New age news: Brightest Day and Spider-man Reboot

Week’s End has been canceled due to my laziness. Also we’ve got no comics coming in for me this week, so I’ll be taking this time to  try and finish some things I meant to finish earlier such as Year’s End, as well as a gust post I’ve been meaning to write for the Weekly Crisis.

Though I may be stopped already from my writing since 2 bits of new found their way onto my computer today. With that said here are the 2 major announcements as well as my commentary on them.

“In Brightest Day” gets it’s own series!

Spider-man Movie Reboot

Brightest Day

So Blackest Night is gearing up to end in just a few months. Only 3 months and 2 issues to go, things are heating up in the war of the light. Hal Jordan has assembled all the Lantern Corps to battle Nekron and his resurrected dead and now all the resurrected heroes of earth are Black Lanterns. After Hal kicks Nekron’s sorry ass back to wherever he came, what’s to come next?

Fans have speculated a lot and finally DC answers the call with Brightest Day. A 26 issue bi-weekly maxi-series starting in April as well as with a 0 issue similar to what Blackest Night had last year on Free Comic Book Day. It will be written by Geoff Johns and Peter Tomasi with an unannounced group of artist as well as David Finch doing all the variants for Brightest Day and its tie-in books.

Yes, it will have tie-in books. Both Green Lantern and Green Lantern as one would expect but also Titans and the new Flash ongoing starring the recently resurrected Flash Barry Allen. All in all it sounds like a massive new project from DC and something that is looking to be really epic.

But what do I really think about?

Well Blackest Night has sort of lost me as far as exciting mega event is concerned. It’s a fun read with some great art but I figure either 8 issues was too many or Johns just didn’t want to give us all the meat of this event in the main event book since right now it’s not really doing much. Oh sure there was that kickass final page to #6 but other then that the series keeps doing the same thing over and over again.

Still I am tempted to check out Brightest Day. If it wasn’t such a huge expense to my wallet I’d probably be eager to check it out but I can’t really be sure if I can afford it. A new maxi-series is one thing, but one that’s bi-weekly would be killer one me and unless I can get a job sometime soon (been looking, trust me) I can’t see this really happening right now.

In the end I want to at least pick up the 0 issue, know what I’m missing out on, but I’ll be honest the chances of me reading Brightest Day are very slim.

Also I’ll admit 26 issues seems like excessive right now. Even if it where just 24 issues it would still be a solid year long commitment and I’m not sure that’s the best way to start up the post-Blackest Night stories with such a massive book like that. It could push away some readers who just want to read one book or the other. The idea of having to check out Brightest Day to know why this certain character showed up suddenly in Green Lantern could be frustrating to readers.

If it where a smaller mini-series or even better, an arc in Green Lantern I think it would have been a smarter move. But Johns and Tomasi seem to know what they want to do, so maybe they’ll prove me wrong with this. It could very well happen and both seem to have  both their ongoings mapped up for quite some time.

I think it also depends on how Blackest Night ends. If Johns can give us a really exciting hook ending that succeeds in leaving me excited for more then I maybe more inclined to check out Green Lantern or even Brightest Day. Though still that’s an “if” at this point since so far Blackest Night has just sort of divulged into fun action but little substance at this point.

Then there’s books like Flash and Titans tying into Brightest Day. I’m not sure if that’s such a good idea. While I can understand wanting to try and sell Flash better by giving it an exciting label of the new event story going on at the same time I just think it would be better for Johns to start the new series on his own and not worry about a current status quo much.

Also as I’ve said I’m not really interested in the new Flash series. Johns’ constant love for Barry Allen and the risk of killing off Iris just for the sake of surprising the readers (seriously, can we ever have a major story without a supporting character dying? Just once? Please?) and it all just seems like a doomed series at this point. But hey at least it will look great in the art department. Maybe I’ll give the first issue a look but my interest is at an all time low.

So while in the end I’ll definitely keep an eye out for the future of the DCU with Brightest Day, for now I’m not really all that excited.

Spider-man Reboot, No More Raimi

Believe it or not I don’t really have a lot to say on this one. Not really. No. The Spider-man movies are getting a reboot. Big whoop. Spider-man 4 was doomed anyway. The writers where constantly fighting over what to do, and even when it seemed like they where close to agreeing it would fall apart all over again. That’s never a good sign for any movie.

Also I hate to say it but I’ve kind of gotten tired with the Spider-man trilogy. The first movie, while not bad in any way, isn’t anywhere near as good as when I saw it when I was younger. It’s a decent fun film but there are lots of stupid parts and it doesn’t really excite me like it used to.

2 is the movie everyone loves, and while I like it, it’s better then the first movie, it’s still not that great. Doc Ock was a great part of it but Peter’s life wasn’t as interesting as everyone else made it out to be. The only part I liked was the musical moment of Peter enjoying being normal again. That and the climax was great, but other then that it was just a solid fun movie.

3 is the one everyone hates and I liked it too. Sure it had more dumb moments, felt rushed at times and ruined my favorite villain, Venom. Though deep down I still had a good time with it and it was better then the first movie for sure and almost as good as 2.

Still deep down this trilogy doesn’t resonate with me as much as it used to. Bigger and better movies like Iron Man and the Dark Knight have taken the super hero formula and perfected them in film making whereas the Spider-man trilogy started the whole trend really so the first movie suffers from that.

So I say go ahead and reboot it. Hollywood is already a mindless shell of it’s former glory, why not just remake movies that are a few years old again and again? I think Saw could use more blood, or maybe the Sixth Sense. Only a matter of time until they get rebooted.

Also the Batman reboot worked. While Begins was in no way a masterpiece (I find it overrated) it was a solid fun film and it did a good job of rebooting the Batman film franchise and lead the way to the far superior Dark Knight. Why not try and work that magic with Spider-man? Besides it’s been a solid decade since the first film and it was a little over a decade when they made Batman Begins from the first Tim Burton film.

So lets reboot it. See if it works. Sure I’ll miss Raimi’s expertise directing but maybe now he can get back to doing Evil Dead 4. Or hey maybe even some other big horror project, that would be cool. Also I got to say I never liked Maguire much as Spider-man. He was a solid Peter Parker, but not a great Spider-man.

I’m sure if the studios put a lot of hard work and love for the characters into the reboot that it could be a great movie. So for now until I hear otherwise I am looking forward to this move and I think it was a smart move on Sony’s behalf.

But in the end I say F*** all that live action movie bullshit. Where the hell is Spectacular Spider-man season 3, Sony?! I don’t give a damn about the movies right now, I want more Spectacular awesomeness.

And so ends this edition of New Age News. Check back in the week for Year’s End (assuming I can actually write it) and hopefully maybe some other little goodies as well. Have a good week ,everybody.