After a busy weekend of rocking out, followed by some hardcore napping, we finally got together to record this week’s podcast episode. Episode 034 of Marooners’ Talk, “Do A Barrel Roll!”, covers various topics. We get off to a slow start, but to be fair it was Monday evening, and not every opening can be fireworks and pinatas, so LAY OFF. There are a few moments of positive discussion this week; specifically, our conversations about limited editions being released this year and our shared admiration of Harmonix titles. The rest of the episode, though, sees us revert to our natural negative natures when discussing Activision (Radical Entertainment), The Amazing Spider-Man, Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut, FOX Marvel movies (Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, X-Men), and the flaws with X-Men: First Class and its absolutely awful Blu-Ray special features. Read the full story

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Here we are friends, the end of Spidey-Month. I’d like to take a moment to thank all the writers and artists from Spidey history, for it was their stories that inspired this month and my love of the characters. As such, let’s talk about the essentials, the best of the best in those stories. As always, these are my opinions, so please accept them as such and check out these great tales.

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I heard it said that a great super hero is how well you can mix him with other characters. In Spidey’s long history, he’s teamed up with a lot of different people, both within the Marvel universe and outside it. As such, I feel that I should talk about his best team-ups. Keep in mind, these are what I enjoyed the most for character interaction and significance, not a countdown, nor a complete list. If I listed all the team-ups Spidey did, I’d be writing all night.

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While it’s possible to talk about every Spidey game, I personally look at the Spidey franchise as starting in the PS1 days. So, since I’ve played every game since then, here’s my mini-review/overview of all of them.

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In keeping with Ahmed’s run of Spidey Month pieces, Episode 026 of Marooners’ Talk, titled, “Spidey’s Turning 50,” focuses primarily on Spider-Man, with the occasional tangental comic character stealing focus for a few moments. We ran a little long, as we will often do when we get into our critical nerd modes, but managed to come to a close about ten minutes before we hit the hour and a half mark. The unrepentant Spider-Man fanboy meets the critical nerd in this week’s HARD HITTING EPISODE. Read the full story

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By this point, it’s kind of a given that while Norman Osborn is Spidey’s greatest foe, Venom will probably always be his most popular foe. But really, who or what is Venom? Villain, anti-hero, monster, parasite? The fact is, Venom is a lot of different people, and yet the same all the time. But, like a lot of Spidey’s villains, he’s had good times and bad times as far as depictions go.

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I always find it funny when something becomes popular outside of its place of origin. Hell, people in the US have managed to make some anime so insanely popular when it was pretty darn average in Japan. So turnaround is fair play when it comes to Spider-Man. Marvel’s wallcrawler has a huge fan following in Japan, and it often resulted in very interesting and original interpretations.

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It seems easy these days. Ask a person who Spider-Man’s greatest enemy is, more often than not they’ll say the Green Goblin, with Doc Ock and Venom being the only ones in the same league. But it wasn’t always that way. While a formidable foe, Norman Osborn had to work hard to make it to the top of the list. And even when he’s not the Goblin attacking Spidey, his legacy continues to live on.

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Spider-Man often comments on his lousy luck, especially with women. But Peter Parker can’t seem to see past his heartache to realize that tons of people would kill to have his women troubles. Even the Human Torch commented that everytime he sees Peter, there’s always some gorgeous woman involved. Hell, even Spidey villain the Chameleon wondered about how Peter knew so many hot women. So, in honor of these women, let’s talk about the most significant love interests in Spider-Man’s history. Please note, this is only the most significant ones, not all of them.

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So, for my first Villain Spotlight, I’ve chosen Spidey’s foe from the upcoming feature film, the Lizard. It helps that he’s one of my favorite non-archenemy characters in Spidey’s Rogues Gallery, and as it’s my first one, let me lay down some ground rules: I may be providing facts, but this is mostly my opinion on what makes this villain works, as well as what stories I think he was well used in, not a biography. Take it with a grain of salt.

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