Tagged: comic book
5 Reasons Why Netflix Marvel is Better Than Movie Marvel!
I’m really enjoying the latest Marvel Netflix original series ‘Jessica Jones’ and I totally loved Daredevil. It really got me thinking about why these shows seem so far (at least to me) so much better than the Marvel cinematic experience!

After a little thought I decided to nail down my five reasons Marvel should send some of their more popular characters down the same path as Jessica & Matt Murdok!
1.Better Character Development:
It’s clear one of the main reasons why I’ve liked the tv shows more so than the movies is simply because we have so much more time to really get to know the characters inside and out. It can be tough sometimes within only a couple hours to really get a character to the point where you actually understand them and their true motivations without everything feeling a bit rushed.

Netflix gives us the time we need without boring us to really fall in love with the characters. It plays out much more like a comic book taking the time it needs to tell a great story. Some of the Marvel movies simply try and pack way too much shit into too small a time. Not only that but Marvel movies are so concerned with tying everything together between franchises that sometimes you get lost in a big sloppy plot. Imagine for a minute if Captain America would have been a tv series, how much more it would have meant to see Bucky come back as the Winter Soldier after spending a whole season with him and Cap in World Ward II?!
2. Believable Special Effects:
Sometimes when I’m watching a Marvel movie I feel like I’m watching a frikin’ cartoon. There’s soooo much CG and special FX work that it ends up a bit feeling like I’m watching ‘Roger Rabbit’. The Netflix shows have really done a spectacular job with the special effects and they flow nicely alongside the story and the action sequences.

They haven’t required the amount of CG that say The Avengers used but sometimes I really wonder if these big bloated shiny CG stuffed spectacles really need to be telling stories that need that much in the way of FX. More is NOT always better folks and some of these Marvel movies just have NOT aged well and it hasn’t even been that long.
3.Better Villains:
One thing the Marvel movies do NOT have going for them are good villains. The Netflix series works hard at giving us reasons to love and at times really hate the villains. We never really get much in the way of character development for the bad guys in a Marvel movie. Usually they’re just merely there as a reason to see some crazy ass battle go down.

The Netflix series give us the time with the bad guys that we need to really understand them or just really wanna see them get their asses served up. I haven’t once given two shits about any villain in a Marvel movie. And folks your superheroes are only as good as their evil counterparts. So if you ain’t got a good bad guy you ain’t got shit.
4.No Ratings:
Yep, the Marvel movies are all about money and selling boatloads of shit to the kids. Making a killing with merchandise means the movies can never go too dark. However the Netflix Marvel stuff doesn’t have to worry about that, they can cuss, draw blood and have tons of sex if they want to.
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The Marvel movies don’t dare go too dark or violent, perhaps that’s one reason why their villains just suck so bad? They’re not allowed to really get all of their evil out onscreen, now imagine the what the Red Skull would have been like in a Netflix series…
5.They Don’t Follow the Marvel Movie Formula:
Let’s all face it, the Marvel movies most definitely have a bit of a tired and predictable formula. I really liked Ant-man but it really felt so “2008”, while watching it’s plot unfold I thought “man we’re really doing this whole thing again?” It felt pretty interchangeable with any other Marvel movies I’ve seen. Good guy gets powers, boring bad guy who has similar powers, cute love interest in danger, big CG fight at end. Blah blah blah..

Or if you’re The Avengers movies you have them all fight a super blah bad guy and then at the end of the movie a big CG slugfest, in a big city, fighting a bunch of similar looking CG clones. The second Avengers movies was really just a retelling of the first, instead of Loki you had Ultron and instead of the hordes of CG Chituari Warriors you had the horde of CG Ultron clones fight at the end in Sokovia instead of New York.

The Netflix shows have broken away from the usual mold at least for the moment and that’s god damn refreshing. Hmm….But then again there is this now:
Comic Book Cover of the Week: PLASTIC MAN Vs. Monster Sewer Sludge?!
I had thoughts this morning for some reason about the 1979 Plastic Man cartoon! It made me wanna feature a cool old classic Plastic Man cover. This one from 1966 sees Plastic Man caught down in the sewers battling a creature created from meat by products and sludge?! Yep! Yuck! Plastic Man had some weird ass stories and villains back in the day and this cover is one of the coolest from that era wonderfully drawn by Ramona Fradon.

While we’re on topic lets take a peek back at that Plastic Man Cartoon!
And let’s not forget there was an elastic Plastic Man action figure too:
also here’s Robert Smith from The Cure as Plastic Man for the hell of it:
Also Plastic Man on the Superfriends! Whatta team up!
and some live action Plastic Man!
Comic Book Cover of the Week: The Ultimate Halloween Super Villain!
I just love those old Charles Vess “Web of Spider-man” comic book covers from the 1980’s! Here’s one of my favs featuring the Hobgoblin in all of his menacing glory. Him and The Green Goblin are the in my opinion the ultimate Halloween super villains, everything about them screams of Halloween. This incredibly cool and simple cover from 1985 is one of my all time favorites of The Hobgoblin. Pure perfection for the season at hand. I mean what screams of the creepy holiday more than pumpkin bombs?! Check this one out:

OMG! Have You Seen the Boring “New” Jeremy Renner Hawkeye Costume?!!
I’ve seen the big hype all over lately about Jeremy Renner’s “new” Hawkeye costume for the upcoming Civil War movie and you know what….so WHAT of if?! If they really wanted to impress us comic book fans they could have done waaaay better than that! When I first saw the headlines I was actually really really excited! In my mind I was fully ready to see this:

Or This:

but in reality something like this most likely:

But instead it was..yawn..this…

Ok so now that picture above isn’t really bad at all, it’s just really nothing new. In fact Isn’t that pretty much what he’s been wearing in every other movie? So everyone please calm down about Hawkeye’s new costume, it’s really nothing to get your undies in a bundle over, at least if you’re a long time fan of the comic book character. Peace!!
We Can Never Go Home: Classic Punk Rock Variant Covers!
I had to put up some of these awesome variant covers for one of my favorite comic books out on the scene right now- We Can Never Go Home. Being a big fan of classic punk rock I can’t say enough about how cool these are. If you haven’t checked out the book yet it’s a super fun read and set back in the 1980s. They’ve been doing some various variant covers in the theme of classic 80’s punk rock album cover. Here’s are the comic book covers along with the album covers they’re based on! Get this book from Black Mask Studios and yeah if you haven’t already – get these albums!!
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R.I.P. Rowdy Roddy Piper!!
Some sad news hit us today as we have just learned Roddy Piper Passed away unexpectedly today from cardiac arrest. Roddy was a legend as a wrestler and also as an actor, starring in some of my favorite popcorn flicks like ‘Hell Comes to Frogtown’ and ‘They Live’.

Piper was only 61 years old too and from what I understand has several movies set to be released and a few he was still working on. One I’d been most excited for is ‘Portal to Hell‘ which I covered here a while back as well as a few other movies in post production ‘The Chair’, ‘Green Fairy’ and ‘Betting on Baker’ which I’m going to have to do a little investigating on now.

He also this year, had a cool graphic novel released Rowdy ‘Roddy Piper: Monster Killer’ that I need to check out and also his popular podcast called Piper’s Pit he’s been doing for quite some time now. So a sad moment as he was a legend and had so much more to offer us all. He was a big part of my childhood as my favorite pro wrestling villain of all time! You’ll be missed Roddy! Check these out for some classic Piper! The first one is pretty awesome, the pilot for the TV show “Tag Team” which a lot of people never even knew existed!
Comic Book Cover of the Week: The Hulk’s Vintage Magazine Career!!
So this week I wanted to take a trip down memory lane and showcase some of my favorite comic covers that are actually covers from the Hulk’s magazine career back in the late 1970’s. There were two, The Rampaging Hulk and The Hulk were both in magazine format and usually featured back up stories from lesser know superheroes or extra’s on the Hulk and many times his villains. These were extra special because the covers were almost always super spectacular paintings of the big ol’ green guy! So here a re some of my favorites check em’ out-they just don’t make em’ like this any more! These are truly INCREDIBLE!













Let’s Make ‘Hellboy 3’ Happen!!
I’m super happy that Ron Perlman is taking matters into his own hands recently with Hellboy 3!! To me it’s absoutely ridiculous that this franchise remains with out it’s final chapter! I’m a HUGE fan of the movies and HUGE fan of the Hellboy/BPRD Mignolaverse and while the movie took a bit of a different take on the character in many ways I still think Del Toro nailed the look and vibe of the whole comic book world they exist in. I don’t think it was humanly possible to cast a better Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and all of the FX work was 100%! I mean how amazing was Doug Jones as Abe Sapien too?!

Well apparently not quite amazing enough for the masses as we never got the third chapter of Guillermo’s planned trilogy. Perhaps the Hellboy universe is just too dang bizarre for the people who yearn for ultra chiseled male models in costume? But for some odd reason we are getting a sequel to the rather unimpressive forgettable Pacific Rim? What gives? Well Perlman and the rest of the cast are pretty damn excited to finish the story. Good ol’ Ron has been speaking out about getting the third film made saying:
“I don’t have any news for you, but there’s always a chance, I’m getting to that age where, if I waited much longer, ‘Hellboy 3’ will be performed out of a wheelchair. So I was basically trying to say, if there’s going to be this thing, it should be sooner rather than later. I wouldn’t want to be involved in a crowdfunding. I don’t think it’s the fans’ job to fund a movie; I think it’s up to the people who do it professionally. I think it’s the fans’ job to sit back and buy popcorn and Coke and watch a movie and enjoy it.”

So here at Universal Dork I wanna use my voice (what little one it may be) to get more of the word out about making Hellboy 3 finally happen! Let’s not get a rebooted Hellboy just yet, let’s finish the story we started and see what Hellboy’s fate really is. Will he bring about the destruction of mankind bringing Hell on earth? Or will he somehow fight the creatures from deep down in the firey pits? Imagine some of the other BPRD agents added to the cast like Panya, Roger the homunculus, Benjamin Daimio, Howards or how’s about Lobster Johnson?!
And also how about a B.P.R.D. movie?! Or a Netflix series? Give us something dammit! I have honestly been slowly becoming totally burnt out on The Avengers movies, I think that Ant-man looks like a bland 2008 Marvel movie with another boring villain and the same tired formula as most Marvel flicks being churned out. Highly forgettable shit in the end. I really believe the Hellboy movie universe holds a lot more intrigue, horror and mystery at the moment. To me Marvel movies are starting to feel like a bit like a shiny boring Pepsi commercial. But in this day and age that’s what most people seem to dig, and if a film isn’t going to make massive amounts of cash then Hollywood just ain’t interested. The first two films didn’t make an obscene amount of money, so the idea of a third movie being made today I guess is kinda unfathomable.

To me the movies always seemed a little too unique and smart for the mainstream. Crowdfunding may indeed be the only way to get this one off the ground at this point. Or perhaps they could re-cast some male supermodels in the roles of Abe Sapien and Hellboy and make them all sexy? Ugghhh…Despite all of that I still think Ron Perlman’s Hellboy could be the guy who saves the superhero flick….let’s get the word out there!
Sal Buscema’s Greatest Hits: Anatomy of the Most Powerful Comic Book Punches!!
Sal Buscema has been one of my all time favorite comic book artists ever since I was just a little kid! His name is synonymous with The Incredible Hulk as one of the longest artists ever on the classic book as well as drawing much of the Hulk-ified Defenders comics way back in the day. The guy is a legend. Period. Well one of my favorite things about his artwork in the comics is the classic Buscema powerful punch! He loves to draw incredibly painful punches that send both heroes and villains flying upside down in the air straight at the reader! It’s really his trademark, so let’s take a good long look at some of Buscema’s greatest hits in all their glory!!!



























And finally just a few non-flying Sal Buscema punches that totally look like they hurt big time!








Phew! My head hurst just looking at all these painful punches! Thanks to 80 Page Giant Blog for many of the images!!
Comic Book Cover of the Week: The Other Thor!
This awesome comic book cover from 1983 has gotta be one of my favorites ever! Thor #337 features my favorite character from the norse god’s mythos-Beta Ray Bill! This super weird character made his first appearance in this issue and as odd as this guy looked he was deemed worthy of Thor’s hammer! So Beta Ray to me is just as cool as Thor, even more so I’d dig it if rather than a woman Thor, we’d just get him to take place of the character completely for a while instead. Also Walt Simonson uses simplicity to make this one of the coolest covers ever for The Mighty Thor comic series. I also really love it when characters affect the comic book covers logo’s and such-I’ve gotta sit down and dig this one out of my collection and give it another read pronto!! They need to put this guy into the next Thor flick dammit!

