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Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 9/3/22
Happy Birthday to me! Not yet, of course. It won’t be until Tuesday — and I’ve got a big announcement to make! — but this is the comics review column ahead of my birthday, so why not say something? Life is fun that way. And comics were fun this week! Including the launch of a new Thunderbolts and another great issue of The Variants.
Comic Book of the Week goes to Ant-Man #2 for how much fun this anniversary series has been, really reaching back into the past and capturing the era-specific magic of guys like Eric O’Grady in his heyday.
Meanwhile, I’m deep into Total War: Warhammer 3 these days, loving the new factions and the giant map. Glad to finally be playing Immortal Empires! I’ve also gotten around to watching Paper Girls on Amazon Prime and it is a real letdown. It feels like an early 2000s Nickelodeon take on the material.
Comic Reviews: Ant-Man #2, Thunderbolts #1 and The Variants #3.
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The 6 Characters on My Comic Book Thunderbolts
What an exciting Comic Con! All the big names in pop culture had a great time in San Diego this past weekend, especially Marvel Studios. They revealed a ton of upcoming movies and finally confirmed that they’re working on a Thunderbolts picture. This makes that team the perfect choice for my annual team roster tradition.
Every Comic Con, I have a bit of creative fun by picking my ideal superhero team roster. Someday I’d like to write superhero comics for a living, and that means I might get the chance to pick my dream roster for various superhero teams. I’ve written about my dream Avengers, Justice League, Teen Titans, Fantastic Four and a host of others, including some original X-Team ideas for the Krakoa era. It’s just a fun little game where I get to live my dreams!
And this year I’m going to do my ideal comic book Thunderbolts! I already did a List of Six a month ago for my Thunderbolts roster in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But what about in the comics? Join me after the jump to see how I would remake the Thunderbolts on the page! And feel free to share your own dream Thunderbolts teams in the comments!
Read the rest of this entryMarvel Studios Bring the Awesome!
Marvel Studios returned to San Diego Comic Con for the first time in years last night, and they brought the power. They outline the ending of Phase 4 and all of Phase 5, with a hint at Phase 6 even, stretching out into 2025. It all looks pretty great to me!
Specifically, we got some great trailers. Like this first look at the next movie, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
That is a damn powerful trailer. I am perfectly fine with the idea of not casting the late Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa. It would have been very simple to just recast him and tell another story where Black Panther fights a new bad guy. But it’s a real creative challenge for everybody else to come together and come up with a great new story that pays respect to his death and legacy. I’m excited!
We also got a new trailer for She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. I’m excited for this show, and this trailer looks good.
Some of the CGI looks wonky still, and some looks better. The whole thing overall looks like a great watch. She-Hulk is a fun character, and I really want a procedural law show starring She-Hulk and a bunch of comic book stuff. Should be fun!
Those were the only trailers we got, though the people at Comic Con got some exclusive footage from a bunch of other projects. Good for them.
We got a few new projects revealed last night, all of which sound great.
Out of those, I’m definitely looking forward to what they end up doing with Thunderbolts. And new Avengers movies sound great to me! We have three whole years for them to put together a new Avengers team to star in Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars. And new Daredevil and Captain America stuff should be a hoot!
Marvel Studios had a great night at Comic-Con and I’m looking forward to all of these things! Gonna be a fun three years, as always.
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The 6 Characters on My MCU Thunderbolts
Word came down from Hollywood on high last week that Marvel was working on a Thunderbolts movie. It’s been rumored for years, and it’s too hot a property to dismiss, so I’m all in favor of this happening. There are enough characters and villains from throughout the past decade of the MCU to put a really good anti-hero/anti-villain team together.
The biggest question is: what kind of movie is this? In the comics, the Thunderbolts were a team of villains posing as heroes, who slowly came around to the idea that being a superhero was awesome. It was one of the biggest twists in comic book history. But with acting announcements and the way Hollywood works, it would be nearly impossible to pull off a similar twist. So I think an MCU Thunderbolts should be the equivalent of the Dark Avengers. Some either villainous or anti-hero characters brought together to fill the void left by the actual Avengers, perhaps by Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. And maybe they’re used for nefarious purposes, but slowly come around to the idea that they should do more good.
Join me after the jump for my roster for an MCU Thunderbolts.
Read the rest of this entryMy 6 Favorite Villains Turned Heroes
I talk a lot on here about one of my favorite tropes in fiction: the Heel-to-Face Turn. Or, to drop the wrestling parlance, when a bad guy becomes a good guy. I just dig it for some reason. I like the idea that these villains, albeit bad people who do bad things, are still reasonable people who are capable of more than just playing their villainous role. When the chips are down, or when doing the right thing is on the line, these baddies turn out to be alright folk.
The granddaddy of them all!
For counter example, I don’t particularly like the Joker. I know he’s probably the most popular super-villain in all of comics, and people adore this guy, but I just don’t really like him. I don’t like his straight crazy villainy. There’s little complexity to the character. He’s just crazy and he does crazy things; clever crazy things, sure, but still just crazy things. Count me out.
Give me a morally complex figure who can recognize the error of their ways or recognize the need to do the right thing in a given situation. Join me after the jump for my favorite Heel-to-Face Turns in all of fiction!
Henchman-4-Hire 