Where Do We Go From Here?

Hey gang.  Its Wednesday, April 8, 2012, and this is The Side.  The Missus's trip to Kansas has gotten extended a bit.  I'm pretty much exhausted, so I'm not terribly clever today.  Being sick doesn't help either.  Right now I'm functioning on vitamins, pills, and caffeine.

MOVIES!!!

THE AVENGERS knocked it right out of the park.  Pretty much the only people who didn't like this movie are snobby twit critics who take their jobs way to seriously.  It broke the box office record, and a sequel has already been green lit.  This is going to follow sequels for Thor, Ironman, and Captain America.  There's a lot of expectations going around, so I'm going to share mine.


As far as over all, I like how they've handled things.  Going into the next sequel cycle, I'd like some build up to a show down with the big bad they showed during the first extra scene in the credits.  The Infinity Gauntlet was shown during Thor, so maybe play with that a bit.

As for the Thor movie, I think an obvious choice in villains is The Enchantress along with the Executioner.  I'm not too stoked with piling on villains for movie sequels, but these two go really well together.  The Enchantress can be a fun foil to the Natalie Portman played Jane, and make for an interesting pseudo-love triangle bit.  Meanwhile you've got The Executioner there for the big time throwdowns that are a must for these flicks.  And if during a big battle a certain glove gets lost and the six certain gems get scattered, I'm seeing no problem with that.


The Ironman movie is a bit trickier.  Marvel isn't wanting to use Chinese characters as major villains in these movies for fear of a possible backlash and maybe accusations of racism.  This sucks because a lot of fans are wanting to see the Mandarin, especially with everything they hinted at in the first movie.  This also rules out The Radioactive Man.  My next thought would be The Titanium Man, but using him right after the Whiplash/Crimson Dynamo gestalt seems too soon.  Back-to-back Russian armor wearers might not go over very well.  This is where we hit tricky ground because we're ruling out a lot of top flight opponents.  I'm thinking its about the right spot to put in M.O.D.O.K. and introduce AIM.  Probably won't have the goofy yellow jumpsuits, and the M.O.D.O.K. design will need a bit of tweaking, but I think that would make for a fun ride.  Might also be a good place for a missing gem or two to be recovered.

The Captain America movie has no shortage of bad guys to pull from.  The great thing is he's got a ton of Neo-Nazi baddies, and if you can't kick the crap out of a Nazi, then there's just no point anymore.  Still, I think it would be a good idea to have the main baddie be someone more current, and not a WWII hold over.  At this point, as we saw in THE AVENGERS, Cap is still getting adjusted to the modern world.  Having a modern villain can really build conflict, not just between the two foes, but with Cap's whole situation.  I'd like to have Crossbones for this.  He's got ties to the Red Skull, and would be a good bridge character.  Taskmaster trained him, so having him in there for a bit would also be fun.


After Mark Ruffalo's brilliant performance there's been a bit of buzz about a possible Hulk movie.  I'm game for it as Ruffalo was really, really good in THE AVENGERS and the Hulk had many of the best scenes.  Since I'm picking villain's here, I'd go with The Leader.  Some of us got to chatting about this on Google Plus, so I've thought about it a bit.  I'd have Banner up north, and have him run afoul a Wendigo.  This way you get some good monster on monster violence.  Have the Leader be behind the scenes a bit looking to tap the power of the Wendigo, but he goes after the Hulk instead.  His quest for the Hulk's power turns him into the big headed green guy we all know.

There's also been a lot of call for an Ant-man movie.  I really don't know about that one.  Sure, I'd love to see The Wasp, but I don't think Ant-man as a character has enough to him to carry a movie.  Yes, I do know he was one of the founding members of the Avengers.  However, that's not quite enough to warrant getting your own major motion picture.  Thor, Cap, and Ironman are the Marvel Trinity characters.  Hulk as been immensely popular for decades.  They make sense.  Ant-man just doesn't rank up there.  Introduce him in one of the sequel flicks and work him in there.  The next Ironman film would be the best fit.


There's a lot of characters I think of when I think of The Avengers: Wonder-man, The Vision, Ms. Marvel, The Scarlet Witch, Beast, and The Black Panther.  I doubt you'll be able to had too many more characters into the sequels as it would make AVENGERS 2 an unwieldy mess.  We don't want that.  Work in Ant-Man and The Wasp, keep the cast they have.


For the sequel, everyone's looking to have the team take on Thanos.  May as well give the people what they want.  Whether or not they use the Infinity Gems as a plot device is fine with me.  My favorite Thanos stories involved the gems so I'm obviously biased here.  Either way, it should be a bunch of good summers coming up if you're a fan of what Marvel's been up to the last few years.


That said, if you're wanting to check out the movie and haven't, go to a theater, and don't be a dick downloading the thing.  The studio makes more money that they can use to continue to entertain us.  besides which, watching these flicks on the big screen is completely awesome.

MUSIC!!

Yeah, been a rough few weeks, so I'm tossing this one on out there.







Off to work.  See y'all Friday.

WAID SMASH D-BOX!!!

Its Wednesday, July 14, 2010 and I'm going to the dentist at seven in the morning here. He's the only one I know of that has performed oral surgery while armed. This is good because if things get too hairy he can just put me down.

"Good-bye, ol Nozz."

::BLAM!!::

TERRANCE HOWARD'D?!

What could the The Incredible Hulk and Kitty Pryde from the X-Men possibly have in common? Quite possibly having three different people play them on the big screen. And the song and dance continues as to whether or not Edward Norton will play Bruce Banner in the impending AVENGERS movie. The movie rep states that it wanted an actor that plays better with others, and would fit better with an ensemble cast. It was at that point that Norton and his agent said "WTF?"

I didn't see INCREDIBLE HULK, although I might rent it. I didn't see the older HULK movie with Eric Bana either. I didn't hear much good about either movie and passed on both. That said, I like Edward Norton as an actor. I read the statement from the movie company's rep and it just seems fishy. All other indications pointed towards everyone being excited about the project. Everyone involved creatively seemed to be cool with everything. But it looks like this little snafu is really about money. And if this is indeed the case it was a stupid movie on the movie rep's part to spread some BS around about creative problems. I know there's some unspoken rule about how you're not supposed to say it was because you couldn't pay what this guy wants, but don't go saying you want an actor that would work better with an ensemble when the actor you've drawn into question is Edward Norton.

So now its wait and see time. For all I know this is just a bit of drama stirring to make things more surprising and interesting if Norton appears with the other confirmed cast members at the San Diego Comic-Con.

THERE GOES MY POPCORN

I don't like 3D, but some people do. In fact some people just want to be dumped in the middle of the movie. Of that group some of them just really want to get into it to get a brief respite from things, and a small portion of that group are the type of pathetic bastards that got depression because really life wasn't as beautiful as the world in that AVATAR movie. However sometimes 3D just isn't enough. You don't want to just look like you're in the film, you want to feel like it too. Enter: the D-Box.

D-Box the precursor to X-Box twenty time removed and while it can't play Halo it can make your chair move. Soon it might make your chair move while you play Halo. Its technology that can move the chair you sit in while you're watching something like those theme park rides in which you don't actually go anywhere and while nifty make me nauseous if I'm one there too long. I rode the Spider-man ride at Universal Studios Florida and some of the screens malfunctioned. When the ride came to an end a very pretty redhead asked us riders if all the screens had works. "Mary Jane?" I replied, slightly dizzy. But she put us through to the front of the line to ride the ride again since everything had not worked the first time.

I then needed about a half an hour to recover.

Its like this: I spend about two hours a day driving to and from work. I'm often perched in slightly precarious positions at work and spent more time than I would like in places that I would fall off of if I moved the wrong way. In my off time I don't really want to sit in anything that moves. My couch don't move around a lot. Sure, it reclines, but that's when I want it too, and that enhances my movie watching experience just fine.

Save the dumb gimmicks and just give me good movies.

TOP 10!!

Mark Waid announced this week that he was through reading superhero comics. Why would a guy who writes some of the best superhero comics, and was one of the key writers to drag superheroes out of the 90s muck with his FLASH run say such a thing? Hell, I don't know, but this here is the internet and if we don't know something, there's just one thing to do: make shit up.

The Top 10 reasons why Mark Waid is giving up on reading superhero comics!

10: Moved on to manga.

9: Upset that retro-boot Brainiac 5 doesn't have a proper haircut.

8: BOOM Studios weekly editorial kegger got out of hand and Waid said things he really didn't mean.

7: Spent years making Wally West the best Flash ever only to have it struck down by idiotic fanboy meme.

6: Frustrated that Kid Eternity was kidnapped six months ago and the rest of the Teen Titans STILL haven't noticed.

5: Superman's new power seems to be angst.

4: Decided to wait for the movie.

3: New direction on Wonder Woman is so awful that he fears being anywhere near it will destroy his since of whimsy utterly.

2: Really upset that Gail Simone killed Savant and Creote during Gay Pride Month.

and the number one reason why Mark Waid is done reading superhero comics is...

Three words: Reverse Speed Force.

FANBOY DICTIONARY!

Its time once again for another addition to the Fanboy Dictionary. That's right, yet another translation of what seems to be English when passed through the mind of social ignoramus.

*GRAPHIC NOVEL: n: a work of serious literature that, despite looking like a comic book, is for a mature and sophisticated audience

"It does not matter that WATCHMEN was originally released as twelve floppy issues, its really a graphic novel and the greatest one ever!"

MUSIC!!

Read some weird stuff in a UK magazine called PARANORMAL with fun articles about where Atlantis could be and ghosts. One article was a piece by a guy who had summoned some demons. Gotta watch out for those types!

POP QUIZ!!

1: Who would you like to see playing Bruce Banner if Norton doesn't?

2: What are your thoughts on D-Box?

That's it for today. I'm currently making a sane attempt at using Twitter since that seems to be where some interesting things are happening. You can find me here. See ya!

Flirting with continuity

I've gotten to the point where I've webpublished enough NIGHT LIFE stories that continuity may become an issue. I've got the comic going on the main site. I'm getting ready to wrap up the third short story here on Blogger. And I did a story on Twitter. That's not including the original NIGHT LIFE story that I did back when I was a student at JMU. Also, there were a few short stories that got written for classes that featured characters that should be very familiar to my readers, all five of you. So that's five different stories on three different sites, a couple of short stories and one college newspaper. Multiple mediums to boot. So which ones don't count?

Well, all of them do. Although the college one, you can pretend doesn't exist, especially since I have the only complete collection of those strips which I occasionally go back through just to cringe at how terrible they were.

When I did the college strip, Wade Granby was already well established as the Night Rain. Keith Sheen didn't come in until the final year I did the strip, but it was clear that they had a history. If you were to get your hands on the old strips and pour over them, you can even spot Danny Blade in a flashback scene. When I wrote the short stories for classes I set most of them in the NIGHT LIFE world. While the professors weren't terribly thrilled with this, it turned out that a few of the students that read these stories for the classes followed the comic and got a kick out of it.

Continuity is a double-edged sword to be certain. It's great when things are clear. However, with enough people involved and if things go along long enough it can turn ugly. That's why the major comic companies with their metric ton of characters and stories supposedly have editors. Someone has to keep it all straight.

My first brush with continuity happened at a very young age. It was an issue of THE INCREDIBLE HULK and the big guy was on some alien planet battling The Gardner. Now this was a major threat because this dude was in possession of one of the "Soul Gems" which we now refer to as the "Infinity Gems". Insanely powerful, and I as a reader got to learn about this due to a quick flashback to another story. It seems some major big bad got his hands on one and it took the Avengers, Captain Marvel, The Thing, Spider-man and Adam Warlock "Reincarnated as the Ultimate Avenger" to stop him. It was nearly twenty years later that I actually had a chance to read the story that the flashback referred. It went down in an old AVENGERS annual and a MARVEL TEAM-UP annual. But referencing that story in the Hulk story I was reading gave me a glimpse that this was something major and this huge battle had gone down. I really wanted to read that story. So there's where continuity was a major bonus.

It turns into a problem when you have two stories directly contradicting each other. Then the writers have to jump through hoops. Problems like that should be caught before books go to press. Back in the day Marvel gave out "No prizes" to readers who caught things like that. Now they just try to avoid the meteor shower of bitchy comments that descend upon them via the internet.

How much danger am I in from this unwieldy beast called continuity? Not much. When there's only one writer it's much easier to keep things straight. I'll be putting in footnotes for people as necessary. Besides, this is the internet, it's easy enough to get a hold of me on here if there's any questions?

You want to know what I think about having enough content out there that this topic warrants a blog post? I think it's a damn good start.

2008 summer comic book movies review

So, this summer we've been hit with five comic book based movies. I really wish I was happier about that. Why am I not happy? Well let's look at what we have.

The Incredible Hulk

I skipped this one entirely. The early previews looked really great. Edward Norton on the run from the military. He's having to keep his cool or really bad things are going to happen. Then I got to see more and more by way of previews. It looked like one big CGI fest and frankly, I have a Wii, so yeah. I skipped it. I might rent it, but I'm not impressed by fancy CGI anymore.

Iron Man

This movie just ticked me off. The action scene bored the hell out of me. The final fight scene just flat out did not work. Of course they take their helmets off for the last battle. Makes complete sense. Please note the sarcasm. I was hoping to see Rhodey do at least one cool thing, and that didn't happen. Mostly, I felt like my intelligence was getting insulted. If I'm making weapons for the military and I find out that the bad guys are getting them and using them, my reaction is not "we're going to stop making weapons". I was waiting the whole time for Tony Stark to ask the magic question, "um, how did these guys get their hands on my stuff?" Sure there were some good one liners and the chemistry between Downey and Paltrow was very good, but that wasn't enough to save it. I wondered repeatedly if I was supposed to watch Tony Stark or Wile E. Coyote. I'm sick of being told that a movie is great as long as I just turn my brain off.

Wanted

This isn't an adaption of the comic so much as the film lifting a few lines and character names and pulling a cut and paste. The early part of the movie did have a nice Fight Club vibe to it, but once the bullets started bending it went downhill real fast. I constantly felt like I was two steps ahead of everything and not just in the plot, but in the action scenes. Props in a couple of spots, but mostly a let down. And "the Loom of Fate"? Who the hell was smoking what when they came up with that one?

The Dark Knight

This movie was best made piece of unenjoyable material I've seen. Great acting, excellent visuals and a solid story all of which I never want to see again. There was no charm whatsoever. Harvey Dent in the film delivers the quote "it's always darkest before the dawn". The dawn never comes. It's a tragedy featuring three noble men struggling against evil and chaos only to be torn down. Good does not triumph here. It barely manages to survive through sacrifice and compromise. I left feeling very depressed and slightly horrified, not by the movie but by my fellow movie-goers. Ledger's Joker was one the screen brutally murdering people and some in the audience were laughing right along with him. Bale's Batman gets by on his gadgets and fists, but little of the intellect and cunning that fans of Batman are used to seeing in the 'World's Greatest Detective". I'm really sorry I watched it.

Hellboy II

Why am I talking about this one last? Because I like to save the best for last. If you're reading this and haven't seen it yet, go right now. It's such a good, fun movie. All the charm The Dark Knight was lacking must have moved here. Great action with some gorgeously executed fight scenes. Del Toro's vision is a joy to watch. Utterly mesmerizing, even when it incredibly creepy. Also, easily the funniest thing I've seen on the big scene in months. This movie is not trying to bring the characters and concepts of the source material into our world. It draws the audience into a completely different and strange world. I'm sure this movie won't make the kind of money the others will at the box office, but I certainly know which one I'll be buying when they come out on DVD.