Even though Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment didn’t make the big announcement about Batman: Arkham City until after Comic Con, they did make sure to let us get our hands on a more kid friendly Batman title. Based off the animated series of the same name, Batman: The Brave and The Bold, which is coming to both the Wii and Nintendo DS, takes classic 2D side scrolling gameplay mixed with hand drawn animations to present a mix of modern and retro to the screen.

Each level is built as a cooperative experience pairing up Batman with either Robin, Aquaman, Black Canary, Blue Beetle, Captain Marvel, Green Lantern Guy Gardner, Green Arrow, Hawkman, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Plastic Man or the Red Tornado facing off against the schemes of any of the game’s various villains. These villains include Catman, Catwoman, Gorilla Grodd, Mongul, Starro and Two-Face. Like the comic book and the show, Batman: The Brave and The Bold focuses on the idea of Batman teaming up with another hero to take on some villainous force he would not have been able to take on solo. Each level features a different hero and drop-in, drop-out gameplay allowing for players to hop in even mid-level.

The game contains a full five minutes of original animation created by WB Animation, the same team that works on the Batman: The Brave and The Bold series. These are seen throughout any of the game’s 2D cutscenes. Everything in the game is hand drawn before being digitally scanned and then animated. Because of this production style, the game contains around 15,000 individual animations. The game definitely stands out amongst all of the other 3D computer animated titles currently being shown.

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Welcome to another edition of The Pull List Comic Reviews! Superboy’s Adventure comes to an end, Daytripper continues to be trippy and the Rhino gets a happy ending that may actually stick. As always, WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

PULL OF THE WEEK:

Adventure Comics #6
DC Comics – $3.99 US
Writer: Geoff Johns
Artist: Francis Manapul
Score: 9/10

Superboy has been trying to “find himself” and determine if he’s more Superman than Lex Luthor, since his genetic make-up is made from both of them. Unfortunately, it’s Luthor who finds him first and serves notice that for all his intellect and power, Luthor still has that nasty little streak in him.

Honestly, this has been a fun, engaging run by superstar writer Geoff Johns. Equal parts adventure (which works great with the title) and drama, all revolved around Superboy’s own identity crisis, this arc hit all the right buttons without coming across as preachy or whiny; a testament to the writer’s considerable talent of making relevant topics matter in the pages of a comic book.

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Here’s a list of some of the new movie and TV shows coming to DVD and Blu-ray this week that we’re looking forward to seeing. Also, there’s some classic, and not-so-classic, movies hitting Blu-ray for the first time this week as well.

Of all the new releases, we’re particularly interested in the Blu-ray versions of movies like Silverado, Dead Calm and The Quick and the Dead as well as Fringe Season One also on the Blu-ray.

Check them out.

Movies

Bedknobs and Broomsticks ~ Angela Lansbury, Roddy McDowall (DVD)

Catwoman ~ Halle Berry (Blu-ray)

Crank 2: High Voltage ~ Jason Statham, Amy Smart, David Carradine (DVD and Blu-ray)

Creepshow ~ Hal Holbrook, Leslie Nielsen (Blu-ray)

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It’s funny, even though the major (and minor) Hollywood studios seem to be cranking out as many comic book movie adaptations as they can, most of them don’t really end up being much of anything to write home about. And some others, such as Daredevil, Batman & Robin, Ghost Rider and Catwoman really suck.

In fact, last year I did two articles for ComicMix about the what I considered, up to that point, the Best and Worst comic book to film adaptations. Since then, we’ve had several more movie based on comics. But for the most part, I think my picks still stand as they are. In a similar vein is Zac Bertschy new article over at Topless Robot. In the article, Bertschy outlines what he feels are the five things comic book movies need to stop doing.

I don’t want to take anything away from the article by talking about it too much here. However, here’s some highlights that I particularly like. First, according to Bertschy, Hollywood needs to stop trying to cram so many villains into each movie. Second, he feels comic book movies need to stop wasting awesome side characters like they do, for example, in the X-Men movies.

Finally, he feels strongly that Hollywood should stop making feature-length origin stories because most people either already know where Batman comes from or don’t care — they just want to see him in action. Its a great article and covers a lot of ground.

I agree with almost everyting he says in it as well. Although, I did enjoy X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Batman Begins and Iron Man, all of which are origin stories. I guess Hollywood can get it right sometimes.