The Best of the Bunch: Week of 2/27/2008

February 29, 2008 on 8:52 pm | In Best of the Bunch

What’s a comic book blog with some weekly book reviews?!

Well, when you’re readin’ the Monkey you’ll get The Best of the Bunch!

If you grabbed books this week, you don’t need me to tell you that good reads were in abundance. Between perennial crowd-pleasers like Geoff John’s Action Comics and Justice Society of America, and Ed Brubaker’s Captain America and Daredevil (not to mention an exceptional kick-off to volume two of his Icon series with Sean Phillips, Criminal), but the book that really rocked my week was JSA Classified #35.

Much like last week’s Superman Confidential, I grabbed this issue because it was written by B. Clay Moore. I picked up Hawaiian Dick—Moore’s awesome Image series—last year and was amazingly pleased to find it was exactly the type of book I was hoping it’d be after seeing the cover, and I’ve checked out as much as I could by Clay since. I heard about the Superman book from Clay when I did an interview with him last fall for a Columbia Missourian article about professional comic creators in and around Kansas City. I was jazzed to read Confidential and really enjoyed it, but in the end, I’m not a big Superman guy. However, when I heard he was doing a three-issue arc on JSA Classified starring Wildcat, I was ecstatic!

Seriously, as far as I’m concerned, Ted Grant is the preeminent badass of the comic book world, because he was the first and he’s still kickin’…

…The coolest thing about the beginning of this arc, is it asks exactly that; why is Ted Grant still wearing the whiskers after all these years? GL poses the question and tells Ted that his old gyms in Gotham are looking a little fishy. So, Ted jumps on his bike and heads to check it out and maybe reaffirm for himself why he hasn’t retired. He punches people and the plot thickens—I could keep telling you what happened or tell you why it was awesome. I’ll opt for the latter.

The dialogue’s tight and rings true of a down-to-Earth, graying boxer in a cat suit constantly outshined by his superpowerful teammates and without sounding as ridiculous as that description of the hero. The plot isn’t overwhelming after one issue but allows for punches aplenty and has more than enough room for chances to analyze what keeps this golden age hero going. Reading the book, it felt like it was written exactly for my tastes and was enjoyable from first page to closing cliffhanger, and that’s just the writing.

Ramon Perez’s art was…well, let’s just say I want to paste it up all over my white and extremely boring apartment walls. He captures the essence of why Wildcat is just flat-out cool in the opening fight sequence and emphasizes every cool jab and hook throughout the book. And the scenes where Moore juxtaposes Wildcat’s past with his present, Perez deserves a callout just for drawing that awesome image of Wildcat punching a ‘20s classic boxer through the seat of a chair…

…Other than the above-mentioned books, I have to give a call out to Blue Beetle. Seeing Jaime Reyes dawn the Ted Kord Beetle costume after 24 issues was just plain awesome…

…and this whole issue was a slam-bang, drag-out action extravaganza. Great stuff!

Lastly, I loved X-Men: Legacy. I’m a big X-Fan, and seeing such an interesting exploration of the easily-clichéd “Xavier might not be perfectly altruistic” theme was really a treat.

Ok folks, that’s it for this week’s bunch, and hey, feel free to email me any questions or comments at TheLoudestMonkey@gmail.com!

And so it begins…

February 15, 2008 on 8:37 pm | In Monkeying around..., Uncategorized

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, comic fans and movie aficionados, readers one and all, welcome to the very first post of The Loudest Monkey!

Seeing as this is the start of things, let’s begin at the beginning: I’m Jim Gibbons, Wizard Universe’s News Editor, and if you’ve clicked the “blogs” link and decided to check out this probable demonstration of my inevitable complete immersion into the internet resulting in my own insanity, well thanks! It’s gonna be a blast!

Now, you may be wondering where a blog on a comics, entertainment and pop culture Web site gets off calling itself The Loudest Monkey, and unless you’re a zoologist or just knowledgeable of the animal kingdom, you’d be right to wonder.

Commence “clever blog title” explanation!
A gibbon is an ape that is known for its extremely vocal nature—the loudest shrieker in the jungle, if you will—I’m Jim Gibbons, and thus the name was created.

Ok, yes, a gibbon is technically an ape and not a monkey (lack of a tail signifies this for those of you taking notes), but “the most oral ape” just sounded a bit too perverse. So, the blog is The Loudest Monkey, good clean fun for everyone!

“What’s the theme behind a blog with a name like The Loudest Monkey?” I assume you might be asking yourself. Marvelous question!

As we carved out some blogs for Wizard Universe with a clear purpose—for example check out, team captain of Thursday Morning Quarterback, Andy Serwin’s recommendation blog Dr. Hot Read or David Paggi and Kiel Phegley’s jaunt off the mainstream with Indie Jones when you’re done here—I pitched The Loudest Monkey as an offbeat title to a blog for myself, Editor-in-Chief Scott Gramling chuckled at the name and here we are. So, I plan to have the potential directionlessness of a blog with a jungle-themed title allow me some free license to have one heckuva fun time on the interweb! Hopefully, one you’ll enjoy as readers as much as I foresee myself enjoying it as a writer.

Among the fun…
• Views, reviews and commentary on comics!
• Collections of my favorite quotes and comments from the Wizard Universe Message Boards!
• Answers to questions from readers like you about Wizard Universe, Wizard HQ and your hairy host!
• A rundown of the week’s top stories that you might have missed from WizardUniverse.com!
• And more…pictures, videos, things of other importance and probable hilarity!

On a serious note, let me say that when you’re reading this blog you can always expect the utmost honesty and sincerity from me. You won’t catch me ragging on a lot of books when I review or discuss things here, because frankly, there’re plenty of great comics out there so why would I waste my time writing about ones I don’t care for? I’d rather have a good time writing about a book I really dig, but that doesn’t mean there’ll be any pretense about it. If I say I like it, I do and you can trust me on that. I can’t answer every question submitted to me, but when I do answer I won’t bullsh– you, I don’t have the time. I’ll goof around and joke plenty, but when it’s all hashed out, I’m an honest fella and I can’t blog any differently than that.

Ok, lastly, I have to give a huge thanks to my good friend Seaby Bess for drawing the Loudest Monkey logo featuring the monkeyed-up caricature of me! I asked, gave some vague description of what I had in mind and he delivered—big time. And did it all out of the good of his heart for an old buddy, asking nothing in return: yep, he’s a rad dude! His artistic talents are musical as well, Check out the MySpace music page for his band Seaby and the Rules. Thanks again, Seabotron!

Alright, that’s it for this round folks! Thanks for stopping in and I’ll see ya next time!