Cap's Police Reform

I was recently reading the entire original run of Avengers comics when I came across this panel from an early ‘80s issue.

It wasn’t odd just because the whole issue seemed like a thinly veiled metaphor for police reform with the exact same talking points that are shouted today. It’s because it was written by a notoriously harsh conservative man named Jim Shooter who was known for injecting his rightist politics into his work despite the editorial edict he himself made against doing so. Of course, that edict was almost entirely in place because he knew the rest of the writers at Marvel were liberals and he didn’t want that in the comics of the company he ran.

But even that dude knew this stuff about the police four decades ago and campaigned for the same changes that are still being called for today.

Ugh. I know there’s been progress, and progress can be slow, but this progress seems glacial even on that scale.

Bonus Question!

Best Marvel Jim?

Steranko.

Black Scorpion

So. Dwayne Johnson finally gave an official announcement about his Black Adam movie. And that’s great. The last two big DC superhero movies, “Aquaman” and “Shazam”, were my favourites of the franchise, and this looks to be a bit of a mix of both. Big, classic adventure from the former and shiny magic from the latter.

But really, the mystic desert action its premise implies makes me hopeful for it to be the Scorpion King sequel we never got. Or the one we didn’t get The Rock in. That movie definitely had sequels. And all of them disappeared into the void without even scraping Dwayne.

So. This should be epic.

Bonus Question!

Best Scorpion?

Marvel Monster Mash

Monster month is fully swinging, and I've been thinking about the classic movie monsters. I noticed that they seem to map fairly well onto the members of the Defenders, Marvel's classic misfit team from the 70s, which happened to be a boom for the supernatural on the big screen while such things were largely forbidden in Marvel's pages by the officious rulings of the Comics Code.

Anyway.

Obviously, Frankenstein's monster was an admitted influence on the Hulk. Big brute who rampages around but really just wants to be left to himself.

The gill man? Namor, the king of the oceans.

Silver Surfer, like the mummy Imhotep, is an aloof displaced member of an ancient civilization imbued with mysterious power who wanders around and pines for his lost love.

And finally the big D's. Doctor Strange and Dracula. They love capes. They're relentlessly theatrical. And while they still measure up to their cohorts in terms of weirdness, they are occasionally able to muster up attempts to interact with society at large without making a complete mess.

Also, Strange was explicitly modelled on Vincent Price, who was involved in that whole monster mix too.

And Hulk's rival Talbot shares a surname with the wolf man. I don't know if that's significant.

Bonus Monster!

Some people like to include the Phantom of the Opera in this bunch, and the idea of a disgraced burn victim in a threatening mask who's obsessed with causing havoc for some dude he's pinned his misfortune on fits pretty well with Doctor Doom.

Tom Tingles

Alright. I know I've always said that Andrew Garfield was my favourite Spidey, and I still think he was a fresh breeze of cavalier air after the somewhat dour Tobey Maguire, who still wasn't really bad at his take, but "Far From Home" convinced me to join everyone else in 2016 and accept that Tom Holland is god tier Spidey. And that's even with my soft spot for the Ultimate Peter Garfield reminded me of. Tom even nails the aspects of that version. It's not really news to anyone but me. In some ways, it's not even news to me. But Tommy's a wondrous distillation of some kind of Platonic Spider-Ideal.

And the movie as a whole is my favourite Spider-Man film. Even its mix of high school jinks and rangy adventure brings to my mind the Ultimate comics that elevated

the character to new heights in my young mutant heart. Also, while I'm somewhat ambivalent about the direction of the credits scene, the character who steered it was a welcome surprise of the grandest order.

The fact that Mysterio's presented as a fusion of my two favourite Avengers doesn't hurt either.

Bonus Question!

Mysterio's described as a mix of Iron Man and Thor, just like Sigurd Stark, the Iron Hammer of the Infinity Warps event. Who wins?

Mysterio's extra stylish in the movie, but he's still just a trickster. Not even a trickster god. Iron Hammer's

got divine science magic. And a hammer. So . . .

ImpulSilver

I’ve been reading Peter David’s old Young Justice series from the 90s, and one of the things that sticks out is Impulse’s resemblance to the X-Men movie version of Quicksilver, who bears little resemblance to the comics version. Although he was also written to great effect by David in the 90s. Did someone in the production room for “Days of Future Past” just finish reading David’s X-Men stuff and say “You know who we need in this movie? That speedy dude Peter David made so awesome two decades ago!”? And the writers just assumed he was talking about Impulse instead of Quicksilver and wrote the script accordingly. Which actually worked out pretty well.

Bonus Question!

Worst Quicksilver?

If Quickstrike and Silverbolt from “Beast Wars” ever became a celebrity couple.

Batadict Cumberbat

Been hearing about this Batman casting. I don’t need to tell you that Pattinson’ll be fine. Everyone basically knows. Putting aside my personal affection for the Twilight franchise, I can still say he’s a skillful actor beyond the confines of that role he harbours open distaste for. But at least it gives clear precedent for his portrayal of a moody nocturnal rich dude. With bat symbolism.

Anyway, if that doesn’t work out for whatever reason, I’ve got another suggestion inspired by hearing that one of the villains for the film is supposed to be the Penguin.

Benedict Cumberbatch! Another tall dude with dark hair who looks as though he could come from money. Maybe he doesn’t quite have the chin for it? But whatever. Really, I just want to hear him pronounce “penguin” again. That was a highlight of that Madagascar film he was in.

He needs a name though. We just had Batfleck, and people are trying to decide on one for Robert. I’ve heard “Robert Batinson” and “Robat Pattinson” at least. Maybe “Batadict Cumberbatch” or “Benedict Cumberbatman”? We can work on it.

Bonus Question!

Best penguin?

Probably Memphis. He’s an incarnation of Elvis played by Hugh Jackman. That’s a potent mix.

Spoils of Infinity War

“Endgame” just came out. “Game of Thrones” is ramping up to its finale. Talk about spoilers and the ethics thereof has not been more prevalent in recent memory.

Now, I remember hearing about some study a few years ago where scientists claimed to prove that spoilers can enhance the consumption of a story because humans subconsciously enjoy putting together a puzzle when they know the end result. Which is fine for some people.

But in recent weeks, I’ve heard that study cited far too much by all sorts of people who hold it up to be some sort of universal truth. But humanity’s not a hive mind, and it’s insane to claim that someone who avoids spoilers actually just doesn’t know that they secretly want them.

I’m not the most fervent opponent of spoilers. Its a personal decision. Like everything, people bear some responsibility for avoiding what they don’t want in their lives, but they also have the right to be annoyed at those who ruin their fun. People generally understand themselves enough to know what they want, and no study is going to trump individual taste. It’s not like vaccination. That stuff doesn’t care if you like needles. It’ll help you anyway. Not the same deal here.

Bonus Question!

Best needle?

Gun.