Category Archives: Marvel
Review: Punisher #1
A new Punisher series hit the stands this week by fantastic crime-writer Greg Rucka, and it’s an awesome comic that’s light on actual Punisher, but great on atmosphere and future potential. The art is realistic and moody, the story is rich with wickedness and the Punisher comes off as the boogeyman – which is exactly the Punisher I want.
Punisher #1
Though nothing will ever compare to the glorious 11-volume Punisher masterpiece by Garth Ennis.
Still, let’s get to the new issue. We open with a military wedding (or the reception afterwards), with a happy couple and a beautiful bride. Then some violent men with guns interrupt the party, and those men have brought death and destruction with them. The wedding erupts in gunfire, shattered glass and chaos, and soon a lot of people are dead, including the groom. The bride is just hanging on, but only by a thread. The police arrive soon after to investigate.
And it’s here that we’re introduced to probably the true protagonists of this tale: NYPD detectives Walter Bolt and Oscar Clemons. The former is the young, white rookie detective, while the latter is the aged, wise black detective who just happens to look a lot like Morgan Freeman. This is an interesting tactic for the comic, to not focus on the Punisher. Frank Castle is by no means a shy guy. Plenty of comics in the past have had the Punisher at the forefront with internal monologue and everything. Perhaps we’ll still get that as the series continues, but for now we start with Bolt and Clemons. There is no internal monologue, just dialogue.
Clemons and Bolt
The two detectives do some cursory work at the crime scene and trade a little dialogue, establishing that Clemons may be getting too old for this sort of carnage, and that Bolt may still be more than a little wet behind the ears. We learn more than enough to get a handle of the two, so they will make suitable entry characters into the world of the Punisher. Because unlike other bright and colorful superheroes, Frank Castle, the Punisher, lives in the dark, grimy streets of New York City. He’s only a man (with a lot of guns), and he deals with bodies, cops, hard-boiled detectives and violent criminals. And that’s how the Punisher should be. I don’t want the Punisher fighting Doctor Doom or super-villains. He’s first and foremost a street-level vigilante, and that’s how I enjoy him.
A little background in case you’re not familiar with the Punisher. Frank Castle was a soldier in Vietnam who saw first hand the horrors of war, while receiving more than a little military and special ops training. When he returned stateside to his wife and two kids, he was looking forward to an idyllic family life – but that was not to be. While out on a picnic one day, his family was gunned down in a shootout between two rival mobs. Castle and his family had nothing to do with the mobsters, they were just collateral damage in the shootout. But Frank survived. From then on, he has used all of his military training and connections to wage a one-man-war on crime. He’s not out for revenge against those specific mobsters, he’s out to punish any and all criminals who break the law.
He’s the ghost story that mobsters tell their children.
Like this...He's almost spectral, but still human
Moving on, Det. Clemons is ready to interview some of the survivors, but Bolt gets a suspicious text message about a drop spot. We cut to a subway terminal, where a nervous Bolt is sitting on a bench next to an envelope. We catch a glimpse of a suspiciously shadowed man in a black trenchcoat passing through the crowd, and then we get a brief glimpse of an underground bunker armed to the teeth. That envelope contained crime scene photos of the wedding. Looks like Bolt is passing information on to the Punisher.
The next scene is at a bar, where violent men who invaded the wedding are kicking back with a celebratory drink. They’re having fun in the crowded bar. Then the lights go out. Then people start dying. The men pull out their own guns, but they dare not shoot because they’ll only hit each other. They group up, but it doesn’t help. More blood. More bodies. Like a wraith, the Punisher moves through the crowd taking them out one-by-one until only the leader is left. And that’s when we get our first real look at the Punisher in this comic.
Bad. Ass.
Punisher goes to shoot the leader in the head, but he’s out of bullets. So the Punisher lets him live and walks off. Ideally he has something else in mind for this guy.
And that’s it. That’s where the story ends. It’s tragically short. We do get a back-up feature told in the style of a police interrogation/interview. It’s a flashback to how Bolt met the Punisher back when he was a vice cop making drug busts. He and his undercover partner were at the scene of a drug deal, in some sort of courtyard. There were also kids around. Something at the bust goes belly up and it becomes obvious that the bullets are about to fly. Bolt, still young, is scared out of his mind. His partner is in the middle of it, as are the kids. What’s he going to do?
Bolt doesn’t have to decide. A gloved hand grabs his mouth while the other hand pulls the fire alarm to get the kids out. Then the bullets do start flying, and the Punisher steps out. He pushes Bolt back and draws his weapon, returning fire. The Punisher obliterates these drug dealers, killing them with military-like precision. Bolt’s partner dies, but all the bad guys are dead and the kids are safe. Back at the station, Bolt gets all the credit. It’s hard to tell if he’s willingly taking it, or if everyone just believes it did it all himself because the Punisher didn’t stick around to talk to the cops. Whatever happened, Bolt makes detective and is now in the pocket of the Punisher.
It’s a nice little back story setting up Bolt and the Punisher. Plus it’s much more of an action scene than the massacre in the bar. So we actually get to see the Punisher shooting and doing a damn good job of it. The Punisher is absolutely badass in this entire comic, and that’s important. A lot of superheroes seem to require a softer side, like Spider-Man. Part of the appeal of Spidey is that he’s a regular guy with foibles and problems that he has to balance alongside his superhero life. Not Frank Castle. The Punisher is at his absolute best when he doesn’t have any reservations, doesn’t have any doubt in himself or his mission. He his cold and hard and determined 100% of the way.
When Punisher isn’t the nitty, gritty hard-boiled vigilante, it can get kind of silly.
His classic costume is ludicrous. Even without the white booties.
So consider me sold on this new series. It’s got the perfect amounts of street-level violence and epic Punisher badassery, with a couple of cool detective characters to serve as foils. Greg Rucka is a fantastic author. I know him best from the DC series Gotham Central, which was about the Gotham City Police Department trying to do their jobs in a city where the criminals are homicidal clowns and Batman is expected to solve everything. That series is brilliant, and is a fine indicator that Rucka can handle the same level of characters in the Punisher. The art is by Marco Checchetto, who I’ve never heard of before. But it’s nicely realistic while also haunting. It should be a nice fit.
And one of these days I’ll tell you about the Garth Ennis run on the Punisher. It’s one of the most brilliant and amazing comic book sagas ever written, and I have all 11 volumes on my bookshelf. Here’s a taste of the Punisher’s dialogue and his badassness.
Click to enlarge
It’s the Agent Coulson Show!
This little clip is apparently going to be on the Thor DVD as an extra. It’s SHIELD Agent Coulson having a brief chat with another agent about how they should approach General Ross about the Hulk. If you recall, in one of the final scenes of The Incredible Hulk, Ross is visited by a SHIELD representative about recruiting the Hulk for the Avengers. So the two agents discuss who they should send.
It’s a quaint little video that I thought I’d pass along. It’s also a hint at larger roles for Agent Coulson in the future!
I can’t seem to get the video to embed, so I’ll just like you to ComicBookMovie.com to watch. Enjoy!
There’s a New Spider-Man…and He Might Be Kinda Cool, Maybe
The new face behind the Ultimate Spidey mask has been revealed: Miles Morales, a half-black, half-Hispanic superhero. He’ll be taking over for Peter Parker, who was killed by the Green Goblin and the Sinister Six in the recent ‘Death of Spider-Man’ story arc. I’m willing to give Miles a chance, even though I think this entire ‘Death of Spider-Man’ idea is just stupid and should never have been done. Killing Peter Parker at this point in his Ultimate Spider-Man career reeks of a marketing stunt. Especially since the reveal that Peter would die, how he died and the identity of Miles were all spoiled in news stories in USA Today before the actual comics comes out on Wednesday.
But I suppose there is potential in injecting some new blood into the Spider-Man legacy and seeing what can be done.
Miles Morales, our new Ultimate Spider-Man
First of all, let me explain that this isn’t the ‘real’ Spider-Man. The character that debuted in the 1960s is still going strong in Amazing Spider-Man as part of the normal Marvel Universe. We’re talking about the Ultimate Marvel Universe. Back in 2000, Marvel decided to create a new line of books told with a contemporary style. They retold the origins of all their popular characters, putting them in a more modern world and focusing on character. Most of these early books were amazing, especially Ultimate Spider-Man and the Ultimates (new name for the Avengers).
The Ultimate Marvel Universe focused on characters first, superheroes second. The likes of Peter Parker, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers and more were treated as real people dealing with the realistic problems that come with being a superhero. Peter Parker has to juggle high school along with getting a job and a girlfriend. They were fun, adventurous stories with a strong heart. Readers cared just as much about Peter’s social life, if not more, than they did about Spider-Man fighting super-villains.
One of my all-time favorite Ultimate Spidey scenes involves Peter and his friends sitting around a campfire, when one of them suddenly discovers that she is a mutant and she freaks out and runs away. Some of the friends know that Peter is Spidey, and some don’t, and those that know want to protect his secret identity. But one of those who doesn’t know (or at least they think he doesn’t know) just stands up and says something like, ‘boy, wouldn’t it be great if there was a superhero around who could go comfort our mutant friend, wink wink’. It’s a really powerful and fun moment for all involved, and shows depths and care in crafting these characters.
Credit series creator and author for 160 issues Brian Michael Bendis. He writes very fun dialogue.
The new Spider-Man costume
Most recently, Ultimate Spider-Man has been a good a read as ever under Bendis’ pen. Peter’s social life was still the primary focus, and things were looking up since most New Yorkers supported him as a hero. Even notorious skinflint newspaperman J. Jonah Jameson had come around to support Spidey after finding out he was really Peter Parker, and having his life saved by Peter. There was even a fun subplot in which the Human Torch and Iceman, two other teenage heroes, had moved into Aunt May’s home because they had nowhere else to go. Peter had pals to hang out with!
There was even this cute new girl at school who just happened to be one of Spidey’s super-villains – but Peter was going to be nice to her at school. I really wanted to see where that story would go!
But then the people at Marvel decided that Peter Parker had to die.
When the Human Torch (of the normal Marvel Universe) was killed in a storyline earlier this year, that too was covered in USA Today and Marvel got a big bump in comic sales. I don’t have the direct quote, but some marketing guy at Marvel afterwards said they were going to kill a character every quarter because it clearly led to more publicity and sales. Such a statement is insanely stupid. But here we are and Ultimate Peter Parker is dead, and it got covered in USA Today.
Somewhere on the web, Marvel Editor Tom Brevoort explained the following:
Everybody takes a blow to the gut at some point where a story they thought was going left suddenly is going right because someone had a better take on it. But those turns don’t happen against the will of the creators involved. If Brian was absolutely dead set on not killing Ultimate Spider-Man, it wouldn’t have happened, or he wouldn’t have written it. If we were convinced that Ultimate Spider-Man must die and he didn’t want to do it, it would have been Jeph Loeb or Jonathan Hickman or Nick Spencer. But the fact that Brian wrote it should tell you that he got on board with the idea. He came to embrace it. The first moment it came up I’m sure it sent a chill down his spine, but it’s a story. He’s a storyteller sitting there, thinking about it, tossing the ideas around and seeing if it works. And he found a way it worked for him.
Basically, it wasn’t Bendis’ idea to kill Peter Parker, and if Bendis didn’t want to kill him, they’d find somebody else to write it. That’s sort of a punch to the gut for a long-standing creator. Marketing trumps creativity!
So yeah, I think killing Peter Parker was a dumb move. His stories were still very fun to read, he had a lot going on in his life and there were no signs that his end was near when the Secret Six suddenly comes around to kill him.
But this doesn’t mean I won’t give Miles Morales a try. First of all, it will still be written by Bendis. That guy is great. One thing I’ve read about this new Spider-Man is that they’re going to keep a lot of the main themes, especially ‘With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility’, they’re just going to try it out in someone else’s world. I think I can get behind that idea. Peter Parker has almost always been Spider-Man, and his supporting cast has always been the same: Aunt May, Mary Jane, Jameson, etc. The world of Spider-Man is a comfortable and familiar world.
Where is the harm in visiting another world? It sounds like they’ll be keeping a lot of the same themes of Spider-Man, but put them in a different environment with new characters and challenges. What does Miles Morales’ family think of him becoming the new Spider-Man? How did he make his costume? How did he get his powers? What does he do with them? How will Jameson and the Daily Bugle react?
I think it could be a very fun series. I’m just upset that it had to happen over Peter Parker’s dead body.
Avengers Assemble!
I couldn’t be more excited for The Avengers movie next year. The Avengers is the most exciting movie project that’s come along in a very, very long time. This is an actual movie experiment. Something that, as far as I know, has never or at least rarely ever been done before. Instead of just being a sequel, The Avengers will combine the characters and plots of four other movie franchises into one gloriously epic adventure! Superheroes having been teaming up since the world of comics began, and now we’ll finally see it happen in the movies! I can’t remember the last time I was this excited about seeing a movie, about the potential that a movie has.
Sure, I’ve looked forward to movies (like Little Miss Sunshine or Scott Pilgrim vs. The World), and there have been some pretty great trailers. But The Avengers is in a league of its own. It will be the crowning achievement of superhero movies, the climax of the past 10 years of awesome films.
I really, really hope it lives up to the hype. I have a lot of faith that it will.
Avengers Assemble!
Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, the Incredible Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye and Nick Fury. We couldn’t have asked for a better team line-up (though I will, later in this post). This team is cinematic gold, and the story of how we got here is just so fascinating. Nobody knew Iron Man would do as well as it did. Iron Man is still my favorite of all the movies in this line, though I’ve enjoyed them all. Everybody knew that the Spider-Man movies would be awesome, that Batman would succeed; but once the movie makers started experimenting with relatively unknown characters, untested properties, we just had to hope. And it paid off again and again and again.
First and foremost, The Avengers is in good hands. The movie is written and directed by Joss Whedon, the god of all geeks.
And Whedon said, "Let there be vampires."
Joss Whedon is the guy who invented Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and helmed her 7-seasons long television series. He’s also the brilliant mind behind Angel, Dollhouse, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and possibly the greatest science fiction show on television: Firefly. If you haven’t seen Firefly, I’ll wait here while you go out and rent it or download it and watch the entire series. It’s amazing. I was literally angry and sad after watching the full series on DVD because I knew there would never be any other episodes. It was mishandled by FOX and is championed by the Internet as the greatest show to have ever been killed before its time. And Joss Whedon is the mastermind behind it.
He also wrote and directed the Firefly movie, Serenity. So clearly he’s got the chops to make a Hollywood movie and make it awesome.
Whedon also wrote a particularly amazing run on Astonishing X-Men. Both that series and his handling of Firefly are prime indicators that this man knows how to write a great group dynamic. Buffy the Vampire Slayer did so well because of the Scooby Gang, of Buffy and her friends just joking around and being fun while all the craziness went on around them. That will be key to a successful Avengers movie. In fact, that is the most important thing Avengers has to get right to be a success: the team dynamic.
Moreso than beating up the bad guys, The Avengers has to be about the heroes and how they interact with one another. Whedon understands this and Whedon will do a great job with this.
Chris Hemsworth as Thor; Chris Evans as Captain America; Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man; Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye; Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk and Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow
So let’s talk about the cast and the team for a moment. Obviously we’ve got the big three: Captain America, Iron Man and Thor. That is the key difference between the main superteam in Marvel and DC comics: the lineup. The Justice League over at DC is composed of all the big, popular characters: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, etc. The Avengers, however, were never made up of Marvel’s top characters. Spider-Man and especially the X-Men, the biggest sellers and most popular, were never a part of the Avengers. Sure you had Cap, Iron Man and Thor, but they were mostly seen as Avengers first and solo heroes second. The Avengers had their own little corner of the Marvel Universe alongside Spidey and the X-Men.
That not only ensured that Spider-Man and the X-Men got their movies first (being the most popular), but it also meant that I was never much into the Avengers as a comic book. I read Spider-Man and X-Men growing up. I’m still not very big into the Avengers as a comic. I simply never cared much for the characters enough to follow their books.
But then, of course, we’ve got this movie magic. Once the Spider-Man and X-Men movies made hundreds of millions of dollars, Marvel decided to clamp down and take control of their own characters. They launched Marvel Studios and made Iron Man, which was an out-of-the-park hit! The brain trust at Marvel then decided to keep going, and someone had the brilliant idea to make solo movies of the Avengers characters and bring them together into the big film next year. And sure enough, Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America were well-made, quality movies. They weren’t the runaway hits that Iron Man was, but they have definitely been successful films, especially the two this year. Marvel Studios is taking care of their movie properties, their heroes. There’s no reason to believe they won’t take good care of The Avengers.
It’s just a shame they couldn’t get Edward Norton back to reprise his role as Bruce Banner. There were some disagreements behind the scenes between Norton and Marvel. It’s key that they kept the same actors, essentially preserving the characters from those earlier movies, so that they are definitely linked. If they’d simply recast all the Avengers, it just wouldn’t be the same, it wouldn’t have the same magic. Which is why I’m so sad that they couldn’t get Norton. I was looking forward to scenes between Norton’s Banner and Downey’s Stark.
Instead we get Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner, the Hulk
The Hulk/Banner is the character I am most looking forward to in The Avengers. Word has it he may start out as a villain (or at least a handful that the other heroes have to deal with), but I oh so hope he is heroic by the end and part of the team. The Incredible Hulk was a good movie, and they portrayed a brilliant Bruce Banner. He’s struggling to get control of this beast within, but at the same time he knows that he can use it for good. When the Abomination is attacking New York, Bruce has the idea to ‘aim’ the Hulk at Abomination and save the day. Hopefully they will carry those ideas over into The Avengers.
Like I said before, how these characters interact with one another will be the key to this movie’s success. They were the protagonists in their own films. Everyone else in the movie reacted to them, bowed down to them. So how are they going to share the screen? It’s going to be fascinating to watch, especially when it comes to the Hulk. Bruce Banner is the other side of the heroic coin. Banner is as smart, if not smarter, than Tony Stark; but when his brush with superheroics came along he got cursed. He doesn’t get the women or the popularity. He’s a monster…but he’s a monster that’s stronger than Thor or anyone else. Hulk is the strongest one there is, after all.
I can’t wait to see how the rest of the team treats him. Will they pity him? Will Tony Stark make fun of him? Will anyone be nice to him?
Bruce Banner and his place within the Avengers was brilliantly written in The Ultimates series. I’ll be doing a blog post about them eventually.
The first picture of the team together
My only complaint about the movie is the lack of female characters. It feels a little overly feminist of me, but they couldn’t come up with any other women to put on the team than the Black Widow? She is a super spy who had a supporting role in Iron Man 2, so that makes her part of the team? Yes, the Black Widow was a member of the Avengers in the comics. But in the movieverse, she’s just a secret agent, not a super hero. Yes there were movies for Iron Man, Cap, Hulk and Thor, but they’re putting Hawkeye on the Avengers when all he had was a tiny cameo in Thor, which they only put in because of the Avengers. So clearly someone was OK with introducing brand new characters just for the Avengers.
My bet is that they’re just riffing off the Hawkeye/Black Widow team-ups in The Ultimates. Hawkeye’s costume in this movie will be his Ultimates uniform, not the comic book outfit.
So why not introduce some new female Avengers? The problem is that a lot of them are derivative of something else. The most prominent female Avenger is the Wasp. But she’s the wife of Giant-Man, Hank Pym. If they ever plan on doing the Wasp someday and want to stick with the comics, that means she has to be connected with Giant-Man. It worked wonders in the comics, especially Ultimates, but that’s probably too much baggage for the movie. Same with the second most prominent female Avenger, the Scarlet Witch. She’s the daughter of Magneto (the X-Men villain), and twin sister to Quicksilver. Again, a lot of baggage.
But who’s left? She-Hulk? Not gonna happen. Ms. Marvel? She’s just Wonder Woman-lite. Spider-Woman? Again, too connected to somebody else. Their only other options would be Tigra, who would work, or Mockingbird, who is essentially Black Widow-lite.
I guess there just aren’t many options for female Avengers. Which is a sad shame. I hope we at least get a cameo for the Wasp. Black Widow is just going to have to carry a whole gender on her shoulders!
I think she can handle it!
That leaves the villain and I have no idea what they’re going to do about it. Very little has been released about the villain. We know that Loki is going to reappear from the Thor movie, but surely he can’t be the only villain. He had his big chance in Thor, and he wasn’t so amazing in that film that fans would want to see him again so soon. Yes, Loki was the first villain in the very first Avengers comic back in the 1960s, the reason the team got together, but they can’t be so devoted to the comics that they’d tank the film with a lame villain.
But the problem is that most of the Avengers’ prominent villains are lame, in my opinion. Kang the Conqueror is a big purple guy who time travels. That is far too complicated for this film. Keep It Simple, Stupid! Ultron is an evil robot, but he was built by Giant-Man and so once again that would add more baggage than one would want for a film. Who’s left? Not many villains. Heck, none of the Avengers villains are famous enough that the public would care about them. They don’t have a Joker or a Lex Luthor.
One rumor that’s being spread around are the Skrulls, an invading alien race. They used the Skrulls in the Ultimates as the first real outside threat that the heroes had to take down, and that story was amazing! It had everyone one could want in a movie!
So in my opinion, the Skrulls should be the villain in the movie. They’d just be an invading alien force that requires all of these heroes to team-up to defeat. Everybody understands an alien invasion. It’s not complicated and it wouldn’t detract from the character interaction. People have said that superhero movies rise and fall based on their villain, but with the Avengers, that shouldn’t be the case.
This movie will rise and fall based on how well they make a movie about The Avengers.
