Yearly Archives: 2013

Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 10/26/13

If you’re reading this, I’m probably neck-deep in Batman: Arkham Origins by this point. I’ll try to have a review and some lists up eventually, but right now, I’m knocking criminal heads together and hopefully kicking Penguin in the crotch! Fortunately, I still found the time to read some comics this week, and most of them are a hoot!

Both Battle of the Atom and Lights Out delivered solid issues this week, and a Justice League tie-in to Forever Evil was equally as strong. I’m pretty much enjoying all of these Big Event comics, though Battle of the Atom is still coming out on top. To try something new, I picked up Velvet #1 from the creative team of Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting. I was…not impressed, but it’s still a fine comic from Image.

Winner of Comic Book of the Week, however, goes to Aquaman! Writer Geoff Johns delivers an origin for the Lost City of Atlantis, and it’s just as good as the rest of his Aquaman series. Go Aquaman!

Though if we’re talking Moment of the Week, that definitely goes to Jason Aaron’s latest chapter of Battle of the Atom. He’s almost as good as Bendis when it comes to writing these merry mutants.

Cyclops’ face is priceless!

Comic Reviews: Aquaman #24, FF #13, Justice League #24, Red Lanterns #24, Velvet #1 and Wolverine and the X-Men #37.

Read the rest of this entry

Captain America, F*ck Yeah!

They did it with the first Captain America film, and now the Internet has done it with the second: clips from the new Cap 2 trailer set to the famous song ‘America, F*ck Yeah’ from Team America: World Police.

Things like this are why I love the collective, creative spirit of the Internet.

WWE’s Jim Ross has a lot to say about the video game industry

Jim Ross has a lot to say about video games, and it’s hilarious.

First Trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier Hits All the Right Beats!

The first trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier hit the Internet today, and it is awesome in ways I had not predicted.

Oh man, I really liked that trailer! It’s action-packed, but it’s focus is clearly on Steve Rogers, and I think that’s great. His line, “That isn’t freedom, that’s fear” was fantastic! I hope the movie has a lot of that in it. At the same time, both the Falcon and the Winter Soldier seem almost arbitrary to the political action, which I like more. So we’ll see how it all pans out. Captain America 2 has definitely started out on the right foot.

Review: Teen Titans #24

I never thought I’d be happy to see the regular Teen Titans again. But after the horrors of the Teen Titans Villain Month comics, I say bring on the regularly scheduled programming, as awful as it may be! And Teen Titans #24 is pretty awful. Not terribly awful, I suppose, but pretty darn awful, nonetheless. This week, Teen Titans focuses on its horrible, stilted expositional dialogue, with an overabundance of thought balloons, because writer Scott Lobdell isn’t aware that those went out of style with fanny packs and the word ‘radical’.

Teen Titans #24

Teen Titans #24 kicks off a time travel adventure for our teen heroes, because why not? It is decidedly not radical.

Comic Rating: 4/10 – Pretty Bad.

For those of you who aren’t reading Forever Evil, the Teen Titans almost had a moment of awesomeness. Almost. Written by Geoff Johns, arguably DC’s best writer, the Teen Titans were some of the few heroes who hadn’t been killed or de-masked by the Crime Syndicate. So Red Robin told his team to gear up! They were going to have to save the world and take on the Crime Syndicate themselves! It was legitimately awesome. But when the Titans actually attacked the Crime Syndicate, they came up against Johnny Quick (Evil Flash) and lasted all of three minutes. The Teen Titans, everybody. Rather than some glorious fight, Quick simply unraveled Kid Flash from time and sent the whole team hurtling into the time stream.

Because that’s how things work, obviously.

So that’s where we are: the Teen Titans are lost in the time stream, bouncing wildly through different points in time. Don’t worry if you don’t understand it, Lobdell freely makes up a bunch of jibber jabber to explain it and then promptly has all of his characters spout his explanations, as well as every important facet of their personalities and back story. Lobdell gets everyone up to speed on Teen Titans in the most hamfisted, achingly dull way possible. But such is the modern Teen Titans. Despite all of the creative shakeups and changes the New 52 has seen in the past two years, Scott Lobdell on Teen Titans remains steadfast. J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman walked off Batwoman, but Lobdell still holds Teen Titans in his icy death grip. Sometimes the universe just isn’t fair.

Also, if you haven’t heard, DC is going to randomly kill of Superboy in a few months. So sorry if you were in any way invested in the New 52 Superboy.

Read the rest of this entry