Watchmen Watch: 11/26/08

I found a Watchmen Poster Gallery over on Things From Another Blog. I guess it originally came from a blog on MTV's website of all places. Interesting.

What's also interesting is that they decided to run the type the opposite way than the original. Not a lot of people have noticed that. I really don't know why they decided to do that, because I don't think it reads any better than the original.

From what I've seen so far, the Watchmen movie looks pretty awesome. They were having some legal issues a couple of months ago that could have blocked the release, but I guess those are resolved because the trailer is on Apple's site.

Things From Another World is also having a sale on the Watchmen Paperback. $9.99 is a good price. If I didn't already have a copy (which I will review at some point) I'd buy it.

Q&A: Chris Yost.

Pretty good article with Chris Yost about X-Force and the upcoming Kingbreaker series.

Right off the bat, he brings up a very good point and an interesting problem in comics, especially with most of Marvel's titles. Every villain nowadays seems to lean towards the middle of the good/bad spectrum. We've seen most, if not every villain team up with a Superhero at some point for some reason, and in some cases (he brought up Juggernaut and Sabretooth as examples), villains actually join a super-hero or mutant team. In fact, that's basically the entire premise of the Thunderbolts comic. I believe I've written about this before, but I think it's the fact that a lot of these characters are viewed as "properties" and that a lot of them are approaching 50 years old, so there's not a whole lot of new ground to cover. Especially with the bad guys, there's only some many times they can break out of jail; you have to do something new. Ergo, "the grey". So, it's good to see that someone is conscious about this and someone is finally writing a character that is totally, 100% evil. And he's also writing about Havok, so I'm in.

Deadpool #5, Preview.

Alright, so Marvel posted a preview of Deadpool #5, which comes out on December 17th. Personally, I love the new Deadpool series, it's off to a great start and I think it's in great hands with Daniel Way at the helm. I have a couple of issues of Cable & Deadpool (I was a little late to the party on that one) and I've gotta say, I think Marvel did the right thing by splitting up that twosome into their own separate series. I've also gotta say that I'm pretty close to dropping Cable because it's SO boring. It's basically the exact opposite of the Deadpool series, which is funny, entertaining, clever, and just an enjoyable read every month. Nothing really happens in that Cable book. Man, is that a boring book.

Deadpool is rapidly becoming one of my favorite "B-Level" characters; the short-list goes something like, Moon Knight, Deadpool and Deathlok. I read on an interview with Axel Alonso on Myspace Comics (he took Joe Quesada's place this week) that he's been wanting to do a Deathlok story for a long time, and he also said that they're going to do that next year, and I couldn't be more excited. Pretty awesome.

Anyways, here's the art for Deadpool #5:

X-Men News 11/19/08

Over on Marvel's site, you can watch two new Wolverine and the X-Men clips. The second one is a short behind the scenes with the vocal actors, and I'm pretty sure I've seen the first one. If you haven't checked it out, head over there, I personally can't wait until it starts in January.

There's another article called Archrivals: X-Men vs Marauders. It features one of the very first X-Men comics I ever bought; X-Men #211. I loved the Mutant Massacre story, which was the first appearance of the Marauders; it's pretty much one of Chris Claremont's last good storyarcs and it's what got me interested in the X-Men. The back-to-back issues where Wolverine fights Sabertooth (#212 & 213) blew me away when I was a kid and think I read my copies probably 938 times.

There's also a First Look at X-Men: Kingbreaker. As I said yesterday, I'm going to pick this book up because it involves Havok, and I think he's one of the most underutilized X-Men. He had a good run as the leader of X-Factor in the mid-to-late 90s, but he really hasn't been used too much lately.

The Return of Darkhawk.

This was posted on Mavel's site last week and I have been busy at work so I never got around to posting it, but Chris will be happy to see that Darkhawk is back and he's getting his own series in February! Sure, it's only a two-issue limited series, but that's a lot more pub than he normally gets.

I am actually looking forward to this whole "War of Kings" storyline. I don't think I'm going to go crazy and get all of the issues, but I will definitely check out the X-Men books (X-Men: Kingbreaker) because I am a pretty big Havok fan. I don't think he gets a whole lot of attention and he hasn't been involved in anything for the last two years because of the events that transpired at the end of the The Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire storyline. So it will be good to see him back. Of course I will also be reading Guardians of the Galaxy, and I am pretty excited that they are involved, even though they're reforming the team.

Marvel has a War of Kings Hub site that you can check out here if you're interested.

Amalgam Comics

I recently re-read the DC vs. Marvel mini-series from 1996. While the mini-series itself is kind of cheesy and forgettable, the one thing I really loved about this crossover is when the universes combined to form the Amalgam universe. I had a faint recollection of that and then got excited when I found six Amalgam issues.

In the Amalgam universe, one character from Marvel was combined with one character from DC to create a new character. Batman and Wolverine are mashed up to create Dark Claw, the Justice League and the X-Men become the JLX and The Flash, The Demon and Ghost Rider are all combined to make Speed Demon.

They published issue #1's, complete with them fighting villains, some origin stories and best of all, little asterisk notes referring to comics that never existed. The Amalgam comics are just pure fun - you could tell the writers really got to be creative with it. They were just one shot issues so you just had 22 pages to tell a good story.

I think I only own about half of the Amalgam comics so hopefully I can find some complete sets on eBay for cheap. I must have started losing interest in comics a while later, because they did a second crossover (of which I only have 3 out of 4 issues) and then a second run of Amalgam one shots a year later. I don't recall any of them. I'm most intrigued by Iron Lantern, though. Sounds badass.

It kind of got me thinking, though...since Marvel is producing its own films now, and DC / Warner Brothers are pretty much the same thing - how awesome would a movie crossover be? I'm sure it would never happen, and they still have SO many stories they can tell individually before they run out of ideas. But how awesome would it be to see a JLA / Avengers movie?

Daredevil - Director's Cut

Had a chance to watch the Director's Cut of Daredevil the other day. I wasn't a huge fan of the movie in its original form, though it was certainly better than other Marvel movies like Ghost Rider. I remember thinking the theatrical release wasn't gritty enough for the Daredevil character, but that's been fixed with this version that's a half hour longer and got the grit. They take out some of the romance elements and add more depth to Kingpin and Foggy Nelson. I was never interested in buying this movie, but for the Director's Cut, it's going on my Christmas list.

For fans of Daredevil, apparently they're thinking of doing a reboot of the Daredevil franchise with Jason Statham taking over the role. That's good since I think Affleck was pretty unconvincing and stoic in his performance, and he's been quoted as saying that playing a superhero in a costume was a source of humiliation for him. Whatever, ass.

I just hope they do something different for the costume in the sequel. I guess you have to do it in leather, but something about it always looked silly.

Guardians of the Galaxy: The New Guard.

There's an article over on Marvel's website about the future of the Guardians of the Galaxy. I will continue to read it, because it will most likely be good, but I am pretty disappointed at the direction it's going in. This is worst part:

"Drax, Quasar, Warlock and Gamora have all quit to pursue their own agendas and Starlord is M.I.A."

Those were pretty much my favorite characters. Especially Drax and Starlord. So, I'm pretty bummed about that.

I do like how the redid the cover to emulate the first issue. And it looks like Groot is going to be involved, so that will be interesting. I also really like Rocket Raccoon, so it's cool that he's staying on and leading the team. I hope at some point they get the old team back together though.