Into the Longbox

As any one knows, I'm a huge Black Panther fan. As far as the comic books, I have all the issues from each volume of his solo series. This may exclude a mini-series here and there. This book and the Fantastic Four are the only books I buy, regardless of the creative team. Other books I drop in and out, but these two are my constants.  Before I dive in, let me say this about the Black Panther comics and I will be honest. They are hit and miss. There is no consistency because each writer wants to put their own spin on him. Sure, some grand ideas may carry over, but that is it. I will say that the Christopher Priest run is the definitive run of Black Panther and it was that run that made me love the character. I didn't care about Black Panther before reading that run in the mid-2000s. The past few years, Marvel has done right by the Black Panther by having black writers handle his solo series. The last couple of years were written by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It started out as an intrigui...

Welcome to a special post of Into the Longbox. Why is this special? Well, this mini-series starring the Thing combines two of my favorite things. The Thing from the Fantastic Four and one of my new favorite writers, Walter Mosley. A few years ago I read "Devil in a Blue Dress" and was so impressed that I've been working my way through his books. Specifically the Easy Rawlins novels for right now. I bring this all up because he is a black author of well renown, writing a comic book about one of my favorite characters. I couldn't have paired this combo any better than if I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I might have mentioned before that I am always hesitant when an author or a celebrity steps into the comics world to write a comic book. Before getting my hands on this book, I read an interview with Mosley which you can find  here . What impressed me is he spoke to why he liked the Thing and something clicked inside me that explained why The Thing appeals to m...

My review will be as lazy as this movie. Zing. As sure as the sun will rise everyday, I will go to see a Marvel movie. This was only the third movie I've seen in theaters this year and since the pandemic started. It's no surprise that those three movies were "Black Widow", "F9" and now this.  I was EXTREMELY skeptical of this movie. Marvel is now navigating the fringes of their catalogue since they burned through all their top sellers. This is minus X-Men and Fantastic Four properties, which they now own now. This movie seemed like way more of a reach than Guardians of the Galaxy. I was not going to see it, but of course, like I said before, it's a Marvel movie. I have a moral obligation to go see it. So how was it? It was fine. Not great. Not terrible. There was some marvel-ness in it with the humor and the wise cracking heroes. I'll touch back on this a little later. It also was a movie that was a good stand alone. It's in the Marvel Universe, ...

I have no excuse for why I haven't talked about this up until now. I watched each episode as it came out and it definitely left an impression. Now I have to sit here and try to think about how I felt a few weeks ago, but I will do my best. Overall, I really enjoyed the show. It took me a while to get into the animation style, but after a while, I accepted it. What helped was having a strong voice acting cast. They included as many as the original actors as they could legally get. The most touching for me was hearing Chadwick Boseman reprise T'Challa a few more times. I felt those performances. This show is in the tradition of the comics, with the twist being that it is focused on the movie properties. I get that because that is what people know and is the best hook for drawing people in. In the comics, it is a concept that allowed Marvel to take some wild swings at pivotal moments in their history. In this show, they cherry pick what they think are some big moments from the mov...

Look, I realize this show is like ten years old. However, Netflix saw fit to inform me of it being available a few months ago and I had to watch it. I vaguely remember this being some kind of experiment that Marvel and Madhouse embarked upon back in the early part of the LAST decade. Anime was getting even more hot, you see and Marvel had to get a piece of that action. Cause...Marvel. I definitely dismissed it then and I kind of dismissed it now, but given my uncanny (see what I did there) ability to watch just about it anything, I made myself watch this. If nothing else I was curious. Well, it's definitely an anime. It made me go through some complex feelings that I'm going to work out here. First off, I didn't like this. At all. At first I was trying to think, "Am I just not that into anime any more like I used to be?" or "Would I have liked this ten years ago when it came out?" I still like anime, but I don't consume it as much as I used to and I ...

Once again, I know I am late on sharing my thoughts. Anyways, let's get on with it. I saw Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings almost two weeks ago, on a temporary release from child care that my wife gave me. I picked a theater where I knew there would be no one and at a time no one is going. I'm still not comfortable going to a theater full of people.  In case you didn't know, this is the latest Marvel movie in the long running cinematic universe. Did I like it? Is the sky blue? Yes, yes I did. Not because I'm a Marvel zombie, but because I legitimately thought it was a good film. When I was finished, what struck me the most is how different it felt from other Marvel movies. There are small ties to the larger MCU with some cameos here and there, but otherwise it is detached from all that continuity. That makes it refreshing. We also get some straight up Martial arts which puts it in the league of Captain America: Winter Soldier as the best hand to hand action we...

I'm back again to talk about a book that covers an identity I am not a part of. Look, I read things and I want to talk about them. My hopes is that they will interest you in them too. With that being said, let me talk about "Marvel Voices: Identity #1". There has been a number of these kind of issues and there will be more. I will attempt to talk about each of them. So this particular issue focuses on characters of Pacific-Asian-Islander descent. Let's not ignore the fact that Shang-Chi is out in theaters, so the time was ripe to do something like this. Understandably, he gets the opening story in this book. There are other books I need to pick up in this Marvel Voices line, but at least with the Pride on and this one, I feel like they are getting better curated. My main complaint about the Pride issue was how many characters they packed in and how it felt like Marvel was going to pull a muscle in their shoulder from patting themselves on the back so much. The entire ...

Wow. Let me tell you why I feel that this show has the best Superman we've had on screen. Initially, I was not sold on Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch as Superman and Lois when they first appeared in Supergirl and during that big Infinite Crisis crossover event that ran through all the CW shows. I am glad that I was so wrong.  If there is one problem with Superman, is how can you have him be threatened when he is so powerful? One answer is to give him a family. Now, given all his power, he can't be there ALL the time and he has to juggle between saving the world and his family. That struggle becomes very apparent early and often in this series. I think that choice makes Superman instantly more compelling. I won't rush to say relatable, but it gives him more real world problems that he can't punch his way through. The fact that I recently became a father also probably plays into why I love this take on Superman. It lines up with what I think was the best run of Supe...

Ah yes. The Suicide Squad. I know it did well at the box office, but I'm shocked they got another go at this particular set of characters. Even more surprising is that they lured James Gunn over to direct. Clearly they wanted some of that Marvel-ness injected into their movies. I don't think that is debatable. Did it work? Well, to me, not really. This is a vastly superior movie to the first Suicide Squad, but I have a couple of problems with this film. I'm going to go in no particular order. Scope. I don't like the scope of this movie. When this particular set of characters are squaring off against Starro, you've gone in the wrong direction. That is a Justice League level villain, not the Suicide Squad. These movies are better served with the characters doing black ops operations against more normal humans. The final battle is ridiculous in all the wrong ways, I feel.  Last movie they fought a powerful witch, this movie a five story tall alien. That does not fit at...

This is another post that is going to feel very dated because this is already happening. The imprint, "Milestone" is back at DC and after years of talking about it, they have finally brought it back. In a nutshell, Milestone was created back in 1993 by a couple of black artists and writers as a way to diverse comic books, which was severely lacking at the time. I had a long post talking about my complicated history with Milestone. I have scrapped that and will spare you all of that. In summary, as a kid getting into comics, I didn't give it a chance because while I wanted more black super heroes, I wanted them in one of the big two, Marvel or DC. To me, they were not legitimate enough. So I never gave them a chance until I was much older. It is something that I regret.  As an adult, I got into them and realize how special it truly was. I could also trust that because it was created by black creators, what I was getting was authentic. Not some white guy's interpretati...

Once again, life has gotten in the way and I have yet to give my thoughts on this show, which I finished months ago. I will summarize this show. It is show created by Jordan Blum and Patton Oswalt. It also starts Patton Oswalt as the titular character.  Think of it as being in the same vein as Robot Chicken. If you're not familiar with THAT show, then think stop motion animation.  It is ten episodes long and at 30 minutes an episode, digestible enough to make it east to binge in a short amount of time.   My feelings on it? I liked it, but did not love it. It is  funny given it's tone and the genius of Oswalt's voice acting. They do assemble a pretty good voice cast around him and it is fun to watch the shenanigans of a super villain and his villainous empire or lack thereof.  There are definitely a good amount of funny gags, but at ten episodes, not everything is going to be a winner. I mentioned before how you could binge it, but I found myself only being ...

A few weeks ago I finally got around to watching, "The New Mutants". As it is a comic book based movie AND in the X-Men universe, I am obligated to watch. This is the service I provide to YOU, dear reader. I will spare you all the details about how troubled the production on this movie was and dive right in. Right off the top, this is a bad movie. It's a shame because you have some good actors that have gone on to become bigger names. In this movie, you have a mutants with varying powers and they are confined to a house to make it a like a locked room mystery. This is a gross misuse of these characters to confine them to a setting like this. I didn't look into it, but I can suspect that maybe budget was one issue. If you don't have the money to do these characters right, you shouldn't do them at all. I say this because they chose the characters that have different iconic displays of powers.  I don't have a problem with the characters they chose. I actually...

Marvel has been pumping out the content on Disney+ this year and right on the heels of Loki finishing up, we get the animated, "What If...?" series. The first episode explored the scenario where Sharon Carter became Captain America instead of Steve Rogers. It was pretty good. However, I don't think they went far enough with the premise. It didn't feel different enough from the first Captain America movie. I'm happy to report that the events of the second episode, "What if T'Challa became a Star Lord?" was very different and more fully realized the potential of this show. I will do my best to avoid  spoilers. At first, the idea of this premise seemed dumb to me, not going to lie. A few minutes in, I immediately accepted it and was all in for this ride. I want to start off by saying this episode was a little emotional for me. Not cause of the content, but because this is the last time we hear Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa. He recorded this before he...

In this blog, I try to write about books that I enjoy. I am your resident comic book nerd, so I want to use my tiny platform to speak to that. My favorite thing to do is to give a hot take on something. Most of the time they are positive. In rare occasions they will be negative. This book, "M.O.M.: Mother of Madness" is that book.  This book is co-written by Emilia Clarke. We know her as Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones. I am always glad when a famous person wants to come into the comic book world. It can only bring exposure and potentially more fans. It gives us a wider pool of things to read. I feel the same about famous novelists, writers for popular magazines, etc. However, the pitfall of this is that you have these newbies coming into this medium alongside people that trained for it, appreciate it and know how it works. There is a degree of craft that  these new writers will not get. That can become very apparent. I say all that to temper what I am about to say ab...

Wow, am I late in writing this. I finished Loki weeks ago, but forgot to mention any of my thoughts on it. I'll save you my usual rambling before my review and just get into it. You can stop when you've had enough! I really liked Loki and that surprised me. After the first two episodes, I was on the fence because things were moving so slowly. It eventually picked up and concluded with what I thought was the best final episode in all the Marvel shows. This show delivered on the promise to have major implications for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Let me talk about what this show isn't. There are some action scenes in this series, but this is not an action show, like Falcon and the Winter Soldier was. Not even a little bit. I would dare argue the action in this show isn't really that good, but that's okay. That is not this show's bread and butter. What the show turned out to be, is a wonderful introspection about Loki himself. Now this is not the Loki we got to k...

I know that Pride month ended a few weeks ago, but just before that I started to read Marvel Voices: Pride #1 . I am just late in making this post. This issue in the vein of the DC Pride book I talked about a few weeks ago. When it comes to Marvel and DC, comparisons are always unavoidable. Like the DC book, I wanted to support what Marvel was doing for Pride month. Marvel has been doing special issues like this to showcase under represented communities via characters and their creators. So how did I feel about Marvel's foray into this? Let's get into that.  First off, like I said with the DC book, I know a little something about representation and how it matters. However, I can't speak to how this book will feel to those in the LGBTQ community. I can only speak to what I see here. This issue is massive and I would argue overstuffed. The DC book was a book about their characters as part of a day in the life. There is a deft to the story telling there that I think is missin...

A few days ago I was able to go back to the theater for the first time since early 2020, the pre-pandemic days. It was nice. I don't have much more to say other than it was nice to watch a movie in a theater. I'm glad that Black Widow was that first movie back. Let's jump straight into it. I really liked this movie for a number of reasons. Before I get into that, I want to say first that this movie was a long time coming. Even if it came out last year as intended, it was still a long overdue. It is a shame that after Marvel pretty much killed Black Widow off in Avengers: Endgame, that we get this movie. The potential for stories was always there, but Marvel didn't pull the trigger. This movie felt more in line with Captain America: Winter Soldier. We're back to government run spy programs and intrigue. I will say that it is pretty telling that it's always the Russians that are the bad guy. I would like to see these movies face the fact that the US isn't much...

  I think it goes without saying, that representation matters. We all like to see ourselves reflected in the media we consume. Whether that is movies, music, comic books, novels, etc. For me, since this is a comic book blog after all, I'm going to go with comic books. In the past, I've immediately written a post about a comic that impacted me in a specific way that I felt I should share with people. This happened last night and this morning as I read two different offerings from DC. I know historically, people see me as a DC hater and a total Marvel fanboy. Those descriptions aren't completely invalid, but the misconception is that I somehow hate DC. I like DC a lot. I just prefer Marvel more. The books I'm going to talk about that I have pictured above are some of the reasons why I like DC. Now they eternal cynic in me would want to dismiss such offerings because a savvy company will have their finger to the pulse of a moment in history and try to capitalize on it. It...

I know I am late to the party on this post. I meant to say something sooner, but that's life. So let's talk about the show Invincible, that appeared on Amazon Prime. From what I can remember in reading the comic, it is very faithful. Simultaneously, it evolved with the times in some of the roles of the characters. There are other sites out there to do that work for you. I'm not going to do that here.  I thought this show is excellent. The comic itself was excellent, so that translated into a great show. I think the biggest thing that will jump out is the great talent they assembled for the voice acting. I'm happy to see Steven Yuen getting his due this year and he was the perfect choice for the main character, Mark Grayson. I am convinced that J.K. Simmons can do no wrong and he is perfect here as Mark's Father, Nolan. He has an underlying menace throughout this whole first season that you can just feel. Also, I'm glad they gave Sandra Oh plenty to do.  The rest...

  I just finished the sixth episode of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier on Disney Plus. I wanted to write this as soon as I could because I want to do this while my feelings are fresh. I had big feelings about the last two episodes. When this series first started, all I wanted was for them to address the impact of having a black Captain American and how Sam Wilson handles that responsibility. We got a snippet of that when Rhodey and Sam speak for a few minutes in the first episode. On it's face, it seemed like a simple conversation. However, it was dripping with a lot of subtext. Basically, Rhodey was trying to tell him that if Sam doesn't take up the shield, that Cap hand picked him for, the Government would get their own guy and it would not be a black man. In the second episode, we meet Isaiah Bradley and we touch on race a little bit more there. We even have a scene where the policy are called and they almost arrest Sam. If it wasn't for his fame, he would have been tr...