Category Archives: Comics
Review: X-Factor #244
It’s Banshee’s turn at the plate in Breaking Points, and she knocks it out of the park with a touching, personal look at her character. The mysterious ‘guest’ she’s been hiding the past few issues is revealed, and by the end of the issue, her status quo is changed in a very significant way. It’s a sad change, but still cool in its way. Part of me thinks it’s a little too easy, and a little too apropos of nothing, but it definitely works. Throw in some good art and some strong appearances by the rest of the cast and you’ve got yourself a very nice issue of X-Factor.
X-Factor #244
Who could ask for anything more?
Comic rating: 4/5: Good!
For the most part, writer Peter David has been doing an acceptable job of cleaning house in X-Factor. I know that X-Factor is going to remain relatively untouched in Marvel NOW!, but that doesn’t mean he might not give it a fresh coat of paint or something. Ditching a few members of the bloated cast is a great idea, in my opinion, and he’s been doing a fine job in figuring out what to do with these guys. PAD takes a strong, hard look at Banshee in this issue, and the emotions that drive her, but he does so with a character he created only a few issues ago, a character that doesn’t have the history or the impact to be such a big deal in Banshee’s life, in my opinion. But it works. PAD shakes things up, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
PAD also manages to work his magic with Havok and Polaris, two characters who have definitely suffered from being suddenly, unceremoniously dropped into this comic. There are some continuity conflicts with Avengers vs. X-Men, but who cares? I’m curious to see if PAD will play any part in preparing Havok for his upcoming leadership position in Uncanny Avengers. He seems to be doing a nice job of preparing Polaris for her stay in X-Factor.
But more on that later. Join me after the jump for a full synopsis and more review!
Robin’s Pixie Boots Are No More!
Today’s Nightwing #0 retells the origin of original Robin, Dick Grayson, and it reveals that the old, classic Robin costume of pixie boots, bare legs and green short shorts is not part of the New 52 rebooted universe! This is awesome news! Granted, it’s not going to suddenly change public perception of Robin, but it’s a strong step towards finally putting that embarrassing costume away for good.
Behold, the new original Robin costume!
Superhero artists love to add arrows that point to the crotch
Personally, I think it’s a little too futuristic. Batman is still wearing a pretty standard costume, design-wise, so why Robin suddenly has to have all these curves and rounded edges is beyond me. But I still like it. I like it loads more than the original Robin costume.
There are a few other new wrinkles to Dick Grayson’s origin, but I’ll consider them spoilers and put them after the jump.
6 Things I Want To See In the Fantastic Four Reboot
A new, rebooted Fantastic Four movie is coming. Despite the fact that Fox so completely botched the franchise the first two times around, they’re not about to let go of a popular superhero movie license in an era when The Avengers made $1.5 Billion worldwide. That’s in dollars. So Fox will simply try again with a reboot. Because audiences and respect for the property just don’t matter. Movie making is a business, and a Fantastic Four movie has the potential to be good business.
Just like they thought Jessica Alba was going to be good business.
I’ll try to keep the Alba-bashing to a minimum
Now don’t get me wrong, a rebooted Fantastic Four has the potential to be great. I loved both X-Men: First Class and The Amazing Spider-Man, despite first assuming both would be terrible cash grabs. So with an upcoming Fantastic Four reboot, I’m going to try and keep an open mind. Will it be grim and gritty? Will it tie in to the old movies? What will the action figures be like? Well here are 6 things that I hope to see in the new Fantastic Four movie.
Project: Rooftop Fantastic Four Designs Are In!
The Project: Rooftop Fantastic Four redesign costumes are in, and they are, pardon the pun, fantastic! If you don’t know, Project: Rooftop is a site dedicated to redesigning superhero costumes. They hold annual contests and even have some pros weigh in on the contestants. These contests produce some of the absolute coolest costume redesigns on the Internet. And I absolutely love this kind of artistic geekery. If only the real comic book companies relied on creative types like these when it came to giving their heroes new costumes.
The best DC Comics can come up with is to add a ton of piping and lines to their new superhero reboot costumes.
Anyway, check out the #1 entry, drawn by Alejandro Bruzzese!
Personally, I’m not a big fan of this design. I like what he was going for, with the color-coded T-shirts, but it doesn’t say ‘Fantastic’ to me. It definitely plays up the explorers/adventurnauts aspect of the Fantastic Four, but it’s not as elegant or awesome as it could be. Still, the judges voted this one as the very best, so who am I to argue?
Join me after the jump for the other winners and a couple of my favorites!
Two X-Force Series? Why the Hell?
The other day I told you guys about the new Cable and X-Force title coming up in Marvel NOW! It was a new take on the X-Force franchise, and actually looked and sounded kind of cool. Plus it fit with the idea of Marvel NOW! being a relaunch of titles and trying some new ideas.
Well apparently Marvel isn’t yet ready to let go of the old ideas. They’re still going to publish Uncanny X-Force, giving us competing X-Force titles for some godforsaken reason.
The adjective makes the team
Right now, Uncanny X-Force is a popular series by writer Rick Remender about Wolverine leading a team of black ops X-Men on kill missions. It’s a very good series, starring characters like Deadpool, Fantomex, Psylocke, Dark Nightcrawler and, at one point, Archangel. But Remender is moving on to bigger comics, and with last week’s Cable-related announcement, I thought for sure that Marvel was hanging up this series as a job well done.
Nope! They’re going to hand it off to a relatively untested writer, who is going to get rid of most of those characters and instead write about a black ops team starring Psylocke, Storm, Spiral and Puck!
He’s Puck!
I’m as much of a Puck fan as the next geek, but really, Marvel? This is what you’re doing for Marvel NOW!? This relaunch is your chance to clear out some of the clutter and cut away some of the excess comics that the world doesn’t need. And nobody in the world needs a series about these characters trying to be a black ops team. Did you learn nothing from Regenesis? Over the past year, Marvel has been publishing several dozen different X-Men books, including X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine and the X-Men, X-Men: Legacy, and Astonishing X-Men, among other extra titles like New Mutants and X-Factor. In order to populate these books, Marvel was just throwing mutants at them. Astonishing X-Men starred Wolverine, Iceman, Gambit, Karma, Cecilia Reyes, and Northstar. What kind of team is that?
I don’t have the exact numbers, but I think it’s safe to say all those extra X-books didn’t do nearly as well as the main series.
Yet it looks like Marvel is doing it again. Just throw a random group of characters together, give it an already familiar name, and just hope people buy it. How long until we see the likes of Uncanny X-Factor? Mimic and the X-Men? Superfluous X-Men? X-Men: Regency? Probably a year from now after Marvel goes through it’s next Big Event/Relaunch…
This interview with new writer Sam Humphries doesn’t really explain why Marvel wants competing X-Force titles. But at least he seems happy to be writing comics, lucky bastard.
Henchman-4-Hire 