The New 52: My top five (and then some)

So, we're on the far side of the New 52 initiative, of which I ended up reading 40 titles (plus two I would have read if I could ever have found copies), and I have to say it aside from some issues that cropped up each week it was overall a positive experience. There were a handful of standouts, but I liked a lot more of the total than I expected to, and I intend to stick with a bunch, albeit a month late after the price drop for most of them. In lieu of writing forty reviews, which I probably would have done if I had time between actually reading my 20-odd-books-a-week pull (urgh), I'm just going to pick out my five favorites and a few honorable mentions and focus on the ones worth reading.

Comics reviews 4/20/11

Running a bit late this week. Pull had a nice mixture of books this week; a bunch of books with dinosaurs, a few books I've come back to after dropping off for a while, surprisingly a couple of books full of interview scenes.

Comics for 4/20
Avengers Academy #12
Doctor Who: A Fairytale Life #1 (of 4)
Mass Effect: Evolution #4 (of 4)
Power Girl #23
Iron Man 2.0 #4
Hulk #32
Super Dinosaur #1
Fables #104
Thunderbolts #156
Black Dynamite: Slave Island

Nothing Will Ever Be The Same: Infestation review

After ten issues and eleven weeks, IDW's crossover event, Infestation, came to a close this week. I originally saw some promotional stuff on it at NYCC last year, promising some zombie mayhem across a handful of mini-series. Unlike the Marvel/DC events that tend to dominate the market, the premise here saw several franchises of IDW's liscensed comics, not sharing a common continuity in the slightest, coming together; Star Trek, Transformers, Ghostbusters and GI Joe, along with original IDW properties Zombies Vs Robots and CVO (Covert Vampire Operations). In the end, the books delivered what was on the tin, and for the most part they were pretty fun, but in the end the detached nature of the separate stories may have hurt the series overall.

Infestation #2, IDW

Super-fast comic reviews for 4/6/11

A decent-sized pull of books this week (and maybe more over the weekend) and not particularly a lot to say, in the end, so going to do a batch of quick reviews again. This time I think I'll limit myself to three sentences, but on a couple books there'll be some things I want to expand on in seperate posts. Specifically, with Infestation ending this week, I'll take a look back at the entire series rather than issue by issue and due to my habit of buying first issues even if I don't intend to follow up with the rest of the series (or even if I do) I'll start taking a seperate look at First Issues of the week and how they are at getting new readers into the books.

Speaking of first issues, among the books on my pull I missed, I really wanted to grab Nonplayer #1 and be on top of these books every other critic, blogger and fan is telling me to read for once. Sadly, though, by the time I got down to the shop tonight there was a nice, big gap in the N section mocking me. If I'm around any other shops over my weekend, I'll try and grab it. In the meantime, I take a look at Doctor Who #3 from last week, which I missed then because I am an idiot and got fooled by variant covers.

Comics for 4/6:
Infestation #2 (of 2)
Nonplayer #1 Doctor Who Ongoing #3
B.P.R.D.: The Dead Remembered #1 (of 3)
Daomu #3
Ozma of Oz #5
Secret Six #32
Witchfinder: Lost and Gone Forever #3 (of 5)
Amazing Spider-Man Annual #38
Herc #1
Chew #18
Fear Itself #1

Strange Tales II

The Strange Tales II hardcover dropped this week. Didn't mention it in the main reviews as I didn't pick up the actual collection, I had already grabbed the single issues as they came out. As such, I can't really comment on the hardcover itself and anything unique to that, but still wanted to extol the virtues of the series to anyone who hasn't checked it out yet.

Comics reviews 3/30/11

Accidentally took the week off from here while hashing some things out, both for the blog and real-life things which must take precedence. Hopefully next week I can implement some of the things I was working on but for now wanted to at least keep the reviews streak going to make sure some content's going up.

Pretty small pull this week, but I think I actually enjoyed every one of them. So, spoiler alert, mostly-positive reviews ahead:

Comics for 3/30
Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters #1
Secret Avengers #11
Detective Comics #875
Spider-Girl #5
Jimmy Olsen one-shot
Amazing Spider-Man #657

Movie review: Sucker Punch

Let me just get this out of the way right off the bat: Sucker Punch is not a good movie. That bit of the review behind us, it is, however, fucking awesome. It has the depth of a puddle, but it is a puddle of oil that someone threw a lighter into and set up a bunch of fireworks around just for the hell of it.

(Full disclosure: As I said on here I planned to see this in 3D, IMAX, the works. I did learn in the eleventh hour, however, that it was a 3D conversion done in post and I cannot in good conscience put my money towards that kind of atrocity, so instead I caught the 2D version we had at work.)

Comics reviews 3/23/11

Facing down a very "meh" week. Grabbed a bunch of books I was only cursorily interested in, and pretty sure on the other side of reading them I feel that way about even more of the pull. Alternatively, there were a couple of good surprises in there.

Comics for 3/23:
Ghostbusters: Infestation #2 (of 2)
Captain America and Batroc The Leaper one-shot
FF #1
Mass Effect: Evolution #3 (of 4)
Hellraiser #1
Batman Incorporated #4
Fables #103
Power Man and Iron First #3 (of 5)
X-Men #9

Comics reviews 3/16/11

Back for another late-ish week. Going to try and keep this a little brief for my own sake but not going to limit myself to two sentences per book this week, although I did have fun forcing myself to do that. Have nothing in particular to wax loudmouth about up here this week so let's just jump right into the reviews.

Comics for 3/16:
G.I. Joe: Infestation #2 (of 2)
Doctor Who #2
Iron Man 2.0 #2
Fear Itself: Book of the Skull (one-shot)
Uncanny X-Force #5.1
Batman #708
Knight and Squire #6 (of 6)
Thunderbolts #155
Amazing Spider-Man #656

Super-fast comic reviews for 3/9/11

For the sake of brevity, since I will not have the disproportionally-large gulf of time I normally devote to write the reviews this weekend, I've decided limit this week's to TWO SENTENCES EACH. My schedule at work is shifting around and I'm finally picking up more hours so in future weeks this may become equally sporadic but I'll keep trying to get at least something up. And this will at least give me a chance at practicing not being such a long-winded bastard.
Side note: Anyone know if the Science Dog Special came out this week? I had it showing up on my release list but didn't see it anywhere.

Comics for 3/9:
Ghostbusters: Infestation #1 (of 2)
Jennifer Blood #2
Guarding The Globe #4 (of 6)
Batgirl #19
Batman And Robin #21
Batman Incorporated #3
B.P.R.D.: Hell On Earth: Gods #3 (of 3)
Venom #1

Comics reviews 3/2/11

Actually a pretty full week this time around, with some new books coming out and some lapsed titles worming their way back into the pull. I've only sporadically looked at Green Lantern titles since Blackest Night, and I don't think I've picked up X-Factor since just after Civil War; I loved both books but I think both were getting mired down by their respective continuities.

Speaking of tiresome continuity, thumbed through the Fear Itself sketchbook I got at the shop. Of all the major, "world-changing" maxi-series events, this is probably the one I'm least interested in. Which is a damn shame, because it looks like it's probably going to be the best one. With a team like Matt Fraction writing and art by Stuart Immonen on the main series. However, and I think this is probably the root of my problem, I have no idea what the hell this is about. I've gathered it involves Red Skull's daughter taking over the mantle, and the Norse God of Fear (who, I admit, I have no idea who this is) but have yet to get a clear explanation regarding plot. Alternatively, I'm pretty burnt out on Event comics in general, and I'm against the kind of passive-aggressive threat of them implying that you have to follow all these books to get the full story and how it impacts the comics' universe at large. Can't say I particularly care to really invest in another one, even if it's mildly tame compared to the scope of some of its predecessors. Not to say I'll be boycotting it or avoiding it entirely, which is a tempting threat to throw around. There are some tie-in issues I'll be picking up anyways, and I'll probably get the main seven-issue series of it. It's just all getting wearisome.
Anyways, onto reviews:

Comics for 3/2:

G.I. Joe: Infestation #1 (of 2)

Daomu #2

Secret Six #31

Green Lantern #63

X-Factor #216

Thunderbolts #154

Witchfinder: Lost and Gone Forever #2 (of 5)

Chew #17

Annihilators #1 (of 4)

If This Be Snackcakes, Part 2: Stay Golden

Yesterday, I focused on the single-page Hostess ads Marvel ran from 1975-1982, but in 1984 Marvel ran a full issue that could have put any of the shorter strips to shame. While not officially sanctioned by Hostess, it was just as crazy as any of the actual ads, and features one of the few villains who, ostensibly, makes sense to be swayed by the promise of tasty, tasty food. I present now for the approval of the Midnight Society the tale of Golden Oldie: Herald of Galactus:

Marvel Team-Up vol. 1 #137, written by Michael Carlin, pencils by Greg LaRocque

Comics reviews 2/23/11

This was a light week, and another one without any DC. As I said last week, I'll be the first to admit that between the big two I have a bit of a Marvel bias, but it's still weird to go two weeks without any DC titles whatsoever. I'm not sure if the ones I do read just have been getting pushed back or what, I feel like when I'm setting up my pull the week before (I use Comixology's PullList app, which while handy is a bit erratic with dates) I have DC titles on there but then come Wednesday they've been shuffled away somewhere further down the timestream. Additionally, my shop didn't have one book I wanted this week so until I'm free enough to skirt over to another store I'll just toss a title from last week I picked up.

Comics for 2/23:

Star Trek: Infestation #2 (of 2)

Atomic Robo: The Deadly Art Of Science #4 (of 5)

Power-Man and Iron Fist #2 (of 5)

X-Men #8

Amazing Spider-Man #655

Skullkickers #6 Jennifer Blood #1

All-Star Superman

All-Star Superman came out this week, and while the trailers didn't exactly fill with me confidence about the project, I still rushed out to grab a copy based solely on how much I loved the books. And so I'm a little surprised to say I ended up far happier with the movie than I expected. Telling the story of Superman's last acts before his death, I loved it but have a hard time separating it from the original source material, hopefully managed to look at it both as an adaptation and its own merits.

Comics reviews 2/16/11 - The dangers of high expectations

Last week I think was overwhelmingly positive for me, to the point that I had to bring in a book I disliked from another week just to bring in some negativity to balance it out. This week, not so much. Nothing I straight-up hated, but at the very least a lot of high expectations dashed away. Perhaps, then, I'm to blame for this disappointment? Hype and expectations can affect the enjoyment of something so much more than the actual content; wanting so much from something can turn something merely mediocre into garbage and by focusing on not getting what you expected one can become prone to miss the merit that is there. Conversely, not expecting very much from something can make the good in it that much more impactful, although this applies more to movies as I revel in bad movies while with comics I rarely am willing to shell out for something I don't expect to be good in the first place. Of course there are things that hype-proof, some things are just solidly good and, having managed to watch Batman Forever twice this month, I can safely say some things are just outright horrible.

Anyways, let's look at comics.


Comics for 2/16:
Transformers: Infestation #2 (of 2)

Mass Effect: Evolution #2 (of 4)

Fables #102

Silver Surfer #1

Thunderbolts #153

Spider-Girl #4

Amazing Spider-Man #654.1

Comics reviews 2/9/11 (and some 2/2)

Figured I'd get into the habit of talking about the books I'm picking up every week, but since this is the first week I'm getting back to it, I might throw a couple of honorable mentions from last week as well. Otherwise, I notice I pick up about ten books a week, so that should provide ample material to write about. The majority of those are going to be from the Big Two publishers, and we can further simplify that down to mostly Batman- and Spider-man-family titles. I do read my share of Image and Dark Horse and the smaller publishing houses, though, and on rare occasion I'll even venture to pick up an indie title. I'll concede there often time a lot better than the mass-produced stuff being churned out, but usually I wait until they've already been out and recommended to me to read them. Anyway, presented in no particular order aside from how they're piled in front of me, here's my pull this week and my write-ups on them beyond the cut:

2/9
Infestation: Star Trek #1 (of 2)
Power Man and Iron First #1
Batman and Robin #20
Batgirl #18
Knight & Squire #5 (of 6)
Atomic Robo: The Deadly Art of Science #3 (of 5)
BPRD: Hell On Earth: Gods #2 (of 3)
Carnage #3 (of 5)
Amazing Spider-Man #654


and from 2/2
Weird Worlds #2 (of 6)
Daomu #1
Witchfinder: Lost and Gone Forever #1 (of 5)
Amazing Spider-Man #653

Quick movie wrap-up: Biutiful and The Illusionist

I'll probably do a more in-depth write-up on a lot of the nominated films around the Academy Awards ceremony, but just wanted to jot down some thoughts on what I caught last night while they're still fresh in my mind.

Biuitiful (IMDb)
Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, starring Javier Bardem, Maricel Álvarez, Guillermo Estrella

This was a powerful film to watch, but like its esteemed competition Black Swan, I was more impressed with the acting than the film itself. I could see Bardem giving Firth a run for his money in the Best Actor category (as could Franco and Eisenberg, to be honest, this is probably going to be a tight race). The movie itself was a bit erratic, but the grounding element was Bardem's Uxbal, continually making bad decisions for the right reasons, digging himself into a deeper mess in the name of making a better life for his children and the people around him. The film bounced from family drama with his children and his estranged wife to dealing with elements of the Barcelona underground, and we saw the effects of this life effecting essentially with everyone who was within one degree of separation from Uxbal himself. There was a supernatural element I have to concede I didn't quite understand and might have appreciated more if I did. It could have been a cultural thing I'm just not familiar with; at times Uxbal seemed to act as a medium and conduit to the recently deceased, but it was used so infrequently and without much of an explanation to me that I just mostly felt lost. Ignoring that, though, the more mundane elements made it a powerful, relatable story. Only major complaint I might have is the length, the pacing at times borders on glacial and I was left very aware that I was watching a 160-minute movie.

The Illusionist (IMDb)
Directed by Sylvain Chomet, starring Jean-Claude Donda, Eilidh Rankin

I had seen Chomet's other works so I was excited to finally see this one, but I wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did. A story of the eponymous, down-on-his luck parlor magician and a girl from a small town in Scotland, Alice, who believes his "magic" is real seemed fairly simple. Initially, I was just impressed with the animation, this is some of the most beautiful traditional animation I've ever seen. The character design is brilliant, there's a sense of depth to the scenes and later on the landscapes around Scotland are simply breath-taking. After the fairly downbeat Biutiful, I may have been a little emotionally weakened but I was immediately struck by how adorable this story was, even in the face of some dark scenes. The brashness and naivety of Alice, the immediate paternal rapport form between the two main characters comes across powerfully and naturally, all done without dialog, other than a few words of quick or mumbled French, English or Gaelic. The cast of supporting characters was equally as colorful and rounded out the film quite well. We see the Illusionist carry on with his act and various odd jobs to try and help Alice and maintain the childlike naivety that charms him so, but in the end the film is less about him and more about Alice and having to finally face growing up. The overall tone takes something of a downward shift near the end, but overall the film manages to hit all levels of emotional highs and lows and in the end you're left seeing how each character affects each other for better and worse.

Dead Space 2 review and musings

I can usually gauge how much I enjoyed a game not on its first play-through but how quickly I want to jump into a second. I have my handful of Fallout lives, burned through three play-throughs of Mass Effect 2 almost immediately after picking it up, I've rebought Brutal Legend after trading it in just to give it another go, and I couldn't even estimate how many times I've repeatedly gone over every level in Bayonetta at this point. I don't do this to top some leaderboard or hone skills or unlock every achievement (although the latter can often provide me with new goals and focuses). I do this because the game was fun, I actually enjoyed playing it (and I have an addictive personality) and I just want to keep playing. So with that in mind, I think it will give a clear indication of how I felt about Dead Space 2 when I finished the single player campaign today, and I was into the second chapter of a New Game+ before I could put it down. And on top of that, I had gone back to Dead Space 1 and finished my fourth play-through there about a week before picking up the sequel.

In the past few years, Dead Space was one of my favorite new IPs to pop up, somewhere between the Silent-Hill-In-Space I had originally hoped it to be and an excellent, fast-paced third-person shooter. Dead Space 2 didn't change a whole lot as far as gameplay; other than a smooth graphical upgrade, a bit of streamlining and an ever-so-slightly different button mapping I'd call the bulk of the game damn near identical. Playing the original right before this one, I slid into it fairly seamlessly, which is handy because I found I, and have heard others, died a lot in the first 5-30 seconds of the game, as it dumps you right into the action. And action is an operative word here. Where Dead Space 1 was heavier on the horror elements, isolation and atmosphere and jump-scares, 2 shifts the focus more to the action side of its spectrum. Indictitive of the shift, I noticed there seemed to be some balancing in combat. Stasis is made less powerful at slowing down the enemies, it doesn't last as long and noticeably the enemies themselves tend to be much, much faster than they had been in the past. Alternatively, the telekinesis beam is a much more powerful tool, with metal spikes and Necromorph arms in plentiful supply and the added mechanic of harpooning an enemy across a room adds both a fun and helpful alternative killing method when you find ammo in short supply. Additionally, melee now seems to actually be a viable method of taking down foes. You're able to knock back enemies if you get surrounded, and generally kick, punch and blast your way out of most altercations. The game becomes a focus on combat rather than survival.

I also found the game to be a lot more wry than it's predecessor which was a direct result of probably the most substantial change between games: Isaac Clarke himself. Originally he was a Silent Protagonist, locked in his RIG, only showing his face in the first and last minutes of the game and never saying a single word more complex than a grunt or scream. In the second game, it is substantially harder to shut him up short of letting the Necromorphs go to town on him, and spends a great deal of time taking his helmet off, including points where you kind of have to question why he'd bother and I'd swear there were even a couple of scenes where he mugged for the camera. Rather than just having characters tell him where to go and explain everything to him in detail, he is actively talking back and smarming the people telling him where to go and explaining everything to him. It's hard to say if this actively added or detracted from Clarke; he certainly had a bit more depth of character but getting to know him wasn't really an improvement, especially after growing attached to the less smartalecky, more stoic Clarke in the first game. However, it did work playing off the equally-smartalecky Ellie after she shows up in the latter half of the game.

I've heard a lot of praise for the story, although I'm not sure where it's coming from. I found it at least fairly standard, and the psychological elements were fun, leaving you sure that Isaac is insane but never sure exactly HOW insane he's become. It picks up three years after the events of the first game but for all intents and purposes you're coming in exactly where it had left off. With the majority of the world-building out of the way already it's a pretty standard fare, and dropping you right in the action it's probably not hard to pick up what's going on even if you haven't played the first game. And while the Marker and Unitology stuff probably makes less sense if you haven't been through it all already, even if you have it still probably doesn't leave you making all that much more sense in the end.

The other major change-up from the first game, and this one certainly an improvement, is the revamp to the Zero-G sections. While there was really nothing particularly wrong with the first game's handling of it, the old gameplay was completely scrapped and replaced with a flying mechanic that I THINK is akin to the jetpack-flying in Dark Void, which I never actually played but from I know of it I believe it was similar. It crops up every now and then and it's very fun to zip around and solve puzzles or avoid deathtraps as warranted, and the only problem I could find with it is the infrequency of the sections. At least, when they do pop up, most of them are short and over with quickly, and I could have gone for some longer segments utilizing the flying rather than just floating around, grabbing a power source, plugging it in, etc.

This leads in to the only complaint I really have about the game, is that it could have stood to shake things up a little. Aside from Zero-G and some steering-falling segments, it's pretty much all running-and-gunning and simple puzzle-solving through the 15 chapters. There's some variety in the foes you'll face, ranging from the swarms of childform-Necromorphs, the standard-issue Necromorph sieges you must hold off and the admittedly fun but quickly repetitive Stalker sections, in which galloping creatures ostensibly resembling malformed pachycephalosaurs (and sounding like Jurassic Park velociraptors to the point that getting through the first section of them unlocks a Clever Girl achievement) hop and hide around a maze of obstacles (typically large shipping crates) until they get a chance to charge at you, and briefly the game becomes more about strategy and timing than straight gunplay. The Brutes are back with a couple of other larger Necromorphs creating a few miniboss segments but the very concept of the miniboss implies there is a larger, grander boss fight which this game never really delivers. Even the final boss fight is primarily just another swarm you had to fend off. Alternatively, the first game had two massive boss fights, the Leviathan and the Hivemind, and even to a lesser extent the asteroid field and the Slug boss segments. The Leviathan remains one of my favorite boss fights of all time, an action set that was a masterpiece of lighting and design and just fun gameplay that I could write a lot more about than I probably should here, maybe some other time. Even the Hivemind was a wonderful Final Boss fight, transplanted into a modern game from a begone era, a giant monster with a repeating moveset to learn and glowing weak-points to shoot. It was the kind of boss fight I'm happy to build up to, to have as a cap on the game. It's not enough to ruin my enjoyment of the game, but the lack of variety really stood out to me. That could even be part of why I dived immediately into the second play-through, there was no break in the gameplay that particularly sated me, but I was happy to just keep rolling. And I'll gladly roll into the inevitable third* game in the series when that crops up, too, no matter how much or how little has changed.

I haven't said anything about the multiplayer because I have no interest in playing the multiplayer. Maybe if some friends are playing I'll hop on with them, but otherwise it's fairly useless to me.

Dead Space 2, developed by Visceral Games and published by EA Games. Images taken from Dead Space 2's official site.

*Accurately, it'd be, what, the fifth game? Plus two movies and a comic. This thing built up a sizable franchise quick.