‘Tec 840 is the follow-up to the Resurrection of R’as al Ghul. A friend of mine said it had two good things: the penciller and inker. I’d expand that to three and get the colorist some respect, too.

But, that story was terrible.

First– The Globe. Dumb villain, dumb gimmick, dumber puns.

Second– R’as. You resurrect him just to throw him in Arkham under an assumed name and take him off the board? What was the point of that seven part crossover, then?

840 felt like a clipshow of bad scenes. Here’s Batman fighting a fat guy with a gimmick, here’s the new R’as, here’s a semi-clever scene, here’s Batman throwing a fat guy at ninjas, here’s Batman drugging R’as and sticking him in Arkham forever.

Terrible.

Hey, did you hear? Monarch is badass.

Over the past month, DC has been releasing Countdown: Arena. In it, Monarch has been planning for his war against the Monitors. Why is he at war against the Monitors?

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Back when I was doing reviews on the old Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat comics, I found that there were comics made based on other one-on-one fighting games, such as Virtua Fighter and Tekken. I scored these two one-shots and sat on them for a while, knowing that they would be best saved for a rainy day. More than that, something seemed off about reviewing these two alone. I needed a third comic to round it out. One day, when reading about Street Fighter on Wikipedia, fate smacked me in the face.

Being a D-level comic blogger like I am, rather than turn away from this ink-and-paper demon spawn, I reacted with, “I need to own this!” I don’t know. Since this 4th Letter gig, I’ve been finding myself going out of my way just to read pure shit. Chris Eckert has the market cornered in making fun of Countdown, and yet I find myself wanting in. That’s why when the series finishes, I plan on reading the entire series in one go backwards Memento style! You know. For science. I might even try reading World War Hulk: Gamma Corps with all the text whited out. It might be interesting in a self-torturing way.

Let’s get DC’s Street Fighter: The Movie out of the way, because believe it or not, it’s going to get worse. A lot has been said about the movie. There are a ton of things wrong with it, but the most complained-about part is the complete lack of loyalty to the source.

The game’s story: A serious martial artist and his less-serious best friend go around the world to train and build themselves up as the greatest street fighters. The more serious one is hunted down by a megalomaniac out to exploit the martial artist’s physical potential. This villain is targeted by many, including an American military man and a Chinese Interpol agent who each harbor a personal vendetta. This all comes to a head in a one-on-one fighting tournament, featuring great fighters from all over the globe.

The movie’s story: A megalomaniac takes a bunch of hostages in Thailand. A military man with an American tattoo, despite having a foreign accent thicker than Double Stuffed Oreos, leads a world-wide military team into Thailand to save the day. Two weasely weapon salesmen, a Chinese news reporter and her camera men (who happen to be a sumo wrestler and a boxer) get involved. Plus a scientist turns one of the main character’s friends into a green monster.

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Johanna Draper Carlson nails one of my problems with Alan Moore’s latest works.

I also, and I cringe at the potential response to this but I’m going to say it anyway, outgrew this kind of fanfiction years ago. When I was a kid, my impulse was to match up the casts of favorite TV shows (because I was a child of the 80s). It’s not that much more clever when Mr. Moore does it with literary figures, except in his case, you need a scorecard to recognize some of the more obscure ones. It’s also not very creative to think that simply having character A from book series B meet character C from TV series D makes for sufficient story. It doesn’t.

I haven’t read Black Dossier yet, nor Lost Girls, and you know what? I kind of don’t want to. I’ve gone into why I can’t get into Alan Moore, and LoEG seems to just be more of the same.

LoEG is continuity porn for literature geeks.

I’m tired of continuity porn and I’m tired of pastiche.

Stop being so clever, Mr. Moore, and write stories with real plots with your own characters.

Amen to that.

The sum total of Speedy’s characterization in Green Arrow/Black Canary #2 amounts to “HEY I GOT AIDS PLUS I USED TO BE A HOOKER YOU GOTTA PROBLEM WITH THAT HUH DO YA?!”

Judd Winick? He’s Chris Claremont 2.0. I can’t think of a single reason to read his books, and I love Cliff Chiang.

Spider-Man 3 on DVD came out recently. I think I’ll wait off on it for the eventual Spider-Man 3.1 release. In honor of this movie, let’s look at the two debuting villains: the Sandman and Venom.

Venom made complete sense. I think most everyone with a brain knew how this was going to play out from the beginning. First movie would have to be Spider-Man’s top nemesis the Green Goblin. Second movie would have to be Doctor Octopus, who, while doesn’t have all that much of a personal connection to Spider-Man, is such a persistent villain that the public equates him as one of the other top bad guys. The third movie had to have Venom. Who else?

Yes, there are a ton of unused Spider-Man villains out there, but does Mysterio really have the star power of Venom? Do you really see 14-year-olds getting all giddy because they heard the next Spider-Man movie will have the Vulture? No. He may not be the most popular villain among the comic writers and especially Sam Raimi, but he certainly plays the third corner in the Big Three for Spider-Man’s rogues gallery.

The Sandman is a sensible addition because of his classic nature, trademark street clothes appearance and the potential of how his powers would look on the big screen. That and Thomas Hayden Church looked so perfect for the role it was impossible to say no to.

They are two very different villains. One is one of the originals, the other is a product of the late 80’s. One is a team player, the other is a loner. One is an overly-milked cash cow, the other isn’t known for starring in any major storyline. But they are mainstays in the comics and will remain so for some time. That begs the question, how often do Venom and the Sandman meet up in the comics?

As far as I can tell, there are three stories about the two of them butting heads. I won’t count minor appearances, like Mark Millar’s Marvel Knights Spider-Man run. Sure, Venom and the Sandman were both in it, but they had no real interaction. This also goes for any illusion or dream sequence or what-have-you for Spider-Man seeing an army of villains running towards him.

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With the first Essential Luke Cage collection so fresh in my mind, it didn’t take me too long to finish off his solo series. Essential Luke Cage, Power Man Volume 2 covers from issue #28 to #49, plus an annual that Chris Claremont wrote. That’s good, since we’re cheated out of an issue. Power Man #36, which claims that “Chemistro is back! And deadlier than ever!” is really just a reprint of #12, the only Chemistro appearance up to that point. The nerve.

On the subject of them messing with us, the back cover of this book promises a guest-starring role by the X-Men. Bullshit. The closest we get is one panel of Iron Fist saying, “I just met the X-Men the other day.”

Except I didn’t read this for the X-Men cameos. I read this because back in the 70’s, the blaxploitation man-tank named Luke Cage was a ridiculously fun protagonist who beat up any jive sucka that looked at his metal tiara the wrong way. The last trade ended with a wacky, but somewhat heartfelt story about a dumb wrestler with a terminal blood clot who finds and drinks a random can of Super Soldier Serum and temporarily reaches his peak physical condition. It’s weird, but it has it’s right at home with the rest of the series and keeps the momentum going into issue #28.

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I honestly hadn’t heard of this comic until I was futzing around with the graphic novel display at work. Glancing at it, I figured it was probably just some crap comic about Tony Montana prior to the movie’s story. Then I saw that John Layman wrote it. I haven’t read much of the man’s work, but House of M: Fantastic Four was the best side-story to the House of M event and Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness is the highlight of the entire Marvel Zombie experiment. That got me interested enough to read the back cover, where I discovered it was a sequel. Hey, why the hell not.

I should get this out of the way first: I’m not the biggest fan of the movie Scarface. It’s been years since I’ve last seen it, but the problem for me that it was too long a movie to be carried by only one likeable character. Tony Montana is an awesome character, but he’s the only thing the movie had going for it. None of the other characters did anything for me. I still respect the movie and wouldn’t mind giving it another go one of these days.

But wait… Isn’t Tony Montana dead? Didn’t the movie end with the crazy gunfight where a coke-filled Tony got riddled with 500 bullets before being shot in the back by that Terminator-looking guy? Now, around the same time, a Scarface videogame called the World is Yours was released and dealt with this by going the What If route. Before he can get killed, Tony finds a passage to escape through, recuperates and plans his comeback. Scarface: Scarred for Life, on the other hand, is a comic book. Like Wilson Fisk and Barracuda, charismatic comic book mobsters have a talent for surviving the most insane maimings.

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If it wasn’t for the fact that Frank Cho apparently needs ten hours to draw each female butt cheek and get it just right, the current arc in Mighty Avengers would be long over and we would be getting ready for the symbiote invasion. That’s not stopping New Avengers, where the underdog superheroes have already been possessed by the liquid nightmares. Not too much of the story is revealed yet. We still don’t totally understand what is going on and how all this came to be. Instead, New Avengers focuses more on the Hood hanging back with old Luke Cage villains and a Punisher bad guy Bendis has taken a shining to.

We do know that in the story, we will eventually see what looks like the Carnage symbiote take over Wasp and become giant. Bendis has also spilled the beans long ago that Doctor Doom is behind this for some reason. The first place my mind goes to is the old Spider-Man arcade game from the early 90’s. Not only did that game feature a 40-foot Venom, but the gist of the plot is that Doom was trying to take over the world with an army of symbiotes.

But that’s not what this article is about. This is about the first time New York City was under siege by the toothy, gooey monstrosities. As much as it might pain you to do this, let’s take a trip back to 1995, for the Planet of the Symbiotes.

The story thus far: Venom was in the midst of his anti-hero run, which only I enjoyed, apparently. Though stationed in San Francisco for a while, he relocated to New York City because the crossover potential was stronger. Enter Ben Reilly, the Scarlet Spider. This clone of Peter Parker heard Venom was in the area and made his superhero debut by defeating him. By removing the symbiote from Eddie Brock with his impact webbing (remember that?), he was able to dominate Venom in a way Spider-Man never could at that point. Eddie and the symbiote stayed separated for quite a while, until getting involved in an adventure with his colorful symbiote children introduced in the Lethal Protector story. Eventually, Eddie and the symbiote became one again.

Here’s the thing that few people realize about Eddie Brock, or at least Eddie Brock in the 90’s. Eddie never really was all that crazy. He was never the picture of perfect mental health, yes, but he wasn’t a raving lunatic. All of that came from the symbiote and being Venom. When the symbiote and its influence were taken away during that period of time, Eddie had time to reflect. He realized all the death he’s caused and how pointless his hatred of Spider-Man was. He didn’t intend to ever wear the costume again and instead just wanted to die. After being forced to don the symbiote again, the subtle control over his actions returned. This time, he’s more aware of it and wants to investigate it.

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There are so many reasons people wished they could have Superman’s powers. The strength, the flying, the speed, the eye-lasers, the x-ray vision… er… Pretend I put “x-ray vision” in there a couple more times. It’s always funnier that way. Anyway, one of the cooler things about Superman’s powers is his ability to slowly storm forward as criminals empty clips into his chest and continue firing in horror and futility as the bullets keep bouncing off his body. I’m sure Batman wishes he was from Krypton just so he could do that every other hour. Superman doesn’t even need to do it! He could zip over and steal the guns if he truly wanted. He only does it for the kicks. That has to be the most gratifying thing you can do as a crime fighter.

Luke Cage exists for the sake of doing this bit whenever he’s in a bad mood. He also exists to show that black people can have bad fashion sense too, but that’s beside the point. Luke Cage’s main superpower is walking forward while armed bad guys shit themselves. The difference is that he loses a lot of shirts. Really. Luke Cage goes through more shirts than Bruce Banner.

Heheh. I wonder if he knows that in 30 years, that’s going to be a stinging insult.

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