* Here's a nice little suite of action-movie reviews that are well worth your time (both the action movies and the reviews):

* Not Coming to a Theater Near You's Cullen Gallagher reviews George P. Cosmatos's Rambo: First Blood Part II. Gallagher plays it straight, which I think is a pretty rewarding way to engage the problematic yet hugely bizarre and entertaining shoot-'em-ups of the '80s.

* Meanwhile, fellow NCtaTNY critic Leo Goldsmith reviews Joseph Zito's Invasion U.S.A. Goldsmith does not play it straight, but hey, with scenes like this, it's tough to blame him. It's still a fun review, and let's face it, Chuck Norris's Matt Hunter does not invite the level of commentary that does John J. Rambo, Sylvester Stallone's Vietnam Frankenstein. Points for locating the film within the Golan-Globus oeuvre.

* Finally, The Onion AV Club's Scott Tobias reviews Sam Raimi's Darkman. For young teens searching desperately for a post-Burton-Batman live-action superhero fix, this one was tough to beat; Raimi's made three Spider-Man and still has yet to do so.

* Here's a quartet of interesting posts from the Comics Comics/PictureBox crew:

* Frank Santoro sings the praises of Mat Brinkman's recently collected Multiforce. I do hope Frank will take a closer look at Teratoid Heights while he's at it; as I've tried to argue, there's emotional content aplenty in that book beyond the "look at the purty pictures" aspect.

* Next, Dan Nadel takes a look at Grant Morrison's Batman run, specifically Batman & Robin (which he likes) and Batman R.I.P. (which he doesn't). Like many readers, Dan blames the discrepancy in art, here between the great Frank Quitely and the, well, less great Tony Daniel, for the discrepancy in quality. I've defended Daniel's work on R.I.P. before and will do so again--no, he isn't Quitely, but not many artists in the history of superhero comics are, and I think the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh was quite obviously intended as a riff on the "extreme" Image heroes whose artists are a clear influence on Daniel. (Actually, now that I think of it, TBoZEA functions a lot like Image's similarly decrepit, in-house Image parody character, the Maxx.)

* Back on the Frank Santoro beat, keep your eyes peeled for Cold Heat Special #9 by Santoro and Closed Caption Comics' awesome Lane Milburn.

* Finally, Santoro's new blog presents highlights from his comics collection, which often end up for sale at the PictureBox table at conventions.

* NeilAlien goes buck-wild on Brian Bendis et al's recent dethroning of Doctor Strange as Sorcerer Supreme.

* Speaking of Bendis, Powers is returning. I'm looking forward to it.

* I finally got a chance to read Graeme McMillan's interview with Grant Morrison I linked to the other day, and here's the part that stood out to me the most:

Watching a billionaire Batman disarm poorly-trained, poverty-stricken muggers effortlessly or beating up skinny junkies might be fun for a scene or two but does tend to raise thorny issues of class and privilege that the basic adventure hero concept is not necessarily equipped to deal with adequately.

Morrison says this by way of explaining why he's focused on Batman's weird/super adversaries rather than doing street-level stuff. It reminds me a lot of what I was talking about earlier regarding superheroes and torture. I think there are several perfectly legitimate approaches to dealing with these sorts of unpleasant situations, and while heightening the contradictions"by doing one of those "logical conclusions"-type stories is one, simply bailing and addressing some other aspect of the genre seems valid to me as well.

* I've been trying to stay as spoiler-free about The Descent 2 as possible--y'know, beyond the spoiler inherent in the existence of the film itself--but here's a big gallery of Descent 2 stills to whet your appetite if you're in that market.

* David Wain, who once ran from The Missus and I when we recognized him in the Museum of Natural History as though he were Princess Diana fleeing the paparazzi, is holding a copy of The State: The Complete Series DVD box set in his hot little hands. I'm still not convinced it's not an elaborate put-on, but I've got the thing pre-ordered on Amazon, so we shall see.

* I'm glad they've instituted Supergirl's bike shorts as her official under-skirt covering, because besides being exponentially less loathsome than showing her panties all the damn time--let alone comics superstar Jeph Loeb's decision to reintroduce this underage character into the DCU by way of a protracted nude scene--it's actually fairly realistic. I've spent my fair share of time around Catholic high school girls in my day, and they almost always wore boxers under their skirts (in large part, let's be honest, because of spending their fair share of time around Catholic high school boys like me).

* Brian K. Vaughan is off Lost. The fanboy in me always reacts to announcements like this by thinking "B-b-b-b-but doesn't he want to stick around till the end?!?!?"

* Guillermo Del Toro talks about a bunch of things, including trying to carve out a new filmic identity for The Hobbit versus The Lord of the Rings. I maintain that Del Toro is overrated, so I view this with the usual blend of excitement and skepticism.

* Damn Data and Bryan Alexander both take a closer look at that horrendous-looking viral-video North Carolina sewer lifeform than I'm willing to do.

* Apparently the comics internet was always a horrible, horrible place.

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