Recently, I had a chance to reacquaint myself with the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film.  You know, the one starring nobody you’d ever heard of except for that one guy named Corey.  The turtles were my first exposure to superheroes, and in a way, they’ll probably always remain my favorite.  Even if it’s just sheer nostalgia, the attachment I had to Raph, Leo, Donnie, and Mikey as a young girl will never entirely disappear.

When I sat down to watch the movie, I was perfectly prepared to discover that, like other childhood favorites, it would not withstand the test of time.  Instead, I discovered a little jewel of a film that, despite the fact that it featured guys in suits and god-awful ’90s hair, had remained entertaining.

One of my favorite things about the film is the fight scenes, because they show a certain sense of humor, a certain silly realism, that just doesn’t happen in fight scenes anymore.  People actually make mistakes, rather than the flawless fighting you would see in a movie like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and to my surprise, I like it better that way.

Other than the fact that the human characters’ costumes look horribly dated (though, considering the disgusting number of people in stretch pants I saw on campus today, that may not last long), there really isn’t much about the movie that lessens its appeal to me.  I think I even like the guys-in-costumes approach better than the all-digitally-rendered-in-3D approach they used in the TMNT movie last year.

Plus, this is never going to stop being funny.

It seems like every few weeks these days something happens that reminds me once more that my beloved Joss Whedon won’t be directing a movie about my beloved Wonder Woman.  In this case, it happened while I was considering the roles of women in comic-based movies.  While watching The Dark Knight the other day, I found myself hoping that Chris Nolan would make it far enough into Bruce Wayne’s story that we might see his take on the original Batgirl: something that would take the foul taste out of my mouth from the Schumacher-era Alicia Silverstone performance.

Now granted, there have been a couple of films released in recent years about some of the leading ladies of the superhero world, such as Elektra (tripe) and Catwoman (also tripe, which is probably the reason Halle Berry was able to get away with also playing Storm in the X-Men films), but there hasn’t been anything compelling.  I find myself wondering if this isn’t indicative of the industry as a whole; beyond the female X-Men and Wonder Woman herself, there aren’t as many leading ladies who make a compelling enough draw to bring audiences into the theater.

I will cotton to being absolutely in love with Laura Vandervoort’s performance as Kara Kent / Supergirl on Smallville, but being a character so thoroughly entwined with Superman’s story, it would be almost impossible to make a Supergirl movie that wouldn’t end up actually being a Superman movie.

What does that leave us with, then?  Is Birds of Prey well-known enough to bring in the kinds of audiences that would justify making a film?  Could comic-shy moviegoers going into such a film expecting a big superhero action movie be satisfied by a team of women led by a paraplegic computer hacker?

As much as I’d like to see a BoP movie, I find myself fearing that the answer is, “no.”

Jesus and Mo is one of my favorite web comics. It features the everyday adventures of Jesus (as in, Christ), and Mohammed (as in, the Prophet). The comic makes the neat concession that both Jesus and Mohammed are real, and they have an apartment together.

You should know before you read Jesus and Mo that it’s definitely not the sort of comic that worries about whose toes it’s stepping on. There are very strong religious themes, obviously, and my favorite part about the comic is the constant interplay between the two main characters and a Barmaid who we never see, but who is an atheist. Some of the philosophical discussions Jesus and Mo have with her are highly entertaining; despite seeing evidence before her eyes that both of the main characters really do exist, she persists in not believing in any sort of higher power.

Readers going to the site expecting the artistic polish of web comics such as Penny Arcade are sure to be disappointed; however, it’s Jesus and Mo’s humor that really shines, much like XKCD (if slightly less full of stick figures). The comic occasionally gets a little over the top, but it’s enjoyable nonetheless.

So The Dark Knight came out on DVD today, which means that it’s time to unleash the greatest of traditions on it: the drinking game.

Rule one: drink every time you see Heath Ledger’s tongue.

What are your TDK drinking game rules?

Gogogo!

Over in this week’s Best Shots column, Brian Andersen writes of his disappointment about how rare it is that books featuring female characters in the lead succeed.  If you haven’t read this week’s Best Shots column, go ahead and do so now.  We’ll wait.  Kay?

Kay.

Women in comics was a little bit of a specialty of mine when I did undergrad.  When it came time to do a final project for my major, I chose to focus it around women’s issues in the comic world.  I absolutely ADORE Wonder Woman, and no treatise on the girl team can be complete without mentioning Birds of Prey, of course.

That being said, I’ll have to admit that I never even noticed that there was a She-Hulk comic around to be canceled.  This is because I’m accustomed to thinking of superheroines who share the powers and names of a male counterpart (particularly one Paris Hilton Supergirl) as tending toward lame, formulaic, and entirely unworthy of notice.  I’m sure that will catch me some flames, but that’s how it is.

Generally speaking, it has been my experience that those heroines who are noteworthy on their own, without sharing the name of an established superhero, find some way to acquire their own fame.  Barbara Gordon comes to mind  - even though she’s always had a special place in my heart, she was somehow never as cool before she adopted Oracle as a persona after the Joker turned her into a paraplegic.

That’s not to say that I’m saying She-Hulk isn’t a great character; I just don’t know, and given that I have a limited number of dollars each week - something I’m sure you’re all familiar with - I have to be selective.

What about you, dear readers?  What would make you interested in the womenfolk of the comic book world?

And, while we’re at it, where can I get some of that double-stick tape Wonder Woman uses?

It has been announced (see here) that Tim Burton’s next project after Alice in Wonderland will be a movie remake of the ’70s “gothic” soap opera Dark Shadows.

Johnny Depp, who has long been on record as having been obsessed with the show, will star in the movie, which of course means yet another Tim Burton film wherein Depp manages to be creepy. I mean, seriously. Given the choice of spending the rest of my life locked in a room with Willy Wonka or Edward Scissorhands, I think I’d probably gouge my own eyes out.

For me, Burton’s films are pretty touch-and-go. I thoroughly enjoyed Sweeney Todd, and Burton’s Batman is the only pre-Nolan film I acknowledge as being part of the franchise, but I honestly wasn’t much of a fan of Big Fish or Corpse Bride. As for the aforementioned Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Edward Scissorhands, I’m ambivalent.

Of course, I’ll have to see Alice in Wonderland before I make my mind up, because it features something I’ve been waiting my whole life for: no, not a Tim Burton film starring Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter, but an adaptation of Carroll’s masterpiece that can’t possibly fail to fit the images of the story that I had as a child.

J.K. Rowling, author of the phenomenally successful Harry Potter series, has finally gotten around to releasing a mass-produced, commercially available version of her Tales of Beedle the Bard, the book of Wizarding fairy tales referred to in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  Beedle the Bard will hit shelves tomorrow, December 4.

For those who, despite the crippling recession going on in the United States and some foreign countries as well, still have more money than sense, an absolutely gorgeous collector’s edition is available exclusively from Amazon.com.  The internet retail giant expects its limited run of 100,000 copies to sell out, according to the Huffington Post.

Released just in time for the holiday season, Tales of Beedle the Bard should make a great gift for the Harry Potter freak in your life.  Of course, by now all the Harry Potter freaks in your life have moved on to being obsessed with Stephenie Meyer’s sparkly vampires, but they’re certain to appreciate the new insight into the Wizarding world nonetheless.

I, myself, will be saving up for the collector’s edition.  And, in case you’re wondering, yes.  That was an admission of my horrifying lack of frugality.

Knights of the Dinner Table, one of my favorite comics, follows the adventures of a tabletop gaming group who play HackMaster, a fictional RPG based on Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Much of its humor is character-based; readers looking for a lot of action will be disappointed. The KoDT books shine, however, in this aspect; anyone who has ever sat down with a group of friends and played a tabletop game will recognize the character archetypes and the dynamic at work.

That is to say, the group has its share of players who look at HackMaster as an excuse to constantly beat the crap out of NPCs and monsters – and once, in true tabletop tradition, a gazebo. As always, the group has one member who insists upon trying to convince the group to role play first in any given situation. In KoDT’s case, this character is also the token girl in the group. There’s the Game Master, or GM, of course. Last but not least we have the rules lawyer, who functions as a sort of encyclopedia of obscure ways to circumvent anything the GM wants to do.

The fun of KoDT is not in the art – which features frequent repetition of the same images with changing dialogue – but in the writing. I find myself laughing hysterically every time B.A., the group’s GM, finds all his careful preparation and planning ruined by the group’s insistence on killing every Non-Player Character, or NPC, before it even has a chance to speak.

KoDT is a wonderfully entertaining series, when you first pick it up. I managed to devour the first 30 or so issues almost without coming up for air, and I still, three months later, find myself chuckling at some of the jokes when I think of them. It’s very well-written; the archetyping is flawless.

The only complaint I had about the series is that, after those first 30 issues or so, I got kind of bored with it. The novelty wore off and it was hard to keep myself reading for much the same reason that it gets harder and harder to make myself care what’s happening on Smallville each week: every subsequent issue just seems to be more of the same. Much in the same way that Clark still hasn’t figured out how to fly after seven freaking years, the Knights never seem to grow or change.

Still, those readers who are fans of webcomics like DM of the Rings or Order of the Stick should enjoy Knights of the Dinner Table just as much. Issues of KoDT are available from Kenzer & Company.

As long as we’re doing introductions, I thought I’d let you know a little bit about myself.

I’m fresh out of college by about six months, and beyond the work I did with Troy for Shotgun Reviews, I don’t have much of an internet presence. I work in tech support at a Big 10 university in Indiana and I have a huge interest in social media as a communication medium.

The comics that appeal to me the very most are those that follow the stories of, respectively, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the X-Men. I will never believe that the Super Mario Bros. movie that featured John Leguizamo as Luigi could possibly have been bad, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will always have a special place in my heart.

One of my favorite areas of study, and one you’ll probably be hearing a lot about from me, is the various roles that women fill in comics. I did a lot of research into it for a project in college, and it’s something I can’t help but want to discuss as much as possible.

I’ll finish up by saying that it was an honor to be asked to be part of the new Blog@ team. Having the opportunity for my name to appear beside the others embarking on this new incarnation is really cool for me. I just hope I can keep up!

I haven’t seen the movie yet, and I don’t plan on it happening any time soon. However, curious as to what all the hype was about and with a holiday weekend ahead of me, I decided to borrow my friends copies of the four Twilight novels by Stephenie Meyer and see what the hype was all about.

I think I have it all figured out. Meyer’s novels appeal to their mostly tween audience, intellectually, in about the same way that a Snickers bar appeals to the sweet tooth. Sure, it’s not particularly nourishing, but it’s desirable all the same.

For the three people who’ve managed to avoid the ridiculous amount of hype surrounding the Twilight franchise, the story centers around one Bella Swan, a pale, shy creature whose parents are divorced, who is more intelligent than most of her classmates, and who has an alarming propensity for attracting life-threatening situations. The only reason she manages to stay alive past the first couple of weeks in town is that she has attracted the attention of one Edward Cullen.

Cullen is a member of a family of vampires who have given up feeding on humans because they have consciences, or fluffy nougat centers, or something. I forget which. Meyer’s vampires, however, offer a twist on the traditional mythology: instead of burning up in the sunlight, they simply sparkle. The reason for this is lost to the ravages of time, but I have this theory. There was a stripper, see, and it was prom night…

Anyway, Edward and Bella love the improbable love that has never been loved by any lovers before. Like all Mary Sue characters, Bella falls desperately in love with Edward the very first time she lays eyes on him, and the attraction is mutual. There’s nothing original there - every romance story of all time starts and ends with the heroine in love with the hero.

The appeal of these books, just like the aforementioned candy bar, lies not in their ability to offer anything new. Nothing has changed at all except for perhaps a few insignificant details: the names, the setting, and the bizarre iteration of what it means to be a vampire.

Also like a chocolate bar, these books start out appealing and then, as you work your way through them, they begin to get subtly sweeter and sweeter, until they finish on a note that leaves a strange taste and sensation in your mouth that sticks around until you brush your teeth.

In terms of nourishment, I’d be hard pressed to find something with less value and more empty calories than a Snickers bar, or the Twilight series, but I still love them both - something, in both cases, that I occasionally find myself being a little ashamed of.