Five Fistfuls of Justice, by Ric Meyers
I hope you’ve already read Matt Raub’s advance review of Justice League: The New Frontier — DC Universe’s Animated Original Movie — which was posted days ago. Naturally, since it’s coming out in stores this coming Tuesday, it’s time, keeping with the comic source material, for my variant review. Matt critiqued the film itself. I, of course, am reviewing the Two Disc Special Edition’s extras.This baby more than makes up for what I felt last week’s He-Man Volume One DVDs lacked: right on the first disc they have a near-full-length (nearly 45 minutes) doc called “Super Heroes United!: The Complete Justice League Story.” It tracks the comic from its inception back in the 1940s ‘til today, using images, clips, and just the talking heads of most of the major comic creators of the era. The information from the likes of Roy Thomas, our own Denny O’Neil, and even Stan Lee was so comprehensive that the doc doesn’t even require a narrator or narration. It does benefit mightily, as do all the featurettes, from the soundtrack music of Kevin Manthei.
Then the first disc alone more than makes up for what I thought the Resident Evil: Extinction DVD lacked: their doc sneak-peek of the upcoming animated Animatrix-like Batman: Gotham Knights D2 (“direct to”) DVD shows the lame, cheat sneak peek of Resident Evil: Degeneration how it’s done. There’s plenty of making-of stuff, talking heads, and exciting glimpses of the finished product as opposed to Resident Evil’s peek-a-boo tease. The first disc of Justice League wraps with two audio commentaries – the first a gang approach, with six participants from the production and DC Comics (though not a single person from the pic’s impressive voice cast), and the second with the writer/artist of the source graphic novel, Darwyn Cooke.
The second disc kicks off with a slightly shorter but just as interesting history of “The Legion of Doom: Pathology of the Super Villain.” While it contains many of the same talking heads as the “Super Heroes United” doc (Michael Uslan, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, etc.), it also benefits from a Malcolm McDowell narration. Then, perhaps as compensation for the film’s inability to recreate the delightful style of the original graphic novel (understandably opting for the previously established designs of DC’s recent Kids-WB Superman and Batman animated TV series), there’s the “Comic Book Commentary: Homage to The New Frontier” featurette, which goes into detail with and on Darwyn Cooke’s original.
For me, The Lost Boys is probably director Joel Shumacher’s only really great movie. It was one of those movies I really loved as a kid and upon subsequent viewings, it still holds up very well as a scary, funny good time — shirtless sax solos not withstanding.
The Fort Worth Circle – a fabled and enduringly relevant colony of artists who transcended their provincial Texas bearings to help redefine art as a class during the 1940s and ’50s – comes full-circle in a massive exhibition at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. The styles of painting and etching – often veering toward cartooning, like their European counterparts in the somewhat earlier dawning Age of Picasso – are too wildly diversified to allow any simple description: One might say the members shared an impulse to describe how it felt to be alive at a time of unbridled creative enthusiasm and reciprocal encouragement.
or 
We’re all used to Hollywood changing endings for comic book adaptations, usually to make them happier and more palatable to mainstream audiences (such as Mary Jane being saved from the Green Goblin on a Manhattan bridge rather than Gwen Stacy being thrown from one). And yet, the involvement of Neville Page in the upcoming Watchmen movie suggests that this film may try to be more true to its roots, considering that Page is known for monster/creature effects.
