Incredible Hulk Trailer
April 30, 2008 | 1 Comment
A new trailer came out for the Incredible Hulk movie today. When they first cast Ed Norton as Bruce Banner, I was intrigued by this movie. Frankly I’m not a big Hulk fan, but Norton brings some serious acting chops to the character. The first trailer looked good, but didn’t reveal much about the storyline.
This trailer comes in and shows a well established plot with love, conflict, and characterization. Hulk/Banner seems to be getting a more robust story line with motivations you can relate to. This raises my interest from curious to full excitement.
Tags: comic book, comics, ed norton, hulk, incredible hulk, liv tyler, movie, trailer, trailers
Fantastic Four 2 Rise of the Silver Surfer: TV Spot
February 27, 2007 | 1 Comment
This sweet TV ad ran during Monday night’s Heroes episode. There are multiple indirect references to Galactus leading us to hope he will in fact make his debut in this film. I am now more excited about this movie than I ever would have expected.
Tags: comic, comic book, fantastic four, Galactus, heroes, movie, Rise of the Silver Surfer, Silver Surfer, tv ad, tv spot
Feedback Wins; Comic and Movie Coming Soon!
September 3, 2006 | 7 Comments
Feedback (aka Matthew Atherton) won this past week on Who Wants To Be A Superhero?. I had originally thought this reality TV show was going to be laughably terrible, but in the end I found it to be quite endearing.
In the end, Feedback certainly would have been my choice as well. He was a good person with honest interest in superhero’s ad well as the character traits that make a good superhero or good person. His boyish excitement about each and every step and challenge during the show was fun to watch. Major Victory was a close second in my book, but I was not excited to have Fat Momma as my next Stan Lee authored comic adventure.
I’m surprised to find myself looking forward to another season of this show. In the meantime I’ll be watching for both the Feedback comic from Dark Horse and the Sci-Fi Network movie.
Tags: character, comic, comic book, comics, dark horse, feedback, Matthew Atherton, movie, scifi, superhero stan lee
The Amazing Screw-On Head
August 28, 2006 | Leave a Comment
I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed the movie Hellboy. It was not overly well received, but was entirely entertaining from my perspective. Since then, I’ve been lightly following Mike Mignola’s work. Frankly I need to read more of his comics… but my attention was caught when Keith told me about Sci-Fi’s The Amazing Screw-On Head.
The pilot is available on their site for free. The story is around Lincoln’s top spy, Screw-On Head (yes, that Lincoln). The plot of the pilot is summarized on the site:
When arch-fiend Emperor Zombie steals an artifact that will enable him to threaten all life on Earth, the task of stopping him is assigned to Screw-on Head. Fortunately, Screw-On Head is not alone on this perilous quest. He is aided by his multitalented manservant, Mr. Groin, and by his talking canine cohort, Mr. Dog.
Can this unorthodox trio stop Emperor Zombie in time? Does Screw-On Head have a body awesome enough to stop the horrors that have been unleashed? Where can we get a talking dog?
My reaction to the pilot, flippin’ bizarre. The humor is witty and all over the place. The animation appears to be ripped straight out of any of Mignola’s work. This show is entirely unique. This is not a show for everyone, but I think I’d quickly grow to love it. If you are up for 20 minutes of funny, bizarre and shocking, go watch the pilot and keep an eye out for a regular series on Sci-Fi.
Tags: amazing screw-on head, bizarre, comic book, comics, hellboy, mignola, mike mignola, pilot, sci-fi, video
Ms. Marvel - A Great New Series
August 1, 2006 | 5 Comments
Female protagonist heroes generally stand out for me as favorites. I’m not sure if writers are trying to reach female audiences by spending a lot of time on character of female heroes, or if they just take a more tender approach to these powerful women. Any way you figure it, I can’t help but like almost every female hero Marvel has presented me with in the last few years. With this in mind, I was immediately intrigued by Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers) when she had a cameo in New Avengers. Her positioning as a reluctant and somewhat unsuccessful hero left me wanting to know more about her.
I hurriedly picked up the Giant Sized Ms. Marvel one-shot which explained some good back story, and was the direct lead-in for her new series. Since then I’ve been following the new series and it has been wonderful.
I decided to look into where this character had come from, learning that this is Marvel’s second attempt at a series. The first series ran 23 issues in the late 1970s. The Giant-Size Ms Marvel features a few of the classic stories which highlighted a lot of overlap with classic Spider-Man characters including J Jonah Jameson and Mary Jane Watson. The writer at the end of her first series was X-Men legend Chris Claremont. Shockingly, Claremont had originally planned on using Ms Marvel instead of Jean Grey for what later became the classic Dark Phoenix series.
Enough of the classic series… The new series is written by Brian Reed, penciled by Roberto De La Torre, and colored by Chris Sottomayor. Ms. Marvel is back with cosmic-like powers. Her primary power is to absorb and manipulate all forms of energy, in addition to this she can fly, is resistant to injury and has superhuman strength. Yet, with all this power, Carol Danvers is still self conscious and personable. You just can’t help but like her.
One of my favorite things about the new series are the frequent guest appearances. So far we’ve seen: Jessica Jones, Captain America, Tony Stark/Iron Man, The Fantastic Four, and Doctor Strange. It would appear that they are setting up a bit of a romantic relationship between Carol and Doctor Strange. It’ll be fun to see how that plays out. They set Jessica Jones up as her best friend which has already played out as important as they are on differing sides of the Civil War.
I also appreciate that Ms. Marvel is drawn somewhat realistically (excluding covers). Certainly she is a very attractive woman with a great figure, but that’s true even of the actors and actresses we see… My point is that she is drawn with idealized dimensions, but at least she shouldn’t be overtly insulting or degrading to women.
She is about to become involved with Civil War in the next issue (#6). Carol is being recruited to startup and manage a super hero training camp. As an ex-Avenger, Tony Stark feels he can trust her to properly train the more amateur of heroes who are registering. Others involved in training include Wonder Man and Arachne, formerly Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter).
I’d love to see them consider this for production as a film. It seems like it would be an easy and appealing project. Especially if they could keep the feel of an entangled universe by throwing a couple cameos from some other successful Marvel properties.
I’ve even convinced Sara to start reading this series. I’m hoping this will be a series which can be as successful as Spider-Girl and hang around for 100+ issues.
Tags: arachne, Brian Reed, captain america, carol danvers. jessica jones, chris claremont, Chris Sottomayor, comic book, comic books, comics, doctor strange, fantastic four, heroine, iron man, Jean Grey, julia carpenter, marvel, ms marvel, Roberto De La Torre, spider-woman, super hero, tony stark, wonder man
Who Wants To Be A Superhero?
July 9, 2006 | 3 Comments
Premiering July 27th on SCI FI Channel is Stan Lee’s new 6 episode reality series “Who Wants To Be A Superhero?” at 9PM.
The basic premise is that a bunch of hopefuls will show up in self-made costumes and strut their stuff as a character of their creation. “Lucky” finalists will leave their “normal” lives and compete 24/7 to prove they have what it takes to be true super heroes. They’ll each be tested for courage, integrity, self-sacrifice, compassion, and resourcefulness — all traits that every true superhero must possess.
In the end, one aspiring superhero will be declared the winner of this six-week competition. They will walk away with their character immortalized in a new comic book created by Stan Lee himself and the winning character will also appear in an original SCI FI Channel movie…
I’m a crazy rabid comics fan, but this seems a bit out there even for me. I poked around in the initial gallery of hopefuls and just like American Idol, the real entertainment here may be in seeing who shows up to compete. Everybody loves a train wreck…
Tags: charater, comic, comic book, comic character, comics, sci-fi, science fiction, scifi, stan lee, super hero, superhero, television, tv, Who Wants To Be A Superhero
Religious Affiliation of Comic Book Super-heroes
June 24, 2006 | 5 Comments
This site compiled an extremely detailed and well researched list of comic book super-heroes and their associated religious affiliations. Fairly interesting to me that so many actually have affiliations. I’m also amazed at how well diversified the hero population seems to be.
As for Spider-Man/Peter Parker, I always felt as though he was protestant, but I couldn’t put a finger on it. Seeing all the evidence clearly laid out was an interesting viewing. The image included above comes from Amazing Spider-Man #494. “>The scene occurs as Peter and Mary Jane reunite after a temporary seperation. This scene strikes deeply for me considering the current talk that MJ may get killed in or as a result of Civil War. Personally I hope this doesn’t happen. Between The Other and deciding to unmask, Peter is going through enough.
Tags: comic book, comic books, comics, mary jane, mary jane killed, mj, protestant, religion, religious, spider-man, spiderman, super hero, wife