- Marvel Studios: Assembling a Universe Unleashes New Phase 2 Art







- New Marvel Movie PHASE 2 & 3 Concept Art: SCARLET WITCH, QUICKSILVER, ANT-MAN, More



Hulkbuster armor!

Questions of Avengers and the future are spinning out of the Cap 2 thread:


That's gonna be one of the interesting developments. Chris Evans is already talking about taking a complete break from acting after his Marvel contract is up. Marvel Comics -- which, despite denials, have a knack for predicting some trends in the films -- have been working hard on developing legacy lines for different characters. You've got to wonder if the movie age, subject to contractual negotiation, isn't going to give way to another boom for second characters.

We've got The Winter Soldier entrenched and ready to take the reigns like he did in the comics. War Machine's got unused dates if Downey Jr is feeling tired. Lady Sif is getting more work than Thor. Maria Hill is ready to take over SHIELD if Nick Fury goes underground. Guardians of the Galaxy will test the threshold for Marvel's launching powers.

Falcon, Ant-Man, Dr. Strange and more are coming to the table. The street level "Defenders" will install street level stars as heroes. It'll be interesting to see if recasting is even necessary, or if they just flip the negative into a positive. What if The Masters of Evil - dark shadows of the original heavy hitters - don't get a look in until the second generation? That might be fun!


Blehhhh! I kinda wish they just didn't go there.

I just want to see a movie based on House of M.

Now that would be glorious.

I have a feeling audiences would be disappointed or less responsive to an "Avengers" titled movie without at least Cap and Iron Man in it...(Well, you could have A Cap, but I'd hate to see Evans and RDJ leave and Steve get killed off and replaced by Bucky without us ever getting to see them fight each other in a Civil War movie first...) but there's certainly precedent in the comics for a team like the "New Avengers" with Dr. Strange and such on the roster.

Perhaps they'd be able to transition Luke Cage and Iron Fist to the big screen after the Netflix series currently in the works about them, Jessica Jones, and Daredevil are over. 'Course, NA had Spider-Man and Wolverine as a big selling point, two characters the MCU doesn't have the rights to...

So it's kind of a tough sell, especially when that would be "Avengers 4" and audiences tend to expect movie series to start sucking around the third and fourth installments.



It wouldn't be my first choice...but I could see it working. Wanda and Pietro are terrorists, they're from...somewhere in Europe, if they have to be part of a villain group and defect from it to join the Avengers like in the comics, Hydra is the closest one. Also, they could be seen as a thematic replacement for Strucker's kids, the Fenris twins. Not to say that Strucker would be their dad, I'm sure the plan is just to go "We don't know who our parents are or where our powers come from."

It's definitely not an easy sell, but there's no getting away from the fact all of the major properties have installed strong spin-off and/or replacement options. It would be naïve to say that's done with eyes closed. The question is definitely the balance and hitting it right. That step's still in a ways to come, and we're going to have a lot more pieces on the puzzle when it finally arrives. When Ant-Man and Dr. Strange are in play as their own franchises, and/or any others (ie; Black Panther), we might all be feeling a lot different about things.

There are those rumors about a Guardians of the Galaxy vs Avengers situation in a movie setting. For better or worse, I don't think we look to the comics for what's possible, or likely. The films have the controlling share. A Thanos situation in Avengers 3 could easily be an opportunity to bump a couple of A List Avengers out (they don't have to die), with a Guardian or two being part of the shuffle, along with all those other [then] newly established heroes.


Really need to get those new emoticons up. We need a vomit icon.

- Is that Ultron in Unofficial "Avengers: Age of Ultron" Photos?





- Elizabeth Olsen & Aaron Taylor-Johnson: 'Avengers 2' Set Photos!

- "Avengers: Age of Ultron" Set Photos Show New Look for Hawkeye



New costume, but they're still refusing to cover his schmucky face with the awesomely ridiculous mask. Bummer. CBR calling it ever so slightly closer to the classic comic design. I thought Guardians of the Galaxy, personally.

- Joss Whedon Apologizes to South Korea For ‘Avengers’ Shoot [video]

Funny headline; interesting location news. It was nice to get a little glimpse of the world in the first Avengers. Great that they're keeping the world in mind in the sequel. South Korea should add something a little bit different to the mix.

He looks so damn top heavy lmao

CGI will almost certainly replace the black clothed parts.

Cyborg Parka is truly scarier than anything CG can create.

I don't remember if they've released any designs for the film Ultron, but this presumably leaves a few questions open. Is it Ultron? Is it a pre-Ultron incarnation? Is it Vision? The head doesn't have the menace of the big bad, but there's always more CG for that. No CG for the body, though. That stays.

- "Avengers: Age of Ultron" Footage Shows New Look for Captain America



Still not quite there, but anything is better than the first Avengers outfit!

What the hell's so bad about House of M?

I can't speak for Mick, but the big problem with the whole Disassembled/House of M era for me was that Wanda's reasons for losing her mind never made any goddamn sense, and it really sucks whenever some writer thinks the best way to shake things up would be to take a relatively popular hero and just turn them evil out of fucking nowhere. Emerald Twilight did the same with Green Lantern and it took about ten years for another writer to come along who could make lemonade out of that shit-lemon.

And "No More Mutants" pretty much ruined my ability to enjoy the X-Men franchise forever. Grant Morrison's run had done a lot to bring credibility and verisimilitude to the idea that mutants are a metaphor for minorities in the real world. They had their own art and fashion and culture, they had their own neighborhood in NYC, they were starting to gain actual acceptance vis-a-vis political correctness and mutant rights movements...

And then to suddenly turn around and go "Nope, they're not a human minority slowly winning the fight to be treated like equals, they're a separate species and now it's going extinct so now the X-Men have to change their whole mission from what it's been since the 60's to "Fuck Xavier's dream, fuck "protecting a world that hates and fears us", let's do exactly what Magneto and the Brotherhood wanted to do all along and make ourselves our first priority, including choosing segregation by moving our whole race to Asteroid M except we'll let it float in the ocean instead of space"? I call bullshit.

Also, Brian Michael Bendis wrote it, which means every character has the same personality, and that personality is "Spider-Man if he used a lot of Yiddish slang all the time".

If you knew anything about Scarlet Witch, you'd know the sensibility of her descent.

Her greatest flaw has always been her mental instability. A complete mental breakdown was inevitable.

Furthermore, don't speak of the lack of mutants as if they were gone forever, or as if they were ever all gone to begin with.

No see, that's the problem. I DO know about the Scarlet Witch. I have actually read fucking Avengers comics. As in, ones from BEFORE Disassembled.

Wanda wasn't mentally unstable like that until Bendis, and she never somehow forgot that she'd created her kids with her powers and they were gone, there's no reason that being reminded of them would cause her to snap. (Also, Wasp is nowhere near that much of a bitch, but that's more of another "Bendis sucks at personalities" problem, not a "Bendis sucks at continuity" problem...)

We're talking about a story where the writer has Dr. Strange, the greatest magic user in the universe, make the claim that "there's no such thing as chaos magic" after decades of comics establishing the exact opposite and one of the Avengers' greatest foes being a Cthulhu stand-in whose power is based entirely around "chaos magic". You don't get to say Disassembled isn't bullshit.

It's called rewriting, and it happens all the time.

If something gets retconned, you have to accept that, not complain about it to no end it like your life is over. It doesn't matter how bad it is.

I, for one, feel Goro's return in Deception was the one of the worst retcons in all of MK, as his death in Deadly Alliance meant something. However, I have to accept that the character's death is no longer valid.

Chris Claremont made huge changes to various characters to make them greater than before, most notably Jean Grey. Clearly, you're not complaining about his work. Just accept it for what it is, no matter the changes.


Also, you swear entirely too much. It seriously isn't that big of a deal.

Oh I know, it just looks hilarious to me hahahaha

Behaving out-of-character is not a retcon, and it's also not a retcon if only ONE writer in a shared universe writes something and all the other writers just ignore him.

Chaos magic, for example, never stopped being a real thing despite the words Bendis put in Dr. Strange's mouth, the Avengers even referenced their complete history with Cthon the next time they fought him, in Dan Slott's Mighty Avengers book, which came out after Disassembled/House of M. Not to mention all the other Dr. Strange writers and stories... Hell, if anything, Bendis constantly retcons himself because he frequently forgets details of stories he himself wrote and contradicts them in books that come out mere months later. He's USED Chaos Magic in stories after saying it doesn't exist.

If you want a retcon, here's one: Young Avengers: Children's Crusade attempted to excuse Wanda's out-of-character mental instability by saying somewhere off-panel before Disassembled, Dr. Doom helped her try to bring her kids back and in the process she got possessed by some powerful cosmic entity just like Phoenix or Parallax.

'Cause, y'know...comics. Why not, right?
Do you actually know what the word "retcon" means? 'Cause your example doesn't really make sense or fit the context of the conversation, Chris Claremont never ignored or rewrote history in his classic X-Men run, characters like Jean Grey's "improvements" were all the product of gradual, natural character development.
P.S. about the swearing? I think you'd know by now, after YEARS of me being the exact same person I always am, that's just how I naturally talk, you're gonna have to put on your big boy pants and learn to deal, 'cause this is like the third time in a month you've whined about it. Would you feel like you've accomplished something if I started swearing more often on purpose, just to get your goat/amuse myself? Maybe in bold or colors...

Shortly after House of M I remember reading a theory that Wanda's freakish behavior was the result of her coming in contact with the more intense magical forces of the DC universe in JLA/Avengers. As much as something like that would never have been stated outright, I think it's a better explanation than anything we got.

I've heard that theory too. It'd be cool, but I don't think Marvel ever really acknowledged anything from the crossover in actual canon, playing it off as more of a what-if/just for fun sort of thing.

DC, on the other hand, actually DID on more than one occasion outright reference the events of JLA/Avengers in canon JLA books (Particularly the "Trinity" series that ran weekly for a year like 52 and Countdown), 'cause it had repercussions on the GL villain Krona.

- New "Age of Ultron" Photos Show Cap's New Look, Tease Official Avengers Uniforms

It's terrific that he doesn't look like a novelty sex toy anymore, but they still just don't seem ready to commit to the look. Pretty damn good, though. Second only to the USO stage show outfit. Yeah, that's right.

- Paul Bettany Confirms Vision Role in ‘The Avengers: Age of Ultron’

This is old news. This article illuminates very little. Since this thread was a little LTTP, let us assume this has only been posted for the sake of anyone who might have missed the original news, and/or for some measure of completion. Paul Bettany -- voice of Iron Man's JARVIS -- will be Vision.