HexThis

I honestly feel like Johnny Storm being black would have an ironically racist slant to it.

He's the least serious member of Fantastic Four, the player, the least mature, the comic relief....I'm more afraid of Marvel taking this to the token black territory especially with the way Michael B. Jordan has characterized him.

Also, there are actually good black characters in the Marvel franchise who've never been given a chance to shine. T'Challa, Storm, Falcon, Misty, Luke Cage....it's a vote of no confidence to me that Marvel seems to think the only way to integrate black people into the movie franchise is by turning established white characters black.

I do have a certain fondness for Singer's X-men, you have to understand the context of them. See, in 2000, there were no superhero movies at all and there wasn't a market for them at all. As a matter in fact, the budget for the X-men movie was like 75 million or something which is nothing compared to what they are today. People weren't as sure that a superhero premise would work on the big screen so there were a lot of alterations made because of that. They couldn't afford to have Beast or Angel in the movie which is part of the reason for why Jean Grey was a doctor. I think Bryan Singer did a very good job with what he had and I think his serious approach to the X-men franchise opened a lot of doors. Another dumb, campy movie would've been disastrous.

I liked First Class and I hope to like Days of Future and Past. A few casting choices irk me though, I never liked Ellen Paige as Kitty Pryde, I don't think Halle Berry has the right presence for Storm, Angel's role was pointless in X3, I didn't like seeing Psylocke as disposable, I don't agree with killing Phoenix, I don't like that Cyke is dead, and I do think Hugh Jackman and his wacky team has co-opted the franchise a bit.

X1, X2, and X-Men First Class were good. Days of Future and Past should be the last though before a reboot.

I hope Young Jean will be integrated into 616 continuity fully so that Rachel can stop calling her "mommie" and stuff. I couldn't stand that, there was an issue once where Jean was plagued by nightmares of child versions of Rachel & Cable and ultimately shoved them against a wall with her telekinesis saying "I am not your mother! Your mother was an alternate reality version of me that will never come to be!" or something to that effect. And it's the the truth.

As soon as 30 year olds have 19 year old children expecting the world of them...there is seriously something very convoluted about continuity.

And, if isn't too harsh to say, won't Hope be made superfluous by a younger version of Jean Grey? That's essentially what she was until the editors screwed us over by changing their minds.

I obviously LOVE this idea, I LOVE Whedon, I LOVE the Scarlet Witch.

What I worry about is that Magneto's involvement in their lives is a huge component of their characters...I'm wondering how they'll pull this off.

Still very excited. Love Wanda. Always.

Well, I am seconding everyone's sentiments about how being transgendered and intersexed are two entirely different things to start with. Also, I don't get the sense there's anything contrived about Alysia's coming out, it makes perfect sense to me what Gail Simone is trying to accomplish.

She's trying to emphasize, like many writers of superhero comics, Barbara's isolation as a costumed vigilante and how that prevents her from becoming too attached to civilians. Here she is living with somebody and cannot disclose a very large part of her identity. In a lot of ways, many people who are transgendered can live with similar fears of being "exposed" or being too identifiable as transgendered and thus discriminated against. Apparently, Alysia is willing to share with Barbara her distinct situation because she feels she owes it to her as an important person in her life, mirroring Barbara's inner-dialogue contemplation of "coming out" so to speak. No shock value in that, just a brilliant parallel.

Now, as for Northstar....

The only real objection I have is why on earth would you shackle him to a husband? His character is independent, witty, arrogant, strong-willed...he should be having affairs, he should be having drama like any other character, he should be living it out a bit more.

Marvel seems to have watered down Northstar. I look to Rictor and Shatterstar's relationship for realism where gay couples are concerned. Or Wiccan and Hulkling maybe.

Bad idea to not have this in the Nolanverse, comicbook fans have a lot of patience for revisions and complex continuity but audience members really don't.

I want to see Cathy Gale appear. I love, love, love Emma Peel and Diana Rigg but you cannot forget about Honor Blackman!

HELENA BERTINELLI!

How about comic creators stop jumping the gun and killing so many people in comics? That seems like an effective way to end the debate over how permanent the death should be. It's almost as though these days, you're not telling an epic story unless someone dies. It's as if there's no other way to challenge readers to think of things differently.

Take Wasp, for example. She died and now she's back, you know why she died? There was a list of characters Marvel said was okay to kill off and she was on it. That's what Bendis said anyways and he wasn't being sarcastic. To me, that idea is just absurd. If you're an editor and you see components of your intellectual property so disposable that you can just type up a list of characters who can come and go, you're not really invested in storytelling. The marketing department over at Marvel (who has since been let go) even said that they would be killing a significant character every quarter because Fantastic Four sold well when they killed Johnny Storm. Nonetheless, even after their marketing department left they still exploited the hell out of Spiderman "dying".

So the cavalier attitude towards death and the sort of passive aggressive/lazy stance people take is what offends me. I happen to love Morrison and I do think he's very deliberate in his storytelling (Jean Grey was an editorial decision, not his, btw) so I doubt he was careless about it. But in general, I think there's just a lot of jokesters/faux-businessmen behind the scenes who see death as a marketing scheme.

I disagree with Matt Fraction, kids don't buy comics at all. It's a totally different market these days because they don't cost a nickel and they aren't at the corner store where you go to buy cigarettes for your parents like kids used to in the fricken 40's, they're only at novelty or comic book shops and some book stores.

Kids exposure to superheroes is through movies and cartoons until they're the age of like 13 or 14 (generally speaking). I saw Batman the Animated Series, the Adventures of Batman and Superman, Spiderman, X-men, X-men: Evolution before ever having picked up a single comic.

So cartoons need Robin.

No wonder this guy got along so well with Joe Quesada, they're both choc full of hacky business savvy that isn't really substantiated by anything at all.