io9 
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San Francisco, 7:48 PM
Mon Nov 9
25 posts in the last 24 hours
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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
[lh6.ggpht.com] #ironman
11/05/09
11/05/09
And the whole scary face helmet thing is prevalent throughout several Asian cultures - Japan, Thailand, etc etc so I suppose it's easy to draw a comparison there. #ironman
11/05/09
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
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11/05/09
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! #ironman
11/05/09
11/05/09
So why is he done up like a Samurai? Did the designers just say, "Hey, Asian is Asian, and Samurai are coo"?
Well, be grateful for small favors, I guess ... they could have made him orange. #ironman
11/05/09
Why not throw in a little baby panda while they are at it? Pandas are SO asian. #ironman
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