BC1

May 1, 2012 3:00 pm I remember those episodes of West Wing. When I rewatched them recently I was thinking, "wouldn't it be awesome if he really was representing S.H.I.E.L.D.?" But if that were true, Jeb Bartlett wouldn't have had to step aside from the presidency - he'd just call Nick Fury and be hangin' with Zoe 5 minutes later. Actually, she wouldn't have gotten kidnapped in the first place; she'd have been dosed with roophie counter-agents prior to any date with Jean-Claude, and her handlers would have never gotten caught by surprise.

April 30, 2012 2:56 pm I'll give this a swing, but I'm feeling like one foot's out the door with this title. The direction that this book started with was great - I want more of that, with "getting his feet under him" Superman.

April 28, 2012 7:35 am Hey, Lobo was kind of fun in Superman:TAS! Don't knock it till you try it.

April 27, 2012 2:29 pm So the Age of Ultron is actually going to be a thing. I figured that would be Bendis' last big event with the Avengers, not AvX. Maybe AvX paves the way? Like AoA, someone important in the Avengers dies and it causes the AoU to occur.

April 27, 2012 10:50 am Except, Magneto knew real Nazis, so does that give his use more force, or is it that much more in poor taste for him to say it? Same rules apply to Captain America or anyone who speaks to him.

April 26, 2012 9:38 am His reasons for being replaced are explained, and groundwork was being laid even before the mini-series (check out Fear Itself: Captain America). He's not dead, he's still around, he's just, as always, planning for every contingency.

April 26, 2012 9:36 am And Firestar right here in the 616 (she was first introduced in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends since Human Torch was unavailable due to license issues)!

April 25, 2012 3:53 pm I read the series too and, while kind of sort of thinking this was what was going to happen, after the end of issue 4 I knew this was what was going to happen. Coulson, though, was a complete left-field surprise. Also, there's a - plausible - reason why this guy's name is Nick Fury. Lame, but...plausible. Honestly, I just picked up the last issue to see if my assumption was right, I'd lost some interest in the story after issue 3. They kept dragging out the reveal and it was more annoying than suspenseful. Once the reveal happened I got what I came for, since I don't know anything about the villain Orion or his Leviathan group. And don't forget Coulson is also in Ultimate Spider-Man (with Clark Gregg voicing, natch).

April 24, 2012 3:44 pm "And so we come around to that same double-edged sword again, where the readership says they’re tired of all of the interconnectivity, but it proves to be a struggle to sustain anything that’s too far apart from the Marvel mainstream." Quotes like this always get me. Define "the readership." What percentage of people reading comics, or more importantly, reading Marvel comics, are saying they don't like interconnectivity? Because if you can't figure that out, then you have a marketing problem that would get people fired in almost any other business. This is the same "readership" that convinced Marvel and DC to take a year off of events, only to see sales drop precipitously. No wonder Marvel can't keep a book like Runaways afloat - they don't know who wants to read it! I wonder, too, how the Tsunami line of books was sold to creators like Vaughn. I wonder if Marvel didn't pitch it as something independent of the main line to get creators to come in with off-beat ideas that wouldn't work in the Marvel U. Like Sentinel is primarily a giant robot story, but the robot happens to be a Sentinel; anywhere else, you could just have sold it as a boy and his robot story. Does trying to Marvelize it hurt the concept in any way? Should it not have been a Marvel property to begin with, but an independent one? From what I understand, there's not much in the first volume of the series that 100% relies on position in the Marvel Universe. Much like Hickman's SHIELD, could any Marvel specific references be removed easily and replaced? Long story short, did Vaughn think this initiative would be different enough to warrant giving up rights to this idea rather than keep it for a creator-owned project? Or did someone at Marvel come up with the concept and just get Vaughn to flesh it out and write it?

April 24, 2012 3:19 pm I didn't realize that you had to shoot a picture of the AR code to get it to activate on a separate app. I bought AvX #'s 1 and 2 on comixology, and I didn't even realize what it was. Also, there was no mention of the AR on the digital copy, so not only did I not see the symbol, I wouldn't have even known what to do with it if I had. Honestly, I tried clicking on my digital copy last week thinking that's how you activated it, and nothing happened. This seems an overly complicated process for something so slight in the final showing. Now, if you want to do more bang for the buck, look at what Double Feature Comics from 4 Star Studioes are doing. You can read the comic as normal, but you can also see the various layers of process if you're into that. You also get commentary from the creators. And it's all included with the price of purchase, and it's all easily navigated because it's integrated into the creation process, not being added onto a product of another medium. And the AvX Infinity comic was a much better step in the direction of what "digital comics" should be. Still a lot of static images that could have been better animated, but the transitions and layering and effects that were used were tremendous.