Into the Longbox

The War of Stars! Wait, that's not right... Wow. It's been a long time since I wrote on here. And what brings me back? Star Wars! There's been some rumor that there is a new movie coming out later this year. Marvel/Disney knows this (as Disney owns the franchise) and in a move of a cash grab synergistic energy, they have released a lot of new comic books. What you may not realize is that these books have taken over the industry (sales wise) by storm. I won't go into details, but those books alone have made Marvel a top seller. So why do I bring this up? I happen to be one of those poor saps that got roped into these books hook, line and sinker. I'm a sucker for Star Wars. Dark Horse had a lot of great series a few years ago, so I can't even begin to explain why I ignored those and suddenly got super interested in these. What's that? There's a new movie coming out? Oh right. That explains it. That excitement has made me wax nostalgic for this fra...

Buy your copy today! I'm going to do something I haven't done on this blog yet. A book review! Before you get all excited and think I'm cultured, I'm sure you already saw the title of this post. Of course it's a book about comic books. I'll try to be as eloquent as possible, since we're taking care of serious business here. What we have here is an unauthorized look behind the history of Marvel Comics. This book is built on more than a hundred interviews the author, Sean Howe, had with many of the professionals that worked at Marvel Comics over the years. I was completely engrossed in this book, but as I was reading it I kept thinking whether I would recommend this book to my non-comic friends. I'm leaning slightly towards no. Let me explain why. The audience for this book is clearly fans of comic books. The majority of the stories hinge on your working knowledge of the creators with each turn of the page. There are ends of chapters that end with ...

I've thought about this for a while, but haven't written about it here. Since this is a comic book blog, I figured I would take a few moments to talk about my top five, favorite Marvel Characters. I know the Avengers are the hot thing now, but you won't see one traditional Avenger show up on my list. I've long since been a fan of the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, so you will probably see that reflected in my list. So here we go, in descending order. 5. Power Man/Iron Fist - I know these are two distinct characters, but I think they have done just as much good together as they did apart. This is my favorite comic book, buddy cop team. You have a black guy (Power Man/Luke Cage) who is from the streets of Harlem and was experimented on in prison to gain super strength and steel hard skin. You have a white guy who was raised in the mystical city of K'un L'un where he became a partial arts master with a technique called the Iron Fist. These two characters could...

I promise you, I was not having some stroke when I wrote that title. That is actually what Marvel is calling their brand new initiative, which is pretty much a reboot of their whole universe, but not really. Confused? Think of it this way. It's a brand new marketing ploy to release a whole slew of new #1 issues, ala DC's New 52 from a few years ago. Admittedly, DC did the roll out a whole lot better. They were able to ship all 52 of their books in a month and on schedule. Marvel hasn't started yet, but all signs point to it not being that organized. With that being said, I am happy for this new shake-up of their universe. I am all about continuity, but I'm glad this is happening. Things were getting stale and this is a way to make things fresh. Essentially moving all the pieces around on the board. There are going to be a lot of books coming out and I am excited for maybe a third of those. I'm going to take a few minutes to talk about which books I'm ex...

I think it's time I finally took a moment to talk bout Marvel's Secret Wars event and all the subsequent spin off books. Jonathan Hickman's Magnum Opus of his Marvel run is playing out before our eyes. All of his Avengers work (which honestly left me cold) has culminated up to this point. The Secret Wars series itself has been really good. It's been in the classic tradition of mixing up the characters into groups that you don't normally see. There have been truly shocking moments. The spinoff books however have been mostly terrible. Here's the premise of this whole crossover in a nutshell. Reality has been destroyed by cosmic forces (isn't that always the way) and the Marvel Universe as we know it ceases to exist. Dr. Doom, who has become all powerful, saves bits and pieces of this reality and has cobbled it together into a place called "Battleworld" where he has affixed him self as a God. This has given Marvel a chance to mine all of our...

I give up. I give up trying to doubt Marvel with their movies right now. I thought Guardians of the Galaxy was an over reach when it was announced. I loved it so much it is in my top three favorite movies that Marvel has put out. When I they announced Ant-Man, I was like "Really? WHO is asking for an Ant-Man movie?!" and I thought this would be the one to due them in. I really liked this movie too. So what do I know. I can't doubt these guys anymore. Everything will come up roses for these guys. So let's talk about this movie. First off, I liked that the scale for this movie was small. (See what I did there?) By that I mean, there was not some evil villain that was trying to take over the world. You just had a d-bag business man doing bad things. At the end of the day, this was essentially a heist movie. That is about the best direction you could take with this character. Like most of my comic movie reviews, I'm not going to compare this to the source mat...

So in my previous post, I talked about my journey to Comic Con. Let me give you my account of my adventure there. I won't do this in chronological order or anything. The first important point I want to make is this: San Diego Comic Con has very little to do with Comic books, despite it's name. The convention center is massive, with gigantic booths, towering displays and tons and tons of vendors. Those that actually sell comic books is quite minute. For those that know me, I am a bargain hunter for comic books and everything else is secondary. To learn this first had was the most disappointing thing for me. The comic book panels themselves are not really full. The big halls are reserved for TV and movie events. Some comic book based, but this convention is more about pop culture in general. And video games. Video games had such a huge presence there. I was able to go to Nintendo, Xbox, Sony and Sega events to play games while I was there. Not that I'm complaining. ALSO, ...