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Batwoman: Elegy (Hardcover) (Review)

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Darren

To celebrate the release of The Dark Knight Rises, July is “Batman month” here at the m0vie blog. Check back daily for comics, movies and television reviews and discussion of the Caped Crusader.

When I read Batwoman: Elegy, I couldn’t help but feel like I just didn’t get it. I mean, it’s good, it’s really good, but everybody and their mother had been going on and on about how it was the best Batman book in ages, and how it really was redefining what you could and couldn’t do in mainstream comic books. I liked it, but I didn’t love it, and it’s hard to put the finger on why – I suspect it’s something purely aesthetic. As much as I appreciate the fantastic art of J.H. Williams, it all seemed rather conventionally plotted by Greg Rucka. It was your standard cookie-cutter superhero story, which meant that the art just looked like pretty window dressing on a fairly routine storyline.

Last night, the bat signal went off in her head…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, Batman Incorporated, Batwoman, Batwoman: Elegy, Christopher Nolan, comic book, detective comics, gotham central, grant morrison, greg rucka, JH Willaims, JH Williams III, lewis carroll, Maggie Sawyer, paul dini | 2 Comments »

Tony Daniel’s Run on Batman – Battle for the Cowl, Life After Death & Eye of the Beholder (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Darren

Tony Daniel’s Batman is a decently entertaining book, one that has clearly been put together with a great deal of skill and care by an artist and writer who seems to be not only enjoying himself, but keen to learn on the job. Handed the unenviable task of writing Battle for the Cowl, the three-issue miniseries designed to link Grant Morrison’s Batman run to his Batman & Robin run, Daniel was given an assignment that would make even a seasoned writer blush with uncertainty – tasked with writing connective tissue between two densely-layered Grant Morrison series, it’s hard to imagine a writer who would have managed anything that much better than the somewhat limp mess that Daniel produced. Still, DC was keen enough to grant the artist not only on-going art chores on the Batman series (rapidly approaching its seven-hundredth issue), but also to let him write it. While it’s hardly the most iconic or memorable tenure on a Batman-related title, it does have a number of charming and somewhat redeeming features. The most impressive one is that Daniel seems willing to learn and to improve as he goes.

Some men just want to see the world burn…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, batman & robin, batman r.i.p., batman: battle for the cowl, batman: eye of the beholder, batman: life after death, battle for the cowl, Daniel, eye of the beholder, grant morrison, Hugo Strange, Jason Todd, morrison, riddler, robin, tony daniel, walt simonson | Leave a comment »

Grant Morrison’s Batman Incorporated: The Deluxe Edition (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Darren

Criminals used to be afraid because they didn’t know where Batman was. Things are different now. Thanks to Batman Incorporated, I can tell you exactly where Batman is. Batman is everywhere.

– Bruce Wayne, Batman Incorporated #6

I’ll admit to warming to Grant Morrison’s gigantic Batman epic. Sure, I don’t think it ranks with All-Star Superman or New X-Men or even Seven Soldiers as the very best of the writer’s mainstream work. It’s still immensely fun comics. I’ll concede that I’m still only lukewarm on his initial continuity-heavy Batman run, but the combination of his Batman & Robin and his Return of Bruce Wayne were some of the most entertaining comics produced by a major comic book company in the past few years. (Certainly the only other mainstream book that could match Morrison’s energy was Paul Cornell’s severely underrated Action Comics run.) While Batman Incorporated never quite reaches those same pulpy highs, it is a massively entertaining and very astute pulp narrative featuring one of the most enduring pop culture creations of the twentieth century.

Batman and his Amazing Friends…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Action Comics, batman, Batman Incorporated, Batwoman, Beware the Batman, bruce wayne, Christopher Nolan, crime, Dark Knight Rises, dc comics, grant morrison, Grantmorrison, Hong Kong, joker, Kuala Lumpur, Leviathan, Lucius Fox, Melbourne, morrison, Oracle, Paul Cornell, ra's al ghul, robin, The Brave and the Bold, Tim Drake | 2 Comments »

Batman: Ego (and Other Tails) (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Darren

“It’s at times like this…. In the cold… in the dark… I feel that I’m losing my way.”

– Batman’s opening monologue, Ego

Few modern comic book artists and writers are as respected as Darwyn Cooke. The illustrator began his career on Batman: The Animated Series, and then expanded out into the comic books that inspired it. He’s worked on any number of iconic projects, including the miniseries New Frontier and the adaptations of Richard Stark’s Parker books. This summer, he’s a major part of DC’s Before Watchmen initiative, writing Silk Spectre and writing and illustrating The Minutemen. Batman: Ego and Other Tails collects the bulk of the writer/illustrator’s work on the Caped Crusader, with Selina’s Big Score included for good measure. In his introduction, the writer confesses that the story was”an earnest yet flawed first effort”, and it seems like he’s being remarkably fair.

He’s created a monster!

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, batman: the animated series, Bruce, caped crusader, Christopher Nolan, dark knight returns, Dark Knight Rises, darwyn cooke, death, frank miller, grant morrison, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, joker, Kurt Cobain, new frontier | Leave a comment »

Peter Tomasi’s Run on Batman & Robin – Blackest Night: Batman (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 3, 2012 by Darren

Okay, so it’s not technically a Batman & Robin book, only featuring Batman in the title, and it doesn’t feature Peter Tomasi’s Batman & Robin collaborator Patrick Gleason on the artwork. Still, Blackest Night: Batman feels very much like a trial run for the hand-picked successor to Grant Morrison’s acclaimed Batman & Robin run. (Arguably much like Blackest Night: Flash led into Geoff Johns’ second on-going Flash series.) While it’s hardly an exceptional three-issue tie-in to Geoff Johns’ massive Blackest Night event, it does show some hint of promise for the author’s forthcoming run on the main title.

Freeze, mofo!

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, batman & robin, Batman and Robin, blackest night, blackest night: batman, comic books, damian wayne, dc comics, death in comics, dick grayson, geoff johns, grant morrison, peter tomasi, review, robin | Leave a comment »

Weapon X by Barry Windsor Smith (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Darren

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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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: arts, avengers, barry windsor-smith, captain america, Comics, grant morrison, logan, marvel, marvel comics, Marvel Comics Presents, marvel universe, weapon x, Weapon X (comic), wolverine, x-men | 9 Comments »

X-Men: The Age of Apocalypse Omnibus (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Darren

The nineties represent a contentious time for fans of the X-Men franchise. The decade saw comic books explode into a huge market, with ridiculous sales and publicity, and the entire X-Men franchise rode that wave perfectly. Chris Claremont and Jim Lee’s adjectiveless X-Men #1 remains the biggest-selling comic book of all time, after all, and the franchise quickly secured itself as Marvel’s premiere comic book franchise. On the other hand, the line had been thrown into disarray by the departure of long-term steward Chris Claremont and its era-defining artist Jim Lee. The family of titles had struggled to find a footing through some uneven crossovers and events like X-Cutioner’s Song and Fatal Attractions. However, I think the decade produced one gem that can be considered as a true classic, along with the best of Claremont’s tenure and the work of Grant Morrison. The Age of Apocalypse might seem an odd choice to identify as one of the highlights of the X-Men saga, but I think it deserves very serious consideration.

Apocalypse now…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Age of Apocalypse, apocalypse, chris claremont, David Lapham, grant morrison, marvel, marvel comics, psychology, Rick Remender, Social Sciences, time travel, walt simonson, x-force, x-men | 4 Comments »

X-Men: Schism (Review)

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Darren

X-Men: Schism is a game-changer. It’s an attempt to realign Marvel’s X-Men line, a series of books that have faltered in recent years. After all, events like Messiah Complex and Second Coming couldn’t propel the line back to prominence, so Schism feels like a manifesto. Collecting the main series written by Jason Aaron, and the X-Men: Regenesis one-shot written by Kieron Gillen, it represents the most recent attempt to bring the some sense of life and purpose back to the X-Men books, which have been increasingly overshadowed by Marvel’s Avengers publishing line. And, to be frank, I can’t help but think that Schism works pretty well as an attempt to brush away the recent past and carve out a new and exciting future.

The hand of fate…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: blue, cyclops, generation hope, gold, grant morrison, Jason Aaron, Kieron Gillen, marvel, marvel comics, matt fraction, review, Schism, schism review, uncanny x-men, wolverine, wolverine and the x-men, x-men, x-men: regenesis, x-men: schism | Leave a comment »

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

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Darren

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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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: avengers, back from the dead, chris claremont, darwyn cooke, dead girl, di another day, doop, franchises, grant morrison, irony, marvel comics, Mike Allred, Milligan, Peter Milligan, post-modern, princess diana, the anarchist, tyke alacar, uncanny x-men, wolverine, wolverine/doop, x-force, x-statix | 2 Comments »

Wolverine by Jason Aaron Omnibus, Vol. I (Review)

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Darren

Wolverine shouldn’t be a tough character to get right. He’s a fairly simple archetype, one often seen in the annals of pulp fiction history. He’s the Man With No Name, the ronin, the warrior who has lived through the war. He’s a man who is a weapon, even if he doesn’t necessarily want to be. He’s badass, he’s a loner, and he doesn’t take any nonsense from anyone or anything. It’s easy to see why the character is one of Marvel’s most iconic fictional creations, right up there with Spider-Man in terms of recognition. However, it seems that many writers struggle in characterising the most famous mutant. Arguably the writer with the best handle on Wolverine since Chris Claremont left Uncanny X-Men was Mark Millar, who wrote two of the character’s more memorable stories (Enemy of the State and Old Man Logan). However, this collection makes a nice argument for Jason Aaron as the logical successor to the writer who defined the bladed Canadian.