io9 
Enter your username and password.
San Francisco, 10:55 AM
Sat Nov 7
20 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip your editors: tips@io9.com
Editor-in-Chief:
Annalee Newitz | Email
News Editor:
Charlie Jane Anders | Email
Associate Editor:
Meredith Woerner | Email
Assistant Editor:
Lauren Davis | Email
Weekend Editor:
Graeme McMillan | Email
Contributors:
Joshua Glenn
Stephen Goldmeier | Email
Ed Grabianowski | Email
Austin Grossman
Paul Hogan | Email
Lauren Davis | Email
Chris Hsiang | Email
Lynn Peril | Email
Ann VanderMeer
Alasdair Wilkins | Email
Graphic Designer:
Stephanie Fox | Email
Interns:
Tim Barribeau | Email
Julia Carusillo | Email
Alex Eichler | Email
Cyriaque Lamar | Email
Caitlin Petrakovitz | Email
Mary Ratliff | Email
Josh Snyder | Email
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/05/09
11/05/09
But onto what I was originally planning to post. The movie Mandarin should be a serious version of Lo Pan... It would be fantastic!
11/06/09
Spectacular Spider-Man is awesome, though. The guy who does Spider-Man's voice in that cartoon should do his voice in every scene where he's a kid. If it's a movie, they should just dub his voice over the kid version. #ironman
11/06/09
11/05/09
FYI - Walmart is selling the first volume for about $10. #ironman
11/05/09
Spectacular Spiderman blows it out of the water. At least in my opinion.
IM:AM just sort of took the relationships we were familiar with and "downsized" them to be kids or younger.
Spectacular Spider-Man is actually playing with the audience's expectations of what they're going to see in a Spider-Man cartoon (including readers of the comics, watchers of the original animated show, and the films) and screws with them in interesting ways.
Not to mention, it probably handles the Symbiote saga better than any other adaptation of it I've seen. #ironman
11/05/09
11/05/09
IM:AA follows a trend Marvel has been doing lately in trying to make everything "realer". There's nothing wrong with this, after all this is how Stan Lee and co. helped revitalize the comic books industry by creating characters with flaws, but if you take it too far you get a weird juxtaposition of the very real with the fantastical which stops working.
This is unlike the Dark Knight film which goes out of its way to emphasis the fact that what Batman and the Joker is doing is crazy and against the norm of reality. But Marvel hasn't really addressed this, it's sort of just..."hey it's real and here's craziness from fantasy now I hope they mix together okay". Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. In essence, it only really works when the two parts remain separate because once you see real-life things crossing over with this fantastical world, you get all sorts of plot holes and you lose a suspension of disbelief. It's like when they decided to put 9/11 in the Spider-Man comic: where the hell were all these superheroes that could've easily stopped this mess? And why is this issue of such vast importance over all the other ridiculous world-threatening things that have happened before?
On the other hand, the editors and writers at DC embrace the absurdity of the fantasy of their universe and actually try to bring it out, make their characters less connected to reality because, let's face it, it's hard to put real-world problems in perspective with a superhero that can destroy cities in seconds. So it ends up like a Greek mythology, something you can't really relate to on a personal level but is mysterious and intriguing to analyze.
This is kind of what Spectacular Spider-Man is doing, I think. It introduces elements from many different sources and plays with a "mythologist's" expectations. It's sort of like what the story of God of War did on a smaller level: it used elements from a mythology but construed them to fit itself and to play with a viewer's expectations.
On the other hand, I concede that the "realness" is part of what makes Spectacular Spider-Man more believable than IM:AA. Since Tony Stark is so damn rich, there's no real good reason for him to continue going to school, i.e. the fantastical situation of being rich and supersmart negates any proper explanation of why going to school is necessary (a similar problem arose in X-Men Evolution). On the other hand, since Peter Parker is so down to Earth, kinda poor and still able to benefit from an education, it makes sense why he still goes to school.
Wow, I just ranted for a moment there.
11/05/09
LOL! It's all good. It's nice to read impassioned posts with actual viewpoints - it opens up some interesting discussions. While you and I are obviously at opposite ends of the spectrum concerning what we like to get out of our animated comic book programming, I would never go call SSP "bad." It's probably the most enjoyable SP since & HIS AMAZING FRIENDS. Again, for me it all comes down to the characters, and IM:AA just has more depth, and that's not to say SSP doesn't have any, just that I prefer how IM:AA uses that depth to explore the established characters in their teenage counterparts.
I haven't watched the current X-MEN show, but it just doesn't look appealing. Based on the IM and SSP I tuned into the new F4 and quickly tuned out. It's utterly dreadful, containing none of what either you or I enjoy from our respective favorites. #ironman
11/05/09
And, like I said, I do enjoy IM:AA as well. IM:AA and Spectacular Spider-Man are both fine shows. It's actually nice to see how far these kinds of shows have come along. I remember being impressed by the original Spider-Man series or the original Iron Man series as a kid, and now I realize just how much better these shows have gotten, sort of out of necessity in order to both appease a new generation and to satisfy the more seasoned palattes of those who remember those old shows.
And then you look at shows like Batman: TAS and the rest of the DCAU that followed and just go "man, these Marvel cartoons have finally caught up". Even though those earlier DCAU shows were a little rough around the edges, the writing was just so...damn good. That one episode of Batman: TAS where Joker, Two-Face, Penguin, Poison Ivy, and Killer Croc are discussing their various plots to kill Batman at a poker game is still one of my favorite animated anythings of all time. Makes you wonder how Bruce Timm and Paul Dini were so dang far ahead of the curve. #ironman
11/05/09
And is Ironman going to do nothing but fight other armored guys now? That's be like making Batman movies where he fought nothing but nocturnal-animal inspired villains. Mansquitos. Flying Squirrel Man. ManBat. It would get old pretty quick. #ironman
11/05/09
11/05/09
As a literary character, he is basically written to be unkillable and unstoppable, yet not a Mary Sue because he is always struggling along the way.
It's an interesting trend I've noticed that whenever you throw Batman in a group of superheroes Batman always becomes the most pivotal character (except in the case of Prometheus, where it turned out Superman was the only character Prometheus couldn't defeat for some reason). #ironman
11/05/09
"YOU'RE A LOOSE CANNON BATMAN!! I want your cowl and your grappling gun."
BATMAN: 70's Detective! #ironman
11/05/09
It's just a matter of accepting IT'S NOT THE COMIC BOOK. Like the movie it only uses the book as source material, not gospel that must be followed to the letter.
And it has the best theme song ever;
11/05/09
11/05/09
11/05/09
11/05/09
11/05/09
11/05/09
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! #ironman
11/05/09
11/05/09
11/05/09
10/19/09
I think we need to cram a few more genres in there. #ironman2
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09
In Space!!! #ironman2
10/19/09
How about making it a musical? #ironman2
10/19/09
10/19/09
Can I buy tickets for the sequel now too? (yes that was a double tap)
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09
Nothing ruins a geek fantasy like a cold splash of reality. #ironman2
10/19/09
10/19/09
It's just geek wish fulfillment and I get it, but it's funny next to analogies for Palestine. #ironman2
10/19/09
tigh was a robot himself so i dont know if that fits.
and caville as well was a robot. and 8s were pretty damned easy on the show. sharon models were pretty much just giving it away. #ironman2
10/19/09
10/19/09
You do know I love you, right?
10/19/09
10/20/09
It's funny because you can imagine either saying that. #ironman2
10/20/09
10/19/09
LAME. #ironman2
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09
Damn, they really aren't wasting any time with Lt. MacDaddy, are they. I wonder to whom he'll be doing his confessing? Poor Eli, perhaps??? Double Pisser!!!!
10/19/09
10/19/09
While I've been enjoying the show, they spend too much time on the annoying characters. And there are a lot of annoying characters. Off the top of my head: Rausch, Greer, and Scott, the whiny Greek Chorus (the rest of the cast that doesn't qualify for names).
And they didn't explain where one of the (four? three functional?) shuttles went at the end of the last episode. Not even a "status update" to let us know that it was a plot thread they did intend to pick up on later. Nobody even noticed it was missing. #ironman2
10/19/09
The reason nobody noticed it was missing was because it is NOT a destiny shuttle.. re-watch episode 1-2 again and you'll see some outside shots of the senators shuttle. Besides, there are only two. the broken one with the senator and the functional one we saw in darkness.
gotta admit though, i was hoping it would be eli/chloe and not lt. scott/chloe... but from the darkness, i guess Elis going to be the good friend that's secretly fallen for chloe but doesn't want to say anything. #ironman2
10/19/09
10/19/09
I do think the ship is flying to the sun for a reason other than killing everyone on board and destroying itself. I am hoping it is doing something to reharge the itself, I mean it did send them to sand planet to get the ingredients to scrub the filters. The ancients made a ship that is practically sentient, so it's possible the ship is going to get fuel for power and used the gas giant to slingshot itself closer to the sun and not the planets. #ironman2
10/19/09
The show seems to be doing its best to avoid most sci-fi televsion cliches, and if the show falls for such a basic plot contrivance, I'll probably tune out sooner rather than later for fear of what it'll become - a show digging itself out of the cliches. #ironman2
10/19/09
Does anyone remember the Who episode where that kind of refueling led to crew-members being infected by a lifeforce bent on killing everyone though? #ironman2
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09
There's something about the idea of a shipfull of people having "we're gonna die" sex, only to have the lights and power come back on that I find extremely funny. When this is happening on what would be episode 5, of what IMDb has listed as a 20 episode series, you know the situation can't be too dire... #ironman2
10/19/09
10/19/09
@Allen_Richards: I married the girl that could kick my ass, so I know what you're talking about. #ironman2
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09
10/19/09