After going back to re-watch Season 1, and finding myself pleasantly surprised at how well it held up, I also went back and watched the second season of Heroes. You may call me an apologist, but I enjoyed season 2 almost as much as the first one. Did the season have its problems? Sure. A lot of the new characters were dumb and annoying, and their introduction caused characters the audience had grown attached to in the first season to be cast aside. It also didn’t help the show that the writer’s strike occurred just as the story was gaining some speed and becoming more interesting. Having seen some of what the creators had planned for the second half of the season, I’m sad that we didn’t get the story as planned. Still, we get 11 solid episodes on this set, and while they may not be quite as good as the first season, they still have their moments, and are more enjoyable than a lot of other crap on TV.

The episodes on this set cover the entire second season, which saw Hiro (Masi Oka) sent to the past to inspire his childhood hero. We also got Peter’s (Milo Ventimiglia) trip to Ireland, then his trip to the future, followed by his journey to Texas. We got Claire (Hayden Panettiere) and her annoying new boyfriend, the “death” of HRG (Jack Coleman), and then we got to meet Claire’s birth mother [...]

A funny thing happened about halfway through this movie, the Minotaur showed up, and suddenly I realized that I was watching an episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journey. This is not to say I was ever a fan of Hercules, but I was just very much reminded of that series. The dimly lit sets, the goofy comic relief, the bad CG monsters, yes it had it all. And like Hercules, Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior had a simple charm to it, and I found myself starting to appreciate it.

Now let’s get this out of the way. This is NOT a good movie. It looks about as good as you would expect a direct-to-DVD movie to look. The dialogue is pretty wooden, as are a lot of the actors. I mean, you don’t even get to make fun of The Rock, or ogle Kelly Hu’s magnificent figure, which is pretty much the only reason to watch the first Scorpion King film.

My biggest problem with Scorpion King 2 is that it contains none of the fun, dumb action movie sensibilities of the Mummy movies that it is a spin-off of. This movie takes itself way too seriously, and if it had even a little of the Mummy’s tongue-in-cheek humor, I could handle it, but it’s just not there [...]

If you’re like me, you were really looking forward to yesterday’s premiere of the third season of Heroes. Like a lot of people, I wasn’t so impressed with the second season, so it was nice to go back and re-watch the first season, which still holds up as one of the best set of episodes of the last few years. Watching these episodes again has reminded me why I enjoyed this show so much when it first started.

Of course, if you’ve seen the show before, you know all about the story. Various people around the world discover that they have extraordinary powers. They quickly learn that not only are they not alone, but that there are evil people who want to use their powers for nefarious deeds. Predictably, they save the cheerleader, they stop the exploding man, and they set up the beginning of the second season. What struck me most about these episodes is how well they hold up. Sure, I didn’t get the big surprises anymore, but I found myself really enjoying the performances and how all the story bits fit together. Little touches like Linderman’s name being mentioned in the first episode, the evolution of Mr. Bennet from villain to hero, and the build up and eventual reveal of series villain Syler. You can tell in the first season that the creators of the show had a plan of how the story would go and it made for really compelling TV [...]

We here at Geeks of Doom are big fans of Stephen Lindsay’s Jesus Hates Zombies comic book series, and we think that you should be to, so we were excited to learn today that Lindsay will be re-releasing the JHZ anthology Those Slack-Jaw Blues this New Year.

The big news is that not only do you have a second chance to read this excellent story, but you also get an exclusive cover by legendary zombie artist Arthur Suydam (Marvel Zombies), which we are proud to show right now for the first time anywhere.

Click on the image here at right to see Jesus in all his zombie-hating glory.

Did you catch that? Arthur Suydam of Marvel Zombies fame did the cover for indie creator Stephen Lindsay’s comic book about a zombie-killing Jesus. C’mon, that’s awesome.

This special re-release will also include the additional short story Jesus Hates Zombies… and Sasquatch.

How cool is that? How can you get this exclusive cover?…

I’ve found myself less than enthused about some of the games I’ve reviewed in the past, which is not to say I can’t get any excitement out of myself, but when offered the chance to review Soul Calibur IV, well let’s just say I jumped at the opportunity. Needless to say, I am in love with this game. It’s just incredibly fun, jam-packed with features, easy enough for rookies like me to enjoy, but deep enough for the hardest of hard core fighting fans to get into. There’s no point where this game fails, and I just don’t see myself getting sick of it for a long time.

We’ll start with the easiest thing to compliment, the graphics. This is just a jaw-droppingly gorgeous game, and at no point does the game slow down during fighting. The character design is a step above every other game to come out in a while. Just the way the characters move is a thing of beauty, and there’s a layer of polish on the whole game that just impressed the hell out of me. I did see a few instances of some graphical glitches, but they were really only in the cinematic scenes before and after the fight. The impressive thing about the story scenes though, is that they’re all rendered in real time by the games engine, and they still look great. It even inserted the character I created into the story, which I was not really expecting…

Yeah, I’m a little behind again, but one small week and one big week combine together so nicely. Lots of good books over the last few weeks, including a return of a favorite series, and an interesting new series. Here we go…

Criminal #4
Starting out this week, we get one of my favorite series, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillip’s Criminal. This issue starts a new arc, dealing with Jacob, who it turns out we met before in one of the previous stories. He’s the creator of a comic strip that has shown up in the book before, but he also has…

Last week, in regards to War Heroes #1, I asked how Tony Harris can be drawing two minis and a regular series. Well, I got the answer this week when I opened this issue to find that he was only drawing one mini and a regular series, and this wasn’t one of them. As it turns out, the final issue of this series was drawn by series writer David Lapham. Now fortunately, Lapham is a decent artist himself, and he managed to do a pretty good imitation of Harris’ style, and the coloring certainly…

I’m kind of surprised by the number of Dragonball Z fighting games that have come out over the last few years. I can understand the appeal, but I’m curious how much of a difference there is in the games from year to year. Dragonball Z: Burst Limit being the first one I’ve played, I can certainly see why fans can enjoy it, and I can see why people looking for a nice casual fighting game can enjoy it, but I wonder if people who have similar games or other Dragonball games should bother to pick this up. It’s a perfectly enjoyable game, but…

Now, I’m not going to say that Neozoic will read better in the trade, but I have to admit that I really enjoyed reading these three issues back to back to back. Reading them all at one time really helped me to keep sense of who everyone was and what they were doing. I missed the first issue, but caught on with the second, and now with these three issues, I have to admit that this is a really good series, with lot’s of action, and a crap ton of dinosaurs…

Yes, I know it’s been a while since I did a weekly review column, and for that I apologize. It’s been a pretty crazy and hectic last month, but I’m back on the clock, so it’s time to get down to business. I’ll be tossing in some older books as well, just to catch everyone up to date. Let’s see what we’ve got!

PULL LIST 07-2008

* Avengers Initiative #15
* New Avengers #43
* Secret Invasion #4
* Dan Dare #7
* Black Summer #7
* Glamourpuss #2
* War Heroes #1
* Final Crisis: Requiem
* Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge #1
* Booster Gold #1,000,000

Avengers Initiative #15
After reading the last few issues I’ve come to realize Initiative is the best Avengers book being published, and is one of the best Marvel books around. I’ve been wildly entertained by basically every issue of the series, and it somehow finds a way to stay interesting and entertaining. Writers Dan Slott and Cristos Gage have presented us with a nice rotating cast of characters with a basis of a few interesting leads, while still maintaining the action. This issue is no different, as the new 3-D Man (formerly Triathlon) thinks that the whole Initiative base has been overrun by Skrulls, thanks to his special goggles that allow him to see disguised Skrulls for what they are. The only problem is one of two actual Skrulls on the base, Crusader, has reversed the polarity on the goggles, so he is seeing humans as Skrulls, and vice-versa.

Henchman21 gives us the lowdown on Ape Entertainment’s White Picket Fences–a blend of sci-fi, giant monsters, and all the good kind of fun you’d expect from a b-movie, sorted into a conveniently-sized trade paperback.

Here’s a look at six Batman trade collections that focus on The Joker and Two-Face, the two main villains of The Dark Knight film.

Among the titles that Mike Mignola will handle the art for is a Hellboy one-shot, due out this October.

This oversized hardcover volume collects the first two Hellboy stories, Seed of Destruction and Wake the Devil, from creator Mike Mignola.

The edition of director Guillermo del Toro’s first Hellboy film comes with three discs’ worth of features and extras, including an extended cut of the film, multiple commentaries, and a bevy of behind-the-scenes footage.

Dan Abnett and Ian Edginton are masters of the Warhammer milieu, having written many books and comics, and add to collection with this latest miniseries Condemned By Fire.

Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, and Luke Goss star in this Hellboy sequel from writer/director Guillermo del Toro.

Henchman21 gives us the lowdown on Dark Horse’s Free Comic Book Day contribution, Hellboy, which contains three stories dealing with the timelines and characters of the three Hellboy series — Hellboy, BPRD, and BPRD: 1946.

Director Guillermo Del Toro spoke about the Hobbit adaptation and its faithfulness to the book, as well as about potential casting.

At the Hellboy II press junket today, director Guillermo del Toro reveals details for a Hellboy III.