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Kurt Busiek’s and George Perez’s Avengers – Avengers/JLA (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Darren

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.”

Read our review of The Avengers here.

Avengers/JLA is about as nerdy as a comic book crossover can get. Really. It takes two teams of superheroes which were both formed to allow existing heroes to team up… and then teams those two teams up. It’s pure geek chic, after all. I have no shame in admitting that I enjoyed on a purely fanboyish level, my inner eight-year-old ecstatic at the idea of taking so many toys out of so many different boxes and bashing them together which such delightful cheer. It’s not an essential story, nor a brilliant one, nor a creative one – but it does exactly what it says on the tin. It gives us a gigantic crossover between two of the more recognisable Marvel and DC superhero teams.

The very definition of awesome...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Avenger, avengers, avengers jla, avengers/jla, batman, Busiek, captain america, captain america: the first avenger, crossover, dc comics, dc universe, george perez, hugo weaving, iron man, jla avengers, jla/avengers, joss whedon, justice league of america, kurt busiek, marvel, marvel comics, marvel universe, marvel/dc, Perez, retrospective, review, superman, World War Hulk | 2 Comments »

Marvel Knights: Punisher by Garth Ennis Omnibus

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Darren

To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, this month we’re going to take a look at Northern Irish writer Garth Ennis’ run on that iconic Marvel anti-hero, The Punisher. Check back every Friday and Wednesday for a review of a particular section.

Solo act again. No Micro. No gimmicks: no fancy ammo, no battle-vans, no high-tech surveillance. Just the basics. Been gone a while. Distracted. The scum in this city need a wake-up call. And here it comes.

– Frank Castle gives us a mission statement

Looking back, it’s hard to imagine how big a mess the Punisher was in before Garth Ennis got his hands on the character. The fascination with “darker and edgier” in the nineties had given the character a huge boost, but it was quickly wasted. From a character who had supported multiple books during the “boom” years, he was reduced to one core title with a radical new direction. Imagining the Punisher as some sort of avenging angel figure hadn’t worked out, so it seemed like that character was truly struggling to keep his head above water. Then Garth Ennis arrived, writing a twelve-part maxi-series that would be the first step in a long and fruitful relationship with the character. He didn’t try to radically revamp the character, opting for a back-to-basics approach with a healthy dash of black humour, realising that there was something inherently absurdist about a gun-carrying psychopathic killing machine with a skull on his chest, sharing a universe with angels and demons and superheroes.

Welcome back, Frank...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, dc universe, ennis, Frank, Garth Ennis, marvel knights, marvel universe, punisher | 13 Comments »

Peter Tomasi & Fernando Pasarin’s Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Darren

Emerald Warriors suffers a bit from being a rather obvious lead-in series to the War of the Green Lanterns crossover than DC was pushing for its space cops to coincide with the release of the Green Lantern film. It’s very clear that the book is written with an editorial mandate to establish certain characters and dynamics, and I think it suffers to a certain extent, because of this – to the point where the series wasn’t renewed as part of the DCnU relaunch, which makes it seem like the series never really existed as anything more than a tie-in to a large event, rather than a cosmic comic book in its own right. It’s a shame, because Peter Tomasi has been one of the most consistant second-tier writers at DC, and his Guy Gardner is second-to-none. Also, you know, it looks incredible.

A breath of fresh air...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, brightest day, dc, dc comics, Emerald Knights, Emerald Warriors, Fernando Pasarin, geoff johns, green lantern, Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors, Guy Gardner, Justice League International, peter tomasi, review, Scott Snyder, sodam yat, Tomasi, war of the green lanterns | Leave a comment »

Does Whatever a Spider Can: Do Chronicle and Kick-Ass Render The Amazing Spider-Man Moot?

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Darren

We still have a few months to wait before Marc Webb reboots Sony’s Spider-Man franchise with The Amazing Spider-Man. Despite some tonal worries, I’ll admit Webb has quite a talented crew assembled – Andrew Garfield is on the cusp of stardom, and Emma Stone is a bit ahead of him. However, I can’t help but wonder if Webb’s film might be a few months too late. After all, haven’t Kick-Ass and Chronicle offered a fairly solid deconstruction of the iconic web-slinging superhero? Is there really enough left to be said in the Spider-Man origin story when we’ve already seen it picked apart and subverted so often and skilfully?

Webb's Spider...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Amazing Spider-Man, Andrew Garfield, batman, bryan singer, clark kent, Emma Stone, fantastic four, Gwen Stacy, kick-ass, lizard, marc webb, mark millar, Peter, peter parker, sam raimi, sony, spider man, stan lee | 4 Comments »

Absolute Crisis on Infinite Earths (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Darren

This January, I’m going to take a look at some of DC’s biggest “events.” This week I’ll be taking at the event that started it all, Marv Wolfman and George Pérez’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, reprinted in DC’s oversized and slipcased Absolute line.

It’s interesting to reflect on Crisis on Infinite Earths, more than a quarter of a century after the twelve-issue maxi-series was published. In the time since, it seems like the editorial purpose driving the event – the desire to “simplify” DC’s tangled and messed continuity into one single and unified history by abolishing the myriad of alternate continuities – has been somewhat undone with the return of the multiverse in 52 and Final Crisis, but this arguably allows Wolfman and Pérez’s epic to be considered on its own merit. Although the series might not be as important as it once was in explaining the sometimes bizarre way that all of DC’s published line fit together, I think you can still see a huge influence of this crossover in the stories that the authors at DC are telling, and how they approach them.

Holding out for some heroes...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: barry allen, batman, crisis on infinite earths, dc comic, dc universe, final crisis, flash, flashpoint, geoff johns, george perez, grant morrison, Grantmorrison, green lantern: rebirth, jack kirby, joe quesada, John, kamandi, lex luthor, Marv Wolfman, marvel, power ring, seven soldiers | 2 Comments »

Alan Moore’s Run on Swamp Thing – Saga of the Swamp Thing (Books #5-6) (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Darren

This January, I’m going to take a look at some of DC’s biggest “events.” You can probably guess which event I’m leading into, but I don’t want to spoil it…

Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing is a run to treasure. I mean, I’m looking forward to getting my hands on Scott Snyder’s new run on the character, especially since DC have decided to release it in hardcover, but Moore’s Swamp Thing remains one of Moore’s longer runs in mainstream comic books, demonstrating that it is possible for an extended in-continuity run on a (relatively) mainstream character to still transcend the expectations of the superhero genre. The eighties were full of fascinating creative ideas in comics, both in miniseries, independent and mainstream books, but I’d still argue that Moore’s Swamp Thing is remarkable due to its work redefining the superhero genre and its impressive length.

Into the sunset...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Adam Strange, alan moore, All Flesh is Grass, batman, books, comic books, dc comic, dc comics, environmentalism, lex luthor, Loving the Alien, Moore, My Blue Heaven, rick veitch, Scott Snyder, swamp thing | 1 Comment »

Brad Meltzer’s Run on Justice League – The Tornado’s Path (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Darren

This January, I’m going to take a look at some of DC’s biggest “events.” This week I’ll be taking a look at Brad Meltzer’s impact on the DC universe.

Justice League has always been a bit of a funny little book. The concept is so straight-forward that you’d imagine it would be quite difficult to muck up. After all, it’s a series about DC’s most powerful and iconic heroes teaming up to do impossibly cool stuff and to look good while doing it. DC has been doing this long enough to have an idea of what works on the title and what doesn’t. While Justice League International has its fans, it’s hard to argue that the appeal of the Justice League wasn’t encapsulated by Grant Morrison’s hugely successful nineties run. As such, putting the big characters back on the title shouldn’t seem like a big event of itself – it should be the default setting. So it always seems to me a bit strange when DC relaunch the series with a big name writer and the iconic line-up, only for editorial to inevitably screw things up down the line.

Team photo...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, Brad Meltzer, Bruce, bruce wayne, continuity, dark knight, dc comic, dc comics, ed benes, Firehawk, justice league, justice league of america, justice league of america: the tornado's path, Red Tornado, the red tornado, The Tornado's Path, Tornado's path, wonder woman | Leave a comment »

Absolute Identity Crisis (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Darren

This January, I’m going to take a look at some of DC’s biggest “events.” This week I’ll be taking a look at Brad Meltzer’s impact on the DC universe.

Identity Crisis is the first in the trilogy of stories that built off the original Crisis on Infinite Earths to offer a fairly significant reevaluation of the modern DC universe, examining where the characters and the fictional landscape was as compared to where it had been decades before. I’ve argued that Marvel went through a similar period of introspection from House of M through to Siege, but DC seemed to engage with the concept on a more direct level. Written by best-selling novelist Brad Meltzer, Identity Crisis is an attempt to explore the rather fundamental changes that occurred in superhero comics during the nineties, often as a direct response to The Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen, giving us a more cynical depiction of the concepts and characters that we take for granted. It’s controversial – as any similar reimagining would be – and, to be frank, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

However, it’s always fascinating, even if it is grimly so.

Time to hang it up?

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Absolute Identity Crisis, batman, Brad Meltzer, comic book, crisis on infinite earths, dark knight returns, dc comics, dc universe, deconstruction, exploitation, flash, Identity Crisis (comics), mark bagley, ralph dibny, reconstruction, retcon, secret identity, sexism in comic books, sue dibny, ultimate spider man | 5 Comments »

Grant Morrison’s Run on Batman & Robin – Batman Reborn, Batman vs. Robin & Batman Must Die! (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Darren

December is “Grant Morrison month” here at the m0vie blog, as we take the month to consider and reflect on one of the most critically acclaimed (and polarising) authors working in the medium. Every Wednesday this month, we’ll have a Grant Morrison related review or retrospective.

I am going to be honest. I didn’t love Grant Morrison’s tenure on Batman. It felt a bit awkward and continuity-heavy – don’t get me wrong, I appreciated his attempt to tie together just about every aspect and iteration of Batman ever, but it just felt a bit too much. Yes, Batman can be the grim avenger or the charming ladies’ man or the camp crusader or the superhero or the urban vigilante or the world’s greatest detective or a swinging icon, but – in reading Morrison’s run – it felt too awkward to make Batman all of these at the same time. Perhaps, then, it’s because Batman & Robin sets itself a more modest goal (in that it doesn’t attempt to reconcile every aspect of the character’s seventy-year history) or just because Morrison appears to be enjoying himself far more, but this second act in Grant Morrison’s epic Batman saga is a much more engaging read.

The run gets off to an explosive start…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: andy clarke, batman, batman & robin, batman & robin must die, Batman and Robin, batman and robin must die!, batman forever, batman must die, batman reborn, batman vs. robin, blackest knight, bruce wayne, cameron stewart, Christopher Nolan, damian wayne, dick grayson, doctor hurt, frank quitely, frazer irving, gotham, grant morrison, Grantmorrison, philip tan, professor pyg, Red Hood, revenge of the red hood, robin, the flamingo, the jokre, the revenge of the red hood, thomas wayne, tim burton | 2 Comments »

we3: The Deluxe Edition (Review)

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Darren

December is “Grant Morrison month” here at the m0vie blog, as we take the month to consider and reflect on one of the most critically acclaimed (and polarising) authors working in the medium.

It’s Homeward Bound, but with cyborgs!