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 6/24/15

So, this week, it was announced that Marvel (and Sony) chose Tom Holland to play Spider-Man in the upcoming reboot and the next Captain America movie. For those of us keeping track, that makes three Spider Man reboots in 15 years. Two more before 2020 and Sony gets a free Subway sandwich but I digress. Clearly, by the look of him, Marvel has been mandated to appeal to Big Brother Disney's potential viewers with a SUPER young fresh face. It's actually kind of amazing that the superhero movie genre has come to a point where fans (and probably Marvel) are excited about Marvel actually getting to lay real creative hands on their own flagship character after almost 20 years of just being the hired help like DC is to Warner Bros.

Also, Marvel confirmed the theme for Season 3 of Agents of SHIELD is "Secret Warriors" which makes complete sense now that we know Skye's whole storyline has been essentially setting her up as Daisy "Quake" Johnson from the comics. You know, "Agents" is a show that has evolved in style and quality over the past two seasons quite nicely....better than its early detractors want to admit. The show does a good job of taking storylines that the movies might take too much time to develop and making them their own. And then there are times when they give you a piecemeal version of a story the movies are almost definitely going to revisit (Civil War, Inhumans) as a way of testing the waters or at least watering fan appetites for later. It's going to be very interesting to see how they modify Brian Bendis' old Secret Warriors story.

As per usual, my weekly comic reviews (this week, it's Planet Hulk) are available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing pleasure. Feel free to like, comment and/or share at your discretion. You know the drill.

Making the Case for Spider Verse....

It has come to my attention that some of you Spider-Man fans out there are not reading Spider Verse. I am encouraging those people to break themselves of this habit immediately. Now, I know SM fans (myself being one of them) tend to be divisive in their ideas of what makes a quality Spider-Man story, but I encourage you to give this one a shot no matter what side of the fence you're on.

1). Nostalgic Value: Every other beat calls back to the fun ridiculousness of the 90s animated series. As a matter of fact, the plot itself calls back to the final episodes of the series where Spider-Man had been chosen to lead an army of Spider-Men against (I shit you not) Spider-Carnage. Oh, it was delightfully silly. Basically, Peter was the only Spider-Man with enough compassion and caring for his fellow man to realize that all Spider-Carnage needed was to see Uncle Ben again and he would give up trying to destroy all of creation. I'm not kidding, by the way. Peter went and got Uncle Ben from another dimension and defeated Carnage with Love. Granted, Spider Verse deals with a far more vicious bad guy from the JMS era of Amazing Spider Man, but yeah, it's a lot of fun.

2). Dan Slott: He's quickly becoming the guy who takes a premise that should be really stupid and making it work because of the unique voice he brings to the project. Last year, I was at the head of the "Superior Spider Man Sucks" Chorus, going off about how it was a travesty and how Marvel was out of ideas blah blah blah, but the second half of the series (that dealt mainly with the war of the Goblins and Norman Osborn basically tearing down New York) really turned things around in showing that shit goes wrong when Peter Parker isn't Spider Man. If Slott can change MY mind, he can change anyone's mind.


3). The Art: Oliver Copiel is at the absolute top of his game here. Shut up and look at this gorgeous panels!

4). The Themes: The thing I personally find to be the most interesting that didn't happen in the animated series (see #1) is that instead of power and responsibility being the thing that makes 616 Peter so special, it's the thing that links all the Spiders together. It's their nature. It essentially MAKES them Spiders in the same way willpower and fearlessness makes Hal Jordan a Green Lantern. Their foes, the Inheritors basically have everything they have because they took it by force because they could. Even their name "Inheritors" implies that power is something they're supposed to have just because. "Might makes right" is their nature.

5). It's the best event Marvel's had in a while: I loved Infinity and ever since, Marvel's crossovers and tie-ins (except the Trial of Jean Grey) have been pretty questionable. X-Men's Battle of the Atom was awesome and so many things to love right up until you figured out it had absolutely no point. Original Sin is probably the WORST crossover event I've ever read. There were eight issues and at least three of them were a bunch of superheroes standing in a room either a). listening to a story or b). responding to the story they just heard. And Avengers/X-Men: Axis is a traveshmockery. My editor over at Black Nerd Problems, Will Evans and I split review duties on this book and every time it comes up on the assignment list, we both cringe like it's our turn to mow the lawn. Spider Verse takes place away from any other happenings in the Marvel Universe and so it doesn't suffer from too many shoehorned personalities that the story doesn't need unlike Axis and its Deadpool fetish.

Spider Verse isn't just another event. It's not even just The Best Event Marvel Has Right Now. So far, at least as far as the 21st century is concerned (showing much respect to the greats like Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and so forth in the 20th century), this book makes the case for Spider-Man. I can't speak for All Fans Everywhere, but that's why I think Spider Verse at least deserves a shot from anyone who fancies themselves a fan. Then again, I could be wrong.

When Creator Credit Matters

I'm going to regret this, but I get approached in public with questions and topic pitches enough that I'm taking them as serious requests to discuss here in the blog.

So, a coworker and I were talking comics and Rob Liefeld's name came up. My coworker asked, as many people (including myself) do, how he keeps getting work. I corrected him by saying that, in fairness, he only keeps getting work with DC because they're the main ones that keep banking on him against all odds (If you need proof, ALL of his New 52 books failed within 8 issues at the beginning of the reboot). As far as Marvel goes, he doesn't do much for them anymore but then again, he doesn't really have to when he keeps beating his chest about how he created Cable and Deadpool.

So, this left my coworker wondering: Does laying claim to being "the creator of..." really hold a lot of weight in comics? And it's a good question. After all, the praise fans shower comic creators with doesn't necessarily translate in every industry the same way. Just ask 90% of game developers.

Honestly, depending on who you ask in the comic industry itself, you might even get mixed answers there, too.

So I contacted DC about the mistaken "created by" credit on Vibe. Helpfully, they're removing the "created by" credit entirely.
— Gerry Conway (@gerryconway) February 22, 2013

(Before I go on, let me take this moment to say that in terms of compensation and publishers' treatment of their talent, creator credit should ALWAYS matter and that DC treatment of Gerry Conway in this case is indefensible. There's just no two ways about it. However, what we're discussing the semantics of how much it should/shouldn't matter from a reader's perspective.)

Now, my coworker isn't necessarily a die-hard comic reader, but from the outside looking in, his question is completely valid. After all, let's say I create a character that ends up having some minimal success if any at all. Someone else like Scott Snyder comes along, completely retools every aspect of my character and suddenly, it's a huge success and a household name. Do I still get lay claim to being the pioneer in this situation?

Answer: Sure, but not really. In other words, if my character ends up being a cartoon, do I have the right to have my name under the creator credits? Absolutely. Without question. Unless, of course, the studio decides to say something like "based on story written by Scott Snyder" so they can directly credit the mind behind the version people actually liked.

For the ideal situation, let's take Spider-Man. Even in uninitiated circles, you'd have to go pretty far and wide to find someone who didn't know that Stan Lee created Spider-Man. No matter who else writes him and receives tons of well deserved praise for their take on the character (Dan Slott, JMS, Brian Bendis), Stan Lee is the heart and soul of Spider-Man. Why, you ask? Because no matter what changes they made to him or what different avenues, they take him down (give him Spider Cancer, magic totem powers, give his life to kill Norman Osborn, Doctor Spiderpus, selling his marriage to Satan, whatever), all of those stories usually wrap with Spider-Man, perhaps a little wiser and worn for the experience, going back to factory settings. As in "how Stan Lee intended him."

You can even repeat this with Superman. Yeah, we all know he's had a few breaks from the norm

Now, let's plug Rob Liefeld in this formula. Liefeld will forever be tied to Cable and Deadpool mainly because he himself will never let us forget that he created Cable and Deadpool. But as many hands as Deadpool has been in, can we really say that the character as we know him now (basically, the Daffy Duck of Marvel Comics) compared to his first appearances in X-Force and New Mutants really what Liefeld seemed to have in mind? I don't know because I'm not actually in Rob Liefeld's mind, but it sure doesn't seem like it. In fact, speaking of X-Force, another one of Liefeld's brain children, if you look at the line up, their purpose, really anything about them....does the X-Force most people know X-Force to be look anything like the one Liefeld started us off with? Probably not.

So all in all, does being "the creator of..." really matter? Answer: It depends. (Unless you're Rob Liefeld, in which case, not really)

The Movie Spider Man Problem

So, after writing my review for The Amazing Spider-Man 2, I then went out in the internets to read reactions to the film and, as predicted, it proved to be as divisive (if not moreso) than Man of Steel was among nerds. They either a). walked away entertained while totally aware of the film's more glaring issues or b). eager to forget the whole thing ever happened. Both are fair reactions to have. After all, it's every bit as understandable that someone would be taken with Andrew Garfield's performance enough give the rest of the movie a pass as it is that some people won't be able to get past Dubstep Electro and Kinda Green Goblin getting maybe five minutes of fight time.

But the ending put something about the movie franchise as a whole into focus that could possibly be a bit off-putting for some old school Spider-Man loyalists on a subconscious level (I say "subconsciously" because I can't say I've actually ever heard this complaint from anyone watching the movies....just a conjecture) that makes some of the goofy moments that much more goofy. I submit that there's a good chance we might not ever see the kind of Spider-Man story the source material whores want to see.

"Well, damn, Oz! Why the hell not?" Good question. One thing that was more overt in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 than any other movies is that Spidey is BELOVED in New York City. I mean, there are at least three cinematic instances I can think of where a Spider-Man fight was a public event akin to street dancers on the subway as opposed to what it would REALLY be which is people fleeing in terror, most of them not even knowing what they're running from other things exploding. The first movie showed people flinging trash at the Green Goblin, claiming the webslinger as one of their own. Spider-Man 2 featured a subway car full of people crowd surfing him with his arms like Christ. Spider-Man 3 had a parade in Peter's honor as well as a day named for him.

Anyone who keeps up with the comics could probably see how strange this is. It's pretty much standard operating procedure in the comics that Spider-Man is, at best, tolerated by the status quo. There are moments even when he's saved the day, he doesn't get it 100% right and people hate him for it. Of course, this is in keeping the overall moral of a Spider-Man comic that sometimes it sucks to do the right thing and people might hate you for doing the right thing, but do the right thing anyway because it's right and it beats being a terrible person. In fact, the only time I can remember people adoring him the way they do in the movies is during the Superior Spider-Man when Doctor Octopus Spidey was almost constantly applauded for being an Extinction Level Douchebag (which is part of why 75% of that book was a stupid idea).

There's only two applicable reasons I could fathom for this.

1). Given the fact that Sony exclusively owns the movie rights to Spider-Man means that it exists in a different universe as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That means he and the Avengers don't exist together. In other words, in the New York he occupies, there's no such thing as the Avengers....so he's the only superhero the people have ever seen. So, sure, it might make sense that he'd be something of a rock star.

2). (And this is really the more important thing to pay attention to.) More than ten years later, a post 9/11 Hollywood will always be hesitant...and rightfully so...to depict an apathetic, rude New York that treats its heroes as anything other than heroes. I get that this is a weird criticism, but consider Movie New York over the years.

I apologize in advance, but this is the second time in the life of this blog that I have to explain Ghostbusters II. This is the movie where an evil painting was filling the sewers with slime that made people into hateful jerks while slowly plunging New York into the eighth level of Hell (or Dallas, depending on who you ask). When the Ghostbusters came to the Mayor, making an impassioned plea to take action, this was the result.....


For me, this is pretty much the poster child for how New York was portrayed in television and cinema before some assholes threw a plane at a building and took countless lives, a day that most of us will probably not forget. This happened so close to the first Spider-Man film that they had to go back and delete the Twin Towers from the posters and certain scenes.

Odds are good we'll probably not see a movie anytime soon where a guy saves hundreds of people from a guy throwing exploding jack o' lanterns or a guy made out of sand only to have trash thrown at his head while he's being called a bum.

Because, as cynical as this generation can be, mainstream moviegoers want to see heroes win. (This is probably why Watchmen had such mixed reactions from people. It's hard to sell people a superhero movie that's primarily about failure.) They want them to be loved because, ultimately, they're blank slates for the viewer. They want to be able to paste themselves the point of superheroes is to give us some semblance of hope that doing the right thing can have a semi-happy ending.

Unless, of course, you're Batman. Because Batman doesn't give a fuck if you like him.

Well, The Amazing Spider Man 2....Umm...Happened.

The fanboys are going to have to start learning to live with one inescapable fact: Spider-Man belongs to Sony and the suits would rather lob off their own pinkies in a fit of cocaine induced rage before ever giving him back to Marvel. It will not happen. So, the dreams of a Spider-Man/Avengers cinematic team are just that: a pipe dream that will come to fruition around the same time the Dallas Cowboys win another Super Bowl (that's code for "Never").

I say all that to say that Marc Webb's follow up to 2012's "The Amazing Spider-Man" is probably the most that comic culture can ask for out of Sony's crack team of writers and producers which, judging by the amount of characters and conflicts crammed into 2.5 hours, must be legion. Civilian (non-nerd) moviegoers will almost certainly adore this visually arresting romp. Comic loyalists will be ridiculously divided. I remember sitting in the theater, seeing an unforgivably goofy moment in which Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) saves three different people out of a frenzied stampede of hundreds from certain electrocution using his only functioning web-shooter and I could practically hear the true geeks groaning in unison. However, if they get past their perennial inability to share with mainstream audiences, this actually ends up being a somewhat decent addition to the webslinger's adventures.

The movie opens up with us seeing Peter Parker fully embracing his whimsical personal as Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, loved by the city (most of it, anyway) and loathed by crooks. Meanwhile, in his civilian life, he remains tormented by Captain George Stacy (Denis Leary) who, with his dying breath in the first film, made Pete promise to keep his daughter, Gwen (Emma Stone) out of his death defying adventures. This probably fucks with him so mainly because of their resolve to ignore the Captain's orders. This is easily the most compelling narrative of the film since it involves two of the best performances. Stone's Gwen is brainy and confident which makes her an adequate leading lady for Garfield, the eight cylinder engine powering this movie, who really gets to show off as the fully realized Wallcrawler we didn't get nearly enough of in the previous film, a witty Spidey that wisecracks through pummeling bad guys to hide his inner turmoil, stumbling through the consequences being Spider-Man has on his personal life.

Shoehorned into the narrative was Peter's continuing search for answers concerning the disappearance of his parents (Campbell Scott, Embeth Davidtz) when he was a little boy. This felt like a rush job that led to a). a heartwarming scene between Peter and his struggling Aunt May (Sally Field) and b). a "sins of their fathers" plotline to link him to his long lost childhood friend Harry Osborn (a creepy, slightly emo Dane DeHaan), whose ailing father, Norman (Chris Cooper), owns Oscorp, the mega-conglomerate that Peter's father worked at. The movie makes no bones about painting Oscorp as NOTHING but the sum total of every "evil empire" ever imagined from which nothing good is derived.

They don't even have appropriate health insurance, evident by Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx), a dorky Spidey-obsessed employee who has an unfortunate spill into a vat of electric eels (I shit you not) and becomes the villainous Electro. Foxx did what he could with what the writers gave him, but he has so much natural charisma, he wears the nerd facade about as well as the Roach from Men in Black wore human skin.

Oh, and there's Paul Giamatti as the Rhino, who feels about as "Aww shucks" and comically throw-away as Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow from the Dark Knight films. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we see him in later films getting beaten up for about ten minutes before Garfield goes on to face whoever his main threat ends up being.

Spidey has his work cut out for him as did Webb, who tried his absolute damnedest to tie all these conflicts together in a neat bow. He doesn't necessarily fail, but the script's Frankenstein-like stitches are definitely apparent. Although, in fairness, it's clearer in this movie than it was in the previous one that the faults aren't necessarily his fault. It's obvious that this car was already fresh off the assembly line and that he was just the driver. Although this movie is at its strongest when it's highlighting the internal conflicts of its major players, the battles still pack plenty of punch with enough "holyshitareyoufuckingkiddingme" moments that really show off why our hero is utterly BELOVED by the citizens of New York (to the dismay of some comic loyalists).

Bottom Line: Is it perfect? NO. Is it better than the first one? Possibly. Will EVERYONE be happy? Hell No. Will it entertain the majority? Most likely. In that regard, it was pretty okay. A mixed bag...but there's nothing wrong with that. 7.5 out of 10

The Art of Snapping or Maybe Cyclops WAS Right.....

I'm apologizing in advance because I have to talk about Ghostbusters II for a second. In Ghostbusters II, Bill Murray and company had to fight a demonic overlord trapped in a painting who was dumping slime into the sewers that turned all of New York into assholes who are awful to each other for no reason (though I'm still not sure how he did that from inside of a painting). Basically, he meant to take over the world by turning NYC in the center of all evil. In other words, Dallas. Watching this movie as a kid has clearly affected my state of mind now because it is my genuine belief that comment sections online are basically the focal point of all digital evil on the World Wide Web. Having said all that, sometimes, when I'm on the internet reading articles and I'm feeling very adventurous, I'll put on my hazmat suit and dive into random comment sections. Why, you ask? Because fuck it, that's why?

Anyway, one of the biggest criticisms I've read this year in comment sections and message boards is about the direction in which Marvel has taken Cyclops and it got me thinking about why. I mean, Marvel's whole thing is that their characters tend to live a little closer to the human condition of the everyman while a lot of DC characters tend to be more static archetypes. Even though Uncanny X-Men is, thus far, serving a purpose similar to Dark Avengers from a few years back during the "Dark Reign" event, Cyclops didn't " go bad" necessarily.

You're Scott Summers. You haven't looked anyone in the eye since you hit puberty. You've been raised by a kind, well-meaning man who wishes for peace between humans and mutants while training you to fight giant robot death machines since you were 15 years old. You're basically the quintessential All-American captain of the football team for mutantkind. As time goes on and you grow into an adult, people from the future you've been taught to fight for come to the present day and basically tell you that you eventually fail. You watch your wife (who is basically your high school sweetheart) silently fawn over your hairy, homicial teammate. That same wife died, came back to life as a world-swallowing space god, died and came back to life and died AGAIN. Eventually, the race of people you're sworn to protect are magically dwindled down to barely enough to reach full capacity at Chick-Fil-A. Now, you're an endangered species living an island that's pretty much a reservation. At some point, that same world swallowing space god possesses you and you convince yourself that you're righting your dead wife's wrong by healing the world. Then, it drives you power mad and you kill Charles Xavier, your only father figure, in cold blood and you're thrown in jail. Cyclops didn't "turn evil." He snapped. Plain and simple.

It's not even a new phenomenon in Marvel. Take the Ultimate Universe, for example. Early on in Ultimate Spider-Man, Nick Fury confessed to having a file on Peter Parker because with everything that had happened to him and his family over the years (father killed in a Hulk attack, father's best friend's son becomes Venom, Uncle Ben, Norman Osborn, etc.), he was the most likely to snap and become the next big supervillain. Of course, Ultimate Peter Parker didn't snap. In fact, he went on to die in the service of not snapping and being exactly the kind of guy Uncle Ben wanted him to be (although I can't help but wonder if that's because Black Fury also said "When you turn 18, you're mine"....turns out that guy's a lying piece of shit in EVERY dimension). Meanwhile, Ultimate Reed Richards had endured equally fucked up circumstances (piece of shit father, being responsible for unintentionally wiping out another dimension, turning his best friends into a monster, his girlfriend being an indecisive ass, Doom, etc.) and, while nobody was looking, turned into the next big supervillain, almost wiping out humanity at least twice. You don't necessarily like or forgive the character for it, but you get it.

The same thing applies for others like the Norman and Harry Osborn, whose Green Goblin incarnations are completely about regular people just plain losing it in the face of bad shit happening. Brian Michael Bendis' run on Daredevil, which has turned out to be one of the most definitive eras in DD history other than Frank Miller's, is entirely the story of what happens when Matt Murdock has pretty much the worst time of his life (unable to cope with his girlfriend's death, secret identity outed to the press, Bullseye's return, declaring himself Kingpin of Hell's Kitchen, disbarred and thrown in prison, etc.) and being utterly unable to cope with the black hole his life had become.

You see it in real life all the time. Kanye West's evolution is pretty much the best real-life example I can think of when I think about what a hero-to-villain transformation looks like, but that's a whole other post.

Have you ever known someone before a relationship and seen them AFTER a breakup? After the death of a loved one? Post-traumatic stress is more present in America than its probably ever been. Often times, soldiers come home from war changed by their experiences and understandably so. Their job is literally to get shot at so you don't have to. Now, compare that to "superheroism." People who get shot at and attacked by all kinds of unthinkable supervillain shit every single day are bound to be deeply affected and changed in the wake of what they've seen.

No, seriously....WHY hasn't Marvel made
these shirts? You're leaving money on the
table, Marvel.

Having a major character go through a major change like that isn't necessarily always a perversion of who he or she was meant to be. Sometimes, it's the next logical step. It's evolution. Sometimes, people just snap. Comic book characters shouldn't have to be immune.