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.

Eternal Character Roster Revealed

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So, we’ve finally gotten a bit of an update on Marvel’s still happening Eternals movie.  Specifically, we know the film will be about the clash between the Eternals and their ancient enemies the Deviants and that Marvel will be aiming for colorblind casting, which is a pretty major positive.  We’ve also received a character breakdown of who to expect in the new film, though they’re basically just names at this point.  

However, there are some very surprising names on this list and some really out of left field descriptions worth digging into along with the more pedestrian choices for an Eternals movie.  What’s more, this seems as good a place as any to dive into the basics of the Eternals’ core characters.  So, let’s breakdown The Eternals character list.

Marvel Announces Eternals Film

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So, let’s talk about The Eternals.  These folks are, allegedly, going to be Marvel’s next big thing going into phase 4 and the 2020s.  I use the word “allegedly” there because I feel like we’ve definitely been here before and done the “next big thing” dance enough times for it to feel decidedly old hat by now.  In particular, we were last here in 2017 when Marvel spent 2 years and countless comics trying to make the Inhumans into their next big thing only for the property to completely flame out after ½ a season of subpar television.  

Even if you LIKED the Inhumans TV show there’s no denying the concentrated effort to rebrand the Inhumans as the new it thing from Marvel was both a failure and embarrassment, especially with how much they’ve receded from the public eye at this point.  One wonders if the Eternals, a very similar group conceptually, aren’t just Marvel’s new flavor of the month, to be forgotten within a few short years of their culmination? 

Panel Vision - 2001: A Space Odyssey

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Today marks the 50^th anniversary of the premiere of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the pinnacles of weird speculative sci-fi films of the late ‘60s alongside the likes of Planet of the Apes and Soylent Green.  The film actually wasn’t a huge success immediately upon release but slowly became a cult classic, allegedly because audiences of stoners would enjoy tripping out to the psychedelic images on display.  

The film proved popular enough to warrant getting a comic book adaptation by the king of comics himself: Jack Kirby.  Kirby liked doing the comic so much and it did so well for Marvel that this led into a new ongoing comic by Kirby exploring his own interpretation of the Monolith and the attendant 2001: A Space Odyssey mythos, which is what I’ll be looking at today. 

Panel Vision - Foolkiller (2017)

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Happy April Fools everyone, if there can really be such a thing.  I’ve elected to celebrate this most ignominious holiday by delving deep into the “fool” part of the name with a look at one of my favorite superhero G-listers: Foolkiller.  Created in 1974 in the pages of Man-Thing by the incomparable Steve Gerber, Foolkiller is one of the many bizarre no-name characters that tend to pepper the lower tiers of the Marvel echelon.  He’s best described as a more comedic version of the Punisher, largely because Steve Gerber was one of the premiere funnymen of ‘70s Marvel comics (he invented Howard the Duck, after all.) 

From those humble beginnings Foolkiller’s actually been re-imagined about 4 different times, once as a hardcore murder vigilante with a weird bondage gimp costume, once in the Marvel mature readers line MAX Comics, and once as part of Deadpool’s expansive entourage.  I’m going to focus today on the last of those three, the Greg Salinger Foolkiller, and his short-lived five-issue comic from 2016 written by Max Bemis, drawn by Dalibor Talajic, and colored by Miroslav Mrva. 

Panel Vision - 7 Possibilities for Black Panther 2

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So, by now Black Panther is a bona fide hit, one of the biggest films of the year and on track to be one of the biggest films of all time frankly.  As such a sequel is now pretty much all but inevitable.  Indeed, our very idea of the superhero is probably going to have to start adapting to this new post-Black Panther age: it’s a milestone movie much in the same vein as Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Dark Knight, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, or Deadpool.  

I get the unique sense Black Panther is going to basically be Marvel’s license to print money going forward into the 2020s so it’s time to milk this particular topic for all its worth by diving into the next big question for Black Panther: what do you do next?  Obviously, anything is on the table and the events of Infinity War are probably going to reshape things quite a bit as well but I think I’ve got a few ideas for 7 characters we might see in Black Panther 2.

Panel Vision - 7 Possibilities for Thor 4

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Well, this was unexpected.  I don’t mean that Thor: Ragnarok was good or successful, at this point a Marvel movie being pretty good and making money is extremely par for the course.  I mean just HOW good and HOW successful Thor: Ragnarok actually was, effectively bringing this franchise back from the edge almost.  The Thor films have had a very odd trajectory, back in 2011 Thor was a breath of fresh air, a “Shakespeare in Space” adventure movie that was easily the most family friendly of the Phase 1 Marvel films.  

Since then, however, Thor lost a lot of its potential when the 2^nd entry, The Dark World, suffered director problems and got creamed by Hunger Games: Catching Fire and then Guardians of the Galaxy became the new cosmic kid on the block & Ant-Man took over the family-friendly mantel.  

But now with Ragnarok Marvel’s finally got a Thor film with a renewed mass appeal that finally figures out how to use Chris Hemsworth right AND delivered on the large-scale action and mythos the character always promised.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, Thor 4 doesn’t seem like such a crazy possibility, especially with how transient the mantle of Thor is.  So with that said here are 7 possibilities for Thor 4. 

New Mutants Trailer Breakdown

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One of the curious things about film success in the 2020s is that “quiet victories” have become more and more prevalent.  That’s more the result of Geek Media spending a lot of time talking up the loud victories than anything else.  For instance, the X-Men franchise is a great example of something quietly successful.  Outwardly the franchise is considered mostly past its prime and running on goodwill and fumes.  

However, a lot of that is simply because the main film series doesn’t draw a lot of interest in the online circles, meanwhile, the spin-off material like Deadpool, Logan, and Legion have been making big waves and spawning imitators left and right.  A lot of that is that Fox seems more willing to experiment on the job with the X-Men peripherals, probably because they assume they aren’t going to be successful anyway so might as well get weird with it.  That certainly seems like the attitude at play with the latest X-Men spin-off flick The New Mutants whose trailer has revealed it to be…a teen horror flick? 

Week of Review - Wolverine & the X-Men

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The late 2000s were an unkind time for the X-men franchise.  Specifically, I’m talking about the film side of the X-Men offerings as the comics were actually fairing really well back then.  The movies had completed their trilogy with the spectacular failure that was X-Men: The Last Stand and moment was quickly slipping away from the series as the decade dwindled.  Meanwhile, in the comics, the X-Men had undergone a radical reinvention since the events of the 2005-2006 stories House of M and Decimation. 

Mutants were suddenly an endangered species with barely 100 left alive, Cyclops had become a militant mutant leader and founded his own rogue nation in the San Francisco Bay called Utopia.  Even the Ultimate Comics line was in a fit of bizarre storytelling under the banner of Ultimatum, a mega-event where Magneto killed most of the Ultimate superheroes including Xavier, Cyclops, Captain America, Wolverine and more.  It was a strange time and Wolverine and the X-Men really reflect that particular strangeness.  

Week of Review - Mutant X

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A key evolution of the modern age of superhero blockbusters is that more and more the story of a film has become the story of the film’s behind the scenes drama.  Whether it’s the corporate mismanagement of the Amazing Spider-Man films, Josh Trank’s prima donna antics on Fant4stic, or the family tragedy & directorial scarpering of Justice League the behind the scenes stories are now the stories of those films.  

The oldest and largest looming example of this is the Fox/Marvel feud, a war between companies that’s raged for well over a decade.  The two absolutely loathe each other, to the point Marvel has canceled publishing Fantastic Four comics because Fox owns the movie rights and Fox, in turn, was willing to waste everyone’s time and money with Fant4stic.  But where did all this animosity come from, what’s the origin of their feud?  Well, it all goes back to a little show from 2001 called Mutant X- let’s dive in. 

Week of Review - Generation X

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In 1991 ­X-Men volume 2 #1 came out and became the highest selling single issue of all time.  It was a huge milestone for Marvel comics as well as the entire decade, cementing the ‘90s as a time for comic book opulence and speculator driven sales.  More pertinently, it was the comic that launched the X-Men from a popular franchise into a moneymaking juggernaut that would dominate the next half of the decade.  Within a year Marvel had partnered with Fox to produce X-Men the animated series and its toy line, one of the most successful brand exercises in the entire superhero genre. 

Of course, this kind of success can’t last forever and by 1996 the X-Men were a lot less stable a franchise.  They were still producing hits, like that year’s Age of Apocalypse story, but the writing was very much on the wall for them and for Marvel, with bankruptcy right around the corner.  Still, they managed to produce one last hurrah for the X-Men franchise in 1996 with a live-action pilot film for a proposed X-Men TV show: Generation X. 

Week of Review - X-Men: Monster Armor

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It is X-Men Week here on the Lido Shuffle, specifically because this is the week Fox’s new series The Gifted premieres.  Even though The Gifted is a Monday premiere I’ll be spending the whole week looking at the history of the X-Men on TV starting with the show that started it all: X-Men, the animated series.  Premiering in 1992, X-Men paved the way for a massively profitable decade of Marvel TV adaptations and set the precedent for the initial run of films that are beloved by people to this day.  

It’s also one of the most popular animated series ever made and more or less a direct transliteration of the comics so I don’t have a lot to say about the show proper, which is why this is an Extended Toy Box entry.  The X-Men animated series tie-in toy line lasted a staggering 7 years passing through a ton of variations and unique threads and today I’m spotlighting one of the coolest ones: Monster Armor.  

Cover Story - Top 10 Sentinels Covers

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This coming Monday marks the premiere of The Gifted, a new series from Fox tying into the X-Men mythos.  The X-Men have honestly kind of struggled for modern relevance, as the Avengers became Marvel’s moneymaking brand, which has always struck me as odd.  I mean, we live in an age of mass struggle by marginalized groups for basic human rights- that’s always been the X-Men’s greatest element.  It’s just hard to think that in an era of Black Lives Matter, the Refugee Crisis, the Mexican Border Wall, Muslim travel ban, ICE, and the struggle for Trans rights the X-Men can’t find a foothold.  

The Gifted looks to change that by zeroing in on the X-Men’s most topical bad guy- the Sentinels, basically a domestic anti-mutant drone army.  When they were created that particular idea sounded a lot more like science fiction than a real policy that’s probably just around the corner but regardless let’s dig into X-Men history to see why these big purple robots have always been so enduring. 

Meet the Mutants of The Gifted

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We’re mere days away from the premiere of Fox’s The Gifted series, the second live-action X-Men show to hit the airwaves after Legion and fourth overall after Generation X and Mutant X back in the ‘90s and 2000s respectively.  It’s a pretty big event, even if the show proper looks kind of far removed from the X-Men aesthetic and mythos and more grounded in the “hated and feared” narrative.  

I don’t mind them going that route- if ever there was a time for a show about government-sponsored violence and bigotry towards the marginalized it would be now.  Even so, I am intrigued by the collection of mutants they’ve cobbled together for the series an what it suggests about where things will be headed as the main heroes struggle to escape the Sentinels and find sanctuary from humanity.  With that in mind, let’s take a look at the mutants of The Gifted.

Netflix' Punisher Gets Full Trailer

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I don’t think it’d be unfair to say that it’s been a difficult year for Marvel Netflix.  First, there was the costly disaster of Iron Fist, then the shocking news that Marvel would be relocating its streaming rights to a Disney-centric new platform, and finally the very disappointing Defenders, which no one really tuned in for.  A lot has gone wrong or Marvel’s streaming service division, continuing the theme of Marvel having a lot of trouble finding lasting success outside the cinematic arena.  However, the year isn’t fully over yet and the house of ideas has one last release up their sleeves- The Punisher. 

Introduced to the MCU in 2016’s mixed bag of Daredevil season 2, Jon Bernthal’s Punisher is one of the real standouts of Marvel’s Netflix foray alongside season 1’s Kingpin and Krysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones.  He pretty much single-handedly made Daredevil season 2 worth watching so his solo series has been long in the anticipation, especially given the cult status afforded to Frank Castle’s previous adaptation Punisher: Warzone.  Now, we finally have our first real look at the upcoming series and boy does it leave one wanting. 

Sony Considering Nightwatch Film

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So, one of the developing superhero universe stories of the late 2010s has been that Sony is looking to continue their own movie-verse that’s adjacent to Marvel’s.  If you haven’t been obsessively following superhero copyright disputes and rights agreements, I’ll try and provide an abridged version.  Sony owns the rights to Spider-Man as well as his attendant mythos of characters but the box office failure of the Amazing Spider-Man films coupled with the North Korea hack eroded the studio’s confidence.  In the wake of dwindling returns, Sony elected to strike a shared custody agreement with Marvel Studios and Disney whereby Marvel would produce a new Spider-Man as part of their universe and Sony would get a share of the profits. 

However, the rest of the Spider-Man stable of characters would have their rights determined on a case-by-case basis, which means Sony can make movies out of those characters without sharing the profits with Marvel/Disney.  So far Sony’s confirmed they’re making a Venom movie with Tom Hardy and Gina Prince-Bythewood is on tap to direct a Black Cat & Silver Sable film.  Now the latest hero rumored to be added to that line-up is a bizarre blast from the past in the form of…Nightwatch. 

Panel Vision - 7 Things to Expect from Spider-Man: Homecoming 2

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So, did you see Spider-Man: Homecoming yet?  Chances are you probably did given the film’s had a big box office success, more or less everyone is praising it, and Marvel is more or less our culture’s cinematic guardian.  What’s more, it does feel like Marvel has poured a lot of time and effort into establishing Tom Holland’s Spider-Man as a new standard bearer for the company.  He’s not quite there yet, mainly because of how much he’s defined by his junior Avenger status, but give him about 3 years I get the sense Spider-Man is going to be one of the faces of the MCU come 2020 along with Black Panther and Captain Marvel.  

As such, and given that the film itself was loaded with references, it’s not too early to start talking about what we might see in a sequel to Homecoming.  Spider-Man’s always had one of the most expansive single character mythos in the entire Marvel brand and a lot of that has already started showing up in the MCU proper so let’s dive in to see what we might see in Spider-Man: Homecoming 2. 

Gina Prince-Bythewood to Direct Silver Sable/Black Cat Film

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As we move into the 2020s one of the significant emerging trends is the way that trends aren’t going away in any meaningful manner.  The decade is beginning to dwindle, and there’s no outward indication that audiences are going to lose interest in the broad multimedia franchises that have managed to stick- most pertinently superheroes.  Despite a thousand and one hit pieces about the impending death of the genre or superhero fatigue, the format has proved itself just too versatile to actually collapse in on itself.  However, just because a thing isn’t going away doesn’t mean it isn’t changing. 

As we begin to cap-off the defining multimedia stories of the 2010s the superhero genre is already evolving in new and different ways like Fox’s non-continuity approach to the X-Men or the CW’s functional TV Multiverse.  One of the biggest changes going forward is the beginnings of a demand for diversity with stuff like Black Panther, Luke Cage, Black Lightning, Captain Marvel, and Wonder Woman.  There’s a lot of reasons for this change, and I’ll end up getting into them more as we go, but this week it added another notch to its belt as Sony has tapped director Gina Prince-Bythewood to direct their planned Silver Sable/Black Cat movie as part of their Spider-Verse. 

Spider-Man: Homecoming Final Trailers Breakdown

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With around a month left to go, Spider-Man: Homecoming is revving up to be a superhero film this year.  I’m not trying to denigrate the movie, in fact as we go through this breakdown I hope it shows I’m somewhat excited for the film, I’m just being honest about where it stands.  In many ways, 2017 has been kind of a hard year on Marvel Studios overall.  There are certainly successes, I don’t think anybody thought Agents of SHIELD would pull off a fourth season as well as it has and Thor: Ragnarok has smash hit written all over it.  But during a year when Marvel is facing down Wonder Woman, Logan, and Justice League none of their adaptations really seem to matter as much, and Homecoming is a pretty solid example of this. 

The film will be the second reboot of Spider-Man this decade and the fourth Spider-Man over the past 10 years.  There’s something in that to the fatigue of franchise management and repetition, especially with a character like Spider-Man who tends to revert to the same role of “teen hero” every time his film series reverts back to square one.  However, credit where it’s due that Homecoming looks very good, it just looks a bit like there might’ve been a more important movie lurking in the original script.  What am I talking about, let’s dive into this latest trailer, and I’ll tell you. 

Tom Hardy Cast as Venom

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The age of franchising and shared universe has been one of severe disappointment and frustration among all the good stuff.  As much as I love Marvel Studios, the CW shared superhero universe, or the emerging Kaiju-verse of Godzilla and King Kong those make up the occasional rarities.  For every one of them, it feels like we’re buried in terrible DCEU installments, ill-conceived horror universe, and yet more incompetent misfires from the people at Sony.  

There has truly been no one more knee-capped by the demand for cinematic universes than Sony, mainly because they only have 1 brand under their belt that could be turned into a bigger universe and now that brand is co-owned by Marvel and Disney. 

Obviously, I’m talking about Spider-Man- the franchise that started the modern superhero fixation at the turn of the millennium.  Sony still remembers those days when Spider-Man made them enough money to buy the Rock of Gibraltar and have been trying to recapture that moment ever since, without realizing it’s their corporate meddling that drove the brand into the ground from #3 onwards.  

However, now that Sony has to share the profits of its new Spider-Man film with the folks at Marvel Sony is trying to branch out with unofficial spin-offs.  So far these have all languished in development hell, but now they’ve finally started to get their act together with the first such project: Venom, starring Tom Hardy.