Tag Archives: Batman

Variant cover to “Batman” #69, Francesco Mattina, 2019

DC Comics.

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Cover to “Batman” #516, Kelley Jones, 1995

DC Comics.

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Cover to “Batman” #518, Kelley Jones, 1995

DC Comics.

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A short and spoiler-free review of “Avengers: Endgame” (2019)

Mind. Blown.

If I could tell my 19-year-old self discovering superhero comics in college exactly how good their big screen adaptations would become, I wouldn’t believe me.

I saw “Avengers: Endgame” (2019) tonight with expectations that were very high. It was still better than I thought it would be. It was easily better than last year’s “Avengers: Infinity War” (although I think of them as two halves of the same epic movie).  I don’t pretend to be a film expert, so take this as speculation — I personally think the pair of “Infinity” films have made comic-book movie history in the same manner as the original “Superman” (1978), Tim Burton’s “Batman” (1989) and Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy (2005-2012).

I don’t really want to make any more observations, because I’m too afraid of inadvertently posting spoilers.  But I will say that there is a massive tonal change between “Infinity War” and “Endgame.”  The banter and humor of the former is largely left aside, and this concluding story is darker and far more emotionally sophisticated.  It’s moving.  It feels strange to write here, but I kept thinking during the movie that this was a more “grown up” Marvel film.

And it is EPIC.  I honestly can’t imagine how Marvel can top it with future films.  There is an action set piece that made my jaw drop.  I can’t say more.

This is an obvious 10 out of 10 from me.

 

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Cover to “Batman” #87, Win Mortimer, 1954

DC Comics.

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Cover to “Batman” #512, Mike Manley, 1994

DC Comics.

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Throwback Thursday: the Marvel superheroes in the 1989 Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Oh, god.  Oh, god.  This … this is evidently what passed for the heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe in 1989.  (This is the company’s float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York.)

Can I be blamed for not getting into superhero comics until college?  When portrayals like this represented the genre to the general public?

Dear God, what have they done to Dr. Doom??  And is that misshapen, dirty aluminum golem supposed to be the Silver Surfer?!  And they’re all in a … multi-level mausoleum?  A crumbling clock-tower?  A haunted castle that inexplicably has a manhole right outside its entrance?  Huh?  Wha?

Hey, this was nearly two full decades before the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Indeed, it was the very same year as Tim Burton’s “Batman” — and that is actually the first bona fide modern superhero movie that I can think of without googling it.  The genre had a long way to go.

Hey … the Spider-man balloon was pretty cool.

 

 

“Batman: the Dark Knight Returns” #3, Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, 1986

DC Comics.

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Cover to “Batman Annual” #15, Scott Hampton, 1991

DC Comics.

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Another comic cover by the late, great Norm Breyfogle.

This is for 1991’s “Batman: Holy Terror.”  It was one of the first graphic novels  I ever read, and it was one of the books that got me hooked on comics.

 

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