2013, wow that was quick! Don’t Forget a Towel entered Phase 2 this past July marking the end of a full year of content on DFAT. A lot of great things happened this year thanks to this website. First off we returned to New York Comic Con for our third year in a row, but this year we were graced with press passes which got us into the event as professionals, so we said what the heck let’s see what else writing for DFAT can do for us. So far besides NYCC we were invited to New York Toy Fair, a press only convention, and we will be reporting from that live in February. We also got invites to some other conventions like Motor City Comic Con, CES, and a couple of others, so not too shabby eh?! We started Towelite Talk, we only got to do two this year, one that is actually not going to see the light of day, but hey that’s ok, trial and error! Hopefully this coming year we can make it a regular thing! A lot of great things happened this year in the Geekly world, almost too much to write about so below check out my lists of top events, news and products from this past year.
Biggest Announcements
JJ Abrams to direct Star Wars Episode VII – the man who made Star Trek cool again gets to rock out his favorite franchise!
Ben Affleck is Batman & Gal Gadot is Wonder Woman in MOS2 – will this become the Justice League movie after all?? Two controversial castings proves to everyone that the internet is filled with a bunch of negative Nancy’s.
Marvel and Netflix team-up – ’nuff said. I am really looking forward to this gritty “street-level” take of the Marvel Cinematic Universe!
Disney acquires Indiana Jones – Another great nerd property in the hands of a company that has not failed us yet!
X-Men: Apocalypse is coming in 2016 – Wow. We haven’t gotten a taste of what Bryan Singer is bringing back to this franchise and this gets announced?! One of my favorite X-Villains ever!
The Avengers: Age of Ultron/Paul Rudd is Ant-Man – Two mammoth announcements. But the question is will Rudd appear in Avengers as Hank Pym? Fingers crossed!
Comics of the Year
Star Wars – a return to what works best. The Brian Wood scribed comic takes place during the original trilogy, and in my book is one of best comics of the year. We also got another Legacy series and the THE original George Lucas screenplay The Star Wars!
Death of the Family/Zero Year/Death of Damian Wayne – The Dark Knight was busy this year. The return of the Joker was grossly great, Zero Year is a perfect re-imagining of Bruce taking on the mantle, and the death of a fan favorite sidekick as Grant Morrison ends his epic run.
Trinity War/Villains Month/ Forever Evil marks the third year of the New 52 and once again DC triumphs with it’s great stories from the best writers in the industry! Biggest WTF moment: Nightwing is unmasked!
Green Arrow – Jeff Lemire took this book from failing to greatness. With the popularity of the show it was without a doubt that this comic would need to be just as good. The addition of Diggle to the DC universe was a nice touch as well!
Guardians of the Galaxy – Brian Michael Bendis takes on the GOTG? Thank you!
Age of Ultron – was ok…. but the repercussions of the maxi-series was the real story here!
Infinity to Inhumanity – Marvel sticks with what it does best and took us on a cosmic adventure that resulted in something unexpected!
Marvel NOW! runs us in circles – I don’t know what strategy Marvel has right now regarding its books but I have never seen so many #1’s and restarts in such a short amount of time. I understand that they are trying to make it easy for new readers to “jump on” with their .NOW issues and calling them #1’s, whatever. This paragraph just confused me… and I thought putting books out every two weeks was bad…
The Maxx returns in IDW’s The Maxx Maxximized as we revisit a great comic from my youth. Sam Keith’s comic is rejuvenated as each original issue is re-mastered and re-colored as we explore the classic tale.
Toys of the Year
End of Mattel’s DC Universe Classics – Sadly 2014 will see the final figures released through MattyCollector. It was a great run and one of my favorite toy lines of all time.
Castle GraySkull – MattyCollector pulled out all the bells and whistles on this one. Taking the original design of the MOTU playset from the 80’s and adding some great new features and improving on others, this set is THE definitive Castle Grayskull!
Star Wars The Black Series 6″ – Hasbro has finally done it right. Now don’t get me wrong I have always enjoyed the 3.75″ line, but after a while there are only so many you can collect. Well enter the 6″ Black Series, putting Star Wars figures in the hands of the adult collector and emptying wallets. For those of you lucky enough to get your mitts on Boba Fett, it wasn’t too much of an effort to collect the first two waves this year! I love these figures and I can’t wait for the 2014 waves!
LEGO Superheroes sets – These are hands down my favorite LEGOs of all time. This year Marvel release some decent sets, mostly based on Ultimate Spider-Man and Iron Man 3. But the real gems came from the DC side of things. The Arkham Asylum set is one of the best LEGO sets I have ever seen. We also got our first Justice League mini-fig, Aquaman. The Man of Steel sets made it easy to get the figures you were looking for without spending a ton of money on all of them. I am really looking forward to 2014’s sets on both sides!
Video Games of the Year
PS4 and XBox One hit shelves – 2013 was the year of the next-gen consoles, and from what I have heard and read the PS4 took the prize. I am really looking forward to getting a PS4 and I am sure I will at some point in 2014!
Injustice Gods Among Us – I am not a big fighting game person, but this game is my favorite game of the year. I could’t put it down and I definitely logged the most time into it.
Batman Arkham Origins – the prequel to two of my favorite games of all time, Origins told us the story of what happened before. Origins quickly became my favorite of the series as the improvements of the overall structure and mechanics of the game we great. Word has it that we will be getting a big announcement in the world of the Arkham series today so stay tooned!
Games I need to play still…. GTA 5, AC4, Last of Us, Lego Marvel Superheroes, Tomb Raider, Legend of Zelda: A Link Between 2 Worlds, Super Mario 3D World. I am not a die-hard gamer and it takes me awhile to get to games and get through them. A lot of these titles I can’t play unless I buy a Wii U and I don’t see that happening for a while. But that’s what I love about staying behind in games, there’s always something to enjoy.
Movies of the Year
Iron Man 3 – It was THE movie that made the most money overall this year at the box office, and the film that divided the comic community in half. Starting off Marvel Studios’ Phase 2, IM3 was definitely a refreshing take on the comic book movie and there’s no argument to why this film made so much money, its accessible to the mass public.
Thor: The Dark World – the second chapter in Phase 2, I love that we get two Marvel films a year! Thor 2 took all of the elements from the original and added what the first film was lacking making this movie a tour-de-force! I can’t wait to see this one again!
Man of Steel – Like it or hate it, Man of Steel is the start of something bigger for the DC films. I liked the film a lot, but it took a second viewing to prove it to myself. MOS is the best Superman film yet and it finally does the character justice, even though it makes some changes to the mythology, they are changes for the better in my opinion, the film truly humanizes the character. For a superhero that people call “boring”, this movie had me on the edge of my seat with every punch and epic battle! Now give me Lex Luthor!
The Wolverine – Welcome to the next coming of Fox’s Marvel films! I LOVED this movie, it quickly became one of my favorite comic book movies of all time. Cleaning up the mess that Origins left behind, The Wolverine takes Logan back to his roots and takes the viewer on an intelligent, intense thrill-ride filled with mystery, suspense, and ninja violence!
Star Trek Into Darkness – I don’t know why people hated this film. JJ Abrams has breathed great life into the Star Trek franchise as he builds the world into something that everyone can enjoy! KHAN!!!!!!!!!!
Pacific Rim – Monster vs Robots. Guillermo Del Toro. If you haven’t seen this film, go do yourself a favor. It’s like Christmas.
This is the End – there is always one comedy that utterly blows me away and this year it was this movie. I thought that I knew how this film would go down and it kicked the asses of all my expectations. True comedic gold!
Movies I still NEED to see – Riddick, The Hobbit, Fast 6, Kick-Ass 2, Anchorman 2, The World’s End. I missed some great films this year, a few that I was pretty upset about not seeing on the big screen. I’ll have to make time this winter…
TV Shows of the Year
Almost Human – My vote for best new show of the year. J.H. Wyman explores the future of mankind in the robot, buddy cop action drama. I love this show, go watch it. NOW!
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – The show that has thrown the comic community into an uproar. I myself think that it is a good show, but what it lacks is exactly what everyone is complaining about, not enough comic references. It’s true though, if you are going to build a show into Phase 2 you have to give people what they want and apparently AOS is not it as of yet.
Sleepy Hollow – My other favorite new show of the year. Creepy, gory, and set in the town that I used to live in. I hope this one is around for a few years, of course it being on Fox cuts its life expectancy in half!
Defiance – When I first heard about this TV Show/video game hybrid I was a little skeptical. But after season 1 ran this year I was proved wrong. From Rockne O’Bannon, the creator of Farscape (I should have had more faith), this vision of a post-apocalyptic United States is a great start to a sci-fi series that I hope lasts. The game isn’t so bad, especially for being a MMO action RPG, I just haven’t had a lot of time to devote to it. Hey at least I got it for 7 bucks!
Arrow S2 – The best show on TV in my book. It does exactly what AOS doesn’t do, shower us with great comic references and treats them intelligently. I haven’t been this excited for a show to be on TV in a while, every week I can’t wait for Wednesday to roll around and I hope it stays that way!
I am MORE than excited for 2014! Two of my most anticipated Marvel Studios films come out, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy and we are finally getting another X-Men movie. More great toys, comics and video games are headed to shelves, enough to keep me busy throughout the year! But most of all I am looking forward to what 2014 will bring for DFAT. We made some amazing strides this year and adopted some new Towelites to the fold, who help to add great, diverse content to the site! But of course we couldn’t do it without YOU our faithful readers out there! Thank you all for being loyal Towelites and we hope that you continue coming to DFAT for your daily dosage of Geekly news!
There’s a lot more to come so Stay Tooned, see you in 2014 Towelites!
~CynicNerd
