I’ve said it for some years now, but it’s still a statement of truth: Iron Man can be kind of a putz. Yes, with the advent of Robert Downey Jr., he’s a much more approachable and charming putz, but he’s still pretty insufferable as a person and especially as a love interest. Sure, he’s worth millions, but he’s also a public target for lunatics with exploding weaponry who want to hurt him through the people he loves, and a notorious womanizer to boot. It’s a no-win situation for all involved. Of course, even money can’t explain the strange romantic magnetism…
Browsing: Question Of The Day
Sharp-eyed Spoilerites who partake of the entire Major Spoilers experience know that quite often, the subjects of the MS-QOTD will pop up on social media a day or two before appearing here at Major Spoilers. Such it is with today’s query, originally brought up by Spoilerite Mela, who wondered how the Uncanny X-Men-style of melodrama, fighty-fighty and angst became a multimedia phenomenon, while the Legion of Super-Heroes similar take is considered hokey and unapproachable. It’s a good question, as both teams have upwards of 90 members, in multiple incarnations, and even share a number of creators in common, most recognizably…
Professor Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters has been home to a lot of remarkable women, from Storm to Kitty Pryde to that one girl with the jets on her head. But the first and foremost for me was always Jean Grey, telepath/telekinetic and bearer of the Phoenix Force. She chose Scott Summers, and their wedding was a massive comic event circa 1994. After her passing (or perhaps technically during the last months of her life and THEN after her passing) Scott was romantically pursued by Emma Frost, The White Queen, who was just as telepathic and just as formidable as…
Even if it’s not the start of your weekend (Shout-Out to my weekend proletariat! Weird work schedules represent!), there’s something special about a Friday. At my day job, it’s actually one of the busiest days for actual work content, but people tend to be generally less stressy, and I know that I get to watch ‘Smackdown’, the wrestling B-Show, where there is a lot more chance of young, inexperienced guys totally blowing a promo or finishing move. Being on the cutting edge of pop culture, I’m reminded of the words of the great philosopher Rebecca Black, “Partyin, Partyin, YEAH!” And…
This week marks the release of part one of ‘The Death of Wolverine’, a shocking comic book story of which a review can be found here. As with every comic book death, mourners are lining the streets with candles and hoods to lament the loss of one of our greatest superhero-type legends, assured that this time, the Canucklehead’s time has run out. With a career that spans more than a century, from his days wearing a night-dress to the inexplicable tiger stripes and back, Wolverine has appeared in many, MANY stories and had thousands of adventures. Indeed, owing to his…
This week, while pickin’ my books for our weekly Staff Picks feature, I discovered that a new comic would be launching featuring the adventures of Alice Cooper as the Lord of Nightmares, a book I’m going to be buying for sure. Indeed, in the long and varied history of comics purportedly featuring the adventures of real people have been a staple of comics for decades. Uri Gellar notably helped Daredevil defeat a villainous mentalist in the 70s, Roy Rogers and many of his cowboy ilk had their own books in the 40s (indeed, it wasn’t until a recent episode of…
In the United States, the first Monday in September is designated Labor Day, a holiday to celebrate the contributions of the working class, and also my favorite secondary holiday. Having worked for a whole lot of jerks in my time, I can tell you that it is possible to be successful even when your immediate overseers are malicious, corrupt, incompetent or inattentive, a situation that makes me happy to have the chance to work at Major Spoilers. The Robot Overlord may have a history of disintegrations, but he’s pretty consistent in his iron-fisted rule, and doesn’t even mind that I…
With the recent debut of the Twelfth Doctor, the creators seem to be actively combating the perception that its central characters are a romantic couple, something that I’m fully behind as a viewer. Sure, there are great moments to be had with that concept, but I think it’s good to try another tack. Some of the best Doctor/Companion interactions had no romantic overtones at all, and it’s perfectly valid for our hero to want to travel through space and time with a good friend, a protegée or even (GASP!) a dude. Indeed, if I were The Doctor myself, first of…
I’m not sure how many actual mutants are left in the Marvel Universe (at one point, they claimed 198, which was immediately revised when someone realized there are more Wolverine knockoffs than that, and that the team rosters would have to change eventually), but they’re slowly being supplanted by Inhumans, a phenomenon which many attribute to Marvel not holding the movie rights to the X-Men. Regardless, in the fifty-odd years since the X-Men first debuted, we’ve seen an awful lot of mutants, and in recent years it has become a running theme that one’s power reflects one’s true inner self,…
With the upcoming ‘Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice’ film hinting at revisiting the iconic battle from “The Dark Knight Returns”, lots of people have been ruminating over the question of who would win a battle between DC’s biggest caped icons. Yesterday, we addressed the problems in that theorem, in that Superman and Batman have much in common as heroes, men of valor, and proud wearers of bed sheets on their back. Of course, we also focused on the question of what character would be most suited to neutralizing the world’s greatest detective, whereas today we ruminate on who might…
With the upcoming ‘Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice’ film hinting at revisiting the iconic battle from “The Dark Knight Returns”, lots of people have been ruminating over the question of who would win a battle between DC’s biggest caped icons. (One has super-speed, is invulnerable to all harm, and has laser vision, so naturally people are voting for the one with a cool car and a big checkbook.) But those who think that Batman and Superman are one another’s nemeses (nemisises?) forget one thing: THEY’RE ON THE SAME SIDE. Thus, in today’s query, we’re going to add a caveat…
Because of relentless promotion of the new “Saved By The Bell” tabloid biopic, my daughter has not only requested to watch it (a soft ‘No’ at this point) but the original SBTB series (which, to my disappointment, kindly Auntie has allowed.) Aside from a complicated explanation of how the Netflix ‘Season One’ is actually a different show entirely, and how that isn’t actually Rodrigo’s dad, I found great amusement at how much she goggled at early-90s fashions and hairstyles the same way I did with ‘Leave It To Beaver’ in my youth. Interestingly, the most annoying side-effect was that I…
This week, I was pleasantly surprised to find one of my comics to be littered with references to several episodes of the classic Twilight Zone, including ‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’, ‘Twenty-Two’ and ‘The Odyssey of Flight 33.’ As a long-time fan of the Zone (I can often quote episode, season and production number, though not with the alacrity that I could at age 17), I was happy to see a reminder that Rod Serling’s masterwork is still remembered in this age of irony and jump-scares. Indeed, the amount of suspense and terror in even a not-so-iconic episode (take, for example,…
Today’s review of Justice Inc. got me to thinking about the nature of the “pulp heroes’ of the past: As the precursors/evolutionary offshoots of the same publishing conditions that led to the creation of superheroes, they’re kind of a conundrum. Often lumped in with the heroes that they helped to inspire, Doc Savage and his ilk are nonetheless a separate breed of cat entirely. Though there are elements of The Shadow in Batman, the core of the characters is such that they honestly have little in common in their execution, and while the fandoms for pulp and comic book heroes…