Comic Musing: SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN, BLACK WIDOW & Others

Really wish DC would have some sort of cover bar

so that these all look like a matching set.

It's certainly been long enough since my last rambling comic review post, and I haven't exactly been letting my reading slip since then, so there's more than a few books I'd like to talk about.  For the sake of keeping things brief, I'll stick with four for now.  Firstly, my muddled thoughts regarding DC's divisive Superman/Wonder Woman series, which has just released its fifth issue this month, and then some looks at three of the new start-up series from the All-New Minty Fresh Marvel NOW! initiative, namely Black Widow, X-Force and Ms. Marvel.

WARNING:  The following post discusses - and contain spoilers for - issues 1-5 of Superman/Wonder Woman, issues 1-3 of Black Widow and issue 1 of both X-Force and Ms. Marvel.  Turn back now if you're sensitive, y'big wuss.

Toy Review: Play Arts Kai Faora-Ul

 Not a photo of mine.

You can probably guess by the lack of awfulness.

To start, hey look, my first post of 2014!  Hope everyone had a safe New Year's.

Anyway - as time passes, I find myself growing more and more irritated with Man of Steel, as seems to be the prevailing feeling amongst interweb dorks like myself.  This is the big problem with the tone and aesthetic that Christopher Nolan has bequeathed to Warner Bros.' nascent DC cinematic universe: when every character and place is presented as cold, severe and super-duper-serious it prompts the audience's thoughts to linger on the ideas and questions raised by the story rather than just relax and let oneself be moved by the flow of the film.  That's fine if you've got a tight grip on the tale and know exactly what points you want to get across, but if you don't - if the questions you're raising clash with the overall 'point' of the film, or if you're simply not elaborating them well enough - then all you're doing is giving viewers more time to chew over the film's problems.  And hoo boy did MoS have hefty problems delivering its themes.

Despite that, I still bought the damn blu-ray just so I could gawk at Faora-Ul in glorious HD.  That plus the hilarious sight of Michael Shannon's misshapen beanpole body being pushed through military-grade workouts in the special features was worth the asking price.  Thus my Faora crush remains strong, albeit ill-served by the movie's merchandising.  Sadly there's still no sign of a Hot Toys 12" $200+ wallet-killer fig of the lady (I remain hopeful - HT's Roadblock figure still hasn't been released and G.I. Joe 2 came out last March) and Mattel did their usual hopeless job on the main toyline, resulting in this disappointment with its cartoon face, borked joints and oddly squat physique.  Luckily, though, DC's licensing deal with Square Enix covers both comics and movie properties, and so the MoS subline of the Play Arts Kai range has stepped up to fill the void and maybe give Faora the toy she deserves.

Now Playing: BATMAN ARKHAM ORIGINS

 The continuing adventures of the World's Grumpiest Dad.

Released October 26, 2013

Developed by Warner Bros. Games Montreal.

Published by Warner Bros. Interactive.

Available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii U (forthcoming).

Version played: PlayStation 3.

Oh, Batman.  No matter how much mud I sling your way for your deeply tiresome obsession with things being 'dark', your horrible fanbase full of the absolute worst of the internet, and your irritating ubiquity that threatens to blot out all other DC heroes like the shadow of Unicron falling o'er that poor bunch of non-Autobot robot people at the start of Transformers: The Movie, I still can't quit you.  You're like a really mangy cat.  For every bit of roadkill you drag into my house and throw up on my shoes (see The Dark Knight Rises or the current 'Zero Year' comics that are dedicating 12 whole months to telling us that, yes, his parents are still in fact dead) you still do something that makes me reconsider putting you up for adoption/throwing you in a dumpster far away from here.  In recent years, those 'somethings' have tended to be the Arkham Insert Noun games from Rocksteady, which were quite rightly praised for giving players the sensation of 'being' Batman to a tee and just being really good Metroid-y puzzle adventures with a great combat system everyone else has tried copying.

The combination of 'properly good game' and 'Batman is in it' propelled both Asylum and the bigger, more ambitious City to crazy sales numbers, which made it deeply unsurprising that Warners chose to outsource the engine and art assets to another developer so they could churn out a third game super-quick and franchise the hell out of the Arkham name.  Whether or not this works is, at time of writing, up in the air; the transparency of this game as a cash-grab, I think, will likely hurt its numbers a bit.  But that's not really what I'm here to talk about.  What matters, after all, is whether or not they threw the weird cosplaying ninja orphan baby out with the bathwater...

Film Reaction/Now Playing Double Date: MAN OF STEEL

2 seconds later, the bungee cord tightened and Clark

went crashing back down.

While I usually try to get these reaction pieces up nice and quickly (well, quickly by my own hopeless standards, at any rate), Man of Steel - Warner Bros' latest attempt to prove they can do a successful superhero movie not about Batman - has been something of a stumbling block, thanks to a few factors.  I couldn't see it until a few days after its UK theater debut, I was still fumbling through an attempted review of Fast & Furious 6 (probably gonna ditch that one - short version, it was silly and great fun, see it if you haven't) and there was no shortage of reviews from more official sources all over the net, many hitting in advance of release, to the point where I figured anyone who knows me could already guess what my opinion would be.

Nevertheless, I do want to get some thoughts on it down here, because it's one of the more 'important' films this summer.  And in the name of variety, I'm also gonna throw in my 2 cents on the MoS tie-in game for iOS/Android devices after the film stuff.  Who says I'm not good to you?  (SPOILERS FOLLOW)

Now Playing: INJUSTICE: GODS AMONG US

One day Warners will give the general public a reason to care

about a DC property that isn't Batman.  This is not that day.

 

 

Released April 2013.

Published by Warner Bros. Games.

Developed by Netherrealm Studios.

Version played:  Wii U

 

Fighting games and superheroes really ought to go together like peanut butter and jam...no, wait, I hate peanut butter...and most jams...okay, better turn of phrase: they ought to go together like convenient DNA-altering lab accidents and losing a relative/guardian/love interest.  Given that basically every traditional cape comic in existence eventually boils down to a simple good guy versus bad guy showdown, translating those stories into a beat-em-up sounds really simple on paper.  But in practice, I can't recall ever being fully satisfied with the results.  Yes, I know, Marvel VS. Capcom has a large, long-lived fanbase, but it's...it's a Capcom fighting game through and through, so irrespective of appearances I have never been able to convince myself, in any incarnation of the series, that I'm really playing AS Spider-Man (or whoever).  No, I'm controlling someone from Street Fighter that kinda looks like Spider-Man.  Superheroes don't just stand 4 feet apart and throw rapid punch-kick combos at each other, they fly, they flip, they shatter the ground with every footfall, hoist 80-ton weights above their head and blast lasers from every orifice!  The only game off the top of my head to try and nail that style of battling was EA's Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects, which unfortunately falls under the heading of 'A for effort, D for execution'.

 

And now the artists formerly known as...whatever their team name was at Midway are taking their second stab at Marvel's 'distinguished competition' after Mortal Kombat VS. DC Universe (a game we DO NOT TALK ABOUT EVER except when we mention it like I did just there) with Injustice, which if nothing else has seen a publicity blitz vastly beyond the reach of any other fighter in recent memory.  The ads were everywhere, there's a tie-in comic series, there's a whole line of 4" action figures (which I'm sorely tempted to sample, especially since Green Arrow and Deathstroke are pack-buddies) - this is the kind of media saturation normally granted only to AAA shoot-em-ups of the most boring variety, and I've no doubt it'll reflect well on the sales figures.  But the question is, will the game prove good enough to keep on rotation for months to come...?

'INJUSTICE: GODS AMONG US' Character Designs in Review (UPDATED)

Ten quid says Batman killed Green Arrow out of spite.

Bruce's always been jealous of my boy Ollie's awesome goatee.

To say I've been less than thrilled with the pre-release hype for Netherrealm's Injustice: Gods Among Us would be...more or less accurate.  It got to the point where I couldn't resist the urge to complain about the recent teaser trailer for the game's story mode on Twitter and unwittingly caught the eye of the game's own PR account, who told me to reserve judgement until I'd at least checked out DC's tie-in comic miniseries.  At £2.99 a pop for at least 4 issues.  Sad thing is, I probably will buy those comics just to be sure, and I almost certainly will buy the game despite what the voices in my head tell me.

Still, just because I can't nitpick the story yet doesn't mean I can't speak out on other things - like, for example, the character designs, which have foregone the straight-from-the-comics look of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe in favour of...uh, something.  Involving leather.  Again, to be totally fair and whatnot, I'm only covering the characters for whom I could find the hi-res promo renders; for some reason guys like Deathstroke and Green Lantern, who have been confirmed for a while now, don't have renders out yet.  If I find more I'll update this post accordingly.

UPDATE 10/05/13 - Added Ares and Killer Frost.

Comic Musing: 'SMALLVILLE Season 11'

Is it a bird?  Is it a plane?

Is it some sort of title-seeking missile?

To say that I was a fan of Smallville when it was still a TV show is, I suppose, half-right.  Much like the rest of the world, I ignored it for the majority of its run; however, thanks to Comics Alliance and their sterling work reviewing each episode of the final (10th) season, I got interested in seeing what it was they found so confusing.  Picking up the BR set of season 10 on its first week of release, I devoted an entire weekend to watching it from start to finish - and oh, I got my answers, and then some.  Navel-gazing introspection, naff music cues and mawkish sentimentality was being made to share the screen with Hawkman, a transparent rip-off of The Matrix (in the year 2011?), and Darkseid - Lord of Apolokips, most foul of the New Gods, one of Jack Kirby's most enduring villains - redesigned as a malignant cloud of smoke.  And that's before we consider this as a retelling of the origins of Superman, which meant that it spent 10 years with a superpowered Clark Kent running around Metropolis not actually being a superhero.  It was, is and may always be the ultimate example of car-crash TV.

And yet, it had viewers.  A shade over a million per episode, in fact, even into the later seasons.  So I suppose it wasn't much of a surprise for DC Comics to greenlight a new ongoing series picking up where the show left off - if even half as many people who watched the show could be persuaded to buy the comics, they'd be the best-selling Superman books since, well, since the absolute WORST Superman books ever.  Makes sense from a business perspective.

From a storytelling perspective?  Hmmm...