Chronological X-Men - Beauty and the Beast Review

Beauty and the Beast!

Beauty and the Beast #1 – Beauty and the Beast: Part One

Beauty and the Beast #2 – Heartbreak Hotel

Beauty and the Beast #3 – Showtime

Beauty and the Beast #4 – Checkmate

Okay this particular story starts off with Alison trying once again to rebuild her life after being outted as a mutant in the events of Dazzler: The Movie. She meets up with Alexander Flynn who promises to make her a star again and allow her to perform without being treated like dirt. I’ve got a problem with this right away because Alison was a character who escaped the Hellfire Club, battled She-Hulk, Enchantress, Doctor Doom and stood her ground with Galactus and yet we have her once again being manipulated by a man promising to make her a star. I don’t have any idea why they continue to choose to write the girl being this dumb. If she was that easy to manipulate why would the Hellfire Club let her escape so easily, or even want her at all; and why would Xavier have let her go off on her own? Anyway, Hank is also in town visiting Wonder Man and is trying to just go around in Hollywood since he thinks everyone will be so used to seeing things like him around. Alison starts to lose control of her powers and ends up staying at Heartbreak Hotel which is sort of a haven for mutants. Hank and Alison sort of start a little something but that quickly ends when Alison goes back with Alexander (who apparently is Victor Von Doom’s son) and soon gets wrapped up in an underground fight club. I don’t really buy that at all, but I’m willing to suspend belief for the rest of the series, but it was even harder to swallow the idea of Hank falling so hard for Alison and him sitting there crying over her. I think the pacing of the story didn’t help how quickly Hank and Alison fell for each other – everything happened to fast, and not just on the romantic front. All of a sudden Alison is a tough gladiator and then there’s a rebellion of the gladiators against Hugo and Alexander takes over. That doesn’t last long either before he’s ousted by the gladiators, Hank, Alison, Link and Poltergeist stop him while Doctor Doom (who also suddenly shows up again) watches. I think it would have been easier to swallow if there was more of a build up in Dazzler that carried over to this miniseries but alas that wasn’t the case.

Dazzler #35 – Brawl!

Alison returns home after her recent adventures – the only one she mentions though are the events of Dazzler: The Movie although the storyline order goes Dazzler: The Movie, Beauty and the Beast and then Dazzler 35. I do like that they remembered that Alison’s landlords weren’t mutant friendly to begin with, but they seemed to accept Alison a little too quickly after their initial freak out over her being a mutant. I don’t know if I Liked the idea of an exclusive all female club – I don’t really see why that was a plot point. However I did like the fact that Alison could see Barb needed help and tried her best to help her. It shows growth from her recent manipulations she had experienced. The whole ‘Janet Jackson’ thing was a nice wink and a nod to the fact that they already created a fictional Michael Jackson counterpart for the book.

Dazzler #36 – The Human Touch

 

Wow this is the first issue in a long time that really felt in character and like everyone involved knew what they were doing. Alison trying to sing, going on a job hunt and accidentally stumbling into a gig, reaching out to save the day; the tired clichés of duos spitting up the evils of Hollywood – it all just fit. The book hadn’t been the same since the big reveal of Alison’s half sister Lois being a mutant also and their run to Hollywood so it was nice to touch bases with the things about the book that were always good and sort of bring it back to basics. I know I ragged pretty hard on how cheesy the book used to be when it first started but there’s a big difference between subtle nods and things that make sense than having it constantly bashed over the readers heads that Alison wants to sing not be a mutant, she’s broke, she can’t afford to do anything, how lucky she is if she can afford tomato soup.

Beauty and the Beast #1 – Beauty and the Beast: Part One: C

Beauty and the Beast #2 – Heartbreak Hotel: C

Beauty and the Beast #3 – Showtime: B

Beauty and the Beast #4 – Checkmate: B

Dazzler #35 – Brawl!: B

Dazzler #36 – The Human Touch: A

BRB

Young Justice 103 Welcome to Happy Harbor Review

Okay, I figured since I covered the Independence Day pilot/movie for Young Justice I might as well continue with the series. It helps that I didn’t get much sleep last night and I wasn’t in the mood to do any reading so I decided to watch this - if I can manage to stay awake I’ll probably do the second episode of Being Human also.

This episode gives us the introduction of Brick and Mister Twister. I’ll start with Brick first, Speedy has been keeping track of Brick and systematically shutting him down. I didn’t really care for Brick but it was an excuse to keep Speedy around and in the show which I like. I like the idea of him trying to remain separate from the team because of how he feels they are treated in general. It’s a nice touch that they started this early when the actual team themselves don’t really now or trust each other that well so I can see them possibly building this into a seasonal arch and perhaps this is a bit of foreshadowing that someone either on Young Justice or The Justice League is actually working with ‘the Light’ and using the younger heroes to further their own needs and once that betrayal is played out Speedy will either be there to fill the gap in the team member (I’m betting it will be Artemis since it’s been stated that she’s not: Arrowette, Mia or the Amazon Artemis but a pre-existing DC Universe character, and that only leaves like 2 ‘Artemis’es left and they’re both villains.) or he will be there once the team sees things his way.

The other character – Mister Twister, is actually the central point of the plot. He’s attacking random locations and Red Tornado sends the team off to check it out. Miss Martian tries to read his mind and finds out that he’s a robot so the team assumes that it is simply Red Tornado testing them. I don’t know what to think about this character, it’s not one that I’m familiar with at all so I have nothing to go off of but his whole purpose seemed to be to be that of a plot device to get the team to trust Miss Martian while showcasing her overall inexperience.

I don’t know what to think of this weird little love triangle between Dick/M’gann/Wally it feels like mostly filler because they’re not doing/can’t for legal reasons do the Tim/Cassie/Kon since they aren’t using Tim and there were legal issues that prevented Wonder Girl from being included at the time. I think the reason why I’m so off put by it is because M’gann feels like she’s nothing more than a  substitute for Secret/Suzie/Greta; when she was first introduced she lived with the team and they had to go through the motions of teaching her what was acceptable behavior. It feels very much like that they’re trying to do with M’gann; she lives at the HQ, she’s learning how to interact with the humans, she’s learning what is okay and not okay to do and while the team really seems to like her they don’t trust her much. These are all things that were staples with Secret’s plots.

Aqualad didn’t really do much this episode and I’m okay with that. After how much they pimped him in the hour long movie it was nice that they scaled him back quite a bit for this episode. It’s going to take a while for me to get used to him so it will be easier if he’s not constantly shoved down my throat. I’m indifferent to the bond that he’s forming with Superboy (again this is a case of me liking the original comic cast much more than the TV incarnation) but I guess it fits because Wally and Dick aren’t in the right places to help Superboy at this point in his life.

Okay, can someone explain to me why the hell they keep pimping Artemis yet she has yet to appear? She was featured in the mid show bumper for the pilot, she’s in the opening credits, she’s featured on the cover of the comic book… yet she hasn’t even had her introduction yet. It seems odd when you think of how Speedy is getting a lot of screen time (especially for a character that isn’t the focal point of the series) and he’s not even a member of the team.

Rating: B

Young Justice Issue 0 'Stopover' Review

Young Justice #0 – Stopover

You know, I’m not even going to get into the different characters thing here – it is obvious how I feel about that so I’ll just move on. I’m glad to have Young Justice comic back in my life, but it’s painful that Todd Nauck isn’t drawing it. I loved his style on the original Young Justice run and he did the majority of the book so it is odd seeing someone else tackle the characters. However I can’t hate on it too much because the art is actually good and it fits the style of the TV show nicely. I wish they would have gone with a different cover though, I mean Artemis and Miss Martian don’t even appear in the book, heck, Artemis hasn’t appeared in the series at all yet – but she’s plastered all over the promotional art. Also…. She’s not Arrowette – sorry, I couldn’t help myself there. The new characters are a nice touch and they do remind me a lot of the original run and in the original run we would have gotten characters like Tommy and Tuppence Terror. I like the aspect of this whole issue taking place between the two final scenes of the pilot episode it was a nice tie in and helped bridge the gap – I wouldn’t mind if the series continued on and did that more often. It was a bit odd though whenever they displayed the date and time no matter what time it always was ‘16’ seconds – I’m sure that’s probably an inside joke that I’m just not a part of. I like the idea of possibly building on a friendship between Wally and Superboy. It did feel a lot like the old series which was nice and one thing really stuck out to me: in Wally’s bedroom we see a poster of He-Man and Skeletor from Masters of the Universe, as well an action figure of He-Man, Electro and Morph figures from Marvel comics and a Bat-Mite from DC and a poster of Richard Dragon – a DC universe character. This is a really nice nod to things that ran in the original series like Wendy the Werewolf Stalker. There was another little ‘dig’ this time at the long running TV show Smallville when Superboy is dressed very much like the TV Clark Kent and Superboy can’t stand it. It was a fun book and I want to see where it goes, but at the same time I’m not entirely sure I can fit another comic book into my reading/collecting rotation.

Young Justice #0 – Stopover: A

Chronological X-Men - Nightcrawler Review

Nightcrawler!

The Uncanny X-Men #194 – Juggernaut’s Back In Town

This issue we have the first appearance of Fernis A.K.A. Andrea and Andreas von Strucker however only Andreas is named. They’re off in Africa apparently hunting and causing random trouble which Ororo stops. I liked touching bases with Ororo to see what she’s doing now that she’s powerless and trying to find herself. We also touch bases with why Charles and certain characters aren’t present because they’re off on Muir Island (off in the Legion plot) and we get a little bit more info with the whole Nimrod plot. I think I’ve said it before but I’ve always thought Nimrod was overhyped and an issue like this where he has many powers and can seemingly deal with everyone doesn’t really help with the overrated feeling. If anything makes the character more Mary Sue like. I like the idea of Rogue taking on more than one ability at a time and the type of struggle she would have to deal with because of that but I don’t really get why random parts of her body mutated. Sure it was for shock value, but I kind of wish they explained why which part took on a particular appearance. This was a good little filler issue and surprisingly I can see myself reading this one again.

Nightcrawler #1 – How much is that Boogie in the window?

Nightcrawler #2 – A Boggie Day in L’un D’un-T’wn

Nightcrawler #3 – To BAMF or not to BAMF!

Nightcrawler #4 – The Wizard of OOPs!

This particular story takes place right after Uncanny X-Men #194 but before Charles and the New Mutants return from Muir Island. At first Kurt, Kitty and Illyana are all alone in the mansion and Kurt is training himself in the danger room and forces himself not to use his teleporting abilities because there could be situations where he won’t be able to use them at all. Or course this causes Kurt to tell Kitty and Illyana all about his adventure when he was teleported to an alternate dimension with Vanisher and neither of them were able to use their powers. He tells the girls all about the Well at the Center of Time which leads Kitty to programming it into the danger room, only some how she actually manages to conjure up the real well. Kurt and Lockheed get sucked in and the two of them begin their own pirate adventure; which is actually perfect for Kurt’s character considering he’s always had a swashbuckler aspect to his character. Kurt and Lockheed stop the pirates from kidnapping a princess and the duo end up being sold to a shark creature who plans to use Kurt to learn how to teleport. The series is fun but it’s so out there in it’s comedy and sight gags that it goes past the obvious and into the ‘oh dear lord this is annoying when will it stop.’ We know that time moves differently in other dimensions which allows for this adventure to be larger than it is, but what wrecks it for me is one little blurb when we check back in with Kitty and Illyana and it says that Kurt has been missing for a few days yet the girls never once change their clothes. I don’t really understand why Illyana couldn’t use a locater spell and then just teleport to Kurt… I get that they included her because the whole story is a nod to magic and teleportation but here we have a character that can do both and she really doesn’t do anything in the story. The jokes aren’t really so much jokes as they are generic non copyright infringement based jokes off of other properties, places and people. I know that the BAMFS are supposed to be personifications from the story she told Illyana when she was a little girl – but to me they seem like sexually frustrated Smurfs. I do like the tie in to Kurt’s story from Bizarre Adventures and the referencing of Kitty’s Fairytale – it helps to sort of tie this story in with the real ones. And you could almost argue that this whole series was done for Kurt to prove to himself that he can lead the X-Men since he led an entire race of BAMFS. My only problem with the story was the ending. Did we really need to know that Illyana who is 15-17 (with all the aging and de-aging of Kitty I can’t keep track of Illyana’s age anymore) but like two years ago was only 7 has a collection of Playgirls?

The Uncanny X-Men #194 – Juggernaut’s Back In Town: A

Nightcrawler #1 – How much is that Boogie in the window?: B

Nightcrawler #2 – A Boggie Day in L’un D’un-T’wn: A

Nightcrawler #3 – To BAMF or not to BAMF!: A

Nightcrawler #4 – The Wizard of OOPs!: B

The Truth About Long Running TV Shows

So I saw this earlier and it got me thinking exactly how true it is:
I find it especially true with shows like Friends, The Office and CSI - the only real exceptions that I can think of are:

Buffy - I LOVED seasons 5-7, but 8 is kind of meh, on the other end of it I didn't really care for s2 (it was good but far from my favorite) and even though season 3 gave me a lot of characters I enjoyed I didn't really care for it.

Smallville - This show actually got stronger as the seasons went on. It got a lot better with the addition of Lois, and it grew even more once they introduced Green Arrow and wrote out Lana and Lex. But... there was Doomsday.

Weeds - The show makes it a point to jump the shark at least every other episode but I revel in it. That's the whole point of the show, everything Nancy does makes things worse and it expands with each move she makes.

Medium - This show was truly amazing and my dvr is a much sadder place now that it doesn't have weekly visits from the Dubois family. There was absolutely no decline in quality at all with this show as the seasons progressed and that is extremely rare.

Chronological X-Men - Legion Review

Legion!

The New Mutants #26 – Legion

The New Mutants #27 – Into the Abyss

The New Mutants #28 - Soulwar

This is a small little story but it’s a pretty big one so that’s why I decided to separate it into its own little section. We do get a draw on some recent history as well as a few things that up until this point had seemed to have been forgotten. The most recent events that are covered are the fact that Thunderbird (II) kidnapped Banshee to exact revenge on Charles Xavier, Charles getting jumped and beaten nearly to death only to be saved by Callisto and Emma Frost not being happy with Empath’s recent actions which played a role in ruining Emma’s plans to use Firestar to assassinate Selene. The stories that seemed long forgotten were Tom Corsi and Sharon Friedlander being transformed by the Demon Bear and Moira and Gabrielle keeping the fact that David Haller is autistic and Charles’ son. The little things really helped to fill out the story - it was nice to see Jamie Madrox show up, he has been MIA for quite some time now. The aftermath of Empath’s actions was surprising because of Emma shutting down his powers. She has always been ruthless but to take away someone’s powers like that is a new level of sadistic even for Emma. Of course this leads to Empath reaching out to a mysterious group to seek revenge on Sunspot and Magma – although I’m not sure why he didn’t go after Emma, Thunderbird (II) and Angelica instead. We touch bases briefly with Magneto and Lee who have started up a romance that appears to end within this particular storyline. The cast is pretty full as it is but it would have been a nice touch to have Illyana present for this story because she was with Moira when they first met Gabrielle. We finally see David Haller for the first time and meet three of his stronger personalities: Jack Wayne – who is a telekinetic, Cyndi who is pyrokinetic and Jemail Karami the telepath who was part of an assassination team sent to kill Daniel Shomron (David’s godfather,) Gabrielle and David. Unfortunately Gabrielle wasn’t there and David’s psychic powers manifested after he witnessed Jemail murder Daniel. David killed the assassination team and unintentionally managed to absorb (at the very least) Jemail’s mind. The main story revolves around Charles and the New Mutants trying to help cure David similar to the way that Charles cured Gabrielle years ago but in the process: Charles, Gabrielle, Dani, Rahne, Doug, Moira, Tom and Sharon all get pulled into David’s mind which is a battlefield. At first we’re led to believe that Jemail has taken over David’s mind and is trying to destroy the boy and take over his body but we learn that Jemail actually wants to help knit David’s fractured mind back together and that Jack Wayne is the one who is trying to keep everything the way it is. Ultimately Jemail and Dani combine their powers to return all of her friends to their physical bodies and Jemail and Jack (under Dani’s threats) piece together David’s mind. However after Dani returns to her physical body Jack built in a failsafe that kept himself, Cyndi and Jemail all separate personalities within David who is now awake and finally comes face to face with the father he thought had abandoned him and Charles remembering that he felt the Beyonder probing David’s mind while they were all trapped in there. It was a good story, nothing really to pick on – there was one little mistake where there’s an image of Gabrielle and Moira with David as a little child but that’s easy to over look. I do wish that they had more time to play up the betrayal factor of the two women he loved the most keeping such a thing from him. Once again the art really suited the story, but I wish it was a bit darker and I’m not really a fan of David’s overall look in the ‘real’ world.

Marvel Graphic Novel #50 – The Scorpio Connection

I put this one in here mostly because I didn’t feel comfortable just doing three issues here and Wolverine/Nick Fury: The Scorpio Connection was the easiest to place. Sure it happens a bit further in the continuity since Dazzler is an X-Man, however she’s only really in one panel so it’s very easy to ignore. Plus Kurt and Ororo aren’t around and that makes sense since Ororo lost her powers and since Nightcrawler is about to go off on his own little adventure thanks to Kitty (who is also not present) and Illyana. The story itself is all about Wolverine and Nick Fury teaming up to take down a man who killed a group of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents and left a calling card in the shape of the Scorpio Zodiac sign. Logan wants revenge because one of the men that Scorpio killed was an old friend of his that once saved his life; Nick wants in on this not because of the dead agents but because the original Scorpio was Nick’s younger brother. Now the big problem for Nick is that he witnessed his brother killing himself so there’s no way it’s possible for Scorpio to be back. Through the story we have the first appearance of Mikel Fury – Nick’s nephew but we find out that he’s actually Nick’s son. We have the first and only appearance of Amber D’Alexis – Mikel’s mother and an outright ruthless woman who manipulated her son into thinking another man was his father just so she could secretly train him to kill his actual father. I really liked the story despite me not being familiar with the bulk of the characters within the story; the only problem I had was the art and coloring. It just wasn’t my thing and all those red panels kind of hurt my eyes with how they’d pop in and out.

The New Mutants #26 – Legion: A

The New Mutants #27 – Into the Abyss: A

The New Mutants #28 – Soulwar: A

Marvel Graphic Novel #50 – The Scorpio Connection: B