The Week In Geek 9/24/14

Hey, guys. You probably noticed no updates from me last week. Well, I had some paid time off from the Day Job and decided to take some personal time for R&R. It's not that I don't love you guys, but self care matters.

This week saw two primetime comic shows premiering: the long awaited, long hyped Gotham and the returning Agents of SHIELD. I was interested to see how SHIELD opened up after really turning things around in their last leg, becoming the show that it really should have been all along. It had an awkward start because of the Marvel films it tried to capitalize off of, but once its plot in the second half of Season 1 borrowed from Winter Soldier, quality stepped up by leaps and bounds. Gotham had received much hype and understandably so. I mean, there's just no reason DC shouldn't be able to sustain a show about Young Jim Gordon. The Zero Year run of Scott Snyder's Batman is proof positive that, just beneath Batman himself, Gordon is easily Gotham's foremost champion of the law.

With all this in mind, Gotham started off with kind of a mixed bag. To its credit, the show does a great job of creating the right atmosphere for dark, foggy, hopeless Gotham City. And Ben McKenzie is a great pick to play Gordon. But there are some glaring problems with this reimagining. For one, we seem to see a lot a young Selina Kyle....but it's a LOT of her doing absolutely nothing. At all. Whatsoever. So far, her entire purpose on this show seems to be feeding stray kittens and standing on top of things for NO reason. It was downright irritating how little someone who appeared so much actually mattered in the plot. And the show really should consider toning down the Batman easter eggs. I understand that without the fun tidbits for fans, this would just be a regular procedural cop drama with a famous name, but at the rate the writers were cramming in stuff from every nook and cranny, they're not going to make it to Season 3.

Meanwhile, Agents of SHIELD got off to an impressive start with their season 2 opener. For one, they're obviously spending more money on this show (at least as far as budgets for primetime network television go). It's nice that they have a bit more direction. Riding the Captain America 2 tidal wave worked out pretty well and they seem to be using the whole "new SHIELD regime" thing to their advantage. Skye is a far less annoying character now that she's a full on field operative with more to do than be a nondescript outline for a standard Joss Whedon character. The addition of some notable characters from Marvel lore certainly help the appeal of the show. Absorbing Man was a fun foil that I hope we see more of throughout the Marvel Cineverse. The possibilities for cameo appearances has always been way too wide for this show to just limit itself to being a promotional tie-in for movies And it's nice that the show is finding some focus aside from "Hey, look, it's Phil Coulson" and not leaning as much on Clark Gregg being the best actor on the show so far except for maybe Hudson's recurring gig in Season 1 (Yes, I know he's Bill Paxton but I will forever think of him as Hudson....because Aliens).

All in all, if I had to put one show or the other in the lead, it would have to go to SHIELD right now. Season 1 was an experiment and now they see where they went wrong and are improving and working out the kinks. Granted, no matter how much it improves, this is still going to end up being That Marvel Thing That's Definitely Not For Everyone. Meanwhile, Gotham just has too much uncertainty floating around it. The material they try to cram into a single hour makes me feel like they're going to blow their strongest gimmicks in three seasons like Lost did.

Then again, these two are just holding me over until Arrow and The Flash debut, so whatever.

-Anyway, don't forget to check out my exclusive interview with Christopher Bird and illustrator Davinder Brar, the creative team behind one of my new favorite webcomics, Al'Rashad: City of Myths. The book really is amazing and the guys are both class acts with tons to say on comics, movies and writing characters of color

-Also, as always, my comic reviews for the week are up and available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing enjoyment. It was a light week for me in the review department since I've been taking it easy with my time off from the day job so think week, I only reviewed:

Batman Eternal: Listen. I know I've spoken before about how important artwork is when you have a constantly rotating wheel of creative talent bringing drastically varying styles and voices to the same set of plots, but fuck's sake did they ever screw the pooch visually. I'm not about to be that troll critic nobody likes. At the same time, the art was REALLY awful. I can't imagine there's anyone who was sitting around wondering what Batman would look like if he were doing a guest appearance on Bob's Burgers. I don't think R.M. Guera has worked on the book previously, but he just shouldn't. To call the art "laughable" implies that there something funny or endearing about looking at this shabby shit.

Yes, we have to talk about GamerGate.

Listen, I don't like this anymore than you do. I really don't want to always be that guy that writes these soapbox sermons every time people on the internet do something significantly fucked up, but guess what? When a gamer journalist has to literally move out of her residence because she mentioned that people were doing something fucked up on the internet, we need to talk, guys.

In the interest of context, I'll start with the two things that are none of our business:

First, two indie developers had a fairly nasty breakup that resulted in the guy, Eron Gjoni, creating a blog for the express purpose of airing out their dirty laundry. Picture the first ten minutes of The Social Network except 40% more male privilege and none of Aaron Sorkin's wit, charm or signs of being a remotely decent human. 

The second thing is that one of the things to come out in the wash of the aforementioned nasty breakup is that allegedly, the ex-girlfriend, Zoe Quinn was sleeping with a game journalist. The rub here is that, in most cases, this would be considered a conflict of interest. Neither of these things are any of our business because a). there is no empirical evidence to imply that said journalist gave any special treatment to Quinn as a result of their fling/affair/whateverwhogivesashit, making it Not A Conflict Of Interest and b). because PEOPLE BREAKING UP ISN'T ANY OF OUR FUCKING BUSINESS.

Now, here's the part that kinda IS our business:

Eron Gjoni's whole whinefest (and this is probably when he should have realized he was headed down a bad path) was adopted by none other than 4Chan, the central hub for all Chaotic Evil on the internet who proceed to call all parties to task. And by "call all parties to task", what I really mean is "they proceeded to specifically slut shame Zoe Quinn for seducing game journalists with her evil vagina magic" and also slut shaming Anita Sarkeesian for saying something about the whole Zoe Quinn thing, but actually had nothing to do with the whole Zoe Quinn thing but was still completely true. So, now, Anita Sarkeesian has to move out of her fucking house because people have found out where she lives, Kotaku has forbidden their journalists from donating to indie developers (don't ask because I don't know either) and gamers are at war with game journalists and basically, this is why we can't have nice things.

Why is this our business, you ask? I'll get to that in a second.

The central issue at the heart of all this is the issue that the Dudebro Community (4Chan, MRAs, Reddit, this prick, etc.) is doing their damnedest to convince you isn't happening, the one we need to talk about: misogyny in nerd culture.

There's two tell tale ways you know misogyny is happening:

1). 4Chan Is Actively Trying to Convince You It's Not Happening- In case I didn't make it clear before, when 4Chan agrees with you, that's probably the moment when you need to give serious thought to the possibility that you're dead wrong on whatever issue you've spoken out about. Seriously, they've gone so far as to say that Zoe Quinn is fabricating death threats against her to jumpstart some war on men. And now, they're lobbying for sympathy for nobody believing them just because they have a history of being unapologetically evil. Here's the trick, though: It MIGHT actually work is 4Chan wasn't actually unapologetically evil. I mean, seriously, if something evil happened on the internet or, really, even in the real world, there's a good chance its origins can be traced to 4Chan. So, their swearing to the Old Gods and The New that "it's totally not like that this time" is like walking in on Michael Myers with a bloody butcher knife standing over a dead white woman and him saying, "Look, I know what it looks like, but..."

2). No Men Are Actually Being Called to Account- None. Gamergate caught the attention of Joss Whedon and he's been quite vocal about the fact that this is why gamers can't have nice things and that this circus needs to stop posthaste. Last I checked, I didn't see anyone threatening him or his family, flaming his Twitter account or swearing a plague o' both his houses. Allegedly, this is about accountability in game journalism, but the actual game journalist who carried on an affair with Zoe Quinn isn't receiving a fifth of the shit Zoe Quinn is fielding. If this were politics and John McCain had pictures of himself at a bar doing shots with Wolf Blitzer, Old Blitz would probably be out of a job or, even worse, exiled to Headline News. The task of staying objective as a journalist is ON THE JOURNALIST and if 4Chan felt that strongly about transparency and truthiness and objective game reviews that, for the most part, aren't objective anyway, they'd be dragging the Kotaku guy out back to the woodshed even worse than they are with Quinn. But they're not. If this wasn't about misogyny, 4Chan would be making Joss Whedon furthering the "strawman" agenda. But they're not. Why? Because one of the symptoms of misogyny is an exclusive and irrational fear of women's evil vagina magic. Ask Aisha Tyler.

The reason we're talking about all of this is not to throw all of Nerd Community or even all gamers under the bus. The point of this is that if you like something, odds are you want to be able to be into it openly. I am, admittedly only a passive gamer. I only own a Nintendo 3DS and a shit ton of games that I usually only play on the bus or on my vacation time. But I love being able to talk about it and network with other gamers and hear their passion about gaming just like I do with comics. Shit like this....makes me not want to have my name associated with gaming. Because it makes it seem like gamers are sociopathic shut-ins that doggedly fuck with anyone who has anything resembling a dissenting opinion on the way things are or could be. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.

The point: Get Off Your Ass And Speak Up. A lady had to move out of her fucking house because people that you might know and play Call of Duty with didn't know how to take constructive criticism. That doesn't kick you in the nuts a little bit? I'll spare you the "great power/great responsibility" speech this time, but for fuck's sake, guys....get passionate about this shit. 

Because simply sipping your tea from afar, saying #NotAllGamers isn't enough anymore. It's not just the fact that, by claiming you're not involved and walking away, it looks like you don't actually care and are just trying to glorify yourself and selfishly maintain your own good name. Because in our turning a blind eye and ignoring the trolls, hoping they'll just go away, the trolls have, in fact, gained strength. Therefore, we are somewhat to blame. Speak up. We're all grown. Nobody's going to spank you. I promise. It's easy. Watch:

"Come on, man. That's a little insensitive."

"Listen, I'm just going to come out and say it, but that's misogynist bullshit."

"It's like this: If you're going to be sexist, racist or homophobic, just don't read this blog. I'll get along just fine without your clicks."

See? Easy. Now, YOU try.

The Week In Geek 7/30/14

I'll have some San Diego Comic Con follow up stuff ready to go for you guys tomorrow since people asking me about certain events took up the better part of my time this week. It's flattering and a little surreal that you people seem to care so much about my opinion on these things lately. I literally can't even go on a date these days without running into a reader who says some shit like "Hey, man, your whiskey sour is on the house....but you're dead wrong about X-Men this week." Anyway, my reviews for Black Nerd Problems are up and available for your viewing pleasure. Feel free to click, share, comment and troll at your convenience. This week, I reviewed....

Batman Eternal: Listen, folks, I know this book, despite my praising it, has had some problems along the way, but this Ray Fawkes and Dustin Nguyen fall very perfectly into this supernatural, "creepy shit afoot" groove with the greatest of ease. Bringing back the Roman was awesome early in the series, but making Deacon Blackfire matter again is setting up to be a good look. I could definitely see the events of this storyline spilling out into the rest of the Bat-books just in time for some fun Halloween related books.

Uncanny X-Men: Listen, not only is this book back to being brilliant, but it's surpassed its previous brilliance. The thing about X-Men books in general is that there are often times when they work better not focusing on superhero antics. Their whole thing is making the public perception of mutants a little more upbeat, but they don't get to do that very often because most of the time, they're fighting with each other on one level or another. And even if they're not fighting each other and actually saving the world, they take it on the chin so often, they never really get around to changing minds. I think Bendis understands that X-books are at their most poignant when they centered around the idea of the X-Men as a family...sometimes fractured, always dysfunctional.

I'm One Step Closer to Being A Supervillain

So, I've decided to move The Blog to Wordpress sometime soon because Blogger and I don't always get along (sometimes, I tell it to do things and it has a nasty habit of not doing what I tell it). The only trouble is that if I'm going to have a new start, The Blog needs a new name. After all, it's bad luck to captain a new boat without a name. I mean, that was the whole moral of Forrest Gump, right? That's what I took from it. Well, that and maybe "True unconditional love is when you love someone despite the 70s."

Have I ever told you people how hard it is to name things? I mean, honestly, I didn't realize how hard it is to figure out what to call something when you're actually TRYING to name it. The first time I saw Avatar: The Last Airbender, I immediately knew...."Hey, that's Kung Fu Jesus." When I watched James Cameron's Avatar...you know, the Great Epic Space Opera About Tree Gods And Cat People That We've Never Seen Before Except When It Was A Disney Movie Called Pocahontas....I immediately knew to call it Pocahontas In Space. I'm just trying to come a name...Just A Fucking Name....and I got nothing. It's a little aggravating.

On my better days when I'm not doing the day job, this blog or writing for Black Nerd Problems, I moonlight as a blog consultant and I have this friend, a fellow blogger who is, more or less, MY unofficial consultant (by that, I mean there's all kinds of crazy shit on the internet and she's usually there to tell me when the crazy shit I discover has been there for years). I was talking out the whole "It's a little weird that I can't name something" thing the other day and.....

Me: I need to step up The Blog content. It's looking more and more like that's going to be the new name because I can't come up with a better one.

Friend: Well, that's cool.

Me: Amazingly enough, it's not taken as far as I can tell.

Friend: Wait....really?

Me: I shit you not. I typed in theblog.com and came up with nothing.

Friend: You typed it in...where?

Me: The first thing I do with random domain names I joke about is open up a new browser tab and type "whatever".com.

Friend: Nah, Oz, you need to go to a registrar. Go to GoDaddy. Aren't you a blog consultant?

Me: Hey, that doesn't have anything to do with this. I'm a blog consultant. Not a name consultant.

Friend: **sigh**

Me: Well, I'll be damned. It IS taken. Now, I want to find out who owns this name and troll the shit out of them.

Friend: For that, you go to whois.com.

Me: Oh, you REALLY shouldn't have shown me this.

Friend: Ha! Sorry.

Me: Are you?

Friend: No, I'm not.

Me: This is the sort of shit Morgan Freeman quit his job over in Dark Knight. #NoOneManShouldHaveAllThisPower

Friend: Bwahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

.....About the Ninja Turtles Trailer

Friend: Have you watched the new Ninja Turtles trailer?

Me: Nope.

Friend: You wanna see it?

Me: The trailer? Not particularly.

Friend: Oh....

Me: You want me to watch it right now, don't you?

Friend: What makes you say that?

Me: You JUST sent the link to my inbox, man.

Friend: Well, I'm just curious about your take on it.

Me: You mean "I'm the only person you know who's nerdy enough to talk to you about this shit."

Friend: Pretty much.

Me: I need new friends. **clicks link**




Friend: It's sort of destructive for a Ninja Turtles movie.

Me: Right. Because any self respecting Ninja Turtles movie should always maintain a baseline destruction level of just crashing a Vanilla Ice concert.

Friend: Do you think they'll try that again? What would be the relevant equivalent of a Vanilla Ice concert?

Me: Probably a Justin Bieber concert. I sort of hope that happens in the movie.

Friend: I never had you pegged as a victim of Bieber Fever.

Me: I'm not. I just think if he shows up in this movie, it might speed up the countdown clock until he jumps the shark.

Friend: Good point.

Me: Wait...is that William Fichtner?

Friend: As the Shredder. Michael Bay wasted no time whitewashing this shit, did he?

Me: Well, let's see...an evil Japanese ninja overlord dressed in ginsu knives trying to destroy New York City? Oh, I'm sure the Asian community would just love that shit.

Friend: But then it's a white guy dressing up like someone we KNOW is an evil Japanese overlord trying to destroy New York City.

Me: Right, but it's William Fichtner, so he'll probably kill it regardless. And we don't exactly know how all that's been retconned since....and I can't stress this enough....this is a trailer and NOT THE MOVIE. I feel I have to remind you this trailer isn't the actual movie because the nerd rage about this trailer is in overflow as if this trailer were the movie. It's not the movie. I've now reminded you three times.

Friend: It's scenes from the movie we're going to see. We're seeing this, by the way.

Me: That door swings both ways. Remember the trailer for Jumper? That looked awesome. The end result was that movie being extremely non-awesome.

Friend: That doesn't count. Hayden Christensen was in it, so it was destined to fail.

Me: This movie has Megan Fox in it. Doesn't that make it sort of starcrossed?

Friend: Point taken.

Me: Thank you. I want expedited shipping for my trophy, please.

Friend: Those turtles sure seem REALLY superhuman.

Me: First off, they weren't human to begin with.

Friend: So, you're saying Michelangelo didn't start out as Corey Feldman?

Me: Well, as far as I know, the Turtles weren't mutated by cocaine so I'm going to say no. Second of all, they're MUTANT Ninja Turtles, so the rules of nature don't apply hardcore to them anymore than they do to Spider-Man.

Friend: I'm not so sure about the design of their faces. They're funny looking.

Me: Remind me how the old Turtles all looked like Ryan Gosling.

Friend: Well....

Me: That's sarcasm, by the way. They didn't. It's a little silly to complain that MUTANT anything is supposed to be pretty.

Friend: Sure, but do they have to look like Shrek?

Me: You're asking a lot from a movie with Megan Fox in it about Mutant turtles who are all basically Daredevil.

Friend: Well, what kind of nerds would we be if we didn't ask a lot from decent properties with ridiculous premises?

Me: Logical ones.

Friend: Okay...but who the fuck wants that?

Me: You have a point there.

Friend: Do I?

Me: No, not really.

Why People Should Suck It Up and Get Over the Iron Man 3 Thing (SPOILERS AHEAD).....

Seriously, there are SPOILERS in here. Last chance.

Well, Iron Man 3 has finally come and, as I predicted within 15 seconds of seeing the big Mandarin reveal, the entire internet fell on the floor kicking and screaming like children (Bell Biv Devoe calls that "the crybaby"). For those of you that don't care about seeing this movie, but want to know what I'm talking about, here's the breakdown.

The movie version of the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) is the (white) supposed head of a terrorist organization known as the Ten Rings, the same group that held Tony Stark captive in the first movie. Stark infiltrates the Mandarin's home only to discover that he is actually a drunken, drug addicted British actor named Trevor Slattery, who is just a front for Aldridge Killian (Guy Pearce) and A.I.M.'s war profiteering scam. At some point throughout Killian's final battle with Iron Man, he screams "I am the Mandarin!!!" Denzel Washington Training Day style.

As a result of this twist in the narrative, as I said before, the internet lost its collective mind because they didn't get a RDJ/Ben Kingsley superpowered slugfest even though the slugfest they got instead was FUCKING AWESOME. The thing about comic nerds is that they're very random about how and when they decide a movie's handling of the source material is careless. X-Men First Class was taken seriously, the Scarecrow got beaten up by Katie Holmes, Dr. Doom was basically portrayed as Donald Trump with superpowers and Ghost Rider got two movies. But somehow, THIS is just too much to handle. To understand why this is a silly grievance, you have to understand who the Mandarin is in the comics.

Depending on the writer, the details have changed slightly over the years, but basically the Mandarin was a Chinese man, oppressed by Chairman Mao, who stumbled upon alien technology in the form of ten powerful rings and used them to become an evil would-be conqueror. An evil Chinese would-be conqueror who looks, dresses and talks like a villain from a Shaw Brothers kung fu movie.

In other words....this guy.

Over the years, they've changed his clothes and motives for hating Iron Man, but as far as his goals and ideologies, long story short....this could be considered pretty fucking racist. In 2013, with the borderline xenophobic political climate, there is just no way in Hell you can market this to a worldwide audience with children in good conscience. None. Granted, I'm not saying that you HAVE to characterize the Mandarin this way to do it justice, but it IS racially problematic for Marvel and, ultimately, Disney. If they cast a Chinese guy, the Asian community would quite possibly maul the studio and rightfully so. If Ben Kingsley's version (dressed the way he was) had been a superpowered badass, the movie would have been accused of "whitewashing" a Chinese character and we saw how that worked out for M. Night Shaymalamadingdong with The Last Airbender. Or you can write the Mandarin out altogether, but then you have C-List Iron Man baddies like the Living Laser. Sorry, but outside of comic book, no studio exec in the universe thinks Living Laser is a good name for a movie villain.

My point here is that Shane Black handled the "Mandarin" issue in the most realistically feasible way possible. So suck it up.

Crowd Participation or Happy Free Comic Book Day

Craig "BBC" Long from Houston, TX wanted to hear my thoughts after reading the Walking Dead comics since I saw Seasons 1 and 2 first.

Well, Craig, I can say that the comic delivers better than I could have hoped. With the direction Swamp Thing and I Vampire went in, The Walking Dead is definitely one of the ONLY mainstream titles in comics that can truly lay claim to being a horror comic. One thing that is well preserved in its own way is the dichotomy of Rick and Shane. Not only do they define each other, they define the theme of the series as a whole. In the moments when it's not an epic zombie saga (easily one of the best of all time), it's essentially a morality play that constantly questions whether or not humanity is a biological or ideological state of being. Rick and Shane seem to be constantly at odds with themselves as well as each other standing on respective sides of the argument. I see where some fans take issue with the things altered in the the tv adaptation, but I think it's the aesthetically reasonable compromise network television could probably muster. No matter how iconic a comic is or how powerful a panel is, the sad truth is that there are just some things that look good in a comic that won't translate as well on television or on screen. That's why I like that geeks are actually being consulted about geek culture. Robert Kirkman works very closely alongside the production team on Walking Dead, George R. R. Martin is reportedly consulted often on the direction of Game of Thrones and Joss Whedon has more than enough nerd credit in the bank at this point to be trusted with The Avengers. At some point Hollywood decided that instead of being satisfied with the receipt for the intellectual property they bought as a stamp of approval, it might be better to actually ask the creator what they think about their work. I stand behind the "for nerds, by nerds" approach.

Johnathan Marroquin writes via Facebook: I need an honest opinion on the Amalgam universe circa 96-98. Potential or not?

For those of you who have no idea what he's talking about, in the late 90s, DC and Marvel were real fiends for cross pollinating their titles because...let's face it...nerds will never stop arguing about who would win in a fight between Superman and the Hulk ("...and then Superman threw the big green monkey into the sun and went back to work. The End."). So, they finally had a Marvel vs. DC miniseries where the best...at the time...of each company had a big slugfest because of some patchwork excuse like "the universes are colliding" (a writer's way of saying "for no good goddamned reason"). Anyway, somehow after the heroes kept the universes from colliding by beating the shit out of each other, the universes collided anyway. The result was a universe full of mashup characters. Sometimes, they made sense like how the "Challengers of the Fantastic" was a combination of the Fantastic Four and the Challengers of the Unknown....both Jack Kirby creations. Most of them, however, were shitty like putting Batman and Man-Thing together to get Bat-Thing. This was indicative of what the mid to late 90s was in the land of comics: a reason to sell cool covers instead of cool books. Assuming Johnathan's question is asking whether or not this same imprint would be a viable venture now, it's enough that DC treats their own artists like the mail room interns you steal ideas from without their knowing. It's enough that Marvel would hold their writers at gunpoint beneath a vat of battery acid and force them to write a "You Got Served" comic if they thought there was money in it. I shudder to think what the Big Two would do to each other.

Batman: No, Logan, I never would have guessed it was you under there.