Marvel introduces the G.O.D.S. #comics #comicbooks
Who are the G.O.D.S.? This fall, readers will find out in a revolutionary series by Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti. Announced back in March, G.O.D.S. will see two of the industry’s greatest modern visionaries dramatically redefine Marvel’s pantheon of cosmic beings and masterfully deconstruct the forces behind reality. The breathtaking new saga will introduce a host of new characters—all…
Marvel Reveals "Masterworks" Variant Covers For Spring
The Press Release:
With the imminent arrival of the 300th Marvel Masterworks this spring, Marvel Comics is proud to honor this milestone with special Masterworks variant covers on select issues of your favorite ongoing comic series. This February, you can find these outstanding comic book variant covers on titles like Amazing Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, Daredevil and more. Featuring gorgeous…
Many. Here's a few of them. Some of them I'm sure I've mentioned before.
🟠Gant:
-is ambidextrous!
-is mildly allergic to peanuts
-was born in Greece
-doesn't exactly *believe* in astrology but will still look up the natal chart of everyone he regularly spends time with. If you refuse to tell him the time and place of your birth he will abuse his authority as a police officer to find ways to attain the information regardless. At that point it's not even about your chart anymore. He just can't stand people purposefully withholding information from him.
-loves snakes and spiders and bugs and all kinds of animals considered "creepy" by most. He always wanted a pet snake, but circumstances never really aligned :(
-is Magnifi Gramarye's younger half-brother and can Perceive; that's what his long stares are. Usually. Other times he really does just want to unsettle you. Magnifi doesn't like him much and so they don't really talk, though. Gant is a bit sad but respects his boundaries. He unleashes all his annoying younger sibling energy on Manfred instead. Or whoever else happens to be around. But annoying Manfred is fun :)
-his pink glasses can detect luminol, just like Ema's.
🔴Blaise:
-likes dogs! Napalm (the dog Edgeworth found in the mall in the flashback episode in season 2 of the anime) is his dog.
-tapes pictures of people he doesn't like to the walls of his office and uses them as dartboards when angry
-used to play very loud music in his office when he was younger, either by putting on a record at max volume or playing his electric guitar himself. Stopped this eventually to prevent further damage to his hearing.
-grew up as the son of a single father who wanted him to follow in his footsteps as a mechanic and taught him how to maintain all kinds of vehicles from a young age. Blaise has used these skills to manipulate the brake cables of people who got uncomfortably close to revealing incriminating truths about him and had them disappear in tragic "accidents".
-his impressive abs? Are silicone implants. As someone who derived much of his confidence from being conventionally attractive when he was younger, aging took a pretty strong emotional toll on him and he couldn't deal with losing both his hair and his muscle definition.
🔵Manfred:
-was offered the position of chief prosecutor before Blaise, but declined. He wants to prosecute, not administrate.
-is left-handed
-really does primarily use his stun gun for self-defense (though it sure comes in handy when threatening defense attorneys and their assistants). If there's one thing he can do as well as prosecute criminals, it's make them very, very angry.
-he gets along perfectly fine with horses, though! His family always had horses so he grew up around them and knows how to behave around them to make them feel safe.
-may or may not have named Franziska after Frank Sinatra
-will deny this if you ask him about it
-will remain silent if Gant asks him about it. He knows he can Perceive.
-thought for the longest time that it was *Gregory* who shot him in an attempt to fight off Yogi. Only realized the truth after looking at the DL-6 case files many years later, sometime around 2013-2014, and reading that forensics only found Yogi's and Miles's fingerprints on the gun. Only then did he begin to plot the whole Turnabout Goodbyes thing.
I got some design inspiration from Revice's Vice, as seen in the 'jaw' and 'tail' part. I also reworked the 'demon' ears into being the 2 front flippers sharks have.
I also cemented him having the same Driver as Ema's, being the Cometriser—since both are on the force; I just added the shark tooth from his hoodie to set it apart a bit.
Venture brothers has ended a d you get the call to do the final season. What's your outline?
Dean goes back to school and takes to super science like a duck takes to water. He gets mixed up with the wrong crowd and has to make a choice whether to major in Protagonism or Antagonism. As the grandson of both Jonas Venture Sr and Force Majuere, he faces immense pressure from both sides. As Mantilla's test tube son, he is the heir apparent to the Guild of Calamitous Intent, and the new Council has their eyes on him.
Hank crashes at his Uncle Monarch's place for a semester and becomes 21's unofficial Number 2, a surrogate 24-in-training. He's not committed to being evil, he's just looking for something to do and a Guild internship happened to come open. He and Dermott are assigned together as Sub-EMA Level 1 arches, a GCI jarhead vs an OSI grunt.
Sally Impossible returns. Before JJ died, they eloped in a private ceremony, so she's Sally Venture now. She learned she was pregnant shortly after his funeral, and gave birth to Jonas Venture III on Spider Skull Island. He and his half brother Rocket (son of Richard Impossible) are real whiz kids, super genius child savants who give Dean a run for his money when they enroll in the same classes. Jonas III is the big man on campus, everybody loves him; there's a lot of legacy nepotism attached to the Venture name, and he hogs the limelight from his cousin, which may be what pushes him towards villainy.
Rusty is pushing 60 and wants nothing more than to retire from super science once and for all, but his attempts to make peace with Malcolm fall on deaf ears. The Monarch would be lost without him.
Augustus St. Cloud rises through the Guild ranks and becomes unequally matched against Billy and Pete White. He can either choose a new arch, or collude with the OSI to help boost his enemies up to his new level. They don't have what it takes to drive in the super science fast lane, so Rusty takes them under his wing, which is a complete disaster; the blind leading the blind.
As Manifold's trail goes cold, tensions between Rogue and Gambit heat up! For months now, they've been pulling apart – Rogue busy with her X-Men duties, Gambit risking eternal death in Otherworld… Now, when Gambit discovers Rogue's been keeping secrets, the couple must face their issues head-on.
Orrrr they could split up and tackle the fight solo – that sounds smart, right? But WHO is gathering super-powered humans? And why is Manifold so important anyway? The mystery continues in Stephanie Philips and Carlos Gómez's explosive romp through the Marvel U!
GARO: The Animation (anime recommendation) - Action, Dark Fantasy (Shonen Elements done right)
(light spoilers)
I saw this once a few years ago, didn't leave much impression at the time.
After a re-watch (Autumn 2023); Surprisingly character driven, character development was well paced (so well paced for some, It left room for a lot of remaining exploration for others)
The show technically has more than one mc, and it works because instead of NPC's hijacking the story from the mains, the mc's are given focus, thus time isn't wasted or robbed from the characters that should have priority. And the extras serve to world-build, & some filler I found myself enjoying.
Well executed action. (Not a fan of some of the CGI)
Music production is from Monaca, Keiichi Okabe's studio (NIER Game series).
Story isn't deep, it's simple.
The setting fits the tone well. (Dark fantasy, Medieval)
Sub is better, Dub is satisfactory. Both good.
Likable core cast, Ema is the Goat. Alfonso the Legend, Leon the beast. Germán the OG Playa.
Again, the side characters fit appropriately to give some world building, everyone isn't contrived to have the same level of importance despite being NPC's.
No, when it's the extras time to shine, they shine, then they bow down as they should. And the main characters are the main characters.
The fanservice didn't overstay it's welcome, didn't annoy me:
(Translation: Not a lot of stock jailbait/schoolgirls getting bent over, ya know, for the "kids"*), majorly it's played casual, it's just women that look sexy for the most part.
Not like a *Camera ZOOMS in on cleavage with bounce animation, sparkle filter, with Anime "WOW" sfx** (holds shot for 5 seconds+)
[Look look! Breasts! You like those right?! Give us a 10/10 please!] Shonen schtick.
As for GARO:
It has gags, comedy, but overall it's executed where it works, and when it's go time, it's go time.
I was waiting for Ema's turn for the obligatory lingering, 5-8sec crotch shot while she's talking mid-sentence, followed by goofy sfx.
Just a 2 frame closeup you could miss if you blinked, Fanservice that flows with what's going on organically... Imagine my disappointment.
The situation doesn’t STOP________ To make sure you fully absorb the artistic significance of her crotch in the camera.
There was an occasion where the crew would've been stuck in an illusionary world if it weren't for Ema and her skills, so how she played into the events was unexpectedly not typical.
I didn't expect her to pop off the way she did at times. Heavy Femme Fatale energy. A professional. The only one in the show that can do what she does.
(I prefer her over Gina *Garo: Vanishing Line*)
Her (Spider-Woman) wire swinging scenes is some of the best content in the series.
So this anime is one of those weird series that for the most part treats their characters seriously while having sexy, but not oversexualized characters. (Again: Imagine my disappointment)
The characters read like characters with a stake & purpose, a story; Not caricatures with lines and a weekly scheduled cliche.
The movie, is decent, the plot wasn't the best but it was also well paced, doesn't drag or waste time, served as nice sendoff.
Recommended, I didn't get to see it the first time around, so watching it after the series served the anime to be more of a full package story.
Similar to (Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider Drive & Gaim: Movie Wars Full Throttle) technically being the sequel, true ending to Gaim.
My gripes would be the CGI look of the Knights themselves, that aesthetic is almost exclusive to them, almost. Clunky at first but they actually look surreal with how flexible and masterful they fight.
A lot of the monsters are 2D, but the Knights themselves are almost if not always CGI, this is my headcanon but I see it as an artistic choice to maintain the illusion of them being an interdimensional force. So they stand out the most in a sense.
It grows on you, eventually.
The villain, for me, was not interesting at all. I did like his stake in everything, the man was a menace, he just wasn't interesting (to me).
German's decision to not save Anna, when he had to power to do so? (In one scene it's shown she's alive when he retrieves the baby, so unless she was technically dead & her looking at him was just an aesthetic decision, I don't see why he doesn't try to take her too). Never understood that. Not a lore breaking gripe, obviously she was as good as dead but still, smells off to me.
Grandpa and those goddamn seeds (If you know, you know), the needless outcome of that situation drove me nuts the most.
---------------------------------
Overall, well produced, decent writing, no masterpiece, naturally; Better than I remember. Underrated.
Medieval Kamen Rider-esque but with Wolf Armor, my favorite of the GARO series trilogy.
The other 2 were OK (Vanishing Line could've been so much more if they focused on the better characters instead of Sophie) but the first, "The Animation" had a better execution about it.