Hulk vs Thor

Changes are inevitable in adaptations. And sometimes, even when a specific story is adapted, the changes made to the story can sometimes be adapted back into a different story. 

Planet Hulk is a perfect example.

"Planet Hulk" was a 2006 storyline in which the Illuminati (an organization of Marvel bigwigs that have their noses in everything) exiled the Hulk to space, where he landed on the planet Sakaar and was forced into gladiatorial combat. Most notably, he had to fight the Silver Surfer.

When Planet Hulk was turned into an animated movie (2010), Silver Surfer was replaced with Beta Ray Bill, who is essentially an alien Thor. (In case you're unfamiliar with Beta Ray Bill, the short version is that he took over as Thor briefly, then Odin gave him his own hammer called Stormbreaker).

"Planet Hulk" was also a large part of Thor: Ragnarok (2017). In this case, Hulk fought actual Thor.

This scene in particular made a huge splash with fans, particularly because of a line Thor says where he's excited Hulk shows up ("Yes! I know him! He's a friend from work."), which was suggested by a fan during a set visit.

So when Incredible Hulk #711 (December 2017) decided to revisit Sakaar's gladiatorial games - no doubt to coincide with the movie, which came out in November - they had the new Hulk (Amadeus Cho) fight Odinson (an unworthy Thor). Except they twisted it a bit by reversing the roles - they even give Hulk the "friends" line!

What's most interesting is that Greg Pak wrote both the original Planet Hulk storyline and this one!

Character Spotlight: Burne Thompson

The current run of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics by IDW is trying to more or less be the definitive TMNT story by synthesizing all the Ninja Turtles media that came before it. As such, that means it has had a ton of canon immigrants and will continue to have many more.

This week: Burne Thompson!

Burne debuted in the first episode of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series, aka "Turtles Tracks" (1987), where he was the editor of Channel 6 News. In other words, he was April's boss, and often provided sort of a J. Jonah Jameson-type role.

He made his comics debut in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #78 (January 2017), although the comics version is just a reporter instead of the editor.

The Maybe File: Jason Todd's Resurrection

Posts on this site are not always cut-and-dried (or on time; sorry it's late this week!). I wish they were. And there are definitely a lot of entries that should either clearly be on the site or should clearly not be, but there are also a lot of maybes, and including them comes down to a judgment call. This one is by far the maybe-est. In fact, I'm creating a new category just for it, because it's close enough that I wouldn't feel right not including it, but still hazy enough that I feel like including it is cheating a bit. So I'm including it with a big caveat.

This week in The Maybe File: Jason Todd's resurrection.

The quick and dirty backstory on Jason Todd is that he was the second Robin, who Batman met when he tried to steal the Batmobile's hubcaps. Jason was more violent and reckless, and fans voted for the Joker to kill him. He stayed dead for almost twenty years when he came back as the Red Hood (Joker's original identity).

Here's where it gets weird: to explain how he came back, along with other incongruities in the DC Universe, the event Infinite Crisis (2006) said that Superboy-Prime punched the walls of reality and the reverberations caused events and details to change throughout time and space.

I know.

That's not a story that's very conducive to adaptations, so when it came time to turn the Red Hood storyline into Batman: Under the Red Hood (June 2010), they said Ra's al-Ghul brought Jason back to life with one of his Lazarus Pits. He felt responsible for Jason's death since the only reason Joker was around to kill him was because al-Ghul had hired him.

That same month, a miniseries called Red Hood: The Lost Days came out that filled in the gaps between his death and return. It doesn't explain how Jason was returned to life, but Talia al-Ghul did use the Lazarus Pits to restore his health and memories.

And in the New 52, he was specifically brought back to life by the Lazarus Pits, which was first mentioned in Red Hood and the Outlaws #0 (September 2012).

This evidence is in no way conclusive. On one hand, the Lazarus Pits are a pretty effective, already existent, on-franchise method of replacing the Superboy punches; I'm a little surprised they didn't go with that to begin with. On the other hand, the timing of Red Hood: The Lost Days is such that it pretty much has to be some planned synergy. But on the first hand again, that miniseries didn't replace the Superboy punches so much as add to them. And to add to the confusion, the same person wrote the original Red Hood story and the movie, and although he didn't write Red Hood and the Outlaws, he did write several Batman books in the New 52 so he may have had some influence.

Appearance Spotlight: Valkyrie

In April (2018), Marvel will be releasing a new volume of Exiles, a series about a group of people from various alternate realities teaming up to save the multiverse. When they first announced the new series last week, their image showed Iron Lad, Khan, Blink, and Wolvie, but it had a mystery character blacked out. On Monday, they revealed who the mystery character was: Valkyrie!

But a very different Valkyrie than readers are used to. See, normally Valkyrie is white girl with two long, blonde braids and armor that is similar to Thor's.

The Exiles Valkyrie isn't based on that version, though. Instead, she's based on the version seen in Thor: Ragnarok (2017). She has the same skin color, armor design, and eye markings. Also, it's hard to tell in this picture, but she has a blue cape that matches the Exiles character as well.

As far as I can tell from interviews, this Valkyrie is meant to be the MCU Valkyrie, or at least as close to it as possible. It's common for Marvel alternate universes to have several other universes that are practically indistinguishable from them, for the purposes of having drastic things happen to familiar universes while keeping the "main" one the same. This - as far as I know, at least - is the first time the MCU has received one of those adjacent universes.

Item Spotlight: Infinity Stones

These are the Infinity Gems. They have a long history in Marvel Comics, beginning in Marvel Premiere #1 (February 1972), when the Soul Gem first appeared. The rest of them appeared during The Power of Warlock (1972) and were originally called Soul Gems as a group. In The Thanos Quest (1990), Thanos changes the name to Infinity Gems since only one of them controls the soul.

In the MCU, Infinity Stones (note they're not called gems) first confirmed to exist in Thor: The Dark World (2013). However, that's not the first time one appeared.

The Tesseract (aka the Cosmic Cube in the comics) was first mentioned in Iron Man 2 (2010), first appeared in the post-credits scene of Thor (2011), played a major role in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), and then was first confirmed as an Infinity Stone in Thor: The Dark World (2013). At some point, probably in an interview, the Tesseract was confirmed to be the Space Stone.

The Aether first appeared in Thor: The Dark World (2013). At some point, it was revealed to be the Reality Stone.

The Orb first appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). It was confirmed to be the Power Stone.

The Mind Stone first appeared (sort of) as the Scepter in The Avengers (2012). The Mind Stone itself was first alluded to in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), and then first appeared in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). As the gem that powers the Vision, it was combined with the Sunstone from the comics.

The Time Stone was first alluded to in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), then first appeared as the center of the Eye of Agamotto in Doctor Strange (2016).

The Soul Stone (which is orange) has not appeared yet.

As you may have noticed, the colors of the Infinity Stones do not match the colors of the Infinity Gems. Keep that in mind below.

In the Marvel Universe, the universe was rewritten following Secret Wars. In practice, this doesn't mean much. No previous Marvel stories have been erased from existence. But it does allow them to change a few things going forward, and one of those changes is that Infinity Gems are now Infinity Stones. Other properties have changed as well.

They started reappearing in Marvel Legacy #1 (September 2017) with this blue stone.

The next one to appear was this giant purple stone in Guardians of the Galaxy #147 (November 2017). The writer says it's so big because of how much energy it has, but that it can be compressed.

Captain Marvel #126 (November 2017) debuted the next stone, a red one that was found in another reality.

The most recent one was also the first to be specifically named: the Time Stone. As you can see, it is now green. It showed up in Thanos #13 (December 2017). Interestingly, only a piece of it has been found so far, and it was found in the future.

Infinity Countdown Prime #1 (February 2018) shows that Turk Barrett has the Mind Stone...

...and Magus has the Soul Stone, until it's taken by Ultron.