2/5/2009 - EVO moment 2k7

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 may not be the most balanced fighting game out there, but it may be the most fun fighting game, with only the Super Smash Bros. series being a possible exception. I mean, I'm a Marvel fan and a Capcom fan, so this game was tailor-made for someone like me. Imagine playing with characters like the Hulk, Spider-Man, and Wolverine against Ryu, Chun-Li, and Guile... all with that Capcom polish. To top it all off, you create tag-teams of three with 56 characters to choose from!

With so many characters and so many possibilities of team match-ups, I found it hard to believe that Marvel vs. Capcom 2 could be used in competition, especially for the formal Evolution tournament. Well, I'm glad they included it because it gave us one of the best comebacks put on tape that wasn't performed by Daigo. In fact, it's none other than Justin Wong, who you may know from the Evo Moment #37 video as being the victim of the greatest clutch performance by Daigo. Justin could have been known solely for that video if it wasn't for this one:



Being down 2 characters in a 3 on 3 match must seem like a hopeless situation... but as the video says, NEVER GIVE UP.

11/16/2008 - Stan Lee Cameos (updated)

Two more Marvel movies in the summer, two more Stan Lee cameos! I'm talking about the ones in Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, of course. Stan's cameos are getting better every time and I hope he continues to do them for the sequels and for the upcoming Captain America, Thor, and Avengers movies!

7/6/2008 - Stan Lee Cameos

There's a reason why Stan Lee's nickname is "The Man"... and that's because he is. In 1962, with the collaboration of great artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, Stan created the Marvel Universe that included the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Iron Man, the Avengers, and the X-Men. He did this in only a span of about 2 years! Think about it... any comic book artist or writer would be lucky to come up with one hit superhero in their lifetime. Stan literally created an army of them... not just their names or their powers, but their entire origins and years of storylines as well!

I dare say that he has just as much imagination as J. K. Rowling, or even Shakespeare himself. Sure, comic books may be a less mature medium, but the mythologies Stan Lee helped shape are no less compelling. And think of it this way... it did not have to take 40 years for Hollywood and digital effects to catch up to Shakespeare or Rowling like it did for Stan. We are witnessing a Renaissance in movies that parallel the Renaissance in comic books that Stan initiated nearly 5 decades ago. Big name actors like Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, Halle Berry, Tobey McGuire, Alfred Molian, Robert Downey Jr., Gweneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard, Edward Norton, Tim Roth, and William Hurt are starring in superhero movies not just to make a quick dollar... they have a genuine respect for the source material that really presents a modern mythology that is on par with those of the Greeks.

And there must be no higher honor for Stan than to have cameos in these Marvel movies. Besides X-Men 2, Stan has had cameos in all the movies that feature one of his creations. And that's not because he lobbies himself to be in the movie... it's because the filmmakers have such respect for the man that they want to pay tribute to him by making him a part of what he created. Plus, it's something cool for the fans as well, who have come to expect Stan in more fun and prominent cameos of the Marvel movies. So here, with the exception of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, are all of Stan's cameos:

6/11/2008 - Iron Man and Batman (3 Videos)

Before we get to the video, my review of the Iron Man movie: it rocks! And yes, the main reason why it rocks is because of the man who plays Tony Stark/Iron Man: Robert Downey Jr. There are maybe a handful of comic character roles that become intertwined with the actor playing those roles: Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Christopher Reeve as Superman, and now Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man. With these three characters, we know what gruff is, we know what nobility is, and with Tony Stark, we know what it means to be a playboy and yet a hero at the same time.

This is not to say that the other actors in Iron Man weren't excellent... they were. It was hard for me to imagine that the hero in Tron would make such a good villain, for example. And I can't wait to see Terrence Howard in the War Machine costume. The story and dialogue was top-notch, as well. I've heard elsewhere that Iron Man was the perfect superhero movie, and they may be right about that. The only valid criticism perhaps was that the end fight sequence was too short. But to me, that's like one grain of salt on the best cheesecake you ever had.

Now, many might say that Iron Man is a complete rip-off on Batman... and that's what these series of videos play off of. However, the core of the characters are complete opposites: Batman is a vigilante who masquerades as a playboy while Iron Man is a playboy who masquerades as a superhero. See? Who says there aren't original ideas in comic books?

3/5/2008 - Iron Man's Adventure

As I've said before, it has taken until this decade to translate Stan Lee's visions of superheroes and super powers to the big and small screen, and that's because the special effects have finally caught up because of computer graphics. The computer effects are mostly an aid to the real-life backdrops and actors on film, but sometimes you get purely digital presentation like the Pixar movies. While The Incredibles was cool, the superheroes weren't the well-established characters we know and love from the Marvel Universe. So what would a computer animated version of the Marvel heroes look like? This promotional video from Marvel gives us a good indication:



It's funny, I actually prefer the look of this Hulk to the ones from the 2003 movie and the upcoming movie. It really looks like a three-dimensional translation of what I see in the comic book!

5/25/2007 - Pokemon MARVEL Ver.

I never got into the whole Pokemon craze... mainly because I've never been into RPG's in general. The whole idea of leveling up with experience points just seems like too much work to me. The whole idea of playing a video game should be to have fun, and fighting small enemies over and over again just to be at a certain level to fight a boss is not fun!

That's why I enjoy fighting games. You start out with a character with all your special moves from the beginning and you fight against opponents one by one. Your character doesn't get stronger as you fight, but it's up to you as the player to be more skilled as you play. Isn't that what being a gamer should be about?

Nobody does 2-D fighting games like Capcom does and they hit their stride with the Marvel vs. Capcom series. Whoever thought of having that kind of crossover with those licensed characters was a genius. And whoever thought of creating a crossover with Pokemon and Marvel vs. Capcom is an evil genius, because they created a Pokemon game that I would actually try.

5/15/2007 - Hi, I'm a Marvel...and I'm a DC.

The Marvel vs. DC feud has been going on pretty much since Fantastic Four #1 when Stan Lee was commissioned to do a book that would rival the Justice League. Stan took it upon himself to break out of the mold and create a superhero team that would be radically different in that it was more like a traditional family with family problems.

Stan would go on to create a mythological pantheon of heroes that stood out against the more bland DC heroes at that time. These heroes would be believable in the "real" world and always had some kind of edge to them that made their powers somewhat a curse as well as a gift. That was the genius of Stan's creations and I consider him to be a personal hero of mine.

It took the movie and special effects industries close to 40 years to catch up to Stan's vision, and now we are finally seeing the results with such hits as the X-Men and Spider-Man trilogies. Of course the DC superheroes have their own movie franchises, too, and thus the feud between the two comic book companies has extended itself into the movies. Of course, being a Marvel fan (my favorite hero is the Incredible Hulk, btw), I got a big kick out of this next video.



Whereas Marvel is releasing two or more movies a year, DC is struggling to produce one a year. While Batman Begins was a decent way to reboot the series (anything would have been an improvement over Batman and Robin), Superman Returns struggled to gain mass appeal as Bryan Singer's X-Men movies. Don't get me wrong... I'd like to see both studios doing well, as I really enjoy the comic book superhero genre. It's just that I see a similar parallel in what happened in the comic book feud between Marvel and DC as to what's happening in the movie feud. DC may be more iconic, but Marvel appeals to a greater audience.