John Weighs in on the X-Men DVD Thing

Well, Rachelle pretty much nailed it on her review, so I'll keep this brief. Yes, these cartoons were terrible. The voice acting was basically bad, bad, bad (with some exceptions - Apocalypse was terrific), the animation was cheap, etc, etc. BUT. there are still some reasons to think about getting this collection:

1. The possibility of special prizes. The copy that we received contained, in lieu of Volume 1, Disc 1, the Leonardo DiCaprio film Catch Me if You Can. Maybe you'll get a Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVD, or a slice of dried bologna or anything! It's like gambling!

2. Drinking games. Every time they reuse footage or dialogue, take a shot. Every time Professor X zooms into frame at an unsafe speed, take a shot. Every time something MAKES NO SENSE, take a shot. You will require about one episode per party.

3. Canadian pride (assumes that you are Canadian). Watch the episode with Alpha Flight and take pride in knowing that our national super-hero, the Vindicator, is so concerned with duty that he is willing to confiscate his best friend's skeleton for the good of his country/the military conspiracy that he works for. I felt so filled with national pride that I immediately confiscated some of Rachelle's ribs. Also, once more: suck it, other national conspiracies.

4. MST3K fun. If you watch bad movies specifically for the purpose of mocking them you will have fun with this. We burnt out after four or five episodes, though.

5. Academic interest. Watch and consider the political or practical considerations behind each nonsensical decision: why does Cable have a black starburst around his (intact) eye? Are scars hard to animate or did the writers/animators believe that children shouldn't know about eye-scarification, in case they might try to it themselves (to look cool, like Cable)? What about that hover-wheelchair? Was regular chair-wheeling too intricate an animation? Was it a plot hook that never got used, like Moira McTaggart's Irish accent? I swear that I could write five papers on this stuff.

6. PYRO AND AVALANCHE. They only show up every few episodes but these two are the very best thing about this show. Pyro is an Australo-Cockney skinny-boy and Avalanche is a big dumb dope who sounds like he maybe got his powers by being beat repeatedly about the head with a pipe. Nothing ever goes right for them - they try to hit on a chick in a bar and it turns out to be Rogue, who beats them silly. They kidnap a scientist and it turns out to be their boss Mystique in disguise. They are the ultimate sad sacks. I want to pitch The Misadventures of Pyro and Avalanche to Adult Swim. Rachelle's suggestion, Pyro and Avalanche in: Gettin' the Blob Laid also has merit, maybe as a movie spin-off.

In any case, you already know if you're going to buy this thing or not. It's exactly like you remember it, trust me.

Oops, now I've got to write my Saturday post. Bye!

Set Phasers For Fun: Dave's Spoiler-Free Mini Review of Star Trek

After a stumbling start with X-Men Origins: Wolverine (see Rachelle’s review here), the summer 2009 movie season got kicked off properly last night with the first shows of J.J. Abrams’ new Star Trek makeover, featuring young, angsty versions of the original cast—Kirk, Spock, etc.—in a universe that is not quite the same as the one we all know but is still somehow canon. How, exactly, requires me to discuss plot points that I don’t want to get into (spoilers and all), but it’s not important anyway. What is important is that the new Star Trek is a hell of a good time, and exactly what this series needed.

Without giving too much away, a Romulan bad guy named Nero has traveled back in time, to back before the original series, to mess with history in various diabolical ways. Along the way, he encounters the USS Enterprise and its crew of fledgling recruits, who have to get over their various differences to stop him from blowing up lots of planets and messing up the spacetime continuum. More than he already has, I mean—his interference has already altered the timeline, meaning that the future as we know it is not set anymore (a handy trick of the filmmakers, one that sidesteps Wolverine’s lack of suspense in knowing that the character survives for at least three more movies). The wonky pseudoscience that has always accompanied the Star Trek brand name and its recurring time travel plotlines allows for an almost literal cosmic reset button, which will hopefully keep the die-hard fans content, while also making way for director J.J. Abrams’ sexy, flashy new vision of the Star Trek universe—while, finally, not in any way contradicting What Has Gone Before.  

The cast is pretty much uniformly great—Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, as Kirk and Spock, respectively, inhabit their characters without resorting to imitations, the supporting characters all get to have cool moments where we see why they’re all destined for greatness, and the space battles and fight scenes are all exciting to watch. There are a lot of fun nods to the original series, but not obnoxiously so. There are some moments of fairly goofy humour, but that’s not so out of place either—never let it be said that Star Trek, in any of its incarnations, is above a lame gag or three. And seriously, when’s the last time we had a good space adventure flick? One that didn’t take place in some depressing dystopia, but in a future where all (or most, anyway) races have come together to get stuff done? By the end of this movie, I was pretty much begging for a sequel, but that’s probably still about three years away. Not soon enough! Great job, everyone involved.
 

Two "Girl" Comics and a Buffy: My Lady-est Week Ever

Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade #6

Grant Morrison does an excellent fill in on the final issue. No. But seriously, this issue had some time traveling, multi-universal craziness worthy of Final Crisis. In a nutshell, Mr. Mxyzptlk makes everyone trip out, and Supergirl saves the day. I really loved this series, and I feel like other creators of all-ages comics should use this as their template: it was fun, had wide appeal and used familiar tropes but also had its own thing going on. And it came out regularly, so kids (and adults) didn't lose interest. (I'm looking at you Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam. Great book, but c'mon! You're not Optic Nerve!)

Power Girl #1

I feel pretty invested in Power Girl as a character. I guess 'cause she's often been such a joke, or she's been the iconic image of why comics are just for dudes. So I totally love the way Palmiotti and Conner make her not suck. I love how she can be funny and brave and cute and relate-able! That said, I found this issue a little lackluster, and just not as emotionally engaging as I was expecting. It was the first issue though, so I'll quit my complaining until a few more come out. I did love the way Power Girl looked, especially her boots! Those round buckles! I loved when that dude called her "Pee Gee." And I was really into her grumpy cat.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #25

The Buffy comic was losing me for a bit there, as the stories seemed a little forced and not totally fresh. But this issue pulled me back in. It was nice to wrap up the Dawn storyline that's been naggingly unresolved since the first issue of the series. I felt like the conclusion was honest, and even told us that Dawn is a bit a like her big sister, and maybe sleeps with people for the wrong reasons. There was some nice Xander and Buffy dialogue and Buffy even mentioned watching Veronica Mars! (A little late to name-drop this sadly canceled show, but still cool. Although, if this season eight comic takes place the year after Buffy the show ended [and the show was always on the same time-line as real life], then Veronica Mars wouldn't have even been on yet when the events in this issue took place!!! How did Buffy get those DVDs? Did Superboy punch a hole in the world?)

Anyway. How 'bout that Jo Chen cover? Perverted! 

My Spoiler-Free Mini-Review of Star Trek

This movie is amazing and awesome and everyone should go see it. I want to see a million more movies with the same cast.

Also, Captain Kirk is hott.

Seriously, this movie had what the Wolverine movie was missing: joy. I have not been this delighted by a film since Iron Man. Go see it!

90s X-Men Animated Series Now Collected in Easy-to Dispose DVD Format

 

Here's the thing: I really loved the old X-Men animated series from the 90s. Not the one where Wolverine had an Australian accent. The other one. I watched every episode several times. In university I watched it again when it was shown on Teletoon. I loved it then, and that was only like eight years ago. The good news for those who loved the show is that it's now available on DVD as of last week (or at least the first 33 episodes are). The bad news is that it really doesn't hold up very well.

Last night Johnathan and I got together for what should have been a perfect evening of beer, ribs and the X-Men DVDs. It took about 30 seconds to realize that no amount of beer and mapley sweet ribs would negate the fact that we were watching a terrible show.

The opening credits are great. Great music, great clips, great fonts. But after that the show pretty much falls apart every episode. Even the episodes I remembered as being good were pretty bad. The end credits were astonishingly bad.

The real problem with this show is that it is extremely loyal to an era of X-Men comics that was extremely flawed. Everyone is ugly with crazy eyebrows, terrible hair, and horrible outfits. Cable is covered in armbands, all of which are way too tight. It must take him five hours to get dressed. The stories are largely based on Claremont comics, but with all the intelligence taken out. Even the Len Wein-penned Alpha Flight episode fell flat.

The animation is lazy. The voice acting is terrible. Everyone's accents are insane. Xavier darts around in his floating wheelchair at an alarming speed in small spaces. Footage is recycled at a ridiculous rate. The characters are all flat and boring. No wonder I loved Gambit so much...he's the only one with a shred of personality. And every time Bishop is on screen we hear blues harmonica for some reason.

My favourite line was probably when Storm was buried under a pile of boulders and Cyclops's reaction was to yell "Help! Storm suffers from claustrophobia!" I think the bigger problem was that Storm was suffering from being buried under a pile of boulders.

Now keep this in mind: this series was airing at the same time as the damn near perfect Batman: The Animated Series!

So what I am saying is that I really wanted to like this. I wanted to watch it and be able to say "You know, this is a pretty solid series" because surely I did not waste hours of my life watching something really crappy. Right? I did. The world is right and I was wrong. This is not a good show. And the fact that there are no special features on the DVDs means there is no reason to buy it. But, y'know, people really like watching the old G.I. Joe cartoon too, and that thing sucks (sorry, nerds. It sucks).

I mean, I guess if you want to get stoned with your friends and redub the audio with your own jokes and post it on YouTube, this is a must-buy. But other than that, I can't really recommend it. It's best left forgotten and replaced in our collective memory by the excellent new series, Wolverine and the X-Men.

It's okay! John Buys Comics is here!

Battle for the Cowl: The Network (One-Shot)

This was interesting: Oracle and what is essentially Bird of Prey II: This Time With Dudes! vs Dr. Hugo Strange, who is setting the new Batman (meaning the Batman who is supposedly Jason Todd but almost certainly isn’t and oh look he’s on the cover of next week’s Battle for the Cowl No. 3 and I don’t think that it’s Jason Todd) up for one of his famous messed-up psychological tests: three kidnapped people (crack mother, old old lady and escaped murderer claiming innocence), two of whom will be killed once the first one is rescued. Also, he’s taking bets on the side.

I liked this. I like the “Oracle with a team of people” dynamic that went away with Birds of Prey (and how long did it take Barbara Gordon to “find herself” anyway? A week?) and there’s a nice sense of the Gotham criminal underground that you don’t often get in Batman stories but that makes sense - why not form a community? Solidarity in the face of oppression!

I feel like bitching about some of the characterization but I’m not awake enough to be the angry nerd yet. Eh, Huntress lost some of the not-psycho calm that she had picked up over in Birds of Prey but at least it fit the story, for what that’s worth. I kind of wish, though, that they’d chosen to play Ragman as the loveable schlub from Shadowpact rather than as the standard creepy supernatural character who calls people “child” and such. Misfit was good, though, and it looks as though her Dark Secret has not been forgotten, so if this spins off into a series of some sort, hopefully she’ll be there.

Groom Lake No. 2

Huh. I skipped the first issue of this because it had a smoking Grey-style alien on the cover and looked like something from a university poster sale, but the partially-skeletonized puff dog on this one managed to pull me in (ag, it's the B cover - why is it so hard to find pictures of B covers? The A cover is even more poster sale). Actually, I’m kind of glad that I did it this way, as the first issue by itself is okay but the first two issues taken as a pair are a pretty decent read.

This is neat. It’s the sort of story that… you know when you have a serious set-up (in this case an X-Files-style alien/government conspiracy) in which most of the cast is playing it serious but then a couple of off-the-wall characters are dropped into the middle and it ends up being funny and plausibly actiony at the same time? This is like that, if skewing toward the funny side of things. Sure, there’s a party-alien, but he has a legitimate reason for being so. If I’d only read the first issue I might’ve complained about some of the characters being too tough and world-weary and attitudey all the time but it actually works quite well to balance out the wacky. Nice writin', Chris Ryall!

And good art, Ben Templesmith! Why are your square-headed women so appealing? Whatever the reason, I like it. All of the characters are super-distinctive and interesting and the colouring job is beautiful and odd.

Oh, and there’s even a decent explanation for alien rectal/genital probing! Finally, my questions have been answered!

Demon Cleaner No. 1

(Written before reading this) I know nothing about this comic - I bought it because books about people fighting demons (see Hellboy, Killer of Demons, etc.) are usually a good time. The Weird Rocky Horror-style lips on the cover are kind of weirding me out.

(Reading…) Hey, this is pretty good! As I figured, the Demon Cleaner is a dude who runs around offing demons who have escaped from Hell and not (as I had secretly hoped) some sort of maid service for the damned. Demons make great villains, by the way, even better than Nazis, as the occasional Nazi can turn out to be just misled, whilst demons are pretty much the definitive bad guys. And they can generally come back again after you kill ‘em, too, which makes for a good antagonistic relationship. Miles Gunter wrote this one and did a good job with his bunch of entertainingly assholey rich people who gathered to eat demons for their medicinal value and (oh the wit) ended up biting off more than they could chew. The demons are pretty good too, especially the one who must inhabit organic matter in order to have a body - look out for the watermelon-demon, aiee!

And it looks real pretty, too. It appears that Antarctic Press is classifying it as a manga but to mine eyes it occupies the same Art Deco-descended niche as Darwyn Cooke’s work on The Spirit. Anyway, it looks nice and the monsters are cool and nicely kinetic. Also, Victor Santos draws a nice skeleton. And! This is two comics in a row with really nice mood-enhancing colouring.

Final Crisis Aftermath: RUN! No. 1 (of 6)

Okay, so my initial reason for reading Battle for the Cowl was a semi-masochistic impulse to take a bad-comic bullet for the LBW team, but that’s not working out because one the whole I’m enjoying them. Therefore, I’m going to read all of the Final Crisis Aftermath books as well. I actually have no idea if they’re going to be good or bad or what - the mess that was Countdown and the other books leading up to Final Crisis (generally - I kind of liked Salvation Run) has left me cynical about this sort of thing but on the other hand I really like the Aftermath focus characters. On the third hand, I liked them as Morrison characters, so I guess we’ll see how well someone else ends up writing them. We’ll call it cautious optimism for now. Anyway, as previously detailed I like the Human Flame, so let’s see how a series about him getting his comeuppance for being the kind of douchebag that films someone’s death on a camera phone goes…

(Reading)

All right! This was exactly what I was hoping for: the misadventures of a total dick. The Human Flame is the most unrepenetant asshole in the DCU, I think. If Sturges and Williams can keep this going for six issues it’ll be a hoot. Basically everyone is after this guy - the heroes, the villains, the Kyrgyzstani Mafia, possibly his tiny daughter - and he just keeps compounding things by acting like a bigger and bigger douchebag. Also: the return of that one uncostumed guy from his debut! Also… is Firestorm a white guy again or was that a colouring error?

Power Girl No. 1

Okay, this was great. Power Girl has had it bad for a while but if this series continues in this vein then she’s in good hands. I bought the cover pictured here and I swear, not for the boobs (though they are impressively colossal). Rather, for that fantastic facial expression and for “It’s okay! Power Girl is here!”, which is pretty much the best catch phrase ever and I hope is employed frequently.

Anyway, good writing job here - Power Girl is forceful without being the cranky-pants that she was in the old days. This Power Girl is no more likely to appreciate Wally West grossly hitting on her than the Justice League Europe version but, I don’t know, wouldn’t be as abrasive about it? Does that make sense? Basically, I like her as a character as much as ever but now I could probably have a conversation with her. Aha! I’ve worked it out: Power Girl now has a sense of humour!

One very good thing about this comic is the reintroduction of PG’s Karen Starr identity. For a while, what with all of the origin revisions and such, it was just one writer after another tearing down aspects of her character: she wasn’t Kryptonian, then she ditched her secret identity, then she was Atlantean for a while and then not Atlantean at all, etc, etc. It’s nice to have her as a cool businesswoman with interesting employees and an apartment and so forth. Also, her insane cat shows up for a couple of panels. Also also, Ultra-Humanite.

Jersey Gods No. 4

Oh man, this is such a good comic. When I read the preview back in... where the heck did I read that preview? in the back of an issue of Invincible, I think. In any case, all I was expecting was a comic about Kirby-esque gods and in-law jokes, which would have been great enough. This, though... Dan McDaid and Glen Brunswick have put together one hell of a comic. It manages to capture that great excessively weird epic quality that Kirby god-stuff had (in Thor or New Gods, take your pick). I mean, it's easy enough to whip off a plot about some ineffable cosmic being with metal gauntlets and dotted powers but hot damn! There's a very cool story taking shape here, with big 'ol flashbacks to the god-history of the past and everything. And the fashion-focused  Earth plot is good too, though I expect that it's going to require some godly intervention soon.

Of course, my absolute favourite part was the meeting of Fusion and Union, who obviously knew who each other were but still felt the need to shout "I am Fusion!" and "I am Union!"

The Zombies that Ate the World No. 3 (of 8) 

You know, at this point there are so many zombie comics floating around that I wouldn't necessarily grab a new one but this has two things going for it right off the bat: a great title and Guy Davis, who draws such pretty pictures that I would be into at least the first issue of anything he cared to put his pen to. Lucky for my easily-led brain, this is an entertainingly weird tale of a world where zombies and humans live together in a weird, dysfunctional society. This issue: focus on the Belgian! Andd I can't find the cover!

Fin Fang 4 Return! (One-Shot)

Okay, so acedemically i know that there are good things going on at marvel Comics that aren't just a portion of some giant crossover. Still, I'm having a hard time shedding my anti-Marvel reactionary stance. Rachelle keeps suggesting stuff, so maybe someday...

This, though... the Marvel Monster Group (or whatever) comics from a few years ago were fantastic, and the Fin Fang Four were the very best. And this? This is a comic to buy and treasure and dig out when you are at your very lowest point and yyou need to remember that the world contains pure unadulterated delight. And the stories inside are arranged by delightfulness! By the time I got  to "How Fin Fang Foom Saved Christmas" I was basically vibrating with joy! Giant monsters and also Wong forever!

Atomic Robo: Shadow From Beyond Time No. 1 (of 5)

I really like coincidences. For instance, I once read a webcomic and it mentioned someone I went to university with and then the next week I realized that the blog I was reading was by the same person's brother and then the next week I found out that she was in Halifax and we went out for Eggs Benedict. How can you not enjoy a world so full of interestingness?

In a far less personal way, I was a fan of both Atomic Robo and 8-Bit Theater before I realized that Brian Clevinger wrote both of them. I guess that "being unobservant" isn''t much in the way of coincidences but still: neat. Atomic Robo is basically the perfect Johnathan comic, except for the absence of forty to sixty years of continuity. Just wait, though.

This new series looks to be just as great as the prior two. It takes place in Atomic Robo's formative years and features both Charles Fort and my old friend H.P. Lovecraft  (in a delightfully frenetic and... Lovecraftian role). One issue in and I'm delighted. I have no doubt that the next four will be just as good (the Free Comic Book Day Atomic Robo was my favourite free comic book of all).

Astro City: Dark Age Book Three No. 1

Ag. This is my last book of the day - I must stop arranging these things by anticipation. If you truely want to know what I think about this after reading it check back on Friday.

(Bah, this edit is happening on Saturday) I love Astro City. Astro City is consistently what a comic book should be. A super-hero comic book, that it. And you might not agree, as is your right (but I will look askance at you). It's like Kurt Busiek sneaks into my room at night and listens to my disjointed sleep-ramblings about my comic-related hopes and dreams and then sneaks home and writes this. Fascinating and still-evolving continuity? Check. Interesting and novel characters with intriguing motivations? Check. A crazy-interesting multi-volume story that is also an extended metaphor for the shifting fates and trends of the super-hero comic book industry? Yep. Unalloyed delight? Double-check.

So this issue features Charles and Royal, the Odd Couple-ish brothers at the heart of The Dark Age on their next step on the path to vengeance during the troubling 1970s and 80s in Astro City. We got Cleopatra and Pyramid and all kinds of interesting things going on but as usual it's background to the more personal stuff that's happening. Royal's in training as a henchman for Pyramid, which is great, as henchmen are fascinating.

Astro City, my friends. You can't beat it, I swear.

Aha - we’re starting to come to some comics that I’ve talked about before. Maybe I’ll just do a little blurb about things like that instead of the whole shebang, unless something big happens, of course. Or maybe if they come out really sporadically. Or if I like them a lot. Okay, sometimes there will be blurbs and here’s one now:

Strange Adventures No. 3 - More fun with DC’s space heroes. Still a good time but I reckon I’d be getting more out of it if my knowledge of alla this stuff was more complete. As usual, it’s fun to buy a comic with the same name as the store I’m shopping at.

Irredeemable No. 2 - Woo! Still great! This issue follows Kaidan, a neato super-hero with a very cool power (and an adorable costume in the flashback that starts the issue) as she seeks out info from rogue hero The Plutonian’s girlfriend. I’m really digging this series - looks like it won’t just be the standard tale of possession by an evil spirit or what have you but a really interesting look at what could drive someone so good and so powerful to be monstrously evil. With lots of terrific characters, to boot!

The Life and Times of Savior 28 No. 2 - Another very interesting examination of the superhuman condition, this time looking at Savior 28, an ultra-patriotic type who turns to the way of pacifism and gets assassinated for it. Well-told and well-drawn, and I think that maybe it’s based on the original “let’s kill Captain America” plot as detailed in Was Superman a Spy? (I read it! It’s good!) and here.

World of New Krypton No. 3 As I said last time: this book keeps on being good and I like it. This time there’s more Labor Guild Civil Rights Movement action and possibly the first time Alura hasn’t acted semi-insane for more than a panel or two. Kal-El just keeps on showing up the Kryptonians on the morality front, too. I’ll bet a dollar right now that most of the population of New Krypton end up back in a bottle by the end of all of this, though.

Killer of Demons No. 3 (of 3) -  Fun! Dave wrote about this one a couple of weeks ago and what he said still stands. Looks like this one is  going to keep on , maybe in a series of miniseries or a regular series or something. Featuring: Heaven and Hell signing what is perhaps the most unbalanced pact ever!

Seaguy No 2 (of 3) - What? Grant Morrison has written something delightful and perplexing? Has the world gone topsy-turvey? Bull-dressing is the best sport ever, is what I say. Viva El Macho!

The Flash: Rebirth No. 2 - Ag! This is very interesting! Don't kill off all of the speedsters, Geoff Johns! Otherwise... carry on.

Sleep well, champs!