The Four Color Media Monitor

The ultra-establishment Captain Comics writes up another sugarladen column of his, this one being on the new All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder, written by Frank Miller.

"I would say the line is aimed squarely at casual readers," Lee told the online site Newsarama, while wearing his VP hat. "Browsers who have never read a Batman comic but are familiar with the character from other media should be able to pick up ('All Star Batman') and 'get' it right from the start."

In all fairness, I should point out that Marvel Comics did something similar five years ago, which has met with enough success to be copied. Their "Ultimate" line serves up many of the same characters that have been around since the early '60s, but as if they were starting out today. In "Ultimate Spider-Man," for example, Peter Parker is a teenage high school student - whereas in "Amazing Spider-Man," and all other non-Ultimate Marvel books, he's a twentysomething high school teacher. The two Spider-Men inhabit different "universes," and what happens in one doesn't affect the other.

Naturally, he obscures the fact that the Ultimate line (which he doesn't even mention that Marvel claimed to be for younger readers before abandoning that claim quickly afterwards) isn't exactly thought of as being the most well written line of comics ever produced, and ends up no better than its parent line. Early in Ultimate X-Men, the supervillain Magneto violently attacks the White House and the president, and Xavier disposes of him in just as lurid a fashion. And when Millar revisits one of the weakest, if not the worst, moments in Avengers history in the Ultimates, that being the time when Hank Pym lashed out at Janet Van Dyne, he implied that Jan was to blame by having her belittle/provoke Hank, leading to his abusing her within just the first few issues.

Of course, he doesn't mention those stories, now does he?

But if there's anything that really bugs me here,

So the "All Star" approach isn't terribly original. But who cares? Just the idea of a new Frank Miller Bat-story is enough to get this jaded fanboy excited. And it's sufficient to name "All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder" No. 1 my Pick of the Month.

Not so fast.

What exactly does Mr. Smith think he's doing by going along and saying that it's his pick of the month if he didn't even actually read and review it first? It's pretty obvious that he's writing what he thinks of the product's being published without actually reviewing it to boot. What good is that? I may want to check it out, but I still want an opinion on the inner content before I do.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, msm propaganda