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.

Anatomy of a Comic: So You Wanna Write A Shitty Crossover Event.... Part 2

Well, Original Sin wrapped up last week and I was sure bringing this event to a close would iron out the overt problems throughout the plot. If anything, it seemed to either a). create new problems or b). worsen the old ones. Mike Deodato is still The Thing This Book Has Going For It, but other than that, it was basically a hot mess.

He's got the last Pumpkin Spice scone! Rush him!

Once again, starting with the cover.....

I cannot stress this enough, but EVERY aspect of the cover should be indicative of what's happening in the comic especially when it's as "OhMyGodThisIsEpic" as Marvel would have you believe it is. Having said that, of the seven notable Marvel characters on this cover, only three of them are actually found in this book. No Captain Marvel, No Daredevil, No Iron Fist, No Mister Fantastic. You can't even say it's an huge exaggeration of something happening in the comic. It's just plain lying. One good example of a well done, symbolic cover (even though I got some shit from a few of you guys for using this example last time) is Identity Crisis.

Here you've got the Justice League which, at this time in the DC universe, was always characterized very much as a family. Everything about this picture conveys a very familial vibe. The broken picture is obviously representing the tragedies and breaches of trust that leave this family broken and divided.

Or if you want to make the comparison against another Marvel event, take Civil War.

Aside from the time honored trope of defeated heroes sprawled across a mount of rubble, it doesn't get much more literal than this. Captain America
and Iron Man, two generals on opposite ends of a major conflict, finally come head to head and beat the unholy hell out of one another. Simple. No hyperbole necessary.

But going back to the Original Sin cover, it says across the bottom "The Final Judgment." What the fuck does that mean? Anyone? Are the Watchers pointing down supposed to be the judges in this case? The Watchers aren't judges. They're Watchers....who just watch stuff. Their whole job description is the antithesis of judging. So, seriously....who's being judged and how? I shouldn't be asking MORE questions going into an event's finale.

And, holy shit, did this book ever leave the audience asking questions. For example....

"Take him apart. So I may drink his blood and consume his knowledge, one bite at a time."

Umm....what? This was the whole problem with Dr. Midas as a villain. Everything was so vague and unexplained. What occurred in this entire series that would lead him to believe that eating a corpse would make him all powerful?

Why have the Watcher's eyes suddenly turned murderous? Does this mean the Watcher's body parts can work independently of one another after he's dead? Is the Watcher a Castlevania villain? What the fucking fuck?

Now, it's a rarity that I would actively shit on the usually immaculate artwork of Mike Deodato, but he screwed the pooch a couple of times here. First of all, this is Black Panther, Dr. Strange and the rest of the heroes who teamed up (for some reason) busting in to fight...umm....someone.

Now, here's Black Panther and Dr. Strange at the end of the book in full outer space gear. Huh?

Also, if you look closely, here's Thor with his hammer firmly in hand. But wait a minute....in issue 7, Nick Fury whispered something to Thor that made him suddenly unworthy to hold the hammer. Now, he's totally holding the hammer.

And now later as the heroes are all leaving, Thor is left back where he was in the last issue trying to pick his hammer up. Shenanigans.

And when exactly did it get decided that Bucky was the new "Man on the Wall"? Did Fury choose him? When did he choose him exactly? The last thing he ever said to Bucky was "Get everyone back." You can't even dismiss that as saying it was unspoken tough guy talk and "he just knew."

Or this. So, Dr. Midas' severed hand turned the snake to gold when he bit it, but not the Exterminatrix (man, villains are really exhausting the shit out of the Big Book of Bad Guy Names) when she stole it? What?

Granted, I'm not saying there shouldn't be room to leave elements as "implied" in a story. But in an event like this where much of your story is extremely contained and doesn't need tie-ins to explain every fringe element (which is something that Marvel has been really good about in recent years)....it's okay to hold your reader's hand just a little bit. And inevitably, the fallacies here will laid at another writer's doorstep to explain how exactly Bucky became The Man on the Wall or who this new Watcher (I'm guessing that's who the glowing old man at the end is supposed to be) is. DC was really bad about this shit last year with Trinity War turning into a promo that basically forced you to buy Justice League and Forever Evil (which, to be fair, was pretty good) just to understand what happened in a 6 or 7 issue miniseries. 

Making someone interested enough in your characters to buy more comics is what a good comic should do. Insisting upon your reader buying comics to properly understand the vague collision of words and images that took place in another comic borderlines on extortion.

The Week In Geek 9/10/14

So, this week, the second issue in the Death of Wolverine dropped. I'm not going to give some in depth overview of the story or dissect the event. Because I'm not reading it. I just plain have no desire to see how Wolverine meets his end for at least the third time I can think of. I think this represents two different sides of the same problem. First and foremost, it's indicative of the overall fan fatigue brought on by years of oversaturation. I mean, let's face it. At one point not too long ago, Wolverine was the centerpiece for 3 different solo(ish) ventures, 3 X-Men titles, 2 Avengers titles all at once. And let's not forget he was basically the star of the first 3 X-films on top of his two solo movies. It's easy to see how people could get fed up with the little fella.

On the other hand, I can't help but feel like this is also the result of fandom reaping what it sowed. There was a time when fans wanted All Wolverine Everything. If he was on the cover of something, that something sold twice as much as it would have without him. He was like the Spock of X-Men. Of course, Spock wasn't simultaneously the captain of two Starships, a Federation space station, a Romulan Warbird and organizing Klingon Poker Night on Thursdays, but still....fans LOVED Wolverine and so comicdom gave them all the Wolverine they could stand. I'm just sayin....there's an ebb and flow.

Besides, we all know he'll be back. The only death so far I've been led to believe is going to stick for the forseeable future is Charles Xavier. I mean, the X-Men have been mourning him for two or three years now. Usually, there's an underlying agenda to make sure you're not comfortable with that character being gone because We All Know They'll Be Back. It's been two years since Avengers vs. X-Men and Marvel is STILL putting Professor X in the ground. Even now, two years later, Uncanny X-Men's latest story arc is "The Last Will and Testament of Charles Xavier." It's like every other month, they're saying "No, seriously. He's dead. Don't wait up." Now, don't get me wrong. This doesn't mean it's a done deal that he's gone forever, but Marvel's biggest non-Spider Man cash cow gone forever when there's another X-Men movie AND solo sequel in the pipeline (honestly, those movies are so awful, they're better promo for the comics than vice versa)? Not gonna happen.

Anyway, my comic reviews for the week are available at Black Nerd Problems for your viewing pleasure. Also, make sure to give the follow up to my Black Panther analysis a look. Feel free to click, comment, share at your leisure. This week, I took a look at:

Batman Eternal: Probably one of the best issues of the series. This book is a lot more effective now that Scott Snyder's overall plotline is getting down to brass tacks. I really enjoy the return of Hush, but I can't help but feel like he's been used enough that his "holy shit" factor may have dwindled slightly. I think time will tell as the next phase of the new big bad's plan for Gotham gets even worse.

Ms. Marvel: First of all, this is one of the best looking books in Marvel's rotation. Easily. Adrian Alphona never fails to deliver these fantastic moments that, on their own, could convey the tone and emotion of the book as a whole. There is no more priceless moment than Kamala Khan pouncing on Lockjaw (as much as a dog like that will allow, anyway), loving on him like he's a damned teddy bear. Second, this is one of the most well-written books in Marvel's rotation hands down. G. Willow Wilson is doing a great job of keeping this book interesting and I'm so excited to see where else it can go.

Batman- Future's End #1: This was an awesome one shot future vision. I have to admit...ever since the "Epilogue" episode of Justice League Unlimited, I'm a complete sucker for the "There Must Always Be A Batman In "Gotham City" line of thinking.

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 9/3/14

So, this week the announcement finally went out officially that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will be playing Black Adam in an upcoming Shazam movie. He's been screwing with fanboys on Twitter for months, posting pictures of possible characters he could have been playing, but it's nice to have officially have confimation. Arguably, this is the first no-brainer DC has actually gotten right in the casting department. Truthfully, they needed a win after a few lackluster choices that weren't necessarily bad but don't really leave anyone camping out in front of the theater.

Granted, I was almost sure he was going to end up being Shazam (because playing a 10 year old in a superhero's body is the kind of shit Johnson can do in his sleep) but I could see his Black Adam being fucking menacing. There's an argument that it's a miscast because Dwayne Johnson's thing is that he plays heroes and would be a great addition to DC's cinematic hero roster. Normally, the fact that this is an opinion that came from IGN would be more than enough to make it inadmissible evidence because most opinions that come out of IGN either come from a). bad information or b). a lack of information. The argument of "I don't want to see The Rock as a bad guy because he's not a bad guy" is, at best a sort of hilarious stance to take. Anyone who holds this logic will have to come to the realization eventually that Dwayne Johnson is, in fact, NOT an actual superhero that DC is actually adding to some list of actual superheroes. He's an actor. He's a wrestler. Even then, the Rock was actually a heel back in the day just before the pinnacle of his wrestling career. He was also a bad guy (a shitty one, but still...) in The Mummy Returns and, before eventually becoming a hero (because Universal would have been stupid to give him up), he was the guy the Fast and Furious team was on the run from. These are nitpicks, but still....to say that an actor should always be a hero just because he's done it well before sort of misses the point of acting, especially when said actor is one of the rare cases in which a wrestler has enough range and charisma to keep getting decent work. Besides, Black Adam's path in the comics has gone for unapologetically evil to kinda-sorta-antihero. And we all know how well that's worked out with Loki over in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's entirely possible that we could get that kind of popularity for this character over at DC.

Anyway, I'll talk a little about the scourge of fuckery in the nerd community known as #GamerGate tomorrow mainly because I'm in a good mood today and would like to remain so. Until then, my comic reviews for the week are up on Black Nerd Problems and available for your viewing pleasure. As always, feel free to comment, like, share at your discretion. This week, I took a look at:

Iron Fist, The Living Weapon: As much as I enjoy this book, I think they've done the whole "break the hero down as much as possible" thing enough. I think everyone reading this book should be just about ready to see the hero win a little bit. I mean, I doubt the the payoff is going to (or can afford to) suck when the titular hero has a Netflix series in production.

Uncanny X-Men: Okay, I wasn't too happy about Chris Bachalo's return to this comic. I mean, I like his style, but honestly, I felt like it served its purpose in previous issues. In fairness, it wasn't that much of a bother because there wasn't a lot of action this time around (because sometimes his action beats are difficult to follow), but Kris Anka just raised the bar so high, it's hard to forget. Aside from that, Bendis' dyfunctional family narrative is still working out well.

Batman Eternal: Let me just say....a villain called the Architect whose outfit theme is clockwork is a little silly. DC really runs the gamut of costumed villains as if there's a compendium of names versus a list of themes and they just close their eyes and pick one from each list. Other than that, this was a pretty good issue.