The Age of Ultron Trailer

The trailer for ‘Avengers 2′ leaked online this week and it features footage of James Spader as Ultron. Forgetting everything else that the trailer shows, James Spader is enough to get you excited for next year. Marvel being the good sports that they are, reacted humorously to the leak and the proceeded to release the official version a week earlier than planned.

Dammit, Hydra.

— Marvel Entertainment (@Marvel) October 22, 2014

The Avengers 2: Age of Ultron starts as Tony Stark’s attempt to kickstart a dormant peacekeeping program of his opens results in the emergence of Ultron. An artificial intelligence who has terrible plans for humanity. While many fans of the comics were miffed as to why Ultron is a result of Stark instead of Hank Pym, the new trailer makes it appear as if everything is going to be OK.

If you haven’t yet seen the trailer then I won’t spoil it for you. It’s better just to watch it and feel the electrons pulse through your body as the excitement kicks in. I always say to people that I don’t get that excited for the movies because I’m more of a comic book guy but this trailer really has me excited. With over 5 million views in less than 12 hours, I’m guessing a hell of a lot of people feel the same.

Who’s better?

There’s an age old question amongst comic book fans. Who’s better? Marvel or DC? For decades fans have debated over which of the big two was better and I have no doubt they will continue to debate it for much longer. Both sides have a plethora of characters and have developed some spectacular stories over the years so it can be hard to really decide who would come up trumps in a battle.

For me my favourite comic of all time is Watchmen without a doubt. What Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons accomplished was a timeless and fantastic piece of fiction which really stands out for me as the greatest ever put in comic format. It is deep and it shows the vulnerability and frailty of humanity in a way which I had never seen before. Alan Moore tells a story which I feel a lot of comic writers now look back on and take inspiration from. It’s an emotionally charge, high octane piece of literature which was brought to life by Dave Gibbons in the most fantastical way.

For me when trying to decide who I think is better out of Marvel and DC I always go to Watchmen and it sways me towards DC. However, I really think that overall Marvel could be the greater of the two. Spiderman, and the Secret Invasion and Civil war series’ are genius. Marvel has always tried to maintain its continuity within universe whereas DC only started worrying about their continuity in the mid 80’s.

Here’s another point and one which I will probably get a lot of flack for but…………..I don’t like Superman. I think that when he died he should have stayed dead. Superman at no point earned his powers, he’s too strong. He basically has every power that you could want and it just makes for awful story telling. For me Superman stories are at their best when he isn’t invincible. I also don’t think you can call Superman a hero, in my mind heroes are people who sacrifice themselves selflessly, Superman can’t sacrifice himself because he’s not sacrificial 99% of the time and when he is it’s because of kryptonite which he isn’t even aware that it’s there at first.

Watchmen puts DC up in the ranks for me but Superman brings it straight back down.

I spoke to one of my friends Chris about this because I didn’t want to put up a blog without getting other opinions on this but strangely enough he’s also a Marvel fan so it made it pointless.

I’m in no way saying that DC isn’t good because of course it is, they have Batman and they published Watchmen. They just don’t impress me on a regular enough basis.