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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Better yet, I hope Kang himself is interesting enough so that we don't groan every time it's revealed the one variant we just defeated was Actually a Doombot.
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."I have a feeling that the overarching villain of this saga might actually be Kang the Conqueror as a concept... like, there's no one Kang who's the Big Bad, but the threat of him in infinite forms is what the heroes are really trying to solve in a way that's better for free will than the TVA.
Disney100 Marathon | DreamWorks MarathonThe Council Of Kangs as a single threat works. There's more than one Kang, but the ensemble of Kangs is the actual threatening body the heroes/Avengers face.
If they go that route, my guess is there'll be one singular Kang villain first in Quantumania to function as an intro to the idea, and then after that point there'll be a set of Kangs who are the overarching threat.
All right, I bit the bullet and watched the trailer for Multiverse of Madness without watching NWH.
And...is it me or does it hit differently (in a good way) than the first trailer for the first DS movie? Probably because it's Sam Raimi running the ship? (Did we eveer learn how we got Sam Freaking Raimi by the way?)
Also, for those scratching their heads about the Gargantos vs. Shuma-Gorath situation, apparently there's an annoying reason for it.
"Shuma-Gorath" as a name was conceived by Robert E. Howard for Conan the Barbarian. Yes, Marvel has used Shuma-Gorath in comics and games. And yes, Marvel has done Conan comics. But apparently, using "Shuma-Gorath" as a name could raise some legal issues with the Robert E. Howard estate if used for movies. And Conan the Barbarian, despite being around since 1932, a whopping 90 years now, is still not in the public domain. So anything that has to do with Conan needs to be okayed with the Robert E. Howard estate. And neither Marvel nor Disney have a toehold when it comes to Conan movie stuff.
Basically, you guys know how the Quantum Realm is pretty much the Microverse, but not called that because it might anger Hasbro's legal ninjas? Same thing here. MCU Gargantos is pretty much MCU Shuma-Gorath, but not called the latter because legal ninjas might attack.
Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Jan 8th 2022 at 2:08:33 PM
As I'm generally unfamiliar with Doctor Strange mythos, the name change doesn't upset me all that much. I do think Shuma-Gorath does sound cooler, but both names sound fairly Lovecraftian, so whatevs.
I hope that Sam Raimi gets to wow us once again. Even outside of Spider-Man, he's a talented filmmaker, and seeing him get to play in the MCU playground might be an amazing comeback after the admittedly kinda forgettable Oz the Great and Powerful.
Edited by MatthewWayne on Jan 8th 2022 at 6:48:50 AM
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."I still think the fact that the thing isn't named Shuma, doesn't look anything like Shuma, and - from what little we see of it in the trailer - doesn't act anything like Shuma is good enough indication that it's not, actually, Shuma.
Also, the fact that Marvel has been publishing the character for decades at this point throws that theory that it was a name change due to copyright into doubt. The poster justifies it by saying there's a difference between film and comic book rights, but he's not talking about film vs comic book rights, he's talking about copyrights and trademarks.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 8th 2022 at 7:23:58 AM
What does Shuma act like? I'm not familiar with the comics, so I don't know what the differences between Shuma-Gorath vs. Gargantos. To me, they both look like some kind of Eldritch Abomination that wants to destroy things.
Shuma is a dimension lord who rules on high over the most powerful realm in existence. He's basically Cthulhu: with all the Cthulhu mythos ideas like breaking down reality around him and so on and so forth. That this monster is more of a random beast for Strange to have a punch up with on the street is an immediate sign to me that it's just not Shuma in the first place.
When he does send avatars to fight against heroes in the normal realm, it looks more like this.
◊
Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 8th 2022 at 7:29:28 AM
Gargantos is just a sea-monster kaiju that's appeared in a total of two issues.
To add some gushing yet not inaccurate details to
: Shuma-Gorath is an unkillable, omniscient Lovecraftian horror who leads the Many-Angled Ones (the beings behind the Cancerverse in The Thanos Imperative, which resulted from them killing Death). He is one of the evilest and oldest sentient beings in the universe, with power that makes Dormammu look like an ant — anytime a hero goes up against him, they're facing what can only accurately be summed up as the tiniest fraction of its fingernail tearing through reality. It has been spreading evil since the time of Conan the Barbarian and is responsible for the death of the Ancient One.
And it's not just some mindless monster with Blue-and-Orange Morality. It fully comprehends good and evil yet chooses the latter, and always speaks with grand, Shakespearean dialogue:
- Shuma-Gorath: So thou knowest the essence of Shuma-Gorath, eh, Doctor Strange? Aye — evil! Ancient, timeless... patient... evil! And Shuma-Gorath doth know thee.
Edited by EmeraldEmperor on Jan 8th 2022 at 7:39:25 AM
I mean when I saw the trailer it certainly looked like Shuma to me. I can't speak for other people, but I thought it looked like Shuma. Whose to say it couldn't be an extension of himself that Strange is fighting?
Edited by jjjj2 on Jan 8th 2022 at 10:42:42 AM
You can only write so much in your forum signature. It's not fair that I want to write a piece of writing yet it will cut me off in the midHere's my primer on Shuma-Gargantos:
I feel like everyone in the 'net is making conclusions a way too quickly about this.
The fact its toy version was called Gargantos could mean it is Gargantos, a Composite Character for whatever eldritch reason, that both of them show up in the movie (it's Sam Raimi, it could happen), or the toylines lying/fucking up as they often do. The fact Strange is fighting him on the street doesn't really mean anything as it could just be a lesser form of Shuma (here's shumie in a lesser form of comparable size actually in the process of throwing a bus like he is in the trailer from Mighty Avengers, vol. 2, issue 3, publishe in 2014
◊). Gargantos for example looks like this
, while the creature in the trailer looks like this
◊. The eye is completely wrong (Gargantos' eye is smaller and at the top of his head like a octopus, the creature in the trailer has his eye composing his torso, like Shuma does) and Gargantos doesn't have spikes around his eye (that's, once again, Shuma
◊) and for whatever reason the creature is yellow (which neither of them are) with a green-irised eye (which neither of them has, with Gargantos' being black and Shuma's being red, although they're both green otherwise).
So, in summary, it doesn't really look like either of them enough to make a statement and what we have so far is basically one frame and some shoddy toys. It's virtually pointless to try to make a definitive statement here. Maybe it's neither of them and the creature in the trailer is the Scandinavian Kraken. Who knows.
Edited by Gaon on Jan 8th 2022 at 8:09:23 AM
"All you Fascists bound to lose."The most important part of the LEGO set is America Chavez and her little Pride pin.
Edited by Tuckerscreator on Jan 8th 2022 at 8:12:49 AM
The only story to feature Shuma's name is "The Curse of the Golden Skull" which was first published 30 years after Howard's death.
I've been digging into it with a couple others elsewhere and the general impression we've gotten is that Marvel at least thinks that they have full ownership of the character. Best evidence of that is Marvel vs. Capcom, where Shuma has been used with no sign of any credit to the Howard estate for it. The thing is the Howard estate, much like the Doyle and Burroughs estates, has increasingly relied on trademark to skirt the public domain and has gotten increasingly litigious as they lose more copyrights. So if there is any impact, it's less that Marvel/Disney don't have the rights at all and more that they don't want to even chance a legal battle when they could avoid it entirely by just slapping another name on it.
Plus for a character that's likely just a Monster of the Week they could just Hand Wave Gargantos as a minion or aspect of Shuma or something. There's easy ways around this, basically.
Trademark law only applies to promotional material. If someone else holds the trademark on Shuma-Gorath, that would prevent Marvel from advertising a film as featuring the character, but wouldn't necessarily prevent the character from appearing.
That's why for a long while you had DC putting out a comic called Shazam about a hero called Captain Marvel: because Marvel Comics has a trademark on the name Captain Marvel, but not a copyright on it.

That's my bet right now, we can have Kang be the main villain of three different stories with varying personalities and competence levels by just having them be three separate Variants of Kang. Hell, I'm expecting Multiverse War to involve DOZENS of Kang Variants, since the entire premise of the war was that it was mostly the Kangs fighting each other.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Jan 7th 2022 at 5:50:55 AM