Thought Bubbles #1: July 11th, 2007

By Christopher Hoerdemann

Well, I seem to be slacking on my reviews as of late. That can mostly be attributed to me being extremely busy, and partly because I have been working on this very column. Like I mentioned over in the first Weekly Forecast column, things are changing around here. Instead of doing fifteen thousand different columns that each cover a specific thing, I’m consolidating, and crunching everything into two columns. One is the Weekly Forecast column where I will provide a little preview art and some thoughts on the next week of comics. This (the Thought Bubbles column) is where I will discuss my thoughts on current comics being released. I might discuss how great a new comic is, or how mind numbingly terrible a new comic is. Most of the time, I’ll let those that are mediocre fall by the wayside, only because talking about mediocrity just isn’t as fun as talking about either of the other “extremes.” This column will also be the home of some of my thoughts on things such as general pop culture, movies, and politi-..............Nope, not politics, that would just open up a very unpleasant can of worms. Basically this is where it’s going down.........or something like that. Okay, let’s get things rolling.

   

July 5th.....God Bless America and god bless this weeks comics!

Well, this was quite a week for me! Overall, this weeks books were quite good, and I am happy to say that there were some that blew my nerd brain to smithereens.

• Action Comics #851 (3-D) Variant
Holy crap, 3-D is awesome! The story was okay, and saying Superman is screwed would be an understatement, but the 3-D overshadowed everything else.

• Astounding Wolf Man #2
I gotta admit, the last page with Wolf Man tearing a guy a new one was a bit obvious, but hey, I enjoyed it nonetheless. Robert Kirkman has quickly become one of my favorite writers because he seems to be versatile, and able to change his style to fit whichever book he’s writing.

• Ant Man #10
Wow.......that was one hell of a World War Hulk tie in. Robert Kirkman uses the tie in to his advantage and advances the main characters own story without letting the tie in get in his way. I can’t get enough of this series, and am sad that it has to go (it’s been cancelled people............let Marvel hear your anger and maybe they’ll bring it back).

July 11th......Yeah, Green Lantern’s light is just about the only bright spot this week!

Last week was great, and this week was okay. It had all the potential in the world, but even some of the books I thought were sure things fell short of my expectations.

• Green Lantern #21
This issue confirms that Sinestro Corps War will be the coolest comic book story coming out this year. Geoff Johns is the quintessential Lantern writer of this generation, and him and Ivan Reis are going to town on this story.

• JSA #7
I was sure that this issue would bring the return of the great JSA stories that were a regular occurrence during the first story arc. After the last couple issues being mediocre at best (blame the Lightning Saga crossover), this was supposed to blow my mind. Unfortunately, it just lacked the spark that I had been expecting. It was still good, but not quite like I imagined.

   

The Blockbuster Summer of the Nerd

Yeah, that’s what I’m calling this summer when it comes to movies hitting the cinemas. I think it’s fitting. Not only have we seen Spider-man 3 and Fantastic Four 2, but we also were introduced to some robots in disguise (and Megan Fox), a guy that would rather live free than die hard, and everyone’s favorite boy wizard! Now, the quality of each of these flicks can be debated, and it has been since each of them has been released. However, none of what anyone else has said matters now, because I’m going to tell you which of these movies were actually good...................
 
• Transformers
The best of the best. This is truly the film that Michael, Bay was born to make. Explosions cut to robots fighting cut to Megan Fox posing cut to more explosions! This movie was like peanut butter wrapped in chocolate wrapped in skittles wrapped in Megan Fox!............which in my opinion tastes damn good!

• Live Free or Die Hard
This movie was so cool that I couldn’t even bring myself to try and question some of the crazy stuff that was going on. Bruce Willis riding a jet? Sure, why not! Bruce Willis killing a helicopter with a car? That’s what I’m talking bout’! It was over the top, it was fun, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

• Spider-man 3
When I first saw it, I liked it. Now that I have seen both Die Hard and Transformers, Spider-man 3 just doesn’t hold up. Yeah, there were some cool moments, but I found myself having to justify many of the parts of the movie. This one finishes in the middle of the pack.

• Fantastic Four 2
I swear it was ghost written by Stan Lee. This movie was attempting to be an action film served with a bit of cheese and humor. Thank god I realized that going in, because it sure did achieve that. I’ve learned finally that in order to properly assess a movie, you have to think about what it wants to accomplish. If you are going to see a Michael Bay film with huge frickin robots beating up on each other, and the movie has huge frickin robots beating up on each other, then things are all good. If you’re going to go see an action packed Harry Potter film, and you end up seeing a two and a half hour snore fest, then things might get ugly (more on that later, AKA the next paragraph).

• Harry Potter 5
The worst of the bunch so far. It was thrown together, and it made no sense (and I’ve read the book multiple times). Of all the movies this summer, this was the one where I felt like I was getting kicked in the nuts through the duration of the film.

   

New Sales Numbers are in, and DC is la la la la LOSING!

DC needs to kick it up a notch! The market share numbers have been released for June 2007, and Marvel is now ahead of DC in sales by about 20 percent. Keep in mind that these two companies usually are pretty close in sales. Over the past year or so (ever since the end of Infinite Crisis), Marvel has been pulling away in the market share race. There doesn’t seem to be anything being done by DC to change that either. Even though I enjoy the new very cohesive, and silver age influenced DC universe, a lot of other people are dropping books because of it. Of the top 25 selling comics in June, Marvel had 16, DC had 8, and Dark Horse had 1. I’m just really surprised about the fact that I haven’t really heard a lot of talk about this topic.

Countdown...........BOOO!

Yet another week has passed, and yet another sub par issue of Countdown has been released. DC seems to not want to recreate the 52 experience exactly when it comes to structure and story telling. I guess they didn’t want it to seem as if they were just recycling the weekly comic fad to make some more money. Too bad 52 was a great story, and Countdown, which is trying to go its’ own course, is very disappointing.

The final curtain..........

That’s all I’ve got this time around! See ya later, and make sure to have your pets spayed and neutered.