elizabeth olsen

School is finally out and now I can get back into serious reading mode for the summer. It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to enjoy books at my own sluggish pace and not race through them during a lunch hour at work. This week I got through a stack of Marvel comics that I had accumulated while I was finishing up school over the last few weeks. First was Captain Marvel‘s second volume, which I’m not really sure how it came to be. Captain Marvel has strangely been rebooted in the middle of its run but retained its author. I’m not really sure what the purpose was of restarting, but here we are at the fourth volume since the NOW! reboot, second in the new line. I have to say I continue to be impressed with DeConnick’s work on Captain Marvel. The ex-Ms. Marvel Carol Danvers has become Captain Marvel, and I think it’s been a great transition. Not only has she had a phenomenal background story, but Captain Marvel is one of the titles that never loses its sense of humor. Many Marvel books attempt funnies and fail hard, and most of them don’t have anywhere near as good of a story. Kelly Sue DeConnick is a proven writer, especially for female leads, and shows that she’s not quite done having fun. Stay Fly teams up Captain Marvel with Rocket Raccoon for some out of this world fun. As the two come to blows over Carol’s pet flerken, they discover that cats may be more deadly than they appear. Overall, I had a lot of fun with this book. There’s not much here story-wise, but there are a lot of laughs and a lot of cool pages. These two characters surprisingly go very well together, and I’d love to see them team up more. I’m sure this isn’t the last Rocket Raccoon team-up we’ll see in the near future.

RATED : ( PG-13 )
STORY : ( 6 / 10 )
ARTWORK : ( 7 / 10 )
COVERS : ( 7 / 10 )
AWESOME : ( 9 / 10 )
FINAL RATING : ( 8 / 10 )

Also this week, I got the opportunity to pick up the latest Pool, as usual. This is the seventh volume in the long-running NOW! reboot of everyone’s favorite anti-hero, Deadpool. Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan have had this good thing going for awhile now with this title. There was a little fall off after the fifth volume or so, when I felt that the title had finally run its course. I’ve always been a big fan of Posehn’s, whether it was on Just Shoot Me! or during his stand-up specials, but I think that his magic touch got weaker and weaker. Eventually your personality phases out, and you become just another Deadpool writer. This happens because Deadpool is such a larger than life character, that demands being written like Deadpool. At first Posehn was able to work his humor and personality into the Deadpool pages, and it worked beautifully. But you can just tell when you read it now that he’s almost out of ideas, or that it’s just not quite clicking like it was at first. And that’s because Deadpool has finally overwhelmed Posehn and Duggan. This isn’t to say the product they’re putting out right now isn’t good, because it’s still great, but it’s just not as magical as it was at the start. What it’s lost in quality story it’s been gaining in neat art, as this volume had one of the coolest covers I’ve seen in the series. With the creation of Zenpool, we not only got the great cover but also a new kind of Deadpool that isn’t as evil as his predecessor. He still can’t rid himself of the sense of humor though, and that’s what makes this book fun.

RATED : ( R )
STORY : ( 6 / 10 )
ARTWORK : ( 7 / 10 )
COVERS : ( 10 / 10 )
AWESOME : ( 9 / 10 )
FINAL RATING : ( 8 / 10 )

A few words about Avengers: Age of Ultron, since I really enjoyed writing about Leto Joker last week. I was able to go and see the film this past weekend on a Sunday morning. I had hoped that there would not be much of a crowd, but I was stuck sitting in front of a person texting on their phone the whole movie, per usual. It never fails that my movie theater experience is ruined, but I digress. Age of Ultron was a weird movie for me, and it was a movie of many firsts. This may have been the first Marvel Studios movie that I didn’t find myself that excited for. Sure, it was another in the line of greatness that has come from Marvel Studios. Sure, it’s a team-up movie that was going to feature almost twice as many heroes/villains as last time. Also, it was set to be an absolute blockbuster. But there was something missing for me, whether it was in the trailers or the story, I just wasn’t interested. I knew I would love it, and I did make time out of my schedule to go to the theater (which I rarely do anymore, for shame). As the movie started with the wintry woods action scene, I found myself remembering why I was there in that very seat. As the movie went on, I knew that this was no Avengers, and it certainly was no Iron Man or Captain America: The Winter Soldier. What it was though, was the first comic book hero movie that actually gave me a nerdgasm. I know that’s a term we throw around when we get really excited about something nerdy, and it’s so awesome it blows our minds. I thought I’d experienced this before in a Nolan Batman film, or a previous Marvel film, but I was wrong. Seeing Scarlet Witch and Vision fighting alongside in the Avengers in the concrete tower towards the end of the movie was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. A switch flipped inside of me that made me so fucking delighted to see this occurring via live action on a movie screen. I totally forgot about the hundreds of people around me, and the guy on his phone in front of me.

As we left the movie, I could not get the scene out of my head. Scarlet Witch popping people left and right with her psychic powers, and Vision flailing around in the air like a fish out of water, beaming people with an infinity gem lodged in his forehead. Something about this made my heart race. It made me excited. The kind of excitement you only remember feeling as a kid. When I got home my girlfriend asked me if there were any good Scarlet Witch books out there, to which I did not know the answer. But then I got it. I went into my reading room and dug into my shelves. We have a ton of books, just one shelf of comics. I have a small collection from when I was a kid, and it is not very expansive. I was privileged to have the few comics I did have growing up, and I read them over and over and over again. I watched more of the cartoons and collected trading cards, but the comics held a very special place. They were like trophies or holy grails to me. I’d protect them and keep them safe, and only took them out to read maybe once a year and would put them back in their sleeves. Looking on my shelf I discovered that one of the ten or so comics I had growing up was a Vision and the Scarlet Witch #4 which is them having a baby. It’s not a comic I probably really understood the context of growing up, and looking through it was nothing special. But this book was one of few connections I had to actual comic books, where these great movies hail from. I connected on a truly personal level to Age of Ultron on Sunday, and I experienced my first true nerd euphoria. I cannot wait to watch the film again, and I truly hope that they keep these two characters around because I thought it was so damn cool to see them both come to life on screen. I really do not care for Paul Bettany either, but Vision was just too cool for school man. And Scarlet Witch? What a bad ass bitch!