Comics | the m0vie blog

Now That’s First Class: X-Men – First Class & Superhero Nostalgia

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Darren

I have to admit that X-Men: First Class is a movie that I find myself in a wild state of flux over. At times, I’m delighted by the sensational casting, the fantastic director and the wonderful artistic design that we’re seeing. However, I am equally curious as to what the point of a prequel is, or why Bryan Singer jumped ship so quickly. At times, it’s one of my most anticipated movies of the coming year, while at others it’s just another film awaiting release. Somewhat lost amid the announcement that Bane and Catwoman would be the villains of The Dark Knight Rises, Fox released a slew of information about their newest X-Men film last week. looking at eth photos, I can’t help wondering whether the superhero movie genre is on the cusp of the nostalgia-fest which has swept their comic book counterparts in recent years.

He always had a magnetic personality...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: bryan singer, Comics, comics books, Cuban Missile Crisis, elektra, emma frost, fantasy, first class, Fox, Gwen Stacy, james mcavoy, January Jones, mark webb, marvel, Mary Jane Watson, matthew vaughn, nostalgia, realism, retro, sam raimi, sony, spider man, superhero movies, superheroes, x-men, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, X-Men: First Class | 5 Comments »

Flashpoint

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Darren

After spending the tail end of last year looking at the tangled inter-continuity crossovers at Marvel, I thought I’d spend January looking at some of the looser “out of continuity” tales at the major companies.

Flashpoint is the first big event of Geoff Johns’ relaunched run on The Flash. If Flash: Rebirth was intended to echo Green Lantern: Rebirth, fan anticipation and speculation suggest that his Flashpoint – a five-part miniseries – will serve as a counterpart to Sinestro Corps War on his Green Lantern run. However, the title Flashpoint has connotations for the character – it was the title of a relatively recent story featuring the character, one of DC Comic’s Elseworlds. I figured, with the big event coming it up, it might be worth a bit of a retroactive review of the title which perhaps inspired the event.

He moves like lightening...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: barry allen, comic books, Comics, crossover, dc comics, elseworlds, flashpoint, geoff johns, mars, norm breyfogle, pat mcgreal, review, speed force, the flash | Leave a comment »

Realm of Kings (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 22, 2010 by Darren

This is the fifteenth in a series of comic book reviews that will look at the direction of Marvel’s shared universe (particularly their “Avengers” franchise) over the past five or so years, as they’ve been attempting to position the property at the heart of their fictional universe. With The Avengers planned for a cinematic release in 2012, I thought I’d bring myself up to speed by taking a look at Marvel’s tangled web of continuity.

Realm of Kings is a strange little chapter in the cosmic saga that Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning have been drafting. It seems to exist not really as a story in its own terms (although it does contain some interesting narratives) but rather as a bridge between War of Kings and The Thanos Imperative. It’s essentially the story of an attempt to find stability in a radically warped universe, one turned upside down by recent events. It feels somewhat smaller in scope than the other events that the pair have produced, not that there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, it’s nice to see a series exploring the consequences and aftermath of what has occurred, rather than simply pushing on right into the next big thing. While Realm of Kings does focus on “the Fault” opened at the climax of War of Kings that will become a galactic threat in The Thanos Imperative, the three miniseries are at their best when they explore the consequences of the political instability that the intergalactic war has produced.

That's gonna be Thor tomorrow...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: andy lanning, arts, cancerverse, captain america, comic books, Comics, cosmic marvel, crossover, dan abnett, ed brubaker, history, imperial guard, inhumans, kree, lovecraft, marvel comics, marvel universe, realm of kings, realm of kings: inhumans, realm of kings: son of hulk, retrospective, review, shi'ar, son of hulk, Thanos Imperative, the fault, war of kings, war of kings: imperial guard | Leave a comment »

Batman: The Animated Series – Robin’s Reckoning (Parts I & II)

Posted on December 18, 2010 by Darren

This post is part of the DCAU fortnight, a series of articles looking at the Warner Brothers animations featuring DC’s iconic selection of characters. I’ll be looking at movies and episodes and even some of the related comic books. We’re winding down now, having worked our way through the nine animated features, so I’m just going to look at a few odds-and-ends, some of the more interesting or important episodes that the DC animated universe has produced. An Emmy-award-winning episode seems a reasonable place to start.

I know the logic. Robin shouldn’t work in the context of Batman, unless you’re veering into camp. Somehow, a teenager in green short-shorts with a yellow cape manages the near-impossible feat of making a grown man who dresses up like a bat look even more ridiculous. To feature Robin in film or animation is to invite insane volumes of camp – think of Adam West’s Batman! or Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin. However, for some reason, Batman: The Animated Series mostly got the balance right somehow. So much so that the belated Robin “origin” story, Robin’s Reckoning, picked up the Emmy in 1993 for outstanding animated programming, somehow beating The Simpsons. These two episodes are on the shortlist of the best episodes of the series, and – thus – amongst the best animated episodes ever made.

Robin steps up to Bat...

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: batman, batman forever, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Comics, dark victory, dc animated universe, dc universe, dcau, dick grayson, Joe Chill, joel schumacher, Martha Wayne, robin, robin's reckoning, the flying graysons, Tony Zucco, Warner Brothers | 2 Comments »

X-Men/Dark Avengers: Utopia (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Darren

This is the fourteenth in a series of comic book reviews that will look at the direction of Marvel’s shared universe (and, in particular, their “Avengers” franchise) over the past five or so years, as they’ve been attempting to position the property at the heart of their fictional universe. With The Avengers planned for a cinematic release in 2012, I thought I’d bring myself up to speed by taking a look at Marvel’s tangled web of continuity. Get an overview of what I’m trying to take a look at here.

There’s an essay to be written about how Marvel has so carefully and meticulously replaced the X-Men with The Avengers as their biggest A-list franchise book (in fact, there’s a quite wonderful essay written here about that). During the nineties, the big event crossovers at Marvel seemed to exist at the leisure of their mutants – Age of Apocalypse and Onslaught being two of the more obvious examples. However, since House of M, the mutants have been consciously sidelined. They continue to have their own internal events and crossovers – Messiah Complex and Second Coming the most obvious examples – but they remain largely insular and detached from the regular goings on in the Marvel Universe. Except for Wolverine, because he’s everywhere.

Marvel announces Dark Avengers on Ice!

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: avengers, avengers/x-men, comic books, Comics, crossover, cyclops, dark avengers, dark reign, dark x-men, emma frost, marvel comics, matt fraction, norman osborn, san francisco, scott summers, the cabal, the list, utopia, x-men, x-men/avengers | 1 Comment »

Final Crisis (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Darren

This post is part of the DCAU fortnight, a series of articles looking at the Warner Brothers animations featuring DC’s iconic selection of characters. I’ll be looking at movies and episodes and even some of the related comic books. Later on today, we’ll be reviewing Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, so I thought I might take a look at a comic book tale which was heavy on Superman, Darkseid and Batman…

This epic elegy for a doomed civilisation, declining from splendor to squalor. This Final Crisis. This last ditch attempt to save creation itself from a loathing and greed beyond measure.

– Grant Morrison outlines the whole point of the book, in case you weren’t paying attention… in a narration which deserves to be read in the most pompously ridiculous style possible

Look, I could hitch a ride back with you. I have a real talent for gritty drama no one’s ever thought to exploit.

– Merryman makes a pitch for “relevance” in the hopes of escaping comic book “limbo”

Destruction or creation. Everything or nothing. A universe full or a universe empty. Life or anti-life. Grant Morrison certainly lives up to his reputation as a frustrating and challenging author – is Final Crisis the statement of a genre looking to make peace with itself, or nonsensical Silver Age surrealism repackaged for a modern world? Is it pretentious or profound? Insightful or devoid of interest? Can’t it be both, or are these mutually exclusive states?

We all knew Obama was Superman…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: analysis, anti-life, arts, barry allen, batman, batman r.i.p., black lightning, comic book, Comics, crisis, darkseid, dc comics, doug mahnke, final crisis, final crisis: submit, final crisis: superman beyond, fire, flash, fourth wall, grant morrison, graphic novels, green lantern, j.g. jones, jack kirby, jg jones, justice league, mandrakk, metafiction, monitors, Narrative, narratives, new gods, retrospective, silver age, stories, superman, superman beyond, the anti-life equation, vampire | 7 Comments »

Grant Morrison’s Run on Justice League of America – The Deluxe Edition, Vol. 3-4 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 13, 2010 by Darren

This post is part of the DCAU fortnight, a series of articles looking at the Warner Brothers animations featuring DC’s iconic selection of characters. I’ll be looking at movies and episodes and even some of the related comic books. With the review of Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths later on today, I thought I’d take a look at Grant Morrison’s graphic novel which inspired it in someway. However, I figure – given that large debt that the entire Justice League cartoon owes Morrison’s iconic tenure on Justice League of America – it’s time to take a look at the latter half of Morrison’s run on the title.

We have no powers, there are millions of them and there’s a child in there who needs us to save the world. Let’s go.

– another day at the office for Superman

I remarked in my review of the first two deluxe hardcovers collecting his work on the series that I was perhaps a lot less impressed than most with Morrison’s work on the title. It was grand and bombastic, but it ended up feeling more than a little hallow, especially measured against some of his bolder efforts within the superhero genre. Although time and a few re-reads have softened my perspective quite a bit, I will concede that I don’t measure this as the writer’s best work. It’s epic and smart and fun, but never really becomes anything too much more.

But, then again, they are the Justice League. If I want deep characterisation of philosophical meanderings, I can check out a different book.

It actually looks quite peaceful when you're not saving it...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: aquaman, batman, Comics, dark knight returns, grant morrison, Grantmorrison, Greenlantern, hal jordan, jla, justice league, justice league of america, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, Kyle Rayner, morrison, review, superman, Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, the shaggy, ultramarine corps, wally west, wonder woman, world war 3, world war iii | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Justice League – New Frontier

Posted on December 8, 2010 by Darren

This post is part of the DCAU fortnight, a series of articles looking at the Warner Brothers animations featuring DC’s iconic selection of characters. This is one of the “stand-alone” animated movies produced by the creative team that gave us the television shows.

Justice League: New Frontier is probably the best of the animated direct-to-DVD feature produced by Warner Brothers. It’s an adaptation of Darwyn Cooke’s superb New Frontier, a look at the gap between the Golden Age and the Silver Age of comic book superheroes, an attempt to offer an in-universe explanation for the shift in tone and content in the medium between the forties and the sixties. It’s also a damn good exploration of the shift in American public culture and consciousness, exploring the difference in America’s attitude towards the government, the attempt to reach the stars and the fall of McCarthy-ism. It’s also a damn fine bit of animation.

Some sort of League... possibly for Justice...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: animation, batman, brooke shields, Comics, darwyn cooked, dc comics, film, golden age, hal jordan, john heard, justice league, justice league: new frontier, Justice League: The New Frontier, Justiceleague, Korean War, kyle maclachlin, lucy lawless, Martian Manhunter, Movies, neil patrick harris, new frontier, non-review review, review, silver age, wonder woman | 1 Comment »

War of Kings (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 8, 2010 by Darren

This is the twelfth in a series of comic book reviews that will look at the direction of Marvel’s shared universe (particularly their “Avengers” franchise) over the past five or so years, as they’ve been attempting to position the property at the heart of their fictional universe. With The Avengers planned for a cinematic release in 2012, I thought I’d bring myself up to speed by taking a look at Marvel’s tangled web of continuity.

War of Kings is perhaps the best thing to come out of Secret Invasion. In fact, the miniseries went out of its way to highlight its links to the Marvel comics mega-event, with the story even kicking off in a Secret Invasion: War of Kings special (note the order there, it isn’t War of Kings: Secret Invasion). However, not withstanding the attempts to tie the series back to the high-selling mainstream events that Marvel was consistently churning out, War of Kings is essentially an epic space opera, the story of an interstellar war and alien politics, told with the wit and charm that writer Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning have made the cosmic line famous for. Tying it into Secret Invasion only serves to highlight the deficiencies with that event, as the writers here attempt the same sort of story with the same sort of themes, but with more skill and grace than the bigger event could off.

Now is the time...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: andy lanning, black bolt, comic books, Comics, cosmic, cosmic marvel, crossover, dan abnett, darkhawk, emperor vulcan, history, inhumans, israel, kree, marvel, marvel universe, Middle East, secret invasion, secret invasion: war of kings, shi'ar, Twentieth Century, war of kings, war of kings: ascession, war of kings: darkhawk, war of kings: who will rule?, Wars and Conflicts | 3 Comments »

Ed Brubaker’s Run on Uncanny X-Men – The Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 8, 2010 by Darren

I’m currently wading my way through Marvel’s somewhat complicated continuity, with a major focus on The Avengers, what with the film due out in 2012 and all that. Anyway, this isn’t really a “big” crossover in its own right, but it factors into a big event I’ll be looking at later on today. Consider this an appendix.

Ed Brubaker’s run on Uncanny X-Men isn’t as widely praised as his work on Daredevil or Captain America – in fact, while Marvel couldn’t wait to churn out omnibus releases of his work on those two titles, his Uncanny X-Men run, like Matt Fraction’s run which followed, has been haphazardly collected. Part of me suspects that this might be down to factors outside Brubaker’s control – Joss Whedon was monopolising the most popular X-Men for Astonishing X-Men when Brubaker kicked off his run – but part of it comes down to the simple fact that Brubaker simply isn’t a great writer of team books. That said, writing a year-long space epic featuring none of the more iconic characters as his introductory arc probably didn’t help much.