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Even If I Live, I Die! (The Amazing Spider-Man #149) (1975)

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Author: Gerry Conway Artist: Ross Andru Embellisher: Mike Esposito Drugged by the Jackal, Spider-Man awakens a prisoner in an abandoned tenement. At this point, I’m wondering how Conway is going to justify Professor Warren’s ability to fight like this. Well, we have to give the Jackal credit for insight, if nothing else. Warren delivers his villain’s monologue, telling how he tricked a student into cloning human cell samples, then accidentally killed him when he protested. He spends the next several months developing his Jackal gear and caring for his clones. Pretty flimsy motivation. Later, Parker arrives at the offices of The Daily Bugle and learns that Ned Leeds is missing. When Spider-Man keeps his appointment with the Jackal at Shea Stadium, he learns both what happened to Ned Leeds and why Professor Warren was speaking about clones in the plural earlier. So this comes out of nowhere, the most unconvincing heel turn in the history of heel turns. And in the aftermath of the bomb ex...
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Created, the Destroyer (The Destroyer #1) (1971) / The Day Remo Died (The Destroyer #0) (1982)

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by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir A secret U.S. government program frames Remo Williams, a nobody beat cop, and sentences him to death so he can be erased and repurposed as a deniable assassin.  It also recruits Chiun, a master of the martial art Sinanju, to train Remo as a lethal operative.  This is a serviceable launchpad for the franchise, especially once Chiun arrives and the book starts showing signs of the humorous personality for which the series is known.  The early Remo/Chiun dynamic is characterized by mentor–student friction, bickering, growing affection, and a clash of worldviews.  A problem is that this novel reads like an uneasy combination of two different types of story.  In the first half, Remo is trained into a killing machine with almost mystical powers of destruction, which promises a Bond-level villain who can threaten the world (which I gather will come along soon enough in the series).  The second half drops him into a mobster plot t...
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The Incredibles (2004)

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Writer / Director: Brad Bird Stars: Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Samuel L. Jackson, Jason Lee, Dominique Louis, Theodore Newton, Jean Sincere, Eli Fucile, Maeve Andrews In a world where superheroes are outlawed, a super-powered family is drawn into conflict with a super-villain because Dad can’t resist playing vigilante from time to time.  This is another classic Pixar film that successfully infuses a comic adventure story with serious themes, all rendered in beautiful state-of-the-art animation.  Mr. Incredible is torn because being the most authentic, best version of himself as he sees it conflicts with the requirements of being a responsible father who provides for his family.  Over the course of the film, the family comes to understand what they mean to each other and their place in society.  There are plenty of laughs and thrilling action sequences.  The voice talent is terrific.  A compete success.
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