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Xombi (1994) #1
There’s a way to end on a downer…. Wow. Rozum moves between science and magic this issue. The science stuff basically just uses concepts the reader is likely familiar with—nanotechnology mostly—and shows how awesome it could be. The magic is a little different. It gives Rozum a lot of room to be creative. He also… 📖
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The Unwritten (2009) #23
Carey brings the arc into port—sorry, couldn’t resist—and ends on a profound moment. Well, sort of. Tom learns the source of his power and, since it makes so much sense, it’s not surprising. Carey and Gross don’t go crazy visualizing it, showing admirable restraint. The real thing comes on the final page though, when it’s… 📖
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The Unwritten (2009) #22
It’s sort of an action issue. I think it’s got to be the fastest read so far in Unwritten’s issues, maybe because Carey doesn’t do much with any of the subplots. Tom calls the Monster (the Frankenstein Monster), who’s sort of his guide when he needs one, and figures a way out of the mess… 📖
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The Unwritten (2009) #21
Carey more than makes up for the previous issue’s weak cliffhanger with this one’s sublime one. The issue, with Tom trying to deal with being stuck in Moby-Dick while Lizzie breaks some bad news to him and he can’t seem to figure out what his father’s doing there. Meanwhile, Lizzie and Savoy meet up with… 📖
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A Knight's Tale (2001, Brian Helgeland), the extended cut
I’ve always found A Knight’s Tale’s lack of popular (or critical) success surprising. Besides the obvious–Heath Ledger when he was still doing the young Mel Gibson thing, only mixed with a more mature Gibson’s consciousness of his charm–it’s absolutely hilarious. Helgeland had a problematic relationship with Gibson, but certainly knew how to write for him… 📖
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The Unwritten (2009) #20
I think Carey just had his first misstep. It might not work out as a misstep… but he ends this issue like it’s “Quantum Leap” or something. It’s a terrible, terrible cliffhanger. The rest of the issue is pretty strong too. It opens with Tom and Lizzie, with Tom blathering on romantically and Lizzie sort… 📖
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The Unwritten (2009) #19
There’s a thread I thought Carey had resolved… the whole Savoy being a vampire being. Looks like I was wrong. I guess I just assumed Wilson Taylor knew stuff. That assumption is, apparently, quite wrong. This issue—kicking off the Melville arc—introduces a new villain. Or a possible new villain; she’s a doll maker and she’s… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #0
What a goofy way to launch a series. This zero issue of Xombi—introducing the character—doesn’t just take place during a crossover, it also takes place eleven issues into the regular series run. Except the series hasn’t started its regular run yet. John Rozum explains it all in the letters page, but avoids mentioning how difficult… 📖
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Boxing Gloves (1929, Robert A. McGowan)
It’s hard not to like Boxing Gloves’s central sequence—a boxing match between Norman ‘Chubby’ Chaney and Joe Cobb—it’s two little fat kids in enormous boxing gloves duking it out. It’s also the sequence where McGowan shows the most directorial zeal. Unfortunately, it’s the place where the short’s particular sound situation (it’s a silent converted to… 📖
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The Unwritten (2009) #18
No way, Carey answers some questions. Without raising new ones. Well, okay, I guess he sort of hints at some new ones—we get to see the council of evil anti-readers for the first time. They look like Fox News personalities, but they’re meeting in a cave and have secret evil rituals. Okay, I guess I’m… 📖
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Homeland: The Illustrated History of the State of Israel, 2nd ed. (2008)
My history B.A. informs my first observation about Homeland—writer Marv Wolfman identifies a disputed point in the history of the formation of Israel as a state—and I appreciated it. Wolfman takes the rockier road. A lot of Homeland does take the rockier road, working very hard to be not to be jingoistic. The knocks one… 📖
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Green Zone (2010, Paul Greengrass)
Most of Green Zone is the best film I’ve seen about the Iraq war, simply because Greengrass is often satisfied with letting the film just be concrete situations (he opens with Matt Damon and his crew having to deal with a sniper and it establishes a great tone). However, Green Zone isn’t just a war… 📖
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Sci-Spy (2002) #6
Are there any real surprises? Nope. Moench doesn’t even resolve the questions he raised last issue. It’s not a particularly good issue of the series—though far from the worst in terms of Moench’s expository dialogue. He’s got a bunch of it here too, but since it’s the last issue, he gets some leeway. There’s a… 📖
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Sci-Spy (2002) #5
Now, how’s Moench going to get himself—and the cast—out of the not insubstantial hole he dug for them? Creatively. I mean, it’s sort of simple—kiss, kiss, bang, bang simple—but it works. Gulacy and Palmiotti eventually have a lot to do this issue, but even at the open… they do well making the unbelievable seem somewhat… 📖
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Sci-Spy (2002) #4
Coming off the highpoint of last issue, it shouldn’t be a surprise this one has problems. Moench spends the first half of it unveiling the “true” ground situation. Loads of expository dialogue, but some really nice flashback summary art from Gulacy and Palmiotti. Not sure what’s up with the weightlifting fetishizing, but whatever…. Then Moench… 📖
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Sci-Spy (2002) #3
Interesting. Moench pulls out some surprises this issue—not simple ones either. The issue opens with something like a Raiders of the Lost Ark homage and it works. The dialogue’s still kind of weak, leftovers from last issue, but Gulacy and Palmiotti make the action pretty. Then we get romance and humor. Moench comes up with… 📖
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Sci-Spy (2002) #2
This issue initially brings out more of the espionage angle. The protagonists—Starchild and Nile—team up (forced into the situation by their boss) and head off into what sounds like a spy mission. They have to impersonate terrorists and discover what’s going on with these robotic monsters eating the good planets piece by piece. Two things… 📖
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Rendezvous (1976, Claude Lelouch)
Okay, I’m not the only one who wondered if Rendezvous might have been dubbed. The short is a high speed drive through Paris—sometimes the pace seems questionable, like Lelouch was able to speed it up (which seems unlikely in most parts, because other cars move at a normal pace) and the traffic patterns are odd.… 📖
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Sci-Spy (2002) #1
Sci-Spy is kind of confusing. Moench and Gulacy have done sci-fi before, but here they’re sort of suffocating the reader with all the ground situation information. The protagonist has two sidekicks. One is his supervisor, a computer named Motherbank. In addition to being his boss, the computer is also his mother as it found him… 📖
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The Unwritten (2009) #17
The playful, “Choose Your Own Adventure,” aspect to this issue is stunning. It’s not the point of the comic—in fact, in a stream of consciousness sort of way, reading it straight through makes more sense (otherwise, why would Carey have ended the issue on the final pages)—but it’s a stunning device. This issue we get… 📖
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Swamp Thing (1972) #24
Poor Alec Holland… he finally regains his humanity, hooks up with a girl (who seems to be excited at the idea of seducing a widower) and then his comic gets cancelled. The final issue of Swamp Thing is a hideous affair—so bad no one’s ever revisited it, not even as a joke. These last two… 📖
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Swamp Thing (1972) #23
Who could predicate this turn of events… Alec Holland’s got a brother no one has ever mentioned before and he cures Swamp Thing…. Maybe the lame Ernie Chan cover sets it up. Or maybe Conway bringing in some obscure character from ten issues previous—I remember the name, but not the character—to turn into this idiotic… 📖
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Swamp Thing (1972) #22
It’s another decent issue from Michelinie and, big shock, it’s not a Swamp Thing comic so much as a “Twilight Zone” episode. Here it’s about some government nuclear test causing a virus and the government secretly quarantining the infected… including the lead scientist’s family. He’s the main character of the issue. Swamp Thing just sort… 📖
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Swamp Thing (1972) #21
Michelinie returns to do a Swamp Thing meets aliens issue. Swampy gets whisked to an intergalactic zoo where he takes part in the conveniently timed uprising of the prisoners. Swamp Thing is completely passive in the issue—Michelinie spends a lot more time on the jailer and his favorite female companion and he turns in a… 📖
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Turbulence (1997, Robert Butler)
Turbulence raises a good point—why bother trying to make a good serial killer thriller? Ray Liotta runs rampant throughout the film, having serving after serving of scenery. The script’s got a bunch of dialogue issues in the third act, but none of them bother Liotta, who’s operating at way too high an adrenaline level to… 📖
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Swamp Thing (1972) #20
Conway gives Bolt a first name (or, at least, uses it), which is nice. In fact, Conway gives Bolt a whole reflective moment here, a lot more than any writer has done before. Abby and Matt, however, are incredibly distant. It doesn’t much matter, because the ending of this issue suggests Swamp Thing is done… 📖
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Swamp Thing (1972) #19
You’ve got to love a comic book with an apology in leu of a cliffhanger. This issue of Swamp Thing—Gerry Conway’s first—was supposed to be double-sized. Instead, they split it in two… and this one ends uneventfully. Stops might be the better term. Still, it’s a decent issue. Conway’s execution is stronger than the comic… 📖
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The Unwritten (2009) #16
So is Wilson’s editor in with Wilson or in with the bad guys? The issue has a soft cliffhanger for Lizzie—who somehow got to go home, but lost it too (I wonder if Carey’s seen Somewhere in Time because he really pulls a penny out of the pocket in terms of an easy fix)—but nothing… 📖
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The Unwritten (2009) #15
Wilson Taylor makes his first appearance in Unwritten’s present action this issue; it’s Carey’s biggest surprise so far. Not because his appearance is so extraordinary, but just the opposite. He shows up like he’s been in the cast the entire time. While the Pullman subplot develops, the issue brings Tom back to his literary geographer… 📖
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The Unwritten (2009) #14
Here Carey has another bridging issue. He gets in some great moments, but he’s mostly just building to the next big incident. He uses this pacing a lot in Unwritten, at least in the two previous arcs, and it always works out very well. But this issue also has another facet and it’s where Carey… 📖
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The Unwritten (2009) #13
Well, while I don’t known exactly what I expected from this issue of Unwritten, I will say I never expected the cliffhanger Carey finishes with. In most ways, the issue is innocuous. There’s the new Tommy Taylor book—a fake—and there’s an event, but that event isn’t happening this issue. There’s some more information about Lizzie,… 📖
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Swamp Thing (1972) #18
In what’s easily David Michelinie’s best-written Swamp Thing issue, the gang (consisting of Swamp Thing, Bolt, Matt and Abby) run into a strange little town filled with insane old people. There’s some deception at first, but it’s really an occult thing—the old people want to capture young people and steal their souls to become young… 📖
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Cliffhanger (1993, Renny Harlin)
Oh, Trevor Jones did the music. I was going to say it sounded like some really good Hans Zimmer (with some plagiarism of Alan Silvestri’s Predator score), but Jones does good work so I guess it’s not a surprise. Cliffhanger is such a technical marvel it’s hard to get upset about the problems (writing and… 📖
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Swamp Thing (1972) #17
The Michelinie curse continues. It turns out Swamp Thing didn’t just crash land on any Caribbean island last issue, but the one where evil mastermind Nathan Ellery has his secret base. Their new mission—make all the leaders of the world brain dead, so Ellery can take over…. But Michelinie doesn’t stop there. Abby and Matt… 📖
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Swamp Thing (1972) #16
Some of this issue’s terrible decisions must be editorially mandated and not all Michelinie’s fault. I’m referring specifically to Conclave head honcho Nathan Ellery coming back from the dead at the end. He fell off a roof a while ago and Batman was going to investigate. Apparently, Batman got busy. Anyway, other stupid parts is… 📖
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Sick (2007, Mike Rymer)
Sick shows being earnest doesn’t necessarily mean being good. A lot of other films prove this point, but Sick does it in about fifteen minutes, so at least it’s not time-consuming. Director Rymer knows how to compose shots—Sick looks great, its production values are quite impressive. He tries hard to write a good script but… 📖
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Swamp Thing (1972) #15
Oddly, as Michelinie moves away from the traditional Swamp Thing standards, such as Swamp Thing having a lot of thoughts, he does better. The issue isn’t exactly good, it’s just not as bad as the previous one. It’s bad, but it doesn’t fail at being a Len Wein Swamp Thing. Michelinie has some really goofy… 📖
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Swamp Thing (1972) #14
And now Wein has left too, leaving David Michelinie to clean up the mess. The mess in question is Wein’s swamp monsters. It turns out they aren’t because of Alec Holland’s serum, rather because of a strange batch of toxic waste dumped in the swamp, which somehow interacted with the Holland formula. While Redondo’s art… 📖
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Swamp Thing (1972) #13
Even though the issue ends with a teaser of the next one, it reads a little like Wein was preparing for it to be Swamp Thing’s finale. Swamp Thing reveals his identity to Matt Cable and then, instead of setting off with Matt to adventure, heads back to the swamp. It takes Swamp Thing a… 📖
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The Unwritten (2009) #12
Reading the latest side-story issue of Unwritten, all I could think about was how Carey and Gross should never stop the series, they should also spin out some of these side-stories. I guess they call these side-stories one-shots. Anyway. This one, “Willowbank Tales,” has more than enough promise to hold at least three issues. It’s… 📖
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Planet of the Apes (2011) #1
Damn, Daryl Gregory kills John Huston. Gregory’s got a rough task—the franchise has always had a confined setting, both in time and place (regardless of jumping around). He remedies it a little… oh, wait, it takes place before the first movie? They use the text paragraph on the indicia and title page for important facts.… 📖