#73 - Heroes in Crisis (Part 3)

Oh goody, Heroes in Crisis, time to put this garbage to bed. Here’s a recap of what I’ve covered so far: A bloody massacre as occurred at the strange and stupidly run facility known as the Sanctuary, tapes that shouldn’t exist were leaked to Lois Lane and rather than giving essential evidence to the Justice League, she wrote an article.

Superman makes a statement to the press rather than actually looking for the killer. That honour goes to Booster gold, who after claiming innocence under the Lasso of truth, something I will not drop btw, is pursued by Harley Quinn and Batgirl who still think he’s the murderer for some reason. On his side is Ted Kord, who has donned his pre-new 52 appearance because Tom King and Jamie S Rich don’t know jack about DC continuity. And most of you are probably still wondering why I spent half my first review giving you the backstory of Wally West when he’s been dead the whole time. But don’t worry, answers will follow. Also, this is all that’s happened in 5 issues.

#72 - Heroes in Crisis (Part 2)

OK, we’re back to this, and there’s a lot to cover, so there isn’t gonna be a long preamble like last time

Previously on Heroes in Crisis: Writer Tom King destroyed the premise of his own story by starting with a massacre at a trauma centre known as the Sanctuary. Booster Gold and Harley Quinn fought, both blaming the other for said massacre. And that’s it.

Once again, trigger warning, I’m going to be describing offensive scenes and not all of them from Heroes in Crisis. Violence, death, suicide, mental health and sexual assault/rape may be covered in this review.

#71 - Heroes in Crisis (Part 1)

I was originally gonna wait on this one, but with my schedule originally there wasn’t gonna be another Rage Review until at least December, so I’m rectifying that now. Heroes in Crisis is the worst comic story I’ve ever read. I’ll make no bones about that, it’s worse than the stupid Mr Freeze retcons, worse than the revamped origins written by Scott Lobdell, worse than Felicia D Henderson’s Teen Titans rune, worse than Cry for Justice and its follow-up mini-series and worse than Secret Empire.

To understand exactly why this story p*sses me off, we need to examine a couple of mental health related issues, so trigger warning. This review, and the onecs that follow will discuss death and suicides in relation to mental health and how this story does all of it a complete disservice. Also, I’m not a doctor, most of my analysis is based on common sense and minor bits of research. If I make a mistake, please point it out to me, I do not want to be giving out inaccurate information.

                                                                                        

Before we begin we must also look at the story of Wally West, so many spoilers to follow. 

#2 - Batman: Arkham Origins (Reupload)

Not sure how this review ended up deleted but here's a reupload of it

Before I start, I want to clarify. Batman Arkham Origins is not a bad game, per-say. But in my honest opinion it’s an ok-good game that exists in a franchise where that’s not good enough.

A little background: games starring superheroes is a not a new franchise but until the Arkham games came out, none of them really felt right. From Superman getting easily beaten by basic weapons, to team games where everyone loses health every time they take a hit. Not to mention the complicated systems of combos and super-moves. There have been a few Batman games in the past, including a Batman Begins game and several based on Batman: The animated series. None of them felt quite right, partially being restricted by their respective franchise

Out of the shadows came Batman: Arkham Asylum. Boasting the writing talents of Paul Dini (writer of the award-winning Batman: The Animated Series episode Heart of Ice) and the voice actors Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill and Arleen Sorkin, all veterans from Batman: The Animated series.  Unlike that said series. This was a much darker story, featuring the Joker committing on screen murder, dead bodies at every turn, and a far more gritty surroundings.

It was a huge success, it took (an element I hate in many games) and made it exciting, it took strategy, but not so much that it was highly complicated, and the surroundings were beautiful. Obviously a sequel was planned: Batman: Arkham City. Batman: Arkham City took everything that made Asylum great, tweaked it by adding new moves, gadgets and the like, and put onto an open world environment. The story, still penned (at least in part) by Paul Dini, and with return of most voice actors (with Tara Strong doing a good stand-in for Arleen Sorkin, and Mark Hamill reprising the Joker for what he said would be the last time, it wasn't the last time) Arkham City expanded on the roots of Arkham Asylum in all the right ways. It still looked lovely, was packed with references, and the story, while somewhat cluttered was a good one.

Lots of rumours had been going around as to what the third iteration of the Arkham franchise would be, with rumours of have a silver age backdrop and including heroes like Superman. In 2013 we received news that a new Batman: Arkham game would be released that year. Later, to many people’s disappointment, it was discovered that Rocksteady, who were the developers of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, would not be working on it (as they were still in the process of creating Batman: Arkham Knight) instead, the task fell to Warner Bros. Montreal, who did the Wii U adaptation of Arkham City. Furthering the disappointing news was the fact that they’d chosen a voice actor for Batman who wasn’t Kevin Conroy. Also of note was that Paul Dini was not working on the story for this game. Batman Arkham Origins would serve as a prequel, detailing the origins of key relationships in Batman’s mythos.

OK, that was a lot of backstory, so on with the review. Spoilers ahead

Guilty Pleasures #46 - Justice League

Over the course of 10 years and over a dozen movies, it’s all been building up to this, this is… wait no, that was Avengers: Infinity War, let’s take a look at Justice League

DC comics do not have a good track record with movies. Since launching the DC Cinematic Universe, only one of their movies has a been a critical success. But most made money at the box office, here we’re looking at DC’s first bonafide flop. The movie was a bit of a mess behind the scenes thanks to Zack Snyder quitting the project and being replaced by Joss Whedon, who rewrote parts of the script and that entailed intensive reshoots.

For the record, I hold no ill will to Zack Snyder for his decision to step down. The loss of a loved one, especially under those circumstances, is a horrible thing to go through and I totally understand his decision to step aside. Then studio then mandated the film be under 2 hours long and wanted it released by the end of 2017 so executives could get their bonuses before the merger of WB and AT&T, this in spite of some hiccups in post-production.

The extent of the reshoots brought the budget up to $300m, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made. It made $657m at the box office; once marketing was factored in that lead to an estimated $60m loss for the studio. So, where did this movie go wrong? And did it deserve to fail?

4 issue test #45 - Doomsday Clock

#51 - Batman and Harley Quinn

Oh boy, we’ve got a bad one for this entry. And I wanted to start with a simple question. Bruce Timm, what happened to you?

Bruce Timm has become somewhat of a legend when it comes to superhero stuff, being one of the guys behind the excellent DCAU and the very good Green Lantern: The Animated series, which I will eventually cover as a retrospective.

Then he took some time off, when he first came back it was for Justice League: Gods and Monsters; a unique take on the trinity of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman where their morals are more grey than usual. It was good, even great, but then something happened, his next movie was the Killing Joke. I ripped this movie apart back in May, particular for that abysmal opening third featuring Batman and Batgirl having sex on a rooftop.

So, for this story, one that’s completely unique, they wanted to tone down the darker tone and focus on humour. That’s fine. Justice League Action, which is a solid if shallow show did that exact thing. But here’s the thing, being a comedy whilst also being adult-orientated can lend itself to some very bad things. I’m looking at you, FAMILY GUY!

So, are we talking At World’s End comedy or Dude, Where’s my Car? comedy? Would it really be here if it wasn’t the latter?

Guilty Pleasures #39 - Suicide Squad

Hope you enjoyed my little skit, just something I wanted to try out. But to the actual review. This is Suicide Squad

The next in the line of DC movies following Batman v Superman: Dawn of Awfulness, Suicide Squad had a rough production history, with the editing being handled by a trailer house and an effort made to inject more humour into what was a serious movie and only 6 weeks given to the writer to script it.

The end result was divisive but profitable none-the-less, and here’s how I weigh in on it.

Neeson Month - MIni Review: Batman Begins

It’s Neeson Month

So, let’s talk about Batman. Batman is my favourite DC character, in case the fact that reviewed stuff with him in it more often than more-or-less anything isn’t a clear indication. And I think the Dark Knight is the best live action Batman movie. Combining all the elements I love about the character, reasonably grounded with emotional gut-punches to boot. The Dark Knight Rises that came after I also enjoy, in spite of its many flaws (plug) but today we’re going to be talking about Batman Begins, the one I like the least of the 3.

Released in 2005, this movie was a critical success with an 86% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, though its profit was modest, I suspect possibly by fans reluctant to watch a reboot after the disaster that was Batman and Robin, the movie did make a modest profit and paved the way for a series that grossed over $2bn overall

#47 - Sequel Month - Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Please Note: This review was written before the announcement of Zack and Deborah Snyder stepping away from Justice League to cope with the loss of their daughter. I wish them all the best, however, I'm commenting on a product, and this product sucks!

It’s Sequel Month!

And enough of the mediocrity, let’s get into the pure sh*t. This is Batman v Superman – Dawn of Depression.

Released in March last year, this movie fell short of expectations for a movie that combines DC’s 2 most popular characters, arguably the two most popular characters in comics overall. If Iron Man 3 could reach a billion dollars in the box office, what stopped this? That’s not to say it did poorly exactly, it made over $800m but the scathing reviews, but holding only a 28% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and the fact a lot was spent on marketing this movie to the point where this movie only barely made a profit, and considering the enormous $250m spent on the movie anyway.

Zack Snyder original tease for this movie had me exceptionally worried. The Dark Knight Returns is a good story, from a time when Frank Miller could actually write coherent stories. But to take inspiration from this for Batman and Superman’s first meeting struck me as odd, especially given the themes of that book.

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I’ll be going over the Ultimate edition of the movie, which is around 3 hours long. This is purportedly the one with the most complete story but I will say now, 3 hours is too long for a movie, whether it be Titanic, Avatar or Batman v. Superman; apparently, it got an R Rating in the US too, even though in the UK, it sits still at the equivalent of PG-13.

Lets dive in

#46 - The Killing Joke (Rage Issues 3rd Anniversary)

Well, we’ve done it. This tiny little site that struggles to get more than 20 views a post has managed to keep running for 3 years!

Sorry if I sound rather un-optimistic but this year’s calibre of movies just keeps getting worse, from the abysmal Barley Lethal to the insulting Riverdale and Back again, this year has been on fire for Rage reviews, and yet I still did less than I did last year. And I’ll probably do even fewer this year as I try and expand my range a bit. But today, to celebrate my third year of doing this, I’ll be reviewing a movie I’ve intended to review for a long… actually it’s the Killing Joke.

I was (un)fortunate enough to see this movie in cinemas before its release onto DVD, I gave it a mixed review but I was positive overall in my short summary. Something needs to be done about that because let me be clear, this is not a good movie.

But before we begin a little info about the Killing Joke comic book that the work is based on. Considered an iconic Joker story, it was written by Alan Moore, a writer famous for being somewhat grouchy about his work at DC and for Watchmen and V for Vendetta. He doesn’t ever attach his names to adaptations of such projects and this is no exception. In fact, he doesn’t think it’s very good and in one aspect it is controversial. I’ll get to that later. In the production team, we have an old friend in Bruce Timm, someone who should know better than this sh*t.

In the voice acting department we have some old friends. Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill and Tara Strong are voicing Batman, the Joker and Barbara Gordon respectively, as they did during the last part of the animated series (Batgirl went through several voice actors) but on the other hand with the writer we have Brian Azzerello, who did the controversial New52 Wonder Woman, a well-acclaimed(ish) Joker story and at point of writing is working with Frank Miller to make DKIII not Suck, most likely without success because this is still Frank Miller… Yeah, I’d rather put my head in a blender than read DKIII, especially at the price they’re selling these issues at, it’s insane!

OK, I’m going off track. So, let’s just dive into Batman: The Killing Joke and see why this deserves an anniversary review.

4 issue test #34 - Trinity

Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman in the same issue. Sold. Writer: Francis Manapul… ok, expectations lowered a bit.

Look, I have not read a lot of Francis Manapul’s work, I dropped the New 52 Flash after the first issue, I was less than impressed. And I’ve seen what happens when someone tries to do double duty as both writer and artist on the same title, JLA was not a great, sure it isn’t the same writer but the constant delays of a title like this worry me. But DC seems interested in getting titles out at their allotted time lately, so we have Clay and Seth Mann and Scott Anderson doing #3 and Emanuela Lupacchino, Ray McCarthy and HiFi doing the art for #4. Could this ruin the feel of the book? Let’s take a look.

4 issue test #32 - All Star Batman

I’m still trying to erase Frank Miller’s All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder from my memory. Fortunately, despite the similar title, this title has nothing to do with that. All Star Batman

Now, a quick proviso on writer Scott Snyder. He has a lot of well-acclaimed work and most of it is well-deserved but… I think he might be a tad overrated. His Court of Owls work is fantastic and his run with Dick Grayson’s Batman is second to none. But then I have to look at the previously reviewed Batman Annual #1 (plug) and his two Joker arcs, neither of which are that great in my opinion. Not horrible, just not great. I honestly think Snyder is at his best dealing with villains that don’t have a tonne of backstory and character. He can remodel lesser villains but when dealing with the mainstream villains, and yes I’m counting Mr Freeze, his work is less than stellar.

So, yes, it does worry me that his first arc is focused on Two-Face, one of the more high-profile Batman villains. Plus, this title promises to be a villain palooza with villains being chucked in left and right. Batman: Eternal had this but it was a 52-issue mini-series with a number of different writers, this is a 5-issue arc.

John Romita Jr does the artwork for this series. Whilst I do like the artwork of Greg Capullo in Scott’s previous Batman run, John Romita Jr did some great work back during his Dick Grayson run, so I’m looking forward to seeing what he has up his sleeve.

All Star Batman is longer than most of DC comics’ offerings and sports a $4.99 price tag, nearly double what DC is offering for everything else. Padding it out is backup feature. I’ll cover the backup story separately as part of the review but I’ll be judging each issue as a whole when I come to scores.

Guilty Pleasures #31 - The Lego Movie

OK, there’s been a lot of cr*p and slightly less cr*p movies I’ve been watching this year, let’s take a look at something good, the Lego Movie.

I know what you’re thinking. Or at least you were before this movie came out. That sounds like a complete corporate shill, only existing to sell toys and you’d be right but this one actually has effort put into it, and they incorporate a large number of lego characters from throughout the years, for mostly cameo roles and of course as long as Warner Bros owns the rights to them, plus a number of a made up characters for this movie.

Produced on a $60m budget, this movie hit the right notes with people, earning $460m at the box office, 96% on rotten tomatoes and 83% on metacritic, not to mention people were miffed when this wasn't nominated for an oscar. and there’s a sequel and 3 different spinoff movies coming out over the next few years, one of which already has a trailer dropped. What’s made it so successful? Let’s find out.

DC Rebirth review - Nightwing/Justice League

Time for me to review an insane amount of comics all in one go, again. Let’s skip the intro and get on with it

DC Rebirth review - Action Comics/Detective Comics/Batman/Superman/The Flash/Wonder Woman

So DC has decided to relaunch all their titles with new creative teams and is attempting to bring legacy back into the DCU. This is a very good idea, legacy is one of the greatest assets DC has over Marvel, which has almost all of its heroes operating in the current day. Another interesting part a number of series are now biweekly, and since the Hiatus combined with how many titles I’m covering make it impossible to do 4 issue tests on all of them I’m going to review the bi-weekly titles in 2 reviews. The first will cover the titles that first came out in June, and the second will cover those that came out in July.

As usual, I’ll cover the first 4 issues of the relaunch, plus the rebirth issue if there is one. But bear in mind that I won’t be covering them in as much detail as I would a regular 4 issue test because I’m covering several comics at once.

#37 - Batman: Bad Blood

Oh boy, we’re back to the New-52verse

You may recall my 4^th rage of this blog was Son of Batman. In it Damian Wayne was forced into Batman’s hands and got the role as Robin. You might want to check out that review, because the plot is ongoing. I also did a review last year of Batman vs Robin, the slightly better sequel. Today we look at the third in the series, and it’s bad, really really bad. This is Batman: Bad Blood. Insert obvious Taylor Swift Joke here.

What we’re looking at is a mish-mash of various bits of Batman history (so what else is knew?). But the biggest influence I can see is Batman Incorporated where Batman assembled a team of not Justice Leaguers to combat a sinister threat. It’s classic Grant Morrison being equal parts awesome, stupid and confusing, especially when Fraser Irving did the art for one issue (rule of thumb, if Frazer Irving did the artwork, it’ll be cr*p) but I suppose I should mention our 2 breakout characters in this.

First we have Kathy Kane aka Batwoman – she was a breakout character from the awesome miniseries 52. In the New 52 continuity, there were plans that she and her long-time girlfriend would get married but the rug was pulled out from under the creative team at the last minute (because, apparently Bat-family characters can’t have happy lives) which lead to the resignation of the creative and the book’s eventual cancellation. She’s currently getting a starring role in Detective comics, I’ll let you know how that turns out in September.

Secondly we have Luke Fox aka Batwing II, the original guy was from Africa, I really have nothing more to say about him because I was not reading Batwing.

With that said, let’s take a look at this piece of trite and see what went wrong.

#36 - Batman and Robin

OK, before we start time for some house-cleaning. It’s become apparent that this meme

Is massively overused so I’m starting a coin jar. Every time I’m tempted to use the clip, I put a coin in the jar, this will last until the end of the year and any money in it will be donated to charity. (I’m all heart, I know)

That’s for the time I used it just now. So with that out of the way, Batman and Robin

I think I might need more change

Oh good grief, this is when Schumacher went too far. I have my issues with Batman Forever but ultimately, I enjoyed it more than I did the Burton movies. Sure, it was over the top but it did have quieter moments and focus was where it should be, on Batman!

In terms of success, being more kid-friendly than the Burton movies helped as it made it more marketable. I doubt they lost any fast food tie ins with this movie. But, this movie’s success was questioned from the start. The movie was fast-tracked into production by the studio after the success of Batman Forever, meaning there was a rushed feel to it, even from the beginning. Making it worse is toy companies coming in during pre-production, adding a commercial feel to proceedings. Chris O’Donnell has said that filming Batman and Robin felt like a toy commercial

Because of scheduling conflicts, largely relating to the fast tracking of the movie, Val Kilmer couldn’t return for a second shot as Batman and so George Clooney was hired instead. Also, with some insistence from Schumacher himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger was cast as Mr Freeze, one of the main villains of the movie, and they were planning to base his origin on the vastly popular episode of Batman: The Animated Series, Heart of Ice. So, yes, I’m doing yet another terrible attempt to replicate it (you might remember the awful attempt to retell Mr Freeze’s origins in Batman Annual #1)

A lot of people in production don’t have nice things to save about this movie, I’ve mentioned Chris O’Donnell’s thoughts. George Clooney said he’d offer refunds to anyone who saw it in theatres (I did not, being the ripe old age of 5 when this came out) and Joel Schumacher himself apologised for it. 

  

Produced on a $140m budget, the movie made back its money with a strong overseas performance but it was lambasted critically, holding a mere 11% on rotten tomatoes, 28% on metacritic and a 3.7 on IMDb.

So, now we’re past the longest intro ever, let’s dive into the sea of sh*t that is, Batman and Robin.

4 issue Test #13 - Batman and Robin Eternal

The weekly miniseries is something DC brought back in 52, an excellent title written by 4 renowned writers focusing on the minor heroes in the DC Universe after the big 3 were taken off the table thanks to infinite crisis

Then came Countdown, an awful work head-written by great writer Paul Dini and a load of crappy writers intended to set up an event it didn’t set up, kill things without mercy and push tie-ins wherever it could. It was awful and killed the miniseries off for a while. With the New52 came 3 new mini-series. Future’s end, Earth 2: World’s end, neither of which I’ve read but I can’t say I’ve heard great things about, and Batman: Eternal, intended to celebrate the 75^th anniversary of Batman, which I did a 4 issue test of in January despite the fact issue 4 came out in April of the previous year.

Batman: Eternal was reasonably well written and successful enough that a 26-issue second mini-series Batman and Robin Eternal, this time celebrating the 75^th anniversary of Robin. I don’t like to give too much background as I feel a new title should provide that anyway. But it’s best to know that during the Batman story endgame. Batman and his long-time nemesis the Joker ‘died.’ James Gordon became a fully police sanctioned Batman with a robotic suit as he lacks the skills Batman had. Bruce has since returned, but with no memories of his time as Batman and lacking the skills.

I hate the idea of Jim Gordon as Batman, I’ll just go out and say it. I haven’t been picking up titles with him as the focus because Jim Gordon to me is the legal centre of Batman. He’s Batman’s ally in the police and the main difference between him and Batman is that he is a firm believer in the law. Becoming a vigilante is backwards for his character, and I hate the ro-bat suit. One other thing. Dick Grayson revealed himself to Robin, Red Robin, Batgirl and the Red Hood to be alive after his ‘death’ in Forever evil and becoming a super-spy (see my 4 issue Test of Grayson for more info)

OK, let’s take a look.

4 issue Test #12 - JLA (Justice League of America)

So, time for another continuity bubbled Justice League. The regular continuity with the Justice League titles is one giant clusterf*ck. The way I see it, Geoff Johns’ League is a pre-convergence story, since it features Bruce Wayne as Batman and a fully powered Superman (although I haven’t seen him do his super-solar flare (yeah, that was added recently because if there’s one thing Superman really didn’t need it’s another new power)) this I can only imagine takes place in the 5 years between the opening Justice League story, and the second, that’s a 5-year gap, give or take.

How does this story hold up? Let’s take a closer look