Yearly Archives: 2013
Honest Trailers Tackles the Big One
I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve seen from the Screen Junkies team, and now they up the ante by giving the Honest Trailers treatment to the worst superhero movie ever made. I’m talking, of course, about Batman and Robin.
I can’t believe young, teenage Sean loved this movie, and Batman Forever. I’m fairly certain I was just blind and dumb as a kid. High school straightened me right out. Now I dislike and giggle at these films with the appropriate amount of disdain.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
I remember reading ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ back in high school English. And I remember hearing about how it was in development hell for the longest time, possibly with Jim Carrey to star. Well now it looks like they’ve got Ben Stiller in the lead role, and it comes out this December. The first trailer looks amazing.
That looks exactly like the kind of movie I love. Well-known comedic actor in a serious, magical role? Count me in! And I already love that song they play in the trailer.
The Artsiest Fan-Film You Will Probably Ever See
The following 17-minute movie is about a comic book character, but I’m not going to spoil who. You’re just going to have to watch and enjoy.
The little movie is written and directed by Joe Lynch, the same guy behind that Punisher fan-film Dirty Laundry from a few years ago. This film is long, sure, and it’s in an odd black and white style, similar to a classic foreign film called Man Bites Dog. But don’t let that scare you. Like I said, it’s the artsiest and neatest fan film you will probably ever see.
Robin and Multiplayer in Batman: Arkham Origins!
I’m still not sure I understand how this is going to work, but IGN revealed today that Batman: Arkham Origins is not only going to have a multiplayer segment, but that multiplayer is going to have Robin! I’m over the moon here! Watch this video and try and understand what’s happening.
So OK, read that article on IGN and try to figure it out with me. It seems that there will two teams of 3 player-controlled henchmen, one team for Joker and one team for Bane. The two teams fight each other for control of territory and spawn points in a map. Sounds typical. The cool part, it seems, is that there will also be two other players in the map playing Batman and Robin. And it will be up to Batman and Robin to sneak around and subdue henchmen on both teams, kind of like flies in the ointment.
That sounds really cool.
Unfortunately, it seems that Robin won’t be a part of the actual main game, which is sad. But still, there is some Robin! And based on that video, it doesn’t look like the same Robin from Batman: Arkham City. So it looks like we’ll have a Dick Grayson version of Robin teaming up with Batman in multiplayer mode. I hope you all won’t hold it against me too much if I keep picking Robin when we play multiplayer matches together.
My Top 6 Greatest Comic Books of All Time
I love comic books because, deep down, I wish I was a hero with incredible powers. I wish I could fly around the world. I wish I was more powerful than a speeding locomotive. I wish I could turn invisible and mess with people on the street. I love reading comic books because they are a uniquely perfect way to tell a story, combining prose and pictures into one fun-to-read package. And comics have a creative freedom unmatched by almost any other medium. Movies and TV shows are hampered by budgets, technology, running time and so much more. With comics, the heroes can travel all around the world or into space without awkward green screens of fake-looking CGI. The visual imagination of comics is hampered only by the strain on an artist’s wrist. Comics can do anything, go anywhere and be anyone.
Though they’re mostly about men dressing up in animal costumes
I’ve had a draft of this List of Six waiting in my queue for more than a year now. I’ve been picking at it, rearranging it, deciding what should go where, but I’m dying to share this list with you. I’m always talking about comics, so what are the best comic book stories/series I have ever read? Keep in mind: this is my personal list. This isn’t just the best comic books of all time. This list isn’t going to have Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns on it. I’ve read those comics, and I like those comics, but they aren’t among the best comics I have ever read. No sir. And that probably has a lot to do with my comic book upbringing.
When I was a kid, I read everything from my dad’s comic collection that he left lying around, which were mostly a small smattering of Marvel superhero comics from the 60s. I didn’t get into comics on my own until the mid-90s, when my brother and I started with Spider-Man in the middle of the Clone Saga…which explains why he and I both love the Clone Saga…and my undying love of Phil Urich. We eventually moved on to the X-Men, but it wasn’t until Batman: Hush and Infinite Crisis that I finally started reading DC Comics on a regular basis. Because of this timeline, I wasn’t around in the 80s for Watchmen to blow my mind. I wasn’t around in the 60s for Spider-Man and Superman to define my world. In fact, almost everything on this list comes from the past 20 years or so, when I really got into comics.
Here are my personal Top 6 Greatest Comic Books of All Time. I would recommend any of these to anyone, comic fans or not.
Henchman-4-Hire 