raduloket

Name: Christopher Carrig

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Reviews
raduloket's Recent Comments
May 12, 2009 12:15 pm

I've been enjoying this quite a bit, enough that I haven't even started catching up on Uncanny.  I didn't hate Danger's origin in Astonishing, but I felt like she needed a little more depth for something struggling with sentience and a need to revenge her perceived imprisonment...she was just a little bit one-note in Astonishing and she's starting to take on some depth here.  I'm not disappointed at all that this isn't yet another X-Men team book.  Between Uncanny, X-Factor, X-Force, New Mutants, and Exiles, all of which have zero involvement with Xavier now, I'm kind of glad to see someone else get a solo book.  For a while there, Wolverine had two solo books going.  

Xavier has always been a lot more interesting to me than Wolverine, and the way they've been retconning Xavier's history lately, he's got more than a few wrongs to correct.  I think Carey's mixing it up nicely with the Danger storyline, dealing with something a little more recent compared to older history like Xavier and Sinister, Xavier and Juggernaut, etc.

I seem to be in the vocal minority with liking what Carey's doing here, but I preferred the introspective stories to the action smackdowns when I first started reading X-Men.  Since Xavier isn't going to be reconciled to the X-Men any time soon and Bendis wasn't allowed to use him instead of Emma in Dark Reign, I'm happy enough to see him wander through memory lane a bit longer...as long as he grows a little bit and actually fixes a few of his mistakes(like issuing a final warning to Juggernaut, that felt like a huge change from the "old" Xavier who gave villains like him a dozen second chances).

May 11, 2009 12:53 pm

I worked as a teacher in a drug rehab for teens for about ten minutes and some of those kids were vicious little snots...not all, just some.  One of them that was a borderline sociopath who took the greatest pleasure in screwing with other people...was such a Lord of the Rings geek that it took my breath away.  Harry Potter fan, too.

 

The world has changed.  There is no culture left for the punks who think they're cooler than everyone else, so they've discovered OUR culture.  Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, comic books, freaking computers...they're all mainstream now.  I should feel like I've won, like I outlasted all the idiots who made fun of me in high school, but I don't.  I worked with these kids.  It's why I stopped teaching.  On one level, yeah, it's a little awesome that the teenage girl ringing up my stuff at Best Buy is quoting the new Star Trek movie to me.  But she's attracted to the shine of something that's cool.  Does she really get it?  Does she want to?  I think there's hope if the answer to the second question is yes.

May 11, 2009 12:29 pm

I've been reading the X-Men since Grant Morrison's run and it's funny that people complain so much about every writer since Claremont, including Claremont when he came back on the books...has anyone ever actually liked the X-Men in comics form?  Other than me?  I mean, I read through some of the 90's stories and enjoyed Age of Apocalypse.  I wasn't a big fan of that arc in Uncanny that brought Chamber back but I didn't hate everything Austen did.  I liked Morrison's run.  I was a little confused at Milligan's run.  Claremont's new run scared me a little.  Brubaker and Carey have kept me interested, and I liked Joss Whedon on Astonishing.  I'd rather have X-Factor in 2-5 titles instead of the infinite teams of X-Men(Now with MORE Wolverine!), but no one's drawing the X-Men anime-style or making Belasco Nightcrawler's father(I know he wasn't, but come on, that would have made a hell of a lot more sense than the Draco storyline). 

 

 

May 8, 2009 5:21 pm

Re:  Ebert...

 

Writing his opinions professionally since 1967 doesn't make them more valid now or then.  I spoke with Leonard Maltin many years ago about his bashing of Jurassic Park and he admitted that he liked the movie and thought it was a lot of fun, but that he had a responsibility as a professional critic to look for flaws.  Mechanics are paid to find problems with your car, critics are paid to find fault with films.  Are there faults?  Usually.  Just like you could find something wrong with you in a full-body scan at the hospital, you can find something wrong in every film.  I think that critics like Ebert should be taken with a grain of salt because their opinions are their job.

May 8, 2009 9:50 am Okay, so Captain America dies but Batman lives on in prehistoric times?  What?  Batman is iconic, but I was sort of looking forward to the idea that someone other than Bruce Wayne takes up the mantle.  He's got the biggest extended family in DC, one of them's bound to be less psychotic than Azrael.
May 8, 2009 9:22 am

I had really high expectations for this movie and I just loved it.  I'm going to see it again tonight and definitely next week with my father.  I can't remember the last time I liked a movie enough to be as excited to see it a second time as before I actually saw it. 

 

Someone commented about the lofty ideals of the Original Series and how they've become space opera.  I have to quibble about that.  It is a space opera and I know the comment was meant to be an insult, but the loftiest idea that Roddenberry had was of a future in which human beings were better versions of themselves and survived to become part of an intergalactic community.  After watching the full run of the Battlestar Galactica reboot, I have to say that Roddenberry's vision is still alive and well here and it still has something to offer even today.  The fact that the characters in this Trek can have funny moments and tell a fun sci-fi story is part of that optimism.  I loved BSG, but even in its finale it maintained a certain fatalism that reminds me of classic science fiction.  Trek can be a little goofy at times, but it's supposed to be.  It's not just a nod to the original series, it's part of the bright future that we want for ourselves--being able to laugh as well as explore new worlds, etc.  I loved this movie and I'm glad everyone else seems to be digging it too.

May 1, 2009 11:11 pm Just saw this today with my wife.  We enjoyed it.  Granted, my first exposure to the X-Men and Wolverine was the first X-Men film and I explored the vast comics universe because I liked that film so much and was interested in Wolverine.  I know it could have been better, but I still hold this above the mess that X3 made of the X-Men series.  I loved the dynamic they gave Sabretooth and Wolverine, was okay with the extended cameos they gave Deadpool and Gambit.  I think Wolverine is a great character, but expecting a film the caliber of Dark Knight would have been a mistake.  Even if someone tried to take Wolverine to that level, it might have been received as badly as Ang Lee's Hulk.  Not every comic is meant to be a masterpiece film.  Some of them are as much for fun as for their part in modern mythology, and this was a fun film.  I think they should have slowed down the beginning and trimmed out some supporting characters, let us enjoy the slow decay of James and Victor and their romp through violent history, but overall I didn't hate this.  I wouldn't show it to someone to convince them comics have substance, but I probably wouldn't hand them an issue of Wolverine for that anyhow.