Posts Tagged ‘ Hulk ’

EDITED for a late addition to the poll suggested by Scott King

It looks like Samuel L Jackson is enlisting the press in his efforts to get a little more money to play Nick Fury in the Avengers, or at least that’s how it seems to my cynical eyes; from the LA Times…

“There was a huge kind of negotiation that broke down. I don’t know. Maybe I won’t be Nick Fury. Maybe somebody else will be Nick Fury or maybe Nick Fury won’t be in it. There seems to be an economic crisis in the Marvel Comics world so , ‘We’re not making that deal.’”

I called Marvel Comics and they gave me a statement that suggested that they still want to see Jackson wearing the eyepatch. “Marvel does not comment on active negotiations,” was the boilerplate response, but there was that emphasis on the word “active” in the voice of the spokesman who phoned me back.

That sounds to me like Marvel are trying to work a budget for the Avengers movie which, if it includes Robert Downey Jr, Don Cheadle, Samuel L Jackson, maybe Ed Norton, Tim Roth, William Hurt and whoever is cast as Thor or Cap or anyone else, could be astronomical. The smart thing to do would to negotiate lower salaries and more points on the back end – or just recast the part.

After all, Jackson appeared as Fury in only one scene; treat Fury as a codename instead of a real name and you’re done. Or you could just recut any Samuel L Jackson roles from the past ten years where he’s played exactly the same character and build the role around those sound clips.

But if you do recast there are two three obvious options.

One:
And two:

Oh yeah.

And three: late addition:

Vote in the poll on the right!

Sneaky bastards.

Looks like Marvel’s $3.99 price point is continuing to roll out, and not just in the mini-series any more. I don’t mind paying a bit more for extra content, but a whole buck more for the same old number of pages?

Per their February solicits, Hulk, Punisher: Frank Castle, and Dark Avengers are all topping out at 32 pages total for $3.99. Most of the other $3.99 books that are non-limited series have 40 pages or more, but these three seem to be testing the water.

I can kind of understand Punisher as it’s a lower selling book and probably needs the higher price to make a profit, but Hulk is a huge seller and Dark Avengers is going to be big. Looks like the line-wide price hike is coming.

Start working out what you’re dropping now!

(As an aside, I really like that cover even though I refuse to read the book!)

In the same spirit as yesterday’s Gotham MiniDude post…

little love for Marvel by ~duss005 on deviantART
I think Dustin Nguyen may have just jumped up my favorite artist list!

Back to that potential Mighty Avengers line-up…you know the one:

In light of what I said last post, and that several people pointed this out to me, and that Bendis said he was going to be one of the Avengers teams, I’m going to call that gun-wielding guy on the bottom left not as Hank Pym, but as Noh-Varr, the new Captain Marvel.

Also, you may remember that Slott said that there will be a founding member on the team – but the absence of Pym (sniff) still leaves Iron Man and Hulk on that pic above.

Or does it?

The image below appeared on Mike Deodato’s blog a few days ago, and Bendis had hinted at the appearance of a character by this name –

– so it could be him and not Iron Man, although Mike Deodato is the artist on Dark Avengers and not Mighty, so maybe not.

It could still be War Machine on the Mighty Avengers cover with the shoulder cannons down. Yep, I’m going for that, because I really, really, hope that’s the Hulk on that cover above and not Hulking, so he’s the only founder.

Quint at AICN has an in depth interview with Jon Favreau, which includes this excerpt:

Dear Marvel,

I see that you will be celebrating 70 years of Marvel in 2009, complete with variant covers and little ’70 Years’ corner boxes.

Maybe I’m not quite as good at maths as I thought I was because when I started picking up US Marvel comics in 1986, I was fairly certain that all the corner boxes then trumpeted that that was Marvel’s 25th Anniversary.

In fact, I’m relatively sure that all your November 1986 issues carried special anniversary covers too. Of those books, only eleven are still around in some form or other (I’m counting X-Factor and New Mutants to be generous), but only three are still on the same numbering run – and of those, only Uncanny X-Men has been numbered straight through.

Sadly, Ewoks, Care Bears and Heathcliff are no longer published by you, and you’ve lost both the Transformers and GI Joe licenses since then.

But I digress.

The point I would like to make is that if you’ve got a big year planned, maybe I can give you some pointers on ways to make it a good year…

1) No deals with the Devil (or demons, imps, devil substitutes or hedge fund managers). It may actually result in a substantial uptick in quality of the title, but it’s not worth the year of pissing and moaning from people who somehow believe that this will cause mythical young readers to fall into satanism (or become accountants).

2) Stop with the status quo-shaking crossovers. Look, if you change the status quo every twelve to eighteen months or so, the new status quo doesn’t have time to become status quo, okay? I understand that BOLD NEW DIRECTIONS! result in temporary sales boosts, but eventually you’re going to lose readers because of them. I know you’ve got War of Kings and probably some mutant-superhuman war thing lined up, but try to keep line-wide ramifications to a minimum, eh?

3) If you must have a status quo-shaking crossover, try to limit the number of new titles that spring out of it. For every Avengers: The Initiative that actually succeeds, you get a The Order which will fail and a New Warriors that will flounder, or an Omega Flight which will just plain tank. Just concentrate on putting out fewer new books and making sure that they’re good ones. Like Guardians of the Galaxy, which is awesome.

4) Stop launching new titles with old title names that bear little relation to those old titles unless you actually have a plan to tie it to the team’s legacy in some way. A good way of doing this is as Abnett and Lanning have done in Guardians of the Galaxy, which is awesome. A bad way is shoehorning Rage and Justice into the New Warriors book, which only reminds us how much better the original book was.

5) I get that #1′s sell, but if you want to relaunch a character who already has a book, just do it in that book. Otherwise the existing title suddenly becomes secondary and it’s blindingly obvious that it’s being phased out. It just pisses readers of that book off. And yes, I know that Invincible Iron Man is pretty good, that’s not the point. The point is that for the past six months, Director of SHIELD has been the red-headed step child.

6) Reinventing characters is great. I for one would love a new spin on, say, Nomad. Or Rocket Racer. But leave alone existing marquee characters unless they actually need a revamp. For example, if you have a character that has had more development in the past year than in the past ten years put together, don’t revert to the most annoying take on that character and introduce a big mean new-colored version of him who, although he may make a good visual, kind of stinks up the place. Am I being too vague, or would you like to look at the cover above?

7) Quit with the Zombie and Ape variants. I know I don’t have to buy them, and I don’t. But they annoy the crap out of me*. We get it! You’re marketing geniuses! You can change any cover into a variant by changing a little bit…it’s irritating in the extreme. Next things you’ll be sticking Skrull chins onto…oh.

There are some great underused characters out there who could do with a limited series or ongoing to spotlight them. The upcoming Cloak and Dagger is a good start, but how about the main MU Power Pack? Alpha Flight? Werewolf by Night? The Shroud? And, of course, Dazzler? I realize that you must get burned on these things but honestly, don’t they sound better to you than Hellcat or The Last Defenders?

9) Not just Wolverine needs inventory stories when he’s running late. Would it kill you to line up some Fantastic Four one-shots so that by the end of 2009, when we still haven’t finished Millar and Hitch’s run, we at least have a couple of issues starring the team out there? Yes, I’m being facetious and delays have lessened over the past couple of years, but I wouldn’t say no to the odd one-shot starring Marvel’s First Family.

10) You’ve got some great books out there at the moment. Captain America, Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy, Incredible Hercules, Captain Britain and MI:13 are all solid gold and I continue to hear very good things about Immortal Iron Fist. Don’t screw ‘em up, ‘kay?

Via AICN, a screencap (or more likely, photo of a screen) apparently showing a certain Captain’s shield buried in the arctic ice from the deleted scene on the Incredible Hulk DVD…

Closer in – yep, that looks like a shield alright.

Cap frozen in the ice – can’t we get a Namor cameo for the Avengers movie as he throws frozen Cap at some Eskimo villagers?

The fools!

Rick Jones has been at the forefront of the Marvel Universe for decades.

Without Rick, there would be no Hulk.

I miss there being a Hulk book on the market that I’m interested in.

With all due respect to Ed McGuinness, whose almost cartoon-styled art I’ve always liked, I have little interest in reading a Red Hulk book. That’s mainly because I have no interest in reading about a character that’s as unlikeable as he seems to be (from what I’ve seen flicking through the book), and also because it’s quite clear that writer Jeph Loeb is writing him up to be a bad ass just because.

He has a gun! (You know that was ‘kewl’ in the 90s…).

He punches out the Watcher! (Galactus is probably next on the list).

He can take Thor out because he’s smart! (Jumping and holding the hammer makes no sense, and I’m not sure that zero gravity trumps mystical Norse magic, but that’s just me).

You know, I’m not one of those fanboys who cries into my cornflakes over whether Thor could take Superman or whatever, but this isn’t good storytelling from what I’ve seen; it’s pandering to a writer who honestly does his best work on moody, emotional flashback tales. He’s not that good at the big action stories that he seem to gravitate to these days.

It’s a shame, because prior to this the Hulk had been on a roll with Planet Hulk and World War Hulk (which wasn’t as great as it could have been, but still).

Maybe I should give Skaar, Son of Hulk a try?

Incredible Hulk (mildly) spoilery stuff below…

Space left for spoilery stuff

Forget Louis Leterrier’s comment about Captain America being in the Incredible Hulk that surfaced over the weekend (I didn’t see anything except a familiar non-Steve Rogers name on a vial, and suspect that this is either a really small easter egg or a reference to how Tim Roth’s character moves with a certain super soldier formula inside him), no what really cheeses me off is the blatant use of a 90 second cameo to sell a movie about another character…

I guess if it gets seats sold on the opening weekend it’s a good thing but it does kind of irk me.

I was reading Bad Genious’ look at a run of the Hulk the other day and I was reminded of two things:

1) Paul Jenkins run on the Hulk really fizzled out with the whole curing-Lou-Gehrig’s-disease-with-the-DNA-of-his-dead-father thing;

2) I don’t like clowns; and

3) I really don’t like Clown Hulk.

Clown Hulk.

What the hell was he thinking?

I just got back from a preview screening of Incredible Hulk.

And, well…

…it was great!

A spoiler-free mini-review follows – but if you want to remain completely unaware, you can probably skip on by.

But that’s a qualified ‘great’. Incredible Hulk does exactly what it says on the can. If you’ve seen the trailers, you know the plot – Bruce Banner is on the run; he gets found; hilarity and smashing ensues.

The thing is, I still loved it. This was the Hulk movie that should have been made five years ago – action packed, not so ponderous and surprisingly funny.

Yes, funny. From Banner’s awkward Portugese, to an unexpected side-effect to him getting excited, it was a funny movie – and I think that’s why it works. Ed Norton is great, selling the desperation of a man who’s trying to live his life as best he can while controlling the beast inside – and the last shot of him is killer. Liv Tyler is…well, I’m not a fan but she’s okay, I guess – sadly, she’s no Jennifer Connelly but who is?

Then there’s new Thunderbolt Ross, William Hurt. It’s funny but I had a hard time seeing the actor behind the moustache and contacts, and I think that’s great – like Iron Man‘s Jeff Bridges, he inhabits the role completely.

The real surprise for me was Tim Roth – he’s not been this good for years and he’s great as special forces soldier Emil Blonsky, even if his character does get lost a bit towards the end and he does look a bit like Harry Potter’s Dobby at one point. There’s one sequence in particular that has me drooling at the prospect of Marvel’s upcoming Captain America movie.

There is an inevitable elephant in the room, and it’s the CGI – yes, the Hulk looks CGI-y but short of painting a man green I’m not sure how you’re going to get away from that. The thing is, the CGI doesn’t really distract on the whole – there are a few shots where you kind of get pulled out of the movie, but not too many.

Nice touches abound; watch out for the names of two college students who capture the green goliath on their cameraphone, a familiar name or two in the opening credits (and not of actors), a Stan Lee cameo that actually furthers the plot, a familiar theme, a TV show that Banner watches, the real project that Banner was working on when he was turned into the Hulk, what turns Blonsky into a – er – super-soldier, a familiar logo in a computer system a great cameo from Lou Ferrigno – and, yes, a scene at the end of the movie that’s been confirmed for a while which features a certain billionaire inventor. In the cut I saw, it was before the credits but I’m not sure if it’ll stay that way.

One other thing – Ferrigno also did some voice work on the movie for the Hulk himself, and he nails it; there are two specific moments where Hulk’s voice shines.

On the directing front, Transporter‘s Louis Leterrier does a good job. The three set-piece action sequences are fluid without being choppy, and he gets that sometimes less is more. The first of these sequences, in a factory, reminds me a little of a sequence in Predator 2 only without Gary Busey chewing the scenery. A barely-seen Hulk makes mince meat of an army team, striking from the shadows.

There were a few bits and bobs from the trailers that didn’t make the cut I saw; for example, the psychiatrist’s role is trimmed down and he goes nameless in the movie (I think) which I guess leaves the door open for another Doc Samson down the road.

There were also a few weird cuts which I suspect were made for rating reasons – Hulk and Blonsky’s confrontation on the grass is abruptly cut, and Blonsky’s final transformation feels like it’s missing a few seconds. I’m hoping there’s a chance to re-edit this for the DVD because I suspect it’s too late for the movie’s release.

And I haven’t even mentioned the surprising bit (to me, at least) – namely the identity of Mr Blue and the set up for the another character, which I loved.

The Incredible Hulk is a fun summer movie; just don’t expect too many twists and turns. Like I said, it does exactly what it says on the can.

The first issue of Mark Millar and Steve McNiven’s sure-to-be-a-hit (at least according to Millar) alternate future take on Wolverine (subtitled Old Man Logan) hits stores this week and Newsarama have a preview.

The art’s as beautiful as ever – although from the cover I am left to wonder why Venom is now a crocodile and I’m relatively sure we were told that Hawkeye was blind and yet here he seems to be driving a jeep…

However it is good to see that even inbred Hulk granddaughters can still take care of their kids…

…although how he’s going to breast feed through that top is anyone’s guess!

Ironclad!

Hope the rest of the U-Foes are in there.

There’s a new Incredible Hulk trailer out – and yes, the big green fella still looks CGI-y.

But y’know what? I kind of like it. Not only does Hulk appear to have been playing Hulk: Ultimate Destruction…

…but Tim Roth’s Emil Blonsky comes across as quite the cocky asshole – even facing down the Hulk because, you know, that’s worked so well before.

More than that though, one split second shot of Hulk and Betty under a cave just captures a certain feeling for me – kind of the way Hulk: Gray does, or this issue here does – it sets a tone and makes me want to see the movie:

Call me a sucker, but I’m looking forward to this.

Looks like Dark Knight‘s campaign is stepping up with the new poster….

…because the movie was sadly lacking in publicity (good or bad) prior to this.

Hey, you think Marvel Studios might consider promoting Incredible Hulk at some point?

Just a few posts with some pics from this weekend’s New York Comic Con. I’ve decided that I’m odd with cons – I like going to panels (especially the movie and tv ones) and I like wandering the floor, taking in the booths and rummaging through back issues but…I never go and talk to creators.

I know that’s kind of weird, but its not like I’m going to get a sketch off them (nowhere to put them) or an autograph (never been that interested in that kind of thing), and going up to them and saying ‘nice job with suchabook’ just feels odd to me. Not that I don’t think that they’d appreciate it, either – I’m pretty sure everyone likes to be told people enjoy what they do – but I’m just not that kind of guy.

I also singularly failed to meet up with anyone I net-know, only bumping into David Gallaher a couple of times. Everytime I passed the Lulu table, Val wasn’t there and despite keeping a keen eye out I failed to see a Little Stuffed Bull.

Ah well. In spite of that I had a great weekend…sorry for the picture quality – need a new camera.

Union Jack – represent!

I don’t think I’d like him when he’s angry.

A good looking Hulk wave, and Elektra strikes a pose.

Two pack – Agent of SHIELD and a Hand ninja? And there’s a Fury variant? Must…resist…purchase…

…because I thought my aversion to the new Hulk title had something to do with his artwork making the new red Hulk look stupid (another part had to do with my severe dislike of anything Jeph Loeb has written in comics in the past five years that hasn’t had Tim Sale as artist).

Anyway, it looks like I was wrong – because, as David Finch’s variant cover for Hulk #3 shows, it was never Ed McGuinnes’s artwork that made red Hulk look stupid.

It was just the fact that the Hulk is, well, red.

And has oddly grey fingernails.