Static Thoughts - In A Mirror Darkly

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It seems these days that alternate realities and parallel universes are everywhere.  That’s actually kind of to be expected as nerdy media becomes more and more of a dominant genre.  Back in the day geek material struggled for mainstream relevance unless it stripped out as many of its big ideas as possible but these days people are making movies and shows out of Ant-Man and Dr. Strange.  As such, digging into more complicated ideas like the Multiverse, pocket universes, or altered continuity are becoming more and more widespread. 

The Flash has really embraced this idea with the Multiverse and Flashpoint, Legends of Tomorrow had its own altered universe episode, Stranger Things was built on a dimensional foundation, and Agents of SHIELD has found serious success with an altered continuity story set in a world where the bad guys won called ‘Agents of Hydra.’  As I’m eager to capitalize on this trend I thought I’d look back at hands down my favorite altered reality story, coming to us from the most hated Star Trek series of them all Star Trek: Enterprise- this is ‘In A Mirror Darkly.’

Panel Vision - What If? #28-29

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As I write this, Agents of SHIELD is gearing up to do an entire episode in honor of the classic Marvel “What If?” format.  This was a whole comic series dedicated to asking bizarre questions about altered Marvel continuity like what if Daredevil had killed Kingpin or what if the X-Men died on their first mission.  

It was a popular series during the ‘70s and ‘80s with a handful of revivals around big events in recent years.  Speaking of big events, Marvel’s current big event for the summer is something called Secret Empire, in which Captain America reveals himself to be a Hydra agent after some reality warping shenanigans from a previous comic. 

The pitch has caused a lot of discourse; most of it I’d like to avoid getting into here.  However the subject of altered reality, evil Nazi Captain America, and What If comics reminded me of one of the greatest What If two-parters of all time- What If Captain America had Led an Army of Super-Soldiers in World War II and What If Captain America had formed the Avengers.  Obviously, there’s more going on than the titles or covers suggest so follow me into one of the darkest and most compelling and well written altered continuity stories this side of Superman: Red Son. 

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. 

Panel Vision - Fury: My War Gone By

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Today marks the return of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, the first major Marvel show on a network.    This year’s premiere of Marvel’s super-spy series comes with a big dollop of serendipity as it’s hot on the heels of the first new Nick Fury comic book to hit stands since the ‘90s.  Given the situation and the fact I’ve meant to write about this for a while now, I’ve elected to look at the best Nick Fury comic book yet written- My War Gone By.  

I briefly discussed it back in my look at Nick’s many iterations and again while going over his best comic covers, now the time has come at least to tackle it head on and believe me, this is a long overdue review.  Aside from fitting into the double SHIELD theme of this week My War Gone By fits the much broader tone of this moment in American history.  

It’s a vast, complex, sobering cold war story of one soldier’s march through history and towards oblivion, the way we make war, and what drives the American identity- just the thing to read as we begin our own inevitable march towards oblivion. 

Static Thoughts - Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD

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As I write this, it’s the eve of Agents of SHIELD’s 4^th and possibly final season.  To celebrate, I’ve decided to look back on the first time SHIELD was ever adapted to the small screen; the 1998 made-for-TV movie Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD, starring David Hasselhoff.  It’s easy to forget this now because of how much Marvel has transformed the cultural landscape but before 1999 virtually ALL of Marvel’s live action output was on TV.  This mainly came from a series of failed pilots in the ‘70s and the Lou Ferrigno Incredible Hulk show. 

However, after the success of 1989’s Batman and the 1990 Flash TV series Marvel made another go of it on TV, first forming a lucrative deal with Fox for animation (which is where the Spider-Man and X-Men show come from) and then pivoting into a pair of TV movie pilots.  This was the second, basically making it the last Marvel live action TV show before Agents of SHIELD, let’s dive in. 

Static Thoughts - 8 Possible Defenders Villains

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One of the most impressive things about Marvel is how well they’ve managed to colonize so many different forms of media successfully.  After successfully establishing themselves as the cinematic guardians of pop culture they’ve now moved on to be the best and most ambitious thing on Netflix.  

Sure, Daredevil might be flawed by Jessica Jones is the best superhero show we’ve yet seen and Luke Cage is shaping up to be the black superhero fantasy we’ve needed for two years now, at least. 

All of this is leading up to The Defenders series next year, which will see a crossover of Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Daredevil, and the upcoming Iron Fist series.  So far the villain of Defenders has been pretty clearly the Hand, the magic ninja clan from Daredevil but recently Vincent D’Onofrio made statements that his villain Kingpin might return for Defenders.  Given this and how many loose threads tie through the MCU I’ve compiled a list of 8 possible villains we could see in The Defenders.

Panel Vision - Reinventing Iron Man for Iron Man 4

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Edited by Robert Beach 

As I write this, Robert Downey Jr. was photographed earlier in the week meeting with Jon Favreau and a handful of former Marvel behind-the-scenes individuals to discuss a new project. This has gotten the ball rolling in some corners of the Internet to start speculating on whether or not we’ll be seeing plans for a new Iron Man film sometime soon.  

The question of fourth installments, like Marvel’s powerhouse solo franchises Iron Man and Captain America, has loomed large in the distance on the long, slow, march towards the 2020s and Marvel’s Phase 4. It’s a legitimately major concern, especially the chopping and the changing over whether or not Robert Downey Jr. was under contract for more Marvel films. Given this recent swirl of rumors, let’s finally answer what’s going on with Iron Man 4.

6 Questions about New Warriors

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Edited by Robert Beach

Something peculiar about the story of Marvel Studios, the little comic book company that dreamed of making movies, is how well they’ve managed to wipe clean people’s memories of their failures. As far as the general public is concerned, Marvel has never failed, more or less cemented themselves as an unstoppable blockbuster juggernaut and America’s cinematic guardian. This takes a lot of mental editing when you take into account how often Marvel has let us down. And nowhere has that been more evident than in their many botched attempts at Network TV. 

After three seasons of diminishing viewership, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. needed to bring in Ghost Rider to resurrect season 4. Their Most Wanted spin-off fell through, and most of Marvel’s “in the works” TV projects seemed to have stalled. This all got so bad that Marvel allegedly met with ABC about what their future in television held. It seems we now have our answer in the form of The New Warriors and also Squirrel Girl.

Joe Dinicol Cast as Ragman in Arrow S5

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As we move into the 4^th year of CW’s superhero dominance a bizarre question has begun to emerge: how do you solve a problem like Arrow?  The Green Arrow show was the first of CW’s new crop of comic book adaptations, premiering in 2012 and setting the tone for 3 years of superhero television and impacting sister shows like Gotham and even Agents of SHIELD.  However, the 2012 was a long time ago and the superhero television landscape has definitely shifted under Arrow’s feet, with the drab and stripped down aesthetic of the first 3 seasons left in the dust by the likes of The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow. 

Arrow has just become a lot less relevant to CW’s expansive universe of shows and season 4’s increased focus on magic didn’t really help things.  As such, season 5 has opted to double down on the one thing that worked for season 4: introducing new heroes, with a crop of new characters coming to the upcoming premiere.  I’ve already covered Wild Dog, Vigilante, and Human Target, now meet Ragman, the Tatterdemalion of Justice, played by Joe Dinicol. 

Brie Larson Cast as Captain Marvel

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Edited by Robert Beach

As we enter our 8^th year of Marvel-dominated blockbusters and news cycles, the tide is slowly turning into the house of the Avengers built. This particular ball got rolling a few years ago after Avengers became a bonafide hit and definitively closed out phase 1. It turned out phase 2 was just going to be more of the same with some space characters thrown in.  

The big trend of the moment has become a majorly increased demand to see greater representation and diversity from Marvel studios seemingly unstoppable hit-making machine. This particular campaign has only gotten more intense over the past three years. Stuff like Jessica Jones proved a major hit while Marvel’s Dr. Strange and Iron Fist incurred ire over their whitewashing and cultural appropriation.  

This year, Marvel seems poised to turn things around with Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther emerging as the breakout character of Captain America: Civil War, and Luke Cage poised to be the next big Netflix hit.  Now, in the wake of San Diego Comic Con, Marvel takes their next big leap forward with the announcement that their first lead woman superhero, Captain Marvel, will be played by Brie Larson.

 

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 - How to Fix Agents of SHIELD

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Edited by Robert Beach

As we continue the march towards San Diego Comic Con something that’s been weighing on me quite a bit is Agents of SHIELD.  At time of writing Agents of SHIELD is, arguably, Marvel’s largest and most public failing.  Even though the comic company turned blockbuster film studio manage to turn off-beat oddities like Guardians of the Galaxy or Ant-Man into smash hits they just don’t seem able to make Agents of SHIELD stick, not with audiences and not as a credible show worth diving deeper into than a few episodes. 

We’re headed now towards a fourth season that could easily end up the show’s last outing, as four seasons is all that’s required for a show to be eligible for syndication.  Given the show’s diminishing audience that seems the most likely case but, if Marvel is going to pull out all the stops for a season 5 bid, I came up with four ways they can make Agents of SHIELD a better show. 

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.

Static Thoughts - The Case for More Agent Carter

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Edited by Robert Beach

Let’s talk about Agent Carter. Springing out of the surprise success of Captain America in the early 2010s, Agent Carter was the second major attempt by the highly successful Marvel Studios to transition from films to television. After the tepid response to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in 2013, Agent Carter’s 2015 launch was vaunted as Marvel TV done right with Kevin Feige promising a true experience to wow and engage audiences, and, at first, that’s what we got. The first season of Agent Carter wasn’t necessarily great, but it was solid as far as period espionage plots go. 

What’s more, the show had a solid core focusing on the way women were being forced out of the independence World War 2 afforded them that would shape the feminist and sexual revolutions going forward. Marvel immediately threw away all that good will with the second season, and the show was canceled. Fan demand for a revival has already started, and while I’m not super on board with such exercises, I do think that Agent Carter deserves a second chance to be the hit series it never really got the chance to be.  

Panel Vision - History of SHIELD

Edited by Robert Beach

Let’s talk about S.H.I.E.L.D. Given that you and I are conversing on the Internet, I’m taking it as a bit of a given that you like or at least know of the Marvel cinematic universe. In less than a decade, the Marvel shared universe of films, TV shows, and one-shots have come to dominate the cultural landscape and occupies the same space in the pop cultural psyche that was once reserved for the likes of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. There are a lot of reasons for that success, but chief among them is how the MCU has used continuity to cross pollinate its various properties, tying the distaff films and show together into a rich tapestry of genres and stylistic affects. 

This has allowed the individual Marvel endeavors to explore their own unique focuses like Captain America’s heavy political metaphors, Guardians of the Galaxy’s emphasis on universe building, or the villain-centric storytelling of Jessica Jones & Daredevil. And at the core of this continuity-driven exploration is S.H.I.E.L.D., the in-universe super spy agency tasked with bridging the gap between the government and the superheroes.  S.H.I.E.L.D.’s had a pretty crazy history in the MCU over the course of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show, yet an even stranger history in the comic books. And today, we showcase that history.

6 Questions About This Fall's Luke Cage

Edited by Robert Beach 

This Friday will mark the premiere of Marvel’s 3^rd Netflix series in the 2^nd season of Daredevil. However, that won’t be the end of Marvel and Netflix’s partnership this year as they’ll also be launching a new series this fall. Coming September 30^th Marvel’s Luke Cage will premiere on Netflix. Luke has already debuted in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, appearing as a supporting character in last year’s hit series Jessica Jones.  

It was established in the series that Luke already has his super powers from the comics of enhanced strength and unbreakable skin. It’s also been confirmed Iron Fist, Marvel’s next proposed Netflix solo hero, will have some part in Luke’s outing. Beyond that, we don’t really know much about the Luke Cage show, so I’ve put together a list of major questions about the upcoming series. 

Will Powerless include the Global Guardians?

Edited by Robert Beach 

One of the bizarre paradoxes of superhero adaptations seems to be that the fewer major properties a studio owns, the better their work turns out.  For instance, DC/WB has owned the rights to all of their characters from the word go, and they’ve yet to churn out a good non-Batman movie this century. Conversely, Marvel, who lacked access to either of their major franchises, turned a handful of B-list heroes into the biggest multimedia franchise on the planet right now. 

The same seems to be true in the world of television where the fractured rights landscape of DC has rendered excellent hits like Supergirl, Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow while Marvel has the disappointing Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter. Now DC/WB is back at the act with weird and fractured comics rights with the new NBC comedy series Powerless, the first set photos of which have just premiered.

From all accounts, Powerless is set to be an office comedy set in a world full of superheroes, magic, and aliens. I’m not entirely sure how that will work if the idea is that the office workers have super powers in the vein of Cracked.com’s Anti-Heroes, or they’re just replacing generic Office-style shenanigans with time travel, super villain schemes, and alien invasions. I’m tempted to think it’s the latter of the two, treating the boom and bombast of standard superhero adventure with the banal attitude of classic mundanity has always been an easy path to hilarity.  

Stuff like The Tick, Formerly Known As The Justice League, and the collected works of Brian Michael Bendis have all mined this lucrative vein of nerd comedy to great success in the past. In either event, the world of Powerless will still require superheroes if it wants to sell its general idea of being in a superhero universe and that’s where things get weird.

Unlike Marvel, who own all of their TV rights, DC’s television adaptation rights are incredibly fractured. That’s why Arrow and Flash are on CW while Supergirl is on CBS, Gotham is on Fox, and Constantine was on NBC. This means even if NBC wanted its superhero universe to feature big-name heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman, they couldn’t get the rights.

However, DC still has an incredible backlog of characters that have never even come close to a live-action adaptation and work perfectly to fill the ranks of Powerless background players. This lets the writers of the show avoid having to come up with new heroes week to week, welcomes nerd viewership by NBC slapping a big DC Comics logo, and get free publicity from blogs like this one. Hey, everyone likes sausage, but no one wants to know how it gets made, right? 

In any event, the first two heroes to appear on Powerless have been announced and we’ve caught a glimpse of one of them. The heroes are Crimson Fox and Jack O’ Lantern. Both of whom I was already thoroughly familiar with long before this announcement because, as established, weird comics and I go together perfectly. Crimson Fox makes a decent amount of sense for an addition as her powers and design are pretty well suited to a quick and easy adaptation. What’s more, she’s only about D-list as far as things go. Though she’s never made it to a multimedia adaptation, Crimson Fox was a member of the Justice League for a time.... sort of. 

After DC rebooted their universe for the first time in 1986, one of the caveats going forward was a brand new Justice League that would feature a whole host of new, internationally themed characters. Thus was born the Justice League International along popular spin-off comic Justice League Europe. Crimson Fox joined as a member of the JLE during the mid point of its very respectable and thoroughly enjoyable run.  

She was a French superhero who had super pheromones in addition to some enhanced physicality, and a costume that looked absolutely nothing like a fox. Eventually, the multi-Justice League era imploded under the weight of other spin-offs like Justice League Antarctica and Justice League Task Force. After that, Crimson Fox dropped off the map for years and years before reappearing in the Global Guardians.

That brings us to the second hero: Jack O’ Lantern.  Jack O’ Lantern was a founding member of the Global Guardians, a weird substrata of the DC universe in its own right. The Global Guardians popped up in the early ‘80s as a direct response to the various characters added to the Super Friends TV show to increase diversity. The idea of the time was to be a version of the Justice League on a Global scale, emphasizing diversity and international cooperation. As such, they had members from England, Brazil, Germany, Australia, Israel, Japan, Greece, and even Native Americans. 

The team were more or less forgotten after their brief initial run, save for members Green Fire and Ice Maiden; they went on to join the Justice League International. The team was revived during Crimson Fox’s tenure as a kind of international superhero watchdog force as a way to curb American metahuman activity. The new team featured mostly new members as most of the original heroes became part of yet another international superhero force: The Ultramarine Corp.

So what does all this actually mean? Well, maybe nothing, yet maybe that the world of superheroes we’re about to see on Powerless is meant to be one of broader diversity and international action. The vast miasma of heroes from across the Global Guardians and Ultra Marine Corp are more than enough to fill out the background ranks of a superhero universe while also giving the proceedings a unique style and look.  

Additionally, most of the costumes required for the various characters would be pretty easy to put together, and none of them boost super powers that would be too difficult to replicate. I don’t really know why the makers of Powerless would settle on this particular route, but it’s not a terrible idea to say the least. Provided the framing of their universe isn’t about a background tapestry of interesting and diverse heroes used to back-up a collection of dull white office drones, that’d be a pretty terrible misstep. 

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