The Batman on DVD

You could probably tell a lot about a person by their answer to the question: “Who’s your favorite Batman?” Me, personally, I’d probably say Michael Keaton from the Tim Burton Batman and Batman Returns movies, with Christian Bale’s Dark Knight a close second (but that’s because of Michael Caine as Alfred). I don’t know what that says about me (escapist nostalgia?), but I have a theory about people whose favorite Batman is now Robert Pattinson in The Batman: they’re probably thoughtful, complex people who know what it’s like to struggle with trauma and anger, and who care about responsibility and accountability.

Here’s why I think that. I’m not going to summarize the plot for you too much, because you’ve probably heard plenty about this movie while it was coming out (I sure did). I wasn’t surprised that a brooding Bruce Wayne faces a brutal Riddler after two years fighting crime as Vengeance. What I was surprised by was how NOT romanticized the Batman figure was. Rather than making him a kooky crimefighter (Adam West style), a pitiable and misguided orphan martyr (like in the Gotham TV series) or a playboy and noble warrior for justice (Christian Bale style), this film makes him (and his Bruce identity) undeniably problematic both as a person and as a symbol to Gotham. Feminists will probably be notably uncomfy with his behavior toward Selina Kyle, Alfred fans (like me) will be startled by how little time and affection Bruce has for his surrogate father, mental health advocates will recognize a truly troubled personality in the unwashed and obsessive Bruce, and by the end of the movie there will be a deep dive into the dark effects a violent vigilante like Batman would really have on the culture and crime rates of Gotham. It’s an important thing to consider in an age of radicalization, polarization, and people pushed to extremes – and it makes a film that really sticks with you.

I know many people were struggling to accept Pattinson’s jump from Twilight mega-fame to tough-guy Bruce, but if you haven’t already you should definitely give this film a watch. If you’re not interested in the philosophical exploration of violence and accountability, try it for the truly wild card atmosphere of this film. For one thing, I promise you are not prepared for the Wayne Manor, and second, I would not be surprised if the casting call for this film stated “must have an unusual or silly-sounding voice”. Moreover, Zoe Kravitz’ Selina Kyle is as tough and sultry as advertised, and ALMOST as good at critiquing Batman’s privileged perspective on the world as Michelle Pfeiffer’s in Batman Returns. Other worthwhile highlights for longtime Batman fans include a clearly retro-inspired Batmobile, an ethnically diverse cast including a particularly effective Jim Gordon, and skillful camera work and orchestration (almost as good a score as The Dark Knight, though not quite at that unsettling level).

Whatever your reason, don’t miss the latest reimagining of The Caped Crusader, now available in DVD and Blu-Ray at the library. Did I miss your favorite Batman? Tell us in the comments!

Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee

If you like queer-inclusive stories of scrappy coming-of-age superheroes such as The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune, All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault by James Alan Gardner, and Hero by Perry Moore, you may want to try the Not Your Sidekick series by C.B. Lee. I recently read the first volume, and it’s a fun YA story of longing for superpowers, landing mysterious (but well-paid) internships, navigating first might-be-mutual crushes, feeling like a disappointment to your parents, learning to distrust the government, and just generally missing what’s right in front of your face.

Jess is almost seventeen, and it looks like she’s never going to have superpowers. Most people manifest their powers by their seventeenth birthday, including Jess’ ultra-perfect sister Claudia, but despite testing herself on every potential power she can think of, Jess has got nothing. This would be a bummer even if her parents weren’t low-level superheroes Shockwave and Smasher, even if Jess wasn’t already the mediocre middle child between Claudia and super-genius Brendan. But Jess decides to make the best of it, and looks for an internship instead. She ends up working for a company owned by her parents’ villain nemeses, the Mischiefs, partly because she thinks it’s both rebellious and hilarious to work for her parents’ enemies, but mostly because she’s working with her longtime crush, Abby. Their growing friendship is great, but the longer she works there the more Jess starts to suspect there’s more going on underneath the surface – with Abby, at the internship, in her edited history textbooks, and with her suddenly elusive friend Bells. And where are the Mischiefs, anyway?

I recommend this to fans of The Extraordinaries partly because it’s a similar universe, and partly because Jess is very similar to Nick in her lovable cluelessness. Readers will probably start to suspect things long before Jess does, but they’ll root for her as she figures it all out – especially with Abby. Another great aspect of this book is the thoughtfully-assembled post-apocalyptic universe; the explanations of solar flares, WWIII, and societal restructuring, are plausible and well-sprinkled through the story. Some of the writing and dialogue comes off stilted at times, but the plot and messaging is on point.

The cast of characters, and society as a whole, is heartwarmingly queer-inclusive; Jess, her friends, and the school not only include the LGBTQ individuals, but bigotry is also notably absent in their experiences. All the same, this utopian vision has its share of social commentary – the Rainbow Club at Jess’ school is critiqued as primarily a clique of the school’s gay boys and their friends, which translates to issues in the real world with whose voices are heard and represented in LGBTQ spaces and media exposure. There’s also some racial and ethnic diversity; Jess’ Vietnamese and Chinese heritage is explicitly explored, and Bells’ family owns a Creole restaurant in honor of their Louisiana heritage.

If you want a light-hearted opening to a government-overthrowing superhero saga, don’t miss Not Your Sidekick. This first series installment is available through our Mobius interlibrary loan system, with its sequels through our Rivershare system.

The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune

Do you remember Anna’s excellent review of TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea? If you liked that book, or his newer Under the Whispering Door, you may want to try his young adult series, starting with The Extraordinaries – and followed up by 2021’s Flash Fire.

The Extraordinaries is set in Nova City, a city with an established set of superheroes (the titular Extraordinaries). Nick is their biggest fan, and is particularly obsessed with Shadow Star, a hero on the rise and constantly in the news. Writing fanfiction about Shadow Star is more enjoyable than real life, where he’s facing a new ADHD medication, an uncomfortable relationship with his ex (kind of) boyfriend, changes in his group of friends, and worries about his dad’s safety as a Nova City police officer. An attempted mugging foiled by Shadow Star makes Nick determined to be a hero too, and he drags his best friend Seth along for the ride as he chases down a spectacular destiny. But he’s got a lot to learn about what it really means to be extraordinary.

Klune is fantastic at putting a human face on a fantasy universe, without skimping on any of the breathtaking fantasy elements. In this case he shows just how wide a gulf stands between being a fan of superheroes and actually being one – to great humorous effect. Nick eventually brands himself the clueless comic relief, but he also has a great deal of emotional depth, including how his ADHD affects his sense of self-worth and self-efficacy, his lingering grief around his mother’s death, and his anxiety for his cop father’s safety. Overall, his story is one grounded in the discomforts and stupid mistakes that abound during the process of growing up, but overflowing with warmth and hope for brighter futures.

For a similar read I recommend Super Adjacent by Crystal Cestari, Hero by Perry Moore, or All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault by James Alan Gardner. Less superhero-focused, but with a similar emphasis the average-citizen perspective in a world of Chosen Ones, is The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness.

Popular Manga Explained: My Hero Academia by Kohei Horikoshi

Have you ever wondered what the heck people are talking about when they rave about a series of manga (Japanese comics read from right-to-left) or anime (Japanese animation)? So have I – and luckily for you I have made it my mission to educate myself about things I never seem to stop hearing about. My latest escapade was into the wildly popular My Hero Academia manga series, which is also a smash hit anime available on DVD. Here’s my breakdown of what it’s all about, my reading experience and why all lovers of superhero stories and high school dramas should give it a try.

My Hero Academia is like The Karate Kid meets The X-Men. It imagines a world where 80% of people are born with a unique superpower, or Quirk, that sets them up for a life of superhero stardom or villainy (depending on their preference). In a world where amazing superheroes are commonplace, a boy named Midoriya (also called Deku) is their biggest fan and a dedicated memorizer of superhero trivia. He wants nothing more than to be a hero himself one day, but unfortunately for his dreams he was born without a Quirk – a fact his bully Bakugo (also called Kacchan) never lets him forget. Then one day, a chance encounter with All Might, the most legendary superhero of all, changes his fate and plunges him into the cutthroat world of the city’s best superhero training academy. Deku finds himself making new friends and enemies, meeting unusual classroom demands, AND struggling to master his new abilities without revealing how he got them. Action, hilarity, and inspiring determination ensue.

Personally, my main struggle with manga is getting into the right headspace – as translated works they have an entirely different culture built in which takes some getting used to when you start reading. Most obviously, you start at the opposite end of the book from where Western books begin, and you read from the right side of the page to the left. If you can make that switch, there’s Japanese names to master and a very dramatic art style. However, once I get my brain in the right gear, I love manga’s big-scale action and even bigger-scale emotions, not to mention the wildly creative character design. My Hero Academia in particular is the ultimate underdog story, filled with a wildly diverse set of characters, each with a very unique superpower to set them apart. I quickly got hooked and wanted more of Deku’s unending perseverance. Bonus: if you’re not into the different reading style, you can watch the anime to get the same story in color.

If you like teen dramas, superheroes, mutants, and/or underdogs, this may be a story for you. And the library has all the manga volumes AND anime seasons, so it’s never too late to jump in and experience the phenomenon.

Can’t Get Enough Thanos?

If you loved your experience watching Avengers: Endgame when it came out back in April and you want to learn more about the Villain of the film, Thanos, then I have great news for you. The Davenport Library has a plethora of resources that you can sink your teeth into.

The Infinity Gauntlet  is the original graphic novel that inspired the events of both Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.

If you are more into a recent comic that features Thanos fighting the Avengers, we have you covered there too. Infinity  is a graphic novel that came out in 2014 that follows Thanos and his invasion of Earth while the Avengers are fighting an intergalactic conflict at the same time and earth’s mightiest heroes are spread between the two conflicts.

If reading novels is more your thing, we also have the novelization of the film Avengers: Infinity War written by Liza Palmer that covers all of the events from the movie entitled Destiny Arrives.

If you want to learn more about Thanos as a character, there is also the graphic novel Thanos: Titan Consumed available to check out. This graphic novel follows the origins of the Mad Titan from when he was young until he begins his quest for the Infinity Stones and gives insight into how the character became the galaxy-conquering destroyer that we see in Endgame.

All of these resources and many more are all available at your Davenport Public Library.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – Volume 1: The Coulson Protocols

If you have watched any of the Avengers movies(or any recent superhero movie), then you’re probably familiar with S.H.I.E.L.D, aka  Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – Volume 1: The Coulson Protocols, Agent Coulson leads Melinda May, Agents Fitz and Simmons, Mockingbird, Quake, and Deathlok, as they battle someone in an Iron Man suit(who is not Iron Man!), multiple people who want to take over the world, and, of course, the evil Hydra organization. Coulson’s old love interest, Lola – not to be confused with his car who just happens to have the same name, has come to the team’s attention after her name is found to be affiliated with the tech that the person in the Iron Man suit blew up the Pentagon to steal. As a result, Coulson goes to meet her to find out what she knows. It turns out that Lola manipulated their previous relationship in order to steal precious superhero information from Coulson. She’s a psychic and can read his mind!

Coulson, being the giant superhero geek that he is, created scenarios in his head about how to take down any of the Avengers and also any of the other superheroes/agents that he knows. Lola then read his mind and stole that information. Those scenarios are now called the Coulson Protocols and fake Iron Man stole them from the Pentagon. That information is now up for auction to the highest bidder and the team must do everything and anything in their power to get that highly sensitive intel back. They battle a massive Iron Man army, throw down with some Hydra bad guys, rub shoulders with Spider-Man, Captain America, Wolverine, and Tony Stark, and find themselves in a massive standoff with the New Avengers, all while trying to find the Coulson Protocols. Allegiances are tested and backstories are revealed as Coulson and his team work to save the world from a possible leak of this sensitive information.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – Volume 1: The Coulson Protocols does a fairly good job introducing readers to who the agents are and how S.H.I.E.L.D. works. (I didn’t come into this graphic novel as a complete newbie, having watched the first season of the S.H.I.E.L.D. tv show many, many months ago, BUT I remember almost none of it, so don’t be afraid of reading this if you’re totally unfamiliar with any of the characters. You’ll be just fine.). Guggenheim also adds the characters’ names next to each throughout most of the comic, so you won’t have to flip back to the beginning to remember who’s who (That’s fantastic, btw, and way more graphic novel writers should take note). I thoroughly enjoyed this new graphic novel and can’t wait for the next volume to be released. In the mean time, I’ll have to settle for watching the two seasons of Marvel’s Agents of Shield that the library owns. Read this comic/watch the shows and let me know what you think!


Check out the television show, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1 and season 2), to learn more about the characters and see more Agent Coulson. Click on the pictures below to

Ant-Man

ant-man movieAnt-Man is a Marvel creation that most recently came out as a movie starring Paul Rudd as Scott Lang and Michael Douglas as Dr. Hank Pym. Dr. Pym was the original Ant-Man, the one who discovered the Pym Particle, a substance that had the ability to shrink items, most importantly a suit. He became Ant-Man and his wife became the Wasp. After a devastating accident, Dr. Pym hid away the formula and the process to find the Pym Particle, locking the suit away.

Flash forward to the present and viewers are introduced to Scott Lang, a burglar who has just been released from jail and is trying to turn his life around so that he can be in his daughter’s life. His roommate and a few friends approach him with the chance of a lifetime: they heard about a rich man who has a safe in his basement and if Scott can crack it, then they will be set financially for a long time. This heist changes Scott’s life and puts him in the sightline of a very powerful man, former Ant-Man Dr. Pym. Giving Scott a chance to reform his life and atone for his past crimes, Dr. Pym presents him with the opportunity to protect the Ant-Man suit and the formula from a group of scientists who wish to harness the power for dubious reasons. Dr. Pym mentors Scott in the ways to use the suit and how to harness all of its powers, while Scott works to change his life for the better. This movie is an excellent introduction to the background of Ant-Man and provides viewers with some pretty spectacular effects, while also keeping the mood light yet fill of action and adventure.


ant-man bookMoving further down the timeline is Nick Spencer’s Ant-Man. In this volume, Ant-Man is older, somewhat more mature, and has worked with a variety of other superheroes. Just because he’s older doesn’t mean he has become a better superhero though. Throughout this graphic novel, it’s pointed out to Scott that he isn’t even the best Ant-Man and that some people still think he’s dead.

Scott is still trying to better his life and provide for his daughter, something that this graphic novel shows has not been without some significant difficulty. Scott thinks he has it made when Iron Man calls and offers him a job, but quickly realizes that he’s only one of many candidates and just because he’s worked with Iron Man before doesn’t mean he is going to get the job. The realization that his ex-wife is moving with his daughter to Florida and a rumble with an old foe throws Scott off-balance, leaving him to try a new business venture that takes Scott and his family down a dangerous path where he is forced to see that what he thinks is right for his family and what is actually right for his family are two very different things.

What I liked best about this graphic novel is that if you are confused about something that is happening, the writers have written in explanations and have also provided you with the issue numbers of the different graphic novels that will help you to fill in the holes. Plus Scott does a lot of reflective thinking, so that helps. It’s brilliant! Check out this graphic novel for a more sarcastic and humanized approach to a superhero who is just trying to get his life together.

Less than Hero by S.G. Browne

lessthanheroUsually I’m wary of books that have quotes written on them from authors or publishers saying, “best writer” or “visionary of our time,” so when I saw Less than Hero on the new cart, my heart sunk a little seeing, “One of today’s very best writers” written across the front. The premise, volunteers who test experimental drugs for cash who then inadvertently turn into side-effect superheroes, immediately caught my interest though and I decided to give this book a try.

In Less than Hero, S.G. Browne has written an arrestingly witty and sarcastic nod to the pharmaceutical industry and superheroes, which I found to live up to the high praise splashed across the front cover. Llyod Prescott finds himself at the age of thirty living as a guinea pig of pharmaceutical drugs with no real direction in his life. He has a group of other guinea pig friends that he meets up with every now and then to talk about the trials that they are taking part of, a side gig pan-handling for money in a variety of locations across New York City, as well as a pixie of a girlfriend who has already saved his life once before. Lloyd is living a stagnant and regular life that’s going in no real direction until one moment when his lips go completely numb and he is struck by utter exhaustion. Letting out a giant yawn, Lloyd finds himself instantly refreshed, but is astonished to find that the stranger next to him has inexplicably fallen asleep.

Lloyd then does what any other superhero would do: tries to keep it a secret and practices on his girlfriend Sophie’s cat. When this slumbering event happens three times on its own to humans around him, since, Lloyd says, it’s important to create a pattern, he meets up with the rest of his guinea pig buddies to see if they have any weird side effects. They do and they all team up to fight crime! With powers ranging from rashes to vomiting to sleeping to convulsions to sudden weight gain, they head out across New York City to set out their own kind of justice on criminals. Through the book, Browne includes interludes about how they discovered their powers and also newspaper articles about two villains running amok in New York, Mr. Blank and Illusion Man. These two villains exhibit superpowers that Lloyd eventually realizes could actually be prescription drug side effects as well. Lloyd and his rag-tag bunch of superhero friends decide that the only thing they can do is to use their superhero abilities for good and they work on honing their talents, so they may then take on those evil villains.

Browne has crafted a superhero book outside the ordinary that is creatively sarcastic and witty about not just things that maybe might not happen, but about things that could happen in our pharmaceutically drugged society.

Thor: God of Thunder

thor god of thunderRight around the release of any superhero movie, a lot of other merchandise related to that superhero begins hitting the market. Because I am not a pre-teen or teenager anymore and have decided that I need to start decorating like a proper adult (It’s sad, I know), buying superhero towels, sheets, and posters to decorate are no longer an option. You know what venue that does still leave open? Videogames! Because of this adulthood I have been thrust into, I have become a sucker for superhero videogames.

I recently went on a Thor binge again because of our recently ended superhero summer reading program. Confession: The movies, both Thor  and Thor: The Dark World, are not my favorite superhero movies, primarily because I love a lot of actiony fights in my movies and the first of a superhero’s movie or graphic novel usually always generates around his origin story, which can be tedious, to me. (This girl is not a fan of origin stories.)

What I found lacking in the Thor movies, I found in Thor: God of Thunder. This game is available in both the Xbox 360 and Wii formats. In this game, all of the action I was missing in the movies came alive. Here, I am able to heft Mjolnir, Thor’s massive hammer, and release all of his powers of wind, thunder, lightning, and storms to fight against 25-foot-tall, 12-ton weighing frost giants and trolls that were plaguing the Norse worlds during the Thor movie. Talk about awesome! There are a variety of combinations that you can release upon your enemies from hammer throws to melee combos to all of those storm powers that I mentioned previously. What I found interesting was that you could scale the giants! You could climb them using a grappling system and multiple points to try and find their weaknesses in order to defeat them. The game also allows you to collect runes in order to pick new powers and abilities and even upgrade your weapons.

Yes, this game is repetitious, but there’s really only so much variety you can do with frost giants and trolls. Those Norse worlds didn’t exactly have many different enemies to fight. It’s important to remember that this videogame was made to be a “movie tie-in,” so it was to be released around the time when the movie actually came out. Graphics and controls are not going to be as up-to-par as if they had taken the time and released this a while after the movie came out. I still enjoyed it and I’m hoping that fellow fans of Thor will enjoy this game too.


Want to check out some other cool Thor related items that the library has? Click on the pictures below to be directed to the Thor items(movies, graphic novels, etc.) in our catalog!

thor 1thor 2thor gnlady thorthor mi

Tired of Heroic, Noble Superheroes? Try Deadpool!

I think we can safely call this the Summer of the Superhero.

You can’t go anywhere without encountering blockbusters, books, graphic novels, and YouTube videos, dedicated to the adventures of the suped-up denizens of the DC and Marvel (and various Independent) Universes.

(especially at the Davenport Public Library—just saying)

But when everyone is fighting for truth, justice, and the way of whichever rebooted dimension they happen to currently inhabit, and everyone’s base superpower is to look fabulous in spandex, how can a single super stand out?

With the power of Pure Obnoxiousness, that’s how.

Marvel’s Deadpool (aka Wade Wilson, aka “The Merc with the Mouth”) isn’t your usual superhero.  And he definitely isn’t for the kiddies.

Deadpool Dead PresidentsOther superheroes have healing factors (Wolverine) and are known for their sarcasm (Spiderman and Hawkeye), still others are egotistical (Tony Stark), have mental health issues (Duh), or dubious reputations (Winter Soldier and the Black Widow), and whatever they say their motivations are, most of them are adrenaline junkies with easily ignored self-preservation instincts.

But only in Deadpool do all these traits combine to make a deadly, invulnerable, happy-go-lucky sociopath who could use a double dose of Ritalin every four hours.

DeadpoolHe’s often drawn as having multiple personality disorder (or being possessed, take your pick), surrounded by different narration boxes that argue with him or amongst themselves.  He’s also one of the few Marvel characters who knows that he’s a character, making him incredibly delusional by the standards of the other characters and impossibly self-aware by ours.  Or vice versa.

Deadpool himself is aware that he’s crazy by anyone’s standards—and he runs with it.  He takes on impossible tasks, talks directly to the reader (and the artists) whenever it’s inappropriate to do so, and takes full advantage of his cartoon status by acting like a happily-homicidal, R-rated version of a Roadrunner who read Wile E. Coyote’s playbook, stole his Acme catalogs, and hung out a shingle.

And his success rate is phenomenal, if you ignore the collateral damage.

Deadpool Draculas GaunletDuring the course of his Extremely Varied Career, he’s saved the world from alien invasions and  undead presidents, punk’d Dracula, kicked it with Hawkeye, and contributed interesting things (including an excellent post credit scene) to Wolverine’s origins.

This is a man who appeares to thoroughly enjoy his (wet)work.

Though that doesn’t mean he can’t get cranky about being an immortal pawn in someone else’s script, to the point of making the odd attempt to take down everyone in all the Marvel Universes . . . and beyond.

Deadpool has a lot to be cranky about—even the mildest of his many, many origin stories is a nightmare: a highly skilled (and highly irritating) mercenary soldier, Wade Wilson was diagnosed with fast-acting, lethal cancer. In exchange for a cure, he agreed to join the Weapon X program (the one that gave Wolverine his metal skeleton), which hoped to use him to create the perfect soldier. Unfortunately, the scientists at Weapon X miscalculated (or lied); their excruciating experiments did give him a healing factor that made him essentially unkillable . . . but it didn’t actually cure his cancer or reverse the horrific effects of the disease . . . or of the experiments.*

Essentially, his cells regenerate just quickly enough to keep the cancer and his battle damage from killing him—but what’s underneath Deadpool’s mask isn’t pretty.  And what’s between his ears, by most definitions, doesn’t have a firm grip on what’s left of its sanity.

Deadpool versus HawkeyeStill, Deadpool is loyal (at least to the highest bidder) willing to do almost any mission (for a price), and occasionally takes a shine to other heroes (especially Spidey, Cable, and Hawkeye) and “helps” them with their own missions in a way that really, really doesn’t . . . at least, at first.

He cares, sometimes, in his own way, and if his ideas of right and wrong are a little skewed, he deserves partial credit for trying. Maybe.  And it might, just might, be possible that the reason Deadpool is so completely, utterly annoying is that his invulnerability is only skin deep and he’s desperate to protest what’s left of the rest of him.

Most of the time, Deadpool wants to be The Hero—or The Anti-Hero of Awesome—of his own story, but his methods are madness.

Though even his worst enemies can’t deny that he makes it work for him.

And it really works for those of us who dare to try his kind of chaotic supercrazy.

 

___________________________

*In another version, the Weapon X experiments worked as stipulated, and Wade Wilson was a covert superhero for a while, until he (mistakenly or deliberately) killed one of his team.  He was sent to The Hospice, a rehabilitation center for damaged mutants and supers, which was actually a secret playground for the sadistic Dr. Killebrew.   The doctor and his staff made bets—in a “deadpool”, get it?—on which of their patients would survive their terrible experiments.  As it happened, Wade Wilson held on long enough to kill his torturers and escape . . . thus “winning” the deadpool and earning a new name.  Isn’t that cheerful?