The Comic Critic

     Well…this review is about 21 years too late haha. Better late than never though so let’s get started!

     Today we’re going to look at a short-lived spin-off series based off of easily my favourite superhero of all time: Spider-Man. This is Spider-Man 2099.  He was created in 1992, first appearing in “The Amazing Spider-Man #365” as part of the Marvel 2099 series. Other notable 2099 series include “Hulk 2099” and “Venom 2099” however Spider-Man 2099 is the most well known. That being said, this character is still pretty unknown to most people who don’t know a lot about Spider-Man or comics in general. However, gamers nowadays do know about the 2099 Spider-Man due to the video-game “Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions” released a couple years ago. 

     Issue number one deals with part of the origin story of this iteration of Spider-Man a.k.a. Miguel O'Hara. The story starts off in a futuristic New York City. We see tall skyscrapers, flying cars, and pretty much everything else that we would imagine to see in the future. Then we turn the page and the new Spider-Man appears. The costume design is pretty cool: solid blue tights with red designs on his chest and mask, and a web cape. He has claws at the ends of his fingers and sharp points on his elbows. Very iconic design in my opinion. 
     The story continues as he is being hunted down by what appear to be futuristic police hunting him by order of the corporation, Alchemax. Of course, he’s Spider-Man and easily escapes from them. He returns to his apartment at Babylon Towers and we get our first glimpse at Miguel O'Hara. He seems like a pretty ordinary guy. Not rich like Bruce Wayne, and not an alien like Clark Kent. Just the way a Spider-Man should be: just a regular guy. His futuristic apartment includes a holographic personal helper, not unlike Jarvis in Iron Man, which has an artificial intelligence built in. O'Hara seems to be in some turmoil and distress (which I won’t get into right now to avoid too many spoilers). The story progresses to where Miguel works: Alchemax. He is a genius who is heading up a genetics project in the labs. He interacts with his co-workers and boss here which shows us his personality. He’s a very sarcastic guy actually. The project Alchemax is essentially human augmentation (giving humans super strength and other powers through genetic alterations.) They test run an experiment on a convicted criminal. Long story short they fail and create a mutant which attacks O'Hara and then instantly dies. The other scientists say that they succeeded in giving him super strength but O'Hara doesn’t care. He decides to quit his job. That’s where the fun starts, and that’s where I’ll stop revealing the plot.

     The story for this issue is pretty good, but at the same time not very informative. The storyline does continue onto the next issue which may be a reason for this however. We get a glimpse into how Miguel O'Hara’s life is and get a good look at his costume, but don’t really see all of his powers in action. There is a lot of dialogue and all of O'Hara’s jokes don’t really help that much. A part that I found very interesting though is that this story takes place in the same (or a similar) universe as the original Spider-Man. There is a scene where O'Hara is discussing the human augmentations and then takes out a picture of Spider-Man saying that he was a legendary hero in the previous century and this is how they should be augmenting their subjects.

     This comic was made in the early 90’s so the artwork looks very dated compared to today’s standards but looks fine nonetheless. The character designs look dark with a good amount of detail and the Spider-Man costume as already discussed looks great too. Overall, the artwork isn’t too sensational but works fine.

     Spider-Man 2099 is one of the best versions of Spider-Man in my opinion.  I just feel though that Marvel needs to take another crack at this character. This series was very short-lived with only 46 issues and a couple of one-shots including a crossover with Peter Parker as well as a couple of video-games. I wish that Marvel would reboot this series or continue where it left off or something like that rather than the direction they’re going with “Superior Spider-Man” which in my opinion, other people’s opinion, and even STAN LEE’s opinion, is a terrible idea for the Spider-Man franchise. But that’s a topic for another time…

     Overall, the story is intriguing and I am eager to continue reading this series and hopefully seeing this character get a new ongoing series himself. I enjoyed reading this, but of course other people may have opinions.  Feel free to like this and comment on your perception of this issue or character. See you next time and as always keep on reading.

     ***IMPORTANT: There may be spoilers in this review for those of you who have not watched this yet. If you have not watched this yet, I highly advise you to stop reading this (yes, I’m telling you to stop reading) and go watch it in order to avoid spoilers. It’ll be worth your while to watch it.***

     The 5th movie in a great line of DC Animated films, “Green Lantern: First Flight” tells the story of the first human green lantern, Hal Jordan, as he is chosen by his ring and must earn the trust of his fellow lanterns and the Guardians of Oa. The story starts off with Hal testing a pilot simulation in a lab. Off in the distance, a spacecraft carrying the injured lantern, Abin Sur, crashes in the desert. Abin Sur lies injured in the wreckage and his ring itself chooses Hal and brings him to the scene. This next part really speaks to Hal’s character. Hal pretty much is brought mysteriously to a crash scene and sees an injured alien lying in the wreckage. Now, most of us would probably turn around and run the other way. Hal on the other hand sees an injured being and goes in to help. Abin Sur explains that the ring has chosen Hal and the ring flies onto Hal’s finger. He transforms and the first green lantern of Earth is born. Later on, four other green lanterns come to see what has happened to Abin Sur. These lanterns are Kilowog, Tomar-Re, Boodikka, and Sinestro.  Yeah, that last name should be setting off alarms in your head. 

     I don’t want to give away too much of the story after that part so I’ll just get on with what I thought about this movie. In my opinion, this movie is amazing. The story is told very well and you really want to know what’s going to happen next. (Here’s where the spoilers start). The plot is pretty much what you may expect after reading above that Sinestro is still a green lantern. The story continues on with Hal joining Sinestro in order to learn how to use the ring. Sinestro, however, has only one thing on his mind: finding the location of Qward. On Qward, the weaponers, a highly skilled race of weapon designers, are fashioning the yellow element weapon: the yellow lantern ring. He eventually finds it and becomes a yellow lantern. This is a great storyline to build this movie around and it is done very well. This movie is great for people who know of green lantern but don’t necessarily know the origins of Hal Jordan or the yellow lantern corps. It is also great for people who do know a lot about the green lantern universe and just want to see more of it. Some hardcore fans make the argument that this movie does not follow the comic universe 100% but honestly, who cares? This movie is fantastic. 

     Along with a great storyline, this film has great animation. With a franchise like green lantern, skill in animation is essential (as long as it’s backed up by a great story and acting ability…..cough cough…Ryan Reynolds green lantern failure…cough cough…). The fight scenes actually showed some impact when punches were landed. The bright green constructs really lit up the screen well and the character designs were really well drawn as well. The animation style looked really good here and I really wished that DC chose to make a series out of this rather than the “Green Lantern: Animated Series” that they chose to go with. I won’t go as far as saying that it would have rivalled Young Justice in quality, but it would have done much better than GL: TAS. 

     If great writing and animation weren’t amazing enough, this movie has a great cast list as well. Christopher Meloni, who some of you may know as Detective Elliot Stabler in Law and Order: SVU, voices Hal Jordan very well and kind of gives him a ‘loose cannon cop’ kind of attitude. Other notable actors include Victor Garber as Sinestro and Kurtwood Smith as Kanjar Ro. 

     The final combat sequence between Hal and Sinestro is well choreographed and shows Hal channel his willpower to overpower Sinestro’s ring. 

     Now, it may seem as though I can only see the great parts of this movie, which is kind of true. Whenever I try to think of something bad about this movie I figure out something that makes me realize that certain flaw makes the movie better. I can’t find anything wrong with it. This movie is definitely one of the best animated movies that DC has released so far and hopefully there are more to come. 

     Hope you enjoyed reading this review. I’m interested to know if you watched it and what you all thought of it whether you agree with me or not. Feel free to leave a comment below. See you next time and as always, keep on reading.

     Yes, it’s Aquaman. He’s the loser of the DC universe, right? WRONG! In this humble reviewer’s opinion Aquaman was never really a loser, per se, but somehow down the line of history he gained the reputation of being one. Regardless, the New 52 Aquaman is no loser.

     For those who don’t know him, Aquaman, also known as Arthur Curry, born to human father and atlantean mother is the rightful ruler of Atlantis and general king of the seas. That’s just a quick intro to him.  

     Issue #1 begins at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean, deep in the trenches (which is appropriate due to the name of this arc being “The Trench”). We then see these mysterious creatures emerge and rise towards the surface. The creatures can be seen on the cover of this issue above. They look rather cuddly, don’t they? I won’t give out too much of what happens with them for the rest of the issue.  When Aquaman finally shows up in the issue, he stops some amateur thieves from escaping in their car. What I found really funny is how everyone reacts to seeing Aquaman. The police officers have no idea that Aquaman can walk around on land and one of them asks him if he is okay and if he needs “a glass of water.”  Geoff Johns (the writer) does a great job of immersing Aquaman into a world similar to ours where he faces ridicule on a daily basis on the surface world.  You kind of feel for him in this world: being half-human, he is given harsh treatment while ruling Atlantis and abdicates his thrown in order to live amongst the humans who in turn ridicule him for having “useless powers” and being a “laughingstock.”  At this point in the story, he needs to make a decision on where he belongs but essentially has nowhere to go.

     Now onto the actual review.  The criteria for my reviews will hinge on a 10-point system: 5-points for story (writing) and 5-points for artwork (presentation).

    Geoff Johns does a great job giving life and emotion to Aquaman. We really see that Arthur has some turmoil brewing within himself from the way he is treated and feel for the character. The atmosphere seamlessly shifts from dark to light to dark and then even darker. The dialogue was solid with a little bit of bumps at times but they were negligible. Overall, a solid first issue story-wise which made me want to see what happens in the next issue.

    Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, and Rod Reis were all in charge of artwork for this issue and they did a pretty good job. During the underwater scene described earlier, the dark artwork is great with a black backdrop which makes the creatures basically glow. The overall design of the creatures is quite simple but terrifying nonetheless. The rest of the issue was illustrated great with nice bright colours during the daytime scenes. Later on in the issue, there is a scene with Aquaman and Mera (his wife) where he is out near the sea contemplating his life.  The sky is dark and the waves crashing onto the land light up the page brilliantly. Now onto probably the most important topic of the series in regards to art: the design choice for Aquaman himself. Every artist in the DC universe has their own take on each character, and later on when I begin to review Justice League you may notice differences in Aquaman’s design. For this series, his design is pretty nice. As other Aquaman iterations did, this one has the usual orange scale and green pants design.  His orange scales look more like a shirt here with a collar on it and following the lead of the rest of the New 52 heroes he’s lost the “underpants” part of his tights and instead has solid green tights with fins on the back. He’s got blonde hair as always and his trusty trident as his weapon of choice (although it has 5 prongs so I don’t know if you can still call it a trident). A gold belt with the Aquaman “A” and green gloves finish up the design. It is not an adventurous design by any means but suits him well.  Overall, a great job on artwork.

     Overall, this issue was a great read and I will definitely continue to read this series.  I look forward to reading and reviewing the rest of the series. See you next time and as always, keep on reading.