COMICS - wtf Batman hits Robin

Happy new year all. Sorry the blog's been a bit sparse as of late. Between the holidays and not too much interesting to blog about I haven't updated much.

I did happen on this today. It comes to us from "Teen Titans - Year One" which hit the stands last week. I picked it up cause the art looked cool and I thought a "Year One" story might be fun. Boy was I wrong. Way wrong. Not only does Batman hit Robin, which is all of stupid (or maybe Frank Miller wrote it), this book has a horrible story and outrageous dialogue. Plus it suffers from the typical "even though these Year-One stories are from the past, let's write them like it's taking place modern day" or to simplify "let's use the internet it can solve all our problems". ugh. I mean I guess it's possible that Batman was taken over OR is not really Batman, but to be honest I don't care.

Anyway I hear this is written by a writer of the Teen Titans cartoon. So maybe this is suppose to be in cartoon continuity, even though the characters are completely different. Who knows...All I know is it's dumb and the new year is not starting out well, it gets a

1 of 4 Ass Monkey

COMICS - Batman & The Joker

Well it's a big week for the Joker. 1st we got of some official press images of Heath Ledger as the Joker from "Batman the Dark Knight". I got to say I'm not too crazy about the look. I think Heath Ledger is a fine actor and I'm looking forward to his portrayal of Mr. J, but I think they went too far away from source material for the film. That being said, if the script and the performances are strong enough, then I'm sure I can look past it. I mean I looked past the fact that Alfred didn't have a mustache in "Batman Returns". :)

I give this look a 1 of 4 Ass Monkey

However I reserve the right to change my rating once the film is released. It could potentially go as high as a 3 of 3 Ass Monkey. If you're out there Heath I'm sure you're standing by.

On another Joker note. All-Star Batman and Robin #8 hit the stands last Wednesday. It's the 1st appearance of the Joker is this book. As most of you know I HATE this book. I mean I wouldn't wipe my ass with the pages from this book. It's god awful. Poor Jim Lee's talents are waisted on this POS. The fact that the same guy who wrote Sin City, Daredevil and Dark Knight wrote this crap-fest astounds me.

I do honestly believe that Miller knows what he is writing, he can't be that stupid. He's throwing his shit at the Warner Bros. wall knowing that DC will pay him an ass-load for it.

I know for a fact that he writes this book on the crapper while reading the latest issue of Maxim.










If you read this book knowing that simple fact it can be a fun read. A buddy sent me a link to a humorous article that breaks down the 1st 7 issues. This a MUST read, even if you haven't read any issues of the book. Here is PART 01 and PART 02. check them out, the dude summarizes this book perfectly.

I can't give this book anything more than a 1 of 4 Ass Monkey.

Not even Jim Lee's art can help this rating. If I could give it less I would.

Comics - Midnight Men

There has not been much to blog about the last few weeks, I don't know why, but not much has caught my fancy. Maybe it's the holidays. Anyway I thought I'd share some pages from the comic book I'm producing called "Midnight Men" . Hope you like them. You can read up on all the characters HERE on the Midnight Men blog.

Comics - Pulp it up

Thought I'd share a blog I found today called Pulp Sunday. Every Sunday artist Francesco Francavilla draws a scene from a pulp novel or radio show. He's starting off with one of my favorite pulp heroes, The Shadow.

You can also check out Francesco Francavilla's website HERE.

I give this site a 4 of 4 ass monkey (but how can I not).

Comics - Occasional Superheroine Blog

I just discovered this Blog called Occasional Superheroine. It's written by a chic who has worked in the comics business. She's got some interesting insight to the business of comics as well as some funny comments of other pop culture stuff. It's a fun read. If you like my blog I think you might find this cool as well. I'm gonna add her blog to my links list below.

Comics - Online comics..to download or not?

As many of you know I download my comic books. If I read the book and like It, I pick up the trade. This way my money supports worth-while material. Most of my friends are on the fence about downloads, as it's waaay illegal. My feeling is why should I pay for something if it's gonna suck. Especially if someone else like advertisers are paying for it already. It's not like comics don't have ads, they do. And not just for other comics, that I would be okay with, but you have to dig though ad-upon-ad for movies, games and deodorant. At least with other things I do pay for blindly, like movies, I only have to sit though a few trailers, of other movies, before I can see if I've wasted my money. Also with movies I get a "trailer" to see if I'm gonna like the movie. Not that a good trailer means a good movie, but do you get that with comics? No, you do not. All you know is if the cover looks good and who's writing and drawing the book. Plus 60% of the time the cover artist is not the artist of the book itself....anyway I could go on and on, but I digress.

The point of all this is that I come across a website today that you can download comics (among other print material, like books) legally. This site is called Wowio.com. CBR did a review of it in their Pipeline column called "MORE COMICS ON-LINE". Basically you sign up, which it kind of a pain cause they ask you a bunch of questions, but after that you're on your way. They don't have any main-stream books as of yet, but they have lots of indies you can check out. They limit you to 3 downloads and day and each downloadable pdf is bookend with an advertisement. Not bad as you're getting it for FREE. You can also set up a que like Net-filcks, so you know what you can download everyday.

I see this as the future of comics, as my friend Chuck says, " the comic companies are going to wake up one day and their lunch is going to be gone". It's really only a matter of time.

I give this site a 3 out of 4 Ass Monkey

Comics - Umbrella Academy - Apocalypse Suite

4 of 4 Ass Monkey

When I 1st heard of this book, I was mildly intrigued. It seemed like it could be a fun book, along the lines of Doom Patrol or a dark version on the X-men. The promo art by Gabriel Bá seemed to fit well with the concept I had read. The only downside was Dark Horse as promoting that it was written by Gerard Way of the band My Chemical Romance. Now I don't have anything against My Chemical Romance, in fact I enjoy some of their music, I'm just not I big fan of folks using their "Star" status to parlay it into a comic book writing career. It seems to be the big comics trend nowadays to get either movie stars or Movie/Tv writers to write comics and to be honest most of them suck, and when they are good they never come out on time. So the whole aspect of Gerard Way writing this book was a BIG negative in my book. However as the art and concept seemed cool I thought I'd check it out.

Story Synopsis (from wikki)
The members of the Umbrella Academy, a formerly disbanded group of young super-heroes, reunite 20 years later after they hear about the death of their adopted father Sir Reginald Hargreeves. Hargreeves, an alien disguised as a famous entrepreneur, collected the members of the Umbrella Academy shortly after their birth and trained them to save the world.

After reading the 1st issue I was pretty impressed. Everything in this book seems to gel, the art and story really work well together. Gerard Way did a really great job of introducing us to his world and cast of characters but not going too far as to bore the reader.

I posted the 1st issue online in case anyone wants to check it out. You can read it HERE. There is also good review at Ain't It Cool News HERE.

Comics - THOR - In the Heartland.

3 Ass Monkey - Above Average

So Marvel brought Thor back from the dead a few months ago. I know this cause my mom has sent me 3 newspaper articles about it. "Why would she do that?" you ask. Cause it seems Thor has decided to purchase 200 acres of land outside of my home town of Oklahoma City. It seems he needed a new place to set up Asgard. Apparently the old one wasn't working so well for him as it was destroyed when he was killed a couple of years ago.

Issue 03 hit the stands this week. As with most new books, I thought I'd give it a few issues to see where it was headed. I've never been that big of a fan of Thor. I've always wanted to read the now classic Simonson arc, but I've never gotten around to it. This new series is brought to us by writer J. Michael Straczynski (JMS) and artist Olivier Coipel. Both of these guys are bringing their "A" game. I've liked most of JMS's work, with the exception of Spider-Man, and Coipel has a great style that really works well with the Norse God of Thunder. The first couple of issues start out a tad slow, granted there is lots of set up, but by the time you get to issue 03, shit really starts to hit the fan. Iron-Man desides to confront Thor. If you read Marvel's last BIG crossover event "Civil War", which I stupidly did, you'll know that Iron-Man (who is now a huge dick) is the head of Shield and that all people with superpowers now must register with the US Government. Oh and also while the world thought Thor was dead he and Reed Richards decided it was a good idea to make a clone of Thor to help rally people to their cause during Civil War. Believe it or not that did not go well, so now Thor is pissed.

Enter issue 03. Thor vs Iron-Man = Good times!!!!

I'll be grabbing the trade of this in a few months, as it's hooked me so far.

If you want to read issue 01 I've posted it. Check it out HERE. Hope you enjoy it. As always let me know what you think.

Comics - Comic art is cool !!!!

So as most of you know because I'm an obsessive compulsive I download like 15-20 comics a week. Out of those read about 4-5, time permitting. If I like what I'm reading I'll stop reading after the 1st issue and pick up the trade. Anyway, I was reading my usual 4-5 comics a week and came across an Iron Man book called "Iron Man - Enter The Mandarin". It's basically the Mandarin origin. It's off to a nice start, but what really pulled me into was the art by ERIC CANETE. This dude kicks all sorts of ass. I need to get him to do a Midnight Men sketch if he has time. Anyway check out his blog, it makes for a fun read.