No Internet, Stan Lee: Dr. Samurai-Evil-Genius, and Wolverine

Today’s post is a smattering of things I haven’t been able to post because I am currently without internet at home. Yes, I have discovered that not having internet is a debilitating, crippling problem to me. I once used to say that I could go several months without the internet and now I find myself incapable of going a few hours without checking up on IMDB, Square Enix.jp, dannychoo.com, various web comics, You-Tube, CNN, the BBC, various independent news networks and non-profit sites, e-mail, or the ever-addictive Facebook…How sad is that? Well, if you are thinking it is sad, I dare you to spend a week without the internet. If you can do it then you are far less addicted to fancy click-of-a-button media than I am.

Moving on…Saturday was FREE COMIC BOOK DAY, and I hope you all got out to your local comic book shop to support them and pick up some of the new previews. I wanted to cover one in particular because I feel it is both silly and well….extremely necessary in some strange, demented way.

Stan Lee has produced a Manga. Yes, you have read correctly. The great Stan Lee has jumped on the Japan-trendy bandwagon and produced a Manga of his own. The work is titled, “Karakuridoji ULTIMO” and presented with Hiroyuki Takei (of Shaman King). It will be released in both Japan and America as a part of the weekly Shonen Jump (Jump SQ. II in Japan). Stan Lee thought the idea of “having a good robot fight the bad ones” would be a great concept for both countries, and I tend to agree. Takei is an AMAZING artist and I really like the art I got to see in Issue Zero.

Without giving any spoiler-tastic details I will tell you that Mechanical Boy Ultimo is “perfect good” and his counterpart is “perfect evil.” The robots were made by a samurai who looks…a lot like Stan Lee. In fact, if this samurai isn’t meant to look like Stan Lee then this was one hell of an accident. The first thing I said when I saw the comic book cover was, “SAMURAI STAN LEE! I MUST HAVE THIS!” The comic book store clerk probably thought I was crazy or some kind of nutty comic girl that had been in her basement too long (and hey, I didn’t live there for THAT long). I even got a cool poster insert with Stan Lee as his epic samurai-self (this samurai is actually an evil-genius-doctor named Dr. Dunstan...and someone please tell me why a samurai has the name Dunstan and I'll give you an insanity cookie).



Unfortunately…the first three panels show us that he’s not going to be sticking around for the series…but I got to see Stan Lee drawn as a samurai and quite frankly that made my day so it’s all good.

The dialogue is very true to manga-style and I have to say I think Stan Lee is pretty decent at writing a shonen manga. The intended audience is obviously slightly younger and male (like with Shamen King and other shonen manga) but I think this will actually be a pretty decent read. I plan on picking up a copy in July when it premiers here in America’s Shonen Jump Magazine (yes, I read Shonen Jump even though I’m female…it’s really not so bad. I promise. Honestly I prefer that sort of story to the ones in Shojou Beat because I’m just not very into that whole sappy romance manga trend).

So yeah, check it out. If you didn’t get a preview for Free Comic Book Day then shame on your for not going out on Saturday and make sure you start surfing the web to find all the cool shiny bits you missed this weekend.

In other news…I saw “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” this weekend, and I have to say it was pretty decent. I have heard many people complain that the action was too intense and that Deadpool didn’t get enough speech-time on screen, but I really don’t think these complaints are all that well founded. Since I don’t want to give any spoilers to anyone that didn’t see it opening weekend I won’t go into it too far…but just keep in mind that there’s cool stuff after the credits and they are making a Deadpool movie after all, so don’t throw yourselves all into a panic. Personally, I thought they made Gambit a total badass in this film and WAY more believable power-wise than in both the comics and the TV show, and Wolverine’s origin story was portrayed with some pretty good canon (though there are creative interpretations that deter from the canon so just keep an open mind). All in all I think it was decent and I rank it above X3, at par with X1, but still below X2 (because X2 rocked some serious awesome-sauce).



Stay tuned this week because I’m going to see the new Star Trek film in IMAX on opening night and that is going to be absolutely amazing. I have a feeling I’m not going to be disappointed (and I hope to the great Space Buddha I’m NOT going to be disappointed because there will be angry posts for sure).

Go check out free previews from Free Comic Book Day! What are you waiting for!?
Lady Jones