#the spectacular spider-man weekly

[all-action-all-picture]

The Spectacular Spider-Man Weekly No. 370, dated 10 April 1980. The cover, by John Romita and Bob McLeod, was originally used on The Amazing Spider-Man No. 201 (1980). Marvel UK.

#10apr #1980 #marvel uk #the punisher #the spectacular spider-man weekly #john romita #bob mcleod

[heckcareoxytwit]

A preview of The Spectacular Spider-Men #2

THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #2

“ARACHNOBATICS” CONTINUES! Surprising anyone who knows Peter Parker (but probably not those who know Miles Morales), the Spider-Men have been keeping up their weekly meetup at the Coffee Bean! Sadly, that hasn’t given them any insight into the machinations of the Jackal!!! And what do all these mysterious interludes add up to?

Written by: Greg Weisman Art by: Humberto Ramos, Edgar Delgado Cover by: Humberto Ramos, Edgar Delgado Page Count: 28 Pages Release Date: April 17, 2024

#Spider Man #Spiderman #Peter Parker #Miles Morales #marvel preview #marvel

[brevoorthistoryofcomics]

BHOC: PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #25

I had skipped the last couple of issues of PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN, having come to the conclusion that the series was relatively superfluous to the life of Marvel’s wall-crawling hero. The stories were mostly fine, but nothing of any particular consequence seemed to happen in them, I can recall looking at both issues repeatedly on the spinner rack on subsequent weekly trips, but…

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#Bill Mantlo #Carrion #Jim Mooney #Keith Pollard #Marv Wolfman #Marvel #Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man

[winxwiki]

"Hopes and Regrets from Winx Club's father" Iginio Straffi interview from 29/10/2010 translated

This interview came out during Magical Adventure 3D's italian press tour. There's a few interesting tidbits in here and it's a bit funny to read in hindsight now. How things change...

More under the cut!

What were your references for this film and, in general, for the creation of its protagonists?

Iginio Straffi: Here we wanted to take up the Shakespearean theme of Romeo and Juliet, and therefore a love thwarted by families, but without that tragic aspect. For Winx, I was vaguely inspired by Sailor Moon, but what I had noticed was that there was not, at the time, a cartoon with really badass protagonists who were not just ballerinas (translator's note: I think he means 80s magical girls like Creamy Mami). For boys there were a lot of interesting heroes, for example Spider-Man, but no super heroines for girls. (translator's note: Wedding Peach, PowerPuff Girls, Corrector Yui, SuperDoll Licca Chan and CardCaptor Sakura all came out after Sailor Moon in Italy and before Winx Club ever broadcasted)

Having started out as a comic book artist, then, was the American scene also an inspiration? And what were your favorite comic books?

Iginio Straffi: Sure, as a child I loved Mickey Mouse (translator's note: he specifically means the Topolino weekly comicbook magazine in Italy. Disney Comics industry in the country is huge!), then at the time there was also Corriere dei Ragazzi (translator's note: short ran comicbook magazine focused on western comics), then all the Bonelli comics, from Zagor to Ken Parker. Growing up I discovered Hugo Pratt and then all the French cartoonists, who are real masters.

In many scenes in the film the 3D aspect is not particularly evident, was that a specific choice?

Iginio Straffi: Yes, we calibrated this aspect scientifically so that it would not be dangerous for young children to watch the film. With 3D you can "push" more or less: it is clear that in a four-minute film you can create much more spectacularity, but here we had the responsibility of an entire film, which had to be suitable for everyone.

Since the television market is also moving toward 3D content, could future Winx series also go in this direction?

Iginio Straffi: We are thinking about it, because as it is also for cinema, 3D means a much higher cost for TV animation, about 30% more than for a standard series. We will have to consider whether in two or three years there will be a sales boom big enough to justify the investment, and also we will have to understand whether this 3D TV animation will be used only for movies or there will be a way to implement a more interactive experience. Perhaps for the fifth season it is still early, but maybe for the sixth season it can be considered (translator's note: lmao).

His future plans include talk of a film set in an academy for young gladiators. Is this a choice aimed at pleasing a male audience?

Iginio Straffi: That movie is really for everyone, it's a comedy about these goofy gladiators, but mainly it's also a love story, again with very badass female protagonists. We think it's going to be a movie for everyone, as they say in America, although still in 3D animation. (translator's note: this is about Gladiators of Rome, which later flopped)

Is there any project you gave up to make room for the Winx that you regret?

Iginio Straffi: Yes, there is one that I really care about and that I hope to be able to realize, sooner or later. It used to be in a drawer, now it's in a hard drive, but I have to slow down the pace if I want to have time for that as well. It is, however, a story not for children, as wonderful an audience as children are, and always able to win you over. (translator's note: could refer to the cancelled adult cartoon he's talked about other times)

#iginio straffi #rainbow #interview #magical adventure

[kcpstarscream]

With this issue we move onto a new editor, Ian Rimmer who would go on to edit TFUK from #22 onwards. In this post I made back when I talked about Simon Furman and about the UK run, I mentioned it was Ian who recommended Simon to Sheila.

Ian knew Sheila through IPC Magazine's Photo Love, and knowing of the dispute over Scream going on at IPC, prompted Robert Sutherland, the Managing Director, to give Ian a position and after working on works such as Conan the Barbarian and Spider-Man Weekly. And when Sheila would move on to edit for the Doctor Who Magazine, Ian was invited to replace Sheila on Transformers. After appointing Simon as assistant editor and John Tomlinson as designer, they set about redesigning a comic that "thus far had struggled to find it's identity" (The Transformers Classics UK, pg 13). To John, Neville Brody (who popularized the logo/title tilt) and I.D.Magazine---with it's "spectacular layouts and great ideas" despite its almost fanzine like appearance--would serve as influence John.

During this time they found out that they'd be going weekly and in full color and aimed to flesh things out by the time it was set in place. #22 brought changes such as less clutter and more focus on the Transformers. The 2-pg opener, that I haven't seen and might be due to the scans, were replaced with a Transformers information page packed with text to prime the reader for the next story (quite different from other comics today), and letters got a dedicated page in the middle of the comic under the persona of a Transformer hosting it containing trivia and hints. The design philosophy for Marvel's most popular series would go on to influence the companies house style/style guide.

According to Ian, the comics had a bit of troubles with Hasbro early on, though following the revamp they seemed quite happy with what was going on, what Sheila was doing, he mentions, was a generalist approach such as covering lots of areas and not focus one on particular story. The definitive strategy was to turn that around and bring to life the bright, futuristic world and the expanding cast. Tomlinson was responsible for the look of the entire comic like placement of text on the cover and the pages of the comic itself. To quote John from The Transformers Classics UK.

"This was well before the age of InDesign, Photoshop, and even Quark XPress, so the design was a good deal less sophisticated than anything you'd see now. My brief was to create a strong, simple template that could be used again and again. [...] The Hasbro style guide was quite sparse compared to the style guides for licensed properties now, which usually include fonts, logos, icons, backgrounds, approved color schemes, ect. We had a few variations on the Transformers logo... and line art for some of the key Transformers, but that was about it. What visual identity the comic has was created in-house at Marval UK - not ust by me - and evolved gradually over time." Issues UK #22-26 encompass the US #6-8 by Bob Budiansky. The next UK original would be the #27-28 story "Repeat Performance!" along with the switch to full color and a weekly schedule.

Speaking of color, US strips would be done by Nel Yomtov and at the time he was only able to work with a 64 color pallet as the CMY method was expensive due to the longer time for the mechanical color separation process and wouldn't appear very well on the cheap newsprint of US comic paper. UK was different in that it was drawn, lettered, than printed on the canvas-like Kentmere and then was painted by hand.

#kcpstarscream #MarvelTransformers #kcpMT22 #creator spotlight #Ian Rimmer #John Tomlinson #Marvel InHouse Design

[popculturebuffet]

Static Shock: Shock to the System and Aftershock Review

“You know what? 13 years ago, me and some friends sat in a restaurant all night and daydreamed about the kinds of stories we would tell if we had the chance. We wanted to expand the concept of superhero to include characters that kind of looked like us, who had some of the same background, experiences and dreams as we did. We wanted to create something fun that a new generation would respond to the same way we responded to our childhood heroes -and damn if we didn't succeed beyond my wildest dreams. Today, Static Shock is a household name with millions of fans of all ages (Is there stuff I'd do differently? Yeah, almost all of season four but why nitpick?) Static is the most successful thing I've ever helped create and I'm both proud and gratified that people have taken it into their hearts. “ 

Dwayne McDuffie, Co-Creator of Static and Writer for Static Shock

This review is dedicated to Dwayne McDuffie and Robert L. Washington III.                                                        Rest In Power Static Shock is awesome. I grew up with the show watching it both first run on the WB and second run on Cartoon Network and loved it as much as I did other large parts of my childhood courtsey of DC like Batman the Animated Series, Teen Titans and both Justice League Shows. What makes this unique among the DC Properties is that Static wasn’t really a big name when he got a show. He wasn’t even part of the DC Universe. 

See as I had no idea for probably a good decade, Static actually came from Milestone Comics, a company ran by and focused on african americans. The goal was understandable: While black heroes existed at the time, and there were some fantastic ones like Storm, Jim Rhodes and Steel... these guys weren’t the center of their universes. The big faces of the big  companies, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Iron Man, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash.. were white. So milestone was a shakeup of that with the main teams and heroes all being black, from Icon, an alien who’d lived among man but rather than end up in kansas like say superman ended up imprinting on a slave woman centuries ago and has been with us since, who was encouraged by an energetic teenager named Rocket to put on a costume and do something with his powers and his community, Hardware, a tech genius who had his work stolen by a white asshole and wanted to fight back and BLood Syndicate, a group of gang members all caught in the “The Big Bang”, a huge fight between all of Dakota, the midwest city where the comics take place, that ended when the police released a bunch of experimental gas that gave them all super powers. 

As most of you who have watched the show already know, this is where Static comes from. Static was the company making their own Spider-Man, i.e. a nerdy teenager who suddenly gets super powers, in this case Virgil Hawkins who at the prodding of a friend took a gun to The Big Bang to get revenge on a bully. .but ultimately couldn’t go through with it, decided it wasn’t him and got rid of the gun and ran.. and still ended up in it, becoming Static, a young hero dedicated to using his powers to fight other “Bang Babies”.. a term that dosen’t really sound that great and they really should’ve thought through. But Phrasing aside the character was great and I look forward to reading more and only haven’t because I have to buy the issues gradually, but DC is currently re-releasing the individual issues of Static, Icon, and Hardware weekly in anticipation of a reboot of Milestone Coming in May digitally on Comixology at only 2 bucks a pop, and rereleased the original print collections that were long out of print for 10 bucks each, though i’m getting static on it’s own since i’ts really not that much less expensive as it only collects four issues while Icon and Hardware both collect 8, so I can wait a bit there on Hardware and already own Icon: A Hero’s Welcome.. and really need to review it at some point. 

While Milestone’s output was good, at least from the two books i’ve read, with Robert Washinton III, who sadly not only ahs also passed but was fucking homeless for a while  in the 2000′s.. what the actual hell, writing Static alongside Dwayne McDuffie, whose later moved onto animation writing tons of Static episodes all of them classics including the school shooting episode, the first three rubberbandman episodes and both Anasazi episodes. Point is it had good writers and artists and even had a distrbution deal with DC, so they had a leg up on the glut of other comic book companies.. but happened to start at the start of the comic book crash, a huge downturn in sales in the 90′s as the speculator boom, i.e. a bunch of people assuming every number one would be worth golden and silver age money, forgetting a character has to BUILD INTREST and this stuff takes time, and whose attempts to sell fast flooded the market with comics no one wanted,, caused the roof to cave in and with a bunch of assholes pegging milestone as a “Company for black people” rather than you know, a company trying to add fucking diversity and represntation to the comics industry, and that simply wanted a unvierse that was centered around people of color instead of white guys. The company eventually had to shut down, and was left to lisencing.  This is where the show comes in. Producers HAD been trying to make shows based on Milestone for a while, as far back as the mid-90s and the company was was all for it but the closest it got was an x-men style team series using various characters whose first draft was terrible and whose second draft by Alan Burnett, a producer on various DC Animated shows who’d go on to produce Static Shock, that McDuffie and others really liked but sadly did not get picked up. eventually though with presistance Static ended up getting a series and as I said McDuffie went on to write for it though he did not develop it. Some changes went into place naturally to make it work for an early 2000′s kids show and while i’ll probably miss so since again, only read one issue as we go. But due to Milestone coming back my intrest was peaking, hence finally reading the copy of Icon I had to buy from the library years ago due to keeping it overdue but am now EXTREMLEY glad I own as i’ts incredibly rare and really damn good, and wanting to read static, doing so lately since it’s finally on digtiial and again not too expensive. So join me as I give you a shock to the system and revisit this hell of a series to see if it holds up.. which just to cut that short it does and i’m only holding off binging MORE because I want the first two eps to be fresh enough in my head to review properly.. and also go over the various voice actors because that’s a thing with me now and charcter co-creator dwayne mcduffie because he’s awesome. 

As I like to do when covering a series first episodes, let’s run down the voice cast. 

First up is an UTTER LEGEND, and I use the term voice acting legend a lot, and mean it every time and have good reason to use it when I say it, and Phil LaMarr is a GOD in the buisness, having done a metric ton of voice acting roles, and being easily the most proflific black voice actor in animation. He’s also done some acting work, mostly in pulp fiction which I have not seen, but his true staying power and talent is in animation so here’s just the roles I feel are most notable or may not be very notable but i’m bringing up anyway because it’s my list. 

His roles besides Virgil include Lester Payton the Texas Ranger who showed up for one very good episode of king of the hill to be badass and show up the hickish, stupid and very punchable local Sheriff, Gearld’s obnoxious older brother Jamie O on Hey Arnold, Hermes Conrad from futurama, Carver from the Weekenders (PUT IT ON PLUS DISNEY), Axel Foley for exactly one bit in Clerks the Animated Series, but anyone whose seen it will know exactly which one, Micheal on the Proud Family, Black Vulcan on Harvey Birdman (In His Pants), Hector Con Carne and Dracula on Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and Evil Con Carne, Jack on Samurai Jack something I didn’t know for decades (and I didn’t know about the carver thing till today though i’ts obvious in hindsight), John Motherfucking Stewart on Justice League and later Steel and Adult Static in the Unlimited seasons, Osmosis Jones on Ozzy and Drix, Bolbi Strogofski on Jimmy Neutron (And yes i’m just as shocked as you are.), Wilt on Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Marcus on Life and Times of Juniper Lee, Bull Sharkowski on My Gym Partner is A Monkey and Also a Sociopath Please Help God My Life is a waking nightmare..... okay the rest of that title is implied but we all watched the same show, we all know in our hearts that was the title

Moving on, he was also, and yes there’s MORE: Maxie Zeus on The Batman, Philly Phil on Class of 3000, Both Robertsons AND Fancy Dan on the Spectacular Spider-Man, Jazz on Transformers Animated, Kit Fisto and Bail Organa on Star Wars the Clone Wars, Gambit and Bolivar Trask on Wolverine and the X-Men, Aquaman I, L-Ron and Green Beetle on Young Justice, J.A.R.V.I.S. and Wonder Man (Simon Williams) In Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Gabe and Carny on Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters (Really miss that game and have been snapping up what cards I can get lately), Baxter Stockman in the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (And there’s also an awesome photo of him with 2003 Baxter... the two best together in one place. I got chills), Dormammu (I’ve come to bargin) in various Marvel Shows, Noville in Mighty Magiswords, Zach’s dad Marcus in Milo Muprhy’s Law, Craig’s Douchey Brother Benard on Craig of the Creek, showing he’s clearly come full circle, And Mr. Scully on the Casagrndes. And given It took about two paragraphs to cover all of this, yeah, I MEANT legend. 

Next we have Kevin Micheal Richardson as Virgil’s Dad Robert, and it’s the first time since I started introducing Voice Actors on a show that i’ve overlapped. I already covered him during the second episode of legend of the three caballeros, but for the short version he’s also very acomplished, very damn good and I somehow missed he played the old blind guy in hey arnold> Needless to say the dude is awesome. 

Virgil’s Sister Sharon is played by Michele Morgan who was in the rap group BWP and did some smaller roles outside of this the one exception being Juicy on the PJ’s, which I have not watched much of but REALLY do not like, though i’ll at least give it credit for being a decently long lasted black claymation sitcom at at time when there were, and hoenstly still aren’t, many black animated shows. 

Back to long casting sheets, next up is Jason Marsden, who is one of my faviorites as i’ve realized recently as Ritchie. As I also found out only recently he started on the Sitcom Step By Step and while that show is .. ehhhhhhhhh, he is great in it because he’s great in everything. He also apparently has his own internet variety show which I have to watch now. His roles include Max Goof, ironically given I was just talking about that role a few days ago, Haku in the english dub of Spirted Away, Micheal, the kid being yelled at by a bunch of 80′s cartoons characters not to take drugs in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue!, Nermal in the DTV Garfield movies and The Garfield Show, Tino on the Weekenders (SERIOUSLY DISNEY), Snapper Carr on Justice League, Rikochet on Mucha Lucha! for the last season (Why I do not knkow and while I love the guy he was not the right choice), Felix on Kim Possible, Chase Young on Xiaolin Showdown (WHich I did not realize was him and now I do easily his best role and I REALLY should’ve), Red Star and Billy Numerous on Teen Titans, Speedy on Batman Brave and the Bold, Impulse/Kid Flash II on Young Justice, and Fingers on Kaijudo. He hasn’t done as much lately which is a shame but hopefully i’tll pick up again. 

Next up is Hotstreak, Virgil’s brutal bully turned unhinted pyromancer played by DANIEL COOKSY, another actor i’m happy to talk about and another faviorite I haven’t seen much of lately. Daniel was an actor from childhood, playing Budnick on Salute Your Shorts, but he quickly gained a long and storied catalogue of VA Work: His first big roll was as Montana Max on Tiny Toon Adventures and if there is a god he’ll be back for the reboot, Stoop Kid on Hey Arnold, the incomprable Jack Spicer on Xiaolin Showdown, far and away his best role and part of why Chronicles sucked so bad was he was he didn’t get to reprise the role, The titular Dave the Barbarian, Django of the Dead on El Tigre (Had no idea), Kicks utterly insufferable big Brother Brad on Kick Buttowski and apparently he’s back at it again after laying low for a bit as he’s voicing Snag in Long Gone Gultch.. which I already really needed to watch but hot damn, I missed him. Sign me up. 

Frieda, Virgil’s crush and close friend who in the comics was his main confidante and love intrest but here is eventually pushed aside, is voiced by Danica Mckeller whose work didn’t seem all that familiar.. until I found out she was Ms. Martian on Young Justice. Hello, Megan. Very talented and she did get a major role in a dc show eventually so good for her. Can’t wait for season 4. 

So with our major players out of the way,  let’s talk about Dwayne. McDuffie is an AWESOME man and my respect has grown for him more and more with time. A writer and editor at Marvel, McDuffie has a decent resume doing smaller but awesome books, which I got most of for free last year when Marvel was giving out free digital collections due to the lock down, like Damage Control, a sitcom set in the marvel universe about the company that picks up after superhero battles and the logistics and antics that insue and Dethlok, about a pacfist trapped inside a cyborg zombie. He was as mentioned one of Milestone’s founders, and wrote Icon, Hardware and co-wrote the first few issues of Static. He’d go on to a pretty stacked career in animation, writing on this show and Justice League before becoming  story editor and show runner for Unlimited , even making a return to comics as a result writing the Marvel miniseries beyond and an arc of Fantastic Four in which Black Panther and Storm filled in for Reed and Sue while the two of them worked on their marriage after Reed did.. pretty much everything he did in Civil War. He also became head writer and show runner for Ben 10: Alien Force and Ultimate Alien, revamping the franchise a bit, and Alien Force, at least the first two seasons are awesome and I feel people overreacted on the changes. Ultimate Alien is okay, but has it’s problems but the finale was awesome and left the man’s legacy on a high note.. as he sadly passed in 2011 due to heart complications. He is truly missed and produced some utterly amazing stuff whlie he was alive. So on that melacholy note let’s see what happens when his creation hits the tv screen shall we?

Shock to the System:

This episode is written by Christopher Simmons, who is apparently a huge art designer guy.. but i’m not sure that’s the same chirsptoher simmons. Much more notable is the writer of the episode after this Stan Berkowitz, who was showrunner for season 1 and has done a LOT of DCAU work and is suprising talent, having written a lot of awesome Justice League episodes including Secret Society and The Royal Flush One. Point is we’re in first class hands.  Before the episode itself I want to talk about the intro and how it’s unique among DCAU shows. Like most Western Animation the intros for DCAU shows didn’t change much over the seasons with the most I can see is JLU changing up the footage to preview the current episode and later adding Hawkgirl to the intro after her return to the team. I THINK superman the animated series changed some of it’s footage too, but I can’t confrim it and may of just been imagining it. As i’ve talked about on my blog it’s normally a pet peeve of mine, mostly because shows you know, change after season 1, characters get added some one shot characters used for the intro never return, and after a while it can feel dated especially in more recent shows where the status quo is not at all set in stone and things change quite a bit. But sometimes it can be good enough that either the dated elements don’t matter or general enough that you don’t need to change it and i’ts just that good.. and given Batman the Animated Series has both in spades, you can see why i’ts probably my golden standard for intros and after superman the animated series DC mostly followed suit. But being part of the teen superhero boom of the 2000′s Static is unique in that it splits the diffrence: It’s intro gets the character across perfectly like a good intro should starting with Virgil getting out of bed and running a comb across his head before showing off to his sister to bug her and literally running into his dad who hand shim his bag and smiles, silently showing off his family. He then runs to school and runs into some trouble.. and said trouble changes for each intro, with Rubberband Man for season 1, Kanga (Whose name I only know because I happened to run across it) for season 2 and your guess is as good as mine for seasons 3 and 4, though Hotstreak is a constant. They still save some money for seasons 1 and 2 by recycling some animation.. but that’s alright with mea s it was good animation, and the improtant thing is cycling out old villians for new ones, while Season 3 is the only out and out redo to show off Richie taking on the Gear identity, adding about 10 seconds of intro to let him show off.  Seriously it’s an utterly great intro and like the other DCAU intros outside of superman, stuck in my brain. 

The other change that’s ENTIRELY diffrent from the rest of htem is that the music changes each time. The first two have the same formula just with a difrent vocalist and backing track: a superhero theme but with some hip hop beat boxing over it. The first intro is fine enough, not specattcular but stilll god. The second song.. is eh. Not really great and feels like a marked downgrade from season 1 and just dosen’t blend an ocrehstiral superhero theme with the beatbox elements NEARLY as well. The third song though is my faviorite.. even if I HATED Little Romeo as a  kid because I really did not like his nick show, it’s more a straight up rap song, but it has a faster beat that fits the intro better, and Romeo’s bragging fits Virgil’s character and penchant for Spidey quips perfectly. I also find it ironic that the theme that blends in with the dcau the most, the first season’s, is the one from BEFORE they decided to put it in the same universe. Still this season’s intro slaps, I just like the LIttle Romeo one a bit more.  The opening scene is picture perfect. Some masked crooks looting a warehouse are loading some stolen TV’s into a van when suddenly the lights come on one by one above one of the crooks before his tv switches to various channels before going haywire. Cue our heroes’ entrance. Let’s tak ea good look at him

Static’s Costume is awesome. While I prefer the season 3 redesign, and clearly DC agrees as the redeisgn was used for both pre and post new-52 when they used him, and while he’s getting a fresh design for the reboot, said design takes a lot of cures from said outfit. As for how the outfit differs from the comics itself  this is the design he had in the comics

It didn’t change much from the first issue, with the exception of his now iconic big puffy jacket which was added pretty early into the character’s history but I was unaware of that and just assumed he had the bodysuit the whole time. The more you know. But as you can see outside of the cool puffy jacket over a costume the two couldn’t be more diffrent. While the Dakotaverse outfit is more a standard superhero outfit, with some regular clothes touches on top the first cartoon outfit comes off more realistic, looking fantastic, but still coming off as something two teenagers could realistically have thrown together with what clothes they could buy, while still looking awesomely superheroy. IN short it’s perfect and only topped by the season 3 onward look...

But the slicker look, with an even cooler jakcet and the new colors all fitting the lighting ascetic better, but fits: not only has Virgil come along farther since he started, but with Richie now having a genius brain as Gear, he can provide a far slicker, far more professional superhero outfit on the budget the two have.  This show is just great  at costume design. 

So getting back to the episode at hand, Static puts up a huge sign in elecrticy saying “Bad guys here”, PFFFT, and then hides away and narrates that a few days ago he’d be the last person anyone would’ve expected to be a hero. Cue Flashback. 

We meet Virgil Hawkins on an average day: rapping into his razor, getting into a petty argument with his older sister Sharon, as a younger brother myself I relate to this, and talking to his dad who tries to get them to cut that out. We find out his mom has passed via his sister making really terrible eggs and saying that’s how mom made them. Exposition! Though we do get a great bit through this as when his sister gets distracted by her boyfriend calling, he uses the opportunity of her leaving the room to dump the eggs.. after having earlier jokingly prayed to his mom for a way out of breakfast. “Thanks for looking out for me mom” That’s both very sweet and very hilarious. 

This is a change from the comics it turns out as I was utterly flored to find Virgil’s mom alive and well when reading the first issue of Static. Turns out this was a change made during development and one Dwane McDuffie admitted in the interview I got the tribute quote from to not liking as he had a good reason for having Virgil have a nuclear family, as most black families in media at the time were just one single parent and a kid or two with the other having either left or died. He wasn’t too bothered by it as while he preferred what he came up with in the first place, the show DID get some really good stories out of her being gone and didn’t just have her be absent because shut up. Virgil is still working over her death and the way HOW she died ends up playing an important role in this episode and gives Virgil a dislike of guns, as she died to gang violence. So the change wasn’t for stupid or racist reasons, but likely both to keep the character count down while giving them something to work with for storylines. Or it could’ve been for stupid reasons and the writers simpily made lemonade out of that very dumb lemon, either way it ended up working.  Virgil also plans to ask his friend Frieda out. Frieda was a bigger deal in the comics, being Virgil’s friend and confidante as well as his ocasional love intrest, but here while she was inteded to at least be his love intrest here, that sorta fizzled out. As for the best friend role we meet her replacement in Richie, which McDuffie conceded was the kind of change a studio would make swapping out a female character for a male one. That being said the crew made the best of it and Richie is awesome, a bit of an overcompensating dipstick at times, but a good sounding board and pal for virgil and funny as hell too. He was also gay, something only revealed post series by McDuffie.. but unlike say Dumbledore, it’s a bit easier to swallow here: The early 2000′s were an even worse time for gay characters in tv let alone cartoons, and if they couldn’t kiss or have sex scenes on regular tv, there was no way we were getting any representation in a children’s show. So it was largely just hinted at by Richie overcompensating in how “into girls” he was and i’m once again fine with this being word of god as it was literally the best they could do and his counterpart in the comics was also gay, if not as relevant.  Ritch encourages Virgil to work on his opening to ask her out as it’s awkward as heck, hits a bit close to home.. but I do appricate the show just .. having him try and ask her out from the first episode. They likely would’ve drug thigns out a bit granted had they used Frieda more, i’m not blind to the convetions of the time. .but as someone who got the very wrong idea from tv that just waiting around meant a girl would like you eventually, when no you need to actually try even if rejection happens, I honestly wish we had more of this in media than the other garbage morals at the time. 

So he prepares to , not helped by her mentioning guy after guy is asking her out.... but before he can F-Stop, the future hotstreak, shows up.  F-STOP

That being said...... it’s not as bad as the original gangster name for the comic’s version, Biz Money B. Yes BIZ MONEY B

So yeah while F-Stop is no more intimidating, it at least means I can stop laughing. Francis, because I can’t type F-Stop without laughing and this review is already behind, shoves Virgil out of the way and agressively hits on Frieda, even saying “you smell good”, the international sign your a douchebag and also to call the police. Virgil steps up to the guy and gets PAINFULLY slammed into the lockers, something I give the animation team a lot of credit for, as you can FEEL how fucking painful that was. Virgil is saved by Wade, another local gangbanger who in the comics was a close friend of Virgils but here saves him seemingly just because.. seemingly. 

On the way home though Virg’s problems don’t end as naturally, the giant sized asshole with nothing better to do has his goons corner virgil before VIOLENTLY beating him.. off screen but the noises, and the clear brusies including a black eye, on virgil afterwords.. just holy damn i’m suprsied they got away with this but it shows just how horrifing it was and that this is a step above regular bullying, which make no mistake is absoluttley terrible and the series would later do an episode on it and school shootings, into straight up gang violence. Wade shows up again and gets the bastards to flee.. but also makes it clear he can’t keep doing this.. and forces Virgil to meet him at his base under the bridge. And it’s a tense sequence, with Virgil KNOWING this is a bad idea but having no real choice and Wade making it abundantly clear that he wants Virgil to join his crew, and makes a chilling point: while Virgils dad RIGHTFULLY dosen’t want his son to join a gang as Virgil points out.. he can’t be there for him all the time and eventually one of those times, Francis will be around. And he may not surivive that. Virgil nods noncomittaly.  At home it gets even more grim as he dosen’t open up to his family, understandably as his dad would jsut say to call the police and well.. we’ve seen how the police treat black people. At best they’d just try and use Virgil as an informant and that likely wouldn’t end fucking well for Virgil. Ritchie points out he can’t join a gang, virgil’s mom died that way.. see told you it’d be important to the plot.. but I like how the story dosen’t offer an easy answer.. well okay he gets electric powers soon enough but without the fantastic element this is just an innocent kid caught between either joining the very thing his mom hated or hoping a system not built to protect him will keep him alive. It’s utterly saddening and chilling and holy shit is it amazing a cartoon in the early 2000′s was able to get away with.. ANY OF THIS, and they handle it great, paired down a bit from the comics but even then it’s still incredibly balsy they got THIS much in. 

Naturally Wade calls in his favor and our hero is forced to come running.. and soon finds out Wade’s brought him in for a massive gang war. Welcome to the big bang, baby. He hands Virgil a gun as things get started and Virgil.. drops the thing and tries to escape, in a harrowing sequence.. and runs into Francis because god apparently REALLY hates this kid today. As if to prove that the police show up and while that prevents a beating, they demand they disassemble. then release untested gas on them because of course they do. 

As a result the big bang truly begins, with the various gang members getting mutated.. and naturally so does virgil. Though he wakes up the next day seemingly fine. How’d he get home? Does his dad know where he was?

I don’t know and we’re not getting any answers, but Virgil soon finds weird stuff happening like his clock shorting out, change being attracted to him and his razor going wild. It’s only once he get sback to his room he gets an inkling of what’s going on and calls Ritchie to meet him at the Junk yard.. though it is a bit of a dick move as he dosen’t you know, tell him anything about Wade or Francis right away. He does at the yard though.. and that he has powers, having finally figured out how to use them to a point. And the series does provide a decent justification later as to why he’d get this so quickly: Virgil is a smart kid, gets great grades at school and apparnetly there’s even an episode later where he gets a scholarship to a fancy genius school. So him getting how elctromagntisim works or being a quick study on it makes perfect sense. 

Richie suggest the obvious.. to become a superhero. And the thought.. hadn’t occured to Virgil. It’s honestly a nice twist on the old trope. That he hadn’t thought of it, not because he’s selfish or any of that or needs to learn a hard lesson, those have been done.. simply because the rush of getting his powers, and implicitly of having a way out of his current predciament, a way to keep Francis off his back and keep Wade from pulling him in further. His own path. But once i’ts brought up.. he jumps on it. Part of it is being a nerd like you or I, of course he wants to.. and being a good intetioned one, he knows this is the right thing to do. It’s waht makes a superhero a hero: Anyone can get powers in a universe like this, esepcailly the dcau, but it takes true courage and heart to use them selflessly and knowing you’ll be in danger. It’s why I love surperheroes: they often didn’t ask for this but they do it anyway because somebody’s gotta. We also get an intresting wrinkle is superman is, at least I think in this episode I could’ve missed it or misremembered things, mentioned as a fictional character. That’s because originally like the comics this wasn’t part of the DCAU.. but eventually the crew decided it shared staff from it, shared a network, both first run and on reruns, why not just make it part of the DCAU proper. I fully support this decisionf: While i’m midly annoyed unlimited never really used anything from static shock outside of Static himself in the time travel episode, despite you know Static and Gear having BEEN to the tower and not being much younger than Kara and defintely older than Courtney, I chalk it up to weird rights issues or something like that. But having Batman, Batman Beyond, Superman, Green Lantern and the Justice League itself all guest star was a good idea, and expanded both static’s universe and gave the DCAU something differnt as most heroes in it were older and more experinced in contrast to the up and coming virgil. Again really would’ve been nice if he and gear could’ve been a part of the expanded league but production might of just been too far ahead or, given he had his own series, they might just have wanted to stick to toher characters. Also begs the question why Icon or Hardware wasn’t adapted for the expanded League but hey, questions for later and the tricky logisitics of the milestone rights might’ve been the issue. I don’t know I wasn’t in the room. 

So we get a costume montage, including Black Vulcan from Superfriends, who again ironically would be voiced by Lamarr not too long after this, though weirdly they DON’T use his outfit from the comics for this montage. I mean why not? It fits the gag and would’ve been a good second to last choice.But what could’ve been aside we get our winner and cut back to present day...

Thanks boys. Static finds out one of the things in the warehouse is a shipment of computers for the school and can’t help but show off, showing up to the school, where Frieda and Richie are setting up for the dance, and dropping off the computers, and even saying his catchphrase for the first time “I’ll put a shock to your system” (Which Richie chimes in with awesome line and I agree, great catcphrase), before helping set up and flirting with frieda. 

Though as Richtie says he’s a natural. He’s not wrong as he can work a crowd. .but back it up too as his first run out had him easily taking out the crooks, and as many teen superheros and fans of heroes of hte type, myself included will tell you, getting it right in one is not easy. Not even Miles MOrales was immune. All Static needs now is a villian. 

And the end of the episode provides one as we see, in horrifc and once again damn suprising detail most of hte new metas aren’t doing so good and are melting and other stuff and we catch up with Francis whose burning up.. and naturally given that hair, though given he named himself F-Stop it’s the least of his problems, he’s got fire powers and escapes to “Have me some fun”

So with that we end episode 1. And it’s excellent, a great way to introduce the hero and while the warehouse opening is a bit superflous, it is a decent addition, showing our heroes first outing in costume and giving us a bit of an action scene to get us through the very heavy rest of the episode. But the rest of the episode is no less grippping, telling the tale of a teen caught in an unwinnable scenario who suddenly finds a way out. And speaking of which waht of Wade? Will we see him again? Is he perhaps Ebon, the series big bad as I thought when I was a kid? What comes of the man who directly caused static’s origin?

Yeahhh that’s the one mistep I think the pilot makes. Frieda is understandable as that was likely a simple change in creative direction. This though? Why build this guy up if your not going to bring him back. I mean where he went was probably the grave, as he probably did due to his mutation, but it’s still VERY weird to spend a whole episode focusing on this guy, building him up as a big personal threat to our hero.. and NOT have him become the series big bad. And maybe he WAS supposed to be ebon and they just changed their mind. I don’t know but it bothers me it bothers me a lot. Otherwise though flawless. ONe more to go. 

Aftershock: We open outside an electronics store, as our heroes watch the news reacap what happened in the first episode, with the media dubbing it the Big Bang and revealing their could be hundreds of “Metahumans”, as Virgil dubs after deciding the media’s term “Mutant” dosen’t fit, a nice wink to the fact that that’s the term used in dc comics and I believe milestone but could be wrong there. Me I like the term, has a nice ring to it. 

At the store while Richie mulls over waht this means Static finds out he’s a human CD player.... this was before mp3 players and streaming on your phone made them horribly obsolete mind you and if you don’t know what one is congradualtions you live in some sort of bubble and you made me feel really old junior. 

Frieda happens to be there and Virgil quips “What’s the matter they run out of britney cds”. Dude she’s not bad. Also be careful what you wish for man. Nickeback returned the year after this. You have not truly suffered through bad music yet my young friend. They spot a kid looking feverish, and he soon turns into a purple werewolf, as you do. It’s a bang baby.. those are richie’s exact word and you may not want to start a panic there bud. Just saying your best friend is one. THeir not all like this. Our heroes book it only to run into Francis who naturally refuses to let them leave and only doesn’t try to beat up Virgil because Virgil points otu the werewolf and nonplussed, he goes to fight it, scarring it off by revealing his own powers. He’s now dubbed himself Hotstreak which points for getting an actually good name kid. No points for what happens next as unsuprisingly getting powers did NOT mak ehim a better person and he attacks Virgil who blocks with a garbage can lid and thankfully is blasted into an ally. Richie tries to guard frieda for damn obvious reasons but gets hsi shirt burnt up because shut up Thankfully Static shows up, and we get our firsdt full on superhuman fight as both fight each other with aplomb, and it’s a damn good fight.. and one that goes pear shaped for Virg as he’s caught off guard when he finds out Hotstreak can use his powers to fly, and tackles him and his previous trauma causes him to freeze up. Thankfully , as Frieda put in a call earlier, the fire department arrive and HOt streak has to retreat, though Virgil is bummed that he “Choked”. And I love this as it not only shows Virgil’s inepxerince, as this is his first time fighting a bad guy but that just because he HAS power now dosen’t mean trauma and his previous fear of Hotstreak goes away or you won’t freeze up from time to time. It dosen’t make him weak or anything like some assholes would call it .. it makes him human. Humans make mistakes, and it makes him all the more relatable that he’s not pefect and that he did freeze up as I know I certainly would at last once in the circumstances. 

Things don’t get better at dinner as Sharon and Pops argue over the bang babies with Pops calling them a meance and Sharon pointing out Static exists so they can’t all be bad. See assuming a group of superhumans are bad because a handful of them ar edick sis why the x-men had to get their own island nation. You can only save an ungreatful populous so many times before you say “fuck it i’m getting my own island, pay me for life saving drugs, save your damn selves and stop doing genocides on us. Kay thanks”. But he does bring up a valid point that rattles his son: We don’t know anything about the Bang Babies or their biological structures and it’s likely they might further mutate into monsters, Static included. 

Virgil, understandably, wants to check this and thus he and richie compare blood samples in science, to no real conclusion. She he checks out with his doctor who assumes he’s sexually active in a great getting crap past the radar bit and a bit of realisim, but he agrees to the test though if something came up he would have to tell Virgil’s dsad and is up front about this. Nice dose of realisim.

That night City Council has a meeting and the Mayor TRIES to deflect Papa Hawkins questions about the bang babies which again, while being a judgmental ass as not every person hit was a gang member (Virgil, and as we discover later some others), and not every gang member is there by choice, some by circumstnace some, like virgil almost was, because they HAD no other option. Again years of reading x-men may of just made me a bit touchy on assholes admitely assuming superpower people bad. But it’s clear the public is upset and while she says an investigation is underway... Virgil and Richie are not only not convinced, but figure she’s actively covering it up. And unlike everyone else there who probably suspects the same, they can do something about it and tail her.  It’s during this, and cleverly as I didn’t realie till writing this using similar skills to his human cd player act, Virgil listens in and discovers whose behind it: Edwin Alva, whose apparently richer than bill gates and a beloved phinarophist Alva, as it turns out, was actually the arch enemy of Hardware in the comics, taking advantage of the guy in his civiliian idtentiy and thus casuing him to launch a war on the asshole. He does transition into this series well though, being the one behind the gas that caused it and with the mayor agreeing to back off, planning to simply dump the info about the big bang on a disc then destroy everything for now till the heat dies down. Yup sounds like a corprate douchebag. 

Static tails him, finds the lab and infiltrates it, stealing the disc.. but getting caught by Alva’s goon, and trapped in a glass prison, forced to use ALL his power to escape and barely getting out alive, but not before bouncing off alva’s car. Still he now has the proof.. and meanwhile Hotstreak, who I was wrong did get captured, is forced to take pill sbut spits them out once the orderly is gone. Dude.. WHY DIDN’T YOU WATCH HIM. Make sure he swallows that shit especially since, as he has no powers right now and can’t harm you. 

Hotstreak escapes off screen and our heroes discuss the disc before he shows up, and we get a REALLY fucking amazing scene: Virgil ducks into an Alleway and ritchie is worried.. and Virgil disarms him with just one word responses Ritchie: Virg you can’t take him.  Virgil: Gotta. Ritchie: Well at least wait for the fire department Virgil: Can’t.  It’s simpile but it gets the point across: This is his fight, he can’t wait for help, and people need him. And this is what makes a true hero: It’s easy to be a hero when everythings going well.. but it’s the true ones who stick it out against the odds and fight anyway. And he’s going to.  So we get one hell of a fight, though naturally Hotstreak burns up the disc. And I do like this as it dosen’t feel contrived.. yes Static could’ve left it with ritchie.. but he wasn’t thinking in the moment and dind’t really have time to think abotu the disc, only that people were being hurt and he was all they had between them and Hotstreak. It was no choice at all. Still that pisses Virgil off that the last night’s work is now worthless, and he fully charges up and curbstomps francis who retreats into a clearing. Hostreak brags when static follows, as even he’s figured out Static needs to be around metal, as he’s usually on his disc or the street, and in the park there suppodsidly isn’t any. But he’s not THAT smart as Virgil points out two things: one, he hoped to do this on PURPOSE so they wouldn’t be around people and no on e would get hurt and 2).. this is a city, there’s metal everywhere.. and he awesomely and cleverly proves it by unlodging a sewage pipe with his powers and dousing his foe, winning and proving his stuff. I love this solution, it’s a clever spider-man type way to disarm him, using smarts and the einvroment instead of just brute forcing it. Though the sewage part wasn’t intetional our hero still won and gets praise from the people dumb enough to follow the fight. 

However at home Virgil points out it was  Pyrrhic Victory and shows off his smarts by telling the tale behind it, which I didn’t know,because tv tropes didn’t exist yet: king pyrhus fought the romans and WON.. but had so little armies left that he still lost overall. That’s what this feels like to Virgil: he beat hotstreak but any chance at a cure for Bang Babies and Alva going to jail for causing them is gone. His mood does get a boost though as the doctor calls and reveals he’s fine, he just has a bit too much elctrolytes and just needs to lay off teh salt. He celebrates, we get a quick gag and the episode ends

Aftershock is another stellar episoe, giving us Virgil’s first super foe and a personal one at that, while showing some growth. As richie tells him he’s not virgil anymore he’s static and he can’t let his past get to him.. and he does’nt going from cowering in fear to easily beating his foe with simple logic. It’s a good followup that answers questions you may have from the first ep, like what does this do to virgil’s body, who supplied the gas, and why has no one done anything about this, and sets up another villian for Static in Alva. Great stuff. I highly recommend these episodes and the show as a whole: it’s fast paced, grounded and enjoyable, having just enough levity to not be too dour but just enough tension and stakes to be intresting. A throughly fantastic superhero show and one that i’d certainly love to revisit on this blog If you have an episode of static or the dcau in general you’d want me to cover, my comissions are open and details are on a tab on my blog or can be gotten simply by asking me via ask or dm. Tommorow we’re going deeper underground, there’s too much damage in this town as the Lena Retrospective continues. So expect gay ducks, straight ducks and some terrfirmains. See you next rainbow. 

#static shock #static #virgil hawkins #richie foley #robert hawkins #sharon hawkins #hotstreak #milestone comics #dc comics #dc animated universe #dcau #dwayne mcduffie #robert l washington IIII #kids wb #hbo max #2000s #animation #black lives matter #black history month

[callmebrycelee]

Movie Review in 900 Words or Less: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)

Once upon a time, circa the early-90's, I became obsessed with all things spooky. I remember my mom going to Waldenbooks on her lunch break to buy me the latest Goosebumps books. And on the weekends, I would beg her to let me stay up and watch Are You Afraid of the Dark and usually she would end up regretting it because I would be too afraid to go to sleep afterwards. It was also during this time I discovered the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books at the Scholastic Book Fair that would come to my school's library every year. I remember flipping through those pages and seeing those creepy drawings by Stephen Gammell. I loved those books so much and I believe those stories along with Are You Afraid of the Dark and Goosebumps are the reason why I love horror so much.

When I found out Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark anthologies were being adapted into a movie, I was a bit nervous to see how my favorite horror stories from my childhood would be brought to life on the big screen. At the tail-end of last summer, I went to my local movie theater and I saw the film. The movie begins on Halloween night in 1968. We meet our main protagonist Stella, an aspiring writer, and her best friends Auggie and Chuck. After playing a prank on the neighborhood bully, Stella and her friends run into Ramon at the drive-in and convince him to join them at the Bellows mansion, the local haunted house. While there, Stella stumbles upon a tome filled with scary stories written by Sarah Bellows, a recluse who was rumored to have killed several kids before killing herself. Stella takes the book and she and her friends flee the mansion. That night, Stella sees a story writing itself in the book. The story is about Tommy, the neighborhood bully, being stalked by a scarecrow. Those of us quite familiar with Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark will recognize that the scarecrow in the story is based off of the scarecrow in the story Harold. In the original story, the scarecrow Harold rips off a farmer's skin. In the film, Harold stabs Tommy with a pitchfork which causes Tommy to transform into a scarecrow himself. Despite there being any blood or gore, watching hay shoot out of Tommy's hands and stomach and mouth is quite gruesome to see. It's easily one of the more disturbing images in the film.

The film takes place over a week and each day a new story is written about one of Stella's friends. Her friend Auggie becomes the victim of a zombie woman looking for her toe which he inadvertently ate. Chuck's older sister, Ruth is commuted to an asylum after a bunch of spiders erupt from a boil on her face. Chuck is forced to confront the Pale Lady while searching for clues in the mental institution Sarah Bellows was committed to. That leaves Stella and Ramon as the last man and woman standing to square off against Sarah Bellows. What I love most about this film is how beloved characters like the Pale Lady and Harold and the corpse from The Big Toe were brought to life. Keep in mind, these were two-dimensional drawings rendered as 3D characters. I especially loved the Pale Lady because I thought she looked exactly like the drawing and she was the creepiest of the characters. As a fan of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark tales I was both surprised and satisfied by how they were woven into the overall narrative.

Words cannot express how much I love this film. I loved that it took place in the 1960s which was a breath of fresh air considering the 1980s are super popular right now. Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush and Austin Zajur did an excellent job considering they are relatively new to the acting word. I thought Dean Norris did a great job in his role as Stella's father. I enjoyed seeing Gil Bellows in this movie. I hadn't seen him since Ally McBeal. Most of all, I loved seeing such a spectacular homage to something so important from my childhood. These stories still hold a special place in my heart and even at 35 years of age, I still find several of the stories in the anthologies quite spooky. Perhaps the best thing to come out of this revival of the book series is a podcast called Scary Stories to Tell on the Pod. Anna and Andrew, the hosts, meet weekly to discuss one of the stories from the anthologies. They are a hoot and if you are big into podcasts like myself I highly suggest giving them a listen. 

So, if you have not had a chance to see this movie, I highly suggest you rent and/or purchase it. I promise you will not be disappointed!

#scary stories to tell in the dark #zoe colletti #austin zajur #gil bellows #gabriel rush #austin abrams #dean norris #andre ovredal #guillermo del toro #movie review in 900 words or less #movie review

[headfulloffantasies]

WWCAD? What Would Captain America Do?

Sam Wilson has a chat with Spider-man about bullying

Sam Wilson was tired. So emotionally tired that the only thing that would console his exhausted soul was flying. There was something about being above everything that made his problems shrink down to manageable sizes. Sam was flying near Queens, just enjoying the wind under his wings, when he caught sight of the red and blue swinging between buildings. Spider-man. The kid must have saw him out of the corner of his eye, ‘cause he twisted in midair to wave at Sam. Sam waved back, ready to pull up and go fly in peace, but Spidey waved more frantically. Sam glided a little closer, til the two of them were pretty much even on Spidey’s upswings. Spidey gestured to a roof. Sam knew that look, even behind the wide white eyes of a mask. Kid needed to talk. Fine. Five minutes, he promised himself. Kid probably just wanted to ask for an autograph.

“Hey, kiddo,” Sam said as they landed on the roof.

“Mr. Falcon, sir.”

Sam would never get over how polite the kid was. Why couldn’t Daredevil or even Deadpool pick up some common decencies?

Spidey reached up and pulled off his mask.

Yikes.

“Kid, that is one spectacular shiner.”

“Thanks,” Peter sassed.

Sam inspected the bruising a little closer. “Did you get that from the Rhino incident yesterday?”

“Haha, no.”

Ok. Detecting a little animosity. Not sure Sam had earned that vehement reply.

“What did you want to talk about?”

“Um,” Peter shifted his feet and fidgeted with the mask in his hands.

“C’mon, kid. Unless it’s a birds and bees talk, you can ask me anything.”

“Say a guy at school is picking on me, and I already tried asking him to stop, and I talked to two teachers, and I tried ignoring him, but nothing is working and actually it’s escalating to the point that I’m dreading going to school?” Peter blurted out.

Sam needed a second to process all that. “Did he give you the black eye?”

“Not directly.”

“Peter.”

Peter dropped his head in his hands and groaned. “Flash greased my chair at Acadec so I’d slip and fall. But he doesn’t know about the sticky Spidey powers, so I may have dramatically pretended to slip even though I didn’t and I may have overdone it with the super-strength and slammed my head into a table.”

Wow. This child was a nightmare. Sam wanted out of this conversation, now. He was not prepared for high school drama.

“Ok. So I get that you’re being bullied. But I’m not sure what to tell you. I thought all schools had a no-bullying policy?”

Peter nodded miserably, “We got the We Are All Heroes program.”

“The what?”

“We gotta treat each other with respect because everyone is a hero,” Peter explained with an accompanying eyeroll.

“Um. Ok?” Sam desperately wanted this conversation to be over. He was prepared to throw himself off the side of the building.

“Yeah, so we’re supposed to ask What Would Cap Do?”

No, wait. Hold the phone.

“Your teachers want you to act like Steve Rogers at all times?”

Peter shrugged, “Yeah, basically.”

Holy Toledo. Everybody stop what they’re doing.

“And what do you think Cap would do in your shoes?”

Peter scowled. “Probably have a nice chat about freedom of speech.”

“Punch him in the face.”

“What?” The poor child’s eyes couldn’t get any wider.

“Cap would punch him in the face. Hundred percent, trust me.” Sam crossed his heart for good measure.

Peter squinted. “Are you sure? That doesn’t sound like Captain America. He’s more ‘Patience is a virtue’ isn’t he?”

Sam’s heart couldn’t take this. Steve’s reputation was in ruins. The brainwashing started so young. “What do they teach you about Captain America in schools?”

Peter shrugged, “I don’t know. We don’t learn World War Two history until next year. All I know is the PSA videos.”

Oh, yeah. That’ll do it. Those stupid videos were the bane of Cap’s existence. He lamented them to Sam on a weekly basis.

“Lies,” Sam hissed. “Steve Rogers is an anarchist, child. He is the embodiment of a pissed off racoon at all times.”

Peter frowned. “Isn’t that Mr. Barnes?”

Sam considered. “Yeah, him too. But Steve’s the one who jumps out of planes without parachutes.”

“So what you’re saying is…?”

“What I’m saying,” Sam huffed. “Is that if your school wants you to act like Captain America then you should remember that Cap started with punching Nazis and finished with punching Hydra, AIM, and whoever else he could get his grubby hands on.”

Peter nodded, eyes thoughtfully trained on the mask in his hands. He looked up at Sam and Sam’s heart did a little flip. Peter may have been all of fifteen, but he had a heart of steel, and in that moment, Sam saw the future of the Avengers.

“If I hit Flash, I’m no better than him. I’m supposed to be a hero no matter which mask I’m wearing, Mr. Falcon.”

Atta boy. Sam definitely was not tearing up, not even a little. It was just windy on the rooftop.

Peter smiled like a shark, “Besides, in ten years I’ll have a Nobel prize and be leader of the Avengers and Flash will still be trying to understand basic physics.”

Sam could now see that the worst influence on Peter was not Steve Rogers, but Tony Stark. Dear God, help us all when this child grows up.

#spiderman #captain america #falcon #peter parker #sam wilson #steve rogers #marvel #mcu #fanfic #bullying #wwcad #what would captain america do

[bzdsentai]

biomic replied to your post: Next week is gonna be rough without the weekly...

i could stream some bioman episodes, or take suggestions for something else

I was thinking of doing a Spectacular Spider-Man stream just to keep the theme of Weisman’s vision consistent. 

But Bioman sounds good, old school Sentai’s always a trip.

#biomic

[seriousissues]

132: Bend It Like Bendis

Sorry we're late! It was a public holiday (just don't ask Levins what the holiday was for) which meant we got an extra day to read all of these extra comics!

Comics reviewed in this episode: 

First Things First (2:10) Man Eaters #1 The Wicked + The Divine 1373AD #1 Heroes In Crisis #1 Justice League Odyssey #1 Infinity Warps: Iron Hammer #1 Spider-Geddon #0 Domino Annual #1 Harbinger Wars 2: Aftermath #1 Faith: Dreamside #1 Gamma #1 Fearscape #1 Friendo #1 High Heaven #1

Image (40:15) Shanghai Red #4

DC (41:40) Doomsday Clock #7 The Terrifics #8 The Silencer #9 Action Comics #1003 Wonder Woman #55 Detective Comics #988 Detective Comics #989 Batgirl #27 Batman: Kings Of Fear #2

Marvel (55:54) Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #310 The Amazing Spider-Man #6 Edge of Spider-Geddon #4 The Sentry #4 Black Panther #4 X-Men Red #8 Extermination #3 Moon Knight #199 Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #35 Marvel 2 in One #12

Other Publishers (1:11:20) Fence #10 Beasts of Burden #2 Beyonders #2 Regular Show: 25 Years Later #4

SUPPORT US ON PATREON SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES / STITCHER DOWNLOAD MP3 FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK JOIN THE SERIOUS ISSUES FACEBOOK GROUP FOLLOW US ON TWITTER TWITTER: LEVINS / SIOBHAN INSTAGRAM: LEVINS / SIOBHAN

–

Serious Issues is a weekly comic book review podcast, hosted by Andrew Levins and Siobhan Coombs at Kings Comics in Sydney.

Find every comic we review on the show at Kings Comics in Sydney or online at http://kingscomics.com

Get in touch with us to ask us a question or tell us to start reading something we’re missing out on. Email us at [email protected] or find us at facebook.com/seriousissuespodcast. If you like what you hear, please leave us a nice review on iTunes!

#serious issues #serious issues podcast #andrew levins #siobhan coombs #kings comics #planet broadcasting #comic book podcast #dc comics #marvel comics #image comics

[all-action-all-picture]

The Spectacular Spider-Man Weekly No. 359, dated 23 January 1980. The cover art, by Al Milgrom, was originally used on Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man No. 33 (1979). Marvel UK.

#23jan #1980 #the spectacular spider-man weekly #peter parker the spectacular spider man #al milgrom #marvel uk

[aion-rsa]

What If…? Episode 5 Review: Magnificent Marvel Zombie Chaos

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This review contains spoilers for Marvel’s What If…? episode 5.

Episode 5 of Marvel’s What If…?, entitled ‘What If…Zombies!?’, is a tremendously fun half hour of television, and is also likely to be a really good time for fans of the Marvel Zombies comics.

The installment is packed with laughs and shocking moments, using classic zombie tropes to keep some of the best and most underrated MCU characters on their toes while maintaining an enviable pace as it throws one wild scenario after another at them.

As you may know by now if you’ve been reading our weekly What If…? reviews, they’re adopting a slightly different format. More of a breakdown that we hope will satisfy die-hard Marvel fans but also help younger viewers and those less familiar with the MCU keep up.

Alright! Now, let’s dig into ‘What If…Zombies!?’, which ponders what would have happened if Janet van Dyne had contracted a terrible virus during her time in the Quantum Realm.

Required viewing

It helps to have seen all the MCU movies leading up to Avengers: Infinity War, but perhaps Spider-Man: Homecoming, Black Panther and the first two Ant-Man films are the most essential watches. There are also a fair few gut punches for any WandaVision fans in the building, and whomst amongst us is not?

Voice cast

Our Watcher Uatu is of course Jeffrey Wright, Chadwick Boseman is T’Challa/Black Panther, Paul Rudd is Scott Lang/Ant-Man, Mark Ruffalo is Bruce Banner/Hulk, Evangeline Lily is Hope van Dyne/Wasp, Sebastian Stan is Bucky Barnes, Paul Bettany is Vision, Jon Favreau is Happy Hogan, Danai Gurira is Okoye, Emily VanCamp is Sharon Carter, David Dastmalchian is Kurt, and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor is Ebony Maw.

The missing voice here is Tom Holland. Musician and Mad Men actor Hudson Thames fills in as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in episode 5.

What’s different?

Bruce Banner in Hulk form returns to Earth via the Bifröst just as he did at the start of Avengers: Infinity War, but this time when he crashes down into the Sanctum Sanctorum he finds Iron Man, Wong and Doctor Strange already turned into flesh-eating zombies.

Bruce is thankfully saved by Hope van Dyne and her swarm of ants, and Peter Parker whisks him off while we get some helpful exposition.

In this universe, Hank Pym’s Ant-Man and the Wasp journey to the Quantum Realm to retrieve his long-lost wife Janet went badly wrong when he found her infected by a quantum zombie brain virus upon his arrival. When she returned, Janet started gnawing on everything within reach and the virus spread like wildfire, quickly infecting millions. Cap, Widow, Hawkeye, Iron Man and Black Panther apparently set out with arguably the worst Cap plan ever to turn back the tide, and disappeared under a pile of hungry zombies.

Banner finds himself among the last of the still-human holdouts. Bucky Barnes, Okoye and Sharon Carter are tracking a signal from Camp Lehigh that may or may not provide a solution to the zombie problem. Along with Happy Hogan and Kurt (who I still don’t think has a last name), the gang forge a loose, Train to Busan-y mission to try and reach Camp Lehigh.

Unfortunately, they are attacked by numerous familiar faces before they set out, and Happy is turned into a zombie, further dampening Peter’s hopes for a W. They eventually get aboard a train, but Zombie Cap climbs on and Bucky has to fight him, which leads to a small sliver of time with Bucky as Cap when he nabs his shield.

Hope gets infected, but helps the rest of the gang get to Camp Lehigh, where they find Vision experimenting with the Mind Stone, and Scott and T’Challa still alive (to varying degrees). Okoye realizes they can use Vision’s research to cure the zombie population, but only from Wakanda where the tech they need could be easily constructed.

Vision’s base turns out to be a bit of a trap. He’s been luring people there to feed a contained – and admittedly extremely cool-looking – Zombie Wanda, as he couldn’t bear to lose her (gulp). His guilt gets the better of him when his friends are attacked by Wanda, and T’Challa, Peter and Scott Lang’s head escape Camp Lehigh and fly to Wakanda while Banner Hulks out and attacks the hoard.

How does it work out?

Oof, not good. Earth seems utterly screwed. Scott is still a head in a jar being supportively cuddled by The Cloak of Levitation, T’Challa is missing a leg, Peter is clinging on to his last shred of hope, and the safe haven of Wakanda plays host to an Infinity Gauntlet-wielding zombie Thanos. Yikes.

Standout moments

There were so many fantastic moments in episode 5 that it will probably require a rewatch or two to catch them all!

First, I’ve gotta give a shout-out to the The Cloak of Levitation. It really is the gift that keeps on giving – kind of like the MCU’s version of a silent movie star. That thing has surely saved the day as many times as the Avengers by now, and it asks for nothing in return. The Cloak of Levitation always knows the assignment, and always delivers.

You’ll be unsurprised to learn that I also loved Peter’s glorious zombie training video, which started off with a distinct Mutant Enemy-esque ident. What a smorgasbord of joy! Kurt’s ketchup-squirting special effects, Bucky listed as “silent but deadly”, Happy forced to wear a custom Thor shirt of questionable origin. This instructional clip had everything, didn’t it?

Peter’s struggle to keep hope alive in the zombie apocalypse is an arc that has almost certainly been pulled from Philip Kennedy Johnson’s spectacular Marvel Zombies: Resurrection run, and it’s just as affecting in this episode as it was in the pages of Marvel Comics. Peter can always be relied upon to maintain his earnest spirit until the bitter end.

Both Kurt and Happy were terrific additions in this episode. Happy’s insistence on yelling “blam!” every time he used the repulsor glove reminded me of Ewan McGregor’s behind the scenes Star Wars: The Phantom Menace story, where he admitted that he made lightsaber noises out loud when he was filming. Apparently, McGregor did it so much that the post-production crew ended up having to edit in louder lightsaber sounds to cover it all up.

Of course, the continuing heartbreak of Vision and Wanda’s relationship was once again ready to twist the emotional knife. In WandaVision, Wanda couldn’t help but use her Chaos Magic to keep Vision around after his death, but here we see that Vision arguably went to more disturbing lengths to contain a zombified Wanda. It was even hard to cope with the monstrous Wanda finding Vision’s lifeless body, and yet Marvel still refuses to pay for my therapy.

See you again next week!

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Marvel’s What If…? is now streaming on Disney+.

The post What If…? Episode 5 Review: Magnificent Marvel Zombie Chaos appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3DRHi5X

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[brevoorthistoryofcomics]

BHOC: PETER PARKER, SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #22

BHOC: PETER PARKER, SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #22

Eventually, after a week’s gap caused by my having bought the new comics for that week while at Heroes World earlier, new comics that I did not already own started turning up at 7-11 again. And so, on my weekly Thursday venture, I bought this issue of PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN. It was a series that I had been following on-and-off for a little bit, but not one that I was especially…

View On WordPress

#Bill Mantlo #Bullpen Bulletins #Doug Moench #Marvel #Mike Zeck #Moon Knight #Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man #Spider-Man

[lobocomicsandtoys]

What’s New @ Lobo | 06/20/2018

Here’s our weekly list of the latest comics coming in at Lobo Comics & Toys so you can keep up with all the comics you’re looking forward to! 

Make sure you never miss a title again! We have a pull box system that you can learn how to sign up for here and have all your comics and trades pulled for you every week.

   Missed an issue already? Can’t find a trade paperback you want? Ask us to special order for you and you’ll have it in about a week!

COMICS:

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #801 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN RENEW YOUR VOWS #20 ANT-MAN AND THE WASP #2 (OF 5) AQUAMAN #37 AVENGERS #3 BARBARELLA #7 BATMAN #49 BATMAN PRELUDE TO THE WEDDING RED HOOD VS ANARKY #1 BATMAN SINS OF THE FATHER #5 (OF 6) BATWOMAN #16 BEEF #5 (OF 5) BEN REILLY THE SCARLET SPIDER #20 BLACK HAMMER AGE OF DOOM #3 BRAVE AND THE BOLD BATMAN AND WONDER WOMAN #5 (OF 6) BTVS SEASON 12 THE RECKONING #1 (OF 4) CABLE #158 CAPTAIN AMERICA #704 CAVE CARSON HAS AN INTERSTELLAR EYE #4 CHAMPIONS #21 CRUDE #3 DAMAGE #6 DAREDEVIL #604 DAYS OF HATE #6 (OF 12) DEADLY CLASS #35 DEATHBED #5 (OF 6) DELTA 13 #2 DOCTOR STRANGE #2 ETHER THE COPPER GOLEMS #2 (OF 5) EVOLUTION #7 FLAVOR #2 FOREVER FREE #2 FUTURE QUEST PRESENTS #11 GIDEON FALLS #4 GOD COMPLEX #6 GREEN LANTERNS #49 HARLEY QUINN #44 HIT-GIRL #5 HUNT FOR WOLVERINE CLAWS OF KILLER #2 (OF 4) INFIDEL #4 (OF 5) INFINITY COUNTDOWN BLACK WIDOW #1 INFINITY COUNTDOWN CHAMPIONS #1 (OF 2) INJUSTICE 2 #28 IRON MAIDEN LEGACY OF THE BEAST #5 (OF 5) JAMES BOND THE BODY #6 (OF 6) JUSTICE LEAGUE #2 LOST CITY EXPLORERS #1 MAD MAGAZINE #2 MAN OF STEEL #4 (OF 6) MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS #28 MOONSHINE #11 NEW CHALLENGERS #2 (OF 6) NINJA-K #8 PETER PARKER THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #1 PLANET OF THE APES URSUS #6 PUNKS NOT DEAD #5 RICK AND MORTY PRESENTS KROMBOPULOUS MICHAEL #1 RUNAWAYS #10 SHADOWMAN #4 (NEW ARC) SHANGHAI RED #1 SKYWARD #3 SPIDER-GWEN #33 STAR WARS POE DAMERON #28 TANK GIRL ALL STARS #1 (OF 4) TMNT UNIVERSE #23 TMNT URBAN LEGENDS #2 TONY STARK IRON MAN #1 USAGI YOJIMBO THE HIDDEN #4 (OF 7) WAYWARD #26 WEAPON H #4 WILD STORM #14 WITCHFINDER GATES OF HEAVEN #2 (OF 5) X-MEN GOLD #30

TRADES:

ALTERS TRADE PAPERBACK VOL 02 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN WORLDWIDE TRADE PAPERBACK VOL 08 AQUAMAN TEMPEST TRADE PAPERBACK BATMAN DETECTIVE COMICS TRADE PAPERBACK VOL 06 FALL OF THE BATMAN BATMAN THE DARK PRINCE CHARMING HARDCOVER BOOK 02 (OF 2) DARK NIGHTS METAL DARK NIGHTS RISING HARDCOVER DOCTOR STRANGE BY DONNY CATES TRADE PAPERBACK VOL 01 GOD OF MAG GHOSTBUSTERS ANSWER THE CALL TRADE PAPERBACK GIANT DAYS TRADE PAPERBACK EXTRA CREDIT HARD PLACE TRADE PAPERBACK HELLBOY OMNIBUS TRADE PAPERBACK VOL 02 STRANGE PLACES HIT-GIRL TRADE PAPERBACK VOL 01 ICE CREAM MAN TRADE PAPERBACK VOL 01 RAINBOW SPRINKLES JUSTICE LEAGUE TRADE PAPERBACK VOL 06 PEOPLE VS THE JUSTICE LEAGUE MULTIPLE WARHEADS TRADE PAPERBACK VOL 02 GHOST TOWN MYSTIK U TRADE PAPERBACK OVER GARDEN WALL TRADE PAPERBACK VOL 04 SISTERS OF SORROW TPRADE PAPERBACK SON OF HITLER HARDCOVER SPACE RIDERS TRADE PAPERBACK VOL 02 GALAXY OF BRUTALITY STAR WARS ADVENTURES TRADE PAPERBACK VOL 03 ENDANGERED STEPHEN MCCRANIES SPACE BOY TRADE PAPERBACK VOL 01 SUPERMAN ZERO HOUR TRADE PAPERBACK TRINITY TRADE PAPERBACK VOL 02 DEAD SPACE UNBEATABLE SQUIRREL GIRL TRADE PAPERBACK VOL 08 MY BEST FRIEND’S SQUIRREL VENOMNIBUS HARDCOVER VOL 01 WEAPON X TRADE PAPERBACK VOL 03 MODERN WARFARE

MANGA:

A CERTAIN SCIENTIFIC RAILGUN VOL 13 DEVILMAN GRIMOIRE VOL 03 GETTER ROBO DEVOLUTION VOL 01 GOLDEN KAMUY VOL 05 HOW NOT TO SUMMON DEMON LORD VOL 01 TOKYO GHOUL RE VOL 05

TOYS:

GUNDAM BUILD DIVERS SERAVEE GUNDAM SCHEHERAZDE MODEL KIT GUNDAM F91 VER 2.0 GUNDAM F91 MG 1/100 MODEL KIT GUNDAM WING LEO HGAC MODEL KIT MARVEL GALLERY BLACK PANTHER MOVIE KILLMONGER PVC FIGURE POP DOUG S1 DOUG FUNNIE VINYL FIGURE POP DOUG S1 PORKCHOP VINYL FIGURE POP MARVEL DEADPOOL CABLE VINYL FIGURE POP MARVEL DEADPOOL PARODY DEADPOOL BOB ROSS VINYL FIGURE POP MARVEL X-MEN ULTIMATE COLOSSUS VINYL FIGURE POP NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS LOCK VINYL FIGURE SUPERGIRL CW GALLERY PVC FIGURE

Available at Lobo Comics & Toys this coming Wednesday, 06/20/2018

visit us on facebook, google+, blogspot, our eBay store, and our website

#whats new #master list #lobo #lobo comics and toys #lobo comics #comics #toys #comic #albuquerque #new mexico #comic shop in new mexico #comic shop in albuquerque #comic store in new mexico #comic store in albuquerque

[jasonmontoyaart]

Spider-Man rockin' he "what? Huh?" look For Marvel Masterpieces 2020 from Upper Deck/Marvel and for this week's second helping of #webheadwednesday! I always dug when artist's would emote the eyes. As always a huge shout out to my partners in this weekly fun @pauljhill_art, @radioactivespiderpod @scottlewisart, @duffman1 and @drestudios! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #jasonmontoyaartist #instaartist #drawing #artoninstagram #handdrawn #artlife #artwork #sketchcard #originalartwork #cartoon #sketch #copic #doodles #draw #illustration #anime #manga #ジェイソン #fun #great #awesome #spiderman #spidey #peterparker #amazing #spectacular #wallcrawler #masterpiece2020 (at Colorado Springs, Colorado) https://www.instagram.com/p/CGVFl9cBX-b/?igshid=1f94724wm6x3a

#webheadwednesday #jasonmontoyaartist #instaartist #drawing #artoninstagram #handdrawn #artlife #artwork #sketchcard #originalartwork #cartoon #sketch #copic #doodles #draw #illustration #anime #manga #ジェイソン #fun #great #awesome #spiderman #spidey #peterparker #amazing #spectacular #wallcrawler #masterpiece2020

[peters-parker]

Pass the happy! When you get this, reply with 5 things that make you happy and send this to the last 10 people in your notifications

Sorry this is late but I love doing these :)1. Being a part of the American premiere of Dunsinane 2. Girls who are just friendly (tell you you’re pretty talk to you etc)3. When people call me by my name (I appreciate people learning/pronouncing my name properly)4. The original spider-man movies with Tobey Maguire (could watch always just spectacular)5. Podcasts (idk how I’d love without the weekly planet)That’s all thanks for asking!

#asks #anon