Panel Vision - Jessica Jones Season 2, What To Expect

So, Jessica Jones seems to be a bona fide hit with audiences, a major success that’s earned Marvel all kinds of critical acclaim and plenty of audience accolades as well.  It’s a major win for Marvel Studios, another example of how well they can convert obscure properties into crowd-pleasing hits while also proving just how dark, complex, and adult the Marvel universe is willing to be.  With all that said and considering it’s been a week since the show’s premiere I think it’s time to start talking about Jessica Jones season 2. 

That might seem a little premature but by comparison Daredevil had its second season confirmed after only 11 days so it doesn’t strike me as too early at all.  Now, as this post is going to be discussing what could come next I’m going to have to dig deep into what’s already happened so this article will contain spoilers.  If that’s a problem for you don’t read ahead, instead go watch the show, it’s excellent. 

Cover Story - Top 13 Strangest Sports Story Covers

So, at the time of writing Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 is blowing up theaters with its only major competition the quickly rising star of the boxing film Creed, a spin-off/follow-up to the Rocky franchise.  The fact that November is being essentially dominated by sports films (wasn’t there a James Bond movie this month? Does anyone remember that?) isn’t really a surprise but it does leave me in sort of a rut covers wise.  There are plenty of sports based comics, mainly from the ‘50s when superheroes didn’t dominate the medium, but they’re all pretty generic.  However, in the ‘60s when Marvel comics was born and fundamentally changed the comics landscape forever something strange started happening. 

In an attempt to compete horizontally with Marvel DC started producing stranger iterations of its ’50s comic line.  Now fundamental characters like Flash, Adam Strange, and Martian Manhunter emerged from an attempt to reintegrate superheroes into the weird science books that had been DC’s stock and trade for so long.  DC also applied this idea to the all purpose manly adventures they published like cowboys, war stories, and sports.  So, in 1963 the quasi-brand of Strange Sports Stories was born.  It didn’t last long at the time but DC has always sort of obsessed over it, even resurrecting the brand in the ‘70s and in recent years. 

Panel Vision - Comic Book Presidents

In case you aren’t one of my American readers, and I know you exist thanks to blogger’s analytics page, we over here in the states are currently in the midst of a fairly crazy presidential election build up.  We haven’t started the primaries yet but they’re looming ever closer and it’s been a wild ride punctuated by a slew of hilariously awful Republican candidates and the still ludicrous convolution of the Democratic leads.  I’ve already released a number of articles capitalizing on this particular election cycle so here’s another one because if you think the real life candidates are insane…well you’re right but here are a bunch of completely weird and out there superheroes and villains who somehow managed to take the highest office in the land against the better judgment of the electorate and editors everywhere.

Comics Rainbow - Captain America

Where do you start with a character like Captain America?  Originally created by legends of the medium Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Captain America is one of the longest running comic characters ever conceived, standing proudly alongside Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman as one of the few heroes whose been part of the genre since its inception in the late ‘30s.  After a brief absence in the ‘50s followed by reintroduction into the burgeoning canon of Marvel comics Captain America has become one of the most dynamic and compelling heroes in the entire genre.  He’s been through innumerable changes in his epically long history and in recent years come to be almost the face of the superhero genre in a way that no one could’ve predicted. 

For decades the hero people thought of when they considered the iconic hero was Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, even Iron Man for a hot minute there in 2008 but now, at this moment in time, it’s hard to think of a superhero who better embodies the genre and the reason for its continued success and relevance.  And with his new film Civil War continuing that trend and having it’s trailer drop I’ve decided to look back over the full history of Captain America, in all it’s shades, shames, and successes.   

Captain America: Civil War Teaser

Let’s not drag this out.  Captain America: Civil War is the 3^rd film in the Captain America series and will be the 13 Marvel Studios film overall.  Picking up in the wake of Avengers: Age of Ultron it follows the new team of Avengers led by Captain America and backed financially and logistically by Tony Stark who’s adopted quasi-retirement.  The film swirls around an international incident that causes the world governments to question the necessity of the Avengers overall and, at the very least, how smart it is to allow them to run around completely unsupervised leading to legislation to bring the heroes under the control of the government.  The decision brings a split between heroes as Iron Man supports the decision while Captain America opposes it owing largely to its impact and relation to his lost friend and comrade Bucky Barnes the Winter Soldier.  The division splits the heroes down the middle all while sinister forces seek to manipulate the situation and now it has a trailer and it’s great.

Legends of Tomorrow 2nd Full Trailer

Legends of Tomorrow is the next step in the amazing experiment that is CW’s shared DC Comics TV universe.  This ambitious project had a difficult infancy, struggling through a pretty rocky start with the first couple seasons of Arrow as little more than a Batman knock-off.  Then Flash happened and it was poor to mediocre at first, right up until CW hosted its first crossover episodes and found they could get a winning combination of sitcom antics, melodrama, and comic book action.  Since then both Flash and Arrow have improved immensely, embracing a broader and more accepting view of the DC comic universe where pretty much anything from the comics is free game to adapt to TV. 

So far Flash’s first season and a half alone have featured time travel, psychic apes, the speed force, and parallel realities while Arrow has branched out to include Ras Al Ghul, the Lazarus Pit, and Magic.  Now, with Legends of Tomorrow CW looks to reinvent the superhero wheel once more with their own Justice League.  Now, after a bit of a reshuffle owing to the departure of Robbie Amell’s Firestorm and CW wanting Legends of Tomorrow to run longer than intended, we’ve got our first trailer for DC’s first live action multi-hero team-up and it looks amazing.

Is Scott Adkins Our Iron Fist?

As 2015 has dragged on one thing has become abundantly clear: Marvel Studio’s future in phase 3 is far less certain than anybody really expected.  More and more the little studio that could has turned into the big studio that can’t seem to get out of its own way.  Marvel’s phase 2 has had some major financial success certainly but culturally the studio has only gotten more scattershot and less solid at predicting what, among its many properties, will be a legitimate smash with audiences or just make a lot of money.  Sure Iron Man 3 was a major financial success but it’s not like anyone is genuinely interested in diving deeper into the Mandarin, AIM, or Extremis any time soon.  The same way Age of Ultron broke all kinds of records but spent the summer getting stomped on at the box office and in the popular consciousness by Jurassic World. 

Meanwhile, less studio involved projects like Ant-Man, Daredevil, Agent Carter, Jessica Jones, and chief of all Captain America: Winter Soldier have found major traction with audiences.  All of this has made Marvel’s upcoming “phase 3” a much shakier and more uncertain place for the once untouchable kings of pop culture.  That their films will still gross solid returns is without question but the lingering issue of “will people still be talking about Marvel in the year 2020” has only become more and more prevalent.  Turns out you can’t sustain cultural impact through cross genre-continuity alone but damned if they aren’t going to try because it looks like Marvel has decided to add another hero to Dr. Strange in the form of Scott Adkins as Iron Fist.

1st Photos From Wonder Woman

So far, this year has been a pretty great time for female representation in geek media.  Supergirl had massive popular success and is easily the most successful the Superman franchise has been since the 1996 animated series, Mad Max: Fury Road gave us Furiosa, one of the all time most bad ass women ever, Jessica Jones is making major waves on Netflix, Agent Carter found a small but dedicated fan base, Hunger Games’ finished its series run, and in the world of comics we got hit new series like Prez, Paper Girls, Jem & The Holograms, Devil Dinosaur & Moon Girl, Spider-Gwen, and the continuing success of Ms. Marvel.  

In the midst of this expanding openness towards female characters in traditionally male dominated spaces it makes sense that Wonder Woman is on the cusp of returning to live action, first next year in Batman v. Superman and then in her own movie in 2017.  Now, we’ve got the first pictures of Wonder Woman from her upcoming movie and she looks amazing.

Panel Vision - History of Uncle Sam & The Freedom Fighters

Over this last weekend Amazon released an original blockbuster streaming series entitled Man in the High Castle, an adaptation of the Philip K. Dick story of the same name about an alternate history in which the Axis powers won World War 2.  I haven’t watched it yet but I’ve heard a lot of good things so far and I’m already a pretty big fan of alternate histories in general.  However, alternate histories are actually pretty rare outside of literature.  There are plenty of historical farces but as far as alternate futures crafted by changes in history that’s actually pretty rare and the ones there are usually come from comic books.  

Which leads us to today’s subject, the most enduring and popular alternate history in comic books, the world of Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters.  The heroes of an alternate timeline entitled Earth-10, Uncle Sam and his Freedom Fighters live in a world where President Roosevelt suffered a fatal heart attack at the height of World War 2 and the resulting instability cost the allies the war.  Now working in the underground Uncle Sam leads a small team of super heroes in a never-ending insurrection against the Axis Empire.  

Panel Vision - Alias

So, Jessica Jones has hit Netflix everywhere and the response has been pretty much overwhelmingly positive.  A lot of critics seem to love it, myself included, and there seems to be enough popular support that I wouldn’t be surprised if a second season got announced over the next couple of weeks.  It’s easy to see why the show has touched such a chord with so many, firstly because it’s just a really well made show.  The writing is excellent, the cinematography solid, the set design and lighting is superb, and the actors are all in top form.  More than that, the show has taken the bold stance of touching on a lot of very controversial and raw subject including, abuse, PTSD, rape, dubious consent, and privilege. 

All of that is relatively in line with the comics that spawned the series, 2001’s groundbreaking comic series by Marvel comics architect Brian Michael Bendis: Alias.  Published through Marvel’s MAX Comics line for adult content Alias pushed the boundaries of modern comics and helped Bendis get his foot in the door to create the Ultimate Universe and eventually take over the reigns of power at Marvel and extend greater relevance to now key characters like Luke Cage and Carol Danvers.  All of which is nice because aside from the book’s importance…it’s really not that great.

Cover Story - Top 15 Wonder Woman Covers

Hello, and welcome to Cover Story: digging as little into comic books as we can.  In case you haven’t heard there’s a Wonder Woman in the works and we just got our first picture from it.  I’ll discuss the picture in more depth later down the line but for now I’ll just that I really like it and it’s actually got me excited for a DC film for a change.  It also got me thinking about Wonder Woman, one of the most underappreciated comic book heroes of all time.  Wonder Woman has an incredibly long and storied history, both in terms of inception and the actual content that informs her comics.  Just like fellow titans Batman and Superman, Wonder Woman’s comic was one of the few superhero books that never stopped running during the decline of superhero popularity.  That means she lasted through 2 whole decades of creativity and craziness, like the fanciful and unrestricted insanity that was the ‘40s or the blend of sci-fi and horror weirdness that was the ‘50s.  With all that in mind I’ll be focusing solely on her volume 1 comics from #1-#105, the issue where her origin was revamped for a new decade.  So, let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the top 15 Wonder Woman covers. 

Comics Rainbow - Daredevil Villains

This Friday will see the premiere of Marvel and Netflix’s second collaborative streaming show Jessica Jones, based on the comic series Alias.  The show is the next installment in the lead up the streaming crossover series Defenders after Daredevil earlier this year and will feature the second Daredevil villain brought to life in the form of David Tennant’s Purple Man.  It’s been no secret that the Marvel cinematic universe has been lacking for interesting bad guys since day one and a big part of that has been that all the cool bad guys are part of franchises Marvel doesn’t own the rights to like Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, or the X-Men.  However, it’s not at all surprising that Marvel is on the cusp of scoring two big villain wins this year with Kingpin and Purple Man, two Daredevil bad guys.  Daredevil has always had one of the more interesting rogues galleries among heroes, usually counted alongside Flash, Batman, and Spider-man as one of the best in the genre so it’s about time Marvel dove into that toy box of madness for inspiration.  So, that’s what we’re going to look at today, the full spectrum look at the many foes of Daredevil; shades, shames, successes and all.

Movie Monthly - Real Steel

So far, all the future film’s we’ve discussed have followed along to the idea of a very distant future.  The defining aspect of them has been that society, as we know it, has been completely swept away due to some great calamity and replaced with a wholly new system of government.  This has mainly acted as a way to up-jump the importance of the futuristic cyber sports within the world of the film.  Most sports movies are fine to let the stakes simply BE winning or losing a sporting event but in the realms of sci-fi, especially nerdier sci-fi, it’s weirdly suspected that an audience won’t necessarily engage with a story unless the stakes are Earth shattering.  So, this week we’re changing it up with a film that’s set in a not too distant future approximation of our world where the only real change is that we’ve invented fighting bots to take up the act of boxing and wrestling.  I’m speaking of course of the underappreciated 2011 gem Real Steel, starring Hugh Jackman.

 

Cover Story - Top 15 Transformers Covers

Hello, and welcome to Cover Story: digging as little into comic books as we can.  A lot of things happened last week but one of the strangest was an ongoing stream set-up by Shia LeBeouf where he streamed himself watching all of his own films.  This latest act of weirdness by one of the weirdest name actors in the Hollywood community lasted for nearly 72 hours under the hashtag #AllMyMovies and was viewed by pretty much everyone as yet another peculiar stunt from the same man who once attended a premiere with a paper bag on his head.  However, it got a lot of folks talking about LeBouf’s many films, chief among them being the Transformers trilogy, which he was forced to endure in full.  This got me thinking about Transformers and remembering they actually had a quite heroically massive comics run with Marvel back in the ‘80s.  So, let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the top 15 Marvel Transformers covers. 

Jessica Jones: All Trailers & Photos

So, we are officially one week away from the premiere of Marvel/Netflix second venture of the year as well as this year’s second, solo female led Marvel production: Jessica Jones.  As the premiere rumbles towards us there’s been a steady drip of teasers, trailers, photos and more so I’ve compiled everything we know about the show so far in one easy spot.  This will cover all of the important photos and trailers you might need to watch and break them down to get an overall sense of the tone and content we’re going to be getting from Marvel’s big Thanksgiving release.  So, let’s talk about Jessica Jones. 

Static Thoughts - Blackadder Goes Forth

Edited by Robert Beach 

On this day 97 years ago, the guns of World War 1 finally fell silent as on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month the Great War came to a close. The war had a total military and civilian casualty report of close to 38 million people, owing mainly to the sausage grinder that was trench warfare in the bulk of the war.  For literal years, the trenches would sit ideally as generals ordered their men into suicidal headline rushes across No Man’s Land. By all accounts, it was one of the cruelest and most nightmarish experiences of “combat” in human history.

who would’ve thought there was a comedy in all that?  

Well, it turns out geniuses thought that because in 1989 Richard Curtis and Ben Elton gave us just that with Blackadder Goes Forth, the 4^th and final season of the acclaimed BBC sitcom Blackadder starring Rowan Atkinson, Tony Robinson, Hugh Laurie, Tim McInnerny, and Stephen Fry. The season is remembered as one of the show’s absolute best and is often cited as the perfect vision of World War 1 in public consciousness. 

Comics Rainbow: War Heroes

Happy Veterans/Armistice Day everyone, may this day of remembrance for the end of the Great War as well as a general appreciation for all those who serve find you well.  With that pleasantry both stated and in mind I’m going to be talking about war comics today on Comics Rainbow, specifically the war comics of DC but first; a bit of comic book history.  After the end of World War 2 superhero comic books seriously tapered off in popularity with a handful of exceptions like Batman and Superman powering through.  It’s not exactly clear why this happened but the best bet would be the major shift in the tastes of comic readership heralded by the end of the war.  Prior to World War 2 the comic reading public actually skewed older, hence the emphases on pulpy violence like The Shadow, but when World War 2 came most of the comic reading public shipped off overseas and the new readership was much younger. 

However, by the time the war ended that new readership had aged and suddenly had new heroes: their fathers and brothers returned from World War 2.  So, at the dawn of the ’50s there was an explosion of war comic books, the 5 big ones being produced by DC comics and written by inventor of Flash and Lady Cop Robert Kanigher.  As the ‘50s dragged on the 5 major comics (G.I. Combat, Our Army At War, Our Fighting Forces, and Star Spangled War Stories) began to develop a roster of reoccurring characters that ended up permanent fixtures of the DC Universe as the superhero craze reemerged in the ‘60s.  Those are the characters I’ll be giving the full spectrum look at today; shades, shames, successes and all. 

Panel Vision - Comic Book Apocalypses

So, Fallout 4 has just been unlocked to the unwashed masses of planet Internet, which most likely means this article won’t be read by many but if you’re one of the few without access to this next great step in human achievement, this is for you.  The release of Fallout got me thinking about apocalypse/post-apocalypses, one of the most interesting elements of fiction while simultaneously one of the most under-explored.  Apocalypse and post-apocalypse fiction is fascinating as a template but often filled up with the same exploration of robots, aliens, zombies, and wastelands, there’s very little variation is my point.  So, because I endeavor to shine the light of obscure nerdy knowledge into the darkness of mundanity these are 10 comic book apocalypses and post-apocalyptic wastelands I’ve chosen to spotlight, I’m not going in any specific order or value set, they’re just a bunch of doomsdays that are worth sharing. 

Movie Monthly - Rollerball

Welcome back to Movie Monthly’s celebration of the very thin crossover line between sci-fi and sports this November with a look at all things future, techno, and athletic.  Last  week we looked at Robot Jox, the story of a distant future wherein nations hashed out their disputes through the tried and true method of giant robot fights, this week we’ve got arguably the opposite inverse film with Rollerball, the 1975 dystopian future sports film starring James Caan.  It’s actually kind of amazing how much Rollerball serves as a counter point to Robot Jox; corporations instead of nations, teams instead of individuals, entertainment rather than politics, a well known star with an actual career rather than “that guy from Alien Nation,” a really awful remake in 2002 instead of a reappraisal by nerd culture in recent years, and most key of all: Rollerball was the product of ‘70s pessimistic futurism while Robot Jox was the result of ‘80s blockbuster fun giving way to ‘90s shallowness and polish.

Cover Story - Top 15 Nick Fury Covers

Edited by Robert Beach 

Hello, and welcome to Cover Story: digging as little into comic books as we can. Cover Story isn’t exactly a new column around here as I’ve been doing “Top Cover” lists since August. now, I’m just giving it a name and making it an official weekly column alongside Comics Rainbow and Movie Monthly. With that said, let’s dive into this week’s cover subject: Nick Fury. 

I’ve already talked at length about Nick Fury earlier this week and how he served as Marvel’s super spy answer to James Bond, and how he’s been through numerous iterations in his 50-year history.  I’m mainly focusing on him because Spectre came out this week, and I’m a sucker for topicality. At the same time, Nick Fury’s various covers feature work by some of the greatest artists in comic book history, including Jim Steranko, a towering legend of the medium and concept artist for Indiana Jones. So let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the top 15 Nick Fury covers. 

Warcraft Movie Trailer

If ever there was a studio that embodied the difference between winning and leading it’d be Universal.  They basically struck gold with the Fast & Furious movies and have been letting that box office money pit accumulate while floundering about in search of fellow hit makers and it’s served them well with equally successful hits like Pitch Perfect, Despicable Me, 50 Shades of Grey, and this year’s mega box office smash Jurassic World.  The thing is that “experimentation” really is the Universal approach as none of their efforts have been in order to define trends or lead the pop cultural scene, simply attempts to get money making films. 

That’s why, even though Jurassic World made unfathomable amounts of cash and Fast & Furious is on its 8^th film I’d never call Universal trend riders or taste makers.  So their latest venture, a collaboration with Blizzard Studios to bring the massively successful Warcraft franchise to life on the big screen is throwing me for a bit of a loop as it actually seems like the most financially successful yet culturally irrelevant studio in Hollywood has finally decided to step up to the plate and lead the way for a change. 

1st Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Set Photos Debut

Edited by Robert Beach 

The importance of the Harry Potter franchise to the modern age of fantasy, blockbuster, and cinematic landscape cannot be overstated. This franchise is a pop culture phenomena second to none; a tremendously popular book series that was translated in something close to its entirety to the big screen in a radical cinematic experiment of letting the actors age through the films over the course of an entire decade.  

Modern pop culture, geek and nerd pop culture specifically, just doesn’t make sense without Harry Potter. Especially for Warner Brothers, the company that spent nearly 10 years dominating the entire fantasy genre thanks to the double barrel blast that was the Potter films and the Lord of the Rings movies. And now, with the fantasy power vacuum still unaddressed since the recession of Game of Thrones’ influence over the medium, and the Hobbit films having run their disappointing course, WB is returning to the Harry Potter well one more time for a prequel series all their own entitled Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and we’ve just received the first set photos.

Static Thoughts - James Bond Jr.

This latest weekend has marked the premiere of Spectre, he fourth film in the Daniel Craig run of James Bond films and continuity that started with Casino Royale in 2006.  At time of writing I haven’t seen it yet but given that I write about nerdy pop culture jazz on the Internet I’m basically contractually required to get in on the fun.  The only problem is that I don’t have a dedicated movie column and James Bond actually hasn’t really spread far beyond the realm of film.  

Unlike a lot of similar heroes he’s never branched out into comic books despite his widespread popularity and longevity James has never made it to television…well, almost never.  Yes, today we’re discussing the ignominious classic of the early ‘90s James Bond Jr., an animated show set smack in the middle of the dead years between Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan that brought James Bond to the small screen as well as comic books, video games, and action figures. 

Alice Through The Looking Glass Trailer

One of the weird things about the late 2000s trend of up-jumping classic fairy tales, seminal works of literature we all know from childhood, and even bible stories and myths into fantasy blockbusters is that very few of these films have actually been successful.  Sure, we’ve cranked out film after film in this genre like Mirror Mirror, Jack the Giant Slayer, Pan, Hansel & Gretel: Witchhunters, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Dracula Untold, Hercules and countless more but for the most part they’ve all been total failures, regardless of actual quality.  That same disclaimer, regardless of quality, applies to the smattering of financial success within the genre, almost all of which seem to come from the pop culture warriors at Disney. 

To some extent it makes sense that Disney are the folks making the most money on easily accessible revisions to classic fairy tales, myths, and literature given that’s been their bread and butter since before World War 2.  At the same time however, Disney did more than anyone to launch this particular trend with the 2010 mega-hit Alice in Wonderland, which ended up the 2^nd highest grossing film of the year, beating out competitors like Harry Potter 7 and Twilight: Eclipse.  Now, Disney returns to the Alice well 6 years later with a sequel minus Tim Burton entitled Alice Through The Looking Glass.