Into the Longbox

Let's carry on with Part II of my year in review. Now we get on to favorite writers, mini-series, events and favorite series. I have also started to read more graphic novels, so I now have a category for that as well. Favorite Writer of 2021 Gene Luen Yang - Shang Chi (Marvel)  - I have absolutely loved what Gene has been doing with his Shang Chi series that started in the middle of the year. I won't act like Marvel put this book out with good intentions. It was to coincide with their movie. I get that. However, Gene has taken his obvious love of the character and is doing something meaningful with him. I've said it before somewhere, but for characters that are non-white, it makes sense to have someone of that similar background write their stories. I'm not saying that white people can't, but there is a lot of nuance that they can never capture. This book has been a fun ride as Shang Chi interacts with the larger Marvel Universe once more. For years he's been re...

I think we can all agree that 2021was ALSO a crap year. I had some big personal changes in my life during the year. I also read a TON of books. Probably more in a year than I ever have. Good thing I use a service to track my collection and I made a conscious effort to track all my books this year, specifically. Looking over the list, I forgot half of this stuff came out and I read it. For instance, DC had this Future State event that I completely forgot. I forgot that Marvel had it's King in Black mini-series as well! This year did feature a return of movies to movie theaters, so I did venture out to see a few. As you can guess, they were all Marvel movies. There were also a lot of TV shows. I have been crushed under the weight of them, specifically DC. So I am way behind all of them except for Superman & Lois. Overall, I probably picked up the same amount of DC books, if not a little more due to more Bat Family stuff. I still buy an insanely high volume of Marvel comics. My Im...

Read past this point at your own peril. There will be spoilers When this show got announced, I was like, "Okay. Thanks Marvel. Give us a series that literally no one asked for." I like Hawkeye in the comics just fine. I hate him in the movies. He's just this bland ass, flat character and Jeremy Renner's performance hadn't changed my opinion. I also feel like Marvel has, to use wrestling terms, tried to get him over. "Look, he's got a FAMILY. He's a family man." "Look, he's lost his family and now he is RONIN". Side note, Ronin is a character only the most hardcore of fans would even know or care about. So using him seemed to be throwing a bone to fans or something. In Avengers: End Game, when it came down to him and Natasha, I was actively mad it wasn't HIM that died. So yeah, not a fan of this guy. I was not excited about this series, but I am resigned to my fate to watch every Marvel Cinematic Universe offering. I'm flawed...

I wanted to sit with this for a few days. Mostly because I didn't want to let my rose colored glasses color my opinion of this movie. Now that I have waited and thought on it... It is still a great movie!! I'm still wrestling where it sits in my list of Spider-Man movies and Marvel movies as a whole because let's face it, Marvel's hand in these movies is what has made them great. Let's dive right in. I want to warn you, there will be spoilers! I can't talk about some of the things in this movie without spoiling things. So if you haven't seen it yet, stop right here!