Comic Book Question 9

IF YOU COULD BE GIVEN COMPLETE CREATIVE CONTROL OF ANY DC CHARACTER, WHICH ONE WOULD IT BE?

The first post I did in this series had almost this exact same question. The only difference is this time it’s about DC instead of Marvel. Much like the last one, it would be very easy to answer this with my favorite DC character, in this case Nightwing, but I don’t like to do things the easy way. I also wouldn’t like having to deal with all of the Batman and Titans writers who would be bugging me every time they wanted to use him in a story. So, I’m going a different way.

Aztek: The Ultimate Man

Aztek #1 by DC Comics

I’m guessing most of you out there have never heard of Aztek. It’s understandable. The above series was only 10 issues before it ended, and Aztek got folded over into the JLA. He had sporadic appearances in the JLA books until he was killed saving the world from the threat he was specifically trained to prevent. Then, Aztek was forgotten for a while until Rebirth, when a new female Aztek was introduced, used in one storyline, and was forgotten again.

Now, I haven’t read anything with the new Aztek in it, so I don’t know how good, or bad, she is. I have read the original’s 10 issue run. I’ve got to say that, when it first came out, I really liked it, so when I saw the digital version on sale on Amazon awhile back for only a couple bucks, I bought it immediately. Then I reread it…

…

I guess underwhelmed is the best way to describe how I felt after reading it the second time. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t nearly as good as I remember it being. There were too many teamups with other characters. Half of the 10 issues involved teamups with Justice League members (first Green Lantern, a two issue story with Batman, then Superman, and the final issue with the entire JLA). Granted, those teamups were necessary due to the overall story arc of the series, but I still didn’t like it. I thought he should’ve stood on his own before getting thrown in with others.

Plus (sorry if I’m spoiling this for anyone), except for the villains from his teamup partners, they killed off every bad person he fought. All of the villains that were made up specifically for this story (including the one that I thought would be a good fit to be Aztek’s main archenemy) ended up dead. Before you ask: no, he didn’t cause any of their deaths. The deaths were either the result of an accident or they were killed by other bad people.

Overall, I still like the character concept, I just didn’t like how they handled the story, and if I was ever given the chance, I already have ideas on where I would start to take it.

Comic Book Question 8

It has been another awful week at work, so I’m picking a question that’s relatively quick for me to answer.

If you switched the rogue galleries of Batman and Spider-Man, which one would have the easiest time defeating the others?

To me, this one is simple. It’s Spider-Man. Spider-Man would have an easier time defeating Batman’s villains than Batman would have defeating Spider-Man’s villains.

I can hear all the DC enthusiasts now: “But, if you give Batman enough time to study his opponents, he could beat all of Spider-Man’s villains!” While that may be true, you don’t always get the time to study your opponents in the crime fighting game. If Batman were to come across Carnage in a dark alley, with no idea what the symbiote’s weaknesses were, I’m taking Carnage in that fight.

On the other hand, if you were to pit Spider-Man against any of Batman’s villains, he’d win those fights even without any prior knowledge of them. Plus, his quips and one-liners would probably annoy the crap out of villains like the Joker and Riddler.

What do you think? Do you agree with me, or do I have it wrong?

RTOTD: 24116

As I get older, I find that most of my regrets aren’t things I did, but things I didn’t do: learn how to play an instrument, learn how to draw, spend more time with my mom before she passed.

The UFL

I haven’t posted about football in a while, so it may seem odd that I’m doing it now, during the NFL off-season. The reason I’m talking about it today is because I’ve been watching the UFL, the new spring football league. Now, I don’t think it’ll ever be as good as the NFL, but it actually is fairly entertaining. The players aren’t as good as they are in the NFL, but the differences in the rules (which I wasn’t sure I was going to like) have made the games interesting. Plus, it seems like these players are putting forth a lot more effort than their NFL counterparts.

If you like football, and don’t want to wait until the NFL season starts in September, watch a UFL game. It may end up not being your cup of tea, but you may end up being pleasantly surprised.

Friday Question #1

Since all of my questions aren’t going to be about comic books or comic book characters/movies/TV shows, I decided to make a separate category for more general questions. The question this week is the first of three that I stole from a post on Joseph Mallozzi’s blog. If you don’t know who that is, he created the comic book and TV series Dark Matter, and he wrote and produced on the Stargate TV shows. You should visit his blog if you’re into any of those things.

Rescue one t.v. character from their on-screen death. Who are you saving?

In his original post, Mr. Mallozzi picked Glenn from The Walking Dead. I liked Glenn, but I stopped watching long before they killed him off. Had I not gotten bored with The Walking Dead halfway through the third season and given up on it, I might agree with him.

My first thought was Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) from Lost. Then, when I thought about it, I wasn’t upset that they killed him off. I was upset about how they killed him off. The way they cut the scene together made it look like he had the time to prevent his death, but he just went with it anyway. If they’d have killed him off in a different way, it wouldn’t bother me as much.

So, to answer the question, I’m going to cheat a little. The character I’m picking is a TV character, but his on-screen death comes in a movie: Wash.

Hoban Washburne (Alan Tudyk), better known as simply Wash, is the pilot of the transport Serenity first seen in the television series Firefly. He didn’t meet his demise in the one season of Firefly, however. His death comes at the end of the follow-up movie, Serenity. Anyone who has seen both will probably agree that Wash’s death sucked hard and should be reversed.

What about you? Which TV character would you save

RTOTD: 24099

I just realized that I didn’t have a post on Friday. That was odd to me since I scheduled a post. Looking into it, I see that I accidentally scheduled the post for this coming Friday instead of last Friday. Oops. Oh, well. There goes my streak of posting once a week this year.

Or does it???

What if I backdate this post to make it look like I posted it on Friday? Nobody would ever know… well… except anyone who reads this…

Twisted Metal

Way back in the Playstation 1 days, I used to play the game Twisted Metal 2 quite a bit. I never really played the first one, and the third game wasn’t as good, but I used to love playing the second one. Driving around in cars, shooting and blowing other cars up? That’s all kinds of fun. Once I bought the original Xbox, though, everything Playstation got pushed to the back burner and eventually faded from thought.

So, when I was randomly scrolling online a while ago, and saw that Peacock adapted Twisted Metal into a TV show, it filled me with both nostalgia and dread. The nostalgia, obviously, is from all the great times I had playing the game. The dread was because there was a very good chance that they were going to mess it up.

Because I have kids, and there’s a lot of stuff in the show I didn’t want to watch while they were around, it took me a while to make it through the 10 episode season. I’m glad I did, though. Don’t get me wrong, it had its flaws, but overall, I liked it.

I don’t want to get into specifics, because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who may want to watch it, but the finale definitely had the car carnage you’d expect from a show carrying the Twisted Metal name.

If you have Peacock, you should give it a try