Now Here's a Bunch of Geek Sh*t That Even I Don't Care About

So, Marvel is going to kill one of its most money-making properties, Wolverine.

It's so terrible watching your heroes die: Jason Todd, aka the second Robin. Superman. Then the Flash died. Then Green Lantern died. Then Batman died. Then Captain America died.

Somewhat recently Peter Parker died. Doc Ock took over his body and began acting as "The Superior Spider-Man" for a year and a half.

They all died for about, oh, I don't know, about 12-18 months.* Then they all got better. It was like a miracle or something.

But I'm sure Wolverine's like Really Dead Now.

Who cares? Seriously. No one buys this anymore. I don't mind stunts, but do a different stunt.

Speaking of things which are Almost But Not Quite Dead: here's the cast of the new Star Wars movie.

I don't know why this is "news," except that it's now "confirmed," but we knew the oldsters would be back for this for like half a year.

I guess there's some new information, like that actors you never heard of will be playing characters you never heard of.

That's actually my favorite phase of any publicity campaign for a Star Wars movie: When the producers make Major Announcements, like, I don't know, "Steve Coogan will be playing galactic garbage inspector Flizz Flazzkran." Or, "Morgan Freeman will be playing Jedi Consular Uha Umuutua."

I always love that part, where the media is compelled to report these absurd names as if it means anything except to action-figure sculptors. Breaking news: Patton Oswald will be playing Gloopo Glornick.

From the What Could Have Been Great But Is Really Meh Department, a gymnast puts on a Spiderman costume and then films himself... mostly climbing fire escapes.

I'm not really that impressed by Spiderman climbing a fire escape. I can climb a fire escape. What else you got?

Oh, he does do a few impressive things, but if you're expecting some serious climbing or free running, well, here's some good news at least: Bruce Boxleitner will have a cameo role as Alderaan Alderman Ailek Attari.

Here's something mildly interesting -- mildly -- but geeks have known this for a year: The upcoming Avengers 2 will feature a super-speed mutant named Quicksilver, pictured here.

And the X-Men: Days of Future Past trailer also features a speedy mutant named Quicksilver.

Yeah, it's the same character. Apparently Quicksilver began as an evil mutant, but soon joined the Avengers as a hero. Later he got retconned as the son of Magneto.

So, as far as the IP, Marvel takes the position that while Fox may use the character as part of the rights it bought when it bought the X-Men rights, they also can use Quicksilver (and his mutant sister, the Scarlet Witch), owing to the fact that those two were long-time Avengers.

So, Quicksilver (a Flash ripoff no one cares about, really) is now in two movies.

I think Josh Wheedon is avoiding calling Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch "mutants," because that directly implicates the X-Men IP package, and won't say Magneto is their dad.

In the post-credit thing in the Captain America movie, they implied (without stating) that their powers arose from that glowing blue Tesseract McGuffin.

Yeah I don't really care either, honestly. Of all the characters to get the big-screen treatment in not one but two tentpole films... Quicksilver, The Man With No Name Recognition.

Fifteen years ago, if I told you that superhero movies would be so popular that there would be not one but two competing movie franchises featuring Quicksilver, you would have... well you probably would have ignored me and told me to lose weight.

Incidentally, Marvel's position that if a character has been in the comic-book Avengers, he can appear in an Avengers movie, is kind of legally menacing: Because almost all these characters have been Avengers, including Spiderman and Wolverine.

So they're just throwin' that out there, you know.

Why No, I'm Not Kidding: Archie is also slated to die in a couple of months.

Yup. They've got like five tricks.

This won't even been the stupidest stunt they've done with Archie.

* Jason Todd and the Flash stayed dead for longer, because no one really cared about them. People did not like the second Robin and affirmatively voted in a poll to kill him (or, that is, to have Joker succeed in killing him).

The Flash character Barry Allen was always pretty lameballz and was replaced by another Flash, Wally West, whom people seemed to like better. People liked Wally West's personality choice better, to wit, that he had one.

And yet, even with characters people didn't particularly like (or at least they liked their successors more), they still could not stop themselves from bringing them back to life.

The Spiderman "death" was slightly interesting because, well, first of all, they pretty much broadcast that Peter Parker would come back to life (his body was still alive, after all), and they had his archvillain Doc Ock controlling the body, trying to prove he could be a "better" Spiderman than Parker.

Eh, kind of interesting. Sort of. At least the story wasn't just the "death" itself, which no one believed for one second.

Oh and now Doc Ock's dead, and I'm sure he'll remain dead just like Spiderman's old archvillain the Green Goblin stayed dead. (Spoiler alert: Green Goblin's been Alive Again for almost ten years now.)

posted by Ace at 07:32 PM

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