Posts Tagged ‘review’

234 – Nightwing Portrait

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

Part 2 of my contribution to the Christopher’s Restaurant art gallery that is on display from September 20th through October 31st. Jason Young and Jeff Potter, my fellow Ok, PANIC! artists, have each done five portraits of various superheroes, and they are all available for sale. If you live in the Dayton, Ohio area, go eat some delicious food and enjoy some great comic-related artwork.

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I’m really trying to get back into the habit of reading comics again, so I might continue to do this.

Moving forward:

Ultimate X-Men: Apparently, mutants were created as part of an experiment by the U.S. government, Wolverine being the first. Then mutantism started spreading like a virus, I guess. Whatever. This follows up on all the hoopla of the Ultimate Fallout story and of Jeph Loeb & Art Adams’ Ultimate X series, which was only worth buying for the art. 5 issues came out in 2 years, which makes me think that this Ultimate reboot, which seems to come pretty quickly after the last Ultimate reboot, is because Ultimate X took so long to come out. Anyway, this was a fine comic, a lot of appearances from former X-Men characters, an intriguing set-up for future stories, and Ultimate Val Cooper. I’ll keep with this for a bit.

Daredevil # 4: I’m not supposed to like this book. I’m not a fan of Mark Waid’s work. I used to be back in his first runs on Flash and Captain America, but everything else I’ve read from him has been pretty mediocre. I love Daredevil, he’s my favorite Marvel character, but I was dreading Mark Waid on this book, for the aforementioned mediocrity, plus it doesn’t really seem like the type of character Waid usually is drawn to. But it works, it absolutely, bafflingly works. The second issue of this book made me want to tear it up due to a litany of legalese puns, but that only happened that once. Plus Paolo Rivera is a fantastic artist, and Marcos Martin is fucking amazing. I’m actually angry that I like this book so much. Goddammit, Daredevil.

Catwoman: Eh. The art’s fantastic and cheesecakey, but there’s seemingly no story here, and if there was, I missed it. It’s really just a string of scenes, all to lead up to the final 4 pages of Batman and Catwoman fucking – which apparently is freaking people out. Eh. Whatever. My only problem with it is that between this and Damien Wayne existing, it destroys my theory that if Batman ever got laid, he’s stop being Batman. Hell, when I was getting laid regularly, I pretty much stopped doing anything else. But otherwise – eh.

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Wolverine

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

So despite the fact that I can say (not-so-proudly) I am a Wolverine fan, I have no intention of seeing X-Men Origins: Wolverine. To make up for that, here’s a pencil drawing I did that was probably the only decent Wolverine sketch I’ve ever done.

That said, I did spend my money on the new Star Trek, a franchise I can easily say that I am not a fan of. I have seen most of the films, though, and enjoyed quite a few of them. The new Trek blows ‘em all away. It’s just a quickly paced, fun, action romp with enough emotional weight and depth to keep you engaged when shit’s not blowin’ up. Zachary Quinto as Spock shows infinitely more range as an actor than his role as Sylar on Heroes (to be fair, everything about Heroes is incredibly one-note). The rest of the major crew is mostly cast as comic relief (with the exception of Uhura), but each gets a dramatic moment to shine as well. Chris Pine as Kirk comes off as an incredible asshole, and in any other world, this would hurt him. However in the rigid command of Starfleet, Asshole Kirk becomes the Everyman, and the most relatable character, something most of the other Trek movies and shows are missing. Leonard Nimoy’s appearance as Old Spock makes sense within the logic of the movie, but it still felt uncomfortable. However, the worst part of the film is when Young Kirk steals a classic convertible and blasts The Beastie Boys and uses some cellphone technology (Buy Nokia!) that isn’t all that far away from what we’ve got now. The whole scene does help build up Kirk as Asshole Everyman, but still feels… shallow. The direction is pretty standard, but owes quite a bit to both Star Wars and Firefly in it’s action sequences and settings. And hey, the Cloverfield monster shows up!

But still, money well spent, the movie is incredibly fun, and I would definitely recommend it to non-Trek fans. As for diehard Trek fans? I dunno. The majority of the folks in the theater (most of whom I can assume were Trekkies) applauded at the end and at certain key moments in the movie, but as I was leaving I was still hearing some folks bitch about continuity errors and things they “got wrong”. So who knows?

I was going to pick this as the next movie pick for my podcast Gutter Trash, but my local nerd crew decided that we all needed to see it opening night. And for once, my superpowers didn’t kick in, and I didn’t have idiots surrounding me in the theater. However I did get there early, to minimize the damage. One of our group, though, couldn’t get in due to the movie being sold out, however, right next to my friend was an empty seat, and there were a whole bunch of empty seats toward the front of the theater as well. I don’t get it.

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