Fun in the Sun

As we mentioned on Monday, everybody is getting ready for New York City Comic Con, which means the news blitz is in full force. DC definitely grabbed the headlines on Monday by announcing that The New 52’s version of Wonder Woman will have a new SPOILER origin. (I love how the Comic Alliance headline makes a big deal warning about the spoiler but then has it in the url.) We at Ret-Conned immediately started to wonder how this would unfold.

We’ve already commented on how we love the closer ties that the new Wonder Woman series has to Greek mythology. In the Justice League Unlimited cartoon, Wonder Woman was the daughter of Hades and the best thing about last year’s The Odyssey storyline in the old Wonder Woman book was the indication this was again true. Taking that concept and tweaking it by moving her father up the metaphorical Greek god food chain is perfectly acceptable to us. The PR spin that this makes Wonder Woman more accessible is a nice sound bite, but I don’t think its anything more than that. In this day and age, I think that Diana never having a father figure is as accessible and relatable as her having a father figure that is a womanizer who cares little for his children. I think the conversation that led to this decision started less like “You know what would make Wonder Woman more accessible?” and more like “You know what would make Wonder Woman really freaking cool?”, but that doesn’t work as well in a press release. The story possibilities that could occur because of this one change are really exciting to consider.

While DC might have dominated the news on Monday, Marvel definitely took it on Tuesday by releasing the first trailer for The Avengers. If you were hoping for a movie with lots of explosions, expansive fight scenes, and zinging one-liners between the main cast, then it looks like you hit the jackpot. Granted, the one-liners primarily come from Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark, who dominated the majority of the spoken lines in the trailer. The trailer did a good job of indicating the major global threat without giving away what that threat actually is. We definitely know that Loki is involved and that there’s something in the air, but beyond that things are still a mystery. So, basically we know exactly what we knew before the trailer comes out. If you weren’t already excited for this movie, then the trailer will definitely make you so. I also find it really funny that at the end of the trailer when they give the movie’s name, release date, and website they also include the movie’s official hashtag. Twitter is not shown on the screen so it’s only meaningful for people who know what #AWord would mean. Does this mean that Twitter hashtags have become that mainstream or is this a nod to the nerd centric community that the trailer is designed for?