retrospective | the m0vie blog

Civil War (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Darren

This is the fourth in a series of comic book reviews that will look at the direction of Marvel’s “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 modern continuity. Get an overview of what I’m trying to take a look at here.

Civil War was Marvel’s big event of 2006-7, and – as this lovely deluxe edition loves to remind you – it was “the industry’s best selling series in over a the decade”. The premise of the series is straight-forward enough – it’s a conflict between the heroes of the Marvel Universe (it’s all there in the title) – and perhaps that is the reason that the series has arguably had more crossover mainstream appeal than the vast majority of comic book crossovers. Marvel have produced a lovely deluxe hardcover which contains just about everything you could possibly want from the event, it’s just a shame I’m not overly impressed by the event itself.

I'm sure we can iron this out...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: anti-registration, captain america, Civil War, civil war script book, comic books, continuity, crossover, event, graphic novel, marvel, marvel comics civil war, marvel universe, miniseries, pro-registration, retrospective, review, spider man, steve mcniven, the fantastic four, the punisher | 6 Comments »

Brian Michael Bendis’ Avengers – New Avengers Vol. 1-2 (Hardcover) (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on September 15, 2010 by Darren

This is the first in a series of comic book reviews that will look at the direction of Marvel’s “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.

Alright. I figure I sound a bit hypocritical complaining about the impact of big events on Marvel’s storytelling continuity without reading said big events. Well, actually, I don’t think I’m a hypocrite – I think it’s perfectly reasonably that a reader should be able to pick up Ed Brubaker’s Captain America without having to worry about Mark Millar’s massive Civil War crossover which they either don’t know enough to care about or know enough not to care about. However, I feel like maybe – just maybe – I should try to ride this “cross-continuity” thing out just once and see if the story somehow justifies the damage it causes to the cohesion of individual runs. Yes, I’m going to jump head-first into the event-populated minefield of continuity which is recent Marvel history, and I will be using New Avengers as a checklist to that. I’m going down the rabbit hole, following the arc from Civil War through to Siege.

Sentry is responsible for the Carnage in this run...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: avengers, bendis, breakout, brian bendis, brian michael bendis, captain america, Civil War, Comics, crisis crossover, crossover, crossovers, franchise, iron man, logan, luke cage, marvel, marvel comics, marvel shared universe, marvel universe, meta, new avengers, retrospective, review, ronin, sentry, spider man, spider-woman, spin, the collective, wolverine | Leave a comment »

Wednesday Comics

Posted on August 25, 2010 by Darren

Hawkman unsheathes his knife and crawls into the gasping T-Rex’s jaws, thinking “Sadly, this is not the craziest thing I’ve ever done.”

– Hawkman

Wednesday Comics is an amazing little experiment, a bit of comic book nostalgia delivered by some of the most talented people in the business with a smile on their face and a skip in their step. For those who don’t know, DC Comics – always the more boldly experimental of the two major companies – ran a twelve-week collection of newspaper comic strips. Fifteen strips bundled together, the reader was offered one page of a given comic at a time on a super-sized newspaper sheet, with a full story told week-on-week. It was a bold little experiment and while the whole is almost certainly greater than the sum of its parts, there’s much to love here.

There in a Flash...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: adam kubert, amanda conner, barry allen, batman, ben caldwell, beware the creeper, brenden fletcher, brian azzarello, brian stelfreeze, catwoman, comic strips, Comics, dan didio, dave bullock, dave gibbons, dc, dc comics, deadman, eddie beganza, eduardo risso, etrigan, flash, green lantern, hawkman, jimmy palmiotti, joe kubert, Joe Quiñones, john arcudi, José Luis García-López, José Villarrubia, kamandi, karl kerschl, kevin nowlan, kurt busiek, kyle baker, lee burmejo, metal men, metamorpho, michael allred, neil gaiman, nostalgia, paul pope, plastic man, retrospective, ryan sook, sean galloway, sergeant rock, sergeant rock and easy company, serialised, sgt rock and easy co, sgt. rock, strange adventures, strips, supergirl, superman, teen titans, the creeper, the demon, the demon and catwoman, the flash, vinton heuck, walt simonson, wednesday, wednesday comics, wonder woman | 4 Comments »

The Best of Both Worlds: A Retrospective

Posted on June 29, 2010 by Darren

I am Locutus – of Borg. Resistance – is futile. Your life, as it has been – is over. From this time forward, you will service – us.

– Locutus introduces himself

I only found out last week that The Best of Both Worlds is twenty years old this June. For those unfamiliar with the title, it’s the two-part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which represented both the franchise’s first real cliffhanger (there was a two-part episode of the original series, but that was simply to incorporate a framing device around the original unaired pilot, The Cage – which featured an (almost) completely different cast) and the first real showcase of perhaps the franchise’s most iconic antagonists, the Borg. It’s also a damn good two hours of television.

Picard could always spot a square...

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: best of both worlds, borg, jean-luc picard, patrick stewart, picard, retrospective, star trek, star trek: the next generation, sttng, Television, the best of both worlds, the borg, the next generation, tng | 5 Comments »

The Death of Captain America Omnibus (Review)

Posted on January 27, 2010 by Darren

I was impressed by the original Captain America by Ed Brubaker Omnibus, but I wasn’t as blown away by his run as almost everyone else seems to have been. A lot of my problems were outside Brubaker’s control – the big Civil War event in the Marvel Universe loomed large over the climax of his run – and, in fairness to him, he worked around it as well as he could have been expected to. His on-going run is continued in a second (albeit smaller) omnibus, succinctly entitled The Death of Captain America Omnibus, which does exactly what it says on the tin, following the events which immediately followed the climax of the last omnibus (even going so far as to reprint the last issue in that volume as the first one in this volume). It’s just over half the size of the early collection – even factoring in the reprint – but I’ll concede that I actually enjoyed it a lot more. Maybe it was the sense that Brubaker was delivering a pay-off to all the threads opened in the first part of his run, or that he was solidly unfettered by editorial mandate this time around, or even that the storyline was considerably more streamlined and focused – no matter what the reason, the vast majority of my (already admittedly small) qualms about the first collection are dealt with here.

That's gonna be a pain to clean...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Bucky, captain america, ed brubaker, marvel, marvel comics, Red Skull, retrospective, review, Steve Epting, the death of captain america, the death of captain america omnibus | Leave a comment »

Robert Kirkman’s Run on Ultimate X-Men – Vol. 7-9 (Hardcover)

Posted on December 23, 2009 by Darren

Ultimate X-Men is a tough title to get a read on. The fact that the run has been broken down into blocks by all manner of superstar writers means that there’s really no consistent underlying principle feeding through the eight-year life of the title. On the other hand, the fact that none of these big name writers like Mark Millar or Brian Michael Bendis could create a book living up to the series’ potential indicates that maybe there wasn’t a writer who could steward the book through its entire life cycle. Ultimate Spider-Man serves in many ways as a fulfillment of the promise of the Ultimate line, it’s almost a single, decade-long story of growth and development, the very evolution of a world of superheroes. Ultimate X-Men is very much the opposite, the constantly bending backwards over itself, jolting, starting and reversing as it seems unable to decide where exactly it’s going at any given moment. Robert Kirkman’s run is perhaps the best examples of the series’ strengths and ultimately (ha!) its weaknesses.

Somebody's been watching Terminator a bit too often...

Note: Some of Aron Coleitte’s work is covered in the Hardcover Volume 9 (with the rest of his short run spilling over into the Ultimatum Hardcover). If I can bring myself to pick up Ultimatum, I will run a review of his rather short tenure on the title. This review is only concerned with Kirkman’s run – up until the end of the Apocalypse arc.

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: 1990s, apocalypse, bishop, cable, comic books, date night, magical, marvel, marvel comics, pheonix?, retrospective, review, robert kirkman, sentinels, the magician, ultimate apocalypse, ultimate marvel, ultimate universe, ultimate x-men, x-men | Leave a comment »

Grant Morrison’s Run on Batman – Batman & Son, The Black Glove & Batman RIP (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on August 1, 2009 by Darren

I want to love Grant Morrison’s run on Batman. I really do. And I quite possibly would if I didn’t feel like I wasn’t particularly welcome at this massive gala birthday bash. I’ve decided to review all of Morrison’s run on Batman – collected in the hardback editions of Batman & Son, The Black Glove, two chapters of The Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul and Batman R.I.P. – as one, because it is all one story. In fact, I’m sure it’ll turn out to be the opening salvo of a gigantic story that Morrison is weaving where it all ties together, but it might be so massive it’s impossible to review all at once. So, how do I feel after the first act?

Who says parenting isn't tough?