The Wolverine (2013)

Directed by James Mangold

The first thing I said when I returned home after watching this movie was, in answer to my wife's query, “It's really nice to go to a comic book movie where the heroes' objective is not 'saving the world'!” Sure, there is plenty of over-the-top action here, there, and yonder, from start to finish but especially toward the end (although the far superior and most memorable sequence is the 300-mph fight atop the bullet-train much earlier), but this is primarily a character story with both an inner and an outer conflict springing from the very nature of The Wolverine. Inner, Logan's actions at the end of the chronologically previous X-Men movie, The Last Stand, literally haunting him with the knowledge that his mutant healing factor makes him potentially immortal while all he loves will eventually die; outer, a Japanese business magnate, Yashida, whose life Logan saved almost seventy years ago at Nagasaki, not understanding that reality – though he thinks he does – striving from his death bed to steal that potential for eternal life for himself. Add a large dose of family and political conflict as well as conflicting issues of love, loyalty, and honor in the exotic locale of Japan and you end up with what I think is perhaps the best story of any of the X-Men franchise.

Cheers! ... and Thanks for reading!

Comicpalooza 2013

For the second year in a row, I attended the Texas International Comic Con at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas on Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend, 25 May. I had noticed just from the maps and information posted online that the venue was much larger this year than last, taking up basically all of the third floor of the huge complex, probably all of the second floor (which is smaller in floor space than the first and third, allowing the first floor halls to be two levels high), and about half of the first floor. All told, probably three times bigger than the not inconsiderable space of last year. Not that there were three times the attendees and activities – this time there was room to breath and the effect was much less claustrophobic than it was last year, especially on up in the afternoon. That was one very pleasant change in what continued to be a very well-run and enjoyable convention experience.

Another pleasant change was that for the first time I was able to share the con experience with a friend. Usually when I come to Houston for whatever reason, I stay with my sister-in-law and her husband; last year, my wife and son came as well to visit with her sister. But this year my sister-in-law and her husband were away on a trip, so my wife had no interest in spending the day in Houston. Therefore a friend came with me. This was his very first convention, which was itself kind of cool to observe.