Daily Grindhouse | THE DAILY DAILY GRINDHOUSE #9

Day Nine, and we are still rocking and rolling. This edition is a little late because I went long on one topic. You’ll see. Let’s get to reading! Here are the things I was thinking about today (aside from lunch and naked ladies, because I’m just a caveman).

JOHN CARPENTER!

Variety has a new interview with John Carpenter. I’m pretty fucking fed up with Variety for the hitpiece on Rachel Zegler yesterday, so I hate to send them clicks, but John Carpenter is John Carpenter.

BTW if you’re one of those people who has trouble with me occasionally coming down hard on Trump supporters, I advise you not to look for what JC has said about ‘em. There was a moment a couple years ago where the right attempted to claim THEY LIVE. While it was nice to see them showing taste for once, talk about missing the point. If you’re so far gone that you think Trump is one of the good guys, I’m so sorry: THEY LIVE was not for you. But maybe it was about you…

NEW COMIC BOOK DAY!

Today was one of the bigger new-comic-book Wednesdays in recent memory, with tons of great stuff being released. Just a few books worth picking up, out of many:

GODZILLA VS. THE FANTASTIC FOUR!

I mentioned the other day that Marvel Comics is putting their characters against Godzilla over the next few weeks. First up is the FF! I guess if Reed Richards can keep Galactus from destroying Earth, he can probably come up with something to slow Godzilla down, but clearly the main draw here is seeing however Ben Grimm attempts to handle the situation.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #15

I wrote about this title last week. It’s good!

BATMAN #158

This is by far the hugest release of the week. Legendary artist Jim Lee, who primarily has been doing covers for years, has returned to monthly comics for a new Batman storyline. Honestly, I’m ambivalent. There’s no artist that I’ve thought about more than Jim Lee: Back when he hit in the early 1990s, he was probably the artist whose work inspired me the most, outside of maybe Arthur Adams or John Byrne. There was a time I dreamed of being a cartoonist and Jim Lee’s dynamic drawings fired up my imagination. What Jim Lee did with the X-Men had so much impact that it’s still very obvious in most of the characters today. The very good series X-Men ‘97 was all about recapturing those glory days, and specifically, those character designs. That said, something about Jim Lee’s work at DC has always left me cold. He’s just as good as ever. It’s me, not him. I think to me, the DC heroes have always been goofier and more cartoony. All my favorite DC comic books have art that leans into the primary colors and preposterousness. The sleekness and modernity that I love so much about his art has always felt like a better fit with Marvel, particularly the X-Men. Or maybe it’s just that I’ll never love anything as much as I did when I was thirteen? I hope it’s not that. At any rate, this new series is going to be huge for comics. That shop was pretty busy today!

ABSOLUTE MARTIAN MANHUNTER #1

You know Superman, and Wonder Woman, and Batman, and Aquaman, and you may even know Green Lantern or The Flash, but chances are you may not know the Martian Manhunter, who is the strangest and least famous member of the Justice League of America. (It isn’t Cyborg, despite what those Zack Snyder movies might have you believe. Cyborg is cool, but over in the comics, Number Seven has always been Martin Manhunter.) This series is a square-one re-introduction to a decades-old character that looks mind-blowing and unlike anything else on the shelves. I haven’t read any of these titles yet, but I did pick them up today!

DOOMSDAY!

The most unavoidable comic books news of today had very little to do with comic books, for better or worse. Marvel Studios announced most of the primary cast for AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY, which is about to start shooting and which will hit theaters on May 1, 2026. As you probably already know, Robert Downey Jr. is returning, but not as Iron Man: He is set to play the ultimate Marvel villain, Doctor Doom.

Marvel has been acting as if this movie is going to be the biggest of all time, and it very well may be. Creatively speaking, it’s another story. After several of its movies underperformed and the actor who was cast as the next big villain after Thanos (Kang, who had been played by the disgraced Jonathan Majors) vacated the picture, Marvel Studios is going back to what worked for them. AVENGERS: ENDGAME in 2019 was one of the biggest movies of all time, in box office terms. So Marvel brought back its directors, the Russo Brothers, and its most beloved star, Robert Downey Jr, despite that movie having taken what felt like half an hour saying goodbye to both the character of Tony Stark and the actor who played him.

Here’s some cause for concern: I saw THE ELECTRIC STATE, the most recent production from the Russo Brothers, which is streaming now on Netflix. I don’t exactly have unwavering faith in the Russo Brothers and their creative choices, nor should you if you saw that movie. Also: Downey is definitely one of the finest actors in the world, but he’s mainly made Marvel movies for the past 17 years, and he’s thoroughly identified with Tony Stark, and three decades of comic-book study tell me that he’s just not the right casting for Dr. Doom. Normally I’d be the type to say “Downey can play anything,” but I don’t think so in this case, not after making Tony Stark a household name. Mickey Mouse can’t play Donald Duck.

Doctor Doom is one of the greatest characters in superhero comic books, and he deserves to be treated as more than stunt casting, which also blatantly feels like a studio-type decision, whether or not that’s the truth. Sometimes feelings matter more than facts. I haven’t heard anybody say this feels like a good idea, outside of people directly employed by Marvel Studios.

One fairly obvious possibility is that this is all one big rope-a-dope, and that Doctor Doom, who has been known to employ “DoomBots” as impostors, could be using the image of Stark to psyche out his enemies. In other words, it isn’t Downey who will ultimately be playing Doom. He’s just playing cover for whichever actor is really going to be doing it. But that’s just speculation, and even if that’s the case, there are still other problems here. For example, we’re expected to be excited about the cast.

Here is who was announced today:

Chris Hemsworth as Thor

Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm

Anthony Mackie as Captain America

Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes

Letitia Wright as Shuri

Paul Rudd as Ant-Man

Wyatt Russell as U.S. Agent

Tenoch Huerta Mejía as Namor

Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm

Simu Liu as Shang-Chi

Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova

Kelsey Grammer as Hank McCoy, The Beast (which by the way, remains the worst comic-to-movie casting OF ALL TIME)

Lewis Pullman as “Bob,” aka The Sentry

Danny Ramirez as The Falcon

Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm

David Harbour as Red Guardian

Winston Duke as M’Baku

Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost

Tom Hiddleston as Loki

Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier

Ian McKellen as Magneto

Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler

Rebecca Romijn as Mystique

James Marsden as Cyclops

Channing Tatum as Gambit (you have GOT to be kidding me)

and

Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, arch-enemy of Victor Von Doom

So. We, the moviegoer, are expected to be thrilled with the hugest cast ever. Please believe that this isn’t even done. There will be many more announcements parceled out over the next year. When I warned you that DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE would be bad for movies in general, this is what I meant. There is no movie that can provide development for this many main characters in two hours. There is no movie based on a superhero comic book that should run longer than two hours. There is no great film that has ever been indebted to fan service. There is no reason we should be excited about characters returning that DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE spent its entire end credits saying goodbye to. And again, this is a minor point in the grand scheme of bad ideas, but Kelsey Grammer as The Beast is just shit casting. Why not bring Vinnie Jones back as The Juggernaut too?

I hope it’s obvious by now that I really do love Marvel Comics. I’m much more agnostic on Marvel Studios. I haven’t felt truly invested since probably 2018, with BLACK PANTHER. That’s the last one that felt to me like a real movie telling a story than the latest installment in an ongoing TV series that I’m not sure I want to be following. And as a fan of movies that have nothing to do with Marvel characters, I am not thrilled that actors like Chris Hemsworth and Florence Pugh, to name just two, keep getting called back to do these movies when they could be off taking part in telling new stories.

Growing up, I dreamed of seeing my favorite Marvel characters on the big screen. (Again, and not to beat a dead horse, but I never ever dreamed that somebody would cast fucking Frasier as my favorite X-Man.) More and more, it’s beginning to feel less like a dream come true than a “be careful what you wish for” kind of cautionary tale.

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Jon Abrams

Editor-In-Chief at Daily Grindhouse

Jon Abrams is a New York-based writer, cartoonist, and committed cinemaniac whose complete work and credits can be found at his site, Demon’s Resume. You can contact him on Twitter as @JonZilla___.

Tough Films For The Rough Crowd

THE DAILY DAILY GRINDHOUSE #9

JOHN CARPENTER!