Category Archives: DC

Review: Teen Titans #20

Teen Titans attempts to break up the crumminess of the recent storyline by giving us an issue devoted to Raven’s origin. That’s all well and good, I suppose, and now is probably as good a time as any to let us know what the heck Raven is doing in this series, but it doesn’t raise the quality of the comic, and it kind of makes Raven worse than she was before. I’m fairly certain this origin sticks closely to Raven’s pre-reboot origin, but honestly? She has one messed up origin.

Teen Titans #20

The cover is a total lie. Evil Red Robin doesn’t even show up in this issue (thank God). Instead, it’s just Trigon narrating the long, complicated origin of Raven.

Comic Rating: 2.5/5 – Pretty Bad.

To an extent, I realize that my dislike of Teen Titans stems almost completely from  the comic diverging from what I want to see, or what I think could be done better. Trigon is definitely one of those things, and now we can add Raven to that list as well. I’ve pretty much disliked everything we’ve seen from Trigon so far, and this issue adds even more garbage to his story. However, I’ve rather liked what we’ve seen of Raven. I like her new costume, and I kind of liked the life being built for her. But after this issue, she’s a complicated, pointless mess of a character. Oh well. She was fun while she lasted.

Pretty much nothing else happens in the rest of the issue. The origin is book-ended by short scenes with the Titans, and they don’t do much of anything. Definitely nothing about Red Robin being ‘reborn’ as the cover would indicate. This story can’t end fast enough.

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New Man of Steel Trailer Focuses on General Zod

General Zod is a horrible choice for villain in a Superman movie. What’s the point of Superman being the last son of Krypton is there are a bunch more? Plus he’s just visually unappealing. Lex Luthor is such a good villain because he’s just as smart as Superman is strong. General Zod is basically just evil Superman, and we’ve already got Bizarro for that.

The new trailer for Man of Steel still looks awesome. The size and scope of this film look amazing. Unlike The Wolverine, I am definitely still excited for Man of Steel. But I definitely don’t care for Zod yet at all. Or his evil plot. But maybe the movie will make him work. We’ll see.

At any rate, enjoy the latest trailer. What do you guys and gals think of Man of Steel so far? Excited? Disinterested? Do you think anybody will ever make a good Superman movie again?

6 Thoughts on the First Season of Arrow

It’s still wild to believe that we have a real, legitimate, live action Batman TV show on the air. Granted, it stars Green Arrow, but beggars can’t be choosers. I kid, I kid. Arrow is a pretty awesome show. The previous superhero show on the CW, Smallville, was more about Superman as a teen heartthrob than Superman as Superman. So it’s simply fantastic that we have a show about a dark, gritty superhero vigilante who fights crime, deals with entertaining drama and doesn’t shy away from costumes, sidekicks and evil super-villain plots to destroy the city with an earthquake machine.

You could put an eye out with that…oh

I’m not sure how to review TV shows. I reviewed the first episode of Arrow, but I have neither the time nor energy to review each and every episode. That sounds exhausting. But I’d still like to talk to you guys and gals about Arrow. So I decided that the best thing to do would be to review the entire first season as a List of Six. And here we are: 6 thoughts on the first season of Arrow.

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Full Batman: Arkham Origins Trailer

Remember last week when I posted the first teaser trailer for Batman: Arkham Origins, and it was pretty much just a short, well-animated fight between Batman and Deathstroke? Well now the first full trailer is out, and it’s basically just a long, well-animated fight between Batman and Deathstroke.

Not that I’m complaining. It’s very well animated. And it features Deadshot and Black Mask, so yay for that. But honestly, it doesn’t show any of the actual game. And nothing in that trailer says ‘Origins’ to me. That could simply be the trailer for a game set at any point in Batman’s career. When did they go back in time to his early days for this story? Was that the only way they could think to bring the Joker back? Are they that desperate to use the Joker again?

Oh well, again, I’m far from complaining. This should be an awesome game. Also, apparently there will be a pre-order bonus that lets you play as Deathstroke. I’m definitely going to get that.

Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 5/18/13

It’s taken me long enough, but I think I’m finally going to start using the .5 in my ratings system. My current 5/5 rating is needlessly complex, what with the words and exclamation marks that probably only make sense in my head. I want to clear things up a little and give myself a little more leeway in terms of classifying comics. Because there are a lot of comics this week that were better than ‘alright’ but I wouldn’t say they were particularly ‘good’. And the basic gist of my review scheme is just me thinking about how I would describe a comic’s quality to someone in one word.

1 – Terrible
1.5 – Very Bad
2 – Bad
2.5 – Pretty Bad
3 – Alright
3.5 – Pretty Good
4 – Good
4.5 – Very Good
5 – Great!

I hope this makes a little more sense. If it doesn’t, please let me know. I haven’t heard any complaints about my ratings system yet, but I want you guys and gals to let me know if I’m not making any sense or could do something better. You’re my readers and the best ones available for giving me feedback. So please don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments.

That being said, it’s a pretty good week for comics. There are one or two gems in my pile, and a few that were mostly so-so. A lot of this week’s comics were just moving the story along, getting us through to the next chapter, and that’s fine. But it’s not overly compelling. But then there are also issues like Wolverine and the X-Men #29, which has the most fun I think anyone has ever had designing a possible alternate future for the X-Men. Jason Aaron must have holed up in his office all day just thinking up wacky character references and one-off gags to make, and they’re all a heck of a lot of fun. Wolverine and The X-Men easily wins Comic Book of the Week.

I know some of my readers at Wolverine and the X-Men haters, but for me, this issue really brought back some of the heart and energy that I enjoyed at the start of the series.

Comic Reviews: Age of Ultron #8, Batwoman #20, FF #7, Nightwing #20, Red Hood and the Outlaws #20, Wolverine and the X-Men #29, and Wonder Woman #20.

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