Day of the Doctor Trailer!
The Doctor Who 50th anniversary episode is right around the corner, and now they’ve finally put out a sweet trailer!
It’s a fun trailer, though I think they could have done a lot more. This is Matt Smith and David Tennant meeting each other for the first time! They could have done soooo much more with that scene. Especially since the two of them became BFFs on set.
Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 11/9/13
Welcome back to another round of reviews, Henchboys and Henchgirls! We’ve got a pretty standard week of books, though personal favorite Captain Marvel makes a big return after months of being buried in crossovers and tie-ins. Of course, now the comic goes on hiatus for four months, because, as always, we can’t have nice things.
But at least Forever Evil, Green Lantern and Mighty Avengers are all pretty entertaining, and we’ve got the debut of Amazing X-Men #1! No doubt Nightcrawler fans are bursting at the seams to see him come back from the dead. Personally, I’m just wondering why this story needed a whole new superfluous X-Men book.
Comic Book of the Week goes to the pretty great Captain Marvel #17. Don’t stay gone for too long, Carol!
Everybody loves a good butt joke
Comic Reviews: Amazing X-Men #1, Captain Marvel #17, Forever Evil #3, Green Lantern #25 and Mighty Avengers #3.
New World of Warcraft Expansion Revealed – Warlords of Draenor
The moment I get out, they drag me back in! I’ve been Warcraft free for a few months now, but here already comes the next expansion!
Personally, I didn’t care much for what I see in that trailer. For those of you who don’t know, Draenor is the ancient homeworld of the orcs and draenei, two of the game’s playable races. But Draenor was destroyed and exists in the game now as Outland, a barren wasteland on the other side of the Dark Portal. So it looks like this new game is going to feature time travel to some degree.
But it’s not going to feature any new playable races or classes. Basically it just looks like we’re going to get a bunch of new quests and places to visit, and considering I mostly play WoW for the lore, this expansion might not be for me. Though I do like the idea of improved character models. Still, I’ll keep my eye on things to see where they go.
Review: Batman: Arkham Origins
He is the terror that flaps in the night! He is the hang nail that annoys the finger of crime! He! Is! Batman! And wouldn’t you know it, he’s back for a threequel prequel in the Batman: Arkham series, which I think is safe to call the greatest superhero video game series of all time. Batman: Arkham Origins once again puts us deep into the mind and fists of the Dark Knight with an awesome story, a bigger playground and even a new multiplayer mode. But things are a little different this third time around. Original series developer Rocksteady is gone, replaced by Warner Bros. Montreal. The change isn’t noticeable, though, because Warner Bros. Montreal does not fix what isn’t broken – for good or ill.
Batman: Arkham Origins doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it just gives us more of that awesome Arkham action we love.
Game Rating: 9/10 – Great!
Batman: Arkham Origins has been our for two weeks now, and I know my review is late to the game, but I wanted to get my thoughts down anyway. This gives me the opportunity to reflect on what other reviewers are saying, and a lot of them are complaining that Arkham Origins doesn’t do anything new to move the series forward in any significant way. I completely agree with that statement, but I don’t think that makes for a bad game. Far from it. Warner Bros. Montreal took everything that worked in the previous two games – Arkham Asylum and Arkham City – and just keeps the ball rolling.
Batman: Arkham Origins follows the same fun rules of sequels to superhero movies. The first games established the world and the mechanics, and Arkham Origins gets to play around in them. And considering how much fun it is to play around in the Arkham games, what more could we really ask for? How does one improve upon perfection? Just throw a new coat of paint on it, add in a few neat Easter Eggs, and it’s off to the punchfest!
Join me after the jump for my full review. There will be plenty of SPOILERS for the game’s storyline, which, personally, I consider to be the best of the series so far.
And So, the Experiment That Was Two X-Forces Comes to a Close
I have long raised a questioning eyebrow to Marvel Comics’ plan over the past year to publish two separate X-Force titles: Uncanny X-Force and Cable and X-Force. Both are about a team of renegade X-Men fighting evil on the fringes of superherodom, and both feature a random assortment of characters, many of whom didn’t necessarily have anything to do with X-Force. It seemed that Marvel was only concerned with wringing as much money out of the brand name as they could.
Well now it seems that grand experiment is coming to an end. Marvel is cancelling both titles and combining only some of the characters into a new adjectiveless X-Force, launching in February.
What went wrong? Who can say. Were the titles selling well? Did Marvel wise up and realize the world doesn’t need two separate X-Force titles? Was nobody enjoying Puck?
These are questions that only those in the know can properly answer, and Marvel isn’t returning my calls. I tried reading both comics but gave up after an issue or two because I just didn’t see the point. On the one hand, they were both made well enough. But I didn’t care about the characters or the plots. That’s on me, not on them.
Well Marvel and USA Today are all manner of excited to tell you about the new series, which will be written by new writer Simon Spurrier, with art by Rock He-Kim. Based on the interview, Spurrier is going to take X-Force back to basics so that they’re simply a black-ops mutant team doing black-ops type things.
“What I’ve taken from those early X-Force episodes is a take-no-prisoners attitude towards action,” Spurrier says. “But I like to think I’ve injected a little post-millennial sophistication, too. “This isn’t a steroidal macho-fest: It’s a slick, nasty, oh-so-grim beast that’ll cut your throat and blow up your headquarters before you even know it’s there.”
Of the more than a dozen characters in Uncanny X-Force and Cable and X-Force, only three are going to make this new team: Cable, Psylocke and Fantomex. Though Spurrier does suggest that other characters will probably pop in from time to time.
Of special note is a new member: Marrow! And since I once proclaimed Marrow my second favorite X-Woman of all time, you better believe I’m going to pick up this book just for her.
On Marrow, Spurrier compared her to Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica, and said:
“She’s a fighter too damaged by own experiences to ever really fit in,” Spurrier says. “She’s one of those brilliant characters which the X-books handle so well who can’t rightly be described as a hero or a villain: a product of her own tragedy.”
So because of Marrow, I’ll definitely be buying this book. What does everybody else think?
Henchman-4-Hire 