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.