Neil Sharpson's Blog, page 2

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…

A seal of great value

As ever, Autumn’s golden-russet oncoming heralds the arrival of the Barnes and Noble preorder promo. As it ever was, as it ever shall be.

Barnes and Noble are running a preorder promo from Wednesday, September 3 through Friday, September 5.

B&N Rewards members will get 25% off preorders, and B&N Premium members will get 25% off, plus an additional 10% discount. Becoming a Rewards member is free and can be done online with the code  PREORDER25.

And would you look at that! It seems I have a book coming out in six days time!

Shortstember: Aladdin the Series

Hurrah! It’s back. Yes folks, this year September fell at a time when I’m not currently sweating a deadline like a hoor in church having taken on far too many writing projects.

I have been sitting on doing a review for Aladdin the series for what feels like forever because I was being good and waiting for the series to pop up on Disney Plus. Unfortunately, it’s not on there and it’s starting to look like it never will be. This is pretty shocking because the series was one of the biggest successes of Disney’s TV division in the nineties, running to an utterly staggering 86 episodes. Nobody seems to know why, either.

Some have suggested that Disney were worried some of the episodes haven’t aged particularly well, or that Genie’s pop culture references risked copyright infringement or simply that Dan Castellaneta’s royalties would be prohibitively expensive. Well, whatever the reason, I am forced to review this series from memory. That’s right. I am reviewing these episodes entirely, and perfectly legally, from my own perfect memory from thirty years ago. And the screencaps I’m using? Drawn by me. From my own memory. Allll nice and legal like. Got it? Good.

The series aired between 1994 and 1995 and takes place between Return of Jafar and King of Thieves. And if you’re wondering “how the hell did they crank out 86 episodes in two years?” it’s probably best not to think about it too hard.

But it probably helped that a whopping eight studios worked on this thing, which, if I know nineties cartoons (and I know nothing else) means that the animation consistency will be scattered over a ten mile radius.

The series is very episodic and doesn’t really do arcs so I’m just diving in and picking out episodes that sound interesting to talk about.

Season 2, Episode 6- One Enchanted Genie

Wha Happen’?

This episode opens with recurring villain Abis Mal (Jason Alexander), now paired with a…servant (?) named Haroud Hazi Bin (James Avery) having just successfully stoled Genie’s lamp from the palace in Agrabah. And it shows how long I’ve been out of the game that my first thought was “oh shit! So he’s Genie’s master now?! What stakes!”

But no, as I obviously should have remembered, Genie is free by this point and the lamp is now just what he sleeps in. There’s a funny bit where Haroud grouses that Abis Mal raised the alarm by treading on Abu and we then see Genie racing across the desert yelling “LAMP THIEF! MONKEY MASHER!”

Abis Mal manages to escape with the lamp, however, leaving Genie miserable. Which, hang on, didn’t Genie hate living in the lamp? Why is he so nostalgic for it now? I dunno, maybe the housing market’s gotten a lot worse. I can understand that.

Pictured: The average Dublin renter.

But Genie perks up when he realises that as soon as Abis Mal rubs the lamp, Genie will know where he is and kick his ass. But Abis Mal is so paralysed by trying to choose his first wish that he takes ages to rub it, leading Genie to wail “why won’t he rub my lamp?!” like a one night stand frantically waiting by the phone for him to call. Anyway, Abis Mal finally decides on a wish (a new hat) and Genie flies away to confront him only to come across a street urchin who has discovered a bottle with a genie.

These characters are introduced so fucking abruptly I cannot tell you. It feels like a different episode got randomly spliced into this one. Anyway, the girl genie is named Eden and she endears herself pretty quickly I gotta say. When Dhandhi, the urchin, makes her first wish for a sandwich, Eden flat out refuses to let her squander a wish like that and instead tells her to wish to never go hungry again. And that’s honestly heart-warming. Genie instantly falls in love with Eden and tries to impress her by also granting Dhandhi’s wishes but that just makes Eden pissed at him for muscling in on her turf. Their competition results in a stack of pepperoni pizza a mile high (guys, you do know that’s pork right?) which draws the attention of Abis Mal.

Once Eden realises that Genie already has a master (wait) it turns out she is super in to him. Dhandhi tells her to go for it and they agree to a date.

Eden shows up at the palace dressed to the nines and having switched skin colour…

…and they have a magical evening dancing amongst the stars. But, Eden feels her bottle being rubbed and promises Genie she’ll be back in a flash. But, when she returns to Dhandhi she finds that Abis Mal has the bottle and is her new master. When she doesn’t return, Genie assumes he’s been dumped and goes back to Aladdin who suggests that they continue their search for Genie’s lamp. While looking like he is off his face on something.

“Okay guys, for this scene we’re going to draw his eyes in a way to suggest that he has Bush Baby ancestry.”

They find Abis Mal and are shocked to see that Eden is now under his control. Genie goes on a furious tirade, accusing her of secretly working for Abis Mal the whole time to trick him (“the kid was a nice touch!”) which is just fucking bananas. Dude, you’re a GENIE. YOU KNOW SHE HAS NO CHOICE HERE.

Wow. Why is Genie voluntarily working with Jafar here?
What an asshole!

Haroud effortlessly incapacitates Aladdin and tells Abis Mal to wish for Eden to imprison Genie at the bottom of the ocean. “Why is Haroud even working for Abis Mal when he is infinity times more competant?” is a question, sadly, that will not be answered in this episode.

After granting this wish, Eden apologises to Aladdin and he’s all “hey, no, I understand, you literally have no free will I don’t blame you” because, y’know, Aladdin’s not a fucking idiot. Abis Mal’s second wish is, hang on, let me get this word for word: “make me the biggest tough guy ever, a cosmic one! I want to blow up things and, eh, possess MEGA BRAIN ENERGY!”

So she turns him into a kaijiu and he starts trying to stomp Aladdin. But, Eden gets a message to Genie telling him how to escape because, while Abis Mal wished him to the bottom of the ocean, he didn’t wish him forever. Genie shows up, high on love, and he’s quickly able to undo Abis Mal’s wish and turn him back to normal size. So Abis Mal uses his final wish to transform Aladdin and Genie into cockroaches so that he can stamp on them. But, Abu grabs the bottle and tosses it to to Dhandhi who wishes that Abis Mal’s wish not come true and Eden instead turns Abis Mal and Haroud into cockroaches. When Dhandhi points out that she didn’t actually wish for that Eden shrugs and says “freebie”.

Now THAT’S customer service. The little extras.

Dhandhi decides that she’s going to use her last wish to free Eden, but says “I only wish we could always stay together” and wouldn’t ya know it? This means Eden has to stay with her and she and Genie can’t be together. For some reason. But she reminds Genie that they have eternity and that she’ll be free for a date in a century or so.

“You had me at “one day this child will be dead’.

How was it?

You know what? Not bad at all! It helps that this episode has an insanely high quality voice cast, like, my God. But the writing has this absurdist streak running through it that got more than a few guffaws out of me and the animation is zippy and surprisingly fluid. Yeah, we are off to a great start! Let’s see if that lasts (not foreshadowing, I am flying completely blind on this. I have no idea what episode I am going to…remember…next).

The elephant in the room…

Hey folks, new episode has dropped. This go round we talk about Johnson and Friends, an Australian show for tots that aired in the nineties and that features grown ass adults in fuzzy animal costumes. What could be more wholesome?

C’est la vie…

In this installment of Now That’s What I Call Nostalgia we talk about the educational, entertaining and often deeply, deeply weird French series Once Upon a Time…Life.