Tag: Comic Book

Tick.. tock… tick… tock… The Doomsday Clock clicks towards the inevitable, and we stand here at the precipice of… The End!

This week, we’re talking about the last moments of the world, potentially, as the former vigilantes turn heroes of the Watchmen have left a generation pass and the world has moved on and evolved based on the giant squid of New York.

What has happened to Ozymandius, Doctor Manhattan, the Silk Spectre and the rest? Well, the HBO Series told us… but was it good?

So settle in as the Somethings bring about the end of the world as we know it – and we feel fine on The End: Watchmen

Ok, here we go… to Mars

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Who out there can say they are a documentarian, comic book writer, and vampire hip-hop mogul?

Only one guy we know, and if you are a fan of Vampire: The Masquerade or Geek & Sundry, you know him too – it’s B. Dave Walters!

With LA By Night finishing up with its fifth season, and this, the Something Spooktacular month, there is no better time to join in to see who lives, dies.. or dies again, rather..

We talk Vampire, his work on the Dungeons & Dragons comic ‘A Darkened Wish‘, his documentary ‘Dear America, from a Black Guy‘ and his upcoming work ‘ElectroPunk‘ – and if you want to keep track of everything B. Dave Walters does, the best place to find him is on Twitter: @bdavewalters

So grab some 10-sided die and spend some blood points, ok, here we go!

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We are in the next era of comic book entertainment. The Marvel mines have been pickaxed so deep that every other funnybook writer is now having their work taken and adapted to the binge-box. 

This month, we’re talking about Netflix’s take on Mark Millar’s Jupiter’s Legacy – a world of heroes dealing with their interpersonal relationships over the span of generations, almost like some sort of… legacy..

What did the Somethings think? Well all you need to do is click on that link at the top of the page that says SURVEY and then listen to the episode to find out!  The survey is there to help us find out who’s listening, what they’re listening to, and really.. why us?  Help us out and give that link a click.

Great, and now that you’ve done that, why don’t you go find your Superdad and go on an adventure with us! 

Ok, here we go!

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You should have known it was coming. Of course we’re going to talk about the last episode of the most recent foray into the wild world of capes!  But the Somethings are not alone.. you see, when you have to take down a bunch of politically gray terrorists and argue over a hunk of tin.. sometimes you need a friend – and that’s why we have brought in our long time friend . You may know him from Geek Stuff, or maybe from rollin’ dice and taking names with Role For It on Twitch – it is none other than OG Matt!

Was the end of the series a solid place to leave off? Admittedly, we dive into the whole of the series a bit more than usual as well as tackle the future of the MCU.. 

It’s time for The End: Falcon & Winter Soldier

Before we jump in though, don’t forget – starting Weds. – Livestream For the Cure begins! Listen to a marathon of amazing podcasts and we’ll be live on TGIF spot of Friday at 8!

Ok, here we go!

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We’ve been with Wanda and the Vision for their whole journey, so it should be no surprise that we want to check up on them for the End. 

Was this strange jump into a bubble worth the journey? Does the ending hold up? There’s only one way to know – and that’s by checking out The End – Wandavision

This episode was filmed before a live studio audience over on twitch.tv/somethingcast.  Join us for our next party on May 4th, 8pm EST.

Ohhhhhkay, here we A-go-tha! …wow, that one was a reach…

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Hey all, PCR here.

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of the MCU.  Going all the way back to our Year 1 celebration we’ve talked about it, hypothesized about it, fawned over it and reviewed aspects of it.  Today, I’m going to dive a bit deeper into the “why” I enjoy it so much, and some things they do that I’m not fond of.

First, the Infinity Gauntlet comic crossover is, by far, my favorite comic crossover.  End of story.  Was it perfect?  No… most huge comic crossover events tend to start amazingly, then seem to have a hard time finding a way to finish, but it still struck a chord with me and has stuck with me since my comic-collecting days… so when Marvel teased at the end of Avengers that we were getting Thanos, I was in.  I felt “there’s no WAY they would do Thanos and NOT do Infinity Gauntlet!” and I was pleased to be correct on that count.

One of the most amazing things in my opinion that the MCU gets right is casting.  I have not found one instance of casting.. hero or villain.. that I’ve been against.  Now, have I thought some were ‘meh’?  Sure, but in those instances it’s more of a “I don’t hate it” and much less of a “They missed the boat..So and so would have been MUCH better!” (looking at Corey Stoll as Yellowjacket here and to a larger extent Anthony Mackie as Falcon).  Those examples aside (I’ll get into the Mackie thing later), from hero to villain to supporting role, the casting in MCU movies and shows has been amazingly spot on.

Another thing I absolutely love about the MCU as a whole, is how they set precedent for future endeavors.  “Ok, we got you to understand The Convergence and The Nine Realms?  Good, here’s The Quantum realm and Dr. Strange”  “You good with multiple suits of Iron Man armor flying around on their own?  Awesome, here’s Ultron and his army” just to use two examples.  It’s brilliant storytelling in my opinion, and makes it easier for those who *aren’t* huge comic fans to digest what they’ve been seeing on the screen.

Heya Somethings!

If you haven’t followed along the last few months, we’ve talked a lot about the MCU’s TV outing WandaVision – and for good reason.. whether you dug it or not, it was a fresh take on a story that really felt beyond the scope of what DizMarv would try and pull off.  The concept of the show isn’t precisely a straight from comics series, but it does take some points from the comic and the on-again off-again low bubble story of the Scarlet Witch’s tragedies. The on-again / off-again aspect is very much because comic writers sometimes pick up a character where they want them to be and another character sees where they should be differently, so you end up with disparate versions of the same character… but since it’s comics, it’s usually begrudgingly accepted.

That said – Wanda is, quite literally, my least favorite Avenger… and it is mostly because her power set is so vaguely ‘chaos magic/hex powers/mutant ability/reality warping/etc’ that she has become the go-to on how to get into a bad situation or out of one.  So why don’t we take a look at the reason the Scarlet Witch has the power to disassemble how much great stuff the MCU has done…

First – let’s take a look at Wanda in the early years of Avengers…

Using her mutant ‘Hex Power’ she basically had telekinesis that only worked half the time. If the villain was too strong, too not-human enough, too aware, too magic, or too advanced.. there was a lot of this sort of ‘OH IF ONLY…’  But from this issue above (Avengers #99, 1972) to this panel from (West Coast Avengers, #56, 1989) she has fallen in love with Vision, he’s been taken apart by the government and replaced with an emotional white husk of his former self (sound familiar) and has been corrupted by an evil something er another…

And just like that – Wanda’s powerset has grown exponentially and is never reined in again. It just continues to morph and grow and get bigger and dumber and more unwieldly.  All the while she ends up being the go-to damsel in countless stories.  Wanda’s been brainwiped. Wanda’s in a coma. Wanda’s been kidnapped. Brainwiped again. She gets over the Vision. She’s not over the Vision. She has moved on to become a better person. She can’t handle the Avengers. Just non-stop using her as a foil and a victim and a catalyst when honestly, all she really needs is some good head meds and a shrink.

Then….. in the 2000’s – literal hundreds of comics later.. she becomes enraged about her kids and takes down the Avengers.  She’s locked up and the Marvel heroes are legitimately contemplating killing her.  Yes, there’s a lot of handwringing and ‘we can’t do that’ talk, but the fact is – the idea pops up and is considered… so when Xavier and her comic dad, Magneto, show up at her cell.  She does this:

She creates an entire reality where mutants never existed and her dad is the king and everyone is happy. (House of M) — When we break out of that alternate world, no more mutants are being born… like she literally altered the DNA of the world. All the while she continues to disappear for a while, come back and be forgiven, or atone, or have her powers changed yet again — the cycle continues on. When there is an unstoppable unbeatable villain?  Who do writers call on… whatever version of Wanda is useful for them.  No reason to explain it – just call it ‘Untapped Remarkable Powers’ and it’ll do just fine.  When Wanda can’t do it.. just have someone photocopy Wanda’s powers so DOUBLE WANDA can do it. (Avengers v. X-Men #12, below)

I’m thrilled that Wandavision was so good. I just hope that the movie writers don’t fall into the same pit that the comic writers have for years – that by not defining the Scarlet Witch, you leave her available as a crutch to lean on whenever you didn’t have a better ending in mind.

In the last two or three months, I’ve started going back to X-Men. You have to understand, there was a time where I drank down everything ‘X’, and when I needed new furniture, I was able to put my mattress on the longboxes I had so many filled with Charles Xavier’s team of racial allegory.

Now, I will admit, I am not currently brought up to speed… I stopped reading what I previously had said was a couple of years ago, but honestly is almost coming up on a decade. Somewhere shortly after Hope Summers saved the world I got super busy and life happened and comics just fell to the wayside. I’ve found during our current Under-The-Dome sheik lifestyle, comics and logic puzzles have helped me caulk up the boring minutes.

So to celebrate that, here are my three favorite X-Men and why!

#3 – JAMIE MADROX
Oh yes, the Multiple Man, the only comic book character that shares my name. Maddrox, for a long time, just felt like ‘another tough do-gooder’ in his younger years, but after Peter David took back X-Factor and we got ‘Multiple Man, Private Dick’ and the much more traditional soap opera of David’s runs, Jamie really came into his own as a complicated and, in many ways, man broken into hundreds of pieces. He’s layered and at times completely wrong in his choices… but that’s what makes good character.

#2 – ROGUE & GAMBIT
The middle spot here is a bit of a revolving door of characters. I always love Maddrox, and #1 is kind of a non-shocker if you know anything about me… but this middle spot really could be taken up by ‘whomever I am really loving right now’. It’s been Blink, it’s been Colossus, it’s been Maggott (oh yes, you read that right). But Rogue and Gambit, at their best, are a fantastically brutal story about the things you can’t have and the toxicity of relationships. Some writers have done them well, other writers have been complete garbage to them and can’t help but treat them like a ‘forbidden fruit’ trope.

When they’re good, they’re great, though – and in my trawling through the X-verse, I have been keeping an eye on where they end up. Sadly, with the way comic books work, their world will never be perfect, and if it feels that it is, it won’t be for long. He’s too broken and she’s too uncomfortable with who she is and there will never be a writer that wants you to feel that they are an ideal that has been achieved when there is so much more gristle on the bone in their dysfunction.

#1 – EMMA FROST
Are you surprised? If you know anything about me, you shouldn’t be. Emma has been one of my favorite characters since Generation X and, honestly, probably before that (but I’ll blame that on teenage me seeing a woman clad in white lingerie and thinking that was the cat’s pajamas. The truth is, Emma, when done correctly, is a tragically beautiful character. From her Hellions being brutalized to her making amends and being the teacher for the next generation of mutants. Followed up by being Cyclops’s therapeutic ‘other woman’.  She is cold and calculating, brutal and unforgiving, and that’s even after you get to know her. The emotions of Emma and the feelings beneath her coldness has been attempted to be explored in an individual series and many many flashbacks that all don’t seem to make much sense when you blend them together, but the heart of her character is true – it is easier to be cold, than hurt… 

At her best, she doesn’t care about what’s best for the ‘Dream of Mutants’ and she doesn’t care what’s the best legal choice. Emma does what’s best for those she has placed beneath her, the kids that are using her as her template. Every story that includes some concept of ‘will Emma be evil?’ doesn’t get Emma at all (I’m looking at you Whedon) and where I loathe her secondary mutation as it feels a tad to ‘on the money’ – when Emma wants something, you’re doing what Emma wants which is the fear everyone has about the Psi-Level-Mutants because if she wanted to, she could rule the world and you wouldn’t even know she was doing it.

So what about you – who’s your favorite X? Who am I completely wrong about? I’ll tell you right now.. I will happily write more X Reviews if you want, as it’s how I cut my teeth as an internet presence and I do miss it sometimes. See you next time.  

Every week, the Somethings will be giving you a little something extra, so please check back every week for reviews, lists, cool finds, and more!

It’s time for another adventure with the WHEEL!

With a myriad of topics and journeys for the Somethings to go on, what is it this week? Well the answer is right there in the title, but you should still act surprised.

From WandaVision to Dr. Strange, the Young Avengers, X-Men, and all of the movies pushed back – we are going to talk about what might be coming next for the House of Ideas.

Don’t forget to check out our friends at Quixotic Games brand new Kickstarter for the CORE WORLDS sequel and its expansion. CORE WORLDS: EMPIRES and NEMESIS that are not only live, but almost to goal!

Ok, here we Mephisgo!

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A couple of weeks ago, if you’ve been listening to the bumpers for the last two months – you would know we were given a slot on Livestream For The Cure. Four days of podcasts to donate money to The Cancer Research Institute.

During that hour Podcast Rob and Hatton discussed their ‘Hero vs Villain’ team – where each person got to add one monkey wrench…

We thought if you happened to have missed the stream, you shouldn’t miss the fun. So please, settle in and listen to the boys do good – and if you want to do good, you can head over to https://www.cancerresearch.org/ and make a donation.

Thanks to the Epic Film Guys for hosting this amazing event and we look forward to being a part of it again next year.

Ok, here we go!

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