Who Needs More Thor Movies?
Why make more Thor movies when we can just have comedy shorts? The first one was genius, and a second one is going to be part of the Doctor Strange DVD release this month! Here’s a brief tease/clip!
Hilarious! I want more and more of these for the entire build-up for Thor: Ragnarok. But they may raise the hype too much for the actual release.
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Why Does Batman Name His New Team the ‘Justice League of America’?
DC has relaunched a new iteration of the Justice League of America this past week and I’m a little confused. According to Justice League of America Rebirth #1, Batman forms the team to be a grounded, more human-focused group of superheroes as opposed to the god-like regular Justice League.
Batman is a big fan of The Flash TV show
We all know the branding reason why the new comic is called ‘Justice League of America’, but after reading this prologue issue, I’m wondering what the in-story reason is for Batman being so patriotic in naming his new team. When has Batman ever been a flag-waving character?
The Rebirth issue is a prologue about Batman going out and recruiting Black Canary, Lobo, the Ray, the Atom, Vixen and Killer Frost to form his new team. This isn’t the first time Batman has formed his own, more grounded Justice League. Any comic book scholar worth her salt would see this as an obvious Batman and the Outsiders-style group.
JLA is definitely the name he picks
But no, it’s not called ‘Batman and the Outsiders’. For reasons that go unexplained, Batman just copies of the name of the regular Justice League and tags ‘of America’ at the end, as if his team is only going to fight bad guys in the continental United States. It makes zero sense.
Especially when you remember that there already was a ‘Justice League of America’ in the New 52 continuity, which I’m pretty sure still applies in the Rebirth era. That team had a reason for using ‘of America’ in their name. They were legitimately government-based.
Remember them?
Has Batman forgotten about them? Is her purposefully co-opting the name for his new squad? What reason could that possibly serve?
Batman is a superhero who knows how branding works. And he’s clearly put a lot of thought into this team — hence why he’s recruited complete newbies Ray and Atom, and why he recruited Lobo for a grounded, more human-focused group of superheroes. So it just doesn’t make any sense why Batman, of all superheroes, would call this team the ‘Justice League of America’ instead of literally anything else.
But I suppose even Batman recognizes that ‘The Outsiders’ just isn’t marketable.
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Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews -2/11/17
The superhero movie bombardment has begun! This year is going to be bursting at the seams with new superhero movies, and The LEGO Batman Movie has kicked things off with aplomb! It’s a super fun film and a great celebration of Batman! I’m going to put my review into next week’s List of Six, so stay tuned.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any Batman comics to review this week. Granted, about half a dozen different Batman-focused comics came out, but I don’t read them well enough to add them to the review pile. So you’re only getting fun Marvel Comics this week! Including the Comic Book of the Week, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl!
Old school crime fighting
The latest issue of Inhumans vs. X-Men also came out this week, but it was kind of a non-issue. A bunch of stuff happened that will move the story along, sure, but none of it had much thematic or dramatic weight. The story just moved along, but at least Marvel didn’t make any more new blunders to vilify Cyclops.
Comic Reviews: Jessica Jones #5, Ms. Marvel #15, Power Man and Iron Fist #13, Unworthy Thor #4 and Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #17.
Runaways Already Disappoints Me
I don’t ask for a lot. But no sooner do I make a list of the things I want to see in the upcoming Runaways TV show than Marvel Studios violates one of my requests! I was hoping that Marvel would recast actor Linda Louise Duan as Tina Minoru after she had a brief, mostly cut cameo in the Doctor Strange movie. I thought it would be a neat bit of continuity.
Instead, Marvel has cast actor Brittany Ishibashi as Tina Minoru in their upcoming show.
I’m sure she’s fine
You can check out the entire casting list for the villainous Pride at TVline.
I’m sure Ishibashi will do a fine job, but man, I was really hoping for that awesome movie to TV casting continuity!
Maybe Duan should fire her agent.
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Tim Drake Works to Reclaim His Title as Best Robin Ever
Now that his stint in the Teen Titans is over, and even though he’s believed to be dead, Tim Drake is still taking steps to reclaim his title as the Best Robin Ever. Don’t believe that’s true? Just ask noted Batmanologist Chris Sims. Simple as that.
But when Tim was rebooted into Red Robin and leader of the Teen Titans for the New 52, a lot of that energy and magic went away. Suddenly he didn’t have much to do with Batman overall. And now everybody’s calling Damian Wayne the Best Robin ever. Please.
Fortunately, even in death, Tim is around to set the record straight, like in this week’s new issue of Detective Comics!
Also, Redbird is back!
It’s all leading towards this year’s big Batman stories, in which the not-dead Tim Drake will hopefully play a big role. But until then, join me after the jump for how Tim proves he’s the best, better than all the rest.
SPOILERS for Detective Comics #950.
