Chris Evans as Captain America
We finally get a look at Chris Evans in…well, most of his Captain America costume thanks to Entertainment Weekly! Looks a lot better than that terrible Green Lantern costume design, at least. I gotta admit, the more I see of it, the more I’m looking forward to this film. Captain America: The First Avenger hits theaters next summer.
The Dark Knight
Over in an interview with The LA Times’ Hero Complex column, Christopher Nolan revealed that the next Batman flick is titled THE DARK KNIGHT RISES. Not a bad title, but I think it’s kind of a shame; I was hoping the next film would get another comics savvy title, Shadow of the Bat.
Nolan also stated that The Riddler won’t be the villain, and several characters from the previous two films would be making appearances to complete his trilogy, which is likely to be all Nolan will do Bat-flick wise. He’s also crossed off Mr. Freeze but with a title including the word “Rise”, could a Ra’s al Ghul return be in the future?
SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE (Hardcover)
Written by J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
Art by SHANE DAVIS and SANDRA HOPE
Cover by SHANE DAVIS
Official Solicitation: “Forget everything you know about The Man of Steel and brace yourself for a staggering new take on the world’s most popular Super Hero.
“Best-selling, Hugo Award-winning writer J. Michael Straczynski (BRAVE AND THE BOLD, Thor, Babylon 5) and red-hot rising star artist Shane Davis (GREEN LANTERN, SUPERMAN/BATMAN) team up for this exciting launch of the EARTH ONE graphic novel series. Set in an all-new continuity re-imagining DC’s top heroes, EARTH ONE is a new wave of original, stand-alone graphic novels produced by the top writers and artists in the industry. The groundbreaking new line rockets into effect right here with the Super Hero who started it all – Superman!
“What would happen if the origin of The Man of Tomorrow were introduced today for the very first time? Return to Smallville and experience the journey of Earth’s favorite adopted son as he grows from boy to Superman like you’ve never seen before!”
I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. The Earth One series of stories looks like something that could be a lot of fun: utilizing DC’s Multiverse to create a series of stories featuring characters familiar yet radically different. I do hate that it’s taken this long for DC to look at doing Multiverse tales like this. I’m also pretty disappointed that the original plan (which involved a series of hard cover novels containing further stories down the road) have been changed to a hardcover debut followed by single issues for additional stories later down the road. But beyond those points of contempt, I’ve got a feeling that the EARTH ONE books are going to be a lot of fun. BATMAN: EARTH ONE is due out some time next year. SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE hits stands this Wednesday, and definitely gets our recommendation.
Medal of Honor
After nearly 10 years of delving into the many facets of World War II, the Medal of Honor series returns in a much needed franchise reboot in a new locale. Based on real battle fought in Afghanistan, Medal of Honor places you in the role of various Tier 1 Operators as they fought their way through enemy territory against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
Long time fans of Medal of Honor will be happy to know that the developers of Battlefield: Bad Company have lent a hand in the multiplayer portion of this title and new team Danger Close led the single player campaign portion in development. Both have created a title worthy of competing with the likes of Call of Duty and the other modern warfare titles out there.
The single player campaign is a pretty bare bones play through. It’s highly evident that it promotes a “God Bless America” motif from the end of the first mission onward. After that first mission where you’re sent in to rescue an operative, the rest of the game is quite simple: Kill as many bad guys as possible. The Tier 1 operatives are sent in to weaken the enemy defenses and provide intel until a major arse of a general decides to send in the army rangers prematurely and from there on in the mission goes crazy as it becomes a battle for survival. It’s kept simple and to the point which I particularly enjoyed.
However this simplistic effort definitely isn’t enough to put MoH on par with the likes of Call of Duty’s story. Despite the single player’s best efforts to provide some incredibly intense moments and great explosive set pieces, they are incredibly linear and if you’ve played any kind of shooter game before the predictability starts to set in. You pretty much know you’re in for a firefight when you see the areas you traverse through so at times the tension of war falls through leaving you with a generic shootout. Other times the game manages to throw the kitchen sink of unpredictability at you and it’s at these moments where MoH really shines as a potential contender to the modern warfare thrown. Unfortunately the campaign is over before it begins and can be played through in a few sittings. It clocks in at around six hours for proven shooter fans and may be a bit longer for someone who has never played this kind of game before. The cliffhanger also doesn’t help as it comes right when you start to feel invested in the various characters you get to step foot into. While the campaign is incredibly fun, right when you feel like you’re getting into it, it abruptly ends and just flat out leaves you hanging. There is some incentive for replay as you have Tier 1 mode which allows you to replay the levels with increased difficulty and a timer but it feels tacked on. The single player campaign is just simply a good shooter.
Multiplayer is a different beast as it contains four different modes and all are incredibly addicting to play with friends online. Combat Mission sees one side defend strongholds against an opposing team that is attempting to capture these strongholds. It cleverly mixes the tight spaces of a game like Call of Duty and previous Medal of Honor titles with a sense of openness like that found in the Battlefield games. Team Assault is your standard team deathmatch, Objective Raid is a sabotage game of sorts where one team attempts to plant an explosive and the other team must stop them from doing so or disarm them. Sector Control will fill the most at home for Battlefield fans as it is a standard capture and hold objectives mode.
Multiplayer also gives you three classes that you can utilize and they are Rifleman, Special Ops and Sniper. Each class can be leveled up and although the unlocks are kept to a minimum, it encourages becoming proficient in at least two of the classes to keep a balance. I enjoyed this a bit more than CoD’s class system as it allowed you to be more focused on what class you want to power up. It keeps the game from becoming a race and more of a balanced affair. I did run into some spawn killing but that’s largely due to the size of the maps as some are just too small in size. There are also a small amount of maps but that is changing with upcoming downloadable content that DICE will be providing for multiplayer. The multiplayer is fun but it’s nothing new and I for one was ok with this. It does what it does well and it looks great and plays great and that’s all I ask for when it comes to the multiplayer portions of these kinds of games.
Overall, Medal of Honor provides a well scripted and well acted campaign that ends prematurely but makes up for it with an exceptional multiplayer component. The combat can be dull and repetitive for some, but then again, what shooter isn’t nowadays. Medal of Honor does what it does best and is a welcome return to form for a series that was suffering in stagnation. I look forward to the upcoming DLC and future installments now that the team has a grasp on how to move forward.
Rating: 
Thanks to those of you that entered, and another huge thanks to Archaia for supplying the prizes. Would have gotten around to posting this sooner, but a wicked storm crippled the Internet and such in town for most of the day. Many thanks to all that entered! We’ll be announcing the winner at roughly 9:05 PM EST on our Twitter account. You can hear the announcement a minute or two earlier if you listen to The RAW Reactor.
Britten and Brülightly by Hannah Berry
A Graphic Novel Review
The setting is classic: a dreary 1940s city where a wealthy heiress seeking answers about her dead fiancé hires a jaded PI. The back cover promises “a haunting story of love and grief, sharply written and luminously drawn.” That’s quite a lot of hype to live up to, but Ms. Berry, surprisingly a 25-year-old newcomer to the graphic novel genre, delivers it quite nicely.
Fernández Britten, known amongst his colleagues and client
s as ‘the Heartbreaker,’ is burnt-out after years of chasing down cheating spouses and jealous lovers. His dreams of righting the wrongs in the world have been dashed apart through the cruelty of humanity and he refuses to even leave the house for anything less than a murder investigation. That prod comes in the form of Charlotte Maughton. Not your usual damsel in distress, Charlotte is foul-talking, cynical and disgusted with the lack of effort on the part of the police to investigate if the death of her fiancé was anything other than the suicide they assumed it was. Thus Fern takes on the case and sets out to find out the truth about the death of Berni Kudos.
Helping Fern is his partner Stewart Brülightly. A teabag. Yes, I’ll repeat, a talking teabag with ‘needs.’ Not far into the story, it’s clear that Stewart represents the lighter side of Fern, that part of him that has been crushed by years of depression. An unusual working relationship perhaps, but one that works as Fern digs through the sordid truths kept secret for decades.
Not only is Hannah Berry a great artist in that she has a firm feel of her subject, but she also is a great writer as well. Great books start with great opening lines, and again Berry does not disappoint:
As it did every morning, with spiteful inevitability, the sun rose.
Fern tells Stewart he’s meeting with a woman who wants them to investigation a murder and with her very first words her character is instantly set in stone.
Charlotte: Fucking weather.
And there is also the surprisingly bit of humor interspersed here and there such as:
Stewart: Listen Fern…when you jumped into that ditch…I think I…uh…Look, I’m sorry: I infused in your waistcoat.
As well as the running joke that everyone assumes Fern is French – he’s Ecuadorian – but his deeply circled eyes and huge nose causes everyone to think otherwise.
If I had to make some kind of criticism, I’d say it would have to be that sometimes the plot is so twisting and convoluted that it was hard to keep up and I found myself having to go back and re-read some key points. However, I think that is more a reflection on me and not the writer. I’m a fan of light mystery writers like Charlaine Harris and this graphic novel is more hardboiled along the lines of Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler.
The action is lively and the twisted path Britten and Brülightly tread to reach the truth is worthy of a fine classical mystery thriller. Any revelation of those truths would lead to spoilers and the tale of Britten and Brülightly is simply too good to miss. If you don’t want to shell out the $20 bucks listed on the cover, head down to your neighborhood library and beg them for a copy if you have to.
Cheers!
—>Susan
Paperback: 112 pages
Publisher: Metropolitan Books (March 17, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0805089276
ISBN-13: 978-0805089271
Contest is over! Congrats to @616Earth on winning. Thanks to everyone who entered, and Archaia for supplying the prizes. We hope to have more contests soon!!
You’ve probably noticed a common thread throughout Archaia Week: all five comics contained the line “read this book”. Now, it’s not that I’m biased towards them. Yes, I love Archaia because they’ve been such a dedicated corner stone to this site, and I’ve made it no secret that without their support, the site probably wouldn’t have made it past it’s first year. No, it’s because I just genuinely love their books. And this week didn’t even feature appearances from Archaia’s two big up and comers: the second volume of Fraggle Rock, which is currently being prepped for a second volume, and Days Missing, which kicks off it’s second volume on November 3.
But now, thanks to sponsorship and support from Archaia, we’re going to give back and hopefully hook a new fan on their books. Yes, to close out Archaia Week, we’re giving you the opportunity to win a copy of all five Archaia Comics titles we looked at this week. That’s a copy of Syndrome, Starkweather: Immortal, Lucid #1, Tumor and Hybrid Bastards! all delivered to your doorstep. Before you get to entering, some legalese.
Okay, so here’s all you need to enter: a Twitter account!! Yes, it’s that simple. The contest starts now, and ends Monday at 3PM EST. We will not be considering any entries after the cut off date. Simply send the following tweet…
@thehomeworld I deserve the #ArchaiaWeek prize pack because…
Which, by my math, gives you roughly 80 characters to convince us you deserve it. It’s as simple as that. Make us laugh, make us cry, or just appeal to the last vestiges of a conscience we have. We’ll be announcing the contest winner Monday night, both on our Twitter and during The RAW Reactor podcast. After we announce the winner, we’ll be sending you a Direct Message via Twitter with instructions on how to claim your prize.
Again, huge thanks to Archaia Comics for their support and for the awesome comics. Best of luck to everyone who enters. We’ll see you crazy kids Monday!!
Hybrid Bastards!
Written By Tom Pinchuk
Art By Kate Glasheen
Hybrid Bastards! is one final book that came in that batch that I didn’t get the chance to review. I did make an attempt to review it, but I ran into one problem. The artwork on the book. Now, I’m not saying it’s bad; I get what Kate Glasheen is doing here, working in a style that very much emulates Classical Greek artwork. But it’s a style that’s very rough and difficult to follow at first. Once you get a feel for the art, however, I couldn’t imagine this story looking any other way. It’s a very suitable style, and highlights the absurdity of the story very well.
And hoo-boy, does absurdity describe Hybrid Bastards! to the letter. Set in a distinctly modern time, Hybrid Bastards! opens with Hera informing her husband Zeus that as retribution for his numerous affairs, she had a spell placed on him 18 years earlier to drive him into a wild, sexual lust against inanimate objects. As a result, his seed has been spread from object to object and has now matured into a variety of unnatural, hybrid bastards who are dedicated to revenge on their absentee father.
What’s I did find interesting was that the story’s prevalent wit and cynicism brought about a reminder of Kevin Maguire’s writings, with a humorous, almost self-aware humor present throughout. The story knows it can’t take itself too seriously; instead, it takes a purely absurd concept and runs with it full speed ahead. The end result is a book that honestly caught me off guard. While it may appear to be rough around the edges, fans of absurdest or bizarre humor would be well suited to give Hyrbid Bastards! a look.
That being said, if you want your own copies of HYBRID BASTARDS! or any of the Archaia Comics titles we’ve looked at this week, check back at 3PM EST today to find out how you can get your very own copy of all five titles!!