Comics I Read Recently

Thanks to holiday sales I actually had a glut of comics to read. So here we go.

Batman: Contagion:  This was really the first of three disaster stories that were pretty much back-to-back-to-back in the late 90s.  The idea was taking Batman out of his comfort zone of fighting criminals and supervillains and deal with disasters.  In this case the insane Order of St. Dumas featured in Azrael comics has loosed an ancient plague on Gotham.  Batman's allies Catwoman, Robin, and Azrael try to hunt down survivors of an outbreak in Greenland while Batman and Nightwing try to quell riots and such.  Robin comes back just in time to come down with the plague.  But it turns out the cure was pretty easy to find; Azrael had it all along and didn't know it!  So it was pretty underwhelming.  More so was the last 8 issues aren't even part of this story!  They're just filler added to pad the length of the book.  It's always annoying when companies do that, though I guess I got this cheap enough that it didn't matter too much. (2/5)

Batman: Cataclysm: This is the second disaster story that also began the year-long No Man’s Land arc partially used in The Dark Knight Rises. The eponymous cataclysm is an earthquake that destroys much of Gotham, including Wayne Manor—and the Batcave. The collected volume is a hodge-podge of stories from all of the Batman-related titles at the time. As you might expect it doesn’t really have much narrative focus. The whole “Quake Master” arc was kind of silly and I guess the answer to who that “person’s” identity was should have been somewhat obvious for long-time readers. (It was the Ventriloquist.) But mostly it was a different kind of Batman story. (3/5)

Justice League Elseworlds, Vol 1: Elseworlds are basically imaginary stories that are not in canon so they can do whatever they want. This volume has some related to the Justice League, though none were that good. The first one was I guess supposed to be some kind of adventure comic strip. It takes place in 1928 with Lana Lang and Clark Kent looking for Lana’s father, enlisting Bruce Wayne’s help. I didn’t really get what the core concept was supposed to be so it wasn’t that interesting. Another was an Old West version of the Justice League but it was one of those lame League incarnations without Superman, Batman, or Green Lantern. It was mostly Wonder Woman, the Flash, Martian Manhunter, Booster Gold, and Blue Beetle. One thing that was really dumb was Wonder Woman’s outfit. It was basically her traditional outfit only with pants, sort of like the lame David E Kelly pilot costume everyone hated. Why would she be going around the Old West in a bikini top? Made no sense. The story of them banding together to stop Max Lord was OK; it was sort of like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen—the movie version more than the comic version. Anyway, another story took place in some fantasy kingdom with these kids being transported there and meeting weird fantasy versions of heroes like Batman, Green Arrow, the Flash, and so on. Superman was actually the bad guy having been raised by Lex Luthor, the king or whatever of the realm. It was kind of lame, like if you remember that old Dungeons & Dragons cartoon show in the 80s. There was a Victorian Wonder Woman story included but I’d already read that one in its individually published incarnation. The last one had an interesting concept: what if instead of Superman and Batman you had Supergirl and Batgirl? Not through any gender swapping but just like Kara Zor-El or whatever her name is crashes on Earth and Commissioner Gordon dies in Crime Alley instead of the Waynes, so Barbara Gordon becomes the obsessive crime fighting vigilante. Sadly, though, the author does little with the concept of a world with female heroes instead of male ones. One misstep is having the “Justice Society” that’s Wonder Woman, the Flash, and some other heroes. They do nothing in the story and only dilute the concept. Basically all that happens is Batgirl and Supergirl are at first at odds when Lex Luthor is kidnapped and then they work together and find out that Luthor got hold of a dead infant Kal-El (you know, Superman) and used his alien physiology to create a bunch of advanced technology. There’s really nothing about the prejudice and sexism these female heroes might face or anything like that, which made it a hollow exercise. Overall none of these stories really did much for me. (2/5)

Batman Elseworlds, Vol 1:  Like the Justice League one, this contains a variety of Batman "Elseworlds" tales that feature a different kind of Batman.  And like the Justice League one some were meh and some were better.  The first "Holy Terror" envisions an America still part of the UK.  Bruce Wayne becomes a priest but when he finds out the government killed his parents, he adopts the Batman guise to find the killers.  And that leads him to discovering a whole mess of secret experiments on people like Barry Allen.  And he also finds the corpse of Superman.  It was OK but not great.  Another takes place in 1863 Nevada.  Colonel Bruce Wayne, Mark Twain, and Wild Bill Hickock try to track down a load of missing silver that might be used by the Confederacy.  It was lame and the half-Native American was borderline racist.  Batman/Dark Joker: the Wild takes place in a fantasy realm called "the Wild" where the "Dark Joker" is a sorcerer taking over the land and the Bat-Man is literally a human-bat hybrid sort of like Man-Bat.  It was kind of lame, like one of the dumb sword-and-sorcery movies they show on Rifftrax.  One with Batman and Houdini at the turn of the century was kind of fun.  Another casts Bruce Wayne as Victor von Frankenstein who reanimates his father's brain in a cobbled-together body, but his undead father goes around beating up highwaymen.  It was an OK concept.  There's another featured on the cover that reimagines a scene from Frank Miller's Year One where Bruce Wayne is badly injured after a night of trying to be a vigilante.  In Year One he's inspired by a bat to become Batman, but in this he's given a Green Lantern ring instead of Hal Jordan and so becomes Green Lantern.  Then he ends up combating Sinestro.  This probably would have been better if it used the more modern Lantern mythology than the dorky Silver Age/Bronze Age stuff where Green Lanterns can't affect anything yellow for instance.  The last one takes place in the late 30s but is actually relevant to now.  It's about industrialist Bruce Wayne becoming Batman to combat fascism in America, including a Ku Klux Klan simulacrum called the "White Legion."  This was kind of interesting though it would have been neat if there had been a sequel included to cover Batman, Catwoman, and Alfred in Germany in WWII. (2.5/5)

Dark Knight Returns: The Master Race: A little over 15 years after Frank Miller’s embarrassingly juvenile sequel to The Dark Knight Returns comes this third chapter. DC did the smart thing and let veteran writer Brian Azzarello “co-write” this project so that instead of embarrassing and awful it’s just boring and cliché. The eponymous “master race” is a group of Kryptonians Superman/Wonder Woman’s daughter convinces Ray Palmer (the Atom) to embiggen, except of course they turn out to be evil and want to take over the planet. Oh, wow, evil Kryptonians. That’s only been done 4698465 times before. This is largely a Superman story since Batman is too old and feeble to do a lot—until he’s mortally wounded and Superman dunks him in a Lazarus Pit, which is just a lazy deus ex machina. I mean couldn’t Superman have done that when Batman “died” in the original Dark Knight Returns? Anyway, Batman helps seed the clouds with Kryptonite at one point so it rains Kryptonite that weakens the bad guys. That’s not an original concept as I remember seeing a Superman (or Superboy?) comic doing that 25-30 years ago. Later, Batman unleashes some bats and many of the bad guys immolate each other with their heat vision. Derp. And then Superman reveals he’s just been “holding back” the last 30 years or so and beats the shit out of the Kryptonians that are left. Yawn. This was just a cash grab for DC and Miller. (2/5)

Batman/Judge Dredd: By now I think Batman has pretty much crossed over at one point with just about every other property: Aliens, Predator, Spawn, Ninja Turtles, and in the 90s or so there were a few crossover comics with Judge Dredd. The first involves “Judge Death” coming to Gotham and Dredd on his tail. Later Dredd helps save Batman from a bomb plot. The Riddler traps Batman and Dredd in a virtual reality arena in another issue. And the Joker goes to Dredd’s dimension to wreak havoc with four evil judges. It was OK but having not read a Judge Dredd comic maybe I didn’t get as much from it as I could have. There’s also an issue where Lobo chases a bounty into Dredd’s dimension. I haven’t read either of their comics so it was kind of meh to me. (2.5/5)

Superman Unchained: This miniseries was written by former Batman writer Scott Snyder. The gist is that for years the US Military has been hiding an alien called “Wraith” that has most of the same powers as Superman. Oh, hey, there’s another new concept! Together they end up foiling an alien plot to invade the Earth with help from Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, and Batman. It’s OK but another that doesn’t bring much new to the table. (2.5/5)

Batman Europa: In this miniseries, Batman and Joker are infected with a virus and have only a week to find the cure. They have to work together as they go from Gotham to Berlin to Prague to Paris to Rome looking for clues. The writer doesn’t really do much with the concept of Batman and the Joker dying and having to rely on each other. In the end they find it was Bane behind it for…reasons. And the cure is…each other’s blood. I’m pretty sure that’s not how science works. For someone dying, Batman manages to beat Bane pretty easily. Another meh miniseries no one really needed. (2.5/5)

Superman: American Alien:  This is essentially a Superman prequel.  The idea is to present seven stories from Superman's formative years, starting when he's a little kid learning his powers and moving on from there as he learns what it takes to be a hero.  It's not breaking a lot of new ground but it walks a good line between the misery and despair of Man of Steel and the Big Blue Boy Scout of Superman The Movie.  It also covers a little more ground than TV's Smallville.  There are cameos from familiar characters like Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, Batman, the Green Lantern Corps (not any human ones), Doomsday, and Lobo.  But Superman seems to have the same problem as Captain America:  besides origin stories and stories killing him it seems hard for writers to find decent stories for the character. (3/5)

Lost Light, Vol 2: A sort of hodge-podge of issues, mostly focusing on the mutinous Getaway, who is willing to do anything (seriously, anything) to get to Cyberuptopia and thereby become a de facto Prime. First Aid and the Protectobots try to stop him, but don’t. Meanwhile the female Autobots consider bringing the dead Skids back to life—but don’t. What sucks is you really don’t have a lot of the main characters in this, though I think they’re set to return in the next issue. (2.5/5)

Justice League 3000:  I actually read the sequel to this (Justice League 3001) over the last two years and then I finally got the initial 12-issue series on sale.  I thought reading this might help clear up some of the confusion from the other book, but...not really.   I guess since it's a comic book it just throws  you right into action and only later backtracks to explain who these new versions of Wonder Woman, Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, and the Flash are.  Basically they're sorta clones, only the DNA from the Justice League members has been implanted in living people and consumes them, transforming them into the superheroes of yore.  Except there are holes in their memories and they aren't really the same as before:  Wonder Woman is bloodthirsty, Batman has a sense of humor, and Superman is a douche who can't fly or use heat vision.  They've been revived to fight "the Five," who are five overpowered supervillains who have taken over the 31st Century universe.   The new Justice League does a pretty shitty job through most of the first 7 issues but eventually their creator rallies them to defeat the Five, at least temporarily.  With how overpowered some of these villains were, it made it hard to believe they could actually be defeated, even by Earth's Mightiest Heroes--or these guys.  But I guess it helped to clear up one or two things. (2.5/5)

Batman, Vol 3: I Am Bane:  Tom King's tremendous run on Batman continues.  After rescuing the "Psycho Pirate" from Bane's island in the previous volume, Bane is hot on Batman's heels.  Only now Bane is pissed off and full of Venom.  Batman needs 5 days for the Psycho Pirate to cure the former "Gotham Girl" so he needs to buy some time.  Meanwhile Bane captures the current and former Robins, Commissioner Gordon, and Catwoman.  The former three are hung in the Batcave, though not dead.  Batman holes up in Arkham Asylum with the Psycho Pirate and Gotham Girl.  To make it to them, Bane needs to run a gauntlet of Arkham inmates from Two-Face to Killer Croc to Scarecrow.  And in the end does so because he is Bane!  The only real fault I have with this volume is Batman doesn't really have much of a plan.  At one point Batman takes the Robins to Superman's Fortress of Solitude to recover.  Why doesn't he just take the Psycho Pirate and Gotham Girl there?  Or the Justice League's Watchtower in space?  Or ask one of the Green Lanterns to fly them to Oa or another planet?  Or why doesn't he just let Superman kick Bane's ass?  All Superman would have to do is fly Bane up into space and he'd die, Venom or no.  But I guess you can pretty much always say that.  At the end of the volume Batman pops the question to Catwoman, ending it on a cliffhanger. (3.5/5)

Batman, Vol 4:  The War of Jokes & Riddles:  This is actually a flashback to something that supposedly happened years ago, though it's only been mentioned during King's run.  The framing device is that Batman is telling Catwoman the story so she can better understand him.  Basically the Riddler and Joker go to war, each recruiting villains to their side while Batman tries to put out the fires--sometimes literally.  The crux of this story turns out to be the secret origin of little-known villain "Kite Man."  He's as lame as that sounds, which turns out to be the whole point; the Riddler created a villain so sad that he thought the Joker would find it hilarious, but it turns out he doesn't.  The only problem is that it's unclear why some villains join up with the Joker and some with the Riddler.  I suppose that could have been explained if this were one of those stories to span the entire Batman line, but in just 5 issues or so it can't really go that in-depth. (3/5)

Totally Awesome Hulk, Vol 1:  Boy genius Amadeus Cho was introduced about 12 years ago in Marvel comics.  He's a big fan of the Hulk and now he gets to become the Hulk!  But he's not a dumb brute like the Banner Hulk.  Instead he maintains his brains (most of the time) and gets to make lame quips that don't involve "Hulk smash!"  There's not a very interesting story in this first volume.  A lady comes from another planet to find Earth's strongest creature and take it back to her zoo.  Eventually she of course finds the new Hulk.  And then in a couple of issues he joins the new Thor to fight the Enchantress.  Meh.  Pretty much if you've read any other of Marvel's new batch of heroes then you've read this.  (2/5)

Hulk: Gray:  This miniseries by Jeph Loeb with overly cartoonish art by Tim Sale retells Hulk's origin.  And that's about it.  Doesn't really provide any new insights into the character.  Pretty much a waste of time if you've read previous Hulk comics or watched the TV show or 2003/2008 movies. (1/5) 

The Mighty Thor, Vol 1: Thunder in Her Veins:  It would be a lot easier to follow the adventures of the female Thor if Marvel didn't insist on renumbering every year.  I mean this is at least the third #1 issue since she picked up the hammer.  And it's all a continuing story so it's kinda confusing.  Anyway, I think maybe this was the most recent #1.  Malekith the Dark Elf, the Enchantress, Frost Giants, and of course Loki are joining forces to take over the 10 realms.  (Wait, weren't there 9 before?)  Only Thor can stop them!  Maybe.  Meanwhile whenever she puts down the hammer, she turns back into Jane Foster, who's dying of cancer.  So, um, just don't put the hammer down?  But I guess that's hard when you're Public Enemy #1 of Odin and all those evildoers above.  Anyway, it was OK and not too hard to follow even though I haven't read the series since the first volume 1 with the female Thor. (2.5/5)

Detective Comics Vol 2: The Victim Syndicate:  In volume 1 of the Rebirth renumbering focused on Batman creating a team of his allies featuring Batwoman, Orphan, Red Robin, Spoiler, and reformed villain Clayface.  In a fight against a rogue US military outfit called "The Colony" Red Robin was "killed."  Most of volume 2 picks up after that with Batman closing out his team because of the loss.  Then the eponymous group calling themselves "the Victim Syndicate" show up.  They're people who were victims of Batman's war on crime, like someone who was tortured by the Joker and one tortured by Scarecrow, and one who was mutated by Clayface to be like him.  Then there's "the first victim" who dresses like a Cenobite from Hellraiser (something they also did recently in the miniseries Dark Nights Metal with the "Batman who laughs").  They poison Spoiler and turn her against Batman and the team--but also them too.  As for who the first victim is, we still don't know.  Someone with a face so gross they leave his/her mask on.  It was a pretty weak arc.  A couple of issues then involve "the Colony" coming back to try to rescue its prisoners and stealing some of the "monster Venom" used in "Night of the Monster Men" which like the Batman volumes is not contained in these because I guess it has its own separate trade collection.  Anyway, it was OK but not great. (2.5/5)

Detective Comics Vol 3:  League of Shadows:  In the Nolan movies "League of Assassins" was changed to "League of Shadows" but in this they are actually two parts of the same organization.  The League of Assassins is the more public group that kills people for profit led by the eternal Ra's al Guhl.  The League of Shadows is a shadowy group (pun intended) that's intended for a more nefarious purpose.  It's led by the evil ninja Shiva who at least in the past was one of Bruce Wayne's teachers in his early days.  It turns out she's also the mother to Orphan, aka Cassandra Cain, whose father took her from her mother and raised her to fight instead of speak.  Cassandra was Batgirl during and after the No Man's Land arc around the turn of the century but disappeared in the New 52 reboot until returning a year or two ago.  Anyway, writer James Tynion IV does somewhat of what Tom King has been doing on the regular Batman title and humanizing the characters to make them more than 2-dimensional.  That makes this story better than it would be otherwise because it focuses largely on the conflict between Cassandra and her long-lost mother who's an evil psychopath and doesn't really want her. (3/5) 

Sins of Youth:  This was a fairly goofy "event" from 2000.  Imagine if you will Freaky Friday, only with superheroes.  The team of teen heroes known as Young Justice has been hounded by reporters and such and so they hold a rally that's also attended by the Justice League and Justice Society.  But a mischievous witch boy uses his powers and turns the teen heroes into adults, the Justice League into teens, and the Justice Society into children, pretty much flip-flopping the natural order of things.  Spin-off issues then pair off teen and adult heroes.  It's an interesting concept, but a single issue can't really cover much in-depth for the heroes.  Not like a book can, like my Gender Swap Heroes series for instance.  I'm just saying. (3/5) 

Seven Soldiers of Victory, Vol 2:  When I bought this, I thought it was the whole series, not just volume 2.  But it doesn't matter all that much since it's mostly unrelated stories.  There are seven main characters who each get 4 issues and then 2 bookend issues.  These 7 characters in some vague way all fight an invasion of evil "fairies" who come from a billion years in the future.  But the thing is that none of them really meet any of the other characters, though many are in the same city during a "Battle of New York" not all that dissimilar from the Avengers movie.  Anyway, this was written by Tony Laplume's hero Grant Morrison who I've said in the past can be either fairly mainstream and insightful or weird and off-the-wall.  Mostly this is the latter.  The Mister Miracle parts are sort of a prelude to Morrison's later Final Crisis, the unnecessary "Crisis" event only die-hard fans give a crap about anymore. The Bulleteer parts get a little icky as one woman's husband surfs a porn site for teenaged superheroes (underage?) and is trading emails with a woman who's really 26 but looks forever like she's 16.  The Frankenstein parts were almost the most normal. That's not unexpected with Morrison. (2.5/5)

Batman Vol 7: Endgame:  This arc near the end of Scott Snyder's run on the Batman title features a face-off with the Joker.  Having previously gone after Batman's "family," this time Joker turns the Justice League against Batman, though of course Batman is ready for this.  Then Joker unleashes a virus on the city that drives people mad, but the only cure lies in the Joker.  It's OK but there's not really much point when you know Batman and the Joker aren't really going to die.  After a brief run with Commissioner Gordon in a robot Batsuit, of course Bruce Wayne came back.  I don't think Joker has come back in the present, but it's only a matter of time.  Personally I don't see the attraction with the Joker.  He's more annoying than scary.  Those who say Batman needs the Joker should read Tom King's mostly Joker-free run. (2.5/5) 

Black Panther by Christopher Priest, Vol 1:  With the movie coming out Amazon had this free to read with Amazon Prime.  This run was from the 90s and takes place in New York, not Wakanda.  King T'Challa has been lured to New York and while he's gone a whacko named Achebe takes power.  To avoid a civil war T'Challa stays in New York.  He makes a deal with Mephisto (the devil), takes on some other bad guys, and reveals to the Avengers that he only joined them to spy on them.  Most of the story is told by bumbling State Department employee Everett Ross, who at one point is chased through the White House with a hockey stick by Bill Clinton.  I can't see that happening in real life unless Ross were a chubby woman. Parts of it are fairly silly but overall it's not terrible. (2.5/5)

Why Do Male Filmmakers Struggle to Make Female Superhero Movies?

Late last week it was announced that Joss Whedon would be exiting DC's Batgirl movie project.  The excuse given was he just couldn't come up with a story.  Whedon also couldn't come up with a Wonder Woman story either back in the day.  He's hardly the only one to fail in that regard.  Until Wonder Woman last year the idea of a female superhero movie was as implausible as a Democrat presidential candidate winning Texas. 

It's never made much sense to me.  I mean I winged off 8 Scarlet Knight books, 3 Girl Power novels, 7 Girl Power short stories, a Girl Power spinoff novella, and 2 (soon 3) Gender Swap Heroes novels.  Though with the exception of the Scarlet Knight books I guess you could say they aren't entirely female heroes.  But still.  It doesn't make sense that it's such a struggle for people to even come up with a coherent idea.

And like with Wonder Woman, I'm going to throw down a Batgirl movie idea right now.  So there.

Definitely need to work in this scene.

Someone on Comic Book Resources was trying to do the same but like Joss Whedon doing it all wrong.  We need Batman to show her the ropes!  We should use the Riddler or the Penguin as the villain!  Yeah, no.  I guess if you're doing this with no eye to plausibility you could go that route.  But DC/WB don't even know who their Batman is anymore with Affleck soon to follow Whedon and Zack Snyder out the door.  And since you have an older Batman and a Nightwing movie in development, why would you start with her as a green recruit?  Unless you're setting the story in the 80s or 90s.  And using main Batman villains?  Come on.  Like they'd go for that in a project they don't think will succeed.

Anyway, I'm going to take a vaguely realistic approach that's borrowed from the New 52 reboot in 2011.  So we start with Barbara Gordon moving into a new apartment in a seedy neighborhood.  Five years ago she was crippled by the Joker but now through science she's able to walk again.

Soon after moving in, Barbara gets on her old Batgirl costume to start flexing her muscles.  She runs into some street crime and stops it, but is almost killed in the process because she's not up to speed.  So she goes to see the lady who helped with her rehab when she was learning to walk again to build up some strength and maybe work on some moves.

Meanwhile there's a crew of bad guys robbing places.  Someone we don't see is actually planning the crimes and maybe overseeing them by video feed.  Barbara is out one night when she gets wind of such a robbery and tries to intervene.  She foils the robbery but the crew's unseen boss helps them elude Batgirl and escape.

Back at the apartment, Barbara starts doing some hacking to find out who these people are and where they might strike.  But as she's hacking, her computer suddenly melts down with an ominous message like, "I can see you" or something on the screen before it shuts down.

The next day she goes to the library where she works to try again.  But as she's working on it, some dangerous-looking characters show up in the library.  They try to catch Barbara, but knowing the terrain a lot better, she's able to escape.  She goes back to her apartment to get her gear, but the place blows up!  As she's lying there, dazed, a guy appears before her.  A familiar guy:  her brother James Jr--last seen in a mental institution.  He tells her that she should have stayed crippled.  Hearing sirens, he takes off into the night.

With nowhere else to go, Barbara goes to her former physical therapist's place in the Burnside neighborhood.  She confesses how shortly after the Batman appeared in Gotham she became Batgirl.  Until one night she answered the door and the Joker shot her in the spine.  (To save on money you don't even need to show the whole Joker; you could just show the bottom half of his face and the gun before it fires.  Then you don't have to pay Jared Leto.  Hooray!)  As for her brother, he was brilliant but always a bad seed, until he killed their mother and was committed.  (If you wanted to go another way and piss off the fans, you could have James Jr shoot her five years ago.)

The therapist agrees to help Barbara.  She's got a brother or friend or something who can help her get some new stuff.  And she gets a costume like the most recent "Batgirl of Burnside" comics.  In the process maybe her and the brother or friend or whatever start to hit it off.

The next time the bad guys go to hit a place she goes to intercept them.  This time she kicks their asses and finds out where James Jr is holed up.  And so she goes there but of course he has some traps.  And maybe he has their father hostage.  But of course Barbara saves the day.  James Jr survives to go back to Arkham or wherever.

Later, Barbara moves into the therapist's place in Burnside.  And then she goes out in costume.  Hooray!

Now if you want, you could maybe replace the therapist with Black Canary or the Huntress and have the other one show up at the end or a credits scene to set up a Birds of Prey movie.  A standalone movie would be cheaper, but the Birds of Prey thing would maybe sell more toys, right?

There you go.  Just that easy.  Credit where credit is due:  someone on CBR actually gave me the James Jr angle because I couldn't think of a decent villain from the Batgirl comics.

Anyway, suck it Joss Whedon.  When is some studio going to hire me to do this for real?  If only they read my blog. lol

Riffing Up the Truth: What Bad Movies Teach Us

Wednesday I wrote a clickbait article of 9 MST3K/Rifftrax movies worse than Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space.  You might ask:  why watch bad movies?  Well besides that it's just fun to see how bad these are, they can also teach you, maybe even more than watching good movies.  I mean you can watch Citizen Kane or The Godfather, but what's the chance you could ever make anything that good?  Not very high.  It's easier to see the flaws in something with a hell of a lot of flaws.

Based on the last article what lessons can we learn from these terrible movies?

9. Ring of Terror
What have we learned?  It helps if you cast people within a decade or two or the age they're playing.  But more importantly, if you're going to have a horror movie, it should have something interesting happen.

8.  The Starfighters
What have we learned?  See above about something interesting happening.  Also, don't make 50% of your movie stock footage.  Plus your characters should have some kind of conflict going on.

7.  Fun in Balloonland
What have we learned?  Clowns are creepy.  Wait, we knew that already.  Don't let drunk women narrate your film? Parades are lame?  And I guess if something is supposed to be a movie it helps to have something like a plot and characters.

6.  Rocket Attack USA
What have we learned?  Don't end your movie on such a bummer.  I mean at least when Watchmen blew up New York it was part of a plan to save humanity and prevent a nuclear war.  A little less of a bummer than just blowing up New York and saying, "We can't let this be the end!"  The hell am I supposed to do with that?

5.  Rocket A-Go-Go
What have we learned?  Have a coherent ending.  M Night Shaymalan clearly missed that lesson.  Don't just say, "Well the bad guy isn't here.  Who was he?  Who knows!?"  Not very satisfying for the audience.

4.  Manos the Hands of Fate
What have we learned?  If you're a fertilizer salesman, don't self-finance a movie!  Besides a coherent ending, a coherent rest of the movie is also a good way to go.  David Lynch and Darren Arronofsky clearly missed that lesson.

3.  Roller Gator
What have we learned?  Don't make your main character so annoying I want to slice it to tiny pieces and feed it to a real gator.  George Lucas clearly missed that lesson when creating Jar-Jar Binks.

2.  Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny
What have we learned?  Don't make your story-within-the-story significantly longer than your main story.  That's kind of a distraction.  And again, a coherent plot is nice.

1.  Birdemic
What have we learned?  Hire competent actors?  Don't hire your 12-year-old nephew to design your computer effects?  Also, don't start your movie with twenty minutes of slow driving, followed by having significant periods of the movie dedicated to slow driving, pulling into traffic, and parking.  I don't think the Fast & Furious movies featured so much driving for so little point!  If you're a writer, don't dedicate so much time to boring, trivial bullshit unless you're James Joyce.

Bonus:  Guy From Harlem
This blaxploitation picture is about a private eye from Harlem...in Miami.  Makes sense!  He has to rescue a woman from the clutches of "Big Daddy" who is of course white.  The woman's father is a hilariously inept actor who seems to be manic-depressive, shouting half a line and then almost whispering the end of it.  His best line when the detective's secretary asks what his business is:  I got two reasons!  (And one answer.)  None of your business!

But what we learn is it's good to have your facts straight.  It's pretty hilarious when the father mentioned above tells the detective:  if you do this I'll have $20,000 air mailed to you.  To which one of the riffers says, "Air mailing something when you live in the same city is dumb."  Yeah, it is pretty dumb to use "air mail" when you live in the same city and obviously you know where the guy's office is.  Maybe a courier would be better.

In that same scene the father says no one knows what "Big Daddy" looks like...except we know he's a white guy about six feet tall with curly blond hair who works out a lot and has bands around his muscles.  So, um, you don't know anything about him, eh?

Slip-ups like that really make you look like a jackass to the viewer--or reader.

Bonus Bonus:  Samurai Cop:
For grammar Nazis, this lame early 90s buddy cop movie frequently uses the expression "son of a bitches."  That doesn't really make any sense because you have the singular A with the plural Bitches.  It's always good to proofread your story or double-check your dialog before you release the final product.

So see, watching bad movies can be educational!

9 MST3K/Rifftrax Movies Worse Than Plan 9 From Outer Space

Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space is often regarded as the worst movie ever made.  But after watching a boatload of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax over the last few months, here are 9 movies actually worse than it!

9.  Ring of Terror

This black-and-white 60s movie features a group of college students who look in their 40s.  This movie is ridiculously short even with commercial breaks.  Basically the whole thing is about one of these "kids" goes to a graveyard to retrieve a ring and ends up dying of fear or something.  It's hopelessly boring for what was supposed to be a horror movie.

8.  The Starfighters

From the title you might think it's a cheesy ripoff of Star Wars or something.  But it's not.  It's about F-104 Starfighter pilots in the early 1960s.  But it's pretty much the opposite of Top Gun.  The movie is full of stock footage of midair refueling and the occasional nice double-date.  There's nothing like drama or romance or anything interesting.  At least you can say there's something interesting in Plan 9.

7.  Fun in Balloonland

I'm not sure this was even really a movie.  Most of it is a really creepy Thanksgiving parade in Philadelphia from the 1960s.  Though first there's a little boy who "dreams" he's shouting at balloons with different themes like Mother Goose, the Wild West, or Triton's kingdom, in which the little kid is wearing only shiny gold underwear.  (So I guess pedophiles would enjoy it.)  On New Year's Amazon trolled people with a Rose Parade narrated by Will Ferrell and Megan Mulally but I don't think this was supposed to be a joke.  The woman who narrates it frequently sounds drunk, slurring words and overemphasizing words.  Imagine Kelly Anne Conway narrating a parade. It's a pretty wretched parade even without the awful narration.  Plan 9 has vampires, zombies, and aliens, but at least it doesn't have creepy clowns and kids in only their underwear.

6.  Rocket Attack USA

This is a black-and-white 50s movie that seemed to be in response to the Sputnik launch.  Much of it is kind of a lame sort of thriller where some secret agent has to go to Russia to stop a nuclear missile.  But guess what?  He fails!  And New York is destroyed by a nuclear missile.  Then a message pops up saying "We Can't Let This Be The End!"  Wow, what a downer.  And you thought Planet of the Apes was bad with that Statue of Liberty thing, right?  Plan 9 had a happy ending--plus you got to stop watching it, which was also a happy ending!

5.  Monster-A-Go-Go
Yet another black-and-white 50s movie.  It's about an astronaut who returns from space and becomes a radioactive monster.  Or something.  There's a lot of stock footage that's cobbled together to kind of make for a narrative.  Like Rocket Attack USA, though, the ending is really awful.  In this case it's not depressing so much as confusing and pointless.  A bunch of army jerks go into a Chicago sewer to find the monster and...they don't.  Then a narrator says the astronaut they thought was the monster has been found safe and sound on the ocean.  So who was the monster?  Who knows?!  As dumb as Plan 9's ending was, it made a slight more sense than this.

4.  Manos the Hands of Fate

This is one of those with the distinction of being on both MST3K and Rifftrax because it's just that freaking terrible.  It was self-funded by a manure salesman and gee how appropriate.  A family of idiots gets lost on a country road and winds up at an old house where they're met by a weird little dude named Torgo who works for "the Master" who has numerous beautiful women (his "wives) chained up and wants to claim one more.  A ridiculous story with terrible acting, pathetic effects, and crappy music.  Ed Wood probably shook his head sadly upon seeing it.

3.  Roller Gator

This 90s "film" makes SnapChat videos of babies look like art.  This low-rent production features a scantily-clad girl usually on roller blades who finds a talking purple rubber alligator puppet that is annoying as fuck.  It sounds like Patton Oswalt doing a Gilbert Gottfried impression.  Because people really want to pay to see that, an evil carnie played by Martin Sheen's brother Joe Estevez wants to steal the gator and put it in a cage.  To that end he employs a "ninja," because ninjas are just waiting around like Mexican day laborers, right?  Meanwhile a "swamp farmer" wants to find the gator.  I'd just be glad it was gone.  And how do you farm a swamp?  The "soundtrack" for most of the movie is acoustic guitar noodling that's usually louder than the dialog.  It's annoying and honestly I think the movies I made for my sister's Spanish and English classes had better production values.  Ed Wood used a rubber squid in Bride of the Monster but at least he didn't make the fucking thing yap obnoxiously the entire movie.

2.  Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny

This is another bizarre movie that I'm not sure was really supposed to be a movie.  It was sponsored by "Pirate World," a now-defunct Florida theme park, back in the 70s.  Santa Claus' sleigh is stranded on a Florida beach and the reindeer have taken off, leaving Santa behind.  So instead of going for help, Santa summons children, who bring a number of impractical animals to try to get the sled out.  Then about 60% of the movie is a lame production of Thumbelina.  The story is pretty creepy as tiny Thumbelina ends up with a female mole who wants to marry her off to a creepy old male mole, which is probably how Trump got his wives.  After the story-in-the-story is done, the kids summon the "Ice Cream Bunny," or a guy in a crappy white bunny suit who drives an old-timey fire engine.  A lot of WTF going on.  Ed Wood loved splicing footage together, but at least it was all one story, not an entirely tangential story.

1.  Birdemic

If you thought Sharknado was terrible, you never watched Birdemic!  The first twenty minutes are a guy driving into town, a creepy meet cute with a "supermodel," and then driving home for I guess a second breakfast?  There's a pathetic romance between two of the dumbest people on Earth before it finally gets to the "birdemic" that features ridiculously badly created digital birds hovering in front of people and occasionally dive-bombing and exploding like they're full of nitro.  I don't think the director ever saw a bird before in his life.  Meanwhile in background shots everything is hilariously normal.  For a "birdemic" it's pretty much no big deal for the rest of the world!   It's so dumb in every possible way.  Ed Wood would've at least used stock footage of birds that would have looked more realistic than Birdemic's hovering and exploding "eagles".

Well there you go.  Did you like my little fake clickbait article?  All I need to do is separate it into 10 pages with a bunch of ads and it'd fit right in on Comic Book Resources or one of those other clickbait sites.

Epics Are Not Supposed to Be Real

A long time ago, in this galaxy, I reread Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire Star Wars trilogy, which were really the first post-Return of the Jedi novels that were (until 2012) considered canon.  They were still great stories, but I did feel that much of it lacked the opera part of a space opera.  And by that I mean the epic twists:  I am your father.  Leia is your sister!  You know, that sort of thing.  But at the end it did have a clone of Luke Skywalker, so that was pretty neat.

When I watched The Last Jedi I felt somewhat the same about it.  This was more to do with Rian Johnson's trolling the audience than anything.  Rey's parents are...nobody!  The Rebellion is...a handful of people in one old ship!  Snoke is...who cares, he's dead already?!  The scummy thief betrays them...and remains a scummy thief!  Luke Skywalker is dead for...reasons!

Some people hailed this as genius because it's more "real."  But the simple fact is that epic stories do not have to be real, nor should they be.  For proof we can go all the way back to the first recorded stories.  Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are anything but real.  Unless you think there really were gods throwing down thunderbolts and turning into swans to fuck maidens or whatever.  Gilgamesh, King Arthur, and even the Bible are not especially "real" though the latter many would disagree with because talking snakes and people turning to salt and so forth isn't like the stuff in those ancient Greek stories at all.  (Uh-huh.)

All of those stories feature magic and monsters and bunch of shit that isn't real at all.  And yet people don't give a shit about that.  In fact, the reason those stories have endured so long might just be because they aren't real in the slightest.  The magic and monsters and such stuff give it a grandeur that makes it...epic.  And epics remain in our consciousness for centuries because they're so big.

Or think of it another way:  who are the people we remember in history?  It's not the baker or the butcher or the accountant who lives a nice, normal life with a wife/husband and two kids and a dog and all that shit.  It's the people who did something big, both positive and negative.  The presidents are remembered, the bureaucrats are not.  The generals are remembered, the privates are not--most of the time.  The tycoon is remembered, not the middle manager.

If A New Hope had taken place entirely on Tatooine, it might have been an OK movie, but not one people remembered for the next 40 years.  Instead it starts out with a big ship stretching across the screen, firing on a littler ship.  And then a big dude all in black armor coming out of the smoke.  And then we go to the surface of a planet that's pretty much all desert with a big-ass Sandcrawler driving around, piloted by tiny aliens.  And swords that aren't just swords--they're made of lasers!  And what could be bigger than the Death Star?  A space station the size of a moon that blows up whole planets!

And people loved it.  Not because it was "real" but the opposite.  It was so big and bold that it was almost pure fantasy, which also meant pure escapism.  Then Empire kicked it up a notch with giant robot camels!  A bad guy ship like three times bigger than the ships in the last movie!  And the operatic twist that not only is Vader a big dude in black armor--he's our hero's father!  And then Return of the Jedi and Force Awakens tried to pretty much ape that formula.  And the prequels...well, I guess they tried.

The point being that Star Wars is definitely not about realism.  Even Rogue One, the grittiest Star Wars movie to date, was not all that real.  And what was the best part?  When Vader stomps into the frigate with his laser sword and uses the Force to throw people like rag dolls and choke them to death. Epic!

If you think about what books from this era could live on like The Iliad or Odyssey what would you choose?  Harry Potter?  Lord of the Rings?  Something by Stephen King?  None of those really scream realism either.  And the way things are going I think it's more likely that the Star Wars movies would last as our epic tale.  Only instead of gods we have Jedi and Sith and instead of monsters we have aliens, AT-ATs, and the Death Star.

I think future writers would do well to remember that like any great epic, Star Wars is not supposed to be "real."  Save the grit for the next shitty Ridley Scott sequel/prequel.

And to a lesser degree this can apply to Star Trek.  It doesn't have the operatic touches but still it's about big ships in a big galaxy full of aliens and sometimes even what seems like magic.

When Nostalgia Goes Wrong

Around the new year there was a site advertised on my Facebook (thanks, Zuck!) selling old video games from the 90s and maybe 2000s.  Among those were the old id Software shooter games Wolfenstein 3D and Doom II.  They were only like $3 apiece so I thought it might be fun to engage in a little 90s nostalgia.

But soon I realized what a terrible mistake I made.  These games were much less fun than I remembered.  I mean don't get me wrong, it's still fun going around blasting Nazis and listening to their dying cry of "Mein laben!" (Or whatever.)  The problem with that game is instead of shooting Nazis, most of the game is wandering mazes of identical corridors, searching for keys, doors to fit those keys, and feeling up walls to find secret doors.  And sometimes they're diabolical and put a key IN a secret room, so unless you feel the right spot on a wall you can spend forever just walking around.  And since there's no map and most of the walls looks the same, it's really annoying.

I think part of my false memories with this is I think my brother and I only had the shareware version, which has only the first episode.  This version I bought had all 6 episodes and it really gets monotonous after a while.

There's less feeling walls in Doom II, but still plenty of wandering around levels trying to figure out how to find a key or open a door.  It's like when I played a couple of those Lego games and at some point the only way to beat a level is to do something you've never done in the game before, so why would you think to do it now?  I mean one you're supposed to shoot at the wall and another punch a wall to open a door.  Why would I think to do that when I've never had to do that before?

In both cases it's good for YouTube.  Many times when I got stuck I'd watch a walkthrough someone made so I could see how you're supposed to do it.  It was a lot better than trying to read a written walkthrough or look at a static map because especially in Wolfenstein so many of the corridors look the same that trying to describe them is futile.  It' easier to just watch it from the first-person perspective.

But it is really annoying to have to resort to that.  I guess I was blinded by rose-colored nostalgia filters and didn't remember what a pain in the arse those games were. 

It reminds me a few months ago I watched some episodes of Cheers on Netflix, mostly late at night.  God, I didn't realize how dull and juvenile that show was!  One whole episode revolved around who could kiss Rebecca first:  Sam or Woody.  Really?  Is this fucking middle school?  I hardly could stay awake for a complete episode because they were so boring.  But the theme song is still good.  Especially the version at the end is really soothing.

As a Fun Fact, when watching that show did you ever think Woody Harrellson would end up being the most successful cast member after the show ended?  I mean Ted Danson has been in some mediocre series and the occasional film role, Kelsey Grammar had Frasier and a small role in what's generally regarded as the worst X-Men movie (other than Wolverine Origins), John Ratzenberger had roles in the Pixar movies, and the others would pop up every so often in something, but Woody, the dumb bartender, has and continues to appear in big movies like The Hunger Games, War for the Planet of the Apes, and the Han Solo movie as well as smaller, more artsy movies.  Honestly, who saw that coming in 1992 when the show ended?

Fictional Characters Are Not Just Characters

It's Valentine's Day, so let's talk about love.  Not romantic love, but the love readers or viewers have for fictional characters.

Obviously fictional characters are not real, that's the whole point of them being fictional, and yet the loss of a character in a book or movie or TV show or whatever can affect us as much as the loss of a real person.  And yet for the author of books, movies, TV shows, or whatever there are often reasons that characters need to be eliminated.  (I see you Game of Thrones and Walking Dead.)  It's the gap between the author and audience that can create problems.

One of the most recent examples is The Last Jedi, where Luke Skywalker was killed off, much to the dismay of many fans.  For many people (including writer/director of that travesty Rian Johnson) it's like, "So what?  It's just a movie."  But this shows a certain amount of ignorance.  Sure, he's just a fictional character in a movie but this is the dude who blew up the Death Star!  Who confronted Vader and learned Vader was his father!  Who confronted Vader again and turned him back to the light to destroy the Emperor!  This is the character whose action figure we played with and pretended to be in the backyard with cardboard tubes.  We made up our own adventures for him in stories and homemade comics.  So it's not just a character to us; it's like the gods and demigods and heroes to the Greeks and Romans and such.

It reminds me of 1986 when I saw Transformers the Movie for the first time.  Hasbro wanted to introduce its new line of toys, so what to do with the old ones?  Hey, let's kill them off!  So in a huge battle many of the old characters are killed off.  This culminates in a battle royale between Autobot leader Optimus Prime and Decepticon leader Megatron.  And ultimately Optimus Prime gives his life to stop Megatron.

When this decision was made, I don't think anyone really gave much consideration to the audience.  I mean imagine you're 8 years old and watching one of your favorite fictional characters die right there on the screen?  Yeah, that didn't go well.

And of course I wasn't the only one.  It's probably just as well there was not a World Wide Web in 1986 or the fallout would have been worse than it was.  It ended up pretty much being a disaster for Hasbro.  Most people never warmed to Optimus Prime's replacement and within a year he was brought back on the TV show and a couple of years later as a toy.

Learning their lesson, when the GI JOE movie came out a year later on video they only put JOE leader Duke in a coma instead of killing him.  At the end he wakes up and everything is fine.  Don't cry kids, he's OK!  Instead of dying they just didn't really use the character anymore; like that older brother in Happy Days he went upstairs one day and never came down--at least until the next reboot.

This has happened to a lot of popular characters:  Superman, Batman, Captain America, Iron Man, pretty much every other comic book hero, Han Solo, Spock, Kirk, Jon Snow, pretty much every adult Stark in GOT, Glen and too many other Walking Dead characters to list, and on and on and on.

Since much of my readership (such as it is) are authors, you're probably aware of the reasons to kill off characters.  In books it's usually because of dramatic necessity.  Someone has to make that ultimate sacrifice!  I've talked about that in blog entries before.  I think I also talked about how bloodthirsty I was in earlier times, versus more recent times.  And pretty much any significant death was meant for a dramatic impact.

But in other media there can be more practical reasons.  Often in TV an actor wants out and so the character is killed off.  Tasha Yar in Star Trek The Next Generation for one.  Of course it didn't work out too well for her.  It worked out a lot better for George Clooney when he left ER for the movies.  Remember the messy breakup between Charlie Sheen and the producers of Two and a Half Men that led to his character being horribly killed by a train or whatever?  Or like when Han Solo was killed I felt bad but not as bad because Harrison Ford is really old and didn't really want to do 3 movies; I think Mark Hamill is still spry enough to have done two movies.  (I expect his ghost might at least appear in the third one.)  In more recent times shows like House of Cards are going to have to scramble because their lead actor has been accused of horrible things and become untouchable.

So I guess those of us in books are a little luckier that we don't have to kill characters because an actor wants a bigger paycheck or is getting long in the tooth.  But maybe sometimes we want to get rid of a character because they've been around too long.  Remember Misery?  The author in that story killed off his long-running character but a disgruntled fan took him prisoner to try to make him change the ending.

Not all fans (or even many of them) are that obsessive, but they're still going to feel a real sense of loss when their favorite character is gone.

Of course it doesn't have to be just death.  I mean sometimes you feel that loss when you get to the end of a series of books.  Like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter.  For me it was Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books.  I read all five books and when it was over even though it was a happy ending it was a bummer that it was over.  So what to do then?  Write my own story of course!  Except I don't think I ever finished it.  I'm not sure if I even wrote more than a scene or two.  I'm sure it's long gone though.  I mean it was in a notebook like 30 years ago almost, so yeah.

Anyway, the point is that fictional characters can become as real to us as real people.  That's why the custodians of those characters need to be careful with them.  For those characters that pass down from one writer or director to another, it really is a sacred trust.

Pulling the Plug on Netflix

I've had Netflix streaming service for a long time.  Pretty much since I got my Nintendo Wii and later when I got a Roku.  So that's like 8 years or so I'd say.  I kept it even when I was out west and homeless because I could still use it on my laptop or places where I could use my Roku.

But now I'm finally pulling the plug on Netflix.  It simply isn't worth $10/month anymore for the simple reason that they're losing a lot of the content I liked to watch.

A good example is this holiday season.  I want to watch my favorite American Dad holiday episodes?  They lost that series months ago.  I want to watch South Park holiday episodes?  They haven't had that show for years.  I want to watch the one It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia holiday episode?  Nope, they lost that too.  So I ended up watching them on Hulu.  Pretty much everything except Netflix originals that I want to watch is either on Hulu or Amazon.  And I got a deal on Hulu for $5.99/month, so why am I staying with Netflix?  For the occasional season of Marvel shows, Voltron, or Bojack Horseman?  I can't even watch House of Cards anymore thanks to the Kevin Spacey scandal.

I suspect this is going to be a growing problem for Netflix as more and more networks pull shows off their service for their own streaming options.  (So long as the overturn of Net neutrality doesn't bring the whole Internet crashing down.)  Netflix is trying to compensate with their original offerings, pouring more and more of subscriber money into these.  Like $90M for Bright?  $40M for Cloverfield Paradox?  Seriously?  Not even a Super Bowl ad costs that much for a commercial and since they aren't directly charging for people to watch it, that's pretty much what it is.  I know my $119.88/year is a pittance by comparison, but it seems pretty irresponsible on their part.  OK, maybe Netflix didn't actually pay all of that, but they still pay a hell of a lot for what's basically a commercial.

The thing about original content is that it's not enough to spend $10/month.  Not for Netflix or Hulu or CBS All Access or whatever else they come up with.  I mean if you think practically you can just subscribe for one month a year, binge all the original content you want, and then just quit.  Or maybe in a two-week free trial if you have enough time.

I've done a similar thing the last 3 years with Sling TV.  Basically I just sign up in August or September and quit in January so I can watch college football and stuff on the ESPN channels and maybe some Adult Swim or Walking Dead or something like that.  I actually got both of the Rokus I use from Sling promotions where you sign up for 2-3 months and you get the Roku "free."  Since I was going to sign up for a few months anyway, why not get a better Roku while I'm at it?  The first time my one Roku was dying anyway, so it killed 2 birds with 1 stone.  Maybe if Netflix runs a promotion like that I'd sign back up with them.

The Second-Worst Writing Advice Ever

Without a doubt the worst writing-related advice I've ever heard was from Guy Kawasaki, who said you should spend $15,000-$20,000 on marketing your book.  That is simply put the most asinine thing I've ever heard in regards to writing.  Well here's the new second place entry from Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn:

Writer’s block does not exist. Some people expect to feel good while they write, and this is an unreasonable expectation for a writer (or any type of professional). Just write.

Um, really?  That's not what writer's block is, moron.  Writer's block is not being able to think of something to write.  In bad movies it's often represented by someone sitting down to write at a typewriter or laptop and staring at a blank page/screen.  That's fucking writer's block, moron.  It has nothing to do with "feeling good."

I'm not someone who gets writer's block a lot.  Usually I like to call what I get "writer's malaise" where I'm just not interested in writing anything.  It's not necessarily because the actual act of writing doesn't feel good.  It's more that existential question, "What's the point of writing?"  A lot of stories now the point is money, so hooray!

But sometimes I get actual "writer's block" where I can't think of how to end a story.  Or maybe how to begin it.  Again, nothing to do with whether it feels good to write or not.  And the advice to "just write" doesn't help much in that case.  Sure if you're staring at a blank page it might help to just write something, anything, to get yourself started.  Hell, do a Finding Forrester and start typing something already written until you feel a new idea coming. 

But if my character is captured and surrounded by sharks with lasers on their heads and I can't figure out how to set him free, "just write" isn't all that helpful.  And again, it's not about writing feeling good or bad; it's about trying to find the story's path.

Of course this dude is somewhat famous so people will hail it as gospel.  SMH.

Counterfeit: Netflix's Ozark is No Breaking Bad

Since Breaking Bad went off the air in 2013 there have been plenty of shows that have tried to duplicate its formula.  And even some like Amazon's Mad Dogs that I enjoyed almost as much.

I'm not sure any show has tried to duplicate Breaking Bad's formula as closely as Netflix's Ozark.  There's a relatively ordinary middle-aged guy who becomes involved with drug dealers, cops, and redneck scumbags.  There's a family with a blond wife and two kids (a boy and a girl), though in this case two teenagers.  There's often grotesque violence and people being killed in creative ways.  There's also purchasing and managing a business (or businesses) to launder dirty money.  So there really are most of the elements.  Yet it never really worked for me.

The plot is that for years Marty Byrd (Jason Bateman) and his partner have been embezzling and laundering money from a Mexican drug cartel to the tune of $8M.  But when the cartel gets wise, they kill Marty's business partner.  They would have killed him, except he comes up with a desperate scheme to save his skin:  he'll move his family to the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri and launder the cartel's money during the summer.  This is based on a brochure his partner gave to him that day.

First he has to get the $8M back, which requires a lot of maneuvering.  His wife Wendy (Laura Linney) gets wind of something being up and goes to a lawyer she's been shtupping for help.  The cartel catches up to her and tosses the lawyer out the window of his penthouse.  Marty and Wendy agree to a fragile truce for the sake of their children.

Once they get to Missouri they have to find a home and a business to buy.  Wendy is in charge of the former and finds a nice house that's under their budget because there's a catch:  a dying old man named Buddy lives in the basement.  He comes with the house, which is why there's the discount.

Meanwhile Marty tries multiple businesses to persuade them to sell to him:  a self-storage place, a bar, and finally a strip club.  Eventually he manages to get his foot in the door at a rundown resort.  The idea is that he can put in orders for ordinary things like office supplies or food for the resort's diner to things like new carpet or air conditioners and pad the invoices to launder the dirty money.

But of course there are many complications.  The first is that a gang of rednecks steal the money Marty and his wife casually left in suitcases in their cheap motel room.  Their kids were supposed to watch it, but really, you expect teenagers to sit around a motel room all day and watch suitcases?  So Marty has to find the rednecks and talks them down into keeping only $20,000 because the rednecks would surely get caught otherwise.

Another complication is the local strip club owner who knows what Marty is up to because he's doing the same thing!  Only he's doing it for the local heroin syndicate that grows poppies (Wicked Witch voice:  Poppies!  Poppies!  Bwahahahahaha!)  Marty talks to some strippers and finds out the "owner" of the place is whoever holds a certificate that's like a bearer bond.  With the help of a redneck girl he gets that bond and thus ownership of the strip club.  Woot!

His next genius idea is to build a church for the preacher who every Sunday has boats gather on the water to preach to them.  (What if it storms?  Or in winter?)  The only hitch is that the heroin syndicate uses hollow hymnals to smuggle their product on the water.  Um, sure, that makes sense.  The syndicate pressures Marty to cancel the construction of a new church, but the preacher and his wife aren't having it--until one of them ends up dead.

To make some quick cash Marty talks an old lady into investing her savings with him.  Then the old woman gets hit by a garbage truck like the next day.  When her son wants a lavish funeral, Wendy ends up buying out the funeral home to add that to their empire.

Meanwhile there's a sociopathic gay FBI agent who seduces one of the redneck guys and turns him into an asset, though he kinda sucks at being an informant.  This never really pays off since the FBI doesn't really accomplish anything.

There's one whole episode that's a flashback to ten years earlier.  I fast-forwarded most of it because it didn't really seem to be adding much.

There were some things that didn't make sense.  In the first episode there's a scene with Marty and a babysitter and it seems to imply that he was fucking her, but this is never mentioned again.  Especially with his wife's unfaithfulness, shouldn't this have been mentioned?  Later, Wendy buys a house that was under construction and stalled for them to use in their scheme but nothing seems to happen to that.  Unless they were converting it into the church?

Overall like I said I never really warmed to the show.  I probably should have liked it.  I mean I liked Breaking Bad and this was a decent production with good actors.  But as I've said before, sometimes it's better to be first.  I guess I wasn't in the mood for Breaking Bad Lite.  It just seemed like a lot of complications for the sake of complications. (2.5/5)

The Punisher is Marvel's Worst Show on Netflix

They might say otherwise, but I don't think Marvel was really planning a Punisher series when he debuted in season 2 of Daredevil.  But people liked Jon Berenthal's take on the character and so a spin-off series was quickly put together.

The problem quickly becomes that in order to come up with a 13-episode season, the producers pad the hell out of the story about a secret death squad in Afghanistan that Frank Castle was part of.  And in the end the series is the last thing you want from a Punisher series:  BORING.  And as I Tweeted, it takes real talent to make a character like the Punisher dull, so kudos Marvel and Disney!

The first episode is actually OK.  After escaping from the police in Daredevil, Frank has been hiding out as a construction worked named Pete Castiglione.  Some of his coworkers get a plan to knock over a mob poker game, but when one of their gang is hurt they recruit a young worker who tried to befriend Frank.  The job goes south and so the coworkers are going to kill the kid until Frank intervenes.

That would be an OK blueprint for an A-Team-type show only with the Punisher.  In the next two episodes, though, Frank and a former NSA analyst going by the handle Micro play pointless cat-and-mouse games that could have been averted if Frank had simply picked up the cell phone provided.

Then it gets into this whole boring conspiracy plot.  Frank Castle and political intrigue don't really go together well.  The good thing about the Punisher in Daredevil was he did what the Punisher does best:  go around killing bad guys.  It's not necessarily my favorite kind of superhero thing (I don't really think of him as a superhero so much as a simple vigilante) it's what people expect from the character.  Having the Punisher sitting around blathering with some computer hacker and later the computer hacker's wife isn't really what I'm hoping for.

Also padding the season there's a plot about a young former solider who goes to support group meetings led by Frank's old buddy, who is pretty much the same as Sam Wilson, minus the wings and plus a fake leg.  The kid is spurred on by an NRA nut at the meetings and gets increasingly belligerent until he starts planting bombs in the city.  He soon butts heads with Karen Page, the intrepid reporter who used to be Matt Murdoch's secretary on season 1 of Daredevil.  This really has nothing to do with the main conspiracy plot.  It's mainly an excuse to reintroduce Frank to Karen, not that anything happens with that.

It really takes until about episodes 11-12 before it gets to the over-the-top violence and gore that you come to expect.  It really could have been wrapped up in the 12th episode but instead there's a gratuitous 13th episode where Frank and a former brother-in-arms fight on the carousel where Frank's family was killed.  Which begged the question:  wouldn't they have just shut down that carousel?  What parent wants to take their kid to a carousel where three people were brutally murdered?  And now you have a nearly as brutal gun-and-fistfight on the same carousel?

Anyway, as far as Marvel's Netflix shows go, Iron Fist is annoying and Jessica Jones was confusing at first, but the Punisher was far worse to me simply because it did a poor job of representing the character.

Honestly I think for a character like the Punisher the serial approach doesn't really work.  Subtlety isn't his thing and trying to build up a 13-episode season just leaves too much time to work with.  Either shrink the season down to half that or go with the episodic approach.  The A-Team approach like that first episode.  It would at least not be as boring.

But you probably disagree.  Good for you.

Even Comedies Need Conflict

For a few months I've been reading EM Foner's Union Station series.  I bought the first book or two and then I've been borrowing one per month on my Kindle.  Last month I read the ninth book, Guest Night on Union Station.  It was a really bland entry in the series.

The main problem is shared by some of the other books in the series:  nothing significant really happens.  There's just some bland, mildly amusing stuff and then it ends after about 200 pages.  In this case there were a couple of spots where there was a potential for something to happen and the author quickly snuffed it out.

The series focuses on Kelly McAllister, an ambassador for EarthCENT, the diplomatic arm of Earth's governments.  Kelly is assigned to the titular Union Station that's managed by highly-advanced artificial lifeforms known as Stryx who maintain peace across the galaxy.  When the series starts, Kelly is alone and in her early 30s or so but as the series progresses she gains a husband, a daughter, and then a son and at the point I'm up to she's over 50.

Anyway, one thing in this ninth book is Kelly's parents are going to visit from Earth.  Her mother hints that her father might have dementia or something like that.  Ooh, that could be interesting, right?  Kelly might have to deal with some serious issues, right?  Um, no.  Her parents have a couple of brief conversations and then just leave.  It's implied that maybe her father isn't really all that senile but just pretending after a fashion.

Later Kelly's daughter pisses off a visiting alien.  The alien hunts her down at work and when she's alone confronts her and uses mental powers to abduct her.  Oh no, Kelly's daughter's in mortal danger, right?  Um, no.  Her daughter is rescued by the Stryx basically a page later with pretty much no effort whatsoever.  So that too fizzles out without anything of consequence happening.

And I suppose people could say, Well these comedies.  They don't need drama.  But even comedies have to have conflict!  Conflict is what builds events to an eventual payoff in some fashion.  The most basic example is that every joke needs a setup before there can be a punchline.  I mean if you just shout, "Orange you glad I didn't say banana?!" you might get laughs but only because you sound like a lunatic.  You need the whole "Knock, knock" setup first for it to make sense.

You can see examples of this in pretty much every comedic movie ever.  Take something as simple as Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore.  We introduce the core concept of the guy who wants to play hockey but sucks at it and yet he has a mean golf swing.  Then we introduce the ticking clock of his grandma losing her house unless he raises some money.  Which he tries to do by playing in golf tournaments.  Then we introduce conflict with his rival, tour pro Shooter McGavin.  It sets up the conflict between them as Shooter gets increasingly jealous of Happy's success and popularity.  And then it escalates as Shooter pays a guy to rile Happy to the point he gets into a fistfight with Bob Barker.  There's the "all is lost" moment as Happy's grandma's house is sold--to Shooter.  The payoff then is a winner-take-all tournament between Happy and Shooter.  This has its own escalating conflict as they vie for the lead.  And then its own final payoff on the last hole, where Happy has to make an improbable shot.

That movie is about 90 minutes long, but it'd be about 9 minutes if it were written like an EM Foner book.  Happy's grandma would face foreclosure but it'd somehow get paid off in the next scene.  The End.  That's fun, right?  Or Happy and Shooter would come into conflict...but Shooter gets thrown off the tour a scene later.  Yay?

So yeah, even comedies need conflict to escalate the plot and built to the climax.  Unless you're just going to have 90 minutes of three stooges throwing pies at each other.  I guess you can go that route, but it doesn't make for much of a story.