Into the Longbox

Oh, DC. I swear I am not actively rooting against you just because I'm a Marvel fanboy. Competition makes both of the companies better. However, as far as the movies go, DC is like a Triple AAA baseball team and Marvel is the big leagues. Wonder Woman gained so much good will from me, but in the back of my mind, I figured Justice League wouldn't be able to build on that momentum. Let's be frank here. Justice League is a bad movie. It occasionally has some cool moments, but that is not enough to save it. The argument I always make for those inevitable Avengers vs. Justice League movie comparisons is this simple fact. The Marvel universe took a slow, methodical approach to get to their movies. They took a calculated risk by getting tentpole movies out for their main players of Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk and Thor. Once those were successes, they had the foundation to build the Avengers movie. You had a natural anticipation that built and built and culminated in t...

I took my time with the Punisher, something I haven't done with the other Marvel shows. I'll be honest, I wasn't as excited for it as I was for the other shows. That is nothing against this show, I just think I am experiencing comic book show fatigue right now. However, I will say this. The first season of Punisher was good. I will also say that is easily the most violent of the Marvel shows, which should surprise no one that has a working knowledge of the character. His scenes in season two of Daredevil were clear evidence of what we might expect. What I didn't expect was a deep dive into PTSD that this show traverses down. Surprisingly, it didn't feel completely ham fisted. It is definitely in your face and they do not hide from it, but I think it accurately demonstrates how each soldier is changed by their experiences and how they deal with it. The central characters in this show were soldiers in one way or another and the effects on them are shown through...

The news of Brian Michael Bendis leaving Marvel to go to DC is way too big for me NOT to mention. This is big because for the last seventeen years, Bendis has been the pre-eminent writer at Marvel. Whether you know this or not, I would argue that he was responsible for the resurgence of the Avengers. Before Bendis, I NEVER touched the avengers. I didn't read their books at all. I deemed them too corny. Lest we forget, around this time, Iron Man was a C level character at best in my opinion. It wasn't until Robert Downey Jr. came along that he became A-list. Bendis broke down the Avengers and built up a new team that felt like more of a collection of his favorite characters than traditional Avengers. You had Captain America and Iron Man, but then you got Spider-Man, Wolverine, Spider-Woman and Luke Cage. Then a mystery character like Ronin and Sentry. Suddenly, these Avengers were cool and I began reading them. On the other side of this, Bendis had been working on Ultimate S...

I really need to get my posts up sooner. Anyways, it's been a week since I saw Thor: Ragnarok, but I wanted to talk about it before I forget everything that I saw! Or maybe, I just need to go see it a second time. Hmmm... This will sound like hyperbole, but Thor: Ragnarok has jumped into my personal top five of the Marvel films. I enjoyed this movie that much. It had what the last few outings (re: Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) lacked. Fun. Now I know you will talk about how funny the Guardians of the Galaxy movie was. Yes, the FIRST one was funny. The second one had jokes that went on too long and tried too hard at times. Am I retroactively contradicting my earlier review? Probably. You expect me to go back and re-read my own stuff?? In a conscious effort to keep my reviews shorter, let me get into what I loved about this movie. The logo and the trailers had an an 80's rock synth bent to it and that carried through in all the musical choices. I absolu...