comic book quickies 25/8/11

Now that the Flashpoint filler fest is over with we can charge forward into a new era of comics! DC is rebooting its universe with 52 new titles. the rebootverse is here! A month full of new number ones!

JUSTICE LEAGUE #1

Written by Geoff Johns art by Jim Lee

So this is the first book of the new universe, the jumping on point for new readers and most likely the highest selling book of the year. As a comic on its own it was pretty gid but to me personally I didn't think it was a good start for the new universe. A team was not put together. I know it probably wouldn't have worked having all the league in issue one but it doesn't feel right, all we got was Batman and Hal Jordan being buddy cops chasing an alien and getting shot at by cops. Not the epic start I was hoping for but as I said as just a comic it was fine with some cool moments between the two heroes. Really its main problem is that it's being so clearly written for the trade making it an ungodly slow start.

ACTION COMICS #1

Written by Grant Morrison art by Rags Morales

Rebootaverse superman is kick ass. This is pretty much everything you could want for a #1 featuring superman. He keeps doing superman-y things! He bends guns, jumps tall buildings and gets hit in the face by trains. Ah, just like the old days. At the same time though he is quite un-superman-y and kind of Batman-ish, throwing wife beaters out windows and neo Nazis into sewage works. He's not proper Supes yet, he's young and incredibly arrogant but its only issue one and he'll get that kicked out of him eventually. But dudes its MORRISON writing superman it'll be fine.

DETECTIVE COMICS #1

Written by Tony S. Daniel art by Ryan Winn

So yeah in the lead up to the New 52 I heard nothing but bad things about this book that it was going to suck cos of the writer and that Batman #1 was where it was at. But I got it any being that it is Detective Comics #1 so it surprised me that it was a lot of fun. It's Batman's first run in with the Joker and it's handled pretty well, the Jokers still a sick bastard and surprisingly for me the Batman of this book is pretty balanced and by that I mean he's not grim dark he's focused on getting the joker but to too focused to forget about collateral damage and I'm not sure where this falls in the time line but he must be young as the Joker actually lands some hits on him. Yeah, he'd been hit by joker gas but he's still Batman. And yeah, something pretty mental happens at the end that makes me want to read more. Pretty good for a book that labelled filler in my head before I read it.

STATIC SHOCK #1

Written by Scott McDaniel art by John Rozum

This was just fine, nothing mind blowing but a good introduction to a young hero. One weird thing is Static is operating out of New York which is just odd to me I dont think of the America of DC having a New York, Metropolis and Gotham kind take over from it. So yeah nothing bad to say for this comic.

JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL #1

Written by Dan Jurgens art by Aaron Lopresti

See this is weird man, the JLI is all together before the proper JL is. Well this is set after the JL forms in comic book time but in real world time the jokey JLI seems more like a real team than the all star universe launchers back at the top of this page. The United Nations put a team of heroes together and make Booster Gold the leader. Hilarity ensues.

And finally an in depth look into the event comic that brought us this new era. FLASHPOINT: a retrospective:

THOMAS WAYNE. Nuff' said.

First impressions: Pirates of the Caribbean 4.

Now, I’m more of a ninja man for preference but I enjoy the buckling of swash as much as any man and I’ll have it noted that the name of this blog that ye do be readin’ was originally my idea. And so it is, I feel, with a small amount authority that I can tell you about the fourth instalment of the Pirates of the Caribbean series: On Stranger Tides.
 

Most important thing about this one; Captain Jack Sparrow is the star almost exclusively. The only other characters who get anything like the same screen time are other pirates, one of whom is freaking BLACKBEARD so that’s badass. That damned whiny Orlando Bloom character is mercifully absent as is that skinny girl whose name I can never remember, you know the one. Bend it like Beckham, she got made king of the pirates in the last film. Her.

Anyway! That leaves this instalment plenty of time for the unrealistically AWESOME action scenes that made people love the Pirates films in the first place. Sparrow swings from chandeliers, jumps between horse drawn carriages while avoiding gunshot, fights with swords, steals the king's cream cakes and generally oozes the same roguish flair the character’s known for. 

There are of course some down sides. For one thing there is a distinct lack men made of rubber, 70 year olds who can punch islands in half, guys who fight with more swords at any one time than they have hands to carry them in OR mysterious superpower granting fruit of diabolic origin. COME ON DISNEY! These are things I’ve come to expect from my pirate themed media and if you can’t keep up then you shouldn’t be in the race.

There ARE mermaids though. And they are NOT like the one in that other Disney film you may have seen. They will fucking kill you. There’s a scene where Blackbeard’s crew tries to catch one (apparently you need fresh mermaid’s tears to make the fountain of youth work, I don’t know why) and they get absolutely brutalised. It’s quite a spectacle. But in the end they do catch one and it’s the worst thing that happens in the movie. Why? Because FOR SOME REASON there’s a missionary on Blackboards ship and FOR SOME REASON he falls in love with the captured sea demon and spends the rest of the film whining on about her twice as earnestly as Will Turner and Elizabeth Swan ever got. Thankfully though that character is marginalised enough that he didn’t ruin the film, but god could he kill a scene.

As is the same with all the other Pirate movies (with the possible exception of the first one) it starts off much stronger than it ends. That’s not to say the ending was actually bad, it’s just not as clever or funny as the introduction of Jack Sparrow or the mid story shenanigans, It’s just a fairly predictable clash of the various factions seeking the fountain of youth. In its defence though it seemed far less rushed than the ending of the last episode (though that may have been somewhat due to my ill considered consumption of various caffeinated beverages before going to see a film featuring lots of running water, if you catch my drift).

CONCLUSION TIME! Pirates 4 is probably the best one since the first one. It has all the bits you liked from the franchise and tries its best to cut out all the stuff everyone was complaining about. It’s funny, it’s stylish, it’s got magic and it makes as good a plot as it can while dealing with pirates discovering the fountain of youth, which is more than can be said of Pirates 3.
 

WATCH IT

Review: Pokemon Black and White (Nintendo DS)

Pokemon. Ever since it appeared in the late 90's it has been a favourite of kids and geeks everywhere. Its unique brand of RPG mechanics that expertly combine simplicity with depth, which also succeeds in itching every gamers propensity for collecting things has seen it become wildly popular, with enough merchandise to stretch to the end of the universe coming along with that popularity (OK, I exaggerate, but it often seems that way). Along with the merchandise there has been a steady release of a new generation of paired releases every few years that add a new geographical area to the franchise and also around 100 or so new Pokemon. Black and White is no different in this regard, but developer Game Freak has done wonders making these new games feel much fresher than the description implies, whilst also still keeping to the series rich heritage and gameplay mechanics.

In common with other Pokemon games, your journey begins in a small village in a secluded area of the game's region, Unova, where Pokemon Professor Juniper just happens to be based. Along with some friends, you pledge to journey across the land, searching far and wide to find and understand each Pokemon, cataloging them in a sort of Pokemon encyclopedia, the Pokedex. At the same time, as a trainer, it is your goal to fight and defeat the 8 gym leaders in order to challenge the regions Pokemon League and become Pokemon Champion of Unova! Of course, starting off in a lonely and secluded village means picking one of the three well designed starter Pokemon (Snivy, the grass snake, Tepig, the fire pig and Oshawott, the sea otter Pokemon) and leaving home to begin assembling your awesome team of Pokemon to help carry out this task.

So far so similar. But as you begin to play the game you'll realise that compared to previous iterations, the battles are lightning fast, and for the first time, the Pokemon move in battle as opposed to previous static sprites. As a result of this, battles are more exciting and engaging. Whilst the mechanics of the battle system remain the same as previous entries, Game Freak have added wild double battles and triple battles to spice proceedings up a little. All these innovations combined with infinite use TM's meaning you can tweak and tinker with your Pokemon as you see fit makes the already winning formula battle wise even more compelling.

The 'making things fresh again' mantra has extended to the choice of Pokemon themselves. No longer will going into a cave result in an endless string of Zubats and Geodudes, oh no, because all of the Pokemon featured in the main game are entirely new, and very well designed they are too. This extends beyond aesthetics - long time Pokemon players have derided the sameyness of fighting the same Pokemon time and time again and knowing their quirks and weaknesses. Gone are the days of instantly knowing a Pokemons typing from previous experience - this makes you think again and experience the wonder of learning and finding them for yourself.

Game Freak has also worked hard to improve the aesthetics since the last generation. 3D graphics are used with much more gusto than before, and in certain parts the camera swoops around and shows a true 3D perspective. Seasons also feature - every month the entire look of Unova changes, from green to brown, and from rain to snow. A long time weak point of Pokemon games are confusing, ugly and badly designed menu screens - this has been improved and everything looks cool, and more importantly functions well, which is essential in a game with so much micro-managing to be done.

Connectivity options have also been vastly improved. No longer is internet trading only available in one building - it's integrated into every Pokemon Centre. In fact, for local battling and trading, there's no longer any need to trek to a Pokemon Centre, as thanks to the C-Gear on the touch screen, Infrared can be used to instantly connect to other players and get that battle itch on.

So Black and White is an evolution then, not a revolution. It plays better, looks better and integrates with other players better, but it's still the same old Pokemon underneath the flashy surface. That said, when a game has such a sheer amount of content and plays so well, it's no mystery why millions of people still want to catch them all.

BUY IT

First Impressions: Sucker punch

Do you ever make chilli con carne? Have you ever made chilli and forgotten to season it properly? I have and I can tell you, it’s a strange and extremely disappointing experience to taste it afterwards. All the right things are there, the flavour is roughly similar and all but somehow it just isn’t anywhere near the standard of your usual cooking.

Can you see the parallel I’m trying to draw here?

The action in Sucker punch is bad, really bad, it commits the cardinal sin of action in film, it’s boring. It shouldn’t be, it has zombie Nazis, robots and dragons fighting unrealistically attractive and scantily clad women one of who rides a mecha suit. Not to mention it’s made by the guy who directed 300 and Watchmen, this film should kick ass but it doesn’t. Here’s why:

The zombie Nazis aren’t threatening at all, as the heroines can and do walk through them as though they were unnamed enemies in a dynasty warriors game.

The robots are just as ineffectual and have a bad habit of standing around and waiting for the stars to kill the last lot before trying to shoot them themselves.

The dragons cause a few more problems for the goodies but are ultimately both killed by one sword wound. Very anti-climactic.

The mecha, and all of the other military equipment one of the girls pilots (She seems to be the designated driver) are all very capable of getting the various missions done in seconds due to the sheer armour and fire power afforded to war-machines and so are forgotten about until they reappear as a convenient deus ex machina.

The girls, while unrealistically attractive and scantily clad, don’t have much character and never once let loose a quick badass one liner. So they don’t carry the film on the back of badass characters.

Overall it just isn’t very exciting. Remember what action films were like before the new Batman and James Bond films? Everyone jumping about on wires and ploughing through mooks without a thought (and not in a good way), none of the hits had any weight to them.

That’s what this is like and it’s a style of film I think Hollywood should really have moved past by now. There are a few nods to the Zach Snyder school of action, you know, the action slows down and speeds up you know the drill. Also, do you remember the first fight in Watchmen where the comedian gets thrown out of his window? Remember how when he gets punched in the face it goes slow-mo and his face gets all distorted and ripples with the force of the punch? That shot is in this movie and it kind of sucks. Probably because a twenty something year old actress probably has much better skin elasticity than Jeffrey Dean does.

So I don’t think Sucker punch is a very good action film. Or maybe to be clearer, I don’t think Sucker punch is a very good action FILM. Without giving out any spoilers the structure of the main bulk of Sucker punches plot structure is consists of the main character progressing though a comparatively realistic over world by going from area to important area and entering a symbolic themed world where the hero’s have to shoot, hack and slash there way though a selection of enemies usually culminating in a climactic battle.

This isn’t just me is it? That’s the plot of a video game right?

I love video games and all but when your high budget blockbuster’s plot is directly comparable to Pokémon red and blue you’ve made a mistake or two.

At the end of the day Sucker punch is the worst thing I’ve seen from Snyder, both in terms of screenplay and execution, it tries somewhat to do something a bit clever here and there but it uniformly fails. It ain’t great but it’s got tits and guns in it so it’ll probably make money right?

DON’T WATCH IT.