Reilly2040's Blog

Right, I really, really need to catch up with some of my blogging.

When we last left events on Oa, Guy was on the rampage as a Red Lantern, Kyle had just been resurrected, and Mogo had decided it was time to socialise.

The highlight for this issue is easily the stuff with Mogo, that neatly wraps up the issue of the Black Lanterns devastating Oa.  It really showcases how powerful Mogo can be as he pulls everyone off of Oa, dragging the Black Lanterns down through his surface towards his power battery core, where they’ll be continually destroyed, no matter how many times they reform.

I loved the justification for Mogo’s appearance being so simple (The Guardians had ordered all Lanterns to report for duty), although interesting was the interaction between Mogo and Salaak.  For some reason Salaak really doesn’t seem to care for Mogo (constantly referring to him as “it”), something made worse when Mogo reveals he has special orders from the Guardians Salaak didn’t know about.  With Salaak being the main administrator for Oa, there’s an element of the control freak to his character, and obviously Mogo being so powerful and key within the Corps unsettles him.

While all this is going on, Guy is still running amok with the red ring.  Kyle’s keen to get it off him, but its pointed out that Guy’s now nicely doing the job Kyle intended when he freed Vice.  Of course, once Mogo takes care of the Black Lanterns, there’s now the issue that they’re not between Guy and his fellow GLs any more, which nicely sets up everyone trying to get the ring off of Guy next issue.

Which should be interesting, as up until now the only “cure” for a red ring we’ve seen has been a blue ring.  Currently though there is an Indigo Lantern and Star Sapphire on Oa as well, so even if the green ring can’t restore Guy’s system from the red ring, then presumably a combination of the different powers will (unless Ganthet’s sent a blue lantern to Oa to help out, who conveniently turns up).

I’m glad the “Oa under Siege” aspect of the story’s been wrapped up so neatly without dragging things out at all, and the stage is now nicely set for the GLs sorting Guy out before heading to Earth to respond to the distress call with the other Corps, so the story arc has been nicely laid out.    Although saying that, recent previews show that the Black Lantern Anti-Monitor will be turning up, so that’ll be very interesting indeed.

I have to presume its once the GLC is on Earth, and they somehow manage to destroy the Black battery, unfortunately not realising he’s trapped in there.  After their brief skirmish in the Sinestro Corps War, a full-on Anti-Monitor versus GLC fight should make for some pretty epic reading.

Welcome new and regular readers to the Crisis on Earth-Blog Challenge!

If you’ve made your way here from another challenge, then congratulations on your right answer

For those of you that are new to the challenge, here’s how it works.  Throughout the internet, a bunch of us blogging-types who talk about DC Comics characters have gotten together, and set a fiendish (and not so fiendish) set of puzzles.    Each blog will be based around a certain character and contain a section of a larger piece of art containing their character.  Correctly solve the puzzle on the blog, and you’ll move onto the next blog and their challenge, until eventually you find your way through the twisty maze of blogs and challenges to find the final, complete artwork featuring all the characters you’ve visited on your travels.

Of course, if you’ve found your way here from another challenge, you already knew all that, so on with the challenge

Adam Strange: Defender of Rann is no stranger to the readers of this blog.  An archeologist on Earth, he found himself caught in a Zeta beam which transported him across the galaxy to the planet Rann, a world of great scientific achievement, where he quickly found his quick-thinking and cunning tactics put to use defending them from alien invaders.  However the Zeta Beam would invariably wear off, returning him to Earth at the end of each adventure.

Some time later, a way was found to imbue Adam with Mega-Zeta radiation which kept him on Rann permanently where he stayed, raising his daughter after his wife Alanna was thought dead.

A long-time ally to the Justice League, imagine their surprise when one day, they suddenly found themselves scooped up in a Zeta Beam and transported to Rann.   Only things were definitely not right.  Adam was no longer the defender of Rann, instead he had become its dictator.  Having joined forces with the En’taran Slavemasters after discovering his wife was alive, he was intent in restoring Rann to its full glory in preparation for Alanna returning.  The population of Rann had been enslaved by Adam and the telepathic En’tarans. However, realising the work would not be completed in time, Adam had decided to kidnap the JLA to ensure things would be ready.

To find their old friend so unhinged was a big shock for the JLA. However as they planned their escape, they found themselves betrayed by another of their own who decided to switch sides and help Adam in his mad scheme.  So the question is, which member of the JLA betrayed the rest of the team?

A) Firestorm

B) Mister Miracle

C) The Martian Manhunter

D) The Atom

E) I Don’t Know

And so I finally get to writing my review of The End of Time and the last adventure for the 10th Doctor (not counting future appearances in charity or anniversary specials obviously ).

In true RTD form, for the 10th Doctor’s finale we were treated to a huge epic spectacle, with returning Time Lords, a super-powered Master, Laser Turret-toting Wilf and a high-diving Doctor.   However where this 2-parter truely shined was in the smaller moments, and I suspect they’ll what’ll be remembered in years to come more than the big, epic stuff.

I’ll be honest.  On first watching part 1, my immediate reaction was “oh dear”.  The Master’s resurrection just seemed far too magical for Doctor Who, and his subsequent super-jumping around I didn’t like (even if I did get the explanation for it).  The head-shaking effect didn’t really work for me either (funnily enough most of these complaints I can link to Last of the Time Lords.  I similarly didn’t like the sped up Doctor effects for his hyper-aging or the flying, super-powered Doctor from that story’s conclusion).  The Vinvocci seemed out of place as silly comedy aliens, and the Obama stuff also seemed a drawn out joke purely for the punchline of the Master being President of the US.

But where I think all of this stuff fell down was that it was purely setup.   None of these things were meant to be taken in the context of that single episode.   And once part 2 was on air, everything clicked into place.  The Vinvocci’s importance to the story clicked in and the Master’s plan provided part of the mechanism for tracking the drumbeat and the return of the Time Lords.  Part 2 was a superb episode and I loved it to bits.  In context of the whole story, part 1’s sole failing really was that it was a setup episode, moving everyone into place for the bigger events of the second part.  Perhaps part 1’s running length could’ve been trimmed a bit, however taking the End of Time as one whole story, it all comes together.

However as much as I disliked some of the bigger elements of part 1, the one scene I hear people referring to time and again is the cafe scene between the Doctor and Wilf.  Where The End of Time really, really shines is the scenes between these two characters, as both actors really take all the great character pieces they’re given and raise them to even greater heights.  The way the Doctor is so close to breaking down when he’s telling Wilf of the mistakes he made is powerful stuff.  We’ve never really seen the Doctor this defeated before, and his reaction to his upcoming death is powerful.  I liked how he’d interpreted the prophecy as his actual death, not regeneration (which, of course, we the audience knew it would be).  But even then he explains how regeneration will still be like death for him, knowing he’ll change so much that he’ll be a new man and cease to exist as he is.

This theme of Wilf and the Doctor playing off each other is the story’s true strength, and continued into part 2, be it Wilf trying to convince the Doctor to take up arms against the Master, or the final revelation when Wilf is revealed as the source of the four knocks.

David Tennant is at his most powerful in these scenes as well.  From his breakdown in the cafe, to the wonderful change in his expression when he thinks he’s survived, only to hear the four knocks, it was hard not to be affected by his performance.  Its truely heartbreaking when the Doctor realises that the moment has come, and even though he rails against the injustice of it, there’s never a moment’s doubt that he’s going to jump into the booth to save Wilf.  Tennant really makes the most of the material he’s given in his last episode, and for one last time reminds us of just how good an actor we’ve had playing the Doctor these last four years.  His final line of “I don’t want to go” was not only powerful, but I suspect reflected the feelings of most of the audience at that point as well.

Of course, the Time Lords came back, and that’s worth mentioning.  Many had speculated that it was going to happen, with the Time Lords being reinstated for Steven Moffat’s era and Matt Smith’s Doctor.  However what we got instead ended up emphasising that they shouldn’t come back (well, at least not just now).   The return of the Time Lords served to draw a line under the Time War as we discover that the Doctor’s been sugar-coating his memories of them ever-so-slightly.

Of course, those fans who’ve watched the old episodes were already aware that he was looking at the Time Lords through rose-tinted glasses, although the degree to which he was doing it, and the fact it was deliberate, came as a shock.

It turns out that the Master wasn’t the only Time Lord resurrected during the Time War, as its revealed that the mysterious narrator throughout part 1 isn’t only President of the Time Lords, but is also Rassilon (the assumption being that it’s THE Rassilon).   Sadly, it also quick becomes apparent that the rumours the 2nd Doctor referred to in the Five Doctors were true and he’s a bit mad.  Ever since Eccleston’s run, its been established that at the end of the Time War, the Doctor pulled the trigger on both the Daleks and the Time Lords.  I’ve always assumed that the loss of the Time Lords was an unavoidable side effect of getting rid of the Daleks, something the Doctor had no choice to do, in order to rid the universe of a great evil.   Now we know that that’s not the case.   When the Doctor got rid of the Time Lords, it was to stop them specifically, as they’d been hideously corrupted by their great power and the war, and were planning the destruction of all reality.  So while the Master is overjoyed to have brought the Time Lords back (granted, for his own purposes), he doesn’t understand why the Doctor is truely terrified by their reappearance.

It was interesting on more than one level.  The Doctor’s reaction to the Time Lords coming back reminded me very much of the 2nd Doctor’s reaction to them back in the War Games.  There, same as here, there was a real fear of these all-powerful beings (although the Time Lords back then weren’t nearly as blood-thirsty).  Seeing the Doctor terrified like that is a nice way of underlying just how powerful the Time Lords truely are, as its not often you see The Doctor that afraid.  Its also interesting, that for a storyline most thought would see the Time Lords restored, it in fact accomplishes the opposite, with the Doctor once again having to come to terms with his decision to end his race, and for the fans showing that, for now, the Time Lords are something that are gone, and should remain that way, hopefully ending the speculation as to when they’ll return.

(Of course, eventually a show-runner will have a killer idea involving non, or at least not-as, evil Time Lords and they’ll be back again, but for now its a done deal.)

So Steven Moffat’s first series will actually start with the Doctor in much the same Last of the Time Lords situation as he has been since the show returned, albeit I hope that this story will put a lid on the Time War and its impact on the Doctor, allowing Steven Moffat to explore the character in whole new ways.

Talking of which, it wouldn’t be fair to close out this post without mentioning Matt Smith’s first short scene as the Doctor, which I thought was brilliant.  It was nice how it called back to David Tennant’s first scene in the Children In Need short, as well as The Christmas Invasion with the comment about wanting to be ginger (after all, we know that he becomes a red-haired Merlin one day).    While very short, I was still impressed, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what Matt Smith brings to the role.  Watching Confidential it really gives you an impression of how he was thrown in at the deep end as well.

All in all, I was extremely happy with the End of Time.   RTD gave us a great conclusion not only to the 10th Doctor, but also to his era as a whole.  And for his finale, David Tennant gave us some of his most powerful acting, and found himself surrounded by superb actors, only further proving what a big name Doctor Who has become, and what a television event this finale was.

The DCU Blog has been ablaze with news all week after the announcement of Brightest Day, the post-Blackest Night direction for the DCU, which will see a 26 issue fortnightly series, and a variety of titles under the Brightest Day banner.

One returning title that I’m very happy to see is Birds of Prey, and even better it has Gail Simone returning as writers, with Ed Benes as the artist.

The original run of Birds of Prey was an exceptionally good book, as Gail turned Black Canary into an A-list character and gave much needed focus and character development to Huntress and Oracle.  It became one of DC’s best-loved team books, and brought something different to the market by focusing on a mostly-female superhero team.  Gail’s dialogue between the characters was what really brought the book to life though.

Sadly, times changed.  Presumably a victim of her own success, with Black Canary now a popular character, she was brought back into the JLA as chairwoman, removing one of Birds of Prey’s lead characters.  Gail ended up moving onto Wonder Woman, and the Birds of Prey book eventually ended up axed by DC.  Something I thought was a real shame as it was a home to popular characters, and as I say, stood out as somewhere that DC’s female characters could really shine.

Of course, things have moved on again since Black Canary was in JLA, and I think its fair to say that the move didn’t really do her character any favours, with her automatically playing second fiddle to Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, and then the eventual Green Arrow/Black Canary book that never really seemed to take off (for the record I was never opposed to the marriage itself, but the book has never seemed to really click).

So the announcement that Birds of Prey is coming back, with the core cast of Oracle, Black Canary, Huntress and Lady Blackhawk reunited is brilliant news.  I really can’t wait to see how Gail approaches the happenings in the characters lives since the first series ended (and could we please have Helena reinstate the updated version of her current costume.  It looked so much more practical).

Of course, causing debate are the two silhouetted figures, with most people figuring its Hawk and Dove, with Hawk being a resurrected Hank Hall.  I never really followed Hawk and Dove before, but I’ve enjoyed their appearances in Blackest Night, so Birds of Prey would seem like the ideal book for them to capitalise on that exposure.  I’ve got no clue about Hank Hall’s Hawk and how he might interact with the Birds, but you have to assume the fact that as a Black Lantern he killed Dove’s sister might cause some tension.

I’ve always viewed an A-Team remake as a fairly bad idea.  It always struck me as the kind of action, adventure show that you probably wouldn’t get away with making these days.

However, with some very good casting choices, and now this trailer, I’ll be darned if its not looking like they’ve pulled it off.  Obviously trailers tend to reflect the best of the film, but I’m really looking forward to this now.  They’ve really sold me with the parachuting tank scene

This weekend, we got a look at Iron Man’s upcoming revamp, following on from the events of the last year.

With the revelation that the Skrull virus had nuked Tony’s Extremis upgrades, rendering his current suit a nightmare to control, and now his self-inflicted lobotomy (and the idea of him rebooting his brain from an old backup actually suggests Tony may not have any memories of anything post-Extremis), it was always a given that the opportunity was in place for Tony to update his armour once again, however rather than wait for it to be revealed in the book, Marvel have instead released this image to all the news sites.

I’m not really overwhelmed to be honest, but it looks nice enough.  I notice that the helmet looks to borrow from the movie version rather than the previous Extremis suit (which suits me, there was an angular, serpentine (for want of a better word) quality to that helmet that I never liked).  I’m not sure about all the smaller lights up from the unibeam as I feel they distract a bit from the unibeam itself (making the unibeam just a larger piece in a series rather than a specific piece of the look in itself).  The upper part of the legs again remind me of the movie look, although the lower parts look more streamlined.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with it save for a few quibbles.  I do feel for artists who have to design a new suit though, as its gotten increasingly tricky over the years.  The iconic look remains the original 60s red and gold, and moves to redesign the armour too radically never stick, which means the artist can be quite limited in what they can do versus, say giving Kyle Rayner a new look.

A pity as one of my favourite suits remains the Silver Centurion, although I’m aware of the complaints that suit got at the time for getting rid of the gold colouring, that have pretty much ensured that every suit since now sticks with the red and gold colour-scheme.   Another favourite for me remains the mouthless suit from the 90s and its a pity it didn’t stick around for longer (despite making it into the spin-off cartoons at the time).   I thought it did a pretty good job of sticking to the basic feel of the Iron Man look while actually changing a fair bit, although its certainly arguable that it perhaps felt like more of a superhero costume and less of an actual armour, which is a feel the Extremis suit definitely gave off.

Designing the armour is something I actually feel the movie did a really good job of.  There’s definite routes that can be traced to the (then current) Extremis suit while toning back some of its elements to be more like the classic look (at the simplest, changing the unibeam back to a circle, and adopting more normal-shaped boots).

Iron Man getting a new suit is always a big moment in his comics, so I’m looking forward to seeing how its approached in the story.  In many ways the Extremis technology was such a jump that it’ll be interesting to see how Matt Fraction makes this suit seem even more advanced, despite Tony no longer having the Extremis benefits available to him.   However given the sterling work Fraction has done this far with Tony, I’m willing to bet it’ll be believable (infact, with Tony being the futurist he is, it won’t surprise me if this suit is something that Tony actually designed around the same time he put in place the rest of the World’s Most Wanted plan).

At Christmas I finally joined the next gen gaming crowd, by getting a Playstation 3.

Over the last few years my gaming has been largely PC-based, although I did get a Nintendo Wii when they were released, so this console’s been interesting to play around with properly.   The advantage of coming to the console fairly late on is that many of the big games are now available cheaply either on the Platinum range or second-hand, so I’ve been having a lot of fun playing Call of Duty World at War, Fallout 3 (previously played on my PC, but my PC struggled with it graphically and this is the Game of the Year edition with the extra content), Batman Arkham Asylum and others.

The graphics look stunning of course, even on my non-HD, non-flatscreen trustworthy 28″ CRT TV, although I will say I’ve noticed a problem whereby some text isn’t easily legible as its clearly meant to be read on a higher-resolution TV (the Playstation store is particularly guilty of this).

Outside of gaming, its been interesting to play with a console with online capabilities, and see how the line between PC and console gaming has blurred.  The dashboard which allows you to track your online friends is nice and sending messages back and forward is pretty painless.  Likewise getting online to play is a breeze as your Playstation ID is just used to manage things.  Of course, like PC gaming, the online option means that games can now have patches available. Its interesting to note that this isn’t necessarily a good thing.  On inserting a new game, if a new version is found you’ve then got to install the update.  Given some of them can be a couple of hundred MB that can mean that your console ends up tied up downloading content when you just wanted to try out your new game.  And on Christmas Day, when I was wanting to try out a bunch of new games I’d received, it could get old a bit quickly.

That said, the fact the online stuff also opens up new content for the games.  Downloadable content and micro-payments for games have become a big thing since being adopted by the console market, and while the micro-payments in particular may be controversial, I’m largely happy with things as long as it doesn’t feel like the user is being taken advantage of, and the downloadable content is genuinely extra material and not necessary to enjoy the game you’re already paid for.  I’ve picked up a few extras for the games I’ve got, most of which were free or only a couple of pounds, although so far I’ve found the £7.99 asking price for the Call of Duty map packs a bit too much.

The other aspect of the console that’s really grabbed me is its position as a media centre.  Now, amongst the people I know, most of them that have PS3s primarily bought them as a cheap Blueray player, so Sony targeting that market was a good move, however beyond that aspect of the console, it also supports various other media type stuff.

While I’ve not yet setup a proper media server, the ability, for example, to copy video files to a USB stick and play them on the big TV via the PS3 is a very welcome feature.  Of course, once I setup a media server on my main PC, the fact that I’ll be able to connect to it via the PS3 and stream all my videos to the big TV is great, but in the meantime using a USB stick is an easy temporary solution.  Likewise the (fairly recent) addition of the BBC iPlayer to the PS3 dashboard works well and delivers a great high-quality catchup service (very handy as I’m not on Virgin Media, who I know can get the iPlayer through their set-top boxes).  While I was pretty much expecting the games side of the console, the media centre functionality’s been a nice surprise, and a good bonus piece of functionality.

All in all, while I was originally quite critical of the PS3 launch, having used the console I have to say I’m extremely impressed by it.  The quality of the games I’ve got is very high, and the online and media centre capabilities of the console are well implemented.  Granted, I’ve never used the X-box 360, but I’m very happy with my PS3.

Following on from John’s misadventures on Xanshi, its straight back to Earth where Nekron’s true threat had been revealed, and black rings had claimed a variety of resurrected heroes and were targetting in on Barry and Hal.

I must admit, I really loved the way Johns dealt with the cliffhanger here. I’ve gone on about Johns writing of the Flash a lot here, and this is no exception with the neat little timejump trick in order to sever the rings connections.

The rest of the issue rattles along quite quickly.  Atom and Mera escape via Wonder Women’s ring (with the hint that her ring is glitching in some way), and then the Corps reform their plan, realising that one member from each Corps is not enough to truely recreate the white light, and they need everyone to head to Earth.  In the meantime others can be temporarily deputised, which leads to the fan-service everyone’s been waiting for, and various DCU characters being inducted into the various Corps.  Some work well and are logical (Barry as Hope I can see, Scarecrow as a Sinestro Corps member is a no-brainer and Lex Luthor being an Orange Lantern is a great moment).  Some however I felt were a little forced, specifically Mera and Wonder Woman.  Mera’s rage hadn’t really been teased much throughout the series until this issue (although Lord knows she got a lot to be angry about), and Wonder Woman I just thought would be a better fit for compassion than love.  The rest of the recruitments were well done I thought, but these two just seemed a little forced to me.

In fairness however, I’m not picking up the Blackest Night: Wonder Woman series and I know it expands on their conflict quite a bit, and I believe Aphrodite is involved with Wonder Woman’s recruitment.  Of course, at the time of recruitment, Diana is still a Black Lantern, so the Sapphire ring overcomes the Black Ring.  I thought this played well off of what happened with Kyle over in Green Lantern Corps, where again, we saw the Star Sapphire power being used to overcome death.  Given the tight links between the series, I can only assume this was a bit of deliberate foreshadowing to introduce that aspect of the violet light.

Largely this issue is a setup issue in terms of the new Corps members, so I thought it came across feeling a little light compared to some of the other issues in this series, but it now puts the Blackest Night event in an interesting place.  With January being a skip month, making way for all the one-shot resurrected books, we’re going to see Indigo Lantern Atom turning up in the Atom/Hawkman book for example.  I imagine the BN: Wonder Woman and Flash series’ third issues will also address their temporary status quo and show them dealing with their new powers.  In Barry’s case this should be interesting indeed, given we’ve seen the level of Hope required to properly wield the ring before, and Barry doesn’t strike me as quite the same type as Saint Walker.  I wonder if it’ll be shown as significant how the Blue Lanterns have tended to recruit manually rather than rely on the automated system.

And now I think about it, we know the violet rings come with a corrupting influence that up until now Carol’s been the only one resistant to.  I wonder if they’ll address this point with Wonder Woman as well.

Another good issue in the series, and I’m very intrigued to see what happens with the promise of all the Corps descending on Earth.  That promises to make for a very dramatic finale.  I also have to wonder if needing all the Corps also points to the rumoured “White Lantern” solution not being involved afterall.

After spending half of Blackest Night teasing John Stewart and Xanshi, we finally get the issue where it pays off.  Well, sort of anyway.

Its hard not to be a little disappointed with the lack of a payoff to John arriving on Xanshi.  After taking more than half of Blackest Night to get there, he quickly realises going there was a dumb idea and legs it.  We then get a short history of Nekron via Atom, Mera and BL Jean Loring as they traverse the dark matter universe linking the black rings.

As someone who’s a fan of John Stewart (well, of all GLs really), while the Xanshi stuff did offer up some nice moments, its a storyline that perhaps suffered from a bit too much buildup for no real payoff.  Couple that with John’s lack of face-time in either Green Lantern book since Rebirth, and the prospect of a John Stewart issue was very appealing.  Instead some of the page count gets diverted to the side story, and we don’t get any real movement on the story of John and Xanshi.  We’ve been promised that Xanshi was in some way linked to the War of Light, but there were no further teases of that here.  And while John does say he’s moved past his mistakes, I didn’t really get the impression that enough had actually happened to drive that character development.

There was the nice surprise of Driq turning up though.  We get the interesting idea that his being kept alive by his ring was a strange glitch no one could ever explain, and its something that seems to have persisted even into his Black Lantern incarnation, as he kept his GL ring and his own mind despite being resurrected by a black ring.  His appearance was a nice moment in the story and a good little nod to some of the older Green Lantern cast from volume 2 of the book.

Taken as part of the larger Blackest Night storyline this book will probably hold together a bit better, but as a John Stewart spotlight issue I’d been looking forward to, and a plot thread that had been teased for a while, this just felt a little light.  The Xanshi storyline is obviously just beginning  (and indeed, turns up briefly in Blackest Night #6), so hopefully John will get a lot more to do as the story develops in other titles, but here it felt a little like the GL book was just marking time until issue #50.  A pity as when Geoff does write John, its always been well done and I’d really like to see him do more with the character (something Geoff has promised, via Twitter, is coming post-Blackest Night).

Speaking of John, with the recent announcement of GLC getting a second feature and being bumped to $3.99, he strikes me as the obvious fit for the second story.  I hope so anyway, assuming Kyle and Guy would continue to share the main part of the book.

Yikes.  I’ve gotten a bit behind on my blogging.  Needless to say, there’ll be a full post on the End of Time coming soon (short version, I loved it), but in the meantime, here’s the trailer for Matt Smith’s first series coming later this year.   I’m really looking forward to seeing what it brings