Random Comics Reviews: Solo Avengers Starring Hawkeye #17

OK, in order to jump-start this den of nothingness that I call a blog, I'm going to dive into my unorganized mess of back issues and randomly select and issue every week to read, review and quite possible ridicule (or praise).
Tonight's offering is Solo Avengers Starring Hawkeye #17 from 1989. It's hard to believe that back in the day that West Coast Avengers was such a hit that it spawned its own spin-off starring it most popular character. Each issue would feature a lead 11 page story starring Hawkeye, and other half would be given over to a tale starring another past or current Avenger.

The lead story, titled, I shit you not, "Even an Octopus Needs Arms!" written by Tom DeFalco with art by Al Milgrom & Don Heck features everyone's favorite purple-attired hero checking in on an anonymous tip called into Avengers mansion about an arms deal. Upon arrival, he's greeted by the recently reformed Sandman, who is casing the joint for his job with Silver Sable and decided he needed some back-up, thus Hawkeye.

Anyway, needless to say, things go sideways when Doctor Octopus shows up and the boys decide to bust some heads. From there, it's a few pages of the heroes bantering while trying to catch the bad guys and eventually losing them all because they're too busy trying not to get killed (well, at least on Hawkeye's part, that is).
The only truly interesting part of it is this panel:

Where Hawkeye references the hearing aids he got after suffering some damage, as he said, "months ago", despite the series being referenced having been published a full six years before. Damn, time moves slowly in the Marvel Universe.

Next up, we have a quick tale starring the Sub-Mariner by Danny Fingeroth and Dave Cockrum. Apparently Namor's looking for the children of his recently deceased wife, Marina. Whilst swimming about the ocean, he happens along a family who were thrown from their boat and he saves them and brings them back to land. Moved by the poverty that they live in, he gives them the gold that he just happens to be carrying with him*.

Anyway, continuing his search, he comes upon Power Man & Iron Fist's old office building which the Beyonder turned to gold and then was promptly sunk in the ocean by the government so it wouldn't tank the entire world's gold market. How's that for a bit of heavy continuity injection for ya? Namor, grudgingly agreeing with the Henry Peter Gyrich-wannabe** he's got to deal with heads out and agrees not to tell anyone about his lucrative find.

As he swims away, he passes a stealth submarine, manned by Goldbug, a super-villain I had only previously thought had existed in a Spider-Man Hostess pie ad***, stealing the gold building. Anyway, after we get treated to Dave Cockrum's Many Emotions of Namor:

He decides to do the right thing and mess up a C-list villain and get yelled at by the same government jackass, thus souring him once again on the human race.

Overall, it's pretty much the definition of adequate superhero comics in the late 1990's. Well worth my $.75, but not much more. Thanks for reading my rants concerning this weeks random folly of my youth, tune in ext week to see what I found lurking in the comics boxes in my basement.

*To apparently pay off a class action suit he had recently lost. This is a book I want: The Biggest Legal Battles of the Marvel Universe. I want action....LEGAL ACTION.

**This Guy:



















***Which apparently I had imagined, I just spent nearly an hour looking for the damned thing on Seanbaby, and couldn't find it. If you happen upon an old school Hostess ad featuring Goldbug, drop me a note, just to show I'm not crazy....at least about this.

Movie Review: Star Trek

I've gotta say that I was impressed. I've never been the biggest Star Trek fan, the original that is. In college, I archived the perfect balance of free time and alcohol abuse that made Next Generation my favorite series for a couple years there, but Kirk, Spock and crew just never connected for me. I enjoyed the better of the movies (how can you deny Wrath of Khan?) , but it just never meant that much to me. So I approached the new movie hesitantly, but I wasn't overly concerned with J.J. Abrahms "crapping on my childhood" or anything like that. Hell, if I was going to try to sell a Trek movie to the general public, I'd do the same thing, start with what everyone know, Kirk, Spock & "Beam me up Scotty!"

So the movie, for an origin story it zips right a long. Starting with Jim Kirk's birth and his Father's death. From there, we get some parallel stories of Kirk & Spock's upbringing, meant to highlight the fact that they grew up outsiders. This is really the only part that kind of fell flat for me. While Spock's story works well, Kirk's only illustrated to me that he was a mouthy little kid who needed a good slap. Plus, that kid looked nothing like Chris Pine.

Anyway, things move quickly from there, getting Kirk etal. through Starfleet Academy via a quick, "Three Years Later"* title and getting us to Kirk's victory over the Kobayashi Maru scenario, which was pretty damn funny. I do like that while Chris Pine nails Kirk's cocky, self-assurance, he's the only one of the actors that didn't attempt to mimic their predecessor's acting style/character tics. It would have been very easy for him to fall into mimicking Shatner's stilted line-readings and that just would've been horrible. The rest of the gang is just great, though I would have preferred a little more of Simon Pegg's Scotty, but hey, you can't get everything you want. All of the characters are given something to so, something that comes from their character and that's the best thing about it, the characters join hand in hand witht he whiz-bang effects to make this just a fantastic film.

The biggest down-fall of the film overall is its villain. Eric Bana gives it a try, though he varies from being the hard-ass, tough-guy, to playing one scene with cocky sarcasm, but he's just kind of there to give something for our heroes to bounce off of. When the sequel comes, I have a feeling they'll have to put a little more effort into the challenge the Enterprise faces.

Overall, I loved this movie, in fact, I plan to see it again tomorrow. Though there are still a few movies coming out this summer that I'm eager to see, I doubt that any of them will rival this one. Now, when's the damn sequel coming out?

*My biggest disappointment about my viewing experience is that the theater mis-framed the picture of the movie, so all of the titles bled off into the curtains. It would have been nice to see the whole thing.

Hey Kids! New Art!

Many moons ago, Les McClaine, superb artist and co-creator of favorite indie-comic (and TV show) The Middleman, was offering to do commissions. This was so many moons ago in fact, that I had forgotten that I had bought one. So much to my pleasant surprise, I found a large envelope on my doorstep with my Iron Fist commission inside, check it out:

Also, since I'm a wonderful person, there was a small portrait of Luke Cage as well:

He also threw in copies of his Repeat Until Death comic-strip collection and the Evil Space Robot mini-comic. So yeah, I'm pretty stoked, maybe this will get me of my ass to get these and my other two portraits framed now, one can only hope.

Anyway, I highly recommend keeping an eye on Mr. McClaine's web site, EvilSpaceRobot to see when he next is offering commissions, and also follow his excellent web-comic, Johnny Crossbones.

FREE COMIC BOOK DAY: $%#@ YEAH!

So it came to pass that Free Comic Book Day has descended upon us once more, on this absolutely beautiful (at least in the Chicago-area) Saturday in May. I headed over to my local comic shop to check out the wares and was not disappointed with the selection and there was already quite a crowd, even though I arrived just a few minutes after opening. Skottie Young, artist on Marvel's adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was already signing and doing sketches, so I quickly jumped in line. Chris Mitten, artist on the very good Wasteland, soon joined him. I managed to get something signed by each of them, along with these two sketches:

First, I had no idea what to get, since I didn't expect them to be doing sketches, so I didn't think about it ahead of time or bring any reference material (or even a sketch-book). Fortunately, I overheard Skottie Young saying that he had just finished re-reading NextWave, so I immediately knew I needed a sketch of Machine Man:


Next, I asked Chris Mitten to draw Michael, from Wasteland:


Both of the guys were great to talk to and I'd highly recommend seeking them out if they're at a convention near you.

Amazing Fantasy did their usual bang-up job with the event and everyone had good things to say about them, I love that shop and it's nice that I've never had to shop at a crappy comics shop in my life.

As for the comics themselves, I'd highly recommend picking up the Atomic Robo book, the short story contained within is a hoot and worth the (no) money for the last page alone. DC's Blackest Night #0 is OK, pretty much a trailer for the upcoming event, but there's still some nice interaction between Hal Jordan and Barry Allen in there, actually, it was better than Flash: Rebirth #1 in that respect, but I don't know if that's a function of this book being that good, or that book being that bad. Marvel's Avengers book is a fun little story and is good for bringing people up to speed on the current clusterfuck that is Avengers continuity, it's a good example of taking a crappy status quo and spinning an OK story out of it.

So anyway, it's still reasonably early on this most comic-booky of holidays, so if you can, get out there and get yourself some comics! Buy some too!

Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader?

I guess I Always knew that this was how it was going to end. That we didn't have him forever. That one day, someone would say, "Hey Jim. Whatever happened to the Caped Crusader?" I'd tell the, "Pretty much what you'd expect. He's dead."
-Commissioner Gordon

So after a few months of delay, the second part of Neil Gaiman & Andy Kubert's two-part requiem for Batman has been published, and from what I've seen it's being met with a collective "meh.." Which is pretty much how I felt, but after thinking about it, I've figured out the problem with the book, and now I think I like it quite a bit.

***Spoilers Ahead***

But let's begin at the beginning, the story (which is better read in one sitting) envisions a ghostly Batman, along with an eventually-identified woman, peering down at his own funeral, watching both his allies and enemies each eulogizing him and giving different accouts of his death. Some of the deaths are brave, so are inconsequential. Through all of these stories, we get the essence of what The batman is, he never gives up, he always saves the day (even if it means his ldeath), and that there is always a Batman. Mirroring Alan Moore's Superman tale, "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow", we find Batman moving onto his reward* But unlike Superman's final reward (to live a normal life as a human, with Lois and child), Batman's reward is to simply be Batman, as if this is all he can imagine and his reqard is to be reborn again and spend a happy few years as a child with his parents again until their murder, which he knows cannot be prevented.

There are good moments in the book, even some that are truly powerful, such as Harvey Bullock's eulogy:






However, I ended up having four issues with the book, and they're all kind of interrelated.

1. The title automatically ties it into "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow", probably one of the most iconic Superman stories of the last 30 years. By joining them like that, you're setting the book up to fail if it doesn't live up to something that's almost impossible to live up to.

2. Batman's not dead. Sure, everyone thinks he is, but as we saw at the end of Final Crisis, he's been shunted to stone age, or on an alternate Earth (or both). Yes, I know that's not really the point and this could very well be an Imaginary Story (aren't they all?), but it leads to a certain cognitive dissonance. When Man of Tomorrow was put out, it was the end of an era, whereas no one really believes that Bruce Wayne is going to be gone much longer than Steve Rogers has been(two years, and counting, but it looks like he's back in July).

3. Andy Kubert, while a very good artist, just isn't an iconic Batman artist, and to lend this book some gravitas, that's what it needed. Man of Tomorrow, had Curt Swan (with inks by George Perez), and really, there's no more iconic Superman artist than Swan. Kubert's good, but can you imagine if they'd gotten Neal Adams? Or hell, while I'm wishing, Jim Apparo?

4. And that brings me to the last issue with this book, it wasn't published 25 years ago, at the same time as "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow", that book was put out as a capper to Superman's silver age, essentially giving that Superman a send-off before he was rebooted by Man of Steel. I really think that's the proper way to look at this book. The myriads of deaths presented are the deaths of the infinite numbers of Batmen as the multiverse collapsed into itself at the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths and the Bruce Wayne, who is re-born at the end, is the new Batman of the re-booted DC Universe following Crisis. When I think of it that way the book works for me. The idea that the collective Batmen (Batmans?), though different, all had the same ultimate goal and the same, final reward.

Anyway, it is well done, Gaiman's writing does carry the story, and though I think it would have been better served to have been all published at once (or at least without the giant delay), I think the book accomplished what it set out to do, and it does work as a complimentary volume to Man of Tomorrow, but I just don't think it will ever be seen that way, but you never know.

*I find it interesting that while most of Superman's friends died trying to save him in Man of Tomorrow and he gets to live happily ever after. While in Batman's story, he's the one who pays the price to save everyone, including his enemies.

Live Tonight: Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3

This is one of those shows that I was excited for as much for hte band, as I was for the venue, the Church of the Epiphany in the West Loop, but alas, they've been forced to move the show to the Logan Square Auditorium, but I'm still stoked, none the less. Hitchcock is an artist I've been a fan of ever sine "So You Think You're In Love" was playing on 120 minutes back in the early 90's, but I've never made it out to see him, and from what I hear, his shows with the Venus 3 (featuring R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, amongst others) are barn-burners, so I'm sure to have a good time. Here's a song from their first album together, Ole' Tarantula:



Both Ole Tarantula ad their current album, Goodnight Oslo, are available on eMusic.

Happy Easter

I know it's late, but it's still the thought that counts.



Hope everybody had a good holiday!

Live Tonight: XTC (kinda)

Over the next few days, an astonishing 4 close, dear friends of mine will pass from the shores of youth into the Greyhavens of the grand age of 35. Fortunately, we've all been given the ample venue for this celebration of their passing into agedness, Tributosaurs, a Chicago collective that puts on monthly shows "as" other musicians, is putting on a show as long-time favorite XTC.

XTC has been a favorite of mine for years, so long that I can't really even pin-point when I started enjoying their music, though I do remember stealing my brother's cassette tape of Mummer way back in the day. Regardless, I've been a fan for just about as long as I knew what type of music that I actually liked and it's nice that I'll finally get to see their music played live, even if not by them. Though they're not exactly a going concern anymore, even if they were still putting out new music, I doubt we'd be seeing them anytime soon. Though it's long been rumored that extreme stage fright keeps lead-singer-songwriter Andy Partridge* off the stage, I think it's because he just doesn't like doing it that much.

Anyhoo, the music itself is pretty much just pitch-perfect witty pop. I really hate writing about music because any effort I put into describing it just comes out sounding lame, so here's the Avengers-inspired video for The Mayor of Simpleton:



If you like what you hear, and you haven't yet been exposed to their majesty, I'd highly recommend picking up their Greatest Hits comp, Upsy Daisy Assortment**, really, in lieu of owning all of their releases, that's an album no collection should be without.

Anyway, needless to say, I'm going to be having a good time tonight, hope you are too.

*Incidentally, Andy Partridge also wrote and performed my all-time favorite TV theme-song for the woefully under appreciated Wonderfalls, I can't find the opening on youtube, but here's a link to the song itself.

**Which is apparently out of print, so you could do worse than to pick up the slightly more expensive, yet also more comprehensive Fossil Fuel singles collection. If you're looking for a single disc, grab Oranges & Lemons, still very good stuff there.

What I Got - 4.8.09

Oh man, what a crappy day, but hey, no day can be that crappy when it's nudie magazine day comics day! Anyway, figured I'd give a quick rundown of what I picked up:


Batman: Battle for the Cowl #2

Not quite as strong as the first issue, but I'd wager that's because it's th middle issue of a three issue series, all the cool stuff is going to happen in the next one. This really felt like it was moving the parts into place. Taking Damien off the bored and forcing Dick to feel a sense of responsibility over him. Moving the Black Mask's plan forward and setting up what seems to be a apocalyptic gang war in Gotham City. So overall, it's still pretty darn good, but all the real fireorks are being held off till next month. Crap.


Captain Britain & MI 13 #12

Speaking of not wanting to wait a month for that next issue...I had read the first 6 issues of this series and resolved to wait for the trade, but after picking up the first trade and reading the last few issues through *cough* *cough* other means I started picking this up again last month and hell, when you have Dracula and his vampire horde invading Britain via his castle on the bloody moon, well, it's just too cool to wait for. Anyway, this issue sets up some true hope for our heroes, only to see said hope crushed at the end. Paul Cornell and Leonard Kirk are doing some fantastic superhero comicing here and I'm glad I'm not missing it (though I could use a time-machine to get me to next month already).

OK, that's it for tonight. I'll try to get something up tomorrow on the other two books I picked up. Incidentally, if you get the hankering for some comics, head on over to The Action Age and check out the first issue of Chris Sims' epic, The Chronicles of Solomon Stone, it's good, real good.

Friday Night Linkage

Hey there folks, I've really been thinking about posting something this week, but man, have I been exhausted. Plus, after the blogosphereageddon that occurred on Monday, with the Alert Nerds' curation of the My Scott & Jean Event, I think the whole geeky internets has been pretty tired anyway.

Anyway, as I'm sure you know, this past week saw April Fool's Day come and go, which is pretty high on my list of fake holidays that I cannot stand, but usually, there's one joke/prank pulled that sticks around either because it was so good or so bad. This year there was one, that was only bad because it was fake, ThinkGeek's Tauntaun sleeping bag:

Yes, a product so truly awesome that they are now attempting to make it a reality. I'm totally buying ones for me and the boys if that happens (yes, they are making them in adult sizes).

In other internet geekiness, part of the reason my blogging regularity has declined is Twitter, I've been wasting spending a lot of time there interacting with fellow colleagues, and...well, it got shamefully geeky the other day. Fortunately, twitter pal Scott Cederlund chose to preserve the conversation for all time, and yeah, it really was rather sad.

In other Twitter conversation news, ms park has taken it upon herself to utilize it as a random poll generating tool. Here's the results of the first few, and though I forgot to mention it in a follow up, I'd totally go with Paris Hilton, because, well, at the end of the day, I'd rather be stuck on an island with a girl.

Oh hey, if you happen to live in South Suburban Chicago, my local comics shop (and it's other locations) is having a pretty nice sale, so I'd recommend you swing on by. The Easter Bunny will even be there, if you're at the Frankfort location, you might get to watch him get messed up by a 3 year-old (I just mentioned that Sean could take him, and now everyone wants to see it).

So there you go, I'll go back to watching TV and you can go back to having a life, but I'll leave you with some music, here's something that's been a fave for a few years, and just never seems to leave the playlist (especially in the spring):

I Wanna Know Girls by Portastatic

Also, speaking of music, check out old friend Ditching Boy's blog as he's been going apeshit with the music bloggery of late.

With that, have a good night and I'll talk at you later.

My "Scott & Jean": "Trust Me!"

The fine folks over at Alert Nerd have decided to take an off hand comment made by one of the fine folks I follow on Twitter and turn it into a meme. When discussing something Batman related, Dan Faust made a comment that the subject in question was his"Scott & Jean", meaning a subject in which a person's passion/geekiness/**** veers from rationality and becomes something that you simply cannot talk about without swearing repeatedly and eventually having to either fold up in the fetal position or drink heavily (and quite possibly both). Let's face it, we all have one, even if it's not a geek related thing, be it about sports (anytime a person mentions the Cubs' "curse" I want to break something...or them), soap operas (Days without John & Marlena just ain't Days...) or whatever else we choose to obsess about, everyone has a breaking point.

As a true nerd, I'm sure I have several, but really there's one that so seemingly minor to most people, but it just sets me on edge, and of course it's all George Lucas's fault. Now, let's all face facts here people, the prequels just weren't made for us children of the 70's, and I've come to grips with that. But I still bitch about them from time to time, hell, I even got yelled at by Church a few weeks ago because I was complaining about how much Attack of the Clones sucked. But ultimately, I've let go of any residual anger about those movies and have even started enjoying them on their own merits (as long as you fast-forward through any of Hayden Christiansen's painful attempts at "acting"). No, my issues lie with the Special Edition re-releases of the original trilogy. Now when these were coming out, we all thought they were an excellent idea, new special effects, new scenes, how could this go wrong? Well, it did, the new effects, though state-of -the-art looked pretty cartoonish when compared to the 25 year-old effects of the original (hell, just look at Jabba in A New Hope SE, that is some bad-looking CGI). But you know, I rolled with it, under that polished veneer, the movies that had shaped my childhood were still there, but then I got to Return of the Jedi and I lost my shit. It was all due to this (go to 4:03 on the video):



Now,if you're wondering what's wrong with that, the original scene* was:

Lando: "Wait, I thought you were blind!"

Han: "Trust me!"

Now, Han's line has been replaced with:

Han: "It's allright, I can see a lot better!"

What the fuck Lucas Why the hell would you change such a perfect line that not only is so fucking Han Solo it's also Airwolf and it also hearkens to Indiana Jones. Why? Well, according to an interview I saw (can't remember if it was with Lucas or one of his lackeys) it was because they had a better audio track for this particular line reading than the old one so they went with it instead. So wait, with everything they have at their disposal, they can't loop one fucking line they can't clean up the audio. What the fuck is wrong with you people? This ultimately confirmed the thing I fear most about Lucas, he's no longer an artist, if he ever was one to begin with, he's now just a technician. A very good one, perhaps one of the best working today in movies, but he's lost the ability to create art he can only create bells and whistles that are certainly pretty and neat, they just don't have any life in them (once again, see the performances in the prequels), and that's what kills me, that's what makes me crazy and that, dear reader, is my Scott & Jean.

*FYI, I did mean to throw up the original scene, but the internets have failed me and it's not on youtube. I did give it the old college try at getting it on youtube myself, but I just couldn't do it, as I ama technological moron.

Big Box O' Love: March (Part 1)

Oh hey there, I guess I have a blog! Should get around to that "content" thing the kids are all talking about. Anyway, DCBS dropped this month's box off at my doorstep Friday, and here's a run-down of what I got.

Starman Omnibus Volume 2: I've made no secret that Starman is probably my favorite series ever, and this volume (and its place on the NYT best-seller list) just proves that it's worthy of my love.

Continuing on the first volume's collection of the entire series in chronological order, along with some stuff I didn't know existed (namely some Shade stories put out in the showcase books DC put out in the 90's), his book is just amazing. Though some of the coloring is a little dated, other than that, this is just a time-less book and I can't wait till I have the remaining four volumes in my hot little hands. By the way, anyone want to buy the first five trades of the series, cheap?


The Invincible Iron Man Volume 1: Finally, the first collection of Matt Fraction's take on Iron Man hits paperback and it's some good stuff. Though it does pay some lip-service to Tony Stark's post-Civil War place in the Marvel Universe as the head of S.H.I.E.L.D., this book feels more like the thematic sequel to Warren Ellis's Extremis story-line,, Stark dealing with the technology he designed as a weapon and trying to make it positively benefit the world. Being Fraction, he manages this actually better than Ellis did, having a much more decompressed story that's a much more satisfying read. Bringing back Zeke Stane, who he introduced in his tragically short-lived series The Order to plague Stark, Fraction tells a good story, though I never really got Stane's motivations, or maybe he just had too many (Daddy-issues, inferiority complex, terminal asshole-itis). Salvador Larocca's art was very good, reminiscent of Adi Granov's work on the previously mentioned Extremis arc, but it had a little more life to it, probably because it was drawn instead of CG. Overall, a solid, well-done book.


Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 1: Another book I've been waiting for in soft-cover for freaking ever, this collects the first six issues. Really, this book is a lot of fun, spinning out of Annihilation Conquest, Peter Quill and his cohorts (including Rocket Raccoon, who is, for some bizarre reason, one of my favorite characters, ever) are on a rather ill-defined mission to seal space-time fissures throughout the cosmos. Using Knowhere, the hollowed-out head of a dead Celestial that hangs on the event horizon of the (literal) end of the universe, as their home-base, the team deals with religious extremists, their own inter-group squabbles and the creeping tendrils of the Secret Invasion. I actually dropped collecting this book monthly when they got sucked into Secret Invasion, but I shouldn't have been so hasty seeing how they ultimately dealt with the situation, which was pretty ingenious on the part of the writers (Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, two writers who are no strangers to cosmic scale superheroics). Once again, Paul Pelletier puts in some very good work, it's a shame that his art doesn't get talked about more, between his work here, on Nova and on Fantastic Four he's proved he's got some serious chops.

So that's the first part, let's see if I can actually get through the other two books I got and get a Part 2 up tomorrow.

Because I'm bored....

Consider this payback for the chicken purse.

A Sorcerer Supreme You Can Believe In

It has come to our attention here at Phoning It In Industries (NYSE: PI3) that The Bendis has decried that the Marvel Universe's current Sorcerer Supreme, Dr. Strange, is to be laid off replaced with what the young ruffians are currently referring to as the "new hotness". Now some people have made some hay of who the choices are and have thrown their considerable (mostly panda-based) weight behind, what we think to be, a lesser candidate.

While our distinguished colleagues in blogging would gladly hand of the title of Sorcerer Supreme over to a young lady who has done well for herself in both the worlds of modeling and super-heroics (though slightly less-so in the world of marriage), young Miss Walker, though lucky in some of her magical dealing, is just not fully prepared for the responsibility of dealing with magical threats to the earthly plane, that's why we here at Phoning It In are throwing our support behind:

ELSA BLOODSTONE

Quite simply Miss Bloodstone has been preparing all her life for the mantle of being Earth's Sorcerer Supreme. Trained from childhood by her (rather deranged) father, Ulysses Bloodstone, first by defeating the Blight Beast with nothing but a spoon as a baby to circumcising the hideous felch-monster of Bihar Province with the same (now rather worse-for-the-wear) spoon moments later.* She proved herself in a mini-series that no one has read. She proved herself by defeating (along with her team, NextWave) the forces of H.A.T.E. I mean, has Miss Walker defeated the combined forces of a Baby M.O.D.O.K. and Devil Dinosaur? We think not. Plus, she's English, they're totally classier that your lame-ass Alaskan chicks.

Vote for Elsa Bloodstone to be your Sorcerer Supreme, she's your only hope (at least until Dr. Strange comes back sometime next year).

*Come to think of it, I really hope they threw that spoon out.

Battlestar Galatcica: Happy Endings

I'm coming to the realization that Battlestar Galactica could very well be my favorite TV series, ever and it's making me wonder why I've been feeling more and more ambivalent as the last few episodes have been unspooling. They've certainly been good, and I'm sure part of it is that while they're giving call-backs to past episodes and kind of reveling in the idea that, "well, we're not going to be in this corridor ever again, we might was well give it a send-off" we all just want to know how it ends. The biggest thing is that we want someone, anyone in this Olympics of Despair to have a happy ending. That's what this show has been about since the first nuke exploded over Caprica, a happy ending for the human race, and short of the ONE TRUE GOD coming down, that's not going to happen for most of the cast we've come to love, let's give a quick run-down:

President Roslin: They might as well be wheeling her around in a coffin for the next three episodes.

Adama: Will not survive. Because letting him live after both* of his true loves are gone is too much for the Old Man to bear. Speaking of his other true love....

Col. Tigh: Is it me or has this whole series been about Tigh? It' like he's the very definition of human fallibility and also of our nobility. Just an amazing character...which kinda sucks because the dude is screwed. There's no way he can have a happy ending, because his two loves are going to be eternally in conflict and other than Adama his other love....

Ellen Tigh: Has been set up as the fall guy lady for the whom all of Man's/Cylon's sins will eventually rest. Ellen will eventually do something noble, but she's fucked (as is most everyone else...keep going).

Boomer: Effectively damned herself with her abduction of Hera, unless she and Tyrol can somehow end up boxed together in the Barbie-dream-house she imagined for them. Speaking of...

Galen Tyrol: Yeah, without Boomer, dudes just a fat, single dad who can fix the hell outta a Viper. That's no happy ending.

Baltar: Let's face it, if this dude gets a happy ending, it's no happy ending for us. I like Baltar, the flashes of brilliance he used to get himself out of tight scrapes are just amazing at times, but eventually, he's going to be made to pay.

Tori: She was once really hot, then she got all Cylon and bitchy. Go away...no happy ending for you.

Hot Dog: Who the fuck cares about Hot Dog?

Anders: Well, it doesn't look good, figuring dude's got a bullet lodged in his brain and he's a Speak n' Spell right now, but, obviously he's going to have a major part to play coming up in the end seeing as how he's married to...

Starbuck: who is obviously the crux who the whole thing is revolving around (though I've never found her that interesting). However, no matter what she is, no matter what happens to her, she's probably not going to be happy, since she love both Anders and....

Lee Adama: Who has shown himself to be both bad-ass and milquetoast throughout the series. Hopefully our man will get a chance to shine in the next two weeks, but I just don't see him settling down with Starbuck and having little cigar-chomping, lawyers with her. He's dooooommmmedddddd.

Helo, Athena & Little Hera: They're it. These three are the only ones with a chance of redemption at the end, the only ones who have not betrayed their friends, whose trespasses are forgivable, who have kept the faith. At the end of the series, humanity/cylonity will rest upon this family and they are all we have.

Well, them and the hopes of a scene featuring Adama and Roslin going to work on Cavill with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch. But that's probably too much to hope for. What do you think?

Batman: Battle for the Cowl

Picked up a bunch of books this week, but I think I'll split the ones I want to talk about into a few posts. Anyhoo, up first is Batman: Battle for the Cowl #1:

So Batman's dead, or stuck int he past, or trapped on an alternate Earth....whatever, dude's not around so the shit is hitting the fan in Gotham City. The criminal element has felt the absence of Batman and is taking full advantage. Nightwing has pulled in all of the reserves to cover the crisis and they're holding, barely. But a new Batman is appearing on the scene, brutally bringing down criminals, leading Robin to believe that someone from the inner circle has to take up the mantle.

I've gotta say, Tony Daniel really does a good job with this book. After reading his workman-like art during Grant Morrison's run on Batman, I was doubtful that his writing would be much batter, but he has seemed to really nail the characters (with one reservation). Robin narrates the whole story, and his voice is very well done. The art is serviceable, not bad, but still a little sketchy in places.

The only real issue I had was Damien's characterization. While Daniel gets the spoiled rich kid thing with him, I always saw him as being much more unflappable. The kids too much of a dick to let his opponents see fear on him, plus the little fucker's lethal. It just seems like the plot required him to behave that way, and thus, he did.

Anyway, it was pretty darn good, and after all of the Final Crisis stuff, astonishingly straight-forward. I'm looking forward to the next two issues, hopefully they'll come out at a reasonable clip.

Fantastic Four: World' Greatest

"It's such a fine line between clever and stupid" - Ian St. Hubbins (Michael McKean)

Mark Millar's been bugging me for a couple of years now. Not really his writing (which has been both good and bad of late), but his public persona, constantly schilling his stuff and explaining to anyone who will listen how rich he is and how much of genius he is. It's pretty much turned me off from picking up any of his latest stuff. However, I had a free trade coming from the shop this week, and with his latest collaboration with Brian Hitch hitting stands, I figured that I'd give it a whirl. Following their collaboration on The Ultimates, a book that I liked a lot though I felt it kind of fell apart towards the end of part two), Millar and Hitch signed on for 16 issues of Fantatic Four and this collects the first eight of them.

Overall, it's a fun little read, playing to their strengths with big action set-pieces and lots of big crazy-science ideas, but, as Sir St. Hubbins says above, in his quest to be really clever with his story, Millar falls onto the stupid side of the thin line. The overall conceit of the book is that the Earth is dying and the only way to save its population is to move them all to the under-construction Nu-Earth (no umlaut?). Of course, the construction is being led by Reed's ex-girlfriend Alyssa Moy (think Reed in Tomb Raider's body), who we're supposed to think is constantly tempting Reed with her feminine wiles, despite acting like a woman I can't see anyone standing for more than ten minutes. That's probably my biggest problem with the book is the characterizations. The only character that I really felt that Millar "nailed" was Reed, with his absent-minded-professor schitck. Ben just kind of stands around and makes wise-cracks, Sue's just there to be the loving wife and stand by Reed, and his Johnny is an irresponsible jackass. That characterization of Johny would have been fine five or six years ago, but during Mark Waid & Mike Wieringo's run* they actually grew him up a bit and it's a shame that no one is contiuing that, it just seems lazy, like he couldn't be bothered to draw any nuance but the broad strokes.

From there we get the patented Millar/Hitch big action scene featuring the entire Marvel U going up against Nu-Earth's out of control security (giant) robot. The arc wraps up with the FF being challenged by a team of refugee superheroes from Earth's apocalyptic future (which adds up to how many apocalyptic futures for the Marvel Universe now? ).

Hitch's art is very good for the most part, but seems in some areas very sketchy. like they colored directly from his pencils in order to save time, which is a shame. If you hire Hitch, you have to deal with the delays and not bother rushing him. He also doesn't seem to get Reed's face/head right. He's pretty spot-on with everyone else, by Reed just always looks rather mis-shapen. Also, he relies upon photo reference for a few too many of the women's facial expressions. I mean, how many do you know who talk while sticking their tongues out? Apparently Bryan Hitch (and Greg Land) know a lot of them. My last issue with the art is that there's a few places where it's obvious they had meant to do a double-page spread of an action scene, but for some reason decided not to. It makes the action in those pages seem rather compressed and loses a lot of its impact (I noticed this towards the end of Ultimates 2 a well).

Overall, I liked the book in it's turn-off-your-brain, action movie kind of way, but it's certainly not something I'll hold up to people as vital work on the FF.

*Probably my favorite run on the title.

Movie Review: Watchmen

"George, you can write this shit, but you can't say it." - Harrison Ford to George Lucas

The quote above pretty much embodies a lot of my feelings towards the movie adaptation of Alan Moore & Dave Gibbon's graphic novel Watchmen. I absolutely love the book,but when comic book dialogue is taken off of the page and put on screen, coming out of the mouths of real people, it just sounds stupid.

But let's back track. I did think the movie as a whole was pretty good, Zack Snyder took what I thought to be an un-filmable book and managed to tame it into a pretty brisk 2 hour 45 minute movie. Some of the performances were excellent, some (one in particular) were not so good. So we'll start with the good. The movie really begins excellently right off with a credits sequence set to Bob Dylan's "The Times, They Are A-Changin'" illustrating the "golden age" of the movie's world to the present with key scenes, including the formation of the Minutemen, the assassination of JFK, and the sad end of the Silhouette. It really sucks you into the world that Moore & Gibbons created and serves as a great Cliff's Notes to the new viewer to understand what 1985 of the Watchmen's world is like. From there we get the first two issues of the series pretty much word-for-word, and done well. Jackie Earl Haley is very good as Rorschach , managing to pull off his voice very well and give his journal readings some heft. Though Jeffrey Dean Morgan gives it a good try, The Comedian's dialogue is the most ridiculous, when not given a brush-up for the screen. This is most obvious during his scene with the Nite Owl while quelling the pre-Keene Act riots. I love how it reads off the page, but when it comes out of his mouth, it just doesn't work. It's in this instance that the filmmakers' slavish devotion to the source material hamstrings them. I'm sure they could have pulled this off much better if they'd rewritten some of it.

The movie proceeds pretty much along the lines of the book, excising some characters (the News Vendor, the boy reading the comic book) and combining some scenes (the psychiatrist now has just one scene with Rorschach). The biggest change is the tweak to the ending, which really didn't bother me, though the idea that Dan & Laurie continued on as superheroes after the end did, as it kind of misses the point. I always thought was one of the ideas of the book was that dressing up in these idiotic costumes was damaging to the individual, for them to continue to be costumed adventurers, to me, shows that they haven't changed despite the events of the story.

Easily the worst part of the film was Malin Ackerman's (Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II) acting. It was as if she was reading cue-cards just out of scene. When I read Michael Phillip's review for the Chicago Tribune and he referred to her as "possibly the worst actress in Hollywood at the moment", I thought he was just being an asshole (because the rest of his review is pretty asshole-ish too), but I do have to agree, she's really bad, distractingly so.

Other issues were Zack Snyders' use of his fast-slooooowww-fast style of action scenes, a style that was old before 300 was over. It's odd, because that's the only way he asserts any directorial style into the picture, other than that it's purely what's on the page, put up on the screen. I would much rather have seen a different director put his own stamp on the material ad take chances with it. While Watchmen is not as bad as 300 or Sin City in my mind, both of those movies to me were so slavishly devoted to their source-material that they ceased to be anything more to me than technical exercises in taking pictured from the page and adapting them exactly for the screen; the equivalent of taking a photo of a girl and photoshopping it so that it looks exactly like the Mona Lisa, that's not art, just good photoshopping.

Anyway, I may sound like I'm coming down on the movie, but I did enjoy myself and may even see it another time (I'll certainly see it on video). At no point was I looking at my watch thinking, "get on with it!" I do wish that I could have come into this movie cold, without the weight of having known this story so well for the past 20 years, I think that's why Roger Ebert's review is so laudatory, he had not read the book, so all of this was new to him, as this was just a re-telling of one of my favorites. Overall, they took a great book and made a pretty good movie out of it.

FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS: OPP!

TONIGHT'S ONE PANEL PUNCH-OUT:
CAPTAIN MARVEL JR. VERSUS CAPTAIN NAZI

YEAH, THAT'S JUST ABOUT HOW I THOUGHT IT WOULD GO DOWN

This awesome panel (along with so, so may others) is brought to you by: Shazam Family Archives Vol. 1.

What I Got - 3.4.09

So I guess I should make an attempt to put up some content on this here blog-thingy, so here's a quick rundown of what I picked up this week, I haven't gotten a chance to read everything, but at least here are some first impressions:

Secret Six#7: The first arc of this book comes to an end and I'm rather enjoying Gail Simone's take on this team of quasi-villains. It just seems like it's missing something, if it weren't for the fact that I have a feeling that the book needs every purchase that it can get, I would probably wait for trade. I suspect that it would read better that way.

Gotham Gazette: Batman Dead?: My sole reason for picking this book up was to see the Gotham MCU back in action and it's OK. It just seems like one of those preview books that DC puts out occasionally, featuring four 6-page previews of new books coming out,this time featuring Vicki Vale, Stephanie Brown, Leslie Thompkins and Harvey Bullock as they deal with the aftermath of Batman's "death". However, I guess that the stories in this book are meant to be wrapped up in another Gotham Gazette book in May? I liked this, but I don't like waiting 2 months for the ends of stories that weren't long enough to be that memorable.

Hellboy: The Wild Hunt #4: It's Hellboy. There's really nothing else to say about that.

Secret Warriors #2: I got the hard sell on this book from a fellow customer at the shop, and, since I've always love Nick Fury I figured I'd give it a shot. Well, I did and I'm out. The whole "everything you know is wrong!" reveal of the last issue just rubbed me the wrong way, and this issue did nothing to make me feel like anything actually interesting is going to happen. Part of the problem is that both issues have featured people sitting around have not-particularly interesting conversations. Plus the art is rather pedestrian. I'll look in on it again when the trade comes out. Kind of disappointed as I was hoping for more from co-writer Jonathan Hickman (as I loved The Nightly News).

Best of the Week

Agents of Atlas #2: Jeff Parker is easily my favorite comics-writer right now and his original Agents of Atlas mini-series is a large reason why. Taking a disparate group of Marvel's golden age characters and fashioning them into team that seeks to save the world while operating as an underground criminal organization, this book is pretty much everything people want in a comic. Smart, fun and full of action, I just love this book so much.

TRADES:

North World Vol. 2: I didn't even know this book was coming out until this morning and I was very happy to see it was coming out. Lars Brown story of Conrad, a heroic adventurer who decided, after the event of volume 1 that he'd rather settle down and be an accountant with his Dad that chase monsters is an enjoyable little story about a man facing the dawning of his adulthood, while fending off giant bears and random street-thugs. I'm only about half-way through this new volume, but it's of the same quality as the first.

Fantastic Four: World's Greatest: I hadn't planned on getting this first volume of Mark Millar and Brian Hitch's run on the title, but I had a free trade coming at the shop, so I figured I'd take a shot. I think I might actually try to review this one in full, once I read it.


So there you go, what did you all pick up this week?

ONE MORE! And Then There Was The Time...

And then there was the time when Power Pack teamed up with The Punisher and Dakota North to bring the Three Stooges to justice...

This fever-dream brought to you by Power Pack #46 by Jo Duffy and Whilce Portacio. And with this one, I promise I'll stop stealing Church's shtick.

And The There Was The Time...

And then there was the time when Luke Skywalker fought
some crazy chick with a laser whip....

This fight originally published in Star Wars Vol. 1 #96, and it is yet another reason why the Expanded Universe can suck it.

Reading the Watchmen: Chapter Five

This was my favorite issue yet of the series. Alternating between the various stories running parallel in the book, the plot is moving quickly towards the moment where everything goes to hell.

Rorschach continues his investigation into the murder of the Comedian and the shaming of Dr. Manhattan. Through this we can again get into his head and see the pure black and white world view that he subscribes to. He sees the evil in the world and he is on a crusade to end it, all of it.

Along with that, we return to the Greek chorus of the book, the nameless news vendor, offering his opinion to any and all about the state of the world, all while the boy reads through the comic-within-a-comic, "The Tales of the Black Freighter". That narration of that book, serving to also narrate our story.

All of this culminates with the framing and capture of Rorschach, revealing him as the bum who we've seen earlier silently carrying a sign reading, "The End is Near". This leads you to wonder, is he really any type of hero at all?

This was just a fantastic issue, and a horrific one. The horrible visuals of the Black Freighter story only serve to heighten the feeling of dread that comes through the entire story. The back-up in this issue, is an excerpt from a book about the pirate comics that ruled the newsstands in the world of Watchmen. The amount of detail that Moore puts into just those three pages is just amazing and I wish that they had managed to put together some of the stories they discuss in there for real, as they all sound pretty amazing.

Reading the Watchmen: Chapter Four

Chapter four of this book is a tough nut to crack, perhaps because it is the most straight-forward so far. It features Dr. Manhattan on Mars, recounting his life story. From boyhood, teaching himself to be a watch-maker (Hey there symbolism! Glad you could drop by!) to becoming a physics researcher for the government, to the accident that turned him into something far more than human.

Essentially, we also get a brief history of the latter 20th century of the world of Watchmen. Manhattan's very existence serves to completely tilt the balance of the Cold War so that it's no longer just a balance between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., instead (as is spelled out in the essay in the back), it's now a ticking time bomb until Russia finally gets fed up and decides to put "America's Superman" to the test by asking him to catch a whole gang of nuclear warheads.

Manhattan has made the whole of humanity obsolete. In a telling scene between the first Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan at Owl's retirement party, he mentions to Manhattan that he's going to fix cars. Manhattan immediately responds that the new electrical cars he has made possible will be even "simpler" than current automobiles. Poor Hollis Mason, the man is effectively pushed out of two lines of business by Manhattan's arrival, and he seems to be the stand in for everyone.

The one thing I question about Dr. Manhattan is that he is most likely the book's biggest tragic figure, since he can see the future and obviously knows both the horrors that are to come, but that he is also powerless to stop fate, but I don't know if he can feel the tragedy in that. It's been shown that he does feel emotion (his outburst of anger when the press turned on him, for one), but while do get overtones of sadness from him, I don't know how he feels about all of this. I'll keep a look out for that as we go along.

Reading the Watchmen: Chapter 3

With the introductions and the world-building of the first two chapters out of the way, chapter 3 kicks the story into high gear. The plot against Dr. Manhattan is put into place, as he is confronted with the information that many of his previous associates have been diagnosed with, or even died from cancer. Manhattan's way of dealing with this information is to freak out on live TV and vanish, first for Arizona and then Mars. His disappearance, literally throws the entire world into havoc. Up until this point, Dr. Manhattan was the ultimate Cold War weapon for the United States, there was no weapon that the U.S.S.R. could produce that could hope to counteract him, so, as we've heard in asides previously in the series, the Russians pretty much had to be happy with saber rattling and accepting whatever America wanted to do. Now, with his disappearance, they immediately invade Afghanistan, with their sights set on quite a bit more. This shows the reader just what the stakes are, for those of us who grew up in the 80's, we all knew that nuclear war was a possibility (hell, a probability depending upon what type of rhetoric Reagan and Thatcher were spouting that particular week), but in the world of Watchmen, it's even far more likely, and closer than ever.

In this issue, we are introduced to the news-vendor, who serves as a bit of a Greek chorus to what is going on in the world. He gives the reader a view into the everyday existence of the book and how the goings on are effecting everyone. Also introduced is the in-book, comic book, The Black Freighter. Picking up with a sailor who stands abandoned on an island with nothing to keep him company, but the rotting corpses of his dead shipmates, his narration of his own story also serves as narration to the over-arching story of the book. I'll be honest, the Black Freighter portions have always been the most impenetrable portions of the book for me. I know what Moore is going for, but this time around I had an easier time seeing the comparisons between the Sailor's thoughts about God abandoning him and Manhattan abandoning humanity.

The back-up is the third (and I believe final) excerpt from Hollis Madison's memoir of being the first Nite Owl, bringing us through the end of their Golden Age and through the beginning of the Silver. The only thing I was left to wonder about was whether DC got the idea about the Justice Society's break-up in the 1950's over being targets of the McCarthy hearings from Watchmen, seeing as how that's essentially what happened to the costumed heroes here, or if it was an independent decision. Just something that occurred to me.

Another great issue of this series, though I really need to pick up the pace if I'm going to get through nine more of these before the 26th. Hope you all had a good weekend!

New Music - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart S/T

It's Saturday morning, and since it looks like it's going to be a pretty nice day here in the Chicago-land area, I figured I'd start it out with a song. Some friends and I were discussing this article at the AV Club regarding what bands you'd like to see one more time, and I started getting nostalgic for my college days and the music that we would listen to over and over again. And fortunately, it just so happens that Thursday night I had downloaded a new album that sounds exactly like the sort of stuff I would have played over and over back in those days. Well, not just in those days, since I've been listening to The Pains of Being Pure at Heart's self-titled album pretty much constantly and enjoying quite a bit. It's just the perfect type of fuzzy pop magic that I loved then, and I love it now. Here's an appropriate song for the day of the week:

Come Saturday - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

If you'd like to read (and hear) some more, head on over to good friend Ditching Boy's blog.

Ladies & Gentlemen: A Major Metropolitan Newspaper!

I had to post this, simply to confirm that it wasn't some type of fever-dream. Today's Chicago Tribune (Section 1, Page 3) featured a 3/4 page spread comparing Rahm Emmanuel to ROM: Spaceknight, here it is in all its glory:

[Edit! You can now click to embiggen!]

So, have I been (as TwitterPal Robert Clark posited) been somehow transported to the Marvel Universe? I don't know, but watch out for Dire Wraiths!

[Edit: It was actually TwitterPal Matt Springer (of PopGeek and AlertNerd) who made the livin' la vida Marvel comment. Oops.]

Reading the Watchmen: Chapter 2

Chapter 2 is where the plot, as they say, thickens. The main line of the story is the funeral of the Comedian, as each of the main characters remembers a key moment in their life that involved him, leading us to understand just what kind of a miserable bastard that he truly was. From him almost raping Sally Jupiter in the Minutemen's trophy room, to his murdering the Vietnamese woman he got pregnant during the war, all these terrible acts show us the dark side of America that he had come to represent. These flashbacks also tell us a great deal about the characters themselves. Most interesting is the realization of just how disconnected from humanity that Dr. Manhattan is. After murdering the woman in Vietnam, The Comedian chides Manhattan for imploring him to stop, but doing nothing about it, "You coulda turned the gun into steam or the bullets into mercury...but you didn't do nothin' about it!" The Comedian becomes a character that allows the reader to view each of these heroes in extreme circumstances and gives us a true window into the America of this book.

So after seeing how horrible a person The Comedian can be, it makes it all the more amazing the revelation that Rorschach has while investigating Moloch, an old villain. The pages featuring a drunk, sobbing Comedian, seemingly confessing his sins and rambling on to Moloch are a beautiful lesson in foreshadowing. In fact, the whole issue is. Really, the whole mystery of the book is solved right there. From watching Ozymandias stare at the burned map of America after his comments that, "Given the correct handling, none of the world's problems are insurmountable. All it takes is the right intelligence." To The Comedian commenting on what he saw on that island, and that Moloch was on "the list". It's all right there.

The book is capped by another excerpt from the original Nite Owl's memoir, this portion detailing the beginnings of his career and the formation (and downfall) of the Minutemen. Not as revelatory as the portion from the previous issue, but still it helps to fill in some information on the world the book is inhabiting.

Reading this again years after first reading it, the big thing that stood out for me was, during the flashback showing the abortive formation of the Crimebusters, Rorschach is speaking with a normal word balloon, instead of the (I have no idea how to describe it) shakily-drawn one he usually "speaks" in. Just another thing to illustrate that one, even Rorschach was a somewhat sane individual.