Gatsby77

Again, as noted above, it's clear by the end of the show that Wanda's both the protagonist *and* the villain. The arc of her personal grief does not at all justify what she did to the people of Westview, let alone to the government soldiers whom she hurt along the way. Not sure how that's anything but crystal clear. And yeah - I know it's not the most reliable source, but "We Got This Covered" is now reporting the rumor that Scarlet Witch is the "big bad" in Doctor Strange 3. Sounds about right.

The cast for this is stacked: Mark Hammill Lena Headey Sarah Michelle Gellar Dennis Haysbert Kevin Conroy Diedrich Bader Justin Long Henry Rollins Alicia Silverstone Tony Todd .

Well, statutory rape is still rape, even if both participants are willing. So...yes. Because underage folks definitionally can't consent - arguably, neither can random guys possessed by the ghost of Steve Trevor.

So your criticism here isn't that the show's conclusion isn't clear, but that fans' desire and expectation for the show was that we'd see Wanda come into her own as a superhero? And are miffed because she's now been positioned more as a villain - or at least a morally grey character? That's not an MCU or a show problem. That's an "OMG - The Last Jedi didn't match my head canon" problem. It's also disingenuous. Throughout the show's run, in this very thread, the bulk of the fan criticism wasn't about Wanda's character, but rather that to be more interesting there *had* to be a different villain behind it all (Mephisto, Higher Evolutionary, etc.). And folks were pizzed when that didn't happen. I thought it was brilliant. The whole point of House of M in the comics was to show: a) Wanda's one of the most powerful heroes in the Marvel universe; and 2) she's bat-sh*t crazy. While WandaVision didn't follow that storyline, it accurately portrayed both of those points - running absolutely true to her character in the comics.

Umm... Just because people on social media are stupid doesn't mean the show (and especially, the finale) wasn't crystal clear. There's no way you can watch all of WandaVision and not come away with the fact that's she's: 1) a villain who enslaved an entire town for weeks just to selfishly "process her grief" and 2) one of the most powerful folks in the entire MCU. To say nothing of Agatha's being right. It was her destiny to become the keeper of the Darkhold - the Scarlet Witch. People thought the ending of Inception was ambiguous, too. Just shows that either 1) they're insufficiently_thoughtful_persons, or 2) they weren't paying attention.

? But that's *the point.* She's not a hero - she's - a villain, absolutely morally compromised. And the implication that she's now the holder of the Darkhold and embracing the mantle of the Scarlet Witch = dark magic. She was absolutely the villain of her own show, no Mephisto (or anyone else) needed. I mean, it's not like she raped a random guy who was unknowingly possessed by her long-lost dead lover or anything, but still...

WandaVision was amazing. The first few episodes were a slog, but the last three were phenomenal.

In which The Washington Post questions whether Black Widow’s poor performance means people are tired of Marvel films as a whole. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/07/20/disney-marvel-black-widow/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=wp_business&fbclid=IwAR0TlGncn64luk_4q26AiBteseT5BTtAk0m8GGgC5IUqvwk-YN7rzIfZMD8

One more note about nostalgia, from someone who was there and remembers it well. My LCS was fairly on-the-ball and stocked up on Valiant back issues as soon as the Previews issue advertising Unity hit. So, at a time when Magnus 12 and X-0 # 5 were still on the stands, they had a full short box of earlier pre-Unity books. When Unity hit and the books skyrocketed, they were ready - with all the early issues in-depth. Some pricing: Magnus # 1 - $15 Solar # 1 - $10 X-O # 1 - $12 Shadowman 1 - $8 and Harbinger 1 - $35. This was significant, because at the time the price guides were only pricing Harbinger 1 at $8-$10. Adult investors called up, were excited to hear they had Harbinger 1 in stock, then balked at the $35 price. Meanwhile, later that summer, the Overstreet price for Harbinger # 1 tripled in just 60 days (due to the bi-monthly "Overstreet Updates"), going from $15 to $45 between issues. This was *unheard of.* Fast forward to spring/summer of 1993, and Keith Contario noted in his Overstreet Update market report that "people who balked at paying $35 for Harbinger # 1 a year ago now sheepishly hand over a c-note ($100 bill) for it." At the time (mid-1993) well-informed collectors thought Harbinger would be the new X-Men, and the price would legit go to $250 in just another year or two. For reference, it took X-Men # 94 seven years to rise to $100. Harbinger 1 did it in something like 15 months.

GoCollect is wrong - at least in 9.8 The 9.6 values are about right, however. Solar 10 is only rare in 9.8, whereas 9.6s traditionally ran ~$100. However, that’s softened a bit - $90 is FMV - a recent Comiclink sale (not reported to GPA) was even less. The point? Solar 10 in 9.8 has been consistently more expensive than Harbinger 1 in 9.8 for at least two years now, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. It’s a lower profile book with no movie buzz, but it’s harder to find in grade and more expensive - full stop.

Yeah. 90-day GPA average for Solar 10 is $785, whereas Harbinger 1 is $648. And 8-9 months ago the spread was bigger -- Harbinger was ~$600 whereas the Solar was ~$900. Makes sense, as the Solar is still a bear in 9.8. Census shows about 3x as many Harbinger 1s as Solar 10s (451 Universal vs. 153 Universal).

I agree with much of what you posted but this statement is ludicrous. Black Widow / Shang Chi / The Eternals / No Way Home aren't going to "save the the theater industry" any more than Tenet did. It also ignores the entire slate of non-MCU blockbusters coming down the pike, including: F9 (which arguably has already surpassed Black Widow's projected final worldwide theatrical gross) The Suicide Squad Dune No Time to Die Top Gun: Maverick If The Suicide Squad out-grosses Black Widow, I am going to laugh so hard, I'll give myself a hernia. Hell, at this point Venom 2 might out-gross Black Widow and Shang-Chi, and it looks *horrible.*

Another marker if this is likely a more systemic change? If No Time to Die gets moved back again. If I'm MGM / Universal, I'd be really skeptical of Bond being able to hit even $600M worldwide in October, even thought Fast 9 will apparently do so this week.

Worth reading: https://deadline.com/2021/07/black-widow-disney-day-and-date-strategy-theatre-owners-protest-1234795420/ Among my takeaways: Disney+ Premiere take is only ~85%; I didn't know Disney has to share ~15% of revenues with platforms (like Apple TV, etc.) Theater owners are shaking in their boots at the prospect of day-and-date streaming marking a systemic (permanent) change that cannibalizes their revenue Not explicitly stated, but alludes to other reports that piracy opening weekend cost Black Widow more revenue than theatrical and Disney Premiere+ combined - not just via Disney+ platform sharing, but the absolute ease of piracy and torrent distribution of a film released simultaneously online, a la Black Widow and Wonder Woman 1984 Goes to my overall opinion that this is a systemic change in how the American public watches movies, vs. simply that Black Widow's under-performance was because it was mediocre. Put another way, do you all *really* think that Captain Marvel was a) that much more popular than and b) that much better a movie than Black Widow? If you don't believe this points to a potential systemic change, than that's the only explanation possible - that Captain Marvel (the character) is more popular and that her solo film was better.

This. And holds true for most of the pre-unity Valiant line, unfortunately - back in 1992 <40k was a really low print run for books when even middle-of-the-road Iron Man issues were doing 80k-100k per issue and titles like X-Men and Spawn were doing close to 1 million a month. Today, the new market's shrunk so much that 40k puts it squarely in the middle of the pack of the top 150 monthly titles. Rai was the worst-selling pre-Unity title, with Valiant themselves noting that the rarest normal issues were Rai 2-5. Harbinger # 1 had the 16th or 17th lowest print run, but 1) It was the lowest print run # 1 among the 6 major pre-Unity titles (thus, biggest key); and 2) as noted above, 10-15% of the print run had coupons cut out.

Fair points. One of the things I liked about the 2015 film was that while Johnny was black, Sue Storm was the adopted one.

Nah - next up is Shang-Chi.

At least you’re consistent.

7 days in, Black Widow's running 4.0% behind Doctor Strange in terms of domestic box office.

That's my take - first Valiant original property. And there's the nostalgia factor. Those of us who were around in 1992-93 remember its meteoric rise to $100 in what - 13 months? So it was a grail wall book for awhile right before the big crash of 1993. And also notoriously hard to find in 9.8 due to bindery issues until a few years ago, when CGC standards for the book seem to have loosened a bit. So you've also got folks who remember when 9.8s sold for $2,000+. It popped back in 2015 with the Sony movie announcement, but I think that project's now dead. I've got a slabbed 9.2 and about six raw copies and am passively looking for a 9.8. That said, I'd still take Solar 10 in 9.8 over Harbinger 1 any day of the week

Oh no! It's taken Black Widow 6 whole days to reach $100M domestic theatrical. 2 whole days longer than Justice League! And 2 days ahead of Fast 9; 4 days ahead of Ant-Man.

Good point. But it also goes to a larger structural difference between the MCU and DCEU. Disney finances 100% of its superhero movies from the jump. Warner Bros/ATT, however, only fronts 30-50% of the money up-front, relying on the creative team and their production companies to raise the funds for the other half. Hence the co-productions with RatPac, Legendary, Arad Entertainment, etc. See the slate of announced - then cancelled - DC projects (New Gods, Justice League 2, The Trench, Cyborg, Gotham City Sirens, etc.) Most of these were not cancelled for artistic or story purposes, but rather from the lack of success in securing co-financiers. Which wouldn't be an issue if Warner Bros. just fronted 100% of the funds, Disney-style. Simply different funding models. The flipside? When a film does *really* well (ex. Joker), the co-financiers get rich.

I get the altruism angle but don’t be totally naive here either. Warner Bros. needed the allure of free day-and-date high profile releases - at least this year - to build an initial subscriber base for HBO Max. This is *certainly* true for Wonder Woman 84, and arguably true for the Snyder Cut as well. HBO Max debuted 6 months behind Disney+ in a world where Netflix, Prime & Hulu were already dominant. There’s only so many $10-$15 / month streaming services your average family’s going to be willing or able to pay for.

This too. There are a huge number of households in the U.S. whose primary TV is now 65" or larger - and with a sound bar. So the relative spectacle of going to see a blockbuster in a theater isn't the draw it was even 10 years ago.

You keep hammering on the steep day-to-day drop-off as if it was the headline - or somehow *magically would have been the headline* if Disney hadn't released their purported streaming numbers - that they did so primarily to save face on the assumption $80M domestic is somehow "disappointing." ' I disagree - I think the headline still would have been "best opening weekend in two years." Full stop. Yes - it's a fact that it was steeply front-loaded -- but it's not necessarily related to why they release the streaming numbers. What makes the streaming numbers story-worthy is that Disney likely made more profit from it alone than from the entire first weekend domestic gross. I think this will be the new normal...but again, we'll know a lot more when Jungle Cruise comes out in two weeks. And yes - I know Warner Bros. has already announced a return to an exclusive 45-day theatrical window beginning in 2022. Still hard to ignore the money left on the table from a potential additional $50-$100 million opening weekend in streaming revenue for their biggest releases if they simply followed in Disney's footsteps and started charging a similar premium for early access.