greg rucka | the m0vie blog

New Escapist Column! On “The Old Guard” and Offering Easy Answers to Tough Problems…

Posted on July 10, 2020 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at Escapist Magazine this evening. The Old Guard was released on Netflix this evening, so it seemed a film that was worth discussing.

The Old Guard is essentially a film that exists half-way between a turn-of-the-millennium high-concept action film and a modern superhero blockbuster, and it doesn’t always split the difference in a particularly elegant way. This is a film that is about the importance of doing good in the world, even when the results aren’t quantifiable or apparent. However, it makes a rather clumsy and facile argument about that, lacking the strength or vision to make its point from first principles.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: escapist magazine, greg rucka, netflix, superhero, the old guard | Leave a comment »

Greg Rucka and Marco Checchetto (and Carmine Di Giandomenico’s) Punisher – War Zone (Review)

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Darren

This March, to celebrate the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, we’ll be taking a look at some classic and not-so-classic Avengers comic books. Check back daily for the latest updates!

Despite the continuity of character, plot and creator, it’s striking how distinct Punisher: War Zone feels from the sixteen-issue solo series leading into it. After Marvel cancelled Greg Rucka and Marco Checchetto’s Punisher series, the company green-lit a five-issue miniseries to allow the duo to wrap up the various plot threads and themes that ran through their earlier work. It is nice to see the pair given a chance to bring closure to their story, to tidy away loose ends on their take on Frank Castle.

At the same time, Punisher: War Zone feels very much like its own thing. The plot is powered by the arrest of Rachel Cole-Alves, Frank Castle’s accomplice who accidentally murdered a police officer during a botched raid. At the end of the series, the New York City Police Department had taken Cole into custody while Castle escaped into the night. In a way, the story could just has effectively ended there – the Punisher disappearing back into the woodwork, the characters all squared away.

While Punisher: War Zone does resolve the Cole-Alves subplot, it feels like it is primarily an accuse to pit Frank Castle against the Avengers. It’s a rather demented comic book idea – allowing a guy with lots of guns to face off against “Earth’s mightiest heroes” – but it plays into the larger themes of Rucka’s run about what tolerance of Castle says about the people who share this world with him.

Seeing red…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: avengers, Carmine Di Giandomenico, Frank Castle, greg rucka, marco checchetto, punisher war zone, spider man, war zone | Leave a comment »

Greg Rucka and Marco Checchetto’s Run on The Punisher, Vol. 9 (Review)

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Darren

The Punisher isn’t really a complex character.

Indeed, despite his popularity and appeal, there’s really only so much you can do with the character before it feels like you’re repeating yourself. He is a vigilante who brutally murders criminals, possibly because criminals killed his family. That’s part of the reason why Rick Remender’s Punisher run was so exhilarating. It genuinely felt unlike anything that had been done with the character before – even if Remender had to take Frank Castle off the reservation to do it.

Writer Greg Rucka and artist Marco Checchetto came up with their ingenious way of making the Punisher seem novel again. Realising that readers have probably become a little too over-familiar with Frank Castle and his world, Rucka and Checchetto shrewdly decide to look at Frank Castle from the outside, treating the Punisher as something like a force of nature, a terror glimpsed fleetingly as he stalks the concrete jungle.

A smoking gun…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: apathy, Comics, Frank Castle, greg rucka, marco checchetto, new york, nyc, punisher, punisher warzone, reviews, stephen wacker, steven wacker, the punisher, warzone | 1 Comment »

Infinite Crisis: Rann-Thanagar War (Review)

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Darren

This month I’m taking a look at DC’s massive “Infinite Crisis” Event. Although it was all published in one massive omnibus, I’ll be breaking down the lead-in to the series to tackle each thread individually, culminating in a review of the event itself. Check back for more.

I’ve always been a fan of the “hokey science-fiction” corner of the DC Universe. Adam Strange is perhaps my second-favourite Silver Age DC hero (behind the Flash). I loved Alan Moore’s trip to the stars during his Swamp Thing run. While many thought that Stars my Destination, the penultimate mega-arc of James Robinson’s Starman, went on far too long, I loved every page. Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern is one of my favourite modern comic book runs. I confess all this so that my bias is upfront, when I admit that Rann-Thanagar War is one of my favourite Infinite Crisis tie-ins, even though it’s one of those least directly connected to the event itself.

All the Strange, Strange heroes…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Adam Strange, avengers, batman, Blue Beetle, Dark Knight Rises, dc comics, dc universe, gotham central, green lantern, greg rucka, Hawkgirl, history, infinite crisis, Kyle Rayner, Rann, Rann-Thanagar War, wonder woman | Leave a comment »

Infinite Crisis: Day of Vengeance (Review)

Posted on November 21, 2012 by Darren

It seems like, within the last decade or so, DC has had a great deal of difficulty organising its “magic and mystic” books. DC generally provided a nice home for books like Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing or John Ostrander’s Spectre, but it seemed like there wasn’t really an abundance of successful magic-themed books in the early part of the new millennium. DC would consciously attempt to remedy this with their “dark” line as part of the “new 52” relaunch, but Day of Vengeance feels like something of an awkward earlier attempt to streamline that corner of the shared universe and to prepare it for some sort of creative relaunch.

One for sorrow, two for joy… What for a few dozen?

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: alan moore, avengers, batman, Bill Willingham, Crispus Allen, dark knight returns, Dark Knight Rises, dc comics, dc universe, Detective Chimp, Enchantress, gotham central, greg rucka, infinite crisis, Ragman, Rann-Thanagar War, spectre, sue dibny, Vengeance, wonder woman | Leave a comment »

Infinite Crisis: The Adventures of Superman – Lightning Strikes Twice (Review)

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Darren

I think it’s quite nice that DC went to the effort to collect the vast majority of tie-ins to Infinite Crisis inside this gigantic omnibus, even when the book didn’t necessarily get its own miniseries like Villains United or The O.M.A.C. Project. Like Sacrifice, Lightning Strikes Twice was a crossover between the Superman books leading into the events of one of the lead-in miniseries. In this case, writer Judd Winick was setting up the events of Day of Vengeance, the magic-themed crossover designed to tidy up and reenergise the mystical side of the DC Universe.

Super-punch!

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: avengers, batman, captain marvel, dc comics, dc universe, Eclipso, gotham central, greg rucka, Ian Churchill, infinite crisis, Jean Loring, judd winick, lois lane, marvel, superman, Villains United, wonder woman | Leave a comment »

Infinite Crisis: Superman – Sacrifice (Review)

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Darren

I can see how Infinite Crisis earned its reputation as an overly-convoluted event. Even its tie-ins had tie-ins. In this case, the Superman: Sacrifice story, an arc spread across Superman, Action Comics and Wonder Woman, serves as a tie-in to Greg Rucka’s The O.M.A.C. Project, which was itself part of the lead-in to the big event. As you can imagine, it’s a rather strange trail of continuity to follow, as events here play out as a subset of a story that is itself a subset of something larger. While that is a problem of itself, the biggest problem with Superman: Sacrifice is that it takes an interesting enough central concept and reduces it to an over-extended four-issue arc about characters hitting each other really hard.

There’s blood on his hands…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Action Comics, batman, brainiac, dc comics, Gail Simone, greg rucka, infinite crisis, Jimmy, Lois, sinestro corps war, superman, wonder woman | Leave a comment »

Final Crisis: Revelations (Review)

Posted on July 23, 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.

I have to admit, I’ve always preferred DC’s approach to big comic events, as opposed to the approach at Marvel. While Marvel’s events (like Civil War or Secret Invasion) seem to exist to encroach on a writer’s comic book run (Ed Brubaker’s Captain America or Matt Fraction’s Iron Man), DC’s events tend to allow writers to tidy up loose ends. Or, to be fair, that’s what Final Crisis appeared to do. The major tie-in miniseries didn’t seem to exist to fill in gaps with the main book. Instead, they allowed the writers to resolve or move forward their own plots. For Geoff Johns, Rogues’ Revenge allowed him to segue between his first Flash run and Flash: Rebirth, while Legion of Three Worlds allowed him to sort out some outstanding Legion of Superheroes continuity.

Revelations exists to serve as a coda to Greg Rucka’s superb Gotham Central and his Question series, as well as tying in a bit to his upcoming Batwoman work. While I’m not the biggest fan of “comic book events” in general terms, I do respect that they allow writers to tell stories they might not otherwise get a chance to.

Shine a light…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Apokolips, batman, Crispus Allen, Dark Knight Rises, dc universe, final crisis, god, gotham central, Gotham City Police Department, greg rucka, new gods, Renee Montoya, spectre, Vandal Savage | Leave a comment »

Batwoman: Elegy (Hardcover) (Review)

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Darren

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 »

Gotham Central – On the Freak Beat & Corrigan (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Darren

If you ask me, Gotham Central is the highest quality Batman title that has been published in quite some time – if not the most consistent Batman comic book ever published. These final two volumes contain the second half of Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka’s celebrated forty-issue exploration of life within the Gotham City Police Department, providing one of the freshest and most compelling comic book stories ever told in either of the two major comic book publishers. Essentially the story of the ordinary men and women stuck in the superhero world of Batman, it’s a genuine comic book classic.