10 Biggest MARVEL Characters Not in Movies Or TV (Yet)

New Marvel characters are being cast every day. Could one of these 10 be next?

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http://www.newsarama.com/15675-10-biggest-marvel-characters-not-in-a-movie-yet.html

Injustice 2 (2017-) #3 - Tom Taylor & Bruno Redondo

Injustice 2 (2017-) #3 Tom Taylor & Bruno Redondo Genre: Graphic Novels Price: $0.99 Publish Date: April 25, 2017 Publisher: DC Comics Seller: DC Comics

Things don't go quite as planned for the new Suicide Squad, which finds itself having to break out of the Pentagon. All of which leads to a battle between Batman…and Batman?

get it now at https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/injustice-2-2017-3/id1230205989?mt=11&uo=2&partnerId=11&at=1010ldoE

The Case Study of Vanitas, Chapter 16 - Jun Mochizuki

The Case Study of Vanitas, Chapter 16 Jun Mochizuki Genre: Other Price: $1.99 Publish Date: April 24, 2017 Publisher: Yen Press World Seller: Yen Press, LLC

Noe and Vanitas's flight through the catacombs comes to an abrupt end. Find out what happens in the latest installment of Jun Mochizuki's latest epic adventure tale, The Case Study of Vanitas, the same day as Japan!

get it now at https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-case-study-of-vanitas-chapter-16/id1229527449?mt=11&uo=2&partnerId=11&at=1010ldoE

MARVEL Wants More SYLVESTER STALLONE In Their Movies - SPOILERS

Yoooooooo Adrian.

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http://www.newsarama.com/34283-marvel-wants-more-sylvester-stallone-in-their-movies.html

WONDER WOMAN Director Lays Out Plans for A Sequel

On the boats and on the (invisible) planes - she's coming to America.

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http://www.newsarama.com/34284-wonder-woman-director-lays-out-plans-for-a-sequel.html

A Look Back at The X-Files

By: David Carner (@davidcarner)

Spoilers to follow! (Although some of them are 24 years old)

In 1993, The X-Files premiered on Fox. It was placed on Friday night at 9, the latest primetime showing Fox had, and it did the strangest thing: it grew. It gathered a cult following and worked its way up the ratings chart, although it never cracked the top ten. The X-Files was very different than anything else on TV, as it mixed a little police procedural with supernatural/sci-fi. It also set the tone of how to create a season of some mythology episodes along with monsters of the week. (If one came before it, please let me know, because I’ve racked my brain trying to figure out another one.)

The X-Files’ main plot was an alien conspiracy (which we’ll get to it), but many weeks saw Mulder and Scully chasing things most self-respecting FBI agents wouldn’t touch. It also saw politics constantly being played out in the FBI, and in other offices in Washington, D.C. A shadow government conspiracy touched the agents, whether they were dealing with mythology episodes or the monster-of-of-the-week. The show was dark at many times, the perfect feel for what they were trying to accomplish, and something many shows fail to pull off. However, for all the darkness, there was another side to The X-Files: Mulder and Scully. When Mulder started off, he was far down the rabbit hole, and while there were times he did live there, Scully brought him back.

The premise of Mulder and Scully was very basic yet genius. A former medical doctor turned FBI agent, Dana Scully, who believed in science, was sent to The X-Files to discredit Fox Mulder’s work. Fox, a brilliant profiler, believes in the existence of UFOs, and believes that they kidnapped his sister years ago. A believer versus a skeptic, and it stayed that way for the most part. Even when Scully started to believe, everything was based on science.

For a second, let’s talk about Gillian Anderson’s performance, which still may not get enough credit. From day one, in my opinion, she was the co-star, but sometimes, David Duchovny was her co-star. As much as the show needed Fox, Scully was the glue, proven when Duchovny left the show in season eight and nine. Many say, me included, that the show was not as good for those two seasons. What we don’t say, and should, is the show would have been cancelled if it were not for her. Anderson’s performances shook you emotionally in so many episodes. Her crisis of faith, her kidnapping, her belief that she couldn’t conceive, to actually conceiving, to the giving up of her and Fox’s child, left me a sobbing mess many nights. I love Duchovny as Fox Mulder, but I do believe without Anderson as Dana Scully, this show would have never worked.

There are tons of things out there about the mythology of the show, but some of the best episodes were the monsters of the week. The third episode, “Squeeze,” set the tone for these episodes, and it is still one of the best. It has been lauded as the episode that appealed to the general fans. It also began the running theme that became crucial to the show, which was finding the truth while also finding a way to capture and convict criminals. Speaking of “Squeeze,” its sequel that season, “Tooms,” introduced a character that became an integral part of the show in Assistant Director Walter Skinner, played by Mitch Pileggi. Skinner was a complicated character that was forced many times to straddle the fence between doing what his bosses told him, and helping Fox and Dana finding the truth.

Speaking of bosses, you can’t talk about The X-Files without mentioning William B. Davis and his portrayal of what I believe is the biggest villain you love to hate, The Cigarette Smoking Man, or CSM, as many X-File fans call him. Here’s the brilliance of what Chris Carter, the creator of The X-Files, did. We have a show about aliens, set on Earth, with no way of going into space to deal with them, so how do you have any hope of combating that? You give them human villains that are responsible for these aliens coming to Earth. (You also have a second set of aliens, but that’s some ways in, and I don’t want to make your mind explode.) The human villains were a cabal of such, and although CSM was not the leader, he was the man who carried out the wishes, and in the end he’s still standing (kind of).

There are over 200 episodes and many of them are amazing. “Home” was only shown once on network TV over its content. There were 210 award nominations given to the show, and it won 94 of them. The show grew and added – and killed – many characters over the years, the most notable being The Lone Gunmen. The trio, who were conspiracy theorists that were even more over the top than Fox, became so popular they even had their own TV show.

The X-Files was the first show I had to watch. I didn’t get involved until season four, but I quickly found and watched every back episode (something not easy to do back then; syndication was my friend). Seasons five, six, and seven are probably my most favorite, but they were all good. Yes, even those without Fox. Shows like Haven have mentioned the show in passing, and even today’s sci-fi/fantasy/comic book shows are still influenced by it. There is a poster that hangs in Fox’s office: I Want to Believe. For nine seasons and a movie I did, and then The X-Files left. It returned in 2008 with a stand-alone movie titled I Want to Believe, and it wasn’t the greatest. However, in 2016, season ten came back to Fox, with its highest ratings ever, and season 11 has been announced to film this summer and premier next year. The first nine seasons are currently available to stream at Hulu if you’re interested in catching up.

And remember, the truth is out there.

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DC REBIRTH's 'The Button' Gets Shuffled as BATMAN #22 Adds Writer, FLASH #22 Delayed

There have been some changes in plans for THE BUTTON.

via The Nerd Machine

http://www.newsarama.com/34282-the-button-gets-shuffled-as-williamson-scripts-batman-22-flash-22-delayed.html

RICHARD RIDER Has a CANCERVERSE Relapse In Penultimate NOVA

And it's up to his replacement to keep him alive.

via The Nerd Machine

http://www.newsarama.com/34281-richard-rider-has-a-cancerverse-relapse-in-penultimate-nova.html

ARCHIE COMICS Takes On SPIDER-MAN In MARVEL DIGEST #1 - Yep, You Read That Right!

MARVEL and ARCHIE have teamed up for MARVEL DIGEST #1.

via The Nerd Machine

http://www.newsarama.com/34278-archie-takes-on-spider-man-in-marvel-digest-1-yep-you-read-that-right.html

GAIMAN Gives SANDMAN Movie Update

NEIL GAIMAN has some ideas about how to adapt his iconic SANDMAN.

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http://www.newsarama.com/34280-gaiman-gives-sandman-movie-update.html

WONDER WOMAN To Run the NASCAR Circuit

Trading in an Invisible Plane for a stock car.

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http://www.newsarama.com/34279-wonder-woman-to-run-the-nascar-circuit.html

Gotham: “How The Riddler Got His Name” Review

By: Tyler Carlos (@tylos624)

After weeks and weeks and weeks of waiting, Gotham finally returned to the airwaves Monday night with a new episode, strongly centering on Edward Nygma as he completed his evolution into the villain that we all know and love. The episode provided some great moments involving The Riddler and Lucius Fox, but beyond that, it seemed much more like a prologue than a new chapter in season three.

Caution: Spoilers ahead.

The main point of this episode was for Edward Nygma to complete his transformation into The Riddler. After killing Penguin in the last episode, Edward was lost because he did not know who he was as a villain without Penguin at his side. While seeking out a person to match his intelligence, he discovered that he could stand on his own. But I gotta say, I thought there would be a bit more to this. I thought Penguin’s “death” was Edward’s way of taking his place as a villain.

In the end, however, it was great to see that Edward is finally going to be standing on his own as The Riddler. We’ve all known since the show began that this would eventually happen, and now there are some GREAT things on the horizon – including the unavoidable Penguin vs. Riddler battle that is to come.

One of the best things about this episode was that we finally got to see a bit more action from Lucius Fox. Usually, Jim Gordon is the guy the villains go after, and although that was indeed Nygma’s plan, it did not go the way he intended, but I think it was for the best. We haven’t seen much action from Lucius lately, so it was great to get him in on the excitement. He is a valuable character in Batman lore, yet he has been very underutilized thus far on Gotham. With any luck, this is only the beginning for Lucius.

Jim, on the other hand, had a more low key episode. His discussions with his Uncle Frank, who is a member of the Court of Owls, took up most of his time on screen. These moments, while needed for the character development, kind of took away from the excitement of what was happening with The Riddler and Lucius. Who knows if Frank is lying about why Jim’s father died or if Jim will actually align himself with the Court. Only time will tell.

Then, there was Bruce and the Bruce clone. After thinking that Selina wanted to meet up to patch things up, Bruce was abducted by the Court and clone Bruce took his place in Wayne Manor. Alfred seems to have bought this for now, but no doubt he will slowly begin seeing the differences in Bruce. This is obvious. What is confusing is the Court’s choice of prison for the real Bruce. He’s in what appears to be a dojo in the mountains…is this where Bruce is going to continue his training? Why would the Court send him there and not to a dungeon. They definitely have one.

Lastly, it was no surprise that Penguin is alive, though I thought it was cool that Ivy was the one who actually found him. I was starting to worry that the writers were going to do to Ivy what they did to Harvey Dent. Hopefully, Penguin can teach Ivy a thing or two about what it means to be a villain before he tries to kill Riddler.

Overall, this was a fun episode, if not a slightly confusing one. Edward’s journey to become the Riddler is complete, and he has taken a completely different road of villainy than Penguin – he is not working undercover. Everyone knows that Riddler is out there, the whole GCPD is after him, and that was Riddler’s intent. For the rest of the characters, this was more of a beginning to the rest of the season. But there is still plenty of season left.

PS: WHEN ARE WE GOING TO FIND OUT WHY ISABELLA LOOKS LIKE MS. KRINGLE?!? I’m never going to let this go.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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#285.5 - Taylor Schilling & Pat Healy

Taylor Schilling ("Orange is the New Black") and Pat Healy ('Captain America: The Winter Soldier,' "Cheap Thrills") join the podcast to talk their new film 'Take Me,' super heroes and much more!

via This Week in Marvel

http://marvel.com/podcasts/10/this_week_in_marvel?utm_campaign=&utm_source=&utm_medium=rss&utm_content=podcast_series-10&

Review: GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 Goes a Little Backward, But Keeps MCU Winning Streak Alive

The first GUARDIANS was that epic high school party than no one saw coming but you still talk about at reunions - this is an attempt to top that.

via The Nerd Machine

http://www.newsarama.com/34277-review-guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-2.html

The Handmaid’s Tale: “Offred” Recap

By: Karen Valenzuela (@VictoriaNoir89)

First thing’s first. If you watched the premiere episode of Hulu’s Original series The Handmaid’s Tale, based on the chilling 1986 novel by Margaret Atwood, come here into my arms and accept this super tight hug. Take some deep, calming breaths. And let me fix you your drink of choice.

The Handmaid’s Tale takes place in the Republic of Gilead, what once was the United States of America. The Republic of Gilead is a totalitarian Christian fundamentalist state in which a select few men have destroyed our democracy from top to bottom and consolidated power. In Gilead, they teach that environmental degradation, birth control, and smut in general has brought God’s wrath upon them when a mysterious wave of infertility greatly reduces the population. Select women who are still fertile are rounded up, torn from their families, their lives, and sent as Handmaids to the homes of Commanders and other high-powered men whose Wives are infertile. They bear a child for the couple, do the grocery shopping, and otherwise make like wallpaper in the household. For all intents and purposes, this anti-feminist state is brutal, vicious, and intense. It’s no wonder Atwood’s book is the cornerstone of so many feminist (Don’t click away!!) literature courses. It’s a chilling premise all on its own, but the relevance and timeliness of this dystopian series airing right now, in our current political and social climate, makes The Handmaid’s Tale downright frightening.

When the first episode opens, panic immediately sets in for the viewer. We’re immersed in an escape scene, our protagonist and her family being chased in their car by sirens. Her family is split up as they try to escape, her husband shot as she and her daughter keep running through the woods. It’s terrifying, stressful, painful…and when they’re finally caught and torn apart by mask-wearing men carrying semi-automatic rifles, it’s deeply heartbreaking.

We’re taken forward in time then. And we meet Offred (Elizabeth Moss) as she is now, sitting in the windowsill of her room. Not a mother or a wife. Not the woman we saw running through the woods. She’s a Handmaid now, wearing what looks very much like a nun’s habit, her hair covered in a white cap, her robe deep red in color. The show gives us Offred’s inner monologue, in which she tells us she had another name once, but it’s forbidden now.



Next we see a flashback in which she first meets the Commander’s wife (Yvonne Strahovski). Immediately, the woman is cold, impersonal, and she compares the last Handmaid to a dog. Commander Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) walks in to a chilly response from his wife, meets Offred with an exchange of unsettlingly impersonal greetings, and leaves again. We get the impression this is not a welcoming environment, especially when the wife tells her she wants to see her as little as possible. Along with the warning: “If I get trouble, believe me, I will give trouble back.” So, in all, a very nice woman.

Back in present time, we meet Rita (Amanda Brugel), one of the Marthas. The Marthas cook the food for the household from scratch, Narrator Offred explains. It’s a return to tradition, what “they” (we assume those who founded Gilead) fought for. Again, there’s no warmth from Rita, no connection, nothing that says “we’re in this together”. Offred takes the grocery order from her and walks out to meet her fellow Handmaid and walking companion, Ofglen (Alexis Bledel). On the way out, Offred is stopped by the Commander’s driver Nick (Max Minghella) who interacts with her in a way that feels forbidden. She wonders if he’s an Eye; presumably these are clandestine spies who infiltrate Gilead society to find those individuals who aren’t following the rules.

On the way home, Offred and Ofglen go past the river where we see sinners hanging from the wall, dead, their heads covered in sacks that bear a symbol which represents what their crime was. Catholicism, abortion doctor, gay man…it’s a message. Anyone who upsets the balance of Gilead’s order, anyone who represents change or difference from status quo, is punished and made an example of.

We’re thrown into another flashback, to when Offred first arrives at the Red Center where Handmaids are trained (or intimidated, and mentally and sometimes physically brutalized into submission) before they’re sent to their households. Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) is showing slides and movies of how terrible the world was before Gilead, how God punished them all with infertility, and how Gilead has restored order. We see how she deals with disorder when one of the new girls mouths off – a sickening and electrifying stab with a cattle prod to the neck. Aunt Lydia is Miss Trunchbull from Matilda but with the violence and intensity turned up a couple hundred notches. In the Red Center, Offred sees someone she recognizes from before Gilead, before she was taken, an old college friend of hers named Moira (Samira Wiley). They’re both in the same boat now, and at least, it seems, they have each other while they’re in the Red Center.

Back in the present, we witness Offred prepare for “The Ceremony.” A bell rings quietly and she walks down into the sitting room, kneeling on the floor as Rita and Nick come in to stand behind her. The Commander’s wife strolls in and lights a cigarette, ignoring the other occupants in the room like they are no more than furniture. The Commander comes in and reads to them a passage that parallels what happens next – we see Offred lying between the Commander’s wife’s legs on a bed while the Commander has sex with his Handmaid. It’s a frankly sickening scene in which we see every party involved removing themselves from it in every sense but the physical. The Commander leaves and his wife pulls away from Offred with anger and disgust, telling her to get out and lighting another cigarette. Offred leaves the room and the wife bites back tears – her shame, despair, and perhaps even the futility of everything is palpable.

Later that night, Offred breaks down and staggers outside in her underthings, but she’s spotted by Nick. She’s afraid of what he’ll do, but by the next morning no Eyes have come, no black vans, and she thinks either he won’t tell anyone, or he just hasn’t yet. She wonders why.

Three bells signal what Offred calls “The Salvaging.” She goes down to tell Rita she’s been called away and Nick meets them in the kitchen. He and Offred have yet another exchange that is markedly personal, a step further than anyone in the household should be going in their interactions with each other. (If you don’t have “Praise be” to say, don’t say anything at all.)

The Handmaids gathering for the Salvaging.

At the Salvaging, Offred spots one of the women she met in the Red Center in the group of Handmaids gathering. The whisper to each other, and Offred asks if she’s heard from anyone else. Her friend asks if she’s heard from Moira. Another Handmaid who overhears turns around and informs them that Moira is dead. She tried to escape, they caught her, and she was sent to the colonies – which is akin to a death sentence. The Salvaging turns out to be a punishment ceremony. An ex-Guard is brought in front of the Handmaids by Aunt Lydia, accused of raping a pregnant Handmaid and causing her to lose her baby. She asks the Handmaids to gather in a circle around the accused and the “particicution” begins when she blows her whistles. The Handmaids beat and tear apart the man, with a vengeful and upset Offred viciously partaking after hearing of her best friend’s fate. It’s violent, wild, animalistic, and seriously traumatic to watch. When Aunt Lydia blows her whistle again, they stop, and the Salvaging is over, the man dead.

As Offred leaves, walking beside her companion Ofglen, she flashbacks again to before Gilead, when she first told Moira she was pregnant. It’s a taste of the infertility issue that swept the country and started the government takeover. Moira reassures her that all of the miscarriages they were hearing about wouldn’t happen to her, that she and her husband Luke would be okay.

Back in the present, Ofglen finally reveals her true self. She says she’s sorry about Offred’s friend, and they stop in front of a shop on the way home which Ofglen says used to be an ice cream shop that had salted caramel. She says it was better than sex…”good sex”. A form of connection after months of being suspicious of one another, and Ofglen tells her about her wife and son who escaped to Canada. They stop at the Waterford residence and Ofglen whispers: “It was nice to finally meet you.” (Just wreck my soul, show.) But then, just as Offred shuts the gate, Ofglen tells her there’s an Eye inside her house, and that she needs to be careful. This colors the way Offred looks at everyone in the household. And the episode ends where the episode began, with Offred sitting in her window. “Someone is watching. Here. Someone is always watching. Nothing can change. It all has to look the same. Because I intend to survive. For her. Her name is Hannah. My husband was Luke. My name is June.”

The intermingling of flashbacks mimics the set-up in Atwood’s novel – telling the story in broken up chunks that were very easy to follow. And the flashbacks were visually stunning. Scenes in which we see Offred before, spending time with her daughter, the beauty of what we see as normalcy. An aquarium, playing in a lake. The flashbacks of the Red Center and what the Handmaids went through as they were prepped for their roles; abuse that is emotional, mental, and physical. One of the Handmaids, Janine (Madeline Brewer), tells the rest of them the story of when she was gang-raped; it ends with Aunt Lydia commanding the others to chant that it’s her fault, that God brought that suffering upon her to teach her a lesson. It’s a frightening parallel to the victim blaming we see in our own society now when women accuse men of rape.

In fact, many of the moments in this first episode were especially terrifying warnings of what an anti-feminist society would look like – when a society is built on stripping 50% of the population’s freedom and making them into brainless wombs with no identity, when crimes that receive the harshest punishment are directly linked to the process of childbearing and childbirth, expanding the population. It’s a reminder to stay awake, be alert, and not to allow indignities to become “ordinary.”

The show’s visuals are completely visceral, every gesture and every look has an importance and a depth that’s simply stunning. We see the small things Offred does to feel something in this wickedly strict society that has stripped women of their rights, all the way down to being able to have feelings. She strokes the wood of the banister, and you know that feeling as you watch, you can imagine it against your fingertips. The way she looks at things from under the wings Handmaids wear. The way her face twists in fury, or in heartbreak, and sometimes a combination of the two. The episode had some freaky tableaus of just how screwed up Gilead is, like the innocent sight of a Martha standing at the edge of the river feeding ducks while a Guard sinisterly sits above her with his rifle.

Yvonne Strahovski is intimidating and chilling, all the way down to the sound of her footsteps. Her face is constantly cast in steel, even as she sits on the bed and holds Offred down while her own husband invades this woman’s body. Throughout the episode, she seems hollow and bitter. She snarks at her husband, almost as if begging him to react, but he ignores it and you wonder if this doesn’t further her shame. She smokes her cigarettes in heightened bitterness, almost like they add to her life’s indignity by not giving her the pleasure or connection she apparently no longer receives from her husband. And after the Ceremony, the antagonism we see in the Commander’s wife through the whole of the episode crumbles and we see a woman who’s broken in every. single. way. She’s been stripped of everything and locked out of meetings that used to include her. She, also, has been relegated to a useless position in society and you can see how deeply it affects her. This is absolutely stunning work from Strahovski, to make a woman who’s this intimidating and so blatantly cruel to our protagonist elicit sympathy from us.



Even in the inner monologue, Elizabeth Moss is breathtakingly powerful as Offred, her voice sometimes hollow and matter-of-fact, other times dripping with biting sarcasm (she had me at “pious little shit”). The suppressed emotion in her face builds and builds even as her body remains motionless, until she finally lets it out. It’s heart shattering when she does, and I personally felt rage for her, almost a violent rage. The fact that they manage to get their viewers to feel this powerfully for a character in just the first hour of a show is frankly impressive.

If the first episode is indicative of what we should expect from the rest of the series, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale will certainly be the most compelling and, honestly, panic-inducing show in 2017. It may in fact drive me to drink…more.

Catch the first three episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu now! Look out for recaps of episodes two and three before the fourth episode is released next Wednesday, and let us know in the comments what you thought of episode one!

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