You Can't Keep a Good Dead Avenger Down...

This blog is very much like Marvel these days, we can't have too many Avengers.

The above cover (nicely rendered by Tom Grummett) is for something called Chaos War: Dead Avengers.

Genius.

You have your Avengers, your New Avengers, your Secret Avengers, your Young Avengers, your Pet Avengers, your Ultimate Avengers (not to mention Avengers Next running around, cartoon Avengers in the offing, and rumors of Cosmic Avengers)...how silly of me not to have considered the possibility of having your Dead Avengers shaking the old dust off to do some more Assemblin' for old times' sake...like I said, genius.

Both Marvel and DC have hit upon a formula that suits them well...why bother trying to come up with a bunch of new ideas that people won't care about or buy when you can just milk your existing franchises until you've sucked all of the life out of them? And, much more importantly, you can suck as much money out of the pockets of the fans of the franchises as you can (before those fans get fed up and starting spending that disposable income on hookers, blow, and iPhone apps instead of comic books.)

(Is it too early to put in a request for Black'n'Blue Avengers? Black Panther, Black Widow, Black Knight, Blue Marvel, and, if they could get the rights, Blue Man Group would make a kick-ass Avengers team...)

Avengers Assemble...um...again...

And the buildup to 2012's Avengers movie continues with this fall's animated series from Disney, Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. It's got the original Avengers along with teases of Captain America, Hawkeye, and the Black Panther plus tons of villains, Nick Fury and SHIELD, and all that jazz.

Could be cool.

Avengers Assemble! (Yeah, we'll wait...)

14. For the first 110 issues of the series (roughly 1963-1973) Marvel’s premier super-hero team, the Avengers, managed to get by with just 14 official members (and that number includes 3 “blink and you’ll miss ‘em” members: The Hulk, the Swordsman, and the Black Knight.)

14 Avengers (the others were, of course: Thor, Iron Man, the many faces of Hank Pym, the Wasp, Captain America, the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Hawkeye, Hercules, the Black Panther, and the Vision) during the course of a decade’s worth of issues (mostly written by two guys: Roy Thomas and Stan Lee)…kind of an exclusive club and that was pretty cool.

Since that time though just about every writer who has come on the book has felt the need to put a personal stamp on the series by adding new faces to the team; a fact which has caused the membership to be something less than exclusive with seemingly dozens of heroes (including a couple of X-Men and three-fourths of the Fantastic Four) carrying Avengers ID cards over the years. There are enough Avengers to fill an auditorium and yet all these writers feel they need to add their pet characters to the mix (as opposed to just drawing from the already incredibly deep bench of formerly active Avengers.)

With the recent announcement that the beloved character Red Hulk would be joining up, the beat goes on.

Hell at this point they might as well just issue every costumed hero in the Marvel Universe an Avengers ID card and tell them “we’ll call you when we need you.”

Don’t get me wrong, I know that some of the later characters have gone on to have distinguished Avenger careers (Beast, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, and Luke Cage come to mind offhand) but just once I’d like to see somebody take over an Avengers title and not feel the need to add somebody new to the already lengthy roster of Avengers.

That’s probably not gonna happen but I, as long time Avengers fan (the book was my first favorite Marvel title back when I started reading comics in the 60’s), I can dream…

14…imagine that…

O Captain, My Captain?

This then is the new Captain America. He doesn't debut until January's Captain America #34 so we won't be sure who is in this shiny uniform (designed by Alex Ross) until then. Bucky Barnes...the Winter Soldier...seems the most likely candidate but we shall see.

The pistol and the knife make it unlikely that it is a resurrected Steve Rogers in the red, white, and blue (and black) togs but, again, we shall see.

Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting have made Captain America an enormously entertaining book even after they killed off the title character (the post-death cast...including The Winter Soldier, The Falcon, Sharon Carter, the Black Widow, Tony Stark, Maria Hill, and Nick Fury...has picked up the slack admirably) so I'm in for the long haul (though I am still hoping and expecting that Steve Rogers will return to the book and the uniform at some point in the future.)

...instant karma's gonna get you, gonna knock you about the head...

Sometimes I’m a petty, petty man.

Ever since they firmly established Iron Man as the deacon of super-dickery during Civil War (yes, I know that ol’ Tony has been campaigning for that title for a long time but his manipulative, duplicitous, and smug actions during CW sealed the deal for him in my mind) I’ve been waiting for him to get a little karma slapped upside his arrogant head.

Asked and answered :-) First, he had his ass handed to him by the Hulk and now (I’m not sure where the new Thor series falls in regards to World War Hulk continuity) he got himself a serious beat down from an unamused thunder god in Thor #3 (our recently revived pal Thor apparently not being at all happy that Stark stole his genetic material and used it to co-create the Thor clone that killed Goliath…go figure.)

I presume that Marvel will at some point set about to rehabilitate the image of the comic book Iron Man/Tony Stark (especially with the movie coming out next year)…though they’ll have a long way to go to get me to see the character as likeable again…but for now I’m jazzed to see Shellhead get punked as hard and as often as possible.

Like I said, sometimes I’m a petty, petty man :-)

Until death...or continuity reboot...do them part...

Rumor has it that the marriage between Peter (Spider-Man) Parker and Mary Jane Watson-Parker is about to come to an end (someway, somehow, it’s comic books they can do whatever they want to get to where they want to be.) If true, I think it’s too bad.

Spider-Man has never been my favorite character…I like him well enough but I don’t follow his solo titles on a regular basis (in fact, I rather prefer him in guest-star, team-up, and team member roles…I think him being an Avenger is extremely cool)…but I was pleased when he and Mary Jane got hitched (yep, ol’ Pete really hit the jackpot there :-) and I think the marriage…through all of its ups and downs…has made the character stronger and more interesting.

It’s been argued by some…including Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada…that the essence of Spider-Man is that he’s a sadsack loser despite the fact he has cool super-powers and a classic costume…that having a happy marriage to a gorgeous redhead (who is an actress and model to boot) is not what his life was supposed to be. I think that’s silly. The idea that the character should be in the same emotional place now that he was in 40+ years ago when Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created him seems absurd to me.

But then I’ve grown up with super-hero comics…I was 9 years old when I got into them seriously…and now that I’m into my 5^th decade I have no problem with characters growing up, growing older, getting married, having kids, yadda, yadda, yadda.

But as someone (I believe it’s attributed to Jim Shooter) once said, super-hero comics from the big 2 are not about change but rather the illusion of change so that they’re always welcoming to new readers (every comic could be somebody’s first comic after all.) I guess that would still make sense if there were hordes of kids taking up the hobby but that just isn’t the case. The audience, for better or worse, is largely adult and (hopefully) able to cope with the fact that characters age and grow…albeit VERY slowly.

Most super-hero marriages come a cropper sooner or later: Aquaman and Mera, Hawkman and Hawkwoman, Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne, the Sub-Mariner and Dorma, the Sub-Mariner and Marrina, the Atom and Jean Loring, the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye and Mockingbird, Donna Troy and Terry Long, Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl (pre-Crisis), the Human Torch and Lyja, and on and on. Through death, continuity reboots, or just plain “irreconcilable differences”, the dissolution rate among super-hero couples is much higher than it is out here in the real world.

Ralph and Sue Dibny, maybe my favorite super-hero couple ever, were ripped asunder in as ugly a way as possible (with having it revealed that Sue was raped by a super-villain in the past and then killed and incinerated by an insane Jean Loring and later Ralph sacrificing himself to contain a demon) and then reunited in the afterlife as ghosts (again, it’s super-hero comics so I guess that qualifies as a happy ending.)

Granted some marriages do endure…that of the Fantastic Four’s Reed and Sue being one that has survived through good times and bad (and hey, their kids are still alive…super-hero offspring don’t usually fare any better than super-hero marriages) with Clark Kent and Lois Lane as another couple that make each other stronger…but they are few and far between.

The Black Panther and Storm were recently married and they seem happy together (at least until some writer comes along and decides that Storm should be back with the X-Men full time) and the union of Luke Cage and Jessica Jones (hey give that kid a name already!) has been interesting and fun so far. Green Arrow and Black Canary are supposedly about to get married but, if it happens, that doesn’t seem like a match that will stand the test of time…though I’m willing to be proved wrong.

Maybe there’s a shift in the way comic book creators think of married super-heroes. But I rather doubt it.

And Pete? MJ? Hey, it’s been real, kids…good luck getting back into the dating pool.

Now the Time is Here for Iron Man to Spread Fear...

Tony Stark is a tool. That was, for a hot minute anyway, almost the name of this blog. I’ve never completely warmed to Iron Man over the years…he always seemed steeped in patrician arrogance even when he was raging alcoholic and that just irked me for whatever reason…but right now I’m pretty much over him as a character right now.

He has, in a typically smug and self-righteous manner, made himself The Man (writ large) in the Marvel Universe with his zealous championing of the Superhero Registration Act and his assumption of the role of Director of SHIELD. And the Marvel Universe is not really a better place for that.

As far as the Superhero Registration Act goes I can sort of understand his position without agreeing with it. Here in the real world if there were people who had superhuman powers I might indeed want them to be regulated and registered. But the Marvel Universe is not…and nor has it ever been (sorry, Stan)…”the real world” (once you have people who can burst into flame, lift school buses over their heads, or control the weather running around the notion that the MU is just like the world outside your window is immediately revealed as a blatant falsehood) and in the context of that Universe, Stark’s self-serving “futurist” excuses for persecuting his so-called friends don’t hold water. Unless, of course, Tony Stark is a tool…then it makes perfect sense.

Stark has all but forsaken his role as a “hero” with his storm troopers going nuts on draft resisters (which is, basically, what the anti-registration folks are given the so-called 50 States Initiative), the establishment of his other-dimensional prison (where people are held indefinitely without due process), the fact that he gave relatively free reign to a nutjob like Norman Osborn (who, in turn, put nutjobs like Bullseye and Venom on the federal payroll to track down super-beings who refuse to register...yeah, Osborn and the rest of the Thunderbolts are injected with nanites that are supposed to keep them under control but you know that that little plan is going to go horribly astray at some point), and his Draconian manipulation of events to further his ends (as revealed in the final issue of Civil War: Frontline)…”the ends justifies the means” almost never being an acceptable excuse for anything (unless, of course, you’re a tool…and then anything goes.)

Now I will be the first to admit that the Superhero Registration Act goes against every Libertarian bone in my cynical body and thus I was not inclined to be on Stark’s side from the word go (hell, the other side…however smug and self-righteous they were and are as “rebels”…was led by Captain America. CAPTAIN AMERICA…dude, 99 times out of a 100 I’m going to be on Cap’s side because, well, he’s Captain America…and yes I refuse to speak of him in past tense because I know that he will be back sooner or later…) but the heavy handed way the pro-Registration side” continues to act and behave (we could do a whole “Hank Pym is a tool” rant but it would be redundant and not worth the effort) does nothing to win me over to their arguments.

Mayhap Tony Stark can be redeemed in my eyes at some point. I don’t see how but I will continue to try to keep a somewhat open mind. But until that time I will hold firm to my belief that he is indeed a tool until he (and, more to the point, the people writing his adventures) see fit to prove otherwise.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Hulk

The Marvel Universe is in a state of manic flux of late.

Bucky is alive and Captain America is dead. The Avengers have disassembled, reassembled, dissembled again, split in two, and are now, through the auspices of “The Initiative”, in the process of spreading super-hero police state glory to all 50 states.

The Civil War has codified the differences between super-heroes into two distinct camps: either you’re a good citizen who registers with the government or you’re a lawless vigilante who will be hunted down and tossed into a other-dimensional prison without such pesky concerns as due process (this dichotomy was always there…Captain America, agent of SHIELD versus Spider-Man, masked menace…but the differences are now separated by an angry, burgeoning chasm that is more bitter and poisonous than it has ever been.)

Millions of sentient beings have fallen victim to annihilation out in the cosmos while the mutant population on Earth has been reduced to a statistically insignificant species.

The United States government is at war with the Inhumans and with Atlantis (and not on the best of terms with Wakanda.) And apparently there are Skrulls everywhere.

And then there’s the Hulk.

Having by exiled off the planet by a covert group of self-appointed guardians of the world…Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, Black Bolt, and Dr. Strange (the other members of their smug little cabal…Professor X and Prince Namor…were, respectively, not present for this particular decision and violently opposed to it ), the Hulk ended up on a violent world…Planet Hulk…where he became a slave gladiator, a rebel leader, and, eventually, a warrior king complete with a pregnant warrior queen (we suspend disbelief enough to go with the notion that beings from different worlds are biologically compatible enough to co-create children.)

But there are no happy endings in the life of the Hulk, of course. The ship that carried him to his new home malfunctioned destroying the world, his wife, and his unborn child and now, with the aid of the survivors of the cataclysm, the Hulk has come home…angrier than ever, more wily than ever, and more focused than ever. As Black Bolt has already found out, it brings a whole new level of meaning to the pithy phrase “Hulk smash.”

Planet Hulk was a grand story…an epic tale of triumph and tragedy…that worked so well because it was largely removed from the rest of the Marvel Universe goings-on (the over-sized hardcover collection of the storyline is a lovely thing indeed.)

World War Hulk has the potential to be a grand story…and its off to an engaging start for the most part…though its chances are somewhat mitigated by the fact that its editorial tentacles are spreading out so far (when we’re being “red skied” by a WWH branded issue of Ghost Rider that has nothing to do with the overall story beyond its final page, it’s an ominous sign.) We shall keep a good thought for the rest of the series just the same.

Hulk smash. Fanboys rejoice.

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