Hot on the heels of the first photo of the Grey Armor from next years Iron Man movie we get the first photo of Iron Man’s main armor, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly. The filmmakers have stayed faithful to the red and gold color scheme and I’ve got to say I think it looks pretty darn good.
One design element that sticks out is the round unibeam emitter on his chest. For the most part, the armor seems to take most of its design from the more recent iterations of the comic book armor. However the round chest emitter is a throwback to the older style armor. I wonder if that is simply a stylistic choice and a nod to the classic look, or if maybe the designers thought that the modern triangular shape is a bit too reminiscent of Superman’s shield. Regardless of the reason, it is a good choice. Personally I think it adds to the “mechanical look”.
I remain cautiously optimistic about this movie, but so far I like what I see.
By now most of you realize that I’m a big Iron Man fan. I don’t think that the character was ruined in the Civil War (which may be a topic for a post sometime in the future, maybe). I’m cautiously optimistic about the upcoming Iron Man movie and my biggest concern is how the armor is portrayed.
The A-Team
In the comics, Tony Stark has gone through many iterations of his armor, constantly refining the design and making some mission specific armors. His first armor in the comics was a clunky, grey suit that he had to cobble together out of spare parts in a manner that would make the A-Team proud. Well, it looks like the movie is going to give us more than one version of the armor and will include a version of his grey armor.
Ain’t it cool news has revealed the first picture of armor from the upcoming movie.
The first glimpse of Iron Man
I was going to include a scan of the cover to Tales of Suspense 39 (the first appearance of Iron Man) so you can see the original comic armor, but then I found that a comparison already exists over at Oof! Blog! Argh! The thumbnail image of the cover has a mouse-over contextual menu that says “Click to embiggen”. And we all know that “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man”. So there you go.
In my post about attending MegaCon 2007, I mentioned the excellent sketch Stan Sakai drew in my “The Art of Usagi Yojimbo” hardcover. I wanted to share the sketch with the world so here it is.
I have a bit of a dilemma. This is still a relatively young blog, and I’m not really sure how it is going to evolve. But I need to make a decision about the comments feature fairly soon.
You see, while I get a fair number of visitors daily, I get very few comments. Legitimate comments, that is. However, I do get more than my fair share of spam comments. Wordpress does a decent job detecting and quarantining the spam, but I still have to sift through them all and confirm their status as spam. Dealing with spam comments is graduating from nuisance to chore.
So I am considering disabling comments. Now there are some of you out there who will say that if I disable comments that means that I hate freedom and the spammers win. I say that depends on whether people will actually use the comments feature. Up to now, people seem to be more inclined to send an email than post a public comment, so it probably won’t be that big of a loss. But on the other-hand, the traffic to the site has been growing so maybe I should wait and see what happens.
I’m leaning towards keeping them enabled for a while longer because I love freedom, but I’m reserving the right to pull the plug at my leisure.
Let me know if you, gentle and wise reader, have a preference.
Due to the overwhelming response to the first classic Captain America scene from the 70’s, I’m proudly presenting yet another. What makes this scene so great is that you think you know what Captain America is going to do at the top of the dam, but you don’t.
Ok, Spring Break is over. Time to get back to work.
Captain America
I want to talk a little bit about Captain America. You see, Marvel decided to whack the good Captain. Ed Brubaker handled the actual story execution of the execution, so it was done well. (We can now rest easy that Brubaker’s “Cap in jail” is not going to be like his “Daredevil in jail” story arc.) But in spite of the talent behind the writing, you have to ask the question “Why”?
Why kill Captain America and why now? There are a lot of people who are reading all sorts of symbolism and political statements into it, but I have to think that any of that is either coincidental or an act of convenience. I think it is simply good marketing.
We all know that Steve “Captain America” Rogers will not be gone for too long. But for how long will he be gone? Two years. That’s right, two years. You see, in today’s comic book industry there are several factors that determine the length of time Cap will be gone. The first factor is the standard length of a comic book story arc. Nowadays you can expect a story arc to last 6 months to a year, so Marvel is going to need at least a year to tell the stories they want to tell. But the most important factor is the Marvel movie release schedule.
Marvel is currently scheduled to release their Captain America movie in 2009. And since Marvel will be producing the movie themselves, they are going to do whatever they can to promote the movie to make it a success. So expect there to be a media blitz about the “Return of Captain America” leading up to the release of the movie.
Speaking of Captain America movies, I really hope that when they make the new one, they draw inspiration from the past. I hope they watch the clip below to see how Captain America is supposed to be portrayed in film.
