JESI THE GENIE, *Part 8: Page 3

Story by Jer Alford. Art by Serena Paccagani.

ANI-MOVIES, *Superman/Batman: Public Enemies

Power Girl beeeewbs! ("ahem") The superhero version of Lethal Weapon flies off in its own movie. Long time amigos Supes and Bats have partnered up in their own comic before titled World's Finest, but over the last few years they've had a different comic called Superman/Batman. The series started out with a story arc where our caped cohorts team up to stop the newly-elected President Lex Luthor from framing them while an asteroid is threatening to destroy the Earth. That became the basis for this superhero slugfest!

Lex Luthor wins the presidency despite how many people know he's a supervillain, and cons a couple of unrelated heroes to work for him lead by Captain Atom. He then learns that an oncoming asteroid made of pure Kryptonite is gonna crash into the planet via Armageddon. Lex tries to convince Superman to stop it, although he turns it into an attempt to kill him with Metallo. Batman rescues him and escapes to the Batcave. Luthor then reports on live TV that Superman killed Metallo, and puts a billion smackers on his head. While trying to solve the mystery of what really happened to Metallo, B&S run across about half the villains in town trying to get their bounty, only to be rescued by Captain Atom and his Luthor-run hero crew. Captain Atom tries to arrest our heroes, but Batman & Superman make off with Power Girl, when Batman realizes it was the villain/hero Major Force who offed Metallo. They then make their way to Luthor's secret crib where they clash with Captain Marvel and Hawkman, but manage to trick Luthor into revealing his plan to letting the asteroid destroy all the life on Earth. Apparently, LL has been taking Kryptonite enimas to make himself deadly to Superman, but it's been making him crazy-as-hell. The World's Finest then scoot to Japan to get help from the young inventor/billionaire Toyman(not the evil one)who builds a giant Composite-Superman rocket-robot to stop the asteroid. However, Luthor shows up in a tacky armored-suit to fight Superman while Bats flies the rocket and blows up the asteroid with no nasty effects to the Earth's atmosphere. Luthor is then kicked out of office by his former superhero hit squad, and Superman is cleared of murder charges.

This movie took a different turn as far as the character designs than the regular DC Universe animated projects had. Instead of the generic style that we're accustomed to from Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League Unlimited, it stuck more to the look that Edward McGuinness' artwork had in the Superman/Batman comic. There is a huge cast of random villains and heroes showing up in it, most notably: Starfire, Black Lightning, Katana, Mongul, Solomon Grundy, Killer Frost, and Grodd, even though you'll need to keep a score card for the list of villains that appear in rumble during the middle. The animation is no exception to the other great production value that was put into Green Lantern: First Flight. Again, my only real complaint is like all the DC Universe movies is that its too short. In fact, its about ten minutes shorter than most of the previous ones. Anyway, this is by far the best best "buddy cop" in capes movie ever!

JESI THE GENIE, *Part 8: Page 2

Story by Jer Alford. Art by Serena Paccagani.

ANI-MOVIES, *Up

Aside from The Incredibles, I try not to get too judgemental about Pixar movies. Some of them like Wall-E which have dynamic animation, and others like Toy Story have a great story but might not be as visually appealing. Up manages to bring together both of these into a wonderful experience for the whole family, as well as for animation fans.

The movie starts out with the young Carl Fredrickson who is a fan of the famous explorer, Charles Muntz, and through this befriends a hick girl named Ellie. They later on marry, and keep planning for their own expedition, but as the years go by the burdens of "real life" makes their dream go unfulfilled, and Ellie eventually dies of old age. Carl is now an old man living in his and Ellie's old dream home, which is in danger of being bought out by a large construction company. So, being a longtime balloon salesman, Carl sticks hundreds of balloons to his house and flies it to South America in the hope of leaving it on the cliff at a place called Paradise Falls. The only hiccup in this is the chubby boy scout Russell was stranded on Carl's porch when it took off, and is now along for the ride. Once in South America, they land the house on the opposite end of the plataeau that the falls are located, so Carl and Russell have to carry the house still floating by balloons to the other end like a giant parade float. They encounter an exotic flightless bird, that Russell calls Kevin, which is being chased by dogs with special collars that allow them to talk. One of the dogs is Dug who quickly befriends them. The other dogs force them to where their owner is, who turns out to be Carl's childhood hero, Muntz. He's been there this whole time ruthlessly looking for a rare bird, which is what Kevin is. Carl and Russell barely escape with Kevin's help, but Kevin gets caught by Muntz's mutts. After finally getting the house to the falls, Russell leaves Carl to go rescue Kevin. Carl eventually decides to go to by flying his house after Muntz in his giant zepplin, and despite being in probably in his 80s, Carl manages to free Kevin and Russell with Dug's help. They then hijack the zepplin and head to the States.

Up was a pure delight. It took a brave move in making a senior citizen the main hero in a family adventure animated film. The first few minutes are very endearing, and really pulls you into this journey of Carl, and ultimately what he decides to do with himself now that he's nearing the end of his life. I totally think that this is the best animated movie of the year, and a modern-day classic.

JESI THE GENIE, *Part 8: Page 1

Story by Jer Alford. Art by Serena Paccagani.

ANI-MOVIES: The Corpse Bride

Tim Burton returned to his stop-motion greatness is this great romantic fantasy. Once again teaming up with animator Mike Johnson who he worked with on The Nightmare Before Christmas, and turned Burton's idea for a short story invoving necrophilia into an enjoyable family feature.

Taking place in Victorian era England, the worried young Victor is engaged to the very ladylike a Victoria(a joke on Victor/Victoria), but is having trouble remembering his vows. After dropping his engagement ring in the woods, he unintentionally resurrects Emily, the corpse of a bride who was killed on her wedding night. She takes him to the underworld where he learns her sad tale. Victor manages to talk her into taking him topside by a magic potion, and tells Victoria what happened, but Emily spitefully returns him to back to the land of the dead. Meanwhile, Victoria's parents believe Victor has ditched her, so they promise her hand to the aristocratic Lord Barkis, who really intends to kill and take her fortune, although he's unaware that Victoria's family was really marrying her to Victor for his family's money. Victor himself hears of Victoria's new fiance via one of his old coachmen who recently died of a bad cough. This causes Victor to consent to marrying Emily, but they decide to take their wedding upstairs to the land of the living. After an initial shock by most of the townspeople who think that's its a typical zombie holocaust, they realize that the dead are just there for the wedding. Victoria makes her way to the chapel, and Emily notices her just before Victor is willingly going to drink poison to join Emily in holy matrimony. Emily decides to let Victor marry Victoria instead, but Lord Barkis shows up and Emily recognizes him as the man who killed her. He unwittingly drinks the poison though, and the dead guests drag him back to the underworld. Emily then drifts peacefully off into the afterlife, leaving Victor and Victoria to live happily ever after.

When this movie first came out, I liked it but quickly forgot about it because of how much more entertaining I found the Wallace & Gromit movie(another stop-motion movie)at the time which came out a few weeks later. It wasn't until I rented it again a few years later that I grew to appreciate it more. It's got a bittersweet story to it done to gothic background. There's some fine humor in it, along with a few slightly unecessary but still welcome musical numbers. I especially loved the outlandish character designs and dark backgrounds, and how much more livelier they made the world of the dead seem from the world of the living. I highly recommend this as a movie to show at either Halloween or Valentines, an definately one for your video library.

2013: Year of the Snake