Everything Wrong with the Desolation of Smaug!
Man, those Cinema Sins folks really didn’t like Desolation of Smaug. Personally, I rather enjoyed the film. I didn’t care for the ending being such an insane cliffhanger, but we’re already closing in on next December, so it won’t be long now before that cliffhanger just doesn’t matter anymore.
Did you hear they want to change the name of the final film to The Hobbit: Into the Fire? As opposed to The Hobbit: There and Back Again? ‘Into the Fire’ would be such a dumb name. ‘There and Back Again’ has such a fun, whimsical feel to it, which I think would better serve the franchise in the long run.
Robin Watch: Robin Rising: Omega!
Big news on the Robin front today! DC Comics and writer Peter J. Tomasi revealed in an interview with the LA Times that Robin is definitely coming back this year for Batman’s 75th anniversary!
But which Robin?
Today’s news seems to point to a resurrected Damian Wayne – but doesn’t confirm it one way or another.
Zombie Robin?
Tomasi will be writing a one-shot called Robin Rising: Omega on July 16, which will kick off the finale of his ongoing ‘Search for Robin’ storyline. That issue will be immediately followed by Batman and Robin #33, returning to the series’ original title. When the last Robin, Damian Wayne, died last year, the series Batman and Robin played a game of teaming up Batman with a bunch of other heroes and villains. They went through everything from Batman and Nightwing to Batman and Aquaman. Throughout the series, Batman has been on a quest to try and resurrect his dead son, Damian – though first he has to get Damian’s body back from the madman, R’as al Ghul!
Will Batman succeed? Maybe. I guess that’s what Robin Rising: Omega is going to be about. Right now, Tomasi is only teasing the outcome of this new one-shot.
In the interview, he said:
Let’s just say that we are most definitely bringing back a Robin for Batman’s 75th anniversary. Batman needs a Robin and Robin needs a Batman, so what more needs to be said except that “Robin Rises: Omega,” drawn by the stupendous Andy Kubert, starts and ends with a bang and everything that occurs in this epic story all has seeds that Pat Gleason and I planted back during our first arc in “Batman and Robin: Born To Kill.”
There’s no gimmicks. We’re telling a character-centric action-adventure story that new readers can easily jump on board due to the way we constructed the opening pages of “Robin Rises: Omega” No. 1 that gives readers the ability to emotionally plug in and get up to speed without having read the series from the start of the New 52.
And it goes without saying, of course, that anyone following the book from our first issue will see that this has all been an organic uber-story and that all the moments they’ve spent with the characters will pay off as Pat, Andy and I serve our only purpose, which is to honor the actual title of the book so everyone can be invested in the roller coaster ride whether you’re new to the party or already scrunched up comfortably in the corner.
Tomasi isn’t coming right out and saying that Batman will succeed in resurrecting Damian, only that they’re ‘bringing back a Robin’ for the anniversary, emphasis on the ‘a’.
Heck, maybe they’re not even giving Batman a new Robin so much as just playing around with Robin. I don’t know what’s going to happen.
Apparently it involves Apokolips
Personally, I don’t want them to resurrect Damian. I think comic book resurrections are a little too silly these days, especially if you’re going to do it within a year of the character dying in the first place. If DC wanted Damian to stay Robin, why not just tell Grant Morrison not to kill him?
I’ll admit that Damian was growing on me as a character towards the end, especially in his partnership with Dick Grayson, but bringing Damian back from the dead just so he can be Robin again strikes the wrong chord with me. Especially when DC has been teasing a new, female Robin.
I firmly believe that DC needs to create a new Robin to go along with the New 52. DC needs to create another Tim Drake, someone who can be a popular Robin for another 20+ years. Damian is turning into too much of a stunt character. Plus, what’s the point of threatening Robin’s life if all Batman has to do is resurrect them within a year?
Of course, if they don’t make Damian Robin again, that leaves Carrie Kelley available in Tomasi’s comic. Of the various female candidates, Carrie is the one Tomasi introduced and is writing about. But I want Carrie to be the new Robin less than I want Damian back from the dead, so I dunno what I’m supposed to do.
Just keep reading, I guess.
X-Men: Days of Future Past Tries Really Hard, One Last Time, to Get Us to Like Quicksilver
The final trailer for X-Men: Days of Future Past landed on the Internet today, and it include an extended sequence of Quicksilver in action. From everything I’ve heard about his limited role in this film, I’m fairly certain FOX is just playing up Quicksilver as much as possible to get ahead of Avengers 2. From Day One, FOX has really tried to stick it to Marvel using Quicksilver.
See for yourself.
From what I’ve read online, Quicksilver is only going to be used to help break Magneto out of prison, as you can see in that trailer. They’re not even going to reference the fact that, in the comics, Quicksilver is Magneto’s son. His parentage not going to come up in the movie. He has this one scene and then I believe he’s out of the film.
But as you can see, he’s the focal point of the final trailer.
Though something tells me that Avengers: Age of Ultron is going to win out in the end.
Personally, I think Days of Future Past could be a lot of fun, but it also looks like a lot of…everything. There’s so much stuff going on in this trailer. Dozens of new mutants, complicated time travel, Sentinels, Iceman, the joining of the two X-franchises; part of me fears this is all just going to be a hot mess.
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6 Ways to Fix Teen Titans
Teen Titans the comic book is rubbish. The team itself is pretty awesome, starring DC Comics’ teen superheroes banding together to be radical and fight bad guys. They’ve been a fan favorite super group since their inception decades ago. The Teen Titans cartoon shows on Cartoon Network are some of the most popular superhero cartoons of all time. Fans and kids love the Teen Titans.
But for reasons that still boggle my mind, DC Comics produced a very crappy Teen Titans comic.
We should have known from Day One
When DC rebooted all of their properties in 2011, they had the chance to remake Teen Titans from scratch. They could have done whatever they wanted with the series. But what they did was give it to writer Scott Lobdell, a man whose work hadn’t been popular since the 90s, and let him turn the team into an ugly, directionless mess, stuffed with weak characterization, agonizingly stiff dialogue and more bad vibes than the Legion of Doom.
It’s no surprise that Lobdell’s Teen Titans has been cancelled, with DC starting over with a new #1 issue in July. Can new writer Will Pfeifer and artist Kenneth Rocafort save this series from the gutter? Or is DC still blind when it comes to producing a quality Teen Titans comic?
According to Janelle Asselin at Comic Book Resources, DC doesn’t seem to have any idea what they’re doing – and I kind of agree with her. But I’m more than willing to put my money where my mouth is; how would I do Teen Titans differently?
Join me after the jump to see my six suggestions for making the new Teen Titans relaunch into a better comic book.
How Frozen Should Have Ended
I always love a good Iceman joke.
Though personally, I would have ended Frozen way differently. I liked the movie, sure, but what really bugged me was the romance angle. Obviously, that rich duke guy was evil; we knew it from the very first moment he appeared on screen. But for a little while, I kind of hoped he was going to be legit. His evil turn kind of comes out of nowhere. I thought for sure that Anna would end up with the rich duke and that the lumpy lumberjack guy would end up with Elsa.
But the moment the lumpy lumberjack started racing back to town with Anna, determined to get her to her ‘one true love’, the rest of the film was pretty obvious and painfully predictable. Alas, poor Frozen.
Also, what was up with the trailers having no idea what the movie was about?
Henchman-4-Hire 