Rating: 
Summary: Todd McFarlane's Spiderman is a work of art!!!
Review: Torment, is one of the best spider-man titles that I have ever read. I may be a bit biased since I love Todd McFarlane's artwork but, even so I was captivated by the first page and I could not put it down. Through reading Torment, you will see some of the best representation's of one of Spidey's most dangerous villians "the Lizard". You will also be drawn into the storyline and feel the "Torment" that Spidey goes through on his night of doom. One word sums up this book: "excellent".
Rating: 
Summary: Blehh
Review: Well, I'm glad someone beat me to the obvious punchline - that the only torment this book has to offer is for the reader. I checked this out from my local library, thank God, as opposed to wasting my money on it. Let's break down everything that's wrong with this book: zero character development. Writing, laughably bad. Art, to be honest, is pretty horrible -- yeah, I know McFarlane's supposed to be la artist supremo numero uno, or something, but his Lizard looks like a toad, all of his regular humans (especially Mary Jane) look more like cereal box mascots than real people, and his rendition of Spidey, at least in my opinion, is just average. Above all else, I get the idea that McFarlane just really doesn't like Spider-Man as a character. Skip it -- get some of Straczynski's brilliant run on the book. Don't waste your time with this faux-Gothic nonsense.
Rating:
Summary: A Look Back in Torment
Review: Wow. I hadn't read TORMENT since it's initial five issue run in 1990. Having just re-read it, some 13+ years later, all I can say is: Wow. Well, that's not ALL I can say, but MAN... wow. That was bad. I didn't notice how bad it was back then. Probably because I was 15 and, like everyone else, caught up in the wheels of the hype machine. Whatever the case, time and a bit of maturation have revealed TORMENT to be abysmal on nearly every level. Art? It's McFarlane in all of his palsied-lines, silly-putty-faced character, pointy-footed Spidey glory. Story? Little to none-- all of which could have been told in 2 issues. Like the DOOM-DOOM-DOOM found on nearly every page, the events in torment are a nightmare of repetition: Spidey fights the Lizard, who is "unholy" and mad with bloodlust, MJ pines for Peter, Spidey fights the Lizard, MJ dances, Spidey's costume gets shredded, and so on, etc. For five issues. With lots of exclamation points. And a sea of captions. And unintentionally hilarious lines such as: "Like some blood-crazed vampire, the Lizard means to rip out the Spider's jugular." Oh, well. It's Todd's first foray into writing, so I should probably cut him some slack. DOOM-DOOM-DOOM (For a well-written and intelligent take on the same material, read the story that inspired this mess: KRAVEN'S LAST HUNT, the antithesis of this book in every way.)
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