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10 Ways ‘Injustice: Gods Among Us’ is Dumb As Hell…

Posted in comic books, Jeff Holland, reviews, Threat Quality with tags Injustice: Gods Among Us, Jeff Holland, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, NetherRealm, Superman, Threat Quality on May 7, 2013 by braak

(…but still kinda fun.)

The new fighting game Injustice: Gods Among Us is the answer to the question, “What if a Mortal Kombat video game starred Superman and Batman?” That is, of course, if you found the first answer, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, to make too much basic sense and also not have hideous costume designs.

It’s fun and pretty easy to play, as Mortal Kombat games tend to be, and the ability to interact with the backgrounds leads to some surprising and often hilarious injuries (seriously, watch out for jet engines, guys). And the two-trigger super-move means you get to enjoy a fatality-style animated finishing sequence without having to memorize a complicated code.

There are a few hinky issues in the battle gameplay – mostly that you don’t automatically win just because you’ve selected Batman, which to me is a glaring and confusing flaw, but I suppose that might be more my problem than the game’s. Read more »

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The three best comics of 2012, including the one that isn’t

Posted in comic books, Jeff Holland, reviews, Threat Quality with tags Comic Reviews, Hawkeye, Jeff Holland, Prophet, Saga, Threat Quality on February 12, 2013 by braak

One of my new year’s resolutions: To read fewer bad comics. I mean, to stop engaging shit like Detective Comics or JMS’s agonizing Superman: Earth One books. Seriously, life is too short to hate-read.

(…Is what I’ve told myself, but then, I do have that next edition of Geoff Johns’ utterly, hilariously terrible Justice League comic on hold at the library, so. Pobody’s Nerfect.)

But this column is not about bad comics. It is, in fact, about two of the best comics produced in 2012 – and possibly in years, maybe decades, maybe…look, they’re really good.

And also one other comic that I’m gonna need a little help with.

First things first. Everything you’ve heard is true: Saga, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, is one of the best comics I’ve ever read. Here, I’ll sell it for you: “Star Wars, starring two brand-new parents.” Read more »

Superior Spider-Man: Well, This Is Gonna Be Weird

Posted in comic books, Jeff Holland, reviews, Threat Quality with tags Dan Slott, Jeff Holland, Spider-Man, Superior Spider-Man, Threat Quality on January 15, 2013 by braak

Here is the thing about Spider-Man: It’s pretty easy to find good Spider-Man comics that fit the platonic ideal of Spider-Man (“With great power comes great responsibility”+ Peter Parker’s crappy luck + girl problems + goofy super-villains + wisecracks = Standard-Issue Spider-Man Story).

The problem comes when writers decide to break out of the mold and try something a little different than what Spider-Man’s used to. Sometimes you get an undisputed classic (“Kraven’s Last Hunt,” which is fricking amazing, but feels almost 0% like a “standard” Spidey story).

A lot more often, that’s when you get things like The Clone Saga, where Peter’s entire LIFE was (for a while) a lie, and he was fighting weird mystical cults and magic people with backstories-to-be-filled-in-later, and …

Yo, I was there. Peter Parker got so stressed over that story he backhanded pregnant Mary Jane and even decided not to even be Peter Parker for a while, “Only The SPIDER!” Read more »

DC Comics New 52 COLLECTED Reviews – Demon Knights, Frankenstein, Suicide Squad and Stormwatch

Posted in comic books, Jeff Holland, reviews, Threat Quality with tags DC Comics, Demon Knights, Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E., Jeff Holland, Stormwatch, Threat Quality on January 11, 2013 by braak

Hm. How embarrassing – I’d assumed I’d posted this months ago.

Anyway, I intend to get back to more timely reviewing – I really want to talk about Saga, and Hawkeye, and Superior Spider-Man – but before we do, I should probably tell you guys about some more DC New 52 collections I’ve read and possibly enjoyed.

This time around, we’re going to look at some of the edgy/weird titles, and this time, I’m pretty well shocked to find two books I really really liked. Positive reviews! This will probably not be a trend.

Demon Knights Vol. 1: Seven Against The Dark

Demon Knights manages to pull off in six issues, using many of the same ingredients, everything that Justice League failed at. It’s a team book with some recognizable characters thrown together by chance, many with conflicting motivations or attitudes, each with a particular skill set, tasked with defending against an invading horde, finding a mission and reason to stay together after the initial events.

But unlike Justice League, it does so by being exciting, good-humored, and intriguing in its teases of future developments and possible betrayals. And unlike Jim Lee’s shiny and shallow art style where poses trump storytelling, Diogenes Neves (who improves with each chapter) focuses a lot of attention on the physical acting of each character.

With an ensemble book, probably the best thing a writer can do to ensure the audience returns – more than upping the ante, though there are some great cliffhangers in here – is develop characters the audience wants to spend more time with. And this is a quirky batch – Vandal Savage’s good-times barbarian, the intriguingly lusty Etrigan, and the downright hilarious Sir Ystin among them – are a lot of things, but mostly, they’re just fun to watch. Even when they are doing terrible things, I find them more sympathetic and emotionally recognizable than any single member of the Justice League. Read more »

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James Gunn, Guardians of the Galaxy

Posted in Braak, comic books, reviews, Threat Quality with tags Braak, disney, feminism, guardians of the galaxy, james gunn, marvel, women on November 28, 2012 by braak

My goodness, I am ready to be done with all this. Here’s the thing: James Gunn, tapped to direct Marvel/Disney’s (Marsney’s) upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy movie did this poll about the superheroes that folks would most like to engage in the intercourse with, and then he followed up all these votes with some pretty awful misogynistic and homophobic junk.

This was a year or so ago, I think, and someone just noticed it recently, so people started talking about it, and James Gunn immediately took it down but look! It’s here on Google cache. The internet — like an elephant, or a quiet iorich — never forgets.

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DC New 52 Collected Reviews – Aquaman (Or: Holy Crap, A Positive Review For a Change)

Posted in comic books, Jeff Holland, reviews, Threat Quality with tags aquaman, DC new 52, Geoff Johns, Jeff Holland, Threat Quality on November 21, 2012 by braak

Well dammit. I actually really like Geoff Johns’ take on Aquaman.

I don’t know why this annoys me. Maybe it’s because after banging through so many other New52 DC collections, I simply expected the book with Angry Aquaman stabbing at the reader to be as bad as one would assume. Aquaman isn’t a character DESIGNED to snarl and frown – he’s a blond swimmy guy who rides seahorses, talks to fish and wears bright orange! – and yet that’s been his default mode for basically the last 30 years. (Unless you go elsewhere.)

Then there’s Johns. I’m not a big Johns fan – the “Johnsian Literalism” theory put in play at Comics Alliance bugs me, and his weird insistence that every DC character have mother or father issues is disconcerting in its consistency. And here it is on display again: the opening arc focuses quite a bit on Aquaman’s relationship with his human father, as it guides the hero through his newfound, “Am I man or Atlantean?” issues.

This is probably a way of making them more “human,” but it usually feels like a hamfisted retcon that gives guys like Green Lantern and Flash something to brood over without feeling particularly intrinsic to their characters.

But damned if it doesn’t work with Aquaman. In fact, practically everything Johns comes up with for this not-quite-reboot* of the character is pretty spot-on.

Which, of course, makes That One Thing stand out even more as being a fucking terrible idea.

But we’ll save that for last, because I’m happy to actually write a positive DC review for a change, so let’s go down the list of things that go right in Aquaman Vol. 1: The Trench. Read more »

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Armchair Screenwriting: That ‘Justice League’ Movie

Posted in Action Movies, comic books, Jeff Holland, Threat Quality with tags Jeff Holland, Justice League movie, Threat Quality, writing on October 26, 2012 by braak

So apparently now that Warner Bros. doesn’t need to worry about how much of Superman it actually owns, they’re gonna go ahead and just make a Justice League movie next year, to be released against Avengers in summer 2015 – though that’s a hell of a turnaround time, considering they don’t have a cast or director in place.

It’s also comically, stubbornly refusing the Avengers individual-films-then-an-all-star-jamboree model of franchising. Instead Warner Bros. is banking on the idea that it can introduce a bunch of characters in Justice League, then spin them off into their own franchises.

And look, this does sound incredibly hubristic, but if you’d have asked me five years ago if Avengers would have been successful…well, I’d have still been too thrown by the notion that people went to see a Thor movie to even field the question posed to me. So it’s not impossible, just…a daunting task, I suppose is the most diplomatic way to put it.

But unless they think they’re going to revive the Green Lantern franchise, this is not likely to pay off as expansively as Warner Bros. probably hopes.

I mean, look at it this way, the line-up is most likely going to be: Read more »

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12th Doctor Comics

Posted in Braak, comic books with tags 12th doctor, Braak, comics, Doctor Who, krakagars on October 21, 2012 by braak

Experiments with Slideshow. I wish I could tinker with it so the change wasn’t a fade, but what can you do?

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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DC New 52 Collected Reviews – Various Bat-Ladies

Posted in comic books, Jeff Holland, reviews, Threat Quality with tags Batgirl, Batwoman, DC Comics, Jeff Holland, New 52, Threat Quality on October 17, 2012 by braak

Batwoman Vol. 1: Hydrology remains a frustrating read for me because it’s nowhere near as fun as it should be when you look at the parts making up its whole:

It is drawn by J.H. Williams…
Starring a lesbian punkabilly socialite with military training who runs her Batwoman operations as combat missions with the help of her version of Alfred, her army colonel father…
Missions that usually involve monster-men, ghost-ladies, the Religion of Crime and an Alice-in-Wonderland themed crazy who is actually Batwoman’s presumed-dead twin…
While trying to evade the eyes of the Department of Extranormal Operations, which is headed by a skeleton in a suit who smokes cigars.

Honestly, how is this thing not better? Read more »

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DC Comics New 52 Collected Reviews – Detective Comics

Posted in comic books, Jeff Holland, reviews, Threat Quality with tags Batman, Detective Comics, Jeff Holland, Threat Quality, Tony Daniel on September 21, 2012 by braak

AKA, “The Comic Where Batman Doesn’t Know How To Use Similes”

Detective Comics, Vol. 1: Faces of Death

I’m glad I waited to read Tony Daniel’s Detective Comics before writing up a full review of the Batman books, because initially I was going to include a section on some of the awkward dialogue found in Peter Tomasi’s over-earnest but generally entertaining Batman & Robin. But then I got through Daniels’ opening run, and…hoo-boy.

Let’s start with the positive. I’m always impressed by how much Daniels strives to improve his art. Since he debuted in the mid-90′s, he’s worked steadily, first at Image and then at DC, and you can really see him taking on different influences and trying to incorporate them into his own style. Here, he’s developed a hybrid of Frank Miller, Neil Adams and Jim Lee, and it mostly works (even though, as with most of the New 52, he’s done no favors by the overly busy costume redesign).

But as a writer, he’s far less adept. Clearly, he’s trying to channel both the tough-guy Miller narration AND the goofy thrills of Grant Morrison’s “All versions of Batman are valid” interpretation, but he lacks the requisite skill and it ends up coming off like bad karaoke. Read more »