I swear to you that I have spent the entire day thinking it was Saturday, and I have a dentist’s appointment tomorrow that I am going to forget about, which is upsetting because they got me in as a favor because my work schedule and the hours they’re open really don’t work together at all. It has been a bewildering day; TikTok banned itself and then unbanned itself and thanked Trump for the unbanning that it did on its own instead of the guy actually in the Oval Office who said he wasn’t going to enforce the ban that the House and Senate passed and the Supreme Court ruled was constitutional, which is a whole giant mess, Diamond Comics went bankrupt a few days ago and I didn’t even hear about it, and I have five hundred pages left in Rhythm of War.
It is going to be three hundred degrees below zero for the next three days and I’m fully expecting to not have to return to work until Thursday (Wednesday might be a two-hour delay instead of a cancel, but it’s gonna be a cancel. Tuesday is kaput.) which probably explains why I don’t know what day it is. I have some school shit I should do tomorrow. We’ll see if any of that happens.
I had another twelve-hour day today and have been grading since I finished dinner, so enjoy the newest addition to my utterly ridiculous assortment of pointless collectibles.
I am moving inevitably into my Elder Nerddom, and while there have been perhaps more statues in my house for several years now than one might expect from a random sample of homes, I have, until now, managed to avoid purchasing anything from Hot Toys. There are a billion reasons for this, but perhaps one of the biggest is that the damn things can run anywhere from $250-500 if not more than that and I knew good and fucking well that there was no way I was ever going to stop with one. My recent disenchantment with the MCU has helped; a lot of the appeal of Hot Toys to their fans is their unearthly skill with facial capture, and as I’ve grown tired of the movies, I’ve grown less interested in the idea of having Chris Evans or Robert Downey, Jr. on my shelf as opposed to a more Platonic, comic-based Iron Man or Captain America.
And today that beautiful bastard up there showed up under the Christmas tree, and I’m fucked now. My wife actually stopped me after I unwrapped the box but before I opened it, telling me that she and the two owners of my local comic shop had gone through a process in trying to decide which one to get me, and that they’d warned her that if I actually opened the box, collectors being who they are, they’d be unable to take it back. She asked me if I wanted her to tell me who was in it (the outside box of a Hot Toys figure has all the brand information but does not actually name the figure inside for some reason) and I told her that if the three of them had managed to guess wrong— my wife has been married to me for nearly sixteen years and I have spent money at the comic shop on a weekly basis for slightly longer than that– I was going to get so much mileage out of making fun of them for it that it would be worth it. Truth be told, I was fully expecting one of the many Iron Mans available.
Moon Knight? Fuck yes, and made even better by the fact that even though that’s Moon Knight’s MCU/Disney+ costume, that costume isn’t really much of a departure from his traditional comic book look and, even better, it’s not Oscar Isaac, since there’s no headsculpt featuring his face. So, yeah, this is perfect and I love you but this is going to cost me so much money, because he’s gonna need a friend, and then they’re gonna need a third, because who are they gonna talk to if they get tired of each other, and by this time next year I expect to have a full glass-front cabinet in the house somewhere with $6000 of these things in it(*) and I plan on regularly reminding my wife that it’s her fault.
(*) I may or may not have just inquired about pre-ordering an Iron Man that didn’t actually ever appear in the films but looks like the Silver Centurion, my favorite Iron Man suit ever.
My son’s best friend currently lives in Indianapolis, and she was in town overnight last night, and today we met her mom in Kokomo to hand her back over. For those of you who don’t know Indiana geography, Kokomo is more or less a halfway point between us, and it’s also the site of several cons I was a vendor at back when I was doing that. The guys who run Kokomo-Con have a comic shop, and two doors down from the comic shop is a fairly massive vintage toy shop, and a couple doors down from that is a used bookstore, with a used record store in between that we didn’t go into because I am not about to bring physical music media back into my life. We spent … I dunno, probably close to a couple of hours browsing between the three stores, and I somehow didn’t manage to spend any money despite finding any number of things I could have bought.
The copy of Iron Man #1 — the real first one, from 1968– was awfully tempting, especially since I’ve now spent some time looking through other listings for that same book and the $660 they wanted for it either indicates a hell of a deal or terrible condition. It wasn’t graded and obviously I didn’t take it off the shelf and look through it, but that’s always been a book I’ve wanted to own. If I was into Westerns I would have been ecstatic about the used bookstore, which had tons of series paperbacks that probably cost a quarter when they first came out. I always go looking for old Tor Conan books from the 1980s and early 90s and I can never find any, and it was the same here.
Three different $1000 Funko Pops. I don’t even remember what they were. That bubble’s got to … uh, pop soon, right?
Anyway, we came home and I took a nap until around 8, and now I’m up and if I wasn’t sitting here in front of the computer I’d be pacing around trying to decide if I wanted to do anything with the rest of my evening or go to bed. Spring Break is basically over at this point since we just have the weekend, and I have stuff to do on both days, so we’ll see if I’m a maniac on Sunday or if I manage to stay calm for the next couple of days. After that, seven weeks of school and then year 19 is in the bag.
I think this is, in total, my fourth or fifth piece about Amazon Prime’s The Boys, and each time I’ve written about it my enthusiasm for the show has deepened. Well, at this point, the third season has finished– the finale was two days ago– and, well. Go watch this fuckin’ show. I don’t know how else to put it. The show has, three seasons in, so thoroughly outgrown its source material that it isn’t even telling the same story any longer, and that’s not an exaggeration. I went through the differences between the show and the comics with my wife after the finale and it is a lengthy list, not to mention that the show rather comprehensively eliminated any chance of ending the way the comics do this season. And every divergence the show has made from the comics has improved the show. This isn’t like Game of Thrones, which decided to change things from the books by adding more rape.
(And while we’re talking about that, this show is enormously better to its woman characters than the comics ever were.)
I don’t really watch a lot of television, to be honest, so calling this “the best-acted show on TV” is … kinda meaningless coming from me, but I will say that it’s really difficult for me to imagine any show loaded with more acting talent than this one has. I will repeat what I said in my last piece about this show: Antony Starr is one of the most terrifying TV villains I’ve ever encountered, and while the show passed up a couple of chances to kill characters this season, I really do feel like there isn’t anyone that has plot armor. And given where they went with a certain major plot line in the comics that only just started showing up in the show, I wouldn’t even necessarily be surprised if they killed Homelander off early next season to move on to this other thing. Will they do that? Probably not. But not definitely not, and at least one other major character has a death sentence hanging over his head right now.
So, yeah. Three seasons in, we have moved to unapologetic, full-throated endorsement of this show. It’s fantastic. You should be watching it, and I can’t wait for Season Four.
I am so tired that it is actually offensive, after being wrenched awake by a headache at 1:30 AM last night and losing several hours of what had been pleasant sleep to throbbing temples. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment in a couple of weeks– just my regular checkup– and I’m going to bring this up, because I keep getting these exact same headaches every couple of weeks, always in the middle of the night, and I don’t know what the hell the deal with them is and I want them to go away.
Anyway.
It’s Wednesday, which means it’s the day that new comics come out, and a new episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi comes out, and– most importantly– the second episode of Ms. Marvel comes out. I was surprised to note that I don’t appear to have mentioned the premiere in this space last week; needless to say it was absolutely perfect and I would literally die for Iman Vellani, whose name is not Man Villain no matter what Autocorrect wants. The premiere was wonderful and made me insanely happy; I will watch the second episode either tonight or tomorrow and am hoping for a similarly positive reaction.
And then, after that, please God let me sleep through the night. This has been a rough week.
This will be the third time I have written about Amazon Prime’s series The Boys, based on the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson comic book of the same name, in this space. The first piece I wrote about it started with a content warning for “everything,” and mainly talked about the fact that I thought the show was problematic as hell, leaning way too much into sexism and rape and fridging female characters than anything I could be comfortable with recommending, but … well … if you could get past that awfulness, there was a pretty good show in there, somehow?
Then Season 2 rolled around, and they’d shed most of Ennis’ bullshit from the first season, in general treating their female characters a lot better, not relying on rape as a driver of the plot at all, and still keeping the insanely hyperviolent and raunchy tone of the first season, which moved the show from “Eh, if you were curious already, check it out, but don’t pay for Amazon Prime for this” to “Well, don’t pay for Amazon Prime just for this, but if you already have it, you probably ought to watch an episode or two and see what you think.”
We are, as of right now, three episodes into Season 3; my understanding is that new episodes are going to drop on Friday, although I’m not 100% sure what the actual schedule is– in other words, I’m not sure if they gave us three episodes to start and there will be 3 more this Friday, or if it’ll be on a more traditional one-episode-a-week schedule, or what, but we’re three episodes in. The season isn’t finished.
But based on those three episodes, and continuing to keep in mind that this show is not for everyone, and that I really can’t emphasize enough how much bodies literally exploding into chunky red sauce has been a part of this season, and there was a sequence in the first episode that very nearly had me hiding behind the couch …
I know Amazon Prime is $129 a year now, but … yeah, you need to be watching The Boys, if your constitution can handle it. If you know you can’t, go in peace and ignore this. But if you can?
This show has some of the best acting I have ever seen on a TV screen. Antony Starr as the Homelander is absolutely fucking terrifying in a way that I have never seen in a television character before. Like, my heart rate shoots up whenever he’s on screen. I want him to play the Joker so badly I can taste it. Karl Urban is amazing. Giancarlo Esposito is amazing. Jack Quaid is amazing. Erin Moriarty and Chance Crawford and Jessie Usher and oh my God Colby Minifie are amazing. Everyone with a role on this show is doing the job of their lives.
(Discovers that Mesmer, from last season, was Haley Joel fucking Osment, and has to take a moment.)
I really cannot express enough how much you need to see the clinic that Antony Starr is putting on here, though, managing to marry being an angry, unstable god with somebody who was very clearly so broken as a child that you almost feel sorry for him. Until, of course, you realize he’s fantasizing about killing every living person in New York City in the same disconnected, unconcerned way you might think for half a second before stepping on a bug. But you can see the scared little kid in him, and it’s just so good. And the writers, who are continuing to do adaptations The Right Way, have made it so clear that this show doesn’t even vaguely understand the concept of Plot Armor that there is literally not a single second where this man is on screen where you’re not worried about him doing something terrible at any moment. It’s been years since I had to take time to calm down after watching a TV show, and we’re only three episodes into this season and they’ve done it to me three times.
So, yeah. There’s still plenty of time for shit to go wrong, but at this point, and without relinquishing any of the previous warnings attached to previous seasons, this show is moving to You Need To Be Watching This. I’ll update again once the season is over.
The short version of this review is this: That they have finally made a Batman movie that I approve of, something I had formerly thought was impossible.
Slightly longer version: I am hard on Batman movies, y’all. I liked Tim Burton’s first Batman movie way back in 1989 and that has been it. I hated the second one so much that my neighbor came over when I got home to ask me to rant about it to my parents less quietly, and when I say neighbor, I would like to remind you that we lived in a house. I don’t even recognize the Nolan movies as having Batman in them. That’s a murder-happy bat-ninja. That’s not Batman. And the less said about Batfleck the better.
This movie is not perfect, but it is closer to being about Batman than any other live-action Batman thing I have ever seen. I am sorely tempted to dive into gripes; the Batsuit is ridiculously tough, rendering Batman virtually immune to gunfire and at one point a C4 explosion that goes basically directly into his torso and doesn’t even scratch him; the chief of police is completely forgotten about as a character after Batman beats up Jim Gordon and flees police custody, and a few other things. There are bits where it is goofy and I suspect that the goofiness is not intentional. Also it is three fucking hours long and yet somehow lacks a few pieces of critical exposition that should probably have been in there somewhere. We watched it over two nights; I highly recommend this approach.
This is also a very different Bruce Wayne than we have seen before, either in the movies or the comics. Bruce Wayne has always been portrayed as a charming playboy; I’m pretty sure this one is a virgin, and he’s a shut-in to a degree that it constitutes clear evidence of a mental health problem. My wife referred to Bruce as a “weird little goblin” at one point during the film and a “drama queen” during another and frankly those are both pretty damn accurate assessments. There is some romantic stuff going on with Catwoman (who hasn’t really adopted that role with a capital-C yet, but whatever) but it’s all at her initiative and they both play it like she’s toying with him because it amuses her.
So it’s not perfect. That doesn’t stop it from being real real good, though, mostly because of the things it gets right: first and foremost, unlike every other Batman movie ever, Batman is a fucking detective in this movie. He is a detective and he is working directly with the GCPD for large chunks of the movie despite many of them not being especially happy with it. And while they do veer into what I think is unintentional camp a couple of times, the movie never forgets how weird it is that this dude is literally running around in a cape trying to beat up criminals. He’s new enough that people are scared of him, but he’s also new enough that some clearly don’t take him seriously, and watching the reactions during the scenes where he strides into a packed nightclub in full gear is really something. This doesn’t appear to be a world with superheroes; there’s a mention of Bludhaven at the very end of the film but no, like, coy references to blue Boy Scouts or anything like that. This is, essentially, entirely separate from any of the rest of the DCU, and frankly, I don’t see this guy being buddies with Superman.
But you know what else he does? He saves people. Which is something you see sadly little of even in superhero movies I like. You know what he doesn‘t do? Kill people. Or use guns. Which is a huge deal, and they make it very clear at multiple points in the movie that Batman doesn’t like guns, and especially in the big fight at the end the film is at pains to make sure you realize that the criminals he’s fighting are being incapacitated, or taken out of the fight one way or another, and not killed. This is, to me, a big deal; not killing and not using guns are the two most critical aspects of Batman’s character and the one thing the movies have consistently gotten wrong.
Now, beyond the Batman-centric issues: the cast is phenomenal. Colin Ferrell is unrecognizable as the Penguin (and now I want him to replace Vincent D’Onofrio as the Kingpin) and provides one of the movie’s most unexpectedly hilarious moments when he reacts with absolute disgust to the idea that Batman has gotten, no shit, a detail of Spanish grammar wrong. The Riddler is creepy as all hell, which is not a sentence that anyone had ever even thought prior to this movie being filmed. Zoey Kravitz and John Turturro as Catwoman and Carmine Falcone are great. I also really liked Robert Pattinson. His Bruce Wayne, as I’ve said, is certainly a different take on the character than what we’ve seen before, but his Batman is spot-on. There has been a lot of talk about the raspy, growly voice that other actors tend to adopt as Batman, and I think one of my favorite things about how he plays the character is that his “Batman voice” just projects calm. That’s it. There are definitely some moments where he lets the rage through (there’s a great bit with Riddler toward the end of the film, and another where he thinks someone is in danger and is freaking out) but in general he just sort of radiates this preternatural calm for 90% of his screen time, and it’s a really interesting take. Also appreciated are a couple of moments where his inexperience shows; there’s a great moment where he tries out a gadget for what sure looks like the first time and he has a moment of absolute undeniable terror on his face as he activates the thing. And while I complained about the Batsuit being bulletproof, there are a couple of places where he does take some seriously brutal hits (one right after activating the device I just mentioned) and he might actually inject himself with Venom at one point in the film.
The movie looks great, and the action scenes are phenomenal; you always know what’s going on and where everybody is, which is something that a lot of directors simply haven’t mastered. The score is great, and I feel like I’ve said that already but it’s worth saying twice. Gotham itself is a grotesque, broken mess; this is the ugliest Gotham we’ve seen on screen, I think, and it fits the aesthetic of the film, which owes a lot to Se7en in a lot of places.
So, yeah. It’s streaming. Go watch it, now that you can do it without spending three hours sitting in a pool of aspirated Covid. You’ll like it.
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