Drunken Comics Rage

"You want me to kick you in the shin? I mean, if you really like pain that much, I'll just kick you real hard in the shin right now, and you won't have to buy that"

DVO said that to me at the comic shop when he saw that I was actually going to buy Titans #4.

I should have taken the kick.

The train wreck that has been Titans has ended it's first story line, and I'm not sure it could have been much worse. The only upside was that there were a few ok jokes here and there, but that's it.

 If you haven't been suffering through the first few issues, I'll give you a basic recap. Trigon has been trying to kill anyone who was ever a Titan. The idea is that in a world full of super heroes, the Titans are the only ones that have ever defeated him, and he figured that he would just wipe them out and then taking over the Earth would be easy. Or something.

At the end of last issue, you find out that Trigon has three sons on Earth, and they've been doing his bidding to open a portal so Dad can come to Earth. This whole story arc seemed like it was just a rushed excuse to get the team back together. Of course with all of the backlash, I wonder if they didn't shorten the whole thing to move on to something else, but seeing how bad it was as a whole, there's just as much chance that this was the plan all along.

In this issue, the Titans meet Trigon's sons, and a fight breaks out. The fight is very much one of those where the writer thought he came up with a few clever things, and that's how the Titans sort of "win" the day. Yet most of those things are really contrived. Case in point, Flash and Donna Troy start fighting each other, because they both want the Trigon son that has lust as his power. Nightwing ends the fight by, and I'm not kidding here, putting a bag over Flash's head. He then tricks Donna Troy into picking up the Flash, and tossing him at the Trigon Son that has the power of envy. All that time, the fastest man on the planet is apparently totally unable to figure out how to take a bag off his head. 

It's things like that which made this whole story line terrible. I'll admit that fits into the story, in that Donna tosses Flash at Envy. Well when Envy touches someone, he can turn into whoever that person envies the most. In Flash's case it's Barry Allen, and Envy can't handle all that power and goes zooming off. Even if you don't want to pull out the geek card, and site that Flash could have taken the bag off his head about 10,000 times in the amount of time it took Donna to pick him up and throw him, or done any number of other things, it's still just trying to be too clever and instead becomes a "what the hell?" moment.

Yup, should have just let DVO kick me.

Rating: 1 Star

I debated giving this issue 2 Stars, on the hope that maybe they revamp everything for #5, and this series is worth a damn. I do really like the idea of putting the Titans back together, but this first story line may sink any future the title really has. I decided instead to take nostalgia out of it, and just rate this issue on it's own merit, and it soooooo gets a 1 Star. They're lucky I liked the art ok, or it might have actually gotten a big fat Zero Stars. Especially for the SUPER cheese "together forever" ending:

Ugh.

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Filed under: General Comics Rage

After about a week of feeling like complete and utter dreck, I'm finally getting back to feeling human again. Given my recent track record with posting I can't really claim that it is what kept me from keeping up on posting, but obviously it didn't help. There's been a bunch of stuff comics wise happen in the last few weeks that I thought about commenting on and have probably since stopped being relavent. But fuck it, here's some quick hits on things you've probably already formed your own opinion on.

#1. So the whole Robert Kirkman thing. So maybe "saving comics" was a bit overstating it. But I do agree that I don't think there is enough going on and DC and Marvel that are age appropriate for the younger generation. I know now that I'm a parent and my son is rapidly discovering the characters I grew up and loved, I struggle with finding books that I can share with him that are not more mature in nature.

"Well see son, the Hulk is kicking the snot out of all of the heroes because they shot him in to space and basically left him for dead"

"So Spiderman just made a deal with the devil and insured his daughter would never be born. But it's okay because he did it to save Aunt May's life"

"Well, the reason Superboy is punching the heads off of heroes is because he's mad that they aren't heroic enough."

"See, it was wasn't really Wonderdog at all. It was a demon dog that ate Wendy and Marvin" (Okay, on this last one. Seriously Didio, what the fuck is wrong with you?)

Setting aside whether those stories were good or bad on any level, they just really aren't the kind of thing you can expect a 5 or 6 year old to grasp. So while I don't know that The Big Two should turn completely away from adult oriented stories, I would love to see more "family friendly" type stories appear. Now of course the question is, can you get those kinds of stories to sell? I would like to think so assuming they didn't insult the intelligence of the reader.

So in regards to the rest of Kirkman's comments, I think what's likely most important is that it got people talking again about creator owned (AKA "Indy") books versus established books and characters. Which I think is really what Kirkman was shooting for all along.

#2. So it's been announced that Warner Brothers is going to rebooted the Superman franchise, which I think is great. But they also want all their comic movie properties to be darker in theme, which I think is basically insane. I'm sure it's a knee jerk to "Damn, look at how much money Dark Knight made us!" but it is really a stooooooopid move. Not all comic movies should be dark, because not all comics should be dark (see item #1 above).

Dark Knight works because it's the fucking Joker and he really can be a scary bastard when handled well. But more than anything, it works because it's true to the material it is about. On the other hand, there is nothing really dark at all about Iron Man and it made an assload of money this summer as well. But agai9n, it was true to it's source material. Not all heroes are dark brooding types. Iron Man is not that guy, and Superman really shouldn't be either. Or Green Lantern. Or Wonder Woman. Or practically any DC big gun not named Batman. So please Warner Brothers, learn the right lesson from the success you had this summer. Being true to the character is what sells, not being dark or "adult". This isn't rocket science folks.

#3. Little DVO and I have been on something of a superhero video game tear as of late. After beating Marvel Ultimate alliance, we hit the local used game store and snagged "Spiderman: Friend or Foe". I knew next to nothing about the game, but it was two player, it involved Spiderman, we were good to go.

I am a little surprised to say the game was really fun if not a little bit short. We pretty well buried is of the course of about ten days. It is (sort of) set in the same world as the Spiderman world as the movies, as the costume designs for the Goblin(s) come straight from the movie and they got Thomas Haden Church doing the voice of Sandman in it. The story is pretty straightforward, someone is creating technological "phantoms" that are gathering pieces of a meteor. Nick Fury has sent Spidey to gather the pieces. Along the way he runs into some allies (Back Cat and Iron Fist as examples) to help him, but every even numbered map ends with a classic Spidey villain that once you beat him, agrees to help out and the second player can choose to be that person.

Game play was pretty simple but still fun. Without going into detail, think Double Dragon but three dimensional at about a 3/4 view. Everyone gets special powers along the way that were pretty awesome to witness as Little DVO figured them out. Pretty much once he mastered the art of picking guys up and throwing them off of cliffs and such, the game just blazed towards the boss levels. The dialogue in the cut scenes and the little pieces of banter between Spidey and the villains were pretty funny as well. Like I said, it was kind of short, but all in all, well worth the $13 I dumped into it.

We followed that up with Xmen: Legends, which we've played only a little bit. I think we are both a bit disappointed in it, but mostly because it is so obviously a predecessor to Ultimate Alliance and shows how polished they've made the game play in the years between the games that it just isn't near as fun. So on Little DVO's insistence, we are now playing through Ultimate Alliance again, this time as a team full of Xmen. Oh yeah, were playing through Spiderman: Friend or Foe again because he apparently didn't get enough of it the first time around either. I've got the Justice League game for the Xbox sitting and waiting for him to get bored with those two titles.

#4. I still owe a review on the latest ediion of the $2.99 experiment. Or in my case, the $3.50 experiment. I'm still committed to doing that in the next few days, but as a quick tease, let's just say Shark owes me $3.50 and probably a half dozen Jack and Cokes for the mental anguish that comic caused me.

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Filed under: DVO Reading Rage, Games!

Yeah, I haven't yet read a damn thing that I said I was going to. As I've mentioned about eight times now, I have a few issues of Moon Knight, Daredevil and Trinity sitting around waiting on me. Also an issue of Universal War One, which I guess is a reprint of a French comic. Not sure it was a good idea to pick that one up or not, but until I read it, the verdict is still out on it.

It's not that I don't want to read them, it's just they fall more into the "eh" category at the moment. I haven't read enough of Daredevil, or the current Moon Knight series, to be really invested in them. The last few issues I did read of both seemed good, but nothing grabbed me enough in either to really want to read as soon as I could, like I do with Guardians of the Galaxy and others.

Trinity was actually sent packing at one point, and then actually started picking up some steam. Those freaking things come out weekly though, and I get behind pretty quick. If I'd just read the damn things as they came out, I could get a good post a week out of it. That right there, is just slacking.

On the flip side of things, I've been working on several other projects, which have sucked up a lot of my time. I also have several other projects in the works for this site and hopefully I'll get those up and running soon.

First thing is that I need to create some stuff for the side bars on the right side. Since I took down the Harvey Dent thing, and the SDCC countdown, it's been looking a little bare up there. I need to see about getting the Angel thing back up (I'll have to ask DVO about that), and then find a few more things. If anyone knows of anything interesting, let me know. Hell, even if it's just your own website, I might put it up for the fun of it for a while.

Second, I'm thinking about putting up a message board for this site. The downside is that I think it might be a little bit of a waste land for a while, but that might change over time. I think it'd be cool to have an area to talk comics, talk about whatever, maybe an artist section and some other things. If I could just get the other guys to talk about comics in there, it might generate some interest, but seeing as how I can't get those dudes to even post anything as of late, that might be easier said than done.

Third might be one of a few odd projects I have floating around in my head. Possibly a cartoon of some type (if I can find an artist), maybe a comic written by a number of people (again, need an artist and some participation) and possibly some contests, though I'm not sure what I'd give away right this second.

If anyone has any ideas of what they'd like to see, or if any of the above things sound good, drop us a comment, or even just email us at dcrguys@gmail.com.

I'll see if I can get some things read today, but no promises. Also, since there was a holiday Monday, comics don't come out until tomorrow. Which sucks. It does mean though that I'll have new stuff to read, write about, or add to the "eh" pile. 

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Filed under: General Comics Rage