Marvel Toddler Shirt

I've been reading about how Marvel has been doing everything they can to keep from advertising the characters that they don't have the movie rights to.  It seems like a ridiculous theory, but when you see merchandise where X-Men and Fantastic Four characters have been removed and replaced with more obscure ones that is pretty telling.  There was once a period of time where every piece of Marvel merchandise had Wolverine on it.

Even know that I was surprised when I found this shirt while shopping for my son.  Sure it has Captain America, Iron Man, Spiderman, Thor, and the Hulk on it.  But check out Nova, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage.  To be fair those characters were in the Ultimate Spiderman Cartoon, but that show wasn't using that look for Cage.  Another fun fact about the shirt is the color black is a fuzzy felt material, so Luke Cage's hair is glorious!

Loki and Sex

News has broke that in the Loki: Agent of Asgard book that starts in February the Marvel character will not only be bisexual but he’ll be changing shape also.  There is much online debate on if this is a good thing or a bad thing.  Loki is a trickster villain and one of the arguments is that as a villain it would put a LGBT character in a bad light.  Like if you’re LGBT you must be evil or something in that light. 

 

So let’s talk about Loki’s sexuality for a bit.  If we look back to the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda; oh right I forgot I’m talking about the actual mythology here for and not the comic version.  Since you know, the myths came before the comics.  I just want to tell one story to show how this “new take” on Loki is pretty true to the character.  Sleipnir is Odin’s eight legged horse and according to Odin is the best of the horses.  Now here comes the fun, Loki is Sleipnir’s mother.  I know it’s surprising but let me explain how it all happened.  See Loki was in Vegas and…  Okay, that’s not true.  The actual myth is more fucked up than just a bender in Sin City.

Way back when the gods were first settling the area a builder shows up and says that he can build a fortification for them in three seasons that will keep all invaders out.  All he wants is Freyja, the sun, and the moon.  They want this incredible fortress but don’t want to pay for it.  The gods try to figure out a way to screw the builder out of the bet and agree only after laying down a bunch of conditions on the builder.  The important condition is that no man is able to help him build.  The builder tricks all of the gods and brings out this amazing horse named Svaoifari.  He and the horse begin working on the fortress and because this horse is such an amazing worker it looks like the gods are going to have to pay up.

The gods are all pissed that the builder has tricked them and blame Loki.  He’s the trickster god; certainly he should have been smart enough to stop this from happening.  With three days left before the deadline Loki comes up with a plan.  He changes shape into a mare and approaches Svaoifari.  Seeing the mare, the horse breaks free from its restraints and chases after the mare all night.  The builder is unable to finish the fortress because he is unable to reign in his horny horse and spends the nice chasing after him.  A while after this Loki gives birth to Sleipnir.  Loki gives birth to an eight legged horse.    I think it’s important here to mention that the other gods didn’t look down on Loki for getting him some of that sweet, sweet horse meat.  He was pretty much doing it because when the Norse gods wanted someone tricked they went to Loki. The other fun part of this story is when gods find out this mystery builder was actually a frost giant; Thor just outright kills him. 

So what does all this have to do with the new Loki being bisexual and all the arguments around it?  Nothing really I suppose.  I just wanted to point out that Loki has already turned into a female horse, had sex with a horse, and gave birth to a freak horse.  This is a character that gives birth to horses and fathers giant wolves; it seems silly to compare him to real life human standards and morals.

Marvel Numbering

To be honest I haven’t bought a lot of comics in the past year.  I buy Flash more out of habit than anything at this point and the other few titles I’ve bought haven’t been from the big two.  I do like to keep up on what is going on in books though.  It’s because of this I was quick to read an announcement that Beta Ray Bill was going to be making an appearance in the new Nova comic.  I’m a huge Beta Ray Bill fan so I was excited to see what was going on.  The cover for the book he’ll be showing up in is posted below. 

 

The first thing you notice is that Beta Ray Bill is a bad ass.  This is normal and it’s how he should be portrayed.  The second thing you probably notice is the giant number one in the right hand corner.  The funny thing about the number one is that this is issue number 13.  You can actually see the 013. printed much smaller down on the bottom right hand corner.  Now it is entirely possible that this is only a promotional image and the real comic will not have a giant number one on the cover.  But if the comic does ship that way it is pretty interesting.

There will always be debate in comics if restarting numbering is more important than having huge issue numbers.  New number ones seem like a fresh start, but you can’t have a 100^th issue if you renumber every year.  Is Marvel going to start numbering their story arcs?  Would you jump into a comic you’ve never read before if they were on the third story in an arc of a book that’s on issue 20?  Again I’m speculating a lot over an image that might not even hit the comic stands that way.  It was something I noticed yesterday and haven’t been able to stop thinking about. 

Thor Recap, Bring on Beta Ray Bill!

With Thor making 65 million over the weekend I’m guessing some of you went and saw it. I just saw it Monday night; I’m pretty allergic to opening weekend crowds so we waited a bit. I really enjoyed the movie. I’m a sucker for cosmic Vikings smashing things though, so your mileage may vary. Most of the comic book references were pretty nicely handled; the bits about Donald Blake had me literally laughing out loud. The after the credits scene is such obscure nerddom that it was almost funny to watch the audience’s confusion.

I’m not bringing Thor up to do a review though. I’m bringing it up because I’m excited. If the god of thunder keeps bringing in money the Marvel machine will have to do a sequel. If they do another one, they’ll have to introduce Beta Ray Bill won’t they? Iron Man 2 brought in War Machine, so it only makes sense. I hope so, because I have a confession. I like Marvel’s version of Thor; but I freaking love Beta Ray Bill.

A little history for those not versed in Thor comics; Beta Ray Bill showed up in 1983. The horse-faced alien didn’t start that way. He was part of an alien race called the Korbinites, who go on searching for a new home when their galaxy explodes. To become their champion Bill undergoes a series of experiments to make his super strong and tough. The rest of his race look human, he bame that thing to protect his people. Thor encounters his space ship and in true comic book fashion the to fight it out before realzing they are both good guys.

This is back when Thor reverted back to Donald Blake if he lost contact with Mjolnir for 60 seconds. You can guess what happens next. Thor gets switched back to Blake during the fight. Bill picks up Blake’s walking staff and is transformed into a Thor-like costume. This is the first time in the comics that anyone else was worthy of picking up the hammer. It has happened a bunch of times since then, but at the time it was pretty epic.

Odin teleports Bill and Thor to Asgard where they battle it out to see who is worthy of Mjolnir. The two are so evenly matched that they knock each other out. Only Beta Ray Bill wakes up first and saves Thor from a lava flow. Bill is determined the winner but eventually concedes Mjolnir to Thor. Odin is so impressed that he gives Bill a hammer of his own, Stormbreaker. When tapped on the ground it even lets Bill return to his original Korbinite appearance. Bill agrees to join the Asgardian forces when he learns the fire demon Surtur was responsible for his race’s near destruction.

Beta Ray Bill’s first appearance and a ton more awesomeness has recently been collected in the Walt Simonson Thor Ominbus. This monster is 1192 pages and covers Thor 337-355, 357-369, 371-382; Balder the Brave #1-4. Yeah, that is a lot of Thor. Well worth the 125 dollar price tag, you can find it through online retailers for about 80 bucks. To me these are the definitive Thor stories and if you’ve never checked them out before don’t let that price tag deter you.

All this talk of Beta Ray Bill may make me play Marvel Ultimate Alliance again. My team of War Machine, Scarlet Spider, US Agent, and Beta Ray Bill was epic.

Lightning in a Cup

You may have noticed by now that I love movie tie-in merchandise. Not that I buy much of it, but I’m fascinated by the things that spring up when the big blockbuster movie hits the theater. The more random the object seems the funnier I think it is. Thor is coming out in May and the toy isles are already full of plastic helmets and hammers. Today though I’m not talking about the toy isle, I’m highlighting a different kind of Thor product.

Blue Lighting Blast Slurpee. If you’ve been in a 7-11 lately you’ll see they’ve been taken over by the Norse god of thunder. They are selling lenticular cups in both the fountain drink and Slurpee variety. Not to mention the plastic strays with little tiny people on top of them. The highlight of this marketing of course is the Slurpee machine.

As you can see by the picture above Blue Lighting Blast is “A Thunderous Blend of Raspberry and Tangerine.” It is the same blue as Windex, which made me pretty reluctant to try it. Actually I pretty much stick to the Coke flavor of Slurpee so I’m pretty reluctant to try most of their off the wall flavors. The wildest I’ll usually get is layering some cherry into the Coke. Well I’ve poured rum into them before too, but that is a different story.

So how does it taste? I’m surprised to say I liked it. I’m not a big raspberry fan normally, and I include both real raspberries and the sugary raspberry flavor most candies use. I do like tangerines though, so it is possible that cut of citrus was enough to make me enjoy it. Your mileage may vary, but I may even get another one before 7-11 moves onto its next movie flavor.

Superhero Squad Cars

When Disney purchased Marvel Comics a ton of very talented people jumped to their drawing boards and started creating mash-ups involving the two company’s characters. Images of Mickey Mouse webslinging through the skyline were all over the place. But it was all in good fun, no one actually expected it to actually lead to anything. But it did lead to something. A mash-up I would have never expected in a million years. Disney is crossing Pixar’s Cars with Marvel’s Superhero Squad.

Now I’m not saying Cars 2 is going to have a Captain America cameo. Mater isn’t going to roll onto the next season of the Superhero Squad. As far as I can tell, this cross over is happening entirely in the toy isle. In that regard it makes certain sense. The Cars line has been incredibly popular. The Superhero Squad stuff has been around for a long time, but has really seen a boost due to the cartoon. So they’re taking two properties that are already strong sellers and smashing them together. Is it chocolate and peanut butter? I suppose you have to make that decision for yourself.

In a very odd way they kind of make sense. Sure, turning Silver Surfer into a talking car is strange. But when you think about it, does Spiderman need a Formula 1 race car with his face on it? Do you see Wolverine driving around in a bright blue tank with his name down the sides? There are cars made for Daredevil, I don’t care what his superpowers are, that’s scary. I’m more willing to believe there is an alternate dimension where everyone is cars than I’m willing to believe Iron Man will ever need to use a yellow and red bi-plane with his picture painted on the wings.

The first wave is full of Marvel marketing’s usual suspects. Iron Man, Spider-Man, Captain America, Thor, Wolverine, Silver Surfer, Hulk, and Dr. Doom. The Thor car was really bothering me for some reason and it took me a while to figure out what I didn’t like about it. It’s all the flash color. Dr. Doom is the only other car to have it and he only has a tiny bit around the eyes. Thor looks more like someone pushed his head into a tiny car. Captain America actually looks pretty cool with the wings in the back.

The company that makes these guys is named Maisto and you can check out there website here. Follow the link and you can see all the stuff they have planned for this year. In addition to the Marvel cars they also have the traditional, check out this cool car with Spiderman painted on the side. So if you don’t like this mash-up and still need your superhero car fix you can still get a green van with the Hulk on it. I have no idea when these guys are going to start showing up on shelves, but I have a feeling they’ll sell pretty well. Hopefully they’ll do well enough that we’ll eventually get an Iron Fist.

The Internet Was Right, I’m Outraged Now Too

Last month it was announced that January’s issue of Thor: The Might Avenger by Roger Langridge and Chris Samnee will be the last. Just about ever comic related site I go to reacted with shock and horror. Numerous people claimed it was the only Marvel book they had been picking up, or that Marvel was canceling their best book. I was sympathetic, but except for two titles, I had moved from single issues to trades. I didn’t know what the furor was about.

This week has changed things. A trade containing the first four issues has come out and everything the internet has said is correct. Between Langridge’s writing and that amazing Samnee art I can’t tell you the last time I smiled this much reading a comic book. It makes super heroes fun. The character relationships have heart. I can not recommend this book enough, I loved it.  It hurts to know it is canceled.

So the book ends in January with issue 8. The subplots were meant to wrap up at issue 12. Is it still possible to save the book? There are Twitter and Facebook groups out there you can join, but my guess is the only way to really save it, is with your wallet. I’ll be buying the remaining individual issues. That first trade would make a fantastic present for any Thor fans in your life. Actually you give this book to non-Thor fans and you’ll convert them, so give it to any comic book fans in your life.  Full on...all the way.