The Quarter Bin – Wolverine 170 – 172

2002 was an exciting year. X-Men the movie had just come out the summer before. Wolverine was a hot property. Plus the yellow spandex was ditched for the black leather jacket. This three story issue arch was called Stay Alive. This story was not the best Wolverine story ever, but I’ve never heard of the writer, Frank Tieri. That doesn’t mean much in the comic world. Writers come and go in the comic industry. This story is a nice little adventure in Canada. Wolverine is looking for a bad guy who messed him up in previously. Instead he stops in a diner and sees some crazy guy eat all these people on a live reality show. The guy turns out to be Mauvais, an immortal French wizard who happens to be a cannibal too. Mauvais is going all crazy to unleash a Wendigo. Wolverine has to fight Mauvais and the Wendigo in issue 171. He’s beat pretty good and then in issue 172 Alpha Flight shows up. Nothing like Canada’s premier superhero team showing up.

So let’s get into what makes this story arch good.

The Good: Wolverine in black leather. I love this era. Grant Morrison run on New X-Men was one of my favorite. I love the old look now. I liked that the X-Men were all out of spandex and into leather jackets. They seemed cooler and who’s the coolest X-Men, Wolverine. The second issue in the arch is a “Nuff Said” issue. It was a challenge Marvel did with its comics for one month in 2002. No words were used in the comic, just pictures to tell the story. In issue 172 Sasquatch preforms a fast ball special. I don’t know about you, but I love seeing Wolverine doing a fastball special anytime I can get it. Also Tieri is setting up future stories with Sabertooth watching Omega Red and Lady Deathstrike. You see both of these characters for a second, but no explanation of what is going on with them. I like Omega Red and wish he was the main villain in the story. Also Wolverine has to fight some Polar Bears.

The Bad: Wolverine seems a little depowered in this arch. Mauvais seems like lame villain. He’s a French wizard. Not really that cool in my book. Wolverine has to fight and kill some polar bears. Doesn’t he know they are already in trouble with global warming? Come on Wolverine. Also the story plot from the first issue is just dropped. What ever happened to the guy who wanted to show everyone dying on TV. The TV producer never gets mentioned after he decides to air his reality show as his contestants are being eaten.

Stay Alive was an okay arch, not the best. I liked a lot of things about it, but it was lacking a real villain. French wizards just seem silly to me. Plus the fact that I spent $1.50 for it I would say it was worth it. I had fun seeing Wolverine in his leather jacket. Plus there was a fast ball special in it!

3.5 stars out of 5

the new 52 - Static Shock

The new 52 has finished it first month. That would the total relaunch of DC comics line of comics. They rebooted their entire line in September. I stopped reading DC comics at this time too. It felt like it would be a good jumping off point since all the stories were wrapping up. I was only reading two Batman books at the time so not a big loss for me. Then this week was the first rounds of issue two for some of the comics. I also only had one comic I as picking up at the comic shop so I figured I might give one comic a shot. I was thinking about Men at War and Action Comics. I heard some good things about both. Who doesn't like a good Grant Morrison Superman story or a war comic? Well in the end I went a totally different direction. I went with Static Shock! I picked up the first two issues of this book mainly because of 00's cartoon. I didn't watch the cartoon regularly but I did like it.

After reading the first two issues, I have to give Static Shock a passing grade. It was a lot of fun to read. He held onto some of his Milestone roots. Milestone was the company that first published Static Shock comics. They have Hardware being Static mentor in superheroing, since he's still a teen. Hardware stayed back in Dakota while sending Static to New York City to investigate some crime. In the first two issues we start to see a criminal organization that Static will be fighting. He crosses their path by accident at first by stopping someone from stealing a powersuit for S.T.A.R. labs. This leads the organization to want to stop Static. They don't want any Superheroes in New York City. They are using a teenage gang of techheads to pull of most of their crimes, the Slate Gang. The organization puts a hit out on Static and all hell breaks loose, very entertaining. They use great cliff hangers at the end of each comic.

All and all Scott McDaniels does an excellent job writing Static Shock. I've always enjoyed his writing since I can remember. He did a lot of great comics in the 90's and 00's. He wrote my favorite run of Nightwing comics. I hope that he continues with his awesomeness and keep Static Shock in my read list. That's it for the new 52 for me. I plan to read more of it, but probably in trade from the public library. When I get my hands on that I'll let you know if the other new 52 is worth reading.

good reads review

Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow by James Sturm


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow is a wonderful graphic novel from The Center for Cartoon Studies. This historical comic is able to grab the reality of the Jim Crow South in a very realistic way. The art in this comic is able to highlight the reality of the time. It's not to cartoony to be seen as a fluff comic. Instead the tree tone color helps bring the comic alive.

I would recommend this beautiful comic to anyone who is interested in baseball history. The book show cases barnstorming base balling. A practice that is no longer used today. The end of the book also has a little glossary for things you might not have known. The little descriptions will help teach about many different aspects of the Jim Crow South.

Although this comic is geared more to a young audience it holds up for more grown people. I would say if you are interested at all about one of the greatest pitchers ever you should read this book.

View all my reviews >>

starship troopers done wrong again

My sister asked me to go see a movie with her and her husband tonight. They decide to go see the must see movie of the Christmas holiday, no not Sherlock Holmes. That would have been amazing. If you haven’t gone and seen Sherlock Holmes you are an idiot. I mean that in the meanest way possible, because it’s that good of a movie, plus I do have a little man crush on Robert Downey Jr. It’s totally cool, so don’t bring it up. Well I’ve gone off topic. Sherlock Holmes is the best, just go see it. I totally get it if you can’t. Back to the subject, I was talking about the movie I saw this tonight. The movie people are raving over, Avatar.

What can I say about Avatar, that hasn’t already been said? It’s EPIC! Did you see how I capitalized all the letters in epic? That’s how epic it was. On the plus side it wasn’t so EPIC I fell asleep in it. No sir, it’s no Lord of the Rings boring. I fell asleep in all three movies, the first two at the theater and the last one at home. I can’t say I’ve seen all three movie all the way through. Mind you I did go in the middle of the day to see them so I wouldn’t be tired. I’m off topic again. Let’s talk Avatar. The special effect blew my mind away! The world they created was so awesome. The creatures were amazing. I loved the creatures they flew on. Awesome. I actually would have preferred if the movie was all about those flying animals and their riders, but then it wouldn’t have been EPIC and everyone would be sad. We need EPIC! It’s like in King Kong, the Jack Black one, where Kong fights three t-rexes. That was an awesome scene, but the rest of the movie I could do without. In fact they should make an hour and a half movie about Kong fighting t-rexes and that’s it. I would see that movie at least ten times in the theaters. I’m way off topic again.

Avatar was a good movie. I could feel the almost three hours on my butt though. It hurt by the end of the film. I felt the film need to end at about two hours, maybe a little before that, but then you would miss all the awesomeness that the build of the EPIC movie had coming or they could have milked a second film out of it and made a ton more of money. Although they might not have had the same impact if they left a huge cliff hanger like that at the end of the film. Sure it worked for the Empire Strikes Back, but that was back in the day. I digress. I enjoyed watching Avatar. It had amazing special FX that I’ve never seen before. I was amazed at how real everything looked. The story was well written if you haven’t seen Fern Gully. I’m not joking; it’s a live action Fern Gully. So pretty much they just made a live action EPIC version of Fern Gully in space. I hope this doesn’t make you look down on me or the film, because I love Fern Gully. It’s the best complement I could give the film. Now they do depart from it a lot and make Avatar its own thing. It’s a great action film when the action happens too. It’s no Die Hard, but we can’t hold every movie to that standard. So if you’re only going to see one holiday movie this year go see Sherlock Holmes. I think it’s better than Avatar any day of the week.