I’ve Taken Too Many Breaks This Year

And yet it looks like I’m going to need another one. My schedule has been broken for a while now. I’ve had late uploads, filler videos because I ran out of time for a proper feature article, and things not getting done when I wanted. It doesn’t help that, as I go over in this week’s Clutter Report, we have a new DVR box so it’s a race to watch everything on the old one that doesn’t seem to want to record. On the plus side I’m banking a bunch of Finally Watched articles for the future, but on the downside it’s something else eating into my time.

I’ve also been wanting to really play with certain pieces of software and learn how to use them better, relink a few things on the site, and try out things that could make for future content in articles, comics, and videos, as well as various combinations of the three. I’ve only done one Reconstruction Zone and one Re-Covered since I started the series a few years ago. So they’re not even series yet. There’s my various backlogs

Therefore I’m taking the next two weeks off to try and do at least some of that. It seems like a decent stop point in the book review, though honestly I would have rather waited until I was between books, though that does mean some of the comics under review are on cliffhangers for a while. I may do some articles for The Clutter Reports but I need time to get some things done and hopefully I won’t get sick and ruin that time off like I’ve done before. So have a great next two weeks. Hopefully the idea I have for the next Jake & Leon can be properly sorted into four panels–the reason there’s no comic today on top of what I just mentioned–and that’s what we’ll return on.

Saturday Night Showcase: Samurai 7

Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai is on the list of most popular movies among cinephiles, a rarity for a Japanese film from the 1950s given how influential it has been on even Western media. Not only has it influenced Star Wars to a degree it inspired a Western (as in cowboys with six shooters) classic, The Magnificent Seven from 1960. Tonight’s Showcase however is a science fiction series from Japan directly influenced by the Kurosawa film as well. If you haven’t been introduced to it before, here is Samurai 7.

By now you know most of this plot. Baddies rob a town blind on a regular basis and a village priestess decides to go into the city to find a samurai to defend them. She and her tagalong sister along with their bodyguard will find seven of them, as the name implies, and the series follows their trek to the village while dealing with a criminal’s posh son with a crush on the priestess. It’s all set to a sci-fi bend as the heroes include a robot as are the villains robbing the village of rice constantly. Despite Funimation’s channel on YouTube being rebranded as Crunchyroll Dubs this episode is in Japanese with subtitles. Yeah, I don’t get it either but at least it’s official. Enjoy episode one: “The Master”.

Continue reading

“Yesterday’s” Comic> Scooby-Doo Team-Up #41

Interesting scenario while not having read the comic yet. The gang’s usual routine is going to end Penelope’s series.

Scooby-Doo Team-Up #41

DC Comics (October, 2018, as featured in volume seven of the digital trade)

“Perils Before Swine”

WRITER: Sholly Fisch

ARTIST: Scott Jeralds

COLORIST: Silvana Brys

LETTERER: Saida Temofonte

EDITOR: Kristy Quinn

Continue reading

Finally Watched…Pokémon Detective Pikachu

For the last movie in last week’s intended Finally Watched list I wanted to watch something a bit different from the other three movies. Batman Ninja and Ant-Man & The Wasp were superhero movies while Alita Battle Angel was a sci-fi action movie. I had wanted to finish on something a bit more fun and less action heavy. My first thought was M*A*S*H*, the movie loosely based on the novel that inspired the famous TV series. Unfortunately it had the same glitch that messed my first choice for the Marvel slot, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, where the recording cut out half way through. So I looked at Kubo And Two Strings, but it had the same problem. It’s good that I checked this out before committing to watching it so I don’t have to worry about seeing only half of it until another option appears.

While a few movies on the DVR that we’re awaiting a replacement for from the cable company were working, that replacement means I’m going to lose movies, so I wanted to grab something from the HBO, Cinemax, and Starz preview weeks to get the full movie without ads. So eventually I settled on Pokémon Detective Pikachu, a 2019 movie based on the video game spin-off of the popular Pokémon game series. I haven’t played it but I do know it’s not your typical pocket monster hunting game, but some kind of mystery solving game. So as an adaptation I can’t tell you if it’s any good, except for how it adapts Poké-Earth in general. I’ve heard good things about it from the community so I guess it is a good adaptation but I can give my thoughts on the movie itself.

RELEASE DATE: 2019

RELEASED BY: Warner Brothers, Legendary Pictures, and the Pokémon Company in association with Toho

RUNTIME: 1 hour44 minutes

RATING: PG

VIEWING SOURCE FOR THIS REVIEW: HBO Family during a free preview weekend

STARRING: Justice Smith, Ryan Renolds, Kathyrn Newton, Bill Nighy, Chris Greere, and Ken Watanabe

SCREENWRITERS: Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit, and Nicole Perlman as writers, joined by Rob Letterman and Derek Connoly on screenplay with Hernandez and Samit

DIRECTOR: Rob Letterman (just had to get into the screenplay credit, Rob?)

BOX OFFICE: $433,477,601 worldwide, $144,174,568 domestic according to IMDB

ESTIMATED BUDGET: $150,000,000 according to IMDB

Continue reading

“Yesterday’s” Comic> Space Ace #3

“Don’t worry, Kimberly. We’ll find another publisher.”

Space Ace #3 [almost the final issue]

CrossGen Publishing and MV Creations (November, 2003)

WRITER: Robert Kirkman

ARTISTS: E.K. Miyaura & Cid Norbert

COLORIST: Jeremy Roberts

LETTERING: Lithium Pro

Continue reading

BW’s Daily Article Link> The Rex Morgan Story Wertham Hated

Remember when I wrote about one of the comics Fredric Wertham claimed to have read but clearly just looked at for a few minutes? Well, and I really took too long to post this, it turns out that was an adaptation of a Rex Morgan comic strip story about a kid on drugs and Rex Morgan’s mission to help his girlfriend save him when everyone around him either wanted him hooked or already gave him up for dead. D.D. Degg of The Daily Cartoonist even linked to the review I did as part of my very deep dive into Seduction Of The Innocent, a book that will haunt me forever. Sorry it took so long to reciprocate, D.D..

The Legal Wars Over Miracleman And A Bunch Of Others

Rights issues are a confusing but fascinating mess and tonight I have a video from Comic Drake that’s a doozy. Interestingly it starts with Captain Shazam up there, follows through into British comics, drags in Spawn, and involves DC and Marvel comics both directly and indirectly. Plus there’s more of that superhero deconstruction I do love so much…oh right, sarcasm doesn’t work as well in text since I actually want it to die or at least take a break until there’s a status quo to discuss because it’s ALL deconstruction now.

The central figure is Marvelman, or Miracleman depending on which point in the character’s life cycle you go with. The history of the series itself is one to be explored at a later date, or just watch this video by Owen Likes Comics, who makes a cameo here along with another BW recommended show, Sasha of Casually Comics. It’s interesting how this tale of lawsuits, mostly between Todd McFarlane and Grant Morrison, that involved Miracleman, variants of Spawn and the angel Angela, and the issue with the character’s name.

Continue reading