EXILES I was a major fan of this comic while it was out (and good), and always MEANT to do a write up of it, but for some reason I’d always delayed. Maybe it’s because I didn’t really feel like re-reading the entire series (I mean, I’m behind on my comic reading ALREADY). But what the hey! I still remember it well enough, and the … Continue reading Jab’s Deep Dive: The Exiles
I am currently surrounded by a bunch of Pop Vinyl characters all just sitting on my floor in disarray while I try to figure out where to put them. I don’t really have any satisfactory kind of display place for them, so they are just kind of scattered around. They deserve better than that, but it’s what I do with my collector mentality. I went … Continue reading Stew’s Reviews: Winter World
IMAGE CREATORS- MARC SILVESTRI:Marc Silvestri is probably #5 of the Image founders in terms of fame, which is a bit sad since he came first, and more or less popularized the style that would come to be known as the “Image Style”- taking Arthur Adams’s cross-hatched, detailed style and making characters into this slender, menacing, sexy figures with assloads of detail, fine lines, and metallic bands all … Continue reading Jab’s Image Deep Dive: Marc Silvestri & CyberForce part 1
Marvel’s Civil War may have been a piece of junk, but I think a lot of the stories and concepts that sprung from it were quite strong, and full of potential. The Initiative was a great little book that featured the new status quo: Superhumans were forced to undergo military training and could only perform “heroics” as agents of the government. And they played both … Continue reading Jab’s Deep Dives: The Avengers Initiative
We’re winding down to the last few entries in this series. At this point in history, it seemed the Marvel Netflix showrunners were certain there would be future seasons, as evident by the number of cliffhangers in Phase Two. In reality, Marvel was removing itself from Netflix so it could stream more MCU-centric shows on Disney+ in the future. During this time, Netflix was trying … Continue reading Netflix Marvel Retrospective – Iron Fist Season 2
It somehow simultaneously feels like the New 52 was both an eternity ago and yesterday. What an odd shitshow of an idea that was, and I say that as a person who has, comics-wise, preferred DC to Marvel for most of the 2000’s. To this day, I still have no idea what the New 52 even was; what from Post-Crisis continuity still “happened”? What was erased? It … Continue reading Stew’s Reviews: DC Rebirth
THE TEEN TITANS PART ONE: Now, this series has the unfortunate legacy of being at it’s best in the early 1980s, and every subsequent run on the book has since looked to that era and been judged against it. The book also has the reputation for having some of the most stringent editorial control in comics- neither rep is particularly helpful for good writing. Here’s … Continue reading Jab’s Deep Dives: History of the Teen Titans, Part 1
Among Image’s early failures was the hero “WildStar”, who was created by people outside of the “Big Six” (Al Gordon & Jerry Ordway)- he had a four-issue Limited Series in 1993 (the year after Image was founded), but his ongoing book that followed was cancelled after three issues. Apparently behind the scenes, both creators each wanted more control over the final product, and lacking an … Continue reading Jab’s Image Deep Dive: The Maxx, Wildstar, Pitt, and Scud
THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST: Now here was a fun, interesting little comic book series. Several years ago, Ed Brubaker & Matt Fraction came out with a revamp of the legend of Danny Rand, a martial arts hero created in the 1970s. Despite an initial push centered around “Marvel Premiere” (a book set up around introducing new concepts after the dearth of big-name new characters by … Continue reading Jab’s deep Dives: The Immortal Iron Fist
Way back in Volume 12 of this series, I had made a promise I failed to follow through on, and for that, I owe you an apology. I believe it went something like “Every twelve issues, a review of a book starring Jubilee!” (because my first and dozenth article both featured Marvel fabulous, frantic firecracker). Well, volume 24 came and, instead, I did a DC … Continue reading Stew’s Reviews: Animal Man
The last time we came together to discuss some of the better non-standard appearances of our favorite comic book characters, I mentioned that the X-Men alone could be at least one article. Never let it be said that I don’t sometimes fulfill my promises, because here we are with an X-Men Special Edition of Comics’ Best Alternate Looks! I may have done Wolverine and Jean Grey in … Continue reading Comics’ Best Alternate Looks: X-Men Edition
Welcome back to my retrospective. We are now entering what I like to call “Phase Two” of the Marvel shows on Netflix. It’s basically the final seasons of all the shows. This phase also didn’t quite have the critical acclaim as the others, sadly. The hype was gone, there had been quite a few bumps in the road, and some of the later seasons didn’t … Continue reading Netflix Marvel Retrospective – Jessica Jones Season 2
Overlord exists as the first “Big Bad” in The Savage Dragon , though he’s very clearly drawn from the “List of Generic Super-Villain Cliches”- a big armored dude with a cape and a metal mask. I mean, it’s a big “Doctor Doom” thing and that’s it. He turned out to be a Mafiosi in his secret identity who realized that the “Freaks” of Chicago were soon becoming … Continue reading Jab’s Image Deep Dive: Savage Dragon’s Rogues Gallery And Others!
Devotees of my podcast will know I have something of a reputation on our show of being “The DC Guy”, and specifically as “The Flash Guy”. That mostly came about as when I was in college, my Marvel reading had all but fallen off the face of the Earth, while I started getting seriously into DC for the first time ever. I was entering DC … Continue reading Stew’s Reviews: Flash – Blitz
We’re on our last entry. 2021 was a great ride in terms of the first batch of MCU shows on Disney+. Just before Christmas, we were given the appropriately holiday-themed show, Hawkeye. This was the show I was most looking forward to. First of all, the show was supposed to be following the Matt Fraction/David Aja Hawkeye series and while I hadn’t read it, I … Continue reading MCU Disney+ Year In Review – Hawkeye
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