Mare of Easttown Accent Critique Week 2

It’s back to the harrowing murder case that’s eating up the residents of hardscrabble Berwyn who live within sight of all those oil refineries.

 

Kate Winslet’s accent continues to be strong, particularly with elongated “O” sounds. This week we got “Do you knoewe where she was goein?” and some other local vowels. For the first time, I heard “Being a single parent—that’s a shtruggle,” which gives me hope that I’ll hear “shtreet.” Winslet also does well with several other sounds, like “Put your gloves awn” and “I’m soewuh sawerry.” Her “alrieght” game is on point.

 

And did I hear Winslet say “owe’ny” for “only”? Extra credit!

 

Evan Peters was pretty impressive, too. I liked the “wool,” “hoepe” and “awlweys” coming from this detective from “the county” who solved that big case in Upper Darby.

 

Mare of Easttown continues to play fast and loose with location, with a sign at the police station saying “Easttown Township, Delaware County,” when of course it’s in Chester County (and those oil refinery shots from last week scream Marcus Hook). It’s mostly amusing to me at this point, like when Mare wants to search all the way out to Route 13. If she means Chester Pike, that’s a hell of a search area from Route 30.

 

Steve tells me the authors are a married couple, one from Aston and one from Berwyn, so they’re basing the show on both their hometowns. This makes a lot of sense to me and the setting does kind of look like Aston with the woodsy areas. (For all my nitpicking, this show is much better with local flavor than the ad I heard for some movie set in Upper Darby, renamed as “Darby Heights.” Pass. Changing the name just alienates me and I’m in the intended audience. My Dad grew up in Upper Darby in our plane of reality, so miss me with this “Darby Heights” nonsense.) So I can understand the choices they make for Mare of Easttown. Regardless of county, the overall atmosphere is very local so I’m just going to enjoy it. It’s also more fun to say “Delco” than “Chesco,” so I’m just going to keep labeling everything a Delco accent.

 

Some of the smaller characters are doing well with the Delco accent. Erin’s father did a great job with “doitter” when he was mourning his daughter. (It’s fun to laugh at accents when people are facing unthinkable tragedy!) Brianna is Delco as hell—like, they pulled this actress right of class at Prendie. In the police station, she slathered the line “Noepe, I want a loyer” with an accent thicker than Cheez Whiz, and I loved it. The father (?) of Erin’s baby also was very good with “wool” and “wanted tuh.”

 

For accents, the most bang for our buck came with that girl they interrogated who said the one word “Umm” with the entire weight of Delco—all 566,747 residents—in her voice. She has to be local. I wonder if a lot of the smaller parts were filled by local people. I read that a lot of actors can’t do our accent, so they might as well just hire some local people who can.

 

Anyway, beyond the accents, it’s a pretty good show. The scene where Mare was remembering her deceased son when talking to her grandson’s doctor was heartbreaking, and the script packed so much subtle, wordless information into it. I’m really enjoying this.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Episode 6: One World, One People

I dunno. I liked The Falcon Captain America and the Winter Soldier overall, especially the previous episode, but I didn’t care for some of this season finale. A few of the storytelling choices were weird this season and this episode brought those into focus.

 

I did like Sam Wilson officially taking on the role of Captain America, with a new costume and wings that look pretty much exactly as they did in the comics. USAgent also looks very much like he did in the comics. I liked everything with Isaiah Bradley and am glad he finally got a place of honor.

 

And so Sharon Carter is actually the mysterious Power Broker. I don’t remember much about the character from the comics, but he wasn’t Carter, who was presumed dead at the time. I vaguely remember the Power Broker from issues of The Thing in the ‘80s. He gave Sharon Ventura, Ben Grimm’s girlfriend, her own Thing powers, making her all orange and rocky. Ventura had taken over the codename of Ms. Marvel from Carol Danvers, who at the time was known as Binary and in space with the Starjammers. Now that Carol is Captain Marvel, the teenage Kamala Khan has taken over as Ms. Marvel. So Ms. Marvel is another name in Marvel that’s been passed around.

 

What does it mean that Marvel is shading heroic women like Agatha Harkness, the Scarlet Witch and Sharon Carter into villainy? Meanwhile, Zemo, who is a rat bastard in the comics, gets the funny meme of dancing in a club. I know it’s more nuanced than that, particularly with Agatha, so it’s not as simple as a face–heel turn. I also know I need to separate the comics from the MCU. But the creators of these TV shows know the comics as well as I do and they made a choice to give some of the women darker shadings and the men lighter shadings. Why is that? (I do kind of like the more ruthless Sharon Carter, but of course, I was a fan of Revenge.)

 

So I thought the Falcon’s confrontation with the Global Repatriation Council was kind of goofy. How convenient that cameras captured it all and everyone on the globe could watch it live. It reminded me of The Naked Gun when Leslie Nielsen professed his love before the Jumbotron and all the cameras at the baseball game, and everyone saw it, and their hearts all melted.

 

The characterization of the Flag Smashers and the GRC was mismanaged. We’re supposed to believe that the GRC is this nefarious organization but all we really see of them is a meeting at the Big Table under the Big Monitor, like Dr. Strangelove. The only way they really handled their mission was from some exposition, when it would have been better to show all that instead of tell.

 

In contrast, we’re not supposed to call the Flag Smashers terrorists, but they did use terror to achieve their mission, and that’s the definition of terrorism. Both sides were bad. We’re supposed to sympathize with the Flag Smashers when the show mostly showed all the awful things they did, like trap some of the GRC in a burning vehicle, murder Battlestar and acknowledge that his life didn’t matter, and blow up a hospital. Then Karli Morgenthau gets this hero edit when she dies with the sad music and the lighting. Sorry, I didn’t really care about this woman after she crossed several bright moral lines. I’m sure she just had a heart of gold and meant well but if she wanted to win over hearts and minds, none of those intentions will mean shit when people find out what she and her colleagues did. And asking Sam if he ever fought for anything greater than himself? He did help defeat Thanos and save the world. So there’s that. I just couldn’t be bothered with Karli.

 

It had some pacing problems but I did like the show and am happy to see Sam come into his own.

Mare of Easttown Accent Critique Week 1

About 15 minutes into the first episode of Mare of Easttown, I finally heard Kate Winslet say it—the key word that tells us we’re hearing the Delco accent:

 

“Feed it and give it clean wooder.”

 

Got it? Not wahter. Wooder. Where I come from, H₂O is wooder. I know what the rest of the country says but I absolutely refuse to change the way I say it. You’d need the jaws of life to take my Delco accent away from me—it’s intractable.

 

This will be a different type of TV review, not so much of the content but the accent. (Although the first episode was good and it’s probably something I’d watch anyway. I mean, Kate Winslet and Jean Smart? SOLD.) It’s the Philadelphia/Delco accent that so many actors have trouble with, and that many don’t even attempt. It’s those tortured vowels that mark me and people like me as from a certain area, like how the British spies gave themselves away to the Nazis in the bar scene in Inglourious Basterds. So this will be a weekly accent critique for as long as it amuses me.

 

It must be said upfront that some of the articles I’ve read about this show are wrong: It’s not Delaware County. Easttown Township is in Chester County, just across the border from Newtown and Radnor townships. I guess calling it a Delco accent is more evocative than Chesco so we’ll stick with that. I don’t know why they picked “Easttown” for the title. Maybe they think it tested well as vaguely East Coast. I think Mare of Folcroft would have been a fun title. I don’t know Easttown but apparently they shot it on location so I guess it’s accurate. I liked the little touches of local things: The mention of “my sister’s place in Ridley,” the Flyers shirt and Phillies trinkets, “the bottom of the Delaware River,” taking an injured person to Riddle, etc.

 

Anyway, the accent. Kate Winslet’s was pretty good! She’s got the elongated “O” sound down pat. You could hear it in “oeverdoese,” “hoemeoewner,” “oever and oever” and in the preview for next week, “hoepe.” (I don’t know how to render these phonetically, but you get the gist.) I liked how she pronounced her long “I” sounds, like “alriieght” or “Friiedie niieght.” Her “come awwihnn” was very good.

 

Winslet was good but a few things either need work or I don’t have enough evidence to judge yet. I’d like to hear “dooiter” for “daughter” and “Dawwihn” for “Dawn.” Her pronunciation of words like “house” or “tasks” or “asses” was too mid-America and not close to how we talk.

 

A kid on the show made a mistake and said “at the creek.” I have always thought that around here, if you’re speaking generically, it’s a “crick.” You’d only say “creek” if it’s a specific creek, like Darby Creek. (I default to “crick” for certain things, like I’ll call the show Schitt’s Crick and not Schitt’s Creek.) But Steve told me not to criticize a kid actor, so I guess I’ll give him a break.

 

So Winslet did pretty well in tackling a tough accent and I genuinely appreciate that she took the time to sound like people in our little corner of the world. There are a few things I’d like to hear from her in coming weeks. I’d like to hear the multisyllabic “yeah” and “no”—“yeea-ahh” and “noe-wah.” I’d also like to hear words like “ass” as more “aeass” and less like “ahhh-ss.” Then, for extra credit, she can try to master the following:

 

·      “See you damorra.”

·      “I’m eating Reesee’s Peecees.”

·      “It costs fi’dollars.”

·      “Up the shtreet.”

·      “Wool” (for “well”)

·      “It’s in the front pahlor.”

 

See yous next week!

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Episode 5: Truth

Sam Wilson looks to be ready to take on the mantle of Captain America, and if anybody deserves the title, it’s him. In the comics, he was Steve’s longest partner (Bucky goes back further with Cap but was out of the picture for decades). Sam had to come to this conclusion on his own. As he notes, Steve Rogers is gone. But he did have some wisdom in offering Sam the shield.

 

Isaiah Bradley understandably doesn’t want the shield. He served his country and his country experimented on him and put him in prison. Before assuming the shield, Sam must weigh the words of the first Black Captain America, in this thoughtful, piercing piece of dialogue:

 

“So they erased me. My history. But they’ve been doing that for 500 years. Pledge allegiance to that, my brother. They will never let a black man be Captain America. And even if they did, no self-respecting black man would ever want to be.”

 

The Falcon’s wings are destroyed in the fight with John Walker. I assume the Wakandans have made him some sort of high-tech Cap uniform. And Sam’s practicing throwing around the shield. So I assume the stage is set for his new identity.

 

Hold up: It’s national treasure Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine! Louis-Dreyfus brings a nice bit of tart humor and I hope we do see some more of her in the MCU. (I assume she’ll win an Emmy for this short cameo, as she seems to collect one for every role she takes on.) Who is Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine? She’s an agent of SHIELD who first appeared in ‘60s issues of Strange Tales, a glamorous agent known for looking completely fabulous in Jim Steranko’s legendary art. She was the girlfriend of Nick Fury.

 

Val is right about the ownership of Cap’s shield being a gray area. Captain America’s shield was originally shaped like a badge and not a circle, and FDR gave this one to him during World War II. I believe this original, flimsier shield was the one Mr. Hyde ripped apart when he and the Masters of Evil invaded Avengers Mansion, the same story in which Zemo tore up Cap’s mother’s picture (boy, that was a rough day for Cap losing mementos). The round modern shield was made of a vibranium alloy developed by scientist Myron McClain. McClain’s attempt to duplicate the shield led him to create the indestructible metal adamantium, of which Wolverine’s claws and the murderous android Ultron are made. Apparently Marvel did retcon this to say T’Chaka gave Cap a vibranium shield during World War II, establishing goodwill between the United States and Wakanda.

 

Anyway, the vibranium alloy shield is the one Captain America has used in the comics ever since. There was a time in the ‘90s when the shield was lost at sea and Cap used a replacement shield made of some sort of energy, but he soon got the real shield back. The thing about the shield is it’s not only indestructible but it has properties that cannot be duplicated. A few nearly omnipotent beings—like the Beyonder, Molecule Man and Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet—have managed to damage the shield, but all have remarked on the shield’s uniqueness, and the shield has always survived.

 

This is why not matter how good a metallurgist John Walker might be, the new shield he creates will always be margarine. Walker has now pretty much snapped. I’m enjoying Wyatt Russell’s performance here, showing the human toll his military service is taking, something more nuanced than being a crazy villain.

 

The military tribunal scene reminds me of something I’ve been watching with concern whenever I see superheroes on screen: Superheroes shouldn’t kill. There are a few rare heroes that stories make exceptions for. Wolverine will kill when he has to, but that’s just part of his character, and he has evolved over the years. Wonder Woman will kill because she comes from a much older culture that is freer to use violence because they face threats like enormous monsters and gods (Diana is an ambassador of peace but do not mess with her). The Punisher will kill but that’s the whole point of the character. (In my opinion, it’s a stupid point. Comic book writers periodically fall in love with these vigilantes who execute people but the stories that praise characters like the Punisher only show that there are very good reasons why society doesn’t trust the administration of justice to a sole character who may be unbalanced.)

 

The Avengers have a prohibition against killing and several characters have been called out for it. Hawkeye once accidentally killed Egghead and the Avengers cleared him of wrongdoing. His wife Mockingbird once killed a villain who had drugged and raped her and I believe the Avengers ruled it self-defense. The Avengers once had a team schism because half of them favored executing the Kree Supreme Intelligence (it turned out they were being mentally manipulated by Kang). Among the X-Men, Colossus once killed the Marauder named Riptide when he was uncontrollably killing the Morlocks (including kids) but it was portrayed as sadly necessary. Storm once stabbed Callisto through the heart, nearly killing her, and she paid a heavy emotional price that changed her as a person. Dark Phoenix once destroyed a planet, which led to editorial decreeing that she die by suicide rather than be redeemed, so a mass murderer wouldn’t be walking around the Marvel Universe calling herself a hero.

 

All of the above examples of heroes killing were rare. The writers took them seriously and there were consequences for the superheroes—there have to be, when you aim stories at kids. That’s why it bothers me when I see Green Arrow killing people on Arrow or the mass death in the Justice League movie. I don’t expect every battle to be with foam swords but when heroes have to kill, it should be rare, thought-out and with real-life consequences.

Dear Flimsy Paper Plate Manufacturer,

I am writing to complain about the physical integrity of your paper plates. They are cheap, flimsy and easily torn. These plates have ruined many a meal for me. 

 

Let me give you one example. The other night, I had my girlfriend over for dinner. All my fine china had been sent away for professional polishing, so I was using your brand of paper plates. We were chatting and laughing while I was making her an Italian feast.

 

Then it came time to serve her. I piled half a box of liberally sauced spaghetti, three meatballs, and two pieces of garlic bread on a single-ply paper plate. I walked over to where she was sitting at the table, holding the plate by the edges, with the tips of my fingers at 5 and 7 on the plate.

 

And—disaster. The meatballs and spaghetti rolled right off the plate onto her lap. She jumped up in surprise and yelped in horror. My girlfriend’s jeans were ruined and so was our dinner date. I don’t know if our relationship will recover. I am very disappointed your paper plates are not durable enough to handle this everyday use.

 

This is hardly the first mishap with one of your shoddy paper plates. Once I was at a picnic and had loaded up one of your plates with a turkey leg, a heap of mashed potatoes, a big hunk of cheesecake and a couple of apples. I was holding the paper plate with one hand under the center of it, like a waiter with a tray, when the mashed potatoes slid off, spilling gravy all over my shirt. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, at least at a picnic.

 

I also have a big problem with your crappy trash bags. They just don’t stand up to any level of punishment. They certainly don’t stay hooked around the edge of the trashcan.

 

Here’s an example. My Keurig recently broke. I was disgusted because I wasn’t able to drink any coffee that morning (and, let‘s face it, I was a little grumpy without my caffeine) so I threw the Keurig in the trash. Not just tossed it in—I wound up like Randy Johnson and hurled the Keurig into the trash can as hard as I could. I was just so angry that it broke.

 

Well, the trash bag didn’t make it. It came right off the lid of the can and collapsed in on itself. I put the bag back on and tried again to throw out my coffee maker (with the reservoir still full of water), but the bag just kept coming off. What shoddy workmanship.

 

If I can’t trust the integrity of your paper plates or trash bags to stand up to perfectly normal usage, I have no choice but to take you to court.

 

I bid you good day.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Episode 4: The Whole World Is Watching

There weren’t any comic book deep cuts this week in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier this week, so for a change, I’ll actually talk about the TV show.

 

You can almost see the exact point when John Walker snaps. Battlestar has been murdered by one of the Flag Smashers and the new Captain America is enraged. Walker chases after one of them and brutally executes him with his shield, while people record it with their smartphones. (This did remind me of the old Captain America story where Cap was forced to use his shield to behead the vampire Baron Blood. Cap felt terrible about it but what he did was understandable since it was a vampire and there was no other way.) I’m assuming the man who supposedly symbolizes America will bring dishonor to his country when the world sees the red, white and blue shield with blood on it.

 

I’m impressed with the depth this show has given John Walker thus far. In contrast to the comics, he doesn’t seem as much of a jerk. He showed some thoughtfulness in his conversation with Battlestar about his medals of honor, noting he received them for the most awful days of his life in Afghanistan. Walker is still haunted by what he saw and it will undoubtedly get worse after the murder of his partner.

 

In contrast, we have the Winter Soldier. Bucky did truly awful things over a long period of time as a brainwashed spy, but as a result of the Wakandans intervening to read a series of words to deprogram him, Bucky is free. This was a very nice sequence.

 

One thing I hope this show doesn’t do is turn Baron Zemo into some “cool” character worthy of a bunch of memes on Twitter. The guy’s a Nazi bastard, and sometimes villains just need to be villains—they can be complicated but make them complicated villains, and not complicated anti-heroes. I was worried that scene of him dancing in a club would make him seem cool to people but I was glad this week the show hinted at something darker. It was very creepy watching him sing a song and throw some Turkish delight at those kids (literally candy from a stranger). Also, I want to know how they got away with flying Zemo away after breaking him out of prison. Did the FAA equivalent really just let a plane known to be owned by Zemo out of the airspace in which Zemo was known to be in prison?

 

I don’t much care for the Flag Smashers. I think their ideas have merit, and this show is a good continuing examination of what happens to a planet when people disappear and reappear after they’d been mourned and the world moved on. (They didn’t have this problem in the comics. In the original Infinity Gauntlet, Nebula wrested control of the Infinity Stones from Thanos and made time turn back 24 hours, before the disappearance. So basically, half the universe never disappeared.) But I think the Flag Smashers’ methods leave a lot to be desired. I also don’t know if I like the idea of a bunch of people running around with Super Soldier serum in their veins, as it should be rarer.

 

Freckle Face was an asshole for calling Sam’s sister and threatening her kids. I didn’t like the guy Walker killed, either, mostly due to that dumb anecdote about his grandfather saying, “If something scares you, that’s a sign that you’re doing something right.” This is completely asinine. As our son the skeptic immediately turned to us to say, “So you’re saying if I’m scared to jump off a building, I should do it?” You can see the hole in the character’s logic.

 

I very much liked this episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. The fight scenes were exciting and it feels like we’re going somewhere here.

TV to fold laundry to

If there’s one mini-genre of writing I’m tired of reading, it’s a certain type of criticism of HGTV shows. Sure, I like to read the gossip about Chip and Joanna Gaines or whatever. What I mean is those think pieces about the fakeness or deeper meaning of the shows, as if some writer is going to turn your world upside down by revealing that a show or on-air personality is—GASP—somewhat less than authentic. Or that there’s—haul over the fainting couch!—a darker side to the network’s shows. 

 

I mean like this article that critiqued Home Town or this one that critiqued Fixer Upper. These were the only two I could find with a quick search but I have read more of them over the years. There are these specific rhetorical tricks in articles like these. It’s hard to describe but it’s like the writer transcribes what’s going on in the episode and does a sort of book-of-the-movie versions, annotating the text of the show and giving a semiotic importance to every little mundane thing. It imparts a vaguely sinister tone onto something most people would find harmless. Let me try it:

The incipient Laurel homeowners stand excitedly in front of the Craftsman house. The house is lovely—although not beautiful—but run down, surrounded by magnolias that could have inspired Faulkner to write a few more chapters set in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County.

 

“This is the Compson house. They lived here for 35 years,” Erin Napier says. “I just think this house is so cute with the columns and big front porch.”

 

“Oh, I love the porch,” says Kathy Drake. Her flowered summer blouse says “mother of two” in that particular way flowered blouses do. “I can see us all sitting out here, just watching the sun set.”

 

“Yeah,” says Erin. “This house just needs a little love, is all.”

 

One wonders what kind of “love” she means. Is it the love that can be found after stripping off George Wallace–era wallpaper and revealing the central rot beneath? The love that can be found as Ben Napier carves a dining room table out of a barn in which Depression farmers once milked prize Holsteins while worrying about how to feed their dusty-haired children?

 

At the end of the hour, after those Craftsman columns have been restored with a postmodern luster, the farm sink has been added, and the built-in bookshelves have been lovingly stacked with evocative yet inoffensive tomes, Erin presents the couple with a watercolor of their new house.

 

“This was the Compson house. Now it’s the Drake house.”

 

Kathy and Michael Drake go a little misty at the drawing. It’s pretty but essentially unreal: the harsh Mississippi summer sun has been sanded down to innocuous pinks and aquas.

 

Look, I know it’s pretty rich for me to complain about pretentious writing or about someone shitting on something harmless that other people enjoy. But writing of this just irks me lately because most people who watch HGTV probably already know the shows have a fake element to them.

 

I know the people on House Hunters have already settled on which house to buy. I know the Fixer Upper families are under contract for the house before they go out looking. I know a lot of the drama is manufactured. I know all this and I will still re-watch Love It or List It episodes I’ve already seen on a loop.

 

You know why I’ll watch these shows? Because they amuse me. HGTV is TV for a rainy Saturday afternoon (or for a pandemic). It’s TV you watch while folding laundry. I know the difference between vitamins and candy bars and sometimes I just want to watch something amusing on TV for a little while before getting back to my novel.

 

It’s not as if I don’t have plenty of criticisms about HGTV. I do, but most of these involve the text of the show and not the subtext: I’ll criticize the design elements, or the people who give the choice between two shades of off-gray backsplash the same gravity as choosing a name for their child, or the people who think having a kitchen island the size of a Buick is some Rosetta Stone to attain the perfect life they believe they deserve.

 

But we all have those criticisms when we watch these HGTV shows; that’s half the fun. Just let people have these simple pleasures and surface criticisms without forcing profundity where there is none.

 

 

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Episode 3: Power Broker

This show seems slow moving for something that only lasts six episodes. It seems like there has been plenty of set-up and halfway through, we’re just getting to the action. I’ll reserve judgment until the end but it seems like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier could have been improved by getting to the story quicker.

 

So, who is Baron Zemo? In both comics and TV, he’s a German noble. Heinrich, the 12^th Baron Zemo, first appeared in Avengers #4 in 1964 in a World War II flashback. He’s one of Marvel’s old Nazi SOBs along with the Red Skull and Baron von Strucker. Zemo had developed an extremely powerful adhesive for the Nazis, Adhesive X, during World War II. Captain America wanted to prevent the use of Adhesive X and threw his shield into a vat containing the adhesive, which then fell over Zemo’s face, permanently attaching his purple hood to his face. After Cap was revived from suspended animation and joined the Avengers, he formed the first Masters of Evil, an ad hoc group of supervillains who fought the Avengers. 

 

Heinrich died and was succeeded by his son Helmut, the 13^th Baron Zemo. Helmut’s face was scarred by Adhesive X, so like his father, he constantly had to wear a purple mask. He sought constant revenge against Captain America, once kidnapping his friends with the assistance of the Red Skull. Helmut Zemo also founded the fourth version of the Masters of Evil, with over a dozen villains, including the Absorbing Man, Titania, Moonstone, Mister Hyde (Daisy’s father in Agents of SHIELD), Blackout, and the Wrecking Crew. This group invaded Avengers Mansion in a 1986 story, driving half the team out and causing considerable damage. There were casualties on both sides. On the Avengers side, Hercules got roofied and—incredibly—the villains managed to beat him into a coma; while the Black Knight and Jarvis were badly injured. (How despicable do you have to be to put the Avengers’ butler in the hospital?) On the Masters of Evil side, Blackout was killed, Moonstone broke her neck and Zemo fell off the roof of Avengers Mansion.

 

The one thing I remember about this battle is while Captain America was tied up, Zemo broke into Cap’s locker and tore up the only picture Steve Rogers had of his mother, right in front of him. What an SOB.

 

Anyway, Zemo survived and later posed as the superhero Citizen V. During the period when the Avengers and Fantastic Four had disappeared in the ‘90s, Citizen V took advantage of the vacuum of heroism and formed the superhero team the Thunderbolts, who in actuality were the Masters of Evil posing as heroes. The twist was that the Thunderbolts soon actually liked being heroes and several permanently reformed.

 

But I digress. Back on the TV, the gang meets up with a pissed-off Sharon Carter. (Her comics background as niece/grand-niece of Peggy Carter is similar to the movies, except in the comics, Sharon was assumed dead for decades in publication time after being killed in a weird off-panel way by the Grand Director, an insane Nazi who had once taken the role of Captain America.)

 

The one thing in this episode I found intriguing was the introduction of the fictional nation of Madripoor. In the comics, this was mostly an X-Men thing, a piratical country where Wolverine would wear an eyepatch and … do whatever. So this may be the first actual integration of X-Men intellectual property into the Avengers universe. (I know Marvel and Fox split Quicksilver but to my mind, even though he’s a mutant, he’s very strongly associated with the Avengers—he joined the team in the very early days with Wanda and neither was ever on the X-Men.)

 

What obscure corner of the Marvel Universe will I explain next week?