I’m only doing it to myself, so unless he says something monumentally stupid, this is it.
Zack Snyder seems to be losing his mind more and more. His Rebel Moon movies for Netflix were designed with a Director’s Cut in mind so he can make more money. However, every review I hear is very negative and nobody is surprised that even DisneyFilm wouldn’t approve it as an official Star Wars movie. His defense is “if you don’t support this movie you’re supporting movies by committee”, and yet he’s making a committee look like the better option. Sometimes you need people to tell you where you’re getting things wrong.
Meanwhile Snyder is STILL trying to defend his take on Superman, and making me less and less interested about Man Of Steel, a movie I’ve called a decent superhero movie but a terrible Superman movie. With every terrible defense I end up with less of an opinion than I did before. Superman is my favorite superhero, and Snyder’s destruction is losing the only defense I had about it because he makes it look worse rather than better.
Now we have a GQ YouTube video coming out of his “seen by more people than the Barbie movie” Rebel Moon, and he tries to explain why his Superman is so much better. It isn’t. It really isn’t.
I’m happy because we don’t lose the supporting cast. Bluey’s friends (Makenzie is my favorite of Bluey’s friends), the Heelers’ neighbors, and with the rest of the family moving closer we would miss out on what stories the family together would tell. This also saves them from drawing up new “sets” for the house. 🙂
In the last few installments of Free Comic Inside we looked at the last of the Aliens minicomics packed with the Aliens toyline. Practically an alternate continuity to have more cast members to turn into toys joined with the belief that boys don’t want those cootie-ridden “girls yuck” as leader, the minicomics were maybe eight pages long and had story arcs going through a few issues. That means to get the complete story you had to buy more figures. Sneaky tactic, really.
However, at some point the line changed. Ripley and her friends were gone because in the pop and geek culture worlds the Xenomorphs had gained a different enemy besides the Space Marines and Earthlings. They got Predators.
First showing up in Dark Horse Presents #38, Aliens Vs. Predator was a huge crossover series for Dark Horse. Both franchises were owned by 20th Century Fox and licensed by Dark Horse Comics, so why wouldn’t you take that opportunity? Alien was a slasher movie in space with aliens while Predator was a slasher movie on Earth with aliens attacking beefy soldiers instead of teenage girls. Both races are hunters. Both are killers…you know, for kids. The comics were a hit…but the movie adaptation apparently isn’t good. Remember, I’m not really big into either franchise, though I did enjoy the first two Predator movies when I saw them and really never saw any of the Alien movies.
Meanwhile Kenner has the license for both action figures, so why wouldn’t they follow suit? The toys may actually be a benefit to the Predator franchise. To fill out the ranks and show mom and dad that they aren’t the same figure each time (the same reason Playmates gave the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles different colored bandana masks), each Predator had their own armor, their own look, their own action figure, just as they had done for the Xenomorphs to fill out the enemies. Dark Horse and Kenner may be the reason these lines continued past their second movie by showing the variety that was possible. The toyline would include one double-paged one-shot minicomic showing for the younger audience just how the backstory came about and why these two forces from movies the kids weren’t allowed to watch yet came together to kill destroy each other. For some reason this is considered the eleventh issue of the Aliens (Space Marines) comic despite having none of the humans from that line. So to end this series of reviews let’s read the last issue in this series.
I’m pretty sure they’ve both fought Archie at one point.
Aliens (Vs Predator/Space Marines) #13
FINAL ISSUE
Kenner/Dark Horse (1992)
“The Ultimate Battle”
Also the name of the two-pack this came with.
WRITER: Dan Thorsland
PENCILER: Brandon McKinney
INKER: Karl Kesel
COVER ART: Joe Philips
LETTERER: Dan Nakrosis
EDITOR: Barbara Kesel
There is no colorist listed at the Aliens Vs. Predator fandom wiki page I’m using for the research side. For the comic side, a toy review sit called OAFE posted the whole minicomic minus the credits page. Here’s where you can read along. It’s double the pages but the same size as the other twelve, so it won’t take long.
As a creative myself, and a fan of worldbuilding…that was a total waste of time. Just when you think the movie’s done failing, this info comes out. I also wonder how much of this info and music Cirque Du Solei had for their Avatar tribute performance, Toruk: The First Flight. I can’t imagine they would miss the opportunity to have music that special.
Chapter By Chapter (usually) features me reading one chapter of the selected book at a time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as a read-along book club.
Things were not going well for our heroes in our last chapter. The investigators are down the power is down, the records are down, but at least the fire is down.
We’re not quite at the last third of the book. We still don’t know if the fire was intentional but if so we know our murderer doesn’t care who dies. Or maybe they do. Maybe this is a crazy person demanding death. We have suspects but given how little time has been devoted to the investigation there’s still room for an extra party to be involved, even with the clue I found by accident when going back a few chapters.
How far will the killer go, and why? There’s still so little we don’t know and I suspect the investigation may still not move forward this chapter with everyone needing to recover. The only way to find out is to check the next chapter and see what happens.
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