A new trailer from Avengers: Age of Ultron

Okay, this isn't all new, just the first minute or so, and a few additional frames here and there.



One of those frames includes the glowstick of destiny, which we know Hydra and Baron von Strucker still has.



Mount up. This is going to be freaking awesome.

Avengers, Age Of Ultron ... WTF Was That?

So, that was fun.



Time for my five cents.



Needless to say-- SPOILERS FOR ALL MARVEL FILMS UP TO THIS POINT.



Avengers 2.

WHAT WE KNOW



Ultron is the primary villain of Avengers2. It's really called Avengers: Age of Ultron. So, duh.



We know that Paul Bettany, the voice of JARVIS in Iron Man, is getting his own part as the Vision.  More later.



We know that Pietro and Wanda Maximoff will be in the film.



Dr. Zola, in The Winter Soldier, has an artificial intelligence algorithm that is set to find threats to Hydra, like superheroes, and kill them.



Hydra has the glows tick of destiny from The Avengers.  It has a glowing gem that makes you control people's minds. A mind gem if you will (more on that later).



ADD IT TOGETHER, YOU GET...



Take the AI, stick it into some of Tony Stark's armor, whack it with the mind gem to give it life, and you have a crapstorm ahead called Ultron.



The Maximoff's were seen at the end of Winter Soldier in the clutches of Hydra. Which means that Baron von Strucker and his minions will be part of it. We have another army of darkness ahead.

That was before I saw the trailer.

Now that we've seen The Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer ... now what?



Well, a few things.  To start with, the narration was obviously done by the marvelously malicious James Spader, who is voicing the killer robot Ultron. Blaming Hydra aside, we know a good chunk of stuff.

[More below the break]







WHO IS ULTRON?



For those of you who don't know about Ultron, in the comics, he was created by Hank Pym, aka: Ant-Man, one of the leading minds of the Marvel universe. Because that's what scientists do in comic books. Ultron went bad, and would even create one of his own robot minions, The Vision. While The Vision is not in the trailer, just assume that he's going to be one of the dozens of various and sundry minions crawling all over that old castle.  Why do I assume that? Because, as noted, The Vision has been cast, and he will be played by Paul Bettany, who has been the voice of Tony Stark's AI with an attitude problem, Jarvis, since the first Iron Man film.



In this little bit of Marvel continuity, Ultron will be created by Tony Stark, not Hank Pym (set to have his own movie sometime next year ... maybe).  From what I have seen around the net, Tony Stark will try to "reactivate a program" and it all goes terribly wrong. Since the end of The Winter Soldier showed us elements that show up in Age of Ultron, my friend Jason and I have considered that this program may incorporate elements of the SHIELD / Hydra program that targeted threats to Hydra -- namely superheroes.



Let's face it, does anyone put it past Tony Stark to say "Hey, if I program to identify real threats, like on that Person of Interest show, and create an army of police drones to enforce it, there's no way that this can go wrong!"?



No matter what, we'll have Ultron, the killer robot will have drone minions, and control machines ... like the Hulkbuster Iron Man armor we see the Incredible Hulk fighting in the trailer.



Short version: Ultron will be a pain in the ass to kill.



TRAILER IMAGES.



We see a city in the distance at sunset, then inside its borders are terrified citizens. In another cut is a crowd, seemingly protesting ... Probably Tony Stark, if the above theory is correct.  Though who would be out protesting during Ultron wiping out humanity is a completely different question.



A robotic hand emerges from a molten liquid and flexes, then more screaming people. We encounter our heroes; Captain America walks in slow motion into wreckage, an alert Hawkeye spins around and a backlit Thor stands in front of a smashed cityscape.

Yeah yeah, all very dramatic.



And here's Ultron, mangled but shambling into Avengers Tower, where the heroes -- in plain clothes -- see him, perhaps for the first time.



The next face we see close-up is Robert Downey, Jr. He looks pretty concerned as the bot-who-will-be-Ultron picks up a Stark drone and crushes his head and



... you know what, this bores me. Back to some analysis.



ECHOES FROM THE WINTER SOLDIER (SPOILERS?).

The Scarlet Witch, in costume

If the end of The Winter Soldier is anything to go by, Hydra will be involved for the first act, and it will involve the two young folk shown in Hydra glass cages -- who are Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff.  Pietro just runs very fast. The Scarlet Witch has the power to warp reality ... and is bat-guano insane.



We know the Maximoff twins are going to be in the movie. They're in the trailer.  If they're out and running loose, that means that Hydra is involved, at least in the first act, if not the second and third.



After all, can't you just see it? Act one, Hydra attacks. Tony Stark releases his drone army.  Captain America comes in out of the cold -- and the search for Bucky -- to fight them. Bruce Banner is around, as seen at the end of Iron Man 3, so he shouldn't be too far off.  Black Widow and Hawkeye would come out to play and beat the crap out of Hydra.  And Thor might just be in the neighborhood.

The Twins, the in movie

By the end of Act One, Hydra is replaced with the drone that will become Ultron as a primary threat, and the Maximoff twins are leftover from the Hydra attack to join Ultron. Then we're off to the races.


How they fit in Jarvis as The Vision is a good question, and it can happen at least three different ways. In the comics, it was a natural progression of the AI Henchman that served Ultron. Obviously, if Jarvis has his own body, something else is going on.



Keep in mind, the Scarlet Witch and the Vision were eventually married in the comic books.



Insert your own "sex machine" joke here.



Since Wanda / Witch can warp reality, there was at least one comic book variation where she had an idle thought about a robot falling in love with her, and it grew a personality ... it also became Ultron.  But the less said about that storyline, the better. If they borrow elements of that, and make it the Vision, with Jarvis' programming, that might work


Also, for the ultra creepy-crowd, in the comics, there were a few writers, who created a few moments, where it looked like Pietro and Wanda were a "thing." And one of those writers was Jeph Loeb, who is currently running Marvel's Agents of SHIELD.



...Though I can't help imaging that if Loeb suggested such a thing, or tried to insert his influence anywhere near Age of Ultron, Joss Whedon would personally break Loeb's fingers off and use them as a suppository up Loeb's backside.



Just saying.



It will be interesting to see what happens with the Maximoff twins, as they belong to two different universes. On the one hand, both become members of the Avengers in the comics.  But they're also supposed to be the children of Magneto. They're mutants.  Yeah. That's going to be fun.



If this film ends with a cameo from Ian McKellen, expect laughter in the audience.


THE TRAILER (PART 2)


In the trailer, there is no shortage of wreckage -- destroyed cities, terrorized citizens and authorities fighting something off camera. Every hero we see early on in the trailer shows them walking slowly, looking forlorn and beat down. Bruce Banner is crouched and shuddering, clearly terrified … then stumbling through the snow, presumably post Hulk. A hospital bed wheels down a hall, and there’s a close-up of surgical equipment.

Okay, what does a castle have to do with ANYTHING?

Ultron is an evil robot. Or is he something Tony dug up somewhere?

Ultron, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch appear to exchange a moment in some sort of factory before the droid army swarm a mountain (the same one with the castle, which Iron Man looked up at and Cap stormed into). The heroes, inside an old structure, appear shocked enough to make Thor drop Mjolnir. Tony Stark says, “It's the end of the path I started us on,” to which Black Widow replies, “Nothing lasts forever.”



Yeah, so this is Stark's fault.



And why is Nick Fury back? And who's that bearded fellow with the odd haircut looking really angry/nervous (played by, I think, Andy Serkis, of Gollum fame)?

Hulk Buster Armor. Guess what it's supposed to do.

Scarlet Witch in an office building ... I'm kind of bored now.  Oh look, the not so jolly green giant versus Stark’s Hulkbuster armor.



Insert action cuts with Black Widow dropping out of a Quinjet on a motorcycle.  That looks cool.  Hey, Marvel, can we have the freaking Black Widow movie now, damnit?



.... And then Thor lifts Stark by the throat .. definition all Stark's fault.



Hulk throws a car at the Hulkbuster -- then punches through the car. Yay destruction.  And ... Captain America’s broken shield.



Are we doing the Death of Captain America already? I'd rather not. The Civil War rumors were stupid enough.

Dun dun dun DUNDUN

End with the finished Ultron product. Cue Terminator theme.



The trailer has the UK release date of April, not the US date of May 1.



So, that was fun.



Oh, and in case you haven't noticed, the commercial was having too much fun playing with that Pinocchio "No strings"  song. Which makes me wonder if Whedon wrote the commercial, too.  It would be something he'd pull.



PHASE TWO, THE CONCLUSION



Now, this will be the end of Marvel's second phrase. If you haven't figured it out yet, everything is building up to Avengers 3, where the main adversary will be Thanos, and he will be wielding all six infinity gems.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, they were mentioned in Guardians of the Galaxy as the McGuffin devices for Captain America, Thor 2, GotG, and the first Avengers.



That is actually a good question with Age of Ultron. The last image we had from Cap 2 was that Hydra, led by Baron von Strucker, was in possession of the mind control spear that Loki used in The Avengers.  If the spear is tipped with yet another gem -- the gem of the mind / soul, for example -- not only could it control people's minds, could it also bestow life on an artificial intelligence? We'll see how it goes.



There are many different ways to slice this pie, and I'm sure there are various and sundry things I'm missing. Heck, the only way I can fit the old castle into this film is if it's a Hydra base .... Yes, I could see Act one (as described above) ending with the Avengers being beaten and driven off, and as they research the program Stark used, they have to go to Eastern Europe to investigate.



Why Eastern Europe?  Look at the region the tanks are driving through, the forest that Hawkeye runs through, and tell me that doesn't look like something that could be in Eastern Europe.



How does this fit in with the rest of "The Marvel Plan"?  Identifying the spear as running on an Infinity Gem would add to the chaos.  If the old castle is actually a really old Hydra base ... well, we know how Hydra liked to play with Powers That Should Not Be Touched, so who only knows where this plot could go with reference to the overarching storyline. Also, according to IMDB, Hayley Atwell (Agent Carter in Cap 1) is supposedly in the movie, but that's IMDB, so who knows?



How much of this buildup was there?  [SPOILERS] Well, Iron Man 3 ended with Tony Stark giving up his suit, which would lead to this drone program (subtle as a brick, our Mr. Whedon). Thor 2 might only impact the story because Thor is on Earth. Captain America 2, however, might bring in God-knows-what, from Hydra, to the AI program, to the glow stick of destiny, but it will certainly bring in the Maximoff Twins. [END SPOILERS]



In reference to Avengers 3, seriously, who knows? I'm still trying to figure out why we're getting a movie about Ant-Man and not Miss Marvel, Black Widow, or Hawkeye.  GotG at least made sense in that it better introduced us to Thanos than his brief cameo at the end of The Avengers. Personally, I could have seen a few different movies done instead, and then do GotG in phase 3, but what do I know?



CAPTAIN AMERICA 3 AND THE CIVIL WAR RUMORS



If you know anything about the Civil War premise, you know that it's impossible to make into a movie at this point, and maybe never.  Why? The original Civil War plotline called for dozens if not hundreds of active heroes in the Marvelverse.  The Superhero Registration Act requires heroes to reveal their identities to the government ... and everyone in the film universe knows about Thor, Stark, Captain America, War Machine, and after Winter Soldier, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and maybe Bruce Banner.  Civil War is an impossibility.



This rumor came out of a conflation of two stories. One, Iron Man would be in Captain America 3. Two, Marvel was going to have a comic book callback to Civil War. Conflate both stories, and game over.



Considering that the rest of the Cap 3 story was that "Downy complained that his role was too small, and various drafts delete him from the plot entirely," I suspect it may be more than a cameo.  Also, if Captain America 3 doesn't involve the search for Bucky, than what the hell was the end of The Winter Soldier about?



Anyway, I think I've said enough. I've told you all I know, and some of what I suspect.  Enjoy.

Music, Lists, Arrow, and Agents of SHIELD

I've been doing a lot of writing lately, though not here.  I've got Codename: Unsub to work on (the sequel to Codename: Winterborn), A Pius Stand to finish when the beta readers get back, and I'm working on Murphy's Law of Vampires, while I'm waiting for Damnation to get back to me on Honor At Stakes.



To start with, there is the list of Arrow vs. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  And, damn, there were a lot of reasons.



There is also what we're not going to miss from the Star Wars expanded universe, courtesy of The Mouse.



You can check out any of my articles on The American Journal, if you feel like looking at me being cranky with the news, politics, politicians, life, that sort of thing, as I do my impersonation of a right-wing fringe lunatic.... or maybe just a lunatic.



If that's not enough, I've got a fun bit of music for you today.



Now, pardon me, I have to keep working. I hear that DC did something else stupid over the weekend that I have to rant and rage against.

Dissecting the Winter Soldier trailers

Well, yesterday was a little long-winded, wasn't it?



Today should be a little shorter.... yeah, no, probably not



Here’s my rundown of stuff you can draw from the assorted promotional materials.



Some of these are SPOILERS, you HAVE BEEN WARNED.



And some of these are ... well, they are MAYBE spoilers, bit and pieces collected from what we know of the Winter Soldier plot (covered yesterday) and the Marvelverse at large, and just plain old-fashioned speculation.



So, SPOILERS and SPOILERS...maybe.



In the words of Heath Ledger, here ... we .... go! [below the break]





Paranoia and conspiracies.



You may have noticed one or two things in the trailers posted yesterday that was a little paranoia-ish.If you didn’t pick up on this vibe, you weren’t paying attention. From shots of SHIELD’s arsenal to Cap beating up a bunch of agents in an elevator, it’s pretty obvious that the idealistic World War II hero is going to find himself pitted against the more modern intelligence community. Add to that a shadowy assassin (potentially the person Robert Redford is talking to when he says, “Your work has shaped the century”) and your story begins to take on the dimensions of major American myth.

 We've seen SHIELD on SHIELD violence. Fury being shot at, perhaps helicarriers firing on helicarriers, an airship crashing into the Triskelion, the Black Widow apparently on the run, out in the cold with Cap, a lot of images of SHIELD seemingly fighting itself and/or failing the people it’s supposed to be supporting. American-looking fighter planes chase the Falcon around the helicarrier. Cap argues with Nick Fury about SHIELD policy. Fury warns Cap not to trust anybody. Is that because the threat—whatever it is—is closer than Cap would like to admit?

And they have Robert Redford, ultra-leftist, in a Captain America movie ... how is he NOT the bad guy?  

The directors have insisted that this is a nod to 1970s paranoid thrillers like Three Days of the Condor, which was all about "the evil government wants oil!" So, Captain America will be running a lot.



Steve seems to spend a lot of time in these scenes walking around in civilian clothes—at least once, seemingly through a museum exhibit dedicated to his wartime exploits. The ensemble even includes the traditional hero-incognito baseball cap. But he’s still seen carrying the shield and getting shot at—and fighting the Winter Soldier—in that civilian garb.



Something else from the trailers....



Um....

Nyet, comrade. I suspect cameras are involved

Cap in love? 



Yes, that’s a set photo of Steve and Natasha making out.



No, I don’t believe it. Unless fanfiction writers have taken over this script. But the last Captain America movie was pretty darn romantic for a film with only one major female character. With Natasha giving Steve romantic advice in that early scene, it looks like she’s getting involved with his personal life. And while Natasha could have any of a billion reasons for that involvement, Steve is pretty straightforward with his emotions. If he falls for Natasha, he’s serious about it. And that can’t go anywhere good.



However, Sharon Carter, Cap's other love interest, is also in the film. So.... muahahahahaha.

The Falcon.

See that guy with the metal wings? That’s Sam Wilson, a.k.a. the Falcon, one of the first African American superheroes. In the comics, Sam was powered by the Red Skull with a fancy wing-suit and a telepathic link with birds, including a hawk named Redwing. and sent to kill Captain America. That worked as well as can be expected, and the two of them ended up best friends and partners. The relationship was notable at the time (the 1970s) for being something pretty close to a real partnership, too; while Steve was obviously giving Sam tips on superheroing, Sam held his own remarkably well in those stories, and wasn't nearly as stereotyped as typical portrayals of black characters from the same period (see: early Luke Cage). 

Also, Falcon started out wearing green and purple spandex, something that the actor actually said he wanted to try, instead of a flight suit, seen above. Obviously, this is a man who has never, ever been in spandex. Ever.

Anyway ...Steve and Sam routinely describe each other as brothers—a term Steve reserves for Sam, Bucky and a couple of war buddies, and that Sam uses only for Steve. While this Falcon is apparently a SHIELD agent rather than a creation of the Red Skull, he seems to have the same deep and instant loyalty to Steve Rogers. It’s good to see him up on the screen; this movie needs a rock like Sam Wilson.

Robert Redford.

As mentioned earlier, that’s Robert Redford. And he seems to be talking to Steve Rogers about the need to tear down an old world and build a new one … but is he talking to Steve? 

At one point, he’s heard saying, “Your work has shaped the century. And I need you to do it one more time.” Steve was pretty impressive in the war and everything, but shaping a century? That sounds more like a description of the Winter Soldier and his involvement in key assassinations throughout the Cold War. And with the role of spy-mentor already filled by Nick Fury, Redford’s character is looking more and more sinister... outside of being ROBERT REDFORD. Yeesh. He might has well have a neon sign over his head.



The best use of Redford would be as a red herring -- he's not the bad guy, will be the good guy, maybe even the best man of all, but I can't bring myself to believe it Cap’s got a long history in the comics of going up against bad guys in suits who seemed innocuous at first. Is Redford’s character the next in a long line?



The current theory is that Robert Redford is the Red Skull, older and Back! From! Spaaaaccceeee! after he pissed off the cosmic Rubix cube in the first film. Skull really enjoys mind-controlling, impersonating, and body-snatching people in power..  And Red Skull will always be Captain America's enemy. Even if he isn't on screen, he'll probably be in the background.



Oh, and the alphabet block from Hell has also played as a home for Skull's brain more than a few times. if the Red Skull did happen to be in there, the entire Avengers film probably would have woken him up. And SHIELD owned it for a bit, so .... bad things will happen.  Period.



Though it might be a touch too obvious.  But, still, Redford, evil.

Nick Fury having a bad day.

His car gets blown up and ripped apart by the Winter Soldier, SHIELD is going bonkers all around him, and Steve quotes “Fury’s last words” (which might be his last words before he apparently died, or just the last thing he said before disappearing). And someone with Fury’s skin tone is seen as a patient in an operating room. When ol’ One-Eye goes from running an international law-enforcement organization to being dead or missing, it’s a bad day for the free world, and a worse day for Steve Rogers. There’s even a scene that appears to show Natasha walking out of a congressional hearing about intelligence operations.

Fury’s major weakness is bureaucrats who can go over his head to get things done. How high do the bad guys go? And how low will Fury have to sink to beat them? Answer: as low as he can get. 

Also see: "Coulson kept his Captain America cards in his locker, not his jacket."  Yes, Fury is a m-fing BASTARD.

For the record, a spoiler: if Nick Fury "dies" in this film, he's going to get better. As in "you didn't touch me, sucka." The comic book Fury is so manipulative, this is a guy who has messed with every major superhero at least once, and didn't get his guts torn out -- this list included calm, relaxed folks like Wolverine.

Okay, let's look at a storyline caled Secret War -- no, not the one from the 80s, from the last decade.  Fury recruits every superhero in New York (ie: most of them) and brings them to Latveria to stop the Prime Minister from selling off all of Doctor Doom's technology to the highest bidder (Doom is temporarily in Hell at the time. Long story). Fury gets the heroes in, and assassinates the PM, and then mindwipes everyone so they don't remember it happened.

Later, when blowback happens and no one remembers why it's happening, Fury explains what happened.  Wolverine, who doesn't react well to having his mind messed with yet again, pops his claws and shreds Nick Fury.

Fury's robotic decory calmly answers, "Logan did you really think I'd be dumb enough to tell you this in person? I'm going off grid for a while. Bye."

Someone talk to the artist.

I think they enhanced ScarJo too much.

I don't mind, it's just that I can see it.

Black Widow.



Don't hold your breath on a Romanov/Rogers romance. Seriously, just don't.



The Marvel movies have been hinting around at the Black Widow’s history for a while now. From the effortless way she infiltrated Tony Stark’s life in Iron Man 2 to her loaded conversations with Loki and Hawkeye in The Avengers, she’s always come across like a complicated character with a long backstory.



Now she’s been promoted to second billing, right after Cap himself, and she’s in a lot of scenes in those videos. Most importantly, she’s the one seen telling Steve—reluctantly—about the Winter Soldier and his legend.



Are we finally going to get to see where the Black Widow comes from? Is the movie Black Widow going to have her own history with the Winter Soldier?



Since ScarJo is getting her own Black Widow film, I'm going to say.... not yet.



Agent 13

This isn't in the trailers, but Emily van Camp is listed in the cast of this movie as “Agent 13”, but she hasn't been seen except for that extremely brief shot of her in the UK trailer. Considering the huge importance of Sharon Carter in the Winter Soldier comics storyline, her absence is conspicuous. They're obviously going to have Sharon as a a surprise. 

So, Agent 13 is the neighbor for Captain America ... I wouldn't put it past the boys from SHIELD (read: Fury) to assign Cap a new best friend / lover / babysitter / spy.  After all, Steve has no friends in the twenty-first century, and doesn’t seem interested in making any. He apparently spends his free time alone in the gym. That kind of isolation is not healthy, so I wouldn't be surprised if SHIELD tried to set a valuable operative up with some “starter friends” to ease him into his new situation. 

The last thing SHIELD needs is a self-destructive superhero. Besides, why would Captain America have normal neighbors? Wouldn't they at least need to be vetted by SHIELD just to live in the same building?

For the record: I love the idea of Emily van Camp as Agent 13. Words can't express how much I like the idea. On Revenge, she's basically playing someone in a long-term, deep cover operation, maipulating people to self-destruction.  I've also seen her fight, and I've seen her wearing black versions of Agent 13's white body suit.

Who the BLEEP is the Winter Soldier?

So, this week comes writing a series on Captain America: The Winter Soldier.



First things first, here, from beginning to end, are the videos we’ve seen so far.



First is the initial trailer, from back in October:

Then the Superbowl trailer, with a cameo by the creator of The Winter Soldier, Ed Brubaker.

And TV Spot #1.

And another spot with the phrase "Fury's last words." Sam Jackson still has several contracted Marvel films... and Nick Fury has more life model decoys up his sleeve than an army of Phil Coulsons, so....

Then a clip that apparently spoils the end of the film.

Followed by a ton of Black Widow. I approve.  I heart Redheads.

Marvel UK's "Three Days of Captain America"

Then... even MORE Black Widow.  I want a movie, and I want it called "Black Widow: Budapest."

So, if you want to know what exactly all this is about, and why a lot of people kicking around the internet are interested in this film, well, let's take a look.

Step 1, day 1: Who the BLEEP is the Winter Soldier?

WARNING: HERE BE SPOILERS

This paragraph pretty much only exists to tell you to STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS. Seriously. This is your last chance. 


Abandon all hope of surprise, ye who enter this blog. There is no meaningful way to discuss the Winter Soldier storyline, or the movie that’s arisen from it, without spoiling at least a few really big plot points. So if you've somehow avoided all the chatter about this movie so far that’s spilled the Winter Soldier’s identity and backstory, and you don’t want to know walking into that theater who he is and why he’s fighting Steve Rogers, then

 STOP READING RIGHT NOW.

And if you didn't see that coming, I'd be surprised.  


Now, then, where were we?

THE WINTER SOLDIER STORYLINE

To explain who the Winter Soldier is and why he matters, come with me now to those glorydays of yesteryear -- 2004 -- when Marvel Comics relaunched the monthly Captain America comic book with a brand-new #1 issue.

With crime-comic writer Ed Brubaker, the comic quickly established itself as a combination of superhero adventure and spy thriller. The story begins with a mysterious ex-Soviet general, Aleksander Lukin, killing a Russian agent sent to disrupt his plans.


Lukin then orders his men to give the body full funeral honors -- he's not a supervillain, he's actually something of a patriot and a soldier.

After that, Lukin meets with the Red Skull, who wants to buy some decommissioned Soviet super-weapons generally found in Cold War comics.


There’s only one thing Lukin won’t sell—a tank containing the shadowy figure of a man with a metal arm. Lukin says he won’t part with that unless the Skull is willing to trade the Cosmic Cube (the Tesseract, if you watch the movies), which can reshape reality. 


The Skull says that a) he doesn't have the Cube and b) he wouldn't give it up if he did, and c) soon he will have it again, blah blah blah world domination—it’s your standard Red Skull rant.

What are we going to do tonight, Skull? 

Fast-forward to five years later. At the end of the comic, after some scenes establishing that Captain America is having some personal problems and that the Skull has some big plan in the works--reassembling a broken Cosmic Cube and powering it up. 

We’re all very focused on the Skull as he takes a call on his cell phone while he’s fondling the Cube.... yes, sounds dirty, doesn't it? It's the Red Skull, he's a freak.  Anyway.

The phone call is from General Lukin from five years ago, making one last offer. The Skull turns him down flat, goes into his usual rant—

—and then suddenly has a fist-sized hole through his chest from a sniper’s bullet.

The Skull falls to the floor, dead. Lukin had made him an offer Skull shouldn't have refused.

A shadowy figure enters the apartment and takes the Cube from the corpse’s hand … at which point we see that the hand picking up that Cube is made of metal. Whoever was in the tank, he’s out in the world now. And he’s working for Aleksander Lukin.


From here on out, what looked like a story about the Red Skull trying to take over the world AGAIN becomes a story about Captain America trying to figure out who killed the Red Skull, and why, and why do we care, it's the Red Skull? Let him rot.



And then it becomes a story about the Winter Soldier.

SO WHO IS THE WINTER SOLDIER?

CSI: Marvel

Still a better concept

than Agents of SHIELD

It’s up to one of Marvel's other super-spies to who figures that out.

In the course of all the running around and spycraft in this story, SHIELD agent, and Steve's girlfriend, Sharon Carter gets captured by the Winter Soldier and used as bait. 

Cap’s already rattled by this point because Lukin has been using the Cube to mess with him from a distance. Cap’s beginning to doubt his own recollection of important battles and major events in his life, especially the day that his partner, James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, died and Cap himself was frozen in ice.

He’s just remembered a long-forgotten detail—that Bucky didn't get blown up because he insisted on defusing a flying missile, but rather because he got his clothing snagged while trying to jump free, as Steve ordered him to do.



Bucky died because Steve wasn't there to save him.

Hmm, wait, doesn't Retcon sound an awful lot like how Bucky bought it in the movie?  Hmm. Yes it does.



Did I see Brubaker's name in the credits for The First Avenger? Yes, I did.



Funny that.

So, Steve becomes Catholic, and incredibly guilty.

And then Sharon tells him that she got a good look at the Winter Soldier’s face … and she’s dead certain that he’s Bucky.



Hilarity, chaos, and complete and utter anarchy ensues.

Steve doesn’t believe it at first, but when he encounters the Winter Soldier in the aftermath of a terrorist bombing (which the Soldier set off), even he’s struck by the resemblance—even if the Winter Soldier is not:

Who the hell is Bucky? It becomes a theme.



THE PERMANENT CORPSES

Remember how long

this lasted?

Yeah, bringing Bucky back from the dead was a bit of a big deal.  True, people who die in comics don’t usually stay dead. It's standard comic-book death: Superman didn't stay dead. Two dead Robins have failed to stay dead. Jean Grey of the X-Men has died so many times that we've all lost count, and all stopped caring.

But there are a few exceptions. Characters who not only stay dead, they must stay dead, so the theory goes. 

Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben is THE classic example of this. If Uncle Ben isn't dead, Spider-Man isn't motivated to be Spider-Man.



Bruce Wayne's family?  They are going to stay dead, dead, dead. If they could become more dead, they would.

Bucky was one of those permanent corpses. His death, ret-conned into Captain America’s backstory when the character was revived in the 1960s, turned a World War II patriotic hero into a tragic figure in keeping with Marvel's five hundred other tragic figures.  Because, you know, you can't simply have a hero be a hero because he's a good man. Heaven forbid.



And, this being marvel, Captain America just had to have a tragic backstory.  After all, isn't the “man out of time” schtick good for just so long—eventually, he’d have to adjust to life in the “future” and he’d be just another superhero, right? But a superhero who’s constantly reminded of his greatest failure—that his partner, best friend, and surrogate little brother died because of the very screwup that made him immortal—that’s a story that fits in with everyone else's tragic backstory. Because this is the freaking comic book industry; even Superman has been ret-conned so he was given some similar trauma.



So, according to this accepted comic book wisdom, Bucky has to remain dead.

Right?

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE


It turns out there’s a way to make a warm breathing Bucky even harder on Steve Rogers than ice cold Bucky. It turns out that Bucky also got the Captain America on ice treatment; even though the missile took his left arm, the freezing water preserved his body.

Remember when Bucky fell from the train in the Captain America movie, and fell into freezing water? Yeah, there's a reason for that.

I'll take you all with one arm

Anyway, a Russian submarine picked up his body, thinking he might be Captain America. But they got the wrong hero on ice. A Soviet general named Karpov had the frozen corpse studied, during which time, the Soviets revived Bucky. Like Jason Bourne, he was missing most of his memories, but he could thrash anyone who got too close, even with only one arm.



Basically, Bucky makes Jason Bourne look like a pussy, especially when he's played by Matt Damon.



By this time, the Cold War was raging. Bucky had basically been a teenage commando, trained in wet work that Captain America wasn't let near with a two-foot tactical baton. So Karpov fitted Bucky with a metal arm and some basic Cold War 101 Ipcress brainwashing, and used him against American targets.

"They will never see me coming."

No, wait, they used that line.

But Bucky was too stubborn—the longer he was out of the deep freeze, the more his real personality tried to reassert itself. So, Karpov put his assassin into stasis between missions and reprogramming him on each awakening. They called him the Winter Soldier in part because of these regular deep freezes, and because Russia has always relied on "General Winter" to win a lot of their battles. When Karpov died, Bucky was put back on ice for a couple of decades—until he was found by Karpov’s protégé, Alexander Lukin.

And for Steve, this is actually worse than thinking Bucky was dead... because having your friend come back as a cyborg zombie assassin is pretty much nightmare fuel.



Steve knows that Bucky would want Steve to kill him rather than let him remain a zombie assassin. And as everyone in the story points out to Steve at some point, there's no Bucky under all that programming. He came face-to-face with Captain America, in full costume, and didn't recognize him. He didn't even know his own name:

It’s appropriate, then, that there’s one dissenting voice in the chorus of “just kill him already”. That voice belongs to a character who’s been controlled by the bad guys before, and who might be Captain America’s best friend in the present day—Sam Wilson, a.k.a. the Falcon.

So, let's save Bucky.

NEVER TRUST THE GENIE


Cap, the Falcon, and SHIELD track the Winter Soldier, and the superheroes go in before backup can arrive.

Because you don't want to see this

from the business end.

What follows is a running fight between Cap and the Winter Soldier. It comes to a head after Bucky expresses surprise that hitting Captain America in the head with a cyborg arm doesn't actually kill him, and Steve realizes that the ex-Soviet killer is still trying to kill people. This comes as a shock, somehow, and Steve challenges Bucky to shoot him in the head if he really doesn't remember their past relationship.

Luckily, Captain America can dodge bullets pretty well, and grabs the Cube.



And then, well …

There's an important lesson comic books can teach writers. It's that there is no easy answer to a problem. Ever.

Two things about the Cosmic Cube.



One, in the comic universe, you can touch it without being blown away.



Two, it's your standard untrustworthy wish-granting device, an old-fashioned jinn, or one of the fae. It will misinterpret pretty much anything you say, if it can. So, with only a second or two to make his wish before the Winter Soldier tackles him again, he goes with:

Sounds good, right? Impossible to screw up? Well...

Yup. This will end well.

PTSD level flashbacks.

NOTHING can go wrong here.

Turns out that suddenly regaining your real personality after being a cyborg zombie for 7 decades is not terribly good for your mental health.

Yeah. NO ONE saw that coming, right?



Oh, wait, everyone’s been saying this all along.



The Bucky grabs the demonic cube and then poof, all that’s left is a little pile of ash. To Sharon and the Falcon, it looks pretty simple: Bucky couldn't live with what had been done to him, so he killed himself. Steve is unconvinced.



And he’s right. For the next year’s worth of comics, Steve is alternately battling the Red Skull and trying to find Bucky. Yes, the Skull got better. Are we surprised?



THE REST OF THE STORY


Once Bucky has his memories back, he ends up doing some cloak-and-dagger work for Nick "I am a bastard" Fury and avoiding Steve, apparently because there’s no good way to have a conversation about how you murdered a bunch of innocent people, tried to shoot your best friend in the face, and then faked your own suicide.



And then Steve gets himself assassinated in Civil War.  If you don't know it, I've got a rant for that.



Along the way, Bucky runs into an old girlfriend... And Hawkeye is going to be pissed.  Apparently, Bucky and Natalia had a thing back when the Winter Soldier was a combat instructor for the Black Widow program. So there’s that.



And Bucky becomes Captain America, because someone has to be.

Alex Ross is a badass.

He's the artist.

The “Bucky Cap” stories focused on Bucky’s ongoing quest for redemption, his struggle to live up to Steve’s example, and his complicated relationship with Natasha. She acted as his liason with SHIELD, pointing him at trouble spots



The Bucky-Widow relationship was actually a lot of fun. The fact that Bucky and Natalia were both strong, complex characters with their own clashing agendas, but that they still clung to each other emotionally kept the story from ever degenerating into something that made one or the other secondary.



Then they killed Bucky AGAIN so Steve could resume being Captain America, just in time for the movie to come out.



Bucky, of course, gets better; he's too popular to kill now.



And, post-Avengers film, Black Widow has had Bucky mind-wiped from her brain, because fans liked her and Hawkeye in the film.



As much as I love the Marvel films, I hate it when it messes up the comic books.

Dear Forbes, you need some nerds.

The following blog post is rated R, mostly for language.



Last week, Forbes decided to weigh in on the whole Agents of SHIELD writing with this article, that claimed that "Had it been this show [that fans wanted] out of the gate, it would have failed catastrophically."



Really? Well, what does Forbes think that fans wanted in the first place?

Had the series come out of the gate with nothing but major universe tie-ins, the series would have tanked before episode two because it would have said to the viewing public “we’re only going for hardcore fans of the MCU right now.”

Major universe tie-ins? What?



Um, how do I break this to Forbes?  Oh, yeah. WE DIDN'T WANT MOVIE TIE-INS! We wanted the Marvel Universe writ small. There was not been one, single, teeny-tiny hint that there's an actual Marvel universe out there independent of the films until seven episodes in. Instead, now, at this late date, we're getting movie tie-ins? If I wanted a movie tie-in, I'd petition for Peter David to write novelizations of the films again.



I try not to swear, but I call BULLSHIT.



BULLSHIT. BULLSHIT. BULLSHIT.



This entire article is a collection lame excuses, and even if I believed a single one of them, there is no reason on God's green Earth for Agents of SHIELD to have taken so damn long.  As of last week, March 4th, we were 14 episodes in; by this time in a single season of Buffy, or Arrow, or practically any other series with "a plan," we have some idea of who the bad guy is, what their motivations are, and a hint of their sinister plot.



Instead, we have had a creepy sex subplot with Ming-Na and someone young enough to be her son, we still have no idea about Coulson's death (not really), they spent a lot of time with awkward scenes of bad guys talking to each other, yet still lacking any character, and this garbage could have been compressed into half the time.



Don't believe me? Do you really think that "This couldn't have happened immediately"?



So we needed a "second pilot"? We needed the Island of Dr. Quinn ("The Asset")? We needed two-dimensional characters, writing as witless as 24, season 6, and a boatload of writing and episodes that went NOWHERE?

[more below the break]







Tell me right now why the viewing order couldn't have been:



Pilot (different ending: blowup Mike Peterson)

The pyrokinetic (The return of not-A.I.M. in "The Girl in the Flower Dress")

Either The Hub or The SHIELD academy (a solid murder mystery with some character development)

The painfully obvious ratings grab with the Thor 2 tie-in and the not-Wrecking Crew, starring Peter MacNicole ("The Well")

The Magical Place (We get a new timeline on Coulson's death)

The killer train (T.R.A.C.K.S. Surprise! Deathlok!), as a mid-season cliff-hangar

T.A.H.I.T.I. (last week's episode) where we actually introduce comic book SHIELD agents



Seven episodes, all of the good stuff, none of the boring crap, their vaunted "slow buildup," and we'd even have the blatant Thor tie-in AT THE APPROPRIATE PLACE AND TIME (November, when the Thor sequel came out).  This is half of the freaking show.  I could make the argument to keep the academy episode or the Island of Ian Quinn, if they actually follow through on anything laid down in those episodes, but I won't hold my breath.  That's still five brain-numbing hours that I want back, closer to seven.



Should we even discuss the upcoming episode that's a blatant dove tail to the Thor: The Dark World DVD release?



And there's still no reason for coming up with a team of "original characters," who are all about as original as the stereotype cookie-cutters they were produced from.



Forbes need some actual nerds on the staff who know what the fuck they're talking about, and I don't mean statisticians and stock analysts, I mean people who read comic books.  Is that so hard?



How could this have been done better?



Let's look at another comic book tv show: Arrow, centered around DC comics' Green Arrow. The first SCENE in Arrow has DC comic references. For anyone who has ever looked at the comic books for an hour (I may have spent four minutes), it's clear that someone has paid attention.  No, it's not fan service, fan service, fan service faithfulness to the comics – but there was enough to show that, yes, the writers are respecting the original material without being chained to it.



And then there's Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, with the forced references to the Marvel movie universe. Which is sort of strange, don't you think? Marvel has seemingly endless B- and C-list characters to draw on, and they used … no one.



But we needed time!



Again, tell it to Arrow; with a half-dozen nods to the comics in the first episode, AoS can not make any such excuses. However, since Jeph Loeb (last seen destroying Heroes) is running the series into the ground, I'm quite willing to blame him for everything. There's an entire universe to play with, and he's barely using any of it.



Like I said before, why bother making "original characters?" Marvel has a pilot named Wyatt Wingfoot... we needed someone new to fly the plane? Can't you see a modified Frank Castle (the Punisher) as being a slightly older field agent who “had a little breakdown a while back, he's better now”?  If they needed female agents, why not use Spider-Woman? Silver Sable? Jessica Jones? All of whom were deep, complex, yet badass females who do not have powers, (Spider-Woman has been de-powered so often, no one would blink if she didn't have them on the show).



With the occasions people have asked for lawyers, is there one reason they couldn't have name-dropped Jennifer Walters (She-Hulk)? Or Matt Murdock (Daredevil)? Marvel even has their own reporter for superheroes … so why didn't we just have her be the Skye character, only with social media instead of dead-tree media?



You see, Forbes, we don't want much, and we don't need much. There are plenty of little things that could have been done from day one.  Heck, even though the first appearance of Nick Fury, at the end of Iron Man, said "You've just taken your first step into a larger universe," the series has made it perfectly clear that there isn't a larger universe to be had.



Forbes apparently don't have any staff nerds, and they've never seen Arrow. While the occasional cameos were amusing, what we all wanted was melding the *general* world of weird that is the MCU (Marvel Comic Universe) in with the show.



In short, we wanted a Joss Whedon show, not a Jeph Loeb show. We wanted the Whedon wit and vibrant characters.  Even Xander of Buffy the Vampire Slayer had more character in the pilot than most of these folks do, half a season in.  They're sort of white bread ... and by that, I mean bland and generic.

The saving grace of the series since day one has been Agent Coulson, and he's what has me coming back week after week. Ming-Na's Melinda "The Cavalry" May had been interesting, then she and the "young hot thing" Grant Ward started having sex (she's 22 years older than he is. Just... eeh).



After the awesomeness that is Arrow, AoS is pissing me off with
it's cliche` characters, its weak overall story arc, the cheap and obvious
attempt to insert romantic tension, and its inability to incorporate the
Marvelverse. Joss Whedon's name has been slapped on this as a selling point, but
it's obvious he's not involved in any of the writing, the characters, or
anything about AoS, really.



Someone send the message to Forbes. We don't want a movie tie-in series, we want a Marvelverse, characters we care about, the wit and wisdom we got from Buffy, and the basic Whedon magic. Not a Heroes retread.

I'm getting published

So, on Friday, I fired my agent.

Why?  Don't get me wrong, I like Sam Fleishman.  I could talk to him, he could understand what I meant, what I wanted, and what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, he himself told me he had problems selling anything by nonfiction lately. As much as I would have liked to stay with him until the bitter end, it's been three years of my life. There has been no movement. And I'm only going mildly insane. I need to do something, and, even though I have my own business now, it's not exactly going as fast as I would like (granted, if it went as fast as I would like, I'd be going door-to-door, but I'm told that's frowned on. And illegal in some cases).



So, I fired Sam.  He was understanding about it.



So, while this did not lead to a sudden discovery by a publisher, this did lead to a decision.  I'm going to start self-publishing my books.



You read it correctly, books, plural.



You see, A Pius Man was never a one shot; not only was it a trilogy, it was also the last in a series of novels I had written.  Characters like Scott Murphy and Giovanni Figlia had been bit players in two previous novels (though they never met). You can imagine the rewrites I had to put in to make A Pius Man intelligible. It had gone from being the last in a series with people the reader should be moderately familiar with, to a first book published.

For example, Maureen McGrail and Sean AP Ryan had met in a comedy-thriller called It Was Only On Stun.  In A Pius Man, we only know that McGrail dislikes working with Ryan, and we can only imagine why.



Now, you're going to find out.  Yes, I am going to publish my first novel, It Was Only On Stun, through a company called Lulu.com.  Here's hoping all goes well.  I have to do a few things first, like layout design.  And I've got two different versions of the book, which means two different openings.



And, in case you're wondering, yes, I will be writing under an alias. Konecsni isn't easy to spread by word of mouth, now is it?



While I am tempted to list this book with a subtitle of A Novel of A Pius Man, I don't think I have quite that many fans.



In short, this is not the end. This is not the beginning of the end.  But we hope, pray God, that this is the end of the beginning.



And now, a flap copy (what you see on the back of the book) of It was only on stun!

When security specialist Sean A.P. Ryan agrees to protect actress Mira Nikolic at a Science Fiction convention, he thinks it can't be all bad. It's only a three-day weekend with some colorful characters in costumes.

But Sean is hardly prepared for what awaits him; the costumes, the fanboys, the freaks and geeks are only the beginning. There are actors with attitude problems, writers with rabies, and how do you spot an assassin when everyone is wearing a mask?

This doesn't even account for the real threats. When his client left Europe, she had been a figure of peace in a region that didn't want it. Now that she's an international celebrity, factions from the old country see her as the start of a reunion tour, with guns. Not only that, but she is being stalked by Middle Earth's Most Wanted Elven Assassin; he thinks that the actress is actually an Elven princess, and will do anything to prove it to her, including murder.

And what is that body doing in the middle of the vendor's floor with a sword-cane through his chest?