Neil Sharpson's Blog

Feelin’ good

So, today’s been a bit of a day.

First of all, the long awaited audiobook for Knock Knock Open Wide is available in North America from Tantor media, narrated by the wonderful Aoife McMahon!

Second! The Burial Tide was just nominated as one of the New York Public Library’s Top 20 Horror Books of 2025 in some pretty darn august company!

And lastly, Indigo Books of Canada has named Don’t Trust Fish! as their Number 1 best Kids Book of the Year!

Yes, all my children seem to be doing so well, except of course for one.

“Been looking for a job? Maybe planning on moving out of the basement?”“Ugh, get off my case DAD.”

The Good Dinosaur (2015)

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I just shouldn’t be allowed near CGI animated dinosaur films. I don’t know why this particular mircogenre of movies manages to so consistently stick in my damn craw. I, of course, have Dinosaur sitting proudly at the very bottom of my rankings of the Disney canon and I have every hope that it will remain that way for a long time.

And I would still gladly watch Dinosaur over The Good Dinosaur. Mainly because, I can at least watch Dinosaur from beginning to end. The Good Dinosaur is the second last movie on my requested reviews because I have put it off over and over and over again. I cannot finish this thing. It bores the piss out of me.

But, before we crack on, I want to explain why I’m not doing a full plot recap for this one.

I was feeling ever so poorly.I actually had a lot on this month. Um…I don’t know if you heard but some stuff happened.Still not entirely sure this isn’t my wife pulling off an amazingly ambitious prank.

3. This movie has practically no plot to recap.

4. Disney Plus was dicking me around something fierce, constantly crashing and freezing and making the experience of watching this movie even more interminable than normal. This, by the way, was also during Kimmelnacht so you can understand why I was eyeing my Disney Plus subscription with a steely eye and whispering…

So, not a recap, more a series of observations about why this fucking movie annoys me so much.

Or, y’know, a rant.

The Good Dinosaur is set in a world where the asteroid that caused the K-T extinction* missed and the dinosaurs continued living right to the present day. Oh, but humans also managed to evolve anyway. Presumably through magic.

Fine, fine, it’s a cartoon. If the movie wasn’t good I probably wouldn’t mind. Still though. Really dumb.

Anyway, Henry and Ida are two Apatosaurus farmers raising their three kids, Libby, Buck and Arlo. Arlo is our protagonist and the titular good dinosaur. Or so the movie says, lying tramp that it is. But before we get into the face that the movie should be called The Dinosaur Who Fucking Sucks, Actually let me touch on a bigger issue I have with the movie. The character designs. And I realise this will make me seem like an Unpleasable Ulmer because my criticism is the exact opposite of the one I made of the designs in Dinosaur.

That movie, if you’ll remember, was originally intended as being a rather grim and bloody nature documentary style movie before it was re-tooled into a kid’s film with talking dinosaurs. Problem was, it kept the original hyper-realistic designs and it didn’t work. Same way the CGI Lion King movies didn’t work. These super serious designs don’t match the wacky cartoon personalities of the characters.

The Good Dinosaur doesn’t have a problem with overly realistic character models. Oh no.

Put Fred Flintstone on this guy’s back and I wouldn’t blink an eye.

Now, I won’t lie. I fucking hate this. BUT. It’s not objectively bad. I may loathe this weird piss green rubber looking thing but ultimately that’s a matter of taste. What isn’t a matter of taste is the fact that they took this and then put it in an ultra-realistic environment.

There is absolutely zero stylisation in the backgrounds, to the point where you wonder why they didn’t just shoot them on location and animate the characters in. And the problem with that is that when you have Arlo falling into a river and being swept away, it looks like a gas station’s inflatable dinosaur mascot came loose from its tethers. There is just no way you can reconcile characters that goofy looking existing in this world.

But that’s all aesthetics. What about the actual story? Well, as I said Arlo is our main character and that’s a big problem because Arlo, at least in the first act of the movie, has two main character traits.

He is afraid of literally everything.He wants to crush a toddler’s head.

Now, the Loveable Coward is a trope for a reason but for it to work, the coward has to have some other positive trait. Cowardice on its own is not endearing to an audience. And sure, you can make a character who’s fearful sympathetic but that usually requires explaining exactly why this character is afraid. Arlo just hatches out of his egg and is afraid of literally everything. And after the seventh time watching this character fail to assert himself with a chicken and going “waaaaaaaah” like a sauropoden Hank Hill…it gets old, is what I’m saying. Oh yes, and then there’s the toddler murder.

So Arlo’s father Henry wants him to “make his mark” by doing something, anything, useful for the family farm at which point he’ll be allowed to leave his footprint on the family barn. He gives Arlo the job of trapping whatever animal has been raiding their supply of winter food, which turns out to be a small caveboy who we’ll name Spot because that’s what he gets named later.

Arlo ends up letting the caveboy escape from the trap and Henry angrily insists that they follow it into the forest. Whereupon, there’s a flash-flood, Henry goes to join the great circle of life and now Arlo’s family are facing winter without Henry’s help to run the farm. When the caveboy comes back for more food, Arlo blames the kid for Henry’s death and his goal, for a significant portion of the movie, is to kill this child. So, he’s trying to do something awful, but he is also utterly incompetent and unable to achieve his goal. You see why I find this character a less than compelling protagonist?

Alright, Arlo chases Spot into the forest, they both fall in a river, they get swept downstream and…that’s it, that’s all the recap you’re getting because you bloody know what happens next. You know Arlo will overcome his fear and grow closer with Spot and they’ll work together and overcome their obstacles together and blah blah blah. You could probably predict every story beat from this point to the credits. Okay, fine, you probably couldn’t predict the scene where they eat rotting fruit and proceed to trip absolute balls.

Jesus Christ those cheeks will haunt me.

I will admit there are a few interesting ideas here and there. For example, the family of T-Rex ranchers who’re driving their herd of buffalo across the plains. T-Rex cowboys, that’s a fantastic concept. Jesus, just make the movie about them!

Also, their little arms make them run like they’re holding the reigns of a horse and that makes me smile.

But it’s also very clear that there’s just…no shape here. I get the distinct whiff of several drafts of a script being sewn together. There’s a sequence where Arlo and Spot meet a weird Pterodactyl cult that tries to eat them.

And another where they meet some Velociraptor rednecks who try to eat them…

And I would bet serious money that these were at one point the same scene with the same characters that got repeated to pad out the runtime.

So, to sum up. It’s boring, it’s ugly, the lead is insufferable, it has maybe two original ideas in its head and in order to watch it I had to become marginally complicit in the slow death of American democracy.

Perhaps I treated you too harshly.

Animation: 07/20 

Technically good, but the stylistic mismatch between the super cartoony character designs and the ultra realistic backgrounds is like carsickness for the eyes.

Leads: 02/20

I kept praying for another asteroid to do the job right this time.

Villain: 05/20

I haven’t really mentioned Thunderclap, the Canadian, storm worshipping Pterodactyl who is honestly not as interesting as that makes him sound. In fairness there might be the potential for a good villain in here. But the scene where he suddenly eats a racoon alive is less “oooh, what a scary villain” and more “no, that’s not just responsible to put in a kid’s movie, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

Supporting Characters: 07/20

Sam Elliot plays a t-rex who has a monologue about drowning an alligator in his own blood. All seven points earned there.

Music: 05/20

Yeah, I even hate the score! Goddamn I’m salty today.

FINAL SCORE: 26%

NEXT UPDATE:   16 October 2025

NEXT TIME: Obviously, it’s not going to top Roger Corman’s masterpiece, but let’s give it a fair chance.

*Yes, I know we’re supposed to call it the “K-Pg” event now. Whatever, I still call ’em “Twitter”, “Turkey”, “Puff Daddy”, “Kanye” and “UFOs” now get off my damn lawn.

Shortstember: The Citadel

Season 2- Episode 35

Wha’ happen

I discussed back in my King of Thieves review how Genie presents a huge problem in the Aladdin franchise: too popular to get rid of, but so powerful that he constantly has to be written around to ensure he doesn’t end the story prematurely. I think one of the reasons why The Citadel is possibly my favourite episode in the whole series is how cleverly it turns that problem into a narrative asset. The other reason of course, is Mozenrath.

Almost certainly the most popular and iconic villain in a series that, as I mentioned last time, wasn’t exactly lacking in that department. The Citadel is his first appearance and, in my opinion, represents what this series was really capable of when firing on all cylinders.

We begin with Agrabah under attack from a mysterious pterodactyl like creature while a shadowy figure watches from the sidelines. Aladdin shows up on carpet and tackles the pterodactyl only to get knocked down and almost fall on to a bed of nails. We then cut to…

…Genie literally watching the episode and looking through the script and realising that right about now is when he should be swooping in to Deus Ex Machina Aladdin out of danger. So right off the bat the episode is not only acknowledging the problem with Genie’s power that I mentioned in the intro, it’s flaunting it. After being rescued by Genie and defeating the monster, Aladdin confronts Mozenrath who reveals that this was all a test and that he passed. He offers Aladdin great wealth if he does a job for him and Al refuses, disgusted that Mozenrath would endanger innocent people.

So, Mozenrath sneaks into Aladdin’s hovel (yeah, he still sleeps in the hovel sometimes I don’t know why, the view is not that good) and steals the lamp. He then whisks Aladdin, Iago, Abu and carpet away to his kingdom, the Land of the Black Sand.

Iago, of all people, recognises where they are and tells Aladdin that the Land of the Black Sand is ruled by Destane, a dark sorceror so dangerous that even Jafar steered well clear of him. Mozenrath casually remarks that Destane was his adopted father and introduces them.

So in like a minute we get a rather fabulously layered bit of both world building and character establishment. We learn that there was a sorceror leagues above Jafar and then we learn that this new guy not only defeated him, but turned him into an undead slave to guard his palace. And he did that to his own father. It’s that combination of power and cruelty that really makes Mozenrath such a memorable villain.

So, Mozenrath tells Aladdin and the gang what the skinny is. He has a creature called a Thirdac that he used to guard his palace. The Thirdac, y’see, devours magic but unfortunately for Mozenrath it escaped and he can’t go near it because he’s mostly magic and hair gel. So Mozenrath needs a mortal like Aladdin to collar the beast. And, as incentive, he’s left Genie’s lamp in his palace so Aladdin better hurry before the Thirdac gobbles him up.

Genie, meanwhile, wakes up and finds himself staring down the Thirdac, which looks like something out of early DnD.

Genie quickly realises that all his semi-phenomenal nearly cosmic power is just lunch to this thing and is pretty soon running for his life. So now the show’s usual power dynamic is completely reversed. Genie is not only powerless but acutely vulnerable and we get to see how formidable Aladdin is even without his big blue pal.

Aladdin discovers Mozenrath’s lab and learns that the Thirdac is from a dimension where magic is as plentiful as water and that the creature is basically dying of thirst but that Mozenrath plans on using it to conquer every magical realm out there. They find Genie and Aladdin sees what he thinks is Genie being eaten alive and proceeds to beat the absolute tar out of the Thirdac.

“HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE HELPLESS?! 
HOW DOES IT FEEL TO KNOW PAIN?! 
LOOK WHAT YOU TURNED ME INTO! 
LOOK WHAT WE’VE BECOME! “

Genie is still alive (obviously, there’s merch to be sold) but he and carpet are very nearly devoured before Aladdin finally manages to get the collar on the Thirdac. Whereupon Mozenrath shows up and is all “thanks, I’ll take it from here”. Aladdin pretends to meekly surrender, but then he and the gang sneak back into the castle where Mozenrath is planning an invasion of Agrahbah simply because “it’s there”.

Aladdin ambushes Mozenrath and tells him he’ll free the Thirdac if Mozenrath doesn’t send it back to its home realm. Mozenrath tells him he’s bluffing, because he’s too good a person to risk Mozenrath’s life. Aladdin points out that, yes, that is true. But Iago sure as shit isn’t.

“I’ve killed before, kids! And I’ll kill again!”

Iago sets the creature free and Mozenrath has to banish it back to it’s own realm to save his own life. He’s about to get revenge on Aladdin but Genie is back at full power so Mozenrath takes the L and tells Aladdin that he’s won “for now”.

How was it?

This was my favourite episode so far. I love the hints of a wider world that are introduced here. Mozenrath’s introduction gives the series its greatest villain and for once it really feels like our heroes have their backs against the wall and are fighting for survival. And, once again, I love what they’re doing with Iago. The idea of the parrot being the Wolverine of the group, the one who’s not afraid to get his feathers dirty, is so fun.

“Up! Up! And AWAY!”

Yeah, I’m sure you’re all shocked. After watching James Gunn’s Superman I decided it was high time that the big blue boy scout got the same treatment as a certain pointy eared co-worker of his.

So yes, we’re going to be looking at every live action Superman movie while we wait for Matt Reeves to finish the script for The Batman 2 roughly around the time of the heat death of the universe (I am not bitter, I am passionate.)

Let’s begin at the beginning. It’s 1948, a mere decade after Superman’s debut in Action Comics and the character is already a bona fide cultural icon with a radio series, newspaper strips, some of the greatest cartoon shorts ever made and a metric shit ton of merchandise. But, weirdly, despite kicking off the entire superhero genre (asterisk asterisk) Superman was actually pretty late to the party when it came to being adapted into live action.

Batman and Captain America both made it to the big screen before him, and even Captain Marvel had a serial in 1941, a mere two years after his debut (which is a bit like The Monkees being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before The Beatles). The reason for this was that National Publications (as DC was called at the time) were extremely protective of the property and wanted full control of the script. The rights being tied up with the Fleischer series also complicated matters, with the result being that work only began on the serial in 1947.

I was wary going into this, as neither of the two Batman serials were exactly a fun time. So I was astonished at just how much I ended up enjoying Superman 1948. It’s definitely a 1940s serial and as such has most of the weaknesses inherent in the format. But in terms of dialogue, pacing, direction and acting it’s leaps ahead of both The Batman and Batman and Robin.

The serial begins with the first ever live action depiction of the planet Krypton.

It’s no spectacular crystal planet but it’s nonetheless an interesting take, a rugged, rocky world rich in alien minerals.

One of the things that really surprised me was just how much of Superman’s lore is already established even at this early point in his history. Jor-El and Lara (named!), Ma and Pa Kent, Metropolis, the Daily Planet, Perry White, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen are all present and perfectly recognisable to a modern Superman fan. This is probably a result of National keeping such a tight control on the property, the other superhero serials of the period tended to deviate pretty sharply from their source material. But it’s also a reflection of just how strong these original concepts were, and how timeless they’ve proven.

Anyway, Jor-El has discovered that Krypton is going to be pulled into the sun and tries to convince the Kryptonian leaders to evacuate the planet. After a FIVE MINUTE scene where they bicker back and forth and tell him that if he’s smart enough to figure out that Krypton is doomed he should be smart enough to figure out how to save it if he’s not crazy or lying (which he probably is), Jor-El realises that the planet is terminally stupid and shit’s gotta be how it’s gotta be. He puts his infant son in a rocket ship and blasts him off to Earth where…fuck it, we don’t have time.

That page is going to save me so much goddamned work. So, the baby is raised by Ma and Pa Kent and as he grows starts to exhibit incredible strength. This culminates in a scene where young Clark Kent rescues his father from a twister and then drives him home.

“Son, I’m mighty disappointed. By rescuing me from that twister you risked revealing your true iden…hahaha, I’m just kidding. Can you imagine? Thanks Clark.”

Clark grows to manhood and his parents finally reveal to him the truth about his origin. After his parents both die offscreen (seriously, it’s scene, parents dead, next scene) young Clark Kent heads to Metropolis to seek his fortune.

So this Kirk Alyn, who holds the distinction of being the first actor to play Superman in live action. And…he’s kinda great? I wasn’t expecting much given that he’s almost never in the conversation when greatest screen Supermen are discussed but I think he should be. For starters, he clearly stamped the role hard in terms of look and mannerisms (one thing that I realised watching this movie, the Clark Kent disguise is FAR more plausible in an era where everyone wears hats). His Clark is a surprisingly sophisticated performance. When he’s around Perry White and Lois Lane he’s slightly bumbling and “aw shucks” but when he’s shaking down mobsters for leads he’s a real newshound; serious, canny and steely. And his Superman made me realise what the most important thing about any Superman performance is: Superman has to seem like he enjoys being Superman. And Alyn fucking nails that. Whether he’s flying out a window, blowing out a fire or man-handling gangsters, he has the same infectious joy of an eight year old playing Superman. He loves his life. He loves that he gets to do this. He gets to fly around the city like a big blue rocket helping people and that is awesome.

Speaking of the flying, if you’ve heard anything about this serial it’s probably the flying scenes and that’s because they look like this:

Originally, it was planned that the flying scenes would be done with wires. These scenes were shot (which apparently was torture for poor Kirk Alyn) and looked so bad that the director fired the effects team and had all the flying scenes redone in hand drawn animation. Are they convincing? Absolutely not. Are they probably the most mocked aspect of this whole production. You bet your ass they are. But I’ll let you in on a little secret. I fucking adore the flying scenes. Not just because they’re gorgeously animated, not just because it looks like Kirk Alyn is momentarily turning into the actual comic-book Superman. I love them because they show an absolute refusal to compromise. Producer Sam Katzman understood that kids did not want to see a nerfed Superman. They wanted to see a Superman who flies around, not a Superman who shows up in a doorway after a shot of a crowd looking up and pointing at the sky. He gave his audience what they wanted and didn’t care if he looked silly doing it and I respect the hell out of him for that.

Anyway, while waiting for a train to take him to Metropolis, Clark learns that the track is damaged and that there’s a locomotive barrelling towards disaster. On the train, we get our first look at the second most important Superman character.

So this is Noel Neill (Jesus, even her name is perfect for comics) as our first live action Lois Lane. And, like Alyn, she pretty quickly shot to the top of my list of great Loises (Loisi?). Neill not only played Lois in this serial and its sequel, she was even invited back a decade later to reprise the role opposite George Reeves on television. She also cameoed in the 1978 Superman, the eighties Superboy series and Superman Returns. Neill’s Lois is a lot younger than most Loisi (Neill was still in her twenties) and she comes across as less “star reporter” and more “gutsy young cub with everything to prove”. There’s even a little subtle (possibly unintentional) feminist commentary with Lois constantly having to prove herself to Perry White, who constantly threatens to banish her to the “women’s pages”. She does frequently get bound and gagged by the bad guys only to be carried away in Superman’s manly, manly arms, but no more than Jimmy Olsen so it’s fine. She’s presented as tough, fearless, canny, perfectly willing to dick over a colleague to get a scoop but willing to take the blame for her mistakes. In short, everything Lois Lane should be. And her office rivalry with Clark is just great. Unlike the Batman serials which just jogged in place, there is actually character development from episode to episode. Lois and Clark start out as rivals with Lois actually getting him falsely arrested at one point just so she can get a head start on a story, but by the final episode they’re bantering and working together as a team.

Superman’s first public appearance comes after when he’s waiting for a train and learns from the signal man that one of the tracks has been bent and that the next train will surely derail. He changes into the costume for the first time and bends the track back into place, saving everyone on the train. Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen happent to be on the train and are all “golly, what a story!” but don’t meet Clark properly until later on. Walking into the Daily Planet, Clark is able to convince Perry White to let him cover a mine disaster and get an interview with some trapped miners. This was a really common trope in old movies, reporters trying to get interviews with trapped miners. I have no goddamned idea why. What do they think the miners are going to say?

“Ow?” “Help me?” “Thank you for your interest but my oxygen is limited so kindly FUCK OFF?”

Anyway, Clark gets the scoop, rescues Lois from a cave-in as Superman and then beats her and Olsen back to Metropolis which leads to honestly one of my favourite “Clark meets Lois” scenes. After she spends a few minutes bad mouthing the “rat” who scooped her he reveals himself from behind a paper, tips his hat to her in a gentlemanly manner and introduces himself as “the rat”.

But that’s only the beginning of our story. Metropolis in the forties, much like her sister city Gotham, is plagued by the scourge of White Guys in Fedoras. These malefactors are led by a sinister and brilliant mastermind known only as The Spider Lady.

Not to be confused with your mother who was asked to chaperone the school Halloween dance at short notice.

So yeah, Superman’s first supervillain in live action was a woman, which is cool. It would be a whole lot cooler if she didn’t suck but you can’t have everything. I don’t want to place too much blame here on actor Carol Foreman, a veteran serial performer who, unusually for a woman, played almost exclusively villainous roles. She even starred with Kirk Alyn in another serial based on a DC property, Blackhawk. She was much better in that so it’s my guess that there was a time issue. Her scenes feel very much like she’s trying to remember her lines and hit her mark and hasn’t been given enough time to rehearse the scene. The mask also limits her signature icy stare, one of her chief assets as an actor, which is probably why it only appears in early episodes before being nixed.

If Kate Mulgrew had been born a few decades earlier, she would have eaten this part alive.

The Spider Lady is a reworked version of the Red Widow from the Superman radio show, which was a much bigger influence on the serial than the actual comic book. Oh, and all her henchmen are called The Spider Lady Men, which sounds less like a criminal gang and more like a Vegas drag revue.

Anyway, the Spider Lady plans to steal something called the Reducer Ray. This is not, as you might assume, a device that shrinks people. It “reduces” in the sense of “reducing something to radioactive ash”. It’s basically a heat ray, stated onscreen to be more powerful than an atom bomb. Although, given this particular franchise’s history with the US Government’s nuclear programme I would have assumed they would have given that whole topic a wide berth. If you don’t know, in 1944 National was going to publish a story about Lex Luthor building a weird science fiction device called an “atom bomb” and the US government asked them to hold off on publishing that until, oh, let’s say 1946? Thaaaanks.

Like the Batman serials, Superman does a lot of narrative jogging in place but it does a far better job of making it feel like the story is advancing. There’s a bit of political intrigue with the Lady Spider Men jockeying for position and undermining each other.

In another sideplot Kryptonite is introduced and we even see Clark revealing his secret identity to the scientist who discovered it in order to get help in combating its effects. In an era where secret identities were absolutely sacrosanct, that was honestly kinda shocking to see. And there’s also lots of fun stuff with Lois and Clark constantly trying to one up each other to get the next scoop, with the aforementioned Lois framing Clark for stealing her car and getting him locked up in jail. It’s great!

I won’t lie and say it never drags, but I found this serial genuinely entertaining, and not just in a historical curio kind of way. It captures the essential appeal of Superman very well, and I’m honestly so excited to see where we’re going next.

***

The Man of Tomorrow

Kirk Alyn walked so those who came after him could soar. A surprisingly great, and criminally over-looked Kal-El.

Ace Reporter of the Daily Planet

Noel Neill is a delight as Lois Lane, sassy, ambitious, a little petty, and with zero tolerance for anyone’s bullshit. My favourite exchange:

PERRY WHITE:  I need an article of the women’s page. Dream up a new way to cook a roast, or toss a salad together.

LOIS: How thrilling.

CLARK: Cook up something good, Lois. I’ll go for it.

LOIS: (smiling sweetly) Anytime, Mr. Kent. (steely glare) Just name your poison.

A Great Metropolitan Newspaper

Pierre Watkin’s Perry White seems to have taken the whole idea of a “crusading newspaper quite literally, as his Daily Planet is less a distinguished paper of record and more a freelance law enforcement agency, sending reporters out to get leads and shut down whole criminal enterprises without all that tiresome “involving the police”. He’s a great Perry, sarcastic, curmudgeonly and yet clearly willing to take a bullet for any of his reporters. Even his belittling of Lois comes across less like sexism and more challenging her to prove the world wrong, a challenge she gleefully accepts. As for Jimmy Olsen, he’s played by Tommy Bond as a well meaning, slightly dim, “ah shucks ain’t that just like a dame?” kinda character. You might ask why they cast a middle aged man as such a young character. To which I reply: “my guys, he’s only 22”.

The forties were rough, man.

Kindly Couple

So here’s a neat little bit of trivia, Jonathan Kent, one of the most important characters in the Superman mythos, was only named that in 1950. Prior to that, the Kents actually cycled through several different names before settling on Johnathan and Martha. Here, they are named as Martha and…Eben. Eben Kent.

Yeah, I see why they changed that.

Another story element that is newer than you might think is Superman’s parents surviving to see his career as Superman which only became a staple after the late eighties. Anyway, while we don’t see that much of Martha and Eben in this film, the essentials are there. Two good people found a baby and raised him as their own, and the love they showed him changed the world.

Desperate Scientists

If Superman is the “Man of Tomorrow” then Krypton is the world of tomorrow.

Originally envisioned as a scientific wonderland as seen through the lens of turn-of-the century progressive* utopianism Krypton often becomes a stand in for the cultural anxieties and hopes of the era in every new iteration. So what is 1948 Krypton a stand in for? Well if I had to guess, the scene of Jor-El trying to convince a room of bored bureaucrats that their world is teetering on the edge of destruction is meant to evoke…

Too basic? Fine, it’s a metaphor for the inauguration of the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade. You don’t even know what was going on in 1948! Don’t you judge me!

Our Nefarious Villains

More like the Spider Lamey.

Fuck you, I’m tired.

“With powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men!”

This Superman is, by necessity, a bit underpowered compared to later versions, and even seems to be struggling at times when fighting ordinary gangsters (not even Superman is a match for dodgy forties fight choreography). At other times he’s shown as being strong enough to stop a moving car or bend a steel girder. He also uses invulnerability, modest super-speed, super-breath, super-hearing, X-Ray vision and “super sight”, where Superman is able to read the impressions on a broken records and reconstruct it.

FINAL SCORE OUT OF TEN:

NEXT UPDATE: 02 October 2025.

NEXT TIME: You lie, title. You lie.

* Note that “progressive” in the early twentieth century referred to a vast constellation of modernist and anti-traditionalist movements and not (as it does today) as a synonym for left-wing politics. Some of the things these progressive advocated we would still recognise as left-wing, some we really, really, really would not.

Shortstember: Eye of the Beholder

Season 2- Episode 58

Wha’ happen

One of the big challenges for adapting Aladdin as a tv series is the absence of Jafar, one of the all time GOAT Disney villains. So props to the creators because TV Aladdin has an impressively deep bench of villains, ranging from the comically inept to the terrifyingly powerful. Firmly in the latter camp was Mirage, a literal goddess of evil voiced by Bebe Neuwirth.

They’re crafty, those furries. I’ll give them that.

This episode begins with Mirage in her evil dimension known as Morbia (where it’s always Morbin’ time) arguing with Fasir, another recurring character in the series. Fasir is basically a blind, mystically powered mysterious old person who’d show up randomly to give Aladdin a quest to go on. He’s Aladdin’s Madam Webb.

Okay, that’s a Morbius and a Madame Webb reference. Let’s see if I can get Venom and Kraven in there.

Fasir and Mirage are arguing over whether evil will ultimately triumph over good. Fasir claims that love is the greatest power in the universe and Mirage hisses that love is weak. Then Fasir is all “have you not seen my servant Aladdin?” and claims that Aladdin’s love for Jasmine is stronger than all of Mirage’s power. And Mirage is all…

In Agrabah, Jasmine is out shopping in the marketplace with, of all people, Iago. This episode takes place really late in the series and I absolutely love the fact that by this point Iago has gone from plotting Jasmine’s death with Jafar to basically being her sassy gay best friend who fake-flirts with her and it’s kinda adorable.

They’re interrupted by a mysterious merchant woman who tries to sell her some lotion by preying on her insecurities about ageing. Jasmine says that her man loves her no matter what and Mirage (for it is she in disguise!) says that men are fickle dogs who will dump a girl over a single wrinkle to which Iago replies “that’s true! I do it all the time!”

“I use women, kids!”

Just then Aladdin arrives and it’s fucking hilarious. He just jumps into the frame with this ridiculously overly zany music sting, like he’s the wacky comedy relief neighbour about to drop his catchphrase.

“It’s Aladdin time!” “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA!”

He tells her he just had to see her beautiful face again and she says “Oh! So you love my beautiful face do you?” and he, get this, says “yes” because the poor idiot chump thinks that’s the right answer. Worried that he’s going to dump her for a younger model (she is 17) she buys the lotion and applies before going to bed. And when she wakes up.

Was there…like…a roster in the studio? For whose fetish got to be catered to this week?

Genie tells the others that there is a magical tree who’s fruit can heal anything so they set out on a quest for the tree. They encounter many obstacles but Jasmine slowly starts to become more and more snakelike. Mirage is at first baffled that Aladdin is still with Jasmine but realises that he’s just hoping out hope that she can be returned to normal. On the journey, Jasmine has to save Aladdin from falling and almost kills him because the barbs on her tale are venomous. They finally reach the tree but Mirage casts a spell that causes all the fruit to wither, meaning that Jasmine is now permanently stuck as a snake. She tells Aladdin to leave her as she can’t even touch him now without endangering his life. Instead, Aladdin uses the last of the lotion to transform himself into a snake so that they can be together.

It looks like someone swapped the heads on two different action figures.

Mirage is furious but Fasir appears and tells her that just because she lost is no reason for Aladdin and Jasmine to suffer and changes them back to their human forms. They kiss and swear that they will love each other forever, and Fasir, watching from a distance, says that one day he Mirage will realise the truth and realise that she loves him and will back with him because apparently they were once an item but she broke up with him when she became evil.

Appareretly, his true power is “cope”.

How was it?

I really enjoyed this. Jasmine and Aladdin have always had one of the more interesting relationships of any of the Disney leads (no doubt helped that they had three movies and a long ass TV series to explore it). But I’m a sucker for a good “true love conquers all story” and this is a genuinely sweet one.

A whisper in your ear…

In our most recent episode of Now That’s What I Call Nostalgia Esther is offended by my suggestion that the episode won’t be out by the time The Burial Tide is published. Well well well.

Oh, and we also spend almost two hours talking about The Legend of Prince Valiant, a fantastic and unfairly overlooked cartoon fantasy series from the early nineties. Onward! To Camelot!

It is unburied…

Happy pub day!

The Burial Tide is out and available in both paperback and audio (excellently read by Aidan Kelly)!

I also have an article in Crime Reads about immortality in fiction (is that relevant to the book, I dunno, could be!)

And the first reviews are already rolling in!

A starred review from BookPage 

Horror DNA  

FanFi Addict 

Grimdark Magazine 

The Burial Tide: Cut Material

We’re a mere two days out from the launch of my next novel, The Burial Tide. This is a story I loved working on, partially because it allowed me to indulge my love of world-building. And early draft of the novel contained passages from fictional books and newspapers that established some of the history of Inishbannock, the fictional Kerry island where the story takes place. Ultimately, it was decided to cut these for pacing but I didn’t want to let them go to waste. So please, enjoy these early, blog-exclusive glimpes of the world of The Burial Tide.

The 1930s saw the commission, now with full government backing, embark on its most sustained and intensive period of folklore collection. With a staff of six full time collectors, armed with cumbersome Ediphone recorders, the commission was able to collect an estimated 100,000 pages worth of folktales, songs, stories, poems and proverbs from every county in the nation, preserving much of the vernacular culture that was in danger of being lost with every passing decade. Support for the commission’s work was enthusiastic amongst the general public, and collectors often reported being embarrassed by the generosity and hospitality of the villages they visited. There were difficulties, however. Many informants, the more elderly in particular, were uncomfortable with being recorded by the Ediphone and their submissions had to be transcribed by hand, which added greatly to the workload of the collector. And, while a warm welcome was common, it was not guaranteed. Many of the more isolated, tight-knit communities, particularly in the west of the country, were suspicious and sometimes even hostile to these strangers from Dublin. One of the commission’s most respected collectors, Professor Seán Mac Gearrán, made repeated visits to the isle of Inishbannock, off the coast of County Kerry, hoping to interview the island’s inhabitants. Mac Gearrán’s letters to commission director Séamus O’Duilearga during this period are telling. Normally unfailingly upbeat, Mac Gearrán’s account describes the islanders as “churlish” and “dour”, complaining to his superior “you would think I was an Englishman from their disdain for my person”.

His last letter to the commission, dated 12 April 1938, informs them that he had finally convinced one of the islanders, the landlady of the local tavern, to be interviewed. From his time in Co Kerry, Mac Gearrán knew many of the strange and macabre stories that the mainlanders had of the island, and was anxious to hear the islanders’ own account.

What MacGearrán recorded is unfortunately lost to us. MacGearrán (and his Ediphone) sank on the boat back to the mainland within sight of Dingle harbour.

MacGearrán’s loss was a terrible blow to the morale of the commission, to a degree that is still visible. In the lobby of the Irish Folklore Commission (now the Department of Folklore in UCD) hangs a great map of Ireland which the commission used to track the presence of their collectors throughout the country. If one looks closely in the bottom right corner they will see a tiny island of the coast of Co. Kerry. There, drawn in blue pen, is a small cross and the following words in the large, loose hand of Seamus O’Duilearga:

Inishbannock- Noli Intrare.

Anna Bale, A History of the Irish Folklore Commission. Béaloideas Press 2002.

***

In a year when the Irish renewables industry has been facing severe headwinds, the opening of the new Inishbannock Offshore Windfarm has been seen as a much needed victory. Phase 1 of the project will be completed at the end of the year with infrastructure and the first turbine (Windmill One, 120 metres) already operating off the west coast of the island. Phase 2, if approved, will commence work next year and will expand the total number  of turbines to forty, making it one of the largest wind farms in the country.

While opposition from local landowners to windfarms has been increasing in recent years, the Inishbannock Wind Farm has faced no such difficulty.

“Support from the local community has been fantastic” says project overseer Cian Morley. “Everyone understands how important this project is, to the local community, to the country and to the planet.”

Local businesswoman Gráinne Dunne, proprietor of the island pub, agrees: “Inishbannock has survived, unlike so many other island communities, because we’re willing to adapt. The windfarm will bring employment, investment and opportunity to the island.”

When asked if there was anyone on the island who disagreed with this assessment, this reporter was told that I was “welcome to ask around.”

True enough, if anyone on the island opposes the project I was unable to find them.

    “Island Community Blow Away by New Wind Farm- The Kerry Leader.”   

Shortstember: Forget Me Lots

Season 2, Episode 12- Forget me Lots

Wha Happen’?

After stealing the Blue Rose of Forgetfulness, Abis Mal and Haroud sneak into the palace hoping to erase the Sultan’s memory and then replace him on the throne. It’s fine, he’s an idiot, his plans don’t have to make sense.

Meanwhile, Jasmine is pissed at Aladdin because it’s the one year anniversary of the time he took her wonder by wonder, over, sideways and under…

Holy shit, was that song about sex?!

No, no. I gotta get my mind out of the gutter. Anyway, Jasmine is upset and refuses to tell him why because that’s both mature and helpful.

Unfortunately, she runs into Abis Mal and smells the rose which wipes her memory. Aladdin catches up with her and says “I know you don’t like me right now” and, because she has no memory of who this guy is who insists on dressing like a beggar while living in a palace, tells him to stay the hell away from her. This attracts the attention of Razoul, who thinks Jasmine has finally gotten sick of Aladdin and broken up with him and that Aladdin isn’t taking “no” for an answer.

Razoul, standing guard against toxic relationships.

So he throws Aladdin out of the palace. Meanwhile Abis Mal and Haroud find Jasmine and Haroud comes up with the idea of convincing Jasmine that she is Abis Mal’s daughter, a notorious bandit known as The Scourge of the Desert. And my girl is into it.

Jasmine then adopts a new personality which involves wearing dark revealing clothes and cracking a whip at all and sundry.

Hmmm. I wonder what the impetus for writing this episode was. What could it possibly have been?

Jasmine (or Scourge) quickly takes control of the palace but just as Abis Mal is about to take the throne as the new Sultan she betrays him and has him thrown in the dungeon with Haroud switching sides to follow her. Haroud is a really interesting character to me. He’s someone who absolutely could be the boss of his own gang but, for whatever reason, just doesn’t want a management role. I respect that.

Anyway, Aladdin and the Genie realise that the palace has been taken over and race back to help. Battling Scourge, Aladdin realises that she’s lost her memory and that if he can remember what it was that made her angry at him true love will break the spell. Carpet shows him the flower he gave Jasmine on that magic carpet ride where he was was like a shooting star and came so far (OH MY GOD IT’S FILTH) and Jasmine recovers her memory. Unfortunately, the palace is still under the control of Haroud and Abis Mal but genie uses the flower to wipe their memories and Iago and Abu use these men as their servants because this was made in a time when Disney characters could brainwash and enslave their enemies like Walt intended.

How was it?

Ehhhh…fine, if a little disappointing. I think “Evil Jasmine” is a fantastic concept but it just felt a bit under utilised. Also, I’m sorry, Linda Larkin just needed to be having more fun with this, her Scourge voice is just Jasmine but angrier. I mean, if you’re going to be this shameless and have dominatrix Jasmine… commit to it, y’know? As for positives, the opening scene of Abis Mal stealing the Blue Rose is beautifully animated.

“The past doesn’t go away. So you can either live with it forever, or do something about it.”

The nineties, as we’ve discussed previously, were a pretty damn bad time to be a Marvel comics fan but there were still bright spots here and there. One of these was The Thunderbolts, a new superhero team that was introduced in The Incredible Hulk. They were presented as a new team stepping up to replace the Avengers who were all believed dead after the events of Onslaught (in actuality, they were all in a parallell universe being drawn by Rob Liefeld).

Sometimes dead’s better.

Anyway, the Thunderbolts then returned for their own series written by Kurt Busiek. It’s a pretty standard superhero team story right up until the shocking twist at the end of the first issue.

The Thunderbolts were actually villains, a team put together by Captain America’s enemy Baron Zemo to pose as superheroes while he consolidated his grip on the underworld. Of course, they eventually decide they actually like being superheroes and turn face, and since then the Thunderbolts team has basically been, well, Marvel’s Suicide Squad let’s not dance around the issue. It’s a team for former supervillains to try and reform and be good guys. The version of the team that today’s movie is based on comes from the mid-2000s Dark Reign…

” Mouse stop the review right now!”“What? Why?“Me and the other maps are boycotting this movie! Artie Rosen created the Sentry, and yet his estate hasn’t been paid a cent in royalties!”“Artie…oh crap. Guys I’m sorry to have to tell you this. Artie Rosen doesn’t exist. He never did.”“What? But then who delivers gifts to good little maps on Rosenmas?”

Okay, okay. Detour. Let’s talk about the Sentry, one of the first original Marvel superheroes of the new millennium and the subject of one of the most ingenious pieces of guerilla marketing I can recall. If you want a full breakdown of the history of the Sentry hoax, this has got you covered but here’s the cliffnotes version: Marvel basically fooled the comic reading public into believing that there was an artist named Artie Rosen who worked with Stan Lee back in the late fifties who had recently passed away. And in Rosen’s possessions his wife found sketches for a lost superhero that he had supposedly been working on with Stan Lee. This, of course, would be the comic book equivalent of the finding of the Lost Caravaggio. They even got Stan Lee himself in on the scam. In reality, this was all marketing to build up hype for the release of The Sentry by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee, a mini-series about a superhero who was erased from the history of the Marvel universe and who no one remembers. It’s a good story, not an all time classic, but it’s a fun read. We get to see Bob Reynolds interacting with different Marvel heroes in different eras, drawn and written in the style of the time. But here’s the thing. The series ends with Reynolds realising why everyone forgot him: he and his arch-enemy The Void are the same person and every act he does as the Sentry is balanced with an evil act committed by the Void. Therefore, the only way to protect the world from the Void is for the Sentry to go away again. So the series ends with Bob once again wiping the world’s collective memory of his existence and going back to his normal humdrum life. All well and good. But then…

Brian Michael Bendis reintroduced the Sentry as a member of his New Avengers team. And this is where Bob Reynold’s troubles really began, and how he began his journey to become one of the most mishandled characters in Marvel’s eighty year history.

Here was the problem. You may have heard Sentry described as “Marvel’s Superman”.

No. No no no. The Sentry makes Superman look like a coughing baby. The Sentry makes PRE-CRISIS SUPERMAN look like a coughing baby. The Sentry is so powerful I have to break up the list of his powers into two separate screencaps:

Also, he plays the ‘cello.

Like, fucking LOOK at that list. This guy is the physical embodiment of “fuck you I win”. You put him on any team and he renders every other member instantly useless. He should be able to solo the entire rogue’s gallery of the Marvel universe in a single afternoon. Bendis got around this by establishing that Bob was suffering from severe depression and agoraphobia and would only come out of his room to save the world if everyone was super nice to him. This admittedly, led to some pretty awesome moments, like Sentry’s iconic battle with the Hulk during the World War Hulk storyline.

Over the years, Bob’s mental problems got worse and worse and it was an admittedly effective source of tension; what happens if God stops taking his meds and snaps? But that just reduced the character to a ticking bomb and that’s not really sustainable over the long haul. Either the bomb has to go off or the audience realises that the bomb is never going to go off. What the character needed was a stable status quo, a default baseline. And every attempt to give him one failed. Everything about Bob was constantly being re-written every time a new writer got his hands on him, particularly his relationship with the Void. Writer A says the Void never existed and was all in Bob’s head. Writer B says the Void was the angel of death from Exodus. Writer C says he was a loving family man. Writer D says he was an abuser who cheated on his wife. Was he once a lab assistant, a junkie, or made the Sentry as part of the Weapon X programme? Flip a three-sided coin, bucko.

Within an impressively short period of time the character had been reduced to an unsalvageable mess and was killed off, only to be periodically brought back as a super-powered threat that needs to be killed off again. But, as someone who always had a soft spot for the character, I was happy to hear that the Sentry was going to be making his debut in the MCU. Surely they’ve learned from past mistakes and are finally ready to do this character right?

Well, let’s see.

So Yelena Belova is not doing so good. She is, as we saw at the end of Black Widow, working for Valentina Allegra De Fontaine. De Fontaine runs a massive, shadowy government organisation responsible for paranormal experimentation, black ops, assassinations, kidnapping and torture called the “C.I.A.”.

“Wow, Stan Lee. How did you come up with these crazy concepts?”

Yelena has been feeling deeply depressed ever since her sister died and after blowing up a lab in Kuala Lumpur that was working on something called “Project Sentry” she goes to visit her “father” Alexei who’s now living in Washington DC and running a limo driving service. They have a touching scene where she tells him that she just doesn’t know what she’s doing with her life and asks him when he was truly happy. He tells her that it was when he was protecting the USSR as the Red Guardian (I swear to God, I could have sworn he was the Crimson Dynamo, all these commie supervillains just bleed into one for me). Yelena calls into Valentina and says that she wants a more public facing role and Valentina tells her that’s cool, she’s just got one last murder mission for her, don’t worry, it’s wafer thin.

See, Valentina’s been getting her metaphorical chestnuts roasted in Congress over all the superhuman experimentation she’s been accused of doing. Facing impeachment, Valentina is doing a little spring cleaning, gathering all incriminating evidence and putting it in a big vault in the desert. Valentina tells Yelena that someone is trying to steal from the vault and tells her to take the thief out. However, Yelena quickly discovers that she’s not the only one there and that it’s basically the black ops version of when your rideshare app glitches and ends up ordering four different taxis to the same house. And with the same result.

Yes, fight! Fight for my fare!

The other three assassins are John Walker (the “George Lazenby” of the Captain America mantle who now goes by U.S. Agent), Ghost and Taskmaster, who actually shows up in a somewhat comic accurate costume! Fantastic! I’ve mentioned before that Taskmaster is one of my favourite Marvel characters period and I can’t wait for this version to redeem the huge missed opportunity that was her appearance in Black Widow and she’s dead never mind.

Why do you hate me, Marvel? Oh, right.

Now, we’ve already encountered Ghost and the MCU version is so different from her comics counterpart that she might as well be an OC, so let’s talk about John Walker. Walker was initially conceived as the supervillain “Super-Patriot”, a dark mirror image of Steve Rogers’ Captain America. The writer of the Cap comic of the time, Mark Gruenwald, had been getting a lot of pressure from fans to make Captain America a more violent, gun-toting kind of superhero. Gruenwald responded by having Steve give up the Captain America identity only to be replaced by Walker. Essentially, he did what the writers of Batman would do a few years later with Jean-Paul Valley, introduce a new character who gives the audience what they think they want in order to show them why they’re a bunch of idiots who need to shut their pie-holes and let the professionals cook. However, even after Steve returned to the shield, Walker has remained a steady presence in the Marvel universe. More than most, his characterisation tends to fluctuate wildly depending on who’s writing him, what’s happening in the country at the time and what commentary the writer wishes to give. He can be “decent guy with a heart of gold who maybe needs to listen to some different podcasts” or he can be “Hitler had some good ideas”. The MCU version largely steers clear of overt political commentary and instead chooses to tell a story of an ordinary man who was given an impossible job (being Steve Rogers) and was crushed by his own failure and became deeply bitter and cynical, and he was probably the one really good character from Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Anyway, along with the four augmented killing machines there is one more person trapped in here: Bob, a mild-mannered stoner in a surgical gown with no military training or experience and no memory of how he got there.

Yelena quickly realises that everyone here is a loose end for Valentina and that they’ve been sent here to die. They barely manage to escape when the room they’re in turns out to be a massive incinerator and agree to work together to escape the vault.

Meanwhile, Valentina’s assistant Mel is approached by Bucky, sorry, by the FUCKING CONGRESSMAN FROM THE GREAT STATE OF NEW YORK JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES.

I don’t know why this is so funny to me.

Bucky is working on Valentina’s impeachment and he gives Mel his card and asks her to call him if she grows a soul in the next fifty minutes or so. Mel is honestly one of the elements of this movie that doesn’t work for me. No disrespect to Geraldine Viswanathan who is really good in the role but Mel is presented as this idealistic young woman who got into politics to do good and slowly realises that her boss is a monster but…at this point in the story she is already deeply complicit in some truly heinous shit. Like, she knows Project Sentry killed loads of people. She arranged for the Thunderbolts* to be burnt alive in the Vault. These are not little forgivable oopsies.

So Mel tells Valentina that the Thunderbolts* (they’re not called that yet, but please just let me make my life easier) survived and are now working together. They see Bob on the CCTV footage and figure out that he is one of the test subjects of Project Sentry who was supposed to have died and yet is very much alive. Realising that Project Sentry was successful, Valentina scrambles a strike team to capture him and kill the others.

Meanwhile, Yelena and Bob start to bond a little as they both realise they’re struggling with depression. So, cards on the table: I like this movie. Maybe that’s the soft bigotry of low expectations. Maybe after the recent run of MCU flicks I’m just happy to watch something that doesn’t feel like a bunch of re-edited studio notes. Something that has, y’know, characters? Themes? A point? You know, a motion picture. One of those. But yeah, I do actually find myself invested in this movie and Bob and Yelena’s struggles against the Void. I think a lot of people can relate to that. I know I can.

Hello Mouse. Remember me?“Oh hello suicidal thoughts, I’ve been meaning to thank you.”Uh…what?“Oh yeah. Thanks to you I got help, started writing a novel as self-therapy, got an agent, quit my job and now I’m living a happy and fulfilled life with my family earning a living doing something I truly love.”What?! Oh my God! I failed utterly! My whole existence is a joke!“Yeah. Yeah. Hey, I got an idea.”“You should go to the roof.”

The T-Bolts fight their way out of the Vault but Bob sacrifices himself to distract the soldiers and is seemingly shot dead…before getting right back up again like Chumbawamba before they vanished into obscurity. The other three escape into the desert where they’re picked up by Alexei who got a job as Valentina’s limo driver and overheard her plan to kill Yelena (hahaaa, none of that is plausible). Anyway, they’re on the road now, Alexei invites himself on to the team. Suddenly, they’re attacked by some of Valentina’s men but are rescued/captured by the pride of New York’s 9th Congressional District.

You think that’s cool, wait until you see his municipal taxation plan.

Valentina takes Bob to the Watchtower, her new headquarters which she has had the gall to set up in the old Avengers Tower. Valentina pours on the oil with Bob, love-bombing him and telling him that he’s going to do great things. But when Bob’s hand brushes hers she’s forced to relive a traumatic memory from her childhood. She’s so horrified that she almost pulls the plug on the whole thing but Bob assures her “I can control it”.

Valentina moves on with her plan to unveil Bob to the world as a replacement for the Avengers but Mel is terrified by the idea of someone as emotionally and mentally unstable as Bob wielding that kind of power and puts in a call to Bucky.

Bucky has been interrogating the Thunderbolts and, once he realises that they’re telling the truth, they suit up and head to New York to stop Valentina. But, they’re too late.

Valentina sics Bob on the Thunderbolts and the resulting fight scene is frankly terrifying. Bob is not simply “holding back”, he is working very, very hard to make sure he doesn’t accidentally kill anyone. It’s obvious that he could so easily murder everyone in the room with his pinky finger and that I think is the essence of the Sentry’s appeal as a character. He’s not superhero fiction. He’s horror. He represents the terror of something so powerful that you only live because it lets you.

The team gets handed their asses and has to retreat. Valentina tells Bob to finish them off and he replies that they’re no threat to him so he’s not going to do that. We then get a great exchange of dialogue.

: Why should a god listen to…

: I think you’re throwing around the G word a bit too freely.

: Well, you said I’m all-powerful, stronger than all the Avengers combined, which includes at least one god, so…

It’s a lovely escalation of menace. It’s one thing to think “oh he’s going mad with power” but then he calmly and rationally explains his reasoning and it’s airtight. Valentina decides to pull Bob’s kill switch, and in return he almost kills her but he’s killed at the last minute by Mel who picked up the kill switch from where Valentina dropped it.

Down on ground level Yelena angrily leaves the others behind but Alexi chases after her. She breaks down and angrily chews him out for not reaching out to her after Natasha’s death. He apologises, she tells him how shit her life is going and that she hates who she’s become. He comforts her, and they have a really nice reconciliation (that Florence Pugh is going places, I tell ya what) and then they realise that there is a Vantablack man in a cape hovering over the city.

So, having tried to kill Bob, Valentina only succeeded in awakening the Void and proceeded to start turning ordinary New Yorkers into Hiroshima shadows. The Thunderbolts try to save as many people as they can but Yelena realises that Bob can’t be stopped and succumbs to the Void.

She finds herself trapped in her own worst memories but eventually fights her way through to Bob, who’s cowering in a bedroom listening to his father abuse his mother. The other Thunderbolts find them and together the gang decides to face the Void together. They find the Void in the lab where Project Sentry was first created. The Void effortlessly restrains the Thunderbolts leaving Bob to face him alone.

Bob starts wailing on the Void, knocking him to the ground and beating him over and over.

And it does nothing. The rage does nothing. The self-loathing does nothing. The regret does nothing.

The Void just takes it all and whispers “that all you got?”

It’s only when his friends hold him and tell him that he’s not alone that the Void is beaten back.

Yeah. I cried.

They re-emerge in New York along with all the other vanished people and are about to catch Valentina and give her a very stern talking to when she springs a press conference on them, announcing them as the New Avengers. This means that she’s now their boss and they can’t tear her head off because that’s inappropriate workplace behaviour.

***

I do genuinely feel sorry for all the cast and crew of Thunderbolts*. They worked damn hard and made a darn good movie and in a fair world that should be enough. Of course, this is not a fair world and this thing tanked harder than General Patton during the North Africa campaign. The common response to claims of “superhero” fatigue is that it’s actually “bad movie” fatigue but that argument becomes harder to sustain when genuinely good films like this are struggling to find audiences. Hell, even Superman, a bona fide modern classic (my opinion) is doing numbers that would have been considered anemic for an MCU movie just a few years ago. Yes, building a film around characters from Black Widow, Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Ant-Man 2 was a “bold” move. But I think Thunderbolts* just suffered from bad timing. It took several bad films to tarnish the MCU’s reputation to the point where they were no longer surefire hits. Time will tell if several good films can get them back there.

If nothing else, this is a good start.

Scoring

Adaptation: 19/25

A significantly less cynical and mean-spirited adaptation of the Dark Reign Thunderbolts.

Our Heroic Heroes: 21/25

Purely on basic roster-building principles, this is a weird team. There’s so much overlap in terms of powers, personalities, backgrounds and skillsets. And then there’s the fact that you have four basically street-level guys and gals and their friend who’s YAHWEH in a cape. But it works, mostly. All the characters contribute something to the group dynamic (except Ghost, I honestly think she could have been nixed). And as a Sentry fan I am very excited to see where they’re taking Bob.

Our Nefarious Villain: 22/25

Julia Louis Dreyfuss is very entertaining as a slightly more evil version of Selina Meyer. And the Void is one of the most instantly iconic MCU villains on visuals alone.

Our Plucky Sidekicks: 16/25

What with this being an ensemble there’s not a lot of supporting characters but I do like Holt, the leader of Valentina’s strike team who planned for a lethal assault and is told he has to change to non-lethal at the last minute. Very relatable character.

The Stinger

A few months later the New Avengers are getting torched in the press and are facing a legal challenge from Sam Wilson over use of the name. The team’s bickering is brought to an abrupt halt when they see a spacecraft entering Earth’s orbit with a rather familiar symbol…

And the audience went…

We are SO FUCKING BACK!

FINAL SCORE: 78%

NEXT UPDATE: 18 September 2025

NEXT TIME: Oh yeah, you knew this was coming…