Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday

[icon_uk]

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.

Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.

Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.

It's been suggested that, if discussing spoilers for recent media events, it might be advisable to consider using the rot13 method to prevent other members seeing spoilers in passing.

The world situation is the world situation. If you're following the news, you know it as much as I do, if you're not, then there are better sources than scans_daily. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.

A shout out to all in Minnesota who are doing a spectacular job of peacefully pissing off people in power (That came out more Stan Lee than I expected).

More of the Epstein files were released, and I've lost track of what is being released to distract from what because it seems to be a Möbius strip.

In what I think must be a first, Disney+ dropped all the episodes of their Yahya Abdul-Mateen II led "Wonder Man" series. One might suspect lack of confidence in their product in not even giving it a weekly release.

On the plus side, The Muppet Show special airs this week, and I think we all need something like that right now.

A documentary about the current FLOTUS also arrived to be greeted by reviews which were a gift to the sarcastic (My favourite remains "If they showed this as an in-flight movie, the audience would STILL walk out") and lots of photos of empty cinemas, though it did manage to get bums on seats in the US.

The Grammy's happened but, since my musical awareness rarely extends beyond oompah-bands and/or Himalayan throat-singing I don't feel qualified to comment.

Comments

[tripodeca113]

Happened to return to the high school I went to and was able to check out the library. Was kind of moved to find that some of the books I loved were still there.
(Though at some point they replaced the Art Of Watchmen book with a copy of Watchmen...)

I was able to recover the images on my USB. Or the ones it would have been really annoying to replace anyway.

I've been working on a project to compile interview for Avatar The Last Airbender. Now there's this lost video interview. I would have preferred to find a transcript of it on a forum, but finding a whole minute and a half of it on Tumblr is pretty good considering we had nothing before.
You sure go through a lot of different Internet era's when your trudging through twenty years of interviews.

A while ago I had this conversation with my brother:
"You know Wish the movie made to celebrate their 100th anniversary?"
"Vaguely. Is it about a young artist trying to realize their dream?"
"No it's the origin of the When You Wish Upon A Star star"
"That is part of the Disney iconography, but I think there's a bunch of other stuff which is about as prominent and would make a better plot for a movie"

Anyway the copy he got on Ebay arrived and we watched it.
It was terrible but kind of bizarrely fascinating.
it felt more like a first draft, where the work out the plot before adding the character and themes that would make it a real story.

For example they open with the narrator reading out a book about how the king founded the kingdom and grants people's wishes, and then we get a perfunctory and uninteresting introduction to our main character and her family, then she sings a song about how the king founded the kingdom and grants people's wishes.
It leaves some pretty important details about how the system is meant to work and focuses on stuff which ultimately doesn't matter. It's not like there's some dark secret to the kingdom's founding and they have to set it up. There's a lot of details that don't contribute to the story and it feels empty as a result.

Anyway the main character is a blank cypher, so I'm going to talk about how the evil king is a confusing character. They have him do some nice things which I guess is meant to humanize him, but only after he's done pretty evil things so we can't sympathies with him in anyway.

And his motives are confused he's evil but he also has a bunch semi-legitimate motives like he only grants a few of the wishes because he thinks they could have unintentional consequences that impact society for the worst. Or he's motivated by how his parent's kingdom was destroyed when he was a child and he had to flee? Or is he going to extreme lengths to try and protect his people from something he doesn't understand?

It's also odd how the moment he turns evil happens after he destroys a wish which releases the evil energy that turns him evil, but he also deliberately destroyed that wish to hurt someone so he isn't he already evil?
I thought maybe they'd have a moment when he realizes he's gone too far, and stops and lets the people rule themself. But no he ends up getting turned into the Magic Mirror from Snow White.

Speaking of which is he meant to be Walt Disney? Or the Disney Corporation. You know he founds a magical kingdom based on joy and creativity, bu he's actually commoditization these concepts for his own ends and selling the masses a watered-down version of the thing he promised them.
There's a lot of obvious parallels but it couldn't have been deliberate on their part surely?

So Disney's big 100th anniversary was focus-tested into a bland mess, symbolically about how they should be destroyed and lost 130 million dollars.
Also all the songs are bad.

[full_metal_ox]

It’s Recombinant Disney Product that mashes together tropes and archetypes and trademark-refreshment details without the fresh compulsion of a story enacted by characters to tell, is what it is.

Speaking of which is he meant to be Walt Disney? Or the Disney Corporation. You know he founds a magical kingdom based on joy and creativity, bu he's actually commoditization these concepts for his own ends and selling the masses a watered-down version of the thing he promised them.

There's a lot of obvious parallels but it couldn't have been deliberate on their part surely?

Depends upon who you mean by “they.” The disgruntled writers—-were there flesh-and-blood writers?—-may have intended the King as a portrait of Disney’s modus operandi, but the framing offers a convenient Big Bad Villain to blame instead of nice clean trustworthy true Disney. The brand is the protagonist.

[iamrman]

This week’s comics ramblings:

Animal Man. Rick Veitch comes on board and bins off Grant Morrison's explanation for Buddy’s powers. Now it’s something to do with mystical Native Americans. Also, whatever the Hell Peter Milligan's run was about.

Avengers West Coast. Tigra's gonna cat. I commissioned an artist friend for some pics inspired by these issues, but now I am without somewhere to host my images, I have no way to share them.

Azrael. I had forgotten just how cheesecakey Barry Kitson's art was on this. Suster Lilhy is supposed to be a nun, or whatever passes for a nun with St. Dumas, but her vestments are *very* form-fitting. Then there is Talia Al Ghul, but baring flesh isn’t anything new for her. She has always had plunging necklines and very leggy dresses.

Detective Comics. I like villain team-ups and I like old horror hams, so of course I liked it when the various Clayfaces joined forces. It’s just a pity that DC seemed to forget about most of the Clayfaces after that. I suppose they became redundant after the original stole their powers.

Batman: Knightquest. I’m not the slightest bit mad that AzBats left Abattoir to die. He came off as a pretentious ass and immediately rubbed me up the wrong way. It’s not like DC would have killed off one of their “good” villains any way.

Booster Gold. It is always a shock to see Booster portrayed as a (semi) competent hero after only being aware of him as a member of the JLI. I had the same reaction when I read the Ted Kord Blue Beetle series.

Cable. It is only the third issue of the ongoing series and the art credits are already all over the place. It wouldn’t be so bad if the issue was more than two guys sitting in a bunker. At least the subplots keep it from being too much of a bore.

[icon_uk]

IIRC there are several later stories following up Clayface III and IV (Lady Clay) and their relationship, and eventual child, who they name Cassius (because of course they do), and then there's another about some scientist doing experiments with Cassius (or a chunk of another Clayface) which leads to said scientist creating, or becoming (I forget which) Claything, who has some sort of clay-vision that allows him to zap things into clay with eyebeam.

Yeah, I was never able to buy into the JLI because I found the humour tedious and it did so by basically knocking down existing heroes to buffoon/incompetent levels.

[iamrman]

Clayfaces 3 and 4 next appear during Knightquest, with baby in tow.

[thanekos]

The funniest thing about JLI's tonal divide is that annual with the Joker coming out the same month as Killing Joke - it's been argued that " Batman stomps off in Wacky Exasperation rather than take the Joker into custody " could lead to " Joker is free to do Killing Joke ".

[metadronos]

Batman: Knightquest. I’m not the slightest bit mad that AzBats left Abattoir to die. He came off as a pretentious ass and immediately rubbed me up the wrong way. It’s not like DC would have killed off one of their “good” villains any way.

Not only was Abattoir a poor idea for a villain (though I found him no so much pretentious as boringly "BLAHAHA I"M AN EVIL MADMAN" one-dimensional), but they dragged out his ultimately doomed run way too long. Worse, they padded it out with such forgettable characters as that husband-and-wife vigilante duo whose names escape me, and that fourth-rate Stooges ripoff trio all going up against him.

Look, I understand the creative team wanted a villain whose death, by AzBat's inaction due to his own psychotic breakdown, would show once and for all that Jean-Paul was unfit to be the new Batman. But they could've done that in, say, three issues tops, ideally with a better-conceived doomed villain, but if not, then at least we'd have been rid of him much sooner.

[lego_joker]

IMO, more vision might've led to Mad Hatter as the sacrificial villain. He'd just gotten a fresh boost of spotlight thanks to BTAS but not *so* much to be too-important-to-kill, and his gimmick is unconventional enough to really highlight the limits of Jean-Paul's "efficient" approach to crimefighting ("Thanks for killing Tetch, dingus, now are you going to un-brainwash his latest victims?")

[iamrman]

I think I remember the vigilante couple you mentioned. The husband looked like he stole Cyclops's vusir. The wife would appear again a few times in early issues of Birds of Prey.

[werehawk]

Peter Milligan's issues of Animal Man were largely indecipherable

[iamrman]

Glad it wasn't just me.

[metadronos]

Morrison's final issue should've been the end of the title, after which DC should've retired the character except for the usual sorts of cameos in other titles. No other writer has come close to matching Morrison's run.

[cyberghostface]

Disney+ released Echo all at once as well.

[icon_uk]

Ah, thanks. I'd forgotten there even was an Echo series.

[mastermahan]

I mean, understandable.

[super_fly]

So had Disney, probably

[cainofdreaming]

Feeling kinda down. In addition to my laptop ceasing to work I heard from my mom that the cat that had chosen to live with them (it was a wildcat that they helped to reaccommodate to pet life) had passed away. We assumed that it was old already, so it wasn't such a surprise but still. Miss the little fussy eater.

[zachbeacon]

"More of the Epstein files were released, and I've lost track of what is being released to distract from what because it seems to be a Möbius strip."

It is really hard to keep track of what's what because of all the misinformation... much of it coming from channels that used to be considered at least semi-credible.

In my most "tinfoil hat" moments, I wonder if the AI push from CEOs and politicians is an attempt to bombard us with so much fake slop that the general public doubts things we see with our own eyes.

(At the very least, it is a scapegoat for layoffs and an obvious money laundering scheme)

The question I have is "who has been doing this since Epstein was arrested?" because I really doubt they stopped.

[thezmage]

I think that the Epstein File release is actually an attempt to distract from the Epstein files. A big drop of everything regardless of how verifiably false (no, George W Bush did not dismember a baby in a demonic ritual on a yacht) to make people talking about it look crazy

[aperturedreams]

Disney's confidence aside, reviews of Wonder Man have largely been very positive

[thezmage]

There's a Doctor Who audio program humble bundle right now: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/doctor-who-audio-adventures-big-finish-books

Even if you're not a big Doctor Who fan, the production values are always great and they're a fun listen

[dewinged]

I'd have been more interested in the new Muppet show if Seth Rogen wasn't involved. Very few celebs make my skin crawl like he does.

[bruinsfan]

His behind-the-scenes involvement often results in good entertainment being produced. It's when he inserts himself as a character that things usually go off the rails.

[scorntx]

Mildly upset because while off on holiday a thing I'd written got knocked down.
Which I had been sort of expecting would happen sooner or later, just that the person who did it was kind of brutal about it.
'n I put a bit of time an' effort into writing it an' all.
... well, we live by the rattling can, we die by the rattling can.
(just needed to vent some spleen somewhere.)

One of the problems with the current newscycle is you heard something on Friday, which was written up on Thursday. By the time you get to Tuesday so much has happened you've already forgotten what it was.

I was thinking of giving Wonder Man a look, but the glowing reviews were actually putting me off.
Lots of talk about how it's a superhero show with little superheroics.
Without watching, it just sounds like it might be either insecure or snobbish.


We finally got a reveal of what Age of the Primes Nexus [AXIOM NEXUS AUTOFILTER ENGAGED] looks like.
He turns into a torso. (well, a jet. But it turns into a torso as well.)
I, ah... was kind of expecting a box-set or something, but, no. No, this does make more sense.

Watched "Image of the Fendahl".
A creature of pure horror that kills all who look upon it, summoned by a bunch of nutjobs who want to become gods.
It turns them into tiny, adorable snake-triffids. Sniffids?

Then "The Sun Makers". Leela continues to wish to stab all the things, but she can't stab bureaucracy.
Louise Jameson is on record as saying it was her favourite serial. I'm thinking maybe the fact Leela spends a lot of it separated from the Doctor plays no small part in that.
(not the only sci-fi franchise thing looked at over the last five days dealing with heavy taxation...)

Got around to reading that X-Men / Ghost Rider crossover in Bishop's Crossing.
You can tell it's a new era for X-Men, as Betsy does not casually announce what that pink glowing thing from her wrist is every time she uses it.
The X-Men go to New Orleans. And it's Mardi Gras, 'cuz course it is.
And there's Brood around.
Another way of telling the franchise is under different management: Only one person gets Brooded up, and there's no angsting about it. None of that "ooh, it's horrible but also kind of sexily compelling."
Brood Queen offers Ghost Rider a chance to be a Brood. "Nah." *stab* Story over.

[iamrman]

"Another way of telling the franchise is under different management: Only one person gets Brooded up, and there's no angsting about it. None of that "ooh, it's horrible but also kind of sexily compelling."

Haha, yes. These X-Men are definitely Claremont's X-Men. Nobody has said a slur.

[scorntx]

And nobody seems particularly fussed about Storm no more.
She's there, and she's leading one team of X-Men, but none of the villains are 'interested' in her anymore.

[cygnia]

"Image" always gave me the creeps as a kid. Felt bad for Thea too.

[mastermahan]

An 18-wheeler changed lanes into my car on the highway Saturday morning. One moment everything was fine, then I heard a crunch, felt my car rotate 90 degrees, and then I was getting pushed along sideways with a truck grill just outside my driver's side window.

Fortunately, we both hit the brakes and didn't collide with anything else. I have no apparent injuries and it seems like only body damage to my car. But JFC that was scary.

[super_fly]

Glad to hear you're still alive, as evident by your posting to that effect.

[mastermahan]

Thanks!

I guess nobody wants to be reminded of this, but...

[lego_joker]

Neil Gaiman also poked his head above ground again, to stump for some "journalist" running around trying to smear all his victims with unsourced 4chan posts. Even his Fan-Reddit's giving him a richly-deserved kicking.

Re: I guess nobody wants to be reminded of this, but...

[super_fly]

While at the same time announcing he's working on a book!
Piss off, Neil.

Re: I guess nobody wants to be reminded of this, but...

[metadronos]

I have to wonder who'd be willing to publish that book. No one with any clout in the arts and entertainment field wants to be associated with him anymore, and rightly so. My guess is he'll either go with some tiny indie publisher who agrees with his "I'm being persecuted" whining, or else self-publish through Amazon or some such.

[beyondthefringe]

Last night, I discovered my basement was the site of a massive sewage backup. Yup. Ewwwwwwwwww.
It's been a shitty 24 hours but hopefully things will get better tomorrow.

[full_metal_ox]

Literally so, from the sound of it. Are you okay?