Into the Longbox

X-Marks the spot with this series! (Ugh. I know. Sorry about that) Last week, the last issue of Jonathan Hickman's X-men two mini-series came to an end. His return to Marvel was billed as a big event that would change the landscape of the X-men forever (until the next big thing). I can say definitively that he has done just that. If you read comics, I get that Hickman is not everyone's cup of tea. He tends to write grand, long spanning, complicated stories. Separately, the pieces do not make sense, but they come together as a whole at the end. There is a brilliance in the way that he writes because he is well aware of what he is doing and you just have to wait till the end. I say all that to say that each issue of his book went from confusing to masterful. Now that it is all done, I can say it is definitely masterful. He has definitely reshaped the X-Men. Their mission is now different. I truly enjoyed this series and there were genuine, mouth wide open surprise moments...

If I hear send in the clowns one more time... I wanted to write this up as soon as I could while my memory is still fresh. I will start off by applauding DC for trying to do something different than it's normal super hero fare. With that being said, this was not a movie that we needed. This is the kind of origin story I don't want, especially for the Joker. As I think about this movie, there were many things that I thought were problematic. I swear I will have a few good things to say, but let me start with what I didn't like. This movie is extremely slow. I get they are trying to do a slow build, but time is money and this movie wasted both for me in the first half of the movie. We follow around Arthur Fleck, who will become the Joker. He is the saddest of sad sacks, with aspirations to be a comedian, but missing that thing you need. Good jokes. We spend too much time in his day to day as he lives with his mom and tries to chase his dreams. They try to make him s...