Black Superheroes: Sunspot

Look, when I said "black heroes" I didn't mean literally

Name: Roberto "Bobby" da Costa 

First Appearance: Marvel Graphic Novel #4 (1982) 

History: Bobby da Costa was not the typical kid. Born to Afro-Brazilian millionaire Emmanuel da Costa, he lived a life of affluence but was also a high-level athlete, particularly skilled in football (that’s “soccer” for you uneducated swine). Despite this he was haunted by racism directed him for being the biracial son of a black man. This came to a head during one of his football matches, where racists from the opposing team brutally attacked him in a racially motivated hate crime. However, it was a that moment that Bobby’s mutant abilities emerged, allowing him to absorb solar energy and transferring them into superpowers (including super strength, flight, and able to create concussive blasts of solar energy, while also taking on pitch black skin while he’s powered up). 

Shortly after this, Bobby’s girlfriend Juliana, the only person who stood by his side when his powers manifested, was kidnapped by goons working for Donald Pierce of the Hellfire Club to lure him into a trap. During the struggle, Karma and Dani Moonstar, two recent recruits of Professor Charles Xavier, arrive to help rescue the two, but ultimately Juliana took a bullet for Bobby and died in his arms. 

Fueled by a need for revenge against Pierce, Bobby returned with Karma and Dani to Xaviers’ School for Gifted Youngsters and becomes of founding member of the New Mutants, the next generation of X-Men, taking on the codename “Sunspot.” 

Beta Says: To be completely transparent here, I’m not the most familiar with Sunspot. The reason for this is because even now after well over 30 years of being a comic book fan The New Mutants has always been and remains a weird blind spot for me. Because of this, I am ashamed to admit it was many years before I was aware that Bobby was black; I thought he was just Latino. However I was not alone in this false belief, as poor Roberto has had the “afro” part of his ethnic identity changed, forgotten, or otherwise ignored possibly more than any other black superhero in history. And that’s what we’re talking about today. Buckle up; I’m pretty pissed off.

More about the black erasure of Sunspot after the jump.

Black Superheroes: Blink (AoA)

Dude, what?! Since when is she black?!

Name: Clarice Ferguson

First Appearance: X-Men - Alpha #1 (1995)

History: Born in an alternative version of Earth, Clarice Ferguson was originally the child of West Indian parents, though her family immigrated to Florida when she was young. A mutant, she was born with pink skin, pointed ears, and markings on her face but despite that she grew in a more-or-less idyllic life. That all changed when the insane mutant Apocalypse made his play for his conquest of North America. Clarice’s parents were killed in the conflict and she was forced to grow up in Apocalypse’s slave pens. Eventually she was rescued by two members of Magneto’s X-Men resistance fighters, Sabretooth and Weapon X. Sabretooth went on to be a surrogate father to the traumatized young girl. As a teenager she would join her adopted father in the X-Men under the name “Blink” and, with the mutant power to teleport short and extremely long distances in the blink of an eye, became a great asset to the team. When the time displaced Bishop arrived in Magneto’s care, he convinced the X-Men to help him reset the timeline to the original version that had been changed due to time travel. They succeeded but their whole world was seemingly wiped out from existence.

However, Blink survived. Being whisked to an unknown time and place she, along with several other displaced X-Men from their own alternate realities, was charged by the Time Broker to fix problems throughout the various versions of Earth. The group was soon branded as the team called “the Exiles."  Originally a freedom fighter, Blink has now found her true calling as leader of the Exiles and a champion of the entire multiverse.

Beta Says: Guys! Guys, oh my God! Blink is black! She’s black, guys! I literally just found this out last year! I don’t know how I never knew this, aside from the obvious. She has literally been one of my favorite characters (top ten, easy) since I was eleven years old and never once did I ever even consider that she was black. I don’t know if I just wasn’t aware of her cultural background, or if this is actually a retcon, but regardless one of my childhood favorite superheroes has turned out to be a character that I as a black kid would have felt a deep connection to if this had been known to me. Now, you might be saying “Wait a second, Beta, I’m fairly certain Blink isn’t black?” I get it; she’s pink and her racial background never comes up. Plus, the two times she had been depicted in live-action media she was played by Asian actresses.

However, the recent Exiles comic clearly depicts Blink chilling out on the main Marvel universe (Earth 616), having lunch with her aunt, her mother’s sister, in her parents’ hometown in the Bahamas. The aunt, Sandra, is clearly a black woman. Also, for the first time ever, Blink appears to have a bit of an afro.

Although I now have several questions about her previously straight hair...

Guys! Guys, my heart is so happy right now! This is literally the main reason I decided to write this blog again; just so I could be all giddy about this revelation!

More on Blink after the jump.

Black Superheroes: Shard

Is that hair part of her mutation or because of a good salon?

Name: Shard Bishop

First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men Annual #17 (1993)

History: Shard Bishop was born roughly eighty years in the future. In her time mutants were rounded up into concentration camps and branded. It is in one such camp where she was raised. Once mutants were emancipated she found herself on the streets but was always looked after by her older brother Lucas. When Lucas joined the Xavier Security Enforcers, a mutant police force, Shard followed suit becoming the youngest graduated in the organization’s history. While on a mission Shard was killed in action by a group of vampire-like creatures known as Emplates. However her brainwaves were saved into a holographic projector that Lucas kept on him at all times, including when he was later trapped in the present. Eventually, during an accident, the projector was destroyed but Shard ended up being reborn as a being of living photonic energy. Now with a new lease on life Shard went on to join the government sponsored team X-Factor in a bid to make her own way outside of her brother’s shadow.

Beta Says: Here we have yet another character who has come back from the future to present times. Its weird how often that sort of thing happens in comic books, especially with X-Men related characters. Anyway the ridiculously named "Shard Bishop" obviously also hails from her gun toting brother’s bummer timeline but it seems that history has been less kind to her. While Bishop’s character was assassinated starting in Messiah Complex where he became depicted as a lunatic hell bent on murdering a child he has since been more or less redeemed and still has a few ongoing and limited solo comic series to his name. Hell, he was even in an X-Men live action movie once. Most comic book fans know who Bishop is, even if they aren’t familiar with his history. But Shard, on the other hand, is a woman who never gets talked about when discussing X-Men and, honestly, doesn’t come up all that often when discussed by other characters. Perhaps it was because she was never a member of the X-Men proper, or perhaps it was that she was only active for about seven years. Or maybe, just maybe, it was because she’s been dead the last seventeen years with no signs of her ever coming back. Yeah, that will definitely hurt your visibility.

More on this time displaced hologram woman after the jump.

Black Superheroes: Bishop

Can you guess which decade Bishop was created in?

Name: Lucas Bishop

 First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #282 (1991)

History: About 80 years in the future anti-mutant hysteria has advanced to the point that mutants are captured and forced to live in concentration camps. As a child Lucas Bishop grew in such a camp, being looked after by his adoptive grandmother as well a mysterious figure named LeBeau, also known as “the Witness” due to the fact he was the last person to see the legendary X-Men alive. Once mutants were emancipated Bishop eventually joined the Xavier's Security Enforcers, or the XSE, a sort of mutant police force. On a mission to apprehend the time traveling mutant criminal Trevor Fitzroy Bishop winds up stuck in present time alongside the legendary X-Men. Professor X offers him a place on the team and Lucas readily accepts. However Bishop recognize one of the team, newcomer Gambit, as a younger version of the Witness leading him to believe that the Cajun mutant survives the eventual death of the X-Men by being the traitor that destroys the team.

Years later it turned out that Professor X was the traitor. Because of course it would be.

Beta Says: When I was a kid during the 1990s I was a really into Bishop. In retrospect I think the sole reason I was such a fan was because he was, aside from Storm, the only black member of the X-Men. Looking back there aren’t a lot of X-Men that I thought looked like me when I was a kid so I was likely drawn to this big, heavily muscled, gun toting dude despite he not really having any of the traits I usually went for in characters back then. Regardless Bishop is a character that Marvel, at least at some point, seemed pretty invested in the guy. He’s had a few ongoing titles and miniseries, none of which paid off. There’s probably several reasons comic fans as a whole never really bought the whole “Bishop is Awesome” train that Marvel was selling, but I’d argue it’s just as well because the guy is pretty goddamn dull. Then Marvel turned him into a super villain. Because…reasons.

Also, can we acknowledge Bishop probably sported a Jheri curl for the first few years of his existence?

I think  we just found the reason for Bishop's dark future

More on the time traveling, gun wielding, baby killing Bishop after the jump.

Review: X-Men - Days of Future Past (Film)

X-Men Month concludes! I wanted to throw up one more post, which would have been a Nerd Rage about something, but I couldn’t get riled up enough to do it which is probably for the best: one less nerdy rant on the internet.

But in any event we have come to the X-Men: Days of Future Past. Is there anything left to be said at this point? It’s a sequel to X-Men: First Class, a movie I LOVED and consider it to be the best X-film. It’s being directed by Bryan Singer who directed X-Men and X2 which were both great but hasn’t directed a ton of great stuff since then (and Jack the Giant Slayer was actively terrible). It’s based on the very classic X-Men comic storyline of the same name. The plot was pretty much the same; the future has been conquered by the Sentinels, mutant hunting robots, and a small group of surviving X-Men use their resident super psychic Rachel Summers to send the consciousness of Kitty Pryde (or “Kate Pryde” as she prefers to be known in the future) through time to 1980 (or “the present” as it preferred to be known at the time) into the body of her teenage counterpart to stop Mystique and her Brotherhood of Evil Mutants from killing a specific dude which will cause a ripple effect that creates the terrible future. Of course this movie still takes place in the X-Men Movie Universe so the details would have to be drastically altered but the main crux of the story seems to be intact.

Anyway with two good movies, one awesome movie, one not terrible Wolverine movie and two absolute garbage flicks the X-Men Film Franchise has had its ups and downs over the years. BUT there’s been a lot of positive buzz about this movie where many people saying it’s the best X-flick to date. So it’s pretty clear that with so many people I like, trust or admire enjoyed it so clearly I’ll love this movie too, right? Right? Why are you just staring at me like that?

Full review after the jump.

[WARNING: There are a few spoilers throughout this review, though I avoid the really big ones. Still, read at your own risk]

Beta's Top Ten X-Men Villains (Part Two)

Sorry this took so long. I was really busy then I was suddenly sick.

Some of these guys are actually X-Men, but the image is cool nonetheless

And X-Men Month is back. Here we are with Part Two of my Top X-Men Villain List, where I’m counting down my personal favorite adversaries of my favorite superhero team. You can find Part One here but if you’re lazy (and I suspect you might be) then let’s do a quick recap of the list so far.

#10: Sabretooth 
 #9: Sentinels 
#8: Mojo 
#7: Dark Beast 
#6: Mystique 

So let’s get back to the list and see who made the top of the list. But first let’s take a quick look at another Honorable Mention that wasn’t good enough to be on the list.

The Brotherhood of Mutants: Or “The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants” if you prefer. I’m pretty much just lumping them all together as the vast majority of its members won’t appear on this list. The Brotherhood are the closest thing the X-Men have to an evil opposite team, being similar with a different ideology. Here’s the thing; the Brotherhood is pretty much completely different with a different roster every time we see them and every incarnation has a much different modus operandi than the last. Hell, originally they didn’t do shit about mutant freedom and just want to conquer the Earth. There’s no consistency so I tend not to care too much when a new group of villainous mutant that Marvel Comics labels “The Brotherhood of Mutants” show up.

Final Five after the jump.

Beta's Top Ten X-Men Villains (Part One)

This may be a good time to just go right back the way you came...

X-Men Month continues! X-Men: Days of Future Past approaches I’m tossing as many X-Men posts as possible in a blatant scheme to bring in search engine hits for your entertainment. Three years ago this month, while writing blogs leading up to my review of X-Men: First Class, I listed my Top Ten Favorite X-Men (Part One, Part Two) but even as I wrote that blog I wanted to do a Top Villains list as well but I didn’t have the time back then. I figured I’d write it up eventually but then I never did. So now I finally have an excuse which is great because I have a list that I’ve spent years working on!

Actually I threw it together over the last two weeks or so. But I thought about doing it for the last three years!

Anyway the X-Men, likely due to their massive popularity in the 1980s and 1990s, have faced a large variety of foes over their fifty year history from simple crooks to interdimensional despots and everything in-between. For a superhero team that’s supposed to be a metaphor for prejudice they sure fight a lot of enemies that don’t neatly fit into the analogy. However they do have one of the best rogue’s gallery in superhero comics. Today (and then a second day because this will be a two-part blog) I’ll be looking at my favorite villains. Not the “best” but rather the ones I like the most; the ones that when they show up in a comic I say “Oh shit, I should probably pay attention to this storyline.” Let’s get to it.

Honorable Mention

The Juggernaut: Professor Xavier's evil, resentful step-brother whose magical powers make him super strong and invulnerable. A classic X-villain old Cain Marko doesn’t make the list proper because as dangerous and powerful as he is he spends most of his time trapped somewhere, like a mountain or a magic pocket dimension, and it’s gotten so bad over the decades that’s it’s makes him kind of a joke. Plus he’s a thug with little imagination. As reviled as Chuck Austen’s run on Uncanny X-Men was at least he tried to give Juggernaut the character development to grow from those limitations. It didn’t stick but I for one liked the idea of Marko trying to be a good guy since being evil has worked out terribly for him.

Click below for Part One.

Review: Wolverine and the X-Men (Animated Series)

Wow, I only managed to write up two blogs in the entire month of April? I sincerely apologize to people who were coming here looking for content. If only there was a way I could make up for this; some theme that would ensure that several posts go live in May. Oh, I know: Welcome to X-Men Month! You may recall back in 2011 in the lead up to my review of X-Men: First Class I wrote a series of X-Men related blogs. Well now that we’re coming up on that film’s sequel, X-Men: Days of Future Past so I figured why not do it again. Let’s start with a review, shall we?

If you have spent any time in the archives, especially under the comic book tag, you would likely know that I hate Wolverine. Despite being the most popular character in the X-Men franchise there is no comic book character I despise more (…well maybe The Sentry…and maybe the Red Hulk…and maybe Barry Allen). I’ve talked about this several times and even started Cyclops Lovers Against Wolverine for people like me who prefer good old Scott Summers over the terribly two-dimensional, overpowered James Howlett. So with all this in mind you’ll be unsurprised to learn that when I first heard Marvel would be releasing a cartoon entitled Wolverine and the X-Men I was anything but pleased. Airing in 2009 Wolverine and the X-Men is the third animated adaptation of the X-Men franchise (fourth if you include the Pryde of the X-Men pilot) and was the successor to X-Men: Evolution, a cartoon I absolutely despised. In fact much of the production team was the same for those two cartoons. But, even with the stink of XM:E surrounding it, my main issue stemmed from the fact that in the months leading up to its debut the show was clearly hyped as being a Wolverine centric show with the X-Men merely featured in supporting roles which found to be ludicrous.

I tried watching this show when it was first aired but didn’t have time to finish it. It ended up being canceled after one season so it pretty much disappeared from television after that. From what I’ve heard there was some sort of financing problem that caused a planned second season to not happen. Five years later there has yet to be a follow-up series and there doesn’t seem to be one in the pipeline as of this writing. [EDITOR’S NOTE: There was an X-Men anime released in 2011 produced by Madhouse as part of the Marvel Anime line that Beta has yet to see. In his defense most people have yet to see those shows; that’s the problem]

While this show has a lot of negative things attached to it technically it would be wrong of me to condemn it just on that without giving it a fair chance. So let’s give it a chance now…and then afterwards condemn it.

Full review after the jump.

Summer Movie Preview '14

I’m once again doing a Summer Movie Preview. Summer Movie season is a frustrating magical time of the year where Hollywood churns out its loud big blockbusters. I also tend to spend most of my free time in the movie theater during this season. So last year there were a ton of movies I was super excited for and most of them let me down. I think this has affected me as I now find it hard to get all that enthusiastic about this year’s offerings. That’s kind of sad.

Anyway today we’ll be taking quick looks at movies that have come under my radar that will be hitting theaters this summer (I tend to think of May, not April, as Summer Movie Season). If I missed anything or if there’s a film you’re excited about feel to let me know in the comments.

Click below for more.

Nerd Rage #16: Road to Marvel's Civil War

Ever wonder who would win in a fight?
No? Too bad

This is my 299th blog, which means two things: 1) Holy shit, I’ve written 299 blogs and 2) the next blog will be #300. That’s a pretty big milestone and one we cannot ignore. A while back, maybe a few weeks or months after uploading blog #100, which if you recall was a rant/review of Spider-Man: One More Day, I was trying to figure out comics that I’d want to review for future big milestones. I decided Spider-Man: One Moment in Time would be appropriate for the 200th blog but there was a comic that I really wanted to review but that I felt deserved an equal amount of attention as those two heinously terrible Spider-Man stories. Then I remembered Civil War, a major crossover for Marvel Comics in 2006.

What’s so important about Civil War? So important that I would sit on reviewing it for years? Well it was a major game changer for Marvel Comics that set a particularly dubious status quo for Marvel both in narrative and the way they conducted business. The effects of this book, as far as the storyline went, lasted for the rest of the decade up until 2010’s Heroic Age. In my opinion Civil War is likely the most important storyline from Marvel Comics during the 2000s (House of M would be the other logical choice).

So next time I’ll be reviewing the main Civil War book, which was seven issues. However today I’d like to talk about important points that lead up to this crossover so that we are all on the same page when I review it, much like I did with One More Day and X-Men Schism.

More useless information after the jump.

Review: X-Men Battle of the Atom Part 7

I’m way behind in this review series and indeed way behind on the blog in general. With National Novel Writing Month (aka my annual month long self-imposed exile from working on the blog) coming up in just days it’s pretty upsetting how little I’ve been able to write and post the last few weeks. I’m going to try to post a few articles before Friday marathon style but we’ll see if I’ll be able to manage it.

Anyway this is the next part in the Battle of the Atom X-over that’s taken over the X-Men titles. This review is of [Non-Adjective] X-Men #6 which was written by Brian Wood with art by David López (pencils) Cam Smith with Terry Pallot on inks and Laura Martin with Matt Milla on colors. Check out the previous reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Full review after the jump.

Review: X-Men - Battle of the Atom Part 6

Battle of the Atom Part Six. Not much to talk about so let’s just get into it. This review is of All-New X-Men #17 which was written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by Stuart Immonen (pencil), Wade Von Grawbadger (ink) and Marte Gracia (colors). Previous reviews: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Full review after the jump.

Review: X-Men - Battle of the Atom Part 5

Sorry this has taken so long. Lately I’ve been feeling unmotivated and, just like through summer, am dealing with personal problems that have been consuming my time.

Anyway we’re still looking at X-Men: Battle of the Atom and thankfully this is the issue where shit starts getting interesting. It only took four issues…well, four and two thirds because things still take a while to get to the point. Really the ball drops in the next issue, which I would totally like to get to in less than a week and a half if that is at all possible.

For the record we’re reviewing Wolverine and the X-Men #36, which was written by Jason Aaron with art from Giuseppe Camuncoli on pencils and Matt Milla with Edgar Delgado on colors. The previous reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Review of part five after the jump.

Review: X-Men - Battle of the Atom Part 4

Battle of the Atom isn’t exactly the most exciting comic book I’ve reviewed on this blog so far but it’s also not the worst one either. It’s sort of just there; it’s not great but it’s not bad. Having now read up to part five and I can say that things will pick up. However part four, which we are reviewing now, is very much so a transitional issue, which means even less will happen here than it did in the previous three parts. Oh joy. So this will probably be a shorter review. The last three reviews: Part 1, Part 2, part 3

For the record this is a review of Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 3) #12 which was written by Brian Michael Bendis with art from Chris Bachalo (pencils), Tim Townsend, Mark Irwin, Jaime Mendoza, Victor Olazaba and Al Vey (inks) and Marte Gracia (colors).

Full review after the jump.

Review: X-Men - Battle of the Atom Part 3

So far behind…I don’t know what it is? I just can’t seem to sit down and review this stuff. Check out the reviews of Part One and Two

Anyway we’re now at part 3 of X-Men: Battle of the Atom. Last time we got the huge reveal of the new female Xorn actually being an adult Jean Grey, who look far too young to be from the future. Oh and also she’s alive, which is only odd when you remember in the present she’s supposed to be dead.

 Actually Jean Grey is not dead in the present, despite what her fellow X-Men believe. She was indeed killed by Xorn Pretending to Be Magneto Pretending to be Xorn in the storyline Planet X however she immediately was resurrected in the following storyline, Here Comes Tomorrow, in the future (time travel again?!) where she fully merges with the Phoenix Force becoming the White Phoenix of the Crown and eventually evolving to a higher plane of existence. I think somewhere in there she came back to the present.

No, I don’t know what the f**k I just wrote either.

We’ve seen the Phoenix since then; in Avengers vs. X-Men obviously the Phoenix Force was central to the plot but never once did Jean Grey as the White Phoenix come up. Furthermore the Phoenix was destroyed at the end of the storyline which is very confusing considering what we know about Jean Grey. As of this writing I have only read up to part four of Battle of the Atom so right now I don’t know if they’ve explained exactly what’s going on with this version of Jean or her connection to the Phoenix, so any confusing aspects of all this might be expertly explained in the future. For now I don’t know what the shit is going on.

...and yet Marvel won't ever bring Gwen Stacy back to life

I will make a bold prediction: the Jean Grey posing as Xorn will turn out not to be the one who died during Planet X but instead turn out to be the time displaced teenage Marvel Girl as an adult and she’s essentially trying to keep herself from making a horrifying mistake in the present. It’s just a guess and I can, and probably will, easily be wrong here.

Full review after the jump.

Review: X-Men - Battle of the Atom Part 2

[Question: What’s the best way to delay a comic book review? Answer: Accidentally leave the comic in a different state when you hastily have to leave town. Oops.]

Today we again look at the new, ongoing X-Men crossover “epic” Battle of the Atom. Before we get into the review of Part Two proper let’s talk about that title. For part one click here.

For those of you who aren’t giant dorks like me you might have missed that the title is a play on the phrase “Children of the Atom” which is also the title of a 1953 novel by Wilmar H. Shiras. The book was about a group of young people who were born as mutants due to their parents’ exposure to a nuclear explosion years prior and now are gifted with superhuman intelligence. Apparently it’s never been officially confirmed but since the X-Men were originally depicted as a group of young mutants Stan Lee may have been heavily influenced by this book when he created their original comic (plus Stan Lee is well known for taking a lot of inspiration from popular fiction when creating comics so it would make historical sense). The X-Men, and mutants in general, have been referred to as “the Children of the Atom” for decades by Marvel Comics (often in the description of the team within the comics themselves) to the point that the title is probably more associated with them than with Shiras.

1950s speculative fiction is the best speculative fiction

So anyway “Battle” of the Atom would strongly imply a conflict between the X-Men, especially since the “original” children of the atom are present and accounted for. However as of this writing I’ve made it to Part Four of this series and so far it’s not exactly been the most explosive on confrontation. I’m just saying someone needs to get punched in the face and soon.

Full review after the jump.

Review: X-Men - Battle of the Atom Part 1

[NOTE: While I started this review two weeks ago it’s taken me a long while to get around to finishing it. As such I’m behind on this whole thing, but hopefully I can catch up by the weekend, or at least by next Monday. No promises]

It feels like I just went through an X-Men crossover but technically it’s almost been a year since I did the last review for Avengers vs. X-Men. Still it seems like X-Men: Battle of the Atom sort of sneaked up on me, even though I was well aware of it. But I am interested in it so I’m going to tackle it, thus spamming you non-comic book fans for several weeks (months?) with unwanted comic book rambling. You’re welcome. Anyway X-Men: Battle for the Atom is a new ten part X-Over (as the cool kids call them) that is moving through X-Men, Uncanny-X-Men, All-New X-Men, and Wolverine and the X-Men in addition to its own self-title two-parter. It features the present day X-Men and the time-displaced teenage X-Men from the past facing off with against team of time-displaced X-Men from the future.

Have I mentioned that superhero comics often don’t make a lot of sense?

Normally I like to have pre-blogs that set up these big events but, as I said, this all kind of sneaked up on me and I didn’t have time. There’s not a heck of a lot of stuff you’d need to understand, really only two things, but I do feel we should talk a bit. So let’s do so right now VERY briefly.

Time travel is a very common plot device in X-Men comics, to the point that no less than three X-Men are actually from varying alternate futures. One of the most famous X-Men stories, Days of Future Past, set the stage for the team to have many, many time travel epics…a lot of which were dumb. It’s such a cliché at this point that certain X-Men can just build time machines casually and the team can pretty much go into the future or past anytime they want. It’s really important to note that Marvel Comics' official policy when it comes to time travel in their stories is that when you travel into the past you cannot change history, instead you merely create an alternate timeline (hence why Bishop, Cable and Rachel Summers can all exist in the present). However this is a rule that is broken ALL THE F**KING TIME! It gets broken so many times that in every instance I hear a writer or editor cite this rulewhen justifying something I kind of want to deck them. Bottom line: Battle of the Atom is by far not the first time this plot device will be used and it won’t be the last.

"Stay tuned for 33 years of Marvel recycling this story over and over again"

As we saw in AvX #12 and Uncanny X-Men #1 Cyclops, now a fugitive, has become the face of the mutant revolution which has freaked out his former teammates. Beast somehow gets the moronic brilliant idea to kidnap the original X-Men (teenage versions of Cyclops, Beat, Iceman, Angel and Marvel Girl) and bringing them to the present in order to somehow guilt trip Cyclops into surrendering to authorities…or something; it was not a good plan. When this doesn’t work (OH REALLY?!) everyone apparently decides that it’s okay for the teens to just hang out in the present for a while, despite the fact that they’re risking the fabric of reality by doing so. In fact the teens have already have experienced game changing alterations as the team now greatly distrust Teen Cyclops for shit he hasn’t done yet, Marvel Girl dumped him in favor of Teen Beast (Marvel Girl is Teenage Jean Grey so this is very bad) and Teen Angel has abandoned his friends to join the mutant revolution. Good job breaking time and space, modern day Beast.

A review of Battle of the Atom Part One after the jump.

Review: The Wolverine (Film)

My original plan was to rent X-Men Origins: Wolverine and review it before this one since that is the only X-Men movie I haven’t reviewed on this blog but unfortunately I kept putting it off and putting it off until I ended up just saying “Screw it, let’s just move on” (Which may be my real life mantra. That’s kind of depressing now that I think about it). I will say that, while I don’t want to completely spoil all my thoughts on that flick, the first Wolverine evil was easily worst X-Men movie ever made. It’s biggest problem was that far too much crap and characters were jammed in there (Seriously, why was Gambit in that movie at all?!).

This brings us to The Wolverine. It seemed like Fox was very serious about making a good Wolverine movie since initially they hired Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, The Wrestler) to direct. Sadly the acclaimed director dropped out when he realized he’d have to be in Japan for a year and was replaced by James Mangold who is…a pretty good director. But after watching his films 3:10 to Yuma and Walk the Line I wasn’t sure he was very good at doing endings (especially with 3:10 to Yuma which was a fantastic movie until the last five minutes ruined everything). Now, like with Pacific Rim, most of what I’ve heard about this film has been extremely positive with most people agreeing it was far and beyond better than the original. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while or have gone back to check out the archives you will probably be aware that Wolverine is one of my most hated characters in superhero comics. I once wrote a long blog about why. (He’s not as bad as Barry Allen though; f**k that guy). But I’m a huge Hugh Jackman fan so I’m willing to give it a chance.

Oh by the way; Fox had prior to this film announced their intention to create their own shared superhero universe following the massive success of The Avengers. In theory the shared universe would include the X-Men and the Fantastic Four with this film starting the trend (well, technically it would make the original film retroactively the trend starter, but whatever). So in addition to its own film we may need to look for clues for possible future films seeing as X-Men: Days of Future Past and the FF are both right around the corner.

Full review after the jump.

[WARNING: This review contains major spoilers. On the bright side they weren't particularly good plot twists but you should still proceed with caution]

Review: X-Men #1 (Vol. 4)

I’m well behind reviewing Uncanny X-Men, though I recently managed to catch up with them so I may be posting a bunch of reviews for those issues pretty soon. Today though I wanted to look at another new X-Men title; X-Men #1. You may remember this as the all-female title with an all-star cast featuring Storm, Jubilee, Rogue, Psylocke, Shadowcat, and Rachel Summers Grey that I talked about a while back. I’ve been anticipating this book for months for a number of reason. For one thing it features three of my Top Ten Favorite X-Men on the roster. It’s a very ethnically diverse title as the cast have a lot more different racial and cultural backgrounds than your typical superhero comic. It’s also is, as far as I’m aware, the first time an X-Men book has featured an all-female cast. This last fact has made a lot of people really angry in a display that I can only describe as “sexist asshole rage”. All the arguments, and I use that term loosely, have been very weak and idiotic. One I heard was the worry that because it’s an all-female team the stories would be really emotional and lacking action because women superheroes having normal adventures is “unrealistic”.

Yeah, that’s dumb as hell. If you subscribe to that than please exit this blog.

Anyway this comic is written by Brian Wood and art by Oliver Coipel (pencils, inks), Mark Morales (inks), and Laura Martin (Colors). Brian Wood is actually well known for writing great female characters though for his part he’s admitted his secret is that he just writes women the same as he would men. So if it’s that simple why do so many male writers do it so terribly so often?

 Full review after the jump.

Summer Movie Preview '13

[UPDATE: Wow, I totally forgot Man of Steel. Because I am dumb. Oh I totally wrote it but I forgot to actually put it up. It’s fixed now.]

It looks like I’m doing another Summer Movie Preview, just like last year. Though I missed out on seeing a few of the films last summer, and others I simply didn’t review, the whole thing was fun and I enjoyed doing it. As I’ve said before I think that the Summer movie experience begins in May, which means I’m really cutting this close. But hey, it’s technically still April. As I said last year these are not reviews; it’s just me talking about movies coming out this summer that appeal to my nerdy side. There might be some films I missed that should go on this list but for now this will do. Notice that the Fantastic Four reboot still isn’t around. When is that happening, Fox?

Click below for more.