Character Spotlight: Codec

It's no longer June, but Agents of ATLAS Month continues! Greg Pak apparently doesn't mess around when he makes a series about Marvel's Asian superheroes, so there are more canon immigrants than the ones who were advertised. We'll talk about one of them today, and who knows, there might be more next week.

In April 2017, a new series called Marvel Future Avengers debuted in Shogakukan’s Bessatsu Coro Coro Comics Special. An animated series debuted in July 2017. Both follow a kid named Makoto, who was given superpowers in a Hydra experiment, then gets trained by the Avengers with two more kids with superpowers. It's a very Super Friends set-up, but there's nothing wrong with that.

One of the other kids is named Akiyadi, aka Codec. Unfortunately, I can't tell you anything more about him since information is scarce about this whole project online. Even what little I've said so far had to be pieced together from multiple sources. But Future Avengers will be receiving an English dub soon, so hopefully that'll change (ideally before this post goes up, but we'll see about that).

Regardless, Codec appears in War of the Realms: New Agents of ATLAS #3 (June 2019), and he's mentioned as being a part of the Future Avengers, so we know that team exists as well in some capacity.

Flashback Friday: The Falcon's Animated Costume

Each Friday, I take one of the entries from my old Super Posts and expand it into its own featured article.

This week: The Falcon's animated costume!

The 90s were a bit of a golden age for animated series based on comic books. But that doesn't mean they were all good. For every Batman: The Animated Series, you had a Spider-Man: The Animated Series, and for every Spider-Man: The Animated Series, you had a Spider-Man Unlimited. And near the bottom of pretty much everyone's list is Avengers: United They Stand.

Avengers: United They Stand aired on Fox Kids in 1999. Even I could tell as a kid that it wasn't up to snuff. The animation was cheap, the stories weren't memorable, and it was the definition of "toyetic" (focusing design and story on how many toys you can make out of it), giving the Avengers entirely unnecessary battle armor to wear.

Another potential knock against it is that it didn't include "The Big Three": Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. Iron Man is somewhat understandable because he had a show earlier in the decade so there may have been rights issues, but Cap and Thor? If anything was keeping them from the show, I'm not sure what it was, and considering they both guest-star near the end of the season, the creators probably just didn't want to use them. Now that's not necessarily a problem for me; I'm a huge fan of giving lesser-known characters the spotlight and letting them become well known characters. Heck, the MCU is built on that idea. But you have to have the stories to back it up, and this show didn't.

What does all this have to do with the Falcon? Well, even without taking the battle armor into account, nearly all of the Avengers got new designs. This is his classic comics appearance, although he's had several outfits along the same lines:

And this is how he looked on the show. Similar, but noticeably different. The Falcon appeared with this design in the first episode of the show, "Avengers Assemble, Part 1" (October 1999).

The costume made its debut in Captain America #25 (November 1999, a month after the debut of the show) and stuck around until at least Captain America #34 (August 2000). As the show's last new episode aired in February 2000, I can't imagine it lasted for much longer than that. Notice it's not exactly the same - all the blue parts are now red.

This outfit is the only one from the show - that I know of - to transfer to the comics, and I'm glad it did. I think it looks great, and it shows that, even though that art style itself wasn't that great, it doesn't means the actual designs weren't either.

Flashback Friday: Firestar

Each Friday, I take one of the entries from my old Super Posts and expand it into its own featured article.

This week: Firestar!

Comic book adaptations in the past were much more willing to create original characters than they are today. If you take a look at a show like Young Justice, it has an enormous cast but all of them  - perhaps with one or two exceptions - are characters from the comics, even if they're very minor ones that only made a couple of appearances. Compare that to something like Batman: The Animated Series, where it seems like half the characters are original to the show. It's that mindset that gave us Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, a show where 1/3 of the main characters was somebody kids had never seen before.

There are many rumors about Firestar's appearance on the show. One is that she was originally meant to be the Human Torch, which makes sense because Spider-Man often hangs out with the Human Torch (and Iceman to a lesser extent) in the comics. There are a few reasons why people say the change happened, but the fact is that the Human Torch's rights were tied up in a solo animated series that never got made, so he would've never been considered for this show. The most likely explanation is that they knew they couldn't use him so created someone similar to him, and then decided that since they were creating an original character anyway, they may as well diversify and make her female.

Similarly, there's a popular rumor that her secret identity was originally going to be Mary Jane Watson instead of Angelica Jones. Other than the two characters having similar looks, this rumor has no grounding. Regardless, she first appeared in the first episode of the show ("Triumph of the Green Goblin", September 1981), and we eventually learn that she is a former member of the X-Men and one of their earliest recruits.

Her first comics appearance was in the tie-in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends #1 (October 1981), an adaptation of the first episode...

...but her first appearance that counts was a few years later in Uncanny X-Men #193 (March 1985), although surprisingly not as an X-Man or even a potential X-Men recruit. Instead, she was part of the Hellions, a team of rivals to the New Mutants led by Emma Frost.

Her next appearance was the following year (January 1986), when she received a mini-series called Firestar that told how she ended up at the Massachusetts Academy and joined the Hellions, then left and became a solo hero. Notably, she was kept in the dark about their true intentions, so she didn't realize they were bad guys.

Since then, she's had a steady career as a B-list superhero. She was a main member of the New Warriors...

...and the Avengers...

...and the Young Allies...

...and finally the X-Men.

She also appeared in Spider-Man Family: Amazing Friends #1 (August 2006), a one-shot to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the show, in which she, Spider-Man, and Iceman team up for a story.

They also teamed up in Amazing X-Men #7 (May 2014) and Iceman #3 (November 2018).

I'll finish up by talking about a strange quirk of Firestar: no one really knows who owns the rights to her!

As you might know, in the 90s Marvel sold off the rights to nearly all of its characters to various production companies, but for the past ten years or so, there have only been three groups worth talking about: Fox, which owns X-Men and Fantastic Four; Sony, which owns Spider-Man; and Disney, which owns everything else.

So does Firestar fall within the X-Men rights because she's a mutant who's been a Hellion and an X-Man? Or does she fall within the everything else rights because she is mainly known as an Avenger and New Warrior? But maybe she falls under the Spider-Man rights because she was created for a Spider-Man show and was a Spider-Man supporting character in Ultimate Marvel. If any of these companies know, they're not saying. But I'm pretty sure nobody really knows and that's why nobody's used her in adaptations in any substantial way. Luckily, it soon won't matter now that Disney is buying Fox and has a deal to use Spider-Man characters in the MCU, but it's interesting to think about nonetheless.

Costume Spotlight: Captain Marvel

Despite having a release date less than a year away, Marvel has been surprisingly tight-lipped on the upcoming Captain Marvel film (March 2019). Many of the cast members are known and, for the most part, we even know who they're playing, we know it's set in the 90s, and that's about it. Even the promotional photos are just like actors in director's chairs, not costume reveals or anything like that. So it was big news in January when someone managed to get pictures of Brie Larson on set in costume...but it wasn't the costume people were expecting.

As you might guess, fans were not happy. Even after it was explained that this costume is probably not something she wears the whole movie and is a combination of her current one and the Kree Centurion uniform that the original Captain Marvel wore at first, they weren't having it.

Regardless, that was only the first time we saw it. Marvel is currently in the middle of an event called Infinity Wars, and leading up to it was a series of one shots called Infinity Countdown that featured the various holders of the Infinity Stones using them (there was some more lead-up with the characters actually finding the stones, but that's not important). Captain Marvel has the Reality Stone, so in Infinity Countdown: Captain Marvel #1 (May 2018), the Reality Stone shows her Captain Marvels from alternate realities.

Some of them are her, some of them are other Captain Marvels such as Mar-Vell or Spectrum, and others still are characters related to Captain Marvel in some way, such as Rogue. But the important one is in the top right corner.

Of course, this isn't really the MCU Captain Marvel. She doesn't own the Reality Stone. But some version of her (Earth-1999998, maybe?), or at least someone with her same costume, does.

UPDATE (08/05/2021): The Earth-616 version of Captain Marvel uses a version of this suit in Avengers #47 (August 2021).

Appearance Spotlight: Thanos's Ship

As you might have heard, a movie called Avengers: Infinity War came out recently (April 2018). You've possibly even seen it. And in this movie, Thanos has a ship called Sanctuary. (For full accuracy, the Sanctuary first appeared in the stinger for Thor: Ragnarok [November 2017].)

The Sanctuary is also Thanos's ship in the Marvel comics universe, as seen here from Thanos #1 (2003). It debuted in Warlock #10 (October 1975), although we only saw its inside back then. Regardless, it has a much different shape.

That is, until Thanos Annual 2018 (April 2018), where the Sanctuary suddenly has a whole new appearance, just in time for the new movie - the day before, in fact.

And technically, these ships are both technically the Sanctuary II. The comics' ship replaced the original boxy one, and the movies' ship replaced Thanos's hunk of rock from his first couple of appearances.

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.

Costume Spotlight: Darren Cross as Yellowjacket

A couple things you need to know upfront:

1. In the comics, Yellowjacket was a heroic persona of Hank Pym, but Hank Pym was going through some stuff at the time so he was kind of a dick.

2. Darren Cross died in his second appearance (the second part of a two-part story), but was later brought back to life and had been a recurring part of Ant-Man's recent series. Although he gained Hulk-esque powers in his first story, he's mostly just a businessman.

In the movie Ant-Man (2015), Yellowjacket is a suit Cross designs to sell to governments as a tactical espionage tool that uses Pym particles. He ends up wearing it himself to fight Ant-Man. As you can see, it looks pretty different to the suit from the comics...

...unless you're talking about the suit he finds in Astonishing Ant-Man #12 (September 2016), in which case it's remarkably similar (but not exact by any means).

Country Spotlight: Sokovia

This one took me by surprise, though it probably shouldn't have since it's become such a turning point in the MCU.

In Avengers: Age of Ultron (May 2015), we're introduced to an Eastern European country called Sokovia. Sokovia is a major part of the story as that's where Baron Strucker's base is, that's where Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver live, and that's where Ultron decides to attack. It continues to be important in Captain America: Civil War (May 2016), because it's where Zemo's from and it's (obviously) a large part of the reason behind the Sokovia Accords.

Here's the weird part: I'm not entirely sure why they created Sokovia for the movie. In the comics, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are from the Eastern European country Transia, and that would've worked just as well.

Regardless, Sokovia is here, and it makes sense that the comics would eventually use it, which they did in Captain America: Steve Rogers #5 (September 2016):

Sokovia also appears in issue 7. Whether it'll become a staple of the Marvel Universe like Wakanda or Madripoor remains to be seen.