First Spider-Man 3 review

Hours away from the moment when Spider-Man 3 lights up the screen, we’ve got your first review – and virtually spoiler free! Plus news on the return of a 60’s classic comic series, more High School Musical, Young Frankenstein, King Kong, making Family Guy "family safe" and we drag out The Runt for an encore!

Come on. The ticket line is too long anyway. Just press the button!

Transcript

www.ComicMix.com Buzz is everywhere and the buzz is good! Alright it is the middle of the week and we are here. Hi it's Mike Raub with the broadcast. Put it together with some news of course and the fact that we saw Spider-Man 3. Yes we will share within minutes I promise.

Also one of the best love 60s comics is back one more time. And we are going to swing back to hear some music from a guy we affectionately called The Runt. All that and more on… May 3rd 2007 ComicMix

News! Oh no, it wasn't the airplane. It was Beauty Kill the Beast. Mark Hossi Enterprises has announced they are going to be doing King Kong along with artist Joe DeVito. There will be a King Kong adaptation of the movie and then a regular series coming from the UK publisher later on this year.

Alright the screaming is for a reason. High School Musical 2 the announcement came from Disney Channel. They will be premiering it on August 17th at 8pm. It will be a whole weekend of High School Musical related programming hosted by the original cast of course. Now starting as a promotional effort this week, Disney Channel.com features an interactive game that allows players to gradually reveal pieces of the movie poster.

But the whole thing will come together on the 18th of May. More monsters from the movies to the comics with 2001 Maniacs unveiled in a brand new comic from Avatar Press. It's fully authorized by Robert Englund, Freddy Krueger who is back as 2001 Maniac star Mayor George W. Buckman. You shouldn't have buried me. I'm not dead. The original cast of the Maniacs 2 is also included in this.

It's all written by the writer-director of the movie, Tim Sullivan. And it will come out later on this year with several variant covers including a photo cover featuring Robert. The entire lineup of Abacus Comics is moving to the web. All their published work so far will be available on Wow-yo.com. It is for free download as well.

This includes a whole bunch of stuff including some exclusive material based on their very popular comic, Lullaby. What you'll find there for free to download includes the titles Deal with the Devil, Devil's Keeper, The Imaginaries, all lullaby issues including all the different miniseries and Six Gun Samurai. You can get them at abacuscomics.com slash wow-yo w-o-w-i-o dot h-t-m. If you're a fan of Johnny Hart's great B.C. strip, here's some good news.

Coming up soon will be a trade paperback called Growing Gold with B.C. A 50 year celebration by Johnny Hart. It will be out in August from Checker Books and available in comic bookstores as well as regular bookstore retailers. Now of course we did lose Johnny over the Easter weekend and he did work on this beforehand picking some of these favorite strips from the 50s all the way through the current time period. Believe it or not some of these are going to be reproduced in their full format so it will be an absolute great addition to your strip collection.

Delray Books says they're going to publish a novel based on the Electronic Arts real time strategy game Command and Conquer 3, Tiberium Wars. That's coming out this month. It will be released in the U.S. then and in the U.K. and Germany later on. My question is how are they going to edit this one for 5 o'clock? Little violent for you don't you think?

20th Century Fox said they have syndicated the anime the comedy Family Guy for a fall 2007 launch in 150 cities including 24 of the top 25 markets. That's about 90% of the TV stations around. It will again be shown in the same period you usually see The Simpsons somewhere between 5 and 7 o'clock depending on your local area. All you men are all alike. Seven or eight quick ones and you're off with a boy to boast and brag.

You better keep your mouth shut. I think I love him. And on Broadway it is Young Frankenstein, an adaptation of the movie of the same name, coming out for a tryout in Seattle August 4th to September 1st. If it goes as hopefully planned Young Frankenstein will be putting on the rips on Broadway with a Halloween 2007 opening night. ComicMix www.ComicMix.com

To cover one of the biggest stories that came out of the Pittsburgh Comic Con we got to go back in time just a little bit to November 1965. And a little company called Tower Comics started a book called Thunder Agents. That was well remembered and well loved that's for sure but it was only published sporadically until about 1969. Dead and went away. Jump ahead to 1983 when a gentleman named John Carbonaro who now owned the rights to the Thunder Agents published his own series in 1983 in his JC Comics line.

In Archie Comics got involved they published an issue as well with Carbonaro's help of course. In 1984 Deluxe Comics did five issues of A New Thunder Agents. In the late 80's Solson Comics produced one issue of Thunder which was based on the Thunder Agents. And even the guys at Penthouse got involved in 1995 in their Omni Comics number three when they did a Thunder Agent story. Now a couple of years ago DC Comics planned to redo the Thunder Agents.

They even released all the early issues in those beautiful archive volumes but nothing happened there. Now comes Airwave publishing best known since the 80's for doing a lot of licensed characters like Mighty Mouse, Underdog, I Dream of Genie and a lot more. And publisher Rich Maruzzio is happy that he has a new property to publish. The Thunder Agents. So what are the plans?

The plans right now is that we're going to be reprinting the Deluxe Comics version that was done in the 80's. And then we're going to be coming out with a new version either Spring of Next Year or Early Winter. How will this version compare to the others? What we're going to do is more like bring it back to sort of a classic. It's going to be you know superheroes with a science fiction edge to it.

Also we're going to have it more like an animated style. Okay. Compared to you know Justice League Unlimited, Batman. During the summer convention season Airwave has produced a limited edition promo comic with some pretty exciting names attached. It has a ten page Raven story that was originally published in the Thunder Agents number one.

Also has a Dave Cochram drawing of the Thunder Agents. A Jerry Ordway Lightning. A pencil version of a page by Dave Cochram and an ink page by Murphy Anderson. Again the pencil cover which has never been seen before by George Perez. Also a piece by Matt Wagner that Matt did for John years ago and the final part is a Murphy Anderson piece.

I'll keep you up on the latest Thunder Agents news all through the summer. ComicMix. ComicMix. Timeline. May 3rd, 1972. On the comic bookshelf today it was House of Mystery number 204 beautiful Bernie Wright's in cover and some artwork inside too. Paul Jimmy Olsen was on his last legs with number 151.

Strange Adventures number 237 had some nice science fiction reprints from DC. We got Superman 254 and the first issue of Weird Mystery Tales. And then over to Marvel we got Fantastic Four 125, The Amazing Spider-Man 111 with the very first Jerry Conway story. Captain America number 152 with the very last Jerry Conway story. Kind of put those two together.

And the very first issue of The Defenders. In the news 77 men were missing and 5 were known dead in a mining disaster in Idaho. Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace were victors in the Indiana Democratic primary. And the body of former FBI head J. Edgar Hoover was displayed at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington. In the movies a whole bunch of forgettable stuff.

Titles like Hot Rock, Zig Zag and Hotspur. Remember any of those? And then there was the pop culture icon of all. For a couple of bucks you could sit and see this one on the wide screen and totally be enthralled. I have a sentimental weakness for my children and my spoils as you can see.

They call me when they should listen. TV tonight, Cal Burnett, Adam 12, Rod Serling's Night Gallery and little Joe. I'm Joe Manix. Let me in or I'll scream. Come on, who could blow up cars better than Manix?

On the radio, definitely one of the best albums of the 70s from a guy late in the 60s we affectionately called The Runt. But the album Something Anything is still a classic today. It's Hot Run. Can you see the light in my eyes? In my eyes, in my eyes.

ComicMix ComicMix.com I'm gonna ask MJ to marry me. A man has to put his wife before himself. Can you do that, Peter?

Yeah, I think I can. Yeah, but can you put the butts in the seats, Peter? That's a question. Well, it's finally here. Spider-Man 3 opens this weekend.

Matt Raub has already been in the theater. Back out again with a lot to say. Alright, webheads. It's Matt Raub back again. And yes, that time has come.

And this is the official ComicMix review for this summer's highest anticipated film, Spider-Man 3. Now, going into the film, I knew it would be somewhat jaded. Because I've got a problem with a leading cast. And no, I'm not talking about James Franco or J.K. Simmons or even our laundry list of villains. I'm talking about Spidey and MJ themselves.

You know, since the first movie, I've had a real problem with Raimi trying to make this franchise all about the on-again off-again relationship between Mary-Jame and Peter. And it doesn't exactly help to have our hero cry throughout roughly the first two-thirds of the first two movies. Plus, after reading the quote from Dunst during a press junket at Spidey 2, in which she wanted the third movie to be where Spider-Man dies off in the first act, and the rest of the film is about Mary-Jame coping in the modern world with a spider-bun in the oven.

I'm sure those of you grinding your teeth at this point are in the same camp as me right now. With that said, this film had way too much of the Dawson's Creek drama. Now, starting off, we're treated to an entire musical number from Mary-Jame's Broadway show. And from that point on, it pretty much just goes downhill, including the climax of the relationship being that Mary-Jame's feels that Spider-Man is stealing too much of her attention.

Wah. This just goes in the same argument that I've had about most Marvel movies. Superhero movies are supposed to be about superheroes, not superheroes girlfriends. Let's move on. Now, because I don't want you to get the idea that I hated this movie, because I really didn't,

I would mention that I loved The Sandman and Venom arcs. Both were very true to the comic books, and I was a little afraid that the Sandman scenes would just be regurgitated scenes from The Mummy, but they held strong through the end. One of the things that I was most excited about going into the film is that one of my favorite comedic actors today, Topher Grace, was playing the reluctant Eddie Brock.

Now, I was concerned at first because the original Brock, as we all know, is this honking meathead with pure hatred in his heart. But with Grace, we got a little more finesse as he played the very down in his luck, misunderstood photographer, just trying to make it in the world with his new girlfriend, Gwen Stacy. Now, much like all of the villains in this flick, nobody was evil, just misunderstood. And the reason they all hate Spider-Man is plainly because halfway through the movie, he just becomes a dick.

I kind of want to beat him up by the end. Now, without giving away too much here, you can go and check out my full review over at the website. And for those of you who are still thinking that I'm just hating on this movie, you're pretty much as misunderstood as Mr. Brock over there. I enjoyed the flick a lot, just needed a little less substance and a little more butt-kicking. And with that said, I'd give the flick a 7 out of 10, with plans to definitely go see it at least one more time, including IMAX.

Until next time, you keep web-slinging, you ComicMix fans, you… Alright, back in line to see Spidey 3 one more time. We'll share some people who saw the movie, let you know what they thought as well. It'll be free Comic Book Day on Saturday, we'll be ready for that. Plus, our ComicMix Comic Book Master series continues once again.

Comments, please, we love to hear them on the website. It's real easy, couple of clicks and we are in contact, or write us direct at podcast.ComicMix.com. Talk to you in a couple of days. Bye.