Bruce Wayne is back and he has made a snap decision to give up his role as Batman. Meanwhile Robin decides to become a man by shucking his role as the Boy Wonder… but will the sudden appearance of the Joker bring them back together?
I was absolutely thrilled to see this video. Kourosh refuses to give up despite the fact that most people (including myself) have bashed his previous work in to the ground… instead he seems to thrive on it.
Unfortunately this installment isn’t quite as humorous as the previous two (Batman and Robin: Dark Betrayal was particularly hilarious).
In this, the third installment, Kourosh and Arvin are obviously drunk on their own infamy as is evidenced by the many street scenes which involve the not-so dynamic duo running around in full costume, chasing down the Joker. It was nice to see the addition of Alfred… I’d like to see a bit more of him in the fourth installment that is sure to come out soon.
Keep up the bad work guys, this stuff is highly entertaining!
Spider-Man has been going through a lot of crap lately. First, he becomes Tony Stark’s personal whore and switches to a super high-tech, poorly designed (aesthetically speaking) costume. He supports the Registration Act because his daddy figure, Stark, supports it. Then he’s coaxed in to revealing his true identity by Stark on national T.V.
Then he realizes that Stark has been spying on him this whole time, and is actually quite creepy. He has a change of heart and decides Captain America will be his daddy instead. Thanks to this switch Spidey becomes a wanted criminal. Then Captain America decides to throw in the towel on a whim and Spidey is left without a daddy once again. Even worse, thanks to trying to please Stark, the entire underworld knows that his true Identity is Peter Parker… so Aunt May ends up getting plugged by a sniper’s bullet. Parker flips out and decides it’s time to abandon everything his Uncle told him… you know, that stuff about “great power” and “responsibility”? Nah… that’s out the window! Spider-Man is now Back in Black and, as he repeatedly reminds us, is ready to kill anyone responsible for his Aunt’s shooting.
Come to think of it, Spider-Man hasn’t actually killed anyone yet. He’s pretty much all talk. He claims he would have gladly killed Aunt May’s assassin, but he didn’t get that chance as another assassin popped a cap in the first one. So we really can’t be for sure about this one.
Although this story line is mildly entertaining, I’m pretty sure this is just a gimmick to make Spider-Man comic books match up a little better with Spider-Man 3 so as to sell more tickets and more comics. Some of the dialogue is also rather cheesy. Like all Spider-Man comics, Spidey has a constant inner dialogue going. In this series he keeps thinking about how he will stop at nothing to avenge May. At one point he tell M.J. “It’s a good thing I have something to do. Otherwise I think I’d just rip my own eyes out.” Talk about a little melodramatic, Peter.
The constant reminders that Parker is feeling somewhat unstable right now are wearisome. Sure there are panels of beaten up bad guys here and there, but when hasn’t Spider-Man beat up the bad guys?
Maybe I’m being a little too harsh on our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man… after all he was raised by his Aunt after indirectly getting his Uncle killed and never having a mother or father. He was also molested as a child and just went through a very wordy, almost action-less war… I’d most likely want to rip my own eyes out also.
If you happened upon this site at some point yesterday and in to today, you most likely were forwarded to no-ip.com. This is because I accidentally allowed my registration to lapse. I was able to register today and get it up and running again, and I apologize for any inconvenience this caused.
You may also wonder why my writing has slowed to a snail pace these past few weeks. There are several personal reasons (sickness, broken limbs etc.). I haven’t lost my passion for writing and will continue to bring what you hopefully consider quality content. This coming week I have several reviews on the way. I’m also working on a new design as the current one was a bad choice from the start.
Thank you for your patience and loyalty. Things will be picking up again soon!
The interwebs are all abuzz about the Mary Jane Comiquette statue. I don’t know what the big deal is though. Marvel is obviously just trying to outdo the DC Supergirl statue. At least Mary Jane is of legal age… Supergirl is SIXTEEN… let’s not forget that. Oh, what’s that you say? She’s actually older than 16 because she rode around in a space ship in stasis for a while before arriving on earth… so in reality it’s just her body that’s 16? Sounds like a pedophiles dream come true. Anyway…
Mary Jane sure does love washing Spidey’s clothes with Kleen brand detergent… oh the irony!
I really think that Marvel should release a follow up with Peter Parker sitting on a couch in his boxers and wife beater drinking a Busch Beer while eyeing MJ up and making a derogatory comment.
You can see more horrible images of this statue at sideshowtoy.com, including a 360 degree quicktime view.
I really didn’t plan on reading any of the initiative titles beyond Initiative #1 (which is an introduction in to several tie-ins)… but the guys at the comic shop misunderstood my request and ended up pulling each and every Initiative comic. I had fully planned on canceling these and complaining, but I got lazy and just bought them anyone, hoping that they’d be good.
I really thought the Initiative wasn’t going to be worth my time. I bought in to the over-hyped Civil War and was very disappointed. It was dull and felt like it ended without a point. The Initiative that came from it (trained super heroes with the goal of assigning a super hero team to each of the 50 states) is shaping up to be really fun.
I really enjoy every Initiative title (except for the Mighty Avengers and Black Panther) and one of my absolute favorites is Avengers. Now this can can get a bit confusing because there are three Avengers titles:
Avengers
More information below
Mighty Avengers
This follows the newly formed avengers team lead by Mrs. Marvel. The writing is rather lame and features way too many thought balloons.
New Avengers
This is a comic that’s been going on for a while and consists of underground heroes, including Spider-Man. Not half bad, I enjoy it… but not as much as Avengers.
Avengers follows the story of some new recruits that are being trained by the Gauntlet to be well rounded, registered super heroes. The kids are sloppy amateurs and are labeled by him as New Warriors. This is, of course, derogatory because the new Warriors are now considered a joke of a super hero team and are blamed as being the cause of the Stamford disaster…. baby killers.
In Issue #1 the trainees consist of Cloud 9 (a jumpy girl who has the power of flight), Hardball, Komodo (a half-lizard half-girl that looks mostly-lizard), Trauma, Armory, and M.V.P. (the grandson of Abraham Erskine, the man who created the Super Soldier Serum that was used on Captain America).
In Issue #2 this team no longer has Armory or M.V.P… I won’t spoil the reason why the roster was cut down (you find out at the end of issue #1) as it’s pretty shocking. Trauma has one of the most interesting powers on the team. When a person is fearful, he actually take on the shape of their fear, such as a giant spider or a dead loved one.
Avengers has a Runaways feel to it and managed to sustain my interest throughout. I was actually very surprised by this comic and highly recommend reading it from the beginning.
If you’re not reading Iron Man, you should be. For all the time I spent bashing Marvel over the years, I’m slowly discovering that several titles are actually worth reading. Iron Man is definitely one of them.
Ton Stark (Iron Man) is currently the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate: a counter-terrorism and intelligence agency formerly headed by Nick Fury). In Iron Man #16 Stark and Maya Hansen examine the body of an attacker from an animal rights group. He has various technological devices grafted in to his body, including a video recorder wired to his optic center. They’re able to recover video of the events just before the man’s death which reveal that the man’s group was backed by Karim Mahwash Najeeb, a phony humanitarian.
Najeeb ends up at a Chinese mental institution in order to find the Mandarin, which he does. The Mandarin won’t cooperate with Najeeb, so Najeeb orders a goon to kill the Mandarin. Instead the goon kills Najeeb.
The Mandarin has long been a thorn in Iron Man’s side. He first made his appearance in Tales of Suspense #50. He’s a mystic that uses 10 power rings which he recovered from a downed alien spacecraft.
In Iron Man #17 Tony Stark is convinced by his friend Sal, that he should lead a covert mission in to China to find Karim Mahwash Najeeb. There they encounter a host of modified inmates at the mental institution where the Mandarin resides. They also recover the body of Najeeb and the book ends with an autopsy of Najeeb. A number of incisions indicate that he’s been operated on post-mortem. Suddenly his red eyes open and his guts spurt out towards the ceiling like a living entity.
Daniel and Charles Knauf are good writers and really capture the feel of war and the politics behind it. The art is nicely done and the pacing is well done also, not and overload of fighting like so many other super hero books. There is a distinct conspiracy feel to the book which I love. If you’re looking for a good Marvel title, Iron Man is it!
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