Comic Doodles 2.0

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 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...