Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
The World’s End continues to impress me the more times I watch it, and as expected, the Blu-ray release contains much more information on the moviemakers’ aims and intentions. I described the premise when I talked about how much I enjoyed watching the movie. In short, five former friends reunite, drawn together by the one of them whose best years really were in high school while the others have moved on and grown up. We open with young versions of […]
Read more
Night of the Comet is a 1984 horror comedy that’s still a lot of fun to watch now. The world is celebrating the approach of a comet with viewing parties and news coverage, but the stellar visitor brings death. Everyone either turns to dust, or if they were partially exposed, they become a zombie. (How timely!) We explore the new world with sisters Reggie (Catherine Mary Stewart) and Sam (Kelli Maroney) and a truck driver (Robert Beltran) they encounter at […]
Read more
Out tomorrow, November 12, on home video is Man of Steel, this summer’s Superman remake. I saw it for the first time this weekend on Blu-ray, and my first impression was that it looked very much like a modern superhero movie. Like many other films this summer, it had big-budget effects, a big plot with world-shattering potential impact, computer-generated fantasy environments, and big, noisy battles — but I was left with little sense of what made *this* story special. The […]
Read moreContinuing the trend of original TV shows airing elsewhere than traditional television networks, Disney/Marvel announced plans to create live-action programming for Netflix. The four serialized shows will feature street-level, Hell’s Kitchen heroes Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage in at least 13 episodes each beginning in 2015. After “multiple years of original programming”, the four will come together in The Defenders, a “mini-series event” that will form them into a team. Netflix is also the “exclusive US subscription […]
Read more
I don’t think it’s arguable to say that Disney/Marvel’s superhero movies do better than Warner/DC’s. Marvel has the third biggest US movie of all time (based on box office) in The Avengers, and while DC’s Dark Knight trilogy also ranks highly on that list, they haven’t been able to make Superman an unqualified success or build a universe the way Marvel has with related films, each with multiple entries in their series (Iron Man, Thor, Captain America). Yet this year, […]
Read more
Following Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk, the next Marvel Knights animated (motion comic) DVD release will feature another Wolverine battle. Wolverine Vs. Sabretooth is due out January 14, 2014 from Shout! Factory. I don’t even remember hearing about this comic, but it seems that it’s written by Jeph Loeb (now out in Hollywood working on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and drawn by Simone Bianchi (Astonishing X-Men). It was published as Wolverine: Evolution, collecting Wolverine #50-55 from 2007. There’s a major spoiler […]
Read more
The next original DC universe animated movie will be Justice League: War, arriving as a Blu-ray combo pack (cover shown here), DVD, and on digital download on February 4, 2014. Amazon currently has the list price as $24.98, with the DVD version at $19.98. This is the first “new 52” story to be animated, telling the origin of the Justice League, formed in response to Darkseid’s invasion of Earth. Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Shazam, and Cyborg band […]
Read more
Marvel Studios has released a new trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier that shows how the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and the Falcon (Anthony Mackie) will play more of a role in the story, a development I’m excited to see. (Love the banter here!) The plot description is as follows: After the cataclysmic events in New York with The Avengers, Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier finds Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, living quietly in Washington, D.C., and trying […]
Read more