Review : Captain America - The First Avenger

Are you aware that when Captain America throws his mighty shield all those who chose to oppose his shield must yield?  Captain America is easily one of my favorite superheroes of all time, being in my opinion one of the most heroic and, when written properly, badass characters ever to grace the medium.  Created in 1941 by Joe Simon and Jack “The King” Kirby first appearing in Captain America Comics #1 the character was one of many patriotic themed heroes introduced during the Golden Age of Comics but is almost certainly the most memorial and long lasting.  The character was reintroduced into Marvel Comics in 1963 in Strange Tales #114 as a sort of tease and then in earnest in 1964 in Avengers #4 and he hasn’t left us since.  There have been several film adaptations over the years but shared this in common: they weren’t very good.  Enter Marvel Studios’ attempt to set up a big budget Avengers film.  Having huge success with Iron Man, and to a lesser extent the Incredible Hulk, in 2008 production for Captain America movie was inevitable.  Unlike the other films in the franchise this movie was supposed to directly lead into the Avengers movie.  Thus it was called Captain America: The First Avenger.

It was directed by Joe Johnston who also directed Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Jumanji, and The Rocketeer so he’s done a pretty decent amount of variety in his films.  So far this year there have been ups and downs wit comic book films; Thor was pretty good, X-Men: First Class was really good but, even though I didn’t get a chance to review it, I was very disappointed in Green Lantern.  In theory a Captain America movie, especially one that is set in the 40s, should be hard to mess up.  Give a scrawny guy a super soldier serum and have him beat the shit out of Nazis?  Box Office Gold!  But seeing as we haven’t gotten the formula right so far one wonders if there’s any reason to give this film the benefit of the doubt.

Full review after the jump.

[WARNING: The following review has some spoilers so read at your own risk]

Batgirl VS. San Diego (Comic-Con)

Sorry abut the lack of updates.  I'm currently working on reviews for Captain America: The First Avenger and a new anime series.  I'm hoping that they'll be done by this weekend (Maybe).

REBOOT, DAMN IT!

 Today I wanted to just share a link to DC Women Kicking Ass (Which you should be reading anyway because it's pretty darn cool) as there is a really intriguing interview up today.  One of the more interesting stories from the San Diego Comic Con this past weekend was about a woman, dressed as Batgirl/Stephanie Brown, attending several DC Reboot panels and flat out asking questions, and thus voicing concern, about the lack of focus on female characters and a lack of female creators and was met with both praise and shocking jeers from other fans and panelist.  This is an interview with her where she tells her adventure from her point of view.  It's a very interesting and thought provoking , and somewhat disturbing, read.

Click here for the interview.

Review: Avengers - Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (Season One)

If you have been to this website with any frequency you may have noticed that I have been following the recent Avengers cartoon “Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” for over a year now.  I’ve talked about it a lot in reactions to the brilliantly produced preview shorts and the initial two-part opener so I think we are mostly aware of the premise of the show by now.

The show premiered on Disney XD in October of 2010 to a lot of fanfare and the season being stretched longer than was originally meant because Disney wanted the last round of episodes to coincide with the Thor movie (Meaning that outside of the US countries got to see the end of the season months before we did).  The show finally wrapped up its first season last month and, after repeatedly missing its initial run due to not always living in a place where Disney XD was available (And Disney XD deciding to change its broadcast time of the show), I finally was able to finish watching the whole run just recently.  Now I would prefer to review the series as a whole as opposed to just one season but seeing as it took this long for 26-epsiodes to come out it seems a little dumb to wait at least another year for the completed series.  So today we’ll be reviewing Season One of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

The head writer of this show is comic/cartoon writer Christopher Yost.  Yost has written for shows like X-Men: Evolution, The Batman, Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Heroes, Wolverine and the X-Men (GODDAMN IT!!!!!) and was the head writer for Iron Man: Armored Adventures…you know, the cartoon where Tony Stark is f**king teenager for some reason.  So with a resume like this I have to assume that he and I are actually archenemies as he has been involved in a long string of cartoons that have made me want to hide in a cave and wait out the Cartoon Apocalypse.  Does he redeem himself with EMH?

Full review after the jump.