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Individual 2007 Top Ten Lists
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Top Ten Entertainment Experiences Of 2007
2007 was pretty lopsided for me in terms of where my quality entertainment experiences came from. It was a phenomenal year for video games. Perhaps the best single year of new releases for the medium since 1997, if not better. Conversely, there just wasn’t much there in terms of great music. Some solid releases, sure, but nothing that remain etched in my mind as transcendent. Live shows definitely resonated better for me than the album experience did. For sports, I’ll preface my conclusion by saying that I only regularly follow the MLB, the NFL, and the NBA. Besides the lone entry on the list, there were no other truly memorable moments for me this year. Television was fairly solid, despite the writers strike putting a damper on my mood late in the year. Comics had some pretty high moments, and also some pretty “meh” ones as well. Finally, 2007 was just not my year for movies as I wasn’t motivated to seek out much other than the obvious films. While some were fairly entertaining, I just couldn’t argue for their inclusion on this list over the items picked.
Without any more ado, here’s my top ten entertainment experiences of 2007:
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Geoff Johns Is A Wordsmith Of The Highest Order
– Posted on December 12, 2007Posted in: Comics
That’s it. Geoff Johns is officially my favorite super hero comics writer. The former assistant to Richard Donner has scribed what is unequivocally the most entertaining story told in the comic medium this year.
I just finished Green Lantern #25, the final chapter of “The Sinestro Corps War,” and my mind is blown to bits of brain matter. Disappointing endings have become a disturbing trend in entertainment these days. Not for this epic space opera. It’s hard to imagine a better payoff to a 6 month storyline than what the Green Lantern creative teams have given us here. GL #25 may very well be the best single comic issue in years.
Troy Brownfield over at Newsarama has nailed down most of my feelings about the story in his review:
Green Lantern #25 stands out as an adrenaline-fueled kick. I can envision Geoff Johns pounding away at the keyboard, cackling with glee. This is a giant popcorn movie on paper, a summer film that ran all the way until Christmas. It’s probably not going to change the course of human history. It’s not Pynchon or Joyce. But it’s a very entertaining, action-packed burst of cathartic “it’s time for the good guys to lay the beat down” energy.
And then, of course, there’s the icing. The last two pages are reserved for what’s become one of Johns’s favorite tricks since Justice Society of America #1. If you see that trailer and don’t either laugh in appreciation at the audacity of it or drop your jaw in “That’s crazy!” admiration, then you’re no fun at parties.
Green Lantern #25 is exactly what it should be: a bold, splashy, unabashedly over-the-top cosmic super-hero entertainment of epic proportions.
If you enjoy any of the following: space operas, comics, super heroes, or action movies – you owe it to yourself to read this instant classic.
Read Newsarama’s review of Green Lantern #25 [newsarama]
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You know that “whoa” feeling you get when you’re watching the second season of a television series and a character or event happens that ties seamlessly back with the first season? This sort of payoff is a big part of what makes serialized content so appealing. Shows like Lost and The X-Files were always maligned for being impossible to jump in the middle of. It’s hard to cannonball into these shows because the creators have spent so much time building the mythos, that not knowing this history severely impacts the enjoyment one can derive from a given episode. Fans of these shows, though, will tell you that the payoff from these shows is infinitely more satisfying than from episodic shows (Law and Order), or even season-contained series like Heroes or 24.The reason I bring this up is because I just got caught up with Geoff Johns and Dave Gibbons’ summer blockbuster comic storyline, The Sinestro Corps War. It’s one of the most entertaining experiences I’ve had all year in any medium. The Sinestro Corps War is the comics equivalent of a well-done summer action flick. I found myself in an interesting position with this story because I’ve never been much of a Green Lantern reader. I’ve read one or two GL storylines in my life, but by no means am I a regular reader. However, the writers have woven in characters from previous DC mega-stories which I have read. If DC’s goal was to get non-Green Lantern readers to start reading the books, they would have achieved it unquestionably.
Pinpointing What Makes Comics And TV So Fun
Now, barely anyone I know reads comics, but almost everyone follows some sort of TV series. I sorely want to tell everyone I know about this story because I want them to experience the same sense of “fuck yeah!” I had, but I question what its impact will be on a person who knows nothing of the characters. In a sense, comics to the non-reader are like Lost to a non-watcher. It’s too daunting or too disorienting to start in the middle, but comics have an added problem of always being “in the middle.” Comics are essentially television series that have been going on for over 40 years. I imagine publishers are constantly trying to figure out a balance between appeasing long-time readers and getting new blood in, but I really don’t think you can truly duplicate a long-term payoff without diluting the experience.
It’ll probably have to wait until we can download experiences directly into our minds before I can fully share with others what makes comics so awesome.
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Marvel Comics Joins The Digital Age
– Posted on November 21, 2007Posted in: Comics
Last week, Marvel comics unveiled its new digital comics service, “Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited“. Users who pay the $9.99 monthly fee (or $4.99 a month with a 12-month contract) will have access to full-length digital scans of over 2,700 comics from Marvel’s illustrious catalog, including such iconic titles as Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four. The comics will be viewable only in your web browser via flash. So far, though, only the first 100 or so issues of those titles are available. The publisher promises to add new comics every week, albeit only older titles. It has instituted a rule that only comics older than six months will be available online, presumably to not draw the ire of every comic retailer on the planet.
I applaud Marvel for dipping their feet into the digital distribution arena. Piracy is a serious problem in the comic industry, more so than the music industry because a majority of a comic’s value comes from the first read. Digital scans of comic books proliferate p2p sites everywhere and are more likely to represent lost sales because once you have read a comic once you are a lot less likely to read it again and again, whereas a large part of a music file’s value is being able to play it whenever you want and wherever you want. This is a big reason why I am not too perturbed by currently being limited to reading the comics only through your web browser. More often than not, when you’re reading your comics you’re sitting in a home or place with a computer anyway. Reading a comic on an iPod or even an iPhone would be pretty painful given the medium’s reliance on large art panels and carefully crafted page breakdowns to tell a story.
Where it would get interesting, though, is if a portable e-book reader like Amazon’s Kindle were to get an upgrade with full color and maybe a larger screen. That would represent a full-fledged paradigm shift in the industry if you could take and buy your comics wherever you wanted. You could pay a subscription fee or even buy the comics a la cart and have them downloaded via a 3g or 4g network. This would probably result in the demise of the brick and mortar comic book store, so some compromise (such as a paper copy + digital copy bundle) would have to be worked out.
But goddamn. Just thinking about that gives me a huge geek boner.
Check out the service [Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited]