TheRetroCritic

Yay! Fellow BFF Axis Of Ornament contributes one of his genius comics to Bat Month! Click on baby Batman to read ;) You can find him on Twitter @AxisOfOrnament and on our goofy observational blog enterthesnowman .

Checked out the LFCC preview tonight, just thought I'd "Batmobile" you guys. Man I love that car... Yes, that is Dr Who walking around next to The Bat's vehicle: He wouldn't last a DAY in Gotham lol

Movies. Video games. Pajamas. With the wide variety of media that has been infiltrated by Batman, chances get higher all the time that the next Batman fan you meet won't have ever read a Batman comic. If you or someone you know is looking to meet Batman between the pages of a graphic novel, read on to see my top choices & why I recommend them for getting to know Batman in his original medium. 1   BATMAN: YEAR ONE   (Frank Miller) As you may guess from the title, this is a telling of how Bruce Wayne is inspired to become Batman, what he goes through to achieve that goal & what life is like after he first puts on that cowl. Almost everyone knows the basics of that plot already, but it is truly well done here & I think that it is Frank Miller at his best. Aside from the Batman aspect, I urge everyone to read this comic for the reason that it's not only a portrait of Batman, but also of Jim Gordon (Holy first impression, Batman!). The man is awesome. Non

Just noticed this. My copy of X-Men 2 is just ridiculously proud of something it really shouldn't be THAT happy about: ONE disc?! No... Could it be true? I didn't know it came in ONE disc form! This is radical! Seriously though, you're proud of selling a single DVD with no bonus extras and stuff? That's like saying: "The X-Men 2 DVD, now with a film inside!" Jeez... (review of the movie itself coming soon, NOT the one-word edition)

Sam Raimi may not have seemed like the most obvious choice as director for this first proper Spider-Man movie at the time but he proved everyone wrong creating a popcorn movie with enough entertainment, humour and faithfulness to the comic books to feel like a worthy attempt. The film begins with tedious narration more suited to a Dr Seuss animation and closes with it as well so not the most promising of starts but from the moment we actually meet Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker things start making sense. Raimi goes for a lighthearted tone actually well suited to the character and the whole film feels very much like a comic book. The build-up to Parker becoming Spider-Man is perfectly handled with the film ticking all the right boxes in terms of superhero origin stories: teen romance, tragic family crisis, growing powers/puberty, bullies, clear villain... It's cliched but in a good way. There's a sense that it's all very self-aware and knows what it's doing. I sh

Marvel Avengers Assemble ? What's with the new title?! Did they just realise this existed? Beat THAT Joss Whedon.

Zack Snyder is a weird one. Directing career so far: 300 , Watchmen , OWLS, Sucker Punch, Superman. I can't say it's been a smooth, flawless ride so far but it's been...interesting. Even the best of the bunch, Watchmen, was far from perfect and failed to to live up to the source material's deeper aspects. What it seems to come down to is a disconnect between style and content. Snyder's films, Sucker Punch included, look fab from start to finish and the over-ambition is always welcome as it gives us the sense that there's nothing Mr Snyder will shy away from. Alas this can also prove to be something of a curse. Titanic scales, tedious slo-mos, gratuitous sex/violence, CGI up the ass, grungy pop music...these seem to be regulars now when it comes to Snyder's films. He's like a Michael Bay wrapped inside a Robert Rodriguez. And although I can't stand 300 and care not for owls I enjoyed Watchmen in parts and was looking forward to this new comic b

  "Hey you guys, we need someone to play a tiny obese evil clown, is John Leguizamo free?". This is the kind of question the producers of 1997 supernatural comic book film Spawn were asking themselves. Who did they originally cast as Spawn then? Danny DeVito? Against all odds, Leguizamo's trippy turn as a Joker-style maniacal clown turns out to be the film's driving force and best asset. Which is not to say there's nothing else appealing about the film: a lot of effects are pretty creative and the whole thing is admittedly entertaining. Unfortunately once you see what Hell looks like you soon forget the good stuff and find yourself wishing you were playing a 90's PC video game instead of watching a film in which entire sequences could have been directly lifted from one of those very games. Like I said, some effects are creative and some do work but that Devil thing and its army of minions all standing around moving like tiny CGI puppets in a sea of fire i

After the catoonish lunacy of the Adam West 60's TV series which had the Dark Knight dancing, surfing, running to crime scenes ON FOOT and stroking his chin repeatedly speaking bat-nonsense and adding the word "bat" before any device, it was definitely time for something a little more, shall we say, edgy? Not that the old series weren't fun: they were great! But as far as comic book heroes go, this one had more potential than the West series could ever produce. So who better to bring out the gothic weirdness and quirky theatrics of The Bat than Beetlejuice maestro Tim Burton? Michael Keaton is the troubled caped crusader, an unlikely choice but one which proved to be surprisingly spot-on: he brings humour and likeability to a character which could easily be bland and "one-note". Of course, the real scene-stealer here is Jack Nicholson's devilish joker who prides himself on being the world's first "homicidal artist" by trashing a museu

After watching Ghost Rider for the first time since I saw it at the movies back in 2007, I re-read the review I'd written at the time: in a nutshell "1 star, avoid". What's with the anger? What drove me to banish Ghost Rider to 1 star Hell? I seriously don't know. I mean, I remember hating the first bit where you see a young Johnny Blaze making a deal with the Devil, I remember hating Eva Mendes, I remember hating the direction... Now don't get me wrong, the first bit is pretty bland, Eva Mendes is annoying and the direction feels more suited to a music video than anything else. But then there's the Ghost Rider! Sure the CGI isn't exactly top of the line but the Rider scenes are all pretty gosh darn awesome: riding in town melting parking meters, riding up and down buildings, pulling down helicopters with chains, riding with a fiery Sam Elliott cowboy, melting a jail cell... pretty kick ass. It's just a shame Nic Cage feels misca

You'd think that 20 years after the godawful Captain America TV movies we'd get something half-decent...not so. Made in 1990, this Captain America suffers such bland cinematography it feels like a 70's film. 90% of the film is spent with Captain America not in costume going to boring places and talking. The rest of the time Steve Rogers is wearing his silly plastic costume and being as bland as a cool character like Captain America could possibly get (very very bland as it turns out). As for the Red Skull, he's at the rendez-vous for about 5 minutes and the rest of the time he's also out of costume so in essence we get about 3 minutes of watchable Captain America vs Red Skull action: yay. In the hope that the new Chris Evans film will at the very least be entertaining, lets try and forget about this dull and lazy attempt. It's not as bad as 1994's Fantastic Four but pretty lame nonetheless.

Life post Superbad hasn't been easy for Michael Cera. His various attempts at adapting his nerdy, awkward persona to other ventures felt somewhat hit and miss ( Nick and Norah , Youth in Revolt ) even if Cera himself was always spot on. Finally, with Scott Pilgrim, we not only get his most enjoyable (and different) performance but also his best film to date and one of the best teen movies of the Noughties. Based on the quirky Manga-style comic books, Scott Pilgrim vs The World is really an ode to 80s-90s video games, kung fu films and anime so if all this geekiness isn't your cup of tea it's very likely that Edgar Wright's latest will fly right over your head like its P-bar's up to its full potential. And if you don't know what a "P-bar" is then, well, good luck with that. There's loads to enjoy regardless, though. I mean you've got Chris Evans as a skateboard-riding douche with a funny beard, Brandon Routh as a super-powerful vegan, a