This Week in Marvel

The 8th issue of Captain Marvel was enmeshed in Civil War, but did little to move the story forward except further high light the fact that Black Panther is having doubts about this ridiculous stance Carol is taking. Squirrel Girl's 11th issue was decent in her show down with Nightmare, it was a throw back to the comic books of  the 80s, but even then the hokey irony of this book is obviously for hipster girls who want to be geek. The 6th issue of International Iron-man was a waste of time with nothing to do with anything. Uncanny In-humans also bored me not of fan of the new In-humans, why can we stick to the classic ones? While I was glad to see Daimon Hellstorm the son of Satan in the latest issue of Hell-cat, the story was treated in the same girly Power Puff manner this entire run has been, I wish they would take her more seriously.Captain America find the book beginning to lose steam in the fourth issue. The Selvig part is trying to hard and this Hydra thing is not really working and I can see it being a stinker that they find themselves trying to correct like One More Day or the Clone Saga. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur finds the book beginning to tread water in the 10th issue , I would like to see sales figures and see if this book is on it's way to being cancelled.

Venom Space Knight was pretty good, unsure how it ties in to Civil War, but a Spider-man & Venom throw down is always fun and it's good to be reminded for where Venom got his start and he is in fact a Spider-man villain and should be an anti-hero at best. Night Hawk was pretty decent , but it felt like the writer was like I want to write Punisher as a black man. Pretty violent for a Marvel book. The 13th issue of "Extraordinary X-men"  was decent, seems detached from the other books and oblivious to Civil War. The New Avengers was o.k it worked with the established story and this team is starting to grow on me. Drax showed some improvement , but it still way to silly for me.

Guardians of the Galaxy

There is a good reason this move has cracked the  90 percentile range on Rotten Tomatoes. Its is one of the best super hero movies Marvel has pumped out thus far. Why some might argue this is just a sci fi flick and not in the same category as Iron - Man. Star Lord wears a mask and in their comic incarnations bump elbows with both X-men and Avengers a like, in fact Ms Marvel has been a regular the past few issues.

It is obvious the film doesn't take it'self seriously, the tone often not unlike James Gunn's Super.The laugh out loud moment mainly come from how the band of cosmic heroes carry themselves. It could be argued that Pratt played Quill like the re-boot version of the young Captain Kurt, I like Pratt depiction of Starlord, more than I like the character in the comics. While familiar with Drax and Gamora from the Infinity Gauntlet series, that this movie often hints it could lead into, the character I had the most connection to in the comic only appeared for a few minutes a Breet the alien girl who followed Banner in the early eighties appears.

The visual elements make up for the few  moments of stiff acting that come from Lee Pace who plays Ronan the Accuser, a character that was pretty one dimensional , until he hooked up with the Inhumans a few years ago. Brolin's Quick appearance at Thanos , who actually appears in the film and not just as a hologram like the folks at Marvel , was a high point for me as the character looks awesome.

The cgi characters Rocket Racoon and Groot, could have been the movie's weak spots, proved that with the Avenger's Hulk Marvel studios has learned the value of getting the cgi right in order for the audience to connect to the characters. The other worldy landscapes were cool, in the future perhaps they can get a little more Blade Runner with this , but what they did worked.The action scene . were very coherent and not just too much thrown at you too fast.

The characters all received pretty equal screen time despite the fact this was from Quill's perspective, it would be great if for a sequel it was more from Rocket's. These guys have set the bar pretty high for the sequel the studio already signed this one up for before the movie came out and with a 11 million dollar opening night they guessed right.The easy way out on the sequel would be to bring them to Earth, but I think just expanding the Cosmic world, as it still leaves the Star Jammers, Gladiator, Beta Ray Bill and the Sliver Surfer to name a few and you know I could keep naming for days here.

Some of the Easter Eggs which ranged from Howard the Duck to the Nova Corps, were good teases, put why not have one of them blast off as the real Nova instead of flying around in ships. Where was Adam Warlock is a good question. The celestials were cool and unexpected as well.Overall you don't have to geek out and now your Marvel inside out to like this Movie, though sense I do I have to look at my girl friend's perspective when it comes to what the normal non-comic lifer's view on this is ,even though like I said I never had much of an emotional investment in these characters. They did win me over here.She really like the movie anf was willing to endure me pulling out my big hard bound encyclopedia to the Marvel Universe and search out more on the characters afterwards. And yes that sort of thing does happen at my house.     Avenger's Age of Ultron is going to really have to come correct if they are going to be able to top this...but it could happen.