For the last two months I've been working my way, slowly but steadily, through the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in preparation for Avengers: Age of Ultron - I watched two movies a week starting with Iron Man (2008) and The Incredible Hulk (2008), and finishing up yesterday with Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). All of these were second or third viewings, but many were the first viewing since the original film.
Here's what I learned.
1) Avengers: Age of Ultron better be pretty great, as I've spent a lot of time doing prep work to enjoy the film. I'm aware my personal efforts in watching the movies are not the same as those who made, studied, cos-played or otherwise enjoyed the films - but still - ten movies? I feel they better raise the bar a little.
2) 3D is pretty overrated. Of all the films, I saw the vast majority in 3D and re-watching them in old-fashioned 2D at home made the colours brighter (looking at you Winter Soldier) and the images much crisper - I think I'll be hunting for 2D showings from now on when possible (I do have to admit that Guardians of the Galaxy in 3D was a treat - but the colour palate of that film was very bright and largely in primary colours - so even dimmed-down a little it was still very effective).
3) How come we haven't had another Hulk movie yet? I found The Incredible Hulk to be a lot of fun, and with the massively positive response to the character in The Avengers (2012), I was honestly a little surprised that a Hulk sequel doesn't even show up on the proposed schedule to at least 2020.
In the end, the films were all well worth the watch and have me pretty excited for next week's follow up.
For the last few years I've fallen steadily behind in my mainstream comic-book reading. Luckily as the big two competitors (DC and Marvel) like to reboot their lines every few years there are a lot of jumping-on points, but even those come with complications.
Take Guardians of the Galaxy for example - the new series (written by Brian Michael Bendis) started back in 2013 when the film was given a release date and I started purchasing it, as it look kind of cool and I was unfamiliar with any of the characters (except for Groot - who's origin story I had read a few years earlier in the excellent Marvel Monsterworks).
So there I am, happily reading my Guardians of the Galaxy, when a crossover occurred with something called INFINITY - basically this was an Avengers tie-in and seemed to connect on a couple points with my comic but as I was only focusing on my own title, I ignored the connecting titles and moved on.
Next was The Trial of Jean Grey - a tie-in with Bendis' other title, All-New X-Men. This one was a six-issue story alternating between the two titles, so I purchased the three issues of X-Men and enjoyed the story for what it was.
In the last few months however, Guardians has begun a crossover event called The Black Vortex, which includes issues from - All-New X-Men, Captain Marvel, Cyclops, Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardian Team-Ups, Legendary Star Lord, and NOVA.
This was clearly too many comics for me to purchase and stay happily married, so I decided to see if any of these other titles were available at my local library.
The answer was yes, and I started catching up on NOVA and X-Men. The problem was, one of the X-Men titles crossed over with The Indestructible Hulk (written by Mark Waid) as well as Uncanny X-Men (written by Bendis), so I put requests in for these titles. My BFF Mike helpfully loan me the Hulk and Captain Marvel titles, but as I started reading Hulk I saw tie-ins with Dardevil and Thor, both of which the library have and both of which tie into any number of other Marvel titles.
The other problem is these are a lot of fun to read, but I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed... oh wait, in this issue Hulk meets King Arthur!
Okay, I'll stick around for a few more, but THAT'S IT!
Probably...
This afternoon my family joined the rest of North America (apparently) and checked out the newest Marvel film Guardians of the Galaxy.
Directed by James Gunn (director of one of my favourite horror-comedies, Slither), Guardians of the Galaxy (GotG) was something I wasn't really expecting from Marvel these days, a stand-alone feature.
I mean sure, it has a few cameos from the other Marvel films (characters, plot points, and props), but as much as I loved The Avengers (and I really did), it really worked best if you had viewed all of the films leading up to it, while GotG could be watched by pretty much anyone, whether they had seen the other Marvel Cinematic Universe films or not.
The action was fun, the story was sweet, and considering the film had five leads, you got to spend enough time with each of them to care about them as characters, which was a pretty nice treat. Yes, there are a lot of extra treats for Marvel fans in the film, but seriously, this may be one of the better Marvel films to start someone on, showing them the types of stories that the film Studio can tell.
At the beginning of 2014 I look back and realize that although I wrote a lot about the various books, games, movies and television shows I enjoyed last year, I didn't really talk about the current comics I was reading.
As I am, traditionally, someone who tends to focus my comic book reading on trade paperback collections - where a run of comics (for example, issues 1-7) of a series are collected in one book, I tend to be four to six months behind the current story lines of whatever I'm reading.
Last year however, I did check out two new series, Marvel's new Guardians of the Galaxy title (written by Brian Michael Bendis), and Afterlife with Archie (written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa) and I've got to say that both are pretty amazing.
Not at all familiar with Guardians of the Galaxy before I started, I'll happily admit that I began collecting this series as to get an idea of what to expect in this years upcoming adaption of the material - the fact that it was written by Bendis was a strong point in my choosing of it, but once I read the first few issues I was sold. The art is fun, the story works a lot like classic Star Wars and Buck Rogers, and I can't seem to stop smiling while I read it.
Afterlife with Archie was recommended to my by one of the helpful staff at Happy Harbor Comics in Edmonton, and it basically combines Archie Comics with a zombie outbreak - working very hard to keep itself a fair representation of both the world of Archie Comics and a classic Zombie story. This comic is incredibly fun, and after trying the first issue, I knew I had found a new favourite title.
Both series are currently ongoing, and if you haven't tried them yet, I strongly recommend you take a look.
