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Nerd Lunch Episode 36: Marvel’s The Avengers Extravaganza

Posted in comic books, movies, podcast, pop culture with tags comic books, Marvel Comics, movies, Nerd Lunch Podcast, podcast, podcasts, pop culture, The Avengers on May 8, 2012 by Paxton

Episode 36 has gone live in what is probably the fastest turn around we’ve ever accomplished between recording, editing and posting. Much luv to CT for that. *pats chest with two fingers gangsta-style*

So anyway, I’m pretty sure we teased our Muppet episode this week, but with the smash success of The Avengers, we felt it was more appropriate to air this episode instead and air the Muppet episode with Shawn Robare next week. Sorry to bump you, Shawn, but…Avengers…am I right?

Avengers Forever by John Byrne (Via Comic Vine)

This is a very special “roadtrip” episode of Nerd Lunch. CT travels to Jacksonville to see The Avengers with me and Jeeg travels to southern Illinois to visit the mysterious “third” Nerd Lunch-er, PLee. CT and I record live in the Cavalcade headquarters and Jeeg and PLee record live on their end and the episode cuts back and forth between our conversations as we talk about our reactions to the movie and our thoughts on the entire Marvel movie franchise.

Did the movie live up to our VERY high expectations? Did the fact that Banner was Ruffalo instead of Norton bother us? Will we ever be the same? Download the episode and find out.

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner. And yes, we are still on the Zune Marketplace.

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Countdown to Avengers: A look at The Avengers collectible soda cans

Posted in comic books, Dr Pepper, Mountain Dew, movies, soda with tags Dr Pepper, Marvel Comics, Mountain Dew, movies, pop culture, soda, sodapalooza, The Avengers on April 25, 2012 by Paxton

Countdown to Avengers is a blog crossover between Nerd Lunch, To The Escape Hatch and the Cavalcade of Awesome. Together we are reviewing all of the solo Avengers movies as well as some of the comics and cartoons. It’s all leading up to the release of The Avengers on May 4 where we will all review the new movie.

So, by this point we have talked about our thoughts on most, if not all, of the movies that lead up to The Avengers. Now, I want to look at some of the ancillary promotions for The Avengers. I’m “the soda guy” of the group so I’m a complete sucker for any big pop culture movie/soda promotion (see my write ups on Star Wars soda promotions here, here and here). So today, I’m going to discuss the big Marvel soda promotions that have happened from all of the Marvel movies including Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America and the upcoming The Avengers. Unfortunately, there were no soda promotions for the original Iron Man or The Incredible Hulk in 2008. So, let’s start with the current Avengers promotion going on with Dr Pepper.

Currently, Dr Pepper has a promotion called “Assemble the Team”. The promotional packaging is starting to show up en mass at retail locations everywhere. The promotion consists of 8 collector cans featuring the principles of The Avengers (Nick Fury, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hawkeye, Black Widow and Hulk) as well as one can featuring the film’s villain (Loki). Here’s an official picture of the set.

The promotion is spread among the four main Dr Pepper brands. The character/brand breakdown (as shown in the right image above, click to make bigger) looks like this:

Dr Pepper – Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor
Diet Dr Pepper – Hawkeye, Black Widow
Dr Pepper Cherry – Nick Fury
Diet Dr Pepper Cherry – Loki

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Of Holy Grails and white whales….Call me Ishmael

Posted in comic books, movies, pop culture, soda, Star Wars, The Flash with tags Cavalcade Comics, comic books, LEB, movies, pop culture, soda, Star Wars, The Flash on April 13, 2012 by Paxton

Brian has released this week’s assignment for The League. This week he wants us to talk about, as collectors, our Holy Grail items. He also mentions our white whales. I see these two concepts as different. Our Holy Grails are something we’d love to own, but we realize that, for whatever reason, we will never own it. “If I had all the money in the world I’d……”

White whales are something we are always on the lookout for. Something that, if we found it, we would be able to bring it home. There is hope with a white whale, but with Holy Grails, there usually is very little.

I’ve been a collector for many years. I don’t really do it as much as I used to, but I still manage to “collect stuff” without meaning to. Action figures, books, DVDs, soda cans, etc.

So, let’s start with my Holy Grail. What do I think would be awesome to own, but I’m 99% confident that I’ll never own? I’d have to say the Holiest of my Holy Grails would be:

Showcase #4 – Published by DC in 1955. Features the first appearance of the Barry Allen Flash. Also considered the beginning of the Silver Age of comics. I’ve been a huge fan of The Flash since I started collecting comics. I have several reprints of this issue, I just think it would be cool to own the actual issue. However, unless I win the lottery, I just can’t fathom ever owning an actual copy of this. And since we are dreaming that I won the lottery, I would also like the other three Showcase issues that feature The Flash as well as the entire run of the Barry Allen Flash series (#105 – 350). However, I have a lot of the Barry Allen series, so I’d just need to complete it.

Now, let’s take a look at my white whales.

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Countdown to Avengers: Thor (2011)

Posted in comic books, movies, pop culture, reviews with tags comic books, Marvel Comics, movies, pop culture, reviews, The Avengers on March 28, 2012 by Paxton

Countdown to Avengers is a blog crossover between Nerd Lunch, To The Escape Hatch and the Cavalcade of Awesome. Together we are reviewing all of the solo Avengers movies as well as some of the comics and cartoons. It’s all leading up to the release of The Avengers on May 4 where we will all review the new movie.

So, today my assignment for the countdown is to review the movie Thor. Directed by Kenneth Brannaugh and starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Kat Dennings, Tom Hiddleston and Sir Anthony Hopkins.

(Via Die Screaming)

My Review:
For this review, this was my second viewing of the movie and the first time I’d seen it since watching it in theaters when it was released in May 2011. To back up a bit, my background with Thor is pretty close to nil. I was not ever a Thor reader. I have a few of his issues from the 80s/90s, but mostly when he had co-stars I cared about like Hulk or The Fantastic Four. I also vividly remember his terrible, terrible Incredible Hulk TV movie appearance. So, needless to say, I’m not really a fan. That being said, if they had decided to play fast and loose with Thor’s history, I really wouldn’t know any different and I would welcome it. I just wanted the movie to have an interesting and engaging story with some really nice visuals. Did it deliver?

When I saw this movie in the theater, I thought it was okay, I enjoyed it and thought the effects were awesome. I think I was more excited about the Hawkeye cameo than I was about the rest of the movie. When I watched it this second time, I focused more on Hemsworth as Thor and Portman as Jane. They were great. Hemsworth especially as the prideful Thor in the beginning is truly great. And how awesome is Anthony Hopkins as Odin? All the Asgard stuff was really good as are the machinations of Loki back in Asgard. I actually believe Hopkins as Odin is truly disappointed and mad at Thor when he casts him out of the realm to Earth. I jokingly quote some of Hopkins’ speech to my son. “..I CAST YOU OUT!!”

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Looking at various Marvelous Land of Oz adaptations

Posted in books, comic books, Wizard of Oz with tags books, comic books, Oz books readthru, pop culture, Wizard of Oz on March 8, 2012 by Paxton

After reading the original Oz book, I looked at a few of the pop culture adaptations of the book. So, now that I’ve read Oz book 2, let’s see what adaptations were released for this book.

Return to Oz – A 1985 film that was an “unofficial” sequel to MGM’s The Wizard of Oz. It utilized plot points from books 2 (Marvelous Land of Oz) and 3 (Ozma of Oz) but took mostly from book 2.

Marvel Treasury of Oz #2 – The Marvelous Land of Oz – I mentioned last time that in 1975 Marvel and DC collaborated for the first time on an adaptation of MGM’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Marvel did one followup to that book, it was The Marvelous Land of Oz seen here. There was no movie to adapt so they adapted the book, however, they used images and character likenesses from the MGM movie. This is fairly rare, I’d like to track one down one day to give it a read. I bet it’s pretty good.

Tin Man – A 2007 re-imagining of Wizard of Oz by the Sci-Fi Network. This mini-series took many of its plot elements from the second book in the series. It starred Zooey Deschanel as DG (Dorothy Gale), Neal McDonough as Wyatt Cain (Tin Man) and Alan Cumming as Glitch (Scarecrow).