This will go on for as long as I feel like… Enjoy.

The Return by IronSyndicate

• Marvel/Disney – This is already “old” news, happening well over two weeks ago, but there are two things I want to happen out of the Marvel/Disney merger. Firstly, I want a Marvel TV show on ABC. There are many ways you can go here, with a “Heroes for Hire” concept pitched somewhere, or, to capitalize on the X-Men brand – an X-Factor series. Runaways is an option, or a S.H.I.E.L.D. (with a potential H.A.M.M.E.R title change after season 4 or so) espionage series. Personally, I would like a “Marvel Street”-type show. The Marvel Universe is ripe with street-level characters, and a show jumping from character to character would be very interesting. You could have an ensemble cast of Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Daredevil, Punisher, Elektra, Spider-Woman, Jessica Jones, Hawkeye, Ronin and many, many more. Every once in a while, feature a big name character like Captain America or Spider-Man. The show, however, should focus on the lesser known heroes and weave story lines between them – think Heroes, just not crappy. The second thing I want to see out of the Marvel/Disney deal is a fleshing out of the Epic imprint, and have Marvel turn it into a worthy competitor to Vertigo. I think a creator-owned line powered by Marvel ideology will be a wonderful thing, and just thinking of the type of stories we’ll get to see out of such an imprint is putting a smile on my face. We can see the amount of effort Marvel are willing to put into a creator-owned book with Ed Brubaker’s Criminial, which is a spectacular book. Think 20-40 of those a month. Glory will be had by all.

• True Blood Season 2 – The finale just aired, and I gotta say, I’m disappointed. This season of True Blood was insane, and it seemed there was no holding the creators back. The scene in the penultimate episode, where Sookie wanders through her own house and just witnesses one long line of crazy was spectacularly eerie, and I expected more of those for the finale. The actual finale was very laid back, predictable and boring. When MaryAnn finally meets her demise, I checked the time stamp and saw the episode was only halfway through. I knew we were heading for trouble right then and there. It was all over too easily. Maryann was built up to be this awesome big bad, and it just fizzled at the end. The egg was pointless, Eggs was pointless, and I was never quite clear on how exactly Tara fit into the Maryann equation – if she summoned her, how did Maryann sleep with a young Sam? Tara in general seems to be the weak link of the show, I never liked her, and probably never will. Her whole story arc throughout this season was disjointed and chaotic. And then we were left with the myraid of loose-end tying scene. The writers apparently decided to turn the camp up to 11, as any scene involving Bill was painful to watch. I can honestly say I’ve grown accustomed to his incredibly thick accent and odd sentence structures, but this was unbearable. Overall, I’d give the episode a 6-6.5 in a season that as a whole was more like a 9. It’s a shame that such a great season to a great show leaves us with a sour taste in our mouth… though that might be because we licked an ostrich egg with blood.

• Arkham Asylum – Damn, this game was brilliant. I’ve finished the main story and started venturing into the challenge room, but it’s nice to have a superhero game done right, and a Batman one to boot. Developers should watch very closely what Arkham Asylum did right and take notes. From the story (which, granted, wasn’t mind shattering, but it served its purpose) to the superb voice acting, to a unified, inventive design perspective, this is how you do it folks.

It is in the anthology FTL #2, published by Orang Utan Comics.

The art is by Gary Heaney, with inks by Nick Dismas and greyscales by Matt Santorelli. The letters are done by Richard Nelson.

You can pick up a copy at IndyPlanet.

Check the link to the right for reviewes of:

• Fantastic Four #559
• Secret Invasion #5

Ciao!

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer #17
• Invincible Iron Man #4
• Ultimate Origins #3
• Venom: Dark Origin #1

Check out the reviews page via the link on the right.

• Immortal Iron-Fist #17
• Green Lantern #33
• Ultimate X-Men #96

You can check them all out at the link to the right.

While the news is still being digested by my brain, one piece of news does stand out above the rest. Akin to Final Fantasy no longer being exclusive.

As reported on DC’s “One Weekend Later” panel, it seems that following Batman R.I.P. and two-part story by Denny O’Neil, Neil Gaiman will be writing Batman. For how long no one knows, but Morrison did say he’s staying on the title “forever” so it’ll probably only be for an arc (plus, I don’t see Gaiman really taking up an ongoing). But it’s Gaiman on Batman – how is that not exciting?

Anyways, as some of you may know I occasionaly work for a comic store here in Israel called “Comics and Vegetables”. I also write reviews and the occasional piece for the store’s website. Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing superstar writer Jason Aaron for the website.

You can check out the interview over here. Don’t worry, while the website itself is in Hebrew, the interview is in English.

Fanboy Dream?

Honestly, I’m not in the least bit excited about this. I actually think I may *shudder* pass on this one.

This suprises me more than anyone, as I’ve been clamoring for a Super-Hero fighter ever since Marvel Nemesis proved to be a total and utter failure. There are several reasons why this isn’t really giving me the geekgasm it should:

1. The premise is stupid. Sure watching Sub-Zero freeze Batman is cool and all, but there needs to be one hell of an explanation to how Sonia Blade can even touch Superman, let alone beat him in hand to hand combat. I don’t know why it bothers me so much, I have no problem with the Star Wars characters in Soul Calibur IV, even though it makes even less sense. It just doesn’t sit right, I could accept it more if it was Marvel chatacters, as they tend to be more street level, but it’s the whole Johnny Cage vs. Flash that seems ridiculous to me. Thought that scene of Catwoman dry-humping Sonia is a nice one.

No fucking way...

2. Mortal Kombat has long since lost its charm. Sure MK 1, 2 and 3 were great. Deadly Alliance, Deception and the many others that have come since weren’t. Fight load times were unbearbly long, and the game wasn’t flowing as well as it should. There seem to be roughly 3 fighters coming out at the same time – Soul Calibur IV, Street Fighter IV and MK vs. DC, I only have money for one, so I’m gonna go for the sleekest one. And yeah, Soul Calibur has already been pre-ordered.

Sonia... always a pleasure.

3. I want a Super-Hero fighter, dammit! Not a Super-Hero and some other guys fighter. Or better yet, let me rephrase – I want the Marvel Super-Hero fighter from EA Chicago. We only saw about 2 minutes of footage before EA Chicago closed down, but hot damn, that was SWEET. I want THAT game.

Obligatory "Meeeow" joke.

4. Cheating in the game will be incredibly easy. All you have to do is choose Batman, it’s an automatic win. If this is not a feature in the game, well then…

Well, Secret Invasion #4 suffers from being an issue of a main event, thus meaning it has cover all the bases, causing to jump around a lot and not dwell in one place for too long. The result is a bunch of tiny steps forward, rather than a huge advance in the story. It still works better than when the whole book is dedicated to on single location a la Secret Invasion #2.

So we start off with a long winded narration of “the story so far”, frankly, I could have done without most of it, as I don’t think we really need to hammer the “Trust no-one” point any further. I think we all get it now, even the biggest dolt in the world is bound to get it after a bazillion times, it’s called conditioning. The narration did have some good bits, particularly about the one about how Human beings have often invaded a place, drove out the local population and then went on with their lives like nothing ever happened. Kind of gives what the Skrulls are doing perspective, seeing how we’ve been doing it for a couple millenia or so.

We get another reminder of just how utterly useless the Sentry is as we see, yet again, a shot of him running away from the battle, crying (I wish to god I was making this up, but I’m not).

Yep, those are tears.

After an issue of flying, Ms. Marvel arrives in New York, only to get shot in the face by Nick Fury (for being a Skrull, of course). I like the team dynamic of Fury’s Howling Commandos (nay, Secret Warriors), they work well together, if only I could figure out what it they were actually doing. They seemed to be collecting the bodies of the fallen, probably Fury wants to beef up his army of kids. Innuendos aside, what I desperately want to figure out is what the hell happened to Ms. Marvel. After previously mentioned face-shooting, she gets piled on by a bunch of Skrulls, among them everyone’s favorite Wife-Beater , Hank Pym, and then we slowly close in on her eye and this happens:

Wha?

Now, I’m pretty sure the last black panel means Carol blacked out (she is being gang-banged by not so little green men, it’s understandable) but what the hell is up with the eye? Vigilant readers of this very blog will remember my own “Blue Eyes Theory” which has been thrown out the window with every character to have had blue eyes before now shown to have green ones (well, just Jarvis, but still). I’m not sure what happened with the mask, did Yu simply forget to put in a pupil in all the previous panels? Faithful readers, feel free to leave a comment below explaining what the hell I’m supposed to be getting from this.

Cut back to the Savage Land, where we find this handy little narration has been Spider-Woman pulling off her best Bond-Villain impersonation and laying out the Skrull’s plan to Tony (albeit a sick, confused , near-death Tony). The two get ambushed by the Black Widow, who, may I add, is totally bad-ass and, less badassly, shatters my dreams of an ape-Beast and Jean Grey coming back. Today. Natasha scares off Spider-Woman and smacks Tony around a bit to get his head back in the game (that and an Adrenaline needle through the f’ing throat!). Natasha also turns Logan (or at least a Logan, I still think he’s a Skrull) into a holier man (by shooting him, not giving him a papal blessing). Apparently the two have agreed on some safe-word which signifies your human-ness. A fool-proof plan, I’m sure (he’s a Skrull folks).

From the Jungle to Space and we see Agent Brand sneak onto a Skrull ship, shed a tear for the fallen, and see Reed Richards being tortured. She gets ambushed and we’re done. I’m left wanting more Brandy goodness (and you can read that whichever way you like, both are true).

On the downed S.H.I.E.L.D. Hellicarrier, Maria Hill is fucked as a (still) totally creepy Jarvis asks her for her surrender. Hill is reassured by the gaggle of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents standing around her with guns drawn. Turns out they’re all Skrulls. Fucked.

The Hood and his crew decide to join the battle for Earth, reasoning that no earth = no more Deathlok robots for them to use to rob banks. Which is probably true.

We wrap up the issue with the most awesomest last page that was spoiled three weeks ago by the cover for Secret Invasion #6, but still, seeing Thor and Cap (Bucky, but he also works) joining the fray sends a little geekgasm tremor through me. Avengers Assemble.

So, Secret Invasion 4 works, although I think if the issue had been over-sized, it would only benefit from the extra space. As it is it’s trying to cram a whole lot into less space, and some scenes could have benefited from a few more pages (I’m looking at you, Agent Brand). Things seem to be looking slightly better for the heroes, with Tony in better shape, Thor and Cap joining up. This of course means the Skrulls will now unleash their true power, pretty much guaranteeing the Heroes are totally doomed until something awesome happens to change it all (I think it starts with a K and ends with a  “ree”).

As an added bonus, I thought I’d take a look back at the 70′s spread from issue #1, and give it a slight update with recent revelations depicted. Enjoy:

Potential Skrulls - Everyone else (click to enlarge).

Oh, and read Captain Britain. I loved it, and I’m not even British, I wonder what they feel about it.