Marvel Comics

Posted On Today at 11:32:30 pm EDT by richardb [Reply] [Quote] [New]

Octo-Spidey looks to get the Chameleon out of SHIELD custody, but he’s not the only one interested in the Chameleon.   Avenging Spider-man #20 Writer: Christopher Yost Artist: Marco Checchetto Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg Letters: VC’s Joe Caramagna Cover Art: Paolo Riveria   Spoilers to follow after the break:   The Plot: In Russia a KGB looking gentleman frets over SHIELD’s recent capture of the Chameleon and what secrets Chameleon may reveal to them and so orders a hit on him.   In NYC we meet the new Nick Fury, who now looks exactly like Samuel L Jackson in the Avengers movie. Indeed as this story proceeds we’ll see SHIELD is now in full on copy the movie mode: Phil Coulson is a character in it, Hawkeye and Black Widow are SHIELD agents, Bruce Banner is on the Hellicarrier science lab, and even the acronym has been changed to match the movie version. Anyway Fury comes across Octo-Spidey, who has just captured some AIM agents and turns them over to Fury knowing this will get him aboard the Hellicarrier.   On the Hellicarrier Octo-Spidey makes chit-chat with Hawkeye & Widow while sending little spider robots into the Hellicarrier so he can monitor everything in it. We finally see Chameleon, whom is being unsuccessfully interrogated by a SHIELD psychiatrist. And then a cloaked Russian fighter jet arrives outside the Hellicarrier waiting for the moment to attack and “kill them all.”   Back onboard we see Octo-Spidey use his robots to cut the power to set up a ruse where he able to check the cellblock. Things take an unexpected turn when the Russians beam onboard led two by superhumans: one who has a rot touch and one of whom has a lightsaber. Ock runs out on the fight to find Chameleon but instead finds Chameleon used the opportunity of the power failure to murder the doctor and guard and escape his cell, which Ock feels responsible for. He doesn’t have time to feel guilty for long as the two super-spies arrive at the cell block. He fights them briefly while trying to figure out how to catch up to Chameleon when suddenly Hulk shows up.   Critical Thoughts: Overall this is a good issue. While I wouldn’t put Chameleon in the upper echelon of Spidey foes, I think the character works best when used in espionage style stories like this one. The Russian villains, while not an instant classic or anything, are adequate enough in their role of secondary antagonists in a story that is packed with characters.   Ock’s voice again rings true this issue. I like how we see his opinions of Hawkeye and Widow—he dismisses the former as a moron, but respects Widow’s assassination skills. (I don’t agree with those opinions as Hawkeye is actually my second favorite Avengers, but I can accept Ock would see him that way.) There’s also a small but fun moment where Ock thinks to himself, “It feels like I should tell a joke here” showing Ock still has to work at impersonating Spidey. Playing into the “superior” concept you also get the idea that part of Ock’s plan on the Hellicarrier is to prove he can outsmart SHIELD by spying on the master spies with his robots. I mean yes, his ultimate goal is to get Chameleon and not ego, but I get the impression between the lines of the story that Ock chose this particular way of getting to him just to prove he could do it.    This story is also an interesting change of pace for Octo-Spidey as this is one of the few villainous things Ock has done since becoming Spidey. This isn’t him going overboard or being more ruthless than Peter in stopping a crime. He is actively committing a crime himself in trying to break Chameleon out of prison. And while he is probably doing this for his ongoing Sinister Six collection subplot, instead of actually setting him free: he is still acting on selfish motives against the law.   I think we also have the potential for some interesting character interactions next issue. The doctor scene reiterates that Chameleon is a master of impersonation. Will that enable him to recognize

Angel's decision to accompany Beast and Iceman in Defenders #125 turned the non-team into a partial revival of the original X-Men. And that's exactly what Angel wanted. Before joining the New Defenders, Angel tried renewing his involvement with the mutant team. Yet beginning with X-Men #137, the high-flying Angel was uncharacteristically careless and klutzy when working alongside the "new" X-Men who largely replaced the original team in #94. Though initially depicted as out of practice, that wasn't the full story. Rather, any beginner's mistakes on Angel's part resulted from his feeling ill-at-ease among the reconfigured team. A disapproving attitude toward Wolverine, and shock that that X-Men would tolerate anyone with homicidal tendencies within their ranks, led Angel to again fly the coup in #148. Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngers no longer felt like home.The above image comes from from X-Men #148.

Author: LartovioSpider-ManEnglish, Rated: THurt/Comfort/FamilyPeter P./Spider-Man & May P.Chapters: 18, Words: 31,538, Reviews: 126, In-Progress-"For a while, he allowed himself to believe he was normal. He tried to forget all about Spider-Man..."- My take on what happens between the night with the lizard and the end of the movie. Chapter eighteen is up!

BuysOk, after a couple weeks of frugal existence, I got loads of stuff this week, mostly DVDs. There's the UK version of House of Cards, Three Days of Hamlet, Disciples of Shaolin, Pina, Tai Chi Zero, Doctor Who's The Visitation Special Edition, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Detachment (see below for these last two), the complete K9 series from Australia, and Warehouse 13 Season 3. Books too: I'm well into A Feast for Crows, the fourth volume of The Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones to some of you), so I got vol. 5, A Dance with Dragons. Annnnnnd Cubicle 7's print version of the First Doctor Sourcebook arrived in the mail. It's awwwwesommmme!"Accomplishments"DVDs: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is Shane Black's directorial debut, and after Iron Man 3, I was curious to see his first pairing with Robert Downey Jr. The result is a film noir comedy that gets amusingly meta about the genre's narration, and pleasantly surprises with its character choices. The Hollywood setting made the idea of characters knowing they're in a film justifiable, and the story came off as something that might take place in the Elmore Leonard universe. Val Kilmer's Gay Perry steals the show, and is probably the most memorable character Kilmer has played since Doc Holliday in Tombstone. And I've loved Michelle Monaghan since I saw her in Source Code, and would definitely like to see her in more films (not romcoms, please). I did find the casual nudity on the exploitative side, but I've otherwise got no complaints. The DVD includes an amusing commentary track with Black, Downey Jr. and Kilmer, and a gag reel.Detachment tells the story of a long-term substitute teacher who spends a month in a school with more than its fair share of problem kids. But this isn't Dangerous Minds. The kids won't be saved by discovering dance or something. No, this is the opposite picture. There's a bleakness to Detachment that's rather poignant, and you'll only find hope in small, fleeting, even ambiguous moments. Though sometimes openly "art house", most of the film is in a "cinema vérité" style that's only broken by the fact we can pretty much recognize the school's entire staff - Andrien Brody (amazing performance), Christina Hendricks, James Caan, Lucy Liu, etc. - not that I'd get rid of any of them. The kids aren't just unknowns, they're somehow unknowable. Detachment is told from the teachers' perspective, and addresses the educational system's many problems. I have a number of friends who are high school teachers, and though Detachment seemingly presents an extreme, these problems have come up in conversation. No easy answers in this, and I'm not even sure I agree with its representation of the modern classroom, but I think what it does best is open these questions up for debate. I recommend this film to any teacher OR parent without any reserve. I think it should be part of the conversation many of our countries should have about education. The DVD has no extras, so the film must stand alone and its questions remain open.Though I'd seen the pilot and the Eureka crossover episodes, I finally sat down to watch the whole of Warehouse 13 this week. I don't know why I waited so long. After all, the year before it premiered, I was running a GURPS campaign with almost exactly the same set-up (though the Warehouse number was 23), and Joanne Kelly was someone I was tapped into since she appeared in the superlative Slings & Arrows. Perhaps the premise reminded me too much of the old Friday the 13th TV series, and I feared the show would quickly become formulaic, with its artifact of the week, and all that. I shouldn't have worried. Like its cousin Eureka, the writers change things up a lot, introduce a recurring villain, delve into the characters' back stories, and lay in several mysteries over the course of Season 1's 12 episodes. And like Eureka, they thread the line between comedy, drama, and genre quite effectively. I'm sorry if I have Eureka on my mind, by the way, but W13 sort of asked for

Posted On Today at 12:42:03 pm EDT by Blargh [Reply] [Quote] [New] Quote: BEN REILLY? I was looking at the upcoming Solicitations for August (I believe.), and it looks like in the Scarlet Spider books, they're going to bring back: BEN REILLY! Why Marvel, why? Are they really that low on ideas? Yeah, I know, Ben Reilly has a fanbase, but still, the Clone Saga almost ruined the Spidey franchise. Why open that can of worms again? To appease a few people? Ben Reilly is seriously better off staying dead. They killed him for a reason. Why are they doing it? Probably because Yost has constructed a wonderful story with the Scarlet Spider title. A story is only as good as its writer. Some of my favorite comic book issues have a fairly mundane premise such as "day-in-the-life", but they read so well (Jason Aaron did this really well in one of his runs on Wolverine). Similarly, other plots that sound amazing and astounding and action packed fall completely flat, like the SPIDER-MAN IN JAIL!!!! plot during the middle of the Brand New Day era. Quote:Plus, his death actually CAN be as pivotal to Peter and impact him on a level akin to Captain Stacy, Gwen, etc. If other writers acknowledge it. Okay, they do. A lot. No, not as often as Gwen. But it has been acknowledged several times. Quote:Can't ANYONE in comics stay dead anymore? Because if the story is good enough, writers shouldn't be restricted by dumb "rules" for stories. Without Bucky coming back from the dead, we would never have had Brubaker's wonderful runs on Cap and Winter Solider.

Posted On Today at 09:24:27 am EDT by Iron Matt [Reply] [Quote] [New] Quote: BEN REILLY? I was looking at the upcoming Solicitations for August (I believe.), and it looks like in the Scarlet Spider books, they're going to bring back: BEN REILLY! Why Marvel, why? Are they really that low on ideas? Yeah, I know, Ben Reilly has a fanbase, but still, the Clone Saga almost ruined the Spidey franchise. Actually, I'm a card carrying member of the Ben Reilly fanbase... and I prefer that he stay dead. Okay, I would have preferred that they not kill him in the first place. But they did. And it sucked. And we moved on. So let the poor guy rest in piece. I didn't like the Clone Saga, but that had nothing to do with Ben. That had to do with the Judas Traveller nonsense, and Scrier -- whose idea was it to invent those two for a Spider-Man comics?? Disliking the Clone Saga also had to do with Stewart Trainer, and Spidercide, and the bazillion and one clones of "Maximum Clonage". Once all that was done and Ben actually took on the mantle of the Sensational Spider-Man, things got noticeable better. Marvel will have Spider-Man be single. May as well let Peter lose his powers (and responsibility) so that he can retire and go raise baby May with MJ. That would have been much better than what we eventually got with "One More Day". Worth noting: Ben Reilly been dead for about seventeen years now. That's six years less than Norman Osborn spent being dead.

"These short trips don't usually work. And the chances of reversing a short trip are even more remote. Still, here's hopping."TECHNICAL SPECS: First aired Nov.8 1980.IN THIS ONE... Romana falls under the spell of the Marshmen and lets them into the Starliner. The Doctor is angered by the near-vivisection of the baby Marshman.REVIEW: There's a long reprise that features the Top 2 most bonehead moves of the previous episode, in case you missed them, which leaves 18 minutes of new material, kids. TARDIS inconsistencies continue to build, as the Doctor makes some straw about short hops in space being very difficult, yet it's done three times over the course of the episode. I think it's far more likely that Romana is behind the TARDIS' increased accuracy since she came on board. She calculated these particular coordinates, after all. He won't have her in the crew for long though. I can't help but see this episode as foreshadowing. Possessed by a spider bite that bonds her to the Marshmen (and gives her that Cyberman veiny infection make-up from The Moonbase), she smashes up her room and lets Adric play companion. It's a passive-aggressive way to tell us she's leaving. There's even a sad passing of the torch when Adric fingers her crushed hat from Shada... which might have meant something to the audience at the time had the story actually aired. Good move, Einsteins.Otherwise, the story is getting better, in no small part because of the renewed focus on the Starliner crew. They attract the Doctor's righteous anger when they try to vivisect the hapless Marshbaby, giving Tom Baker the first strong dramatic scene he's had to play in a while. The baby's violent fit saves its life, but also drives Romana to open the gates to its brethren. The vivisectionist is generally well-meaning though amoral, but you can feel the anxiety coming off the Deciders who let him go ahead with his plans. These aren't villains, just people trying to do their best for their community. Of course, their best isn't very imaginative, and it takes the Doctor to really rattle their cages and dare expose their secrets. We don't learn the entire truth here, not yet, but the accusation of willful procrastination that has kept their society idling for generations is a fair one. They've been maintaining a ship, but haven't told the citizens they can't pilot the craft. In other hands (say Holmes or Adams), this would take a satirical bent. Even the Outlers put to work on the ship doing drone work walk around in a pack of six, which could be a condemnation of the unions. But while there's irony in the Alzarians' situation, there's no sense that it's meant to reflect 1980 Earth. I think it's because the script is by and large humorless, so our brains are never switched to that mode of understanding.REWATCHABILITY: Medium - The revelations are good ones and the Doctor's scene with the Deciders is excellent, but the story's potential for satire is wasted.

Of all the great artists that were present yesterday the one I really had something to say to was Bill Sienkiewicz. As one the 80s power house Marvel artists who's art has graced the covers of Rom as well as other Rom related books I would say Sienkiewicz had the most unique style of all of them. As a kid I certainly didn't fully appreciate his slightly impressionistic style of comic book art.But as I got older I started to see it in a different light and develop a new appreciation for it. I would dare say his style would serve well as a course study in modern art and perhaps even earn some respect from the snobbish art crowd that usually regard comic book art beneath their notice. It was really nice to be able to share that epiphany I've had in recent years about his work and he was quite humble in his appreciation of what I had to say. Bill Sienkiewicz, an all around stand up guy.And what con would be complete with out some cosplay maidens? And there was even more cool stuff there but that part of it I uploaded to Youtube for your viewing pleasure http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFlxl0ij-qE&feature=youtu.be