Comic Book Week in Review for 11/11/07 - 11/17/07

Just a quick Comic Book Week in Review post for today. I've got a few tidbits you might have missed from this week's Wizard World Texas, links to the Ultimates 3 variant covers and general recaps of everything you might have missed at the Weekly Crisis this week. Hit the jump for the full break down.

Wizard World Texas

Hard to believe, since there was no hype or fanfare, but Wizard World Texas was actually this weekend. You can read a full report of it over at Blog@Newsarama, but I'll give a brief run down of the few worthwhile tidbits that came out of the event.

• DC has plans, but nothing definite, for an Ion series, which would conceivably star Sodam Yat. However, there are no plans whatsoever for a Kyle Rayner series, which is the equivalent of DC kicking poor Kyle when he's down.
• Grant Morrison will be on Batman well into 2008 and beyond.
• Remember that rumour about Batman dying and the follow up that he would become a New God? Well, DiDio squashed that rumour when a fan asked if it was true they would be killing off Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman and resurrecting them as New Gods. DiDio responded with, "Oh God, that's a bad idea!".
• DiDio let slip that there was a relationship between Sensei and Ra's al Ghul in the current Resurrection of Ra's storyline, which implies Sensei might be a relative and the possible new body for Ra's.

Frank Cho Finished With Mighty Avengers

In other news, Frank Cho posted over at the Jinxworld forums (home of Brian Michael Bendis) with some fresh artwork from the upcoming Mighty Avengers #6. He goes on to state that he's finished with all his pages and that they are off to the colourist, which means we can expect the final part of the Boobtron Ultron storyline in the near future.

Ultimates 3 Variants

IGN Comics has the exclusive variant covers for Ultimates 3 #1. One is done by Joe Mad and the other is by Michael Turner. We all know how I feel about Turner after yesterday's Comic Book Rant. You'll note that Valkyrie's foot is conveniently hidden behind the horse's wing.

With most of the news out of the way, I'd like to remind you to check out Wednesday's Weekly Crisis Comic Book Reviews and, my Thursday follow up, the Quick Shot Reviews. There were a lot of great books this week, ranging from All-Star Superman to the conclusion to WWH, and the Weekly Crisis was there at the zero hour for all your weekly comic book reviews, so check those out if you missed any of them.

Finally, I'd like to remind you all to check out the Comic Book Moments of the Week. The final page from Punisher MAX was probably the biggest "OH SH--!" moment of the year for me or, at the very least, the biggest one in recent memory. On top of that, there was a huge selection of moments from all your favourite books this week, so make sure you don't miss any of those.

Next Week On The Weekly Crisis...

Check back tomorrow for the Post-Crisis Previews, which features all the comics I'll be picking up next Wednesday, including solicit information and my annotated comments on what I expect from each issue. As always, Wednesday and Thursday will have all my comic book reviews and Friday will feature my Comic Book Moments of the Week, so be sure to check back daily!

Furthermore, I'm hoping to churn out a new Comic Book Character Spotlight or maybe even a series Comic Book Recommendations posts that I've been working on, which would catch people up on certain areas of the Marvel and DC universes and lists of books they might find interesting from each.

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Comic Book Week in Review for 10/14/07 - 10/20/07

Another week over and there's a lot you might have missed here at the Weekly Crisis - Comic Book Review Blog and around the comic book world. Check out this Comic Book Week in Review for all the happenings of the past week.

New Site Layout for The Weekly Crisis

First on the agenda, how do you like the new site layout? I spent a fair bit of time on my test blog working on the dimensions and creating the rounded edges for all the borders as well as making sure all the old articles still looked correct with the new layout. If you're having any issues with the new site - whether loading problems or dead links or what have you - feel free to let me know through email or drop a comment in any of the various postings. And if you feel like sharing any compliments or critiques on things I can do to improve the site, those are welcome as well.

GLC Mongul Preview

In other news, I'd like to point you to the newest Green Lantern Corps #20 cover that I saw over at The Comic Rack, featuring Mongul. You can see the crappy, unfinished Newsarama version by clicking here. However, I want to show you the finished version, which you can see above, from artist Patrick Gleason's personal blog, The Straight Poop.

Tigra vs The Hood & "Women in Fridges"

Next up, I suppose the big overreaction to the Tigra beatdown by The Hood from over 2 weeks ago needs addressing. Apparently, Brian Bendis had to be interviewed by Newsarama to straighten this whole fiasco out, which you can read all about here.

I expressed my opinion on it in this week's Weekly Crisis reviews during the JLA #14 review. JLAer, Geo-Force, suffered through a similar string of events, including a filming of his beatdown for later viewing, and was nearly killed and eaten by Gorilla Grodd. Almost no reaction from readers led to my discussion with Weekly Crisis reader Pete in the comments of my review. You can read those and join in on the debate by clicking here.

While I agree with most of the "Women in Fridges" debates, this Tigra crusade they've all raised the war banners over has gotten blown way out of proportion and I think people need to step back and view it as the superhero fight to put over the villain that it was. There was no gender assassination here, no rape, no pointless death. The complete lack of outcry over Geo-Force's similar situation just goes to show that it is a small, vocal minority that has stirred up this hornet's nest of false proclaimation.

30 Days of Night

Finally, a new comic book movie debuted this week with 30 Days of Night. I'm sure everyone's heard all about it already and knows the basic "vampires head to the artic town of Barrows where there's 30 days of night due to how far north it is" premise. It's odd, since the arctic area they describe typically sees upwards of 60 days, but it's a movie / comic book and the title and premise wouldn't have been as thrilling with "50-60+ Days of Night". You can read several reviews of the movie around the net. Here's a few quick links for any who missed out.

• Newsarama
• Yahoo! News Entertainment
• IGN Movies

Personally, I thought it was a decent adaption of the comic book, which was an adaption of Niles' failed screenplay which, ironically, lead to the current movie. I guess it's true that you fail upwards in Hollywood. If you like vampires or "scary" movies, there are far worse films you could see than 30 Days of Night. I didn't care for the actual comic book series when it came out, but the movie did manage to entertain. I'd typically wait for a DVD release with a horror film, but seeing as it was a comic book movie, I felt the need to go see it in theatre.

Now, let's get on with what happened here at the Weekly Crisis.

Next up, this week saw the return of the Comic Book Crisis of Faith Reviews with an article featuring Warren Ellis' Thunderbolts, "Faith in Monsters". If you've been here for a while, you'll remember the older Grant Morrison's Batman, Blue Beetle or Immortal Iron Fist Crisis of Faith articles. However, I'd like to point out that I've overhauled the CoF format so that it is more streamlined and focused along with even more scans and images from the actual comic!

While I just posted it today, I want to make sure you don't miss this week's Comic Book Character Spotlight featuring Jaime Reyes, the Blue Beetle! He's one of my favourite new characters and his book is easily one of the best coming out of DC today. With a new membership with the Teen Titans and cameos in Booster Gold, Blue Beetle is a book you should be reading and this character spotlight hopes to give you a little primer and insight into the character.

As always, if you missed this week's reviews, make sure to check them out in the Weekly Crisis Comic Book Reviews. I also introduced a new bullet point-style set of reviews for all the comics I didn't have time to do full reviews on in this week's debut Weekly Crisis Quick Shot Comic Book Reviews. I couldn't think of a decent name to describe the new, shorter and concise reviews, so if you can think of something better, feel free to comment below.

And finally, how could I possibly forget to remind you to check out this week's Comic Book Moments of the Week? One of my most popular features, this week's edition featured some great moments, such as Hank Pym's Commodore 64 line in Mighty Avengers or Bluebeard's untimely demise at the claws and fangs of Shere Khan in Fables.

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Comic Book Week in Review for 10/07/07 - 10/13/07

This was a very busy week in comics and seeing how it's the weekend and all, I'm just going to throw out a nice Week-In-Review post to summarize a lot of the various happenings in the world of comics. Hit the jump to catch up on everything you may have missed.


Before I get into the full breakdown of this week's events, I just want to point out some of the new features and housekeeping I did this week. I've streamlined the Thought Bubbles (tags) that accompany each post so that it is much easier to find posts that are related to specific topics.

Previously, I had each individual book's title tagged in every review, preview and moment of the week such that it was nearly impossible to find an archived post that was specifically about that one topic.

On top of that, I've added a Related Posts section to every post. You can find it at the bottom of every page with several links to earlier posts I did related to that topic. This should make it easier for people to find previous reviews or articles when reading a topic you enjoy.

I'm doing these things to make your experience with the site more enjoyable, so feel free to comment on any features you would like to see. In fact, comments require no registration, so feel free to comment on any news, reviews or articles that interest you. No hassles with registration or required email addresses here. Now, on with the Week-In-Review!

First up, make sure to check out this week's Weekly Crisis Comic Book Reviews. Hopefully, it's your first stop for comic book reviews each and every Wednesday. If you missed it, there's some great stuff this week, such as Green Lantern, Black Adam and Nova, to name a few.

I was fairly critical of this week's Green Arrow & Black Canary #1. If you're interested in a great counterpoint to my more negative review, head over to The Comic Rack for Comic Geek's excellent review.

If you're looking for more thorough reviews with some great summaries and break downs of the positives and negatives of individual issues, Rokk of Rokk's Comic Book Revolution has a couple of great reviews for Green Lantern #24 and Countdown #29 from this week's batch of comics.

Once you finish up with the reviews, make sure you hit up this week's Comic Book Moments of the Week. This week had a huge selection of incredible moments from a variety of books, such as my personal favourite, the Top 10 Reasons To Hate Sally Floyd from WWH: Frontline or a drunken Booster Gold telling Skeets about how Superman took his cape from him and told him he could never wear one again as he was not cut out for it in Booster Gold #3.

Next up was my newest feature here at the Weekly Crisis, the Comic Book Character Spotlight! I put the spotlight on Sodam Yat from the Green Lantern books this week. He played a key role in the Battle of Mogo and was instrumental in the destruction of Ranx, the sentient city. He appears to be in line to be the next Ion as well, so make sure you hit up this special character spotlight to find out all about this new and important character in the Green Lantern mythos.

Probably the biggest news this week came from Marvel with the introduction of the new Captain America costume design and the revelation that a new Cap will be featured in Captain America #34 wearing said costume. You can read all about it at Marvel's website here or check out the Newsarama interview with Alex Ross and Ed Brubaker here.

Personally, I think the new costume is horrible. Ross has done similar "unique" and "imaginitive" redesigns before and they all look near identical to this new Cap design. The basic V-shaped upper torso with full black can be seen in his Spider-Man movie design and this other random character design he did. The addition of the gun and knife don't add anything to the character. The entire costume comes off as a cheap 90's concept in my eyes. However, I have faith in Brubaker to make this new Cap work dispite my misgivings with the new costume.

Next Week On The Weekly Crisis...

Be sure to check in Monday for Post-Crisis Comic Book Previews where I will outline my pull list for the upcoming week with solicits and various comments on what I expect from each issue.

As always, Wednesday and Friday will see the Weekly Crisis Comic Book Reviews, where I'll be your first source for reviews on your weekly comics, and Comic Book Moments of the Week, the only source for high quality scans of the best moments from all your weekly purchases.

I will also be attempting to work in the occasional news posting and assorted Comic Book Rants or Character Spotlights. I was thinking about doing a spotlight on DC's Lord Havok & The Extremists to coincide with their new mini-series coming out next week, but I'm open to suggestions from you, the readers, if you have anyone you'd like to see. I'm trying to keep the spotlights related to current events, but I'm open to any suggestions, so don't be afraid to speak up.

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Comic Book Week in Review 09/23/07 - 09/29/07

Well, today sees the end of a very good week in comics and the Comic Book Week in Review is here to make sure you're kept appraised of everything that's happened this week in comics here at The Weekly Crisis. Hit the jump for a full overview of what you might have missed this week and a glimpse at what to expect next week.

THIS WEEK ON THE WEEKLY CRISIS...

Your first stop should be the Weekly Crisis Comic Book Reviews to see what was good and bad with this week's batch of comics. Feel free to comment on books you liked or anything I might have missed in this week's comic reviews. There were a lot of great books this week and it was definitely one of the best selections of books I have seen in a while with Blue Beetle, Teen Titans, Immortal Iron Fist and many more of my favourite books coming out this week. The only blemish was the delay of Green Lantern Corps to next week, but that will only make next week's comics that much better.

The next big stop on this week's tour is the Comic Book Moments of the Week. There were a lot of great moments this week, ranging from the big fight with Fat Cobra in Iron Fist to the hilarious exchange between John Stewart and Black Lightning in Justice League as well as many others. Let me know what you think and feel free to let everyone else know what you thought your Moment of the Week was in the comments.

DC COMICS ANIMATED PROJECTS

Coming a few days late to the party, I started this week off with my Superman: Doomsday Review of the animated movie from Warner Bros. It contains a full summary of the movie with spoilers along with my review and even a comic book comparison with the original Death & Return of Superman. Definitely worth a look if you're interested in the movie or wondering if it is worth checking out or even if you just want to know all the spoilers in specific detail.

Following up on the Superman: Doomsday review, I did a review of the incredible DC: The New Frontier comic book along with a preview of the upcoming animated movie, Justice League: The New Frontier, that will be based on said comic. Comes with an embedded video preview of the movie, which is set to release in January 2008, and you can check that out here.


The final part of my DC animated focus from last week was with my list of 5 DC Events That Need Animated Movies. It was based on comments by Paul Levitz, DC Publisher and President, where he said DC has many fan favourite events planned for development but failed to give any specifics. Taking the initiative, I outlined several that I think would make excellent choices for the line. Feel free to check that out if you missed it and let me know what you think would make a good choice for a movie.

NEXT WEEK ON THE WEEKLY CRISIS...

Starting this week, I will be posting the Post-Crisis Comic Book Previews on Mondays to start the week off right and let people know what to expect in the comic book reviews on Wednesday's Weekly Crisis Comic Book Reviews. Expect these previews along with my annotated comments on each issue tomorrow. You'll be able to let me know in the comments then if you have any comics you'd like to see me review or books you think I should pick up that aren't on my pull list.

COUNTDOWN TEASER FLASHBACKS

On Tuesday, expect a re-evaluation of the first Countdown teaser image "So Begins The End...", which will just take a look at the various clues in the image and explain what each is representing. Many did this with the two images when they came out several months ago, but I'm just going to take a new perspective on them both based on the newer developments, like the 'death' of Green Arrow, Superman from Kingdom Come showing up in JSA and the numerous other developments in Countdown and related titles. Thursday will see the breakdown of the second teaser image, "...And Evil Shall Inherit The Earth", which is pictured below.


Also, make sure to be here on Wednesday for next week's Weekly Crisis Comic Book Reviews and Friday for the Comic Book Moments of the Week! Enjoy the recap from the past week and I hope you all tune in for next week's updates.

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Comic Book Week in Review 09/16/07 - 09/22/07

It was a busy week here at The Weekly Crisis and with the huge influx of new readers, I just thought I'd make a post summarizing some of the major posts of the last week. Hit the jump for a quick recap and a preview of what's coming up next week.


I started the week off with The Usual Skrullspects. It lists the various Illuminati members, along with a few non-members from the Marvel Universe, and gives the odds of whether they are a Skrull or not for the upcoming Secret Invasion event scheduled for next year. It's a great overview and I'm curious who your picks are for who's a Skrull or not in the Marvel Universe.


This week also saw my first foray into the multi-part columns with my 10 Reasons SINGLES Are Better Than TRADES on Tuesday and its counterpart, 10 Reasons TRADES Are Better Than SINGLES, on Thursday. Both posts highlight the different opinions of each side of the argument and list why each side thinks it is better than the other.

As always, you can read the weekly comic reviews in The Weekly Crisis Comic Reviews Volume 8. It was a busy week in comics and we had some excellent books, like Captain America #30, which was the Book of the Week, New X-Men #42, the debut of Countdown to Mystery, which saw the return of Dr Fate, and the requisite big event book, World War Hulk #4. Make sure you check out these and the rest of this week's comic reviews.

Once you finish up with The Weekly Crisis, make sure you know what's coming out next week with Post-Crisis Comic Previews for 09/26/07, which is basically my pull list for next week. If you think there is a comic I should be reading or reviewing that is not on the list, feel free to let me know early so I can pick it up next Wednesday when I head to the comic shop.

Friday saw the return of my most popular column, the Moments of the Week. This week's edition became the most viewed article on my site in less than a day. Once you finish with this week's version, be sure to check out last week's edition.

Finally, make sure you find out who the mystery villain leading the Phalanx in Annihilation: Conquest might be with my 5 Potential Villains For Conquest post. It's a breakdown of the best 5 choices from the major cosmic villains in the Marvel Universe that might be controlling the Phalanx.

All-in-all, it was a very busy week and this post does not even cover the various other minor news posts from this past week. Make sure you keep up to date on all the Weekly Crisis has to offer and subscribe to the RSS feed by clicking the image link in the upper right corner labelled Add This Blog To My Pull List or by clicking here.

Thanks for viewing and be sure to check by later today for a special review of the Superman: Doomsday animated movie from DC Comics. And stay tuned for later this week as I have some special posts planned for the upcoming JLA: New Frontier movie and more related to DC's future straight-to-DVD movies. Finally, expect a return of the Crisis of Faith columns this week as I spotlight Warren Ellis' Thunderbolts run.

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