Avengers Alien Mystery Solved? (Photo Comparison)

Very recently photos of an Avengers board game have come online, they feature the movie Avengers up against what look very much like Skrulls. Now the game pieces themselves look kind of cheap and are unpainted, or are simply all the same color. Few people doubt these are skrulls, but what is in doubt is the identity of the villains in the film. A few short freeze frames is all we have of the film's mysterious villains, and honestly at first look they don't look to much like the game pieces.

But that is at first look. At second look it becomes clear that the feet are identical, the armor is identical or very very similar, they have ears that might be skrull ears (The freeze frames are so blurry they could be antenna.) and they seem to be wearing similar head gear that comes down to a point over their fore head.

Here is a photo of some of the points on the aliens that look similar.

As you can see the feet and the armored skirt-thing look dead on, I have highlighted those areas to make the shapes easier to see. The chest piece looks off, but I think we are seeing shadows and blur that seem to be hiding the true shape, if you look closely it appears to be layered just like on the toy, with the top most piece extending further in the middle, with indents on either side of it.

The circular headband bit also appears on some of the toys though it is difficult to see in this photo and may or may not be the same part. The last similarity seems to be flat circular second on the forearm. These are at two different angles, but it sure does look like it might be the same piece.

The photos of the board game show two different Skrulls, This is the bulkier "Skrull Commander" (Unofficial name) the others are less bulky and don't have the shoulder and back armor, however they are also holding a gun in front of their check which obscures most of the details.

I think after examining these photos the aliens at Loki's beck and call really are the same as the board game, a kind of Skrull. Now will they will be called by that name or an other ? That remains to be seen.

YOU SHALL RUE THE DAY YOU CROSSED..... SCREWBALL!

The Ronin here,

After all of the reboots and reviews and the like it's time to look back at another wacky villain. This one is pretty recent and comes to us from the "Brand New Day"* era Spider-Man comics. This villain is so mind numbingly, painfully bizarre she had to end up here. Honestly I don't know what to make of this villain. (But she is probably not based on a mass murderer so that is a bonus) It is Ms. Web 2.0 her self, Screwball.

So who is Screwball? That is a damn good question. Screwball appears to be a young woman in her 20s, physically fit and skilled in the sport of 'Parkour'. (and yes, there was a bad pun based around the fact it sounds like Parker) A kind of urban gymnastics, involving running, scaling obstacles quickly, performing tricks etc. It is impressive stuff for sure in the real world... In a world populated with super heroes? less so.

Fear Itself Tie-ins

There are a lot of Fear Itself tie-ins, which ones suck and which ones don't suck? Well we have a lot of Meh, a few good and one 'what the hell is this?'

Baby why do you do me so wrong? (Spider-Girl)

The Ronin here,

There is a character I like, A series I wanted to like, but was disappointed by. She is Anya Corazon, the non May Parker Spider-Girl. I like Anya, my introduction to the character came in two places at roughly the same time. I had just finished reading Ms. Marvel's recent series which featured her as a supporting character. She was someone for Ms. Marvel to mentor, and they had a little sister/big sister kind of relationship. About the same time she appeared in Grim Hunt, as one of the 'spiders' Kraven's wacky family was after.

In Ms. Marvel she was young, new and inexperienced, but greatly wanted to be a hero.  Ms. Marvel needed what she was, a younger character to mentor, to teach. At the time Ms. Marvel needed to have a real inexperienced character looking up to her, she acted as a nice foil to Ms Marvel and really added to my enjoyment of that series.

Captain America WAS AWESOME!

 

The Ronin here!

Captain America was awesome. It might be the best superhero movie of the year. There are to many reviews of this film already for me to be able to add anything so I will simply say this, go watch the movie! And so many wonderful easter eggs that had me giddy.

For fans of the golden age "Human Torch", pay close attention to the exhibit hall for a little something-something, early in the movie.

Avengers Academy 2.0?

That is all!

The Mighty - Fear Itself

 

The Ronin here,

HOLY FUCK!

With three issues left and a lot of plot to go in "Fear Itself" this teaser was released by Marvel today and seems to show the Avengers powered up with weapons and armor similar to 'The Worthy'.

Spotlight: Young Avengers

The Ronin here,

Welcome to the spotlight, a new series were we examine some part of comic books further, and hopefully introduce people to some new stories and characters. Today we are putting the spot light on Marvel's Young Avengers.

Captain America 615.1

The Ronin here,

Today we have Captain America 615.1. I liked this comic book, however I have a few issues with it. We will get into that in a moment.

As a 'point one' issue this is designed to introduce the illusive new reader into the book. I suspect that explains our cover. It is a fairly generic cover. Cap is running at the reader but in a world war II setting, and he appears to be wearing his costume from the up and coming movie, my only issue with this is this issue has nothing to do with World War Two, (aside from a couple of panels of flashback) and he does not wear this costume in the book at all.

We start with a very brief recap page, which is good, the only problem is it is a little to vague. For example there is a big subplot going on about Bucky, and while it is mentioned in the book in passing, The book never explains to the reader what has happened. I feel they could of been a little more specific. (they said "legal trouble" then quickly moved on.)

I liked the art on the book, it was very moody and fit the tone of the book, though I can understand why some people would not like it.

Uncanny X-men 534.1 Review

The Ronin here,

Today we have Uncanny X-Men 534.1. Once again as a "point one" issue this is designed to introduce new readers to the property. As we have seen in the other "point ones" this has been hit and miss so far. Uncanny X-Men is a good property for a "point one". Everyone has heard of the X-men, and at 500 some odd issues in, with tons of back story it seems like a good property for a 'jump in' issue.

It has been a very long time since I have read an X-book, I am somewhat aware (from reading the other Marvel books) of what is going on with the X-men. However I do not know any of the details. As such this would appear to be the perfect book for me, so let's dig in.

The cover is fine, it is just the heroes standing in front of a cool broken X made of steel. It does a good job showing us the main characters, Cyclops, Colossus, Emma Frost, the ubiquitous Wolverine, Kitty Pride who is in some sort of space suite and, holy fuck, Magneto and Namor?!?! Okay I am sold already. The X-men have apparently become the Squad of old men you don't fuck with.

I am okay with this.

Invincible Iron Man 500.1

Ronin here,

After several disappointing "point one" issues I sat down today with "Iron Man 500.1" I have never really read Iron Man comics, though I have always been a fan of the character,  I've seen him when he pops up in other books, and of course the Iron Man movies are fucking bad ass. That said I don't know that much about the Iron Man status quo these days. So this 'point one' issue seemed to be the perfect place to start. I poured my self a strong drink in the ironmanian style and dug in.

The cover is okay there are lots of supporting characters, and some sinister faces and what looks like Pepper Pots in her own Iron Man (Iron Woman? Iron Person?) suite. This intrigued me, I must admit. Behind Iron Man are characters I don't really recognize, I assume the black guy is Rhodey. Which either says something unpleasant about my self or something unpleasant about Iron Man's supporting cast.

Below Iron man is apparently Shinzon from "Star Trek: Nemesis". Can any one say Crossover?!?

Thor 620.1 - Thor and his buddies get stoned

The Ronin here,

Today we look at adjective-less Thor 620.1. First off, I like Thor. I had never really read Thor comics as A kid. Only really reading the Spider-man and X-men books. I also did not read the Avengers books. So I was only tentatively aware of what the character was about.

However when I started really reading comic books again and then dipped back into the super hero stuff, I picked up a trade paperback that introduced me to Thor properly. Thor had been gone for a while. Marvel had been resting the character and presumably looking for someone interesting to relaunch him. J. Michael Straczynski was that someone.

JMS (for short) is known as the creator of "Babylon 5", and had just finished a long run on "The Amazing Spider-man". JMS reintroduced Thor to both the Marvel universe and to many new readers like myself, his engaging, exciting and down right funny comic books drew you in from issue one and never let you go. You cared about these characters with in pages of being introduced to them. I did not even know who the Warriors Three were at the time, but I liked and rooted for them all before they even showed themselves.

The Mighty Thor #3 quick preview

The Ronin here,

The Mighty Thor #3 is out Wednesday, let us take a look at the cover Marvel has released.

Okay, does anything else need to be said? 

If you have not been reading The Mighty Thor, it does not disappoint. A very epic Thor story so far, and I can not wait for #3. 

Avengers Academy 14.1

The Ronin here,

I love this series as you might of read in my "Why aren't you reading Avengers Academy" post. So it will be harder to put my self into the mindset of a new reader, but I shall try.

Avengers Academy 14.1, like the others is marketed as a jumping on point. However this book has a harder job to do then "Secret Avengers" because unless you've been reading Avengers Academy you will recognize none of these characters on the cover. Aside from a few issues of "Avengers: The Initiative" which had Reptil in it, these are all characters new to the Avengers franchise.

The cover is nothing amazing it is just the characters running at the reader, however it does a good job showing off all of the characters. You get a good sense of what they can do from their look, and they are all very colorful and don't blend together like poor Beast did while hanging out in Steve Roger's arm pit in "Secret Avengers".

Secret Avengers 12.1

The Ronin here,

In February Marvel started their "point one" program, the idea was to release a new .1 issue for each of their lines that would serve as a jumping on point, It would bring new readers up to speed so they could jump in with this issue then start buying the regular series. It is not a terrible idea. Although I have to wonder, how did they expect new readers to know this? I mean 614.1 is not exactly an inviting number.

That said the .1 issues were hit and miss, they sold about as well as their regular counterparts, which I am sure Marvel does not mind, but I'd guess the regular readers are the ones who bought them. Only time will tell. So Today i am re-reading two .1 issues I picked up. One from a series I was unfamiliar with and wanted to try, and the other a series I love and own all of.

YOU SHALL RUE THE DAY YOU CROSSED..... THE HATE-MONGER!

The Ronin here,

Every now and again, while reading webpages, or digging through old comic books of mine or my father's or just from general word of mouth on the internet I come across a character so outlandish, so bat-shit insane I just sort of let the old 'WTF' slip out. Now this is not always A bad thing, super-villains are themselves kind of a crazy idea. You have to be pretty out there to think to your self, "Wow I can bench press two thousand pounds... I should dress up as a hippo and rob banks in the same neighborhood the effective heroes work out of."

However the super-villain itself is so ingrained into popular culture we don't pay it to much mind. The super-villain is also a successful tool in story telling, as they are often the only kind of characters that can really threaten the hero.

A mediocre overlook at X-Men: First Class

Before I begin this, I will let you in on a little something: I am a huge sap...any movie with back story to people that I have come to know about as already matured characters, will leave me in utter awe (Which basically means I would have loved this movie even if it got lower ratings than Howard The Duck).

Not to mention mutant bromances, oh the mutant bromance.

With that being said, this movie rocked my fucking socks off.

A few things here and there left me trying to figure out whether or not that aligned with the other movies, such as Charles and Mystique having somewhat of a brother sister relationship when there is no recall of this in the other movies. Also, Charles has said that Wolvie, Storm, Cyclops, etc were the first mutants he ever trained when obviously they weren’t. Honestly, by the end of the movie I couldn’t care less because this was by far my favorite of the franchise.

Seeing the professor get paralyzed by Magneto was (so sad and shocking I was looking around like an idiot wondering if everyone was as amazed as I was) a great bonus.

Also, the eye candy didn’t hurt. James McAvoy was a perfectly hot young Professor X, and let’s not forget Michael Fassbender making me wish I was on team Magneto.

Why aren't you reading Avengers Academy?

The Ronin here,

No one is buying Avengers Academy.

In a way we are fortunate, Marvel likes this series. Which is probably the only thing keeping it from suffering the same fate as 'Young Allies' and 'Spider-Girl'. Of course it is also better then 'Young Allies' and 'Spider-girl'. Not that Young Allies actually had much of a chance to shine. the titular allies barely come together by the final issue of the series.

I understand why people aren't giving it a try. For one there are a lot of Avengers titles right now, 'Avengers', 'New Avengers', 'Secret Avengers', 'Avengers: The Children Crusade', 'Ultimate Avengers', 'Avengers: Rehab', 'Avengers: Cleveland' and finally 'Avengers: Daycare'. Some of the real ones even sell quite well. Actually there is a lot of good stuff out there for today's busy Avengers fan.