When I heard there was going to be a Punisher movie, the following thoughts ran throught my head:"It's probably going to suck.""John Travolta's in it? It's definitely going to suck.""Wait, Travolta's the bad guy. The Punisher kills bad guys.""Hmm, maybe this won't be so bad after all."So I went to see it, and I was pretty happy...
If you're like me, there are probably certain types of characters you gravitate towards. For whatever reason, their stories interest you, moreso than other characters'. I thought I'd do a few posts about the different types that appeal to me. In this case, I'm probably going to be combining American comics with anime/manga,...
Blech. I need a better name for this than that mess. Maybe it should fall under "Things I think About". Oh well. Just some questions and random impressions from the week, now that I got that whole "mutant" thing out of my system:1) I'm worried Starfire won't survive Infinite Crisis. I glanced through what I think was the most recent Outsiders. Her sister, who I take it doesn't like her any better...
There are two problems for me when talking about inheritance. One, genetics is not my field of study. Two, I don't have a real good idea if the secret behind mutants has been throughly revealed. As far as I can remember, there is this one gene, with two possible alleles. Get one allele, you're Homo sapiens. Get the other, congratulations, you're Homo superior! You now have a lifetime of hatred, fear,...
I'm a biology major, which is probably the only reason this occurs to me.Apocalypse vs. Dracula. That's what put me on this path. I haven't seen a very positive response to it out here in the blogosphere, but Len at the store seems pretty excited for it. We were discussing Apocalypse on Friday and how Len feels Marvel just doesn't quite get what they claim Apocalypse's motivation is: Survival of the...
I'm posting about costume changes, and remarkably it's not Spider-Man's. First, the backstory.I'm cruising Absorbascon. Scipio has provided four new entrees for Galact. . . I mean four new characters for the Marvel Universe. Below that he links to all the previous donations. I admit, I hadn't read them all, so when I see Starfire,...
We steal stuff from X-Play! For those who don't know, X-Play is a show on G4 that reviews video games with lowbrow humor. Well, sometimes they go higher, like their "1st Annual H.P. Lovecraft Spelling Bee", but mostly, fart jokes. Which is fine, it's video games, not 19th Century English literature (thank goodness). It's beloved...
SEVEN! That's right, seven titles this week. Let me see you tremble in awe, and let me hear the lamentations of your women. Actually, forget lamentations, just send the women hither. Or is it thither? Over this away. Spoiler warnings, because I'm sure there will be some.Robin #146: Willingham continues Operation: Kill The Clock,...
I tell you, to this day I can't figure out why exactly I was excited by Joe Casey's Uncanny X-Men. I mean, I know why I had zero interest in Morrison's X-Men. It was a team with Emma Frost, Scott Summers, and Jean Grey, one of whom shouldn't be a hero, and the other two I'm sick to death of. But Casey's team, for some odd reason, worked.Archangel: I've haven't really liked him since he went back to...
When did Terra come back? Or is it a different person? I remember she was in that "Titans of Tomorrow" story, but I just figured it was a different person. But then there she was again, in Infinite Crisis #4, right alongside Kalinara's favorite Sand, sticking it to Whiny-Brat Superboy, I mean Superboy-Prime. If it is the same Terra that teamed with Deathstroke, why bring her back? To me, she had one...
After all, what's a hero without a villain? And Spider-Man has one of the best collections of enemies around (I'd say only the Flash and Batman can compare, especially when it comes to variety). I'm thinking this is a sort of what I'd like to see, and this wouldn't be all the enemies he'd be dealing with, just his most frequent...
Why is Watchmen regarded as such a great piece of work? I'm not criticizing it, as I've never read it, just curious.Is Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers in continuity with the rest of DC, or is it like All-Star Superman, off in it's own little world?What was the reason for leaving Earth-2 Lois and Superman, Superboy, and Alex Luthor alive in a pocket dimension? Was there some reason why they had to...
Beware, this is me getting my nit-picky fanboy on.Harken back to the OMAC Project mini-series. I don't remember which issue it was, 4 or 5, but an OMAC is getting ready to kill Rocket Red #4. No worries, Maritan Manhunter on the job. Except, the OMAC knows about Martian vulnerabilities, so it ignites, J'onn gets burned, he can't stop the OMAC, no big deal.Except. . .In an arc in JLA, J'onn overcame...
Infinite Crisis #4 left me with two major thoughts/questions.Barry Allen said he would see Wally three times, when Wally needed him most. Did his appearance against Superboy count as the third time? Becuase I kind of figured Barry meant he would time travel and see Wally, which wasn't really what happened.Second, I feel much...
According to Eric, I may be the only person not happy with the direction Dan DiDio is taking DC. Fine. When DiDio stops screwing over the characters I care about, I'll start being happy with his direction. With that out of the way, on to reviews. Spolier warnings abound.Batgirl #72 - Last month I said, I was probably grading this book lightly because it's drawing to a close. This month, I can't even...
What is Speedy's blue arrow? You know the one I'm talking about. When she first joined the Titans, Cyborg gave her Arsenal's old quiver, which had a blue arrow that said "use in emergency only". Since then, pretty much every battle she's gotten ready to use it, then something stops her.Fighting Dr. Light? Cyborg steps in.Fighting Superboy? He's throws a wall at her.Fighting Demons? A bunch of dead...
First off, posting may become more erratic starting tomorrow. The semester is kicking off, and I'm not sure yet whether it'll affect my posting. Hopefully, I'll keep up a 1 post per day pace, at least.Anyway, if you go to Absorbascon, and go to Scipio's earliest posts (March 27, 2004) he has some posts on what he calls Dynastic...
This stems from a conversation Len and I have had the last couple of Fridays. Comics did a lot of things wrong in the '90s by most accounts. On the Marvel side, there were entirely too many books and crossovers with "X" or "Maximum" in the title. But one thing Len and I agreed was that Marvel did the right thing with their teams, mainly keep them separate entities. Think about it, for those who read...
Here's a hypothetical for you. Say Didio or Quesada comes up to you. They tell you either they're going to start a new team book, or change the lineup on an existing one. You get to choose the seven character roster, no limits, any hero, villain, alive or dead, although if they're dead, story arcs will have to be devoted to the resurrection. Whoever you pick, the writer and artist will depict them...
Ahh, the joys of chocolate chewy Chips Ahoy. As if they weren't delicious enough, they made the whole cookie chocolate.Here's a question for you: What happened to thought balloons? Nowadays, the character's inner monologue goes on in the caption boxes in the corner. But that used to be reserved for the writer/narrator to say things like "and at the speed of thought, the Scarlet Speedster creates a...
I gotta confess, I kinda like it when my titles look like something you'd see on a dissertation, or at least a master's thesis. Anyway, this isn't about "The Other", so relax. If you remember, I did a post last month, right before Christmas, where I suggested Uncle Ben be reborn as a Green Lantern. At the time, I mentioned...
Two books this week, not so good, plus highlander over at The Miserable Annals of the Earth has a post - titled "The Abyss Gazes Back" - that set me off a bit. It's not that I disagree with him that the Silver Age, as a whole, had better work than what he calls the Modern Age. I couldn't tell you, I haven't read enough Silver Age to make a fair judgement, plus what I have read is mostly characters,...
Man, nothing like a season premiere of The Shield to get you in the mood to post.First off, relating to my earlier post about Robin, I forgot to mention I do like that Willingham has tried to give Robin some enemies of his own. Sure Johnny Warlock, the Rising Sun Archer, and the Dark Rider won't be challenging Flash's Rouges anytime soon (not if they value their health anyway), but as Robin establishes...
