Star Trek

Yeah, it’s movie-review time again.

As you’ve already heard from every other reviewer in the universe, the new “Star Trek” movie is pretty spectacularly awesome. I’m not a big enough Trekkie to have made the first showing (I’ve got a severe allergy to people who show up for movies wearing costumes), but my brother and I took a break from installing insulation Sunday afternoon to hit the theater. I’d been taking the early reviews with a grain of salt — I remember how wildly enthusiastic the “Star Wars” fans were when “Phantom Menace” hit the big screen — but I got won over very fast.

No spoiler here — all the action here takes place in an alternate universe from the standard “Star Trek” continuity, which gives the filmmakers the opportunity to reboot classic “Star Trek” into something new for the 21st century. And even better, they gave the whole thing to a guy with no connection to previous “Star Trek” movies — J.J. Abrams, a dude who is best known for producing and directing action movies and wildly complicated TV shows. As a result, you get a movie that, while very respectful of classic Trek’s history and performances, doesn’t feel duty-bound to precisely replicate them, especially when audiences would rather enjoy some brawling, some stuntwork, some thrills, and some shocks.

I was expecting the least from Chris Pine, the guy who was picked to play the new version of James Kirk, but he ended up being the best surprise — he doesn’t try to channel William Shatner, but he does bring the essence of Kirk — the brash, cocky, womanizing bad boy — to the screen. Zachary Quinto as Spock, Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy, Anton Yelchin as Chekov, and especially Simon Pegg as the uncommonly funny Montgomery Scott are pretty much perfect, and everyone else is really close to perfect. Eric Bana’s genocidal Romulan Nero is an extraordinarily appealing character — party psycho, part charmer (I’m wildly in favor of his initial greeting to Captain Pike), and almost as good a villain as Ricardo Montalban’s Khan Noonien Singh or Christopher Plummer’s General Chang.

I’ve seen some complaints that it’s got too much action. I’d consider that a legitimate complaint if it was bad action or pointless action, but it’s not. It’s good action that serves the plot and doesn’t get in the way of character development. Yes, McCoy, Sulu, Scotty, and other characters don’t get as much screen time as Kirk, Spock, and Uhura — I certainly would’ve loved to see Pegg and Urban get some more time in front of the cameras. But this is an ensemble cast — there’s just no way to make sure all of them get equal time.

I think it’s a great movie, and a great way to reboot the series. I’m looking forward to the sequels.

Another long work-week has passed, and it’s time once again for that time we all love the most: FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight, we’re going all the way back to May 1939 for Detective Comics #27, by Bill Finger and Bob Kane. In the first appearance of the Dark Knight, Batman slugs murderous industrialist Alfred Stryker in the jaw, knocking him into a vat of acid…

SOCK!

That artwork was actually taken from a collection called Batman in the Forties. No, I don’t actually own the first appearance of Batman — if I did, I doubt I’d be so worried about job-hunting…

Power Girl #1

The bestest blonde bombshell in comics finally gets her own ongoing series. And it’s got art by Amanda Conner! This is fantastic news all around.

Power Girl is settling in at her new hometown, New York City, and re-starting her old secret identity as Karen Starr, owner of Starrware Labs. But the Big Apple gets invaded by rampaging robots that transmit — for lack of a better word — bad vibes, and PeeGee gets captured by the Ultra-Humanite. What’s the evil brain-swapping super-ape gunning for?

Verdict: Numerous enthusiastic thumbs up. Yay, an ongoing series for Power Girl! Yay, art by the impossibly awesome Amanda Conner! All that plus lots of great character moments for Karen Starr and her employees. And a nice cliffhanger with the Ultra-Humanite, too. Go pick it up!

Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade #6

A great series ends here — hope they eventually pick it back up for an ongoing.

The school principal has revealed his big secret — he’s secretly Mr. Mxyzptlk in disguise! And he plans to destroy both the Third and Fifth Dimensions to give himself ultimate power! Belinda Zee has been turned into a statue, Supergirl’s time-traveling future self has been pulled back to the future, Superman and Lex Luthor have been turned into two-dimensional crayon drawings, and it’s all up to Supergirl and Lena Luthor to put their differences aside and save the world. I’d say more, but I don’t want to give away too much, ’cause it’s awfully good.

Verdict: Another colossal thumbs up. Vast, insane fun. I’m pretty irritated that this one is over already, and I really hope they come back with a good sequel. Landry Q. Walker and Eric Jones deserve tons of credit for crafting this impossibly charming and fun series. If you haven’t gotten it already, keep an eye out for the trade paperback.

B.P.R.D.: The Black Goddess #4

There’s an awful lot of back-and-forth going on here. Johann Kraus is sneaking into the hidden city, dragons are aiding the soldiers and warrior monks against the frogs and sub-humans and giant bugs, and Memnan Saa tells stories of ancient myths to rationalize his plans to save only a tiny portion of humanity from the invaders.

Verdict: Thumbs down. The fight scenes are good, and Memnan Saa has one very good badass moment, but this story has been going on for a long, long time, and it should’ve been over by now.

Wonder Woman #31

Well, Hippolyta’s former honor guard allies itself with Ares, while Wonder Woman gets weepy about Etta Candy and gets comforted by Dr. T.O. Morrow, of all people. Achilles and his crazy Greek dudes attack the UN, and a nurse gets possessed by Athena to prophesy various dooms and reveal that Genocide is actually the future dead body of Wonder Woman herself. Wondy also smacks Achilles around a little and then punches out a nuclear bomb.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Even the bit with the nuke ended up dull, and the rest of it was really beyond boring. This is another story that has gone on way, way too long.

Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes #10

Dr. Henry Pym loses out on a warehouse job he really needed — and so does Flint Marko, better known as the Sandman. When Marko robs the warehouse to get revenge, can Pym’s shrinking powers as Ant-Man and his hordes of ant buddies help him stop the Sandman before it’s too late?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Hank Pym makes a great hard-luck superhero here. The ants are funny, his relationship with Janet Van Dyne is amusing, and the job interview at the beginning of the story — where Pym and Marko get beat out for the warehouse job by a pencil-necked geek named Irving Forbush — is definitely a keeper.

Marvel Adventures: The Avengers #35

Storm, Giant-Girl, and Tigra are out-of-town for a few weeks, so the guys on the team are living it up and making colossal messes. And the biggest mess is made by Hawkeye, who signs up for a dating website and accidentally uploads the whole team’s info to the site as well. Soon enough, the Avengers are swamped by the city’s most eligible bachelorettes. Unable to get any crimefighting done, they go to the headquarters of the Lover’s Leap website and find that it’s being run by Batroc the Leaper. Batroc the Leaper?! Why is Batroc the Leaper running a dating website?! Who cares, it’s completely hilarious, so I completely approve. Anyway, Batroc persuades them to go on just a few dates before he’ll remove their info from the site. But of course, Batroc doesn’t play fair…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Very funny stuff, and of course, Batroc is always good for some fun. But I think my favorite panel is this one:

Please note the “Snikts” at the bottom of the panel. Wolverine is not apparently a fan of yappy dogs.

With the Lubbock Comic Book Expo over for another year, it’s time to try to catch up on some of the comics reviews I’ve been neglecting. And lo and behold, there’s been a passel of “Green Lantern” comics piling up.

Green Lantern #39

We get our introduction to Agent Orange, the sole guardian of the Orange Lantern in this issue. The Controllers, old rivals of the Guardians of the Universe who run the Green Lantern Corps, visit the planet Okaara in the Vega system, which is off-limits to the Green Lanterns. The Controllers hope to control the Orange Lantern to power their schemes, but Agent Orange and his minions effortlessly take them apart. Meanwhile, Hal Jordan is still stuck wearing both a Green Lantern ring and a Blue Lantern ring. He has a big argument/discussion with the Blue Lanterns and their guardians, Ganthet and Sayd, about power and/or weaknesses of hope — in other words, hope needs willpower to work, just as the blue rings need green rings to function. The Guardians on Oa aren’t happy that Jordan has two rings, but when the robotic Green Lantern Stel chases a Sinestro Corps member to the Vega system, Larfleeze, the greedy Agent Orange, attacks Stel and the Guardians for breaking their oath to leave Vega alone.

Verdict: Ehh, thumbs down. Mostly boring stuff. Too much talky-talk, which I could excuse if it were interesting talky-talk.

Green Lantern #40

The Guardians decree that the Vega system is no longer off-limits to the GL Corps, and they all go off to invade Okaara and take out Larfleeze. But things don’t go as easily as they’d hoped — when Agent Orange kills someone, he’s able to steal their identity and create an orange-light construct of them to fight on his behalf.

Verdict: I’ll give it a thumbs up for the fairly nifty identity-stealing gimmick of Agent Orange, but other than that, there’s a whole lot of shootin’ and shoutin’ and not a whole lot to show for it.

Free Comic Book Day: Blackest Night #0

Our focus here is on Hal Jordan and Barry Allen as they review some of the high-profile recent deaths in the DCU — Batman, the Martian Manhunter, Aquaman — with the implication that they’ll be some of the zombies rising under the control of the Black Lanterns whenever the “Blackest Night” crossover gets started this summer.

Verdict: Thumbs up, mostly for the great dialogue and interplay between Hal and Barry. Sure, the “Blackest Night” hints are fairly cool, as are the pinups of the seven color-coded corps, but really, it’s just nice to see GL and Flash interacting again.

Well, not a hangover exactly. Alcohol in large enough concentrations is a poison, and there weren’t nothing poisonous about Saturday’s Lubbock Comic Book Expo.

We had at least 2,500 attendees, which was a heck of a lot more than last year. Part of that was because the Lubbock Arts Festival was downstairs, and some folks climbed the stairs to see what was going on. But I’m good with that. A lot of those curiosity-seekers left with a few free comics, thanks to Free Comic Book Day. They enjoyed the presentations we held. They had a blast watching the costume contest. They got to talk to a lot of wonderful artists and vendors, and they picked up a few old comics they remembered from their childhoods, or they got a sketch from someone, or at the very least, they left saying, “That was fun. What a great group of people.”

As far as I’m concerned, this was a huge success. When I left, I was actually in physical pain, and I was so tired, I went to bed at 9 p.m. and slept for about ten hours. But I would do the whole thing over again in a heartbeat.

Here’s a bunch of pictures from the event:

We’re doing it again this November, from the main exhibit hall in the Science Spectrum. Watch for more announcements about the West Texas Comicon as we get closer to fall!

Wow, I sure do talk about the Lubbock Comic Book Expo a lot…

Actually, I really just wanted to direct your attention to this great article about the Expo that appeared in today’s edition of the A-J.

Go read it, then come on down to the Civic Center and see the show!

If I haven’t mentioned it before, this has been a heck of a week. So let’s just get straight to what we all came here for: FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

From March 1985, here’s Action Comics #565 by Keith Giffen, Robert Loren Fleming, and Bob Oksner, in which Superman ejects Ambush Bug from the Fortress of Solitude:

And that’s that. This week’s been so busy, I’m gonna go grab a little early shut-eye, for once. Y’all don’t forget the Lubbock Comic Book Expo, tomorrow at the Civic Center!

Are you ready for the Lubbock Comic Book Expo? Well, get ready. Get your costume together, get some bucks scrounged up to buy some comics, get your head in gear to meet and talk with some of the comic artists from Lubbock. ‘Cause it’s all happening tomorrow.

Let’s summarize the particulars: The Lubbock Comic Book Expo will be held tomorrow, May 2, at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center, at 1501 Mac Davis Lane. This is held in conjunction with the Lubbock Arts Festival, so expect a crowd. Bring yer walking shoes, ’cause the parking lot is going to be jam-packed. Entrance to the Comic Book Expo is free (we’re upstairs in the Civic Center’s mezzanine), but if you want to get into the Arts Festival, too, it’s gonna cost you two bucks. If I were you, I’d bring two bucks, ’cause the Arts Festival is great fun, and they got lemonade.

What’s there to do once you get there? Well, you can meet tons of exhibitors who will be selling comics, drawing sketches, shaking hands, and making contacts. You can enjoy Free Comic Book Day (but you better get there early, ’cause the free comics will probably disappear very quickly). You can get your picture taken with Batman, the Silver Surfer, the Headless Horseman, or any of your fellow comic fanboys and fangirls.

You can enjoy a wide variety of presentations, including:

• 11 a.m.: “The Reality of Spider-Man” with Rob Weiner – in which Rob will attempt to convince us that Spidey is real and is probably going to bite us and inject us with radioactive spider-man eggs.
• 12 noon: “Lubbock’s Comics Connections” with Scott Slemmons – in which I read off a bunch of my old blog posts, but you should come see it anyway, ’cause I’ll be using my beautiful radio voice, which can soothe savage goats.
• 1 p.m.: A demonstration by the Texas Tech Library 2D Lab – the first of three programs about computer aids for artists.
• 2 p.m.: A demonstration by the Texas Tech Library 3D Lab – The folks from the Tech Library also wanted to do something with their 4D Lab, but it got lost somewhere in the Jurassic. Maybe we’ll get to see that one last year.
• 3 p.m.: A Flash animation demonstration with Paul Davidson from South Plains College – a huge number of cartoons nowadays are animated using Adobe Flash, so this should be a good resource for aspiring animators.
• 4 p.m.: The Costume Contest – Are you gonna let that sweaty guy in the trenchcoat, fedora, and homemade Rorschach mask beat you? NO WAY! It’s ON LIKE DONKEY KONG, BABY!
• 5 p.m.: “The Future of Comics in West Texas” with Will Terrell and Robert Mora – in which Will and Robert emerge from the Texas Tech 4D Lab and destroy us all with Atomic Killbots from the 29th Century.

We’re gonna have a blast, and we want all of you to come say howdy. Remember, that’s tomorrow, 10 a.m., at the Civic Center! If you miss out, your future grandchildren will laugh at your lameness.