The Home Office On Wheels

 Before the pandemic I used to spend a lot of time in Starbucks, Biggby Coffee, or Panera Bread to write.  The problem when the pandemic shut those places down was I couldn't write there anymore.  A few ill-advised times they would reopen service inside but to sit around for hours writing and drinking coffee would be pretty fucking stupid so I obviously never did it.

When I did write I wrote at home but the reason I never liked writing at home much was there are all the distractions of TV, the Internet, and so on that can make it hard to focus.  Sometimes I would think, "Gee, wouldn't it be great if I had a trailer or van or SUV or something where I could set up a mobile office?"

Unfortunately it wasn't until about October that the thought hit me:  why don't I just move the front seat on the passenger's side up and write in the backseat?  And so I tried that.  It was a little snug because my Focus doesn't have tons of legroom but there was enough room to type.  And there's a cupholder in the backseat and the center console for beverages.  I have my MP3 player and a portable speaker or headphones to listen to music.  I also have a tabletop thing I bought a couple years ago to write in my recliner chair but it works even better in the car.  I can put my Chromebook on that and type away as well as in any coffee place--in some cases it's a less wobbly platform.

Most of the time when I did (and do) this I go to a park or the parking lot of a big box store like Walmart, Meijer, or Lowe's.  Those places usually have plenty of parking spots to spare whereas a minimall parking lot or somewhere like that might be more cramped and I don't want to take up space if I'm not really buying anything.

While this does usually work, there are some drawbacks.

1. Bathrooms!  The problem during the pandemic is you can't just run into a fast food or coffee place to use the can like the old days.  You could probably go into Meijer or Walmart or somewhere but that can still be risky.  Portable toilets are harder to find unless you want to try to infiltrate a construction site.  On Amazon you can buy a portable urinal like they use in hospital beds.  It looks sort of like a small gas can, where you piss into the hole.  They even can come with a hose and adapter for male or female genitalia.  But the problem is you can't do that very easily in a parking lot without risking someone might notice and call the cops.  Really the only other thing you could do is wear adult diapers.
2. Weather or Not:  Weather of course can be a big problem.  In the summer it gets hot and unless you want to run the car's air conditioner, it won't be very comfortable with the windows down.  Conversely in the winter it gets really cold and even if you had the heater on in the car before you stopped, it can start getting cold unless you're going to keep running the heater.
3. WiFi:  Something that can be good and bad is depending on where you park, you might not have access to WiFi.  Especially in a park there's not likely to be WiFi access.  Big box stores can be iffy.  I mean the Lowe's near me usually has WiFi I can access but the Walmart next door doesn't.  That can be good as it's less distraction but it also kind of sucks on a Chromebook where no WiFi means you can't save it to the Cloud, so you have to hope the device's limited hard drive will keep it until you can get WiFi access.  If you use a more traditional laptop then it wouldn't matter as much.

Anyway, with Year 2 of the pandemic coming up in a month, it's something to think about doing if you're a writer and you're tired of the distractions at home.  If you have a trailer or RV or van or something it would probably work a lot better than my Focus but if I can make it work in a small car, you can probably make it work with what you have.  I'm just saying.

The Price Is Right, GameStop, and the Search for Competitive Advantage

 First off, today is my niece Juno's 10th birthday.  It's hard to believe that she's already in the double digits.  Only 3 more years and she'll be a teenager.  That's how you know you're getting old.

Juno when she was about 8 months old

Anyway, near the start of the year Pluto TV started a new channel of classic Price is Right episodes from when Bob Barker was the host.  Around the same time I was watching that, there was this whole thing about how a Reddit group banded together to prop up the price of stocks like GameStop and AMC that big time Wall Street people were shorting.  A lot of these people made money and they fucked over Wall Street, so they kind of became folk heroes.

There is a common factor between a game show that's been on a long time and a group of people finding a way to make money and fuck Wall Street:  the search for competitive advantage.

In the Price is Right, the first thing people have to do after they "come on down" is bid against each other on some small prize.  Fairly quickly people worked out strategies to get an edge.  For instance if the top bid is $525, the last person might bid $526.  That way they have the highest bid and make sure the next-highest person can't win unless they are exactly on.  I always think that's lame but it works sometimes.

In one of the old 1982 shows there was kind of an embarrassing moment when one contestant bid $500--but someone else already had.  But before they realized this the next person was going to bid $600.  So they had to go back to the second person who bid $500 and she thought she could bid $601 and get the highest bid, but they had to inform her that the person after her's bid hadn't been counted yet.  So after she bid $600, guess what the person after her bid?  $601.  And she won.  So there you go.  

Conversely sometimes people only bid $1 because they figure everyone else is over and thus that way they ensure they don't go over.  But if you go the $1 route too early, someone else might bid $2 to screw you.

When it comes to spinning the big wheel they have a rule that the wheel has to go all the way around.  Why?  Because otherwise someone would barely nudge the wheel so they could get the $1 amount to win $1000 or whatever.

A couple years ago I watched a documentary about a guy who got the ultimate competitive advantage on the Price is Right.  He figured out that they used a lot of the same products over and over.  And rewatching the show you can see this is true.  I mean I watched one episode where in one game they had a popcorn popper for $56 and the next episode in a different game they had the same popcorn popper that was $56.  Or a few times they had Kraft Mac n Cheese and it's always 43 cents.  Anyway, this guy basically made a database of the products and when he went to the show he would help some of the players out and when he got on stage he won a bunch of stuff.

In the case of that guy and people who play cutthroat style by bidding $1 more or just bidding $1, it's not cheating.  It's just trying to give yourself a competitive advantage.  And really that's what the Redditors did.  They did what Wall Street itself has done for decades by finding a way to game the market and make it work for them.

The problem is finding the line between an acceptable competitive advantage and an unacceptable advantage.  Like athletes who use steroids.  The Patriots filming other teams's practices and "Deflategate."  Pyramid schemes like Amway or Herbalife.  These things might not be outright illegal so much as just sleazy and can do real harm to people--physically with steroids and financially with pyramid schemes.

I guess the difference is what you'd consider a "victimless crime."  The Price is Right examples aren't really hurting anyone.  Maybe you're denying someone else a chance to get on stage and play a game but it's not really hurting anyone.  The guy who figured out the prices is like someone who can count cards at blackjack:  if he was smart enough to make it work then more power to him.  And he helped other people win, so the only one who might have been hurt is the producers of the show who had to give more stuff away.  The Reddit stock thing it might have hurt some Wall Street millionaires.  Meh.  The only real damage might have been people who jumped in too late and didn't make money.

Anyway, searching for an advantage is something people have always done.  It's how we evolved and I doubt it's ever going to change.  The struggle for society is defining which competitive advantages are acceptable and which are not.

Old Dogs, New Tricks: The High-Tech Pyramid Scheme

 A couple of weeks ago I talked about literary schemes that aren't scams--just really shitty deals.  And then I experienced a non-literary one for myself.

I forget exactly which rabbit hole I went down while browsing but somewhere there was a promise to make $2800 a month with no work!  Too good to be true?  Sure, but I thought I'd check it out anyway.  I mean, why not?

I got an email and it said to sign up for some seminar where I'd learn how to make money with only 27 minutes of work and no lists or websites.  The seminar was at 10pm because the guy who runs it is in Northern Ireland; I think by Belfast.  I played on my phone while he went through this whole spiel of how you could use these sites I'd never heard of to make money by selling online products.  Have you ever heard of Clickbank?  JVZoo?  AWeber?  I'd never heard of any of those.  AWeber is like Mailchimp, the thing I use for my Eric Filler newsletter.  The other two I still don't really understand but they have something to do with selling crap online.

Anyway, I'm listening and of course it all sounds too good to be true.  Where's the hammer?  The ask?  And...boom.  This amazing program can be yours for the low, low price of $497!  Uh-huh.  No thanks.  I don't have $500 for a pyramid scheme.  But there were plenty of people who did sign up then and there.  I shook my head when I realized the guy had probably made $10-$15K just for one 50 minute seminar.  Imagine if teachers could get paid like that.

A few days go by and I kept getting emails asking me to sign up.  Finally I got an offer to try it for 7 days FREE!  And so I thought, OK, let's see if this really can work.  So I signed up for the free trial.

The first thing you have to do is sign up for Clickbank and AWeber, the latter of which costs about $200/year for the premium service.  I'm not sure if you can use the free account for what "the program" needs to do.  Anyway, after I did that I went through 12 videos on the guy's site to set up prefab email campaigns. 

Now I'm ready to roll.  All I need to do to start making the big bucks is get traffic so I can get email addresses to put on my AWeber thing to pester with emails.  How do I do that?  There are a couple of videos (almost 3 hours worth) that are supposed to tell you the great secret for free traffic.

What is the great secret?  You're reading it right now.  It's a blog!  Seriously.  You're supposed to write a blog.  Like this one.  Three days a week.  Like this one.  Preferably with a domain name that's like your name--like I used to have.  And do still have for my Eric Filler site on Wordpress.

What are you supposed to blog about?  Whatever.  How "the program" is working for you.  Or online tools you like.  Shit like that.  But be positive!  (You know, not like me.)  And at the end put in a link for people to click so maybe they'll buy something that you'll get paid for and get their email for your list.

As I listened, I wanted to bash my forehead on my desk.  THIS is the great secret.  THIS!  A blog.  I've been blogging for 11 years never realizing that was the secret to online success. Ha.  But don't just blog, promote your blog posts on Facebook and Twitter!  Which I already do.  And how many people read this blog?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?  Yeah.  But you could have a post go viral!  OK, it's been 11 years and I haven't had a post go viral.  And, wait, didn't the email I get say I didn't need a website or a list?  Now I'm supposed to create a website to get addresses for a list?  WTF?

At last I could finally see how this worked.  It's a classic pyramid scheme.  It's highly unlikely someone like me at the bottom is going to make thousands of dollars a day or even a month from writing a blog and putting a link at the bottom.  I might make a few bucks, probably not even enough to pay the $500 I'd have to spend for "the program."  But the guy at the top is getting 50% of "the profits" (however much that is) from everyone else in the pyramid.  That's why he's making $2-$3K while he sleeps.  The rest of us, not so much.

I'd finally heard enough and cancelled my trial of "the program" and AWeber account and stuff.  I should have gotten out soon enough that I don't have to pay anything.  In the end it's a good reminder that even though the tools change, the tactics are still largely the same.  "The program" is really not that different from HerbaLife or AmWay, only you're writing blogs and sending emails instead of going door-to-door.  There are times when my skepticism is justified.  This is one of those.

My secondary motivation, besides the highly unlikely possibility I might actually make thousands of dollars for doing almost nothing, was to see if any of this might help with MY online business--selling books.  I was curious when I heard about this Clickbank and JVZoo stuff if I could use it for book marketing.  From what I've seen, not really.  I went to the JVZoo "Marketplace" and any books in there would be non-fiction.  Mostly the "get rich quick" or fad diet kind of stuff.  

The idea of "affiliate marketing," as it's called, might be able to work, but I don't really think it would for fiction.  I mean for a nonfiction "get rich quick" or fad diet you could recruit an army of minions to blog about how great it is and how it changed their lives.  A fiction book, whether it's a gender swap like I do or a traditional mystery or thriller, would be harder to work.  You could in theory get an army of minions to blog reviews of it and put links at the bottom, but I'm not sure it'd really have the appeal of a nonfiction book.

In the end, I think the core of the scheme is something I've talked about before:  the online footprint.  If just this one guy is blogging about "the program" then it's hard for it to turn up on searches.  But if you get an army of disciples blogging about "the program" then you have a lot more footprints out there, making it more likely for people to see your product or service when searching online.  Even better if you get this army of disciples to pay you $500 apiece for the privilege of promoting your product in the hope of getting a cut.  And in a month or so when they've hardly made any money, you can blame them and say they're not working hard enough.  It's a win-win--if you're at the top of the pyramid.  

But hey, let's try this program out.

PS:  Would you like to know the secrets that changed my life?  Then go to Planet 99 Publishing and learn all about my books!

Ranking DC Live Action & Animated Movies

 Since I was talking about DC live action and animated movies the last couple of entries, it seemed natural to do some ranking.  I'm going to rank the live action and animated separately.  And since I haven't watched a lot of the animated ones in a while I'll only do my top 5.

Live Action (2013-2020):

9.  Birds of Prey Harley Quinn:  I haven't seen it but I just assume it sucks ass.

8.  Suicide Squad:  I thought this movie was so dumb and lame.  I hated Jared Leto's Joker, hated Harley Quinn, and the rest of the characters were pretty forgettable.  Viola Davis did a good job of Amanda Waller, but her character does so many stupid things that it was ridiculous.

7.  Wonder Woman 84:  See two blog entries ago.  To me the whole wishing thing was dumb and there were so many things that didn't really make a lot of sense.  A big disappointment from after the first movie.

6.  BvS:  This attempt to create a cinematic universe was full of  holes.  There were some good parts and I didn't hate Batfleck as much as other people, but in the end the plot doesn't hold together.  I mean, what the hell was Lex Luthor's plan?  Hope Batman kills Superman or at least delays him long enough to unleash Doomsday?  And if Doomsday fails, sell out Earth to Darkseid?  Why?

5.  Justice League:  I didn't hate this nearly as much as other people.  It wasn't a great movie either, but it did the best it could with the hand it was dealt.  I doubt the much-anticipated "Snyder Cut" will really make it that much better in the end.

4.  Man of Steel:  As far as Superman movies go it wasn't as cheesy as the Christopher Reeve movies and not as confusing as the Brandon Routh movie.  There aren't as many plot holes as BvS but all the Krypton stuff and world engine stuff was pretty lame.  It's too bad DC/WB got dollar signs in their eyes before they could really build up the character.

3.  Aquaman:  The first movie after the disaster of Justice League and it did a good job of changing the narrative by largely ignoring Justice League, ditching the grim-n-gritty Snyder tone, and taking its cues from Black Panther and Thor.  The end result is a decent popcorn movie on par with a lot of Marvel efforts.

2.  Shazam:  Like Deadpool, this was as much a comedy as an action movie.  A lot of it is basically like if in Big the kid had turned into Superman instead of Tom Hanks.  It took a character most people hadn't cared about since the 50s and made it a success.

1.  Wonder Woman:  The first of the modern DC live action movies where they actually got things right.  Most of it wasn't as fun and popcorn-movie entertaining as Aquaman and Shazam but it was a good origin story and for my money the No Man's Land scene is still one of the best scenes in any superhero movie.  Not to mention the significance of finally having a successful female superhero movie after decades of popular female characters being ignored.

Animated Movies (Top 5)

1.  Mask of the Phantasm:  This movie is from 1994 but it still holds up in the modern superhero movie age.  It combines a noir movie, romance, and superhero movie in a great package.  It's really better than a lot of the DC live action movies--and some of Marvel's too.

2.  All Star Superman:  This was an adaptation of Grant Morrison's standalone 12-issue series where Superman saves some scientists near the sun and sort of overdoses on solar radiation.  Not only does this make him stronger, but in time it will kill him.  While the animated movie doesn't include everything from the series (like the Bizarro World part) it hits most of the main points and had a great ending.

3.  Red Son:  I really liked the graphic novel and since this keeps most of that story, I really liked the animated version too.

4.  Justice League: War:  The title is probably the worst part of this movie.  It was a pretty straight-up adaptation of the first two volumes of the New 52 Justice League title that brought together the League as they come together to thwart an invasion by Darkseid.  Really the live action version would have been much better off following this blueprint.

5.  Justice League:  Gods & Monsters:  This is an alternate universe or "Elseworlds" tale where Superman is the son of Zod, Wonder Woman is the granddaughter of the "Highfather," and Batman is a scientist who turned into a vampire.  While not evil like the Crime Syndicate (the real Justice League's doppelgangers) this is a lot grittier Justice League.  When someone starts rubbing out scientists in ways that look like the Justice League is responsible, they have to find the real killer before the government wipes them out.  This was really good.  The bad guy wasn't too easy to spot, so that made it better than if it had just been Lex Luthor or someone obviously evil. 

As a third category, here are some of the stories I wish they would do animated movies for:

1.  Kingdom Come:  The seminal graphic novel by Mark Waid and Alex Ross was really great.  I'd say it was probably the best DC Comics story of the 90s.  It would be amazing if they could adapt Ross's painted artwork for the animation.

2.  Batman:  Knightfall:  I really want an adaptation of this that sticks pretty close to the comics of the 90s.  It would be hard to do in live action but an Elseworlds animated movie would be awesome.  Actually I'd like three movies to cover all 3 phases of the story:  Knightfall, Knightsquest, and Knightsend.  Or the first part could adapt the Sword of Azrael miniseries, then Knightfall, and then combine Knightsquest/Knightsend into one movie.

3.  Batman:  Vampire:  Another great story from the 90s (I think) where Batman becomes a vampire and destroys Count Dracula.  There are two more books where he struggles with being a vampire until he kills the Joker and Alfred and Gordon kill him and then in the final book he's brought back (because they didn't cut off his head) and becomes a murdering fiend until he's destroyed once and for all.

4.  Green Lantern:  Earth One:  This was a more recent two-part graphic novel series of which I only read the first part.  It's set in the future where Hal Jordan is a space miner or something and finds the Green Lantern ring.  It was a neat way to update the story.

5.  Wonder Woman:  Warbringer:  This was a YA novel that they also did in graphic novel form.  It's about a young Diana finding a girl who's cursed to start a war that could end the world unless she's taken to Greece to remove the curse.  It's sort of a prequel for Wonder Woman and a decent fish-out-of-water story as Diana enters the "world of Man" for the first time.  A lot better than WW84 anyway.

DC Animated Movies Are Still More Consistently Better Than Live Action Ones

 One nice thing when I finally logged in to HBO Max is they have almost all of the DC animated movies from Mask of the Phantasm in 1994 to ones released last year.  Quite a few I had already seen on Amazon Prime or Redbox (usually as part of a BOGO Free) but there were some I hadn't seen.  And as I said overall the quality of the stories is still better consistently than the live action DC movies.

If you don't already know, these movies are PG-13 or R-rated with bad language, blood, gore, and sex.  They're cartoons but they're a lot different from the old Superfriends cartoon.

Superman:  Red Son:  This was one I wanted to see but it came out last year near the start of the pandemic so I didn't get the chance.  It's an adaptation of the graphic novel by Mark Millar that postulates what would happen if Superman's rocket had landed in the Ukraine in 1938 instead of Kansas.  The result is that Superman becomes a servant of Stalin and the Soviet state before becoming the head of the USSR.  Much of the world then comes to his side while Lex Luthor and the USA becomes more desperate, isolated, and poor.

The animated version follows most of the key points of the graphic novel:  Superman ending Stalin's camps, taking over as the premier, befriending Wonder Woman (though not that way), fighting the Russian Batman, fighting Luthor's cloned Superman (essentially Bizarro), and fighting an American Green Lantern Corps.  The end is a bit different as there's a big battle with Superman and Luthor teaming up against Brainiac.  I think that was added to give the third act more oomph because in the comic I think Superman beats the Green Lanterns and shows up to the White House where Luthor has him read a note asking if he'll put the whole world in a bottle like one of Brainiac's captured cities.  Superman then realizes that he's been going at this wrong and backs down.  Then it skips forward into the distant future on a dying Earth, where baby Kal-El is sent back through time and space.  Both endings work pretty well.

Gotham By Gaslight:  This is a Batman Elseworlds that takes place in the late 19th Century.  Someone is killing prostitutes in Gotham and Bruce Wayne as a steampunk Batman tries to track down the killer.  I read this a long time ago and thought it was kind of meh.  Like a lot of these Elseworlds it's just "let's set it in this time period and do basically the same story as in modern times."  The difference between this and Red Son is that Red Son is a lot bolder in telling a unique story while also integrating a lot of the traditional Superman characters.  Whereas stories like this feel more like a costume party; it's like everyone is dressing up in 19th Century costumes and acting out a Batman story.  It's not all that interesting to me.  Still, it's not bad either. 

I'm not sure if they changed the ending or not because it's been so long since I read this.  I like how they worked the Robins in, which I'm pretty sure this was added for this because the graphic novel was a long time ago.  I was pleasantly surprised they didn't work the Joker or Harley Quinn into this; I suppose the Joker being Jack the Ripper would have been too obvious.

Superman:  Man of Tomorrow:  This is a prequel or maybe a reboot from last year about Superman when he's just starting out in Metropolis.  When Lobo comes to track him down, there's a big fight and some alien goo gets on a janitor, who becomes Parasite, able to drain people of life force--including Superman.  With the help of Lobo, Martian Manhunter, and Lex Luthor, he's able to stop the Parasite in a battle that takes much too long to get to what we all know is going to happen.  I mean obviously Superman isn't going to die, so why drag it out for like 20 minutes?  And watching Martian Manhunter burn to death was a little over-the-top, though spoiler, he doesn't really die; it was just a psychic trick.

Teen Titans: The Judas Contract:  The Judas Contract was one of the first big event comics from back in the early 80s.  In it Deathstroke is hired to capture the Titans, which he does with the help of a girl named Terra who has earth-controlling powers.  The title comes from Terra betraying the rest of the Titans--like Judas.  The 2017 movie tells basically the same story though it's more streamlined and a few things are different because the team is a little different.  Overall I think it was a good representation of the story and unlike some later animated movies wasn't too dark or violent.

Superman Unbound:  This was an older one from 2013 that I might have seen before, though I'm not exactly sure.  It's about Brainiac coming to Earth and Superman and Supergirl have to stop him and free the Kryptonian city of Kandor from his clutches.  It was good for the most part.  It was PG-13 so there's some violence and language but nothing too much.  It ends with Clark proposing to Lois, but I think they rebooted their animated continuity before they could get married.

Batman:  Hush:  This was a big storyline in the 2000s by Jeph Loeb, who went on to work for Marvel TV projects.  A mysterious man with a bandaged face is using Batman villains to cause havoc.  He even has Poison Ivy brainwash Superman.  Meanwhile, Batman and Catwoman hook up and Bruce even reveals his secret identity.  In the end it turns out the Riddler dresses up as Hush after finding out he has a tumor (cue Kindergarten Cop joke) and dunks himself in a Lazarus Pit.  I thought it was Bruce's friend Tom Elliott in the comic but it turns out that was the sequel Heart of Hush, which wasn't as good as the original.  Anyway, it was a decent movie.  The relationship with Batman and Catwoman worked as well as in Tom King's recent comics, though like with those comics of course it doesn't turn out.  Like other recent animated movies some details were changed to make it fit into the animated continuity, like the presence of Batman's son Damian, who I don't think had shown up yet in the comics when it came out.

Batman: Death in the Family:  I'm glad I saw this on HBO Max because to spend any money directly on it would be a huge ripoff.  Maybe the DVD has more stuff but this was just a Cliff Notes version of the Under the Red Hood movie from years ago.  Seriously, they just took the footage from that and edited it down with narration by Bruce in a diner with Clark Kent.  To pad it out feature length they have 4 unrelated shorts.  The first is Sgt Rock (a WWII hero voiced by Karl Urban) with a vampire, werewolf, and Frankenstein monster taking down a Nazi castle.  Another is Adam Strange looking like The Dude saving a mining colony in space.  Another is The Phantom Stranger (voiced by Peter Serafinowicz of The Tick on Amazon) helping a teenage girl avoid being eaten by a demon.  The last one (the best one) is a struggling artist meeting Death (the young girl version from the Neil Gaiman Sandman comics) and painting a picture of her--then he goes to the afterlife.  On streaming this would be a waste of money but from what I read on Amazon the DVD might have the alternate endings for the Death in the Family story.

Batman:  Ninja:  I thought this would be like the Gotham by Gaslight one where it's just Batman in medieval Japan.  Instead it's about Batman, his allies, and some of his enemies actually going back in time to medieval Japan.  And then it gets weird with castles that turn into giant robots and then those giant robots make one super robot Voltron/Power Rangers style.  And a bunch of monkeys and bats form a giant Batman.  I did like how Batman's motorcycle turned into robot armor like a Robotech/Mospaeda Cyclone, but unfortunately that was destroyed too soon.  The animation was mostly in an anime style with a little CGI thrown in and one section had something that was cruder and more like painting.  It did look pretty cool but I'd have liked more of a down-to-earth story.

The Death of Superman:  It was a few years earlier when they did a half-assed Death/Return of Superman called Doomed, but this is more like the comics from the early 90s that were shocking at the time.  The gist of this is still the same but it's a lot more streamlined and there are some changes made to make it fit in with previous Justice League movies like War and Throne of Atlantis since this does function as a direct sequel of those, not as a stand-alone or Elseworlds kind of movie.

So anyway, a huge monster called Doomsday attacks, the rest of the Justice League can't stop it, and Superman does, but he dies.  At the end Superman's body disappears and in cookie snippets during the credits we get glimpses of the four Supermen taking his place, setting up the next movie.  Overall this was a good movie that did a better job at setting up the Lois and Clark relationship than in the live action movies.

Reign of the Supermen:  Superman is dead, long live the Supermen!  Taking a cue from the 90s comics, 4 characters vie to replace Superman.  There's a young clone of Superman made by Lex Luthor--but don't call him Superboy!  There's Dr. John Henry who basically makes an Iron Man suit and becomes known as Steel.  There's "the Eradicator" who wears a yellow visor, shoots beams of light, and has no problem killing people.  And there's the Cyborg Superman who is...a cyborg that looks like Superman.

Like the previous movie the story is more streamlined to fit into about 80 minutes and things are changed to fit into the animated movie continuity.  I didn't read all the comics back in the 90s so I'm not sure if the origins of the Supermen are really the same.  Like I'm not sure if the Eradicator was a hologram in the comics who was dedicated to protecting Kal-El as he regenerates--and apparently used a really liberal definition of protecting him.  Or if this Superboy was a clone, though I know there was at least one in the 90s-2000s who was.  Or if the Cyborg Superman back then was created by Darkseid.

The Cyborg Superman becomes the main villain while Superboy and Steel are good guys and the Eradicator kind of disappears after a battle at Luthor's headquarters.  The involvement of Darkseid helps to explain how Hank Henshaw becomes the Cyborg Superman and also sets up for the next movie in the series.  In a cookie scene, the Justice League decides that they need to take the war to Darkseid on his home of Apokolips...

Justice League Dark: Apokolips War:  This takes a cue from the last two Avengers movies as it ties together all the stuff that came before with all the various teams:  Justice League, Justice League Dark, Teen Titans, and Suicide Squad.  Maybe they put this under the Justice League Dark banner because it gets dark...really fucking dark.  This is R-rated and it's not a light R rating either.

It starts off with Superman convincing everyone they need to do a preemptive strike on Darkseid's home of Apokolips.  The whole Justice League goes along with Constantine and Zatanna of the Justice League Dark.  But unbeknownst to them, Darkseid is eavesdropping through Cyborg and thus is prepared for them and the heroes are routed.  Zatanna and Hal Jordan are killed.  Wonder Woman, Mera, Hawkman, and Martian Manhunter become cyborg servants of Darkseid.  Batman is brainwashed into becoming Darkseid's aide.  Cyborg and Flash are used to help run systems on Apokolips.  And Superman is injected with liquid Kryptonite and sent back to Earth depowered to show everyone the price of fucking with Darkseid.

Two years later Earth has been overrun by Darkseid's minions.  Constantine is tracked down by Clark Kent and Raven of the Titans to help them find Damien Wayne for their last ditch plan to get to Apokolips and try to get Batman to help them.  But to get to Apokolips they need to recruit the Suicide Squad to help them get into LexCorp in Metropolis.  Meanwhile, Darkseid launches three machines to suck the magma out of the earth, which will destroy the planet.

It's all pretty grim, but wait, there's more!  Once the heroes start their last-ditch attack, the bodies start dropping:  Shazam, Batwing, Batgirl, Batwoman, Jon Stewart, and all the other Green Lanterns and Guardians on Oa are all killed.  The body count keeps climbing and yet somehow Harley Quinn is still alive--grrr...

As I was watching things just get darker and darker I kept wondering when they were going to go back in time and fix all this.  I mean that's what has to happen, right?  Right?  I mean you can't leave it with like 75% of the heroes dead and most of the others mutilated.  And the planet has lost enough magma from the core that Earth is probably going to die.  So, yeah, finally the Flash leaves to go back and create another Flashpoint.  But we'd have to wait for another movie to find out what's different.  Since these movies started based off the New 52 maybe they'll reboot it to Rebirth or whatever.

Anyway, I don't mind darker superhero movies but this was too dark even for me.

Wonder Woman:  Bloodlines:  This opens with a prequel as Steve Trevor crashes on Paradise Island after his plane is attacked by Darkseid's parademons.  Diana rescues him and decides to take him back to Man's World, but her mom doesn't want her to go.  When Diana defies her, it means she can't come back to Paradise Island ever again.  Steve takes her to the home of some anthropologist or archaeologist or whatever and the lady's daughter Vanessa gets jealous because her mom is fawning all over Diana.

Years later, after Diana has become Wonder Woman and part of the Justice League and everything, Vanessa steals some shit and when her mom and Diana go to stop her, Vanessa's mom is killed and Vanessa blames her.  Vanessa joins up with some bad guys and becomes "Silver Swan," who looks like a female version of Archangel or whoever in that X-Men Apocalypse movie.  Apparently the only way to save her is to take her to Paradise Island and use the "purple healing ray" to fix her.  With the help of an evil pharmaceutical company CEO, Diana finds where Paradise Island should be, but...it's a trap!

The bad guys unleash Medusa and shit starts getting dark as Medusa turns numerous Amazons to stone and kills them.  There's a far-too-lengthy battle between Wonder Woman and Medusa, during which Wonder Woman blinds herself to keep from looking at Medusa and turning to stone.  Did we really need to go that far?  Couldn't she just use a mirror like Clash of the Titans or something?  Since we all knew Wonder Woman was going to win eventually it just seemed way too drawn out.

Other than that it was OK but not great.  Still better than WW84.  In the same way, that Apokolips War movie was too dark and grim but the plot does hold together a lot better than BvS.  Man of Tomorrow was a better Superman origin story than Man of Steel, probably because they truncated all that Krypton stuff.  So that's what I mean that the animated movies have been consistently better than the live action ones.  Going forward, though, maybe they can lay off the darkness just a little bit.  I don't need it to be all slapstick or something but maybe fewer mass killings and mutilations.  I'm just saying.

Some Other Stuff I Watched

 I've talked about The Mandalorian season 2, The Expanse season 5, and Birds of Prey, but of course I watched some other stuff too.  Since it's unlikely I'll get any comments either way I'm just going to put it into one entry.  There wasn't tons of other stuff because most of December I watched holiday stuff.

WW84:  Only after a meme on Twitter told me I could use my regular HBO login to watch HBO Max did I get around to watching this.  And...I didn't really like it.  The core concept didn't work for me.  I mean in superhero movies magic is one thing, but a wishing stone?  And Maxwell Lord (basically a cut-rate Donald Trump) wishes to be the stone?  That's like that old thing where you get a magic lamp and wish for more wishes.  And it's 1984 but no one ever takes a picture of Wonder Woman?  Granted they didn't have cell phone cameras, but people had regular cameras and Polaroids.  Shouldn't there be at least blurry Bigfoot/Nessie-type pictures?  And wouldn't Bruce Wayne and maybe Clark Kent and Arthur Curry remember when Wonder Woman saved the world?  And she flies now? (She flies now.)  She wishes Steve Trevor to live again and he Quantum Leaps into some other dude?  Considering he died in 1917 how is it he could fly a jet in almost no time?  And when did Wonder Woman start trying to make things invisible?  And why the hell isn't she flying and making shit invisible in BvS or Justice League?  

"Cheetah" wound up being pretty lame.  The nerdy person who obsesses over the hero and turns on him/her was already done in Batman Forever and Amazing Spider-Man 2.  And just because she wore leopard print she turns into a cat woman?  Maybe if I had watched it in a theater I would have liked it more by virtue of being a captive audience but watching it at home I just started playing games on my phone and not really giving a shit.

I really liked the first movie but it was more down-to-earth.  The scene where she crossed No Man's Land gave me the chills; this just gave me the yawns.  I'm wondering if Patty Jenkins isn't like Zack Snyder in that she shouldn't be given too much creative control or she'll make a mess; doesn't give me any hope for her Star Wars movie or a sequel to this.

Becker:  This CBS comedy from 1998-2004 was on Pluto TV.  I watched a few episodes on the TV Land channel and then saw it On Demand so I watched it from the beginning.  The show stars Ted Danson as Dr. John Becker, a real grumpy bulldog who has a small practice in the Bronx.  He's basically like Al Bundy if Al hadn't been married with children and a doctor instead of a shoe salesman.  Becker's office is managed by a black woman named Margaret (who's basically his boss) and there's a ditzy young assistant named Linda.  He frequents a diner that for the first four seasons is run by a woman named Reggie, played by Terry Farrell, who left DS9 before its final season for this.  There's also a newsstand run by a blind black guy named Jake and there's an annoying customer named Bob who in the first couple seasons is only a guest star and talks about himself in the third person but by the third season he was promoted to a regular and stopped with the third person thing.  Then he left before the start of the sixth (and final) season and some fat Latino dude named Hector was added to pal around with Jake.

I liked the first 3 seasons for the most part.  Some of the jokes and setups were predictable but mostly it was fun for Becker's rants and how his attitude would get him in trouble.  There were a few "very special episodes" but not too many to bring it down.

One of the things I liked too was unlike a lot of shows of that time they didn't have any of that will they-won't they romance stuff.  They really made no attempt to hook up Becker and Reggie.  Then in the last few episodes of the 4th season they introduce Chris (played by Nancy Travis, who co-starred in the 3 Men & A Baby/Little Lady movies with Danson) and Reggie suddenly wants to sleep with Becker.  She leaves town after sleeping with him and then there's a will they-won't they with Becker and Chris in the fifth season and in the sixth they hook up.  Meh.

Fun Facts:  Besides Terry Farrell, Star Trek alums LeVar Burton and Leonard Nimoy guest starred in different episodes.  Nimoy was also the director of 3 Men & A Baby.  His ex-wife in one episode was played by Alice Krige, the Borg Queen in Star Trek First Contact.  Cheers alums Rhea Perlman, George Wendt, and Kelsey Grammer guest starred in different episodes, though not as the characters of that show.  John Mahoney, who played Frasier's father in that series also shows up in an episode.  

Truth Seekers:  I hadn't really heard anything about this series before I saw it advertised on Amazon Prime.  I watched the first episode and it was pretty fun so I watched the other seven.  This is a British series that stars Nick Frost, Simon Pegg's sidekick in Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Paul, etc.  He's a cable internet repair guy who also has a little-seen YouTube channel where he hunts ghosts.  Then on a call he and his new trainee "Elton John" run into an actual haunting.  They encounter more spirits and save a girl who had disappeared back in like 1997.  Eventually they stumble into a conspiracy of a cult trying to open some kind of gateway to another world.  If you liked Shaun of the Dead or that Dirk Gently show then you'd probably like this.

While I liked it and hope there's a season 2 (there's sort of a cookie scene in the last episode to set one up) the naming a character after a real person (or a real person's stage name) always bugs me.  It's been done to death.  The other thing I didn't like was it's only about a half-hour.  When I started watching I just assumed it was in that 45-60 minute range so when it ended after about 30 minutes I was like WTF?!  Unlike some shows I would have liked it to be longer.

Fun Facts:  Simon Pegg is also in this show as Nick Frost's boss with the cable internet company.  The cookie scene at the end involves him and sort of gives his secret origin.  Malcolm McDowell of A Clockwork Orange, Star Trek Generations, the Halloween reboots, etc plays Nick Frost's dad who gets brainwashed by the evil cult.

Stargirl:  This was originally on the failed DC Universe streaming service but then was moved to the CW.  While it has the higher production values like other DC Universe shows it really does fit in with the CW shows because it focuses on a teenage girl who finds a magic staff and becomes a superhero.  Then she recruits some other kids at her school to become Wildcat and Hourman.  The full season was 13 episodes, but I would have much preferred 8--if not fewer.  

A lot of the story just didn't make sense to me.  In the beginning the Injustice Society kills the Justice Society of America, including Starman, who was the original owner of the magic staff.  So now the bad guys have killed the good guys they'll take over the world, right?  Um, no.  Instead they go run some town in the middle of fucking Nebraska to play house.  Why?  I mean if you have the power to kill all the superheroes on this Earth, why wouldn't you just go take over the world?  Who's gonna stop you?  And why did they leave all the JSA shit there?  I mean everything except the staff was just sitting around the former JSA headquarters; wouldn't the bad guys at least take them as trophies?  And why was a perky blonde girl being shunned so she had to sit with the losers, who of course were not unattractive either?  Most of it just didn't really make a lot of sense to me.  And while I liked Joel McHale in The Soup, Community, and even a Rifftrax, I can't buy him as a superhero unless he was voicing an animated character.

Swamp Thing:  Speaking of failed DC Universe shows on the CW.  I watched the first episode of this and it was OK.  Most of it is from the perspective of a woman named Abby who works for the CDC who returns to her hometown in Louisiana to study a mysterious outbreak.  So it's like halfway through the episode before we even meet Alec Holland, the dude who becomes Swamp Thing and actually longer to find out his name.  Holland is a disgraced scientist working for some rich guy.  Together he and Abby find out someone has been dumping something in the swamp.  And then Holland is nearly blown up and lands in the swamp and becomes Swamp Thing.

I kept forgetting to watch the other episodes so it really made almost no impression on me.  Watching a couple other episodes they focus mostly on Abby, probably because Swamp Thing is expensive.  It's kind of lame when you hardly show the titular character of the show.

Swamp Thing is one of those characters DC keeps trying to make happen in comics and on TV and stuff but he never really is going to get beyond B-list status--at best.  This show was cancelled before the second episode on DC Universe aired but I don't know if they plan on reviving it on the CW or not.  I don't really care.

Deathstroke: Knights and Dragons:  This was a 2019 animated movie that's in two parts on the CW Seed app and also on HBO Max.  It's kind of a rebooted Deathstroke story.  It was R-rated so there was some violence and gore and sex.  In the first part Deathstroke has a wife and kid but an old rival cuts the kid's throat, though the kid survives.  His wife divorces him and puts the kid in military school.  Like 10 years later the kid turns out to have psychic powers and is recruited by the old rival and an Asian girl who turns out to be Deathstroke's bastard daughter.  It was OK.  I mentioned in one entry that Deathstroke is one of the characters DC could do a live action movie about and this kind of proves the point.  I wouldn't do this story per se, but the character is versatile and deserves more than a cookie scene at the end of Justice League.

Constantine:  City of Demons:  Like Swamp Thing, Constantine is another character they keep trying to make happen.  There was that dumb Keanu Reeves movie.  The TV series on NBC.  Appearances on Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow and whatever else.  Numerous iterations of a solo comic and Justice League Dark and whatever else.  Like the Deathstroke movie this was a 2018 animated movie on the CW Seed app, though it's not there anymore; it is on HBO Max.  It stars Matt Ryan, who played Constantine on the NBC series and I think those other shows too.  An old friend's daughter is possessed by a demon and so he goes to LA to find a way to save her.  Like the Deathstroke movie this was also R-rated so there's some nasty demon shit and death and some sexiness.  I'm not a big Constantine fan but it was OK.  There are a couple of sad twists at the end. 

More Pandemic Comics

 I haven't read as many comics since the last time.  There weren't a lot of good sales or anything added to Amazon Prime to read for free.  But there were a few things.

Dawn of the Undead 2:  The long-awaited next chapter by my blogger buddy Arion.  Though it's called "Dawn of the Undead" only the first story is really about zombies.  The rest is a collection of stories, some spooky and some sad.  They're drawn with different styles too.  It's the same length as a regular comic by the big publishers but cheaper than new ones by Marvel or DC so why not check it out?

Immortal Hulk Vols 6-7:  I've liked Al Ewing's take on the Hulk and was glad when there was a sale where I could get the next two volumes for cheap.  When it left off, the Hulk/Banner had taken over a secret government facility.  Now Banner is sending out messages saying that we need to destroy the world.  Not like a nuclear holocaust or anything but that we need to throw off the shackles of capitalism, which I largely agree with.  And so do a lot of other people.  This worries the head of the evil Roxxon corporation who has recently revealed himself as a minotaur.  So he recruits an ancient monster who brainwashes everyone into thinking that it's the Hulk and Banner is an evil supervillain.  Everyone believes this--even Banner!  But inside of him, the Hulk still knows he's the Hulk and so he saves the day.  Meanwhile the villain "the Leader" is disguised as Banner's friend Rick Jones.  The second volume ends with a bang as "Rick Jones" explodes the Hulk with an infusion of gamma radiation.  A good continuation of the series and maybe someday I'll get more.

Batman: Damned:  This "Black Label" title got a lot of attention because it originally showed Batman's dick.  The edition I got from Comixology had it shadowed out.  Not that it mattered; it was pretty much gratuitous.  From what people on Goodreads said this was actually a sequel to Brian Azzarello's Joker that I read a long time ago.  If I remembered it better maybe I'd have enjoyed this more.  The story starts with the Joker falling to his death from a bridge.  Batman feels responsible and starts freaking out and seeing demons and shit.  Constantine shows up to "help" though he doesn't really seem to do a lot.  Besides the gratuitous dick shot, there was the gratuitous scene where Harley Quinn basically rapes Batman for...reasons.  In the end Batman wishes that he died instead of the Joker.  So now there's no Batman and the Joker is alive.  Yay?

Batman:  City of Bane:  This was the last two volumes of Tom King's run on the regular Batman title.  I got the first volume on sale but the second wasn't.  I was sick of waiting to read it so I just bought it at regular price.  Overall it was a decent way to end the story arc.  

After Bane had taken over Gotham, Batman's father from an alternate universe (the "Flashpoint" Batman) took Batman captive to try to revive his mother (Save...Marrrrtha!) but Batman escaped.  In his "Matches Malone" disguise (which looks like Magnum PI) he reunites with Catwoman in some tropical location.  There they reconcile and intercept some Venom.  Meanwhile, Robin tries to infiltrate Gotham but is captured and in retribution, Alfred is killed.

Without the shipment of Venom, Bane is weakened enough that Batman can take him down.  And eventually stops  his father too.  He and Catwoman don't get married but they're still hooking up, which should play into King's next series, which I suppose DC gave him to make up for cutting his run short and giving the main title to some Scott Snyder-loving hack.  Now we start the countdown for Alfred to be brought back.  We should start a pool on the date and method:  clone, multiverse, time travel, android, alien replica...?

Amazing Spider-Man (2018):  After about 10 years of Dan Slott writing the title, Marvel finally switched writers to Nick Spencer, the guy who gave us that whole Secret Empire thing.  After losing his company and money and everything, Peter Parker is back to living in New York with a couple of roommates.  Things get worse when he loses his doctorate because some computer determines Doc Ock wrote it, which is true because it was back during the Superior Spider-Man thing when Doc Ock's consciousness had taken over Peter's body.

Then things get worse when during a fight with the Taskmaster in a lab, Spider-Man triggers some machine that splits him into Spider-Man and Peter Parker.  It's like that Star Trek where there was a good and evil Kirk, only it doesn't so much make Spidey and Peter good or evil.  While Spidey has the powers and science smarts, Peter has all the feelings of responsibility and the memories of Uncle Ben's death.  At first it seems cool as Peter can hook up with Mary Jane while Spidey kicks villain butt, but eventually Peter finds out if they don't get back together they'll die.  Convincing Spidey of that is a bit harder but eventually they make it happen.

Overall the first volume isn't bad.  There's not a huge difference between Spencer's writing (so far) and Slott's.  I mean Spider-Man is still kind of a dork who makes a lot of bad jokes and Peter is a dork who just can't ever get his life together for an extended period.  I'm not all that keen on the idea of bringing back Kraven the Hunter but it's a comic book so no one stays dead forever.

The Boys Vol 2: Get Some:  This was added to Amazon Prime about the time as the second season of the TV series, though it bears no similarity at all.  This volume contains two stories.  In the first, Butcher and Hughie investigate a "superhero" who's sort of like Iron Man/Batman only he has a sex addiction that prompts him to try to put his dick in pretty much anything.  One of the last things he put his dick in (or tried to) was his old sidekick, who wound up dead.  After being disgraced, the former hero saves Earth by fucking a giant meteor to death.  The second half of the volume has Butcher and his team go to Russia, where someone has been using the superhero steroid to create villains to overthrow the government.  This second story was better as it was more of a real story with less nasty sex stuff--though still some.  Unlike the TV show there was nothing about "the Seven" in this except one mention of Homelander on the phone with someone.  Maybe if Amazon adds volume 3 this fall I can see what happens next.

A Scam Isn't Always a Scam

 The day after New Year's I got a message on my author page that seemed pretty innocuous, asking about how I came up with Chance of a Lifetime.  Silly me actually thought this was a real reader asking about the story and so I answered it like a reader question.

Then I get back this message:

Thanks for your sharing, Actually I am an editor from other site. May I speak with you as a representative of another site? I believe you are the writer we are looking for. If you are interested, I would like to introduce some opportunities, which may bring financial support to you.

When I said "ok" they continued:

Great! here is a brief introduction to Ringdom: We are a new subsidiary platform of STARY, while our sister-platform, Dreame, has been a great success in distributing Romance (Ranks top 3 as a reading app in most countries), we focus on presenting more Genre Fiction that is adventurous, high-concept and fast-paced. By joining us, apart from advance/contracted work award (depends on the situation) and royalty, you would enjoy a targeted readership as well as a better promotion opportunity. You may visit www.ringdomstory.com or check on our app on Google Play. 

I went to their site and I thought at first it was like this Public Bookshelf thing I loaded the Children of Eternity series to back in 2008:  you sell them the book for $50 and they put it on their page and people read it.  That was before Amazon Kindle so it seemed like a way to make something off stories that otherwise weren't likely to do anything.

So I ask if that's the deal and then this person goes into this whole thing about royalties and exclusive or non-exclusive and blah blah blah:

I would like to introduce you our business mode:

Our marketing strategy is to concentrate on digital sale first. Bestsellers will have the opportunity to be published in hardcover or to be adapted. 

On Ringdom's portal, a contracted new arrival would be promoted by the operation team while being free for reading. Until it has gained 200 followers, it will be selected into Pay-to-read Program*. It is possible that we will put a book into Pay-to-read Program earlier than that when we find another right time to do it.

*Apart from discount and some free samples, a reader would pay $1 to read about 10,000 words of premium content. As we are willing to offer you an 8% royalty, you would get $0.08 from a reader's $1 payment. （our cost is above 80%）

Nevertheless, an exclusive agreement will require the corresponding work to take its Licensee as sole publishing access. If you are not expecting an exclusive agreement for your book, you might want to try a non-exclusive contract with us. However, while you may freely feature the work through your own channels, the royalty will decrease to 6% and less promotion accesses will be given.

My takeaway is that you get either a 6% or 8% royalty on books you sell to them.  Which is chump change, emphasis on the CHUMP.  For 10,000 words you would get a whopping 8 cents.  Do the math on how much that is per word.  In the old days I think a lot of the magazines or pulps would give you a penny a word, which would be a lot better.  To make a dollar I'd need 13 people to buy it.  To make $10 I'd need 130 people to buy it.  To make $100 I'd need 1300 people to buy it!  And so on.  Whereas for Amazon I get 35 cents to $2 per person who buys it depending on how much I charge.

As I told this person, I make 70% on Amazon and it's Amazon, so people have heard of it.  I've never heard of "Ringdom" before now.  I guess that was enough to take the wind out of his/her sails:

Yeah, it’s better,  anyway, it’s good to talk with you, thanks for your reply.

Since this is a reading app, it made me think of Wattpad, that site/app that's mostly for short stories/flash fiction.  I hadn't actually been there in years, but when I did log in, I saw this message in my mail from last November:

Hello PatrickDilloway,

My name is Anna. I'm an Author Liaison representative, representing W e b n o v e l. 

I've read the initial chapters and I feel that your novel showcases your capabilities as a writer thus, I would like to invite you to publish on our platform W e b n o v e l. You may find our App on Appstore or Google Play, which has over tens of millions installations. 

We would like to offer a non-exclusive contract for your novels currently on the site, this way, you can keep the novel on the site but at the same time also help you tap on the large reader base of on our platform with over 60 million unique user views, making it a win-win situation. 

Please feel free to reach out to me with regards to this, we want to understand your needs first and foremost as an author to help you reach the target market you want to hit. 

If you want to reach out personally, You can contact me at：

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WebnovelEditors

Facebook Messenger: WebnovelEditors (There should be a space between two words)

Instagram: WebnovelEditors (There should be a space between two words)

Discord: Anna#5681

Email: editorwn.anna@gmail.com

(Checking my Eric Filler Gmail account recently, I got pretty much the same message only for Eric Filler and referencing my old sci-fi story Waking Prometheus.  It used a different editor name, though it was pretty much the same text.  That was about two months ago or a month after the Wattpad one.)

I go to their Facebook page and of course there's hundreds of other people who got the same message, only with a different name of the "editor."  On the surface it seems like pretty much the same deal as that "Ringdom" site.  There's no mention of royalties in this email but I bet if I had followed it up, it would be as meager--if not more so--than Ringdom.  I did go to their website and look up the page for authors.  Other than a stipend of $200 a month if you publish at least 1500 words a day (every day, no exceptions, which is basically NanoWriMo every month) there didn't seem to be anything specific on there.  Maybe I should do an undercover expose, though that's really more Writer Beware's forte.  And they do mention Webnovel and Ringdom's parents STARY & Dreame in this blog entry from October, so I guess it just took a couple of months to get to me.  There's also a 2018 blog entry from another site about this sort of thing.  

Like me, what they seem to say is it's not really an out-an-out scam.  It's more just taking advantage of gullible people.  Like a lot of other things the hook is more exposure than any serious money.  It probably works a lot better on Wattpad where you have a lot more newbs.  Maybe the Ringdom person thought that since Chance of a Lifetime was published back in 2013 I didn't really have anything else going on and thus would be more susceptible to this pitch.  But the Eric Filler stuff I do is probably going to make a lot more at the 70% I get from Amazon (and however the KDP Select thing works) than I'd get at 6-8% from some site I've never heard of.

The $200/month thing on Webnovel it's harder to do the math on.  I'm not sure that an Eric Filler book would make that much in a month.  But the good thing is that I can be flexible and release 2-3 books that aren't 45-50,000 words and that altogether might be $200/month.  And I set the pace, so I can do 5,000 words one day and 0 words another day.  Though a lot of the sales I get are still on the backlist, all that old stuff still on Amazon.  But it's probably a moot point since to get that $200/month you have to jump through a bunch of hoops and what are the odds they'll actually pay up?

Whether these are really scams or not, I think the best approach is to be skeptical and assume that when it comes to writing, no one legit is ever going to approach you out of the blue.  Especially in both of these instances it was pretty obvious they were just cutting and pasting, changing a name or title here or there to shotgun these messages out to hundreds or thousands of users.  That's how junk mail works, not legitimate businesses.

Anyway, if you get something like this, be wary.

Season 5 of the Expanse Isn't Great, But Sets the Table for the Epic Ending

 Last December, around Christmastime, Amazon started putting out season 5 of The Expanse.  If you want to know more about the show based on the book series by "James SA Corey" (who's actually 2 people) then you can read a couple of entries I wrote last winter.  

Part 1

Part 2

Anyway, this season is largely based on the fifth book and for good or ill mostly follows the important stuff from that.  For people who aren't fans of the books, this is not a great season because it's mostly about setting up the next season, which Amazon has said is the last season.  Which makes sense because the sixth book ends in a way that can make a satisfying ending while books 7-8 take place about 30 years later, which would be hard to do on TV.  Either they'd have to shrink the gap or spend a lot of time aging up the characters before each episode, which wouldn't be practical.

Like in the 5th book, in this season our main characters are spread throughout the Solar System.  Captain James Holden is on Tycho Station, overseeing the repair of the former Martian gunship Rocinante.  His pilot Alex goes back to Mars to try to make amends with his ex-wife and son, though she's not interested.  His engineer Amos Burton goes back to Earth to tend to the affairs of a former caretaker who died.  And his lover/XO Naomi goes into the Belt to find her son.

The father of Naomi's son is Marco Innaros, who's a charismatic terrorist or freedom fighter for the Belt, depending on your point of view.  Marco has a daring plan to deal a deathblow to Earth and thus rewrite the balance of power.  This is set up in the previous season as Marco and his people are stealing/buying Martian military technology, most notably stealth paint.

What do they do with the stealth paint?  Paint a bunch of small asteroids.  Then hurl the asteroids at Earth.  With the stealth paint, they're almost impossible to see from a long way away and almost impossible to detect on instruments unless you're really looking, which no one is.

It's not until the fourth episode of the season that the asteroids start to hit Earth.  Amos is in a prison underground to visit Clarissa Mao, who tried to kill Holden in season 3 but couldn't go through with it.  Amos, Clarissa, some guards, and a prisoner amped-up on steroids manage to climb to freedom.  For them then it's sort of like The Road or one of those post-apocalyptic movies as they have to find a way off Earth, with the help of some of Amos's old criminal buddies in Baltimore.  They go to a remote community in New Hampshire or somewhere like that where Clarissa used to know people.  One place there has a shuttle in a hangar but it's not working, so she, Amos, and Amos's friend have to get it running.

Meanwhile, as the asteroid attack is happening, Marco's agents assassinate Fred Johnson, the leader of Tycho Station and the more benign faction of Belters.  In the book I was pretty sure he survived the attack and died in the next book, but maybe there were real world reasons why the actor couldn't be in the show anymore.  The assassins also make off with a sample of the "protomolecule," an alien substance that infects and rebuilds pretty much anything it comes in contact with, as seen in the first three seasons.  Holden has to assemble a new crew for the Rocinante to try to find the assassins, though when they find the ship, it blows up with one shot.

Meanwhile, Alex meets up with former Martian Marine Bobbie Draper, who's investigating the disappearing Martian military equipment.  They follow some Martians until they're discovered and their ship winds up making some evasive maneuvers to escape.

The former leader of Earth, the foul-mouthed Chrisjen Avisarala, is pretty much the only one left after the destruction of Earth because she was exiled to the moon by the woman she lost to in a presidential election.  At first some other guy is in charge, but after he starts ordering retaliatory strikes on Belter stations, killing a lot of innocent civilians, the rest of his cabinet backs Avisarala to take over.  She then stops the retaliatory strikes to find a more strategic way to fight back.

Meanwhile, Naomi escapes from Marco's ship by injecting herself with something as she jumps out an airlock without a spacesuit.  She's able to get into an old freighter before she would die out in the vacuum.  But then she finds out the ship she's on is a bomb that's transmitting her voice to lure the Rocinante there.  While she tries to find a way to get control of the ship, Alex/Bobby and the Rocinante are bearing down on the ship.  The writers and producers think we're a lot more interested in watching Naomi cry, grunt, and bang on things than at least I was.  It's too bad they couldn't have done a fun montage of her going back and forth.

A Free Navy flotilla is bearing down on the Rocinante and Naomi's ship so Holden orders the Rocinante to engage to buy time for Alex and Bobby to save Naomi.  A few of the Free Navy ships change sides thanks to Drummer, who used to be in charge of the Belter station inside the Ring but went out on her own.  Meanwhile, to keep Alex and Bobby away from her doomed ship, Naomi jumps out the airlock, this time with most of a suit so she won't die right away.  

Though it's super implausible, Bobby sees Naomi and goes out to save her.  (Naomi really needed some flares or something to light up when she jumped.)  It's pretty cheesy that they focus tight on Naomi's face as she's rescued so they didn't have to spend the money for special effects to actually show Bobby coming out to get her.  Just as cheesy is when they get back, Alex is dead from a stroke.  This didn't happen in the book.  From what Offutt said, Cas Avnar got fired for sexual harassment so they had to write him out of the show--sometimes real world considerations have to be taken into account.  As Offutt suggested they might make Bull (who died in book 3) the new pilot.  Or not.  Whatever.  I like Alex as sort of a sad clown but sometimes shit happens in the real world.

Everyone meets up on the moon in time to watch as a rogue Martian fleet destroys the UN ships guarding the Ring so they can go to Laconia and use the protomolecule sample to build super ships and stuff.  I wasn't sure what they were going to do with the Laconia shit if they weren't going to do books 7-8, but I suppose they'll do a really stripped-down version of it.  Or maybe it'd set up a spin-off?  I don't know.  At the very end we see one of the Martian ships entering the gate for Laconia and disintegrating.  This is something that comes into play as it turns out if too many ships go through a gate in a certain amount of time they start disintegrating.  The idea that there's some race (or races) out there that actively don't want anyone to use the gates is part of book 8 as a scientist from season 4 is going through various gates to find out more about them.  (That could be a whole Star Trek-type spin-off really.)

So the pieces are in place for an epic ending as the whole Solar System goes to war.  That should be a lot more exciting than this season, depending how much money they spend to bring it to the screen.  This season was OK in that, though they could have done more to show the asteroid attack.  I wouldn't blame a lot of people for not really liking this season because it's kind of slow as it's mostly about our heroes surviving and regrouping to fight the new threat of Marco and his "Free Navy" and maybe the Laconia thing.  Fans of the books already know what's going to happen, but those who haven't read the books will probably be disappointed.

Anyway, I guess you can say they're going to save the best for last.

How Much Fan Service is Too Much?

 On Monday's entry I mentioned the end of Season 2 of The Mandalorian.  In that Mando, Bo Katan, and their allies were on the bridge of Moff Gideon's cruiser with a platoon of Dark Troopers trying to break in and kill them when Luke Skywalker shows up to take the Dark Troopers down and leave with Grogu--the Child.

I loved finally getting to see Luke kick some ass in a way we really hadn't seen in the movies.  Like I said, it was like at the end of Rogue One where you really got to see Vader kicking ass the way we always imagined.  So for me it was pretty awesome.

But one of my Facebook "friends" complained that it was a "copout."  I can see that.  I mean it's kind of a deus ex machina with Luke swooping in to save the day.  With a show called The Mandalorian, shouldn't at least A Mandalorian save the day?

On the other hand, it wasn't entirely coming out of nowhere.  Grogu was at the old Jedi temple and it was established that a Jedi might be able to see him and who's the only fucking Jedi left--the Last Jedi as it were?  Duh.  So really it was only a big surprise in that they would actually bring him in, though as I figured he was cloaked most of the time because you know it wasn't 65-ish-year-old Mark Hamill twirling around like that and that age-regression computer stuff is best for when someone is standing in place, not moving around.

But really, what's the line between fan service that works and fan service that gets to be too much?  In this case I didn't think it was too much, but obviously some people did.  I guess in the end it's up to the viewer to decide.

TV's Birds of Prey Was Ahead of Its Time

 A few months ago when I had nothing on Hulu or Amazon or Disney+ I wanted to watch, I remembered I had the CW app on my Roku.  They had added the full season of Stargirl, so I decided to watch that.  (Short review:  I wish it had been 8 eps instead of 13.)  At the end of the episode a window popped up recommending other shows, one of which was Birds of Prey, the short-lived series from 2002-2003 on what was then the WB.  I had watched a few episodes back then but I hadn't seen the whole 13-episode season so I decided to give it a try.

And really it wasn't bad for what it was.  A Michael Offutt type would say that it doesn't look as good as Stargirl or The Flash but it was 2002, so what do you expect?  At the time the new age of superhero movies had just started with X-Men and Spider-Man and Smallville had hit the airwaves just the year before, so of course it wouldn't be as polished as shows that came along on the CW and Netflix 10-15 years later.  As long as you can appreciate it in context it's a pretty decent show and one that was ahead of its time--as the title of the article says.

The main focus of the show is "Huntress" who isn't the Huntress from the comics and later Arrow TV show.  That Huntress was the daughter of a mob boss who goes around killing people with a crossbow, though sometimes she doesn't kill people because Batman and company don't really like that.

This Huntress is named Helena.  She's the daughter of Batman and the retired Catwoman.  Though neither of them is supposed to have real superpowers, Helena is a metahuman with superhuman reflexes--catlike reflexes.  Before the show begins, her mother is murdered and her father has disappeared, so she went to live with Barbara Gordon, who was Batgirl until she was crippled by the Joker and since then works as a high school science teacher.  She also is the white hat hacker known as Oracle, who along with Huntress fights evil in "New Gotham."  (I'm not sure why they chose to call it New Gotham since it's not really in the future, but maybe it was based on the then-recent "Cataclysm" and "No Man's Land" stories in the comics that had destroyed original Gotham.)

The first episode begins with a teenage girl named Dinah Lance coming to town on a bus.  When she's harassed by a young Aaron Paul, Huntress saves her.  Dinah is a runaway with nowhere to go so she comes to stay with Barbara and Huntress in their clock tower loft headquarters.  It turns out Dinah has psychic powers that come in handy when they have to fight a metahuman who can mess with people's minds.

The first episode sets the template for the season, which was largely the same template Smallville followed in its first season the previous year:  there's an evil metahuman and Huntress, Dinah, and Barbara--along with a friendly cop played by Shemar Moore, who voices Cyborg in some of the more recent animated movies--have to find a way to take him/her/it down.  There is also a larger story as Helena sees a therapist:  Dr. Harleen Quinzel, as in Harley Quinn.  This Harley Quinn is normal looking and middle-aged (played by Ferris Bueller's Mia Sara) and secretly controlling New Gotham's rackets.

In the last episodes of the season, Harley finally reveals herself as a villain and nearly destroys our heroes until they can find a way to stop her.  The series ended with Alfred calling Bruce Wayne on the phone.  Since there was no second season, there was never a chance to find out where Bruce was or why he had spent the last few years away from his daughter and New Gotham.  During the season Dinah had been developing her psychic powers, adding some telekinesis and stuff, so that's something that would also have been developed more in a second season.  Barbara's fiance was murdered by Harley, which also would have been something to go into a second season.  But now we'll never know how it would play out.

Besides the plot structure, this followed Smallville in that the heroes never wear costumes, except on a couple of occasions when Barbara is in her old Batgirl costume (black with a yellow cape).  In the pilot episode Helena wears some flimsy dress and bulky overcoat thing but after that she mostly wears a less revealing pants, blouse, and black overcoat.  Dinah and Oracle also just wear normal clothes for the most part.  Even Dinah's biological mother Black Canary (played by recent jailbird Lori Laughlin) wore normal clothes.  The Black Canary thing was kind of weird as Dinah Lance is a traditional name for Black Canary, but instead she had psychic powers instead of the "Canary Cry" while her mother had a different name.

The "metahuman" thing seemed more inspired by X-Men than DC properties.  Metahumans were generally viewed as freaks and for the most part tried to hide.  A few times in the series Helena visits a secret bar for metahumans and we see their different powers like the bartender/owner has a perfect memory while others have more extreme abilities.

Anyway, as the title said, this show was ahead of its time in that it brought the girl power fifteen years before there was a Wonder Woman movie and eighteen years before that Birds of Prey Harley Quinn movie.  The three main heroes are all female and the main villain is female.  About the closest I can think any other superhero show has come to this is Jessica Jones.  Even Stargirl, which is named for a female character, has a supporting cast that's largely male.  You routinely had a female character in Helena kicking the crap out of male characters while you also had Barbara who was super smart and always figuring shit out.  So you can't complain that the female characters were weak or dumb and most of the time didn't need a male character to bail them out, though the cop would usually help and there was some time dedicated to hooking up him and Helena.  I'm just saying as far as female empowerment goes, it was ahead of its time.

I watched it on the CW Seed app but probably at the start of the year they took that and most of the other DC programming off of there.  I don't see it yet on HBO Max but maybe it'll show up there eventually.  If nothing else I'm sure you can buy it on DVD for pretty cheap.

On TV At Least Sci-Fi Franchises Learn the Value of Old Things

 Season 2 of The Mandalorian came out last fall on Disney+ and this second season saw it bring back a lot of characters from old Star Wars movies and TV shows.  The first episode, "The Marshal" brought back Boba Fett, though he was only seen at the end without his armor because Mando had his.  Later Mando goes to a planet and meets Ahsoka Tano from the animated series Clone Wars and Rebels.  That also gave us "The Child"'s real name and a reference to Grand Admiral Thrawn!  Which means that maybe a live action Thrawn might finally happen.

The biggest surprise was at the end of the season when an X-Wing flies into the hangar of Moff Gideon's ship.  A single X-Wing?  Who could that be?  And then we see a cloaked figure take out a green lightsaber and start hacking through Dark Troopers (who were introduced in video games back in the 90s).  It's Luke Skywalker!  And not the whiny, PTSD-ed bitch from The Last Jedi, but an ass-kicking machine!  Like Vader in the end of Rogue One, Luke really gets to cut loose as he takes down the Dark Troopers to make his way to the bridge.

Thanks to computer technology used in Captain America: Civil War and Rogue One, they were able to show a Luke who looks mostly like in Return of the Jedi.  He takes Grogu with him, presumably to the Jedi academy with his whiny, annoying nephew.

I suppose some critics would whine about "fan service" running amok, but I think Star Wars is coming to the same conclusion as Star Trek has the last few years:  maybe all that old stuff is worth something after all.  Instead of trying for something shiny and new (that mostly just apes the original anyway) maybe we can actually deepen the connections between a lot of these old TV shows and video games and books.  Instead of just tossing stuff on the scrap heap and declaring it non canon, why not find a way to use it in canon?

In Star Trek the reboots might have made more money but they kind of fizzled out.  On the small screen they've decided to revisit the old continuity with Discovery, Picard, and even the animated Lower Decks show.  I haven't really watched those much but from what I've read, they have a lot of references to stuff from the old series and in the case of Picard brought back a number of characters from TNG.  There's also supposed to be a new series about Pike's Enterprise as an off-shoot of Discovery.

Part of why this works is you have a lot of fans getting older and thus nostalgic.  Bringing back old characters and referencing old stuff makes them remember those good times from the 60s-90s.  Especially in the scary world of 2020-2021, it's nice to think back to those less-scary times.

And it can help to right some wrongs.  Like Boba Fett "dying" like a chump.  Or Luke Skywalker becoming a whiny putz.  Stuff that didn't really sit right with people, in the former case for almost 40 years!

I'm not sure how far they'll take this.  Probably until fans stop tuning in.  Along with a live action Thrawn, I'm really hoping for a live action Mara Jade and Talon Karrde.  I'm sure other fans have their own wish lists.  Though when it comes to sex, I doubt Disney or CBS/Paramount will be servicing fans much.  That will still have to remain in the realm of fan fiction.