Iron Man 3 is this Weekend...Power Up the Reactors!

Looking Forward to Iron Man 3 this weekend

I have not seen the new Iron Man 3 movie yet, but I have my tickets to see it on Friday.
I’m excited and hoping it is a good movie.  Iron Man 1 was great, 2 was okay.  I’m hoping this one is a at least good.

Iron Man has always been one of my favorites ever since I was a kid of 7 and 8.
When I first started trading empty bottles for nickels and dimes and dimes for comic books, my favorites were Batman, Captain America and Iron Man. 

Batman in those days was a silly detective and the books would give you clues and you would try to solve the crime before Batman and Robin did.  Batman was fun in those days, not the psychologically burdened Dark Knight that he became later.  I liked Batman, everybody did.  He had a TV show and was super famous.

Captain America was pretty well known as well.  But Iron Man seemed to be somebody only I was reading about.  None of my friends knew Iron Man.  He had no TV show.  In my circle of friends and family, I was the only one buying and reading stories about Tony Stark and his crazy technological inventions.  Tony wasn’t a drunk or a psychological mess in those days either—he was a respected business man with a suit and tie with a secret identity and secret skills the people around him did not know about.  As a young Mormon kid, that was how I felt.  I had to be proper and wear a tie, but secretly I wanted to do things and learn things I wasn’t supposed to be doing and learning.  I dreamed about building a secret lab with secret planes and rockets and robots and stuff.  But mostly my secret life was filled with comics and books from the library full of stories I wasn’t supposed to be reading.

I also learned how to draw by copying the pictures in those comics.  Then I would put my own dialog on the pictures.  I’m still kind of doing that these days.

Later, as I got older, I started realizing that Iron Man’s armor was kind of a metaphor for all our technology.  I learned that no matter how we wrap ourselves in metal cars and planes and extend our senses with TV and satellites, that we are still biological animals with limitations and issues that cannot be solved with technology, that we are still scared little monkeys no matter how cool our toys and how powerful our inventions.  Tony Stark showed me a lot of that, and it has remained true even as I have learned a lot more than what could be slipped into a comic book.

Iron Man comics have been all over the map from horribly bad, to corny, to incredible (I’m looking at you Matt Fraction).  But even at their worst, they are always enjoyable.  I’m hoping this movie will be an addition to the “Incredible Iron Man” list.  But even if it is corny, I will still enjoy it.

See you at the movies.  And then let’s go save the world!

-- Jay

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Don't forget, Next Week is LarsenGeekery's next show:

May 11 &12th 2013, Pacific NerdWest 13 - Bellingham WA

Games, Art, Vendors (including LarsenGeekery), and I hear Fargo from Eureka is going to be there!

Comics Anticipation....Making Me Wait...

Waiting for comics that have been announced, but that have not come out yet is a big part of being a comics fan.  The new book has a writer you really like, an artist that is good, and a character or two that you really enjoy.  So it has to be GREAT!  Right?

Well......not necessarily.
Comics are a hit and miss media.  It's easy to make bad comics.  It's hard to make mediocre comics.  And it is almost impossible to make really, really great comics.  That magic lightning of comic greatness only ends up on the page once in a while.  But as fans, we keep hoping.  And when that next project sounds like it has increased odds of maybe, just possibly manifesting into our reality as a genuinely great book, well... we get all excited with the possibility.

Luckily, for me, I am a fan of mediocre comics and I even secretly love the really bad comics.  So there is plenty there to keep my attention.  But I still keep hoping that this next book is going to be the one that redefines what is possible in this incredible media called comics.  I am 100% positive that there are untapped riches of comics that have not been discovered or imagined yet.

So learning to enjoy the anticipation phase of comics is important.  Anything is possible when Writer X meets Artists Y and Z while exploring Characters A, B and C!
Also, to be fair, a lot of what we love about comic characters takes place between the panels and between issues anyway.  There has never been a Doctor Strange comic as cool as the Doctor Strange in my imagination.  And every time a new Doc Strange project is announced I think, maybe this time the good doctor's true mystical potential will make it onto a page.
Don't get me wrong, there have been Good Dr. Strange comics.  But there has never been a truly GREAT Doctor Strange comic....Yet.  But he is Sorcerer Supreme again, so maybe someday soon...

So what books are in Anticipation Mode right now?
Thanks for asking.

Guardians of the Galaxy.  Can Bendis unlock the wacky weirdness that is Rocket Raccoon?  And not ruin it with too much Tony Stark?

Fearless Defenders.  Will Dani Moonstar get a chance to show how incredibly cool she is while standing back-to-back with Valkyrie?  Hel Yeah!


Books that have passed out of Anticipation Mode and into actual comic pages?
The Iron man reboot.  A good book, so far.  But not Great.
The Fantastic Four/FF Fraction takeover.  Hickman's FFs were literally "fantastic" 80% of the time.  So Matt Fraction has big shoes to fill.  But he is doing a good job of making things fun and he is really capturing the "family" vibe of the Fantastic Four and the FF.  So far so good.

Young Avengers #1  Wow!  What can I say.  This time the actual book is better than my level of anticipation!  A Great Kick Off to new series with some of the most interesting young Marvel characters.  If you can get your hands on this book, read it.  Billy is doing well intentioned, but really stupid things (just like his mom, the Scarlet Witch does).  I mean, even Kid Loki was trying to stop him.

Newly moved into Anticipation Mode...Young Avengers #2
Can Kieron Gillen and James McKelvie keep things at the high level set by #1?  Will this be more than just one Great Comic?  Will if be a great Story Arc?  Or dare I say it, a Great Comic Series?  We shall see...  Anything is possible.

Anticipation can be fun.
-- Jay Larsen
PS: You can read my new Comic, Giga-Geekery #1, with a minimum of Anticipation.  Just Click Here and go get one!

New Year, Marvel NOW!

I have already said that I have an affinity for Marvel comic books, so I may be biased.  When comparing DC's New 52 "reboot" with Marvel NOW!'s "non-reboot", Marvel wins hands down.

Good things were already happening at Marvel in 2012: Fear Itself (the 2011 event) was finally over. Hickman's run on Fantastic Four and FF were amazing!  Bendis ran Avengers for longer than any other writer in Marvel history, and he did amazing things with them.  Fraction's Iron Man was solid.  Defenders got resurrected with a bang and retired with a whimper (sorry Marvel, it wasn't all good).

The big event of the Marvel year was AvX, Avengers vs X-men, which sounded like a gimmick, and ended up being pretty damned good.  I especially liked when Black Panther slaps the science out of Tony Stark just as he was going to go all Civil-War-Serious on us again.  (Tony only gets to tear the world apart once a decade!)  Cyclops started sliding into madness years ago (in my opinion) and the Phoenix Force just made it so everyone else could see it.  AvX managed to hit the other books without making them slaves to the "big event" (which shows that maybe Marvel is learning from it's past mistakes.)  Wolverine reopening the school turned out to be a really fun ride and showed what an ensemble cast book could be like, in Wolverine and the X-men.  New Mutants had a great year (thanks Abnett and Lanning) especially the "Date with the Devil" issue #37--possibly the best single issue I read all year!

Marvel did get bought by Disney last year.  This still kind of creeps me out and makes me worry, but so far so good.
Marvel movies did great: Avengers anyone?

So 2012 was a good year for Marvel.
And then they announced Marvel NOW! (which has to have CAPS and an Exclamation Mark!) the new "not a reboot" of the Marvel line.  Uh Oh!, I thought to myself.  Marvel is going to do a DC-style New 52 (which I did not think turned out well for DC).
But so far, so good in my opinion.

Marvel moved all their most popular writers and artists around, giving them fresh books to work on.  This resulted in some really good endings to some of the existing story arcs.  Fantastic Four, Avengers, New Avengers, Iron Man, Spider-man all got interesting stories that their old teams wanted to tell before they left.

And NOW! the new Marvel NOW! issues have been coming out (with more promised for later).
Bendis is on X-men now.  He did my least favorite thing and did a time travel story where the 1960's teenager X-men meet the new screwed up X-men.  I didn't want to like it.  But it is turning out to be really great.
Matt Fraction has taken the Fantastic Four on an intergalactic road trip.  And put a replacement FF team on Earth to hold down the fort.  I can't wait to see what happens next.
Fraction and Aja have are also 7 issues into a new Hawkeye series that is one of the coolest things being published right now.  It is hard to describe, but a joy to read.
The new Thor series is good.
Avengers is going cosmic, Hickman style.
Spider-man just killed Peter Parker (again) and replaced him with Doc Octopus!  (Don't worry kids, it is the 50th anniversary of Spider-man this year.  I'm sure Peter will come back to us somehow.)
And there are still more NOW! titles that have not come out yet.  Fearless Defenders, an all Girl X-Men Team, Nova, and Guardians of the Galaxy!  I am Groot!

This could end up being a great year for Marvel Comics!  I think they are doing a lot of things right with their "not a reboot".  It's a great time to jump on and Marvel didn't throw all their history and continuity into the garbage.  I like it so far.  But maybe it's just me?

-- Jay

The Mystery of Iron Man's Pants

It's a Comic Mashup of Iron Men:
Iron Man vs Doom

Comic Mashup Practical Joke

Hey kid!  You with the comics!
Hey kid!  I've got your nose!
Comic Mashup Theater presents a story as plain as the nose on your face.

Now you can take the story apart to see what makes it run.
But whatever you do, don't picket!

Another Look at The Avengers Movie

Entertainment Weekly has some photos from the new Avengers Movie, which is in production right now.  I couldn't help but re-present a few for you and me.

Holy Projectiles Batman, that's some hot lead and broad heads headed our way.

(Batman doesn't exist in the Marvel Universe.  But Hawkeye could put Nick Fury's eye out with that shaft of his.)

 Steve Rogers and Tony Stark can't take their eyes off that red-headed ex-Russian spy, but they are red-blooded American boys after all.

 But if the boys watch Black Widow for too long, there are bound to be explosions!

I know how they feel.

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That probably should have been a Mashup, but any excuse for showing sexy red-headed spies is a good excuse.  Apparently Joss Whedon agrees with me.  Looking forward to the movie. 

Avengers Assemble!