This week on the Major Spoilers Podcast – One more dip in the Guardians of the Galaxy movie pool, are we reaching a saturation of superhero movies, San Diego sues Salt Lake City, Rodrigo is angry at eels, Imperial #1, Midnight Tiger, and the Legendary Star-Lord #2.
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NEWS
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles gets a sequel
LINK
Too many comic book movies or not enough?
LINK
REVIEWS
STEPHEN
Imperial #1
Story By: Steven T. Seagle
Art By: Marc Dos Santos
Mark is two weeks out from making the biggest decision of his life. But which big decision will it be? Taking the ring of the woman of his dreams and becoming a married man? Or taking the crown of the world’s only superhero and becoming the next Imperial? STEVEN T. SEAGLE (THE RED DIARY/ THE RE[A]D DIARY, Genius, it’s a bird…) teams with MARK DOS SANTOS for a buddy book with commitment issues.
MATTHEW
MIDNIGHT TIGER #1
Writer(s): DeWayne Feenstra, Ray-Anthony Height
Artist Name(s): Ray-Anthony Height
Cover Artist(s): Ray-Anthony Height (reg). Jerry Gaylord (v)
Having lost all hope in the heroes of his world, fate steps in and gives young Gavin Shaw the power to do the things they have not. Only as the teenage hero Midnight Tiger does his city have a chance at redemption. Retailer incentive cover by Jerry Gaylord!
RODRIGO
MYSTERY OF EELS
Eels can be found all over the globe, in fresh and salt water ecosystems alike. But today, risk of over-fishing and the presence of dams and other obstacles that prevent eels from reaching their oceanic spawning grounds pose new threats to an animal that once roamed the planet alongside the dinosaurs. Artist, writer, and naturalist James Prosek explores the mysterious world of the eel. Buy the film. The Mystery of Eels premiered April 17, 2013.
ZACH
Legendary Star-Lord #2
Writer: Samuel Ryan Humphries
Artist: Paco Medina
Publisher: Marvel
Peter’s captured by a bounty hunter—who may have a strange connection to his past! • Can Peter and the bounty hunter make amends before he’s fed to a giant alien? • And who is the mysterious Mr. Knife–and why is he so interested in Star-Lord?
Major Spoilers Poll of the Week: #WhoCoveredItUp
For the last couple of weeks, BOOM! Studios teased us with conspiracy theory teasers for its upcoming Deep State series. As a younger man, I devoured everything Art Bell served up, and wild tales of Bigfoot, Area 51, and the Illuminati holding secret meetings at Old Navy had me enthralled with the mystery of the unknown.
VOTE!
Do you believe there are secret groups controlling the world (i.e. The Illuminati)?
[poll="349”]
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5 Comments
Some comments from the topics of this episode:
Guardians of the Galaxy: Absolutely loved the characters. The story was a bit weak, but I cannot wait to see more of the Guardians. I want to go see this again in the theaters, which is rare for me. Not quite as good as Avengers or Winter Soldier (I am back and forth on which of those is my favorite Marvel movie) but well worth the price of admission. Karen Gillan should have had more lines, she shaved her head for the movie. Come on people. I am actually impressed that she brought such life to that character with so little to say, but she was always good in Dr. Who with bringing the intensity to her expressions.
Are super hero movies going to hit a plateau? Most likely yes, but they will morph and change to be thinly veiled super hero movies when this happens. The formula works, but the hype surrounding it will change. I do think that it won’t happen for 4-55 years, however.
The real bubble that I expect to burst soon is the conversion of young adult modern fantasy/ sci-fi into movies. They are even now digging pretty deep into the well, and taking great liberties with the actual plot of the books to remake them into the formula. I expect a couple of major misses in the next couple of years to bring the whole train crashing down near a polar bear…
Speaking of which, I think that ending was a shot at Lost, but I am probably just making that up .:)
‘Comic Book’ isn’t a genre, its a source, just like novels, plays, etc.
Superheroes is a ‘genre’ with definable, identifiable tropes, and it certainly has a lifespan. What that lifespan is, and what the saturation point is, is tough to say. It will end and might end with some colossal bombs. Or i it could just fade out in a steep decline with ever diminishing returns.
Genre explosions can tap into the zeitgeist for various reasons, run their course and fade away, even on television. Look at the explosion of P.I. shows in the 70s and 80s. Police procedurals in the 00s and 10s, Family comedies in the wake of Cosby in the 80s, groups of friends doing stuff in the 90s into the 10s. Take your pick.
…and Westerns in the late 50s
Westerns as a genre peaked in 1958-59 and were EVERYWHERE.
Look at these staggering numbers:
1958 – 44 Western Theatrical releases
1959 – 34 Western Theatrical releases
PLUS 26 Westerns on Television in a 3 network universe. (Dumont was imploding at this point)
.
After that Westerns went into a slow, steady decline, and now they are released rarely . They are certainly still made, but they aren’t tapping into any broad cultural zeitgeist, and are no longer pervasive. Their tropes have even been absorbed into other types of movies (including Superhero films).
We’re nowhere near seeing 40 superhero movies in a single year. But…
Superheroes could also be seen as a subset of sci-fi and fantasy which are also very popular (Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Twilight, Star Wars).
If you consider sci-fi actioners/fantasy genre films as including the superhero films then we could be closer to a saturation point where we have a lot of sci fi movies on tap and in release, as well as lots of this type of stuff on TV. Much closer to the late 50s Western numbers.
My point is that I don’t think we’ve hit peak Superhero yet, but we might be getting close.
I just wanted to drop in and say that they are doing a Guardians 3000 series coming soon, written by Dan Abnett.
Relevant Major Spoilers article:
http://majorspoilers.com/2014/06/26/dan-abnett-pen-guardians-3000/
Rats! I missed the Poll and wasn’t able to comment in advance….
Zach exactly nails the appeal of conspiracy theories. A singular, sinister explanation of why the world is a mess is easier than the explanation that NOBODY knows what’s going on and our leaders are largely incompetent. That incompetence signal amplifies through complex and powerful systems and looks a lot like conspiracy. The sinister explanation is actually more comforting to some.
Brad Meltzer’s Decoded must be the (very good) show Stephen was describing. The cool thing about that show is that some episodes come out on the side of actual conspiracy. See the one about whether there is actually any Gold in Fort Knox.
Alex Jones is the Bohemian Grove conspiracy theorist.
All that Weishaupt as Washington stuff seems to originate out of Illumninatus! I have found no earlier references that I recall in a LOT of searching.
Stephen touches on an awesome experiment I’ve done to make your world really interesting for a while. If you want to get into a conspiracy world view get ALL your news for AT LEAST 2 weeks from nothing but sites like Prison Planet, Infowars, Jeff Rense, Coast to Coast AM, Rumor Mill News, Godlike Productions, Vigilant Citizen, and on and on. It’s not hard to find plenty to keep you busy. Plus tons of YouTube videos on any topic you find interesting from these sites.
You will become EXTREMELY paranoid, and will feel like you are living in a weird alternate reality… just remember you’re down a rabbit hole and you have to come back. You will run up against some really hateful stuff too, because conspiracy culture is on the fringes, and those fringes brush up against some other really awful stuff even further out. You’ll find that conspiracy theory is as prevalent among left wingers as it is among right wingers, and you’ll see a spectrum of stuff that is credible and believable, all the way to stuff that wouldn’t make a credible plot in the wildest comics. You’ll find a theory that offers confirmation bias of your worst fears regardless of political leanings. The neat thing is that when you are done, you’ll probably never look at the news the same way again, you’ll devise your own alternate theories for any news story you read or hear. You might even become more skeptical, even of firmly held personal beliefs, taking more of the information you get with a grain of salt and becoming a more credible thinker…Or you’ll get pulled in and never escape…Beware!
Really good show, and because of that Illuminatus! podcast from so many years ago, I’ve actually read that book twice in about five years. (Pages may or may not be filled with notes in the margins.) So if there was any time in the schedule or in people’s lives, I’d love for a follow up with the good Mr. Otter back on.