Crisis On Inifnite Midlives Podcast Episode 17: The Bucky Larson of Superhero Movies

It’s Sunday, so it’s time for another Crisis On Infinite Midlives Show! May God have mercy upon your soul!

It has been a big, weird week for Marvel, both the movie studio and the comic publisher, so we talk about:

• Edgar Wright’s departure from the Ant-Man movie, who might be a good choice from the directors who have been named as probable replacements, and who would actually be a good replacement
• The rumor (a rumor that is picking up some partial documentation and some steam) that Marvel might cancel Fantastic Four to spite Fox Studios efforts to promote the latest movie adaptation
• The concept that Marvel and DC might just be intellectual property farms for movies and TV, the deleterious effect that that could have on comics, and what, if anything, comics fans can do about it (spoiler alert: not much)
• Fantastic Four #5, written by James Robinson with art by Leonard Kirk
• Trees #1, written by Warren Ellis with art by Jason Howard

And, the usual legalese:

• This show was recorded live to tape, which means you might hear more weird pauses, aborted jokes, and jokes about abortion than you might hear on your normal podcast
• This show contains spoilers. We try to warn ahead of time, but there is every chance you will hear the odd spoiler of a story point or nine. What can I say? We ruin stuff.
• This show contains adult, explicit language, and is not safe for work. Invest in some headphones, even if they must be those awful Beats By Dre monstrosities.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:22:41 — 75.7MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS | More

Enjoy the show, suckers!

Pym Particle Fallout: Joss Whedon and James Gunn Comment on Edgar Wright’s Departure From Ant-Man

It is Saturday of the American Memorial Day long weekend. This means that, in general, there is fuck-all going on in the way of genre news other than redundant tales of heavy drinking by comic creators (and comic bloggers), and Edgar Wright’s departure from Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man movie.

There’s a dearth of actual hard news about what actually happened to lead to the split. Latino Review has a story based on a bunch of anonymous sources saying it had to do with the script, but with no names attached, I’m just gonna link to it and let you draw your own conclusions.

Wright himself hasn’t said anything, and his Twitter feed has been silent… except for a re-Tweet of a wordless picture post Avengers and Avengers 2: Age of Ultron director Joss Whedon threw up earlier today, and which you can check out after the jump.

Small Change: Edgar Wright Out As Ant-Man Director

Let’s face facts: nobody really gives a shit about Ant-Man. Despite being a founding member of The Avengers (And notice nobody at Marvel Studios bent over backwards to try and get him in the Avengers movie), the first thing Hank Pym ever did that anyone paid any attention to was tune up his wife in Avengers #213, and by then he was Yellowjacket, which was about his fourth ineffectual alter ego. And don’t even bring up Scott Lang and Eric O’Grady, who were each killed in separate team books to advance minor plot points.

Which is why it was a somewhat strange choice for Marvel Studios to go with the character as the first movie in their Phase Three of major motion pictures, but it didn’t matter. Because Marvel Studios had announced that Edgar Wright, the director of my favorite movie of 2013, The World’s End, was going to be directing the flick.

The key word in that sentence, however, is “was.” Because he ain’t gonna be doing it anymore.

Miniscule Enthusiasm: Edgar Wright Releases First Ant-Man Picture

If you had asked me six months ago, I would have firmly stated, with a great deal of confidence, that nobody gives a shit about Ant-Man.

Sure, Ant-Man was one of the first Marvel superheroes, debuting in 1962, and he was a founding member of The Avengers, but seriously: the dude shrinks. So what? And it’s not even like he can go microscopic like The Atom and fight sentient viruses in someone’s body the way he did in World’s Finest Comics #236, which I read when I was five years old and have never forgotten.

Look at it this way: Ant-Man is so lame that Hank Pym has since gone on to be known as Giant-Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket and The Wasp… basically he’s tried to be anything so he doesn’t have to be Ant-Man.

So I didn’t really give a hoot in hell about the Ant-Man movie that Marvel Studios has on the slate for 2015… until one thing happened. I saw The World’s End by director Edgar Wright, who is also slated to direct Ant-Man, and it was bar none the best movie I’ve seen this year (Sorry, Iron Man 3, Man of Steel and The Wolverine). It became the first Blu-Ray I’ve ever pre-ordered to make sure I don’t miss it, it caused me to go back and revisit Shawn of The Dead and Hot Fuzz… and more importantly, it made me look forward to what he’s gonna do with Ant-Man.

And apparently he has started doing stuff with Ant-Man, because Wright tweeted this yesterday: