Tag Archive: The Avengers


Preview–The Avengers return today with new Marvel Comics monthly series

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May 2, 2018

  

This Saturday, May 5, 2018, is Free Comic Book Day at comic book stores nationwide.  Marvel Comics has several titles available, each setting the groundwork for a new direction in the Marvel Universe.  One of those featured issues is The Avengers, a story written by Jason Aaron with artwork by Sara Pichelli.  That comic book leads into a new series beginning today with the arrival of the first issue of a brand-new monthly, also titled The Avengers.  Written by Aaron with artwork by Ed McGuinness, along with Mark Morales and David Curiel, it’s a great jumping-on point for new readers, and the arrival is well-timed for fans clamoring for more Marvel superhero action after last weekend’s release of Avengers: Infinity War. 

Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man are back together, this time to protect the world from a new menace: the giant space-gods called the Celestials.  And the Big Three will be joined by Doctor Strange, Black Panther, She-Hulk, Ghost Rider, and Captain Marvel.  The first issue of the monthly series will arrive with several cover options, a standard cover by Ed McGuinness, two variant versions of that cover, variant covers by Esad Ribic, Greg Land, and Aaron Kuder, and a blank sketch cover.

   

And you can get your copies signed this weekend by the writer himself.  Jason Aaron will be signing The Avengers, Issue #1, and the Free Comic Book Day issue this Saturday at the Free Comic Book Day celebration at Elite Comics in Overland Park, Kansas.  Check out the Elite Comics Facebook page here for more information on the event.

Here is a preview of the cover art for The Avengers, Issue #1 (above and below), a preview of the first pages of Issue #1, and a preview of the cover for Issue #2:

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First look–Marvel’s Avengers return next summer in “Civil War”

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November 29, 2015

avengers-civil-war-official-poster

The Avengers and cast from Avengers 2: Age of Ultron are returning to theaters next summer for the next installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Captain America: Civil War.

Check out this trailer for Captain America: Civil War:

Captain America: Civil War hits theaters May 6, 2016.

C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com

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Need your own totem? Find heroines aplenty in Funko’s action figure line

Filed under: Comics & Books, Con Culture, Fantasy Realms, Movies, Retro Fix, Sci-Fi Café, Superheroes, TV — 4 Comments
July 25, 2015

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The Renaissance of movie and TV tie-in action figures arrived in 2013 with Funko’s classic Kenner-style ReAction figure line.  Other companies focus on single licensed figures and getting the likenesses spot-on, but Funko’s diversification of lines meant everyone could find something that fit their personal niche at an affordable price point.  A true throwback series, one of the overlooked features of the line is the incredible variety of no-names-taken, classic kick-ass heroines represented.

In fact you can find here the top of the world’s best, in-your-face, take-no-prisoners, genre heroines.  Buy them for yourself, for your friends, or get your favorite as a totem to inspire you each day from your desktop.  And where the early sculpts in Funko’s line admittedly looked nothing like the actresses that made the roles famous, the new lines have only improved.  And nobody has better packaging designs than the ReAction line.

Zoe Washburne scene

Who would you add to the Funko roster of heroines?  Compare your list to our more than 85 suggestions for future kick-ass women action figures below.

First, check out this Baker’s Dozen of our favorites in the current Funko pantheon:

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Sizing up Captain America: The Winter Soldier against the rest of the pack

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May 11, 2014

Winter Soldier

Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the sequel to 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger and the ensemble film The Avengers, is full of all those things you like to see in a comic book spinoff film: lots of action sequences and plenty of banter between superheroes.  It’s a good addition to the Marvel Studios universe of films.  But compared to past entries it begs the question of where Marvel is heading with all its Avengers-based films.

Not as viscerally compelling as The First Avenger, the story in The Winter Soldier seems disjointed, as if it is a stitched together batch of scenes instead of a clearly thought out story.  We have one villain with the Winter Soldier, another with a government wonk played by Robert Redford, another with a would-be S.H.I.E.L.D. enforcer played by the who-would ever-trust-a-guy that-looks-like-that Frank Grillo, and pretty much every government lawman around, including scenes with too-many-to-count police cars destroyed and demolished by the good guys.  Oh, yeah–and Hydra.  Again.  Is it a complex story or just too many unnecessary plot threads?  The first Captain America was a complete story, showing the weak young man who wanted to fight for all that’s right as he moved along a path to become a supersoldier, working with an incredible group of comrades, and experiencing love and loss along the way–character driven, not action driven.  The basic story here has been over-used lately–stop the criminals who believe destroying the world (or the city, etc.) is the only way to save it.  In what world does that logic make sense?

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Black Widow–Edmondson and Noto’s series among the best of 2014

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April 13, 2014

Black-Widow-5-by-Phil-Noto

In the same way that Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye series took us by surprise as the best new series of 2012 (and hasn’t let up in 2014), Nathan Edmondson and Phil Noto’s Black Widow monthly comic book series is proving to be at the top of the 2014 titles.  Strange that the duo of Hawkeye and Black Widow is well-known to be a second tier partnership within the Avengers, yet they are the stars of some of the best monthlies the Marvel universe has to offer.

The Black Widow series follows Natasha Romanova and her attempt to atone for her past sins as a mercenary, assassin, general all-around “bad guy.”  She selects missions these days very carefully.  Her goal is making money but not hurting anyone in the process.  And that money goes into trust funds and pays off her web of back-up operatives around the world—nothing in her plans is about profit-taking.

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That doesn’t mean she won’t be tapped for S.H.I.E.L.D. or Avengers projects from time to time.  Former agent and now director Maria Hill (who you’ll recall is played by Cobie Smulders in the live-action Marvel universe) brings her in on a few missions.  They make a great team.  Edmondson has a great feel for Romanova.  In the same way Fraction was able to show the personal side of Hawkeye, Edmondson scratches the surface of what makes this lethal heroine tick, but her character shows great depth.  Yet as she says at the beginning of her series “my full story will never be told”.

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Edmondson and Noto offer up a cool, new look at Marvel Comics’ Black Widow

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January 28, 2014

Black Widow 2 cover Noto

If you’re still waiting to see who is going to pick up the reins and turn Gentle Giant’s Honey Trap Army into a comic book series, the next best thing may be at your local comic book store right now.  It’s Nathan Edmondson and Phil Noto’s new Black Widow biweekly series from Marvel Comics.  What does it have to do with the Honey Trap Army?  Nothing really, except that Natasha Romanoff as realized by the 1960s style art of Phil Noto would fit right in with the mod-inspired team of high-end assassin action figures.

You’ll get the feeling you’re reading something with plenty of potential, storytelling on par with Jason Aaron’s Thor, God of Thunder.  In a similar way as Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye created a story of a second-level Avenger apart from the world of the Avengers, Edmondson’s Black Widow is on her own and carving out her own life in this new series.  She’s still working with the Avengers, but this story is about how she spends the rest of her time.  And like Hawkeye has his pal Lucky Dog, Natasha almost has her own pet cat.  Almost.

Black Widow Honey Trap Army look

She’s an assassin turned paid killer, a distinction that has real meaning for Natasha, who is taking on her own mercenary projects for good pay but not for personal gain.  It’s all part of her atonement for past sins, a process she is both forging ahead and wrestling with.  She has an able if not seemingly foppish aide in this endeavor, a buttoned-shirt lawyer named Mr. Ross, who selects assignments to take any subjective influences away from what projects are selected for Natasha to pursue.  At her request.  And we learn even he is full of surprises.

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Stuck in a revolving door: Why costumed heroes don’t work in the 21st Century

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October 6, 2013

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By Art Schmidt

I was having lunch with a friend the other day and we were talking about comic book movies and the slow transition of the formulas for the ones which have succeeded to television format. My friend was grumbling about the lack of costumed heroes on popular shows such as Arrow or the new Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  I have to admit, I hadn’t really noticed the lack of costumes in those shows, loving the first season of Arrow despite very few folks with traditional comic book costumes, and enjoying the first couple of episodes of A.O.S. (can you acronym an acronym?).

But the more I thought about it, the more puzzled I was.  Why weren’t there more costumes in Arrow?  Certainly Deathstroke’s mask was a pivotal prop in the series, and the Dark Archer had a cool getup, but they weren’t costumes so much as work attire fitting the villain’s nature.  And of course A.O.S. is a show about normal people, super spies and highly-skilled to be sure, but not superheroes.  And certainly without costumes outside of May’s black leather suit, akin to Fury’s normal wardrobe and the attire seen by many personnel aboard the Heli-carrier in The Avengers.

Speaking of which, The Avengers is a perfect case in point.  The evolution of the superhero sans costume.  I’ll get back to that in a minute.

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Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. premieres tonight on ABC

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September 24, 2013

Smulders in Agents of SHIELD pilot

Tonight, at last, ABC premieres Joss Whedon’s new TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  Expanding from the mega-hit movie series of superhero flicks that led up to last year’s The Avengers, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is taking a queue from the CW’s DC Comics series Arrow:  It will focus on the non-superhero aspects of the comic book universe, introducing a new team of characters to help explain this shadow organization called S.H.I.E.L.D.

We work the cases S.H.I.E.L.D. hasn’t classified.  We investigate the bizarre.  The strange.  The unknown.  To protect the ordinary from the extraordinary.  Welcome to Level 7.

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Don’t look for Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury or Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor, or any of the other major Marvel superheroes, at least in the initial episodes, although there may be known Marvel villains in the first season.  But look for two major links to the Marvel movies in tonight’s premiere.  First is a visit from Agent Maria Hill, played by Cobie Smulders.  Smulders’ performance as Hill elevated the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to near-superhero status in The Avengers.  Her major role and performance left us all begging for more, so we hope we get to see her more than in just the series pilot.

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First look–Agent Coulson returns in Joss Whedon’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D”

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May 16, 2013

Agent Coulson is back

Agent Coulson lives!

Like all characters in comic books, dead doesn’t really mean dead.  And we couldn’t be happier that Marvel Studios is bringing back Agent Phil Coulson, who, played by Clarke Gregg, was the unlikely lynchpin of every one of the recent interconnected movies based on Marvel Comics’ characters.

In the marathon opening night for The Avengers, Agent Coulson served as our guide, speaking directly to viewers as he introduced Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Iron Man 2, and Captain America: The First Avenger.  In The Avengers, we saw what was unquestionably the most emotional scene of the franchise as Coulson was killed by Loki.  Or so we thought.

Check out the preview for the ABC Network’s new TV series, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:

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First look–Marvel Studios releases first trailer for Thor: The Dark World

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April 24, 2013

Thor the Dark World poster

Rounding out our week of dark-themed 2013 movie previews, Marvel Studios just released the first trailer for Thor: The Dark World, sequel to the hit film Thor that we reviewed here at borg.com back in 2011.  We liked the first big screen run at translating the classic popular comic book series starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgård, and Anthony Hopkins.  It’s probably the most notable for giving us the backstory of Hiddleston’s Loki, who became the villain bent on Earth’s destruction in 2012’s megahit The Avengers. 

Hemsworth, Portman, Hiddleston, Skarsgård, and Hopkins all return as Thor, Jane Foster, Loki, Dr. Selvig, and Odin in Thor: The Dark World, and are joined by Chuck’s Zachary Levi as Fandral, Doctor Who’s Christopher Eccleston as Malekith, Get Shorty’s Rene Russo as Frigga, and Lost’s Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Algrim.

Check out the first studio preview for Thor: The Dark World:

Thor: The Dark World hits theaters November 8, 2013.

C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com

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