#Spider-Boy 4 Review

[dispatchdcu]

Spider-Boy #4 Review

Spider-Boy #4 Review #spiderboy #MARVEL #marvelcomics #comics #comicbooks #news #mcu #art #info #NCBD #comicbooknews #previews #reviews #spiderman #Amazon #peterparker #asm #amazingspiderman

Writers: Dan Slott Artists: Paco Medina; Ty Templeton Colorist: Erick Arciniega; Dee Cunniffe Letterer: Joe Caramagna Cover Artists: Humberto Ramos & Edgar Delgado; Nicoletta Baldari; Philip Tan & Rachelle Rosenberg; Martín Cóccolo & Jesus Aburtov; Ethan Young & John Kalisz Publisher: Marvel Price: $4.99 Release Date: February 21, 2023 Bailey Briggs risked his reputation to aid Thor. Yet winning…

[harveybwabbit92]

Speedy ultra facts (Revised, with a few more facts):

4 out of the original 6 ultra brothers are actually related to each other.

Taro and Ace are brothers, Seven is their cousin.

Jack is married to one of Mother of Ultra's sisters making him Seven, Taro and Ace's uncle.

Seven has a sister and brother.

Seven was raised by his sister after his mother died.

Seven, Jack and Taro have children.

Seven is Zero's father.

Taro is Taiga's father

And Jack has an unnamed son.

(And I guess Ace counts too? since he's Ultraman Z's godfather.)

Taro and Ace are the sons of Father and Mother of Ultra.

Ace is adopted.

Mother and Father's real names are Ken and Marie.

Ultraman is a university professor.

Leo and Astra are twins and princes.

Zoffy is apparently the grandson of ultraman King.

Zoffy smokes (in the manga he does anyways)

An Ultra-baby appears in it's capsule for a few seconds at the end of Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legends in the crowd of ultras who have been unfrozen.

The baby parents are a red(or silver) father and a blue mother.

Jack is one of the few original ultra brother's who stays in regular contact with his human host.

Ultraman Mebius's favorite food is curry.

Zero has a childhood friend named Voice who is a musician.

Ultra's mouths can open and close considering they also need to eat and drink.

Father of Ultra is terrified of angering his wife.

Taro and Ace used to have a pet dog.

Apparently there are cats and dogs in the Land of Light, though they look very different from their Earth counterparts. (Cos Aliens)[though in the comics the pup looks like a normal dog, but in the show it looks like white puffball wit' spider legs.]

Mother of Ultra has at least two sisters, one of whom married jack and the other is Seven's mother.

80 is adopted (at least in the manga adaption he is.)

80's adoptive father's name is Ultraman Red and he's Father's best friend.

Color timers were surgically grafted onto an ultra's chest in early childhood. (Taro has his as a young child in Ultraman Story and Ultraman boy has one...but then there's Geed whose timer really was grafted onto him after birth...Ah, I'm not going down this rabbit hole.)

{(Okay, I went and reviewed the wiki and some other sources on this the Color timer thing has been sort of retconned, They changed the age for Color timers to teen or adult Ultras who have the choice if they want to have a color timer or not (there are lot civvy ultras who don't have a color timer), and that it's mainly for Ultras whose jobs require them to travel off planet or for Ultras who are active warriors in the IGDF. but for the earlier installments (like the original 60s lore) it was at birth.)}

The reason Ultraseven doesn't have a color timer is cos he wasn't meant to be a fighter. His original mission was to scout out and draw a map of the milky way galaxy.

The creator of Pokemon was inspired by Ultraseven, in fact the reason it's called Pokemon is because the name Capsule monsters was already copyrighted by Tsuburaya.

Most Ultras are born through gestation capsules.(However according some of the novels *they might be outdated and thus not considered canon anymore* There are a few that still make babies and give birth the ol'fashion way.)

Fuma, Gai and Jugglus are from the same planet O-50.

The inhabitants on O-50 Aren't born ultras their original forms, As much as it sucks are human-like in appearance, but they do have super abilities to sort of make up for it. The only true way to become an Ultra on O-50 is by being chosen by the Light ring or The voice of light to become one.

The Light Ring/Voice of light is this big blue halo that floats over the planet O-50 that sometimes gives people super powers... ([there's not a lot info on O-50 other then the few snippets from the R/B novel, Orb saga and Fuma's voice drama, so work with me here])

O-50's trial to become an Ultra requires one or more people who must climb to the very top of the planets highest and deadliest mountain: Crusader's peak. Now, they can do this completely on their own or be summoned personally by the Light ring. (According to Fuma a lot of people fail the trial because they either kill each other or die on the climb up.) Anyway when they reach the peak the Ring will pass judgement if they're worthy or not, if they're found worthy then it grants them the power they need to turn into an ultra....If not then, it'll electro yeet them off the mountain like it did with Jugglus.

Though not inhabitants of O-50 themselves, the original R/B/G siblings crashed landed there and got the power to transform into their ultra and Kaiju forms, from the Light ring while to fighting off a monster they'd accidentally woke up while fighting off a gang that had chased them off their home planet.

According to Fuma, Grigio is considered an idol on O-50.

Now on to U-40 Where the inhabitants are called Ultra-people who are all born human in appearance, they're just ultras but human size.

the ancient inhabitants of U-40 through unknown means created the Ultra mind. (It's a core of light that works similarly to the plasma spark.) which helped them achieve a higher state of spiritual evolution that transformed them into ultras.

Unlike their M-78 counter parts the U-40 ultras can't naturally grow into giants; except for this small group of eight warriors who have achieved the ability to grow giant, though much like the creation of the Ultra mind this isn't fully explained on how or why this can happened. (though in Titas's backstory it hints at that it might be connected to resolve and finding balance within one's self.).

Despite that the few inhabitants of U-40 that can turn giant prefer to stay small or in their human forms rather then their giant forms.

Unlike the land of light U-40 still has it's sun and thus has day and night cycles, though one of it's two moons was destroyed by the Heller Army (the bad guys of The⭐Ultraman anime.).

[.....Though, I think I heard somewhere that the Land o light Ultras use technology that's similar to switchable film windows or something to mimic a night-cycle (Well, indoors they do anyways.) but I could be misremembering.]

Titas is a dark giant.

Titas was born in the dark nebula to two soldiers in the Heller Army but his parents didn't want him to follow in their footsteps, so they sent him as an infant to U-40 where he could grow up safely and choose his own path.

Ultraman X possibly dated an alien space cat monster Mu who looks like a cross between a Beholder from DnD and a cat, she also had memory erasing farts.

X doesn't remember dating Mu...

Ultraman thought humans were too primitive to have develop the ability to fly, He was proven wrong moments later by getting hit in the face by a jet being flown by his host Shin Hayata.

Ultras aren't completely made of energy, they actually have skeletons and organs that are sort similar to a human's but also having a few extras that are very alien.

Ultras stop aging at around 10000 years and 1 ultra year is equivalent to 300 human years.

[mediumgayitalian]

fic rec friday 6

hi!! welcome to fic rec friday. every week, i pick five fics i have bookmarked and rec them with a little review. check them out!

Will and Nico Sitting in a Tree by percyspandapillowpet

Nico rolls his eyes. “Can’t believe I used to have a crush on that guy,” he mumbles, and then immediately covers his mouth. Oh gods. “What—what?” Will asks. “You what?” Nico turns away, burying his face in his hands. “I—I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

this one made me giggle oblivious nico always does. "Like absolutely clueless sons of Hades" yes you tell him will!! will is such a brat w the biggest eyeroll problem in the world i adore him. i know he has literally strained his ocular muscles before

2. (Im)perfect by percysandapillowpet

He was thankful his suit was black, because he was starting to sweat through it. His stomach wasn’t holding up well, either. He hadn’t eaten anything in hours, but he felt like he was going to throw up any second. He stood in the bathroom still, now holding a wet cloth to his forehead. His hand was shaking, causing the water to drip down his sleeve. Why was he so nervous?

i am weak for proposal fics and have been my whole life. 'marriage is an instituation' blah blah blah. its FUN. i LIKE READING IT. and this was CUTE AS HELL. the namebadge especially was the cutest ever touch truly

3. As Long as I'm Getting Paid by percyspandapillowpet

Nico raised his eyebrows, using his shoulder to hold the door open. “Hi. What do you want.” Will smiled, but he shifted his feet. “Can’t a friend just stop by and say hi?” “No,” Nico replied. He then moved to close the door and retreat back into his cabin, but Will lunged forward and caught it. “Wait!”

walking up the scary badass to kill the spider will never not be funny. like yes of course befriending the most dramatic kids in camp will have dire consequences for nico and those consequences will involve waking up at odd hours in the night to do the Dumbest thing possible ever

4. Two Boys, Being Straight, Doing Straight Things by percyspandapillowpet

“Remember, dessert makes her sleepy. She’ll be out by seven-thirty, and we’ll have the rest of the evening to ourselves.” “Fair point,” Ms. Solace says, handing Will and Nico each a pie wrapped in tinfoil. “We can probably hold out til then.” Will glances at the clock above the stove. “One more hour.” He glances at Nico with a grin. “And then we can be gay again.”

i love this fckn series i have to have read it like fourteen times. i love seeing them gay and older and disastrous. and this whole concept of having to pretend to be straight for wills dumbass homophobic grandma will never not be funny

5. Even If It's Forever by @wintersky101

Nico doesn’t like to be touched. Will respects that, of course, even though he’s got a lot of hugs he wants to give him. Sometimes, though, Nico doesn’t mind, and those are some of the moments Will likes best. Or, five times Will didn’t touch his boyfriend, and one time he did.

this was such a soft and wonderful character study. the soft slow build and determined communication...yeah this fic was written with such care and you can tell

thank you for joining me this friday!! happy reading!!

[melefim]

Dead Boy Detectives Score is out!

I’ve also added it to my playlist with all the other songs used in the show here:

I’ll be doing a complete listing of where all the songs are found in the show like I did for the regular soundtrack, but in the meantime here’s what I recognize from a quick listen/ click through:

(Episode numbers are in parentheses)

Death Becomes Him: Gas mask ghost street chase, Death in the office (1)

The Dead Boy Detectives Main Title theme: self- explanatory- opening titles for every episode, as well as credits for 1-3.

So Many Questions for So Many Fools: Edwin’s Flashback (1), intercepted by cats & escorted to the cannery (2), (escort to cannery bit also plays when Niko & Crystal are walking to the cannery in episode 8), Edwin gives Crystal a list of questions for Niko —> We have the same left (2)

Little Girl Collector: Esther’s theme— bits of it played throughout: Esther meets Crystal (1), Yelling at Monty (1), Esther browsing Tragic Mick’s (2), Esther in the butcher shop (3), Esther sees Monty with Edwin (3), Esther & Monty in the kitchen (5&6), Esther walking down the street (8)

Want and Pleasure: Cat King theme- all or partially played during Edwin’s punishment discussion (2), Meeting by the lighthouse (4), Cat King in forest (6), Esther in the cannery (7)

Niko: bit starting around 2:00 is following Maxine (5), 2:45-3:00ish is setting up the butcher shop for the date & Jenny’s reaction(5)

Sadness Came Too/ Looking for Boys: up until 1:37 is Niko & Crystal talking about their families (2), 1:38 and on is the Night Nurse/ Lost & Found department theme. Sections are heard at end of episode 1, reviewing the boy’s files (2), the notary (3), interviewing the Devlin girls (3), Night nurse arrives in Port Townsend (4), upstairs with Jenny (4), that night on the cliff (4), appears to take the boys (6), opening the door to hell (7), and when she leaves at the end of 7.

Awakening Skeletons: Dandelion shrine field (2)

Stuck in a jar: Dandelion Sprite theme- when they’re first in the jar & when Niko first sees them (2), the three scenes with them taunting Niko in Devlin house (3), Jenny sees them (8), very end of igloo & end credits (8)

Odd Customers and Cohorts: first bit is Potential client interviews (3), second half might be at Tragic Mick’s?

VHS and David: Devlin House- last minute of the song is after the loop is broken and Death comes (3)

You Can Talk To Me: first bit is them back at the tongue & tail after the lighthouse Leapers (4)

All So Obvious: 2:20-3:17 is summoning Shelby (5)

Never Been Kissed/ Hell: first bit is Niko & Edwin talking about kissing (4), Middle is probably Charles descending into Hell?? (7), 4:30 on is the ‘Previously on Dead Boy Detectives’ background music (2-8)

I Messed Up: Crystal & Jenny in the alley, Crystal & Charles in the alley, Crystal unlocks her door, Charles shows her his parents (1)

Accepting Being Dead: beginning is almost but not exactly the bit in Hell from when the spider grabs Edwin to when Charles finds him again. (7) 1:00-2:30 is Edwin coming out to Charles (6). Last 30 seconds is Charles crying on the cliff (4), Bad guy talk (5), and right after he realizes he’s dead in his flashback (7).

Mirror Maze: Maxine attacks Jenny (5), pretty sure at least part is the David/Crystal/Charles confrontation in the forest (6)

Run From Hell / I’m in Love with You: first 45 seconds is Charles & Edwin running from the baby doll spider, :45- 3:30 is the second scene with Simon (do you think it has to be torture being the way we are?), 3:30- end is Edwin’s confession (7). Confession time can also be heard during conversation at end of (6) and the hug at end of (8).

Her Own Fault: first bit is Fight at Esther’s house, starts when Esther throws Niko against the wall, goes through Niko’s death

Esther’s Origin/ A New Deal: Cat King’s Esther story (8), 2:50ish onwards is the Principal looking at the case board through the end of the scene to the zoom out the window (8)

I will be going through and trying to find timestamps for where every song plays in the show, but it’ll take a bit. Until then, hope people find this useful! (And if you know any parts of songs that I missed, please feel free to drop a comment!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you like lists of things like I do, you can check out my other Dead Boy Detectives list posts here:

Full soundtrack with timestamps

When Charles’ Shirt Colors Change

George Rextrew’s Edwin comic inspo board

Moves, Incidents, and Cases Masterlist

Swearing Masterlist

[princesscolumbia]

Ranma 1/2 Thoughts, Meta Edition

I have consumed...a lot of Ranma 1/2 content.

I mean, this is kinda what happens when you're a repressed transgirl who discovers the manga a year into a marriage that you got into to "fix" being trans and be "a real boy" in a desperate bid to fill the hole that you wouldn't learn for two decades could only be filled by living as your true self.

I've encountered precisely four (4) types of Ranma 1/2 fans in that time:

Transwomen who see Ranma as their idealized expression of the gender experience ("I'm not like this because I want to be, it's a curse. A curse that gives me a smokin' hot body and HUGE tits! But it's tooootally a curse, for realsies! I'll find a cure any day now, see how hard I'm looking? I'm trying sooooo hard to find a cure...")

Transmen who see Ranma as their perfect representation of their gender experience ("I'm a guy, damnit! This body...it's a curse! I hate it and I want nothing better than to be cured, but all sorts of Life Bullshit keeps getting in the way!")

Lesbians who kin either Ranma (butch NB lesbian) or one of their love interests (Akane - comphet closetted butch lesbian, Shampoo - Strong, smokin' hot bad bitch who goes after what she wants, Ukyo - transmasc coded genderfluid NB)

Completely clueless nimrods who miss the FUCKING POINT and are only into the show for the martial arts and think it would be better if Ranma got cured and they stopped having funny stuff happen.

(In case it's not obvious, IMHO the last group are the worst parts of the fandom and need to Go Away. Most of the toxic stuff that exists in R.5 fanspaces is because of this group of assholes which includes the incels that think everything would be better if Ranma just did stuff that's questionable from an ethics and morality perspective and chased after Shampoo because she's the closest thing to a Barbie-doll these closet fascists can allow themselves to fantasize about playing with, completely ignoring that she's a complex character that's a subversive pastiche to the Japanese racist stereotypes of the 1980s.)

I'm not kidding when I say that in the early days of the public Internet (before Facebook and Twitter ruined it for everyone), Ranma 1/2 was the SINGLE largest fandom by a MASSIVE stretch. I once checked my math on this by going to Fanfiction.net (before the massive purges) and brought up the Big List of All Fandoms and right there at the top with a MASSIVE number of fics was Ranma 1/2 by a HUGE margin. It took three fandoms (Star Trek, Doctor Who, and I believe Naruto if I'm recalling correctly) to have their combined total number of fics exceed the number of R.5 fics on FF.net...and that was JUST FF.net. There was an entire separate index (The Penultimate Ranma 1/2 Fanfic Index) that had the single task of listing, not even curating or reading or reviewing, ONLY Ranma 1/2 fanfics. Not fanart, not commentary, no RP blogs or chat transcripts or whatever, JUST fanfics. And only about half of those linked to FF.net, meaning that if you dig up the archives you'll find at least 60% of all fanfics that people had managed to index in the Ranma 1/2 fandom are missing because they were never properly archived and just...faded from the Internet as the public servers and places like Geocities started disappearing. You can find teasing, tantalizing hints of larger works that all we have left, like scraps of ancient papyri revealing a quote from a missing book of the Bible, are single chapters backed up on niche sites that managed to get spider-crawled by Archive.org, but many great works are just...lost. (There's an ero fic called "Playing with Water" that was SUPER hot and featured elements that we have tags for on porn sites but didn't really have proper words for back in the day...but even back when it was first being written finding the thing was hard...and today? Nearly impossible.)

(If you wonder why I'm such an absolute RABID advocate of AO3, this is why)

For me, Ranma will always be the transfemme coded genderfluid hero that we needed in the late 80s and early 90s. We were on the tail end of the AIDS pandemic, and just like COVID-19 there were a bunch of assholes who used it to ride to power and marginalize queer folk. It was easier to do with AIDS, of course, given the absolutely massive numbers of queer cis men and transwomen who contracted it and died. (Sidebar: the reason "L" comes first in "LGBTQIA+" is because it was the Lesbian nurses who were the caretakers of the Gay men who were dying in numbers large enough to be counted as a tragic statistic instead of a mere tragedy) and while the world was starting to acknowledge (again) that gay men was a thing that existed and they weren't actually trying to corrupt the youth, what we now call "transgender" was still listed in the DSM as a mental disorder that required treatment to "cure." According to the cultural majority in damn near every field you can imagine, the Gender Binary was the only way to exist and if you didn't fit neatly into one or the other then you were Damaged™ and had to be Fixed™ for The Good of All People™ (but specifically so cis-het-white folks, usually men, could feel comfy and not be confronted by things that made them feel icky and might have cooties). It's a truism that's treated as a joke that transwomen get into coding and wind up doing IT work in such massive numbers that between us and the furries we ARE the foundation of the modern Internet. And into the fanspaces packed to the brim with closetted AMAB transwomen who hadn't yet had their egg cracked came this plucky martial artist that gets to swap their gender with a splash of water but somehow still winds up the best of the best, the finest martial artist of their generation. (Goku can suck it, Ranma would turn the Kamea-meha right back on the over-muscled, braindead loser with a food fetish and still make it home in time for Kasumi's dinner)

I'm no sociologist, anthropologist, behaviorist, whatever, but I suspect that the reason Ranma Saotome spawned such a large fanbase so early in the modern Internet's history was specifically because the series created a safe space where people could talk about gender issues with a degree of separation that helped strip away the stigma surrounding feeling like you were in the wrong body.

I get why people like the martial arts aspect. I mean, Ranma kills a demigod. This is NOT something to sneeze at. I also understand the transmen who latch onto Ranma as a kin because I get the feeling like you have no control over what your body's doing and you're going through your days in existential dread of what might be dragging you further and further away from what you always knew was right and correct about yourself. It's a terrifying thing and here's someone who (esp. the anime version) IS a guy trapped in a girl's body.

For me, though, and for a LOT of transwomen out there, Ranma is transfemme. And, yes, canonically Ranma states right near the end of the manga that they're both and they kinda forgot about the 'cure' when they had to pick between that and the really important stuff and that they're okay with being fluid ('cause water, gettit?!) about their gender and it's a damn shame this was the 80s 'cause a continuation might wind up showing Ranma embracing being both...

BUT, and this is a transfemme thing, I know, if you continue the parabolic arc of Ranma's character development, the logical conclusion (for us) is that she eventually decides that she's a woman and just lives in her "cursed" form the majority (or all) of the time.

And yes, this is because that's the transfemme story arc. In the manga in some distant part of the multiverse that peers into our universe and for some reason decides to make me the MC (god, that must be a FUCKING BORING manga by our standards, I weep for those fans), my story arc is the gradual progression of uncracked, closetted transgirl to transitioned out and proud transbien mom. At one point I swapped back and forth between gender presentations because it was safer for me to appear in some spaces as the male that they thought I was. Now I would prefer to die before being forced to go back to pretending to be a man again.

Ranma has the choice, and good for them. Until the Kaisufuu is permanently destroyed, even if the "curse" is locked, they have the option of going one way or the other based solely on their own, personal desire. I can't say I'd be comfortable with that option being available. In that theoretical manga where there's a reboot that gives me a condition like Ranma's, I'd probably wind up destroying the equivalent to the Kaisufuu just because of the threat to my mental wellbeing it presents.

So it's not a stretch to imagine Ranma making the same choice. She's a woman now, she has the life she never realized she wanted because she never had the choice so didn't know she was allowed to imagine it, but now she's happier than ever and why would she ever go back to that struggle of being a guy that only ever brought her pain and challenges and heartache?

[abnerkrill]

Nik! Did you watch Rebel Moon? How was it?

Yes hello this is my 4 star review of rebel moon on letterboxd.

But first: a professional, somewhat critical review of rebel moon that engages with the film well, especially regarding anti-colonial themes, and isn't just knee-jerk regurgitated Snyder haterism:

And now more of my thoughts: [edit: Oh No, He Went And Talked For 3 Hours About It, Thanks For Coming To My TedTalk:)

No one has a better knack at putting together a cast list SO ATTRACTIVE TO THE BISEXUALS. read it and weep, boys. (Jena Malone is there too but really just for 1 set piece)

...Jena Malone's one (1) scene set piece features her as an alien spider woman with legitimate grievances against the Empire who now wants to kill kids because all her kids were killed. Like, so valid, girl. Also, did I say Jena Malone as an alien spider-woman? And this is just one scene.

Look, if that pitch doesn't hook you, this film may not be for you, and that's okay, but by GOD my people are the people who hear "Jena Malone alien spider woman" and perk up. I love you, freaks.

The cinematography is ace and always will be under Snyder's direction. music by Tom Holkenborg SLAPS. Costuming and design overall is super super strong. (People on this hellsite are always complaining about inadequate, boring as hell sci-fi design and you get RM and you don't appreciate it for what it is. WAKE UP.)

Costume showcase! Second from the right in this photo showing off those sweet sweet sci-fi costume designs is my beloved non-binary they/them revolutionary Milius. CANONICALLY non-binary, let me add. Imagine SW doing that lmaoooooooooooo D*ve Filoni would fuckin keel over and die

Kora! Our tragic female protagonist of color who's over 40, with a dark edgy sexy background. [KIDNAPPED AS A CHILD!! DEAD FAMILY!!! DEAD LOVER!!!!!!! SHE FAILED TO PROTECT HER WARD FROM ASSASSINATION!!!!! SHE IS THE MOST WANTED WOMAN IN THE UNIVERSE!!]

Bitches on tumblr LOVE taking failmen with sad backstories from media and blorbifying them, but the second it's a woman? please. If this was a man people would be writing the filthiest x reader smut you've seen since Mandalorian S1 came out. If this was a man you'd already have seen 20,000 fan drawings of her with her muscles and tits OUT. God where's my Kora fanart.

I personally have no problems with the plot of this movie (part 1 of 2) being "we must collect warriors to fight the evil empire." That's kinda fantasy story 101 and I still love new, varied interpretations of that plot.

If there's not much interconnecting plot because Kora's just gathering fighters, it's kinda like... that's the point, babes, they'll actually get to it in part 2. We're just at the "forming the team" stage. I revel in that part of a fantasy film and I always want it to be longer, so this film is like catnip to me.

Uh, yeah, this is getting long. More under the cut.

Entertainment professional nitpick time! I've seen someone say RM would be better as a TV show to introduce a new character each episode. And I truly don't think that fixes any of the problems this person has with the film, while introducing way more problems. (Who the fuck would go in on an original concept TV show where each episode introduces a new hero. You could not sell that pitch to a studio, ever, and viewers would instantly check out if they didn't like the introduced character of the week, and the same complaints would be made: it’s just a new character intro blah blah blah. This wouldn’t fix anything! It would very much make it worse!)

Me, like every day, through gritted teeth: that's... not... how... tv... works...

Like be realistic for a hot second with me. Television is not "long movie"—it is a different medium with different rules. Yes, the past decade has blurred many lines between TV and film, but they're still different mediums, and when people blur them ("it's a 10-hour movie!") the results often suck ass, because you either lack episodic structure or you lack feature structure. Snyder is a feature filmmaker who has never worked in TV. Whenever features people jump into TV, it's a whole other learning curve! They're usually terrible at it! You want Snyder to have to learn a new medium? You want him to learn 5/6-act TV structure from scratch? You want him to (horrified gasp) lead a writers room? Those are not his strengths, baby. Let him play in his space opera sandbox.

And I'm not done! You want the casting team to have to deal with the headache of getting feature film actors to star in a TV show? (Pay cuts! Longer commitments! TV production timelines!) You want to do that to me, personally, and fuck up the TV landscape some more by going, "Oh, we can basically just make a Longer Feature Film in TV"? Fuck off with that. TV has different production realities and different basic story structures. A [long] film [with two parts] is still a film, in structure and production practicalities.

Truly, Tumblr media studies brains (derogatory) at it again.

To each their own, but again, I think RM's structure is fun because it gives me more of the goodies (badass, varied character intros) for the price of one (2-hour film.) Like... that's the good stuff, that's often the most exhilarating part of a film for me. And contrary to popular belief, it's not intro to intro without rising tension or stakes. It builds tension as it goes because new facets of resistance against the Motherworld are explored in each character's intro scene. New ways they fight back, new worlds on which they fight back. And a ticking time bomb of the King's Gaze (king's gays lol) catching up.

Here, have a trailer bc Tumblr's mad at me for too much text in one block.

...I like the RM characters. I want to spend time with them and see what other zany shenanigans Snyder will have them do. (Alien bar fights! Taming a space gryphon! Lightsaber battle!) I like the side-quest-y, exploratory, space opera sandbox playground nature. It's fun, and like, again, if you don't perk up at the concept of collecting cool characters like action figures, this film may just not be for you.

To me it's a polycule. Like, the most messed up polycule in the whole galaxy, but it's a polycule.

Speaking of: THE CHARACTERS ROCK. Yeah, we're missing some significant character development because Netflix truncated Snyder's 4-hr, R-rated film into a 2-hr PG-13 version (likely to be able to release the 4-hr cut later, drum up new press, and get more eyeballs on the movie in total in a few months.) That's... not really Snyder's fault [even though he claims he's in on the plan... some part of me thinks it was Netflix's idea and not his. Stinks of studio meddling.] And it's not indicative of the quality of the actual film, which I currently see as more of an abridged version of the R-rated film that's gonna come out and fill up some of these story holes.

If people are judging the film for not being the 4-hour version, and then decide not to see the 4-hour version, that's their call, but it's kinda shitty to act like the 2-hr version is all there is. Like it probably wasn't Snyder's call to do a 2-hr cut! He's said that the 4-hr one is a whole different movie. I betcha the common criticisms (not enough character development, just jumps from character intro to character intro without interconnection, lack of structure) will be helped, if not outright solved, by the longer cut.

I think people are also happy to take a Part 1 of a movie if it's, say, Dune, and the source material has another part, so Part 1 is allowed to be fucking boring, whereas people don't give that kind of allowance to original sci-fi movies, WHICH IS A REASON WE DON'T GET ORIGINAL SCI-FI. If you're painting with as huge and cosmic a palette as space opera Rebel Moon, the 4-8 hours total across the 2 four-hour parts is kinda bare minimum for an epic. So... patience is a virtue? Let part 1 have elements of IT'S KIND OF A PROLOGUE?

What's that saying? If you want the rewards of space opera worldbuilding with an ensemble cast, you must submit to the mortifying ordeal of 2 hours of setup. Geez. Enjoy the wacky exposition or get out of the space opera genre.

Yeah, that leads me to the point of people who don't enjoy space opera are getting mad at RM for fulfilling the promises of the genre. You might truly be happier elsewhere. The whole thing is over-the-top, huge-scale MELODRAMA and I thrive on melodrama. If it's too cheesy for you, don't come to space operas!!!!!!!

On that note, people have said RM is too tropey and too Star Wars-y. But like I said. If you don't love the tropes get out of the genre!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you aren't here for bloodier/hornier Star Wars get out of RM!!!!

Another big idea I would be remiss to skip over. RM is an explicitly, deliberately anti-colonial, anti-imperial text—far, far more so than any other mainstream sci-fi currently being released. Well-intentioned liberals love to tout Star Trek/Star Wars as progressive media but they really hedge and defang all their political commentary, especially in their 21st century franchise form—think the SW sequels/shows straight up woobifying K*lo Ren in realtime and the Trek shows that (while fun!) are really often just nostalgia bait.

RM is pretty fucking radical. Its theme basically is Kill Nazis—or in expanded form, something along the lines of "The empire will eat up everything of value in the universe unless it is met with unified armed resistance built on solidarity."

And just look at RM's casting. We're not colorblind here; we're very color-conscious. (That's a rant for another day, but I've really started to despise colorblind casting for its extremely well-intentioned-liberal "we're all the same" mentality. It just winds up erasing.) Anyway: RM features the explicitly American-English-Afrikaans empire vs. the Algerian Amazigh protagonist, Black freedom fighters, Japanese revolutionary... and like. Snyder's always gonna be into Vikings so obviously we have Space Vikings too, whatever. Look at me, I can criticize Snyder too! The Poor Sad Space Vikings are not the strongest part of the film!

...Anyway of course the empire vs. revolution is absolutely kind of Star Wars-y since RM is highkey Snyder's Star Wars, but it goes so much further than SW dreamed (or, perhaps, nightmared). SW's rebels/resistance continually get defanged because they're kind of foundationally space magic/singular hero's quest deals, and modern SW with the exception of Rogue One/Andor is just politically, socially stupid. In contrast, RM is about forming a coalition, without something like the Force to help you out. I could write an essay on the ways RM starts in the same place Star Wars starts but takes its politics so much more seriously, so much further.

While I'd argue "good politics" and "artistic quality" rarely correlate, RM is explicitly and doggedly a text about the colonial empire that exploits, enslaves, abuses, and seeks to utterly control marginalized people groups in its quest for domination—and god, I would LOVE to see a resurgence in very fanged, very angry political sci-fi.

One more aside. Snyder has been rightfully criticized for his earlier works basking in fascist-adjacent, hypermasculine aesthetics; 300 is notably super duper racist in how it depicts savage/monstrous Persians vs. Beautifully Good White Spartans Defending Their Culture. (more on "300 Bad" stored up in my brain if anyone wants THAT rant.) To Snyder's credit, none of his films since 300 have really done that—parts of Batman v Superman and his cut of Justice League purposefully poke fun at it. The hypermasculinity is kinda still there, but it's subsumed in the service of melodrama and mythic-flavored cinema, and it's kinda a staple of the action genre anyway, and if you're gonna criticize Snyder without criticizing EVERY ACTION MOVIE EVER, that's just more regurgitated Snyder haterism.

No one is doing mythic action like Snyder these days. No one has the balls and the command of melodrama & operatic visuals. And it comes clearly from Snyder's background in art & art history because all his shots are jam-packed with symbolism and meaning and allusion. So criticize the film for its weaknesses if you like but geez, if I see another post railing about the lack of CRAFT in RM, I will start biting. ALMOST NO BLOCKBUSTER HAS THIS LEVEL OF CRAFT. It's okay that you don't understand visual storytelling, babygirl, but please don't accuse Snyder of lacking craft.

Sorry, you've triggered Cinema Defense Mechanisms in me, I'm gonna have to sit down for a while after this.

I have more takes. Takes hot enough to fuel the King's Gaze (king's gays lol.) But I'll end with a funny observation: I transed my gender (cheers, shouts, hoorays) just about the time I was getting ready to watch Rebel Moon, and in one shocking, epiphanic moment I turned to my partner and went "Of COURSE I'm a man. I like Zack Snyder." So........... do with that what you will.

[dykebelova]

White Widow #1 by Sarah Gailey review.

We can all agree that we all fell in love with Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova in Black Widow (2021) and for many people, including me, she was our first introduction to the character. And as an absolute, completely sane and normal person, I said to myself “Why not read all of her appearances in the comics ?”, and I did.

Surprisingly, both characters are incredibly different. Nonetheless, both interesting and amazing on their own. While I agree that MCU Yelena has more depth and perhaps, more personality, comics Yelena is still a good character. The way she has been written has been very disturbing, even sick and twisted sometimes, like Pale Little Spider (2002) or Black Widow (2001). Sometimes messy, and I suggest everybody forget her Adaptoid phase or anything that ever happened in Secret Avengers (2013) for her sake. But still, you don't erase almost 25 years of a character's development, even if it has been inconsistent, just because you felt like it.

In the comics, Yelena has always been in Natasha’s shadow and has never had her own original story. In Widowmakers: Red Guardians and Yelena Belova (2020) and Winter Guard (2021), we had a glimpse of hope to finally see her character evolve despite Red Guardian’s appearance, a character linked to Natasha. When a limited-serie on White Widow, a character that hasn’t been properly developed and deserved to, was announced, I fucking cheered man. But then I remembered the curse of a character’s MCUfication, because Marvel never does anything right. And oh boy was I not prepared for what was coming…

I don’t even know where to begin. It all felt like a giant fanfiction written by someone who has only ever seen the movie and didn’t even bother to check on other writers’ previous work on Yelena’s character.

White Widow (2023) #1.

There are lots of things wrong in this picture. First and second panel, where does the needle come from ? After I checked and double checked just in case, there were NO records of Yelena being abducted or forced to do anything she has done in her life. She chose to join the Red Room. She chose to be a Black Widow and she was determined to outperform Natasha’s results during tests. She even had a whole mental breakdown about it.

Pale Little Spider (2002) #1

Now, let’s try to find excuses for the use of the needle… The first one would be the Red Room using the Black Widow’s serum they used on the 28th original Widows, during Natasha’s era. But our good ol' Grigor Ivanovich just ruined this theory.

Black Widow (2004) #4

Excuse number two, the Red Room used some sort of a mind-control serum which wouldn’t make any sense too for all of the reasons I said above.

Now the third panel… I’m at a loss for words. Where the fuck does it comes from. Where the FUCK was it during Secret Empire (2017) ? Yelena wasn’t even there anymore, bitch was dead. We didn’t see her until Tales of Suspense: Hawkeye and The Winter Soldier (2018), until she was brought back to life WITH Natasha. Also, she has a real family and they’re even mentioned in Black Widow (2001), Yelena calls her mother and her aunt Olga is mentioned.

White Widow (2023) #1

Now, the board... It looks like it has been made for a MCU tie-in more than anything.

Although I'd like to adress one thing that has been said on Twitter, about the "Hate nationalism → Imperialist invasion". There is a difference between nationalism and patriotism. Being a nationalist is being way too extreme about your country when being a patriot is to love your country, its people and its culture while also being critical about the way its being led.

Now, we know when she was young, Yelena was kind of extreme. In Black Widow: The Things They Say About Her (2005) #1, she admitted she was willing to sacrifice herself for the Motherland more than once. During her Black Widow era, she was naive and had a blind love for Russia which was her biggest weakness.

Black Widow (2001) #3

But as her character continued to evolve and grow through her appearences, Yelena is far more reasonable now. She considers herself like a true patriot and she has always been proud of being Russian. In conclusion, this board's section is not as bad as people make it out to be since Yelena went from being an extreme nationalist to a patriot.

Widowmakers: Red Guardian and Yelena Belova (2020)

I know many of you like Kate Bishop and Yelena’s friendship due to their duo in Hawkeye, I too, am a big fan of them… But unfortunately, they only interacted once in the comics. And they didn’t even talk to each other. That’s why mentioning Kate Bishop in her like section is purely fan service and although it is a nice nod to the series, it doesn’t make any sense here. Yelena has interacted with Clint Barton way more than the better Hawkeye, which is sad.

Black Widow (2020) #10

I'd like to come back in the hate section just a second to say I don't know why she hates the Infinity Gauntlet so much that's it's written in caps. It's 100% a nod to the MCU again but here it also doesn't make sense. But again, a lot of things doesn't in this issue.

I wont bother talking about her attitude and how she looks like a teenager swallowing vodka directly from a bottle when she used to be classy and extra with manners. I wont bother talking about her new suit's design which sucks more than her previous one. This is not the Yelena Belova we used to know, it's a complete new character made to match her MCU self and please a small public who mostly watch the movies/series.

I saw a lot of people celebrating Yelena's changes to match Yelena's Florence Pugh more. I know the character has become more famous because of Flo', but this is actually terrible and wasn't handled correctly.

We hoped for a more mature story, maybe a little darker than usual. A new start for her character, to follow her path in making the world a better place and get out of Natasha’s shadow for good. With a little backstory too, nothing much. The bare minimum. Instead, we had a copycat of her MCU counterpart and it is just heartbreaking to see a character I loved so much being destroyed like that.

I could go on and on about why this piece of junk is just a bunch of nonsense and laziness and how Sarah Gailey’s just went for the easiest writing ever… But I will stop there. I just hope she knows that us, fan of comics Yelena, are fucking disappointed. Everything that made her character so special and dear to us, disappeared in one issue. The damage is surreal.

It’s only four issues long so I will continue to read it until the end, but I expect nothing from it anymore. I hope the writer won’t destroy Yelena’s character any further, because things can only go downhill from here.

[ayaspen]

Is “Across The Spider-Verse” a great sequel ? Yes.

One thing to know about me, is that I’ve always been a spider-man girlie, granted I wasn’t even born when the Raimi’s trilogy dropped, and it took me twelve years after to discover that Spider-Man was not actually blonde (my younger brain always thought he was for some reason) but there’s no denying that Spider-Man has always been a pop culture symbol, even if you don’t know his story, there’s no way you haven’t heard or seen pictures of the masked vigilante who swings around the city with his webs.

And although there were different interpretations to his story, he was always the ordinary kid in Queens (or in our case Brooklyn) who’s got too much power in his hands and is struggling what to do with it, to later become the masked vigilante who saves people and understands the responsibility he have toward his people.

When Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse dropped in 2018, people had mixed reviews on the subject, (and I was a middle schooler who stumbled upon the trailer by accident but was intrigued nonetheless) I think people were afraid that this was going to end up not meeting their expectations, and boy did it exceed them!

The movie did very well (and for good reasons!), and managed to re-introduce the story of The Spider-Man with a twist, in this case introducing the Spider-Verse, and everyone went nuts about it, from the music to the animation to the well-crafted story. The movie was one of the best movies of that year, if not of all times.

But what happens when that movie has a sequel ?  4 years later and with a very enthusiastic fan-base ? Will it be a disappointment or another win ? 

Today, I’m ready to say that Across The Spider-Verse is as good if not better than the original, and here’s why…

Hello and welcome to Butterfly Scribbles, I am the Butterfly in question, and today we’re going to cross the multiverse…I mean the Spider-Verse, my bad!

So ladies and gentlemen, let’s do this again one last time!

(This review may contain spoilers for the movie, so If you haven’t seen it, I highly encourage you to do so, and then read my review after, have a nice time!)

PLOT:

Miles Morales, is very much accustomed to being “Brooklyn’s one and only Spider-Man”, he loves his job, but him leading a double life starts to interfere with his life as Miles and his relationship with his family (and his grades), which leads to him feeling the loneliness this job imposes and starts terribly missing his spider friends.

After that he gets a visit from his best friend Gwen, and learns that there’s a whole universe full of Spider-people teaming up to protect his very existence which leads to a great conflict and a “Spider-hunt” to stop him from going to change his fate and protect the people he loves most in his life, all while redefining his story and doing what he thinks is his role as a hero.

I think the plot of the movie does a really great job of solidifying Miles as his own hero, he is constantly put into situations that tests his morals and beliefs of what he thinks he is doing right, while everyone is treating him like some ignorant teenager, there’s even a great scene where miles stand up for himself and says: “Everyone keeps telling me how my own story is supposed to go, Nah, Imma do my own thing” which is nothing if not great character development.

The twists at the end of the movie are also sure to leave you feeling blown away!

Characters:

Miles:

Like I said before, this movie gives the best arcs to its main hero, Miles goes through a journey of self discovery and finding himself all while struggling with the distance he creates with his family, especially his mom whom he keeps lying to, and her trying to understand what is going on with her son, to the point where she’s scared of him moving away from her.

Miles also feels like an outcast even with his peers, when he discovers the Spider-Verse, Gwen and Peter are against him joining the team for his safety, Miles then feels pressured to prove himself in order to gain respect and inclusion, which does not end up really well.

In the end, he chooses to do it his way, and decides to have fate in his powers and do what perceives to be the right thing, and save people when he has the chance to do so, even if it means having to deal with bigger consequences.

Gwen:

Gwen was one of the fan favorites after the release of the first movie, but the sequel gives more depth to her character, and expands upon her struggles, how she lost her best friend, peter parker, how he looked up to her and wanted to be “special” like she is, also justifying her choice to not be involved in friendships anymore.

Gwen also has an ongoing conflict with her dad, the captain of the city, who hates Spider-Woman and is leading a manhunt against her, blaming her for the murder of Peter, and how that creates a conflict with her father as Gwen, which leads to a confrontation and an identity reveal.

I think it was very smart to include Gwen as one of the protagonists of the movie for obvious reasons, now we know more about her, we sympathize with her as a heroine, and its show 

the similarities her and Miles are experiencing, establishing her role to be more than a love interest and I’m all here for it!

Other characters: 

I think the highlight of this movies is the hundreds of Spider-people we see, each with their own personality, costumes and very funny cameos too! 

My favorites have to be Spider Girl (Peter’s baby), Spider-Woman, Pavitr and Spider-Punk!

Animation and Music:

I think it’s necessary to have a whole section on this review dedicated to praise the animators and the song mixers for this movie, and It’s safe to say that without these two, the magic of the film wouldn’t be the same, I mean just imagine if It wasn’t an animated movie! and If it didn’t have such great singles like “What’s Up Danger”! 

truly a tragedy.

The animation for this movie specifically was really amazing, they combined multiple coloring styles to create the personality of each story like Gwen’s watercolor world in the start of the movie, the battle scenes are epic especially in the Spider hunt scenes with Miles and Miguel.

For the Score of the movie, I personally like the last track “Across The Spider-Verse (Start a Band)” track,I think the music really fits the last and best moments of the movie!

In conclusion, and If you haven’t got it yet, I’m In LOVE with this movie! (I mean, why else would I write a whole essay about it right ?) It’s the perfect sequel to a perfect first, and I’m convinced it’s the best movie of the year and one of the best superhero movies ever !

So if you haven’t watched it yet, I highly encourage you to do so, because It is a great watch even for people who know nothing about Spider-Man.

If you did, well let me know in the comments so we can talk about it even more, cause I’m not even close to being done with it yet!

[baenyth]

Bethany's Bizarre Miraculous Reviews Episode 4-14: Sentibubbler

The word 'sentient', turned into the prefix 'senti' in 'Sentimonster' means 'capable of feeling,' including sensations such as sight and touch, or pain. I assume this includes the more artificial or mechanical-looking sentimonsters, as with enough programming robots could indeed feel pain. Also I prefer to use the term "Peacock-Made" rather than "Sentimonster," just because it gets to the point more and I think it's just nicer. I know a certain antagonist might appreciate it.

I know this is meant to be a nightmare sequence, but honestly imagine if Marinette thought she was more discrete than she actually was and Hawkmoth somehow never figured out. Hilarious.

I know a certain comic-maker on this site that would disagree, dream Chloe.

Yep, there he is. Honestly Marinette should be reeling from the trauma or something not an episode after Chat Blanc.

Oooh, Lollipops. Have those always been there?

They're not talking about Trixx, are they.

Yep.

Oh boy. Bethany's confused. When was Hannibal introduced, if ever? I think I'd remember a spider. And if this was his first episode, then what was Alya talking about earlier? Is Hannibal from the zoo? Alya's pet? I'm getting confused here.

Yall better not be on your phones during class

Little does he know

Just tell Chat Hawkmoth is setting up a deathtrap and to stay where he is. But then again Chat's acting awfully envious...

Well, at least he's not the kind of person to slack off while Ladybug is working. That's for sure.

Why is Hawkmoth holding a coffee again? Was he in a rush or something? Did he order his coffee as Hawkmoth? Because that's a funny sight.

Just say Rena contacted and told you.

I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

pffft hothead

Yeah, I'm still not used to Nino's voice.

[astoundingbeyondbelief]

Kaiju Week in Review (March 26-April 1, 2023)

Sadao Iizuka died on March 24 at the age of 88. One of the last living links to the first Godzilla film, he had an incredibly prolific career in tokusatsu as an optical artist, with his work including Godzilla's atomic breath, King Ghidorah's gravity beams, and Ultraman's specium ray. Most of his work on Toho kaiju films was in the Showa era, but he also contributed animation to every one from 1993 to 1997, plus Final Wars and, believe it or not, Shin Ultraman. Rest in peace.

If you'd like to learn more about his career, Brett Homenick published a couple of very expansive interviews here and here.

Chibi Godzilla Raids Again premiered on April Fools Day with a lot of bickering between the worldly Chibi Mechagodzilla and the sweet Chibi Godzilla. No official translation yet, but fellow Wikizilla bureaucrat Les went through the on-screen captions to write a lengthy summary.

Godziban is celebrating Godzilla vs. Megalon's 50th with a multipart episode, the first installment of which also went up on April Fools' Day. The Three Godzilla Brothers get the filmmaking itch again, and Gigan and Megalon are as gloriously dumb as ever.

Kamen Rider and Man Spider—sorry, "Masked Rider" and "Kumo Augment"—have joined Godzilla Battle Line. With this, every lead from the Shin Japan Heroes Universe is part of the game, making it one of the most elaborate Godzilla crossovers ever (remember, Kong's there too). I doubt Rider actually becomes kaiju-sized in Shin Kamen Rider, but there is some precedent for it. Both units are apparently game-changers too.

Penguin will be publishing a Godzilla picture book the day after Christmas by Olivia Luchini, titled Love from Godzilla. No cover yet, but here's the description:

Share the love with Godzilla! This hardcover gift book, complete with monstrously adorable illustrations of everyone’s favorite kaijus, is perfect for that special someone.

Sick of the Skull Island cartoon taking forever to come out? Make your own story. Evil Genius Games has opened preorders for its Kong: Skull Island Cinematic Adventure RPG, to be released on June 1, although you can buy the PDF right now. As someone whose introduction to tabletop RPGs was Toho Kingdom's D20 section, I'm beyond thrilled, not the least because the book thanks Wikizilla and our resident King Kong expert, The Boy Who Cried Godzilla. And as you can see, there are some new monsters in the mix.

Preorders are also open for their Pacific Rim RPG; same release date. They're hoping to expand on both via crowdfunding; the Kickstarter starts May 9.

Bandai released a short, baffling video about an unspecified Shin Japan Heroes Universe project on April Fools' Day. Very suspicious timing, but there's nothing in here that really reads as a prank; this crossover has been around for a while now. Cool animation too.

Toho didn't do anything Godzilla-related for 4/1 this year, probably to avoid upstaging the shows that released actual episodes that day. But I did write a Wikizilla article on past pranks if you'd like a stroll down memory lane.

[legion1227]

Invincible Season 2: Review.

Let's hope the wait isn't as long for season 3. 

The first season of Invincible caught the world by storm in 2021. A genuine addition to the superhero TV medium that separated itself from its peers with exceptional storytelling, a memorable cast, a sensational collection of voice actors and actresses, and copious amounts of blood and gore unseen in other superhero shows, animated or live-action. (Except for maybe fellow Amazon Prime Original, The Boys.) 

Two years later, on November 3rd, 2023, Invincible sophomore season picked up where the first one left off. The first episode showcases Mark Grayson, our super-powered 17-year-old known as the titular Invincible, trying to shoulder his responsibility as a hero after the ass-kicking of a lifetime by his father Omni-man, which left countless across the world dead. 

What can I say about this season that hasn't been praised for already? 

Let me get some of the negatives out of the way. There aren't a lot. There are some moments when the animation, mostly when characters are idle and having a conversation, where it looks odd. Sometimes, characters like Mark speak with other superheroes about crucial plot points, and they look a little stilted, where it's slightly distracting. The one other nitpick lies within the hiatus between episodes 4 and 5. Dropping four episodes weekly only to take a 4-month hiatus before releasing the next four episodes was an infuriating decision that killed the hype then. Regardless of the reasoning, I hope for season 3, there is no repeat of that. Did the hiatus hurt the quality of the remaining episodes? Absolutely not. 

Mark's journey as Invincible this season was even more captivating after the traumatic events that transpired last season as he struggles with soooooooooooooooooooo much more. Forced to confront his father once more, other villains of varying degrees of danger, and the looming threat of more Viltrumites coming to Earth has Mark pushed to his ends beyond belief. Coupled with the attempt to juggle a relationship and go to classes regularly at college, you can see how Mark is stretched so thin. Steven Yeun's performance hasn't missed a beat as he captures the spirit of a growing teen going through so much exceptionally. And he's not the only one to hit a bullseye amongst the rest of the VAs. Sandra Oh, J.K. Simmons, Walton Goggins, Jason Mantzoukas, Khary Payton, Clancy Brown, Ben Schwartz, Sterling K. Brown, and the countless others that make up this talented cast brought their A-game to make every character sound earnest and purposeful. The writing was sublime throughout as character motives were established clearly and made sense, the dynamics heroes and villains alike had with one another were remarkable, and the action scenes were as stellar as ever. 

There's almost TOO much to love. I loved in the first episode how the show edges you with when exactly the title card will drop despite everybody constantly setting it up with Invincible's name. I loved Ben Schwartz's alien character Shapesmith, and his bumbling presence throughout. I loved every scene involving Allen the Alien and the testament to the voice direction where for the first time in a voice role, I hear Seth Rogen voicing a character, but it's not distracting. I almost forget he's being voiced by Rogen at times. I loved the inner turmoil Omni-Man faced and the growth he experienced since the last time we saw him. Simmons's delivery of his final line in the last episode captured the sadness and regret perfectly. I loved every single fight scene. Period. Shoutout to Rex during his fight with the Lizard League because I haven't stopped thinking about how he held his own for weeks. I loved the little gags about the animation process or Mark's little interactions with Agent Spider or 'the guy who dresses like a bat.' 

In conclusion, there's simply too much Invincible has gone in its sophomore season that WORKS. It's TOO GOOD. The writing, the animation (mostly), the voicework, the story, the characters...there's a solid reason why this is one of the best superhero shows out there right now. There are a few shows I'm watching right now that come close to the high quality it's reaching. I'm giving Invincible Season 2 a 4.5/5. Depending on how the rest of the competition fares throughout this year, this could be THE show for 2024. 

[agentnico]

Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024) review

Jack Black’s new version of “Hit Me Baby One More Time” is great. In all honestly all of Tenacious D’s covers are superb. Their take on “I Think I Love You” for Croods 2 slaps as hard as Will Smith’s palm against Chris Rock’s face. Apologies, I just watched the new Bad Boys trailer so that momentary awards moment has sprung back into my mind.

Plot: After Po is tapped to become the Spiritual Leader of the Valley of Peace, he needs to find and train a new Dragon Warrior, while a wicked sorceress plans to re-summon all the master villains whom Po has vanquished to the spirit realm.

For some reason I presumed Kung Fu Panda 3 was the ending to the trilogy and the story was over. Then again Hollywood wants to keep making more money and this animated franchise has been highly successful for DreamWorks till now, so of course it was only a matter of time. To give them props though, DreamWorks has been on a bit of a hot streak recently with The Bad Guys - a visually-pleasing heist flick; Croods 2 - hilarious riot; this year’s Orion and the Dark - a fun concept with a mind-bending ending; and of course Puss in Boots: The Last Wish which is an animated masterpiece. There, I said it. The Puss in Boots sequel is fantastic and I won’t hear otherwise! As such even though the trailers weren’t showing too much promise, I went into Kung Fu Panda 4 optimistically, hoping it’s not just a needless cash-grab.

Right, yep, it’s a cash-grab through and through. You can tell the writers were really trying to milk some kind of an idea for a plot, and all they could come up with is Po needing to find a new Dragon Warrior in his place. Not the most original concept as is, and one that in the end feels really rushed, and his choice for his replacement is one that feels unsatisfying. The main villain also is really weak. A chameleon voiced by Viola Davis, and though visually the shape-shifting gimmick works really well, narratively this character has hardly anything to do, let alone be in any way intimidating. I recall in one of the previous films the villain was Lord Shen, who was introduced as someone who has killed Dragon Warriors before. What’s the scariest thing this chameleon now does, you may ask? She lightly pushes someone down the stairs. That’s it.

Another rushed aspect of the movie is that many voice actors from the previous films are needlessly ditched either with a lame excuse for their absence, or not giving them any lines and the characters appearing in silence. Like a big selling point in the marketing is that we get to see all the villains from the previous entries come back. A fun idea, however aside from Ian McShane as Tai Lung the other villains only appear as if they’re in a silent movie. Are you telling me that DreamWorks really couldn’t afford to get Gary Oldman to record a couple of lines on his phone and send them over? It’s like if Spider-Man: No Way Home had all the old Spidey villains from previous films come back, but they just stand about silently doing nothing. How crap would that have been? So yes, this really cheapens the movie.

Visually the film looks great. It’s mad to see how the animation has progressed as this series of movies has gone further. Particular attention has been given to the background environments that look gorgeous! Great use of colours and detail. A chase sequence through a city of thieves is a particular eye-popping set piece, that even gives Hans Zimmer the small opportunity to have some fun with the music score during it.

As for the voice cast - Jack Black is a charisma machine! He’s an icon and of course Po is just Jack Black being himself, but he has so much energy in his line delivery that he carries this movie fully on his shoulders. Awkwafina is also in this movie. Look, the reason I’m pointing that out is that if one looks at her filmography since 2019 she’s voiced characters in Little Mermaid, Migration, Kung Fu Panda 4, Bad Guys, SpongeBob: The Movie, Raya and the Last Dragon, The Dark Crystal Netflix series, Angry Birds Movie 2…. That’s so much!! What does she have on these animation studios that they keep hiring her? She’s not the only female voice actor out there. And I’m sorry, she’s not even that great of a voice actress, and I wasn’t a fan of her here either. Dustin Hoffman kind of just lingers about questioning his life, Bryan Cranston and James Hong have some amusing co-dads banter, Ian McShane being back as Tai Lung was lovely, and Ke Huy Quan is the usual ball of excitable energy that he always is.

Unlike Puss in Boots where the wait for the sequel was more than worth it, Kung Fu Panda 4 feels as if the franchise may have run its course and the writers have simply ran out of ideas. There’s a “been there done that” aura surrounding this whole movie, and again it’s not terrible, but more so just passable. There’s nothing new here, simply retreading old territory. I’m sure if you take your kids with you to see it though they’ll probably have a good time. Probably. That “Hit Me Baby One More Time” cover though - hell yeah!

Overall score: 5/10

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Here we are... Best Animated Feature noms...

My predictions were 4-out-of-5...

THE BOY AND THE HERON, NIMONA, ROBOT DREAMS, and SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE all got in...

The one I got wrong was TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM, which to be fair, I did say in my previous post that that one was the wild card out of my predictions. Despite the high praise and tons of nominations TMNT:MM got elsewhere, in addition to a single win, I guess those who were nominating it for the Oscar just didn't think the oozy gross-out turtle action-superhero movie cut it.

Instead, we have ELEMENTAL, so Disney Pictures gets at least one slot this year. The last time they were shut out entirely was for the features of 2011, the year they released the critical dud CARS 2 and the completely dumped WINNIE THE POOH. I was pretty sure that this year, they also wouldn't make it. ELEMENTAL's critical reception was fine at best, nowhere near the acclaim MUTANT MAYHEM got. WISH was both a critical and commercial dud, so that had no chance, only ELEMENTAL did... Maybe the Academy just didn't feel like pulling a 2018 and nominating two superhero action animated movies. Maybe they decided to have just one IP-based movie in the race, and opted for an original story. (As NIMONA and ROBOT DREAMS are based on pre-existing source material, BOY AND THE HERON references a novel that plays a part in its story.) Maybe something else about it wasn't all to their liking. Maybe Disney is just that powerful that they got themselves a slot.

I still think this is a strong line-up, and again, it speaks to how robust this year was for features both mainstream and independent.

And I will admit, even though I wasn't in love with the movie, ELEMENTAL getting into the race is very nice, I feel. Director Peter Sohn's first Pixar feature, THE GOOD DINOSAUR, was both a box office flop and didn't get a nominated for the Oscar (it shared the year with sister Pixar movie INSIDE OUT). It was also a film that he inherited after its original director got removed from it. ELEMENTAL was his personal project from the ground-up, and after a rough opening and all the press jeering that it was going to be this big flopperooni, it had excellent legs at the box office... and now... It has a Best Animated Feature nom. Talk about staying power! Maybe Pete Docter should think twice about that statement he made back in the summer, about trying to go back to Pixar's "roots" in trying to figure out what audiences supposedly want from this studio.

Anyways, Pixar usually gets a nom every year. For 2022's animated features, TURNING RED was in the running. 2021, LUCA. 2020, SOUL, which won for that year. Last time Pixar didn't get a nom at all was for 2016, their sole feature that year was FINDING DORY. Got good reviews and made beaucoup bucks, but it shared a year with Disney Animation's ZOOTOPIA and MOANA, two heavy hitters which ended up getting the noms. So, outside of FINDING DORY, MONSTERS UNIVERSITY, and CARS 2, Pixar usually never misses a nom whenever they release a single movie in a calendar year.

Most of Paramount's Oscar noms in animation were for DreamWorks movies they released circa 2006-2012, which are all now Universal movies since Comcast owns all of DreamWorks Animation outright. Funnily enough, the inaugural Best Animated Feature nominations included Paramount's JIMMY NEUTRON: BOY GENIUS, which was up against eventual winner SHREK, and MONSTERS, INC. Paramount then began distributing DreamWorks movies in 2006, and scored nominations with KUNG FU PANDA, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, KUNG FU PANDA 2, and PUSS IN BOOTS. For a non-DreamWorks nom, there was RANGO, which won for Best Animated Feature of 2011... Ever since then? Only one movie, ANOMALISA. The films they released from 2015 to now just never made it: SHERLOCK GNOMES, WONDER PARK, SPONGEBOB 3, RUMBLE, etc. MUTANT MAYHEM really had a good shot at getting in... Maybe TRANSFORMERS: ONE surprises later this year, I don't know. Paramount's animation history post-80s is so weird...

Anyways, congrats to everyone. I'm personally rooting for either BOY AND THE HERON, or NIMONA.

[therevengeoffrankenstein]

my year in review (data/stats/numbers)

this year, mental illness kicked my ass until it didn't (when fabba came back), and then about a week ago, it started kicking my ass again. i wish i had spent more of the year escaping into art. 2023 was the first year in a while, i feel, that has had this low numbers.

part of that is because my special interest in the 2000s emo scene was reawakened by fob's return, so much of my year was spent re-obsessing over them. rediscovering a bunch of music that made me happy ages 12-15, a time period full of suicidal ideation. my suicidal thoughts and impulses were slain, once again, by the fabbaboos like champions in an arena. 'are you not entertained?' and all that.

(the only 're-'s i am counting are film re-watches, so no album re-listens are counted in that. so a bunch of the stuff i did this year is not being counted! i actually listened to a lot more music than i have catalogued here, i just don't personally log re-listens in my physical media log, so they aren't counted here.)

another part of this is that i spent so much of the year working on my own projects, working on myself, and trying to manage my mental illnesses. i quit drugs and wanting to kill myself! i'm learning spanish! i'm graduating in a few months! this is not an apology; i just prefer to do a lot more stuff to distract me from all the horribleness in my life </3.

this is a (hopefully) complete-ish log of stuff i did this year bc i like number and data and keeping logs because i have an intense, immense fear of lack of permanence/forgetting/losing things because i have lost and forgotten so much stuff in my life 😁😁😁

this is going to get long, so i'm putting it under a cut.

movies watched: 54

top 10 best movies, loosely ranked best to worst:

the revenge of frankenstein (1958) (re-watch) (5 stars)

moustachette (2009) (re-watch) (5 stars)

a field in england (2013) (5 stars)

barbie (2023) (5 stars)

the curse of frankenstein (1957) (re-watch) (5 stars)

spider-man: across the spider-verse (2023) (5 stars)

how to get ahead in advertising (1989) (5 stars)

field of dreams (1989) (5 stars)

the boy and the heron (2023) (4.5 stars)

withnail & i (1987) (4.5 stars)

die hard (1988) (4.5 stars)

honorable mentions: akira (1988), his girl friday (1940), juno (2007), guardians of the galaxy vol. 3 (2023), a clockwork orange (1971)

top 5 worst films, loosely ranked worst to best:

black jack (1981) (2 stars)

lust for a vampire (1971) (2 stars)

some may live (1967) (3 stars)

renfield (2023) (3 stars)

men at work (1990) (3 stars)

*

i don't really watch that much television, so i'm not logging it here. i did watch a bunch of tv, but not enough to really warrant a wrapped.

*

books read: 7 (+3 issues of do a powerbomb) (+ part of great expectations by charles dickens, but i haven't finished it yet 🥰)

ranked, best to worst:

gray by pete wentz, james montgomery (4.5 stars)

landline by rainbow rowell (4.5 stars)

the last command by timothy zahn (4.5 stars)

the secret diary of laura palmer by jennifer lynch (4 stars)

attachments by rainbow rowell (4 stars)

specter of the past by timothy zahn (3.5 stars)

do a powerbomb by daniel warren johnson (first three issues, 3.5 average stars)

death star by steve perry, michael reaves (2 stars)

*

i still haven't received my spotify wrapped in full because it won't load all the way through, so that is going to have to wait. but i am an album listener through and through, so here are some album stats!

i'm only counting albums that are new to me/i previously hadn't listened to all the way through, so this doesn't count re-listens :/

this also IS counting eps.

albums listened to: 29

top 10 albums, best to worst:

soul punk (2011) by patrick stump (5 stars)

so much (for) stardust (2023) by fall out boy (5 stars)

purple rain (1984) by prince (5 stars)

hot mess (2009) by cobra starship (5 stars)

transgender dysphoria blues (2014) by against me! (5 stars)

can't buy a thrill (1972) by steely dan (5 stars)

like vines (2006) by the hush sound (5 stars)

bleed american (2001) by jimmy eat world (5 stars)

this is why (2023) by paramore (4.5)

flamboyant (2019) by dorian electra (4.5 stars)

honorable mentions: where sleeplessness is rest from nightmares (2001) by arma angelus; the land is inhospitable and so are we (2023) by mitski; old world underground, where are you now? (2003) by metric; phantomime (ep) (2023) by ghost; sempiternal (2013) by bring me the horizon

loosely ordered, non-exhaustive 10 of my favorite new-to-me songs:

fake out by fall out boy

run dry (x heart x fingers) / cryptozoology by patrick stump

love from the other side by fall out boy

thick skull by paramore

so much (for) stardust by fall out boy

allie by patrick stump

bleed american by jimmy eat world

i would die 4 u by prince (there would be more prince on this list, but i had listened to much of purple rain already, so!)

you're not in on the joke by cobra starship

to feel no more bitterness forever by arma angelus

*

personal project wrapped!

poems: 37

the bc wip: 6146 words (daily writing streak not broken since i started it 😁)

the mi wip: 836 words

the epdb wip: 1697 words

other stuff: ???

i've written too many songs/scraps of songs to count those.

*

10 favorite real world things + stuff i'm grateful/proud that happened:

got hardcore back into fall out boy !

saw fall out boy live !

saw ghost live !

sobered up and became straight edge !

overcame suicidal urges (kinda) !

have been learning how to read music and play piano better !

went to the pmu !

read 'gray' by pete wentz !

curbed my righteous anger / learned to cope with anger better !

have been learning spanish !

honorable mentions: learning to be a better friend, have been keeping up a writing streak with the bc wip + haven't missed a single day since i started, started the mi wip, have been putting myself out there more, doing things scared, writing a shit ton of poetry + sharing it, got clandestine merch, keeping to my dietary restrictions, recovering from onychotillomania!

[readingrobin]

Mid-Year Book Freakout 2023

I was tagged by @the-forest-library. Thanks for the tag. Gives me a chance to do a bit of reflecting.

1. Best book you’ve read so far this year

The Scapegracers. It's so weird that I felt like I read this book so long ago but it was just in March. Angry queer witch vibes continue to have a big hold on me and I really need to get around reading The Scratch Daughters.

2. Best sequel you’ve read so far this year

Seeing as I've only read two sequels this year so far and one was the most disappointing continuation I think I've ever read, I think Bloodmarked is a clear winner. It's odd to see how contentious this book was among the fans, since I enjoyed it just fine. But hey that's just me.

3. New release you haven’t read yet

Probably Mysteries of Thorn Manor by Margaret Rogerson. I really want to go back to the world within Sorcery of Thorns and I'm glad that it's just a novella so I don't have to worry about too much of a time commitment. I want to see the good meow meow demon boy Silas again.

4. Most anticipated release for the second half of the year

Oooo, The Spirit Bares its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White. I absolutely loved Hell Followed With Us, especially how raw it is. I'm so excited to see how Andrew pulls off a ghost story when he has such a great way of writing uncomfortable and disturbing material.

5. Biggest disappointment

Ugh, absolutely West by Edith Pattou, the sequel to East. I don't want to be mean, but I don't think this book really needed to exist. After 15 years, a sequel to a fairy tale retelling that retreads the plot of the original has a difficult time of being interesting or engaging to the people that really fell in love with the original. If you want to see me get into specifics, it's in my review on Storygraph.

6. Biggest surprise

I think just the fact that one of the books I read, Strange Grace by Tessa Gratton, had a polyamorous triad that really felt organic and believable. I genuinely think these three people all love each other, which is rare enough in YA between just two people. I'm always behind choosing throuples over dumb love triangles.

7. Favorite new author (debut or new to you)

Angela Carter for sure. Also, T. Kingfisher.

8. Newest fictional crush/newest favorite character

Valec from Bloodmarked is easily at the top of that list. Sissix from The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet was real cool as well.

9. Book that made you cry

Haven't really been reading too emotional of stories, so I don't think I have an answer right now. There've been emotions sure, but nothing really sobworthy. Firekeeper's Daughter got me close though.

10. Book that made you happy

Spider-Punk: Battle of the Banned mainly because it's feeding into my current Spider Punk obsession and the art is so lively and amazing.

11. Favorite Adaptation

Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber is absolutely fundamental for anyone that loves fairy tale retellings. They feel so dangerous, sensual, but also mature and exploratory. Sometimes it feels like the retellings are somehow the stories' coming of age tales.

12. Prettiest Cover

The Kingdom of Back by Maire Lu, hands down.

13. A book you need to read before the end of the year

Still slowly, but surely chugging along through Les Miserables. Hugo goes on tangents like you wouldn't believe, not just about the Parisian sewer system

Not going to be tagging anyone this round, just do it if you feel like it!

[dispatchdcu]

Spider-Boy #4 Preview

Spider-Boy #4 Preview #spiderboy #MARVEL #marvelcomics #comics #comicbooks #news #mcu #art #info #NCBD #comicbooknews #previews #reviews #spiderman #Amazon #peterparker #asm #amazingspiderman

Spider-Boy #4 Preview: We’ve seen Spider-Boy “monster out” before…but who’s to say that’s not his true form? Maybe he’s more spider than boy and it’s “Bailey Briggs” that’s really his disguise? Join special guest star Miles Morales as he tracks down the terror that everyone’s now calling…the Boy-Spider! DAN SLOTT • PACO MEDINA & TY TEMPLETON (A) • Cover by HUMBERTO RAMOS VIRGIN VARIANT COVER BY…