Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities The All Avengers Thread

I'm going on them all using the new costumes, but possibly, only when they're performing Valkyrior duties and going to Valkyrior meetings and talking with Valkyrior gods and goddesses.

Sort of like Masons or Girl Scouts or Knights of the Round Table?
Hmmm, or maybe like fireman?

Here's the second group, I updated my Nightside.
I like her better with the darker wings.
I added Amanda Sefton for Set and Darkstar for ML.
None of them have Razor micro's so I used other characters both from him and from Super-Hero Compendium.

Sefton is first, then Nightside and finally, Darkstar.

Gorgeous micros, Candle. If you have any more, feel free to share them here.

Meanwhile, my latest hiatus from new comics has left me in something of a quandary. I read the first two issues of the Bendis/Bagley Avengers vs. Zodiac arc in the new title Avengers Assemble, and thought they were actually not bad, thanks largely to Bags' art, but not great, either. Apparently # 3 hasn't even come out yet, usually a sign of behind-the-scenes hysteria, and Bendis appears to have spoiled his own story, making a calculated remark that hinted the Zodiac are the puppets of...

<span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">...Thanos.</span></span>

If so, I don't think that's particularly inspired, but then, that villain has never been a favorite of mine anyway, kind of a one-trick pony.

Meanwhile, I haven't been reading the regular Avengers books, so I don't know how Walt Simonson's art mixes with Bendis' writing, or if Remender has improved any after a disappointing start on SA.

Point being, if any of you have read any or all of the above, your comments would be very welcome in this thread.

Simonson's art has taken a mediocre Bendis script and made it above par; it's not great yet--but may get there. What's noticeable immediately is Walt has injected some energy to the story which otherwise might be another slow burn.

Whenever there is a crossover, Bendis seems to revel in giving us the 'secret backstory' of what's going on. Now that it's the fourth time around it feels predictable and boring.

Luckily Walt is making it visually exciting. A scene where Thor returns to the team to greet Cap was majestic.

Thanks, Cobie. Much as I love Walt, I think I'm going to continue to pass on Avengers until Bendis is gone.

Of course, depending on his replacement, I may continue to avoid Avengers even after he's gone. I guess Marvel's waiting til the San Diego con to make the announcement.

Yeah, I can't in good conscience recommend it. Same for Secret Avengers so far--while 'not bad', its still not leaving me in a happy place.

The next era can't come fast enough.

Well, tinypics hasn't been letting me crop lately, so I decided to just do a page of amalgamated Valkyrior micros.
I used one of Future's backgrounds, so they should fit without messing with the spacing or the pixal size.
:crossed fingers of hope:



Row 1 - Valkyrie, Dani Moonstar, Aragorn, Jocasta, Nightside, Amanda Sefton and Darkstar.
Row 2 - Magma, Snowbird, Shadowcat & Lockheed, Frenzy, Deadly Nightshade, Gloriana, Jennifer Kale, Mantis.
Row 3 - Polaris, Power Woman, a Lockjaw sired puppy I call Liloksy(Lily for everyday) & Iridia, Hellcat, Thundra, Photon, Black Widow.

All of the costumes originated with Razer's Byzantine Heroes.
Some he had already done, like Magma, Mantis, Hellcat, Black Widow, Photon, Jocasta and others.
These I added pants(horse riding for any distance or time, demands covered bottoms and legs, I'm afraid ) and the Asgardian/Valkyrie head wings to everyone as a base.
The rest of the design elements I just played with, adding capes or hair or changing hands/eyes, tiara's, etc..

A lot of them were formed from other Byzantine micros and character's from the Micro-Heroes Compendium site, especially if I didn't know the character I was going for, like Frenzy or Power Woman.

Razer made a Kitty but without Lockheed, so I found one with him and adjusted her to add him.
I made the arm and added the hands from one of Blancett's many characters.
She's amazing, as is kat, JR, TC, GI and many others found at Compendium.

Aragorn began as an uncredited Comet, one set of Razer's many wings and another set from Compendium. The jewelry and tack came from Dani's various outfits.
She also started as Mirage, a DC character.

I added Jocasta and Meggan to my list, since I dropped the others.
I separated the grill work on the Razer original and added lips and a nose. She also got a cape.

Night Shade started as a completely hooded Razer Night Shade, a caucasian DC character, but I added a Compendium Nightshade head and went from there.
From what I read, she's a Marvel villian, so I'm not sure why ML listed her.


I hope I got the characters right and they're fun for everyone to look at.
They're such a beautiful idea, I couldn't let them languish on an island site, by themselves.

...there. There are no words for this.

Well, I hope that's a good thing.


My favorites of my suggestion are Iridia and Nightside.
My favorites of Set's picks are Power Woman and Frenzy.
Of ML's, I like Polaris and Dani best.

Darkstar was the hardest because I started with Dinah Soar, a non-humanoid character.
Why?


Well, Aragorn was hard, too.
He took the most time and decision making and putting together.
sigh

Very cool!

I like your Black Widow and Hellcat costumes the best. The colors on Hellcat just pop, and Black Widow's spider-legged chest-piece is funky!

I have no idea who Gloriana is, but the coloration makes it look like the Enchantress as a Valkyrie, which is a scary thought!

Magma, with her yellow and red coloration, might look more distinctive in a black suit of armor (or a dark blue one, or something). The white ends up being overpowered by her own colors, I think. If she went to a full red coloration for her fiery body, and wore golden valkyrie armor, that would keep her 'traditional' colors, and possibly look awesome, too.

Love Valkyrie and Polaris' cloaks, but the coolest thing ever has to be Lockheed!

Random aside;

While the Marvel valkyries have traditionally just used winged horses, the valkyries of Norse myth have been alternately portrayed as winged women, wingless women capable of flight anyway, women riding winged horses, women riding wingless flying horses, and, most intriguingly, women riding horse-sized winged wolves.

I'm not sure which female hero would look most awesome riding into the fray on a super-strong immortal Asgardian winged wolf the size of a bear (Patsy Walker would be my number one choice, for this), but, gosh, that would be a crazy cool visual!

Glorian(n)a is code name that Meggan had finally picked for her code name, according to wikipedia.
ML said that she's now in X Force now.


I'm doing something with the flying steeds thing, it'll just take me awhile, since I have to keep them in the micro mode.

The winged wolf is a fun idea. Razer has a couple on his site, actually, not winged, just wolves.
That should be interesting to play with.
T

Thundra has her platform, and I can't see her with an animal, really.
.

Magma and Nightside I'm already working on, Kitty, too.
I won't say what, but they're not like Aragorn.

Frenzy, too, if she doesn't fly on her own.
Does she?

If I can find a Veil, I might do her instead of Night Shade, whom I think would go techie, too.
I don't see Madame Mask on an animal, either.
sigh

And there's Iridia, who has wings AND the baby sired by Lockheed!
I love him/her, like you, and had to include her.
So, Iridia has 2 ways of getting someplace unusually fast!

I've decided to group these characters differently so I've deleted this one, here and on Bits.
I like them much better in the following panels.

Well, Nightside isn't flying yet.
But, she will be, soon.

If, like, she was real.

Photon is incredible.

She's a combination of 5 characters + my input.
But, Nightside was so much more complicated and difficult, even more so with her steed.
sigh
Glad you like Photo, though, SarK.

I posted this on Bits . . . as well but it was made for this thread and partly about Set's comments.



Set suggested wolves,specifically, and Razer had already done wolves, Dire Wolves I think, for his Artemis Byzantine Knights.
So, here they are with Hellcat and the Black Widow, two Valkyrior micro candidates that Set commented on.

The Valkyrie steed was one I found after I made my own Aragorn for Dani.
This one was on the Compendium site and credited to JR. He added the wings, anyway, and the little scalloped edge around the horse's chest.
Rat is credited with Comet, the horse base used.
I don't know if Rat made the horse or if he used as a base for his Comet, though.

I added tack to go with Valkyrie's costume, gave her a sword that I designed from her clothes, and stood her up, since she would look cool with that cape flying out, another thing that Set liked.


Edit: I saw something that needed fixing.
Then, I decided to put Photon and Thundra here as a grouping.
I'll change the Nightside/Iridia grouping as well, to reflect my picks, like the Mystery Lad grouping that I added.

Set's will be like these, too.

So, as per Bleeding Cool:

Jonathan Hickman will replace Bendis on Avengers v.4 sometime this fall.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. Hickman is, in many ways, a better superhero writer than Bendis, but his tendency for bittiness and dragged-out subplots kept me from ever fully embracing his Fantastic Four/FF. OTOH, maybe Hickman has learned from his mistakes and I'll like his Avengers better. Either way, I'm willing to give the first arc a fair chance.

This is great news for me! I'm a big Hickman fan and his latest stories on Fantastic Four & FF seem to be the best ones he's done so far. His SHIELD has been my favorite Marvel title for years (when it comes out). Meanwhile, his creator-owned stuff is by far his best stuff out there, and some of the very best stuff in the marketplace right now from any company or in any genre.

The best thing we can expect is a restoration of the 'grandiose' element of the Avengers. Bendis took the Avengers and really brought it down to the street level, and maybe that was 'cool' for a minute (psst: ), but it's far time for the Avengers to regain the stature it once had.

Plus Hickman loves utilizies concepts and characters from deep in a series' mythology, so we can expect all kinds of stuff from Avengers history to be present, and revitalized.

That would be awesome, if true. I *like* many of the 'street level' Avengers (Cap, Hawkeye, USAgent, etc.), but the way he tossed Dr. Strange, who used to hang with Silver Surfer, the Hulk and Namor, and be a 'big gun' (who once took out a weakened Galactus with one spell...), and made him unable to teleport across the street, just bugged me.

Bendis really needed a street-level mystic for that, and totally could have taken Brother Voodoo, or Amanda Sefton, or one of the other mystics lying around unused, rather than de-power Dr. Strange for that concept. (Marvel doesn't really have a John Constantine analogue, does it? That really seems to be around the level that Bendis was looking for...)

Ooh, that's inspiring! I loved how Busiek went all 'continuity porn' with his run, bringing back all sorts of classic elements.

I'd love to see a non-deus ex machina Scarlet Witch back, some day (and a return of the Wasp!). The last decade or so, it really seems like there's been a concerted effort to make Wanda unusable as a character (same as happened to Jean Grey, really), and it kinda bugs me.

With the push into new media (movies, especially, but also animated shows), it's about time Marvel started highlighting some of their classic female characters (Jean, Wanda, Janet, Sue), which is kinda problematic, since they keep killing them (or making them omnipotent, crazy and / or evil)...

I liked Hickman's run on Fantastic Four to start with, but I felt that his stories took too long to pay off so I dropped it pretty early on.

I would be willing to give him another try on Avengers; his FF cast has grown pretty huge and I have heard a lot of good things from fans so I assume he can work well with a large cast of characters (which is a completely different thing to just HAVING a large cast of characters with only one or two of them having any real voice....)

I also really like his sensibility when it comes to how he approaches superheroes. A lot more than Bendis' anyway who always seems to write the Avengers as a pretty unlikeable clique of bullies a lot of the time.

It would be nice to be able to read an Avengers comic all the way through without putting it down in disgust or rolling my eyes at the lousy characterisation again....

They don't. But I tried to create a female Constantine analog a couple years ago, retconning her into untold stories from the 616 universe:

http://iammilk-milk.blogspot.com/2010/09/fanfic-west-coast-avengers-in-burdens.html

http://iammilk-milk.blogspot.com/2010/08/fanfic-avengers-in-something-about-mary.html

http://iammilk-milk.blogspot.com/2010/08/fanfic-black-knight-in-choice.html

Hellstorm!

Avenger's Academy continues to be fun. They've been sucked into the A vs. X event, but done so in a way that suits the book and it's themes.

Hercules as a teacher is all kinds of hilarious. (His first history lesson is teaching about Greek wrestling, by taking off his clothes and demonstrating the poses, since Greek wrestling was in the nude. Nobody takes him up on his offer to help him re-enact various famous wrestling matches...)

The X-folk are generally less than impressed that one of the Academy students is a boy who rescued a Sentinel from the scrap heap, and has his own pet 'iron giant,' particularly when the Sentinel ocasionally says 'Destroy all mutants!' when it's scanners pick up a mutant. As Juston explains, "He doesn't mean that! He just says it when he gets overstimulated!"