4 Stars « The Wolfman Cometh

Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk [REVIEW]

May 5, 2010 4 Comments

I remember reading the first issue of this series back in December of 2005. I mean honestly, Hulk vs. Wolverine? Fuck yes! Then I had to wait two months to read the next one. Even after two issues, there was talk of fighting, but no actual fighting, but it was promised to happen in the third issue. And then the third issue was released…THREE GODDAMN YEARS LATER. I have heard of delays in comic books, but three years? Seriously? It was actually my favorite joke at the comic book store. I tried to reference it as often as possible by saying “Oh hey guys, I can’t believe they finally released number three!” or “I saw that it’s being released next week, can I put a copy on reserve?”. When it finally got released, I almost didn’t believe it, and figured it was a joke. And after all of this disappointment, was it even worth it?

I knew you were going to look for this image, so I figured I would put this right here to save everyone some time.

The first issue starts with Wolverine slow regaining consciousness, only to realize his legs are no longer attached. Luckily, we got a nice two page splash image of Hulk ripping Wolverine in two, then throwing Wolverine’s legs four miles UP a mountain. How awesome is that? The first two issues let us know that Nick Fury has sent Wolverine to Tibet to kill the Hulk because he is just a huge asshole. Then once they start their fight, She-Hulk also shows up to try to destroy everything, and Nick Fury then drops a bomb on all three of them. From there, Wolverine is just a severed head trying to regrow the rest of his body. After getting in touch with the mutant Forge, who has the ability to create practically any device he can think of, Wolverine gets two collars that, once attached to a subject, would require something like one billion million kajillion tons of force to open. The plan? Wolverine will put these on Hulk and She-Hulk, while still in human form, knowing that if they Hulk out, they will strangle themselves and die.

Muscles, veins, green boobs! What more could a guy ask for?!

One thing that I had completely forgotten was the fact that in these comic book face-offs, nobody actually wins or loses. Generally, it just ends up at a stalemate, everyone hugs, then fights a bad guy. This was still fun to read, and I recommend checking it out just for a fun action comic, but it also ends up in a stalemate. The problem with this specific title ending this way is that the writer Damon Lindelof, claimed one of them would die. I guess Wolverine kind of died, because his head came off, but still, he came back to life, which is cheating. Since this was the Ultimate universe, I did like the explanation of who She-Hulk was, and why she existed, but I don’t want to ruin it for you.

The real fight everyone wanted to see. WOLVERINE FIGHTING A FUCKING PANDA.

I guess looking back on all the delays and false promises, I can understand it. In case Damon Lindelof sounded familiar, that’s because he’s one of the co-creators of LOST, so obviously he had more important things to take care of. I mean, without him, we wouldn’t have gotten to see Matthew Fox shirtless nearly as many times as we have. It also makes sense that Lindelof claimed “somebody will die”, probably forgot he made that claim, and had Wolverine half-assedly die. Kind of reminds you of “Holy shit, there’s polar bears on the island?!” and then two seasons later say, “Oh so there was a zoo on the island? Whatever.” Also, the artist, Leinil Francis Yu, was the artist for the big crossover event in 2008, Secret Invasion. Most likely any attempt to contact him to finally do the art for Wolverine vs. Hulk was met with a “Yeah sure, I bet it really will come out this time.”

Wolfman Moon Scale

Wikipedia
Amazon Trade Paperback
Find A Shop Near You!

Filed under 4 Stars, Comics Tagged with blood, claws, Comics, damon lindelof, dharma, edward norton, eric bana, green boobs, hugh jackman, hulk, iron man, lienil francis yu, lost, marvel, matthew fox, nick fury, robert downey jr, samuel l. jackson, she-hulk, stan lee, ultimate, wolverine

Kick-Ass (2010) [REVIEW]

April 26, 2010 Leave a comment

I’m a little foggy on the details of the development of this movie, as far as whether the movie was being developed first or if it was the comic book. All I know is that it started back when people still used MySpace, as that was primarily how this film was promoted. One thing I do know is that the comic book debuted and finished before the film was released, so that was the storyline I was more familiar with. When I originally saw the first issue released, it was awesome. I was excited to see Mark Millar writing a “kick-ass” story, especially with John Romita, Jr. being in charge of the art. The only JRJR art I was familiar with was his long run on The Amazing Spider-Man, so seeing him doing graphic violence was pretty exciting. Every issue that came out I made sure to share with my roommate, because it was balls-out action and ridiculousness, and I went into the movie expecting the same.

I have also posed like this, but I tend to use dildos rather than wimpy batons.

As far as the plot of the film vs. comic are concerned, the basic elements are similar. The story centers around a comic book nerd who is exceptionally average, when he one day wonders why no one has ever even attempted being a superhero before. While pondering, he decides he will become the first, but not necessarily the way you might think. He immediately gets stabbed and hit by a car and is left in traction for quite some time, wondering why he ever thought of the idea in the first place. But sure enough, he gets the crime-fighting bug again, and gives it another go. This time, he beats people up and the event ends up on YouTube, sparking his internet and real-life popularity. Other superheroes start meeting up with him, to varying levels of superhero-ness, as well as actual crime bosses. As you can imagine, violence ensues, and we learn the fate of the heroes Kick-Ass, Red Mist, Big Daddy, and Hit Girl.

That’s so weird! I dye my pubes the same color!

As previously mentioned, I really enjoyed the comic books, so I went into this movie with high hopes. Sadly, those expectations were not met. The series itself was eight issues, but you just couldn’t get enough. It could have been 80 issues and I feel like the intensity would have kept up the whole time. The movie was close to two hours, but it dragged a few times. I would say the action scenes were cool enough, but they were few and far between. More specifically, in the comics, the fight where Kick-Ass officially gets his name was a complete freakout where he destroyed three gang members, but in the movie, he didn’t even win. It was more of an “Even though I didn’t win, I am willing to die to save this person!” kind of moment that wasn’t nearly as awesome. I would say there were three main points in which the movie and film were different, but I can’t go into detail without giving a:

SPOILER ALERT

1) It is established in both the film and comic that Kick-Ass, whose real name is Dave, develops a crush on a girl in his class. In his first fight, he took off his costume before paramedics arrived. Word got out that he was found beaten and naked, so the rumors started that he was gay. The object of his affection always wanted a gay best friend, so Dave plays along and furthers their relationship. Ultimately, he can’t take the lies and confesses his love. In the movie, he gets the girl and they have a whole bunch of sex. In the comic, she rejects him, calls him a freak, and sends him picture messages of him blowing another guy. This was so awesome! The fact that even the “hero” couldn’t get the girl connected you to Dave in the comics, but not so much in the movie.

2) In the film, Big Daddy and Hit Girl have a complicated father/daughter saga involving being framed and ending up in jail and swearing vengeance against the man who put them there, which is the crime lord Frank D’ Amico. For the most part, this is very similar to the comics, except the detail that Big Daddy always carries around a locked suitcase. When he ultimately meets his demise, the suitcase is opened to find dozens of extremely rare comic books, which he has been using to fund his endeavors. Also, it turns out that the whole story is fake. He is just a comic book fanatic who wanted to give his daughter an exciting life. I thought it was a good twist in the comics that they unfortunately left out of the film.

3) The character of the crime lord is only briefly involved in the comics. Granted, those brief moments involve lots of torture and death, but most of the issues just deal specifically with Kick-Ass existing, rather than his enemies. In the film, the crime lord might actually have more screen time than either Big Daddy or Hit Girl. Mark Strong, who plays Frank D’ Amico, did a great job playing the character, connecting to his inner Pacino his over-the-top acting style, but was silly at the same time so you didn’t actually think he was some supervillain. I wouldn’t say this aspect was better than the book, but had a different actor been involved, it might not have worked out so well.

END OF SPOILERS

They got it all wrong. People who read comic books are far more attractive than these three.

As far as the acting goes, it was kind of…meh. Aaron Johnson, who plays Kick-Ass, really just seemed to be a person in a suit. Whereas in the comics, the character is pretty pathetic, so I think maybe just the transition to film changed the character so he wasn’t as pathetic. Unfortunately, this made the character a little bit harder for me to connect to. Nicolas Cage was fine as Big Daddy, but I think that’s just because he has said he was channeling Adam West the whole time, so his entire performance was laughable. Red Mist, played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse, a.k.a. McLovin’, wasn’t really all that good. I get it, the kid will always be McLovin’, no matter what he does, and even if he is playing a similar whiny kid, I still don’t really need to see him. Like I said, Mark Strong was awesome, despite the fact that he made me question whether or not he really was Andy Garcia. Hit Girl….WAS AWESOME. Every scene she was in was great, whether she was just playing an 11 year old or whether she was kicking everyone’s ass. I think that had any of the characters had as good of an actress as Chloe Moretz, the movie could have been ten times better. I would recommend watching the movie, because you’ll probably be entertained, but then when you read the comics later, you will be even more excited.

Wolfman Moon Scale

Official Site
IMDb
Amazon Trade Paperback

Filed under 4 Stars, 4 Stars, Comics, Non-Horror Film Tagged with blood, civil war, john romita jr, jrjr, kick-ass, mark millar, mark strong, mclovin, nemesis, nicolas cage, superbad, wanted

The Infinity Gauntlet [REVIEW]

March 11, 2010 Leave a comment

In this six issue series published in 1991, the character Thanos creates a gauntlet containing the six gems that give him control of all space, time, soul, mind, reality, and power. Obviously, having controlling of all these gems basically makes him omnipotent, so he decides to do all sorts of bad things. My knowledge of this series was quite limited, as seeing the cover art I immediately thought it was one of the comics that Target was able to slap on a t-shirt and sell it to people who really liked the Iron Man movie. It was my friend Ben who actually encouraged me to read and review it, so here we are today. Most of my knowledge of comics books would be modern age of comics, and since this falls on the earlier end of that spectrum, I had no idea how relevant it was. Still have no idea how relevant it is to loyal comic book fans, but at least now Ben will stop telling me to read this.

Shortly after, Hulk and Wolverine put on some Joy Division and started cutting themselves…unsuccessfully

The story itself gets a little complicated at times, but it turns out that gauntlet not only refers to the piece of armor that Thanos puts all of the gems in and wears, but also refers to the fact that Thanos himself runs a gauntlet. Determined to win over the affection of Lady Death, the first issue points out that there are currently more people on Earth currently than have ever even died. Thanos decides to change this as a way to impress Death, so immediately half of the world’s population disappears. This includes humans, superheroes, and some animals. It’s never really determined what animals or why, but there is a panel about cows disappearing, which doesn’t really seem important. Earth’s heroes confront Thanos, and we get to see him run the gamut of them and destroy them all. After that, Thanos takes on the likes of Galactus, some celestials, and even Eternity, to which he destroys them all. In a scene similar to Jafar becoming the Genie in Aladdin, Thanos then gets full of himself and gets all intangible, which results in his supposed grand-daughter Nebula takes the gauntlet from him. Once she does, she tries to possess the power, but it overwhelms her, and she accidentally fixes everything Thanos broke, and she loses the gauntlet. Thanos then gets punched into oblivion and everyone is happy.

LOOK AT THIS ENORMOUS CONFLAGRATION!!!

It’s refreshing to see huge events like this that Marvel has done that don’t involve all sorts of cross-overs and tie-ins. I know that when Civil War happened, to get the “complete” story, there were over 80 different books you had to buy. That’s insane. Luckily, they are down to only having tie-ins with the relevant characters or participants, but it can still get a little nuts trying to keep up with everything going on. This was six issues…that’s how many you needed to buy to know what was going on. Sure, you could have read a few Thanos related stories beforehand to have a better idea of the character, but whats to know? He’s purple, apparently super powerful, and a bad guy. I knew that much about him before going into the story, so I’m sure that when it came out that people were a little more informed than I was.

Grimace was clearly quite upset with the glass Thor he received in his happy meal

When it comes to stories involving the Celestials and people named Eternity and gods and all that stuff, it’s sometimes hard to stay relevant. They are obviously existing on a completely different plane of existence than all the other characters in the Marvel universe, so how do they factor in? Most of the turning points of this story involved emotion, which was really interesting. The reason why Thanos made half of the Earth’s population was to try to impress someone he desired, by giving her more victims. He was so omnipotent that at one point he was advised that Death wasn’t impressed, since there was no chance of him losing, so he made himself slightly vulnerable. He turned his grand-daughter Nebula into a charred and burned corpse to show Death how much pain and sorrow he could put something through, especially something related to him. It was pride that made him become intangible, which proved to cause vulnerability. Then it was anger that caused Nebula to take something away from the person who caused her so much pain. These things weren’t happening just because anyone wanted the power, which seems to be the case with most villains, that they just do bad things to do bad things. It certainly made these characters have relevance and made me realize that rather than these intangible God-like creatures, but they happened to be characters just like all the heroes and villains, these ones are just far more powerful.

Wolfman Moon Scale

Wikipedia

Amazon Trade Paperback

Find A Shop Near You!

UPDATE:What If…The Silver Surfer Possessed the Infinity Gauntlet?

Also recommended by my pal Ben was this one shot tie-in to the Infinity Gauntlet series where (big surprise) the results f Silver Surfer getting the Infinity Gauntlet were pondered. There was a moment in the original series where Thanos was about to strike Captain America, and then Silver Surfer surfed in to try and grab the gauntlet, and missed. But in this story, S.S. grabbed the gauntlet and became omnipotent. He held no grudges against Thanos, and undid all the damage he had done. In addition, he basically fed all the hungry and gave poor people money and killed Carlos Mencia and cured AIDS and all sorts of things the world wants. Then Mephisto was all like “You’re still a bitch, Norrin Radd”, to which Silver Surfer exploded him. Obviously realizing he was going cuckoo with power, Dr. Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme, realized it was time to take action. Dr. Strange brought back Surfers dead wife, and she claimed they could never be equals because he was a god and she was a mortal. So Norrin Radd gave her half of his power, and she again objected to the situation, and they started fighting. After quite a few backhands to his recently revived love, he realized he was being a douche, destroyed the Infinity Gauntlet, and the two of them disappeared. In general, the “What If…” stories are fun to read because you know the outcomes aren’t permanent. That being said, I kind of would have like to see a more drastic result with all that power going to someone’s head, but I feel it was probably in honor of how noble of a character Silver Surfer was, that even in the worst case scenario, he held his composure pretty well. Thanks Ben!

Filed under 4 Stars, Comics Tagged with 90's, Adam Warlock, captain america, Comics, grimace, happy meals, hulk, Ifinity Gauntlet, Joy Division, marvel, nebula, Silver Surfer, stan lee, Thanos

Deadpool

March 6, 2010 Leave a comment

You might not recognize who you’re looking at, but I’m sure the name is certainly familiar. Deadpool is working his way up the ranks from D-list Marvel superhero to C-list, possibly even B-list status. This is mostly thanks to the fact that he was involved in the Wolverine: Origins movie, as well as the fact that he is currently the star of three, about to be four, titles at your local comic book store. By the time you finish reading this sentence, there will probably be another title. And I’m sure you have been reading the blogs and websites talking about development for the Deadpool movie, starring Ryan Reynolds. With this post, I will give a little background on the character as well as review the three more popular titles that currently have his namesake so that when you finally see a trailer for this movie, you can act like you have been down since the beginning.

“NEEDS MORE POUCHES!” – Rob Liefeld

The absolute worst part about Deadpool is the fact that he was created by an absolute idiot named Rob Liefeld, who is absolutely insane. Not so much in any type of cool “Oh my god, look how cool the things are this artist is doing, he must be INSANE!” kinds of way, but in the sense of “Has this man ever seen a human woman, let alone human ANYTHING?’. It’s like Liefeld was sitting around thinking “Hmmm, if only there was a way I could have a character whose super power was the use of guns, samurai swords, and a plethora of pouches! And he should wear black and red, and probably have DEATH or something like that in the name…”. To get a better understanding of the insanity of Rob Liefeld, please consult this website: http://progressiveboink.com/archive/robliefeld.html

That is one shiny sword

ANYWAYS, the simplified backstory involves Deadpool, a.k.a. Wade Wilson, having Cancer and being experimented on with the Weapon X program. Specifically, Wolverine’s healing factor was extracted and applied to Deadpool, which gave him regenerative power, as well as made the Cancer super strong. This means he is powerful enough to grow back limbs or heads, but also covers his body in tumors and makes him horribly disfigured. In an issue of Cable & Deadpool quite a few years back, Deadpool actually described himself as a cross between Ryan Reynolds and a shar pei. In addition to being nearly immortal, he generally relies on his super agility and reflexes, exploiting them as an assassin. One of his nicknames is the “Merc with a Mouth”, Merc being pronounced like mer-k, despite the fact that it is short for mercenary.

And the hilarity ensues…

One of the more interesting aspects to Deadpool’s abilities are the fact that the experiments have driven him absolutely insane. Not Rob Liefeld insane, but the wacky kind of insane, which is probably the reason he has become such a fan favorite. He is constantly making jokes and quips to his counterparts in the comics, and has even taken advantage of the comic book format and their tendencies to have thought bubbles. Deadpool constantly has multiple conversations and arguments between his different personalities, as well talking to the reader of the comic book directly and breaking the fourth wall. To give an idea of his “humor”, it’s like if you were to say Spider-man was Patton Oswalt, Deadpool would be like Zach Galifiankis. Instead of actual jokes, it’s just a constant stream of non-sequiturs.

Merc With A Mouth

If you were to only read one Deadpool title, I would definitely pick this one up. Before you even open the issues, you would see that all of the covers are parodies of famous movie posters, which make the cover price worth it alone. Once you open up the issue, you get just what you pay for…a wacky mercenary blowing things up and saying insane things, as well as babes with huge boobs in various levels of undress. I believe the current storyline also involves traveling between dimensions with his partner in crime, which happens to be a zombified version of his own head. I would also like to point out that the art is done by a guy named BONG DAZO. That’s right, his name is goddamned BONG DAZO. Now, if that name alone isn’t enough to draw you in, take a look at this:

Dinosaurs, zombie heads, and babes. Looks like the inside of my head.

Wolfman Moon Scale

Deadpool

The beginning of this series was pretty good, up until around issue 13. He was doing classic Deadpool stuff, running around, blowing stuff up, saying silly things, and it was a lot of fun when he started getting into fights with Bullseye (who if you remember your Marvel universe, was actually posing as Hawkeye). Once the whole X-Men Utopia event happened, things got a little weird with Deadpool trying to join the X-Men (again), and I don’t really remember where it ended up going, because I was bored with it. However, the last couple issues involved teaming up with Spider-man to take down a mysterious character referred to as Hitman Monkey….who is a hitman, that’s a monkey. Hopefully things pick up and it gets better again.

Wolfman Moon Scale

Deadpool Team-Up

I feel like this series was either a joke or a bet that someone won/lost, thus resulting in a series that is being released in reverse chronological order? Yeah, my thoughts exactly. A few months ago, some flagship Marvel series were reaching pivotal issue numbers, thus causing them to start renumbering their issues. Captain America, Incredible Hulk, and The Amazing Spider-man all hit issue number 600, as well as Daredevil reaching issue 500. Shortly after that, they released Deadpool, issue #900, which I thought was going to be a one shot book poking fun of all those other titles. Little did I know it was a starting point for Deadpool Team-Up to start releasing the following month, starting with issue #899, with numbers decreasing since then. Most of these issues involve Deadpool teaming up with a D-list character to take down some characters you’ve never heard of. Really not worth it, but come on, look how cool that black and red guy with all the guns look!

Wolfman Moon Scale