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Tag Archives: sunday funday
Sunday Funday: Hack/Slash!
Hooray for Sunday. This afternoon will consist of me, my patio, an H. Upmann Corona Major, a generous rock glass of Jameson, and the first three volumes of Tim Seeley’s Hack/Slash. This is the kind of stuff that makes slaving through the work week worthwhile.
I’m actually not going to spend a lot of time talking about the misadventures of Cassie and Vlad. Suffice it to say, I love this comic. Last year, I read them all digitally and now I’m buying the TPBs for my bookshelf. I’ll probably do a proper feature on them some Sunday in the future. I’ve got many more volumes to go.
Nope, I just wanted to give a shout out to the Ebay Seller Rivalrycomics, because they’re so professional and awesome. I bought Hack/Slash Vol. 3 from them and they quickly messaged me to let me know that it had some light shelf wear and a bumped corner and apologized and said if I wanted to cancel the order or take a discount they’d be fine with that. I know where they’re coming from. I owned and operated a book shop for eight years. I did a lot of Internet business, and I know how hard it is to accurately represent collectibles when it comes to condition. Collectors can be crazy picky!
Anywho, I said it was Ok because I was mainly looking for a nice reading copy, it was a really good price on the book to begin with and the shipping was free. Well, they still tossed in some extra comics, including a super cool reprint Tales from the Crypt issue. They must have read my mind, because I don’t think they could have possible selected a cooler bonus comic. It’s awesome!
And even after all that, the book I originally ordered was in great shape! So, it’s cool to see people who deal in collectibles who are so meticulous about condition. These guys get it. They’re professionals. They’re bros. They care. That’s the kind of people I love to do business with. I do a ton of business on Ebay, whether it be buying toys, comics, or old video games, and I’ve crossed path with my share of skunks and swindlers, so it’s all the better when you encounter some professionals. So, if you’re looking for some comics or video games, hit up their Ebay Store. Maybe they have something you’re looking for. I know I will be ordering from them again.
Sunday Funday: Time Bandits Blu-Ray!
I love time travel fiction, Monty Python and British sci-fi… Time Bandits was practically made for me. It was released in 1981. I was nine, and my parents took me to see it. I loved it and it went on to become one of the VHS tapes that I rented the most in my youth, right next to Ghostbusters and Strange Brew. I was an odd child.
One night last year at the corner pub, Time Bandits was the topic of discussion among some friends and some people we had just met. That night, I made the mistake of lending my DVD copy to a girl that was at that gathering and I never got it back. I don’t usually lend out my coveted DVDs, but when I’m drunk and a nice-looking pub girl wants to come home with me and borrow a copy of “Time Bandits,” I’m not likely to hesitate. That’s not the sort of thing that happens every day. Anyway, about a week ago, I wanted to watch it again and when I went to the shelf for it, I suddenly remembered it was gone. I took the opportunity to upgrade to a Blu-Ray copy and kicked back with it this weekend along with some scrummy Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout.
Time Bandits can be summed up fairly simply. It’s about a gang of “little people” who work for God and steal a map of all the time holes in the universe in an effort to get rich by robbing their way through history. Oh yeah, and David Warner plays The Devil, who is obsessed with computer technology and he wants to get it from them. That right there is about as epic as a movie concept can get. But beyond that, what I really love about this movie is the way it looks. The time-bending costume designs for Randall and his band, the look of the map itself, that crazy medieval ship that the giant winds up wearing as a hat, even David Warner’s costume, complete with Giger-inspired headgear, is friggin fantastic. There’s also a lot of cool and more surreal imagery at play. I love the void of hanging cages in the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness, the way the final battle actually takes place in the lego-strewn floor of Kevin’s bedroom, and those freaky skull-headed, hook-handed minions. Those things freaked me out as a kid… and they still kinda do! This movie is replete with fantastic and imaginative imagery.
The other awesome thing about Time Bandits, as with all of Terry Gilliam’s films is that there are always tons of unanswered questions, which are really wonderfully conducive to drunken speculation at pubs. You take a lot at face value and you’re challenged to fill in a lot of blanks. In the case of Time Bandits, the ending alone has been the subject of many a night of slurred ranting and arguments among my regular drinking group. I also would have loved to know more about Horseflesh. Who was he and how did he die? Just the fact that his name was tossed out a couple of times gives the movie an intriguing untold backstory.
The Blu-Ray itself is a rather mixed bag, with bare bones extras that include only a theatrical trailer and an interview with Gilliam. This is a film that demands a rich commentary track and its absence is highly disappointing. Furthermore, the quality of this film’s print hasn’t aged well and really screams for a professional restoration, which obviously didn’t happen here. As a result, the DVD never looked all that better than the VHS, and there are times when the Blu-Ray doesn’t look much better either. There are still episodes of distracting noise on the print from time to time, and the darker scenes don’t benefit much from the HD transfer. On the other hand, the scenes in Sherwood Forest and in Ancient Mycenae do look rather crisp and clean. The Blu-Ray is an improvement, there were times when I said, “Ooooh, that looks nice!” but it isn’t the polished overhaul that I would have liked.
While the quality of the Blu-Ray is disappointing, Time Bandits remains one of my childhood favorites and to this day I never tire of watching it. It’s quirky and fun, it’s flippant and yet incredibly dark, but most of all it’s pure imagination running wild.
Sunday Funday: Grimm’s Fairy Tales Omnibus!
Arriving just in time for the waning days of my vacation, Zenescope has finally released their mammoth Omnibus collection of their always twisted and sometimes sexy take on Grimm’s Fairy Tales. It’s actually been available for a little while as an exclusive from their booth at various conventions. Unfortunately, I live toward the tip of a peninsula where such conventions are mostly fairy tales themselves. See what I did there? If you haven’t delved into any of the 80+ issues of GFT and its rapidly expanding universe, here’s the deal: In what usually plays out like an after-hours Twilight Zone episode, characters are beaten over the head with moral lessons played out in Fairy Tales that usually draw to a delightfully gore-filled conclusion. Needless to say I’m spending a lot of time with this book this weekend and my cigar of choice this time is the always faithful, H. Upmann 1844 Special Reserve. Mmm… lovely.
GFT was the first comic that I started reading digitally on a tablet, and I’ll confess I didn’t take to the book right away. It lacks the pithy dialogue or sweeping stories that I usually go for in my comics. The humor is more subtle and I sometimes wonder how many of the chuckles I get out of this book are intentional. The first story was rather predictable and seemed to go nowhere, but I downloaded the first 10 issues as part of a sale and I pressed on. Before long, things got more interesting, and before I knew it, I was buying more downloads to see what kind of twisted shit they could come up with next. As it turns out, it’s an insidious book that slowly draws you in, making the stories more complex, and eventually pulling back the camera and revealing the two narrators, Sela and Belinda, as characters in a struggle against each other over the souls of their target of the month. If this whole thing was planned out, it’s rather clever, but also a risky move, because I imagine a number of people were tempted to drop the book from their pull lists before it really started to get good. As such, I think it’s one of those comics that may be best experienced in collected editions. On the other hand, if you stick with it through the individual issues, reading GFT is like being in that proverbial pot of slowly boiling water. I was getting hooked (or is that cooked?), but I didn’t realize it was happening until it was too late. Of course, all the Zenescope branded T&A in the art doesn’t hurt either. Yaknowatimean?
The Omnibus is an ambitious beast of a publication. At 1350 pages(!), it encompasses the first EIGHT collected volumes, meaning it contains the first FIFTY issues of the comic! I was a little concerned about how well a book of this size and weight would turn out, but I knew I wanted these collected in a print edition for my shelf, and getting eight volumes worth of comics in one book seemed like the easier (and less expensive way to go). It turned out to be a worthy gamble. The quality of the print is gorgeous and the binding seems to be of very good quality. Even at the center of the book, reading or enjoying the art near the binding is not a chore, and it doesn’t seem like creasing in the spine or loose pages will be a problem, so long as a modicum of care is taken while reading. Each reprinted volume retains the often heartfelt introductions, although individual variant covers are not included. While this could be a big deal to some, it’s understandable that some sacrifices had to be made. The variant covers alone would have added another 100+ pages to an already gargantuan tome.
The cover price for the Omnibus is $59.99, but I had my copy pre-ordered at Amazon for the ridiculously low price of $37 and they actually had it to me a few days before its scheduled release. GFT started out as a guilty pleasure, but it’s evolved beyond that for me and this collection makes me glad that I was content with my digital downloads and didn’t start going after the individual trades. At this point, the only downside is that if I fall asleep reading with this thing on my chest, I’m liable to wake up thinking I’m having a heart attack.
Images used are the copyright of Zenescope and are reproduced here for review purposes only. If you love comic books, support the artists and writers by BUYING them, either digitally or in print. Better yet, buy them in print and support your local comic shop too!
Sunday Funday: Bendis’ Moon Knight
Tomorrow starts my vacation in which I will embark on a great quest to see how little I can leave the house during the span of a week. I seriously plan on doing nothing other than lay around read comics, enjoy cigars and libation, and maybe play a video game or two. Well, I started a bit early this weekend by lighting up an H. Upmann Corona Major and re-reading Brian Michael Bendis’ Moon Knight in its collected TPB releases. I’m thinking of just renaming Sunday Funday Comics & Coronas.
Almost every year it happens. That one book I love gets shit-canned. The year before last, I was still reeling from some of my favorite DC books falling victim to the reboot, but last year it was the end of Bendis’ short run with Moon Knight that cut the deepest. God, I loved this book! It took a character that I hardly gave two shits about and turned him into someone that got me to the comic shop for each new issue. Marc Spector, self-appointed Hollywood socialite works on a campy TV series about his life, while trying to establish himself as a West Coast Avenger and unravel the mystery of a new Kingpin and the sale of an Ultron head. The art by Alex Maleev is excellent. It’s gritty, it’s edgy, and it gives the book a serious undertone, which balances out the black comedy really well.
Yes, I love comics for all sorts of reasons, but in the end, it’s the ones that make me laugh that usually get me coming back the most. Bendis’ Moon Knight is good with that. Marc Spector is batshit insane (but he would argue all costumed super heroes are!) and the book’s greatest selling point is the pithy inner dialogue between him and the voices in his head who take on the personalities of Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Captain America. Cap takes on the role of Spector’s moral compass, Spidey is his fun and impulsive side, and Wolverine just mercilessly berates him for everything he does and everything he fails to do. Toss in the self-deprecating humor found in the fact that Moon Knight can get no respect from friends and foes alike, and Moon Knight is dark comedy gold.
Not being satisfied with just his inner monologue, Spector takes his neurosis to the extreme and even dresses up like his imaginary friends and in his mind, becomes them. Of course, eventually the real players show up, which leads to great moments like this…
I could go on and on. There’s some great play between him and his reluctant partner, the sexy, deaf ex-Avenger, Echo. A priceless run-in with criminal hack squad The Night Shift. But easily my favorite part of any of the books is when Spector dresses up like Bullseye and beats the shit out of his newly hired consultant just to see if the guy was trustworthy.
There’s no doubt, Moon Knight was one of my favorite books of 2012. In fact, it’s probably second only to IDW’s Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye. I would have loved to see Moon Knight go on, but I can’t deny there’s something to be said for having a shorter, self-contained run. Moon Knight was canned after 12 issues. It went out on a high and it left me wanting more, and if you’re a comic book or movie, or just about any other kind of entertainment, that’s generally considered a success. As it stands, Moon Knight is the perfect length to pull out every couple of months and spend a lazy afternoon re-reading and I enjoy it every time.
Images used are the copyright of Marvel Comics and are reproduced here for review purposes only. If you love comic books, support the artists and writers by BUYING them, either digitally or in print. Better yet, buy them in print and support your local comic shop too!
Sunday Funday: Star Trek (2009) Blu-Ray
Today’s going to be a quickie, because I’m off this weekend, it’s a beautiful day here in sunny Florida, and I’d rather be out on the patio, drinking and reading my comics. Truth be told, I went through the entire Star Trek original crew movie series on Blu-Ray this week, but I’m looking at the 2009 movie today only because Sunday Funday is supposed to be about something I did over the weekend and I watched it last night. It’s also the only one that comes with a cool novelty package that I can talk about.
I won’t go into a lot about the movie. Suffice it to say, I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. That’s not a loaded compliment. I really enjoy this movie, despite the fact that I was nerd-raging against the concept from the start. The casting is great, the sets and ship designs are cool, the effects are amazing, and this disc is definitely in the top three best looking Blu-Ray’s in my collection. Seriously, whenever I want to impress people with my AV setup, I’m always most likely to bust out the Blu-Ray of Star Trek or The Avengers.
Normally, I am not a fan of novelty Blu-Ray packaging. I am borderline OCD, which probably speaks volumes as to my collecting habits. But I do enjoy my shelves to look neat and orderly with all the cases lined up just right. So when you get something like a special case into the mix, it seriously throws off the feng shui of my media shelves and that’s just not cool. I try to avoid these most of the time. I still can’t look at my shelf of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies without shooting a hateful look at that absurd circular tin containing the old Total Recall Special Edition DVD.
I do, however, really enjoy the Star Trek package, which is basically a little model of the Enterprise with the discs cleverly held in the saucer section. It’s such an amazingly well-crafted little piece that owning it dissuaded me from spending the money on Playmates version of the 2009 Enterprise. No, it’s not electronic, but it displays just as well on the shelf. It doesn’t look like a Blu-Ray incentive at all. It just looks like a little model of the Enterprise that I would have on my shelf.
The idea to store the discs in the saucer section is both obvious and genius at the same time. It makes the discs easily accessible, while exploiting the design of the model itself. It’s also worth noting that this Enterprise is remarkably sturdy, made out of great quality plastic, and sits perfectly on its stand, unlike a certain expensive Diamond Select Starship I bought a short while ago.
And that’ll wrap up Star Trek Week. I had intended to come back to some of my 90’s Playmates Trek figures, since it’s been forever since I looked at any and they are piling up. I’ll have to make an effort to squeeze them back into my weekly routine. Maybe next week.
Sunday Funday with Booster Gold!
It’s Sunday Funday, where I chronicle something I did over the weekend that doesn’t have to do with toys. This weekend, I kicked back with the Booster Gold TPBs: “52 Pick Up” “Blue and Gold” and “Reality Lost.” See, I told you the last three features of the week would synch up! Yes, Booster returned with his new Ongoing book in 2007, inevitably reprinted in some collected editions a couple years later. The series picks up exactly where the events of “52” left off. While not a complete collection, the three trades offer a cohesive (well, as cohesive as you can get from time travel fiction) storyline from the first 20 issues. To the uninitiated, these volumes are a great introduction to Booster, while fleshing him out as a more sympathetic character and offering a great tribute to his undying loyalty to and friendship with Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle. In some ways, this collection is almost as much about Kord and The Blue Beetles (plural) as it is Booster, but then the two have always been rather inseparable in my eyes.
In broad strokes, a good part of the ongoing story plays out as a DC inspired tribute to Quantum Leap (maybe with a dash of Forrest Gump since Booster manages to hit a lot of important moments in the history of the DC Universe). Booster bounces through the personal histories of various superheroes and villains in an attempt to set things right. He’s on hand to keep Green Lantern Sinestro from meeting up with Hal Jordan before his time. He has a hand in making sure Barry Allen gets zapped into becoming The Flash. He teams up with Jonah Hex to prevent a herd of teleported bison (!) from falling out of the sky (!!) and crushing the Doctor that would deliver the ancestor of Superman’s adopted Earth father (!!!) all while drunk off his ass. And he dodges some rather awkward questions from Ralph Dibny about his future with his wife. Even Booster’s own timeline isn’t immune to his good-natured meddling, as he eventually teams up with himself to defeat the mysterious villains. For me, the culmination of all these time travelling adventures is the harsh lesson Booster learns while repeatedly trying to save Barbara Gordon from the infamous paralyzing attack at the hands of The Joker. The Doctor would have referred to that as a “fixed point in time!”
And, of course, against all warnings and advice, he uses his time-traveling power to bring back his best friend, Ted Kord, to the land of the living. And therein lies the bulk of the second volume, “Blue and Gold.” It’s so great to see the two chums standing shoulder to shoulder against evil again, even if we suspect from the beginning that such a good thing can never last. And in an instance of truly tragic irony, before the third volume is complete we see Booster unknowingly save the life of the ancestor of Max Lord himself. Time travel… it’s a fickle bitch!
If the underlying theme of “Blue and Gold” is all about Ted, than a big part of the issues that make up “Reality Lost” gives Goldstar the spotlight, as more time meddling shenanigans bring Booster’s sister, Michelle, back to life and sees her teamed up with her brother. Much like “Blue and Gold” it’s bittersweet because we know this can’t end well. Still, it’s a fun ride along the way as Michelle gets to pose for Leonardo DaVinci, cosplay as Batgirl, and help steal the Batmobile with Booster dressed like Elvis. Epic hardly seems like the right word.
As the bulk of my comics are in storage, picking up these trades was a nice treat. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my Saturday evening than sitting out on the porch, enjoying a cigar and a couple belts of Jameson and getting lost in the pages. Granted, it’s only been a couple of years since I last read this run, but it’s still one of those books that I love to read even though I know what’s going to happen. The editors did a nice job cherry-picking the issues to present casual readers with a complete package, but as a Booster fan, I’d still recommend hitting all 20 issues if you can. Sure, the overall story is mostly time-travel cliches and nothing to write home about, but it’s the journey along the way that makes it so entertaining. These books feature solid art, pithy dialogue and they really do the character of Booster proud. It’s whimsical, silly, poignant, tragic, but I’ll concede that I was always more than a little disappointed that it ends with the status quo being reinstated. Still, any chance to see Booster and Ted Kord in action again is a great book for me.
Images used are the copyright of DC Comics and are reproduced here for review purposes only. If you love comic books, support the artists and writers by BUYING them, either digitally or in print. Better yet, buy them in print and support your local comic shop too!
Sunday Funday: The Last Starfighter Blu-Ray
So, I really didn’t need anything from Wally World, but I convinced myself to drive down there the other morning because I was jonesing for an action figure or a Lego set or something. So much of my stuff has been coming to me by way of the Internets lately. I don’t really miss the hunt, but every once and a while, it is nice to actually buy something and not have to wait a week to have it in hand. Anyway, I didn’t do all that well in the toy aisles, but I did spend some time rummaging through the HUGE drum of $7.88 Blu-Rays that that they have set up in the middle of the aisle. I honestly hate going through these things. Trying to find anything in it is like digging a hole in the sand. It just keeps closing up and you can spend an hour just flipping through copies of Ace Ventura, Face Off, and Happy Feet. Also, I feel like a homeless person picking through a giant garbage can looking for something I can use to decorate my cardboard box shack.
Well, I was just about to call it quits before I came up with this forgotten gem. When I say forgotten gem, I mean I really did forget this movie existed. Once I set eyes on it, however, it all came rushing back to me. I could remember my parents taking me to see it in the theater. It came out in 1984, which means I was 12. That right there was what made my parents so awesome. They had no hope of enjoying anything this movie had to offer, and yet they flushed their Saturday afternoon down the drain because they knew it would make me happy. Maybe my Dad got a kick out of the effects, but my Mom must have been bored to tears, but she did it because she is a great Mom. (And that’s my shout out to my Mom on Mother’s Day!). I loved this movie and I can well remember renting it more than a dozen times when it finally became available on VHS. It celebrated almost everything that I loved about life as a 12 year old boy: Aliens, Space Ships, and Video Games.
Now it’s been over a decade since I saw it, and I was excited to pop it in and see whether it could possibly hold up. Now granted, the last time I watched this, I was a 14-year old munching on some Cap’n Crunch, and now I’m a middle aged nerd with a rock glass of Jameson in my hand. So, does it hold up? Well, with just the right amount of nostalgia and whiskey… yes, yes it does.
Trailer park washout Alex dreams of heading to the big city and making something of himself, but he’s stuck fixing people’s fuse boxes and dropping quarters into the local Starfighter arcade machine. Of course, it’s all a test to find someone capable of joining The Star League and piloting a Gunstar against the forces of the evil dictator-wannabe, Xur. There’s a lot I love about this story, but mostly it’s the stuff that’s non-conventional. Alex is clearly a video game nerd, but he’s not really a loser. He’s got a pretty girlfriend, he’s got friends to hang out with, but most of all, he’s got the support of his little trailer park community who turn out in droves to cheer him on when he’s beating the machine’s top score. Seeing all those people cheer him on is just one of the greatest video-gaming moments of cinema. Some of you young people may not be aware, but it wasn’t always cool to be a nerd like in today’s world of top grossing comic book movies and Xbox. Stuff like this and Tron were a really big deal.
Robert Preston gives it his all as Centauri, who shows up in his flying car to take Alex to the Star League base. Yes, kids, if an old stranger shows up and tells you to get in his cool car, you climb on board! That’s what we learned from The Last Starfighter! Anyway, I still love the “Star Car” as much as I did as a kid and I still remember screaming inward at the screen when Alex asked to be taken home rather than help. “What the hell are you doing??? They’re going to let you fly a f’cking spaceship with a lizard man and shoot lasers!!!!” I had forgotten about this plot-point in the movie, and this time I was yelling at the screen out loud in a Jameson fueled rage.
The subplot with Beta Unit Alex holds up pretty well for me too, mainly because of the cool special effects scenes. I remember seeing a lot of screen grabs and articles in either Starlog or Fangoria, or a similar magazine, about the makeup and effects. I used to love those kinds of magazines and how they showed everything that went into practical effects, and now I have a hankering to pull my old stack out for a future Sunday Funday. That kind of shit made me want to ask for a bunch of latex and air bellows for Christmas so I could learn how to do it and get a job in an SFX company. Good thing I didn’t, because now it’s all done by computers, and I spend too much time sitting at a computer desk already.
Speaking of computers and effects… Last Starfighter was hyped because it was one of the first movies to showcase CG effects in place of model ships. Watching the movie again, I thought the hardest thing to accept would be the Tron-like CG effects as realistic spacecraft. To my surprise, they actually look quite spectacular on the Blu-Ray cut. Not realistic, mind you. There’s no part of me that is convinced they’re real ships, and I still prefer the good old studio model kit building for my space ship effects, but I can’t deny that this stuff just looks neat. NEAT!!!
Sometimes, I drop $8 on a budget movie, watch it and think, meh… why did I bother? That wasn’t the case here. I enjoyed watching this one again and I can see myself popping it in again sometime down the road. In fact, I’ll probably watch it again this week for the commentary and extras. Oh, and while Sunday Funday is all about taking a break from toys, I’m not opposed to a toy tie-in if I can do it. Check out this amazing little piece on the unproduced Last Starfighter action figure line at the awesome Plaid Stallions blog. Or how about this ridiculously cool Lego Gunstar.
Sunday Funday: New 52 Suicide Squad Comics!
Yesterday was Free Comic Book Day and while work prevented me from taking advantage of it, at least I made lots of money to buy lots of comics. That’s almost as good. Anyway, the last time I talked comics on Sunday Funday, I got all ranty and kind of mean, and that kind of missed the point of the day, although I can’t deny it was fun. This weekend, a great deal of my downtime was spent reading the first two TPBs of Suicide Squad and then going back and re-reading some of Gail Simone’s run on Secret Six. I recently picked up two of those collected editions, “Unhinged” and “The Darkest House” as my individual issues inexplicably found their way into storage… at least I hope they’re in storage.
There were a lot of reasons to be suspicious and wary of the New 52 reboot, but when I look back to it, there was really only one thing about it that pissed me off: It signaled the end of Simone’s Secret Six. It was like being in a speeding car heading toward a brick wall and I couldn’t get out. Secret Six had grown to become one of my favorite comics of all time. Granted, that’s a long list, as I do love me my funnybooks, but Secret Six is a comic that I thoroughly savored. It hit on all the points that make me still an avid comic book reader, even as I enter that precarious point in my life called Middle Age. I can’t remember ever being so sad and disappointed as when I found out that it was wrapping up in favor of the impending reboot.
As it turns out, I’ve been pretty happy with a number of the New 52 books. Some may call that sacrilege, but that’s where I stand. I can say that I read every first issue, I pursued a little more than half of them past the first issue, and since then I’ve narrowed it down quite a bit. But the ones that I’m still reading are entertaining enough and somewhat refreshing to me. I’ve got 30+ years of the crushing weight of comic continuity running through my head, and I constantly felt as if I was falling behind on the books I cared about and in some cases, getting caught up would be a lost cause. Reading comics started to feel like a frustrating chore, and that’s never what I wanted from one of my favorite pastimes. The New 52 made me feel like I had half a chance again. Maybe on some level the reboot was like killing the patient to cure the disease, but in the end I was glad DC did it.
Anyway, one of the books I didn’t follow past the first issue was Suicide Squad. I was still bitter over Secret Six ending and I just thought DC was trying to use the Suicide Squad title as a cheap way to continue the popularity of Simone’s book. Whether that’s the case or not, it’s hard to argue that it’s intended as the spiritual successor. I can remember flipping through that first issue violently and screaming, “YOU’RE NOT SECRET SIX… STOP TRYING TO BE!!!” Then I threw it down and ran out of the room sobbing while slamming the door as loudly as I can. Ok, that didn’t really happen. I did, however, want to stay mad and bitter, but ultimately, my love for King Shark and Deadshot sucked me in, and I picked up the first two TPBs while browsing at the comic shop a week or so back.
A great deal of my resistance was worn down by seeing Adam Glass’ name on the cover. I really enjoyed Deadpool Pulp and Luke Cage Noir is still on my reading list. I can’t say I was instantly familiar with either artists’, Fernando Dagnino or Federico Dallocchio, work, but I can say that I’m a fan now because I really dig the look of these books. Anyway, I devoured both volumes pretty quickly and then I flipped through them a second time to skim the good parts and it dawned on me that there was room to have both books exist in my good graces. Suicide Squad is fun, violent, crazy, and best of all I can get my fix of Deadshot and King Shark. Y’all know I’m not a big Batman fan, so this was one of the first times I really followed a book with Harley Quinn and I warmed up to her a lot more than I thought I would. Oh, and tossing Captain Boomerang in there never hurts either. It’s a far cry from the glory days of Simone and Secret Six, but a good time had at the FigureFan ranch this weekend, and I’m looking forward to October when I will most definitely pick up volume three.
Images used are the copyright of DC Comicsand are reproduced here for review purposes only. If you love comic books, support the artists and writers by BUYING them, either digitally or in print. Better yet, buy them in print and support your local comic shop too!
Sunday Funday: My Ten Favorite Things About Last Night’s Doctor Who!
Wow, yesterday’s “Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS” was a cracker of an episode. I loved it to death and since I’ll probably spend today watching it again, I thought I’d run off a quick list of the things I loved most about it… If you haven’t seen it yet… SPOILERS!!!
- The Doctor tricking the salvage team into thinking they had only 30 minutes to rescue Clara before he blew up the TARDIS was brilliant… The set up was even more so… “Behind those doors is the salvage of a lifetime!”
- “We’re in trouble, Clara… proper trouble!” LOL.
- Matt Smith is unbelievably brilliant even in the mediocre episodes, but give him something like this one and there’s no stopping him!
- Validium!!! The “living metal” invented by the Time Lords and featured prominently in the 7th Doctor story “Silver Nemesis.” Ok, it wasn’t mentioned by name, but we saw where it’s used by the TARDIS as part of her ability to alter her own internal geography. So cool!
- Even trashed, the new console room looked absolutely gorgeous in this episode.
- The Eye of Harmony… ‘nuff said.
- The bit where you hear all the voices that the TARDIS remembers hearing inside her console room. In addition to various incarnation of The Doctor, you get to hear Susan and Ian Chesterton. That put a huge smile on my face.
- Clara’s skirt!!! 😉
- There’s an Encyclopedia Gallifrey and it’s in liquid form and stored in bottles! Which brings me to…
- Holy Christ, there’s a leather-bound History of the Time War in the TARDIS library!!!!! I love this on so many levels. First, I love and collect antique books. I spent eight years of my life buying and selling them for a living. I would LOVE to have that prop! Secondly, I think it’s hilarious that there’s a “history” of something that has been Time Locked and therefore effectively removed from time itself. It’s almost like having a history of something that was erased from history.
Great stuff! I can’t wait until next week’s!
FigureFan Zero 