A Month With Batman

Sorry that this comes nearly a month after I finished my Batman-themed Reading Challenge for December, but here we go:

In December I read thirty one volumes of both Batman and Batman related stories from the recent “New 52” relaunch over at DC comics.

The stories definitely worked better when read together, and with the exception of a few crossovers with other DC characters (The Flash, Wonder Woman, and Superman all appeared in the first trade of Batman: The Dark Knight) the stories were largely contained to Gotham, with a few fieldtrips by various Gothamites thrown in here and there as they worked to solve various mysteries.

The two main crossovers, Night of the Owls, and Death of the Family were both incredibly well done, and left me wanting more as the stories really built up the tension level and felt like they would have a lasting effect on the story.

Favourite part of the series: The introduction of Bat-Cow in Batman and Robin – yes it was silly, but also a nice reprieve from the darkness that fill most of the titles

Least favourite part of the series: The Switch in Batgirl from writer Gail Simone to Cameron Stewart, the entire tone of the comic changed, but seemed unwilling to separate itself from the main Batman title or from Birds of Prey, both of which worked quite well with Simone’s Batgirl and not quite as well with the new, stumbling through college Cameron Batgirl

Creepiest Moment: The recently returned Joker taunting Damien in Batman & Robin, wherein (sorry for the mild spoiler), he does something so creepy with his face it stuck with me for days – or maybe the proposal the Joker makes in Batgirl, actually, there is an awful lot of creepy going on in Batman comics.

Will I read more: Absolutely – at this point I’m sitting about one collection behind the current issue for each title and the overall story is a lot of fun!

Will I choose the Distinguished Competition over the folk folks at Marvel: Although the Batman comics are pretty great, I’m actually really enjoying the world-building sensation of reading all of the Marvel Now! titles over the last few months, I think I’ll keep up with Batman, but in terms of the majority of my comic reading right now?


Make Mine Marvel.

Falling down the Marvel Wormhole...

For the last few years I've fallen steadily behind in my mainstream comic-book reading.  Luckily as the big two competitors (DC and Marvel) like to reboot their lines every few years there are a lot of jumping-on points, but even those come with complications.

Take Guardians of the Galaxy for example - the new series (written by Brian Michael Bendis) started back in 2013 when the film was given a release date and I started purchasing it, as it look kind of cool and I was unfamiliar with any of the characters (except for Groot - who's origin story I had read a few years earlier in the excellent Marvel Monsterworks).

So there I am, happily reading my Guardians of the Galaxy, when a crossover occurred with something called INFINITY - basically this was an Avengers tie-in and seemed to connect on a couple points with my comic but as I was only focusing on my own title, I ignored the connecting titles and moved on.

Next was The Trial of Jean Grey - a tie-in with Bendis' other title, All-New X-Men.  This one was a six-issue story alternating between the two titles, so I purchased the three issues of X-Men and enjoyed the story for what it was.

In the last few months however, Guardians has begun a crossover event called The Black Vortex, which includes issues from - All-New X-Men, Captain Marvel, Cyclops, Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardian Team-Ups, Legendary Star Lord, and NOVA.

This was clearly too many comics for me to purchase and stay happily married, so I decided to see if any of these other titles were available at my local library.  

The answer was yes, and I started catching up on NOVA and X-Men.  The problem was, one of the X-Men titles crossed over with The Indestructible Hulk (written by Mark Waid) as well as Uncanny X-Men (written by Bendis), so I put requests in for these titles.  My BFF Mike helpfully loan me the Hulk and Captain Marvel titles, but as I started reading Hulk I saw tie-ins with Dardevil and Thor, both of which the library have and both of which tie into any number of other Marvel titles.  

The other problem is these are a lot of fun to read, but I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed... oh wait, in this issue Hulk meets King Arthur!

Okay, I'll stick around for a few more, but THAT'S IT!

Probably...

Movie Review: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

With friends and family we spent our Saturday afternoon checking out the most recent entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

First and most important point – I found the 3D to be pretty useless. The picture was very dim and hard to see in some points, and although the muted colours may have been intentional, I see no reason anyone should pay the extra couple of bucks to see the film that way.

Secondly – I really liked this movie! Although I suppose I could have done some reading into the original comics before going in, I tried to shy away from spoilers and see the film clean – not something I can do with a lot of comic book-based films as I’m pretty familiar with a lot of the stories, but with the heavier workload in Grad school for the last couple of months I was able to stay away, for the most part.

(A Quick Side-note – I am more than a little annoyed at the Marvel special “Marvel: Assembling a Universe” which aired in the regular timeslot of the TV series Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. last month – not only did it ruin the big spoil of the film, but it totally didn’t have to. Sometimes it’s nice to keep the mystery)

Trying to avoid spoilers, the film focuses on how S.H.I.E.L.D. has changed in a post-The Avengers world, a world where an alien invasion could literally come out of nowhere, and Captain America’s reaction to these changes. A huge part of what I love about the character is that his 1940’s era mindset doesn’t mean he’s naïve, it just means he looks at things a little differently.

The film didn’t quite measure up to the first one for me (Sorry, but the first film was my surprise favourite film of 2011), but I loved the 70s conspiracy movie feel and some of the fight scenes were pretty fantastic.

In the end, much of the movie rests on the character of Steve Rogers (Captain America, played by Chris Evans) and his ability to balance an incredibly jingoistic concept with a character you would really like as a friend, and in that way, as with the first film, the movie succeeds quite nicely.

Definitely worth seeing on the big screen, but again, stay away from the 3D unless you have no choice.

Things I've noticed: It's time to start hunting for new comics

When it comes to comic books I’m mostly a trade paperback kind of guy, where a collection of 4-10 issues are bound together, sometimes have a nice introduction written and often include notes by the author after the final issue.  But I’ve got to admit there is something nice about a continuing monthly story.

For the last few years I’ve been collecting one or two comic book series issue-by-issue: The Dark Tower, and The Stand, both published through Marvel comics, both adaptations of Stephen King novels I love.  With the adaptation of the The Stand wrapping up a few months back, and The Dark Tower series, catching up to the stories I’ve read in the original novels, I’m feeling it’s time for me to start looking for a new series to follow, issue-by-issue.

Right now I don’t really know where to start – my youngest daughter likes Batman, so if I get those I’ll probably get two readings out of each issue I purchase, but at the same time there are a heck of a lot of Batman and Batman-related titles out there.

Anyway, I don’t really have an idea of which series I’ll be going for, but I’m going to make sure to list whatever ends up gracing my (very small) single-issue comic book space at home.  For the record, the last time I went mainstream was back in 2000 when I collected Brian K. Vaughn’s run on Swamp Thing, featuring the original swamp things daughter, Tefe Holland. (who, come to think of it, would be a great Genre Character of the Week), so I’ve set the bar pretty high for myself there.

Thing's Ive Notived: Thor circa 1983 is pretty awesome

So the movie Thor is coming out in a couple months and as I'm a guy who likes to do a little background research I decided to read some Thor comics. Rather than starting with the Stan Lee stuff from the '60s however, I decided to start with Walter Simonson's run which began in 1983 (Also it was one of the only Thor comics my library had).

Here's what I knew about Thor before cracking the cover 1) The guy is a god, 2) He has a magic hammer, 3) That little girl in Adventures in Babysitting loved him.

Three pages in and here's what I knew. 1) Thor has (had) an alter-ego named Donald Blake, 2) When Blake struck his cane against the ground he became Thor, 3) Nick Fury didn't always look like Samuel L. Jackson, 4) Nick Fury has a flying car 4) Nick Fury has a giant Floating Aircraft Carrier 5) ALIENS ARE ATTACKING!!! Here's the thing about these first 11 issues of Thor - stuff is happening all over the place, from Alien ivaders to demon invasions and even a fight with Faeries.

Thor seems to cross over into every genre possible and kicks butt wherever he goes. Simonson follows multiple characters (Thor, Odin, Loki, Beta Ray Bill, Baldur, Lorelai, etc.) to create a very dense storyline and by switching back and forth between these characters plotlines you get non-stop character development and cliffhangers. I've still got a couple Simonson collections to go, and my library does have the J. Michael Straczynski run as well, but I've got to say if the film has anything like the Simonson stuff I'm reading, it will be pretty awesome.