Baby, it's cold outside.

Note: Stark died on the way to his home planet

Dude...you've studied the Avengers 4 trailer long enough!

Will the Goat make it to X-Mas without being burned?

ANI-MOVIES, *Godzilla: Planet Of Monsters

After several decades of live-action movies, Toho finally decided to make a Godzilla anime, and not just as a single film but a full on back-to-back trilogy. There have been two unsuccessful American animated TV series(one based on the U.S. film), but never a genuine anime. Instead of standard animation, they got Polygon Pictures to do a CGI production. Polygon has already gotten a good track with Ghost In The Shell: Innocence and The Sky Crawlers, also handled American properties like Transformers, Star Wars, and Tron. The anime itself doesn't have it take place in the normal Godzilla setting, but acts as a far flung outer space epic.

A quick opening narrative tells that the Earth was overrun with kaiju during the late 1990s, and the most powerful of them all was the overgrown fire-breathing reptile called Godzilla. Godzilla ends up finishing off the other kaiju, with mankind not having any way of getting rid of him. Suddenly, an alien alliance made of two races come to Earth offering to help humanity kill Godzilla in exchange for being allowed to migrate to Earth. The aliens try to counter with their own "Mechagodzilla" which fails to activate, leaving the aliens no choice but to round up the remaining humans and head off in a big space ark to find another planet to live on. Cut to two decades later, and the allied humans and aliens decide to head back to Earth after not locating an inhabitable world. After warping back to the Solar System, they discover that twenty millennia had past on Earth, and the Big-G still stomping around. Captain Haruo becomes de facto leader of an anti-Godzilla exploration team to lure the lizard into an ambush after finding he has an Achilles heel in his dorsal fin. Their plan actually works and this Godzilla gets blown to bits, however the original Godzilla was waiting in the wings and is over 300 meters tall(over twice as big as the Monsterverse version!). Haruo awakens from the attack in the care of an insect like humanoid native, meaning we could stand to see a giant butterfly in one of the sequels.

Planet Of Monsters acts as a decent beginning to the Godzilla anime trilogy, more setting up the hardships the humans and aliens had trying to survive in space for twenty years, and finding out how much Earth itself has changed during the passing thousands of years. The film seems more like a Starship Troopers anime movie as opposed to the standard kaiju story. If you're a fan of the original Showa Era of Godzilla, this anime might seem like a Gene Roddenberry-inspired follow-up to that set of films. The animation itself is fair enough with the characters, but works much better with the starships, mecha, and monster diagrams. You can see though that it would have benefited from having more standard animation as opposed to having it all done in CGI with more lifeless-looking character expressions. Whether or not this all works together as a well-toned trilogy is yet to be seen.

MISC. MANGA, *Bat-Manga

As the first ever manga based on an American comic book, the 1966 Batman series rode the success of the live-action Adam West show, but based each entry on stories from the original Batman and Detective Comics first printed in America. Jiro Kawata, famous for doing the art for 8-Man, was picked for illustrating this special Japanese run, which allowed him to do manga versions of other American properties like The Time Tunnel and The Invaders. Prior to DC Comics' release of the Bat-Manga, there was a one-shot special published by Pantheon Books highlighting a few of the at the time available manga remnants, as well as several great photographs of the huge wave of Batman merchandise that flooded the Japanese market at the time.

Bat-Manga retells several of the classic Batman stories from the 50s-60s, although rarely using any of the general Bat-villains, possibly due to international licensing rights concerning the characters. There were two separate appearances of Clayface(the second one of which shows his first appearance!), plus C-list villains like Planet Master, Catman, Outsider, and Lord Death Man. This included rebranded bad guys like Flash's foe Weather Wizard rebranded "Go-Go the Magician". The rest of the villains were usually one-shot adversaries that only appeared for one issue like aliens, mad scientists, mutants, and super-intelligent gorillas(not Grodd!). Batman himself is relatively the same, along with Robin wearing an outfit with a slightly longer tunic. Also featuring a rarely occurring Alfred, a brief guest spot by a brunette Vicki Vale, and Commissioner Gordon who apparently knows the Dynamic Duo' secret identities. The Caped Crusades sport the 60s Batmobile, plus a Bat-Copter that is like a large-domed vehicle.

The Bat-Manga was restored in its entirety by DC Comics, partially thanks to Chip Kidd's efforts on the original Bat-Manga collection special. You get each chapter as it was printed in Japan, although the sound effects are still in Japanese attached to an asterisk in the lower corner of the panels, as well as most of the narration blocks being crushed and put to the side making it slightly difficult to read. The paperback version are done in oversized manga format in regular right-to-left format. The manga itself influenced a brief appearance on the Batman: Brave And The Bold TV series, as well as making Lord Death Man a regular foe of the designated Batman Incorporated agents of Japan. If you long for the fun action that anime like Speed Racer and Cyborg 009 became infamous with American otaku, then Bat-Manga needs a spot on your shelf!

ANI-MOVIES, The Incredibles 2

Despite there being 2 sequels and 2 spinoffs to Cars, Pixar took its sweet time to finally come up with a follow up to The Incredibles. The Fantastic Four-inspired animated film was about two superheroes who were forced to retire from being active crimefighters and raise their superpowered kids, only to be dragged into a scheme where most of all the other heroes had been killed off during their retreat. Brad Bird returns to bring the superhero family back to the screen.

Taking place right where the previous one left off, The Incredibles try to stop the subterranean villain The Underminer, only for him to make a clean getaway, leaving our heroes to clean up after the mess they made confronting him. Their activity gets the attention of Winston Deaver, the rich head of a telecommunications company who wants to have supers being legalized again. Along with his sister Evelyn, they contact Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl, and Frozone about their plan, but choose Elastigirl to be the figurehead of their campaign. Elastigirl saves a runaway train, while Mr. Incredible, Dash, Violet, and Jack-Jack move into a new estate provided to them by Winston. A mysterious new villain called Screenslaver who can hypnotize people with screens is responsible for the train accident, and an attack on an ambassador, so Elastigirl manages to track the bad guy down with Evelyn's help. However, Elastigirl realizes the man she caught was just a fall guy, and that Evelyn was the one setting up all the attacks, getting back at supers for having the public relying on them too much instead of fending for themselves. Evelyn takes control of Elastigirl and Mr. Incredible, then sends a group of hypnotized heroes to round up their kids, who are having enough problems after finding out baby Jack-Jack has come into his own multitude of powers. The kid Incredibles have to rescue their parents along with Frozone and the other heroes from a plan Evelyn had for sabotaging the heroes legalization ceremony on a huge yacht. Evelyn is eventually captured, and the Incredibles continue their crusade as a superhero family.

After seeing this film after the first one, its clear that the animation is of a better quality, but still keeps the look and motif of the original using a mod/art deco style to the times and characters fashion. Not a lot is referred to the original movie, which makes it slightly convenient for those who didn't watch it and just wanted to see a good superhero film. Most of the previous cast is back, and hopefully will be around to voice a third chapter! If Avengers: Infinity War gave you such a downer, then Incredibles 2 will take you back up and away!