Comic Book Television: Too much of a good thing?

It wasn’t that long ago when the only comic book-like characters on TV could be found in shows like ‘Heroes’ and ‘The Cape’. Now we have a smorgasbord of comic book TV shows and for most people there is so much content it is impossible to view it all (unless your unemployed I guess). There is so much that I have had to pick and choose what to watch and what not to watch. Here’s a quick breakdown:

 

Netflix/Marvel Shows:

 

Season 2 for both Luke Cage and Iron Fist was an improvement from their first seasons but sadly the improvements were not enough and both shows were cancelled. Mike Colter as ‘Luke Cage’ is brilliant in the role; I would even go so far as to say he was born to play the character. I really hope they use him in future Marvel TV or film projects. Iron Fist on the other hand just never really hit for me. Their portrayal of Danny Rand just fell flat. He is supposed to be a kung fu master yet season one there were very few fights. And the fights that did occur were really laughable. Season 2 was a slight improvement but not much. It is my hope they will combine both these characters in a ‘Heroes for Hire’ TV series, which is what they should have done to begin with.

Season 3 of Daredevil was great in my opinion. The story, the fights, the cast, everything was just right for this season. Season one was great too, season two was not as good but they did introduce the Punisher and Elektra into the mix.

Season 2 of Jessica Jones was definitely not as good as season one. Season 2 lacked a compelling villain. David Tenant as ‘Killgrave’ hit it out of the park, and he is in my opinion THE BEST villain in all the MCU (movies included).

 

CW/Arrowverse Shows:

 

 

I stopped watching these shows a few years ago despite having good actors and good stories. The formula they all follow is what ruined them for me: Arrow, Flash, Legends, Supergirl all have the same format: title character surrounded by a ‘team’ which help them solve problems and save the day. As time goes on the ‘team’ members themselves gain powers, abilities and take center stage from time to time. This is easily forgiven in ‘Legends’ since they are in fact a team show, the rest it just gets too be too much following all these less interesting characters around. Plus the 22+ episode seasons do not help!! Sorry Stephen Amell, you are a great guy and it was a thrill to meet you but I can’t commit to a 22+ television season with so many other shows trying for my attention.

 

Others:

I watched ‘Legion’ season one and was intrigued, especially with Aubrey Plaza. She is fantastic in this show. But season 2 lost me right away and I haven’t gone back to watch.

 

I have not checked out any of the other shows I’ve heard of: Titans, The Gifted, Cloak & Dagger, Gotham, etc. I am looking forward to a ‘Doom Patrol’ show because I have been a fan of the comic since I was a kid. I think that launches early next year.

 

And finally DC: Make a Batman TV series already! Not a young Alfred show or young Gordon show or Batwoman show, I want a honest to goodness serious (not Adam West) Batman series! Call up HBO, they do awesome TV like ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Westworld’, I’m sure they’d love to tackle a Batman series!

 

Nuff Said.  

 

Crash Test Dummies: 19 years later

My Enemy

I've been debating whether to blog about this and I have finally decided to set the record straight. This post will go a few places so bear with me. 

Recently I have been watching a lot of YouTube videos about author Harlan Ellison, who passed away this year. He was a controversial guy who had a lot of enemies out there which made me conclude I really don't have any enemies. There were a few guys in high school and after that I got in conflict with but nothing too serious and nothing lasting. Then I received a call from my Mom Wednesday morning to tell me that an acquaintance  made a very ignorant comment on my Facebook post from August 28th where I mentioned it was Crystal and I's anniversary. It was a confusing and rude comment and I have since deleted it and blocked this person from my Facebook, all FOUR different Facebook accounts he has. This "acquaintance" is the ex-common law husband of a friend of Crystals. This guy is a real piece of garbage and I will not name him here as to avoid any legal trouble, but here are some facts about he who shall not be named: He began dating Crystal's friend when she was 14 years old and he was 29-30 years old. He's always been a pot head for as long as we have known him but the last few years he has moved on to meth and probably some other "hard" drugs I suspect. A few years ago he dumped his common-law wife (Crystal's friend) to be with another woman. When that relationship only lasted a week he expected to take up with his ex as if nothing happened. She told him no and over the course of several years she has been the victim of stalking, threats and death threats of which he was actually jailed for. 

Anyway a couple years back he was on one of his Facebook accounts and making false claims that his ex wife's current boyfriend was a pedophile, ironic considering he was at one time a 30 year old man dating a 14 year old but I digress. My son went on FB and defended the man he was speaking against as we know these accusations to be untrue, which he later removed from his FB when questioned by the police about making false accusations. Anyway my son then became a target of this asshole: he got into a public war of words with my son on FB. He even went so far as to leave a message on my wife's phone where he told her to "shut up your fucking kid if you know what's good for you", unfortunately this message was deleted otherwise I would have shared it with the cops. He even began to follow my son, who had just turned 16 and had a car of his own, around town in his truck. Did I mention this guy got fired from his job due to not passing a drug test; yep he sure did. Anyway one of these times he actually pursued my sons car at higher that normal town speeds. This scared my son and all of us so I took my son down to the cop shop to give a statement. Sadly all the cops could do was talk to the asshole as their FB exchange had been deleted by him and my son had no proof he had been in a car chase with him. Ironically the cop told him to next time if he was chasing him and/or stalking him in his truck for my son to record it with his cell phone. 

So here we were: this piece of shit had threatened and scared my son and the cops could do nothing about it. The next evening I went to the pub with some friends and had a few too many to drink. Now as I walked home in my drunkin stupor I decided I was going to have a talk with this asshole as he lived at the time only a few blocks from my house. I asked him to come out and face me and I told him if he was man enough to terrorize a 16 year old boy he could be man enough to face me, he refused. But I seemed to have scared him as he left my boy alone after that and he has not left any messages on my wife's phone. Now over 2 years later he left an ignorant comment on my FB post. As I said I have since blocked all FOUR Facebook accounts he has. 

This man is 53 years old, he has done jail time for making death threats, he is a drug addict and he lives in my community. He is my enemy and if he threatens my family again I will do everything in my power to see he goes back to jail. 

Time for a change

I'm getting older. I'm currently 38 years old, soon to be 39, and I am over weight with a family history of both weight and heart problems. 2 years ago I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and recently my blood sugar levels have been high, probably due to my sweet tooth and lack of monitoring.

 Earlier this year one of my pop culture icons, writer/director/podcaster Kevin Smith suffered and survived a widow maker heart attack. He had already been taking steps to lose weight but his doctor told him he had to lose more after the heart attack. Now he is literally half the man he used to be and he is a spokesperson for Weight Watchers, along with other celebrities like Oprah Winfrey.

My Dad was 39 when he had his first heart attack, his Dad was 27. My Uncle Gord (my fathers brother) passed away at the age of 44 due to heart attack. My Grandpa was 51 when he died. It's time to get my shit together. I'm probably about 80 pounds overweight and I need to change that. I have, like my pop culture icon Kevin Smith, joined Weight Watchers and am on a diet. There's definitely been an adjustment as I am finding out how much my sweet tooth adds into my weight and it has and will be hard giving up some things; but it is for a greater good. I want to live.  So going forward hopefully I will be less of what I am now, weight wise that is. My initial goal is to get down to 250 pounds, which may be a lot for most but I am 6 foot and big built (think football player shoulders/build) so to go down to 250 is a good starting goal for me. I do want to lose more but that will come once I've achieved my initial goal.

Wish me luck!

The Comic Book Pile:Summer 2012

***Note***
This is an unpublished blog post from 2012. Not sure why I never posted it, it was interesting to see how much has changed in 6 years. I've inserted some updated comments.
- Chris Sept 25th 2018
_______________

2012: (2018)

I am currently blogging while on my vacation in Fairview, Alberta. The family and I are visiting my Grandparents-in-law. (Sadly we did not make our annual trip to Fairview in 2018)
We are having a blast as always. But onto the blogging:

 

As you no doubt know I am a huge comic book fan. I order most of my comics on line from a company out of Quebec called 'Comic Pull' (I no longer order comics through Comic Pull. I get my comic books digitally from comixology and I order trades from Amazon) . I also have a 'pull list' at the 'Comic King' comic book store in West Edmonton Mall (Which has now been closed for probably 2-3 years. The last owner was a bone head and not a comic book fan and had no clue how to stay in business. I really did not like him and I am glad to see his business fail, although I am sad to see no comic book store in the mall. I have a lot of fond memories of WEM Comic King as it was my first comic book store).

I read a lot of comics in a month so I've decided to do a quarterly update segment where I tell you what I feel is the best of what I read (I never kept up with that nor do I want to do that now...lol). Some titles will not change from month to month because my favourite titles are pretty solid, but I'll try and include something different. If your thinking about picking up some comic books to try I hope this segment will help. in my opinion this truly is a great time to be reading comics.  

 

Top 10 Comic Books (In my opinion)

 

1- Batman (DC). Best written and drawn book out there!! (Still good with Tom King currently writing it)

2- Invincible (Image). Created and written by Robert Kirkman (creator of 'The Walking Dead' comic and TV show) (Sadly this book ended earlier this year but still worth checking out)

3- Daredevil (Marvel). Written by the great Mark Waid. This book is a lot of fun. (Waid no longer writing and I stopped reading it)

4- Fantastic Four (Marvel Comics). Jonathan Hickman is a great writer and this is a fun thinking man's comic book. (Hickman no longer writing and it just relaunched with Dan Slott writing after a 3 year hiatus of the title. So far it is good) 

5- Earth Two (DC) Still a new title but this is a great read by James Robinson (Starman) (No longer being made)

6- FF (Marvel) This is the sister book to the Fantastic Four and is written by Hickman. Fun book. (No longer being made)

7- Saga (Image) Written by Brian K. Vaughan this is a cool sci-fi comic book. Romeo & Juliet-ish it is. (No longer reading. got very boring)

8- Justice League (DC) Written by Geoff Johns, art by the legend Jim Lee. The back up 'Shazam' story is great too. (No longer reading. Johns no longer writing)

9- Aquaman (DC) Written by Geoff Johns. This really is a fun book to read and yes it is Aquaman. (No longer reading. Johns no longer writing)

10- Flash (DC) I was a fan of the Flash but with the relaunch of the 'New 52' this book got really good. (No longer reading. Got boring and redundant in my opinion)

 

Mentions: Swamp Thing (DC)(No longer reading) , Secret (Image) (No longer being made), Action Comics (DC), Hulk (Marvel)(No longer reading) , Batman Incorporated (DC)(No longer being made) .

 

Trade I'm reading: Starman Omnibus 1, paperback from DC comics. Reprinting this series from the 90's written by James Robinson (Earth Two). this is a fun book to read. the art is not the best but it suits the story I think.

  

See you in the fall for more of 'The Comic Book Pile'!! (No you won't)
(But more blogging goodness next week as always!)

Netflix Reviews: ‘Lost in Space’

‘Lost in Space’:

I was never a big fan of the original series. I remember watching it as a teenager on the Sci-Fi Channel (now known as ‘SyFy’) and it was just too goofy for me. I grew up on ‘Star Trek’ the original series on CBC and only got exposed to Lost in Space when my family got satellite tv...too little too late. It was cool to see a child Bill Mummy, whom i knew as ‘Lennier’ on Babylon 5, on the show. Also I couldn’t help but wonder if I was related to June Lockhart...

The less said about the 1998 Lost in Space film the better...

Now we have this new series. I’ve heard a lot of good things about it from friends and coworkers but I was hesitant to try it but I did and it was ...ok. The actors are good, especially the kid actors because it is tough casting good kid actors but they did a great job. The series looks great but I have a feeling their creativity was limited by the budget. Instead of the Jupiter 2 being lost and traveling through space it’s marooned on one planet. Instead of the space family Robinson encountering different aliens we get one episode of giant alien bats. The robot is not a member of the crew, it’s an alien artificial intelligence which may or may not be evil. And Doctor Smith has gone from being a bumbling sabatoer to a psychotic woman who steals the real Doctor Smiths id (whom was played by the original Wil Robinson: Lennier himself ‘Bill Mummy’). 

This series was ok but suffers from a lot of lazy writing (seriously I’m blind and need tears to see...lazy) which as I said earlier may be the result of budget constraints. And to be honest i was not a fan of Parker Posey as ‘Doctor Smith’, but the rest of the cast was good. 

I’ll check out season 2 and they ended the season with a good set up. And this show is better than Star Trek: Discovery! 

2.5 stars out of 5. 

Stigma

So recently I shared my story of battling insomnia. And as I had said I had bouts of insomnia from time to time over the years but never like this time. I believe this insomnia was being cause by both a change in my medications and stress. I literally would sleep for an hour or so and be wide awake for the next fourteen hours, fall asleep for an hour or so and repeat. I don't care who you are: no one can live like that for days at a time and function properly let alone be effective and productive in a work place setting. I missed 3 days of work due to this, in those days I managed to get in to see my doctor (which was not easy because he is very busy), I managed to get a prescription for sleeping meds, use them and get back into a functional routine so I could return to work in a safe manner.

Well when I got back it seemed I was being punished for having missed the last three days. Agreements made between me and a co-worker for some reason became null and void due to my absence, even though my absence in no way affected my co-worker or would have changed our work arrangement in any way. Obviously I cannot go into specifics but suffice to say my co-worker took advantage of my situation to get one up on me; talk about kicking someone when they are down. Also a person above me helped to change the arrangement I had with my co-worker even though neither of us directly work for him; he chose to stick his nose in our business because he seemed to not be happy with my absences for some reason even though they in no way affected him.

Long story short I was going through a bad time and people took advantage of that and kicked me when I was down (metaphorically not literally). It has helped me understand what people go through with mental illness and all the stigma that goes with it. Insomnia is obviously not a mental illness (although mental illness can cause insomnia that is not the case here) I was judged for not going to work due to insomnia. I heard whispers and saw some eye rolls when I returned to work (Suck it up, quit being lazy, go to bed earlier, etc. were no doubt being floated around behind my back). In my experience I find this treatment is the same for people who suffer from mental illness. "Poor you, suck it up already, I've been through worse, etc." are often muttered behind the backs of people with mental illness. I like to think I'm better than that because my Mom worked in the mental health field and she taught me a lot but the truth is before I learned about mental illness I too judged others who suffered from it. I just didn't understand the affects of mental illness. Just like I didn't understand what true insomnia felt like or how it can affect the mind and body until I had it.

My final thought on the matter:
Unless you have suffered from something, whether it be insomnia or mental illness, don't judge someone who is suffering from it. You cannot truly understand what they are going through.
Be patient and be kind to one another and don't take advantage or kick people when they are down.