The Big Picture: MovieBob: FAQ

[SenseOfTumour]

Well, if there was ever an opportunity to ask a question this is it. Hey Bob, can you recommend a non-superhero based comic (that isn't walking dead)?

I'm not Bob, but I'll have a go

Transmetropolitan - about a futuristic journo exposing corruption and far more fun than it sounds.

Y The Last Man - a guy and his monkey left the last males on earth after a 'disaster'

Preacher - Just the greatest comic book tale ever told.

Just because I like bending the rules:

The Boys - not superheroes, but they police the superheroes, and keep em in line, and by Garth Ennis, creator of Preacher among others


I also second Bob's recommendation of get thee to a library. (quickly, in the UK, before our government sells them all off, and turns the books into kindling, they've started on the libraries, and they'll see a profit in books as firewood once they've sold all our forests.)

Politics aside, your local library is a great place to get introduced to graphic novels, and even if your local library doesn't do em, you can order them into your local for £1 for a 3 week loan, far cheaper than buying em.

 

[omegawyrm]

You didn't mention your favorite game Bob. In a gaming community site like this one, we care about stuff like that.

Judging by some things he's said on The Game Overthinker, I'm going to hazard a guess that it's Super Mario Bros. 3. I'd be pretty curious to hear him justify how 3 is better than World though. If it's just "I got it as a kid" that would be totally acceptable. (World is totally better!)


On the comics topic, I would agree that you can't avoid continuity. There are a few ways to ease into it though with Wikipedia as your trusty companion.

Like Watchmen? DC has published a book called DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore that you might want to check out, and Moore wrote an excellent series when he was working for them called The Saga of the Swamp thing that has several plot intersections with the DC Universe and ties into a story called Crisis on Infinite Earths that could make a great jumping off point for the DC Universe.

Like the Batman movies or shows? There are actually quite a lot of Batman books that require no prior knowledge to understand. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were loosely based around the plots of two such books called The Long Halloween and Batman: Year One. Wonder where Ledger got some of his inspiration for the Joker? Two comics called Batman: The Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth.

(I discussed DC, because that's mainly what I read.)

 

[Xaryn Mar]

Troll Hunter! Go Norway! Wohoo!

More to the point, I recently saw it, and I grinned stupidly at the screen for 90 minutes, see it if you have the chance.

Oh I will, if it ever comes to Denmark after all it has trolls depicted the right way

 

[omegawyrm]

Most of MovieBob haters are Halo fans.

I know that you meant in general but I really really need to say this. I love MovieBob's shows(all of them) and I also love the Halo series. That is one of the very few things that my views disagree with his on. Also, what proof do you have that most of the haters are Halo fans.(I will leave questioning your lack of evidence out of this). I of course assume that by Halo fans, you mean the people that think that the reason for gamings existence is Halo, but don't make such bold generalizations.

I'm a big Moviebob fan and a big Halo fan. I love Halo just because I love schlocky science-fiction and it's not as "serious" as Call of Duty, so it's very appropriate for relaxed play with friends while hanging out. And the reason I like Moviebob is that, even with all the shit he's been getting lately, he's the most frequently positive serious critic I know of on the internet, and as someone who really love s Geek properties and most video games, it really kind of gets me upset when I hear game critics that are negative about the majority of things they play.

Unfortunately, if you're a Marvel fan, there aren't as many as those as there are for DC, but like Bob said, you could always get a trade.

If you like anything by Joss Whedon, you could try his four volume Astonishing X-Men series, which contains plenty of outside continuity references, but nothing you NEED to know to understand the story.

 

[SlothfulCobra]

I'm surprised nobody asked about those stock faces you have.

Where did you get them? Who are they supposed to be?

 

[schtick]

As a Norwegian fan, I would it if you made a review of Troll Hunter!
And it's quite an awesome movie, yes. ^^,

 

[ironlordthemad]

Want to get into comic books but don't want too get into continuity... Planet Hulk/World War Hulk.
The hulk gets fired into space by the big names that everyone knows in marvel (even if you only have a passive understanding of the universe like me) and gets thrown into a savage world and smashes stuff...
Then he comes back (or in the extra story I got with my edition that was all stuck together, his wife comes back) and smashes stuff on earth.
Simples, no?

 

[neoontime]

MovieBob said Robocop and I squealed big time. That goes a +3 to his awesomeness.

 

[GeorgW]

Did not see robocop coming. And screw troll hunter, review the girl with the dragon tattoo!!

 

[Sludgefeast]

I have a question; why is your artistic talent limited by time constraints & censorship?

 

[Geekeric]

Hey! Another great episode; I particularly liked the comment about how we should do the review instead of bugging MovieBob to do it. It's important to remember that this is the internet and it does have that interactive-thingy going on. I guess maybe that's why I post on forums; we don't want to end up watching (ugh...) television again, do we?

 

[plainlake]

Ahh! creamed my pants when he mentioned rare exports and Troll hunter. Only seen trailers for rare exports, but I would give money too see a review of trollhunter(trolljegeren). I have my own and dont need his opinion on it, but I would love to see it.

 

[RTR]

"Raging at the heavens"

Hilarious

 

[roostuf]

Nice bob i hope you will be able to make more FAQ's.

 

[Tinybear]

TROLLHUNTER!

It's unique and fresh, somewhat peculiar a taste, but overall quite great. Shame you don't get to know the deal with the dialects in the movie without spoiling quite a bit, so:

!!!!!!!! SPOILER ALERT !!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!! SPOILER ALERT !!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!! SPOILER ALERT !!!!!!!!!!!!!

The accent of the cameraman is from west-norway, which is known as the last refuge of christians in the country. That is, it's the only place where they are occationally enough to be a voting majority, and ironically, it is also the spawning place of some of Norway's most famous death metal bands. Extremes breed opposite extremes I guess.

And the reason to why this matters is because the old fairy tales in Norway said that Trolls could smell christian blood. Why can they do that? Ask someone who specialized in it, we norwegians have been stuffed this stuff down the throat so much we forgot the finer tastes of it.

There are also raging protests from various morons about power lines ruining beautiful scenery, which is also a bit in the subtext of the movie.

 

[icame]

Robocop? really?...hmm

Great stuff as usual bob ^^

 

[Boba Frag]

After a long miserable day out in the rain this chilled out Big Picture was an absolute tonic.
Always enjoy your stuff, Bob, hopefully we'll see another one of these FAQ's in the future.

I was afraid of continuity as well until I realised the Trade existed.... Thank God for that!

Reminds me... must nip to my local and pick up Blackest Night....

 

[movienut]

This episode makes me think that it might be fun to see bob do an interactive event like the LRR crew do every once in a while. That way people could ask specific questions about his opinion on things.

I know I would love to go head to head with him about some of his reviews *cough* bookofeli *cough*.

 

[elbowlick]

Durp

snip.

Much obliged, I've read the first trade of Transmetropolitan and it seemed pretty funny so I wouldn't mind reading more of that. The Boys sounds neat, hopefully I'll be able to find it in my local comic stores.

Now in response I'll recommend something: Platinum Grit. It's fairly obscure and might not be found in a library but that's okay because the author posts the chapters online.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I love Mystery Science Theater 3000. Sometimes I'll stay up and watch those bad movies they play on Space (Canadian Sci Fi channel) just for the sole purpose of riffing on them. Although I know I have nothing on Joel and Mike.

EDIT: Incidentally, is it even possible to do a proper live action adaptation of Super Mario Bros.?