Days of Future Past (Chris Claremont, John Byrne, et. al.)



Yeah, this collection does not make a good first impression. The first issue is Cyclops at Jean Grey's funeral, giving an infodump of what's happened to the X-Men up to this point, and it's equal parts tedious and goofy as Cyclops babbles on about characters turning evil then good again and dying only for it to be later revealed they faked their death, over and over. It's like a parody of what people who don't read comics think all comics are.

Once that's out of the way, it can start telling actual stories with the feature being the "Days of Future Past" two-parter. And while I preferred the story where the X-Men and Doctor Strange go into Hell to save Nightcrawler, I at least have to commend "Days of Future Past" for telling its story in two issues when these days it would be drawn out into an entire six-issue trade.

Rating:

Absolute Batman Vol. 2: Abomination (Written by Scott Snyder, Illustrated by Nick Dragotta et. al.)



I didn't understand people comparing Absolute Batman to Berserk in The Zoo but holy shit, yeah, I totally see where that's coming from in Abomination. I've mentioned before that there's far more to Berserk than all the violence and rape, and it's about Guts fighting fate and impossible odds against sins against God while trying to preserve what's left of his own humanity. And Abomination leans into all of that with Mr. Freeze, Bane mutilating Bruce's friends to bring them closer to their mainline versions, and every time Venom gets involved. Not the rape part, though, unless you consider Bruce being violated in ArkM as a metaphorical rape.

And yes, Bruce using his own teeth as knuckle dusters, can't forget about that.

I guess Snyder saw the similarities between Batman and Bane, both being strong guys who are also super smart, and chose to make Bane even more of a twisted reflection of Batman by giving him daddy issues like Bruce. Except Bruce draws strength from his father's memory while Bane threw his father under the bus.

I am also quite certain how Bane is defeated was lifted from that scene in The Animated Series where Batman breaks Bane's Venom regulator, with a heaping scoop of Akira mixed in.

Rating:

Dispatch (PC, M)



I don't believe I've played any TellTale games more recent than Sam and Max Season Three so I missed their pivot to decision and quick time event-based gameplay with The Walking Dead, a style they overglutted on and eventually collapsed under. Well, here's Dispatch to show us what a bunch of former TellTale developers have learned from their mistake.

Instead of the traditional adventure game loop of walking around, picking stuff up, and trying to figure out what to use where, Dispatch's main gameplay loop is more like a strategy game as you receive emergency calls and decide which hero(es) to send based on a description of the situation and the heroes' stats and skill sets. So if the call says to hurry you want to send a fast hero, if you're instructed to negotiate you send a charismatic hero (only to discover the game wanted an intelligent hero), and some calls can be insta-won with a certain hero. But then the game introduces calls that autofail if one of your stats (usually Power) is too high, and unless you know about these types of calls beforehand and build your characters certain ways, you're at the whims of RNGesus.

But really, you're here for the story of a mech pilot who lost his mech and is now tasked with cleaning up a rag-tag team of reformed supervillains. Whether or not the story works for you depends on how much wiggle room you're willing to give logic for the sake of characterization and fee-fees because logically things kinda fall apart in the final episode. Fuck's sake, Shroud feels like a kid on a playground responding to everything you throw at him with "nuh uh, I saw that coming and set up my Everything-Proof Shield before your attack hit." And yes, people on the Dispatch Subreddit, everybody knows how stupid it would be for Robert to do what he does in the final confrontation with Shroud over a dog in real life, you're not smarter than everyone else for bringing that CinemaSins shit in here.

And fuck me this game is spicy, and I say that as somebody who got her sex education from The Golden Girls. Dick jokes, innuendo, full frontal nudity, the opening cutscene has a man made of toxic sludge with his naughty bits dangling out, and there is so much swearing. There is an option to censor the game, but I didn't want to censor it entirely, just take it from 11 down to, say, 8.

I'm not going to rag on how much of the game is cutscenes because I did very much enjoy the characters (I went for a Paragon Robert, I don't know how much things change if you go Renegade besides a worse ending for one character), but the quick time events where you have to slide your mouse in the indicated direction are needlessly annoying because it feels like the game lowers your mouse sensitivity during them. A movement that's a flick of the mouse during the dispatch segments requires you to damn near drag the mouse from one end of your mousepad to the other, and there was a QTE very late in the game that I failed because my mouse actually went off my mousepad just before it connected.

It may be a little short at eight to ten hours depending on how much you reset over botched calls, but because of all the places the road splits you're encouraged to replay it at least once and switch as many of the choices as you care to. Although I'd suggest taking a short break before you do this, I jumped right into my second run and got a little burned out halfway through. Some choices I kept the same, like telling the Z-Team Robert was Mecha Man.

The first time through, when you have to kick Sonar or Coupe from the team I let the timer run out wondering if it would lead to a secret third choice where Robert would refuse to fire either. But then the game chose Sonar, so I cut Coupe on the replay and boy, I hated disappointing my angry leprechaun. Later there's a point where you have to pick one of two heroes to add to the team, and on the surface it's like choosing between All Might and Tsuyu (or Superman and Aqualad if that comparison is too weebish. No, not Aquaman, Aqualad) but I genuinely wanted to give Waterboy a chance to shine. On my first playthrough I picked Phenomaman because the dude was so bummed out I hoped hanging out with the Z-Team would cheer him up and damn, his Depression "talent" was a pain in the ass and the final mission is slightly harder if you pick Phenomaman. You go with Phenomaman for a more comedic story and Waterboy for a more heartfelt story.

By the way, Robert sounded familiar, but I've never seen Breaking Bad and nothing else on Aaron Paul's IMDB page rings a bell so I have no idea why I thought I recognized him. It's also weird that most of the voice acting is great and there are some big-name talents involved like Liam O'Brien and Matthew Mercer, and then Lightningstruck's toady during the jewelry store robbery sounds like the kid from Joshua and the Promised Land.

Rating:

Transformers, Vols. 1 - 4 (Daniel Warren Johnson, Jorge Corona, Ryan Ottley, et. al)



This comic is like if the original G1 cartoon was as brutal as the movie.

"Daniel Warren Johnson" sounded familiar and after a quick search I realized, oh, he's the guy who wrote and drew Murder Falcon. And like how Murder Falcon was an ode to heavy metal that gave way to a somber tale about life and death, Johnson's take on the Transformers is a less action-oriented and more empathetic take on the bots with Optimus very quickly learning how much squisher life on Earth is compared to Cybertron and getting - for lack of a better word - possessed by two forces, one good and one evil, that are messing with his head. A recurring theme is trauma, with Ultra Magnus suffering PTSD after being tortured by Shockwave for Primus knows how long, and Sparky going from an engineer to a traumatized war veteran who's withdrawn from his family.

Given what other properties Hasbro owns - I mean, the Transformers had a crossover with My Little Pony that's surprisingly not as terrible as it sounds as long as you're open to the campy spectacle of Rarity playing pretty princess dressup with Starscream - is this version of Sparky supposed to be a former member of G.I. Joe?

Oh, it still has its share of total badass moments, like Optimus Prime ripping his own arm off and beating Thundercracker with it, and a new Transformer that wouldn't be too out of place in Murder Falcon. The book also gives some nuance to the Decepticons, Starscream in particular, and hints to Optimus being a bit of a warmonger in the past.

The pacing may be a little rushed, like "zero to mach 1 out of the starting gate" rushed. As soon as Optimus Prime wakes up he's decided he's friends with the first two squishies he sees, and he and Sparky are making major sacrifices to save members of a race they literally just met. You just woke up after a million year nap, Optimus, want to at least have whatever the Energon version of a coffee is, first? But I've bitched about writing for the trade in the past so fine, I'll take it.

After issue #24, the final issue of these volumes, Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead, Invincible) took over and I've heard mixed thoughts about his run so far. Some people say it's fine, others say Kirkman completely shits the bed. But there's not even a trade of it yet, so it's going to be a while before I check it out.

Rating:

Ultraman Vol. 12 - 21 (Written and Illustrated by Eiichi Shimizu and Tomohiro Shimoguchi)



Yeah, this time I'm going through the manga before the anime.

I can't imagine what it's like trying to keep up with this month to month. There are so many plot threads going on that it can take several chapters to finally come back to one, like whatever the Leo Twins are doing in that polar area. And Jack makes, like, one appearance every three volumes because without the "big brother" angle he has in the anime the manga doesn't know what to do with him. I guess they've set him up to be Kotaro's mentor, but even when they're teamed up it's Kotaro who does all the ass kicking. There's also the subplot about tensions between humans and aliens with the aliens being an obvious metaphor for immigrants, ignoring that some of these aliens are capable of single-handedly wiping out half a city.

Then there's something going on with Edo, the cyclops alien that works with the SSSP. One moment he'll be discussing a plan with the Ultramen, the next he'll be conspiring with the Star Cluster Council, leaving you to wonder who he's really working for. The twist to this actually made me say "Oh, fuck you" especially since the anime stated (spoiler) Edo was the last of the Zetton aliens.

So we're introduced to the leader of the Z-Ton Core, Damned, who argues that instead of helping Earth, Ultraman ruined everything for the humans by stunting their growth and making the humans dependent on him. He's trying to kill both Ultraman and the humans' faith in him because then the humans will be free to forge their own path without his interference.

Does this sound familiar to anyone else? Because it's Lex Luthor's argument for killing Superman in All-Star Superman.

I originally wrote this off as coincidence and the Iron Man-esque designs of the Ultraman suits - come on, it's not hard to find people comparing Jack to the Hulkbuster - as the duo pulling from the Marvel movies rather than the comics because, again, the Japanese don't two licks of a Tootsie Roll Pop about Amerikajin keppushitto. Hell, the Japanese version of All-Star Superman hasn't even been in print for years. But then I discovered, purely by chance, that Shimizu and Shimoguchi have done a Batman manga. They could very well be among the few Japanese with an interest in western superhero comics, saw Ultraman as Japan's Superman, and pulled inspiration from All-Star Superman. Although it'd be kind of funny if this was lifted from All-Star Superman because it's the Avengers Ultraman has had a crossover with.

Rating: