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Weapon X by Barry Windsor Smith (Review/Retrospective)

With our month looking at Avengers comics officially over, we thought it might be fun to dig into that other iconic Marvel property, the X-Men. Join us for a month of X-Men related reviews and discussion.

Barry Windsor-Smith’s Weapon X was a fairly divisive comic when it was first published. Tasked with providing an origin for that most popular and iconic X-Men character, Windsor-Smith produced a twelve-part tale exploring the character’s history inside the secret “Weapon X” programme. While most fans would have probably preferred a more straight-forward and accessible exploration of the character’s history and back story, Weapon X is a wonderfully dense piece of work and, I’d argue, a true piece of comic book literature.

A bloody mess...

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More Than You Embargoed For: Thoughts on Review Embargoes…

I know I’m a bit late on this one, but I’ve been thinking a bit about movie review embargoes of late. For those unaware, embargoes are those restrictions on when a reviewer can publish a review. They’re normally enforced by studios, limiting the publication of reviews to within a one week window of the movie’s release. I’ve had the fortune over the past few months to be invited to screenings of The Avengers and Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists long before the window, and have held my review until it’s okay to publish. Still, I can’t help but feel a little uneasy at the prospect.

Nothing to get too Fury-ous about…

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Righteous Fury: Nick Fury, The Avengers & Moral Ambiguity…

I had the pleasure of seeing The Avengers for the second time last week, to try to make sense of my opinion on it. I still think that it’s an impressive action movie, even if it is a fundamentally flawed one. Strangely enough, though, I confess to finding the character of Nick Fury completely and utter fascinating, arguably the most complex character in the script. The problem, however, is that his complex moral ambiguity is very clearly contrasted with the idealism of his team of superheroes. However, I’m not convinced that they win the argument.

How does he patch things up with the team?

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New Snow White and the Huntsmen Clips…

The guys over at Universal just sent on these three clips from the upcoming Snow White and the Huntsmen, the fantasy film starring Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth and Kristen Stewart. It will be released internationally next Friday (1st June). Check them out below. The lovely folks at Universal have also given us some prize-packs to give away. You can enter the competition here.

More below the line.

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X-Statix Omnibus by Peter Milligan & Mike Allred (Review/Retrospective)

With our month looking at Avengers comics officially over, we thought it might be fun to dig into that other iconic Marvel property, the X-Men. Join us for a month of X-Men related reviews and discussion.

There’s been a lot written about how fiendishly clever Peter Milligan and Mike Allred’s X-Statix was when it was published by Marvel in the early part of the last decade. Spanning two titles (beginning in X-Force and then spinning into its own title in X-Statix), it offered a forty-issue re-examination of the core X-Men thesis. Published at approximately the same time, it actually serves as something of a spiritual companion to Grant Morrison’s equally controversial, challenging and provocative New X-Men run. Both series dared to consider that Chris Claremont’s once revolutionary idea, casting mutants as a feared minority because they were inherently “different” might need revision in the early years of the twenty-first century. Both series have been attacked by critics for not conforming to the model that Claremont designed for the franchise three decades earlier. However, I’m going to be controversial, and I’m going to state that both Morrison and Milligan were more faithful spiritual successors to Claremont than any X-Men writers since the nineties.

Nobody’s Doop…

Note: You can read my review of Milligan and Allred’s initial X-Force run, collected in the hardcover “Famous, Mutant & Mortal” here. This is a review of the recently-published omnibus, which collects all their work on the characters, so I won’t go into too much depth on that initial run.

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Acts of Vengeance Omnibus (Review/Retrospective)

April (and a little bit of May) are “Avengers month” at the m0vie blog. In anticipation of Joss Whedon’s superhero epic, we’ll have a variety of articles and reviews published looking at various aspects of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.”

As The Avengers is getting its U.S. theatrical release this weekend, I thought I’d celebrate by taking a look at a gigantic crossover. I’ll be reviewing individual tie-ins over the weekend, so check back!

Truth be told, I would have been quite disappointed if I made it all the way to the end of the month without taking a look at one of those token “big, dumb” crossovers featuring Marvel’s iconic characters. Truth be told, Acts of Vengeance just looked kinda fun. Although it spread to Marvel’s whole line, it was directed by writer and artist John Byrne, who was behind Avengers and West Coast Avengers at the time, so I’m totally counting it as an Avengers crossover. It’s one of those incredibly silly concepts that could only ever work in the context of superhero comic books. Basically, tired of being soundly defeated by their heroes, a bunch of supervillains decide to band together and exchange partners. Hilarity ensues as the line struggles to maintain editorial consistency.

Shattered heroes…

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Secret War (Review/Retrospective)

April (and a little bit of May) are “Avengers month” at the m0vie blog. In anticipation of Joss Whedon’s superhero epic, we’ll have a variety of articles and reviews published looking at various aspects of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.” Yesterday and today we’re taking a look at the two Brian Michael Bendis events that kick-started the writer’s work on the franchise.

In many ways, Secret War feels like a companion piece to DC’s Identity Crisis crossover. Both miniseries essentially deconstructed the relatively simplistic nature of those superhero universes – daring to question what might happen if you approached these plot devices with a bit more cynicism. Bendis’ Secret War miniseries not only sets up the status quo and suggests the themes he would develop over the course of his New Avengers run, it also darkens the entire tone of the shared Marvel Universe. You can almost plot a straight line between Secret War and Siege, considering it one gigantic and messy saga adopting a cynical approach to the mechanics of this fictional world.

The war at home…

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Not Everything, Not Yet: Nolan’s Dark Knight Rises and the Prospect of Finality

Read our in-depth review of the film here.

It’s a funny thing watching The Dark Knight Rises trailer that was released earlier in the week. It seems that a lot of people had the same response that I did. Colleagues in work, friends and family members, all looked at the trailer for the third in Nolan’s trilogy that began with Batman Begins and seemed to have the same observation. “I think he might kill Batman,” a lot of people remarked on viewing the teaser for the film. Given how safe most major studio productions are, especially those that are part of a cash-cow franchise, it’s amazing that the possibility even exists at all, hovering faintly over the film.

Broken bat…

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Brian Michael Bendis’ Avengers – Disassembled (Review/Retrospective)

April (and a little bit of May) are “Avengers month” at the m0vie blog. In anticipation of Joss Whedon’s superhero epic, we’ll have a variety of articles and reviews published looking at various aspects of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.” Today and tomorrow we’ll be taking a look at the two Brian Michael Bendis events that kick-started the writer’s work on the franchise.

Avengers: Disassembled welcomed Brian Michael Bendis to the Avengers franchise. The super-star writer had enjoyed long and well-received runs on Ultimate Spider-Man and Daredevil, but his tenure on the Avengers franchise proved much more divisive. Taking over for a three issue arc on the main Avengers title, Bendis literally destroyed the team. Not only did he demolish a lot of the iconography associated with the bunch of superheroes, he also launched a fairly scathing deconstruction of the stalwart superhero team. Bendis wasn’t just going to adopt a caretaker position on the series, he clearly planned some very serious remodelling. That meant that some walls had to get knocked down. In many ways, Disassembled feels like a brutal demolition.

Things come apart…

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Kurt Busiek’s Avengers – Avengers Assemble! Vol. 5 (The Kang Dynasty) (Review/Retrospective)

April (and a little bit of May) are “Avengers month” at the m0vie blog. In anticipation of Joss Whedon’s superhero epic, we’ll have a variety of articles and reviews published looking at various aspects of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.”

I’ll be honest. I am still not sure what to make of Kurt Busiek’s Avengers run, republished here in five lavish oversized hardcovers. The first three volumes of the set included the stellar artwork of George Perez, but the fifth and final volume contains the entire Kang Dynasty (aka Kang War) saga. For those unfamiliar with the storyline, it was a fairly massive plot told over fifteen issues and an annual, and marked the climax of Busiek’s five-year tenure on the title. For better or for worse, it’s a more than adequate conclusion to his run – complete with many of the flaws which chipped away at it, but also possessing many of the recognisable strengths.

"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"

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