At the Marvel TV panel at NYCC, Joss Whedon (via video) has confirmed that Clark Gregg will be headlining the SHIELD TV show.  “Phil Coulson, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” or at at least that’s how they’re hyping the announcement.

That was about it for new news (the motion comics were announced in July), however, there is a new trailer for the Iron Man: Rise of Technovore anime.

 

12 COMMENTS

  1. I’m confused as to how a cartoon produced in America, written and directed by Americans, can be called “anime”.

  2. Hmm, Peter David remarks at today’s Stan Lee’s World of Heroes panel that Coulson may or not be dead. Something about his head appearing on a website with the Vision superimposed on his face. Indicating it was the Vision who posed as Coulson? Too much for me to comprehend.

  3. Although I would agree/admit that anime generally would have the connotation of having some specific connection to Japanese animation, there’s probably enough counterarguments that it might be hard to make a big issue out of it. For one, of course, in Japan itself, “anime” is a term applied to any animation (not something they use to make a distinction for Japanese animation specifically). Arguably, the definition of it has probably broadened a bit to the point where it can be applied to animation that is in the general style of Japanese animation, regardless of its country of origin. Sort of like how “manga” has certainly stretched out so that even American-produced work has been described as manga because of the style. I would say it’s still a bit of a stretch – Teen Titans or Powerpuff Girls clearly had some influences, but I never heard them described simply as “anime” in the same way. But I suspect this is one of those things where the influence of anime as a style is such that we’re going to see it applied more and more to animation as a whole.

    Btw, I will say I do kind of disagree with the notion of trying to define a stereotypical Japanese “style” of animation, since there’s clearly a lot of diversity among creators and styles. But there’s probably enough things that are commonly associated with Japanese anime at this point that it would be kind of pointless to argue that point either.

  4. I guess that’s one way to get out of it and keep using the character, but doesn’t that kind of tear the emotional heart out of that scene and his sacrifice? I’d rather they just have the Scarlet Witch bring him back to life with magic or something.

  5. OK, well, scratch some of this point. In the case of this Iron Man: Rise of the Technovore thing, just read that it’s being produced by the Japanese studio Madhouse – I’ll go ahead and say that’s enough to warrant it being fairly called anime and not simply “anime-influenced”. I would agree that you get into interesting bits of discussion when you have non-Japanese creators involved with the production/writing/etc. but I’ll still go out on a limb and say that if it’s a Japanese animation studio actually producing it, it’s pretty fair to call it anime no matter what.

  6. I feel horrible for knowing this, but; the Vision was an android whose personality was based on (essentially) the downloaded brainwave patterns of a dead man. In the comics, the dead man in question was Simon Williams, a.k.a. Wonder Man (who was dead at the time, but got better).

    The obvious way to (sort of) bring Coulson back in the movie franchise would be to keep that conceit, but to tweak it so that the late Phil Coulson provides the personality template for the Vision.

  7. I feel horrible for knowing this, but; the Vision was an android whose personality was based on (essentially) the downloaded brainwave patterns of a dead man.

    The brainwave patterns (personality) bit is a typical comic-booky kludge. In SF, engrams are transferred, meaning a person’s entire persona. In AVENGERS, Englehart emphasized the differences, in the interest of developing the synthetic man’s personality; Busiek, for one, emphasized the similarities in his AVENGERS in the interest of a soap opera triangle. Given the obvious differences between the Vision and an organic human, there’s little reason to suppose that his personality would be practically identical to Williams’s or you have to suppose that the Vision, for example, has synthetic hormones that power his emotions, a la humans. That is going way too far.

    SRS

  8. My guess is the SHIELD tv show takes place a couple of years before the Avengers movie. Perhaps starting it at the same time as the first Iron Man movie to tie into events from the movies when it convenient to do so.

    I forget if it was Joss Whedon or Clark Gregg, but I remember one interview where they said you couldn’t just ignore the death, that it would cheapen the moment in the movie and that he was really dead.

    Also if they turn him into Vision, I would imagine that is an event big enough that they would want it in one of the movies rather than the tv show. Not to mention the kind of special effects they will likely want for Vision is not something that they will likely afford on a tv show budget.

  9. Who says, if they make him a Vision-ish character, it’s like the comics? Jarvis is in the movies a sophisticated AI: I can think of a couple of ways how they could use an upgraded emgram/computer program/life model decoy for Coulson. I also bet you that, if he’s vision-ish-we wouldn’t get the same power set as in the comics. Let’s see what they come up with.

  10. Why not just say Coulson survived? He walks past Nick Fury on the Helicarrier in the last scene of AVENGERS, anyway.

  11. You never actually saw the dead body of coulsin. You saw his eyes close but that’s it. The rest of it was Fury’s bullshitting the avengers into getting their head in the game.
    In an actor’s point of view I don’t think he’d want to be the vision as depending on how they do it you might not even see the actor’s face. Unless they’re going to just have him do the voice like they have to do with silver surfer… but i’m not seeing it.

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