itt: consternation and wailing about Zach Snyder's upcoming SUPERMAN/BATMAN film/sequel to MAN OF STEEL -- official title: BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

like, what if there hadn't been a thor movie or a cap movie and then in the avengers they just had nick fury say "and behind this door is a guy who's been asleep for fifty years" and a MEANWHILE IN ASGARD

were they so burnt by green lantern that they don't realize they're basically letting zack snyder make watchmen again only with the real heroes

to be entirely fair to this movie, which will be bad no matter what, it does make at least some kind of sense to say that you can do without an origin story for Batman, I wish to god they would stop remaking origin stories for some of these guys. With Spider-Man it was just insulting: just change the actor and do another movie, call it "Spider-Man Versus The Lizard" and let us get on with our lives. If they actually cast some old grumpy asshole as Batman (Bruce Willis... Clint Eastwood.... you know) then the Dark Knight Returns fight with Superman could be awesome. That won't happen of course, and it will be terrible. I am not deluded about this.

let's be honest, we're all just marking time til

Xmas 2017 – Flash and Green Lantern team-up

xpost testify. either of those guys as miller DK would have ruled. clint probably closer to the miller vision but willis gives good pathos.

I also wish Spidey had just treated Andrew Garfield like a Roger Moore and agree there's no need for an origin story re: batman, who's equitable in the Avengers to the Hulk - a known character with a new actor. It's the new-to-movies characters from magical continents I can't believe DC is just gonna wedge in this thing.

the dude who played Khal Drogo has supposedly been cast as Aquaman fwiw

But everyone has seen the Superfriends, the only character that really needs explanation for a comics-illiterate audience is Cyborg

even if we accept that everybody knows the superfriends, and that america will be fine with batman v superman being interrupted by the king of the sea and the queen of the amazons, it's a hell of a risk to assume that america will LOVE all the characters enough based on this movie to want to see three spin-offs the following year.

and it's not like marvel/fox/sony are going to politely sit on their hands while DC goes justice league happy

No Gleek origin story? NOT CANON.

jesus, currently captain america 3, batman v superman and x-men apocalypse are ALL scheduled for May 2016

I read that as Jesus was scheduled for then too. Which one will he see first?

so if the dc slate is legit

2016
==
may - cap 3, batman v superman, x-men apocalypse
june - amazing spider man 3
july - unnamed marvel movie (likely Dr Strange), Shazam
dec - sandman

2017
==
March - Wolverine 3
May - Justice League, another marvel sequel
July - Wonder Woman, Fantastic Four 2
August - Whatever fresh madness comes after Ant-Man and Dr Strange for Marvel
Dec - Flash and Green Lantern's Bogus Journey

2018
==
May - Man Of Steel 2, another marvel sequel

and this is just the superhero shit, there's also multiple star wars and countless other sequels floating around

Jesus vs. Wolverine green-lit for 2018. "I'm the blessed there is at what I do."

there's also the new Fantastic Four as well as Sinister Six, Venom, and more Spider-Man

and if there's one thing comics have taught us it's that market saturation cannot possibly backfire

What's the movie equivalent of foil-stamped covers?

The kevin smith stamp of approval

Sinister Six movie really gonna happen?

well Drew Goddard was announced as the director and he seemingly left the Daredevil TV show to work on it

What's the movie equivalent of foil-stamped covers?

Retrofitted 3D?

lol

http://www.movieweb.com/news/fake-batman-v-superman-script-written-and-leaked-by-kevin-smith

We just received an interesting tip from an anonymous source deep within the Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice production. This comes just moments after we posted a story about the introduction of three new, lesser-known heroes in the movie. Badass Digest has gotten their hands on a pdf that claims to be the legitimate shooting script, and in it, there are a number of new secondary characters and locations. This came hot on the heels of Latino Review claiming four new villains were going to appear alongside Lex Luthor. Well, guess what? If we're to believe the email we just got our hands on, not only is the script fake...It was written by Kevin Smith!

He explains that having the "v" instead of "vs." is a way "to keep it from being a straight 'versus' movie, even in the most subtle way.

so subtle it's literally just a legal drama and batman and superman are now lawyers

http://static.tvgcdn.net/MediaBin/Galleries/Shows/G_L/Ha_Hh/HarveyBirdman_AttorneyAtLaw/crops/HarveyBirdman3.jpg

Yeah, I liked Sean O'neal's take:

And he discussed how he originally had no intention of introducing Batman to Superman’s world so soon, believing he’d one day get around to that by making an adaptation of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. “But on the other hand it seemed organic the way our story was unfolding to start to feather him in,” Snyder said, of this very natural progression to jumpstart a comic-book movie universe to compete with Marvel’s as soon as possible.

otm tho rilly it's not like warner/dc's competing with marvel for anything but style points and I guess maybe "not looking like complete idiots"

real losers are producers shopping big budget non-comic projects, as there are now even fewer prime release slots. so much for Hudson Hawk II...

Good enough place to post this long Chris Sims piece about DC's "Marvel problem." I missed it when he published it at Comics Alliance last year but Business Insider ran it last week. DC's identity problems extend to the films as well, imo.

http://www.businessinsider.com/dc-copies-marvel-2014-6

Great article.

Entertaining read for sure. Boy, does he hate Bob Kane!

The shoutout to the Conan issue of What-If (unquestionably its high point) made me smile.

Is the one where Wolverine somehow ends up in that time period?

There's some anti-Kane, pro-Finger sentiment brewing these days because Kane is apparently going to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame or whatever it's called. Mark Evanier's been blogging it up a bit lately.

xxp

Here's Chris Sims on why he dislikes Bob Kane:

http://comicsalliance.com/ask-chris-164-bob-kane-is-just-the-worst/

It's a lot like if Stan Lee not only took all the credit for Marvel superheroes, but denied that Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, or Steve Ditko ever existed.

That gravestone is pretty unbelievable

It looks like Conan was a popular subject for what-if. There are 4 issues apparently. One I remember has him becoming a pimp and walking a leopard on a leash (referenced in the article), which must be WI#13 from 1979. Then there's this one http://www.comicvine.com/what-if-what-if-conan-the-barbarian-were-stranded-in-the-20th-century/4000-23995/ from 1985 with a sick bill sienkiewicz cover that has him on the verge of joining the avengers at the end. I also remember one where he becomes buddies with Thor (who dies) and the final panel is Conan climbing up a mountain with Mjolnir. The Wolverine one is from the later relaunch of What If in the 90s.

(xpost)

ahh i see

good piece

as an outsider it feels like there's a lot of narrativizing and that he also really just doesn't like DC despite his constant assurances otherwise but still good piece thanks for posting

He also loves Batman more than anything

we all say things to make batman feel better, don't have to mean them

okay that tombstone

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--00NL7eOa--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/19dfys1yex2wxjpg.jpg

Sims piece is pretty good at explaining DC's current actions/predicament (not that they were really that difficult to grasp to begin with). I think it conveniently elides some basic facts in the service of maintaining the overall argument about the companies narratives though - for one thing, it's weird to act like these corporations, the ownership and direction of which has shifted multiple times over the decades, during which huge swathes of their respective creative departments switched back and forth, have any kind of inherent, coherent behavior patterns. These are not distinct individuals. They are constantly shifting conglomerates that have continuously tried to adapt to market pressures. They don't have a philosophy beyond making money. I know that in this glorious day and age corporations are people too, my friend, but talking about Marvel and DC like they're a couple of neurotic siblings is not really reflective of reality.

Also, it seems one-sided in its assessment of DC's chasing Marvel's trends. Marvel has ripped off plenty of shit from DC over the years, for the same reasons DC ripped off Marvel - they saw the other making money and tried to copy it. Thanos/Cosmic Cube/Capt Marvel saga are a pretty blatant rip of Kirby's Fourth World. Man-Thing and Swamp Thing. Marvel's alternate universes (Ultimate etc.) and DC's Earth-2, Earth-Prime, Earth-C whatever. It's all a rich tapestry of opportunism. Where there's some divergence (at least afaik) is that occasionally DC has gone out on a limb and succeeded and Marvel didn't even bother to try to compete - thinking primarily of DC's Vertigo imprint and their importation of the Brit troika of Moore/Gaiman/Morrison (if Marvel made some corresponding moves to capture the college-girl market the way Sandman did I'm not aware of it).

I look forward to sic correcting whatever factual errors I may have made with this post and defer to his voluminous knowledge of publication/comics history but Sims' piece oversimplifies this stuff imo.

Plus we are getting into Ouroboros territory, as Marvel are about to have their own Crisis and merge the Ultimate universe with Earth-616.

haha waht

wait what? explain that!
I was gonna say, the Ultimate universe was sort of different take on DC's Crisis. The original idea - that the original universe is too complicated for new readers - was used, but they didn't kill off the original stories and then ran parallel. They were pretty dedicated to the idea that the universes would never crossover for a long time (until they did the Mile Morales/Peter Parker thing). They even teased it as a joke for Marvel Zombies and UFF.

Marvel has generally preferred gradual line changes rather than big event reboots. But as the Ultimate Universe started getting 5, 10 years on, it became just as screwed up as the 616. I haven't kept up in a long time, but my impression was that the Ultimate universe was rebooted post-Ultimatum when they killed off like 90% of the characters?

I just wish they would abandon the idea of continuity altogether. it's so fucking stupid and unworkable.

it might be kind of *more* workable in film where there's less product but it just seems so constricting. much prefer the near-nonsensical Silver Age DC approach - just make up whatever you want/use whatever you want and shoehorn in some ridiculous explanation if it serves the story, otherwise who cares.

They abandon whatever they feel like when it's convenient. (Peter and MJ married? Haw!) I wouldn't want them to abandon the idea altogether. I was rereading Age of Ultron last night and its callbacks to early Avengers and Pym history are its big strength.

xp -- we're definitely going to have to agree to disagree, Otis.