Avengers Assemble! Week One: Iron Man, The Extras! part the second

   Being a comic book geek, I possess a disturbing number of things that are not actually comics but are somewhat connected to comics. Case in point, I own quite a few board games that feature comic characters. Further cementing my comic nerdliness is the fact that I actually play them and find myself using some of my precious free my time to DIY rules and miscellany for said games.

From Left to Right: Heroclix Ultimate Iron Man, Marvel Heroscape Iron Man, Heroclix S.H.I.E.L.D. Iron Man, and Heroclix Iron Man. Background is paper terrain from Fat Dragon Games and Worldworks Games.

   These miniatures are from two different but similar collectable miniature games, Heroclix and Heroscape, While I haven't been playing either all that often, I am slowly exposing my 5 (and a half!) year old son to them, and he has been enjoying a simplistic version of the Heroscape rules. He absolutely loves playing with the miniatures as toys, its like playing with really colorful army men.

Avengers Assemble! Week One: Iron Man, The Extras!

   When I was 11, I had my appendix taken out. It was a week long hospital stay that seemed to go on for months (and probably did in my pre-pubescent head). However, my grandmother sent me a care package of comics. They were my oxygen during recovery, they were amazing. Some of the comics seemed to speak right to me (marvel comics were like a heat seeking missile to a nearly teenage mind) and others wouldn't resonate until years later (I still have no idea why my conservative grandmother sent me the first 10 issues of Alan Moore's Miracleman). Those comics truly made me who I am today. Thanks, Grandma.

Avengers Assemble! Week One: Iron Man, Day 5

    You have gotta be in awe of that last sentence from this card. No other reference to his alcoholic past, just a 'still he fights on, sobered by the knowledge...'. Smooth, Marvel, really smooth.
   And so ends week one of Avengers Assemble!, but stay prepared for weekend bonuses of other Iron Man ephemera that I have floating about me. Also, next week features the second character to appear in the Marvel Movie lineup, the incredible Hulk!

Avengers Assemble! Week One: Iron Man, Day 4

    I wasn't reading many Marvel comics at this time in his history (my teenage interests had shifted from mainstream super heroes to DC's new imprints Vertigo and Milestone) - but I've always disliked it when they've made Tony Stark a depressing character. He always seemed at his best when he was portrayed as having a manic energy and lust for life. This card definitely seems to be about the former.


     Also note the sleepy Tony on the back of the card. It sure seems like Marvel was just reusing art from previous card sets. For Shame, Marvel, For Shame!

Avengers Assemble! Week One: Iron Man, Day 3

   I do love me some classic Iron Man. There is just something great in this armor's simplicity or it could just be that its the armor that was around when I was first started reading the comics. Titanium Man's mini-skirt is pretty great too, though. From an unknown set of 1990 Marvel Trading cards.

Avengers Assemble! Week One: Iron Man, Day 1

   Earlier this year, my parents have decided to empty their attic and return to me all those things that I left at their house but forgotten about. Chief among these things, were a couple of dusty shoeboxes full of cards. You see, ti turns out that when I was a 'tween' (ye gods I hate that term), I had too much pocket change and far too few life skills. This led to a variety of strange purchases. Least among these were packs upon packs of trading cards.Now, I'm sifting through these and posting a few.

   This card is pretty straight forward and nice, a cute little origin story with some passable artwork.Although it lacks nearly any of the dynamism a super hero should have. Tony even looks like he's about to fall asleep on the back of the card.

From the 'forgotten shoebox': Avengers Assemble!

A preamble.
Being a crotchety old fan, I have fallen in and out of love with comics throughout my almost four decades on this planet. However, I have somewhat recently, created a spawn that is now himself digging through my back issues and rekindling my love of older comics. Currently, my son is in love with the Avengers (as are most after the recent spate of Marvel Movies). Hell, I've even found myself enjoying the films (despite the fact that I tend to be fairly cynical about all things Hollywood).
I have also concurrently been scanning and putting old cards I found in my parent's attic on my former Tumblr site. So, I figured that I would combine these two into one semi-coherent theme: Avengers Assemble! Where I find any and all cards and related crap in the forgotten shoebox and post them here.The first week, I will spotlight the first of the current generation of Marvel Movies, Iron Man.

I know this is all a little on the late side, what with Avengers having premiered two weeks ago, but I figure- what the hell. And stay tuned, in the upcoming weeks the rest of the cast of The Avengers will be seen.

Finnegan, Begin Again

All right, trying my hand at really posting to this blog again. For a while there I was posting daily to a Tumblr account, but I am starting to rethink that decision. I want a resource I can more easily use to store and sort my collection of pop culture BS. So, starting next week I am putting my Bang Tumblr to bed, and waking up this blog (for the first time, really).
So anyway, prepare for some of my home grown drivel in this corner of the internet...

From Iron Man #192, 1985.

and consider this image a teaser for my first theme.