When Companies Collide!

One of my favorite type of comic is the inter-company crossover. You know what I’m talking about, when the heroes from two companies team up in the same comic. I just love that kind of stuff. I know that it doesn’t happen as much today as it did back in the ‘80s & ‘90s, but it apparently still does, as evidenced by this miniseries that I ran across just last week which was a Marvel/Top Cow team-up pitting The Mighty Avengers & Cyberforce against Thunderbirds & Hunter-Killer.



This story occurs just after Civil War (Marvel Time) and just before the events of the Cyberforce/Hunter-Killer Top Cow match-up. For the Avengers the story is just after the formation of the Mighty Avenger team by Tony Stark (they spar with mole Man then take part in this story).

While the story itself was quite entertaining, I did have a bit of a problem with the story. Unfortunately, part of the set-up of the story just doesn’t hang right. The New Avenger team is doing photo ops promoting how totally cool they are (much to the chagrin of some of the team members), and are pulled off course on a return trip to New York and get involved with Cyberforce. Now while this is innocent enough the geography itself is off.

Cyblade is in his ancestral home in Westchester, NY. when he is attacked. The Avengers are on a return trip (in a Quinjet) from Washington, D.C. and head to the conflagration. While they are on the way to the attack, Black Widow says to Ms. Marvel “Are you sure? Don’t the Thunderbolts have jurisdiction...”

Now, I’m not a big T-Bolt fan, but even I know that the T-bolts are located in the Rocky Mountains (Colorado Springs, CO, in fact); which — last time I checked — is no where near Westchester, NY.

Other than this (not so) minor glitch, the story reads fine, and seemed to capture the animosity between the Avengers and Thunderbolts, as well as Stark and Osborn (this is before the flip-flop that occurred just after Secret Invasion and Osborn replaced Stark as top dog (and inserted his (Dark) Avengers in place if the Mighty Avengers).

I’m not sure how the series did (it ran from May to July of this year, and just might be on the shelves of your favorite comic shop if you are lucky), but hopefully it will lead to more teaming of secondary and tertiary groups of characters. personally, I have my hopes on a Spider-Man, Static, Backlash, Creeper team up, as the last three characters are among the most notable “knockoffs” of the first, and all personal favorites of mine.



How cool is that?

Wanted!

Hey, last night I went to see Wanted, — which, as we all know is based on the eponymous Top Cow comicbook by written by Mark Millar with art by J. G. Jones. I justed wanted to crack wise, praise it for being wonderful. The film’s premise is that about a 1,000 year-old fraternity of assassins grew out of a society of weavers, who wanted to keep the world in a proper order. They get their mission hits from a mystical loom that is powered by Fate. The targets come out in a series of codes that are translated by their leader, Sloan (Morgan Freeman). well the fraternity’s safety is compromised by Cross, and assassin gone rouge. So his son Wesley (James McAvoy)is recruited to be trained and fight back. this flick co-stars Angelina Jolie as Fox, one of the fraternity’s top hitters.

This film shows off it’s pedigree as the premise of it could only have been developed by comicbooks writers as it really only works in sort of a Matrix-style universe, where assassins can “curve” bullets, or speed up their hears so that they can react faster to situations than those around themselves. Don’t get me wrong, this is all fine, and — for the purpose of this film — that premise works just fine, but it it really is the sort of shorthand that comicbook writers use to get their stories to work.