Howdy, folks! We’re in the thick of May, we’ve put away those Justin Timberlake memes til next year, and we’re gearing up for summer. For a lot of folks, summer = Sports. Not for me, but for other folks. Still, it’s hard not to have sports on the brain. I’ve never really had a team, as I kinda think “hometown pride” is dumb. Why should I throw my support behind some folks just because they live here? Anyone can move. Players move. Teams move. It’s such a risky gamble. Also, our home football team had an offensive name, while our baseball team is only, like, 20 years old, but people around here pretend like it’s been around forever. Y’all grew up going to Camden Yards just like the rest of us! Lately, though, I’ve discovered some things about a few teams that just might make them my teams going forward.
Believe it or not, the most interesting stuff is going on in minor league baseball. I recently discovered a minor league team in Madison, Alabama, known as the Rocket City Trash Pandas. Formed in 2020, they were originally the Mobile BayBears, but were sold and moved to Madison. A Double-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels, their debut season was set for April 2020, but…Covid. Anyway, they’ve more than made up for lost time, as their merchandise sales have been quite lucrative for the team. Plus, they’ve had Marvel and Star Wars promotions, with Rocket Raccoon taking the spotlight on shirts and hats. As far as wins, they’re pretty much at the bottom of the league. But who cares about winning when you’ve got notoriety?! Anyway, I found out about the team from Katie Nolan’s Casuals podcast, and immediately checked out their website. Now, my family’s from Alabama, but nowhere near Madison. Still, that didn’t stop me from becoming the proud owner of a Trash Pandas t-shirt, sticker set, and enamel pin. I’m all about the swag, baby!
Meanwhile, in my research, I found out that minor league teams do this thing where they adopt “alternate identities”. I haven’t really found a great explanation as to why, but it seems like the most obvious answer is that it’s an opportunity to sell more merchandise. The alternate names tend to be intentionally salacious, as that makes their merch edgier and more sought after. Since the name change is usually a one-game situation, it also makes the merch more rare. For the 2025 season, the Morehead City Marlins will be the Crystal Coast Booty Divers. Meanwhile, the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp will be the Jacksonville Honey Drippers. The Winston-Salem Dash will be the Winston-Salem Hooch Pooches. Meanwhile, the local Chesapeake Baysox probably had the most controversial logo with their alternate identity of the Chesapeake Oyster Catchers. They settled on an oystercatcher bird, perched on a baseball bat, but the original logo was a baseball positioned in an oyster shell, which made it look like a clitoris in a vagina. As you can imagine, some online t-shirt sites are still offering this design.
Finally, sports were everywhere this week, as it was announced that Pete Rose had been reinstated to Major League Baseball, making him eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame. For those not in the know, he had been banned due to gambling, though he claims he’d never bet on his own games. And he did a bunch of other stuff, like sleeping with a teenage girl when he was in his 30s. He never even seemed to show remorse for that one, as journalists would question him, and he’d basically be like “Why you gotta go and bring up old shit?” A real Class Act, that guy! Anyway, he’s dead now, but a certain person in the White House, who has decided to champion every nefarious “underdog”, made it known that he felt Rose deserved to be reinstated, and everyone wants to please that guy these days.
In the past few days, I’m sort of amazed how my stance has changed on the whole thing. My whole life I pretty much felt “No, he hurt the game, and doesn’t belong in the Hall.” I’m sure you’re asking “Why did you even care, Will? You don’t like sports.” Au contraire, mon frere! I don’t care to watch sports, but I, like every boy of my generation, collected baseball cards. That was basically our gateway drug into the world of collecting. Then, we’d move on to collecting comics or POGs or become one of those weirdos who collected stamps. So, I knew the major players, and I had them all in top loaders or Ultra Pro 9-pocket sleeves in an old photo album.
Anyway, I grew up where the mere mention of Pete Rose made my brain immediately respond “Fuck that guy!” The world has changed, however, as we live in a climate where folks want to whitewash history, and eliminate the negative aspects of things. If we’re going to look to history to tell a story, then it should tell the whole story, warts and all. Putting Rose in the Hall won’t erase what he’s done, but rather call more attention to it. Plus, his talent can’t be denied, as he was an important part of the tail end of the golden era of the game. I mean, Babe Ruth is in Cooperstown, and every account basically describes him like “He was a fat, slovenly, womanizing son of a bitch, but boy, could he play baseball!” So, to put Rose into the Hall of Fame doesn’t “forgive” him for what he did, but rather shows that “it takes all kinds” to run the bases.
Meanwhile, I’ve been working on a movie project I’m not ready to share yet, but I took a break from that to check out Novocaine, which recently dropped on Paramount+. I had posted this trailer a few months back, as it looked like this insanely frenetic action movie, starring the unlikely hero choice of Jack Quaid. Having never watched The Boys (I’ve read that comic series, and that was ENOUGH), I didn’t even realize Quaid was on that show. To me, he was Ensign Boimler on Star Trek: Lower Decks (and a live-action guest appearance on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds). Once you realize the “Quaid” comes from the fact that his parents are Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, then you’re sort of like. “Ah. One of those.” Don’t get me wrong, in that he’s a likeable Everyman, but I don’t see him as a STAR, yet he’s been the lead in a LOT of things lately. For this film, it might as well have been called Nepo Babies: The Movie, as the Big Bad is played by Ray Nicholson, son of Jack Nicholson. Also, here’s a fun fact I learned: Ray Nicholson is 33 years old, while Jack has a grandson, Duke Nicholson, who’s 26 years old, and is best known for appearing on the cover of Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell! album. So, Jack has a son and grandson who are 7 years apart!
Anyway, Novocaine focuses on Quaid’s Nathan Caine, who’s a lonely assistant manager of a bank, who also suffers from a condition where he doesn’t feel pain. His only friend is a stranger he games with online, and he has a crush on his coworker, Sherry. One day, Sherry asks him to lunch, and puts him at ease enough for him to try pie for the first time. We think we’re witnessing the beginning of a cute relationship – that is until their bank is robbed, and Sherry is taken hostage by the robbers. So, in a plot familiar to anyone who has played Super Mario Bros, Nathan has to fight his way to Sherry, fighting off foes with his “power” that he doesn’t feel pain. So, he’s stabbed, shot, fried, etc, as his forges on, driven by love. It all sounds pretty cool, but I actually found it pretty boring. It’s good I watched it at home, as a theater viewing would have been a struggle. Whoever edited that trailer deserves an award, because the film never reaches the break-neck pace that we were led to believe it would.
Also, an important distinction is that Nathan doesn’t feel pain, but it doesn’t mean that he’s invincible. So, not to sound all Health Guru on you, but “Pain is GOOD”. Pain is a good metric that you’ve reached a limit, or need to “listen to your body”. So, he gets banged up and keeps going, but he pretty much looks like Wade Wilson when everything is said and done. I’ll say, though, given how formidable the “final boss” turned out to be, it almost made it seem like Nathan had met his match – odd, given we’re never led to believe that the other guy might also have that condition. That might have made things more interesting. Anyway, in some regions the film was known as Mr. No Pain, which makes it sound like a mid 90s Jackie Chan movie. Hell, this whole enterprise would have been more enjoyable as a mid 90s Jackie Chan movie.
Trailer Park
Spider-Man Noir (Prime Video, 2026)
Instead of writing anything, I could just post the video for “I Hate Everything About You” by Three Days Grace. This looks like a fan film from 2004. It doesn’t know if it wants to be inspired by Sin City or be a late 2000s video game cutscene. I…I hate everything about this.
Ironheart (Disney+, June 24)
The fact that this show comes out in a month, and this is the first trailer, implies Disney isn’t exactly giving this project the push it needs. I don’t know if that’s due to quality, or if it’s just seen as some “DEI Project” that they feel they have to bury now. That said, this show contains 2 characters that I actually like quite a bit: Riri Williams and Parker Robbins. Now, I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I sort of stopped reading Marvel in “real time” around the time my second daughter was born. I can pinpoint the moment in the timeline, as it was in the middle of Secret Empire, when all the libs on Twitter were like “How could they make Cap a Nazi?! Don’t they understand what they’re doing?!” Ya know, without actually reading the story first. Writer Nick Spencer was getting death threats over that! Anyway, Charlotte was born, and I was relegated to a life of miniseries and Elseworlds tales, as I didn’t have time for “continuity”. This was around the time when the original heroes were being replaced by legacy heroes, so old school fans didn’t love these new introductions. Amadeus Cho Hulk, Riri Williams Iron Man, and Sam Wilson Cap. So, now the Right Wing fans were all mad about having these minorities “forced on them”. Go raise those kids you’re neglecting, Ted!
I feel like there was a tad pushback on Riri because she was created by Brian Michael Bendis, so there were folks wondering how this white man was going to write another black character (he had already created Miles Morales, and would later create Naomi for DC Comics). What a lot of folks didn’t realize, however, was that this was around the time Bendis and his wife adopted 2 black daughters. On top of a pretty big health scare, I feel like he started to create more personal characters, to perhaps give his kids characters to which they could relate. And that’s tricky, because folks want to rail against the white guy writing black characters, but I see it as someone using his platform to push forward ideas that wouldn’t have gotten noticed by black newcomer creators. Riri was introduced during his run on Invincible Iron Man, and it was pretty much like in the MCU, only comic Riri still had “Tony” to guide her. You see, even though the actual Stark was in a coma (gotta love soap opera tropes), he had left a Tony A.I. that was something of a mentor to Riri. So, similar to how Stark mentored Peter in the movies, he mentored Riri in the comics. And that’s where I left her. I know she would go on to adopt the codename Ironheart, and she would meet Shuri, just as in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, but Lord only knows what they’ve done to her characterization since. I will say, however, that I never really liked MCU Riri. I don’t know if it’s the casting, or the fact that her “voice” doesn’t feel familiar from when I was reading the comics. I’m just not a fan, but I’m willing to have my mind changed.
Meanwhile, Parker Robbins was created almost a decade before Riri, by Brian K. Vaughan, in the miniseries The Hood. This was a book I picked up at the time, as it was part of Marvel’s fledgling MAX imprint, which meant “Boobies and Cursing!” I was 20. What did you expect from me? Anyway, it was an interesting story about a 2-bit criminal who comes into possession of a mysterious hooded cloak that turns out to have been possessed by a demon. Basically, the cloak gives Robbins the power to become a real force to be reckoned with, and allows him to shoot demonically charged bullets. Anyway, he spends his first few years as something of a joke, but during Bendis’s time on the Avengers books, Robbins eventually replaces Wilson Fisk as the Kingpin of New York. So, it’s a character with a lot of potential, but, just like Riri, Anthony Ramos is NOT the dude I saw as The Hood. So, everyone here seems to be playing against my expectations, but I’ll be watching. I mean, someone’s got to!
Run The Numbers
Yeah, I realize I need to read a “real” book. At this rate, I’m gonna have to do one a month just to hit that goal. I’m not too worried yet, though. This week, high on Thunderbolts* Fever, I decided to finally read the original The Sentry miniseries from Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee. I feel like most of the folks reading this already know the story here, as you all listen to Wizards: The Podcast Guide To Comics (especially the episodes I’m on, right? RIGHT?), but in case you don’t, here we go: This series was introduced through a marketing campaign orchestrated by Marvel Comics and Wizard Magazine. The gist was that someone at Marvel had unearthed sketches of an unpublished Marvel hero, and a date on the back indicated that they predated the Fantastic Four. This hero, known as The Sentry: The Golden Guardian of Good, would have been the actual first Marvel Super Hero, and was purportedly created by Stan Lee and artist Artie Rosen. The magazine even had then Marvel Editor in Chief Joe Quesada conduct an interview with Lee about the hero, where Lee played coy, answering most questions with things like “My memory is fuzzy” and “Well, I’ve created so many things over the years!” Coincidentally, Rosen had passed away a few months prior to the discover of the sketches, noted by an obituary that had been published in Wizard.
Eventually, it’s said that Paul Jenkins had been looking through files at the Marvel offices, and when he came across the sketches of The Sentry, he and Jae Lee decided to bump a planned Namor series to focus on a Sentry series instead. So, the story introduces us to Robert Reynolds, who just seems like an Everyman, yet he believes something in his life is…off. Not only that, but he feels that something is coming. So, throughout the miniseries – and accompanying one shot specials – Reynolds makes his way through the Marvel Universe, slowly piecing together his story. He begins to remember he was once the hero known as The Sentry, who had been best friends with Reed Richards, and had worked alongside the likes of the original X-Men, Spider-Man, and the Avengers. For some reason, though, he’s the only one who remembers. So, he visits all of these parties and tries to get them to remember. They usually think he’s crazy until he presents them with a certain trinket or gift that jogs their memory. Once he gets them all to remember, he warns them that it’s just in time, as his nemesis The Void is coming, and it’s going to take their combined might if they’re to even have a chance to defeat him. Well, if you’ve seen Thunderbolts* (or read any comic with the character), then you already know that The Sentry IS The Void. It’s some sort of multiple personality/dark side of his psyche thing going on, where The Sentry gave rise to his own worst enemy. And the fact that everyone had forgotten had been orchestrated, as the only way to keep The Void at bay was to also render The Sentry inert. So, they’d all forgot for their own safety. But now the cat’s out of the bag.
My problem with the story is that they lay it on WAY too thick. It’s not only that Sentry was a hero, but every character, once they remember, says something like “He was the best of us”. He could talk science on equal footing with Reed Richards, he could fly better than Angel, and craziest of all, he was the only person to tame The Hulk, with the behemoth considering The Sentry to be his only friend. I understand that the story was trying to beg the question “How could everyone forget someone SO important?”, but it was doing too much. Didn’t need all that. Most surprising, however, is how the story ends. I thought it would open the door to The Sentry’s future appearances in the Marvel Universe, but that’s not exactly what happens. Oh, and that whole “Stan Lee and Artie Rosen created The Sentry and lost the sketches” thing? FAKE. Stan had just played along. “Artie Rosen” wasn’t even a real creator, and the picture used in the obituary had been the great uncle of Wizard staff writer Christopher Lawrence. Some fans felt bamboozled, but I long for the days the you could pull off a hoax like that. The internet pretty much killed all of that.
Links I Loved
Over at Space Monkey X, Rob does a deep dive into the RoadBlasters toyline from Matchbox. I knew of their existence, but never really knew the story behind them. He’s got the rundown on everything, and it’s a great look back at an 80s toyline that had a lot of promise.
Things You Might Have Missed This Week
- More like “My Father the Zero“, amirite? French actor Gérard Depardieu was found guilty of sexually assaulting two women on a film set. Do you know how egregious something sexual has to be for the FRENCH to say “Non! You have gone too far!”?!
- The next MonsterVerse installment will be called Godzilla x Kong: Supernova. All the best Oasis jokes have already been made, but this is where I would have put an Oasis joke.
- Speaking of sequels, it was announced that next year’s Mario film will be called Super Mario World.
- Everything old is new again, as it was confirmed Krysten Ritter will reprise her role as Jessica Jones in Daredevil: Born Again season 2. I said this on social media, but here’s my thing with this: I love Ritter, and I love Jessica Jones, but I don’t love Ritter as Jessica Jones. That casting was always wrong to me. Yes, I do have ideas as to who would have been a better choice.
- Netflix is bringing back 80s staple Star Search, as a live show that will air twice a week. I’m only watching if it’s hosted by an AI Ed McMahon. Seacrest and Cannon have enough jobs, and they seem to be the only ones who get these kinds of gigs.
- Star Wars: Skeleton Crew‘s Ryan Kiera Armstrong has been cast as the new slayer in Hulu’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer..sequel? Folks keep calling it a “reboot”, but Gellar is involved, so that term is incorrect.
- Don’t tell Mrs. Charter, but it seems her husband is really into Cox. Yeah, that didn’t exactly land. Anyway, Charter Communications is set to merge with Cox Communication in a $34.5 billion deal
- Finally, we got this poster of Hulu’s upcoming King of the Hill revival, and it’s sort of everything it needs to be. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t want this, but if we’re getting it anyway, I like the direction they’re going
I can’t believe we’re here – that I’m actually typing this. But could Warner Bros Discovery finally be coming to their sense? They made a lot of moves this week that kept them in the public eye. First up, it was announced that there would be a rare screening of Joel Schumacher’s original cut of Batman Forever. Now, the existence of this cut has been known, as Kevin Smith even did a private screening, but this is one that the general public (well, those in the vicinity of LA’s CineFile Video) can attend. Now, it’s unclear if Warner Bros is “allowing” this, but it’s more telling that they also haven’t *killed* it, either. This is the studio that has a completed Batgirl movie that they refuse to allow to see the light of day. It would be typical for David Zaslav to have his legal team fire off a cease & desist over the fear of “brand confusion”. So far, though, LA Batman fans need only wait til May 29th to watch this rare cut of the film.
Then, at this week’s network upfronts, it was announced that Max’s hit medical series The Pitt would air on TNT this fall, leading up to the second season’s premiere on the streaming service. The Noah Wyle drama takes place in “real time”, over the course of one day. So, it’s basically Jack Bauer versus gunshot wounds and heart attacks. Also, the first season of John Cena’s Peacemaker is also slated to air on TNT this fall. No word on how edited these shows will be.
The biggest Warner Bros Discover news, however, was how they announced their Max streaming service, formerly known as HBO Max, would once again be known as HBO Max. Sure, we all had a lot of jokes about it, and you’ve got to wonder how much money they wasted on research and rebranding. That said, this is a corporation admitting they made a mistake. And it didn’t require a changing of the guard for them to do so. It’s the same David Zaslav it’s always been, but this is a new approach from him. Also, it’s believed that WBD may be about to spin off some companies just as Comcast Xfinity recently did with their cable networks. So, to better position their assets for the marketplace, they need to make sure they look the best that they can. While they, at one time, felt the HBO name was being “tarnished” by being attached to a streamer, it seems like the HBO brand as a whole was being tarnished by not residing under a unified umbrella. So, I applaud this change, and hope it means they might be changing their minds on other decisions they’ve made. So, for this corporate change of heart, Warner Bros Discovery had the West Week Ever.
