A Guy With Some Marvel Cards

agentmlovestacos:

Some classic #XMen trading cards at @Marvel HQ. Art by @jimlee. I LOVE GIDEON SO MUCH. #comics #art #illustration (Taken with Instagram)

The promised land… 

Gideon’s hair might out 90’s even Maverick (but not Shatterstar. NEVER Shatterstar). 

I’m going to be up front here. I’ve failed you on this one. 

I wanted so badly to write something clever about Boom Boom and the era she came from. Something about X-Force and what they were all about. How they represented, for better or worse, a sort of changing of the guard for Marvel and the entire X-Universe. Maybe even some REALLY stretched thing about Boom Boom’s vapid personality and ability to create brightly colored flashy time bombs and how that’s totally a metaphor for the shiny, explosive, but ultimately empty flash that was comics in the 90s. 

I set out wanting to do ALL of that. 

But when I look at this card and I see her name all I can hear in my head is a big fat kid filling his diaper and saying “UH OH! I MADE A BOOM BOOM!”. 

So that’s what you get. 

I’m so sorry. 

Back before we concerned ourselves with stupid insignificant bullshit like Apple vs. Android, the multiple bloody clashes between Team Edward and Team Jacob*, and Y2K hysteria vs. common sense we had REAL problems to deal with.

Way back when we had two separate, but (supposedly) equal X-Men teams and if you didn’t believe STRONGLY that one was significantly better than the other then you were lying to the entire world and to your own stupid self. Idiot. 

Anyone with an IQ higher than that of the pants I’m currently wearing KNOWS in the center of their very heart and soul that the Blue Team was where it was at.

“But Ed”, you say handsomely and intelligently, “the Blue Team had Gambit and you hate Gambit. And then you mix in the OTHER worst accent in the Marvel U in the form of Rogue’s ‘sugah’s and other faux southern charm bullshit ‘ah say ah say ah say’ Foghorn Leghorn colloquialisms. And Jubilee? You’re really going to claim that the team with cut-rate Marvel version of Robin, Jubilee, is the superior team? You’re an idiot and more than a little crazy and probably drunk and you’ve just absolutely shredded every last bit of credibility you’ve built up by being right about everything for years”.

First of all: Good for you for having strong feelings about this. If we can’t care about the important stuff like how awful Gambit is then what are we even doing here? 

Secondly: Look, all of that is true (not the me being drunk part… as far as you know) but overcoming the black hole of suck that is Gambit and still being the best is testament to HOW COOL the Blue Team was. And this isn’t just the knee-jerk reaction of 12 year old fanboy Ed thinking “WOLVERINE IS SO COOL” (ok, it’s a little bit that), it’s Cyclops being strong leader Cyclops and Beast saying “oh my stars and garters” and fighting Omega Red and Jim Lee and travelling to the Mojoverse toOK FINE IT’S BECAUSE OF THIS DRAWING OF PSYLOCKE IN THIS BATHING SUIT OK!!!!!! 

What can I say? Purple haired British psychics transformed into Japanese assassins by falling through the Siege Perilous except it wasn’t really a transformation because she was sort of mind and body melded/swapped with an entirely different person so her mind and powers were all jumbled and split between two people and the X-Men were just all “well I guess she’s Japanese now, case closed” but then the “real” Psylocke showed up and they fought and something about cybernetic eyes (and maybe the Legacy Virus?) and I’m sure it all got worked out eventually, but by that point I was taking a break from the X-Men so I’m not really sure what wound up happening to her) are a real weak spot for me. I’m complicated. 

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*Having recently seen a Twilight movies (I don’t know which one… the one where they stand around in the woods with furrowed brows and look really worried about stuff. That one.) can I just ask how this is even a fucking question? The pale broody guy who pulls that classic “I love you, that’s why I have to abandon you” bullshit and probably listens to a lot of really sad bastard music and you KNOW he’s always cold and clammy OR the muscly Native American kid who always has your back, does sweet parkour jump kick moves to get up to your second floor window, rarely wears a shirt, and TURNS INTO A TOTALLY RAD FUCKING WOLF (ok, yeah, he’s walking around in jean shorts a lot, but still)? Seriously!?!? How did this stretch out over several movies? Get your shit together frowny, pouty girl. Furrow your brow REAL hard and realize that you have the opportunity to date someone WHO TURNS INTO A GIANT FUCKING WOLF! 

Shatterstar is just SO Shatterstar-y. There’s really no other way to describe him.

You could go on and on about Liefeld or the scourge of the 90s and how headgear and bad hair and shoulder pads and belt/thigh/arm/cock pouches endeavored to DESTROY ALL COMICS.

How gimmick covers and BIG SHOCKING (ultimately meaningless) deaths and 22 pages of splash page pin-ups were acceptable substitutes for plots and character development and good writing. How character development meant giving a character a bigger gun or making him “gritty” and “real”. You could look at Shatterstar and legitimately argue that he’s a walking embodiment of ALL of that. 

But somehow Shatterstar transcends. He takes all of that stuff to the next level SO FUCKING HARD that you can’t help but just sit back, smile, and say “damn… Shatterstar is just SO Shatterstar-y”. 

Also, he has a sword with TWO blades side by side. How you gonna fuck with that? 

Ha HA! Do you see what I’ve done here? I’ve used a pen to write a question after the name of W.H.O. to indicate that I have no idea WHO (GET IT!?!??!) these guys are. This is the absolute HEIGHT of my comedic abilities. Seriously, it is. This is all I have. 

Surprise, they’re associated with Excalibur or something. I’m so sick of those guys. I swear I’ve been reading comics for over 20 years and there was NEVER a time in my life when I cared about Excalibur and yet if these trading cards are any indication they were a BIG DEAL at some point. 

(Also, please spare me your emails, tweets, messages, threats, etc extolling the virtues of any version of Excalibur past, present, or future. I’ll never care. I promise.) 

Gambit in all of his Jim Lee drawn, 3D, hologrammed glory! 

Still terrible. Just the worst. 

Plus Gambit’s from the backwood bayous of Louisiana or something so if he even SAW a hologram he’d probably think it was voodoo magic and try to kill it with fire. What an idiot. 

thedazzlingone:

fuckyeahalisonblaire:

aguywithsomemarvelcards:

This is not a Dazzler that I’m familiar with. 

I know Disco Dazzler. She was pretty cool, but this looks like geared up, paramilitary Dazzler. I don’t know her. 

That said, Dazzler’s powers are pretty cool. She turns sound into light and energy blasts (have Dazzler and Siryn ever teamed up? That’s some Thelma and Louise lady power team-up shit that practically writes itself right there. YOU’RE WELCOME, MARVEL!).

I’d like to have Dazzler’s powers at about 1:45 AM every morning when the bar across the street empties out. Zapping loud, drunk dickheads with energy blasts powered by their own slurred, nonsensical shouting would be really REALLY satisfying. 

Dazz and Siryn have teamed up two times, but I don’t think they were the awesome moments they could have been, though :[ Hopefully, if they do team up again, it’ll be the awesome I know it could be.

Great card :)

Teaming up!

Asked and answered. Thanks, die hard Dazzler fans (and who knew that there were die hard Dazzler fans?).

This is not a Dazzler that I’m familiar with. 

I know Disco Dazzler. She was pretty cool, but this looks like geared up, paramilitary Dazzler. I don’t know her. 

That said, Dazzler’s powers are pretty cool. She turns sound into light and energy blasts (have Dazzler and Siryn ever teamed up? That’s some Thelma and Louise lady power team-up shit that practically writes itself right there. YOU’RE WELCOME, MARVEL!).

I’d like to have Dazzler’s powers at about 1:45 AM every morning when the bar across the street empties out. Zapping loud, drunk dickheads with energy blasts powered by their own slurred, nonsensical shouting would be really REALLY satisfying. 

Question: Who’s more 90s? 

Bishop has the hair (and for an AWESOME write-up about Bishop’s hair check this out) and the big gun, but Maverick has the belts and the ammo and the headgear/mask thing AND the mysterious backstory and shady links to Wolverine’s past (you guys have heard of Wolverine, right? He has a mysterious past in case you didn’t know. At least he did in the 90s). 

Use the ASK PAGE or chime in below. 

The question is: WHO’S MORE 90S?

How much do I dig on Lockheed? 

He’s a product of that shitbox of a super team and weak ass Marvel property Excalibur and I STILL think he’s cool. 

More teams need an animal mascot type character and on that note I would TOTALLY read a Lockjaw/Lockeed team-up. 

Reminder: Gambit is terrible. 

Hang on, let me Gambit that up for you: ”Jus’ so’s you don’ be forgettin’ Gambit is trés terriblé my petite”. 

If your key characteristic is a badly written accent then you’re terrible. 

He’s a guy. He’s really strong. So they called him “Strong Guy”. It’s like something out of a Tick comic. 

Least creative name EVER. 

And I say that knowing full well that this was the same era of Marvel Comics when we were simply calling Jean Grey “Jean Grey”. 

daveloves90scomics:

Lobo’s Back!

Where I bought it: I didn’t!

Where I read it: At my friend’s house

 

What I thought/think: Lobo was a revelation. I can clearly recall the 1st issue of the Last Czarnian mini hanging behind the register on the Expensive Back Issue Wall at my childhood comic book store. The cover was dark, foreboding and a little behind my comprehension. It looked more like an older cousin’s heavy metal album than a comic book cover, with one really confusing wrinkle- the DC “bullet” logo. DC Comics was Superman and Batman, and Wonder Woman, not this scary dude with blood coming out of his mouth. The comic was out of my price range though, so it took another year or so to find out what this Lobo dude was all about. 

After school one day I went over to a kid on my school bus’s house  to read comics. We sat and basically read Lobo out loud, due to us repeating every line that made us laugh, and that was a lot of lines. “Feetel’s gizz!” “Bastiche!” I had never read a comic that was so gleefully maniacal and brutal. Lobo’s Back was about Lobo dying, and then killing his way through both Heaven and Hell until he got reincarnated to eject him out of the afterlife. 

Lobo was my first exposure to Keith Giffen’s writing (along with Alan Grant) and the sinewy powerful art of Simon Bisley. It was my first inkling that comics weren’t just the monthly patrols of super-heroes fighting crime. This was subversive, violent, sacrilegious, and hilarious. It was wonderfully immature in its maturity. It lead me to checking out some of those other weird DC books- like Swamp Thing, and Sandman.

Bee Tee Dubbs, if you enjoy all the comics of yesteryear nostalgia that A Guy With Some Marvel Cards brings and you want to see someone do it a LOT better, more frequently, and on a wider variety of topics You MUST check out Dave Love 90s Comics. 

It’s so good it almost makes me want to just give up on whatever it is I’m doing here. 

He made his own X-Men jean jacket for fuck’s sake. How can I compete with that? 

A lot of things during this era of comics got “grim and gritty” and much of it was needless posturing to try to make comics hardcore and cool and adult. So much of it was incredibly lame and obviously trying too hard. They just made everyone ANGRY. Sometimes for no reason. 

But I don’t care if that’s where this version of Archangel came from because he’s TOTALLY awesome. Trading in your feathery wings for razor sharp tools of death and oh by the way your skin is now blue? Upgrade I say. 

Plus since his wings are all mechanical or whatever the fact that he could fold them up and hide them inside his clothes or that backpack or whatever suddenly made a lot more sense. 

C’mon… The secondary color of his costume is PINK and he’s still fucking hardcore. 

Anonymous asked: You obviously opened the rare Jamie Maddrox pack(s). Be careful, if you keep dropping them you might wind up with a shit ton of Holograms.

That didn’t take long. Someone solved the mystery of the duplicate pack in the nerdiest way possible. 

I love you internet.