I'm a comic book geek. I have been most of my life. So, for those of you who are not into comic books, I apologize, but I really must talk about the "New 52" event happening at DC Comics. I'll return to my regularly-scheduled chocolate pudding coverage tomorrow.
And so it begins.
In a desperate attempt to make comic books relevant entertainment in their own right instead of mere fodder for creating super-hero movies, DC Comics has decided to relaunch their entire line of comics from scratch. Again. They did something similar back in 1985 with Crisis on Infinite Earths. Basically, the idea is to strip away all the crap that's been saddled on the characters for the past couple decades and start fresh. This way new DC Comics readers can start enjoying these books without having to know all the complicated back-stories they missed.
To put it another way, idiotic editorial decisions like having Superman marry Lois Lane and renounce his US citizenship never happened.
As a comic book collector, relaunches like this piss me off. It's maddening to collect 200 issues of a book only to have it be canceled so you have to start all over again. Even worse, all that time you've invested in following the continuity of the stories and watching characters grow and change are lost.
As a comic book fan, relaunches like this are a good thing because it's a breath of fresh air being breathed into characters so stale that even their biggest devotees are getting tired of reading about them. Of all the comic titles I collect, I read maybe half of them because so many just aren't interesting any more.
Ultimately, I think the good outweighs the bad though, so I've decided to give DC's 52 new titles a shot. Starting with their flagship title, Justice League, written by Geoff Johns and beautifully illustrated by Jim Lee with inks by Scott Williams...
It's a super-hero explosion!
For those who care about this kind of stuff, I've written up my comments and a review in an extended entry...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
It's a busy busy Bullet Sunday!
If I were smart, I'd blow off blogging today so I could get caught up with work. Oh well. Blogging is a tough habit to break. Even when it's bad for you. Especially when it's bad for you.
• Holiday. Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there! Including mine...
• Cheesy. I think it aught to be a law that companies who make low-fat and fat-free cheese products should be REQUIRED UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH to label their products with giant warning labels like they put on cigarettes...
I am tired of accidentally buying the wrong cheese at the store because I'm in a hurry and don't notice the beautifully-integrated low-fat declaration. If there were an offensively large warning label requirement, I'd be less likely to mistakenly purchase this crap.
• Batmobile. Batman is my favorite comic book hero. By far. He doesn't have any super powers, so the stakes are always higher for him than say.... Superman. How Batman compensates for being merely human is those wonderful toys he uses to fight crime. The most famous of which would have to be the Batmobile. As Batman's vehicle of choice, it's taken a lot of different forms over the years. Some good. Some bad. Some meh. Kind of like the latest Batmobile designed by Gordon Murray(!) for the new Batman Live touring show. In the right light, it's kind of sexy...
But in the wrong light... such as, say... DAYLIGHT... it looks kind of boring and lame...
Still, it is a step above the massive tank-like "Batmobile Tumbler" from the current Batman films, I guess. I mostly didn't care for the theatrical and goofy nature of the Tim Burton movies, but I think he had the best Batmobile on the big screen so far.
• Flush. I am sick of all these commercials touting "Flash" as an awesome "feature" on the Android Tablets. Flash sucks. It's battery-draining, crash-happy, annoying bullshit and I hate it. Apple choosing to dump the buggy shit from its iPhone, iPod, and iPad was one of the best things to happen to the internet, because it's forcing web developers to stop using Flash and turn to modern HTML 5 elements instead. I am reminded of just how smart Apple is every time I visit a Flash site on my MacBook and it either crashes or sucks my battery dry.
My favorite thing to do is fill out crash reports whenever Flash crashes (which is a lot)...
Not that it's any news to Apple... hell, they're trying their best to kill Flash. But I'm easily frustrated and a total smartass.
• Cloudy. Speaking of Apple competitor suckage... why is buying music from Amazon such a frikin' joke? It's an awful, awful experience. It's so mind-boggling horrible that I'd rather pay $1.29 for a song from Apple than to suffer through buying the same song for 69¢ from Amazon. And now that they force you to go through their "Cloud Drive" for everything, a bad situation is even worse. Partly because their "Cloud Drive Player" is shit and stutters and stalls every time I try to listen to a song. But mostly because you can't just download your music when you want. You still have to use Amazon's unbelievably crappy downloader utility, which is just fucking stupid. Apple's iCloud service won't be ready until July (Mac) and September (iOS), but it's bound to be worth waiting for given Amazon's terrible solution. Guess I'm in no danger of turning in my Certified Apple Whore credentials any time soon.
And now I think I'll eat cookies and watch episodes of The West Wing. After all these years, it remains some of the best television ever aired.
Back to reality for a super-hero-fashion episode of Bullet Sunday! But, before we get there, I need to remind everybody that the best podcast on the internet you're probably not listening to is now on iTunes! Cannot recommend it highly enough: Hey! That's My Hummus on iTunes. And for baseball talk, don't forget Just Talking to the Cornfield on iTunes.
• Wonder Woman! I've had very strong reservations over the whole David E. Kelley Wonder Woman television pilot from the very beginning. From everything I've read, it seems as though he's dead-set on putting his personal stamp on the material, which means we're not going to get Wonder Woman... it's going to be Ally McBeal in bad latex. The first episode's villain is perfume company CEO Veronica Cale (WTF?) which is being played by the incomparable Elizabeth Hurley (who arrived in L.A. a while back to film her scenes)...
©2011 Michael Wright/WENN (from AceShowbiz)
Since Elizabeth Hurley is in it, I'm pretty much obligated to watch the show now. Which is a shame, because the official Wonder Woman costume photo looks like crap...
In all seriousness, I've been to comic book conventions where the fan costumes looked better than this cheap-n-glossy joke. She looks like a badly-dressed dominatrix or something. Such a horrible departure from the classic Wonder Woman uniform that was worn so perfectly by Linda Carter in the original TV show...
Call it cheesy if you want, but THAT'S what Wonder Woman is supposed to look like.
• Spider-Man! And speaking of truly terrible costumes... I loved the first two Spider-Man movies. The third one was awful story-wise, but had really good action sequences. Still, I was hoping for another Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire installment because I liked the "feel" they gave the character. Alas, it was not to be. So now we've moved on to something new which could be good or could be bad. And if the costume is what we have to go on, this is going to be as bad as it gets...
Even if he didn't have an inexplicably black crotch, this would be a horrible interpretation of an iconic costume.
• Captain America! The modern-day Captain America comics have never interested me very much. Sure there are good stories that pop up from time to time but, overall, it's a one-note concept to me. But I have to say, everything I've seen for the upcoming Cap film looks flawless. First of all, they set the movie in World War II, which is faithful to the character's origin. Second of all, it seems as if director Joe Johnston is going out of his way to make it a fun and entertaining film to watch...
What's so killer about Cap's costume is how you can see they're clearly building up to his modern-day outfit by starting with a WWII era interpretation. He was designed to be a symbol for the guys in the trenches, and its coming across perfectly. And just look at the Red Skull! Cannot wait for this movie.
• Thor! Other than Walter Simonson's brilliant run on the character in the 1980's, I've never been a big fan of Thor. He just never seems to work in the context of the super-hero genre very well. But this film has Kenneth Branagh directing, and the trailers look to be pretty epic in scope, so we'll see...
I am the first to admit that translating Thor's costume to the big screen is no easy task... but this looks all cheesy and plastic to me. I'm guessing it's supposed to be metal (maybe it is!), but I'm still not impressed and think it would have looked better with a brushed metal? This is probably going to appear much better on-screen when lit properly, so it's hard for me to be too critical. It is, after all, pretty faithful in "feel" to the original.
• Green Lantern! This is the hardest movie of all to figure out. I think my hetero-man-crush Ryan Reynolds was flawless casting for Hal Jordan, but the movie is looking like a George Lucas CGI party instead of a film of any substance. The special-effects generated costume in the preview trailer looked so bad that I couldn't fathom how the movie could possibly work...
But then I saw this shot of Mark Strong as Sinestro and thought "maybe"...
Green Lantern was one of the first comic books I ever read, and so I continue to hope that everything comes together. Out of all the super-hero projects underway, it has the most potential for greatness... or disaster.
It's pretty hard to get a feel for how the costume works from still images. On Hal Jordan, all the crazy lines look just plain stupid. On Sinestro, they look awesome. I'm guessing that when they're in-motion they'll be all glowing and stuff, which will probably look cool. Or corny. I have no idea. I do think it would have been better to not go with 100% CGI though, which seems like a recipe for disaster.
• X-Men! I should probably get this out of the way... I loathed all of the X-Men films. They were SO BORING. The X-Men were never really given any battles. Sure there were some silly little scrapes here and there, but they didn't have any scope. Everything in the movie seemed so much smaller than life. And while the costumes weren't anything to write home about, I thought they were okay. Sadly, the costumes weren't the problem. And so now we're re-booting the franchise with a prequel...
From what I can tell, the costumes here are pretty good. They are a faithful (albeit upgraded) interpretation of the "original" X-Men costumes, which was no easy task. All we can do is wait and see if the movie has the scope and story to make any use of them.
That's a lot of super-heroes. And it doesn't even account for the new Superman movie reboot, the third Iron Man film, the third Batman film, The Hulk reboot, The Avengers, and whatever else that's coming up. I hope that people don't get burnt out on comic book movies.
Even though "bullet points" are very different from "ammunition bullets," yesterday's horrifying events have depressed me so badly that there will be no bullets here today. And while I could type out an angst-filled rant over efforts on both sides of the political spectrum to unleash blame and hatred over something so tragic, I just can't do it. A man and a little nine-year-old girl are dead. Others are seriously injured.
I'll think about it tomorrow. I just can't do it today.
In an effort to put my mind as far away as possible from the heartbreaking events in the news, I'm going to get as far away from them as possible in my blog.
Look! I'm Batman!
This awesome Bat-shirt was my gift from the "Bloggy Gift Exxxtravaganza 2010 Remix" over at Josh's blog!
I already had the Bat-iPhone.
Another week. Another Bullet Sunday. And this one seems to be inspired by how the vast information available on the internet seems to cause a chain of events from one thing to another.
• LEGO Chain. This started with me getting the latest LEGO catalog in the mail and seeing that they've come up with a third series of Space Police sets. I've been a fan of LEGO since I was very young, but it was when they released the original Space Police that I became insane over those little plastic bricks. What's so amazing is how LEGO keeps innovating and improving on the concept. This time around they've put a real effort into making the minifigs drive the series. The little alien criminals have to be the cutest LEGOs ever...
Clockwise: Frenzy, Kranxx, Skull Twin, and Squidman.
Photos taken from the awesome shots at No Onion's Flickr Set
Space Police then led to video games when I saw that the catalog also featured an advertisement for their latest effort, LEGO Battles. It seems to be a Real-Time Strategy game that's geared for a younger gamer. Or a gamer like me who loves LEGO video games so much that they'll buy anything that comes out...
I don't know anything about the game play, but the trailer makes me want to buy it immediately...
LEGO Battles led to me remember that I had bought LEGO Indiana Jones and LEGO Batman games for my Wii months ago, but had never even opened the boxes! The last game I had played was LEGO Star Wars, which was ten shades of awesome, so I decided to rip them open and give them a try. As expected, they were absolutely amazing and a lot of fun. Sadly, I don't have time for games, or I could have spent all day playing...
As a major Batman fan, LEGO Batman is a huge favorite. The puzzles are really good, and some of them quite challenging as you attempt to find all the game's secrets. But they don't stop there... not only do you get to play as all the Bat Heroes (including Batgirl!) you can then replay the levels from the villain's perspective! Sweet! A pity the iPhone version isn't nearly as good.
This then led me to wonder which LEGO property would be getting a video game next. Spider-Man? Superman? Nope. Turns out it's LEGO Harry Potter, Years 1-4 coming in 2010. I don't even like Harry Potter, but the trailer has me wanting it...
This led me to wish that they would expand the games outside of licensed properties and explore some of the LEGO favorites like LEGO Pirates and LEGO Space Police... how awesome would that be? Guess I'll have to settle for LEGO Rock Band...
• Hollywood Chain. This all started with a tweet by Kevin Smith...
Since Kevin Smith interviews and Kevin Smith talks are about as entertaining as it gets, this immediately grabbed my attention. I didn't even know Kevin Pollak had an internet chat show.
Which led to Kevin Pollak's site. Where I noticed his previous guest was ILLEANA DOUGLAS!! I love Illeana Douglas! She always manages to pop up just when I least expect it, and usually ends up stealing the show. My favorite character of hers would have to be child star turned prostitute turned Hollywood movie executive Wendy Ward in Action! but she's great in everything...
Her interview wsa very interesting (and very long!) but led me to her latest project which, believe it or not, is a series of shorts for IKEA called Easy to Assemble starring Illeana as "herself"... trying to leave Hollywood behind and lead a "normal life" by working at IKEA...
This led me to visiting the IKEA site so I could see if they started making those DVD shelves I like again, but they aren't on the site. This is a major bummer, because I can't even remember the IKEA name of the unit so I can call and ask if the store in Seattle has it. Best. DVD. Shelf. Ever. And I need more.
This led me to wondering when Watchmen was coming out on DVD. Turns out the Blu-Ray Director's Cut will hit on July 25th...
This led me to remember that the Blog-Her conference is on July 25th in Chicago. This led me to wonder if Chicago television show My Boys had been renewed for a fourth season (according to The Futon Critic it hasn't yet). Which led me to wonder if they had at least released the second season of My Boys on DVD (they haven't). Which led me to wanting my IKEA shelves all over again.
• Bloggign Chain. This morning I learned that OBNOXIOUSLY LOUD TV PITCH-MAN BILLY MAYS HAD DIED. This led me to look back at my blog entry about him from back in 2007...
This led me to remember that it was Bullet Sunday, and I should probably write my entry for the day. So here I am. REST IN PEACE BILLY MAYS!!!
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