I was in elementary school then, and all the boys used to trade their excess Marvel cards to try to complete their sets. For the longest time, I kept buying packs of cards from this comic book store not too far from my home, trying to finish my set, since all I was missing was the card of a superhero named Speedball. As luck would have it, no matter how many packs I bought, I was never able to wrangle Speedball in on my own to finish my collection. Finally, one day, in the boy's locker room, Danny Santana told me that he had an extra Speedball card, and that he would trade it to me that night for five cards. I had a whole bunch of spares, so he saw an opportunity and took it, and I didn't hesitate since I had nothing better to do with those excess cards anyway. My grandma drove me to his house that evening at around 7 p.m. to make the exchange, and the biggest smile came across my face when I finally held that one missing piece to my collection in my hand. My 1991 set had FINALLY been completed!!
Now, by no means, am I saying Speedball's the man. Speedball was a silly superhero. Definitely no Wolverine or Gambit, who were my two faves back then. Keep in mind, this was back when Gambit was still a relative mystery man, before he became a lame Cajun cliché. All he was then was a dude with a trenchcoat, steel shin guards and a weird facemask-looking thingy who nobody knew much about. He sort of resembled a WWF wrestler, but in the comic books, he'd always appear at the strangest of times to throw crap at people (mostly playing cards) and beat them with a very long stick (or a bo staff, if you must). Hilarious stuff, really! Wolverine was also cool as heck. The dude had claws, could heal from any wound in about two seconds, and was every little boy's image of what a tough guy should be. However, in 1991, Speedball was the only superhero missing from my collection, so I was willing to give up five cards for him. That, my friends, is called supply and demand. That and free trade are what our capitalist economy thrives on.
This is not an essay on economics, though, so let me get back to my point. Back in 1991, I had a lot of time on my hands and there were little to no superhero movies coming out. The few that did were lame as all bloody hell. However, technology has finally reached a point now -- some two decades later -- where that same Marvel universe I was a part of as a kid has come to encompass the cinematic landscape. But now, as luck would have it, I just don't have the time or energy to keep up with it, and so I've fallen way behind. In all honesty, I wish I had more time these days to kick back and enjoy three-hour epic movie experiences, but I just don't. However, if reading comics and watching wrestling as a kid taught me anything, it's that where there's a will, there's a way!
So, here's my plan...
Sometime in the near future, I'm going to take just one weekend out of my busy schedule to host a two-day superhero movie marathon. There are way too many Marvel movies already to fully catch up in one weekend, but one's all I can spare for now, so I'm just going to tackle the big ones. Forget the confusing X-Men sequence of movies, and the lame Fantastic Four ones, let's just focus on the biggest moneymakers of them all -- those Avengers that are making Stan Lee's pockets greener than the (Incredible) Hulk's skin! Eleven movies, twenty-nine hours, two days. I'll watch them in this order, which I believe is the order in which they were released to the general public: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and then I'll head to the movies to finish off the marathon with the one that's out now, Avengers: Age of Ultron.
For anyone reading this that ain't a lifelong comic book fan, but who still wants to know the backstory of all these movies, I've got something to make your lives simpler. I didn't create it, but I did watch it and thought it'd be helpful to the comic book novice while trying to live in Stan Lee's world. So if you've got 13 minutes to spare, feel free to learn about the overall connecting story arc that goes on in all these movies...
