Panel Vision - 11 Possibilities for Captain Marvel 2

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By this point, the success and sequalization of Marvel films feels almost like a given.  Marvel has gotten so good at making quality movies that manage to thrill us without skimping on characterization that the fact we’ll be seeing these heroes again in new installments is the norm and not the exception.  As such, and combined with its record-breaking success so far, it doesn’t seem too earlier to start speculating about what we can expect from the next entry in the blossoming Captain Marvel franchise.  

The first film has been a major success for Marvel, planting their flag firmly alongside Wonder Woman and Black Panther in the realm of relatively more diverse superhero blockbusters and promising a whole world of potential for the next installment in this new and exciting franchise.  Combined with the extensive collection of comic book history that Carol Danvers and the Captain Mar-Vell brands have been wrapped up in and the recent changes in ownership at Marvel and Disney and there’s plenty of places to take this series next: here are 11 possibilities.

Panel Vision - 8 Possibilities for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 is now a pretty unequivocal hit, more or less proving that it wasn’t a fluke and Marvel is Jim Henson levels of good at making us empathize with incredibly goofy cartoons like Groot and Rocket.  With a sequel already announced by Marvel, it’s already time for sites like mine to start wildly speculating about what we might see.  

Even though the film hasn’t been written yet there were some pretty much hints towards future storylines in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and James Gunn has said that he already has a sketched out idea for the third film and how it will allegedly set-up the new mega-story for Marvel Phase 4.  Additionally, the Guardians of the Galaxy may not have been major Marvel heroes throughout their career but they do have a fairly notable and bizarre history all their own worth digging into to figure out where things might be going next. 

Static Thoughts - Future of Marvel TV

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At the time of writing, we’re in a bit of a dead zone for Marvel TV.  Iron Fist has just finished its premiere and Agents of SHIELD won’t be back for a couple weeks.  As such, I’ve elected to take that time to revise an old topic and delve into where Marvel TV is headed.  I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that TV is the area where Marvel has enjoyed the least success.  That’s kind of a couched statement as Marvel hasn’t really branched out into that many mediums, but even so, it’s kind of impressive that Marvel has made 12 movies, all of them solid, but only one genuinely great TV show. 

It just seems like the house of ideas can’t crack the formula to bring its superheroes to the small screen, aside from 1 or 2 notable exceptions.  As such, the future of Marvel TV, though a clear slate of announced projects, feels more tenuous than anything else at their company.  It’s basically guaranteed that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 will be a blast and their upcoming Secret Empire event comic promises to be absorbing, but in the land of television, Marvel’s upcoming features read a lot more like a list of threats than promises. 

Inhumans Casting Breakdown

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As the future of Marvel TV lurches forever forward the time has finally come to speak once more about the Inhumans.  I actually blew most of my article formats on this particular Marvel property 2 years ago when it first looked like Agents of SHIELD was going to lead into the Inhumans.  Allegedly that’s still happening only now their debut will be in the form of a prestige TV show rather than a film, which is probably for the best.  Marvel spent 5 years trying to make the Inhumans into a suitable substitute for the X-Men with exactly zero success so abandoning that plan in the name of a television show is probably smart. 

However, there are still some pretty big red flags when it comes to the Inhumans show but rather than go through them in a list format I figured I’d naturally address them through a casting breakdown.  After all, an Inhumans show is going to have to focus heavily on a very small collection of characters, and while I’ve already discussed their comic book origins, the actors involved raise a whole new dimension to the conversation.  So, with that in mind let’s talk about the casting of Marvel’s Inhumans. 

Ghost Rider Cast in Agents of SHIELD S3

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So, it’s official; Ghost Rider is coming to Agents of SHIELD and will be played by Gabriel Luna.  In retrospect this was pretty much inevitable.  Agents of SHIELD remains Marvel’s most prominent failure, especially with how much the show has struggled to keep up with a cinematic universe that’s consistently leaving it in the dust, so this kind of shake up was badly needed to try and win back an audience and make the show relevant once more. 

Let me be clear on this, even if you like Agents of SHIELD the show is definitely not what Marvel wanted it to be in terms of ratings or importance, especially compared to the blossoming CW stable of shows or Marvel’s own vaunted Netflix series.  However, the Ghost Rider they’ve conscripted isn’t quite the one everybody knows which means we’ve got to dive into the history of the character to get the full view of what’s going on here. 

Static Thoughts - Future of Marvel TV

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As I write this, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is at something of a crossroads.  The films have entered such an institutional point in our culture that even widespread disinterest is more or less unable to derail their success.  Cycles of disappointment, disengagement, rediscovery, and reappraisal have been sped up to an insane degree and Marvel’s cross-media presence has pretty much guaranteed them cultural dominance through to the end of the decade.  What’s more, their series of Netflix shows have proven thoroughly successful and aside from a handful of major casting flubs the MCU is the most powerful it’s been since Avengers. 

The one area where things have faltered, however, is on TV, with the network television side of the MCU slowly atrophying as projects end up postponed, canceled, or passed on.  Agents of SHIELD is barreling ahead into another season but the proposed spin-off Most Wanted was passed over, the Damage Control show seems to have been quietly scuttled, and Agent Carter was officially canceled.  All of this has folks wondering: what does the future hold for Marvel television?

Is Ghost Rider coming to Agents of SHIELD?

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We are now about 2 weeks out from San Diego Comic Con, the biggest event of the geek media calendar year.  It’s basically Christmas in July for the geek world, the point in the year where we catch a glimpse of everything that’s going to dominate our social media conversations and news feeds for the next year or so.  Lately, each year has been marked by some major announces from the good people at Marvel Studios, even though recent offerings have been a little sparse given their greater focus on the Disney Expo.  As we all impatiently salivate for the latest major announcement from the little multi-billion dollar business that could one of the more shockingly relevant Marvel properties up at bat this year is Agents of SHIELD. 

Despite spending 3 years hemorrhaging viewers and slowly becoming the least integral aspect of the Marvel Cinematic Universe the show has managed to turn quite a few heads with a shocking train reveal of their new logo design which features a flaming chain.  While there are several Marvel heroes that use both chains and flames as weapon most fans have taken this to mean that Agents of SHIELD season 4 is planning to introduce Ghost Rider to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Cover Story - Top 12 Inhumans Covers

This coming week will see the return of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, the little TV show that nobody believed in, every one thought would fail, and then did exactly that.  Seriously, despite some moderately decent word of mouth over season 2 Agents of SHIELD has done little more than jog in place for 2.5 season while occupying the least interesting space in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Maybe that’ll turn around this coming half season but I seriously doubt. 

Regardless, we’re not here to talk about Agents of SHIELD but rather the major chunk of Marvel IP they’ve elected to squat on top of: the Inhumans.  I’ve already pretty thoroughly explored the Inhumans in previous articles so today isn’t going to cover much of their history of character make-up but simply the history of great art that has informed the group since its inception at the hands of all-time comic great Jack Kirby.  So, let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the Inhumans.

Cover Story - Top 12 Twilight Zone Covers

Hello and welcome to Cover Story, diving as little into the world of comic books as possible.  Well it’s a new year and with a new year comes the annual Twilight Zone marathon.  In case you’ve never encountered it before, every year on New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July the SciFi channel hosts a massive marathon of the sci-fi/horror/fantasy anthology TV series the Twilight Zone.  Given that just happened and there’s nothing else topical to base this week’s Cover Story on we’re taking a look at the Twilight Zone comics that were published alongside the original show back in the 1950s.  Given that comics of that era were all about weird stories and anthology storytelling the Twilight Zone was the perfect fit for a comic adaptation.  So, let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the top 12 Twilight Zone comic covers.

Karnak #1 Review

I check out one of the All-New All-Different Marvel line's better entries with Warren Ellis' Karnak #1, full review over on All-Comic:

http://all-comic.com/2015/karnak-1/

Panel Vision - History of the Inhumans

In case you haven’t heard, Marvel Studio’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show has started its third season and kicked off a major storyline involving a secret race known as the Inhumans.  The Inhumans have been hovering around the edges of the Marvel cinematic universe for awhile now, especially since the announcement that they’d be getting their own movie as part of Marvel’s Phase 3.  What’s more Marvel has been building them up as a major part of the comics universe for the past 2 years.  That particular prevalence will only be increasing this month with Marvel’s major universe reboot.  It’s clear that Marvel wants the Inhumans to be a big part of their universe no matter how little sense it makes. I’ll get more into the bone headed whys of that decision but first I think it’s time to cover the history of the Inhumans.

Comic Rainbow - Inhumans

Comics Rainbow is a project I’ve been meaning to start for awhile now and given that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has returned to cement Marvel’s incredibly ill-informed infatuation with the Inhumans I might as well dive in.  The idea behind Comics Rainbow is basically that I wanted another weekly article to produce and this is something I can do several weeks in advance.  The other major factor was getting the chance to rip-off Reading Rainbow’s name because the combination was too obvious not make.  As for actual content this is mostly meant as a beginners guide to a characters, story lines, and interpretations. 

Each week it’ll be some new topical city that I’ll breakdown through my spectrum of criticism.  Red is for stuff everyone hates, orange is personal favorites, yellow is for stuff I think is terrible but everyone loves, green is objective good, blue is something I like but everyone hates, indigo is well intentioned but flawed, and violet is universally loved. 

Occasionally I’ll also work white and black in there if there are other points I’d want to make but the 7 major colors will be here every week.  Like I said, it’s an introduction point for new fans who don’t have the time to just jump in on consensus.  This week I’m taking a look at the Inhumans, a hidden non-human race on Earth with a history so dense it’ll probably warrant a full article of its own.  For now I’m just going to be aggressively focusing on the Inhuman Royal Family, the characters who make up the corp of this brand and will probably be showing up in the movie Marvel are still insisting they’ll make.

Quake #1 Review

Quake #1 is meant to be a celebration of the character's graduation to Marvel universe mainstay as well as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the creation of S.H.I.E.L.D.  What it actually is is a soulless marketing cash grab that only serves to cheapen the comics and their characters in the name of tying into Agents of SHIELD, full review on Front Towards Gamer

http://ftg.operationsupplydrop.org/2015/09/11/quake-1-review-comics/

Panel Vision - 10 Marvel Women Who Deserve a Solo Movie

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about Marvel’s representation of women in their films.  Though a lot of this has stemmed from Ant-Man’s portrayal of Hope van Dyne and the Wasp it overall has more to do with Marvel Studio’s infinitely too dismissive and uninvolved attitude towards female superheroes.  Given that I’m very much of the opinion that we definitely do need more female superheroes and it’s kind of supremely ludicrous that it’ll take Marvel 10 years to give us a superhero film where the hero is a woman I thought up a list of 10 Marvel super heroes who need a movie of their own.