Post- Age of Ultron

You know we are dealing with the same mess we had a few weeks ago, there isn't really anybook I'm finding that entertaing though the Avenger's Enemy Within book was the best of the bunch, Iron-Man being a cosmic character seems like they are reaching, Thor has great art but is an obtuse read that suffers from the time travel plague sweeping across the company as a whole. Can you think of any book where it's not mucked up with time travel, body swtiching or alternate reality? Daredevil is the only one that pops into my head, though the rather underwhelming Thunderbolts counts. The Hulk will end up in some sort of return to the savage land with the Raw Hide Kid showing up and riding dinosaurs so that sounds like another time slip of a mess.

Defenders now has a Wonder=woman knock off, why not make Valkyrie your Wonder-woman kncok off? Then bringing in Neil Gaiman's Angela character to end the Age of Ultron, is Joss Whedon in charge how did we end up with so manny warrior women, not that I havea problem with them, some of my favorite marvel characters are women,...She-hulk, Tigra, Wasp and Scarlet Witch. Why not further develop those?

So we can agree Age of Ultron is a flop, it should have taken place in the Ultimate Universe, so looking ahead we have this Infinity which will be rehash of the Infinity Gauntlet story, bringing Thanos in and ramping up Guardians of the Galaxy for the big screen, we know Captain America,Thor and Spider-man have movies coming out so expect them to be spotlighted.So Captain America should have his other worldly adventures wrapped up by septemeber, according to sollicts the God-slayer thing gets drug out in Thor til August, and Expect Peter Parker to be back by the time the sequel hits. So with Movies and now ..television entertwined with who gets a push, expect more from SHEILD, the rumors of Luke Cage debunked so J August's character will get a push who ever it might be. Then on Marvel's slate it's Ant-man, Dr.Strange and Black Panther, so by the fall the seeds will start being sewn to increase awareness of those characters. Falcon should get more face time since he is in Cap 2, he is already being shocased on the Avengers Assembled Cartoon, Winter Soldier...well he has had his own book and since he is the villain in this then, I don't know. He seems a weird choice for a villian to me.

Speaking of Villians , the other heroes aside from Dr.Strange have a fairly weak rogues gallery and Black Panther barely has one at all, I mean Klaw? Man-Ape, though I suppose they could take him to the Savage Land or something. Ant-man has ...Ultron, then Egg Head and I suppose any of the masters of evilm I think he would be a good gateway to bring in Vision and Wonder-man. Joss confirmed this week that yes, Scarlet With and Quicksliver will be in the Avengers sequel, I thin this will help phase Rober Downey jr out. I'm fine with an Iron-man less team. They will more than liely follow the books and have the team drop down to Cap, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Quicksliver and bring in Black Panter though Captain Marvel is suppose to show up.

Marvel studios has an aversion to characters keeping their mask on so hows that going to work with Black Panther? Will Dr.Strange be in Blu pajamss? At 45 MArk Ruffalo knows the clock is ticking on him as Banner in a stand alone and just think how bad an Iron-man four without Downey will flop as they are saying the character is enough like James Bond that anyone can play him. How long with the Comic book movie trend last? Regardless Marvel needs to step up to the plate and start writing books that have me looking forward to my weekly comic book store run rather than just me making it out of obligation, because once we reach that level of apathy do you think we will pay for movies?

Iron -Man 3

O.k here we go on very little sleep after seeing a late night showing.

Mostly entertaining, I think Iron Man 3 succeeds if not in being a good movie then at at least better than the previous film in this trilogy. It has a strong start and acknowledges the Avengers as being a traumatic even for the character , part of this being the fact he has to acknowledge that gods and aliens exist in the world and his power is he's a guy who build things. There is a wink to A.I.M but no guys in yellow beep keeper suits, hazmat suits would have worked as well. It was somewhere in the first big action scene that things went left of center for me. In a much similar way to how they did in Thor, because for almost of the movie we have a powerless Tony Stark, due to armor malfunctions. So this way I suppose we have an Iron-man movie with him not in the suit the bulk of the movie ,trying to make it more like a James bond film and the giving you a big superhero ending like something out of the transformers as Stark jumps from one armor to the next.

I can appreciate the message being conveyed by the depiction of the Mandarin, as just an actor playing role as I have always said you can throw any Arab in front of a camera and tell the world its Osma Bin Laden and how are we to say different, if all the back story we have on him is what CNN tells us. But at the end of the day the Mandarin who is a pivotal character in the Marvel Universe when it comes to Stark's world...just doesn't exist. No power rings , nothing. So if you going into this expecting it to be faithful to the comics in any way then expect to be let down. The fact the movie has some heart and Downey's portrayal of Stark continues to carry the film don't make it a waste of money but after the few two film captured a balance of reverence and being broad enough for the general movie going public then, this is a jarring turn.

The only accurate information the creators gave us going into this is its not as dark as the trailers would lead you to believe. They keep a low level of humor buzzing through out. As far as Easter eggs, they have jumped the rabbit on this. Don't expect to see S.H.E.I.L.D or any Avengers, unless the trailer for Thor 2 counts and the post-credit scene , which does not have anything to do with Guardians of the Galaxy.
The best easter egg to me was the Hulk-Buster armor and the ten seconds it spent on screen.They are really going to have a lot of action figures to sell.

The fact Norman Osborn wasn't in the Iron Patriot costume was fine as he is in the rights to Spider-man deal, and the Iron Patriot was pretty much a running joke. There was no Rescue even though Potts does have on a suit for a second. The president has an Iron Patriot suit on for a minute but that doesn't make him the Iron Patriot.

The whole plane scene felt a little forced to me but with the exception of when things got very transformers for the big battle scene which by no means out did the Avengers the action was better than the sort of thing I saw in the Fast and Furious six trailer. The bad guy an odd choice but worked. The end either is going to start the tone to write Iron-man out of the Avengers to make room for the new characters or is going to make it harder for them to get the band back together sort of thing because this movie doesn't lead you to believe they became functioning team. The tug of war between being a good movie and a good comic book movie...super-hero movie, rage through out as they are somewhat apologetic where the previous films didn't so the change of direction did bring its changes in the tone.