A few years back, Max Landis — son of legendary director John Landis — created a video on YouTube called Cooking with Comics: Knightfall. In it, he prepares a meal while explaining the story of Knightfall from memory. His monologue is adapted into a bunch of scenes acted out by his friends in low-budget costumes with a lot of humor tossed in, like something out of Drunk History. I’ve posted it once or twice during This Week in Panels because I can watch it every day and still laugh at a black guy with a blond mullet wig and a cross in hand playing Azrael.

Now he’s back with a new video, twice as long, where he explains the story of Death and Return of Superman. That on its own makes it worth checking out, but he really went all out in getting famous people to show up for this. Not only do we have cameos from guys like Simon Pegg and Ron Howard, but Mandy Moore is Lois Lane and Elijah freaking Wood is Hank Henshaw, the Cyborg Superman.

If anything, you have to watch it for the absolute best incarnation of the Green Lantern Corps.

Turns out he wrote that superpowers-based movie Chronicle that just came out this week. That’s certainly an interesting way to go about advertising, but I’ll take it!

When we last left our sorta heroes, Hawkeye stepped into the room to alert the Thunderbolts to his presence… and to let them know that he clogged the toilet. Thunderbolts #21 follows up on that with the team making a joint effort in trying to take Hawkeye down. Much like any given Garth Ennis protagonist, the guy with no powers proceeds to clown everyone. Not just with his trick arrows, but with his ability to make the Thunderbolts trip over each other.

The deal is that if he could last five minutes, the team would have to hear his pitch. And what a pitch! He’s talked it over with Henry Gyrich and the government bigwigs and wants to lead the Thunderbolts. Sure, he was annoyed by the whole Masters of Evil façade, but was he really all that different before joining the Avengers? Suddenly the Black Widow flashback story from the first year seems like less of a throwaway issue as it’s really there to seep Hawkeye into our reader consciousness.

The team is open to this idea, except for Songbird. She desperately screams that this is all a trick and flies off. MACH offers to go talk to her and it’s a good thing, since she’s having a very public tantrum that’s brought the National Guard into this. He gets her away from the battle, but his shoddy armor starts to fall apart and they crash into a condemned building. Songbird makes a sound-based shield to keep the authorities out and MACH finally mans up and talks to her about her recent personality shift.

Songbird goes into her life. Between her parents, her first love, the Grapplers, the Masters of Evil, her relationship with Angar the Screamer and the emotional twisting that came from Zemo’s Thunderbolts plan, her life has been nothing but a series of hope leading directly into soul-crushing failure and she can’t take it anymore. Hawkeye’s idea sounds nice, but she knows it’ll only kill her on the inside yet again. MACH promises that despite her attempts to push him away, he’ll always be there for her. Which is all nice, but they also have that whole National Guard situation to deal with. Luckily, Hawkeye and the rest bail them out. This does lead to there being footage of Hawkeye working with the Thunderbolts and the media isn’t so sure how to handle that.

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Tonight was the Royal Rumble, which means I’m in a good mood. While the show was fun as usual, I didn’t do well when it came to my friend Bob’s Royal Rumble Game. This game, which he’s been using for at least five years, goes like this: all the guests pick numbers 1-30 (40 last year) and those numbers represent us. There were ten of us tonight, so we got three each. When one of your wrestlers hits a signature move, you get one point. A finisher will get you two points. An elimination gets you three. Making the final three is worth three points, final two is four and your guy winning gets you five points. I did this last year and did a little less than average.

This year, my picks were #6, #16 and #20. That meant I got Primo, Hunico and Michael Cole. That means I was the first person in the history of the Royal Rumble Game to ever get ZERO POINTS. So I’m like the Drew McIntyre of that game. :damn:

This week I’m helped out by Was Taters, Space Jawa and luis. Let’s get it on!

All-Star Western #5 (Was Taters’ pick)
Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Moritat and Phil Winslade

All-Star Western #5 (Gavin’s pick)
Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Moritat and Phil Winslade

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About nine months ago, shortly after a really depressingly bad Wrestlemania and the infamous Christian two-day title run, I was ready to stop watching WWE completely. Everything good was being drowned out by bad writing, terrible Superman booking for Cena and Orton and some masturbatory patting of the back about how great the Attitude Era guys were. Though the morbid part of me does find that Wrestlemania funny for getting to see John Morrison commit career suicide live on PPV.

After Christian dropped the title, I decided that I’d give WWE one more week to hold my attention. R-Truth’s heel turn was the only major thing keeping me amused by that point. It ended up being a good thing that I gave WWE a little slack because that led to CM Punk taking the company by storm and the infinitely good Money in the Bank show. Then things started to get a little awkward, with pieces of brilliance in there. Unfortunately, Triple H and Kevin Nash felt the need to interrupt the angle of the year so they could enjoy the spotlight. It was like the bombing scene at the end of Jarhead with the Clique as the asshole commander. I was able to hang onto my love for everything Mark Henry to keep me going and over the past couple months I’ve found the company to be in a pretty good place. There’s been improvement all over the place. I’m feeling pretty positive, especially as they move into Wrestlemania season.

They say that if you have nothing nice to say, you should say nothing at all. Not like that’s ever stopped me, but as it is right now, I have 30 nice things to say about the current state of the WWE. Here are the things I dig in no particular order.

1) The Return and Trolling of Chris Jericho

I mean, this one goes without saying. I have no idea where they’re going with this angle outside of a possible Jericho vs. Punk match at Wrestlemania, but I know they can pull it off. Why? Because Jericho is pretty well-liked by the higher ups and I’m sure he has a lot of creative control in this. One of the things I love about it, other than the pure Dadaist nature of it all, is that Jericho is always insistent on starting things anew. After he became stale as hell during the last couple years of his first run, he realized that he had to constantly reinvent himself. I’d say he’s doing a good job so far.

2) Cody Rhodes Living Up to the Past

It’s got to be hard being the son of a beloved wrestler. It’s like releasing a hit album and having to make a decent follow-up. You have to be good enough, but not too similar or you won’t be able to stand outside the shadow. Cody’s in a bad place because not only is his dad Dusty Rhodes, but his brother is Goldust. It wasn’t until a poll between the Divas named him the most handsome guy in the locker room that Cody finally found a way to make it all work.

See, being a Rhodes isn’t about being a funky and indecipherable southern man of the people or a painted sexual predator film buff. It’s about being fucking crazy. Find a persona and make that persona fucking crazy. It may mean calling yourself “dashing” for several minutes at a time. It may mean wearing a mask and acting like a hybrid of Vega and Dr. Doom. Whatever it is, Cody’s got it and he’s potentially the future of the company.

Not only that, but I’d like to believe that he and Randy Orton have some kind of mentor/protégé relationship behind the scenes, especially seeing as how they’ve not only been in a stable together, but they’ve feuded no less than three times over the years. There are a lot of parallels in their career paths and gimmicks (generic face, unhinged villain, heelishly milking an injury, abusing Ted Dibiase Jr., etc), but while Orton was first, I think that Cody has what it takes to be an overall superior performer.

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Hey people. ThWiP time again. This time I’ve got Was Taters, Jody and Space Jawa. Jawa is basically using this installment as self-promotion since I’m using a panel from his own comic project Robot Viking Ninja Pirates. Something he sent me a copy of a while back and I totally forgot to read it because I’m a total dickhead. Sorry, man.

Avenging Spider-Man #3 (Jody’s pick)
Zeb Wells and Joe Madureira

Avenging Spider-Man #3 (Gavin’s pick)
Zeb Wells and Joe Madureira

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Ever read that crossover with Planetary and Batman? There’s a whole gimmick where this crazy guy has powers to alter reality and without warning, Batman keeps changing incarnations throughout the story. He’ll go from Adam West to Frank Miller-style to wearing the purple gloves from his original appearance and change his tone to fit the situation. As great as that was, Star Wars Uncut brings it to an entirely new level.

The idea is that several hundred groups had been tasked to recreate Star Wars: A New Hope… 15 seconds each. Each party is assigned a specific 15 seconds and has to remake the scene however they see fit. Then all of it is stitched together to form a completely bizarre and hilarious interpretation of the full movie.

You’ll go from seeing someone’s kids dressed up as Stormtroopers to trippy animation to special effects and acting out of Be Kind Rewind to claymation to silent film to puppets to someone talking upside down with eyes drawn on their chin. There’s plenty of gold in there, such as Lady Gaga Darth Vader, C3PO getting way too sexual, a basket of ferrets reenacting the garbage scene, an Anti-Monitor action figure playing the role of R2D2 and my new favorite impression of Chewbacca. Sometimes the footage will go into completely different universes, like turning into a Disney movie, World War II dogfights, a western, the Seventh Seal, Tron, Yellow Submarine and even at one point the Big Lewbowski.

There are some stinkers in there, sure, but that’s all part of the charm. It’s a great way to spend a couple hours.

Gotta make this quick. I have a headache, I feel like crap and I have to wake up early. But on a lighter note, I won a free Nook Tablet at work and that absolutely rules.

Helped out this week by Was Taters, Space Jawa and my buddy Jody. All sorts of varied comic book stuff via the lot of us. No overlaps or nothing.

Amazing Spider-Man #677
Mark Waid and Emma Rios

Batman and Robin #5
Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason

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Every now and then, Something Awful does a bit for their Photoshop Phriday called Mixed-Up Movie Captions. The idea is that you take the still of one movie and add a subtitle of a quote from another movie. It’s an incredibly fun creative exercise. Over a year ago, they did one and I took part, coming up with a bunch of entries. Some got used, some didn’t.

Yesterday, they put up a new batch as created by the Something Awful forum. Once again, I had a grand old time playing this game and they even chose nine of my images in the feature. Since I did so many, I thought I might as well feature all my work.

Some of these will get a little more obscure than others. I have some reference at the bottom just in case. And sorry about the Buffalo Rider one. Not the easiest movie to find a clean image of.

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We all remember Abobo, right? Introduced in the arcade version of Double Dragon, he became more well-known in the NES adaptation, where he looked less human and more like an angry pile of muscles. He proceeded to be a staple in the series, showing up in sequels, the Battletoads crossover game, the fighting game and the live-action movie. Even when videogame company Evoga failed to get the rights to make their game Rage of the Dragons a part of the Double Dragon franchise, they still had a character in there named Abubo.

Abobo’s been a nostalgic icon for the NES, so it’s fitting that all these years later, he’d be the centerpiece for this Newgrounds collaboration that’s taken many years to put together. Check out the trailer.

With the kidnapping of Aboboy, Abobo must go through a series of different classic NES game styles to set things right. Throughout the excessively violent journey, he deals with:

1) A warped reimagining of the first level of Double Dragon.
2) A Mario Brothers underwater level where he has Yoshi powers.
3) A very one-sided battle with Urban Champ.
4) A dungeon from Legend of Zelda where he must take on the game’s greatest villain: the old man who gives you advice. Using a sword is good enough, but using a piece of meat as a sword does even more damage.
5) After chasing the Amazon with only a pair of balloons, you then take him on in a Pro Wrestling match, featuring some unexpected but not unwelcome help.
6) As Megabobo, you must defeat your robot double.
7) Armed with a machine gun and a code for 30 lives, you blaze through the jungle to face Krang in his most dangerous form ever.
8) You take it back to the ring to face an underdog who has since become a power-hungry tyrant.

You have to play this game. It’s fun and I found myself cracking up many times, especially during the horrific ending. Good show, guys.

Last time I discussed the initial stories of Thunderbolts, where the heroes were really wolves in sheep’s clothing. They all played the role of hero with different emotional impacts and now it’s all come to a head. Somebody’s figured them out and while at a press conference, SHIELD busts in to arrest them. Everyone’s shocked to hear that these guys are the Masters of Evil, but nobody more than their own member Jolt.

Zemo himself doesn’t seem so surprised and has an escape plan ready. They sneak out and split up, told to regroup at base. Atlas is emotionally gutted from having to see the look on Dallas’ face, but runs off regardless. Jolt could proclaim her innocence in it all, but she jumps out the window, feeling that there has to be something she can do to make things right. They each get to base in their own way, but interestingly enough, Moonstone gets in a brief tussle with Hawkeye, who had come back from being… Wolverine… in a brown mask… on an Earth… on the other side of the sun…?

Listen, comics are fucking weird. What’s important is that Moonstone sneaks away in disguise and thinks about skipping town and starting over. Ultimately, she decides to keep with the team.

One little touch that I’m still not sure if it was planned or if it was damage control over a writing mishap has the media point out that in the footage of the Thunderbolts fighting Arnim Zola’s creations, Techno briefly refers to Meteorite as Moonstone. Even Jolt’s realizing that she was there and that should have raised a red flag if she wasn’t so caught in the moment.

The Thunderbolts think about who could have blown the whistle on them. Black Widow, perhaps? Nah. It was Zemo, who could see that everyone was starting to come around on the hero concept and wanted to speed up the plan to take care of that. Granted, they don’t HAVE to follow him. They could play hero and be arrested or go back to the villain life and be violently ostracized for their actions as Thunderbolts. In a bit of checkmate, he’s got them right in his pocket.

They get in their plane (Thunderjet?) and fly off into space. As an exclamation point, Zemo detonates Four Freedoms Plaza. No word yet if Dr. Doom cried.

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