First off, check out the animated short Saturday Morning Watchmen if you haven’t already. Yes, yes, it’s Newgrounds. I don’t care. It’s quality. Check it out.

The new Watchmen movie is about to be released. I got my midnight IMAX tickets ready. Good or bad, it’s probably realistically the best we would ever get. Lord knows they’ve been trying to make it into a movie for years. It started back in the 80’s with a ridiculous script by Sam Hamm, the guy who gave us the Michael Keaton Batman movie. I haven’t read the whole thing, but I have read enough. The ending in the screenplay puts you in a facepalm frenzy by having Dr. Manhattan save the world by going back in time and negating his own origin. This causes the present to be undone so that Nite Owl, Silk Spectre and Rorschach end up in the real world.

That sounds painful. The movie had remained in limbo for years after. There seemed to be some movement in the mid-00’s, with David “Solid Snake” Hayter’s screenplay. Darren Aronofsky was set to direct. Alan Moore, though disagreeing with the concept of a Watchmen movie, still said that Hayter’s vision was the best and most faithful version he had read. Things were moving forward a bit, even with a Watchmen movie teaser site up for a little while. Then it just went away and the whole thing was scrapped for a couple years until being greenlit with another creative team and another screenplay.

But what of the David Hayter script? Was it any good? I’ve actually read it. A few years back, back when the wheels were still in motion, I got my hands on the script and read through it. Totally legit. I had written a list of all the differences between the book and Hayter’s stuff. With the movie coming out, I figured I’d just dust it off and repost it for you guys.

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Yeah, that’s right. Two musical references in one title. I rule.

One of my few regrets about this site is that sometimes people don’t take my opinion seriously because I revel in stupid shit. I can give them my take on something and say it’s worth checking out, only for them to roll their eyes because I’m the guy who says that the Double Dragon comic was a good read or that the later issues of Mortal Kombat weren’t even all that bad. Now, sometimes when Venom is the center of a conversation, someone might explain that he’s actually a good character. Another person will ask, “Yeah? If he’s such a good character, name one of those good Venom stories.”

I could suggest the time he teamed up with Morbius against an army of goblins or Eddie Brock’s misadventures as a skateboarder, but those will just be seen as off-the-wall screwball stuff. Is there an actual true blue good Venom story out there from before modern days?

Yes there is and I’m going to tell you about it.

Venom: The Hunger (Venom #43-46), is that story. Don’t get this confused with the Spectacular Spider-Man story also called The Hunger, by Paul Jenkins and Humerto Ramos. We won’t get to that one for a while. This one is instead by Len Kaminski and Ted Halsted. What a fantastic creative team. Bagley may draw the true Venom to me, but Halsted’s creepy depictions of the symbiote anti-hero go perfectly with Kaminski’s writing.

Off-the-wall adventures against monsters and guys with flamethrowers is always good for a laugh, but you have to remember that Venom is insane. Why go for the colorful slugfest option when you can just go deeper and do a psychological story? I mean a real psychological story. Not that crap in The Madness where he screamed about being crazy and then got tossed into an alternate dimension where he fought Fake Spider-Man, Fake Wolverine and Fake Ghost Rider.

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“You killed my—“
“Yes, yes, I killed your father. What is it with you women? I killed my father and you don’t hear me complaining about it.”

— Chun-Li and M. Bison from the Street Fighter animated series.

Years ago, I went and saw Street Fighter: The Movie in theaters. It was, as we all know, a bad movie. It’s infamous for being a bad movie. I hated it. As time went on, I learned to forgive it and even enjoy it for its ridiculousness. More than that, I understood the movie.

At least, I understood why it came to be. Street Fighter II was all the rage and a movie was a natural follow up. With so many characters to choose from, the best they could do was create a GI Joe setting where the then-most popular character in the US leads his fellow good guys against the main villain and his cronies. It was there to sell action figures. It was stupid, but I understand why it was.

Last night I watched Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. Most fighting games have the habit of having a crappy first attempt and a beautiful second attempt. Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Fatal Fury, Guilty Gear, the Marvel games and so on. By all means, it should be the same with the movies, considering what a turkey the first movie was. They HAD to improve. The studio pressure was lessened this time. We didn’t need Guile and his kung-fu commandos taking on M. Bison’s armies. They were free to tell a more fitting story. They were allowed to do better! They WOULD do better!

Right?

The real question isn’t whether or not Legend of Chun-Li is worse than the first Street Fighter movie. Because it really is. It really, really is. The real question is whether Legend of Chun-Li is worse than the Happening. I honestly can’t figure out a good answer for that right now. It’s that close. It’s definitely worse than Mortal Kombat: Annihilation if that means anything to you.

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I’ve always been a fan of the Street Fighter games and their stories. With the sudden resurgence of the series with its kickass new videogame and horrible, horrible new movie which I will unfortunately see on opening day because it probably won’t be in theaters anymore by Saturday, I’ve been checking out a lot of the comic-related stuff. While UDON has three different Street Fighter comics coming out at the same time (Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter IV and a Chun-Li miniseries), I decided to give the manga Ryu Final a look.

I’m not usually a manga guy, but we had it at work and I wanted to give it a shot because it takes place during the course of Street Fighter III. I love the SF3 games and they never get any play. They always appear neglected by Capcom and a lot of the fans, such as the lack of any of its characters in SF4. I should also bring up the bizarre and confusing ordering of the game series’ canon. Some games replace others in continuity, even when they appear to be sequels. By the end of it, it looks like this:

– Street Fighter
– Street Fighter Alpha 2
– Street Fighter Alpha 3
– Super Street Fighter II Turbo
– Street Fighter IV
– Street Fighter III: Second Impact
– Street Fighter III: Third Strike

All while sharing the same universe with Final Fight, Rival Schools and Saturday Night Slam Masters.

Ryu Final takes place during Third Strike, the latest entry in terms of continuity. It follows Ryu, piecing together nearly all of his character interactions and the game endings that relate to him. A run-in with Ken ends with Ryu defeated and questioning why he even fights in the first place. Soon after, he meets with a crazy 150-year-old man named Oro who soundly defeats him and forces him under his wing as his new apprentice. The two of them wander the world together as Ryu takes on various SF3 characters like Hugo, Yun, Yang and Dudley.

This quest for answers brings Ryu closer and closer to his final battle against his main nemesis Akuma. Which reminds me that the manga is completely worth reading just for a flashback sequence that shows Ryu’s origin. Long story short, a younger Akuma saves a very young Ryu’s life by jumping out of the shadows in a cave, punching his fist THROUGH the back of a bear’s skull and stopping with his fist inches from Ryu’s face. The manga does well in adding more dimension to the Akuma character, even including an odd Killing Joke moment of laughter between Ryu and Akuma before their fight.

For me, it all boils down to how awesome Sagat is. For those who play the games, you’re probably wondering what the hell Sagat has to do with anything. He wasn’t in any of the SF3 games. As far as the canon goes, Sagat and Ryu agreed that Ryu would seek out Sagat when he was ready for them to have their true, clean fight. So during SF3, Sagat is just chilling out in Thailand. In this book, Ryu does meet up with him as to fulfill his promise of a rematch and the entire thing is totally sweet.

But there’s another part that’s great involving a flashback. We go back to see Sagat after SF1’s conclusion. Ryu had sucker-punched Sagat and gave him a huge, bloody wound on his chest in a major upset. Sagat’s top pupil has lost faith in him and Sagat has lost faith in himself. He responds to his loss by tearing apart trees in rage.

Then he finds that he almost crushed a kid during this. The boy is laying there, horribly wounded and half dead. A doctor finds that the wounds were caused by a tiger mauling him. There are poachers out there who will force children to act as decoys for the sake of catching their prey. Hearing about this, Sagat races into the jungle.

“What am I doing?! Am I going to defeat the poachers to avenge the young boy…?! NO!! I merely want to avenge my own honor… That is all I fight for! This has nothing to do with compassion… This is about making myself feel better! What a petty man I am! But… I don’t care! No one can stop me now!!”

There are two hunters going after a giant tiger. One gets mauled to death. Sagat steps in and stares down the tiger until it leaves. The surviving poacher is grateful, but Sagat calls him out on exploiting the children. He begins to slap the shit out of the guy repeatedly while bitching him out. His chest wound is still fresh and the pain kicks in again, causing him to hesitate and allowing the poacher to escape into his camp. The poacher brings out a little girl and holds a gun to her head, saying that he’ll let her go if Sagat forgets this night ever happened.

The wounded little boy from earlier shows up and yells at him to stop.

After the flashback, we see that these two siblings have grown up to be farmers who are loyal and close to Sagat. Sagat rules so very much.

But yeah, Ryu Final is worth a try if you’re riding the SF4 high. The UDON Street Fighter stuff isn’t bad either, now that it’s coming out regularly again, but I noticed a big problem in Seth’s plan in the first Street Fighter IV issue:

Don’t do it! That guy in the bottom right beat up Batman and can tear your spine out! Wait, never mind. I forgot that I hate Crimson Viper. Forget I said anything.

That’s what it is according to the images of the toys for Wolverine: Origins. So far there’s a Superhero Squad figure and this guy:

“So who is this Deadpool guy?”
“He looks like Freddy Krueger and has Wolverine’s healing, but no claws.”
“We’re going to give him claws because it’s a Wolverine movie.”
“But, sir! If he has claws, that makes him too similar to Freddy Krueger!”
“Then we won’t make him look like Freddy Krueger anymore! Make him look like Zartan or something. What, do I have to think of everything?”

I seem to hate this design considerably less when I remember that Alex Hayden existed.

There was a lot of strange goings on during the 90’s, but one of the big things was mullets. It almost looked like you weren’t allowed to be a male superhero unless you rocked the mudflap at least once in your crime-fighting career. Superman comes back from the dead? He’s sporting an ape-drape. Venom becomes a good guy? Over the course of a couple days he’s grown an impressive set of locks going down the back of his head. Nightwing, Bishop, Nova, Longshot, etc. They all had business in front and a party in the back. The Spider-Girl comic even toyed with nature itself by giving Normie Osborn a hairstyle that mixed the mullet with the infamous Osborn cornrows!

One topic that comes up in comics a lot is if it’s the powers that make the superhero or the heroism inside. Is Superman truly a superhero because he can smash mountains or because of his never-say-die attitude? In the 90’s, that could be asked in another way. Is it the powers that make the hero, is it the inner strength or… is it the mullet?

In 1995, Marvel would test that question by releasing this wondrous piece of work.

Yes, that’s right. Billy Ray Cyrus. The comic. Written by Paul S. Newman and illustrated by Dan Barry. Marvel Music was a short-lived line that mostly dealt with biographies of musicians, such as Bob Marley and the Rolling Stones. Billy Ray Cyrus is above that. Look at that cover. You know this is going to take a turn for the outrageous. A simple biography isn’t going to cut it. This southern boy needs adventure!

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Now that I’m fully rested after having to endure that exhaustive weekend of New York Comic Con, now would probably be a good time to do a detailed write-up about the event. Well, that’s not going to happen.

Truth is, there isn’t too much to write about. It was your usual fare, only with tons more people than the last couple years, meaning that it was harder to walk around and even harder to get into a couple panels. One panel about self-publishing I couldn’t get into because it seemed to have been held in a room the size of an elevator and was already filled to the brim. And the DC/Marvel panels? Forget about it. I went to a couple, but I had to stand in the corner due to the amount of people there.

By the way, if anyone was at the Dark Reign panel, I was the jerkwad asking about D-Man. Yeah, that’s right. D-Man! Represent!

I got some books signed here and there. Jason Aaron, despite looking like a guy who would tear your throat out with the slightest provocation, is a really swell guy and really gracious. Van Lente, Gage, Parker, Pak and Calero were also pretty cool to talk to. My true failure of the weekend is my inability to find Larry Hama in time. I had hoped to have him sign the “Venom vs. Carnage inside the internet” issue of Carnage Unleashed and the “Rad Eddie” issue of Venom: The Hunted, but by the time I figured out where he was going to be, I was a half hour too late. Oh well. He probably would have haymakered me for it anyway.

One of the cooler moments is finding former Booster Gold co-writer Jeff Katz and Booster Gold creator/artist/writer/caterer Dan Jurgens at the DC booth. I asked Jurgens about whether or not Booster’s old secretary Trixie is Rip Hunter’s mother, which he said no, but a good guess. I began explaining my harebrained “Ted Kord is the next Batman” theory to Mr. Katz and he surprised me with the revelation that he himself has read that very article. Hell yeah! High five!

Unfortunately, he tore down any hope of Kord being the Dark Knight. Awww.

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hermanos already left for the east coast yesterday. I’m about to get some sleep before trekking into New York tomorrow. If for some crazed reason you actually recognize me, feel free to say hi. Unless I’m at the urinal. Then it’s just weird.

Hopefully enough interesting stuff will happen that I’ll have a nice write-up for when I’m done. In the meantime, here are some random thoughts on things:

– Like with every year, I take a week off from work to go to Comic Con. That way I get a day off to prepare, as well as three days after the con to relax. This is especially a good thing because where I work, Barnes & Noble, we’re set to have a book signing by Kate Gosselin (of Jon & Kate Plus 8 fame). It was set to be on Tuesday, but just got postponed a day. Not only am I escaping the horrors of having to deal with that book signing, but I’m also escaping a day of angry people wondering where the hell Kate Gosselin is. Phew.

– Speaking of work, we’ve started playing the latest Springsteen album. There’s this song called Outlaw Pete and I swear I can’t listen to it without hearing Kiss’ I Was Made for Loving You. One trip to Google and it appears like the internet agrees with me. Knew I wasn’t crazy.

– How great is the cliffhanger retcon reveal in Secret Warriors #1? You know what rules? Rereading What If the Punisher Became an Agent of SHIELD. Bendis has inadvertently made that comic even more awesome.

– Even though he won’t be around, hermanos will still have his Black History posts up day by day.

– Click the image to see how Final Crisis #7 really should have ended.

– I haven’t played around with MUGEN for years, but damn if this isn’t well done.

Back in a couple of days. Be good to each other.

Hey, Dan Slott? You know how angry I was when you basically shat on the Juggernaut during your She-Hulk run?

All is forgiven.

(note: I still boycott Amazing Spider-Man, but I’ve allowed myself to make exceptions for Eddie Brock appearances)

Welp. I’m back to this. It’s been a while since the last We Care a Lot, so let’s do a quick recap. It started off with me reminiscing about how I was introduced to Venom comics and how it led to this site. In the comics, Venom decided that Spider-Man wasn’t so bad after all and they formed an agreement not to go after each other. That lasted for about five minutes. Then Venom went to San Francisco, where he teamed up with and/or fought Spider-Man, Punisher, Juggernaut, Hulk, Morbius, Mace and Vengeance. He then went back to New York City to get punked out by the Scarlet Spider. After dealing with his symbiote children and fighting Carnage inside the internet, Eddie Brock turned his wife into Venom for a few minutes and saved Christmas. All that and he made appearances in other comics.

All caught up? Good. Let’s pick up where we left off with Rune vs. Venom, a one-shot by writer Chris Ulm and artists Greg Luzniak, Mark Pacella and Gabriel Gecko. So who is Rune and why does he get top billing? He’s an alien vampire from Malibu’s Ultraverse line. At the time, they were doing a series of Marvel/Ultraverse crossovers and this was one of them. Fair enough.

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The Royal Rumble was last night, meaning you no longer care about anything I have to say. Yeah, well… shut up, okay?

I thought the event was top notch. Jack Swagger vs. John Morrison is going to make a very fine PPV main event one day.

The Rumble match itself was pretty good. It had a lot of fun spots, but got bogged down by keeping the ring too full. They were so determined to keep every single main eventer in the ring until the end while keeping them scattered on the card that it seemed to blow up in their face.

But the highlight of the Rumble?

MAMA MIA!

(thanks to Jerusalem for the gif)

Let’s finish this off and call it a day.

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