The Inevitable Best and Worst List of 2023 - Part I

This was certainly a year. I think the number of comics I buy in a year actually went down for the first time in a while. I have no explanation other than the obvious, I was just buying less. Why? The musical chairs of writers/artists on books and the slow output of creator owned projects left me with my normal pull list and I would MAYBE pick up a book or two outside of that. I also get behind on my comics all the time due to a kiddo, so I'm not in the shop every week grabbing what is new like I used to.

I have definitely pulled away from DC, as they have reduced their output and nothing much interests me over there outside of the big three. And even then, I buy based on the creative team, not the character.

Marvel is the same thing, but there is so much quantity, I have a lot more choices and I will take a little more risk. With all their movies, some characters got pushed more than others, for good or for bad. I didn't take good (any?) notes this year, so let's see how this goes. It's going to be a dumpster fire.

This year, I will do a few fun, superlative categories to fluff my content.

Without further ado, here is part I of my review of 2023.


Dearly Departed (The Comics I dropped this year)
Before I get into the rest of my list, a moment of silence for the number of comics that I dropped this year after giving a good go at it:

• N/A - I didn't actively drop anything. Stuff just ended!

Favorite Comic Book Movie of 2023

Spider-Man: Across the Multi-verse (Marvel) - Come on. I honestly almost forgot that this movie was THIS year because it was so early on, but this is easily the best comic book movie of the year. This movie had heart and fantastic visuals. It sucks to know that those visuals came at a cost of the poor people that worked long hours for us to get this. Even though the movie starts a lot with Gwen Stacy, it is still very much Miles' story and how he is adapting to things. I already wrote my review on this, so I will finish by saying, it was a great film.

Honorable Mentions: Blue Beetle (DC), The Marvels (Marvel)

Worst Comic Book Movie of 2023
Antman and Wasp: Quantumania (Marvel) - This was a hard choice between this movie and The Flash. The Flash was an absolute mess, but it had Michael Keaton as Batman, which is the only factor involved. This movie moved away from what made the other Ant-man movies so fun. You can argue it's still a heist movie, but this time it's on a much grander scale that doesn't serve this character. I'm sorry, but Ant-Man is NOT going toe to toe with Kang. No way in hell. But that is what we get here. Also, all the actors just seemed exhausted with this movie (probably not as exhausted as the poor SFX people) and bored, like we were. There were stakes here, but I never felt like they wouldn't achieve them. We knew this movie was only another step up the laborious tower of Marvel to get to the next big thing.

Honorable Mention: The Flash (DC)

Favorite Comic Book TV Show of 2023
My Adventures with Superman (DC) - I will be real here, this honor would probably have gone to Superman and Lois, if I wasn't a season or two behind, so I guess I have to pick something. So I will go with the next best thing, "My Adventures with Superman". I would say I'm a low-key Superman fan, but I think I've proven time and time again that he is one of my favorites ever since childhood. As an adult, I like seeing how they handle a guy who is clearly overpowered, dealing with something that could actually threaten him. In this show, since we're just starting out with him, just about everything is a threat to him. Underneath all that action is a sweet love story between brash and bold Lois and timid and meek Clark. Caught in the middle is Jimmy Olson who realizes he's becoming a third wheel. I loved the fun take on classic superman characters and the voice acting is superb. 

Honorable Mentions: Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (Marvel)

Worst Comic Book TV show of 2023
Secret Invasion (Marvel) - Hands down, the easiest choice I had to make here. And I don't take pleasure in doing this. This is a concept that should have been a slam dunk, but they fumbled this one big time and quite frankly, wasted Sam Jackson's time. Like Wolverine, Nick Fury is a character we don't really need to know much about his past, only what he's doing now. By trying to flesh him out, you made him less interesting. They would have been forgiven if we had like an episode of sad Nick Fury, but six episodes of him being a step behind and not proving why he's the best? That's a no from me, dawg. Let's also not forget the little nugget that dropped at the end about Rhodey having been replaced by a Skrull some undetermined amount of time ago.

Honorable Mention: N/A.

The “Oh you still come out and I buy you” of 2023
Immortal X-Men (Marvel) - I know I've been back on the X-Men train for the past two-three years, but for the life of me, I'm not sure why I still buy this book. It's about the last interesting X-Men characters (Douglock) and I guess what's left of the little government they set up.

The "Oh, why don't I drop you because it would be so easy" of 2023

Immortal Thor (Marvel) - Historically, I've never cared for Thor. Then I read Jason Aaron's Thor: God of Thunder run and I got into the character and I've stayed around for a few years. I've read spinoffs like Valkerye and Jane Foster. Now though, I'm so done with this character, but I keep buying the book. It's fine, but I don't enjoy it enough to keep spending money. I need to stop. I just have to remember to take it off my pull list...

Favorite New Artist of 2023
Elena Casagrande - Blade - (Marvel) - For years, Marvel has been running this "Young Guns" or "Stormbreakers" stuff that showcases "new" talent. I say "new" because they've been drawing for a while, but are newish to Marvel and they're getting put in the spotlight. Sometimes they hit, sometimes they miss. Elena was someone in the group and when I saw her work on Blade, I instantly became a fan. I'm going to go track down other books she's worked on (like Black Widow) to fully appreciate her. I hope she continues to get more high profile books.

Honorable Mentions: Can't think of none

Worst Artist of 2023
Carlos Magno - Captain America - Cold War - Marvel - Unfortunately, I'm basing this award on ONE issue that I saw drawn by Carlos, but it was igregious enough that I marked it down so I wouldn't forget about it, seven months later. So here we are. My notes on why I put it here were, "Low Rent Gary Frank". If you don't get that reference to well known comic book artist, that's fine. I also put, "People were all teeth." Which meant there were a lot of "Grrrrrr" faces, which is a cheap trick in comic book art. So there you have it.

Honorable Mentions: Caio Majado - Incredible Hulk Annual

Favorite Artist of 2023
Khary Randolph - Sirens of the City (Boom Studios) - I did some soul searching and followed my heart. I see a lot of good art, but there isn't always a lot that moves me and makes me go, WOW. Randolph's work in "Sirens of the City" did that for me. His art crackled with a creative freedom I hadn't seen from him in a while. He clearly was enjoying himself on the book and when I heard about this book, I bought it solely for his art. Definitely recommend picking it up.

Honorable Mentions: Andres Genolet (She-Hulk), Daniel Sampiere (Wonder Woman)

Favorite New Writer (to me) of 2023
Rodney Barnes - Killadelphia (Image), Blacula: Return of the King (Zombie Press Studios) Gang War: Luke Cage (Marvel) - Rodney Barnes has been in the game for a while and has written for a number of tv shows. I'm still behind in his book, Killadelphia, but I started to read it this year and I instantly became a fan of his work. I also picked up his graphic novel, Blacula: Return of the King and that is also excellent. I always want to support black writers and he's starting to gain steam in the comic world, so I want to continue to support him. He trends towards more horror, but it's always from a black person angle, which we don't get enough of in horror. He's definitely worth checking out.

Honorable Mentions: N/A

Worst Writer of 2023
Joe Madueria - Battlechasers (Image) - What is this, the 90's all over again? I honestly don't know why I picked up this series which had been on ice for about twenty years. The writing definitely didn't improve in that time. Picking on this feels like low hanging fruit, but it was so egregious, I had to put it here. His art is great, but his writing is definitely not. This book is about as generic fantasy as it gets.

Honorable Mentions: N/A. (I can't remember anyone else that should be on this list)

The Oversaturation of 2023

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - It mains me to say this, but there was a lot of damn Ninja Turtle stuff this year. I love them, you all know this. But when I list out what came out this year in addition to their mainline title, you'll see what I mean. I'll even use a numbered list to hammer home my point.

1. "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Power Rangers II"
2. "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Stranger Things"
3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Usagi Yojimbo: Wherewhen
4. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vs. Street Fighter
5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Saturday Morning Adventures
6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin - The Lost Years.

Could it be that there was a movie coming out? Couldn't tell ya. But also, damn. Look at that list. That's too much. I am also guilty of having read EVERY SINGLE ONE. I can tell you that the Street Fighter one didn't need to happen. The Stranger Things was better than you would think because they used the Eastman/Laird original turtles from the 80's since Stranger Things takes place in the 80's. Get it? Cute. The Power Rangers one was built for me and I loved every damn issue of it's nonsense. I'll do a separate set of reviews for these later. I need to re-read them because honestly, they run together.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

I saw Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom last Thursday and I'm going to try and keep it short and sweet in this review. It's a bad movie, but it was also kinda fun. So I guess I liked it in the way that I like the Fast and Furious franchise. You have to turn your brain off because stuff will not make sense. Just drift away in the current. (See what I did there?) Otherwise, you will be UPSET.

This movie is in a weird spot because we know that it doesn't count in the grand scheme of DC's future movie franchises. I guess they thought they could recoup some money, but honestly, they should have just put it on Max and called it a day.  They'll bury a Batgirl movie, but let this one see the light of day? Give me a break.

We're not really told where this movie fits with his appearance in that Justice League movie. Its as if the two movies themselves are in different universes. We start off finding out that Aquaman and Mera (we'll get into her later) had a kid, Aquaman is a part time king (how does that even work?) and splits time between Atlantis and living with his pops in a lighthouse. 

The family dynamics are so weird here. We know who Aquaman's mom is (Nicole Kidman) and she comes up to say hi to him and her lover every now and then, but also spends her time down in Atlantis with her new baby daddy, Dolph Lundgren. Look, I can barely be bothered to say character names, so I will just say the actors in most cases. Mera is a mom that is around sometimes and other times she's just gone. Aquaman keeps making comments about being a single father, when we just saw Mera helping out one scene before. I would argue that Amber Heard has zero chemistry with Jason Mamoa and the baby.

The movie also centers around Orn, his half brother who was imprisoned after the last movie. Confused yet? Imagine watching this movie with all the family drama I mentioned above and they don't dig into it, outside of the brother relationship. You got a ready made family drama if you wanted to go there, but this movie has zero interest in that. Let's just show cool shit.

To the movie's credit, all the fun is in the Orn/Aquaman pairing and the movie is smart to have them together as much as possible. They use the odd couple dynamic to a t. One guy is messy, the other guy is clean. One guy is buttoned up, the other guy wants to have fun. Jason Mamoa is being Jason Mamoa in this movie and when I saw he had a writing credit, I was like, "Of course he did." Unlike Amber Heard, he has chemistry with Patrick Wilson (Orn).

There are a lot of good jokes in that pairing. My personal favorite is the rare, specific detail of how Orn runs when he is on the surface. He starts the movie doing a Naruto run (look up that reference if you don't get it. This is a nerd blog, you should know already!) and when Aquaman calls him out on it after one too many times, he replies that he's used to swimming, not running on the surface world, which makes sense. It is the ONE clever thing this movie does and will do. It's a great joke. There are other jokes that they do make callbacks about, so the movie at least commits to that.

Like I said before, this movie is a mess. The special effects are very suspect. They don't match the ambition of this movie and things looked best when they weren't underwater. The plot is predictable and you know where it's going to go. Also, as much as I liked seeing Black Mantis be mostly the sole bad guy here, he's still being manipulated, so he's a mini-boss at best. At least there was no redeeming arc for him.

My final thoughts. Amber Heard. After all that went down with her and Johnny Depp, I'm surprised she's in this movie as much as she is. They clearly wrote around her character instead of just recasting it, so things just feel off in every scene she's in. I didn't think she was great in the last movie, she's not great here and it's just a weird thing where real life intervened here.

Is this movie worth a watch? Sure, for free. With friends where you can make fun of it as you watch. It's a big dumb movie that is at least more put together than the first one. It isn't trying to do four things at once.

Oh and Randall Park is in this movie being Randall Park. So if you like him, you get moments of levity. I personally like him, so it gave me stuff to watch for.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

A few weeks ago, because we have Paramount Plus now, I finally got around to watching this movie that came and went over the summer. If you missed it, let me save you the trouble with this review. Don't bother unless you're a sucker for punishment like I am. It's amazing the sunk cost I have with these live action Transformer movies and I keep going back. I KNOW I have a problem. That's on me. Let's hope you're not with me, because misery loves company.

First of all, God love Peter Cullen. Here he is like 40 years later, still giving voice to Optimus Prime. I hate that they trotted him back out for this movie. Like Kevin Conroy, he is always the definitive voice of this character. However, it's time we all faced reality and accept that they need to get new blood. These movies hurt my soul because these movies always make Optimus look like a completely incompetent leader and I hate hearing the voice of my childhood attached to that.

Who knows what the timeline is for all these damn Transformer movies. This one is set in the 90's so it is a lazy excuse to shoehorn in any 90's song you can think of. I hate seeing Wu-Tang getting abused like this.

This movie CLEARLY wasn't working with the budget of it's predecessors. The Transformers looked real bad to me. Like, obvious CG and didn't blend great with the scenery bad. I still don't like the design aesthetic they use for all the transformers in robot form. They are looking like some sinewy ass robots. The robot generator chose "Lithe" as the body type and then you move the slider up and down for height. We also get a smaller, lazy ass lineup of Transformers for either side. For the Autobots we have Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Mirage and Arcee and [name forgotten and I don't care to do the research]. Okay, real quick. That last one was a giant plane. But not just any plane, an old man plane. They did this joke in past movies. Maybe it was the same guy, don't know, don't care. Point is, it makes no sense to have senile transformers like this. It's like a bunch of dude-bros wrote this with a crack focus group.

For the....not Decepticons, we have... I don't remember and I didn't want to look it up. Menacing names like Crusher or Blazer or something I'm sure. It doesn't really matter. Going back to the Autobots, I'm so tired of every other movie, Bumblebee is like a damsel in distress or taken off the board because the heels have to get over on someone, so it's always Bumblebee taking the fall. (The following was a wrestling joke for the uninitiated. Here's your mansplainy explanation for the article.) He's the most beloved, but the one they consistently sacrifice.

I know the film tries to make you feel for the characters, but you really don't. Optimus is pretty damn unlikeable, Mirage is annoying as hell and Arcee doesn't get enough to do other than being the "female" Autobot. Then we get the Maximals. The only real reason you care is because the wonderful Michelle Yeoh is here. That's it. I'll admit, I NEVER cared for Beast Wars. I just couldn't.

I've been on a rant here and haven't said anything concrete about the movie. It's bad y'all. It's annoying. It's bland. They bring in Unicron, but who cares at this point? The earth gets destroyed every movie, so why is this any different. And it takes the power of friendship between a weak ass collection of Autobots and humans (they always have to play a factor in these movies, which is beyond annoying). The only thing this movie does right is be merciful, clocking in at a shade over two hours. 

Michael Bay not directing fixes some of the problems, but what he created was expanded upon here and that's never a good thing. So I guess we can say the first movie and Bumblebee are the only good movies out of the SEVEN that they have done. I love Transformers, but I hate these movies so much. I only have myself to blame for continuing to watch them. I may not be spending money to see them in theaters, but I spent time and that is a more valuable commodity to me.

Loki: Season 2

Although I finished this weeks ago, I'm just now getting around to writing about it. What you can take about that is my "meh" feeling with Marvel shows that leaves me ready to move past them, rather than talk about them. But then I'm not doing my duty for YOU dear reader, so let me give you my thoughts.

Like the first season of Loki, I thought this was okay. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it. What I respect about it, unlike the other shows, is it has this water cooler effect to it that I can't explain. To be more specific, it feels like appointment viewing and then you want to talk about it with your friends or co-workers and then guess about what happens next. Out of ALLLLLLLLLLLL the shows that Marvel has done, this show and Wandavision are the only ones I felt this with. It probably has something to do with the fact that these shows usually have the potential to change the overarching narrative of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

So does this show do that? Well, yes and no. The series has done a great job of creating a redemption arc for this version of Loki and we've watched him struggle with trying to be better from the first episode of the series. In this season, he makes the ultimate sacrifice and although I won't say what that was, this MIGHT have implications for the larger MCU. I say might because I have zero faith in Marvel and what they are doing right now. They have been stumbling into good content. Phase 5 has been a nightmare, with no real direction.

So let me start with what I didn't like. This show is six episodes, but there are long stretches that it feels middling. This show wants to go go go because there is a big crisis coming, but it takes it's time getting there and makes us sit in their character moments for too long. I like character development as much as the next guy, but this show didn't add a whole lot of new stuff to them. I know we had questions about what Mobius and the rest of the TVA were up to before they "joined" the TVA, but I don't think we needed to see it. When Mobius kept talking about water skis, I didn't WANT to see why. It's an interesting quirk, but I don't need it explained like we got. It is okay to leave stuff to our imagination.

Also, some of the situations just felt contrived. The major issue of the season is solving how to fix the time stream going through a time loom. Something that took up about three episodes. I think the problem with a show like this, with the stakes being as high as they are, you know it's going to get fixed, so the sense of drama isn't really there like they think. The only thing you're wondering is what lengths Loki is going to go to in order to fix it. After all this, it's not like he's NOT going to fix it. The search for Sylvie, really didn't affect too much in the end. At least that's what I remember. Gimme a break, it's been a few weeks. For me, that might as well be years. I watch a lot of shit. What also irks me is that at times, Loki acts as a regular dude, then remembers he has powers. The show found a way to nerf him in weird ways. 

One of the things I've liked about this show, although it makes no sense, is this weird, 50's aesthetic everything has. You don't normally see that with any sci-fi show when time travel is involved, but they have their own unique style and they stick to it, never wavering. I can respect that.

The strongest part of the show that I liked, were the actors. This is a great cast and they all play well off each other. Tom Hiddleston has been putting on a clinic in this series and with his time playing Loki coming to an end, it's been a fun journey and he has easily been Marvel's best villain (turned hero). Jonathan Majors is back in dual roles, playing Victor Timely and then Kang. The stark difference between their portrayal really shows his range and I hope he gets to stick around. Yes, I know he's in legal trouble, so we'll wait for that to play out. I will also keep my thoughts to myself.

I've never liked Owen Wilson more than I do here. He is as understated as can be and that's a good thing. And no, please don't point me to other stuff he's done, I don't care THAT much. Let me just have this show. 

The other thing I liked, even though I complained about how contrived some of the situations are, I'm a sucker for time travel story and that is here as well. It's really used to good effect in the last episode. Even though it's been weeks, I'm not going to reveal any of the twists. I'm not a monster.

Like the first season, I kept waiting for something big that effects the entire MCU. Although something big does happen, it's not what I was expecting. Let me say this though, folks. The multi-verse is here to say, whether we want it or not. 

Would I recommend this? Eh, it's definitely not the worst thing in the Marvel. This has been one of the more bright spots in the million TV shows that Marvel has put out because this one actually means something in the larger universe right now, doesn't go outside of it's budget and has wonderful acting.