On May 28, Marvel Comics will release the highly anticipated X-Men: Magneto Testament hard cover, a collection of the five-issue critically acclaimed limited series from the fan favorite team of New York Times Best-Selling Author Greg Pak (Incredible Hulk, Incredible Hercules) and Carmine Di Giandomenico. This collector’s edition hard cover will be jam-packed with amazingly powerful extras, including a story never before published, and arrives with a suggested retail price of $24.99.
Today, the whole world knows him as Magneto, the most radical champion of mutant rights that mankind has ever seen. But in 1935, he was just another schoolboy — who happened to be Jewish in Nazi Germany. The definitive origin story for one of Marvel’s greatest icons begins with a silver chain and a crush on a girl — then quickly turns into a harrowing struggle for survival against the inexorable machinery of Hitler’s Final Solution.
Tags:
Comic Books,
Marvel Comics,
X-Men
It’s the historic Captain America issue you’ve been waiting for as Eisner-winning writer Ed Brubaker teams up with a group of red hot artists like Butch Guice, Steve Epting, and many more to bring you the extra-sized Captain America #600! It’s the anniversary of the day Captain America died, as the Marvel Universe reflects—and the next jaw dropping chapter in the Captain America mythos begins! Plus, writers Mark Waid and Roger Stern join Brubaker to bring you over 60 pages of all new stories, plus select reprints featuring the work of Stan Lee and a Captain America cover gallery! And just who is the girl without a world? What’s her connection to Captain America? With covers by superstars Alex Ross and Steve Epting, no Captain America fan can miss this issue!
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Tags:
Captain America,
Marvel Comics
Director Kenneth Branagh and Marvel Comics have found the man they want to step into the role of The Mighty Thor and have cast Australian born Chris Hemsworth as the hammer swinging action hero.
Hemsworth, whom movie viewers have recently seen as the heroic, but ill-fated George Kirk in the new Star Trek movie, is a ruggedly handsome 26 year old actor who is no stranger to action roles in movies. He is set to pick up Thor’s Hammer and step into the lead role when the movie goes into production in early January of 2010.
In this live action movie version of the long running Marvel comic, Thor, Hemsworth will play the slightly disabled Dr. Donald Blake who discovers that his alter ego is the none other than the ancient Norse god of thunder (and Thursday),
Tags:
Chris Hemsworth,
Jack Kirby,
Kenneth Branagh,
Marvel Comics,
Stan Lee,
Thor
Back in 1992, fans of Marvel Comics – and superheroes in general – were delighted to find Marvel’s merry band of mutants on Saturday morning television. The series, which ran for seventy-six episodes, brought Marvel’s unique brand of wit and topicality to kids’ TV and ran for five seasons over six years.
X-Men Vol. 1 introduces us to the X-Men via the plot point of the Mutant Registration Act and young Jubilee Lee, a foster child who turns out to have mutant abilities. When giant robots, called Sentinels, try to kidnap her, her flight leads to the X-Men stepping in to help her. The three-part tale, Night of the Sentinels adapts the original X-Men adventure of the same name to accommodate an updated team comprised of three original X-Men [Beast, Cyclops, and Jean Grey], three “New” X-Men [Rogue, Storm and Wolverine], and a lone wolf type [Gambit] who eventually became one of the most popular X-Men ever – almost as popular as Wolverine. As in the comics, the team was led by the wheelchair-bound Professor Charles Xavier, a man whose physical mobility might have been limited, but whose mental gifts included telepathy and a kind of astral projection.
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Tags:
Animation,
Buena Vista Home Video,
Marvel Comics,
X-Men
Here’s the thing about X-Men Origins: Wolverine, while I watched it, I enjoyed about 2/3 of it. It follows the pattern of most summer blockbusters where there’s a strong first act that sucks you in, a 2nd act where things get a little shaky but still manageable and a last act that’s awful. I’m going to keep this review short because I really don’t have much to say about this movie. I liked it for what it was but if I think about it too much I’ll start to question every little thing and a this is a film that’s meant to be consumed and forgotten about not endlessly dissected and over analyzed. I didn’t like this because it had good explosions – which, kind of sucked. I liked it because it gasp, had really strong acting from Hugh Jackman (Logan / Wolverine) and Liev Schreiber (Victor Creed / Sabretooth). The movie really does a fantastic job of setting up their story in the first few minutes of the film.The opening credit sequence does a great job of setting up Logan and Victor’s relationship. It’s about as great an opening sequence as the one they used in the recent Watchmen movie. It gives you everything you need to know in less than five minutes.
The problem is there really is nowhere for the story to go after this opening sequence. We can spend the rest of the film either showing them breaking up and fighting or I don’t know what the other option would be. So the writers obviously selected option A. We find out what Sabretooth did to foster his and Wolverine’s hatred. But the explanation of why is pretty tame high school stuff – “He abandoned me.” Yeah really? After having each other’s back for 100 years that’s all it takes for you to turn on your brother? I would think the hatred would have started in the first scene when Login killed their father when he was a kid. But they actually “bonded” over that and the movie never touches on it ever again, which made it sort of pointless to show it.
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Tags:
2009 Summer Movies,
Hugh Jackman,
Liev Schreiber,
Marvel Comics,
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
I’m a bit of a Marvel movie geek. I’ve seen all of them – including the Dolph Lundgren Punisher and George Lucas’ Howard the Duck, and the TV-movie of Doctor Strange [which I have on VHS]. I have most of them on DVD – and have re-watched most of them [including Howard the Duck] – and I really wanted Punisher: War Zone to be good. Sadly, it is the worst of the lot.
Why? Well, like another action movie I reviewed recently, Max Payne, PWZ is an exceptionally well crafted film, technically, but it’s simply awful as a story. The thread thin plot is simply an excuse to create mayhem, much of it so far over the top that it becomes [somewhat queasily] hilarious.
Director Lexi Alexander is a stuntwoman turned director, so she understands how to stage action set pieces of both the fistic and bullets & booms varieties. There’s a lot of imagination in those areas and they’re supported by solid and occasionally very good performances from the cast – Ray Stevenson, especially, embodies Frank Castle as well as he can be.
In the end, though, all the the technical expertise in the world can’t hide the fact that this is a Marvel movie that lacks what Marvel has always been good at – heart and soul. Punisher is literally “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” No wonder Thomas Jane wanted nothing to with it.
Final Grade: D
Tags:
Julie Benz,
Lexi Alexander,
Lionsgate,
Marvel Comics,
Ray Stevenson
In my review of Iron Man during its theatrical run, after noting that the film worked mainly because of its honouring the source material from the Marvel comics, I wrapped up with:
“While the action scenes aren’t as accomplished as something by Michael Bay, they come off better because director Jon Favreau understands that it’s the characters that make everything else in the film work. He keeps the pace high enough to prevent lessening of interest and knows how to make the film’s effects serve the story. This is a film with surprising wit and genuine intelligence.”
Repeated screenings [twice more in the theater and twice more on DVD] convince me that I was remiss in grading the film a mere A-. Considering that the film’s only real flaw is that the big fight scene between Iron Monger and Iron Man is a bit clunky [which, when you think about it, is appropriate for the big, clumsy looking Iron Monger], and considering that the film translates extremely well from big screen to small, I have to revise that upwards.
Then there are the multitudinous features. How many are there? Check this out: Disc One: Eleven Deleted and/or Extended Scenes; Iron Man Adventures Teaser; Disc Two: I Am Iron Man [Seven Featurettes Documenting the Making if Iron Man: The Journey Begins; The Suit That Makes The Iron Man; Walk of Destruction; Grounded In Reality; Beneath the Armor; It’s All In The Details; A Good Story Well Told]; The Invincible Iron Man [Six Featurettes Covering the History of Iron Man In Comics: Origins; Friends and Foes; The Definitive Iron Man; Demon In a Bottle; Extremis and Beyond; Ultimate Iron Man]; Robert Downey’s Screen Test; The Actor’s Process [Downey, Jeff Bridges and Jon Favreau figure out a scene]; The Onion: Wildly Popular Iron Man Trailer To Be Adapted Into full-Length Film; Galleries: Concept Art [Environments: Afghan Cave, Stark Estate, Stark Garage, Stark Industries; Characters: Iron Man, Iron Monger, Tony Stark]; Tech; Unit Photography, and Posters. There is no commentary track and that costs the Features grade.
The DVD’s menus are patterned after the 3D Hologram effects in the film and are both really cool and easy to navigate. The DVD comes in a standard box inside an embossed card stock slip cover.
Grade: Iron Man – A
Grade: Features – B+
Final Grade: A
Tags:
Action/Adventure,
Gwyneth Paltrow,
Jeff Bridges,
Jon Favreau,
Marvel Comics,
Paramount Pictures,
Robert Downey Jr.,
Sci-Fi,
Terrance Howard
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