Category Archives: Marvel
The Avengers…the video game?
Turns out some company called THQ Brisbane was working on an Avengers video game before they got shut down. The website Kotaku got their hands on some actual gameplay footage, showing a first-person shooter style of game, only you get to play as Avengers characters. The videos are pretty wild, with the Hulk and Iron Man and Thor so far shown. You fly and smash and throw the hammer, and it looks kind of cool. I can’t imagine it being very good, since comic book video games aren’t very good. But wow, imagine what we could have had.
Both the Thor and Captain America movies had video game adaptations. Alyssa said the Cap game was alright, but nothing special. I don’t imagine Thor was anything special either. Movie tie-in games just aren’t anything special anymore. Not since Spider-Man 2.
Still, check out these videos!
And then a second one.
What do you think? Does it look like a fun game? Would it have been cool to play as superheroes in the first person?
Spider-Man on Project Rooftop!
If you’ve never been to the website Project: Rooftop, it’s an artist site that features amateur drawings of alternate costumes of famous superheroes. It’s one of my favorite sites to visit. The pictures are all great and very creative, and it’s all for fun! They occasionally have contests where dozens of artists submit their variations on specific superheroes.
The first half of their Spider-Man contest was posted today!
Here are some of my favorites:
Reminds me of Ben Reilly, and that's always a good thing
Love the color scheme
Review: Punisher #3
What should have been a vicious fight between the Punisher and lame-o villain Vulture is instead a murky, hard-to-follow shadowfest that I guess ends the only way it could. Sadly, that the entire issue is turned over to this fight scene is a shame because it’s a real dip in quality from what we’ve been reading so far, both in terms of art and storytelling. As I said in my last review, the new Vulture is just a stupid, uninteresting character and nowhere near the Punisher’s weight class.
Punisher #3
But I suppose this issue takes care of that problem – Punisher kills the Vulture!
I sort of predicted that in my last review. If you’re going to throw the Punisher up against real Marvel Universe villains, he’s going to want to kill them. So of course Marvel and writer Greg Rucka threw him a completely disposable nobody to dispatch. Introduced as a Spider-Man villain, the Vulture is so lame he ends up getting jobbed down to the Punisher. Take that, loser! Maybe be more interesting next time.
So yeah, this issue can be summed up in three words: Punisher vs. Vulture. The other ongoing storylines are only given the tiniest of pushes, though not much happens in any of them. We see detectives Bolt and Clemons, but they don’t do much of anything. The Bride has a few scenes that are clearly leading to something bigger, but we’re definitely not there yet.
There are two truly sucky issues with the fight scene: the art is too dark and murky to really follow, and neither of the two combatants say anything. For the third issue in a row, writer Rucka keeps the Punisher silent (except for the final page). He’s just a quiet killing machine. The Vulture, meanwhile, speaks in incomprehensible squawks. So the fight is basically just the Punisher silently stabbing the Vulture while the Vulture makes random squawks about who knows what.
Stabby McStabberson likes to stab
That’s practically the entire fight right there in that picture. The Vulture can fly, so right at the very beginning he picks up the Punisher in his talons from the warehouse and carries him off. The redhead villainous tells her men not to shoot the Vulture, and then they disappear for the rest of the issue. So the fight between the Punisher and the Vulture is in the air, but there’s nothing truly exciting about the fight. Basically it all takes place as an extended grapple, with Punisher getting the upper hand as he clings to the Vulture high above the streets of New York. Presumably he takes his knife and starts stabbing, but as I said, the art is just too dark and murky to really make anything out. It’s just ugly-looking stab followed by the Vulture spewing yellowish spit from his mandibles as he gets stabbed some more.
It’s not an interesting fight. For all the menace that the Vulture was supposed to inspire, he goes down fairly easily. Sure there’s some red thrown into the pictures to indicate blood, but it mostly looks like the Punisher got cut by accident. There’s no fight. There’s just stabbing until the Vulture goes down.
Or DOWWWWWWWNNNNNNN!! If you'd prefer
The issue ends with the Punisher stabbing Vulture through the head – up through the underside of his jaw, no less. But that means the Punisher is falling from their aerial fight! He lands in a dumpster and seems to get through it OK, though he’s all bloody and beat up. Still, he survives the fall without too much of a hassle. Then he utters the only words he’s said in three issues.
“You…help me.”
Who’s he talking to? Why it’s Norah Winters, the reporter who appeared last issue! She was alerted to the aerial fight and then followed Punisher in a cab, eventually making it to his crash site. We’re led to believe that maybe Bolt and Clemons are going to get there first, but nope, it’s Norah. She straight up asks how he was able to survive the fall, so perhaps there’s more to his fall than we realize. Rucka and artist Marco Checchetto also try to get cinematic with the fall. The panels of Punisher falling into the dumpster are intercut with panels of all the other characters. So we’re flashing from one scene to another. If this were a movie, there’d be some cool dramatic music playing. You can sort of see it playing in your head.
Anyway, as for the other characters in the book, detectives Bolt and Clemons are one step behind the Punisher and the bad guys. They arrive at the warehouse, but they’re too late because the Punisher and Vulture are gone. They find Liam’s body with his head blown off. Bolt thinks the Punisher did it, but Clemons disagrees and has already deduced that someone who can fly has already left the scene. Norah Winters takes Clemons’ advice and goes to the salon to get her blonde hair cut short. But she leaves in the middle of it, with her hair only half cut, because of the fight going on. Her appearance at the end seems to indicate a Punisher/Norah team-up for issue #4.
Sounds like a hoot.
The Bride is told by the doctors that she’ll have a long rehab process, but at the end of the issue she defiantly gets out of bed and tries to walk. That’s the part that’s intercut with the Punisher falling. The Bride gets a few steps before collapsing to her knees.
It may be a small bit of storytelling, but I think it’s clear that the Bride is supposed to be similar to the Punisher. Her family was gunned down as well, and now it’s just her and her military training. She’s clearly going to tough it through her rehab and get back on her feet, seeking vengeance. Previous Punisher writer Garth Ennis wrote a similar story, about a mob princess who lost everything and decided to become like the Punisher. In the end, neither she nor the police detective investigating that story had what it took to truly sink to Frank Castle’s dark, depressing level. I suppose we’ll see what happens with the Bride.
Perhaps the Punisher will get a sidekick?
Madrox Lives!
The day we’ve all been waiting for has arrived: the full X-Factor teaser has been released and Multiple Man lives! My fears of Jamie Madrox dying were for naught. Behold, faithful readers, of the awesomeness that is X-Factor!
He may be tucked way down off to the side, but at least he's there!
Madrox dying would have really put a crimp in my comic book reading habits. For all you non geeks, I figure it would be like if your favorite sports star was no longer playing the sport. Or if your favorite TV character left the show. The final season of Scrubs just wasn’t as good without JD. Of course I watched it, but it felt less than itself. That’s what a Madrox-less X-Factor would have been like.
And it’s not just Madrox, but Longshot and Polaris as well, which was one of my guesses from the last post. So that’s very exciting. Granted, there are now 11 characters on the team. That means less panel-time for everybody. But I’d like to think that writer Peter David knows what he’s doing. The man rejuvenated Multiple Man, after all! I’ve got to have faith!
For anyone interested, here are the full X-franchise teaser images for all their titles. None of the character reveals have made me want to pick up a book that I wasn’t already planning to pick up. Though now I’m even more excited to be getting Wolverine and the X-Men since Iceman and Toad are on the team. My brother Cippy is getting Cyclops and the Uncanny X-Men.
First is Wolverine and the ‘Gold Team’.
Click to enlarge
Second is Cyclops and the ‘Blue Team’.
Click to enlarge
The only sadness in all of this is that my other favorite X-Character, The Mimic, is not on any team. Oh well. Back to comic book oblivion for him.
Madrox Update – A Possible Stay of Execution?
Remember last week when Marvel Comics was teasing the possible death of my favorite comic book character, Jamie Madrox the Multiple Man? Well this week the teaser swings back in the other direction, indicating that Madrox may not be dying after all. He may still be around come the new X-Franchise revamp this winter. Clearly Marvel knows a thing or two about marketing. As a comic book geek, I’m on the edge of my seat.
Behold! The X-Factor teaser cover now has 3 distinct hidden characters!
Click to englarge
Could one of those three silhouettes be Multiple Man? Focus on the silhouette on the left. He’d got Madrox’s style of hair, and he’s clearly got some sort of collar, just like Madrox’s signature trench coat. This greatly increases the odds from last week, when Marvel had yet to reveal Strong Guy and that area was just one big blob of black. Back then, in the long long ago, I surmised that maybe there were two characters hidden in Strong Guy’s shadow. Now that there are 3, that gets my hopes up! Behold last week!
See the difference?
As I wrote last time, Marvel is making a big push for the X-Franchise in 2012, everything from Uncanny X-Men to New Mutants to my personal favorite, X-Factor. The teams are going to get new lineups with a bunch of new drama to deal with. Marvel is teasing this big push by releasing the covers for the upcoming issues, only with all the characters blacked out as silhouettes. Then week-by-week, they’re unveiling which characters are hidden in which silhouettes and will be on which team.
I read comics based primarily on the characters. So this teaser strategy is perfect in determining which X-books I’m going to be reading.
Hopefully next week (or the week after) we may find out once and for all if Madrox is making the cut.
That’s the extent of the news, but if you’re interested in comic book stuff, I think I’m going to break this down a little bit more. So we’ve got three characters, one of which has short hair, one of which has a bit longer hair to the ears and one of which has either big hair or is wearing some kind of a hood. I think this means we have two guys and a girl, or a hood.
Let’s break it down:
Who are we missing? Out of the current X-Factor team, the three missing characters are Madrox, Longshot and Darwin (though he’s on sabbatical). They do not yet appear on this cover. Both Madrox and Longshot have similar hair, and could be either one of those two short-haired male characters. Darwin could be wearing a hood. So perhaps nobody dies in November and the team stays exactly the same with the addition of Havok, that blonde guy in the middle with the blue glowy powers.
Remember the 90s? Back in the mid-90s, there was an X-Factor series very similar to the current series. Both were written by Peter David, both were about a mutant team spun-off from the X-Men and both featured the same characters. In fact, Multiple Man and Strong Guy both became popular in the mid-90s X-Factor. Havok was on that team as well, along with Wolfsbane and a few others.
The 90s were X-Treme!
So with Peter David still writing, and Havok joining the team, we’re clearly looking at some kind of 90s reunion sort of series. Comic book fans love references to old stuff, and the 90s X-Factor was incredibly popular. Heck, love for that series is what gave birth to the current X-Factor after all. So Marvel is definitely banking on that. Which means, why kill Multiple Man? Keep him around for the 90s reunion!
Which leads me to believe that the ‘hooded’ figure is actually 90s member Polaris! She’s the chick up there with the green hair. Polaris and Havok have been out having an adventure in space for the past few years. They’re a couple. So it only stands to reason that Polaris would join Havok in X-Factor, as well as add to the 90s reunion.
So I think Polaris is that hooded or big-haired character.
And I’m going to go out on a limb and say Longshot in the character in the middle, with the hair that goes down to his ears.
Or we might just have some random new character add some new blood to the team!
They could all be Madrox! Remember, Multiple Man’s super-power is that he can make duplicates of himself. Walking, talking, thinking duplicates of himself. And the catalyst for Peter David’s recent revival of Multiple Man was that he sent a bunch of duplicates out into the world to learn different things. Then when the main Madrox reabsorbs them, he gains all that knowledge. Perhaps the main Madrox will still die…but then a bunch of duplicates from around the world will return and join the team. That would account for the different hairstyles and the possible hood.
We shall see! I’ll stay on this story all month if I have to!
Henchman-4-Hire