COMIC BOOK GUY (SEASON 35)

 

Welcome back to COMIC BOOK GUY, where I, your vastly overqualified arbiter of four-color cinema, am once again forced to evaluate a slate that includes the nihilistic bloodbath of The Punisher: Purgatory, the gloriously idiotic chaos of The Tick, the moss-covered mood piece Man-Thing, and the sleek-but-overstuffed conspiracy fest Batman: Duality. Four wildly different tones, one poor critic—what could possibly go wrong?

THE PUNISHER: PURGATORY
The filmmakers clearly are not holding back with Purgatory. Mel Gibson leans into an older, meaner Frank Castle who feels less like a superhero and more like a walking war crime, while Jonathan Tucker’s Jigsaw is a twitchy, genuinely unhinged villain straight out of the grimiest corners of the comics - even if it did take some time to get used to this amalgam version of Jigsaw and Finn Cooley. The action is brutal, methodical, and often uncomfortable in that very Zahler way (the Rikers sequence alone feels like a prison movie wandered into a Punisher comic), and the film actually earns its nihilism instead of just posing with it. But… it’s also indulgent as hell—overlong, packed with side characters, and so committed to its bleak worldview that it occasionally forgets pacing is a thing. Still, as the third entry in this series, it’s the one that goes full MAX imprint—ugly, uncompromising, and weirdly compelling, even when you kind of want it to take a shower (just don't drop the soap). 

THE TICK

The Tick is a loud, gleefully stupid cartoon that somehow understands superhero logic better than half the “serious” entries in your slate—and then spends 90 minutes making fun of it. Rob Riggle is perfect as The Tick, delivering every line like it’s the most important speech in human history, while Michael Cera leans all the way into Arthur’s nervous, accidental-hero energy. The movie throws everything at the wall—Chairface carving his name into the moon (deep-cut comic insanity, bonus points), a dinosaur named Neil, Die Fledermaus being aggressively useless—and most of it sticks because the film commits to the bit with zero irony. That said, it’s also a little too in love with its own randomness; the middle stretch starts to feel like a sketch reel instead of a story, and the pacing wobbles as a result. Still, as a send-up of superhero tropes (and a surprisingly affectionate one), it’s chaotic, dumb in the right ways, and far more fun than it has any right to be—just don’t expect it to make sense for more than five consecutive minutes.

MAN-THING

I wasn't sure what to expect from a Jordan Peele-directed Man-Thing film. The result is a slow, humid, deeply patient horror movie that occasionally remembers it’s based on a Marvel property and then goes right back to being a moody lecture about corporate greed and environmental collapse. Max Minghella and Allison Williams do solid, grounded work, and when Man-Thing actually shows up to enforce his “fear equals fire” policy, it’s great—but you will wait for it, because Peele is in absolutely no rush to get to the monster in his monster movie. The AIM villains are enjoyably slimy, the atmosphere is doing a lot of heavy lifting, and the whole thing feels like it would rather be compared to Annihilation than anything in the MCU. It’s smart, eerie, and admirably weird… but also the kind of film where you can feel half the audience quietly wondering when the swamp is going to speed things up.

BATMAN: DUALITY

Batman: Duality is slick but overstuffed, like the studio handed the filmmakers every cool Batman idea on a whiteboard and told, “Yes, all of them.” The Court of Owls stuff works, Batwoman brings some much-needed edge, and Jake Gyllenhaal broods like he’s contractually obligated—but the movie is so busy setting up its next movie that this one occasionally feels like a very expensive trailer. Surprisingly, Chris Rock ends up being one of the better calls as Harvey Dent; his jittery, barely-contained energy makes the Two-Face turn feel less Shakespearean tragedy and more “this guy was always one bad day away from snapping,” which honestly fits this Gotham. The action moves fast enough that you almost don’t notice how many threads it drops—until that Lazarus Pit stinger basically waves and says, “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it later.” Entertaining, stylish, and just overstuffed enough to be its own villain.