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Well, the first screenings for Man of Steel have taken place. Not sure if it really means anything, but the reviews/comments have been really good. You can get more detailed info out there, including some spoilers, but I liked this guy's bullet-point summary, even with the obvious hyperbole.

-Imagine a Nolan story with Snyder effects/action.
-It's the best movie of the year.
-There's TONS of action with Superman kicking all kinds of ass in his suit.
-The cape is CG'd most of the time so it can look awesome.
-They have intentionally left out most of the the Super action in trailers to save it.
-It's not nearly as dour and serious as the trailers suggest.
-The movie is complete, minus the 3D post-conversion, which is currently taking place.

I'm really looking forward to this one - June 14th can't get here fast enough!

This felt worthy of sharing here.

I reckon I'll do some turbo reviews of Before Watchmen as I've read it all except the last issue of Comedian which isn't out yet. Basically it went contrary to what you would think. Most of the best series are some of the least popular characters and vice versa.

Silk Spectre: Surprisingly this is one of the top minis in the Before Watchmen event. She's just more relatable to than the other characters.

Minutemen: This may be the best one. Like Silk Spectre the key seems to be characters that are not fully fleshed out in Watchmen are easier to play around with for another writer. I suppose we know most of what's going to transpire here because of the prose portions of Watchmen but Cooke just did a good job overall fleshing it out and adding in his own dramatic turns.

Rorshach: Below average mini in my opinion. This is one where I realized that you just can't do anything more intersting with Rorshach than what is already written in Watchmen. There's a lot of Rorshach in Watchmen. When you think about it his entire life story is in Watchmen from his early troubled childhood to his bitter end and all the important events in between.
I will say the art was great and makes Rorshach look way cooler than he's supposed to. Rorshach is actually a weird guy who wears a trench coat with a broken clasp and purple striped pants not to mention he purportately smells very bad. They gave him cooler pants to make him look cooler in every frame and I'm sure he smells great too.

Dr. Manhatten: Suffers from the same problem as Rorshach. There is an issue in the original Watchmen that is the Dr. Manhatten isue. It shows the universe through the eyes of Dr. Manhatten especially the unique way he perceives time. He exists in and experiences all time at once but can not alter it. It's one of the best individiual comic books written in my opinion.
Well, this mini is the same thing but stretched out over 4 issues! It adds some kind of quantum observer wrinkle that I don't care for and basically this work adds nothing and would have been better off not being written at all.

Nite Owl: Bucking the trend this ones pretty good I think. It's just a solid comic book story as it should be. Nite Owl is the most earnest of the "superheroes" or "masks: in the Watchmen world and that works to the benefit of this mini. There's some cheese in here but I guess cheese kind of suits Nite Owl II.

Moloch: Just a short 2 issue mini that actually ends of in the middle of the pack quality wise for the overall event.

Comedian: As can be expected this is an extemly violent and cynical tale. I mean what can I say? It accurately captures what the Comedian is about. He's a deplorable human being but he's not an unintereting one and we get to see him doing his thing in Vietnam.

Dollar Bill: What the hell was the point of this? I am so mad that I actually had to pay for this. I just asked my comic book guy for the "Before Watchmen" stuff. Little did I know I'd get a Dollar Bill comic in there. Dollar Bill's story is covered in Watchmen. It is then covered again in great detail in Minutemen. It is then covered again for some reason in his own dedicated book! He's a guy who got his cape stuck in a revolving door and then got shot! That's it! The End! That's the whole thing.

Ozymandias: Going by my theory that less fleshed out characters make good stories I was hoping for good things here. This is the worst one (except Dollar Bill). This was a real missed opportunity. I think they should have done a tail of some old fashioned superheroing by Ozymandias here. Perhaps show how he was once a great hero that lost his way. No, it turns out Ozymandias was always a jerk. This is a play by play recreation of The Watchmen but just from Ozymandias point of view. He's literally just talking at us like it's a directors commentary on movie. "And this is where I read some books to get ideas, and this is where I watched some sci-fi Tv shows for ideas, and this is the part where I got my secret Antartic fortress" and so on. I hated this peice of crap.


In summary, if you want to read some learn fom my mistakes. Don't just get them all, they vary greatly in quality. Also, don't just go for the charaters that you may have liked in The Watchmen.

I enjoyed Ozymandias quite a bit - but I'll also admit it might have been due to the fact that Jae Lee's art was amazing!

 Alpharius wrote:
I enjoyed Ozymandias quite a bit - but I'll also admit it might have been due to the fact that Jae Lee's art was amazing!

It was good, the faces are so simple but all the historical figures look like who they're supposed too. Only issue I have is Ozymandias looks so evil. Like even as a little kid he looks so pompous. Sure, we know he's malevolent now but he doesn't actually look so menacing in Watchmen. He had a somewhat innocent look to him that was juxtoposed to his actions. Anyway, I'm sure that direction was a choice and he did accomplish what he was trying to convey.

I personally love a couple of Australian Orientated series:
The Soldier is a good read
Changing Ways as well
But my favourite by far has got to be the Walking Dead Comics, the best comic book I've ever read, though really different to the movies in almost every form.

I think Walking Dead is transitioning to its next phase. it's going to become a study on what it's like to rebuild civilization from anarchy.

Digging The new Uncanny X-Men too. That Cyclops has a lot on his plate. He views the Avengers as his new oppressors and they seem like a lot more credible threat than guys like Senator Kelly and giant robots.

Also like mutant lord of the flies Ultimate X-Men. Lots of good X titles lately.

Continuing my Cosmic Marvel Abnett binge by finishing up Nova and The Thanos Imperative which I liked. Now on to The Anihilators.

What's everyone else out their liking? You favorite title in your pull list for example.

I finally got around to ordering Batwoman: Elegy and another book from the UK. Hopefully they will get here by the end of next week.

Marvel and Comixology are giving the whole "700 free comic books" thing another shot.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/123141-Comixology-Takes-Another-Shot-At-700-Comic-Giveaway?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=news

I read a few of the Marvel Now #1s and so far, All New X-Men is my favourite.

Try the Superior Spiderman.

It is pretty good.

It's interesting, but I'm still reading Slott's regular Spider-Man. I'm not quite sure how long it'll be till Superior starts.

Or really how long the Superior side of things will be lasting either...

Picked up a fair few comics over the past couple of weeks, the current arc on Deadpool just ended with a new one about to start next issue hopefully (they had to put a filler issue in because they weren't able to sort out the next story issue properly, involving him trying to get Iron Man drunk again during the Devil in the Bottle arc)

X-Men Legacy is as weird and wonderful as ever, a fair amount of action, some decent humour, slightly worrying enemies and amusing scenarios, even if the artist struggles to draw smiling or blushing faces that aren't creepy.

Superior Spiderman is going well/badly with a new arc about to begin (I think), well for the readers, badly for the characters. And seems likely to be about to get really fun.

Uncanny X-Men is fun, it covers some interest ideas whilst retaining a sense of humour, with the art being a very fun style which always helps.

Morbius the Living Vampire is okay, the pace is going a bit iffy as it seems to have slowed down significantly, which isn't good for a once monthly comic, other than that its fun though.

Savage Wolverine is as fun as always, with some decent action, though at the moment Amadeus Cho seems to be getting more limelight than the titular character (not that that's a bad thing).

I picked up the first issue of Age of Ultron, and haven't picked one up since as it wasn't to enjoyable and reviews have said it doesn't get any faster, so I'm not going to spend what little money I have on it.

Been reading IDW's Godzilla lately. The Swierczynski books, not Kingdom of Monsters. I really like Simon Gane's monsters:



The story is ... well, writing kaiju stories is really hard because the audience is there for the monsters but the monsters are only good because you sublimate the human characterization onto them. So the story kind of struggles along. As usual, I thought the second volume was better than the first -- probably just because I was more into it after pushing through the exposition in volume one.

I also read Godzilla Legends, which is a collection of five one shots centered around Anguirus, Rodan, Titanosaurus, Hedorah, and Kumonga respectively. The Rodan story (illustrated by Gane, see above) is fantastic -- it nails the kaiju themes perfectly. I think it was written by Jonathan Vankin, who was a long time senior editor for Vertigo. I wish Vankin would write a whole Godzilla title.

I also read the first volume of Star Wars Dark Times. There are so many alien characters, I kind of felt like I was reading about the Muppets.



FWIW, the story lives up to the title. We start with a straight forward rescue quest and it gets ... really, really dark by the end.

... shudder ...

Meanwhile, Darth Vader is moping around wondering what he'll do with the rest of his life. It's a good question that I never really gave much thought to -- for Vader, after screaming NOOOOOOO, what's next? I always just assumed he went straight to hunting Jedi. This title explores that question more deeply -- and also more slowly.

I really liked the first volume of Dark Times and am really looking forward to getting into the second, which -- per usual -- I will likely enjoy even more.

I downloaded a bunch of books when Marvel was giving away #1s for free. Finally gave me a chance to check out some of the Marvel NOW stuff.

What do you guys think of A&X so far? I loved the first issue, or to be more specific, the image of Red Hulk in the Oval Office and I want to see how it contiues. It was way more entertaining than Avenging Spider-Man.

Cable and X-Force was interesting too. I never was a big Cable fan, but he seems cool here and I like Colossus. I'd give it another shot when I can.

All New X-Men was definetly my favourite so far. And the team-up doesn't even start until the next issue. The set-up is awesome and I'm really looking forward to it, even though I never followed the X-Men that much.

Both Cap and Iron Man were off to a good start. Iron Man was good fun but I might stick with Cap just for Romita's artwork.

Those free comics involve signing up for stuff and what not. Too much work for me, I'm out.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Those free comics involve signing up for stuff and what not. Too much work for me, I'm out.

No they didn't...
If you had an account with the App Store you could just download the free app, then start downloading.

Manhattan Projects 10

I read volumes 2 -5 of Star Wars Dark Times as well as Darth Vader and the Ghost Prison. Mick Harrison (a.k.a. Welles Hartley, a.k.a. Randy Stradley) wrote volumes 1 - 4 of Dark Times and volume 4 (as well as volume 3, the second part of the Vector crossover) contains the best Star Wars writing I've encountered outside of Empire. If you want to get the full impact of Vol. 4, you need to at least read Vol. 1 -- put I've found the series so enjoyable that I would easily recommend it to any SW fan who reads comics. The Ghost Prison book was also pretty good, dealing with the same time frame and themes as Dark Times.

http://www.behance.net/gallery/Sponsored-Heroes/7322335





...that's probably not far off what would happen eh ?

Actually there was a bit of something like this before. DC's Booster Gold had sponsoring and wore logos like this. He was used in Smallville the same way.

Oh come on, have none of you seen Mystery Men?

Google Captain Amazing.

 malfred wrote:
Oh come on, have none of you seen Mystery Men?

Google Captain Amazing.

I've seen it, but it was when I was 11 or 12 I think so I can't remember much about it other than a guy who could telekinetically control cutlery and someone who could turn invisible, but only when no one was watching.


Also, got a midnight viewing of Iron Man 3 tonight, following a marathon of iron man 1, 2 and the Avengers

I'm collecting Age of Ultron. It's ok I guess. I think its basically supposed to be an Age of Apocalypse for the Avengers. Because it's an obvious alternate timeline I'm having a tough time caring what's happening because I know it's going to be undone in the end anyway.

I read somewhere that it WILL have a major impact.

If you've read the latest issue, you might start to see how, why and via who - but maybe not?

As you say, I have a hard time believing it will have a lasting impact at all, no matter what they say.

But who knows - they may surprise us in the end!

 Alpharius wrote:
I read somewhere that it WILL have a major impact.

If you've read the latest issue, you might start to see how, why and via who - but maybe not?

As you say, I have a hard time believing it will have a lasting impact at all, no matter what they say.

But who knows - they may surprise us in the end!

I hadn't heard that - that's good then.

I don't read Superior Spider-Man. Is the Spider-Man in this mini The Amazing Spider-Man or The Superior Spider-Man?

I don't think it is a spoiler to say...


...that...




It is an OK read, but only last week did it really 'pick up the pace'!