The last of earth left to discover

30 Days of Marvel: Day 30: Something you would like Marvel to do (movie, comic, cartoon,  adaption, apparel, etc.)

1. A new Gambit comic.  By a writer and artist I respect, which might be good. And yes, they’re doing it.  They’re doing it!  I live in hope that it will be good, and that they will get him right, and that I’ll enjoy it.

2. Another movie with Tom Hiddleston as Loki.

3. A Black Widow/S.H.I.E.L.D. movie.

4. A new Young Avengers title. Or just give Wiccan and Hulkling their own comic.

5. A new Hawkeye comic. Yes, I know, they’re doing one. I’m thinking of Kate Bishop, not Clint Barton.  (Not that I have any complaints about the new Hawkeye comic - I just think there’s room enough for two Hawkeye comics in the Marvel universe!)

6. Bring back Pete Wisdom. Ideally, I’d like to see him reunited with Kitty Pryde, and written by someone clever and witty.  Or, conversely, Pete Wisdom working with S.H.I.E.L.D. 

7. Return and redemption of Mystique, Daken, and Forge.

8. Restitution of the Spider-Man/Mary Jane Watson marriage.

9. The return of Nightcrawler.

10. A movie with Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Nick Fury.

11. A new Nick Fury comic that isn’t a Max comic, or set in the past.

12. More diversity at Marvel: more female heroes, more gay and bi characters (especially women, which are lacking), more handicapped heroes, more non-American heroes, more heroes of different ethnicities.  More women writing their stories. More women editing and drawing their stories.

30 Days of Marvel: Day 28: Power you would most like to have

Wolverine’s: guaranteed long life and good health.  Sounds about perfect to me.

30 Days of Marvel: Day 27: Where do you buy your comics?

At the Silver Snail in Ottawa, near the corner of Bank and Lewis, where I have a subscription to the good stuff.

391 Bank St
Ottawa, ON K2P 1Y3

(613) 232-2609

Best comic shop in town, and the manager, Kin Jee, is terrific.

30 Days of Marvel: Day 25: Favorite couple/relationship (romantic)

Another easy one: Emma Frost and Scott Summers.

“When I was with Emma, it was like flying. I could say any outrageous thing. There was no pressure. She had no expectations. She just accepted everything about me…” - Scott Summers, in New X-Men #142.

He was the X-Men’s teacher’s pet.  She was the slutty White Queen of the Hellfire Club. Who’d have guessed how well they’d fit together?

Now, back in the sixties and seventies, I was into the Scott/Jean thing. It was what we had.  I took it for granted. And even though I liked Scott Summers, he wasn’t the most interesting of the X-Men. He was the most reliable, the most dependable, the least likely to have a life.  Exciting?  Not really.

Emma changed all that.  Emma changed him, and all for the better, as far as I’m concerned. The good-boy X-Man discovered his edge, discovered his intelligence, developed his leadership, turned into a hard-assed arrogant son of a bitch who didn’t let anyone push him around.

Except for Emma. Sometimes. But only sometimes.

30 Days of Marvel: Day 23: Best Marvel costume you’ve seen IRL (cosplay)

Hmm. Any of the costumes I made myself? Not that they were the best ever, but there’s a great satisfaction in making one’s own costumes… And such fun to wear. Those days when I was Saturn Girl and Janet was Supergirl and Don was Brainiac 5… Yeah, not Marvel, I know. That was in my Legion of Super-Heores fangirl days. Mostly my costumes were Marvel: Doctor Strange was the best - the costume looked dramatic, and was comfortable to wear. And to dance in. And Guinevere from Camelot 3000 - anyone remember that? 

Okay, aside from that: the best costumes I have seen were at San Diego Comic Con, back when I used to go. The one that most stands out in my mind was a duo: Cloak and Dagger. He was big and dark and looming. She was tall and slim and fair. They had presence.

Really, with costumes, presence is as important as style.

30 Days of Marvel: Day 22: Favorite fanart picture

Kid Loki by ~situriina on Deviantart.

30 Days of Marvel: Day 21: Current obsession

Hmm. How many obsessions can a fan have at once? As usual, I have many Marvel obsessions… Many favourite comics and favourite characters because there are so many good ones out there. Daredevil and Magneto have been favourites for decades. But now… just now…

I’ll say Loki. Thanks to Pasqual Ferry’s lovely art and the revival of the character as a boy; thanks to good writing by Matt Fraction Kieron Gillen; thanks to the magnificent portrayal of Loki by Tom Hiddleston in The Avengers movie…. Yeah. My current obsession is Loki, Marvel’s god of mischief. I had a look at Wikipedia on Loki as a mythological figure, and was amused by the scholarly descriptions:

“…Folke Ström… in 1956 concluded that Loki is a hypostasis of the god Odin. In 1959, Jan de Vries theorized that Loki is a typical example of a trickster figure. In 1961, by way of excluding all non-Scandinavian mythological parallels in her analysis, Anna Birgitta Rooth concluded that Loki was originally a spider. Anne Holtsmark, writing in 1962, concluded that no conclusion could be made about Loki.

Regarding scholarship on Loki, scholar Gabriel Turville-Petre comments (1964) that “more ink has been spilled on Loki than on any other figure in Norse myth. This, in itself, is enough to show how little scholars agree, and how far we are from understanding him.”

…Stefanie von Schnurbein (2000) comments that “Loki, the outsider in the Northern Germanic pantheon, confounds not only his fellow deities and chronicler Snorri Sturluson [referring to the Prose Edda] but has occasioned as much quarrel among his interpreters. Hardly a monography, article, or encyclopedic entry does not begin with the reference to Loki as a staggeringly complex, confusing, and ambivalent figure who has been the catalyst of countless unresolved scholarly controversies and has elicited more problems than solutions”.

Fertile ground for Marvel and for movies, I’d say. [fan art by ~kisago on DeviantArt]

30 Days of Marvel: Day 20: Best cartoon version of any comic

Okay: right up front. I do not like cartoons. Some cartoons are vaguely watchable, most are not. When I do watch a cartoon, it’s almost certainly out of curiosity, not pleasure. I hate the exaggerated voices, the thin stories, and, often as not, the simplified art.

X-Men: The Animated Series was rather good. I particularly liked the voice of Chris Potter for Gambit. (I have my priorities.)

The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes isn’t bad… I didn’t run screaming. It would probably be going too far to say I liked it, but it was fun to see my familiar heroes being revised and revisited. I liked the voice of Eric Loomis as Iron Man.

My favourite? Without doubt, Spider-Man: The New Animated Series - not so new now, as it aired in 2003. I never saw it on TV, but I liked the look of the art and bought the DVD. Neil Patrick Harris was the voice of Peter Parker, and he was good. I liked it enough to buy the DVD, but that was a few years ago, and I haven’t liked it enough to actually watch it yet. 

30 Days of Marvel: Day 19: Best spin off series

The Young Avengers

It’s a spin-off of The Avengers, with teen characters. Kate Bishop, a girl version of Hawkeye. Cassie, size-shifter. Teddy, a sweet Skrull prince. Billy, a gay spellcaster, and his brash twin Tommy, a speedster. Kang the Conqueror, before he was Kang the Conqueror. Eli, a black Captain America.

Could be hokey, right? And maybe should be. But as it happens, Young Avengers has been consistently well written, the characters are all interesting - and not, I’m happy to say, all reeking of adolescent angst. The stories have been bright, clever, and engaging.

I want to see more of them.

Besides, Billy and Teddy are the cutest young gay couple in comics.

30 Days of Marvel: Day 18: Funniest character

Spider-Man. Nobody beats Spider-Man for the glib one-liner.

Man. I should start a blog. “Spiderfail.org”

30 Days of Marvel: Day 17: Coolest Marvel apparel

For us? For the fans?

On thing I think, and have always thought, is that most of the outfits sold as comic book merchanizing are either for little kids, or kind of ugly. Ugly in a dorky way. There are some fine T-shirts (and many ugly ones), a few good ties, some watches - but on the whole, the comic book apparel I have seen looks like dorkwear. Stuff adolescent males would wear before they develop any taste or colour sense. Me, I’m not impressed.

There cold be Marvel-based apparel that looks both attractive and adult, even dignified. Or glamorous. Something along the lines of Nick Fury’s coat, for example. There’s so much potential there: fan see it, on pages like GeetTyrantor the Tumblr comic book fashion pages.

Best I can think of is Wolverine’s leather jacket.

30 Days of Marvel: Day 15: Favorite Marvel movie actress

Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, in Iron Man and The Avengers.  I’ve always loved the Black Widow in the comics. It’s a joy to see her well depicted in the movies.

This is a strong contrast to most - perhaps all - of the other female superheroes I have loved over the decades, who are so disappointingly portrayed in the movies (if they are featured at all) that it spoils my enjoyment of those movies, and my memories of them.

If I were to choose my second favourite Marvel movies actress, it would have to be Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, in the same movies.
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