This time we travel into the ancient past of the Star Wars universe with Tales of the Jedi. Read more
Comic Review: The Shadow – Seven Deadly Finns
This time I’m finishing up the run of DC’s The Shadow Comics – at least the ones that I own a copy of, with a story arc that goes back to some of the character’s original pulp roots. Read more
Comic Review: Droids – The Kalarba Adventures
Coming a few months after the first installment of Tales of the Jedi, we get an episodic, more comedic Star Wars comic, focusing on the comic relief of the original trilogy – R2-D2 and C3-P0. Read more
Legends of the Force: Episode IX – Dark Empire I
We continue with the launch of the classic EU with Dark Horse Comics first comic outing – Dark Empire I. Read more
Comic Review: The Shadow – Shadows & Light
A little bit ago I reviewed DC Comics revival of The Shadow, written and drawn by Howard Chaykin. This time I’m taking a look at the follow-up to the first sequel arc to that series.
Comic Review: The Shadow – Blood and Judgement
I’m something of a fan of The Shadow, both in terms of the radio plays, and in terms of the pulp character. The feature film starring Alec Baldwin holds a special place in my heart for how it combines the two very different versions of the character into one with some success. So, when I ended up having to find a new comic shop after my old one (Ancient Wonders in Tualatin – which was also my FLGS) closed, I found myself in need of a new comic shop. When I found my new one (Comics Adventure in Gladstone) I ended up checking out the quarter bins in the back, and finding almost all of Howard Chaykin’s 4-issue The Shadow miniseries – Blood and Judgement. I picked that up, and found the first issue on Comixology. Having read it, it’s time to give my thoughts. Read more
Legends of the Force: Episode 6 – Marvel Star Wars Part 3
This time we cover the conclusion of Marvel’s original comic run. Read more
Comic Review: Tales of the Jedi (Part 1)
Before we return to Star Wars novels, we have one more comic series to take on, one which goes to the furthest reaches of the Star Wars universe – the Tales of the Jedi. Read more
Legends of the Force: Episode II – Marvel Star Wars Part 1, Blows Against The Empire
This time we’re continuing with Legends of the Force with a look at the first third of Marvel’s initial take on Star Wars – how it came to be, who wrote it, and the stories that were told. Read more
Comic Review: Marvel Star Wars – Part 1
Continuing with my run-down of the Star Wars Legends continuity, I’m taking a look at the first chunk of Marvel’s initial run on Star Wars, falling between their adaptation of A New Hope to the start of Empire Strikes Back. Yeah, I said I wasn’t going to cover Marvel Star Wars, but I changed my mind. Read more
Film Review: Captain America – Civil War
Civil War, as a Comic Event, was something of a spectacular failure. I haven’t been good at doing video posts on my blog the past few weeks (something I’ll try to fix shortly), but this past week I did a video post on YouTube about Civil War, the comics, event, and how that could have been fixed.
The film version of Civil War has none of those problems. Instead, it’s one of the top films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to date. There will be some minor spoilers in this review (below the cut if you’re reading this on my blog). Read more
5 Things Wrong with the Civil War Comic Event And What Could Have Fixed Them
In time for the release of Captain America: Civil War – I give my thoughts on my top 5 things that were wrong with the Civil War Marvel Comics event, and how they could have been fixed.
Music – “Little Lily Swing” – Tri-Tachyon
Graphic Novel Review – Poorcraft
This week I’m doing a book review of the graphic novel, Poorcraft, and discuss some of the omissions, and odd inclusions from that book.
Read Poorcraft online at poorcraft.com
Comic Review – Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 11: Carnage
So, it’s now time to review the Ultimate Universe’s take on the member of Spider-Man’s rogue’s gallery I hate the most. I’m going to say this right now. I hate Carnage. The character is completely unoriginal. He was created to be a darker-and-edgier version of Venom, who was in turn meant to be a darker and edgier version of Spider-Man. The character has essentially no depth. He kills people for no reason. That’s it. He breaks out of where he’s held, kills people until he’s stopped, and wash, rinse, repeat.
Thus, when I picked up this volume, I had my doubts about how they could make this story interesting. Thus, I was pleasantly surprised by how they did succeed. Basically, they managed to pull it off by not directly attaching the character to Venom, but instead to Curt Connors, aka The Lizard. Connors has been, in my opinion, one of the better members of Spider-Man’s supporting cast. This is, for a large part, because he’s a tragic figure. He experiments on himself in an attempt to develop a way for amputees to re-grow limbs, and ends up turning himself into a lizard-man. Everything the character does is meant with the best intentions, as opposed to villainous figures like Doc Ock and the Green Goblin. Read more
Movie Review – Iron Man II
Superhero movies tend to do better on the second installment than on the first installment. The Dark Knight was better than Batman Begins. X-Men 2 was better than the first X-Men movie. Part of this is because the writer no longer is saddled with having to set up the hero’s origin story, while also setting up the origin story for the villain as well, and laying down the rules of the setting, and establishing all the characters you’re introducing. Come movie number two, and you (and the audience) already know what the rules are and the hero’s origin. Now you just have to establish a new villain, possibly involving his origin (though, as The Dark Knight showed, not always), and plot the character growth for the returning cast.
I’m not saying it’s easy. I am saying it’s not necessarily as hard as the first outing. Read more
Comic Review – Ultimate Six
I’ve been catching up on my Ultimate Spider-Man, for reasons various and sundry. The volumes that haven’t been reviewed at Bureau42, I’ve reviewed here. However, this storyline – the introduction of the Ultimate Universe’s version of the Sinister Six, has been reviewed there. Thus, I’m taking my review of this storyline to my blog here, so I can kind of review it in my own little way, with a bit of an aside about the state of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. This review contains some spoilers.
First off, I enjoy the Ultimate Spider-Man part of the Ultimate Universe, but it’s the only part of the Ultimate Universe that I like. Mark Millar’s work rubs me wrong in almost every respect. Ultimate X-Men turned me off the moment they decided that Ultimate Cable was future Wolverine (as if Wolverine wasn’t over-used enough). However, Ultimate Spider-Man has managed to balance Peter Parker’s angst with the more light-hearted face that Peter puts forward as Spider-Man in a way that the comics in the main Marvel U haven’t, for reasons that I can best tell are related to Editorial fiat. Read more
How Awesome Is It To Be Renee Montoya?
So, recently, I’ve been catching up on my podcasts, particuarly iFanboy, and particularly their episode on Final Crisis. I read comic books, and I like Superhero comics, but often times it’s the lower tier characters who capture my attention. The Green Arrows, the Deadpools, the Booster Golds of the world. For a moderate part, because it’s a little tricky to get into the big heroes and also around the time I was getting back into comics I wasn’t too into the direction the Bat-titles were going at the moment, I never quite got into Superman, and Wonder Woman never really was my thing. I like the Marvel stuff too, but also around the time I started getting back into comics (and getting a pull box started and so forth), Civil War had begun, and I wanted to see how it turned out before I anted back in – consequently, after the Iron Fascist won, I decided not to delve too deeply into the Marvel U (sticking with just Deadpool), and I went more deeply into the DC universe. However, I went with the smaller characters – Green Arrow, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold. I had JLA on my pull list, but it didn’t come out regularly enough that I could follow an arc – it seemed to be coming out quarterly, so I dropped it.
So, my thoughts on XIII
Being that I don’t, generally, listen to popular music, I didn’t watch the Grammy’s this year. Instead, NBC is running a mini-series based off the French comic book XII. I decided to give this show a try, mainly becuse I hadn’t read the comic book, hadn’t played the video game based off the comic book, and, frankly, I wanted to give a mini-series based off a non-Supers comic book that wasn’t from the US or Japan a shot. I was pleasantly surprised. There are some spoilers below the cut, so be warned.
Thoughts on Justice League: New Frontier
This isn’t going to be my standard review, in part because I’m planning on re-thinking how I do movie reviews on the site. This, instead is going to be my general overall review of the film. I’ll be working off the Blu-Ray version of the movie here for all of my criticisms, and there may be spoilers here, so be warned.