Danika questions Marvel, and Disney’s, ability to present women in their superhero franchises. When the comic is such a strong source to pull from; why do films get Black Widow so wrong?
Category: Comics
Megan questions the gender equality in pop culture. Why is it girls can read Batman but boys can’t watch My Little Pony? Where has this Brony explosion and hatred come from?
Like many geeks and nerds Megan is conflicted about the portrayal of women in games. But are we right to assume all portrayals of sexy women are negative?
Megan begins her new Hopes and Fears fetures tackling something on the mind of many nerds and geeks, the new Michael Bay Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film; should we be excited or worried?
Ruaidhri hulks out and throws his fanboy hat into the ring to discuss the distinct lack of Super Hero video games.
Gary dips into a ‘classic’ video game movie from 20 years ago, Super Mario Bros. Did it deserve it’s panning from critics and video game fans alike or was it unfairly judged? With a new ‘sequel’ comic out what kind of legacy does this video game movie leave behind?
Jon looks at some of the best Batman villains we’ll never see included in a Batman game.
Kid Sidekicks have become a staple in comic books, and something that we’ve come to accept as just another part of the medium. But have…
This week Gary looks back at Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D featuring David “The Hoff” Hasselhoff. Was it panned to early or did it deserve a chance?
Gary Jive continues his journey into mystery, delving into the world of Marvel’s forgotten TV pilots. This week, he discovers the schmaltzy delight that is the Power Pack TV pilot.
Come with Gary Jive on a journey into mystery as he unearths the top 5 forgotten Marvel TV pilots! This week: Hulk meets Thor!
Gary Jive continues his journey into television mystery by tackling the largely forgotten 1978 pilot for Marvel’s Doctor Strange!
Come with Gary Jive on a journey into mystery as he unearths the top 5 forgotten Marvel TV pilots!
Smoking may be increasingly uncommon, but there’s one world where it’s been non-existent for a decade. Martin takes a look at Marvel Comics’ blanket smoking ban.
The comic book is the natural medium for the super-hero. This is an indisputable fact – it’s the medium that birthed them, that’s most featured them and has evolved around them. But it’s not the only medium that the super-hero thrives in. There’s another that’s had a long and fevered history with the super-hero, brought it to new audiences and brought out new sides of it. No, it’s not the cinema (where the super-hero has only really worked successfully en masse in the past decade or so). It’s radio.
Just kidding, it’s cartoons.
Yes, what other than animation can replicate the bright characters, crazy locations, mad props and insane action of a super-hero comic? Some pretty wicked shadow puppets maybe, but let’s stick with cartoons for now. To celebrate this joyous affair of moving pictures and lycra-clad super-men, here’s a non-definitive run down of some of the best super-hero cartoons ever made.
If you’ve been reading this columns regularly, you’ll probably have spotted that I’m generally having them link into each other, like a strand of multicoloured handkerchiefs impossibly streaming from a magician’s sleeve. As such, I was going to write about someone who’s died a lot, picking up on the last instalment’s topic, but instead I’m going to follow up a quick aside I made and talk about Captain Marvel.
Over the last few instalments of this column we’ve looked at a few superhero identities that have been used by more than one character (Robin and Captain America, for the new or forgetful). Legacy characters like this are popular in comics because they’re a way of keeping names, and trademarks, alive and relevant (and to learn the importance of that, just ask DC about Captain Marvel). Individual characters aren’t always as timeless as the superhero identity or idea in general, so it pays now and then to get rid of them and replace them with a more relevant version. One of the best ways to sell this change has been to kill off the original as it immediately gives the new character an empty stage on which work and feel important.
Making his debut in #37 of Swamp Thing in the late eighties, Alan Moore’s supporting character of Constantine hit our pages as a… a bit of prick. A sorcerer, a deviant and a swindler, Constantine was the devil on the good-natured swamp thing’s shoulder. The wayward scab that itches to be picked, and then gets very, VERY infected. And once given a life of his own, he didn’t change much in nearly thirty years. Swamp Thing’s publication without the Comic Code Authority’s stamp of all ages approval, and the newly rated ‘suggested for mature readers’ umbrella, gave birth to DC’s darker stylized publication house Vertigo, and more importantly, formed a new direction for DC, with Hellblazer as the main attraction.
Last time, I mentioned that the gap between Captain America’s WW2 adventures and his modern recovery from the Arctic ice is ever-widening. Beyond being problematic for the believability of Cap functioning in the present day, this also presents other problems.