A Slice of Fried Gold

Mmmmm...Pop Culture...

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Before I get cracking on my Sasquatch related posts, I wanted to get into details about my thoughts about a few things and then a couple current happenings in my life. This post is about my thoughts, specifically those directly related towards a couple recent pop culture milestones. Check it.

While I was off down in Portland visiting with friends, one of the things we had to do of course was go check out the new Indiana Jones movie, titled Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. We're all big Indy junkies, so we were all very, very excited to see it. What'd we think?


I prefer to think that they never made it. To me, the Indy series ended with Last Crusade. Maybe in time I will think this movie was adequate, but as of right now I think it was a travesty and a money grab, as I felt that everyone phoned their roles in besides possibly Shia LaBeouf. Not only that, but the whole movie stunk of George Lucas, as fun stunts and action scenes from the original three were replaced with CGI aplenty. Besides that, blatant ridiculousness and shoddy scripting weighed down the film as well. Also, Russians are not a comparable replacement for Nazis. Seriously. You can't even compare the two.


Needless to say, I didn't like it. If you're a fan of the series, be wary.


On the comics front (I'm thinking of starting up a weekly segment about this - exciting right?), this week featured the arrival of Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men #1. Why is this a big deal? This is the culmination of Joss Whedon and John Cassaday's run on the title, spanning 25 absolutely genius issues and capping off what is my all-time favorite run on any X-Men title.


And boy did they go out with a bang. Sure everything that happened was a little predictable (even in its awesomeness), but this issue featured everything - Whedon's trademark wit, great action sequences, saucy innuendo, sad goodbyes, giant action pieces, and most importantly, Cassaday's incomparable art. In my opinion, you just cannot get better than John Cassaday when it comes to pencils - the man is a god with art supplies. It reminded me of February's final issue of Y the Last Man, especially with the way it wrapped up.


If you like comics, it's an absolute crime to not have read this whole series already. In terms of recent runs on iconic heroes, you really cannot do much better.


Well hello there flipside, nice to see you! This week also featured the release of the first issue of DC's mega-event - Final Crisis (I almost put final in quotations - I don't believe that this is really the last crisis). After an entire year of build up in the moderately atrocious and occasionally vaguely readable Countdown, we're treated to an entire issue featuring a dream creative team (as opposed to the trash that was creating Countdown - sorry Paul Dini and Sean McKeever, but downgrade) - Grant Morrison and JG Jones (on interiors! happy day!).


Sadly though, even though we have a dynamic team to read from, all we're left with is a scattered mess that does absolutely nothing for us besides needlessly killing a legendary hero in a far less than heroic way. Great right? Sure, Marvel's Secret Invasion has been less than perfect so far, but first issue to first issue, Marvel has such a commanding lead in summer events it isn't even close.


Hopefully Morrison is going somewhere with this, as I trust he would be because the man rarely doesn't succeed. Count me in as a skeptic for once though. This series scares the crap out of me, and I really hope it doesn't fall short of the mammoth amounts of hype that preceded it. With DC's recent track record, I really am beginning to question it though. Good luck team, you're going to need it.

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