Avengers...Now???

So, this picture surfaced the other day concerning Marvel screwing up some of my favorite characters. Okay, really just Captain America, but still…ruined. Anyway, I wanted to put my two cents in and get this off my chest. I’m starting in the left hand upper row and working my way across and then down to the second row. I’ll put names to faces to make it less confusing.

MEDUSA – So, she doesn’t cover her face anymore, but we made sure to get some jewelry on her lady parts in the nether regions? Maybe it’s to make sure that Black Bolt doesn’t shred her when they are getting busy? One little moan from the leader of the Inhumans and her vageen is liquefied.

SCARLET WITCH – Classic look. She seems thinner. Did she lose weight for some reason?

IRON MAN – Where is the red and gold? Did Tony Stark use all of his paint allowance on fancy sports cars again? Now he looked like an armored Silver Surfer.

DOCTOR STRANGE –The form fitting costume looks a little sixties. He’s the Sorcerer Supreme not an opening act for Burt Wonderstone. Give me a break. Also, he appears thinner as well. Does magic make you skinny? Like Atkins?

ANT-MAN  - That helmet is stupid. Also, which of the seventy five incarnations of Ant-Man is this one? Hank Pym? Scott Lang? Paul Rudd?
WINTER SOLDIER – Winter Soldier is cool.

ANGELA  - What is this Red Sonja rip off from Spawn doing here? At least she’s not Thor’s sister or something dumb. What’s that? Oh nooooo…

THOR – Apparently Thor found out he had a sister and got mad jealous about the boobs. So, now he’s got boobs. Also, and this is just a guess…lady parts.

CAPTAIN AMERICA – Steve Rogers is Captain America. They have pulled this stunt before. They will do it again. Sam Wilson’s days are numbered and he don’t even know it. At least they let him keep the wings. It will be funny the first time he has to throw the shield and then spends an hour looking for it.

INFERNO – I wondered why The Human Torch was running around in some rags, but I guess this is someone else. I have no idea who this is. But, we already have a guy that can burst into flame. A few of them actually, so this guy should just go see if DC Comics can use him.

DEATHLOK – I always liked the design of Deathlok. This is just a copy from the show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. It works on TV. Not in comics. In comics it looks dumb.

There you go, my two cents. Take it, leave it, I do not care. I am appreciative of Marvel making so many stupid changes. I am saving a bundle on comic books I no longer have to buy.

Another Captain America Rant

This Captain America is better than what Marvel has planned.

There are those of us that are what I like to call, long term fans. We read comic books before there were comic book stores. We went to the local grocer and went through the spinner rack anytime we had more than a quarter to spend. I was lucky in that both of my parents are big readers so they figured reading anything is a good thing.

There are comic book characters I have more affinity for than others. The Fantastic Four, The Avengers, Spider Man and especially, Captain America. OF all of them, he is my favorite. A man who wanted nothing more than to be a good soldier and fight against the bullies of the world. And Captain America, while being a symbol is Steve Rogers. It is the mindset of that single individual that makes Captain America the symbol that he is. People argue that the suit is the symbol regardless of who wears it and, while that is true, if it hadn’t been for Steve Rogers, there would be no symbol.

Last time I wrote that writer Rick Remender should be removed from the current incarnation of Captain America comics. In my opinion, he has ruined the entire character of Captain America in a very short period of time. He has removed the super soldier formula that makes Captain America the hero that he is. Steve Rogers has been reduced to a very old man.

This has been done before. Cap has been depowered. Cap has become disillusioned with America. Cap gets murdered. All been done before and then they replace him with someone else. John Walker, Bucky Barnes, The Falcon.

Waitaminit!

Did you say, The Falcon.

Yes, apparently there will be a new comic, also by Remender, where The Falcon takes up the mantle of Captain America and old man Steve Rogers helps him on his adventures.

This is, without a doubt, the worst idea for Captain America I have ever had. The Falcon is a hero in his own right. I have always been a fan of Sam Wilson, unless Remender is writing him. Then it’s just wrong. Sam getting drunk and getting his freak on with Jet Black. Yeah, not my Falcon.

Why would he agree to do this? I know he would do it if Steve asked, but it just seems wrong. Apparently, there will be a new book for this so Marvel can slap another oversized #1 on the cover of a book.

Luckily,  IDW still makes Godzilla comics. Fortunately, DC has the incredible J.M. DeMatteis continues to thrill me with Justice League Dark and, in the land of Marvel, there are things like Amazing X-Men, Spider-Man 2099 and a few others that I still read. Once a Marvel Zombie always a Marvel Zombie.

Still, it saddens me when I go to the comic shop and there isn’t an Avengers comic or a Captain America comic in my things I grab for the week. See, I’m old fashioned and don’t do pull lists. I like thumbing through the comics and grabbing what I see that catches my eye.

Keeps me young. Like Steve Rogers before Rick Remender fucked it all up.

On a side note, I mentioned writing this article and my wife exploded. She was furious about the whole thing. To be fair they did turn Thor into a woman the day before and she hated that. I thought it was sweet that she had the same opinion about Captain America as I did.

I knew marrying her was going to be awesome!

FIRE RICK REMENDER!

This was the war cry recently due to what people thought was statutory rape by a drunken Sam Wilson a.k.a. The Falcon in a recent issue of Captain America. This, of course, turned out to be a misconception and not true so, that reason for firing Rick Remender is unsubstantiated.

Let me give you the real reasons for firing Rick Remender. There are more than a few.

I had recently gotten back into buying monthly comics again. It had been many years and I decided since my daughters both liked comic books we would make a biweekly trek to the local comic book store. The girls and I would ransack the quarter bin and then pick out some monthly titles. One liked My Little Pony and the other was a huge Daredevil fan. I saw that a new Captain America title was starting up and then, because of The Avengers film there were about fifty eight Avengers titles. I went with Uncanny Avengers because Captain America was in it. It looked like fun.

These are both written by Rick Remender.

At first I liked both titles.  Captain America in Dimension Z reminded me of the old Jack Kirby days. It was cool. The Uncanny Avengers with its meld of Avengers and X-Men was cool.

Then a few issues went by.

Captain America was still in Dimension Z. Didn’t he have a new movie coming out soon? Wasn’t it getting tiresome? Yeah, it was. And then when he did leave Remender killed Sharon Carter (Again???) and the kid that Cap had raised for years. And, since it was a pocket dimension no time had passed in the Marvel Universe. Another aspect was just the amount of torture Captain America was put through in each issue. Beaten, stabbed, brutalized issue after issue. It became numbing and I just dropped the title. I wanted nothing to do with Cap’s return to the real world, or at the very least, Marvel Universe. This was not my Captain America.

Uncanny Avengers wasn’t faring much better. It seems that Mr. Remender is only capable of long form, event stories. Sometimes those are fun. All the time, they are not.  And, after I dropped the title he apparently slaughtered a bunch of super heroes. It’s Marvel, they make a lot of money off of their heroes. We know that none of these deaths are permanent. If Frank Miller couldn’t keep Elektra dead, Rick Remender sure isn’t going to keep any of the Avengers six feet under.

I traded up for the infinitely better Avengers A.I. Of course, they cancelled that titles and I did buy The Uncanny Avengers Annual, but that was terrible. I got excited when I saw Man-Thing on the cover. Yeah, why did I think Remender would know how to write Man-Thing? Beats me.

 And the new twist in Captain America is that they sucked the super soldier formula out of him and he’s an old man. Yeah, this has been done. Steve Rogers still needs to be Captain America for two more Avengers movies and one more solo film. Do you think the money men at Disney are going to let this stick? If you don’t know how to realistically tell stories within the context of someone else’s sandbox, maybe you should go find something else to do. I hear Remender has an independent book of his own. Maybe he could do that instead of ruining characters that I have decades of history with. Writers and artists have managed to tell stories about Captain America that are funny, smart, exciting and done in one that don’t feel the necessity to shake things up.

So, fire Rick Remender? Absolutely, but not for some stupid, trumped up internet frenzy. Do it because he is terrible at his job.