A WONDER TO BEHOLD

The first night of the NY ComicCon held one of the most anticipated events of the entire convention. The IGN theatre was filled to the rafters before a special complete viewing of the highly anticipated Wonder Woman full-length animated, straight to DVD, feature coming out March 3rd, 2009, three days before the Watchmen premieres in theatres (DC drilled that into our heads during the Lauren Montgomery/Bruce Timm/Michael Jelenic panel after the movie).

DC's animation department has been churning out these full-length features for years now, and they have always pushed themselves to the limits in terms of story telling and doing justice to the characters (except for Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman, I've tried for years to delete that from my memory banks). It's a credit to Producer Bruce Timm and Casting Director Andrea Romano who have been a part of almost all of them. Bruce and Andrea were also in the original brain trust that started the animation revolution in the early 1990s with Batman: The Animated Series and continued their relationship with DC with this project and it shows in another above and beyond effort.

This was a huge undertaking since it marks the first time in 30 years that any media form has devoted a sole project to the Amazonian Princess and DC pulled out all the stops in terms of talent: Keri Russell as Wonder Woman, Alfred Molina as Ares, Oliver Platt as Hades, Nathan Fillion as Steve Trevor, Rosario Dawson as Artemis, and Virginia Madsen as Hippolyta. And, of course, it wouldn't be a DC animation project without a little pro voice over talent, perfectly cast again by Andrea Romano, with Tara Strong (Raven in Teen Titans, Batgirl in Batman: The Animated Series) as Alexa and John DiMaggio (Bender in Futurama, Marcus Fenix in Gears of War 1 and 2) as Deimos. Director Lauren Montgomery is a veteran in the animation game, but this was her first full-length feature where she was the sole director and she did a great job with such a huge undertaking. Add in veteran cartoon writer Michael Jelenic for the script and the pieces were in place for what could be one of DC's best cartoon features to date.

Here's the basic premise for those of you unfamiliar with Wonder Woman's background. Taken with some liberties from Greek mythology, Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, wages war against Ares, the god of war, in an attempt to save humanity from itself. After besting Ares in battle, Hippolyta wishes to do away with Ares, but is prevented by Zeus, the father of Ares and king of the gods. Hera, queen of the gods, and patron to Hippolyta, bargains to imprison Ares for all time on the Amazon's island in the Aegean Sea and Hera would be given a child from the gods for her trouble. So Hippolyta locks Ares away and makes a child out of mud and clay that is blessed by the gods in the form of a daughter, whom Hippolyta names Diana.

Centuries later, the Amazons, who still look smoking hot because they are descended from gods and do not age like humans, are living in tranquility on their island, hidden from man's eyes by a magic mirror by Hephaestus (Greek god of the forge) when an American fighter jet gets shot down and crashes into the invisible island. Upon landing in what he thinks is heaven (who can blame him), American pilot Steve Trevor is captured and learns that the Amazons' culture involves the hatred of man and that he must be sent back to America with an emissary from the Amazons' island. Diana, dying to explore the world, rigs the selection process so that she may be the emissary. At the same time, the Amazons are betrayed by one of their own and Ares is set free so Diana's mission becomes two-fold, to re-capture Ares as well as escort Steve Trevor home.

This was a great watch. The only real snag I hit with this project was that it still never explained where the heck she got her invisible jet! Everything else was given a detailed, ornate history from her bulletproof bracelets to her Lasso of Truth. The jet though just sort of appeared as if an invisible jet was common place. Then, to add insult to injury, it seemed like too many people could see the invisible jet so it really wasn't that invisible, was it? My theory is that the Amazons reverse engineered the jet that Steve Trevor crashed in and made their own improvements to it, but it still wasn't explained outright. Cursed comic book speculation!

Overall, the story is relatively accurate to the comics, with a few liberties taken on the Greek mythos, but it was still done in an enjoyable and meaningful manner that does justice to the original stories from the 1940s. The voice acting was great, the story held your attention the entire way through, and it timed out nicely at nearly an hour and a half. It also answered every question (almost; damn invisible jet) that you might have about Wonder Woman if you weren't a diehard and not too familiar with the character.

The Wonder Woman animated feature gets 4 out of 5.

-Ray Carsillo

Messiah Complex: X-Men 207

Hi Readers,

I recently bought another Trade Paperback which was X-Men Messiah Complex. It set me back 30 bucks, which I thought was a bit pricey, but I was dying to get this. One of the issues that stood out to me was X-men #207 mostly because of Bachalo's incredible art!

While reading, a couple of questions crossed my mind. Now that Rogue has been wiped clean of all of her past absorptions, does she still have Ms Marvel's and Sunfire's powers? I would assume that she does not, but within the story, Rogue leaves without explaining that she does or doesn't. Also, in the story, Pixie stabs Malice(the Omega Sentinel) in the torso with her soul dagger, but what exactly does that do? Magik's soul sword and Pixie's soul dagger are a complete mystery to me. Do these weapons hurt people physically? Mentally? Spiritually?

The Good: Like I stated before, Bachalo's art is incredible! His illustrating style is fantastic and cartoonish, but can also be savage and brutal. I was excited to see that Sunfire (from the regular 616 reality) had adopted the costume of his Age of Apocalypse counterpart. I'm pretty sure that readers everywhere were happy to see the change. It was also beautifully gorey for Dust to eviscerate Exodus's insides while he battled Emma Frost. Not only was this action unexpected of an X-Man, but it could not have happened to a nicer guy! I loved the fact that this issue was a free-for-all fight between the X-Men, new X-Men, Marauders, Predator X and Cable. The chaos let readers know that anything could happen and many characters were going to be hurt from this fight.

The Bad: Even though I liked the big battle between all of these opposing forces, I thought it was a bad move for all of these mutants to be so incredibly careless during the fight with each other's lives. Their species is on the edge of extinction and everyone is trying to kill each other. I understand that these are trying times for both sides of this fight, but I figured that with extinction on the horizon, each team would have kept that fact in mind instead of attempting to kill each other. Another aspect that I did not care for, was Bishop loosing his arm in the fight with Predator X. It didn't seem to serve a purpose and this particular injury makes him too "Cable-esque" since he has to now wear a mechanical arm. Now both Cable and Bishop are two mutant time-traveling, metal armed, big muscled mutants with opposite objectives. Bishop should be his own character! What's next, is Cyclops going to sprout claws from his knuckles and start calling people bub? You see my point?

Overall this was a great comic book within a great story line. Let me know what you think also!

@~~~~~~~~}~~~~~~~ Devin Peacock

RAY SMASH PUNY MOVIES!

Its efforts like this from Marvel that have almost made me "Hulk-out" on many an occasion. I will give them some credit; their timing is impeccable. A few months after the release of the solid Incredible Hulk remake with Edward Norton on DVD, days before the New York Comic Con, and only a couple of months before Wolverine: Origins hits theatres, Marvel Studios drops this little wannabe gem on us called Hulk VS.

"Versus who?" you ask. Well, who do you want to see fight the Hulk? This is after all the question that the folks at Marvel seemed to ask themselves since this effort is just a huge piece of fan fiction to drive the fan-boys into frenzied fits at comic-conventions.

Hulk VS. is a straight to DVD release that contains not one, but TWO "movies". I have to put those magical punctuations around the word "movies" with this because something that can be strung across a pair of Saturday morning cartoon episodes should not be considered an actual movie. To try to make this geek-gasm on a disc worth your money, Marvel paired two separate Hulk adventures onto this DVD and even then it times out to only 82 minutes.

First, we see the not-so-jolly green giant take on the man who is "the best at what he does, and what he does isn't very nice". A pre-X-MEN Wolverine has been tasked by his Department H headmasters to locate and subdue a monster who is wreaking havoc in the Canadian countryside. Dept. H is a fictional spin on Canada's CSIS, by the way. Fictional, of course, because who expects Canada to have any REAL intelligence agency? After picking up the scent, Wolverine begins to track the Hulk across the Canadian Rockies.

The action quickly picks up as Wolverine finds a quivering Bruce Banner in the woods and he wants to know why there is a half-naked man in freezing temperatures out in the middle of nowhere. Wolverine's subsequent threats get under Banner's skin, transforming Banner into his worse half and the highlight of the "movie" ensues with a defining battle taking place with moments from all the Hulk vs. Wolverine battles that have happened over the past 30 years, again catering to the fan-boys. Before it can end, Sabertooth, Lady Deathstrike, Deadpool, and Omega Red appear out of nowhere. We then see a montage of Wolverine's origin story, which is not explained so if you are unfamiliar with the character, you end up lost, confused, and frustrated because I thought the Hulk was supposed to be the main character here and we just had every major bad guy and moment from Wolverine's history thrown into a five minute montage. The story then continues in a Wolverine and Hulk TEAM-UP against the Weapon X rejects. After they are defeated, the Hulk and Wolverine go back to fighting each other, for no apparent reason, and the credits start to roll on a freeze frame a la Rocky vs. Apollo Creed like they were two friends sparring in some eternal duel.

This first DVD is a complete and utter disappointment. The things that made me furious as a comics fan far outweigh the handful of positives in this. When all the special features vignettes outlast the actual "movie" by almost 20 minutes each, you know you got off on the wrong foot.

The only positives were that the animation style kept in line with the popular Japanese style that many American animation studios have adapted in recent history (starting in 1992 with Batman: The Animated Series and continuing through most major superhero cartoons up to this point) and living up to those standards, they tried to make it play like a comic story arc, and the introduction of Deadpool to animation.

The negatives include the horrible character development, the fact that the name of the title is Hulk vs. Wolverine and it ended up being Hulk and Wolverine vs. Weapon X, the horrible animation model for Sabertooth, who looked nearly the same size as Wolverine, the fact that the entire movie could have been done over the course of a Saturday morning special, and you just have a frustrating, disjointed viewing experience as if you were reading a comic story arc, but missed several issues. If you are a diehard comics fan then you will probably be able to sit through it because you already know the back stories and will recognize the many, many references the "movie" makes to the comics, but if you are a casual fan, this would not be for you. Add in a few typical behind the scenes vignettes and special commentary packages and the special edition part of this disc is not very special at all.

The second piece in this two part Hulk-fest sees Mr. "You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry" against the mighty Thor, the Norse God of Thunder in the aptly titled: Hulk vs. Thor. This second "movie" was a lot better than the first. With a narrated opening montage that explains all you need to know about Asgard (realm of the Norse gods) and the characters in play, the plot is revealed within the first five minutes and the rest is non-stop smashing. Loki, the Norse God of Mischief and Evil has separated Bruce Banner from the essence that is the Hulk and unleashed him on Asgard during its weakest hour.

Without Banner to keep the Hulk tethered to humanity, the Hulk rampages throughout Asgard, laying waste to all in his path and all that stands between Hulk and the complete destruction of Asgard is Thor. The Hulk, being the only thing that could compete with a god, handily smashes Thor. Loki is betrayed though by his minion, the nicely drawn Enchantress, who revives Thor because it seems she's got a crush on Mr. Goldilocks. She reveals what Loki has done and the rest of the movie is cut between Thor trying to reunite Banner with the Hulk and Hulk just laying waste to the rest of Asgard's army as he makes a beeline towards the temporarily incapacitated Odin (near omnipotent king of the gods) with Thor finally succeeding in the end.

This "movie" was much better in terms of establishing the plot and giving the heroes an objective. Still though, being only 45 minutes, again this could have been done over a pair of Saturday morning specials and we could have been done with it. Instead, Marvel wanted to show off the new blood special effects that they have for animation so they could get a PG-13 rating on a cartoon and therefore make it so they couldn't put it on network Saturday mornings and mass produce these ridiculously overpriced DVDs. Again, the special feature vignettes are just "How we produced 82 minutes of par animation and charged you $24.99 for it" and they last longer than the actual "movie".

I have to end on the note that I really hope they do better with future releases in the "VS." series Marvel is planning. On an individual basis, Hulk vs. Wolverine gets a 1 out of 5 and Hulk vs. Thor gets a 2 out of 5 to average it out to a whopping 1.5 out of 5. Unless you are a hardcore Marvel fan-boy, I would probably avoid these or rent them at most.

-Ray Carsillo

Dark Avengers Issue #1

Hi Readers,

Just like everyone, I was ecstatic to see that the "Secret Invasion" story arc was over... until I saw that it meant the beginning of "Dark Reign". I'm SOOOOOOOOOOOOO over these story arcs that incorporate most of the Marvel Universe, but I did read "Dark Avengers" because Bendis and Deodato were the creative forces behind it.

The Good: Bendis does a great job of transferring the eeriness of the Thunderbolts to Dark Avengers. Both teams are comprised of anti-heroes and villains, but both books are bursting with comedy, shocking moments and bucketfuls of deception. This is combined with Deodato's art, which layers each page with shadows and smirks on each character's face.

Bendis also does a great job of showcasing each characters' personality traits such as Venom's savage cannibalism, Moonstone's ego, Daken's Oedipus complex, Sentry's phobia, etc. Another attractive quality of this issue was Osborn's explanation for his recruitment: he simply wanted to piss off certain heroes by hiring anti-heroes to impersonate them.

The Bad: I don't understand what Noh-Varr's doing with the others, he is a completely random choice as an Avenger. I read his profile on Marvel.com and read his scene a second time, but still could not find an understandable reason for him being apart of this roster.

I also hate the fact that Ares is a hired lackey in the Avengers. He's the God of Fucking War! How can someone who considers himself to be a god, be easily "purchased" by Stark, Osborn or whoever? As long as Ares has been an Avenger, I have yet to see him display any extraordinary talent or ability outside of being a sword-wielding curse-slinging brute. When Thor was an Avenger, it was because he respected his teammates and wanted to continue being a hero; same as Hercules (who is way cooler than Ares). Ares is an Avenger because he is paid to be and "there are battles to be fought" (quote from this issue). One word... LAME!

Overall, this was a great beginning issue for this new series and I can't wait to see the Dark Avengers "slip up" and expose their true identities.

@~~~~~~~~~}~~~~~~~ Devin Peacock