Comic Book Resources

Based off of that list, I'd say History of Violence was by far and away the best movie of any of those featured on the list, both as an actual movie and as one of the few movies I've ever seen that is vastly superior to its source material.

My God, Sin City was a steaming pile of shit, though. I was actually embarrassed to be a fan of the comics when I saw it. To this day I have no idea how it ever attracted as much praise as it did. The acting is utterly atrocious, the editing is pedestrian at best, the action scenes are boring, and the blood looks like pigeon shit. I'm all for faithful adaptations of comics, but can we please get someone with actual skill directing them instead of Tarantino's talentless Mexican protege?

I don't think the costume was even that bad so much as, it looked like Kevin James from King of Queens.

I found out about it that way too, by the way. It was bumped off the front by a monkey getting scared of its own reflection. Truly a proud day for comics.

I heard it on the CBS News At Noon in New York, and confussingly listened as the anchors offered their own opinions on why they thought Cap is dead. I have determined that for these reporters, noon is too early to do any research for stories, since one of them suggested that Cap was killed because (and I paraphrase) "his 93 year old creator probably got tired of the character".

And the other anchor said that no one's sure why Cap has died. I'm begining to appriciate Jonathan Hickman's "The Nightly News" more and more...

Alexis Bledel? Really?

I thought Sin City was pretty good myself. Certainly not deserving of some of the hyperbolic fanboy revulsion it often gets.

Well, most sites that I've been too have dutifully put "Cap 25 *spoilers inside* including this blog. Until we get to this article

So yeah, nice one. I won't be coming back to this blog again now.

In an interview with Comic Book Artist, the interviewer asked Gerber, "What did you think of the Howard the Duck movie?"

Gerber replied, "What did everybody think of it? It wasn't a good movie."

Where was the Thomas Jane Punisher movie on that list? While not a cinematic masterpiece, it was a very fun action/revenge movie and a very true adaption of The Punisher himself. Plus Travolta as the villain was a great casting choice AND he played Howard Saint kind of low key and not over the top. I would have put that on the list instead of that awful Hulk movie(8 minutes of cool Hulk footage doesn't offset 2 1/2 hours of a boring family drama).

I found out right after work in the elevator, of all places. My building has a little news-crawl-type thing that plays in the elevators. As you say, weird place for a comic spoiler! So Jussy, if I may say, if you hadn't heard it from this blog you would have probably seen it on the news somewhere. Don't hate!

I think I first saw the news the traditional way - on Tuesday on a message board.

But yesterday I was amused to see how foxnews.com reported the story. It was the lead story, at least for a time, and the headline was just "CAPTAIN AMERICA DEAD," in pretty large type, accompanied by Epting's art from the splash page.

Epting's art is pretty "photo-realistic," and especially when shrunken down on a news website, it looked like an actual photograph of an actual Captain America's death.

The overall effect was funny, like I was actually looking at a web site from the Marvel Universe.

I spotted it as a banner headline when I went online to check the weather forecast via Yahoo.

agreed, Sin City is overrated, Batman Begins should of been on top, they were just trying to be cool by not giving it to a corporate character.

Where was superman returns in all of this?

Spider-man was too high up on the list, as was X2, man that movie was long. + why didn't iceman just freeze the lake before they forced phoenix down out throats huh huh?

rant over

Let's just say that I work for a news company and we have a morning meeting where there is a call-in for the day's coverage. Someone read-in the item - double doh! blown by a Marvel release making the cut at all and the spoiler.

To answer the question, I was in front of my computer, checking out the CBR site, expecting them to handle the matter with a bit more common sense - (un)fortunately, the story hasn't been a big news item in the rest of the world, so that was the first of me seeing it.

Thanks a bunch.

Wow, I'm really surprised by all of the hatred Sin City seems to be getting here. I thought it was a great adaptation. The editing alone puts it near the top of any list I could make. The acting was superb as a nice throwback to the film noir classics (though I can see if you aren't used to those conventions, its not going to seem that good). Plus, if nothing else, it looked like the comic come to life and is the only movie I've ever seen that can actually live up to that.

And seriously, who can praise Howard the Duck? That's just a bad, bad movie and a real shame too. The Howard comics were a lot of fun, but the movie completely missed the mark.

I made the mistake of reading Civil War The Initiative #1 before I read Captain America #25. So I didn't think he really died. Watching the news and reading Marvel's site made me realize it was true.

Richard
http://1rightopinion-comics.blogspot.com/

Where was I? I was reading a favorite blog of mine, "Comics Should Be Good" when I scrolled down and came across the headline that read "Where Were You When You Found Out Captain America Died?"

Seriously.

My friends had told me that there was a huge development in CA #25, and that the news was even in the mainstream media. They didn't spoil it for me, knowing that I get my comics via an online subscription and it would be about a week before I would receive my next shipment. I figured that the comics related sited would be kind enough to post Spoiler Warnings if they were reporting on thus huge development, and most had, so for about 24 hours, I've managed to avoid the news that he died. Until about 5 minutes ago. Thanks.

-r-

Captain America is dead?

i saw it on my hometown newspaper website ajc.com, and let me tell you how pissed i was. i expect to be spoiled on comic websites and tend to avoid them on wednesdays, but i never thought it would happen during my daily ritual of reading the news to see if the world ended while i was sleeping. well, it was bound to be spoiled for me, just the shock of how made it worse.

"My God, Sin City was a steaming pile of shit, though. I was actually embarrassed to be a fan of the comics when I saw it. To this day I have no idea how it ever attracted as much praise as it did. The acting is utterly atrocious, the editing is pedestrian at best, the action scenes are boring, and the blood looks like pigeon shit. I’m all for faithful adaptations of comics, but can we please get someone with actual skill directing them instead of Tarantino’s talentless Mexican protege?"

FINALLY. I thought I was the only one who hated that movie!

"The acting was superb as a nice throwback to the film noir classics (though I can see if you aren’t used to those conventions, its not going to seem that good)."

No, it's not that. It's that I have absolutely zero interest in seeing a demonstration of conventions and formulas. I want CHARACTERS, with depth beyond "angry", "scared", or "sad".

There was no acting in that movie. Just stylized reading.

Sin City is basically an experiment in hyperstylization, and as a result, its characters are less rounded than the bulk of the great noir films' protagonists. MacMurray in Double Indemnity, Mitchum in Out of the Past, Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, even Meeker in Kiss Me Deadly all craft characters of greater depth than the nearly-interchangeable protagonists of the Miller-Rodriguez film.

But that's sort of what Miller is going for in the comic and the film: the distillation of noir into its purely expressive elements, to the point that absurdly fantastic plot details like the Yellow Bastard's resurrection or the ninja hookers simply read as hyperstylized tropes rather than cross-genre trainwrecks. It's why the Elijah Wood part arguably isn't even a character; he's a plot function, an emblem.

But the characters, Bruce Willis's supercop Hartnell excepted, are effectively without human motivation in Sin City's vignettes. Marv is tough and has a code of honor, but we have no clue why he does or what it is he wants in general from his life. He is simply a man in a particular situation who functions in a particular way. Ditto Clive Owen's character. It's especially apparent with the minor folks who receive little to no dialogue. Why is Cardinal Rourke a murderous psychotic? Because he is, apparently.

That said, Michael Madsden is painful to watch in his few minutes of screen time, and...well, ninja hookers were a little too silly for me, sorry. It's an ok film.

I see no point in a sequel.

I saw the news on the CNN website. The headline was something about a superhero dying. They had a spoiler warning at the top of the article, but since I didn't read Civil War or Captain America I didn't mind at all.

I enjoy following all these huge crossovers through this blog and others. When does the World War Hulk/Back In Black hype start?

As for Howard the Duck, I don't think I've seen it since I was 10 years old. I've toyed with the idea of watching it. I think the idea sounds fun but I think I'll just stick with the warm nostalgia and not blow it.

Speaking of comic movies, I would go with "The Specials." I don't think it's based on a comic book, but it was everything I wanted in a comic book movie.

Has everyone forgot about Tank Girl? Still one of my guilty pleasure favs! Naomi Watts before she played with the ape and Ice-T as a mad Kangaroo...

Good Stuff Maynard!!!

Everyone knows the original 1960's Batman movie is the best Superhero movie ever made. (Closely followed by Superman 2).

Watching Sin City and Kill Bill back to back makes you aware of the inherent failings of Sin City. They both have ludicrous plots and paper thin characterizations, but the difference is that in Kill Bill they utterly believe every line of dialogue and in Sin City every member of the cast just seems fucking embarassed to be there. Especially Madsen. My god, he seemed more enthusiastic about being in fucking Bloodrayne than Sin City.

"On a related note, isn’t it funny that Scarlett Johansson is the biggest star in that movie, and she was in it for, what, 15 minutes?"

Bob Balaban is the biggest star in that movie.

Well, he would be if I got to pick who the biggest stars were.

Hey, speaking of Scholastic/kid's comics, I recently read The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which is a really cool sorta-comic about a kid in Paris in the 30's. I have a review on my blog here . Sorry to shill, but it's fairly on topic with the content of the post.