On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

Good evening, everyone.

I have read of Keith Giffen's passing earlier tonight. I've made friendships because of his work, and he was one of the artists that inspired me to try my own hand at the crafting of comics.

I'm sorry he's gone. I'm grateful that he was here.

https://t.co/oFeDvqt7lf

Seriously. I should have been expecting this announcement. And I wasn't.

Comic book movies, right?

Okay, so I'm re-reading The Marvels now that I have an uninterrupted run of the first four issues. One of the key characters so far is Aero. Real name is Lei Ling, she's based out of Shanghai, and she's an architect in her "regular" job. Specifically created as part of a joint project between Marvel and NetEase, a Chinese tech firm. Some sort of co-op project that was meant to further support Marvel's efforts to get their comics works into mainland Chinese markets.

Does anyone know if architects in mainland China have to have Party cards - or be otherwise ideologically "certified" - in order to work these days? I'm curious about that detail.

Also, I suspect that Aero's involvement with the current incarnation of the Agents of Atlas might see changes, depending on geopolitical considerations.

(Looks at the un-person status now bestowed by the Xi regime upon Grace Zhao, director of the Eternals movie, as well as the reaction to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings as symptoms of troubles for distribution of Marvel movies...)

Sure, the previews - I'm sourcing Newsarama here for this - want us focused on Rogers and Doom...but that's not the real lead in my opinion...

https://t.co/66dzjudlQb?amp=1

My brain is putting these things together:

• A reunion of the Inhumans cast in Toronto...because Serinda Swan(Medusa) and Anson Mount(Black Bolt) are already working on other stuff there and knocking the critics dead with joy. Get those actors a script they can all have fun with.
• She-Hulk shows up because the Inhumans have moved from Hawai'i to Toronto because politics. And she's a lawyer, drowning in a crash course on international law, refugee/immigration law, etc..
• Ms. Marvel if they hold onto her Inhuman connection from the comics, and my logic doesn't have an explanation why her family would let her go to/bring her from Jersey City to Toronto yet.
• Shang-Chi, because of his father's schemes having a Toronto angle.
• I want to try to leverage Alpha Flight as I first knew it from the comics further into MCU being without being X-Men-dependent.
• Get some of the Agents of SHIELD cast into the game. At least Daisy Johnson and alt-timeline Daniel Sousa.

None of this makes any sense to any of you, right? Outside of a fanfic context, anyway. I'm spitballing here out loud in public, precisely where I shouldn't. Also, getting Canadian actors - Swan, Vellani, Maslany, Liu - to be able to work on a Marvel project in Canada.

"The mutant space program", they call it now.

A station that used to house six thousand people of assorted species, now repurposed to run with 300 or so Earthly mutants of the newborne Krakoan nation using it as a platform for exploration, research, diplomacy, defence.

A mixture of dreamers, pragmatists, working stiffs, grifters...and fanatics.

The first three issues read well together. Even with the intervention of the "King in Black" crossover, which I write off as the latest consequence of the original Secret Wars mini-series from the early 1980's. From there to Venom/Eddie Brock...eventually to this.

I'm having fun reading.

Yeah.

So this happened, apparently to one of the characters connecting those two Marvel teams.

Or at least, their existence was a connection between the two branches of the Marvel Universe until now.

Looks like this particular creative choice backfired, perhaps not unlike "One More Day/Brand New Day" backfired on the Spider-Man comics titles. We'll see what happens in the months and years ahead, I suppose.

Okay, that's it. Show's over.

I cried. I'll probably tell you when in the comments at some point.

But I think I'm okay with the ending for this set of stories, in Agents of SHIELD.

I suspect that we're not going to see much of our soldier-spy heroes for a while, given some of the antics going on across the real world of late. Despite the feeling that anti-fascist soldier-spies may be exactly what we want or need among our fictional and real heroes right now. It all just looks too shady.

This may also explain why DC's reorganizing Checkmate from its previous roles as first a US government intel shop and later a United Nations-attached organization into a loose band of four solo heroes (including Lois Lane).

I saw it.

Two things coming to mind. One is a paraphrase of something Clint said to Natasha in Endgame: Don't give me hope unless you mean it. The other is that I'm bracing for this movie to be an eulogy and no more than that.

It burns me that those of us who care about such things had to wait until after Endgame to get this movie at all. And there are lots of more important things to be angry about, yes. I am angry about many of those other things, too, as you've read from earlier installments of this blog. But this is staying on my personal list of such things, anyway.