One thing I’ve been wanting to really see when it comes to the Duckverse superheroes was for Gizmoduck to finally get his own comic. Barring that I wanted to see more of the Justice Ducks, the team of heroes from the Darkwing Duck episode “Just Us Justice Ducks”. They created two of them for the episode if memory serves, but it would still be cool if done right. Hopefully, Dynamite will do it right because they’re putting out a Justice Ducks comic, based on the original incarnation and with Roger Langridge on writing duties. If he adapts Darkwing Duck, Gizmoduck, and friends as well as he did the Muppets, I have high hopes for this one, and that’s nice to say with a modern adaptation. Please live up to that.
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.
Yes, two chapters this week because they’re both short, about 8 pages between the two of them. So in the interest of time we’re going to read them both. Will it be worth making two chapters? We’ll find out.
Last time we learned about most of our remaining guest cast (I think there’s still a young couple to be introduced as I remember one being prominent in the sequel) and everybody’s connection to the experimental nerve regeneration process. This book comes out before the transporter was practically turned into a medical device. We did have some accidents that split people in two or sent them to an alternate universe, but it wasn’t until The Next Generation that we would see it restore people afflicted by a rapid aging disease or restore adults from the child form they were put into by the transporter. I’m not even sure why you’d need doctors in their future. Just use the last pattern in the buffer and heal their body. However, the future could also be shown to regrow limbs, though apparently not fix eyes that no longer or never worked.
This is one of the problems with trying to create advanced medicine when you want to invoke a plot involving some medical condition. Why did Worf need experimental spine surgery? You could almost suspect the transporter could put it back, and nanites could fix everything back in place. They have to come up with some reason it can’t be done just to make a medical drama plotline. I think Geordi has normal (or normal looking) eyes by the time of Picard. Luckily they can’t cure the common cold in Kirk’s time, so it’s time to see the early days of a process they may not even need later on.
According to the recommended reading order I’m using, only the first story should be read now in continuity, with four others grouped later and the last one not even on the list that I can see. Since that’s a dumb way to review a comic, I’m going to do the whole thing now in a quickie review similar to what I’m doing with The Blue Beetle Golden Age comic. If we can handle the mess up in my reading order for Sonic and Knuckles comics, I think we can deal with this.
So we have six stories total: Prime, The Strangers, The “Making Of Rune”, Hardcase, Mantra, and Freex. Prime is one I’m interested and have enjoyed the previously reviewed Strangers and Hardcase stories. Manta and Run are ones I don’t care about but they’re here so I might as well let them audition for a spot in my comic reading, and Freex apparently isn’t what I thought it was (I was thinking it was one of the mystical comics like Rune and Mantra) so this is their first chance to get me to read the series. With that, let’s speed run…through the review, because I want to try to enjoy the story.
Here’s the deleted scene from The Marvels, so we’re all on the same page.
Remember, Kamala Khan is SIXTEEN YEARS OLD! First off, the “strap on” joke (by the writer’s, not by Valkyrie) is already inappropriate for the teenage girl, a MINOR (you’d think with the claims that modern Disney are grooming teens they’d be really careful about stuff like that proving their critics’ point) who is supposed to come from a devout Muslim family, at least in the comics Marvel Studios no longer cares about, which is why I’m not going to watch the show or movie even if I had the opportunity to. On that note, I’m talking about this recently released deleted scene, not the movie itself. And yes, I’m calling non-Norse looking Valkyrie in a business suit cultural appropriation because it is. It’s not just for white people anymore, apparently…and there are still followers of Norse religion out there who probably hate Marvel to being with.
Culture war nonsense aside, in more strict (read “fanatical”) Muslim countries and communities, child brides totally exist, some brides being at least 13, possibly younger. I do not feel comfortable looking up when that stops but I know it’s way too young. Those same countries and communities will behead you for being a homosexual. If you’re surprised, look up the meaning of “fanatical”. So we have a culturally appropriated Norse mythological character accusing a white woman of having a lesbian Muslim child bride, then making a reference to sex toys. This scene should never have been written, never have been performed, never have been filmed, or at least deleted completely. Whatever else the rest of the movie does or doesn’t do as a movie or as an adaptation, this is in poor taste.
Moving on, this week’s Clutter Report has me building the Gunblaster Zoid after over a decade of only being a body. I’ll do a proper review once I’ve had time to mess with it.
I have two article series ending this week, as I complete (for now) the Many, MANY Intros Of Spider-Man and the Transformers: Beast Machines writing guides that were released to the public. Still going is the Chapter By Chapter review of Star Trek: The Vulcan Academy Murders with chapter 3. The rest of the week…who knows? Have a great week, everyone!
As I progress through the Many, MANY Intros Of Spider-Man, there are two shows that won’t be on the list because they don’t have a real intro. I thought it would be interesting to feature both on Saturday Night Showcase, to give them some form of representation.
However, I can’t find a full episode of Ultimate Spider-Man on YouTube, the one where Peter becomes a SHIELD trainee along with other, teenified heroes and Peter sometimes has comedic fantasies that break the fourth wall. Marvel HQ on YouTube has a trailer for them but I guess they took them down. Nobody else on YouTube has them, either. I’m not happy with the version I found on Dailymotion, since the darn thing kept autoplaying in the embed and I’m not doing that to you guys. So here’s what this show tries to pass of as an intro.
I can, however, bring you Marvel’s Spider-Man, which is essentially a reimagine of the lore on the level of the MCU version, but still with the same costume and powers. Peter is again in high school (because of course he is), but in the first official episode (I could post the shorts, later combined into the first episode, “Origins”, as Peter learns his powers, but I want the regular episode experience) he starts going to some high tech super brain science academy.
Neither show has an intro, just the old comic panel turning into the title thing Marvel movies were doing prior to the MCU and a title card getting pulled away by webbing or being invaded by Spidey. Enjoy.
This one is going to be a big shorter. There’s a new chapter of the “Threat From Saturn” but according to the Grand Comics Database they didn’t make any more and left the story on a cliffhanger. Seeing as how I hated the story I’m happy to leave it finished with “and then they unexpectedly drowned for some reason” and get on with my life. Also, there’s an O’Brine Twins story and I really don’t care about them, either. The two “Minut Mysteries” are one page crime stories that never have time to be good.
Don’t worry, there’s still plenty to review and the link below will take you to the comic if you really want to read them. I don’t, so I’m moving on. With this series I’m following the history more than trying to enjoy it, but I’m hoping it gets more fun at some point.
