Kingdom Come

Posted on 6 July, 2006 by James Huff

Kingdom Come

He had not turned his back on us. He stands in the sky . . . faith rewarded. He is returned . . . and – dear God. The threat of Armageddon hasn’t ended. It’s just begun . . .

Kingdom Come, a DC Elseworlds masterpiece by writer Mark Waid and artist Alex Ross, is the best graphic novel ever produced by a major comic publisher. A philosophical tale of Armageddon in the DC universe, Kingdom Come is filled with biblical parallels which cast our heroes and antiheroes into haunting roles that we are all too familiar with.

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Posted in Action/Adventure, Superhero | 5 Comments

Splash Panel’s First Staff Writer

Posted on 5 July, 2006 by Khaled Abou Alfa

Splash Panel started life around 8 months ago. For a while there I was pretty consistent with the number of reviews I did, unfortunately due to many things happening during the past couple of months the time the amount of reviews and commentary I actually got round to completing did dramatically fall.

The main reason I created this site was to enable me to have a place to interact with other like minded people and discuss graphic novels. Version 1 of this site will hopefully help us down the road to creating the ultimate graphic novel resource website around.

However my enthusiasm for this site has most definitely not waned and my vision for this site and what it can be has remained with me throughout these 8 hard months. Enter James Huff. He’s been a pretty big supporter of the site since it’s inception and I’m very happy to announce that he’s being added to the ranks over here at Splash Panel as the first staff writer. I have a lot of faith in the man as he’s seriously very enthusiastic about the graphic novels he reads. He brings a shot into the site and a kick up my ass to get on with things and stop being a bit complacent about the site. It’s an important issue.

Hopefully we might even get around to doing some joint reviews and what not. The possibilities are endless. How often will he be posting? As often as he feels like. I’ve made it clear that the Panel is not about the quantity but about the quality. So now all I’ve got to do is sort out version 1 of this site design (which is going to be one of the loudest things on the net).

Posted in Site Related | 3 Comments

Splash Panel Update

Posted on 27 June, 2006 by Khaled Abou Alfa

While it seems that I have forsaken this site, nothing could be farther from the truth. It’s just that lately my concentration has been spent elsewhere and I can’t really devote the time and attention that every post or review takes for this site. I’m not in the business of trying to hack out posts for this site so I prefer to not write anything unless I’ve got something that deserves to be said, more importantly in the way it’s meant to be said.

I’ve got several reviews that are in various stages of being finished and once I get the time to give to Splash Panel there will hopefully be a steady stream of updates that everyone can expect on a regular basis. I’m going to try and have at least 3 reviews a week however I’ve made these kind of promises before, so I’m hoping to stock pile a few weeks worth and then keep them coming. So what I’m trying to say is sorry about the lack of posts and reviews, I’m working on changing that.

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Can be found here. I remember when the trailer for Spider-man 2 came out and I thought it was the best thing since sliced cheese. See the problem with this particular trailer is that it’s got me excited in the same way the last one did. My only problem with this situation is that SM2 seriously didn’t live up to my expectations. Lets hope they got the dialogue better this time round.

Posted on 27 June, 2006 by Khaled Abou Alfa | Leave a comment

GN Release – 7th June 2006

Posted on 17 June, 2006 by Khaled Abou Alfa

Yeah this list is about 1 week old, but I want to keep the continuity as best I can on these things, so bear with me while I sort my house out.

ACTION PHILOSOPHERS VOL 1 GIANT SIZED THING TP $6.95
AISHITERUZE BABY VOL 2 TP $8.99
ARF MUSEUM SC $19.95
BATMAN UNDER THE HOOD VOL 2 TP $9.99
BLEACH VOL 13 TP $7.95
CANNON GOD EXAXXION STAGE 5 VOL 5 TP $15.95
CANTARELLA VOL 3 GN (MR) $10.99
CLAYMORE VOL 2 TP $7.99
CROSSROAD VOL 3 GN $10.99
CRYPTOZOO CREW VOL 2 TP $12.95
DE TALES VOL 1 TP $14.95
DEMI SAGA OF A DEMONESS VOL 1 MANGA CVR TP (A) $15.95

DMZ VOL 1 ON THE GROUND TP (MR) $9.99
Civil War in America. Brian Wood seeming to be making his way back to form and exploring other publishers in the meantime. Seeing as Vertigo is my second favourite publisher I’ll be buying this.

DRAGONBALL Z VOL 26 TP $7.95
EMBROIDERIES SC $10.95
EYESHIELD 21 VOL 8 TP $7.99
FEB063072 TENSHI JA NAI (IM NO ANGEL) VOL 3 GN (MR)
GACHA GACHA VOL 4 GN (MR) $10.95
GREASE MONKEY GN $27.95
HISSING VOL 1 GN $10.95
JOJOS BIZARRE ADVENTURE VOL 4 TP $7.99
KAZE HIKARU VOL 2 GN $8.99
LIBERTY MEADOWS VOL 1 TP NEW PRTG $14.99
LION GRAPHIC BIBLE GN NEW ED $12.95
LUMP VOL 1 TP (MR) $14.95

MAJESTIC VOL 2 TP $14.99
I will buy this book at some point down the line as I tend to buy most of the stuff from Wildstorm (with the exception of the Jimmy Palmiotti/Justin Gray stuff, it just doesn’t generally appeal to me in either way to make me grab it off the shelf to be honest). When Majestic is done well he’s a brilliant character, shame the man to take him RIGHT to the top is Alan Moore. It’s pretty damn hard to take it any higher.

NANA VOL 3 TP $8.99

NARUTO VOL 10 TP $7.95
This kind of reminds me how far back I am on my reading to be honest. Believe it or not part of the reason is that I don’t know which was the last volume I bought. They kind of start messing into one another and I don’t have proper space in my bookshelf so they get hidden and therefore aren’t in my eye to check before I go to the store (mental note buy some more damn shelves).

NEXT EXIT VOL 1 TP $12.95
OH MY GODDESS VOL 23 RTL TP $10.95
PIECES OF A SPIRAL VOL 4 $9.99
POWER GIRL TP $14.99
RUROUNI KENSHIN VOL 27 TP $7.95
SCHOOL RUMBLE VOL 2 GN $10.95
STONEHAVEN VOL 2 SUBTERRANEAN HEARTS HC (MR) $38.95
STONEHAVEN VOL 2 SUBTERRANEAN HEARTS SC (MR) $19.95
SUPERMAN DOOMSDAY OMNIBUS TP $19.99
TREASURY VICTORIAN MURDER VOL 8 MADELEINE SMITH HC $15.95
YU GI OH DUELIST VOL 15 TP $7.95

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X-men | The Last Stand

Posted on 8 June, 2006 by Khaled Abou Alfa

Just came back from watching this movie, so it’s pretty fresh in my mind. This is going to be a SPOILER FILLED review. If you’ve not had a chance to watch this movie, seriously GO AWAY, I’ll be right here when you get back, honest. You’ll enjoy what you read a lot more I promise you.

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Posted in cinema | 9 Comments

GN Release – 31st of May 2006

Posted on 5 June, 2006 by Khaled Abou Alfa

Yes it’s been a while since I’ve done this. The real reason is because it did get boring sifting through all the list every week, just from a formatting point of view. I’m going to be tackling that soon by building myself an excel macro that does most of the dirty work for me. Once that’s done we should be cooking on gas, and hopefully I won’t miss a week. Anyway onto what came out last week.
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Obviously I’ve been out of the loop on all these comic book related news, but there’s a Ghost Rider trailer out. I’m not a big GR fan (having never read a comic with the character), but if Daredevil is anything to go by (same director), we’re going to be subjected to a monster prune.

Posted on 28 May, 2006 by Khaled Abou Alfa | Leave a comment

Flash Movie

Posted on 23 May, 2006 by Khaled Abou Alfa

So I was having a bite to eat on a lazy sunday afternoon, I flip on the tube (which I assure you is very rare unless I’ve got something specific I would like to watch), and what do I see, The Flash movie from the early to mid nineties. The series has always had a seriously soft spot in my heart as I remember watching it religiously. In my mind it was always the best made comic book TV series adaptation ever. The Flash looked the part completely and never did not disappoint in the costume and the extent of his powers. So with such fond memories it was interesting to see if in fact the start of the series which was a 2hour movie, would actually hold up 10 years later. Some things however are definitely not like fine wine, that is they don’t age all that well.

John Wesley Shipp stars in the movie and I remember thinking that he was the perfect casting of the character as he really looked the part physically. At the time I really couldn’t tell whether his acting was any good as I was more interested in the stories and the effects and whether or not he was going to dump that whiney bitch of a girlfriend and get it on with the nice British doctor woman, you know the standard trapping of these types of television series.

The problem with watching it now (over 10 years later) is that things do actually look dated. From the clothes to the hairstyles that looked so modern back then look a bit much. The real problem for me however with the series is the acting, which often times makes me cringe that’s really not the way to see a

One thing I will say that did make me smile a great deal because I think it’s a great bit of dialogue right at the end of the movie was how he’s there talking to his nephew who’s just lost his dad and he says something along the line of:

Don’t ever worry, whenever you’re in trouble, you can count on me, and I’ll be there in a Flash.

That’s a good geek moment and in many ways reminded me that this series was fun to watch, as long as I’m hot hypercritical about it.

Posted in Superhero, television | 2 Comments

Speaking of the X-men, Mike’s gone and given the latest installment in the X-men movie franchise a thumbs up. Like I’ve said before I’m quietly optimistic regarding this movie, but this does bode well in general.

Posted on 23 May, 2006 by Khaled Abou Alfa | Leave a comment