I have some sort of hideous cold/flu thing –it seems to be our household October ritual, Julie’s got it too– but I’m tired of missing my self-imposed column deadline of one a week. So even though normally I wouldn’t stack up so many Junk Drawers together in such a short span of time, I’m going there one more time because it’s about all I can manage this week. Not really a column, just various bits and pieces that didn’t quite balloon up into one. Some are long and some are short. Over at the old stand, Chad Nevett used to do a thing called “Random Thoughts” and I’m totally stealing that schtick for today. Some of these are following up on something I’ve talked about here before and some are new.
So here you go. Enjoy.
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Remember the outrage I mentioned last week among the ‘shippers of the seventies bionic duo, Steve and Jaime, back when I was a kid? Behold my vindication.
I love the one letter that describes Steve’s rival, the brilliant young surgeon, as ‘fruity and ugly.’ It was a different time, kids.
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Our friend Ian Stone, who played Chewbacca in the Outdoor Wars stage production, has a cool new project– Diabolos.
As it happens, Julie and I had seen a previous collaboration between Ian and his partner Chris Julian at RenCon last month; a Star Wars fan film called Vicious, that Chris described as “the missing scene from Return of the Jedi.” Which is to say, a depiction of the ground battle on Endor between the Stormtroopers and the Ewoks. We liked it a lot, and the Q&A afterwards explaining how they got such a remarkably good-looking, effects-heavy piece filmed for next to nothing was fascinating.
Now, I never really bought into the idea of the Ewoks being dangerous, but Chris and Ian and the rest of the cast and crew of Vicious made me believe it. They are a talented bunch. (As I told Ian, it didn’t really feel like a Star Wars story so much as it did Ursula LeGuin’s The Word for World is Forest.)
So we were easily persuaded to back Diabolos. Apart from wanting to support a cool project, I have some pretty strong feelings about school bullying — as this piece over at the old stand will tell you — and this project sounds like a fascinating angle on the idea. We were happy to kick in a few bucks and we hope you will too. Link here.
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Speaking of vindication, I’m glad to see Gerry Conway agrees with me:
Any "cop" who wears a Punisher logo in his official capacity is identifying law enforcement with an outlaw. These "cops" are a disgrace to serious police officers everywhere. They show an imbecilic level of irresponsibility and should be fired immediately. https://t.co/8mJ0Mzp89x
— Gerry Conway (@gerryconway) October 11, 2019
That’s the creator of the Punisher, ladies and gentlemen. Case closed.
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I have mixed feelings about the DC superhero shows on the CW, and the only ones we really follow any more are Supergirl and now Batwoman. But the big crossovers always own me.
They have the sense of joy and swashbuckling adventure that are sadly missing from the actual DC theatrical releases, and so many Easter eggs and shoutouts to the comics I grew up on that I just can’t help but love them.
Thus, it follows that I just can’t help nerding out over the photos they’ve been teasing us with for the upcoming Crisis on Infinite Earths. Like this one…
And this one…
And this one…
And THIS one….
And this one… why yes, that IS an unscarred Jonah Hex…
This one made my inner Earth-2 fanboy ridiculously happy…
And of course THIS one has the entire comics internet buzzing with guesses and theories.
The really funny thing–at least, this is what I’m betting–is that the endgame is the same as the original: getting everyone on the same Earth, so it isn’t such an ordeal to do the crossovers. But mostly what I love is how much fun everyone seems to be having. Superhero stories should be fun, dammit.
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Okay, that’s about all I can manage. Time for some Benadryl and a nap. Talk amongst yourselves, and I’ll be back next week with something cool.
*ahem* Selina Kyle ain’t no ‘socialite.’
…and since that comment is too short to post, I’ll just add that Le Guin’s Word for World is truly awesome – I really need to read it again…
She has been a socialite in some of her incarnations (I was just reading The Many Lives of Catwoman) so it’s not a huge stretch.
I enjoy all the shows (not Arrow last season) and I do love Tyler Hoechlin channeling Chris Reeve in obvious contrast to the theatrical versions now current (according to a Teen Wolf fan I know, that’s pretty much him in real life).
Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman is possibly my favorite thing about Supergirl. Especially the two-parter that introduced him. It makes me sad that Henry Cavill could have nailed THAT Superman so hard on the big screen and never got a chance to do it. I have said elsewhere that the CW crossovers are way, WAY closer to my idea of a JLA movie than what we got in theaters.
The DC films of this century are a world of lost opportunities.
Batman vs. Superman gives us a twitchy, caffeinated millennial as Lex Luthor; Supergirl gives us a Luthor who can figure out how to turn Sol into a red sun.
And yes, about the crossovers.