Another Batwoman Begins

The Beeboverse is back, baby! The CW’s new TV season is only a quarter later than usual. By now you should know Ruby Rose isn’t returning to star in Batwoman’s second season. Rather than recasting Kate Kane, Javicia Leslie has been cast Rose Wilder. She’s a brand new character created to be the brand new Batwoman. Ryan Wilder debuted in the wilds of Batgirl #50 (after she’d been announced to be headlining a TV show) so she’s technically a canon DC Comics character. I don’t think she’s shown up in since, so any future comics appearances will take their lead from the show fleshing her out. Meanwhile DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow will add as many characters as possible so long as they’re not from DC comics.

I wrote up a lengthy blog about my initial thoughts on the matter. Lets see how the series confirms or denies my suspicions as the season progresses. If you don’t want to go back & reread that, here are the highlights of my misgivings: The first season’s arcs heavily involving Kate hadn’t been concluded. The inaugural season’s writing was quite ropy, & we don’t know whether they would’ve stuck the landing. The entire show’s character dynamics are constructed to revolve around Kate. We barely established Kate Kane as Batwoman last season, & now we have to halt the narrative momentum to do another origin story for a whole new Batwoman. Now Kate is missing when it still hasn’t solved the mystery of what happened to Bruce Wayne. It’s not so much that the rookie has big shoes to fill as she has big shortfalls to overcome.

They’ve abandoned doing Lewis Carrol quotes for titles this season. “Whatever Happened To Kate Kane?” is very direct & possibly misleading.  Here are SPOILERS of the non-Stephanie Brown variety!

“I’ve got the mayor breathing down my neck, & he’s ready to call in the penguin commandos!”

X Of Mr. Sinister’s Swords

Now that Wonder Woman 1984 & The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina Part 4 are done, I can resume blogging unpunctually! As threatened last year, here’s my review of the X-Men crossover, X Of Swords! (What is the proper formatting for a crossover’s name?) I finished it just in time for readers to have moved on. I didn’t get all the issues so it’s also recapped poorly. I still complain about earlier “Dawn Of X” stuff too. To make that go down smoother, I modified my Mister Sinister! I hear he’s a magnificent bastard in Hellions, but that’s sadly one of the books I didn’t have on my pull list because I accidentally prioritized titles I don’t enjoy.

Villains need louche necklines!

CAOS Part 4 Is A Hellish Snore

WW84 was a Christmas present that filled me with ambivalence. Meanwhile The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina Part 4 should’ve been out for Halloween! Here be SPOILERS for a final season that’s sinfully dull. It’s not a rousing way to ring in 2021. Maybe releasing it on New Year’s Eve 2020 was a fitting summation for the year? Why’d I even bother using the “horror” tag? Luckily I can throw in some recommendations for better witchcraft cartoons at the end.

“But how do we ensure nobody likes Sabrina anymore?” CAOS writers’ room

Wonder Woman 1984: Cheetahs Never Prosper

This movie is Wonder Woman 84, meaning I skipped the intervening eighty-two sequels since the original. In a controversial move, WB finally opted to simultaneously release it to cinemas & HBO Max (at no additional charge, unlike Mulan on Disney+) on Christmas day. At least its release wasn’t as postponed as The New Mutants. I watched it a movie theater because I believe the safety precautions taken by the cinema & myself are sufficient to outweigh the risk. If you think otherwise, Gal Gadon’t go because you can watch it from the safety of your home. So is Wonder Woman 1984 doubleplusgood or thoughtcrime? The Lasso of Truth compels me to unspool its SPOILERS in this collaboreview with The Wages of Cinema, reunited for the first time since Plan 9 From Star Wars!

Swamp Thing Makes My Heart Sing!

It’s odd how Swamp Thing is often described as an obscure character when he had some of the highest media saturation for a DC Comics character prior to its shared movieverse. I never saw either film despite wishing to do so. (Tubi currently just has the sequel.) I recently leaned he previously had a poorly received yet somehow syndicated live action TV series in the 90’s. I did see the movie of Man-Thing, Marvel’s mucky counterpart, featuring the future Trish Walker when it aired as a SciFi Original Movie. Despite being made by the director of the beloved Virtuosity & Lawnmower Man (Sadly Cybo-Man is the exception to the Monkey With A Gun rule.), Man-Thing is so terrible that the title creature is ashamed to show his iconic visage until the climax.

Thanks to the intro of his very short-lived cartoon of which I only vaguely recall seeing the pilot, I’ll always associate Swamp Thing with Jimi Hendrix & The Troggs. (Is Swampy jealous Man-Thing has his own The Mountain Goats song?). He was embargoed from appearing on Justice League Unlimited (aside from some Easter eggs snuck in) because by that point he was cloistered away in the mature readers Vertigo imprint. Thankfully Justice League Action allowed him & John Constantine to poison the minds of the youth! Swampy is very toyetic, yet somehow I never acquired any of his action figures.

Unlike last week’s merry Marvel miscellany, here’s a blog with a pruned topic. You’ve seen my fire gourd, now read my review of Swamp Thing’s relatively new television series! It’s doomed, which makes it more tragic. Now I finally have firsthand anger over this. The morass below is crawling with SPOILERS!

I didn’t mean to damn it with faint praise!

It’s The Most Marvelous Time Of The Year!

After last week’s commissioned deep dive into Stormfront the proverbial milkshake duck, I figured it’s time to clear out some of the Marvel content cluttering my drafts. I won’t be finished editing my X Of Swords review until nobody cares, so this is light on X-Men content. It does have a surfeit of pre-Christmas action figure photos if that’s your bag. (I will regret this if Santa only delivers coal this year.) After the MCU news musings not involving She-Hulk, my comic book thoughts are separated by superfluous tildes!

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“Now I have The Phoenix Force! Ho ho ho!”

Amazon’s The Boys Wanna Fight…

Marvel finally confirmed Tatiana Maslany really is playing She-Hulk after two months of confusion, so I got this blog out in the nick of time! Maybe they’ll redesign Abomination to not look like Doomsday? I want less Zombie-Hulk, more Silurian-Hulk! I was expecting a confirmation that we’d finally get Tim Blake Nelson as The Leader instead. Now that this Disney Investor Day (the most banal marketing event name possible) tidbit is out of the way, we can move on to another cold take review.

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This review of The Boys comes to you courtesy of my new patron, Korey Hughes. Out of the blue, she informed me she was gifting me DVDs of the first two seasons because I don’t have Amazon Prime & she wanted to read my review of it. (I would’ve also accepted the latest seasons of The Expanse.) So this review was written for one person only. All other visitors can move along. Let this be a lesson to the rest of you: If you mail me free stuff, I will review it! This even applies to stuff you didn’t make!

Not only is this a big SPOILER alert for the first two seasons, I’ll also throw in a Content Warning! After three paragraphs of me making value judgements of source material I didn’t read, I finally start talking about the TV adaptation. There’s lots to ruminate upon in these sixteen episodes so it’s practically Love Sausage-sized! (Welcome Home, Brother Charles, exactly the wrong title for my brain to remember, beat it to the penile strangulation.) This time there won’t be any metallic lycanthropes to go with the gratuitous genitalia. Supe porn seems pretty tame compared to death by Popclaw’s snu-snu.

Exhibit A-Train in inciting incidents.

Project: Metalbeast Is A Feast!

I got wine drunk & called my family to let them know how succulent my Thanksgiving turkey turned out because I am an insufferable chef. The Princess of Purrsia kept screaming for some bird, & I told told her she could have as much as she wanted once it finished cooking in several hours. Then she only had a couple bites & walked off in disappointment. She interrupted many a cozy tryptophan coma afterwards. It wasn’t until day three that she put in a serious effort to help devour the poultry as it grew more putrid. Meanwhile I’ve been eating turkey every meal for four days, & my body is beginning to reject me.

I insist that this personal anecdote  tangentially segues into today’s topic. If you thought last week’s 300th blog on She-Hulk was a cold take, wait until you feast your eyes upon this week’s movie review! The Academy is a bunch of cowards too intimidated by Project: Metalbeast to give it the awards it deserved! This direct-to-video gem could become a Thanksgiving staple just like The Lair Of The White Worm has become for Easter! Why isn’t it Metal-Beast or at least MetalBeast?

I first learned of this motion picture from reading the comments for a werewolf action figure Kickstarter. There’s a dim memory that it was also at my local video store, but perhaps I’m just now retroactively imagining it since it’s the kind of movie that would’ve been there. I watched it on Tubi (also home to Russian were-bears), but supposedly it’s free on Amazon as well. Now, without further ado, here’s SPOILERS for a movie from 1995!

Finally, a meme people can relate to!

The Sensational 300th Blog Of She-Hulk!

This headline is sort of misleading. I have not written three-hundred blogs about Jennifer Walters the sensational She-Hulk. This is merely my three-hundredth blog on Matt The Catania, whose topic happens to be She-Hulk. I figured I should try a different topic than the best cat in the world for once. It was not my intention to draw attention away from other blogs that have legitimutantly written 300 entries on Shulkie. I apologize for the confusion. This is also an anniversary number (We survived #299!) which doesn’t coincide with an anniversary for the blog.

Hunker down for some wild thoughts on Disney+’s She-Hulk TV series. It’s still kind of timely. Can you believe Marvel & DC almost swapped She-Hulk & Martian Manhunter? Now they’ll both be live action television stars in defiance of David Goyer! All the anxiety I once had over whether Wonder Woman would suck has since been transferred to She-Hulk!

Merry Almost-versary Number?

October the Disrober is over. Now commences November the Ember. (The month is halfway over already, but this rhymes better.)

I’ve been remiss in posting new content this month. (I’ve since revised my posting schedule form weekly to semi-weekly in “About” to cover myself.) One of several unconvincing excuses is that according to WordPress, I was at 299 blog posts. One of those was just me reblogging Cain S. Latrani’s review of The Dolorous Adventure of Brother Banenose, so I don’t count that as one I’d written. (Cain has new novels & merchandise available! Go patronize him with your funds!) As far as I’m concerned, this is my real 299th blog. I became paralyzed trying to think of worthy content not only for post #300 but also sufficient for its immediate predecessor! Curse my modicum of integrity!