The Road to Batman V Superman!

 

 The movie event of the year is just days upon us. Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice is almost in theatres nationwide. I'm penciled in to see it with my godson a week from Easter Sunday. Until then, join me as I review some of the adventures of the Dark Knight, the Man of Steel, and maybe even an Amazonian Princess.

First Up: Batman: Earth One, Volume 1! Enjoy! 

My Top 5 of 2014

This year, the ladies, graphic novels, and Marvel dominated the best comics has to offer. So, before 2014 ends, here's my picks for the top 5 books for the year plus a few honorable mentions.

 Black Canary/ Zatanna: Bloodspell.
    Written by Paul Dini,  the creative force behind Batman: The Animated Series amongst others, this graphic novel pits Black Canary and Zatanna in a 'Thelma and Louise' type adventure across the United States. The adventure starts in Las Vegas where a year prior, Black Canary infiltrated a gang bent on robbing a casino. Just before the ring leader dies, she puts a curse on her former minions and the undercover heroine. A year's past and the curse is coming to pass with the former villains succumbing in supernaturally weird ways. Desperate to prevent herself from being next on this list, Canary seeks out her JLA teammate Zatanna to find a cure for the uncommon curse. Bloodspell was the one graphic novel I read over the past year in which I thought to myself, that this would make a great series in DC's New 52. It's got action, adventure, the supernatural, and just a little bit of sex appeal.

Waid and Samnee's Daredevil
    One part pop art, one part John Grisham, one part James Bond and his reputation with the ladies. This is Mark Waid's Daredevil. Volume 4 ended this year with Matt Murdock losing everything and making a move back west to sunny California. But that's okay because the perfect formula that Mark and artist Chris Samnee created in that series carried over into volume 5. The changeover resulted in yet another confusing bout of titles having to be renumbered. It would seem to have Daredevil switch coasts would be the perfect leeway towards beginning another volume. but the change was all a marketing ploy by Marvel that angered many. Despite this, the company didn't seem to lose many customers over it. (YET!)

Andre the Giant: Life and Legend
    This biographical graphic novel about the larger than life wrestling icon of the 1980s told the tragic tale of a French young stricken with acromegaly, a disease that causes the pituitary gland to overwork thus resulting in in Andre's gigantic size. This volume balanced the facts of this gentle giant's life with the over-the-top antics of his career in the square circle, much of which was fodder generated by promoters to hype matches starring the man touted as the "Eighth Wonder of the World."

Ms. Marvel
  The newest superhero to bear the moniker of the House of Ideas is fun, brash, and storytelling at its very best. This Ms. Marvel was controversial for about 5 minutes because she was cast as a Muslim girl. But writer G. Willow Wilson, who herself is a Muslim living in America, balances young Kamala Khan's faith with her life in America without being preachy or militant. The book could use subtitles for its Arabic dialogue and the villains are a little hokey. But, it's a wild ride I would mind going on ago soon.

Gaijin: American Prisoner of War
   Matt Faulkner's tale of a young Japanese-American boy and his white mother's internment in an American POW camp for being Japanese is based on true life events in both Faulkner's family history and the real life internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. This little known segment of American history is something that should not be forgotten nor ignored least we repeat this social experiment mistake again in the future.

Honorable Mentions:
Batman: Arkham Unhinged- features some great single-issue tales about Batman's most dangerous foes with some unique origin changes that make for better stories than the original.

Dead Boy Detectives- Encyclopedia Brown meets the Sixth Sense. The stories were fresh, frightening, and so very British.

Hip Hop Family Tree, Volume I (New Printing)-  Artist and writer Ed Piskor did something with this book I never expected, it got me a little bit interested in hip hop. An interesting Who's Who in the history of Old School rap, this new addition featured new art, extra scenes, and a fascinating story.

Red Light Properties: Previously Haunted Real Estate- A unique storyline with great art, it has the potential to be considered a modern classic. But in the vein of 'Little Miss Sunshine' and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' its just a little too bleak for my tastes.

The 160-Character Review Challenge

Texting: I've only just started but it's been all the rage 4 a while. I thought this week it would b a fun challenge 2 limit my reviews 2 only 160 characters (the limit I am allowed per text on my cell.) so here are the rules. 1: picture text gives 1000 characters. Except 4 this post pic texting is a no-no. 2: spaces on my phone counts towards my 160 so I must b creative & concise. 3: no text speak but I can sub the following to save space- 2 b 4 and & instead of the intended word. 4: 1 text per review. No doubling. 5: single issue comics only- 160 doesn't do a treasury justice. 6: except 4 capitalizing sentences & proper names I cannot edit a text once I email it. 7: I can use wc or nwc 2 tell if a book is worth consuming or not. 8: I may use a fraction 2 numerically rate my reviews instead of my normal stars 4 this challenge. So there you have it. I am sure this will b harder than
it looks. I had 6 times as many characters 2 work with on this & I am struggling 2 keep under 1000 char-

Marvel Universe LIVE! A Reveiw, Part 2

The next Avengers film isn’t due till next year. That means roughly 3 years is going to span between the first movie and its sequel. What a way to keep kids and fans interested but by producing a live action show that keeps the Avengers, Loki, and the Tesseract in the minds of potential movie goers. I also loved that Marvel Universe LIVE! used the many of the voices of the characters from the cartoons. Drake Bell voices was dubbed for Spidey! Adrian Pasdar was speaking for both Tony Stark and Iron Man! Very clever! And the production made sure to use characters from recent Marvel films including the Extremis soldiers and Electro in order to bridge the gap between this show and the movie universe.

Before I sign off, I just want to let you know that you shouldn’t come to this show expecting things to be cheap. Parking was $15 a person and I expect some places like Chicago, Vegas, and New York will be even more pricy. But when you get inside is when things really hit you. For the same price of my parking, you can get a bag of cotton candy and a foam mask of Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-man, or Hulk. The mask is really cool but as my wife pointed out “the day I pay $15 for a bag of cotton candy is the day you need to get my head examined.” Super-hero themed snow cones, lollies, and other sweets are around the same price range.

If you’ve read my blog, you know I am a big fan of t-shirts. Marvel Universe LIVE! Was no exception. They had some sweet ones. But at $30 a pop for an adult shirt, I could buy 3 really nice tees at Wal-Mart (5 if I check out their clearance racks!)

  This doesn’t mean that there wasn’t some really cool merchandise that I wanted or that I didn’t buy anything. I highly recommend the Souvenir Booklet. It’s a full colored book that one part program and one part activity/ trivia book. There’s tons of great artwork but very few live-action shots. Actually, there aren’t any except for a ‘behind the scenes’ section. I would’ve liked to have a few pictures of the show in action. As you can tell, my pics are not the best quality. Maybe the show is too new for this. Another reason to get the book however is the free prequel comic book that comes with the booklet. It’s not available unless you buy the booklet. Plus, I give major kudos to Feld Entertainment for presenting the comics bagged and boarded.

Sure, you can see the wires. Granted, the one-liners were corny. Yeah, paying $40 for a stuffed Hulk is a lot of money. And there was a little controversy over the run time being about 20 minutes shorter than expected. But Marvel, Feld, and of course, the House of Mouse put on a great show. I left the show on a high, ready to save my little corner of the world.

Worth Consuming.

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Marvel Universe LIVE! A Review, Part 1

Last night for an anniversary present, my wife took me to go see the new live action production of Marvel Universe LIVE! My wife was a little concerned that it was going to be too childish and that I wouldn’t enjoy it. But I had a blast!

The show is about 2 hours and is a mix between the Circus, Circe du Soleil, a live action comic book, and a motocross competition! Produced by Felt Entertainment, the creative minds behind Ringling Brothers Circus, Monster Jam, and Disney on Ice, there’s tons of pyro, explosions, and great special effects too!

The story involves the cosmic cube. Thor, having snatched it from his evil brother Loki, smashes the cube into 3 pieces. In response to the loss of the cube, Loki has created a clone of the cube and powers it by having kidnapped some of the X-Men. This new cube forces the Avengers to Assemble and they are joined by Wolverine and Spider-man in the search and rescue efforts.

The Avengers determine that they must split off into 3 groups in order to finding the cosmic cube fractals if they want any chance of defeating Loki. This Justice League style move allows the viewers to see their favorite super heroes face some of their biggest foes- AIM, Hydra, and The Sinister Six are just a few of the biggest baddies in the Marvel Universe popping up in this production.

I don’t want to go into too much more detail about the plot as Marvel Universe LIVE! Is a fairly new production. My site city of Raleigh, NC was just the 2^nd stop in a tour that will travel to almost 100 cities nationwide over the next 2 years. But, I hope that these pics will inspire you to check out the show. However, the entire production was a stroke of marketing genius.

   

Where am I? Being Transferred...

No, I'm not being transferred from my job or anything like that. As you may know, 'Madman with a Book' is not my first attempt at an online reading journal. For about 6 years I've been using another site. For about 5 and a half years, I was very happy with the site. Then the logging in problems started.


It seemed like every week the site was down for maintance and I'd get incressingly worried that I would lose all my years of reviews. I depended on that site to help me keep track of what I'd read. When you've read over 2,600 books (yes mostly comics) it's hard to keep track over what you've read and what you haven't.


Anyways, 3 days ago I got a notice saying that the site would being shutting down on May 31st. At that time, I still had about 1,500 reviews that I had yet to transfer over to MMWAB. So, I've been spending most of my online time transferring my reviews to a Word document in order to transfer over to this site.


It takes a lot of time to post old reviews while keeping up with the latest things I have read. I try to add about 25 old reviews a week. But until I can get the last few hundred of them saved into a Word file, I'm going to have to forgo time on Blogger. I'm hope to be back in business by the end of the week.


I apologize for the delay and hope you will continue to enjoy the rantings of a madman with a book.