Tag: Marvel

Northstar, Marvel’s first openly gay hero, is going to tie the knot with his boyfriend in mainstream superhero comics’ first same-sex wedding in an upcoming issue of “Astonishing X-Men.” The announcement comes on the heels of DC co-publisher Dan DiDio’s revelation that an iconic DC character will reveal he is gay in a June issue, joining prominent lesbian character Batwoman beneath the rainbow banner. Northstar, whose real name is Jean-Paul Beaubier, is a Canadian mutant whose superhuman abilities allow him to move and fly at supersonic speeds. He’s also a professional skier, Olympian, novelist and businessman who made his debut in “Alpha Flight” #10 in 1984. He openly revealed his sexuality eight years later, in 1992′s issue #106, and officially joined the X-Men in 2002. In “Astonishing X-Men” #50, set to hit comic shop shelves Wednesday, Northstar proposes to his ...

Stan Lee has canceled his Monday appearance at the 2012 Hero Complex Film Festival, according to Theo Dumont, a spokesman at Lee’s POW Entertainment. Lee, the 89-year-old comic book icon, was the centerpiece of the final night of the festival, which was also to include video-taped greetings from industry peers and Hollywood elite as well as a screening of “X-Men,” the movie that 12 years ago ushered in the new era of superhero cinema. The festival, in its third year, will now end on Sunday night. Lee is distraught and depressed about the recent death of business associate Arthur Lieberman, according to Yuka Kobayashi, another staffer at POW Entertainment. While Lieberman died on May 1, Kobayashi said the collective fatigue of multiple appearances tied to “The Avengers” release have made it necessary for Lee to clear his upcoming schedule. Lee will be appearing Saturday at ...

Long before Andrew Garfield or Tobey Maguire ever went up the wall,  Nicholas Hammond amazed young fans by leaping across the screen as the amazing Spider-Man. The actor was no stranger to pop-culture sensations — he played the Friedrich von Trapp kid in “The Sound of Music” (one of the three biggest hits in film history, if you go purely by the number of tickets sold) and figures prominently in a classic episode of “The Brady Bunch” — yep, he was the guy who broke a date with Marcia Brady when she got bonked on the nose with a football. Guest writer Mark Edlitz (who recently wrote about Broadway’s Superman for Hero Complex) interviewed him. HC: This is the 50th anniversary of Spider-Man and the 35th anniversary of “The Amazing Spider-Man,” the CBS series that you starred in it. There’s also a new onscreen Spider-Man ...

This story contains spoilers about “The Avengers.” “The Avengers” passed the $1-billion mark in worldwide ticket sales this weekend, and a sequel is already in the works. Does that mean writer-director Joss Whedon will be back at the helm of the franchise that unites Marvel’s box-office heavyweights, including Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and the Hulk? “You know, I’m very torn,” Whedon said in a sit-down interview in Beverly Hills before the film’s U.S. opening. “It’s an enormous amount of work telling what is ultimately somebody else’s story, even though I feel like I did get to put myself into it. But at the same time, I have a bunch of ideas, and they all seem really cool.” Whether he gets his hands on the sequel, Whedon’s fingerprints are all over “The Avengers,” which echoes some tropes found in his ...

COSMIC-LEVEL SPOILER ahead, so stop reading if you haven’t seen “The Avengers” — although with $775 million in worldwide box office it’s getting harder to find Marvel fans that haven’t seen director Joss Whedon’s all-star, crowd-pleasing epic. As the credits roll on “The Avengers,” moviegoers see a sinister alien revealed — it’s Thanos, a being obsessed with nihilism and death, eventually falling in love with its embodiment, Mistress Death. The Mad Titan first appeared in Iron Man #55 in 1973 and would become a signature figure in the Marvel Universe’s “cosmic level” sagas — the struggles that brought heroes, monsters, aliens, immortals and gods into conflicts that spilled across space, time and other dimensions. The character was created by artist and writer Jim Starlin, who we caught up with to talk about his Mad Titan getting a Hollywood close-up. HC: When ...

It’s almost here — we’re just one week from the start of the 2012 Hero Complex Film Festival and with the franchise in its third year we’ve moved to a sweet new home (Regal Cinemas at LA Live, where in September we brought you a 30th anniversary screening of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” with Steven Spielberg and surprise guest Harrison Ford) and expanded the program (four days now with more than a dozen guests, including three that haven’t been announced). To get a bead on the festival, peruse the photo gallery above — be sure to click the “CAPTIONS ON” option if you don’t see text across the bottom of each image – and you’ll get a snapshot description of all of eight of our separately ticketed screenings. The box here on the right leads to the ticketing page. And how about those fun images in the gallery? ...

This story contains spoilers about “The Avengers” and previously released Marvel films. When word got out in 2010 that Mark Ruffalo had been cast as Bruce Banner and his big, green alter ego the Hulk in “The Avengers,” many fans of the franchise were furious. They took to the message boards, touting the merits of Edward Norton’s performance in 2008′s “The Incredible Hulk” and decrying the decision to cast a different actor in “The Avengers,” which would finally unite Marvel’s superheroes, including Captain America, Iron Man and Thor. Ruffalo — best known for off-the-beaten-path movies such as “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and 2010′s critical darling “The Kids Are All Right” — had been unsure of his decision to accept the role in the action-packed flick. But he said the fan outrage was exactly the motivation he needed. “I ...

Surrounded by a Norse god, a super soldier, a deadly spy, a brilliant scientist who can become an 8-foot-tall rage monster, and, well, Tony Stark, it might have been easy for Cobie Smulders to get lost in the muscle-clad crowd. But the 30-year-old Canadian actress who plays S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Maria Hill in the record-breaking blockbuster “The Avengers” made it her mission to create a space for her character among Marvel’s A-listers, which, of course, include Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, Chris Evans’ Captain America and Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man. “I feel like I was able to hold my own quite well,” Smulders said, sitting down for an interview on a recent morning. “That was really important to me, because I was quite intimidated…. Not only is it a different genre for me, but it’s with some of the most talented actors ...

Turns out Hulk isn’t the only one who can deliver a big green smash. Joss Whedon just scored a Galactus-sized success with “The Avengers,” which not only topped the “Harry Potter” single-weekend record, it made the once magical Hogwarts crowd seem like, well, schoolchildren waving sticks in the air. The sixth Marvel Studios release just completed the best opening weekend in movie history, earning $200.3 million at the domestic box office, an especially staggering number when you consider that previous mark by “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2″ was $169.2-million. More than that, with all the sparkling reviews, director and co-writer Whedon has a genuine summer cinema supernova — Tony Stark is still at the center of the Marvel Studios universe, but now he’s not the only one standing there in the warm glow of cascading cosmic rays. The numbers are bigger the deeper you look. The North ...

After a succession of quick cameos in almost every Marvel Studios movie, Samuel L. Jackson’s mysterious Nick Fury is at last stepping out of the shadows for his turn in the spotlight in “The Avengers.” “It was finally satisfying to get to find out exactly what Nick’s been getting at,” Jackson said on a recent morning at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. “About the Avengers initiative, and why he thought it was necessary. We find out a little more about where he operates, how he operates, sort of the workings of his mind.” The film, which opens in U.S. theaters this weekend, unites the Marvel superheroes that have dominated the big screen in recent summers — Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) as well as Black Widow (Scarlett ...