Comics Picks of The Week 16.10.2013

This was another week with me reading far more non-DC comics than DC comics, as was the case in September. Lots of great variety in the comics this week, especially a lot of exciting new series with their first issues. There are a few other series that I’m looking forward to reading in the next few days, particularly catching up with some favourites like Bill Willingham’s Fables, of which I’ve read the first two volumes, and some Top Cow books.

Which brings me to the my usual complaint with my comics reading: the lack of being able to read any graphic novels. I fully expected to be able to move through at least two this week but I got caught up reading a really big fantasy novel that proved to be a tough slog, not to mention a sudden fascination with the Candy Crush game on my iPad and my smartphone, so I’ve been whiling away a lot of time. No idea what’s gonna happen this week, but as always, I’m hopeful!

In the meantime, here’s another edition of this new feature. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.

Robocop: The Last Stand #1 by Frank Miller and Steven Grant (Comics Review)

Growing up, the Robocop animated series was very much fringe viewing for me. I was never really interested in it to the same degree as I was with stuff like Johnny Quest, Tom & Jerry, Aladdin, Superman, Batman or a whole bunch of other shows from the same era. But, I enjoyed watching it all the same and if an episode of Robocop was on, I’d be certain that I watched it in full. I even used to borrow a cousin’s taped VHSs on occasion.

When I heard recently that Boom Studios was doing a mini-series based on Frank Miller’s unused screenplay for Robocop 3, I was pretty interested. I’ve never seen the Robocop movies, so I don’t know what kind of quality they had or what have you, but this news got me intrigued enough to find out more. I’ve actually had this issue for a while, but never quite got around to reading it. But I did read it a few minutes ago, mostly looking for something completely different to the stuff I usually read, and I have to say that this series is off to a so-so start.

The Wolverine vs Wolverine: Different Eras

Last month saw the release of the much-hyped The Wolverine, the latest in 20th Century Fox’s ongoing attempts to create an X-Men movie franchise. There’ve been lots of ups and downs in the last, what, thirteen years (?) as far as that’s concerned. The first X-Men movie was a great movie that did a lot to help establish Marvel characters within Hollywood, but the subsequent productions, despite their varying success levels, haven’t exactly been on par. The X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie was a ridiculous attempt at a prequel to the trilogy and though I kind of do love the film because of all the action-goodness in it, it was low on plot and low on character development. The most recent movie, X-Men: First Class, a reboot of the entire franchise, went back into the Cold War era to kickstart the global mutant-hate and was an attempt to tell a prequel with a much different tone and one that would establish the divisions between Professor X and Magneto. Of course, it doesn’t help that First Class officially retconned the Origins movie and that together, all three movies are a continuity mess, when taken together.

And into this mix is The Wolverine, which is seemingly set after the events of X-Men 3 and will ultimately tie into next year’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, which will continue on with the X-Men team established by Professor X in First Class and is also a sequel to X-Men 3 at the same time. Which just makes things really confusing.

Either way, this review isn’t really a review of the usual type. I’m taking a look at the new movie and comparing it against its direct source material, Wolverine Volume 1 by Chris Claremont, which is where the story for the movie has been adapted from. In a nutshell, I think the movie is a fairly good adaptation and it is not a straight lifting of plot points or character development, but is something different. All things considered, I think this is one of the best such adaptations I’ve seen.

Note: spoilers for the final act of the movie and the comic will be discussed towards the end of the review.