Last Wednesday, in recognition of the second full week of DC Comics’ New 52 promotion, I recommended the seven new DC titles that I thought were most likely to be worthy of your attention and your money sight unseen. Now that we’ve had a week to digest them, the question is how did I do? I think it’s safe to characterize the entire promotion as a monster success for DC at least in terms of PR for month one: sellouts across the line, reprints on the way and copies being ordered in the six figure range. Overall, I can honestly say the quality of the actual product has been stronger than I was expecting. The books I personally recommended for week three in order of expected quality were as follows: Batman, Wonder Woman, Nightwing, Green Lantern Corps, DC Universe Presents: Deadman, Red Hood and the Outlaws and Catwoman.

So how were they in reality?

Read more of this article »

Last week’s Monday Night Raw from Cleveland, Ohio saw the return of a former staple of the show, the guest host. Hugh Jackman was on the scene to promote his new fightin robot movie, Real Steel, and seemed to really enjoy himself. He wasn’t given complete control of the show, but he definitely got involved. I’m without my tag team partner this week so I’ll slash through things quickly to get ready for tonight’s show.

Read more of this article »

I enjoy when the Doctor interacts with regular people and James Corden’s appearances on Doctor Who have really highlighted those moments. Closing Time makes for a fun episode, but it’s not one I’m likely to go back to often even though I truly enjoy Cordon’s portrayal of Craig Owens. There’s a looming sense of dread about what lies in the Doctor’s immediate future and his true reasons for visiting his friend at this time, but I’m more than ready for some resolution to this season’s mysteries surrounding the Doctor’s death.

Spoilers for what lurks in department store changing rooms, out of service elevators, and baby talk will follow.

Read more of this article »

I’ve previously read exactly three issues of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, a three part story called “The River” from Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s original Mirage Comics run with art by Rick Veitch. It was fantastic, but the series just wasn’t something I wanted to get into at the time. The cowabunga/pizza turtles on TV may have been a big factor in that (although I do have a Donatello action figure in my collection and I was a huge fan of the Turtles arcade game). A lot has happened with the Turtles property since that time and discovering a new comic book series from IDW with Eastman’s name attached certainly piqued my interest.

Read more of this article »

Continuing the onslaught of new books for the month of September, this week sees the return of Ultimate Comics X-Men to Marvel’s relaunching Ultimate line. In the spirit of all of these new books (both from DC Comics’ “New 52″ and beyond), we’ve been trying to showcase as many as we can in a what is a truly remarkable time for comics. Ultimate Comics X-Men #1 is a book I would have passed on otherwise, and I’m a serious X-Men fan. Writer Nick Spencer and artist Paco Medina introduce a dramatically new status quo for the mutants of this world here and as first issues go, this one puts a lot on the table.

Spoilers regarding everything you thought you knew about the X-Men will follow.

Read more of this article »