SANTIGOLD PERFORMS @ THE TROC TONIGHT w/ Theophilus London

PHILLY POST: How bad are things at the Daily News? New York Times-bound Wendy Ruderman [pictured, middle], a 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner, is urging her colleagues to jump ship. “I hate to say it, but if people at the Daily News aren’t looking, they should be,” says Ruderman, whose swan song is Thursday. “If they’re not, it’s kind of stupid … This place is rudderless.” Rumors of the DN’s imminent demise are nothing new. This time, however, it feels real, Ruderman, 42, says. Under new owners (again) and with circulation plummeting, everything is in flux as the DN and the Inquirer prepare to relocate to smaller headquarters downtown. “Morale couldn’t get any worse,” says Ruderman, who joined the DN in 2007 from the Inky, where she was about to be laid off after four years. “Nobody tells us anything. We’ve been through this before, but for the first time, it feels real. It’s scary.” Ruderman starts at the NYT on June 4th as police bureau chief. Based in One Police Plaza, she’ll help direct as well as report daily coverage of crime and cops. MORE

PULITZER 2010: Investigative Reporting – Awarded to Barbara Laker [pictured, left] and Wendy Ruderman of the Philadelphia Daily News for their resourceful reporting that exposed a rogue police narcotics squad, resulting in an FBI probe and the review of hundreds of criminal cases tainted by the scandal. MORE

RELATED: The dynamic duo are celebrating in the DN newsroom where we’re told Ruderman just drank champagne out of her sneaker.You can check out their winning series “Tainted Justice” here. MORE

FRESH AIR

Lena Dunham was just 23 years old when her second feature film, Tiny Furniture, won the best narrative feature prize at the South by Southwest Film Festival. The movie’s success led to Dunham striking a deal with HBO for a comedy series about a group of 20-something girls navigating New York City. Girls, which Dunham writes and also stars in, premiered on HBO in April. Critics immediately heaped praise on the comedy for its voice and colorful storylines; The Hollywood Reporter‘s Tim Goodman called the show “one of the most original, spot-on, no-missed-steps series in recent memory.” A New York Magazine cover story called the show revolutionary — and USA Today noted that “Dunham is clearly a talent to be reckoned with.” But not everyone was so enamored. Within hours of Girls‘ premiere on April 15, a backlash started growing online, with critics charging that the show is narcissistic, lacks racial diversity and showcases whiny, privileged millennials complaining about topics only relevant to whiny, privileged millennials. On Monday’s Fresh Air, Dunham talks about creating the show, as well as her own experiences navigating life in New York City after graduating from college. She also addresses some of the criticisms lobbed at Girls, and details how she came up with the ideas for many of the scenes in the show. Interview highlights are below. MORE

Author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, whose classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are became a perennial and award-winning favorite for generations of children, died Tuesday. He was 83. Sendak appeared on Fresh Air with Terry Gross several times over the years. In 1989, he told Terry Gross that he didn’t ever write with children in mind — but that somehow what he wrote turned out to be for children nonetheless. MORE

RELATED: Author/Illustrator Maurice Sendak, Chronicler Of The Dark Side Of Childhood’s Moon, Dead At 83

FOOBOOZ: Fergus “Fergie” Carey (Fergie’s, Monk’s Cafe, Belgian Cafe, Grace Tavern and Nodding Head Brewery) is listed as one of the officers on the liquor license application at old High Pressure Fire Service Building at Columbus Boulevard and Race Street. The building was purchased last year by the Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe festival management and a bright orange liquor license placard is now displayed on the former fire hydrant pumping station. The building will be the permanent home of Philadelphia Live Arts and will include: MORE

RELATED: Morgan’s Pier is the name attached to Avram Hornik’s new project on the waterfront. Replacing what was once Octo and previously Rock Lobster, Morgan’s Pier is going for the beer garden vibe and backyard grilling style cooking. Hornik also told The Insider he’s in talks with a “name-brand” chef to run the kitchen. MORE

NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Which brings us back to the question: Have we reached peak Facebook? And no, we haven’t. Even if Facebook never adds another user, it will keep growing: It has become a fundamental substrate, a difficult-to-avoid component of any site or app that requires users to register—making it essential to nearly every major web innovation now and in the future. There’s a related question: Is Facebook ever going to be cool again? That’s like asking “Is the phone company cool?” The interface may not be exciting anymore, but the network is very, very cool, in the disruptively awesome way that enormous things are: volcanoes, aircraft carriers, the New Deal. Peak Facebook, when it does arrive, is something that Facebook-haters should fear, not welcome. Facebook’s platform has been so overwhelmingly successful that the company hardly had time to do anything but grow. Yet when the growth of the network itself slows, as it too inevitably will, Facebook—as a publicly traded leviathan whose mandate is to increase profits—will need to find new ways of slicing and dicing humanity into groups that will respond to marketing. That’s what lurks on the other side of peak Facebook, and it is going to suck. MORE

RELATED: If all goes as planned, Facebook will finally pull the trigger later this month on its long-salivated-over IPO. The deal could value the company in the neighborhood of $100 billion, making founder and CEO Mark Elliot Zuckerberg’s own unusually large stake worth $25 billion. It is a huge sum, even in context. Zuckerberg’s impending fortune is more money than Wal-Mart’s 10,000-plus stores made last year. It’s more than Wall Street paid in bonuses to New Yorkers last year. And it has been amassed in only eight years by a 27-year-old who not long ago passed out business cards reading “I’m CEO, bitch.” The Zuckerberg most people know is the one depicted by The Social Network: nerdy, insecure, and shady—in no way a mature adult who’s earned such massive wealth. His awkward public appearances over the years have not improved that impression. Zuckerberg may have written the original code for Facebook, the common view of him goes, but the company’s success since then—the service is now used by nearly one-eighth of the world’s population—has come more despite him than because of him. He was just in the right place at the right time. But this view sells Zuckerberg massively short. Getting a company to grow as fast as Facebook has is extraordinarily difficult, even when users do a lot of the work. It’s even more challenging when you go in having never raised so much as a dollar from investors or managed a single employee, and you’re fighting to stay ahead of some of the richest, most aggressive, and most talented companies in the world. Mark has done two things in his twenties,” a colleague of Zuckerberg says. “He has built a global company, and he has grown up.” The second one made the first possible. MORE

RELATED: Facebook Social Reader Apps Are ‘Collapsing’

Forget everything you know about Willie Nelson: the weed, the massive IRS bill, the resulting Taco Bell commercials, the weed, the solar powered tour bus, the Julio Iglesias duet, the reggae album, the weed. That’s all well and good, but what matters is the music. And the music of Willie Nelson is no joke. Nelson is an icon, an outlaw, a cowboy, a fierce guitar player and nuanced singer, a great songwriter, a larger than life character who seems hewn from a piece of granite. He is still out on the road most of the time at age 79, outperforming many people a quarter of his age. Nelson is, to use his own imagery, like an old grizzled matador who refuses to cede the ring because he knows he can still do battle and because it’s the only life he knows. A more apt comparison might be to that of a wily old boxer (like Philly icon Bernard Hopkins), who gets knocked down a lot, but always gets back up swinging and wins more than his share of fights. Nelson hasn’t stayed down on the mat or off the road long in his 72 years of performing, and he showed on Sunday night at the Keswick Theatre that he is still a champion. Nelson’s voice, while weathered, is still strong and memorable. His unique guitar playing – short staccato bursts of notes, with a strong Spanish/Classical influence – remains powerful as ever. Nelson and his crack band mixed classics, some deep cuts and a few recent songs to the delight of a packed house for almost two hours. The crowd listened carefully to the old master and between songs erupted in applause, letting Nelson know he was deeply revered and appreciated. Highlights: “Still is Still Moving To Me”, “Always On My Mind”, “Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground”, a medley of “Funny How Time Slips Away/Crazy/Nightlife” and late in the set a showstopper – a brilliant, epic “Ou Es-Tu, Mon Amour?/I Never Cared for You” (from 1998’s overlooked Teatro), showing that this gunslinger still has a lot of bullets left. – PETE TROSHAK

PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE: From some other developer, this might all sound a little too fantastical. But after putting a European-style piazza in Northern Liberties, Blatstein is working in rarefied air, both literally and figuratively. His newest concept takes a little explaining. But in short, about 60 feet off the ground, on rooftops extending from about a third of the way along the 1400 block of Callowhill, all the way to 16th Street, Blatstein plans to erect a “village reminiscent of old Europe.” [NOT pictured, above] Crooked and meandering streets will weave through a collection of one- and two-story buildings housing small shops, cafes and restaurants. The Village will be connected by a “sky bridge” traveling across North 15th Street. “You know how you see, in nature shows, in rain forests, scientists can go up into the canopy of the forest and find a whole different ecosystem?” asks Blatstein. “That’s sort of the concept, only what you’ll find here will be like Europe. With the buildings around you, you really will feel not like you’re on a roof, but like you’re in a village.” MORE

PHAWKER: Hmmm, have to see the actual plans and we may well wind up on the wrong side of history with this one, but our initial response is this sounds kinda corny — like a roofdeck Hershey Park. Also, hermetically-sealed retail/entertainment concepts are almost always a bad idea — think The Gallery, think Dave & Busters. Lastly what is the message it sends? Philly is broken and can’t be fixed so we’re gonna build a new one on top of it in the clouds. This new Philly in the clouds will be gated, to make sure that not too many North Philadelphians from the surrounding neighborhoods get in, lest you think its open to just anyone. But having said that, we are glad to see that someone in this town dares to think big. And Blatstein has proven the skeptics wrong before. So while this sounds like a lot of pie in the sky right now, Eightball says ask again later.

THE INDEPENDENT: Iceland was a pioneer in recklessness during the credit boom. And now the small nation in the north Atlantic is a pioneer in political accountability during the credit bust. Geir Haarde, the Icelandic prime minister between 2006 and 2009, appeared in a special constitutional court in Reykjavik yesterday on charges of “failures of ministerial responsibility” during the 2008 financial meltdown. But there is an irony here. For the economy that Mr Haarde helped to wreck has fared surprisingly well since the bust. Iceland experienced one of the most severe recessions in the world when the markets crashed in 2008. Economic output fell by about 12 per cent over two years. But the latest report on Iceland by the International Monetary Fund shows that growth is resuming. GDP is expected to increase by a relatively healthy 2.5 per cent in 2011. The Icelandic public finances are on a sustainable path too with government debt projected to fall to 80 per cent of GDP in 2016. So how did Iceland manage it? There were four pillars to Icelandic policy in the aftermath of the bust: external assistance, debt repudiation, currency depreciation and capital controls. MORE

NATURAL NEWS: The initiative came about following protests by Icelanders in 2008-2009 who were angry at the country’s leaders and bankers for its fiscal and economic collapse. At one point, protestors gathered around the Parliament building and pelted it with rocks. In the ensuing months, Iceland banks have forgiven loans equaling 13 percent of the country’s annual gross domestic product, which has eased the debt burden for more than 25 percent of Iceland’s population, according to a February report published by the Icelandic Financial Services Association. Iceland’s slow ascent out of the economic abyss began in 2008, following an $85 billion default by the country’s banks. Its economy in 2012 will surpass that of the entire euro zone, as well as the developed world on average (including the world’s largest economy, the United States, whose economy grew at an anemic 2.2 percent in the first quarter of this year), according to an estimate by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).W ithout the agreement, homeowners would have succumbed to their debt after the ratio of obligation to income skyrocketed to 240 percent in 2008. Iceland’s $13 billion annual economy declined 6.7 percent the following year, in 2009, but has since rebounded and will expand by 2.4 percent this year and in 2013, the OECD estimated. Meanwhile, in the rest of debt-ridden Europe, the economy will collectively expand by a paltry 0.2 percent this year and only 1.6 percent the next, OECD estimates said in November. Housing is now just about 3 percent below values in September 2008, just before the financial collapse. So improved is the nation’s economic and fiscal outlook that Fitch Ratings in February raised the country to investment grade with a stable outlook, stating the country’s “unorthodox crisis policy response has succeeded.” A new leadership coalition, led by Social Democrat Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir that was voted into office in early 2009, has authorities looking into who was most responsible for the banking meltdown. And parliament is still weighing whether to move forward with an indictment brought against former Prime Minister Geir Haarde in 2009 for his role in the crisis. A new coalition, led by Social Democrat Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, was voted into office in early 2009. The authorities are now investigating most of the main protagonists of the banking meltdown. In all, a special prosecutor has announced that as many as 90 people may be indicted, while more than 200 others, including former chief executives of the country’s three largest banks, will face criminal charges. In the U.S., meanwhile, no top bank executives or lawmakers have faced prosecution for their roles in the subprime mortgage meltdown. MORE

BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER If Zac Braff’s Garden State was The Graduate for the iPod generation, the Shins’ “New Slang” was its “Sound of Silence.” “You have to hear this one song, it will change your life,” Natalie Portman beseeched us all in Braff’s film. That scene sure changed the Shins’ life, for better and for worse — depending on where you stand on the two albums that followed, 2007’s winsome Wincing the Night Away and the new Port of Morrow. I like ’em fine, but they sound like the work of a different band from the one that made Oh, Inverted World and Chutes Too Narrow in the early ’00s. That’s because it is. These days only singer-songwriter James Mercer remains from the “life-changing” original lineup. If you’re like me, and you think what makes the Shins the Shins are Mercer’s neurotic yip of a voice and remarkable facility with melody, this is a good thing. Or at least it’s not a bad thing. If you think otherwise, you probably didn’t bother going to the Tower on Thursday night where Mercer and his reconstituted Shins — bassist Yuuki Matthews, guitarist Jessica Dobson, drummer Joe Plummer, and keyboardist Richard Swift — leavened sleek, smartly turned pop from the new album (the barreling “The Rifle’s Spiral,” the fruity tropicalia of “Bait and Switch” and the majestic “Simple Song”) with deep cuts from the Oh, Inverted World?/?Chutes Too Narrow era (the galloping “Mine’s Not a High Horse,” the eruptive ecstasies of “So Says I,” and an especially gorgeous, altogether stately “Saint Simon,” arguably Mercer’s finest moment as a songwriter to date). MORE

LOS ANGELES TIMES: George Lindsey, the Southern-born character actor who played dim hayseed Goober Pyle, the genial gas station auto mechanic on “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Mayberry R.F.D.,” died early Sunday morning. He was 83.”George Lindsey was my friend,” Andy Griffith said in a statement. “I had great respect for his talent and his human spirit.” Noting that he had his last conversation with Lindsey a few days ago, Griffith said: “I am happy to say that as we found ourselves in our 80s, we were not afraid to say, ‘I love you.’ That was the last thing George and I had to say to each other. ‘I love you.’ ” “The Andy Griffith Show,” the classic 1960s situation comedy starring Griffith as the kindly sheriff of Mayberry, N.C., was in its fourth season in 1964 when Lindsey first appeared as the cousin of naive gas station attendant Gomer Pyle, played by Jim Nabors. Lindsey’s character became more prominent after Nabors left the show to star in the spin-off series “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” in 1964. As Goober, Lindsey wore a brown felt beanie with turned-up scalloped edges and had a tire gauge, pens and pencils stuffed into the pocket of his work shirt and a rag hanging out of the back pocket of his high-wasted pants. Lindsey often recalled that Griffith told him, “Goober’s the kind of guy that would go into a restaurant and say, ‘This is great salt.’ ” MORE

Photo by Deborah Lopez

BY JONATHAN VALANIA “If heroin still made me feel like I did the first time, and kept making me that way forever — kept working — I might’ve quite happily accepted a desolate, marginal life and death,” writes Mike Doughty, aka M. Doughty, former frontman for the dearly departed Soul Coughing, in the introduction to The Book of Drugs, his wickedly funny recently-published memoir. Although he is loathe to admit it, Soul Coughing was easily the most fascinating, innovative and sonically-subversive American band to come along since Devo. Future generations of scientists may well conclude that Western Civilization set back the cause of progress for decades when it elected to ignore the band’s bracing blend of Beat poetics, hip-hop, funk and industrial rock. I strongly urge you to drop everything right now and get yourself a copy of Irresistible Bliss. You can thank me later. For the past decade-plus, Doughty has been working solo, cranking out more than a dozen studio albums, live recordings and limited edition EPs. He is currently touring in support of The Book of Drugs putting on a show that is one part concert, one part book reading, one part question an answer session with the audience. He performs tomorrow at the Sellersville Theater and will be returning to the area for WXPN’s XPonential Fest. Since Mr. Doughty has demonstrated a fondness and facility for the advice columnist format, we decided to utilize it for his Phawker Q&A.

Dear Mr. Doughty,
I am thinking about starting a critically-acclaimed early 90s alt-rock band that combines Beat poetry, hip-hop-ish spoken word, the clangorous mechanized  audio palette industrial music and the booty-shaking grooves of funk, but all anyone wants to talk about is Nirvana, Nirvana, Nirvana! Please help,
Signed Luckless On The Lower East Side

Dear Mr. or Mrs, Phawker,
I’m thinking about starting a time machine, going back to 1994, and abandoning a critically-acclaimed-early-90s etc., because that music isn’t what I wanted it to be, and the band was a dark, emotionally abusive, ugly marriage. It sounds watered-down, annoyingly self-conscious, and goofy, and I was–in my opinion–bullied into signing away the copyrights to bandmates that–in my opinion–beat the life out of me, verbally, considered me beneath their talents, and exhibited behavior that was–in my opinion–somewhere between bizarrely delusional and mean-spiritedly amoral. Then, I’ll do some recording with DJ Premier, Future Sound of London, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. If the time machine is unworkable, I’ll simply ask–humbly, sincerely, and respectfully–that people who want to hear songs by the critically-acclaimed-90s etc. consider not attending the show, because I’ve abandoned that repertoire, and play the songs I’ve been writing and releasing for a dozen years. There’s a lot of people who came to these songs because they knew Soul Coughing first, but the audience is there for Skittish, Haughty Melodic, Sad Man Happy Man, Yes and Also Yes, and etc. A Soul Coughing fan would feel extremely out-of-place. I’d also love to get rid of that Beatnik tag. I’m generations removed from those dudes. It’s like calling Mötley Crüe a blues band. I truly, truly mean this respectfully: though you may be a Soul Coughing fan, I’m not–bigtime not. I know that seems weird, but it’s true. It makes me sad to have to deal with this band I dislike so intensely all the time. More importantly, it makes me sad to disappoint you.

Dear Mr. Doughty,
I have very little experience with hard drugs but I am thinking about trying heroin because I’ve heard good things and it seems to have improved the quality of life for so many people. Please advise.
Signed Soon To Be In A World Of Pain

Dear Mr. or Mrs. Phawker,
If you’ve used Vicodin, Percoset, or Oxycodone, you’ve used the exact same substance as heroin–not akin to heroin, the same thing. As gin and whiskey are both alcohol. Heroin’s cheaper, and nobody has to con a prescription out of anybody, but the quality varies. You may be asking specifically about the use of needles, about which I’m, alas, inexpert–I was a shmecker (Yiddish for sniffer). I do know that needles don’t affect the strength of the substance, just the speed at which it enters the bloodstream. Be assured: opiates are opiates, even if you put them on a Ritz cracker and shove them up your asshole.

Dear Mr. Doughty,
I am thinking about signing my life away to a major label. It just seems like a lot of fun. Please advise.
Signed, Soon To Be Completely Fucked

Dear Mr. or Mrs. Phawker,
I was treated well by all the record companies I worked with. There was an A&R guy at Warner Bros. that I’d describe as a gay, indie-rock Jabba the Hutt, and he was somewhat of a demonically passive-aggressive presence, but, other than that, they were respectful and accommodating. I kind of wished they’d have stepped in a little more, actually. Record companies are great if they give you tour support. It is so, so rare these days. Just the cost of gasoline and shared motel rooms. You’ll probably need to box the country four or five times before you have an audience–even if you do have one of those fluke blog explosions that people, sadly, still think translates into a viable career.

Dear Mr. Doughty,
My band and I don’t get along anymore. Should I just let things fester and, presumably, magically fix themselves or take a more proactive, less drug-addicted approach? How do you see this working out?
Signed, Pride Goeth Before A Fall

Dear Mr. or Mrs. Phawker,
You’re fortunate, in that you say “anymore”. The band I was in didn’t get along at any point in its existence. I’d say I was–and I don’t think this is too strong a word–hated by my bandmates. I don’t know why it’s so hard to leave abusive relationships–I guess if you grow up in a dark household, you’ll recreate it when you become an adult. Please, leave this abusive relationship you’re in. It’s just not worth it.

Dear Mr. Doughty,
I am thinking about writing a memoir of my life as a post-junkie alt-rock refugee. The tone will be black humor mixed with brutal honesty. Should I tell the truth or just make a lot of crazy shit up? Also, what are the possible downsides?
Signed The Man Who Said Too Much

Dear Mr. or Mrs. Phawker,
Tell the truth. It’s a Rashomon world, and absolutely everybody has a different perspective on everything. But, tell your truth, and be scrupulous in your honesty. If you’re already an oversharer, there aren’t downsides, other than–perhaps–a little snark, occasionally, on the internet.

MIKE DOUGHTY PERFORMS TOMORROW NIGHT AT THE SELLERSVILLE THEATER

THE AVENGERS (2012, directed by Joss Whedon, 142 minutes, U.S.)

BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Like an asteroid headed straight at earth, the unavoidable, unstoppable Avengers movie has finally made impact and resistance is futile. Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D has been making post-credit appearances in the Marvel super hero films for four years now, hinting at the arrival of the all-star super hero team. The Avengers is meant to top all the previous Marvel blockbusters of the past decade and it does that with the sheer scope of the frenzied destruction that, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk and the rest bring to New York City. Yet there’s something about this crowning achievement that also feels like the beginning of the end of the current super hero cycle (Batman and Spider-Man trailers be damned.)

Nick Fury (an authoritative Samuel L. Jackson) finally summons the hesitant heroes when the government’s experiments with dark energy draws Thor’s evil half-brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston, F. Scott Fitzgerald from Woody Allen’s recent hit Midnight in Paris) to earth to steal the endless energy supply and enslave the population of earth. Even with the fate of the world in the balance, these lone cowboys (and cowlady, counting Scarlett Johansson’s tightly-clad Black Widow) are not natural team players, so you can count on some inter-mural brinkmanship before the spandex show-offs finally get around to rescuing the rest of us.

That short paragraph sums up about all the nuance The Avengers possesses. Over two and a third hours the film basically has an opening action sequence (fighting Loki over control of the energy source, called “The Tesseract”), a middle section in which “characterization” is shaded with a series of bantering arguments, and a over-extenuated finale, in which 9-11 mayhem is again unleashed on downtown NYC. Director Josh Whedon, who just a month back wowed us with his re-think of horror clichés in Cabin in the Woods, is in no position to re-think the super hero genre with this film. The Avengers is designed to deliver the Marvel formula by the numbers, if only a bigger scale and with more CGI-powered stars.

With that ambition The Avengers is undeniably successful. The script contains some real wit, a wit that also imbues the C.G.I. destruction and the beautiful design of the massive sky ships, that emerge from a hole in the atmosphere and swim through the air like armored eels. And who steals every scene he is in? The Incredible Hulk, that’s who. Although he was never able to front a movie that pleased his fans, The Hulk, now portrayed by Mark Ruffalo (with a voice by an uncredited Lou Ferrigno,), turns his brute force into muscle-bound comic relief, able to dispel the hyperbolic speechifying of his team members by mindlessly pounding things into the ground with his huge green fists.

The Avengers had last night’s midnight crowd squealing with delight and there is a sense that it will gross more money than has been minted since the beginning of time, yet often at the height of something’s powers you can often glimpse the seeds of their fall. When the Universal Studios monster cycle of the 30′s and 40′s rolled to its conclusion, the only way the series felt it could top itself was by bringing The Wolf Man, Frankenstein, and Dracula all together in the films House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula. That was the end, the only spark left in the monsters was as straight men to Abbott and Costello. After this super hero jamboree, where can the series go without back tracking? Will one hero even seem like enough again? P.S. Stay in the theater to the bitter end, post-credits The Avengers contains a fleeting glimpse of the team during downtime that is the most original scene of the movie. If only the next installment was brave enough to explore a hero’s mundane real world moments like this. After all, placing its heroes in something resembling our world was what set Marvel apart from its competition in the first place.

EDITOR’S NOTE: One-man-walking-Star-Trek-convention and incoming Phawker intern Richard Suplee is, by his own admission, a total comic book nerd. In the quadrants of the galaxy where the jocks still rule the roost, such a confession would get your ass kicked into next week. As further proof that Phawker is not high school, instead of kicking his ass into next week, we are going to harness his deep geek knowledge and use it to vet this summer’s onslaught of big budget superhero popcorn movies. We begin with this incredibly-detailed and rigorous cross-examination of The Avengers. So put on your Spock ears and let’s do this thing.

BY RICHARD SUPLEE There are already plenty of reviews on how awesome or how awful The Avengers is. As an avid comic book reader, I figured another review of the movie will be pointless. Instead, I will be giving a detail reading on how effectively I think each member of the Avengers team was utilized by the filmmakers. As a quick overview, let me say director Joss Whedon did an excellent job. Every character is a crowning moment of awesomeness and their respective superfine will not be disappointed. Also, there are some minor spoilers below.

Firstly, The Hulk and Dr. Bruce Banner were presented almost perfectly. In the Marvel Comics universe, The Hulk is the “strongest one there is.” That is not just a fancy catch phrase but truth in advertising. Very few other beings are equal to him and besides from certain unnamed cosmic entities none can truly say they are stronger.Thankfully, Joss Whedon did not nerf The Hulk’s strength at all. The Hulk goes toe to toe with Thor, destroys a giant serpent-like spaceship in all of two seconds, and defeated Loki in roughly the same amount of time (by comparison, Thor took a good 5 minutes to defeat Loki). Bruce Banner was equally impressive. The dude is one of the top 10 smartest people on Marvel Earth (yes there is a list). The techno-babble between Banner and Stark is priceless and is one of many moments that show just how smart Banner is. While I loved seeing Banner transform at will, he is not in complete control of The Hulk, there is a nice middle ground that seems to represent the usual relationship between the two in the comics. The movie also goes to great lengths to show that The Hulk does not have an easily exploited weakness. I have personally had many heated debates over how defeating The Hulk is not as easy as just shooting Banner in the face and the movie proves me right. The Avengers also gives some personality to The Hulk beyond his rep as a misunderstood/mindless killing machine. In one scene, as he falls out of space and plummets a couple miles to Earth, he purposely aims his descent so that he lands in an abandoned warehouse so as not to hurt anyone.

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