Young Avengers #7-#8

No, your eyes do not deceive you, I am finally reviewing a Marvel comic!  Only took me four and half months, right?  And I’m not even covering any of the titles that people actually care about.  Instead, I’m taking a look at one of my personal favorites, Young Avengers, about a group of teen heroes who, despite their name, have no real connections to any established heroes.  Seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it?  The title debuted in 2005 and, from what little I’ve read, was generally a good book until Children’s Crusade came along.  I won’t spoil anything for people who still want to read it, but let’s just say that it only adds fuel to my theory that mainstream comics are allergic to happiness.

But anyway.  The story arc I’m looking at today, called “Secret Identities,” is sandwiched between two much longer story arcs where a lot more stuff goes on in terms of villainous attempts at world domination.  I’m reviewing “Secret Identities” instead of those ones because, frankly, I am lazy and didn’t feel like reviewing anything longer.  Don’t worry, we’ll still have fun.

(Also, there will be mild spoilers for the first six issues along with issues seven and eight here, so tread carefully.)

"The Sky's the Limit"/"On Wings of Song" - Sky Dancers

Hey there, children of the ‘90s!  Ready for a blast from the past that’ll make you feel old?  You’ve come to the right place.  And yes, I am counting the Sky Dancers as superheroes.  They are on the side of good, have special powers, and fight a designated supervillain, and that’s good enough for my money.  Though after watching the show, I’m kinda wishing it wasn’t.

What time is it? Shameless plug time!

Can it be?  A Cracked article cowritten by yours truly?

The 6 Creepiest Sexual Encounters in Comic Book History

It actually took me a second to recognize it on the site, since my original title was "Six Comic Books That Tried to Be Romantic and Failed Horrendously."  Actually, they changed most of what I wrote, and while that's kind of an ego-deflater once you've poured your heart and soul into something and thought you did a real bang-up job of it, that's the way things work in the real world, so you just have to shrug your shoulders and move on with life. 

Though to be honest, I'm more miffed at the factual errors than the fact that they deleted half my jokes.  Tarantula raped Nightwing on a rooftop, not in the street, dangit!

Batman: The Movie

Long before Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan ever thought of bringing the Dark Knight to the silver screen, 20^th Century Fox decided to capitalize on the wild success of the ‘60s Batman series with a full-length film.  It was shot during the break between the first and second seasons on a budget of $1,377,800, which was pretty paltry even for back then.  But hey, just because a movie is made on the cheap doesn’t mean it can’t be good—Psycho, made six years earlier, famously had a budget of just one million dollars.  Is this film anywhere near as brilliant as Psycho?  Don’t be silly.  Is it one heck of a fun ride?  You bet your Bat-boots it is!

"Walk on the Wild Side" - X-Men: Evolution

As I said in my introductory post, I’m primarily a DC fan, and it was only in the past couple of years that I became curious enough about Marvel to start checking out some of their cartoons.  One of the first shows I tried was X-Men: Evolution, which lasted four seasons and played fast and loose with the X-Men mythos (e.g. de-aging half the cast).  If you look at the reviews for this program on IMDB, the changes apparently raised some hackles among comic book nerds.  Let’s face it—when it comes to hackle-raising, we geeks are the undisputed champions. (Finally, a sport that nerds excel in!)  But in all honesty, X-Men: Evolution isn’t one of the things I nitpick.  For better or worse, this show was my introduction to the X-Men, and I for one get a lot of enjoyment out of it.

Well… except for this one episode…

The (Comic) Book Was Better - Superman/Batman: Public Enemies

We’ve all heard it.  Heck, we’ve all said it—“That movie was good/bad/okay/fantastic/the worst piece of dreck ever put on film… but the book was better.”  In this new review series, I am going to be looking at movies (or TV episodes, though the emphasis will be on DC’s series of animated films) and the comic books/graphic novels that inspired them to determine which one told the story better.  I won’t really be comparing them per se, because otherwise you could probably narrow it all down to “the cartoon cut too much stuff out”—I’ll just be judging each version on its own merits as if I have never seen/read the other version, and we’ll see how this works. Today’s subject: Superman/Batman: Public Enemies!

The Incredibles

After all the rage from last month’s reviews, I figured it’d be therapeutic to start March by writing about something fun, and let’s face it—if there are two companies that know how to make fun movies, they’re Disney and Pixar.  In 2004, in the wake of the wildly winning Finding Nemo, they brought their formidable fun-making forces to the world of superheroes.  The result?  The Incredibles, which ended up netting another few bajillion dollars for its creators.  Was it deserved?  I think we all know the answer to that, but let’s take a look anyway.