Upcomming Posts!

The Ronin here,

I just want to let everyone who reads know what is coming up soon, possibly over the next few days.

You shall rue the day you crossed <redacted> (another silly super villain thread)

Whats the point: Journey into Mystery (Spotlight on a new .1 issue)

Justice League of America #1 review/discussion (yet another review, I bet this is the only one like it on the net)

I am excited for Action Comics #1!

The Amazing Spider-Man 668 (review)

Series spotlight: Irredeemable (indy series over look)

So stay tuned so to speak, and as always feel free to comment even if you disagree with me, discussion is never bad.

Fear Itself Tie-ins

There are a lot of Fear Itself tie-ins, which ones suck and which ones don't suck? Well we have a lot of Meh, a few good and one 'what the hell is this?'

Baby why do you do me so wrong? (Spider-Girl)

The Ronin here,

There is a character I like, A series I wanted to like, but was disappointed by. She is Anya Corazon, the non May Parker Spider-Girl. I like Anya, my introduction to the character came in two places at roughly the same time. I had just finished reading Ms. Marvel's recent series which featured her as a supporting character. She was someone for Ms. Marvel to mentor, and they had a little sister/big sister kind of relationship. About the same time she appeared in Grim Hunt, as one of the 'spiders' Kraven's wacky family was after.

In Ms. Marvel she was young, new and inexperienced, but greatly wanted to be a hero.  Ms. Marvel needed what she was, a younger character to mentor, to teach. At the time Ms. Marvel needed to have a real inexperienced character looking up to her, she acted as a nice foil to Ms Marvel and really added to my enjoyment of that series.

Captain America WAS AWESOME!

 

The Ronin here!

Captain America was awesome. It might be the best superhero movie of the year. There are to many reviews of this film already for me to be able to add anything so I will simply say this, go watch the movie! And so many wonderful easter eggs that had me giddy.

For fans of the golden age "Human Torch", pay close attention to the exhibit hall for a little something-something, early in the movie.

Avengers Academy 2.0?

That is all!

DC comics! (and the new 52)

The Ronin here!

First of all, I understand that like 90 percent of what I have posted has been about Marvel comics. I am a huge Marvel fan going way back, my all time favorite superhero is Spider-Man, I grew up on Marvel animation in the 90s and confusing clone saga Spider-Man comics. Although, perhaps more importantly for the blog, I have just been reading a lot of Marvel lately. That said, I love DC comics. Not just the excellent vertigo line, but the DC Universe stuff.

The Mighty - Fear Itself

 

The Ronin here,

HOLY FUCK!

With three issues left and a lot of plot to go in "Fear Itself" this teaser was released by Marvel today and seems to show the Avengers powered up with weapons and armor similar to 'The Worthy'.

Flashpoint #3 is getting Awesome

The Reverse-Ronin here.

I have gone back in time and changed history to screw with The Ronin. I could not allow his beautifully written, insightful, typo free and popular reviews of dozens of DC comics to exist any longer, so I have changed history making sure they never existed. They were to awesome, and to plentiful, he had to be stopped! And now the site is filled mostly with terrible Marvel comics! Now all you will read about are 'point one' issues that have no recap page and don't explain the situation at all for new readers and best of all they will be marketed only to existing readers in other comic books!

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA Fools! Enjoy your suck!

...Except for Avengers Academy, Reverse-Ronin thinks that it is pretty damn good, you should check it out.

Spotlight: Young Avengers

The Ronin here,

Welcome to the spotlight, a new series were we examine some part of comic books further, and hopefully introduce people to some new stories and characters. Today we are putting the spot light on Marvel's Young Avengers.

Panel Awesome - July

The Young Avengers discover hate groups are not fans. 

(from Avengers Children Crusade #1)

The Green Lantern: Better late than never

I don't have much to say about a movie I didn't care much about to begin with. With time to kill on my husbands fathers day, I went in just wanting to be entertained for a couple of hours.

Although it didn't entertain quite as well as I hoped, it wasn't the worst.

I noticed a couple things that if I were to be a fan, would have made me pissed. Hector Hammond's backstory is basically non existent. They never let us in on the relationships he had with Hal and Carol growing up. Which made me wonder what the point of him being there was anyway.

The thing that bothered me the most was this: So much potential for bad ass battles, but not a lot was offered. I spent a good deal of the movie imagining things of my own that would have been a hundred times better than...a racetrack?

Yesterday!

The Ronin here,

New comics came out yesterday. Here are some:

Amazing Spider-Man #664!

Avengers Children Crusade #6 of 9!

Incredible Hulks Annual! (part of a trilogy of annuals this year)

The Iron Age #1!

Captain America 615.1

The Ronin here,

Today we have Captain America 615.1. I liked this comic book, however I have a few issues with it. We will get into that in a moment.

As a 'point one' issue this is designed to introduce the illusive new reader into the book. I suspect that explains our cover. It is a fairly generic cover. Cap is running at the reader but in a world war II setting, and he appears to be wearing his costume from the up and coming movie, my only issue with this is this issue has nothing to do with World War Two, (aside from a couple of panels of flashback) and he does not wear this costume in the book at all.

We start with a very brief recap page, which is good, the only problem is it is a little to vague. For example there is a big subplot going on about Bucky, and while it is mentioned in the book in passing, The book never explains to the reader what has happened. I feel they could of been a little more specific. (they said "legal trouble" then quickly moved on.)

I liked the art on the book, it was very moody and fit the tone of the book, though I can understand why some people would not like it.

Uncanny X-men 534.1 Review

The Ronin here,

Today we have Uncanny X-Men 534.1. Once again as a "point one" issue this is designed to introduce new readers to the property. As we have seen in the other "point ones" this has been hit and miss so far. Uncanny X-Men is a good property for a "point one". Everyone has heard of the X-men, and at 500 some odd issues in, with tons of back story it seems like a good property for a 'jump in' issue.

It has been a very long time since I have read an X-book, I am somewhat aware (from reading the other Marvel books) of what is going on with the X-men. However I do not know any of the details. As such this would appear to be the perfect book for me, so let's dig in.

The cover is fine, it is just the heroes standing in front of a cool broken X made of steel. It does a good job showing us the main characters, Cyclops, Colossus, Emma Frost, the ubiquitous Wolverine, Kitty Pride who is in some sort of space suite and, holy fuck, Magneto and Namor?!?! Okay I am sold already. The X-men have apparently become the Squad of old men you don't fuck with.

I am okay with this.

Invincible Iron Man 500.1

Ronin here,

After several disappointing "point one" issues I sat down today with "Iron Man 500.1" I have never really read Iron Man comics, though I have always been a fan of the character,  I've seen him when he pops up in other books, and of course the Iron Man movies are fucking bad ass. That said I don't know that much about the Iron Man status quo these days. So this 'point one' issue seemed to be the perfect place to start. I poured my self a strong drink in the ironmanian style and dug in.

The cover is okay there are lots of supporting characters, and some sinister faces and what looks like Pepper Pots in her own Iron Man (Iron Woman? Iron Person?) suite. This intrigued me, I must admit. Behind Iron Man are characters I don't really recognize, I assume the black guy is Rhodey. Which either says something unpleasant about my self or something unpleasant about Iron Man's supporting cast.

Below Iron man is apparently Shinzon from "Star Trek: Nemesis". Can any one say Crossover?!?

City of Heroes to go free later this year

Hey guys Nomaru here to give you some comic related news.

It Looks like NCSOFT the makers of the comic inspired game "City of heroes" will be making their game into a 'free to play' structured game.  I played this game back when it came out.  While I wouldn't pay a subscription for this game I would, however, play a 'free to play' version.  This is good news for those that are looking for a comic related game and don't want a $15/month price tag attached to it. The new title will be "City of Heroes: Freedom" and will be re-launched later this year.

More info at: http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/freedom/freedom_overview.html

Cheers, 

Nomaru

Review of World of Warcraft Volume 1 ( Issues #0-7)

World of Warcraft Volume 1
Available for purchase at Amazon: http://tiny.cc/jtj7f


A short review by Nomaru

I will be the first to admit that I'm somewhat of an avid World of Warcraft player.  I have played many blizzard games throughout the years.  I found myself itching to know more about this (what seemed) vast and immense universe.  Who doesn't want a story with elves, orcs, ogres and halflings (known as dwarvs and gnomes in this universe) and yes even some dragons, right?  Well the team at Blizzard has done a fine job at telling this story.

Thor 620.1 - Thor and his buddies get stoned

The Ronin here,

Today we look at adjective-less Thor 620.1. First off, I like Thor. I had never really read Thor comics as A kid. Only really reading the Spider-man and X-men books. I also did not read the Avengers books. So I was only tentatively aware of what the character was about.

However when I started really reading comic books again and then dipped back into the super hero stuff, I picked up a trade paperback that introduced me to Thor properly. Thor had been gone for a while. Marvel had been resting the character and presumably looking for someone interesting to relaunch him. J. Michael Straczynski was that someone.

JMS (for short) is known as the creator of "Babylon 5", and had just finished a long run on "The Amazing Spider-man". JMS reintroduced Thor to both the Marvel universe and to many new readers like myself, his engaging, exciting and down right funny comic books drew you in from issue one and never let you go. You cared about these characters with in pages of being introduced to them. I did not even know who the Warriors Three were at the time, but I liked and rooted for them all before they even showed themselves.

The Mighty Thor #3 quick preview

The Ronin here,

The Mighty Thor #3 is out Wednesday, let us take a look at the cover Marvel has released.

Okay, does anything else need to be said? 

If you have not been reading The Mighty Thor, it does not disappoint. A very epic Thor story so far, and I can not wait for #3. 

New contributor to A.L.S.

Hello everyone my name is Nomaru.  Just dropping in to introduce myself to the party (no worries this will be short).  I have been reading manga and graphic novels for quite a few years.  I will be contributing at least once a week (that's the goal of course) family and such willing.  I am going to be giving news and reviews of manga and some new comics I'm introducing myself to (as well as reading again ;) .  I look forward to posting for you.

Nomaru