Agonus

I was hoping Robin's cape would just be modeled after feathers, a la the last version of the CSA's Owlman. This whole "Lookit me, I'm Falcon!" thing just looks silly.

I've said that Jones was underwhelming as Frost, though whether she's to be blame, or the writers just utterly ignored the character's verbal manipulation skill and snark is another matter.

That aside, from the beginning, part of the idea with the Hellfire Club, in the [spooky fingers] all mighty canon of the comics[/spooky fingers], was that the women in the group dressed in lingerie while the men wore the old timey costumes. Barring the occasional pantsuit, Frost has largely stuck to a similarly revealing style of dress ever since. Also, miniskirts and beatle boots were a style of the times of the FC era.

As far as Mystique goes, one of the plot points is that she was upset that Charles could walk around in public and no one would know he was a mutant. She, on the other hand, could not walk around in her normal, blue skinned form. It even seemed to bother Charles, who also encouraged her to stick to the blonde form. Erik told her to be herself. It's part of what drew her to McCoy at first, he also had a -physical- mutation even if it wasn't as glaring as hers.

I'm pretty sure it's more of an additional location sorta thing, than changing filming from Chicago to Pittsburgh.

Chunky?!

Lawrence's rounder babyface more pronounced in First Class but in some pics online she doesn't look to have that at all. Regardless, I found her to be pleasantly curvey. 'Specially in the full shot of her standing there as blueskin Mystique. /e drool

Agreed there. Nice to know I wasn't the only one thinking that. >.<

This actually came up in the conversation with my friend afterwards about the villains. Azazel was there for the link to Nightcrawler. Riptide/Whirlwind was there to... allow for some wind cgi. I'd like to have them just run with the Hellfire Club and use Harry Leland or Von Roehm or Selene, though she was probably supposed to be in the background of "entertainment" scene in the club, considering the sheer number of Easter eggs in the movie.

Considering Mystique's shapeshifting and all of Xavier and Emma's telepathy tricks, I think Mastermind would have been sorta redundant, y'know?


I thought Banshee looked fine, it was Angel's awkward I'm-stuck-in-a-harness-and-they're-trying-to-make-it-look-like-I'm-flying pose that hurt that scene for me.

As far as Emma Frost goes, Jones was a little underwhelming, yeah. Visually, I have no complaints, mind you.

If memory serves, around the beginning of Generation X, Emma was strongly implied to be in her mid to late 30's. From that point I took her to be that age, until a recent comic where she whines on panel to the effect of "26 isn't that old!"

To my knowledge, there aren't any new arcs starting in any DCU title between now and then. Just about every current arc's been timed to end by the end of Flashpoint.

Don't know about any new minis starting now and then though, but it seems highly unlikely.

As for bothering to get the books between now and then anyway? To find out how the respective arcs end.

Heh. Fair enough.

As I said in the other thread on the Flashpoint reboot, DC, as they are now, are -not- bringing in enough new readers. The older generation fans that DC has largely been catering to the last 5 or so years are still walking away. And DC also hasn't really managed to successfully do much of anything with the main DCU comics to bring in enough new readers to make up for it.

I could be wrong, but last I knew one of DC's biggest selling comics recently was the Superman: Earth One GN, which essentially ultimatized the Superman mythos. Seems to be that with the Flashpoint reboot, DC decided to try something similar to that on their entire line.

Couldn't disagree more. I utterly despised those stock Disney cliche/trope characters in the other PoTC movies. The movies don't need bumbling comic relief with all the humor and wordplay they can pull off with the other characters like Sparrow, Biggs, and Barbossa.

I doubt that has anything to do with it. If you -really- want to pull off something like that, as I did when I was goofing around to see if I could make Castiel, you can do wings and the longer base coats, like the Baron coat.

McAvoy seems to be a bigger geek than I ever figured. Dude was surprisingly excited to try to sneak Picard's catchphrases into his lines in First Class.

I'll give you that Brown and Cain have their share of fans. But to call them "extremely popular"? What's Batman then? Ungodly popular? If Brown and Cain were as popular as you imply, they'd each have their own best selling ongoings and minis.

Just once? Really? I seem to stand corrected.

They way I see it, there's either the new blood like Kyle Rayner and Wally West, or the Teen Titans age characters like Supergirl and Jamie Reyes, or both. Kyle is popular, but he'll -always- be second string to Hal (and John Stewart if you count the JLU exposure). I can't comment on Wally because I don't care about the Flash. DC doesn't know what to do with the modern Supergirl. The new Blue Beetle has a cult fanbase, but it's not enough to keep his solo title going. Teen Titans are one of the core DC books, but it still doesn't sell anywhere near the levels of the main Batbooks or GL titles.

To stick with your numbers.

As for the money spent on advertising. I think it's safe to say that DC is getting a lot more backing from WB than they were previously. WB are looking to the DC universe for the next Harry Potter franchise.

The only aspect of the comic book industry that's been growing is digital sales. Monthlies are slowing bleeding off readers (barring the occasional sales stunt like the Future Foundation reboot, but it's still too early to tell how that's going to hold up) and the top selling books used to clear 100,000 copies easy on a regular basis. Now it's sales spike for the highest selling title to sell to 100,000 copies. And while trades do sell, neither Marvel or DC are switching to a trades only format any time soon.

Is DC down to the hardcore fanbase who'll buy their product no matter what? I certainly hope not. But those 100 customers were 110 last year. And 120 the year before that. And if DC wouldn't be pulling the Flashpoint reboot, according to the trends of sales they'd be down to 90 next year. As of right now, DC is not attracting new customers. For some reason, even the whole "Drawing the Line at $2.99" thing backfired. DC got small spike, but they're right back to where they were, if not worse.

So yeah, there's risk that DC will lose a chunk of their 100 customers with the reboot. But there's also a chance that even if they lose 50% out of spite for the reboot, they'll gain 55%. And the word of mouth from the new people that -like- the new direction will bring in another 20% and so on.

>.>

<.<

I support the missionary's position!

Does your crystal ball tell you lottery numbers too?

I'll give you Tim Drake being popular. But Brown and Cain are stretching it. Oracle, yeah, but how many times has BoP been relaunched now?

Not in DC they don't.

Again, I'd like to see this crystal ball of yours.

Hate to break it to you, but I think DC has learned the hard way that potential new readers (the target audience of the post Flashpoint reboot) outnumber their current fanbase they've been catering to for the better part of the last decade (longstanding readers like you and me) by a very wide margin

Oh they'll get a sales boost from all the new number 1s. The big thing will be to see if they can stick to it (and not panic in a few months and reset everything, again) AND carry the momentum with competent creative teams who won't drive off readers. Like, say, Jeph Loeb and the Ultimate Universe.

Looks like a hybrid of the old suit and the new costume. Hopefully she ends up with some variation of red boots to add something to the solid black leggings.

Word is there's a mandate that everyone in tights has a collar now. *shrug* (Rumor has is that a few years back one of the newer higher ups at DC also declared that it was time to get rid of the underwear-on-the-outside look. Bruce's costume post return ditched them, and now Clark has finally gotten rid of 'em too.) This outfit looks a lot like an older Elseworlds version of the costume that was supposed to be more Kryptonian influence on the design. Dunno why they had to re-do the S shield. About goddamned time they got rid of the superunderoos too. There's also word that Supes new costume has kneepads of all things.

Eh, I like Aquaman's look in Flashpoint.

Oh, and Batman's costume has minor tweaks too. as far as I can tell so far, his gloves look to be more armored, and the yellow around the bat on his chest is gone, again.

They do use the real name? I'm only up to ep 4, and I was just wondering if it was a Bowdlerization of the name Hellfire Club.