Category: Books

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Batman Battles Hush!

batman-hush

Thanks to a great Christmas gift from The Paladin, I was able to buy Batman: The Complete Hush from comiXology.  It was written by Jeph Loeb, penciled by Jim Lee, inked by Scott Williams, and colored by Alex Sinclair.  An all star lineup if there ever was one, and they did not disappoint with this book.

Batman has to fight all of his old foes, but for some reason he is always a step or two behind them.  The mysterious Hush seems to be outplaying him.  Batman will have to use all his tricks, and trust his allies to stop this new threat.

What I loved about this book is that Loeb used pretty much all of Batman’s main villains, and he did it without feeling like they were shoehorned in there just because he felt like he needed to.  The villains all had a reason to be in this book.  This book, while being in the main line, is its own self contained story as well with a beginning and end, which is nice for a trade paper back.  You don’t need to feel like you need to buy seven more to complete the series.  Thanks to its self contained nature it is also a great place to start reading Batman comics since it covers just about anything you would need to know.

The artists all did a good job.  Batman, Gotham, and all the rest just seem to jump off the page (well tablet screen anyway).  You expect a comic book to look good when you get this much talent, and they delivered.  If you want to see Batman looking his best, this is a good book to read.

If you have been thinking about getting a graphic novel about the Dark Knight, Hush would be an excellent one to choose.  You can find the book just about anywhere, and it seems like it is always on sale, so you shouldn’t have to break the bank.  Batman: The Complete Hush gets my full recommendation!

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New Avengers: Age Of Ultron Trailer!

The new trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron is out, and while it is not as perfect as the teaser that they released it does give us a better look at the Hulk versus Iron Man fight.  It also lets us know that this is all really Tony Stark’s fault.  Not that anybody was doubting that, but still.  I am ready for this movie.  May cannot get here fast enough!

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Random DC Comics News!

Justice-League

A couple quick DC Comics things to talk about today.  The boys and gals over at Ain’t It Cool News were reporting that the Batman V Superman flick would be split up in to two movies.  One would have opened on Batman V Superman’s original date of October 23rd 2015 called Enter The Knight, and the second one would have come out on the new date of March 26th 2016 with the title Dawn of Justice.

Superman himself Henry Cavill shot this rumor down over at Variety, but still it is an interesting idea.  My problem with this movie is that they are trying to do to much with one film, kind of the opposite problem the Hobbit movies had.  With two movies it would have given the stories more of a chance to breath instead of just being thrown together.  Plus October is a month that they could have had pretty much to themselves.  Still, there was too much going against this story for it to be true because with movies this big there are a lot of moving parts with distribution, advertising and toy sales, so to all of the sudden announce a new movie for October would be crazy.  You move a movie back, not five months forward.

Next up a little TV news.  According to Entertainment Weekly the CW is thinking of adding another comic book show to its lineup, and the hero that makes the most sense is Brandon Routh’s Atom.  Sure they could pick someone else, but Routh is a great actor with real screen presence, so it is hard to imagine some other hero getting the nod.  They could be still trying to startup Hourman, but since I haven’t heard anything about him recently, I am guessing he will not be showing up anytime soon.  The other hero they might try is Firestorm recently seen on The Flash, but I don’t think they have invested enough time in him to get audiences to care about him.  Yet.

Lastly according to IGN, it looks like Supergirl has a shot of being seen on The Flash or Arrow, or conversely them showing up on her show.  Greg Berlanti seems to think it is possible, but he wants to do what is right for Supergirl first.  Still at least there is a possibility.  If the crossover does happen I can’t wait to see what Earth ending apocalypse the joint forces of Arrow, The Flash, The Atom, Firestorm and Supergirl would have to face.

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Listening To Good Omens Was Divine!

GoodOmens-Hard-2006

Well I was right to tip you off to the BBC Radio 4 broadcast of Good Omens.  It was great.  I don’t listen to many radio shows … actually this is the first one I have listened to in probably decades, but this made me want to listen to more.  They are so much more fun than a book on tape.  With their cast of characters and sound effects it really draws you in.

The story follows the book fairly closely, I am not sure that I noticed any differences.  I would have to read the book again to be sure.  It still follows Aziraphale (Mark Heap) and Crowley (Peter Serafinowicz) as they try and stop the end of the world.  “Try” being the operative word.

The cast was wonderful, and now if they ever do a movie or a miniseries they are going to have use the same people otherwise it is going to sound all wrong and bug the crap out of me.  Heap and Serafinowicz in particular really anchor this production well.

The BBC’s sound effects crew need to be commended as well because everything sounded spot on.  I my not have been able to see things happening, but my imagination never had to stretch much to figure out what was going on.  It was just good work all around.

I had so much fun with this production, I will be looking for more BBC radio plays in the future.  Though they have set the bar so high with this one maybe I shouldn’t.  In any case you should give Good Omens a listen.  It is only three and a half hours long, and broken up in to six episodes, so you shouldn’t have a problem finding the time.  It is still free for a couple of weeks, and that is a hard price to beat.

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Ant-Man Trailer Is A Go!

I thought this trailer was going to come sooner, but here it is.  I will have to say that the first part of this trailer scared me a bit because it was so serious, but then the ending sets the tone I am looking for.  Funny.  Ant-Man is supposed to be funny.  Which is why I was so excited about Edgar Wright doing it, but I do understand that Disney wants this to be Marvel’s Ant-Man not Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man.  Though that is what The Paladin wanted, and I can’t say I blame him.  Maybe someday Disney will let people do different takes on its heroes, but probably not any time soon.