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The Top 6 Marvel Armored Bug Characters
A couple weeks ago, I spotlighted the new Marvel villain Murder Hornet because I think that’s a great name to pull out of the horrors of 2020 and turn into a comic book character. I was also tickled pink by Murder Hornet because Marvel has a long history of turning bugs into armored characters. There’s a ton of bug characters — perhaps you’ve heard of Spider-Man? — but Marvel also specifically creates bug-themed armored characters. It’s wild!
Murder Hornet is going to appear in the new Heroes Reborn Big Event coming later this spring. I don’t yet know how much of Heroes Reborn I’m going to read, but I am fairly confident I’m going to get a good look at Murder Hornet and her series, Squadron Savage. And I’m going to keep my fingers crossed that she shows up in the regular Marvel Universe when this is all over. As this List of Six will attest, she’ll be joining a fine pantheon of bug-themed armored characters.
Join me after the jump for the best armored bug people at Marvel Comics!
Read the rest of this entryThe New Mortal Kombat Move is Just Going For It!
At long last, the first trailer for the new live action Mortal Kombat movie has arrived. And jeez louise, people, this movie is just going for it! They’re not being the least bit subtle. Just live action Mortal Kombat in all its glory!
I’m sharing the trailer here on my blog, but it’s a red band, so you may need to just click the link through to YouTube to watch. It’s definitely worth the trouble!
I don’t even know where to begin with this trailer! We saw a bunch of posters for characters yesterday, but clearly the movie is going to be chockful of Mortal Kombat characters. We saw Goro, we saw Reptile, and I think we saw my boy Smoke at one point! And that’s not mentioning all the main characters, like Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Liu Kang, Jax and a billion others! Again, this movie is just going for it!
Digital effects simply weren’t up to snuff back when the first movie came out. Perhaps now we’re ready!
Mortal Kombat comes to theaters and/or HBO Max on April 16!
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How About a Blood-Soaked Mortal Kombat Cartoon?
Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge comes out next month and they’ve decided to entice us with a blood-soaked new trailer! Let the cartoon blood flow!
This movie looks interesting…to an extent. It’s weird how the first half of the trailer is all about a cool Scorpion origin story…and then the second half switches over to Liu Kang and company. It’s like the movie wants us to think it’s all Scorpion all the time…but it’s probably just another retelling of the same old Liu Kang story again.
Which is doubly weird, because aren’t we supposed to get a new live action Mortal Kombat movie soon? And won’t that movie probably also focus on Liu Kang’s story in the first tournament? Why do MK producers keep going back to that story? Surely we’re all bored of it by now?
If you had to choose between Scorpion and Liu Kang, I think 99% of us would choose Scorpion.
Or better yet, Sub-Zero! Like this write-up I did last year on my idea for a Mortal Kombat movie! It’s time we leave Liu Kang, Sonya Blade and that third guy in the dust! Focus on the actually interesting characters! You’re already most of the way there with Scorpion’s Revenge!
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They’re Going All In With an Animated Mortal Kombat Movie, Apparently
I just heard of this movie and I think it’s rather silly. The people behind Mortal Kombat are coming out with a new straight-to-DVD animated film called Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge. I think the idea is pretty cool, but the execution looks tame.
From that trailer, it looks like they’re just going to do the first Mortal Kombat tournament all over again. How many times do we need this event portrayed? Why does everybody think that’s the most interesting story in Mortal Kombat lore? Hell, the title of the film is about Scorpion, and he seems to be a major player in the movie…why not just do that?
Do the people behind Mortal Kombat really think we care about Liu Kang, Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade? When you’ve got a cool story like that of Scorpion vs. Sub-Zero, why would anybody want Liu Kang to show up?
Last year, I did my own write-up on a plot for a Mortal Kombat movie, one that focused on the second Sub-Zero. He’s a far more interesting character with a far more interesting story than any of the regular Earth realmers. Just putting it out there!
Scorpion’s Revenge comes out this spring.
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In a Little More Than 2 Years, Nearly Every Single One of My Favorite Comic Book Characters Has Been Killed
As a longtime comic book reader, I have my personal list of favorite characters. Everybody has one, right? Those characters that you love to read about and see pop up in new comics. For a lot of people, their favorite characters are big name superheroes, like Spider-Man or Batman. For me, I tend to prefer the smaller supporting characters. That’s just what happens when you read a lot of comics and are exposed to a lot of characters.
As such, when I started this blog back in 2011, one of my earliest Lists of Six was my top six favorite comic book characters of all-time. With the exception of one name, that list has remained pretty firm over the past eight years.
In the past two years and a couple months, nearly every character on that list has been killed. Several characters in my Honorable Mentions addendum have been killed. And a couple other characters I love have either been killed or nearly killed within this time frame.
I don’t…I don’t know what’s going on.
I don’t presume to think this is some sort of targeted attack on yours truly. I think this is just the unfortunate cost of loving minor comic book characters, the sorts of characters that can be chewed up and spit out as any given writer sees fit.
But damn, this has been pretty hard on the soul.
And I guess I just felt like listing them off, as if that would help me somehow. Let’s start with my favorite characters list:
Multiple Man was killed in Death of X #1 in October 2016.
He’s still dead. Multiple Man has returned to comics, replaced by one of his duplicates. And his character has been re-written as a feckless coward. So that’s some good salt in the wound.
The Mimic was killed in Extermination #5 in December 2018.
This one was really disappointing. He made a surprise appearance in Extermination after being out of comics for a few years. I knew from the moment he appeared that he probably wouldn’t survive the series, and I had to wait several months for those fears to be confirmed.
Phil Urich was killed in Amazing Spider-Man #797 in March 2018.
Phil was my favorite superhero as a kid, and the first comic I actively started collecting on my own, issue-by-issue. I endured years of him being transformed into an unrepentant villain before they finally put him out of his misery.
Tim Drake was killed in Detective Comics #940 in September 2016.
Thankfully, his death was a fake out. He survived and returned to service shortly thereafter. He’s even gone back to being just “Robin” instead of the far more ridiculous “Red Robin”. So there’s at least one happy ending in this list.
That’s it for my list of favorites. I listed “Robin” on that list as more of the concept of the character. Damian Wayne, the current Robin, is still alive…but if I’m being honest, he hasn’t really been ‘Robin’ in a long time. The concept of ‘Batman and Robin’ as a team is pretty dead. So does that count? Not to mention that Damian was killed in early 2013. So for a short while there, Robin was dead.
The Spot is also still alive, but he’s the one character I would probably take off my list of favorites. I’ve always been a big fan of the Spot, and will always be a big fan of the Spot, but there are characters I like better. Which is probably why he’s still alive.
How about some of those Honorable Mentions at the bottom of the page?
Mach X was killed in Thunderbolts #12 in April 2017.
Technically speaking, we didn’t see a body, and that’s usually a good sign they might come back. But we haven’t seen Abner Jenkins since then, so he’s as good as dead.
The Scorpion was maybe killed in Venom Annual #1 in October 2018.
I’m not too sure about this one. It does appear that Venom kills the Scorpion, but then Scorpion has been showing up in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man recently. I may have to check and see if there’s an explanation.
Strong Guy was killed in Uncanny X-Men #12 in February 2019.
This is the most recent, and inspired this list. Strong Guy is Multiple Man’s best friend, and one of my favorite duos in comics. And now they’re both dead, and neither one particularly cares about the other these days. So just bleakness all around.
Avalanche was killed in Uncanny Avengers #1 in October 2012.
That happened a year after I started my blog and he’s still dead. The recent X-Men Gold comic introduced a new Avalanche, but I didn’t read it, and I’m pretty sure the character didn’t stick around. The X-Men have since ignored the new Pyro also, and he joined the X-Men towards the end of that comic. So that’s not looking good.
That’s the major list. Eight of my favorite comic book characters have been killed since I started this blog, most of them within the past two years or so. And only one of them has been properly ‘resurrected’ in that time. It’s just a little soul-crushing.
That’s not counting the time Stingray was nearly killed in a recent Avengers comic. Or the speculation that Simon Baz, my favorite Green Lantern, is probably going to be killed in Heroes in Crisis.
I don’t have any larger point to make. And I’m largely just whining. But c’mon. There’s only so much my soul can take. Is it really so wrong to have favorite comic book characters? Is there somebody specifically targeting me?
When will it stop?
All I really know is that Beta Ray Bill had better be very careful now that he’s a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy. There’s almost no way he’s going to survive that comic.
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Henchman-4-Hire 