by Matt
Welcome to another "Shout Out/Scream At!” column! where I take a look at what makes me a happy fanboy (Shout Outs!) and what frustrates me (Scream Ats!) about the comic industry. With this column I will be covering Captain Britain, DC's Blackest Night, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and DC's Human Target hitting the small screen.! 
SHOUT OUT! Blackest Night
I have never collected Green Lantern. My first exposure to the character (and to the DC Universe) was Zero Hour and Grant Morrison's JLA. I have always been intrigued by the concept of Green Lantern but never made the move to try him out officially by reading his book. I was also a little dissatisfied with Final Crisis and was slowly losing my interest in the DC universe as a whole. I was not going to pick up the Blackest Night event but there were 3 things that made me want to at least check it out. First, the Martian Manhunter revealed as a Black Lantern. The Martian Manhunter is my favorite DC character and I was ticked that he was killed in Final Crisis (I was real happy with Final Crisis: Requiem) and I am really curious about where being a Black Lantern will take him. Second, I couldn't resist Blackest Night #0 since it was free and it had a great balance of new content and provided enough information for me to catch up with all the current Green Lantern news. And I have always liked Johns writing and Ivan Reis's artwork. And lastly, Mailordercomics had the first issue for only 99 cents so why not give it a read? I am hoping this event is great. I have dropped all DC books and I miss the DC Universe.
SCREAM AT! X-Men Origins: Wolverine
For the most part I enjoyed the film and I saw it a second time with my dad and it was much better with a second viewing. I am not the type to be picky about how the movie compares to the comic, so I didn't mind the changes that were made to some of the characters. What I didn't like, and still didn't like upon the second viewing was the death of Silver Fox. I just found it utterly unbelievable that Wolverine would have been fooled with her death. He has been around death by being involved in so many wars, I am sure he could smell it. And the blood Sabretooth poured on her? Wolverine would know if it was her blood or not, I don't think he could have been fooled so easily. It would have made Sabretooth all the more bad ass if he had really iced her the first time.
SHOUT OUT! Banshee in Wolverine movie!
Did you catch the small cameo of my favorite X-Man Banshee? You do remember that Banshee was the FIRST X-Man to be portrayed live action. Anyone remember that horrible Generation X pilot? This huge Banshee fan was so bored he fell asleep and missed most of the show!
SHOUT OUT! Human Target TV series
I loved, loved the last Human Target comic series produced by Vertigo. I highly recommend snagging the first Human Target miniseries to get a taste of what the Human Target is all about. The small clips of the show look a little hokey and I am hoping that Hollywood doesn't just make this a cliche action show. I hope that they stick close to the Vertigo series and really make the stories about the man (Christopher Chance) having difficulties with taking on multiple persona's. Either way, I am looking forward to the series and will certainly catch it when it hits the airwaves. You can see the video clips here.
SCREAM AT! Captain Britain Cancelled
Paul Cornell recently stated on his blog that Captain Britain and MI:13 has been canceled. BOOOO! This was perhaps the only Marvel title that I was enjoying consistently. I thought Cornell really understood the Captain Britain character, Cap has not been written like this since the old Ellis run on Excalibur. What really makes me scream about this cancellation is that I was certain (and I could be wrong) that Joe Quesada said he was raising the prices on more popular titles so that Marvel could continue to afford to put out less popular titles like this one. It feels like Marvel is taking their money and running. I would have gladly paid $3.99 for this book anyway and I am happy that Cornell got to end the book the way he wanted too.
SCREAM AT! Captain Britain Omnibus Rescheduled Again!
I am sure that with Marvel releasing this huge Omnibus they wanted to capitalize on both the success and buzz of the new Captain Britain series and name drop Alan Moore. Funny, (well, not really that funny) that the new Captain Britain series has just been canceled and this Omnibus has been moved from June 17th to a new shipping date of July 1st. This was supposed to have been released March 25th. Now I fear that Marvel might just cancel this book entirely!
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5.23.2009
Shout Outs! and Scream Ats!
8.05.2008
From Top to Bottom #15: Comic Book Comforts
by Matt
Welcome to the 15th edition of the weekly "From Top to Bottom" column! Every week I will look at something within the comics industry and give you my opinion on what I think is the best and what I think ranks amongst the bottom-feeders.
Last week, I geeked out with more X-Men stuff by looking at the Top and Bottom of X-Men miniseries. I had a hoot pulling out some old X-Men miniseries and re-reading them and finding a few that I absolutely loved and could read anytime. Now you have heard of comfort foods, foods that make you feel happy and safe and bring back pleasant memories. Well, I have some comic books that do the same thing. They make me happy every time I read them and I can read them anytime, they are my Comic Book Comforts. Which is why I named the column the way I did. There are a lot of comics that qualify for this, but I am only going to look at miniseries. After looking at my Top 3 Comforts, I will then take a look at some miniseries that I have that leaves me scratching my head and wondering why.
This wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. While I did have a ton of choices, I immediately knew which ones were my absolute favorites the moment that I found them. I am sure that some will disagree with my picks, and that is fine, but you have to remember that I am picking out the books that act as a comfort food. These books go hand-in-hand with Mountain Dew: Livewire and Cadbury Creme Eggs for me. These are the guilty pleasures that I would want with me on a desert island (with LiveWire and Creme Eggs). Here are my Top 3 Comic Book Comforts.
Like I have said before, I am a sucker for crossovers and I just couldn't pass up two of my favorite movie characters crossing over. Add to that a superb creative dream team of Frank Miller and Walt Simonson (that alone should convince you to pick this series up) and this project just screamed fun. And it certainly was fun! It had a lot of twists and turns and was very tongue-in-cheek at times and totally surpassed what I expected. I loved that the Terminator's mission was to save Robocop because the creation of Robocop led directly to the formation of SkyNet. And the last page was totally Walt Simonson.
Written and drawn by Alan Davis. In this DC universe, Martha and Jonathan Kent never discover the spaceship that the baby Superman crashed to Earth in due to a nail that caused a flat tire on thier truck. So we get to see what the world would be like without Superman. Lots of appearences from almost everyone from the DC Universe and one of the more haunting Batman/Joker confrontations. The followup Another Nail was very entertaining but not as memorable and great as this first series.
I saw the cover to #1 in the Previews and it made me try out this series and I was so glad I did. This series was a wild ride that I was not prepared for it. Peter Milligan and the late Edvin Biukovic brought back Christopher Chance, the Human Target and took him to the 'Vertigo' universe for more suitable and mature stories could be told. The basic premise is Christopher Chance becomes an actual Human Target by disguising himself as someone marked for death, then he draws out the assassin and he tries to put a stop to them. But it goes much deeper than that, the Human Target didn't just look like the person he was protecting, he BECAME that person and at times couldn't separate who was who. This miniseries just keeps you guessing. Peter Milligan is at the top of his game with sharp writing and dialogue and the art by Biukovic just leaps off the page. This led to an original graphic novel (The Final Cut) and to a monthly series that sadly lasted only 21 issues.
And now for the Bottom 3, the miniseries that I had real high hopes for when they first came out but were major disappointments. And for some strange reason they remain in my collection only because I think they will suddenly get good. They remind me of one of my favorite movie reviews. It was for the new Highlander 2 Special Edition DVD and the reviewer said (and I am paraphrasing) "No matter how much you dress it up and spray perfume on it, poop will always remain poop." No matter how good I think these books will be, it will never change. 
Brett Booth's art was the biggest draw (pun totally intended) for this series but the idea behind it actually sounded a little cool. A Texas earthquake unearths evidence that man is not the most intelligent species on Earth. A team of specialists is dispatched to investigate and they find out that it was dinosaurs who were the most intelligent species on Earth, and some of them are still living. Now Brett Booth can draw the heck out of a dinosaur so I was intrigued. And I was left disappointed. I don't think this was meant to be a comedy.
Ugh. This mini series was terrible. The art was muddled and drawn in the "Image" style and completely ignored the events in Alpha Flight #106 which featured the outing of Northstar. Alpha Flight was canceled with #130 and they announced a new Northstar mini-series that if it became popular would become an ongoing series. I was hoping that the series would examine Northstar's lifestyle a bit more but we got nothing more than a pointless story with pointless villains and "kewl" characters like Kane and Weapon P.R.I.M.E. You know what would make this series worse? If I really cared for Northstar. Which brings us to my #1 Bottom pick and I character I adore.
I love Captain Britain. A few years after the original Excalibur series was canceled, a new four-issue limited series titled Excalibur came out. And I was excited for this new Excalibur book because it would feature Cap more than the X-charcters that ruined the book in the last years. Remember Britannic? Ugh. It featured Captain Britain and Meggan and guest-starred Psylocke (whom for some reason paraded around in a bra) and the Black Knight (whom I thought would be a natural fit for Excalibur). The series dealt with Brian becoming King of Otherworld, the idea behind the series seemed natural but the series was extremely boring and the costume changes for Captain Britain were horrible. What was up with the flaming Union Jack on his face?
Now there were a lot of other miniseries that I really enjoyed. Daredevil: Man Without Fear, Earth X, Batman: The Long Halloween just to name a few. But for these books I have to be in the mood to read them again. I can't just grab those books off the shelf. What are your "Comic Book Comforts"?
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