Just in case you wanted to see all of the Joe videos in one place:

Two things I have never been much of a fan of: the 80s incarnation of G.I. Joe and anything produced lately for the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. The tiny-action-figured version of Joe came a little late for my generation, and though I admit to watching a few episodes its childish character names and disregard for the old Joe of my childhood made it fairly easy to disregard.

On the opposite end, Adult Swim has become so “experimental” I can hardly keep my food down while watching it. Do we really need to spend money on programming like “Xavier: Renegade Angel”? Are potheads really this desperate for entertainment?

Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that writer-extraordinaire Warren Ellis has been handed the keys to the animated Joe kingdom and has produced a new online mini-series titled “G.I. Joe: Resolute.”

No spoilers here. Promise. But I’ve just watched the first episode, and it is absolutely, positively the best thing I’ve seen with the Joes, ever. Yeah, some of the voice work stinks(don’t know why all of the Joes have to sound like professional wrestlers-maybe that’s a throwback to the old series), but the story is strong and it will most likely put the upcoming movie to shame. Two episodes are already online. Catch ‘em soon!

Frequent contributor Freakengine hasn’t been contributing all that frequently as of late due to his commitment as creator/writer of and actor in Jupiter’s Ghost, an online series of Webisodes tracking the fate of the Heracles and its crew. New episodes are posted every week, so check in often for updates.

Here’s a nice little piece of footage from the newly launched New Frontiersman site showing a distinctly 1980s view of Dr. Manhattan. Didn’t know they had such good CGI back then, did ya?

Christmas has come and gone, and it just occurred to me that we never posted a 25th toy of Christmas past.  So, before the holiday season of 2008 is completely gone, let’s let our final toy be a tribute to one of the all-time greats – Major Matt Mason:

Children’s book author Adam Rex created this, and in spite of myself I can’t stop myself from watching it… kinda like a gamma bomb explosion.

Sci-fi blog io9 recently published their take on MTV’s media blitz regarding Robert Kirkman’s Invincible animated series.  The plan is to take existing issues of Invicible, digitize them, animate them somewhat (something like what Marvel does with its cinema-style previews of big event comics) and add character voices.  If they’re going to THAT much trouble, I don’t see why they just don’t go ahead and do a full-fledged animated series; the new Spectacular Spider-Man toon has more than proven that can work.

Most interesting in io9’s article is the argument that this is sending animation backwards, rather than forwards, so that comics fans are basically getting high-tech versions of cartoons like this:

Get the idea?  So, I figure, if they’re going to go THAT far back to save a few bucks on animation, why not embrace the ultimate in animation cheese:

Cutting corners and overhyping your product – truly the American way.  Hopefully Invincible will turn out ok, but then it could end up with creepy human mouths all over the screen.  And that just doesn’t sound right, does it?

Read the full io9 story here:

MTV’s New Cartoon Brings You Cutting Edge Of 1960s Animation

The Gotham Knight DVD (available now) is a real mixed bag. It’s a messy affair that’s fairly dull except for a few interesting design elements. It’s like the plate of Chinese food in the restaurant window. It’s encased in plastic to keep it looking fresh but that very same plastic also makes it unappetizing.

I have to question the wisdom of even attempting a project like this one. It reeks of “Hey, that Ani-Matrix DVD was cool. Let’s do something like that!” The Ani-Matrix DVD was artistically successful because each animator got to choose his own take on the subject and none of the stories was linked by anything but the universe they existed in. It was more expressive and less corporatized. Gotham Knight is the opposite. It’s like the commodification of the Ani-Matrix idea.

There are five sequences, many of them storied by Jordan Goldberg, which present what I think is supposed to be a single continuous story. Let’s be honest – there isn’t much story here. A few old school villains show up briefly but none of the villainous stars most of us would expect. No, what little story there is revolves around Bruce and Bats and it’s not exciting, interesting, or deep. It just is. If you’re a zen monk you might just LOVE this package. Me? It put me to sleep. That’s not to say that it’s all bad.

There are interesting designs for Bruce and Batman that are all over the map visually but which provide us with something to look forward to in the next fifteen-minute vignette. It’s the only dramatic tension in the piece. What will the next Batman look like? It’s like watching music videos. Yeah, this one sucks but maybe the next one will be cool. The only problem is that in this day of on demand programming I’m more likely to fast forward through the suckage. This project really needed a kick-ass plot to keep me interested. Batman has always needed more than generic villains and a drive toward self-sacrifice. You’d think Bruce Timm would know better after all the miles he’s travelled with this character. Hell, he was instrumental in bringing to the screen one of my favorite Batman flicks, Mask of the Phantasm. So what happened?

It’s hard to know what exactly Bruce Timm had to do with this project (he’s listed as “executive producer”). The old Batman the Animated Series staff is well represented (including Kevin Conroy as Batman) but the look of the older show is nowhere to be seen. Instead, this Batman seems to exist in Christopher Nolan’s Gotham City and with Nolan’s characters but with costumes and props from other films, comics, and sometimes from the animators’ imaginations. This helps to reinforce the disjointed nature of what is supposed to be a melting pot of sorts. I don’t have a problem with moving forward with the look of the animated Batman but if the stories are supposed to be cohesive, there should at least be some common ground to the designs. Since Warner Brothers obviously had a hand in the choice of setting these stories in the same world as the upcoming Dark Knight feature, why not clearly set all five segments (and all five Bats) in that space? For that matter, why even involve five directors? Why not make a film with a single interesting storyline with one of those directors? Hey, it could even be an ongoing series of films like the Masters of Horror series.

I’d actually have preferred wildly contrasting takes on the character in a variety of expressionistic storylines in a variety of lengths. If you’re going to turn talented people loose with your character wouldn’t you prefer to see what they would have done when completely unbound?  Instead these filmmakers were given just enough rope to hang themselves.

PS – There’s a decent featurette about the upcoming Wonder Woman animated feature on the disc. Let’s hope it fares better than this set.

Words aren’t really necessary here, are they???