Supercrooks #1–4 by Mark Millar and Leinil Yu It may sound like a simple pitch – Ocean’s Eleven with supervillains – but it’s a good one (and superpowers make everything better) and the execution is equally good, which means that Supercrooks is a great example of a comic book that…
Not strictly a comic book adaptation – Green Hornet originated as a radio series in 1936 (the film states that it was based on the radio series): a newspaper publisher who fights crime as a masked hero by night with assistant Kato. It has had a complicated multi-media life since…
I don’t get the appeal of Ghost Rider. A skeleton wearing leather with his head on fire riding a motorcycle – I think it might be an American thing, something to do with riding a ‘hog’ on the open road. The first film was not good, with the added yuck…
Is Jonah Hex one of the worst movies with a decent cast of actors ever? Josh Brolin as Hex, John Malkovitch as Quentin Turnbull (the villain of the piece), the awesome Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett in a straight role (although I do feel sorry for him – he’s a good…
The main part of N.I.C.E. finished at 5pm so that they could change the hall from the artists’ alley to a room to hold the waiting audience for Alan Moore’s appearance. Unfortunately, everything else in Wicksteed Park closed at the same time, meaning that there was little to do while…
The first Northants International Comics Expo (I think the ‘International’ is stretching it, but I guess they wanted the groovy acronym; a bit like the Dublin International Comics Expo wanted ‘D.I.C.E.’) was held in Wicksteed Park, Kettering, on Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 September. I attended on the Saturday because that…
The great thing about Looper is that it blends smart sci-fi with exciting action without losing anything from either element – that’s a smart trick to pull off. It has a strong and simple hook: in the future, time travel has been invented but immediately banned, used illegally by gangsters…
By Kim Newman I have thoroughly enjoyed Kim Newman’s alternative world vampire stories, with their wonderful blending of history and characters from literature and film, so I was looking forward to sampling the next instalment. Dracula Cha Cha Cha is another delightful addition to his ongoing storyline and it continues…
‘Created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra’. That’s the first credit that comes up when the film has finished, before the name of the director or the screenwriter. If I wasn’t smiling before, I was certainly smiling when I saw those words. I don’t remember those words appearing in the…
Wolverine #66–72 and Wolverine: Old Man Logan Giant-Size by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven I haven’t purchased a Mark Millar comic book in ages – his overbearing hucksterism, his ‘film pitch as comic book’ approach, and his seeming dislike for people who read comic books make for an unpleasant taste…