Into the Longbox

When I heard this movie was announced a few years ago, I rolled my eyes pretty hard. Here we are with yet ANOTHER Batman movie. We were starting to get diminishing returns with this franchise. I get that they want to keep trying to make money, but maybe we need to let Batman take a rest. Then I watched this movie and I take it all back. I only saw this a week ago, so I'm still in hot take mode, but this is EASILY one of the best Batman movies I have ever seen. Right now, I have Dark Knight first, this movie second and the 1989 Batman movie coming in at number 3. There are just so many things this movie does right. It is almost a master class in how you juggle multiple villains. We also get to see Batman be, *GASP* a detective and try to solve a crime. Not in the ham fisted ways that we've seen in the past either.  In no particular order, let me talk about what I loved about this movie. First of all, we don't have to get an origin story about Bruce Wayne/Batman. It's a s...

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!

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...