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2021-03-28 04:12 pm

Comic Review: Invincible, by Robert Kirkman

A superhero universe by the guy who wrote The Walking Dead.


Invincible

Image Comics, 144 issues


Invincible was a comic book series published by Image Comics that ran for fifteen years. In addition to the Invincible series itself, there were many spin-offs and miniseries and one-shots, all set in the same universe. It's now an animated feature on Amazon Prime. (I have not yet watched any of it.)



The series is collected in a variety of trade paperbacks and omnibuses, also available digitally. If you want to read the entire series, then other than reading all 144 issues individually, there are several types of collections. I'll describe them below, but tldr: get the Compendiums as the simplest way to read everything.

Trade Paperbacks



There are 25 of these. Each Volume collects 4-6 issues.

Invincible Volume 1: Family Matters

Ultimate Collections



There are 12 of these. Each Ultimate Collections contains 11 to 13 issues of the series.



Ultimate Collection 1
Ultimate Collection 2
Ultimate Collection 3
Ultimate Collection 4
Ultimate Collection 5
Ultimate Collection 6


Ultimate Collection 7
Ultimate Collection 8
Ultimate Collection 9
Ultimate Collection 10
Ultimate Collection 11
Ultimate Collection 12



Compendiums



Lastly, there are the Compendiums. The entire series collected in three big volumes.


Ultimate Compendium 1
Ultimate Compendium 2
Ultimate Compendium 3


Below will be a review of the original comic series, including huge spoilers below the cut.

Invincible is an unabashed four-color superhero comic book. The main thing that sets it apart, and won it so many accolades, is that having been steered from beginning to end by a single creator, it is able to preserve a consistent narrative without too many continuity glitches across its entire fifteen-year span. While Marvel and DC characters have accumulated the cruft of 60-80 years of history, having been written by literally hundreds of different writers, further complicated by endless reboots, Invincible has always been written by one man: Robert Kirkman. It shows. You can see things in the final few issues that were set up at the beginning of the series. Recurring characters really feel like recurring characters whose reappearance was intended all along. It's not perfect: there are a few silly tangents and a lot of plot holes, some characters who seemed to have no real purpose other than a single scene, and a few early plot threads never resolve, but for the most part, it feels like a very long saga that the writer was able to bring to a conclusion the way he wanted to.

One of the other features of Invincible, though, is that it is graphically violent. When superheroes punch each other, there is blood, sometimes a lot of it, and there are entire issues painted with buckets of blood and gore. Kirkman really likes to show what happens when Superman punches a normie.

lj-cut for gory spoilers... )

The story starts out as the amazing adventures of Mark Grayson, an ordinary teenager whose dad is Omni-Man, basically this world's Superman, but with a pornstache.

Omni-Man

Mark is a senior in high school, trying to juggle girls, an afterschool job, homework, and college applications like any other teenager, and then his powers kick in. He's delighted to take up the cape (not literally, he goes for a more modern, capeless costume) and become a superhero like his old man.

Invincible

They have Adventures, Invincible joins the Teen Team, there is relationship drama, and the Graysons are adorable, with Mark's mom being so blase about her husband and son running off to save the world on a regular basis, and occasionally disappearing for a week or two while being captured by extradimensional aliens or master villains.

The first volume alone was just plain fun, and enough to keep me reading, though I was starting to get bored with the Adventures of Superboy.

Then, everything changes.

HUGE SPOILERS FOLLOW. )




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2019-03-20 10:18 pm

Book Review: Ex-Isle, by Peter Clines

The Ex-Heroes find more survivors, with an obligatory superhero brick battle.


Ex-Isle

Broadway Books, 2016, 389 pages



The spectacular fifth adventure in the genre-busting Ex-Heroes series.

The heroes are overjoyed when they discover another group of survivors living on a manmade island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But there's something very, very wrong with this isolated community and its mysterious leader - a secret that could put every survivor in the world at risk.


The fifth book in a series that seems to be settling in for the long run. )

Also by Peter Clines: My reviews of Ex-Heroes, Ex-Patriots, Ex-Communication, Ex-Purgatory, 14, The Fold, and Paradox Bound.




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2016-04-28 07:40 pm

Book Review: Secrets of a D-List Supervillain, by Jim Bernheimer

The (kinda) former supervillain adds a few more lines to his character sheet.


Secrets of a D-List Supervillain

Self-published, 2014, 196 pages



Cal Stringel may be dead to the world at large, but a select few know that he's still alive and in control of the most powerful suit of battle armor ever created. He's part of a rogue superteam taking the world by storm and changing the dynamic for both heroes and villains alike. With change comes resistance, and those holding control and power are not ready to just hand it over without a fight.

For the former D-list supervillain, it's time to break out the spare synthmuscle, charge the massive railgun pistol, and bring the pain. With his new team, he thinks he can take on the world, but is Cal biting off more than he can chew? He must deal with sanctioned hero teams and power-mad bureaucrats on one side and the major supervillains of his world on the other.

As Cal and his allies ready themselves to face friend and foe, he will also have to deal with his relationship with Stacy Mitchell, also known as the Olympian, Aphrodite. Separated for more than a year, they've only just reunited and are faced with the prospect of being on opposite sides of the coming conflict. Can they find enough common ground between the secrets and half truths to sustain their fledgling relationship, or are they doomed like the last time to crash and burn?


Still fun, but not as solid as the first book. )

Also by Jim Bernheimer: My review of Confessions of a D-List Supervillain.




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2015-07-12 07:18 pm
Entry tags:

Three Comic Book Universes on the Table: Comparing Superhero Deckbuilders

Three Comic Book Universes on the Table: Comparing Superhero Deckbuilders

I may have mentioned a time or two that I am fond of superheroes, and have been a comic book geek since way back when.

Combine this with my gaming hobby, and that means of course that I am always down to try out a superhero game.

I actually own a Super Deck! starter pack. Super Deck! was one of the many CCGs published in the 1990s, trying to capitalize on the Magic craze, but Super Deck! was worse than most. Actually, it's probably a contender for Worst CCG Ever Made.

Super Deck!

Fortunately, the game industry has moved on. While CCGs still exist, there are also collectible dice games, cooperative games, and deckbuilders. Most of the latter are trying to capitalize on the popularity of Dominion, and as usual with copycats, the quality ranges from very good to horrible. But when you're dealing with big money licenses, you usually get something at least decent, and here's where I start.

For those who have never played a deckbuilder, the basic idea is that each player starts with a small deck (usually a dozen or so) of relatively weak cards, and by various mechanisms is able to add new cards to his deck. Selecting the right cards to get powerful combination effects, managing your hand in such a way that you don't wind up with worthless or unusable cards, trying to thin the weak and useless cards out of your deck, are all elements of a typical deckbuilder. This is very much like most CCGs, the difference being that you start with a fixed set of cards.

Marvel Legendary: In which we get two Wolverines but no Kitty Prydes



Marvel Legendary

Marvel Legendary is, you guessed it, a deckbuilder based on the Marvel Universe. At this time, there are five expansions (of which I own all but one), plus a companion game, Legendary: Villains, plus a game using the same engine but based on the Aliens franchise: Legendary Encounters. Supposedly these are all combinable, with some tweaking, so you could in theory have Wolverine and Dr. Doom teaming up with Ripley to defeat the Alien Queen and the Heralds of Galactus.

Sticking to Legendary, a game consists of a random (or semi-random) combination of heroes and villains, with a single Master Villain and a Scheme defining the unique conditions for the game. The players' decks consist of superheroes, each player drawing from the same hero deck. Every turn you can "recruit" new heroes and/or fight supervillains (which are drawn from the villains deck) while trying to build up cards powerful enough to fight the Master Villain. You start with mere S.H.I.E.L.D agents, but soon can acquire hero cards who have more recruiting ability, thus allowing you to recruit more powerful hero cards, which allow you to lay some serious smack down on the bad guys.

In a typical game, the hero deck has five different heroes (with five different cards for each hero), and your deck will work best if you try to concentrate on recruiting two or three of them.

So for example, a Legendary game might consist of Wolverine, Storm, Spider Man, the Hulk, and Mr. Fantastic trying to defeat Dr. Doom in his Scheme to Unleash the Legacy Virus, aided by Doombots, Hand Ninjas, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and the Sinister Six.

Marvel Legendary player mat

Thematically, the cards and the player mat do evoke the Marvel Universe, though actual game play often becomes an exercise in combo-optimization (but this is true of all deckbuilders). One can actually feel like you are "recruiting" Wolverine and the Hulk to go kick Dr. Doom's ass, while the Legacy Virus is constantly knocking heroes off the board. The combinations are variable but well-balanced; you start out slow but by the end game may well be able to dish out enough damage with one hand to knock out Galactus. Sometimes there isn't that much strategy involved, since you will buy the best hero card you can afford each turn, and the optimal order to play your hand is usually fairly easy to determine. There are a fair number of decisions to make, though.

Legendary is "semi-coop," meaning that players are in competition for the highest final victory point total (scored mostly by the number of villains you defeat), but you must collectively defeat the Master Villain before the Scheme ends the game, or else everybody loses.

The challenge level is variable, but I've played very few games in which the Master Villain won. Some Master Villains are harder to fight than others, and some Schemes are fairly easy to beat, while others impose a very challenging ticking clock for the players. Some combinations are brutal, while others are a bit silly. (If you generate your scenario completely randomly, you can theoretically wind up with Galactus and a Scheme to Rob the Mid-Town Bank...)

I've played a couple dozen games of Legendary and have not gotten tired of it yet. However, the expansions add dramatically to the variability and the challenge. The base game comes with Marvel's biggest heroes (the Avengers, the X-Men, Spider Man, and a few others), while the expansions add the Fantastic Four, Marvel Knights, Spider Friends, X-Factor, and others. Notably missing so far is Dr. Strange, and some of my personal favorites like Kitty Pryde, Dazzler, and Nova. There is also (as yet) no She-Hulk, or Captain Marvel. And yet there are two versions of Wolverine, which reminds me of the 90s when Wolverine was Marvel's most popular character and so he was guest-starring in every other series practically every month.

For game play and theme, Marvel Legendary scores very high. I will note that, in addition to the expense of collecting all those expansions, there are a lot of cards to sort out for each game, so the setup and breakdown time is considerable; it's not something you can casually whip out for a quick game.

DC Comics Deck-Building Game: In which you throw the kitchen sink at random villains



DC Comics Deck-Building Game

I tend to be biased in favor of Marvel over DC, but I still have fond memories of the Wolfman/Perez run of the New Teen Titans and John Byrne's Superman. (I also seem to be the only person I know who prefers Superman over Batman.)

So anyway, I finally got a chance to play the DC Comics Deck-Building Game recently.

The problems with this one start with the title. "DC Comics Deck-Building Game." Really. That is the name of the game. Could they possibly have come up with anything more generic and less exciting?

The same thing seems to be true of all DC licenses, from movies to card games: their marketing sucks.

Unlike Marvel Legendary, in the DC game, each player pick a single hero. Well, supposedly. What this means is you start with one DC hero card — Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Cyborg, or even good old Aquaman.

Aquaman.jpg

Each hero has one starting power. The Flash gets to draw extra cards, Superman gets a power bonus when using multiple superpowers, and so on. So far, so good — that much is thematic.

However, the common deck that everyone "buys" from consists of an undifferentiated mix of superpowers belonging to all heroes in play, equipment, additional heroes, and supervillains. So for example, as Superman, you can wind up with the Batmobile, Kid Flash, Harley Quinn, and Marine Telepathy in your deck. In theory, trying to purchase all the Superman powers that come up would make for a more thematic (and efficient) deck, but in practice, this seemed difficult to do. (In our game, the player with The Flash did manage to pick up most of the Flash/Kid Flash cards, which meant his deck was cycling at... well, super-speed.) The idea is supposedly that, as in the Marvel game, you are "recruiting" other heroes to join you, but this doesn't explain why you add supervillains to your deck.


Punch

Batman is punchy.


Instead of a single Master Villain to fight, there is a stack of them, and they are basically just more expensive cards that you can buy like any other. Each one does something nasty when he or she first appears, but after that you just add them to your deck when you have enough power. The game ends when the master villain deck is empty, and everyone counts victory points (more expensive cards are generally worth more points, with a few cards granting special ways to add bonus points) to determine the winner.

Whereas playing Legendary does evoke some of the feeling of playing a team of superheroes trying to defeat a supervillain and his minions, the DC Deck-Building Game evokes the feeling of trying to buy random cards with pictures of DC characters on them to accumulate the most victory points in the end. Being non-cooperative, there is more opportunity to screw with other players' decks, which is a mechanic I personally dislike in games; it makes it harder to plan your next turn, and thus to my mind, more random and luck-based.

I was glad I got to play someone else's copy of this game, as now I won't have to buy it myself.

Sentinels of the Multiverse: In which you kind of need an app for that



Sentinels of the Multiverse

Sentinels of the Multiverse is an independent game, unconnected to any existing superhero franchise. It has all the good and bad features of independent comics: it's fresh, original, fun, and a little unpolished, with art that is... well, if not exactly up to Marvel and DC standards, captures the four-color vibe very effectively.

There are already a ton of expansions available, but I've only played with the base set so far.

Sentinels is a fully cooperative game; all the players are working together to defeat the villain, and you either win together or lose together. There are four starting supervillains to choose from, helpfully ranked according to difficulty. The base game also comes with ten heroes. The designers have actually written up fairly detailed "origin" stories for all of them, making you feel like you are actually entering into an established superhero universe.

Unlike the Marvel and DC games, in Sentinels each hero has a unique deck, so everyone is drawing only from their own set of cards. This makes the theme much stronger, as all of Ra's cards are fire powers, Tachyon's cards all relate to her super-speed, Bunker gets a bunch of equipment cards and "modes," and so on.

Each round, players go around the table, each chooses one card to play and one power to use. Their objective is to defeat the villain by damaging him, knocking his health down to zero, at which point the villain card is flipped over, usually to a berserk or a diminished form which has to be defeated again.

Then comes the Environment phase, in which a card is drawn from the Environment deck. Usually this is something bad, an effect that will persist until the heroes do something to end it, either by destroying the card, discarding cards from their hand, or something else. Then comes the villain's turn, in which a card is drawn from the villain deck (each villain having his own deck, like the heroes). This is always something bad: either the villain acquires a minion, or a device, or a new power, and usually it involves doing damage to the heroes and/or making him harder to defeat.


Ra

Ra is my favorite damage-dealer so far.


As a superhero-themed game, it works wonderfully. I love Sentinels of the Multiverse. It comes the closest of all three games to feeling like you are a team of superheroes battling a master villain, with defeat always imminent. Some of the villains are especially brutal if they get the right combination of cards, so defeating them feels like an actual accomplishment. There are constant choices to be made — attack the main villain, or knock out the runaway monorail that's doing damage to the heroes every turn? Take out a minion while you can, or use a power to buff your defenses or heal before the next Environmental hazard knocks you down to zero health?

Like all cooperative games, there is a slight danger of an "alpha player" taking over and telling everyone else what to do. What may be a bigger problem for some players is that as powers, environmental effects, and villain tactics accumulate, the game requires an awful lot of bookkeeping. Although lots of "+1 Damage Dealt" and "Immune to Damage" counters and so on are provided, the mid to late game slows down as each player must carefully tally up all cumulative bonuses and penalties to figure out how much damage he can actually inflict on any given target. Since there are different types of damage and every hero and minion and villain may take more or less damage from different effects, the game is, again, quite good at simulating unique power effects, but it's no surprise that many players use an app to track numbers during play.

Rating the games: Which one is best?



Although I like Marvel Legendary very much, and it does have the most polished game mechanics, for sheer fun and superhero action Sentinels of the Multiverse is my favorite.

Legendary would probably be my pick if I had to choose one game to teach new players, especially if they are not familiar with deckbuilders (or if they love the Marvel movies). On the other hand, Sentinels is going to appeal more to true genre geeks, especially the sort who have played the Champions RPG or similar games.

Legendary and Sentinels both play very well in solitaire mode, and are almost as much fun in two-player mode as they are with three or four players. I've played Legendary with up to five players, and while it works, it starts to become a much longer and slower game.

The DC Deck-Building Game, alas, just doesn't make the cut for me in any respect. In fairness, I have only played it once, but that was enough to convince me I had no desire to get a copy for myself. It's not a terrible game, so if someone else brought it to the table, I would be willing to play it again, but it's not as fun as the other games, and of the three, it does the poorest job of capturing a theme or exciting interest in "playing your heroes."
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2015-07-09 10:30 pm

Book Review: Jumper, by Stephen Gould

A teenager with teleportation acts like a real person instead of a comic book character.


Jumper

Tor, 1992, 344 pages



What if you could go anywhere in the world, in the blink of an eye? Where would you go? What would you do

Davy can teleport. To survive, Davy must learn to use and control his power in a world that is more violent and complex than he ever imagined. But mere survival is not enough for him. Davy wants to find others like himself, others who can Jump.


It's not a superhero novel, but it's about super powers. )




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2015-05-01 09:59 pm

Book Review: Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon, by Richard Roberts

The Inscrutable Machine goes into space, fights aliens and Mad Science.


Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon

Curiosity Quills Press, 2015, 353 pages



Supervillains do not merely play hooky.

True, coming back to school after a month spent fighting - and defeating - adult superheroes is a bit of a comedown for the Inscrutable Machine. When offered the chance to skip school in the most dramatic way possible, Penelope Akk can't resist. With the help of a giant spider and mysterious red goo, she builds a spaceship and flies to Jupiter.

Mutant goats. Secret human colonies. A war between three alien races with humanity as the prize. Robot overlords and evil plots. Penny and her friends find all this and more on Jupiter's moons, but what they don't find are any heroes to save the day.

Fortunately, they have an angry eleven year old and a whole lot of mad science!


Puppeteers, Conquerors, and Jovian colonists descended from Victorian supervillains. )

Verdict: Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon is a fun book and I'm still looking forward to more adventures of Penny and her friends, but it did not have the consistent worldbuilding and character development of the first book. It reads a bit like a second draft, with too much story and not enough polish. 7/10.

Also by Richard Roberts: My review of Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain.




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2015-04-02 09:21 pm

Book Review: Ex-Purgatory, by Peter Clines

The next episode in the superhero/zombie post-apocalypse.


Ex-Purgatory

Broadway Books, 2013, 336 pages



The fourth novel in Peter Clines' best-selling Ex series.

When he's awake, George Bailey is just an ordinary man. Five days a week he coaxes his old Hyundai to life, curses the Los Angeles traffic, and clocks in at his job as a handyman at the local college. But when he sleeps, George dreams of something more. George dreams of flying. He dreams of fighting monsters. He dreams of a man made of pure lightning, an armored robot, a giant in an army uniform, a beautiful woman who moves like a ninja.

Then one day as he's walking from one fix-it job to the next, a pale girl in a wheelchair tells George of another world, one in which civilization fell to a plague that animates the dead-and in which George is no longer a glorified janitor, but one of humanity's last heroes. Her tale sounds like madness, of course. But as George's dreams and his waking life begin bleeding together, he starts to wonder - which is the real world, and which is just fantasy?


Agent Smith has them in the Matrix, and Los Angeles is still full of zombies. )

Verdict: You'll know if you'll like these books by whether the idea of superheroes and zombies sounds entertaining or stupid to you. Ex-Purgatory, the fourth book in the series, is as good as the third book and better than the first two. 7/10.

Also by Peter Clines: My reviews of Ex-Heroes, Ex-Patriots, Ex-Communication, and 14.




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2015-01-07 08:32 pm

Book Review: Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain, by Richard Roberts

Three middle-schoolers p0wn the superhero community — if you liked The Incredibles then this book is for you.


Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain

Curiosity Quills Press, 2014, 374 pages



Penelope Akk wants to be a superhero. She's got superhero parents. She's got the ultimate mad science power, filling her life with crazy gadgets even she doesn't understand. She has two super powered best friends. In middle school, the line between good and evil looks clear.

In real life, nothing is that clear. All it takes is one hero's sidekick picking a fight, and Penny and her friends are labeled supervillains. In the process, Penny learns a hard lesson about villainy: She's good at it.

Criminal masterminds, heroes in power armor, bottles of dragon blood, alien war drones, shape shifters and ghosts, no matter what the super powered world throws at her, Penny and her friends come out on top. They have to. If she can keep winning, maybe she can clear her name before her mom and dad find out.


A superhero novel for the true superhero fan. )

Verdict: A fun, light-hearted adventure for anyone who loves superhero comic books, especially those aimed at the younger set. Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain surprised me with how much I liked it; I plan to get the soon-to-be-published sequel as soon as it's out. 9/10.





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2014-11-23 03:24 pm

Book Review: Burn Baby Burn, by James Maxey

Supervillains save the world in a novel that almost achieves comic book scale.


Burn Baby Burn

Self-Published, 2011, 212 pages



Sundancer is a militant radical who channels the heat and light of the sun, capable of melting steel and vaporizing anyone who stands in her way. Pit Geek is seemingly immortal, able to survive any injury, but haunted by fragmented memories. Together, these supervillains launch a crime spree bold enough to threaten the world's economy.

To stop them, the government authorizes a new band of superheroes known as the Covenant to hunt down the menaces. Sundancer and Pit must learn to rely on one another as never before if they're to escape the heroes that hound them. When they finally run out of places to hide, can mankind survive the conflagration when Sundancer unleashes the full force of her solar powers?


Robots and Monkeys make everything better. )

Verdict: Burn Baby Burn is a stand-alone sequel that's better than the first book, and highly recommended for all superhero fans. While the writing remains a bit flat at times, and characterization is sometimes narrated rather than displayed, James Maxey has mastered the superhero genre, and is able to deliver a book that has all the best aspects of both novel and comic book. Aliens, robots, monkeys, and apocalyptic showdowns, and somehow it doesn't fall over into silliness. 8/10.

Also by James Maxey: My review of Nobody Gets the Girl.




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2014-10-13 05:14 pm
Entry tags:

Didn't grimdark comics go out of style in the 90s?

I'm not one of those prudes longing for a pristine, wholesome Golden Age of Comics when superheroes were morally unambiguous and nobody swore or died.

I liked it when superheroes first started getting a more "adult" treatment. Now there are numerous superhero novels. Like 'em or hate 'em, they have made it a distinct if niche sub-genre. Some authors treat the genre and its conventions at face value, others try to be subversive. But it's cool and interesting to explore questions like "What if Superman wasn't so nice?" or "How would the world really deal with superpowered people?"

I do, however, believe that the heart and soul of the superhero genre is heroes being heroic. And villains being villainous. And a generally optimistic tone in which we have reason to believe that Good will eventually triumph over Evil.

It's not terribly realistic, and it's not terribly nuanced, and a lot of people don't like superheroes, or think the whole idea is stupid, for precisely that reason. Fair enough. I don't get the appeal of paranormal romances or steampunk. We all like what we like. But I think what draws fans to the genre is the expectation of tales of heroism.

According to some, superheroes are modern myths retold, and there's some truth to that. But I think they are mostly power fantasies. Specifically, we look at a deeply dysfunctional broken world with mostly insoluble problems, injustice and atrocities that cannot be easily fixed with individual action, and imagine how satisfying it would be if we could just run around punching out bad guys.

Mix it up a bit with some moral dilemmas, the occasional "anti-hero," sure. I was as big a Wolverine fan as anyone, back when he first became the hot new icon that everyone copied and parodied. And while Alan Moore's Watchmen is an ugly, cynical deconstruction in a lot of ways, it's also clever and it respects the conventions it's deliberately breaking. And it was a limited, self-contained story, not an ongoing bloodbath in which all the tropes of superherodom were repeatedly shat upon.

Which brings me to the "Free Comic Book Day" issue of DC's The New 52 Future's End:

Future's End

Basically, the whole issue is a bloodbath in which all the DC heroes are hacked apart and assimilated by some Borg-like Big Bad who's taken over the world. Bruce Wayne, mortally wounded after having his arm graphically chopped off, sends his protege back in time to fix it.

First of all, Marvel has already done this. Repeatedly. It was even made into the most recent X-Men movie.

Once again, DC is trying to capture what has been a winning formula for Marvel without any sense of what makes it winning. Some people did not like the "Days of Future Past" or "Age of Apocalypse" storylines in the old X-Men. They were kind of grimdark. I liked them, but in the 80s and 90s when they were first published, Marvel was experimenting with their most popular and contemporary heroes, and they did, unfortunately, then go through a long dark period of X-Force, X-Factor, X-cetera, and the completely worthless character Cable. I know this legacy is still around, but notice the winning Marvel movies, even Days of Future Past, were "darkness before the dawn," not darkness all the way through.

I assume that DC, also, intends for "Future's End" to end with the heroes victoriously hitting the reset button. But everything I have seen in their new line indicates that they're just kind of clueless about what draws readers to superhero comics.

"Free Comic Book Day" is supposed to attract new readers to the genre. So what the hell makes DC think the best way to do that is by putting Wonder Woman's head on a spike?

New 52 Future's End Cover
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2014-09-23 11:04 pm

Book Review: Ex-Communication, by Peter Clines

Book three in the zombie apocalypse-superhero mashup.


Ex-Communication

Broadway Books, 2013, 352 pages



"All of us try to cheat death. I was just better prepared to do it than most folks." In the years since the wave of living death swept the globe, St George and his fellow heroes haven't just kept Los Angeles' last humans alive - they've created a real community, a bustling town that's spreading beyond its original walls and swelling with new refugees. But now one of the heroes, perhaps the most powerful among them, seems to be losing his mind. The implacable enemy known as Legion has found terrifying new ways of using zombies as pawns in his attacks. And outside the Mount, something ancient and monstrous is hell-bent on revenge. As Peter Clines weaves these elements together in yet another masterful, shocking climax, St. George, Stealth, Captain Freedom, and the rest of the heroes find that even in a city overrun by millions of ex-humans... there's more than one way to come back from the dead.


And now... wizards and demon lords. )

Verdict: Zombie/Superhero novel should tell you all you need to know. If you like those things, then start with the first book in the series; Ex-Communication is a decent third installment.

Also by Peter Clines: My reviews of Ex-Heroes, Ex-Patriots, and 14.




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2014-08-16 04:11 pm

Book Review: Heroes Lost and Found, by Sheryl Nantus

A superhero trilogy fizzles into the sunset.


Heroes Lost and Found

Samhain Publishing, 2012, 325 pages



Jo Tanis is still recovering from her near-death experience in Las Vegas when she receives a mysterious postcard from Harris Limox, who claims to have a promising lead on the whereabouts of the Controller. Over her boyfriend/guardian Hunter's objections, she sets off to a sleepy Oregon town to ferret out the truth.

The Controller is more than just a disgruntled super. He's a rogue Guardian who was presumed dead and is now armed with a slew of high-tech hardware that not only makes him physically superior to the supers—and therefore almost impossible to destroy—he's got the ability to detonate the implants in the back of all supers' necks.

In Oregon, Jo meets a surviving Alpha super, Kit Masters, whose wild plan to capture the Controller could put an entire town of innocents at risk. But instead of successfully talking her former idol out of his disastrous bid to regain former glory, Jo finds herself betrayed and trapped in her worst nightmare.

Fight her former teammates, or die.


Melodramatic quirks and trite superhero tropes do not always translate well on the page. )

Verdict: For superhero fans, this trilogy is a moderately entertaining series with a variety of supers and lots of fights, decent characters, mediocre writing, and a good start at worldbuilding, but Heroes Lost and Found is a bit of a flop at the finish. Your enjoyment will depend largely on your love-of-all-things-superhero to dislike-of-romance-masquerading-as-superhero-fiction ratio.

Also by Sheryl Nantus: My reviews of Blaze of Glory and Heroes Without, Monsters Within.




My complete list of book reviews.
inverarity: (inverarity)
2014-07-27 09:33 pm

Book Review: Warbound, by Larry Correia

Contains (a partial list): 1930s noir superheroes, samurai battle armor, magical ninjas, Lovecraftian monsters, and zeppelin pirates


Warbound

Baen, 2013, 448 pages



Only a handful of people in the world know that mankind's magic comes from a living creature, and it is a refugee from another universe. The Power showed up here in the 1850s because it was running from something. Now it is 1933, and the Power's hiding place has been discovered by a killer. It is a predator that eats magic and leaves destroyed worlds in its wake. Earth is next.

Former private eye Jake Sullivan knows the score. The problem is, hardly anyone believes him. The world's most capable Active, Faye Vierra, could back him up, but she is hiding from forces that think she is too dangerous to live. So Jake has put together a ragtag crew of airship pirates and Grimnoir knights - and set out on a suicide mission to stop the predator before it is too late.


It is what it is, and it's kind of awesome. )

Verdict: This book is cheesy big guns blazing noir superhero action, and I loved it. The author is doing nothing more and nothing less than entertaining his audience. Is it deep? Is it literary? Is it a classic of the genre? No. But would I read another Grimnoir series? Absolutely.

Also by Larry Correia: My reviews of Hard Magic and Spellbound.




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inverarity: (inverarity)
2014-04-23 10:48 pm

Book Review: Spellbound, by Larry Correia

In the second book in the Grimnoir Chronicles, the U.S. government is the enemy and the author gets his digs in on FDR.


Spellbound

Baen, 2011, 448 pages



Dark fantasy goes hardboiled in Book II of the hard-hitting Grimnoir Chronicles by the New York Times best-selling creator of Monster Hunter International. The Grimnoir Society’s mission is to protect people with magic, and they’ve done so—successfully and in secret—since the mysterious arrival of the Power in the 1850s, but when a magical assassin makes an attempt on the life of President Franklin Roosevelt, the crime is pinned on the Grimnoir. The knights must become fugitives while they attempt to discover who framed them. Things go from bad to worse when Jake Sullivan, former P.I. and knight of the Grimnoir, receives a telephone call from a dead man—a man he helped kill. Turns out the Power jumped universes because it was fleeing from a predator that eats magic and leaves destroyed worlds in its wake. That predator has just landed on Earth.


Correia's allegories are none too subtle, nor is his writing, but this is still damn entertaining. )

Verdict: An entertaining action adventure with pulp sci-fi robots and evil super-powered samurai against hard-boiled American wizard-superheroes. This is not a deep series, but it's much more entertaining than all that alt-Victoriana steampunk crap.

Also by Larry Correia: My review of Hard Magic.




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inverarity: (inverarity)
2014-04-07 09:15 pm
Entry tags:

Movie Review: Captain America - The Winter Soldier

Captain America The Winter Soldier

Captain America was never my favorite Marvel hero, but he is an archetype, and there is something endearing about a guy who still runs around wearing a flag. Still, he hasn't aged well. He's an eternal Boy Scout, like Superman (who also used to be much more blatantly pro-America), and his costume is almost as embarrassing as Wonder Woman's.

In the comics, that is. In the movies, damned if they didn't manage to pull off just the right combination of earnest, sincere heroism and bad-assitude. Cap looks like a soldier, acts like a soldier, and being frozen since the 40s, manages to act like a man out of time while being savvy and smart enough to do his best to catch up. The first Captain America was my second favorite among all the recent Marvel movies, just behind The Avengers and narrowly edging out Iron Man and Thor. I like heroes who are genuinely heroic without being saps (something several Superman movies have failed to pull off). And yeah, I like harkening back to an era when you could be patriotic without ambivalence.

So anyway, The Winter Soldier did not disappoint. Although the true identity of the main villain should have surprised no one over the age of 10, and there were some rather silly Tropish moments that didn't execute as well on film as they do in comics (seriously, the Villanous Monologue where the super-smart evil genius tells you all his plans before he gon' blow you up, 'cause that always works? Or packing an elevator with a bunch of thugs to beat up Captain fucking America, because yeah, that will totally work too), it was gloriously full of city-razing special effects and high-speed superhuman martial arts smackdowns, and a plot no more silly than anything else based on a comic book. It's not a character-redefining movie, nor did it have the genius and the humor of The Avengers, but it was satisfying, and it managed to keep Captain America believably heroic without either ignoring or denying his essential Americanness.

That said, one cannot help noticing how very global the movie is, heroes and villains alike. This is the post-9/11 era, and it's hard to pull off unironic patriotism, especially of the "America, fuck yeah!" variety. Especially when foreign box office makes up so much of a movie's receipts. Hence while Captain America is still Captain America, he really doesn't talk a lot about America per se, except in a rather wistful past tense. S.H.I.E.L.D. is apparently an international organization (despite pretty much every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent we've seen being an American) taking its orders from the "World Security Council."

I enjoyed Winter Soldier quite a bit, and am happy that they've been able to update Cap (as well as a few other B-listers).

Cap and the Falcon

Batroc

I did catch the namedropping of Stephen Strange, though, which makes me wonder when Dr. Strange will get his own movie?
inverarity: (inverarity)
2014-01-26 03:41 pm

Book Review: Hard Magic, by Larry Correia

Hard-boiled magical superheroes vs. the Japanese Imperium's war-dirigibles in an alternate 1933.


Hard Magic

Baen, 2011, 423 pages



Jake Sullivan is a licensed private eye with a seriously hardboiled attitude. He also possesses raw magical talent and the ability to make objects in his vicinity light as a feather or as heavy as depleted uranium, all with a magical thought. It's no wonder the G-men turn to Jake when they need someone to go after a suspected killer who has been knocking off banks in a magic-enhanced crime spree.

Problems arise when Jake discovers the bad girl behind the robberies is an old friend, and he happens to know her magic is just as powerful as his. And the Feds have plunged Jake into a secret battle between powerful cartels of magic-users - a cartel whose ruthless leaders have decided that Jake is far too dangerous to live.


Mislabeled! This ain't urban fantasy and it ain't steampunk, but it's hella fun. )

Verdict: Larry Correia is obviously a big dorky aficionado of guns, B-movies, superheroes, and "America fuck yeah!" politics. He's packed Hard Magic full of enough tropes to power an alternate Marvel Universe, and yes, I could tell he was thinking in movie frames when he wrote his action scenes. Don't be misled by the title or the cover: Hard Magic is more "pulp-era X-Men vs. a Japanese Magneto" than it is urban fantasy, noir, or steampunk. There's world-saving to be done, and this is the first start of a series I've read in a while that really makes me want to read the next book.




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inverarity: (inverarity)
2013-12-28 09:14 pm

Movie Review: Man of Steel

Man of Steel

Well, this was not the worst Superman movie ever, but it was not the best.

First of all, I don't know why every superhero has to be "rebooted," origin story and all, every 10-20 years. We all know the Superman story. I'd rather see a movie that does something interesting with him, with the assumption that we all know who he is and what he does, than yet another iteration of death-of-Krypton, donning-the-cape, etc. I mean, James Bond didn't need to be rebooted for almost 50 years. Nobody needs James Bond explained in the first hour of the movie before you get to the plot.

So anyway, in this version, they play up Superman's loneliness and alienation from his adopted planet. They kill Pa Kent in a sequence I found particularly hard to believe (I'm sorry, Clark would never let someone die, especially not his father, to protect his secret identity!), and then General Zod arrives from the Phantom Zone to wreak a huge special effects budget on Earth.

Holy crap, Amy Adams is a lousy actress. Lois Lane almost seemed to be reading from cue cards. And chemistry? Forget about it.

The action sequences were impressive, though I thought the visuals borrowed too much from Alien and Independence Day. I can't recall many other movies with such blatant product placement, though, including the U.S. military.

The ending also annoyed me. Okay, you want to break over 60 years of Superman tradition by having him kill the bad guy? You should at least respect the canon and show it to be something more wrenching than his angst over being the last Kryptonian.

I understand there is a Superman-Wonder Woman movie in the works. I await it with mixed feelings - it might be good, but it has the potential to be very, very bad.
inverarity: (inverarity)
2013-12-21 07:58 pm

Book Review: Confessions of a D-List Supervillain, by Jim Bernheimer

Not everyone can be Dr. Doom. Or even the Crimson Dynamo.


Confessions of a D-List Supervillain

CreateSpace (self-published), 2011, 164 pages



"Being a supervillain means never having to say you’re sorry - unless it’s to the judge or the parole board. Even then, you don’t really have to. It’s not like it’s going to change the outcome or anything." Those are the words of Calvin Matthew Stringel, better known as Mechani-Cal. He’s a down-on-his-luck armored villain. Follow his exploits as he gets swept up in a world domination scheme gone wrong and ends up working for these weak willed, mercy loving heroes. Immerse yourself in epic battles and see what it’s like to be an outsider looking in at a world that few have ever experienced. Climb into Cal’s battlesuit and join him on his journey. Will he avoid selling out his principles for a paycheck and a pardon? Can he resist the camaraderie of being on a super team? Does he fall prey to the ample charms of the beautiful Olympian Aphrodite? How will he survive the jealous schemes of Ultraweapon, who wears armor so powerful it makes Cal’s look like a museum piece?

See the world of “righteous do-gooders” through the eyes of someone who doesn’t particularly care for them. Revel in his sarcasm and hang on for one wild ride! Just remember: losing an argument with a group of rioters isn’t a good excuse to start lobbing tear gas indiscriminately at them. You’ve only got so many rounds and it’s going to be a long day, so make sure you get as many as possible with each one.


A non-Gary Stu wish-fulfillment fantasy. )

Verdict: Self-published. Superhero novel. I have not always had success with that combination. But this one works. It's short, action-packed, true to the genre, and strikes the right balance of humor and sincerity. Confessions of a D-List Supervillain is nothing new or brilliant, but it's fun for those who like superhero novels.




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inverarity: (inverarity)
2013-11-15 11:42 pm
Entry tags:

Movie Review: Thor: The Dark World

Thor: The Dark World

Actually saw this in the theater. I think I liked it better than the first movie, which was a surprise. It's rather remarkable how well Marvel has done pulling B- and C-list villains out of its archives as movie Big Bads.

Best parts: Loki's banter, and London getting trashed. (Why does it always have to be New York?)

Worst parts: No way do I buy Natalie Portman as a PhD astrophysicist. And if you keep slapping gods, sweetie, sooner or later one of them is going to slap you back. Also, there seems to be a biiiig unexplained plot hole at the end, which I guess will be addressed in the next movie?

Wait for the very, very end of the credits - the audience that waited for the first easter egg and left missed the second.
inverarity: (inverarity)
2013-10-10 10:17 pm

Book Review: Steelheart, by Brandon Sanderson

Superheroes are the bad guys in Brandon Sanderson's rewrite of Mistborn.


Steelheart

Delacorte, 2013, 384 pages



Ten years ago, Calamity came. It was a burst in the sky that gave ordinary men and women extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics.

But Epics are no friend of man. With incredible gifts came the desire to rule. And to rule man you must crush his will.

Nobody fights the Epics...nobody but the Reckoners. A shadowy group of ordinary humans, they spend their lives studying Epics, finding their weaknesses, and then assassinating them.

And David wants in. He wants Steelheart - the Epic who is said to be invincible. The Epic who killed David's father. For years, like the Reckoners, David's been studying, and planning - and he has something they need. Not an object, but an experience.

He's seen Steelheart bleed.

And he wants revenge.


Brandon Sanderson writes entertaining Brandon Sanderson fanfic. )

Verdict: Steelheart was a fun read. Brandon Sanderson doing superheroes will appeal to you if you like superheroes and/or Brandon Sanderson and are willing to overlook the limitations of both. It is not his best work, nor is it his worst, and likewise it's neither the best nor the worst superhero novel I've ever read (I have read quite a few).

Also by Brandon Sanderson: My reviews of Elantris, The Mistborn trilogy, The Alloy of Law, and The Way of Kings.




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