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Hello boys and girls. A new year, a new Groovy Grab Bag. We have plenty to talk about. As always, throw your own list or thoughts onto the comments, or talk about it on my twitter.

Comics:

Dark Knight III: The Master Race #2

Secret Six #6

James Bond #1

James Bond #2

Secret Six #7

Secret Six #8

Batman & Robin Eternal #12

Darth Vader #1

Princess Leia #1

Kanan: The Last Padawan #1

Superman/Wonder Woman Annual #2

Batman & Robin Eternal #13

Secret Six #9

Superman: Lois & Clark #3

Justice League #47

We Are Robin #4

This week presented an interesting mix of comics. For example, I didn’t expect to enjoy the Star Wars line as much as I did here. While I have enjoyed several issues of the main Star Wars comic by Jason Aaron and John Cassaday, I didn’t expect a majority of the line to be of similarly high quality. In particular the Darth Vader book is my personal standout.

The issue with a book set in-between the movies is just how much story can you tell without either stepping on the toes of the movies, or simply telling low calorie stories featuring these beloved characters. Where Darth Vader succeeds is in telling a story that’s not covered by the movies: exploring the political fallout of a military failure as spectacular as that of the Death Star through the eyes of one of its survivors, Darth Vader himself. While skeptical of the Death Star’s ultimate power, Vader still stayed to the end, and the Emperor wastes no time in punishing him for that failure by putting him under the authority of the only Moff to leave. While I can’t profess to be a fan of Salvador Larroca’s art outside of his Iron Man run with Matt Fraction, he does an admirable job of keeping the art firmly in the style of the movies, while finding neat ways to give Vader emotion despite being completely armored.

Princess Leia similarly explores something that the movies completely ignored, namely the obvious grief that would emerge from being one of the last survivors of a culture that’s been wiped out in a single blow. Mark Waid and Terry Dodson bring a lighter touch to this compared to Darth Vader, while the story is action-packed, its ultimate goal of showing Leia’s version of grieving compared to what everyone expects her to be is exciting, as well as a perhaps interesting bit of commentary between how the movies presented Leia as a fierce leader versus the wider fanboy image of her (and Carrie Fisher) as a sex symbol.

I also would like to note that We Are Robin is increasingly becoming one of my favorite Batman line books. While I’m a die hard Damian Wayne fan, I can’t deny the appeal of a Robin book that actually takes its cues from the real world, as opposed to what some might call a very weird trend in Bruce’s propensity to select partners among an eternal line of bright and black haired young men. While Duke Thomas is an obvious sell because of his rise in Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman run proper, having a whole team of them from different backgrounds makes perfect sense. While people want to be Batman, the obvious appeal in being Robin is that you get to hang out with Batman as his partner, and the series draws on that meta-construct in full force as it shows just how modern teenagers would adapt the Robin symbol for their own. While the idea that Alfred would willingly put more children at risk is a little iffy, Lee Bermejo sells that idea fairly well in the context of what he’s lost, and what Gotham needs. Also welcome is DC’s willingness to experiment outside their house style, giving us James Harvey who’s fill-in issue featuring Riko’s team-up with Batgirl a very distinct tone and feeling even outside of Batgirl’s own book.

Television:

Sherlock: The Abominable Bride

Sherlock is a very… iffy series to me. While I’ve written recently about how much I’ve enjoyed Doctor Who series 9 compared to co-writer and co-creator Moffat’s previous offerings, Sherlock Series 3 lost me with its tendency to emulate Moffat’s worst efforts and be “clever” as opposed to clever. The Christmas Special at first does far better in what initially looks to be a “back to basics” story putting Sherlock and Watson squarely back into the continuity of the early Strand stories. However, the devil is always in the details, and while I would like to congratulate Moffat and Mark Gatiss for attempting to tell a clever story, it’s not quite that clever so much as its disappearing inside of itself. The saving grace as always for Sherlock is in the performances of its two leads Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. They wring every drop of blood out of the fun of playing the classic versions of their leads, and the enjoyment of the special is all the better for it. Sadly it can’t really save the story. While I won’t give away the twist, it’s not as tangential as one would enjoy, but it makes for an interesting experiment in format at least.

Movies

Die Hard

Die Hard With a Vengeance

Unfriended

Fruitvale Station

I’m a sucker for Die Hard. Not every iteration mind you, I’m not completely insane. But the first and the third are about as perfect as action movies get. Every Christmas, I watch the first movie. Why? Because it’s Christmas you maniac. I won’t go over the details of the story, everyone knows it by now. But there’s more to appreciate every time you watch that initial movie. The unique sense of space. Everywhere John goes makes sense in the context of the film, and plenty of ink has been spilled about John being unique in the avalanche of 80’s tough guys for being normal, and while that performance has turned towards self-parody in his later years, that original performance of John McClane is still one of the best roles Bruce Willis ever had. It helps that Hans Gruber is by far still one of the best villains to match an underdog hero. Where John is a scrappy New York cop in a tank top, Hans is a well-educated terrorist in an immaculate suit, that Sherlock and Moriarty dynamic suits them even though they don’t meet face to face for most of the film. Also Christmas is more incidental to the plot than anything else, there’s no cloying parable about the true meaning of Christmas found through John letting a guy fall down to the Nakatomi Plaza, there doesn’t need to be. Which is probably one of the best gifts Die Hard ever gave to Christmas truth be told.

Now this concludes the first Groovy Grab Bag of the New Year. Hope y’all have a good rest of the year. Bon voyage folks, we should have more media to review up for the next week.