Into the Longbox

Wow, this movie did not disappoint. I'm a little late to getting to this movie because I finally watched it last week. I won't make you wait to give you my feelings, I loved this movie. I still love Spider-Man: Homecoming, but this is easily my second favorite Spider-Man movie of the Holland movies. Scratch that. Out of all of them. And yes, I liked it more than Spider-Man 2 (the Raimi/Maguire one). Anyways, be prepared for spoilers. This movie is quintessential Spider-Man and I will tell you how. In the comics, Peter/Spider-Man is constantly put upon. Either by choices he made or something happening to him. He gets put through the wringer, but he still does the right thing and saves people. That is the throughline of this entire film and you watch Peter wrestle with his choice from Spider-Man: No Way Home.  He's out there doing Spider-Man things and nothing else. I felt so bad for bro because he is not dealing with all of this well. At all. Tom Holland is so good as an act...

Well, season 2 is in the bag and I have a lot of thoughts. I'll try to keep them brief, but I don't know if that is a promise I will keep. I'm doing away with my list format so I can let these thoughts flow out. Be warned, there are spoilers. Anyways, what did I think of this season? It was okay. I did not love it like the first season. I borderline almost didn't like it. There are specific things that save it for me and I will get into it. I know this show went through turmoil with it's showrunner and you can look that up online. I won't get into it here. I bring it up because this season just doesn't have the FEEL of the first one. It felt very disjointed. X-Men has a long history and this season felt like they tried to cram twenty years of story beats from the comics into this season alone. What do I mean? We got X-Force (a modified team). We got X-Factor (pretty much intact). We got the look of the Grant Morrison New X-Men. We got some time travelling wi...

Oh no. Another female super hero action movie. If you know the internet at all, the usual, lazy ass backlash of calling this film woke arrived just on time. Ignore all of that. I thought this movie was pretty good. A solid B+. I did enjoy it and I had very few issues. Per my usual, here's my lazy, bulleted format: Milly Alcock I think is the perfect choice for this newly rebooted Supergirl. She was able to carry off the whole hero arc her character HAS to go through in the movie. I liked the smart way they nerf her powers. Super people (her and Superman) are overpowered, so by having her traveling the galaxy that have different suns, you get to see the effect it has on her. Did the story dictate this? Yes. But also, it helped to show how she can be heroic without powers. On the flip side, the villain is so one note. And that is OKAY. I don't need to be invested in the bad guy. He is an obstacle to get punched into oblivion later. Normally I don't like kid sidekicks, but Rut...

I have to be honest with y'all. I didn't enjoy this as much as I wanted to. It is clear that the Punisher is a character that Jon Beranthal loves and is a passion project for him. He even gets a writing credit and producer credit. But at a certain point, you keep trying to mine depth for a character that we don't need it on. The Punisher's family was killed by the mob, so he wants revenge. That's the story. Then they layer on PTSD and his time in the special forces. They did this in the two seasons he had on Netflix, so this is ground WELL covered. In this special, we deal with all of that again. It's like seeing Batman or Superman's origin repeated in every iteration of the character. We know the back story, so let's move on to something new. I'm at least thankful this was one long episode and not a series. I  would not be able to stick around for seven more hours of the life and times of Melancholy Frank. He barely says a word for about 75% of this...

I finished Daredevil: Born Again - Season 2 a few days ago and of course I have thoughts! You would expect nothing less. Like season 1, I thought overall, this was pretty good. The show's action is brutal, but draws the line at being too cartoony (looking at you Punisher). Let's just get to my thoughts, in my lazier, bulleted format. I will have two longer thoughts at the end. The show still looks like when the show was on Netflix, gritty and not overly stylized. I love that. Loved seeing Jessica Jones show up Karen Page finally has more to do. So much tension in watching Kingpin's inner circle start to collapse in on itself This show is extremely well acted. To rephrase what I stated in the paragraph above, the fight choreography is easily the best in all Marvel projects (television). I didn't say all Marvel movies because Winter Soldier and Shang-Chi would like a word. An unhinged Bullseye is a perfect, chaotic force in this season With that being said, the physics of...

When it comes to comic books, if there is one thing I enjoy, it's being proven wrong. I was extremely skepitcal when this show was announced. Wonder Man on his best day is a D-List Marvel character. I don't care what anyone says. Yes, he's shown up in Avengers, but I was not an Avengers fan pre-2003. I felt like this was Marvel, once again scrambling with their own IP. There was no way this show would be any good. I was wrong. This show is a breath of fresh air. Instead of something flashy full of stupid special effects on a TV show budget with mind numbingly dull action, this is a character story first and foremost. You also don't have to have watched many other Marvel properties. As loathe as I am to say it, I would argue that watching Iron Man 3 is a good pre-requisite to this show. Also Shang-Chi. I'll explain why later on. I know comic fans were angrily typing away on their sad, overcomensating keyboards when Simon Williams was cast as a Black man, instead of a...

  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 and whatevers. In Memoriam Peter David  - I didn't address this when it happened back in May, but we lost writer Peter David this year. He was a stalwart in the industry. When I started reading comics in the early 90's during my formative years, he was at the helm of the Incredible Hulk and X-Factor. His run on Hulk is the very reason that the smart Hulk is my favorite version. He did numerous other titles throughout the years and he was a writer that if I saw him on a book, I picked it up. His series, " Spyboy " is an underrated gem and not known well enough. He single handedly made me like the character Madrox (X-Factor member) and that is impressive in itself. I'd seen him at a few cons, but never went over to talk to him and I regret that. His death highlights a very real problem in the comic book industry and how they don't ha...

  Life was even more crazy this year, so I consistently stayed behind on my comic book reading. I'm sure BOTH of my comic shops love me, with all the books I don't pick up often enough from my pull box. To go back a second, we finally got a comic book shop here in town, so I don't have to drive 40 minutes out of the way to the one that's been my comic book home since 2003. Out of loyalty, I still have books I pick up over there, but I've split my time between two shops. Also, I need that relationship there because comic books are a hard business to maintain and I need a foothold in a few places. I also switched to a far superior comic book tracking system that allows me to create a pull list at my local store in town, but also gives me far better metrics for tracking stuff. The site is  League of Comic Geeks . This will make this list so much easier to make this year! Let's show my metrics (that I don't have to excrutiatingly pull from my old site, put into ...