Wot Up

been off work for a while and have been pretty occupied (which meant my plans to see the new Spidey film went out the window three days in a row: will see it Monday for definite now) but have managed to get a few things done.

I've cleared most of my reading backlog (hallelujah!) but still struggling with the 75 Years of DC Comics book. Purely because of its physical size, it's uncomfortable to read for long periods of time but is quite sanitised, no mention of the company being founded on the back of criminal activity or of the Siegal/Shuster case but has revealed one unknown fact: DC is long held to be name after Detective Comics but internally it was believed to be named after Donnenfield Comics, the owner at the time. Nice book but not much meat to it so far.

The latest original DC animated movie turned up this week, Superman vs the Elite. Although Marvel's animated programme started first, DC's far outweighs it in terms of output, quality and voice casting. The fact they're usually based on specific storylines also helps (I WISH they'd never cancelled the New Teen Titans Judas Contract project!) but while The New Frontier condensed it's storyline into one movie (my favourite of the bunch) and the Dark Knight Returns will be spread over two movies, Joe Kelly and Doug Mahnke's single issue of Action Comics forms this movie. Essentially highlighting Superman's continued relevance against Authority analogues the Elite, this is an acceptable instalment but ranks towards the lower end of the series.

The title sequence is great, featuring an iconoclastic punk mish mash of the 60s and 70s animated versions of Superman though there is one bit that's just plain wrong. At one point (and the word is used repeatedly by Manchester Black), Superman says something like "Acting like a wanker". Superman shouldn't say wanker! They art staff did good research to depict Mancunian streets but surely somebody should realise the emotive content of that word, probably equivalent to the F word...just seemed wrong to me, not the word just the character saying it.

Finally, I always wonder why people want to engage in cosplay but stumbled across a sight (after finding a cosplay reinterpretation of some Adam Hughes images) and can't deny the quality of some costumes, examples below...