Geek Talk

This past weekend was my birthday and on Thursday (I took my birthday off which was that friday) I went to see Batman Begins. I liked it. There was one scene I kind of felt weird about. I’m not sure what it was, but Batman had a lisp for about 5 minutes. Maybe the mask was too tight or something but that was the only time it showed up. But other than that 5 minute malfunction, I really enjoyed it. I liked seeing how the batcave came to be and his suit and all the other gadgets. I really hope everyone from this movie comes back for the next one. So go see it, it’s worth it.

Way back when I heard about “The Dukes of Hazzard” movie coming out this summer and heard Jessica Simpson would play Daisy. I thought that was bad, but maybe the other actors would overshadow her and it wouldn’t be so bad… Well I just found out who plays the dukes. Johnny Knoxville and Seann William Scott, yeah Stiffler and a Jackass… wow, this’ll suck.

Visiting an arcarde with some friends when we were about 12, they all wanted to play the X-men video game. I went along knowing nothing about it. I was left with Nightcrawler since no one wanted to play him. I instantly loved everything about this guy. Later in the week they were ordering comics from a book and asked if I wanted any. So I ordered X-men vs. Excalibur since I was told Nightcrawler is no longer on X-men but Excalibur. I was hooked, the next few years shaped this comic geek you know and love. I got almost every issue of Excalibur. I know i have 1-100 and then I have random issues from 100-125.

So when Marvel announced that Excalibur would be relaunched as something completely different I wanted to check it out. It turned out to be about Xavier rebuilding the mutant country Genosha. I always liked Xavier as a charcter and Magneto was helping him. I liked it so much I order a subscription. Two days ago in the mail they said Excalibur was being shut down, 14 issues after the relaunch. I think its because Magneto is going into full bad mode again. Then I read the letters page and they claim Excalibur would be back in a few months. Odd I thought. But even odder is the title “New Excalibur”.

What’s Marvel’s fascination with the word new? New X-men, New Avengers, New Thunderbolts, whats next? New Spider-Man? I hate when they relaunch titles at number 1. I’d rather they just make the cover with text only “NEW DIRECTION”. Maybe what they need is some kind of symbol to say “This is a new story”, so people know they can jump in and won’t miss much. And stop changing the titles of books. It’s just silly. Maybe I should change my name everytime I get a raise or something, Jim “now with more money” Murphy! or New Jim, or Ultimate Jim.

Newsarama claims X3 has lost another director. For those not in the know, Bryan Singer was the director of Xmen and X2 but left the director seat of X3 to direct Superman Returns.

Maybe this will give them enough time for Singer to come back. I have nothing against Vaughan but I loved the way X2 came out. 3 big scenes from that movie are still so much fun to watch. Those are Nightcrawler’s assault on the oval office, Magneto’s escape and Wolverine goes nuts. Those were over the top action scenes. I hope X3 has those also.