The Week In Geek 12/10/14

So, this week's midseason finale to The Flash kicked several levels of ass. The fight between Barry and Reverse Flash...who is TOTALLY Dr. Wells (sorry if that's a spoiler but if you haven't figured that out by now...)....was pretty incredible looking for primetime network television. I've been hearing a lot of complaints about Iris West's character, but I'm sorry....I love a pretty brown girl as the leading lady in an interracial relationship. By the way, I don't seem to remember all that complaining when Lana Lang was the leading lady in Smallville and that was maybe one of the worst shows in nerd history. Just saying. At this point, the complaints that "it's so CW" just have to stop. We (I'm speaking to my generation in particular) have to learn to get used to the fact that comic culture HAS to attract younger viewers to survive. I mentioned this in an article a while back, but fans have to get better about sharing. Otherwise, we end up looking like insiders and troll. Just ask the Gamergate trolls.

My reviews for the week are up and available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing pleasure. This week, I took a look at:

Thor: I am more convinced than ever that the new lady Thor is actually, Roz Solomon, Odinson's SHIELD girlfriend. That's why she was so desperate to get the hammer back before she turned back into Someone That Roxxon Would Recognize (from the Last Days of Midgard story). Anyway, I do appreciate that the hammer kinda offer tutorials in how to be Thor like Green Lantern's ring. Other than that, there's not much else to say. Jason Aaron is going to be remembered as one of the premier names when they talk about Thor in the 2010s.

Avengers/X-Men: Axis- Okay, this week was slightly better for Axis but not by much. I know Deadpool is supposed to something of a hood ornament to uptick your sales a little bit, but it just didn't work out here. Spider-Man, as usual, was something of a boon to the story and Scarlet Witch looked great and all, but this plot is so rough. It literally pains me to review it.

Batman Eternal: The funny thing is that the whole Jason Bard plotline hanging over the book has basically made plot "A World Without Jim Gordon", furthering DC's initiative to make Commissioner Gordon into a nigh-superhero. I've said this before, but aside from Batman, he's the only other thing saving Gotham from descending into Hell. This is, in part, why I'm so disappointed that the Gotham tv series sucks so bad.

Why I Left Gotham....

Friend: Okay, you've been keeping up with Gotham, right? I have a reference question.

Me: Actually I gave up on Gotham after episode three.

Friend: Which one was that?

Me: The one that came third.

Friend: Yeah, but...good one....what was it about?

Me: It was Jim Gordon vs. Balloons

Friend: That was a vigilante whose motif was balloons. I thought you'd like that one.

Me: So, you thought I was drunk?

Friend: Are you telling me you weren't?

Me: No, I got drunk after it was over. To numb the pain.

Friend: So, what was wrong with the Balloonman?

Me: First of all, his name was Balloonman. You can't get away with a name that stupid if you're a MegaMan villain. Hell, he couldn't even get away with being a MegaMan villain because if MegaMan absorbed Balloonman's power, I'm pretty sure he'd refund it back to the guy.

Friend: "Excuse me, Dr. Wiley, I got this from your associates about a week ago. I don't have a receipt but it's just not what I thought it was and I'd like to see about getting a refund on it."

Me: "Well, young man, my associate should have made you aware of our five day policy for returns on evil robot powers clearly indicated in our terms of service....."

Friend: "Well, I'll take store credit. You don't have any free song downloads or some shit? Candy Crush lives? Nothing?"

Me: The thing about Gotham is that it's trying to be some hybrid of a Batman prequel and quirky procedural cop drama. In other words, it's trying to horde the CW and CBS audience at the same time. The problem is that it sucks at both.

Friend: But what about Kid Bruce Wayne? Batman before he even thought about being Batman. That's gotta be worth something.

Me: It would be if they actually bothered to write a character for this kid outside of "Bruce Wayne's parents got shot and he's been creepy ever since."

Friend: But isn't that how it basically went, though?

Me: Yeah, but there's a reason the other origin stories skip right to Bruce learning kung-fu and Sherlock Holmes 101. Because all an eight year old can do at that point realistically is really just pout and be a complete snot. Unless, you want to do a whole series about young Bruce Wayne solving mysteries. And Young Bruce Wayne Mysteries is essentially just Young Indiana Jones. And doing Young Indiana Jones without River Phoenix is a punishable offense.

Friend: But you write for a website that HAS to cover this kind of thing to know what's going on and all that.

Me: I write for a website where ONE of us has to cover Gotham. We are well aware of his sacrifice for the greater good. It's basically like he's Batman flying Bane's atom bomb into the ocean every Monday at 7 and we are grateful. But other than him, I think every other staff writer has basically washed their hands of the whole thing. I mean, there are just better things to do with my Monday night than wonder how much worse Jada Pinkett Smith's wig is going to be this week.

Friend: But you're not worried you're missing out on landmark comic-based media even if it's kinda bad?

Me: The last time I had that thought, I ended up watching several seasons of Smallville when three would have worked out just fine.

Friend: But Smallville was necessary. We needed to know that comic-based television could get if a show was left on the air years after its worn out its welcome for advertisment's sake.

Me: No, we didn't. We knew that already because that describes any CW show that lasts longer than two seasons that isn't Supernatural.

Friend: I'll give you that.

Me: But your point is that Gotham is necessary because we haven't had Smallville to remind us in a while?

Friend: Not really.

Me: So, what's your point in defense of Gotham?

Friend: I was defending Gotham? Oh, man, that show sucks. I just had a question.

Me: **sigh** Good talk, man.

The Week In Geek 9/24/14

Hey, guys. You probably noticed no updates from me last week. Well, I had some paid time off from the Day Job and decided to take some personal time for R&R. It's not that I don't love you guys, but self care matters.

This week saw two primetime comic shows premiering: the long awaited, long hyped Gotham and the returning Agents of SHIELD. I was interested to see how SHIELD opened up after really turning things around in their last leg, becoming the show that it really should have been all along. It had an awkward start because of the Marvel films it tried to capitalize off of, but once its plot in the second half of Season 1 borrowed from Winter Soldier, quality stepped up by leaps and bounds. Gotham had received much hype and understandably so. I mean, there's just no reason DC shouldn't be able to sustain a show about Young Jim Gordon. The Zero Year run of Scott Snyder's Batman is proof positive that, just beneath Batman himself, Gordon is easily Gotham's foremost champion of the law.

With all this in mind, Gotham started off with kind of a mixed bag. To its credit, the show does a great job of creating the right atmosphere for dark, foggy, hopeless Gotham City. And Ben McKenzie is a great pick to play Gordon. But there are some glaring problems with this reimagining. For one, we seem to see a lot a young Selina Kyle....but it's a LOT of her doing absolutely nothing. At all. Whatsoever. So far, her entire purpose on this show seems to be feeding stray kittens and standing on top of things for NO reason. It was downright irritating how little someone who appeared so much actually mattered in the plot. And the show really should consider toning down the Batman easter eggs. I understand that without the fun tidbits for fans, this would just be a regular procedural cop drama with a famous name, but at the rate the writers were cramming in stuff from every nook and cranny, they're not going to make it to Season 3.

Meanwhile, Agents of SHIELD got off to an impressive start with their season 2 opener. For one, they're obviously spending more money on this show (at least as far as budgets for primetime network television go). It's nice that they have a bit more direction. Riding the Captain America 2 tidal wave worked out pretty well and they seem to be using the whole "new SHIELD regime" thing to their advantage. Skye is a far less annoying character now that she's a full on field operative with more to do than be a nondescript outline for a standard Joss Whedon character. The addition of some notable characters from Marvel lore certainly help the appeal of the show. Absorbing Man was a fun foil that I hope we see more of throughout the Marvel Cineverse. The possibilities for cameo appearances has always been way too wide for this show to just limit itself to being a promotional tie-in for movies And it's nice that the show is finding some focus aside from "Hey, look, it's Phil Coulson" and not leaning as much on Clark Gregg being the best actor on the show so far except for maybe Hudson's recurring gig in Season 1 (Yes, I know he's Bill Paxton but I will forever think of him as Hudson....because Aliens).

All in all, if I had to put one show or the other in the lead, it would have to go to SHIELD right now. Season 1 was an experiment and now they see where they went wrong and are improving and working out the kinks. Granted, no matter how much it improves, this is still going to end up being That Marvel Thing That's Definitely Not For Everyone. Meanwhile, Gotham just has too much uncertainty floating around it. The material they try to cram into a single hour makes me feel like they're going to blow their strongest gimmicks in three seasons like Lost did.

Then again, these two are just holding me over until Arrow and The Flash debut, so whatever.

-Anyway, don't forget to check out my exclusive interview with Christopher Bird and illustrator Davinder Brar, the creative team behind one of my new favorite webcomics, Al'Rashad: City of Myths. The book really is amazing and the guys are both class acts with tons to say on comics, movies and writing characters of color

-Also, as always, my comic reviews for the week are up and available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing enjoyment. It was a light week for me in the review department since I've been taking it easy with my time off from the day job so think week, I only reviewed:

Batman Eternal: Listen. I know I've spoken before about how important artwork is when you have a constantly rotating wheel of creative talent bringing drastically varying styles and voices to the same set of plots, but fuck's sake did they ever screw the pooch visually. I'm not about to be that troll critic nobody likes. At the same time, the art was REALLY awful. I can't imagine there's anyone who was sitting around wondering what Batman would look like if he were doing a guest appearance on Bob's Burgers. I don't think R.M. Guera has worked on the book previously, but he just shouldn't. To call the art "laughable" implies that there something funny or endearing about looking at this shabby shit.

Stuff I Read This Week 7/2/14

My reviews for the week are finished and available on Black Nerd Problems for enjoyment alongside your barbecue and the drinks your uncle tells you not to watch him make. Smell that shit before you drink it. You never know. This week I took a look at.....

Batman Eternal: This was an awesome week because it furthers Scott Snyder and the conspiracy to make Jim Gordon an awesome character. I'm of the mind that a hero is only as great as the villains who test them. What better test is there to keep throwing in a hero's path than his sociopathic serial killer son? Also, Jason Bard is growing on me. His team-up with Harvey Bullock and Maggie Sawyer has been a great read and is evidence that we need a GCPD book soon. Mikel Janin is easily one of the best artists we've seen on this book yet. He really seems to get the kind of atmosphere this book should have, but isn't shy with using a very definitive color palette to get his point across and separate the "freaks" from the "straights."

Iron Fist, The Living Weapon

: This book has not hesitated to get better with each issue and I'm totally okay with this. When you create a genre based superhero, I believe the idea is to make a character that would make the most skilled, revered real life figures of that genre shit themselves. Having said that, Iron Fist would render Bruce Lee unconscious just by cracking his knuckles.

Stuff I Read This Week 6/25/14

My reviews for the week are now available on Black Nerd Problems for your enjoyment or to alleviate boredom during your work day. Unless you work at a sushi joint....then you should probably concentrate on not cooking your fingers on those hibachi grills. This week, I took a look at.....

Batman Eternal: Okay, so, I think last week's artwork went over a lot of people's head. And with a cash grab franchise like Batman, you probably don't want the visuals going over people's heads. Now, sometimes, it's okay for the writing to do so (I'm looking at you, Grant Morrison), but definitely not the pencils. Anyway, this week's episode (I call Eternal issues episodes because this is like my weekly Batman tv show) finally moved the "Jim Gordon, Murderer" story along with some delightful results. The point of any good "Trial of..." plotline should be for the prosecution to be so hardcore on your hero, it makes you squirm a little bit. The opening statement against Jim Gordon had absolutely no chill. The one thing I left out of my review is that maybe James Tynion tried just a little too hard to hammer home the point that Tim Drake is the detective among the sidekick family. We get it. He's Sherlock Holmes.

Batman: My editor said it better than I could in his description of my review when he said that Scott Snyder's Zero Year run is going to go down in the books as one of the greatest Batman stories ever told. Ever. Anyone else who does a Riddler story after Snyder has their work cut out for them. Months later, I still marvel at the fact that Edward Nygma hasn't been this deliciously diabolical in years. The best scene is seeing him face to face with Batman who has had to employ every one of his skills just to keep up with Nygma's scheming. I mean, he's been shot at, beaten and literally attacked by lions. I am on pins and needles waiting to see what else Snyder has in store for the finale.

All New Ghost Rider: Now, THAT is a delightfully wacky comic book. Felipe Smith makes no apologies for making an unbelievably ridiculous plotline. If professional wrestling had a James Cameron level budget for makeup and special effects, I suspect this is storyboard for what they would come up with.

Stuff I Read This Week 4/18/14

Thor, God of Thunder #21: Jason Aaron has Thor down almost to a science. So far, the God of Thunder series has been as suitably epic in scale as a series about a god could ever hope to deliver. It traverses time and space with the ease of your apartment building's elevator. The "Last Days of Midgard" story is one that has proven to be a perfect display of such scale.

This issue picks up where the last left off with Present Time Thor at odds with an evil conglomerate so intent on mining the Earth's resources until it dies, you would almost think Aaron had borrowed a villain directly from Captain Planet. This alone makes for interesting conflict, reminding our hero that not every villain is one that he can defeat with a swing of his hammer. It also gives us more of Thor's newfound (kinda) girlfriend, SHIELD agent Roz Solomon, who serves as a nice sidekick to teach the God of Thunder something about dealing with earthly ways like lawyers. It's funny as all hell, too. Then, there's my favorite part where, in the far future, Old Thor, ruler of Asgard gets into a fistfight....let me reiterate....a knockdown, drag-out street fight with GALACTUS!!!! It's pretty difficult to get more epic than that. I can practically hear the nerds five years from now in their "who would win" fights citing that time when Thor got into it with Galactus and lived (we think so far). Of course, none of this would leap off of the page the way it does if it weren't for Esad Ribic. With his sweeping sense of scope and his taste for detailed landscapes adds to the flavor of Aaron's tale of legends. In fact, each page has the kind of style one would think you might find in a sacred tome telling the myths of the Asgardian prince.

Bottom Line: Jason Aaron is telling some of the best stories in Thor's history. This issue is no different. 9 out of 10

Batman #30: Scott Snyder's run on Batman in the New 52 era has had some pretty impressive successes. The Zero Year saga in particular has been his best work on the series. We've seen a fun, swashbuckling take on the Bat-mythos that puts a fun spin on an endlessly retreaded origin. We see a wild-eyed Batman who shoots from the hip, curses and smiles from time to time. But the most notable highlight of this entire series has been the Riddler. 

The evolution of Edward Nygma is one that can only be seen to believed. Over the years, he's been a Woody Allen-esque sidekick to Catwoman, a world class thief and even a detective. Here in the latest issue going into the "Savage City" story, we see a maniacal mastermind who has been one step ahead of the Dark Knight Detective with Gotham completely under his thumb. This story thus far highlights three particularly interesting things. First, this is probably the MOST diabolical we've ever seen the Riddler, capitalizing on opportunities left behind by the various goings-on in the city. The second notable is that Snyder has become adept at making Jim Gordon almost a superhero in his own right and appropriately so. The point of Batman (most especially in the Dark Knight era of the character) is that he brings criminals down a peg so that the law can work for itself. In that context, there is pretty much no greater champion of good in Gotham than Gordon. He's the city's rock. Zero Year has been great at shining a spotlight on his heroics. And finally, the BEST thing is that in the era in which Batman is seen as an unfallible ubermensch of sorts, we see him dealing with failure. This is what it's like when The World's Greatest Detective isn't always in control, who doesn't go into battle with the upper hand on his foe. It's actually a very nice change of pace. At this point going into the perfection that Greg Capullo's artwork is almost an exercise in redundancy. His detailed layouts are great at depicting a defeated wasteland of a city.

Bottom Line: This is easily one the best books DC has to offer. If you're not reading it at this point, I don't know what else you're doing. 9 out of 10.

Stuff I Read This Week 4/11/14

Batman Eternal #1: The last time DC launched a weekly book surrounded by this much hype, we got 52 which yielded somewhat mixed results. So, apparently, they got the bright idea to try this again with a property that, at this point, can't lose (sales wise). Yes, that's right, folks. We have yet ANOTHER Batman book on our hands. Passing a weekly book on through the hands of various creative teams is always a dicey yet audacious venture. However, if the opening issue is any evidence of what we're going to see each week, the future looks promising. From the very first page which features a beautifully rendered yet strange portrait of Batman and his beloved Gotham, Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV want us to know they're swinging for the fences here.

This book seeks to not only highlight the Caped Crusader, but the dynamic he has with the city he's sworn to protect, building a large sandbox universe almost akin to that seen in the Arkham video game series. With this in mind, the inaugural issue placed the spotlight on the Gotham City Police, no doubt riding the high of the recently announced Gotham television series currently in development. Snyder and Tynion give us a yin/yang approach through the primary players in this issue. We are first introduced to the obligatory new kid on the block, Jason Bard, a somewhat innocent transferred from Detroit to GCPD's Major Crimes division. If the idea here is to give us an outsider's sense of the gritty streets, this character seems well suited for the task thus far. On the other side of the coin, we are reintroduced to the blatantly crooked Major Forbes who slightly detracts from the tone of the book by being so obviously dickish, working to undermine Commissioner Gordon. He might as well twirl a mustache and "Bwahaha" right there in the panel. One of these characters forces the other into a very compromising position that sets the stage for the first story arc. Jason Fabok's art style is incredible and perfect for this book. One of the truly noteworthy accomplishments he achieves here is making Jim Gordon look like every bit the superhero Batman is. The panel where they run after a foe side by side as if they've done this for years (because they have) is awe inspiring.

Bottom Line: No, we DON'T need another Batman book, but if we have to have one, GODDAMN I'm glad it's this one. 9 out of 10.

Iron Fist The Living Weapon #1: You know what's been missing from Marvel NOW? A good kung-fu comic. Specifically, an Iron Fist comic. Once the announcement went out that Marvel entered into a deal with Netflix to produce an original series for the former Hero for Hire, we knew it was a matter of time before the Powers-That-Be bestowed us with more martial arts awesomeness. 

It opens up strong enough, but I'll confess it's a little difficult to resolve this version of Danny Rand with the lighthearted adventurer we've come to know from the past ten years or so. Kaare Andrews gives us some insight into a more sullen, somewhat broken shadow of a familiar hero who doesn't seem to like the things life is showing him. Feeling somewhat apart from his fellow man, he seems to crave aggression and violence rather than normal human connections. This serves as an interesting backdrop to what's historically been a really fun character. There's plenty to potential for us to see an example of what years and years of conflict can do to a man. Normally, this would feel dull but Andrews keeps it engaging. Aside from that, the narrative itself doesn't do anything different from what we've seen before. However, in this case, that isn't such a bad thing. The visual nuances to this book are another strong selling point. Andrews approaches this with all the visceral yet old school sensibilities of a Shaw Brothers film if Quentin Tarentino had dosed it with LSD. Every page seems to be drawn tailor made to convey the particular tone of that particular part of the narrative. This is definitely how kung fu fantasy should be done.

Bottom Line: Definitely one of the best, fresh feeling Marvel books to drop this month. 8.5 out of 10