Rapid Reviews - 15 December 2004 with extras

Marvel Age Fantastic Four #9: "The End of the Fantastic Four": Ah, Namor! This was a nice little quest book, with a fun beginning, middle, and... well, ending. This book is cute and interesting.

Plastic Man #13: "The Most Evil Book of All Time": Um. Right.

Birds of Prey #77: "Hero Hunters Part Two: Harvest": Spooky new villain, nicely flowing story, good cliff-hanger. This new style Birds might be fun. Still too soon to tell for sure, but I'm looking forward to reading more.

Identity Crisis #7: "The Hero's Life": Seems like people either liked this finish a little, or hated it passionately. I'm in the "liked a little" camp, I guess. It wasn't the earth-shaking adventure DC promised, and I had more than a few difficulties buying the motive of the villain. In short, I don't. It was a dumb reason, and didn't really add much. The second half of the book, with everyone dealing with aftermaths, just bored me. So, um, maybe I'm in the hated it group. I can't really tell. I feel like I didn't read a book that was really worth reading, but at least the art was generally good.

Girl Genius #13: I want the next issue NOW. And the issue after that... and the issue after that... and the issue after that... The only problem with this book is that it doesn't come out more often. This is definitely an issue I'm going to want to go back through page by page and revisit each step of the way for fun stuff in the backgrounds. Recommended.

Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events: A fortunate event, a friend's kind offer, let me see this movie before it hit the second-run theaters. It appeared at first that the movie was going to be an unfortunate event, as when the lights went down, the screen remained black for awhile, then showed test patterns (upside-down) for awhile, then went black again... then the house lights came back up. But that was the only glitch in the theater, and we weren't quite certain it wasn't intentional. The movie itself? Fantastic. Truly wonderful. It does NOT follow the books religiously, but instead does something far more important... it gets the spirit of the books exactly right. The sets and costumes reflect the uncertain location/era of the story, and the music is just perfectly enhancing. There were a few false notes, mostly in the characterizations of minor characters (the judge came off much worse than in the first book), but since the spirit was so close to the books, I found that easy to forgive. This is not for young children, and as usual, the books are better than the movie based on them, but honestly, I have to recommend this one. Very fun.

Farscape [2-08]: Dream a Little Dream: Zhaan has recurring nightmares of what happened when Moya had to leave half the crew behind. This was apparently slated to be the season opener, but it was decided that it was too weak to start the season off. I understand that thinking. There's also the fact that the original story, without the framing sequence, would have been as frustrating as it gets for the viewers who wanted a resolution to the cliffhanger from last season. It's a bit of a pity they didn't run with it anyway, as this show tends to break boundaries. As a mid-season episode, it doesn't have nearly the impact it would have had if it had started the season.