A Look Back: Not Comics 2006

This was a big year for comics outside of the folded paper medium. From movies and TV to video games and toys, it was a good year to be a comic book fan, even if you don’t like to bother yourself with any of that tedious “reading.”

Movies

2006 saw the release of two blockbuster movies featuring two of the biggest franchises from their respective publishers: Superman and the X-Men.

Everyone here at the Legion of Doom took a stab at reviewing Superman Returns, and the reaction was decidedly mixed. To me, retaining the continuity from the first two Christopher Reeve movies was a bad idea. Instead of starting fresh with a timeless character, Bryan Singer & Co. decided to bog the movie down with 20-year-old continuity that a good handful of the viewing audience had no knowledge of, myself included. While Kevin Spacey is a great actor, he played Lex Luthor a little too over the top for my tastes (this is Lex Luthor, not the Joker, after all). And while Brandon Routh did look the part of a Christopher Reeve replacement, I never thought Reeve looked the part of Superman in the first place. I had high expectations going into Superman Returns and left the theater thoroughly disappointed.

On the other hand, my expectations going into the third installment of the X-Men franchise were pretty low. No one I talked to about it had any sort of high hopes with Brett Ratner at the helm. Plus, an increased emphasis on Storm and the rumored deaths of both Cyclops and Professor X did not have me looking forward to this thing. For some reason, Angel was just thrown in there as a plot device when he could have been a vital part of the story. Kelsey Grammar did a wonderful job as Beast, and somehow they were able to perfectly capture the essence of Madrox the Multiple Man in his two short on-screen appearances. I really enjoyed the twist the filmmakers put on the idea of the Phoenix, that it was a repressed part of Jean’s psyche instead of an outside force, and Jean looked pretty damn cool when she tapped into those powers. X-Men: The Last Stand certainly had the coolest displays of mutant powers of any movie in the set, but the story was lacking the whole way through. If you could ignore the story and just enjoy the cool superhero fights, it was a pretty fun experience. You know, just like every comic produced in the early 90s.

V for Vendetta was far and away the best comic book adaptation of the year. The Wachowski Brothers amazed me with their ability to not write a horrible movie. It was a great update on the idea originally presented in the graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, which was heavily rooted in the political landscape of the 1980s. The movie involves civil liberties being revoked, fear-mongering, domestic wiretapping and the government exploiting terrorist acts to fuel support for their own agendas. The amazing thing is that stuff was in the original story, and it just happens to be completely relevant to what’s going on in the Bush administration today. V for Vendetta wasn’t just a great comic book movie; it was a great movie, period.

TV

For the longest time, comic-inspired TV shows were regulated to Saturday mornings and the WB. Not anymore. Now you can find comic shows on Saturday mornings, NBC, Sci-Fi and the CW. Cool.

Legion of Superheroes debuted this fall on Kids WB or whatever they call it now that the WB and UPN merged. It’s sort of a mix of the classic Bruce Timm DC animated style and the anime-inspired Teen Titans, and it’s a really great show. The Legion of Superheroes is a no-brainer for a cartoon, with a near limitless cast of characters. The core team includes Superman (although Superboy is more accurate), Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, Braniac 5, Phantom Girl and Bouncing Boy, with Triplicate Girl, Timberwolf and others joining up as the story merits.

Sci-Fi produced a show called Who Wants to Be a Superhero? in which a bunch of losers dress up in spandex and pretend they have superpowers in order to star in a comic book. Because you couldn’t, you know, produce your own comic book starring yourself a lot easier and skip the whole “looking like a jackass” thing.

The best comic show of the year has been the surprise hit Heroes on NBC. We’ve gone over it many times here on the blog, and I don’t really feel like getting in another argument with Doom DeLuise about the show’s quality. So just read what we’ve already written about Heroes.

Video Games

Justice League Heroes came out this year and is by far the best game ever made based on DC characters. It’s essentially X-Men Legends with the JLA, except you can only play as two guys at a time and for most of the game you don’t get to pick who. The storyline is decent, with Braniac leading a group of villains in an attempt to destroy the Justice League, but the real joy of the game comes from the unlockables. There are nearly as many unlockable heroes as there are playable from the start, including Hal Jordan, Hawkgirl, Huntress (who really should have been Black Canary, BTW) and Green Arrow. In addition, there’s a butt ton of alternate costumes including Earth-2 Superman, Biker Wonder Woman and Jay Garrick Flash. The real fun of the game is customizing your superpowers. There’s nothing more satisfying than maxing out Superman’s heat vision or Green Lantern’s homing blast and blasting the crap out of your enemies.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance came out late in the year, taking the aforementioned X-Men Legends formula and throwing in an entire universe full of characters instead of just mutants. I haven’t really had any time to play the game yet, but the play mechanics of the game on the Wii are pretty swiit. Take Mr. Fantastic, for instance: in order to extend your arms forward and deliver a punch, you extend the Wiimote forward. And I can’t speak enough about how cool it is to be able to choose between the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the X-Men or even a double date (Mr. Fantastic/Invisible Woman/Black Panther/Storm) to fight the greatest villains Marvel has to offer.

Toys

The final year of the Toy Biz-run Marvel Legends has possibly been the best one since it started years ago. At the beginning of the year Marvel/Toy Biz announced they had sold the Marvel Heroes license to Hasbro beginning in 2007, and they made the most of the license during those last 12 months. Toy Biz produced four great waves of action figures in 2006 (the Giant Man, Onslaught, Mojo and Modok series), in addition to a couple nice box sets, a line of 12-inch figures, two series of two-packs, some nice villainous additions to the Spider-Man line, and a few series of great X-Men figures. Some of the best figures Toy Biz has ever produced came out this year, including First Appearance Iron Man, two Captain Marvels (Mahr-Vell and Genis-Vell), Green Goblin and Havok.

DC Direct produced as many figures in 2006 as they have any other year, including series based on Infinite Crisis, Superman/Batman, Green Lantern, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Identity Crisis and the catch-all Elseworlds line. The Elseworlds line finally gave us action figures of the Spectre and Norman McCay, the last two major characters from Kingdom Come.