All Men Must (And Probably Will) Die

Okay, guys...so, this post is mainly about the first episode of Game of Thrones. I have a feeling I'll be writing a LOT about Thrones considering that I have an unhealthy obsession with this show and these last two seasons are going to be pivotal. Anyway, there are HUGE spoilers after the jump. Just so you know. Big spoilers after the jump. That's twice I warned you about spoilers after the jump. Three times, now.

Whole squad decked out in that Maleficent spring line.

....On Captain America, Secret Empire and Nazi Punching.

Y’all. Marvel’s latest event, Secret Empire is good AND bad all at once. I say that because it’s handling a unilaterally stupid and insulting premise very well. I’m not going to elaborate on the “insulting” part of the concept of a designated Nazi punching superhero created by two Jewish men (one of which was an official Nazi puncher himself) being a secret Nazi so….well, I kinda just did, but moving on.

From this point on after the jump, it's spoilers all the way down. If you care about actually reading how this clusterfuck works out in the comics, go ahead and stop here. Otherwise, details after the jump.

Something Something Hot Trailers

So, two long awaited trailers dropped this week.

The first was for Thor: Ragnarok which looks incredible. This looks like the sort of epic scale the Thor movies should have always been aiming for. Thus far, the series has been, let’s face it, a series of well produced romcoms with fantasy elements not unlike the white thirst cinema that is Starz’ Outlander. Jane and Thor make doe eyes at each other, Kat Dennings looks hot and cracks jokes, Tom Hiddleston steals the show, Kat Dennings looks hot and…..you get the idea. Rinse and repeat. Thor is one of those properties where each and every adventure should have all of existence hanging in the balance. This franchise and the Hulk’s movies should always be about super destructive epic god battles. For context, Jason Aaron’s God of Thunder series features a future vision in which an older, war worn Thor who now rules Asgard gets into a fist fight with Galactus where he thrown into the moon so hard he comes flying out the other side. I shit you not. So, a slugfest with the Hulk is more than welcome.

Until now, the movies never had that sense of scale and urgency. The trailer alludes to that and it also manages to look fun which, at the end of the day, is really the most important element to maintaining the kind of audience these movies attract or should attract (are you listening, DC?). A movie about a thunder god should go for broke AT LEAST and Ragnarok looks like it does just that.

Then, there was The Last Jedi….

Though I could geek the fuck out about every detail, I’m going to try not to go on very long about about it because I have a feeling I’m going to be talking about Star Wars a lot in the near future. First of all, the Tron inspired poster look spectacular and really gives Rey that epic hero look she needed in the Force Awakens poster.

The trailer was epic, though. I mean, it was only a minute and a half and it threw out thrills and questions to be answered faster than Janet Hubert tweeting during a Fresh Prince marathon. The part I’m most interested in is the part at the end where Luke said, “It’s time for the Jedi to end.” That line alone opens up potential for some interesting directions for Luke’s character to go. Even though the Jedi are mostly about order and learning to center your emotions and letting go of earthly attachments and shit, Skywalkers tend to have a complicated relationship with the Force. With him being literally the LAST of the Jedi, there’s no telling what secrets he learned once he found the Jedi temple. He could have learned the truth of how his father was seduced by the dark side (and how his mother was dating Anakin when he was clearly still a minor) which would be enough to give anyone resentment issues. Who knows? I’ve even heard some theories that we might get introduced to the beginning of the “Grey Order”, something we’ve never seen in mainstream canon. Also, make sure you get a good look at Poe Dameron’s black X-Wing. The ball’s in your court to pump out some quality toys and model kits, Disney. I’ll be waiting.

My review of Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps is available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing pleasure.

The Obligatory Iron Fist Post

So, in case you haven’t heard, Marvel’s long anticipated Netflix series Iron Fist….is garbage. Even by Arrow season 4 standards, it’s pretty rough. The worst part about wasn’t even that Iron Fist was a white guy. Matt Fraction’s version was pretty awesome and featured a white guy but also many Iron Fists of color that, Marvel seems to have completely overlooked for reasons unknown. It’s a bad thing but not the worst thing.

It was that it was painfully obvious that Marvel had been putting the development off because they had no idea what angle they wanted to approach the story from so they went with a paint by numbers origin story that, good or bad, just didn’t feel genuine at all. Granted, I realize that “heart” isn’t really quantifiable but you can definitely tell when a writer has something to say and the writers for Iron Fist didn’t.

No matter what you think of any given Spider-Man film, it’s very clear in each installment that the writers have a clear understanding of the fact that Spider Man’s most prevailing themes is “doing the right thing even when it sucks.” Hell, even Kung Fu Panda seems to run with the theme that “Being a hero isn’t about where you come from so much as who you choose to be.” Nothing about Iron Fist seems to convey an overall theme aside from “because kung fu” which is pretty rudimentary considering how far along we are in telling of the superhero myth.

Honestly, Marvel had a chance to beat DC to the punch of something they do well because they’ve been doing legacy stories forever (Reminder: There have been four Flashes, three Batmen and three Green Lanterns in one sector). They could have easily done a Book of the Iron Fist series about various wielders of the power throughout the years. Introduce a new Iron Fist, preferably an Asian one and have the show be about him returning to the world to fight the Hand when someone else emerges who controls the Iron Fist simultaneously, a white man named Danny Rand (because there is precedent in the comics of two people having the power at the same time), let them do an obligatory team up and have Danny go away and let Lewis Tan or Collin Chow or whoever be in the Defenders.

So yeah, I’m not as mad about Iron Fist being racially problematic and silly. There’s plenty of that. I’m salty because it’s structurally silly and full of missed opportunities. No matter WHO plays Iron Fist….the show would have still been bad. The only difference is that we’d be drowning in think pieces about how (Enter Much Better Actor Here) is way too good to be in it.

The Defenders seems promising, though. So, there’s that. Check out my review on the Green Lantern/Space Ghost crossover on Black Nerd Problems

The Week In Geek: 3/4/17

So, this week in Star Wars, as if the cast for the Han Solo movie wasn’t already cartoonishly awesome, Michael K. Williams (Omar from The Wire) has officially been added to the cast. I don’t know how big his role is. I don’t know what character he’s playing. As far as I’m concerned, he could reprieve his old role as Omar from The Wire and my ticket would still be guaranteed bought. I love that we’re getting so much Star Wars content out of this run. I would be in Heaven if we could get a non episodic movie in between every episode. We’re at a point where the budget and the technology exists to send this franchise in so many different directions. The official episodes represent the “space drama” and Rogue One had the feel of a “greatest generation” war movie that showed a more visceral, ground level side of this conflict. We don’t know much about the Han Solo movie but I could totally envision this being a space caper film. Either way, my ticket is bought so that’s that.

In other geeky ass news, nobody really knows for sure what’s going on with Tron. A few years ago, we production for Tron 3 got cancelled. I’m assuming Disney put the brakes on it to pay for all these Marvel movies being relentlessly pumped out (not that I’m complaining about more Marvel but TRON) on top of liberating Star Wars from George Lucas’ wooden ass dialogue. Since then, there have been rumors that more Tron might still get made. Hell, Tron Legacy director Joseph Kosinski even gave us some insight into what Tron: Ascension would have been (or might still be about). Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney might be looking to reboot Tron all together….with Jared Leto at the center of it. There is virtually no version of me throughout the multiverse that could be convinced to not watch a Tron movie. If the only thing standing between me and my seat in a movie theater to watch a Tron movie were a dozen heavyweight MMA fighters, I guarantee they’d all end up on their asses. No amount of anything could keep my nerdy black ass out of the seat for a Tron movie….except maybe Jared Leto, the dude who took his role as the Joker so seriously, he showed up to a hospital in full Joker garb with a tarantula on his face, scaring the shit out of terminally ill children. But the idea of a reboot isn’t terrible. I’m really excited about what Kosinski had in mind for Tron 3, but even as a Tron fanatic, I realize that a lot of time has passed and it’s not unreasonable for a studio to want to just start over. If that’s what it takes to get these light cycles back in effect, so be it. I just wouldn’t count on seeing it until a few years after the Avengers defeat Thanos.

My comic review for Star Wars is available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing enjoyment and don’t forget about Chapter 2 of Neverland: The Untold

Dear Logan: Thanks But No Thanks

Since I’ve been away working on other projects, one of the main things I’ve had people asking me about is the Logan, Fox’s final attempt at making a respectable Wolverine movie (since Hugh Jackman is finally tapping out after playing Wolverine for 17 years...feel old yet?). What do I think? Am I going to go see it? Does it look like it’s any good to me?

No. I’m not going to see it. Well...I’m not going to spend money on it.

Yes, I see that it’s rated R since (in the wake of Deadpool’s success) Fox has decided that the problem with their movies is that there isn’t enough blood and cursing. Yes, I see that they’re borrowing bits and pieces from the Old Man Logan graphic novel. And yes, I see that it’s gritty and Wolverine’s all bloody and explosions and desert and X-23’s in it.

The problem is that these Wolverine movies are like a terrible ex lover that keeps coming back, telling you it’s going to be different this time. They show up at your door with a different haircut, better clothes, a new job and they don’t smell like cigarettes and whiskey anymore. They even talk a little different, remembering everything you like. They spend a few minutes convincing you of how aware they are that they fucked up their last two chances with you. They swear up and down that if they had their chance they’d show you just how much they’d appreciate you. Then you let them in just a little bit for “just one drink”. The next thing you know, you’re alone at the bar while they’re in the entirely too small bathroom in the pub next door, going down on your best friend (terribly, by the way). That’s what these Wolverine movies are. They promise that the new one isn't going to be like the last one and oftentimes, it's not, but that doesn't stop it from being worse.

Maybe it’ll be fantastic. Maybe Fox has truly gotten its shit together. Maybe this will be the thing that turns the X-franchise around for the better. Hell, maybe we should just be happy Hugh Jackman is getting one last enormous check out of this shit sandwich. Maybe things’ll get better when they reboot and get wooden ass Sam Worthington to start playing Wolverine.

Either way...I’m pretty sure I’m not ready to love again. I’ve been hurt before. Also, my review of The Mighty Thor is up and available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing enjoyment.

My GAWD, Shame On Me For Not Talking About Westworld

Originally, I was going to do a post about the current state of The Walking Dead, but there’s probably nothing new I can add to that conversation other than the fact that this season is probably the most divisive I’ve ever seen among fans. 

Then, I was going to do a post outlining each part of the yearly Arrowverse crossover which now includes four separate shows, two and a half of which are particularly terrible. However, I could only sit through two episodes and it doesn’t feel right railing on a story when it’s entirely feasible (but probably not) that the conclusion featured in Legends of Tomorrow could have turned things around and made this event tolerable. So we’ll mark that as “to be continued.” 

Then I was going to update you about how Civil War II is going, but I don’t think anyone will be surprised to know that it’s still pimpled butt cheeks. The past three issues have been going over the same three points over and over: 1). Captain Marvel is strong and wrong; 2). The young heroes are sick of the old heroes and their shit and 3). Spider Man really doesn’t want to go to jail. So yeah, still awful.

And then I realized that while I’ve been looking one way, HBO’s sci-fi mind bender, Westworld has been low key becoming the best show on television. It hits all the obligatory markers of an HBO show….obscene budget, brilliant A list casting, first class writing. Clearly, the network is aiming for this to be the successor to the crown currently occupied by Game of Thrones which is officially on its way out. But the show goes a little further than that, ambitiously reaching past the story’s roots from the Michael Crichton movie. 

There are spoilers after this point. They are really MINOR spoilers but I'm still obligated (by the fact that I don't want to hear whining about spoilers) to tell you that there are spoilers after the jump. That's four times I've mentioned spoilers. Five now. So I don't want to hear any bullshit about it.

Night of the Awful Slavery/Zombie Episode.....

So, you’ll notice one comic related show I never talk about is Legends of Tomorrow. It’s not because I don’t find time to watch it or because I ration out my television time among select shows. It’s because, last I checked, Legends of Tomorrow was a generally terrible show. Of all the shows that make up CW’s Arrowverse, Legends is the one that most resembles Fox’s approach towards the X-Men movies. Take a few fan favorite characters, some good looking actors, a nerdy premise, shake well and the result is….well...a fucking mess.

For those of you that had the good sense to skip the show up to now, there are people out there fucking up space and time for various and sometimes, undefined reasons. So, the Doctor Rip Hunter went against the wishes of the Time Masters Lords came to the present day to ask Oliver Queen and Barry Allen to vouch for him so he could recruit a team of misfits including Firestorm, Heatwave and Not Quite Tony Stark the Atom. They call themselves the Legends (despite this being among the silliest team names of all time). So, this is the part where I go into a recap of the worst episode of anything I've watched in at least the past two months. There are spoilers, so if you're brave enough to still watch this horseshit after said recap, just know that there are spoilers after the jump.

Update: Arrow is Still Trash

Since I haven’t done a post in a while, I might as well check back in with comic based television. I know I said I was done with Arrow last season, but after seeing the trailer for the new season, I got curious as to where they were headed. The result is my first real hate-watch since Smallville. I mean….there are just so many bad things taking place, but the small handful of good things keep me interested in how they’re going to maintain them.

First off, I talked about this before but the whole thing with Oliver Queen maybe/maybe not doing murder is just getting silly. The whole point of a superhero is that they stand on a very basic code of morals, whatever that code may be. It’s hard to know if you’re the kind of superhero these people want to stand behind if that code is changing from season to season. If the writers are going to be so deadset on modeling the Green Arrow after Batman, he’s gotta be less indecisive than that.

And this whole Arrow Academy storyline wavers between “trash” and “kinda tolerable fan service.” And the main problem isn’t that the new team is garbage (although the new team IS garbage); it’s that the only reason there’s a new team is because the writers realized they’ve written all of the old team into a corner. Diggle has fallen so far from awesomeness, he had to run off to the Army just to have a sense of identity. A SUPERHERO had to quit superheroing and rejoin the Army just to feel like somebody. That’s a problem. Meanwhile, Ollie’s sister, Thea has quit being Speedy/Red Arrow to join her brother in politics just to have a credible storyline that isn’t focused on either a). her daddy issues or b). her consistently terrible choices in boyfriends. And Felicity is sick of being Oliver’s enabler even though she stuck around to continue serving as Oliver’s enabler. Because make no mistake, one of the primary reasons that the Green Arrow is an asshole is because Felicity spent four seasons telling him that his best, most dickish self is the key to beating the bad guys. Granted, this week’s episode was probably the best one thus far simply because the scene of Team Arrow assembling was epic (not to mention Stephen Amell settling his wrestling beef yet again with Cory “Stardust” Rhodes who played the villain of the week).

The problem with this show digging so hard into the Batman well is that Batman doesn’t work in a weekly CW show. Batman works well in comics and movies because either you’re not reminded constantly of what an irredeemable douche he is.

In any case, the show is probably going to crawl along on this redemption run until the Green Arrow finally throws down with Prometheus because there’s only room for one Impossible White Man in Star City. But for the most part, it feels like the show is trying so hard to gain its viewers trust back, it's just a reminder of how much they've fucked up.

How the Village Failed David Walker

So, recently, David Walker announced on Facebook that Marvel had left his Nighthawk series out of the November solicitations….meaning it was being canceled. Walker went on to soothe his savage fans (this includes myself), being as candid and classy about the whole thing as he could. After all, he still has his Luke Cage and Iron Fist series as well as the upcoming Occupy Avengers, so I'm sure he's not crying himself to sleep. Honestly, this is why I don’t take the complaints about blackwashing characters seriously.

Fans will whine and cry and moan about how the Big Two should focus on building up existing characters of color or creating new characters instead of having them take up the monikers of white heroes. And sure, this is valid but the problem here is that when the industry listens to the audience and gives us what we want, nobody buys it. This has been the case with Static Shock, Mister Terrific, Deathlok, Black Panther: Man Without Fear (though that last one was probably canceled more because it was meh) and the list goes on.

Nighthawk was essentially every single thing the audience has been calling for. Walker delivered an honest, upfront, challenging book that dusted off a black character that people really enjoyed from Supreme Power/Squadron Supreme. I mean, a Batman analog beating the shit out of corrupt cops in Chicago? That’s worth its weight in vibranium. And David Walker is a solid, prolific writer, so you can’t really say that Marvel didn’t put quality talent into it. We let books go to the wayside and then complain that we’re not getting what we want. We can’t have it both ways. At some point, a company (because it’s not unreasonable for Marvel to want to make money) is eventually going to go with what makes money and if that means the Falcon gets to be Captain America (which makes more sense than detractors are willing to admit) or that Kamala Khan gets to take Carol Danvers’ old name (in an Eisner award winning book, by the way), so be it. Meanwhile, if you want to whine about Marvel not being original, sure, that argument can be had. But if you’re going to complain, you have to at least meet the industry half way when they actually make a consorted effort to give you what you want. It takes a village to raise our own heroes up, but when we let decent material pass us by after complaining that it doesn't exist, I wonder if there was ever a village to begin with. Just thinking out loud. My review on the finale of Tokyo Ghost is available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing enjoyment. And don't forget about my webcomic collaboration with Katie Coats, Neverland: The Untold as well

My Review of The Get Down

This is my review of the Get Down. There will be spoilers so if you haven't watched the Part One of Season One of The Get Down, here is your stop. For everyone else, proceed to reading after the jump.

Update: Civil War II Still Sucks

So, for those of you keeping up and those of you who haven't, I just wanted to check in and remind you that Civil War II is still a thing that's going on and it's still pretty stupid. I mean, granted, it's not nearly as stupid as DC fans starting to petition to end a website for keeping count of how many people think a movie they like is good or bad (because that's all Rotten Tomatoes is, really), but it's still pretty stupid for reasons other than the ones we've already discussed. So, it merits at least some discussion....which will occur after the jump.

The Killing Joke: Hard Pass.

So, this week in Doing It Wrong, it turns out that DC's animated adaptation of Alan Moore's Killing Joke story holds true to DC's long standing tradition of taking things Alan Moore did and making them worse. It's been leaked that the movie takes a Batman and Batgirl's relationship down a different road. Long story short....they fuck.

idk how to feel about this pic.twitter.com/gsBGHsYet5

— ☕ (@AcroNite7) July 22, 2016

It's not enough that DC would be so socially out of touch with their audience's current social issues that they would think it's a good idea to bring back an infinitely triggering story with questionable gender politics. It's not enough that they have to go the extra mile and strain an already borderline non-existent relationship with a creator they've alienated countless times over the years. But then they have to change a story to make it twice as problematic at a time when readers seem to enjoy Barbara Gordon as Batgirl (one of the few things the New 52 reboot got right in retrospect), kicking ass. Why open yourself up to even more feminist critique than this story already deserves (and make no mistake....it deserves a great deal of feminist critique)? Just for context, we're talking about a story where even Moore himself, who has a long history of writing super rapey books, admitted that the editorial team at the time should have stepped in and stopped him. We're at a point where we shouldn't still be having rudimentary conversations about using women as props to anger men into battle to slay the dragon.

It's not even necessary in a Batman story. The character has virtually every reason to be pissed off built into him already. He's a traumatized orphan fighting in the most crime-y city ever in the history of comics. And, really, that's just if the writers in question decide he even needs a reason which, according the Arkham game series, he doesn't. Now, you have to give him yet another pseudo-girlfriend to house all his commitment issues? DC seems to be wearing their inability to "get it" right for women like an awarded badge of honor. The Killing Joke is their acceptance speech.



My comic reviews for the week on Star Wars and the exponentially bad Green Lanterns are up and available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing enjoyment. And don't forget my webcomic collaboation with Katie Coats, Neverland: the Untold. This week was a double page week to get us back on schedule so check out Pages 31 AND 32.

Why Suicide Squad Might End Up Being Trash....

So, I wanted to talk very briefly about why I'm less and less excited about Suicide Squad.

I'm not even going to touch on the problems with making a movie based on a comic that has probably been rebooted no less than three times and has likely sold about as many copies in six years.

When the trailer first debuted, it looked fantastic even though it's not really fooling anyone into believing that it's anything other than a vehicle to introduce Harley Quinn and Jared Leto's Joker. And it seems to be doing a lot of things right. It's a diverse cast taking the DC universe in a direction Marvel hasn't explored yet (even though I would pay ungodly sums of money to see Marvel do a Thunderbolts movie). But now that Batman v Superman has come and (thankfully) gone, it's brought a bit of context to the kind of world we're being sold. Check it.



"What if Superman had decided to fly down, rip off the roof of the White House and grab the President right out of the Oval Office? Who would have stopped him?"

First of all, depending on how this election shakes out, I doubt anyone would have a problem with that so that's not the scariest imagery one could invoke to establish Superman as a threat (which is the main thing wrong with BvS, but I'm not having that discussion anymore). Second, if Superman did go rogue and attack the White House, what in the WORLD WIDE FUCK are Deadshot, Harley Quinn and Katana going to do about it aside from die screaming? The problem with these "hit squad to stop the most powerful people on Earth" scenarios is that they always involve recruiting people that stand NO CHANCE of stopping the most powerful people on Earth. I mean, sure, it's a good move to feature Batman in the movie to show off how badass the Suicide Squad is up against A-listers, but let's be honest, y'all. The ONLY reason Batman was able to contend with Superman in Yawn of Justice is because the script required Superman be an unfathomably stupid chump to even be goaded into a fight in the first place. So, right there, you're not going to convince me that Killer Croc is the go-to guy if Superman decides to say, "fuck it."

Most importantly, the Suicide Squad's whole thing is that they're badasses willing to do things the good guys either can't fathom doing or don't have the balls to do. But the first two movies have Batman and Superman, DCs two standards for how heroism works in their universe, going about as far as you can go....which is murder.

If Superman isn't above murder and Batman isn't above murder (because OH SWEET JESUS, HE MURDERS SO MANY PEOPLE), why does it matter that the Suicide Squad's bread and butter is murder? I'm not saying this movie doesn't still stand a chance of being fun to look at or that we won't get some epic moments from some key characters. I know I'm pretty excited about the prospect of a Batfleck/Joker car chase. But I'm cautious about a movie that has negated all of its most obvious stakes and reasons to care before the thing even started pre production.

Just something to think about.

The Week In Geek 6/22/16: Civil War II Is Stupid So Far

So, Civil War II: Civil Harder, has begun in the Marvel Universe and we're two issues in so that's as good a place as any to start talking about it.

Disclaimer: I'm talking about Civil War II, so I'm talking directly about the plot which means there are spoilers. So, if you guys don't want to hear about it, go ahead and jump ship now. Otherwise, there are spoilers after the jump. I've warned you.

The Week in Geek 6/8/16: A DC Reboot Is Problematic or Water Is Wet.

As much as I tried to avoid talking about this, here I am giving my limited viewpoint of DC Rebirth, DC's attempt to fix something that used to be broken but isn't really THAT broken anymore but made a lot of people mad back when it was broken. First of all, trying to undo the sins of the New 52, something fans were pissed about five years ago, now that it turns out Big Two comic sales are looking down recently is like an abusive spouse taking you to Red Lobster because they remembered you asked for it five years ago when you met: Thanks but you'd still appreciate it if they stopped abusing you. (From this point, I discuss actual events that have taken place in certain DC comics, so if you're not at least two weeks up to date and you actually care about spoilers, go ahead and stop here. For everyone else, further discussion happens after the jump.)

The Week in Geek: 5/25/16 or My Breakup With Arrow

So, This Week in Superhero Television.....I think I'm done with Arrow. For those of you that don't follow me on Twitter, I do the weekly livetweet for Flash and Arrow under the Black Nerd Problems account. One of my editors, Omar Holmon, used to do it, but I think his neighbors found out he was stealing cable and he had to shut that shit down. Anyway, I'd usually be honored by the opportunity, but Arrow's redemption season has been a painful trudge to the middle of the road. I mean, the show has maintained a steady standard of "not as good as The Flash but better than Legends of Tomorrow" but let's be honest; that's not a high bar to clear in the first place.

When this season started, there seemed to be some light at the end of the tunnel, an attempt to right some of the creative wrongs committed in the previous season. But the writers seemed to make an almost deliberate attempt to solve those problems by either highlighting everything that's been wrong with the show or stepping over said problems altogether. Case in point, the Black Canary II. There has been no one more against Laurel Lance taking her sister's mantle than me. They choreographed her fight choreography terribly and she spent the past two seasons being unnecessarily unlikeable. So, you would think I would be happy they killed her off. But then, her Earth 2 doppelganger shows up on The Flash and she stole the whole episode. She was an amazingly fun villain as the Black Siren, it brought into realization that the writers just plain squandered her on Arrow as opposed to the thought that she'd fallen so hard, she couldn't be written back into glory again. It was just a waste, retrospectively.

The finale was like a window display of everything that's been wrong with this show. Much of this show has been about Oliver Queen's fight against his darker nature and the killer instincts that he picked up during his time on The Island From LOST. For a few episodes, they telegraphed to viewers that the way to combat Damian Dahrk's Sith Lord Magic was for him to expel the darkness in his own heart and embrace the light. But in the end....after Dahrk's magic was nullified by the people of Star City using The Third Act In Dark Knight Rises against him...Oliver ended up succumbing to the darkness by killing Dahrk after he was clearly beaten. Even Diggle, the Arrow's moral compass ended up giving into his dark side by murdering the older brother whose soul he'd been trying to save all season because Andy trolled him a little in defeat. I mean, really, Diggle had turned to the dark side when he tried to kidnap his enemy's wife and pistol whipped her in broad daylight, but hey....who's counting at this point? It's just strange that the show has spent all this time cloning Batman (more blatantly in the finale than ever before) and yet picked the strangest time to step out of Batman's shadow. One of the big problems with American shows like this is that they go on past their structural shelf life. In a perfect world, Arrow would have ended after Season Two when he defeated Slade Wilson and conquered the darkness within the second time (he's gone back and forth about killing no less than four times not including his useless flashbacks to The Island From LOST). But because the endgame is to monopolize CW with entire blocks of the Arrowverse (as is more evident by the inclusion of Supergirl), these shows have to go on being built far away from the foundations they were built on and the past season is the resulting category 4 shit storm. Rest In Peace, Arrow. We will never forget. But we will try.

My comic reviews for the week on Star Wars and The Mighty Thor are available on Black Nerd Problems. And don't forget my ongoing webcomic series with Katie Coats, Neverland: The Untold.

A Brief Opinion of Civil War

So, I finally got around to getting out to the theater to see Civil War yesterday (I waited a week so there'd be less humans and crying babies to trigger my Akira-like, rage powered telekinesis) and I'm going to go ahead and skip the obvious angle of comparing to the DC's latest dumpster fire, Batman v Superman because the comparison is almost insulting to Civil War which is, undoubtedly, the better movie on virtually every discernible level. I'm going to jump out there and say that this movie is the linchpin that makes the Captain America trilogy surpass the Dark Knight trilogy which, up to this point, was the Godfather of superhero sagas.

There are spoilers after the jump. Not a lot or even major spoilers, but there are spoilers there. So, yeah.

The New Game of Thrones Trolling Experience

So, Game of Thrones happened in the past couple of weeks. I was going to do a post about it after the season premiere but I wanted to wait until two episodes had passed because GoT has a habit dedicating one episode purely to set-up for what's to come. And that's basically what happened.

For those of you keeping score, that's that kid's uncle. He's also
that kid's father AND he fucked the boy's mom in that same spot.

I'm glad I waited until after the second episode to form an opinion because it's plainly obvious now that the format has changed. Obviously (except for the Iron Islands stuff), the showrunners have run out of book material to follow and honestly, it's the best goddamned thing to happen to this show in the past two seasons. See, there was a time when the showrunners made an attempt at a 1:1 representation of the source material as established by George R. R. Martin and before anything else, Martin is an extinction level troll. He loves that people lose their collective shit when someone who may or may not have deserved it gets killed off. That said, the source material can be long and torturous to its characters. So, "staying faithful" to it means we would have had to sit through half a season of Roose Bolton telling Ramsey to get his shit together after he does something unforgivably evil and macabre or no less than six episodes of Tyrion Lannister realizing that he is the smartest person in the room and STILL has to be the one to do the legwork nobody else wants to do in the service of saving the day. But now that the ship is set on "sail", the showrunners get to advance the plot at their leisure. So, now, Arya only has to go through a couple episodes of Daredevil training before we see some payoff. Just two episodes before Ramsey finally gets sick of his father's shit and does the thing we all knew he should have done a season ago (Jesus Christ, he had his JUST BORN baby brother fed to dogs on sight before even washing his father's blood off the dagger). As the writer of a comic whose first issue is primarily set-up, I appreciate the time it takes to create a universe and lay groundwork, but I feel like we're at a point where the training wheels can be taken off and viewers can all have an experience together without being divided by people who are on the edge of their seat and people who've read the books and are just waiting for one shoe or another to drop. We can all be trolled together and that's a good thing....unless they start with that rape shit again.

My comic review for the week on Invincible Iron Man is up and available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing enjoyment. Feel free to like, share or comment at your own discretion

The Week In Geek 4/20/16

So, This Week In Excuses to Move On From Batman v Superman.....It's recently been announced that Marvel/Disney's Inhumans movie, previously scheduled for a July 2019 release, no longer has a release date. That's not to say that it's no longer on the schedule but usually when things like this happen, it's because the studio has to make room for an impending franchise (**cough** Spider Man) because his appearance in the previews for a certain upcoming film (**cough** Civil War) has tested well thus far, so it's probably a good thing that they're staying flexible with this Marvel Cinematic Universe. After all, they should probably have time to rethink whatever they had in mind for the film since Agents of SHIELD has spent the past two seasons mining the whole Inhumans thing with their Secret Warriors plotline (which has successfully reinvigorated the show with a new sense of identity).

Also, there's the whole rumor that Marvel might be coming to an mutual X-Men deal with Fox to use them....but I don't believe that shit just yet, so we'll move on.

This Week in Superhero Television.....It turns out there is a script in the can for Krypton, a Gotham style Superman prequel show. Apparently, the pilot is set two generations before Krypton's destruction where Superman's grandfather tries to bring honor back to the House of El. Here's why this is stupid. Why the FUCK are we doing a show about a planet we KNOW is going to die. I mean, we actually know how this is going to end. There are literally NO STAKES involved. Now, there is a chance that they could take this in a psuedo-Game of Thrones direction where upper crust Kryptonians wrestle for political and military power, which would wipe away the time honored "We were a peaceful, technologically advanced and unilaterally boring as fuck civilization that basically sets the stage to let our future protagonist grow up with abandonment issues" approach we've seen for God knows how long. However, this premise as is has the same problem Gotham has: primetime superhero television's compulsive need to appeal to the Lowest Common Denominator viewer that will be perfect happy just to name drop popular names from the comics wherever possible (which, in a show two generations before anything relatively Superman happens, consists exclusively of Zod, Jor-El and maybe Brainiac depending on what version you're going with). And sure, Titanic took place in an ill fated setting too and it made tons of money, but this is primetime (probably broadcast basic cable at best) television so it's highly doubtful that any network that falls under that umbrella is willing to shell out that level of production quality to a show about Superman's grandfather. So, we'll see.

My comic reviews for the week on Tokyo Ghost, The Mighty Thor and Superman: American Alien are up and available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing pleasure.

And don't forget about my the latest page of my comic collaboration with Katie Coats, Neverland: The Untold. As always feel free to like, share and comment at your leisure. You know the drill.