Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Tag: Comics

  • Comic Trademarks

    Here’s an interesting fact: Marvel and DC—the two biggest publishers of comic books—jointly own a trademark on the term “Super Hero” (and its variations). Huh? I picked this up from Newsarama, via Boing Boing.

    That seems to me to be just a little bit ludicrous, but it suddenly seems clear why Alan Moore’s comic books refer to their protagonists as “science heroes” and not superheroes.

    Man that’s weird.

  • The Far Side

    Come on—who wouldn’t want The Complete Far Side for Christmas?

  • RSS Comics Feeds

    “Tapestry is a series of RSS feeds for online comics.” Very cool. I’ve just subscribed to a bunch of them, now I’ll get the day’s comics delivered right to my computer automagically!

    Update: Forgot to give credit to Jake at UtterlyBoring.com for the link.

  • Comic Book Rant

    This rant is something I mentioned here some time back, and I’ve been mulling it over in my head for a while now; if you’re not interested in comics, then you can safely pass this up. It’s one of those highly geeky topics that make many people shake their head in bemusement whenever it comes up.

    Also, it’s long. Consider yourself warned. (more…)

  • Get Father’s Day

    What a neat Father’s Day it was. I got to lay around the house, drink some beer, played some Dukes of Hazzard: Racing for Home (you haven’t lived until you’ve jumped the General Lee over anything with the horn playing. The reviews at Amazon aren’t so hot for this game, though. Go figure). Also I picked up a couple of books for myself, Groovitude: A Get Fuzzy Treasury, by Darby Conley, and How the Mind Works, by Steven Pinker, with a Barnes & Noble gift card from my in-laws.

    Get Fuzzy is one of the funniest strips to come along in awhile (for me, anyway). Reminds me a lot of Bloom County (one of my all time favorite strips) with liberal doses of Calvin & Hobbes and The Far Side thrown in.

    So for the past 2 days I’ve been reading Groovitude and chuckling. Interestingly, the early versions of Rob is visually very, very similar to Steve Dallas from Bloom County.

    Ooo! The freshmaker!

  • X2

    I saw X2 (X-Men 2, for the uninitiated) Saturday, and I’ll say right off, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was better than the original, which is a bold thing to say for a sequel, but it’s true. And I quite liked the first movie.

    About the only thing I didn’t like about it was the title; the subtitle to X2 was X-Men United, which didn’t really make any sense and certainly didn’t add anything to the movie; sort of like Star Wars Episode II‘s subtitle. At any rate, they could have just called the movie X2 and left it at that; it has a nicer ring to it, I think.

    Things I liked:

    • The overall plot and script was better than the last movie, too, much more coherent and sensible (well, as sensible as fantasy can be).
    • The special effects are spot on. I think we’re finally at the time where there’s pretty much nothing that can’t be done or depicted on the screen.
    • Consistent use of actors and characters. Nothing bothers me more than when a character in one movie was played by a certain actor, only to then pop up in another movie being played by a different actor. Not a problem here. Minor roles from the first movie are played by the same actors here.
    • Halle Berry does a much better job of portraying Storm this time. Her wig looks real, too.
    • Magneto is dangerous and more ruthless this time around, which is appropriate, but they haven’t elevated him to ridiculous power levels or made him a savage lunatic like they tend to do in the comics.
    • Wolverine kicks SO much ass. The way Wolverine should be done.
    • The School for mutants is actually a school (like in the first movie), not just a mutant paramilitary training ground, as it was almost always portrayed in the comics prior to the first movie.

    Overall, great movie. Go see it.

  • The Man Without Fear

    Went and saw “Daredevil” Friday night. I liked it quite a lot, it’s worth seeing if you’re into the action/comic-book-adaption movie thing. I was especially interested as Daredevil, the comic book, has been the one comic I’ve consistently collected for, oh, the past 15 years or more. I’ll try not to spoil any critical parts of it.

    What I liked:

    • The realistic costume. No more of those 80 pound stiff rubber batsuits!
    • The realistic portrayal of a blind man going about his daily routine— folding various denominations of money in different ways to distinguish them, dark rooms (if you’re blind, why use lights?), all the braille.
    • The way they depicted DD’s “radar sense” was well done. Likewise, the fact that he spent nights in a sensory deprivation tank to give his ultra-senses a break was an excellent touch.
    • Depicting the physical strain and toll it must be to do what Daredevil does, night after night, by the scars all over his back in the shower, and pulling out a tooth (in a scene lifted neatly from “Fight Club”) in the same scene.
    • Colin Farrell as Bullseye.
    • Jon Favreau as Foggy Nelson.
    • A lot of nods/tributes to the original comic, and Marvel comics in general, like: the sports center sign featuring the boxing match of Jack Murdock vs. John Romita; cops named Miller, Mack and Bendis; Kevin Smith playing a bit part as a crime lab worker named Kirby.

    What I didn’t like:

    • A few of the action/acrobat sequences had an unnatural Matrix-quality to them. I really don’t think people can jump that far, or that high…
    • Where was Stick? Or any martial arts instructor? It’s kind of hard to buy that a young Matt Murdock could have taught himself how to fight and do acrobatics so quickly…
    • Hm…. I guess there wasn’t much I didn’t like.

    Go see the movie. It’s worth it.

    And for any comic geeks reading, Frank Miller is the definitive Daredevil writer. For artists, I’m partial to David Mazzucchelli and John Romita, Jr. Following that, it pretty much goes without saying that I think the two definitive runs on Daredevil are Born Again and The Man Without Fear.