2010s – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Who Killed Captain Alex?

Who Killed Captain Alex? (2010)
Written and directed by Nabwana I.G.G.

I’ve mentioned several times in this series on foreign films how much American media is saturated with other cultures. This is intentional as it helps spread US hegemony across the globe by portraying the country as the toughest, most heroic culture on Earth. In the 1980s, this was done through the macho action films of people like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. More recently, Marvel movies have been America’s tool of global indoctrination.

Comic Book Review – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The IDW Collection Volume One

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The IDW Collection Volume One (2015)
Reprints Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2011) #1-12, Raphael, Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo, and Splinter Micro-Series one-shots
Written by Kevin Eastman & Tom Waltz (with Bobby Curnow, Brian Lynch, Erik Burnham
Art by Kevin Eastman, Dan Duncan, Mateus Santoluco, Franco Urru, Andy Kuhn, Valerio Schiti, Sophie Campbell, Charles Paul Wilson III

Since their debut in 1985, there haven’t been many instances where there wasn’t a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles being published. Since 2011, the Turtles’ adventures have been published by IDW. They are the 5th largest comics publisher in the States, having made their way with many licensed books, and currently publish a handful of Star Wars comics outside the Marvel banner. The Turtles have been one of their biggest successes, with a major reboot happening over the last year that has expanded them into a whole line of ongoing books. We’re returning to where it all started with this volume of the first year’s worth of issues.

Comic Book Review – X-Men Forever Volumes Three and Four

X-Men Forever: Come to Mother…Russia! (2010)
Reprints X-Men Forever #11-15
Written by Chris Claremont
Art by Tom Grummett

X-Men Forever: Devil in a White Dress (2010)
Reprints X-Men Forever #16-20 & X-Men Forever Annual #1
Written by Chris Claremont
Art by Graham Nolan and Tom Grummett

Chris Claremont’s X-Men Forever continues its fascinatingly weird alternate take on the 1990s X-Men. As discussed in the first review, Claremont was given this out-of-canon book to continue his X-Men run and started by shrinking the team to a smaller, more easily handled number. He instituted several other big changes – killing off Wolverine, revealing Storm is still a child, and showing that the adult Storm is some kind of imposter. Nathan Christopher Summers was never sent to the future and more. He’s not done and in Come to Mother…Russia, Claremont keeps providing new takes on familiar faces. One of these is a character who retired in Uncanny X-Men and even walked away from the book when Bob Harras pressured him to bring back Colossus.

Comic Book Review – X-Men Forever Volumes One and Two

X-Men Forever: Picking Up Where We Left Off (2012)
Reprints X-Men Forever #1-5
Written by Chris Claremont
Art by Tom Grummett

X-Men Forever: The Secret History of the Sentinels (2012)
Reprints X-Men Forever #6-10
Written by Chris Claremont
Art by Paul Smith and Steve Scott

This year, 2024, I read through the entirety of Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men run. It’s one of the all-time great comic book runs with highs and lows, but always something new and interesting. It came from when comic book characters were not IPs making billions of dollars in box office revenue. With less scrutiny came more creativity & risk. But, by 1991, Marvel Comics wanted an X-Men comic that wasn’t so weird and had traditional team dynamics with missions against the villains of the month. Claremont stepped away. But he wouldn’t burn his bridges; Claremont understood the spotlight shifted to the hot young artists like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld in the early 1990s. He kept plugging away with little projects here and there, even writing for DC Comics. Eventually, he started writing new stories for Marvel about many of the characters he helped to create. The idea was to have Claremont write an out-of-continuity series that continued his X-Men as if there had never been an interruption. Sounds great, right? It’s one of the most insane X-Men things I’ve read in a long time.

Comic Book Review – Sideways

Sideways: Steppin’ Out (2018)
Reprints Sideways #1-6
Written by Dan DiDio and Justin Jordan
Art by Kenneth Rocafort, Robert Gil, and Carmine di Giandomenico

Sideways: Rifts and Revelations (2019)
Reprints Sideways #7-13, Annual #1
Written by Dan DiDio and Grant Morrison
Art by Kenneth Rocafort, Max Raynor, Trevor Scott, Will Conrad, Cliff Richards, Shane Davis, Michelle Delecki, and Ibraim Roberson

Following the events of DC: Metal, a somewhat ludicrous storyline, DC Comics rolled out a line of comics that clearly attempted to create Marvel knock-offs. That’s nothing new. We’ll see later this month when I review Marvel’s Squadron Supreme that the Big Two have been doing this for decades, a playful series of non-copyright infringing homages that let writers make commentaries on the other company’s characters.

PopCult Podcast – Beetlejuice/Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

With Tim Burton’s latest opening in theaters, we decided to take a look back. The first is a classic, his second feature which introduced us to the ghost with the most. The second is YA novel adaptation from 2016 that is heavy on the CG and exposition.

Comic Book Review – The Manhattan Projects Deluxe Book One

The Manhattan Projects Deluxe Book One (2014)
Reprints The Manhattan Projects #1-10
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Nick Pitarra and Ryan Browne

The basic premise of Jonathan HIckman’s The Manhattan Projects is “What if the research and development department created to produce the first atomic bomb was a front for a series of other, more unusual, programs?” From this seed of an idea, Hickman and artistic collaborator Nick Pitarra developed alternate history versions of many well-known scientific figures of the mid-20th century. The names are familiar, but what they do and who they are in the context of this comic is a wild trip of discovery, comedy, and horror. At first glance, the books have a graphic design philosophy similar to Hickman’s Krakoa-era X-Men work, making them like artifacts from an alternate reality.

Comic Book Review – Prophet Volumes One & Two

Prophet Volume One (Image Comics)
Reprints Prophet #21-26
Written by Brandon Graham (with Simon Roy, Farel Dalrymple, and Giannis Milonogiannis
Art by Simon Roy, Farel Dalrymple, Brandon Graham, Giannis Milonogiannis, and Marian Churchland

Prophet Volume Two (Image Comics)
Reprints Prophet #27-31, 33
Written by Brandon Graham (with Simon Roy, Farel Dalrymple, and Giannis Milonogiannis
Art by Simon Roy, Farel Dalrymple, Brandon Graham, Giannis Milonogiannis, Fil Barlow, Helen Maler, and Boo Cook

You might be a bit confused about the issues reprinted here. How is this volume one if it starts with issue 21? That’s a valid question. Prophet was the revival of a previously canceled series under Rob Liefield’s Image Comics imprint Extreme Comics. The initial Prophet series concluded in 1994 and was revived in 1995, with a second ongoing series canceled shortly after that. For over a decade, Liefield flailed around with his original IPs, as he is wont to do. In 2011, a radical revival was planned of several Liefeld properties, and Prophet ended up being the longest-running and best-executed, in my opinion. That was mainly due to the seemingly endless creativity of its writer, Brandon Graham.

Movie Review – Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)
Written and directed by Jalmari Helander

The mixing up of Santa lore is a prevalent trope in modern Christmas fare. While it’s becoming more common to see dark, action-oriented Christmas movies over the last few years, Rare Exports was one of the first. I saw this when it was initially released in 2010, and this was my first rewatch since my initial viewing. I found it to be entertaining & charming on my original viewing, but now, thirteen years later, it has not held up very well. There’s a fantastic kernel of a premise at the center of the film, but it never entirely comes together and commits the greatest sin an action movie can: it becomes interminably dull.

Movie Review – Insidious

Insidious (2010)
Written by Leigh Whanell
Directed by James Wan

I’ve never seen one of the Saw films, and I probably never will. Just doesn’t look like my thing. However, I remember being curious about the stylized world of James Wan’s follow-up franchise, Insidious. I saw the film at the time of its release and remember being somewhat entertained. I decided to watch the whole series this year because the fifth film was released. I found that the things I remember liking about this first film had aged poorly. In fact, I am confident in saying I think Insidious is the most boring, least coherent horror franchise I’ve ever seen. And I’ve watched all the Halloween movies, so that’s saying a lot.