Defending The Grade: Batsoup

70%? That’s a passing grade, right?

Yesterday, the last of the Gabbing Geek crew, Ryan, finally saw Batman Vs. Superman Vs. All Common Sense.  He didn’t like it and left a long, often amusing, ever-expanding when he remembers something else list of the film’s flaws.  For my part, I thought it would be fun to write a tongue-in-cheek reply listing everything that was “right” about the movie.  That was rough because I wanted the same number of points as Ryan’s original post, and he has since added a few more.  There may be more by the time I finish typing this and more still when it goes live.  Check in often and make sure.

However, Ryan made note of the fact that the others ’round these parts, either on post or podcast, rated the movie above a five out of ten.  My own grade was a seven out of ten.  I stand by that.  So, in the interest of filling up space, allow me to explain my reasoning a bit.

SPOILERS for the movie after the cut.

Going Through The DCAU Part Sixteen

And we’re back with those wacky cartoon enthusiasts Tom and Jimmy for more of this feature.

This week, they’re covering the Batman the Animated Series episodes “The Man Who Killed Batman,” “Mudslide,” and “Paging the Crime Doctor”.

Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Heroes Case Files #43: Hauptmann Deutschland

This panel is the most popular one of this character on Google Images. No lie!

The late Marvel Comics writer Mark Gruenwald had a rare talent:  an encyclopedic knowledge of old comics.  Gruenwald was apparently the only man who could beat Mark Waid in a comic book trivia contest about the Justice League…which, of course, was published by DC, not the company Gruenwald actually worked on.

As a result of this, Gruenwald, during long runs on series like Captain America and Quasar, would much prefer to resurrect long forgotten characters for story lines rather than create new ones.  He even did the most mature Justice League story ever when he used the Marvel knock-offs versions to tell what many consider the first mature readers comic book storyline with the fantastic Squadron Supreme mini-series, a story showing the Squadron taking over their Earth as benevolent dictators, unmasking in public, and all the eventually horrible repercussions that came with that.  Not only does this story predate Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, but Gruenwald told a story with mature themes without anything that would have gotten the book censored by the Comics Code.  That’s right, folks:  his mature story had no nudity, sex, or swearwords.

But he did create a few characters too, and into that mess came the unfortunate example of Hauptmann Deutschland.

Jimmy Attempts To Read All Of Secret Wars XXIX

So, not unexpectedly I’m way behind in going through all of Secret Wars.  But give me a break, there are over 200 issues and counting to this event.  At least the Secret Wars main series being so extremely late and now extended an issue gives me until at least December, if not 2016, to finish up “on time”.

After the cut I’ll take a spoiler filled look at the latest issue of the main series: Secret Wars #6.  As well, I’ll finish off my review of the series Old Man Logan.  I previously looked at Parts 1 and 2 and in this post I’ll examine Old Man Logan #3, Old Man Logan #4 and Old Man Logan #5.  I’ll save spoilers until after the cut, but let’s just say, we have another disappointing ending to add to the pile.

Related links:
Secret Wars Power Rankings
Tom’s Road To Secret Wars: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,7.
Other parts of this series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28

Afternoon Funnies- Superhero Strip Edition

Also known as “Watson Didn’t Want to Write an Article today and Just Dumped a Bunch of Pictures Off His Phone”.  Click on for a mild chuckle.

Where Does the Josh Trank Fantastic Four Movie Rank Against Other Superhero Flicks?

You’ve seen me praise the film in my review.  Jenny liked it as well in her review.  The critics combined score over at Rotten Tomatoes was another story.  But again, I feel they missed the boat on this one.

To illustrate how wrong I think the critics are on this one, I decided to examine exactly where Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four ranked relative to the other DC/Marvel superhero movies in the post-Iron Man and Dark Knight era.

My findings after the jump.

Podcast Reaction: The Ryan Edition

Ryan likes this movie.

I’ve been doing podcast reactions for a while now, even before I got tapped to write for this site.  In that time, I have picked on Jenny and Watson quite a bit.  Why not?  Jenny is three ducks in a woman suit who doesn’t know who Max von Sydow is despite his memorable roles in both The Exorcist and Flash Gordon–leading to my theory that someone is finally continuing Flash Gordon‘s “To be continued” tag when Ming the Merciless is revealed to be the bad guy in Star Wars Episode VII.  Watson just has that one picture that makes it rather easy.  Heck, it doesn’t matter what other pictures I use, that picture will be the one that appears on Facebook for any article I write and use it for.

But aside from pointing out just how much Ryan likes the awful, awful Krull, I don’t pick on him that much.

I’m not going to pick on him now, because this post is an intervention.

Gabbing Geek 42: Jurassic World, Watchmen, And Star Wars

Gabbing Geek 42: Jurassic World, Watchmen, And Star Wars

Episode 42 of Gabbing Geek has a great conversation about Jurassic World, our Watchmen book club, and a fun Star Wars Episode VII betting game.  Give it a listen right now or jump after the break to read more!

Slightly Misplaced Comics Hero Case Files #20: Mr. A

This is his happy face.

I am approaching this particular case file with a bit of trepidation.  Every other character I’ve used for this ongoing column has been owned by DC or Marvel.  Some were misguided, some were inconsistent, some of them sucked, and some of them were used really well at some point and then just forgotten about.

Today’s entry is about a character that I only know about secondhand, but I’m feeling philosophical about the whole thing, so here we are.  Today’s character is creator owned by Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko and has appeared only a handful of times over the years.  His name is Mr. A.

1.21 Gigawatts: Jimmy Revisits A Comic Book Movie Post From Y2K

“A Watchmen movie? Don’t hold your breath.” – Jimmy Impossible circa 2000

Before I started writing endless Secret Wars posts for Gabbing Geek, I used to work on and write for a site called the Hollywood Stock Brokerage & Resource (HSBR, no “&”, I don’t care what you say).  It was a (the best) Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX) fansite.  While the site has unfortunately closed it’s doors, I still interact with most of the group on a daily basis.  Gabbing Geek founding member Ryan “don’t call me hose311” Garcia was also a contributor to HSBR and foolishly recruited me here.

In recently rambling writing about Superman: Earth One, I mentioned that around the turn of the new millennium I wrote an article that Rising Stars by Earth One writer J. Michael Straczynski would make a great movie.  While I pulled that observation out of the Impossible memory vaults, I wondered what else I had written in said article, and if any of them had come to pass.

So let’s hop in the Delorean, look into the Pensieve, travel naked back in time courtesy of Skynet and revisit and update that post.