Tag Archives: Marvel

C2E2 2023 Photos, Part 1 of 4: Cosplay!

April 2, 2023 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments
Venger and Eric cosplayers pretending to fight.

A wildly unfair fight between Venger and Eric from the Dungeons & Dragons Saturday morning cartoon from my childhood.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Each year when there isn’t a pandemic fully raging, my wife Anne and I love attending entertainment and comic conventions throughout the Midwest and occasionally a bit beyond. We’re fascinated by the spectacle of each and every in-person nexus of geek cultures that presents a confluence of comics, artists, cosplayers, hobby artifacts, rare collectibles, IP-inspired handicrafts, talented performers and celebrity guests with fandom connections of varying levels of dedication and/or awesomeness.

My wife Anne and I just got home from the latest edition of the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″), a three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, Funko Pops, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. After its 2010 inception, we attended every year from 2011 to 2019, then took a break due partly to the pandemic and partly due to guest lists outside our circles of interest. This year’s strong lineup lured us back in, much to our delight.

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Yes, There Are Scenes During and After the “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” End Credits

February 21, 2023 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Two Paul Rudds facing each other in shock in Ant-Man costumes.

Wacky Scott Lang vs. Serious Scott Lang: who wins?

Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe begins! Paul Rudd returns for his fifth MCU outing and the third film in the Ant-Man trilogy! Unless they make more and it isn’t a trilogy! Which is just as well, because we’ve never had a literal, cohesive, hermetically self-contained MCU trilogy anyway. None of the first three Thor films resembles the other, the arcs of Iron Man and Captain America are incomplete without the four Avengers films, and Ant-Man’s life likewise had pivotal moments in Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Endgame. I’d love to pretend Guardians of the Galaxy will be the exception come May, but the story of Star-Lord and Gamora in Volume 3 won’t make sense without the traumatic events of Avengers: Infinity War as well as Endgame. As their multiverse presently stands, there’s been no such credible thing as a “Marvel trilogy” since Blade.

After a three-month moment of silence for us all to meditate on the fallout from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the MCU’s back with its 31st big-screen chapter, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, ostensibly directed by returning Ant-maestro Peyton Reed (he of Bring It On and the unjustly forgotten Down with Love), whose sensibilities are definitely felt in the film’s first ten minutes and its last twenty, but not nearly so much during the long, dour, draggy, perfunctory infodump and overextended Star Wars Cantina interlude between them, like an endless row of empty, pastel-graffitied boxcars separating engine and caboose.

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My 2022 at the Movies, Part 2 of 2: The Year’s Best

January 20, 2023 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
The Batmobile jumping through an explosion in "The Batman".

Brought to you by EXPLOSIONS! They’re good for what bores ya!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: in 2022 I made 18 trips to the theater to see films made that same year. In Part 1 we ranked the Bottom 8 backwards from “Blockbuster Video clearance bin” to “groundbreaking yet ordinary”, which I realize makes little sense to anyone who lives outside my own head, but is the sort of convoluted flaw you need to expect from a hobbyist who super-likes movies, occasionally enjoys writing about them, but refuses to rate them on an ordinate scale comprising numbers, letters, stars, adjectives, or cutesy emoji.

And now, the countdown concludes with the ten most relatively awesome films I saw at a theater in 2022 that were released for general audiences in same. Onward!

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My 2022 at the Movies, Part 1 of 2: The Year’s Worst

January 15, 2023 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Jared Leto as Michael Morbius holds a hand up to the camera.

Talk to the Morb.

It’s listing time again! In today’s entertainment consumption sphere, all experiences must be pitted against each other and assigned numeric values that are ultimately arbitrary to anyone except the writer themselves. It’s just this fun thing some of us love doing even though the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.

I saw 18 films in theaters in 2022 that were actually released in 2022, an 18.2% decrease over 2021 despite having taken more vaccines than ever, well short of my all-time high of 32 films in 2019. That number doesn’t include the seven Academy Award nominees that were officially 2021 releases, but which I saw later as part of my annual Oscar Quest. It definitely doesn’t include all the 2022 films I watched on streaming services, which will receive their own much longer two-part listicle.

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Yes, There’s a Scene During the “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” End Credits

November 13, 2022 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Danai Gurira and Letitia Wright as Okoye and Shuri, wearing expensive non-superhero fashions to "blend in" with mixed results, from Marvel's "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever".

Okoye and Shuri learned everything they know about “going undercover” from James Bond parodies.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: after going 2-for-2 on his first feature films Fruitvale Station and Creed, director Ryan Coogler raised the bar in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Black Panther, and in turn gave Chadwick Boseman a long-overdue boost into super-stardom after years of his own fine works such as 42 and the still-underrated Persons Unknown. His death was among the many, many, many reasons we will never forgive the year 2020 for its endless curses.

Though we were blessed with chances to celebrate his life and talent posthumously in Da 5 Bloods, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and the grand surprisie of an alt-timeline Panther reprise in What If…? season one, the MCU proper never got a chance to say goodbye, to give King T’Challa of Wakanda the big sendoff he would’ve deserved if only Boseman could’ve had a couple more years to perform the honors. Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole return for that very purpose — and so, so much more — with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

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Yes, There Are Scenes During and After the “Thor: Love and Thunder” End Credits

July 23, 2022 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Tessa Thompson and Natalie Portman in "Thor Love and Thunder".

“Y’know, if we let Gorr end him, we could have the movie all to ourselves…”

Unlike some actors we know who used to earn eight-figure paychecks from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and now probably have to subsist on seven-figure residuals, Chris Hemsworth isn’t going anywhere. The star and Executive Producer is back for Thor: Love and Thunder, as is Taika Waititi, costar and director of Thor: Ragnarok, the Best Thor Movie Ever and possibly the funniest MCU film to date. Perplexingly, he’s followed up with my least favorite Waititi film to date.

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The Fantabulous 50s Weekend, Part 3: How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way

June 7, 2022 By in Comics/Lit, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Amazing Spider-Man #252 cover!

I was 11 when Amazing Spider-Man #252 debuted his black costume and blew my mind. Art by Ron Frenz and Klaus Janson.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our respective birthdays together traveling to some new place or attraction as a short-term road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas we’ve never experienced before. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

I’ve just now lived to see 50, and after weeks of research and indecision, we planned an overnight journey to the next state over, to the capital city of Columbus, Ohio, which had cool stuff that this now-fiftysomething geek wanted to see. Columbus, then, would be the setting for our first outing together as quintagenarians…

Now we’re to my favorite part of the Marvel exhibit at Columbus’ Center of Science and Industry. The statues were fun and the MCU film props and costumes were quite a sight to behold up close, but original comics art is a rarity for me to see in person. Growing up, buying original art was something rich comics investors did for fun and showiness, nothing a poor kid like me could ever afford. In adulthood I’ve climbed up the ladder high enough that I now own a few modest pages, nothing fancy.

The Marvel exhibit features over six dozen pages drawn by the original artists across 80+ years of the medium’s history — not just reproductions, the real thing, largely loaned by private collectors identified below each frame for provenance and gratitude. Some were autographed by the artists; in a few of the older pieces, you can see where artists (and Stan “The Man” Lee) autographed them years after the fact. The following gallery, less than half the total works on display, is a selection of those that stuck out to me for various reasons and didn’t succumb to blurry photography. One of them even has color. (Painted, at that!) A few have behind-the-scenes Easter eggs, such as our lead photo — if you click on the cover to ASM #252 you can read Klaus Janson’s notes in the margins addressed to George Roussos, the colorist who handled all Marvel covers at the time. For me, the little details add to the thrill of comics art appreciation.

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The Fantabulous 50s Weekend, Part 2: Mighty Marvel Cinemania

June 5, 2022 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Iron Man Mark I armor!

The Iron Man Mark I armor, the very first costume in the official Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our respective birthdays together traveling to some new place or attraction as a short-term road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas we’ve never experienced before. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

I’ve just now lived to see 50, and after weeks of research and indecision, we planned an overnight journey to the next state over, to the capital city of Columbus, Ohio, which had cool stuff that this now-fiftysomething geek wanted to see. Columbus, then, would be the setting for our first outing together as quintagenarians…

…so we old folks had fun roaming around a kiddie museum, Columbus’ Center of Science and Industry, immersing ourselves in the all-ages roadshow exhibit “Marvel: Universe of Super-Heroes”. As you’d expect from a mainstream celebration of a massive multimedia corporation with an audience of hundreds of millions, many vitrines were devoted to keepsakes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Costumes and props worn and touched by the actors (and/or stunt doubles) were all around the hall, imbuing onlookers with that keen vibe of authentic Hollywood proximity. We’d previously seen MCU items on our Atlanta trip back in 2019, but I was gratified to notice very little overlap between the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library & Museum’s collection and this one.

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The Fantabulous 50s Weekend, Part 1: The Merry Marvel Museum Menagerie

June 4, 2022 By in Comics/Lit, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Spidey and jazz hands!

I began collecting Amazing Spider-Man at age 6, around the first time Aunt May died. 44 years later, one of us has aged better.

In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our respective birthdays together traveling to some new place or attraction as a short-term road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas we’ve never experienced before. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

Whether through a lot of lucky cosmic dice rolls or by divine interference, I’ve just now lived to see 50. We’d had to keep Anne’s own 50th-birthday outing modest because the pandemic curtailed our options. It was her wish that we wouldn’t have to compromise the same way for mine. After weeks of research and indecision, we planned an overnight journey to the next state over, to the capital city of Columbus, Ohio. We’ve driven through them several times on our way to other states, we’ve checked out their As-Seen-on-TV giant burgers, we’ve twice attended the most awesome indie comics show in the Midwest, and we’ve even been inside their capitol dome. We dug a little more deeply and learned they have still more to offer, especially in my fields of interest.

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Yes, There Are Scenes During and After the “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” End Credits

May 8, 2022 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Dr, Strange 2 IMAX Poster!

We don’t always pay extra for Marvel movie upgrades, but this time…eh, why not.

A coworker of mine was invited to see Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness on opening weekend despite the fact that she’d never watched a single Marvel product in her life. While I chuckled for a few minutes and mentally judged the invitee for his selfish chutzpah, another coworker generally on the same pop-culture page as me graciously tried to recap both the first Doctor Strange and Spider-Man: No Way Home in hopes that it might give her the slightest help before being dragged into the 28th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s kind to show someone how to dog-paddle at least a little before they’re shoved into the deep end of the pool by some dude eagerly looking forward to giving her swimming lessons while she’s drowning. Oh, the gleeful countdown he probably kept in his head for days until that heroic moment when he could point at Benedict Cumberbatch onscreen and proudly, loudly whisper to her, “That’s Doctor Strange!”

Meanwhile, I’m unhelpfully daydreaming how this exchange might’ve been twice as entertaining, but only half as helpful, if at all helpful, if coworker #2 had delivered the recap in the style of Ant-Man’s pal Luis. I am arguably an enabler of the problem here.

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Yes, There Are Scenes During the “Morbius” End Credits

April 3, 2022 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Morbius!

The Matrix Resurrections skewered the whole “bullet-time” fad, yet here we go again.

I thought Morbius the Living Vampire was scary when I was 6 or 7 and he showed up in a 1977 comic I picked up at the toy store. In a time when the Comics Code Authority was still touchy about allowing comics to show the undead because they might turn young readers into rampaging juvenile delinquents, Morbius exploited a loophole with an origin that revealed him as not an actual vampire, but as a scientist who conducted questionable experiments to cure his own rare blood disease, which went awry and turned him into a science vampire, with many vampiric powers and few-if-any vampiric weaknesses. He was a forerunner of the irritating horror sub-subgenre Vampires Who Ignore Vampire Rules and Who Therefore Aren’t Vampires by Definition So Maybe the Writer Should’ve Made Up Their Own Monster Instead of Misusing the Word “Vampire”.

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My 2021 at the Movies, Part 2 of 2: The Year’s Best

January 14, 2022 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Scarlett Johansson IS Black Widow!

Yeah, I know, superhero films with only one timeline in them are so 2018.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: In 2021 I made 22 trips to the theater to see films made that same year. In Part 1 we ranked the majority from “this film is pretty keen” to “this film is my mortal enemy” but in reverse. And now, the countdown concludes with the ten most relatively awesome films I saw at a theater in 2021 that were released for general audiences in 2021. Exactly those dates. Exactly those dates.

EXACTLY those dates.

Onward!

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My 2021 at the Movies, Part 1 of 2: The Year’s Least Best

January 9, 2022 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Spider-Man: No Way Home!

“Our billion-dollar movie made six whole people grumpy! Let’s ask Doctor Strange to overwrite their brains!”

It’s listing time again! In today’s entertainment consumption sphere, all experiences must be pitted against each other and assigned numeric values that are ultimately arbitrary to anyone except the writer themselves. It’s just this fun thing some of us love doing even though the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.

Continue reading →

Yes, There Are Scenes During and After the “Spider-Man: No Way Home” End Credits

December 21, 2021 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Spider-Man No Way Home!

It wouldn’t be a true Spidey film if Peter didn’t unmask for the final battle.

Here’s the Too Long, Won’t Read version: despite some wonderful interplay among the main cast and the special guests at the heart of the film (and one beautifully meta performance in particular), Spider-Man: No Way Home is my least favorite Marvel Cinematic Universe film since Thor: The Dark World. I’m in the minority on this, but no other 2021 film has aggravated me as much as this box-office leviathan did.

Hope that helps? You’re now free to go. Thanks for stopping by. I do understand. I just need to get the following 5000 words out of my system. Imagine it’s Martin Scorsese’s rapid voice so it’ll move faster.

…

Still here? Cool, but fair warning: it’s been a long time since I front-loaded a movie entry with a courtesy spoiler alert. There’s no way I can adequately express my reactions without moving beyond the trailer-approved plot points and into its numerous surprises, some of which were foretold on various geek clickbait sites and some of which I predicted from the trailers. Really, the courtesy spoiler alert is for real, anything goes. You might find plenty of reasons for irritation with me, but by venturing beyond the courtesy spoiler alert guard post you hereby forfeit the right to count “AAAHH! SPOILERS!” among them.

Once again, for those just joining us: courtesy spoiler alert. Thank you.

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Yes, There Are Scenes During and After the “Eternals” End Credits

November 14, 2021 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Celestial Arishem!

“Kneel before your new god, the great and powerful d6!”

Hi, I’m a longtime comics reader who always thought the Eternals sucked.

Among the tenets of staunch dogma handed down by elder comic book fans is: Jack “King” Kirby was a saint and every page he breathed upon was perfection incarnate. To find fault in anything Kirby ever did is to sound like an edgelord poser and betray Comics. Kirby indisputably drew legendary comics and was one of the most significant co-inventors of one of our greatest American corporate mythologies, but his heyday largely ended a few years before my time. His pages could be wondrous panoplies of dynamic, majestic, blockbuster imagery, all the more mind-blowing if you can see the original, full-size art in person.

Then there were the other components, from the peculiar scripting in his post-1970 Stan-Lee-less bombastic productions to his predilection for pun-filled character names that could sound like their own MAD Magazine parodies. Multiple short samples of his mid-’70s Eternals, arguably a rehash of his DC “Fourth World” work with new nametags, left me cold. Later revivals by the likes of Walt Simonson and Neil Gaiman — yes, that Neil Gaiman — likewise did nothing for me. I didn’t even finish reading Gaiman’s version. I tried. Alas, I’m not proud to be a longtime heretic barred from the Eternal Orthodox Church of King Kirby the Konsummate Kreator.

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Yes, There Are Scenes After the “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” End Credits

November 2, 2021 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Shang-Chi!

If Shang-Chi throws less than 50 punches an hour, the bus will explode.

Midlife Crisis Crossover has dozens of unwritten rules and three or four written ones. Among the latter that longtime readers might recall: every film I see in theaters gets its own entry. Some entries get procrastinated longer than others, but sooner or later their turn will come, no matter how much I curse myself for establishing that stupid rule.

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Yes, There’s a Scene During the “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” End Credits

October 3, 2021 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Venom Let There Be Carnage!

Rated PG-13 for high body count, one shrewdly placed F-bomb, and splattering more food than blood.

A lot of Tom Hardy fans were looking forward to the new film where he plays a thickly accented schlub possessed of too much power who can’t deal with its consequences and, after leaving too much death in his wake, hits some major obstacles and faces the possibility of living out the rest of his life in powerless mediocrity. That was 2020, and we all agreed never to speak of Capone again. One year later Venom: Let There Be Carnage reminds us why Hardy rules, sometimes despite his surroundings.

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Dragon Con 2021 Photos #4: More Cosplay Parade

September 7, 2021 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Cult of Marriott Carpet cosplay!

The Cult of Marriott Carpet is one of those extremely specific Dragon Con in-jokes. See, there’s a Marriott with this distinctive carpet that looks like Jackson Pollock and Piet Mondrian made a map of Boston together…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In 2019 my wife Anne and I attended our very first Dragon Con in Atlanta, Georgia. We returned home to Indianapolis with a plethora of new memories, hundreds and hundreds of photos, and a shared suspicion that we’d return someday. Not every year, but someday. In the year of our grand pandemic 2020 we attended exactly zero conventions for easily guessed reasons. In 2021 several cons made their comeback plans, but Dragon Con stepped up hardest and made us some offers we couldn’t refuse. We didn’t have to think long or hard before accepting the special rules under which this pandemic-era show would be held…

As promised, another gallery from the annual Saturday morning cosplay parade through downtown Atlanta. Marvel unintentionally dominates this section, but they don’t quite have this one all to themselves. For past comic-cons I used to sort the costumes by company, by genre, or by whatever pop-culture divisions came to mind. That procedure takes extra time and has been suspended for the time being so I can save time and get these done for You, The Viewers At Home. Corrections and revisions welcome as always. Enjoy! Again!

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Dragon Con 2021 Photos #2: A Cosplay Sampler

September 6, 2021 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
2020 cleaning supplies cosplay!

A round of applause for those 2020 MVPs, the Hygiene Theater all-stars! Flanked on each side by a pair of…uh, RocketDoge?

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In 2019 my wife Anne and I attended our very first Dragon Con in Atlanta, Georgia. We returned home to Indianapolis with a plethora of new memories, hundreds and hundreds of photos, and a shared suspicion that we’d return someday. Not every year, but someday. In the year of our grand pandemic 2020 we attended exactly zero conventions for easily guessed reasons. In 2021 several cons made their comeback plans, but Dragon Con stepped up hardest and made us some offers we couldn’t refuse. We didn’t have to think long or hard before accepting the special rules under which this pandemic-era show would be held…

To our surprise and delight, thousands of cosplayers showed up in full effect to showcase their sartorial talents and represent for their fandoms, despite the mandatory masking protocols. Some used plain masks to make them easier to overlook; others chose accessories with matching elements or incorporated them into their costumes. The rules were very specific that attendees couldn’t simply throw on a Ben Cooper plastic mask or a Latex Halloween head and consider themselves compliant. The masks felt and looked odd in a convention setting for about six minutes until we all remembered we’ve been staring at masks, masks, and more masks for over a year now. In a world where everyone’s doing mask cosplay, they were just more visual blips that blended in to our kaleidoscopic surroundings.

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My 2021 Reading Stacks #3: Stan Lee, Presented

August 30, 2021 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Abraham Riesman's "True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee".

The man. The myth. The marketeer. The misery.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome once again to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read lately that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-three years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place.

I’ve previously written why I don’t do eBooks. Perhaps someday I’ll also explain why these capsules are exclusive to MCC and not shared on Amazon, Goodreads, or other sites where their authors might prefer I’d share them. In the meantime, here’s me and my recent reading results…

I set this feature aside for a while because I knew which book would be next in line and dreaded how much headspace it would require. With its paperback edition coming soon, now seems a good time to exorcise it.

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