#that focused on the x-men spider-man and the f4

[thevindicativevordan]

If you were in charge of the new Ultimate line and had to assign creative teams to five books, which books would you make and who would you put on them?

Obviously Hickman needs a book but generally I would like to see:

Ultimates - Written by Jonathan Hickman and drawn by Bryan Hitch. The flagship title that drives the line. Whatever Hickman wants to do with them works for me, I doubt I could come up with a better pitch than he can.

Ultimate X-Men - Written by James Tynion IV and drawn by Alvaro Martinez Bueno. Look Tynion would never do it, he's making bank with his creator owned work, and I'd rather have him do a DC cape book, but he's who I would pick to write this. Mutants coming together in a world that hates and fears them, but with a twist: they're not out to win over humanity. This version of the X-Men is primarily focused on protecting mutants from humans, and part of the change is because who is on the founding team this go around. My choices, restricting it to five like the original X-Men team, would be Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, Forge, and Emma Frost. Emma taking the position you would usually see Jean in helps justify this team being more militant. She's pushing Cyclops and the rest towards going on the offense. Senator Kelly wants to pass an act aimed at forcing humans to register and build Sentinels to kill those who won't? The X-Men frame him in a way that destroys his political and personal life. Hellfire Club is trying to assert control over mutants? Blackmail them into backing off. It's an X-Men team that is more morally gray than we're used to seeing, and is primarily focusing on countering human bigotry at first. Later we would see Magneto show up and the X-Men react to him.

Ultimate Fantastic Four - Written by Christopher Cantwell and drawn by Federico Vicentini. Cantwell has written both Doom and Reed before, and I think he would kill it on a F4 with a villainous Reed and a Doom that could be heroic. Two pitches come to mind like I mentioned in my previous Ultimate Universe post. Either this team is a traditional Fantastic Four with Maker back in the role of "Mr. Fantastic", but concealing that he remembers the old timeline and is biding his time while he studies this new universe, or it's Dr. Doom taking Reed's position as leader of the F4 while Maker serves as their primary antagonist. Reed back with the FF would make for great tension, you have this guy that everyone thinks of as a great hero - which Reed deliberately goes along with - all the while the other three don't yet realize that he's a monster. Maybe Reed is aiming to kill off Ben and Johnny (Ben for "betraying" him when Reed first turned and "stealing" Sue, Johnny for burning his face and being annoying in general), but keep Sue this time. So the tension is that Reed wants to get Ben and Johnny killed off but doesn't want Sue to blame him, so he's trying to maneuver the two into getting killed by one of their villains in a way Sue won't blame him for, all the while he's also wooing Sue to embrace his outlook on life. Alternatively you go with Doom as leader of the F4, with the new Ultimate Universe being a timeline where Reed is the one who gets fucked up by the events that give them their powers this time. Maker still remembers the old timeline and is pissed that he somehow has ended up even worse off this time around, with Sue, Johnny, and Ben pitying him and chafing under the leadership of Doom who is just barely a hero.

Ultimate Spider-Man - Written by Donny Cates and drawn by Ryan Stegman. This is who I would put on a Peter book. Would be a standard Spider-Man book just like the Bendis one was, only I would have it set in Peter's college years because I'm sick of high school Peter.

Ultimate Black Panther - Written by Geoffrey Thorne and drawn by Sanford Greene. Thorne has wanted the gig for ages, and I liked his post Hickman Secret Wars pitch for the character, from what I remember it was T'Challa patrolling economic zones Wakanda had established internationally to share some of their tech and improve life on Earth elsewhere. Doing that with a "Year 2" T'Challa is my pitch. He's established himself at home and is trying to turn Wakanda into a superpower via sharing it's tech with the world through certain economic zones. He's allowed ordinary Wakandans to leave the country and travel abroad. Wakandan conservatives are pissed at him for doing that, while the liberals are angry T'Challa still has left the strict immigration laws for outsiders intact. Other global powers are eyeing this new player warily, particularly the United States and China. T'Challa has plenty of enemies at home and abroad who are aiming to bring him down, and he has to use his brains, tech, and the power of the heart-shaped herb to stay on top.

#marvel #ultimate universe

[dykerachelsummers]

y’all i have been in such an x-men mood recently and it’s all @ghostbunn’s fault actually

#tee talks #what if...i created an e82 analogue for marvel #that focused on the x-men spider-man and the f4 #also the young avengers runaways and champions #what if i did that #marvel

[orlissa]

So now we have “BatCatPussyGate” or whatever, and I have some thoughts on it—I mean, it does intersect with my area of research.

In case you missed it: a scene where Batman goes down on Catwoman was not included in the Harley Quinn animated series, because, basically, a Batman who gives oral is bad marketing, and makes merchandise hard to sell (they did use the word “toy” in the statement, but you just know they meant action figures aka collectibles aka whatever older male fans buy). It is not even the first such scandal involving Batman in recent years, but we’ll get to that later.

There is a LOT to unpack here, so let’s get started. I’ll try to make it as coherent as I can, but this post still might be a bit of a mess.

First of all, we have to make one thing clear in which Marvel and DC differ from each other (I think I might have talked about this before, but it bears repeating): it’s what I like to call “hierarchical structure of characters.” Basically, Marvel’s structure is like the nervous system: there are interconnected nodes, but no one, clearly defined center. The Avengers are important, but so are the X-Men, and Spider-Man, and the Fantastic Four… Plus Wolverine has been an X-Man and an Avenger, Spider-Man has his own lore, but he has been a member of the F4… you get the picture. A big pro of this structure is if that one node falls (a series doesn’t sell), it’s no big deal, because the system remains standing, so, basically, you can experiment with stories. If it doesn’t stick, it doesn’t stick, you move on. DC’s structure, on the other hand, is more like a spider web: you have the Holy Trinity—Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman—in the middle, and everything else connects through them. And if the center falls… everything falls. Which means that even though the Holy Trinity has HUGE cultural visibility (greater than of any single Marvel character), they are pretty much set in their ways. They cannot change much, because what they are now is what sells, and any significant change in representation might lead to failure, which then in turn would lead to the failure of the whole spider web. (I have a like 40 pages long paper on how, because of this, Wonder Woman needs to continuously appeal to both the male—sexualizing male gaze—and the female—identifying female gaze—gazes, compared to Carol Danvers, who keeps jumping between the two ends throughout her publication history.)

And within this scheme, Batman is the picture of hypermasculinity. He is powerful, intelligent, cannot do wrong, closed off from his emotions, and women fall for him, even if he cannot properly commit to a romantic relationship (this last thing is something that goes back to the Silver Age of comics, because male heroes just cannot have love, because nothing can be more important than their vigilantism, while female superheroes are lesser, because they are ready to hang up their capes for love).

Then what does academia has to say about this? Note: I’m going to be talking a lot about stuff that film criticism came up with, but since both movies and comics are a visual narrative medium, I’ve found that you can pretty much project everything about movies to comics.

So, first of all, one big shortcoming of feminist film criticism is that (not entirely unjustly) it is mostly focused on how women are portrayed in movies—especially how they are oppressed and objectified, while it leaves men/male characters… unstudied. Masculinity studies exists, but it’s pretty new and marginal. The availability of male bodies in film to the female gaze is also mostly unexamined (but I’ve dabbled in it! Talking about sexy male bodies in a detached academic manner is fun!), and it’s somewhat of a problem.

Richard Dyer studied the peculiarities of male pinups, and he came up with three instabilities: 1, it violates the codes of looking (because traditionally it’s the men who look, and women who are being looked at), 2, it rejects passivity (because being looked at is read as being passive, and the male body is supposed to be active, so, usually, male and female pinups are posed in a totally different way), and 3, it breaks the myth of the phallus (male power signified by the penis)—because once we start looking into it, we’ll discover that the phallus just… cannot live up to the hype. Therefore not studying the male body/male presence and focusing on the female body/presence actually serves the patriarchy, because the phallus can only keep its central, dominant position until it remains unexamined. Once we look into it, we discover that it’s not that great, and then we can displace patriarchy.

And then what does it mean in practice? Here comes the other Batman scandal I mentioned: about three years ago, DC came up with their new line of comics, where the big draw was the total lack of censoring. It was promised to be super bloody and full of gore and cursing and stuff. The first series of this line was Batman Damned, and the first issue featured the… batawang. I mean Batman’s penis. Returning from some mission, Batman starts undressing the moment he steps into the Batcave, stripping naked, and on some panels one can clearly see… little Bruce. It had no point. It could have easily been brushed out, and it would not have looked out of place. Or course, the internet had a field day with it, about the same way they are having a field day with his lack of oral sex now. It grew so big that within a couple of days DC announced that they’d airbrush out the batawang in the second printing and in any subsequently sold digital editions (which then caused the price of the first print editions skyrocket, to some $300, I believe). So to sum up: DC showed Batman’s penis for shock value. Seeing Batman’s penis wasn’t awe-inspiring, a show of power, but the butt of the joke—because examining the phallus shows that it cannot live up to the hype! So Batman’s power, his standing as a masculine ideal/male power fantasy was misplaced in a moment. (Something similar was happening behind the scenes of the Watchmen series as well: when Tom Mison had a full frontal nude scene, they actually used a penis-double—as there was no shot where his face and penis was shown at the same time—now imagine the casting for that role!)

In some way, this is happening now as well—not showing Batman performing oral sex is not because it “hurts toy sales;” it’s because it breaks the myth of the phallus, thus it breaks the myth of the Batman as an immaculate male power fantasy. Batman receives—power, admiration, and, of course, sex. But within the framework of sex, he needs to be the one that dominates, the one that mostly on the receiving end of the pleasure. What is important is that 1, he gets the woman and 2, he gets off. Whether the woman gets off is unimportant within this framework, because it doesn’t serve the myth of Batman/the male power fantasy. Within the fantasy, women need to want to sleep with him because he is Batman (because the male reader identifies with Batman, and he needs to feels as if the women in the comic want him just because he is him/Batman), but if he performs oral sex on the woman, it presupposes an active need for effort from his part from her to want him. It gives her agency, which elevates her to a partner, not an object to-be-looked-at.

So if Batman performs oral sex, his body will be put on display as something beyond the realm of the male power fantasy; it will be examined, and thus determined he is not all-powerful. His dominance within the narrative will be questioned. The role of the woman will be elevated. The patriarchal dominance displaced. So, yeah, that’s why Batman can’t give oral—not because it will hurt the toy sales.

I mean, it might. But because it will hurt Batman as a hypermasculine ideal

#batman #dc #masculinity #male power fantasy #batcatpussygate #mine

[spock-smokes-weed]

hey there! as someone new-ish to comics, do you have recs on more comic centric blogs? it can be both marvel or dc. (love your blog btw, and all your written posts) :)

@traincat has a lot of really great posts all about spider-man and the F4!!! They’re very in depth and I’ve learned a lot from them!!!

@imperiuswrecked is a comic veteran friend of mind and they’re all about Namor!!! They make a lot of funny posts about the silly evil fish man and just has a really fun blog in general!!

@scarletbirbs is a fellow Tim Drake stan and writes a lot of good meta analysis about Timmy, the Batfam, and Young Justice 98!

@mutantapologist has a bunch of really neat art and is mostly x-men focused!! they were one of the first ppl I followed when I got into the x-men and their page has a lot of quality memes.

I hope that helps at all (these were just some of the few that came to mind) and I’m really glad you like my blog!!! I’m mostly just screaming into the abyss about my silly little picture books and it’s nice to know at least some ppl are listening.

#ask box #thanks so much for the ask!!!

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

The Anti-Spider-Girl Agenda within Marvel

In 1998 Tom DeFalco, former EIC of Marvel, created Mayday Parker/Spider-Girl. Her debut did gangbusters and a first edition of it still fetches a lot of cash. She got a solo series in 1999 which launched an entire interconnected universe of characters, the MC2 universe. 

The universe ultimately wrapped up in 2010 but throughout that time Mayday was being regularly published in one format or another, she was even the FIRST ever Marvel character to get a digital ongoing series before it went to print. An impressive accolade to add to the fact that she still holds the record for the female Marvel solo protagonist with the longest running continuous series. That is to say no breaks or relaunches, just over 60 straight monthly issues...

... And THEN she went another 40 straight issue for good measure before finally being continued in a relaunch. 

So, given how the anniversaries of both her debut and the debut of her series/the MC2 universe have come and gone I have to ask...why has there been 0 acknowledgement from Marvel?

We’re in the middle of a 2099 celebration, and that imprint (that lasted less time and was arguably less successful) was an on and off presence between 2013-2017.

We’re going to get something acknowledging Iron Man 2020 a character who is hardly in the zeitgeist of Marvel fandom to the same extent as Spider-Girl.

Now in fairness both of those examples are reliant upon the literal names of both properties. It does make a certain amount of sense to celebrate the 2099 line in a year ending in the number 9, thus bringing us ever closer to the real life year 2099. Equally it makes sense to revive Iron Man 2020 during well...the year 2020.

But then you get to Marvel celebrating the Earth X stuff. Now for all you out there who haven’t read the Earth X stuff I want you to ask yourself a question and be very honest with yourselves. How much do you actually know about the Earth X universe just via osmosis, without having read it. I’m willing to bet it ain’t much if anything and what you do know probably amounts to:

It was Marvel’s answer to Kingdom Come

Alex Ross did art for it

MAYBE you know Norman Osborn was the President

Oh and you probably remember that really cool Venom/symbiote looking character who was a version of Spider-Girl!

Golly, it’s almost like if Marvel are going to celebrate the not-that-well-remembered Earth X line (which like 2099 also lasted for less time than the MC2 universe) then they should do SOMETHING (beyond releasing some trades) to mark EITHER of the appropriate anniversaries for Spider-Girl and/or the MC2 universe as a whole.

But no. We get some trades and also Mayday appeared in Spider-Geddon for a few issues...at no point being solely in the spotlight...

This my friends is simply the latest in a very, very, very, very, very long list of instances where Mayday/the MC2 brand is mistreated.

  And a lot of that mistreatment I think is due to Tom DeFalco’s hand in creating Mayday and the MC2 universe. Because frankly, in particular relation to the MC2 universe, DeFalco’s work has also been mistreated in recent years.

  The facts are: 

Mayday’s ongoing (Spectacular Spider-Girl volume 2) was turned into a mini in spite of solicits 

She was cancelled so Anya Corazon could get the name Spider-Girl 

The very next time she shows up her Dad is killed off, thus fundamentally wrecking the whole premise for her character 

The guy who killed her Dad proceeded to treat her as an abused babysitter 

That same guy finished things off by removing her unique name and costume 

That same guy (Slott) in the same run before and after Spider-Verse wrecked other elements from DeFalco’s ASM work AND threw shade at his origin for MJ, calling it reductive 

Slott also was hired by DeFalco and had to uncomfortably admit he’d conned the man. Which combined with everything else makes me wonder if DeFalco maybe threw some shade Slott’s way back when he was an intern. Like he looked upon him as underhanded and unworthy of his place in the company, and Slott knew that and resented DeFalco for it. And again, being EIC earns enemies and DeFalco was the EIC when Slott started 

Slott also wrecked Ben Reilly a character DeFalco did not create but had strong associations with. 

During secret wars the story focused HEAVILY upon Hope Pym, Stinger and Ant-Man at a time when coincidentally the Ant-Man movie was happening. 

During Secret Wars the same writer who wrecked her in Spider-Verse COINCIDENTALLY happened to a story about the daughter of Spider-Man who was born during the 1990s, but it was his own OC 

During Secret Wars, Mayday appeared on the cover of one of the ongoings she was set to appear in, but it was then revised to be Anya 

Mayday when she began appearing regularly in a new title was seemingly killed off early into it and didn’t appear for awhile, not getting much spotlight when she did

Mayday had to share her spotlight moments in Spider-Geddon with Anya (again), still wasn’t allowed to be called Spider-Girl again, and the story was mostly about Annie not her. 

She was going to appear in the USM cartoon but then that was totally changed to be a gender flipped Peter Parker

Eric Masterson/Thunderstrike, another well remembered DeFalco creation, has also gotten little-no attention this decade despite it being a 20th/25th anniversary of him too. One of the more notable acknowledgments of his character was turning him into a Neo-Nazi for Spider-Punk to beat up.

Spider-Girl’s VERY SUCCESSFUL digests were discontinued but conveniently other digests for other Marvel properties either continued or started up after Mayday’s were discontinued. 

The ‘complete’ Spider-Ham trade paperbacks ‘conveniently’ do not include Spider-Ham’s equivalent character for Spider-Girl, Swiney-Girl

Gee that’s an AWFUL lot of coincidence, especially when you consider fucking Spider-Ham has been getting more attention from Marvel than Mayday; and that was BEFORE Into the Spider-Verse came out.

I’m sorry, but it’s really, really, really, really, really, really obvious that there is an anti DeFalco/Spider-Girl/MC2 sentiment within Marvel.

But why you may ask?

There are a few reasons for that. The biggest one though is that Tom DeFalco is the former EIC of Marvel comics.

At the time of me writing this, Axel Alonso recently stopped being EIC of Marvel and no bad words are muttered about him. People in the industry equally have little bad to say about Joe Quesada, especially those within Marvel.

But then again...Joey Q is still working for Marvel and in a position ABOVE the EIC. He never stopped working for Marvel even when he stopped being the EIC. And Alonso, one of Quesada’s right hand yes men conveniently took over for him and do you know he didn’t run the company all THAT differently to his former boss. Funny that right?

It’s almost as funny as how other former EICs of Marvel absolutely don’t have the same treatment. Jim Shooter is routinely BLASTED by countless fans and creators, especially the ones who worked under him, even though he oversaw arguably the height of Marvel comics’ creative history. Bob Harrass and his decisions are often talked about less than flatteringly. Tom DeFalco meanwhile had a whole disparaging phrase named after him.

Yes. That is is a real life Marvel letter page from the mid-2000s literally using the term ‘DeFalco’s Folly’ in reference to a former Marvel EIC and outright BLAMING HIM for their bankruptcy in the 1990s.*

When you are the EIC you make enemies. It’s rare that the boss of any business isn’t resented on some level by their employees. And your words take on much more meaning that what you simply say, being subject to misinterpretation.**

But now imagine you are the boss of a bunch of creative nerds (for most creators of superheros are nerds). Creative people A LOT of the time tend to be fairly sensitive as is, it’s likely critical to their craft. Nerds historically have tended to be sensitive (that’s neither a good nor bad thing). If you are the boss of those people, hoo boy will you ever make enemies. Tom DeFalco in fact once told a fellow editor that an innocuous comment about how an artist under said editor’s employ drew a character was being taken by the artist as an insult to their whole career.

NOW imagine all that and also under your tenure the company goes bankrupt and a lot of people lose their jobs?

Enemies. Enemies galore. 

Even if it wasn’t necessarily your fault, you are the most visible person in authority so you get the blame. If the internet wasn’t that much of a thing do you really think that Ike Perlmutter would be the guy who got the blame for deep sixing the X-Men and F4 in the 2010s? Hell no, it’d have been Axel Alonso and/or Tom Brevoort.

So yeah, Mayday was DeFalco’s baby and the MC2 universe more than anything was the logical extrapolation from the Marvel universe as it existed under HIS tenure as EIC. It’s very much seen as representative of DeFalco himself. Thus if people have an issue with DeFalco, they’re not going to do all that much positive as far as his stuff is concerned, in particular if it gives him anything like royalties.

But on top of all of that I think Spider-Girl and the MC2 universe simply conceptually lean against Marvel’s ‘party line.

I didn’t notice this, but it was pointed out to me by an acquaintance that the MC2 universe is VERY similar to DC’s Earth 2 concept, wherein the classic heroes are older and/or retired with their immediate descendants picking up their mantles. Marvel and DC have this petty and asinine pissing contest between them, with many within Marvel even outright hating the fact that they have numbered universes like DC. It’s likely (definitely) the reason Earth 616 was rebranded as ‘Earth Prime’. This of course won’t stop them ripping off DC if they think it’ll make bank

The MC2 universe was a universe of OPTIMISM. In particular in the 2000s, and this attitude has definitely lingered, there is this emphasis upon cynicism and at best Pyrrhic victories within Marvel. Partially this is due to a misinterpretation of what ‘realism’ means, but partially this is due to  misguided belief that controversy sells and pissing the fans off makes bank. 

The MC2 universe is very old school. It’s deliberately designed to be nostalgic and feel Silver Age in it’s sensibilities. this is why the violence is not all that gory, the sexual references are at best reserved and tasteful and there’s that optimism I talked about. not to mention it kicks back hard against the decompression/writing for the trade storytelling model Marvel typically employs and has typically employed for almost 20 years now. Whether it’s simply because the universe doesn’t conform, or because Marvel views anything ‘retro’ as bad because it isn’t ‘modern’ (with no inspection of whether the modern trends are a GOOD thing) the end result is that the MC2′s sensibilities are not in line with how Marvel WANTS their comics produced.

Then you have Mayday herself. Mayday is a living symbol of both the Clone Saga and the Spider Marriage. Whilst Marvel are NOW willing to more openly reference the Clone Saga, few people i any kind of positions of power look upon it (or even aspects of it) with anything but disdain and embarrassment. Dan Slott for instance openly hated it. As for the Spider Marriage...I mean do I even need to explain that one?

I’m sure a frustrating fact for Marvel during Spider-Girl’s publication, and something likely passed down to Axel Alonso when he was handpicked by Quesada, was that the book refused to die. Spider-Girl was scheduled for cancellation multiple times and defied the odds multiple times. Marvel 90% of the time won’t kill a book if it’s making a profit (especially in a day and age when they were still feeling the fallout from bankruptcy) so they kept Spider-Girl around, but because it was so against the party line I’m VERY sure they’d have LIKED to have had the justification for killing the title. That’s likely why they shuffled her onto a digital platform in 2009. Amazing Spider-Girl did poorly enough to justify cancelling it but not so poorly that they couldn’t still make money from it. Another relaunch would’ve boosted sales for the series, but making it a digital series at a time when hardly anyone read digitially (let alone PAID for it), now that’s a shrewd manoeuvre. You make SOME money from it, you pay lip service to keeping it alive and appeasing very upset Spider-Marriage fans, but you’ve essentially guaranteed it’s failure long term.

Part of that annoying success was those incredibly successful digests that were possibly indoctrinating a lot of young impressionable readers on a character/brand Marvel wanted to bury and aspects of their flagship character (read: a married older Peter Parker) that they wanted to bury. Hence Spider-Girl digests disappeared but conveniently there were still digests for Ultimate Spider-Man sold featuring a young, buffoonish, Avengers worshipping Peter Parker.

Oh...and she also had the incredibly brand sexy name ‘Spider-Girl’ that Joe Quesada wanted for his own precious pet OC character, Anya Corazon. In fact Mayday was going to be rebranded as Spider Woman in Spider-Girl #75, specifically so that Anya Corazon could be given the name Spider-Girl. Years later Mayday was cancelled specifically for that purpose.

tl:dr There is a VERY OBVIOUS anti Tom DeFalco/Spider-Girl/MC2 agenda within Marvel.

My hope is that it’s rooted out, hopefully as a result of the 20 year nostalgia factor kicking in sooner of later (her series was most prevalent in the 2000s) and more female creators coming into the industry.

*Which is very much unfair. There is rarely one singular decision that results in bankruptcy. So whilst DeFalco making a single purchase might’ve been a contribution (emphasis on ‘might’) the idea that it was THE ultimate cause of Marvel’s problems is ridiculous.

Marvel were heading for the shitter the moment Ron Perleman purchased it in the 1980s. They were the victims of a ‘pump and dump’ scheme wherein sleazy yet clever financial people showed up, created a bubble to make a load of money, then moved on to the next thing when the bubble burst. To my understanding a similar thing occurred with baseball cards.

** In fact DeFalco’s friend, Ron Frenz, has spoken about how he was witness to DeFalco saying one thing and the people listening to him hearing and acting upon it in a totally different way than was intended.

The same happened to Stan Lee when he made an aside about Iron Man’s lack of a nose, which resulted in his employees believing Stan wanted them to give Iron Man a nose.

P.S. You know in the 1990s when all the 2099 books got cancelled sans Spider-Man 2099, they never got a second bite of the apple.

But between the late 90s and 2000s the MC2 universe was seemed successful enough that around 2006-2007 both Spider-Girl AND the wider MC2 universe were given second volumes, even the ones that only lasted like 6 issues.

Since then there’s been at least 3 attempts to revive the 2099 universe, we’re living through the latest one. 

And yet Mayday doesn’t seem to even be worthy of a spotlight issue in the current Spider-Verse series. 

#Spider-Man #Spider-Girl #Mayday Parker #mc2 #mc2 universe #Tom DeFalco #Ron Frenz #Thunderstrike #Eric Masterson #Dan Slott #Joe Quesada

[vo-kopen]

Concepts for the Petty Kang story

Not planning to write this, just spitballing ideas. Backstory is a version of Marvel's universe's Kang is being erased for existence thanks to all the reality breaking plot recently, so in a last "f--- you" he attempts to erase the Avengers from history, since he is doomed either way. He erases Tony Stark, Hank Pym, Bruce Banner, and Donald Blake, assuming that Hank being removed will prevent the rise of the Wasp too. (F4 and X-Men appear naturally, Spider-Man might not given the obscure link he has to Hank Pym) What this creates is a different line up for the Avengers. Jan still becomes the Wasp but with her own skills; designing a wingsuit woven out of that solar fabric tech - like the one Georgia Tech has been working on. She will be able to zap a foe with a touch, as well as magnetize to let her scale up buildings to glide through her city. She is one of the first Avengers to appear, and one of the most heroic and moral. She was also be diagnosed as Autistic here, chop it up to her not being diagnosed in the main universe and her special interests being dismissed as girly stuff, or just that it is a different reality. Second is Jane foster as Thor, but not like in the comics. Closer to the old What If, without Donald Blake with her in the cave she finds the hammer, and transforms into Thor to save herself. But here she resembles the male-presenting god of the original comics. Her journey would be focused on gender and the differences between Thor and Jane, as well as her identifying as non binary and deciding that even if she wasn't born nb it is who she is, and it is valid. She and the Wasp will be romantically involved. A few years in universe pass and Ant-Man emerges, from the scientist Otto Octavius. Working to create technology for S.H.I.E.L.D. to fight mutants and other villains. (Plenty of villains emerge regardless of heroes) he builds a harness with a pair of super strong arms along with a helmet allowing him to control drones. The project is meant to be mass produced, but paranoid of being replaced he makes the tech locked to his brainwaves. This puts him at odds with S.H.I.E.L.D. and has strained things further. A few years later in Hawaii a young black Jewish boy named Ken Mack is injured by an X-Men fight, exposing a layer of iridium under his arm. His parents attempt to hide the tear for a few months, but eventually while trying to save people he is exposed to the public, dubbed the "Iron Man" by the news. He went on the run before being captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. to be experimented on with aid from Ant-Man and Calvin Zabo . Despite realizing he lacked mutant DNA they still ripped off all his flesh, exposing his metallic body underneath. Terrified and hurt, and still not ten years old, he along with Ant-Man would be recruited to the black ops "Avengers" S.H.I.E.L.D. team because Mettle's life must suck everywhere. That team would later ally with the duo of the Wasp and Thor during a dangerous mission against monsters. Not sure what the Hulk in this universe would be, but I am thinking possibly Daisy Johnson. Or maybe she would be called Hulkling. In this concept Calvin Zabo would engineer the Hulk formula for S.H.I.E.L.D. based off samples of Captain America's DNA from before he was lost. Working on inmates he managed to perfect the chemical cocktail, but they would use their strength to turn on him and inject an overdose into Calvin and his young daughter, leading to them rampaging across New York. Again in this version Ant-Man and Iron Man would be sent to contain S.H.I.E.L.D.'s mistake, while Thor and the Wasp would come to protect civilians and stop the monsters. After the fight the Wasp uses her family's money and influence to adopt Ken and Daisy, as both are not even teens. The two of them also become sidekicks to her and Thor, while Ant-Man takes the imprisoned Hulk to experiment on. So yeah, that's the concept. And again it's just a weird AU, not a proper part of Marvel. And yes it was inspired by that Justice League movie from a few years back. Anyway tagging @jogress @thefingerfuckingfemalefury @renaroo @majingojira @lissabelle116 and anyone else possibly interested in this word vomit of a concept

#avengers #alternate universe #kang the conqueror #avengers academy comic

[russian-spider]

Do you see mcu focusing on Bucky more post phase 3? I don't know since X-Men are back, FF, Deadpool, Namor, Marvel and others will get their movies. I know it's a shot in the dark.

Idk, I think the focus will be in Black Panther, Captain Marvel and Spider-man, even with x-men and F4. To establish the x-men will take time, years, and the F4, while very important to the marvel universe, will be like any other franchise, and it will take the Guardians place I think. Namor won't get a movie any time soon, his rights are complicated, just like Hulk's, and his world is very similar to Aquaman. He could be the antagonist in a F4 movie tho.I don't know how much focus Bucky will get, but I do believe he will still be relevant to the earth based movies. As I've said before, it's not like the mcu is going to suddenly become the xmcu.

#reply #Anonymous

[thevindicativevordan]

How would you rate Marvel and DC's showings at SDCC?

Marvel was great. DC was terrible. I should be at the point now where I don't let that bother me as it's been the case ever since BvS, but damnit I'm not happy with the state of DC outside the Trinity.

Running down the list for Marvel:

Comics - Obviously the big news is Hickman writing a "Sandman" for Marvel. My guess is it's either a Dr. Strange book, or a book focused on the Marvel Abstracts (Death, Order, Chaos, the Living Tribunal, etc). Of course I will be picking that up Day 1. Otherwise the Tradd Moore Dr. Strange book sounds interesting, I'm hopeful that the new F4 creative team will come out guns blazing, Aaron is finally off Avengers but we don't know what's next for him, there's going to be a "Cold War" Captain America event featuring Steve and Sam, Cantwell is leaving Iron Man with issue 25, and he's doing a Namor book and another book where Osborn will be a hero going by the moniker "Gold Goblin". Krakoa will last until 2024 at least which is when they might start entering the second act of Hickman's plan. None of the Spider-Man teases interested me.

Animation - Goddamn but that Spider-Man cartoon sure interests me! Gorgeous art style, finally a Marvel cartoon with an actual budget again. They say it's set in the MCU but that can't be true. You've got Norman and Otto showing up here which would outright contradict No Way Home, and Peter gets a classic costume. I assume this is set in the "MCU Multiverse" like the What-If series, on a different Earth. Can't wait to watch, would be nice if we could have great Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man cartoons all running simultaneously like the 90s again. Never seen the X-Men 90s cartoon but maybe I'll go watch that and check out the revival.

Film/TV - Aside from Spider-Man, Blade, and F4 I don't have any interest in the upcoming Marvel slate. Maybe I'll go see the Avengers movies but right now I'm scaling back. Hot damn did this show the confidence invested in Feige all the same, even coming off of the worst Marvel Phase yet he still is able to get people excited over a bunch of logos. That Wakanda Forever trailer was beautiful but I can't help feeling bitter over what it means for T'Challa.

For DC

Comics - Williamson's big "reveal" only elicited eye rolls and groans from what I've seen. Nobody cares about infinite Earths when you can't even put out books featuring anyone but the Bats. Aside from two Static books and a YA Superman book, EVERYTHING else was Batman related. I get that DC likely wants to hold back on revealing what's coming in 2023 until we're deeper into Dark Crisis, but it's painful to see how small the DCU has shrunk compared to Marvel. They're not even trying right now.

Animation - The only interesting reveal was the 2023 DTV lineup of JL/RWYB, Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham, Legion of Superheroes, and JL: Warworld. Only Legion and Warworld caught my eye, not a RWYB fan, and DtctG's main appeal is the Mignola art which I doubt they can afford to replicate. Other two seem to be the Tomorowverse movies, and both are likely going to star Superman in a lead role given Legion has his symbol in the promo and Warworld is self-explanatory. That takes the sting out of him not getting his own solo movie for his 85th at least. Ideally Legion would be an adaption of the Johns/Frank Superman & the Legion of Superheroes arc, and Warworld would be an adaption of PKJ's Warworld Saga, with the League replacing the Authority, but it's just as likely they will be original stories. Guess the rumors of a CoIE trilogy were false, no matter I'm not a huge fan of that story anyway. Edit: Looks like the Legion story is going to be Superman introducing Supergirl to the team, that could still be fun although I hope Clark is more involved than just passing her off to them and disappearing.

Film - Shazam 2 looks funny but I expect it to be another modest success. Black Adam looks cool but everyone was hoping the rumor Cavill would show up was true, and weren't happy when it didn't happen. Deadline wouldn't usually report "buzz" if there wasn't at least plausible cause but this time they looked like fools. Cavill and WB have been playing a game of chicken for five years and I'm tired of it. If you're seriously going to let the Rock put a post credit scene in BA that sets up a showdown with Superman, fucking get a Superman. Either give Cavill another solo movie like he wants or recast the role, because Cavill is not going to blink. Damn if WB doesn't look sad right now, can't even promote their 2023 movies because of the Miller and Heard controversies, never mind talking about the future.

DC got bodied this year. Speculation that they're saving reveals for Fandome feel far fetched to me given A. the likelihood that there are changes to the slate coming because of the restructure and Hamada's likely departure, and B. last year they announced a date for Fandome in April and it's almost August now. I don't think we'll get a Fandome this year because everyone is waiting for Zaslav to pick his new DC head and then they'll be the one to start greenlighting pitches. Five years since Snyder got kicked out and DC is still a mess. What a waste.

#dc comics #marvel #sdcc2022