Geek Tee Friday - The Hulk

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This Friday's geek tee is one of the Hulk taken from the Thor: Ragnarok movie from 2017. This is the 3rd of the 4 mystery shirts I got for £15 and did a bag opening in this BLOG here. Check it out.

I wasn't too impressed with this one at 1st it seems a bit muted colour wise and I am sure there are better Hulk shirts out there but hey ho it is what it is, I'm sure it will grow on me!

As a character the Hulk has been around since May 1962  when he was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. He 1st appeared in The Incredible Hulk #1, a book that only ran for 6 issues before the big Green/Grey one was moved to Tales to Astonish which was later renamed as The Incredible Hulk in April 1968. It ran under a few different names up till 2013 when it was replaced by The Indestructible Hulk as part of Marvel's Marvel NOW! relaunch.

I remember that Marvel UK had a Hulk comic too that I know I read some of as a kid but I would expect that my 1st encounter with the very angry one was when Lou Ferrigno played him in the TV show of the 70's. It was pretty big in it's day this show I seem to recall, with Bill Bixby playing the role of the mild mannered scientist David (not Bruce??!!) Banner. The show ran for 5 seasons, (82 episodes) on CBS in America from 1978 - 1982 apparently. Wow, I didn't realise it was as many as that, I wonder if we got to see them all in the UK. 

It was a cool show, he was always on the move from town to town, working on cures for his Hulk problem and he'd end up befriending and helping someone with the big green one's aid and have to move on again at the end of the show. The poignant music would play out as he trudged off, (normally in the rain I seem to recall), to a new town and new adventures. 

They also made 3 films the 1st of which, The Incredible Hulk Returns features him meeting up, I am sure for the 1st time on screen, with the thunder god Thor himself. See they really are old friends from work!!

The Incredible Hulk Returns - 1988

He also met up with Daredevil in The Trial of The Incredible Hulk (1989) and in The Death of The Incredible Hulk (1990) he falls in love with an Eastern European spy (Black Widow surely!!)

I have quite a few issues of Hulk in my collection, I'd guess I must have collected him for 3/4 years but I need to go dig them out to confirm this. I know I have quite a few of the Peter David era of the big green goliath. He united his Banner/Hulk personas for a time during this period and we also learned that Bruce was abused by his father making Hulk ostensibly his childhood fury manifest. When Hulk refused to emerge during Avengers: Infinity Wars I theorized that his inner child bully Hulk was scared after the beat down that he received from Thanos. I think he might need a little lie-down on Doc Samson's sofa once again to get his head right. Also a lot of fun during David's run was when Hulk went grey again and had dominance over Banner, he became Mr Fixit for a time, a mob enforcer cracking heads to order for a crime boss. He was no where near as strong at this point, he had better intelligence and reasoning so he couldn't channel his boundless rage into strength.

I wonder if Hulk has featured in more Marvel movies than any other character. Does anyone have the figures at all? Maybe he is the character that has fronted the most movies. He has the 3 TV tie-in ones that I already mentioned and then he has had 2 others, Hulk (2003) with Eric Bana as Bruce Banner and The Incredible Hulk (2008) with Edward Norton in that role. He's also been in 3 Avengers movies, (I think) with Mark Ruffalo as Banner, and of course Thor Ragnarok where he has a tumultuous & fun battle with the titular hero. 

Fights between The Hulk and Thor have been plentiful over the years with many a debate being had between fans over who would win in such a battle. Hulk (in some versions), has brute strength that seemingly has no limits, increasing as his anger does, but Thor is a god, a skilled warrior with the might of Mjolnir and the power of thunder. I tried to find out when they 1st battled in the comics, the earliest encounter I could find was Journey Into Mystery #112 from January 1965. 

I am sure we will see him next in Infinity Wars Part 2 but I wonder if there are any plans to have him star in his own movies again at some point. I certainly hope so as I for one will NEVER tire of the Superhero genre, I don't remember a time when I haven't loved them and I can't picture there being one in the future either. Keep 'em coming I say.

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Movie Review - Vixen (The Movie)

Vixen was created by Gerry Conway and Bob Oksner and debuted in July 1981 in Action Comics #521. As I mentioned in my video I didn't think she'd ever had her own run of books. It was intended to give her a series at one point when she 1st emerged but it was forced to be cancelled. 

She has featured primarily in team books such as The Justice League and The Suicide Squad. I can't recall her from Suicide Squad at all but it seems she joined them initially to get revenge on a murderous smuggler then when she was struggling to control her animal side she stayed on a more long term basis, she also had a romance with the Bronze Tiger, (a long time squad member), for a time.

In 2008 she had a 5-issue mini-series called Vixen: Return of the Lion which chronicles her 1st return to her home village where she confronts the warlord who killed her mother and has since taken over several Zambesi villages.

I did a bit of research now on this and found that indeed this DVD is made up of 2 season's of a web series that streamed on CW's online viewing platform with 15 minutes of added footage and a couple of her appearances from Justice League Unlimited and a featurette as added DVD extras. Each season ran for 6 episodes of 4 - 7 minutes in length which you think might make it seem a bit jumbled being compressed together on one DVD as a full length film but it works fine I think.

Cover art of Justice League of America: Vixen #1 (January 2017).
Art by Ivan Reis.

It is set in the Arrowverse which is the name given to the DC TV shows continuity which air on the CW network. The original cast members of The Arrow & Flash TV shows turn up many times in the cartoon and are voiced by the actors who portray them in the live action versions. So we see guest star outings from Flash, Arrow, Felicity, Cisco, Atom & Black Canary. Also as I am not at all caught up on the live action franchises I did not know that Mari McCabe/Vixen has also got a live action version, played by Megalyn Echikunwoke, (who also provides her voice for this film),  she looks very much ideal for the part going by this picture of her.

She has so far only appeared in 1 episode from Arrow season 4 but an ancestor of the character was played by Maisie Richardson-Sellers in season 2 of Legends of Tomorrow. I must have seen that I am sure but forgotten about it as Mr Memory is NOT my superhero name!!

Amaya Jiwe is Mari McCabe's grandmother

Another bonus with the DVD is that it comes with a digital download on Ultraviolet so you can watch it on your devices on the go. I've got quite a catalogue of Super films on my Flixster account now, I just wish they all came with that option.

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Nextflix Reviews - The Villainess

Want to know what to 'watch next' on Netflix? Check out my Nextflix Reviews


So I'm going to start reviewing any interesting films and/or TV series that I discover on Netflix as so many people are always asking, "Hey what shall I watch next on Netflix,?" and I normally forget what cool things I've watched. So if I make posts about it from now on I can remind myself can't I? 

So 1st up is the film The Villainess which is a high action, violent martial arts rampage of a movie. The opening protracted ultraviolent sequence plays a bit like Hardcore Henry meets Oldboy. In 1st person mode our heroine, (at least I think she's more of a heroine than a villainess to be honest, although she certainly is conflicted), plows her bloody way through a multitude of gangster looking types with guns and blades. We (or she) switch from this perspective after she gets her head smashed into a mirror. The rest of the bloodbath (and the film) then ensues in 3rd person mode. 

In the aftermath of this slaughter she is caught by a shadowy organisation, perhaps government sanctioned and trained by them as an undercover operative. A spy/assassin kind of akin to the film Nikita. She is found to be pregnant and has a baby daughter which she raises inside the organisations prison like training camp. She makes friends and enemies there and she eventually gets let out, the idea is she has to give the organisation 10 years of her life then she'll get her freedom. 

From then we see how she deals with life once she is released into the world and she tries to create a semblance of a normality for herself and her daughter whilst doing the agency's bidding and also being the focus of their machinations. Throughout we are shown flashbacks of her history and what led up to the initial bloodbath the movie started with and things from her past begin to catch up with her resulting in a clash between her new alliances and her old ones which doesn't leave very many survivors.

The action is fast and nasty and there were a couple of points that had me exclaim, "Ooh steady on there film, that was a bit much!"

All in all a very enjoyable, bloody, violent, action packed hit as far as I am concerned. It's a South Korean film, released in 2017 and has subtitles so if you're one of those people who don't like them it may not be for you. 

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Also starring Kim Ok-Bin

   

Also directed by Byung-gil Jung

DVD review - Kung Fu Hustle

Kung Fu movies, I love them, I maybe don't watch them so much nowadays and maybe I'm out of the loop but there don't seem to be as many coming out any more. At least not in the west, I am sure they are just as plentiful as they ever were in Asian cinema but I am just not seeing them advertised at the cinema here anymore or in DVD rentals at all. They are kind of like the 80's style action blockbusters, I just don't seem to see quality examples of the genre much around lately.


Now historically I am sure that Bruce Lee was the original martial artist that made it into the movies in Hollywood. He had to work hard to get what he could from the business but had a hard time trying to popularise Kung Fu movies and getting roles. I remember the TV series Kung Fu, I enjoyed it as a kid and I am sure I had a Kung Fu annual at some point. However that was a prime example of Lee being held down by the TV Execs. He came up with the idea for the show and they chose the non-Asian David Carradine to play the role of the half Chinese "Grasshopper" Kwai Chang Caine. 

David has a few more geeky claims to fame, he played Frankenstein in Death Race 2000 and Bill in the, Tarantino written and directed, Kill Bill movies. He actually learned martial arts later in life inspired by his role in Kung Fu. I'm just glad that inspired him and not his driving in Death Race 2000 😏 



  

Lee played the role of Kato in The Green Hornet. I never saw that at all as a kid, I don't know if the UK TV networks ever bought it. I don't recall it from the time but Green Hornet & Kato popped their heads out of the window in one of the Batman TV shows from the 60's. They also appeared as guests in one show solving a crime together. I only know this as an old customer of mine ripped me the whole series onto DVD-Rs for me but I left them at work when I was made redundant. Needless to say as the Batman series is now out on DVD it's on my to-buy list. I may well look into getting the Green Hornet series too, it only ran for one season though with 26 episodes running from September 9, 1966,  through to March 17, 1967. I am not sure if this series is even available now though. All I could find were a couple of movies, The Green Hornet and Fury of The Dragon cobbled together to cash in after Lee died 😢 I did discover that Kevin Smith had written a Batman/Green Hornet comic that followed up from the TV show story!! And there was a 1940's TV series of the Green Hornet where the master from Kung Fu plays Kato!

    

 I have the movie from 2011 and that was pretty cool. Hey another thing, off tangent, but did you know that Britt Reid aka the Green Hornet is a relative of The Lone Ranger?? He shares the same family name as Britt's father was the Lone Ranger's nephew. True story! 


As far as movies go the only one I really recall of Lee's was Enter The Dragon. (It was sadly practically his last, he died during filming of his next movie The Game of Death). It's a classic of the genre, no nonsense, no jokes just serious action. If you want this movie with jokes and silliness check out The Kentucky Fried Movie, it has a parody called A Fistful of Yen which is hilarious.

So Lee was historically first I think but for me I am sure that I was aware of Jackie Chan before I knew of him. I could be mistaken of course, my memory is naff as heck. I recall he was in a movie called Battle Creek Brawl (1980) that was on in the cinemas in the UK and I was too young to go and see it. This was the age of the video rental shops though and I did watch a ton of Chan movies over the years. Some I can recall are of course Drunken Master, Armour of God, Wheels on Meals and Police Story. His films were different from Lee's with the added element of humour, lots of fart jokes and terrible dubbing and sound effects. Also insane stunts, remember the crazy out takes scenes at the end of each film? It's surprising Jackie is still going with all the crazy bumps he's taken over the years. He's still making good films too. Check out my review of The Foreigner, it's got no humour in it at all but it's a cool serious film and Jackie is great in it.

    

Sho Kosugi is a name I remember too, with a number of "Ninja" movies from the early 80's being pretty good viewing at the time.

Of the 80's/90's action heroes Jean-Claude Van Damme was the most martial arts focused, with films like Blood Sport, Kickboxer, A.W.O.L, Double Impact and Street Fighter but his movies branched out from that with gun fights so I don't think of him as a total martial arts hero really. 



Fun fact: I found out he studied ballet for 5 years!! Well I never!!

Played Colonel Guile in Street Fighter and was the inspiration for Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat too!

A more recent series of films I liked were Ong Bak with Tony Jaa.

 The knees and elbows thrown in those are insane, it just looks damned painful watching it!! Those fight stuntmen earn every penny of their money and they probably deserve more really I reckon! I've not seen any other films by him though and there doesn't seem to be any martial arts action star that I know of bringing out a succession of great movies.  There are a few one-offs like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Ip Man series, both of which are pretty entertaining. 

This film Kung Fu Hustle starring Stephen Chow who also did Shaolin Soccer is pretty huge though, looking it up I found out it was the highest-grossing Chinese-language film in the history of Hong Kong until it was surpassed in 2011. It came out in 2004!! Wow, time files huh?