A few days ago, Paramount Pictures released their first promo images for the new G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. I thought they looked fairly promising and bad-ass, but, today, they’ve released the first T.V. spot for the movie, to be aired during the Superbowl tomorrow.

Superhero Hype! has a world exclusive, so you’ll have to venture over there to check it out. Check it out.

Holy hell, was I ever wrong. This looks absolutely horrible, and I shouldn’t be surprised, seeings as how it’s directed by the guy who did the Mummy, but wow. I wasn’t expecting it to be that bad.

And what was that music? And was Snake Eyes at the end there made of computer graphics? And who thought it’d be a good idea to cast one of the Wayons brothers as an action star?

This is gonna be ugly.

Welcome to the latest edition of Doomkopf’s Book of Doom. This week, our roundtable discussion is about the final issue of Grant Morrison’s “Final Crisis.” This isn’t the first time we’ve discussed the series on here, and our Book of Doom has even been devoted to its issues more than once or twice.

For this last issue, though, we’ve assembled a team of celebrity guest bloggers to join us in tackling the merits of said issue. None of us have the last word on the matter, though, so feel free to chime in with your own thoughts in the comments section.

To start with, let me say that my expectations for this series were pretty low following the abysmal lead-in from Countdown to Final Crisis, which I had the distinctly unpleasant task of reviewing for an entire year. Thankfully, Final Crisis glossed over that year and ignored every single thing that happened within the pages of that worthless piece of garbage.

Now that we’re at the end of Final Crisis, though, I’m left wondering what the point of all of it was. Crisis on Infinite Earths was created to fold a lot of continuity contradictions into one cohesive Earth; Infinite Crisis was made to brighten the DCU and get rid of all the gloom and paranoia (it failed in that); yet, Final Crisis just seems to be here to capitalize on the Crisis brand. It doesn’t make a lick of sense why this was published so soon after Infinite Crisis, but we’ll leave that alone, for now.

This issue, specifically, is what we’re here to discuss, so let’s do that. And, to get it out of the way, let me ask a simple question.

What the hell was that?

The Flashes do something that seems at best unnecessary and at worst illogical, bringing the Black Racer to Darkseid so that he can die more quickly than he would otherwise. Superman makes a wish into a Miracle Machine. Wonder Woman rejects the Anti-Life Equation. Aquaman comes back for a panel. The Green Lanterns see some monsters. A Vampire Superman shows up and gets killed. Captain Marvel from Earth-5 amasses an army that never sees any battle. The Monitors quit monitoring stuff.

Am I missing something here?

This just seems like the perfect ending to a series that has been incoherent nonsense since the start, and I suppose I’ll leave it at that, since I’m pretty drunk, and we have an all-star cast of guest reviewers to send us home. To start things, let’s turn things over to our very own Doominator:

• Doominator: (more…)

It’s not often that we here at Doomkopf get let in on breaking news, as we tend to fall more in the gripe / moan / insult category, but the good people at First Second Books just sent over a note that Scott McCloud (of Zot! and Understanding Comics fame) is joining the indie publisher for the release of two upcoming books.

A new work of graphic fiction, tentatively titled “The Sculptor,” is slated for publication in Spring 2013 and will be followed by a non-fiction book.

First Second’s Editorial Director Mark Siegel says, “Scott McCloud’s accomplishments are considerable: as spokesman and champion of the medium of comics, as its great explainer and theorist, as its dedicated practitioner. Scott has now tasked himself with an ambitious pole-vault into adult fiction—a great American graphic novel.”
[...]
Of this new editorial partnership, McCloud commented: “I’m thrilled to be working with First Second. I’ve been in contact with Mark Siegel since the line launched and have watched with admiration as their catalog has grown in depth, breadth and quality, including some of my favorite new artists working on upcoming projects. This is a forward-looking team that understands comics, and can match my enthusiasm for its endless possibilities.”

I’ve very much enjoyed the only two books I’ve read from First Second — Prince of Persia and Slow Storm, the first of which we reviewed and the second of which will hopefully soon be reviewed here alongside an interview with creator Danica Novgorodoff.

What in Blue Blazes is this?

This looks frickin’ terrible. I just stumbled across it on the internet, so I have no idea how much of this footage will be used in the upcoming movie, but, boy, it just looks all sorts of bad. Like, they’re intentionally trying to make it look like it’s from the 70s, but that doesn’t stop it from being incredibly lame.

I dunno, maybe I’m being too harsh. What do you guys think? Is this as stupid as I think it is?

Now that our look back at 2008 has concluded, it’s once again time to set our sights on the future. Just as I do every year, I’m here to discuss the upcoming superhero movies of 2009, and, from initial glance, it looks like it’s going to be one weird year.

In 2008, we had quite a lot of inconsistency when it came to these flicks, and 2009 doesn’t look to be any different. Last summer, we saw two of the best superhero movies ever made, with The Dark Knight shattering expectations, not to mention box office records. Iron Man also did quite the number at the box office, and it was an incredibly enjoyable experience, to boot.

Yet, the year was rounded out by two of the absolute worst films ever made (in any genre), in the form of Punisher: War Zone and The Spirit.

Enough about the past, though. We’re here to talk about the future, and it looks like it might be a very frustrating future, indeed (Obama lied, there’s no such thing as hope for the future!). Let’s go!

To begin things, let’s talk about probably the most anticipated superhero movie of the year, in the form of Watchmen, set for a March 6 release (thankfully, those lawsuits from Fox have been fully resolved).

The previews for this movie look semi-promising, but I’m not a big fan of computer graphics and slow motion wire stunts, so I’m not sure if this will be anywhere near as good as the comic. While that’s not surprising, it’s still kind of a letdown.

As much as I want to get my hopes up for Watchmen, the fact is, I’ve read the final script, and there are enough tweaks and changes to the original story (that don’t really make sense as to why they’ve been changed), that I have next to no faith that this will be anything more than two hours of dreadful mediocrity.

Speaking of dreadful mediocrity (don’t worry, Jim Doom, I’m not stealing your Doomino Effect gimmick), that brings us to the April 8 release of Dragonball Evolution. (more…)

In honor of the release of Final Crisis #7, which finally deflated my three-year-old theory that Batman would become the Spectre, I give to you another theory: 4thletter: Beetle for the Cowl.

Like Batman-as-Spectre, Gavok’s theory is remarkable for its utilitarian brilliance. It’s full of supporting research that validates the comic reading experience by honoring years of scattered hints. It involves faith in the safe belief that Geoff Johns would plan the foundation of a story long in advance. And it would be awesome, which leads me to believe it will never happen.

But man, sometimes theories come along that just reignite your excitement for the potential of comic books to tell great soap opera stories.

I imagine it’s probably a futile effort to convince anyone to start picking up Hercules.

That’s probably why Marvel tricked me into subscribing to the book. But, I continue to subscribe because, damn! it’s the funniest funny book I’ve ever read.

Picking up Hercules, initially, feels a lot like getting one of those men’s bodybuilding magazines. For someone with a pre-Cap Steve Rogers frame like me, it especially feels like I’m trying to compensate for something. I mean, here’s Herc, bare-chested, hairy, and enormous. And he wears a skirt that sometimes, depending on the angle, comes a bit too close to exposing his mythic peen.

Marvel annoyingly—and perhaps wisely—transitioned The Incredible Hulk title into The Incredible Hercules, shortly after the Grecian’s appearance in “World War Hulk”. I’m not sure why, exactly; I don’t know that there was a lot of previous demand for Herc to have a solo title. All I can assume is they wanted Hulk to have a new title, with a new #1, that the character isn’t strong enough to support multiple ongoing titles, and the company wanted to milk suckers like me who didn’t realize the changeover would last quite a bit longer than temporary. (more…)

Since Doomanchu is proudly serving pancakes (and his country) right now in Iraq, I’m taking this opportunity to honor him by revisiting his lone post on Doomkopf. And by “honor” him, I do in fact mean “blatantly steal the idea from his post and relate it to something that came out this week.”

The issue (which I do not have, to be clear) that I have issues with is, of course, Final Crisis #7. I stopped buying this train wreck after issue #3, and I don’t regret my decision for a second. All my comic friends seem to have kept up with the series despite their better judgment, and even the guy from my local comic store was more than willing to tell a potential customer why it isn’t worth buying.

These are the issues I had with this particular issue:

1) There is apparently an Earth in the multiverse where everything is exactly the same except everyone’s black. And no, I’m not talking about the Milestone universe (those guys are back on New Earth, remember?). DC must not realize and/or care that they’ve established there are only 52 universes in the multiverse. (more…)

In a recent interview with Newsarama, DC Comics writer Grant Morrison, the man behind Batman RIP, Final Crisis, and Superman: Beyond, does a little complaining of his own about internet complainers. In his words:

Every time I read about the agonizing pains of ‘event fatigue’ or how ‘3-D hurts my head…’ or how something’s ‘incomprehensible’ when most people are ‘comprehending’ it just fine, it’s like visiting a nursing home. ‘Events’ in superhero comic books FATIGUE you? I’m speechless. Admittedly they do tend to be a little more exciting than the instruction leaflets that come with angina pills but… ‘fatigue’?

Superhero comics should have an ‘event’ in every panel! We all know this instinctively. Who cares ‘how?’ as long as it feels right and looks brilliant?

It’s funny, because we complain about event fatigue and 3D glasses giving us headaches all the time around here.

And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve referred to Final Crisis as nothing more than a bunch of freaked out gobbledygook.

Let me defend ourselves a little, though, since it’s clear that Mr. Morrison was speaking specifically about our blog in that interview (hey, there, buddy, thanks for reading!).

“Event fatigue,” first of all, isn’t exactly describing what you’re talking about. Only a great fool would think fans are complaining because stuff is happening on every panel of their comics. Can you really imagine somebody saying, “Boy, this new issue of Captain America sucks because that goddamn Ed Brubaker keeps making Cap get into fights and shit. I wish there’d be 22 pages of him just taking a nap already! Sheesh!”

No, that’s retarded. Hit the jump, readers. (more…)

This movie just officially made its way onto my radar.

Source: Newsarama