That’s The Spirit! Part 3

Once again the fine folks at Lionsgate saw fit to send more The Spirit teaser posters my way and this time they sent two! So check out these two lovely ladies:

Jaime King as Lorelei

Sarah Paulson as Ellen Dolan

Like I said before, I’m not all that familiar with The Spirit, but even I know who Ellen Dolan is and can’t wait to see Sarah Paulson again. I was a big fan of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (if you haven’t seen it, you should check out the DVDs, I’ll get to a review soon enough). So, we’ll see once Christmas comes how she does with The Spirit.

ToyFare #132 OUT NOW!

Hey Schoolers, I’m a complete goober for not mentioning this last week, but ToyFare #132 is now available in stores. For fans of old school stuff, definitely check out the our Retro Robo Force feature that covers all aspects of those suction cupped robots. There’s also a look back at all of the previous Batman movies and their toys to go along with our rad DC Direct Deluxe Dark Knight Joker figure. Creepy right? We’ve also got the usual Incoming section bringing all of the coolest toys for the next few months, a Futurama feature with original art from some of people who work on the show, an interview with Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman from the Animated Series and Gotham Knight. Also, Bot Con! The conclusion of the Spidey-as-Nova TTT! A huge Hellboy Visual Price Guide! And, of course, all the word balloons you can handle.

My personal favorite balloon involves a pimp cane!

OMAC Attack

For the past 15 years or so I’ve felt this weird connection to Jack “The King” Kirby. It’s not because I was a huge fan of his work (I think the only copies of his books I owned prior to last year were some of his Topps Comics stuff), but because he passed away on my birthday back in 1994. I was around 11 at the time and had only been reading comics for a few years, but I remember feeling really weird about that.

Anyway, fast forward to last year and I finally found myself reading some of Jack’s work for the first time. But it wasn’t the Marvel stuff I had heard about since I started reading comics, it was the at-one-time-less-known New Gods stuff. The Jack Kirby Fourth World Omnibuses blew me away and once I’m through reading them, I’ll probably post something on here about them, but for now you’ll have to settle for an OMAC review.

Jack Kirby’s OMAC: One Man Army Corps
Written, drawn & edited by Jack Kirby
Starring OMAC, Buddy Blank

This book came out a few weeks ago and boy is it a great read. Weird, but great. Probably the most interesting aspect of the whole thing was mentioned in the intro by Mark Evanier. According to Mark, the concept of OMAC (a One Man Army Corps in the future) started life as a Captain America story. Can you imagine? Just think about it for a second.

Anyway, on to the story. Most of you have probably heard of OMACs by now. The latest version played a prominent role in DC’s Infinite Crisis. In that continuity they’re hapless people who were infected with a technovirus that lets a satellite called Brother-I turn them into superhero killers. But in Kirby’s world, OMAC was designed as a hero for the people in “the world that’s coming.”

Which brings us to Buddy Blank, a regular dude who works for Build-A-Friend until he’s selected by the faceless Peace Agency to become the One Man Army Corps. When OMAC takes over, Buddy disappears, but does return later on in the series.

Over the next 8 issues, Kirby throws OMAC against everything from a rented city of assassins trying to kill him, a giant spider-like monster, future gangsters, a vast cloning ring, a mad scientist stealing the Earth’s water and more. Kirby’s wild pencils really bring these out-there concepts to life, punching you in the eyes with incredibly crisp pencils.

The main problem with the book is that there isn’t much of a conclusion. Like a lot of Kirby’s DC work (from what I hear), OMAC got cut short because he was moving back to Marvel and DC didn’t want to put anyone else on the book (hence the Joe Kubert cover to #8). Because of this, the obviously-planned-as-a-cliffhanger ending to #8 got a new non-Kirby panel drawn to try and wrap-up the series (which doesn’t really succeed).

That being said, this book is completely worth it. If you’ve never read any Kirby, this is a great representation of his wild and wacky DC work. Want to pick up the Fourth World books, but don’t know if you’ll like them? I think if you like OMAC, you’ll like the Fourth World stuff, so this is a pretty good measuring stick for $24.95 (or less depending on which websites you shop at).

Personally, I’m hoping to see the rest of Kirby’s DC work collecting in a similar format to this and the Fourth World Omnibuses. Maybe a Sandman book? Or even a re-packaging of the Kamandi Archive Editions in this Omnibus format. What do you say DC? What are the odds?

That’s the Spirit! Part 2!

The nice folks at Lionsgate passed another The Spirit teaser poster my way. This time it’s the lovely Scarlett Johansson as Silken Floss.

Wowsers, does this poster make anyone else feel kinda funny? Like when we used to climb the rope in gym class?

Feeling Tarantino

So, this weekend was a little weird, mostly for all of the weird Tarantino-ness that sneaked its way into things. The wife and I headed up north to New Hampshire to visit her folks for Father’s Day. On Saturday we went to this flea market where I picked up Evil-Lynn from the 2002 Masters of the Universe line along with NECA’s The Bride figure from Kill Bill.

Later on, we went to this place called Building 19 where I picked up three books (for $2.98 each). One was the script to Pulp Fiction which I ended up reading for the rest of the day (it reads just as well as it watches), Spike, Mike Reloaded by John Pierson (a book I’ve heard about on plenty of Kevin Smith DVD commentaries) and Sonata For Jukebox by Geoffrey O’Brien, a book that caught my eye like just about any other book with a record on the cover does.

Finally, my Quentin Tarantino weekend ended with a viewing of Incredible Hulk (hey, Tim Roth was in it, he was also in Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, close enough right?). I wasn’t all that excited about this flick at first, partly because I was one of the few people that liked the original Hulk movie. It’s been a while since I watched it, so there will be a Hulk review up later this week (hopefully). Anyway, I just wasn’t feeling IH. Ed Norton just didn’t feel like Bruce Banner. The Hulk and Abomination CGI looked fine, but the helicopters looked ridiculously fake.

Frankly, the best part of the flick was Roth. He’s super-crazy and the scene where he fights the Hulk as himself (before Abomination-ing out) made me psyched for the Captain America movie. The only problem? Wouldn’t it have been cool to see Roth play Union Jack down the line? Oh well, too late for that now probably.

On a different note, Em and I were talking with the in laws about the upcoming movies and we all suggested that Matt Damon would make a great Captain America. This got me thinking that if it is Brad Pitt, as some of us around the office have thought about, Damon could make a great Hawkeye down the road. Let’s just not wait too long on this, okay Marvel? Thanks.

Um…I guess I ran out of Tarantino stuff, but you get the idea.

Welcome to the Hellmouth: Buffy Season 1

So, there used to be this show that I’m sure most of you have heard about called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Well, back when I was a sophomore in high school, my friend Randy told me about this show. It was in its second season at the time, but I just jumped in and started watching. Luckily for me, the WB used to show these things called reruns that got me caught up on most of the first and second seasons. One thing that I really enjoyed was that Buffy was only one year older than me (when she was a senior, I was a junior). I was so into the series that I actually taped every episode I saw, sometimes cutting out the commercials (and usually screwing that up) and even going so far as to make my own tape covers which had promo shots on the front and an episode list on the back, just like the bootlegs I’d buy at comic conventions (I’ll take some pics when I go home in a few months to really show you how big of a dork I was).

Also, Buffy was a big reason that Em and I got together. We had met a few times, but since we were both Buffy fans we’d meet up with a few other people and watch in the common room every week.

So, yeah, I’m a fan of Buffy, though, surprising as it might sound, not one of the uber-fans, though I’m not sure what differentiates me from them. Anyway, I’ve been picking up the Buffy seasons as they go on sale at Best Buy (I’m all about value), but haven’t really sat down to watch them all in a row for a while. I talked to Em, that girl I watched season five with and eventually married, and convinced her to rewatch the series with me. So we started Sunday at the beginning. And it turns out that she hadn’t actually seen the first season and it sounds like she hasn’t seen all of season two, so I’m excited to watch it with her.

Season One seems to have a bit of a bad wrap amongst some of the people I’ve talked to. Sure, the show doesn’t look as good as it does later on and the plots get a little repetitive (character A falls in love with character B who turns out to be D-monic), but upon re-watching season one (for maybe the third time) I realized that I really like these episodes. I was also surprised at how many lines I remembered.

And MAN, is the Master creepy. So is that freakin’ little kid. Can’t wait till Spike…well, you know. Personal highlights include the first two episodes (I used to have the original, different Willow pilot on bootleg, that’s very similar), “Nightmares” in which Buffy tries to help a different creepy little kid who’s making everyone’s nightmares come to life and the season finale “Prophecy Girl” where she actually dies then comes back and kills the Master.

Season One definitely isn’t my favorite, but it watched a lot better than I remembered it would and I can’t freakin’ wait to get into Season Two (we started tonight). That’s the season that I started watching and still remains as one of (if not the) favorite season (3’s pretty rad too).

The Death of Optimus Prime

As some of you may know, I don’t just sit around and blog all day (as you can see by my less-than-regular posting schedule). When I’m not editing copy and suggesting word balloons for the next issue of ToyFare (#132 hits TOMORROW, go check it out), I sometimes lend my voice to Animated TTT’s like the one below. I’m not sure how widley known these bad boys are, but you should definitey check it out. Can you guess who I play?

HINT:

“I’M HELPING!”

That’s the Spirit!

Hey gang, so, I guess the nice folks at Lionsgate liked what I had to say about Rambo because they added me to some kind of press E-mail list. At least, that’s what I think happened. Anyway, one of their nice press people sent me the following teaser image of The Spirit’s Eva Mendes as Sand Saref. I have to claim ignorance when it comes to The Spirit, but I’m curious to see how this movie plays out (Sin City was awesome and Frank Miller’s a pretty big deal).

So, thanks again to Lionsgate, feel free to send any more images or screeners/DVDs (crosses fingers) my way.

Fourth Blood: A Rambo Review

So, yeah, a movie from 2008 might not exactly be considered “kicking it old school,” but I figured, since it’s the fourth in a series of rad action movies from the ’80s, it can count. Also, I watched First Blood a couple of weeks ago and was completely weirded out by the fact that it didn’t take place in a jungle, but a town in the U.S. Crazy, right? Who knew? Probably the rest of you, but I didn’t. Anyway, here’s how things went down with the new (?) and improved (?) Rambo.

Rambo (2008)

Directed by Sylvester Stallone

Written by Sylvester Stallone & Art Monterastelli
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz and a bunch of dudes who either get blown up or beaten close to death

Averages 2.59 killings per minute. Has a kill count of 236, the most for any Rambo film.

Okay, so I had a couple of beers and decided to watch Rambo and man, what a great choice (the movie, not the beer, though I find beer to be a great choice often enough). Here’s a couple of facts I learned from IMDB.com that will give a pretty great idea of how the movie stacks up against its predecessors: there are 236 kills on screen, which average out to 2.59 deaths per minute. Awesome. Seriously.

So, here’s the plot. Rambo’s living in a jungle (or something) near Burma (which is called something else now). Julie Benz plays a missionary who asks for Rambo’s help to go to a different part of the jungle which he eventually agrees to. She and the other missionaries get attacked while Rambo sleeps on the boat. A military guy shows up and asks Rambo to ferry a bunch of other army dudes to help find Julie Benz (who, I forgot to mention got captured by the Burma guys). He agrees and they head into the jungle.

As a quick side note, I don’t actually know anything about Burma except for what I saw in the Kardashian’s PSA (YouTube that if you haven’t seen it), but the Burmans (?) in this flick are so repulsive that they just might be the new Nazis, you know, cannon fodder type characters you don’t mind seeing get their limbs and heads blown off (more on that later).

Back to the story, the scene where the Burmese attack the missionary camp is absolutely insane. They storm in there and kill anything that moves (including kids, but excluding Julie Benz). It’s a pretty rough scene to watch (the beer helped). So once Rambo hooks up with the army dudes, he ferries them to the camp site, but their leader insists on leaving him there, but don’t worry, he doesn’t. Which is great because Rambo shows up to shoot arrows into the heads and necks of the bad guys as they roll up on the decimated camp.

Later, they run an attack on the Burman soldier camp at night (which is awesome). Things (including people) get blown up in the process, but Rambo saves Julie Benz, even though the other army dudes make a run back to the boat after rescuing a few of the other missionaries. Now Rambo’s on the run with Julie and the army guys’ sniper who stuck around to help out.

So, they’re running through the jungle trying to get back to the boat. Rambo tells sniper and Julie to head to the boat and he sets up a claymore mine to explode some dudes. And wow, does he explode some dudes. It looked like a nuke went off. I have no idea how realistic this was, but it looked crazy.

All of this leads to Rambo coming up on the army dudes being held by the Burmese jerks. He jumps on the back of a truck and starts blasting away with some kind of gatling gun or something that absolutely tears the bad guys into pieces. It’s one of the bloodiest 10-15 minutes of film I’ve ever seen and, again, it’s awesome. Have I mentioned that I liked movie violence? Cause I do. And Rambo gives it up in spades.

I gotta give it to Stallone. The dude was 62 when Rambo came out and he looks rad and haggard, just like Rambo would. Call me easily-entertained, but an hour and a half of Stallone running around a jungle, making mince meat out of jerk-holes is a great way to spend part of an evening. If you liked any of the other Rambo movies or like seeing older dudes kick some ass (like Willis in the latest Die Hard or Harrison Ford in Indy 4 or even Stallone in Rocky Balboa, which I haven’t seen yet) or just crazy action movies where the good guy wins and the bad guy dies horribly, then you’ll definitely enjoy Rambo.

One more quick thing. Something I really liked about Rambo is that there isn’t one specific villain. It’s not like Rambo’s matching wits with one guy, he’s facing an entire army of evil jerks. There is a guy later on (the guy getting stabbed in the guts above) who leads the guys beating up on the army guys towards the end of the movie, but it’s not an arch-villain type of thing. It’s a nice difference of story from the previous installments and a lot of the other movies out there that took a page or 90 from the Rambo scriptbook.

New Comment Section (kinda)

As some of you may know, this here blog doesn’t have a public comments section. Well, fear not, if you want your opinion voiced on the goofy things I write about head on over to the Wizard Universe Message Boards, jump into the WizardUniverse pool and swim around until you find the Kickin’ It Old School post. Or just follow the link:

http://wizarduniverse.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=23234