Bleeding Fool |
- Un-Woke: Stephen Mertz’s ‘Cody’s Return’ Features ‘Crazy Feminist’ Villain
- The Folly of Including Real Life Tragedies in Modern Comicbooks
- Superman Films Ranked: #6 Zack Snyder’s ‘Justice League’ (2021)
- How Should Warner Bros. Handle Ezra Miller’s Scandals?
- Can ‘The Old Man’ Avoid Being Another Formulaic Ex-Spy Story?
- After Making Superman Gay, Tom Taylor Keeps Low Profile Back Home
- Marvel Studios Says They’re Courting Big Names for Fantastic Four
| Un-Woke: Stephen Mertz’s ‘Cody’s Return’ Features ‘Crazy Feminist’ Villain Posted: 04 Jun 2022 07:55 AM PDT
Who would feature a "crazy feminist" as a villain in today's woke world? Author Stephen Mertz would in Cody's War, book one of his new action-adventure trilogy.
On May 15, MensPulpMags.com did a Q&A with Mertz and talked about Cody's Return and The Justice Trilogy. And Mertz summarized what the novel and series are about.
When I created the first book in the trilogy, CODY'S RETURN, I decided to lighten the series up with a sort of pure action vibe like back in my Mack Bolan days. I've been a fan of super villains since I grew up reading about super bad guys like Dr. No and Fu Manchu. But I wanted a super villain that hadn't been done before. I came up with Thelma Justice, a global media megastar who happens to be a crazy feminist who wants to blow up the world so she can rule what's left. I teamed her up with a rogue Russian general who deals in black market nukes and is about to make her dream come true. They're a match made in Hell! I'm happy with the result.
That is one unique villain for today's world. Actually, it's unique just to have a villainess as the villain. (Of course, he did team her up with "a rogue Russian general," so who knows if he was consciously trying to go against the grain.)
And although Cody's Return came out this March, readers don't have to wait for the release of books two and three to find out what happens and how it all ends. Lethal Assault and Final Strike are already here.
If you want even more thrilling adventures featuring hero Jack Cody after that, Mertz has a separate series going called Cody's War. Afghanistan Payback is book nine and was just published on May 22.
America's disorganized military evacuation from the Hell on Earth called Afghanistan left ace CIA field agent Jack Cody with a bitter, dissatisfied fire in his gut. Maybe it was strategically viable, but too much good was being left undone in a country that had fallen into wholesale slaughter and savagery following America's withdrawal.
Now, the Taliban is in power, and no one is safe.
But when the US government learns that a handful of American military personnel may have been left behind and are being held prisoner by a cruel Taliban warlord somewhere in that godforsaken country, nothing can stop the man they call Suicide Cody from launching a one-man dark-op mission to locate their people and bring them home . . . or die trying!
So if you're looking for a good action-adventure series with an un-woke villain, you might want to give Cody's Return and the rest of The Justice Trilogy a try. The post Un-Woke: Stephen Mertz’s 'Cody's Return' Features 'Crazy Feminist' Villain appeared first on Bleeding Fool. | ||
| The Folly of Including Real Life Tragedies in Modern Comicbooks Posted: 04 Jun 2022 05:25 AM PDT While reporting on Tidal Wave’s new bio-comic about Ukraine’s president, the Willamette Week said the following:
These superheroes may have such a history, but before the turn of the century, most past writers usually avoided putting the fictional heroes directly in the middle of WW2, since here, you have superpowered beings who could knock down dozens of enemy soldiers in most surreal fashion, and it wouldn’t look good in comparison with real life where USA soldiers were experiencing hell on the battlefield in Europe with no such luxuries as you’d see in science fantasy. Yet the 2019 SyFy network article linked to by the Oregon-based weekly makes no attempt to acknowledge mixing characters from a sci-fi world with real life issues can come off as incredibly awkward. What they do say is the following:
And why specifically must Spidey’s title be the choice series for what turned out to be an insult to the intellect? Why not Iron Man or Wolverine’s solo series? Obviously, because Spidey’s long been considered one of the most recognizable Marvel creations by far, and that’s how they concluded it would be only fitting to make the web-slinger’s title the one for focus on the issue, in number 36. Of course, they couldn’t bother to clearly name who exactly oversaw this whole project, which would’ve been mainly Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas. In any case, by employing a flagship title so noticeably for conveying this kind of story only makes it look all the more blatant.
Now, I know Spidey’s physical strength isn’t enough to hold up a collapsing building as tall and heavy as the WTC was, and Shell-Head’s mechanics may not be either, but Thor could handle it with his strength, and so could Dr. Strange using magic, and considering various other heroes like the Avengers make appearances in the book, whose powers could possibly avail in keeping the building up long enough to evacuate the occupants (don’t be surprised if Quasar’s came in very useful for such a task), that’s one more reason why this was a long range embarrassment. Besides, what did it actually say about the Islamic jihadism that led to the tragedy? From what I could tell, all they really did was subtly imply the same kind of talking point George W. Bush used, that “a great religion was hijacked.”
Honestly, I’m disappointed with both Senior and Junior for approving this in the first place, given how farfetched it turned out to be, right down to the sight of Doctor Doom sobbing under his metal mask. And on that note, SyFy’s writers made sure to sugarcoat that part too:
I wonder how a tale relying on stealth victim-blaming can be considered a work of strength and unity? Unfortunately, that’s what the tale contains, whether in terms of moral equivalence or otherwise, and it solves nothing. To imply we have to bear the burdens, as the panel on the side does, is tasteless, and minimizes the seriousness of the issue.
Considering all the stories in the past where the despot leader of Latveria visited carnage and mayhem upon innocents, including but not limited to the Fantastic Four, why would it look plausible for him to feel sorrow over other tyrants committing the same thing? It wouldn’t have made sense if Kang the Conqueror were illustrated doing that either, considering he too was depicted in the past employing deadly force in later stories coming after the Silver Age. Why, what about Bullseye? If he’d turned up in the story, after all the assassinations he’d been depicted performing for mafia syndicates ever since he debuted in Daredevil in the mid-70s, wouldn’t that too look bizarrely insulting?
And the part near the end, where writer Straczynski urges, “do not do as they do, or the war is lost before it is even begun”, is also insulting. Especially if he sees nothing wrong with Islamic veils, as the panel suggests, and won’t consider they’re hurtful to women. Yet it’s hardly a surprise somebody coming from an ultra-liberal background could conceive a story featuring only so many woke talking points, subtle or direct, though of course, that doesn’t make it any less of a problem. What it does do is demonstrate how bad the influence of leftism is in modern times.
It’s a real shame some artists like the Romitas, whom I’ve considered impressive in the past, had to participate in this, or more precisely, that they’d be so accepting of the political approach employed by the writer of the story. And similarly, it’s a shame the MSM sources who’ve covered the history of this Spidey story approach it all through such a dishonest lens, refusing to consider that, while comics villainy may not be exactly the same as real life, it doesn’t make a science fiction world any more plausible a spot in which to tell a story like this drawing from reality. Nor does it help to make use of such naïve leftist beliefs as Straczynski did over 2 decades ago.
Originally published here.
The post The Folly of Including Real Life Tragedies in Modern Comicbooks appeared first on Bleeding Fool. | ||
| Superman Films Ranked: #6 Zack Snyder’s ‘Justice League’ (2021) Posted: 03 Jun 2022 03:25 PM PDT
#6 in my ranking of the theatrically released Superman films. #2 in my ranking of the DCEU franchise. #8 in my ranking of theatrically released Batman films.
Well, that's an improvement. The original release of Justice League in 2017 was a conflict of visions, mostly made by Zack Snyder but completed with heavy reshoots by Joss Whedon. It was also cut down from what would have been, best case scenario, almost three hours at the time to a svelte two hours flat. Considering the amount of storytelling that needed to happen in that shortened timeframe, it was no surprise to me that it felt rushed and incomplete. Well, several years pass, the "Snyder Cut" becomes a pop culture myth, and the COVID shutdown of theaters leads HBO Max in a desperate search for content, so they enlist Zack Snyder to make his original vision a reality. How does it stack up?
One of the main problems of the original cut was that there wasn't enough time to develop the three new main characters in any significant way before they got thrown into the plot. This movie fixes that, but there's a catch.
You see, ensemble pieces are hard. They're even harder when you have to introduce several of your main characters from scratch. The thing about a story is that stories tend to work best when all of the pieces work together to create one cohesive whole. When you introduce three new characters, along with a large plot about the end of the world, these three characters need to be fleshed out right there, but they're all dealing with different things. Cyborg is dealing with his fractured relationship with his father and the fact that he's part machine from an alien box that was buried under the ground for thousands of years. Flash is an incredibly awkward young man who runs super fast, can't make personal connections, and wants to pay for his college education to help his father beat the false charges that he's in prison for. Aquaman wants nothing to do with his Atlantean people because of something to do with his mother's mistreatment, even though he should be their king. This is all stuff that would have been fleshed out more naturally in stand alone movies that introduced these characters to audiences. However, as one quarter of the movie's first half, they all end up clashing. Add in the fact that Snyder was able to make his film four hours long because of the streaming platform release so that he included pretty much everything he had shot of these stories, and you get a first half that functions but drags. The individual pieces feel overlong, never bad, but also like we're cutting between four different movies instead of four different parts of a single story.
The plot is that same as the original release, of course. An alien named Steppenwolf has come to Earth looking for three Mother Boxes that were lost on Earth millennia ago that, when united, will destroy the planet through fire. However, Steppenwolf is much improved here. In an effort to create a streamlined character, the theatrical cut reduced him to obsessing over "Mother", and it felt off at best. Here he's trying to get back in the good graces of the ultimate bad guy of the DCEU, Darkseid, communicating back to the planet Apocalypse about his progress, hoping to get an audience with his master, and only beginning to gain the right attention when he discovers that Earth carries Anti-Life (unclear what that is, honestly, I think it's an equation) that Darkseid left on the planet millennia ago when his invasion was knocked back by the combined forces of Earth's Age of Heroes.
So, Steppenwolf has to get the three Mother Boxes first. The first is held at Themyscira and that action scene where Steppenwolf steals it from them is decent. The Amazons keeps getting owned in this franchise, but here they at least put up a good fight. The second is in Atlantis, and this comes off like a leaden balloon. There's too much to establish in Atlantis at once with Aquaman, Mera, and Nuidis talking high and mighty about the history of a place we barely know exists followed swiftly by another quick attack that's harder to see and includes a last second arrival of Aquaman that feels off. Well, at least Aquaman doesn't prevent Steppenwolf from getting the Box, so it's less annoying than it could be.
At this point, I was honestly feeling kind of a bit bored. We were just shy of two hours in, and I was getting four separate movies in one, and none of them were great though they were all functional. Then the pieces finally began to come together with the team actually forming. First was Flash, who happily joined because he needs friends. Then is Aquaman who joins because of his failure in Atlantis. Then is Cyborg who joins after his father is kidnapped by Steppenwolf's parademons. Together, they bear down on Steppenwolf's location outside of Gotham where he was looking for the final Mother Box. This is where it suddenly feels like we're in a single movie, and despite my inability to fully appreciate the first two hours because of its inelegant construction, the character work in the first two hours begins to pay dividends here.
Action scenes have more emotional punch as the team learns to work together against a mighty foe. We get demonstrations of their individual power, but none of them are strong enough individually to take on Steppenwolf and even as a team they're too fractured. The fight scenes have Snyder's visual panache with each hero getting their moment to shine, even if they don't fully succeed. Beaten back, they consider their only potential alternative to fighting such a powerful being: raising Superman from the dead with the power of the Mother Box they have.
Superman arises, and he's disorientated, surrounded by people he doesn't know, and he sees the man who had been trying to kill him, Batman, just before his death at the hands of Doomsday. Only saved by Lois Lane, who was nearby to say goodbye to Superman one more time before trying to move on with her life from her sorrow, the team watches Superman fly away right before Steppenwolf shows up and takes the final Mother Box from them, knowing where it was because they turned it on to revive Superman.
From this point, all the pieces are set for the finale. Steppenwolf has the three Mother Boxes and begins the Unity that will end the world. Cyborg has watched his father die marking the Box to be tracked, so his motivation is complete. The heroes have doubts because of their failures against Steppenwolf and their inability to bring Superman to their cause, but they have no other choice but to fight. Superman, though, is wonderful here. He doesn't have some grand moment of realization. Instead we just watch him slowly remember with the help of Lois and his mother Martha his final days and come to the realization of how much the League risked to get him alive. He has to help, it's just who he is.
The pieces all come together in a large scale fight in and around an abandoned nuclear reactor in Russia (not Chernobyl, though) where everyone has to use their powers and abilities to their utmost to fight off the army and leader trying to destroy the world. It's a hugely satisfying bout of superhero antics that caps with a look at the bigger threat to come as Darkseid ends up watching the final moments through a portal in preparation for his victory, coming face to face with the heroes who would defy him if this adventure were to continue.
There's no way Warner Brothers was ever going to release this movie at 4 hours in theaters. There might have been a possibility of a three hour release if they had bent some more, but for whatever reason they wanted no more than a two hour and twenty minute version of this film. For all of my problems about the jagged nature of this movie's first half, that first half becomes necessary in order to create the emotional investment for the final two hours. This is a marked improvement over the original, though it's far from perfect. There's extra stuff added in here and there that I have trouble understanding at all, like why is Secretary of Defense Swanwick, who was in both Man of Steel and Batman V Superman, suddenly Martian Manhunter? I have no idea, and he contributes nothing. The film feels both self-contained and part of a larger whole at the same time, though, and that's a hard trick to pull off.
It's good. Rating: 3/4
Originally published here The post Superman Films Ranked: #6 Zack Snyder's 'Justice League' (2021) appeared first on Bleeding Fool. | ||
| How Should Warner Bros. Handle Ezra Miller’s Scandals? Posted: 03 Jun 2022 01:15 PM PDT
Despite recent controversies and all the delays, Warner Bros. still has high hopes for "The Flash.” The next DCEU movie in the “Snyder-Verse,” which completed production in 2021 and is scheduled to debut in theaters in 2023, has reportedly been extraordinarily well received in early test screenings. But given DC Films' inconsistent track record in fielding commercial hits, initial reception that "The Flash" could be a crowd-pleasing blockbuster is not only a relief, but a necessity to succeed at the box office. Of course, nothing is guaranteed.
According to Variety, the biggest concern WB has is that Ezra Miller can't seem to stay out of trouble. In recent months, the actor has been arrested or taken into custody several times for harassment, assault, and disorderly conduct.
Around the same time, two Hawaii residents filed a temporary restraining order against Miller after they allegedly broke into the couple's bedroom and tried to steal their passports and wallets. Though the restraining order was later dropped, their continued behavior has prompted serious unease about the people they have endangered, as well as Miller's own health and well-being. Those incidents took place nearly two years after footage surfaced of Miller appearing to choke a woman outside a bar in Iceland. It's hardly the kind of attention that a studio wants for the star of a $200 million-budgeted tentpole. Those eyebrow-raising events have led to speculation about Warner Bros.' plans for the blockbuster-hopeful, which serves as the first solo film for Barry Allen, a.k.a. the Scarlet Speedster, a.k.a. the Flash. Would the studio actually replace Miller with another actor? Will it jettison the film to HBO Max in an attempt to limit potentially negative fanfare that could accompany a theatrical release? Or will Warner Bros. keep the movie in theaters on June 23, 2023 as planned? Barring unforeseen developments, sources say, Warners is barreling ahead with intention to give the superhero film the full blockbuster treatment. "The Flash" simply cost too much money to scrap the project entirely and it likely will not generate the revenues needed to turn a profit without playing in theaters. For option three to happen without triggering a major backlash, Miller would need to be on their best behavior. And that's a big question, because so far Miller has been dogged by one controversy after another, leaving collaborators concerned about the actor's welfare. "There are a myriad of directions that Warner Bros. could go," says Jeff Bock, a box office analyst with Exhibitor Relations. "Choosing the right one is paramount for the future of DC."
The real problems began with his casting. While fans are able to easily overlook Miller nothing like the version in the comics or the popular TV series, he wore his activism and sexual preference on his sleeve. From his insistence that co-star Gal Gadot says “hetero-patriarchy, your wrath upon the world is on the world is over,” to choking female fans, pretending he’s hunting the Klan, to threatening to sue his arresting officers for “misgendering” him, the boy has got issues.
But despite the extremely negative press associated with Ezra Miller, Hollywood shill media, like Variety, are still very positive. And at a time when superhero adaptations are largely populated by straight actors, Ezra Miller, who stars in "The Flash" and is nonbinary and queer, feels like a refreshingly progressive choice to headline a big all-audience summer movie.
Please. No one gives a shit about this insufferable clown’s gender. If the movie is good, it will do well, but despite Warner Bros. claims about early test screenings, I remain skeptical. Let’s see what happens.
The post How Should Warner Bros. Handle Ezra Miller’s Scandals? appeared first on Bleeding Fool. | ||
| Can ‘The Old Man’ Avoid Being Another Formulaic Ex-Spy Story? Posted: 03 Jun 2022 10:55 AM PDT
Jeff Bridges stars in The Old Man, a new thriller series on FX about a former intelligence professional on the run as the government hunts him down. Will it offer something original, or will it be yet another formulaic ex-spy story?
The Old Man is based on a novel of the same name by Thomas Perry. FX provides a summary of its adaptation.
. . . The Old Man centers on Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges) who absconded from the CIA decades ago and has been living off the grid since. When an assassin arrives and tries to take Chase out, the old operative learns that to ensure his future he now must reconcile his past.
With Dan Chase flushed out of hiding, the FBI's Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Harold Harper (John Lithgow) is called on to hunt him down because of his complicated past with the rogue fugitive. . . . While on the run, Chase rents a room from Zoe McDonald (Amy Brenneman) who draws on reserves she never knew she had in order to survive the day when she learns the truth about her new tenant.
The trailer indicates the series will have plenty of intrigue and action. And while it's somewhat innovative to have an old hero, other aspects of it seem quite familiar—particularly the ex-spy-who-got-out-of-the-game-and-now-the-government-wants-him-dead part of it.
It definitely looks like it has ideas within it that could be interesting (even the well-worn one I mentioned above) if executed correctly. But that's a big "if." After all, we are talking about modern Hollywood.
For those interested in watching, Variety reports that, "The first two episodes of 'The Old Man' will debut on June 16. The entire seven-episode season will run through July 21. Episodes will air Thursdays on FX, and be available to stream the next day on Hulu." The post Can 'The Old Man' Avoid Being Another Formulaic Ex-Spy Story? appeared first on Bleeding Fool. | ||
| After Making Superman Gay, Tom Taylor Keeps Low Profile Back Home Posted: 03 Jun 2022 06:15 AM PDT
The Sydney Morning Herald interviewed one of the worst SJWs employed by DC/Marvel of recent, and who’s even developing animated TV programs. But what was really surprising, amid all the fluff-coating, was the following:
Everyone who’s a realist should avoid him, maybe for being such a hypocrite. Let’s see if I have this correct. He’s married with kids, and despite his radical leftism, he doesn’t want his own children to view the heavy-handed woke politics he’s injecting into comics like Son of Kal-El? Well at least we know he’s bizarrely different from the kind of far-leftists you meet in the USA, who have no qualms about indoctrinating children with the propaganda he’s specializing in. What does this mean? That it’s okay to foist this upon unwitting westerners other than his own immediate circle? Now that’s surely got to be the biggest form of hypocrisy you could find coming from somebody like Taylor. Who goes on to brag about injecting homosexual propaganda into the Superman franchise:
Whether or not he wants his own family reading this stuff, his gushing, boasting and just plain virtue-signaling is quite insulting. As is both his and the interviewer’s failure to clearly distinguish between Clark Kent and his son with Lois Lane named Jon Kent, after Kal-El’s earthly father. Taylor has certainly established himself as one of the most shameless scribes now in the business. And how peculiar he doesn’t back up his claims everybody responded in the positive by presenting sales figures. Which could partly explain why he says he prefers to retain a low profile; that’s pretty much how propagandists like him get their trash published. And then, in another note about the cartoon he’s written:
Again, assuming what he’s stated so far about having a family is correct, there’s something pretty weird about this too. Because when he speaks of “diverse”, what if that implies more social justice propaganda? And what if it turns out that’s what he considers the opposite of “safe” and “boring”? Something a lot of mainstream comics suffer from today when it comes to heterosexual relationships, which are being shoved aside for the sake of the LGBTQ propaganda he’s emphasizing in comics like Son of Kal-El. If it turns out The Deep builds on the woke themes particularly seen in USA entertainment, that’d surely stand as contradictory to what he said earlier. But then, Taylor has made clear before he’s a pretty fishy type. One more reason it’s a tragedy comicdom’s in the dire political state it’s been in for years now.
Originally published here. The post After Making Superman Gay, Tom Taylor Keeps Low Profile Back Home appeared first on Bleeding Fool. | ||
| Marvel Studios Says They’re Courting Big Names for Fantastic Four Posted: 03 Jun 2022 04:45 AM PDT
The Marvel family is getting bigger. Marvel Studios is reportedly courting “big names” to direct the Fantastic Four reboot bringing the superhero family of Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch, and the Thing into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Kevin Feige announced Tom Holland’s Spider-Man director Jon Watts would direct the reboot during Disney’s Investor Day in December 2020, but Watts officially stepped away from the MCU in April.
Feige is now reportedly considering an established filmmaker to helm Fantastic Four after recruiting Sony’s Spider-Man trilogy director Sam Raimi to replace Scott Derrickson on Doctor Strange 2.
In a series of tweets, Deadline’s Justin Kroll reported Fantastic Four is “easily Marvel’s top [open directing assignment]:
Marvel Studios’ strategy in recent years has been to hire talent creating their first blockbuster for the studio, such as Joss Whedon, the Russo brothers, James Gunn, Cate Shortland, and others, with different degrees of success, similar to Jon Watts’ plan before reinventing Spider-Man.
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and co-president Louis D’Esposito stated of Watts’ amicable departure from the Fantastic Four in a statement:
“We were looking forward to continuing our work with him to bring the Fantastic Four into the MCU but understand and are supportive of his reasons for stepping away. We are optimistic that we will have the opportunity to work together again at some point down the road.”
Fantastic Four has yet to receive a release date or cast announcement. The first member of the Fantastic Four to appear in the MCU was John Krasinski, who played a multiverse version Reed Richards in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. It’s unknown if Krasinski will repeat that role in Marvel’s Fantastic Four.
via ComicBook.com The post Marvel Studios Says They’re Courting Big Names for Fantastic Four appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
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