Superman: Doomsday

I watched Superman: Doomsday the other night and here's my review "Meh." The entire thing feels rushed, but I guess that's to be expected when you only have an hour and change to tell a huge story. I didn't like how the return of Superman ignored so much of what happened in the comics - with the four different Supermen storyline. The animation was decent enough and the voice actors were okay but overall, the entire movie left me feeling empty and bored. Doomsday shows up, Superman fights him, they both die, there's a Superman clone, then the real Superman comes back, end of story. If you're a comic book geek, you'll probably enjoy it on some level but it wasn't quite what I expected.

Megan Fox.

I just read an article on Yahoo! about Megen Fox and a couple of her upcoming movie roles. Two of them are comic book related, but neither of them are Wonder Woman. One of them is Jonah Hex, which also stars Josh Brolin as the lead character. Sounds interesting.

The other movie she has committed to is an adaptation of Fathom. To be honest, I've never heard of that comic, but apparently, she is a huge fan of the book and will receive a producer credit, alongside ex-finance Brian Austin Green. Probably the best news I've heard in a very long time was a couple of weeks ago when it was announced that she had dropped BAG like a bad habit. I always thought he was a douchebag. But he has been surprisingly good on The Sara Conner Chronicles.

I am hoping the the Jonah Hex movie turns out half-way decent, I actually think it could be a pretty big hit if it was done correctly.

Speaking of an Identity Crisis...

I've mentioned a time or two on here that I'm much much much more of a Marvel fan than a DC fan. I think my main gripe is I have no clue who the main characters are. When I was collecting comics in the '90s, everyone was shaking things up with their storylines and characters. But even now, 10+ years later, I still have no clue who the Flash's alter-ego is. I haven't checked Wikipedia yet, but I think it's Wally West. If it's not him, it's Barry Allen. Other possible candidates are the kid that was Impulse and for some reason, the name Jay Garrick is popping into my head. Let's find out.

Okay, it turns out the most recent Flash was Bart Allen / Impulse, but he's dead so it was then Wally West. But at Comic Con this year, they announced that Barry Allen is coming back in the lead role as The Flash. Huh? How is a casual fan supposed to keep up with that?

The current Green Lantern could be Hal Jordan or Kyle Rayner, but Alan Scott, Guy Gardner, John Stewart and Jade have also been GL. Batman was replaced by Azrael for a bit, Superman died and was replaced by four different people claiming to be him. There have been five Robins, and six characters named Nightwing.

I was thinking about the same situation in terms of Marvel Comics. I think Thor has probably had the most alter-egos but he's still Thor. Those are just his human form. There were two Spider-Mans, two Captain Americas...and I'm struggling to think of more. How many Wolverines, Hulks and Iron Mans have there been? Just one of each, to the best of my knowledge.

My other minor complaint against DC is their use of fictional cities like Metropolis and Gotham City. When I heard the X-Men set up shop in San Francisco, I know where that is. I'm still not sure where Keystone City is.

Crises

Thanks to the library, I finished up reading Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis recently. Both were better than I expected. As I've said here, I'm not much of a DC fan but got drawn into both stories even though I didn't know who some characters at all.

Identity Crisis doesn't really tie in to the whole Crisis multi-verse storylines DC is known for. Identity is a tight murder mystery story written by novelist Brad Meltzer. The identity of the killer and their motivation was a little bit of a letdown, but I did enjoy the story. I especially liked how it focused more on characters like Green Arrow and Zatanna, and the villain Doctor Light, who comes off looking like a threat. Rags Morales does a great job on pencilling the series, too.

Infinite Crisis deals with the multiple Earth storyline, and Earth Two's Superman, Superboy, Alex Luthor and Lois Lane wanting to make their Earth the true one. They consider Earth Two to be a more perfect world, as Earth One's Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman have all had their own individual meltdowns and struggles lately. JLA Watchtower has been destroyed and the entire DC Universe seems to be coming apart at the seems. Villains are uniting and all out chaos erupts. There are so many characters in this series it's hard to keep track of them all, especially to a casual DC fan like myself. Still, you can't help but get excited when the entire Green Lantern Corps races into space, Firestorm is taking care of business, and other characters are dying every few pages.

Infinite was a really thought out, well paced series. Since I'm always behind on comics, I'll have to wait until the trades come out for Final Crisis and/or the One Year Later storylines, but this series got me excited about the DCU.

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?

Secret Six.

Wow, someone should really post something here, huh? Sometime last week I read an article on DC's site about the news Secret Six series and decided to pick it up.

It was interesting. It definitely struggled in a few places, but that's what you should expect in a first issue. Not every series can be Guardians of the Galaxy. As I've admitted before, I"m not much of a DC follower, so I have a very limited knowledge of their characters, but one guy I do like is Deadshot, and he's in this book, so I'm in. I don't know if it's a limited series or a regular series, but it did almost sell out at my local comic book store, so I assume it'll be around for awhile, at least until the demand is there. The next issue might feature Batman, so I think I'll give this one a spin and see what happens.

One cool thing is that you can download a Secret Six mini-poster here. It's a pretty fun cover.

DC Films

Apparently DC had a meeting with Warner Brothers to figure out what the hell they're doing with DC movies. Even though The Dark Knight is still tearing up the box office, I really think DC has dropped the ball with their films. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are both stellar movies, but Superman Returns sucked. What else has DC put out in the last few years...? Oh, that's right - nothing. They're sitting on Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, The Flash, JLA, etc.

Meanwhile, Marvel has churned out 3 X-Men films, 3 Spider-Man films, 2 Hulk films, 2 Fantastic Four films, 3 Blade films, 2 Punisher films, not to mention Iron Man, Daredevil, Elektra, Ghost Rider and many more on the way. Granted, not every one of this films has been good but they've all been pretty profitable.

As that article mentions, no single person at DC has the power to take the ball and run with it. I'm not a huge DC fan but I'd totally go see a Green Lantern (or any other DC property) movie just to see it.

In other movie news, I thought this article where Robert Downey Jr. gives his thoughts on The Dark Knight and ends it by saying "F--- DC Comics" was kinda funny. Given how long DC is taking to get their ass in the movie making department, I'd have to agree.

The Dark Knight - Another Review

Ah...The Dark Knight. Finally got around to seeing it on Saturday night. This is the third weekend it's been out and the theater was packed. I'm not sure why this keeps packing theaters - is it repeat business or is it Heath Ledger? Either way, here's a rundown of my thoughts. Overall, I really liked the movie and I liked that it was dark dark dark. I was going to reply to Tyler's post but I'll just address things here:

That looked like a new title logo for DC Comics, which kinda rips off of the Marvel Comics logo with comic pages flipping through. I'm heavily pro-Marvel, so maybe I'm being nitpicky about it.

The film has a lot of plot lines going on, but they kept intersecting in neat ways so that was okay. It still felt like a long movie at times. I think the coolest part of the movie (call me lame) is when someone goes to remove Batman's mask and gets an electric shock. I thought that was so clever and was like, "How come no one else thought of that in their version of Batman?" Such a small detail, but I really liked it.

I was surprised by how much Harvey Dent was in the film. I thought we'd just get the introduction of Two-Face but then they ended up rushing his plot through and killing him off. I know he needed to be there because he's Batman's foil. Harvey Dent is a public and heroic figure, while Batman keeps to himself and is a vigilante. I liked how Batman is struggling with his role, too. He knows he can't go on forever and the people need public heroes they can believe in. Seeing that personal struggle side was very well done.

Heath Ledger as the Joker was badass. He kind of kept popping in and out of the storyline, which I liked. Oscar worthy? I'm still out on that one. I lean towards yes, but I know the academy usually goes with more established / older actors.

I like how Scarecrow popped up in the beginning of the film. I've often wondered why Spider-Man movies don't start off with him beating the crap out of someone lame, like The Shocker. It's not like Spider-Man only faces supervillains every two years in the comics. So that was a nice touch back to Batman Begins.

I liked the ending a lot. Batman, by his nature, kind of has to be an outcast and now he knows, and more importantly, accepts it. Although it will be difficult, I think they'll have to bring The Joker back. They totally set it up for that and I don't know who could fill Heath's shoes. Batman vs. Joker is that eternal struggle in Batman's life. Christopher Nolan has stated that The Penguin is a bit too cheesy to fit in with what they've established so far, so I'm guessing that also rules out Riddler. I've heard early rumor for the next film is Catwoman, which might be okay. They did a great job with a second rate villain like The Scarecrow in the first one, so whoever they bring in for the next one will be done well, I'm sure.

The Dark Knight: Review #1.

Shockingly, I saw a comic book movie before Chris did. And wrote a review about it and didn't procrastinate. Shocking turn of events. There are spoilers aplenty. I guess I should make it official and say this;

:::::SPOILER WARNING:::::

DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU STILL PLAN TO SEE THE MOVIE

So, The Dark Knight. Pretty good movie. It was also very long. I never looked at my watch during the movie (which is a sure sign that a movie is boring me) because it had plenty of action and there was always something going on, but I felt they could have cut some things out, spend some things up and shortened some of the scenes. And it could have ended a couple of different times. It wasn't even close to Return of the King's four endings, but it was getting awfully close.

I liked it a lot better than Batman Begins. I did not see Begins in the theater, and when I finally saw it on DVD, I thought it was good, but not great. I was very impressed with the Dark Knight. They bumped everything up a few notches. And Heath Ledger WAS amazing. I'm glad the hype was finally warranted. He played the character perfectly and his lines were great and delivered perfectly. The part where he made the pencil disappear during the mob scene was great. That whole mob scene was outstanding. It sucks that he won't be able to come back an reprise the role. And they set it up with a lot of lines like, "We're just going to have to do this again" and "I can see us doing this for a very long time".

I loved the darkness of the movie. I was always drawn to the Frank Miller and late eighties version of the character. The really did their homework and got that version of the franchise right. You can tell what source material they were using, obviously the Dark Knight series, but also things like The Killing Joke One-Shot that I still have. I saved up for a first printing of that one and must have read it at least 500 times.

One thing about the movie that was very interesting was the ending. Obviously, if they knew what was going to happen, they would have killed the Joker and let Two Face survive to come back in the third movie.

So, in my opinion, they've got a problem in the next movie as to who the villian should be. They can't bring someone in to play The Joker. They just can't. Heath Ledger owned the character and will be the definitive movie version of the Joker for the next 20-30 years. The Riddler is too campy, Mr. Freeze still left a bad taste in everyone's mouth from Batman & Robin. The Penguin is a possibility, but again, that's been done. They killed Two Face. So, what's next? Killer Croc?

My guess is they try and bring Christian Bale back for the JLA movie, after Man of Steel and the Wonder Woman movie. Kind of like how Jon Favreau says he sees the third Iron Man movie as being the Avengers flick. It just makes sense. That's how I would do things.

Some other observations, I thought the movie was a little too predictable, there were more than three or four times I said something was going to happen and it did. And I did not read any spoilers online. BUT, Gordon faking his death was a pretty nice surprise. It got me, I didn't see that coming, and was a little upset that they did it until he came back. But I did think the way they brought him back was pretty cheesy.

And I understand what they were trying to do with Harvey Dent being the "White Knight" for most of the movie, but he was Two Face for a VERY short amount of time and then they killed him off at the end. Very strange. And killing Rachael was an interesting choice. One part that I thought was pretty lame from that whole sequence was the way he fell over in his chair and tipped over one of the gas barrels. It just seemed very forced to me.

And could anyone make out Gordon at the end of the movie? It was weird, it was like they had the mix of the score turned up too much or something. I talked to a friend of mine at work today and he noticed the same thing. And when Bale was talking when he was Batman was also hard to understand in spots. Way too guttural.

Overall, I thought it was a great movie, and I will probably be buying it on DVD. In fact, I'll probably buy Batman Begins on DVD when the Dark Knight comes out just to have them both.

Worlds Collide

I know we don't usually talk about DC stuff on here, but thought this was interesting - the next Mortal Kombat game will be Mortal Kombat vs. DC. I guess Midway wanted to try their hand at something new, in the vein of the Marvel vs. Capcom series. Early word is there will be no fatalities but they will push the Teen rating as close to Mature as they can. Also, Superman's powers will be affected by travelling to this dimension so he'll be on par with the MK characters. The only confirmed characters so far are Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Batman and Superman. You gotta figure the DC mainstays will be in it. Check out the trailer below.

Justice League: The New Frontier.

I saw Justice League: The New Frontier over the weekend. I thought it was just ok. It seemed a little rushed. According to the wikipedia entry, they cut and change a lot of the story from the original comic. The main villain, which apparently manifested itself as a giant floating dinosaur island, really wasn't fleshed out too well in my opinion. There wasn't really a reason why it was attacking Earth. The animation style was pretty cool though, and most of the characters had older looking costumes, because it was set in the 50s. It was an interesting take on the DCU. I would rent it if I were you though.

There was a preview for Batman: Gotham Knight that actually looks pretty cool. It will feature six short stories that are animated in different styles, including Japanese Anime. So that is something to look forward to. I think it's supposed to be released before the next live-action movie. Superman: Doomsday is also on my list of movies to see; I kind of have high hopes for that one. I'll let you know what I think when I see it.