2. That’s totally an extraneous “the” on Jimmy Olsen’s “Elastic Lad” costume. “THE ELASTIC LAD” doesn’t have quite the same ominous tone as “THE DARK KNIGHT.”
Our shipping company sent one of the boxes from our comic book distributor on a free trip to the San Fernando Valley, so we were out 60 lbs. of new funnybooks today. SIXTY POUNDS. No Punishermax. No Chew. No Buzzard. No Uncle Scrooge. Not a single luxury.
Thankfully, our customers were understanding about it, and the box should be at the shop Thursday, but this still means I essentially have to do the comic saver pulls twice, and frankly I’m not all that good at doing them once a week, so we’ll see how this goes.
Some of the things we did get in this week:
By the way, pal Sean bought one of the tweaked one, which he got with his Former Employee Discount so he didn’t pay full price for it, at least. He popped it open to let me take a look…and surprisingly, the unpleasantly difficult-to-read Wonder Woman story had been relettered from its original printing in the newspaper format, making it slightly less unpleasantly difficult-to-read. The rest of the book looks nice, too. This has been Mike’s In-Depth Review.
In lighter Swamp Thing news, there’s this discussion where the main concern is apparently the number of times Batman has taken a beating from Swamp Thing. Sez one gentleman, he sez
“The Vertigo community which I’m part of feels this is just a ploy so that they can pit Batman and Swamp Thing back together and rectify, two of Batman’s very few losses.”
…which not only indicates that there’s two places on the nerdinet where Swamp Thing beating Batman is a point of contention, but that it’s felt this is the reason that Swampy was moved away from the mature reader Vertigo into the slightly-less mature reader DC Universe. And not, say, that the Vertigo-ized Swampy was a bit played out and needed to be retooled, or that one of DC’s more recognizable characters needed some rehabilitation for marketing exploitation, or something. Actually, I don’t care about the reasons, just bring me more Swamp Thing comics. Of any kind. And make it snappy.
(TONY STARK is at the congressional hearing, being grilled about the Iron Man suit by Senator Stern.)
STERN: “Mr. Stark, it is of utmost importance that the Iron Man suit be turned over to the military immediately.”
STARK: “Sorry, that’s not going to happen –”
(STARK is interrupted by a beeping from his super high-tech phone thingie.)
STARK: “Whoa, Ultimo is tearing up downtown. Gotta go. Hold that thought.”
(A couple of minutes later:)
STARK: “Whew boy, that was somethin’. Okay, where were we?”
FURY: “Now, this box might be of interest to you. It belonged to your father, and inside….”
STARK: “Hey, hold on now…is that Blizzard out there over the ocean? Man, that guy really cheeses me off. I’ll be right back.”
FURY: “Stark, don’t you dare–!”
FURY: “Don’t you ever do that to me again.”
STARK: “Oh, hey, Rhodey, just received a message that the Blood Brothers are back in town. Can you handle Vanko and pals while I take care of this?”
RHODEY: “Wait, what?”
(A couple of minutes later:)
RHODEY: “Hey, Tony? Where are you, buddy? Could use a hand here! …Hello?”
Here is a permutation of the “Got Milk?” campaign that I never quite expected. (But you can have Batman Beyond right now, in the current Superman/Batman annual, now on sale!)
What the hell is Killer Croc wielding, there? “BEHOLD MY CLAWED PERISCOPE OF DEATH, BATMAN!”
I have to say I’m very disappointed in the search results for Batman in the Specialty Services category. “WINNING BIDDER WILL HAVE ME AS THEIR PERSONAL BATMAN FOR THE DAY.” That’s what I was hoping to see.
So is the stain part of the design or is it, just, you know…stained?
I would so totally lose fingers on this double-bladed Bat-knife. I like how “Batman” is just etched on the belt clip.
I don’t know why offering just a single Joker’s Henchman Lego figure makes me laugh, but it really does. I mean, it could be a rare item for all I know.
“18 Tongue Ring Playboy Batman Ganja Skull Logo Whistle” – sadly, these are descriptions of different tongue rings, not all the same tongue ring. “GANJA PLAYBOY BATMAN SKULL TO THE RESCUE! tweeet tweeet!”
“I Believe in Batman” — don’t we all, friend…don’t we all.
(SPOILERS AHEAD, like you all haven’t seen it already)
Yeah, I know, I’m like the last person on the planet to see it…or at least it feels that way, given the number of conversations about the movie I’ve had to avoid at the shop over the last couple of weeks. But, I finally got in there Saturday night, with a surprisingly large crowd, and…well, the film was okay. I did enjoy it, but it’s not really a patch on the first film. Once or twice early on in the flick, I found myself thinking “why is the movie showing me this instead of more scenes of Iron Man doing something awesome?” Okay, I know it was necessary character set-up stuff for future plot events, but still, it seemed like there was a little more forward momentum and…”spark,” I guess, to similar scenes in the first film.
When you actually count out the number of Iron Man action scenes in this film, there really aren’t that many, and I’m not sure if I’d count the very uncomfortable bit of business with Tony acting like a buffoon at his party (though it does set up how Tony and Rhodey are able to defeat the bad guy at the end). I’d heard some complaints about the climactic battle being hard to follow, but I didn’t have any trouble (and I usually am the first to complain when a film’s action sequence is poorly directed).
And I had heard comments from folks about having yet another bad guy with a Bigger, Badder Iron Man suit for our heroes to fight, and…yeah, they should probably change it up a bit for the next movie. I’m pulling for Living Laser, myself. Though I’d die if it was MODOK.
Oh, and hello, Sir Scene-in-The-Trailer-And-Not-Appearing-in-This-Movie:
By the by…so decades ago, Poppa Stark hid the description of a secret element for his son to later find, and it just happened to be the right element to solve Tony’s current health/power generator issues? …Sure, why not. I did figure the city layout was a hidden message to Tony from his father early on, but I thought it was going to reveal plans for a circuit board. I mean, it did look like one, right? A bit? Somewhat?
And yes, there was that bit of business at the end of the film, after the credits…and I do wish they had inserted the scene, like, a minute or two into the credits instead of at the very end, because man, sitting there and waiting is a drag.
But there was the scene, and the few other suckers audience members who waited it out cheered when they saw the hammer, and at least one guy exclaiming “it’s Thor!” I also overheard someone explaining to his friends what the significance of the hammer was, using Adventures in Babysitting as part of said explanation. I thoroughly approve of this.
Also, I’m glad I was going out of my way to see or read anything about the film ahead of time, because man, when I was going through the trailer to pick out images as my “spoiler borders,” it’s like the entire film was in it. It’s almost Disney trailer-esque in its reveals.
But most importantly…just how fantastic was Garry Shandling in this movie?
“You’d think if I was going to buy 500 identical outfits so I can wear
the same thing to school every single day, I’d have picked an outfit
that wasn’t so itchy.”
“WHAT’S IN THE BOX!?”
“I’ve had it with this stupid one-horse town. Especially when that
horse turned out to be yet another super-villain gunnin’
for Superboy. I mean, c’mon, give me a break, here.”
BEHOLD THE TOMATOES OF PA KENT
BEHOLD THE WONDERS OF MA KENT’S PIE
So the Season 9 finale of Smallville aired last week, and the prologue for that episode featured a flash-forward to the year 2013, where Lois is a full-fledged reporter for the Daily Planet, Perry White is the Chief, and Clark is off to a super-rescue, diverting a plane from a collision course with the Planet building:
What I am hoping for is that we get an episode or two (or maybe a two-hour series finale) of some honest-to-goodness Superman action rather than just a closing shot of Clark finally donning the familiar togs. That would be, I think, the proper payoff for 10 years of meandering and teasing and hints at his “ultimate destiny.” It’d be nice if Michael Rosenbaum would come back to reprise his role as Lex Luthor for the last episode, but I suspect they couldn’t pay him enough to shave his head again.
And while the show did improve a bit in the last couple of years…yeah, it’s goofy, but it’s a fun goofy, but I think enough’s enough at this point. It was probably enough several points ago. Plus, after this last year with Zod as the primary antagonist, I don’t think I ever need to hear the phrase “kneel…before Zod” ever again. Sorry, General.
Actress Allison Mack, who portrays the popular supporting character “Chloe Sullivan” (who has never made an appearance in the regular Superman comics, despite the occasional announcement), is apparently scaling back her participation in the final season, which may disappoint the folks who made this commercial.* I remember very early on thinking the eventual reveal would be that Chloe, to separate herself from her tabloid-esque beginnings, would change her professional name to “Lois Lane.” Luckily I don’t have a day job doing psychic predictions, though my accuracy rate is about the same.
So anyway…sorry to see you go, Smallville, but not too sorry. It is going to be a bit strange after next season to not have Smallville to kick around anymore, though I imagine there are plenty of people out there who probably thought it ended years ago.
Another superhero show that’s shuffled off this mortal coil is Heroes, which will not be returning next season, and nobody seems particularly torn up about it. Well, I suspect the cast and crew aren’t terribly pleased. And it is a bit of a shame, I think, since this last season was actually pretty good, with a creepy and occasionally oddly sympathetic antagonist (which resulted in this lawsuit, by the way).
I liked the cast, I like the interactions of the characters, and while the plots and events were pretty familiar to anyone who’s ever read a comic book ever, it was still fun to see it all played out in live action. There’s maybe a slight chance of a wrap-up movie to conclude everything, which would be nice (and probably would help the chances of continuing DVD sales, if people know there’s an actual conclusion to the story), but I’m not holding my breath.
