// Category Archive for: Comics

FanExpo Canada 2013: 100,000 Fans Can’t Be Wrong

By Less Lee Moore

Another year of FanExpo Canada has come and gone. As usual, the four-day event was jam-packed with people and panels, photo ops and paraphernalia. With so many things happening and so many attendees, there are bound to be a multiplicity of experiences. Here are mine.

Day One: Thursday, August 22

The doors opened at 2:00 p.m. and as usual, there was already a line-up. I don’t like to brag, but I enjoy being able to go through the Media entrance and not wait in the lines outside. Although, never fear, non-media folks: I still have to wait in a line to get onto the exhibition floor like the rest of you. (I do think it would be nice if media got to go in about an hour before the show opens, just to prepare for photos and video shoots.)

This year, due to the addition of the Sports segment and the expected increase in attendance, FanExpo took up multiple floors in both the South and North buildings. This meant a bit more walking across the bridge between buildings, but it also made for less cramped conditions (at least on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday; I didn’t attend Saturday).

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Why Ben Affleck As Batman Doesn’t Matter

By Paul Casey

Ben Affleck is Batman. Commence some teeth gnashing about how he lacks the essential nature of the character, followed by oppositionist chatter in favor. Here’s the thing, though: it doesn’t matter one bit who you cast in this Superman/Batman crossover. You can have Michael Keaton return to play an elderly and run down Frank Miller-style Bruce Wayne, or convince Christian Bale to lose all of his sense and diminish the great work he did with Christopher Nolan. You can give George Clooney another shot unhampered by a bad movie, or you can agree that Michael Fassbender is amazing in everything and just hire him. Superman/Batman remains an inherently bad idea, regardless of how it is executed and there are decades worth of comic books that confirm it.

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Forget About Shark Week: It’s Shark Month with the August Kickstarter for Frenzy, An Illustrated Prose Novel

By Less Lee Moore

Artwork © Chandra Free, 2013

If you prefer your sharks to be more like Jaws than Sharknado, here’s something you can really sink your multiple rows of teeth into: Frenzy, where the sharks are the stars, and the humans are the threat!

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Movie Review: G.I. Joe: Retaliation

By LabSplice

In G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the Joes are no more. The entire squad and their leader were wiped out in a double-cross by Zartan, the Cobra lieutenant who has impersonated the president of the United States and is working from within the government to free Cobra Commander. The remaining Joes, led by Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson), are forced to take on a government that no longer trusts them and rescue the entire world from the brink of nuclear war.

You almost have to feel sorry for way the cards were stacked against G.I. Joe: Retaliation. The first film in the series, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, limped out of theaters as a critical failure, and many fans would have preferred to see the franchise die an ignominious death without any additional entries. Furthermore, Retaliation suffered from several delays in its production schedule, delays that allegedly arose regarding complications in the use of Channing Tatum’s character, Duke. This meant that the only actors who would reprise their roles in the second film would be Jonathan Pryce as the president of the United States, Byung-hun Lee as Storm Shadow, and the silent and faceless presence of Ray Park as Snake Eyes. Throw in a few quick scenes with Arnold Vosloo as Zartan and you had perhaps the most underwhelming core of franchise talent in summer blockbuster history.

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Assemblog: January 11, 2013

Mads Mikkelsen in NBC’s Hannibal

New this week on Popshifter:
Chelsea profiles Boston band The Grownup Noise; Danny reveals his choice for best turntable; Lisa picks 13 genre films to see this year; Paul tackles wrasslin’ and the potential of a new Prince album in 2013; Cait shares the good news about the upcoming David Bowie album; Julie likes the new Crime & the City Solution compilation A History of Crime; Brad has good things to say about the Blu-Ray for Sleep Tight; Elizabeth is back with a new installment of “TV Is Dead, Long Live TV” with her picks for this new year; I recommend Lost Girl for fans of good television; and give some background on the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, which starts January 17.

The only concession I will make to the 2013 Oscars is that they exist. It’s become a ridiculous wankfest and one to which I do not wish to contribute. So I guess you could say that my Oscar snub is to snub the Oscars. Ha!

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Thor and Loki: Blood Brothers

By Lisa Anderson

I have a confession to make: Until the movie Thor came out last summer, I didn’t know that Marvel comics had characters based (somewhat loosely) on Norse mythology. Like many people, I enjoyed Chris Hemsworth’s endearing portrayal of Thor, god of thunder, and Tom Hiddleston’s mesmerizing take on Thor’s brother Loki, the god of mischief. Their painful family history also added a layer of complexity to this summer’s Avengers, even if Loki was far less sympathetic the second time around.

Recently, I had the opportunity to see another interpretation of these characters. I watched Thor and Loki: Blood Brothers, a four-episode motion comic from Marvel Knights Animation. (For those who may not know, a motion comic is a slightly different style of animation, where the background is more static and the movements are less fluid.) It’s based on a 2004 storyline with no connection to the Marvel films.

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The Dark Knight Rises

By Less Lee Moore

Photo © Warner Bros. via ScreenCrush

Let’s be honest: The Dark Knight Rises doesn’t need my review. People are going to see it anyway. But I need to write a review. After the midnight showing I felt overwhelmed, exuberant, humbled. I couldn’t stop talking and thinking about the movie. I got home after 3 a.m., exhausted but unable to sleep. That hasn’t happened since the first night I saw Fight Club in 1999. Before that, it was in 1998, because of the movie Velvet Goldmine, with none other than Christian Bale—but I’m getting ahead of (behind?) myself. You want to know about The Dark Knight Rises.

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Five Reasons We Love Nathan Fillion

By Lisa Anderson

Nathan Fillion as
Mal Reynolds on Firefly

Few Canadian actors have been as beloved in the 21st century than Nathan Fillion. He’s perhaps best known for his role as spaceship smuggler captain and war veteran Malcolm Reynolds, in Joss Whedon’s short-lived but influential Firefly series. It’s true enough that Browncoats (Firefly fans) still love their Captain; he even unintentionally set off an online fundraising firestorm last year by suggesting that he would buy the rights to the show and distribute it for free if he had enough money. There are many other reasons that Nathan Fillion has as many fans as he does, though—even aside from being handsome and seeming friendly and funny in interviews and at conventions. Here are are just a few.
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Assemblog: May 18, 2012

Donna Summer, 1948 – 2012

New on Popshifter this week: Reviews of the remastered reissues of The Bill Evans Trio’s Moon Beams and Thelonious Monk’s Misterioso, plus some righteous indignation about women and guitar culture.

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Assemblog: May 4, 2012

“I’m not wearing hockey pads.”

New on Popshifter this week: Part Four of the ongoing hilarity of “so bad they’re good” YouTube videos from around the world; reviews of new releases by Chelle Rose and Portland Cello Project; The Lake Effect’s Expect Delays EP; Dave Martin’s Natural Selection; and whether or not The Avengers is a “chick flick.”

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