The Avengers made Marvel's biggest experiment work: take a group of people who don't particularly like each other and somehow convince us they belong together.

Fourteen years later, Avengers: Doomsday has the same problem on a ridiculous scale.

This time we're not just dealing with Iron Man arguing with Thor or Steve Rogers trying to keep six Avengers focused. We've got Avengers, New Avengers, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Wakandans, multiple universes—and Doctor Doom sitting right in the middle of it.

So for this Road to Avengers: Doomsday rewatch, we're going back to 2012 to figure out why the original Avengers actually worked.

We get into how quickly the movie establishes each Avenger's personality, why letting them fight and disagree is essential to eventually making the team believable, Steve becoming the field leader, Loki accidentally creating the Avengers in both comics and the MCU, the escalation from the Tesseract to thousands of incursions, and why we desperately miss this version of Hulk.

Then there's the bigger Doomsday problem:

Who the hell leads everybody?

Steve Rogers? Sam Wilson? Reed Richards? The X-Men? And what happens when saving one universe might mean another one doesn't survive?

And maybe most importantly—what happens if Doctor Doom doesn't walk into the room offering a fight?

What if Doom offers them a solution?

Because the worst version of Avengers: Doomsday is just a parade of characters showing up so everyone can cheer.

The rotating Avengers shot in 2012 worked because the movie spent two hours making us believe those six people had finally become a team.

That shot was the payoff. It wasn't the story.

Avengers: Doomsday doesn't just have to assemble everybody.

It has to earn another Avengers moment.

Road to Avengers: Doomsday continues as we figure out what each movie adds to the board.

We're finally jumping into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics—and somehow we picked one of the strangest possible starting points.

TMNT: Black, White & Green isn't one continuous story. It's four issues filled with short stories from completely different creative teams, all telling their own version of the Turtles using only black, white and green.

Which makes this thing almost impossible to rate.

Some stories had us wishing they were full six-issue arcs.

Some felt like they ended right when they were getting interesting.

And at least one had us wondering what the hell we were even reading.

Miguel and Luis get into the best and worst stories, the wildly different artwork, whether eight pages is actually enough to tell these stories, why the Turtles still feel surprisingly consistent across completely different creators—and Luis somehow changes his rating in the middle of the episode.

Then we get into the important shit:

Who's the best Ninja Turtle?

And with this book officially kicking off our TMNT comic journey, we're already looking ahead to the big one:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin.

John Stewart is finally Green Lantern. So why didn't it completely feel like it?

The Lanterns Season 1 finale answers the murder mystery, reveals what really happened to Hal Jordan, gives us Noah's Manhunter truth, closes the book on Hal and John in a surprisingly emotional way, and finally puts Hal's ring in John's hands.

And a lot of it works.

Noah and John becoming two sides of the same question about programming versus choice? Works.

Hal finally being given the opportunity to hold onto life and choosing to let go instead? That got me.

John rejecting everyone else's plan for his life and creating his own Green Lantern oath around the words “I choose”? I actually like it more the longer I've thought about it.

But then John finally flies.

This should've been the moment where, after eight episodes, I went:

There he is. That's John Stewart. That's Green Lantern.

And…I didn't.

So we're getting into everything from Kerry and Noah to Hal's goodbye, John's new oath, Sinestro's strange fear-infused Lantern, what John actually is now, and why I don't think this finale needed a giant CGI battle—but desperately needed one definitive Green Lantern moment.

Because I think Lanterns understands John Stewart incredibly well.

I'm just not sure the finale completely understands the fantasy of being Green Lantern.

And somehow the biggest question I'm leaving Season 1 with isn't what happened to Hal Jordan.

It's:

What the hell kind of Green Lantern did John Stewart just become?

Steve Rogers already got one of the most complete endings in the MCU—so why are we going all the way back to Captain America: The First Avenger before Avengers: Doomsday?

After this rewatch, I think I finally get it.

The First Avenger isn't really about Steve Rogers becoming Captain America. It's about proving that he already was. Before the serum, the shield or the costume, Steve was the guy willing to jump on the grenade for everybody else.

And that's what makes his return so interesting now.

We get into skinny Steve, the grenade scene, Captain America becoming a product before becoming the hero, Bucky's beginnings, the Tesseract and Red Skull, Steve/Bucky/Sam and the legacy of Captain America, and what it could mean for Steve to encounter Doctor Doom wearing Robert Downey Jr.'s face.

But the biggest question comes from Endgame.

Steve finally stopped sacrificing. He chose Peggy. He chose a life for himself. Now Loki has shown up at their door, and Anthony Russo says that's where Avengers: Doomsday is “born.”

So what if Doomsday happens inside Steve's Endgame ending?

Could Steve leave Peggy, survive Doomsday, return home, live his life, and still eventually become the old Steve who gives Sam the shield?

That's speculation—but it's one way Marvel could bring Steve Rogers back without undoing the ending that made his entire MCU story work.

Road to Avengers: Doomsday continues as we figure out what each movie adds to the board.

Rewatching X2 changed how we're looking at the returning X-Men in Avengers: Doomsday—and it has surprisingly little to do with William Stryker or a bunch of Easter eggs from 2003.

X2 gives us a much better look at Professor X, Magneto, Cyclops, Mystique and Nightcrawler, but more importantly, it shows what happens when characters with fundamentally different beliefs are forced onto the same side by an existential threat.

We get into Nightcrawler's faith, Bobby and Pyro taking completely different lessons from the same experience, why Magneto barely needs to recruit Pyro, Stryker and Weapon X, Mystique being one of the movie's MVPs, the ridiculous Marvel names hiding on Stryker's computer, Jean Grey becoming Phoenix, and why we're begging Marvel to finally let Cyclops matter.

X-Men introduced the argument. X2 puts that argument to the test.

So when these characters collide with the rest of the Marvel universe in Avengers: Doomsday, will they actually agree on what survival looks like?

Road to Avengers: Doomsday continues as we figure out what each movie adds to the board.

Lanterns Episode 7, “The Jordan Boys' Legacy,” finally pulls back the curtain on Hal Jordan — and somehow makes his greatest strength and his biggest flaw feel like the exact same thing.

Miguel breaks down Hal's relationship with his father Martin, the meaning behind the baseball and Hal's inability to let go, the Jordan family's generational trauma, and why the episode completely reframes Hal's claim that he's “fearless.”

We also get into John Stewart's strange connection to his constructs, the surprisingly emotional relationship between John and the Halogram, why Noah and Kerry still feel suspicious, Hal's secret portal to Anton's destroyed world, the Manhunters, and Sinestro waiting at the end of Hal's trail.

With one episode left, we're asking the big questions: Who killed Hal Jordan? Why did Hal have that portal? Who freed Sinestro? What is going on with Noah? And is the show's increasing focus on fear setting up something much bigger for the Green Lantern mythology?

Full spoilers for Lanterns Episode 7.

Follow Our Opinions Matter:

YouTube — @ouropinionsmatterpod
Instagram — @ouropnionsmatter25
TikTok — @ouropnionsmatter25
Threads — @ouropnionsmatter25

#Lanterns #HalJordan #GreenLantern

Did Tom King ruin Adam Strange — or did Strange Adventures make him more interesting by tearing down the mythology surrounding him?

Miguel and Chris dive into Strange Adventures by Tom King, Mitch Gerads and Evan “Doc” Shaner, the DC Black Label series that transforms Adam Strange's heroic reputation into a mystery about war, truth, deception and the stories we choose to believe.

We discuss why both of us landed at 9.4/10, why Chris considers it his favorite comic of all time, the backlash from Adam Strange fans, Mister Terrific's investigation, Alanna discovering the truth, Adam's deal with the Pyykts, Aleea, the ending, and whether Mister Terrific ultimately tells the truth himself.

We also dig into Tom King's real-world inspiration for the story and how his background helped shape a comic about the uncomfortable distance between a celebrated hero's mythology and reality.

Full spoilers.

Follow Our Opinions Matter:YouTube — @ouropinionsmatterpodInstagram — @ouropnionsmatter25TikTok — @ouropnionsmatter25Threads — @ouropnionsmatter25

#StrangeAdventures #TomKing #DCComics

Ten years after Rushville, John Stewart has built an entirely new life. Hal Jordan spent that decade paying for what happened. And now Hal is dead.

We're breaking down Lanterns Episode 6, “Bad Optics,” including John's return to Rushville, Hal's suspicious murder, his warning that nobody should know he met with John, the mysterious Green Lantern vault, Sinestro's escape from the Science Cells, Nathan Fillion's Guy Gardner entering the story, Carol Ferris, Hal's surprisingly emotional funeral, and the larger DCU references to Superman, Batman, Starro and Midway City.

But the biggest change may be John himself.

Ten years ago, everyone else told John Stewart what the Green Lantern ring was supposed to mean for his life. He rejected it.

This time, nobody makes the decision for him.

John chooses the ring himself.

With Hal's killer still somewhere in Rushville, Sinestro loose and only two episodes remaining, we're getting into everything Episode 6 sets up for the end of Lanterns Season 1.

Our Opinions Matter