I had low expectations for Frank Miller's adaptation of Will Eisner's The Spirit. The first time I saw a trailer for the movie I was instantly worried, gone was the cartoony style of The Spirit that masqueraded the violence in the comic book and in it's place we're given Sin City like effects that showcased the insane blood bath, but also distracted from the actual story making some scenes completely unwatchable.
There were definitely redeeming benefits to the movie as well. Samuel L Jackson cast as Octopus and Scarlett Johanson as his partner in crime, Silken Floss, were the ony things that kept me in the movie theater. Jackson's over the top antics and Johanson's deadpanned coolness saved the movie from totally bombing right off the bat. Add in Louis Lombardi's purposely stupid clone army, Phobos & Company, and you have a well defined team of villains with perfect comedic timing.
Sadly, the perfect villains were balanced with not so perfect heroes. At times Gabriel Macht's (Playing the title character of The Spirit) sarcastic wit and flirtatious banter would get lost in scenes that forced you to focus on his brilliantly white Chuck Taylors instead of the main plot, a fault that you can only blame on Miller's lack directorial experience, since the script from the movie seemed to be almost spot on for Eisner's vision of Central City.
Besides a few missing or combined elements (besides the obvious ocmission of Ebony White, The Spirit's living racial pun & the combination of The Octopus & Dr. Cobra) Frank Miller seemed to have written a script didn't suck, it's just too bad that Miller wasn't seasoned enough to focus on BOTH directing and writing.
All in all Frank Miller's vision of The Spirit seems to be a partial nightmare, but I keep telling myself it couold have been worse, he could have done The Rocketeer.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
Kevin Smith's Batman Cacophony #1
The only complaint i have about Kevin Smith's Cacophony is that Roy sold himself short. He soooo could have netted a hell of a lot more than $20 grand, course....that will make more sense in a bit.
Witty dialogue and senseless violence marks the beginning of Cacophony, Smith's recent venture into the Batman world and I am so happy that he let us into his twisted version of the Batman universe.
Tying the poor economics of today, Smith starts us off with a satirical joke on big business and keeps on going; delving into such topics of green merkins and why pedophiles enjoy the Sunday papers Family Circle comic. But the fun doesn't stop there kiddies.....all of that happens in the first few pages of the book.
Starting off with a potential murder, Deadshot has been hired by a bereaved parent whose kid offed himself while using the new drug on the street "Chuckles". Chuckles was discovered when Zues Maximus raided one of the Jokers hide-outs and found a random canister of The Joker's fatal laughing gas. Maximus being an entrepreneurial kinda guy thought it would be wise to cut Ecstasy with diluted Joker gas and sell it on the street. Next thing he knows he's mass producing the next designer drug. Sadly, Deadshot's current employer doesn't realize the drug is being put out by Maximus so he's sent Deadshot in to kill The Joker.
After getting the security codes to Arkham Asylum from a disgruntled security guard named Roy who was let go due to our poor economical times possibly brought on by the Bush administration, Deadshot makes his way into Arkham to bust the Joker's chaps. Sadly he's stopped short by an unknown assailant who has different plans for Joker....bust him out of jail and give him LOADS of cash. The Joker graciously accepts the cash load and makes off to take his revenge on Maximus.
Kevin Smith does a fantastic job of showing us the darker side of Gotham by including special appearances by Zasz and other insane members of the cities zanies, not to mention that Smith's version of Batman does seem to border that thin line of sanity he sometimes balances on.
Batman Cacophony was a great book that not only I could recommend to a Batman fan, but to someone new to the whole DC universe and not have worry about them being lost. Smith's dialogue helps barely used Maximus seem like a regular in the Batman world and adds enough development to each character so you don't feel like an outsider as some mini series can.
Totally dig it. Pick it up!
Witty dialogue and senseless violence marks the beginning of Cacophony, Smith's recent venture into the Batman world and I am so happy that he let us into his twisted version of the Batman universe.
Tying the poor economics of today, Smith starts us off with a satirical joke on big business and keeps on going; delving into such topics of green merkins and why pedophiles enjoy the Sunday papers Family Circle comic. But the fun doesn't stop there kiddies.....all of that happens in the first few pages of the book.
Starting off with a potential murder, Deadshot has been hired by a bereaved parent whose kid offed himself while using the new drug on the street "Chuckles". Chuckles was discovered when Zues Maximus raided one of the Jokers hide-outs and found a random canister of The Joker's fatal laughing gas. Maximus being an entrepreneurial kinda guy thought it would be wise to cut Ecstasy with diluted Joker gas and sell it on the street. Next thing he knows he's mass producing the next designer drug. Sadly, Deadshot's current employer doesn't realize the drug is being put out by Maximus so he's sent Deadshot in to kill The Joker.
After getting the security codes to Arkham Asylum from a disgruntled security guard named Roy who was let go due to our poor economical times possibly brought on by the Bush administration, Deadshot makes his way into Arkham to bust the Joker's chaps. Sadly he's stopped short by an unknown assailant who has different plans for Joker....bust him out of jail and give him LOADS of cash. The Joker graciously accepts the cash load and makes off to take his revenge on Maximus.
Kevin Smith does a fantastic job of showing us the darker side of Gotham by including special appearances by Zasz and other insane members of the cities zanies, not to mention that Smith's version of Batman does seem to border that thin line of sanity he sometimes balances on.
Batman Cacophony was a great book that not only I could recommend to a Batman fan, but to someone new to the whole DC universe and not have worry about them being lost. Smith's dialogue helps barely used Maximus seem like a regular in the Batman world and adds enough development to each character so you don't feel like an outsider as some mini series can.
Totally dig it. Pick it up!
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Project Superpowers: Black Terror #1
I think the narrator best describes how I feel about anything Project Superpowers near the beginning of Black Terror #1," What he feels now is nothing. NOTHING," cause that is how I feel about Project Superpowers.
Let's rewind a bit. Project Super Powers is the child of Alex Ross and Jim Krueger. Since most publishing companies NEED to have a "Super Hero" universe Dynamite Entertainment brought them into to the picture to take public domain characters from Fox Comics and Crestwood Productions and sculpt them into the Super Heroes.
How do they bring these golden age heroes into the light of today, by a contrived plot device which left all of the worlds super heroes (save two, The Fighting Yank & the Green Lama) trapped in Pandora's Box after Hitler released all of it's evil out into the world.
For some reason the US Government did not like all these super heroes running around and convinced Yank to go around and collect them in the box.
Flash forward to today and The Yank is not feeling very happy about what he's done, so he travels over to visit the Green Lama in Tibet to contemplate what he's done decades ago.
Eventually all of the heroes are let out and they try to adjust to the world today.
.....and I think this sounds super cool, right? Sadly I just don't care about any of the heroes here.
I've tried, but I fell like none of the Heroes had any development, it was just like..here ya go...have some golden age super heroes that people have forgotten about but are public domain so we're gonna use them all.
So now we come to Black Terror #1. The break out star from Project Superpowers. Ummm...I didn't realize there was a break out star to this series. I had to look up who the main character was on wikipedia, I mean this story is just that forgettable to me. But here he is, he's got his own book and wow is it sub par like the rest of the series.
I've read and re-read this issue and I still cannot fathom how it came to be. The writing is cliched and the art work, well I'm suprised that Alex Ross has ANYTHING to do with the art direction.
I understand that the writing tone is in the grandiose fashion of the Golden Age and this makes sense since most of these Super Heroes walked right out of that time period, but what gets me is that even though the character of Black Terror has had his back story explained, his motivation has been defined and he's been given a proper purpose I still don't care.
Plus the one thing that I would expect to be stellar in a Alex Ross project would be the art, unfortuantely Ross paints better than he directs. While the covers in Project Superpowers have been fantastic the interior work is lacking in that fresh crispness you would associate with Ross and while I realize he's not the one doing most of the art I would expect consitancy to be kept up through out his works instead of this 90's looking crap (Supplied lovingly by Mike Lilly, known mostly for supplying sketch cards to trading card companies) that leaves you wishing they would have finished drawing the villians instead of blending parts of them into the black background.
Whatever. Right now Project Superpowers is just not the BAM POW WOW Super Hero universe that Dynamite Entertainment is looking for, which is sad cause it has potential. Hopefully it can grow into the universe it needs to be, but right now I'd say it's floundering to it's death.
Let's rewind a bit. Project Super Powers is the child of Alex Ross and Jim Krueger. Since most publishing companies NEED to have a "Super Hero" universe Dynamite Entertainment brought them into to the picture to take public domain characters from Fox Comics and Crestwood Productions and sculpt them into the Super Heroes.
How do they bring these golden age heroes into the light of today, by a contrived plot device which left all of the worlds super heroes (save two, The Fighting Yank & the Green Lama) trapped in Pandora's Box after Hitler released all of it's evil out into the world.
For some reason the US Government did not like all these super heroes running around and convinced Yank to go around and collect them in the box.
Flash forward to today and The Yank is not feeling very happy about what he's done, so he travels over to visit the Green Lama in Tibet to contemplate what he's done decades ago.
Eventually all of the heroes are let out and they try to adjust to the world today.
.....and I think this sounds super cool, right? Sadly I just don't care about any of the heroes here.
I've tried, but I fell like none of the Heroes had any development, it was just like..here ya go...have some golden age super heroes that people have forgotten about but are public domain so we're gonna use them all.
So now we come to Black Terror #1. The break out star from Project Superpowers. Ummm...I didn't realize there was a break out star to this series. I had to look up who the main character was on wikipedia, I mean this story is just that forgettable to me. But here he is, he's got his own book and wow is it sub par like the rest of the series.
I've read and re-read this issue and I still cannot fathom how it came to be. The writing is cliched and the art work, well I'm suprised that Alex Ross has ANYTHING to do with the art direction.
I understand that the writing tone is in the grandiose fashion of the Golden Age and this makes sense since most of these Super Heroes walked right out of that time period, but what gets me is that even though the character of Black Terror has had his back story explained, his motivation has been defined and he's been given a proper purpose I still don't care.
Plus the one thing that I would expect to be stellar in a Alex Ross project would be the art, unfortuantely Ross paints better than he directs. While the covers in Project Superpowers have been fantastic the interior work is lacking in that fresh crispness you would associate with Ross and while I realize he's not the one doing most of the art I would expect consitancy to be kept up through out his works instead of this 90's looking crap (Supplied lovingly by Mike Lilly, known mostly for supplying sketch cards to trading card companies) that leaves you wishing they would have finished drawing the villians instead of blending parts of them into the black background.
Whatever. Right now Project Superpowers is just not the BAM POW WOW Super Hero universe that Dynamite Entertainment is looking for, which is sad cause it has potential. Hopefully it can grow into the universe it needs to be, but right now I'd say it's floundering to it's death.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Gears of War #1
Man do I love Gears of War. I love the cheesy sci-fi story that loosely resembles the general plot of Starship Troopers and all of the gratuitous blood and gore. Hell, I'll admit it, I also just liked shooting people and being a beefy soldier kicking ass all over.
So when I read about the Gears of War comic from Wildstorm I was insanely excited. Here is a game that took up a few months of my life and I still want to pop it in the 360 occasionally and frag some Horde members. Imagine my surprise when I read the comic and it just didn't do it for me.
I know it had been a bit since I've played Gears last, but the terminology was suddenly lost on me and while it didn't lack in the guts and gore department there was something a bit more thrilling about shooting someones head off then reading about it happening.
But with Joshua Ortega writing the current comic and the script for Gears of War 2 I can see this tying into the video game eventually (I've read that the first arc will bridge the gap between the two games, we'll see.) and fleshing out the rest of the Gears world. After all this is a man who's written prequels to Star Wars Kotor (His story in Star wars Tale #23 served as a prequel for the KOTOR video game) and the recent top selling "Frank Frazzeta's Death Dealer" mini, both were great stories that lead me to trust him with my Gears.
If that isn't enough you have the incredibly hectic art work Liam Sharp. You remember Liam Sharp, he's recently done pencil work for Dc/Vertigo's Testament and The barely read Countdown tie-in "Lord Havok & the Extremists". His frenzied style of art will definitely lend to the chaotic stories of war that take place in the Gears universe.
Although I must admit that the first issue of this series did give me a bit of a scare, I'm the type of reader that allows a slow start in a series. After a few issues of going no where...then I start to worry, but with the creative team or Ortega and Sharp I'm not really worried at all.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
M Night Shyamalan's The Happening and one other crappy movie
*ALERT ALERT THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS*
The other night I rented The Happening and Pathology on DVD; two movies that held the only expectation of me being drunk by the end of the night. So I called up my buddy James and we opened up a beer (Magic Hat for me #9 is my Fav right now) and popped in Pathology.
I don't even know if i should waste anytime writing about Pathology. This Milo Ventimiglia helmed "thriller" was just horrible and made absolutely no sense. This was obviously Ventimiglia's break out of the good guy movie and all it did was make him look like a douche.
Milo plays a young med student who goes to some big town and gets involved with a bunch of peers with God complexes. They each take turns murdering people in creative ways and have then everyone else has to figure out how. It sounds good in theory, but when you throw in the fact that their crack smoking, beer drinking students who love to have sex while their chopping up corpses and do all sorts of deviant acts it makes it horrible. I can't sugar coat it, it was horrible.
Even Alyssa Milano could not save this mess as Ventimiglia's love interest, mainly cause he was spending his time diddeling one of his partners in crimes fiance on morgue slabs next to corpses.
See, it was just a horrible movie. Don't rent it, I've wasted too much time on it already.
NEXT!
The Happening opens at a busy foliage filled park during the middle of a beautiful day. All of a sudden people start dropping dead either by their own hand or reasons unknown. A young woman stabs herself in the neck with a knitting needle as she tries to recall where she left off in a book. Shocking.
The city is evacuated to smaller towns surrounded by bushes and big trees and expansive lawns, but still people keep dying. Now they're acting out and killing themselves all over. People are hanging themselves from trees or running themselves over with lawnmowers; it's horrible. It's scary. It's SHOCKING, until a hippie couple who owns a nursery brings up to male lead Marky Mark how plants can quickly evolve and adapt lethal defense mechanisms. Did I mention that Marky Mark plays a high school science teacher?
Suddenly, while walking through a huge field of wheat surronded by trees and other plants as far as the eye can see, a huge crop of people start to off themselves (including the hippie botanists) and Marky Mark brings up the plant idea. Everyone seems to like it so he steals the dead hippies ideas and becomes the savior of the movie. Good job Marky mark.
I can't help but feel M Night Shyamalan is trying to teach us a lesson with his latest faux shocker, The Happening; Trust in Science and Save the Planet or it's going to come back and bite us in the ass one day. Those are two great points that are brought up to us everyday by Al Gore, but when you package a great message with Shyamalan's cliched writing and sloppy directing it's something I would expect from the Sci-Fi network, not the director of 6th Sense and Unbreakable.
Wait? I'm just realizing something. Out of Shyamalan's 6 movies where he's done all the work I only liked two of them and they were the first two he made. Why oh why do I keep watching his work. I can only think of one reason, his movies are gratuitus, over the top shit.
That's right, walking into any of his movies you can always expect to be watching M. Night Shyamalan stroking his own ego with obvious plot twists and crazy characters that would never adorn any other movie but his own. Sadly, he seems to see these as original ground breaking ideas that will surprise us and hopefuly teach us each a lesson. A modern day fable.
What draws The Happening down even further is the casting. Mark Whalberg plays a pussy whipped high school science teacher who's BFF with John Leguizamo number puzzle spouting math teacher. Marky Mark's idea of playing the "sensitive" high school teacher reminds me more of Stewart from MadTV than a brainy science teacher come to save the day. And Lequizamo, while I never really liked him anyways.
If it wasn't for the every quirky Zooey Deschanel and a VERY interesting Betty Buckley bit part near the end of the movie I owuld say leave this one on the shelf, but you just can't. Go out and get it and experince the shocking horror that is M Night Shyamalan for yourself.
The other night I rented The Happening and Pathology on DVD; two movies that held the only expectation of me being drunk by the end of the night. So I called up my buddy James and we opened up a beer (Magic Hat for me #9 is my Fav right now) and popped in Pathology.
I don't even know if i should waste anytime writing about Pathology. This Milo Ventimiglia helmed "thriller" was just horrible and made absolutely no sense. This was obviously Ventimiglia's break out of the good guy movie and all it did was make him look like a douche.
Milo plays a young med student who goes to some big town and gets involved with a bunch of peers with God complexes. They each take turns murdering people in creative ways and have then everyone else has to figure out how. It sounds good in theory, but when you throw in the fact that their crack smoking, beer drinking students who love to have sex while their chopping up corpses and do all sorts of deviant acts it makes it horrible. I can't sugar coat it, it was horrible.
Even Alyssa Milano could not save this mess as Ventimiglia's love interest, mainly cause he was spending his time diddeling one of his partners in crimes fiance on morgue slabs next to corpses.
See, it was just a horrible movie. Don't rent it, I've wasted too much time on it already.
NEXT!
The Happening opens at a busy foliage filled park during the middle of a beautiful day. All of a sudden people start dropping dead either by their own hand or reasons unknown. A young woman stabs herself in the neck with a knitting needle as she tries to recall where she left off in a book. Shocking.
The city is evacuated to smaller towns surrounded by bushes and big trees and expansive lawns, but still people keep dying. Now they're acting out and killing themselves all over. People are hanging themselves from trees or running themselves over with lawnmowers; it's horrible. It's scary. It's SHOCKING, until a hippie couple who owns a nursery brings up to male lead Marky Mark how plants can quickly evolve and adapt lethal defense mechanisms. Did I mention that Marky Mark plays a high school science teacher?
Suddenly, while walking through a huge field of wheat surronded by trees and other plants as far as the eye can see, a huge crop of people start to off themselves (including the hippie botanists) and Marky Mark brings up the plant idea. Everyone seems to like it so he steals the dead hippies ideas and becomes the savior of the movie. Good job Marky mark.
I can't help but feel M Night Shyamalan is trying to teach us a lesson with his latest faux shocker, The Happening; Trust in Science and Save the Planet or it's going to come back and bite us in the ass one day. Those are two great points that are brought up to us everyday by Al Gore, but when you package a great message with Shyamalan's cliched writing and sloppy directing it's something I would expect from the Sci-Fi network, not the director of 6th Sense and Unbreakable.
Wait? I'm just realizing something. Out of Shyamalan's 6 movies where he's done all the work I only liked two of them and they were the first two he made. Why oh why do I keep watching his work. I can only think of one reason, his movies are gratuitus, over the top shit.
That's right, walking into any of his movies you can always expect to be watching M. Night Shyamalan stroking his own ego with obvious plot twists and crazy characters that would never adorn any other movie but his own. Sadly, he seems to see these as original ground breaking ideas that will surprise us and hopefuly teach us each a lesson. A modern day fable.
What draws The Happening down even further is the casting. Mark Whalberg plays a pussy whipped high school science teacher who's BFF with John Leguizamo number puzzle spouting math teacher. Marky Mark's idea of playing the "sensitive" high school teacher reminds me more of Stewart from MadTV than a brainy science teacher come to save the day. And Lequizamo, while I never really liked him anyways.
If it wasn't for the every quirky Zooey Deschanel and a VERY interesting Betty Buckley bit part near the end of the movie I owuld say leave this one on the shelf, but you just can't. Go out and get it and experince the shocking horror that is M Night Shyamalan for yourself.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
The Stand: Captain Trips
We have found something special in Marvel's recent dive into the world of Stephen King, writers and artists who can take someone's work and expand on it without destroying the original.
It's really hard to believe I know, but after two successful Dark Tower Mini Series Marvel Comics has ventured into another one of King's interlocking series, The Stand. Yes, The Stand has been adapted into a comic and Marvel has picked a wonderful creative team to helm this apocalyptic adventure.
The secret to this tightly weaved adaptation is Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Sensational Spider-Man; Dead of Night Featuring Man-Thing) get's what King was doing when he wrote the book. He was a major Stephen King fan when he was younger and devoured The Stand when it hit shelves back in the day, so he understands the dogged, end of the world, shit in your face attitude spun out of the author's opus .
The best thing though is that Mike Perkins (Captain America; House of M: Avengers) knows what King was envisioning when The Stand was written. If you think that Agguire-Sacasa writing has King pegged you should take a gander at Perkins gritty stylistic art has said that Perkins artwork has reflected closely how he imagined the characters and I second that opinion; after reading the second issue I feel the comic is better cast then the mediocre ABC Mini Series.
I never really bought Molly Ringwald as the pregnant Frannie Goldsmith, Rob Lowe as the mute Nick Andros and while I enjoyed Laura San Giacomo in Just Shoot Me the role of crazy Nadine just didn't fit her, but when Perkins lets his pen flow I finally see faces the that I imagined; something that I thought I would never see.
So yes peoples, I think that you should run out to your local comic book shop and pick up this kickin' adaptation of The Stand. Not only is the story telling spot on, you've got plenty of gritty illustration that capture Stepehen King's vision perfectly.
It's really hard to believe I know, but after two successful Dark Tower Mini Series Marvel Comics has ventured into another one of King's interlocking series, The Stand. Yes, The Stand has been adapted into a comic and Marvel has picked a wonderful creative team to helm this apocalyptic adventure.
The secret to this tightly weaved adaptation is Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Sensational Spider-Man; Dead of Night Featuring Man-Thing) get's what King was doing when he wrote the book. He was a major Stephen King fan when he was younger and devoured The Stand when it hit shelves back in the day, so he understands the dogged, end of the world, shit in your face attitude spun out of the author's opus .
The best thing though is that Mike Perkins (Captain America; House of M: Avengers) knows what King was envisioning when The Stand was written. If you think that Agguire-Sacasa writing has King pegged you should take a gander at Perkins gritty stylistic art has said that Perkins artwork has reflected closely how he imagined the characters and I second that opinion; after reading the second issue I feel the comic is better cast then the mediocre ABC Mini Series.
I never really bought Molly Ringwald as the pregnant Frannie Goldsmith, Rob Lowe as the mute Nick Andros and while I enjoyed Laura San Giacomo in Just Shoot Me the role of crazy Nadine just didn't fit her, but when Perkins lets his pen flow I finally see faces the that I imagined; something that I thought I would never see.
So yes peoples, I think that you should run out to your local comic book shop and pick up this kickin' adaptation of The Stand. Not only is the story telling spot on, you've got plenty of gritty illustration that capture Stepehen King's vision perfectly.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Pinching Our Pocket Books?
Unless you’ve been stuck under a rock you’ve been reading Marvel Comics BIG event this year, “Secret Invasion” and this week brought us one issue closer to the end.
Before we go any further in this I just want you to know that I AM enjoying Secret Invasion. It reminds me of those old body snatcher/alien invasion movies where everyone turns out to be an alien in the end, Love it. But after all of the fighting, explosions and shocking revelas I can’t help but feel that I’m missing something.
What I’m missing in this book is an epic story that our heroes deserve and trust me; I’m not saying that DC is doing that with Final Crisis. But with Secret Invasion we’re getting the same thing we got with Civil War; a main book that is full of fighting, but no back story to fill in the blanks. To do that you need to buy the 114+ tie in issues and the 5 or six miniseries that comes out with the main book. I just don’t want that anymore.
True, it doesn’t hurt my pocket book that much to pick up a book and try it out, but what about those of you out there who don’t work at a comic book shop or have the convenience of Marvel sending you preview copies. You’re screwed and forced to just read about a bunch of super heroes fighting, which I’m sure there are a few of you out there that doesn’t mind a story lacking structure, but COME ON fight fight fight, run run run, skrull skrull skrull does not make a full story.
Sure this is the next big thing and apparently to embrace change we need to spend a few hundred dollars on Secret Invasion, But what if Marvel embraced change? What if instead of forcing us to buy a hundred and something books they took the time to carefully place all the key plot points in the main book, instead of assuming that as comic fans we have an infinite amount of money to spend on event books.
I think what Marvel is missing in this event format DC is actually excelling on. Sure they have cross over miniseries to Final Crisis and sure they’re important to the main story, but look at this. DC took a SCHEDULED two month break during Final Crisis to give us time to focus our attention (and money) on a few tie-in miniseries that ARE important to Crisis. I’ll admit, when Final Crisis #3 ended and I realized I had to wait two months for the next issue I was upset, but they left books like Superman Beyond (by Morrison) & DC’s Last Will and Testament (By Meltzer) to take the main books place and they succeeded in furthering the story without releasing their main book and five tie ins at the same time (just counting the tie ins for Secret Invasion this week, That’s $15.96 just to read Secret Invasion this week Vs. Dc’s $3.99 For the one Tie in they put out).
So there, I said my beef. Secret Invasion started out as a good book, but then it turned into fighting and Oh this person is a skrull too, but we're not going to tell you how, we're going to make you buy this book and that book and then maybe you'll get the full story, but not till you buy the 4 issue miniseries that goes with it as well and the epilogue in Mighty Avengers/New Avengers’ Tie in.
Ok, maybe that was a bit of a run on sentence, but you catch my drift.
Before we go any further in this I just want you to know that I AM enjoying Secret Invasion. It reminds me of those old body snatcher/alien invasion movies where everyone turns out to be an alien in the end, Love it. But after all of the fighting, explosions and shocking revelas I can’t help but feel that I’m missing something.
What I’m missing in this book is an epic story that our heroes deserve and trust me; I’m not saying that DC is doing that with Final Crisis. But with Secret Invasion we’re getting the same thing we got with Civil War; a main book that is full of fighting, but no back story to fill in the blanks. To do that you need to buy the 114+ tie in issues and the 5 or six miniseries that comes out with the main book. I just don’t want that anymore.
True, it doesn’t hurt my pocket book that much to pick up a book and try it out, but what about those of you out there who don’t work at a comic book shop or have the convenience of Marvel sending you preview copies. You’re screwed and forced to just read about a bunch of super heroes fighting, which I’m sure there are a few of you out there that doesn’t mind a story lacking structure, but COME ON fight fight fight, run run run, skrull skrull skrull does not make a full story.
Sure this is the next big thing and apparently to embrace change we need to spend a few hundred dollars on Secret Invasion, But what if Marvel embraced change? What if instead of forcing us to buy a hundred and something books they took the time to carefully place all the key plot points in the main book, instead of assuming that as comic fans we have an infinite amount of money to spend on event books.
I think what Marvel is missing in this event format DC is actually excelling on. Sure they have cross over miniseries to Final Crisis and sure they’re important to the main story, but look at this. DC took a SCHEDULED two month break during Final Crisis to give us time to focus our attention (and money) on a few tie-in miniseries that ARE important to Crisis. I’ll admit, when Final Crisis #3 ended and I realized I had to wait two months for the next issue I was upset, but they left books like Superman Beyond (by Morrison) & DC’s Last Will and Testament (By Meltzer) to take the main books place and they succeeded in furthering the story without releasing their main book and five tie ins at the same time (just counting the tie ins for Secret Invasion this week, That’s $15.96 just to read Secret Invasion this week Vs. Dc’s $3.99 For the one Tie in they put out).
So there, I said my beef. Secret Invasion started out as a good book, but then it turned into fighting and Oh this person is a skrull too, but we're not going to tell you how, we're going to make you buy this book and that book and then maybe you'll get the full story, but not till you buy the 4 issue miniseries that goes with it as well and the epilogue in Mighty Avengers/New Avengers’ Tie in.
Ok, maybe that was a bit of a run on sentence, but you catch my drift.
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