Brain Dead and Loving it!

''See the sea, my friend!'' When you consider that our planet is covered by over 70% of water, legends regarding the mysteries of the depths and its mysterious inhabitants were inevitable. Sailors traveling across the oceans may have witnessed the vaguely human shape of a manatee or a seal slicing through the waves, and dream up in their drunken stupor fantasies of humans who have adapted to an underwater existence. The first account of the mermaid legend itself seems to date back to over 3000 years, with the Assyrian myth of the Goddess Atargatis who jumped into a lake after accidentally killing her lover, and became part fish. Followed a number of tales and legends, including 1836's famous Hans Christian Andersen's THE LITTLE MERMAID. In all of those tales, those people of the sea would be half human and half fish. The mother of all mermaids, the Assyrian goddess Atargatis. In the early 1700s, a specific tale in the ARABIAN NIGHTS (A...

Before I start on the review, I first have to address the elephant in the room; the death of Stan Lee, and the controversy surrounding his exact implication in the creation of the characters that populate the Marvel Universe, including of course our favorite wall-crawler. There will always be a certain amount of discord between comic book fans and historians regarding just how much Stan Lee (Born Stanley Lieber 95 years ago) was involved in the creation of characters like Spider-Man, the Hulk, or the Fantastic Four, just to name a few. Most sources will agree that it was a collaborative effort between Lee and the artists. For instance, it has been noticed that early on, the comics only sported the signatures of Stan Lee & Jack Kirby for the first issue of Fantastic Four, or Stan Lee & Steve Ditko for Amazing Fantasy #15, which featured, of course, the first appearance of Spidey. In a certain way, this was almost a way of sharing authorship on th...