Top 5

 

Scootin’ Spidey is NOT one of the Top 5.

This month’s Top 5 will look at my top five Spider-Man costume redesigns. This is costumes other than the original recipe red & blue that first appeared back in 1962 and is still in use today. Not all of these costumes have been worn by the Peter Parker we’re all familiar with but they’ve been worn by someone somewhere/somewhen who called themselves Spider-Man.

 

 

Splitting Hairs

Something’s alway bugged me about the casting of the female leads in the Spider-Man movies: their hair color. I know that there’s a lot more that goes into casting a role besides wether or not an actor naturally looks like the character they’re supposed to be playing and that makeup & various other forms of movie magic can fix any number of physical discrepancies. But the three choices for Spidey’s leading ladies and their respective hair colors always struck me as an odd coincidence.

YOU WILL BELIEVE A MAN CAN SWING: A Spider-Man Movie Retrospective

The Amazing Spider-Man hits theaters today. It’s kind of funny to think that this is the fourth Spider-Man film released in just over a decade, especially when you consider that Marvel first sold the film rights to the character in 1985 and Spidey didn’t swing his way onto the big screen until 2002. Crawling his way through protracted legal battles, four movie studios, a half dozen directors and twice as many writers Spider-Man finally made it to the big time with three movies that each set a new opening day box office record when they were released. As the site’s resident Spider-Man expert, I’ll be taking a look back at those three films before I jump into seeing the new film at some point this week.

Onward, true believers!

 

Avengers on Pace to Become Third Highest Grossing Film of All Time

 

I don’t think anyone’s mentioned it here, but The Avengers has dominated the box office for the third weekend in a row and is about to eclipse Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 to become the third highest grossing film ever. Of course, even after passing Potter’s $1.3 billion the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are still nowhere close to the $2.1 billion of Titanic or the $2.7 billion of Avatar.  My strategy for defeating those two behemoths: Kang or Ultron travels back in time to kill James Cameron at some point after he finished True Lies. That seems fitting.

Either way, Battleship can suck it.

The Amazing Spider-Man’s Four Minute “Super Preview”

After the jump is the four minute long “super preview” that Columbia Pictures has released for their Spider franchise reboot The Amazing Spider-Man. It’s really just a couple minutes of new footage followed by stuff we’ve already seen from the trailers already released. And while two minutes might not be a lot, I honestly wasn’t looking forward to this movie until now. I mean, I knew it was happening and knew I was going to go see it. It’s a Spider-Man movie; let’s not kid ourselves here. But after seeing the initial previews all I could muster in the way of enthusiasm was a hearty “That looks okay, I guess.” However, something about this “super preview” does it for me.

Visually, the movie looks great and Andrew Garfield seems to have the character down. How the rest of the cast & story will play out, I can’t really say. I’m also not sure what to make of the “Spider-Man’s greatest secrets will be revealed” plot line they’re trying to build. They already make good on that promise within the first minute of the preview when Spidey takes his mask off in public. Was this written by Brian Michael Bendis?

The movie hits theaters July 3.

Let’s Give It a Couple Issues…Scarlet Spider

 

Written by Christopher Yost

Pencils by Ryan Stegman

Most people remember the Scarlet Spider as one of the punch lines of the much maligned Clone Saga that ran (and ran and ran and ran) through all of the Spider books in the early 90s. He was Ben Reilly; the clone of Peter Parker, who turned out to be the real Peter Parker, who turned out to be a clone of Peter Parker. Before he took Peter’s place as Spider-Man for a cup of coffee, he created his own identity as the Scarlet Spider. His costume was an all red Spidey suit accented with a cut-off blue hoodie and some extra belts, pouches, and straps. It was the 90s, after all. You gotta have extra belts, pouches, and straps.

Anyway, this Scarlet Spider isn’t Ben Reilly. He’s long dead…disintegrated, even. So who is this new masked man? Some other clone of Peter Parker?

My Panel of the Last Eight Months

I know I haven’t written anything in this blog since July of last year, and that’s nobody’s fauly but my own. I know, I’m a terrible person. But I plan on remedying that and creating more content, especially now that we’re partnered with The Zone. To get back into the swing of things, I’m posting what I’m calling my Panel of the Last Eight Months. Hopefully, this won’t be a regular feature.  It comes from Winter Soldier #2 by Ed Brubaker & Butch Guice.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3: The Search for More Money

It’s been over eleven years since Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes came out so fans rejoiced when Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds was finally released in February of this year. Well, Capcom looks to be making up for lost time with the release of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 this November. It’s not exactly a sequel, just a jazzed up version of the same game. It’s listed at only $40, which is cheaper than a regular new release but still stings a bit when you remember you paid $60 for a lesser version of the same game less than a year ago. The new features are as follows:

• Twelve new playable characters:

Marvel	Capcom
Doctor Strange	Firebrand
Ghost Rider	Frank West
Hawkeye	Nemesis
Iron Fist	Phoenix Wright
Nova	Strider Hiryu
Rocket Raccoon	Vergil

• Redesigned HUD and menu screens.
• Tweaks in gameplay to make the characters more balanced.
• Improved online functionality including a spectator mode.

Adding twelve new characters still doesn’t match the 56 playable characters in MvC2. And it still doesn’t add missing fan favorites like Cyclops, Mega Man, Psylocke, or Cammy back to the game.I’m hoping one of the tweaks to the gameplay involves an option for the old control scheme. Things the new game does not include, however, are all of the DLC packs that have already been released for the original version. If you want to play as Jill Valentine or Shuma-Gorath or see the new costumes for Captain America or Iron Man you’ll still have to pay extra for that.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 retails for only $40. I suppose if you weren’t one of those schmucks who bought the original when it was first released, like me, this is a great deal. Factor in $60 for the original game, $4.99 to download each new character, and a charge for the new stages & features and you’re looking at a value of well over $120. If you don’t already own the game it’s a savings of $80. If you do, it’s only $20.

Below is a trailer featuring some of the new characters in action. Notice that one of Hawkeye’s hyper combos involves shooting an arrow ridden Ant-Man who turns giant after hitting his target and steps on them. That move is almost worth the extra $40…almost.

New Spider-Man Toy Shows Off New Movie’s New Costume

This week at Comic-Con Hasbro showed off the new Spider-Man figure that will be released as part of the tie-in toy line for The Amazing Spider-Man movie next summer. This being the first good look we’ve gotten at the new costume Spidey will be wearing in the film…I am not impressed. I don’t hate it, it just seems needlessly busy. Spider-Man’s suit is a fairly simple design. Various artists have tried to change his look over the years and the only look that stuck around was one even simpler. The red stripes on the legs, the blue stripes on the arms and gloves, the extra long legs on the front spider logo, the treads on the boots…it all seems a bit much. The normally clean look of Spider-Man’s costume just becomes a jumbled mess below the neck. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll look better in reality that it does on this figure.

Haters gonna hate.

Five more pics after the jump.

This is Relevant to My Interests

I’m a fan of comic books and professional wrestling, and those two interests don’t overlap very often. When they do you usually get ridiculous nonsense like this or this. But WWE’s current media sensation CM Punk was at Comic-Con International yesterday and got a gift from artist Josh Adams. As you probably didn’t know, a routine part of Punk’s ring entrance involves him looking at an imaginary watch and yelling “It’s clobberin’ time!”, the catch phrase of the the ever lovin’ blue-eyed Thing.I’ve never seen any of Adam’s work before, but this is pretty great.