Friday, August 15, 2014

What’s All This Then? #3: Rapid Fire Marvel & DC Comics News

What’s All This Then? #3: Rapid Fire
By: Andrew O’Brien

Hey! A lot has happened in the past month or so. I’d love to dedicate an entire article to each and every one of those things, but that would take far too long, so I’m going to go about this a little differently. This will be a lightning round of sorts where I can tell you the bare basics of a few things in the comics media-sphere that have interested me that I think you should also take note of. Sound good? Doesn't matter, that’s what I’m doing, so hold on to your butts. Here we go.

(SPOILER warning: I will be spoiling things. Mostly things involving talking raccoons and turtles, but if you don’t care keep reading.)
 
  1. Fantastic Four No More- A little while ago a rumor found its way onto the Internet saying that Marvel was going to cancel the Fantastic Four comic indefinitely due to Fox holding tight onto the movie rights. Although they did cancel the Ultimate version of the FF (because of horrendous sales though not silly movie rights squabbles) the current James Robinson Fantastic Four is still being solicited through October, and Marvel denies the validity of this rumor. Personally, I don’t think Marvel would be that childish, but keep an eye on those solicitations.
  1. The Multiversity comes out in a week- Yes, you read correct. Grant Morrison’s The Multiversity, an in depth story detailing the many Earths of the DCU, is finally coming out. The 9 issue miniseries will feature different versions of beloved DC characters like President Superman, Damian Wayne: Celebrity Batman and Abin Sur as Green Lantern. This project was announced years ago and with the New 52 and all the craziness that came with it many people thought this would never happen. I’ve had my doubts, but now that it’s almost here, I’m very excited. It’s gonna be a bit of a confusing story that’ll probably read better in trade, but I promise you it’ll be one hell of a ride.
  1. Guardians Of The Galaxy- If you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple weeks then I guess you didn’t hear, but Marvel’s cosmic band of misfits had this little movie that made $94 million in its first weekend. This was the second best opening weekend for a comic book movie falling just short of Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($95 mil), but it did beat out both X-Men and Spider-Man which is incredible. I loved the film and have seen it 3 times and counting. It’s one of the best films of the year and quite possibly the best in the MCU. The characters were all damn near perfect. The story had a great mix of action, comedy, and drama. The special effects were some of the best I’ve seen in a while (most of all Rocket and Groot). But there is one glaring negative that I keep thinking of…

  1. Howard the F@#$ing Duck- Nowadays it’s no secret that you have to wait until the very end of each Marvel Studios film to get a special glimpse further into its ever-expanding universe. In Phase 1 we got Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury talking about the Avengers, Agent Coulson finding Thor’s Hammer and even a teaser for The Avengers. Well... in Phase 2 it seems the theme is to troll the audience and give them a more comedic end cap to the movie. Guardians followed that same pattern with an end scene starring none other than Howard the Duck. Don’t worry though, James Gunn has already said that it was just for the lolz and there are no known plans to expand Howard’s role. The entire end scene made me disappointed more than anything. We could’ve had anything from Adam Warlock to where Nebula went, or even just a teaser for Avengers: Age of Ultron. Instead, all we got was Howard the F@#$ing Duck.
  2.  WB finally believes in DC (I hope)- A little before San Diego Comic-Con this year, a schedule got leaked online of the supposed Warner Bros push for a DC Cinematic Universe. It included Justice League, a Wonder Woman solo film, and even a Green Lantern/Flash team-up, so I was expecting some big things from Warner Bros’ press conference. When the time came I had my phone already on the right website and I took my break when the presser was scheduled to start. I was ready, and you know what they showed? They showed 30 seconds of Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, and a picture of Wonder Woman, then they moved on to things that weren’t DC Comics related. As you can probably guess, I was disheartened, but I wasn’t surprised since the next movie is still two years out. It wasn’t until a few weeks later where Warner Bros threw me for a loop when they announced nine unspecified DC related movie release dates and the movement of Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice (God , that’s a long title) to March 23rd, 2016. Even as I write this I am in a bit of shock that WB is finally ready to give Marvel a run for their money. Now I just pray that they don’t try to dark everything up to make it more “realistic”, but instead take some notes from Marvel, and try to make their brand entertaining for everyone not just nerds and people who can only like things that are “serious”. I do not want a gritty, grim Shazam. Not now. Not ever.
  1. Bay Turtles- While we’re on the subject of dark re-tellings, Michael Bay’s infamous Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie came out, and it sucked, but not for the reasons you may think. Well... unless you thought it was the CGI because that was pretty horrendous, but that’s not all. Overall, it was just stupid. The story was the same as the Amazing Spider-Man’s with the special blood, and the villain’s plan to use a cell tower to spread a poisonous gas all over the city. Sure, they weren’t alien ninja turtles and William Fichtner wasn’t the Shredder, but there were much stupider elements to the movie than those early fake leaks. Among these idiotic things are: the main character was Megan Fox’s April O’Neil, Leonardo had around 8 lines of dialogue, and Splinter decided to teach the Turtles Kung-Fu because a book fell into the sewers and he thought it was a good idea. The movie was dumb, but it made money (Thanks a lot kids and nerds.) so I can’t really do anything except complain.
  1. Correction About Earth 2: World’s End- In my last article I said that third DC weekly series starting in October is going to be helmed by Tom Taylor, and praised it because of him. Unfortunately I’ve learned since that Taylor will not be on that book because he’s found better work elsewhere, which seriously hurts World's End in my eyes. (On a side note, Futures End is pretty damn good, so my opinions from last article have definitely changed.) Fortunately, that better work is for Marvel and it’s the Superior Iron Man, a new ongoing series spinning out of Avengers and X-Men: AXIS about Tony Stark moving to San Francisco and turning Extremis into an app. He also might be evil or “less than good”, but so far Marvel has only leaked a stream of details on their next event. This book is also part of Avengers NOW!, their next publishing push, which will see some of their biggest characters changed forever. (Or at least until May when the next movie comes out) Speaking of those changes…

  1. That Thunder God has lady parts!- Everyone and their mother asked me what I thought about this when it happened, so it’s not breaking news or anything, but sometime very soon (It might have actually happened this week, but my comic stack is huge) Thor is going to become unworthy and lose Mjolnir. An unspecified woman is going to pick it up and gain all of the powers of Thor, and in the meantime, the actual Thor will be wielding his lesser known, but still badass axe Jarnbjorn. After hearing this; the world went nuts, and if you’re still insane about it, then just listen to me. Calm down. It’s all going to be OK. Jason Aaron is still writing the book, and if you haven’t been reading Thor: God Of Thunder then stop what you’re doing and go read it right now. It’s amazing. I’m sure this new lady Thor will be just as good. (Oh and Steve Rogers doesn’t have the super soldier serum and Falcon is taking up the mantle of Captain America for him. My opinion on this is the same as Lady Thor except replace Jason Aaron’s name with Rick Remender.)
  1. Disney’s Marvel’s Star Wars Comics-Yes, yes, the inevitable is finally happening. Marvel is putting out Star Wars books again. Let me give you a quick description of each one. Jason Aaron and John Cassaday’s Star Wars is a new ongoing that takes place right after Episode IV and tells the story of what the Rebellion does after their home on Yavin 4 is discovered by the Empire. Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larocca’s Darth Vader tells the story of how the Sith Lord regains his honor after the destruction of the Death Star. And finally Mark Waid and Terry Dodson’s Princess Leia is a limited series showing Leia do cool stuff for the Rebellion proving she can really kick some butt. Does something sound familiar about all three of these titles? I you’ve been reading Brain Wood’s Star Wars for Dark Horse then it should because the plots of Marvel’s three different books are literally the same plot of that one book. Because of this it seems like an obvious cash grab. For shame, Marvel... for shame. (Will I at least try these new books? Probably, but I’m part of the problem.)
That pretty much does it for me. We got through a lot of stuff, and I hope you had a lot of fun like I did. I am definitely going to put more of an effort into getting more news up quicker. I’m thinking of some different things to do like possibly a weekly look at comics I’m excited to read and why you should be too, or more stuff like this. I’d also like to do more reviews again sometime. The Fade Out by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips comes out next week ...perhaps I’ll review that. 
Either way see ya again soon!

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