Finally!!

Well before I go any further I have to express my excitement at the fact ...SENTRY IS BACK!!! o.k as a horseman of Apocalypse and since his return is taking place in the pages of Uncanny Avengers this will lead to a rematch between Sentry and the man who put him down...Thor. This will of course be a fight that I am conflicted over since I like both characters , if I think back to Seige, I was rooting for Thor and  will prolly always root for Thor over Sentry, just like I would want the Hulk to beat either of them should those tussles ensue ...which if this bleeds over into Avengers it very well could.

I do think he should keep this black and blue looking tron suit that he's wearing , I like it better than the yellow one , though he has that blue Arch Angel looking face that I could do without and the pale white hair is an improvement in the  characters look. Hopefully there will be some positive fan response and this can be a permanent thing rather than just a few issues. We have seen other characters like Wolverine , the Hulk and Angel all go back to their normal selves after a stint with Apocalypse, but since his current horsemen have been brought back from the dead then does that mean they go back to being dead?

So who are the other three? They are choices designed to target specific avengers for sure , and good choices one in particular would make me a little excited for the next issue but is eclipsed by Sentry for sure and that's Daken. The other two are Banshee and the Grim Reaper who just died an issue or so ago, when Rogue killed him.

oh and other comics came out as well,   new avengers or  the Illuminati Avengers, has the Wakanda and Atlantis war building, I think Atlantis will take them.

The Hulk was alright, Daredevil's guest appearance was not annoying and the build here is that Baron Zemo is going to be a big bad, not really much the Hulk should worry about.  Superior Spider-man was pretty decent , the amped up Scorpion and Vulture loose on the raft as the Spider-slayer is hunting him or J,J Jameson.    

Cable and the X-force, the Uncanny Avengers showed up for Cable there was a brief fight , Thor schools Colossus in a big way and the Avengers get Cable, pretty satisfying and a fun read. The art in that book is pretty good, not up to the level of new avengers which was the best marvel art.

Then there was Age of Ultron 10, Marvel got butt hurt that it leaked after being poly-bagged, but truth be told I would have been pissed if I had paid to read that piece of trash, it's not the first time Bendis has wasted my time, they used up the space time continuum, so this gives them a loop hole for all sorts of multi-universe abuse, they go into the Ultimate verse and show galactus show up. Thor knocking Ultron's head off was the best of it all , but overall the whole ten issues has been a waste.

Movie Review: Man of Steel

If you read this blog, it is no secret that Super-man is my favorite D/C comics character,  so the anticipation and the expectations are raised pretty high, though after the Rotten Tomatoes reviews started coming in and the social media reaction was not negative but just not knowing how to take the film, I tried to lessen my expectations. Now after seeing it myself I can understand the odd reactions as it was not what people expected and I am still a little unsure how I feel about it.

It was entertaining and did not suck. Part of this was due to the fact it was incredibly well made. Some of the mega-galatic qualities made elements of the Avengers look like cheap video game cgi.  So from a production and cinematic level it was a better movie than Avengers as it had more of a Ridley Scott feel than the more comic like elements Snyder normally employs.

From the get go liberties began to be taken with the mythos. Krypton resembled something that was a cross between "City of Lost Children" and "Dune". Truth be told I am so tired of this origin story being told I guess the visual element was needed to keep from losing me. The last adventures of Jor-el, while fun to watch could have been trimmed to have put more screen time with Clark in the suit before he turned him self over to the military. Zod shows up and outs Clark via a broadcast threat, so the fact the military decided to just take Zod's word or everything seemed a little off to me.

The Fortress of Solitude being a space ship instead of an ice castle , made sense i selling it with as much realism they attempted with this and I think overall the film succeeded in what it intended to do in making Super-man more feasible to modern audiences when he was so grounded in World War 2 values. The Smallville elements were handled better than previous films , I feel even more than the Donner films. Reeves had more charisma on screen and made you feel like Super-man was your friend, this movie he was much more clearly alien and there was an sense of isolation and being on the outside looking in that almost took from the Bill Bixby Hulk television show.

As with Smallville or any of the movies there is this sense of joy that wells up inside of me when ever I see him first appear in the suit. Its such an iconic image that somehow manages to almost hold more weight for me than when I see Banner transform on screen. I think this is because the Hulk is more about release where Super-man is the actualization of our higher selves. It was in these moments the movie excelled, but when it threw a lot of hard sci-fi at you in the big battle scene in the movies second half that it lost something for me.

After Clark saves Lois when she is crashing to Earth and becomes embroiled in stopping all these various terra forming plots and devices Zod has set in place it gets scattered and then turns into a disaster film combined with the third  Matrix film. Snyder dialed back his trademark slow-mo fight scenes but went just as over  the top but in a much more Micheal Bay manner and lost me because then I couldn't see the character. The character came back in the final fight scene with Zod. I find it hard to believe Super-man would have allowed for that much destruction of Metropolis to take place, but this is a different Super-man who will kill, when he has to.

Overall I will have to see the middle section again to make a final judgement, it quality film making but feels weird seeing this as the portrayal of his world be it on Earth or on Krypton, it was gritty and often serious , though I don't think that was necessarily problematic, it was an intangible element in the tone, but maybe I just need to see it again to get use to the stylistic difference. It was one of the more well made Super-hero films to date and raises the bar on Marvel when they think about the quality in which they wish to bring the cosmic elements to life.    

Faster Than the Speed of Sense

Comics continue to not really inspire and the plague of alternate universes / time travel to weasel their way around continuity and make readers really give a shit less , is most pronounced in Age of Ultron but books like the Indestructible Hulk where the team up with the Walt Simonson Thor occurs and while mildly entertaining at least more so than other books I read this week I don't feel like for all the talent working on it it really lived up to it's potential , the Avengers books continue to be mired down in cosmic goobly gook , this includes new Avengers, I'm not sure if I forgot to read Dark Avengers or it it really left that little of an impression on me.

While we are on the subject of poor first impression , X-men one did little to dispel the notion that an all female team can't carry a book. It was less than memorable with Rogue the only character worth caring about and Jubilee who didn't appear to be a vampire with a baby. While the art in Savage Wolverine was pretty good and had a guest spot with a Hulk from where and why is he mindless? the story was weak.

What's there to look forward to ... mmm the Daredevil arc of the Hulk can go either way , I think Superior Spider-man has more promise than any of the X or Avengers book though Uncanny could get back on track making Fantastic Four pretty much a lost cause.


 
in other news

It's no secret now that Quicksliver and his sister the Scarlet Witch will be in the sequel to the Avengers, though now Fox and Disney/Marvel get to slug it out over the fine print concerning Marvel's speedster who has already been cast for the X-men film, as Evan Peters from American Horror Story fame playing the role. In the X-men film the Avengers can't be referenced and the Fact Magneto is their father can't be referenced in Avengers nor can the word mutant, so genetic freak is o.k? I'm sure Joss can work around it if it's justa matter of verbiage and hopefully this will mean skipping over origins all together.  Scarlet Witch runs neck and neck with Tigra  for being may favorite female Marvel character, I like Wasp, Carol Danvers and She-Hulk as well but I know at least Jennifer Walters will never see the light of an Avengers Movie.

Other news to be raising their prices over the years Dragon-con is certainly lacking any interesting guests so far the only ones I give a shit about are

James Marsters

Traci Lords

 Doug Jones

Laurell K Hamilton

Jim Butcher

Richard Lee Byers

 and then geeks in general might care about but I don't really give a shit about
 

Billy Dee Williams

George Takei

William Shatner