DP812

I'm positive it's going to be Black Cat. I don't think there's any question that the rights to Jessica Drew most-likely lie with Marvel, not Sony. The only connection the two characters have is from Ultimate Spider-Man where a female clone of Peter called herself Jessica Drew, but that's hardly a Quicksilver/Scarlet Witch situation. If Sony tries for a Jessica Drew movie, they'd have a massive uphill battle to prove that she's part of the Spidey rights. Fox would actually have more of a claim to Drew's rights, since she's spent more time in X-Men comics than in Spider-Man.

Julia Carpenter had a slightly stronger connection to Spidey, but that mostly came about later in her career when she became the new Madame Web. The only Spider-Woman Sony could really make an airtight case for is Mattie Franklin, but I doubt they'd want to make a movie about a teenage girl with spider-powers, because that's not enough to differentiate her from Peter.

A Mayday Spider-Girl movie is also unlikely since Sony wants to build its own little universe, and doing a movie set in the future wouldn't really work with that. That also means we won't be seeing any Spider-Gwen movies set in an alternate universe.

The Anya Corazon Spider-Girl is more likely than Mayday, but once again there's the problem with a movie based on Mattie Franklin—not really enough there to differentiate her from Spider-Man. The mystic background of her powers would help, but I doubt Sony wants to go down that route.

This makes Black Cat the most likely candidate. Sony knows they've already got the rights. They've already had Felicity Jones play a pre-BC Felicia in ASM2 so the casting is done, and this allows it to tie into ASM2. A Black Cat movie could also be potentially cheaper to produce than a Spider-Woman/Spider-Girl picture, plus she's got enough to differentiate herself from Spidey. Black Cat for the win, IMO.

One of the great things about Tony Stark is that his genius was something he developed. It wasn't a superpower, he wasn't born with it, he had to work hard at it.

This new origin has completely trashed that.

The idea of Tony's intellect being something that was done TO him rather than something he did FOR himself was so terrible when Orson Scott Card did it in Ultimate Iron Man that it was promptly retconned, so I have absolutely no idea why Gillen or Marvel would think it should be tried again.

I wonder if DC will follow suit and reveal that while Bruce Wayne was in the womb, the knowledge of Sherlock Holmes and the fighting skills of Bruce Lee were implanted into his brain.

@scarletbatman said:

Unfortunately, for those of us who live far from a comic book store or in a country that doesn't even carry American comics unless they've been translated into the local language, digital is the only recourse we have.

Good post. This is something I'm very concerned with myself and why I've opted to basically avoid comics (I'm an expatriate so have no access to American comic books).

If you're talking about a streaming-type service, a la Netflix or Marvel's Digital Comics Unlimited, then that's a different story because it's clearly a rental service.

This is going to be a big problem when one of these services goes out of business. At least with iTunes or Amazon, if the stores go down, you still have the files, assuming you've backed them up. But ComiXology automatically removes comics from your device after a period of inactivity and you have to download them all over again.

And when one of these services goes down, I think there will be a huge outcry (not to mention a big uptick in piracy, at least temporarily so people can get the stuff they paid for and no longer have access to) and things will have to change. DRM controls have already been removed from music files, I think it's just a matter of time before other media begins doing this as well.

Proof that the media doesn't really do their research.

Rebis from Doom Patrol came around long before Alysia or Shining Knight and the marriage of Apollo and Midnighter predated Northstar and Kyle.

I don't know who thought this was a good idea, but all volumes of Amazing Spider-Man have been combined into a single volume. So Amazing Spider-Man v2 (1999) 1-58 are now Amazing Spider-Man v1 (1961) 442-499. This is extremely confusing and it's also inconsistent with other books on the site that have spanned multiple volumes and gone through issue renumbering. For example, Avengers, Fantastic Four, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, etc. aren't all combined under one single volume for each of those titles. They're listed as separate volumes and it should be the same with Amazing Spider-Man.

@danhimself said:

@JamesKM716: like I said before...judging Hickman based on one issue is a huge mistake...he is a huge scope writer where you really won't get a good feel for where his books are going until a few arcs have passed....his run on FF was basically on huge arc where stuff from his first issue played a role in his last issue

You won't really get a good feel for whether his books are worth buying until a few arcs have passed? Are you serious?

The average comic book arc is three issues. That's around $15. A few arcs and now you're getting into $45-50 range. And that's what you need to fork over just to get a feel for the book?

Uh-uh. If you need me to stick around for several arcs before I can make a judgment call, then I'm making my judgment call right now—not worth the money. If you're not good enough to wow me in a single issue, then you're not good enough. Writers in decades past were able to wow readers in a single issue, which back then cost a fraction of what an issue costs these days. If you can't meet that expectation, you are not worth the $3 price tag.

To begin with, a big cast of Avengers isn't really anything new. It's been done before, most-recently at the end of Kurt Busiek's stellar run. And unlike what I've read of Hickman's Avengers so far, it managed to have a lot more characterization. Hickman's Avengers feels very bland. Most of the characters feel like little more than background fixtures. And the narration comes off as extremely, terribly pretentious.

After nearly a decade of Bendis' street Avengers, what this book really needs is a back-to-basics approach. Hickman should have started off with the team for the movie, and kept it going for at least the first year of the title, and slowly work in some of these other characters. Right now, they all feel very forced and there's a feeling of being rushed through these characters. The Hyperion story should have really been three issues or so. And the Smasher issue felt painfully coincidental. A woman who studied astrology just so happens to find intergalactic goggles that enable her to travel to space and when she returns to Earth, her grandfather hands her Captain America's phone number because he just so happened to serve alongside Cap in WW2? Little too much coincidence there.

@gravitypress said:

Does a characters sexuality really matter? I applaud that DC is getting more diverse but it feels like they want praise for doing this. With the whole Northstar marriage thing you have a sense of progression to the next step (controversial or not). My real stance though is keep comics comics don't try to turn them into romantic novellas with pictures.

I doubt Robinson did this for praise. He's just trying to add more diversity in his cast. It seems to be that it's the media making more of an issue about this than DC.

@GrandHarrier said:

@DP812: To be fair, DC claimed the new 52 was a relaunch, not a reboot. Which, we all know, was a pile of lies. But for many people they accepted this company line, so to suddenly have a character take a literal 180 from who and what he is, can be extremely disconcerting. I, personally, think its a stupid move. Rather than introduce a new character and make us like him (like Bunker, I've grown to enjoy him in Teen Titans), Mr. Robinson fundamentally changes an iconic character.

Would people be OK if DC suddenly changed Batwoman to be straight (again, like she was originally). Would it be accepted and celebrated, or decried? If people would take offense to it, why are we unable to take offense to this change?

You're arguing semantics in regards to the relaunch/reboot. Fact of the matter is, the majority of DC's characters HAVE been completely rebooted.

Is Alan Scott still a powerful guy? Yes.

Is he still a Green Lantern? Yes.

Is he still a great hero? Yes.

Is he still a leader the rest of the JSA looks up to? Yes.

Way I see it, the fact that he now sleeps with men instead of women is hardly a literal 180 from who and what he is. His sexuality is not nor has it ever been a defining character trait.

If Alan had been turned into a gay stereotype who spoke with a lisp and made bad jokes like, "I'm the biggest FLAMER around!" then you'd be justified in making the literal 180 shift claim. That's not what's happened, so your complaint seems to be based more on your own personal homophobia than anything else.