“I’m going to need a ladder.”
Mobile Suit Gundam Wing
Tamashii Nations (Free Comic Book Day 2025)
“Operation Meteor” (adapting part of the first episode, “The Shooting Star She Saw”)
ORIGINAL STORY: Hajime Yatate & Yoshiyuki Tomino
WRITER: Katsuyuki Sumizawa
WRITER/LETTERER: David Clarke
SUPERVISOR: Naohiro Ogata
ARTIST: Mark Simmons
COLORIST: Arthur Hesli
EDITOR: Sedric Harris
I wasn’t going to talk about this trailer, honestly. Not because I’m an adult white male, and certain elements on the internet tell me I’m not allowed to talk about it. That’s bull. I’m allowed to have opinions and I’m not just examining storytelling for one group, even though my story preferences will by nature limit my audience. A good story is where you find it, and it’s rare to hear about a good story attached to Ironheart.
Remember, this girl’s backstory is misunderstanding a quote from astronaut Sally Ride about how the more people told her she couldn’t be an astronaut the more determined she was to prove them wrong. However, being an astronaut was already her dream. Riri took it as she needed someone to tell her what she couldn’t be and that would become her dream. She’s a girl who never had a dream who got one because she forced some old white woman teacher to tell her what she’ll never be. The teacher just happened to choose Tony Stark instead of Martha Stewart. That’s already pretty weak if your goal is to convince black girls to give science and engineering a try just to fill a quota count instead of encouraging black teens to follow their dream whether it leads to Tony Stark or Martha Stewart.
So now we have a trailer for Disney Plus’ Ironheart, a show that was kept in mothballs for years after her poor reception from Wakanda Forever despite principle photography already being done. Poor Dominque Thorne (who probably ALSO deserves better and is being convinced by Disney+ that the critics are just sexist racists) is probably too old to play the character now and you know they’re going to shove her into the next Avengers two-part movie, which is probably the only reason the SIX episode show came out five years after it was announced, with the first three going to be dumped at the same time and the other three presumably coming out weekly. This was such a non-entity to me that I wasn’t going to bother with it, but then I heard the usual suspects insisting that to put down this show was to be racist/sexist against intelligent black teen girls. If you ask me the opposite is true. Is this really the best you can give girls of color who want to be engineers?
“That could be anybody’s ink stain.”
Transformers: Worst Bot Ever Free Comic Book Day
Skybound Comet/Image Comics (May, 2025)
EDITOR: Alex Antos
LOGO DESIGN: Andrew Juarez
“Worst Bot Ever”
WRITER: Brian “Smitty” Smith
ARTIST/COLORIST/LETTERER: Marz Jr.
“Family Force V” preview
WRITER/CO-CREATOR: Matt Braly
ARTIST/CO-CREATOR: Ainsworth Lin
LETTERER: Aw’s Jame
Catch more from XanderFlicks on YouTube
and click here to check out Bullet Boy.
I kind of like “Blue Bullet”.
James Gunn’s DC Studios just dropped the official trailer for James Gunn’s Superman By James Gunn, directed by James Gunn, which he wants to make sure you know it’s by James Gunn according to previous promotion and shoving himself into the intro for Creature Commandos. All of that has made me a bit weary about the former Superman: Legacy, and critics suspect the Legacy part is so you have to call it James Gunn’s Superman. That’s why here at the Spotlight it will be known as James Gunn’s Superman By James Gunn. He wants you to know it so bad, might as well let him have it. He can also take the “L” if this turns out to be bad. The recent plot leak involving him taking vengeance on his critics who found his past tweets of poor attempts at humor that cost him working for Marvel, but we had let that go away until the leak news clearly showed he was taking the Dixie Chicks approach and being “not ready to play nice”. If the leak turns out to be true he hasn’t moved on even though nobody brought those comments up until the leak.
So now we have the full trailer, an idea of why everyone hates Superman beyond Luthor’s mutant monkey led smear campaign against him. Now we get to see some of the actual performances and now we actually get to see if their acting is any good. I have not watched any of the usual critics I follow responding to the trailer, or any of the Easter Egg videos that pop up because references are no longer fun for me since so many directors use them poorly. You can’t replace good adaptation with “see, we remember this from that one story you liked, isn’t that what you want?” references. This is all my thoughts, though I am going to check those out after I finish writing this article. So what do I think? Let’s watch it and see.
The Clutter Reports (my other site) Atop The Fourth Wall Crisis On Earth Prime Lean Into Artcast Bully Says “Comics Oughta Be Fun” Siskoid’s Blog of Geekery
Cartoon Hero’s Lair SF Debris Four Million Years Later
BW Media Spotlight 
Are The Creators Turning The Actors Against The Fans?
NOTE: Swearing in the trailer below and in one of the other videos in use
Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet has already had its share of controversy before the box is even constructed to come right out of. Many critics pointed to all the product placement. While Sony pushing it’s own product is no surprise, there’s also the Porsche spaceship (on a space bounty hunter’s income?), Adidas sneakers, and that gaming chair she’s using as a pilot seat probably came from somewhere but I missed it. I guess this is what we do to push AAA games since it’s less clear if such games will be successful.
One of the reasons for that lack of success is the other controversy: the character. In the first trailer she comes off as the trendy “girlboss” warrior woman in a medium that has been trying to blank out attractive women. At least in the western gaming sphere. Marvel Rivals out of China (of all places) and Stellar Blade out of South Korea have featured powerful women looking sexy and kicking butt not like a male character would but as a female character would. It’s not the gender, it’s the depiction, and gamers are getting tired of unattractive women, especially the ones who were attractive in the first game (Mary Jane in the Insomniac Spider-Man games comes to mind). I’m not really here to talk about all of that, but it does lead into our discussion topic.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Tati Gabrielle, who is the model and voice of Intergalactic‘s player character, Jordan A. Mun, discussed her roles in the TV and movie versions of other Naughty Dog properties, but it’s when she discussed how Neil Druckmann, creator of the original The Last Of Us games and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, prepared her for backlash from this game based on his experience…and when I read it I got the impression he was already trying to tell her what all the negative responses “really” were, which got me to thinking: is this going on in Hollywood all over? Note that Druckmann is part of the Hollywood culture even though he’s making video games, only know he’s put the pseudo-zombie horror game franchise on pause to focus on the HBO retelling of the first two games, so I’m counting him. And I believe he might not be alone.
Continue reading →
Tell others about the Spotlight:
Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on May 16, 2025 in Movie Spotlight, Video Game Spotlight and tagged commentary, fans vs creators, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, John Boyega, Kelly Marie Tran, Tati Gabrielle.
Leave a comment