Luby’s Review: Hellboy, the Right Hand of Doom

Let me begin by stating in no uncertain terms, I like Hellboy. Very rarely do we have such a good creepy, horror-tinged corpus of work which becomes mainstream. I like his work, by and large.

So, the Right Hand of Doom, is a kind of collection of short stories written and illustrated by Mignola to explain the back story of Hellboy, more specifically, his giant stone hand. Since it is repeatedly alluded to that Hellboy is the Beast of the Apocolypse, and will bring about the end of the world, his hand is also alluded to be the key to that end. Hellboy, in common character spits out the occasional skeptical remark or “oh crap” in between various strangeness intersperced with villans going on and on about what they’re going to do w/his power and what he should be doing w/it. All in all, its alright. But there is very little suspense, or intrigue, as is par for the course w/Hellboy. There is less emphasis on character and dialogue, and much more on imagery and esoteric weirdness. I chose dialogue, even though I already stated that there are speeches made by the villans to Hellboy at various points, and they are just that, speeches. It feels like they are talking more to themselves, or to the reader, than to Hellboy. This is exasserbated when Hellboy tosses out the odd skeptical comment like “oh yeah?” and the like. He seems uninterested what they have to say. I guess keeping them talking distracts them, I imagine that would be useful when fighting monsters, keeping them distrcted. That is one of the charms (?) of Mignola’s horror comics, they are full of creepiness and dark imagery and subject matter, but they rarely have emotional moments. I guess when they do, this makes them more poiniant, such as Roger’s almost sacrifice in Conquerer Worm, or the story told to Hellboy by the dead alien (I happened to very much enjoy that, makes me wonder why Mignola can’t do it more often).  But by this detachment, I don’t care much for the charactes, as I can’t identify with them. Odd, because they are such blank slates, they shoudl be ripe for projection, but they don’t seem to need any. Its less a story about “What’s gonna happen to Hellboy now?” and more about ” What weird things are going to happen now?”

Maybe I’m being to harsh, but I felt that the movie gave more character to the character than all the comics I’d seen.

6 out of 10

Luby’s Review: The Incredible Hulk

Last we I also saw the Incredible Hulk in my local theatre. (it was my Father’s Day present)

So I mentioned that Iron Man really dragged on in its extemporising the origin, and that comprised a large chunk of the movie.  Hulk summed up the origin (which everyone should be aware of) in 5 minutes without dialogue. Since that was out of the way, they were free to focus on the story, which was pretty good. I kinda like Ed Norton as Banner, he doesn’t come off as maladjusted or book-smart as I thought he should be, but he does a very good job. Liv Tyler could have done better if she had been given a better part, but he lines were a bit too cowed for my take on Betty Ross. William Hurt looked too nice to be Thunderbolt Ross, but he damn well sold it. Blonsky took a massive departure from the comics, but what else could be expected when doing a movie. I happened to like Blonsky the badass with his enhancements dancing around the hulk. But then he dropped his guard with a cocky “is that all you got” Bad idea, both for the character (getting punted across the field into a tree must hurt) but also for the writing. WHY?! Why would he?! He’s seen this thing tear apart everything they’ve thrown at it, but he thinks, what, it won’t attack him? He won’t get hurt? It’s honorable? Stupid. But it was necessary for the chrysalis-like metamorphosis into Evil Blonsky who is now single-mindedly pursuing the Hulk’s power. Whatever… It wasn’t a sappy movie like Ang Lee’s Hulk, it was a comic-movie, and a good one. It had its funny parts, its cameos, its ‘oh shit’ moments. All in all it was cool.

I also really liked both Lou Ferrigno’s cameo and is voice for the Hulk, as well as Stan Lee’s cameo.
7 out of 10

I also liked the Tony Stark cameo, at the end and the similar tie in to 201. Either it will kick ass or go down in flames. I’m hoping for ass-kicking

Luby’s Review: Iron Man the Movie

Last week I saw Iron Man in my local theatre.

I was skeptical of the film, what with the recent drop in superhero movies from Marvel (The Hulk, Spiderman 3, etc.) Plus, I’ve never much been an Iron Man fan, even less so with his current mentality in comics these days (the whole Illuminati business) But I saw it after hearing glowing reviews from family and friends (My sister, who has never, to my knowledge, enjoyed comics or comic movies, loved it.) It was a different type of comic movie, less glitz and glamor. The comic-y side of it was divorced from the ‘realistic’ side of it. Meaning there was a very clear-cut difference between the CG superhero and Downey Jr. Though Downey did a great job and the film was overall, a good one, it felt less like a comic movie than a movie about a comic hero. By contrast, Spiderman felt very much like a comic movie, it was somewhat cartoony and over-exaggerated, melodramatic. Iron man was more mature and thought out. It’s lack of comic book feel is exemplified with more than the first half of the movie devoted to the iron man armor being built and perfected. It was less about “hero kicking ass” and more about ‘man becomes a hero and has to kick ass”. This is true of most origin stories, but few try to be so realistic-ish and take such a long time to get around to it. The journey to becoming Iron Man was as important, or moreso, than actually being Iron Man.

All-in-all a good film, special effects were too flashy for me, but that’s just my opinion.

For those that don’t know you really should stay after the credits for the cameo to end all cameo, I about cheered aloud I was so impressed. I can’t wait till 2011.

7.5 out of 10

Luby’s Reviews have Begun!

This is the start of something big…

Hopefully.

Yes, the beginning of Luby’s Reviews; where I, the aforementioned Luby, comment on comics, film, animation, and popular culture. Don’t hang around if you aren’t looking forward to wasting lots of time!

Peace out y’all!

~Luby