New X-Force, Because Why Not?
I thought about complaining how team comics never last long enough for their membership to really gel, to really come together as a solid cast of characters with relationships and friendships and drama. But then I realized that my favorite comic, X-Factor, has done just that over the past 5+ years. So moot point.
The real point is that there’s going to be a new X-Force in Marvel NOW! Marvel is ditching the Wolverine-led black ops team angle and going with Cable and friends on the run as some kind of fugitives. And now we know Colossus comes out OK from Avengers vs. X-Men.
Which one is Keyser Soze?
So we’ve got Cable, Domino, Colossus, Forge and Doctor Nemesis…who is looking a little worse for wear. What the hell have they done to Nemesis? They do know he’s supposed to be this 100+-year-old scientist/curmudgeon, right? Now he looks like an anime character. Still, it’s nice to see Forge back in action, and I like the orange/silver/gray look they’e got going on.
The premise sounds cool too: they’re going to be wanted fugitives for a reason we don’t yet know, on the run from more prominent heroes. That could be a pretty cool storyline. It’s also going to be drawn by Salvador Larocca, a favorite artist of mine.
But then we come to the big problem: It’s going to be written by Dennis Hopeless. He gave an interview about the series here.
Now I have never read anything that Hopeless has done. I don’t know what kind of writer he is, or how good his comics might be. But I do know that he is also the writer behind Avengers Arena, the comic that’s going to be about killing fan favorite characters as wantonly and as indiscriminately as possible. And any writer who brags about how his comic is going to feature deaths already gets a black mark in my book.
But we’ll see. I think I might check out this new Cable and X-Force series.
Abandon All Reason and Bear Witness to the Justice League of Animals
It’s good to know that insanity still exists in the world of cartoons.
That was just…there are so few words. A toilet joke? Aquaman as a baboon? Lex Luthor as a liger? That is just brilliant. And I know a certain someone who is going to love Wonder Wombat.
This isn’t going to be a full series, but instead just another bunch of cartoon shorts aired alongside the DC Nation cartoon block. Like those Super Best Friends Forever cartoons that were so good. I definitely like where DC’s head is at with all these cartoon shorts.
Joker as a fish? You guys crack me up
Marvel Plays Musical Chairs with New Thunderbolts
What’s in a name?
If you’re putting together a new superhero team, do you come up with a brand new, original name? Or do you just give them the name of an already existing team in the hopes that it will increase sales? Even though the new team has absolutely nothing to do with the old team?
That’s what Marvel seems to be doing with the new Thunderbolts in Marvel NOW!
Let’s base a superhero team around the colors red and black!
You’ve got Red Hulk, Deadpool, Elekta, Venom and the Punisher (for some reason) on a team together, and are going to call themselves the Thunderbolts. I don’t know about you, but it looks to me like Marvel just threw a bunch of violent character names into a hat and picked out a couple at random. This thing is almost destined to fail, and not just because they’re stealing a name. Potentially, these characters as solo heroes sell pretty well. But they have no business being on a team together. The Punisher is definitely not a team player. Deadpool makes no sense on a team like this. And Elektra is a hired assassin, not a superhero. I’m starting to think that the black/red color scheme is the sole reason why these people are together. And where’s Ghost Rider? Was his name not picked?
Orange is kind of like red
Don’t get me wrong, the concept of this team could have potential. If you didn’t know, the Red Hulk is actually General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross…so I guess that’s why they’re going to use that name…He’s that old army guy who is always chasing the Incredible Hulk, and was in both Hulk movies. A few years ago, they turned him into a Hulk himself, and he’s been a superhero ever since, even an Avenger. Well I kind of like the idea that Red Hulk breaks away from the Avengers to put together his own superhero team to do things his way, especially if they lean heavily on the fact that he’s a retired general, with a lot of military experience.
Punisher is a former Marine and Venom is an Army veteran, so that works. But still, this does not seem like a team that Ross would put together, no matter what writer Daniel Way said in this interview. It just screams of Marvel’s marketing department.
I’ve never particularly enjoyed Way’s comics. I read some of his Wolverine back in the day, and his Deadpool, but I eventually just stopped liking what he was doing with Deadpool and dropped the book. Way was also the longtime writer of Wolverine: Origins, one of the most universally disliked comics of all time. That was the series that tried to insist that Wolverine’s entire life was all part of some vast conspiracy orchestrated by a guy named Romulus, who was basically just ‘uber-Wolverine’. You will likely never find a character more hated than Romulus, yet Marvel keeps trying to make him work for some ridiculous reason. He’s almost as hated as Red Hulk was when he first debuted.
Joining Way on art will be his Wolverine: Origins collaborator Steve Dillon, another creator whose work I just don’t like. Dillon has this stiff artistic style, where all of his characters look like they have this long, wooden face. I just don’t like it.
I just don’t like his art, so sue me
So two creators that I don’t like and who can’t sell comics based on their names alone; that’s two strikes against this series. The third? Stealing the name Thunderbolts. The comic world is not kind when Marvel tries to misuse the Thunderbolts name.
Debuting in the 90s, the Thunderbolts were a new superhero team where the concept was that they were secretly super-villains posing as superheroes. It was fairly popular…until Marvel decided to just completely revamp the series and make it about an underground super-villain fight club. Marvel completely threw out the old idea and brought in new characters and concepts for this fight club nonsense. Everybody hated it.
Worst. Revamp. Ever.
The title was mercifully cancelled after less than 10 issues.
A few years later, Marvel brought back the classic Thunderbolts, and again the series thrived. It’s been an ongoing publication ever since, using the concept of villains posing as heroes. They’ve had a few roster changes over the years, while keeping a core group of the same characters at its heart.
But then most recently, Marvel decided to change the title from ‘Thunderbolts’ to ‘Dark Avengers’, because as we saw yesterday, Marvel will slap the brand name ‘Avengers’ on anything if it’ll possibly sell more comics. So the team that has been known as the Thunderbolts is now known as the Dark Avengers…which, in theory, frees up the name Thunderbolts. And now we see that Marvel is just going to take that name and slap it on a new comic that has absolutely nothing to do with the classic Thunderbolts team and concept.
Because that worked so well when they tried it with the fight club. At least that black/red thing looks pretty cool on the cover.
Full Lincoln Trailer My Collapse Under the Weight of Its Own Prestige
I know Lincoln is going to be a prestigious movie, but hot damn that trailer seems to think it’s going to be the most prestigious movie ever made! I’m starting to wonder if Lincoln is going to drown in its prestige.
It was an alright trailer. Nothing special, nothing too amazing about it. The trailer didn’t give me goosebumps or get me very excited for the movie. Hopefully it’ll be a good flick.
Marvel Again Betting on the Idea That We Want to See Beloved Characters Killed
Have you been a fan of any of the teen superhero comics at Marvel over the past few years?
Well good news! Some of your favorite characters are going to be brutally murdered!
Behold the upcoming Marvel NOW! series Avengers Arena, which apparently exists solely to pit young teen characters into a Hunger Games-like battle royale, where writer Dennis Hopeless actually seems to brag in this interview that characters are going to be killed.
Everybody come read about the killings!
Amongst those on the killing floor are the casts of Avengers Academy and Runaways, with random appearances by Darkhawk, X-23 and Cammie from Annihilation. The story is that the villain Arcade takes 16 kids to Murder World and then sets them about killing each other. The comic will be drawn by Kev Walker.
…
Fuck this comic.
Seriously, fuck you, Marvel Comics, you blood-thirsty, mindless drones of corporate marketing. I didn’t read The Hunger Games, but I’m pretty sure from watching the movie that one of the underlying themes was that having children kill each other as entertainment WAS A BAD THING! If you’re going to just steal the concept, isn’t it the height of irony to then completely miss the point!?
Who reads this vomit? What kind of budding sociopath reads a comic where the major draw is that fan favorite characters are going to be brutally killed?
Whoever they are, they should just go back to strangling cats and ripping the wings off flies.
