Category Archives: Comics
Review: Teen Titans #13
You guys are probably not going to believe me, but the newest issue of Teen Titans is actually good! Really good! Delightfully good! Teen Titans finally does what I’ve been suggesting this entire time: it slows down, nixes all that frantic action and actually spends some time treating its characters like real people instead of ‘x-treme’ cartoons. Even as an issue filled with narration and flashback, it’s still fun to read. Wonder Girl spends almost the entire issue telling her New 52 origin story, with Red Robin and Superboy providing witty commentary. And I do mean ‘witty’. I had some actual smiles and chuckles reading this comic.
Teen Titans #13
What’s that? There’s almost an entirely new creative team on Teen Titans #13? Ooooooh, that would probably explain a lot.
Comic rating: 4/5: Good!
The overwritten sledgehammer of Scott Lobdell is gone! While he still provides the overall story, fellow longtime comics scribe Fabian Nicieza steps in with the actual script, and the difference is extraordinary. I’ve always liked Nicieza’s work, but here it sings. The trio of Titans are charming, funny and sound like real teenagers bickering and bantering. Even Wonder Girl’s origin story is fun to read, since it’s an entirely new tale, with absolutely no connection to the Greek Gods or Wonder Woman. That might annoy some longtime Cassie Sandsmark fans, but I’m not one of them, so I wasn’t bothered. My favorite character, Tim Drake, got a new origin with the reboot. So it’s the same with Cassie. But trust me, hers is pretty cool.
The brightly called and frantically kinetic pencils of Brett Booth are also gone, replaced by Ale Garza, who brings a more simple innocence to the team. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Booth, but seeing this issue, it’s clear that he was only contributing to the insane feeling of the previous Teen Titans issues. I said it in almost all of my reviews, but the New 52 Teen Titans was written and drawn as if they didn’t think the audience had any sort of attention span. The art and the writing were wild and wacky, full of motion and movement and everything one might think a teenager likes. But it made for a bad series that never took the time to get to know its characters.
Teen Titans #13 is exactly what I’ve wanted from this series. It doesn’t solve every problem, but it’s a step in the right direction. It definitely helps to flesh out Cassie’s character a lot more. I only wish the rest of the team were in the book, but sometimes it’s better to focus on just a few characters. You can get a lot done that way, as Nicieza and Garza have now proven.
Join me after the jump for a full synopsis and more review!
6 Best and 6 Worst Male Superhero Halloween Costumes
We are living in a golden age of dressing up as a superhero for Halloween. The success of the superhero film industry has made them the #1 choice for any Halloween party-goer or trick-or-treater. Heck, The Dark Knight alone had to have raised the Joker costume quotient by 2,000%! And I would hope to see a ton of Avengers costumes this year.
Exactly right
I did a List of Six last year about the best and worst female superhero costumes, and it’s been a pretty popular list this fall. So I decided to revisit the idea and do a list of the best and worst male superhero costumes. Being the nerd that I am, the list is based on two things: costume quality and accuracy. This isn’t about the most popular costumes. The girls’ list was also judged on sluttiness, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for men. Superheroes should be an obvious Halloween costume, because the heroes are wearing costumes themselves. So one would think that designing a Halloween costume should involve just recreating the superhero’s costume as accurately as possible.
Apparently not. But sometimes they get it right. All of these costumes were found online available for sale.
Review: Ultimate Comics: All-New Spider-Man #16
Brian Michael Bendis still doesn’t seem to have any idea what to do with this Divided We Fall/United We Stand storyline, so apparently he decided to just throw HYDRA at the problem. What should have been a fun issue of Miles trying to join the Ultimates instead quickly descends into a mindless, random fight scene for almost the entire issue. And not a very interesting fight scene either. It’s a dark, rainy battle against an army of identical henchmen, with art that doesn’t necessarily work in sequence.
Ultimate Spider-Man #16
That’s not to say this is a bad comic. It’s fun, well-written and full of action. It just feels like pointless filler is all, at a time when we should be getting some really exciting and fulfilling stories about young Miles Morales’ life.
Comic rating: 4/5: Good.
This is a big moment in Miles’ development as a superhero. He’s decided to volunteer for the Ultimates now that the country is falling apart. At only 13-years-old, he’s decided to step up and be a man, to accept all of the responsibility that his powers have unfairly placed on his young shoulders. And he’s doing so while keeping it all a big secret from his parents. Bendis has weaved a rather delightful web in Miles’ life. But this stupid crossover is just mucking everything up. It feels a little like Bendis’ is flailing, not sure how to handle something so momentous when his Spider-Man is only 16-issues-old.
This should be a big moment for Miles. He should be making character-defining decisions. It’s a little too soon for him to deal with something of his magnitude, but now that it’s here, Bendis should be making the most of it. He’s a skilled enough writer. And while there are hints and whispers of the potential, he doesn’t reach the finish line. Like I said, this is just a big, boring fight scene, but it could have been so much more.
Join me after the jump for a full synopsis and more view!
Forgotten Characters: Lacuna
Whatever happened to Lacuna, the mutant talk show host and would-be member of X-Statix?
The green blob Doop has been given new prominence in the popular pages of Wolverine & The X-Men, but he wasn’t the only character to survive the massacre that was Peter Milligan’s X-Statix. I want to know whatever happened to my personal favorite character from that series, the beautiful, the excitable, the orange Lacuna! X-Statix may have been controversial in its day, but the rose-colored glasses of hindsight have proven just how ahead of its time that series really was.
X-Statix was a comic that satirized Jersey Shore several years before Jersey Show was even on the air. X-Statix was making Kim Kardashian jokes before ‘Kardashian’ was even a thing. And there in the wings, doing her part to mock talk show hosts, was Woodstock Schumaker, the sometimes superhero known as Lacuna. She was one of the few characters to survive the end of X-Statix, but she hasn’t been seen since. I want to know why not!
She looks absolutely awesome
Here is a young female character ripe for use in any number of rebooted X-teams. She’s got an awesome look, nifty powers and her own talk show! At the very least, why hasn’t anybody had Lacuna and the Stars playing in the background of any scenes?
Join me after the jump for more!
Just When You Thought Cyclops Couldn’t Get Any More Awesome!
I want to consider my blog a bastion of pro-Cyclops ideology and understanding. Because even though I was, at times, frustrated with his portrayal during Avengers vs. X-Men, Marvel are clearly turning him into the greatest hero ever in the aftermath!
I don’t want to spoil too much right away – I’ll save that for the jump – but suffice to say, from almost everything I’ve seen post-AvX, Marvel seems poised to do some exciting things with Cyclops in the future. More and more, it looks intentional that Marvel and their writers knew exactly what they were doing with Cyclops in Avengers vs. X-Men, and I am absolutely loving it! The character is on this fascinating journey, and not some cliched apologetic quest for redemption.
Cyclops is a total boss! As we can see in a few previews of the upcoming All-New X-Men #1! Join me for more after the jump to view them!
Henchman-4-Hire 