Week of Review - X-Men: Evolution's X-23

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It’s day 3 of X-Men week here on the Lido Shuffle and time to address the BEST X-Men show ever made: X-Men: Evolution.  Premiering 4 months after the smash hit that was 2000’s X-Men, X-Men: Evolution was meant to continue the adventures of everyone’s favorite mutants though with a bit of a twist.  The series borrows elements of its aesthetic from the films such as the look of Xavier’s Institute and the more uniform costumes but for the most part feels like a throwback to the ‘70s X-Men stuff rebranded for the modern era, or at least a modern late ‘90s. 

The show focused on the X-Men and Brotherhood as teenagers in high school struggling to balance their lives even as the threats they face grow greater and greater.  It’s one of the most character-driven superheroes shows there is and embodies adolescence shockingly well, comparable to Daria levels of well.  Seriously, I’d be here forever praising it so instead I’ve decided to focus specifically on the show’s most enduring creation: X-23. 

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. 

Marvel Phase 2 Review

The release of any Marvel film brings with it the question of “where does it rank among all the other Marvel movies.”  However, in the case of Ant-Man that question brings with it an added amount of weight and focus, as Ant-Man is also the conclusion to Marvel’s entire Phase 2 enterprise.  This was meant as the big, showy example of everything Marvel could with both Disney’s money and the assured popularity of a mass fan base in the wake of Phase 1’s success at finding an audience for their B & C-list heroes.  Oh there have been installments in phase 2 meant to broaden Marvel’s character rosters but more often than not that job fell to the sidebars of individual films.  New characters like Iron Patriot, The Vision, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and the Falcon weren’t the focus of this experimental phase.  No, the big push of phase 2 has been capitalizing on previous success to move things around for the overall Marvel Cinematic Universe story and there’s no getting around the truth that for the most part it just didn’t work.