The visual-effects magicians of Industrial Light and Magic explain exactly how they created New York City for the climactic scene of The Avengers.
On the last page of Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates No. 15, on sale yesterday, Captain America gets a phone call informing him that he's just been elected president of the United States. The story is by writer Sam Humphries, newish to Marvel and new to superhero comics in general. (He was previously best-known as the writer of Our Love Is Real, a sci-fi comic set in a future where people have sex with animals, plants, and occasionally minerals. You should read it, it's great. "Not just about people fucking plants!" — Grantland.)
The President America story is less, um, groundbreaking than Our Love Is Real, and — as ripped-from-the-headlines election-year stories go — almost quaintly nonpartisan. Some context: A few years ago, right-wing bloggers jumped on another Captain America story that could be read (especially on a day when the fish were not exactly jumpin', right-wing-blogger-news-wise) as depicting the actual, nonfictional tea party in a light that seemed less than flattering; Fox News's Mike Huckabee got similarly Worst Issue Ever–ish last spring when DC Comics' Superman — sick of "having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy" — decided to stand before the U.N. and renounce his American citizenship. (Huckabee, reported Politico, "said he wouldn't purchase the comic book, and that American kids should be taught that their country is great.") And then there was the time Rush Limbaugh transformed into one of comic-shopdom's most durable clichés: Fat Guy Who Is for Some Reason Really Upset About Bane.
Dumb as they are, flaps like these are always bittersweet moments for comics fans; the fact that people still bother to feign outrage about things that happen in actual, printed comic books proves that actual, printed comic books — with a little help from a couple of hundred-million-dollar blockbuster movies, OK — are still culturally important enough to argue about. "We've wanted these characters to be taken seriously for a long time," Humphries says, "and now they are, and we have to deal with that."
Wayne Brady (in jest) before he proceeds to collect money from prostitutes, break a cop's neck, give Dave Chappelle PCP, and then shoot him in the leg:
You know, one of the things in Hollywood is, there are only a few of us black actors that happen to be working. And nothing makes me happier than to be able to take another black actor's job.
As always with Chappelle's Show, while this was meant to be funny and set up the epic six-minute skit between Wayne and Dave, there was a sizable amount of truth to the statement. And since this skit aired in 2004, it began an Internet tradition that I've kept up for over eight years:
Every few months, I Google Image search "black actors," just to see what's going on.
On Wednesday, Marvel Films announced the director for Captain America 2: The Return of the Sepia-Stained Pectorals, due to be released in 2014. Make that directors: Brothers Joe and Anthony Russo were given the gig over fellow finalists Tim Story (Fantastic Four) and George Nolfi (The Adjustment Bureau). At first blush it may seem strange that the fraternal filmers responsible for the “Advanced Gay” episode of Community and the Arrested Development episode in which Jason Bateman and Will Arnett endeavor to track the seal that ate their brother’s hand would be given the keys to such an expensive, if retro, sports car. (The first Captain America made over $368 million worldwide in 2011. Take that, globalization!) But from a purely creative perspective, the Russos — whose previous feature credit was 2006’s failed bromance You, Me and Dupree — are actually an inspired choice. Their time on manic sitcoms like Happy Endings and especially Community provided opportunities to direct everything from bottle episodes to full-on paintball bloodbaths, and their zippy sensibilities are a good fit for the winking pop propaganda that made the first installment a surprising success. But there’s an equally clever business sense at play here as well. After dabbling with proven cinéastes for the opening chapters in their ever-expanding multiplex multiverse — Shakespearian Kenneth Branagh for Thor, '40s fetishist Joe Johnston for the first Cap, and aging swinger Jon Favreau for Iron Man — Marvel has turned to another medium entirely to find the talent capable of keeping the party going, and, more importantly, the costs down: television.
