Although Doctor Strange won’t make his way to theaters until November 2016, Marvel has finally unveiled what its magic man will look like. In an exclusive spread in Entertainment Weekly, Benedict Cumberbatch’s take on the Sorcerer Supreme looks pretty much exactly like his comics counterpart. This is both surprising and heartening. Adhering to the source material …
Captain America is about to turn 75 and Marvel will celebrate in a big way. The entertainment giant recently announced that ABC will air Captain America: 75 Heroic Years on Tuesday, January 19 at 8 p.m. to commemorate Cap’s Hitler-punching debut from Jack Kirby and Joe Simon. The special befits the character’s iconic status and prominence in …
The release of the first season of Jessica Jones on Netflix has been met with acclaim from numerous sources, raising the excitement level of fans in the process in the remaining series that will be released as part of the Netflix-Marvel partnership, focusing on Luke Cage and Iron Fist respectively. With the former already well …
With comic book adaptations on almost every channel and streaming service, fans will meet many new characters with extensive backstories. We’re here to introduce these characters to help lessen the learning curve. He’s big, he’s blue, and he’s here to shepherd mutantkind to its place as the dominant species. Apocalypse will no longer be confined …
2015 saw a lot of comic book variant covers. While variants are nothing new to the world of comic books, the amount of variants seems to be skyrocketing. DC Comics could crash the market with Dark Knight III, releasing over 50 versions of the first issue alone. If the demand for variant covers continues to …
The relationship between Jessica (Krysten Ritter) and Kilgrave (David Tennant) is at the heart of Jessica Jones’ first season. Her fear of, and desire to get revenge on, Kilgrave make for compelling character motivations, propelling Jessica through her various crises without ever suggesting that he is the only noteworthy aspect of her life.
Is there more to say about gritty, troubled superheroes? Yes, according to Jessica Jones, the latest Netflix entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Marvel used to be wary of the legacy game. Sure, the odd villain or minor hero would pass a mantle on here or there, but it’s never been a consistent move. The publisher was always more content to give characters new titles rather than give them established ones, unless it made narrative sense to do so like …
The X-Men’s future appears murky, but the franchise’s history could save its future.
The recent revelation that Inhuman Terrigen mist is lethal to mutants, reeks of an editorial mandate and adds further fuel to the fire regarding Marvel’s recent distaste for the X-Men franchise. This act of segregation, due to the fact that the world is now (literally) deadly to mutants not only is a blatant attempt to sequester the franchise and put it into an isolated corner of the Marvel Universe, but it also spits in the face of everything the franchise is supposed to stand for. Very few comic books have ever managed to reflect our culture, or make such poignant social commentary as the X-Men franchise has. After all, the ethos of the franchise is that of change and acceptance. For decades, mutants were used as a sort of universal metaphor for anyone or any group of people who were abused, discriminated against, or persecuted by society. With this recent wave of social justice movements sweeping through our society at such a torrid pace, it’s clear that the X-Men are just as relevant and necessary as they’ve ever been. But instead of continuing the fight for justice and equality, Marvel would rather have the X-Men cut their losses and throw in the towel. It just goes to show that art doesn’t always imitate real life…even when it should.
After frantically sprinting from the press to the general admission line and waiting in the queue hall for hours with the help of my Jewel (Jessica Jones’ old superhero identity) cosplaying friend Julia, I had the privilege of attending the Marvel Netflix panel about Daredevil Season 2 and Jessica Jones Season 1, which is set to premiere on November 20. The panel looked back at the first season of Daredevil while showing the first footage of the upcoming second season, and the lucky fans in the audience also had the chance to watch the first episode of Jessica Jones after a discussion with the cast and showrunner Melissa Rosenberg (Dexter).
Looks like Marvel can pat themselves on the back now. They put a female hero in the title of something! After being a moderate success in Marvel terms this summer, it looks like Ant-Man will be returning in his own solo movie, which the studio announced on Thursday. The film will be called Ant-Man and …
Talk about a left field choice. According to The Wrap, Marvel has tapped Flight of the Conchords and What We Do In The Shadows director Taika Waititi for Thor: Ragnarok, which is set for a 2017 release. The film will bring back Chris Hemsworth with Natalie Portman and Tom Hiddleston uncertain. The Wrap reports Waititi …
Set in a future where big business uses superpowered boxing matches to settle board room shenanigans, plotter and penciller Wilson, scripter John Byrne and inker Armando Gil are stumbling from the very beginning. Wilson, who had been a Marvel mainstay on Marvel Two-In-One and its successor The Thing, is trying to create something “gritty” and “real” in that late 1970’s/early 1980’s cinematic way. There’s threads of Super Boxers that can be traced to movies to the same narrative origins as Rocky, Blade Runner and The Terminator. A lowly street boxer named Max is used by the powerful elite to fight their battles and win their wars. It’s the age old story of class war set in a Ridley Scott/George Orwellian future.
For the first half of ‘Fantastic Four’ you’re wondering, “When is this movie going to start?” For the second half you’re wondering, “When is this movie going to end?!?” It’s not an awful movie, it’s just unrelentingly bland.
E Is For Extinction #2, without any real revelatory character work or struggles, ends up being one giant fight comic. Villalobos and colorist Ian Herring choreograph a brutal fight, no matter whether the fight is verbal or physical. The pettiness of both the good and bad guys makes this comic just a fight about egos which seems exciting but ends up being a bit empty because for all of the bluster, it’s not really fighting for anything other than being just another tie-in to an event that has a massive amount of tie-ins.
It’s hard to stomach that Mark Waid’s Daredevil, which has been hitting stands every month for around four years, is about to end, but it is indeed going to be that time very soon. There’s a feeling of culmination in this penultimate issue, bringing back plot threads from not just the start of the “Marvel Now!” relaunch in 2014, but even before that from the first major part of Waid’s run. The result is solid modernistic superhero storytelling with high stakes, tough battles, and a constant questioning of the hero’s philosophy and capability. It’s a great read, page-for-page.
2012: a British man, playing an online slot machine for 30p on his laptop, is suddenly greeted by the sight of Christian Bale’s Batman and Heath Ledger’s Joker taking over his screen. Not crude 8-bit interpretations, but full HD actual animation from the Chris Nolan blockbuster – complete with voiceovers. The player is urged to …
While DC Comics attempts to play catch-up with their “Divergence” marketing campaign, highlighting new and more diverse status-quo switch-ups along with some #1 issues, Marvel Comics continues to kick ass with more awesome comic books. After Secret Wars, an epic event comic from Jonathan Hickman that changes up the continuity by mashing together the Ultimate and …
With traditional pinball falling more and more toward the wayside over the last decade, along with the arcades which once housed these fabled tables of fate, Zen Pinball and its sequel have managed to carve a clever little niche in the digital market for nostalgia hounds who grew up blasting off that little silver ball with each lucky quarter.
It takes 45 wobbly minutes for director Peyton Reed’s film to find its rhythm, but it closes with some ingenious action set pieces that leave you feeling satisfied. ‘Ant-Man’ is a quirky little orphan that will probably need some time and distance from its cinematic brethren to be fully appreciated.
For any Star Wars fan, it’s a familiar sight: a boy named Skywalker staring off into the distance under Tatooine’s twin suns. His past is a series of choices that were out of his hands to make and his future is as yet unwritten. He’s a kid from a backwater planet who will one day hold the destiny of a galaxy in his hands. You probably know the picture or recognize the description but in Darth Vader #7, Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca turn the image upside down. Instead of an idealistic and young Luke Skywalker looking towards the future, Gillen and Larroca show us Vader in that very similar pose on the Lars desert homestead, where Tatooine is a past that he cannot escape.
The next Spider-Man….is British again. Marvel announced on Tuesday that they would be finding someone across the pond to play Peter Parker in their upcoming reboot of Spider-Man and they have named The Impossible and Wolf Hall star Tom Holland for the part. Holland beat out a range of actors who tested for the role …