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Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 6/24/17

Woo boy, do we have a wallop of a column today. As I’ve whined about in the past, all of my favorite comics tend to have the habit of coming out in the same week. Or maybe I’m just reading too many comics. Whatever the case may be, I went all out and have reviewed nearly a dozen comics this week!

We’ve got Power Rangers, we’ve got a new Spider-Man comic, we’ve got Luke Cage and Iceman, and I tried to throw in more DC comics, like Batman, Harley Quinn and hopefully the start of my Aquaman coverage. Thankfully, there were some real gems this week.

But the standout, as has been said numerous times, is the new issue of Silver Surfer. This consistent Comic Book of the Week is going to break my damn heart.

Surfer Dawn Sad 01

I almost jumped back into reviewing The Mighty Thor now that the Shi’ar story arc is over, but this week was a standalone issue to introduce The War Thor…which, I guess, is similar to The War Doctor? It was a fine issue, and I suppose this new concept could be fun, but there were just way too many comics on my review pile already.

Comic Reviews: Aquaman #25, Batman #25, Batwoman #4, Iceman #2, Luke Cage #2, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #16, Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #1, Silver Surfer #12 and The Wild Storm #5. 

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Calling It: Justice League is Gonna Stink

The first proper trailer for the Justice League movie arrived on Saturday, and while the rest of the Internet seems blown away, I have arrived at one conclusion: this movie is gonna stink.

The trailer looks exactly like Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Heck, this trailer looks worse than the trailers for those movies. I remember being excited about those trailers.

Justice League looks like just another dark, joyless affair. All people seem to care about is seeing their favorite superheroes in cool poses. But as we keep seeing, that doesn’t make for a good movie. Most of this trailer is just the heroes fighting faceless henchmen. We don’t even get a sense of the villains or the story or the scope of anything. It’s all just gray-colored action posing.

There’s one joke at the end, but the comedic timing is way off.

So I’m calling it right now: Justice League is going to be another dreary, poorly paced, over-stylized action movie that does not save the DC Cinematic Universe.

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Hey Look, It’s That There Justice League!

A picture of the united Justice League movie team hit the Internet over the weekend, and I’m gonna share it with the lot of you. I’m just that cool of a guy.

jl-movie-big-01

Finally, some good Aquaman

Looks like a neat picture, but is, of course, all dark, gritty and really gloomy. This isn’t very heroic-looking at all. But this is going to be our Justice League, so all we can do is hope and wait.

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Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 6/11/16

Huh, what a week. After a few comic weeks full of great and wonderful comics, we’ve kind of landed on a thudder of a week. Some fine comics came out, some enjoyable, some not so much. I read a bunch and generally had a good time. But this was kind of an off week.

Aquaman and Wonder Woman got the Rebirth treatment, but neither issue wowed me in any way. Flash has started Rebirth as well, but for some reason, I still can’t bring myself to buy a Flash comic. It’s fascinating to me how few DC superheroes I’m actually invested in. Where’s Robin Rebirth? I guess Tim Drake’s revival in Detective Comics will have to do!

But it wasn’t all bad news this week! We’ve got the first issue of the Gotham Academy/Lumberjanes crossover! It’s not as amazing as I’d hoped, but it’s still a sign of hopefully great things to come! And it definitely picks up Comic Book of the Week!

Something wonderful!

Now we just need a Lumberjanes/Unbeatable Squirrel Girl crossover and I’ll be all set!

Comic Reviews: Aquaman Rebirth #1, Detective Comics #934, Kaijumax #2, Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy #1 and Wonder Woman Rebirth #1.

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Review: Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice

I’m not really sure what I think about Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. I can’t bring myself to say it’s a bad movie, because it’s competently made and sometimes enjoyable. But I can’t bring myself to say it’s a good movie, because it’s utterly joyless and, at times, terribly made. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is the Transformers of superhero movies. It’s a big, CGI mess of darkness and explosions, but sometimes it’s fun seeing these characters on screen, and it’s going to make all the money.

Movie Rating: 5/10 – Alright.

At the very least, it’s kind of cool to see these superheroes on the big screen together. Part of me did get excited to see Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman standing together against adversity (even if we’d already seen it in the trailers). But another part of me wished the movie was more fun. BvS is a dark, drab, gritty production that puts even the Christopher Nolan Batman movies to shame. This film is the exact opposite of the successful and wonderful Marvel movies. There’s no charm, no joy, no heroics and, most important, no fun.

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is the grimdark superhero trend taken to its ultimate conclusion. If you like your superheroes as grimdark and serious as possible, this might be the movie for you. But I would have liked something more enjoyable.

Join me after the jump for the full review and lots of SPOILERS.

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