Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 1/14/17
Greetings and various salutations, good readers. I come to you today with another pile of comic book reviews, some good, most OK, and all worth my time. Comics are good like that.
We’ve got everything from Batman to Ms. Marvel to Captain America to the Mighty Thor this week, once again reveling in the fact that I am clearly too much of a Marvel fanboy for my own good.
For example, did you know it is Squirrel Girl’s 25th anniversary? I did not, but the comic book says so, and I’m going to take it at it’s word! Comic Book of the Week goes to the Squirrel Girl anniversary issue!
We’re everywhere!
This week also featured a crossover between the Justice League and the Power Rangers, which was just spiffy, but I didn’t get around to reviewing it. The comic does give us the team up we never knew we wanted: Batman and the Pink Power Ranger. That’s just quality entertainment right there.
Comic Reviews: Detective Comics #948, Jessica Jones #4, Mighty Thor #15, Ms. Marvel #14, Power Man and Iron Fist #12, Steve Rogers: Captain America #9 and Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #17.
Ben Affleck Needs to Up His Trolling Game
I don’t know how much pop culture news you read online everyday, but I surf a pretty healthy number of websites. And over the past few weeks, or even months at this point, I’ve started to notice a pretty troubling and hugely annoying trend: every single word out of Ben Affleck’s mouth about his upcoming Batman movie launches an avalanche of identical headlines across the Internet. If this guy’s fart sounded like a Joker laugh, we would have to head for the hills.
I could link to a bunch of the articles to prove my point, but io9 has a pretty healthy summation. Thanks io9!
It’s reached the point that I, in all honesty, just want Ben Affleck to start trolling the heck out of the Internet.
Did he know what he was signing up for?
I don’t know why Affleck is doing so much press. Is he promoting a different movie? But it seems like every single day he just happens to mention the Batman movie to somebody, and then everybody else posts huge clickbait headlines about whatever random comment he made. Is he looking forward to directing? Is he hinting that he won’t be directing? Does he have a script? What are his thoughts on the costume?
The avalanche is endless. And yeah, I understand how clickbait and Internet headlines work, and I understand that these websites need content. But jeez louise, this is getting to be a bit much. We’re still only in early pre-production, people!
I think the solution to all of this is that Affleck should just start making stuff up. He should release a press release on one day and give a release date for the movie. Then he should come out with a new one the next day saying the project has been cancelled. Then just keep talking about it like it’s back on. He should announce that Danny DeVito will be reprising his role as the Penguin, alongside Nicki Minaj as the Riddler and Matt Damon as Robin. Announce an Adam West cameo! Nothing is true; everything is permitted!
And in this way, Ben Affleck could become a pretty good Joker.
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Everybody Wants to Kill Bruce 2
The Internet is a big, great glorious thing. Case in point: someone made a sequel to Everybody Wants to Kill Bruce. This is a tightly edited mash-up of several different action movies where everybody is trying to kill Bruce Willis.
Again, I say to you that the Internet is insane. Kudos to Pierre-Alexandre Chauvat for the cut.
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6 Wartiest Frog Superheroes
Animal-themed superheroes and villains are a funny thing. Sometimes they’re really kind of silly, and other times they’re arguably the two most popular heroes at their companies — I’m looking at you, Batman and Spider-Man! So what makes a good animal superhero? How does one even catch on? And why aren’t there more?
Also, doesn’t everybody love frogs?
Ribbit
I’ve done lists for bird superheroes, cat superheroes, dog superheroes, rabbit superheroes, bear superheroes and more, and I love scouring the Internets and comic books to find the best ones! This time, I’ve decided to take a look at the wartiest, slimiest, lilypaddiest frog and toad dudes in the funny pages!
Also, I’m calling dibs on creating a comic book villain based on the dreaded Surinam Toad. Don’t Google it!
We Are Totally Getting a Ben Reilly as Scarlet Spider Comic Book
The inevitable is now confirmed: the original Scarlet Spider will be getting his own comic again. Right now, Ben Reilly has come back from the dead in Clone Conspiracy as the semi-villainous Jackal. The story isn’t over, but Marvel is totally cool about revealing that he’ll survive the story and come out the other side as the star of Ben Reilly: The Scarlet Spider.
His costume isn’t very good.
What is up with that Spidercide-esque mouth?
It also looks worse than the last guy to star in a Scarlet Spider comic, Kaine. That black and red costume was the bomb.
Speaking of whom, Kaine will also be a major character in the new comic, so that’s awesome. I find myself liking Kaine more than Ben these days. I look forward to seeing the two of them butting heads in the new comic!
The series was announced on Comic Book Resources. You can read the brief interview with writer Peter David, whom I like, and artist Mark Bagley, whom I also like. This is a pretty awesome Spider-Man creative team.
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