Marvel Universe

[Rollo Tomassi]

Speaking of stupid characters. Batroc the Leaper. And not because of the horrible accent cliche or the mustache or his constant ass handings by Cap.

He wears a mask, yet uses his real last name as his "Villain" name. Dumbass.

[Rollo Tomassi]

When you think about all the A.I.M. agents who get killed in the course of Matvel Comics, and how each AIM agent has a PhD, You've gotta wonder how many millions of dollars in unpaid school loans are floating around the Marvel U?

[anarky]

In the MU, it was Sallie Mae, not Fannie Mae, that caused the financial collapse.

[Diabolical]

When you think about all the A.I.M. agents who get killed in the course of Matvel Comics, and how each AIM agent has a PhD, You've gotta wonder how many millions of dollars in unpaid school loans are floating around the Marvel U?

If a person dies all federal student loans are forgiven.

[anarky]

Forgiven or not, they're still unpaid. Think of a government agency funding or guaranteeing trillions in stupid loans for guys who become AIM agents.

[anarky]

Looking at some "Ends of the Earth" teaser images. WTF happened to Doc Ock?

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Looking at some "Ends of the Earth" teaser images. WTF happened to Doc Ock?

Since ASM 600, Doc Ock has had a degenerative nerve disorder from all the concussions he received from various Super Heroes punching him in the noggin. This disorder is "fatal" ( ) so he's basically fashioned himself an iron lung....or something...with 8 mechanical arms. Making him a TRUE Octopus themed villain!

All kidding aside, they've been making him more of an A-list threat lately. He beat Tony Stark, Hank Pym, outsmarted Reed and broke into the Baxter Building, and defeated the Intelligencia. So, good for him.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Reading some old Venom books. One of the minis was Carnage Unleashed by Hama and Wildman. It had a bit of a Meta slant to it because it was released in the mid 90s and it was about the Maximum Carnage video game and Cletus signing his rights to the IP away. Not Wildman's best work though.
Also read the first three issues of the Venom ongoing from 2002. Daniel Way pretty much ripped off the movie The Thing verbatim. Isolated arctic station, jumpy sled dogs, mysterious disappearances, except the creature is the Venom Symbiote. I mean seriously, if you read it, you'd wonder how Marvel didn't get sued. And on top of that, the art was by Francisco Herrera. Who is to Humberto Ramos what Ramos is to Jim Lee. The most exaggerated cartoony art imaginable. Which gels with a "horror" plot about as well as a pork shrimp cheeseburger does at Passover dinner. So Way continues to reside fairly high on my shitty writers list. Not as high as Remender and Loeb and Millar. But up there.

I read the rest of Way's 18 issue Venom ongoing. After the Thing movie ripoff story arc, the Symbiote(which I'll call Venom even though it's not technically Eddie Brock OR Eddie's Symbiote) makes its way south into Canada and ends up fighting Wolverine in a small Canadian town. The "secret Govt agency"(more on them later) chasing Venom decide to NUKE the entire town. Okay, so a nuke goes off in Canada and nobody flips their shit? That's laughable, but I'll let it slide because of this next part. So, Logan was at ground zero when the nuke hit. I mean, literally, ground zero. He wakes up IN the crater. That's right, Logan can survive ground zero nukes where the temperature is like a billion degrees Celsius and everything atomizes. I don't even think his Adamantium skeleton could avoid be atomized. But seeing as it is a fictitious metal in a comic Universe, I'll let that slide. But surely, every single cell of non Adamantium on his body would be vaporized, right? Okay, he's got a fictitious healing factor, so I guess we'll stretch the suspension of disbelief a bit further. But surely at least his skin would be burned off, right? No? He wakes up with just a bit of soot on him, like an Acme cigar blew up in his face.
But the BEST part (or worst, depending) he wakes up STILL WEARING PANTS. Yes folks, Logan's off the rack JCPenny khaki trousers are immune to NUCLEAR DETONATIONS! Fuck you, Daniel Way.
Right. Anyway, the next arc goes back and explains how the Venom Symbiote arrived at the Arctic research facility in the first place. Apparently there's a Super Super SUPER Secret Govt Agency that runs everything and their Boss has SO MUCH Top Secret Clearance he gets to order NICK FURY around! Not only order him around, but Nick Fury turns into a submissive bitch mumbling 'yessir' and 'nosir' like a buck Private. Again, fuck you Daniel Way.
The final arc had Spidey, the FF and Eddie Brock in it. Eventually Eddie Reabsorbs the second Symbiote and becomes a Super-Venom and escapes. And thats how the series ended.

I remember I once offered a guy on eBay $18 for this series, and he wanted at least twice that. So I'm glad I turned him down and paid roughly 30 cents per issue. Daniel Way sucks.

[anarky]

That first paragraph deserves to be enshrined for all posterity to read. The way you set that up, fucking brilliant. It borders on cliche, but doesn't cross into that territory.

It does raise a question: is anyone on Marvel's editorial actually paying attention to Wolvie, meaning making sure there are checks and balances on him? He's (canon) well over 100, in prime form, has bones laced with and claws made of the most unbreakable substance known, and can now survive a ground zero nuclear blast--and somehow protect his pants when he does so.

Why the fuck are there other heroes? If you have Wolverine at that sort of power level, all other heroes should retire. This Wolvie (given his proclivity to violence--and does he still go berzerker, or is that a thing of the past?) should keep every villain so scared shitless they never do evil again. And I do mean every villain. This fucker could kill Galactus.

And, no, a guy at this power level simply having been a dick most of his life is not an appropriate Achilles' heel.

I remember someone jokingly writing in to the letter column of either Wolverine or Hulk (I think Wolverine), asking the editor to settle a bet: if Hulk smashed his hands together on Wolvie's skull, would it make a "bong" sound? The editor pointed out that his bones were merely laced with adamantium, not solid, and the skull is hollow to begin with, so someone as strong as the Hulk would still crush his skull in, likely killing him. So, at one point, they recognized this.

I also remember Wolverine being completely reconstituted from a single cell, but magic was involved. And we shouldn't ever forget the iconic scene in "Days of Future Past," where a single blast from a Sentinel reduces him to a scorched metal-laced skeleton with some flesh still left on one hand, and that was most certainly fatal in that story.

My point that I'm taking too long to make: the healing factor is an awesome ability, if it's not taken too far. Same with the metal skeleton, as long as we keep in mind that it's less than an inch thick (and probably much thinner), so it's not completely invulnerable . Too far, they make him more godlike than Superman.

I always thought an awesome thing to do would be sort of a riff on the one-armed Wolverine from AoA: somehow, some immense force crushes one side of Wolverine's body. Not enough to kill him, obviously. It takes a few weeks for the healing factor to fix his body; his doctor wonders why it's taking longer than normal, then realizes that Wolverine can't heal himself (particularly his bones and the muscles attached to them) because the adamantium is completely mangled. To save his teammates from some threat, Wolverine insists that the adamantium be removed from the affected areas, so Magneto or Polaris or whatever magnetically-powered Lenscher is a good guy this week does it. But they can't get the metal back in where it was taken out. Ever. And, because it was strained for so long, his healing factor is much slower--and slower to kick in, and prone to leaving nasty scars--maybe it was overstrained, and now has to spend additional effort fighting the poisoning effects of adamantium. So now Wolverine has roughly half of his body that isn't protected by adamantium.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Went on a Ben Grimm kick today. I read a couple oneshots from 2002, a mini from 2003, and the 8 issue Dan Slott ongoing.

Thing/She Hulk: The Long Night. A 2002 oneshot with art by Bryan Hitch and Ivan Reis. The Roxxon Corp. is trying to clone Dragon Man under NY at the same time as some vampire creatures attack. Ben and Jen are on the subway and have to survive the chaos that ensues. A lot of fun story crammed into one issue with two great artists.
The Thing Startling Stories. A 2003 oneshot with some REALLY fantastic art by Don Kramer. Ben chats with a soldier and reminisces about different fights he's had with Wrecker, the Inhumans, and Blastaar. Pretty good.

Night Falls on Yancy St. A 2003 mini by Evan Dorkin. Ben meets a woman who turns out to have a fetish for guys with 'unusual' skin, as she's dated Sandman, and Absorbing Man. It all ends up with Trapster and Wizard getting beat to death and Yancy St. being completely demolished, so I'm not sure if this is "in continuity".

Thing 1-8. From 2006. This series takes place around JMS' run on FF and Ben is a Billionaire from his fourth of the FF patent holdings. First three issues, he gets trapped on Arcade's MurderWorld with Tony Stark, Nighthawk, and Constrictor and a bunch of other hostage billionaires. Issue 4 he adopts Lockjaw as his sidekick. Issues 5 and 6 guests Spidey and take place on Yancy St. and he builds a Youth Center for all the delinquents. 7 he takes Alicia back in time to see the Venus de Milo as its being sculpted. He gets into a fight with 130 BC Hercules and ends up breaking the arms off in the fight.
Issue 8 Ben has his Bar Mitzvah. Nope. Not joking.

Which brings up the interesting ongoing "sliding timescale" issue. Since the Rabbi makes the case of it being 13 years since he turned into The Thing, his second life he is 13 years old and can be Bar Mitzvah'd.
Which means everything After that in the Marvel U (2006-2012) is 13+ years. It's one of those immutable events like Franklin's and Val's births, Peter graduating High School, etc that prevent the Universe from perpetually being "11-ish years old". But I digress.

[Diabolical]

That nuke story sounds like a good recurring article: "What the fuck?" or "Wait a sec...what the hell was that?" or something where bullshit like that gets called out, especially in comics.

[Diabolical]

Night Falls on Yancy St. A 2003 mini by Evan Dorkin. Ben meets a woman who turns out to have a fetish for guys with 'unusual' skin, as she's dated Sandman, and Absorbing Man. It all ends up with Trapster and Wizard getting beat to death and Yancy St. being completely demolished, so I'm not sure if this is "in continuity".

Evan Dorkin? Wow, I may have to try and track that down at a some point.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

I think they have tried to deal with the fantastical aspects of Wolverine's hyper healing factor, but doing so just makes the entire thing more convoluted. Most recently Marc Guggenheim wrote a 5-issue arc tryin to get Logan back to a more 'realistic' healing level. And then it is not adhered to by follow up writers, so it becomes academic endeavor. If one writer thinks its a cool idea to have Wolverine riddled by 10,000 bullets and still be standing, he's gonna write that story.
I much prefer the stories where Logan doesn't wade into enemy fire because he knows he's invincible. It still fucking hurts to get shot once, let alone 10,000 times. I just chalk it up to some writers know what they're doing. And some are asshats like Way and Remender.

[anarky]

Maybe I'm extremely dense, but I'm trying to figure out how the just-announced "Marvel Comics Infinite" differs from a standard digital comic or motion comic...?

Anyone noticed anything truly different about this?

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Other than it being "Digital Only" (meaning I don't think there's an agenda to ever put them in print) I can't see a difference.

The curmudgeon in me is Mighty suspicious of this and sees it as the first step towards the end of monthly floppies. I don't like the idea of ANY continuity not being available in print. Up until this point, even stuff that saw release first as a digital comic, eventually saw print in oneshots or collections later on.