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Big day today.
It's late afternoon on Thursday here. Thursday here in Australia, like in the UK, is new comic book day. A day that comes about 52 times a year, and usually is just full of terrible disappointment, sprinkled with the occasional ray of sunshine which is a typical Ellis, etc.
But today, oh today…. Today is an anniversary. Today is #200 issues of X-men.
Why does this matter?
Many, many years ago a certain friend of mine swapped a copy of X-Men #1 with me. At the time the series had reached the dizzying heights of #10, and I was totally unaware of the existence of Uncanny X-Men, X-Force, X-Factor, etc. (for those who don't know, Marvel Comics tend to milk their licences. Seriously. So a lot of books are published around the successful franchise). X-Men #1 is what got me hook, and over the years I have bought every variant cover, and got my gatefold cover signed by (write) Chris Claremont and (artist) Jim Lee.
It's the comic that started it all for me, and it's one I always come back to. Happy Birthday X-Men.
Read it. Watch it.
I think I'm going to enjoy 2k8
Last night (Monday 23rd April - 6:15 for a 6:45 start my ticket is what is pictured!) I had the privilege to attend the Australian premier of Spider-man 3. No stars at ours (bar the local celebrity reviewer or two, which I was quite excited to see as I enjoy our local movie show). It was at the George Street cinema in Sydney, and it was packed with eager people, looking forward to the first big summer (winter for us) blockbuster of the year...
And they enjoyed it. There was a smattering of applause at the end, but that smattering reflected exactly what I thought of the film. It was... Enjoyable. OK. That is it.
First, it's way too long. For a light movie (which it clearly attempts to be, no matter the themes of revenge, personal development, etc) it labours the point quite a lot. I think they are trying to ram home the change in characters, yet they seem to assume they need to appeal to the lowest common denominator in the audience to do this. Yes this person is behaving incorrectly, but you don't have to show me the same thing again and again. I think I got where you were going to with the first cheesy montage.
And there I hit the second point. The cheese factor. Now I've been a comic web-head for over ten years. The comics themselves do not shy from the cheese factor, so I can appreciate that in this movie. Over all this movie appeared to embrace it's comic-roots far more than the others... It's just that the cheese factor was so overwhelming at points it was embarrassing to be a member of the audience . I don't like feeling uncomfortable in films, so didn't really appreciate this.
Finally (at least for the detractions of the movie) the use of the Sandman is largely redundant. He looks fantastic, usually, but this film did not need two bad guys. I understand their inclusion to assist in completing Harry Osbourne's journey as the Goblin, yet feel that Venom should have been enough of a threat to do this. The modification of the back story, shoe-horning the Sandman into Peter's life proves to be a catalyst for an event or two, but it's nothing that could not have taken place with slightly more intelligent plotting. The worst result of the inclusion of the Sandman is that we get such a small amount of Venom time. This is such a shame.
There are some positives. The introduction is clever. The montage during the opening web credits showing images of the first two films is clever, well edited, and reminds all of us of what has come before. Very clever.
The effects are top notch, with Venom being particularly brilliant.
Bruce Campbell's Spider-man role was his best yet, and drew the greatest audience laugh and a flurry of whispers. As did the obligatory Stan Lee appearance. It's great to see even the non-comic-geekery people recognising him now.
Over all the film is enjoyable. It could serve as an adequate end (or break point) to the franchise. It just has the Batman Forever/Ewoks in Jedi feel about it. Shark is about to be jumped, or just has been, and things might never be the same again.
Over at the The Engine, Warren Ells has started this whole redesign thing. To quote:
Of late, there's been a recurrent meme among several comics art blogs. Reclaiming characters from their owners, I guess it could be broadly described as... right now, I think there are Supergirl and Power Girl art-response threads running across various places, chiefly LiveJournal.
the first was Witchblade Now I don't know a lot about this Witchblade chick, and I seldom post on The Engine... but I found some old Derwent Drawing pencils over the long weekend, and I had a go.
My take was tentacles and claws, because they are evil. I also had the Witchblade thingy slow dissolve clothes, so that we could have a cuteish chick without the fanboygasm. That's what the colour sneaking into the clothes is. I'd love to have it corrupt the face, but I'm rubbish at faces, so it's just squiggles.
Meh. I think the next time I'll try some photoshop mashup.
A panel, found somewhere on the internet
You should all have read this.