SANTA VISTS GOTHAM CITY IN....

 Hello comic lovers and new readers of tales of thoughtfulness,                                                      So yeah in someway or other I will admit that I have been so full of wanting to read this particular comic trade that I had  got a couple of weeks ago when I had picked up my recent comics at Adventures Underground in uptown Richland. This trade consists of four issues from around last Christmas time by Decetevice Comics with their top comic superhero known as Batman, in what I am reviewing right now Batman-Santa Claus《Silent Knight》. Which is written by Jeff Parker (Batman '66, Aquaman) with artists Michele Bandini and Trevor Hairsine. Together these three comic creators brought fourth a yarn of ideas as odd as Santa Claus being a darker version of himself while fighting his own foe with the greatest set of heroes around at his side!                                                              When carolers whom are not named expect for a gentleman known asTodd but my guess, is they represent the Batman editorial department, are singing songs of yuletide to the citizens of Gotham city are attacked by winged creatures called the Draug. For true Batman comic readers his Robin here is his actual son,which he had with the daughter of his enemy Ra Al Ghoul in the story known as "Son of the Demon" which is written by Mike O Bar. In that story Batman has a son, yet is not mentioned for years. His son is named Damien Wayne. Recently a few years ago I had seen a whole Robin comicbook trade where Damien had to prove his chance at being not only Bruce's son, also his reasoning for being his dad's partner in being a crime fighter. Yet I am unsure if I happen to have that very trade from when I saw it at Adventures Underground...                                        Batman- Santa Claus《Silent Knight》came out in December of 2023 with these covers   

seen here. The first prints are at the top and were priced at 3.99 a piece, when the alternate variants with the superheroes on the covers were 5.99 a piece at the same time if you were lucky enough some comic shops had not only these but two other sets of variants as well.

As I said earlier in this post I had got at least one of each of these two sets seen here issue one of the first prints and the wonder woman issue of the fourth issue I believe? Yet for this whole review I am using the trade which is of the upper left one of the first prints with Superman reading a comic with a Christmas theme Batman cover to a child who is sitting on his lap.
So how issue one this very series opens up is Bruce Wayne and Damien Wayne as Batman and Robin are investigating a crime scene of where some creatures have attacked some Christmas Carolers in uptown Gotham city and the creatures look like this

 

and Batman comes as he always does with a backup plan and sent a call out to Zatanna who come to Gotham from Europe via a snow-transport spell. She is the one on Santa's lap on the upper left variant cover.  Zatanna I believe is one of Decetevice Comics answer to Marvel's sorcerer supreme better known as Doctor Strange, the only thing so far that I know is definitely different is Zatanna announces her magic spells backwards. Then 

Santa appears on top of building across from where the investigation is taking place and tells both Robin and Zatanna who he is by letting them know he knows where there live, before telling Batman he has been following his exploits for years he also reveals what the creatures are name wise.... 
    By the end of the first arc (issue) , we learn that Santa has come to to Gotham to help the world understand that he is here to help fight his own darker self known as Krampus. In the Second issue we the readers learn of the history between Kris Kringle and his as ( I described it...) a darker version of himself. The writer Jeff Parker knew that he had to have a great diversity against Santa Claus that he had history with... so Jeff remembered the stories he had learned from when he was growing up and what he knows from the internet,  along with his own ideas of the creature called Krampus. Here is what both Santa and Krampus are     

   

                                              like during this Christmas theme tale. Oh one thing that I forgot to mention was in issue one, Santa even with Batman and his friends and family's help couldn't stop one of the wounded Draug that had covered Zatanna with a unknowable pollinating from a colorful set of flowers that rise from the dead creature chest... and cover her in green goo. That takes her out for the remainder of the story.  Besides  learning about the history of Krampus and Claus in issue two we the readers are treated to seeing other members of the justice league... ( Which to my understanding of the D.C. cannon universe hasn't been seen since twenty two I believe? I could be mistaken but I also may be right, and that's me being honest actually). With the heroes now not having a personal ace of a magical chance against the dark side of Kris Kringle, the justice league slowly starts helping Batman and Santa Claus because they see they Draug creeatures effects on each of their own existence and cities as well.... As Krampus fearfullness spreads through out the world even the need of a certain Kryptoniten is felt by all. And when Kal or as he is better known to the world arrives Superman is definitely surprised to finally be meeting Santa Claus!  
      In the opening of issue three this world spaning Christmas tale, Krampus forces of hostile harpies are on a all out attack on Hyde Park,  in London on Christmas Eve morning brings out Hawkgirl, Jo (the youngest of the female Green Lanterns), your general understanding of the Green Lanterns knowledge is mostly male oriented as is mine I am sure for the generation you are apart of.  I mainly know the main Green Lantern as Hal Jordan.... How many do you the reader of this know if I could please ask.) And finally the best known female character of the D.C.  universe has joined in on helping Santa Claus fight his darker side, she is known of course as the Amazonian warrior princess          
    

Wonder woman. ( Now if you are to ask me if I like the design of Diana Prince I am not entirely certain if I know for cretain because I have always known her main costume as a bathing suit more like this 

           but at the same time I can honestly understand why comic companies have a set of changes to accommodate a series of comic arcs storywise. Yet some fans like what they do love).  Throughout this particular part of the story Krampus is building his strength as Batman and the justice league of this world as small as it ( I will explain more about it a little bit later), is joining Santa Claus and his elk known as Prancer.... sorry but no Rudolph and I think that is because Jeff Parker liked/loved Prancer more than any other  reindeer from the classic song. This issue also has a Spider-Man like character known as Blue Beetle who transports the  non flying heroes to an island with a tree to finding another friend of Kris Kringle's named Peppermint Jon who comes the North pole's toy workshop to take them all to Port of Aheim, Vanylvs FJORD, Norway... where the team fight off a sea serpent and Krampus together... and yes by this point Krampus has the upper hand by not only kidnapping Damian Wayne, He finds a way to make Superman his toy puppet and uses Superman to unleash all kinds of monsters on December twenty third....                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  In the fourth and final issue of this story opens on Christmas Eve of a Batman tale featuring him and Santa Claus going on with their battle with Santa's darker side known as Krampus  with the help of some members of the Justice League, helping them to save the holiday itself. Now the team is in Greenland and are trying to find a way to take down a possessed Superman who has Krampus' soul inside of himself this very night, while also trying to find his son Damian who is in a magical cage in one of the many forrests of Greenland. The youthful Blue Beetle character has way to fight the Krampus spirited filled Superman that nearly kills both of them.... As to what it is you are going have to  find this very trade because I don't want to spoil it for Ye who really wants to know.... oh before I get into my overall grade of this Christmas yarn from twenty,  twenty three and start this year's Batman Santa crossover because there is one yes, I want all of you comic fans to know that the regular Justice League title of the main D.C. universe hasn't been around for at least since twenty,  twenty one if I am not mistaken as to why that is entirely I know that I haven't a real clue about how long the real team will be gone for? Maybe one thing that I can think about as a answer is maybe someone or some company outside of Decetevice Comics has bought the rights for a while to using the characters for a while... like back when Marvel comics filled for bankruptcy in nineteen ninety six to survive the sold the rights of several characters like X-MEN, SPIDER-MAN, and the Fantastic Four to cretain studios to keeping ownership of the characters in Marvel's ownership and form that time in nineteen ninety six, till twenty twelve Marvel used the Fantastic Four characters very little in their main comic continuity.  For they were co owned by twenty century fox films. But who knows if something like that is the reason for the Justice League not having a title for so long is! As to my grade of Batman-Santa Claus Silent Night story I will give it a B plus. Because it has done something no other Decetevice Comics title did... it has me wanting to read more of their comics and that's rare thing seeing me with a comic from that company unless it's something I really love that is being published by them!

Classic Troup of Sci-fi/Horror fun from films of old.... or something else entirely???

Hey comic fans of all kinds of stories,                                                                                                   Well for this review I have been thinking quite a lot of old movies that I haven't seen in a very long time that at some point I know that I have to review here on this ongoing little thing that I try to do daily if I can get the chance to do it. The two main movies that happen to be on my mind at the moment are The Day The Earth Stood Still (the original one from nineteen fifty one), and Return of the Living Dead and fit very well into this very entry,  which at some eventual time I am planning on reviewing through out this very blog. So is there by any chance of a science fiction and horror films that are a way to elude to a chance of a completely EXCITING comic story....                                                                          Of course for all of you who know the real me, that when I get into reviewing something I will give it my most definitive attention. Especially when it comes upon knowing comics in and out of getting maybe you wanting to checking it out for yourself and seeing how you like a new richness of a new type of a small short story from the creative minds from people who want to boarding our understanding of both having fun and also going out with their ideas to understanding our imaginations with either classic characters that we all do know or new ones that are certainly created by at least the story architecture of the writer and the illustratior. But of course, in the end of everything  you can just read my review here if that is what works best for you as well?                                                                             Here is the very comic that I am going to be sharing the content of...                                               

In THE COLONIZED, which is written by Chris Ryall and illustrated by Drew Moss, in the state where  you used to be able to go pretty much as fast as you wanted on the roads it turns out has a really strong, yet very broken community that is definitely divided on it's expanding growth by it's leading family known as the Robertsons has recently just buried their father Rennie in the town's cemetery, by his son Huxley. Who with his closest friends view something in the night sky 

that statlers them and also some other citizens who don't necessarily agree with Hux's views on the governance of Carbon Falls, Montana way of life...                                                            But they all are very well scarred out of their wits when they go to see what has become a very interesting object in the woods. There all of the town's folk find a space vessel that's in ruins 

, and as they argue over what's inside the downed craft from outside of our own solar system they come in contact with some very equally scarred visitors from beyond our galaxy. Who don't want to wage war on the human race, they want our help?                              See the aliens were trying to find out if they could make contact with a inhabitant of the planet earth only to find out what they had found was a dead cropse that they pulled from a recent burial plot in the Carbon Falls cemetery with an transporter beam to their vessel. One mystery that has me interested most about this story is Chris's development of bringing the Zombies into his story telling! This comic is published by IMAGE comics and isn't limited to just two cruse words like if it were published by either Decetevice or Marvel comics, where when if some characters swears they use prompts so that their stories are equally important yet safe for all type of readers from youngsters to adults of all kinds. It's their way of keeping one aspect of the created comics code authority in check from the mid nineteen fifties of publishing comics. Drew's pencils really give the story a impressive impact. I am willing for my rank of a grade for this very comic is an C plus! 

Ultimate Spider-Man #1 and why it's so fantastic

Hello comic readers and Spider-Man fans alike,                                                                                  Before starting my day of around town to do stuff I am definitely going to do my first full comic review of the year, and well why not start out with a hopeful and strong turn for one of Marvel comics most beloved characters... and still maybe a long way off of it but it could happen you never can honestly tell? Here's the cover of Ultimate Spider-Man #1,   

          being cared for by Spider-Man himself. This story is by writer Jonathan Hickman with illustrative art by Marco Checchetto. The original Ultimate Spider-Man comic with Peter Parker as Spider-Man started the winter/spring of two thousand and at that very same time the writer of the television series known as Babylon five was writer of the recently rebooted volume two of the continuation of Amazing Spider-Man since Marvel had declared bankruptcy in nineteen ninety six. His name was  Joe Michael Straczynski his run at first started to focus on making Peter and Mary Jane's marriage get to it's strongest strength throughout his run on the title till he was ordered by his boss to make it magically vanish by a Spider-Man title known as One More Day... (If you're a regular viewer/reader of this very blog, YOU KNOW HOW I HAVE FELT ALBOUSTULELY OF THE END RESULT, FOR NOW I WILL LET YOU FIND OUT ON YOUR OWN!), The writer of the original Ultimate Spider-Man line was Brian Michael Bendis, who before writing this project was writer of POWERS a imprint of his own released by IMAGE comics.                                                             The original reasoning for the Ultimate Spider-Man which was then followed a couple of years later by Ultimate X-MEN was to create a special diversity of the main Marvel Universe which at this time was only thrity eight years old, if we go all the way back to nineteen sixty two, even though Stan Lee was completely conceived by early nineteen sixty he was ready to retire from the then Altas comics the name of the company since the mid nineteen fifties. Yet the owner of the company a cousin to his mother's side of the family had wanted Stan to come up with something that could rival the competition's Justice League title? What did Stan and artist Jack Kirby come up with as a team for that family cousin Martin Goodman to leverage against the bigger than life of superheroes on a very popular team? They came out with the group               

                  known as the one seen here. The Fantastic Four and that was in late nineteen sixty one, so is it possible that the Marvel comics universe is in actuality more likely fourty years old back in the year two thousand? Anyhoo the Spider-Man character first appeared in a title known as Amazing Fantasy #15, in March of nineteen sixty two...                Just so that you can be aware the older Marvel comics universe is listed as Earth 616 and for reference of the original ultimate universe is listed as Earth 1610. The original Ultimate universe stories ended in twenty eleven. And had only one of their characters be pulled into the main Earth 616 timeline... Yes it's that universe's Spider-Man known as Miles Morales   

   seen here. ( I can say this Miles since his character's beginning still hasn't been able to escape Peter Parker's shadow of who is better as the web Spiner at least comic wise), Miles Morales should have his own hero identity is all I want to say here. Now with all of the brief summarized histories of both sets of takes on the Marvel comics Universes,  let us jump right into this very interesting take on a Spider-Man defined universe that's unique in it's own way, shall we!                                                                                                                   One thing that is very engaging about this very issue is that in it for the first in a very long time of storywise Peter Parker is actually being shown here to be taking his life of existence very responsibly of being older than he is in the Amazing Spider-Man continually by being a father to two children named May and Richard Parker. (Richard Parker is Peter's father's name, he and his wife Mary were framed by Captain America's foe the Red Skull as spies and died when Peter was very young), so it's definitely a great recall to including the whole Parker legacy of family. There is also one character in this very story that in every other iteration of the Spider-Man mythology is never in the stories unless you want to remember the one time, that even after Harry Osborn's death he had succeeded in being absolutely capable of beating out his father Norman Osborn in torturing Peter Parker with the creation of his parents being clones just before the start of the nineties storyline of the clone saga.... yet this very person has been Peter's driving force of his motto of "With Great Power, there must come Great Responsibility!"                         Here he works for the daily bugle with Jonah Jameson, Robbie Robertson, and Wilson Fisk the Kingpin crime is a shrewd business tycoon who owns the Bugle. There's also his foe the Green Goblin. (Yet we have no idea of who he is as of right now, only that possibility his suit looks like it's Stark industry related...) Yet even though he is uncertain about something in his life as well at the current time, he has a very strong relationship with Mary Jane Watson who is his wife. I can honestly say that this version of Peter is very informative of sharing his thoughts of what he is thinking about with her and she is also a great commincater at the same time as being a hopeful listener of his concerns related to every day life. They truly do care about each other like the friends they are, suppose to do. Oh yes I did forget to mention as of yet he isn't even Spider-Man at all,  only a thrity something regular human dealing with life as best that he knows how to!                To me even though I don't know this writer named Hickman, well enough to understand his fundamental goals with this, with his take on Peter's on set so far.... I do know that most fans of Spider-Man as a whole want the man known as Peter Parker to of course have his share of trials of Problems as a normal human will go through weather he is has a super drawn out battle with any bad person on the street, to a specific super villain that he knows how to deal with. So how does Peter Parker deal with his fears of depression when he is in a life and death struggle of lifting his own inner strength is he consistently jokes with his foe whom he is threatened by!                                                                 It also seems as if in this spin of the Ultimate universe there are very few heroes out there trying to figure out who they are as well! So our boy Peter, is not the only human being known to be fighting a grand inner influence of faith in finding out if he is any kind of hero as well? What or Who made all of this very universe so much in need of heroes anyway? All I can honestly say is whom ever it is, is called the Maker. I know even though I know that answer of who the Maker is l have to get the prequel to this version of the Ultimate Universe which was released last year as a title known as Ultimate Invasion a four part plus a added one shot series. I happen to have three out of the five in single issue format, they too are scribed by Hickman as well.                                                                         There is ONE MORE  VERY IMPORTANT THING,  that I also want to talk about before giving my complete grade of this very Awesome and well constructive look at a set of fans appreciation of Spider-Man as a enduring as Mister Peter Parker truly is... Marvel as a company has had their top selling character be for since 2007, that is seventeen years way to long to keep him as a one note bum without any chance to be a growing character be stuck as maybe this is only me I don't happen to say it as anything but Peter Parker is actually been a as I mentioned a bum, but also a great villain because he has been unrelatable since One More Day ended. Yes you heard that right I am certain a bunch of Spider-Man fans believe a hero can't be worth being a hopeful inspirational source of being faithful to being fair and honest for everyone.  I mean with how most comics have been written for the last few years how can any hero at Marvel or Decetevice Comics be worth exploring for richness of knowledge of heroism... when the stories are written so condensed by the writer of any book. Now I have to also remember super heroes right now of both mainstream publishers are lost in editorial mistakes more than ever! The editors definitely need to know that writing towards one set of readers who don't care for your product will get their sells only so far for so long, in the long term. I am honestly hoping that Marvel won't make this Ultimate Spider-Man eventually just like they have the one that is sixty two years old and be unwanted at all. My grade for the family version of  Peter Parker seen here 

is really fascinating full of each character from Peter and Mary Jane and their two children May and Richard are ready to grow into the best of both worlds of who want to be full of gusto in their own ongoing and on growing creative universe. I can say this about reading this very issue has me thinking about getting the forementioned Ultimate Spider-Man onimibus from Amazon at some point. My grade is A + for this one and have high expectations that Peter and Mary Jane's marriage will eventually return in great detail in the one that is super brilliantly broken right now!