*Well the last issue of Fantastic Four has come and gone for Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo. I’ve never been a huge Fantastic Four fan - the characters were never particularly interesting to me. Nonetheless, I jumped on about 5 issues ago, and man do I regret that. Not because I didn’t love the book, but because I loved the book. Waid did a great job of telling a compelling story and making me actually care about the characters. And the art, while not my particular favorite style, fit nicely within the style of the book. And now that I’ve come to appreciate this title, Waid and Wieringo are gone.

I have to admit though, I’m not sure if I’ll stick with the title. Because when you get down to it, I still don’t have any great affinity for the Fantastic Four, I just really liked the way they were written and drawn.

*I also regret not getting into the F4 before I did. I missed a lot of good stories I suspect.

*Let me also say, that this last issue by Waid and Wieringo was actually a touching story. It marks the first time that I truly saw what people like so much about the Fantastic Four.

*When I went to my comic book store a week or two ago, I ran across the new Demon comic. And I have to admit I was a little surprised. I didn’t realize they were going to come out with a new version. I’ve always liked the Demon, I guess it’s that mix of magic, Merlin, and lost in time feeling that I like so much. The only “problem” I had after reading this new title is that Etrigan doesn’t rhyme! I became so used to reading a rhyming Etrigan in the old Demon books, it was a little difficult to read!

The good news is that as of tomorrow Demon #2 will be hitting comic book stores. I think this title has potential to become one of my favorites.

*So I’m hearing back from the first few friends who have gone out and seen Sin City. You may recall that two weeks ago I wrote that I wasn’t feeling very impressed with Sin City. I said, “That makes me fear for this movie. How many movies have truly survived an over abundance of advertising? The other thing that makes me fear for this movie is the fact that it’s black and white. Hasn’t evolution proven that we have color vision for a reason?”

I’ll admit, I may have been wrong on both accounts. As I said, from everything I hear this is one heck of a comic book to movie adaptation, and I’m willing to admit this is a good movie (once I see it).

One other thought occurs to me as I listen to people talk about how good the movie is; have you noticed how many stars are in this movie? It seems that virtually all the actors are well known and usually with multiple movies to their names. Usually that many celebrities is a guarantee that the movie will flop.

*Let’s recap Sin City for a second and look at the “signs” that typically point to a bad movie.
1. An overabundance of advertising
2. Too stylistic – in this case black and white
3. Tons of big-time stars.
4. Ebert and Roeper giving the movie two thumbs up.

I’d lay good odds on any movie with only half of those conditions being awful. It’s amazing that Sin City is bucking that trend.

My only explanation for this is that they let Frank Miller be involved so closely with the movie. Which helped guarantee that it would be a very solid adaptation from the comic books. I hope that more comic book adaptations learn from this example.

*One last Sin City note. The movie grossed $28.1 million this weekend. That’s ¾ of it’s production value! Not too shabby.

*Okay, I lied. I have a very difficult time typing “Sin City” and not “Sim City”. The conditioning is almost too much!

*Let me just say how glad I am that there is a new artist on Robin. Normally I’m a softie on saying negative things about a specific artist/writer. Hey, none of that’s easy to do, and I’m sure they are all more talented than me. But in this case, the art was dramatically pulling down a great story. There is such depth and meaning to Tim Drake right now, that I found it very frustrating to read the book. You’ll see that in my review of Robin #135 last month I was not very kind to Damion Scott. In fact, I gave that book a rating of 1.5 halibuts purely because of the art.

So when I read this months Robin I remember thinking, “hey the art looks pretty good in this issue, I’m glad to see that Scott has “cleaned” up the art a little.” But then it dawned on me that they must have a new artist, and sure enough they do (Giuseppe Camumcoli and Sandra Hope). I don’t know how long this new art team will last, but I am now really looking forward to Robin #137!

*Wild C.A.T.S. will be released this Summer on DVD. This was probably the first comic I bought from Image when the publisher opened up its doors. I really did like the comic book, but I never really got into the cartoon. And apparently not many others did either, since it only lasted one season.

What I did like about the cartoon was that it wasn’t simply another Batman or another Superman cartoon. It was fun just to see another comic book group come alive.

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