I'm still holding out for Marshal Law.

I like superheroes!

Who's Captain America?

Ghost World, American Splendour and Perseopolis are being ripped off the shelves and burnt RIGHT NOW to make way for the tidal wave of superhero movies. Oh noes!

Hey, in 1602, an alternate-timeline Marvel Universe book, Neil Gaiman had Thor speaking in the alliterative cadences of the Icelandic eddas, which makes much more sense. Unfortunately the marketing people will never greenlight that for the movie.

Thor remains cool if for no other reason than that he represents a pantheon and cosmology other than the Judeo-Christian one. From videogames (Diablo) to comics and movies (Spawn, Preacher, Constantine, etc.) and TV series (Carnivale) I for one am tired of the whole business of angels and devils and sin and the war of souls and whatever the fuck excuse some lazy-ass writer has concocted to slap superpowers onto the Judeo-Christian mythos.

Admittedly, the Thor writers have not exactly been scholars of Norse religion, but Thor gets to fight storm giants and world-spanning serpents and pop around on Bifrost, the Rainbow Bridge, and so forth. It's kinda refreshing even when it's not all that well done.

I thought Captain America was dead...

Cracked did a funny countdown on this topic: http://www.cracked.com/article_15679_5-upcoming-comic-book-movies-that-must-be-stopped.html

But we are getting the Watchmen, which makes it all worthwhile.

I like the "Ultimates" version of Thor -- a charismatic guy named Thorlief Golmen with weather powers, who's attracted a cult following since claiming to be the son of Odin...

Thor is ridiculous

Whereas people getting powers via the bite of a radioactive spider makes PERFECT SENSE. Comic books are an artform of the absurd. Whereas Thor is not my cup of tea (I am looking forward to the Dark Knight), I am eager to see how it will translate to the big screen.

I would like to see DC explore some lesser known properties like Doom Patrol or the Spectre (it would make a cool horror movie!), but I am not holding my breath. I have always been more of a DC person, but Marvel has been much better about putting out films.

Rumor has it that Kevin McKidd (from Rome) will be Thor, which means the storm god will have a thick scottish accent. norse-alicious!

McCain and Bush remind me of evil Germans that Captain America used to fight against ...

I still have that comic book with Letterman on the cover. You can barely read it on screen but it says "Assistant Editors' Month." There were all kinds of wacky shenanigans that month, most of which were oh so close to being funny.

even in President McCain’s post-post-ironic, mega-Patriotic, uber-fucked America

Jeez, knock it off with the defeatism. If that's to be our future, let's at least enjoy our last summer of hoping for something better before resigning ourselves to that particular dystopia. Save the crying about how fucked we are with Crazy Grandpa McCain until it's a reality.

On the DC/Vertigo front, we're getting a movie for Y: The Last Man, which has the potential to be incredible. I don't know how I feel about Yorick being played by Shia Laboef, but a choice like that has the potential to bring people not familiar with the books in to see the movie, which is of course good.

I'm not a superhero person at all, though I have a soft spot for Batman and I intend to see the Ironman movie as soon as possible (I was busy drinking in the woods this past weekend). The rest of these sound... awful. Captain America can suck it.

The new Hulk movie with Edward Norton confuses me. I mean, we just had a Hulk movie a few years ago, which totally sucked. Why make another one right now, with a completely different cast? Do they expect us to just forget that this was already done not that long ago?

But now there are TWO Hulks...because when you can't think of anything else, just double the number of what everyone wants to see.

Worked for Ironman. It boils down to a basic Robot vs. Robot plot.

Aislinn,

Yes they are pretending the last Hulk Movie didn't exist. Just like Rocky V and Superman III and IV.

New Hulk film is a wipe-the-slate clean remake, much like I imagine the next Superman film will be, if there is another one. A Hollywood admission that the last attempt was cinematic gleet and they'd like to spend another hundred million to try again.

Shia is playing Yorick? Uneasy feelings about this. Have you seen his sideburns in the Indy trailer? He's my new ZB.

I DO like superheroes (in addition to the less spandex-y comics championed by the indie comics aristocracy), but agree that Thor, Cap, and the Avengers will all be Ghostrider by another name. Maybe Nick Cage and Ben Affleck can co-star.

But if these flicks prove to be half the Saturday afternoon entertainment Ironman is, I'll eat my hat. Not really.

**have fun watching the Red Balloon and enjoying your own sense of self-satisfaction

Is it too much for a fag to get a Wonder Woman film? As much as I love Lynda Carter, I want a big screen version, damnit!

Wow, Shia LeBouf is starring in the Y: The Last Man film? I am also unsure how I feel about that, although off the top of my head I can't think of a better recommendation...

Iron Man WAS GENUINELY GOOD. I was entertained. Most superhero movies are least marginally entertaining (at times mind numbing though).

Still, the nastalgia from my youth was X-men, spiderman, and batman. All three had excellent villans which made for great stories. Thor? Hulk? and sadly Iron Man didn't have great villans. The best thing about Iron man was his own conflict was himself (terrible alcoholic!)

And then there was war machine, who I always thought had a cooler costume and better storyline anyways.

Dave,

Josh Wheedon attempted a Wonder Woman film, and gave up.

Set Captain America during World War 2 and have him battling the Red Skull with Bucky (who has an ambiguous death).

The climax takes place on a Zepplin over the Artic Circle. The Cap defeat Red Skull, blows up the Doomsday weapon or whatever, but falls into the ocean. They can't find him. Captain America is presumed dead. Everyone is sad.

Cue remarkably brief end credits.

"65 years later". A team recovers a frozen Steve Rogers from the ocean. The medical team revives him and he's greeted by Tony Stark who tells him that America needs its Captain again...

Cue actual end credits.

THOR? they're scraping the barrel like that when Dr. Strange moulders on the shelf? Its an insult to Gene Colan!

& Steve Ditko.

Iron Man, is the first film made under the new Marvel movies studio, which was created to retain both more control over the characters and allow for the inevitable crossovers. And if it's a sign of things to come, they actually know what they're doing this time, after years of depressingly poor and inaccurate adaptations.

Plus, while Captain America might possibly be the single most difficult character to write for a post-Watergate United States, Ed Brubaker, who relaunched the title a couple of years ago, has proven it can be done and done well. Paranoia-style.

@15 - even I am trying to forget the last Hulk movie exists ... can you blame them?

I hear they cast Mr. Poe for the "After" part of the new Hulk movie ...

@5,

I completely agree with you. And also (kinda) with @24. BUT, Strange and Thor have worked together often, as had Strange and Hulk in the Defenders. You can't judge all superhero movies on stinkers like the FF movies and the last X-Men. Hollywood ran out of original ideas a long time ago -see how many movies are adapted from novels-, so why not keep crankin' out these kind of movies? The new Batman is gonna be great, and I'm not just sayin' that 'cuz I got to work on it as a stand-in. As long as they keep the spirit of the good story arcs from the original writers, they are going to be fine and I will keep going.

So there.

You're missing the point people - Marvel, Inc. has a definite game plan in mind with this series of filmatic roll-outs, all of which will culminate in the Avengers movie as Paul points out; "Iron Man" being just the first event in that multi-year strategy (rumor has it that Downey/Stark/IM will be making a cameo in the Hulk reboot, which if true would mean that Marvel is already working the cross-over angle even now).

Imagine the possibilities when several (presumably) proven money-making franchises all merge into one super-mega blockbuster? It's a potential gold-mine for Marvel, and one that could give them the financial resources to wipe the floor with DC, which to-date has done a piss-poor job of integrating the various celluloid versions of their characters ("Smallville" ironically being the sole exception) into a single, cohesive, "world" on-screen.

@8 When was the last time you read Watchmen? Do you seriously think you're going to get anything remotely like Watchmen? There's an entire narrative in there that cannot be put on film alongside the main narrative. It's going to be pure shite.

@9 SPOILER ALERT There's already Ultimate Nick Fury in Iron Man, and though they used the 616 origin (modernised), they clearly used the Ultimate Iron Man personality. They may call it Avengers, but it's going to be Ultimates, which will be fucking awesome.

@22 - I'm aware of the Whedon attempts. I'm just tired of Warners stalling on the project. Or rather, Joel Silver.

@30 - Oh yes, so awesome that we'll get Quicksilver/Scarlet Witch incest! Thanks, Mark Millar and Jeph Loeb!

@8: Watchmen worries me. I think it could be one of those properties that is an amazing read but doesn't translate well to the big screen. Much like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, also an Alan Moore book.

@10: I'm a longtime Spectre fan since I first saw him in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but I have a hard time imagining what his movie would be. To have any drama he'd need to be depowered by a magnitude of 1000.

Now, I could easily see him playing a role if they ever made Hellraiser: The Good Version.

@31: No shit. This whole "Quicksilver could only love the Scarlet Witch, and it keeps her from destroying everything!" angle is a craptacular. Ultimates Volume 2 was amazing start to finish; this one, not so much.

No comic book movie has ever been good according to the pre-release predictions of comic book nerds.

Uh oh...this is starting to look like an Aint It Cool thread.

Zounds!

Oh great @34, now we're going to have to figure out which SLOGGERS are the Harry, Hercules & Moriarty analogues...