Spider-Man: The Lost Years Part 1

I know I'm pretty negative a lot of the time here, "this comic is bad," "this movie made me sad," and whatnot. This time, I'm just going to talk about something I probably shouldn't like, but I love it anyway. It's the most 90's thing you will ever read in your life, it's:

Comic Review: Spider-Man The Lost Years

Back in the good ol' days, we didn't have none of this Superior crap. When the writers wanted to replace Spider-Man, they just came up with a convoluted and confusing storyline to replace him with a clone, then say the clone wasn't the clone, but then reveal that part was actually a lie, and by the end everyone just heaves a sigh of relief when he dies. Point is, Ben Reilly was a clone of Peter Parker, who ran away from home years ago. He spent a lot of time wandering and being all brooding, and this comic reveals what he was up to.

We start on a crowded highway outside of Salt Lake City. A truck driver passes out from exhaustion, and is about to smash into some people before a mysterious man breaks open the window, pulls him out, and redirects the tractor trailor off the highway. He gives mouth-to-mouth to the unconscious driver, and runs away before anyone can catch him. Who is this enigamtic figure? This guy.

The magnificent spectacle you are now viewing is the most 90's thing in existence. Look at it! He has a mullet, 5 o' clock shadow, and a long duster trailing behind him while he rides his chopper. The fact that it's drawn by John Romita Jr. only amps up the 90's. I would even say this is... radical?

Anyway, we cut to a bar in Salt Lake City, where apparently this is going to take place. There sits another mysterious man. Listen, we're just going to keep getting those. Let's listen to his internal monologue for a bit.

That's Kaine, another clone of Peter Parker, only much more dark and brooding, because he was a failed clone, which means he's stronger and more powerful than Peter. Wait, what? Oh, his face is sort of scarred, okay.

He's been chasing Reilly for a long time, for reasons he doesn't quite understand. He reveals, as will become a regular thing, that Ben Reilly was actually the original, and that Peter is the clone. Of course, this was later proven false by the end of the Clone Saga, so this story only makes sense in that tiny context.

Anyway, he's propositioned by a hooker, and is accosted by her pimp when he declines. Kaine beats the hell out of the pimp, and gives money to the prostitute. Aww, he really is a softy! Of course he does this while contemplating the misery and pain of his life. On the way out he bumps into a woman who asks his name. He replies, "You can call me Kaine." She's evidently there to meet up with some mob types.

We then cut to Kennedy's office at the police station, and her partner, Detective Jacob Raven. He's a damn good cop in a town gone bad. And I love it.

In a jail cell, we see Vincent Tannen, the local crime boss, organizing a hit with the help of a dirty prison guard. We don't get much of that before it's back to Ben, at a job interview for a teaching assistant at some college. Fake credentials and references get him the job, so he celebrates at a local diner. The next panel is best read if you're listening to the Romeo and Juliet Love Theme.

And Ben Reilly instantly falls in love with this redheaded woman for some reason. It's so weird, it's almost like she reminds him of someone else... Anyway, he asks Janine out on a date, and she says yes. That night, Kennedy catches a Tannen underling in a sting, but some goons ambush her, and it's up to one bearded man to save the day. Kaine beats up the goons, and they arrange a late night rendevous. Two other thugs pull Raven into a car, and he's spirited away. At the same time, Reilly happens to be cycling past a house when his Spider-sense goes off, and then the house explodes. He pulls two people out of the wreckage, while lamenting the responsibility that comes with his power.

Kaine has also fallen head over heels for a lady almost instantly after meeting her, and they just had some PG-13 rated relations! Louise gets a call informing her that Raven's house just exploded, and now she is sad.

At the close of the issue, Ben stands on top of a building, pondering whether he really wants to get involved with Salt Lake City's problems. On our next exciting episode: Who will decorate for Kaine and Louise's wedding? When will we find out Janine is also a clone? And can the mullets get any bigger? Find out next time on the W Defender!

Pizza Hut's 3 Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza

Sometimes I think I might be too susceptible to advertising. I usually only think this when it's some weird time of night and I'm driving to a fast food place I just saw a commercial for. Either I'm gullible or I have a problem with self-control. Point is, last night I found myself at Pizza Hut, which I hope is a situation you never find yourself facing. Anyway, it's time for:

Oh God Why Did I Do This To Myself

My aim that night was the Three Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza from Pizza Hut. If I were a lawyer of any sort, I would have advised them to add a liberal amount of quotation marks to that title. I guess Stuffed could stay. In the kind of hungry furvor you only get after considering the point of your existence, I ordered it with bacon, pepperoni, and mushrooms. I would try to pinpoint which part was a mistake, but if I consider it at all every decision which lead to this was a miscalculation.

You buy a shitty pizza, and you expect grease, I get it. I expected grease. But this was another level. It left a visible sheen on the pizza box.

Look at dat grease.

The bacon, I thought, how could I go wrong? Well, it uh, it did. I don't know if it was the cheap bacon, or something wrong with the pizza itself, but a salty taste permeated every bite. Did it have cheese? My eyes said yes, but every other part said, "Maybe."

As for the unstuffed part of the crust. You know, the part under the cheese. The pizza... bread? You know what I mean. It was unremarkable. Kind of rubbery, but nothing you don't expect from something like a Little Caesar's. The "highlight" of this was the Stuffed "Crust". I was surprised to learn, after eating, that they expected me to believe there were three cheeses in this. I'm honestly not sure if there was even one. What I detected, stuffed unwilling into that poorly rolled crust, was some sort of cheese-esque food goo.

I mean, you could tell it was trying to be cheese. It did its best. They did something to the crust itself that made it taste sweet. Or perhaps after making it through the cheesy part, the sweet taste was my tongue trying to kill itself.

Now, we all know the true test of pizza is not how it is right out of the box, but after a night in the fridge. So, for you, I saved a piece. How was it? I didn't think it could get much worse, but there it was. Whereas previously it was but a container for grease, it became an active receptacle, desperately holding onto every last drop. The plate that held it was free of grease, but my hands were granted the privilege of sharing in this horrible resource. The stuffed portion of the crust became not unlike the floor of a tennis court. Only a marginal improvement over the original.

All in all, I would say this is a poor excuse for a pizza. I can't say I had too fun of a time trying to stuff this in my gaping maw. Luckily, it did put the giant stain on the front of my wifebeater that I was missing. It was salty, greasy, and I think I have trust issues now. Would I buy it again? No. Maybe. Probably.

Yeah, okay, I totally would.

Man of Steel Review

So guess what I just saw. It's that movie about the guy who flies around, wears a blue suit and punches stuff. Not saving people, but I'll mention that later. It's time for:

Movie Review: Man of Steel

Okay. So. I'm not even quite sure where to begin. So the first part of this movie was an incredibly long opening sequence on Aiur Krypton where it takes far too long for Jor-El to send Kal-El off to Earth, and a bunch of other stuff to happen. That's one big problem with this movie, everything just takes way too friggin' long. I should not be dreading a fight scene in a superhero movie, but by the time I got to the final fight, I was so sick of them. A large portion of the movie is pointless fight scenes that just go on and on. At one point, I asked myself why Superman Kent was fighting two Kryptonians in Smallville. I couldn't come up with a good reason. At one point Kent fights a giant robot that makes scary arms come out of it, and I didn't know why he was taking so long with that either.

The biggest problem with this movie, however, was Superman. Well, the dude they decided to call Superman right at the end but never really earned the name. He saved, maybe, 10 people in this movie. Eight, really, if you count the two people he pretty much killed. Metropolis was leveled and probably thousands of people died. How is that a Superman movie?! At one point, Kent and Lois make out for a bit in the Metropolis ruins, when there are definitely dozens of people trapped in the surrounding rubble, but don't worry that can wait until Kent and Zod fly around and punch each other for the next hour.

The whole tone of the movie wasn't what a Superman movie should ever be. On the surface it was pretty much any other action movie. For a minute I thought they switched the last act with a Transformers movie. Jonathan "Never Save Anybody" Kent was the worst Super-father ever. So in a flashback, Clark saves a busful of children after it falls into a river, and the mother of a kid in it starts asking the Kents questions. Ol' Pa talks to Clark about it, telling him he shouldn't have done that. Clark says, "Should I have just let them die?!" And his dear old Dad, the foundation for Superman's unflinching morals, says, "Maybe..."

Let me say that again, Superman's dad suggested that he let a busful of children die! Then he dies saving a dog in a tornado for no reason. The whole movie makes a point of expressing that saving people's lives is less important than hiding the fact that you're an alien from everyone forever.

Lemme talk about some other characters real quick. The villains were evil-bland. They had suits that looked like a gothy high school student's doodles, with the face masks almost exactly resembling skulls. Zod tried really hard to kill Earth just because, and expected Kal-El to help him because he must be Raditz or something.

Lois Lane was just sort of there, without much of a personality either way. She did some stuff, but it doesn't matter that she did it, it could have been anyone else in her position and it would have come out the same.

There was a bunch of techno-science mumbo-jumbo about Kryptonian DNA and it's in Clark's cells, but that part was just a reason for Zod to want to kill Clark, and I don't really care about it.

I was aghast when Kal-El killed Zod. Not "Oh my god what an unexpected move!" aghast, I mean, this was "This is a mortal sin" aghast. Superman is essentially Find A Better Way-man. Superman is supposed to be that moral guide, who doesn't take the easy way out, who always does what's right. But in this he just kills a dude, feels super bad about it for a bit, but then he's over it.

Is this the Superman we have? One whose movie has a six or seven figure body count? The one who, when it seems like he's faced with no choice but to kill, kills anyway? One who is told, specifically, not to save people by his father, who then revokes ever being his father? So many things in this movie did not make it a good movie, and so many more things made it a terrible Superman movie.

The fight scenes were too long, many characters were one-sided, the body count was huge, and it was just way too damn pessimistic for a Superman movie. It didn't even do pessimism well,
it was sad and pointless for no reason. This was a bad start to a Superman franchise, since, you know, they already greenlit it, and a bad start to the planned Justice League franchise. This movie was bad, and I feel bad.

Iron Man 3 Review

Hey, you guys remember that movie, you know, the one that came out with the dude in the metal rocket suit? It was right before he was in the Avengers. Iron Man, yeah. That didn't have a sequel. Okay, well, now it did. (There's spoilers if you haven't seen it.)

Movie Review: Iron Man 3

Okay, obviously I jest about there being no Iron Man 2. Otherwise how could we be optimistic about Iron Man 3? Okay yeah let's just start things.

So Iron Man 3 is more of a sequel to The Avengers than it is to IM2. Which makes sense, nobody wanted to remember 2. So we got Tony. Gone is his random alcoholism that appeared in 2, which all the comic fans were waiting with baited breath to see. Instead, we get a Stark with panic attacks. I'm a bit torn on these, because on the one hand it makes Stark's entrance into a world of actual superhumans have more weight, so it actually affected his character. On the other hand, It's like they picked it from a list, and added it into scenes later. By the end of the movie this little subplot never actually gets resolved, he just sort of gets over it somehow by beating the movie's villain.

Pepper starts cool as usual, running the company and shit, and the romance between her and Tony still isn't really played up in here. It's just sort of there, but nothing really happens with it. As far as what happens to her in the movie, it's a little back and forth. At one point she's wearing parts of the Iron Man suit, but then she's kidnapped and scienced-on, then right at the end she's badass for a second, and it's over. I mean, they barely avoided the Women-In-Refrigerators thing with her, but for a big chunk of the movie she's just sort of strapped to an upright table. Neither of those is what I'd like for Pepper, considering she's best as the competant businesswoman who happens to be dating Tony. My problem with this is the fact that when people try to make "Strong Female Characters" they tend to always go for physically strong, and by this point that's a tired concept. (CoughDarkKnightRisesCatwomancough)

The villains. Firstly there's the Mandarin who (SPOILER ALERT) was an actor the whole time. On one hand it kind of makes sense, because the Mandarin makes no sense. On the other hand, it's kind of lazy, seeing as how they could just throw anything at him and be all "WELL HE WAS FAKE SO WHATEVER HA HA HA." Not to mention the whole thing seems a little too Dark Knight Rises for my tastes. You know, he's Bane, the villain that has no motivation, and then Dr. I Don't Remember Her Name is like Talia, in that she acts friendly but is all evil later.

Killian, the real villain apparently, really didn't make much sense to me. I mean, yeah, he wanted to bang Pepper, but seriously, he was all buff and hot and stuff, don't you think he would have moved on by that point? And I'm a little confused about his logic with stuff. So, in his secret research facilities, people exploded, so he decided to make people explode in public places, Then he made up the Mandarin so the Government would have someone to blame for the random explosions he caused. ...Then... Profit? I mean, yeah, he was looking for a government contract, but it seems way too elaborate for that. You would think if he blew the hell out of a dude's house with helicopters and then kidnapped the President, it would make it a bit too easy to find the people that did it. I don't get where he was going.

War Machine, er, Iron Patriot was fine. I mean, he didn't really change too much, and I guess he helped Tony instead of punching him, so that works. The problem was halfway through the movie when we get Small Town Time with Anakin Skywalker. That was pretty annoying,

I expected a bit more out of the whole Extremis thing, like I thought it would tie in more with the whole Super Soldier thing that was in Captain America and The Incredible Hulk. It just sort of happened, as a random bad thing independent of the rest. I really thought, at the very least, Killian's motivation would be for the human race to survive in a world with Gods and Hulks. Without that he felt pretty shallow. If anything this movie suffers from trying to be both really on its own and really connected to The Avengers.

So overall, better than Iron Man 2, not as good as Iron Man 1. It was like Avengers in that it was a pretty good ride, but didn't really have much depth to it. The scene with a billion Iron Mans is probably the most memorable one, but who knows what else you'd remember. It's still worth a watch, especially if you've suffered through Iron Man 2. So until next time, this is the W Defender.