Category: Comic Musings

All general posts relating to the comic book industry.

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.

Why The Avengers Worked (And Nothing Else Does…)

A couple weeks ago, the new Thunderbolts movie came out. As per usual, I did not watch the film due to lack of interest. And then they did a thing for the sake of marketing because… I don’t know why. But they did it. I was still not compelled to watch the new movie in theaters.

But you know what I did watch? The Avengers. The first movie from 2012. Sweet Sassy Molassy, that’s a great movie. And it still holds up. But more than anything, as I was watching this movie, it just sort of clicked that they tried a thing with this movie and it worked. It simply worked. To the point where others have tried similar things and those didn’t quite work.

And I got to thinking… why? Well, here’s my thought on that.

Continue reading “Why The Avengers Worked (And Nothing Else Does…)”

Screen Rant Is Worthless

Who actually reads Screen Rant around here?

It seems like every time I look up news for a particular piece of entertainment – whether it’d be a long-running franchise whose only presence is relegated to a monthly comic book or a recently-released motion picture based on a comic book property and is also part of a long-running cinematic universe – I’d see dozens upon dozens of these headlines from Screen Rant in general and they’re usually among the most inane pieces that I’ve come across.

Sometimes it’s complaining about a sequel that never came and devoting no more than a handful of articles dedicated to this supposed missed opportunity. Other times, it’s talking about minor plot points in a film that, oh yeah, thanks for spoiling, assholes. (Not that I’d care; I’m usually looking up the synopsis on Wikipedia for these things anyway.) And on rare occasions that they’re actually dispensing some sort of actual news articles, they’re written in a way that feel more like opinion pieces than actual news articles that, you know, tell you the news.

People will now go “But Dave, you fool! You sometimes post links to news pages and then share your thoughts! What’s the difference?!”

Difference is that this is a blog where I share my thoughts on things. I’m not reporting news; I’m just regurgitating what’s there, add my thoughts, and if you want to learn more, here’s the page I got the news from. Also, I don’t get paid for this shit. The shit on that site, however, is content that people are paid to write. People earn money writing this crap. I get this is an age where anyone can get monetized if they want, but there has to be a limit in terms of the quality of the material.

Is this me being bitter?

I don’t know… I’m not sure if I’d consider what I do here worthy of commission. I just post thoughts and move on with my day. You’d figure that anyone in the so-called professional field would put more care into their work.

But no, I’m being annoyed… at these search engines who brings these inane opinion pieces up and try to pass them off as news.

That and the clickbait.

Oh, boy… the clickbait.

That shit can go fuck itself too.

This has been your Sunday Morning session of old man yelling at cloud.

The Folies Of A Title

In case you missed, the new Thunderbolts* movie came out in theaters… or are we supposed to call it the New Avengers now? Does it really matter?

I’ve heard good things about it, for whatever it’s worth. And it’s probably one of those movies that I wouldn’t mind watching if I had nothing better to do… but at no point did I felt compelled to want to watch this in theaters and a title change isn’t going to change matters. Instead, I just went back and watched the old Avengers movie and… lo and behold, that still holds up. I actually want to go back and write a quick thing about why that Avengers work and this one… kinda doesn’t… but that’s another story.

And hey… don’t feel too bad, Marvel. It takes a rare film to actually make me want to put with up with the overpriced experience of sitting in a stinky hall with a bunch of obnoxious kids flashing their FUCKING TELEPHONES (GET REAL) and being irritating little shits who wouldn’t shut the fuck up. I’ll watch your Thunderbolt Avenger thing when it hits Disney+ and I can be bothered to put up with your shitty, shitty, interface.

Anyway, that’s not what I really wanted to talk about. It’s just something that conveniently fits with the title of this post… but even before this whole thing became a thing, there was a sudden thought that came to mind one day that I wanted to share… and believe it or not, it’s not entirely dreadful or negative… maybe partly, but not mostly… close enough, I suppose.

So I’ve read somewhere – not going to link the source because it’s a “problem” site for some people due to certain triggering viewpoints that I don’t share, but they do make me laugh – that some people have issues with the title of the next Spider-Man film with Tom Holland. For those who don’t know, the next Spider-Man film will be called Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Why do people have an issue with Brand New Day as a title? Because it’s the same title as the storyline that immediately followed the controversial and much derided One More Day storyline… you know, the one where Spider-Man made a deal with the devil to end his marriage for the life of Aunt May.

Now, it’s no secret that I absolutely despise One More Day, both as a storyline and also as an attempt at a soft reboot of sorts. It is the absolute low point and creative nadir of Spider-Man that pretty much destroyed any interest I have in the character. I can go back and re-read old Spider-Man comics just fine, but anything that has come out afterwards – with the exception of the brief Superior Spider-Man run – I refuse to give even a passing glance. I’ve read stuff here and there, but for the most part, I couldn’t give two fucks about Spider-Verses or whatever bullshit they got going on where they bring Spder-Man up to a higher level, only to take him down several pegs because “down on his luck Parker” is something we can’t move past because the people involved in the creatively bankrupt direction of the character are a bunch of talentless hacks.

So naturally, I should take exception to the fact that the movie shares a name with a storyline that follows the lowpoint of Spider-Man creative… except I really don’t. And the simple reason is that Brand New Day the comic event and Brand New Day the movie are two different things that share a similar premise; a brand new start for Spider-Man.

In the case of Brand New Day the movie, this is following No Way Home, where – spoilers – the world has forgotten Peter Parker and the character is pretty much given a clean slate. The next movie is essentially a soft reboot where he’ll have a new supporting cast, be involved in a new situation, and stuff happens from there. In this particular context, Brand New Day makes sense as a title because it is a new beginning, as it were.

Also, last time I checked, Dr. Strange is not Mephisto, who is supposed to be the devil… now if you want to make a case for Benedict Cumberbatch being the devil, that’s another story entirely, but for now, we’ll give Sherlock the benefit of the doubt.

So, it’s the same deal when they decided to dub the third Captain America movie Civil War. Both the comic event and the movie shared similar plot points and both went in similar directions. And again, I was not a fan of the Civil War event in the comics – in part due to its contributions in the progressive destruction of the Spider-Man character as a result of One More Day – but also, I just didn’t like the story in general. On the flip side, I did enjoy the movie. I thought it was good and it did introduce the world to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, which I still think is a great take on the character at a younger age. I had no issues with the movie sharing the same name as a comic event I didn’t care for, because I know it wasn’t going to be the same thing.

So, for anyone who has some quibble over the name of the next Spider-Man movie, the movie isn’t following Spider-Man making a deal with the devil to end his marriage. It’s following Peter Parker in a world that has no knowledge of who he is. Brand New Day denotes a clean slate and this fourth movie is looking to be pretty much that… and I can’t help but be curious as to where they go from here. Because at the end of the day, I still enjoy Spider-Man. I don’t enjoy what they’re doing with the character these days, but a part of me still wants to see that character endure and do well.

And hey, I tell a little fib. I actually do enjoy the current Ultimate Spider-Man book. That’s a good comic. I just hope Marvel doesn’t fuck that up like they’ve fucked up everything else they do these days, but… I’ll try to enjoy the ride while I can.