Comic Doodles 2.0

Photo courtesy VentureBeat      In 2015, Disney announced a product that promised to revolutionize toys-to-life gaming: Playmation. Instead of having each toy be represented by a video game character on a screen, the ambitious Playmation tried to make the toys interactive in the real world. The idea was announced with a bold slogan: "Imagination made real."      And after this amazing trailer was released, it's easy to see why many of us were excited by the concept.          Even before the first iteration of Playmation was released, the ad made the bold proclamation that Playmation Star Wars would be unveiled in 2016. It wasn't. Photo courtesy Passion For Savings      The first iteration of Playmation, which was based around the Avengers, involved a wearable Iron Man gauntlet, which the player could use to fight toy villains as he or she moved around the room. The villains sat on bases that allowed them to respond to the player's attacks, and moti

     The DC Multiverse is full of elseworlds. What if baby Superman landed in the Soviet Union? What if the Flash went back in time to save his mother? But one of the most intriguing premises remains to be answered: W hat if Batman and his rogues gallery all went to the same high school?      Enter Gotham High , a cancelled animated series by Jeffrey Thomas and Celeste Green. Photo courtesy Jeff and Celeste!  Blog      While the idea of combining the usual grittiness of the Batman mythos with what looks almost like an animated Freaks and Geeks might be a divisive idea, it could have been really interesting. The concept art is incredible -- especially those character designs on Bruce, Harley, and Killer Croc -- and the DC execs knew it. In fact, Thomas explained in a blog post , "[W]e were approached to create a spec series based off of an old drawing of mine that we then sent to DC," which is shown below. Photo courtesy Jeff and Celeste!      What kind of show

Photo courtesy DC Comics      With the trailer for James Wan's Aquaman set to debut at San Diego Comic-Con, I decided to return to a time before Aquaman had blockbuster visual effects and Jason Momoa's epic facial hair -- a faraway time known as 2006.      The Superman origin series Smallville was changing the face of superhero television, and its creators Al Gough and Miles Millar were thinking about possibilities for other DC Comics adaptations. After the successful introduction of Aquaman in season 5, they decided to give him his own series. The show wouldn't be a spinoff of Smallville, but it would have a similar style. (I'll probably do another post about why this series never got off the ground.)      The CW rejected the pilot, but Warner Bros. eventually released the single episode on iTunes. So, I forked over $1.99 and watched this thing. And boy, do I have some thoughts. (I'm gonna spoil the whole thing, so if you plan on watching it free of spoilers

Photo courtesy IGN      In a viral Instagram post , Tom "The Spoiler King" Holland just revealed the logo and title for the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming , which appears to be called Spider-Man: Far From Home . And in true MCU superfan fashion, we have questions. (It's also the royal "we" in this case. I'm literally the only person writing this blog.) 1. Is the title even real?      The title sounds a bit on the nose, and given the MCU's habit of using clever working titles for its movies (such as Group Hug , the working title for Avengers ) this might just be a way for Marvel Studios to troll spoiler-hungry news outlets. I mean, just look at the logo! A Photoshop-savvy artist could just as easily make that, complete with the Spidey mask for an O.      Then again, the title of Spider-Man: Homecoming is a pun in and of itself; it's a nod to the fact that Peter would once again be in high school, and also possibly a way to commemorate the

Photo courtesy Bustle       One of the best things to come out of the Thor franchise (and one of the most talked about absences in Infinity War ) was Korg, the talking pile of rocks with a penchant for rock-paper-scissors jokes and starting revolutions. But why was he so obsessed with starting a revolution? As per usual, I'm gonna overanalyze the heck out of the MCU and come to a shocking conclusion: it's because his father was brutally murdered while trying to start a revolution of his own. And Thor is the one who killed him.       In the third Thor movie, Korg explains how he became a gladiator, explaining, "I tried to start a revolution, but didn't print enough pamphlets so hardly anyone turned up. Except for my mum and her boyfriend, who I hate. As punishment, I was forced to be in here and become a gladiator." But Korg (or at least, the MCU version) doesn't seem like the type to start a coup; in the movie, he's quite kind and... well... meek.

     Like any Marvel fan with too much time on their hands, I was rewatching Black Panther when I noticed the interesting Wakandan text in the background of many of the scenes. Now, translation keys for the Wakandan alphabet were available online even around the time the main trailer was released, but when I tried translating one of the signs, I just got "HIJKL." Which spells nothing. Absolutely nothing.      But this time, I decided to give it another go. I started with the writing on the shoes Shuri built for T'Challa, and what I found was pretty interesting. Check out my video below:      So please, join me in the hunt for more translation Easter eggs in Black Panther ! I used this key someone posted on Imgur, which came from an official behind-the-scenes booklet Brisk Tea released. Happy hunting, and Wakanda Forever.

     Disney has proved itself a juggernaut once again by purchasing 20th Century Fox, meaning we might one day see the X-Men cross paths with the Avengers. But interestingly, the MCU might have already given us clues suggesting one mutant was already skulking around somewhere off-camera: Wolverine.      Believe it or not, adamantium -- the metal comprising Wolverine's unbreakable claws -- has been mentioned in the Marvel Cinematic Universe before. This might be shocking, considering the Marvel Cinematic Universe is owned by Disney and the X-Men are owned by 20th Century Fox (until this deal receives the necessary approval), but a small detail snuck its way into the MCU undetected: Photo Courtesy Reddit      These are the blueprints for Captain America's shield, close-ups of which appear in the bonus features of Iron Man 2 . If you look closely, you can see a note from Stark that reads, "adamantium alloy -- [too] much bounce." Presumably, Stark used adamantium

Photo courtesy JoBlo       Shortly after the Luke Cage Netflix series premiered in 2016, Tarantino revealed in an interview that he nearly made a film adaptation of everyone's favorite Hero for Hire back in the 1990s. I'm not necessarily a die-hard fan of Tarantino (although Django Unchained was fantastic), but of all of Hollywood's tales of lost films, this is one of the most intriguing.      In the interview, Tarantino said he would have liked to have cast Laurence Fishburne as Luke, which would have been amazing given Fishburne's versatility as an actor and Luke Cage's penchant for combining comedy with drama. Tarantino's comic-loving friends, however, thought Wesley Snipes would make a better Luke Cage, given his physique, and this frustrated Tarantino so much that he decided his efforts would be better spent creating original material than adapting existing characters.      But what would his version have looked like, anyway? While expressing a

Photo courtesy Lionsgate and Marvel Entertainment      With the exception of Big Hero 6 , animated movies based on Marvel Comics haven't really had the same critical acclaim or massive fan following as DC's animated movies. But there's one Marvel Animated Feature that I can't help but love because it dares to answer the age-old question, "What if the Avengers had a bunch of kids, and then most of the Avengers died off, and then Tony Stark's old robot buddy Ultron came to ruin everything?"      Enter the 2008 film  Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow . Picture a cross between "Old Man Logan" and "Age of Ultron" with some "A-Next" thrown in for good measure, except it's not really based on any of them. The premise? Most of the Avengers are gone, and their kids are left in the care of Old Man Tony Stark. Making up our cast of powered preteens are Pym (Ant-Man and Wasp's son), Azari (Black Panther and Storm's son),

Photo courtesy 20th Century Fox SPOILERS AHEAD FOR LOGAN ! It's been a year already, go watch it!      Every time I watch Logan , there's one character in particular that really stands out, and that's Bobby, the New Mutant with electricity powers and the very same kid clutching a Wolverine action figure at Logan's funeral. And apparently I'm not the only one to think this. Grace Randolph from the YouTube channel Beyond the Trailer said that while she found most of the New Mutants in the film to be "not likable," she enjoyed watching Bobby. But I think the reason I find his character so interesting is not just his likability, but the fact that he might be one of the most important characters in the film.      There's a deleted scene in which Logan awakes to find Bobby standing over his bed, playing out a fight with his action figures. In one hand, he has Wolverine, clad in his classic canary suit; in the other, he has Sabretooth, whose fangs and

Photo courtesy Sony Pictures      2011 was an interesting year for comic book movies. In the year before Marvel's The Avengers would completely revolutionize superhero filmmaking, we had movies like  X-Men: First Class, Thor, Green Lantern, and  Captain America: The First Avenger . That year, we also saw a superhero film of a different kind, Michel Gondry's adaptation of  The Green Hornet series, which starred Seth Rogen and Jay Chou. Despite being panned by critics (it boasts a mighty 43% on Rotten Tomatoes!), this film is definitely worth a second watch, for beneath the action and the juvenile humor lies a clever and unique deconstruction of superheroes, comic book movies, and most importantly, sidekicks.      Seth Rogen plays Britt Reid, whose life is sent tumbling into a directionless abyss when his father dies of a bee sting. Like many superheroes, he is driven to vigilantism by his father's death -- kind of. Once his father is dead, he bonds with his father's