Honestly, Renfield made me laugh out loud so many times that it’s a shame the film’s so wildly uneven, mercilessly flipping between giving me life and making me feel dead inside. The Walking Dead and Invincible writer Robert Kirkman came up with a fresh and funny story about Dracula, told from the perspective of Renfield. Who begins to realize he’s codependent.
There’s a lot of humor to mine from the idea of treating this classic horror relationship like it’s the sort of thing one would speak with a support group about. Indeed, the trailer—which anyone who regularly goes to the movies has seen SEVEN MILLION TIMES now—sells that core conceit well. Community and Rick and Morty writer Ryan Ridley—and, I have to assume, uncreative studio executives—take this idea and… suddenly, add a mob plot?
I do not need a MOB PLOT in my DRACULA MOVIE.
The film opens promisingly enough, with Renfield giving your basic “You may be wondering how I got here” recap of who he is, complete with black-and-white shot-for-shot recreations of scenes from Tod Browning’s Dracula. Which delighted me as someone who had just seen that movie for the first time recently. You get to see Nicolas Cage as Dracula deliver the iconic “I never drink…wine” line!
But don’t worry, the movie is never this stylistically creative again.
Back in present-day New Orleans, see, Renfield listens to his fellow codependents complain about their own Draculas so that he can offer them up to Dracula as victims. This does get him embroiled in the aforementioned mob plot, as does a chance encounter with traffic cop Rebecca Quincy (a nod to the Texan Quincey Morris, who is often left out of adaptations) where he saves a bunch of people and believes he may be able to change his ways. But then Dracula wants to take over the world and…the mob…wants…revenge?
Look, the plot of this movie was just sketched out on a cocktail napkin, and at only 93 minutes, it’s very much just sleepwalking through the idea of what a movie is supposed to look like, utterly and completely weightless.
Every time there was a scene with Renfield or Dracula or the support group, I enjoyed this quirky little thing with a touch of horror, and every time there was a scene with *checks notes* Teddy Lobo or his mafia mamma, I did not understand why any of this was happening. Or why the film expected me to believe that Ben Schwartz was Shohreh Aghdashloo’s son. Schwartz did amuse me at times, and Aghdashloo’s stern demeanor and gravelly voice made her come off a bit vampiric herself, but I…I…just don’t know why. Who authorized this? Who thought we needed this in this movie?
Plus, there’s a subplot with Rebecca and her sister mourning their dead father killed by the mob and also there is police corruption and…why. It’s so completely off tonally from the material in the film that fuckin’ KILLS, like characters having a random hatred of ska or Dracula defensively explaining that he doesn’t care about the gender of the cheerleaders whose blood he desires or the gleefully over-the-top action sequences that treat human bodies like bags of blood.
The Lego Batman Movie director Chris McKay shows absolutely no restraint in these scenes and I love it. This film invents its own silly mythology like Renfield getting superpowers from eating bugs, and by superpowers, I mean he has the power to rip people’s arms off and then throw a severed arm so hard that it pierces a man and pins him to a door. For a few minutes here and there, it just becomes a Japanese splatterpunk film except without the glorious practical effects. Lots of CGI blood spraying here!
For the most part, the action is well choreographed and coherently shot, the camera moving in conjunction with the action with only a few occasions where too much editing makes it difficult to follow. Even that much editing stands out when John Wick: Chapter 4 is still in theaters, but John Wick never punched a dude’s head off, so I’ll forgive it.
After seeing Nicholas Hoult excel in recent roles where he’s an entertainingly insufferable prick (The Favourite, The Great, The Menu), I enjoyed seeing him go the opposite direction with more of a Warm Bodies or Mad Max: Fury Road performance, an endearing outcast trying to find his inner strength. Awkwafina is…fine in a super generic role just doing her Awkwafina thing. But I know everyone’s here for bloodsucking Nicolas Cage, who expectedly chews all the scenery as he channels not Bela Lugosi, not Gary Oldman, not anyone that has ever played Dracula but himself, he channels Nicolas Cage. Specifically Nicolas Cage in Face/Off, a vicious egotistical murderer with a hint of regalness.
McKay may not able to give his film a cohesive tone, but I did appreciate that he didn’t forget the horror in this horror-comedy, as despite Cage’s deliberately campy performance, Dracula remains a fearsome figure for most of the film as he slowly grows to full power transforming from a more Nosferatu-like monster to the charismatic count we know and love.
And speaking of growing to full power, Brandon Scott Jones is the MVP of this film as the support group leader—his incredible line reading of “Exactly! He won’t grow to full power! Whaaaat, that’s so weird, why would you phrase it like that, but yes!” delighted me all seven million times I saw the trailer and absolutely DESTROYED the half of my audience who had apparently never seen the trailer.
That’s the thing, there were so many times my audience was in STITCHES that I wish the whole movie had that silly, give-no-fucks attitude. Hell, the climax is a riot and features some clever callbacks to the internal mythology the film has set up, and the final scene brazenly expands that mythology for the sake of a joke, but the film shoots itself in the foot by trying to be a Real Movie when it could have been a really fun one. In the end, Renfield doesn’t suck, but it lacks bite.
The science fiction series The Arkhas been renewed for a second season. As confirmed by SYFY just moments ago, the survivalist space adventure will see another go-around after concluding its season finale next Wednesday, April 19th. With all episodes to be available immediately afterward shortly on Peacock.
A futuristic science fiction series set 100 years into the future, The Ark is a story set about a troubling time in human history when establishing an interstellar space colony proves key to keeping the human race alive. Along the way, the first mission on the spacecraft Ark One suffers a surprising catastrophe that eliminates many of its people, including the ship’s leaders. With a year still to go before hitting their destination, the lack of supplies and need for order force the remaining survivors to work together to keep the ship functioning until their ship can hopefully arrive.
The series was created by science fiction production veterans Dean Devlin (Independence Day) and Jonathan Glassner (Stargate SG-1). The first season of The Ark likewise reached an astonishing 6.5 million viewers across every major platform, with the series premiere, hitting the best in total viewers since the premiere of another SYFY hit, Resident Alien.
“We couldn’t be more excited to get back into space with the crew of the Ark. SYFY continues to be an amazing partner and home for this series,” said Devlin and Glassner in a statement released by SYFY.
“The success of The Ark is just another example of delivering on a promise to provide a wide spectrum of quality shows across our linear, cable and streaming portfolios,” added Lisa Katz, President of Scripted Programming at NBCUniversal Television and Streaming. “Heading into space with Dean and Jonathan has truly been a trip worth taking and we’re tremendously excited about how this otherworldly adventure will continue in Season 2.”
Dean Devlin (“Independence Day,” “Stargate”) and Jonathan Glassner (“Stargate SG-1”) are co-showrunners and executive producers alongside Marc Roskin and Rachel Olschan-Wilson of Electric Entertainment. Jonathan English of Balkanic Media and Steve Lee serve as producers for the first season.
The season one cast includes Christie Burke, Richard Fleeshman, Reece Ritchie, Stacey Read and Ryan Adams.
In first trailer for superhero team-up movie The Marvels, a space-suited Monica Rambeau approaches a jump point while Nick Fury looks on from a station. As soon as she touches it, said space suit goes hurling through space… and it’s teenaged Jersey City-ite Kamala Khan who’s inside. Monika lands on some kind of space rock… while Carol Danvers shows up in Kamala’s fangirl-tastic bedroom, which is covered in images of… Carol Danvers.
Right off the bat, the trailer tells us that we’re in for a fun superhero team-up / mix-up movie that’ll entangle our three Marvel ladies via their powers. Let the hijinks begin! Here are five things we’re looking forward to seeing in the movie. But first, in case you haven’t seen it yet, behold the trailer:
Zawe Ashton’s Villainous Hammer-Wielder
All we really know about Ashton’s character is that she’ll be the main villain and that her weapon looks remarkably like that of Ronan the Accuser. Just who is she, and what is she up to? Hard to say right now, but we can’t wait to find out!
Park Seo-joon’s Mystery Character
What’s Parasite actor Park Seo-joon doing here? Besides looking bad ass while apparently leading a charge on what’s probably an alien planet? We’ve got no idea, but we’re sure eager to find out!
Interstellar Journeys!
The trailer kicks off in space, and much of it takes place in space, and so it’s safe to say we’ll get to explore more of the vast expanse that is the Marvel universe beyond earth. Who knows what characters and civilizations we’ll get to meet out there?
Big Fangirl Energy
Part of Kamala Khan’s charm is how she unabashedly lets the whole world know that she’s a huge Carol Danvers fan. Many-a Marvel fan can find a kindred spirit in her collecting, cosplaying, and fan art-ing, and in The Marvels, she’ll not only get to meet her hero, but fight alongside her. This should be fun… and adorable!
In Fool’s Paradise, Charlie Day plays a mentally damaged individual, whose name is unknown though ultimately goes by the name, Latte Pronto (At least, in Hollywood). After losing his understanding of the world, he has lost his ability to speak, and soon, gets kicked out of his mental health care facility for lacking insurance.
Getting sent on a bus downtown, a chance encounter with Ray Liotta’s character, a Hollywood producer type, sees an immediate desire to hire Day as a fill-in double. Why so, is revealed because ‘Pronto” is the spitting image of a separate movie star (also, played by Day), who is too drunk to finish shooting scenes in his latest Western.
Before long, The Fool/Latte Pronto becomes a movie star in his own right. The resulting movie adventure of Pronto’s rise and fall, along with his publicist (played by Ken Jeong), make the heart of Fool’s Paradise. A film that in many ways, mirrors a Don Quixote type of adventure with a dash of mistaken identity in a Charlie Chaplinesque Hollywood parody.
The film features a rather large ensemble cast. In addition to Day is Liotta and Jeong, Fool’s Paradise will also feature appearances from actors Kate Beckinsale, Adrien Brody, Jason Sudeikis, Jason Bateman, Common, Edie Falco, Jillian Bell, Dean Norris, Jimmi Simpson, and John Malkovich.
Now, while this amalgam of subgenres may feel excessive, in many ways like an episode of It’s Always Sunny, it’s also that stupid brilliance of blending it that got us films such as Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. Fool’s Paradise seems just as much about the absurdity of Hollywood, in much as it is, paying a love letter to it.
Fool’s Paradise is written and directed by Charlie Day, who has been on a spree of hits lately. The actor just appeared as Luigi in the most recent, Mario movie.
When last we saw Batman in issue #134, he’d lost a hand, but that’s not going to stop The Dark Knight from defeating Red Mask for the final installment of “The Bat-Man of Gotham”. On sale May 2nd, issue #135 finds this new multiversal baddie going up against the Caped Crusader in a fight for a Gotham City that’s new to hope.
It’s going to be an epic finale requiring an oversized 56 pages to wrap things up while also celebrating the landmark 900th issue of Batman’s original solo series. And, if that weren’t reason enough to make this a can’t-miss moment, series artist Jorge Jiménez returns to add his signature style alongside artists Mike Hawthorne and Mikel Janín, and reunites with writer Chip Zdarsky.
Red Mask is a dastardly villain who uses a multiversal energy-generating gas to infect the citizens of Gotham City with the intention of traveling the multiverse and becoming this Gotham City’s resident Joker. It’s a convoluted plan that eventually leads Red Mask to aspire to a greater, more lethal role. Batman’s certainly got a lot on his plate: driving back the infection, saving Gotham, but luckily he’s not alone – Selina Kyle, Alfred Pennyworth, and newcomer Jewel (a mysterious freedom fighter) are fighting by his side. That still leaves the fate of the multiverse up in the air…who can help? With a parade of guest stars, mind-blowing discoveries, and a bright future for The Batman, Batman #135/#900 has something for every comic book fan, don’t miss out!
Think this issue is all about the story? Think again! Comics are a visual medium and boy does this issue give the reader a feast for the eyes. Along with Jiménez’s magnificent main cover, there are also two connecting variant covers focused on different takes on The Dark Knight throughout the multiverse by none other than Joe Quesada! Both covers are also available as a wraparound black and white ratio variant cover (1:100). Gabriele Dell’Otto, Stanley “Artgerm” Lau, Kael Ngu, Jim Cheung, Lee Bermejo, provide additional artwork. And, in one of his final DC pieces before his passing, the iconic Neal Adams contributed to this landmark issue.
Dragonis Games is thrilled to announce the upcoming Early Access release of Eresys, a heart-pounding co-op horror game set in a sinister Lovecraftian universe. Players will be immersed in a world of dark magic and mystery, where teamwork is essential for survival. Along their journey, the group must face off against horrifying extra-dimensional creatures and must seal a dangerous Void Portal to protect their world from ultimate destruction.
Escalated Difficulty:
The Lovecraftian universe of Eresys is a dangerous place, and the difficulty level will ramp up as players progress through the game. With the Progression system, players will need to continuously improve their skills to stand a chance against the horrors of the Lovecraftian Mythos. Each new challenge will push players to their limits, testing their wits and bravery. Even the noise players make through their microphones makes difference.
Safe Houses:
Safe Houses in Eresys are more than just a place to rest. These hidden refuges are crucial for survival, providing respite from the horrors outside and a chance to regroup. But players will also uncover secrets within the Safe Houses, leading to valuable resources necessary for quest completion and deeper lore exploration.
You can check out Eresys when it hits Steam on April 20th.
The game Road Diner Simulator, published by DRAGO Entertainment, is a unique type of management simulator game set in the neon-lit world of a late-50s diner. Located on the iconic Route 66, players can transform this dilapidated dive into a bustling establishment that caters to different types of patrons, the likes of whom catered to, all come down to the player’s choices in design.
“Road Diner Simulator captures a slick of Americana by providing entrepreneurs with a deeply immersive and detailed experience covering all aspects of running a business,” said Karol Sasorski, Marketing Manager at DRAGO Entertainment. “We can’t wait to see what kind of diners restauranteurs create and their impact on gas stations when Road Diner Simulator comes to Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG!”
With a wide selection of decor options, players can create an atmosphere that appeals to tourists, bikers, criminals, outcasts, or any other type of clientele they choose. There is also, a robust cooking system where players can create signature dishes, hire talented staff, and interact with customers to build rapport. By providing excellent dining experiences, players can raise money for future renovations and expand their business from a run-down dive to a must-visit attraction. But be careful, management decisions affect every aspect of the diner, from management to hiring to business growth.
Key features include:
Interact with a variety of NPCs to learn their unique stories, from traveling VIPs to locals and everyone in between
Balance management, hiring, and business growth decision affecting every aspect of the diner
Master multiple activities like cooking and cleaning with meaningful skill progression
Build your diner from scratch
Witness breathtaking visual effects and features, including Lumen and Nanite, made possible by Unreal Engine 5
Atop of this, one of the groundbreaking features of Road Diner Simulator is its connection to Drago Entertainment’s other game: Gas Station Simulator. As owning both games will provide cross-game support. Players who own Gas Station Simulator can witness both the diner and nearby gas stations evolving together in real-time, creating an interconnected dynasty of interstate commerce.
This shared world feature adds a unique dimension to the gameplay, allowing players to see the impact of their decisions on both the diner and their respective gas stations, together.
It’s confirmed that British actress Millie Bobby Brown is now engaged to her partner, Jake Bongiovi. The Stranger Things actress, along with the son of Jon Bongiovi, shared a surprising post on Instagram this morning on their respective accounts.
Brown could be seen in a black and white photo with Bongiovi while embracing, with a noticeable ring right on Brown’s finger. In another photo posted on the same day, a similar scenario is playing out on a beach with the single comment: ‘forever’ down on Jake’s Instagram. You can view the photos below.
Fans and friends have left comments congratulating the couple on their social media pages, though, at the moment, official comments have yet to be made to the public outside of the images shared. The couple was rumored to have gotten together on June 2021 when they shared a selfie together on Instagram. And, according to a report by People, Bongiovi captioned the snap with the words “bff” and the symbols for a heart emoji.
The 19-year old Millie Bobby Brown is most renowned for her role as Eleven on the Netflix hit Stranger Things. Which debuted on July 15, 2016. Since then, the actress has gone on to star in the Kaiju Godzilla franchise, along with leading her own film series as the star of Netflix’s Enola Holmes. A tale about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ sister.
20-year old Jake Bongiovi is a self-professed video game critic, actor, and producer on his Instagram account, where he has 1.2 million followers. He is one of four sons – the second youngest of the family, in fact – of 80s music legend Jon Bon Jovi and Dorothea Hurley.
Jon Bon Jovi is a rock-legend and actor known for a slew of 80s power ballad hits such as “Wanted Dead or Alive”. He has been married to his wife and high school sweetheart Dorothea Hurley, since 1989 who is is also, both an acclaimed restauranteur and karate instructor.
Grogu and The Mandalorian in their ship | Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios
I can tell you the exact moment I fell in love with TheMandalorian show. In the very first episode, at 35:33, after Mando and IG-11 have blasted their way into the compound to get their bounty, the little blanket rustles, and the big ears and eyes of Baby Yoda (who we would later come to know as Grogu) come into view. From then on, I was hooked, and I loved every minute of the first two seasons.
Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios
But, doing my weekly recaps of Season Three, I have felt that something was off. The show hasn’t been landing for me the way it did the first two seasons. So I spoke to my fellow Mandalori-Fan, Mary Fan, to discuss.
VICTOR: So I wanted to talk to you about season three and why I think it’s a step back from the previous seasons. First, do you feel that way or am I alone?
MARY: In this specific chat? You’re alone. I’m actually really enjoying S3. I’ll admit the first episodes were slow going for me — Mando should’ve gotten his holy bath in one episode — and the aside to Coruscant was weird. But I like the focus on Mandalorian society. Also, the show seems to be taking itself less seriously and generally feels like it has more… personality? I recall finding the middle episodes of S1 very mediocre because they felt like overly self-serious side quests (Mando spent, like, 5 episodes not even bothering to wonder where this random baby he rescued might have come from). S3 has side quests, sure, but they’re fun.
Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios
VICTOR: See, there’s the thing. I have liked each episode of the season fine. I just don’t think they add up to a cohesive whole. Plus, so many of the quests Din has this year either take five minutes to complete, or they get discarded immediately. You have to bathe in the Living Waters. Ok, sploosh! Done. We have to fix IG-11. Oh, wait, no we don’t. Here are some pirates! Pew pew! They’re done.
S1 and S2 had a pretty clean story arc: Din becoming a reluctant surrogate father to Grogu while looking for the Jedi. This year has been all over the place.
MARY: That’s fair. I’m liking it and I’ll admit it’s been an uneven season. I think I’m partly biased toward it because I miss episodic television. Where you can have a low-stakes buddy-cop-type adventure in between your world-saving quests. S1 bothered me because it set up a story arc then failed to follow through for several episodes. S2 was much more focused and, in my opinion, much better. S3 is comparably silly, but it’s a nice respite. Sometimes, you just want to hang out with a bunch of Mandos.
VICTOR: Maybe that’s the core of it for me. I like the Mandalorians more when they aren’t explained. Like season one Mando, he couldn’t take his helmet off. Why? Because This Is the Way. Ok, that’s cool. Boba Fett never took his helmet off either. Now it’s all about the Mando-Lore, like Bo-Katan’s royal house and Mandalorian training camp. I liked it better when it was just Din & Grogu having Lone Wolf and Cub adventures.
Also, dramatically, the resolution of the helmet thing really annoyed me. It was a big, huge, emotional moment when Din took off his helmet to say goodbye to Grogu. It was heartbreaking. Din chose his love of Grogu over his clan that had raised him since childhood. And what happened after that? Grogu came back and Din was redeemed in less than two episodes. Just completely neutered the emotional stakes.
Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios
MARY: Hah, see I agreed with Bo that the whole helmet thing was rather fanatical. Hey, Jango Fett was running around without a helmet. I know for a while there they tried to retcon things so that Boba wasn’t really Mandalorian, which irritated me to no end because it was literally his character design they based the whole civilization off of. But anyway, I digress. I think I’m less attached to Grogu than most which is why I’m glad there’s more going on this season than “must protect magic (morally questionable) baby.”
Though how bad ass was Ahmed Best’s appearance doing just that??
Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios
VICTOR: Ahmed Best got the hero moment he deserved after having to eat shit for over 20 years because of Jar Jar. I hope he pops up again, although the sheer number of Jedi that survived Order 66 makes me question Palpatine’s effectiveness.
And I literally have about eight Grogu plushies and three Grogu coffee mugs. I bought a lot of them during the pandemic. Every time I got depressed or stressed out that year, my wife would get me Grogu merch. So, I have a lot of Grogu stuff. Which means I am very protective of my boy. And I’m not thrilled with his lack of screen time this season. Freakin’ Tim Meadows had more to do the other week than he did!
I know what you Star Wars fans want..More Meadows! | Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios
MARY: I think I’m just not as impressed by cuteness as a lot of people haha. Oh don’t blink your puppy dog eyes at me, that won’t work. Unless you’re an actual puppy. I feel like Grogu is mostly an accessory this season, and maybe that was inevitable. With the whole slow aging thing plus all the fans wanting Baby Yoda to stay baby-ish, I don’t think they’re going to be able to develop him as a character. Though it would be cute AF to see him get a little Mando helmet.
VICTOR: Who hurt you, Mary? Grogu is the cuteness singularly. And if he gets a little helmet I’ll be overjoyed.
Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios
Perhaps it was inevitable that the show focused less on him. One of the producers confirmed this week that The Mandalorian was going to look at all Mandalorians more. Maybe that would annoy me less if the other Mandalorians weren’t so dumb? Like, they set up their base on a planet full of giant crocodiles and shriek-hawks that like to feast on their kids! I dunno, maybe go somewhere else? And no one checked Mandalore to see if it was actually poisoned?? Really?
MARY: Oh yeah the monster-infested base was hilarious. Especially since they got the same kid twice! I did like the peek at Mandalorian culture though. How you saw that our Mando isn’t the only one with a foundling. Also, the Armorer is getting more to do this season, which makes me happy. I hope she remains an enigma. I swear, if they give me some cheesy flashback of a teary-eyed little girl being rescued by Mandalorians… I don’t want her to ever take off her helmet or reveal a name! I’m not even gonna look up what the actress looks like!
VICTOR: Speaking of the actors… A big thing this season has been the uptick in the guest stars and the level of star wattage. For the past two seasons, the guests have been largely solid character actors, like Timothy Oliphant or Titus Welliver (Or Bill Burr, showing that South Boston existed a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.) But just last week, we had Jack Black, Lizzo and Christopher Lloyd. I thought they were fun cameos, but people on the interwebs were losing their damn minds about it. Star Wars fanatics haven’t been that angry since some kids on Book of Boba Fett rode scooters. What do you think about the guest spots?
Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios
MARY: I think they were fun! The fanatics need to calm down. Lizzo and Jack Black were minor roles, so why not have fun with stunt casting? And Christopher Lloyd was excellent. Honestly, who cares if the Duchess can act? She’s just there to look outrageously Star Wars-y in that big ol’ dress and cuddle Baby Yoda. People will complain about anything these days.
VICTOR: Indeed. The whole point was to show a decadent but helpless society that can’t defend itself, and having Lizzo and Jack Black dress like Hunger Games Capital Region extras achieved that.
One thing I have bumped up against a lot this season is that a lot of the plot points seem to be getting pulled from Dave Feloni’s animated series, The Clone Wars. I have nothing against the Clone Wars show. I watched a couple episodes on Disney+ and couldn’t really get into it, in part because I found the animation style unattractive. But it seems like Feloni is not going to be happy until I watch all 200+ episodes of Clone Wars and Rebels. And one thing I really dislike is the feeling that I have to watch things as homework. I want to have fun! And now it feels like I need to go hunt out Clone Wars episodes to read about the Fall of Mandalore, Bo-Katan, Sabine Wren, etc.
Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios
MARY: Hah, I haven’t watched Clone Wars for the same reason. I heard it gets better though, so I might give it a second chance. Agree on things starting to feel like homework. I stubbornly haven’t watched Andor yet, partly because it feels like homework, and partly because I’ve heard it’s glum and I don’t like glum Star Wars. But I think there’s enough context in The Mandalorian for those of us who haven’t watched the animated shows yet. (Though if you haven’t watched Book of Boba Fett, you’re SOL if you’re wondering why Grogu isn’t training to be a Jedi.)
VICTOR: Honestly. My mom watches The Mandalorian, but none of the other Disney+ shows, and she called me up to ask why Mando and Grogu were back together. Did she miss an episode? And I had to tell her all about season 2.5 hidden in BoBF.
And I would urge you to watch Andor when you’re in the mood. It’s great! Although, I think that part of the reason for the trip to Coruscant in episode 3 was because Feloni & Favreau were annoyed about all the glowing reviews Andor got, and they went “Oh, you like Andor? Well, we can do Andor!”
Any final thoughts about where you’d like to see the season end? Personally, I’m hoping we get the return of Moff Gideon, our excellent villain from the first two seasons. They’ve teased that pretty hard.
MARY: Oh for sure, I want Moff Gideon back! And I want to see a huge showdown at Mandalore where the Imperials try to take it and the united Mandalorians chase them off. Also, Grogu flying on one of those baby birds they adopted, preferably while wearing a baby helmet.
VICTOR: If Moff Gideon comes back and Grogu flies in on a Baby Shriek-Hawk and uses the force to defeat him, I’ll forgive a lot of the problems with pacing and pirates.
There’s a lot of spider-people out there thanks to the concept of the Spider-Verse. But the vast majority tend to be adults or young adults. Now, we recently got introduced to Spider-Boy in the sold-out Spider-Man #7 by Dan Slott and Mark Bagley. But fret not if you missed the crazy popular issue, since it’s getting a second printing next month with a variant cover illustrated by Luciano Vecchio!
Who is Spider-Boy, you ask? Here’s what Dan Slott had to say:
“I can’t wait for people to meet Spider-Boy, and the unique role he’s going to play in both Spider-Man’s world and the Marvel Universe,” Slott said. “I grew up reading Spider-Man comics. He’s my favorite character in all of fiction. All I ever wanted to do was tell stories with THIS cast, and it’s been the coolest thing ever to co-create some of the characters who populate it. And this kid, this Spider-Boy, is THE one I’m most psyched about!”
Be sure and check out the sweet artwork below. And stay tuned to The Workprint for all more Marvel-ous stories.
SPIDER-MAN #7
Written by DAN SLOTT
Art by MARK BAGLEY
Second Printing Variant Cover by LUCIANO VECCHIO – 75960620327700712
Virgin Second Printing Ratio Variant Cover by HUMBERTO RAMOS – 75960620327700716
On Sale 5/17
Thor has faced some truly powerful and epic villains in his day, aliens from the farthest reaches of space to fiends wielding god-slaying swords to his very own mischievous brother. But now in the giant-sized Thor Annual #1, he faces something I never saw coming — M.O.D.O.K.!
Before you scoff, hear me out. This isn’t the usual tiny-limbed freakshow that regularly gets his butt handed to him by Marvel’s heroes. No, this M.O.D.O.K. is something else entirely. Check out the details below:
Enter…MYTHOS! When M.O.D.O.K. — fueled by revenge and a refusal to ever again be someone else’s pawn — seizes control of all of the Ten Realms but Asgard, Thor the All-Father must step in and regain control of the Ten Realms and the World Tree. But M.O.D.O.K.’s new, cosmic power proves to be a greater threat than Thor could imagine, and he’ll need the inspiration of some beloved friends from Midgard to reclaim his realms and his awesome power.
If that story by Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly and Ibraim Roberson wasn’t exciting enough, this issue will also include a sneak peak of sagas to come for the God of Thunder. So be sure and head to your local purveyor of fine comic books this July to get all the details yourself.
THOR ANNUAL #1
Written by JACKSON LANZING & COLLIN KELLY
Art by IBRAIM ROBERSON
Cover by ADAM KUBERT
On Sale 7/5
It’s odd to say this, but I’ve actually been waiting most of my life for a true Mario Bros. movie experience. Don’t get me wrong, back in the day I actually enjoyed Super Mario Bros., corny and awkward as it was (though I still haven’t forgiven them for the “Goombas”). Honestly, after waiting 30 or so additional years, I really didn’t have any expectations for The Super Mario Bros. Movie. It initially struck me as a curiosity, and I was more than a little worried by the expensive voice cast. But after finally sitting down and watching The Super Mario Bros. Movie, my inner fanboy is quite pleased.
Like any good video game, it introduces the villain first. Even from the trailers, I knew Jack Black completely killed it as the King of the Koopas. He’s brash, loud and hedonistic. He wants what he wants, when he wants and how he wants it. And much to the dismay of the nearby Mushroom and Jungle Kingdoms, he secures ultimate power in the first few minutes of the movie, stealing the Power Star from a vastly outmatched kingdom of penguins, who I assume were inspired by Super Mario 64. He marches in unexpectedly, riding less of an airship and more of a floating kingdom. So, what’s a set of plumbers and a princess to do?
One of the things I enjoyed most about The Super Mario Bros. Movie is how it introduces Mario and Luigi. We get a delightfully corny commercial selling potential customers for their newly established plumbing business. Proving what fans have known all along, that Mario and Luigi have always been plumbers. They’re also Italian, but not in a stereotypical or offensive way. I was actually worried that Chris Pratt didn’t sound enough like the classic character, with plenty of “Itsa Me” and “Wahoos”, but after the way they poked fun at the traditional accent, I’m frankly more than okay with his performance.
He and Luigi are down on their luck, but plucky and resolved to be a success. Their first job, of course, goes horribly wrong after Luigi pisses off the client’s pooch, who comes after them in homicidal fashion. Later, at home with their extended family, including the family patriarch voiced by longtime Mario voice actor Charles Martinet, it becomes clear that Mario and Luigi aren’t very well supported. But they resolve that as long as they’re together, there’s nothing they can’t do.
The call to adventure comes out of nowhere, with Brooklyn mysteriously flooded. The two brothers head to the sewers and discover an array of strange pipes. They’re not sure where they lead, but then Luigi gets sucked into one, and Mario chases after him. They learn firsthand how Warp Pipes work, but sadly get separated in transit. Mario ends up in the Mushroom Kingdom, while poor, terrified Luigi ends up in Bowser’s home turf, the Dark Lands. This serves as the excuse for what I saw as a nod to the Luigi’s Mansion games, where the green brother is harried and terrified by Dry Bones, bats, Shy Guys and one bad ass Snifit. Suffice to say, despite successfully evading the walking dead, Luigi gets kidnapped in record time.
Most of the remainder of the film is about Mario learning the ropes, discovering power-ups, and setting off with Princess Peach to get the aid of the Kongs in their Jungle Kingdom. Though I was happy enough with Pratt’s Mario, I adored Anya Taylor-Joy’s Peach. This is no damsel in distress, though a couple of snarky Toad doormen do reference the whole “Your Princess Is In Another Castle” bit from Super Mario Bros. 3. No, this princess is as tough as she is cute, and she’s not willing to let her kingdom get ruined by Bowser’s mischief. Interestingly, she’s also apparently not originally from the Mushroom Kingdom, though the movie never clarifies where the young Peach arrived from. Perhaps that’s foreshadowing for a potential sequel.
I also really enjoyed Keegan-Michael Key’s Toad. He’s more of a Captain Toad than a traditional, woe-is-me fungus. He’s a go-getter and quickly befriends Mario, though it’s somewhat of a one-sided friendship. What really surprised me was how great Seth Rogen’s Donkey Kong was. The Jungle Kingdom is like a mixture of an Aztec temple, Mario Kart infrastructure and beach-side merriment. Cranky (voiced by Fred Armisen) is the King, while DK is the pec-flexing prince. He also utterly thrashes Mario in a gladiatorial combat sequence, until Mario finally discovers the power of the Cat Bell.
While I very much enjoyed the overall flow of the movie, which is fast-paced and full of eclectic humor, I’d be lying if I said I loved everything about it. Yes, I appreciated all the musical nods to past Mario games, as well as the timely inclusion of the DK Rap. And sure, the animation is gorgeous, popping with bright colors. But after the credits rolled, I couldn’t help but lament a general lack of exposition and backstory. We don’t learn much about Mario and Luigi, other than that they apparently used to work for the Wrecking Crew. Worse, we don’t really know much about Bowser, other than his twisted infatuation with a certain princess. While I feel the characters are faithful to fan perceptions, it was a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. We never really see them hatch, just burst into life fully formed, but without any real narrative arc.
As for big action sequences, it’s no surprise if you’ve seen trailers that there’s a Rainbow Road scene. Not only is this zany and over the top, but it ends with a unexpected attack from a Blue Shell. Mario and DK also get swallowed by a giant eel, Peach makes great use of an Ice Flower to crash her own wedding, and Tanuki Mario faces off against a kingdom-destroying Banzai Bill. It’s all amazing fan service, despite my minor issues with the movie.
That said, Illumination does their constantly amazing work with this animated film. While I would have liked a bit more exposition, and perhaps a broader understanding of the world the game takes place in, I can’t deny I had a great time watching it. I had a broad smile on my face the entire time, despite constant interruptions from impatient children in the audience. If you love Mario and want to just have a fun outing at the theater, you can’t go wrong with this one. Let’s just hope a possible sequel fleshes out the universe in a satisfying fashion.
Last week, WonderCon gave DC fans a first look at Wonder Woman, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and Unstoppable Doom Patrol among other things. Today it’s MegaCon’s turn, with exclusive showcases from industry heavy hitters such as Geoff Johns, Joshua Williamson, Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Simone Di Meo, and Mitch Gerads.
Among the more spectacular reveals was the brand-new Dawn of DC trailer with artwork by the iconic Jeff Spokes. For everyone else, the trailer will premiere during episodes of AEW Dynamite and AEW Rampage on TNT in May, and additionally on HBO Max.
Batman and Robin, starting in September, care of writer Joshua Williamson and artist Simone Di Meo, sees Bruce and Damian Wayne reunited following the events of Batman vs. Robin and Lazarus Planet. The Dark Knight and his son are back to solving mysteries and fighting monsters in Gotham, and fans got to drool over the first issue’s cover, interior art, and Di Meo’s coup de grace: a Robin Mobile.
Batman’s not the only big name getting attention. The Flash is speeding towards his monumental 800th issue set to arrive on June 6th. The over-sized spectacle will spotlight stories from well known Flash writers like Mark Waid (Batman/Superman: World’s Finest), Geoff Johns, Joshua Williamson, and Jeremy Adams (The Flash). MegaCon featured Johns unveiling five exclusive pages by Scott Kolins (The Flash) with the focus on Zoom aka Hunter Zolomon. Williamson took the opportunity to reveal his contribution will highlight Barry Allen and Iris West’s relationship with sneak peek artwork coming soon!
Considering the two Superman writers in attendance it’s no surprise sneak peeks at the upcoming issues of Superman and Action Comics were on deck. Superman #3’s first look featured a new costume for Superman, while Phillip Kennedy Johnson previewed both the central story in Action Comics #1054 along with a variant cover care of Mirko Colak (Aquaman) for the next issue of Green Lantern: War Journal, launching in September. Fans will first peep John Stewart in the backup to Green Lantern by Jeremy Adams with art by Xermánico, on shelves come May 9.
If you’ve been itching to see Helena Wayne’s journey through time, the wait is over – Johns dropped a first look at Justice Society of America #4 about this very story! It’s not the only Justice Society of America to watch out for though, #6 brings the New Golden Age and the Dawn of DC together for the first time. It’s not a one-off either, Johns promised there will be more New Golden Age stories to come.
May 16th brings Halloween to Gotham early with Batman: The Brave and the Bold, where award winning artist Mitch Gerads and writer Tom King take up a the brutal task of documenting the horrifying first confrontation between The Joker and the Batman. If you’re into self-hatred, deceit, and…jokes (of course), this twisted Mr. J might be the Joker you’ve been waiting for.
We open in on the grisly aftermath of our feast. Picked clean to the bone, Jackie drips the remnant of her remains to give an almost musical beat. Coach Ben (Steven Krueger) thinks back to a happier time through the seeming rewinding of a tape.
Spending a casual night with his boyfriend Paul is Ben’s bliss inside his living nightmare. He’s traumatized from last night’s events, and he’s not exactly alone.
Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown) isn’t exactly at grips with Jackie’s state of being, but Van (Liv Hewson) snaps her back to reality. They all, save for Ben, partook at the feeding trough. Additionally, Taissa wasn’t sleepwalking. In these woods, if denial is luxury, then acceptance is the gift.
This is true for the rest of the squad, who are feeling internally more than a little funny. Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) steps up and steps in to take the remains to the airplane, to be buried like the others when the ground thaws. Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) is too numb to care. Just because they’re accepting doesn’t mean they’re any less shaken, including Lottie (Courtney Eaton).
Now, Lottie (Simone Kessell) is attempting to help others in a session. Natalie (Juliette Lewis) peeks in, but moves along to tour the grounds. She notices Lottie’s flock, if you will, clad in self-harvested purple dyes, until coming across a cabin with Lottie’s horns adorning it.
She also crosses Lisa (Nicole Maines) about to slaughter a chicken. Even with an axe in her victim’s hand, Natalie seems fearless. As Natalie continues on, we notice a bit of blood seep into the moss of a nearby tree. Maybe Travis was right: nature is finally coming for them.
In a haze, Taissa (Tawny Cypress) comes to after experiencing a little bit of a hallucination. They’re not exactly stable with Simone, but the nurse did comment on the infamous glyph adorning her beloved’s palm. Ostensibly not privy to this happening, Tai immediately wipes the ‘good luck’ symbol from the palm… but ya can’t wipe it from existence…
Elsewhere, with Veruca Salt’s “Seether” as a backing, Misty (Christina Ricci) heads to the docks only to find Walter (Elijah Wood) on his boat. Turns out he simply wanted to work a case with the much-vaunted African Grey, but she demands to interrogate since it’s her case and her witness, but Misty books it onto his boat.
Their interrogee is someone she knows: Randy Walsh (Jeff Holman). Remember, good ole Randy from last season? The asshole from high school they all know that turns out to be a go-nowhere in life schlep. Let the Cyrano-ing begin.
Hubby Jeff (Warren Kole) confronts Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) about why she had to go and have an affair with an artist. It was less his denial of ‘strawberry lube’ in the past and more the person he’s become after she claimed he was no fun.
Shauna assures him that the affair was less about Jeff and more about the excitement of the unknown itself. It was a departure from what she is in now, which is safe and sound, and a mother with a husband in a good house in a decent town, Wiskayok.
Sadly, in a lot of well-to-do suburban Jersey towns, I’ve gotten the feeling that being well-to-do and safe isn’t enough. To be fair, what is a better rush than to get out there and test your mettle?
Driving back, Jeff gets a fucking wild hair up his ass and makes a detour. He’s got Colonial Williamsburg (what?) on his mind. Granted, he’s out of his mind, but the decision to be more impulsive isn’t on his side, since he almost hits someone, and is nearly shot before Shauna can wrestle the gun from the carjacker. They still got their car stolen.
The one thing more stolen though was Shauna’s feigned acceptance of getting out of the woods. She now operates at a high level of adrenaline and anything less would be failing. This puts her marriage, despite the affair at a huge loss, as he’s now thinking something happened in those woods she may never come back from.
Her purse and pocket change are the least of Jeff’s worries. It’s Callie’s beloved stuffed toy. If we now are armed with any knowledge, it’s that Shauna would burn the entire Garden State down if it meant Callie could live so she could breathe.
At the commune, Lottie shows Nat something interesting: their original beehive. She extols how important the queen is in the hive. Natalie doesn’t take her words to heart until they talk about the beautiful brutality of nature. If there isn’t any of it, everybody starves.
In the wilderness, teen Natalie prepares for the trek to the airplane. She doesn’t accept the prayer blood tea from Lottie and doesn’t accept the companionship of Travis (Kevin Alves).
Shauna seems ripped from herself for the moment, but Lottie comforts her. What bothers Shauna is that she wanted to partake. They all partook though and Lottie wants to hold a ceremony to welcome ‘him’. The word didn’t escape Shauna, but Lottie skirts by it as ‘for her.’
Misty (Sammi Hanratty) signs off on a baby shower, as is the rest of them.
It is a healing of the group and an exercise in community… sound familiar, Lottie?
With Randy now in the hot seat and Misty feeding Walter lines as she’s checking his onboard medicine cabinet (clever girl), when it comes to not getting an answer to her liking, Cyrano is resorting to violence. She claims that the guy was a bully so won’t cave until it’s met with violence. Boy, this girl is confident…
Teen Taissa and another teammate prepare the baby’s crib, and the other teammate talks about how she’d do anything to see her sister’s baby again. Hint hint, Tai. Take the night off and digest it, if you know what I mean.
Mari (Alexa Barajas) made a nice, if not violently abstract dream maker, but hears constant drips. Lottie’s sewing a quilt. Misty reveals to Crystal (Nuha Jes Izman) that her process isn’t working with the group. That’s when Crystal reveals her actor secrets about being a different person. She also reveals she’s absorbed her identical twin in the womb, so consuming another makes her feel like they are channeling another.
Misty’s perfect gift is literally staring her in the face.
Ben hobbled in imagining that the team is after him. This prompts his mind in rewind mode to go back to his big night in the kitchen, where the makeout was the aperitif. In his mind, what made Paul the dessert was Ben moving in and forgetting about states and ultimately Nationals… so this would be the second course in destruction. Bon appétit!
Ben, however, seemed to make excuses and be uncomfortable with what is really at the center of it all. He’s uncomfortable outing himself in a high school faculty. That wasn’t a dream. His failure to his boyfriend is letting him delve deeper into a catatonic state.
Teen Natalie goes back to that frosted tube that is the first home they had, the airplane, and tries to make peace with Jackie. She seems to only be vulnerable to the dead lain before but considers Jackie lucky. Surviving is a living death to her. This is sad but fitting, given her stints in rehab.
This is also foreboding as Jackie encounters a dangerous bounty: a white moose. This big-time boy would have them survive for a long time, but before trying to gore her, she’s only saved by the constraints of the plane door.
Still alive, but without any food, she is hanging on by a needle’s drop (you get it). If she took the drink Lottie offered or Travis, maybe things would have worked out differently. She is, though, after all, at the mercy of nature, maybe the one thing pure.
Misty ramps it up a bit, with Walter going for a more direct approach with an automatic saw. It’s his own, which raises some questions, but he gets an answer because Misty goes harder.
They were wearing all purple and he only noticed because they took all the fantasy from the vending machine. Walter cuts him loose but with a warning.
That night, Crystal and Misty have a powwow about acting. In the failure of character, therein lies the truth. We’re all made of lies.
Later on, Taissa breaks free, but Van (Liv Hewson) asks to follow her. Taissa allows it. It leads them to the glyph at the edge of a rock Taissa was about to jump off last time. Before she can go fully to it, Tai snaps into the cold and dead, finding the symbol. She still has no idea what it means, but she still gives Van a glimpse into the One With No Eyes… only if Taissa lets her. Hmmm. Is this a case of D.I.D. or possession? Tai might actually know who that being is, however.
Back at the gym, Jeff is pumping iron. I guess he’s trying to take out his frustration or feel like a man, and the latter might be truer as he sees Kevyn (Alex Wyndham). Jeff tries to aggressively exonerate his wife from someone he once derided in high school. It’s classic jock-to-outsider syndrome, via high school insecurity.
Speaking of standing up, Shauna then gets a ride to a chop shop. She proceeds to hold up the manager at gunpoint but reveals that she’s not scared and she’d kill him for a stupid minivan. The one thing that stays in her head is the kill. The first time was protection. The next time would be for fun and she doesn’t want to lose her soul… so she ends up with her van back, yet not for anything else but for her daughter and her stuffed animal.
She also has a monologue where it makes me think that Shauna may be the queen of the squad in the woods. She has everything in her life, but she’s given up so much to have the team back home, namely the star player, her daughter. So don’t fuck with her.
In Ben’s dream, he quit the team and accepted his nature. He wants to say fuck everybody else and imagines in his tortured cabin bed that the rest of them would have just perished. He’s pretty sure he’ll die. I think he’s made peace with it, but regrets are already in tow. Maybe he’s written his own eulogy.
Now it’s time for gifts, and though Van created something, Misty went with something performative, which not only entertains for morale but helps in the long run… a monologue from Steel Magnolia. Her coming out and getting out of her shell helps her in her adult life. It’s the defining moment.
Travis isn’t having it but notices Ben’s in a bad way. It’s morbid, but meat goes rotten in different ways. It also shows Misty growing up in front of their eyes. Becoming something new. And it was impressive and it encapsulated what they all felt.
In the now, Taissa is trying to process her hurt with pills in the hospital. The only thing is in the bathroom, her other side rears itself and she can finally see it in the mirror. Maybe the two sides are splitting, but something in her fears it. It’s nearing Van, who lost her eye. Through a Lynchian lens, Van knows where she wants to go.
Misty knows Walter can’t be of use before she knows that Fanta could link the group to an address. Yeah, fuck quarters, the refuge of the ones that don’t want to be found can be found.
She can also read people, but maybe Misty has someone, leaving the unshakeable shaken.
Callie’s only comfort is delivered and Shauna has to answer as to how Van is back. She’s stirred, not shaken.
At Lottie’s session, she finally calls up Natalie with her victim. This is to see if Lisa wants to resort to violence if she was vengeful. She wasn’t. She was Acceptful.
Remember what I said about being acceptable to thine ownhand? Is denial a luxury? Honoring is the height of whatever comes, comes at a price. It’s called ego.
Lottie knits a blanket for the baby but with the glyph sewn in. Natalie doesn’t accept the gift because of it. A fight ensues with the blood from Shauna’s nose being at the forefront of it. Never mind the fact that most of the team back Lottie, but a new phenomenon happens. The actual murder of on top of their house. Of crows. She suggests they should round them up as blessings. They all follow her lead.
As Lottie in her commune finds the bees of her hive dead and mired by blood, dripping from the hives, she slightly freaks out before another invites her to lunch. There is no blood. Maybe nature is coming for her.
If what Travis says about finding true nature is getting as close to death as possible, all girls have it in them. Shauna perhaps most of all in ways that she’s not fully aware of. Nobody can be truly out of the woods.
Takeaway:
To help you digestif something, it requires a bit of bitterness. Just the way it’s played. It calms the stomach, it’s just not the taste you want unless you’re accustomed to it. The botanicals, especially adorned on Shauna’s head explain a hard pill to swallow. Which they all do.
It goes down as hard as your swallow it. It tastes pretty much like medicine… but maybe it is.
When we left off last week, Bo-Katan had been tasked by the Armorer to go and collect the other Mandalorians throughout the Galaxy. Some of them, including Bo-Katan’s old crew now led by Axe Woves, are now guns for hire. When they aren’t snatching lovestruck Calimari princes away from their Cthulhu-faced Quarren lovers to return them home, they’re acting as an intergalactic defense force for planets that need them.
Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios
Planets like Plazir-15! This beautiful domed city is constitutionally forbidden from having an army, so (unlike Greef Karga) they were smart enough to hire outside help. Now, Bo-Katan must try and get them back onside to unify the Mandalorians.
Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios
While on their way to see these hired guns, Bo-Katan’s ship gets locked into the planet’s auto-landing system, and their monorail automatically ferries them away from the mercenaries and off to a meeting with the rulers of the planet.
In our first big cameos of the week, it’s revealed that the rulers are Jack Black and Lizzo, here playing Captain Bombardier and the Duchess of Plazir-15. Dressed like extras from the Capitol District of Panem, they welcome Din, Bo-Katan and Grogu. Lizzo is just smitten with little Grogu and he feels the same as he excitedly force leaps into her arms from across the table. (And really, who could blame either of them. I have about 10 Grogu plushies and played “About Damn Time” approximately 1000 times in the car last summer.)
The Captain is another success story of the Amnesty Program. He used to be Imperial, but after the war he helped rebuild Plazir-15, and then he and the Duchess fell in love. (Awww…) Unlike other “successes”, (*cough,* Kane, *cough cough*) Bombardier seems sincere. And he is sincerely concerned that all of the imperial droids he painstakingly reprogrammed seem to be glitching out. If our Mandalorians can help figure out the droid problem, he’ll grant them diplomatic access to the privateer Mandalorians they’ve hired to defend the planet.
He sends them to his head of security, Commissioner Helgait, to review the footage of the droid attacks. In our next big cameo of the week, Helgait is played by Doc Brown himself, Christopher Lloyd.
Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios
He shows them some footage of the Plazir-15’s Wackiest Malfunctioning Droid Videos. Droids are tearing up luggage they’re carrying, droid valets are slamming land speeders into walls, and generally causing havoc. He has a killswitch for all the droids, but he’s reluctant to use it. The population depends on droids for literally everything, and they won’t be able to function without them. He sends them to the lower levels to get a list of the droids that are going haywire.
And here is where the episode turns into a buddy cop show. Din and Bo-Katan follow the breadcrumbs from scene to scene, chasing the clues as they find them. Bo-Katan is the by-the-book rookie, Din is the cop who plays by his own rules but gets results, dammit! They go talk to the Ugnaughts who have been working on the droids, and because Din knows how to talk to them with respect (“I have spoken!”) they give them the info they need. The Ugnaughts’ analysis predicts that the next rogue droid will pop up on the loading docks. They head over there where they quiz the foreman, an old B1 battle droid, aka a “Roger Roger.” (Alas, they don’t let the droid say the line. Come on, if you’re doing prequel fan service like that, SERVICE THE FANS!)
While Bo-Katan questions Roger, Din starts shoving the battle droids that have been repurposed into loaders. If they’re loaders now, reasons Din, they aren’t going to react when I disrupt their programming. Except, of course, for the rogue droid who reacts very badly. After a chase through the Plazir-15 nightlife, Din and Bo-Katan subdue the droid, who conveniently has a matchbook (sorry, strike pad) from a droid bar. Shout out to the little police bot that projects some holographic crime scene tape around the dead droid.
They head to the droid bar, and I was totally prepared to have the bartender yell at them that they don’t serve their kind here. (You know, an homage to the Mos Eisley cantina). But the bartender is quite eager to help. They’d rather not be melted down or deactivated and want the rogue droid problem fixed as well. It turns out that all the rogue droids came to that bar, and all of them refreshed themselves with nepenthe, a lubricating solution that also carries programming patches. Hmm…
Back at the droid morgue, the technician takes a sample of the nepenthe from the one they destroyed. Turns out those programming patches are actually nanobots. And, super conveniently, they have a blockchain on them identifying the purchaser as…
Commissioner Helgait! Gasp! You mean Judge Doom was the villain all along? When confronted, he admits that he did not want to serve the corrupt Republic or the Empire, he is a separatist! And I’m sure he’d have more to say about that but Bo-Katan tases him before he can get much further. Case closed!
So, finally, Bo-Katan and Din get to the other Mandalorians. Axe is quite happy doing his own thing and doesn’t want to leave, so Bo-Katan challenges him to a trial by combat. The fight is very well done, with all of the Mandalorian gadgets being used to great effect. Grappling lines, jet packs, gauntlet blades, it’s a no holds barred affair. Bo-Katan subdues him, but he still doesn’t want to follow her. After all, she doesn’t wield the darksaber! You know, for all the crap they gave Din about wearing the helmet last season, they sure are fixated on that darksaber.
Din helpfully tells them that when he was exploring Mandalore, he got captured, and Bo-Katan rescued him with the darksaber. She bested the ones who defeated him, therefore she controls the blade. And frankly, I think Din was glad to be rid of it. He always looked extremely awkward holding it. Bo-Katan now has her blade and the loyalty of the Mandalorians!
Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios
So, this episode was…fine. I actually quite liked the CSI: Plazir-15 vibe that Din and Bo-Katan had going, to the point where I wouldn’t mind seeing a full on Law & Order: New Republic show. (Anything to bring back the police tape droid! When’s that action figure coming out?) But there weren’t really any stakes to speak of. Did you ever doubt that they’d crack the droid case? Or that Bo-Katan wouldn’t get the Mandalorians back on her side? Me either. I kept expecting there to be a reveal about Captain Jack Black secretly reprogramming the droids for Moff Gideon, but no. Everything played straight down the middle. Still, it was enjoyable if nothing special.
And, as I have said before, I am still not really invested in Bo-Katan, leader of Mandalore. Maybe I will get there, but it’s really not clicking for me.
The sheer wattage of the guest stars threatened to overwhelm the show, considering the usual level of guest is more of a character actor like Bill Burr or Titus Welliver, but Lizzo and Jack Black were clearly having a blast which made it more fun to watch.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Grogu Cuteness Meter: Grogu is having the best time with his babysitter, Duchess Lizzo. He coos while she scratches his head! He uses the force to help her win at pillbug croquet! (I doubt Luke would approve) It’s making up for the absolute dearth of Grogu from last week.
Because life is not entirely a series of disappointments and heartbreaks, the TV gods have granted us a second season of Schmigadoon!, with the first two episodes now streaming on Apple TV.
What’s that? Are you not familiar with this hilarious musical satire? Do you not know your Rogers from your Hammerstein? Your Sondheim from your Schwartz? Don’t worry, I’m here to help and let you know if this show is right for you.
So, what is “Schmigadoon” anyway?
Schmigadoon! (don’t forget the exclamation point) is a satire of movie musicals. Season one focused on the golden age musicals, like Brigadoon, Carousel, Sound of Music, and Music Man, and lovingly poked fun at the tropes popularized by creators like Rogers and Hammerstein. Season 2, subtitled Schmicago!, is centered on the grittier shows of the ’60s and ’70s, like Pippen, Chicago, and Cabaret with lots of Bob Fosse jokes and references thrown in for good measure.
If I don’t like musicals, will I enjoy this?
Oh god, no. You will sit at the screen staring incomprehensibly at inside jokes that your theatre kid friends are falling out of their seats laughing at. A running joke in season two has an older woman with a martini glass and gravelly voice popping up at random intervals to shout out “I’ll drink to that,” and if I have to explain the concept of Elaine Stritch to you you are not going to understand why I am howling with laughter.
Ok, so what if I kind of like musicals and had to go sit through my niece’s production of Legally Blonde at her high school?
Look, I’ll be honest. This show is best enjoyed by people who love musical theatre. People who hum “Another Hundred People” as they get on the subway in the morning. People who are camping out for rush tickets to see Phantom of the Opera just one more time before it closes. (Hi, Mary Fan!) It is a love letter to musicals and the people who adore them in spite of the many, many, problems they can have. (Like retrograde gender roles, romantic stereotypes, and plots that are often on rails)
People like Cecily Strong’s character, Melissa. In the first season, she and her long time boyfriend Josh (Keegan Michael Key) got lost on a couples bonding retreat and wound up in Schmigadoon!, a magical town populated by many Broadway stars (Alan Cumming! Kristen Chenoweth! Ariana DeBose! Aaron Tveit! Ann Harada!) that only appears to people who need to find it. It’s a real life musical and Melissa is tickled. A leprechaun played by Martin Short tells them they cannot leave the town until they find true love, your standard musical theatre plot. Josh doesn’t care for musicals (hey look, imaginary person I’m talking to, you are represented!) but reluctantly plays along. Eventually, they of course realize they love each other and are allowed to leave.
That sounds, well pretty basic.
Sure, but did I mention the songs? The original songs by show co-creator Cinco Paul are spectacular, perfectly evoking the spirit of the shows they’re mocking while also being funny and clever in their own right. For example, the Emmy-winning “Corn Pudding” could’ve been plucked directly out of Music Man or State Fair.
And, look, if you aren’t tapping your toes and singing “you put the corn in the pudding and the pudding in the bowl” after that, I can’t help you. Go watch that new political spy show on Netflix.
Ok, that was fun. So if they got out of the town, what’s season two about?
Well, Melissa and Josh are now married, but they’ve fallen into a bit of a rut. They’re back in their medical jobs, trying to have a baby without success. The cinematography does a great job here, as the bright colors of Schmigadoon fade away into the blues and grays of their working life. Depressed, they both decide to head back to the woods and find Schmigadoon again to regain a bit of color in their lives.
Wait, so they’re going back to the town they couldn’t wait to escape from?
Have I mentioned how terrible the plots of a lot of musicals are? One of the longest running shows in Broadway history is about kitty cats arguing over who gets to go to kitty cat heaven.
Point taken.
Thank you. So they can’t find Schmigadoon, but they do stumble into Schmicago when their car gets a flat tire. And, wouldn’t you know it? Leprechaun Martin Short is back to tell them they can’t leave until they find a “happy end.” Which is nigh impossible, since these shows don’t usually end happily… (Think Sweeney Todd, which ends with Angela Lansbury being burned in a furnace. Spoilers!)
Where Schmigadoon was an idealized version of the small town in a golden age musical like River City in Music Man, Schmicago is the uber-stereotype of the gritty, Bob Fosse esthetic. Dirty streets, skinny dancers that are both slinky and full of sharp angles and dressed in ratty lingerie, ominous narrators, and lots of minor keys.
Oh and lots of white gloves. I can’t even begin to describe the smile on my face when Titus Burgess emerges from a cloud of glowing white gloves.
Burgess is playing the Narrator, essentially Ben Vereen’s character of the Leading Player in Pippen, and now I really want to see him in a full production of Pippen.
And that goes for most of the cast here as well. Everyone has a list of stage credits as high as an elephant’s eye.
What?
Look, if you can’t hit the softballs I’m lobbing at you… *Deep sigh* It’s a lyric from South Pacific, dude.
Oh! I’ve heard of that one! That’s a classic musical!
Now you’re getting it!
So why are you referencing a golden age show when the season is about the shows of the ’60s and ’70s?
Oh, now you’re really getting it! That’s just the kind of specific knowledge you’re going to need to get all of the jokes.
Anyway, the cast. Dove Cameron, who is escaping the Disney Channel in a big, bad way, is here playing Jenny Banks, a version of Liza Minelli’s Sally Bowles from Cabaret. The moment she bursts into Josh and Melissa’s hotel room in her tattered dressing gown going a mile a minute about how she’s desperate for a cigarette and then incites them to the club to watch her show, you know you’re in great hands. She absolutely nails the mannerisms, and her number is a highlight of episode one. “Kaput” is a mash up of Cabaret’s “Mein Herr” and Blazing Saddles “I’m Tired,” and Cinco Paul should clear a space for another Emmy.
The club is hosted by emcee Ariana DeBose, who is being even more overtly sexual than Alan Cumming was on Broadway. While there, Josh comes across the body of a dead showgirl names Elsie (Cabaret fans know), and gets arrested. Melissa hires lawyer Bobby Flanagan, played by Jane Krakowski. She is playing a riff on Chicago’s Billy Flynn, and is having a blast doing the Fosse arms while the notes of Roxy’s Theme play in the background. Tony winner Aaron Tveit is Josh’s cellmate Topher, playing a refugee from Hair (although the policeman arrests him for “telling parables that have no point,” which is a pretty fair summary of Godspell) and he sings the absolute best parody of Corner of the Sky I have ever heard. The line “poets play with starlight, kittens play with string” just nails what an entitled goober Pippen is in the play, and (most likely) Topher as well.
I think I understood about half of those references.
Ok, if you are intrigued by this show but are worried you don’t know all the references, give it a try! The songs are good enough to stand on their own. The jokes are solid and the cast is great.
If you decide you want to get a little more background on the era of shows being parodied, go watch Chicago, Cabaret, and Pippen. All are available to rent on various platforms, and this will give you a good base for like 75% of the references.
But even I didn’t catch everything! An eagle-eyed viewer on Twitter noted that all the girls in the seedy cabaret are named after the orphans from Annie. Hard knock life, indeed.
So bottom line, should I watch this?
If you like musicals even a little, yes. You will enjoy it.
If you love musicals, it is the best thing ever and it was made just for you. I will see you at Schmiga-con. Be sure to bring your white gloves and corn pudding recipes.
Gather 'round, children. She's got a story to tell. Amanda Plummer as Vadic, Jin Maley as Kova Rin Esmar, Stephanie Czajkowski as Lt. T’Veen, Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine, Todd Stashwick as Captain Liam Shaw
We’re getting close to the finish line, folks. I think it’s no longer a spoiler to say that all the Next Generation regulars have now appeared on the show, and a big reunion is on the horizon. Though given the bleakness of Picard (and the lighting), it won’t be an entirely happy one.
This week picks up where the last episode, “Dominion,” left off, with things looking bleak for our heroes and Vadic fully indulging her singsong villainy. It’d be impossible to discuss without spoilers, so if you haven’t watched this week’s episode, “Surrender,” yet, and care about such things, turn away now. Review to commence after this picture of Seven of Nine, because we always need more pictures of Seven of Nine.
Always bet on Seven. Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine.
What goes up must come down, and after Vadic’s triumph over the Titan last week, you can bet our heroes will turn the tide eventually. But things are looking pretty bleak to begin. Vadic, with the help of the Lore side of the Soong android, has taken over the ship and taken the bridge crew hostage. Those still running loose—Picard, Beverly, Jack, Sidney, Geordi, Alandra—are locked out of the systems.
“Wait… he can hear my thoughts? ALL of them??” Ed Speleers as Jack Crusher and Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut as Sidney La Forge
What happens next is pretty predictable: Vadic threatens to kill the bridge crew one by one if Jack doesn’t surrender. An agonized Jack seeks to sacrifice himself while his parents refuse to let him—not only because he’s their beautiful baby boy, but because whatever’s going on with him, giving Vadic and the Changelings what they want isn’t a good idea. Vadic intensifies her threat. Jack agonizes some more. Rinse and repeat, with only a brief telepathic moment—where Jack uses his newfound abilities to possess a bridge officer and attempt a ship takeover—to break the monotony.
It’s all necessary for the plot, I guess, and hey, it gives Amanda Plummer a chance to chew on some more villainous monologues, but it drags on longer than necessary. Once again, I get the feeling that the writers and editors are desperately trying to fill runtime. And perhaps too enamored with Amanda Plummer (I find over-the-top performances work best in small but sharp doses).
Young man, do you know what time it is? Ed Speleers as Jack Crusher, Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher and Patrick Stewart as Picard
At the end of the last episode, Vadic hinted at what (or who??) might be behind Jack’s visions and sudden telepathic abilities—not only to read minds but to also to possess people. But if you were hoping for answers this week, you’re out of luck. Though Vadic sadistically teases both Jack and the audience, we aren’t any closer to learning what’s going on.
Meanwhile, the members of the cast missing from last week—Riker, Troi, Worf, Raffi—reappear at last. We’re treated to a sweet reunion between Riker and Troi, who the Changelings had the courtesy to imprison together. Troi calls Riker an old man who can take a punch, and it’s an apt descriptor not only for him but the entire TNG crew. In the words of Michelle Yeoh, don’t let anyone tell you you’re past your prime, and the best part of this season of Picard is how it’s proving that older adults can still be protagonists and heroes.
Worst date ever. Jonathan Frakes as Will Riker and Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi.
It was lovely seeing Riker and Troi together again at last, even under such harsh circumstances. Though I’m not sure I buy Riker’s explanation that he betrayed the Titan to save Troi from torture, knowing that Picard would figure out how to deal with Vadic. Ah well, it had to be done for the Plot. And thank goodness they skipped the actual torture scenes.
All my kudos to the writers for giving us the Worf we know and love, with his Worf-iness dialed up to a thousand. Whether he’s busting his buddies out (with surprisingly little resistance) or matter-of-factly reviving his flirtation with Troi (in front of an aghast Riker), this Worf milks all the toughness and (inadvertent, on his part) humor of the character, and I loved every second.
Out of other options, Picard and the others seek the Soong android that might be Data, or might be Lore, hoping he can retake the ship for them. You know what’s coming next: a showdown between brothers in an abstract mindscape. Though the way it played out was fairly predictable, the execution nevertheless made it a treat to watch. I loved seeing Brent Spiner go head-to-head with himself as two vastly different characters, both of whom retain every characteristic of his past performances. We really were seeing Data and Lore again, just in older bodies. And the Next Generation Easter Eggs we got (just in time for actual Easter!) are sure to delight longtime fans (SPOT! SPOT! SPOT! =^._.^=)
While I came into this episode fairly sure that our heroes would retake the ship, Vadic’s abrupt demise came as a surprise. And the show seems to want us to know that she’s gone gone, not just sort-of-maybe gone, given that she’s shown shattering into a million pieces in space (then again, this is Star Trek, and I’m sure they could technobabble their way out of it if they really wanted to). Given that she’s been the primary villain all season, and there are still two episodes left to go, I wasn’t expecting her to be dispatched just yet. Even though it’s clear that she serves a bigger baddie—Darth Vader to an unknown Emperor—she’s been the face of the evil we’re rooting against. The bigger bad might still be out there, but it would have been more satisfying to see Vadic go out along with her mysterious boss in the show’s climax, rather than being done away with early (imagine if they’d killed off Vader halfway through Return of the Jedi… yes, I’m mixing fandoms. Hush.)
Anyway, for all its flaws, “Surrender” did pull off a hell of a triumph in the last few minutes. You’d have to be a stone-cold hater not to cheer for the Next Generation crew as they claim victory over Vadic. It was such a cinematic ending, it’ll be hard for the actual finale to top that. And when they gather around a table to discuss things afterward? ALL. THE. FEELS.
Rating:
4/5 stars, with a whole star added for that ending
The highly anticipated resolution to the mystery of “WHAT DID PETER DO?” finally gets revealed this summer. From writer Zeb Wells and artist John Romita Jr., after a long time together, fans of the webhead will finally see this successful run of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN uncover the truth. The complete story details unveiled with AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25, set to release on May 10 according to Marvel’s latest press release.
This issue will unveil the events that happened to Mary Jane Watson while she was trapped in an alternate dimension for several years. The emotional impact of the issue will directly lead to AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #26, the most astonishing issue of the series in 50 years.
Superstar artist Kaare Andrews will provide interior artwork for this double-sized issue, depicting MJ’s tumultuous recent years. Meanwhile, John Romita Jr. will continue from where things left off as Spidey confronts the fallout of his actions.
To commemorate this milestone, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 will have an array of rather gorgeous variant covers. This includes a pair by John Romita Jr. that showcases Peter Parker’s two great loves, an exquisite pinup of MJ by Greg Land, and an homage to MJ’s initial appearance by Ed McGuiness, which highlights her new “jackpot” powers, and much more. You can check out all of the covers below.
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AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 Cover by JOHN ROMITA JR.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 Gwen Stacy Variant Cover by JOHN ROMITA JR.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 Mary Jane Variant Cover by JOHN ROMITA JR.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 Variant Cover by ED MCGUINNESS
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 Variant Cover by JOHN CASSADAY
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 Variant Cover by GREG LAND
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 Virgin Black & White Variant Cover by GREG LAND
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 Variant Cover by SKOTTIE YOUNG
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 Disney100 Variant Cover by DONALD SOFFRITTI
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 Interior Artwork by Kaare Andrews
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 Interior Artwork by Kaare Andrews
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 Interior Artwork by Kaare Andrews
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 Interior Artwork by John Romita Jr.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 Interior Artwork by John Romita Jr.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25 Interior Artwork by John Romita Jr.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #25
Written by ZEB WELLS
Art by JOHN ROMITA JR., KAARE ANDREWS, &
Cover by JOHN ROMITA JR.
Gwen Stacy Variant Cover by JOHN ROMITA JR.
Mary Jane Variant Cover by JOHN ROMITA JR.
Variant Cover by ED MCGUINNESS
Variant Cover by JOHN CASSADAY
Variant Cover by GREG LAND
Virgin Black & White Variant Cover by GREG LAND
Variant Cover by SKOTTIE YOUNG
Disney100 Variant Cover by DONALD SOFFRITTI
Disney100 Black & White Variant Cover by DONALD SOFFRITTI
On Sale 5/10
MegaCon in Orlando gave fans a look into Fall of X, kicking off this summer with new titles and stories designed to usher in a new age of X-Men. With dominos set up through 2019’s House of X and Powers of X, Fall of X provides the powerful answer to the burning question of how long the Krakoan Age can really endure: infinitely? Or is there a clock on paradise?
Fans are getting a treat! Check out the covers for X-Men titles on sale this July a full month before Fall of X starts. These issues herald the beginning of the end for Krakoa, giving us one last glimpse at glory before X-Men: Hellfire Gala #1 delivers the death blow!
X-MEN #24
Written by GERRY DUGGAN
Art and Co
ver by JOSHUA CASSARA
On Sale 7/5
In writer Gerry Duggan and artist Joshua Cassara’s X-Men #24, the X-Men go up against an infamous mercenary. No, not the one you’re thinking of, it’s fan favorite Pogg Ur-Pogg, from X of Swords, making a spectacular return! The lethal life ender for hire is clashing with the X-Men at the worst time possible!
IMMORTAL X-MEN #13
Written by KIERON GILLEN
Art by LUCAS WERNECK
Cover by MARK BROOKS
On Sale 7/12
Time is of the essence and Krakoa has no choice but to put up or shut up, luckily Doug Ramsey is its voice. Immortal X-Men #13, written by Kieron Gillen with art from Lucas Werneck, focuses in on the fall’s most important player as Krakoa approaches the end.
X-MEN RED #13
Written by AL EWING
Art by JACOPO CAMAGNI
Cover by STEFANO CASELLI
On Sale 7/19
X-Men Red #13, sees writer Al Ewing and artist Jacopo Camagni tackle the resurrection of Genesis. The Mother of Arakko once more inhabits the island she ruled for eons, Annihilation Staff in hand, but what does her return mean? Is it cause for jubilation or despair? With the Fall of X getting closer, the Great Ring needs to figure it out…or bring about their own doom.
WOLVERINE #35
Written by BENJAMIN PERCY
Art by JUAN JOSÉ RYP
Cover by LEINIL FRANCIS YU
On Sale 7/19
The conclusion of Wolverine’s Clone Saga not only sets up his future, but portends some big moments in Krakoa’s destiny. Writer Benjamin Percy and artist Juan José Ryp’s violent finale to “Weapons of X” in Wolverine #35 reveals who survived the Clone Wars: Beast or Wolverine? Rest assured whoever it is, he’s the real deal!
X-FORCE #42
Written by BENJAMIN PERCY
Art by PAUL DAVIDSON
Cover by JOSHUA CASSARA
On Sale 7/12
Hank McCoy not only survives Nimrod’s masterplan, but thrives! Benjamin Percy, with help from artist Paul Davidson, continues his groundbreaking Beast storyline in X-Force #42. Beast’s long game has given Nimrod an ultimate victory but what does this mean for all of mutantkind? Is there still a chance for X-Force to stop it? As one of the Krakoan ages’ most shocking plotlines, Beast’s surprising character arc isn’t over yet, and fans are chomping at the bit to see how this epic story trajectory ends!
X-MEN: BEFORE THE FALL – SINISTER FOUR #1
Written by KIERON GILLEN
Art by PACO MEDINA
Cover by LUCAS WERNECK
On Sale 7/5
July brings with it horsemen of a different color as X-Men: Before the Fall – Sinister Four #1 drops care of Gillen and Paco Medina. Four one-shots explore the lives of Nathaniel Essex’s wayward clones after their creation and his death. These Sinister shadows will also help set Fall of X into motion. But they’re not all Sinister are they? Ok, so following their lives might show us the usual Sinister brand of mischief, however that’s not all…there’s also…uh…dating?
The most thrilling issue of Amazing Spider-Man in the last five decades is coming with variant covers by some of the industry’s biggest names! Today, it’s Pepe Larraz with his gorgeous take on Peter Parker’s daily sky scraper commute high above the city, which should prove an ideal pairing to the highly anticipated issue. The issue turns a groundbreaking corner for Zeb Wells and John Romita Jr.’s run and will impact the Marvel Universe as a whole.
The Emissary has returned, following the fallout of Peter’s secret being dragged into the light, and Spider-Man’s super hero powers pale in comparison to the threat he’s facing. Can the heroes win the day? Maybe…but at what cost?
When I was young, I was very much into Greek mythology. I read a lot of the for-kids versions of stories of Hercules, Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, and many others. I was fascinated by the tales of the powerful, but petulant and petty gods and the poor mortals they would toy with. I think I saw the old Clash of the Titans film about a dozen times, probably because it was one of the six movies that the First Choice network in Canada showed regularly. (I also saw Rocky III about 15 times for similar reasons.)
So while I knew a lot about the Greek gods, I didn’t know a lot about mythologies from other lands. When I got a little older, I read more about the Norse gods, like Odin, Thor, and Loki, but I still was very ignorant about the mythology of my native continent. The indigenous peoples of this hemisphere have rich and complex tales of the gods and deities that shaped their cultures.
Fortunately, we now have the colorful and exciting graphic novel Codex Black to help fill in those gaps.
Written by Camilo Moncada Lozanzo, with colors by Angel DeSantiago and based on their web comic, the story takes place in 15th century Mesoamerica. (This is the area that today would cover Southern and Central Mexico and much of Central America.) The story follows Donaji, a 15 year old girl leaving her village for the first time to track down her father, who disappeared on one of his regular trips to the nearby city to trade goods. The only thing of her father’s she has is his old poncho. Fortunately, the poncho is the current home of a god that gives Donaji great strength. On her journey, she comes across Itzcacalotl, an 18-year-old Mexica warrior who got separated from his caravan and somehow gained the wings of a crow (which can come in quite handy, as you’d imagine.)
They join forces and both look for Donaji’s father, all the while noting the strange things happening in their land. There are warring nations on the march, a strange cabal dressed in black robes that looks to be up to no good, and many appearances by petty and angry gods. (I guess some things are the same in every region.)
The artwork is beautiful and dynamic, showing off the swoops of Itzcacalotl’s wings and the whooshes of feet and fists from Donaji in combat. It also displays some real artistry in portraying some of the more gruesome beings that inhabit the pantheon. (There’s a creature called The Night Axe that is honestly terrifying.) The layout moves along briskly and the 300+ pages of the book pass quickly.
The two main characters play well together. Donaji’s bravery is a front for some pretty severe imposter syndrome. Itzcacalotl is still trying to figure out why he’s alive and was chosen to receive his wings. These two people with serious psychic wounds achieve a real friendship and grow to rely on each other. Plus there are many more colorful characters they encounter on their journey, like a young thief who also gets assistance from gods of her own.
My main critique of this volume is that there is a lot of table setting, but not enough story. There are a lot of plot threads being put into play that look very important but don’t get explored fully enough. Several characters get a hero’s intro, with a big splash page and text explaining who they are and what powers they have, only to have what amounts to an extended cameo. I assume they are returning in later volumes, but here it really leaves you feeling like this ended mid-chapter.
Still, since I wanted to find out what happened to them, I take that as a good sign that you should check out the second volume when it arrives.
This story is aimed for YA readers, but can be enjoyed by all who have an interest in adventure and myths and legends of different cultures.
Raymond Lee as Dr. Ben Song and Mason Alexander Park as Ian. Photo by: Trae Patton / NBC
The first season of the new Quantum Leap has concluded, and, as promised, the show has tied up its dangling plot threads in a neat little bow. Which I personally really appreciated. While there are certain open story lines that could be explored in a second season (which the show has already been renewed for), the questions raised throughout the season—why did Ben leap? Which time/place are his leaps leading him to? Who is “Leaper X”? etc.—come to a logical and largely satisfactory conclusion.
It would be impossible to discuss the finale further without spoiling the season up until this point, so if you haven’t caught up to episode 17 yet, turn away now. The review that follows will attempt to avoid spoilers for episode 18 as much as possible. It will commence after this ominous yet context-less photo of Ben.
Raymond Lee as Dr. Ben Song. Photo by: Trae Patton / NBC
The teaser at the end of episode 17 pretty much promised that it would be the last traditional Quantum Leap episode of the season. After meeting a grizzled and haunted Ian in the ruins of Quantum Leap headquarters in a future plagued by nuclear winter, there’s no way the finale (apocalyptically titled “Judgement Day”) could be another one-off adventure about Ben fixing a lovable stranger’s life. But since the quantum accelerator wasn’t built to send people into the future, it starts pulling Ben away moments later, leaving Future Ian to hastily explain what’s going on and rely on Ben’s conveniently photographic memory to convey a vital piece of information to the Quantum Leap family—I mean team—back in 2023 (at some point, the show’s contemporary timeline also crossed the New Year threshold).
The team—Addison, 2023 Ian, Jenn, Magic, and now Janis as well—isn’t able to view what Ben’s up to in the future, but soon, familiar blue lights swirl, and Ben is pulled into the past again. And this time, he has leaped into… himself. In 2018. At the half-built Quantum Leap headquarters, moments before his first date with Addison, who still considers him just a coworker.
This was where he was heading all along, what Janis had helped him sabotage the official project to achieve. It’s also where Martinez, aka Leaper X, was heading… and where, in the timeline Ben was trying to prevent, Addison will die.
After 17 episodes of leaping into strangers to fix the pasts of people he doesn’t know, Ben finally gets to, as himself, attempt to fix his own past. Except now, there’s no Ziggy to guide him or the team back in 2023. However, the team is able to help by giving him information about their past selves. Which turns out to be important as Leaper X catches up.
It was fun getting to see the teams’ past selves, particularly Ian, who really is the breakout character of this whole season. Mason Alexander Park does a brilliant job of portraying three different Ians—the high-strung 2018 version, the more open and mature 2023 version, and the mournful, desperate future version. For someone who started off as just another “nerd in the lab” supporting figure, the convenient genius who feeds the central characters information, they have really stolen the show in the best possible way. Even before the plot started hinting at their vital role in the wider arc, their onscreen charisma had a way of grabbing the camera. Here’s hoping we get to see a lot more of them in season 2.
Mason Alexander Park as Ian. Photo by: Trae Patton / NBC
The episode takes Ben and the audience on a wild ride, doing things with the quantum accelerator that we haven’t seen yet in this iteration of the show. As a conclusion to an 18-episode season, “Judgement Day” is largely satisfying, as plot threads come together and everything finally makes sense. In an entertainment environment that sometimes feels like twists are written for the sake of twists and mystery boxes are presented without anyone having considered where they could lead, it was great to get an ending that makes sense without being entirely predictable. And that is, you know, an actual ending (a rare sight in the age of binge-seeking streamers).
The finale’s one weakness is that Martinez is never really developed as a character, and so isn’t particularly compelling as an antagonist. Despite having popped in and out of the show since halfway through the season, he was never more than a plot device. Which is a shame, because the episodes framed as a showdown between Ben and Martinez, but it’s hard to really become engaged.
All in all, Quantum Leap has done a great job of bringing back the formula we know and love while integrating a new plot and purpose for its leaper. Some of the retconning of the original show’s world-building (the disappearance of the waiting room, the leap host amnesia) will probably continue to annoy some viewers, but the spirit of the show remains. In a sea of dour dystopias, Quantum Leap stands out as a hopeful piece of science fiction, frame technology and science as a way to make the world a better place, and the people behind it as selfless idealists who truly care about doing the right thing. Dare I even call it hopepunk?
While it had its ups and down, like any show, overall the first season was an enjoyable watch, full of likable characters (and a found family!), fun story lines, and a heart the size of a quantum accelerator.
Emma Frost has been on a tumultuous path over the years. She started as a hard core, sadistic villain, then got humanized (kind of) as Cyclops’ secret mistress, and wound up in a more heroic role in recent stories. Now the self-proclaimed White Queen will take the lead in Invincible Iron Man #6 and form an unusual partnership with the one and only Tony Stark.
Here are the details you need to know:
In INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #4 by Gerry Duggan and Juan Frigeri, Tony approached Emma and proposed a team-up that could save them both. Fans can look forward to Emma playing a major role in the series moving forward and to celebrate this, acclaimed artist Rose Besch has drawn a stunning new variant cover for INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #6! The issue will reveal a never-before-seen encounter between Tony and Emma that will impact their relationship in a surprising way.
Honestly, it’s hard to guess what will happen between Tony Stark and Emma Frost. But the good money is on something saucy and naughty happening. At least once Feilong and his nasty Stark Sentinels are dealt with. Be sure to check out the full variant cover by artist Rose Besch below. And head to your local comic dealer May 10th to pick up this compelling story arc.
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #6
Written by GERRY DUGGAN
Art by ANDREA DI VITO
Variant Cover by ROSE BESCH
Virgin Variant Cover by ROSE BESCH
On Sale 5/10
Announced at Chicago’s C2E2, Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski and VENOM editor Devin Lewis, along with David Pepose, Sabir Pirzada, and Zeb Wells, have announced Marvel’s SUMMER OF SYMBIOTES celebrating the 35th anniversary of Venom. Starting this May, fans can expect titles such as CULT OF CARNAGE: MISERY, EXTREME VENOMVERSE, and CARNAGE REIGNS, among others, to showcase the twisted symbiotic family tree of the Marvel Universe.
In WEB OF CARNAGE, written by Ram V with art by Francesco Manna, Carnage seeks to inherit the Earth following the aftermath of CARNAGE REIGNS, where Cletus Kasady took revenge on Miles Morales and the Marvel Universe. With the Carnage symbiote left adrift among the stars, but with its purpose renewed, it has its sights set on the throne of the King in Black, with the first hurdle being Morlun.
Alex Paknadel and Jan Bazaldua’s RED GOBLIN #6 follows “Nature Vs. Nuture”, a new arc where Normie Osborn and the Rascal symbiote are in trouble after managing to keep the killing machine inside of him under control. Though Normie will soon learn that fighting nature is impossible.
Sabir Pirzada and Francesco Mortarino’s CULT OF CARNAGE: MISERY explores the new symbiotic monstrosity called Madness, which inadvertently forces Liz Allan to bond to the all-new MISERY symbiote, changing her life and the future of symbiotes. Madness has the powers and personalities of the LIFE FOUNDATION SYMBIOTES, making it a symbiotic force unlike any other in the Marvel Universe.
Al Ewing and Ramon F. Bachs’ VENOM #22 sees a radical transformation of Eddie Brock as Venom. Eddie’s consciousness has been displaced in time, and he finds himself in the far future and past of the Marvel Universe. Face-to-face with the mysterious FLEXO in the past, Venom learns a shocking secret about the role symbiotes play in Marvel history.
Lastly, Torunn Grønbekk and Ken Lashley’s VENOM #23 present a new vision of TOXIN, the offspring of the most dangerous symbiote in the history of the Marvel Universe, CARNAGE. As Carnage and Cletus Kasady plan for cosmic bloodshed and conquest, what has its progeny been up to? And will Dylan Brock or the Venom symbiote survive when they come face-to-face with this latest terrifying Toxin?
The SUMMER OF SYMBIOTES will also be available on Marvel Unlimited in the EDGE OF VENOMVERSE UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC series. Writer Clay McLeod Chapman and a lineup of artists including Phillip Sevy, Gustavo Duarte, Dax Gordine, and Nathan Stockman will unleash a new Venom upon an unsuspecting world. Will the Holy Man offer salvation or ultimate destruction to a terrified family? The series drops on Marvel Unlimited on Tuesday, June 13, and J. Holtham will be writing alternating stories, beginning with President Venom’s special 4th of July address.
Overall, the SUMMER OF SYMBIOTES promises to be an exciting season for fans of Venom and the Marvel Universe’s symbiotic family tree, with new stories, characters, and twists that will change the continuing saga of the symbiotes forever.
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CULT OF CARNAGE: MISERY #1 - 75960620568400111 Written by SABIR PIRZADA Art by FRANCESCO MORTARINO Madness Concept Art by FRANCESCO MORTARINO Cover by SKAN On Sale 5/3
Tuesday, June 13
Tuesday, June 13
VENOM #22
Written by AL EWING
Art by RAMON F. BACHS
Cover by BRYAN HITCH
On Sale 7/5
WEB OF CARNAGE #1 Written by RAM V & MORE Art by FRANCESCO MANNA Cover by KENDRICK “KUNKKA” LIM On Sale 7/12
RED GOBLIN #6 Written by ALEX PAKNADEL Art by JAN BAZALDUA Cover by BJÖRN BARENDS On Sale 7/12
VENOM #23
Written by TORUNN GRØNBEKK
Art by KEN LASHLEY
Cover by BRYAN HITCH
On Sale 7/19
CULT OF CARNAGE: MISERY #3
Written by SABIR PIRZADA
Art by FRANCESCO MORTARINO
Cover by SKAN
On Sale 7/26
DEATH OF THE VENOMVERSE #1 (OF 5) Written by CULLEN BUNN & DAVID MICHELINIE Art by GERARDO SANDOVAL Cover by BJÖRN BARENDS On Sale 8/2
CULT OF CARNAGE: MISERY #4 Written by SABIR PIRZADA Penciled by FRANCESCO MORTARINO Cover by SKAN SRISUWAN On Sale 8/30
CULT OF CARNAGE: MISERY #3
Written by SABIR PIRZADA
Art by FRANCESCO MORTARINO
MAGNUM P.I. -- "Dark Skies" Episode 508 -- Pictured: Jay Hernandez as Thomas Magnum -- (Photo by: Zack Dougan/NBC)
All season, Magnum P.I. has been hinting at more things to come regarding the murder of Captain Buck Greene. And in “Dark Skies”, we begin to get an image of the broader picture, and let’s just say it’s not good for Thomas and company.
It starts in San Diego. The harbormaster that T.C. talked with back in episode one has since gone missing, and now is hiding on his houseboat in sunny San Diego. Just one problem—Thomas has found him, and surprises him when he returns. Louis Peele was apparently paid to lie about Greene, and now Thomas wants his assistance finding the men that had Greene murdered. And in case Louis thought Magnum was asking for help, let’s be clear—this is a demand on Thomas’ part, and the only way Louis can make restitution for his actions.
MAGNUM P.I. — “Dark Skies” Episode 508 — Pictured: (l-r) Christopher Thornton as “Shammy”, Amy Hill as Teuila “Kumu” Tuileta — (Photo by: NBC)
Then we go to Rick’s bar, La Mariana, for trivia night. Or as he calls it, La Triviana (cringe). There’s plenty of trash talk and laughter, and Higgy and her team are against Shammy and his team in the final round. We actually haven’t seen any of Shammy all season 5, and I suspected he was cut out of the show entirely. So it’s nice to see him kicking butt in trivia, and winning some gift cards from Rick. Then the next morning, when the wheelchair-bound big winner rolls in to redeem his winnings for a breakfast burrito (Rick has a no alcohol policy on gift cards). Kumu realizes someone tried to steal from them. The cash drawer is off kilter, and some expensive Moai masks were taken. Kumu and Shammy realize someone was inside the bar all night, hiding in the bathroom, and then went out through the window with their loot. But Magnum and Higgins aren’t the only detectives in town, and so Shammy and Kumu are on the case!
As for Higgins, she’s working a new case on Maui, so she gets a chopper ride from T.C. The client of the week is Nolan Pierce, an eccentric billionaire that has no grasp of social cues whatsoever. Someone has been harassing him with a drone for several days straight, and so he hired Higgy and T.C. to help find out who. They chat with the help, and it’s quickly made clear Pierce is a real piece of work. Not only is he eccentric, but he’s expanding into protected wildlife areas and generally seems like an asshole. Hell, the only reason he hired outsiders to help is because he just fired his corporate security for trying to unionize. Like most people with too much money, he’s a real great guy.
Meanwhile, Rick gets more info on the terrorist they had a hand in taking out, Hadid. He finds a trail of bodies in the wake of Hadid’s killing, including an expert named Nadine Amherst. She died last summer, supposedly in a plane crash, but sabotage seems more likely. All that matters is everybody that had a hand in the operation is getting killed one by one, and Magnum and company are next. So his plan is to use Louis as bait to draw in the people that hired him. Rick is worried Thomas is being hasty, but Magnum’s not willing to wait any longer, and wants to punish the people that killed Greene.
Back with Kumu and Shammy, they’re able to trace footprints from La Mariana’s bathroom to social media, and find the culprit. He’s just a young, stupid kid. He gets caught quickly, and Katsumoto thanks the duo for their detective work. Then Kumu waits in the lobby, and starts talking with a woman that’s clearly overwhelmed. Turns out, she’s the thief’s mother, and he was just desperate to get money to fix her fuel pump. It’s clear Kumu has a lot of sympathy, and wants to do what she can to help.
As for Higgins and T.C., they’re getting ready to triangulate where the drone may have come from when another appears. There’s a fantastic sequence where she and T.C. are riding horseback chasing the drone, taking potshots until Juliette finally knocks it out of the sky. When Higgy takes it apart, she finds it was sent from protected land three miles away, which makes them think the drone was sent by some activist group unhappy with Pierce.
Back with Magnum, he watches from a shielded position with Rick on overwatch duty while Louis plays bait. It’s quickly clear something has gone wrong when Louis gets a call, and moments later he’s shot twice. The sniper runs for it, and Magnum chases him. There’s a scuffle, but Thomas manages to knock the shooter unconscious. And thankfully for bait boy, he was wearing a bulletproof vest, so he survived the ordeal.
MAGNUM P.I. — “Dark Skies” Episode 508 — Pictured: Zachary Knighton as Orville “Rick” Wright — (Photo by: Zack Dougan/NBC)
The shooter is tied up at Robin’s Nest, and it’s pretty clear he’s former military. He says he doesn’t know who hired him, and that they shouldn’t put their trust in Greene. Some digging uncovers that the shooter was a ranger serving a prison sentence in Levenworth for war crimes in Syria. Just one problem—his sentence isn’t up yet, but somehow he’s walking around free as a bird. Given his military service, it also seems very unlikely he’s working for Hadid’s people.
Higgins and T.C. check out where the drone was launched from, and find a bunch of cigarillos. Worse, they find a fire where four men were burning evidence. Turns out, they weren’t after Pierce at all. They were after his pilot, a woman named Valentina. Higgy calls Pierce and tells him to take refuge in a safe room. Because the men are still after Valentina, and will kill anybody in their way.
Pierce and company skulk into the safe room as the men arrive, guns blazing. They watch on the monitor as they rage about outside. Thankfully, Higgy and T.C. arrive shortly on horseback and armed with pistols. They make short work of the banditos, and deal with an overly clingy billionaire afterwards. Valentina was apparently being hunted because she gave an anonymous tip to the DEA about a former boss.
It ends with a hostage exchange and some big revelations. First Kumu and Shammy chill out back at La Mariana. They got the Moai masks back, and kindhearted Kumu didn’t press charges on the stupid thief. As for Magnum and Rick, though their hostage kept insisting they had to kill him, instead they hand him over to U.S. Marshals to deal with. Then at the very end of “Dark Skies”, Higgins finds wire transfers sent to the sniper. Turns out, they lead right back to the CIA.
MAGNUM P.I. — “Dark Skies” Episode 508 — Pictured: Jay Hernandez as Thomas Magnum — (Photo by: Zack Dougan/NBC)
Though I’m not at all sure why the CIA would be trying to murder Magnum and company, it’s a great twist. Here’s hoping they can keep up the positive momentum and keep us all on the edge of our seats.
In a case of a solid premise but awful execution, Hunt Club is a film that ultimately falls flat by lacking a coherent vision. A tensive tale about women’s survival and subsequent retaliation against the rich white men taking pride in hunting them for sport, thefilmultimately falls flat as both an indie and a B-quality horror flick in regards to its distasteful handling of the subject material. It is a movie that tries to break bad against abusive men and male-gazey filmmaking by unironically reenacting the genre it means to condemn.
A shame… as there might have been a potential indie breakout here.
Initially announced by The Hollywood Reporter, the film features a handful of stars in its cast with Mena Suvari as Cassandra, Maya Stojan playing her badass girlfriend, and then Casper Van Dien and Mickey Rourke acting as the movie’s villains.
The movie follows the story of Cassandra (Suvari), a grieving mother on a self-destructive life path rescued by a woman named Tessa (Stojan). Per luck, she finds herself in a strange encounter with two men and a financial offer: $100,000 if she takes part in a hunt in a remote area.
Accepting the risk, she soon finds herself captured along with several women whose terrible life circumstances have also made them strapped for cash. The women are to serve as prey for the hunters, revealed to be a toxic group of misogynistic Alpha-Male dude-bros who are a little more than a fraternity of privileged white men with power complexes.
The Good
First, let’s talk about the positives. Like any good survival against all odds story, the heart of this film is in its inevitable turn when the women finally get their revenge. It’s short but satisfying and they’re glimpses of fine emotional performances from Mena Suvari, along with some kick-ass scenes from Maya Stojan’s Tessa.
The one nice thing about this movie is that the women aren’t just props. They’re well-rounded characters with surprisingly showcased backstories. Women who were trying to find their own empowerment, though who ultimately, were all taken advantage of in terms of getting put into this hunt. Cassandra’s character likewise, has a solid tale about a mother trying to escape while delving into her past with her daughter and partner.
The Bad
Still, fair warning, these revelations don’t really occur until the turn into the second half. The hunt, not really kicking off until the movie’s final act, as the midpoint, for some strange reason, focuses on Casper Van Dien’s character, Carter. Who makes a big speech about the primal power of masculinity? How empowering it feels to be a man on the hunt…
Against. Defenseless. Women…
Which is where the movie absolutely crashes.
These men, while villainous for the story’s sake, are incredibly poorly-written caricatures of toxic masculinity. Most of them are white, come from privilege, and then conveniently like to make long-winded speeches about how much they hate that culture has changed, “Back in my day, a man was this…” many times throughout this film.
The problem is that the villains of the story are lacking any sort of layers and are so distant from the characters that it’s a classic case of us-versus-them. Despite how it’s a well-known fact that most sexual offenses aren’t by strangers but by someone within their immediate circle. Why there’s so little context makes for an easier-to-digest enemy, yet, also feels like it’s slightly pandering. Though to whom, I’m not sure because this production? Absolutely caters to the male gaze in a misplaced homage to the slasher genre trope, where the women in this movie are unnecessarily clad in their underwear this entire time.
It should be noted that the writing team was accredited to two men, David Lipper and John Saunders, who spend the majority of the movie talking about women’s disempowerment despite that neither of the screenwriters are women.
The problem is that the movie poorly addresses rape.
Sumayyah Ameerah and Mena Suvari in The Hunt Club
There’s a prostitute in the movie who leads the movie’s tertiary C-Plot. A woman whose actions are later revealed, to be motivated by uncomfortable consent for money, and then switches into non-consensual. Like the rest of the women in the movie, she essentially wants revenge for what’s happened to her, particularly over being violently raped (offscreen). Ultimately, her story beats turn at the blink of an eye in a whiplash of tonal shifts that make us all wonder: why is this even a part of the movie?
Now, director Blake-Thomas is no stranger to directing movies about sex trafficking, which is why I’m assuming ‘Hunt Club’ gets into this territory. Yet, the storyline contributes to absolutely nothing and feels uncomfortably exploitative outside of implied torture and a forced-Greek mythology theme that had to be spoon-fed, via very painful and out-of-place dialogue, several times throughout the film.
Ultimately, keeping these moments within the film hurts the tone of the events happening more than helps, as it makes the movie fall more in line with the controversial rape-revenge horror genre such as The Last House on The Left say as compared to The Most Dangerous Game. It also… has absolutely nothing to do with Cassandra’s journey nor is it connected to the film in any essential way.
So why is rape even a side plot point of the movie in the first place?
The Production Doesn’t Fare Much Better
Casper Van Dien and Mickey Rourke in Hunt Club
The Hunt itself is talked about more than actually displayed in this movie, perhaps for budgetary reasons, though, a lot for the sake of showcasing toxic masculinity.
Atop of this, the movie is littered with less-than-stellar action sequences that feature more aftermath cutaways rather than actual hunting minus a few stunts from actress Maya Stojan. This is a B-movie, though not a particularly fun one in terms of its directing, and at times: both lighting and keyframing—as there are a lot of extreme close-ups in this movie.
On the one hand, on paper, the beats of this tale should make for a compelling and positive script. A harrowing tale about revenge for women flipping the script on all of the predatory men. Picture the Oscar-award-winning Room but with B-Rate survivalist undertones, almost like a, You’re Next though lacking the surprising twists of the ‘growing up in a survivalist compound’ backstory—just being a woman was enough to be a badass.
Yet, the movie falls short in many aspects of these vaunted goals. Carter (Van Dien) plays a single-toned bad guy whom we can’t help but root for their downfall. Mickey Rourke plays yet another enforcer type meant to be overcome. The women get their revenge. The mid-sections are filled with aftermath deaths (there are actually very few exceptions in this movie). Oh, and there’s a redemption story for Carter’s son Jackson—who gets into a weirdly not intimate but close relationship with Cassandra. The explorations of which throughout the movie also feel… pretty in poor taste.
Still, weirdly, the most cringeworthy moment of this film was less about the film itself than what it was lacking. As there was a startling amount of white people in it. Minus one token black character, almost everyone in this movie was white—which kind of did disturb me as a person of color. Something which I don’t always point out but in this case, absolutely felt like I had to. In a strange way, this movie felt like something out of a Jordan Peele movie, minus almost all of the black people. Which is why it felt uncomfortable to watch.
The Take
As somebody who’s a writer, writes screenplays, and has friends in every facet of the industry, I don’t often give negative reviews as I understand how difficult it is to get things made. But when the film ended with what’s essential, a scene that rips off a bit of the ending to The Rise of Skywalker‘s final moments, I kind of knew this was going to be a bad review.
I’m conflicted here.
I like the movie’s ambitions as it feels like it was going for a great idea but just poorly executed minus a handful of saving graces from its cast. Whereas this could have been something like Room, or at the least, a women empowerment story of survival—a lot felt missing or distastefully addressed, lacking a coherent vision of what it was trying to say.
Which is more-or-less… Go, Women?! Down with the patriarchy?
I couldn’t tell you. Because I’m not entirely sure they were trying to say that either.
The latest episode of #StarTrekPicard, “Dominion,” was a step back from the thrills of the last few weeks but featured some fantastic performances. @StarTrekOnPPlus
Let me start by saying by this point in Star Trek: Picard‘s third and final season, you should stay off the internet completely if you don’t like spoilers. Not just because of people on social media, but headlines in mainstream publications going “Oh look, spoiler just did spoiler thing!” accompanied by a surprise-spoiling photo. Every episode ramps up the reveals and twists as the show barrels toward what is sure to be an explosive conclusion.
There. You have been warned. Review to commence below this picture of our space parents.
Space Mom and Dad are displeased. Image: Paramount+
The seventh episode, “Dominion”, pretty much tells you what it’s going to be about in the title. The Changelings are ramping up their plot, and our faves are on the run. They hide out in a scrapyard, where Seven seeks help from a familiar face. Hey look, Tuvok is back! And Tim Russ is absolutely excellent. Despite a little gray, it feels like no time has passed at all for the character—same expressions, mannerisms, and voice patterns. On Star Trek: Voyager (which I’ve recently been nostalgia-watching thanks to Picard) some of my favorite episodes involved Tuvok slipping from his Vulcan rationality and watching how Tim Russ seamlessly went from Tuvok being all, well, Tuvok-y, to taking on entirely different personalities. We’re treated to another such moment here, when a question from Seven reveals this “Tuvok” to be a Changeling.
Look at her. She’s the captain now. Image: Paramount+
The Titan is on its own now. Tuvok wasn’t the first ally they attempted to seek out, but it seems he might be the last at this point. The clock is ticking down to Frontier Day, and the crew is no closer to figuring out just what the Changelings are planning. Like us, the audience, all they can do is theorize, and one of their ideas was pretty close to what fellow The Workprint writer Victor Catano and I were speculating about earlier this week… maybe they’re after Picard’s genetic material (his body, his son) to create a perfect copy for nefarious reasons.
Lovely spot for a first date. Image: Paramount+
Speaking of Picard’s son—what’s going on with that little rascal? Last week, he was not-so-subtly flirting with Sidney La Forge (prompting a fun dad moment from Geordi), and this week, he doesn’t seem shy about pursuing his little crush. With some telepathic help… Hey, maybe those weird visions aren’t just brain-disease hallucinations after all. It would seem a waste to tease us with those visions only for them to wind up meaningless, and this episode hints that Crusher and Picard are missing something when it comes to their baby boy.
Name this band. Image: Paramount+
The bulk of the episode is about what happens after the Titan lures Vadic and her henchmen on board with the plan of trapping and interrogating her, and of course, that goes about as well as you’d expect. Vadic is completely unfazed, and you get the sense right from the start that she’s in control of the whole situation. Amanda Plummer gives a wonderfully creepy performance as she tells her story. The reveal isn’t particularly interesting, and the monologuing goes on a bit long for my taste. With Worf, Raffi, and Riker off the ship (sadly, we don’t get any updates from that storyline this week), the show again feels like it’s struggling to fill its runtime and chooses to just loop its more dramatic moments.
Hello from the other siiiiiide… Image: Paramount+
We also get a few moments with the new, older-looking android who possess both Data and Lore’s personalities, plus others. It’s wonderful seeing Brent Spiner slip so seamlessly between the two performances. Plot-wise, he does get a little to do, but not much.
Hello, Clarice. Image: Paramount+
Overall, “Dominion” is mostly an episode to watch some scene-chewing acting, get more background on what the Changelings might be up to, and confirm the idea that Jack’s red-eyed visions are more than a medical issue. Despite the tense writing and dramatic (lack of) lighting, though, it felt hard to get really invested in what felt like a saggy middle chapter. I guess it was inevitable after the thrills of the last two weeks. Here’s hoping next week picks things back up.
Rating:
3.5/5 stars… with a whole star added for Tim Russ, Amanda Plummer, and Brent Spiner
Lottie, Shauna and Taissa share a moment before the fire.
The last episode left off to where audiences were perversely hoping it might have intimated from the Pilot. The stakes are high and the morale has gone low. With one down from the squad, they are at the mercy of the away team. Some positions may need to be shifted, for better or worse. Maybe a red card ain’t looking so bad, now.
Review:
Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) is teased mercilessly by the ‘guilt ghost’ of Jackie (Ella Purnell) in the provisions shed. The pickings are slim and they’re in the dead of winter. The only thing not dead in the shed is Shauna’s deep-seated issues.
Lottie (Courtney Eaton) is the only one backing Shauna’s journey and people are having enough of ‘the other sick one’ making excuses for someone who in their estimation isn’t doing too hot. Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown) is the one willing to call out everyone on that and for another for shitting in the piss bucket.
Admission of guilt isn’t on the table for anyone present, but with the squad growing hungrier, animosity isn’t something one can simply consume because it functions the other way around.
Jackie’s request to be braided and dolled up only serves to pave one path to Shauna’s subconscious: self-preservation. Jackie offers up a butcher’s sample of her own flesh, lest we forget, who’s truly holding the knife.
Presently, Callie (Sarah Desjardins) has had enough of life and no amount of hitting a vape will hide her disdain for Kyle’s (Khobe Clarke) childishness, breaking up then and there.
In the cabin, Van (Liv Hewson) awakes to find Tai’s gone missing. She chases her down into that cold and dark as her beloved seems to amble with intent, besotted by a vision of the No-Eyed Man. Van intercepts its intent before Taissa takes her final leap, which happens to be right near a rock carved with the now infamous glyph.
Adult Tai (Tawny Cypress) attempts her version of self-care by soaking every fibrous sinew with coffee. As Massive Attack’s ‘Intertia Creeps’ plays, caffeine consumption, working out, and showering still give Tai that oh-so-bedraggled glow.
In the wilderness, her younger self notices Lottie getting along with the girls, including Van. Lottie doesn’t escape the disapproving eye of Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) either, especially when she seems to be interacting with Travis (Kevin Alves) post-panic attack. For the journey, Nat always plans ahead.
Travis maintains to Nat that a spiritual guide isn’t so bad. Natalie surely isn’t buying into the healing power of something beyond actual food and warmth. This is where the two diverge, both in opinion and more crucially in the actual direction.
Natalie may be deft in reading the landscape, but certainly deaf in hearing the nature of her fellow teammates, and with daylight at a critical luxury, they decide on a meetup point.
At the commune of Lottie (Simone Kessell), Natalie (Juliette Lewis) is as skeptical as ever. Despite being kidnapped and tied down, in Lottie’s defense, it was in order to keep a teammate alive. It’s not exactly fair calling what Lottie’s built a cult when Natalie’s been in a place that was only a ‘retreat’ by euphemism.
At home, Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) attempts in vain to coax Callie into spending more time together which is met with the usual snark. She only knows her mother’s narrative, nothing of the horrid sacrifices her mother had to experience in the wilderness to keep the both of them alive.
Elsewhere, grown Misty (Christina Ricci) tries to get a hold of Taissa to no avail. Misty’s sadly the last to know while also being the first one to the scene and utilizes the only avenue where cunning matters more than appearance—the message boards.
She wants to hack into a security camera and one answer bears fruit she can take a bite into, but it also calls for her to swallow her pride first—a pill without water.
Emerging, Shauna doesn’t get too much time to warm up at the fire before Taissa turns up the burners quickly, demanding answers.
Tai demands the cremation of Jackie to cease the madness- for the sake of the team, for the sake of Shauna’s baby. Even with Lottie in her corner, Shauna’s got no standing to put the kibosh on this.
Out of the woods but into the fire, home life isn’t less chaotic for the poor woman. Old pal Detective Kevyn (Alex Wyndham) makes an unexpected visit. With Cassie eavesdropping, he casts out the news of Adam Martin’s disappearance as if expecting a nibble. Callie interrupts and averts the questioning. Her mother’s floundering and Callie doesn’t want to end in a fish fry. Not yet, at least.
Even with a thank you to her daughter, Shauna can’t help but lie deftly to her face. She may not have the spitfire of Natalie, the ferocity of Taissa, the craftiness of Misty, nor the newfound zen of Lottie, but Shauna isn’t just some geek off the street.
The wilderness carved her into a survivor with a varied skill set, which possibly makes her the strongest. Like a Swiss army knife.
Getting ready for work, Taissa sees Sammy (Aiden Stoxx). He’s hoofed it after school and though happy to see him, dread is just looming, having to contact Simone (Rukiya Bernard) to pick him up.
At her job, Misty notices a new entrant (Elijah Wood), wheeling his mother into the building. They make eye contact with an extra smirk pursed on his lips before he passes her, prompting Misty to grab her lunch. There, she finds a letter addressed to her, both sides blank. Most of us can see where this is headed, even though Misty yet cannot.
With a beacon setting, Travis meets Natalie only to find something he wasn’t expecting. Natalie did find something. A pair of blood-soaked shorts. The shorts were compliments of Javi’s suitcase and the blood compliments hers.
Yes, this is fucked up. It manipulates Travis into her arms. It bleeds him of hope. It also, however, cuts the intention down to pure survival, which means a larger focus on food in one more person and less focus on someone that maybe already dead.
At the commune, certain things need to come out, and it’s time for Lottie to reveal all. On the night of Travis’ (Andres Soto) death, he reached out to Lottie, convinced the wilderness was after him. She took note and went to see him.
He wanted to get as close to death as possible, convinced it worked for her and Van. She kept vigil but fell asleep. Calling Natalie wasn’t an option Travis wanted, citing it would only make things worse.
He left before Lottie could wake up, leaving instructions for accessing his bank account, only leaving the note to ‘Tell Nat She Was Right.’ This led Lottie to the ranch where he worked. She was greeted by him, candles lit in the shape of the symbol they all knew to accept or fear.
The plan, a la Flatliners was to see what was on the other side and to confront it before coming back. Though hesitant, Lottie had no choice. The only problem was letting him down. The damn thing jammed and Travis was dead but a few feet off the ground.
Natalie, naturally, isn’t convinced, but as the recounting went further, Lottie tried, but then saw death incarnate before her very eyes in the visage of Laura Lee, the first of the true sacrifices of the woods. Meanwhile, Travis is being hoisted up further.
Before ya know it and bob’s your uncle, Laura Lee disintegrates, leaving Lottie to notice Travis fully strung. This will marinate Natalie for a moment, but before she can plead her innocence, she lashes out at Lottie for her track record of failing to save souls.
This ain’t flying with Natalie whatsoever, but to be fair, neither did Laura Lee back home. I don’t believe that was by any fault of Lottie’s. Though Natalie plans to expose her former teammate, she’ll have to spend the night.
At Tai’s house, the door is chain-locked, and she passes out. The body can only take so much, and cannot survive without the mind. Simone gets in, but Sammy’s nowhere to be found with his bedroom window open. Time for a hunt.
As the pyre is prepared, the issue of Jackie’s clothes is brought up but is immediately put down. Lottie lets her keep Jackie’s necklace and covers up the chunk taken out of her arm. Lottie sees something the others don’t.
At the bar, Cassie and her friend order a bunch of drinks before the hurt notices a guy at the bar checking her out and before she can say another round, starts flirting with him. His story of separated parents resonates with her situation, she spills the beans on her mother cheating on daddy.
As the final kindling has lain, Nat and Travis arrive from the trek only to find a scene too surreal for comfort. Lottie swears she can feel Javi’s still alive, but before Natalie can kiss her fist with Lottie’s lips, Shauna approaches with the flame.
With few words spent, but all heartfelt, the fire is started. Fuck Superman, this one is truly the funeral for a friend. Travis takes the time to say goodbye to his brother as well, only providing warmth for the deceased. Even Taissa comforts her as they all hunker down for the night.
In her cabin for the night, Natalie lays her head down to sleep but not before seeing a flashback of her own—possibly the first time she overdosed.
Misty cleans her bird cage with a UV light, and the lightbulb in her head goes off. The voiceover is clearly Mr. Wood’s character and identifies a man he’s set up for more information and extends his hand on an interrogation date, of sorts. Something has me already shipping them, but it’s too preliminary to call.
At the police station, the guy that flirted with Callie, Matt (John Reynolds) informs partner Kevyn of what he’s gleaned. Kevyn knows it’s not entirely above board to ply an underage with alcohol, but my guy’s only a first year, suspecting that Adam might be at the root of the affair. Kevyn wants to tiptoe on that tightrope, but you know rookies do just the opposite, right, Kevvy?
After the shit show of a day they’ve had, Travis comforts Natalie, unknowing that she may feel regret about earlier and they go at it. She accepts, unaware of what’s on his mind. To be fair, he’s got nobody and she’s got what she wanted.
That’s where things get a bit tricky in these woods that are lovely dark and deep. They fuck, but he’s thinking about the healing of Lottie. The more her comforting gestures mimic his, the more invested he gets in the act itself. To be fair, I don’t know if he feels protected by Lottie or is turned on by her.
Consummating, it seems as though Lottie is watching them. Out goes the candles and a presence through the trees violently shakes the snow from above onto Jackie’s body.
On the drive to find Sammy, Simone gets a call. I never trust scenes in cars with dialogue. Simone gets a phone call that Sammy’s been at school the entire time and has been waiting for a pick-up. It certainly further fucked up Simone’s opinion of their chances until she gets help, but her rage gets the better of her and throws pedal to her mettle, t-boning an SUV. (Nothing good comes from vehicle scenes).
Something awakes the cabin. It’s the sound of the fury. They all go outside, where the snow preserved Jackie, nearly to a perfectly cooked platter. This may not be the woods taking but rather giving…
Takeaway:
It’s just a matter of time before this led up to an inevitability. How it went down was the haunting part.
In the final minutes, what goes off is what is imagined in their minds (a bacchanalian feast with all kinds of food). They all consume Jackie at the unborn’s behest. It’s actually a well-crafted scene of how the body will take over in survival mode with the mind compensating for the rest. Radiohead’s “Climbing Up the Walls” only helped to secure this fête as a future iconic set piece of the series, even as Coach Ben (Steven Krueger) shudders at the sight. Will he be next on the now not-so-proverbial chopping block?
Will Callie give up some ghost before the rest of the team can rally together, or was she already born into fealty and ultimately will be their winning goal in PK time?
Specifically, the space pirates led by the mossman Gorian Shard, last seen trying to shoot down Mando & Grogu as they left Nevarro in Episode 1. He’s back, and rather pissed at High Magistrate Greef Karga for shooting a lot of his crew and booting them out. Shard’s corsair drops in over the city and starts blasting everything. Since they have no defenses, Karga and the townspeople are forced to flee into the lava flats.
Now, it seems slightly incredulous to me that Karga would have no weapons to deal with something like this. (You couldn’t have picked up an used ion cannon from a garage sale on Hoth or something?) Since he keeps making such a big deal about how Nevarro is independent now, it kind of behooves him to take care of things like planetary defense if you can’t rely on the New Republic or the Empire to help you out. And it’s not like the pirates were a surprise or anything! They swore revenge! This just seems like a shockingly bad oversight on his part. Did he think the pirates would hear he was putting in a new rail spur and stay away? “Oh, they’re a legitimate business hub now! Best leave them alone!”
Desperate, Karga sends a message to Captain Appa, sorry, Captain Teva of the New Republic Rangers. (I’m a fan of Kim’s Convenience. Can we somehow get Simu Liu over to the Star Wars universe, too?) He’s chilling at the bar on his base of operations, when he gets the holo-message Karga sent him. His drinking buddy tells him tough break about Nevarro, it looked like they were going to make it. But the Republic is swamped with requests for assistance from Republic worlds. There’s no way that they’ll send out help to an independent world.
Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios
Fans of the Rebels animated series will recognize that Teva’s drinking buddy is Zeb. This continues Dave Filoni’s quest to get me to watch all 200 episodes of Clone Wars and Rebels and, sorry, I just don’t like the animation style in those shows. But, cool fan service for all you Rebel-heads!
Undaunted, Teva heads to Coruscant to make his case in person. He heads to his supervisor, Colonel Tuttle, to plead his case in person. In our second fun cameo of the week, Tuttle is played by Tim Meadows who is the perfect choice to play a harried bureaucrat. His desk is covered with data files, and his helpful droid keeps bringing him more.
Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios
Tuttle seems open to help Nevarro, until his assistant helpfully reminds him that Nevarro isn’t a Republic planet. His assistant is R68, aka Elia Kane, the faithful Amnesty Program member who flayed Dr. Pershing’s mind. She sweetly suggests that maybe planets need to learn the benefits of Republic membership the hard way. Teva seems to know something’s off with her, and Tuttle either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.
Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios
As a last ditch effort, Teva pays a visit to the Mandalorian Covert. How does he find them? Well, he fought with R5-D4 back in the Rebellion and was able to track him. He tells Din that his buddy Greef Karga is in trouble. Just thought you’d want to know! Wink-wink. Since the Mandalorians will have to move anyway (since the Covert was discovered), Din proposes that they go help his friend. Greef Karga promised him a parcel of land. Perhaps the Clan could take up residence there, and live in the light again. Surprisingly, Paz Vizsla, the big Mandalorian with the rail gun who is usually quite antagonistic to Din, agrees. Din and Bo-Katan helped save his son, no questions asked, because that is the way. Now it’s time for the Mandalorians to fight and perhaps find a new home. Bo-Katan draws up a plan of attack and it’s off to Nevarro.
The Mandalorians make embarrassingly short work of the pirates. The drunken pirates are just utterly pantsed by our helmeted friends. (The Armorer gets to literally go hammer and tongs on some of them.) Shard is a terrible tactician, sending all his stubfighters after Mando’s N-1 starcraft, leaving the ship vulnerable to Bo-Katan’s attack after she drops the Mandalorians into the city. After losing engines, Shard calls the fighters back, but Vane—the one Karga let go back in episode one—is smart enough to recognize a losing hand and ditches Shard for, ahem, greener pastures. Shard refuses to retreat and gets blown out of the sky. Too bad, he looked cool even if he was pretty dumb for a pirate.
After the battle, Greef Karga thanks the Mandalorians and grants them the land west of the Lava Flats for their new home. As they celebrate, Bo-Katan is summoned to the Armorer, who commands her to remove her helmet.
Bo-Katan is obviously surprised by that. I mean, we’ve had multiple reminders about how taking the helmet off is bad and requires a dunk in the mines and all. But, The Armorer has her reasons. She wants Bo-Katan to walk in both worlds. The Mandalorians have been scattered for far too long, it’s time for them to reunite and return home. And Bo-Katan is the one to gather them all.
Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios
This gets to my problem with this season of the Mandalorian thus far: I just don’t care that much about Bo-Katan’s arc or the reclamation of Mandalore. The main thrust of the first two seasons was about Din Djarin becoming a reluctant guardian to Grogu while searching for Jedi who could train him. It was a clean, concise plot that allowed for different adventures each week. This season, I’m repeatedly told that Bo-Katan is supposed to reclaim her homeworld. I’m not sure why I should care all that much about it. Even if it wasn’t poisoned, Mandalore is still a bombed out rock, full of evil droid monsters and cavemen. Surely you can find somewhere better?
Personally. I think the Manadalorians are more interesting the less you know about them. Din was super cool when he was just wandering about with a helmet and saying “This is the way” as he found his bounties. I really don’t give a fig about the royal lineages of Mandalore or the lore behind the creed. Your mileage may vary, of course.
The episode ends with a return to Teva on patrol. He comes across the wreck of a Lambda class shuttle, with a breeched hull and a dead crew. The transponder coordinates confirm that this was the shuttle being used to transport Moff Gideon to trial, only his body is nowhere to be found. He was extracted and judging from the scraps of Beskar steel embedded in the wall, it looks like he was taken by a Mandalorian.
Just from the few mentions this season, I am already about ten times more invested in the return of Moff Gideon than I am in Mandalorian politics. (Doesn’t hurt that we might get a reappearance of the marvelous Giancarlo Esposito!) Was a Mandalorian hired to free him? Was a different clan working on their own? I’m invested again!
Only three episodes remain! I hope that the return of Gideon can help the show stick the landing to an up and down season.
Unlike Gorian Shard…
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Grogu Cuteness Meter: Tim Meadows had more screen time than Grogu!!! THIS WILL NOT STAND!
Marvel Comics has announced a new title called G.O.D.S. will make its debut this Fall. Written by Jonathan Hickman and illustrated by Valerio Schiti, the series is set to shake the foundations of the Marvel Universe with a complete reimagining of the cosmic beings that exist at Marvel’s core.
Known for his recent work on X-Men along with A.X.E Judgment Day, Hickman’s work on Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and the X-Men have earned him both critical acclaim and praise amongst fans. This, along with Valerio Schiti, who worked on Marvel’s Empyre and S.W.O.R.D., will make a tag teaming duo who’ll shake everything we knew about Marvel’s Gods at its core.
The story will be set in a special corner of the Marvel Universe, where science and magic intersect. The G.O.D.S. series will introduce a new cast of characters, some of whom have been in action long before Marvel’s popular superheroes.
One such character is Wyn, is a mysterious player in a war that exists outside of the orders we know. Wyn is a vital member who exists and perceives just outside of the eons-old hierarchy, the omnipotent rulers of the universe such as Eternity, Infinity, and the Living Tribunal.
“When I came back to Marvel a few years ago, I wrote two series bibles. The first was House of X and the other one was G.O.D.S.,” Hickman explained. “To say that I’m excited to finally be able to share this story with everyone is a massive understatement. G.O.D.S. takes place in its own special corner of the Marvel Universe — in the cracks that lie at the intersection of science and magic — and revisits some characters and concepts that we’ve reimagined for a more modern, continuity-driven audience.”
“When I was given a chance to work with Jonathan on a new project, I accepted right away,” Schiti said. “Then I discovered that we would be reimagining gods in the Marvel Universe: how they work, what they do, and how they interact with each other and humanity. It’s the kind of project that makes you weak in the knees when you think about it. Luckily, Jonathan has the gift to make even the most complex stories surprisingly simple and understandable. His pitch inspired me almost immediately. The core of the story is so perfect and clear that it swept away my anxiety and turned it into a burst of creativity.”
“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Valerio Schiti on this for the last year, and watching him bring this to life has been a total joy,” Hickman added “G.O.D.S. is my favorite kind of Marvel comic: one that feels like something old, but pushes the Marvel Universe in an exciting new direction.”
“The thing that I love the most is how the story grows, starting on the streets of New York and then taking the characters and the readers on an incredible journey with the Marvel pantheon,” Schiti said. “We will bring you to new places, show you what was hidden though the wrinkles of reality, introduce new characters, and put a fresh spin on old ones. You think you knew the Marvel Universe? Well, we will prove you wrong!”
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The series will also feature a main cover reveal, a new variant cover series, backup stories, and more. Marvel Comics promises to take readers on an incredible journey with the Marvel pantheon, bringing them to new places, introducing new characters, and putting a fresh spin on old ones.
Fans can experience the wonder that awaits in G.O.D.S. when a special preview will be released in FREE COMIC BOOK DAY: AVENGERS/X-MEN #1 on May 6.
