@Rocketknight: No, you're not at all... It saddens me. I loved Spectacular Spider-man and still watch it multiple times a week. I also loved the first season of Wolverine and the X-men. Now Marvel has to do this... It's a shame, really...
But onto what I was originally planning to post. The movie Mandarin should be a serious version of Lo Pan... It would be fantastic!
@Cal Hawks: I don't care much for Wolverine and the X-men either. Steven Blum just can't do Wolverine's voice. I like the X-Men: Evolution voice actor better.
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
@Rocketknight: I dunno, I like Steve Blum, though Scott McNeil was better... I just love the whole feel of Wolverine and the X-Men... And I can't wait for their attempts to prevent the Age of Apocalypse in season two. #ironman
I've been watching ARMORED ADVENTURES since I stumbled across it last spring and it's easily the best Marvel animated show yet. One would think that going "teen" would dumb it down, but it's the smartest show of its kind, and going "teen" breathed far more fresh air into the character than the movie did. The spins taken on most of the established characters works far more than they don't. Even the SMALLVILLE-esque spin on The Mandarin is a fun twist.
FYI - Walmart is selling the first volume for about $10. #ironman
@Allen_Richards: I've been watching both Iron Man: Armored Adventures and the Spectacular Spiderman.
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
@DRaGZ: I enjoy SSP, and like you find number of the twists refreshing, especially the Symbiote and the Green Goblin, but for me it doesn't come close to the more intricate relationships found in IM:AA. The characters are more well-rounded and fleshed out, and at the end of the day doesn't feel as "cartoony" as SSP. Despite both shows having a TV7 rating, IM:AA feels more adult. Despite it being fantasy, the sense of reality applied to the heavies appeals to me as well. #ironman
@Allen_Richards: Well, this is probably where our opinions fundamentally differ.
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.
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
@Allen_Richards: Yeah, Wolverine and the X-Men is clearly a ploy to push forward a character that Marvel has been seeking to whore out lately. From what I've seen, it manages to put a new spin on old stories but somehow make them feel old and overdone.
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
So, is this a Michael Moorcock Ironman crossover, where he fights Arioch? Or is he going to Middle Earth to fight Sauron? What the hell is that?
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
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
The show is excellent. It has solid characterizations and ongoing plot threads that use very much of the Marvel Universe. A recent episode was the cumulation of quite a few threads involving The Living Laser being acquired by The Ghost for AIM to activate MODOK who then revealed one AIM agent was still working on The Controller discs. Oh, and then Tony called in Nick Fury and SHIELD for whom he just discovered his father made weapons which disappointed him.
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.
@AngriestGeek: Just like every other Marvel movie change (except Spider-Man, which back-dated his "natural webs" into the comic), I view a movie as an "alternate universe" version of the same characters. Not the same, not better (definitely!), just different. Like the Ultimate Universe...same people, new and different stories. Still would like to see a Marvel movie that was 100% "canon," though. #ironman
@Howard Blair: But it never could be. Books are not films. It's a different medium with different requirements. I mean, Shakespeare gets changed, Pulitzer Prize winning novels get changed, so it's a bit much to think that Spider-Man #178 isn't going to get changed. One good thing about them utterly changing the setting of Iron Man is that immediately jettison that burden. Since it's so clearly NOT the comic, they're free to do what they want. #ironman
@AngriestGeek: Best theme song ever? I don't think so. Spectacular Spiderman's is so good, I don't even fast forward through it when I watch it on Tivo. #ironman
@Abdiel: It's good ("Spectacular, spectacular...") but Rooney's song just rocks. And I never fast forward through it either. It's even on my iPod. #ironman
@Abdiel: It's good ("Spectacular, spectacular...") but Rooney's song just rocks. And I never fast forward through it either. It's even on my iPod. #ironman
For all its pretensions, nothing reminded you more that BSG had its feet in cheesy science fiction than the fact that hot robot women (blonde and asian, of course) continuously like to get it on with considerably less attractive men. Notice how no hot robot women wanted say, Apollo. #ironman2
Is it just me or is anyone else thinking this V remake is just old cheese. If it aint broke dont fix it. Or in the new series case....if its new, go into production melt down and keep breaking everything!! Give me the original any day!! #ironman2
I`m looking forward to the predators movie , I really hope they don`t alter their appearance in anyway . I`m afraid for Iron man 2 , having way too many characters in it . the fourth kind has gotten my attention . Looks quite interesting . I think "V" will disappear before anyones knows it was here , then again maybe not ,we`ll wait and see . #ironman2
Looks like poor Eli is getting seconds somewhere down the road, like the end of the series....
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!!!!
@Allen_Richards: SRSLY. I don't even like Dashy McDreamboat. He's annoying. And not in the dickhead scientist kind of annoying, but just boring.
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
@t3knomanser:
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
@t3knomanser: I get the whole "conflicted sex/religion" thing, and it's an obvious weakness he's going to wrestle with over the course of the show, but watching him work his way through the female crew is going to get old quick. Watching him already make it with the only likable gal on a ship filled with unlikable people ruins an tension created by a potential love triangle with Eli the boy genius. While I'm not entirely convinced Eli and Chloe are a good match, they do seem to be the only completely likable people on that ship. #ironman2
@jollyrogue: I was hoping for Eli/chloe as well and my wife and I were talking about it during the end of the ep. and then they showed the previews for next week and I was disappointed. However, it is only gonna be the 4th episode so it's realy anyone's game.
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
@jollyrogue: " i guess Elis going to be the good friend that's secretly fallen for chloe but doesn't want to say anything"
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
@Makidian: Exactly the conversation I was having yesterday.
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
@Makidian: Methinks the ship is solar powered. It's gonna pop out its sails then jump them to the Inner Sphere so they can help fight the Clans. #ironman2
@Allen_Richards: Eli should go after Lieutenant Boobs McPerky. She did promise him to kick his ass. I smell a kinky sex episode in the future. Maybe in the episode titled "Life"?
@ggodo, the man from R.O.A.C.H.: I've seen the solar idea elsewhere, and it makes about as much sense as anything else at this point.
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
@Pessimippopotamus: Personally, I've always found dating chicks who can kick my ass a massive turn on, but somehow I don't see the writers venturing down that avenue. #ironman2
@ggodo, the man from R.O.A.C.H.: It probably is solar powered but you know what would be awesome, if the sun's plasma fueled the ships power, so the ship could just take a dip in it or something. I would say fly through it but that would be insanely improbable.
@Allen_Richards: I married the girl that could kick my ass, so I know what you're talking about. #ironman2
"Sookie is part of another race, and if it does turn out to be fairies, they'll be fierce and primal, not like Tinkerbell" i'd still like to anna paquin in the tinkerbell costume :D #ironman2
@evildead1971: I went back to that after getting over my initial shock of "Sookie and Eric may or may not get together in Season 3"... and then I did a double take. Sookie in a Tinkerbell costume would be hilarious. #ironman2
@mauramcallister: I'm all for Sookie in a Tinkerbell getup, as long as she mysteriously loses the power of speech whenever she's wearing it... #ironman2
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
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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
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10/19/09
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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
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10/19/09