Category Archives: Cartoons
What’s That? New Venture Bros. Footage? I’ll Take It!
Apparently it’s been almost two years since the last new episode of The Venture Bros. Has it really been that long? Jeez…Well a new Halloween special will air this Sunday, and here is a teaser/preview! It’s a little meatier than the Iron Man 3 teaser/preview at least.
Man, is it good to get new Venture Bros. stuff! If you couldn’t tell from the very theme of this blog, we here at Henchman-4-Hire are huge Venture Bros. fans! New episodes are cause for celebration!
A Couple of Marvel Trailers
First up, the debut trailer of Iron Man and Hulk: Heroes United confirms my suspicion that it will be crappy.
Stiff, stilted computer animation looks like it was done by a freshman design student. The dialogue appears to be nothing but cheap one-liners and weak banter. The villains are just a bunch of robots and/or additional Iron Man suits. This is a flimsy, boring work of drivel from a company that produces the best superhero stories and movies in the world. I expect better.
Next up is the latest trailer for Marvel Heroes, the upcoming Marvel-themed Massive Multiplayer Online game. I don’t know why I haven’t written about this game yet, probably due to lack of interest. And I don’t know why I’m not very interested in this game. It looks to be the next evolution of the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance games, and those were great.
Marvel Heroes wisely forgoes DC Comics’ attempt at an MMO, and instead lets you play as the actual superheroes. DC went with a City of Heroes-style game, where you design your own superhero and then fight alongside the Justice League. Marvel is going with a Diablo-like game, where you get to play as their superheroes in a dungeon-crawler-like environment. They’ve done a good job with that kind of series in the past, like I said, but something about this game has yet to really grab me. I think it’s the generic-ness that I’ve seen from the previews so far.
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 was based heavily on Civil War, the comic series that pit hero against hero. It was full of exciting cameos (Multiple Man! Prodigy!), and got really in depth for a video game. Marvel Heroes, so far, seems to be striving to be as generic as possible, probably to bring in as many players as possible. Plus all of the characters they’ve revealed so far are not among my list of favorites. So there’s nothing to get excited about…yet. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.
What do you guys think of movie and this game? Are you looking forward to both? Hating them both? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Who Needs a Live Action Justice League Movie
When we can have one made out of LEGOs instead!
Despite the mouthful title of LEGO Batman The Movie: DC Heroes Unite, this is going to be a full length LEGO Batman movie, based off the recent video game (which I sadly have not played). It’s going to star Batman and Robin teaming up with the entire Justice League to take on the Joker and Lex Luthor!
So why even bother with a live action Justice League movie? There’s no way it’ll be as good as this. Heck, why bother with traditional animation anymore? All future superhero movies should be made out of Lego.
We’re living in a golden age of superheroes
The Dark Knight Returns Returns in Part 2
If you want more proof that Peter Weller is a terrible Batman, here’s a trailer for Part 2 of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns:
I was moderately OK with Part 1, as you can see in my review. The worst part of the film was Peter Weller as Batman. You can hear it in the first lines of that trailer. His voice is so flat and emotionless. Batman is better than that.
Well Part 2 promises to include Superman and the Joker, though Superman still just looks like normal, everyday Bruce Timm Superman, another drawback of these animated adaptations. Frank Miller had such a unique style to his art for the original comics. I wish they’d tried to replicate that look for these. Oh well, what can you do? At least Ben Linus is voicing the Joker. That should be fun.
Also, we’ve now learned at NYC Comic-Con that the next two cartoons will be Superman: Unbound, based on Geoff Johns’ recent Brainiac reboot story, and Justice League: Flashpoint, based on the alternate reality tale that brought us into the New 52. Which makes me wonder if all future DVDs after that will be based on New 52 stories. That might be cool.
Animated Perry Bible Fellowship!
I am a huge, longtime fan of The Perry Bible Fellowship, a cartoon by fellow Syracuse University alumni Nicholas Gurewitch. Well he’s been posting a few of these animated shorts, which he directed, on Facebook, so I thought I’d share. I don’t think he animates them himself, and they’re made for the BBC, but it’s still probably the closest thing we’ll get to an animated Perry Bible Fellowship!
Henchman-4-Hire 