Get Declassified Once Again with Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season Three Declassified!

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Now available at online booksellers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, local comic shops, or wherever fine publications are sold - Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season Three Declassified by Troy Benjamin! This 248 page hardcover continues the tradition of providing an excellent resource to fans of the series and the Marvel Cinematic Universe by giving you a full and detailed episode guide along with analysis from the writers, producers, and cast of the show, as well as looks behind the scenes on the stunts, visual effects, costumes, props, even the sounds required on a weekly basis for ABC's hit series!

Among the features of this season's book:

- A foreword penned by Daisy Johnson herself, Chloe Bennet talking about her experiences on the show.

- "The Sound of S.H.I.E.L.D." a top to bottom look behind how sound factors into each and every episode of the series, from what is recorded during production (and what is not) to what is added later in post-production. What does Daisy's "Quake" ability sound like? Do they smash a lot of car windows to get that sound? Find out in the book!

- A changed Director Coulson, Clark Gregg on love found and love lost - and what the tragedy he experiences in Season Three does to forever change his character.

- A look back on the evolution of Grant Ward into Hive, including conceptual artwork and commentary from the show runners and Brett Dalton himself!

- L.O.V.E. on S.H.I.E.L.D. - just why are relationships so difficult in the modern spy workplace? And how and why was this the right time for two "cursed" lovers to come together in the series? Elizabeth Henstridge and Iain De Caestecker give you their thoughts in this year's book!

As always, these behind the scenes tomes are such a joy to write - hopefully you'll enjoy reading this season's book as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Get Caught Up with the Guidebook to the Marvel Cinematic Universe!

I've been hard at work on Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season Three Declassified and have been so buried that I completely missed that not one, not two, not three, but FOUR issues of the Guidebook to the Marvel Cinematic Universe are out now! Check your local comic book shop or online retailer to pickup, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, and The Avengers now with a whole lot more to be coming around the corner.

Apologies for the updates here on the site. As you can imagine, with the book deadline, with a new Ghostbusters film right around the corner, and trying to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table, haven't had much time for writing anything else. But rest assured that this summer more updates will be a'coming!

SPT2015: Catching Up on Marvel Awesomeness

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I vividly remember right after the release of Batman Returns that I sat down with a small notebook and somehow figured out that if Batman was released in 1989, and Batman Returns was released in 1992, that it would roughly take them another three years to release another Batman film. I don't know where that logic came from, but 11-year-old me was convinced that it would be true and I started a countdown to 1995. Sure enough, 1995 rolled around and so did Batman Forever (for better or worse). The countdown was a little on the excruciating side, especially at that age when time seems to crawl at such a snail's pace and three years seemed like an eternity.

I can't imagine being my present-day 33-year-old self and going back in time to tell my younger self that there would come a time in 2015 that I'd watch Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on television, which immediately led into the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron, then I'd be in Montreal and Vancouver (to work on two Marvel projects) and be watching Daredevil on Netflix, and a month later would be watching Ant-Man in theaters. There's more on this in the upcoming Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season Two Declassified (/end plug) but I can't think of any other time where there has been new content for a property consistently for six-plus months like there has for Marvel this year. And it seems like this is just the beginning as Star Wars will be following a similar model - and you can bet other intellectual properties will be hot on their heels.

The storytelling possibilities have been fantastic. One lengthy and connected story told over multiple years, through multiple mediums, with multiple focuses. How great is that? It's the comic book page having come to life and sent to the mainstream. I've been enjoying it completely. And yes, I do have a personal bias and was a little spoiled in seeing both Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man at their respective premieres... one of the amazing perks of being the Kimmy Gibbler to the Marvel family. But I'm enjoying every minute of it. Even though Ant-Man is another origin story, it falls in the midst of an on-going story that it's able to weave in and out of seamlessly. Age of Ultron was similar, it didn't need to carry the burden of introducing all the main characters (though it did have to carry the burden of introducing a variety of other characters, which made it a super-dense flourless chocolate cake). 

Ant-Man was a completely different film. If Captain America: The Winter Soldier was a politically-charged action thriller, then Ant-Man is a comedy-charged heist film. Shades of Oceans Eleven, The Italian Job, even a little bit of Mission: Impossible are all in there. It's great how all of the live-action Marvel properties have a very different feel and tone and probably a good reason why they've all been so successful.

One thing is for certain, between a Marvel-fueled first half of the year and a Star Wars-fueled second half, both 11-year-old and 33-year-old Troy are loving every minute of it. And I don't even have to wait three years in between it all. 

Bits & Bobs - 8th Edition

Bits & Bobs collects some of the cool things around the interwebs that I think are noteworthy and worth your time but don't necessarily fill up a full blog post or news item. On with the show...

THERE HAS BEEN AN AWAKENING, AND YOU PROBABLY FELT IT...

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Unless you've been off the grid since Thanksgiving, you probably have already seen and know that a teaser trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released on Black Friday. The new sequel film takes place thirty years after the events of Return of the Jedi and features all-new characters and some familiar faces including Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia. The teaser trailer clocks in at a mere 88 seconds but is the first official glimpse of the newcomers John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, and Oscar Issac and is intended as something of an amuse-bouche before bigger trailers are released presumably next spring. Of course, fanboys are nitpicking over tiny details including a brand new lightsaber seen sported by what many assume is the new villain of the film but how can you not like everything you see in this trailer? A panicked hero in Stormtooper armor on the run, a tough female jumping onto a souped-up speeder and racing to (or away from) danger, X-Wings, the Millennium Falcon... I mean, c'mon. If you haven't seen it, check it out here in glorious high definition courtesy of StarWars.com.

HER NAME IS AGENT

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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is about to head off into its mid-season hiatus with a blow-out Winter Finale on December 9th, but the good news is that in between episodes Agent Carter is going to help you pass the time starting with a two-hour film airing on ABC January 6, 2015. The latest TV spots and promos really make the film look true to the first Captain America: The First Avenger film (and in-turn, gets me stoked for the show because it also feels a lot like The Rocketeer). The seven episodes will presumably air weekly leading up to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s return later in 2015, and knowing how everything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is connected, will most likely have ramifications for all of the Marvel shows and films to come.