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armageddon-generation · 11 months

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Justice For MCU Hulk: Everything cut from The Incredible Hulk (2009) that saves its characters

After She-Hulk renewed criticism of Bruce Banner’s characterisation in the MCU, I looked back at The Incredible Hulk. It’s the shortest MCU movie (1hr 52 mins) so this extra 25 minutes of footage would bring it to about the same length as The Winter Soldier, vastly improving Bruce’s characterisation, his romance with Betty, and General Ross as the villain.

Alternate Opening in the Arctic (2:16)

The most famous cut, Bruce’s attempted s*icide referenced in The Avengers. Strong, shocking character beat to open the film

Hulk’s origin

The film’s 3-minute title-sequence condenses “40 minutes” of Hulk’s origin & its aftermath. This was mostly unscripted (Norton contributed a lot) with “points of entry” for flashbacks throughout the film that unravelled the mystery of what happened..

In an interview, director Louis Leterrie explained:

“[the Arctic was] a few months after the incident … afterwards we were flash forwarding to Brazil … a few years later ... then afterward you were getting flashbacks—that’s the way the script was structured—to tell you the story … everything you saw in the credit sequence. People hated it … what the hell is this? Is this a sequel? Is this a re-boot? We don’t understand anything.”

Building the Lab (1:07)

Most of the cut Brazil footage is filler, but I like Bruce dumpster-diving to make DIY lab equipment

General Greller (2:28)

Ross’ motivation. He’s the true villain!

I’d cut the 1st exchange between Ross & Greller, moving straight from the plane to Blonsky entering the office.

Nice character-building (‘is there any medal you haven’t won?’)

Greller criticizing Ross’ supersoldier program ties into the wider MCU (Hulk as a supersoldier attempt was only later established in The Avengers) & makes Ross more culpable

Bruce Delivers Pizzas (0:36)

The girls’ dorm should stay cut, but Bruce helping students with an experiment at his old university is a lovely character beat

Betty and Leonard (0:30)

Doc Sampson!

So the love triangle doesn’t seem quite as lopsided

Bruce and Betty Talk (3:18)

Sets a clear timeline for Bruce

Sets up an ‘ethics cloud’ around Sterns/The Leader, and suggests he turned Bruce over to Ross in Brazil

Betty is proactive. Her arc becoming disillusioned with Ross starts here. Her keeping their data in an ornate jewelry box builds the Bruce/Betty romance

“Hope comes back so quickly” is a strong character beat

Dinner with Bruce (1:30)

“It’s been a long time since I’ve felt a light” is a nice character beat: Betty’s house is the eye of the storm in Bruce’s journey

Leonard characterisation!

The Orchid (1:27)

Betty is proactive again!

The Orchid as a metaphor for their love

Bruce and Leonard (4:17)

Leonard: I’ll confess something to you if you clear up some things for me. First, I confess as a man, Betty’s lover, that I’ve always hoped you were dead. Not because I don’t like you but because I love Betty. And I’ve known that unless you were really gone, or she believed that you were… there’d always be three of us in this relationship. I dreaded the thought of you walking through the door. But… now that you’re here, I have to admit I’m very happy about it. Because I’m also a psychiatrist. And I’m very committed to putting light into dark corners, so to speak. Betty has a very dark corner that I’ve never found my way into, despite considerable careful effort. And the only thing that I know about her dark place is that you’re in it. So… Why are you something that she won’t talk about?

Bruce: There are aspects of my personality that I can’t control. And when I lose control it’s very dangerous to be around me. I hurt Betty in a way that I will never forgive myself for.

Leonard: You don’t drop your career and fall off the face of the Earth for 5 years because you have an anger management issue, Bruce. You see a shrink.

Bruce: It’s a little bit more complicated than that.

Leonard: Trust me when I tell you I’ve heard them all.

Bruce: Not like this.

Leonard: Completely honest and yet avoiding the heart of the matter. Exactly like her.

Leonard’s big moment! He’s an actual character! Learning Bruce hurt Betty motivates him turning Bruce in

Chatting to a psychiatrist about the Hulk like a real-world personality disorder is gold

Lots of work on the romance, the ‘Dark Corner’ in Betty’s mind that Bruce inhabits.

Justification for Leonard ratting Bruce out. It's implied Leonard deliberately drains the car battery to discourage Betty going with Bruce

Motel Room Conversation (1:14)

Bruce: I’m sorry.

Betty: It’s okay. It’s so mysterious, this thing inside of you. All the other scars have healed.

Bruce: Not mine. His scars heal but mine don’t

Betty: Yes they do. They leave a mark, but they stop hurting [exposes a scar under her fringe, from the Hulk accident. Bruce turns away.] Look at me. That pain didn’t last. Not knowing was so much worse. I looked for your face everywhere. I never stopped.

Proactive Betty again. Real meat for the romance, addressing their shared trauma & Bruce’s guilt

Nature’s Mystery (3:02)

Ross: Major, a great writer once said, "There are clefts in the rock, where we see the back part of God, and tremble." There's no training for what you saw out there because it's not an enemy that confronts us, it's a new power. Let loose through a crack in the cliff of Nature's mystery. How many times do you think that's happened in all of human history? Fire. The splitting of the atom. The universe unveils a secret and people recoil, cowering in fear and awe. And then comes the person who stops trembling. Who steps forward to face the flame, and seizes the burning stick and says "This will I master and use."

William Hurt gets to act. This monologue is the best dialogue in the film. Ross’ motivation is so well-expressed here

On the Hulk Hunt (1:07)

Builds Blomsky’s frustrations with Ross and motivation to become Abomination

Ross and Sparr (1:40)

Betty: I will never forgive what you've done to him.

Ross: He's a fugitive. He made choices.

Betty: You made him a fugitive. To cover your failures, and protect your career. I know what you said to him after the accident. Before I woke up, what you proposed? That's why he ran away and gave up.

Ross: His work, his blood is the property of the United States Army, and my duty precedes my personal feelings in this matter.

Betty: Freedom, democracy, our way of life.

Ross: Something like that.

Betty: You believe in so much. But we have to start with truth or the rest of it doesn't work. Don't ever speak to me as your daughter again.

“If you took it from me I’m gonna put you in a hole for the rest of your life”. Ross is the villain!

Cut the Major, but Betty confronting Ross re: weaponizing the Hulk is a strong cap for her arc

Bruce Confesses in the Helicopter

In the novelisation:

“on the helicopter, prior to jumping … Banner admits to Betty that because he thought he killed her when he first became the Hulk, he tried to kill himself. The Hulk wouldn’t let him, which is why he thinks the Hulk will save him from the fall.”

Leonard Calls Betty (1:40)

Follow-up on Leonard and Betty. Nice moment for her

Tldr; This extended version still wouldn’t be *great*, but it’s a significant improvement from mediocre to good, especially in hindsight with how Hulk has been treated since AoU.

#hulk #the incrediable hulk #mcu #deleted scenes #edward norton #betty ross #bruce banner #mcu phase 1 #louis leterrier #mark ruffalo #she hulk #abomination #tim roth #the hulk #marvel #doc samson #captain america 4

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ultrahpfan5blog · 6 months

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The Marvels - a pretty funny, if slight MCU venture...

Its no secret that the MCU has been struggling recently, in tv and in movies. I think Secret Invasion was one of the most disappointing things that have come out of the MCU. Prior to that, Love and Thunder was a big swing and a miss for me. She-Hulk wasn't funny enough to really work as a show. I didn't find Quantumania to be as bad as others did, but it was definitely the weakest of the Ant-Man films. In fact GOTG3 has really been the only clean winner since No Way Home. The Marvels released with very little hype and mixed reception. I enjoyed Captain Marvel, mainly for the chemistry that Brie Larson and Samuel L Jackson had, but it wasn't top tier Marvel for me. While I enjoyed Ms Marvel a lot, this movie's trailers and subsequent critical reception didn't inspire a lot of confidence.

Maybe because of the low expectations, but I had a lot of fun with this movie. I laughed a lot. The action was pretty good and the humor was largely genuinely funny. The SFX were up to par, which shouldn't be something I have to praise, but The Flash, Love & Thunder, and Quantumania have had shockingly poor VFX in recent times. I will say that the film feels slight, and certainly those who have watched Secret Invasion will find it confusing in continuity. This and Secret Invasion couldn't be more different in tone, and it does seem odd for these two projects to release so close to each other and be at odds with each other in a way. Zawe Ashton's villain is immensely forgettable. Arguably ranks only above a couple of one and done MCU villains.

The film's strength is the bond of the lead trio. They have genuinely good chemistry and they all seem to thrive of each others energy. Iman Vellani steals the show. She was fantastic in Ms Marvel and she's just as great here. Couldn't have found better casting for this role. She carries a lot of the humor of this movie. But Brie Larson and Teyonah Parris are a lot looser and at ease in this movie then they have been in this role in previous incarnations. And I do think they did a decent job reconnecting the Carol and Monica and giving it some emotional depth. Unlike with a lot of other films recently, I feel another 15 minutes or so could have been provided to give the connections between the characters some more depth. Samuel L. Jackson provides his funniest performance as Fury in this movie, which is a complete 180 from his darker turn in the role in Secret Invasion. Kamala's family is an absolute delight. The movie has some inventive action sequences, using the power entanglement to good use. The humor worked for me. It may not work for everyone. It is very silly. There is a sequence with a planet full of singing people, and a scene with many flerkens eating people. Both scenes are intentionally very goofy, but they just worked for me, unlike say, the humor in L&T, which clashed with the pretty serious Jane cancer and Gorr storylines.

I will say that the film was probably edited down a bit too much. There is some haphazardness and there seems to be some explanation of certain events that are missing or abbreviated. I don't know how much of that is on Nia DaCosta. Given its her first film of this scale, she does a fairly decent job. This is neither top tier, nor bottom tier Marvel. I do think its better than people are giving it credit for. Its like a 7-7.5/10 type movie. As in, its relatively forgettable, but it is enjoyable when you watch it.

#the marvels #carol danvers #monica rambeau #kamala khan #nick fury #brie larson #teyonah parris #iman vellani #samuel l jackson #nia dacosta #mcu #zawe ashton #dar benn #captain marvel #ms marvel

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litcityblues · 5 months

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Loki Season 2 & What Should Have Happened With The MCU

I think it’s safe to say that at this point, the MCU has hit a rough patch- but the weirdly frustrating thing about navigating said rough patch is that a lot of the content they’ve put out has not been bad. In fact, some of it has been good to downright excellent, but the problem is that there’s been way too much of it.

Loki is firmly in the ‘downright excellent’ category. You actually see some of that old MCU magic at play here. There’s a unique visual style. Good characters. It’s obviously a key piece of the multiverse saga, but the frustrating part is that they didn’t really treat it like that until the end of the second season where Loki’s position in the multiverse becomes very apparent indeed. (Also that there gets to be a Multiverse full stop.) Leaving aside the Kang speculation for awhile, I think it’s worth looking at everything that’s come out since Endgame and really assessing what was necessary and what wasn’t. I think (and you won’t convince me of anything else) that a firehose of content was what undid them here. When it becomes a chore to keep track of whatever is going on in the MCU, you’re going to see diminishing returns and that’s exactly what has happened.

So, if I’m an agent of the TVA and going back in time to try and fix this, this is what I’d probably do:

Far From Home: Keep

Black Widow: Keep

Shang-Chi: Ditch- though you can make a case for doing a release purely aimed at the Asian markets and/or making this an Iron Fist sequel where you clean up the obviously problematic things– but this movie was decent, but wasn’t really an ‘event’ for me.

Eternals: Ditch- I don’t mind the Eternals and it feels like an unusual departure and an attempt at trying something a little different for Marvel, so points for that. But without a plan of how to integrate them into the wider narrative, it feels like a wasted opportunity. (And they hinted at that with the Black Knight/Harry Styles cameo at the end- and then nothing happened with either of those characters as far as I can tell. Plus people keep rightly pointing out that there's a GIANT HAND coming out of the ocean that NO ONE in the MCU has mentioned since.)

No Way Home: Keep

Multiverse of Madness: Keep

Love and Thunder: Ditch- Something’s gotta go?

Wakanda Forever: Keep

Quantumania: Ditch- If the Eternals were trying something new with no integration into the wider narrative, Quantumania had the opposite problem. It was a chapter of the wider narrative that completely subsumed anything entertaining about the film. This should have been Avatar for the MCU.

GoTG 3: Keep

The Marvels: Keep- but I saw some decent criticism that pointed out that it’s hard to root for a character who is so damn powerful. Hopefully, the introduction of The X-Men gives them the opportunity to explore some storylines.

WandaVision: Keep

The Falcon and Winter Soldier: Should Have Been A Movie

Loki: Keep (obviously)

What If?: Keep

Hawkeye: Keep

Moon Knight: Should have been introduced somewhere else, but I appreciate the concept and how they portrayed it, but I’d say Ditch.

Ms. Marvel: Keep

She-Hulk: Keep

Secret Invasion: Should Have Been A Movie

Loki 2: Keep (obviously)

So, you’d go from 21 projects between streaming and movies down to 14 and suddenly the fire hose becomes a bit more manageable to me. I would have also led off with Loki as soon as practicable after Endgame so you could lay down the seeds of Kang (or whomever) and establish the Multiversity of it all. Wandavision does lead into Dr. Strange 2 quite nicely and the Spiderman movies tie in quite nicely as well with Dr. Strange and then the Spider-verse uniting with Andrew Garfield and Toby McGuire in No Way Home. Making Loki more of the centerpiece and turning down the firehose of content would have made the impact of the end of Season 2 land more impactfully I think.

Whatever you do- if you're moving into a Multiverse Saga then everything should have some connective tissue to that central concept and a lot of it doesn't-- some of that is probably down to the business of movies-- you're going to have some sequels, but again. 'less is more'.

(I am a big believer in the idea of ‘less is more’ for the MCU– but fight me in the comments if you don’t like what I’ve pruned from the timeline.)

But, Loki Season 2: The story picks up from Season 1- where Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) has killed He Who Remains and thrown the TVA and the timeline into chaos. Without He Who Remains guarding the sacred timeline, the branches are growing out of control and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has been afflicted with time-slipping that he cannot (at least at first)- but he and Mobius (Owen Wilson) go to TVA Technician Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan) to try and figure out what's going on with Loki and prevent the Time Loom from going critical and exploding- which Loki sees in a vision of the future before he time slips again.

Loki, Mobius, and their allies in the TVA decide they need to find Sylvie-- but it turns out that's not the answer to their problems either, so they try and track down Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) and Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and find another of He Who Remains variants, Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors) instead. Everything keeps coming back to the Loom. They keep trying and trying to save it but eventually, Loki realizes that there is only one thing he can do to save his friends and, perhaps more importantly, reality itself: he goes out into the Loom and it explodes anyway, but Loki keeps going, realizing that his abilities can rejuvenate the branches and, rearranges them into a tree-like structure and becomes not the God of Mischief, but the God of Stories, overseeing the branches alone at the end of time.

The TVA dedicates itself to finding the variants of who remains across the timeline and stopping them and Mobius retires from the TVA.

Overall: Satisfying and perfect and a great way to wrap up this character's journey through the MCU, Loki Season 2 should be the capstone to Tom Hiddleston's role. Don't bring him back. Don't reboot him. Don't. Do. Anything. Else. (Unless it's very well-written and MAKES SENSE in terms of your larger narrative.) I love the sets in this show. I love the color palette of this show. I love the cast in this show-- Jonathan Majors gives an excellent performance as Victor TImely. Ke Huy Quan is a perfect addition to the cast as OB and they bring the story to a close perfectly.

However- as I said above, if Marvel had slowed down the fire hose of content and committed to investing in fewer shows with higher quality writing/sets/casts, etc- I think they'd be in a lot better position. That's not to say that both seasons of Loki aren't important in the current scheme of the MCU-- they obviously are, but because of the firehose of content that Marvel unleashed, they are decidedly not the appointment viewing that they should have been. It's not quite as frustrating to think about as it is when you watch Secret Invasion which was a criminal waste of both Samuel L. Jackson and Olivia Colman and should have been a movie, but there's some frustration here. This show is very, very good. It got robbed of some of its flowers because Marvel decided that more is more, when in fact, less would have been better.

My Grade: **** out of **** One of the best MCU shows hands down. Could have been even better though.

#loki season 2 #mcu #marvel

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littlerosetrove · 2 years

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I already knew it before this last episode, but She-Hulk was a miss for me. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t really like it either. I am a Marvel fan, but a critical one.

Let me try to keep my overall thoughts brief, and keep in mind that this is how the show and characters came across to me.

The writing and storytelling was generally sloppy and kinda disjointed.

The only fully formed character was Jen while literally everyone else was a walking stereotype of some sort, and just one dimensional caricatures. Even so, I still didn’t learn all the much about Jen. What I did get was: she’s a lawyer (not a great one either), I think she wants to date but is satisfied with hook-ups I guess, kinda self-centered, honestly a bit dismissive and belittling towards her cousin Bruce, and......????

Clearly part of the story was supposed to showcase Jen coming to terms and peace with living her life as Jen and She-Hulk. To me her “acceptance” wasn’t executed well. Her only inkling to even be a superhero came up in the second to last episode when Matt Murdock, a stranger, told Jen she can do good as a lawyer and as She-Hulk. Until that point, Jen had no interest in being a superhero. She only used She-Hulk to get attention. Even by the end of the series, and in the last episode, where She-Hulk/Jen says something about being a lawyer and a superhero, I just.... didn’t buy it. The show, to me, did a poor job of convincing me that Jen 1) wants to be a superhero, and 2) is on her way to being a superhero.

She-Hulk never cared or thought about property damage the entire time, nor did she seem to think about the fact that 99.9999% of the people she was confronting are human and easy for her to kill or seriously harm. My favorite example is her throwing a fucking car at Daredevil when she had no clue if he is super-powered or not.

The “pairing” (re: they had a little banter I guess and slept together once) of Daredevil/Matt and Jen didn’t work for me. It felt very contrived and forced. While the actors themselves have some chemistry, that doesn’t make up for the fact that the writing for their characters coming together or whatever, just didn’t work for me. I do not care to see more of them together in the future of the MCU.

The writers really used the fourth wall break in the last episode as a cop out to actually concluding some storylines and the show as a whole in any satisfying way. In some way the fourth wall break of Jen/She-Hulk saying, “No no, let’s do this ending differently” worked for me, but mostly not. Just *sighs* nothing really felt like it mattered.

I also never cared for the show’s constant “men bad” approach.

To reiterate, I don’t hate this show, but I don’t particularly like it either. I also don’t hate Jen, but the show didn’t really endear me to her or She-Hulk despite the actress playing her trying her best. If there’s a second season I don’t know if I’ll watch it. At most I’ll read spoilers about it just to keep up with the MCU overall.

EDIT: I was reading reviews on this show and someone made a great point: She-Hulk/Jen legit got out of criminal charges by demanding to speak with the manager. Holy shit.

#She-Hulk spoilers #She-Hulk criticism #if anyone reading this DID like the show that's great!#I'm not being sarcastic #you're allowed to enjoy what you enjoy #just as I am allowed to not like something #and I'm also allowed to be critical of the media I consume #and again I'm a Marvel fan #but that doesn't mean I have to like every #storyline or every character ya know?#anyway

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teeelsie-posts · 1 year

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My fave of your fics is What Doesn't Kill You. Would love to hear your comments on that one!

Director's Cut commentary about What Doesn't Kill You:

What Doesn’t Kill You was my first MCU fic, so it’s kind of special to me. Yeah, I know it starts with a brutal gang rape, so I guess that sounds kinda weird.

After I saw CA:CW, just literally, out of the blue, I got this 2-second snip in my head of Clint bent face down over a desk, struggling as his arms are being held down and outstretched. That was it, just this flash of a scene with nothing else really along with it, but I COULD NOT let go of it.

I lasted about a week until I had to take that scene and develop it to something more in order to get it out of my head. Up until then, I’d been lurking in the fandom since AoU and there were soooo many accomplished writers out there who had already been producing great stuff for years. It was very intimidating to write and post in the fandom. I felt like such an interloper.

Eventually, that flash of a scene resolved itself into chapter 1 of the fic--the rape scene. Now look, non-con is not a genre I would say that I write in. I’m not criticizing it—I’ve read some very, very good fic that involve dub-con or non-con. But, I’d never addressed it before in my own fic and if you’d have asked me, I would have said, nah, not interested, just not my thing (I probably would still say that). But, man, I could not shake that image and when more of a fic started to form in my head and take hold, suddenly I was writing a really, very graphic non-con fic.

It made me kind of uncomfortable, if I’m honest, because it’s such a brutal thing and I was like, where is this coming from? But I think the thing for me is this: for me, the non-con is simply the necessary event to highlight and demonstrate that Clint Barton is nothing if not a survivor. He’s resilient. (I think Phil says as much at some point in the fic) That’s what this fic is really about. The rape is just a means to an end. And yes, I could have just had him get a beat-down (because you know I love my whump), but I really felt like the Raft—prison—is all about power differential, and rape is not so much as act of sex, but an act of power and violence, so in the context of the Raft, it just made sense.

The fic was originally just a one-shot—what is now chapter one—and I had no intent to write any more. dentalfloss betad that fic for me and after I posted, she said something like ‘I wish I could see the others’ reactions.’ Which got my wheels spinning anew. It was tricky, because I’ve read more than one fic where it’s a one-shot from a certain POV, and then maybe someone says exactly the same thing to the writer that dentalfloss said to me and so they write the other POV. Sometimes the next parts are great, but it seemed like too often, it was just a repetition of the first part, sometimes word for word for long dialog stretches. So I knew if I was going to add more to the story, itneeded to BUILD on chapter 1 and not just repeat it. I spent a few months plotting out and drafting chapters for most of the other Avengers, trying to weave their stories into Clint’s without being repetitive. I hope I was successful at that. If it worked the way I wanted, each chapter would reveal more little bits of the broader story without any one person’s story telling it all. Ach, it’s hard to explain. In the end, I was satisfied with how it turned out.

And then, because I was talking to dentalfloss, and had been reading In Wade We Trust, Wade Wilson popped up in my head and said, me me pic me, and waved his arm around and I sat down and drafted a chapter with him in about 30 minutes because it was all JUST RIGHT THERE and I couldn’t not. Thankfully, floss gave me permission to use “her Wade”, but his appearance in this fic should not be construed as being part of her Wade ‘verse.

If I hadn’t added the other chapters, this would be a very different fic (obviously). For me, though, this fic is no longer a rape fic—it truly metamorphosized into a recovery fic. Like, when I think about that first chapter now, I’m kind of hand-wavy, yeah, yeah, but that’s not the point! The point is what comes AFTER. Honestly, I think if non-con turns you off, you could literally skip chapter 1 and move on to the rest with just the background understanding that this thing happened to Clint, and the rest of it is really the important part.

Finally, I really love Phil in this fic. This was some of my favorite Phil writing (by me), for sure. I got his voice pretty much just how I wanted it, and there are a couple scenes between him and Clint that are high up on the list of my favorites I ever wrote.

So this fic started as a bit of an earworm that I had to put on paper in order to get it out of my head, and it became something else entirely, unexpectedly becoming much more a story about survival and resilience.

Thanks for the ask, @ryuunoyuki

Fanfic Writers's Director's Cut ask game.

#Clint Barton #Hawkeye #fanfic #my fic #tw rape #ask game

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cblgblog · 2 years

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What did you think about Dr. Strange (assuming you’ve seen it). I think, if you’ve seen it, you’ll know which cameo I’d love to hear your thoughts on…I know it’s gotten a mixed reaction. And have you seen the rumor of Captain Carter getting a show?

I have seen it! I mostly really liked it, much to my own shock. I had problems with it that I might talk about later if anyone cares, I dunno, but as to that specific thing, spoilers under the cut, for everyone’s safety (mostly mine).

So again, I really liked it. Would I have liked to see a Cap Carter cameo—say that 5 times fast—in a less murder-y context? Clearly. Would I have liked it to be longer? Clearly. But I’ve said before that I’ve loved this iteration of the character since like 2016, when she had a non-speaking role in a mobile game. I never actually thought we’d get the fantastic What If version that we did, let alone a live action iteration. So despite all the more obvious problems I’d normally have, I’m amazed we got here at all, frankly. She was amazing in what we did get, and as brutal as the end result was, it made sense within the context of the story, and is in some ways more appealing to me than Peggy dying of old age, ravaged by Alzheimer’s.

I’ve heard the criticisms, or at least most of them, I think, so let’s tackle those just because. The argument that she shouldn’t be there at all and it shoulda been Sam was always asinine, because it’s a goddamn multiverse movie, the point is that stuff is different from canon. Doubly asinine now, in full context, because maybe let’s not have the homicidally unstable pretty white girl kill the current Cap, who is also black. Maybe let’s not do that. Plus it’s funny to me that the antis bitched about it for so long ahead of time, without context, and now they’re cheering it cuz she’s dead, like that’s a victory. Guys, she wasn’t the same version as What If. At the very least, we know that version is returning. So you’re celebrating this, after throwing all the fits about it, and you’re still going to die mad long before Peggy ever dies permanently, because with each death she rspawns stronger.

But anyway, the argument it should’ve been Sam in this movie is stupid.

I get the irritation with, “I can do this all day,” to a point. I’m not gonna call that an invalid criticism. I get the argument that it is a quintessential Steve line, but I also kinda love that it’s grown bigger than MCU Steve. They’ve used it in the comics, and now here, and I would also argue that while it’s a quintessential Steve line, it’s also a quintessential Cap line. I feel like it represents all of the Caps, in their own way, except Walker because he’s trash, but that’s a given. I would’ve personally extended that fight a little bit so she doesn’t die immediately after saying it, but I also get why they filmed it that way. Wanda was a terminator at that point, an unstoppable force, and that certainly came through.

As far as the Illuminati in general being too weak and pathetic, again, I agree to a point. I would’ve liked to see a longer fight, especially with how heavily the trailers leaned on that scene. I also maintain that Peggy should’ve lopped her shield at Reed’s face the moment he started telling Wanda the secret boss fight hack about Black Bolt. Smartest man my ass, but anyway. So, I would’ve liked to see more, but I also kinda get it. Again, Wanda. Unstoppable force. Peggy and the rest are working off of bad intel. They come off like arrogant idiots, in a way, but I don’t necessarily think that’s bad writing. The Illuminati as a concept is just, it’s an incredibly arrogant concept. It always was, ever since it showed up however many years ago in the comics. You have to have a certain amount of arrogance to think that you and these like, 4 other randoms know what’s best for everyone in humanity, and to implement that with no accountability but to yourselves. After Thanos, I can see why these guys would think they could handle anything, especially because, again, bad intel. And Peggy’s canon history running a secret (for awhile) world security organization with 2 other founders, I could see how that could morph into her involvement in the Illuminati.

Frankly, I think there are some really dark undertones you could infer from that version of the character that are really interesting. Like, why did she say that quintessential Steve line? Was this a version of the character like the Exiles comics and the mobile game where Steve died before he could take the serum? Or was it a what if on the What If ep where the Hydra Stomper crashed and he wasn’t recovered after, and hell, maybe there was a Winter Soldier scenario? Or was it completely different? My point is, it's a Steve line, and they could’ve just given it to her, or she could’ve heard it from him at some point. There’s a bit of extended footage from the 1953 interview in Cap 2 where she says that Steve never let her forget that these were real lives they were dealing with, and without that it would be easy to fall into a mission trumps all, ends justify the means mentality. In the comics, Steve finds out the Illuminati are about to do something awful, tells them they can’t, calls them out on it, and gets his mind wiped for it. No, Peggy wasn’t in that version. Point being, Steve functions as everyone’s conscience, really, including hers, and I wonder if losing him, or perhaps never finding him at all is part of why this Illuminati stuff happened.

But anyway…some people do hard drugs, I overthink fictional characters. We all have our vices.

So I’m as happy with that cameo as I could be, under these circumstances. It’s not my perfect world cameo, and I understand a lot of the complaints people have, but I’m thrilled we got what we did. And yes, I’ve heard the rumor. I’m trying very, very hard not to get my hopes up, but if it’s true, there��s a gaping hole in my heart that’s been there since the end of Agent Carter season 1 that might actually heal a little.

#doctor strange 2 spoilers #peggy carter #pro peggy carter #anti peggy antis

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iamdeltas · 1 year

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I posted 23,873 times in 2022

163 posts created (1%)

23,710 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@linguisticparadox

@whencartoonsruletheworld

@acenerdsbian

@elliesgaymachete

@salithemage

I tagged 17,501 of my posts in 2022

Only 27% of my posts had no tags

#the queueniverse tends towards entropy - 8,776 posts

#critical role - 1,181 posts

#disney - 937 posts

#encanto - 831 posts

#the owl house - 805 posts

#dracula daily - 761 posts

#dracula - 722 posts

#dead end paranormal park - 636 posts

#marvel - 536 posts

#cr3 - 512 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#honestly i thought it was just a me thing cuz i just normally don't vibe with characters who are portrayed as stupid for the point of comed

My Top Posts in 2022:

Luz 100% will stumble across Camila's old Cosmic Frontiers fanfic one day. I am willing it into being, because it would be hilarious.

64 notes - Posted October 17, 2022

I haven't done any posts about general episode thoughts in a long time but I figure I ought to bring it back for Kamala's MCU debut, what with my icon being her right now and also what with her being my favorite Marvel character and my introduction to the comics.

I really think they captured Kamala's character well here and Iman Vellani is a delight playing her! It is interesting that they changed Kamala from being a fanfic writer to being a YouTuber discussing the Avengers, but it makes sense. I'll miss the fanfic angle but since fanfic of the Avengers in-universe is basically RPF, that probably gets into weird territory.

Now I'm not of Pakistani descent but I am Indian-American, and I'm Muslim, so I think I can speak to the accuracy of the cultural stuff. Honestly, I think it was dead on. The Bollywood music was a really nice touch, and I loved the scattered Urdu phrases throughout. And the aunty gossip is too real. I remember when a family friend was getting engaged to a white girl, the gossip was raging! (They all still came to the wedding though.) Also the Halal Guys shout out had me laughing, especially since I was considering getting lunch from there earlier today!

The family dynamic is very compelling and there was a lot that rang true for me. Honestly my parents would have reacted the exact same way if I'd asked to attend any cons. It was a bit amusing that the dialogue there seemed to be lifted from the comics since in the comics Kamala was actually asking to go to a party but it still worked because desi parents do overexaggerate things! That being said, I am kind of wary of how they've firmly slotted Muneeba as the "strict" parent and Yusuf as the "nice" parent when they were both equally strict in the comics. I don't know that I like that change. Anyway I'm also liking her sibling dynamic with Aamir and I'm looking forward to when we see his fiancee since she was really cool in the comics.

Kamala's and Bruno's dynamic is really fun. I did catch those ship teasing, which is... fine, they did that in the comics too. Anyway, they bounce off each other well! I enjoyed what little we saw of Nakia too and I hope we see more of her.

As expected, since I'm ornery like that, I still don't like the changes to her powers. I do appreciate the comic references though, like when she rescued Zoe in a similar way. And the end credits sequence with the art from the comics was VERY cool!

I am cautiously optimistic about the rest of this series!

72 notes - Posted June 8, 2022

I see that "they," Netflix After School. 👀

207 notes - Posted July 1, 2022

I absolutely love that Phoenix Parks has an actual goddamn dungeon. I can 100% believe Pauline would be extra enough to have one built. Wonder who else she's thrown in there.

237 notes - Posted June 30, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Me: *looking at the cast list for Dead End: Paranormal Park* What do you MEAN the demon guy is voiced by Lily from Hannah Montana?

409 notes - Posted June 18, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #of course that's my number 1 post

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queen-susans-revenge · 2 years

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a meme, thank you @klaproos for thinking of me!

favorite color: I went into it a little bit more here but it's basically burnt sienna with a bronzy shimmer, like so

currently reading: Haley Campbell, All the Living and the Dead, mostly because Neil Gaiman recommended it. I don't read a lot of nonfiction but like everybody else I have been thinking a lot about death in the past couple years, so it's very interesting.

last song: okay I just fired up Spotify and here's what it was in the middle of last time I closed it. This is not even a great remix, I like the original much better, but I do listen to a lot of Grimes. In fact this came up because I was in the middle of the complete Grimes collection on Spotify, which I often put on loop when I just need music in the background.

I am in a perpetual state of "oh girl no" over Grimes but I completely love her music. I just wish there was more focus on her art and process as opposed to her personal mess, and I think the treatment she gets is sexist because dudes are allowed to be wild self-indulgent freaks who are still taken seriously as artists. Grimes is a wild self-indulgent freak who should still be taken seriously as an artist.

youtube

last tv show: The Netflix series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. I do not watch a lot of anime, but I love the art style on this one. All the colors, mmm. I'm about halfway through the series.

Cyberpunk in general is an easy sell for me. Take me to neon reflecting in rainy streets while hovercars go by overhead and cyborgs sit around slurping from bowls at noodle stands, and you don't even have to buy me dinner. I'm already a slut for it.

That said, there's a tension in a lot of cyberpunk, a retro fixation within a genre that ostensibly depicts the future but is rapidly being outpaced by the present. A weirdly large element of it is nostalgia for the 80s and 90s, and there's some social attitudes from those decades that get pulled in wholesale along with the aesthetic. Sex workers get murdered a lot. Depictions of racial minorities skew towards the cringe. There's a moral simplicity to the noir landscapes it tends to build: the heroes might be "edgy" but they're pitted against monsters so grotesque that there's never really any question about where right and wrong lie. Violence is cathartic and solves a lot of problems.

There's a trans critic, El Sandifer, who has written a couple of very insightful pieces of criticism, both on the cyberpunk genre in general and on the Cyberpunk 2077 world in particular. I love her observation that "cyberpunk is still a living genre; a successful prediction of the future that continues to be made long after it’s come true." And I think her conclusion—that the genre badly needs a queerer perspective—is the right one.

This series does not have a queer perspective. But what it does have is mirrorshades and samurai on motorbikes, and some really beautiful action sequences that unfold in supersaturated neon colors. So I'm in.

youtube

last movie: Thor: Love and Thunder. Iunno, it was all right. I didn't want my money back or anything. In terms of MCU movie rankings I would put it somewhere solidly mid. Better than Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness I guess.

I think we're all kind of burned out on Marvel content, right? The last MCU thing I can think of that felt fresh or compelling was the Ms. Marvel series and even that is already fading into forgetability. Can I get more of Yelena and new energy-flavor Hawkeye? I liked them a lot.

sweet/savory/spicy: savory.

currently working on: I'm now more than 100k words into the space pirate novel and probably have another 20k or 30k to go. It will be a long book but it is all one book (I was wondering earlier if I should split it up, which I kind of wanted to because it would mean I could start shopping around the first part, but unfortunately I think the answer is that I really do have to write the whole thing first.)

And the chapter I just finished was like, the most fun to write in the whole book. It was a sex scene followed by some pillow talk. Now I have to do corporate intrigue and hacker stuff, which is much harder to make interesting. It's part of why I'm watching cyberpunk shows, to get inspired.

tagging everybody! Anybody who wants to! I get anxious about tagging people both from the point of view of possibly annoying someone, and from the point of view of possibly making someone else feel overlooked, so as usual I will take the coward's way out on this one.

#Youtube

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bearpillowmonster · 2 years

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She-Hulk Episode 1

Just call it She-Hulk, we already know she's an attorney. I've waited for She-Hulk's appearance for a long time because I myself am a She-Hulk fan. I liked the Hulk as a kid but felt that more recent iterations of him are very bland and not what I look for in Hulk media, it's hard to get right in a live action format but I felt like She-Hulk might've been a little easier to swallow.

So this one had a bad reputation before release, from people judging it without seeing it, people spoiling it without seeing it, people who clearly have no idea who She-Hulk is but are criticizing it anyway, behind the scenes drama and just all around bad vibes, just look at some of this.

So apparently we need to be inclusive...about CGI...wtf. But because of this and the kind of poor trailers and overselling and rebranding, I've felt like this was doomed to fail but I was onboard regardless despite low expectations.

Anyways, the actual episode, it's not that bad. It's short, probably the shortest of any MCU show intro with only 35 minutes (actually only around 30 because the credits take so long with D+)

But it's setting itself up to be a Monster of the Week show and I'm perfectly okay with that, I want an episode to episode basis to do with Hulk. This episode is indeed Hulk. It's cool to see how he dealt with being Smart Hulk and the Blip and losing Tony and all that jazz.

Now the origin is a bit odd because originally she needed an emergency blood transfusion and Bruce had to be the donor (comics). I could see a lot done with that plot, with Bruce trying to wrestle with the idea with making Jen a freak like himself but saving her life and saving lives is what he does since he's a hero. But they take that, shoot it out the window and turn it into "While driving with Bruce, a spaceship came down and caused Jen to pull off the road and flip the car down a hill. She's alright, she just as a few scratches but Bruce gets hurt and some of his blood drips into her wound." Which is really dumb. That spaceship is later said to be a courier ship with a message that they never mention or bother to investigate. It will probably become relevant at some point but let's be honest, it probably won't be until the end of the show or an after credits scene which is even dumber.

The fourth wall breaks are...interesting, it makes me feel like I'm watching a stupid modern sitcom, I just feel like they can be much better. Rather than her commentating and say "Here's the story of my life." I'd rather her be in the middle of a battle and quip or something. I know these comics and this story are practically know for fourth wall breaks so by all means, let's have them but I still can't shake that sitcom vibe.

The CGI for this episode specifically wasn't bad in my opinion, a lot of recent Marvel CGI has been poor but this is only the first episode, I'm sure we have more to come but I'm hoping due to backlash they've fixed it.

You already knew it was going to do a feminist take, I didn't need to tell you that and you didn't need to act surprised so there are a few scenes where she gets catcalled or talks about getting catcalled but it was within a tolerable range for me, I think they made them just shove that in there to appease the masses so it's just whatever. I'm not against making her a feminist but there are far more interesting ways to do it, the way its done here is just a trope at this point but again, I expected it so I'm not going to complain.

All in all, not too bad though, hopefully it keeps at least this good despite a few fumbles within the plot and just random things taking place.

#she-hulk #mcu #attorney at law #she hulk #it's here #episode 1 #review #she-hulk spoilers

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brakken-spideyverse · 2 years

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Here’s another review! Almost up to date, now...

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

This film is fun, and cute!

I remember when I first saw it, I kind of got sensory overload. Because TASM2 was so dear to me, I was concerned about how I’d feel about a newly rebooted series. I was mostly pleased by it, and the more I’ve watched it, the things I like have amplified, and the things I dislike have diminished.

To start on something I like – well, that’s Peter. Tom Holland brings good energy to this version of the character. Separated from the plots themselves, I’m happy to have enjoyed all cinematic portrayals of Spidey, each enjoyable and unique – great covers of the same song. Tom’s Peter balances the weight of a hero’s responsibility with the excitement and naivety of a teenager really well - very eager to please and show off.

It’s nice to have a sense of believability to him and his friends. The Hollywood Highschool filter isn’t strong here – the characters all feel young, and still finding their feet. In one way, however, I do think this is a hindrance. Where many felt that the TASM Peter was ‘too cool’, here we have the opposite problem to an extent. Most of the students are goofy, nerdy, weirdos – to the point where those traits don’t stand out as much in Peter. Things like making Flash a nerdy bully avoids certain clichés, but our main character blends into the crowd a little in the process.

But dang, Spidey’s pretty fun in this, ain’t he? His scenes feel exciting in a whole different way than earlier iterations. The notorious MCU humour finds a home with this character, and we get to laugh and panic and cheer at his heroics. I find his consistent screw-ups get a little tiring by the end – I want to feel his confidence shift into a new gear as he grows up a bit, and they don’t deliver fully on that here. Some great design work, though. The moving lenses? Genius. The saturated red-and-blue? Beautiful. Some smaller embellishments I’m not too keen on, but hey, it doesn’t hurt the look too much. His theme music is good, while not hitting the absolute pinnacle I want from a Spidey theme, it does its job – but sounds best when it’s just doing the low-key ‘Peter Parker’ version of it.

In the earlier Phases, it was a common criticism that the individual films felt too separated from the wider universe. ‘Why doesn’t he just call the Avengers?’ was a question easily asked of each movie, and in turn the plots attempted to skirt around it. Civil War hung that question out to dry, and Homecoming followed up to show us that actually, this universe is indeed connected despite not always front and centre. The movie wears its lower stakes proudly – really wanting this to be the friendly neighborhood.

But… I do get tired in the scenes with Tony Stark, which is hard to reconcile with, as he’s what drives a lot of the plot forward – a plot I think is nicely structured. Tony in Homecoming almost feels like a caricatured version of the character from earlier movies, exaggerated to necessitate certain moments for Peter’s journey. For the most part I’m able to go along with it, as it’s not a movie about Iron Man, but I always get caught up on this when he comes off as overly disconnected to Peter. He brought him into the fold in Civil War, and here it really does feel like the kid is an afterthought. The movie wants you to be on board with the reality check he gives to Peter after the ferry, but I’ve never been completely sold on that.

And that stems partly from Karen. She is a problem for me! I’ve talked before about how a plot with a suit that puts a voice inside Peter’s mind and gives him unique abilities is far too in-key with a Symbiote storyline. In Homecoming, Karen is kind of a mixed bag of enabling Peter’s recklessness, or getting him into more trouble in spite of it. It’s all kicked off when he disables the ‘Training Wheels’ protocol… which is what, exactly? All it seems to do is hinder Peter from getting beyond what he already knows how to do. If the idea is to train Peter, why is Karen locked behind DLC instead of being there to guide Peter from the start, since Tony doesn’t seem keen to do so himself? Karen should be the training wheels.

It all builds to Peter lifting himself up out of the rubble. A wonderful moment. His simple chant of “Come on, Spider-Man!” hits beautifully for how I think about the character. But it’s a little deflated because it hinges around Tony’s words echoing back to him - it sorta gives the win to Tony, instead of Peter.

Vulture is a solid aspect of that afore-mentioned ‘shared universe’ feeling. His grudge against Tony Stark is this extra drop of backstory that makes his own motivations feel part of a broader world. It could easily have been exaggerated into a big ol’ revenge plot, but his focus on keeping under the radar makes things more interesting, and stays connected yet unhooked from the larger-scale MCU stuff. I think the 8-year time skip hurts Vulture most. Simply put, there’s really no tangible growth for his team across that skip to make it feel justified. Heck, their hairstyles haven’t even changed in all that time. The notion that Shocker 1 hasn’t caused a problem until now feels very contrived the more I watch it, and his death scene puts Toomes’ character into a grey area for me because of that. As far as visual designs which depart from the comics go, I love this one – it has just enough going on to hit the middle ground between a practical piece of equipment and a villainous bird costume, with his scavenging making it clear that he’s a particular kind of bird. And while it’s overused, I love his music. A twisted version of the Avengers theme, that is just loud and untidy, and annoyed.

When my favourite scene in a Spider-Man movie is with three characters sitting in traffic, something has either gone very wrong or very right. In this case, it’s the latter. I’m gonna be bold and say that the scene of driving to the dance is an example of tension written to perfection. So much of the movie has stacked to it without us knowing, and we’re allowed to watch that Jenga tower wobble… right itself… wobble again… and then the light turns green, and Toomes has it.

There’s a simplistic charm to Aunt May in this movie. It seems like each cinematic version of the character has scaled back her inspirational pep talks, but in doing so, also scaled back her presence and impact on Peter’s life. I wish she had more to do, or more relevance, but at the same time I do like seeing her just… helping him get ready for the dance.

MJ never really hit home in this movie for me. I feel she’s stuck in the limbo of a middle-tier character - not given enough to do to justify her showing up, nor does she lack substance to the point of relegating her to the background. This is a meta-critique, but it’s just weird that she’s on the poster for this movie, and not Liz, or Ned. She gets more to do in the sequels, but her presence here almost feels out of preparation for that, than anything else.

It's hard to properly judge the film’s ending given how things follow up in Infinity War. Peter walking down the steps, away from the Avengers HQ with a big smile on his face is a very satisfying moment. Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, here we go—oh, wait, nope… now he’s in space. Connecting to the larger MCU proves to be a strength and a weakness, so while I enjoy the ending here, it’s an aspect of this iteration that I have continued to wrestle with, as have the films themselves.

It's good, it’s fun, and there’s a lot of simple and solid Spidey stuff – that is both elevated and hampered by the Avengers spotlight.

Rating:

#max talks about spidey #long post #nonmakeover

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sniper-childe · 2 years

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About Fontaine (GENSHIN KALLEN WHEN???) (PE Dudu as the Hydro Archon, yes??)

I mentioned before in the notes of a fic that I HC Fontaine as a place that is governed by the Church because it values the Truth and Law the most and one of the Absolutes of Teyvat that we know of is Celestia and the so-called Heavenly Principles. So I imagine that Fontaine would be the most avid fanatics devotees of Celestia and the Archons who uphold its laws.

Tho tbh, I mainly have this HC because I want the Hydro Archon to be a mix of Jeanne D’Arc and Durandal (from Honkai; specifically the Platinum Equinox battlesuit because I want a horse in Genshin, hoyoverse >:() and maybe a little bit of Thena (from MCU Eternals), but that’s just me.

I also imagine that Gay Jesus Kallen is going to be an undercover nun who will turn out to be a Fatui Harbinger that is coming for the Hydro Archon’s Gnosis :D And when we fight her, she will be immune to Elemental Damage because hoyoverse loves to make us suffer, yeah?

And also some little part of me wants the Fontaine Arc to be Anti-Church hajskdnfeglakw (NOT to be confused with anti-[specific religion] but rather the Institution that has grown corrupt and has commodified faith and made religion into something that is Absolute and used it to justify heinous acts).

BUT! (There is a reason why I have typed this HC out.) I have recently binged-watched an amazing courtroom kdrama that started as a murder case and the MCs ended up taking down a corrupt politician and I was like—OMG I WANT MORE SHIT LIKE THIS. It’s a good watch, you guys. It’s on Netflix. If you’re a fan of How To Get Away With Murder, you’ll like that series too.

Now I don’t know which one I want more: abolishing ‘the Church’ or taking down a corrupt high-ranking official with the use of sharp wit and cleverness. I just—I have high hopes for Fontaine now and I feel like I will be disappointed again but I still have faith in the Genshin Team hahasjkdengme

I hope that whatever they’re going to do, they would actually push through with it tho hahaha I have mentioned before that they probably weren’t ready to go all out with Anti-Imperialism or Anti-War with Inazuma but I have to admit that the fandom wasn’t ready for it too. Take a look at Eula’s release and the non-critically-thinking people of the fandom ‘canceling’ her, a fictional character. Imagine what they would do if Genshin actually made Ei the villain of the Inazuma Arc or had Kokomi do some morally-grey shit to win the war.

The only playable antagonist in Genshin that we have is Childe. And I am sad about that. A writer friend once told me that to have a good character, some bad things have to be their fault. And I want that kind of complexity in the upcoming characters and not just someone who was interesting but then got regressed into another ‘soft uwu’ character praised by the people around them.

#i... want to do a character analysis on ei so i can get over my bias against her but hngggg ANYWAYS!! FONTAINE WHEN HHHH #genshin impact #fontaine #genshin fontaine #genshin headcanons #genshin theory #hi3 #honkai durandal #kallen kaslana #eula lawrence #raiden ei #sangonomiya kokomi #childe

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agentem · 2 years

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Fixing Eternals.

Been thinking about how I could make Eternals stronger. I didn’t hate it like some critics did (see my many posts about it) but I do think it’s got problems.

A lot of people say there were too many characters and that some should have been cut. And I agree with this but I have a hard time deciding who I want to cut. I think the one that springs to mind is Sprite, which I feel bad saying because the actress is so young. It’s not her fault she’s isn’t as compelling as these seasoned professionals. (And it was adorable of her to day she was star struck by Richard Madden because she had a Cinderella-themed birthday party “when she was little”.)

I do think they were going for something with the “god made me wrong” angle that never quite landed. Mostly she came off as a bit of a whiner.

I might honestly get rid of Dane, even though I think Kit Harrington was fine too. I just think Sersei is never saving the world for her boyfriend, it’s always for all of humanity so there is a unnecessary love triangle here.

I might also reveal to the audience that Ikaris killed Ajax earlier, but wait to reveal to Sersei maybe? Because I feel like Richard Madden has to be very stiff and walk this line where he never says what he’s thinking and Deviants are always interrupting him before he makes his confesssion or whatever. And I would rather just see him commit to it. And also, stand by the whole “we are saving billions by destroying this planet.” Make him a true believer from the jump. People actually sympathized with Thanos after Infinity War and his reasoning for killing people was way less sound. The actual god of creation (in this world) really did tell him to do this or the universe will not continue the way it is supposed to.

What if they are just married and love each other and this rips them apart? I mean that is sort of what happens already, right? Lean into the family dynamic.

Tumblr will hate me but I might also cut Druig or at LEAST the excursion to the Amazon because there are too many locations and scenes where they go tell a new person what is going on. They should all have cell phones and just send a text to meet somewhere. Even letters by mail would be a faster sequence! Show Sersei going to the post office. Idk. Or maybe, to foreshadow the Uni-Mind, they all know when Ajax dies, how about that? Like they sense it through the cosmic energy or whatever.

I definitely think Phastos should be in it more. Not just because I want the gay character to have more screentime but I think he actually serves as a better mouthpiece for the “save Earth” contingent than Sersei does. He has a husband and a kid. Brian Tyree Henry is great in that one scene where he yells at Ikaris that he exists for his family. I would like more of that. Also more Ben/Phastos for the gays.

I would make the fighting with each other on the Domo and later the beach, and probably have more switching sides or having to be convinced.

I mean, Ikaris flings Druig to the ground from a very high height and then laser eyes him and he’s JUST FINE. This family would definitely come to physical blows more. They can all take it.

Less Deviants. That was a waste of a Skarsgard. (The MCU has used two of its Skarsgards already! There aren’t many left!)

What else?

Oh, I know Chloe Zhao thinks Kingo made the most ethical decision or whatever the exact phrasing she used was, by sticking to his beliefs but refusing to harm his family. Like he refuses to become an Extermist for his religion. But... it’s also kind of boring for me? At the VERY LEAST I want a shot of him joining the Uni-Mind while he was waiting in line at Starbucks or doing whatever else he was doing?

#the eternals #Eternals #Phastos #Sersei #ikaris #Richard Madden #brian tyree henry #Gemma Chan #sprite #Kingo #kumail nanjiani #Chloe Zhao #lia mchugh

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sineala · 3 years

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Tony Stark and Arthuriana

Coming to you by special request, a very long post about 616 Tony's interest in Arthuriana, with a focus on all of Tony's run-ins with Morgan le Fay!

I feel like I should disclaim the extent of my knowledge here, which is that I still haven't managed to read anywhere near every issue of Iron Man -- at least, not yet, anyway -- so I'm just going by the things I know I've read, and Morgan le Fay's Marvel wiki entry is frustratingly under-cited, so it's very possible I've missed something relevant, but I'm pretty sure I've got the big stuff down. My other disclaimer here is that I'm not as big an Arthurian nerd as Tony is, which is to say that most of my familiarity comes from modern retellings -- T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave, Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset -- and not so much the usual classic sources on the Matter of Britain, though I've read bits and pieces of them.

(This is because I wanted to read versions of them that were as close to the original as possible but so far have not ended up finishing any of them because, well, that's hard. So I've never read the Mabinogion because I do not know Welsh. I've got the Norton Critical Edition of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which is probably the best student edition if you're looking for something without modernized spellings, as I was. I've also got -- well, okay, it's my wife's but I'm borrowing it -- a relatively recent Boydell & Brewer edition (ed. Reeve, tr. Wright) of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), which is, you guessed it, in Latin with a facing English translation. I haven't gotten very far in it because, in case you didn't know this about Latin texts, the beginning is pretty much always the hardest, so I gave up and read some Plautus adaptations instead. Anyway, if for some reason you too want to read Geoffrey of Monmouth in the original Latin I'd recommend that one, but I can't recommend any particular English translations because I've never read one by itself. I bet you didn't think you'd be getting Latin prose recommendations in this post. I mean, maybe you did; it is me, after all.)

Okay. Right. King Arthur. Here we go.

We've got:

Flashbacks to Tony's childhood in late Iron Man volume 1

A brief discussion of Morgan's origin story and Avengers #187

Iron Man vol 1 #149-150: Doomquest

What If vol 1 #33: What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?

Iron Man vol 1 #249-250: Recurring Knightmare

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom #1-4

Avengers vol 3 #1-4: The Morgan Conquest

Civil War: The Confession

Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11: Time Is On No One's Side

In terms of universe-internal chronology, we know from Iron Man #287, from 1992, that Tony has been a fan of King Arthur since childhood. This is an issue of a fandom-favorite arc which features Tony having a lot of childhood flashbacks, including the famous "Stark men are made of iron" line (in #286) that for some reason MCU fandom decided it loved; I mean, seriously, I've seen that quoted in way more MCU fic than 616 fic. But slightly later, in #287, we get an entire page devoted to Tony's love of King Arthur.

The narration reads: "Over the next few years, I learned as my father intended. Discipline of body. Strength of character. But in what free time I was allowed, I worked my way through the school's library. At thirteen, I discovered Mallory [sic], who showed me a whole new world. A world of dedication to a cause greater than oneself. Of chivalry and honor. And the fantastic deeds -- of armored heroes."

The art shows Tony as a child sitting under a tree, reading a book labeled Mort D'Arthur by Mallory [sic] -- no, don't ask me why nobody at Marvel checked how to spell either the name of the book or its author -- and daydreaming of King Arthur, the Sword in the Stone, knights, et cetera. Just in case you somehow missed the extremely blatant hint that we are meant to understand that Tony's knight obsession heavily influenced him becoming Iron Man as an adult, we see one of his armors mixed in with all the drawings of knights. So, yes, canonically Tony is Iron Man at least partly because he's a giant King Arthur nerd, which I think is so very sweet. I love him. He's such a dork!

(This issue is currently in print in the Iron Man Epic Collection War Machine, should you need your own copy.)

This isn't actually the only reference to Tony as a King Arthur fanboy in this era of canon, either; a little later, in IM #298, we see that one of Tony's passwords is actually "Mallory." (Yeah, no, they still couldn't spell. But it's cute.)

But in terms of actual publication order, this is definitely not the first time we have seen in canon that Tony is into Arthuriana, as I'm sure you all know. I would assume, in fact, that giving Tony a childhood interest in Arthuriana is because Doomquest is one of the most beloved Iron Man story arcs of all time, and that all started at least a decade before IM #287 here was published.

The villain of Doomquest -- the one who isn't Doctor Doom, at least -- is Morgan le Fay. Yes, that Morgan le Fay. Yes, Arthur's evil half-sister Morgan le Fay. Yes, all of this King Arthur stuff is canonically real history on Earth-616. Morgan's first appearance in Marvel, per the wiki, was in Black Knight #1 (1955), which I have not read, and judging by the summary I feel like this is probably just supposed to be a straight-up comic retelling of Arthurian legends for kids; I don't think Marvel really had the whole Marvel Universe in mind as a concept in 1955, so I'm not sure this was meant to connect to anything else. I feel like this is another one of those instances of Marvel discovering that they can write comics about characters in the public domain for free -- like, I'm pretty sure that's how we also ended up with, like, Norse, Greek, and Roman mythology wedged into 616.

As far as I can tell from the wiki, the first time Morgan tangled with the Avengers (or indeed the larger 616 universe) in any way actually predated Doomquest -- it was in an early arc in Spider-Woman (#2-6) and then Avengers #187, which came out in 1979, actually right when Demon in a Bottle was happening over in Iron Man comics. If you read #187, Iron Man is not in it because he's off the team due to his drinking problem and also his accidentally murdering the Carnelian ambassador problem. So Wonder Man's filling in instead. This issue is part of Michelinie's rather sporadic Avengers run, which makes sense, I guess, considering where we see Morgan next.

Anyway, Avengers #187 is the classic issue where Wanda is possessed by Chthon, but what you may not remember from Chthon's backstory (I sure didn't!) is that he was summoned by Morgan le Fay because she was the first person who tried to wield the Darkhold to summon him. As you can imagine, this did not work out especially well for her and her followers and they had to seal Chthon away in Wundagore Mountain, which was where Wanda found him. (The Spider-Woman stuff is only slightly earlier and also appears to be about Morgan and the Darkhold; the Darkhold is not one of the areas of 616 canon I am especially conversant with, alas. It's on my to-read list.)

Doomquest, as you probably know, was a classic Iron Man two-parter in Layton & Michelinie's first Iron Man run that set up Tony and Doom as rivals; Doomquest itself was IM #149-150, in 1981, and then in their second IM run they came back and did a sequel in 1989, Recurring Knightmare (IM #249-250), and then the much later four-part sequel to that was the 2008 miniseries Iron Man: Legacy of Doom, which was also by Layton & Michelinie but generally does not seem to be as popular as the first two parts. They've all been reprinted, if you're looking for copies; I have a Doomquest hardcover that collects the first four issues and then a separate Legacy of Doom hardcover. Currently in the Iron Man Epic Collection line there's a volume called Doom, which confusingly only collects the 249-250 part of the storyline (as well as surrounding issues), because for some reason the first Layton & Michelinie run isn't in Epics yet but the second one is. So the beginning of Doomquest isn't currently in print, as far as I can tell. I'm sure you can find it anyway.

So what's Doomquest about? Okay, so you remember how Doctor Doom's mother's soul is stuck in hell for all eternity? Well, Doom's obviously interested in getting her back, and the strategy he has embarked on is to try to team up with other powerful magicians who can help him out, and he thinks Morgan le Fay would be a good choice, for, uh, his quest. Doom's quest. A Doomquest, if you will. (If you've ever read Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph & Torment, you're familiar with the part where he later ends up waylaying Strange for this and they go to hell together. And if you haven't read Triumph & Torment, you really should, because it's amazing.)

So Doom is off to his time machine to go team up with Morgan le Fay and Tony thinks Doom is up to something -- Doom has been stealing components for his time machine from a lot of people, including Tony -- and he follows him and it turns out one of Doom's lackeys has a grudge and wants to trap Doom in the past forever, and Tony gets caught up in it. Now they're both in Camelot. Surprise! #149 is actually all setup; they don't get to Camelot until #150.

IM #150 begins with Doom and Tony thrown back into the past; there's a fandom-famous splash page of them locked in combat, only to realize that they have found themselves in Camelot.

They are then discovered by knights; Doom would very much like to attack them, but Tony, who naturally would be happy to LARP Camelot forever, persuades him to play nice. Also Doom thinks Iron Man is only Tony's bodyguard so he keeps referring to him as "lackey," much to Tony's annoyance. Somehow everyone thinks they're sorcerers. Can't imagine why. The knights take them to meet King Arthur himself, and Tony has clearly had his introduction all ready to go, as he introduces himself in a timeline-appropriate manner, says he's here to apprehend Doom, and demonstrates his "magic" by levitating Arthur's throne. Doom's response is essentially "I'm the king of Latveria," which is, y'know, also valid. So they're guests at Camelot for the night while Arthur figures out what to do with them.

We then have a page devoted to Tony alone in his room, musing sadly about how alien he feels, how he doesn't know if he'll ever get home, how he could never fit in here without his beloved technology. Then a Sexy Lady shows up to keep him company for the night, and he decides maybe it's not all bad. Thanks, Marvel. I guess they can't all be winners.

Doom is using his evening much more productively; he compels one of the servants to tell him where Morgan's castle is, because he's still interested in having that team-up. Then he jets off. Literally. He has a jetpack.

The next morning Arthur's like "one of you is still here and one of you has punched a hole through the castle wall and flown off to join Morgan so I guess I know which of you is more trustworthy." He then explains to Tony who Morgan is, because Tony professes ignorance, because clearly we had not yet retconned in Tony's love of Arthuriana. Tony offers to go fight Doom and Morgan with Arthur; meanwhile, Morgan and Doom have teamed up and Morgan has offered to help get Doom's mother out of hell if he commands her undead armies against Arthur because for Reasons she can't command them herself anymore. So that's a thing that happens.

So, yes, it's Tony and Arthur versus Doom and Morgan. Fight fight fight!

Tony tries Doom first but then decides to hunt Morgan down, and in the ensuing fight we get what I think is Tony's first ever "I hate magic," a complaint that we all know he still makes even to this day.

Anyway, Tony freezes a dragon with Freon (mmm, technology) and Morgan gets upset and disappears, so the battle comes to an end, and of course Doom is extremely mad at Tony because he blames Tony for Morgan not sticking around to save Doom's mom, because I guess Doom trusted her to keep her word? Weird. (Like I said, for the next chapter of Doom saving his mother, go read Triumph & Torment.)

Doom says if he and Tony work together, the components in both of their armors can send them both home. So Tony has to trust Doom. Which he does, because he really has no other choice. They build a time machine and Tony makes Doom agree to a 24-hour truce when they get back, so they can both get home. So it all works out okay, and they end up in the present, and Doom tells him, ominously, that they will meet again. Okay, then. That concludes the original Doomquest. It's fun! You can see why fandom likes it.

So that's all well and good, but you might have noticed that Tony's ability to get home hinged on Doom actually being trustworthy. And Doom was. But what if Doom hadn't been? What if he'd just stranded Tony in Camelot forever As you may have surmised from the form of that question, that is in fact a question Marvel asked themselves, because, yes, there's a What If about this! What If v1 #33 is "What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?"

The divergence point from canon, as you can probably guess, is the very end of Doomquest. Instead of Doom bringing Tony home, he deceives him and leaves him in Camelot. And since Tony cannibalized a lot of the tech from his armor to make the time machine, he doesn't have a way to go home.

This is not a story where Tony comes up with a way to go home after all. He really doesn't get to go home. But instead of drowning his sorrows in mead -- because, remember, Demon in a Bottle has already happened and Tony is sober now -- he decides he might as well just play the hand he's dealt. So with what's left of his armor, he defeats some enemies that Morgan rounds up to send against Camelot. And for his services, he's knighted. He is now Sir Anthony.

Tony acknowledges that he is both living the dream and would also like very, very much to go home.

He does end up having some fun in Camelot; it's not all miserable. But he obviously doesn't want to be there.

So if you're at all familiar with King Arthur, you know how this goes, right? Arthur fights Mordred and Mordred kills him. And that does happen in this version. Except Tony is right there, and with his dying words, Arthur asks Tony to rule Camelot... and Tony agrees.

So, yes, Tony Stark becomes king of the Britons after Arthur's death and he never goes home again. The end. Man, I love What Ifs.

Heading back to main 616 continuity, there is still more of this arc to go. The original Doomquest was only two issues, yes, but it was popular enough that Layton & Michelinie did a sequel a hundred issues later, in their second run of Iron Man, and that's Iron Man #249-250, Recurring Knightmare. (In the intervening issues were Denny O'Neil's IM run, specifically the second drinking arc (#160-200), and then Layton & Michelinie came back and most famously gave us Armor Wars (#225-232). I would have to say that Armor Wars is definitely the standout fandom-favorite arc of their second IM run; for their first one, I think a lot of people would have a hard time choosing between Doomquest and Demon.) But anyway, yes. Recurring Knightmare.

Recurring Knightmare is... well, the best way I can describe it is "a trip." It is definitely a sequel to Doomquest, and it is also definitely not a sequel you would ever have expected to see for Doomquest.

Much like #149, #249 is pretty much just setup. Fun setup, but the big action is in the next issue. We open with Doom in Latveria, on his throne, pondering which of his servants he should have disintegrated. Anyway, he's just hanging out there when a mysterious object appears. In California, Tony is suited up and entertaining the crowd at a mall opening when the same object also appears! He takes it to his lab. Please note that this is after the Kathy Dare incident, so Tony is still recovering and is walking with a cane. Doom sees on the news that Iron Man has found the same object, which cannot be carbon-dated, and he shows up at Tony's house. He criticizes Tony's taste in art.

Anyway, Doom basically orders Tony to work with him. Tony refuses, and then Doom sends some robots to attempt to steal Tony's version of the object because he thinks if he has them both he will be powerful. Doom manages to steal it, and when he puts the pieces together, both he and Tony disappear.

So where do they go, you might ask? Camelot?

Not exactly. The future! There is a great callback to the Doomquest splash page.

It turns out they are in London in 2093. Merlin brought them there. Tony still hates magic. And in the future, King Arthur is still there, except he is now a child, because he has been reborn. But he does remember Tony from Doomquest, at which point Tony kneels. Doom, of course, is not impressed. He asks why they have been brought to the future.

The answer is that things are going wrong in the future. If you do not personally remember United States politics in the 1980s, I need you to google the words "Strategic Defense Initiative" right now. I'll wait.

Back with me? Okay, so this is a future where Reagan's Star Wars program actually happened the way he wanted it to, and the satellites are still hanging around the Earth in the future and messing everything up, and Arthur and Merlin need Tony and Doom's help to stop them. Doom once again flies away with his jetpack, of course.

Tony is game to help, but he's not in an armor that can stay in space for long. This is when Merlin takes him and Arthur to the mall and Tony manages to get everything to upgrade his armor at Radio Shack. You see what I meant about this issue being weird.

Tony is out in space trying to disarm the SDI platform, which is where he runs into his future descendant, Andros Stark, who is in armor you will probably recognize from Iron Man 2020. He is referred to as "the resurrected spawn of Iron Man 2020" so I assume he's actually directly related to Arno rather than a direct descendant of Tony; Wiki confirms that Arno is his grandfather. This is all from way before Arno was contemporaneous with Tony in canon. Anyway, he's fighting Tony.

Oh, by the way, Future Doom exists. Future Doom would like to rule this future Earth and for some reason Andros would like to help him. Meanwhile, Present Doom finds out from Merlin that he can't leave except by magic and he can't leave without Tony, so he is reluctantly on Tony's side.

They need help from the Lady of the Lake, except the lake has been paved over and is now a parking lot. Merlin makes the lake come back and then of course they get Excalibur. Arthur is a kid, so he can't wield a longsword; Doom assumes he's going to take it because he is basically a king, and he's pretty grumpy when the sword picks Tony. Tony then uses Excalibur to destroy the space lasers, and I bet that is a sentence you never thought you would read. It's pretty cool. Tony concludes that magic has its good points. Tony stops Andros and Doom stops, uh, himself, and the world is saved and they get to go home. Also, Doom finds out Tony is Iron Man, but when Merlin sends them back he conveniently erases their memories, so neither of them remember anything about this and Tony's secret is still safe. And that's the sequel to Doomquest.

And if you think that's weird, wait until you see Legacy of Doom.

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom is a four-issue miniseries from 2008, also by Layton and Michelinie. Even though it's from 2008, it's set during a much more classic time in Iron Man, continuing on from where we left off in this Doomquest saga. We start with a framing story in 2008. Tony, who has Extremis now, is busy scrapping some of his older armors and reviewing his logs when he suddenly remembers that there was a whole thing with Doom that happened that he seems to have forgotten about until right now. So the whole thing is narrated by Tony in flashback.

Tony's in space fixing a satellite when a hologram of Doom shows up and summons him to Latveria. It's not really clear why Doom needs Tony's help in particular here, but Doom tells Tony that he's discovered that Mephisto would like to bring about the end of the world, which Doom finds, and I quote, "presumptive." So Doom has his Time Cube, and with it he takes Tony to hell.

(Yes, I promise this is relevant to Doomquest. There will be some Arthuriana shortly.)

Doom brings Tony to Mephisto, and it turns out it's a setup! Doom trades Tony for an item he wants from Mephisto, leaves, and Tony's going to be trapped in hell forever! Oh no! (I mean, he's not. But it's quite a cliffhanger.)

At the beginning of issue #2, we find out what the Arthurian connection is, which is that we learned that after the events of Doomquest, Morgan had been granted sanctuary by Mephisto in exchange for a shard of Excalibur that she had somehow stolen. Doom still wants Morgan's help with some magic -- he doesn't mention what it is here, but he says he needs someone of Pendragon blood, and that'd be her -- so he traded Tony to Mephisto in exchange for, I'm guessing, Morgan and the Excalibur shard.

I have probably mentioned this elsewhere, but Legacy of Doom #2 is one of my favorite issues of Iron Man ever, solely because of the next scene. We return to Tony in hell. Howard Stark is also in hell, and he is now a demon, and Tony has to fight him. Mephisto brings popcorn and watches. This is the one time in canon when Tony actually confronts his father, and okay, yes, it's a fistfight in hell and Howard is a demon, but that's comics for you. Howard spends several pages insulting Tony -- specifically insulting his masculinity, but that's a whole other essay -- until he finally insults Maria too, and that's when Tony fights back, because his mother taught him to be good. Honestly if you're a Tony fan I'd recommend this issue just for that scene.

Anyway, we go back to the Doom and Morgan plot, and Morgan casts the spell Doom wanted, which was fusing the Excalibur shard with Doom's armor. Then Doom sends her back to Camelot rather than hell, because he's still mad that she never helped him get his mom out of hell like she said she would.

Tony freezes Howard with Freon -- yes, the same trick he pulled on the dragon back in Doomquest -- and tells him, "You're no father of mine." It is immensely satisfying.

(I had been going to mention that I thought it was a shame that neither canon nor fandom seems to have really engaged with this confrontation, and I know canon never believes in narrative closure but fandom sure does -- and then, anyway, it occurred to me that since the framing story of Tony remembering this is set when Tony has Extremis, there's a very good chance that he no longer remembers remembering it. Goddammit, Marvel.)

(If I got to retcon one canon thing about Tony, I think "the entirety of World's Most Wanted" is up there. I mean, okay, a lot of things are up there, but WMW is definitely on the shortlist.)

Okay. Tony has now engineered his way out of hell, and he's back with Doom in Latveria. Doom has Excalibur. Doom would very much like to fight him. While wielding Excalibur. You get the sense that this is going to be bad. Another cliffhanger!

Legacy of Doom #3 opens with Tony destroying Doom's lab to buy time and running away from Doom and Excalibur. I should probably mention that Doom still doesn't know Tony is Iron Man (anymore), so he thinks he is dealing only with Iron Man, Tony Stark's lackey. Meanwhile, some scientists at SI think there's something weird going on with space. Meanwhile meanwhile, Tony is in a forest taking a breather when a mysterious old man walks up to him.

It's Merlin! Surprise! Merlin wants Tony's help to stop Doom from doing whatever he's doing with Excalibur. The sword makes you invincible and the scabbard makes you invulnerable, so Merlin sends Tony to Scotland on a fetch quest for the scabbard. Doom has now magically sent the sword in search of the scabbard, so the sword flies away to meet it and Doom follows. Turns out the thing that's wrong with space is a thing that's going to hit Earth at the exact place Tony and Doom are. What a coincidence! So Tony and Doom get trapped in a stone circle and fight some stone warriors and then Tony ends up with the scabbard. And by "ends up with," I mean it fuses to his armor. Next issue!

Legacy of Doom #4 is when things really, really get weird. A giant demon made of eyes (???) appears, and this demon is apparently what Doom had been preparing to fight (because it's mad that Doom stole one of its spellbooks), and now he can't, because the sword and the scabbard aren't together. Thanks, Shellhead.

That's when Merlin shows up and says all is not lost. They can defeat the demon... if they put the sword into the scabbard.

"But I'm the scabbard now!" Tony says, uncomprehending.

"Yes," Merlin says. "You are."

Then Tony gets it.

So, yes, Doom has to, um, penetrate Tony. With Excalibur. I love comics. I love comics so much.

So that's a thing that happens.

And then Tony flies off and, I guess, resolves to never, ever think about any of this again.

We head back to the framing story, in which Tony, now having remembered all of this, flies to Britain, buys the land the lake is on, and paves it over, presumably so it will be there for Merlin to bring back in Iron Man #250. The end.

Whew.

Okay, yeah, I know I didn't have to summarize the whole thing, but Legacy of Doom here really is one of my favorite Iron Man miniseries. And I just want to share the love. Please read it. It's great.

But the Arthuriana fun doesn't end there! In fact, now we get an Arthurian-themed arc that actually isn't in Iron Man comics. It's in Avengers! Iron Man is involved, though.

(There is also apparently a Morgan arc in Avengers #240. I actually haven't read it. It seems to be yet another Spider-Woman arc. I get the impression that this isn't really Arthuriana other than having Morgan in it fighting Jess, though, so it doesn't seem quite as relevant. Morgan also apparently has some appearances in FF, Journey into Mystery, and Marvel Team-Up, but those seem like more of just basic villainy. Also, probably not involving Tony.)

Kurt Busiek's 1998 Avengers run, volume 3, is in large part the kind of Avengers run that is a nostalgic love letter to older comics. Heroes are heroes and villains are villains and good triumphs over evil. The Avengers all live in the mansion and are BFFs. I love it. It does assume that you are already a fan of the Avengers, because it starts out by summoning pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger and is available to the mansion, and that is... a lot of people. Thirty-nine, by my count. Also, when the entire team is magically whisked away, we are treated to the following narration, as Steve disappears: "And Captain America's last thought, as the world goes white around him, and he with it -- is that Iron Man would hate this."

The narration doesn't tell you why Iron Man would hate this, or how Captain America would know that Iron Man hates this. This is not explained later on. But if you have read comics -- or if you have read the above summary of Doomquest -- you know that Tony is absolutely, one hundred percent, thinking, "I hate magic." And Steve knows it.

The reference is not relevant to the plot; if you don't get it, you'll be fine. But that's what I mean when I say this is a nostalgia run. There are definitely Easter eggs for people who have read a bunch of comics. Busiek does this a whole lot in his work -- there's a reason you can buy an annotated edition of Marvels -- and, yeah, it happens here too. Just know that there will be references you're not getting, if you're new to comics.

Anyway. So Busiek's run actually starts out with an Arthurian arc, #1-4, "The Morgan Conquest." The name is a dead giveaway. Yes, Morgan le Fay is back. Again. For once, Doom is not involved.

The Avengers are all back from their sojourn on Counter-Earth after fighting Onslaught -- don't worry about it -- and mysterious things are happening. There are a lot of monster attacks. So pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger is summoned to the mansion, at which point we learn from Thor about some mystical artifacts that are being stolen. (They are the Norn Stones and also the Twilight Sword. That sounds like something from a Zelda game, doesn't it?) The Avengers go to try to stop this, end up in Tintagel, and then they run into Mordred. He wants to capture Wanda, presumably for Magic Reasons. Morgan le Fay casts a spell on all of them, reshaping reality. Yes, all of them. Surprise!

So now all the Avengers are living in a medieval castle and/or town; Morgan is their queen, and thanks to the power of mind-control they are all basically living in Ye Olden Times. The Avengers are all some variety of knight, except for Wanda, who is chained up in the dungeon so Morgan can steal her magic and use it to fuel all this reality-warping.

Wanda calls for help, and that snaps Steve (Yeoman America!) out of the mind control (or altered reality or whatever you want to call it) pretty fast, because Steve's always been very good at resisting mind control, and then Steve promptly goes and snaps Clint out of it, because I guess Steve is also good at inspiring people to snap out of mind control. "Oh, man!" Clint says. "Not another alternate reality! Not again!" (I assume he's referring to Counter-Earth? Maybe?)

So Steve and Clint go around reassembling the Avengers and orienting them as to reality. They get Jan and Monica easily, but then Steve insists on trying to get Tony because, I guess, he likes Tony and would really like to hang around Tony, who is half-naked and asleep in his bedroom, and certainly I am reading nothing whatsoever into this. Clint tells Steve it's not going to work. Tony has historically been fairly susceptible to mind control; it was only pretty recently at this point that he'd been doing Kang's bidding in The Crossing. But the more serious impediment is that this is Tony Stark and he would obviously like to LARP being a knight forever and ever. Tony, therefore, does not believe Steve, and throws him and Clint out of his bedroom and into the barracks.

"Iron Man's a good guy, normally," Clint says. "But he's waaay too into his whole nobleman/lord of the manor trip. That spell musta hit him right where he lives!"

Clint speaks the truth, clearly.

Anyway, they go around and manage to make pretty much every Avenger in the room other than Tony snap out, and attempt to rebel against Morgan while Tony is stil fighting them because he is Still A Knight. There's a lot of punching, because some of the Avengers still aren't free; they weren't ones Steve found.

The day is saved when Wanda manages to channel Wonder Man and break free. This gives the Avengers a fighting chance against Morgan and the Avengers are all lending Wanda their power when Tony finally snaps out of it and is on the side of good.

Then they take Morgan down, go home, and attempt to figure out which of these thirty-nine people should be on the active Avengers team. Hooray.

But that's not the end of Morgan le Fay showing up to screw around with Tony's life! There's more to come! Not much, but there is one that I know of, and at least one more memorable reference.

(I haven't read all her appearances or anything, but one of them definitely involves Tony; I can't swear that he doesn't appear in any of the other books Morgan shows up in, but it'd be a cameo for him, because I only know of one more arc that she's in in a book that Tony stars in.)

In a few more years, we have now entered the part of Marvel Comics history where Brian Michael Bendis writes all the Avengers books at the same time for, like, seven years running. It was sure A Time. There were a lot of word bubbles.

And the thing about Bendis is, Bendis looooooves Doomquest. If you're familiar with the very end of his tenure at Marvel where he made Doom be Iron Man after Tony got knocked into a coma in Civil War II, you have probably figured out already that he likes Doom. But he also likes Doomquest, specifically.

I mean, if nothing else, the giant splash page in The Confession where Maleev redrew the climactic Doomquest fight while Bendis had Tony talk about how deeply meaningful to his understanding of the world this all was -- and how it allowed him to predict Civil War -- was probably a big clue, right?

As far as I am aware, Morgan le Fay makes exactly one more appearance in Tony's life. And that's in Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11. Only one of those issues is named, so I'm going to assume the arc is named after it: Time Is On No One's Side.

You remember Mighty Avengers, right? The deal with the Avengers books at the time was that after Bendis exploded the mansion and made the team disband in Avengers Disassembled, the main Avengers book was no longer called just Avengers. Instead, the main Avengers book was New Avengers, and that was the only Avengers book. Then Civil War happened, Steve got killed, and New Avengers became the book about what was left of the SHRA resistance (i.e., Steve's side) after the war. So about halfway through New Avengers, Mighty Avengers starts up, and Mighty Avengers is about an extremely fucked-up and grief-stricken Tony Stark trying to run the official government-sanctioned Avengers team, with Carol's help. This is the comic with the arc where Tony turned into naked girl Ultron. You remember.

So, anyway, there's this Mighty Avengers arc where Doom is Up To Something (there are symbiotes and a satellite involved) and somehow Tony and the Avengers end up in Latveria, punching Doom. Also, by the way, Doom is visiting Morgan in the past because he likes her. The Avengers attacking his castle made him have to come back to the present, so he's kind of cranky. And he fights Tony, and in the course of the fight, his time platform explodes and sends Doom and Tony and also the Sentry to... the past.

This is one of those times where you should definitely look up the comics if possible because the way the past is visually indicated here is that it's colored with halftone dots the way you would expect old comics to be colored, although they have modern shading and color palettes. It's very charmingly retro.

So the three of them are stuck in New York in the past, and naturally they would like to leave. There's one person in this time who has a time machine and it is, of course, Reed Richards. Doom and Tony have a lot of banter in this arc; I think it's entertaining.

Sentry has to be the one to break them all into the Baxter Building because of that power he has where no one will remember him. So they do that, travel forward in time, and end up in Latveria in the present again except Doom is gone and also things are currently exploding where they are.

Doom, of course, has made a side trip to visit Morgan again and he asks her to help him build an army, because I guess this is what their relationship is like. So the rest of the Avengers are captured by what look to me like Mindless Ones and are in a cave in magic bondage, because comics. Jess comments that at least they aren't naked, because she too is remembering that memorable New Avengers trip to the Savage Land. Doom threatens Carol in some creepy sexist ways and eventually it turns out that Tony and the Sentry are fine and everyone kicks Doom's ass. Business as usual.

And the last page of the arc is Morgan alone, wondering where Doom is. So technically Morgan and Tony don't come face to face here, but I think she counts as being at least partially responsible for ruining Tony's day here. And then Secret Invasion happens and Tony has a very, very bad day.

There are a few more Morgan appearances after this, but, as I said, I don't think any of them involve Tony. She shows up in Dark Avengers, apparently, which was one of the post-Civil War Avengers titles I didn't read, and I know that recently, on the X-Men side of things, she's been in Tini Howard's Excalibur one, which I have only read a little of. No Tony there. Just a lot of Morgan and Betsy Braddock and Brian Braddock and the Otherworld.

If you are interested in Morgan's other appearances, you might like this Marvel listicle that is Morgan le Fay's six most malicious acts. I pulled some of the Darkhold backstory from their discussion, but it's not really focused on Morgan and Tony.

So there you have it! That's everything I know about Tony's love for King Arthur and every run-in I know about that he's had with Morgan le Fay! One of two terrible people in Tony's life named Morgan! Actually, I don't think we've seen Morgan Stark in a while. I wonder if he's alive. There should be a Morgan & Morgan team-up. I should probably stop typing and post this.

The tl;dr point is that you should all read Doomquest and its sequels, especially Legacy of Doom. They're great!

#posts i actually wrote

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the-desolated-quill · 3 years

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WandaVision: ‘Subverting’ Good Television - Quill’s Scribbles

(Spoilers for the first five episodes)

Hey everyone! Well... it’s been a while, hasn’t it? The last time I wrote a proper review or Scribble, people still thought the COVID crisis would be over within a month. The poor saps. But I thought that as a special way to mark this year’s Valentines Day, we could take a closer look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s shittiest power couple in their new Disney+ show WandaVision.

The first of many MCU spin-off shows that nobody asked for, broadcast exclusively on Disney’s totally unnecessary streaming platform, WandaVision is about everybody’s favourite whitewashed Nazi experiment and her red sexbot boyfriend as they try to fit into a suburban sitcom neighbourhood without arousing suspicion.

Yes, you read that correctly. The MCU has a sitcom now. My life is now complete.

Sarcasm aside, I was legitimately curious about WandaVision because of its unusual setting. And considering one of my most common criticisms of the MCU is its total lack of creativity, anything that’s even a little bit subversive is bound to attract my attention. Of course ‘subversive’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good.’ I could hand you a canvas smeared with my own shit and call it subversive. That doesn’t necessarily make it good art. And that’s exactly what WandaVision is. A canvas smeared with shit.

So lets split this critical analysis/review/angry bitter rant into two distinct chapters. The first focusing on the plot and setting, and the second focusing on the characters. Okay? Okay.

Chapter 1: Bewitched

Critics seem to be utterly enamoured with the whole sitcom gimmick, and it is a gimmick. As far as I can tell from the episodes I’ve seen, the sitcom setting serves no real purpose whatsoever other than to make the show ‘quirky.’ Which I wouldn’t mind, believe it or not, if the show was actually funny. There’s just one problem. It’s not.

Now in some ways describing why a sitcom doesn’t work is often futile because comedy is largely subjective. What I find funny, you won’t necessarily find funny and vice versa. With WandaVision, however, I won’t have that problem. I can demonstrate to you precisely why WandaVision, objectively, isn’t funny. And it all comes down to one simple thing. The stakes. Or rather the complete and total absence of stakes.

The show makes it very clear from the beginning that none of what we’re seeing is real. The cheesy theme song, the era appropriate special effects (mostly. It’s actually very inconsistent), the joke commercials, and, in the case of the first two episodes, which are in black and white, the appearance of red lights and objects in Scarlet Witch’s general vicinity. (Gee, what a mystery this is).

Basically Wanda has brought Vision back from the dead and created this sitcom world for them to inhabit. I’ll explain the stupidity of this in Chapter 2. The point is none of this is real, and that has a negative effect on the comedy because the very nature of comedy is suffering. Take the plot of the first episode. Wanda and Vision have to prepare a dinner to impress Vision’s boss. If they fail, Vision could lose his job and the couple could be exposed as superheroes. If this were a normal sitcom, it would work. The stakes are clear and it would be satisfying to see the two struggle and overcome the odds. But here, we know it’s not real. If it’s not real, it means there’s no stakes. If there’s no stakes, it means there’s no suffering. If there’s no suffering, there’s no comedy.

It would be one thing if the unfunny sitcom stuff lasted for like the first ten minutes or so before making way for the actual plot, but it doesn’t. Oh no. It doesn’t even last for the first episode. Out of the five episodes I’ve watched, four of them are almost entirely about these unfunny, objectively flawed sitcom homages, each set in a different time period. The fifties, the sixties, and so on. And what’s worse is that nothing that happens in them is plot-relevant. That gets relegated to the last five minutes of an episode. So you’re forced to sit through twenty five minutes of boring slapstick and puns in order to catch even a whiff of actual story. Which begs the question... who is this for exactly? It can’t be entertaining to Marvel fans, who have to slog through all this pointless shit so they can figure out what the fuck is going on. Comedy fans may get a kick out of the sitcom pastiche at first, but after four episodes, surely the joke would wear thin. So why is it in here? Clearly someone in the writer’s room absolutely fell in love with the idea of doing a Marvel sitcom, but nobody put in any time or effort to figure out how it would work in context.

I cannot stress enough how bad the plotting of this series is. As I said, the vast majority of a thirty minute episode is about shitty sitcom plots that aren’t funny and don’t have any impact on the story, only to then tease you with a crumb of actual plot in order to keep you coming back for the next instalment. Admittedly it’s an effective strategy. I was more than ready to quit after Episode 2 until that beekeeper showed up out of the sewer (don’t ask. It’s not important). WandaVision essentially follows the Steven Moffat school of bad writing. String your audience along with the promise that things might get more interesting later on and that all the bullshit that came before will retroactively make sense by the end. Except, as demonstrated with BBC’s Sherlock, that doesn’t work. And even if it did, it wouldn’t justify wasting the audience’s fucking time. And that’s what the majority of WandaVision is. A waste of time.

The only episode that doesn’t follow the sitcom format is the fourth episode. Instead it basically exists to explain all the shit that happened before. The shit that the audience, frankly, are smart enough to figure out for themselves. Wanda created the sitcom world as a way of coping with the loss of Vision, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, we got it. Thanks. It doesn’t advance the plot or anything. It’s just a massive info-dump. But by far the lowest point was when Darcy (by far the most annoying character in the first Thor film and is just as obnoxious here) was sat in front of the TV, watching the sitcom and asking the same questions we were. Not even attempting to look for answers. Just reiterating what the audience is thinking. Like this is an episode of fucking Gogglebox.

In the end it becomes apparent why the series is structured the way that it is. It’s to hoodwink people into subscribing to Disney’s stupid streaming service. If you think about it, there was no reason for WandaVision to be a TV series other than to lure gullible fans in with a piece-meal story buried in a mountain of crap. This isn’t a TV show. It’s what is cynically known in the world of big business executives as ‘content.’ They’re not interested in entertaining the audience. Instead they crave ‘engagement’, which isn’t the same thing. Watching WandaVision is like staring into the void, waiting for something to happen, while Disney charge you for the privilege.

Chapter 2: I Love Lucy

So the plot sucks balls. What about the characters? Surely if Wanda and Vision are likeable at least, it’ll give us something to cling onto.

Well as I was watching the first episode, it suddenly hit me that I couldn’t remember anything that happened to them in previous films. I knew Vision died, but other than that, I couldn’t tell you significant plot details or their personalities or anything. Not a great start.

See, up until now, Vision and Scarlet Witch have been little more than background characters. So already there’s an uphill struggle to get us invested in their relationship, especially considering we haven’t actually seen that relationship develop. In Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Scarlet Witch is killing people because she’s pissed off about Tony Stark killing people (you work that one out) until all of a sudden she stops and joins the good guys because the script said so. Vision meanwhile is introduced as a convenient deus ex machina to beat Ultron and gets no real personality other than he’s a robot. Captain America: Civil War comes the closest to giving Wanda a story and personality of her own as it’s her actions that cause the Sokovia Accords to come into effect, but she never gets any real growth or payoff as the film is heavily focused on Cap and Iron Man’s penis measuring contest. And as for Vision, all he does in the film is accidentally cripple War Machine. No real character or arc there as such. And then we have Avengers: Infinity War, where Wanda and Vision are now sporadically in love and on the run until that pesky Josh Brolin, looking like a CGI cross between Joss Whedon and a grumpy grape, comes along and rips out Vision’s Infinity Stone to power up his golden glove of doom, and the film treats this like a tragic moment, except... it isn’t. Because we haven’t really had the time to properly get to know these characters and see their romance blossom. So instead it just comes off as hollow and forced.

WandaVision has the exact same problem. Apparently Wanda was so distraught about Vision’s death that she broke into a SWORD base, stole his corpse, brought it back from the dead... somehow, and then enslaved an entire town of people to create an idyllic lifestyle for her and her hubby while broadcasting it as a sitcom to the outside world... for some reason. Putting aside the dubious morality of it all, it’s impossible to really sympathise with Wanda or her supposed grief because we’ve barely spent any time with her. Had the Marvel movies taken the time to properly explore the characters and show us their relationship grow and develop, this might have had more emotional resonance. But no, it just happens. In one film they barely speak to each other and in the next they’re a couple. No effort to explore how they feel about each other or any of the problems that may arise trying to date a robot. It just happens and we’re just supposed to care. Well I’m sorry, but I don’t care. You’re going to have to try a little bit harder than that I’m afraid. What’s worse is that, thanks to the whole fake sitcom thing, it’s impossible to really become invested in Wanda and her plight because the show has to constantly keep us at arms length at all times in order to keep up the pretence that this bullshit is somehow mysterious.

Looking through the WandaVision tag, it amuses me how many people say that she’s acting out of character. And yeah, her actions are a bit of a head scratcher. Why would an Eastern European’s ideal life be an American sitcom? Why a sitcom? Why kidnap an entire town? Why keep changing the decade? None of it makes sense, but you’re wrong for thinking that Wanda is behaving out of character for the simple reason that Wanda has never actually had a character. In fact, ironically, Wanda mind controlling an entire town and forcing them to do her bidding is probably the one consistent thing about her as she did this in Age Of Ultron. In interviews, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany described how they used actors like Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick Van Dyke as influences, which is really funny because they’re straight up admitting they don’t have characters and even now they’re still not playing the characters, instead emulating the work of far better actors.

As I was watching the show, it became abundantly clear that not only do Marvel not have the faintest idea what they wanted to do with these characters, but they also straight up don’t give a shit about these characters. Wanda in particular has had a rough time under the tyrannical regime of the House of Mouse. First they cast Elizabeth Olsen, a white woman, to play a Romani character, then systematically erasing her Jewish roots, even going so far as to put a cross in her bedroom in Civil War, and now the character is being butchered even more by forcing her into an American sitcom housewife role that she apparently willingly chose for herself, which is laughable. I mean say what you like about Magneto in the X-Men films, at least they actually depicted his Jewish culture. At least they recognised his Jewish background was important (though not important enough to cast a Jewish actor apparently). Wanda’s steady cultural erasure over the years is incredibly insidious and judging by Olsen’s comments in interviews, where she called Wanda’s comic book outfit a quote ‘gypsy thing’ unquote, it seems nobody has an ounce of fucking respect for the character or the culture she’s supposed to be representing. (and to all those kissing her arse saying it was a slip of the tongue, she has been repeatedly called out for using the slur in the past, so at this point I’d describe her behaviour as wilful ignorance)

If you want further proof of how much Marvel doesn’t seem to care about Wanda, look no further than her brother Pietro, aka Quicksilver. At the end of Episode 5, Wanda brings Pietro back from the dead, except it’s not Pietro. It’s Peter Maximoff, the Quicksilver from the X-Men films played by Peter Evans, who coincidentally is not Jewish or Romani either. So Quicksilver has the dubious honour of not only being whitewashed three times, but also twice within the same franchise. But should we really be surprised at this point? It’s Marvel after all. The same company that whitewashed the Ancient One in Doctor Yellowface and claimed it wasn’t racist because Tilda Swinton is ‘Celtic’. But now I’m going off topic. My point is that this isn’t a simple case of recasting an actor like Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton as the Hulk. WandaVision actually acknowledges the recast in-universe, which makes no sense. Why would Wanda bring back her brother, only to make him look like a different person? We the audience may be familiar with this version of Quicksilver, but she isn’t. That would be like me bringing my Grandad back to life and making him look like Ian McKellen. He’d be perfectly charming, I’m sure, but he wouldn’t be my Grandad.

If Marvel really cared about the characters or narrative consistency, they would have brought Aaron Taylor Johnson back. Instead, now they have absorbed 20th Century Fox into the hellish Disney abyss, they use X-Men’s Quicksilver as a means to keep viewers from switching off and so that people will write stupid articles and think pieces about whether the rest of the X-Men will show up in the MCU. It’s like dangling your keys in front of a toddler’s face to distract them from the rotting corpse of a raccoon lying face down in the corner of the room.

And it’s here where I decided to stop watching the show because fuck Disney.

Epilogue: One Foot In The Grave

You know, I am sick and tired of the so called ‘professional’ critics bending over backwards to praise these god awful films and shows when it’s so clear to anyone with a functioning brain cell how bad they truly are. WandaVision is without a doubt one of the most cynically produced and poorly structured TV shows I’ve ever seen. Its riffs on classic sitcoms are pointless and self-indulgent, the writing is terrible, the characters are unlikable and unsympathetic, and it’s entirely emblematic of what the entire MCU has become of late. And it’s only going to get worse as Disney drowns us with more ‘content’ to keep the plebs ‘engaged’. In short; pathetic.

#anti wandavision #anti marvel #anti mcu #anti disney #quill's scribbles

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mcustorm · 3 years

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In Defense of a Black Cyclops

In case my username didn’t make it clear, the single most anticipated visual project for me is the MCU’s interpretation of the X-Men, which hasn’t even been announced yet [officially]. And ladies and gents, I have found your Cyclops:

Good ol’ Alfred Enoch, who we all know from Harry Potter and How to Get Away With Murder. If you’re not familiar with HTGAWM, know that his character goes from the de facto leader of the ragtag (murderers) and most cherished protege of Viola Davis’ Professor X to taking more of a grimdark turn after his girlfriend’s death. Sound at least somewhat familiar?

Enoch also embodies the physicality of the character well, seeing as to how he’s “slim”, 6′4(!!), black, and notoriously lanky. Wait, one of these isn’t like the others.

In general I hate fancasting. Everyone generally picks from the same pool of about 30 actors (Peeps, neither Taron nor Daniel is a good Wolverine choice. Argue with your mother!), and most all of it is based on physicality, except when it absolutely should be (like say, choosing a ~5′10 dark-skinned black woman for Storm).

And I think there’s some malarkey afoot. I think there needs to be some serious consideration on part of fancasters and actual casting agents alike to rethink race when it comes to the [white] X-Men, especially since they’re the X-Men of all teams. So I’ll make the case for a black Cyclops:

1. There is no quota on Black X-Men: There’s a bug in your ear that’s been whispering lies to you for years, it says something to the effect of “We need a black person on the team for diversity. How bout Storm?” And you’ve gotten complacent. Storm does not have to be the only black person on your X-Men roster.

2. The X-Men represent diversity: Iceman is gay, Cyclops and Prof. X are disabled (sorta), there are plenty of women, oh and everybody except Storm is white. Of the A-List X-Men, there is only *one* POC character. I’d argue that an MCU X-Men needs to champion diversity like never before.

3. The X-Men represent minority struggle while being mostly white: There’s a cognitive dissonance in the metaphor that has always been there, and for the most part, nobody cares. To appeal to the white readers of the 60′s, the X-Men were all initially white. That way, the message of the mutants could be related to the audience with a familiar face. We don’t need to approach the problem that way in 202?

4. Just because that’s the way it’s always been, doesn’t mean that’s the way it should be: The first line of defense. Sorry, that will never be a good justification for literally any idea. It’s time for some more critical thinking.

5. We don’t all want to be Bishop: So say you’re white and you have a kid who for his birthday having a costume party. You’ve bought some X-Men costumes and you want each kid to pick one. 9 white kids and one black kid show up to your house. As the kids deliberate who gets what costume, be it Cyke or Wolvie or whatever, you yell at everybody to “STOP!”, point to the one black kid and tell him “You’re gonna be Bishop. That’s it, end of story!”

We don’t all want to be Bishop. The black child could have the best Cyclops interpretation within him, but you’ll never know if you don’t let him try. And that’s no different from the Black actors of Hollywood. There’s no reason why all of the black talent should *have* to compete for the role of Bishop or Storm, which I’ve discussed, while Joe Schmo can walk up and audition for literally anybody he wants.

Jharrel Jerome is 23 and has an Emmy to his name. He needs to be in the MCU in some capacity, period. Stephan James is another. How bout Damson Idris. Ashton Sanders. But no, no, let’s fancast Dacre Montgomery or Ansel or Joe Keery again as [Human Torch, Wolverine, Iceman, Angel, I’ve literally seen it all.]

6. Nobody wants to see the B-team if it comes down to it. The next line of defense from your racebending naysayers after “That’s the way it’s always been!” is “Well, what about Psylocke, Bishop, Forge and Jubilee?” who are otherwise known as B-tier X-Men. The problem is, we’ve got limited time and limited spots.

So since the X-Men is all about wonky metaphors that make half sense, let me give you another: Let’s say somebody approaches you and says “Hey buddy, I got two free concert tickets for ya! You can either see Michael Jackson Sings the Blues, or you can go see Justin Timberlake. Free of charge!”

Now, are you used to MJ singing the blues? No! Do you have a problem with going to see Justin Timberlake? No, he’s fine on a Wednesday! He had that one little diddy we liked that one time. We’d love to see him eventually! But are you gonna say, “fuck that, I’m going to see MJ Sings the Blues” regardless? Hell yes, because that’s still Michael Jackson. He’s gonna give the same amazing performance he always does, it’s just gonna be the blues. And speaking of blues...

7. Black is not Blue, Brown is not Blue: Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard this one: “I don’t care if you’re black, white, purple, or green, I’m going to treat you all the same!” I will not say all have this intention, but some fancasters have noticed that the racial diversity is kinda low within the A-List X-Men, so they oh-so-generously give the following roles to a black or brown person: Iceman, Nightcrawler, Beast.

Notice the pattern? It’s a microaggression, and it’s bullshit. What these fancasters are implicitly telling you is that, yes the actors will be black or brown, but when the action starts we can ignore that. They’ll be blue by then. In other words, you in fact do care if they’re purple or green. Nobody will cry foul if Dev Patel gets to play Nightcrawler (because that’s a common one I see), but should Anna Diop be Starfire or Michael B. Jordan be Human Torch, I bet there’d be backlash. Oh wait. If that’s you, please stop acting like you actually value diversity. You don’t want to see black or brown skin, period. Unless of course, it’s Storm (refer to point #1).

But wait, there’s more! When brown characters get whitewashed in these movies, it’s crickets! So eventually it’s revealed implicitly that proclaimers of point #4 only care about it one way.

8. Professor X should not be black if you’re not willing to change anyone else: The next line of defense is that some people say the professor should be black, if anybody HAS to be racebent. Something something MLK Jr., Civil Rights or some shit. Number one, I’m not reducing Professor X to being a magical negro for 9 white people (and Storm!) who for all intents and purposes get to have all the action. Number 2, the Professor X/MLK/Magneto/Malcolm X comparison is an oversimplifying disservice to ALL FOUR of those people. I hate that line whenever I see it, please watch a documentary my friends.

9. The Candidates for Racebending: For me, the A-List X-Men are Cyclops, Jean Grey, Iceman, Angel, Beast, Wolverine, Storm, Gambit, Rogue, Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Kitty Pryde. Now, who should be exempt from the racebending? Storm, she’s our designated minority. Gambit, he’s Cajun and they’re white (generally speaking, that’s a fun bit of research). Wolverine, Colossus, and Nightcrawler, because their nationality/ethnicity was the whole point of the Giant-Size premise in the first place. Angel, because his character embodies a privileged white male. Beast and Iceman, I don’t care one way or another (Point #7).

That leaves Cyclops, Rogue, Jean Grey, and Kitty Pryde. Now Jean Grey is a redhead, and we all know that every time a redhead is racebent people sharpen their pitchforks (Mary Jane, Wally West, Iris West), so I will cede the ground on Jean if only so that my ginger friends can get their rep. Kitty Pryde is Jewish, but Jews of color exist. Rogue is from the South. And Cyclops is, well, just Cyclops. That makes those three characters good options for more diversity. But allow me to make the case for Cyclops, specifically.

10. It’s not just diversity for diversity’s sake: If you had to pick who the main character of the X-Men is supposed to be, most would say Cyclops. And so in a series that highlights racial discrimination in society, it makes sense that our main character be black. While changing Cyclops’ skin color should not change who he is as a character, it *should* recontextualize it. Now, as an eventual increasingly radical leader of the X-Men, Cyclops would evoke real life figures such as Colin Kaepernick or, shall I say, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Not that most X-Men fans and writers truly think about what it means to be black anyways. Storm’s minority status is almost always put through the lens of her being a mutant and not her being a black woman. In other words, you can’t argue that making a character black will fundamentally change his or her character when you haven’t even analyzed the racial context of the black character(s) you already have. Another concept that the MCU X-Men should tackle: intersectionality.

11. Representation matters: I have to say it: Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther hit different. And now he is tragically gone. At the end of the day, the MCU moving forward is down its most prominent black male superhero. Which has implications beyond just the movies themselves.

The women are in good hands. Shuri, Okoye, and Nakia are badasses in Wakanda, Valkyrie is ruling Asgard, Storm is almost assuredly on the way, RiRi Williams has already been cast, and Monica Rambeau is here and she’s not even at her most glorious yet. That doesn’t even include variable Δ, or the number of characters who can and will be racebent. And I’ll note again that to me, Gamora doesn’t count, because she’s green (#7 really pisses me off because it’s so blatant. I hate it). Of course from a behind the camera perspective we love black women getting work.

The men are a completely different story. Imma just go out and say it, I can’t stand Falcon and War Machine [in the MCU] because they’re not characters, they’re just two of a slew of MCU minority sidekicks who have essentially been at the beck and call of Captain America and Iron Man, respectively. You cannot tell Falcon’s story without mentioning Cap. The reverse is not true. There’s a whole essay that could be and have been written on “Minorities in the MCU, pre-Black Panther”. Remember, there’s a reason BP made so much noise in the first place.

So excluding those two we have, let’s see, M’Baku, Blade, and Fury who aren’t exactly the most superheroic superheroes, Eli Bradley is proooobably coming, I doubt Miles Morales is coming (because he’s just Peter Parker in the MCU), Luke Cage(?) Bishop(??), Sunspot(???), Blue Marvel(????). Not only are they not A-List, I would not put money on any of them being in the MCU any time soon.

Cyclops is thee Captain America of the X-Men. He’s the frontman. He’s the poster boy. He’s the “boy scout”, which in other words means he’s the hero, if there has to be one. It would mean a lot right now, and specifically *right now*, if he were to be black. The MCU needs it. It NEEDS it.

12. The X-Men is the Summers Story: I’ll even make the case that if just one character needs to racebent, then it should be Cyclops, because that of course implies that other related characters need to be black because half of the X-Men universe is in fact a part of the Summers family.

So now Cable is black. Corsair is black. Havok is black. And one of the most central stories in the X-Men mythos, the Summers family drama, is now a black family drama set in space or the future or where the fuck ever. The concept is boundary pushing. When white families have drama in the media, it gets to be Game of Thrones or Star Wars, while when black families have drama in the media, it has to be black people arguing in a kitchen or living room about their various earthly traumas (I’m @’ing you, Mr. Perry). I mean, that’s all fine and good often times, but I want my black family drama in space, dammit.

And again, this is the X-Men, the series that’s all about *minorities* and their struggle, so again, why not?

Oh, and I’ll even throw out a Havok fancast for you: How bout Jharrel Jerome?

#cyclops #scott summers #the mutants #monica rambeau #X-men #xmen #marvel #MCU #fancast #jharrel would actually be a better sunspot #but you get the point #my man would have OPTIONS

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