Countdown to Fables #100: The Championship

Welcome to today’s entry to the Countdown to Fables #100, where on Tuesday and Friday I recap a story told within the pages of Fables.  This will happen up until issue #100 is released on December 8th.  If you’re new to the countdown, an archive of all previous entries can be found under our Special Features menu.  Today’s story is titled “The Championship.”  In this story, Flycatcher has to deal with the difficulties of being king after an unfortunate incident in Haven.  The story, complete with spoilers (of course), is after the break. 

Preview debut of Spider-Man muscial a cacophony of disaster

After innumerable delays and problems, the long-awaited Spider-Man $65 million Broadway musical, “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” premiered on Sunday to a preview audience…and it was a disaster.  Not so much “building burns down and hundreds die” disaster, but more like “an ongoing stream of unfortunate events” disaster.

Incidents that left the audience confused, flustered, and in some cases downright angry included:

• The actress singing the opening number was left hanging over the crowd for several minutes after her song ended.
• Mary Jane was supposed to be rescued from atop the Chrysler Building, but the building appeared missing pieces and without Mary Jane atop it.  Minutes later, Spider-Man swung in carrying her.
• Spider-Man was supposed to swing away to end the first act, but a snag left the actor swinging back and forth over the crowd as stage hands tried to grab his feet and pull him back down.
• The Green Goblin had to stall with the intro to his piano number as stage workers fixed faulty equipment before finally starting his song.

So not a very good night for this seemingly cursed show.  Of course, anyone paying to go see a Spider-Man musical can’t be expecting too much in the field of quality.  But better than this, most likely.

New Comic Day hangover

It’s been several weeks since I’ve picked up my new comics, so I’ll be going through the backlog on this, my 20th edition of the New Comic Day hangover.  20?  Really?  Where does the time go?

Anyway, this edition we’ll be looking at…

• Booster Gold #38 in which we get a trip to the past to set up a continuity issue.
• Justice League: Generation Lost #13-14 in which we get a whole lot of Captain Atom.
• New Mutants #19 in which we get more torture.
• Uncanny X-Force #2 in which Wolverine pisses off Angel.
• Uncanny X-Men #530 in which the mutants get the sniffles.
• X-Factor #211 in which we get back to Las Vegas.
• X-Men #5 in which we are still fighting vampires.
• X-Men Legacy #242 in which the rebuilding of San Francisco gets underway.

As a side note, I know I said I would be dropping both Uncanny X-Force and Booster Gold but since my comic shop had already ordered  me copies of these issues before I dropped them from my pull list, I did the decent thing and went ahead and picked them up.  The same will happen with next month’s issues.

Anyway – reviews (with SPOILERS) after the jump.  Let’s get to it!

Comic Book Movie Review: Jonah Hex

Directed by Jimmy Hayward

Written by Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor & William Farmer

Starring
Josh Brolin as Jonah Hex
John Malkovich as Quentin Turnbull
Megan Fox as Lilah
Michael Fassbender as Burke
Will Arnett as Lieutenant Grass

With its release on DVD, allowing me to get it from Netflix, I was finally able to see Jonah Hex.  Even though I had never read a Jonah Hex comic, after the movie was announced, I was initially interested in seeing it.  Josh Brolin and John Malkovich are both fine actors, and I do like some Westerns.  However, as more info came out about the movie, and the abysmal reviews, I quickly decided to wait.  Sometimes, I decide to wait for a movie to come to DVD, and then wish I had seen it in theaters.  This was not one of those times.  Movie summary, with spoilers, and my complete thoughts on the movie are after the break. 

A look at Velocity #1

Admittedly, I don’t usually have a lot of time for books outside my normal reading circle.  I stick to X-Men mostly, and branch out here and there, though less so than in years past, as I’ve learned some of the financial woes of adulthood.  So I can’t say I’m at all familiar with any of Top Cow’s product.  But when CBR posted the entirety of June’s Velocity #1, tagging it as “critically acclaimed”, I decided to take a minute and read the book.

I’m not really familiar with Velocity or Cyberforce (outside of a panel I made fun of a while back in my other blog), so I went into the issue open-minded.  After all, it’s a first issue!  A jumping on point of an “critically acclaimed” title!  I was bound to like it, right?

Well, not really.

More after the jump.

Countdown to Fables #100: Witches

Welcome to today’s entry to the Countdown to Fables #100, where on Tuesday and Friday I recap a story told within the pages of Fables.  This will happen up until issue #100 is released on December 8th.  If you’re new to the countdown, an archive of all previous entries can be found under our Special Features menu.  Today’s story is titled “Witches.”  In this story, an unlikely hero saves the business office, while the witches try to figure out what to do with Mr. Dark.  The story, complete with spoilers (of course), is after the break. 

Countdown to Fables #100: Boxing Days

Welcome to today’s entry to the Countdown to Fables #100, where on Tuesday and Friday I recap a story told within the pages of Fables.  This will happen up until issue #100 is released on December 8th.  If you’re new to the countdown, an archive of all previous entries can be found under our Special Features menu.  Today’s story is titled “Boxing Days.”  In this story, we learn how Mr. Dark became trapped in the box he was found in.  The story, complete with spoilers (of course), is after the break. 

Chaos War: X-Men dissuades me in just four pages

Okay, I’ll admit it.  I have absolutely no idea what Chaos War is, nor what has gone down thus far in it.  I do know that the X-Men are getting a tie-in book called Chaos War: X-Men, advertised as dead X-Men returning from the grave for some purpose.  This might have come off as exciting had the exact same thing not just happened in Necrosha, which actually took place in the main X-Men titles.  That was the first bell that went off in my head against the book.  Then I saw that the co-writers of it are Chris Claremont and Louise Simonson.  While undoubtedly two of the most important writers in X-History, both are currently better suited to the out-of-continutiy stuff of the Forever titles.

So prospects weren’t looking too good for me picking up the book.  Then, I spotted CBR’s four page preview of the first issue.  And I have to hand it to Claremont and Simonson – they only needed four pages to prevent me from buying this book.  Just four pages.  That’s impressive.  I’ll go into the why’s after the jump, since there will be four pages of SPOILERS.

A letter to the dropped

Dear Booster Gold and Uncanny X-Force,

I’ve been avoiding this.  I mean, I really don’t want to hurt either you.  Really.  But I can’t just dodge this anymore, and I know that it will only get worse the longer I hold out.  So it’s time to man up and just say it.

Guys, this isn’t working out.  I think it’s time that we parted ways.

I’d be lying if I took credit for it being completely my fault that this is happening.  After all, if you were “must read”, this probably wouldn’t have come up.  But I just can’t go another month with you.  I have to move on.  But I do feel like I should give you an explanation for my decision, and I will do so seperately.  After all, I can hardly lump the two of you in together, can I?

Countdown to Fables #100: The Great Fables Crossover

Welcome to today’s entry to the Countdown to Fables #100, where on Tuesday and Friday I recap a story told within the pages of Fables.  This will happen up until issue #100 is released on December 8th.  If you’re new to the countdown, an archive of all previous entries can be found under our Special Features menu.  Today’s story is titled “The Great Fables Crossover.”  In this story, a new danger threatens to undo existence.  Unlike every other story, as the title implies, this story crosses over with Jack of Fables, and The Literals mini-series.  I marked what information appeared in which issue.   Also, since there is a lot of information here that doesn’t really pertain to the rest of the Fables stories, I’ve done the recap a bit differently.  After writing out the first issue, I realized it would be easier to just give you the main points of the story in bulletin points.  The story, complete with spoilers (of course), is after the break.