Category Archives: I Just Finished

I Just Finished – Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

Posted on by
Reply

So last night I saw this film, and on these very (virtual) pages said that it was the best Wonder Woman film of 2017. It was, because it communicated what the character was all about, which Patty Jenkins’s blockbuster starring Gal Gadot did not.

Wonder Woman was about love, pacifism and hope. She was about the triumph of compassion over war, over evil, over hate. I say she was about those things because she often is not about them anymore. In her new, iconic incarnation, she’s about women being able to be just as strong, just as aggressive, just as violent as men. That is not what her creator intended.

Continue reading →

I Just Saw the Best Wonder Woman Movie of 2017 (And It’s Not the One You Think It Is)

Posted on by
1

So I just got back from seeing Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, written and directed by Angela Robinson. I want to tell you why it’s a better Wonder Woman story than the one which starred Gal Gadot this past Summer, but I think I’ll start by explaining why the Gal Gadot film (actually, the Patty Jenkins film) disappointed me. I wrote this review the day after seeing that Summer blockbuster, but I didn’t publish it. It felt like I was spitting into the wind, because damn near everyone had declared that Wonder Woman (2017) was just the best superhero film ever–especially people who knew nothing about Wonder Woman and didn’t like superhero films.

Now, though, presented with what I think is a far superior film about Wonder Woman, if not starring the character, I want to share what I wrote then. Tomorrow, I hope to share my reflections on Robinson’s film.

A Lifelong Wonder Woman fan’s response to Patty Jenkins’s film

(Consider yourself spoiler-warned right now. Don’t read this if you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want to know plot details.)

I love super heroines. Always have. Before I started reading comic books, the women of the Starship Enterprise fascinated me. A while back I wrote this tribute to the character I thought was Captain Kirk’s equal as an officer and an action-heroine.

Continue reading →

I Just Finished – Jean Grey #7

Posted on by
Reply

Jean Grey, founding member of the X-Men way long ago, has been kidnapped out of time as a teenager and brought forward to an era where her adult self is long dead, and remembered primarily for becoming the all-powerful, all-corrupt entity known as the Phoenix. Now the leader of her teenage cohorts, Jean is on a quest to learn how she can avoid following in her older counterpart’s footsteps.

In the latest issues of her solo series, Jean has been meeting up with a different denizen of the Marvel Universe each month–all the other Phoenix hosts, Namor, Thor, Psylocke, Doctor Strange–all with the goal of learning how not to become the Phoenix. She’s also being stalked by the ghost of her older self.

This issue, she meets up with the Scarlet Witch. There’s a bond between these two 1960s-born heroines, one which author Jeff Parker clearly recognized when he wrote a humorous series of adventures for the two, as teens, in the back pages of X-Men First Class several years ago. Both are mutants. Both were the only women on their teams, Wanda first in The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and later in The Avengers.

Continue reading →

I Just Finished – Star Trek New Visions Special: The Cage

Posted on by
Reply

Back in the days before most of us could afford a video recorder, and before there was such a thing as a DVD, a BluRay, or an MP4 file, there was no easy way to view a favorite TV show or movie between the times it was running on television. A few collectors could afford 16 MM film prints, but that was a very few. Star Trek fans had such a voracious hunger to experience and re-experience their favorite TV show that, in 1977, a company called Mandala Productions decided to cash in. They produced “Fotonovels”— composed of screen captures from Star Trek episodes, with dialogue and narration added comic-book style using boxes and word balloons. Bantam books published these monthly for one year, and I was all over them. Not only did they let me relive a TV show I couldn’t get enough of, they were also great photo reference. I was a budding artist in my teens, and later an illustrator for fanzines. Fotonovels were indispensible aids.

So when John Byrne of X-Men fame launched a series of new, larger format fotonovels a couple of years ago, I was immediately in for the long haul. Using photoshop technology and screen caps from the 79 original hours of Star Trek, Byrne has so far created 17 new Trek episodes in this nostalgic format.

Continue reading →

I Just Finished – Eternal Empire #4

Posted on by
Reply

This series is perhaps less accessible than Jonathan Luna and Sarah Vaughan’s previous effort, Alex + Ada, but it is intriguing. It billed as an “Epic Fantasy,” which would normally cause me to leave it on the rack. This creative team’s last series was so good, however, that my whole family read it, including my non-comic-reader wife. So I wasn’t going to leave anything they did on the rack. (I hate to hear good comic books shriek in pain.)

So the description is standard fantasy fare: The Eternal Empress has, for years, oppressed the country of… Sorry, went to sleep. Fantasy does that to me, but, again, there are exceptions and this is one.

Right now it’s a “road” story, as Tair and Rion, young fugitives whose physical interactions are literally explosive (if they touch each other, stuff blows up), travel through the wilderness in search of a land of the free. Actually, it’s the last country that the Eternal Empress has not conquered. A little bit Logan’s Run in concept, but the pair have yet to meet anyone else who’s as interesting as they are. Their relationship is evolving slowly, but should prove interesting to follow.

Issue #5 came out today, but wasn’t on the shelf. Will have to track it down.

I Just Finished – Marvel Legacy

Posted on by
Reply

“My shrubbery is not to be trifled with, Daniel Rand.”

Funniest line in the book. Unfortunately, it’s about 25 pages in, and not a lot happens before it that grabbed me. Actually, the whole sequence in which that line falls, which has Dr. Strange and Iron Fist visiting Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum, after Norman Osborne has just tried to break into it, is funny, and the most entertaining part of the book.

Marvel Legacy has been heralded (by Marvel) as the return of many classic characters and teams. The artwork, and Axel Alonso’s notes at the end of this issue, suggest that the whole point of the effort is to bring back the glory of Bronze Age Marvel. And I’m all about that idea. I started reading comics in 1974, and the best time for comic books, in any given reader’s opinion, is usually the year or three around the time he started reading.

But the storylines that Mr. Alonso promises are coming—like Loki becoming Sorceror Supreme, or Klaw conquering Wakanda, just make me shrug. And the story which introduces this new effort does the same. If this is what Marvel Legacy is going to look like, then I’m going to go in with low expectations.

Continue reading →

I Just Finished – Superman (1939) #150

Posted on by
Reply

As was typical of the times (1962), this issue contains three stories. The cover actually references the third and shortest of them, “When the World Forgot Superman.” These were the days when the editor (Mort Weisinger, if memory serves) would have the artist draw a sensational cover, depicting an incident likely to make a reader ask, “How could that ever happen?!” And then the writer would be told to make that happen in a story. In this case, Superman returns from a mission in space to find that no one in Metropolis knows who he is, although, appropriately, they still know Clark Kent. How could this happen? Well, the answer is pretty obvious, if you know your Superman lore.

Continue reading →

I Just Finished – Uncanny Avengers (2015) #27

Posted on by
Reply

A satisfying conclusion to the Graviton story, although the resolution of Rogue’s brief brush with madness at the climax is a little abrupt. The story celebrates teamwork, which is what the Avengers are all about. And the words “Fantastic Four” are actually uttered! Johnny Storm is a welcome member of this team, but it would be nice to have him back where he belongs. The subplot where an attorney is trying to catch up with him, and surprises him at the end of a boxer-clad battle, is appropriately funny and mixes the mundane with the fantastic in the way the best Marvel tales always have. I’m reminded of the first appearance of Henry Peter Gyrich (although that was more sinister) or the earlier Avengers tale in which Janet Van Dyne (the original Wasp, and still a member of this team) inherited her father’s millions.

I Just Finished – Action Comics #987

Posted on by
Reply

The first issue of the much-heralded story, “The Oz Effect.” Who is Mr. Oz? Well, he’s a character who first appeared a couple years back in a middle-numbered issue of the last run of Superman. That was before DC launched “Rebirth,” this… um… lessee… Crisis, Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis (do we count Final Crisis?)… New 52… Sixth? Fifth and a half reboot—well, now, I guess the introduction of the Silver Age Flash and all his JLA kin was also a reboot, so let’s go with six and a half reboots—six or seventh reboot of the DC Universe. Anyway, Mr. Oz is more than one reboot old, which is pretty damn ancient in DC terms, and he’s shown up a few dozen times these past few months, including in the eponymous DC Rebirth one-shot that started all the current shooting.

In this opening tale, the mysterious Mr. Oz declares that the human race does not deserve Superman or his family. Humans are just too selfish and petty, too easily swung toward the wrong choice, too prone to bring chaos. So Mr. Oz decided to give them a little push towards just that, in hopes of showing Kal-El that humanity is just not worth his time.

Right at the end, we learn the true identity of Mr. Oz. No spoilers, and I’m pretty sure it won’t stick; but it guarantees that this is a story I’ll want to read. Of course, so does Dan Jurgens name in the credits, but still…

A well-crafted story that touches on an old (but never-answered) question about being Superman: What the hell does he do when a lot of things go wrong at once? Here a lot of things do go wrong, and it’s enough to drive even the eldest of the super heroes to despair. Kudos to Jurgens for political even-handedness, by the way. There is, predictably, a white supremacist attack on helpless immigrants depicted. It’s the first crime Superman prevents. It’s followed up quickly by a thug spouting Occupy rhetoric as he tries to burn down someone’s house. It’s refreshing to see a piece of mass entertainment remind us that there are extremists on both ends of the spectrum, and they’re all dangerous.

I Just Finished – Marvel’s Inhumans – Episodes 1 & 2

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve heard mixed reviews about this ABC TV series, and largely from people whose opinions I trust. I kept an open mind going into it, however. The Marvel movies have rarely disappointed me. Agents of SHIELD has overall stayed entertaining. I haven’t taken time to watch all of Legion, but, of course, Daredevil on Netflix is amazing. Jessica Jones held my interest, even though I don’t care for the character, and I liked the flavor of life in Harlem that Luke Cage brought to superhero television. I’m still in the middle of Iron Fist, and haven’t even started Defenders. But maybe because reactions to Inhumans were so mixed, I wanted to check it out.

I quite frankly loved it. It has some of the tone of SHIELD, but with more colorful, more recognizable characters. Recognizable for me, anyway, since I was a Fantastic Four reader from childhood, and the Inhumans were introduced in those pages. The show has humor, suspense and admirable heroes. I’m particularly happy with the casting choices for Gorgon, Crystal and Karnak. Those actors especially brought energy to sometimes under-appreciated supporting roles. And seeing Lockjaw, looking like, well, Lockjaw, popping in and out of the scenes, transporting his fellow Inhumans all over the world and the moon, was a treat.

A lot of comments I heard during the publicity phase of the series focused on Medusa’s hair looking fake. Well, I had to agree it looked a little odd, but then it always looked a little odd in the comics. Fortunately, the producers found a way to squeeze a fix for that out of their plot. I’ll avoid spoilers, but it’s just one more way Maximus the Mad parallels Thor’s Loki, if you know your Norse myths.

I’ll be interested to see where this series goes.