Posted 9/16/11 3:53 pm ET by Lemonjuice McGee in Animation, Cartoon Network, Reviews
Finally, Young Justice is about to start airing new episodes on Cartoon Network! It's been far too long since Aqualad, Robin, Artemis, and the rest of the team have been on our screens, fighting evil and whining about the hardships of growing up...or being a clone.
"Targets" is the latest episode and sees a peace agreement between North and South Korea Rhelasia being brokered by none other than Lex Luthor. However, a couple of hired assassins have other plans in mind with only Red Arrow reluctantly standing between them and Lex's bald visage. Also, Miss Martian and Superboy go to their first day of school. Yep.
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I'll continue to watch this if they immediately change it to the "Misadventures of Faye The Mean Girl Witch."
***Spoilers below!***
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Posted 9/16/11 2:44 pm ET by Lemonjuice McGee in Animation, Cartoon Network, Reviews
Batman: The Brave & The Bold is drawing to a close, and we were privileged to get a sneak peek at the latest episode to air on Cartoon Network, "The Scorn of the Star Sapphire"! There are quite a few surprises during this episode, beginning with the opening teaser featuring another DC icon. Join us as we review tonight's episode of Batman: The Brave & The Bold.
In this episode, Batman mops up crime in Coast City while Hal Jordan tests out his new Ferris Air-built vehicles. During some encounters with Green Lantern-related supervillains, the Star Sapphire shows up to cause trouble for the team of Batman and Hal Jordan. Hilarity and violence ensue.
Below are some random notes we made while watching the show:
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Posted 9/16/11 12:36 pm ET by Matt Morgan in Hobby Gaming, Reviews
If you've ever attempted to play Street Fighter but just didn't have the joystick wielding skills necessary to pull off a victory, then I've got the perfect game for you. Yomi is a 1-vs-1 card game that aims to bottle up all of the mental strategy used by professional Street Fighter players while leaving out all of the finger-twisting dexterity.
You may recognize the game's creator, David Sirlin, as the designer of the recent Street Fighter HD Remix video game and Puzzle Strike: Bag of Chips which we reviewed here on MTV Geek a few weeks back, so he's definitely got the right resume for the job. The big question here is whether a fighting game can still be fun without the controller, or if it simply feels like half of a game. Read on for the full review to find out:
Just the Facts:
Players: 2
Playing Time: 30 minutes
Age: 10 to Adult
Publisher: Sirlin Games
MSRP: $25 (2 decks) / $100 (10-deck Complete First Edition)
Release: January 2011
The Gameplay:
At it's core, Yomi uses a rock-paper-scissors mechanic to represent the various types fighting game moves and the different strengths they hold over each other. These attacks, dodges, throws, and blocks are each assigned to the cards of a standard poker deck, and just like a true fighting game, player must begin by selecting a character. There are ten to choose from in Yomi, and each comes with its own unique abilities.
Posted 9/15/11 4:58 pm ET by MTV Geek in Comic Books, DC Comics, Reviews
Superboy #1, Scott Lobdell (w), R.B. Silva (a), [PRINT]
THE PITCH: In a secret lab, a shady organization is attempting to build a living WMD: Superboy.
HOW WAS IT: Man, there's not a single book in the New 52 relaunch that doesn't have at least one dead body in it? Even with a title like Superboy or Batgirl, there's going to be a two corpse minimum somewhere in there. Well, okay, fact check: Action Comics didn't have any dead people in it, but that's one out of 26, which is a pretty off ratio.
Dead bodies notwithstanding, this is still the most youth-oriented book of the recent crop in a way that I kind of wish more of the New 52 titles were. In this issue, we're introduced to the vat-grown Superboy--that's the only name the techs give him--who informs us through captions that he's only about three months old and is as clueless as we are as to what's going on. There's something different about this version of the character's physical composition though, as we learn that his consciousness is "spread equally throughout [his] body, to [his] every atom," and this is all seemingly part of the plan on the part of Lobdell's script to make the character far more alien than Conner Kent was (in fact, there are shades of the Young Justice version of the character here). Where the cyborg-esque visual from the Eric Canete cover comes from is anyone's guess, but it has nothing to do with the contents of this book.
First off, it's a pretty clean break from the previous iteration of the title, working as a hard reset of the Superboy concept from the mid-90's. However, in that book, which spun out of the "Death of Superman," Superboy was a sort of ready-made hero developed by Cadmus, this incarnation of the character is a little more alien and lacking in anything close to a moral center. The only real human connection he has is with a scientist called "Red" (everyone in the lab has a color for a name) thanks to some kind of psychic power that Superboy appears to be developing.
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Posted 9/15/11 3:10 pm ET by Charles Webb in Comic Books, DC Comics, Reviews
Batwoman #1, J.H. Williams III (w/a), W. Haden Blackman (w) (Writer, Artist) [PRINT]
THE PITCH: In Gotham City, Kate Kane is one of the many people to take up the mantle of the Bat.
HOW WAS IT: A solid to very damned good effort out of the gate for Williams and Blackman, hampered slightly by the need to hammer what appears to be an existing plot into the New 52. When I initially began this review, it was with something along the lines of "pretty good, needs a little work," but as I revisited it (about three or four times at this point) to discuss some of the finer points of the issue, I realized that it's a much stronger book that I initially thought, inviting multiple readings and analysis to sift through all of its finer detail. This is kind of advanced comics, and I think the visual complexity of it, its richness of detail, might be just the thing to put off some new readers.
But let me back up. First off, this book is pretty dense--both in the context of the narrative and visually. I'm not sure how much of this book was put together before the New 52, but all indications are that a lot of it was probably intended for Batmwoman's originally-planned February, then April release, before getting shuffled into the relaunch. Williams and Blackman provide two pretty content-heavy pages in in the issue that detail some of Kate Kane's recent history (particularly the "Elegy" arc with Rucka) as well as folding in call-outs to the new shape of the universe.
Posted 9/15/11 1:15 pm ET by Lemonjuice McGee in Mattel, Reviews, Toys
Just when we think we're through with the JLU line of action figures, Mattel keeps pulling us back in! This time it's thanks to a couple of exclusive 3 packs from their collector-based Matty Collector website. Both the original JSA and fan-favorites are represented as the line winds down for the last time. However, are these guys worth your time and money? Read on to see what we think.
Posted 9/14/11 3:43 pm ET by Charles Webb in Comic Books, DC Comics, Reviews
Mister Terrific #1, Eric Wallace (w), Gianluca Gugliotta (w) [Print]
THE PITCH: Billionaire superhero Michael Holt is the third smartest man on the planet and plans to use his wealth, smarts, and super science to stop evil.
HOW WAS IT? ... And between this book and Static Shock, DC has created a universe that no longer needs Black Lightning. I wonder how this reads to someone who picks up this book and that book last week--two black characters who speak a lot of science-y gobbledygook who seem to have electricity-based powers. Would you assume the two characters are related or something? And with the weird timeline of the DCNu (some stuff happening in the present, some five years or so ago), would anyone possibly think maybe they're the same character? That would be weird.
Of course--and this is in spite of some of my quibbles with that first issue--Static Shock is a much better book than the one we have here. Because Mister Terrific is a title that slides quickly from "kind of interesting, if a little rough" to awful mess with bad art, and by the final page you start hoping that maybe it's not too late to get a new creative team here. I know this comes off as very harsh towards the new series by Wallace and Gugliotta, but this is not at all a good showcase for the character, the dialog is clunky and on-the-nose, the staging of conversation and action is hard to follow to simply nonsensical, and the "third smartest man in the world," stuff needed to die with the old DC. Oh, and that costume still doesn't work.
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Posted 9/14/11 2:55 pm ET by Charles Webb in Comic Books, Image Comics, Reviews
Pigs #1, Nate Cosby & Ben McCool (w), Breno Tamura (a)
So this is one of those cases of strong concept meeting fair to not great execution. It has a killer of a last-page reveal that's unfortunately undercut by needlessly jumbled chronology.
The book opens with a group of commandos in wetsuits on a raft planning some kind of attack on American soil, and then jumps to another time period to a couple of D.C. cops grilling an icy Russian national about her knowledge of Soviet sleeper cells left in Cuba following the Bay of Pigs. First off, why a couple of cops are grilling this particular suspect about the particular case we learn they're following strains credibility, but moreover, we're given no frame of reference about who this woman is (besides being some Russian lady in the know) and why she's important.
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Posted 9/14/11 11:45 am ET by Alex Zalben in Comic Books, Marvel, Reviews
With today's release of Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1, we thought we'd let two of our comics writers duke it out with their takes on the new Spidey, Miles Morales. Did they both like it? One hate it, the other love it? You'll just have to read on to find out.
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