Jake & Leon #621> Ultimate Hollywood Showdown

Considering how often they get a movie, you’d think it would be movie alchemy.

For the record, I chose the bland colors on purpose.

Over at The Clutter Reports this week I took on a new chart, a project priority chart. It also helped me learn some tricks with my spreadsheet program I can use later on. I need to learn how to do cool stuff in my software more. Will this help me get organized in my creative projects? If I can stop getting tests, which won’t be this week. Of course it’s the same week as our monthly bulk shopping trip AND getting Christmas decorations up. *sigh*

So, remember how I originally planned to do a final Saturday Night Showcase when DC Heroes United was done? (Refresher article.) Well, episode two dropped on Friday and they actually include the videos of the paths not taken. Obviously they don’t affect the running narrative post-voting, and I still don’t want to be disappointed my vote didn’t make it so I’m still not playing the connected game. However, it felt like fun to explore how those unchosen paths would have impacted things and how the choices that won might affect what will come. So we’ll start that this week while continuing the Chapter By Chapter review of Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mirror Image and (I think) the penultimate installment of Star Trek: Pitch & Guide.

Plus this is going to be a distracting week (and I’m getting tired of so many of those), so I’m hoping to at least get those and the comic reviews going. We’ll see how it goes. Have a great week, everyone!

Saturday Night Showcase> Rogue Elements

One of the more childish pushbacks by modern Hollywood creators is that you can’t really critique them because you don’t create anything yourself, because only the opinion of their entertainment peers matters to them. “You can’t possibly know what goes into making the things we do so you can’t properly judge my works.” This is bullcrap. I don’t need to be an artist to know I don’t like the art, and don’t have to be a writer to know I don’t enjoy the story. Before I became either of those things I was a fan, and fans know what they like and don’t like, and vote accordingly with their time and wallets.

So what happens when a critic actually makes something? Will their opinion matter now or will there be a new way to ignore any negative critique? Will Jordan can now claim to find out. He’s written a novel series featuring CIA secret operative Ryan Drake, and he’s also made and co-wrote a pilot, or a “proof of concept” as he calls it, for a TV series (or possibly streaming series) starring the character he created, titled Rogue Elements.

He’s also known online as The Critical Drinker, scourge of the current Hollywood culture. I’ve used a few of his videos for the Daily Video or occasional filler, so let’s see what happens when he puts his words into action.

In this crowdfunded pilot, Drake and his team have to extract a captured informant who has information that could stop the Russians taking back control of parts of Eastern Europe, the former USSR. However, it’s also personal as the Russian agent who took him also tortured and killed one of his friends…and he’s not the only one out for revenge. For readers of the books, and I have not had the opportunity, the short film takes place between the second and third books in Jordan’s “Ryan Drake” series. Perhaps you can also tell me why Drake doesn’t sound American and what the deal is with the blond lady. (No spoilers in the intro.) This has all the violence and language of an R rated movie, so heads up on that. If you’re okay with that, enjoy.

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BW’s Saturday Article Link> Reading To Newborns

Here’s one that’s been sitting in my archives waiting to be used. In an article from Aleteia, contributor Theresa Barber makes a good case for reading to your newborn to help connect with your child and start a love of reading. I don’t know if my mom read to me that early, but she is one of the reasons I love reading today.

Plus a picture of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, Himself a great storyteller, is a good way to kick off our push into the Christmas season.

Continuity Vs Anthology

The Literature Devil showed this clip on Wednesday’s Morning Nonsense stream, and that got my waking brain going.

The above clip and corresponding tweets on X-Twitter (hopefully it’s coming up for you since the rebrand has messed with embeds) features James Gunn basically stating that because story is fiction canon is “whatever you want it to be”. Remember, this is the guy creating an entire universe, has had trouble deciding whether or not his DC movies and shows will or won’t be canon to the new movie continuity (they’re his so of course they are, even recently stating they’ll be using the recon bomb to force season one of Peacemaker into the new Gunniverse of movies and animated series to explain the Snyder Justice League cameo), and will be in charge of this universe going forward. He does not believe in a set canon according to that clip. I don’t know what podcast is from so I can’t confirm the context, but if accurate this does not bode well for Warner Brothers’ latest attempt to challenge Disney on the superhero front as the new DC Studios seeks to go head to head with Marvel Studios, who have themselves ditched respecting the comics like they did with the MCU first began and Paramount was doing the distribution.

There are times I’m worried the horse is so beaten that the glue factory can’t work with the remains, but then some necromancer pops up and restores the horse. The debate over canon has more resurrections than Optimus Prime at this point, as many writers out there are more interested in stories than continuity. Canon is the cohesion of a continuity for a series or a shared universe. That’s not what they want to make, though. What they’re really asking for isn’t a shared or even ongoing universe, but an anthology, something more akin to The Twilight Zone or even Golden Age comics than what a series or franchise is supposed to be. Marvel Studios is forgetting that, DC Studios seems poised to never learn that lesson, and both of the comics that spawned the movie studios that spurn their parent media are losing the ability to do this as well. Stories do not a series make. I think we need to learn the difference.

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“Yesterday’s” Comic> Jumbo Comics #10

The perspective on this cover is so off.

Jumbo Comics #10

Real Adventures Publishing (October/November, 1939)

Since I need to fill space here, seeing as the credits are different for each comic and thus too long to list here, this isn’t the best scan in the world, but not the worse. Comic Book Plus has two covers (the one pictured is the second), there’s obvious signs of time on some pages, and apparently two pages of the “Peter Pupp” story is missing according to a commenter. Considering previous issues are using black & white microfiche I’d say we’re pretty lucky to have what we’ve got. That someone saved an issue long enough for it to be scanned onto the internet is amazing.

[Read along with me here]

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BW’s Daily Video> South Park On Imagination

A good storyteller makes a fictional world seem real, no matter how unlike our own world it is. That’s how we connect with the character, through shared experiences or wanting to see the protagonist overcome or learn their lesson and become better because they’re someone we’d like to know and befriend. Or they inspire us to be better by showing us what we lack and how to achieve some version of that on our own. We’ll never have Superman’s powers but we can follow his example on how to be a better person. Kyle is also right that many of these characters will exist after we’re gone, but I’ll add that many of them existed before we were born, and stayed relevant for reasons modern writers can not grasp. And so those legends are dying, replaced with mediocre doppelgangers and namesakes who failed to learn their processor’s lessons.

They cannot believe, and as Yoda once said, that is why they fail.

BW’s Thanksgiving Night Showcase: The Mouse On The Mayflower

Sorry about the autoplay. I couldn’t find it on YouTube, just reviews. So I was forced to use DailyMotion, which is a terrible player. The only other site I saw it on was Facebook and I’m not sure I can embed from there. Have a happy Thanksgiving, or a happy Thursday for those of you who don’t celebrate, and we’ll be back tomorrow with regular content. I figure not many people will be reading today, so here’s one of my childhood favorites.

Also, please remember if you watch that other, more famous Thanksgiving special:

Seriously, Linus and Franklin are the only two people I would trust to have Charlie Brown’s back, and one of them is on the opposing baseball team. He’s also the “straight man” and probably the most sane character. Which is tough sitting near Peppermint Patty in school.

They might even have needed to put him across just to make the nervous network happy, or they just ran out of room when blocking out the table. Stop assuming everything is evil just so you can be mad about something.