nate_studio

Thanks, I definitely missed that part. Another great line that had me cracking up for a while Can't stop thinking about this movie

I was reluctant at first but these last two trailers have me on board. I think this will be the sleeper hit this summer and will surpass Raimi's Spider-man movies.

I loved it! Just got home from seeing it. I had so much trouble focusing at work today because I knew I was going to see it tonight. It totally lived up to the hype. It's a ton of fun from start to finish. I really don't know why there was so much secrecy about the redacted. They tell you who they are in literally the first two minutes. Sure they were under developed but we were all there to see the heroes and they all shine. Loved them all. I'm really considering seeing this again in theaters (never done that before).

Hmmm... I always thought it was miry like mih-ree. The more you know... Amyway these look great. I can't wait to get a sentry and those boxsets! Ps - is everyone having that issue with Ant-Man's mouth?

3 in one sounds good to me. I've been waiting until I finished season 1 to start season 2. I don't have Disney XD or whatever channel, so I'll have to watch them online anyway, so I'm not worried about catching them when they air. But I am curious where S2 is going. S1:E24 - This Hostage Earth The end begins! As Thor and Iron Man work to find a way for Thor to return to Asgard, the Enchantress makes her move. Favorite moments: Wasp "Anyone wanna switch spots?" or Hawkeye "There's an elf here giving me a dirty look..." S1:E25 - The Fall of Asgard Lost and separated, the Avengers struggle to tsurvive in the nine realms of Asgard. Favorite moments: Iron Man "I'm Iron Man" after blasting Ulik in the face. Hulk "HULK. STRONGEST. THERE. IS!" Hawkeye "I do okay" Cap "We're in for a long night" S1:E26 - A Day Unlike Any Other Eight reamls have fallen and only Midgard remains. The Avengers are nothing against his power. Loki has won. Every moment has led to this. Favorite moment: Hawkeye "When in doubt - blow it up" - Although we've gone off on many different tangents, the core arc of this season has been Loki's master plan. With three episodes left, we get to see it in full swing. So the Avengers are trying to get Thor back to Asgard. Tony thinks he's come up with a brilliant innovation when Cap tells him it's been done, like, 60 years ago. As Cap explains his flashback, Enchantress is spreading Norn stones all around the globe. The Avengers decide to investigate because Enchantresses plan seems to deal an awful lot with what they were talking about anyway. The team splits up sending one member to each location. Bad idea, guys. The heroes get pitted in some really odd match ups, which are kind of fun. Rather than seeing Hulk fight Abomination again, we get to see Wasp fight Abomination. It was interesting to see heroes against villains who don't really reflect their skill sets or personal backstories. This, however, leads to a few issues and our heroes really don't seem to be doing their best. When things start to look really bad, Thor offers the simple suggestion - break the stone! Instead of just ending the magics going on, though, when each Avenger breaks their stone they get transported to one of the other nine realms. Thor is put in chains while the other Avengers are hunted down by his evil forces. This is also where Loki tries to take credit for everything the Avengers went through this season. I'm not sure he had a hand in everything, but he was the main driving force. Here in these new realms, the heroes get some more fitting match ups - Hulk vs trolls, Giant Man vs Giants, Cap in the land of the dead, Hawkeye with some archers, Thor with Loki and Iron Man with dwarves. Oh and Black Panther was shown briefly with some kind of demon spirit things... I dunno. Most of these are obvious, but some of the cooler ones are Cap facing the ghosts of his past (where's Bucky?) and Iron Man building an uru suit with the dwarves. We get some really great moments from most of the team interacting with their strange new environments. Oh and look who's there! The Warriors Three and Lady Sif! So then, some undisclosed amount of time passes (long enough for Iron Man to make a suit of armor, but short enough for Wasp not to freeze) and things are looking pretty bad. Sure, they're adapting, getting some new armor and weapons and have (mostly) reassembled, but they still have to face Loki with Odin's power. Of course, since they're the Avengers, they face the problem head on and rush in to battle. When Cap gets back from Hel- wait, what did they call it for the kids show?- he's all business. Giving orders and taking charge. Still, they're no match for Loki's odin-force. Even when fully reassembled, they can put up a fight but can't win. Luckily, someone comes along who can match the odin-force... ODIN. Things wrap up pretty nicely once the big guy wakes up and Loki is sent away again (to have snake venom dripped in his eyes or something). It was really cool to see each Avenger on thier own both on Earth and in the eight other realms, to see them adapt and then rejoin. I enjoyed the Asgardian arc, but wish Thor played a bigger part in the last two episodes instead of just being chained up. Still, these three episodes were filled with great animation, incredible action and ...well tying up loose ends. It was also nice to see the closing of the story arc and a tease of the new one. Season one was fantastic, but now I'm just so excited for S2!

Nice photos, straycat. Those legos are pretty cool and it's nice to see how they look with the 'mates. I'll probably pass on getting the legos, myself, but some of them are pretty tempting.

Congrats, man. Always exciting to see someone getting to live out their dream! Oh and also congrats on getting married.

Happy Birthday, Turtle!

Those packaging shots are amazing! So much stuff! These look so much better than the promo images. If I'm not excited for a mate in these box sets, I'm at least excited for one of their accessories. Oh and I would be a fan of you revealing a new mate each week leading up to a convention. Always nice to know what to budget for and exciting to see who is coming up.

Happy birthday! Any chance you've prepared a special birthday comic for yourself?

Great photos Zach! I always love it when you share this stuff. Can't wait to see the tray shots.

It's good to hear we're getting more hair pieces and heads and hammers. Takes some of the bite out of getting the repeat characters. Honestly though, I was going to buy these for Kang, Hawkeye, and Reaper regardless of who they came with. Sure I was hoping for Wasp or Falcon, but I figured it would be Iron Man or Cap. Like (I think it was Zach) said, at least it's not another slightly different Cap and Iron Man than wave 44. And the more I look at the new mates the more excited I get.

Awesome. Kind of. At least I don't have to worry about buying 44 and these boxsets, I guess. I'm still going to need a Sentry. Anyway these new characters look great and I can't wait

So, I don't want to talk about other Marvel animations here, but I just rewatched the Ultimate Avengers movies last week (a bunch of Marvel toons were recently added to Netflix!) and then this episode over the weekend and couldn't help compare - what a huge difference between the two. The one thing that really stuck out to me was the characterization. Big things like Pym being such a jerk for no reason in Ultimate and being a scientist/pacifist in EMH to little things like the way Cap dealt with being a man out of time. Also, in this episode of EMH, Hulk can't lift Thor's hammer because HE'S NOT THOR. In Ultimate Avengers, he can't lift Thor's hammer... until he tries harder. That really bugged me, so I was glad to see that they got that right in EMH (also got it right in Hulk vs, which I just rewatched tonight). I just love how EMH pays so much respect to the long history of 616 whereas Ultimate Avengers didn't even get the Ultimates right... or make any of the characters likeable, actually. The worst episode of EMH is still better than either of the Ultimate Avengers movies, IMO.

Congrats, Jeff!

Great photos, Zach! This is a much more exciting way to reveal new mates over just seeing them posted early on BBTS. I'm super excited for everything we've 'seen' so far. Here's hoping we get a perfect iconic version of Hawkeye! I actually missed him the first time around so I'm definitely looking forward to this. And I'm going to guess that these aren't based on EMH, but are similar just because minimates and EMH are trying to cash in on the biggest Avengers characters.

How early is everyone else buying your tickets? I'm debating how early is too early. And it's down to a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes... guess there will be people who think it's based off a bootleg of Transformers 3 or something...? Critics...

S1:E23 - The Ultron Imperative As the devastated team struggles with a loss, they don't realize that Ultron has transcended his body and infiltrated the world's computer systems. Action. Packed. This episode takes up where the last one left off and builds upon it perfectly. Pym and Stark are trying to destroy all that remains of Ultron, but it's too late. He has already spread out and taken control of ... well he's kind of like Skynet. He takes over everything, including SHIELD's computers. He even has a new body and a much deadlier plan. While the team is dealing with the loss of Thor and Cap, and Ant-Man is beating himself up over how he got things so wrong, Ultron activates all of Iron Man's old armors to literally beat up the Avengers. It's always fun to see heroes pitted against each other, and we sort of get that here. How does Hawkeye stand up to Iron Man? How does Panther? Hulk vs Hulkbuster? Plus, it's even more fun to see the heroes get to fight robots and things that they don't have to hold back on. When the team realizes that the Iron Men are just a distraction, Hawkeye sends the majority to help SHIELD while he and Panther stay behind... then he immediately realizes he's an idiot. Another thing I love about this episode is the juxtaposition between the intense action scenes and the peaceful scense with Thor and Amora. One second you're in the middle of battle, arrows, fists, claws and repulsor beams flying and the next second you're basking in the soft glow of sunlight shining through the trees where a dreamy Thor is trying to remember where he is and where he was. We get our second big battle against Ultron and things have escalated. Both sides have suffered losses and the stakes couldn't be higher. Luckily, Thor gets Enchantress mad enough that she sends him back to Earth just in time to save the team. And he. Is. Angry. While the ...hmm... how do I put this... non-brilliant-scientist members of the team fight Ultron, it's really up to Iron Man to save the world and Ant-Man to stop Ultron. In the end, they save the day but there is still some larger looming threat. Plus, what are the odds that that's the last we see of Ultron? As always, some amazing, fluid fight scenes, great characterization, and at least one opportunity to root for your favorite Avenger (well, except for Cap in this episode). Favorite moment: Okay, there were some great one-liners mixed in this episode, but I'm going to have to award my favorite moment to Thor's return. Such raw power and fury.

So, this question pulls a little away from the Avengers, but I'm wondering if you'll have the answer... I've seen certain stories about the origins of the F4 where the powers they gained reflect their personalities - Reed is stretching himself in too many directions, Sue is ignored, Johnny is a hothead, and Ben is tough or whatever. Was that an original Stan Lee thing or was that a more recent explanation? It just seems weird either way. On the one hand, four people were exposed to the same cosmic rays and gained incredibly different abilities, but on the other hand, four people gained abilities based on expressions about their personalities. I didn't realize two other sets of four gained powers in similar cosmic rays (each gaining a different ability) until just now, so it got me wondering. I'm surprised you haven't just been going on about Ultron, though!

Yikes. These guys are worse off than I thought. Yes, snakes are dangerous and scary animals in real life, but not really the best inspiration for super villains. You save me so much time instead of searching Wikipedia for this stuff, Miry.

I haven't started watching season 2 yet, but hopefully Winter Soldier comes in to play soon! S1:E22 - Ultron-5 Ant-Man has had enough of the violence. He wants to find a better way to bring peace and order to the world. We start of with maybe one of the lamest groups of villains and end with one of the coolest adversaries the Avengers will face ... Ultron. He's kind of like if Jarvis turned evil, or if Alfred tried to kill Batman. Ultron is such a scary villain because he knows the Avengers. He fought along side them. He was built by one of them. And he wants them dead. But I'm getting ahead of myself... We first find the team fighting the Serpent Society. These guys aren't a huge threat, but serve more as a springboard for a couple of things to happen. The first is Ant-Man trying to stop the fighting. He worked with some of these villains in the Big House and was hoping he could talk to them. When they refuse to listen, Hawkeye takes a 'bullet' for Ant-Man which is awesome because Hawkeye's one of the least bullet-proof heroes on the team. I know it was some kind of energy blast that was in no way meant to be a bullet, but I'm using that term for the sake of easy conversation. Hawkeye steps up his awesome a minute later when he gets dragged down in to the sewer by one of the snakes and then it's the snake who ends up running away from him, injured shoulder and all. Good ol' Clint. But once the fight is over, Ant-Man realizes he's not on the same path as the Avengers (punch the villains!) and quits the team. That's when things start getting crazy. As Hank is working on Ultron and trying to dissect what is wrong with the Avengers' plan (punch the villains!) he realizes that maybe humanity can't be saved. Ultron takes this to mean that humanity should be destroyed in order to achieve peace. He then sets his plan in motion. Some other highlights for this episode include: Thor asks Iron Man for his help in returning to Asgard. The two have had their differences and debates, but when Thor can't return home, he puts all that aside and asks for help. Wasp turning in to Giant-Woman (or something). Can she do that? How long has she been able to do that? Will TM2 say she's a mutant again? Her eyes did the same glow-effect that Hank's did earlier in the episode, so it seems like Pym particles are in play. HULK SMASH ULTRON!! Hank having to destroy his own failed creation. Poor guy's got some serious guilt problems, but knows what has to be done. But did he destroy everything in time? Funniest moment: Thor's observation about just how many monkeys the fight.

Well the reveals are pretty much what everyone thought they'd be. Not sure why there was so much secrecy around these guys. I am a little worried about the "major character tragedy" though, knowing Joss's track record... Oh and as always, the minimates look way better than the Lego counterparts. If only DST could make play sets...

Happy birthday man!

That's why it kills me what they have done to Cyclops since Whedon's run ended. He was finally in a good place where he was just an awesome leader for the team and then they went too serious, too dark, too morally questionable. I haven't been keeping up with too many of the recent comics, but I haven't been a huge fan of what I've read recently. I think the Mutant endangered species aspect is interesting, but I don't like the 'anything to survive' outlook. I think Magneto being a good guy is interesting, but Cyclops becoming Magneto is less exciting. I think Wolverine taking a stand is interesting, but he shouldn't be leading a team. I think Hope is interesting, but am just waiting for Jean to return. I guess I'll wait and see what happens in AvX and see how I feel about it. I'm sure a few months after it ends the status quo will be pretty much the same as ever.

Well, these definitely caught my interest. Can't wait to see what they look like opaque and fully colored.