Back in the mid-90s, the most popular team in comic books wasn’t the X-Men, but a group from independent publisher Image Comics. Created by Jim Lee, Brandon Choi and Jim Scott Campbell, “GEN 13″ was the sexiest, edgiest team on the shelf and a hit with readers. An animated film version...

Probably the only thing writer/director Jonathan Hensleigh got right with his big budget version of “The Punisher” is to cast Thomas Jane (”Deep Blue Sea”) in the lead role. With his raspy voice and stoic personality, Jane is perfect. The rest of the movie? Not so good. In fact,...

Before 1989, unless you were an avid comic book reader, you probably viewed Batman as a clownish superhero, trading punches and quips with bad guys with his youthful assistant Robin faithfully at his side. He was campy, a bit dull, and never dangerous. That is, until the summer of 1989, when Tim Burton...

Movies featuring little know comic book characters have come a long way since the modestly budgeted “The Crow” in 1994. Now Columbia Pictures gives Mike Mignola’s creation the full big budget treatment, complete with a talented cast and cutting edge special effects. But despite all...

Promoted as Marvel’s answer to “Batman” and set for release to coincide with the character’s 50th anniversary, this cinematic embarrassment was quickly shelved in 1990. It eventually received a quiet release on home video and cable television two years later, a deserving fate...

In 1998, Lady Death creator Brian Pulido announced that the character would make the transition to the screen in the form of an animated feature film. Six years later, the “Lady Death” film finally arrives on video shelves for the perusal of those so inclined. While not exactly worth the...

“The Hulk” is probably the best comic book adaptation of 2003, which is unofficially the Year of the Superheroes. What “The Hulk” has going for it is a sure hand by director Ang Lee and two outstanding leads in Australian newcomer Eric Bana (”The Nugget”) and longtime...

The biggest problem with “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” (or “LXG” as the promos call it) is that it doesn’t offer anything new. Oh sure, the story takes place in 1899, and all of the gadgets on display are “antique” versions of what we’re used...

James O’Barr’s “The Crow” comic book, which originally ran in the late ’80s/early ’90s as a 4-issue mini-series, was a brilliant and nihilistic story of everlasting love, unrelenting pain, and human nature gone terribly, terribly wrong. The movie “The Crow”,...

“X2″, the sequel to 2000’s “X-Men”, is a better movie than the original, but not by much. Considering that director Bryan Singer and his screenwriters were burdened with having to introduce the world of the X-Men, the original lacked what I called the “Wow Factor”....

Continuing the seemingly unstoppable streak of Comic Book Superhero movies, 2003’s first entry is “Daredevil”, a mid-level character from Marvel Comics, which also put out “X-Men”, “Spiderman”, the “Blade” franchise, and the upcoming “Hulk”...

“Batman Forever,” the third installment in the live-action “Batman” franchise, is generally considered (and quite rightly so) as the beginning of the end of “Batman” as a viable superhero franchise. Not content to doom Batman and Bruce Wayne’s fate with this...

The following review refers to the workprint version, which is not the final print, meaning there is a very good chance the final print — that is, the print that appears on TV — will be (in varying degrees) different from the version reviewed below. The new upcoming WB TV show “Birds...

In one particularly telling scene in Guillermo del Toro’s “Blade 2,” a vampire is nailed to the wall by another character’s sword, but instead of pulling the sword out and escaping that way, the vampire scurries up the wall thus slicing open his pelvis area! That scene epitomizes...

The major treat of all “Golden Age” comic book characters is the simplicity of their Origin Story. Superman is an alien who came to Earth as a child and was raised by a kind Kansas couple, and he fights evil because he’s been raised to stand up for the little guy. Batman’s parents...

Infamous film producer Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four is the movie that shouldn’t have been, but since it has found a way to become despite the odds, has been hidden so far in the Earth core that only those wholly devoted to the comic book of which the movie is based would take the time to...

It’s amazing how a movie with the pedigree of The Crow: Salvation (or Crow 3) could fall so low. The entire franchise (there has been 3 in the series) is based on a comic book by James O’Barr, who drew the series in the ’80s. The first movie, starring the late Brandon Lee (who died...

Not many people know this, but the hit-movie Men in Black with Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith actually started life as a comic book, published by an underground comic house. Men in Black had it easy because its characters didn’t wear brightly colored tights, but sported black suits, shades, and...