A Brief Opinion of Civil War

So, I finally got around to getting out to the theater to see Civil War yesterday (I waited a week so there'd be less humans and crying babies to trigger my Akira-like, rage powered telekinesis) and I'm going to go ahead and skip the obvious angle of comparing to the DC's latest dumpster fire, Batman v Superman because the comparison is almost insulting to Civil War which is, undoubtedly, the better movie on virtually every discernible level. I'm going to jump out there and say that this movie is the linchpin that makes the Captain America trilogy surpass the Dark Knight trilogy which, up to this point, was the Godfather of superhero sagas.

There are spoilers after the jump. Not a lot or even major spoilers, but there are spoilers there. So, yeah.

The Week In Geek 4/20/16

So, This Week In Excuses to Move On From Batman v Superman.....It's recently been announced that Marvel/Disney's Inhumans movie, previously scheduled for a July 2019 release, no longer has a release date. That's not to say that it's no longer on the schedule but usually when things like this happen, it's because the studio has to make room for an impending franchise (**cough** Spider Man) because his appearance in the previews for a certain upcoming film (**cough** Civil War) has tested well thus far, so it's probably a good thing that they're staying flexible with this Marvel Cinematic Universe. After all, they should probably have time to rethink whatever they had in mind for the film since Agents of SHIELD has spent the past two seasons mining the whole Inhumans thing with their Secret Warriors plotline (which has successfully reinvigorated the show with a new sense of identity).

Also, there's the whole rumor that Marvel might be coming to an mutual X-Men deal with Fox to use them....but I don't believe that shit just yet, so we'll move on.

This Week in Superhero Television.....It turns out there is a script in the can for Krypton, a Gotham style Superman prequel show. Apparently, the pilot is set two generations before Krypton's destruction where Superman's grandfather tries to bring honor back to the House of El. Here's why this is stupid. Why the FUCK are we doing a show about a planet we KNOW is going to die. I mean, we actually know how this is going to end. There are literally NO STAKES involved. Now, there is a chance that they could take this in a psuedo-Game of Thrones direction where upper crust Kryptonians wrestle for political and military power, which would wipe away the time honored "We were a peaceful, technologically advanced and unilaterally boring as fuck civilization that basically sets the stage to let our future protagonist grow up with abandonment issues" approach we've seen for God knows how long. However, this premise as is has the same problem Gotham has: primetime superhero television's compulsive need to appeal to the Lowest Common Denominator viewer that will be perfect happy just to name drop popular names from the comics wherever possible (which, in a show two generations before anything relatively Superman happens, consists exclusively of Zod, Jor-El and maybe Brainiac depending on what version you're going with). And sure, Titanic took place in an ill fated setting too and it made tons of money, but this is primetime (probably broadcast basic cable at best) television so it's highly doubtful that any network that falls under that umbrella is willing to shell out that level of production quality to a show about Superman's grandfather. So, we'll see.

My comic reviews for the week on Tokyo Ghost, The Mighty Thor and Superman: American Alien are up and available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing pleasure.

And don't forget about my the latest page of my comic collaboration with Katie Coats, Neverland: The Untold. As always feel free to like, share and comment at your leisure. You know the drill.

The Week In Geek 12/2/15

Last Week In Movie Stuff: The trailer for Captain America: Civil War dropped last week. If a trailer's purpose is to whet your appetite for what's to come, then GODDAMN, this was 2+ minutes that would make any Marvel fan drop to their knees and thank the geek gods. I'm not going to bother doing a whole breakdown of the trailer because a solid week has passed so EVERYONE has likely done a breakdown of the trailer by now and in the immortal words of Ricky Bobby, "if you're not first, you're last." So, I'll just point out a couple of awesome things about what I saw.

First and foremost, the best thing they could do to adapt Civil War from the comics is keep it firmly in Captain America's wheelhouse. They don't have enough established heroes (or villains) to make it a standalone Marvel event and the plot itself is flawed (giving the most irresponsible superhero in comics government oversight), but tying it directly to the existing Cap timeline is smart. "Cap loses Bucky, Cap finds Bucky, Cap fights for Bucky's freedom." That's about as straightforward of a trilogy as you can possibly get while still conveying a basic theme of the bonds of war (which is a big selling point for movies about soldiers from The Greatest Generation). Having said that, the thing that worked the best about Winter Soldier is that it worked independent of the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, free from having to sell other movies. After the middle-of-the-road response to Avengers: Age of Ultron, Marvel has to prove that they can balance a large cast of characters effectively. Sure, the pulled it off in the first Avengers movie, but now there's twice as many characters to cram into one movie (including Spider-Man's Marvel debut which, I suspect, will be a post credits scene). The only other time we've seen so many superpowers on the screen at the same time is probably Fox's X-Men movies and it's arguable that was way too many.

Also, there's the little matter of the Black Panther. We didn't get much to go on, but judging from what we're given, the Panther seems to be fighting on Iron Man's side against the Winter Soldier. I hypothesized a long time ago that he might appear to bring Bucky to justice for some former Hydra crimes committed against Wakanda. It's entirely possible that they might set Bucky up as being T'Challa's father's killer while he was brainwashed by Hydra, adding to Cap's whole "Bucky's a changed man" thing. Black Panther is such a long hyped character that we've waited for, I'm going to say that, to make the fans happy, T'Challa is going to have to dole out no less than three ass whuppings. The first is to prove that his fighting prowess is comparable to Cap (who has taken on Georges St. Pierre Da Gawd), the second is prove that he can take on Bucky, who has stood toe to toe with Captain America himself. The third is just for awesomeness' sake.

Meanwhile, This Week In Movie Stuff....The new Dawn of Justice trailer debuted and umm...I don't know if they grade trailers on Rotten Tomatoes, but if they did, the general public so far would have rated this one somewhere between Alex Cross and Stealth. Personally, I feel like the trailer is taking it in the teeth a little worse than it deserves. The whole thing was "meh" and for some reason, people in this 0 to 100 culture have decided that "meh" immediately equates to bad and it really doesn't.

I WILL say that the trailer shows way too much of the plotline even though most of us had guessed the plot long before we saw any trailer. "Heroes don't get along, they get manipulated, they fight, they join forces to beat manipulator." That's a long standing trope of superhero lore that has carried this whole Batman/Superman rivalry for ages now. So, I don't understand why fans are pretending like they're disappointed as if they didn't at least entertain the notion that this was where the movie was going. Part of the backlash is very clearly due to the underlying notion among the collective consciousness that Marvel is basically reigning supreme over this film genre and DC is desperate to play catch-up (I mean, they are), so in many ways, it's become cool to piss on DC. At the same time, I guess they're making it easy, so there's that.

My comic reviews for the week on Star Wars, Invincible Iron Man and Cyborg are up and available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing pleasure. And don't forget the latest page of my ongoing webcomic series, Neverland: The Untold.

Anatomy of a Comic: So You Wanna Write a Shitty Crossover Event.....

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Okay, so usually, if it comes down to the Big Two, I commonly prefer Marvel crossover events to DC's. Usually, even when they're not great, they're fun reads for the moment (absolutely excluding Age of Ultron). Original Sin is trying, but it's not succeeding. In fact, I will go as far as saying that it is indeed failing. Mike Deodato's artwork is probably the one prevailing awesome is this series, but as far as plot and marketing, I don't understand what this book is going for. It's been a very schizophrenic title thus far. Sometimes, it's a murder mystery....and then it's 28 pages of characters not liking each other....then it's The Secret History of the Secret History of Nick Fury. There's one more issue to go and I still don't understand the point of this book.

-The first problem with this week's issue? The cover:

Daredevil is on this cover....but Daredevil is NOT IN THIS BOOK! He's really not even very involved in the Original Sin event at all with the exception of the big scene where everyone's secrets get revealed or something. It's not even as if it's some kind of quirky "Deadpool Is On Every Cover This Month Because It's Quirky But It's Really Obnoxious" kind of thing. He's just on the cover....for some reason. In a crossover event, every single aspect of the cover (or, really any comic) should be symbolic of or selling you on something taking place IN the book.

-This issue spent a lot of time in flashbacks to tell us that The Orb, Exterminatrix and Dr. Midas are the bad guys in this book. This would be awesome....if we hadn't already known they were the bad guys in this book since the second issue. In fact, was their being in this book at all wasn't very exciting. I mean, Dr. Midas turning things to gold was kinda cool but other than that, these are NOT memorable characters by any stretch of the imagination. In a crossover title, even a shitty character should stick with you. With the right writer, even a stopped clock can be right twice a day. Take DC's Identity Crisis, for example.....

Dr. Light is, for the most part, a shitty villain (I can't possibly be the only person who thinks of Mega Man when I hear his name) and was largely a plot device to facilitate this faction of the Justice League crossing the line in dealing with him, but he's still memorable. He was set up properly without having to involve him in a tie-in somewhere else. His attack on Sue Dibny didn't exactly feel forced (though, to this day, I don't agree it should have gone that far). This is how you create a memorable moment for a bad guy in a big event even when your bad guy sucks.

-So, this big fight with Nick Fury....Aside from Thor, Falcon and Iron Man, should the Avengers be able to maneuver so well in zero gravity?

-Has anyone else noticed that Moon Knight isn't very....Moon Knight-ish? Don't get me wrong. I understand that big companies like Marvel aren't always some well oiled machine between creative talent so, yeah, I get that one hand doesn't usually know what the other hand's doing. But when you have such a memorable incarnation of Moon Knight as the one Warren Ellis has left us with (Brian Wood's got a hell of a challenge following him up), you usually want to incorporate at least SOME pieces of that version in a high profile crossover title.

Come on. Look at this boss!!!

Imagine this guy, Mr. Knight standing in the presence of all these heroes in an all while business suit taking cues from the vengeance god Khonshu (think Norman Osborn in Dark Avengers hearing "the Goblin"). Now, that would make for an interesting addition to this mix of this unlikely (if you don't consider that a lot of either have a movie or are going to have one) cast of characters. Speaking of which....

-This makes (correct me if I'm wrong) the fourth issue where at least half of this large cast is just standing around in a room not liking each other and not understanding what's going on although, in their defense, neither do I. You could have possibly gotten away with this when it was Nick Fury explaining that he's a Secret Guy Whose Secret Is That He Has Secrets, but come on. I mean, you've got guys like the world's best mass murderer (Punisher), space renegades (Gamora and Rocket Raccoon), a super spy type (Winter Soldier) and a guy whose specialty is shrinking small enough to remain out of sight. No way would they have a big fight with Nick Fury robots, be seen with Nick Fury who, for right now, looks like The Bad Guy, not help the Avengers.....and just stay at the scene of the fight, talking.

In a crossover event with a cast this big that affects the rest of your universe, it's okay to move around a little bit. DC's 52 was a good exercise in this point. Granted, I acknowledge that they had a LOT more issues to execute this with, but every aspect of the ongoing story had time to breathe and get its proper development. Much like Game of Thrones, the story was never in a hurry to get back to one thing or the other.

-Did Nick Fury say "goodbye" to Captain America and fly away with the Watcher's eyes just to go to the moonbase....which is basically a few miles from the goddamned space station? Where he knocked Thor (who, despite not having his hammer, is still really strong and pissed off) and the Hulk to? What the fucking fuck?

-It's the 7th issue in an 8 issue series and I'm still not sure what the point of any of this is. In a crossover event, your purpose should be laid out clearly early on. Hell, it should be the reason we pick up the first issue. Civil War...superheroes fighting over the morality of government oversight in superheroism. Secret Invasion....nobody trusts anyone during an alien invasion. Siege....deposing a villain who wants to be a dictator. Original Sin....umm....ummm.....

Of course, the point of this could very well also just stop at "Because It's Crossover Event Season" too. That's a possibility.