He's keeping a running tally of all the continuity mistakes...

What has come before: Norman Osborn (formerly the Green Goblin, now the Iron Patriot) pretty much runs America. Clint Barton (formerly Hawkeye, now Ronin) seems to be more upset about this than anyone (even Spider-Man, oddly enough).
This comic dredges up some mixed emotions in me. I’ll get into it further after the break, as there are some spoilers contained herein.

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What has come before: It really doesn’t matter.

I have nothing bad to say about Alan Davis's covers. That logo, on the other hand...

Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s aborted run on Fantastic Four was ambitious, yet disappointing. With their final issue, they joined the ranks of extraordinarily talented creative teams (JMS and Mike McKone, Jeph Loeb and Carlos Pacheco, Chris Claremont and Salvador LaRocca, etc.) that, for one reason or another, proved unable to fill Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Galactus-sized shoes. When I heard about the incoming creative team, I was indifferent at best. I am unfamiliar with writer Jonathan Hickman’s previous work, and Dale Eaglesham’s art has always been solid, but has never fostered any sense of fannish loyalty in me. Still, since I have been fascinated with these four heroes for a long time, I felt compelled to give them a chance and picked up their first issue, despite the retro 70′s logo and the Alan Davis cover (I adore Davis, but his awesome covers have graced some awful comics).

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Dear Marvel,

My name is Mike Rapin. I’m a pretty big fan of almost everything you do. There are a few things here and there that I disagree with (How you dealt with Xorn, Gambit becoming and unbecoming Death, Mini-Marvels, the last of Kirkman’s Ultimate X-Men) but for the most part, I can deal with it. I really can. You tend to bring things back and make me, the reader, 90% happy all of the time. Not saying that you couldn’t do 95%, but you got to 90% and that’s better than what other companies (NBC-Heroes, Disney-Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Warner Bros.-Alexander) can do with an extremely brilliant staff of writers, artists and creators.

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I was sitting at my apartment today when I saw a tweet from none other than Warren Ellis which contained a link to a clip from Comic Con ’08 that contained a fight scene from the upcoming movie The Spirit. The fight was between our hero, The Spirit/Denny Colt, and the antagonist in the story: The Octopus. Played respectively by Gabriel Macht and Samuel L. Jackson, the fight was utterly outrageous; hundreds of punches, smashes with concrete blocks and toilets are all over the place. It’s completely hilarious. I’m not sure if this was intentional, but from the clip it seemed to be that way.

Now, I don’t know if this was how Will Eisner had originally written the series, or if any other writer, wrote the story in a “Oh my god, this is effing outrageous” type of way, but wow, this clip just made think: is Frank Miller making a comedy?

More ranting and the clip after the break.

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Oh, this is just the beginning...

Now, I’m a dirty Marvel fanboy with the grease and grime of 8 years worth of comic books from Marvel plastering my skin; digging itself into every crease and crevice and dirtying the undersides of my finger and toe-nails. It’s that bad. But despite being such a dirty Marvel fanboy I can’t agree with every single thing they do. I could rant about a few major things (namely Marvel’s relentless undoing of almost everything Grant Morrison did on X-Men) but I come to you today about one thing: Marvel’s trailers for upcoming comic books.

** Warning: vulgarity and anger after the break **

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I just got through issue #5 a few minutes ago of Watchmen and my mind is going crazy with everything. I know this is an older comic, but as I said before, it’s something I’ve been meaning to read for a long while and I’m really glad I started today.

I don’t think I need to explain the plot, because really you need to go out and read this some way or some how if you’re interested. Alan Moore‘s genius spans generations and probably dimensions. And yes, this is just more and more praise to an already infamous and critically acclaimed graphic novel/series but hot-dog-diggity damn is it good.

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