Yeah, you can totally miss this.

Remember DC Universe #0? The Final Crisis preview that featured several short teasers for upcoming stories by prominent writers and artists? Remember how after reading that, you thought “Well, that was pretty damn light and unfulfilling…but wait, I paid 50 cents for this, so whatever.”? After reading this, you will experience a similar response, except that the relief that you only paid 50 cents for a teaser trailer book will be replaced with the flabbergastation that you paid 6 dollars (except if you’re like me, and bought the issue at a discounted price…god bless you, if you did.)

Here’s the problem with teaser trailer books like this: the crumbs that the creators leave are not only unsubstantial for a story (which is KIND OF the point, I guess), but unentertaining by themselves as well. It’s not so much that the writers are writing poor stories, but that in the end, they’re reading these stories with a completely different mindset than you or me. They lay out these crumbs knowing EXACTLY where the trail is heading. So naturally, they’re reading what they wrote as an exciting and intriguing. When we get a hold of these, though, we have ZERO frame of reference, and instead of having a good savory starting points for multiple stories, we have cryptic events that only make sense in the minds of the creators. Therein lies the ultimate problem with Marvel: Point One.

It wasn’t all a failure, though. Despite not really feeling Chris Yost’s Scarlet Spider story, I was utterly blown away by Ryan Stegman’s kinetic and lively framing and models. The little Age Of Apocalypse teaser was also pretty interesting, since it looks like we’re going to be focusing on a broader view of that particular world, which is something that hasn’t really been done before (CORRECTION: Something that hasn’t really been done WELL before). The best overall segment was Fred Van Lente’s, despite Salvador Larocca’s art putting a Greg Land flavor in my mouth. Van Lente is probably the greatest treasure that Marvel has at the moment, since he seems to be the best guy to implement new ideas and characters into the grander Marvel universe. Shame that he’s kind of getting the shaft in terms of his multiple series, lately.

Otherwise, this issue did nothing else to stir anything inside of me. I can’t really tell you if Marvel is heading in the right direction with their stories based on this, since I REALLY don’t have much to go on from here. Teasers shouldn’t be breadcrumbs, but instead the bits left behind by Shake And Bake Chicken: delicious on its own, but an omen to something even more delicious. Unfortunately, the only Shake And Bake bits teaser was Van Lente’s, but since that was only a small fraction of this book, I can’t call this book anything else but a failure.