your COMPLETE 164-page guide to movies, tv and comics
the top superhero mor vies as voted fo by you!
stan “the man” lee
answers your questions!
2014 film previews THE amazing spider-man 2! captain america 2!
x-men: days of future past! guardians of the galaxy! the best tv superhero marvel’s agents of shield ARROW 1970s classics! shows too! The lowdown on the new tv sensation
Cast and crew spill new season secrets
PLUS! thor: the dark world • superman iv the fantastic four • howard the duck • more!
Hulk, Spidey and the cap’s crazy days
printed in the uk
sfx bookazine 5: superheroes
£9.99
FROM THE MAKERS OF
MAGAZINE
CONTENTS 8
8 Thor: The Dark World Stars and director give us the lowdown on the next blockbuster Marvel movie.
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14 The Top 50 Superhero Movies Of All Time You voted in your thousands and the results are in.
20 Captain America: The Winter Soldier Previewing Cap’s next solo outing.
24 Captain America (1990) We look back at the infamous mini-budget outing of the star-spangled Avenger.
28 The Amazing Spider-Man 2 All you need to know about the forthcoming Spidey movie.
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34 Villains Made Movie Suitable They’ve souped Electro up – so here are our suggestions for how they could soup up a few more Spidey baddies.
36 Spider-Man TV Animation Compendium An in-depth look at the eight Spider-Man animated TV series that have come to television since the late ’60s.
44 X-Men: Days Of Future Past The big names discuss next year’s mutant “inbetweenquel” – and it sounds ace.
50 Stan Lee Fannish Inquisition The great man answers your searching questions.
56 The Lego Movie Previewing the movie that brings together Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman!
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SFX presents
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The Ultimate Guide To Superheroes
44 Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
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98 58 Foreign Superhero Films Unusual and eccentric costumed types from all around the globe.
60 Future Shockers The future of films according to us, plus the comic book superheroes we’d love to see on the silver screen.
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112 84 The Insane World Of Superman Comics
148
A gallery of the craziest Man of Steel comic book covers.
88 Double Take
124 Supervillains On The Couch
The movie scenes that have recreated comic strip panels to the letter.
So what would a psychologist’s analysis be after checking out these bad guys?
62 Guardians Of The Galaxy
90 Picture Perfect
Will next year’s Marvel mega-movie be able to emulate the success of Avengers Assemble?
Why comic artists are up there with the greats of the art world.
68 Mego Toys
94 If Superheroes Existed
Prepare for a nostalgic journey back to the days of your childhood.
How exactly would superheroes cope in realworld situations?
72 Arrow
98 Marvel’s Agents Of SHIELD
Looking forward to the second season of TV’s Green Arrow adaptation.
We check out the most exciting new TV series in years.
76 SFX’s Best Superhero Covers
102 The Fantastic Four (1994)
SFX art editor Jon Coates chooses his favourite front pages.
The amazing story of the Marvel movie that was never intended to be released.
78 The Avengers
106 Non-buff Superheroes
We test the great British public on their knowledge of the superhero team.
Not all super-powered types have been down the gym…
80 Superman IV: The Quest For Peace
108 Third World Superheroes
Looking back at the movie that sent Superman crashing to Earth.
A fascinating insight into the likes of the Hindi Superman and the Turkish Batman.
126 Howard The Duck How did George Lucas and Marvel get it so wrong back in the ’80s?
Speaking to the folk who create weekends of extreme fun.
136 When McCartney Met Kirby The strange tale of the ex-Beatle and the Marvel maestro.
138 Super Graphic Exclusive extracts from a fabulous new graphics book.
146 Adult Superhero Spoofs How Vivid is putting Batman, Superman and Spider-Man into somewhat spicier situations.
Remembering The Incredible Hulk, The Amazing Spider-Man, Dr Strange and Captain America on the small screen.
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The director – plus Simon Pegg and Nick Frost – chat about 2015’s tiny blockbuster.
132 Comic Conventions
112 Seventies TV
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130 Edgar Wright & Ant-Man
148 The Team’s Favourite Movies The people who made this magazine name their top flicks.
118 Bizarre Bad Guys
150 Review Zone
Comic books’ oddest and craziest creations from over the years.
Reprinting ten classic SFX reviews – and seeing whether the original reviewers stand by their original comments.
120 The What If…? Comic A close look at the Marvel mag that presented alternate – and fairly bloody – histories for major characters.
162 Ratings Quiz How well do you know your BBFC advice? Take our quiz to find out.
SFX presents
The Ultimate Guide To Superheroes 7
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CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER
The forthcoming sequel to Captain America promises action, new sidekicks and plenty of moral dilemmas WORDS BY TARA BENNETT
W
hen we last saw Captain America on film, he was chowing down on shawarma, basking in the glow of not only a global victory, but finding his footing on a personal level as well. Thawed out and revived at the end of Captain America, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) spent a good chunk of Avengers Assemble trying to navigate the modern world; a walking anachronism from a bygone age. But Cap’s crisis of purpose is gone when he returns in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The new adventure places Rogers in Washington, DC, where he and Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) get entangled in a conspiracy that threatens his very existence. Directed by brothers Anthony and Joe Russo, The Winter Soldier is just as much of a departure as the period era of the first film was. Joe Russo classifies this instalment as more of a ’70s thriller. “The movie is very different in tone,” Joe explains. “The first film is a wonderful love letter to the origin of Cap and the time period.
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But Cap is now in the modern world so it’s a political thriller – it’s as modern, edgy and aggressive as it could be. You can’t have thrills in a thriller unless the characters have real stakes and jeopardy, so Cap gets put through a lot. It’s action-heavy and very intense.” Now based at the hub of all things military and political, Rogers finds his personal struggle emanating
from the complexity of threats in today’s world. The black and white, good and bad model of villainy is gone; his lack of trust for Nick Fury and SHIELD means Rogers has to find his own moral high ground in a very grey world. For Chris Evans, that struggle has been his favourite aspect of Steve’s new journey. “To be candid, that’s
Concept art showing how Steve and Bucky might slug it out.
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2014 is shaping up to be a year of amazing superhero movies, and they don’t come more X-citing than a new X-Men film… WORDS BY RICHARD EDWARDS
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X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST
CAST AND DIRECTOR INTERVIEWS!
Could this be the last time we see Jackman as the Wolverine?
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“DAYS OF FUTURE PAST SHOULD BE THE CINEMATIC GLUE THAT BONDS THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY WITH ITS YOUNG UPSTART OF A SEQUEL”
he bookazine you’re reading probably wouldn’t exist without the original X-Men movie. Living on the Earth (616, presumably) of 2013 that might seem an odd thing to say, but back when Twentieth Century Fox took a punt on adapting Marvel’s long-running mutant saga, it all seemed a bit of a gamble. At the turn of the millennium, superhero movies were far from the licence to print money they are now, with the Caped Crusader franchise disgraced by the über-camp, pun-ravaged neon-overload of Batman & Robin, and Superman still in recovery after his misjudged Quest For Peace. Okay, Wesley Snipes’s Blade had made a decent stab at adapting a Marvel property a couple of years earlier (bizarrely, only the second House of Ideas character to get a theatrical outing – the
first was, er, Howard the Duck), but the Night Walker was a lesser comic book character aiming for a more niche, R-rated audience. X-Men was a rather bigger kettle of mutant fish – even if its budget was fairly modest for a summer blockbuster – and heaped a load of pressure on Bryan Singer, at that point best known for directing the masterpiece that is The Usual Suspects. Singer was up to the task, however, and turned the movie into a hit by mixing unashamed respect for the source material, with a determination to ground the story in the real world. X-Men may have existed in a near-future populated by people who could control weather or bend metal with their minds, but you were never in any doubt that the movie believed in its reality 100%. Singer also had the wisdom to hire some of the finest actors on the planet, putting Shakespearean legends (now both knights of the realm) Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in two of the lead roles, as sparring former
allies Professor X and Magneto. These days, every leading actor of advancing years – from Robert Redford to Anthony Hopkins, from Michael Caine to Martin Sheen – is queuing up to get their own piece of superhero action. By the time the superior X-Men 2 came out in 2003, Spider-Man had also conquered the box office and all the studios were looking for their own piece of superhero pie. The X-franchise continued to flourish financially after Singer’s departure to direct Superman Returns, with X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009). While there was nothing wrong with the box office numbers, however, the post-Singer mutants had met a creative dead end. Then, along came prequel movie First Class (2011), which went back to the days when Professor X and Magneto were simply Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, with a new, younger cast and a cool, Bondish ’60s vibe provided by Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn (who had
SFX presents
The Ultimate Guide To Superheroes 45
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Let’s celebrate 18 years of fantastic superhero coverage
A RUSS
JON
s you will see from this spread, SFX has done a fair few superhero covers over the years. And Art Editor Jonathan Coates has been responsible for a lot of them (all from issue 125 onwards to be precise). So we’ve got Jon to pick his top six covers from SFX’s history, so him and Production Editor Russell Lewin can discuss the merits of each of them. Don your mask, adjust your cape, we’re going in…
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The Ultimate Guide To Superheroes
9/11/13 5:08 PM
SFX COVERS
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Jon: I like the sense of movement in it, particularly the depth that’s created with the Chrysler Building background. Also I like the big powerful headline: “Spider-Man 2 Spectacular!” The webs are very effective, the way he’s swinging in. Russ: The webs sort of dissect the cover diagonally, don’t they? And you’ve also got that line forming the triangle in the top left in parallel with it – I wonder whether that was deliberate? Jon: Mind, it’s got a lot of crotch action. Maybe slightly more than I would have liked.
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“I like the smoky effect, it’s quite mysterious”
SFX #133 Fantastic Four
Jon: It’s got the foreshortening effect of the giant, out-of-proportion fist – anything with a big fist gets my vote. There’s also the interaction with the logo, with particles flying around the place. Russ: That’s great isn’t it, it reminds me of Marvel comics I used to read, when sometimes they’d smash the logo or do something to it. Jon: Note the shadow in the middle of the word “clobberin’” to add more depth to it. Hopefully it stood out on the newsstand. Russ: The cover’s better than the film.
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SFX #119 Spider-Man 2
SFX #172 The Dark Knight
Russ: Before I worked on SFX I remember seeing this on the newsstands – I thought it was a really striking cover. Jon: Maybe you thought it was an error! Russ: Yeah, someone’s written all over it! No, I think it’s effective and daring. Which is why you like it? Jon: Yeah. It was created in an unusual way – we did it as a real collage and then scanned the collage in. Russ: Was it controversial at the time? Did the editor worry? Jon: Not so much with Dave, more Warner Bros. I remember the two of us being sat in a little room waiting for Warners to phone to give us either the thumbs up or thumbs down. Russ: So they had approval on this cover? Jon: They did and in the end the only thing they asked us to change was not having the Joker’s face over Batman’s. Russ: It’s a very textured cover. You can look at it for a long time. Jon: And I’m not sure we’d get away with this now.
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Origins: 4 X-Men Wolverine SFX #179
Jon: Doesn’t he look young? And his hair is quite coiffed, he’s a well groomed Wolverine. I do like the image, the claws are nice to work with because you can have them run over the text and they don’t obliterate too much of it. Russ: You had fun with the logo. Jon: Yes, a chopped metal effect at the top. Russ: And there’s the “SEX” thing, if you wished to perceive it that way… How aware are you about the whole obscuring the bottom of the F of SFX generally? Jon: All I would say is I probably do it as much as I can, as I know it appeals to certain people and it’s been picked up in the past. It’s kind of fun and I don’t think it’s damaged the mag in any way. Personally I don’t see it as “SEX” as I’m so used to seeing SFX as a logo – but lots of people do, so from that point of view it amuses me to do it.
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SFX #211 Captain America: The First Avenger Russ: Just the one image here, which we don’t do much nowadays. Jon: Yes, it’s quite minimal in a way. I like the image – it’s a bit atypical in that he’s not looking directly at the viewer. I think that’s why we decided to give it the feel of a sort of WW2 recruitment poster – it’s like a classic hero shot. It’s shot from quite low down, the way he’s looking up, the addition of the clouds and the flag effect… Russ: Did you put the planes on? Jon: Yeah, I put all of that on. I think originally it was just a standard studio shot. And I think it works with that “Do your duty!” copy. Russ: And there’s the “enlist now” line, keeping in with the war poster vibe.
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SFX #68 X-Men
Russ: So we have three foxy ladies here… Jon: Yes, and they work well as a group. I imagine they were provided as three separate shots but they work well together and the lighting’s quite interesting. I like the smoky effect, it’s quite mysterious. Russ: A couple of things look odd to me: look at that “Hippies With Nukes” line – why’s it on there in that position? And the Kevin Bacon line – “goes nude in Hollow Man” and “unfortunately he’s invisible” – it’s trying to appeal to women in a way, contrasting with the appeal of the X-ladies. You wonder whether they did that because they wanted to “rebalance” the cover’s appeal.
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AND
TO KNOW
Forget Magneto, Joker and Loki – here’s a collection of the most vacuous villains ever penned WORDS BY JONNY WILKES
KITE-MAN
THE SPOT
HYPNO-HUSTLER
THE TEN-EYED MAN
FIRST APPEARANCE
FIRST APPEARANCE
Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man #24
POWERS
WHY BIZARRE?
As lead singer of the Mercy Killers, Hypno-Hustler (aka Antoine Desloin) was the genius behind the plan of hypnotising his audiences and robbing them. The only hitch is that if his headphones are removed his own music can hypnotise him!
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FIRST APPEARANCE Batman #133
Able to hypnotise people with his guitar playing. Must be like listening to Coldplay…
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Batman #226
POWERS
He has kites. Lots of kites.
WHY BIZARRE?
A master of the aircraft most commonly associated with Mary Poppins or Charlie Brown, KiteMan – real name Charles Brown! – flies using a kite, uses small kites to attack his enemies and is defeated by Batman. Using a kite.
The Ultimate Guide To Superheroes
POWERS
FIRST APPEARANCE
WHY BIZARRE?
POWERS
He can see through optic nerves in his fingertips.
Special Forces soldier Philip Reardon’s sight was damaged by a grenade blast in Vietnam. Never fear, his optic nerves were reattached to his fingers giving him full 360-degree sight. A villain with no drawbacks, except it hurts when he catches things thrown at him by Batman.
Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man #97
He can move himself, or bits of himself, by creating spots leading to another dimension. Think Portal.
WHY BIZARRE?
It’s a fantastic concept for a villain but he does look like a Dalmatian, and is defeated by a Spider-Man who barely breaks a sweat.
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BIZARRE BAD GUYS
CODPIECE
ANIMAL-VEGETABLEMINERAL MAN FIRST APPEARANCE The Doom Patrol #89
POWERS
FIRST APPEARANCE The Doom Patrol #70
POWERS
He can change any part of his body into pretty much anything.
He has a robotic suit with a special weapon where his other special weapon is.
WHY BIZARRE?
WHY BIZARRE?
After falling into a vat of acid (classic), Dr Sven Larsen realises he can turn his leg into a tree and his entire left side into a dinosaur. But look at him. He’s hardly Mystique, is he?
He’s called Codpiece. He has a transferable weapon attached to his groin. It can be a cannon, boxing glove, drill, ultrasound emitter and even scissors, making him a Swiss Army Groin.
THE FIDDLER
SNOW FLAME
FIRST APPEARANCE All-Flash #32
FIRST APPEARANCE New Guardians #2
POWERS
After taking cocaine he has super strength and is covered in white fire. So remember, just say no, kids.
WHY BIZARRE?
This man has a serious drug problem and what do the New Guardians do? Beat him up. He needs their help, not violence.
MATTER-EATER LAD
POWERS
He takes on the Fastest Man Alive with his mind-controlling violin. He should team up with Hypno-Hustler and form the worst band ever. Or is that the best band ever?
WHY BIZARRE?
You did not read it incorrectly. We’re not talking about the Riddler here. This is the Fiddler. The Violin Villain. Oh, and he has a Fiddle-Mobile.
ALMIGHTY DOLLAR
SQUIRREL GIRL THE CLOCK KING
FIRST APPEARANCE Marvel Super-Heroes #8
FIRST APPEARANCE
FIRST APPEARANCE
POWERS
POWERS
Star Spangled Comics #70
None. But he has got an excellent skill for time management.
WHY BIZARRE?
He had a makeover to make him a bit less pathetic and actually give him powers, but the original William Tockman is a ticking time bomb of a bad villain.
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Adventure Comics #303
Able to eat all matter quickly.
WHY BIZARRE?
One shudders at the thought of what his trips to the men’s room are like. He’s an alien from the planet of Bismoll – their oceans are presumably bright pink and called Pepto-Bismoll.
POWERS
Squirrel teeth, claws and a tail allowing her to climb trees. She can also communicate with squirrels.
FIRST APPEARANCE
WHY BIZARRE?
POWERS
Doreen Green’s powers are a little too effective to be plausible. She’s saved Iron Man from Doctor Doom and has also taken down Deadpool and Wolverine. Always accompanied by either Monkey Joe or Tippy-Toe, Squirrel Girl is way too successful at beating bad guys.
SFX presents
NFL Superpro #10
Has the ability to shoot pennies from his wrists.
WHY BIZARRE?
Almighty Dollar, also called J Pennington Pennypacker, must surely be every homeless person’s favourite supertype.
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QUIZ
Blastermind
SPECIAL How well do you know your graphic superhero content? That well, eh? Go on then, match the BBFC’s remarks to the film WORDS BY JONNY WILKES
MOVIES BBFC DESCRIPTIONS
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) The Dark Knight (2008) Kick-Ass (2010) X-Men: First Class (2011) Avengers Assemble (2012) Dredd (2012) Green Lantern (2011) The Dark Knight Rises (2012) The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) Iron Man 3 (2013)
A A laboratory animal is seen chewing what appears to be the bloody remains of another creature. B In one scene a man pulls a woman’s head towards his crutch, after which we see blood around her mouth, implying she has bitten off his penis. C In one scene, a scientist is stabbed in the face with a hypodermic needle by an unseen force. D The major action sequences feature small CGI-generated creatures which variously menace the heroes. E Characters are seen to explode but without gory detail. F The film contains some mild bad language, such as “hell”, “damn”, “ass”, “son of a bitch”, “pissed off”, “bastards” and “quim”. G Most of the violent scenes show bloody spray from gunshot wounds as well as the occasional severing of limbs, cutting of throats or stabbing of hands. H A coin on its edge is seen to fly at and enter a villain’s forehead, then exit the back of his skull, killing him. I Contains some special make-up effects that whilst clearly not real, have the potential to be moderately frightening. J One sequence sees the sustained beating of one character by another but the scene serves to emphasise the powerful and ruthless nature of the attacker rather than presenting sadism for its own sake.
I The Dark Knight. J The Dark Knight Rises A The Amazing Spider-Man. B Dredd. C Green Lantern. D Hellboy II: The Golden Army. E Iron Man 3. F Avengers Assemble. G Kick-Ass. H X-Men: First Class.
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ANSWERS 162
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The Ultimate Guide To Superheroes
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