Beyond My Geeky Life

I have never really been a big fan of DC Comics or their related properties. I generally am aware of them, but I don't go out of my way to watch their stuff for the most part and when I do, I normally find my views to be justified. I just do not enjoy most of what DC puts out there. In past posts I have talked about some of the DC-related elements that I do not like and why. Every so often something DC-related surprises me. I am a huge fan of Watchman and I understand why it is such a big deal. Neil Gaiman's Sandman is just so incredibly well done. I liked Batman Begins, the only good movie of that trilogy, as The Dark Knight is one of the most overrated films ever. And thanks to my son, I got into the new Flash TV show and Supergirl. While neither fully breaks away from the flaws of DC, they a least were different and had interesting characters and plots that I enjoyed. And while the Flash is insanely overpowered and they tried to pull Supergirl down power-wise, they soo...

When I first heard they were working on an animated Spider-Man movie I thought "Okay, might be fun," but really did not think of it as anything big. The trailers came out and I thought "Okay, this looks better than I was expecting," yet I was still not taking it too seriously. I had little faith they were going to do anything special with it. I figured it would be just another attempt at Sony Pictures getting their money's worth from having the rights to Spider-Man cinematic universe. They have been so hit or miss with what they have done with it so far, I was not seeing a full animated movie as being promising from them. So now on Rotten Tomatoes Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has 62 reviews and is at 100%. Now that is a truly rare event.  Normally by 62 reviews there are a few who didn't like a movie, no matter how good it is. Several reviews call it the best animated movie of the year, which is saying a lot. A Sony Pictures animated film is getting...

Stan Lee has died. It was not a surprise or shocking death, as he was 95 and had been having health issues. Yet his death does hit hard those of us who were fans. When a person who has inspired us, entertained us, created something that we hold important in our lives dies, it is going to leave us at a loss of words, even if it is expected. And while I am one of those who feels that Lee's contribution is too often over hyped, (Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby were just as important in creating what became the Marvel Universe, but are not as well known) he very much became a known inspiring personality.  Anyone who reads my blog knows how big a fan of Spider-Man I am, so having both creators die in less than half a year from each other (Steve Ditko passed in June) is somewhat surreal. You can look back to my posts about how Amazing Fantasy 15 changed the world of comic books and entertainment in general. With just that one creation the two of them created a legacy that is clearly going t...

The new season of Doctor Who has started. We have our first female Doctor, played by Jodi Whittaker. We have a new TARDIS.  We have a new show runner and I believe a full new creative staff putting it all together. So at four episodes in, what does this all mean? Our first episode, The Women Who Fell to Earth, did what it needed to do with the basic introduction of the new Doctor. The story was decent, nothing special. It let us see the new Doctor in action and gave us some feel for her three new companions. My main problem with this first episode was it felt rushed. There were jokes in there that seemed good, but had bad timing on them for a proper reaction. There was enough filler shots in there that they could have told us the same story at a better pace if they had tried. Next we have The Ghost Monument, which worked for me. Nothing special in it, but it felt like Doctor Who. It had some interesting concepts in it and flowed well enough. We get to see the new TARDIS. ...

In an interesting turn of events, San Diego Comic-Con won the law suit against Salt Lake City Comic Con over the use of ‘Comic Con’. This is a term most fans just assumed was going to be used as a generic term for the big conventions. Just about every major city now seemed to have a Comic Con and we more or less knew they were not all connected. Much of the law suit seemed somewhat petty to me. San Diego Comic-Con as the Comic-Con, with all the others just being a comic con. And since SDCC always sold out and was about as crowded as it gets, I really doubt they were losing any business to those other conventions. But the judgment has been made. Here in Colorado we have at least four conventions that were using ‘comic con’, with the Denver Comic Con being the biggest of them.  Well they have now changed their name to Denver Pop Culture Convention, DPCC now, although I saw two friends refer to it as D-Pop. Doing a quick check on-line, I get the impression Denver is ahead of ...

Stephan Colbert this last week had actor  Joe Manganiello on to talk about his upcoming projects. That never happened.  The two of them instead talked about Dungeons and Dragons for most of the interview. They covered the classic 'Red Box' edition of the game, the 'Satanic Panic' era as well as various changes made through the various editions, ending with Colbert pulling out a bag of dice and talking about rolling for attributes before Manganiello rolled a natural twenty to end the interview with. Colbert explained that he was not supposed to make the roll, as it was to see if they were going to end the interview or not. Colbert had to apologize because the interview had to end, despite what the die roll said. During the interview they showed pictures of Manganiello’s gaming dungeon, which was just awesome, as he talked about all the celebrities that hung out at his place to game. The two men then set up a date for Colbert to come by and do some D&D next time he w...

In general I am not one who is afraid to voice my opinion. I have done it on this blog many times, so I am starting this one off by saying the following is my opinion and everyone is free to agree or disagree. I know this opinion will most likely not be popular, but that has never been my concern. Feel free to disagree with me here, as I am willing to bet there are a lot who do. As many here know I am not a fan of Batman, a boring character to say the least. Some time ago I wrote about my issues with him.  At that time I mentioned just how bad a character The Joker is and that I would write a future post on that. Well here is that post. The Joker is about the most overrated character in comic books, ever. He is a poorly conceived one trick pony that grows old quickly. But of course you look at most of Batman’s enemies and you can see a pattern of them just not being interesting.  However The Joker is the one everyone seems to love and is too often at the forefront...

As those who read my blog hopefully know, I am writer, a story teller. I hope I’m good one. I get little feedback on that, most of it being from my family and they may be a little biased. However good of story teller I might be, I can still see what is and is not good story telling elsewhere. This post is going to focus on good story telling. So now, where to start. Let’s go with Gravity Falls. I wrote a post some time ago about just how well done the last episode of Gravity Falls was, and it was brilliant.  The whole series was. There was beginning and an end to the story, with an entertaining journey to get us there. We got to explore the world and get to see characters develop as the story progressed. We were given some well-done twists and surprises along the way. And while not every episode revolved around the core plot, those episodes were not forgotten and were entertaining as something more than filler. When we reach the end we have been on a highly rewarding ride we ...

I remember about twenty years ago one of my co-workers, not even eighteen years old yet, had not seen Star Wars. He would talk about all the newer movies and his other interests and such, but had no idea about Star Wars. He mentioned a rapper he liked, I do not remember who it was, but at the time I did remember having just seen an interview where that rapper talked about how much Star Wars influenced him. This guy had a really hard time grasping just how big Star Wars was and what it had done to our society on so many levels. I tried to explain to him how the whole idea of blockbuster movies as we know them today, came from the success of Star Wars. How it brought about a new age of special effects, or the impact of those incredible music scores. He just wasn’t understanding it. His focus was on the present, not seeing what had come before to shape things. And I’ve seen this elsewhere. People often seem to not be aware that there was a past, that in order to bring the entertainm...

If you are not aware, I am a big fan of Marvel comics.  At one point in the 90s I was picking up just about everything they put out. Over the years I have had to cut back and at times actually take a break from them when money was tight. Right now I am actively picking up some of the new stuff. Several Marvel titles have hit big milestones recently, and I have picked up three of them. I am going to talk about them and one recent wedding issue. We’ll start with Thor. With issue 700 they started a major storyline titled The Death of Thor that ran through issue 705 with a follow up in issue 706, which was the last for that run of the series. Several years ago Jane Foster, one time Thor love interest, became the new Thor. It was a huge deal to have a female Thor in the game. Yet there was  twist.  Jane had cancer and the magic of Thor’s hammer was actually making the cancer worst, seeing the chemotherapy as a danger to her and the cancer as her body. The Death of Th...

With the continuing poor performance of Solo: A Star Wars Story, it really is becoming clear that we are at a point where a certain group of ‘fans’ are ready to bring about a truly horrific time for fandom. First off, Solo was a good movie and deserves far more praise than it has received. While it was not perfect and was a new take on a story that has been told a few time already.  Han’s early life has already seen a few iterations in the old Expanded Universe (Now known and Legacy). Like with most of the old EU, it was left behind but the basics were kept. In fact a fair amount of Solo was based off the known story for Han and Chewbacca, which have been part of the official history for them for some time. Go back and read my last post to get the full of my views on Solo and why it is not doing as well as it should. I will summarize it though with saying Toxic Fans are a big part of the reason. Regretfully Star Wars is not the only place we see this toxic fandom. We s...

So the big news concerning Star Wars right now is how Solo: A Star Wars Story underperformed at the box office over this last weekend. Now understand, to say ‘underperformed’ is a little misleading, as it underperformed for a Star Wars movie, which means it still was the number one movie for the weekend and had ticket sales over shadowing most movies. I see a lot of speculation about how they are milking the franchise, over-saturating the market and so on. And I call bull on that fully. Star Wars has been milked for worse in the past and far more over-saturated. Yes, it has only been about six months since the last Star Wars movie, but we are still averaging just one a year right now. With Marvel studios doing three movies a year, Fox putting out normally a couple of X-men films a year and Sony this year putting out Venom as a stand alone, with majority of those movies doing really well, Star Wars is being fairly restrained. Solo suffered from a lot of issues during production...

With Toys R Us going out of business, it feels like the end of an era, but looking back on it all that era ended some time ago. And while there are many factors that have led to the company shutting down, the real reasons can all be linked to the 90s. Over the time I have been raising my two boys, I have noticed that none of their friends collect toys, even on the level when I was young and all my friends traded with each other. At t hat time you did not collect for value. You collected to play with the toys. And I remember in Junior High being told toys were for kids, but that did not stop me from collecting. In the 90s everything switched around. Everyone, even the kids, collected toys for the value. I worked in a toy department and was blown away by how often a kid would look at what figures to buy fully based on the value of it. And it was mostly adults who were buying the toys, most of whom were very open about buying them as an investment. Back in the 80s y...