Into the Longbox

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 ...

*Editors note: I wrote this over a year ago and didn't get around to posting it. I'm not editing any of my past tense because what fun would that be. Imagine I posted this in 2024. ** A year or two ago, I tried to convince my wife (and myself), that Batman Returns was a Christmas movie. I insisted we watch it, holding this movie in high regard from my childhood. We never finished it then, but a few weeks ago, we did. Let me tell you, your childhood can lie to you. Nostalgia is a potent drug. It makes you forget things. Halfway through the movie, all I could think is, "This movie is so damn stupid." Or "I think I hate this movie." I forgot that maybe a decade ago, I did this same exercise, fooling myself into thinking this was a worthy successor to Batman. It isn't. It's not close. I'm going to get into my reasoning for this. If I were to describe this movie with one word, it'd be bizzare. After the success of the first movie, it's like Wa...

I finally got around to watching the most recent Superman and I definitely have thoughts. I'm still processing them, but this I do know. I wanted to love this movie more than I did. At the end, I was like, "This was good, but not great." It's not beating Fantastic Four as my comic book movie of the year.  Before I get to my thoughts, I want to lead with this and be up front. I'm not a huge fan of James Gunn. I've liked some of his movies/shows (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1, Peacemaker) and disliked others (Guardians 2 and 3, THE Suicide Squad). I haven't watched Creature Commanders and I'm leaving out previous movies like Slither and the many others I'm sure someone will call out. I don't like his music choices. I don't always love his comedy beats. I don't always love how he films action scenes. This movie had a lot of what I like from him and what I don't like.  One thing I will say and it might sound like tepid praise based on ...

What in the blue hell? Sony has just been scraping the bottom of the barrel to meet the requirements to keep the Spider-Man properties. No one in their right mind would want a Kraven movie, but here we are. Down is up, up is down.  I've said this before, I'm kind of a movie mascochist. No one makes me do this. I do this to myself. After enduring Madame Web, I had to move on down the list to this movie. It is everything I thought it was. A stupid movie, but there's something more at work here. Lemme get into it. I feel for the lead star, Aaron Taylor-Johnson. He clearly bulked up for the role and really thought it was going to be something special. This movie is not going to help his case. He's fine, but this is a dumb movie and you're the face of it, bro. Remember how I said you can tell Aaron bulked up? Yeah, he walks around like a guy that just did arm day at the gym. The way he poses and all his action scenes are there to show off his work. Good job, my guy. Do y...

I'm a deeply sick, disturbed man. Multiple people told me DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE. Saying those words are like catnip to me. I was gonna watch it. All I needed was time and opportunity. Over the labor day weekend, I was doing chores. Okay, I was putting comic boards into comic bags for my haul for the last couple of weeks. I figured, I'm doing something mindless, let me watch a mindless movie. That's when I found the time for this movie. Is this movie as bad as they said? Yes. Absolutely. It was a waste of my time, but I wasn't raging at the stupidness of this movie like I thought I would. I was laughing because I couldn't believe this was a serious movie made with real money. This movie is par for the course on the terribleness of all the Sony Spider-Man properties. I'm excluding the last two Venom movies because I haven't watched them yet, but I have no doubt they are equally terrible. Let's get into my thoughts: I've never seen anyone with less ch...