Dec 29 2017

Marvel And Star Wars Comics Sale at Amazon

Marvel And Star Wars Comics Sale at Amazon! I know, we do this a lot. Push digital comics sales. And sometimes it’s when there’s only a little bit of time left. But if you read digital comics — and you should — there are some sweeeet deals to be had. Only valid on December 29, 2017, so hurry up.

Hey Kids! Comics!

Hey Kids! Comics!

Here’s the general link. Specific suggestions follow.

Ms. Marvel Volume 1, $1.80:

Man did I love these comics. An actual modern take on the “kid gets powers, has no idea how to deal with them” story. Plus it focuses on a culture that I know very little about. Give it a try.

Infinity Gauntlet, $2.20

The movie is coming out soon, and this is way cheaper than spending $450 on the hardcover.

Planet Hulk, $5.00

Oh man did I love these comics. Thor Ragnorak is based in part on stuff from here. And you can follow that up with…

World War Hulk, $1.80

Hulk mad, but Hulk SMART. Hulk mad and smart is very dangerous for those he is mad at. And oh, is he PISSED.

Hawkeye Vol. 1: My Life As A Weapon, $2.20

This was a pleasant surprise. Hawkeye buys a brownstone in Brooklyn and he’s blind, I think. It really wasn’t what I expected at all. Plus the art is genuinely different and overall very awesome.

And…

Marvel Graphic Novel #1: The Death of Captain Marvel, 80 cents

80 CENTS! FOR ONE OF THE BEST COMICS EVER! JUST BUY IT!

OK! Some Star Wars comics:

Star Wars: Darth Vader Vol. 1, $2.20

Vader in modern comic book form is highly intriguing. Think about it. What do we know about him, really? I don’t mean Spongebob Whinypants from the prequels, I mean VADER. What’s he like? These comics offer some insight.

Star Wars Vol. 1: Skywalker Strikes

Let’s go full Skywalker family, bros! (Sorry about that. I’m not really a “bro” type but it felt OK here. Is it OK? Do I have to give myself a wedgie now? Will it hurt?)

Just hit the link below and explore. Shop. Today only. December 29, 2017. May the force be with you, True Believers.

Source: Amazon.com: Marvel And Star Wars Comics Holiday Sale December 29 ONLY


Dec 10 2016

Spider-Man: Homecoming Trailer

Here is the Spider-Man: Homecoming trailer. If you are a Geek Gold Card member, prepare to make little nerdy noises.


Where to begin? So much to like.

  • He’s young. This is the first on-screen Peter Parker we’ve had that is actually the age of the original character, which is 15. Yes. 15. Even if one were to dicker over the exact age, it was clear that he was in high school, making him, at best, 16, 17, whatever. While both Tobey Maquire and Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of the character had him in high school, neither actor was as young as the current Peter/Spidey, one Tom Holland, seen already in Captain America: Civil War. It is SO MUCH FUN to see a kid playing Peter Parker as a kid. (Holland is 20 but looks younger.) Next summer (July 2017) we get a whole movie of this. Yay! (No disrespect to Mr. Maquire or Mr. Garfield, both of whom were very good.)
  • Iron ManRobert Downey Jr. is in the movie. In one of the many versions of Spidey in Marvel Comics, Tony Stark plays the role of mentor to Peter Parker. We got a taste of this in Civil War. We get another taste in the trailer. The movie will have more. There is even a peek of the two fighting side-by-side. Eee. (That’s a little nerdy noise.)
  • It looks like Ganke but it’s not. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought that Peter’s friend in the trailer was Ganke. Ganke was/is (I can’t keep track) Miles Morales’ friend in the Ultimate Spider-Man comics. Miles Morales is a different version of Spider-Man who was in a different universe but now isn’t. Because comics.
  • Web wings. Spider-Man sometimes has webbing on his arms, or as Peter once referred to himself in the comics, “ol’ web pits.” In the movie, these apparently give Spider-Man the ability to glide. Not fly. Glide. Love it.

What can I say? I’m a sucker for this stuff. I’ve been fully into the Marvel Cinematic Universe from the beginning. I never thought Spider-Man would be a part of it. Now he is. I am happy.


Dec 01 2016

Marvel Cartoons Even I Haven’t Heard Of

As a Geek Gold Gold member and Marvel dork, I was surprised to find out that there are Marvel cartoons even I haven’t heard of. Note that I didn’t say Marvel cartoons I haven’t seen. I haven’t seen every animated work the House of Ideas has produced (usually with partners). That said, I figured I had heard of all of them.

I was wrong. Wrong! So very wrong.

Below is a link to a fun article from CBR, aka Comic Book Resources, discussing 15 “forgotten” Marvel cartoons. (Not to split hairs, but they clearly aren’t forgotten if you wrote an article about them!)

Since I love me some superhero animation, and I know you do too, here is a quick rundown of the shows I’ve seen and the ones I haven’t.

SEEN BY ME

Spider-Man Unlimited: Very odd show. Spidey goes to “Counter-Earth” to save John Jameson and winds up staying there because reasons. Kind of hard to search for because there is now a game with the same title. Here’s the series on Amazon.

Silver Surfer: The animation in this series is absolutely beautiful, and the rest of it is good too. Very epic and features a clever mix of traditional and computer animation. Worth seeking out. Here’s episode 1 on YouTube.

Black Panther: Very very good series that probably was doomed from the start because it’s a “motion comic”. However, as the CBR article points out, the voice talent is stellar (Djimon Hounsou, Kerry Washington, and Alfre freaking Woodard, along with a very dramatic Stan Lee cameo), and the material (based on Reginald Hudlin and John Romita Jr.’s excellent comics) is strong enough that it worked for me. Check it out on Amazon.

Spider-Man: The New Animated Series: I have a soft spot for this 2003 series because it aired just after the 2002 Spider-Man movie and was kindasorta a continuation of it. Also, here’s your main cast: Neil Patrick Harris as Peter Parker, Lisa Loeb as Mary Jane Watson, and Ian Ziering as Harry Osborn. Name another cartoon with Lisa Loeb. You can’t. (That doesn’t mean she’s never done another cartoon, it just means you can’t name one.) And Ian Ziering? Is this “Spider-Man: 90210”? It was 2003, we wore onions on our belts, and the writing was pretty good. Free on Amazon with a Prime Subscription, which you can try for 30 days FREE right here.

Fred And Barney Meet The Thing: Apparently there is an episode where The Thing meets Bigfoot. I need to see that. Thing Ring, do your thing!

Iron Man: Armored Adventures: Solid story-telling overcomes a premise that shouldn’t work but totally does, which is Iron Man as a teenager. Amazon link here.

Spider-Woman: I’ve seen a couple of episodes of this series. I think the same creative team moved on to do a Spider-Man series which eventually became the ever-awesome Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Don’t quote me on that, though. The animation style and overall look/feel are very similar.

Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Heroes: Not good. Just didn’t work.

Avengers: United They Stand: Very odd series. Most of the better known characters (Iron Man, et al) aren’t there. As for oddness, all of the characters have “Avengers flight belts”… including Falcon. Falcon’s whole thing is that HE CAN FLY. Why does he need a flight belt? Not one of the better Marvel cartoons. Of course, I watched it anyway.

UNSEEN BY ME:

Dracula: Sovereign Of The Damned: Sounds weird enough that I might check it out. I also really like Marvel’s version of Dracula.

Marvel Anime: Not my thing. All I can find online are clips here.

Monster Of Frankenstein: Doesn’t sound much like a Marvel movie but as with Dracula above, it sounds entertainingly weird.

Pryde Of The X-Men: How I’ve never seen this, I have no idea. I’ve heard so much about it that I feel like I’ve seen it. Wolverine is inexplicably Australian. Someone told me that they kept airing the pilot over and over again, teasing viewers that a series would eventually show up. Technically it did — X-Men: The Animated Series. Can we get an Honest Trailer? We can!

 

Solarman: Who?

Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers: Apparently this was some unholy mashup of Avengers and Pokemon. Sure, why not.

Everybody remembers the ’90s X-Men and Spider-Man cartoons, but do you remember these ones?

Source: Marvel Superheroes: The Most Forgotten Comics Cartoons (CBR)


Jul 17 2016

Marvel Digital Comics Sale at Amazon

Marvel digital comics sale at Amazon. Doctor Strange, Thor, X-Men, Iron Man, Howard the Duck, lots and lots of stuff. Check it out, true believers.

Marvel Digital Comics Sale at Amazon

Source: Amazon.com: Featured Sale Titles


Apr 15 2016

Doctor Strange Trailer (And Some Thoughts on The Comics)

By the hoary hosts of Hoggoth, they actually did it. Here is the new Doctor Strange trailer.

Doctor Strange movie

Looks like fun, yeah? I’ll give you a few thoughts of my own; if you want a moment by moment Doctor Strange trailer breakdown check out this video at IGN.

(Note: Marvel/Comixology/Amazon is having a sale on Doctor Strange digital comics — 99 cents each. Check ’em out here.)

So. Doctor Strange. What’s his deal? He’s got magic powers, lots of nifty mystical items that he uses to protect Earth from inter-dimensional nasties, and… I don’t know, he’s cool. Not a traditional superhero like Iron Man, Spider-Man and the rest.

Splash page for the "Doctor Strange"...

Splash page for the “Doctor Strange” story in Strange Tales #110 (July 1963). Art by Steve Ditko. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On a personal note, the first “real” comic book I ever read was an issue of Doctor Strange. I’d been reading Richie Rich, Casper, Archie, that kind of stuff. One day my dad said, “It’s time for you to read some real comics,” and handed me a copy of Doctor Strange. My little boy mind was blown. The first thing I remember is how much smaller the lettering was. That was true for all “real” comics (read: Marvel and DC); Richie Rich, et al, were aimed at very young readers and had simpler dialogue and storylines… and larger lettering. The next thing I remember is the splash page. One big image, full of colorful details, with Doctor Strange himself looming large over it all. I think he was looking out of a window, but it’s possible he was sitting in a chair with stuff drawn around him. I’ve been looking for that issue for years and I think I’ve found it, although I can’t remember what number it is at the moment. I also don’t remember the story. But I do remember how I felt. It was basically my comic book Bar Mitzvah. No more little kid comics for me. Now I could read the good stuff.

And I did. I have a nice collection of books that I bought at the local candy store/newsstand, because you could buy comics there when I was a kid. (You still kind of can, it just isn’t as common.) I didn’t keep those comics in very good shape, which in some cases is a bummer — my Frank Miller and Klaus Janson Daredevils would be worth a few bucks, as would my copy of the original Wolverine mini-series (which you can get for less than six dollars via Comixology). But instead of bagging and boarding everything, I read the hell out of my comics, because they were awesome. (Those Daredevils in particular are probably my favorite comic books ever.)

Back to Doctor Strange. His book went in and out, and I didn’t buy it that often. It’s possible that the local candy store didn’t always have it in stock even when it was being published. In addition to not being a traditional superhero, I don’t think he was as popular as the big names. He did found one of my sneaky super teams, The Defenders. The original core group of Defenders was Doctor Strange, Namor the Sub-Mariner, and The Incredible Hulk, quickly followed by The Silver Surfer. Basically a bunch of really powerful dudes who don’t play well with others, hence the term “non-team”. Later Defenders mainstays included such popular characters as Hellcat, Gargoyle, and Nighthawk. Also Valkyrie. Never heard of them? Join the club. (Marvel is doing a Netflix series called The Defenders, which I’m sure will be fun but doesn’t have much, if anything, to do with The Defenders’ comic books.) The Defenders hung out at Doctor Strange’s Greenwich Village mansion, known as The Sanctum Santorum, while constantly making a point of telling readers that they were NOT a super-team like The Avengers. I liked those comics a lot. Something about the idea of a group of semi-outcasts and/or angry people and/or loners teaming up only when it suited them really appealed to me.

I also always dug the good Doctor on his own. His job, Sorcerer Supreme, was to defend Earth from mystical threats. Sometimes he gets help from other Marvel heroes, but usually he doesn’t, because he’s the only one who can do what needs to be done. This led to some wonderfully trippy artwork, first by the legendary Steve Ditko (written by the even more legendary Stan Lee) and later by lots of other people.

The thing that made me the happiest in the trailer was seeing Doctor Strange’s Astral Form. (When Tilda Swinton punches him and it looks like a ghost pops out of his body.) It works like this: Doc leaves his body behind, defenseless, and his spirit floats around and does stuff. He can travel faster this way, but he can’t touch anyone and most people can’t see him. (One notable exception, if memory serves, is The Hulk. Because comic books. UPDATE: I just read some Doctor Strange comics from the 80s, and in those stories Doc can allow people to see his astral form if he wants them to. Again, because comic books.) It’s something that for various reasons I always found fascinating, so to see them do it in a live action movie had me making little nerdy noises.

So there you go. The Doctor Strange trailer. Looks like Marvel might get it right again, taking a character that isn’t well-known and putting said character into a big-budget blockbuster movie that doesn’t suck. Here’s hoping.

Read some comics:


May 08 2015

Avengers: Age of Ultron Link Roundup (Ongoing) – UPDATED

Now that Avengers: Age of Ultron is finally here, and I’ve seen it (twice), I can start reading about it until my eyeballs fall out. This page will have an an ongoing list of links to some of what I’ve read that I found interesting.

Me and The Avengers movie.

Personally I prefer The Avengers. Have I mentioned that lately?

UPDATED 5/11/15 (new links after the break; you can tell they’re new because they say NEW LINK.)

As you know, I frickin’ LOVED The Avengers, the first one. To say that Avengers: Age of Ultron isn’t quite as good as the first film is like saying I’m shorter than Shaquille O’Neal. Or, to ever-so-slightly borrow a joke from the movie, that this blog post will be shorter than a Eugene O’Neill play. Bottom line: it was a lot of fun, Joss Whedon did a nice job of balancing all of the myriad demands of a film with a ton of characters and future Marvel Cinematic Universe movies to promote, and I’ve already seen the movie twice and would gladly see it again.

As expected with a summer blockbuster, especially a follow-up to a film as great as The Avengers, the Interwebs are filled with articles and blog posts and charts and click-bait about all things Ultron. I went on Rotten Tomatoes planning to read a few reviews. I got as far as one before being sucked into a rabbit hole (maybe I should say tesseract instead) of Age of Ultron related topics.

Oh, the obligatory Spoiler Alert from this point forward. I’m not going to bother watching what I say about the movie, although this isn’t a review and odds are I won’t reveal anything particularly important. But if you haven’t seen the movie yet and prefer to do so without knowing anything about what happens, stop reading now. Then come back. Don’t worry. We’ll wait. Read more »


Mar 13 2015

Robert Downey Jr. Brings Georgia Boy Bionic Arm (DaddyTube)

The line between Robert Downey Jr. and Iron Man is growing slimmer every day. Here is a video of the actor bringing a Georgia boy named Alex Pring a real bionic arm.

DaddyTips Featured Video

It’s OK if you get a little misty-eyed. We’ll wait.

The important bit here is that a group called The Collective Project made a bionic arm for a child, Alex, who was “born with a partially developed right arm,” according to the video. The arm was made by Albert Manero, “a college student who builds and donates low-cost, 3D-printed bionic limbs to kids around the world,” according to the YouTube video. Here’s a quote from the Fox 5 DC story where we found this:

“The arm doesn’t have a lot of supernatural powers, but it makes life easier on Alex both physically and mentally.”

The two then compare arms, with Downey pulling his out of a case with the Stark Industries logo.

Which brings us to what we were talking about when we said the line between Robert Downey Jr. and Iron Man is getting slimmer every day.

Remember in 2012 when we posted that Robert Downey Jr surprised kids at Comic Con? (Heck, remember 2012? I’m not sure I do.) Here’s what we had to say back then:

Marvel could easily drop this footage into ‘Iron Man 3‘ if they want to. … Have the kids shouting out “IRON MAN!”, people cheering when Downey Tony Stark shows up… Free idea from me to you, ‘Iron Man 3? filmmakers. I’ll take a special thanks and perhaps a repulsor ray if you’ve got an extra one lying around.

(They didn’t take my idea. Maybe for Iron Man 4, or a future Avengers movie.)

The second best thing about this new video (the first, of course, is the kid getting the arm, because that’s actually real-life awesome) is the moment when someone off-camera asks Alex, “Do you know who that is?” “Iron Man,” Alex replies, to the delight of everyone in the room (and us home viewers). But then comes the follow-up:

“What’s his name?”

“Robert.”

Downey does nothing to correct Alex, nor does anyone else. In Alex’s 7-year-old mind, Robert Downey Jr. is Iron Man. To Downey’s credit, he’s a good enough actor that playing the super-rich Avenger has not hampered his film career; he can play other roles just as convincingly as he always has. But if he keeps this up, he might have to change his name to Tony Stark. Or maybe Marvel will just change Iron Man’s name to Robert Downey Jr. Both are about as likely to happen as me turning into Thor. But this particular blurring of fact and fiction is fun to watch.

On a more serious note, huge, massive, supremely large shout-outs to Albert Manero, who is apparently making bionic arms for kids who need them (it’s OK if that makes your head explode a little bit), and to Mr. Downey Jr., whom we like both on and off screen. And best of luck to Alex, a young man growing up in very interesting times.

‘Iron Man’ surprises boy in Georgia – DC News FOX 5 DC WTTG.