Category: Reviews

REVIEW: Home Again

With the comic book-based movie ascendant, other genres have worn out their welcome with audiences, largely given to them being played out mines of creativity. One such casualty of staleness was the romcom; I would argue we haven’t had a good one of those in at least a decade. It makes sense, therefore, that the next generation of filmmaker tries the genre. You can’t have a better pedigree for this than Writer/Director Hallie Meyers-Shyer, who with parents Nancy Meyers (The Holiday) and Charles Shyer, were the last interesting purveyors in this field.

The trailers for Universal’s Home Again certainly looked promising with a look at 40-year old single mom Alice Kinney (Reese Witherspoon) raising her two daughters Isabel (Lola Flanery) and Rose (Eden Grace Redfield) in the house her now deceased father owned. He was a legendary director who married his last major star, Lillian (Candice Bergen), who remains a cheerful nudge. Alice is separated from her husband, music producer Austen (Michael Sheen) who can’t seem to make time for his family.

While out getting hammered in celebration of turning 40, Alice and her pals encounter fledgling filmmakers Harry (Pico Alexander), Teddy (Nat Wolff), and George (Jon Rudnitsky), in town to work on turning their short film into a feature. For some reason, none of them have money, but Harry has plenty of chemist with Alice, resulting in the three crashing at her house. Lillian invites them to stay in the guest house our back and so begins the romcom.

The three keep telling us how in awe they are with how well Alice is handling the single mom thing but Meyers-Shyer keeps forgetting to show evidence of this. Instead, these three are like elves who cook, shop, and chauffeur while also working on their careers, collectively and increasingly individually.

All the elements are here for a fun exploration of romance and parenthood in the 21st century but instead, everything is under-baked. The age difference between 20-something Harry and Alice is never an issue, the men’s fraying relationship is more contrivance than character-based dilemma, and the ultimate arrival of Austen in the mix goes along predictable lines. In fact, the further into the film we go, the more predictable the plot points get, robbing the film of being truly engaging.

The film is out now on a Combo Pack from Universal Home Entertainment so you get a fine high definition transfer, a DVD, and Digital HD code. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack is equally competent.

Despite middling to positive reviews, the movie underwhelmed at the box office, which may explain why the sole special feature is an audio commentary with Meyers-Shyer and mama Meyers.

 

REVIEW: Games of Thrones: The Complete Seventh Season

With the news this week that the eighth and final season of HBO’s Game of Thrones won’t air until 2019 comes just as Games of Thrones: The Complete Seventh Season arrives on disc tomorrow. The digital editions have been out for some time and if any season bears repeat watching it is this one.

One advantage to the bloodshed and character demises over the last few seasons has meant that the survivors all get larger roles, meatier scenes, and characters we’ve longed to see together actually share the screen. The episodes are longer, but there are fewer of them to enjoy. Perhaps the biggest downside to this is that events have had to be telescoped, stretching and then breaking the show’s internal logic.

No matter how the producers spin it, there was really no way for episode six to work once the White Walkers surrounded our hardy band of warriors. Of course we knew what was coming, we knew that Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) would arrive on her dragon to rescue them in the greatest arrival of the cavalry moment in years.

The shorter season also cost some characters a chance to breathe before they shuffled off stage, notably the sand snakes (Indira Varma and her daughters). Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright) and his visions also gets short-shrift but that is more than made up for by the arc involving his sisters, Sansa (Sophie Turner) and Arya (Maisie Williams), especially as they are manipulated by Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish (Aidan Gillen). Some of their exchanges caused much chuckling.

Everyone has been moved around Westeros as the true threat has finally been exposed. And yet, there remain schemes within schemes, wheels turning as we see Cersei (Lena Headey) cutting deals with the Iron Bank and overseas alliances in anticipation of life after the White Walkers’ defeat. While it makes sense to be prepared, she may also be underestimating the size of the threat coming from the North.

As secrets have been revealed to the audience, but not yet the characters themselves, we also see the inevitable consummation of lust between Danerys and Jon Snow (Kit Harrington) leading some in the audience to go, “ick”.

After the men have brooded, slashed, and hacked their way into this mess, the tide has turned and it has pretty much fallen to the women to clean up their mess. The fun of the final season should be the culmination of the moves made during this rather satisfying seventh with Cersei, Danerys, and Sansa all in positions of power with vastly different objectives and alliances. It’s a shame Lady Olenna Tyrell (Diana Rigg) won’t be around to see it after her incredibly dignified death in episode two.

We’re in uncharted here since the television series is far past where the events of the source material, George R.R. Martin’s stalled Song of Fire and Ice novel series, left readers. As a result, we have no way of determining how much of this is Martin’s original scheme and how much a product of the producers. They have certainly maintained the flawed characters and expansive world but as they are left to their own devices, there are far fewer surprises than earlier seasons.

The episodes come in a variety of packages with our reviewing the four-disc DVD edition. The transfer for audio and video is superb and will reward viewers.

The most welcome extra is the separate disc packaged apart from the season set (for a limited time): Conquest & Rebellion: An Animated History of the Seven Kingdoms. This is an animated history of the Seven Kingdoms with voices provided by Pilou Asbæk (Euron Greyjoy), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister),Aidan Gillen (Littlefinger), Conleth Hill (Varys), Harry Lloyd (Viserys Targaryen) and Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark). The focus is on Aegon Targaryen’s attempts to conquer the Seven Kingdoms and was written by show writer Dave Hill. Essentially, this is a 45-minute expanded version of the Histories and Lore shorts, found in the box set.

The extras contained within the box set include: From Imagination to Reality: Inside the Art Department, a two-part featurette (46:25) that concentrates its attention the new sets, including Dragonstone, Casterly Rock, Highgarden, and the Dragonpit.

Fire & Steel: Creating the Invasion of Westeros (30:02) has the cast and crew talking about creating this sequence.

There are Audio Commentaries for every episode with cast and crew including producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, Jacob Anderson, Gwendoline Christie, Liam Cunningham, Kit Harington, Lena Headey, and others.

Histories and Lore are seven animated shorts that provide the history and background for storylines including The Dragonpit, Highgarden, Prophecies of the Known World, the Rains of Castamere and more all narrated by cast members.

In-Episode Guides-In-feature resource that provides background information about on-screen characters and locations.

For those who buy the series digitally, available through iTunes and UltraViolet, there’s one more bonus: “Creating the North and Beyond” looking at Jon Snow’s trek north.

Herbie Archives, Volume One by Shane O’Shea and Ogden Whitney

Yeah, it did take me until now to finally read Herbie. It is so much exactly the kind of thing that I would like that the delay seems weird, but it’s a big world, and you can only do one thing at a time. I finally got to this particular thing, and can finally talk about it.

But wait! You say. Did I come in the middle of something? What on earth are you going on about?

All right, all right. Herbie Popnecker was the “hero” of a series of stories from the American Comics Group, for about a decade from 1958 through 1967 — first as one-off stories in anthologies, then as the star of twenty-three issues of his own comic in 64-67. He’s a short, fat, torpid, laconic kid with heavy-lidded eyes, a bowl haircut, and a lollipop always in his mouth, whose father is constantly complaining about him and calling him a “little fat nothing.” He doesn’t like sports or schoolwork or playing with other kids; at home he tends to sit in a straightback chair and doze, and we don’t see him at school or interacting with his peers.

So far, so promising for a humor title, right? Sounds just like the thing in the ’50s-’60s burst of teen-interest comics, with Archie and Binky and Scooter!

Well, Herbie was more than just a little fat nothing, luckily. He was also world-famous, almost omnipotent, and oddly resourceful. His lollipops gave him superpowers — this is slightly inconsistent, since sometimes he seems to have power merely because he is Herbie — and his aid is regularly sought by US Presidents and UN Secretary-Generals. Gorgeous women swoon at his approach. Vicious animals flee when they realize who he is. He travels in time, via lollipop and a flying boat-like grandfather clock, and can walk under the oceans and across empty space to reach distant planets.

And, if threatened, all he needs to do is ask “You want I should bop you with this here lollipop?” Herbie’s bop is a force that can frighten the greatest forces in the universe — in just this book, we see suns, dragons, and Satan himself cowed by it.

That is one weird mix of elements, and it doesn’t seem like it should work. But ACG editor Richard E. Hughes (writing as “Shane O’Shea”) kept a deadpan tone around Herbie, making it all strangely plausible. And Ogden Whitney drew all of the stories in a solid, straightforward style — both of them as if to drain any possible insinuation of imagination out of the stories, as if to prove Herbie’s adventures must be plausible if they are this normal-seeming.

It worked. It still works, now: some elements are a little outdated (the supernatural creatures are somewhat comic-booky and of their time), but most of Herbie is unique and sui generis. And many individual panels are still laugh-out-loud funny after fifty-plus years.

The first third of the Herbie stories were collected in 2008 as Herbie Archives, Volume One , which is what I finally read. There are two more volumes, collecting the rest of the Herbie stories, which I now need to dig up and read. If you like weird comics, you probably already know about Herbie. If you’ve never read him, you’ll probably want to move him up in the queue — this is still really good stuff, nutty and crazy in all the best midcentury ways.

antickmusingsdyil2auoc8za-2782559 antickmusingsd63t7ie-lg7y-1542372 antickmusingsdqj6idk7rits-3565871

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Chew, Vol. 6: Space Cakes by John Layman and Rob Guillory

Oh, look — another comics series I’m still poking my way through, a year or so after it ended! There are ten volumes of the collected Chew, so I’m three or four years behind at this point. I don’t see any particular reason to be concerned about this — not reading a book right when it comes out doesn’t harm anything, or cause a single problem — but I do seem to be doing a lot of it lately.

Anyway: Chew, Vol. 6: Space Cakes . Right smack-dab in the middle of the weird alternate-world detective story by John Layman (words) and Rob Guillory (pictures). See my reviews of volumes one and two and three-through-five (during one of my periodic reviewing bankruptcies) if you care; don’t if you don’t.

This is a comic-book world, coming out regularly in pamphlet form from a major publisher. And that means that, even if this isn’t officially a superhero comic, it will tend to bend in that direction, as a tree growing in a continuous wind will be bent. So this world is, by this point, chock-full of people with weird powers, all of which (this is Chew‘s particular shtick) are food-related. We started with Tony Chu, who can read the history of something by eating it, and this book focuses on his twin sister Toni, who can see the future of the things she eats.

She works for NASA, another one of the super-powerful government agencies (along with the FDA and USDA) in this alternate world. And she’s bubbly and goofy, as befits this goofy series. So, while Tony is in a coma (more or less) Toni takes over for a few issues of culinary mayhem and derring-do. The usual supporting cast runs around doing their thing — including an included one-shot of the murderous rooster Poyo — but this is Toni’s story.

It’s not exactly a good story for her, in the end, but saying more would get into spoiler territory. And the last few pages imply the book will go back to being about Tony, as we’d expect. So this is a big chunk of middle, though it’s chewy, flavorful middle, in a banquet where we know exactly when the dessert and brandy will be coming.

Sidebar: Hey, I haven’t complained about anyone’s ONIX feed for a while! This book was published in January of 2013, and the publisher, Image, still hasn’t managed to upload (to the major online stores) a version of the cover with words on it yet. This is appalling, and if I rated books on some kind of a scale, they’d definitely lose points for that.

antickmusingsdyil2auoc8za-5102428 antickmusingsd63t7ie-lg7y-7359511 antickmusingsdqj6idk7rits-3829033

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

REVIEW: Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

I was only vaguely aware of the French graphic novels featuring Valérian and Laureline, created by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières. The albums ran from 1967 through 2010 and well incredibly well-received, leading first to an animated series before Luc Besson bought the rights for a feature film in 2012.

Well, five years later, he delivered Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, out now from Lionsgate Home Entertainment, and he lavished so much of the $200 million budget on spectacular visuals, he seemingly did not have enough left for a good script. The movie looked promising with its trailers, but it was all gloss, covering up a compelling story or well-delineated characters.

Despite loving the series as a youngster, Besson lost the charm of the series, ignoring Laureline’s origins as a peasant from the 11th century who encountered Valérian on a time travel trip and convinced him to bring her back to his era. In the film, they are seen as equals, partners, and friends as played by Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne respectively.

The film starts promisingly with a montage of first contacts through the ages that helps explore the origins of the city of a thousand planets but once we get to the 28th century, the story ignites into frenetic chaos and not much plot. No single character is well defined and the dialogue more perfunctory than revelatory. Basically, the plot involves the pair being sent by their commander, Arün Filitt (Clive Owen), to the fabled city of Alpha to determine what mystery lay in the center, which is connected to a world that has seen its share of misery. This beatific world has its share of interesting visuals and a pretty princess and her pet, called a Convertor for its ability to, well, convert materials.

Overall, this is a pretty movie with many interesting ideas thrown here and there like a Pollock painting, but there’s no heart or soul, no worldbuilding to sustain the ideas. As a result, it’s mildly entertaining but leaves you hugely dissatisfied.

The Blu-ray is an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1, nicely capturing the colorful visuals. (Note: There is no home video version of the theatrical 3-D release.) The Dolby Atmos track is equally a match for the video.

The Blu-ray offers up a Valerian: Enhancement Mode, letting the viewer branching to a number of supplemental featurettes. Among the Enhancement Pods (35:58) are: Alpha Introduction, Princess Liho-Minaa, Empress Aloi, Destruction of Mui, Igon Siruss, Motion Capture Cameras, Kris Wu Set Tour, Melo the Convertor, Pearl Guns, Kris Wu 4D Scan, Paradise Alley, Boulan Bathor Emperor, Emperor Haban-Limai, and K-Trons. There is also the interesting Citizens of Imagination: Creating the Universe of Valerian (59:04) properly focused on bringing the graphic novels to visual life.

Finally, there is The Art of Valerian still gallery and pair of trailers.

REVIEW: Atomic Blonde

After James Bond and Jason Bourne, the bar has been raised high for espionage films that mingle international intrigue with edge-of-the-seat action. Many have tried and failed to reach the upper echelon of the genre and none have featured a female lead. Atomic Blonde, starring Charlize Theron, is pretty close and if she returns for a sequel, just might find a place in the pantheon.

The summer film was based on The Coldest City graphic novel from Antony Johnston and Sam Hart and was chosen for development prior to publication by Theron, then looking at properties for her production company. She brought on Kurt Johnstad to adapt the story which was fine given his previous work adapting 300 from comic to screen. He also wrote an Aquaman script losing last year’s bake-off to Will Beall.

Set in the waning days of Cold War Berlin, an MI6 agent is shot, the microfilm he was carrying stolen, and the hunt is on for his killer and the list of field agents in the USSR. Lorraine Broughton is set on the hunt and from there, the pace rarely lessens. We start with the end, seeing a naked, battered and bruised Lorraine soaking in a bathtub full of ice then reporting to her superior Eric Gray (Toby Jones) and his CIA counterpart Emmett Kurzfield (John Goodman). During her recounting of the actions, we gain an increasing sense of unease; someone is a mole, endangering the mission. The audience is left wondering who it might be starting with David Percival (James McAvoy), the Berlin station chief who may or may not have gone native.

Complicating her mission is Delphine (Sofia Boutella), a rookie French agent posing as a local, who gets too close to Lorraine. She’s a Bond girl but her affair with Lorraine packs more emotional heart than most similar heterosexual encounters.

That action was hyped during the trailers but what you don’t appreciate until you see the film is how much director David Leitch, pushed the action. He made a name for himself with uncredited work on John Wick and was coaxed away from the sequel to this film and he made Theron work hard and its pays off in some of the freshest fighting sequences captured on film in years.

He nicely integrates mostly familiar 1980s music to the film, helping ground it. Director of Photography Jonathan Sela does a nice job maintaining a gritty, run down look and feel to East Berlin, contrasting it with its Western twin.

There’s a relentlessness to the pace which nicely matches the ticking clock as the Wall crumbles and the microfilm is out to auction. By the end, everything is neatly tied up and I’ll admit to being surprised as to who was the mole.

The film, out now in a variety of formats from Universal Home Entertainment has a fine, not exceptional, high definition transfer with a solid DTS:X Master Audio soundtrack.

The 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray discs contain an assortment of interesting special features starting with Deleted/Extended Scenes (7:23), six sequences, two of which focus on Delphine and would have been nice to have in the main feature. Welcome to Berlin (4:33) is a cursory look at the city along with shooting locations and production design. Blondes Have More Gun (7:01) focuses on Theron with a nice look at the intensive training that went into readying her for the action sequences where she did the vast majority of her own stunts. Spymaster (4:18) lets Leith talk about what drew him to this project. The best feature is Anatomy of a Fight Scene (7:52), focusing on the protracted fight sequence inside an apartment building before spilling into the streets. There some nice picture-in-picture director commentary along with split screen behind the scenes footage.

Finally, there’s Story in Motion, animated storyboards for two scenes: Agent Broughton (2:16) and The Chase (1:38), each offer optional Leitch commentary.

The Audio Commentary: Director David Leitch and Editor Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir is interesting and informative so if you enjoy the film, you’ll learn plenty from a second pass with this option.

 

 

REVIEW: DC Universe Original Movies: 10th Anniversary Collection

DC Comics and Warner Animation have every reason to celebrate their first decade of original feature film work. Since their inception, they have explored ways of adapting classic and current storylines to expand the audience for the heroes and villains that have existed on the four-color page. In time, they have experimented with styles, looks, and sounds, slowly but surely evolving into a shared universe of linked features so dedicated audiences can watch things progress.

The celebration is taking place in the just-released DC Universe Original Movies: 10th Anniversary Collection Blu-ray box set, which is limited to a numbered set of 20,000 units, priced at $299.99.

In addition to the thirty films and bonus content disc, the box set comes with an exclusive 40-page adult coloring book featuring key art from all DC Universe films and exclusive collector coins featuring the DC “Trinity” – Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman.

Overall, it’s handsome set with lovely cover artwork and nice interior design. Clearly aimed at collectors, it ranks up there with some of the other anniversary box sets from elsewhere in the digital universe. Obviously, the films vary in quality and not all is to individual taste, but together they are a testament to the characters’ adaptable quality, able to be interpreted and reinterpreted by a wide range of talents.

On the bonus disc, there should be something about the decade itself, some roundtable of creators, animators and voice actors looking back. It feels like a gaping absence. Instead, we start with a 49-minute “The Super Human in Us All” which is meant to be an inspiring look at real-world heroes, individuals who have committed selfless acts to help others. Some have used those moments to launch new careers and they are justifiably celebrated, but it is an oh-so-serious, ponderous production, intermixing way too much Alex Ross artwork to connect DC’s heroes with these admirable humans that it proves more self-important than inspiring.

The hosts from DC All-Access take us through a cursory “Comic Book History of Justice League Dark”, leaving out key details. Considering they appear in just one of the films with no announced plans for more, it is a curiosity.

Far better is “Mark Hamill: Finding The Laugh”, as the actor traces his career from Star Wars to his 20-plus year career voicing the Clown Prince of Crime. He acknowledges those who brought their own take as found on several films in this set and walks us through his thought process in finding his voice and sustaining it as the content has grown darker, notably the video games.

Also included is the obligatory DC Universe Original Movies 10th Anniversary Panel at 2017 Comic-Con International spotlights Bruce Timm, James Tucker, co-producers/screenwriters Alan Burnett and Jim Krieg; along with voice actors Kevin Conroy (Batman), Tara Strong (Harley Quinn), John DiMaggio (multiple), Vanessa Marshall (Wonder Woman) and Christopher Gorham (Flash).

As is appropriate for the celebration, the 2008 Comic-Con International Wonder Woman (Animated) Panel is presented, featuring former DC Publisher Paul Levitz, Bruce Timm, director Lauren Montgomery, eight-time Emmy Award-winning dialogue/casting director Andrea Romano, and Nathan Fillion (Steve Trevor).

There are Lookbooks for Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, Batman: The Killing Joke, Justice League: Throne of Atlantis and Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, which are essentially still images and text.

Panel Discussion – A Tribute to Darwyn Cooke is another celebration of the artist and animator who left us too early but did give us many wonderful projects so deserves the look back.

There are three brief pieces drawn from the JLA: Gods & Monsters film, featuring variant takes on the trinity.

For the record: the 30-film DC Universe Original Movies: 10th Anniversary Collection includes:

  1. SUPERMAN: DOOMSDAY
  2. JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE NEW FRONTIER (COMMEMORATIVE EDITION)
  3. BATMAN: GOTHAM KNIGHT
  4. WONDER WOMAN (COMMEMORATIVE EDITION)
  5. GREEN LANTERN: FIRST FLIGHT
  6. SUPERMAN/BATMAN: PUBLIC ENEMIES
  7. JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRISIS ON TWO EARTHS
  8. BATMAN: UNDER THE RED HOOD
  9. SUPERMAN/BATMAN: APOCALYPSE
  10. ALL-STAR SUPERMAN
  11. GREEN LANTERN: EMERALD KNIGHTS
  12. BATMAN: YEAR ONE
  13. JUSTICE LEAGUE: DOOM
  14. SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE
  15. THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, PART 1
  16. THE DARK KNIGHTS RETURNS, PART 2
  17. SUPERMAN: UNBOUND
  18. JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE FLASHPOINT PARADOX
  19. JUSTICE LEAGUE: WAR
  20. SON OF BATMAN
  21. BATMAN: ASSAULT ON ARKHAM
  22. JUSTICE LEAGUE: THRONE OF ATLANTIS
  23. BATMAN VS. ROBIN
  24. JUSTICE LEAGUE: GODS AND MONSTERS
  25. BATMAN: BAD BLOOD
  26. JUSTICE LEAGUE VS. TEEN TITANS
  27. BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE
  28. JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK
  29. TEEN TITANS: THE JUDAS CONTRACT
  30. BATMAN AND HARLEY QUINN

Also included: SUPERMAN/SHAZAM! The Return of Black Adam, along with The Spectre, Green Arrow, Jonah Hex, and Catwoman shorts.

Legends of the World’s Finest by Walt Simonson & Daniel Brereton

Note: I didn’t plan to read this book and have the review land on Halloween — that was purely random. But it’s nice when things work out so appropriately, isn’t it? 

There are books where you wonder why anyone ever thought they were a good idea — how they could possibly have come into existence. A fully-painted series of comic books in which a sweaty-looking Superman and Batman trade dreams as part of the schemes of an undead Scottish laird to beat a random female demon would fall into that category for a whole lot of people.

But, once you realize that comics not uncommonly come into existence because the then-hot artist had a list of things he really wanted to draw, it starts to make more sense. Legends of the World’s Finest , the book in question, has introductions from both writer Walt Simonson and painter Daniel Brereton in which both of them pretend this was a good or at least plausible idea to begin with. (In their defense, it was 1993, when the spandex-dudes industry was teetering on an unsustainable peak of grimacing, variant covers, belt pouches, bad art, and speculator hype. A lot of things looked like good ideas at the time from inside the industry. And Brereton, unlike some artists of that era, was hot because he paints creepy, gorgeous art, so the demon-plot at least was driven by his obvious strengths.)

This Legends is also from long enough ago that it feels more like the wordy comics of the ’70s and ’80s than the more stripped-down style of the last twenty years — everyone here yammers on a lot, and the narrative voice gets into the action, too, telling us things we can clearly see in the panels repeatedly. I’m too lazy to look up whether the “real” Superman was officially dead or alive when Legends was published — it was right in the middle of that foofaraw, when first he was dead, then he was four other people, and then he suddenly wasn’t dead and wasn’t any of them, either — but it’s from that era of comics, when the Big Two companies were throwing everything they could think of at the wall, with the Image founders doing the same with even less likely things, and nearly everything was sticking.

For a while, at least. The wall wised up before too long, and a hell of a lot of things suddenly stopped sticking very soon after this. And a lot of projects that worked well enough in the inflationary era look silly and ridiculous afterwards.

Again, which brings us back to Legends. It is silly. I won’t say that it’s actually ridiculous, but it and ridiculous are close enough neighbors to share a snow-blower this winter. It has Batman and Superman act wildly out of character on purpose, but doesn’t manage to wring any humor, or much drama, out of that. It manages to feel much longer than its hundred-and-fifty-ish pages. For a presumably out-of-continuity Prestige Format series, it’s remarkably mired in the dull continuity of the era. (Superman thinks about his last encounter with Blaze, the female demon! It features the character sensation of never, the who-ever-cared-about-her Silver Banshee!)

There are a lot of big elements here that just don’t come off as big. The world is nearly destroyed, yet again, but it’s ho-hum. There’s way too much talking, none of it in words that are surprising or interesting. And it teaches the great superhero lesson that evil people can never change, so you should never ever help anyone who asks.

Everyone has probably forgotten this even existed. They were pretty much right to do so. But the Brereton art is still quite impressive, especially if you want to see a sweaty, bodybuilder-esque Superman lurching around. That’s the most positive thing I can say about it.

antickmusingsdyil2auoc8za-3170157 antickmusingsd63t7ie-lg7y-7463825 antickmusingsdqj6idk7rits-8190402

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Categories

Archives

Everything you need to make great comics!

comicmix-pro-300x69-2

Nucleus X

Bookshop Zaks