Category: Comics

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The One Thing The Bugs Me About The New Flash Show…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSQ-h_2WGkw

I really the like the new Flash TV series on The CW, but one thing really bugs me:  Their makeshift supervillain prison.  One of the Flash’s main features is how nice he is.  I mean it is crazy.  It is almost one of his super powers.  The video above captures this perfectly, he even cares for his villains in most cases.  However, in the TV show he just locks them up in little glass balls in complete isolation.  The Flash would never do that.  He would find a way to incarcerate is enemies humanely.

Now so far in the show every one of these guys and gals has killed someone, so they do deserve long time lock up, but just not like this.  Not if done by the Flash.  He would find a way to lock them up legally and safely.  Maybe the this whole crazy underground iso-lockdown prison will blow up in their faces, and I hope it does, but I just wish Barry Allen would say something about it.

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What Can We Learn From the Batman V Superman Trailer?

superman-and-the-warriors

Well about eight million trailers came out over the weekend, and they were all pretty good, but I am going to discuss the Batman V Superman trailer for a little bit.  You can watch it again here to refresh your memory.  It was a pretty nuts trailer, and it was a teaser in the truest sense.  It showed a bunch of stuff without giving away any plot, or did it?

First off people have gone a little crazy for Superman.  I mean look at the picture above.  He is hanging out with The Warriors for some reason, and people keep kneeling down in front of him.  He clearly has some fans.  While they were showing people loving Superman, what people were saying about him was quite different.  People are unsure of him, and they don’t trust him.  The best line came from Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor, “Devils don’t come from Hell beneath us, they come from the sky.”

I am guessing Luthor’s little speech is for Batman.  Batman doesn’t trust people with a lot of power (though he and Superman do become best friends), so Luthor is playing on Batman’s paranoia and letting Batman do all his heavy lifting.  It is a good plan.  They didn’t show it (they did show Superman working with the military though), but I am guessing Superman is getting similar speeches from the military about Batman.  Except more along the lines of, “can we trust someone who works on their own without any oversight?”  The military is big on oversight.

Finally we get the line that had twitter all a buzz.  Batman’s quote, “Tell me, do you bleed?”  I am glad Bruce spent some of his money on a voice modulator.  That should save him quite a bit on throat lozenges.  I am guessing after that they do what superheroes do best, they fight until they become friends.  Which is the real question I have with this movie.  How long is the fighting until they are friends going to take?  Will it be like the first hour, and then they will figure out that they were duped.  Then they will team up to take down Lex and tell the military to get their own hitman?  That would leave an hour for the rest of the Justice League, or will that take two hours and the Justice League stuff will be like fifteen minutes.  It is hard to say, but it will be a long ten months to find out.

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A Daredevil Worth Watching!

daredevil_netflix

Netflix gave me a birthday present not to long ago when they launched their new comic book based TV show Daredevil.  This show has nothing to do with the unfortunate Ben Affleck movie, well besides that it features the same character.  It is still Matt Murdock beating up bad guys, but now it takes place in a believable world, and it is not pulling its punches.

It is a tale as old as time (sing it Angela).  An orphan wants to makes his home a better place, so he uses his extraordinary abilities to take down crime.  In this case that orphan is the blind Matt Murdock played by Charlie Cox who I am sure you know from Stardust.  You don’t know him from Stardust?  You are a terrible person!  Well back to the review,  Murdock, a local defense attorney, is trying to cleanup his part of New York City known as Hell’s Kitchen, but he is finding it harder than he anticipated.

What I love about this series is that it is so much more brutal than any other Marvel property as of late.  When the good guys and bad guys go at it, they really go at it.  There is blood and bone crunching, and people will die.  While it fits nicely within the Marvel Universe, you can definitely tell this corner of it was inspired by Frank Miller’s (Sin City) run with the character in the 90’s.  It has that dark washed out feel to it that is quite different than the bright and almost cheery Marvel Movie Universe.

If Daredevil is setting the tone for things to come in the Marvel TV Universe, I am very excited.  It shows that Marvel is finding more stories to tell outside the Avengers.  Not to rag on Agents of SHIELD which has now found its footing, but some separation from the movies will do wonders for these new TV shows.  With the good work they have done with Daredevil, I can’t wait to see AKA Jessica Jones!

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Aquaman Gets The Comic Book He Deserves

New_52_Aquaman

For one reason or another Aquaman has always been thought of as a joke.  I guess it has something to do with his water based powers, or maybe it was his terrible representation in the old Super Friends cartoon, but whatever the case besides being able to control fish, he is super strong, can jump long distances, and has a weapon that can pretty much destroy anything.  Despite all this people still look down on him, and that is what Geoff Johns and crew address in Aquaman’s New 52 re-launch.  Even as a fan of Green Lantern, I have to say Aquaman may be Johns’ best work.

In this book Aquaman (Arthur Curry) has given up ruling the sea kingdom of Atlantis, and he and Mera (don’t call her Aquawoman) decide to instead protect the coastline from harm.  The humans in the area misunderstand him, and they think of him as a looser in the superhero community even though he is regularly saving their lives.  He is constantly the butt of their jokes.  While this gets on Mera’s nerves, Aquaman does his best to let it go and still do what is right.

I love that Aquaman continues to be a hero even though people don’t really like him that much.  It is easy to rescue people when they love you, but to save them even though they mock you is another thing entirely.  It was smart of Johns to bring that real world aspect in to the book.  It just makes Aquaman that much more relatable.  Here he is saving the day, but people are still not giving him the respect he deserves.  I think we all feel that way sometimes, and I hope that we deal with it as well as Arthur Curry.

I have heard that Aquaman was the best New 52 comic book, and after reading the first trade paper back I can see why.  It looks great, and it tells a great story about an underappreciated hero.  I hope that he is given the respect he deserves in the upcoming Justice League movies, so that he will thought of as more than just the guy that can talk to fish in the future.