Friday, December 31, 2010

Guten Rutsch!

Ich wünsche allen einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr 2011. Viel Glück und Gesundheit!

CNN cartoon

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Five For Fighting - Slice


It's disgusting that our generation has been taken over by hip-hop and rap. Five For Fighting reminds us of good old American pop-rock. Enjoy... :)

Review: V Season One



Watched all 12 episodes of "V: Season One" with my wife and kids over the weekend. I was a huge fan of the 1983 series (that also scared the wits out of me) and being an avid reader of forteana/conspiracy books by folks like David Icke, Zechariah Sitchin, Erich Von Daniken and R.A. Boulay certainly factors into my interest for this reptilian/alien invasion series.

The new series feels a lot more polished than the 1980s one - although the scary bits are toned down a lot. Morena Baccarin is an excellent choice to play the Visitors' Queen Anna. She can act all cold and manipulative throughout - and her evil self shows through with just a twitch of her lips in a quick smile when she turns her back to the camera. Then when she finally loses control and succumbs to human emotions in the last episode, you wonder what's going to happen to her in the next season (watch the interview above with Morena at SDCC where she gives some hints about the much-awaited second season).

Elizabeth Mitchell is also excellent as FBI Agent Erica Evans who struggles in her battle against the Visitors while juggling her responsibilities as a single mom to an incorrigible son who is in love with the Visitors. There's also a hint of something more than friendship with Joel Gretsch's Father Jack Landry. I especially liked the scene where Kyle Hobbes (Charles Mesure) walked in on the two trading punches and commented that "It feels all Thorn Birds in here!" Any Colleen McCullough reference on national TV is a welcome one! Speaking of Kyle Hobbes, he's actually my favourite character in the series. He comes off somewhat like the Punisher did when he joined up with Captain America's rebel underground resistance in "Civil War". In short, he's the loose cannon with his own agenda but you need him because of his ruthlessness and strategic brilliance. Then you end up keeping an eye on him nevertheless because the ruthlessness and strategic brilliance can work both ways.

Scott Wolf's TV broadcaster Chad Decker is very much the Everyman perspective in the series. His experience and exploration of what the V's arrival means for Earth is representative of the viewers' inquiries as well. The last scene with him throwing in his support with the rebels after Father Jack's sermon probably had more to do with his discovery of the scary experiments on Live Aboard humans in the V Ship than the content of the sermon. There's also a hint of "something more" between Chad and Queen Anna - especially when he began having sexual nightmares about Anna and waking up with a cold sweat! You know that spells trouble because they just did the same thing over in "True Blood" with Sam and his homoerotic nightmares of vampire Bill!

I started watching the series because of my interest in alien/reptilian conspiracies. Then I continued watching because of the engaging storylines. Now, I'm addicted to the series because of one major reason: Morena Baccarin. She's the best thing on TV at the present moment. Even more than Erica Durance in "Smallville" or Julie Benz in "No Ordinary Family" or Mariana Klaveno in "True Blood"! I'll continue watching as long as she continues playing the central role of Queen Anna. :)

Crony cartoon

Monday, December 27, 2010

Sunday, December 26, 2010

2011 Resolution

Christmas Greetings 2010



Celebrate Christmas for what Christmas really is.

Review: ULTIMATUM

I wrote in April this year about the oversized "Ultimatum" hardcover that collects all 10 issues of "Ultimates 3" and "Ultimatum" by Jeph Loeb and artists Joe Madureira and David Finch. I finally got the book and read it on Christmas Eve. I confess that the reason it took me so long to pick up the Ultimatum story was a reaction to all the negative reviews over the internet. Most readers called it the worst Marvel story ever published. I don't think that's fair. I mean, a lot of stuff published during the Bob Harras era were really bad. But then, that's the nature of fandom, one moment they loved Jeph Loeb (during his DC days paired up with Tim Sale) and the next moment, he's the next Rob Liefeld.

Anyway, I was really excited about "Ultimatum" months before the single issues were even out. Truth was, I was a lot more excited about the series than "Civil War", "Secret Invasion", "Siege" and "Blackest Night" put together. Then came the negative reviews following the release of the 1st issue of the series. As the series progressed, the reviews got worse and, I should say, more virulent. With only a limited budget for comics monthly, I decided to check out other books instead - I did not even pick up the Premiere Hardcover or the subsequent tradepaperback that came out. Thankfully, Marvel decided to repackage the whole thing into an oversized hardcover putting "Ultimates 3" into the same package (since the two series actually make up a whole story anyway) and wrap up the whole thing in a beautiful Joe Mad cover featuring Ultimate Cap, Ultimate Wolvie and Ultimate Hawkeye. In short, the perfect Christmas gift for me.

Then I sat down and read the whole thing in one sitting. Verdict? I LOVED IT. I'm serious. The very vocal internet fans were all wrong about the whole thing - just like they are wrong about a lot of things (e.g. Heroes Reborn). I mean, I can understand that this is no "Watchmen" or "Dark Knight Returns" or even "Kingdom Come". I can even understand how some folks were turned off by some of the violent deaths (e.g. the cannibalistic Blob stuff). But as a slam-bang Marvel event, it actually works. I think a lot of the hate on this book came from people who were very caught up in the "serious" socio-political subtextual stuff that was in "Civil War" and "Dark Reign". In fact, many of the reviewers have never invested 8 years reading Ultimate Marvel in the first place (many of them considered Ultimate Marvel nothing more than glorified fan-fiction and thus not REAL in the first place - well, news for you guys: 616-Marvel ain't real either!). Jeph Loeb wasn't really going for realism in the story. Granted, some of the criticisms of the man were valid. I agree that it felt like Loeb was trying too hard to *sound* like Mark Millar or Warren Ellis. Truth was, he shouldn't have tried so hard in the first place. Loeb is an older American who was never gifted/cursed with the acerbic wit/cynicism of a Millar or Ellis and should never have tried to be what he could never be.

That being the case, Ultimatum also featured Jeph Loeb doing what Jeph Loeb does best - a big-screen stupid action movie on paper. We probably would've gotten the same thing if Michael Bay wrote comics. Now, I love/hate Michael Bay as much as the next guy, but c'mon, you guys still line up for tickets when "Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon" hits the screens next year. It's fun in a stupid way - or stupid fun, to put it simply. But the guy delivers. Admit it, we even pick up the DVDs for rewatches on evenings when all we want is stupid fun - nothing too introspective, nothing to mind-bending, nothing too artsy-fartsy. Just stupid fun. Ultimatum is in that vein of a popcorn movie on paper with the gloriously detailed art of former Top Cow alumni, David Finch. It's really just me. If you gave me a choice between a fun Batman movie (like those by Joel Schumacher) or a supposedly "deep" and "introspective" Batman movie with socio-political overtones (like those by Christopher Nolan) for an afternoon matinee with the kids, I'd choose the former everytime. I like the silly one-liners and the puns. I like the colour and the pomp. In short, I like the stupid fun. In fact, Jeph Loeb's roots were in stupid fun - anyone remember Commando or Teen Wolf? Well, Loeb wrote those stupid fun classics as well.

Anyway, Ultimatum is touted as the story that ended the original Ultimate Marvel universe. In a way, that's true. But I don't think that it affected the Avengers in a significant way. The book that was hit the hardest was, of course, "Ultimate X-Men". In fact, aside from Bobby, Kitty, Jean and Rogue, all the rest of the X-Men died in this story. Bobby is now a co-star in the new Ult. Spidey book while Kitty and Jean show up in Loeb's Ultimate X book. The FF disbanded and according to Bendis, Ultimate Reed is now the number one villain in the Ultimate Universe. The economic motivation behind the selection of characters that bit the dust was one of the elements in this story that bothered me. I mean, it's quite obvious to many comic fans that the X-Men (especially the post-Vaughn Ultimate X-Men) isn't really the pull that it was in the 1980s/90s. As Bendis declared in one interview, the Avengers are indeed the new X-Men of the millennium. That's true following the hugely popular "Ultimates 1 & 2" by Mark Millar and Brian Hitch, and also the Avengers relaunch by Bendis and David Finch - which led to the two Iron Man films and the upcoming Cap, Thor and Avengers films. Spidey will always be popular and Ult. Spidey was the most successful (in terms of both sales and critical acclaim) of the Ultimate monthlies anyway. Therefore, it felt like all these elements went into considering who should bite the dust rather than the actual story itself. In other words, it sometimes felt like the villains in the piece (chiefly, the killer flood unleashed by Magneto) were targetting characters that were no longer financially viable properties (read: no movie deals in the near future). The only exception is probably Ultimate Wolverine but then, the 616-version is still showing up in a gazillion titles a month anyway so aside from a few continuity buffs (like me), no one will miss Ultimate Wolverine.

Other than that complaint above, I really, really enjoyed ULTIMATUM. It was shocking in that Marvel actually wiped away so many characters in one series. In fact, this has never been done before in comics since DC's "Crisis On Infinite Earths" in 1985/86. Many reviewers said that the deaths were so sudden and meaningless. I know. I'd be the first to say that Ultimate Dazzler (who was 10 million times more interesting and complex compared to the 616-version) deserved a better send off. But then, that's what really happens in a disaster. Remember 9-11? Remember the killer tsunami from a few years back? Remember the Szechuan earthquake? Or the victims of car accidents and violent crimes? Sudden and meaningless - with the mourning survivors trying to make sense of the whole meaningless carnage after the event. On that note, Ultimatum delivered in spades. And no, there's no sense of closure either. Not even in the Requiem one-shots that followed the event. This was what the Ultimate Universe was about in the first place - the place where anything could happen. I'm surprised that not many people talk about this element in the Ultimate stories.

My beef with the whole thing was that it really should have been a 12-issue maxiseries. Loeb wasn't given enough pages to flesh out the whole thing - which probably was the real reason why people say that the deaths were so meaningless and sudden (actually, they were not so polite - most of them complained that the whole thing was a gore-fest or a death-porn). However, being squeezed into a 5-issue miniseries does have its advantages. It has an energy and punch that are sorely lacking in comics today - even in big-event comics. Truth is, that's what I find missing in so many really well-written comics by folks like Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka. Now, don't get me wrong. I like that stuff too but the crazy/stupid Liefeld-ian energy just isn't there. Go back to Kirby's stuff in the 1960s/70s to see what I mean. Marvel then was very well known for in-your-face action where characters punch, kick, leap, blow things up, etc. as compared to the more polite and restrained DC of Carmen Infantino. John Buscema took over from Kirby on many of the books and continued giving us characters who were "Amazing", "Mighty" and "Incredible" because of the physical prowess more than anything. That's what Ultimatum felt like to me. On one page, Peter Parker and his friends are out on a city-tour, the next page, a killer tsunami strikes NYC. One one page, Reed is proposing to Sue, the next page, they rush up to the ceiling and Sue passes out trying to push back the killer waves with her invisible force field. Magneto does more than pull out Wolvie's adamantium, he literally skinned the ol'Canucklehead and destroyed him on the cellular level. Valkyrie chops off Magneto's arm with a sword! Cyclops blows off Magneto's head with his optic blast while the Thing squeezes Dr. Doom's head like a grapefruit!

Furthermore, as a Magneto-centered event, it works far better than the sometimes boring and very talky "House of M". Magneto here is a demi-god of destruction (especially when armed with Thor's hammer, Mjolnir). It's been a long time since we get a villain capable of carnage and destruction on such a level. It's crazy that the fans who complained that Robert Kirkman's take on Ultimate Apocalypse was too tame are also complaining that Ultimate Magneto was too murderous or destructive. The last time we saw destruction and carnage on this level was the Warren Ellis run on "The Authority".

If there's one thing I learnt reading Ultimatum, it's this: don't believe the negative reviewers on the internet. Go check out the work yourself. :)

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

A Merry Christmas To All!


Luke 7:23
"Blessed is he who does not take offense at Me."

King cartoon

Review: The Marvels Project

Before I read "The Marvels Project", I thought that it was unfairly overshadowed by the more high-profile "Siege" event. After I finished reading the entire 8-issue series by Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting about 5 minutes ago, I must conclude that the whole thing, while undeniably an important addition to the Marvel Canon, really isn't as good as expected.

Perhaps the problem was because my hopes for this series were unreasonably high. Firstly, it's set in the Golden Age (more accurately 1938-1942) and I'm a huge fan of Golden Age mystery-men tales. Secondly, it's really the first attempt to tie in the various Golden Age issues together to present a seamless and official "origin" of the Invaders. I'm a huge fan of the Invaders having recently picked up the "70th Anniversary Timely Comics" hardcover along with the "Avengers/Invaders" hardcover. Thirdly, I'm also a huge fan of Brubaker and Epting's work on the regular "Captain America" series. That being said, I found myself largely bored and uninterested in this series. The reason for this is that "The Marvels Project" is really not a story at all! It's very much a by-the-numbers retelling of how the various Golden Age Marvel (then known as Timely) characters got together and formed the first super-group to fight the Nazis. If that was all there was, I remember that Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross did a far better job years ago in the first issue of "Marvels".

Speaking of "Marvels", there are obvious similarities with that work. Dr Thomas Halloway aka The Angel serves as narrator here much as Phil Sheldon did in "Marvels". The work is also reminiscent of the other Alex Ross classic, "Kingdom Come". Here, the dying Two-Gun Kid (who has seen the future of the 616-Marvel Universe) prophesied the coming of that glorious heroic age much like the Golden Age Sandman, Wesley Dodds, prophesied the coming of the dark age in "Kingdom Come". There are also obvious parallels to Alan Moore's "Watchmen" and James Robinson's "The Golden Age". As the progeny of such luminaries, you would expect "The Marvels Project" to be something truly special, right? Truth is, I really wished that it was. In fact, I even put on classic 1940s jazz while reading it just for that added flavour.

The problem with this work is that while Epting managed to capture the mood and atmosphere of the Second World War in his artwork (his pencils also resemble Alex Ross' pencil work in many ways - and that is a definite bonus), the pacing throughout is abysmally slow. You feel that Brubaker has so many things to show the reader - from the familiar unveiling of the Human Torch by Prof. Phineas Horton to the Super-Soldier Serum that created Captain America to the grand superhuman battle above the skies of NYC between the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner and finally to the gathering of the Invaders in the White House. Problem was, while Brubaker and Epting had so much to SHOW, they really had very little to SAY. There wasn't any grand theme that tied the piece together - like the theme of ordinary humans' distrust or discomfort with superheroes in "Marvels" or the fascistic authoritarianism of "Kingdom Come". In fact, I'm a tad frustrated after reading the work as a whole in one sitting because I know that Brubaker is capable of delivering far greater work. I mean, the flashback scenes to the Golden Age in his "Winter Soldier" arc are far more moving and poignant compared to the entirety of "The Marvels Project"! Furthermore, if you are looking for the Invaders kicking the Nazis or the Red Skull, there's nearly nothing here to that tune. The closest we got was Cap, Bucky, Namor and the Angel fighting some rebel faction from Atlantis while the Human Torch and Toro fought a losing battle against the Japs to prevent the Pearl Harbour bombings. That was supposed to be the grand battle but there wasn't any real emotional payoff. In fact, it's ironic that about the only character that displayed any real emotions was Jim Hammond, the android Human Torch. The other iconic heroes simply strutted around being iconic!

As an "origins" story, it more than did its job but there is little more to the tale. Therefore, the tale can only aspire to the level of say, Paul Jenkins' "Mythos" series or Joe Casey's "Avengers: Earth Mightiest Heroes". In other words, a retro take on a familiar myth or a retelling of a story of how our heroes began their careers. Does it then warrant the hardcover treatment? Well, I wouldn't argue with that since I'm a sucker for beautiful hardcover collections anyway. After all, the story is an important one and Brubaker will most likely build on some of the elements here in future Cap stories. In other words, I'll give the work an 8 out of 10 for its importance to the overall Marvel Canon but as a standalone story, it's at best only a 6.5 out of 10 (though I'd say that Epting's beautiful artwork earns a 9 out of 10).

We've had Steel Claw well heres Kid Gloves!!




Reg Parlett who does an amazing job at drawing hand shapes with the gloves very expressive..they do seem alive walking along the floor with the kid upside down..





later drawn by Rob Lee

http://www.bustercomic.co.uk/kidgloves.htmlKid Gloves
Buster comic-
Launched: 13th December 1975

Ended: 19th April 1980

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

What my wife got for Christmas this year...


... she loves Cosmic Villains - especially done in the Mighty Muggs style! 'Nuff said!

Trailers for "Thor" and "Transformers 3"


And here's the first trailer for the upcoming "Thor" movie. People are screaming that they put in a black Heimdall. Actually, I don't have that much problems with that. I hate it that Thor doesn't have the winged helmet. I also hate Anthony Hopkins. No, I don't think that he'll be bad as Odin. I just hate Anthony Hopkins is all.



Here's the first trailer for "Transformers: Dark of the Moon". Is that f***-in' UNICRON??? If it is, then this film would really be worth a watch! :)


Review: Tron Legacy

My head was spinning after studying Tort Law for close to five hours on Monday. As I was heading home, it started to rain very heavily. I then decided to catch a movie. "Tron Legacy" was a film that I promised myself to see. After all, I was a huge fan of the original 1982 film. In fact, I was so much a fan of the original film that I borrowed my cousin's Disney storybook and copied the entire book into my school exercise book so that I could reread the novelisation of the film again and again and again.

I had a choice between the 2D and 3D versions of the film. Now I never had any good experiences with 3D - especially as I have to put on the stupid 3D glasses on top of my normal glasses. The combined effect always make me sleepy. The last time I did that, I fell asleep and missed three quarters of "Toy Story 3"!!! So, 2D it is. I even got a discount on the ticket price courtesy of being a college student. In other words, everything was jolly.

About 20 minutes into the film, I realised that not everyone in the packed theatres were enjoying the film. In fact, some folks were getting impatient with the heavy sci-fi in the film. Director Joseph Kosinski could have gone for an all-action CGI no-brainer ala' Michael Bay but thankfully he did not. That would please the crowd a lot more but it would do nothing for an old time Tron fan like me. No, Kosinski instead was very faithful to the original film (some would even say slavishly faithful) and really tried his best to provide a worthy follow-up in terms of continuity, characterisation and concept. It wasn't Tron reimagined for the post-Matrix, post-Internet, post-online gaming crowd. It was Tron naturally evolved - where the original sense of wonder of visiting the digital world of video games was pushed to the Nth level. Now that is ironic because in this day and age, most folks already spend 90% of their time in the virtual world anyway - have you seen those blokes playing online games at the local cybercafe? Their avatars have become their real selves. What would such a film like Tron Legacy have to say to this crowd? The answer is: Nothing. The film wasn't made for the Gen-Y internet generation. The film was made for us old farts who grew up in the glorious 1980s where high scores in Donkey KongSpace Invaders, Zaxxon, Frogger and Pac-Man were a matter of life-and-death. The film was made for us old farts who visited dark arcades that were lit up only by the dazzling colours of arcade machines with 1980s synthesizer pop-rock mixed up with the game sounds from the machines. The film was made for us old farts who still think that the light-sabers from the original Star Wars films were the coolest things on earth - and we posed with flourescent light-tubes at home with our little brothers before our parents came home and spanked us. In time, our imagination was pushed even further than light-sabers when the 1982 Tron introduced us to the magic of light-cycles!

Read any other review of the film and you'll see references to how the technical wizardry allowed the film-makers to put in a 30-year old Jeff Bridges along a 60-year old present day Jeff Bridges. You may also get philosophical musings about dualism, Zoroastrianism (Flynn as Ahura Mazda and CLU as Ahriman?), gnosticism, etc. that viewers picked up from the films not-too-subtle references. Some may even compare the film unfavourably to the Matrix trilogy and say that it was all glam and little in the way of character development. But they are all missing the point. The primary enjoyment of the film is when Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) turned on the lights in his father's old arcade and Journey started blasting at full volume from the speakers - and then he visits the world ("The Grid") that his dad, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) first introduced us to in 1982. Some of us (like yours truly) never truly left that world behind.

Finally, there are the babes. I couldn't believe how much Olivia Wilde has evolved. I hated her in "The O.C." but here, she's a wide-eyed ISO (that's isomorphic algorithms - i.e. uncreated programs that have self-existent souls) in tight leather named Quorra! I loved every scene that she was in. I think it's the leather. And her beautiful eyes. I know I'm gushing. But can you blame me? Beau Garrett was also painfully beautiful here in an unearthly way. She was great as Frankie Raye in FF: Rise of the Silver Surfer but here, she's even more unearthly in her beauty. Forget the heavy sci-fi or references to the 1982 film. Just watch the film for these two babes! :)