Things have been very focused on comic books here this week and it’s about to get worse. The annual Philadelphia Comic-Con sponsored by Wizard Entertainment comes to town today and we’ll be all over it.

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Our discussion of the new Avengers titles launching as part of Marvel’s Heroic Age continues with Secret Avengers #1. This was a book both of us were looking forward to for different reasons that you’ll see below along with spoilers for the issue.

PTB: I liked this. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but to be honest I wouldn’t know how to describe what I was expecting.

Steve Rogers plan to eliminate threats that the world doesn’t or can’t know about could be a great spin on the character and the Marvel Universe. I was questioning whether this was something that made sense for the character, but the reference to Cap’s experiences in World War II and having just read The Marvels Project got me over that.

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After all of discussion of Thunderbolts earlier this week, PTB and I thought it might be fun to discuss all of Marvel’s Heroic Age launches beginning with the centerpiece book, Avengers #1. Spoilers ahead.

PTB: I enjoyed Avengers #1, primarily because of the inclusion of Kang the Conqueror. I don’t know what it is about that character, but I’m a fan.

KevinMLD: i don’t really know anything about Kang except that he’s a guy that you have some like nostalgic appreciation of… Oh and that he’s a time traveler of some sort.

PTB: He’s a time warrior!

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Lester "The Silver Fox" Patrick

The Flyers were huge in Philadelphia when I was growing up, and they’ve done a lot this year to put themselves back in the spotlight. Now that hockey has been on the brain for a while, I got to thinking about the last time in my life that I really payed attention to the sport.

The thing that came immediately to mind are the crazy set of divisions and conferences that the NHL was organized into throughout the 1980s. The Flyers have been part of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference since 1993, but my memories of them are as part of the Patrick Division in the the Prince of Wales Conference. I’ll never forget having a certain fascination with where these names came from and what they meant. While the Adams, Norris, and Smythe Divisions and the Campbell Conference weren’t things I could immediately recall from memory, they have so much more charm than East, West and all points in between.

The other thing I recall trying to wrap my mind around were the teams from oddball cities, particularly ones without other sports teams like the Hartford Whalers, Winnipeg Jets, and Quebec Nordiques. Technically those teams still exist as the Carolina Hurricanes, Phoenix Coyotes, and Colorado Avalanche respectively, but those teams just seem so boring to me. Of course, there are still some weird franchises out there like the Columbus Bluejackets, San Jose Sharks, and Ottawa Senators, but they’re just not the same.

With expansion, relocation, and realignment to geographic divisions, I feel like some of the magic has been lost. The organization shouldn’t really affect the sport, but looking back, the archaic and inaccessible setup really created a mystique for the NHL. At least this year, the Stanley Cup Finals feature representatives of the James Norris Division in the Chicago Blackhawks along with the former Lester Patrick Division Philadelphia Flyers. A Flyers win might just be enough to keep me around even if the league is so easy to figure out these days.

I’m sure there is plenty that happens in Philadelphia every single weekend.  So after you read this, please don’t feel the need to tell me about all those other busy, busy Philly weekends.  I don’t really care about those.  I am generally a homebody.  I don’t need to go out to every event.  As I rode the train down to the city today, I thought about how hot it was outside.  And how this first weekend in June has seemed to be impossibly hot every year since we moved into the city.  I was wondering why there were at least 30 other people getting on the 1:15 train with me on a Friday afternoon.  Does no one work anymore? Read more of this article »