Go watch Ms. Marvel

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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.

FINALLY

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I have been so, so down on the Marvel Cinematic Universe lately, but there are still a couple of projects coming that I’m genuinely excited about: specifically, the Disney+ series for Moon Knight, She-Hulk, and, of course, Ms. Marvel. Kamala Khan is one of my favorite comic book characters– there are two of her on my desk– and while they appear to have made some substantial changes to her powers and her origin for what mostly seem like reasonable reasons, the core of the character seems to be there. That “I’m a superhero!” dorky running away moment at the end there? That’s Kamala Khan. I don’t mind the look, at least, of the crystalline new power set, although I do hope they find some way to make her powers intrinsic to her and not something that’s triggered by those bracelets she puts on in one shot. I don’t have a problem with making her not an Inhuman, since the Inhumans are dumb not part of the MCU yet anyway, but I don’t want her powers to be part of her costume. Make ’em sparkly, whatever; she’s gonna be tricky for TV budgets anyway. Just make them her powers and make her her and I’m on board.

(I can– and have— bitch for hours about how the movies have fucked up Superman and Batman. I really don’t have any of those moments yet for Marvel characters. Once they got Tony Stark and Captain America perfect, I knew the characters were going to be in good hands, and I’ve not seen reason to back off on that initial assessment.)

Just … please, please, please, can we get through this series without the word “multiverse”?

Star Wars and stuff

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This post is going to be kind of grab-baggy, so be prepared for that, and there will probably be various and sundry spoilers for various and sundry things, so be prepared to potentially be spoiled somehow on basically anything I mention.

The Mandalorian continues to be … a thing, that I watch. The show annoys me as often as it entertains me, to be honest, and reintroducing Boba fucking Fett back into continuity got directly on my damn nerves no matter how much of a badass Temuera Morrison is in the role. The show’s structure is kind of aggravating, too; I’ve talked before about how video games seem to be imposing their structure on serial storytelling, and this show is really big on episodes that feel exactly like side quests in video games. Plus, for a bounty hunter, Din Djarin sure doesn’t hunt a whole lot of bounties. Baby Yoda (Grogu, whatever; I’m actually fine with the name) has basically eaten the show. That said, I thought the show’s most recent episode did some really interesting narrative stuff, including shortcutting past what I thought was going to be an entire episode about breaking a character out of prison ended up dispensing with the entire “breakout” by basically having one character pull some strings and dealing with it in two minutes.

The show’s budget is also completely out of control, in a good way. It looks gorgeous, and it doesn’t skimp on … really, anything at all. But I feel like I spend at least half of each episode sighing.

While I’m talking about Star Wars, I may as well point out that I’m working my way through The Clone Wars, and … well, that’s a thing I watch too. I’m mostly interested in filling in my knowledge of Ahsoka Tano’s backstory, so sooner or later I’ll move on to Rebels. I’m not loving the show, though, so it’ll probably take a minute. Also, the more time I spend watching Stormtroopers shoot at people and miss or droids shoot at people and miss, the more it starts to actually get on my nerves. Turns out there’s a limit for this stuff after all.

Then again, this has happened:

… and, damn, I am so back in. I didn’t know how much I needed a Patty Jenkins Rogue Squadron movie until seeing this teaser, which blew my damn mind. I spent the whole thing thinking she was either talking about Captain Marvel 2 or, for some reason, Green Lantern, which seems kind of an unlikely announcement for a Disney production. So when she pulls that X-Wing pilot helmet out … damn.

Let’s see, what else? There was a teaser for Ms. Marvel, too:

I have kind of checked out of the MCU since Endgame and especially Far from Home, which is easy for me to say when the global pandemic has seriously curtailed any actual chance I might have to watch any new programming. But this? This is what I want, and Iman Vellani seems like the perfect actress for this role. I also continue to be hugely psyched about WandaVision, mostly because of Monica Rambeau’s presence in the program.

I have reread R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War and The Dragon Republic in the last couple of weeks, and I finally, finally got to start reading The Burning God, book III of that trilogy, today. It was the right call to reread the first two books again, which 1) reminded me of just how phenomenally good the first book was, and 2) made me realize that the second really is just as good as the first one. This series really isn’t for everyone, I still stand by that, but my God is it an amazing piece of work. I can’t wait to see how Kuang wraps up the trilogy with this final book. The rest of my unread shelf can wait.