WEB DESIGNERS

I JUST FIGURED OUT WHO THE BROTHER AND SISTER ARE THAT JOSS WHEDON WAS TALKING ABOUT

Joss recently tweeted that Avengers 2 would have his favorite brother and sister in it.  Everyone said it would be Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver.  But they’re owned by another studio.  So, I figured out who it is:

Actually, it was my son’s idea.  So it it’s wrong, blame him.

THROG by Skottie Young

DCU by Mike Allred

COSPLAY OF THE DAY

Galactus by Philip Bonneau on Flickr.

NEWS OF THE WEEK, AFTER A LITTLE BITCHING

A few brief notes on the last six or so issues of Marvel’s The Uncanny Avengers.

This week was Chicago’s huge comicon, and Marvel had a panel on the X-verse, where Uncanny Avengers’ author Rick Remender described the current storyline in which Archangel and Pestilence’s twin children, “The Apocalypse Twins,” were raised in a future timeline by Kang the Conqueror and have no returned to resurrect new four horsemen: Banshee (Lorelei’s brother), Sentry, Grim Reaper (Wonder Man’s brother) and Dakken (Wolverine’s son).  Remender at the panel said, and this is a quote: “This sounds like I’m sitting in my house playing D&D by myself.”

Yes, Rick, it does.  And that’s the problem.

Ever since Chris Claremont revived the series and turned it into the biggest moneymaking franchise in comic book history, The X-Men have been very “soap opera” like, and have had an extremely wide and complicated family tree.  It’s what made them special to people who liked them, and impenetrable to more casual fans like me.

In stark contrast, The Avengers has always been a book that is self-contained.  Apart from the occasional cross-over and with the exception of a few brief periods, the book is about adventures within the title itself.  This was by necessity, since often half the team had solo books that needed to have their own continuity.

With Marvel Now!, this has been flipped on its head.  Brian Michael Bendis has brilliantly created two X-books that can be read together or alone, and that require little to know knowledge of the characters’ backstories (apart from knowing about the Schism).  But Remender has now created an Avengers comic that is both maddeningly decompressed and complex at the same time.  Usually, decompression gives the reader time to catch up, but the characters and convolutions are so extreme that this isn’t happening.  And usually, complexity rewards careful readers, but all I seem to get out of it is that if I didn’t read the Apocalypse Sage, and I didn’t, then I should just give up.  Nobody except Rick Remender seems to understand the story–or care about it.

Which is what I’ve done.  For the first time since the comic book launched in 1966, I have no interest in reading The Avengers.

Okay, other C2E2 news, movie news, etc., after the break.

CARTOONS

My childhood was the golden age of TV. And I was busy playing outside most of the time.

CONAN by Art Baltazar

 

COSPLAY OF THE DAY

This one just makes me sad.