Sheldon’s (Jim Parsons) most recent craziness pushes Leonard (Johnny Galecki) over the edge, caused the friendship agreement to be dissolved. No longer classified as Sheldon’s friend, Leonard finds himself freed from his usual responsibilities. Unfortunately for Sheldon, he can find no one else to pick up the slack.
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The Friendship Contraction Read More »
The long delayed final issue of the Kung Fu Panda mini-series is sadly a disappointment. Until now the comic has done a good job capturing the fun of the films by putting a comic book spin on new stories featuring Po, the Furious Five, and others. Sadly that ends here with an issue that feels very phoned-in and cribbed directly from the current Kung Fu Panda TV-show.
In the main story Po is reunited with his ultra-competitive childhood friend Heng who has arrived to challenge the Dragon Warrior to best him in the “infinite obsta-gauntlet course of trapishness” the pair thought up as kids. The story has some fun moments, and a nice moral at the end as Po allows his friend to save face by beating him before finding a way to turn Heng’s complete waste of money into a profitable enterprise.
The back-up story is a direct lift from “The Scorpion’s Sting” (an episode of Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness) featuring Po’s quest to find a flower in the Forest of Isolation to save Tigress‘ life after she is poisoned. The story substitutes an armadillo for the scorpion but the only real change.
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Kung Fu Panda #4 (of 4) Read More »
The final issue of Secret Avengers by writer Warren Ellis isn’t bad, but then again it isn’t all that great either. I won’t go so far as to say he phoned it in, but this is a rather lackluster end to his run on the comic.
Steve Rogers as his team fake an emergency to break into the Office of National Emergency and rout out a high ranking traitor who has been finding intelligence to the Shadow Council.
The team learns the Super Soldier experiments taken from Paraguay and brought into O.N.E. have been activated by the traitor once the Avengers appeared. The creatures have been unleashed in the bowels of the building.
Rogers interrogation of the traitor works okay, but the team fighting the (rather generic-looking) monsters in the basement is far from thrilling. The comic also ends with a thoroughly unsatisfying ending as Captain America either allows a woman five feet away to commit suicide or was simply too stupid or too slow to stop her. I don’t know, maybe the years are finally catching up with him? Hit and Miss.
[Marvel, $3.99]
Secret Avengers #21 Read More »
The Iron Lady is as perplexing as it is forgettable. Coming off like a sanitized made-for-TV film that was given a bigger budget once it landed arguably the greatest living actress, the film is centered around some of the least important moments of one of the most important British politicians of the 20th Century. Like I said, perplexing.
In her waning days, after losing her husband, Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep) looks back on her career as she rose to power as Britain’s first female Prime Minister during one of the country’s most tumultuous periods. Despite detractors, and the fact that many of her monetary policies helped lead to high unemployment and social unrest (some of which is still felt today), the film certainly takes a pro-Thatcher stance.
The strangest choice the film makes is to center so much of the story around Thatcher’s days after her years in office. Yes we get flashbacks of her days in office, but except for a segment of the the film that deals with the Falklands War, they are short, fragmented, and don’t fit together all that well.
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The Lone Ranger rides again! I’m a fan of Dynamite Entertainment’s previous Lone Ranger series by writer Brett Matthews and artist Sergio Cariello (with some terrific covers by John Cassaday). I even own the Definite Edition hardcover. The new series gets off to a bit of a shaky start coming off very much like the poor B-Western from which the character sprang (that frankly we don’t want to be reminded of).
The Lone Ranger and Tonto are supporting characters for a story centered on a farmer and his family terrorized by a local band of outlaws which, before the issue’s end, will have the Ranger looking back on the similarities to his own past.
The first issue isn’t bad, and a one-issue story opening was a good choice, but it’s far from the rousing call to adventure I’d been hoping for. I’ve missed seeing a Lone Ranger on the comic stand. There’s a fair share of clunky dialogue from Ande Parks and the art of Esteve Polls lacks the larger than life quality of Sergio Cariello’s take on the character, but I’m willing to give the title another issue or two to see if it finds its way. Hit and Miss.
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The Lone Ranger #1 Read More »
