July 13, 2025

Jake & Leon #648> Unchecked List

I also forgot a caption.

Yes, today’s my birthday, which long time readers knows means I take the week off. I was actually hoping to have enough fillers read that I wouldn’t have to but I fell a bit short thanks to the Doctor Who BBC 1963 Note & Reports ending a week earlier than I planned. Still, outside of Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mirror Image which still has quite aways to go, anything with a cliffhanger isn’t going to be resolved any time soon since it’s more of a “running story” thing. So I might as well take the time to pull myself together and maybe get some other life and personal projects done without worrying about content.

This actually includes the site itself. When I first started the site I did change themes a bit too often. Not ridiculously so, but enough that Jake and Leon up there could make fun of it. Well, I’ve had this theme, “Selecta” for so long that it’s now outdated and unsupported. Sadly I haven’t found one with all the features I want, but I’m going to have to settle for what I can because it’s becoming a bit unstable on this side of the site, though thankfully not on your side. Still, it’s time for a change, which means also changing the images and a few layout details. Also haven’t updated the sidebar, RSS feed and blogroll links, or the logo in some time. I don’t want to make a huge change to the logo; mostly just clean up the line work. So if you visit during the week you won’t seen new articles but you will see me putting the new look of the site together once I chose a proper theme.

I also want to get caught up as much as I can on the video backlog, various around the house projects, and a few other things I want to do for the site and the creative process. So I’ll be doing that as well. What, you thought I was just going to relax? I have nowhere to go and no money do it with. I’ll be taking it easier and trying to do things to make things easier on my in the future, but it’s not like I’m going to Australia or Venice for a week. I’ll be here, in my house, doing things to hopefully improve my future and maybe even gain some income if I’m lucky. I am not very lucky.

So have a great week, everyone, and pity the now 52 year old man still trying to pull himself together. I’ll see you all next week, possibly with a new look to the site and things in place for the future!

Posted by on July 13, 2025 in Jake & Leon and tagged , , , .

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July 12, 2025

Saturday Night Showcase> Superman Vs. The Elite

My apologies if rights issues keep tonight’s Showcase blocked in your country. I’ve heard that happens, but if you can’t watch it here or through YouTube directly, track this and next week’s down because they’re really good.

James Gunn’s Superman By James Gunn came out a bit earlier that I thought; right week, wrong day. The reviews I’m hearing are not filling me with positivity. It sounds like another case of “decent superhero movie, bad Superman adaptation” filled with James Gunn’s signature humor, some very bad decisions (using Tom King’s warped version of Supergirl, too many cast members to introduce Superman into the DC Gunniverse, and a few other things) but for the most part more fun than Zack Snyder’s version. Superman may be the only character they got right, ala My Adventures With Superman, but with more caveats. Lately you can tell how good a Superman story is by the treatment of his parents, and that was the most disappointing thing outside of Supergirl that I heard. Again, from reviews. I haven’t the funds to see this on my own.

Somehow, though, I don’t think he’ll top the two animated movies I’ll be posting for as long as YouTube lets me. Tonight we get to what’s becoming my favorite Superman movie. No offense to Richard Donner. You tried, but Superman works best in animation because his powers and his world doesn’t translate to live-action, though Gunn is really trying.  Superman Vs. The Elite is an adaptation of Action Comics #775 (cover date March, 2001, so watch for which Action Comics #775 you go with. Stupid renumbering). Joe Kelly’s “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice, And The American Way” (those last three words Gunn seems afraid of while telling us his movie is the essence of America) introduces Manchester Black and the Elite, a group of vigilantes who save the world their way. The violent way.

It’s a deconstruction not of the superhero but the superhero deconstruction (Superman even calls that out in the movie) and the trend of darker, more violent heroes. Sadly it’s not a good one for kids, and you know how that normally bugs me. However, I don’t think you could tell that story in something kid-friendly, though the violence is not graphic and the bad language is mild. The movie is rated PG-13 so you make the call. It has one of the greatest Superman moments, where he shows you what a darker Superman would really be like without becoming Injustice: Gods Among Us. Hopefully me building up a second movie doesn’t blow up in my face, but enjoy this movie anyway.

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Posted by on July 12, 2025 in Animation Spotlight, DC Spotlight, Movie Spotlight, Saturday Night Showcase and tagged , , , , , .

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July 12, 2025

BW’s Saturday Article Link> Blumhouse Takes Blame For M3gan 2.0’s Flopping?

In a rarity for anyone in the Hollywood system, Jason Blum didn’t go after fans or YouTube critics to blame and shame them for not seeing the sequel to teen horror hit M3gan, about a robot “best friend” who goes to murderous lengths to protect her young charge. The sequel went for a Terminator 2 type story where the villain of the first movie is the hero of the second against an even worse threat. It did not go over well, but the Blumhouse founder and producer actually looked at what THEY did wrong instead of fans to figure out why the second film didn’t do as well as the first. Horror isn’t my genre so I’m not the guy to ask. It still lost me at “hang on to your vaginas” and the robot’s more sensual posing but I wasn’t going to see it anyway. No, those are not blamed, either.

Posted by on July 12, 2025 in Movie Spotlight and tagged , , .

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July 11, 2025

Doctor Who 1963 BBC Reports & Notes> Audience Report & Final Thoughts

Our final report of this series is rather short, so I might as well end with this article. Thus far we’ve looked at reports leading up to the creation of Doctor Who and it’s pilot episode “An Unearthly Child”, a pilot so off the mark they had to redo the whole thing despite mostly keeping the same script. The final pilot aired on November 23rd, 1963, with the remainder of the storyline called “100,000 BC”, where the next three episodes took place. However, we all know it by the first episode’s name: An Unearthly Child. This was before the serials used multipart titles. Based on later naming systems the episode would have been called “100,000 BC part 1” or “An Unearthly Child part 1” despite the former more properly representing the storyline. Alternately “An Unearthly Child” should have been a stand-alone (a rarity in classic Who) and the others three episodes be “100,000 BC” parts one to three.

The report was actually filed on December 30th according to the TARDIS Fandom wiki, which is more than a month after the pilot aired. This isn’t a report on the whole arc, just the first episode. One would think for the first episode of a series you’re committing to, especially one that practically had to force itself into existing given everything we’ve seen in this series of reports. Instead it’s just a report for “An Unearthly Child”. I don’t know if this was just for this show or the entirety of BBC programming that night. The report is titled “British Broadcasting Corporation Confidential AN AUDIENCE RESEARCH REPORT (Week 48) [File number] VR/63/668”. So this could just be a snippet of a larger report. Still, it’s the only part we care about, which may be why they included it in the list.

For one last time (and because these pingback links help find the articles in the proper order), find the link to download all of these from the prologue and let’s wrap this series up.

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Posted by on July 11, 2025 in Doctor Who 1963 Notes/Reports, Television Spotlight and tagged , , , .

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July 11, 2025

“Yesterday’s” Comic> Four Color/Dick Tracy #8 (Dell newspaper strip reprints)

“How do these ants keeping getting in here!

Four Color Comic Series: Dick Tracy #8

Dell Comics (January, 1940)

WRITER/ARTIST/CREATOR: Chester Gould

There are a few reasons I’m starting 1940 with this comic, despite previously stating I wasn’t going to cover the comic strip collections. For one, Dick Tracy comics usually get pulled by Comic Book Plus for not being in public domain…somehow…in anthology collections, so actually getting to read his adventures from the newspapers of this time is a new experience for me.

For another, it’s rare to see a Golden Age comic that isn’t an anthology. While I’m expecting multiple stories going into this, we’re looking at all Dick Tracy tales. No guest stories, no back-ups, no other stories but this for 68-ish pages. I kind of want to see how that plays out, so that’s what we’re doing this week.

[Read along with me here]

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Posted by on July 11, 2025 in Yesterday's Comics and tagged , , , , , , , .

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July 11, 2025

BW’s Daily Video> New Doctor Who Described By Family Guy

Catch more from EthanDJC on YouTube

Posted by on July 11, 2025 in Animation Spotlight, Television Spotlight and tagged , , .

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July 10, 2025

Video Games Europe Fighting Stop Killing Games

Some time ago I brought up the campaign by YouTube video creator Ross Scott. Mostly known (around here anyway) for the comedy series Freeman’s Mind, playing through the Half-Life series while hearing the crazy thoughts of Gordon Freeman, Scott also hosts Ross’s Game Dungeon and Dead Games on the Accursed Farms YouTube channel. It’s from that latter show that the “Stop Killing Games” campaign began. Scott had gone over numerous games no longer playable, often due to online DRM, where you had to be on a server to play a game even when it wasn’t an online game. When the servers were no longer supported and shut down there was now no way to play the game without a hack that allowed you to use a fanserver. The last straw was an online only game called The Crew, a racing game with a single-player story, though I guess the emphasis was on the online racing. Because the game got older and totally not to get players to finally move to the sequel, the servers for the 2014 game was shut down in 2023 without much warning, making even the offline story of infiltrating street racers to stop a corrupt FBI agent impossible to play.

Since my initial article, Scott has been succeeding in getting signatures on petitions to force game companies to change this practice. His reasoning is if you buy the game you own that copy and should be able to continue playing it, either on fan servers or at least the offline versions of the game, that don’t require other players. Currently the European Union (EU) is where he’s focusing his efforts, and the European game companies are seeing him as a threat since reaching his legally required goal of 1 million signature. The lobbying group Video Game Europe (link and info courtesy of That Park Place) recently put out a statement defending their clients’ rights to shut down any game anytime they want and not refund gamers. You can read along with the full statement or scroll down to the end of the article and see what Ross Scott himself has to say about their earlier statement. I won’t cover everything because that’s too long an article.

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Posted by on July 10, 2025 in Video Game Spotlight and tagged , , , , , , .

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