Top Five Best Amazing Comic Book Moments of 2005

5. Henry Ducard is Actually Ra's Al Ghul in Batman Begins.
That was awesome! The guy who wrote that is awesome! What a great trick! Batman better realize after that he needs to do spend some more time detecting and less time making out with Mrs. Tom Cruise. Who was totally hot in that movie. But they great mystery of Ra's Al Ghul took center stage and now we know that Batman was, in fact, trained by his greatest enemy. Just blows your mind. And Gary Oldman was great as Gordon. And the Joker card at the end was a really great nod to the fans of the comics!

4. Aliens vs. Predator (Unrated Director's Cut DVD).
The DVD that the fans demanded! Finally all the questions that were raised by the studios intereference with Paul Anderson's vision are answered! The movie follows a research team that discovers a Predator temple under the ice where they breed Aliens to hunt. But who ends up hunted in the end?

Anderson is vindicated with this DVD and can take his place among the greats like Fincher and Cameron. This is a great adaptation of a great comic book series published by Dark Horse.

And in the end who won? We, the fans won. A lot.

3. Blue Beetle is Shot in the Head and Murdered by Maxwell Lord.
Woah! And with that moment everything changes. The DC Universe is no longer a place for kids and adults who won't grow up. It's a darker palce, more like the more realistic Marvel Universe. This event launched the Infinite Crisis saga that split up Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman and sent a bunch of DC characters into space in a flying Roman city. And there were One Man Army Corp robots everywhere. And TWO Lex Luthors. And we thought one was a lot for the heroes to have to handle! Now there're two! Looks like it could be pretty good. Until Ultimate Galactus blows it out of the water next year!

2. Fantastic Four Movie Opens.
Now that's what I'm talking about. Ben Grim, Mr. Fantastic, The Invisible Woman and Johnny Storm, charged into theaters to show how a comic movie can work when done right! Take notes Mr. Singer! They made the right changes to make it believable for a modern audience while keeping that flair that Lee and Kirby made famous. Let's face it, a guy like Dr. Doom wearing a metal suit doesn't make a lot of sense, but him being in a space accident that turns him into a metal suit and then has him put on a metal face mask he got as a humanitarian award, now you've got something that makes sense to an modern audience! The best part of the movie was the family dynamic and the horrible choice Ben had to make to save his friends. It was truly touching for a comic fan to see such sacrifice on the screen and to see the first family of comics captured so well on celluloid. And Jessica Alba is certainly no slouch in the hotness department!

1. The Return of Frank Miller. Frank Miller, the genius behind The Dark Knight Returns, returned himself to comics in 2005. With a vengeance! His All Star Batman and Robin The Boy Wonder exploded into comics stores with comic book artist superstar Jim Lee. He also wrote and directed a live action movie called Sin City. After the success of Dark Knight Miller left comics for Hollywood where he made the underrated film Robocop 2. But after the success of Sin City, he decided to return to his first home, comic books. And we couldn't be happier. Here we see some of his best work ever, as we see how a child would perceive such a force as The Batman. Batman knows he needs a sidekick and that Dick needs to shape up so that he can join the War on Crime! How will it end? We're dying to know!

Welcome back Frank! You are, indeed the goddamn Batman!

Top Five Best Comic Book Let-Downs of 2005

5. Excalibur Cancelled.
Booooo! That was the collective shout of fans everywhere as Marvel once again screwed over uber-scribe Chris Claremont in order to let Brian Bendis pee all over everything true Marvel fans hold dear. The only X-book with decent characterizations of Professor X and Magneto and it gets canned for House of M. Then comes back, but has Captain Britain in it again. Captain Britains already led one version of this book into cancellation! Let's go for two! Meanwhile: Professor X is gone, Magneto can't lift a fork, and everything sucks.

4. Seven Soldiers of Victory.
Seriously, I have no idea what's going on in these books. Really. Zatanna's in one and there's a Pegasus. And then this other one has some chick with a conehead.

3. Young Avengers.
Muppet Babies meets Avengers. And the Hulk guy's not really a Hulk-guy, he just makes himself look like one. And Kang's there or something. And Cap's all pissed. I guess because Bucky died and he doesn't want kids involved in super-heroing. Except Bucky's not dead, so why should he care?

2. No More Mutants.
Mutants are awesome! What the hell is wrong with you, Marvel?!

1. All Star Superman.
We waited months for this? What even happened in it? Superman goes to the sun, comes back and is dying. No way. Morrison proves again he just doesn't understand comic characters. Superman gets his powers form the sun. Why would it kill him? In The Dark Knight Returns Superman once got his powers from a flower.

And Quietly? An All-Star? If you want an artist who's going to put in a lot of time on a book and truly is an All-Star, let's get comic-God Rob Liefeld in there. Maybe he can do a fill in when ASS Superman ends up being late.

And why was everyone all weirdly colored? Go have your acid trips elsewhere, Mr. Morrison.

After the smash-hit that was Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder, this was a real let down.

Next column: THE CREATIVE PROCESS RESUMES!




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