Lil’ Batman and Superman bring hilarity to the DCU!

This week’s Superman/Batman (Issue #51) by Michael Green and Mike Johnson, with art by the completely awesome Rafael Albuquerque (Click here for a post that link sto tons of rad Rafael art from Blue Beetle), is a must-read this week just for the pure fun factor it delivers.

Bringing back the Lil’ League from Superman’s hallucinations on Magic Kryptonite from Superman/Batman #46, the issue sees the full-sized heroes meeting up with their pint-sized counterparts, and it’s a real fun read.

Here’s a taste…

I love Albuquerque’s art as much as a Bat-man loves his strawberry ice cream, so seeing him doing art on this super fun issue was just a blast. Go pick it up, you won’t be sorry.

Spider-Man explained in an adorable and hilarious nutshell

If you didn’t check out the King-Size Spider-Man Summer Special two weeks back, well you missed a ton of web-slinger fun courtesy of Paul Tobin, Colleen Coover and Chris Giarusso (not to mention a cool Spidey/Falcon retro team-up from Keith Giffen, Rick Burchett, Wil Quintant and Nate Piekos)!

However, fun as the whole super-sized issue was, the simplest yet most hilarious moment may have come on the intro page in a single-panel strip by Coover.

It’s the the wall-crawler’s origin in a silly six words! Good stuff, just like the rest of the issue, so go pick it up!

Catching up on comics: late July’s best of the bunch!

Hey Folks! I’ve been absent from the blogosphere for a week’s vacation (Hey, it’s summer! I gotta get some fun in the sun in some time!), which led to much relaxing and quite a bit of catching up on comics. I managed to pound through all the books from the last two weeks of July that had been piling up on my desk, so I figured I’d drop my top recommendations from the past half month now that I’m caught up (ok, ok…I’m actually still a week behind after missing last week, but give me a break and just read the recs!)…

Ambush Bug: Year None #1 (of 6)
It’s Keith Giffen—have I mentioned I’m a big Keith Giffen fan? No? Well, I’m a big Keith Giffen fan!—and it’s some good, irreverent fun, with some snazzy, old school interiors to boot!

Joker’s Asylum: Scarecrow
Wicked cool interiors from Juan Doe alongside a classic slumber party horror scenario make for a classic and spooky look into the Bat-rogue’s world. With this issue added to Jason Aaron’s Penguin story and J.T. Krul’s Poison Ivy tale, this series is doing justice to the one of the main things that make the Dark Knight one of comics’ top sellers: his villains!

The Exterminators #30
This book has been one of my favorite reads for a while and it’s conclusion two weeks ago was amazingly bittersweet: I’m bitter because I want more, but man, what an ending! If you haven’t checked out the story about city pest control bad asses and their battle against a killer swarm of bugs bent on bringing back an evil Egyptian insect god, now you can go scrounge up all 30 issues and indulge! Get on it!

Blue Beetle #29
Jaime Reyes is hands down my favorite character in the DCU, so I was super pleased to see his book pick up again with a larger storyline after Will Pfeiffer’s one-shots (they were fun, but one-shots…not much gravitas). Now, if you read the cover, you might have expected not only the return of the radical Rafael Albuquerque on art, but also writer John Rogers (the man responsible for The Reach story in BB, known for its massive amounts of pure awesomeness), and if you didn’t read the internal credits you would never have guessed the series has a new full-time scribe in Matthew Sturges. Take the one-shots out of the picture and it easily could have been mistaken for a continuation of Roger’s run—and that’s a distinctly good thing!

The book’s definitely got a new voice on the insectoid-monnikered hero with Sturges, but one so inline with everything that Rogers did that I’m really excited to see where Sturges takes things. He’s already got the most important part—the characters—down, so I’m psyched for the rest of his stories.

The bottom line: if you haven’t read Blue Beetle before, there’s no better time to start enjoying the adventures of El Paso’s superhéroe numero uno (but seriously, go back and read everything from issue #1 onward if you have the time and funds—you won’t be sorry)!

Teen Titans #61
It’s a Blue Beetle and Kid Devil-centric issue (more importantly Blue Beetle, read above), need I say more?!

Ok, Sean McKeever’s got a good handle on this team. It may not be the coolest incarnation or the most-seminal run ever, but it’s darn fun and it’s got my boy in blue rockin’ alongside Robin here and there, so you know I’m in!

Black Panther #39
One of my favorite writers, Jason Aaron, takes the reigns on the king of Wakanda’s book for a three issue tie-in to Secret Invasion.
And. It’s. AWESOME!
It’s war epic meets superhero story mashed together with a classic sci-fi alien invasion, and it features plenty of Skrull decapitation, so yeah…awesome!
(I chatted with Jason recently—mostly about Wolverine: Manifest Destiny but a smidge about BP’s SI tie-in—so check that out here if you feel so inclined!)

Skaar: Son of Hulk #2
If you saw my review of Skaar #1 then you not only know that I am a huge fan of Greg Pak’s Hulk work, but also loved issue #1 of the third part in his big, green epic! Issue #2 just keeps things rolling on what is set to be one of my favorite weekly reads for a long time coming!

I also really enjoyed Fantastic Four: True Story and Immortal Iron Fist #17, but you can read more about my thoughts on those books here (FF) and here (Iron Fist)!

Well, that’s it for this round of “Best of the Bunch!” Hope those recommendations help out a few of you readers in need of some comicky goodness!

Why I’m loving Paul Cornell’s ‘Fantastic Four: True Story’

Week in and week out, as comics stream into Wizard HQ, I end up reading quite a few books each week: the good, the bad and the ugly.

So after all that reading, when I end up finding a writer that constantly delivers for me as a reader—in this case Captain Britain and MI 13 scribe Paul Cornell (go read his Marvel Max mini Wisdom for a great intro into the crazy goodness he’s been bringing to the 616)—I get really excited to see their names attached to a new project.

On top of that, I am always drawn into a comic that has an awesome and original premise. Hearing Cornell was doing an FF mini got me pretty psyched. Then I read the solicit text, which explained that the book would be an in-continuity tale where Marvel’s first family has to venture into the world of fiction to battle evil alongside characters from the works of Jane Austen and Mary Shelley—among other famous authors—well…yeah…I’m sorry, do I even need to explain how awesome that is?!

Now, that would normally be enough to have me raving (and so far, it is!), but Cornell’s humor and handle of the FF in this super self-aware tale is just a joy to read. So, here are a few of the moments that led to the gush-fest that is this blog post:

Instead of being yet another writer working with the FF trying to write new—and usually stale—dialogue between Ben and Johnny when they’re fighting/arguing, Cornell takes a completely different and hilarious route and gives a cool nod to anyone who’s ever read a Fantastic Four comic. No need to say what’s already been said 700 bajillion times, ya know?

And six pages later…

Ok, maybe I found this funnier than most as I’m possibly the only comic fan out there who shamelessly has the soundtrack to the Rachel Leigh Cook, Rosario Dawson and Tara Reid-starring “Josie and the Pussycats” on his iPod, but the idea of Earth’s biggest brain being a big fan of that flick is definitely worth a good laugh either way.

Another fun little nod as these “real world” heroes—from a fictional work, obviously—enter the world of fiction and can see their own speech bubbles. It’s the only way—as readers—we’ve ever seen them talk, so just seeing them get a kick out of it is fun (and when was the last time we saw a Reed Richards just having fun with discovery and not fretting about Skrulls or ruining his marriage with too much work? It’s great to see the guy in good spirits again!). Plus, it helps establish how crazy things are set to get if “talk bubbles” are just the tip of the Fictoverse iceberg.

Really, really enjoyable writing aside, how can you not get giddy for some amazing Niko Henrichon covers?!

Not enticed to check it out after all that?

First, that’s crazy!

Second, check out my interview with Paul Cornell for more on the series that should turn you around if I haven’t made a believer of you yet.

It’s my pick of the week and I highly recommend any fans of truly imaginative tales give it a shot. It’d be near impossible to be let down by this story, and it’s only issue #1!

The New, More ‘Mortal’ Iron Fist!?

So, I just checked out Duane Swierczynski’s first issue of Immortal Iron Fist.

Being a huge fan of Brubaker and Fraction’s relaunch and run on the book, I was as bummed as everyone else to hear they’d be moving on. But, when Marvel announced the Swiercz would be taking the reigns, I had this quiet hope that the book would continue it’s radness. Sure, he only had one or two issues of Cable under his belt when the announcement was made, but something told me he had the chops to rock this chop-socky book in a way that would live up to what came before while taking the book in a whole new direction.

I’m happy to say that after one issue, as far as I’m concerned, the Swiercz is on target and kickin’ this book like a kung-fu foot through a few planks of wood!

Seriously, don’t be deterred by the change of team. If you liked this book before, you’re still going to like this book. There is no drop-off at all, which is saying something as the book was definitely of a high-quality before, and the story is super cohesive with everything that was set up in the previous arc. I don’t want to say to much, because you should really read it…ok, there’s a dragon-man who hunts down and kills Iron Fists, an old west Iron Fist flashback story and some Danny Rand/Misty Knight sexiness! It’s pretty awesome!

My only real gripe is David Aja’s not on art duty anymore. New artist Travel Foreman’s style takes a little getting used to, and while his more talky scenes aren’t really to my liking, when the guy can draw actions scenes like these…

…well, that’s really the most important aspect of drawing Marvel’s Immortal Weapon!

So—as if it weren’t already obvious—my recommendation is to go pick it up!

Also, we ran an interview with the Swiercz yesterday over on Wizard Universe proper, so go check it out if you’re craving more info on the book.

“Son of Rambow,” and the telling of my trek into New York for its screening in New York

A few weeks back, I got the chance to head down into Nueva York to see a private screening of a little British film called “Son of Rambow.” While I loved the movie and will elaborate a bit more on why I did later, I figure a review or synopsis of the film is only going to tell you something that at least nine other Web sites could tell you. So, because I’m still new enough in this game to have the stars in my eyes after getting to see a “private screening,” I thought an account of my professional movie-going experience might be a little more interesting (other journalists and media folks, feel free to turn and leave the blog now or scroll on to another post—you’ve heard this song or danced this dance before).

“Son of Rambow” is a great film (don’t take my word for it, take the Sundance’s) about two young boys who become unlikely friends when they try to make their own action movie. One boy is from a religious group that forbids TV, and when he tries to help out a bully—who’s shooting footage for a young film makers competition and is being raised by his jerk brother since his parents have all but left the two alone—he watched a bootleg copy of First Blood as his first taste of the movies and becomes obsessed. The bully with the drive to make the film and the camera teams up with the goofy fount of imagination released from this timid kid after he sees Stallone in action and the two form a friendship and go about creating their film. Throw in a crazy French foreign exchange student, he production problems that hit every film managed by 11 year olds and the inevitable humor that comes along with it and you’ve got the supremely enjoyable “Son of Rambow.”

It’s got the laughs, tender moments and serious aspects to make it an extremely diverse film—I partially loved the film because it could access all those emotions—but in the end its a tale about childhood friendship and limitless imagination and a love for movies that we can all draw back to our youth. It was a really fantastic film, and as I first described it afterwards, “If you have a heart, you can’t dislike this film.”

Now, as to how my attendance at this screening went down, here’s how it went:

Entertainment Editor Rickey Purdin got an e-mail asking if he wanted to send anyone to the screening. He asked, I said sure and so I was set for a trip down town.

The day of the screening, I left the office a bit early with staff writer Kevin Mahadeo—who was set to see a screening of Jackie Chan and Jet Li’s “Forbidden Kingdom”—and we headed into urban jungle.

After traffic and a search for parking, we arrived at the Dolby Building on 6th Ave.

We signed in, Kevin headed to a large screening room on the first floor and I head up to the twenty eighth floor where my smaller screening room was located (smaller movie, smaller screen).

Now here’s where it gets pretty cool….

So, i checked in again at the screening and pick up a press packet all about the film. The window in this office looks out on the city, twenty eight stories up and I realized this is the highest altitude I’ve watched a movie from short of an airplane and the occasional trip to Denver (which, sea level-wise is pretty high, though I wasn’t in a twenty eight story building).

After heading the the bathroom—for which I had to use a elementary school-style “bathroom pass” key, and yes, it was a rather bulky reel of film replica painted blue for the men’s room (pink for the ladies!)—I walked through two large doors into a small picture house that looked much like a nice home theater…only nicer…and twenty eight stories high.

I cozied up in one of the cushy armchair seats in the front row and sat amongst the other press scattered throughout the 20 seat room waiting for the film to start.

The film rolled, I enjoyed, I took an elevator down twenty eight floors and went home with a smile on my face after seeing such a pleasant movie.

That’s about it. It’s not the most super glamorous thing in the world but it’s still one of the fun little perks of the fourth estate. Hope that little window into my job was entertaining, and really do make an effort to see “Son of Rambow!” I’m a sucker for little indie films that leave you feeling good, but even if that isn’t your bag, everyone can relate to those childhood years of limitless imagination, friends without questions and the awe that all movies inspired then before we grew up, sat back and decided we’re all critics.

Quite a bunch of good books this week, let’s pick through’em!

I like Wednesdays that surprise me.

Every week I usually have my picks: my best guesses at what books are going to get me giddy. Most times, I’m right on the money and the first books I’m grabbing are the books that keep me talking all week. Great as those reads may be, having your perennial favorites be top picks gets a little predictable.

Then, there’s those other weeks that come along when books A, B and C seem like the most exciting, but X, Y and Z end up making the week memorable. It’s that type of freshness added to my reading list here and there that keeps me coming back for something new.

But the best weeks, by far, are the ones where the books I’ve guessed would be good turn out great and the leaps I’ve taken with other books aren’t let-downs but really enriched my weekly reading.

And with that long explanatory preface over, this week was one of the best kinds where the no-brainers and favorites definitely delivered along with the leaps.

The top “no-brainer” of the week has got to be Logan. I feel like saying, “I shouldn’t even have to explain why Brian K. Vaughan and Eduardo Risso working on a Wolverine book is awesome,” actually insults your intelligence as readers, but if you need telling, check out what this week’s QB crew had to say about this “Book of the Week.” Quick related side-note: I love referring to a last page cliffhanger by saying, “Holy crap, the last page dropped a bomb!” And this book dropped the bomb, calling out “Little Boy” on the page…

Another book this week I could rattle on all day about is Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera’s Scalped, but Andy Serwin already took care of that for me, so check his blog to hear why you need to be reading this book. Trust me, grab the first two trades, give’em a read and you will wonder how you’ve been getting by as a comics reader without out.

Now, the “no-brainer” for most that really was a leap for me was this week’s Green Lantern. I was editing columnist Jamie Dunst’s Corps Curriculum roundup—which, as a guy who’s never read much Green Lantern, reads like an update about the denizens of the Mos Eisley Cantina to someone who’s never seen Star Wars with all the alien names being bandied about—and got so freakin’ excited after Laira became a Red Lantern that I think I became a Lantern fan on the spot! Seriously, I read that panel and I could just see the splash page down the line with a rainbow of warriors from different factions meeting on an intergalactic battlefield for a crazier and more colorful Hobbit-esque “Battle of Six Armies!”

Another book I gave a read after editing some related stories was Image’s Dead Space. After giving the ol’ edit to Kevin Mahadeo’s interviews with the writer Antony Johnston and artist Ben Templesmith, I thought, “I like Johnston’s Wasteland and I dig Templesmith’s art on Fell, I’ll give this a shot.” While most versions of video games in other forms of media haven’t been great successes, this book really drew me in and had me itching for more issues and a shot at the game, so much so that I snuck into Thursday Morning Quarterback and tacked that very statement onto the end of the Extra Points section (Ok, ok, I didn’t so much “sneak” as I said, “Hey Andy, did you give Dead Space an Extra Point, cuz I dug that book, man.” He said “no” but I could, to which I said, “I’m doing it!”)! I think I’m most excited for the next issue because while this one didn’t have mass amounts of alien assault or monster mayhem, it was a really creepy laying-out of the story that shows all the little pieces that will inevitably lead to the type of clusterf— that lead to a video game about a guy alone on a monster-filled space station. Plus, eery ghost scenes like this are just intriguing for a big sci-fi fan like me that loves cross-genre stories…

Now, I’ve got to call out Halloween: Night Dance. As I’ve said in other posts, “Halloween” is my favorite horror franchise and I think that’s because it’s not just gore for gore’s sake, it’s always had a very creepy psychological aspect to it and it took place in a small Illinois town that, being from the outer suburbs of Chicago, I could always look at and go, “Wow, that could be my town!” Plus, that setting always made me a little nostalgic for Halloween night back when I was in High School. Anyway, after editing TJ Dietsch’s interview with writer Stefan Hutchinson—I read and edit a cool story, I like to check out the book and that happened a lot this week—I grabbed last month’s first issue and this week’s #2…

Between the ever unraveling mystery of Lisa with her nightmares and the creepy drawings she keeps getting from a young neighbor kid, the plight of the out-of-towner who’s been hospitalized after hitting a young woman fleeing Michael Myers with his car and seen his wife skewered, things are pretty nuts in this comic…and I like it! The inner monologue keeps changing so reader’s get all of Lisa’s anxiety, all the craziness of Mr. Denial-about-his-wife’s-murder as he contemplates how to rescue his love that readers know is long gone and the terrified thoughts of each new victim, the book builds to that frantic, breakneck thought process of being chased by a silent, sadistic unstoppable killer that the classic “Halloween” movies instilled in viewers.

On top of that, Tim Seeley’s art and the colors by Elizabeth John and Courtney Via are so spot on for fall in the Midwest that as I read the carnival scene in issue #2, I actually got the smell of burning leaves and that rush of first brisk breeze and thought about going to grab a sweater. Great stuff!

That’s this week’s best of the bunch for me! Next week, more comics will be read and more bunches of books highlighted, but keep checking in to The Loudest Monkey all week for more comic talk and feel free to leave me comments over at the my blog’s official thread on the Wizard Universe Message Boards or shoot me an email. Till later on, monkey-lovers!

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

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!