Category: 2006
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I wonder if Plastic Man producers Tom Kenny and Andy Suriano ever saw “Ren and Stimpy.” It’s not bad, just highly derivative of forty years of other cartoons without ever getting appropriate credit. Suriano takes enough time to put cute kitten pictures in a community service office (Plastic Man’s base of operations), but not enough…
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Dell’s back on inks. There aren’t as many close ups so it doesn’t get too bad, but it’s not great. The faces are too sharp. It’s mostly an action issue, with cuts to Nick Fury and Tony Stark talking in exposition to explain the comic to the reader. Ultimate Vulture is a waste of time,…
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I think John Dell took over inking. It has his name on the cover but not the interior credits, but the art looks totally different. There’s a long scene with May ranting about how much she hates Spider-Man (weak scene for her) and she looks totally different. As for the rest of the story, the…
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I knew Emilio Estevez directed Bobby, but I didn’t know he also wrote it. From the dialogue and the construction of conversations, I assumed it was a playwright. There’s a certain indulgence to the dialogue, which some actors utilize well (Anthony Hopkins) and some not (Elijah Wood). Estevez’s an exceptionally confident filmmaker here. He changes…
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One Rat Short is a story of chance and star-crossed lovers. It’s also the perfect example of good realistic CG animation. Director Weil and his animators revel in their medium and utilize it to the fullest. A New York sewer rat happens upon an open Cheetos bag and follows it through a roof-top fan into…
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In the end credits, Pressure refers to itself as a film (by Lena Dunham). However, it’s a lot more of a video by Dunham. Given it’s from 2006, Dunham and her camera operator, Hannah Lesser, don’t even have the excuse they shot it on a cellphone to make up for the shaky camera and incompetent…
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Black Book is a film of convenience; whether it’s a negative to further the plot or a simple positive like there being a nonsensical chute to allow easy entry into a basement, the film keeps oiling its gears. It’s not predictable—in fact, it hinges on being unpredictable (Black Book owes a lot to the heist…
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Almost all of Poseidon is extremely predictable. Even if it didn’t rip off every blockbuster since 1995 for one detail or plot twist or another, it would be extremely predictable. There is one big departure into unpredictability and it’s so jarring, for a while I maintained interested hoping screenwriter Mark Protosevich would try it again.…
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One has to wonder… if everyone wrote Dr. Strange and Wong as well as Vaughan does here, wouldn’t Doctor Strange be the most popular book on the market? Instead of one without an ongoing, I mean. Vaughan comes up with a compelling story, sure, but the selling point is his dialogue and the character relationships.…
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It’s interesting how Morgan finishes the series—it’s kind of setting up Civil War only with Dubya as the bad guy. I guess Marvel lost the cajones. He also runs out of space, hinting the character he wasted about fifteen pages on throughout the series will be a threat next time, not this time. And there…
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It’s not an all-action issue, instead Morgan creates the all-torture issue. Well, okay, he’s got a scene with the blond Black Widow saving Daredevil and another one with Black Widow’s sidekick, but basically the entire issue is just Natasha either being tortured or about to be tortured. Oddly, the torture isn’t what drives the comic…
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Casting Paul Giamatti is a great idea, except when you get someone even more dynamic than him (it’s difficult, but possible) in a supporting role. Especially if it’s just Giamatti’s voice and you’re putting him up against David Hyde Pierce. Giamatti does fine for a while in The Amazing Screw-On Head, but then Pierce shows…
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I think I just remembered how this series ends. I think it’s with a big, unresolvable cliffhanger. Unfortunate. Anyway, this issue’s pretty good. It’s an all-action issue—Natasha goes and gets her sidekick from the South American work farm. There’s also another big Daredevil scene with Nick Fury—Matt beats up a bunch of guys—and it’s where…
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Reading the scene where Nick Fury gets tortured by a Bush flunky, it’s clear why comics should never get too involved with politics, especially not superhero comics. It’s Nick Fury… shouldn’t Captain America bust in and save him? And if Captain America isn’t busting in and saving him, isn’t the reason why more important than…
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In this issue, Gillen introduces time travel. Well, it’s not exactly time travel and I shouldn’t say Gillen introduces it. It’s basically the time travel device out of Somewhere in Time. Has anyone else noticed I keep coming up with movie references to describe plot points in Phonogram? It’s possibly because Gillen doesn’t have a…
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Gillen describes Phonogram—in his pointless, self-indulgent essay at the end—as “modern fantasy.” Meaning, presumably, there really are ghosts of people who aren’t supposed to be dead and the protagonist is really haunted by an ex-girlfriend who’s become “the goddess.” She possesses people and sends him on missions. It’s kind of like a lamer Sixth Sense,…
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Calling Phonogram pretentious would be a little like calling the sun hot when asked for its exact temperature in Kelvin. Between the endless glossary (which features some of Gillen’s best writing in the issue) and the story itself, Phonogram reads a little like that friend who knows oh so much more about music than you…
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I think this issue is Bunn’s first all action issue. I guess it’s not all action, but the second half is a long action sequence (a gunfight) punctuated by a mob shootout. The opening is some more weirdness going on with the demons and Eddie talking to the Worm. Bunn’s dialogue makes the Worm sequence…
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Hurtt gets really gross this issue. Not so much in the first half. The first half is all demons and bigger demons and Eddie being all beat up. The second half has a multi-eyed demon with all his eyes torn out wrapped in barbed wire. Then there’s the Worm, who Bunn first mentioned last issue.…
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It’s amazing how much Bunn fits into this issue. It really shows what a comic can do without ads to worry about. He does a cinematic opening of the protagonist—Eddie—being resurrected. Then he has Eddie meet up with one gangster (all the major gangsters are demons, not sure Bunn ever bothers explaining it), then another,…
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This prequel slash teaser slash ashcan ran as a backup in other Oni titles and online. I’ve read The Damned before and… although there’s some nice Hurtt art here (there’s a double page spread, not a lot of action, but the art is beautiful), it’s not a very good preview. Bunn sort of introduces the…
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There’s no director or writer credited for You Will Believe and without a host, the “documentary” sort of ambles through the history of the Superman film series. Given the contentious history, it goes far in bringing everyone into it… but it doesn’t actually ask any questions. There’s only one moment when it directly refutes something…
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Well, there certainly are a lot of developments here. There’s a super villain introduced and he’s, no shock, a psychotic. The girl seduces the brainiac protagonist, who’s spent the first part of the issue thinking he needs to think things through better. Oh, and the cute old man the protagonist looks after–he’s got alzheimer’s and…
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I’m still not enthusiastic. Even though I don’t remember the specifics of the events, even though I’m sort of fresh reading it, I don’t really care at all. I remember it ends terribly so going through the issue, I’m finding myself concentrating on things besides the story. First and foremost, the artwork. Phillips is mostly…
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I remember thinking about early seventies Springsteen the first time I read Criminal and I did again this time. Brubaker’s opening narration makes some pretty clear references to Springsteen and then it disappears. I don’t think it ever comes back, but it’s right there on the second page. I always get hung up on whether…
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After opening with a nice fight scene–it starts with just Jimmy, then brings everyone in–the issue moves to some Atlas investigating. The book’s title still doesn’t make any sense in the context of the content, which is kind of awesome. I wish I remembered what I thought it meant at this point during my first…
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Derek, the SHIELD agent, narrates this issue. The result is a more procedural issue, like Parker is trying to keep the reader a few steps removed from the principle characters. He does it a few times, more obviously, in the narrative, like when Venus says hello to a changed Bob. A little about the art.…
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Coming back to the first Atlas series is a bigger treat than I thought it would be. I don’t remember much about it, but I certainly didn’t remember Parker uses Gorilla Man as the narrator for the first issue. It’s a nice entry to the setup because–strangely enough–Ken is the most human member of the…
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Here’s what I can’t figure out–there’s this interspecies kiss between Robocop and Lewis in this one and then Robocop goes rogue, like some kind of vigilante–why the hell do Frank Miller and Steven Grant and the boys at Avatar think someone without nuts–without sex organs of any kind–is going to be getting all passionate on…
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Oh, good grief. The Prestige is in IMDb’s top 250 movies? It’s so bad, I’m actually going to say something nice about Christopher Nolan in a second here. I’ve never heard of source novelist Christopher Priest and no one I know has ever mentioned him to me, so I’m guessing he’s pretty godawful, which probably…
The Stop Button 