Archive for August, 2012

Read all about it!

Posted in Behind the Scenes, tagged , , , , , , on August 31, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I’ve added an Extra’s tab to the top of the page. Once I get the banner and the trailers up they will fall under this section… but more importantly…

BLOOPERS!!!!

Chellerbelle is going to be writing ‘out takes’ and ‘bloopers’ from the series which is going to be awesome cause she’s sssssooooooooooo hilarious in her writing! You have got to check out her X-Men Present series!!!

We’ll also include some Deleted Scenes as well, but of course both of these won’t be posted until after the episode airs.

So far, everything is coming together nicely!

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Banner, not to be confused with Bruce.

Posted in Behind the Scenes, tagged , , on August 31, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Well, I’ve hired an artist to work on my banner and accompanying art and avatars. Not sure yet what it’s going to look like, we’re in the conceptual stage atm.

All I know is that it will definitely be sssooooooooo much better than what I’ve done!!!

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Review: X-Treme X-Men #1 & #2

Posted in Reviews, tagged , , , on August 30, 2012| Leave a Comment »

X-Treme X-Men #1 & #2 (2012)

X-Treme X-Men #1

X-Treme X-Men #1

I’m not going to lie, X-Treme X-Men is… different. The plot is literally that main universe Dazzler and alt-universe Wolvie, Emma and Kurt have to travel around to different alt universes with an alt-universe Xavier’s head in a bottle. They then have to kill other Xavier’s who are apparently evil and must be stopped.

And yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

What saves the series is the fact that it’s just so damn quirky and sarcastic. It literally knows that it’s ridiculous and embraces it.

Dazzler who is, I guess, the main character, is totally taken the mick out of while snarky comments are thrown left and right, lampshading the fact that this is just one crazy kettle of fish.

I do like these alternate versions of Wolvie, Emma and Kurt. They are different and fun and really have some great lines. These were a great choice for cast in this title, now if the plot can catch up with them and be just as epic.

X-Treme X-Men (2012) is not for everyone, I’ll give you that, and with only two issues it’s hard to be sure if this is exactly what we see is what we get… but if you are in the mood for something different, give it a shot, you’ll at least get a few laughs out of it.

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Review: Wolverine and the X-Men #15

Posted in Reviews, tagged , , , on August 30, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Wolverine and the X-Men #15

I’m not sure what possessed me to start reading this series because I’m not really a fan of the main characters, Wolverine, Kitty and Bobby… but this is just a great title and #15 literally had me laughing out loud with a lot of the quips and jokes riddled throughout.

Iron Man and Broo was hilarious. Bobby’s comment about strip clubs was just… pure awesome. Not to mention Bobby and Wolvie’s talk was one of those ‘everyone is thinking it’ moments.

And of course, this is the comic series that made me fall in love with Quire and his interaction here with Professor X is golden.

I’ll always prefer the light-hearted and fun over the dark and gritty and this series, esp this issue, delivers in spades without being sappy or on the nose. Definitely worth checking out!

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Review: Gambit #1 & #2

Posted in Reviews, tagged , , , on August 30, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Gambit #1 & Gambit #2 (2012)

Gambit #1 (2012)

Gambit #1 (2012)

It’s no real secret that I love Gambit as a character. A southern charmer and dashing thief to boot. He’s made to be the kind of man who women want and men want to be… he’s just shy of a cliché but is still his own man which is a testament to creator Chris Claremont’s creative skills. So naturally I was looking forward to reading a brand new series (esp since no Thieves’ Guild stuff!).

Now, I’ve read a few reviews and to be honest, the ones giving it middling scores don’t know what they are talking about. They are completely missing the point as to what is driving Gambit. It’s literally the lack of drive that is pushing him forward.

Gambit used to be a loner thief, then through a series of events he’s, in his own words, become a teacher, a sympathetic ex-boyfriend, and a team player. He is doing what we’ve all done (or will do) once we settle into a routine and that is miss the times when life was more exciting (or seemed to be). For most adults that’s missing all those keggers in college and spending every weekend at the lake kind of things. For Gambit, it’s that thrill of a score.

But he’s a responsible adult so he’s not just gonna burn all bridges and go back to being a full-time thief, just like only adults in a major midlife crisis aren’t going to quit their job. So while we might decide to put together a trip to the lake ‘like old times’ he decides to rob a guy. It’s nothing more deep than that but at the same time it’s extremely deep and showing of his character. It makes him very human as we all experience that kind of slump.

Of course, something goes wrong and now Gambit is on a little adventure…

The adventure though, after two issues, is kinda meh. This other female seems a bit generic tough-girl (and I’m not saying that cause I love Rogue!). She hasn’t done anything we haven’t seen and there is no spark about her that makes her different. Maybe we’ll see something in the next issue, but atm she’s very forgettable. Hell, Sekhmet in Gambit (1999) was more memorable.

And the set up for the adventures is a bit basic and haven’t we don’t this ‘Gambit gets possessed’ shtick before? (granted, this isn’t the same kind of possession, that we know of, for now).

But Gambit is in good form, cracking a few jokes, being absolutely charming, and generally reminding us why we love Gambit. Plus, where can you go wrong with half-nekkid Gambit? Seriously, the boy is showing a lot of skin in these first two issues showing that the writer and artist understands their audience quite well…

So while I wouldn’t give these issues 5 stars, they are still very entertaining and very much setting up for some great Gambit-y goodness to come.

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Channel Surfing

Posted in Behind the Scenes, tagged , , , , on August 29, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Yesterday’s discussion of the new live-action tv series in the works at ABC made me rethink my idea to have this series ‘air’ on FOX. I’ve decided that my first instinct was correct, FOX is the most likely network station to pick up X-Men as a live action tv series (should the universe align to make it so).

The reason being is that we already know 20th Century Fox owns the rights for X-Men which is why they produce and distribute the movies and not Marvel Studios. This extends to television as Fox sued Marvel over Mutant X which was basically X-Men with a ‘government experimentation background’ ala Dark Angel which came out a year earlier. (Come to think of it, Max pretty much becomes a Rogue analogue but that’s another discussion).

Whedon’s show will be on ABC because ABC is owned by Disney and Disney owns Marvel Entertainment and in turn has distribution rights with Marvel for anything Marvel still has licensing rights to. But if Marvel wanted to create a live action X-Men series they would have to either get the rights back from Fox or make a deal with them.

With two more X-Men movies on the horizon, the rights aren’t going to revert any time soon. Also, Fox is not one to give up licensing lightly, the whole business with Daredevil not withstanding. If they even consider letting Marvel buy out the licensing agreement it probably won’t be worth it to Marvel to pay their price tag. But then, who knows.

So the final option left for Marvel is to make a deal with Fox to co-produce an X-Men series. Marvel Entertainment was involved in the production of X-Men: First Class so there is at least a working relationship there. Fox would obviously want it to be on one of their channels, so either FOX network or FX. Considering that X-Men would be more a mainstream and young adult friendly show their best bet is to put it on a network channel.

Now, this assumes that Marvel is involved with the tv series because since Fox has the licensing for X-Men they could go ahead with a tv show without Marvel’s input. Again, either FOX network or FX, network being the most viable choice.

So, here is the million dollar question: What is the likelihood of an actual X-Men live action tv-series?

Fox always has been more friendly to scifi and fantasy tv shows than other channels (not counting CW’s lineup of young adult emo fests). They know that Heroes was popular and Alphas is currently a hit… despite the fact that Alphas is Heroes without their budget and Heroes was Mutant X with a bigger budget and Mutant X was X-Men without the licensing… and where was I? Oh, yes, the audience is out there as long as they make good content which is accessible not only to fans but to newcomers as well.

Fox is still interested in the X-Men franchise with two movies on the way, so developing it further into a tv series is not a big stretch, esp since this new S.H.I.E.L.D. series is direct competition.

That being said, I think it’s unlikely at this point that Fox is even considering an X-Men tv series. With the movies coming out they’ll probably want to focus on the film franchise. If Days of Future Past and Wolverine do well then they’ll want to continue to work that way. If they don’t do well, then they probably won’t want to tie too much into an fx heavy, possibly costly, tv show like X-Men would be (though in my fan fic I attempt to take this into account and keep the fx budget down).

Maybe in ten years once the new set of movies have done their run, Marvel’s tv show and Phase Two and possible Phase Three have also ended, then Fox might look into developing a series.

Until then… well, that’s why we have fan fic.

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Speaking of live-action tv series…

Posted in News and Editorials, tagged , , , , on August 28, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Joss Whedon gets to write a live action fan fic tv series… cause seriously… once the comics moved away from their original creators, everything became fan fic, professional fan fic, but fan fic none the less. Doubly so when you get a writer who is obviously a fan of the original.

Deadline reports that the live-action tv series that’s been talked about since Avengers blew away the box office has been greenlighted and it will center around S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. This is smart because it fits in universe without actually needing to pay the big names for anything more than perhaps the occasional cameo.

Am I looking forward to this? Yes and no. For one, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in this show are going to be either brand new originals or minor ones from the comics which only diehards would know about. So Joss has the task of making characters that are going to have to be appealing to an audience who mostly only know S.H.I.E.L.D. from the movies and it didn’t exactly have a large role.

I say this because the tv audience is much larger than the movie audience and the movie audience is larger than the comic fan audience. It’s the same issue I have with my X-Men fan fic, if it where to be an actual tv series then the assumption has to be made that most of the target audience would be made up of people who don’t exactly know who the X-Men are (and a few will probably accuse them of being a Heroes or Alphas rip-off) and the other main group will only know X-Men from the movies.

So a line has to be drawn, Joss’ show has to appeal to a much wider audience than Avengers did while at the same time pleasing movie and comic fans alike. By being mostly (if not all) original characters then he doesn’t fall into the traps that come with re-introducing known characters. Such as Captain America, comic fans know all his back history, movie fans know the history shown in the movies, but you’d still have to go through that in a tv show. You’d have to make sure people understood his origin without a) skipping over it so much you confuse/piss off those who don’t know and b) annoy those who do because it makes them think you think they are idiots.

Joss has created plenty of characters that we all know and love, he’s given us a great film in Avengers, so I’m excited to see where he will go with this, but it won’t be easy for him because he’ll have to create characters that get me interested beyond just being S.H.I.E.L.D agents.

Until we get more information, I’m going to be neutral to cautiously optimistic on this new Marvel endeavour.

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What I would give for decent Photoshop skills…

Posted in Behind the Scenes, tagged , , on August 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Been doing a lot of tweaking on the widgets, layout, etc… trying to figure out how I want to upload the episodes, i.e., one chapter at a time or all at once on the air date.

I got time to think about it, do some more tests… but right now I’m looking around and I wish I do could photoshop… seriously… hopefully by the time this is read by anyone I’ll have a professional banner made… cause what I made is sad… so sad… but it’ll place hold for now.

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Building a Blog

Posted in Behind the Scenes, tagged , on August 26, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Today I opened up this blog account, about a full year before I plan on posting the first episode of X-Men: The (fan fic) Series.

I already have several episodes of the first season written, mostly they just need a little editing. I have synopsis wrote down for the rest. This is a huge, epic even, project that I’m undertaking. But that’s why I’m starting now.

First thing first, get this place looking good.

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