Friday Night Fights!

Hey Capatain Marvel Jr.! That Dudley guy stole a whole gang of jewelry & tried to kill Freddy Freeman! Beat him up!

POW! SOCK! BAM! CLOUT!

Wait a minute....."clout"? Was "biff" out to lunch?

Now Bahlactus, that's a guy with clout.

And Now a Word from....Art Brut

Modern art....

Makes me...




Want to ROCK OUT!!!!!!

Friday Night Fights - I Spit On Your Grave!

"Sure thing boy scout...I've heard that before"


DAMN!

Bahlactus could stop the rockin', he just doesn't feel like it.

Images from Superman #666, these panels occur after Superman demolishes a convenience store and before he kills Braniac using "super-friction".

What I Got - 8.22.07

To reiterate from my other blog....I suck, but hey, it's August and I'm not the only one whose blogging-fu has dropped off recently. Anyway, I'm still paying my weekly tithe to the shop, so I might as well write about what I'm spending my money on:

Batman #668

Morrison continues on his "Batmen of Many Nations" arc and ups the stakes for our collection of heroes. It's an interesting little murder-mystery that really brings Bats back to his roots. I only have read a few of Morrison's Batman issues, but what I really like is how he's humanized (dare I say...softened) Batman. When Robin starts making fun of some of the past-their-sell-by-date heroes they're trapped with, Bats sticks up to defend them. Plus, his continued confidence in Robin's abilities is very cool. It's nice to see him acknowledge not every hero can measure up to him. This is the middle-part, so it suffers a bit from that, but it's still a very good issue.

One thing about the art, I had noticed while re-reading the previous issue, it looks as if J.H. Williams III is drawing each hero in a different artist's style. The Knight & Squire look as if Ed McGuinness is drawing them, the Argentine hero is in Carlos Ezquerra's style, the American Indian heroes look like Kevin Nowlan did them and The Legionairre looks like some of Carmine Infantino's Silver Age work. It looks really cool.



Superman #666

Holy crap that was awesome. I was disappointed with Batman #666, but this issue of Superman more than makes up for it. Essentially the plot is that Superman, thinking he's dreaming, decides to live out every single awful impulse he has ever had...from killing Luthor (by spitting in, and through, his face!) to making Jimmy Olsen's head explode using his super-whistling, and hey, no biggie, it's all a dream.....(wait for it)....OR IS IT!

Kurt Busiek writes an insane script that essentially exists solely to give Walt Simonson insane things to draw in the way that only Mr. Simonson can. I think this is the best single-issue tale I've read all year.





Annihilation Conquest: Starlord # 2

So our heroes go into battle (including everyone's favorite Racoon riding a sentient tree) and things get messy. That's pretty much it, this issue was good, but not to the heights of the first issue. It could be that the artist is better at drawing people talking rather than shooting, but it's still good. Part of the problem may have been for as much action that happened in this issue, there wasn't a lot of story, it's like the script read "Our Heroes bicker as the fight their way through the sewers and X & Y characters die." It's not that simple, but not too far off.

Irregardless, I'm still excited to see where this is going and I'm confident that it won't let me down.





The Spirit #9

Darwyn Cooke gets back into fighting form with this issue. Focusing back onto out main villain, who was created during The Spirit's origin, this issue mirrors the tale told in issue #3 with multiple member's of the cast telling the story in narration as we move through. It's well done and what could have been incoherent is easy to follow.












Immortal Iron Fist #8

Here's the pitch: Iron Fist...starring in..."Enter the Dragon", with superpowered kung-fu deities.

FIGHT!

Oh yeah.....

Friday Night Fights - Challengers!

Annnnnndddd....BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE!

BONUS HIT:

WTF!

Both images courtesy of this week's Brave & the Bold #6 in which the Challengers of the Unknown fuck up Rann's entire army. Please note, that is the only panel in which the giant gun makes an appearance. No, I have no idea where the hell it came from either.

What I Got: 8/08/07...Do-Over!

So while I liked what I picked up on last Wednesday, i was a little underwhelmed by my choices (for the record: Nova #4, Criminal #8 & X-Factor #22), mainly because all three books were in mid-storyline so each amounted to a set-up for the next issue. I feel bad about this, since all three of those are some of the bast on the stands currently, but hey, I'll hopefully I'll be raving about them again in a month. ANYWAY, I was just going to skip reviewing this week, but this guy and this other guy's review of the following two books pushed me back into the shop yesterday and I was pleasantly surprised.

Batman #667

I had picked up issue 666 (because, how can one stay away) and was underwhelmed by the issue, so I decided to wait on this book until the collection, but the reviews started coming in and it looked like this might be Morrison's defining arc on the character, so hey, 3 more dollars to my local isn't that much is it? The reviews were right, Morrison brings this Silver-age bit of insanity into current continuity and not only fits it in well with our current Batman, but uses it to humanize him a little as well. This looks to be a fun bit of murder mystery that will help get Bats back to his detective roots.

One last note on the art, J.H. Williams returns to Batman (after his brief Detective stint w/ Paul Dini) and once again, he does a great job. while I love his take on Batman, his Robin is probably the best I've ever seen. He makes him look both like a kid, but tough at the same time. I'd love to see him do a Robin mini sometime in the future.

Casanova #8

So I had picked up the first two issues of this series, because it was a) Matt Fraction, "fuck-yeah" artist of 2006 and b) it was in the $1.99 "Fell-Format". While I enjoyed the secret agent/criminal action of the story, the constant reality/time shifting left me kinda clueless as to what the hell was going on. so I bailed. Not my finest moment, I admit, but life's too short to be confused by funny-books. ANYWAY, this story is a lot more straight forward with everything having been established by the opening arc. Essentially, Casanova Quinn, all-around bad-ass, other-reality super-agent has to track down some hard-core, evil-tech, military hardware. All that plus a giant robot. Fantastic. So, now I'm off to get the collection of the previous seven issues from Amazon. Woo-hoo!

Friday Night....Beatdown!

Lesson #1, Hawkeye:

YOU DON'T BRING A BOW TO A FIST FIGHT!

This beatdown was brought to you by New Avengers #33, of which, these were the only panels worth a good gosh darn.

Thanks, Bahlactus for continuing to bring the pain!

What I Learned @ The Movies

Well then, in the last few weeks, I've seen more movies than I did in all of calendar 2006 (and perhaps 2005), rather than write cohesive reviews (go here for those), here's some things I learned:

• Batman commands respect: During the previews before The Bourne Ultimatum began last night, all of the teenagers in the audience were chatting amongst themselves, but as soon as Michael Caine's dialogue started during the trailer (when you realize it's Batman) everyone became silent. It was awesome. The trailer's kinda "meh" on youtube, but in the theatre, it rocks. I guess it figures, since the guy will throw a car battery at you if you mess with him.


• As for The Bourne Ultimatum itself, it f---ing rocks. A solid continuation of the previous movie (it literally begins 5 minutes after the other one let off) it really doesn't feel like the movie stops to let you breathe throughout the entire running time.


• Also, I highly recommend seeing it in the theatre, since a lot of it is filmed hand-held and with very little to no set-ups or blocking (ie. there's a lot of times where people are standing in front of the camera and very little of the shot is revealed) so I think it'll lose something on the small screen.


• Took my 4-year-old to see Underdog earlier the same day and it was actually pretty good. Not a lot of poop or fart jokes, some good effects and nothing too-scary for the little one. A good time and recommended if you have kids. If you don't, skip it and go see Ratatouille.


• Speaking of Ratatouille, definitely go see that movie. It's love letter to the power that good food has to transport you to another place. Indeed, in that way, it really speaks to all art, be it music, books, what have you, it really shows how you can take many disparate ingredients and use them to trigger not only a specific feeling, but transport someone to a time and place in their history that it's just beautiful.


• Oh yeah, and there's a ton of fun slap-stick moments and perfectly timed jokes that'll keep you laughing at the same time.


• But lest you forget, there still are insipid kids-movies getting foisted upon us, we watched the trailer for the Alvin & the Chipmunks movie and even Jack thought it looked awful.


• The fact that no one is taking a close look at how Pixar is achieving their success and trying to emulate them says a lot of sad things about the state of movie-making in America today.


• Saw Die Hard 4 (the real title sucks, let's face it) and enjoyed it. It's as good as the last two and really, for all of the people bitching about it being rated PG-13, there's a shocking level of violence. Well, there weren't any boobs, good thing we just limited the kids to seeing many, many brutal murders instead of a boob, THAT could warp them.

That's about it for thatrical movies, I was going to get into my recent Netflix travails, but I'll hold onto that for a couple of days. Have a good week.

Friday Night Fights

HA! Eat Glass Lawman!

(click to awesome-size)

What's his name!?!

Yer damn right!

Bahlactus will devour your world!!!

All images courtesy of All Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder #6, which should be retitled simply: Goddamned Batman from now on.