Chuck Austen’s X-Men: Sacred Vows

We’ve come through the holy muck and now it’s time for some matrimony!  Be those wedding bells I hear?  It’s time for the wedding of Havok and Polaris!  Chuck Austen style!  What could possibly go wrong?  Let’s take a look at the specs:

Took Place In
Uncanny X-Men #425-427

Team Line-Up
Archangel (Leader), Havok (Leader?), Nightcrawler, Husk, Iceman, Northstar, Jubilee, Polaris, Juggernaut

Others You Should Be Aware Of
Cyclops, Jean Grey, Nurse Annie, Carter, Sammy the Fish Boy

In a Nutshell
After courting forever, Havok and Polaris plan to marry and the festivities go abound with strippers, strippers, and more strippers.  Havok, Polaris, Nurse Annie and Iceman all get caught up in a romantic mess and the whole thing stinks.  Oh, and we get an epilogue of the death of Skin.

It is assumed that you have accepted Nurse Annie Ghazikhanian into your heart as the greatest character ever created by this point.  Seriously.  If not, then get with it.  Jeez.

Anyway, you are cordially invited  to the wedding of Alexander Summers to Lorna Dane.  What could possibly go wrong?

X-Men teasing follow-up, X-Force style

Wouldn’t you know that the day after I go into the teaser images Marvel has been pushing to promote the new direction for the X-Men books, another one goes up?  Oh well – here’s the one for Uncanny X-Force.

Unlike the other five teasers, the shadowed out images in this one are easy to figure out.  They’re regular cast members Psylocke, Deadpool and Fantomex.  And that’s great – there’s no need to shake up this book’s roster.

The real mention here is that the featured character is the Age of Apocalypse variation of Nightcrawler.  I mentioned yesterday that I spotted what looked to me like Nightcrawler’s tail on the cover of Wolverine and the X-Men.  Having him here pretty much disproves that theory (since the covers of Wolverine and the X-Men, Legacy and X-Force seem to link up like the other three did) but who cares?  He’s HERE!  Bringing the AoA Nightcrawler into the mainstream is an interesting way to get the character back.  It will be an interesting adjustment period should X-Force not keep him a secret from the rest of the X-Men.  I’m going to have to pull my four issues of X-Calibre and check out the differences between the deceased Nightcrawler and the AoA one.

Teasing the post-Schism X-Men

Marvel certainly does love its teaser images.  Whenever one of its books has anything coming up – be it which member of the Fantastic Four will die or who is the new female Black Panther (whatever happened to that one?) – Marvel tosses out teaser images to get the fan base hyped.  My co-writer J.R. occasionally jokes about this practice, yet he’s often the one who alerts me to them.  He can’t dispute their effectiveness in gaining buzz.

Following the conclusion and aftermath of Schism, the X-Men line looks to be getting (yet another) shake-up.  Comic Book Resources has previewed all five of these teaser images featuring the covers of Generation Hope, Uncanny X-Men, X-Men: Legacy, X-Men and the new launch Wolverine and the X-Men with one character shown and the rest of the apparent roster shaded out.  Even neater is that the covers of Uncanny, Hope and X-Men seem to line up to make one big picture.

Neat

After the jump we’ll take a look at each of the five teaser images and do some guesswork, as well as taking a look at the line as a whole.

Comic Book Movie Review: Cowboys & Aliens

Cowboys & Aliens is a tale about cowboys….and aliens.  The movie gets its name and basic premise (very, very basic) from the comic created by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg and written by Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley.

Directed by Jon Favreau

Written by (screenplay) Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby & Steve Oedekerk

Cast
Daniel Craig as Jake Lonergan
Harrison Ford as Woodrow Dolarhyde
Olivia Wilde as Ella Swenson
Sam Rockwell as Doc
Clancy Brown as Meacham
Paul Dano as Percy Dolarhyde
Adam Beach as Nat Colorado
Noah Ringer as Emmett Taggart
Keith Carradine as Sheriff John Taggart

Spoiler filled synopsis and review after the break.

A link for you

This is brilliant.

X-Men in Video Games: Part 3

It’s been quite some time since I got around to my X-Men in Video Games feature, but I was set on having the Paragon Software PC games be the next ones covered and that meant Madness in Murderworld.  But to play the game, I had to figure out the controls, which needed my wireless keyboard for my laptop, and it took me a while to get it back.  So finally I got around to it and here we are.

This game launched in 1989, the same year the rather horrible NES debacle did, but this game is superior in every single way.  That’s really not saying much – the NES game was a failure on almost every level (in it’s defense, it did have music) – but Madness in Murderworld is a decent game…assuming you can play it well.  And you can’t.  Because the game is hard and it cheats.  And it hates mutants.

Place holder…kind of

I’ve finally figured out how to play that damn 1989 X-Men computer came Madness in Murderworld and am working on the next X-Men in Video Games entry, but I’ve found myself incredibly busy this morning, so for now enjoy this picture of Jim Henson with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I’ll get back to you.

Comic Book Movie Review: Captain America: The First Avenger

Captain America is the story of how one scrawny guy is able to change the course of World War II through heart, determination, and performance ehancing drugs super serum.

Directed by Joe Johnston

Written by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely

Cast
Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America
Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter
Sebastian Stan as James ‘Bucky’ Barnes
Tommy Lee Jones as Colonel Chester Phillips
Hugo Weaving as Johann Schmidt/Red Skull
Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark
Richard Armitage as Heinz Kruger
Stanley Tucci as Dr. Abraham Erskine
Toby Jones as Dr. Arnin Zola 

Full synopsis with spoilers and my thoughts are after the break.  

Uncanny getting a new logo

Marvel released a teaser of the first issue of the relaunch of Uncanny X-Men with one of the roster revealed (spoiler alert: it’s Emma Frost), but what took my attention more was the logo they had with it.

It looks like this:

A new logo for a new direction, yes?

The X-Men logo gets a new look every so often as the line takes new directions or goes through shake-ups, but they never really seem to stick.  Eventually, the logo ends up reverting back to the classic logo (or a small variation of it) designed oh-so-long ago by Jim Steranko.  You know the one:

I have no doubt that Marvel will eventually reunify the two X-Men factions and aim the line for a more retro feel (returning to the X-Mansion, led by Professor X, etc.) and with that will see a return to this logo.  And why not?  It’s an iconic look and it just works.

New Comic Day hangover

Very light week for me this week, but there will be an addition to the list.  I’ve made the questionable decision to work two jobs and with the added income I decided to add a title to my pull list.  That actually triples the size of this week’s hangover.  That will be the only time three times the hangover is a good thing.  We’ll be looking at:

• Alpha Flight #1 & 2 in which Canada’s premier super-hero team gets back to the fight.
• X-Factor #223 in which everyone is still after Wolfsbane’s baby.

Click the link, beware the SPOILERS and let’s begin.