Dave interviews writer Paul Jenkins about helping to launch Marvel Knights, writing Wolverine’s Origin, his work on characters like Spider-Man and Sentry, and a whole lot more!
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The Dark Knight Trilogy 15 Years Later: Film & Comic Influences!
The films of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy – Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), The Dark Knight Rises (2012) – are often cited among some of the most influential films in recent memory, certainly responsible for revitalizing the superhero genre in the public consciousness, but perhaps also changing the landscape of big-budget blockbuster Hollywood filmmaking. Nolan’s grounded approach to superhero films, seeped with realism, has influenced every franchise since, for better or worse.
It is easy to note and cite the influences these films have had since their release, but art is not born out of a vacuum. And while I do think “everything is a remix” can be a rather pessimistic way to look at things – if nothing is truly “original,” what is even the point, right? – it is important to look back, not just to gain a deeper understanding of a work, but also to acquire a new outlook with which to look forward.
So, what are the influences of The Dark Knight Trilogy? It is, of course, a marriage of two mediums, taking a character predominantly associated with comic books and bringing him onto the big screen, so it must have had influences from both films and comic books. What films informed the cinematography of this trilogy? And what stories from the character’s rich publication history were mined to tell the tale Nolan et al. were trying to tell with their films?
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Sins of Sinister: Nightcrawlers, X-Men #20, New Mutants: Lethal Legion #1 | Comic Book Herald Live!
On my weekly livestream, Casual Krakoa Live, I review the week’s X-Men comics, and answer big questions about what’s going on with Marvel’s merry mutants! You can listen or watch below:
This week we’re jumping 100 years into the Sins of Sinister, and talking about the rest of what’s interesting in the day’s comics!
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2002 Variant A: Ant-Man & Wasp Quantumania TAKEDOWN!
Dave, Charlotte and Zack review the MCU’s latest: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania!
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Steve Orlando’s Marauders #1-5—Annotated!
Marauders #1-5
Credits: Steve Orlando writes; Eleonora Carlini draws #1-4, Andrea Broccardo on issue #5; Matt Milla colors; Ariana Maher letters; covers by Kael Ngu
By turns poignant and silly, rousing and baffling, Steve Orlando’s Marauders is, regardless of your stance, chock-full of fascinating pulls from and allusions to Silver and Bronze Age X-Men comics—and of course, the greatest era of all, the x-treme ’90s. Steve is trying to do a lot with this title, cramming in all he can as if he might not get to keep it for more than a year; and these days, who knows. He’s in the big leagues now and making a name for himself at Marvel, the chance of a lifetime. So, he’s got to make his mark quick, and do it splashy, garish and even ghoulish—because that’s what we remember, plus his distinctive surname that keeps popping up on covers across the MU. Nowadays, even seasoned vets aren’t guaranteed more than half a year on any given title, so Steve’s frenetic penchant for everything and the kitchen sink makes sense—indeed, it’s strategic.
Really, who can say—We might be witnessing the stewing up of the primordial soup of the Orlando-verse, just as there was the Hickman-verse of the 2010s and now the Ewing-verse coming to fruition in the 2020s. Will the 2030s be Steve Orlando’s?
Again, who knows—but Steve is clearly having a lot of fun giving fans old and new endless Easter egg hunts, and all this mulching could one day become a lush wild garden from which to pick many a season’s harvest. And whether or not he is one of those future gardeners (Elder of the MU or not), he’s still bequeathing those creators much to chew on if time is taken to unpack his compressed ideas and oddball character beats.
That said, I’m betting that the Shi’ar elements, particularly Xandra, will be more fully folded into the story of Krakoa later this year with the “Fall of X.”
So, let’s look at some of what he’s been drawing from and see if we can suss out where it all might be going… starting with Marauders #1-4. At the very least, you’ll discover or rediscover some fun comics, however classic or pure rubbish or both, along the way.
The question for Orlando is what he might do with all this mulch, when a majority of these obscure pulls get more focus instead of feeling like tossed off moments that have the feel of gratuitous referentiality.
That said, the first arc does open with such a moment that is definitely saved by the poignancy of its pathos…
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