Posts Tagged ‘ Wolverine ’

Thankfully it’s not the Franklin Richards-Huntara-Vibraxas-Devlar combo come back from the nooks and crannies of Tom Brevoort’s mind, but instead the New Defenders recently introduced in Mark Millar’s Fantastic Four run.

I didn’t go to see The Day The Earth Stood Still because ‘ll take Michael Rennie over Keanu Reeves any day of the week, but there was a trailer that ran infront of it…

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE HD

The new trailer is different from the original one that aired at San Diego Comic-Con this past summer, but it looks good – Now updated with the official version!

If you squint you can see that Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine and Liev Schreiber’s Sabretooth are leading the way in what looks like the Normandy landings in this pic – and you can see more pics over at Superherohype. 

From IGN the cover to Dark Avengers #1
According to the article, Tom Brevoort had this to say:

Who are the Dark Avengers? That’s the question that all of Marveldom is going to be asking as Secret Invasion gives way to Dark Reign. Are they clones? Doppelgangers? Future Echoes? Or something more immediate and horrifying? And once their identity is revealed, that will only propel the Marvel Universe onto a path that will carry it forward towards an inevitable, explosive climax.

Just as initial look, that looks a lot like the Iron Patriot (whoever he may be), Wolverine, Venom, Hawkeye and Ms Marvel in her old outfit – or perhaps Ultra Girl.

Still, I actually get a bit of a different vibe when I look closely – the Ms Marvel character reminds me a little like Thunderbolts’ Moonstone, Hawkeye’s mask reminds me of Batroc’s and Wolverine…doesn’t Wolverine look a little slim and clean-cut in this pic? And is it my imagination or does ‘he’ breasts?

Consider my interest piqued!

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!

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?

…or, what to write when I don’t have time to post anything of substance. So why don’t you…

1) Hop on over to Hobotrashcan to see my guest blog on reconnecting to your inner geek. Granted, if you’re here then chances are you’re pretty well connected already…

2) Spend time on Paizo considering downloading all those classic AD&D and D&D guides and modules that you played with when you were a gamer….

3) Save the Aquaman Hoodie!

4) Follow this blog so it pops up on your Google Reader and blogger dashboard.

5) Pick up the new printing of the Atomic Robo trade while it lasts!

6) Read Mike Carey’s Felix Castor novels because they’re great! (No, they really are. Exorcists, murders, ghosts, demons, loup-garous, a zombie fence and a lesbian succubus. Pretty much everything you need).

7) Spend some time playing with City of Memory, a project to record stories of New York.

Read about Stan Lee and Jon Favreau’s Iron Man press conference.

9) Go watch the X-Men Origins: Wolverine trailer again. I keep changing the source of it, and so far this one’s lasted.

10) Have a good weekend!

You remember a while back that I wondered if these images had anything to do with some kind of Mutant Noir project?

If the first two could be interpreted as Cyclops and Jean Grey, I’m willing to jump in and say that this is Wolverine – look at the hair – maybe as a corrupt cop.

It’s worth pointing out that artist Dennis Calero’s website is currently teasing something as well:

Dark…like Noir? I’m standing by my X-Men Noir theory – now with Dennis Calero as the artist!

FINAL EDIT: The trailer below loads – but takes a moment; you can find the trailer that runs in front of The Day the Earth Stood Still here…

Original Post:
I’m so narked that I didn’t head to the 20th Century Fox panel on Friday, although that was motivated by my intense indifference to a remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still…

Anyway, the reason I’m sorry I missed is that apparently Hugh Jackman showed to introduce the trailer for X-Men Origins Wolverine…

How did I not hear about this?!?

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!

Flynetonline has a few pics from the set of the in-shooting Wolverine movie…including Liev Schreiber as Sabretooth.

Somehow I missed this yesterday, but Lost‘s Dominic Monaghan has been cast as Barnell Bohusk in the upcoming Wolverine movie. Now much as I like Dominic Monaghan and while I can kind of get behind Gambit and Deadpool (change Gambit’s origin to link him to Weapon X and you’re good to go) being in the movie, I have to wonder what portion of fandom was clamoring for Beak to be in the movie.

Daniel Henney has also joined the cast as Agent Zero (or, I guess, Maverick).

I’m telling you, this is shaping up to be a Weapon X movie…

Tim Riggins, or rather actor Taylor Kitsch, has been cast as Gambit in the upcoming Wolverine movie.

As someone who’s recently got into Friday Night Lights, I think that’s actually pretty good casting.

Not only that, but AICN is reporting that the merc with a mouth himself, Deadpool, will be showing up in the movie as portrayed by Ryan Reynolds (pretty much perfect casting) – so I guess that this means that the Weapon X project is filling out!

This means that Hugh Jackman is joined by Reynolds, Kitsch, the excellent Liev Schreiber as Sabretooth, Danny Huston as Stryker, and Lynn Collins as Silver Fox (and she is). Sounds like this is shaping up to be a pretty good movie.

Fingers crossed!

Someone over at the CBR forums posted something that got me thinking – namely that Spidey hangs out with Wolverine, who lives at a Mansion where a kid on the junior team, Elixir, can heal anyone – so why is May being shot a problem?

It’s a damn good point.

Not to mention that Angel’s secondary mutation (and thank you Grant Morrison for that pointless headache) is to heal people with his blood, and even though Warren and Logan don’t get along you’d think that maybe Warren would help out here.

In fact, now that you mention it, I’m pretty sure that the FF have got money these days – and I know that Ben Grimm is definitely still loaded – so how come Spidey doesn’t swing over there and ask for a loan? Why not ask teammate Doc Strange to heal May?

Of course the easy answer is that Spidey needs to confront Iron Man. Peter needs to give Tony a damn good kicking because he’s responsible for the whole mess in the first place – or at least, he’s who Peter’s transferring his guilt to.

But when you take a step back it doesn’t make any sense.

Which means that this is happening because the story dictates it, regardless of justification.

It annoys me, and it occurs to me that that’s the drawback of such a shared universe. There’s a certain suspension of disbelief in comics (no, really?) – if you think things through, the MU would have been disease-free years ago thanks to Mr Fantastic, if he spent a little more time on medical advances and a little less time on ripping open dimensional portals to allow other-worldly menaces access to Earth.

And I can live with that but when you consider that the FF exist in the same world as Spidey and the X-Men it gets a bit rockier – because the FF and Peter are friends, and they’d help out if they could, so the only reason they don’t is that they don’t know that he needs help.

I suppose that not asking for help is one of Peter’s qualities but this is his aunt we’re talking about.

Of course I may be way off base with my mutterings because Peter is apparently going to be asking Dr Strange for help in the next installment – but if he’d used his head and asked Logan, May would be up, around and dancing the polka right now.

And we would have been spared all that Back in Black nonsense…

Over at Comic Addiction, Paul Steven Brown has an interesting column about the X-Men, and how in his opinion Uncanny X-Men #211 marked the end of the All-New, All-Different X-Men that were introduced in Giant-Size X-Men #1.