This week on the Major Spoilers Podcast – Skybound’s Manifest Destiny, Thor is going to be a girl, The Last Broadcast, Grimm Fairy Tales #100, Legend of Korra, and The Last Fall #1. Plus, Groot or Rocket Raccoon. You decide!
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NEWS
Marvel announces Thor series
LINK
New Look for Batgirl
LINK
REVIEWS
STEPHEN
The Last Broadcast #3
Writer(s): André Sirangelo
Artist(s): Gabriel Iumazark
Ivan, Harumi, and Niko venture back into Blackhall’s bunker, and this time, they stumble on more than they bargained for. As more secrets are revealed about the conspiracy surrounding the magician, the members of Backbone start to realize that this may be their most dangerous exploration yet.
MATTHEW
GRIMM FAIRY TALES #100
Story by Joe Brusha, Ralph Tedesco, and Anthony Spay
Written by Joe Brusha and Ralph Tedesco
Artwork by Anthony Spay Colors by Ivan Nunes
Letters by Jim Campbell Edited by Nicole Glade
The LANDMARK issue of one of the hottest indie comics of the past decade has arrived! It all began with Sela Mathers, the Guardian of the Nexus, a woman tasked with teaching misguided humans right from wrong. But Sela’s struggles, her ups and downs, and the effects of those she’s helped and those she’s lost to darkness will all culminate in this epic 100th issue! Sela will take on the biggest threat she’s ever faced as the Dark Queen looks to plunge the Grimm Universe into an Age of Darkness.
RODRIGO
Legend of Korra: Book 3: Change
Book Three: Change is the title of the third book of The Legend of Korra, which will run for a total of thirteen episodes. Set two weeks after the end of Book Two: Spirits, the nomenclature refers to the changes induced by the energy shift of the planet due to Harmonic Convergence and Korra’s battle with the Dark Avatar.
ZACH
The Last Fall #1 (of 5)
Writer: Tom Waltz
Artist: Casey Maloney
Marcus Fall is a battle-hardened soldier in a long-running inter-planetary war. After multiple combat tours, Fall is finally able to leave the military and return to his beloved wife and son. But his happy homecoming comes to a tragic end when a suicide bomber murders his family. Devastated, Fall returns to the war with one bloody mission in mind: revenge against the enemy… every last one of them.
Major Spoilers Poll of the Week
With the Guardians of the Galaxy just around the corner, it’s time to start thinking about who you want to dress up for your frightful festivities. Two particularly creepy costumes are those with the masks for Rocket Raccoon and Groot.
[poll="345”]Major Spoilers Poll of the Week: Creepy Halloween costume edition
Discussion: Manifest Destiny Volume 1 Writer: Chris Dingess Artist: Matthew Roberts Publisher: Image Comics/Skybound Cover Price: $9.99 In 1804, Captain Meriwether Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark set out on an expedition to explore the uncharted American frontier. This is the story of what the monsters they discovered lurking in the wilds...
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13 Comments
Rodrigo’s read on this arc was spot-on. I think the sign of a strong read is the ‘a-ha!’ moment you get when it’s laid out. Definitely had that once or twice when he was breaking it down. It’s hard to look past some of the more troubling aspects of this book. You would hope that at some point they would be more self-aware of the themes they’re presenting. I wonder if any of this came up in the letters columns? It would really be fascinating if it was intentional on the part of the creative team, and they were doing a commentary on the absurdity of Manifest Destiny and what follows from that philosophy. Though, through six issues I don’t see that in any overt way in the comic itself.
And that’s what I get for commenting before the final word is put in. Zach’s comment about Dingess’ drunken realization makes the prospect of this being a self-aware commentary far less likely.
I agree with you Stephen about Thor’s mantle being given to a female, it is a total slap in the face. The idea to use Thor’s comic as a means to “getaway” with a female character is a joke. Why not start a comic that creates a strong female character who can become a top tier character is beyond me. Or, heck why not use one of the already awesome female characters that you have? like Captain Marvel, who is just plain epic in my opinion. Wish these comic giants really knew what they were doing….. its really sad sometimes that they just don’t get it.
To the Thor discussion, I’m not concerned that she is called Thor. Thor is a name, but it is also a title of the god of thunder. This is well supported in the history of the title. As we have seen with Beta Ray Bill, having the tile does not mean that she will not have another name that is commonly used and that can continue with her once the title is inevitably returned to “normal”.
Overall, its not really exciting news. As said, its all been done before, and its just not going to last. I would be more excited about this if it were happening in the cinematic universe. That would be a risk, and one that could pay off big for fans and the company. Also, it would have a chance at a more lasting impact. I think this is where the announcement may have backfired for Marvel, and where they will be confusing their mainstream audience. When the View tells people that Thor is going to be a woman, they are going to expect this to occur in the medium they know best.
Bottom line, there is some potential here. If the story and character are strong, it could turn into a recurring character that will enrich the Marvel universe long after she is no longer Thor. But it could also fall big, and now the world is watching.
And please, not Angela. That would be… so bad… on so many levels…
I’m just wondering why they aren’t pushing for Captain Marvel? She is crazy strong and has so much potential, and man Angela would be awful.
I don’t understand all of the hate for the Thor announcement. i understand some of it, but not all of it. You can say you hate the idea of it all you want but shouldn’t we wait for that first issue of the new series before we call it crap? I’m going to let Jason Aaron tell his story and hold final judgement for it then.
It won’t be Angela, she’s supposedly getting her title announced just before or at SDCC with Kieron Gillen writing.
My comics, game and movie continuity do not have to mesh, the games and movies are based on the comics, they are not the comics.
I’m looking forward to see the story that Aaron give us here.
Part of me really wonders if Marvel had intended to make a big deal out of the Thor thing at all, but then saw the crazy reaction to Batgirl, decided to make a counter move, using the View and their own hype machine to shift attention away from that.
That’s a great point.
A few notes from a history major on the Manifest Destiny book.
The concept of Manifest Destiny, and the term, originates from 1845, four decades after the Lewis and Clark expedition. Jefferson was a true believer in the concept of a small agrarian society and had no interest in westward expansion, and really the American population in 1804 was only about 5 million spread across the east coast. Land was plentiful and the first post-colonial immigration rush was still a decade away.
The Louisiana Purchase had nothing to do with wanted to expand westward and everything with wanting to remove the potential threat of French attacks from the south by taking control of the port at New Orleans and its surroundings. France however saw no point in keeping the western territory if it was giving up the port so made it a package deal. The Lewis and Clarke expedition became necessary because even France hadn’t bothered to map most of the territory. Interestingly the Lewis and Clark expedition met almost no hostility from the native tries during its trip. The closest they came was when they got caught in the crossfire between two tribes.
After the expedition the territory sat mostly unclaimed for three decades until the 1830s when Jackson decided to move 90% of the native tribes on the east coast across the Mississippi. The infamous Trail of Tears sent several dozen new tribes into the region which still had almost no white settlers in it as the land was considered too poor for civilized use. Even when settlers started to cross the Mississippi in the 1840s they either stayed close to the river or pushed on to Mexico controlled California. The land runs in the Midwest would not start until the 1880s.
So really the period when you saw a lot of conflict between Native tribes and settlers, and thus the time period of so many westerns, is between about 1850 and 1900, and this was also the time period when Manifest Destiny was really being espoused by everyone. So honestly the title of the book is about forty years out of sync with the events of history and has absolutely nothing to do with anything happening in it.
Good info! Thanks for being a history major. I have seen sources that site the Louisiana Purchase as one of the moments that set up the mission of the United States as the “shining city upon a hill”, and that Jackson’s “extending the area of freedom” as one of the first examples of the underlying principles of manifest destiny.
Again, thanks for your comments!
Yes and now, Jefferson really didn’t want all that territory, and wasn’t even sure he had the constitutional right to make the purchase. He finally did it because the United States needed New Orleans and the price worked out to something like 4 cents an acre. It was too good an offer to pass up. Even then alot of people argued against it in Congress and around the nation. Americans in general saw no need for all the territory at the time.
The population was growing rapidly however and by Jackson’s time, thirty years later we were butting up against the Indian Tribes until they were forced to migrate. And by 1945 we had slammed into the Mississippi and began the tentative steps across it. Even then however the goal was the west coast rather then the midwest. Mass settlement of the midwest wouldn’t really come until post Civil War. Texas ironically was essentially gained through the illegal immigration of Americans in Mexican territory and then rebelling against the Mexicans.
Most who cite the Louisiana Purchase as part of Manifest Destiny do so based only on the idea that the countries territory doubled in size but ignore how much of the nation argued against it. By the time we went to war with Mexico in 1845 to gain control of the rest of the Western half of the continent American had fully embraced the idea that we were meant to have it all and didn’t care who we had to take it from or how we got it.
Yeah, Jefferson thought it would be something like 900 years before the white settlements would expand all the way to the Pacific. By then, he theorized, the native population would have a chance to “catch up” to the European settlers and we’d have a set of relatively separate-but-equal American republics — one for the natives and one for the whites.
And Stephen, you can’t lump Jefferson+Lewis & Clark with Jackson+Manifest Destiny. They were separated by time, ideology (Jefferson hated Jackson and thought him an ignorant brute) and, religion. Jefferson and Lewis were deists, not Christians, and, thus, didn’t accept the idea of an involved creator who made this universe and world for the benefit of mankind. They believed in a kind of cosmic watchmaker who set the universe in motion and then left it alone — wholly incompatible with the idea of Manifest Destiny.
(BTW, I am not related to the author of “Manifest Destiny”)
I may be way off, but what if the whole Thor thing is because of the movies?
Chris Hemsworth and the whole Avengers gang isn’t going to be around forever, and the roles are probably going to be replaced a few movies out. Make a female Thor in the comics now and establish that ‘Thor’ is a title, not a name – replace Hemsworth with a woman in the movies, and you got yourself a movie that can compete with the Wonder Woman movie.