The Billionty-Oneth Geek: Older Than 8 Since 1991

Grant Morrison seems to be hit or miss. And unfortunately, it’s been a while since I’ve read one of his hits. Final Crisis is the big DC crossover event that spanned from summer 2008 to early 2009. It’s a story of Gods and New Gods, aliens and supermen, humans and talking animals all rolled into one story. One mess of a story. To summarize and regurgitate the story is a feat in of itself. Final Crisis is a convoluted tale that tries to take on too much. Essentially, it’s a story about Darkseid trying to once again destroy reality. But there are so many side stories, that this main plot gets lost. A lot of ideas are thrown into the pot, but none are allowed to properly cook. One of the consequences of telling a scattered story is that there is no central voice that really leads the story. The cohesiveness offered by a single voice was missing. Perhaps if it had that leading voice, a centralized narrative could have been established. I think one thing that hurt the story is ...

Following the success of DC's Fifty-Two weekly series, they released a series called Countdown immediately after Fifty-Two concluded. Countdown was also a weekly series used as a precursor towards the big summer crossover event called Final Crisis which would take place the following year (2008). I'm learning to love DC more and more with each passing series, at least as far as crossovers go. But with Countdown , I think they went to the well one too many times. Much like Fifty-Two , in Countdown , several different stories carry on simultaneously, giving us a perspective of the DC Universe. The story arcs ranged from zany (you had Jimmy Olsen become akin to a God... really, Jimmy) to useless (Harley Quinn, from the Batman series, joining the amazons) to boring (the story of the Monitors). With so many storylines, you'd think that at least one would stand out as being awesome, alas, none were found. On top of that, with so many convoluted subplots, the main story arc...

When I was a youngster, Marvel Comics was always my favourite company between them and DC Comics. Marvel just always seemed to have cooler and flashier heroes. DC on the otherhand always seemed oldschool and bland by comparison. Amongst me and my friends, Marvel was always the cool and hip brand. Now that I'm older, I'm really re-evaluating that preference. What reasons do I have to like Marvel? Nothing that I've read in the past few years have really grasped me, in fact, I've felt more disappointed if anything. DC on the otherhand seems to produce more content that I can really connect with and if you count their Vertigo imprint as DC, then by far, DC would be my favourite right now. But I'm going to be fair to Marvel and discount Vertigo. I just get excited reading DC stories now. Not only are the stories well written and gripping, I get excited in discovering new characters that I never knew about before, who are just as cool as those from Marvel. Okay, I just ha...

About two months ago, me and a friend were talking about comic books and sharing about some of the stories that we were enjoying. He was telling me about DC's Infinite Crisis , describing the story and it interested me. At the time, I thought that I had never read it before, so earlier this month, I dove right into this seven issue series. With each passing issue I kept thinking to myself, "wow, this story seems really familiar". And in fact, there were numerous times where I would predict what would happen on the next page... I must have read it before and it turns out I did. So I talked to my friend again and it turns out he had read Final Crisis , a different crossover series from DC Comics. Looking back, this was a happy mistake because it's been a long time since I first read this story arc which I enjoyed the first time around and still enjoyed this second time. Released originally in 2006, Infinite Crisis is a crossover series in the DC Universe that sou...

I try not to hide the fact that I'm a big wrestling fan. I'm what the internet geeks would call a hardcore fan or a mark. As a kid (and in some ways still) the wrestler, Bret "The Hitman" Hart, was always my favourite because to me, he was like a hero. He always fought for the good and cut down all the bad. Even when he would turn in storyline into a bad guy, I would still cheer for him because he was Canadian and he represented our country. To me, Bret Hart was always the infallible, indestructible and invincible hero. Then a funny thing happened 3 years ago. Back in the fall of 2007 he released his much anticipated autobiography, a book touted as the best wrestling biography ever written. It must have been one the books I was most anxious to read in my life. As I started reading it, I was really smiling because I was getting to learn more about my childhood hero. But as I read the book further, my smile started to straighten, and then curve down. I felt sad. The m...