Showing posts with label Hank Pym. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hank Pym. Show all posts

Friday, June 10, 2016

#MyFirstAvengersLineUp

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Doug: Here's a fun drill for Marvelites of all ages. About a week and a half ago one of our Twitter friends was asking folks to mark time by events within the pages of Earth's Mightiest Heroes -- specifically, the Avengers line-up when you started reading the book. So many thanks to Greg A. (@garaujo1) for today's post idea.

Doug: For this guy, my entry to the Avengers on an ongoing basis was around #119-120: the adventure against the Collector in Rutland, Vermont and then on into the Zodiac arc. You can see from the cover below (Jazzy Johnny Romita had a hand in that one, ya think?) that our Avengers at the time were Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, the Black Panther, the Vision, the Scarlet Witch, and Mantis and the Swordsman. That's a great line-up, certainly one of the best in the history of the team.

Karen: That's a powerhouse line-up, and very similar to my first team of Assemblers, from way back in issue #92. Anyone who's been around here for more than a few months knows that I came aboard the Marvel train with the Kree-Skrull War and never shut up about how great it is. But my first exposure to the Avengers had a team divided: there was the active team composed of the later generations of Avengers, namely the Scarlet Witch, her brother Quicksilver, their comrade Clint Barton, once Hawkeye, now playing the role of Goliath, and the Vision. The Big Three -Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor -show up at the end of the issue to disband the team -although they were really Skrulls posing as those heroes. But by the next issue the real McCoys would be back, along with a brief visit from Ant-Man. So I always think of the Big Three, plus the Vision, and Wanda, as mainstays.

Martinex1: As I've mentioned before, at a young age my cousin gave me a box of various comics and my favorites amongst those were a smattering of Avengers books ranging intermittently from Avengers #45 to Avengers #91. So I received in that gift a pretty broad view of the team's assembled heroes. My favorite though was the team gathered in the battle with Grandmaster and Kang in issues #69 to #71. The final page of that arc had a marvelous Sal Buscema pin-up that defined the team for me; it included the big three plus Vision, Clint-Goliath, Yellowjacket, Wasp, Black Knight, and the Black Panther. When I purchased my first Avengers comic with my own money, it was at the start of the Nefaria Saga at issue #164. Amazingly the team had not changed much despite the big gap in issues. The main difference was that the Scarlet Witch and the Beast were in, but Clint and the Black Knight were absent. So those were essentially my Avengers! I do have to say though that I thoroughly enjoyed the second kooky quartet that Karen mentioned of Goliath, Vision, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver; their battle with Brainchild in issue #86 remains one of my guilty pleasures in following the team.

Redartz:
My introductory Avengers lineup is quite similar to Doug's, as we joined the Assemblers during the same era. Specifically, I began with issue # 127, the crossover with the Inhumans and the Fantastic Four. Actually, I bought the issue because of the Fantastic Four appearance, and was immediately hooked (and why not -- what a cast of characters, and Ultron to boot!). So that would be Thor, Iron Man, Wanda and the Vision, Mantis and the Swordsman. Honorable mention goes to the Beast, who joined shortly thereafter, and became my favorite Avenger.



Sunday, March 6, 2016

That's Just Dumb


Doug: Some things, in the hands of the ignorant, are dangerous. As this is the endless season of elections here in the States, we are inundated with poll after poll. But it's a poll I saw on Twitter a couple of days ago (and actually voted in) that has drawn my ire. Have a look for yourself:



Doug: Really? Now you all could guess that I voted for Goliath. Yup -- finished dead last. Check out the number of voters. Over 13K... and over 8100 of those nitwits chose Ant-Man as their favorite alias of Hank Pym? Clearly, these weren't Bronze Age Babies voting in this poll.


Thursday, July 23, 2015

Discuss: Ant-Man! And, Spoil It All You Want!



Karen: OK, the movie has been out for nearly a week -go ahead and discuss it freely (that includes SPOILERS)!

Doug: We'll start, as we have in the past with some banter lifted over to this site from some email exchanges we've shared in the past few days. Obviously then you follow (for those of you who have seen the flick) with agreements and disagreements of your own. Again, if you've not seen the film and don't want to know about it, then get the heck out of here now!


Doug: Going to see Ant-Man at 1:30 on Monday (7/20/15). My oldest son saw it today (7/18/15). He liked it; says it has a good sense of humor. Said the two end of credits scenes were big.

Karen: We saw Ant-Man yesterday (7/18/15) and I enjoyed it. I wasn’t expecting much nor was I that excited about it but it was a fun film. I’d probably give it a solid B. They managed to make shrinking look cool. I agree with your boy, the two credit scenes were really good!

Doug: I just saw it and loved it! It's not better than either of the Avengers or either of the Cap films, but I think I enjoyed it more than Iron Man 3. Shoot -- if you melded the two Thor films together you'd get one great Thor film. So I'd rank this right in the thick of the Marvel Studios pictures.

Doug: Loved the humor in the film. I think Marvel is onto something with Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man. Not that I'm saying all of their films should be borderline comedies, but it's a refreshing sort of humor -- not fall-flat humor like they attempt with the annoying lab asst. in the Thor movies.
Karen: I really enjoyed it as well. I liked that it was light and fun, that it didn't take itself seriously yet didn't spoof the material. It walked a fine line, knowing how to work the humor of the premise and yet not turn the whole thing into a joke. One of the trailers we got with it was for "Batman v. Superman" and I kept returning to the contrast between the two. Frankly, I like some humor in my super-hero films. They're people in costumes with super-powers running around doing fantastic things -there should be some light moments!

Doug: The Special effects were good, and I just loved the final battle in the play room. It really evoked some of the Dick Sprang Batman comics. I thought the effects folks did a nice job of giving off the idea that Scott Lang was really shrinking and growing, rather than disappearing and reappearing.
Karen: One thing they did very well was convince me how neat shrinking powers are. I never thought I would say that. The rapid-fire shrinking and growing were brilliantly executed, and the scenes from the ant-sized perspective were fantastic. I nearly came out of my seat during the trip to "sub-atomica" or however you want to call it. That was extremely well done, just like something out of the comics. In fact, I wonder if they didn't look at some Kirby or Ditko books to get that right!

Doug: I loved the scene with the Wasp, and am already looking forward to the new Wasp. Easily Stan Lee's best cameo. Hilarious. And hey -- did I spy Garrett Morris? I sure think I did! Did you have the one cop as Julius from "Remember the Titans"?
 Karen: The flashback to the scene with the original Ant-Man and Wasp was just wonderful, even if we only got to see them briefly. I love the idea of these heroes existing prior to Iron Man and the others. And we do have the promise of a Wasp in the future...
Garrett Morris' cameo was inspired! I started laughing loudly, and I guess I was the only person in the theater who remembered that SNL sketch! "Hey Hulk, this guy's got the strength of a human!" 

Doug: I would have sworn at some point either Pym or Rudd would have used the blue ring to become Giant-Man. Not totally disappointed, but definitely see it coming in the future.

And do you suppose Sebastian Stan's 10 seconds on screen counts for his 9-picture contract?
Karen: The throwdown with the Falcon was a real thrill. I felt so bad for Sam...but it was great to see the two go at it. And the whole set up -"You idiots, that's not a warehouse!" -classic. I really like how this film integrated other elements of the Marvel universe in a way that didn't seem forced, but natural. It also didn't feel like it had to shape itself to support future films, which is something I think has hurt some of the other movies.

That last clip in the credits was a nice glimpse at Civil War -I heard it was an actual scene from the movie.  I was glad to see the Winter Soldier though; we were hearing so much about it being Cap vs Iron Man that it seemed like they'd forgotten about him, and I felt like Cap 3 needed to carry over his arc from the second Cap film.



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