The Boys Season 3 Is Back in Town

This third season overview of Amazon’s The Boys is relatively punctual compared to my review of the first two seasons. (I threw in my reaction to Deadpool 3 news too.) This was also made possible courtesy of my patron, Korey Hughes. SPOILERS for The Boys season three abound, but none for its Diabolical cartoon spinoff because it wasn’t included in the professional quality bootleg DVDs. For instance, there is no sequence set to Garbage’s “Boys Wanna Fight.” I haven’t found any fan edits of this either despite putting the idea out into the world. C’mon, this is low hanging fruit! I like Christopher Lennertz‘s end credits scores though.

This series says “supe” so much it made made me crave lobster bisque. Do not have a drink every time they say it. Your liver will kill you in self-dense. Have a glass of milk instead. Here’s a portrait of my cat reconstructed from The Boys trailer stills!

The Deep State is The Dream Of The Fisherman’s Wife!

MCU Musings

I’ve got a backlog of writing that’s more esoteric than my usual rants. Since my neophyte blogging days, however, I’ve learned it’s better for site traffic to prioritize blogs that are newsworthy in the moment. (Even being well timed, however, isn’t a guarantee they’ll be popular upon posting.) Then when there isn’t anything trendy happening in a given week, I get confused over which ramble is most worth editing into something readable.

That was going to be the case last week, but then I heard D23 was happening. So after postponing to see if anything earthshaking was revealed, it was more of a Loki lowkey affair aside from a Werewolf By Night trailer & Thunderbolts roster. So then I opted not to rush to publish my thoughts. Instead this is mostly rambling Marvel Cinematic Universe cold takes. I held back some stuff that’d be germane to She-Hulk: Attorney At Law & Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. In addition to general MCU & adjacent Spider-Man, I’ll start off with hypothetical X-Men. Belated Marvel Comics rants will be a future blog.

Stargirl’s Three Thousand Years Of Longing

The headline was originally going to be “Three Thousand Years Of Longing For Stargirl,” but it sounded a tad too skeevy. I doubt anybody’s been that horny for Stargirl for so long anyway. I’m glad its third season is now here though! Ordinarily I’d wait until the season was over to review it all at once, but those posts might be prohibitively long. Also The CW series I watch that haven’t been massacred aren’t returning this fall, so there’s not going to be as much topic competition this year. I did want to recommend Three Thousand Years Of Longing though since it’s unjustly bombing. Both include a Djinn, so they’ve got more commonality than Riverdale & The Sandman (aside from serial killer conventions). Do you wish for SPOILERS?

The Sandman & Cheryl Blossom Summer Special!

This week’s topic is The Sandman’s surprise episode & Cheryl Blossom in Riverdale season six. Why? Because there’s no overlap, that’s why! I was so preoccupied with whether or not I could, I didn’t stop to think if I should combine them! I’ve gone mad with limited power! Since virtually nobody else will be writing up the particular combo, it saves me the trouble of writing a less basic headline too. SPOILERS ahead for the combo you never knew you needed!

A Decade Of D-Cat!

It’s cat bloggin’ time! Recently I celebrated my cat’s tenth birthday. (I waited until after to write this headline & introduction so as not to jinx it with tragedy.) I don’t know if it’s her real birthday, but it’s the one I assigned her in lieu of a birth certificate. It’s also not her tenth anniversary of being the feline in residence. (Until her family pays her ransom, this cat will continue to be my hostage.) Rather than continuously refer to her generically, I will reveal her first name starts with D. This will maintain a level of privacy for her & prevent me from having to commit to one spelling online. Happy decade to the D-Cat!

Unlike the inflatable birthday hat fiasco, this year I went out of my way to purchase her Yeoww! catnip toys from Pet Goods she actually appreciates. The path of least resistance works to placate pussycats! Hopefully they’ll make some catnip fish in new colors because I believe she now has the complete set. She’s quite fond of nip-pineapple. I was able to get plenty of photos of her playing with her new toys, but the lighting wasn’t ideal. So here’s some of her wielding hammers instead!

“These tools are mine now. I am become a hammerist.”

Does Netflix’s The Sandman Bring Us A Dream?

There have been numerous aborted attempts to adapt Neil Gaiman’s acclaimed The Sandman to live action for years. Netflix is the first to see it to fruition. Or one could argue it’s runner-up to Fox’s Lucifer, whose eponymous piano bar Devil & Mazikeen were spin-offs. David Goyer is one of the executive producers, which is worrisome. Allan Heinberg as the other executive producer & showrunner is less alarming. I wasn’t sure what to make of its trailers. Does it live up to its reputation of being Sleepwalker done wrong?

His helm is inspired both by Wesley Dodds’s gas mask & Alien’s Space Jockey.

Season Six is Riverdale’s Magic Number!

Sayonara, San Diego! A new age of wonderment is upon us! Riverdale is now all aboard the cuckoo bananas supernatural train! This formerly listless show finally got onto some rails. They may be rails of coke but rails nonetheless. Huzzah for season 6(66)! Sometimes I think the cast deserves hazard pay for reciting their dialogue. The cruel premature cancellation of Legends Of Tomorrow inflicted so much psychic trauma upon me that Riverdale now fills me with excitement rather than ennui. (I’m a very disturbed individual.) Shun the nonbelievers that claim season six jumped the shark! Verily Riverdale finally blossomed into its ideal self. I’m extra mad at seasons four & five sucking so badly that they made viewers quit before this legitimutantly good season.

It’s kind of genius that all the mundane context for these characters was laid out well in advance of the spooky stuff. It’d have to vie for attention if it were horror from the outset. The supernatural storylines feel better less nonsensical than the supposedly realistic ones of seasons past. (I got “Twin Babies Levitating Over a Fire as Part of a Cult Ritual Led by Chad Michael Murray” in the “What Riverdale Subplot Are You?” quiz!) They’re better foreshadowed than the gobbledygook The Flash has been spewing lately too. Now that it’s genuinely supernatural, the kooky character motivations & loopy internal logic actually make more sense. Strap in cause I’ve got fifteen more episodes full of weird mysteries to synopsize. If you bailed earlier, you won’t believe the following are real SPOILERS & not me slowly dying from a gas leak!

You may also substitute another favorite prematurely cancelled show of your choice. There’s no shortage.

CC Returned To SD!

After a two year absence, San Diego Comic Con returned in collective figurative person to San Diego! As a germaphobe on a limited budget, I did not partake of the festivities directly. I enjoyed the virtual panels that I used to be able to stream at home, but they’ve been discontinued. While I couldn’t observe the Gremlins: Secrets Of The Mogwai panel, I’m relived Tze Chun meeting Greta went great. Despite what crazy people on The Twitter insisted, neither Henry Cavill nor Elizabeth Olsen showed up! The amount of Everything Everywhere All At Once cosplay I saw secondhand pleased me.

I was planning on doing one of my non-review blogs after Thor Part IV & Ms. Marvel’s inaugural season, but a heatwave of the non-Mick Rory variety struck. I can work when it’s too hot or too cold. I need a temperature-regulating gimp suit like Scorpius. Then I got hung up obsessing over SDCC tidbits from another timezone. So I realized nobody would bother reading a non-SDCC article from me. I doubt anyone even wants to read an SDCC retrospective from me, but sometimes you have to write a low stakes blog to remind visitors there’ll be better blogs soon. If you share my incredibly narrow interests, this armchair SDCC coverage is the overview for you! It goes action figures, Marvel, & DC. As usual, no actual comic book news will be involved!

“Are you here for Dom-Con too?” “No, we’re looking for the American Library Association conference.”

How Marvelous Is Ms. Marvel?

Ms. Marvel is the second of the unofficial Disney+ Phase Two introducing new headliners. She made it onto a billboard that looks blatantly photoshopped. The proudly ignorant are boycotting the series. Or is that just Poe’s Law in action?

Marvel Studios has had great success streamlining decades of continuity for modern audiences whilst maintaining the comics’ spirits. Kamala Khan only dates back to 2013. They shouldn’t need to make any drastic changes. I generally feel that unless there’s a compelling reason for altering things, adaptations should be as close to the source material as possible to best represent the stories they’re ostensibly based upon. Marvel’s alterations range from good (inventing Layla El Faouly) to neutral (Kate Bishop being Hawkeye’s only fan) to bad (America Chavez as a damsel in distress). Rejiggering this fan favorite headliner filled many with trepidation as to where in that spectrum it’d land. So in addition to season one SPOILERS, this review will contain additional kvetching about changes in translation. (I do that anyway, so I’m not sure if it’s to a greater degree this time.) I HATE CHANGE!

Will You Love & Thunder Thor 4?

The end of June/start of July was jam packed with season finales for Superman & Lois, The Flash, & Stranger Things. Now it’s finally time for my most anticipated movie of the year, Th4! If you’ve already read my teaser reaction for Thor: Love & Thunder & my Marvel Legends gallery, a fun game will be seeing how much of this review I directly plagiarized from myself. If you’ve not read those blogs, all this will be new to you! Either way, this The Wages Of Cinema collaboreview crackles with SPOILERS for the fourth Thor! Grab your Mjolnir popcorn bucket & rock onward!