Secret origins for everyone!

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This use to be the worst Batgirl that I knew of. But Adam Beechen has officially changed that forever. His new six part run of Batgirl, is easily the worst comic book I have read in recent history. If this can possible be spoiled for you then don’t read the rest of this post.

*Spoiler Alert!*

Issue five begins with Cassandra Cain stealing a plane from the Batcave, Nightwing tells her not to, jumps on the wing as it goes up, sticks a tracer on one of Batmans planes, and then parachutes off.

Scene two: Batman and Robin are in another plane chasing her, telling her to land, Cassandra Cain the martial artist does a smooth sky U-turn out manuvering Batman, getting on his flank and then shooting him down. She is so precise that she intentionally doesn’t kill them and forces them into chaseing her on dune buggys.

I don’t think I have anymore to say about it. The whole issue is exactly that bad. She finally meets up with David Cain at the end and he mysteriously reminds me of the noid. So what I’m trying to say is that the pencils in the book suck as well. J.Calafiore is definitely going on my “try to avoid” list.

The next issue is promising a “surprise ending!!” with two exclamation points!! I think you guys might see where I am going with this, but I’ll say it anyway. The only thing that could surprise me in the last issue is if it were good. And unless Adam Beechen is pulling a prank as large as the Y2K blackout theory, I don’t think that’s going to happen.  0 out of 3159 stars (my lowest ranking ever!!)

I would rather have my own robot mother give Hollywood Hulk Hogan  hot mouth sex, than read the last part of this series! -Slugtron

Swank-mo-tron: Hello everyone, Swank-mo-tron here.  I just wanted to kick off our first roundtable in a while, this time for the new 007 picture, Quantum of Solace.

Let me be the first to say that this movie was pretty good despite obvious mistakes and missteps.  The action sequences, though too choppy, were pretty engaging and cool and Daniel Craig is a certifiable bad-ass.  Having said that, this isn’t my favorite Bond film and there are a few reasons for that.  First, the fact that Forster decided to NOT open with the gun barrel sequence that every other James Bond picture opens with started off this outing with a bit of annoyance for me.  (I was already pissed because there wasn’t a Watchmen trailer on my print but two (count ‘em two!) fucking Seven Pounds trailers).  The lack of the gun barrel combined with the utterly patronizing and pointless title screens every time the locale changes served to grate on me through what should have been an otherwise perfect film.  I mean, how many Bond movies have we as a collective audience sat through and didn’t need updates about where the action was heading and all of a sudden we’re too fucking stupid?  I mean honestly, when Bond says, “They’re going to Bolivia,” and they get on a plane and the next shot is him getting off, can’t we just assume that we’re in Bolivia instead of taking me for a moron?  My other big problem was the lack of 007’s theme song in the body of the film.  In Casino Royale, I understood the reason they held off, but for this outing there was no excuse.

Also, where the fuck are Q and Moneypenny?  There is a reason that for 20 straight Bond films there was a Q department and a great scene with Bond and his relationship with Moneypenny.  Why are we not capable of handling that awesomeness anymore?  The next film might as well be Moonraker bad if it can’t include Moneypenny, Q, the James Bond theme and the gun barrel sequence at the fucking beginning.  Otherwise this is just another Bourne movie, and I’ve had enough of those….

Any thoughts?

Humanjunk: The movie was good though. I won’t say it’s as good as Casino Royale, as I seemed to miss the character arc if there was any for Bond. He spent the whole of the movie scowling and being emotionally constipated, don’t get me wrong, Daniel Craig is a fine Bond, by far my favorite, but it seemed to me that he spent the entire time pissed over Vesper. This movie and the last one are more human and real than any of the other ones in the franchise, and Craig, though brooding, brings an element of melancholy to the film; a man who fights against his emotions, fearing that they’ll make him seem weak. He’s well aware that everything he touches turns to shit.

This annual shows all of the reasons you should be reading Ultimate Spider-Man. Bendis takes his writing seriously, and he tries to give the me honest portrayal of Spider-Man and Peter Parker. As well as everyone else in the book.

Peter has got a pretty great understanding about responsibility. But with that in his back pocket, how does he approach other teenage problems besides homework and curfews. Such as all those hormones raging in his system. Peter and MJ have been through life and death situations, why wouldn’t they eventually approach the subject of sex? To find out you should pick up the issue.

Telltale Games was kind enough to provide Big Shiny Robot! a review copy of their new game “Sam and Max: Season One” for the Wii.  (If you’re interested in picking it up from Amazon, click here.)  I spent quite a bit of time noodling around with the game and I was quite excited to play. Sam and Max Hit the Road was a game I had a lot of fun with in my teenage years and so I’ve always harbored a fondness for these characters.

My inherent fondness for these characters might have been the only reason I was able to enjoy this game at all.

The game is very simple in it’s design.  You use your Wii-mote to point at various things on the screen and watch Sam and Max pontificate in a generally humorous fashion. And there is plenty to click on, so there’s never any shortage of stuff to do.

The problem is that the only thing there is to do is click on stuff.  There are puzzles to solve by clicking on stuff, but they aren’t terribly intuitive…  I played through three (of six) episodes and it did get easier as I went on and I think the reason was because I started to get acclimated to the mechanics of the game and the inherent…lameness (?) of how the puzzles work. Maybe lameness is the wrong word.  It’s just cheesy.  And for the first episode, the dynamics of how they work didn’t make a lot of sense to me, so it was really frustrating.  Like, so frustrating that I went to GameFAQs.com and looked up a walkthrough.

All in all, I think if you’re a fan of Sam and Max, you’ll enjoy the game if you can get around the awkward writing, they are fun characters.  If not, it might be worth a shot to Tell Tales’ Strong Bad Games instead.

I picked this game up a few days ago, on account of how rad the rest of the Nintendo DS Castlevania games have been and I was not disappointed. On the other hand it didn’t bring almost anything new to the series at all. The story is basically the same, someone is trying to bring Count Dracula to power, and you don’t want them to.

Well, it’s slightly more complicated than that. The main character in the game is a human broad named Shanoa and she has the unique ability to suck in “glyphs” and then use their powers. Someone steals the glyphs that contain Dracula’s power, and you are trying to get them back.

The trailers for this game were very deceptive, because it looked like the format was going to majorly change. The trailers were filled with magic spells that looked very unconventional, but radical, and there was very little weapon fighting, which seems to be what the other games are very much about. It turns out that this game was also very much about it, you are mostly using swords and maces just like the other games. So nothing much changed, but not changing from a winning formula is change we don’t need, right? They do introduce new ways to fight the same way though, and this somehow kept me very interested, amen.

That’s not change! That’s more of the same! -Slugtron & Joe Biden

This game is actually a pretty easy beat, you may get stuck at a few of the bosses at the beginning but by the end you have so much dope shit that you are practically unstoppable. So you are way more likely to die against the crab boss in the third dungeon than by Death himself. Which some might consider a flaw, but I had fun the whole time. I even had fun running through the game a second time on hard! Which was even easier then playing through on easy (because you get to keep all of your equipment.) On the plus side there is a harder version of hard, and also a different version of the game with another character, as well as all the other normal Castlevania extras like a boss rush mode.

All in all, I highly recommend this game to anyone that liked any other Castlevania game. But it’s simple enough for someone who hasn’t played any of the other games who wants to jump in and have fun. In fact as far as the revamped series goes starting from Symphony of the Night, this is about the easiest and most basic, even though I think the trailers would force you to believe something completely different.

As with all Castlevania games I would recommend jumping on it and buying it quick. Because for some reason they usually mysteriously stop producing them after the first week and seldom go down in price. In fact this game has an “out of stock” message at the creator Konami’s website.

Order of Ecclesia gets 143 out of 156 stars as well as a decree by me, Doctor Cyborg, that Castlevania rocks! But only until the movie comes out and embarasses the entire franchise. Apparantly written by Paul W.S. Anderson the mastermind behind such wonders as “Alien Vs. Predetor” and “Mortal Kombat”. Not that directing those movies wasn’t already a black eye, I would also like to point out that with nine films he has a 0% success rate on rotten tomatoes. Directed by Sylvain White the professor that gifted us with such miracles as “I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer” and “Stomp the Yard” also boasting an astringent 0% on rotten tomatoes. You better strap in and then hold on to your hats when these two come together. Also I don’t really care for the idea of a Castlevania fighting game that is slated to come out later this month.

CyberNev discusses the new Terra and the prettiness of Amanda Conner’s art.

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This space did, indeed, contain a blisteringly positive review for an early draft of the screenplay for Scott Pilgrim.

But we got a call about 5 hours after it was posted by Jared LeBoff, one of the films producers. He was quite cool about it and asked if we could take the review down. We have experience with being asked to have stuff taken down, but this was actually the first producer to call and politely ask us to do it personally and they were super-sticky-sweet about it. It was waaaaay cooler than the cease-and-desist letters Warner Brothers sent us…

So we’ve taken it down.

They are, however, going to get us in the loop for the press for Scott Pilgrim when the film ramps up production.

In the meantime, what do you guys think of the Scott Pilgrim movie and all the news you’ve heard about it to date?

Iron Man: The End
Written by David Michelinie
Penciled by Bernard Chang
Published by Marvel Comics
Release Date: 11/05/2008

I’ve read Marvel’s “The End” comics here and there and sometimes I’m quite pleasantly surprised (as was the case with Hulk’s ending story, which kicked so much ass it was astonishing) and other times, I’m a little let down.  This book is more towards the “letting down” side of the spectrum than the astonishing side, but it wasn’t terrible.

It was just pretty ho-hum.

The story is about Tony Stark coming to terms with the fact that his age is catching up with him and he’s going to have to find a replacement for himself.  Both as the philanthropic industrialist and as Iron Man.  But he doesn’t want to let go.

It seems like it should have been more interesting, but the story labors through the paces in a way that doesn’t seem to offer me any insight beyond the images simply reading the pitch conjures.  If you know anything about Tony Stark (and since the movie came out, who doesn’t know about him now) and you read the one sentence pitch of this book, then you could probably guess what sorts of things you’ll be reading about.

The pencilling is quite capable and looks nice, as well as the inks and the colors, but the story was certainly driven to readers in that Hum-drum-vee that Rhodey was forced to ride in, in the movie.

Having said that, it’s great to see Marvel going out on limbs like this with their characters in What If…? sorts of scenarios, even if they aren’t as Twilight Zone feeling as What If…?.  And let’s be honest, there’s no way this could be better than Stan Lee and John Romita, Jr.’s Last Fantastic Four Story.

Superman: New Krypton Special

Writers- Geoff Johns, James Robinson and Sterling Gates

Artists- Gary Frank (Penciler) and Jon Sibal (Inks), Renato Guedes(P) and Wilson Magalháes(I), and Pete Woods (P/I)

Let me start by saying I hate specials and crossovers. I do not like to buy other books when crossovers happen for a myriad of reasons, but the big two being story and cost. Typically, when you read issue “A” of one series and the next part in book “B”, you loose something in translation as the two writers attempt to make the story cohesive and work. Not only that, but “Special” usually means a book that costs more and includes reprints or some kind of supplemental material (which is in reality padding any way you slice it), it’s usually a lose-lose situation.

“Superman: New Krypton Special” is both the end of the previous “Braniac” arc and the beginning of the New Krypton story. The book comes in at a stunning 40 pages of story (48 pages, do the math on the ads yourself) for an extra buck ($3.99). The story tells what is both the worst time and the best time in the life of Clark Kent, his father recently deceased (John Kent) and his “Kryptonian” family (Aunt and Uncle) arriving with 999,998 (that’s 1,000,000 all together) other Kryptonians. Unfortunately, these Kryptonians didn’t have the benefit of being raised by a kindly Kansas couple and see humanity as lesser beings.

Geoff Johns, James Robinson, and Sterling Gates all manage to mesh together in one cohesive story (their books being Action Comics, Superman, and Supergirl respectively). On the same note, not so much on the artists ends (through no fault of their own). The art of Gary Frank (of Action Comics) tells the story of the funeral of Clark’s father, and why Jonathan Kent was so important in whom Clark is. In an inner thoughts moment that is emotionally chilling, Johns and Frank tells us why it’s important that Superman not “act” the way we would want to given the circumstances, and what would happen should Superman drop what some perceive as a dated morality. Additionally, Frank manages to capture the essence of Christopher Reeves in appearance and mannerisms in both his renderings of Clark and Superman.

The art of Renato Guedes and Pete Woods seems to mesh pretty well in a drastic departure from Frank’s work. It doesn’t interrupt the flow of the story so much, but is a bit jarring to adjust to. The two artists manage to tie the story together with their respective writers. For the first time, I actually admit to myself that I want to read the three individual Super-books, and not for the crossover (New Krypton runs through Action Comics, Superman, and Supergirl).