Canister X – A.P. Fuchs: Zombie, Paranormal Romance and Superhero Novelist, Blogger, Artist, Publisher

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It’s World War II and the US Army needs to up its game in its war against the villainous Nazis under the command of Adolf Hitler.

Enter Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a little guy from Brooklyn with all sorts of health problems, but who has possibly the strongest sense of morals and courage than any man on the front line. Unfortunately, due to his fragility, Steve is not allowed to join the American army despite multiple tries. A scientist experimenting in a super soldier serum for the US army notices this and offers him a chance to take part in a dangerous procedure that, if it goes well, will grant Steve superhuman-like abilities and enable him to be an ultimate man, athlete and warrior. Steve accepts and transforms into the world’s first super soldier: Captain America.

Meanwhile, the first test subject of the serum, Johann Schmidt–aka the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving)–has come into possession of the Tesseract cube, a powerful energy source rumored to be from Asgard. His plan? Nothing less than overthrowing Hitler himself and taking over the world.

If only we had a super soldier to stop him. Wait . . . we do.

His name is Captain America.

Like all good fanboys, I saw this movie in the theatre. Having grown up on the cheesy Captain America movies starring Reb Brown and, later, the 1990 version with Matt Salinger, a part of me, I admit, was waiting for a repeat of the 1990 film (in the general sense). I was more interested in how Captain America: The First Avenger would tie into the then upcoming Avengers and this movie didn’t disappoint.

The introduction of the Tesseract–which would be key in Avengers–was real smart on the filmmakers’ part because not only did it point to the forthcoming ensemble film, but also gave a quick link to the Thor movie as well.
Watching Chris Evans as Steve Rogers was fantastic. He really suits the role and played it perfectly. I wasn’t sure how the once Human Torch–all witty and sarcastic–would fare as the famous super soldier, and I’m glad Chris Evans proved he can play a kind of Superman-like character as well. Seeing him play both the small, frail Steve Rogers (facially, anyway, as someone else’s body was used), to playing the suped-up Steve made the film truly a story about how our greatest power lies within as opposed to externally.
Likewise, Hugo Weaving as Red Skull did a great job, especially since playing villains is no strange task to Weaving (Agent Smith, anyone?). Even with the German haircut he looked different never mind later when his red skull visage was revealed.
The story was simple and, like the first Spider-Man movie, I left the theatre underwhelmed. After seeing it a second time, I saw it for what it was and really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, the end battle was anti-climatic. It didn’t need to be an all-out brawl between Cap and Red Skull, but it felt brief considering these two are the heads and tails of the same coin. Some sort of super soldier/titan clash would have punched up the ending. Speaking of which, the ending of this movie has one of the best last lines to a flick ever. It was the kind of line I try to end my own novels on, one that finishes the tale but also has a punch to it.
As far as superhero stories go, the World War II setting gave the genre a breath of fresh air movie-wise as, thus, far, pretty much every super flick to come out recently is all set in the modern day. Alternate times and/or worlds with a superhero figure are few and far between. The Spirit is the only one that comes to mind in this regard.
After this movie and Avengers, I’m excited to see Captain America: Winter Soldier, which is presently set for 2014.

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4 out of 5

When Thor’s mischievous brother, Loki, makes a deal with the alien race Chitauri to help them secure the Tesseract Cube so they can conquer the galaxy, the Earth suddenly falls into great peril. With even the powerful top secret agency S.H.I.E.L.D. having difficulty containing Loki, there is only one call S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury can make: Avengers Assemble!

The team is gathered–Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye–set out to do battle with Loki and his alien cohorts. If they don’t overcome their differences and learn to work together as a team, the Earth will fall and Loki will rule the planet.

The Avengers brings together Earth’s mightiest heroes to combat a force of evil so great they either stand together or fall together, with the fate of the planet–even the galaxy–hanging in the balance.

The Avengers is a difficult movie to review, more so, give a proper rating to because this movie is very much black and white between its story and its presentation, so that said, I’m going to quickly go over both and you’ll see where I’m coming from at the end.

The story: This is a single-plot movie, very much an A-to-B narrative and incredibly simple—too simple. Aliens are coming, we need to stop them so we’ll get the Avengers to do it. That’s it. From a storytelling perspective, it’s too simple and too predictable. Big bad guy, big good guy(s), let’s fight, good guys win. The end.

However, if you view The Avengers as an end cap/final act to all the movies leading up to it: Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man II, Thor, Captain America–then you have something that definitely serves its purpose and more or less let’s each character shine for the same amount of time. In this case, a simple story works despite, um, the many continuity flaws from the previous movies (i.e. Thor somehow now able to come to Earth, which renders the ending of Thor’s movie moot, Tony Stark called upon to be Iron Man in the Avengers despite being banned from doing so in Iron Man II, the characters communicating to each other without earpieces or any communication devices. Maybe they’re telepathic?).

The presentation: This movie is a nerd’s dream come true from start to finish. Assemble your favorite superheroes–of which each were spotlighted in their own movies, almost–put them together and have them go toe-to-toe with a larger-than-life threat that will squash the planet if they don’t come through.

From an eye candy perspective, this movie nailed it. Huge battles, lots of explosions, combat action, hammer throwing, Hulk smashing, shield boomeranging, repulsors firing, arrows shooting, girl fists punching—yeah, it has it all.

It’s also very important to point out that the casting of Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/Hulk was an amazing choice. I honestly wasn’t too thrilled with the news when I first heard it, with Ruffalo being more a chick-flick romance guy, but he got the role done so well that if there’s a spin-off, I hope he gets the job. He’s definitely earned it.

Chris Evans as Captain America–a Superman performance, which is good and brought a traditional superhero element to the team. As the running joke was throughout the movie, a little “old-fashioned” was what was needed.

Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man–do I really need to talk about this? He’s the same Tony Stark from the first two movies, the only difference being he’s mellowed out a bit because, despite his arrogance, he understands life isn’t all about him and there’s other people out there, too. This bit really comes through in this movie.

Chris Helmsworth as Thor–bold, poetic, commanding, everything his character is supposed to be so kudos to him for carrying on with a great performance from the stand-alone movie.

Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye–I don’t know much about the comic character other than he’s like Green Arrow, but perhaps with a more military-mind-set, so I can’t comment. Renner did sell me on Hawkeye though, but why couldn’t they give him that awesome mask? Maybe in the sequel.

Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow–she really comes into her own in this flick because in Iron Man II, it was more a back-up appearance so we didn’t know much about her. I’m glad she got the screen time she deserved and, come on, her fight scenes were fantastic.

Tom Hiddleston as Loki—he’s the bad guy you love to hate, the one that, even just looking at him, you want to punch in the face. I appreciated how Loki, to a degree, was a villain to sympathize with because of his exile, but you also get mad at him for being such a jerk about it.

Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury–an excellent portrayal of Samuel L. Jackson being Samuel L. Jasckon–but under a fictitious alias. Yeah.

The Avengers is a solid good-times-turn-your-brain-off-action-fest that is great for escape and is recommended for that reason. As a spoiler warning, if you want just the action parts, start the movie around 30 minutes in.

Honest assessment is 3.5 out of 5, but because it’s the first movie of its kind and because of all the building up to it that has been going on since 2008, I’ll give it a 4.

Hot off the Net-reels, this new trailer gives us more of the story while still serving up a heap of action. This fanboy is beside himself at the moment. May 4 . . . think I’m going to start hanging around outside the theatre after this entry just to be sure I get a good seat.

And be sure to watch all the way through because the bit after the title card has got me drooling. Seriously, what is that thing?!

Shows you enough to get excited, holds back enough to leave you wanting more.

Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Black Widow, Nick Fury, Hawkeye, Loki–

This flick is going to be killer.

As previously mentioned, Zomtropolis is a side project for me, something that is part of me offering free content here on this website. The past couple weeks haven’t had an update, and not for lack of wanting to post one. In the end, I’m getting tired. Not of the book, no, not that. But I’m due for a break and have one coming soon. I work long, long days and do so six days a week, sometimes seven. The human brain can only take so much thinking before it starts to give out, and by the time I’m able to write a chapter of Zomtropolis, my brain is mush and I don’t want to give you guys a wash-out chapter just to say I posted something.

The story will continue and will be completed this year. Just give me some time to get my head together. In the meantime, please bear with me as Zomtropolis gets sporadic updates over the next bit until my holiday.

Thanks for understanding.

To cheer you up, here are a couple new Captain America TV spots:

Copyright 2010-2011 by A.P. Fuchs. All rights reserved.
45: Old School Comics

Immediately I swung around, lashing my fist out and connecting square with the creature’s jaw. It was a bonehead move. Had I been off by even a couple millimeters, I could have easily snagged my knuckles on its teeth and probably would have gotten infected. The zombie shuffled back a step, paused, then stumbled towards me again, arms out.
My heart pounded—but not from fear. Only anger. These guys had caused so many problems and had hurt me personally with making Selena one of their own. Worse, making many Selenas one of their own.
The sound of shoes scraping against the sidewalk behind me forced me to reconsider decking the zombie in front of me. It was run or be killed. So I ran. I dodged around the nearest two undead, their hands raising into the air a second too late to grab onto me. Another I shoved to the side as I bolted down the sidewalk, hoping Jay was somewhere nearby.
Don’t go too far, I thought. We need to stay in the area. For now, anyway.
I scanned the undead that were a block or block and a half away. None of them looked like my sweetheart.
A figure ran out from between a couple of fallen sky signs just ahead. A pack of zombies lumbered after him.
Jay.
“Hey!” I shouted, waving my arms and hoping he’d heard me. It didn’t seem he did because he kept running and disappeared between a pair of apartment buildings across the street, the zombies still keeping after him.
But someone heard me. The undead in my nearest vicinity immediately set their rotten gaze in my direction and started towards me.
“Oh man . . .” I breathed, glanced back over my shoulder, and tried to come up with a plan. It seems there was only one in this undead world: run.
I took off further down the street, but a pack of zombies up and to my right saw me and joined their brethren in their mission to take me down.
A blur of color materialized on my left as I ran past an outlet store, then quickly disappeared. I halted my run, turned, and headed back. It was a comics shop, the kind that still sold old paper copies of comic books that nowadays most people read on their eReaders and telecom units. Maybe they had a back room I could hide out in. Maybe even a room with a lock on the door. Its large front window had been smashed during the riots when the zombie plague first hit. I stepped over the frame, my shoes crunching against the broken glass on the floor. Comics and old school graphic novels littered the floor like a squirrel’s nest, panels of Axiom-man, Superman, Captain America and others catching my eye as I stepped quickly through the shop and to the rear of the store. This was a place I had meant to go into back before all this chaos started. Interesting I was here now, looking to save my life amongst images of heroes that did it all the time.
A dented and overturned moneycomp lay on the counter to my left. Whoever smashed it up must have thought that because this place dealt in vintage comics, it must have dealt in vintage cash, too. Idiots. Paper money and coins were phased out completely a good ten years ago if not longer.
Behind me, undead feet shuffled through the scraps of comics on the floor. A loud thunk made me look over my shoulder only to see one of the zombies—a much-decayed one—had tripped over the window frame and landed on its face.
I was already at the back of the tiny shop, with nothing near me to use against them. Just a bunch of very old collectibles, some hanging on the wall behind me, others on the floor at my feet. Most of them were action figures. One was a Spider-Man webshooter for kids. There was a Superman costume, a plastic lightsaber, and a cap gun. I thought maybe I could get away with using the lightsaber, but its plastic handle was already cracked, presumably from whoever had been in here before me. There wasn’t a back room.
Adrenaline quickly kicked in and I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it out this time.
The zombies drew closer.
My foot stepped on something soft at first, but it gave way and my heel landed on something hard. I kicked at it through the scraps of comic pages covering it.
It was a sword. A fake one, but one that would still be dangerous regardless. Kind of. It was still in its black cardboard package, a red logo with what looked like a wild cat roaring, followed by silver letters reading: THUNDERCATS. Never heard of them.
I quickly bent down, picked up the sword and ripped it from its package. Crap. It was plastic, its gleaming silver paint job having fooled me. But the plastic felt hard, solid.
Realizing how stupid this was, a brief note of hope still sounded in my heart. I lifted the blade and wound it back like a baseball bat.
The first zombie moved in.
I took a swing.
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Really straight forward today:

- Debating on running an experimental comic here on the blog; it’s done. Just needs to be uploaded. It’s about 20 pages, I think.
- Almost done draft two of my vampire novella trilogy. Will finish today and type up changes tomorrow because…
- I’m neck deep in number crunching for the business as the taxman is coming in April and I need to be able to show him something

That’s it.

On a lighter note, the Captain America trailer hits tomorrow. You can count on me posting it here the moment I see it.

Yesterday was the Superbowl, and though I’m not into watching guys in tights running around chasing after a ball, I am into guys in tights running around chasing after bad guys.

Here’s some super-clips that aired during commercials during yesterday’s big football event.
Captain America:

Thor:

Transformers 3 (okay, not superheroes, but looks plain fun nonetheless):

Normally, my monthly comic reading diet consists of Batman, Superman, Batman and Robin, Red Robin and Batgirl. I might buy another comic or two, but those are my regulars.

Well, I went to the shop (Galaxy Comics) yesterday and walked out with a pretty big stack of books.

- Batman/Superman #75
- Wolverine Saga (Marvel freebie)
- Batman Beyond #2 (for my kind)
- Toy Story #-something (for my other kid)

From the dollar bin, all these #1 reprints:

The Talisman #0
Captain America #1 (for my wife)
Action Comics #858
Marvel Zombies #1
The Walking Dead #1
The Flash: Rebirth #1
Detective Comics #854
Spawn #1
Savage Dragon #1
Proof #1

I came home yesterday, went through my pile, read Spawn and Savage Dragon and noticed the Wolverine and Batman/Superman. I thought, Wait, this isn’t my stuff. You see, I have a mailbox there and they just put the stuff I collect in there for me to pick up at my convenience. When I got to the counter with my stack of dollar books, the other comics were already in a bag. I just assumed what was in there was my usual books.

Anyway, I went back to today. The Wolverine was a freebie (so I kept it, of course) and the Batman/Superman #75 was an error because I originally asked for the regular Batman and Superman series to be added to my monthly books over the phone. I guess the guy took it as the team up book instead of the two separate books like I meant. Completely understandable mistake because the Batman/Superman book is usually refered to as Superman and Batman or vice versa. But I kept the Batman/Superman because a) I like the owner and b) it’s the 75th issue and has some bonus stuff in it. No worries. It’s all good.

So I left there today with Batman #702 and Superman #702, Hellboy #1 from the dollar bin plus a pack of bags and boards.

Good haul. Really happy.