For a couple days, my neck of the woods has been victim of a pretty bad rainstorm. The kind that has people calling into where you work just to ask if you have power because they don’t and they need some place to be. The kind that has you find new routes getting home because there are trees littering the streets and, in one case, crashed into a house. The kind where you lose your cable, but are fortune enough to still have electricity and water, unlike half of the town.

So without any internet during this time, I decided it was finally time to get to reading Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.’s Kick-Ass.

I picked up the hardcover last week because the movie trailer makes it look fun and the JRJR art is really nice. Unlike my associate hermanos, I don’t normally hate on Millar. A lot of the time, I enjoy his work. I even didn’t mind anything about the infamous Red Skull flashback in Ultimate Avengers #5 until Millar pussied out about how even though Skull forced a woman to horrifically murder her husband and then tossed a baby out the window, he would NOT be committing any rape, no sir. Such an idea is unbefitting of a reimagining of a proud Nazi war criminal. No, dead children plus horrific murder plus ordered rape is only good enough for a reimagining of the Kingpin these days.

It’s that inability to commit that leads to my problem with Kick-Ass. I feel that the comic is really, really good… up to a point. Then the lynchpin is pulled out and the entire thing seems to implode. I’m going to be getting into some major spoilers, so if you’re waiting for the movie, this isn’t the article for you.

Read the rest of this entry �

The new Iron Man trailer premiered tonight during Jimmy Kimmel. As expected, it looks like heat rocks. Check it out on Apple’s site if you want to watch it in high def or hit the video below for the official Youtube HD embed.

I’m liking what the story is shaping up to be. The US gov’t getting in bed with Whiplash to bring down Stark, Rhodey backing up his homey, Pepper still not falling for his tricks, Scarlett Johansson looking like Scarlett Johansson… it’s gonna be a good’un.

Judd Winick’s Jason Todd resurrection story, Under the Hood, is coming out in straight-to-dvd animated movie form this fall.  So far, they’ve released few details.  There’s talk about how the story will be dark.  And there is a model of Nightwing.

This angular style seems to be the new trend in animation. 

Batman from the The Batman Strikes.

Martian Manhunter from Crisis on Two Earths.

Seriously, every superhero’s head seems to be modeled on Tahmoh Penikett’s skull.

There is also a quote from Judd Winick.

“What I loved best about it is that it had a really amazing beginning and a really strong ending, which pretty much most movies ride on.”

Read the rest of this entry �

Andy Diggle and Jock’s The Losers has probably the best last line of any comic ever (if you’ve ever read it, you know it) and the movie drops later this year. MSN has the hookup on a full length trailer, presented here with a tip of the hat to iFanboy, where I watched the footage.

I like it. It looks great, it feels like the book, it’s well-cast, and it has a good sense of humor, something that The Losers definitely had when it was appropriate. Another thing I really like: they aren’t afraid to step away from the source material to make the movie work. There were a few scenes I didn’t recognize (Aisha in the tub, the Blagyver stuff, Aisha being fairly talky talk) along with a lot that I did (Chris Evans dancing in the elevator, Aisha blowing up the tank). A good comic book movie, even when adapting a specific story (such as 300 or Sin City), includes something new, rather than just being comics turned storyboards turned script turned movie.

Freshen it up some. I loved Sin City, but it is faithful to the point of being annoying. I knew all the twists, I knew all the lines, and while I liked it, it wasn’t as dope as it should have been.

But yeah, back to the point: The Losers. Dope.

Spoiling.  It’s what I do.

Read the rest of this entry �

Overall:  Not bad.

Any more, and I’ll be spewing out spoilers, so only click if you want to know.

Read the rest of this entry �

I saw on twitter a minute ago that the trailer for the film adaptation of Inio Asano’s solanin came out. It’s all in Japanese, and I’m pretty sure it blows something that was supposed to be a surprise, but check it out:

The casting looks really good. Kato is dead on, and while Meiko is substantially less freckled than her comic counterpart, but she looks good. The bit with her and the knit cap– that’s cool, totally true to the book. Their circle of friends looks pretty good, too.

Doesn’t this look like the perfect 20-something movie? A bunch of attractive post-college kids working out their issues and forming a rock band. It looks universal, like people of any culture could get into it.

I reviewed solanin a while back and really enjoyed it.

Here’s my favorite Halloween-related thing. Back in the day, Alice Cooper was abducted by Jason Voorhees. The Terminator decided that Axl Rose wasn’t worth killing. Both the Fat Boys and the Fresh Prince were each terrorized by Freddy Krueger.

But Dokken doesn’t play that weak shit. Kick his ass, Don! WITH ROCK!

I was thinking today about Diana and Stephanie, the two female characters whose comics I buy.  Diana, Wonder Woman, is perfect.  The embodiment of compassion, strength, honor, bravery, and beauty, she’s a princess and a warrior and an ambassador.  Despite her iconic status, and the fact that she’s had an ongoing comic for the better part of a century, female fan interest in her has only recently heated up – due to Gail Simone’s decision to write her comic.

Stephanie, Spoiler/Robin/Batgirl/Who’sNext?, is decidedly not perfect.  A perpetual screw-up, she’s earned both my and general female fandom’s accolades by picking herself up, dusting herself off, and starting all over again.  It’s possible that her moment of greatest popularity was after her death.

While it’s normal for fans of any gender to decry a comics character’s death while pretty much ignoring their life, I wonder if something extra is at work, here, especially when I think of other media.  Most TV shows and movies about female characters are about the adorable main character trying to get her life together.  She’s clumsy, and awkward, but tries so hard.

And she’s at war, usually, with the ultra-perfect glamazon who is after her job/man/scholarship/position in society/what’s next?  I hate that dynamic because it has always been, in my experience, false.   What’s more, it embraces the values it supposedly abhors.  Whether it favors the popular girl or the outsider (And who are we kidding?  Like any show, book or movie in the last fifty years hasn’t sung the praises of the noble outsider), it still villifies one segment of the population for, basically, having different values, tastes or interests.  Still, I wonder if, no matter how I resist it, it’s at work in me, or at work in many women.

While media that sings the praises of the powerful man (The Sopranos, The Tudors, Kings, etc.), the brilliant man (Law & Order: Criminal Intent, CSI Miami, House, Monk), or simply the eccenric or egotistical man (Dexter, House again, Nip/Tuck) do well, women are always given a heroine they can relate to not one that they feel they have to compete with, and certainly not one they feel they’d lose out to.

Even in shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the heroine is usual beset with troubles and struggling, instead of blowing everyone away with her strength and brilliance.  Buffy, the mystical chosen one, is always one step away from getting kicked out of school.  House, the doctor who can’t be assed to restrain his own bad behavior, finds out that his supervisor has budgeted in lawsuit money for the various patients who sue him because he is just that good.

Is this about what’s offered to women?  Is it about what’s taught?  (Tina Fey’s movie, Mean Girls, was hailed as an insightful satire about teenage girls.  It had a group called ‘The Plastics’.  We never had groups like that in my school, but how many movies can you watch before you develop an attitude of ‘it’s us versus them’.)  Is it just my lopsided view of pop-culture?

In the end, girls and women are given many examples of heroines about winning out when odds are against them (just as men are) but relatively few examples of just plain winners.

Fine, fine, the next DC animated straight-to-DVD movie is badly named.  ‘Crisis on Two Earths’?  We’ve had infinite earths.  Two earths just sounds like people being stingy with the crises.  I was skeptical.

I had reservations.

I was not impressed.

And then?

Hell. Yeah.

Yes, that is James Woods as Owlman.  And Gina Torres as Superwoman.  Is it wrong to hope that evil wins this one?