Marvel Madness Begins - And So Does the Preseason Countdown

What happens you have one week with nothing to do except brainstorm and write a little? I mean very little, like you have to do it 5 minute spurts, and you can't research anything you write. What happens is you come up with a ridiculously uneccesary tournament that truly opens your heart and exposes the depth of your nerdiness.

This past week I "worked" at a call center where I was not able to take calls until a large amount of paperwork could filter it's way in from 47 states, but I had to sit and listen to other calls. I could not bring books to read, nor could use a computer. I had a pen and paper and as an attempt to kill time, decided to list every Marvel villian I could think of.

That did not take nearly eight hours, so then I decided to rank them by villany greatness, and then I decided to break them up into brackets for an oversized villian vs. villian tournament for the right to be named the sports blogs greatest Marvel villian. The tournament features 256 villians, split into four brackets March Madness style, with villians seeded 1-64 in each bracket.

The tournament will be scored by reader votes, after you read each blog just leave a comment with your vote on each matchup, whoever gets more votes advances. If there is a tie, I will cast the deciding vote. The current plan is to post eight matchups every day until round one is over, this is a lot but we haves a lot of matchups to vote on and I'd really rather not have this take a year.

Let the madness begin!!!!

We start today in our Broxton region.

As gesture of kindness for those who may not know enough about all 256 character to give a decent vote, I have linked each picture to that characters Wikipedia page. I think my plan will be to keep voting open for 2 days after each post before determining a winner.

24. Vengeance

vs.

41. Black Tom


56. Allistair Smythe

vs.

7. Carnage

40. Gladiatorvs.

25. Wendigo

57. Tinkerervs.
8. General Thunderbolt Ross/Red Hulk

48. Devil Dinosaur

vs.
17. Bolivar Trask

49. Sauron

vs.

16. Dormammu

32. Nuke

vs.

33. Bushman

64. Doppelganger

vs.

1.Thanos

I was unable to find the time to blog my entire top 50 preseason countdown this year, but I will provide the list below and try to get them posted daily from here. Rivals is currently at no. 25 on their countdown.

50. Maryland

49.Tennessee

48. Navy

47. Louisville

46. Toledo

45. Syracuse

44. Fresno State

43. Arizona

42. NC State

41. Miami

40. Texas Tech

39. Auburn

38. Houston

37. Northwestern

36. Washington

35. Utah

34. Penn State

33. North Carolina

32. Clemson

31. Florida

30. BYU

29. Air Force

28. Missouri

27. USC

26. Mississippi State

25. South Florida

Captain America Review

Marvel studios put out two films this year that I was highly skeptical of going into. The previews looked pretty hokey, and like most fans, I was very pessimistic about the casting of Chris Evans as Steve Rogers. I am happy to report that my pessimism is 0 for 2 or Marvel films this year.

Captain America is not as good as Thor or Iron Man but it will leave fans satisfied as they leave theatres. All of the acting is acceptable and as expected, Hugo Weaving shines as the Red Skull, with Peggy Carter and Bucky Barnes also coming across as very likable supporting characters.

The first hour of the movie, in my opinion outshines the second of the movie. Scrawny, puny, young Steve Rogers is so perfect it makes up for many flaws in the second half of the movie. The story of Steve's multiple attempts to join the army, and the relationship he builds with Dr. Erskine is a wonder to behold. There is also a lot of Tommy Lee Jones, which is always a good thing.

The second does not stand up to the first half because after the movie starts with beautiful character development and solid pacing, it feels like you are watching the movie in fast forward as soon as Cap actually joins the war. The movie actually gets so busy that you really never get a feel for Captain America the person, as there is barely a scene in the movie after the point he dons the costume, that Captain America is actually given much in the way of dialouge.

My biggest complaint about the movie has to be the CGI. The special effects seemed really awful at points, and I felt that they were a bit overused. I literally don't think you see a single punch thrown by Captain America that isn't sped up by special effects. Every time Cap fights at all, it's clear he is compter animated and at points it just doesn't look good.

The end of the movie, however, is outstanding and does a perfect job of staying true to the real story from the comics and giving new fans a happy ending. Now next summer is where it really counts though.

Avengers Assemble.

Final rating 7.5/10