I only have two requests.

1) Show more of Gotham city and how they react to the Batman.

2) Make Edward Nigma the villain, and make sure it’s this version. Have the media call him the Riddler before he’s revealed.

The past two films have been all about villains trying to kill other people. Nigma isn’t after that. He’s just heard stories of the “Dark Knight Detective” and he wants to see if he can outsmart him. He pulls off complicated heists, tricky kidnappings, and generally causes high impact, but low danger, crime to get Batman’s attention. He leaves behind a clue or two, maybe a green question mark on a postcard with a rhyme on the back.

He doesn’t want to kill. He doesn’t want to murder. He’s just a thrillseeker who happens to be super-smart. Also, he doesn’t wear a stupid costume. He’s dapper and slick, and probably knows Bruce Wayne in real life, but hasn’t made the connection between Bruce and Bats yet.

Get on it. 2010.

Also, my brother-from-another William points out something fun– Eddie should be black. Just because.

The first work of Will Eisner’s that I ever read was Eisner/Miller. I may have purchased Autobiographix first, but I barely remember it at this point.

Eisner/Miller, though, sticks out in my mind because it was a conversation between two respected creators. The press lead-up to the book was probably the first time I’d ever heard Eisner’s name. All I knew going in was that he was a) old, b) highly respected, and c) crazy talented. I hadn’t read The Spirit, A Contract With God, or any of that. Regardless, Eisner/Miller was a fascinating history lesson and very interesting.

I looked up a few trades of The Spirit and didn’t get it. Ebony White was dumb, The Spirit was just kind of a dopey generic dude, and the art was all right. The idea was neat, at least. I filed it under “Things that aren’t for me,” a box which also contains LoSH, heavy metal, dungeons & dragons, and Angelina Jolie. Out of sight, out of mind, and so on.

I scoped out Darwyn Cooke’s Spirit when it dropped. It was okay– the art was good and the noir-y feel was pretty decent, but it didn’t really grab me. I might grab the hardcovers for the art, but you know, that’s when I get around to it.

By this point, everyone’s seen the trailer for The Spirit movie. It’s written and directed by Frank Miller, stars Gabriel Macht, Sam Jackson, Eva Mendes, and a grip of other people. Most of the fan response I’ve seen for it, mainly online, has tended toward the negative.

“He’s just remaking Sin City.” “Oh, is everyone gonna be a whore?” “Psht, he’s ruining Eisner’s vision.” “Frank Miller lost it.” “The trailer is overwrought.”

Honestly, I don’t get it. I know that ASBAR and DKSA are pretty much the definition of “Love it or hate it,” and the “WHORES WHORES WHORES” meme is very prevalent (though boiling down a man’s decades-long career into a webcomic catchphrase is ridiculously reductionist), but I see the trailer and see a movie that I genuinely want to see.

It hits more than a few of my buttons. It’s noir, it’s got Sam “I’ll Play Any Role For Money” Jackson, Miller is involved, and it’s got a striking visual style. Even the posters are different from what I’ve usually seen for movies.

So, you know, I was trying to figure out why basically everyone I know hates the very idea of this movie. I think it comes down to two things. One is that my default stance with Miller is “I’ll check it out.” I generally like his work, and he’s produced some of my favorite comics. I think he’s got an interesting, and off-kilter, perspective on things, so I’m curious to see where he’s taking the movie.

The other is that I just don’t really care about the Spirit at all. I don’t have the attachment that people who’re more steeped in comics history do. He’s just another hero to me. He isn’t Flash or Spider-man. He’s like… well, he’s still more than Captain Atom. He’s Katana or Wildcat– interesting in theory, but not so interesting that I’m going to seek out books featuring them.

The movie looks like an interesting way to try and get into the character, and it actually takes less commitment to watch a two hour flick than it does to buy a trade and have to live with it being terrible and sitting on your bookshelf. I think it’ll be a fun action flick, all things considered, and a good way to waste away an afternoon.

Plus, the movie’s got Eva Mendes.

It’s a busy time for the Hulk. Not only is his movie at the top of the box office charts, smashing up the Happening, but he’s getting a lot of play for a character who currently only has a supporting role in his own book. A shitty book, but at least he has connections elsewhere. Incredible Hercules, co-starring Hulk’s little buddy Amadeus Cho, is one of Marvel’s best books right now. Skaar: Son of Hulk just started up and last week gave us a one-shot by Jeff Parker about futuristic warrior feminist Thundra going back in time to scrape some DNA off Hulk and make a green futuristic warrior feminist daughter. Then you have Wolverine, where we see that 50 years in the future, Hulk’s inbred grandchildren rule California with an iron fist. Whatever that’s all about.

Hulk is becoming like the gamma irradiated Wilt Chamberlain of Marvel.

A few weeks ago at work, we got a bunch of Hulk books for kids to tie in with the new movie. Junior novelizations, picture books, coloring books and so on. One thing we got was an activity book that came with a tiny little Hulk figure, held onto the cover with a plastic shell. The figure is supposed to be tossed into water, where it will expand into six times its original size.

Being that some (most) children are little bastards, one of the copies of that activity book got trashed. The plastic covering got torn off and it became unsellable. I pulled that copy of the book to be sent back to the publisher, but decided to at least put that Hulk figure to good use. I called over my manager and we got a cup of water, filled it up and dropped the Hulk in there, ready for the mild thrill of watching it grow like one of Rita’s creations.

…nothing happened.

Going back to the book, we found that we needed to wait up to ten days for it to grow. Christ, what’s the freaking point? If I felt like waiting over a week for some pointless green thing to grow, I’d buy a Chia Pet.

Could you imagine how lame Hulk would be if Banner had to wait ten days to transform, like some kind of superhero Brady Law? “Sorry, Tony. I’d love to help you and the guys fight Kang the Conquerer, but I have three more days of making myself angry before I can be any help. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Small Wonder marathon I need to get back to.”

Enough days have passed and the Hulk has indeed grown quite a bit. Although he may be bigger and stronger, Hulk has certainly seen better days.

HULK IS NOT ANIMAL!

You ever read Marvel Ruins where instead of becoming a green-skin giant, the gamma bomb turned Bruce Banner into a mountain of tumors? If you haven’t, don’t. The comic sucks. But I can’t shake the memory from looking at this thing. Maybe his bicep isn’t angry enough.

Those black lines are supposed to be ridges in his forehead, but I can’t help but think of them as cartoony eyes. Like something Kirby would have. In fact, it reminds me of Roast Beef from Achewood.

Poor, poor SpongeHulk Tornpants. Maybe he can get a job working for Dr. Frankenstein or move into a bell tower.

Caught the midnight showing of Incredible Hulk tonight. Very fun movie that’s definitely better than the Ang Lee non-prequel. It flows nicely and the action wasn’t too brief, as it sometimes felt in Iron Man. Not to say it’s better than Iron Man, because it isn’t, but there’s no shame in that. Besides, this is the second episode of the Avengers Movie Saga and it does feel right in that respect.

Several weeks back I read the Peter David novelization, as I’m wont to do, so I already had been spoiled in terms of the plot. While there are few surprises, there’s still the interesting experience of seeing stuff that was in the original version of the story that got cut out. I’ve done this before, of course, with Spider-Man 3 and Iron Man. The former was originally a solid story until important chunks of it got cut out. The latter remained good, despite a subplot cut out because of the Air Force’s say so.

With Incredible Hulk, the good outweighed the bad in terms of cuts. God, did it ever. Yes, there was definitely some stuff that should have stayed in there. No doubt. It’s just that a lot of scenes that got ousted had the potential to be really bad. Really bad. I’m talking Superman’s cellophane S projectile bad. I’m talking Matt Murdock fighting Elektra at the playground bad. I’m talking the entirety of Rise of the Silver Surfer bad. It’s cool that I count that movie as one long, horrible scene, right?

Word on the street is that there are 70 minutes of stuff cut. It’ll probably be seen in DVD form. Whether or not that makes for a better movie remains to be seen. The deleted scenes below, filled with spoilers, don’t seem to sum up to 70 minutes, but when it comes to cutting them being a good or bad idea, I’ll let you be the judge.

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The Incredible Hulk, part two of the “Avengers Saga” of Marvel films (there go my nipples again), is on its way in a few weeks. Naturally, Peter David wrote a novelization based on the upcoming movie. Since I did the same for Spider-Man 3 and Iron Man, I went up for round three by picking it up and seeing what it had to offer.

Incredible Hulk is like Ang Lee’s Hulk mixed with Superman Returns, only better than each of them. Granted, I did enjoy the older Hulk movie for the most part. I thought most of the stuff involving David Banner was fantastic and found him so sympathetic that I can’t even bring myself to call him a villain. But let’s be honest, the pacing had problems and there was a huge unbalance in the story where they try to tell the tale of a man’s tragic relationship with his father one minute and HOLY SHIT DID YOU SEE WHAT HE DID TO THAT TANK the next.

This new movie is most definitely not a sequel to the Ang Lee production, but like with Batman Begins and the Tim Burton Batman, stupid people will believe they’re connected no matter how many changes in continuity they spy. Still, the movie knows what we saw in Hulk and doesn’t give us a story based purely on origin. Though the Hulk’s origin is different this time around, it’s only delved into through explanations and brief flashbacks.

David’s book is based on the screenplay treatments of Edward Norton and Zak Penn. That means that it’ll be harder to tell how accurate it is to the final product than usual, based on the stories I’ve heard about the movie’s production. For one, Norton had been rewriting scenes on the set just about every day. For two, they decided to make some edits that have pissed him off. Even the little footage I’ve seen of the movie is different from what the book goes with. Such as that scene where Hulk tears a cop car in half and uses it as boxing gloves. Not only is that not mentioned at all here, but that scene involves Abomination talking. Abomination has no dialogue in the book after his transformation.

This could be a good thing or a bad thing. Truth is, there are a couple minor bits I wouldn’t mind changed.

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Gavok note: longtime reader and internet buddy A.o.D. sent a couple threatening emails to me and hermanos, wondering why we haven’t gotten around to reviewing the totally awesome Iron Man movie. I decided to ask him to write the review for us, since I thought he was the most qualified. After all, this guy knows more about Iron Man than I will likely ever know and has been a well of information for years. Not only has he read just about every good Iron Man story, but he’s willingly worked through the horrors of that whole Evil Tony Stark vs. Teenage Tony Stark fiasco and read every issue of Force Works. Poor guy. Point is, the guy knows his Iron Man, so it’s only fair that he gets to write this.

You’ve probably seen the movie by now. Every entertainment, comic (except 4th letter *ahem*), movie, and newspaper website has had a review up by now. Iron Man has raked in over one hundred million dollars domestically. It has in every essential sense proven itself to be a success. I am in no means going to contradict any of that. I am also not going to discuss the various plot points. All of this has been done ad nauseum. I will, however, sing some of the movie’s many praises.

Iron Man was a wonderful movie. When I first heard of the project, and the possibility of Nick Cage being involved, I was filled with a mixture of fear and excitement. Fear because I knew that Cage would have been absolutely terrible in the role, but excited because a long neglected Marvel character that I had a huge man crush for was going to be recognized. Bear in mind that this was before Civil War, Extremis, or even Tony Stark: Secretary of Defense. Iron Man was a small run book that had for decades been eclipsed by the likes of X-Books and Spider Man. To most comic fans, despite the fact that Iron Man was something of a big deal in Marvel continuity, he was just ‘that guy in the avengers’.

So yeah, I’m a big ol’ Iron Man fanboy. There’s a lot about the character that speaks to me. The fact that he doesn’t always get it right, the fact that he is a deeply flawed, but moral human being. Or that he doesn’t see things in black or white and understands that the world is tinted in shades of grey. Then there’s also the fact that he looks like he enjoys what he does. Sure, there’s a sense of purpose and duty involved, but the metal pajamas he wears look like a hell of a lot of fun.

So I had a lot of expectation for the movie. Expectations that rose once I learned that Marvel was taking over the project and that Robert Downey, Jr. was going to play the lead. Not only did he look the part, but if anyone knew what it meant to be a hard living, self abusive playboy, surely it would be Downey. In that, Downey exceeded every expectation. He owned the part as thoroughly as Christopher Reeve owned his role in Superman. Simply put, I never want to see him replaced. He expertly captures the juxtaposition of Stark’s self destructive hedonism and genius fueled intense drive. Everything he does rings true.

Pepper Potts, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, interestingly enough, had a far larger role than she traditionally has in the Iron Man comics. For most of her existence she was window dressing or a plot point. The movie does her far more justice. Although I wouldn’t characterize her as a strong female, she is clearly characterized as one of the three people who makes Tony’s life work.

Jim Rhodes played by Terrence Howard is blah blah blah blah blah.

Look, you’ve read this all before. If you’re reading this, you’re a comics fan and probably have already seen the movie. If not, what are you waiting for? Are you still pissed about Civil War? What the hell is wrong with you?! This movie is worth twice the price of admission, so go see it two times! It’s a freakin’ bargain! Just be thankful that at the very least we’re getting an encore performance in a couple of years with the promise of an Avengers movie down the road. Iron Man is what superhero movies should all aspire to be. Go freakin’ see it already.

Last night I checked out the Iron Man movie. It is just as fantastic as it was meant to be, but that’s just my initial reaction. We’ll see how I feel in a couple days. Ah, hell. I’ll still probably love it.

About a month back, I read through Peter David’s novelization, so I got the gist of how good this would be. Like Spider-Man 3, it was based on an earlier or fuller version of the movie before scenes got cut or, in the case of this movie, replaced. Spider-Man 3 was about character-building scenes getting cut for the sake of time and allowing more focus on Mary Jane’s constant whining. With Iron Man, most of the scenes were cut for time, or in other cases, to totally fuck over Terrance Howard as Jim Rhodes. The poor guy gets devoured by editing. According to interviews, in return for their involvement in the film, the Air Force insisted on having control of the character and refused some of his character actions. That explains that.

It’s also worth noting that director Favreau was into improvisation, which does alter a couple scenes here and there on the dialogue side of things..

This is going to be filled with spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want to know about the scene where Titanium Man beats up an army of ballerinas, go make yourself a sandwich. Or go see the movie. You’d be glad you did.

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A week ago, back when I posted my report on Comic Con, I mentioned this one comic issue that was so absurd it nearly knocked me over. The review was originally going to be up today at PopCultureShock, but that’s going to have to wait for next week. It’s not that I’m not about done with it, because I am. It’s just that with last week’s Comics From the 5th Dimension article, I sent it in a little too late and hermanos sat on it a little too long, so it just got put up for this week.

It works out. I do need to spend some more time on this site, especially with all the stuff I have planned. For one, with the Iron Man movie coming out tomorrow, I have to write its own little counterpart to the Spider-Man 3 Deleted Scenes article from a year back. Remember to check back for that.

In the meantime, check out Kountdown to Final Kombat, the top ten list of why I’m looking forward to Mortal Kombat vs. DC.

The weekend of chunky guys dressed like Colossus and hot women dressed as Slave Leia has come to an end. I myself had a great time, spent with hermanos from this very site and a whole bunch of guys from Funnybook Babylon. Sadly, Thomas “Wanderer” Wilde deemed himself “too broke” to consider joining us and Hoatzin would have probably involved a gigantic plane ticket paid in rare diamonds, since he’s from Europe. I don’t know. I really have no grasp on how that type of thing works. Besides, Hoatzin seems to have vanished from our planet. What happened to that guy?

This one movie sent the other movie into space.

Day One

Last year I got to New York the day before the con started, which allowed me enough rest and whatnot. This year I had to come in the first day of the event and kill time until David Uzumeri came in from Canada, since he was in charge of dealing with the hotel. I walked straight from the Port Authority bus terminal to the Javits Center, which tired me the hell out.

After getting my swanktastical press pass, I met up with hermanos and Joseph of FBB. They were at a panel starting up that was a screening for a new Will Eisner documentary. Since I was tired from all that walking, I decided to stick around and watch it. I found it interesting in the sense that I honestly didn’t know all that much about Eisner, which is almost a sin if you’re a comic fan. The four of us (David U. showed up towards the end) mostly agreed that while it had some fantastic stuff in there, such as taped conversations between Eisner and guys like Kirby, the sum of it was incredibly dry.

Shortly after, we went to the panel on online journalism, with guys from Newsarama and CBR there. It wasn’t as good as the comic blogging panel from last year and mostly focused on arguing over criticism vs. getting press releases. Once that was done with, I was rested up enough to do some wandering.

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I’m going to have a big post about Comic Con later in the day, but something caught my eye today and I felt I needed to make mention of it. Back in the mid-90’s, DC released a commercial to the masses about their comics. It was well-produced and even though at that age I couldn’t name half the characters shown, I still thought it was pretty badass.

It would show character art of heroes from that era and morph them into other characters as the announcer went on. Here’s a quick transcript, minus the echoing female voice:

Announcer: DC. Incredible action. Astonishing adventure. The coolest heroes. The hottest heroines. And the most outrageous villains…

Darkseid: TOO TOUGH FOR TEE VEE!

Announcer: …in the universe!

Lobo (with an animated mouth and a voice that tries way too hard to be animated Wolverine): This ain’t yer daddy’s comic book, fanboy!

Announcer: DC Comics!

I never got the whole “too tough for TV” thing. Didn’t they have Batman: The Animated Series around that time?

Maybe you remember this. The only reason I still do is because a fairly local comic shop, Zapp Comics, used the same commercial. After DC decided to stop using the ad, Zapp just took the same commercial and added their store’s information to the last few seconds. It’s weird that they would do a commercial that doesn’t even mention Marvel in any capacity, but like I said, it’s a well-produced commercial.

They aren’t the only ones who do this. A quick search on YouTube helped me find the same commercial, only with information from Humungo Comics in Pennsylvania tacked on.

Why do I remember this commercial and bring it up? Because they still play it! I just saw the damned thing on TV less than an hour ago!

Yes, it’s a nice ad, but it’s been like 12-14 years. Look at all the dated stuff in that commercial. Murderous Hooded Green Arrow, Yellow-Ringed Guy Gardner with the G jacket, Deathstroke shown as one of the “coolest heroes”, Matrix Supergirl, Catwoman with her huge curly hair as one of the first villains shown, MOTHERFUCKING LEX LUTHOR JUNIOR! I could have sworn I saw Evil Raven in the commercial I saw on TV, but she’s not on the YouTube video.

I know comic shops may not have the revenue necessary to make a flashy new commercial every few years, but at this rate, some kid will be watching this and Lobo’s one-liner will be wrong. Those actually were that kid’s daddy’s comic books.