Spider-man 3 or Sandman can fly?? WTF??

8/10

I saw Spider-man 3 last week and delayed posting about it so that it had time to sink in and so I had enough time for initial reactions to wear off. That being said, I did enjoy it and didn't find that it suffered from "Multiple Villain Syndrome" as much as I thought it would. Expect spoilers and some "quick hits" as to what was good and bad.

However, the movie did lack where it came to developing the villains in detail like the previous 2 movies did. In the first one there was a nice gradual buildup to the Goblin reveal and a similar scenario with Dr. Octopus in the second. Here though, because there are 3 villains, screen time is precious and each villain could have been fleshed out a bit more. The back stories that they did show did get the job done though and the audience can easily understand their motivations. The second Green Goblin, Harry didn't need much to get his story out there as it has been building for 2 movies. The nagging thing about the Sandman is that he didn't really need to team up with Venom as he had no real reason to want Spidey dead. It would have made more sense for his character to just run and hide.

Emo Spidey = annoying
Song and dance numbers = ditto

The special effects in the film were top notch and the Sandman scenes were particularly exciting (though why he can fly as a sandstorm is beyond me). The fight at the end where we have a good old fashioned comic-book team-up was really neat and I was pleased to see the redemption of Harry seen in the comics come through on the big screen.

The fight with Venom was great and it was especially rewarding to see Peter use his brain to defeat him instead of sheer brawn.

Basically, if you liked the first two, you'll probably like this one as well.

New Comic Book Day 2007

Man, did Elfsar comics ever spoil me on Free Comic Book Day (FCBD). For those that need a refresher, Elfsar was a wonderful little comic shop in the heart of Downtown Vancouver that I used to get my comics from. They made a huge deal about FCBD. They would have a barbeque, guest signings, prizes, a large selection of free comics and above all, excellent sales such as the buy-2-get-1-free that I took liberal advantage of during the previous 2 FCBDs here and here. As well, the proprietor Ethan, puts a big push on it for kids because he figures so long as you can get kids reading something, it's a good thing

That being said, I can never pass up a chance for free swag, so I ventured to Lightning Bolt comics to snag the goods. Though it was fine, I was somewhat disappointed with the selection as not all the comics sent out for FCBD were sitting on the table. If you go here you can see a list of the titles available and the ones at Lightning Bolt were mainly the Gold Sponsor Titles with a smattering of the Silver. I picked up a few items but nothing was fantastic. Here's a list of what I got:

Bongo's Free for All 2007 (the best one I read thus far)
Umbrella Academy Zero Killer Pantheon City 2007
Legion of Super Heroes in the 31st Century 2007
The Lone Ranger / New Battlestar Galactica Flip Book 2007
Transformers the Movie Prequel # 1 2007 (picked this up for Mark as I have 0 interest in Transformer comics)
Tokyopop Choose Your Weapon 2007
Amazing Spider-Man Swing Shift 2007 (this was actually not too bad either)
Owly & Korgi 2007 (very cute book)

I was very disappointed that they didn't have Comics Festival! - 2007 FCBD Edition as it supposedly had a Scott Pilgrim strip in it. No sales or fanfare either unfortunately. Maybe next year I can schedule a trip to Vancouver...