The Week In Geek 10/22/14

So, this week, the trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron got leaked which seemed inevitable considering the buzz Marvel generated by stealth bombing San Diego Comic Con with a "special sneak peek" that nobody outside of that sound stage has seen to this day. I have to say that Marvel is really taking the whole thing in stride which does nothing but help their image at this point. To the surprise of nobody, what we saw in the teaser is very impressive. In particular, the shot of Hulk fighting the Hulkbuster armor looks absolutely incredible. Marvel gets better and better at capturing the essence of the mostly CGI monster every single time.

The trailer was supposed to make its debut on the upcoming episode of Agents of SHIELD (by the way, Tuesday's episode with "Mockingbird" was fucking awesome) and honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Marvel showed the SDCC trailer instead just to keep fans happy. Also, given the bizarre ratings drop of the season so far, they could use the viewers, so my suggestion would be to watch this week's episode anyway.

My comic reviews for the week are available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing enjoyment. This week, I took a look at:

Batman Eternal: Okay, there's been some complaints about the book's tendency to divert from the main plotline to tell some side stories and tie off hanging plotlines, but honestly, that's no different from shows like Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. After al, the purpose for Eternal is to build a universe out of Gotham opposed to Scott Snyder's Batman, which is a more focused book that only has Batman himself to center on. With that in mind, I think it's a solid book despite some of it's issues in the art department at times.

Avengers/X-Men- Axis: Decent but sloppy. I have to appreciate the step up in the art department, but still. The resolution felt so circular. Avengers Vs. X-Men was supposed to jump start the resolution of the rift between the mutant community and the Avengers. Then, we got Uncanny Avengers as a result which was supposed to be the solution. Almost three years later, we're back to this "mutants and the government will never get along" shit. The whole thread seems to have chased its own tail.

San Diego Comic Con Post Game Show

Okay, so this week was mainly the San Diego Comic Con fallout. I was scouring the internet for the Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer I keep hearing about and I had what I realize is a long overdue epiphany. I'm starting to see why smaller cons are gaining popularity these days. It seems like each year, SDCC becomes more and more of a press conference that barely involves comics and involves fans even less. I am convinced that Comic Con could run just the same if there were no audience at all. The whole point of any convention is that it's an assembly for like-minded people to generate fellowship. With that said, I like cons the way I like church: If I need binoculars, bifocals, bionic eyes or any other vision enhancing apparatus to see the talent (preacher), I don't need to be there.

Anyway, basically, as most things in comic fandom seem to do, this year came down to Marvel vs. DC vying for control of the movie fanboy hype machine. Marvel's big one-two punch was bringing out the cast for a few minutes and presenting the special super secret Avengers trailer. Now, for the record, this is NOT the part where I show up with the special super secret Avengers trailer because I don't have it. I mean NOBODY has it. This Disney money has gotten Marvel better connected than the CIA. Seriously. Batman himself couldn't get a hold of this shit. I just want to make sure everyone realizes how irregular it is for something of this magnitude to occur at a high profile con and to have not leaked by now. However, there's a pretty good description of the epic sneak peek available if you can't wait until "eventually." 

Meanwhile, DC hit every one with a haymaker in the form a teaser for the impending Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The most notable aspect was that Batfleck was rocking the infamous heavy duty armor that Batman wore when he gave Superman that #AllKryptoniteEverything ass whupping in The Dark Knight Returns (which ISN'T canon, Bat-fanatics). Superman floating in the sky with his heat vision all queued up was reminiscent of his Jim Lee look in Hush (another instance in which the two came to blows). Of course, the trailer was leaked immediately after so the rest of the internet could follow suit in losing their shit over the 40 seconds or so of "holy shit."

So, who really dominated SDCC this year?

In fairness, DC definitely a). had a lot more of the deck stacked against them and b). had a lot more riding on positive reactions to their offering. Marvel has been winning this race as it is, so they could have done the minimum amount and still walked away with a loyal fan base. Why? As they've proven with putting out a schedule of their proposed movies for the next five years, Marvel has a tried and tested product that they can stand by. It's a confidence few moviemaking outfits can lay claim to.

Since BvS was announced, it's like the studio had been on a year long press junket. I mean every single level of production, casting and development has been run up the flagpole and criticized by every blog, news outlet from here to the New York Post. Barack Obama himself hadn't been vetted half as much as Comics' favorite bromance. Especially if you a comic nerd, it's become like a gaudy shopping mall being built right outside your house, having to wake up to the construction, seeing the new hires, watching every stick of furniture being moved in and constantly updating about it on Twitter every hour. They NEEDED a win. There are always going to be naysayers about this venture. They're practically built in. But they had to win some people over and it seems like they did.

Winner: Marvel. At this point, they are a behemoth that's hard to compete with. As of right now, they almost ARE the superhero movie genre. They had the crown before even showing up in San Diego.

The Week In Geek 7/30/14

I'll have some San Diego Comic Con follow up stuff ready to go for you guys tomorrow since people asking me about certain events took up the better part of my time this week. It's flattering and a little surreal that you people seem to care so much about my opinion on these things lately. I literally can't even go on a date these days without running into a reader who says some shit like "Hey, man, your whiskey sour is on the house....but you're dead wrong about X-Men this week." Anyway, my reviews for Black Nerd Problems are up and available for your viewing pleasure. Feel free to click, share, comment and troll at your convenience. This week, I reviewed....

Batman Eternal: Listen, folks, I know this book, despite my praising it, has had some problems along the way, but this Ray Fawkes and Dustin Nguyen fall very perfectly into this supernatural, "creepy shit afoot" groove with the greatest of ease. Bringing back the Roman was awesome early in the series, but making Deacon Blackfire matter again is setting up to be a good look. I could definitely see the events of this storyline spilling out into the rest of the Bat-books just in time for some fun Halloween related books.

Uncanny X-Men: Listen, not only is this book back to being brilliant, but it's surpassed its previous brilliance. The thing about X-Men books in general is that there are often times when they work better not focusing on superhero antics. Their whole thing is making the public perception of mutants a little more upbeat, but they don't get to do that very often because most of the time, they're fighting with each other on one level or another. And even if they're not fighting each other and actually saving the world, they take it on the chin so often, they never really get around to changing minds. I think Bendis understands that X-books are at their most poignant when they centered around the idea of the X-Men as a family...sometimes fractured, always dysfunctional.