Thor #610
Written by: Kieron Gillen
Art by: Doug Braithwaite
Colors by: Andy Troy, Doug Braithwaite, & Paul Mounts
Letters by: Joe Sabino
Cover by: Mico Suayan & Laura Martin
Marvel Comics
Price: $2.99
Release Date: May 26, 2010

Well Thor enthusiasts, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the wrap up of Siege in Thor #610 was very well done and Kieron Gillen is doing an awesome job keeping up with almost all aspects from issue #1 of J. Michael Straczynski’s run. The bad news is we had an art change and I for one don’t feel like Doug Braithwaite is fully grasping all the characters yet.

This Siege Epilogue did a great job of wrapping up all of the things covered in Siege. but I do wish there was a little more set up for the future of the book. There is some dialogue that foreshadows but it is in the slowest section of the book. My favorite parts are with Kelda and Valkyrie going to see Bill in his afterlife, Volstagg trying to make up for his mistake, and Thor being welcomed back just as Ragnarok needs to be defeated.

It looks like Marvel’s plans for introducing the second-tier characters has been slightly modified [read Marvel Plans To Release Lower Budget Movies With B-List Characters].

Latino Review has a scoop that instead of the $20-$40 million low-budget films that were originally planned for these characters, Marvel may opt for short ten-minute films instead.

This approach could be used for Marvel “B-Team” characters such as Luke Cage, Dr. Strange, and the Black Panther. It is also believed that these films would be shown before full-length Marvel films such as The Avengers.

Amazon has resurrected one of its amazing deals!

Right now, the Firefly Complete Series Blu-ray collection is on sale for $27.99! (that’s $62 off or 69% off the list price of $89.98).

That’s all 14 episodes of the Joss Whedon scifi space western television series Firefly, which was canceled much too prematurely by Fox back in 2002 before the first season was even completed. This Blu-ray edition includes the last three episodes that never aired on television.

Grab this deal while you can because there’s nothing on the listing page that specifies how long this sale is going on.

Below is a run-down from the product page of the episode/special features that appear on the 3-disc Blu-ray set.

Joe the Barbarian #5 (of 8)
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Sean Murphy
Colors by Dave Stewart
Letters by Todd Klein
Vertigo Comics
Release date: May 19, 2010

Grant Morrison delivers yet again in Joe the Barbarian #5. In this issue, Joe and company are still diligent on their quest to find the light, but along the way they run into terrible monsters and an ever-growing darkness that seems to be consuming the entire world. This story is a fantastic look at the mind of a young boy, who is literally walking the edge of fantasy and reality.

I absolutely love every panel of this book, and have been more than pleased with the entire mini-series. Morrison is doing a fantastic job of telling an incredibly, albeit complex, story of a lonely young boy who is very apparently crossing realms of imagination and reality and is having a harder and harder time distinguishing between the two. The story itself is powerful and intriguing, but the sheer genius of Grant Morrison is shown through his ties between fantasy and reality. For example, in the fantasy world we see a powerful river that is running down a mountain, but in reality we see that this river is an overflowing sink that is going down a flight of stairs. This is just one example, but Morrison also likens a demonic appearing monster to a dog, and the ever-growing darkness is mirrored as a house with a blown fuse, or simply that the power has gone out. Morrison also does a wonderful job with his characters by writing Joe and his gang in a manner that makes you truly feel compassion for them.

Shutter Island
DVD | Blu-ray
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams
Warner Bros Home Video
Release date: June 8, 2010

Martin Scorsese‘s foray into violent territories has been characterized by blood, weapons, extreme wealth and more blood. Working with these characteristics he managed to use them to help mold his image of Man, using them as instruments to inflict pain upon Man in the process. Scorsese has become synonymous, as we have all come to know, with violence and gangster qualities, leading him to produce unequivocal masterpieces. But, surprisingly, he works at equal competence when he displays Man as a helpless entity, one who suppresses his true feelings and, as in Shutter Island, one succumbing to psychological occurrences that are far beyond his collective knowledge.

These themes undoubtedly occur throughout most of Scorsese’s pictures but the way he delves into the psychological depths of an individual’s mind, which has nothing but contempt and regret regarding his past, in his new film, brings out a baroque like menace which we haven’t seen in Scorsese before. Shutter Island is an immersive movie nightmare that rises above the thriller genre, emancipating itself from the mundane conventions of such films so it can blossom into a piece of art that is dreadful, ghastly and surreal.