Happy holidays, everyone – if you celebrated. I definitely did celebrate and it’s been a whirlwind of family visits and events around the city, so I have been crazy busy. I am still working on a few reviews to add, but currently my internet is wonky and I can only post while at work on my half-hour break. So, until I can catch up (hopefully soon – maybe this week), I hope you’ll check out my other blog:
This review blog is something I have a ton of fun with, but Away With Words is a more serious (most of the time, anyway) blog where I showcase my friends, events in my life, and random musings. Check it out, pass it around. I update them both about equally – whenever the mood strikes. Thank you for reading, and I hope to see more of you during this exciting new year of 2015!
-Joe
Me in a Wonder Woman Onesie I got for Christmas from my “Secret Santa” at work.
Wonder Woman: Blood collects issues #1-6 of the DC Comics New 52 Wonder Woman series with writing by Brian Azzarello and art by Cliff Chiang and Tony Akins.
Wonder Woman, the Amazon born of clay and a prayer, has known who she is all her life. However, when Hermes (yes, the god Hermes) attempts to help a young woman who has been impregnated by Zeus (yes, the god Zeus) – Zeus’ wife, Hera (yes, the goddess Hera) is none too happy about it and sends her followers to go pay Zeus’ new concubine a visit. Under the protection of Wonder Woman, the Amazons and even some gods and demi-gods – the mortal woman still may not survive the fury of Hera, and in the meantime – Wonder Woman learns that maybe she’s not who she’s thought she was all this time.
To me, Wonder Woman has always been one of DC Comics’ most interesting characters. As far as mythology goes, she is DC’s version of Marvel’s Thor (Yeah, I know Wonder Woman came first, obviously). With all the controversy of Gal Gadot being cast as Wonder Woman I figured it’d be a good time to re-examine the character for myself and ended up giving the first six issues of the New 52 version of Wonder Woman a try in order to do so.
First off, the writing was pretty decent. Azarello, you can tell, wants to keep a lot of the mythology in tact and he does so pretty well. At least for a comic book, anyway. One thing I didn’t really like, though, was there seemed to be an awful lot of puns. I’m not sure exactly how many there were, but I felt like that’s all I was doing at points was reading puns to myself that the characters were saying. That hindered the enjoyment in places, but overall it was pretty entertaining aside from what I felt were jarring transitions between issues and even within individual issues.
The art was okay, but I feel like it was maybe a tad too cartoony. It reminded me of Bruce Timm a bit, which is good, but in the context of an Amazonian woman who spends her time hacking the arms off centaurs, I feel like it should be more gritty and realistic. It would really bring home the reality of our world and put it in tune with the fantastical aspects of the mythological one that Diana inhabits.
Overall, I enjoyed it and I look forward to seeing where it goes in the next volume. Seeing all the different gods represented in the artist/author’s interpretations was kind of cool, too. (Although Hermes is pretty creepy looking, I’ll admit).
Original Theatrical Release: February 28, 2012 Director: Lauren Montgomery
The Justice League is a team of powerful superheroes dedicated to protecting Earth from all manner of supervillains and other dangers. Batman (Kevin Conroy), the most human of the Justice League, has created contingency plans to defeat each individual member of the famed superhero team. Vandal Savage (Phil Morris) has plans of world domination and decides to send Mirror Master (Alexis Denisof) to sneak into the Batcave and steal all of Batman’s files, including the weaknesses of the Justice League. This results in Batman, Superman (Tim Daly), Wonder Woman (Susan Eisenberg), Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Martian Manhunter (Carl Lumbly), The Flash (Michael Rosenbaum) and Cyborg (Bumper Robinson) all having to fight for their very lives as Batman’s contingency plans prove all too effective.
Taken from the Tower of Babel story line, the events in this film mostly mirror those found in DC Comics, with some differences. However, with only 77 minutes to tell this story, I think they managed to do a good job, overall. Still, some fans of the original material might feel like this doesn’t adequately translate Mark Waid’s original writing. Movies will almost always lack the depth of their source material, so it’s best to treat them as separate entities if you can.
The animation was very slick and stylized. The voice acting was consistently very good, and it was nice to see the Legion Of Doom go up against the Justice League. You could get a sense of the classic rivalries between the characters even without knowing all of the years of back story behind them.
DC seems to really have a handle on all of their animated features – I will give them that. DC characters are sort of larger than life and tend to lend themselves more to animated adventures, where Marvel characters tend to be more gritty and aside from characters like Spider-Man, are more suited to the big screen.
With that said, in this (too) short animated feature, you will find copious amounts of action, danger and adventure…and you will feel that the League really is close to being defeated, because they are…and it’s because of one of their own members. (Thanks a lot, Batman…)
Original Release Date: January 11, 2011 Developer: Sony Online Entertainment Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment and WB Games
As far as the storyline goes, you begin the game by watching a really cool cinematic battle between the Justice League and a bunch of DC villains. The heroes are all killed in the battle, even Superman, with the Joker and Lex Luthor still standing. Then, Brainiac shows up with an army of metahumans he’s created by “downloading” the powers of the DC heroes and villains for years. Lex Luthor can do nothing but watch. So, Lex travels through time and warns the heroes about Brainiac and also releases stolen exobytes (nano-sized mechanisms that attach to humans and give them superpowers) into the atmosphere, creating thousands of metahumans which will be able to help in the fight against Brainiac once they are trained by either the Justice League (With mentors being Superman, Wonder Woman or Batman) or the DC villains (With mentors being Lex Luthor, Circe and Joker).
The character you create is one of those new superheroes, just learning how to use their powers.
Jim Lee is at the helm of the game (awesome) so the art and production is pretty amazing. Geoff Johns does the principal writing, so the story is decent as well.
I played through the entire game with my own character, Captain Kinesis, and reached the level cap. (30, currently) It didn’t take me too long and I didn’t have to pay to play, although I ended up subscribing so I could make more characters. (You only get two slots, initially, unless you pay…which is $15 a month) Captain Kinesis is a mental-based superhero who can fly, use telekinesis to lift buses and cars into the air to throw at villains, and he has super-strength….pummeling the bad guys with his fists. There are tons of power combinations for characters. (I also have another character, an anthropomorphic fox named Permafox who has super-speed and ice-based powers and uses a shield like Captain America)
I found no real down sides about the game aside from character creation problems (more on that below). It was consistently fun, the graphics and art were great and the PVP modes were always fun (and you could play as major DC characters like Superman or Batman).
One drawback, though, was actually in the character creation mode. When you try to name your character, more often than not you’ll get a message that says “Already taken, please try again” or something to that effect. HOWEVER, they don’t give you any other options and there is no way to tell what’s already been taken unless you try. Sometimes, I would sit for a half hour or more, trying various names (I refused to name the character the same way I would name a screen name in a chat room…”SuperDude23″) I don’t consider myself not creative and I imagine if they had a way to list available variations or have a list with names already taken once you try to type it in, that it would be a lot faster.
Most of the fun in this game and in others like it is creating your own superhero and seeing them interact with a comic book universe that you’ve grown to love. I’m way more of a Marvel guy than a DC guy, but I can still appreciate Metropolis and Gotham. There is plenty of that as you travel through those cities, mostly, and you fight crime alongside other new heroes or even alongside seasoned, canon characters.
The other downside was the download time for the actual game. I think it took more than four hours, and that was consistent with other folks I knew of who downloaded it. Make sure to leave yourself some time for that.
Since it’s free to play, you should give it a try! Especially if you have played and liked games such as Champions Online or City of Heroes/City of Villains or Marvel Heroes – You won’t be disappointed.
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