Comic: Supergod

I had an opportunity to stop by a comic store earlier this week and I picked up one of the new Walking Dead paperbacks I hadn’t read yet.  While I was there, I spotted another book called Supergod.  I’m a big fan of self-contained superhero stories, so I figured I’d give this one a try.

The premise for the book is that the nuclear arms race in our world was replaced by a superhero arms race.  Each nation raced to get a powerful superhero of their own to deter others from attacking them.  Each one is created differently and has vastly different abilities and powers, but one thing they all share in common is a detachment from humanity.  These aren’t your Spiderman or Batman type heroes.  These are more like Superman, except without any attachment to humans.  They are on a level entirely beyond humanity and tend to value humanity as we value ants.

The story unfolds as one of the superheroes is accidentally unleashed and begins his own goals and methods, which slowly become clear over time.  Other superheroes are crafted and eventually some battle against others and humanity is left in the wake.  Watching how some of them behave is startling, and the battles are interesting if short.

Actually, I would have to say that’s the biggest problem with the book: it’s short.  It’s roughly five issues all told, and spans decades of development and warfare.  Had this book been three or four times its size and actually had the chance to go through a lot of the progression of the story, I think it would have been much better.  As it is, some of the superheroes are only given a few pages of development, and then their battles take a single page or two.

The story is told from a person alive during the aftermath of everything dictating the rise of these superheroes and the subsequent fall of humanity.  From the very beginning you see him sitting in a ruined city talking about what happened and where things went wrong.  There is very little actual dialogue apart from his narration, which gives the reader the a detached feeling that mirrors what the superheroes feel.

Overall, it felt like a great series of ideas that could have been fleshed out more.  If anything, it felt like I was reading a skeleton outline to a great story.

Would I recommend reading it?  If you can get the chance to read it without buying it, I certainly would.  Outside of that, it’s a pretty bizarre novel.  If you enjoy things like Empire or A God Somewhere, this is in the same vein as those ones, though it’s not quite as good as them.

Captain America: The First Avenger

Went to see Captain America with the wife last night. Overall, a great movie. I had heard that the movie was a little slow early on and I can understand that view, but I felt like it was good to set up Steve Rogers' character before he became Captain America, and show all the obstacles he had to bypass to actually become the Captain America we all know.

If anything, I felt disappointed by the villains of the movie: Hydra. I liked Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull, but his motivations did not really seem that... well... impressive. The idea of a villain who's a bit insane and feels superior to the rest of humanity and recognizes his hero counterpart as being cut of the same cloth was done much better with the Green Goblin and Spiderman in the first Spiderman movie. Here it felt a bit more like the villain's plot was kinda tacked on in a few places to give Cap someone to fight against.

Even with the weaker villain setup, I still really enjoyed this movie. This year we've been lucky to get X-Men: First Class and Captain America as two of our comic movies (I haven't seen Thor or Green Lantern) and neither X-Men nor Cap disappoint.

If you do go to see the movie, I'd recommend staying to the end of the credits. There will be further references to a new movie coming out in May of 2012.

The X-Men Family Tree

I just saw this on another blog I read and had to repost it. Quite funny if you follow X-Men at all. I was surprised how many of these things I could figure out just by following the relationship tags. "Well, so-and-so married what's-his-name and gave birth to XYZ who is a nemesis of someone who works with Apocolypse, so that means this person must be Homer Simpson!"

Comic: The Flash Rebirth

Over the weekend, Dan lent me The Flash: Rebirth to read, so yesterday morning when I was too sore to get out of bed, I polished it off.

Most of my thoughts about The Flash: Rebirth are, fairly or not, in comparison to the Green Lantern: Rebirth comic from years ago. I'll start out by saying I loved the GL:R comic. It did a lot to tie together a bunch of the different pieces of Green Lantern lore from around the ages. What was the deal with Paralyx? Why the yellow impurity and why did Kyle's ring not have it? How does the ring work, and could anyone use it effectively? The writing was great, and the art superb. If you like Green Lantern at all, pick up GL:R.

Okay, after that tangent, I'll talk a little about The Flash's rebirth. Barry Allen, the Silver Age version of the Flash, has been out of comics for about 23 years, ever since he joined the Speed Force back in Crisis on Infinate Earths when he stopped the Anti-Monitor's massive weapon of destruction. This comic had to do with Allen's return.

The book started with Barry Allen already back. Clearly this is something that had happened before the comic I was reading, and that set me off a little bit. I was expecting to read about his return, but I guess the comic was more an explaination of why and how he returned. Understanding that little piece, I kept reading.

I was glad I did. It was a very good comic. I confess my knowledge of The Flash's mythos is fairly limited, but that didn't seem to hold me back from understanding what was going on. So there are dozens of speedsters that all get their power from the Speed Force? Okay, I can buy that. There's something called the Black Flash? Fair enough. Whoa, a couple of folks are from the future and used the Speed Force to travel back in time? Sure thing. None of this was new information - all of it had been established well before in the Flash comics, but Flash: Rebirth did a great job of tying it all together and tightening the overall mythos.

I'd still place the Green Lantern: Rebirth comic on the shelf above this one, but this one's not a bad take either. I really enjoyed the "race" between Superman and the Flash and their conversation when it was happening. I thought the opening conversation between Hal Jorden and Barry Allen was great, and I liked how Barry Allen wasn't as happy to be back and pick things up as people thought he should be. I was a little put off about the whole "You need a lightning rod" thing - maybe it felt too similar to the "Constant" concept in LOST - but it felt like a weak point in the storyline.

In the end, though, a good and fairly self-contained story. I don't feel like picking up any more of the Flash after reading it, but I'm glad I took the time to see what it was all about.

Comic: A God Somewhere

After the first review I did for Empire, I decided I might try to review a few more comics as I read them.



A God Somewhere was recommended to me by another website as another good, non-standard-superhero tale. This story is, essentially, about a young man, his best friend, his brother and sister-in-law. The young man is in a horrible accident and becomes a super-powered man. He can fly, shrug off bullets, summon feats of massive strength, etc. All good stuff.

The story follows the other three characters primarily, and generally focuses on the hero's best friend and how he takes his friend's changes. The hero starts by saving people and helping people, but slowly the power of who he is corrupts him. He starts to see himself as a god above people, able to do whatever he likes. The friend tries to balance the horror that has happened with the fact that he still feels for his friend as tragedy upon tragedy compile.

Overall, I thought the story was good. Not great, but good. It's one I would read again, but it would not make it onto my stack of best comics I love reading again and again. I felt like the story rushed some key parts. It was at its best when it was delving into the philosophy of what it would be to be the only superhero in the world while everyone else was "just" human, but as the story went on, those parts were farther and farther apart. I was disappointed with some of the predictable nature of the plot. I really didn't feel like the story surprised me at any particular point, but it was fun to read how it all worked out.

In short, it's no Empire, and no Midnight Nation, and won't earn a place on the shelf next to them, but it is worth the read and I'm glad I picked it up.

Comic: Empire

When I used to work at Quest many a year ago, I had the benefit of working within a five minute drive from the Game Parlor, one of my local gaming stores. About once a week I'd find myself heading out for lunch and I'd pick up a comic or magazine from the Parlor and then hit up the pizza joint just next door and read while I ate.

One such day, I was looking through their lot of comics (they have a very bizarre selection of comics there - I don't know what the rational is behind some of the things they stock) and happened to find one that stuck my eye. I didn't want to read anything that was part of a series or had any connection to anything else, so this one fit my bill pretty well.


Empire was originally put out in 2000 by a new company that folded after only two issues. Eventually, in 2003, DC Comics picked up the title and finished off the mini-series. Despite being part of the DC line, it had no connection whatsoever with the DC Universe.

The premise was pretty simple: what would happen if the greatest super-villain in the world actually succeeded in taking over the world and there were no superheroes left to challenge him? The result is a massive, global empire in which Golgoth, the yellow-headed guy you see on the cover, rules over everything. He has a council of other super-powered people, all of whom are kept in line by a drug he controls called Eucharist that gives them massively-boosted abilities, but it's highly addictive. While the subordinates would not dream of trying to cross Golgoth, they have no real love for each other and constantly try to get a leg up on each other.

Golgoth is never seen out of his armor, and it's revealed pretty early on that he has a daughter and that his wife is dead. Whether that had something to do with his rise to evil-ness is never really discussed. The story isn't about how Golgoth took over the world - it's about what happens now that he has it.

Overall, I was very impressed with the story. There are several twists and turns you don't see coming. Seeing how Golgoth deals with the life he now has is pretty interesting, and getting hints throughout the story that things are actually even worse than you first thought when evil rules everything is just fun. That it's a self-contained story is perfect. There's not a large investment of time or anything to get the whole story. It's one of the better books on my comic shelf, and one that I keep going back to.

Undead Delight

Every Halloween my friends and I put together a horror-based roleplaying game just to have a bit of fun. Generally, people die, and much fun is had. A few years back I ran a particular game about a zombie apocalypse. It began with everyone creating each other as characters, and then everyone got to play themselves. I, being the GM, was the first person to be killed and their first introduction to zombies. Appropriately, I think Mary killed me, both hating zombies and in particular being my nemesis. The group had to escape Brian and Mary’s house, find transportation, and then navigate the dangerous route to escape. I had no long-term plans, just put them in a world of zombies and see what happened. They headed for the airport. In a fight near a fueling station at the airport, Dan was killed and came back as a zombie. Things got hectic, the fuel ignited, and I don’t remember how many people survived.

I don’t know what it is about zombies, but I love the concept of them. It might be my fascination with post-apocalyptic stories or survival stories or dealing with a situation that seems so hopelessly beyond your ability to survive and somehow coming out alive. Whatever it is, I can’t seem to get enough of them. I wanted to talk about three treatments of zombies that I consider among the best out there.

First is the movie 28 Days Later. For me, this was the trigger to my really enjoying zombies. Before this they were just lame horror monsters, but this was the first movie I saw where I was really freaked out by the zombies in it. It was pretty much exactly what I look for now in a good zombie adaptation. Focus on a small group of survivors and the terror that they particularly go through. The zombies form a backdrop for the story and help propel the characters forward and through different scenes, but the focus is really on the characters. I still can’t listen to the soundtrack (In the House – In a Heartbeat) without my heart racing. It spawned a few follow ups, but none of them came close to the original.

Second is the comic Walking Dead which started being published in 2003 by Image comics, a year after 28 Days Later came out. I can see the similarities and style. While Walking Dead has more traditional zombies that shamble slowly, again, the focus is entirely on the characters and how they deal with an impossible survival situation. Often times, humans are far more dangerous to each other than the zombies themselves are. People die all the time and sometimes in very unexpected ways, and through it all, the characters keep struggling to survive.

Finally is the book World War Z by Max Brooks. I admit I never read the book myself, I only heard the abridged version on the books on tape. But even with that treatment, it was fantastic. It’s a book that takes the form of a documentary. The author is interviewing people from all over the world who survived the zombie apocalypse that ended just years ago. Each person recounts their own horror stories and how the world responded to such a bizarre situation. Humanity is stripped away and many people cringe still at the things they had to do to just survive. Some of the parts are not for the faint of heart.

If you are a fan of character-driven stories and zombies, all three of these are musts. Enjoy!

Avengers Assemble!

Evidently the director of the new Avengers movie has been selected and it is none other than our very own Joss Whedon. Hopefully it will be more of the Dollhouse/Serenity/Firefly/Angel/Buffy TV show Joss Whedon rather than the Alien Resurrection/Buffy movie Joss Whedon. Time will tell, but this news makes this particular Marvel fan happy.