A Marvel Boy's Look At DC's New 52

My name's Jae and I'm a Marvelholic. I've been one since the age of 11 when I discovered the X-Men and I've never looked back. I've flirted with harder stuff, Dark Horse and Image, and with lighter stuff like IDW and had full-blown affairs with 2000AD but Marvel comics have always formed the centre of my comic obsession. DC, of all the big comic publishers, has rarely featured at all. Sure I own the hardcover Killing Joke, the collected 52 and some other Batman stuff. But ultimately the complexity of the DC universe and it's unfamiliar characters has kept me at arms length.

All that appears to have changed with the New 52, DC's latest reboot. I decided to give DC a fair go... and I'm liking what I'm seeing. Here's some reviews of the stuff I've read: 

Justice League #1

Whilst Justice League is completely alien to me, Batman, Green Lantern and Superman are at least characters I know and thus I found myself enjoying this a lot more than I thought I would. Green Lantern is young and impulsive, Batman is intelligent and experienced and Superman... well he just seems pissed off (and hot!). The art is excellent and I'm definitely going to be picking up issue #2 next month. This just felt so accessible that I thought... let's try some more!

Action Comics #1

I really enjoyed this introduction to Superman, still learning of the true extent of his powers and a little too cocky. The ending definitely has me wanting more but... the art was middling. This is meant to be a young, immature Superman but sometimes he looked like he might be in his forties. I just didn't feel the art complimented the story at all. Alas... I'll still be getting #2. 

Stormwatch #1 

Intriguing. This is the first book populated by characters I don't know. This did make me feel slightly disconnected from it but I want to know more... who is the Midnighter? What is the giant eye in the Moon? I'll get #2 but I think this is my first book on temporary probation whilst I try to get a proper feel for it. 

Batwoman #1

I know her, she was in 52! And she was my favourite character from that collection too... The art. Well, what can you say? It was exquisite. Beautiful. Mmmm... And the story was just vague enough to make me feel like buying #2 to find out a little more. 

Demon Knights #1

I have no idea of the history of any of these characters, nor of the time period it's set in. But I know one thing... I bloody loved this. Dragons that look like dinosaurs. Characters will a bit of verve. A story that took shape pretty quickly. LOVED. 

Superboy #1

Excellent modern feeling art, complimented by a totally new beginning for a character even a Marvelboy has heard of. I was absolutely besotted by this one. Yet another one for the pull list. This is tiring... 

Legion Lost #1

The art got better as the story went along. That's the best I can say. And the story... was alright. There were too many panels with too much text and I felt it was all a bit of a mess. I might give it the benefit of the doubt (I'm a forgiving completist when it comes to comics) but probably won't be pursuing this one.

Overall... I've been very impressed. 6 out of 7 comics were excellent and definitely grabbed me. Marvel's comic output is becoming a bit of a mess right now, and I think with this new relaunch DC stand a good chance of grabbing a good deal of my attention for the foreseeable future. Very, very good stuff indeed. 

Primeval: S04E04

Sorry for the late update, I've been incredibly distracted by personal issues this last week or so.

Episode 4 of the fourth series of Primeval finally had me interested again. After the previous episode I was worried that there might be no hope for this programme at all but I love being proved wrong. There was a plot. There was several story strands that worked well. There was mild peril. There was character development. And there was less poor use of CGI (except for a couple of poorly edited reused shots).

I'm intrigued by Matt now, whereas before I was just annoyed by him. What is his backstory? When asked about school he suggested he didn't remember it. Is this a lie? Is he from a different time? Is that why he is so friendly towards Emily?

I want to know. I'm interested. Finally Primeval! FINALLY!

Primeval: S04E03

Talk about a mixed bag. This episode, "Tree Creepers" showed  us everything that can be good about the concept of the show. But it also showed us everything that can be bad about it's implementation. 

The A-plot was regarding 3 time travellers who appear through an anomaly in a theatre, followed by two rather nasty arboreal reptiles. The B-plot has Connor stuck back at base working on a security system that accidentally locks down the entire ARC. 

The good points: The time travellers (up to 15 of them supposedly) are an interesting addition to the show and something that appears, hopefully, to be adding a bit more depth to the usual "monster of the week" run of the mill show. In fact the story continues into at least next episode which is excellent. 

Connor had plenty of screen time. 

And there were some interesting questions that'll make me come back next week:

Will Rex survive?

Why are the time travellers around? Are they lost or simply adventurers? 

What are Gideon and Matt up to? 

What is Burton's "New Dawn" programme? 

Now for the really bad points:

The CGI-human interaction is truly appalling. The fight scenes between Matt and a Tree Creeper was truly boring as at no point would my mind allow me to believe the Tree Creeper and Matt were even in the same room. Something has to be done to avoid too much reliance on CGI if they are unable to use it in a compelling way. 

Doctor Who expects us to suspend all belief of reality and accept the insane, illogical and stupid as real. That works because Doctor Who's that sort of show and it's built up our trust over many, many years. Primeval's writers have obviously watched the Doctor's mad cap solutions to things (Think nice thoughts!) and thought they could try the same on their show, and that no one would care. They are very wrong. Showing electricity moving up a pole as if it would be visible, or Rex's amazing recovery from unconscious to happy flying Rex in about 2 seconds are just too unbelievable. They take me out of the story and ruin it for me. I don't want to have to sit there, in a show about time-travel for heaven's sake, and think this is just totally unrealistic. 

And it's not just in the technical, nit-picking aspects that this "unreal" feeling permeates through the show. The human reactions to situations don't ring true. Burton is dying in a room without oxygen. Connor is working on a solution. Connor seems unconcerned, slow, unhurried, and relaxed. It's jarringly awful writing. I wanted to see urgency, fear and focus. I wanted tension. The most tense I felt was as to whether or not Rex would survive and even that was ruined by his super quick recovery. When you're more concerned about whether a CGI flying lizard might survive than one of the more compelling characters (Burton), then you know something is up. 

The reason I stopped watching Primeval during series 3 was because it had an excellent concept that was being handled extremely badly. This show has a really great potential but it's now series 4 and I just don't see it being realised. I'll persevere but only because I hope for better.

Primeval: S04E02

The second episode of series 4 was a vast improvement over the first. Whilst both are still run of the mill monster of the week episodes, the second episode had a heart. There were jokes, Lester, Abby and Connor actually acted like themselves and there were more hints of what Gideon (the old man who keeps talking to Matt) is up to. And with Connor's friend from the dodo episode returning and our first look at Rex and his new home in the menagerie, we had a good sense of the highlights of earlier series.

Plus Kaprosuchus was this weeks monster. How anyone can not go "Whoop" at that, I don't know!

Primeval: S04E01

I've been looking forward to the return of Primeval for some time. It's a bit bizarre, given the fact that I gave up on series 3 halfway through and promised myself never to watch the show again.

So I sat down to watch the first episode of the fourth season with my expectations raised extremely highly and thus I was disappointed.

The problem with the show had been that it was becoming ever more a "monster of the week" show. That was forgiveable at the start, but I'd hoped to see a thread of a story going through each episode. The Helen Cutter stuff just didn't do it for me. Thus when this first episode turned out to be little more than just another monster of the week story (it's a Spinosaurus, which sort of makes up for it!) I was crushed.

However, I'm being unfair. The acting was better than usual. If we forget the massive plot holes (good to see somethings never change), the story was alright as a set up. The end showing Matt Anderson talking to some old fellow, and the possible dynamics of Philip Burton's relationship with the ARC leave me hopeful there might be something more to come.

So yes I was disappointed. I shall lower my expectations for tonight's episode accordingly and cross my fingers for improvement.

A Christmas Carol: 2010 Xmas Doctor Who Special

It just wouldn't be Christmas Day without a Doctor Who special! I imagine in a hundred years it'll be as much a part of the Christmas holiday as the Christmas tree and mince pies are today. Alright, a boy can dream can't he?

I was only saying to my better half today, whilst watching Scrooged, that A Christmas Carol must be the most adapted novel in all of history. So there was a big concern that Doctor Who's take on it might be dry, boring and old hat. Surely there's only so many ways to tell a story, after all. Yet I felt that this episode took the heart of the traditional Dickens story, and put a wonderful twist on it meaning it seemed fresh, and unpredictable.

I particularly liked the fact that as Kazran Sardick (this episode's Scrooge) was changed through the "Ghosts" process, there were unintended consequences blending the best of the old with the best timey-wimeyness one can expect from Doctor Who.

The acting was initially worrying but got stronger and stronger as the episode went on, the flying fish were an excellently alien but still charmingly kitsch addition and the flying shark was basically added just to please me. Surely a flying shark in a Christmas themed Doctor Who episode is as close to realising my ultimate dream as there can be?

The romantic/depressing subplot was played out with an unfamiliar subtlety. Whereas Russell T. Davies would have bashed us round the head with it, here it was allowed to just be and was all the more touching and upsetting for it.

And, as someone who hasn't particularly warmed to the Eleventh Doctor during the fifth/two hundredth and ninty first/twelth series of Doctor Who, I was mightily impressed by Matt Smith's performance and finally feel like I can accept him as our favourite Time Lord.

All in all an absolutely top notch episode of modern Doctor Who with the series 6/five million/-5 trailer looking totally epic!

Zombie Apocalypse by Stephen Jones

Full disclosure: I'm a Zombie-aholic. I've seen the movies, read the books, adored the comics and just this last two weeks raved about TV series. So when, whilst wandering through my local bookstore the other day desperate for inspiration, I saw a book entitled "Zombie Apocalypse I could not walk past. 


In retrospect, picking it up and taking it home was an excellent decision. The story is told via the medium of letters, emails, diary entries, blogposts and Twitter feeds which makes it quite disjointed but not unduly so, and is very reminiscent of World War Z by Max Brooks (not a bad thing at all). It helps create a picture of the world far more easily and quickly than a normal narrative story. 


Mixing humour, recent political and news events, horror and an underlying bleakness, the story rolls on quickly to a humourous if despairing end. I got through it in a matter of hours, which shows just how easily it grabs your attention.


You do care about the characters, you do get taken in by the story (I stopped reading half way through and was surprised to find there were no zombies trying to break down my door!) and it will leave any horror or zombie fan very satisfied indeed. 


An excellent book and one I wholeheartedly recommend. 


Further Reading 


Zombie Apocalypse! US Amazon UK Amazon

If you feel benevolent and particularly generous, this writer always appreciates things bought for him from his wishlist