Tagged: Daredevil
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.
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:
Conspiracy Theory: The Owl & Wolverine are the SAME person?!!
I’ve always wondered if perhaps there is some secret connection to Wolverine and The Owl in Marvel comics? Is it just me or do these two legendary characters share some unexplained similarities! Have they ever met in the comics? From what I can tell they’ve never crossed paths. So what’s up here are they long lost brothers? The Same person?! Distant relatives or did perhaps Wolverine rip off Leland Owsley’s style? Let’s compare!
hmmm…..
Well let’s see Wolverine again…even though we all know what he looks like!
I’m sure i’m not the first to notice this ahem…striking similarity! but just for the record The Owl first appeared in Daredevil #3 in 1964! Well good ol’ boy Wolverine didn’t appear until 1974 in Incredible Hulk #181! So looks like Wolverine just might have copied Leland’s look for his own! Damn! But still I’m fairly certain The Owl decided he realllllly like Logan’s claws so he had to make a pair for himself. I’m not sure just when The Owl’s claws made their first appearance…STILL though I think it’s totally possible that Logan just might be Leland! Most people make aliases with the same letters in the first name right??! The conspiracy deepens!!
Phototracing and Lightboxes: Real Comic Book Art?
I’ve been questioning some of the ways comic book artists are doing their “artwork” these days. Lets face it art has changed quite a bit from back when comic books were printed on newsprint and cost a mere sixty cents. Today our comic books cost four bucks and are full of computerized gloss. Hell I’m not even sure what they are printed on is actually real paper. But it got me thinking a lot on just how comic book art is produced these days for the bigger companies out there. It turns out a lot of artist out there are phototracing, meaning gathering photos online, shot from a digital camera or even other artists actual artwork, uploading them onto the computer or light box and tracing them, adding costumes different hair etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGRdfPp65eg
It seems this trend has a small debate forming on what exactly is real art in comic books these days? Is it real art when Alex Maleev uses a light box to do all of his city back grounds or David Mack tracing pictures of his characters? Or when an artist simply takes some celebrity photos and traces over them giving the characters their likeness? To me I’m a little disappointed to hear that this trend is becoming even more popular these days. I guess you don’t have to spend much time with perspective if you’re merely tracing a photo.
I guess the “Artist” these days has maybe actually become the inker? Don’t get me wrong there’s still good degree of skill and talent needed to make a trace job look real good. People have been photo referencing for years but tracing to me just doesn’t really make the cut. I love for a comic book to look good, heck if the comic has shitty generic artwork (as most do these days is seems) I flat out just won’t buy it.
Art is very important to me when dropping 4 bones a pop on a comic book these days the art and story better be top notch. What do you think? Do you care how the artwork was made in your comic book? Here’s a great video from IFanboy on the great debate of phototracing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vic__TS1Ayc
Comic Book Cover of the Week: Matt Murdock’s Crappy Christmas!!
I love digging up cool comic books that took place around Christmas time and Daredevil #229 fits that bill quite perfectly! This is an especially rad cover of a time when Matt Murdock went homeless on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen due to the Kingpin ruining his entire life. This has got to be one of the lowest points in the characters history as Murdock is down on his luck in this grim story arc written by Frank Miller before he turned into a crazy douche bag. This issue also has one of the most brutal fights between Murdock and the Kingpin as they go head to head in Fisk’s office. It’s bloody and Matt gets his ass kicked big time…damn I’m feeling as I type this the urge to read these issues again immediately! The cover is brilliantly drawn back in 1986 by one of my fav artists David Mazzucchelli and clearly shows how crappy Christmas was that particular year for Daredevil….
The 1989 “Trial of The Hulk” Daredevil Returns in Marvel’s Netflix Series?! WTF?!
Ummm…this is a bit of an odd surprise here, we just got the official look at the new Marvel Daredevil from the upcoming Netflix series today and well it seems they’ve decided upon the 1989 “Trial of The Incredible Hulk” TV series version of the characters costume!!? I’m not kidding this is exactly the same costume design from that movie that Rex Smith wore! Which, um….wasn’t really the best interpretation of the character I’ve seen, heck I might even take the Affleck Daredevil’s maroon leather look over this one! Don’t believe me? Check out this newly released pic:
And now let’s look at the 1989 Trial of The Incredible Hulk Tv version:
Ummm…kinda Baffling huh? I guess we’ll see how this all plays out, my guess is the newly released Marvel pic above could be Daredevil’s starter costume? Like maybe it’s the first one that he puts together? If not boy that sucks!!! I wonder if John Rhys-Davies will be returning as the Kingpin?!!!
Comic Book Cover of The Week: Mazzucchelli Batman and Daredevil!
I think this awesome cover to Batman #405 (better known as “Year One, Part 2”) deserves to showcased here. First of all it’s proves that sometimes simplicity works best for an effective comic book cover! Second it’s drawn by one of my favorite comic book artists, David Mazzucchelli! In my opinion his version of Batman is perfect, forget the battle armor kevlar BS, this is the perfect Dark Knight stripped down and dirty. This was a great series too written by classic writer Frank Miller (now a total D-Bag) it’s considered now one of the best Batman Stories of all time.
Mazzucchelli also drew some of the best Daredevil comics of all time (also teaming up with Frank Miller), in a similar tone he proves that Daredevil is Marvel’s Batman. This has inspired me to get the full scoop on what David Mazzucchelli is up to now, so expect a post on that soon!
Let’s Appreciate Bill Sienkiewicz on his Birthday!
Today is Bill Sienkiewicz’s Birthday and it’s as good a reason as any to celebrate the man’s existence as one of the best comic book artists of all time! To say his artwork is unique would probably be the biggest understatement you could come up with in the comic book universe. His jagged, frantic and often abstract work is unmistakable. Whenever you’d get a comic book cover or let alone an entire issue filled with his artwork you always knew you were in for a treat.
His work became a staple in the early 80’s where he drew black and white back up stories of Moon Knight in The Incredible Hulk magazine size comic books. He continued on with some of his most famous work for titles like The New Mutants and the legendary Elektra: Assassin miniseries amongst many others. So happy birthday Bill! Thanks for the incredibly original art all these years-Here’s hoping for much more of it in 2014! Here are a few of my personal favorite pieces of his comic book art!
Ben Affleck is the New BATMAN?!
Yep-seems that we have a new Batman again, not the perfect choice of Joseph Gordon Levitt but Ben Affleck as USA Today has just reported! Not sure what to think about this, I suppose Affleck has gotten to be better through the years. Somehow though I just can’t erase that wretched Daredevil flick from 2003 from my mind! I can’t say I’m thrilled but everyone deserves a chance at redemption right?! Ok Ben, don’t fuck this one up!!!
Ok, though let’s NOT forget this bullshit though ok?
Comic Book Cover of the Week: Daredevil Tightens The Noose…
Daredevil to me has always been Marvel’s answer to Batman. He’s a vigilante searching the streets at night for whatever scum may be lurking in the shadows. He’s also had some pretty dark story lines over the years and this particular comic book cover drawn by John Romita Jr. is about as dark as it gets. This particular issue follows Matt Murdock during his “nomadic” spree where he wanders around the city after burning his belongings. He stays in a small bed and breakfast and helps a married couple in need sever their ties with their criminal family. During this period we get a very dark Daredevil indeed. This cover is a fave of mine…
Phoenix Jones Returns To The Streets!
I am sure everyone has heard that Phoenix Jones, Seattle’s premiere real life super hero was arrested on October 9th for apparently pepper spraying some people who he mistook for fighting. They claim however that they were merely horsing around, leading the rainy city’s most popular super hero to being arrested. My thoughts? Could these people have been plants sent to set up and ruin Jones forever?! Quite possible. But my words to Phoenix is don’t give up, I mean seriously look at all the fucked up shit that has happened to Spider-man or say Daredevil over the years! They’ve done a lot more than pepper spray the wrong people and they never stopped the fight. So what now if your secret identity has been revealed to the world-there are a lot of super heroes that don’t let that get in the way. Everyone knows Steve Rogers is Cap!
Well apparently he already considered all these things because word on the street is that Phoenix Jones HAS actually hit the streets again according to the Everett Herald, it seems that the prosecutors declined to file charges. It makes you wonder if Jones has a foggy Nelson type character in his life helping him out? Or perhaps the people just realized the obvious-life’s a lot more rad knowing you have a real life super hero patroling your city!!
Universal Dork 