J-Nel

May 23, 2012 7:43 pm Not the cast I was expecting, especially Weller, but as I'll give it a shot as I have with all of these. Maybe they'll top "Red Hood" as the best of the animated batfilms!! Kinda humorous that this is following "Superman VS The Elite" in the production considering their opposing statements on what a hero should be. I feel that the heroes The Elite represent are the immature outgrowth of what DKR started in comics, but ech, maybe I'm still just down on Miller... A blog rant about Occupy shouldn't ruin a creator for everyone, but it sure did for me... My suggestion for the next one of these where Bats stars : Paul Pope's "Batman Year 100"...

May 21, 2012 3:36 pm These are really starting to bum me out on the Marvel side of things. Yes, "Marville" (among a few other things) may have been a bad call but I think Marvel was at a creative peak week we hadn't seen since the 60s with him in charge. Or at least books were allowed to breath and creators were brought in on their comics merit not their superhero comics merit and a willingness to play ball with whatever "event" or "between-event-branding". Titles had their own identity and the freedom to cultivate their own voice back in those days. Look at that "New Mutants" cover even has the "Tsunami" logo on it. At least people got "Runaways" and a BKV penned "Mystique" out of that line, what has Buckley's Marvel ever tried do that lasted besides the Marvel Illustrated and other than Skottie Young's (who got his start on Tsunami's "Human Torch") "Oz" books... I didn't read the Rucka "Wolverine" run until I recently saw it in a quarter bin. What the hell was I thinking back then!?!? This was easily my favorite run of "Wolverine" both in art, writing, and Logan as a loner... Great stuff!!

January 20, 2012 4:47 pm I'm right there with Josh on "Wildcats"... I've always found it karmically unfair that Casey had to pick up the pieces of Lobdell's run and did a great job with it but in the end got nudged into that dumbass "Coda War" arc in 3.0 and didn't even get to finish his run. Oh well, I'm hoping lightning strikes twice and him and Nathan Fox can make something great out of "Haunt", which despite my nostalgia for McFarlane's art and respect for Kirkman failed to interest me. Which gets to my pick for best recent reinvention... I was thinking through creators on this subject and got to Bendis. Surprisingly, the first thing that came to mind wasn't "Ultimate Spider-Man" but his revamp of the "Spawn-iverse". Him, along with the capable likes of Ashley Wood made a "Hellspawn" into basically a Sienkwicz-esque romp through every idea Todd had commited to the core title, both embracing the unintentional goofiness of these ideas while making them work within the concept of the reinvention of Spawn as a sorta urban boogeyman. It was "Ultimate Spawn" and it covered all the ground it needed to before Bendis left (er, got fired). The same sentiment rings true with "Sam & Twitch". Although the art on the earlier arcs were all by Todd clones the stories were police procedurals with an occult twist and never disappointed on clever endings. In the final Bendis arc, Alex Maleev showed up for the "Jinx" crossover wow, just wow! There were still some great stories left in this title once Bendis got canned, but I'm glad it all led to "Daredevil"... Final thing, I basically hate all 90s characters on principle (Venom gets a pass at this point), but "Cable" HAS actually been reinvented and done very well. Unfortunately, it was done around the same time as Morrison's "X-Men" and truly was "new" and "different" and as a result didn't sell. It was written by David Tischman, drawn by Igor Kordey, and made Cable an international man of mystery in the vein of a Vertigo book. Great stuff, and X-fans were clamoring for "their Cable" back with almost as much vigor as those detractors of Milligan's "X-Force" at the time!!

December 23, 2011 11:17 pm I heard Josh mention that "Punisher" was way worse than "Jonah Hex" and that led me here to see if he meant the Jane movie or this. Turns out it's this one. I'm still not sure which is worse, but after hearing Lexi ALexander on "How Did This Get Made?" you'll forgive her at least a little bit... Check it out... http://www.earwolf.com/episode/punisher-war-zone/

December 13, 2011 9:34 pm Damn, too bad Ramos isn't on this but I'm liking Slott's run... Oh well, there are bigger crimes at work in this post. Does anyone else find it a tad offensive that Marvel chose a Romita Spidey over a Ditko one. I mean, seriously, show a little f*ckin' respect !!