John Berry
9-23-09
---------Greetings comic book peeps. As most of you know Heroes started up its new season Monday night. Of course I was watching the Dolphins/Colts game, however the Tivo had my back. My over all impression of the two-hour season premier is that it was rather unremarkable. Which compared to the first two thirds of last season is a vast improvement. Lets start with the good. Speedy knifey carney dude vs. speedy knifey Peter Petrelli. I always want to see the hot super on super action. Icy water ladies character is actually starting to get interesting. And the new band of Irish carnies seemed really cool and interesting.
---------Now onto the bad. Parkman, he’s a boring character even with his powers. Make him not use his powers and what’s the point? Now who knows, this whole fighting the addiction thing could lead to a dark and interesting place. Only time will tell. The Cheerleader, yawn. Again with a pubescent storyline? Who cares about her life? The answer is nobody. Her character can be interesting and cool, but so far only when she is involved in the main storyline. All her personal drama has been at the expense of other more interesting stuff. Hiro, he is definitely one of the coolest characters on the show. I’m ok with the nerfing of his abilities; however make it so he can do something. Now when he uses his powers it brings him that much closer to death? Stupid, we all know they aren’t going to kill him off. Give him a set of powers that the writers are comfortable with and let him do his thing. Also I find it a little stupid that he can so easily give up on his oath to not change the past. Every fan of sci-fi can tell you that no good ever comes of it. Hiro should just plain know better.
--------Redemption? We shall see. I think the whole limiting of powers and internal conflict that seems to be one of the main themes they are developing is weak. Nobody reads a comic book or watches a superhero movie to see the character nerfed of his abilities. Make the conflict super powered bad guys. Let the heroes flourish and grow as superheroes. One more thing… Bring back Sylar. He is the show.
---------In comic book news, the Ultimate universe is back. This is good. I was able to pick up the new Spider-Man and the first two issues of Ultimate Avengers. Let me tell you this. Ultimate Red Skull is a grade A bad ass! For the most part the changes between the OG continuity and the Ultimate continuity are improvements in my humble opinion. The re-imagining of the Red Skull is no exception. Treat yourself to this you wont be disappointed this dude is hard core.
---------A friend of mine loaned me the first twenty-four or so Ultimate Fantastic Four issues. Some of them were in the form of trade paperbacks. So I gave them a read. They are definitely worth taking a gander at. The Fantastic Four were pretty groundbreaking stuff and they have just about the coolest archenemy in comics. Doctor Doom. Now it is my opinion that Doctor Doom was the inspiration for Darth Vader. Digression has occurred. I would say that the Ultimate reinterpretation of the Fantastic Four is worth the read. Namor, Annihilus, Mole Man & Dr. Doom are all interesting in this version. Namor is way more of a badass in this it seems. I still prefer the OG version of Doom and Namor; they got a lot of history.
--------I caught up on Time Storm 2099. Back in the nineties Marvel brought out the 2099 line of comics. I thought it was pretty cool. At least Spider-Man 2099 and Doom 2099 were. Punisher 2099 and Ravage 2099 were not as cool. Anyways they had a Thor and a Hulk as well but I believe they only showed up in mini series, which I never had a chance to read. The Thor guy did appear in the Thor series as part of the Thor Corps. Those were a good read. The Eric Masterson Thor and Beta Ray Bill rounded out the Thor Corps. If you get a chance pick it up, three hammers are better than one. Anyways I seem to have gotten off topic. Back to Timestorm 2099. In this present day, or Heroic Age, Spider-Man and Wolverine get sucked into the year 2099. I found it to be a pretty good read. I am missing #2 and apparently that’s the issue where Wolverine fights an army of Hulks. So you know I gotta pick that up. My biggest complaint was the price tag. $3.99 for each issue. If you wanna charge more you gotta give more, and they didn’t do that. These were regular sized comic books at annual prices. At the end they hinted at a 2099 re-launch. I could be interested if it was one title at $2.99. But we all know Marvel wants the money so we will have to see where they go with that. I don’t think Timestorm 2099 did all that well so they probably wont do anything.
---------This weekend I intend to see Surrogates and Pandorum . I’ll let you know what I think.