Mark's Epic Blog of Randomness

 By Mark Rodriguez Spider-Man succeeded in rescuing Mary Jane from the portal dimension after the end of the 90's animated series. However new villains loom over the horizon, namely Morlun, a long-lived man that feasts on 'spider totems' and is after Spider-Man in particular. As Morlun defeats the wall crawler in a fight, Kraven the Hunter is watching from the rooftops. How is he involved and how does he know Morlun?    "Chapter Three- Totems" opens with a lion roaming around the rooftop of the Sims Foundation late at night. The lion, named Gulyadkin, growls loudly but is hushed by Kraven, as they don't want to reveal themselves just yet. Meanwhile Morlun monologues about how long before humans came to be and time was recorded there were countless other races and civilizations. Several have risen and fell over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. One of them was Morlun's home, the kingdom called Lokka. Morlun was a prince, son of a king that died...

 By Mark Rodriguez Before the Avengers movies, I have only heard of the Black Widow in passing. When I first encountered her she was wearing a grey skintight outfit with a big collar and spider logo on her chest and she had shorter hair. While I thought this was her initial look, it seems she bounced back and forth between this and her more iconic all-black outfit back in the day. It seems to be tough to find older comics with this look because even older ones still have her in the all-black outfit. Looks like I finally found one in this classic Marvel Team-Up book. Let's take a look as we go back in time to when comics cost 60 cents. "Where were you when the lights went out?" opens with a city-wide blackout. Hospitals turn on emergency power. Officers are deployed in riot gear as things got crazy the last time there was a blackout. A man's pawn shop is being robbed on the streets, the thieves taking advantage of the darkness. The man yells out that he took their jun...

By Mark Rodriguez One of the favorite animated versions of Spider-Man for many fans was the 90's Animated Series. It gave everyone a look at Spider-Man and his supporting cast while offering condensed versions of classic stories like, The Spider-Slayers, The Sinister Six (called Insidious Six in the cartoon) , his first encounter with the Symbiote and even Secret Wars. Somewhere during the later seasons, Mary Jane fell through a portal in a battle with the Green Goblin (a homage to The Night Gwen Stacy died), and the series ended with Madame Web taking Spider-Man to find her. So now we got a comic that will continue his adventures and be kinda like a season 6 (unless of course, they actually make a season 6 similar to the current X-Men 97 series).  And yes... I know Spider-Man Unlimited was supposed to be the follow up to Spider-Man the Animated Series but let's ignore that... Anyway, let's check it out.   "Chapter One: The Awakening" opens with a mysterious man ...

By Mark Rodriguez Spider-Man and Wolverine team up to track down the Janus Directory, which contains files of every known spy mission ever, to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. While fighting off the combined forces of Kraven the Hunter, Omega Red and Mysterio, Peter decides to look into his parents' final mission as spies. The files revealed that Logan, working for the Red Skull at the time, was the one that killed his parents. Now Spider-Man is seeing red and is out to kill Wolverine in cold-blooded revenge!!   "Spider-Man VS Wolverine" opens with Spider-Man socking Wolverine across the face yelling out that he killed his parents. Wolverine tries to explain but Spider-Man hits him again. He yells out that he saw Wolverine kill his parents. As flashbacks pass that show Logan attacking the Parkers in an airplane, Peter says he's going to kill him.   Wolverine says he doesn't want to hurt Peter and says he can't trust what he saw after all the mind ga...

 By Mark Rodriguez There's been a couple of character team-ups coming out last week. The Vision and the Scarlet Witch, Hulk and Doctor Strange but the one that got me curious enough to pick up a copy was Spider-Man and Wolverine. I'm curious what got these two to work together (this time anyway since they've teamed up several times before over the years) and what villains they will face. Let's check it out.    "Duality" opens in Berlin Germany as Wolverine hacks and slashes his way through HYDRA zombies. Wolverine says he doesn't do 'funny' but Bill has some sense of humor inviting him to a HYDRA Remnant Safe House after so many years. Bill, a career spy intelligence agent to the highest bidder, says Wolverine hasn't lost his touch. Wolverine asks what he wants and Bill asks if he's heard of the Janus Directory. Wolverine knows that the Janus Directory is a master database of the world's double agents. He figured he'd be on it, and...

By Mark Rodriguez Gwenpool is a 'real world' Marvel fan named Gwendolyn Poole that somehow ended up in the Marvel Universe. Fearing that she might be killed off as a random extra as collateral damage, she chose to become a superhero popular enough to stick around. While she had some fighting skills, Gwen's biggest weapons are being incredibly genre-savvy and able to break the fourth wall. But now there's a deadlier and darker Gwenpool running around. What will happen in this new series?   The issue opens in a Weapon X Facility: Beta as some armed soldiers are looking for their target. One of them hears that the target is in the vicinity and activates her night vision. She asks Calloway if she has eyes on the target. Their target says that agent Calloway has such beautiful eyes. The target shows the agent Calloway's decapitated head. The agent opens fire and mows the person down. The agent declared the target to be down. The target says she's wrong and asks for h...