The Serpent Society

If you watched the Luke Cage series you might have noticed that the bad guy's (Cottonmouth and Diamondback) were al named after snakes. This isn't a coincidence since the most stable criminal organisation in the Marvel Universe is called 'The Serpent Society'.

I must admit that I've seen a few appearances of the serpents and my impression of them was a bunch of idiots dressed as snakes but after Luke Cage I looked into them and there seems to be more about them than meets the eye. 

The one who started the whole group was Sidewinder, who had tried creating a organisation a few times with 'The Serpent Squad' before succeeding. The first members were Anaconda, Black Mamba and Death Ader. Sidewinder convinced them to contact other known mob's and gangsters and soon the group grew. Asp, Bushmaster, Cottonmouth, Diamondback, Cobra and Princess Python joined the club. 

When the whole bunch came together Sidewinder explained his idea. A society of mob's and gangsters working together as one. Each would lay out there resources and they would all benefit from each others technologie, weapons, money, insurance and health benefits. They would also be for hire to criminals who could afford them.

There first gig was killing the original M.O.D.O.K. for an ex member of AIM. When they succeeded they really got on the map as hired criminals of the first caliber. 

Later Princess Python deserted the group and Death Ader got killed. Viper once tried to take over the group but Diamond back got help from Captain America himself to save the society.

As you can read there's more about the group than meets the eye. Killing M.O.D.O.K. or getting help from the Captain himself aren't things achieved by a group of idiots. Even tough they're painted of as idiots sometimes. 

  

Review Doctor Strange

Hey guys, today we'll we reviewing the Doctor Strange so for those who didn't have a chance of seeing it SPOILER ALERT. For those who did see it, everything below is a personal opinion of how I experienced the movie. It is perfectly possible and oke if you don't agree with what I think.

Overall I have to say 'wauw'. They pulled it off again didn't they? The MCU had quit some challenges when it comes to Marvel stories, I can imagine it can't be easy to sell a talking raccoon but they did it and with Doctor Strange his complex story line they did it again.
Stephen Strange is a serious and big character in the comic books so they had to make sure the movie wasn't a flop and they did a good job. A lot of stuff in the comics is quit hard to follow, the different universes, the time controlling etc. Yet they were able to bring it on screen naturally and I think it wasn't that hard to follow.    

I liked the reference to the infinity stones. They revealed the time stone in the eye of Agamotto which is a little wink to those who are paying attention to the overall story line in the MCU films.
The fact that the ancient one dies at the end is something I didn't expect. I question if it was the right move since it's a big character to kill. It's perfectly possible to keep a powerful character alive without messing up the main character's story, watch what they did with Odin in the Thor franchise.

At last I wanted to point out that I really like that Mordo played a friend in this movie, the comic readers know that he will turn out to become Strange's arch enemy but they didn't rush it. At the end you kind off notice that he's not a big fan of the Ancient One no more but it's subtle which I think is a nice play.

Ronan the accuser

As  promised I'll be telling you guys a little more about Ronan today. You've all seen him in the first Guardians of the galaxy movie where he plays the main villain. Personally I think the Guardians were able to defeat him quit easily considering his powerful weapon. Than again it can't be easy putting all these huge Marvel stories in movies that last two hours tops so keeping that in mind his character was visualized quit decently. Here's how it all started for Ronan.

Ronan is a Kree and a very traditional one. When he was young he always had his eyes on joining the public accusers corps which is the Kree law enforcement. When he completed his studies he made his dream reality and soon rose in the ranks.
When he made a huge bust revealing Skrull soldiers who tried to travel trough Kree space he got promoted to supreme accuser. This status is the highest one among the accusers and he only had to answer to the supreme intelligence.

The characters made a lot of appearances in the fantastic four, captain Marvel, the inhumans and he plays a big part in the 'Kree - Skrull war' series. He is most known for his weapon which is a massive hamer. All accusers wield one but at some point Ronan's hamer gets empowered even more by one of the infinity stones! (This also happens in the movie).

He's a interesting character at the least and a worthy first enemy for the guardians.

X-23

Hey guys! Today we'll be talking about X-23. Some of you might have heard but the wrap has reported some pretty sweet facts about the new Wolverine movie called 'Logan'. A few of them we already knew like the fact that the movie will be played in the future and some stuff we could already assume seeing the trailer.
The thing which drew my attention most however was that they confirmed that the little girl traveling with Logan in the trailer will have claws like him but only two on each hand. There were a lot of rumors about X-23 being in the movie so I guess this kind off confirms it? No way of telling for sure but we'll tell you about X-23 in this post so you at least know who she is.

A top-secret program tried to recreate the original Weapon-X experiment. A lot of mutants were brought in and died because of this program. There was no mutant strong enough to endure the procedure. After a while when te scientist working on this project were on the verge of giving up when a young scientist called Sarah Kinney came up with the idea of making a clone.
They pulled all the strings they had to scramble all the DNA they had left of the original Weapon-X but it wasn't enough to make a new wolverine. The DNA was damaged and it had only x-chromosomes which meant they were not able to clone a man.
Sarah went on and made a female clone against orders, as a punishment she had to play surrogate mother to the child.

X-23 was raised and trained as a weapon. Knowing nothing but captivity there wasn't much humanity left in her. They created a special scent on which X-23 would go in animal mode and kill whatever was in front of her.
The highest bidder could pay her for a mission, where she killed numerous people. After a while her surrogate mother commanded her to kill the people leading the project so they could escape the facility but when X-23 was out obeying her mothers command one of the scientist exposed her mother to the scent. When X-23 returned she killed her mother. Right before she died she named X-23 Laura.

Again, we don't know for sure if they're going to use X-23 but you have to admit it kind off looks like it! I for one can't wait to see Logan.

The super-Skrull

Hi, guys! today we'll be talking about a villain whom we think is definitely worth looking in to. The super-Skrull made a lot of great appearances. If you don't know what skrull are first read this previous post!

In one of the attempts of the Skrull to invade planet earth, it were the fantastic four who stopped them. The Skrull fell back infuriated by their defeat and there leader Dorrek was determined to defeat the team of heroes.

After lot's of discussions with the best and brightest among the Skrull, Dorrek pulled all his resources to creat a sublime warrior. One of his best soldiers got chosen to experiment on and he would finally be known as the super-Skrull.

This being had all the powers of the Fantastic four for his own and could wield them all at once. His weakness was that he was empowered by a interstellar beam. The first time he meets the Fantastic Four he humiliates them. The team didn't know what they were up against and were no match.
It didn't take long for Doctor Fantastic to figure out what empowered this creature and soon he invented a machine to block the beam and they were able to defeat the super-Skrull. 

The Skrull didn't give up easily so they created a stronger beam empowering their soldier again. The super-Skrull fell and roze many times. He stood against many foe's (Thor, The fantastic four, The avengers, Captain Marvel,...). He also did a lot of notable team up's with Thanos and Ronan the accuser (Ronan will be a subject we'll write about soon). 

Soon the value of the super-Skrull became noted by a lot of parties. He fought for a lot of armies sometimes against his own will but he played a big role in a lot of great story lines. Definitely a character worth knowing. 

        

Yondu!

Guy's today marvel released a first sneak peek of 'guardians of the galaxy vol 2'. If you haven't seen it yet, hurry to our Facebook page (click here). Since most of us got surprised by this sudden release we've decided to make today's post about one of the new guardians.
That's right, there are two confirmed new guardians in this movie. Both of them had a side role in the previous movie but are ready to step up, we're talking about Yondu and Nebula. Nebula will be our subject a differente time, today will be all about Yondu!

Born on Zataon young Yondu grew up to be a hunter. The tribes who lived there were primal compared to earths further evolved humans. When earth started colonizing planet's outside their own, the solar system Zataon was one of the first planets on the radar. Most of the inhabitants were intimidated by earths supreme technology, they didn't pick a fight and had peaceful relationships with the settlers. Yondu's tribe however, sought sanctuary in the forests so they didn't need to contact the earthlings.

One day the planet was under attack by the Badoon. During the chaos Yondu came across an earthling and the two banded together in the hopes of escaping the planet. It didn't work out the way they planned since the Badoon captured them and held them prisoners.
Later Yondu and his human friend Astor escaped together with Charlie-27 and Martinex and the four of them founded the very first Guardians of the galaxy!

This is the origin story of Yondu in the comics, and it is only one version of him. In other universes he might really band up with Starlord. I wanted to share this one today so you guys could learn that Yondu was much more than a bounty hunter in one of the universes.  

Cottonmouth

Many of you will have watched Luke Cage already, some might still have to check it out. In our previous post we talked about Luke from a comic book perspective (you can read it here). If you've read it you'll notice we also talked about his arch nemesis Diamond Back.
In the series it's also his greatest foe but his first real foe is Cotton Mouth, we thought you'd like to learn a little more about this gangster crimelord.

Cottonmouth was a drug lord behind what he claimed to be the most successful drug cartel in the whole country. His right hand mand Slick was always by his side. Luke Cage was offered a job in the mob hierarchy by Cottonmouth (notice that this also happens in the beginning of the series). Luke pretends to take the job, to gain proof about the setup that had put him in jail years ago (as you can read in our previous Luke Cage post).
Slick doesn't trust Luke one bit and claims he has to prove himself so Cottonmouth sends him out to retrieve drugs that was stolen from him. Luke does the job but informs to the police. Cottonmouth finds out and isn't very happy about it. A fight between the two breaks out and during the fight Luke throws Slick trough the window. Slick didn't survive the fall and when Luke tries to force Cottonmouth to talk he finds out that the only one who had info on the setup was Slick he had now killed.

Angry and desperate Luke gives Cottonmouth to the police who gave him a one way ticket to jail and Luke continued his search for proof about his past.