oh, oh, i see what you wrote there, Larry Hama!

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
budget: $170M
US gross: $150M
total worldwide gross: $300M *
approximate DVD/BD sales: $65M *


i dare you to present me a critic who makes that much money. so who's laughing now?


* does not include lost potential income from torrent downloads, and pirated copies in Canal St. and Southeast Asia.
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G.I. Joe: Origins #9

some cyberspace

sometimes, it gets irritating to read comic-related movie news that weren't written by knowledgeable people. i detest the drooling fanboy type, but i kind of get annoyed by writers who have no background at all. i'd rather write about stuff i know or do some research on it, instead of getting paid to write crap.

According to our source, Fox isn’t waiting around to see how the solo movie performs. ... they’re tossing around story ideas for the almost inevitable Wolverine 2. Word is that the character they’re hoping to use as the villain of Wolverine 2 is someone named Cyber.

someone named Cyber??

i'd smash this palooka's face, if i were Cyber. that and if i wasn't dead. no respect. there's always Wikipedia.



ol' Silas Burr says tell him you're sorry, little man!

back in Wolverine #79-81, Cyber tangled with Wolverine, who's fresh off getting un-adamantiumed by Magneto. it was enjoyable rip-roaring ride, courtesy of he-man Larry "I Want to Write G.I.Joe 'Til I Die" Hama. take note of this Three Stooges-type sequence, as Cyber is distracted by ceremonial cannon fire while going mano-a-mano with the ol' Canucklehead.

adamantium-less Wolverine versus the adamantium/hallucinogen-laced Cyber? no contest. but that doesn't stop Logan from clawing, punching, kicking and burning the Cyber man.

i actually missed the last two-thirds of the battle the first time around; i only finished it years later. i was kinda disappointed that they just managed to imprison him in Muir Island. Cyber would eventually donate (non-consensual, of course) his adamantium to Wolverine (who raises a pint to him annually), and in doing so, would take a long dirtnap. in Mighty Marvel tradition, he's up and about and still making trouble, most recently in Wolverine: Origins.

someone named Cyber?? good grief.


ok, sorry, forgot my meds today.

tripping the force magnetic pt. 4

continuing a look back at a '90s classic ... if you can call it that.

Fatal Attractions
Wolverine #75 "Nightmares Persist"
Larry Hama/Adam Kubert/Mark Farmer/Dan Green/Mark Pennington

Larry Hama is best known for his 12-year G.I. Joe run. but he also made a mark with a 7-year stint on Wolverine, where blood tend to spill and characters die, like what you would expect in a military-themed comic. sadly, G.I. Joe was geared toward kids so Cobras and Joes alike would always parachute safely to the ground even after their planes were blown up.

but enough about the Joes. this is a post about Logan, tying in to my reflections on Fatal Attractions, and how this event set him on a different direction, and Hama was there to steer the bike.

with Magneto ripping his adamantium out (wondering why no one thought of doing that prior to this), Logan is now put in a place he hasn't been through before - the loss of one of his two security blankets. the massive trauma he suffers necessitates that the X-Men bring him back to Earth for medical treatment.

i really wonder how his mask stayed on? painted, perhaps?

the hombre's tough, but this was one hell of a painful thing to go through. good thing he has Gambit (of all people) providing Cajun stereotype comedy relief (contrast that with the current state of affairs in X-Men, re Messiah CompleX, where Remy is on the other side and Logan throws down on him).

"piece de gâteau"? wouldn't that be 'morceau de gâteau'? merde!

if the X-Men's Blackbird wasn't space-worthy, how the hell did Bishop get it up there in the first place? Professor Xavier and Jean try to hold Logan and the aircraft together (with Quicksilver providing the speedy manual navigating), but Logan gets worse by the minute.

like i said, his mask was painted on his face

back on terra firma, the late Moira McTaggert and the rest of the X-crew try to guide the aircraft in, dispense medical advice, speculate and panic all at the same time. the only positive thing provided by a Blackbird entering earth orbit on fire is to give some poor kid the chance to make a wish.

"i wish i was a mutant!"

Xavier tries to pull Wolverine away from the light, so to speak, but the pull is too great. the Blackbird runs into nasty weather and is threatening to tear itself apart. only Jean makes the supreme sacrifice of using her telekinesis to hold the parts together at the cost of getting swept out of the hatch. and then in one of most improbable-yet-probable movie-like finishes, Logan wakes up and saves Jean.

we never actually see the Blackbird land on the Westchester grounds. huh.

back on safe soil, Logan starts the healing process. on his first attempt at machismo, he waves off all opinions on his medical health and participates in a solo Danger Room sequence, and is promptly smacked around.

getting hurt only fuels his anger, and when he gets mad, he usually pops his claws. and when he does ...

its finally revealed (and this part is semi-officially credited to noted writer Peter David) that Logan's claws were actually bone, not implants, and the adamantium bond made it the weapons they were. now Logan's healing factor - his other security blanket - has not returned to full efficiency and is struggling to keep up with the wounds, especially the holes opened (ugh) by 'tracting and retracting' (snort) his bone claws.

feeling he's no longer "the best at what he does", Logan embarks on a long strange trip away from his teammates to rediscover himself. at least he still had great penmanship despite the wounds on his wrists.

ol' Canucklehead won't regain his adamantium until 70 issues later (that's more than 5 years). the change actually made him a better character, not the cardboard cutout he was devolving into at that time, and made for some great storylines. like the time he went to bone to adamantium bone with Cyber, or that classic throwdown with Sabretooth in #90. he actually turned feral too, at some point during the next few years, which is a nod to his supposed (but not sanctioned) origin - an evolved wolverine created by the High Evolutionary, the god of all mad scientists.

Larry Hama, bless his wild Japanese heart, wrote some of the best Wolverine stories, and this is a salute.

final stop: backstabbing. kinda.