Category: Comic Musings

All general posts relating to the comic book industry.

Should I Even Care?

So they announce that they’re bringing back Robert Downey Jr. into the MCU fold that he could play not Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man a.k.a. the role he made famous, but rather Doctor Doom – the arch nemesis of the Fantastic Four… a casting choice that was made shortly after their originally intended villain – Kang The Whoever – was dropped because the guy who played him in some Ant-Man movie was dealing with some legal issues.

And then they put out a live stream that had people waiting for a trailer that showed a bunch of chairs with people’s names on it. Apparently, this was enough to get the MCU diehards excited while anyone with a functioning brain would sit back and go… “huh?”

And then as the weeks pass, they announce other possible names added to this already bloated production that apparently doesn’t even have a finished script. Exactly how many people do really need to tell a good story that’s worth telling? What the fuck are we doing here?

The more I hear about this production, the more weary I become over the whole deal. It’s clear that Disney and Marvel wants to lure back some of the folks who dropped on the MCU train after Endgame by bringing back some of these old faces. This implies a severe lack of confidence in this new wave of characters to carry the franchise on their own. It’s also pretty clear that they want this to be the biggest and bestest Marvel movie of all time and… I say “good luck with that, pal. You’re gonna need it.”

It’s been no secret that my feelings towards the current MCU product has been largely ambivalent. I haven’t cared enough about what they’ve been putting out to actually sit down and give these things a watch. However, I can’t help but feel a bit of a perverse interest in the behind the scenes stuff that’s been going on. Sure, there’s some negative noise being bandied about here and there… but it is an Avengers movie. It’s usually a big deal and I’m sure that thing will make some bank and people will praise it to the high heavens.

With that in mind… I actually, sincerely hope that this movie bombs. Like absolutely totally fail at the box office to recoup its massively overblown budget to bring back all these talents that I’m pretty sure didn’t come cheap. I just want to see this thing fail miserably… if only because I’m interested in seeing what the aftermath of that whole deal is going to be. Having a couple smaller things crap out here and there – it’ll be business as usual and there’ll be some words about things changing when nothing actually did… but if an Avengers movie were to bomb – an Avengers movie with a massively bloated budget to account for all those overpriced actors, mind you – what would happen afterwards? Would we see a change in leadership? Would we scrap the whole deal and start anew? Do we give this thing a rest and let absence make the heart grow fonder?

And look, if it ends up being a success – which I’m sure it will be – then you know what? Cool, whatever. We all move on with our lives. But if it ends up being a failure… I don’t know. What happens afterwards? Where do we go from there? That feels like a more intriguing scenario than anything the monkeys writing these things could come up with.

That’s the strange mindset I have with this movie. I don’t care enough to watch it when it comes out in theaters, but I’m fascinated by any potential fallout that would come as a result of the massive failure of a major Avengers event film. That would be the more interesting story and potentially a better narrative than any scripted piece of MCU entertainment scripted in the past decade or so.

Anyway, I’m done. I’m going to get some shawarma.

Later.

Did I Mention That Superman Was A Good Movie?

I feel the need to mention that.

I also feel the need to mention that I had a good time in the movie theater for the first time in a long time.

Is the humor and quip machine getting tiresome? Sure… seems like every movie has it. Sometimes, however, you can almost forgive that if the more wholesome parts of the film are done well… and I feel that’s the case here.

Maybe I’ll revisit the movie at home whenever I can get the chance to see if it holds up… but so far, I want to hold on to the happy memory of Krypto saving the whole movie… not that it really needed saving.

No, Seriously, Superman Is Good…

No full review or anything like that. No deep dive… if I feel like it, we’ll do one towards the end of the year… but I will say this much. It’s nice to have a Superman movie that isn’t ashamed of being a Superman movie. It’s nice to see a comic book movie embrace the absurdity of the universe it’s establishing. It’s nice to see a movie that isn’t five hours long.

Does it have issues? Sure, there are some emotional bits that are undercut by a stray joke here and there. You could make the argument that they may have crammed in too much, but I thought they did a fine job of balancing everything out. You’ve got a good Superman, you’ve got a good Luthor, the side characters have their moments… and then there’s the dog.

The dog is the best part of the movie.

No doubt it’ll be the best part of [REDACTED.]

So, yes, Superman is good.

Superpwn

For those wondering, no, I have not seen the movie yet. We’ll see about doing that later today if there’s time. However, word of mouth has generally been positive… with some reservations. And there’s the usual white noise from certain political circles.

I had a post here that was going to touch on one thing in particular, but decided against actually posting it. That’s veering into territory that I would rather not touch on and also it’s a horrible way to start off a wonderful weekend with some wonderful weather… or so I’m told.

I don’t know… I’m gonna wash the car in the morning and go from there.

Later.

The LA Starship

Source: https://trekmovie.com/2025/06/17/captain-kirk-to-be-resurrected-for-new-star-trek-the-last-starship-comic-series-set-in-far-future/

New Star Trek comic from IDW… this one resurrects Captain Kirk, puts him in command of what looks like a hackjob rebuild of the old Enterprise, and gives him a new crew to explore the new post-BURN galaxy of the future. Yes, they’re doing a Star Trek comic set during the Burn – the event that set up the third season of Discovery where all the Federation ships blew up at once and we have no Federation – and they’re bringing back Jim Kirk to command this new series… and his old ship.

I don’t know about you folks, but I find this concept somewhat fascinating and I’m genuinely curious to see how it plays out.

It’s no secret to anyone who has frequented this blog for however long it’s been that I was never the biggest fan of Star Trek: Discovery. I respect the show for getting the ball rolling on this current period of Trek television that has been – in every possible context – hit or miss. It’s also no secret that Discovery lost me during its third season when they made the jump to the future in order to not fuck up any more canon and/or continuity… because we have Strange New Worlds to pick up that flag, after all. Hey, I gave it a shot… but the glacial pacing despite season runs being half of that of an old school Trek show, the constant overemoting, staring into the distances, the modern-day dialogue that feels like the script were written by teenagers… yeah, by the time we’re rehashing the Mirror Universe stuff, that’s when I decided to call it quits. I largely skipped over the fourth season and gave the final season a try… eh… meh… meh.

So I get that there are some folks who are less than thrilled that the current ongoing Star Trek comic available is going to cover this Burn period that had only been alluded to on Discovery… mostly because of their distaste for Discovery, but mostly because – despite their endless cries of moving Trek forwards – they’d rather “GIVE US STAR TREK LEGACY YOU HACK FRAUDS!” or something like that. And listen, I get it. I wasn’t too keen on Discovery in any way, shape, or form… but I wouldn’t mind something that would explore this Burn period of Trek lore more up close and honestly, doing this in comic book form is probably the best way to explore this sort of thing.

Star Trek comics have often been hit or miss, but oftentimes, the misses are usually based on the material they have to work with or maybe the concept they’re going for doesn’t quite work. That said, IDW’s Star Trek has consistently been very good. Their two comic series starring the Kelvin Timeline crew were pretty good, their Year Five series was excellent, and I actually did enjoy their most recent Trek series that lead up to Lore Wars, which… ended up being one of those rare misses, but the stuff before that were fun reads.

Yeah, the idea of a revived James Kirk on board a haphazard rebuild of the old Enterprise with a new crew exploring a galaxy that took a hard left after the Burn and all but obliterated the Federation as a result is a pretty bonkers idea on paper… but that’s why the comic book format is perfect for this sort of thing. And if you think this sort of thing is out of left field for Star Trek as far as comic stories go, you clearly need to go back and read some of the old shit that DC and Marvel used to put out back in the day. Hell, go back and read the old GOLD KEY comics where they really played loose with the source material and then come back and tell me this is too wacko for Trekko.

So yeah, you know what. The Last Starship, with its stupid looking title art, has piqued my interest and I’m looking forward to seeing how this turns out. Considering what has come out of the IDW camp in the past, I’m fairly confident that we’ll get an entertaining piece of business that will make the most of what they have to work with. This has me intrigued and I’ve sadly haven’t felt that way about a Star Trek project in recent memory.

And hopefully, this will sate any need for a Captain Kirk revival without having to back the Brink’s truck up Shatner’s barn or something. You want an ending to Shatner’s Kirk? Go check out that Unification short film that someone made last year. That’s a perfect note to close that character’s book on. We don’t need Shatner back to ruin that moment like several TNG moves and Picard did to ruin All Good Things…

Just Give Me The News, You Donkey!

So I’m visiting this entertainment website whose name I shall not reveal, but they generally… occasionally well, okay, I mostly visit for the luls. But what doesn’t bring me the LULZ is that whenever they discuss comics, they will often copy and paste bits and pieces of a source article and then proceed to write a nine-hundred page editorial expressing their opinions on this thing. More often than not, it’s the same tired rhetoric about [insert film brand here], [insert comic company there], or anything involving the ol’ webhead.

Anyone remember the days when news articles mostly gave you the news and that’s it? If you wanted an opinion on something, you’d read an editorial or commentary piece. And these things would give you something to think about, but hopefully not give you something to parrot like a lemming. Now it’s like “Hey, so-so is doing this. What’s going on?” and then you click on the article to get about fifty words worth of news and the rest of the eight-hundred and fifty words is dedicated to why so-so sucks or is an insult to one’s intelligence. You know what’s insulting my intelligence? Trying to pass yourselves off as a news site when all you’re doing is copying and pasting other people’s words before tossing in your own half-baked opinions and rhetorics that I’m pretty sure was copied and pasted from whatever backlog of opinions you have on hand to reuse and regurgitate whenever you have the chance. Dreadful.

Just so that we’re clear on things, dtm666.com is not a news site. This is a blog where I post stuff of interest and then I talk about it. None of this stuff is ever passed for news (I’ll source you the original article, so you can read for yourself) and virtually everything is an opinion piece of some sort. If you’re going to an entertainment news site or something that claims to be that, you just want to read the news and not a five-thousand word opinion piece on something that should have taken less than 500 words tops to report.

If you want to write an opinion piece, write a fucking column. Otherwise, just report the news and fuck off, will you?

Iron What Now?

Tout d’abord, je tiens à souhaiter à tous mes voisins francophones un joyeux national du Québec. Profitez de vos festivals pendant que je reste à la maison à regarder des vidéos Youtube en anglais.

Okay, now that we got that out of the way…

I got an e-mail reminder from someone that some show called Ironheart is set to debut today. My first reaction is “What the hell is an Ironheart?” The only thing that I know of with that name is that it’s a title of a Japanese superheroine porn movie that came out years ago. I never saw it myself, but I’ve heard good things. Anyway, I don’t give it another thought.

Then I frequent some comic site somewhere – name withheld to protect the guilty – and they mention something called Ironheart that’s based on a comic that apparently nobody likes… and it’s a Marvel thing. Again, I draw a complete blank.

Then I give it a little bit of thought and it hits me… oh, right, Ironheart. That thing where little black girl makes her own Iron Man suit and… apparently, nobody likes the character, but they still insist on pushing her as the next big thing. And so she gets the MCU treatment because… little black girl makes an Iron Man suit and… I don’t know.

From what I understand, this was in the can and ready to go for a couple years, but they only just put this out now because David Zazlov isn’t running Marvel and so we don’t shelf projects as tax write-offs.

So they’re debuting this series and I’m like… “Why haven’t I heard of this thing?” Granted, I’m not following this MCU stuff as deeply as most people, if at all, but usually whenever there’s a new Marvel thing coming up, it at least gets mentioned or you’d get a few trailers out of it… but all I’ve was able to find was one trailer. And look, I’ve seen the trailer. I didn’t care for it. Therefore, I’m not re-subbing to Disney+ for this one show. (I just got done watching the second season of Andor, which was largely excellent. And then the sub died right after. Fine by me.)

Whoever sent me the reminder about Ironheart… thanks for reminding me of the porn parody film. That’s my biggest takeaway from this whole deal.

P.S. – I may have figured out why I missed the Ironheart trailer… because it came out on the same day that DC Studios put out their new Superman trailer. Needless to say, I was more hyped for Superman and forgot about… what’s her face again?

Besides, Superman has a dog.

That’s a good boy.

Later.

IDW To Finish The Final Mirage Volume With TMNT Journeys

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/family/after-20-years-of-waiting-one-of-tmnts-lost-series-is-finally-resurfacing/ar-AA1EWn8W

Once upon a time, Peter Laird and Jim Lawson began writing Volume 4 of the TMNT comic book – skipping the much-maligned Image Comics run that is Volume 3. Due to a variety of factors including the sale of the TMNT property to Viacom, Volume 4 only lasted about 30+ issues before it was eventually abandoned.

Well, it looks like IDW is going to pull the same shit they did with Volume 3 – where they reprinted the entire run before poaching the original creatives to produce a proper finale for this thing – but this time with Volume 4, a series that also had its share of mixed reactions.

Admittedly, I wasn’t a huge fan of the book. Maybe it was the slow pacing, the slow output of issues during the latter period, or maybe just the overall general direction… but it never grabbed me as much as some of the older stuff did. If anything, I found myself enjoying the relaunched Tales Of The TMNT series more; those were self-contained stories that did whatever and covered whatever, but you had some genuinely fun stuff in there that more than made up for the dull pacing of the main book… even if you had to put up with the harsh political slant of the letter pages, which I generally avoid because those things almost never age well.

Still, seeing this get a reprint and possibly a proper conclusion is somewhat exciting. Maybe giving this another shot decades after its initial inception will change my perception of this run… or maybe it won’t. But then again, I didn’t completely hate Volume 3 back in the day and actually did look forward to that coming to a conclusion, so… fuck, who knows?

Third Time’s A Why?

Source: https://www.ign.com/articles/mighty-morphin-power-rangers-and-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-reunite-for-third-crossover-series

For the olds… remember the days when Ninja Turtles ruled the roast of children’s entertainment before Power Rangers became a thing and there were always debates to which was better? And then we got Shell Shocked… the less said the better.

But then decades later and we didn’t just get one proper crossover, but TWO. And now a third one is coming along and I’m like… meh.

Don’t get me wrong. I actually enjoyed the first two crossovers. They were fun reads… but when you did the Turtle Rangers in the first mini and then you do the Mutant Rangers in the second mini… is there anything left to say with a third mini? At this point, we’re just mashing toys together and the appeal of these crossovers – which seem to come out thrice per month – are lost. This sort of thing used to be a rare thing that felt like an event… now it feels like business as usual and it’s hard to get excited over this stuff.

Oh well… for what it’s worth, I am somewhat enjoying the current Prime series that Boom is putting out. I have reservations about certain aspects, but it’s doing its own thing and surprisingly, I actually like it. I do need to catch up on the current TMNT run, however.