Welcome back to Comic Book lucky dip and boy do I have a treat for you this time. I have recently subscribed to the DC Universe app so now my collection of comics covers a lot of DC History. I told the search to select at comic at random, I don’t know if it actually did but it came up with Batman Family #4 from 1976, easily the oldest comic I’ve ever reviewed.
Today’s randomly selected comic is Detective Comics #1051. This is the most recent of the comics I’ve reviewed for this but time is meaningless here, this was the 5th part of the Shadows of the Bat Storyline going on at the time, written by Mariko Tomaki, with art by Max Raynor and with a backup story written by Matthew Rosenberg with Fernando Blanco on art.
Welcome back to the comic book lucky dip where I pick one of my thousands of comics at random and review it without explaining the backstory or context to the story. And well, chosen at random this week is a one-shot issue. Tales From the Dark Multiverse: Infinite Crisis. And this is a perfect fit for this format as it’s a one-shot issue so the story is self-contained but also a major misfit because it’s a retelling of an old(er) event comic and per the rules of this format, I must not make reference to it at all [watch me fail at that]
On writing duties we have James Tynion IV who is a decent writer of many books I’ve enjoyed, and a few that I didn’t. On pencils it’s Aaron Lopresti, I hadn’t seen much of his work before but from what I can tell, he never seems to stick around. Might just be bad luck, or fill-in jobs. Matt Ryan is on Inks, not the guy who plays Constantine.
After a month-long break, we’re back with Titans and we last had 2 of the series’ stronger episodes back-to-back, can it end on a strong note, let’s find out
We’re back with Titans, and seriously, there are 4 more episodes to go. Rule of thumb, if a show wants to tell one continuous story, it should do so over no more than 6 (at a stretch 8) episodes. If it’s a mystery story, I’d drop that to 3 episodes. There are exceptions, of course, Daredevil seasons 1 and 3 managed to be riveting over 13 episodes and I’m excluding stories that tell smaller stories whilst weaving in a larger one, like Young Justice or the like. And Hell, Doctor Who Flux managed to be a confusing mess in 6 episodes and likely would’ve done better with more time. But enough preamble, let’s take a look at the next 2 episodes of Titans and see if something actually happens in them.
So, we’re continuing season 2 of Titans, and so far the quality has been decidedly meh, can you believe we’re half way through at this point but it feels like almost nothing has happened. Still, the strongest episode this season so far was the flashback and we’re starting this retrospective with part 2.
And we’re back with another dose of the Snyder Cut and a likely rather scattershot set of viewpoints around the changes made here. Unlike with previous reboots discussed here, a lot of material was in the original, the original I have already reviewed and the plot in this film is pretty much the same. It’s hard to determine exactly how successful the Snyder Cut has actually been. It’s certainly created a lot of buzz, and the more positive reception certainly helped but because it’s been released on a streaming service the value it creates will be dependant on how many subscribers it brings on and retains. And 2021 has been a big year for HBO Max with all of its big cinematic releases being placed on the service for free for a few weeks at time of release. This was an attempt to reclaim something as Covid has drawn audiences away from traditional theatres.
So you remember in what turned out to be the concluding episode of season 1 they teased Superboy and Krypto. Well, we’re at episode 6 of season 2 so finally they decide to actually deliver on that tease, right as they have a big cliff-hanger to deal with.
OK, we’re looking at a different kind of reboot here. After Batman v Superman planted seeds for a Justice League, Zack Snyder was hard at work on the project and had done most of the filming for it, sadly it was interrupted by the tragic death of his daughter and he left the project to grieve and I hold no ill will toward him for that.
Still, that takes time and they needed alignment in the
actors’ filming schedules and various other issues to continue filming, there
were already difficulties with the product we ended up with, hence Supes’ awful
CG chin to remove the facial hair for Mission: Impossible. So I get why WB
handed over the reins to Joss Whedon. The problems were many-fold, WB execs
wanted the film out so they could get their bonuses, he was also under pressure
to lighten the tone based on reception to Batman v Superman. And no, I’m not
defending Whedon acting like a piece of crap on-set, Ray Fisher has come out
with some rather disturbing on-set stories with both Whedon and Geoff Johns
mentioned by name as perpetrators.
Still, I’m not a huge fan of Snyder either, his take on Superman
felt like a fundamental misunderstanding of the character and he drew on
material that he also fundamentally misunderstood in Batman v Superman. He also
began riling up fan interest in reviving his take on the film. I can’t
understand the level of entitlement here, it’s not a good look and neither is the
studio acquiescing to the tune of $70m? This film already had a ballooned
budget thanks to all the reshoots.
Of course, with Zack it’s all about the artistic vision. How
do I know he’s gone this pretentious route? This ‘movie’ has a 4:3 aspect ratio
and is available in Black and White. There’s nothing wrong with an artistic
vision however, but with a medium like film, it should be an entertaining
product first and foremost and that’s the angle I’ll be judging it from. It’s
also nearly 4 hours long so to protect my sanity, I’ll be splitting this over 2
reviews. They’ve nicely broken it into 6 chapters so I’ll try and stick with
chapters 1-3 for this review, and 4-6 for next week’s review.
We’re taking another look at season 2 of Titans, the last season before the show moved to HBO Max
Time to take a look at Titans, the show that is still going on for some reason. Season 2 debuted on the DC Universe app in 2019. Season 1 had some great moments but had a pretty dull story and all the edginess you could ever want. The season opener for this season I covered as a rage review, it spent the first half concluding the season 1 arc in a pretty poor fashion, and the other setting up the events of season 2 as Jason has joined the Titans and Deathstroke is ready to enact his revenge or something. Let’s dig in and take a look at what season 2 has to offer in earnest.
We’re looking at Young Justice Outsiders one last time for the final run of episodes. As I write this the newest season, co-titled Phantoms hasn’t come out yet but it due to soon. [Time of posting the first half of the season has come out, and has its pros and cons]
Hope you enjoyed the last 3 episodes with the Outsiders, they do not have another mission until episode 24, in the meantime, we need to catch up with everyone else as we dive into episodes 20-22 of Outsiders.
OK, let’s get back into Young Justice Outsiders and, in the 6th of 8 reviews for the season, finally get to the debut of the titular Outsiders.
So, here’s one that’s a bit interesting, and by interesting, I mean that the title is excruciatingly long, this is Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn.
I try not to think about Suicide Squad too often, here’s
hoping the James Gunn version is better. But one thing I couldn’t complain
about was Margot Robbie’s performance as Harley Quinn. Harley Quinn over the
years has surged in popularity, especially recently as her animated series,
which to my astonishment was really f*cking good.
Anyway, with Harley’s star rising, a solo film was
inevitable and the one that DC Ultimately greenlit was one championed by Margot
Robbie herself. She was of the belief that Harley needed a team to interact
with… a point I will bring up later in the review itself.
The end result is an R-rated $100m blockbuster, on the
cheaper end for superhero films, written by Christina Hodson, known for the
saviour of the Transformers franchise, Bumblebee, and directed by Cathy Yan, the
first Asian-American director of a superhero film.
The performance was, regrettably underwhelming, making just over $200m and with a critical score of around 78% with a 6.8/10 average.
We’re back for another look at YJ outsiders, how will the first half of the season be capped? Let’s take a look.
We’re back with another run of Young Justice, more episodes done from memory, with a little help from the wiki summaries so again things may be out of order or condensed. Sorry, I only have so much time for these.
We’re back for another run of Young Justice and it’s happened again, I did the reviews then lost them, this time thanks to word glitching. I decided to have a go at doing these from memory and whilst the actual plot points are definitely from the episode, they may be a little out of order or condensed.
So, Young Justice Outsiders
It’s been a while since I’ve been able to talk about this
show, the last time being way back in 2016, when I did an editorial one what I
wanted to see from this show… and I’ll say I got 1/5.
My thoughts have shifted a little on Young Justice. It did
an exemplary job in season one balancing the overarching storyline with its
cast of main characters. By majorly expanding the team in season 2, it also
really torpedoed the balance in favour of plot as opposed to character
development, making certain characters feel like pieces on a chessboard.
Outsiders, as I’ll explain, suffers from a similar problem, but I’ll get to
that later.
What’s interesting is that fan demand and the launch of a DC
streaming service lead to the announcement of YJ Outsiders in 2016, the show
would ultimately be released in 2019, which is quite extensive gap, DC
announced the show’s renewal literally days after the creators found out.
So minor changes before we get into it, James Arnold Taylor has taken over from Tim Curry as G Gordon Godfrey, who has also permanently taken over the role as the Flash from George Eads after voicing him in the season 2 finale. Could be a cost saving measure, voice actors are portraying multiple characters across the board this season, and there are other budget-saving measures as we’ll get into.
According to a source I can’t seem to find now, Logan Grove was likely off in the military at the time of Outsiders’ production, so Beast Boy has been recast with Greg Cipes reprising his role from Teen Titans (and TTG). And for what it’s worth he does a decent job.
I’ll be covering the first 13 episodes of the series now, with the hopes of doing the other half in the later half of the year. Part of the problem is that there’s no series purchase option on Amazon for the second half, if I wanted to buy the second half at present, I’d have to buy every episode individually and at £2.49 an episode (I live in the UK so HBOMax isn’t an option), I am not doing that.
I wasn’t intending to do this one, but it’s a leadup to another review so here we are, the Lego Batman movie.
Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t enjoy the
movie, far from it, but the reason I don’t review it is the same reason I
haven’t done an in-depth review of a lego short since way back when I did Star
Wars, there’s precious little to say about them. Most of the jokes in them are
self-referential, either to the fact that they’re Lego or to various plot
elements of the story it’s based on. They’re designed to sell Lego merch to
children first and foremost. The Lego Batman is a good kids advertisement,
don’t get me wrong here but its humour is satirical and it’s difficult to
explain why I like it without also spoiling the jokes, plus unlike with the
Lego Movie, there’s no overt real world allegory to it.
Still, it’s hardly surprising that Lego Batman would get a
spinoff. Warner Brothers already owns the rights to the character, there have
been 3 Lego Batman games and various Lego shorts based around Batman, plus
Batman is still DC Comics’ most popular character. The film made a reasonable
$312m on its $80m budget, not quite as much as its predecessor but enough to
call it a success. And it has a pretty stunning 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes
with a 9.5/10 average score.
