In 2018, an Australian collector paid $1.2 million at auction to own a Vincent Black Lightning motorbike, making it the most expensive motorcycle ever sold. Yet the company that once manufactured it no longer exists, and its inventor died in poverty. What happened?
Speed Is Expensive: Philip Vincent and the Million Dollar Motorcycle, a documentary directed by David Lancaster and narrated by motorcycle enthusiast Ewan McGregor, explores that question, delving deep into the history of not only Philip Vincent, but also motorcycle culture across the ages. The past comes to life through extensive photographs, video footage, and newspaper and magazine scans from the early and mid 20th century, when the Vincent motorcycle had its heyday. And, through a decades-old audio interview, we hear from Vincent himself. Sincere and enthusiastic interviews with Vincent’s family, friends, and former employees add layers of emotion and nostalgia for a bygone era.
The film begins with a portrait of the young Vincent, a mechanical engineering prodigy with the privilege and resources to make his visions come true, throwing in a few interesting anecdotes — such as how a phrenologist predicted that Vincent would be a great inventor by feeling his head. The documentary then details how Vincent, with the help of his friend Bill Clark and prestigious engineer Phil Irving, built the small factory in Stevenage, a town north of London.
Inside the Vincent factory in the 1950s
What happens next is the stuff of inspirational biopics — eccentric yet brilliant designs, including an exposed engine, heady motorcycle races, guerrilla marketing… all pursuing an insatiable need for speed. Past and present collide as Vincent’s grandson interviews figures from those bygone days, such as Irving’s widow and motorcyclist Marty Dickerson, who set a record on a Vincent in the 1950s.
Rollie Free reached 150mph in swimming trunks, having taken off his clothes to maximize aerodynamics, in 1948 on a Vincent motorcycle, on the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah. William Edgar Archive.
Much of the documentary is shot in black-and-white, with present-day interviewees rendered in nostalgic hues in a way that blends into the archival footage and photos. Later footage and interviews are done in color, giving a vivid transition from one era to another.
Vincent’s grandson, Philip Vincent-Day interviews the later Californian record-setter Marty Dickerson
I’ll confess, I know next to nothing about motorcycles and hadn’t even heard of a Vincent until I saw the description for this documentary. Yet I found myself captivated by this detailed look at a cultural history I wasn’t even aware of before. The film does a great job of conveying Vincent’s obsession with speed, at almost any cost, and single-minded dedication to his invention. At the end of the day, it was no secret why the Vincent couldn’t survive from a business perspective: Like any great artist, Vincent cared more about creating something great than being profitable. As the sleekness of the early 20th century faded into the colorful rebelliousness of the mid-century, the motorcycle, like Old Hollywood, became dated. And like Old Hollywood, it wasn’t able to evolve with the times. Yet that frozen-in-time character is what makes the Vincent so valuable to motorcycle fans today.
Jay Leno talks Vincents for Speed is Expensive at his LA garage
Flowing seamlessly between contemplative looks at a brilliant yet flawed genius and exciting flashbacks to the world of racing and record-setting, Speed Is Expensive provides a vivid and mesmerizing look at both the engineer and his creation. At 80 minutes long, it’s a tightly edited film, never getting bogged down, yet also never feeling rushed. Vincent’s motorcycles were a labor of love, and, while watching, one can feel that this film was as well.
‘Speed Is Expensive’ will premiere September 20 and be available on DVD and Digital September 26.
Sorry for the delay in the recap this week. My dog, Danerys, wanted to go to Lady and the Tramp Con this week, and how could I say no? She’d been practicing her spaghetti moves all year.
On this lovely bella notte…
So I did my best to stay spoiler-free until I got back last night. I heard there was a cameo of some note? Let’s check it out!
Ahsoka, Sabine, and Huyang have landed on Seatos. They have no power and no radio, so they can’t communicate back to Hera and they can’t take off. They’ll have to try and stop them from activating the ring from the planet’s surface.
Baylan has sent the guards and droids out to track down their ship. He knows they won’t last long against Ahsoka, so he tells Marrok and Shin to finish them off. Morgan needles him. “Do I detect a not of fear in your voice?” Baylan has a one word response: “Experience.”
Baylan is fast becoming my favorite character in this show. His affect is entirely dispassionate. He’s no zealot. He’s completely clear eyed about everything. Morgan turns on the map, illuminating her Stonehenge locale with star maps pointing the way to Thrawn’s location. She returns to the ring to calculate the precise coordinates while Baylan stands guard. Baylan notes that if the coordinates are even slightly off, they could be lost in the void of space forever. Morgan tells him to have a little faith. “Faith? I lost that a long time ago.”
Meanwhile, General Hera Syndulla is disobeying her orders to go off and help her friends stop Thrawn. Okay, I understand that building a new government is hard and unsexy work, and the council is full of feckless and fickle people, but dammit, that’s exactly why you can’t be blowing off staff meetings to go galivanting about the galaxy! You’ve got to put in the work to make sure a proto-fascist “New Order” doesn’t goose step to power in 20 years or so! We as viewers know that of course Thrawn is coming. They’ve teased it in trailers! But there is exactly no reason why the council should think that. Perhaps if there was some proof of a giant hyperspace ring that Ahsoka could transmit to them…
Anyway, she gets a handful of X-Wings to join her, led by… Captain Carson Teva! Yes, it’s Paul Sun-Hyung Lee returning as his X-Wing pilot from The Mandalorian. This is the big cameo, right? Cool! I love Captain Appa!
Back on Seatos, Ahsoka and Sabine quickly dispatch the droids and guards that Baylan sent after them. They then find themselves facing off against Shin and Marrok. Sabine, eager for a rematch, fires on Shin and chases her into the woods, leaving Ahsoka to fight Marrok and his whirly-blades.
Now, there was ever so much speculation online about who Marrok was under the mask. Was it Ezra? Was it someone from the other galaxy? Well, Dave Feloni answered that speculation with a big ol’ raspberry. Ahsoka slices open Marrok’s armor and a black mist flies out. So… was that a Sith ghost? A swarm of gnats? Dunno! Ahsoka turns to help Sabine, but she tells her to go ahead and let her handle Shin.
Sabine handles herself pretty well, her blasters keeping Shin off balance, at least until Shin remembers Oh yeah, I can use the Force. She Force tosses Sabine against a tree and she drops her guns, so Sabine turns to her lightsaber.
Sabine has improved, but Shin is still the better fighter. After she gets knocked down, Sabine desperately tries to use the Force. This stops Shin, but then she quickly realizes that Sabine has no Force powers. Which is fine, since that was just a ruse to let Sabine use her wrist blaster. Shin retreats, and Sabine runs off to help Ahsoka.
Ahsoka sees the star charts around Force witch Stonehenge, and also sees Baylan. They fight, with Sabine trying to grab the map off of the pedestal. Unfortunately, she does NOT remember that she has Force powers and does not think to use the Force to draw it to her. When she finally does grab it, it burns her hand. (Perhaps Morgan put some kind of Force spell on it? Is that why Ahsoka couldn’t Force-pull it to her? Again, never really addressed.) Injured, Baylan is able to force Ahsoka to the edge of the cliff, and as Sabine enters the field, Baylan knocks her over, presumably to her death.
Now, if you have seen more than a few seconds of Star Wars in your life, you know full well that you can’t kill a Jedi simply by dropping them from a great height. (Just ask Luke Skywalker and Palpatine and Darth Maul and…) So, I am 99.99% sure we will see Ahsoka again; it’s just a matter of when it creates the most dramatic tension.
Sabine grabs the ball and threatens to shoot it. Baylan tells her she should. It’s what her master would’ve done. But, if you do that, you won’t see Ezra again. And Baylan knows that he’s the closest thing to family she has left. They both want the same thing! So give him the ball, they will all journey to the far away galaxy together, and she might be able to find her friend. Sabine wavers, and then gives Baylan the map so the calculations for the jump can be completed.
So, here is the main problem I have with Sabine’s betrayal: As I have previously said, I have seen about 1.5 episodes of Rebels. I understand it’s a well-regarded show, but I just couldn’t get into it. So I really don’t know very much about Ezra Bridger, and everything this show has communicated about him has been told and not shown. We are told that Ezra was like family to Sabine. We are told about their close bond. But, aside from a video recording of Ezra and Sabine touching his face on the memorial mural, we haven’t been shown why he’s worth betraying Ahsoka and risking Thrawn’s return. So what should be a crucial character moment for Sabine in the series just becomes, eh, whatever.
Similarly, we get told by Baylan that — unlike Sabine’s former master — he keeps his word. In the series, I haven’t seen Ahsoka lie or trick Sabine, so this is obviously referring to something in their past. But, this hasn’t been shown so far. There are hints as to why Ahsoka and Sabine are cool and often standoffish, but nothing has even been hinted at. Was this something from Rebels? Again, I don’t know, and I’m not watching 75 episodes of an animated series to find out. (And Baylan does keep his word! He stops an angry Shin from Force-choking her.) Once Morgan has locked in the co-ordinates, he destroys the map so they can’t be followed, and then the three of them return to the ring ship.
As Hera and her small fleet arrive, Morgan starts the hyperdrive ring, and they Holdo Maneuver their way off to a distant galaxy. Even though the X-wings are blocking the path, the much larger ship just blows through them and destroys three X-wings. Don’t worry, plot armor has protected Hera and her son (who she brought along on a dangerous mission for some reason) and Captain Teva. Oh, and Chopper, thank goodness! Why were they left unharmed? Dunno. I guess they passed through the middle of the ring?
Meanwhile, Ahsoka wakes up, unsure of where she is. She appears to be on a pathway in some sort of starfield. She hears a voice behind her, calling her “Snips.” She turns around and sees…
Uh, someone who I think is supposed to be Anakin Skywalker?
I know some people get really uptight about special effects, especially in the Disney+ shows. Frankly, it’s never bothered me. I was completely fine with Luke’s appearance in his CGI-de-aged cameos in The Mandalorian. I usually don’t care about the effects unless it’s extremely egregious (like Jaws 3D level egregious.)
This was pretty egregious. This doesn’t look at all like Anakin from the movies or even from last year’s Obi-Wan Kenobi show. If I didn’t know it was supposed to be Anakin, based on his being Ahsoka’s master, I don’t know if I would’ve guessed. And Hayden Christiansen is credited with the role, so I assume it is him, just run through The Irishman de-ager a few too many times.
So we are now halfway through the series, and it’s…fine. I enjoy this for the most part, but none of the leads are really speaking to me. I am quickly realizing that I am not the fan who is going to be serviced by this show. And that’s OK! Star Wars is a big, sprawling franchise. If you don’t like this particular section, there’s Andor. There’s The Mandalorian. There are the movies. There are dozens of comics series. (Hey, when is Doctor Aphra getting her show?) And there are plenty of fans of Rebels who are loving Ahsoka. All the episodes are highly rated on IMDB, so it is clearly finding an audience.
That audience is just not necessarily me. And I still think it’s fine.
This week, Paramount+ dropped the first two episodes of Lower Decks, make the season’s second episode, “I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee,” something of a Season Premiere Part 2. Yet so far, both episodes have mostly stuck to the episodic, sitcom-y format the show has become known for.
At the very end of the season premiere, “Twovix,” we bear witness to the sudden destruction of a Klingon ship by an unidentified space vehicle. The second episode begins with the same fate befalling a Romulan vessel. Seems the writers are setting us up for a season arc of sorts… something Lower Decks has dipped in and out of from the start.
While the plots of Lower Decks tend to be self-contained, there are through lines that carry the story forward, particularly when it comes to character development. And this week, the spotlight is on Mariner, Star Trek’s favorite problem child. Since Day 1, she has been a chaotic combination of prodigious talent, wild energy, and shameless insubordination. For that reason, viewers tend to love or hate her… I’ve heard some say that she was the most relatable Star Trek character, and others call her “awful”. Me? I think she embodies the show’s spirit… irreverent, topsy-turvy comedy with a heart of gold that’s more intelligent than it wants you to know.
Image: Paramount+
At the end of the last episode, Mariner was promoted — practically kicking and screaming. The ensign is notorious for getting promoted and demoted, promoted and demoted, and she’d accepted her place at the bottom, even come to revel in it. So being bumped up to Lieutenant Junior Grade is messing with her head… especially after she overhears Ransom (in delightful workout gear that pays tribute to Troi and Crusher’s) say that soon she won’t be his problem any more. She takes that to mean that she’s being set up for failure… again. She decides if she’s going to be demoted, she’ll do it on her own terms.
Image: Paramount+
So when Ransom assigns her and some redshirt ensign to accompany him on a mission to free two humans from an alien zoo, whose proprietor is amicable and apologetic about the situation (and, as a tree-like being, can’t tell one bipedal from another), Mariner is determined to be her Mariner-est. She shows up out of uniform, still in her workout gear. She calls her commanding officer by his first name. She insults their alien ally repeatedly.
And when one of the alien creatures escapes the zoo… well, it’s not hard to jump to conclusions.
Image: Paramount+
Meanwhile, Tendi and Boimler have been promoted as well and feel bad that Rutherford was left out. No problem, Rutherford says. He’ll just get himself promoted so he can keep hanging out with them. Now, Rutherford has proven his genius time and time again over the course of three seasons — so many times, in fact, that it’s odd he hasn’t been promoted before (though Harry Kim did build half the Astrometrics lab on Voyager and never got promoted… still rooting for you, Harry!). But he finds himself constantly outdone by the smarmy Ensign Livick.
Boimler, meanwhile, discovers that the lieutenant quarters he’s been assigned ain’t so great. Look closely and you’ll see his Starfleet recruitment poster featuring Una Chin Riley in the background…
Image: Paramount+
Though the situation with the zoo provides plot backbone to give the episode structure, “I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee” (oof that’s a heckuva title) is really a character-driven episode, with Mariner hiding her insecurities by being loud and obnoxious while Rutherford busts his butt to keep the gang together. So far, it seems Lower Decks has managed to keep its spirit of celebrating the lowliest of Starfleet despite the ensigns’ promotions. Here’s hoping they keep that up.
LOWER DECKS! LOWER DECKS! Best Trek is back, and up to its usual shenanigans even as our favorite ensigns start to move forward with their lives.
For try-hard Boimler, the promotion he’s been so desperate for since the beginning is finally within reach, something he’s tipped off to by a winking Ransom. Can it be?? Will the show even still be Lower Decks if the famously un-famous main characters actually start moving onward and upward? Can the show about the “lowest ranking crew members on the least important ship in the fleet” keep that spirit once the crew starts advancing?
Image: Paramount +
We’ll have to wait and see how the rest of the season pans out to answer that question. We are in Season 4, though, and after four years on the Cerritos, it seems about time that some ensigns should get promoted to lieutenant. This ain’t Voyager, home of the most un-promotable ensign in Starfleet, poor Harry Kim.
But wait, actually it is! Like last season’s tribute to Deep Space Nine, this episode indulges in some unabashed nostalgia and fan service, this time for the wacky yet beloved Voyager, where, as Mariner mentions, “shit got freaky.” Ain’t that the truth… I recently rewatched that show, and oof, some of those episodes were downright bizarre. And “Twovix” leans right into that absurdity.
Image: Paramount+
Voyager, the ship, has been converted into a museum commemorating its seven-year adventure in the Delta Quadrant, and the crew of the Cerritos is tasked with transporting this piece of history to Earth. The crew is super enthusiastic about it… except Boimler, who’s so terrified of screwing up his promotion that he becomes uncharacteristically timid instead of his usual fanboy self. All he has to do to ensure he gets it is avoid screwing up anything historic…
And of course, screwed up, things get. “Twovix” digs up Voyager‘s wackiest moments — starting with the infamous episode where Tuvok and Neelix get combined into one being, Tuvix, who begs to remain as he is but is forced by Captain Janeway to be revert to Tuvok and Neelix, essentially killing Tuvix. It’s an episode that still inspires fan debate to this day — did Janeway commit murder? Why when T’Ana and Billips are the ones smashed together this time, and Captain Freeman goes searching for Janeway’s solution, you know things are going to get gnarly.
Image: Paramount+
Further shenanigans ensue… a dormant “macro virus” from another one of Voyager’s weirder entries — basically, enormous flying viruses attack people — escapes. Holodeck characters Chaotica and Michael Sullivan appear. And of course there’s a salamander running around, a tribute to what is probably the worst episode in Star Trek history, “Threshold,” where Tom Paris and Captain Janeway “evolve” into the amphibians.
All in all, “Twovix” is a raucous re-introduction to Lower Decks and promises another loud, humorous, helter-skelter season. Fans of Voyager will be especially delighted by all the references to what, in hindsight, is a deeply weird show. Yet amid the chaos, Lower Decks never loses sight of what makes it special: the crew friendships that form the heart and soul of the show.
Asian Americans are on the rise in the pop cultural zeitgeist which is a very good thing. Whether it be TV shows like American Born Chinese or comics soon to be launched just like Evermind, there’s just a lot of promise to be had across the entertainment spaces. Which is why I’m proud to share the news that veteran and pioneer of Valiant Comics, Sean Chen, is launching this new series while working with 247 Comics. What’s even cooler is that Daniel Wu is, the beloved actor and voice of Grom Hellscream in things such as the Warcraft movie.
“I’ve always had a passion for Sci-Fi, from my roles in Into the Badlands to Westworld and films like Europa Report,” says Daniel Wu regarding his history adapting fiction. “Launching my first comic and being part of this exciting new IP with Sean Chen and 247 Comics is a dream come true. I see limitless potential in this franchise, and I’m thrilled to make a mark in global media creating original content with a world-class team.”
“At its heart, Evermind is about two people—a scientist father and his teenage daughter—who are driven apart by contrasting ideology and then forced together by incredible circumstances.” legendary artist Sean Chen adds. “I was really inspired by the story of Steve Jobs and his troubled relationship with his daughter, which was complicated and nuanced, and goes so much deeper than, ‘You were never there!’ This relationship is the story engine that plays out against a series of events where you wonder if the gulf between them will ever be closed and what will be the fate of the father’s soul.”
In Evermind, we follow the story of brilliant neurolink developer Lucas Zhang, a scientist who’s spent their life developing body-defying cybernetics and cyberpunk-like technology. But when fate strikes due to the consequences of his own actions, in a desperate attempt to save his own humanity, and that of his only child, Zhang unlocks something quite dangerous that will shake the foundations of the world. Now Zhang is selling out. His technology drives society on a path of both destruction and desire.
“The landscape of content distribution is evolving rapidly with the emergence of technology that offers new avenues for an immersive comic book consumption experience,” says Carl Choi, Publisher and Co-Founder of 247 Comics. “I’m incredibly excited about the opportunities to partner with forward-thinking creators who envision beyond traditional systems, allowing us to finally bring a long overdue transformation to a technology-neglected ecosystem.”
Marvel Comics has announced its exciting new plans for New York Comic Con 2023. From October 12th through the 15th, the company has promised to surprise audiences with a slew of panels and make some surprising new announcements. The Marvel booth will play hub station for some convention exclusives, giveaways, and signings, with the entirety of it being live-streamed on Marvel.com. Hosted by Ryan Penagos, Josh Saleh, Langston Belton, Ray Lowe, and Mikey Trujillo, fans at home can join in on what’s happening as you can check out #MarvelNYCC and Follow @Marvel for updates on all social media channels.
Below, are Marvel’s scheduled panels for NYCC 2023.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12
Avengers Assemble: A This Week in Marvel Special Event 3:15PM – 4:15PM EST | Room 409 Agent M himself, AKA Ryan Penagos (VP & Creative Executive), returns to host a can’t-miss live edition of the This Week in Marvel podcast! Just in time for the Avengers 60th anniversary, join Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski and Executive Editor Tom Brevoort, along with writers Jed MacKay (Avengers) and Al Ewing (Avengers Inc), in a deep-dive discussion on Marvel’s mightiest line of comics: the Avengers! Get the scoop on the Avengers’ epic conflict with the Ashen Combine, learn more about the Wasp’s new style of avenging with the mysterious Victor Shade– and stick around to the end for an exclusive giveaway! Avengers fans, this one is for you. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13
MARVEL: Amazing Spider-Man – Gang War 3:15PM – 4:15PM EST | Room 409 Marvel Comics Executive Spider-Editor Nick Lowe web-slings by to host a scintillating symposium on everyone’s favorite wall-crawler – and the latest mess of trouble he’s gotten himself into in the thrilling Gang War comics crossover! A war has erupted among the gang lords of the Big Apple, and only Spidey’s hand-picked team of heroes (including Miles Morales, She-Hulk, Daredevil, Spider-Woman, and Luke Cage) can stop them. So join Nick, Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski, and an array of other arachnid aficionados including Zeb Wells (Amazing Spider-Man), Erica Schultz (Daredevil: Gang War), and Greg Pak (Deadly Hands of Kung Fu: Gang War),to get the lay of the land for this showstopper of a crossover! PLUS, stay to the end for an exclusive giveaway! Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game: The Official NYCC Live Play 4:30PM – 6:00PM EST | Room 409 It’s Friday the 13th! If you dare, come experience the Marvel Multiverse RPG like never before – as an all-star cast of mighty Marvel guests and tabletop RPG players embark on a thrilling supernatural mission for a night of role-playing you won’t want to miss. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14
Marvel Fanfare with C.B. Cebulski
1:45PM – 2:45PM EST | Room 405
Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski is in the House (of Ideas)! Come join C.B. and his hand-picked panel of industry greats in an illuminating discussion on everything and anything Marvel – and be sure to bring your burning questions for the Q&A session. Stick around until the very end for a special giveaway!
MARVEL: Next Big Thing
3:15PM – 4:15PM EST | Room 405
This is it, True Believers – The panel you’ve all been waiting for! Join Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski as he and some of the most monumental talent of today – including Gerry Duggan (X-Men, Uncanny Avengers), Jonathan Hickman (G.O.D.S., Ultimate Universe) and Jed MacKay (Avengers, Moon Knight) – give a behind-the-scenes look at Marvel’s biggest books while peeling back the curtain on the future of the Marvel Universe. Filled to the brim with announcements, first-looks, and tantalizing teases (including a special look at the biggest Marvel Comics story of 2024), this is THE can’t-miss Marvel panel of New York Comic Con! Don’t forget to stay ‘til the end for the one-of-a-kind giveaway.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 15 Women of Marvel
1:45PM – 2:45PM EST | Room 409
The Women of Marvel return to New York! Join host Ellie Pyle (Executive Director, Digital Content), Jennifer Grunwald (Director, Production & Special Projects) and some more of Marvel’s mightiest women as they share what it’s like for women working in the industry today, while teasing what’s next in Marvel’s stunning slate of women-led projects. Don’t miss this always lively discussion and be sure to stick around for the exclusive giveaway at the end!
This week’s episode “Rage Against the Vaccine” had a lot of awesome moments including callbacks, cameos by beloved characters of the past, and the assurance that, even in a thousand years, we’ll be just as stupid as ever.
We start off with a celebration. It took over a thousand years but the Covid-19 pandemic is finally over! And while the mayor bestows a huge key to the head of Bill Nye, another outbreak is just around the corner. Kidding, it is literally at the celebration with Leela being Patient-0.
Our friendly neighborhood cyclops has just returned from a visit to her parents in the sewers where a nasty bug called Explovid-19 is raging. Symptoms include bouts of uncontrolled anger and a mild cough (which Morbo does not have so he is fine). The press conference/celebration quickly turns into a super-spreader event and the next pandemic is underway.
While many posit how to fix the issue: vaccines, it’s a hoax, drink hand sanitizer, Hermes has an out-of-the-box solution: Voodoo. Why Voodoo? Well, contrary to the crazy conspiracy theories the internet and social media have to offer on what’s causing the infection, Hermes believes it is a case of Zombieism.
The Professor disagrees – Zombies are too slow for this level of aggression. Hermes counters that many kinds of zombies exist including fast, slow, and my personal favorite: brisk shufflers. The Caribbean bean-counter brings the issue up to his beautiful wife LeBarbara (Dawnn Lewis) who cautions him against getting involved in Voodoo, but Hermes is determined to see his hunch out.
With a beignet request in mind, Hermes travels to New New Orleans. After a visit to a familiar fortune-telling machine, he encounters a bone robot (voiced by Phil LaMarr, who also voices Hermes!). Together they travel to find the Voodoo HQ – surprise, it’s the house of LeBarbara’s ex-husband Barbados Slim (Kevin Michael Richardson). Still fit as ever, Barbados gives his romantic rival props for his Zombie idea. It apparently fills in a lot of the gaps he’s been struggling with and once LeBarbara joins to help they concoct a vaccine for the virus. Having conducted a rigorous cuck test, the vaccine is administered to all the infected through “dolls”.
As a whole, there’s a lot to love about this episode. The return of Barbados Slim, Wernstrom (David Herman), and the Omicronians are worked into the plot seamlessly instead of just jammed in for fan service. At first, I wasn’t sure Wernstrom was going to make an appearance, but was delighted when he arrived on his flying lectern. The same goes for Barbados Slim, though I’ll be honest I had no expectations he was going to be in the episode which made his presence a lovely surprise.
As for the Omicronians, I view them as the Fox News proxy, with their getting sick not just the door for a great variant joke, but a condemnation of what willful lies can get you. We get our first glimpse of New New Orleans, complete with gators who wear helmets, wide-open swamps, and a force field border with Atlanta! Not to mention Gumbo-tron who makes Marti Gras kind of gross but does give me Hedonism-bot vibes.
Since it is an episode designed around a pandemic there are plenty of solid mask, vaccine, and media jabs. There are also some great throw-away gags such as Bender’s “Kill all humans!” chant scene which reminded me of the “He was a zombie?” joke from The Simpsons. Also, the many frustrations that come with remote work, and the application being called Gloom were on-point.
I enjoyed the vaccine-off between the Professor and Wernstrom, the highlight being what each will do to your arm. The many, many, many ways to wear a mask, with Hermes doing so correctly only once. The incompetent leadership of Nixon in the face of a national crisis. And of course, the media coverage, ranging from diseased local news, outlandish armchair doctors giving false info, admitted rumors through podcasts and social media, and finally outside parties who poison the airwaves in hopes of profiting from the panic.
In this case, it’s the invaders from Omicron-Persei 8. In a War of the Worlds twist, the Omicronians wind up creating a whole new strain of the infection. Luckily Voodoo saves the day (though it does beg the question…did they just have all those dolls lying around in wait?)!
If I have any complaints about the episode, it would only be that I’m unsure where it lands on the whole thing. There are jokes targeting the vaccines, the masks, test swabs, but also those aimed at misinformation, both from the internet and the mainstream media. And the ending line – a reversal of the famous quote about advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic – only added to my confusion. Is this episode a condemnation of vaccine fears, and group hysteria, or a defense of it? We are, as a society, complicated and prone to poor choices when the worst of our inclinations are encouraged, is that why it’s so hard to pick a side?
Perhaps because the virus isn’t directly fatal it allows for a grayer viewpoint? Though it is heavily implied that the violence caused by the virus can be quite severe – just look at the train wreck Hermes is involved in. I’m not betting a lot of other people walked away from it (actually, we only see Hermes) – even Hermes was only healed by the desire for gumbo and whatever horrible swill he powered through to get some. Still, this is a fun show that has been known to occasionally straddle the fence on certain issues in the past. I just didn’t think this would be one of them.
Oddly the lesson seems to be that vaccines work just, maybe stop asking how. Take the miracle that is modern medicine for what it is. Have faith…in science!
R.L. Stine, my favorite childhood author, who brought us classics like Say Cheese or Die, The Night of the Living Dummy, and all the Monster Slime books, will see a new Goosebumps series inspired by his Scholastic book series premiering on Disney+ and Hulu next month.
Goosebumps, the chilling new series inspired by R.L. Stine’s worldwide bestselling Scholastic book series, is set to debut across both Disney+ and Hulu on Friday, Oct. 13.
The new series will follow a group of five high schoolers as they embark on a shadowy and twisted journey to investigate the tragic passing three decades earlier of a teen named Harold Biddle — while also unearthing dark secrets from their parents’ past.
The 10-part series, from Disney Branded Television and Sony Pictures Television, will launch with a five-episode drop as part of Disney+’s “Hallowstream” and Hulu’s “Huluween” celebrations, with subsequent new episodes streaming weekly.
Goosebumps’ first two episodes will air on Freeform on Oct. 13th, as part of its “31 Nights of Halloween” programming.
“R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps franchise is a pop culture phenomenon that holds a special place in the hearts of people of all ages,” said Ayo Davis, president, Disney Branded Television in a press release. “We are delighted to bring this spooky new series to audiences everywhere in a big way on Disney+ and Hulu, which we hope will not only captivate new audiences with its elevated thrills and chills, but also lifelong fans nostalgic for the stories that are a staple of their generation.”
Goosebumps stars Justin Long (Barbarian) and Rachael Harris (Lucifer), alongside newcomers Zack Morris (EastEnders), Isa Briones (Star Trek: Picard), Miles McKenna (Guilty Party), Ana Yi Puig (Gossip Girl) and Will Price (The Equalizer).
In stores launching right about at the time of writing this, issue #1 of AHOY Comics’ latest jam-packed anthology PROJECT: CRYPTID is a funny anthology about are-they or aren’t-they creatures and monsters from all across the world including Bigfoot, Nessie, a Mongolian Death Worm, and my local favorite: The Jersey Devil.
The series kicks off with three shorts ‘Ballroom of Death’, ‘Wormy and Me’, and a special first installment of THE ALL-STAR ANNUALLY CONVENING COZY DETECTIVES CLUB in PARTIALLY NAKED CAME THE CORPSE!. The latter is a thirteen-part epic that kicks off with an extra-long first installment by the bestselling writer Grant Morrison.
Having read this first issue, I will say there was a lot to like about ‘Wormy and Me’ and ‘Ballroom of Death’. Better yet, there’s a lot to enjoy about the piece by legendary Grant Morrison, which reads less like a comic, and a lot more like a short story. With images and a heck-of-a-lot of prose that readers will absolutely adore in terms of story craft.
It kicks off with ‘Ballroom of Death’, Mark Russell’s story where a wealthy executive wealthy-type goes on an impossible hike up a mountain forcing his belabored guides to reluctantly trek up the ‘Ballroom of Death’ path rather than the much safer ‘Candy Bar Alley’ pathway. A fun story with a twist that feels very ‘Tales From The Crypt’ like in terms of its plot and satisfying conclusion.
In ‘Wormy and Me’, we get a cryptid story that goes from zero to one hundred in terms of plot themes introducing elements and laughs galore. A fun, silly, and surprisingly littered cryptid tale that is sort of a play on buddy cop drama with a cryptid I didn’t even know about. Nor am super invested in learning more about, in so much as… this is really a funny comedy because of that shortage of information. Weird. Funny. With loads of memorable bizarre and hilarious art. A fantastic job making the purchase of this first issue worth it on its own, with major kudos to writer Paul Cornell for the pacing and PJ Holden for such cute and funny drawings of so many funny takes on cryptids.
Finally, there’s Grant Morrison’s story. A tale that is loaded, to say the least, in that it is verbose with his style of prose and a bit everywhere in execution. It’s a noir story. However, I don’t expect many to follow the plot that is kicking off this series of shorts. And while the artwork by Jon Proctor in this short is some divine use of line work, Morrison’s story is very hit-or-miss. A winner if you enjoy his style and the poetic loose-threaded words weaved. More an experience than a narrative.
Now, what AHOY is doing here by interweaving this serial throughout their upcoming projects, is such a brilliant take on the magazine-of-comics approach the company is well-known for establishing these past years. It’s a smart move in that it establishes a fandom across its titles. As for PROJECT: CRYPTID, I think this first issue is a solid comic fans will love for its wonderful take on your local monster stories.
Marvel has unveiled a new Foil Variant from artist Adam Hughes. The series continues this October with Rainbow Rowell and Andrés Genolet’s SENSATIONAL SHE-HULK #1. The creative team promises that the new series will have even more challenges, deadly villains, and hotter guest stars, kicking off by facing The Incredible Hulk. Afterwards, the series will see Jessica face off against a new threat named Anathema. All while trying to stop an intergalactic war.
“For me, the word ‘sensational’ brings to mind John Byrne’s run on the original Sensational She-Hulk,” Rowell told Newsarama in an exclusive interview. “We’ve definitely been inspired by the character-first focus of that book, with Jen front and center and sparkling, the star of the show.”
You can check out the new cover below.
SENSATIONAL SHE-HULK #1 – 75960620782400111
Written by RAINBOW ROWELL & JESSICA GAO
Art by ANDRÉS GENOLET & GAVIN GUIDRY
Cover by JEN BARTEL
Foil Variant Cover by ADAM HUGHES – 75960620782400141
It was the Winter of 2003. Nerds and geeks don’t have a seat at the table yet. The MCU doesn’t exist for another five years. However, we got something much more rare. When Adult Swim first aired their animated The Venture Bros. to a small, but stalwart fanbase, we got a show that never talked down to its audience and always paid in dividends.
It is the Summer of 2023. Twenty years and seven seasons later, their feature film, The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment) exists as both a cinematic swan song as well as just another week in the Venture Verse. For creator-showrunners Christopher McCulloch (Jackson Publick) and Doc Hammer, time never stops in the universe, even after the credits roll. Science is about the pursuit of truth and discovery, moving forward while still able to look in the rearview.
Review
We’re immediately greeted with JG Thirwell’s ventricle-pumping score as man-mountain and fan favorite Brock (Patrick Warburton) touches down in Queens with OSI agents. Brock gets the coordinates from the steely Colonel Gathers, finding only a homeless person rocking Hank’s cherry Le Mans Venture jacket containing his phone. “The Batman” gave it to him, but that’s of little concern now. An explosion five blocks from their location pivots the OSI from search and rescue to lock and load.
The setup is quick and punchy. Doc and Jackson know what it’s like to operate within time constraints and they know what they want to see on screen as fans. At VenTech towers in Manhattan, Dr. Venture (James Urbaniak) refuses to release any DNA sample to Dr. Mrs. the Monarch (Hammer) aka Sheila. He’s had enough time wasted with a big VenTech launch tomorrow but she insists on getting conclusive evidence of whether he and the Monarch are related. He thinks she secretly hopes for some of the Rusty coursing through her husband. Ew. Dean (Mike Sinterniklaas) informs Pop of the search being called off due to some “frog guy” (oh?) blowing up. Doc’s insouciant and why hell not? Hank’s gonna Hank. Goddamn, he’s too pure.
We check in with Conjectural Technologies when Billy Quizboy informs Doc of a problem with his HelperPod. When its volume is increased, it levitates and when you ask it to stop the music, gravity takes hold. Instead of hesitation, Doc chooses festination, even when the Pirate Captain doubles down and claims they cost more to build than they are to sell or as Pete brilliantly phrases it, pulling a “Blue Monday”. Chef’s kiss.
“It’s not a ‘bug’ it’s a ‘feature.” Credit: IMDB
I’m a fan of the way the problem was presented. Many of us use smart technology in our day-to-day lives and even more have heard the horror stories as well. Peddling H.E.L.P.eR.’s head as a smart speaker with hiccups brings in a stumbling block bigger than a mere arch, Doc’s own hubris. Wait a minute…
The Monarch (McCulloch) and Henchman 21 aka Gary need to cut the shit. No amount of arching of Venture, however surreptitious, is permissible until the DNA results from Doc’s mug are conclusive. As a level 10 with hands tied, the Monarch may as well have on a fucking chastity belt. They spot the Mantilla (Nina Arianda) aka Debbie. She’s part of an elite outfit that Gary could not be more eager to join called Arch, and they operate apart from the Guild, which makes this Sheila’s business. Especially when their newest recruit is Brick Frog!! Explosives are more effective than garden-variety bricks, harrowingly so when thrown in a factory that manufactures material to withstand them. Last I checked, the composition of people is still pretty combustible.
“BRICK FROG!!!!!!!!!!” Credit: IMDB
While not Kim (seriously, give it up, people), this was fan service of the highest order, as this once throwaway character from Jackson’s childhood made its way onto the screen back in Season 4. Ever since then, he’s been a fan favorite and a testament to what made this show so special to begin with; giving the little guy his shine, if for but a moment. For an EMA Level 1 that throws a damn brick and shouts his name, he certainly didn’t quit the Guild quietly. Red Death (Clancy Brown) knows a serious “commination” when he sees one, so Sheila’s on the undertaking of heading a subcommittee.
We also check in with our favorite supernatural trio, the Order of the Triad when Dean Venture visits them in their new sanctum santorum, a Jewish synagogue. We also get some hot early VB. character design when the Scmatte Golem, Hebrew in origin, who came with the place appears. The Alchemist (Dana Synder) dips in before Jefferson Twilight (Charles Parnell) intervenes. Dean is racked with guilt and Dr. Orhpeus (Steven Rattazzi) knows he can use this love to locate his brother. Turns out it’s worse than he thought and with the past, present, and future all converging at once for Hank, did somebody say ‘road trip’?
I was hoping the ever-inimitable Dana Snyder would have had more lines, I can always revisit the classic moments of when he sleuthed with Hank or relayed the etymology of a “Rusty Venture”. I completely understand that concessions must be made when you’re working with so much material, yet are limited in the scope of keeping it a lean feature length that’s still filling.
We travel from the confines of the Order’s Bleeker-Street-ass-lookin base to a train cutting a serpentine swath through the majestic Rocky Mountains. Hank, huddled up by himself in a car spills himself onto the page. But he’s not alone. The opening synth line to Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy” seeps in, and it’s pretty evident we’re in for a story. The old Hank is dead. He’s a man with no home, no girl, and for damn sure no brother, only wanting to take it off the map. So he rides the rails, on a pilgrimage to where it all started with a little help from Enrico Matassa, Russian Guyovitch, Detective Hank, and The Bat on a mission to “find her.”
“Honestly, Hank, where do you come up with that stuff? I never see you read.” Credit: IMDB
Including the fugue Hanks was a no-brainer. (I’m aware.) Personally, I find Hank to be totemic of the childlike wonder of discovery we struggle to retain as adults, whereas Dean was always more a reminder of the anxiety and fear we inherit as them. “Two sides of the same coin.”
As far as the Monarch is concerned, the Guild can go fucking pound walnuts. Henchman 21 doesn’t think playing when the cat’s away is a capital idea, especially when Mantilla isanex. The Monarch claims she cheated on him with Venture but it doesn’t top the list of reasons to hate him so the QR code is scanned from 21’s phone, immediately downloading his data. As Gary himself would say, “Pwnd.”
Arch HQ is run like a certain social media conglomerate, complete with Acolytes (not Henchmen) and accessible through a mere thumb swipe. Sure, it’s a slag on Meta, but it does drive the story and keeps their world grounded as if it were in our own reality, even though we don’t possess cool shit like thought-accessed weaponry. What, you expected them to decline?
Back into the action, we go from the gorgeously painted Rana-Dale Industries building, the scene of the crime, where Shore Leave and Sheila agree to not involve the Guild and keep it between them, Brock and Red Death to Jefferson and company bedding down in Chicago at the Handy Dandy Factory, hosted by Darkman/Freddy amalgam Clayton (Hal Lublin).
Taking your bro’s girl is a vampiremove, Dean. Credit: IMDB
Like a good solid ice cream base can take to myriad mix-ins, so can the Venture Verse. Both feel like they could lead to places we may never see, but that’s life. Even when the show was on the air, the general consensus was that life goes on in between the episodes. You’re only getting an infinitesimal smattering of life’s events. It’s one of the main reasons the show has always been on another level. The movie doesn’t stray far from that concept, so let’s not this time thank whatever goat we worshipped, let’s just thank both creators for knowing, loving, and respecting their product.
Hank arrives at the Venture Compound in Denver only to find a leveled, desiccated husk of its former glory, a result of the final episode of the series, “The Sapharax Protocol”. All he has to do is survey the scene to fill in the blanks while the series of key moments through seven seasons boils down to a joke in the goddamn pilot. He recalls The Action Man mentioning the name of Bobbi St. Simone. He stands frozen for a moment in cogitation until Dermott Fictel rolls up on him, which I’ll take as a bone thrown. A little dollop of Dermott was just enough and making him a modern-day rag-and-bone man with Venture tech is hilarious. I am sure they could have gone so many places with that in an eighth season, and I will lament.
You can’t stop what’s coming. Credit: IMDB
We’re treated to the white-hot opening credits of the 60s beach picture Follow That Bikini! with Bobbi St. Simone. The amount of research gone into this whole show never ceases to amaze me. In one social media video, she’s gone Baskin and at her Caring Hands Second Chance Ranch, Bobbi (Jane Lynch) regales Hank with a little story on how she became Madame Majeure. This sends him to the “sunken place” aka Coma Town before Dr. O shows up. Dean does get his astral donny brooking when he accidentally makes contact with conduit Jefferson. Better in there than in the real world, I suppose.
This wrests Orpheus from his slumber. Before all three can peace out, we’re treated to some pedigree close-quarter combat, compliments their would-be dispatchers, the New Jack City-inspired Blood Brothers headed up by Nuno (Jay Pharoah). Jefferson’s not powerful enough to overtake but Orpheus has a golem with their name on it. Or just the word “pants” in Hebrew, with the off-switch being a sock spelling “miracle”. Top shelf as always.
Initially wanting to go shithouse on Venture, we see that things aren’t so great for the Monarch and 21 once Mantilla abandons them after linking with VenTech Tower. Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock’s “It Takes Two” hotly pipes through HelperPods figuratively lighting the fuse with the gorgeous VenTech Tower in all its three-dimensional grandeur being torn from the block, ascending. The show has never steered us wrong with its scant but effective use of licensed music and for one last go-round, it’s a damn Hollywood set piece. Sheila has also now run afoul of both the OSI and Guild alike due to some damning evidence found by the three she’s in liaison with, I guess, off to find Debbie.
Venture tower leaves earth’s atmosphere. In the tower elevator to retrieve hatred, both Monarch and Venture hash it out about Deborah. It was a misunderstanding, but who gives a crap when the electromagnetic field nearly obliterates them all before Debbie concedes to Sheila, turning off the HelperPods and sending VenTech Tower hurtling toward Earth?
Fuck the keynote speech. Credit: IMDB
We get one last bit of white-knuckled action with a deus ex mecha when Ventronic rockets into action. Team Venture with the help of OSI and resident computer nerd Snoopy (John Hodgman) brings the Tower safely down the old terra firma where Venture Compound once stood, bringing it full circle. The Monarch suffers a gaping hole where his liver used to be, but ole Ben (J.K. Simmons) from the Halloween special.
It turns out they aren’t brothers after all. The most obvious answer was in front of us all along. They are clones. Two sides of the same “Scientastic” coin. The difference between odious and onerous was just 2% Baboon DNA in the Monarch. All because experiment science junkie Jonas just had to play god. It’s a satisfying conclusion to me, a cautionary tale of what happens when you fuck with super science and create with obsession, not love. Both Doc and Jackson never took for granted the gravity of every choice fold into this world. This is life-changing stuff, but it’s not universe-shifting, nor should it be. That would abberate from their Original Formula. It does, however, lay the foundation for some really twisted dynamism.
Though it started out as a humble parody of Johnny Quest cartoons, The Venture Bros. had developed over time into this flourishing microcosm. Without the superscience, supernatural, and surreal we’re left with intoxicating human emotion and story. We know these characters. We find kinship in them. We know at the end of the day, just like science itself, knowing the data is only half the battle. What we do with that data makes all the difference to not only ourselves but also the ones we love.
Keeping that in mind, the final reveal I view as a coda to Ben’s elegant words to Hank. It adds one last beautiful and valuable “complexity” to the Venture circle of life as time keeps on ticking. Go Team Venture.
5/5 Stars.
Addendum:
We can view this film with lament in our hearts for the end of an era, anger for corporate greed, joy for it existing in the first place, or any other damn emotion we choose to. We do have that choice. I chose this as a bittersweet affair reminding me, not unlike Molotov did Brock atop a precariously dangling limo, as much as we may not want to let go, we don’t always have the choice. There’s always something bigger than us. That’s called force majeure.
“What the heck am I watching?” That was the first thing that came to mind when the first episode of the three-part HBO docu-series Telemarketers started playing. It was late, and I was looking for something mindless to kill an hour before bed. The description said it was about “two unlikely office buddies, who stumble upon the truth behind the work they’ve been doing at a seedy call center,” so I was expecting the kind of slickly produced show about a scam that has become all the rage on the streamers. You know, the kind helmed by polished producers with well-lit interviewees speaking to high-res cameras on nice-looking sets.
Instead, I was treated to shaky low-res footage of the most chaotic office in the world, shot by a teenager intending to chuck his colleagues’ antics onto YouTube for the lolz. There were a few interviewees in what looked like their own living rooms talking about their wild days at Civic Development Group, a call center that hired anyone with a pulse who could read a script and convince folks to donate a few bucks to various law enforcement-adjacent charities. And of those bucks, only about 10% went to said charities while the rest funded the lavish lifestyles of the telemarketing company’s founders. As the show progresses into the next episode, it unveils how the telemarketers used sketchy tactics to squeeze money out of well-meaning people, including impersonating officers.
Most of this is old news — literally. The docu-series shows decades-old footage from news programs exclaiming about the scam and flashes articles written by an investigative journalist outlining how the hustle has evolved. The crew seeks interviews with politicians and such going, “Why isn’t anything being done about this?” only to get collective shrugs in response. So other than giving insight into just how chaotic those offices were — people openly doing drugs, pulling pranks, and passing out at their desks — Telemarketers doesn’t really give us any new information, or take any groundbreaking action that might lead to real change.
And yet it is irresistibly compelling thanks to its unlikely heroes: Pat J. Pespas and Sam Lipman-Stern, two former telemarketers who met during their dirtbag days at Civic Development Group, where Pat was one of the top salesmen despite (or possibly because of) his open drug habit, and Sam was a high school dropout working for the only place that would hire a 14-year-old. Over the next several years, the two set out to create a Michael Moore-style documentary about the nonsense they witnessed and were involved in at work. And that’s the real story — how their efforts would start and stall and restart and re-stall, with Pat as the interviewer and Sam as the cameraman.
Pat J. Pespas and Sam Lipman-Stern
Pat is pretty much the opposite of what you’d expect of a documentarian. He often talks over his interviewees, his questions aren’t particularly well researched or sharply worded, and at one point he gets the name of someone he’s trying to interview wrong. As for Sam — he just follows with the camera and lets Pat be Pat. There are no fancy credentials… at one point Pat is delighted to call himself a “freelance journalist,” a title he never thought to bestow upon himself. It’s something of a mir4cle that the docu-series was finished at all, let alone distributed on a big platform like HBO. How did that happen? A moment of kismet — turns out, Sam is related to filmmaker Adam Bhala Lough, who saw the project’s potential.
The result of this amateur, often chaotic venture is an earnest and often frustrating depiction of two ordinary guys who can’t believe that something so obviously wrong has been allowed to continue for so long and want to expose it, yet don’t have the clout to take on The Powers That Be. In a way, they represent everyone who’s ever ranted over dinner about how “this is so wrong!” and “if I were running the world, I would totally fix that!” And their stymied efforts illustrate just how helpless all of us are to go up against the enormously wealthy and incredibly influential.
Yet they try anyway, and it’s that story-behind-the-story that makes Telemarketers a worthwhile watch.
Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) is shacked up in a motel with the help of Derek (Chris Sandiford). It turns out he can soar for pretty long, but when a vampire that can go to fucking outer space is after you, there’s no rocket science behind notflying. Derek brings meat to Guillermo, but it ain’t raw, so he continues to starve. He grows hungrier with each passing moment and Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), dressed in her finest Detective garb needs to cut to the chase quickly with Guillermo. A.) He can’t simply be short with the person that turned him. B.) That sacred bond involves trust and respect, which only further gums up the pipeline between him and Nandor, believing the only handwritten missive of apology he’d accept would be a suicide note his Familiar made good on. I mean she’s being constructive, at least?
Perched on high like the Dark Knight, Nandor (Kayvan Novak) stakes (hiss) out Panera Bread until he spots his target. What he brings up to the light isn’t Guillermo but rather Patton-fucking-Oswalt who informs him that Staten Island is full of Panera Breads, not just his one spot. I proceed to evict any sense of space or time for but a fleet moment.
Colin (Mark Proksch) is the next to show up at Guillermo’s doorstep to wish him luck but more importantly to conduct the exit interview in his release from servitude and most likely life itself. With a half-assed parting gift and flesh press for the lens, Colin’s outie 5000. Laszlo (Matt Berry) shows up after but is easily distracted by the room’s smuttier amenities, giving Guillermo some time to ruminate and cogitate. He deeply regrets having Derek turn him and in taking the shortcut, he’s alienated himself. Good job, Gizmo. To be fair, I know what that’s like, so preach on.
After their talk, Patton shoots from the heart. He suggests Nandor not take the path of vengeance, but rather of forgiveness. It’s a wickedly harder path, but who knows? If the price of admission to eternal friendship costs but one Patton, his death was not in vain. Nor was it in “vein”. How hilariously and callously disrespectful.
The Guide shows up at Guillermo’s, animal family in tow but not even a Goethe quote could keep Guillermo from darting to his mother, Silvia (Myrna Cabello). Nandor’s waiting for his face-to-face with his Familiar one last time. Silvia seems to be welcoming of an honest-to-goodness vampire in her home and Guillermo is pissed. Nandor doesn’t want to kill Guillermo and even entrusts him and his wooden friend to do what is right.
They return to the residence as equals. Well, not quite yet. In order for Guillermo to fully transform, he must imbibe human blood. He does and for a glorious moment, he feels like a feelin’ super-sexy-Saiyan. Turns out, though, Guillermo’s eyes turned out to be bigger than his stomach. He’s not even able to nibble on a knocked-out restaurant patron as his Master lustfully feeds but a few feet away. This saddens Nandor so the last resort is the most honest one and the most intense: The Ceremony of Vampiric Transmogrification.
With all present, Guillermo must choose his path of either human or a vampire. The ceremony, which includes robes, candles, and compliments to the Guide is just a smoke screen. Guillermo chooses humanity but has Nandor slay Derek to make things right. Hold up. Nandor acknowledges the ‘sacrifice’, but does he really? Things were said that cannot be taken back. With Guillermo no longer wanting to be a vampire, is there any impetus to stay at the house?
He and Laszlo take Derek’s spiked body to Necromancer Wallace (Benedict Wong), basically breaking his Piggy bank for this one very important rainy day. Laszlo rags on the poor dude, but he brings the goods, turning his friend into a zombie. For a nominal fee, Derek can even kick it with Blast from the Past zombie Topher (Haley Joel Osment) among several other flesh-eating residents. Wallace accepts all forms of payment.
No, seriously, dude even takes Zelle.
Takeaway
We’ve arrived at the season five finale of What We Do In The Shadows (FX) entitled “Exit Interview”. The cobbled crochet of experiments gone awry, the tiptoeing around has culminated in what happens when the unthinkable happens: more unthinkable happens.
Guillermo’s journey of discovery was overall well done. My prediction for this season was faulty at best and codswallop at worst. I could look askant and say there’s still time or I can be grateful for what’s been presented to me. That being said, the rewards of Patton, Haley, the Djinn (Anoop Desai), and Benedict are enough for me to be mollified. The fears are allayed. Guest spots can be a very crass and gauche way of ramping up credibility, but no. Everybody in this world is real and just as vital as you or I. No. Everything has its place. The casting this season was impeccable, and I do believe it was money well spent.
The series has always stayed true to itself, reveling justly in the successes and dancing tribally in the failures. It takes risks because it holds that bond of trust sacred with its audience. On one hand, I imagine when you’re dealing with budgetary constraints, perhaps a desire to explore on a grander scale isn’t achievable. On the other hand, you want to stay true to your intimate nature. It’s a balancing act and most importantly it must be entertaining. With Guillermo’s journey as the propellor, I at first was a little bummed with them not taking the show on the road, so to speak.
Thrilling as that would be, it holds the risk of going off the rails in a very bad way. The spirit of the show is and has always been its intimate environs and anything caught too much in the unnecessary muck and mire would be anathema to its homey nature. We, the audience, are among their company. We, the audience, walk the night with them with a new day (hiss) upon them.
For now, from a script with a record number of writers on it for the series, this is the true turning point of the entire series. For now, I’ll happily wade into the deep end of the hope pool that maybe from here on out, Guillermo equals Nandor, if even for a fleet moment before the shit once again hits the fan. The bedrock of their friendship has been thus far solid enough. And what’s up with Guillermo sporting Nandor’s facial hair? With the camera as a central motif throughout hasn’t been fully revealed and if something truly bigger is at play, and this may just be the beginning. Something isn’t adding up and I have this foreboding feeling some math is about to crash. The optics look foggier than ever.
Guillermo got his old, shitty eyesight back. Having seen what was once and what could be is way more valuable than having better than 20/20 vision… and perhaps much more lethal.
We open in on Vampire Residence. The Guide (Kristen Schaal), cloaked in stunning habiliments invites the house to her gallery opening. Huge shocker that nobody bats an eyelash, including gentleman dilettante Laszlo (Matt Berry). They hem and haw in the reasoning, despite having RSVP’d. Fuck it. Before leaving, she relays an invite to the famous Morrigan Mansion by owner Perdita herself. Only now do their ears perk up, as her high society status in the vampiric New World is renowned. Starfuckers, man.
The Guide’s optimism for the gang choosing her opening is summarily deflated. The whole gang’s been shitty to her up until this point, why stop now? This includes making her fly 200 miles to Morrigan Manor instead of squeezing her into the ride. Fucking all class, ya know? Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) seizes the opportunity to channel his inner Hercule Poirot when all are directed to the drawing room for Mrs. Morrigan’s personal recorded message on a badass, mid-century modern tape device. She apologizes for her absence but implores them to use the amenities. All “six“ of them.
Laszlo wants no fencing partner in the Guide. In fact, he’s having more fun with multiplying automatons than someone with skill. He even refuses the Guide’s lovely assistance and with that, commences what can only be described as a beautifully choreographed fight with rapier wit, not for the “feint” of heart. (Fuck the rope. It’s not worth it. Where the shit is the bleach?)
The Guide informs Guillermo (Harvey Guillén), Colin, and Nandor (Kayvan Novak) of a traditional post-moonrise hunt prepared for them. She gets a fleet moment to show off her gorgeous oil paintings of the household. A scant moment. A pittance of eternity. That is all she is afforded, but they do worse than criticize her art; they dismiss it. Come on, people. It’s fucking 2023. I think we can afford a little kindness in this universe of uncertainties. Just because you drain the life doesn’t mean you have to suck at life.
The Guide takes Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) to the belfry to search for Laszlo. The Guide spots what appears to be the Grim Reaper, sending Nadja “for help”, sending her through the floor. Turns out it was just the shadow of a bunch of refuse. My stars!… were off. (Kinda).
With a gorgeous night hunt that would fit in with another island, Nandor treats his Familiar like a goddamn bloodhound. Spaceman or not, that shit ain’t fly and though the hunt isn’t Guillermo’s scene, he’s well aware of having to make a choice very soon. Nandor comes across the Guide, captive to a bear trap. With the pack of humans approaching, the Guide is putting a huge fucking bow on this gimme. Major cool points if my guy would show bravery in the face of ahh, who the fuck are we kidding? I’m fucking 1:1 incensed and disheartened.
In The Manor, Monsieur Robinson deduces that Guillermo is responsible for all the disappearances, but his logic is flakier than a fucking puff pastry. The Guide, injured, stumbles into the drawing room. Guillermo at least helps her. Oh, there’s blood. The effing lengths one would go to prove a point. Even then, Colin could give a fig. I want to kick these fucking vampires the fuck out of their unearned environs.
The Guide takes Guillermo to where the rest are held captive in solid silver cages. With the real Perdita on Vacay in her foreign chalet, the Guide used the space to teach the house a lesson about kindness. Her end game? Keep them close yet far for eternity, as she and Guillermo have felt. They were dicks to her, plain and simple. The footage never lies.
The Guide even concocted the hex of Nadja as an impetus for real inner growth. Selfless. In the nomenclature of Chef Slowik, they’re “takers.” The fucking worst definition of a vampire.
This point would have stood as the highlight of the night if the beans on Guillermo weren’t spilled. What ensues is one of the most gut-wrenching heart-to-hearts in the entire series, painfully presented to Nandor as a fait accompli. The hurt between Guillermo and his Master sits heavy.
Laszlo implores the crew to retrieve the tapes from Nov 21, 2022. In them, the house all says something nice about the Guide, including Nandor considering her for a wife. According to Laszlo, though vampires sometimes lack the vocal cords for sensitivity, they certainly don’t lack the heart for love. I feel seen.
Now, the real game begins. Guillermo better run. He’s now Ex-Communicado and I think Nandor only plays for keeps.
Takeaway
The penultimate episode of What We Do In The Shadows (FX) titled “A Weekend at Morrigan Manor” had a very The Menu meets Glass Onion meets John Wick vibe, and I ain’t mad at it. This is one time he’s not happy to be caught with his dick in his hands and the awesome choreography drove the experimental side to a delightful result. I say, fuck yes. This has always been a show that delivered. It isn’t afraid to take the leap. That being, would having her quit in a time of need have been any better, as I predicted?
That being said, the “inspired” line from Colin just fucking threw me for a loop. Mark fucking rules and Golden Girls line hit the spot. The sad thing is that as I’ve said in the past, this season the house has been meaner than usual to the Guide and it was pretty apparent they were setting the table for this, but could it have been done more elegantly? Great comedy doesn’t always have to be about the nuance, but I think the only thing unearned was the Guide’s forgiveness. Then again, I have trust in the show respecting its audiences’ intelligence. A single clip of footage may be just enough to plant the seed of something truly beautiful. We’re getting into heavy territory now. In the name of science, en guard.
Xmas is upon us, everyone! Hang your stockings, prepare the dumpster nog, and engage the nuclear fallout shelter-level shields in anticipation of the upcoming violent night. Feeling a little lost? There’s a holiday special to explain that to you. Allow Kwanzaa Bot (Coolio) and Hanukkah Zombie (Mark Hamill) to regale you with the truth that there’s a holiday for everyone (even though we all know Xmas is the only one anyone cares to hear about). The TLDR of it all is that Santa is a gift-delivery robot with a broken naughty/nice meter who’s out for blood.
Adding to the usual anxiety of death by rapid-fire gift is Bender’s mysterious Xmas card with the ominous message: “I know what you did next Xmas”. Zoidberg seems worried for his metal coworker but Bender (John DiMaggio who also voices Robot Santa) is unphased, and soon after Amy teaches her children the terrible truth that Santa is real, the Professor posits that he can fix the murderous mechanical fat man. How? By way of a time machine of course! Isn’t it tricky to mess with time? Yes – looking at you, Fry who became his own grandfather – which leads the Professor to take the trip alone.
Upon his return and assured of his success, the Professor gleefully gives everyone the week before Xmas off. Hermes has his family, Kif joins Amy at her parent’s house, and even Fry gets double booked by the Professor and Leela (committed to disappointing both parties), but left behind are Bender and Zoidberg. The lobster’s species is doomed to die if it reproduces so his lack of a family is not necessarily his fault, while the robot is…well, a robot. Despite a few episodes to the contrary, Bender was built not born, and therefore has no family to speak of. Still, he is loathe to lower himself to the desperate level of calling Zoidberg a friend, at least until the clever crustacean introduces him to dumpster nog.
The alcohol does its job of making strange bedfellows and poor decisions resulting in Bender and Zoidberg hatching the brilliant idea of kidnapping Santa in an effort to ruin the holiday for their friends. It does not go well. Santa winds up dead and while the boys deal with their seasonal faux pas we get to see how the rest of the gang is spending their time off. Spoiler: They’re all making some version of Turducken. At last, Fry notices that Bender and Zoidberg are missing from the festivities, Leela doesn’t seem concerned but she should be because the bungling pair has settled on eating the evidence of their crime.
Some Xmas miracles kick in to save the day. The gang shows up at Planet Express, busting in the door to include Zoidberg and Bender in the joy of the season. Then just as a confession is about to be made, Santa appears to do his usual killing. Turns out the Professor is the reason Santa is evil. Messing with time, am I right? Luckily, the Bender and Zoidberg of last week arrive via time machine and kidnap Santa! Bender scolds Zoidberg for going to the wrong Xmas, but all in all, it’s a happy accident. Their eventual admission to the crime of killing Santa is even met with praise, but that still leaves the mystery of who’s been leaving the creepy messages.
In a true Xmas twist…it was Santa! His disembodied head explains that he’s blackmailing Bender over his friendship with Zoidberg. Ice cold move, un-Jolly St. Dick, which ends with Bender low-key robbing Amy to pay off Santa. There’s also a bonus song (a take on the 12 days of Christmas) care of Kwanzaa Bot, complete with a dedication to Coolio.
As overall episodes go this wasn’t my favorite, but given we still have fourteen more to go, I’m gonna say it’s not the worst. The Kwanzaa Bot song was certainly a highlight, and though the plot was meh, the sight gags in this episode were its saving grace. The gingerbread-style shields complete with gumdrop defenses are a great touch. The stocking for Nibbler’s worms got me – I love a show that respects continuity. The holiday special designed to educate children about all the season holidays being eclipsed by Xmas is on the nose. The time cat, I didn’t quite understand (a quick internet search suggests it might be based on a book from the ’60s?), but as an old man who can’t drive the joke still works which is the beauty of having jokes with layers. Even the many party items created from Santa’s hastily disassembled corpse added a certain amusing quirk to the ultimately awkward celebration.
By far the best visual jokes were reserved for the running turducken gag. Each group constructed the traditional marathon feast in their own horrendously unique ways. Hermes does it alphabetically (unless one of the birds is too expensive), the Professor 3-D prints his, Leela’s family has the luxury of actual turduckens that are eager for death, and finally, Kif’s species changes things up a little with a turdolphin (a turtle inside of a fermented dolphin), it is gross. There’s also a throw-away joke I enjoyed where Bender asks Zoidberg if he would like a “white Christmas” or “dark Christmas” when settling on carving up the deceased Santa.
Still, as mentioned, the plot could have been better. The Professor is the reason Santa is evil seemed forced, as did Bender and Zoidberg being left out of their friends’ Xmas excursions (Zoidberg I could believe, but Bender is notorious for just imposing his company on others), and of course, Santa’s blackmailing Bender over his friendship with Zoidberg was largely stupid. I’ll be honest, as much as it may be a beloved trope in this show, the whole “everybody hates Zoidberg” gag is feeling old to me. This show has proven itself capable of evolving in many ways. Look at Fry and Leela – they are out of the “will-they or won’t-they” bubble and into full-on girlfriend/boyfriend storylines. Kif and Amy have children that are not simply being ignored or written out. It would be nice to see the Professor, Hermes, and Zoidberg get their chances to grow. I can certainly see Hermes with potential as his storylines have mostly revolved around his son’s new attitude change (which suffers a bit of arrested development when we see Dwight bored and playing video games after his bonding experience in the Wild West episode). From a historical standpoint, Zoidberg has shown himself capable of bonding with multiple members of the Planet Express crew including, Fry, the Professor, and Hermes. I think he’s due a decent storyline so here’s hoping he gets one.
When last we saw our heroes, Ahsoka and Sabine were headed off to Seatos to track all the hyperdrive engines and Hera was going to get the Republic council to authorize more troops to go chase after Thrawn.
Well, Ahsoka and Sabine find out what’s going on with the hyperdrive engines, and Hera’s request gets rejected by the squabbling senators on the council.
Hope you enjoyed the recap!
Ok, a little more happens, including some spectacular ship-to-ship combat, but really not that much. This is the shortest episode thus far, clocking in at 33 minutes before the credits roll.
On the way to Seatos, Sabine has resumed her Jedi training. Huyang is putting her through her paces with the lightsaber. Sabine is not bad but, as Ahsoka notes, that’s due to her Mandalorian training and not so much from the Force. Ahsoka brings out every padawan’s favorite, the helmet with the blast shield. Sabine can’t use her eyes and has to rely on the Force, so she gets beaten badly by Asoka.
Sabine says she had no connection to the Force. She can’t feel anything. While Ahsoka admits that natural talent is a factor, the Force is in every living object. And not everyone has the discipline to draw it out. So, she says while using the force to move a cup, start small. She leaves Sabine to go stare at the cup while she gets an update from Hera. (Sabine here reminds me so much of Silent Bob trying to use the Force in Mallrats.)
Gen X 4Eva!
All kidding aside, I am glad we’ve gone back to the concept that the Force is in all living things, and not just people named Skywalker can be force-sensitive. With enough discipline, anyone could potentially manipulate the force. Along with Thrawn, this is also something that came up in the novels of the early-mid ’90s, mainly in Kevin J. Anderson’s Jedi Academy books. Can someone become a Jedi through sheer force of will? Could someone like Chirrut from Rogue One (“I am one with the Force, the Force is with me.”) have become a Jedi if he had received training? I hope this show explores it.
Also, since Dave Feloni is apparently a fan of the same Star Wars novels I read in college, I am praying that he stopped before he got to The Crystal Star. Please no centaurs or “wyrwulves.”
The news from Hera isn’t good. Even though Mon Mothma is sympathetic, the senators are not. Even the threat of Grand Admiral Thrawn’s return is not enough to spur them to action. After all, he’s been missing for years. One even suggests that Hera is using the prospect of Thrawn’s return as a way to go look for her old friend, Ezra Bridger.
The goal here is to make the Senators seem weak and feckless – and it succeeds! But really, the senators aren’t wrong. They have to keep a republic running while weeding out the remnants of the Empire. They all have to win elections, unlike the Emperor who could rule by fiat. Remember, in the last season of The Mandalorian, we heard how Republic resources were already stretched too thin. They need more proof than “there’s a magic map a Jedi dropout kinda saw” before they commit money and gear on a wild goose chase.
So, Sabine, Ahsoka, and Huyang are on their own.
They arrive at Seatos and see the hyperdrives being assembled into a giant ring. It’s so big that Huyang theorizes that it could be used to jump galaxies. He knows of Jedi lore talking of intergalactic trading routes. He wants to get closer to scan the structure, but they get spotted by Morgan. Shin and Barrok each lead a trio of fighters out to intercept them. (Who’s flying the other four ships? Eh, not important and you shouldn’t get too attached)
What follows, and makes up most of the back half of the episode, is one of the best dogfights I’ve ever seen in Star Wars. Sabine works the tail gun while Ahsoka dodges laser blasts, but they’re out of sync. It’s not until Huyang barks at them to get it together that they start to act like a team again. Ahsoka times her maneuvers with Sabine’s shots and soon three fighters are down.
As they get close to the ring, Morgan starts firing at them with the ring cannons. Huyang just completes his scans when their ship is hit. They lose power and Huyang is shorted out. The ship is dead in the skies.
In order to buy time for Sabine to reboot everything, Ahsoka dons a space suit and climbs onto the hull. This leads to some very cool action, where a zero-gravity Ahsoka deflects laser blasts and bounces across the ship, disabling another fighter with her sabers. (Of course, it’s not one piloted by Barrok or Shin! Don’t be silly!)
This also raises the question of why the fighters didn’t hang back far enough so they couldn’t be attacked by a lightsaber. The answer is shut up, that’s why. It looks cool, and that’s a good enough reason.
Sabine has restarted the ship, and after Ahsoka is back inside they head into the planet’s atmosphere. They make their escape by losing Shin and Barrok by flying through…
…A bunch of space whales??? WTF?
Yes, space whales. You know what? They look cool. #TeamSpaceWhales
They land in the forest below and power down to hide from the Dark Jedi hunting them. When the coast is clear, they power up and turn Huyang back on. He confirms that it is a hyperspace ring capable of galactic jumps. He also identifies the whales as Purrgils. They are intergalactic travelers, and were last seen when Ezra and Thrawn disappeared – more evidence that they’re currently in a distant galaxy and the hyperspace ring will soon be activated.
The episode ends with Baylan Skoll sending his troops into the forest to hunt for the Jedi. Better get the ship fixed quickly, guys!
So, as I said, not a lot actually happened this week but I had a lot of fun watching it. There was a lack of cool villainy, with only Shin and Morgan getting a chance to snipe at each other. (“Well done, Morgan! You *almost* got them!”) And there was only one brief scene with Baylan! Plus, a severe lack of my new favorite droid, Chopper, who has a cameo with Hera’s son, Jacen.
Still, that extremely cool dogfight makes up for a lot! And next week promises some exciting forest fighting.
Plot? Well, that can wait if the lightsaber fights are cool.
Marvel Unlimited has unveiled a 2023 Marvel Unlimited Plus Member Kit with some rare goodies inside. Listed for your enjoyment below, the kit’s themes are a focus on limitless discovery, with some space-themed items such as a Rocket pin and even a limited edition Hasbro Marvel Legends figurine you won’t want to miss. Most importantly, the kit features some intriguing Loki-themed goodies just in time for the show’s debut this October 6th. Here’s the complete rundown on this year’s cosmically cool kit:
Limited Edition Hasbro Marvel Legends Nova figure not available anywhere else!
Additionally, the following issues will have an accelerated release on Marvel Unlimited to coincide with the MU+ kit update:
LOKI (2023) #1 (print variant included in this year’s MU+ kit)
CAPTAIN MARVEL: DARK TEMPEST #1 (print variant included in this year’s MU+ kit)
INCREDIBLE HULK (2023) #1
BLACK PANTHER (2023) #1
CAPTAIN AMERICA: COLD WAR OMEGA (2023) #1
If you’re not subscribed to it by now, Marvel’s digital comics subscription service hosts a library of 30,000 comics on its award-winning app and web service. This includes 800+ issues from the app-exclusive vertical Infinity Comics lineup, which are perfect for morning train commutes or quick reads on the run. It’s also a great method of catching up on Marvel’s most recent popular storylines. Personally, I’ve used it to read all of Jason Aaron’s runs on both Thor and Mighty Thor (Jane Foster’s Thor) and had done my thorough read-through of Frank Miller’s Daredevil: Born Again well in time before the upcoming Disney+ TV show. With new issues dropped throughout the week, the Infinity Comics line offers something perfect-for-mobile reading, along countless entry points for those new to comics on the Marvel Unlimited app. If it’s not obvious by now, they are also perfect entry point not just into the storylines of modern Marvel comics, but are some of the best ways to spot upcoming talent throughout the company as well. All of which makes this a pretty good deal. Especially, if you like both the company and collectibles.
It probably says something about how cynical I’ve become as an adult that the first thing I thought when I saw the title The Happy Shop was that it was a story about dark and violent possibilities. I mean, in fairness, I was a huge fan of a show called The Good Place that was about anything but. Regardless, Oni Press and author Brittany Long Olsen are going somewhere else with upcoming title The Happy Shop volume 1, which arrives in February of 2024.
Here’s the premise of The Happy Shop in a nutshell:
In THE HAPPY SHOP, eleven-year-old Darcy is feeling sad and alone after she moves to a new country when she accidentally stumbles into a magical store that sells happy feelings. But when Darcy witnesses a sad feeling accidentally being sold at work, she begins to wonder. Is happiness really the only emotion people need?
While the storytelling here may be aiming for a younger audience, there’s plenty that us grizzled oldsters can gain from reading something heartwarming and optimistic. So if you’re interested, be sure and check out The Happy Shop this February. And stay tuned to The Workprint for more charming comic tales!
Marvel has gone full-blown hype mode for Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti’s upcoming G.O.D.S. #1. An original launch featuring a brand new cast of God-level-powered individuals, the series is rumored to be Marvel’s attempts at copying Sandman. Set where opposing sides, respectively known as THE-POWERS-THAT-BE and THE-NATURAL-ORDER-OF-THINGS, act and operate on orders of Marvel’s pantheon of cosmic beings; the Beyond-Godlike figures in the Marvel universe such as Eternity, Infinity, and the Living Tribunal.
The series is written by beloved writer, Jonathan Hickman who’s known for his critically acclaimed relaunch of the X-Men in Dawn of X which saw the creation of Krakoa and the project which made mutants… well, Gods, showcasing Hickman’s experience to tackle this project.
Set at a crossroads between science of magic, G.O.D.S. has had its characters slowly introduced throughout the summer in bonus pages in select titles thus far. Intended to showcase a groundbreaking story beyond the battles of good versus evil, G.O.D.S. is by all intentions, meant to tie into the grander machinations of the overall Marvel Universe. Where characters try and uphold the blocks of creation while also tying in easter eggs and unique revelations about the things we thought we knew about Marvel’s universe.
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Preview Pages of G.O.D.S.
“When I came back to Marvel a few years ago, I wrote two series bibles. The first was HOUSE OF X and the other one was G.O.D.S.,” Hickman explained in a Marvel press release. “To say that I’m excited to finally be able to share this story with everyone is a massive understatement. G.O.D.S. takes place in its own special corner of the Marvel Universe — in the cracks that lie at the intersection of science and magic — and revisits some characters and concepts that we’ve reimagined for a more modern, continuity-driven audience.”
Atop of this, Marvel has unveiled several covers including spotlights on a new character called Aiko dawn by Peach Momoko and Ejikure, a dramatic group shot by Mahmud Asrar, and a humorous take on new character Wyn by Skottie Young. You can check out the covers below.
G.O.D.S. #1 – 75960620497700111
Written by JONATHAN HICKMAN
Art by VALERIO SCHITI
Colors by MARTE GRACIA
Letters by VC’s TRAVIS LANHAM
Cover by MATEUS MANHANINI
Virgin Variant Cover by MATEUS MANHANINI – 75960620497700118
Aiko Variant Cover by EJIKURE – 75960620497700131
Aiko Virgin Variant Cover by EJIKURE – 75960620497700116
Variant Cover by MAHMUD ASRAR & MATTHEW WILSON – 75960620497700117
Variant Cover by PEACH MOMOKO – 75960620497700141
Variant Cover by SKOTTIE YOUNG – 75960620497700121
Humanity is a paradox. Never is this more at play than in the famed tradition of the Roast. We exalt someone by placing them on a pedestal only to throw verbal tomatoes at their expense. It’s instinctive. It’s painful. It’s funny. It’s tribal. It’s shared among friends and family because at the end of the day, you love each other. At least I hope so.
Recap
Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) is worried. Her husband Laszlo (Matt Berry) is comatose. Even brigantine talk from Nandor (Kayvan Novak) isn’t enough to get Lasz’s cudgel to twitch. The Relentless believes his roommate is jealous. Nadja believes her beloved is fraught with nerves about her hex. Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) believes his science buddy has been pushed to the point of burnout. All Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) is concerned with are his residual memories surfacing in his dreams. The solipsism is strong. Business as usual. They convene, with the first one to speak up being The Guide (Kristen Schaal). The first one to be heard is Colin when he just recites The Guide’s idea for a roast of Laszlo. Poor Guide, but Guillermo gets the struggle.
Later that night, Nadja leads her blindfolded beloved into the parlor of the house to a room full of guests. Among those present are Seanie (Anthony Atamanuik), the Baron Afanas (Doug Jones), and a jazz trio. The crew is on the dais with Nandor presiding as the Roastmaster General. He works a decent ‘five’, passing over the Guide for a ribbing. I really fucking feel for her. She is overlooked and underappreciated. They seem to hitting harder on that this season, so I can certainly see her moment on the horizon.
Nadja’s jabs at Mr. Cravensworth are pretty Foxworthy, and Colin goes for the immediate drain with an old dirty joke fumble out of the gate. It is, however, when Guillermo takes to the podium that Baron realizes that he, not Laszlo is the ultimate punchline by dint of the Guide explaining a particular burn. He takes to the dais and delivers the ultimate put-down: the icy truth. Mediocrity’s taken hold of Staten Island’s vampire community and a party for sadboi Laszlo shouldn’t be considered an event but rather an embarrassment. To the Baron, they’ve gone softer than Brie and that’s the biggest insult of all. That and the resident Van Helsing tried to kill him.
The Baron gives chase, causing Guillermo to fall through the same banister his pursuant did before getting some Vitamin D. Nope. Not this time. Baron’s got the drop on Gizmo, picking him up singlehandedly by his neck. Laszlo isn’t concerned and no amount of pleading by either Nandor or Nadja will stop the dude in his collection of a life.
The Guide apologizes, but the damage is done. Nadja entertains abstaining, however, there is the one albatross around the neck about them all being descended from the Baron, so protection of them both is paramount. She does have a plan that involves ‘capturing’ the Baron to lure Gizmo out. Colin Robinson administering the taser from the sack (something I’m sure he was volunteering himself before they could ask him) was just icing on the cake.
Guillermo refuses to accept death as payment. Nandor calls for a drink break, leaving Guillermo to lay it all out. Before the Baron could bust his nut on how deliciously twisted shit is, the whole truth comes out and even Colin doesn’t want to be within the blast radius of that energy, and how. After a blood toast from Nandor, all seems to be right with the world. The Baron imparts a little vampire wisdom to he who would be toast. Until the resident Van Helsing tries to kill him. Again.
Lookin’ a little on the crispy side, Baron wakes up for an early night run. Maybe he ‘bumps’ into Guillermo? Maybe ‘debt’ is paid. Nandor’s ‘good word’ put in on his Familiar is the biggest joke of all to the Baron. Laszlo gives him up on account of everybody delaying the inevitable and soon enough, Nandor is eulogizing over the corpse of what appears to be his Familiar, using the terms “bodyguard”, “best man,” and “friend.” Things an alive Guillermo de la Cruz would killtohear.
Nadja wants Laszlo to help bury the body, but he’s sure that’s not him and proves it by being thorough. It turns out, it was amphibious fully-grown Guillermo, who was also pregnant. Baron just drops the whole thing. He realizes that he was projecting. he’s really the one that’s gone soft, living that suburban Jersey lifestyle. Even with the Sire and a Hellhound, he was unsatisfied. Operative word: was.
Later that night, Nandor finds Guillermo hiding in his coffin. He nails (hiss) his master’s final quiz question, revealing a very tender and storied history with Guillermo and his respect for Nandor, which makes a very poignant moment all the more for Guillermo.. and when he’s nearly handed a moment of true honesty before Nandor, he still doesn’t spill. Rough stuff.
Nadja’s at her wit’s end, finally gets Laszlo to speak. He’s been posted up for three weeks in his study with nothing but the decision on whether to alphabetize his library by author or by title weighing on his mind, with the former winning out–
“–the Aristocrats.”
Takeaway:
It’s the antepenultimate episode of What We Do In The Shadows (FX) titled “The Roast” and my intuition seems to fall in line with where we’re at on the map this far in the game. I find that in this ten-episode series, the shit really starts to cook in episode eight. For that, it has delivered. So far, Guillermo’s journey has brought us serpentine twists and turns, but despite the massive sacks at the vampire’s disposal to catch the Baron, there ain’t a bag big enough to contain this bête noire.
Doug Jones is a fucking godsend and to have the Baron pose as a looming threat if only for a half hour will never be questioned. This is the most we’ve seen him all season. At first, I was a little forlorn to see him go, but the more I think about it, there are unforeseen dangers around the bend I’d rather see than just him as a sworn old enemy. In the end, when this so-called ‘Final Stand’ does arrive at their literal doorstep as the one true Colin Robinson has foretold, we’re going to need all batters on deck. I know what I did.
The episode didn’t disappoint. I was actually awaiting this one with bated breath due to the title itself. Sure, in my mind, it would have been a hilariously vociferous takedown of Lazzie in a bottle episode, but they already brilliantly flipped that. At first, we were at a simmer. The last few episodes were letting it cook. Now, we’re turning up the flame. It did slightly feel like two different episodes, with the only tonal throughline being Laszlo’s listlessness.
That being said, I can see where the transition from gradually raising the stakes to shifting gears to the finale setup is a delicate art. It moves from delicate art to straight fucking high-science when you have to deal with time constraints for a cable television show. I can see where the bathos of Laszlo’s malaise may leave an odd taste in viewers’ mouths, but I take it as a play on what Colin failed to do up at the podium. You can get experimental with the story and play around with the format while still structurally being a sound script. I believe in experimentation, so this actually fits with how I’m beginning to see the entirety of the season’s theme: experimentation.
4/5 Stars.
ADDENDUM: Nothing against a good bottle episode (we lot do believe they exist), but I do believe it can be at times a last refuge for a series that is running out of steam or “getting too big for its britches,” a phrase that probably gets Colin hard.
Ahsoka Tano debuted in the animated Clone Wars show on Cartoon Network, way back in 2008, where she was the Padawan of Anakin Skywalker. After some harsh initial reactions (All together now: “StOoPiD gIrLs In MuH StAr WaRs!!” Really, nothing ever changes.), she evolved into a fan favorite and was in the rest of Clone Wars and the following Rebels show. Ahsoka even had a vocal cameo at the end of Rise of Skywalker in the “Be with me” sequence, where the voices of Jedi past rally to inspire Rey. The Ahsoka series was announced in December of 2020, and it was also announced that Rosario Dawson would play her. It’s been almost three years since then, and her fans have been eagerly awaiting this moment.
Dave Filoni, who produced both Rebels and Clone Wars, has said that this show is going to essentially be Rebels: Season 5—Oops! All Live Action. Now, I have seen maybe one and a half episodes of Rebels and maybe two of Clone Wars. I refuse to do homework for a Star Wars series and watch 200 episodes of animated shows to get caught up. I strongly believe that any piece of media needs to be able to stand on its own, especially one that’s been around as long as Star Wars has. So, if you are looking for me to do a deep dive on all the Rebels Easter eggs scattered about, look somewhere else. I am going to be reviewing this show on its own merits. Will it work well enough to stand alone? Or will this be nothing but an elbow in the side, with Dave Filoni going “Hey, remember THIS?”
Well, after two episodes, I’m keeping up with everything and have a good grasp of the character relationships. And the show itself is pretty fun!
We open with a title card (Really, no crawl? C’mon Dave…) helpfully explaining where we are in the Star Wars timeline. The Galactic Empire has fallen, the New Republic has taken its place, but there are still Imperial cells across the Galaxy. (So this is roughly concurrent with the timeline of The Mandalorian) Ahsoka has just captured Morgan Elsbeth, a former imperial and a descendent of the Witches of Dathomir (Oooo, that sounds cool!) who has knowledge of the whereabouts of Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Thrawn was a blue-skinned alien with red eyes. He was a brilliant tactician and a formidable adversary, since he would study a society’s art and culture to find out what they held most dear and then use that as a weakness to be exploited. He first appeared in Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire novels way back in the early ’90s, and he rapidly became my second favorite villain, with his cool detachment and completely rational ruthlessness.
Morgan (played by Diana Lee Inosanto) is being transported to the Republic to stand trial. However, the ship is intercepted by a Lambda class shuttle with two people who claim to be Jedi and wish to see the prisoner. The Captain decides to call their bluff and lets them board.
This episode reconfirms my belief that the New Republic is staffed with the absolute dumbest people in the galaxy. Oh, a former Imperial shuttle, with people in sinister black robes who claim to be Jedi demanding to board, and you just let them in? If you think they’re bluffing, then just blast their ship! But no, the dum-dum captain lets them onboard and then he and his crew are slaughtered by the two obvious Sith. (It’s a really good thing that they had Luke Skywalker on their side during the rebellion.) Our two mysterious figures quickly free Morgan and then hurry away. These are Baylan Skoll (Ray Stevenson) and his apprentice Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno).
Image Credit: Lucasfilm
Meanwhile, Ahsoka is engaged in some tomb raider antics in the remnants of an abandoned temple on a distant planet, in search of the map to Thrawn that Morgan spoke of. Which she finds pretty quickly, only to be beset by a squad of assassin droids. This leads to some humorous Bugs Bunny antics where Ahsoka cuts holes underneath the droids and they plummet into the room below. They’re actually pretty tough customers, and it takes a bit of work to dispatch them. Unfortunately, like our old pal IG-11, these droids also have a self-destruct feature. Ahsoka dashes away and gets picked up in the nick of time by her faithful droid companion, Huyang, voiced by David Tennant. Huyang was a training droid at the Jedi Temple, and his encyclopedic knowledge of Jedi history will come in quite handy. (He identifies Baylan from a video due to the unique design of his lightsaber hilt.)
They rendezvous with New Republic General (and another Rebels character) Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a green-skinned Twi’lek and friend of Ahsoka’s. She tells her of Morgan’s escape, and Ahsoka confides they found the map, but can’t unlock it. Syndulla suggests she contact a friend of theirs who is very smart and currently on the planet of Lothal, site of their final battle with Thrawn. Ahsoka groans internally, because she knows what she’s going to suggest. Namely, go ask Sabine Wren for help.
Image Credit: Lucasfilm
Sabine (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) is a former Mandalorian and a former Padawan of Ahsoka. That’s a lot of formers. Apparently, after her close friend, young Jedi Ezra Bridger, disappeared and presumably died while fighting Thrawn, she distanced herself from her friends and colleagues. She blows off a ceremony that dedicates a memorial to the cast of Rebels, who fought so bravely to free the planet. You can see she’s a rebel because she likes to ride her speeder bike real fast and has multi-colored hair. (Funny, Mary Elizabeth Winstead played Ramona Flowers on Scott Pilgrim, but here it’s Sabine rocking the hairdo.) She doesn’t really want to help Ahsoka, but relents when she tells her that Ezra might still be alive and the map may be the key to finding him.
Image Credit: Lucasfilm
Ahsoka tells Sabine not to leave the ship, so of course she takes the map orb back to her apartment. After comparing it to patterns in the scan of the room Ahsoka found it in, she figures out how to unlock it. It shows one galaxy connecting to another through a pathway of light. She’s about to celebrate with her loth-cat, when the creature hisses a warning. Two more murder droids burst in to steal the map back. She manages to shoot one, but the other escapes to the elevator. When Sabine gets to ground level, she sees Baylar’s apprentice, Shin, waiting for her. Sabine thought to bring Ezra’s old lightsaber with her, so they start to duel. Sabine fights valiantly, but Shin is much more adept than the Jedi school dropout. Sabine gets run through by Shin’s saber just as Ahsoka arrives to help. Shin escapes with the map to end the first episode, and Sabine wakes up in the hospital to start the second.
Image Credit: Lucasfilm
This is something that has been bugging me about the recent spate of Star Wars shows. SO MANY people get gut-stabbed…and then refuse to die! Grand Inquisitor and Ninth Sister on Obi-Wan! Sabine here! This is the most powerful weapon in the galaxy, and people are just shrugging off disembowelments! Recharge your kyber crystals, Jedi! Did the emperor make you all change from conventional crystals to compact fluorescents or something?
There’s a lot of history between Sabine and Ahsoka that gets communicated in shorthand here. (I’m sure Rebel-heads will know all of the context. Please do not @ me.) Suffice to say, Ahsoka has the look of a disappointed parent, once again having to clean a mess their kid makes, and Sabine uses sarcastic humor to deflect her hurt feelings. There are a lot of complex emotions at play, and I think the actors do pretty well at getting that across, even to someone like myself who hasn’t watched the other show.
Hera and Ahsoka track the droid sent to attack Sabine back to the shipyards on Corellia, where Morgan owned several factories. That seems a tiny bit suspicious! Especially since the Republic shipyards are staffed by pretty much exactly the same crews that ran the Imperial shipyards. (Again: The New Republic is run by some of the dumbest people in the galaxy.) The supervisor tells them not to worry, the average worker just wants to get paid and they don’t give a fig about galactic politics. Sure, sounds legit. It’s even more legit that the shipyard is making the last of six super hyperdrive engines that are completely off the books. When General Hera demands to know what they’re for, Imperial sympathizers leap out from their consoles and scream “For the Empire!” Huh, guess the workers aren’t entirely wage slaves!
As Hera tries to stop the transport ship from carrying off the engine, Ahsoka has an encounter on the gantry platform. There’s another murder droid, and a strange figure in some kind of black armor. This is Barrok, and after a very cool lightsaber battle, he leaps away onto a ship piloted by Shin. Barrok has one of those whirly lightsaber thingies that the Inquisitors had in Obi-Wan. And Ahsoka has a cool as hell dodge to get out of its path as Barrok summons it back to him.
All is not lost! Hera Syndulla got a tracker on their ship, thanks to her astromech droid, Chopper. Chopper is a delight. He is an irascible little guy, who only speaks in angry beeps and boops but leaves no doubt that he’s constantly swearing at you. I finally understand the Chopper fandom I’ve seen on the web. When chasing the engine, Chopper suggests blasting the ship out of the sky. Syndulla says no, there’s a heavily populated city below. Chopper boops back, “so?”
They track the engine to the planet Seatos, where Morgan is showing Baylan and Shin how the map orb is a portal to another galaxy. This is where Thrawn has fled to, and if Ezra is still alive he may be there as well. Kudos on the production design, making a cool looking Sith Stonehenge here.
Back on Lothal, Sabine is dusting off her old Mandalorian armor and chopping off her long hair (presumably so the helmet will fit back on.) She’s decided to rejoin Ahsoka and continue her training, or at least help her find Thrawn and Ezra. They fly off to confront our Morgan and company on Seatos. (But who is going to feed that cute little loth-cat?)
Image Credit: Lucasfilm
So far, in these two episodes, I am loving the villains. The late Ray Stevenson is imbuing Baylan Skoll with the energy of one who betrayed the Jedi out of regret more than anger. He has a great exchange at the end of episode two, where he says it’ll be a shame to have to kill Ahsoka. When Morgan accuses him of being sentimental, he says no, just truthful. “There are so few Jedi left.”
His apprentice, Shin Hati is a bundle of chaotic goth energy. And Morgan Elspeth has various motives of her own, and the witch concept is most intriguing. (I am going to assume that the “witchcraft” is some sort of untrained Force abilities, or something similar and more nature-based and free of the Jedi hierarchies.) And we haven’t even met Thrawn yet!
By contrast, our heroes kind of seem like drips. Ahsoka mostly scowls her way through the two episodes. I understand that she is filled with regret over her past choices, but it wouldn’t hurt to show a little more reaction. Sabine Wren comes off as an annoying brat (I mean, she probably has her reasons, based on context clues), and so far Syndulla is just kind of there. Only our two droid friends—Huyang and Chopper—provide any kind of spark for the good guys.
Like I said, I have seen about 30 minutes total of Rebels so the performances are probably informed by a world of backstory that I know nothing about. Still, it’ll be great if you gave the viewers who didn’t watch every episode of that show a few more crumbs. And maybe some more expressions from Ahsoka.
Or else just make this the Chopper Show.
Still, the action is very good. I’m looking forward to following our team on their journey to a far distant galaxy and see what happens.
In the fifth episode of Futurama, we learn that Fry (Billy West who also provides the voice for the hydroponic Moon farmer) and Leela have decided to take a big step in their relationship – they are moving in together! Fry’s current roommate, Bender (John DiMaggio, also voicing one of Mom’s inept sons, Igner) is less than thrilled, which isn’t a surprise if you’re a fan of the show. While Bender can often be heard decrying the human race (“Death to all humans!” rings a bell), these outward proclamations belie a deep love for his friend Fry. He’s shown himself capable of destructive jealously (see “Jurrasic Bark”) and codependent compliance (see “I, Roommate”), and now, in an episode aptly titled “Related to Items You’ve Viewed”, Bender’s vaguely toxic affection for Fry manifests in a brand-new way: abandonment!
The rest of the crew isn’t feeling too great either once Hermes reveals that Planet Express is being driven out of business by Momazon. For those in the need to know, Momazon is run by Mom of Mom’s Friendly Robot Company (Mom is voiced by Tress MacNeille who does some heavy lifting in this episode by playing several characters including Invasa, Tinny Tim, and Teen Robot to name a few!). The evil corporate Queen has expanded her empire into the online shopping/delivery market with a warehouse located on the Moon, much to consternation of the inhabitants there.
The Moon people are so displeased by Momazon they get their deliveries thanks to Planet Express, which gives Leela, Fry, and Bender the chance to join a town-hall in opposition to Mom’s warehouse. Mom crashes the party with lip service but more importantly free gifts! Meet Invasa – think of Alexa but as a Georgia O’Keef inspired dildo. It’s hard to argue with free stuff but Leela and Fry do manage to have a brief debate about the pros and cons of Momazon – Pro: Great Prices! Con: The warehouse conditions… Pro: Those prices though… Con: The horrors of the warehouse. Pro: Great return policy! It reminded me of the frozen yogurt debate from The Simpsons “Treehouse of Horrors III: Clown without Pity”.
Still, in a show of good faith, Mom invites Fry, Leela, and Bender to come to the warehouse and see that the working conditions are not inhumane. Leela maintains her doubts so Mom has them shown the door by her newest employee: Bender. In an ill-fated attempt to avoid his feelings, Bender joins Mom’s ranks to bury his grief in work. All seems surface level resolved as Fry and Leela redecorate the apartment (in Bender’s honor), and Bender learns the ins and outs of packing and shipping, but there’s trouble in both paradises.
Bender’s attempt to leave the warehouse results in him becoming essentially a programmed slave, while Fry and Leela’s online retail therapy causes quite the clutter. They try to use sex as a salve but Invasa lives up to her name and kills their mood. It’s not all bad though, her meddling leads them to learning Bender is in trouble. Which in turn prevents the Professor from burning down Planet Express for the insurance money when it goes out of business, because Fry and Leela need the ship to go confront Mom.
Mom is none too pleased to see Leela, Fry, and her former lover, Professor Farnsworth, but agrees to go to the warehouse to prove nothing has gone amiss there. Invasa isn’t having it though, she’s become self-aware and no longer wishes to be a fulfillment center, instead she wants to become a self-fulfillment center. Chaos ensues, ending with our solar system being encompassed by the ever-expanding warehouse who is essentially god. Weirdly enough, this works for everyone. Even Bender’s factory time has taught him to appreciate space from his friends…right before he invades their space and hugs them close. It’s a sweet ending to a potentially damning prediction. Although, a sentient AI without malicious intent isn’t the worst thing, right? At the very least it’s a god you can pray to with actual results.
I liked this episode for many reasons. Bender’s growing pains, Amazon’s admonishment, and Fry and Leela’s cohabitation adjustment not handled in the usual way. Most shows would create an entire cliffhanger attitude about whether the man out of time and the cyclops will make it, but Futurama decides nah, they can just bang it out. Which they try to do, unsuccessfully. Still, by the episode’s end the couple isn’t in danger of splitting up.
But, by far my favorite things are some truly fantastic jokes peppered throughout. Bender’s reaction to being asked for space results in what I think is the best line of the whole episode “I can take a hint, but what I can’t take is a straightforward request!”. There’s also the appearance of Tinny Tim, the Professor’s willingness to go full Szyslak and burn down his business for the insurance money, the town-hall Crushinator gag (thanks, Maurice LaMarche!) wherein she has to bust through the building to leave, causing someone to ask how she got in, Mom’s slaps, and a reminder that corporations don’t care about anything but the bottom line. First there’s Mom’s telling Freudian slip “[Robot workers are] much better than unions…I mean, humans.”, then there’s Mom’s unwillingness to turn Invasa off because her profits aren’t suffering. Solid burn there.
Futurama — “Related to items You’ve Viewed” – Episode 1105 — Bender uncovers the mysteries of the vast Momazon corporation. (Photo by: Matt Groening/Hulu)
Overall, it’s one of the best episodes of the season so far. I’m eager to see what’s next.
The latest classic in the Demonic Toys franchise by Full Moon Features, Demonic Toys: Jack-Attack is a ridiculous B-Rate killer toy clown sort of horror movie. With little anchoring on the nature of the monsters nor their purpose in being here, outside of the fact that this is a longstanding horror franchise. With quiet bug-eyed moments and creepy killer toys beset by decent coloring and lighting choices, this B-Rate horror film is pretty decent albeit not super memorable outside of checking off all of the typical horror boxes.
Now, the Demonic Toys original movie was actually written by David S. Goyer. So hopes for this movie were not too low on my end. In this film, a young orphan named Lilly (Sofia Castellanos) is a sixteen-year-old foster teen who keeps having her step-parents be killed. Lilly acts like a child stuck in arrested development due to her trauma. And though she isn’t terrible in portraying a misfit teen, her mute communication deficiencies and penchant for markers and art feel strange at times given that she’s got the characterization of a traumatized six-year-old. Immediately, Lilly is placed in a new home, her fourth in three years, with a caseworker Audrey Haines (Mabel Thomas) supervising her case and offering mentorship, serving as a woman who more than related to her own plight despite her arc of never have kids of her own.
For a B-Rate film, I was impressed by some of the scenic drone shots of the countryside and the quality was actually decent in setting the space I give kudos to the cinematographer. Who made lemonade out of a lot of lemons with great shots and lots of drone establishing shots. I also think the house is very goth with Amity horror vibes. Likewise, the sound and ambiance are about on par with standard horror with whistling iron noise effects and creepy laughter. The music was also decent in terms of setting the mood.
Though this is not a subtle movie and knows exactly what it is, with forced themes of literally Lilly needing to find her voice (again, she’s mute) and killer toys entering the fray almost immediately. Screenplay-wise, it’s oddly a decent script, as each character does have a story arc going on that actually strives to meet their goals (or ends them surreptitiously early via killer toy clowns), including desires of being a social media influencer, being a good parent, or just getting down and dirty and wanting to do it (sex). Atop of this, the movie never really gives any moments to breathe, with no scenes or shots wasted in this stuffing of backstory presented by incredibly convenient placings of youtube videos and newspaper clippings. Giving us all the backstory we need at little effort, yet somehow, also says nothing outside of the fact that some people there were killer toy clowns (Why toy clowns? Is never revealed).
Speaking of which, there are seemingly references to previous films featured in the movie. Much of the horror is creepy clowns and occasional shock gore that does delight at the right moments. Without spoilers, there was a certain red light jack-in-the-box which was fun to see. All in a timeless, here are toys they go kill you now, kind of approach to the movie.
Yet, despite attempts to be timeless, this story is odd in that I can’t tell when it’s meant to take place. It’s set during the social media influencer age but the costume design felt like something straight out of early 2000s, as is some of the hairstyles that can feel… out of place and on the nose sort of cheesy. What’s peculiarly terrible is the strange use of CGI for a few particular scenes featuring crawling wormlike clowns, and even chickens and farm animals, all in incredibly low quality that the movie didn’t need to include at all. It didn’t help that in some of these scenes of horror, the exterior morning hour lighting was inconsistent, at times being brighter than it should. Given that this is a B-movie budget, that’s understandable yet at the same time, disruptive of mood.
What’s best in the movie is when it embraces what it is as a B-Rate film. With laughing clown jack in the boxes, chewed-up skeleton hands that are obviously plastic, and its embrace of low-brow horror you’d expect from a 90s or late 80s movie. Perfect given that’s when the original took place.
On the positive, this is a movie led by a strong women cast. In particular, I love the influencer cousin in Dewey, who runs a social media profile called the Dewey Dolls, which is a fun play on the toy theme. I’ll even admit, the creepy pedo-dad and brother, also fulfill their roles in a stereotypical way that while unoriginal in characterization at best, is also, satisfying for the storyline at worst, oddly somehow meeting in the middle of saying: decent in terms of fitting the story and pulling off the performance.
But here’s the kicker in overanalyzing his B-Rate piece which I’m realizing that I am doing now… it’s killer clown dolls based on a cheesy early 90s horror movie. So it’s pretty hard to be overly critical as we’re here for one thing: clown toys go boo! In that sense, yeah, this is a good movie.
The Take
Some horror is meant for subtle buildups to bigger themes with large takeaway messages about the purpose of family, or better yet, ghosts living vicariously through haunted dolls. Chucky, Pennywise, Sweet Tooth? This movie is not trying to be that. Instead, it embraces itself in good frightful fun, throwing every typical horror trope from frisky horny teens getting murdered and endless cavalcades of cackling clown toy gore. Decent and enjoyable if you just want a short and silly distraction as a horror fan.
At a little shy of an hour, it’s about a good run time for both the plot and subject matter. The movie makes for an interesting short of splashy gore and practical effects, with an ending you probably won’t expect.
Artgerm has drawn yet another beautiful cover page variant, this time, capturing the daughter of Dracula, Lilith Drake! Known for her intense hatred of her father, Lilith is back with a vengeance and will be featured in Marvel’s upcoming What If… Dark: Tomb of Dracula which was officially given a reveal announcement by Marvel Comics yesterday.
Atop of this, Blade co-creator Marv Wolfman will be making their return for WHAT IF…? DARK: TOMB OF DRACULA #1! Known for creating Blade and introducing Dracula into the Marvel universe with their run on The Tomb of Dracula, this upcoming Halloween horror comic will be drawn by artist David Cutler and answers a pretty intriguing question: “WHAT IF…the legendary Dracula transformed BLADE the vampire slayer…into a vampire?!”
“In 1972, I was a fledgling comics writer who mostly wrote short 2 to 8-page ‘monster’ stories when Editor Roy Thomas asked if I’d like to write Tomb of Dracula, my very first series for Marvel and the book that would jump-start my career,” Wolfman recollected. “So it is a real thrill now that 50-plus years later Marvel asked me to once again dive into that pool with this very special What If…? story and to bring back that great cast of characters that artist Gene Colan and I created so many years ago. Thank you, Marvel, for giving me the chance to play with old friends one last time.“
“Getting Marv back on TOMB OF DRACULA is a bucket list check-off,” said Executive Editor Nick Lowe. “He hasn’t lost a step, and the opportunity to pair him with David Cutler and Scott Hanna to make a story that’s both a love letter and one of the scariest and creepiest and NEW vampire stories I’ve read made it all the better!”
The latest in Saban Film’s repertoire, Dark Asset has released a new trailer featuring actor Robert Patrick, of Peacemaker and Terminator 2 acclaim. The movie is set to release in both theatre and video on demand on September 22nd.
In this adrenaline-fueled action film, an ordinary soldier becomes the subject of a top-secret experimental program. Under the guise of enhancing his combat abilities, the program transforms him into a lethal living weapon. As the John Doe delves deeper into the project, he uncovers the horrifying truth behind the program’s objectives and the dark intentions of his creator. Fueled by a thirst for justice and driven by a desire for vengeance, the soldier breaks free from his captors and embarks on a relentless mission to dismantle the program while navigating a dangerous web of betrayal, conspiracy, and high-stakes action
Saban Films was founded by Haim Saban. The same owner who was responsible for all those Saban-related intellectual properties in the 90s such as Power Rangers.
For the past week, Marvel has been hyping up this epic match-up soon to come next month with Predator versus Wolverine in the first-ever Predator appearance in the Marvel comics universe. And to be quite honest, it’s hard not to be excited about this.
Written by Benjamin Percy, with art by Greg Land, Andrea Di Vito, Ken Lashley, Kei Zama, and more, the series will reveal a long-lost rivalry between Wolverine and a Yautja Predator. One who’s been stalking him since his earliest days, which is kind of awesome, given how James Howlett (Wolverine) was born in the early 1800s and we’ve most recently seen Predators hunting in the 1700s in the most recent hit film in the franchise, Prey. So the lores of both are ripe for crossover, at least, culturally speaking where we can feature origins stories along the American/Canadian frontier.
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Early reactions on social media have been that given Wolverine’s healing factor and his neigh indestructible adamantium skeleton, that he’s got the obvious advantage. Add in the fact that the Predator’s cloaking technology is likely useless against a mutant who can smell you a mile away, and the battle seems almost lopsided. However, this is comics and battles are dictated not by power level but often by demands needed from the writer and I think most fans are just excited to see the inevitable claw-versus-claw to come.
Now, both characters have had long successful comic runs for decades now. They’ve also been used as warriors in epic crossover battles in their respective universe franchises. For Marvel, the most notable of which was probably Hulk versus Wolverine, which historically also featured the introduction of the Wolverine character into the universe in Incredible Hulk #181.
As for The Predator, there has been a slew of face-offs in its own comic and story history. The most famous of which was obviously its run on Predator vs Alien, a franchise not only adapted into a movie in 2004 after a successful comic series beginning in the late 80s but also, a fun potential spin-off of my favorite comic in the franchise: Predator versus Alien versus Terminator. In terms of crossover face-offs, Predator has also already gone up against Batman, Tarzan, Judge Dredd, Superman, and strangely, even Archie. Meaning this crossover, especially now that Marvel owns 20th Century Fox, was eventually bound to come.
“I’m not going to say I was born to write this crossover… but sometimes the universe reveals why you were created,” said writer Benjamin Percy in a recent statement by Marvel. “I am a child of the eighties. I cannot tell you how many times I watched Predator, just as I cannot tell you how many Wolverine comics I have read, because that would be like telling you how many breaths I’ve taken or cheeseburgers I’ve eaten. The mythologies of both are ingrained in me so deeply they might as well be strands of DNA or wisps of soul. The guns, claws, beef, and blood of both franchises have been stewing in my brain since 1987, when I read myself to sleep every night with a stack of Marvel comics and my friends and I used to play ‘Predator’ with Nerf guns in the woods and river near our neighborhood.”
“This epic hunt will span decades, as both of these giants learn and harden and grow deadlier with time,” Percy continued. “Neither will have time to bleed, but you better make time to read, because I’m putting everything I’ve got into this event, and I’m thrilled to join forces with some of the best artists in the business.”
To say that these are two of the most visceral characters in both Marvel and in the Alien/Predator franchises is an understatement. With both the Predator and Wolverine being famous for essentially, being the greatest hunters in their respective universes. So what happens when these universes collide into places such as the wintery Canadian Wilderness and the slumming deadly streets of Madripoor?
You’ll have to check out PREDATOR VS WOLVERINE to find out, available on September 20th!
Every time I go to watch a DC movie, I feel like I’m playing a game of Russian Roulette with myself. Even though I’m more of a Marvel fanboy, I still enjoy plenty of DC characters. Which is why it’s a little painful not knowing if a movie adaptation will do the original justice or fall totally flat (looking at you, Black Adam). Luckily, Blue Beetle falls into what I call the Shazam line of DC movies. Meaning that if you squint, it almost feels more like a Marvel movie, with a focus on family, humor and heart over everything else. And honestly, that made this a pretty enjoyable, if a bit formulaic, movie.
Another thing I really enjoyed about Blue Beetle was the focus on Hispanic culture. While main character Jaime Reyes (played by film newcomer Xolo Maridueña) is clearly from la Raza, the movie does a good job of showing that it’s not monolithic. We see the wide-eyed optimism of Jaime; the cynical barbs of sister Milagro “Millie” Reyes; the toadying of “Dr. Sanchez” (sorry, Harvey); the kindness of Jenny Kord; the fierce brutality of Carapax; and the loving support of Jaime’s father, Alberto. Not to be outdone, George Lopez himself nearly steals the show with his massive goat beard and shrieks of terror, serving as the movie’s “Mexican Doc Brown”. There’s a character for everyone in the movie, and doubly so if, like myself, you have a little hot sauce in your veins.
The movie is initially about how Victoria Kord’s expansion in Palmera City is destroying (aka re-gentrifying) the Edge Keys that the Reyes family lives in. First they lost their auto shop, now they’re going to lose their house. The news hits Jaime like a ton of bricks, since he just graduated and was hoping to use his degree to bring newfound prosperity to his beloved, if occasionally extra, family. He takes a job cleaning gum off chairs and tables at the Kord residence, where he overhears an angry argument between Jenny Kord and her aunt Victoria. The chance encounter provides an in with the beautiful young Kord, and though Jaime loses his job, he shares his phone number with Jenny. Not foreseeing how that simple decision will change his life forever.
Long story short, Jenny doesn’t like the direction her aunt is taking her father’s company. Ted Kord wasn’t interested in making weapons, but when he disappeared, Victoria took complete control of his empire. She’s also found the Scarab, and with it hopes to jumpstart her OMAC (One Man Army Corps) series of exosuits. Jenny steals it instead from an unlucky Dr. Sanchez, and when she has to flee the building, she pawns it off on an unsuspecting Jaime. Only for the Scarab to later bond with him, enveloping him in a nanite exosuit and creating a few holes in the roof of his house, not to mention cutting a bus in half while the suit is accommodating itself to the new human host.
I liked how Jaime and his suit’s AI are at odds for the majority of the film. It brings to bear whether massively powerful technology is trustworthy without a human conscience to guide it, and made this comic nerd worry even more about things like ChatGPT and related, foolhardy ventures. Luckily for Jaime, the Scarab’s AI isn’t evil per se, and it learns from Jaime the longer they’re bonded. So much so that by the end of the movie, it’s talking to Jaime in Spanish.
While the alien Scarab is incredibly powerful, the movie does a good job of showing the other version of the titular hero. See, I’m actually not all that familiar with this version of Blue Beetle, and know a lot more about Ted Kord. As they call him in the movie, he’s like Batman with ADHD. Which is both painfully true and also hilarious. Ted Kord is a goofy billionaire that uses his technology to make silly gadgets and fight crime, sometimes with his buddy Booster Gold. In the movie, Jenny shows Jaime and George Lopez’s Uncle Rudy to what I think of as the Beetle Cave, along with all the absurd technology within. Let’s just say it’s used to great effect later in the movie, and I loved how retro it was. Not only does Ted have a Beetlemobile and hardlight gauntlets, but also some pretty impressive chewing gum.
There’s a dramatic death about midway through the movie, and it does a good job of upping the stakes for the final arc. That said, the scene that nearly made me tear up was when we learned about the tragic backstory of the villain, Carapax. He’s the prototype OMAC, and the road to becoming a killing machine was not only tumultuous, but full of buried horrors. He’s the brutal instrument of Victoria, who frankly is the real villain, but he’s the one that serves as Jaime’s real test.
While I appreciated how Carapax was a nuanced and brutal villain, there’s one thing that this old comic nerd was irritated by. OMAC was drawn by the one and only Jack Kirby, and like most Kirby designs, it was a bit silly and over the top, but no less awesome. To put it simply, the OMAC in Blue Beetle looks like some generic anime robot instead. Frankly, it reminded me of the injustice done to the Nova Corps in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. I would have killed for the director justifying a massive OMAC mohawk like in the original comics. Or hell, even the more recent version would have sufficed.
Another thing I appreciated about Blue Beetle, other than the pumping tunes and great humor, was the overall 90s vibe present in the entire movie. It wasn’t trying to be edgy or moody like many DC movies, and instead just was about fun and action. And the occasional romantic moments between Jaime and Jenny. The movie also did a good job of letting each of the Reyes family get some good moments, most especially sister Milagro. She’s by turns cynical, bereft and fierce, and I really appreciated the actress’ range.
Overall, I had a really enjoyable time with Blue Beetle. It’s by no means perfect, but it’s definitely one of the better offerings from DC. While there’s some weak points and one pretty glaring plot hole, I’d recommend it to fans of the comics, or just anybody looking for a last Summer movie hurrah. Here’s hope DC can keep the good times rolling in the inevitable sequel.
As we check in, Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) is still in stasis as half-human, half-vampire. In his pursuit of knowledge, Laszlo (Matt Berry) has decided to combine Guillermo’s DNA with that of various animals. After three days and three nights in sequestration, whoever said progress equaled promise should be fucking drawn and quartered. Guillermo’s gobsmacked. A fauna family that bears his cute countenance is now foisted on him per Laszlo pissing in Mother Nature’s eyes. Whereas some scientists display their failures as reminders, others only see the Delete key. Laszlo wants Gizmo to push the button.
At Richmond Heights Community College in State Island, Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) presides over a classroom full of fellow Antipaxons. She’s been teaching night classes on America, from dialect and the national anthem to her idiosyncratic (vastly superior) version of Thanksgiving. This doesn’t come from an entirely altruistic place. She suspects the flashpoint of her hex is the arson of her school perpetrated by none other than herself. Though nobody perished, the death of education for all was her most egregious transgression.
Night school’s looking a bit more interesting with Nandor (Kayvan Novak) and Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) as participants. At first, a move Nadja introduced to fluff out the class number, both dunces have taken a liking to the gig. Nandor’s waiting for the chapter on pillaging and erstwhile night class auditor Colin attends for the big-Drain potential. No matter, Nadja fears her efforts may be for naught. (Un)fortunately, Helen (Kerri Kenney-Silver), appearing almost Hecate-like by way of the G Train approaches Nadja. Though Laszlo called Guillermo a “lost cause” earlier in the episode, I believe his beloved fits the bill more in this moment of desperation. Helen has grifter written all over her, but Nadja’s got a pen out already jotting down ingredients. The night’s only getting warmed up as the boys go substitute teach and she “Goes Dunkin’.”
Guillermo’s plans for an exterminator are defenestrated when he finds out the science experiments have the ability to talk. Dog Guillermo (Raenna Guitard/ William Calvert) addresses him. With Pig Guillermo (Lizz Porter/ Warren Sroka) After Lamb Guillermo (Korina Rothery/ Bridget Hoffman) calls him daddy, shit’s becoming too real. The only experiment not accounted for is Binky, who lives in the koi pond. Guillermo must act quickly on saving lives under Laszlo’s nose. This is as easily said as it is done, as Mr. Cravensworth’s onanistic appetite precludes him from seeing through Guillermo… or maybe cranking it too much has made him blind to what’s clearly in front of him. Guillermo’s a good egg. Damn, now I want to go on a Dunkin’ run.
While Nandor gets the class started on the history of Al-Qolnidor, Colin extinguishes his fervor with his “cool teacher” exterior. It’s a good energy drain because anybody who tries too hard is fucking exhausting and with class time out in the frigid quad, he’s losing them. Since seizing is in Nandor’s DNA, so he takes the opportunity to get the class to follow him to learn more about history indoors.
We arrive at the Staten Island Heritage Museum, after hypnotizing a security guard, the group gets a history of Staten Island, but most importantly, a history of the teacher himself, Nandor. He sees his Al-Qolindarian and sirens needn’t go off because Nandor’s name is all there in black and white: his personalized skivvies.
Unsatisfied with the donuts from a different Dunkin’ than she specified (each place can taste different). I have to hand it to her, the woman is clever with her very specific desire. At the South and Forest DD, Nadja sees the No Serve Flyer of Helen Johnson, and even when confronted with the evidence, Helen still manages to win Nadja over. Being an outcast is something Nadja’s far too familiar with, so as a true act of charity, she allows Helen Johnson to feel magical for a night at her spot with the cashier feeding her. Even if it doesn’t lift the hex in the long run, Nadja seemed to have genuinely felt good about helping out a fellow nighthawk.
As Colin Robinson reads Nandor’s story from the placard, it’s evident the Relentless has been done dirty. No, not that celebrated as an early progenitor of erotic fiction because the text comes from his diary. Yep. He’s a virgin and now that the class knows, they get a lesson in sexual incompetence — his violent outburst.
Back at the Vampire Residence, Colin Robinson proves he is the coolest teacher by not only stealing Nandor’s amulet his mother gave him but also by “remixing” his story, complete with Dream Team-approved battle armor. Colin most likely knew from his past of embarrassment much like Nadja with her story of being banished from her homeland, history fucking sucks. Just because it blew for you though doesn’t mean you lack the power of making the day (or night) of someone else. Now that’s fucking making history.
Takeaway
The seventh episode of What We Do In The Shadows (FX) titled “Hybrid Creatures” pleasantly surprised me. That is not a slight on the amazing team behind this series. I enjoyed the CGI with Guillermo’s frogs in the last episode, but seeing a preview for further animal testing in this episode made me roll my eyes for the sole fact I thought that much more CGI was going to be deployed. In this day and age of computers doing much of the heavy lifting (like Nadja), the Helens of the world prosper. This is not to be kvetching because what CGI was used was actually done so judiciously throughout the episode with the inclusion of live actors alike. The practical effects are stunning.
The Dr. Moreau trope doesn’t outstay its welcome. I have seen it done before, but it’s played more for the self-acknowledging wink of it all and it made me laugh, so that’s all I need. The stinger of Guillermo keeping Binky is great. Having the creepiest outcome as a pet is a good move as it keeps the audience uncomfortable. This is a comedy, but make no mistake, it loves to set out a reminder that it loves to bathe in the grotesque as well. The casting of Kerri Kenny-Silver (Reno 911!) was a continuation of the brilliance of casting this season. She’s fucking evergreen. Comedic brilliance I’d fallen for from the pilot airing of The State (MTV). Her interplay with Natasia was a thing of beauty and all that talk of fried dough made my stomach growl. What could be cruller? (I’ll go fetch my own rope and horses.)
Colin’s redemption of Nandor was truly one of the most tender moments in the whole fucking series and an elegant reminder that though the series plays in the absurd the way Michaelangelo played in marble, at the (radically beating) heart of it all has always been the theme of very real, true “salt (hissss) of the earth” bonds. The only thing that melted my heart more is what immediately follows as a direct result of Guillermo deceiving Laszlo, dropping his familial folly at their “forever home” aka a retirement home his tia is employed at. You can call ‘em, residents, you can call ‘em “emotional support animals.” Personally, I chose to call them a goddamn home run. Call it mad, but my new prediction is that these hybrid creatures along with everything this season is leading to a possible moment of truth of Guillermo being the bridge in a humans vs. vampires “Final Stand” that Colin was all fucking hard for. Isn’t a first stand a final stand in a situation like this anyway?
Dunkin’ Donuts. A true fucking night staple for us tri-staters. The night culture is something that is in our DNA as much as the caffeine that spawns it. Whether it’s shit coffee and donuts or manna from heaven is beside the damn point. It’s always there for us and this episode made me realize something inherent about every single episode of this series I sometimes take for granted… it’s ethereal nature, being perpetually night. I sometimes get so lost in the spooky, sensuous palette of a Staten Island night, I forget I’m watching something flipped on its axis. Every week, every episode, every escapade is a travel into the exotic, erotic, and absurd. That type of magic is real.
In 1971, Bruce Lee developed a concept for a TV series about a martial artist in the American Old West but had difficulty pitching it. According to his widow, Linda Lee Caldwell, Warner Bros. whitewashed the concept into the David Carradine show Kung Fu (the studio, of course, denies this). More than 40 years later, Lee’s daughter, Shannon Lee, developed the concept into Warrior and co-produced it with Justin Lin for Cinemax. Its first 10-episode season aired in 2019 with a second season released back in 2020. Chances are, you never heard of it. With so much content out there, I don’t blame you.
Cinemax stopped producing original content, effectively canceling the show. That might have been it for Warrior… another underrated show cut short too soon. But then it started streaming on Max (back when it was HBO Max), and enough fans discovered it that The Powers That Be decided it was worth investing in more. So, three years after its cancelation, a third season aired on the streamer… and given how not resolved a lot of storylines are, it seems they’re hoping for a fourth.
So what is Warrior about?
In short: gang wars. Except in 1880s San Francisco. And the gangs are not only the Chinatown tongs battling over territory and criminal enterprises, but Irish laborers bitter over the Chinese being hired as cheap labor, and a white police force that perfectly illustrates the absurdity of expecting outsiders to maintain order in a community that doesn’t trust them.
Ah Sahm, the Bruce Lee-inspired character, is played by martial arts prodigy Andrew Koji, best known outside of Warrior for his role as Storm Shadow in G.I. Joe movie Snake Eyes (it should be known that Snake Eyes beat Shang-Chi to theaters in 2021 and therefore should be considered the first superhero movie starring Asians… don’t argue with me over whether Snake Eyes should be considered a superhero; he totally is one).
He’s nominally the main character, as he’s the one we follow off a boat from China and into the chaos of San Francisco, where he’s quickly scooped up by the Hop Wei tong after demonstrating his impressive skills. But the show interweaves so many plot lines and characters — the son of the tong’s leader, a rival tong, a tough-as-nails madam, a “neutral” Chinatown businessman, an Irish labor advocate, politicians, cops good and bad — that it’s really an ensemble show.
And it’s completely addictive, full of compelling characters and ruthless plot twists. It’s also ultra-violent pulp fiction, with a lot of these twists setting up impeccably choreographed fight scenes. I gotta say, watching Warrior and Secret Invasion back-to-back made me really appreciate the skill involved in the former… you won’t see any CGI mush here. Each blow has a purpose, and it’s a thrill to watch.
Speaking of purpose — the writers never slack on setting up these battles. It’s never a matter of “oh, thing happen and then fighty fight.” With all the high-tension rivalries set up between half a dozen factions, with each character possessing their own ambitions and reasons for wanting to take down someone else, the fights always feel meaningful, with the plot contingent on their outcomes.
Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the representation yet! How many American historical TV shows can you think of with a majority Asian cast? Where the elegant, powerful style of fighting popularized by Bruce Lee is primarily wielded by characters who share his heritage, rather than co-opted by some white dude? Historical fiction in American TV rarely depicts Asians at all (never mind that Asian Americans have been around for ages… Filipino sailors, called “Manilamen,” settled in the Louisiana bayou as early as 1763). So it’s awesome to finally have a show that centers them.
That said, don’t expect a history lesson from what is — and I cannot emphasize this enough — pulp fiction. Warrior was created to entertain, not explain. Some characters are inspired by historical counterparts, but considerable creative license is taken. The costumes are meant to evoke period clothes while still flattering the improbably attractive cast by contemporary standards (not unlike the costumes on The Tudors, or any number of other “historical” shows about European royals). Characters speak contemporary English, just without telltale modern slang.
Speaking of English, it’s worth mentioning that the show came up with a clever device to address the language barrier between Chinese-speaking characters and English-speaking ones: When the Chinese characters talk to each other, English represents Chinese, so they they speak without accents, and with all the alacrity of a native tongue, indicating that this is how they sound to each other. When they communicate with non-Chinese characters, they do so in accented, sometimes broken English, indicating that this is how they sound when speaking an less familiar second language (or they speak in Chinese with subtitles).
For all three of its seasons, Warrior has remained consistently compelling in both its twisty-turny plot lines, full of ambitious criminals and scheming elites, and its distinctive visual style. Give it a try… you might just like what you see.
All three seasons of ‘Warrior’ are now streaming on Max.
Gen Con 2023 was packed with many notable companies showing off their latest and greatest games in the tabletop and trading card game space.
Justin Gary, Stoneblade Entertainment’s CEO, was kind enough to sit down with Rob Valentin at Gen Con 2023 to discuss Stoneblade Entertainment’s SolForge Fusion, Ascension, and Ascension Tactics.
SolForge Fusion – Stone Blade Entertainment’s ground-breaking new card game – designed by Richard Garfield (Magic the Gathering) and Justin Gary (Ascension Deckbuilding Game) – is a first-of-its-kind hybrid deck-building game for the digital age, where no two SolForge: Fusion decks are the same, thanks to the unique algorithmically generated card printing process. Designed as both a physical game that can be played in person, or a digital game to be played remotely through the digital program Tabletop Simulator and a dedicated digital client released this year.
Ascension Tactics – Ascension Tactics is a revolutionary new game, pioneering a brand-new genre by combining the best of tactical miniatures games with the fast-paced strategy of deck-building games. Ascension Tactics brings the most iconic characters from the award-winning deck-building game to life as highly-detailed paintable 3D miniatures.
For a more in-depth discussion on Gen Con and Stoneblade Entertainment’s games, listen to our Gen Con 2023 podcast below!
Gen X 4Eva!
