Gatsby77

? Where is Man of Steel 2? Justice League Part 2? Deathstroke? Cyborg? Affleck's Batman? (or...the originally planned in-continuity Batman solo film)? The Flash? (only slightly joking, as the film we may end up seeing in 2023 is not at all the one originally conceived/announced back in 2016.) Had the films (sans Wonder Woman and Aquaman) made more money, we'd have seen all of these by now. All were announced...all were cancelled (or, maybe just...delayed for 5 years). I'm not even counting the myriad other announced-and-cancelled projects -- just the ones directly tied to the Snyderverse films we did see.

But like... The entire reason we're in this mess is the utter failure of Snyder's films. Man of Steel was solid - but didn't do great box office. BvS was so bad it led to them reworking Justice League Part 1... And Justice League Part 1 (ahem..."Josstice League") was so bad it led to the cancellation of at least three announced films, and the total reworking of Affleck's Batman film... Ultimately leading them to split off Battinson to a different continuity entirely. The *only* good things that came out of the Snyderverse were: 1) Amazing casting decisions like Cavill, Gadot and Momoa; and 2) Snyder's role in developing / co-writing the first Wonder Woman film. Given that track record, it'd make sense that they'd want to jettison Cavill and Gadot, as well as (presumptively) Miller. The outlier here is actually their keeping Momoa - only logical rationale for that is Aquaman's $1 billion+ box office take. But it's still weird. Why not start entirely anew, with a new actor as Aquaman and shifting Momoa to Lobo? That way you've got no carryovers from the Snyderverse and it can be a totally fresh reboot - with room for side universes for Joker, Battison, etc. I just hope he doesn't go full James Gunn and give us something like Midnighter leading the next iteration of the Justice League...

Precisely zero people care about critics viewpoints when it comes to established brands, such as: Dwayne Johnson action films Mark Wahlberg movies Tom Cruise films Fast & the Furious movies MCU superhero flicks Tyler Perry movies Blumhouse horror films In fact, in many of those cases, a positive critical response is a hindrance - not a help.

Nah. While Siskel & Ebert superficially rated films thumbs up or thumbs down, they both: a) wrote long-form reviews of the films in their respective newspapers that offered actual star ratings (1-5) and b) discussed the films at length on their TV show. Likewise, the key to Rotten Tomatoes isn't the single binary score - it's the ease of comparing the actual written reviews themselves. It's like using Wikipedia - the key isn't in the overall Wikipedia entry itself, but rather the sources linked at the bottom that are cited throughout the overall summary entry. You're acting like rank-and-file moviegoers are either too dumb or too lazy to read anything beyond the binary aggregate RT score - and also can't distinguish between a review written by critics from say...The Atlantic, Rolling Stone or the NYT vs. those written by Ain't It Cool News or JoBob's Movie Blog. More importantly, you're assuming the general movie-going public cares about Rotten Tomatoes *at all.* I promise you most folks are far more influenced by TV commercials and trailers for the films themselves than any mere binary scoring from RT.

Nah. Rotten Tomatoes is a simple binary scoring metric - is it good (60%+ positive reviews)? Or bad (<60%)? The same binary metric of outsized importance existed in the 1980s and 90s too - it was just called Siskel & Ebert. They too, ultimately scored a film as simply good (thumbs up) or bad (thumbs down).

Sent out later - but the fact remains it's as much a reprint as the gold. As in, not available (anywhere) the same week as the Silver, Green or bagged versions were. Retailers instead got a "one-per-store" certificate that they'd later be sent a copy of the Platinum. Don't recall if came weeks or months later, but either way...it's still a reprint.

But like...both the Platinum and Gold UPC are reprints as well. Literally - the Platinum came out a few months later, as did the Gold, UPC Wal-Mart version or Direct. I mean - I agree with you - I have no desire to own the "Marvel Collectibles Classics" or whatever they're called, but even as reprints they're no less legit than the Silver Age 1966 Golden Record Reprints or the Platinum or Gold Spidey # 1s.

It's a tough race this year, but Colin Farrell's got a solid chance at the Oscar for Best Actor.

Exactly. The comments under the Superman: Legacy announcement tweet Bosco posted above are telling. 2 of the top 5 responses on Twitter are: "This sounds like Man of Steel." In a vacuum, with the log line given, it sounds like the first 1/2 of Man of Steel - young man discovers his powers and comes to deal with them. So...what?

Yeah - that doesn't say anything, since Aquaman 2 is (or nearly) finished - and set to debut this Christmas. From what I've read, they're (officially, at least) holding off on any decision on a third film until they see how this one performs. So yeah...no more mention on how Momoa or Aquaman fit into the post 2024 DC than that of Ezra Miller or The Flash.

Question - where is Aquaman in this lineup? Jason Momoa was trending on Twitter at some point last week stating that he had a new surprise coming from DC - it was ambiguous whether he was referring to further Aquaman work or hinting at Lobo. Did I miss him in this lineup?

Initial reactions: This is a truly odd assortment of choices, even by James Gunn standards. Weirdly, I picked up Authority 1-15 from the $1 bin at the last true comic con I went to, 5 years ago. Even under the new leadership, I'd still bet 1/3 of these projects never see the light of day.

1) What Bosco said. 2) Yes - Shang-Chi was the highest grossing film released in September 2021, on Fridays that fall on the 3rd day of the month, too. 3) For worldwide box office, it's not even top 6 for the year (note that Bosco's chart above omits No Way Home which (again!) made $550 million domestically in just its first two weeks of release).

Is this parody? Shang-Chi was the 5th-lowest grossing MCU theatrical release. To put that in perspective, even the first Thor movie had a higher worldwide gross, and it came out fully 10 years earlier. And - no it was and is not the biggest domestic box office release of 2021. That would be Spider-Man: No Way Home, which had a domestic box office greater than 2.5x that of Shang-Chi ($557.5 milion vs. Shang-Chi's $224.5 million). And yes - that counts *just* 2021 -- Spider-Man: No Way Home made that $550+ million in just its first two weeks of release (i.e., December 2021). That number doesn't even count the film's 2022 take, which was ultimately more than $800 million domestically. Shang-Chi led to an adjustment in No Time to Die's release schedule? 100% false. No Time to Die's Oct. 8 release date was announced on Jan. 21 - months before Shang-Chi's release. See here: https://www.looper.com/317598/no-time-to-die-gets-yet-another-new-release-date/ And, as discussed before, Fast 9 was far more responsible for "saving movie theaters" than was Shang-Chi. Why? While it didn't do as well domestically as Shang-Chi, it showed summer movie staying power - and ultimately did >$725 million worldwide. (Or did you forget that the pandemic was global - and worse in places like China and Italy than it was here in the U.S.?) Oh - and you know what - Fast 9 getting's a sequel. Shang-Chi? No so much.

I mean, re. # 2 - you’re not wrong. My memory of him from the ‘80s Avengers books was that he kept being thwarted not by the actions of the heroes themselves but more by his own actions…because he was a dumb-a** In the comics he was like Marvel’s equivalent of the Ferengi.

When the Infinity Gauntlet came out, Iron Man 55 was out-of-reach for me. But I was hooked on Warlock and bought nearly all of his pre-1993 appearances. This is a good summary. I never felt the need to buy FF 66-67 -- I mean, I bought them as *FF* books, but not as Warlock books. Thought the cocoon was stupid as an intro and his Him appearances might as well as have been prototypes. For me, the key book to have was Marvel Premiere 1 - for the reasons you mentioned -- new costume, new name, soul gem - the iconic source of his powers. PLUS the black cover made it really hard-to-find in grade - I eventually picked up CGC copies in 7.0, 9.0 and 9.6. I think the overall story arc of MP 1-2, Warlock 1-8, Strange Tales 178-181 & Warlock 9-15 is one of the best of the Bronze Age.

This is one I'm actually okay with. If I recall correctly, the Doomsday "appearances" in the 5 weeks leading up to Man of Steel 18 simply showed his fist or arms punching on the last page. Put another way, I'm not sure we actually knew what he looked like until MoS 18. We certainly didn't in MoS 17. That's not in the same league as say, Hulk 180, where Wolverine is referenced throughout the story, shows up - in full - in the last page, and talks. If anything, claiming MoS 17 is Doomsday's first appearance is like saying Web of Spider-Man 18 is Venom's first appearance.

With last week's Heritage auction, I finally secured the last piece of the puzzle: Magnus # 37, in CGC 9.4. I've been looking for the book for 7 years now, and with it - I've (finally!) completed the entire Gold Key Magnus run (# 1-46) n CGC 9.4 or higher (with an average of 9.6). And the cherry on top? Scored an upgrade to one of the other top 5 hardest Magnus issues to find in high-grade: # 33 (9.6). For those of you who may be wondering, the hardest issues to find in 9.0 or higher are: 29, 37, 33, 4, 3, 46, 43 (in that order). It's telling that, since so few folks care about the reprints (# 29-46), decades later, they're (far) harder to find in high grade than all but a handful of the first 10 issues. I guess it's analogous to trying to find super-high-grade copies of X-Men # 67-93.

But no - it likely didn't make a profit theatrically. Point is, it's relative - pandemic or no, the film definitely underperformed expectations. But hey - if you think it was successful, that's cool. I look forward to the sequel.

It was # 2 domestically - Doesn't mean it was successful. Or, more specifically, profitable. It did $432 million worldwide against a reported $150-$200 million budget. And consensus industry reports noted it was still not yet profitable when it hit $400 million. By comparison, Dr. Strange 2 and Black Panther 2 did better than $400 million just domestically. Hell - even Love and Thunder did better than $700 million worldwide - and I've not met anyone who actually liked that film.

FWIW, I think the best superhero film of the last three years was Everything, Everywhere All at Once. It deserves the Oscar nomination love it's gotten so far... And it says something that it was easily a better multiverse film than either No Way Home or Multiverse of Madness.

Storytelling - duh. Shang-Chi, Eternals, Morbius and Black Adam didn't bomb because of "superhero fatigue." They bombed because they sucked. More specifically, they didn't offer audiences anything they hadn't seen (and done far better) before.

IIRC, McFarlane only did cover work for # 330 and 340-346 -- although there was a whole thread here a few years back arguing that, contrary to the credits and CGC notation, McFarlane also had a hand in the cover to # 333. I disagree, and don't believe the cover was McFarlane at all. The argument basically boiled down to folks saying "the cover's too sweet to have been by McLeod.:" And yes - no McFarlane whatsoever in # 335, although that issue does have a HTF So Much Fun variant.