ahgunsillyo

@oscars94: Funnily enough, I'm not just making a seemingly random reference. I mean, look at the minifigure of the banana man that they included in this set, then look back at the Bluth's Frozen Banana uniform. NO WAY that is a coincidence.

Don't worry.

Honestly, I'm surprised that they at Marvel didn't take this opportunity to change Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver into costumes that match their movie counterparts, as is their wont to do. Especially considering everything else they're changing about the nature of their characters to seemingly match their backgrounds in the MCU for the sake of the story.

Well, I guess they have a few months to spare. We'll see if they actually go through with that particular bit of brand synergy.

I can't say that I'm crazy about this new outfit, but I can kind of see what they're going for. The main thing that's bugging me is that the outfit seems to be inherently ripped up. I get that she's supposed to be angry, but the ripped-up nature of her outfit kind of seems like edginess for the sake of edginess. I do like her turtleneck sweater design of her top, but the fact that there are gaping holes in it bugs me a bit.

I also do like her shorter hair and her face makeup (that's makeup, right, not a tattoo?). The last thing we need is another lady with long blond hair on the team. Most artists have a hard enough time differentiating between Magik and Emma Frost as is, especially out of costume (though, funnily enough, the only time I recall seeing them out of their X-Men costumes was when Kris Anka drew the "Ladies' Night Out" one-shot).

Apart from the holes, though, I think it's a surprisingly impractical design overall, especially coming from Kris Anka, who is known for coming up with practical and functional costume redesigns. The multiple loose belts and the skirt with bare legs don't seem like they would be very helpful in a combat situation, but I obviously haven't seen the new direction in which they'll take her or the role she'll play on the Uncanny team, so for all I know, it could be more than serviceable for her needs. I think I'd be much more into her new look if she had some pants (maybe some black denim capris or something) and if her outfit weren't so tattered, but I'm not in any position to tell anybody how a character should or shouldn't look, so if that's what they deemed an appropriate look for the new direction in which they're taking Dazzler, then more power to them. Then again, everybody on the Uncanny team (barring Kitty Pryde and the Original 5 Minus Young Cyclops) looks pretty ridiculous right now, so she'll most likely fit right in.

I'm interested to see where this goes. Honestly, I'm kind of sick of storytelling in comic books resorting to the whole "bad things happen to heroes and they fly off the handle in the craziest and most over-the-top ways, often times resulting in a drastic change in hair and/or wardrobe" shtick, as if superheroes are completely incapable of being happy and/or well-adjusted adults who don't save multiple worlds on at least a semi-regular basis. But you have to keep things "interesting," I guess. God forbid a status quo lasts longer than a year.

Comic Vine: You're one of DC's go-to guys for character redesigns, was anything specially asked for when doing the new A.R.G.U.S. agents' armor?

Brett Booth: The original notes asked for a bit bulkier look, but Brian Cunningham asked me to sleek them up a bit, but also to not make them super complicated.

This strikes me as a very interesting and amusing thing to say. Whenever I see Brett Booth's character redesigns for the New 52, one of the first things I always think is that they're always needlessly overly complicated. Every one of them has enough seams and lines to make your head spin. I know I've shown this before in another thread, so you'll have to forgive me for posting it again, but come on.

Does he really need THREE logos (one on each shoulder, and another on his chest that doesn't actually have anything in it)? And then he not only needs a utility belt AND the chest strap (which, to be fair, is a holdover from the original design), but extra utility straps on each bicep!

And if you look at his redesign of Doctor Fate for Earth-2:

Do you really need all the extra textured seams on the gauntlets, boots, and collar? Did the cape really need to have feather-esque frills at the end? More importantly, did The Helm really need all those extra accents and details? All of these details just kind of scream "complexity for the sake of being complex," which really harkens back to that 90s mentality of putting pouches and straps on everything because pouches and straps make everything seem cooler (see Red Robin design above).

It just seems that if what you're going for is to "not make them super-complicated," then choosing Brett Booth to redesign the costume/uniform is an incredibly baffling decision.

Yup. I'm still sad about Grills.

The debate about the choices and changes they made regarding Superman's character in Man of Steel is certainly an interesting one to have. I personally thought the movie was pretty great, and though I did recognize that significant changes were made to the origin and foundation of Superman, I also recognized that the film presented a completely separate and unique interpretation of the character and treated it as such.

I didn't really have much of a problem that there was a lot of ridiculous destruction throughout the major fight scenes in the film. What I did think was a bit interesting, though, was that when Superman and his enemies were being launched through buildings, none of those buildings, save for the IHOP where Pete Ross worked, seemed to have anybody in them. At one point, Superman gets knocked through a skyscraper in the battle against Zod in Metropolis, and those floors through which he passed seemed completely devoid of people. I figured that at that point, everybody had evacuated those buildings and were at ground level, so I just left it at that and continued watching the action.

I will say that it would have been beneficial to show Superman trying to save people amid the chaos in Smallville and Metropolis. However, considering the nature of the action and the combat in the film, having those types of scenes also could potentially be picked apart. If Superman is giving his all just to fight these enemies who can move incredibly fast, would he reasonably have enough time to save everyone? Considering that in majority of the fight scenes, Superman and his enemies were within very close proximity and only far away from each other long enough to regain their composure and fly right back into each other's faces, could Superman have enough time to lift heavy debris off of injured civilians or carry them to safety before Zod or whomever he was fighting slammed right back into him?

I actually also didn't really have a problem with Superman killing Zod at the end because of the nature of the scene and how it played out. I liked that it was clearly a very difficult decision of Superman to make and he immediately openly regretted having to do that despite it being the right thing to do. After a while, I did think about the ways Superman could have tried to get around that situation, such as covering Zod's eyes with his hand so as to block the heat vision, flying them both out of the area, and so on. However, considering that Superman was struggling as hard as he could just to hold Zod in place, it probably wouldn't get him very far to do either of these options. In that case, he likely wouldn't have been able to hold Zod in place and withstand the heat vision without Zod breaking free. I do question how Superman managed to snap Zod's neck despite Zod being as invulnerable and strong as Kryptonians tend to be on Earth, but I guess I can understand that, given the characters' relative strengths and power levels and what have you. In the end, the situation and the scene made sense to me, and I thought that how it played out was pretty powerful.

It is especially interesting that many people have a problem with Superman killing in this film and saying that "Superman doesn't kill" or "Superman would never kill," when there are actually a few instances throughout his long history in which he has done so. When Superman "died," so did Doomsday. The threat he faced was so great that he saw no choice but to punch Doomsday until he was dead, even if it was at the cost of his own life. Now, I realize that both Superman and Doomsday both returned from the dead soon after, but that act of the story ended with Superman killing Doomsday. And in The New 52, Superman killed Parademons in the first few issues of Justice League and killed that big Kryptonian dragon thing in Lobdell's Superman. Now, it can be argued that the Superman that exists in The New 52 "isn't the REAL Superman," but that is honestly one particular debate that could get even more out of hand than the one being discussed currently.

And @teerackbrings up a good point. Though Batman made it a point to spare The Joker in The Dark Knight and one of The Joker's main missions in the film is to make Batman break his "one rule" of not killing, every other major villain in Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy dies, more often than not by Batman's hand (with the exception of Scarecrow, who really has the best luck of anybody in those films, if you think about it). He refuses to save Ra's al Ghul and leaves him to die, he shoot missiles at Talia's truck, causing her to die, and he doesn't seem to have any problem with Catwoman shooting Bane with the cannons on the Batpod. Yet, and I could easily be wrong here, but people, or at least those in the Internet enthusiast press, didn't seem to raise as much of a stink with those films having Batman kill his foes than they are right now with Man of Steel. So teerack is right. If Man of Steel isn't a Superman movie, then by a lot of that same metric, Nolan's Dark Knight films aren't really Batman movies, either.

On a separate note, I don't really know if you can point to Norman Osborn's death at the end of the first Spider-Man movie as evidence of Hollywood being "determined to have the villains die at the end." His death is actually one of the most comics-accurate endings for a villain in a superhero film, so you could say that he died as a way for the story of the film to be more like those of the comics rather than a Hollywood agenda to kill the villains at the end of the films.

I think Man of Steel is a good film, and more importantly, it is an interesting and thought-provoking take on Superman as both a man and a hero. By doing something different, changing his foundation, and pushing the bounds and limits of the character, it has sparked many a discussion of who and what Superman is and why he is so important that probably would not have happened if the film had portrayed a more traditional or standard version of Superman.

I have a feeling that the Deathstroke DLC might just be Challenge Room content like the Nightwing and Robin DLC packs for Arkham City, the latter of which was a pre-order bonus at Best Buy. Not that that's really a bad thing, mind you.

Good on them for getting Kevin Conroy again, though. WB Montreal is already fighting an uphill battle simply by not being Rocksteady, so it really adds to their favor that they are retaining THE voice despite the earlier reports of that not being the case.

Did Brett Booth design this? This looks like one of the most 90s-era character designs that I've seen come out of The New 52 yet. She kind of looks like one of those rebellious kids that you would see in a "My So-Called Life"-esque teen serial drama around 20 years ago, with the long trenchcoat and the flannel, and the silly "HAHAHA!" tattoo going diagonally across her abdomen just screams of overkill.

I respect Brett Booth; I think his art is pretty decent and he is able to churn out a consistent level of work at an impressive rate, but I feel like his character designs in particular have been some of the most needlessly complex and overly busy in The New 52, especially his redesigns for the various Teen Titans characters.

I mean, looking at his Red Robin design alone, he has two different shoulder logos, a non-logo on his chest, a utility belt with an off-center buckle, an X-strap across his chest, similar straps on his biceps, and though I know these were eventually phased out of the design and actually appreciate the logic behind this, he also has straps across his abdomen to hold his X-strap in place. He has straps for his straps. It's simply too much.