And the winner is ...

...hopefully all of you.  By the overwhelming victory of 2-0, you the readers have decided that I should start doing reviews/retrospectives of classic comics, starting with Walt Simonson's run on Thor.  It'll take me a little time to get those going, but hopefully not too long.  Watch this space!

And a big thank you to the two people that took the time to vote.

Comics Reviews - A Proposal

So a week into the two week voting cycle and we have an overwhelming response of "Yes" to my question about whether I should start doing a retrospective on older comics.  Obviously, I would be starting with Thor (since I stole borrowed the name of this blog from that letters page) but here is what I envision.

The majority of the time, I'll just have a straight up "Plot recap, brief review" format, which will get you the basics and my general thoughts.  Where I think it's necessary, I'll add a "where it comes from" section, which Trey does when he has his Warlord Wednesdays at The Sorcerer's Skull, where I'll let you know where the important characters/plots come from in the Lore, to the best of my ability.

Should the votes continue in the affirmative then I'll start writing up my thoughts.  This could take a bit of time to show up here, though, but rest assured that it will happen.  What I would have to decide, though, is where to go afterward.  I'm thinking the Peter David run on Aquaman, and continuing through to #75 of that series, since someone doesn't seem to want to touch them.  I also have all of the DC Comics Star Trek series, so I'll see if I can work them in as well.  If anyone out there has a request, though, I'm willing to entertain most anything that's available.  Just let me know.

Riddle me this

Here's a question for all of you ones of readers out there.  Having been inspired by Rob Kelly over at the Aquaman Shrine, specifically his Adventure Sunday line, I have been giving thought to doing reviews of old comics.  I would start out with the Walt Simonson run on Thor, mainly because I own all them them in trade form.  This would consist of a recap of the issue, along with a few page images, and my take of the comic.

So the question is, would anyone want to read this?  I'm thinking that I would work a few ahead and post them on Thursdays if I have nothing else to talk about (which seems to be often).  If I've done this correctly, there should be a poll in the upper right of the blog.  If you could please take the time and vote, I would appreciate it.

EDIT: I know that the font color on the poll is screwed up, but I can't figure out how to fix it.  For reference, the top answer is Yes and the bottom is No.  Sorry about that.

Social Media

Just so you know, dear readers, I have created pages for this blog on both Facebook and Google+.  Please feel free to add them for all the latest updates.

2001: A Retrospective

I recently read this post over at The Nerdist about “2001: A Space Odyssey.”  Let me start by saying that I agree with almost 100% of what is said in that article.  However, what is glossed over is the storytelling, or lack thereof.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the movie, but I had to work to love it.  When I was a kid, and saw it for the first time, it was great visuals, but I had no idea what was going on.  Unlike most other movies where I had that problem, this one didn’t make much more sense as I got older.  In fact, until I read the book (which is brilliant, By the way) I had no idea what was going on in the “ancient earth” portion of the movie.  Much like the phrase “if you have to explain the joke, it isn’t funny”, if you have to read to book to understand it, it’s not a good movie.

I recently saw a post one some social media platform that said something like, “I have never met a woman that enjoys 2001.  It’s the anti-chick flick” or some such.  Now I don’t get a lot of “chick flicks”, Bridesmaids being the one major example, but that’s not because I don’t get the plot.  The reason that a lot of women don’t like 2001, IMHO, is that they don’t get what’s going on, and I can’t fault them for that, since this film is style over substance.  Kubrick spent so much time on the look of the film, and did a superb job on all of that, that the storytelling got lost in the shuffle.  I think this did a huge disservice to Clarke’s novel and makes this less than a stellar movie. 

Having said all that, if anyone does want to watch it I would suggest two things.  First, read the book.  You will understand so much more of the movie, especially the first half and the very end.  Second, follow your 2001 experience with 2010 immediately.  While the visuals aren’t as stunning and there isn’t much by way of classical music, it is a much better movie sci-fi story.  Plus it helps explain why HAL went bonkers in the first film.  If you want to watch a really compelling, beautifully shot and really well done Kubrick film, got out a get Spartacus.