The Longest Week's Features

There is but one thing on my mind this week.  Anyone who knows me (or read our last post) ought to realize that is the upcoming release of The Avengers this Friday.  My excitement has left me unable to keep from talking about the potential of the film, remembering what it was that I walked into the other room for or get a decent night’s sleep.

In an effort to calm myself down, I have tried to remind myself that not everything Avengers related has always been a hit in my book (and that doesn’t even include the Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman movie from 1998).  Thus, while the weekly features will be Avengers-laden, our top five list looks to temper my fan-boy instinct by chronicling the five lamest Avengers in my opinion complete with the link to their page on the Mrvel Universe site.

5. Machine Man – His most redeeming qualities are the fact that he was developed as a militaristic weapon (sort of dark) and that his original name was X-51 (X-Men-esque).  Other than that, it’s a pretty lame name and the original drawings look like he’s basically a slightly tougher version of Inspector Gadget.

4. Stingray – The Aquaman of the Marvel Universe, Stingray, it appears, was only included as a member of the Avengers because the team needed an underwater lair to crash at for awhile.

3. Two-Gun Kid – Time traveling western cowboy.  Whaaaa?  The horrific grammar on the official Marvel Universe entry goes to show that this entry into Avengers’ history has been washed over.

2. Henry Pym – Call him Giant-Man, Goliath, Ant-Man, Yellowjacket or just plain old Hank.  It doesn’t matter.  Sure he was a founding member, created the revolutionary Pym particles and continues to be one of the most intelligent men in the Marvel Universe, but his insecurities and his past domestic abuse make Henry Pym a loser in my book.

1. Starfox – Sadly, this is not the anthropomorphic Nintendo character that we all know and love.  This ginger-haired, sprite looking man travels the universe in search of adventure (cool) and romance (yuck) and his primary super-human ability seems to be his “pleasure powers.”  I don’t know about you, but I don’t even want to see that in action.

This week’s cool-ass thing you will never own is Mjolnir.  The inscription right on the legendary hammer itself reads like an owner’s manual.  It can only be possessed by one who is worthy to possess the powers of Thor.  I have yet to meet anyone, including me.

This week’s sign you are a nerd is that you will be attending a screening of the film with a group of friends, each dressed as an Avenger form the movie.  Since it’s unlikely your group found a female to attend the movie, I feel bad for the guy who has to wear the Black Widow costume.  Then again, maybe he’s cool with it.  In that case, more power to him.

This week’s nemesis is this week.  That is not a typo.  This will prove to be one of the longest week’s of my life as I count down the hours, nay, the minutes to the time when I might be lucky enough to sit in a darkened movie theater and behold the glory that is sure to be Joss Whedon’s Marvel mash-up.

This week’s lesson learned is that eating a meat-lover’s pizza after midnight sounds like a better idea than it is.  Hearing that my brother in an unnamed foreign country was going to be able to see The Avengers an entire week before I could Saturday night was hard to take.  The fact that I consoled myself with food as detailed above made the night even rougher.

This week’s analysis looks at one aspect of the make-up of the comic book Avengers over the years…

Finally, this week’s Star Wars quote celebrates the upcoming Star Wars Day (May the fourth), “May the Force be with you.”

Thanks for reading.  Be sure to keep visiting and watch for my review of The Avengers after seeing it this weekend.