DC Comics Green Arrow/Black Canary #9

The search for Connor Hawke continues.....the challenge find the body and fight the bad guy. The bad guy flavor of the month (or is that story line?) The League of Assassins. Though to tell the truth they have continued to be the villain since the return of Green Arrow and Black Canary.

The reason for Batman's villains to be introduced into a Green Arrow storyline. The Black Canary, during a Birds of Prey storyline she removed the future Lady Shiva from her training camp. You later find out that the training ground was under the control of the League of Assassins.

Judd Winick has made this story line entertaining to say the least. This time he has introduced a strange element, Plastic Man. The rubbery superhero is found by Green Arrow and Black Canary during their search. The League had kidnapped and experimented on Plastic Man (intro sub plot?).

Speedy is out tracking the League with the English sidekick that they had picked up. Unfortunately things take a turn for the worst, and the League decides to take a stand and fight back (against the sidekick, of course).

Then at the end of the book...well you should read it and find out.

DC Comics Titans #3 - What's the Point?

"We are getting the band back together!" this is what came to mind when I heard they were reintroducing the Titans to the next generation of comic book readers. A team composed of Nightwing (before that Robin), Donna Troy (Wonder Girl), the Flash (Kid Flash), Red Arrow (Speedy), Starfire, Beast Boy (I liked him better as Changeling), Raven and Cyborg.

To give you a recap, The Teen Titans was an excellent team comic book back in the 80's. It had original stories (like the Judas Contract) written by Marv Wolfman and supported by George Perez (one really gifted artist).

Flash forward to the 21st Century we have the original team coming back together all grown up (or I guess more grown up since they were already into adulthood during the Teen Titans) with Judd Winick as the writer and Joe Benitez and Victor Llamas doing the art chores. The storyline so far, someone is killing off the Titans past and present. A good start but where do you go from there?

As the reader I am three issues into the story (four if you count the one shot that was "not" connected to the storyline), and nothing very exciting has happened. We do see some drama start to occur in this issue, but we later find out that the cause of the problems were Trigon's sons. It was revealed at the end of the second issue that Trigon was hunting them down and that he had another child.

However, in looking back at Titan's history we know that all of his children had been hunted down and killed. So what kept Trigon's enemies from getting at this new brood. Why where they hidden from Raven? Newly reborn and seemingly more powerful than before? These are some of the questions that I feel may get lost in the story telling....any thoughts?

Marvel Comics Secret Invasion - Iron Man Traitor?

So after all this time we are suppose to believe that Tony Stark has been a skrull?

For those of you who are not in the know, this is in reference to Marvel's summer cross over Secret Invasion. The skrulls have their sights on the Earth and they mean to take it by force.

This of course all started back in Avenger's Illuminati, where Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, Dr. Strange, the Sub Mariner and Black Bolt thought it was a good idea to tell the entire race of skrull to stay away from earth. Well they got their head's handed to them, and ended up as captives for an unknown length of time. So of course the skrulls took the opportunity to study all their powers and figured out how to invade earth undetected.

That was just a quick recap, and now to go on with my commentary. Tony Stark, Iron Man and director of SHIELD a skrull ridiculous. This a red herring if I ever saw one, and this is my reasoning. The Queen decided to stand in for Spider Woman. She would have Spider Woman's powers and be able to use her chemical pheromones to manipulate Iron Man into believing he is a skrull, thus taking out one of the smartest men in the Marvel Universe.

Iron Man the Movie

Iron Man the movie, I know this is kind of late to be talking about it but, I just started writing and this was the last superhero movie I saw.

John Favreau did a great job directing, loved the fight scenes and the evolution of the armor. Robert Downey Jr. made an excellent Tony Stark, fun, witty, and sometimes almost serious.

The dark horse of this movie for me was Obidiah Stane played by Jeff Bridges. When did he get so big? He was barely recognizable bald too. He was ruthless, money hungry, and just plain evil. I loved it!

So with everyone now very aware of the last scene in the film with Nick Fury (Samuel Jackson), will they really introduce the Avengers? Team movies don't seem to be as engaging as the solo ones. Although I thought the X-Men films were ok, there is not enough focus on plot or character developement. If the Avengers were a smaller team it might work (don't kill me but I liked the Fantastic Four films). A team of four characters is a lot easier to handle than six or more.

The Incredible Hulk

Here we are on the eve of the release of the Incredible Hulk "requel" not a sequel or a remake, but something that will quietly ignore the Ang Lee film of 2003. The cast features Ed Norton a decent choice for Bruce Banner (although I did like Eric Bana). The trailers show a lot of chase scenes giving the movie a feel reminiscent of the earlier Incredible Hulk TV show with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno (complete with similar theme music).

They have added a decent villain the Abomination (Emil Blosky played by Tim Roth) who I will admit is an excellent upgrade from the pseudo Absorbing Man that was played by Nick Nolte in the first film. Let's hope that he does not suffer the same fate as most comic book movie villains. Though it may lack the elegance of the film that Ang Lee (I really did like the comic panels on the screen) made, I am sure the action that everyone thought was missing will be more than made up for in this one.

To all who will see it tomorrow, I hope it is the apology you are looking for by Marvel and that it lays the foundation for more Hulk films. I will post my thoughts on the film after I have seen it (most likely when the crowds have died down).