Category: Recommendations đź‘Ť

Other people’s content that I like. Basically unsolicited endorsements.

The Little Mermaid remake

We watched soon after learning that our friend worked on the film. As you maybe or may not know, my opinions of these remakes have been hit-or-miss. Some of them were great and had something unique to offer that the original didn’t, The others were akin to a community theater performance of a Broadway production: it’s good because it reminds you of how great the original was.

This movie was the former. The original film was one of those movies that defined a stage of my childhood, where the songs were not just the soundtrack of the film, but of my life. I wanted to be a part of something bigger than what I had, and as I was still shy at that point, I wanted to connect with people in a way more meaningful than what I was capable of. And the original movie captured all of that, propelled by it’s amazing songs and score. It didn’t occur to me until just now, as I write this, that Ariel’s experience of being voiceless mirrored my own. Except she eventually found what she was looking for, so no wonder I enjoyed it so much. I thought this new version did a great job at capturing these elements, but did it differently than the original.

McCarthy’s phenomenal Ursula

Melissa McCarthy absolutely killed her role as Usual and was just amazing! I had no idea she could sing, and her version of Poor Unfortunate Souls was better than the original. As I recall, I haven’t thought any of the new versions of the songs were better then the original, so kudos to Melissa. The things that I most appreciated about her performance was that she truly played Ursula, and didn’t bring any of her trademark comedic personality to the character. When Jim Carrey did Grinch, or Will Smith did Genie, it was like “here’s the Will version of Genie”. Or, “It’s the Grinch, only he’s wacky and slapstick like Carey”. I didn’t know Melissa played the character while I was watching, and wasn’t even sure if it was her or an actor that looked like her until we got to the credits. And seeing as how the sea witch is one of Disney’s most charismatic, iconic villains, that’s an impressive feat.

Eric and Ariel being cute together

One other piece of this new version that warned my heart was the sequence in which Jodie Benson (the original Ariel) handed a dinglehopper to Halle Bailey’s version of the character. Jodie will always be the iconic voice, but Halle is a human face that looks fast more authentic as an actor than any of the theme park versions which try to look like a real life version of animated Ariel. I really works, having an actor of different ethnicity than the original. And despite that, she still looks and feels like her animated counterpart! I was original okay with them not using a white actor simply because Halle looked great as the character. Once I saw the movie, however, I realized the change was far more significant than just one character. They expanded the original theme, of wanting to belong to something foreign, to a literal explosion of other cultures. I’m other words, we’re not just limiting this to mythical creatures anymore: we’re talking about real peoples in the world today. They took Sebastian’s Island accent and used a Caribbean culture as the dominating local culture! They kept Eric anglo, but made it a point to identify him as adopted. And that lead to a depending of his character, as it gives him motivation for his drive to explore. I don’t know any adopted person who hasn’t been curious at some point about their birth parents, especially when their own ethnicity different from the rest of their family. Eric’s character plays a larger, appreciated role in this film, breaking the Disney tradition of “generic hottie” romantic interests. Flounder plays less of a role, Flotsam, Jesom, and Vanessa didn’t even get named,  but Scuttle plays a larger role and even gets a musical number(?).

Lastly, and I won’t spoil the ending for anyone reading this who is now Chris too check the film out, but there is a subtle yet significant change during the climax that is well appreciated, and quite honestly should have been done in the original. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

X-Factor’s Gambit!

I drew this years ago; colored it tonight. People may not remember when Gambit was a member of X-Factor, but it was one of my favorite books Marvel’s published. I’m sad that we may never see the Quicksilver/Remy friendship again, but at least I can still draw from that era (pun intended). #gambit #x-factor #allnewxfactor #x-factor #krita

They paid $2.2 million; did they know it wasn’t Batman’s first appearance?

A copy of Batman #1 just sold for $2.2 million. That’s insane! Batman #1 was the first issue of Batman’s solo series, but the world’s greatest detective actually appeared for the first time in Detective Comics #27. To put the ridiculousness of this sale into perspective, the most expensive copy of Detective Comics #27 sold for only $1,075,000: less than half of what Batman #1 sold for. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Batman #1 is a valuable book. It contains the first appearance of Catwoman and the Joker and previously sold for $567,625. But if I’m going to pay $2.2 million, I’d rather spend it on Batman’s first appearance. Which leads me to wonder, did the purchaser know what he or she was buying? Did they know that Detective Comics #27 existed?

Don’t Fight Your Demons

Apple Music. Spotify. A very appropriate album to have on repeat right now, given all of the political activity happening right now.

The newest album by Arrested Development. This group has been hugely instrumental to my development as a youth in ways that I don’t feel like getting into right now. It didn’t surprise me that they would release an album following the civil rights activity taking place across the nation this fall. If you are a fan or remember there first album (Tennessee, Mr. Wendle, People Everyday), then you’ll want to get this. It’s their best since then, imo.

For me, the stand-out tracks are #4 Becoming, #5 Young Americans, #8 Sunset in Ghana, #11 Pardon You For Disrupting, #12 Journey On, and #13 We’ll See. Although, lately I’ve been playing #14 Amazing and #16 Forsaken an awful lot.

After three years, I finally played Scythe.

Really enjoyed it. Was surprisingly easy to learn, and game play was really simple.

I’ve found that these massive broadband that take an hour or more to play a game are very intimidating to start. Especially for the first time: it takes time to blunder through the rules, and there are always a few mistakes. My brother bought Scythe three years ago, and every time we tried to play, we took one look at the instructions and decided, “meh, let’s try tomorrow. I’m already tired tonight.” And then proceed to drink another beer. If that’s been your barrier to playing, then stop it. We finally gave it a shot, and the learning curve was painless. Now that I have a learning game under my belt, I keep thinking of what strategies I want to try next time I play.

Are Hickman’s new X-Men titles worth buying?

Note: I will do my best to avoid plot spoilers in this review.

My big question in reading and writing this entry: are these books worth purchasing. They’re hefty, with 34 pages of art, 4 title/quote pages, and 8 of those wonderful expository/info-graph pages that I believe Hickman designs graphically himself (based on the art that he did in The Nightly News and Pax Romana). They also come with a hefty price rolling in at $6 an issue. Which, to be fair, is probably a good value when you compare it to the normal price of a 20 page book. Still, $6 is $6. By the time you factor in tax, the entire 12-page epic will set you back around $75. So I’d like to make sure it’s something I will ultimately enjoy.

Artwise, House of X was incredible. Aside from a single action sequence, this book is entirely talking heads. Sure, a crap ton of world-building takes place, and most of the story revolves around politics and culture, so it’s to be expected. But given that, Peppe outdoes himself in making everything exciting to read. He uses the space to flesh out [minor spoiler] what Krakoa looks like, and to really play out the fantasy element of the environment that Hickman is aiming to create here. With a plot involving nothing but conversation, Peppe and Gracia spin gold from straw. Not a single page is boring to look at, and despite the content, the book moves.

Storywise, I was interested. As I mentioned before, this issue was largely world-building. And in all honesty, it feels more like an X-Men fanfic or a movie script than it does a cannon book title: all of the dead characters have returned (I’m sure Legion has something to do with that in the previous series) and all of them seem to be living in harmony. Xavier (as seen in the covers) is walking, and wears that funny Cerebro helmet around. These aren’t really plot elements, they’re just givens, that I’m sure we’re expected to accept. The idea of the premise, like almost every event since Age of Apocalypse, is something that previous writers have addressed. Nothing original happens anymore in the x-universe. In the particular case of House of X, we’ve seen this particular idea at least four times that I can think of immediately off the top of my head. Sure, there are some unique uses of smaller characters in pulling it off, but at the heart of it all, we’ve seen the idea before. I imagine though, that Hickman has some unique way of ending it. Or not.

I was excited to see some of my favorite less-popular characters being put to good use. [spoiler] I’ll mention one of them here, as it’s not much of a spoiler: but Doug Ramsey’s language ability is finally given credit for the amazing thing that it is. In the real world, the ability to speak and understand any language would be incredibly powerful, However, in a world of tights and powerblasts, it gets overlooked. Kudos to Hickman for recognizing the importants of language.

Still, the weak points of the book were that we don’t have an actual protagonist so far. Xavior is likely going to be that character, but at the moment he’s been a plot device and a setting piece. We’ve seen very few actual X-Men do anything other than look pretty; villains have taken the spotlight thus far. I have a feeling that Hickman may set up an environment and then focus on the morality of the people trying to tear it down. Personally, I’m not very interested in that book. I’m hoping to read about my favorite heroes.

I was far less impressed with Powers of X. We’re initially presented with Xavier as the protagonist, which is nice, but then the book jumps far into the future. And stays there. To an outside reader who is more interested in the story than the X-Men, I’m sure this move was fine. For me, as an x-fan, it sucked. We get to meet boring new characters that are just amalgamations of characters we already know, and we’re basically told how the situation presented in House of X resolves. Lame. A mythology was established that felt similar to East of West (interestingly, East of West felt more like an X-Men book to me than Powers of X did).

Artwise, this book was equally as impressive as Powers of X. Or possibly a little less so, as I feel like the script gave Silva more fun things to draw. There was more action than House of X #1, for example.

Overall, I was disappointed. I didn’t become emotionally invested in any of the characters, and I wasn’t interested in any plot mysteries or developments. Furthermore, because it spoiled the outcome of the premise established in House of X, I have now become less invested in that series as well. I am going to read up on what others reviewers thought of these books, but as it stands now I may possibly get House of X #2 and will not be getting further issues of Powers of X.

House/Powers of X

Because of reasons, I have been holding off on posting pics of my recent drawings. But rest assured, I have them. In my notebook at work, I use unruled paper and use it to doodle and draw. Which means that I’ve been pretty much drawing daily, and I’m excited to start posting them again.

Sara Pichelli’s variant cover

Also with my renewed interest in drawing, I have been reading Jem and X-Men comics again. Which leads me to the topic of this post: I am trying to decide if I want to continue purchasing this title. Right off the bat, I was turned away by the marking, that basically says this series/event is the biggest thing to hit the x-titles since New X-Men. Which is a pretty bold statement. Every other milestone that was listed in the advertisement (The original #1, Giant-Sized #1, Jim Lee’s X-Men #1, and Age of Apocalypse) was not known to be a significant event until after the book hit and the fandom responded. With Hickman’s book, Marvel is pre-emptively declaring it a hit. Which leads me to want to drop as much hate on the book from the get go. That being said, as a writer, I have thoroughly enjoyed Hickman books in the past. Nightly News was great and thoughtful, and I am greatly enjoying East of West. However, as has been seen with superstar writers jumping on x-books in the past, the writers tend to have the idea that they are bigger than the characters. For example, Ed Brubrake and Rick Remender both came on to write x-titles that were unpopular with fans, but were well regarded with reviewers outside of the fandom. This is because they ignored the histories of characters and/or characterization to further their own plots. To me, it felt like they had a plot in mind and plugged in x-characters as an afterthought. This is very different from writers like Mike Carey that specifically wanted to write about character x, character y, etc. Carey has one of the best beloved runs in the fandom from one of the best loved eras, yet I wonder how the sales during that era compared to Remender’s run of Uncanny Avengers. I also wonder how much the marketing push that Marvel gave titles like Uncanny Avengers affected their sales too. House of X is most definitely getting a strong marketing push, so it will do well sales-wise, regardless. Hopefully, it gives us a story that will make fans happy.

With regard to the art, before this book, I was unfamiliar with Peppe Larraz and R.B. Silva, but one look at preview art confirmed that both are fantastic. As far as the colors, which to me, are very important, Marte Gracia is one of the best. He responsible, in my opinion, for turning Stuart Immoment from just a solid artist to a superstar. His colors do wonders with minimalist artists by truely helping to definte and give depth to otherwise flat renderings. In House of X and Powers of X, his colors do no less of an amazing transformation, and they absolutely shine. Even if the book reads terribly, it will at least appear fantastic.

Next, I’ll give my reaction after reading the first issue of each book.

Kesha straight owns her $#!+

She doesn’t still spell it with a “$”, does she?

On my way back from Japan, I watched many videos from the back of the headrest of the seat in front of me. I came across this one, and have been addicted since. Kesha truly is an incredible artist, and her performance here validates that. Nothing beats her dancing around in a golden Elvis suit, and I applaud how unapologetically she owns her appearance and performance. I’m disappointed this song isn’t a bigger hit.