Yearly Archives: 2013
I Read X-Men for the Babes
In a pretty awesome movie in terms of reaching out to female comic fans, Marvel is going to relaunch their adjectiveless X-Men series in April with an all-female cast. This is pretty awesome news because I am definitely in favor of more female-led comics. Some of my best friends are lady comic book geeks.
I bet someone really, really wanted to call it ‘X-Women’
The series will be written by Brian Wood, with whom I have very little reading experience, and drawn by Olivier Copiel, one of the greatest comic book artists working today. Copiel is an amazing talent, and to see him put on this book is truly awesome. Marvel is clealry taking this book seriously. Copiel’s issues of Avengers vs. X-Men were some of the best drawn of that whole series.
As you can tell from that cover, the book will star Storm, Rogue, Kitty Pryde, Psylocke, Marvel Girl and Jubilee. My only concern is that almost all of those characters, with the exception of Jubilee, are already starring in some of the other X-Men comics. If you don’t know, the X-Men franchise these days is filled to the brim with comics. And a lot of the characters are appearing in multiple books. It’s a huge hodge podge of characters and teams. So on the one hand, it’s a great idea for a book like X-Men to have such a unique premise. On the other hand, it’ll be a huge continuity headache to figure out why all of these heroines suddenly hang out together in their own separate comic, as opposed to the various comics in which they already appear.
But that’s only a headache if you let it be a headache. I’m sure I can get over it if the comic is awesome.
“I feel like as far as the X-Men go, the women are the X-Men,” Wood explains. “Cyclops and Wolverine are big names, but taken as a whole, the women kind of rule the franchise. If you look at the entire world as a whole, it’s the females that really dominate and are the most interesting and cool to look at. When you have a great artist drawing them, they look so amazing and always have.”
According to Wood, the star of the series will be Jubilee, which is cool with me. I’ve always been a Jubilee fan, at least since I was introduced to her in the animated series in the 90s. I can only hope he’ll work to fix some of her crazier continuity in the past few years. Jubilee went from losing her powers on M-Day to becoming a technology-powered hero in New Warriors to then becoming a vampire when Marvel tried unsuccessfully to tap into the Twilight craze. Yeah, that was ill-planned.
As for stories, Wood says Jubilee will be a big focus when she finds a baby who may be the key to the future of mutants. He also says the villain Sublime (from the Grant Morrison days) will come to the X-Men seeking help. There will also be Sentinels, aliens and a return to the X-Men’s soap opera roots, all of which sounds pretty awesome to me.
The Best Superhero Games are GTA Clones
Does everybody remember Spider-Man 2 the video game? Or the follow-up Ultimate Spider-Man? They were awesome games, and they were essentially just Grand Theft Auto with Spider-Man powers! That sounds like a winning combination to me. Just like this Iron Man version.
That’s absolutely beautiful. The flying looks perfect. The weaponry could use a little work, but it’s still close enough that I wouldn’t complain. Not with flying that good. This was made by fiddling with the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV, otherwise known as ‘modding’. Some people in life have all the skill. It’s similar to a cool Ghost Rider MOD on the same game.
This one is by a person named H1Vltg3. More power to him!
Review: Scarlet Spider #13
What a difference the art makes. Khoi Pham is still drawing Scarlet Spider, and either his talents have gone completely downhill, or the inker and colorist have done a terrible job, because the art in Scarlet Spider #13 is atrocious. Sketchy, awkward, off-model, it brings the whole issue down. This might actually be a good issue of Scarlet Spider, but the bad art is just so distracting. It doesn’t help either that the villains are generic werewolf people. And that Pham can’t draw werewolves to save his life.
Scarlet Spider #13
We’re finally getting answers about Aracely, but whatever impact those answers might have is completely lost due to horrendous art. I hope this is just a bump in the road. A switch to bad art is always a sign that a series is nearing its cancellation.
Comic rating: 2/5: Bad.
The mysteries of Aracely have never been that big of a deal to me. She’s definitely come into her own in this series, and was a standout in the last issue. But I haven’t particularly cared where she came from. Still, writer Christopher Yost was definitely going to get around to it eventually. And it seems like he’s tying it deeply into Mexican folklore and more. I’ve never particularly cared about Mexican folklore either, but maybe he can win me over. Yost definitely does a fine job detailing how Kaine uncomfortably fits into this scenario. I think it will be a fun adventure for our hero. He’s already an outsider in the normal world, now he’s even more so. That should be good for him.
But like I said, the art is terrible. And the villains could use a big boost to make them interesting. Right now, they’re just generic evil werewolf criminals. How boring. Here’s an idea: why not make them were-something else? Why is it always wolves? There’s a lot of talk in this issue about ‘coyotes’, which are what they call the people who transport Mexicans over the border for a fee. Why not make them werecoyotes? That would be interesting and cool!
Instead, all we get is mostly bland.
Join me after the jump for a full synopsis and more review!
A Star Wars/Disney Corporate Retreat
So apparently Yahoo is doing sketch comedy nowadays? Who knew! Their SketchY group put together this awesome cartoon.
Some of the jokes are silly and easy, but then I doubt Yahoo really wants to push the envelope too much. Kudos to them for trying.
A few pressing questions about the Power Rangers, explained
Power Rangers RPM is the newest rendition of the franchise, now in its 20th year, and I haven’t been keeping up. In a recent episode, however, some interesting questions were explained. Why do the Zords have eyes? Why is there sometimes a six-story high explosion behind the characters when they morph? All shall be revealed.
Henchman-4-Hire 