Unsolicited Advice

For any of the Avengers fans curious about how the Stark + Banner bromance thing goes in the comic canon, I dug this here up for yas: Hulk vol 2 071 Hulk vol 2 072 Hulk vol 2 073 Hulk vol 2 074 It's pretty much just Stark and Banner for this short arc, with a few vaguely peripheral people of whom I have never heard before, and of whom no one probably ever heard again. A few notes, for context: Tony doesn't drink anymore. He dried himself out some years ago in the comics, because he noticed it was starting to interfere in his being a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist. This is basically the only way to get Tony to do anything. He has kept the rest of his world-famous collection of bad habits, on the basis that he is TONY motherfucking STARK and he can do whatever he wants. Bruce is on the run again, pretty much now and forever. He does typically show up when the Avengers assemble, but aside from that he spends most of his time being an itinerant supergenius an...

In which I apply way too much logic to the Hulk. Again. [small Avengers  spoiler. spoiler. spoiler spoiler spoily spoiler. this is getting monotonous, but i suppose it's better than being beaten by a rampaging mob of comic geeks.]

[spoilering. spoiler spoiler. for seventeen seconds of Avengers . when can I stop doing this?]

Finally got around to watching the Edward Norton Hulk  movie. And it is definitely that way around. It is not a Hulk film starring Edward Norton; it is an Ed Norton movie guest-starring the Hulk. I admit up front to not being a fan of his at all. His favorite themes in storytelling are pretty much the opposite of anything I find even remotely fun to watch or enlightening to ponder. They're generally good films for what they are, but what they are is not to my taste. Still, the compare and contrast between the character of Bruce Banner as written and played by Edward Norton and Bruce Banner as written by Joss Whedon and played by Mark Ruffalo is an interesting example of how far apart you can get with interpretations of comic book characters and still technically all be canon.

It has come to my attention that less than 100% of the internet has seen the old Incredible Hulk TV series. I feel I should do my part to fix that. YouTube has several episodes, apparently at random. Among them are " Proof Positive ", " Never Give A Trucker An Even Break ", and " Prometheus ( part 2 )", the last being the one I referred to where Ferrigno actually gets lines for once. [WAG: It was probably Bixby's week off.] It probably looks oddly cheap in places, to a modern audience, even though it decidedly wasn't -- the per-episode budget was in the neighborhood of $600,000, which IIRC is comparable to the original run of The A-Team -- mostly because there was no such thing as CGI in at the time and they had to use a lot of practicals. The series debuted in 1978, so everyone dresses as if they were completely blind and every pair of flattering pants had been mysteriously wiped off the face of the planet, but if you can get over that then the ...