Super-Villain Team-Up/M.O.D.O.K.'s 11 by Fred Van Lente

And while I can respect Van Lente's desire to do a proper 'heist' tale, the fact that a super-futuristic fortress from the end of time has security which relies on a slowly-rotating video camera (and which can thus be dodged) is. It's also a bit convoluted - what with characters posing as other characters, double-crosses galore, and more factions at play than can really be given the proper spotlight.

Part of it was maybe the decision to take this overly ludicrous premise and instead play it straight, making it more of a standard supervillain tale than the laugh riot I was expecting. So it was actually a pretty major letdown that the comic itself was, after all this time of looking forward to it, kind of a disappointment. as the ringleader? From the premise alone, I was sold! If not wholly original, but still something that gives a comic reader a choice in comic shelves filled with derivative superhero pap.Ī supervillain comic aping Ocean's 11, with ridiculous 'big head' M.O.D.O.K. I enjoyed this story Van Lente managed to do something refreshing by using these D-List characters in a caper story. MODOK used his weakness, his joke reputation, to catch his opponents off guard. But Van Lente’s approach in this story in different is that he takes everything that makes MODOK a joke, but as the story progresses and the end reveal turns him into a calculating villain. If this was any other writer than Van Lente, that writer would have just made him into a token mad scientist. In fact, through the years he has met defeat at the hands of various heroes that he has very much become a joke.

No doubt the AIM mastermind can be a vexing villain with his super-evolved intellect and the resources of AIM to draw on, but he can easily be a cartoonish character, after all he is just a man with a very, very large head. Van Lente turns his attention in this trade paperback to MODOK. His stories are infused with his signature humor, whether following Robert Kirkman on Marvel Zombies (an unenviable task it was) or teaming up with Greg Pak on the buddy book Incredible Hercules. He has a Rumpelstiltskin-like ability to spin story gold from little-known and little-used characters of the D-List set. Originally reviewed on The Raving Asgardianĭespite being part of the Amazing Spider-Man brain trust that charted the Web-crawler’s Brand New Day adventures, Fred Van Lente is an underrated writer.

Super-Villain Team-Up/M.O.D.O.K.'s 11 by Fred Van Lente