Captain America: Civil War (Movie Review)

Marvel Studio’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which is the second movie in the Captain America series, is very much the best movie in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. Iron Man and The Avengers come very close, but The Winter Soldier is a well-balanced mix of action and intrigue that superhero movies in general would do well to emulate. And it gets even better in comparison with its predecessor, Captain America: The First Avenger, which was a very lackluster and subdued affair with a boring villain and a boring plot. As such, the studio’s latest, Captain America: Civil War had a lot to live up too, and while it didn’t disappoint, it also left much to be desired.

Captain America: Civil War builds forward from the end of The Avengers: Age of Ultron from last year, and takes the overall story of the MCU forward in a plot that sees conflicts develop between the team members, conflicts that were hinted at in The Avengers and which are now magnified from several angles. As a pure action movie, Civil War does not fail to entertain and is right on point. But as an adaptation of the infamous Civil War storyline from the comics, it is unsuccessful and unsatisfactory.

Note: This review contains some major spoilers for the movie and even some for the original comics the movie is adapted from, so read at your own peril.

Comics Picks For 21.01.2015

Another week of a “Magic 40”, though no graphic novels.

This week’s surprise hits were Ivar, Timewalker #1 from Valiant, Mortal Kombat X #4 from DC, and Twilight Zone: Shadow And Substance #1 from Dynamite. The disappointments of the week were Spider-Woman #3 from Dynamite and Spider-Verse #2 and The Amazing Spider-Man #13 from Marvel and Vampirella: Feary Tales #4 from Dynamite. Ongoing greats were Wonder Woman ’77 #3 , The Flash: Season Zero #11 and Supergirl #38 from DC, Black Widow #14 and Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier #4 from Marvel, and, Grimm Fairy Tales: Realm War #6 from Zenescope among others.

Anyway, here’s another edition of “Comics Picks For…”. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.

Inhuman #11 (Comics Review)

Marvel’s Avengers & X-Men: AXIS event has been a right headache for me. The whole “hero morality-inversion” really messed things up for a lot of characters, and none more so than Queen Medusa of New Attilan, the leader of the Inhumans and NuHumans. She became war-like and aggressive, deliberately courting disaster from the world powers while her people suffered and it was the only thing in Charles Soule’s recent issues that I didn’t like, the rest of the story and the art being pretty high on my list.

Last week’s Inhuman #11 brings an end to the whole inversion thing and it feels like such a letdown since for Medusa things are over in a snap and she’s back to her old self. Which just makes the whole inversion thing for her seem really contrived and pointless in the end. Thankfully, the arc with Reader and Xiaoyi was given the focus this time and ended up being really well done. And of course, Ryan Stegman and Richard Isanove’s art continued being great, so that was something to look forward as well.

Best of 2014 Part 2b: Monthly Comics

A few days ago I did my best of 2014 list for the comics I read in the second half of 2014. And back in July of 2014, I did the first “best comics of 2014” post. The reason I mention that is because of the changes I’ve made for this list. While previously I used to do it so that I put up my top 6 comics, in July’14 I did a top 12 on account of the increased number of comics I was reading at the time. And that same holds true for this list as well since I’ve gone up on the number yet again, and this list has the top 20 and then 20 honourable mentions.

More comics, yay!

So, with the books of the second half of 2014 already having been covered, I now delve into my favourite monthly comics of the same period. The next post will be a list of the top graphic novels I read in all of 2014.

Let’s see what makes the cut and which comes close then!

Comics Picks For 24.12.2014

The last week of 2014 and I hit my Magic 40 number. That pleases me immensely. I was hoping I’d be able to make it to this number, and I did, especially with 2 graphic novels in the mix a well!

For this final week of 2014, the surprise hits were: Jungle Book: Fall Of The Wild #1 from Zenescope and Transformers: Drift: Empire of Stone #2 from IDW Publishing. The disappointing comics of the week were Death of Wolverine: The Logan Legacy #7 from Marvel and Secret Origins #8 from DC. The regular greats like Aquaman, Catwoman, Sensation Comics, Secret Avengers, Godzilla: Cataclysm and others struck once again in the final tally.

The graphic novels for this week were Sunstone by Stjepan Sejic and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Volume 3 by Dan Abnett, Pop Mhan, Mark Roberts, Deron Bennett and Stjepan Sejic.

Anyway, here’s another edition of “Comics Picks For…”. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.

Inhuman #10 (Comics Review)

The recent Avengers & X-Men: AXIS event has ended up changing things for a lot of heroes and villains alike. Their personalities have essentially been inverted in that the heroes have gotten megalomaniacal and ruthless while the villains have become more aware of the wrongs they’ve done and of their social responsibilities even. Where that comes into play for Inhuman is that Queen Medusa has been affected as well, and she comes back to New Attilan with plans for invading Manhattan and showing the world leaders that the Inhumans are their superiors in every way and are not to be trifled with. Not a good thing for anybody who is going to be involved.

Inhuman #10, which came out in the previous week, saw some major things happening. For one, Medusa took her… grievances to the United Nations in a public show of force and tangled with Spider-Man there. It was a pretty fantastic showdown by all accounts, and made me realize that if Charles Soule gets to writing a Spidey comic, I’d definitely be first in line to get the thing. And then there’s the separate narrative with Reader and Xiaoyi in Italy where the former discovers how he has been played by the people at Ennilux and decides to be the hero for real after all.

12 Days of Best Covers of 2014: Day #9

The ninth book cover I pick for the 2014 edition of “12 Days of Best Covers of…” is for a Warhammer Fantasy novel, The End Times: The Return of Nagash by Josh Reynolds, the cover for which was done by Paul Dainton. The End Times is a new series in Warhammer Fantasy that is positioned as one to move forward the “stuck” timeline of the setting. There are major upheavals happening in the Old World, and no race is untouched by these events. And among these, one of the most dire change is that the greatest necromancer of all time, Nagash, has returned to life, and Josh’s utterly fantastic novel charts how the greatest villain of Warhammer Fantasy returns to life.

The first of the ninth set of comic covers I pick this year is for Edge of Spider-Verse #2 by Jason Latour, Robbi Rodriguez, Rico Renzi and VC’s Clayton Cowles, with the cover by Robbi. The second is for Batman: Eternal #24 by Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Ray Fawkes, Kyle Higgins, Tim Seeley, Andy Clarke, Blond and Steve Wands with the cover by the cool team of Jason Fabok and Brad Anderson. Edge of Spider-Verse #2 is itself such a notable comic because it features Gwen Stacy as a Spider-Women. Part of the larger Spider-Verse crossover event where we find out that there are innumerable realities out there, each home to an Earth with its own version of Spider-Man or Spider-Woman, or what have you, this comic was incredibly good, in both the story and art, being an utter wowzer. Batman: Eternal #24 on the other hand is notable because so much of it deals with Stephanie Brown, even as the larger events of the series unfold. Stephanie finally steps into her identity as Spoiler in this issue, and it is damn good fun to see her take on her villain father.

So without further ado, hit the break to see all the covers in their full glory! The full list of all these covers is available here.

Comics Picks For 10.12.2014

Almost a month after the last time, I finally had a Magic 40 week! And not just any plan Magic 40 week, but one where I managed to read three graphic novels as well!

For this week, the surprise hits were Fables: The Wolf Among Us #1 from Vertigo Comics, Death of Wolverine: Logan Legacy #6 and Spider-Man & The X-Men #1 from Marvel Comics, Justice League #32-36 from DC Comics and The Valiant #1 from Valiant Comics. The comic (yes, the only one!) that proved to be rather disappointing, even unexpectedly so, was New Suicide Squad #5 from DC. Apart from that, a good run continued on several other titles like Hexed, John Carter: Warlord of Mars, Batman: Eternal, Birthright, Prometheus: Fire and Stone and others.

The three graphic novels for this week were: Grimm Fairy Tales: Code Red Volume 1, which is set during the recent Age of Darkness crossover event from Zenescope Entertainment, Mighty Avengers Volume 2 from Marvel, which is an effort by me to catch up on this mostly-good title, and Supergirl Volume 1, which is an older Supergirl title, pre-New 52.

Anyway, here’s another edition of “Comics Picks For…”. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.

Fast-Shot Comics Reviews 10.12.2014

This segment is proving to be quite interestingly popular in certain corners, and I still am taken with how it allows me to cover so many more comics than I would otherwise be able to. It is suitably time-intensive as well, which can sometimes wear on me when I have so much more to do, but not such a big deal. Plus, choosing which comic to feature here, while a challenge, is also quite a fun process in and of itself, so that’s something as well.

The picks for this week are: Brides of Helheim #3, Chastity #4-6, Dredd Uprise #2, Hexed #5, Spider-Verse Team-Up #2 and Prometheus: Fire and Stone #3-4. Lots of catch-up on the reviews this week, as you can see!

12 Days of Best Covers of 2014: Day #3

The third book cover I pick for the 2014 edition of “12 Days of Best Covers of…” is for Christie Golden’s World of WarCraft tie-in novel The Shattering: Prelude To The Cataclysm. This novel marked a resurgence of my interest in reading tie-in fiction outside of Warhammer, Star Wars or Star Trek, and took me back to the days when I first read The Last Guardian and Rise of The Horde, two of the best WoW novels I’ve read to date. And since I never got to play the Cataclysm expansion properly at level, this prequel novel did much to soothe that longing.

The third set of comic covers I pick this year are for Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10 #1 by Christos Gage and Rebekah Isaacs, with the cover done by Steve Morris, and the second one is for Superior Spider-Man Annual #2, also by Christos Gage, though he worked with pencillers Javier Rodriguez and Philippe Briones on this one, with the cover done by Michael Del Mundo. The former marked my first foray into reading Buffy comics, though I had read some of the Angel & Faith comics before that and the latter was another dip into the Superior Spider-Man territory, the premise of which I find rather intriguing, to say the least and love it as well.

So without further ado, hit the break to see both the covers in all their glory! The full list of all these covers is available here.

Scarlet Spiders #1 (Comics Review)

Spider-Verse has been crawling along for a few weeks without much direction so far. It started off well-enough but the utter proliferation of tie-ins has just about killed it for me. I’m hanging on only for a few characters like Gwen Stacy, Jessica Drew, Kaine, Ben Reilly, Spider-Ham, Spider-Man Noir and a few others but other than that, I’ve been feeling rather underwhelmed by the entire event. There are some gems in here for sure, but I think what this event needs is some strong narrative direction rather than focusing on each character on his or her own.

This week’s Scarlet Spiders #1 brings together three clones of Peter Parker for a short-lived adventure set in Spider-Verse. Kaine, Ben Reilly and Ultimate Jessica Drew are sent on a mission to a world identified as the one where the Inheritors are cloning their bodies (Amazing Spider-Man #10 I believe). Writer Mike Costa is at the helm of this series and he makes this first issue an absolute joy, bringing together three of Peter’s more famous clones, even as artist Paco Diaz makes them visually stand-out in a great way.

Spider-Woman #1 (Comics Review)

Jessica Drew aka Spider-Woman has faced quite an uphill battle in recent years. There was the whole “boob-window” controversy last year during the Infinity event, when her space-suit had a boob window for some inexplicable reason. And then there was the utterly horrible Milo Manara variant cover a few weeks back for her debut issue, released this week. Despite being an Avengers stalwart for a number of years, she has had a tougher time in recent years with her own books than many other characters, though she has still come out on top with others like Black Widow and Ms. Marvel and others in getting a brand-new series this year.

Spider-Woman I had quite high expectations for, I’ll admit. I love Jess as a character, thanks largely to some of Brian Michael Bendis’ work with her and what Ales Kot has been doing this year in Secret Avengers. Despite the controversy, I was really looking forward to this book, but unfortunately, things just don’t work out at all. Writer Dennis Hopeless dumps you straight into the middle of Spider-Verse without any kind of context at all and it is more an ensemble title rather than a Spider-Woman title. Most disappointing.