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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 18, 2024 16:03:29 GMT -5
On the flip side we have Jason Aaron's Batman: Off-World. It's aiming for a similarly larger than life plot...but it isn't nearly as tightly plotted. Worse still, Aaron gives voice to that very feeling that the story has out-lived its novelty(Batman fighting aliens in space) as Bruce wonders what he's still doing out in wastelands fighting alien pirates, and Bruce's answer to his self doubt(he couldn't keep calling himself Batman if he didn't keep trying) just isn't very convincing. There was some fun action and I did like the design of the new Thanagarian bounty hunter but this feels like a story that should have wrapped up already instead of continuing on. 6/10
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 18, 2024 15:51:01 GMT -5
World's Finest #26 Written by Mark Waid Art by Dan Mora Summary: The World's Finest team up with Mite-World's Finest as an evil mite unleashes new mites based on Earth's super villains. Plot: More writers need to take note: This is how you do event style story telling. Waid's mash up of Superman, Batman and Robin teaming up with Bat-Mite and Mr. Mxyzptlk(yes, I looked up the spelling) has the right mix of action, character moments and humor combined with a fast pace. So many writers pad their big stories with endless amounts of exposition with most of it leading to nothing but Waid's plotting is lean and mean with just enough set up to really draw you in and best of all it's not trying to be universe shattering or world defining: it's just focused on being fun. And doing that doesn't sacrifice any of the feeling that it's a bigger than normal story, it just doesn't have any pretentiousness about it. My favorite part though? When we got a look at the villain without a hood he looked an awful lot like a maniacal Mark Waid. I could be wrong, but he reminded me a lot of Waid for somereason which if true is such a great addition to the idea of 5th dimensional imps. I don't know where this is going next but I'm definitely a long for the ride. Art: As per usual Dan Mora's art is perfect. I think the highights for me however were his design for the super-powered costume for Dick as it just channeled some real silver Age sensibilities and the 2D look of Batman, Superman and Robin at the end when parasite drained a dimension from them. It just had such a great, cartoony vibe that really came right off the page. If you aren't reading this book and you love super heroes you're really missing out. Grade:10/10
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 18, 2024 10:25:35 GMT -5
Titans continues to be a fun romp as well, though it's not on the same level as Nightwing. It has the same light, fun feeling as Nightwing but it's hamstrung to a greater extent than Nightwing by it's choice of a villain that once again I just don't care for. With Nightwing it's heartless but in Titans it's once again evil Raven which is just really tired and over done. I like the mix of classic and New Titans team though with the addition of Tempest so I'm definitely going to stick with it but the threat just doesn't interest me. 7/10
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 18, 2024 9:24:07 GMT -5
Nightwing #113Written by Tom Taylor and Marv Wolfman Art by Daniele Di Nicuolo and Bruno Redondo Summary: On the eve of his birthday, Dick teams up with Tim, Damian and Babs to stop an arms deal that unveils that Heartless has big plans. Plot: While I'm still not a fan of Heartless as a villain I have to admit this mysterious build up to his plan to take down Dick has my buying into the story. He's still a pointless edgelord of a character with zero interesting characteristics but that the threat to Dick and his family is personal works for me especially with how well the build up of Dick's relationship with his family. The scenes with Dick interacting with Tim and Damian were fantastic and loved the play with Barbra, they just added such a wholesome feel to the book that I love seeing month in and month out. The best part though? That tribute to Marv Wolfman and George Perez. You'd think that having Wolfman write a tribute to his time with Nightwing would be too self referential and over indulgent but it was perfectly done and loved every panel of those two pages. Again and again, Taylor just proves that this is a book that shouldn't be missed. Art: The over exaggerated, cartoony look that Di Nicuolo employs isn't normally my favorite style, especially as it doesn't convey deep emotions well but their light hearted look here really fit the tone of the issue so for once I don't mind them. Grade:9/10
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 16, 2024 17:05:09 GMT -5
OFF THE RACKS!Real Readers, Honest Reviews! What Did You Read This Week?
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 14, 2024 15:50:02 GMT -5
I'm going to go with the IDW run, I especially loved the series that attempted to retell classic trek stories in the Kelvin Universe.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 14, 2024 13:37:48 GMT -5
Incredibly slow and drawn out, yeah. For me, it's not even in the same league as Rogue One. Not by a long shot. Plus, I tend to agree with you that I'm not sure it was even a story that required telling. I guess you could legitimately say the same about Rogue one, but the proof of that was in the pudding and for my money the pudding was fantastic cinema. That said, Diego Luna was great reprising his title role in Andor and the production values are predictably high...and I also enjoyed the fact that, like Rogue One, it showed us the morally grubbier underside of the early Rebellion. But by far its biggest sin for me is that the story is unnecessarily stretched out, almost to breaking point, just to get 10 episodes (or whatever it was) out of it. It needed a good editor with the balls to say, "there's really not enough story here for a full series. Let's turn it into a feature-length TV movie." I really liked Andor... I thought it was some really interesting background on how the Death Star was built and the conditions of the average citizen in the Star Wars galaxy. Was the pace a bit slow? For sure. Alot like Bad Batch.. it's a great story being told in the Star Wars universe that I had no idea I wanted to hear about. If they MUST tell stories within the frame work of the existing movies (rather than moving forward) this is the sort of stuff I want. Yeah, the pacing was definitely a weak point but overall I really enjoyed And or and Bad Batch is honestly amazing.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 14, 2024 13:20:53 GMT -5
The idea of humanity being united seemed silly whenever an episode or film dealt with corruption within Starfleet. Okay, Starfleet seemed less corrupt than other organisations (fictional or real), but it did show that the idea of a “unified mankind” seemed a little absurd - I may be overthinking it - when corruption still existed. And if it existed within Starfleet, then it had to also exist in other organisations on Earth. When I do think about it, the idea of a Utopia within Star Trek seems unlikely. The way I see it is you can still have some negative character traits on a personal level, like greed, pride or envy, but on a societal level mankind had gone beyond such ills as racism, sexism, nationalism, and solved the inequities that plague modern life like poverty, homelessness and largely disease. So you can still have power mad star ship captains or admirals or corrupt politicians but life on the whole for everyone is still pretty Utopic.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 14, 2024 11:42:35 GMT -5
That had me right up until that laughably bad Darth Vader, but the 50's look was cool.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 14, 2024 11:36:56 GMT -5
I originally liked Discovery building on the space seed idea introduced in The Chase...but now it just feels overly decompressed. The original race to find the progenitors only lasted an episode and we are going on three now and nothing new has been added.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 13, 2024 16:11:35 GMT -5
Action Comics #1064. Awesome issue! Braniac is back! I like seeing the whole Superman Family in Action (pun intended). However I'm just not crazy about the Chinese Superman and the Super Twins. Great to see Superwoman again It seems to be playing heavily on Johns big Brainiac story from 2008 so far but there is room for it to be more of its own thing.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 13, 2024 16:07:52 GMT -5
Haven't had a chance to read through it yet (and likely won't until Sunday) but Brian Hibbs yearly analysis of the comic market via Bookscan sales has dropped over at the beat. You can read it here if you're interested. -M As he mentions it's both surprising and not how much DC's book sales have cratered in the last few years. Surprising because historically they've done very well with the general book store audience but not surprising considering the fact that the powers that be at WB completely gutted DC's book division as a "cost cutting measure". Who knew that getting rid of people who knew what they were doing would result in poor results?
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 12, 2024 16:15:43 GMT -5
- Batman/Dylan Dog #2 - Batman: First Knight #2 Batman/Dylan Dog continues to be the one of the best sleeper DCU books this year. It's so well written and beautifully drawn. I know enough of Dylan Dog from reading the old Dark Horse reprints to understand the character. Haven't read First Knight yet. I'm excited to get into it. - Batman/Dylan Dog #2 - Batman: First Knight #2 Batman/Dylan Dog continues to be the one of the best sleeper DCU books this year. It's so well written and beautifully drawn. I know enough of Dylan Dog from reading the old Dark Horse reprints to understand the character. Haven't read First Knight yet. I'm excited to get into it. I picked up issue 1 and 2 of Batman/Dylan Dog largely based on yours and others here and elsewhere reactions to it. -M It's very much a sort of 90's inter company crossover kind of book, but fun in a nostalgic way but the art is absolutely stunning
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 6, 2024 6:04:45 GMT -5
I posted a review of that a while back, and while I absolutely LOVE Russell's non superhero stuff, I found Superman: Space Age (as well as his other recent DCU stuff) pretty meh... so much so that I'm going to pass on the Batman one. Everyone should read Not All Robots and Travelling to Mars though.. both are fantastic. Snagglepuss was quite good too. (I need to read the Flintstones one of these days) He can do Superhero stuff well, his Joker story from one of those Walmart issues for instance was fantastic. The Clown Prince of Crime using social media to get people to do crazy stuff? That not only works so well for the character but also offers fantastic commentary on social media's negative impact on society.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 6, 2024 5:23:36 GMT -5
Has there ever been a Thundarr the Barbarian comic? Seems like a no brainer. Given how popular Green Lantern is, I'm surprised one of the small press companies that work on old public domain characters have never done a Lensmen comic. How about Perry Rhodan? (might be that exists, just not in English). I talked to Steve Gerber about that once in the late 90's and he said there were talks for Jack Kirby to do a Sunday newspaper strip based on the series but it was canceled. Oh, what could have been!
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