Disney/Marvel wonder twin powers activate!!!

So I woke up this morning to find that amidst the fires that are slowly, once again, burning California down, that Disney had acquired Marvel. While some people are freaking out or starting to talk bad about it, I have decided to look at it in a positive light. I mean after all Marvel was bankrupt only a few short years ago, and to now see it land on stable ground makes me happy to see that some of the titles I grew up with might just have some stable ground.

Granted this bit of news will cause rampant speculation in the days to come, but in truth we won't say anything become of this for a least a few years.

I always saw Marvel as The Man when it came to comics anyway. And I don't mean "Yo, dawg you da man!!!" but more of "I will not work for The Man!!". So to see these two come together just means more corporate America at work.

I am way excited at maybe seeing the possibility of Marvel properties with Pixar but at least we won't have to worry about licensing rights when comparing The Incredibles with The Fantastic Four. So who knows, this could work out good for both companies. I mean just look at what it's done for Harry Potter.

I think that what's going to happen is Disney will walk in and trim some of the fat as far as Marvels excessive titles goes. Hopefully we won't see 100 different X-Men titles anymore and maybe even a more cohesive storyline within the Marvel universe. I seriously doubt that they will try to make the comics more kid friendly. They themselves have been quoted as saying "If it isn't broke..."

As far as the films go, they have only one way to go and that's up. Fans such as myself have been somewhat disappointed for years at the quality of films being put out by Marvel studios. I mean there have been 3 Punisher films in the past 20 years and all of them blew. 2 Hulk films. 4 Captain America movies. I think what will happen is Disney will give them their own studio (much like Dreamworks which is owned by Disney as well) and let them make their movies. As long as they stay within the quality standards of Iron Man then it could work out for the better.

If anything, as a comic writer myself, it makes me wonder if we will see more Indy Comic companies more prodominante or if Disney will choke out Marvel and then we will see more Creator owned comic companies like what happened when Image was created. Who knows, only time will tell.

Here is a list of other companies Disney owns. Hopefully, it will help you reach your own conclusions.

The Walt Disney Studios

* Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group
o Walt Disney Pictures
o Touchstone Pictures
o Hollywood Pictures
o ImageMovers Digital
o Miramax Films
+ Miramax Family Films
+ Dimension Films (Disney owns the Dimension Films library for all films released before September 30, 2005)
+ Miramax Television
o Disneynature
o DreamWorks (for films made by Touchstone only, its sister company, DreamWorks Animation SKG, is still distributed and owned by Paramount Pictures)
o Animation
+ Walt Disney Animation Studios (formerly Walt Disney Feature Animation)
+ Pixar Animation Studios
+ DisneyToon Studios
* Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (formerly Buena Vista Distribution)
* Buena Vista International
o Miravista Films
o Patagonik Film Group (joint venture between Disney and Artear Argentina)
* Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment (distributes under the following labels: Walt Disney Home Entertainment, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, Touchstone Home Entertainment, Hollywood Pictures Home Entertainment, Miramax Home Entertainment, Dimension Home Video, ABC Video, Buena Vista Home Entertainment)
* El Capitan Theatre
* Disney Music Group
o Walt Disney Records
o Hollywood Records
o Mammoth Records
o Lyric Street Records
o Buena Vista Records
o Disney Music Publishing (see Buena Vista Music Group page for a list of publishers that are part of Disney Music Publishing)
* Disney Theatrical Productions
o Hyperion Theatrical
o Disney Live Family Entertainment
+ Disney on Ice - produced by Feld Entertainment
+ Disney Live — produced by Feld Entertainment
* Disney Character Voices International

Where do I start

Man, what a past few weeks it's been. I don't even know where to start with an update or column.

Let's start with Inglorious Basterds. Did not dig it. I mean it was kinda cool and all in an artistic sense but as an overall movie, I just wasn't feeling it. Sorry. Start shooting me hate responses now lol.

Been busy doing a lotta running around and prep work for the upcoming comic. Justin and I are hard at work and trying to get all the prep done on this so we can send it to the printers as soon as possible. Wanna see a sneak peek at the art for it?



There ye have it.

We are very proud of the comic and how it's coming together. So stick around and you won't be disappointed.

Read The Nobody this week. That was a really good book and was pleasantly surprised by it. Also, Deadpool Suicide Kings wrapped up it's 4 issue run. Really loved that one.



The banter between Deadpool and Spiderman had me laughing.

Well, it's getting late and I need to play me some Batman: Arkham Asylum. Can't believe it made it into the Guinness Book Of World Records already. That's kinda sweet. hehe.

District 9

District 9, wow what a pleasant surprise this movie was. I seriously can't say enough good things about it. But let's see if I can try.

For those of you who don't know, District 9 is a movie about the Alien occupation of a small section of Johannesburg. And by Alien, I mean creatures/being from outer space. In the movie timeline 28 years ago a spacecraft came to Earth and took position over Johannesburg. After two months of speculating, the military decided to take action and try entering the craft. Upon doing so they discovered 1.8 million Aliens, which the call Prawns due to their looks, living in what we would consider poverty. They begun moving the Prawns to District 9 in order to try to learn more about them.

The movie starts off with documentary detailing how their occupation of this District was causing more problems than solving. The MNU (Multi-National United) is about to launch a movement which would evict the tenants of District 9 and move them into another District 200 km away from their current location. And that's where the fun starts.

This movie takes an in-depth look into how we as humans would react in an environment such as this. It shows not only our "PC" stance on the situation but also the true face of horror. Showing not only what we would see on the outside but also alot of what we wouldn't see due to the media spin on it.

I loved it. I loved every second of the movie. It had to have been one of the only movies this summer that I walked into that wasn't a sequel, a comic, or a movie based on a book or story of which I had already read. It was nice to walk into the theater with an open mind, ready to be surprised and that I was. The acting in this was pretty good. Most of the characters that were seen were just side characters of a documentary but they managed to pull off their jobs well. The main antagonist of the story did a great job in not only making me think he was a supreme dork but to also get me to hate him with every ire of my being. In what had to be a twist of irony, the entire theater seemed to the be rooting for the Alien to return home, knowing that he was going to do so in order to get his friends and come back to whip our collective asses.

The FX were also top notch. For what had to be a lower budget film, they did their best to pull out all of the stops. The story had me from the word go and the action at the end had me on the edge of my seat.

This film took the best elements of Cloverfield and Blair Witch and any other "shaky cam" movie and improved on it without making the audience sick or bored. If you haven't had a chance to see this movie yet, then do yourself a favor and get out there and do so. Hopefully you will be as surprised as I was.

Original short that inspired the movie District 9

G.I. WTF?!?!?!

So, I went out the other night to catch G.I. Joe the movie last Friday. And wow, I don't even know where to start with this one. Needless to say it's taken me a few days to collect my thoughts on the matter in order to access my feelings on the subject. Let me just start with this, I have been a huge fan of the comic since I was a kid. I remember when the #1 issue came out and I picked it up. I thought to myself, holy crap this is cool. Reading the series (while I was able to identify that it was pure make believe) influenced me to join the military. Which I did proudly for 3 years.

I also know that it had been out for decades before that but in the form of a doll that was put out. I would collect the toys and make my own adventures with them. Hell many a time did I have Snake-Eyes sitting on top of Optimus Prime heading out to do battle with Darth Vader in Castle Greyskull. Heh yup I was a dork. Hell I still am. And like many others, Snake-Eyes was my favorite. I even went with a buddy of mine and we got our Clan Arashikage tatts on our forearms.

So now that I filled you in on the level of dorkiness that I have within me let me address the movie itself.

G.I. Joe the movie was crap.

Wait, let me rethink that and just list the pros and cons of the movie and let you formulate your own opinion.

Cons:

As a military man I failed to understand how the two main characters had Goatees. It's not allowed in the service dammit.

Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, while starting out as enemies, ended up living with their Sword Brothers moniker and would later lead a ninja squad in G.I. Joe. He never died.

Snake-Eyes Mask had lips!!!!!!!

The whole Star Wars theme of the movie. I wasn't the only one screaming "Stay on target" during the last battle scene.

So when you destroy ice, it floats. It doesn't sink.

When you are destroying the roof of a building, don't take the elevator up to it. The signs on the elevator even tell you that.

The quotes from the cartoon, while cool to hear, just sounded waaay to forced. They tried to hard to make it bound in reality and dorky at the same time. They should have found a way to do one or the other.

No one is called Storm Shadow and Snake-Eyes at the age of 8!!!

Really Cobra Commanders mask had to look like that?

There are tons of other cons, but I should probably list the pros before I get to deep lol.

Pros:

The chicks were hot.

With the understanding constant switch in continuity in the comics and tv shows, it was understandable that they tried to mix it up.

Snake-Eyes and Storm Shadow throwing down was the shit!!!

Action and tons of it.

The chicks were hot.

The trailers!!

Yeah. so to summarize, the movie at times felt forced or awkward in that they had to many origin stories and not enough of everything else. The fact that Cobra Commander turned out to be the Baronesses Brother whose death she blamed on Duke while they were dating 4 years ago seemed waaaaay to convenient. And while it was cool to see Marlon Wayans in a movie that wasn't him trying to be funny or had his entire family in it, he just doesn't pull off that badass like we were expected to see.

The director and writers of the movie seemed to accept that there was no way that they were going to create a believable story out of this movie and so they saturated it with tons and tons of CGI and action. And while I can normally forgive that and just live in Actionville (i.e. Transformers 2) in this case I couldn't be so ignorant. Of course the movie will have made it's budget back and the ending of it was left wide open enough for us to be stupid not to expect a sequel, I would have just like it better if they would have called Warren Ellis up and said "Hey, yeah you know what you did for G.I. Joe Resolute? Can you do that for G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra?"

Tri-Fi

So, as many times as I have complained in the past about the lack of any good science fiction shows out there (with the exception of Battlestar Galactica and Stargate) the networks have seemed to answer my complaints with what would seem to be a trifecta of new shows.

Now before I dive to deep into this column let me remind you of my theory that I had stated in my first column. Every few years or so Hollywood will put out 2 movies and 1 TV show which are almost identical. This season seems to go above and beyond in proving me right but more in reverse. Instead of 2 movies and a TV show this year it's 1 movie and 4 TV shows which seem to be related.

The movie having been Moon with Sam Rockwell dealt with a guy on the surface of the moon alone doing research. While it only had limited release my understanding is that it was outstanding. My regret was my inability to see it.

The first TV show is kinda of a standalone from the other three. The being Battlestar Galactica Caprica. This series will focus on how the Cylons were created and how the society of the time period deals with it. Don't except to much in the way of space travel but more on technilogical advances of the use of AI as well as dramactic overtones of 2 heartbroken fathers dealing with the ramifications of their decisions. Having seen the 2 hour movie that was put out a short time ago, I can tell you that I am well over anxious to watch this series and it lays it hope of success on the success of it predecessor. Still, it will make for some good TV. Eric Stolz seems to have found his niche as a drunken misunderstood parent making questionable decisions thanks to his role in The Butterfly effect. We'll see how this one pans out.

The second, third and fourth TV show I can lump together as all 3 of them seem to be about the same thing (hence my trifecta statement). The shows being Stargate Universe, Virtuality, and Defying Gravity. All of them seem to be about a bunch of astronauts hoping on a ship in some planet saving fashion only to have some "Otherworldly" issues present themselves. The only difference is that SGU gives the impression of a flat out ripoff of Star Trek Voyager in that the crew is full of non-astronauts stuck on a ship in an unknown galaxy. We as the viewers are expected to watch them travel throughout while trying to find a way home. Sound familiar? While I am excited at the prospect of being able to watch a new Stargate show, I am disappointed in the fact that the originality of this show seems to be non-existent.

The other two shows, Virtuality and Defying Gravity, seem to be about exactly the same thing. Group of people having trained for a mission to travel to an unmapped sector of the galaxy in hopes of discovering something to help save the planet on a 5 or 6 year mission. Not only do they have to deal with their own discrepincies but they will be faced with either a haunted ship or an extraterrestrial guiding them or hitching a ride until they reach their final destination. While I applaud the fact that we will be seeing 2 sci-fi space shows on main stream tv, I have to question their arrogance and hopefulness that the shows will last all of the 5 or 6 years slated for each series. A little wishful thinking? I do believe that TV shows should have an expected shelf life (Harpers Island, Alias, Lost) I fear that the audience will once again get disappointed when a show that they seem to be enjoying once again gets cancelled in the middle of a story arc (Firefly, Journeyman, Life, Kings) or be forced to wrap the series with some haphazardly throw together disappointing ending (Life on Mars).

I have watched both Virtuality and Defying Gravity (the pilots at least) and generally like them both. I can see the storylines and episodes laid out before me and am excited to see where they go. Sure they are basically the same TV show, but hopefully the networks won't show them at the same time thus forcing us to make a choice. At the same time, I hope they realize their similarities and do something to make them stand apart from one another else we will feel like we are watching repeats when we are indeed watching 2 shows with the same plot.

Who knows how the season will plan out. I mean they could all get cancelled and leave us all eager for next summer to watch new episodes of Burn Notice (awesome show btw). But I will hold out and watch them each with eager anticipation. Stay tuned to either this column or the panelcasts as I will do my best to review them in turn

My bad

Sorry it's been so long since I have posted on here. This blog was designed to follow me and the rest of Forbidden Panel as we cruised along to the point where our comics were published and ready for the world. We are still working on that goal, but in the meantime please continue to visit either here or our website for updates and podcasts as our journey continues.