Speed Bump is totes ma faves

And you can clearly see why:

ImeanliekLOL1

Bevity: Always spot on

For instance:

It is Kids in the Hall good, folks.

Traditional America

Doctor Cat is Amazing

Doctor Cat is amazing and you need to read it right now.

Avengers: Loki's Army Race?

At the end of the 2nd Avengers trailer, Loki claims to have an army. In the most recent trailer, we get a few glimpses at the army. In neither trailer are we told who the army is, of what race the army is composed. I would like to pull together a few resources upon which we may base speculative answers to this question: What is Loki's army?



First, let's meet our contestants. This page offers eight possibilities:

Skrulls
Frost Giants
Badoons
Annihilus and His Minions
Knights of Wundagore
Sons of Muspell
Atlanteans
Alpha Cenaurians

The page briefly summarizes the pros and cons for each race. If we ignore the Frost Giants as "too predictable" since they were the villains in Thor, then the strongest cases can be made for Atlanteans or Sons of Muspell:

Atlanteans:
There were at least three hints at Atlantis in Iron Man 2:

1) The Oracle Dome.
2) S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Target Map' includes Namor's 'Fortress of Solitude'.
3) Vanko's workshop wall: 'Atlantis Discovered' News clipping.

The problem is that Atlantis may be reserved for the Iron Man franchise, rather than have it bleed over into Avengers. Some speculate that Iron Man 3 might be a retelling of the Demon in a Bottle storyline, so Marvel may be saving Namor / Atlantis for this film, rather than spoil it in Avengers.

Sons of Muspell:
This page compares the attack scenes from the Avengers trailer with pages from an old Thor comic. Some of the attack scenes are quite similar, but a few pages from a Thor comic seems to not be evidence enough for a strong conclusion.

I'd like to offer another piece of evidence that I think throws the 8 possibilities listed above into question: the package art for the Avengers LEGO sets:




As we see in these images, the members of Loki's army are silver and gold. They are also unnamed on the box art. If Loki's army were composed of a known race from the Marvel universe, presumably they would be named on the LEGO sets.

That's all the "evidence" I've found pertaining to this very important question. So, what do you think? And before you go with the token 'SKRULLS!' response, know that Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said they are not Skrulls, even though they're probably Skrulls.

Avengers: Trailer 2

The Avengers: Awesome Awesome Awesome

"Take that away, what are you?"

Yes to this.

The Emprises of Not-Icarus™: Episode 1

Our argument in the Thor thread seems to have been causally efficacious in my creating a superhero comic this weekend. So, having avoided needless degrees of ado, I present:

Thing I kinda want, but could NEVER justify-

From the press release : IDW Publishing is thrilled to announce the expansion of the company’s acclaimed Artist’s Edition series with WALTER SIMONSON’S THE MIGHTY THOR: ARTIST’S EDITION. Launching in July, this oversized, hardcover collection will present Thor 337-340, Simonson’s first classic story arc, which introduced Beta Ray Bill, and Thor 360-362, Simonson’s choice for the second arc in the book. WALTER SIMONSON’S THE MIGHTY THOR: ARTIST’S EDITION will be the first in a series of Artist’s Editions featuring legendary creators and comics from Marvel.

WALTER SIMONSON’S THOR: ARTIST’S EDITION ($100, hardcover, black and white, 176 pages, 12” x 17”) will be available in stores in July 2011. ISBN 978-1-61377-038-2.

.. 100 dollars.. for.. 7 reprinted issues. Wrong, I know. But.. it's 100 dollars for Space Horse Jesus as he was meant to be seen.

R.I.P. Johnny Storm

Johnny Storm, the human torch, is dead.

His death occurred in Fantastic Four issue 587, wherein he sacrifices himself to prevent Annihilus from invading Earth through the Negative Zone portal in the Baxter Building. Though Ben Grimm was ready to stay behind, Storm sacrificed himself to save Grimm's life. Storm then died the death of a true hero, to an onslaught of billions of alien insects.



I suggest a moment of silence in honor of Johnny Storm. During this moment I invite you to reflect upon this simple truth: That through all these years Johnny Storm has been the lone character who kept the Fantastic Four from becoming one overtly retarded cock-storm of faggotry. This despite the fact that his catch-phrase was to scream:



Flame on, Johnny Storm.

Flame on.

Archie Comics

As a really conservative comic... I am really curious as to how this will play out with their readership.
Introducing Kevin Keller, The new gay kid on the block

Greatest Webcomic Edit, Ever

Greatest Webcomic Edit, ever.


Explanation:
Original comic
News Story

XKCD: Tautology Club

Best XKCD, Ever.

Axe Cop: Stupid Brilliant

Axe Cop is a webcomic written by a 5 year old, drawn by a 29 year old.

It might suck.
Or it might be fantastic.

I do not know.

Kant and Aesthetics...Comic Book Style.

I like Kant as much as the next guy (which means not very much) but I love shit like this.

Philosophical Impact of Comic Character Religions

Religion of Comic Book Characters

If anyone would like to engage in a discussion of the religions of various comic characters with a slant towards the philosophical implications of the religious views these characters maintain feel free to comment.

For example: Does religion provide a core defining component of a character or do religions exist as tacked-on additions to suppliment an already defined character? Is Nightcrawler's Catholicism as integral to the character as, say, Shadowcats Judaism?

Disney to buy Marvel

Source

The Walt Disney Co. (DIS) said Monday it agreed to buy Marvel Entertainment Inc. (MVL), the creator of Spider-Man, the X-Men and thousands of other characters, for about $4 billion in the company's largest acquisition since it bought Pixar Animation Studios in 2006.

So are all of the X-men women going to be grandfathered into the Disney Princess collection?

Poor Betty

BG Paper Notepad and Sounding Board

So, as everyone's aware, Mikey linked me to Bowling Green's call for submissions on a Comic Book and Popular Culture paper.

I've been hashing out some ideas, and frankly, need a place to list them, disect them, and get input.

Some relatively narrow, and easily researched options:

The Batman Campfire Story - Three seperate versions of the same story, with roughly a decade between each iteration, the story involves kids telling their interpretation of Batman around a campfire. This story is taken across mediums, from the original comic, to the kid's 90s' animated series, and then to a Direct to DVD adult-aimed animation, with differing needs and tones. An interesting discussion of medium and opportunity, as well room to comment on further Batman references ( the cartoon nods towards Dark Knight Returns, the 90's movies, etc)

Riffs on the Superman Origin - The Superman Orgin story is a wellspring for Elseworld/What if type adaptations - What if the rocket landed elsewhere, what if it landed elseWHEN, etc, giving rise to alternative Superman characters, such as the Communist Red Son, the Cleese written True Brit, and so on. This would also have room to discuss Superman analogues, Marvel's Hyperion, who is Government Raised Superman, Invincible's Omni-Man, the forerunner of an alien invasion, Valentino's normalman, the parody character, etc. Raises issues of identity, the immigrant role, political indoctrination, etc.

Costume Changes and Reversions - An examination of the regular occurance of drastically changing a character's costume, and the tendency for these changes to be ephemral, and short-lived. Superman is a great focus for this, with the "Superman Red, Superman Blue" stories (both the original, and the modern 'Electric Superman', the "Death of Superman/Reign of the Supermen" story that introduces a number of Superman replacements, and more. This also has some overlap with the various Alternative 'Elseworld' Superman stories that have the character raised elsewhere. This is on some level a discussion of iconography and nostalgia, as well speaking to temporary aesthetic choices of the comic market ( an 80's costume is not a 90's costume, and neither are a 40's costume)

And a handful of other, less developed, topics and ideas. Some of these would require much more in the way of research material I don't have, some are things I have deep interest in, but unable to pin down a discussion, and some are just topics that haven't quite gelled yet.

DC's Suicide Squad - An Eighties examination of a politically-motivated semi-covert use of criminals (superpowered) to engage in espionage in exchange for sentence reductions. Gets deeply involved in discussions of politics, nationalism and terrorism.

Transmetropolitan - Huner S. Thompson in the bizzare future. I have an absurd ammount of love for this series, deeply tied into discussions of subcultures, material culture, futurism, and politics. Unfortunately, I haven't a clue what I'd like to say about this, and my series is stuck in storage.

DC's Starman - Similarly, deeply enamored of this series, with it's indepth examination of family and history, it links a scattered collection of attempts to keep the trademark on the Starman name, and weaves a tale of DC publishing and continuity history and nostalgia in through a coming of age / recognition of self story.

Morrison's Animal Man or Flex Mentallo - I don't have a thing to write here, but would love to go into something regarding Morrison's structuralism, making his characters cognizant of their existance in a comic book. No way in hell I can discipline myself into keeping this coherrent and restrained, I fear.

An examination/argument for comic books as filling the role of Modern Myth - something I toyed with during Banta's spring term Classical Mythology class. Myths often being on some level simplistic and contradictory, involving larger than life, hypersexualized figures imparting simplistic morality while not exactly portraying the messages they impart. Plenty of places to go from here, what with Kirby's influence all over Marvel and DC - Thor, Herc., the New Gods, the Eternals, etc. Proabably a bit too ambitious.

Anything from Oni, or other Indy comics taht I have? The Flight anthologies are interesting here, but the biggest issue for these is that I don't have access to them right now, so I have no clue what I might talk about regarding them.

Anyways, this is just me, trying to muddle through what I might talk about, and bounce ideas off folks. Any thoughts/disagreements/piqued interests?

Edit: Here's the link to the submissions request

Marvel Movies: The Three Fight Rule

So, Marvel is making their own movies now, and I enjoyed Iron Man quite a bit, and The Incredible Hulk was also on the correct track, but what I want to talk about specifically is the meting out of fight scenes.

Iron Man followed a three fight formula that was essentially "fight to survive", then "become an irresistible force" then "meet an unmovable object". The Hulk complicated the system a bit by virtue of the Hulk being in all instances an irresistible force, but there were still three main fights.

To elaborate, the fight to survive is the origin fight in Iron Man's case, and the factory fight for the Hulk. This is a battle not necessarily initiated by the hero, but is one that results in the unrefined application of force on the hero's part in overcoming an immediate threat. The becoming an irresistible force is the recognition that the power that was applied in the fight to survive could be used to liberate others. Iron Man takes down terrorists and Hulk protects Betty. This fight to some extent is a shift between a selfish and selfless incarnation of the hero. Fight three, the meeting of the unmovable object, introduces the foe who is equal or greater to the hero in potency. This fight changes the rules, and all the overwhelming power shown by the hero in fights one and two are now moot in the face of this opponent who has in some way mimicked the hero's capabilities. This is the hero fighting the selfish version of himself, and for me, this is the most interesting show down. Iron Man can only distract and deflect Iron Monger while Pepper delivers the killing blow, and the Hulk has to rely on the source of his problem, his anger, to overpower Abomination.

The virtue of having a relatively small number of distinct battle sequences is, to me at least, that it opens up a large portion of the movie to inaction. Stark has time to be Tony Stark and to experiment with his technology, and Banner gets to worry about contaminating people and figuring out how to fix his problem and all while both of them sort of get to have a relationship with a female. And all of this inaction makes the subsequent action much more important, and it keeps inaction out of the action. Bring Singer, I think, in his X-Men movies had to mix a bit of action and inaction due to the fact that he had such a large number of characters who needed to perform in such a short period of time, hence the furious cycling between the use of words and fists throughout almost the entire movie. Daredevil took this to something of an extreme through its use of trivial action sequences and banal dialogue. Had Marvel made that movie, I would bet that Matt wouldn't have sparred with Elektra in the park, and we would have gotten a better court case instead. In other words, Matt would be a character who fights in the law courts, and Daredevil would be a character who is his alter ego and fights in the streets, instead of the sketchy outline of Matt that, by the film's account, exists largely as a way to humanize a guy who dresses in fetish gear and beats the shit out of Michael Clark Duncan (an unconfirmed retard) and Colin Farell (America's town drunk).

I hope the three-fight trend continues, because I enjoy the way it keeps the mild-mannered and the super distinct and allows both to exist on the same film. I also appreciate how it puts each battle to work advancing not only the plot, but the character both in and out of hero mode. For me, three fights is the golden rule.