Category: Marvel

ULTRA Lame Comic Book Cover of the Week: The Punisher & Eminem Team Up!

I thought it’d be a good idea to showcase some real lame comic books that probably should never have been made! I don’t want to spend too much time on these abominations, but I do want to at least acknowledge that someone thought they’d be a good or “cool” as fuck idea to make. So the first one I want to spotlight is the Punisher and Eminem team-up! Yeah man Mr. Mathers is a good rapper but is he really that much of a bad-ass that we needed to see him team up with Frank Castle?! I think we all know the answer to that one but somebody thought he was cool enuff so we got this shit whether we liked it or not!

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Yep, this really happened and it wasn’t that long ago either-in 2009 we got this stupid story which tries it’s hardest to make us all really believe Eminem can play hard ball with the big leagues. This comic and story just plain suck. You can watch the whole thing unfold below on this youtube vid! I think however this is going to a fun little series of comic books to research, there has gotta be some others that rival this garbage and I intend to find em’ all!

 

The Movie Rhino is looking like S#%T!!!! Come on Hollywood!!!!

So there’ve been some new pics from the set of Spider-man 2 and of course I’ve been pretty stoked on the idea of Paul Giamatti playing The Rhino for quite some time now. However the other day we got a teaser into his supposed “costume” or make up or in this case……Mech Armor?!! Ugggh…how I loathe these comic book movies more and more every day! I am sorry but THIS is not what The Rhino is supposed to look like people!

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This however is:

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Understand why I am so irate?! So what the hell gives here? What is this shitty mechanical looking bullshit they’re trying to pass as The Rhino?! Is the new trend making all the bad guys wear mech armor these days (ie The Silver Samurai in the upcoming Wolverine movie)? If so I ain’t down with that! Haven’t we learned enough from the Willem Dafoe Green Goblin from the first Spider-man? Why bring an iconic villain into another movie and not stay true to the source material/look? Hell create a new villain, have Giamatti play him, dress him up in mech armor and call him the fucking Hippo? How about that? That would actually be better than ruining yet another rad villain for the silver screen….

p.s. On the off chance that Giamatti is just Robotech-in’ around and this is NOT the Rhino’s actual look I apologize. But these days I don’t have much faith left in Hollywood to do any justice to our comic book characters…

Comic Book Cover of the Week! The Strangest Team-Up of All Time??

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Yep I had to share this weird ass little team up way back from January 1984-yeah it’s NOT a hoax! This is a team up of Franklin Richards and Aunt May!! As far as covers go you don’t get much more epic than THIS! Right? Yeah well Peter Parker and The Fantastic Four thought it was a good idea to leave Franklin alone at the circus with Aunt May and fortunately it resulted in a bizarre team-up against Galactus! Yep Galactus accidentally transforms good ol’ Aunt May into a Herald! Better yet she names herself “The Golden Oldie”!! This was part of the “Assistant Editors” month at Marvel, back in the day when reading Marvel comics was a helluva lot more fun (and cheaper) than it is today! Basically the normal editor went on vacation for a month and it brought on a slew of ridiculous stories…ahhh…the good ol’ days are tuly missed…

 

 

 

 

Iron Man 3: Why The Movie Mandarin is the Most Chilling Villain of Recent Cinema

I just saw Iron Man 3 last night and I loved it! I would go as far to say that it’s as good as or better than the first movie. I’m quite certain you don’t need a full report from me about what I loved about the film, as there’s more than enough online about the movie that could end up being the highest grossing film of all time. Instead I would like to address something that kinda floored me about the film. That being number one, The Mandarin. So if you haven’t seen the movie, STOP right here.

Major spoilers ahead!

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I was completely taken by surprise with the film’s big twist. The Mandarin was not The Mandarin at all. Instead it was shockingly revealed he was a bumbling drunken actor that was hired to play the part of the worlds most hated and feared terrorist. This was an incredible twist which immediately had me thinking. What was Hollywood trying to tell us? Was Shane Black letting us in on the big secret? For years I have had my doubts about the events surrounding 9/11. I wouldn’t say I am a conspiracy theorist but I would say I do believe a conspiracy was and still is afoot regarding that tragic day in American history. One thing which I’ve always been skeptical about was Osama Bin Laden.

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Everything about the man and his relation to the USA in the past, his family relations to our Gov’t and his “Death” a couple years back. I always felt something was off with the official story of his demise. There are so many interesting theories about the man, mainly that he died in 2001 of kidney failure. This also combined with strange inconsistencies in his recorded messages over the years have lead many people wonder if Bin Laden was really an evil mastermind in a cave in Afganistan. You add the fact that there is absolutely zero proof he was actually killed by Navy Seal Team Six. No body. No pictures. No video of the raid. Nothing. not even one solid story of “what went down” at “the raid”. Just the official word from Obama that it happened. The most dangerous enemy of the United States would have been worth so much more alive if he was who they claimed he was yet we’re supposed to believe we just killed him with no questioning? The guy was never even indicted for 9/11. So Who really was Bin laden?! Was he a manufactured comic book style villain? The ultimate “evil doer”? or was he merely a man just like The Mandarin?

Opening Night Premiere Of "The Union" At The 2011 Tribeca Film Festival

The Iron Man 3 Mandarin was clearly based on Osama Bin Laden and to me the reveal felt like a message to the people that mirrors perhaps our own reality. Governments all thru history use their own propaganda to push forward their agendas. Some may even manufacture real life “villains” for the public to hate & fear. Iron Man 3 gave a some food for thought to the mainstream. Revealing that many times villains can be made on a small sound stage, that governments and corporations can have a hand in orchestrating events to move along agendas and keep the public scared. Even though we didn’t get the legendary evil Mandarin from the pages of the comic books we got a Mandarin who’s far, far more chilling than any super villain. We got a glimpse into our own possible reality here in the real world….

Here’s an excellent excerpt from the BBC’s “The Power of Nightmares” perhaps Shane Black was a fan?

The New Wolverine Trailer: The Silver Samurai? Or Megatron?! WTF?

Hmmm…I am a bit of a  huge skeptic of the upcoming Wolverine movie, but I’ve decided that I’ll see it with an open mind and not jump to any unfair conclusions. However as I watch this new trailer I only wonder two things: 1. Why is there a girl dressed as Ronald Mcdonald in it?  and 2. Why the HELL is the Silver Samurai a Giant robot?!!!! Does this mean that maybe Wolverine will have a big robot version of himself to fight the big robot Silver Samurai? I wouldn’t honestly rule that out!

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Ugggh….I am losing faith here, but I won’t let this discourage me! This is gonna be it! This has to be The Wolverine movie we’ve always dreamed  about right? Well I can look at it from another perspective, if it does suck it will force them to reboot the franchise! Something I am excited to see!

 

‘The Wolverine’ Trailer: Did They Finally Get it Right?

I won’t lie, I’ve been looking forward to finally seeing the trailer for ‘The Wolverine’ for quite some time now. The wait is over, we finally got to see a glimpse of what we’re in store for this summer. As you may know I loathed X-men Origins: Wolverine with a passion. I still have a hard time pumping myself up for any Hugh Jackman Wolverine stuff after enduring that giant heaping turd of a film. However I’m a fair guy and give things more than their fair share of chances, though I’ve said here before that I’d actually love a Wolverine reboot with a whole new cast. Still I am reaching deep down within my soul and looking past the last couple Wolverine based flicks and again giving Hugh one LAST chance to redeem himself as everyone’s favorite berserker. So I watched the trailer several times now and to me this looks like a pretty solid attempt at a ‘decent” Wolverine adventure.

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Did it wow me like I was hoping? No. Did it suck as bad as I was expecting? Not at all. I give this teaser a solid B. This meaning that it could go one of two ways. Way down or way up on the scale of what us true Wolverine fans have really always wanted. First I gotta say Jackman looks good as he always has in the role, he’s a great actor and fully capable of bringing us the best Wolverine performance we’re likely to ever see on screen. I can be knit picky about wanting Wolverine’s crazy comic book hair all day, but hey this is Hollywood and they want to make Wolverine super sexy, not a freaky, hairy little five foot tall mutant with fucked up hair. I get it. I let go of ever seeing that version of the character on screen.

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So with this trailer we see Logan apparently heading back to Japan to become “mortal” because he’s tired of living forever with all the pain he’s endured in his life. It appears Lord Shingen weakens his healing factor much like in the original Claremont/Miller limited series from 1982 which this movie is loosely based on. However in that story he heads to Japan to find his fiancee has been forced into marriage by her father Lord Shingen, to an abusive Yakuza crimeboss. Hence Wolverine goes batshit crazy against a clan of ninjas ect.

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This movie version looks like it’s trying to head into a “more epic” storyline, amping up the special effects and including a bunch of villains into the mix. This to me could be the first sign of a mistake in the movie. Trying to cram too much into a perfectly human story of love and revenge. However it’s really too soon to jump to any conclusions. One thing that appears to be missing is the blood and violence needed to properly tell the store of a man with razor sharp blades indestructibly bound to his knuckles. This movie better not skimp on the blood. I want to see Wolverine’s claws slice and dice like they do in the comic, in all of the past films we never see any blood, severed arms, legs, ect. I know this is a PG-13 movie but at least give us a little in the way of what sort of damage this mutant would do in a real world with weapons like that. Again, too soon to tell, this movie could indeed give us all that and more. I just can’t take another bloodless kiddie Wolverine flick. So all that said I wasn’t blown away by the trailer. It has potential, unfortunately we don’t yet know if it will finally raise the bar to the true potential of what an amazing Wolverine flick can and should be….what do you think?

Planet Hulk Movie is a No Go! Where to go with The Movie Hulk?

I’ve just read via Ain’t it Cool News that supposedly there are NO plans to bring the Planet Hulk story to the big screen. As much as I enjoyed Planet Hulk, the idea of this being a big Hollywood blockbuster movie really didn’t excite me all that much. First I had wondered how they would pull this off with Ruffalo, as Marvel has recently stated they were concerned that Planet Hulk was missing one key ingredient for big screen success….Bruce Banner!

Yeah as cool as it may have been for this Hulk story to be told if, I remember correctly Banner only appeared in Planet Hulk for a brief moment in a small side story which perhaps showed up in an annual of some sorts during that time. I do wonder why Marvel would have to have a Banner-less Planet Hulk? They’ve changed a lot in the movies from their comic origins so why couldn’t Banner co-exist with The Hulk in the big screen version? Perhaps they just don’t want to waste the time of having to make Hulk a menace to the world on screen? He seems to be working out nicely right now in the books as an Avenger and an agent of SHIELD.

So for a second though let’s imagine Marvel did indeed want to make Planet Hulk a reality, following the comic book storyline strictly. What we would have on our hands would be an entirely CG, animated movie. We all know that the big Hollywood studios rarely use live sets anymore especially for an alien world, we all know that they refuse to use any practical effects or make up to bring The Hulk to life, we all know in big Hollywood movies that aliens are 99.9% of the time entirely CG creations and since we have him teaming up with aliens in the movie there would be no use for any real on screen actors. We would have some big name actors voicing. This really leaves nothing for Ruffalo in that storyline. So to me it would be like a PIXAR flick. That could be cool, but it’s not what Avengers and Hulk fans want at the end of the day. So where does this leave the poor Hulk?

Perhaps he’s better as a team player? Perhaps the Hulk doesn’t work the way he did back in the 70’s when Bixby and Ferrigno brought him to life on TV weekly. If they do bring another Hulk movie it’s going to need a lot of Ruffalo/Banner and smaller doses of the Hulk. I personally would love a simpler classic Hulk approach to a movie. Give me The Leader as the Mastermind, throw in some henchmen like the U-foes, Half-life or the Bi-Beast and give us She-Hulk plus Doc Samson and let’s get down to business of some good smashing the old school way! What do you think should happen with the Hulk on the big screen? Should he just stay a team player? Should he have another shot at a solo film? What story would you like to see brought to life?

The Indestructible Hulk and Walt Simonson!

I had to take a second here just to say how pumped I am that starting with issue #6 of The Indestructible Hulk we will be getting an old school artist taking the reigns. Yep Walt Simonson will be doing a three issue arc of the book which is also going to feature his old buddy The Mighty Thor which Walt is most famous for! So there’ve been a few preview panels / covers on the web so I thought I’d post ’em here as well. I’m excited about this as Simonson has been a fave of mine since I was just a kid. I’ll admit that his most recent work on The Avengers with Bendis seemed pretty rushed and sloppy. This however is a three issue stint and hopefully he took his time with the art. So far so good I would say though, wouldn’t you?

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Simonson used to do some Hulk artwork in the old days too, mainly for The Rampaging Hulk, a Hulk magazine comic book which was one of my all time favorite reads..

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Paul Giamatti as The Rhino?!!

I just heard the news that Paul Giamatti is in talks to play The Rhino in the next Spider-man film! As odd as this sounds, as Giamatti doesn’t strike me as a particularly brawny dude I can oddly see this working. Partially working because of his sheer enthusiasm for the character which he has gone on record several times stating how much he loves the villain. Not to mention he’s a downright awesome actor.

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This news thrills me as The Rhino is easily one of my fave Spider-man / Hulk villains of all time. As a kid also I was a HUGE Rhino fan. What’s not to love about a giant hulking guy in Rhino suit grafted to his body who smashes anything in his path? I can already imagine Giamatti’s face peeping out of the cut out face hole of the suit. Can you picture it?

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So though I wasn’t totally floored by Spider-man this news makes me pretty excited for this flick to start filming in Feb. They had better keep with the original design of the character though and not simply make him a man who transforms into a humanoid rhino hybrid. This way too maybe they could bring Giamatti on board to take on The Hulk when they decide to give the green guy another movie of his own! This is exciting news and the kid in me just pee’d my pants!

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Put The Leader & The Rhino up against The Incredible Hulk in the next film!