After 8 exciting weeks, we’ve come to the closing ceremonies of Camp Ellie Mae. Next week, the girls will return to school, while I will shut down the camp and continue looking for work. It has been both a long and short summer, but I’m ready for them to go back to school. I pay taxes for them to be watched by someone else during the day! Meanwhile, I watched and read a lot this week, so let’s get into it.
So, last weekend my buddy John and I went to the Fathom Events 35th anniversary release of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film. I was thrown off in the beginning, because I was like “Why does this look so shitty?” It’s because they were showing an outtake that was part of some fan film someone had made. The problem, though, is this “preview” ran so long that I started to wonder if I had gotten tickets to the actual film, or if I had mistakenly gotten tickets to watch this fan film thing.
This is gonna sound weird, but I was amazed by how disconnected I was from the film for about the first 1/3 of the movie. I mean, it wasn’t my first time, and I was a TMNT mega fan, like every other kid in the 90s. Still, it’s a franchise that has gone through changes throughout its different incarnations, plus I haven’t really paid attention to it since Power Rangers hit the scene. That said, I was watching it with the same bewilderment that I have when my girls try to explain some new promotion in Roblox (What the Hell is a “Honey Merchant”?). I was watching, like “What am I supposed to get out of this?” Looking back, it was sort of a testament to how much we’d just snatch up anything associated with that franchise. I mean, by that point, we’d been watching the cartoon for about 4 years. And this movie was pretty much nothing like the cartoon. Sure, the main pillars are there: fighting turtles named after Renaissance artists, rat mentor, Shredder, attractive female who probably smells terrible. But where’s Krang? Splinter was ALWAYS a rat? And it’s so poorly lit, whereas the cartoon was a bright, colorful affair.
It also made me think about this time in filmmaking. The film was a huge hit, and when we think of that these days, it’s usually some box office spectacle with a budget of $200M that goes on to make $700M. This film, however, was considered an independent film at the time, made on a budget of $13.5M, going on to gross $202M. THAT’S INSANE! However, based on that $13.5M budget, they had to cut some corners. It’s not a visual spectacle as much as a trick of lighting. It looks akin to a really good Cannon film, or something from New World Pictures, like 1989’s The Punisher. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s certainly a relic of its time.
After I sort of “got back in the groove”, I enjoyed it. I’m not about to run into the street, yelling “Turtle Power!” but it was fun. I do think that Donatello doesn’t get a fully formed personality in the film. Plus, I’d throw it all out for a film that focused on the sexual tension between Casey and April. When they get to that farmhouse, you’re half expecting it to turn into 9 1/2 Weeks. I feel like any relationship between them would be toxic as Hell, but you just know the first time they had sex it shook the walls! Anyway, I saw a lot of folks on social media talking about heading to the screening, so did any of y’all feel the same way I did about any of this?
Next up, I watched a terrible documentary called ABBA: Against The Odds. Now, I have already told y’all that we were considering cord cutting in the wake of the Cartoon Network removal from Xfinity. Well, we’re doing it, but I’ve got to clear off the 200 things on the DVR I never watched. One of these things was this documentary, which was released to commemorate the band’s 50th anniversary in 2024. I call it terrible because it didn’t really have a narrative. Sure, it’s chock full of archival interviews and original recordings, but what story is it trying to tell? Basically, it wants you to believe that ABBA was a huge international joke, having risen to fame as the dark horse winner of the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. However, they were allegedly such an embarrassment to their native Sweden that the country did not wish to host the next year’s contest, which is the obligation of the winning country.
Meanwhile, the band would travel the world, appearing on talk shows as the hosts mocked them to their faces. The story of ABBA, however, isn’t a very exciting one. The doc is littered with newspaper headlines, meant to set the tone, but I did some research that turned up a lot of those were faked. Also, I had recorded this off The CW, which had chosen to censor some words in the onscreen articles. This leaves you wondering what was real and what wasn’t. You could probably trust the audio, but the printed matter? Not so much. And that pained me, because there was a great quote where they were being mocked for not really being like the Soul music that was on the rise at the time, and member Benny Anderson replied “To some people, this is Soul.” It was such an innocent, and somewhat naïve approach, but that was ABBA.
At the end of the day, that group was essentially “What if the 4 most boring people you knew got together and created some of the greatest melodies not generated within the confines of Contemporary Christian Music?” They weren’t about that rock star life, and the touring wore on them. It ruined their marriages to each other. When Agnetha and Bjorn had their daughter, they started taking separate flights on tour, just in case something happened to a plane their kid wouldn’t be an orphan. They all really seemed to love making music, but they didn’t enjoy everything that came with fame. I can understand why Anderson and Ulvaeus would move on to making musicals, like Chess, where they aren’t front and center. Anyway, great look back at ABBA’s music, but terrible look back on ABBA’s influence.
Next up, Lindsay and I watched the Netflix docuseries Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser, which focused on NBC’s hit weight loss show of the early 2000s. I was familiar with a lot of this, as articles were coming out a decade ago about how the show shredded the metabolism of the contestants, creating a lifestyle that was impossible to maintain once they left the show. Out of the folks they interviewed, they’d all gained the weight back. Some were even heavier now than when they went on the show. The most interesting stuff is probably on the production side. This was a JD Roth show, as I’m sure a lot of y’all don’t realize the former host of the syndicated kids game show Fun House went on to create reality TV shows. Now 57 (we’re all so old…), Roth looked back at the show, and stands by the fact that they made good television. Meanwhile, the contestants act like they are just now getting the joke about the show’s title. “They were making us look like losers. Were we the losers? Is that what the show was truly about?”
Sure, the show did insane things. It would take them into a room, filled with tempting foods, and the winner of the round would be whomever consumed the most calories. Yet, they were still expected to meet their weight loss goal in spite of this binge activity. The only host who participated was coach Bob Harper, who was interesting in that he’s in a totally different place in his life now. He was sort of a Dude’s Dude during the show, but after surviving a “widowmaker” heart attack in 2017, he’s now living out loud. He is a proud, catty gay man, and he probably would have been more interesting on The Biggest Loser if he’d been allowed to be that then. Hell, this was the age of Queer Eye 1.0, so NBC knew there were ratings there.
Meanwhile, other coach Jillian Michaels was painted as the villain of the show, as she’d yell at contestants, but then come back and gently tell them she’s pushing them for their own good. Allegedly, she convinced contestants to take caffeine pills (as well as Stacker-2, which used to be advertised during WWF Superstars, and was known to make folks’ hearts explode), which were against the rules. Of course she declined to participate in the documentary, which made it easy to pin blame on her. I mean, there was a period of time in the mid 2000s where most fitness shows were run by a mean lesbian. Hell, over on Bravo, Michaels’s ex-girlfriend, Jackie Warner, was doing the same routine on her reality show Work Out, which would end up being canceled when Warner and her staff mocked a club member’s breast implants, not realizing she was a breast cancer survivor. So, not great people here.
Meanwhile, the show’s on-set doctor, Dr. Huizenga, maintained that he wasn’t aware of all of the challenges, and that the coaches frequently did things without consulting him. In fact, there were many contestants where he forbade them from participating in challenges, which put them at odds with the coaches and their fellow team members. Huizenga is trying to come off genuine, but the guy has a mullet. I can’t trust a 2025 doctor who looks like 1988 Ian Ziering.
I appreciated, though, how most of the contestants didn’t blame the show for their subsequent weight gain. Some acknowledged that their metabolism was probably shot by the time they’d even been chosen for the show. They all admitted it was a life-changing experience, even if it wasn’t all about maintaining weight loss. Some returned home with the courage to leave toxic marriages. Some learned it’s a marathon and not the sprint that the show depicted it to be. It’s only 3 episodes, at roughly 35 minutes each, so it’s worth a watch if you were ever a fan of the show.
Another DVR cleanout was Lifetime’s Recipe For Seduction, which was INSANE. I know I wrote about it when it was released back in 2020, but I hadn’t watched it until now. If you’re not familiar, it was “custom branded content”, which was basically a 15-minute KFC ad. You see, it follows a standard Lifetime movie formula, yet it’s truncated. Mario Lopez stars as a young, sexy Harland Sanders who finds himself working for a family that’s about to lose their fortune. The daughter has been promised to the son of another wealthy family, but she can’t marry him, as she doesn’t love him. She’s being forced into the marriage so that the union between the families will keep her family afloat. She comes to find, however, that she does love the new mystery chef that her mother has hired (So, their losing money, with the bank about to foreclose, but they hire a new chef?). Sanders is quickly smitten with her, and he proceeds to tell her about his dream of sharing his “secret recipe” with the world. She shares this with her mom, who’s a royal bitch that’s in cahoots with the other rich family. Now, her boyfriend, angry that his proposal wasn’t accepted, decides to pay off Sanders to make him leave town. He writes him a check for $500,000, so that he can get started on sharing that recipe as far from there as possible.
I’m gonna stop there, because then things REALLY go off the rails! Did I mention this thing was only 15 minutes long?! I feel like I use this description a lot, but it was filmed like pornography without the sex. Also, I’m not sure if this accomplished its goal of increasing traffic into KFC. It was released during Covid, when it’s not like we had a ton of chicken choices. We ate whatever DoorDash or GrubHub would bring us! I don’t know if this is streaming anywhere, but it’s worth checking out, merely to discover that Saved By The Bell might have been the best acting of Lopez’s career.
Run The Numbers
We’ve reached a milestone this week, as we met the 50 book goal for TPBs/GNs. What makes it even more special is that I read three DC trade paperbacks, bringing the total to 52 – a very important number (for whatever reason) in the DC Universe. Back when Absolute Batman launched, I read the first issue, and it even had the West Week Ever. Then, I sort of just stacked up the other issues. I enjoyed what I read, but Life… Anyway, I noticed the first trade was on Hoopla, so I checked it out.
Absolute Batman Vol 1: The Zoo is the origin of Batman in this new take on the DCU that spun out of the Absolute Power event. I hated that event, but I appreciated what it gave us. I won’t say that Absolute DC is more “grounded”, but it is a darker take on what we’ve seen before. The world itself – likely because of Darkseid’s influence, is just a much harder place to live. In Absolute Batman, we meet a Bruce Wayne unlike the one we’re used to seeing: this one has no money, no mansion, and his mother is still alive. Instead of the familiar Parents Gunned Down After Seeing Zorro origin, this Bruce lost his father – who was also his teacher – in a mass shooting at the Gotham Zoo during a class field trip. Forever changed by that event, he trained his body, but also became a civil servant, learning all the ins and outs of his city. He worked in the sewers, he worked construction, he worked for water treatment. He’d gather knowledge and then move on.
Anyway, when the story starts, the Party Animals gang is wreaking havoc on the city, where mask-wearing criminals are running wild. Batman would learn that the masks are gamifying the process, assigning certain dollar amounts to certain crimes. Some folks believe that the Party Animals are taking orders from a crime boss, known as Black Mask, but no one has been able to prove it. Meanwhile, Batman appears, as this hulking behemoth, who inflicts pain, has a transforming cape, and a giant axe that he stores in his chest symbol. Yeah, it’s insane, but it works.
A lot of the story, however, is told from the viewpoint of Alfred Pennyworth, who is not Bruce Wayne’s butler, but rather a career spy/assassin. He is NOT a good man. But it seems like he’s trying to do something good with the time he has left. He has a daughter, Julia, who lives in Gotham, and wants nothing to do with him. Pennyworth has been sent to Gotham to collect intel on Black Mask, but also engage Batman if he gets in the way. He wastes no time figuring out Batman’s identity, and he’s also the one who tells the reader about Bruce’s path to becoming Batman. He quickly finds himself impressed by Batman, even if he thinks he’s in over his head. He thinks he’s teaching Bruce about how the world works, but Bruce ends up showing him that he might be wrong.
Another interesting aspect is that all of Batman’s traditional enemies are actually his friends here. Penguin, Two-Face, Catwoman, Killer Croc, and Riddler – all childhood friends of Bruce Wayne. Hell, they were also on the field trip to the zoo! Did that field trip mess them up, too? It doesn’t seem like it. I’d love for this to be a permanent thing, but I just feel like this was done to give it emotional weight down the road when each of them goes bad.
I’m not gonna give a beat by beat review, as I want y’all to read it. I will say, when everything was said and done, I sort of wish it was just an Elseworlds miniseries, and not an ongoing affair. I really love what they’ve set up here, but I just know they’re gonna ruin it down the road. They’re gonna give themselves too much rope, and they’ll end up hanging themselves. For now, though, it’s a story about hope and perseverance in a world that’s trying to beat you down, which is something that’s been missing from comics for quite some time, but also something we could all use right now.
Since I enjoyed Absolute Batman so much, I saw that Absolute Wonder Woman Vol 1: The Last Amazon was available, so I checked it out. I’ve never loved that character, as she’s hard to get “right”. Plus, I’ve always had this aversion to mythology, so that was something of a barrier for me. Trying to remember all the gods, and what they were gods of, was just too much of a task. In this incarnation, however, it’s not as important.
Diana was sent to the Underworld as a baby, to punish the Amazons for their transgressions. She would be the last Amazon, so her separation from her people was both symbolic and intentional. Circe, also banished to the Underworld, was forced to be here guardian in this lawless, godforsaken place. Circe initially pushed back against this “sentence”, but she came to love Diana over time. She knew her strength, but she also began to notice her compassion for love. She never wanted to kill enemies, but rather transform them. It’s like she saw the good in them that they didn’t see themselves. So, Circe and Diana became a nice little family over time, as Circe taught her the ways of magic. Circe, however, knew that one day Diana would leave, as she had been having visions of Diana’s future, and how she would become a great hero to mankind.
Steve Trevor also shows up because, well, can you have a Wonder Woman project without him popping in? The problem with Trevor is he never seems worthy of Diana. Sure, he’s captivated by her, and she’s smitten with him, but he’s just a dude. Even as Chris Pine (who’s just the latest model of Chris O’Donnell), he’s nothing to exactly “write home about”, and that comes across here. Don’t get me wrong – he’s a good guy but, at the end of the day, he’s still just a man.
So, this is the story of Diana coming to Man’s World, to save humanity from a freak beast that’s attacking a city – the same city where Steve and Wonder Woman mainstay Etta Candy happen to be. It’s one of those “This is just the beginning” situations, so she has to remain in case some other mythological beast she show up. The story itself is fine, but what shines here is the characterization. You can notice the transformation in Circe as Diana’s capacity for love begins to affect her. Diana herself is an amazing character. There’s one aspect about her (that I’m not gonna spoil here) that makes her better than any incarnation of Diana I’ve ever encountered. She is BADASS, but also gentle. You know how a wave can gently roll in, but also violently crash against rocks, yet it’s all the same water? Anyway, a lot of folks have said that this is their favorite Absolute title, and while I may not be there with them on that, I can certainly understand why.
Well, my timing was excellent, as I finished WW just before Absolute Superman Vol 1: Last Dust of Krypton was released, so I checked it out on Hoopla. Ya know, it was a bold move for them to make us wait for Superman, as this was the actual order in which the series were released. Still, it was more than worth the wait.
In this version, Kal-El’s parents were NOT “science royalty” like in most incarnations. Sure, they were smart, but their unwillingness to go along with the rules of society had caused them to be ostracized. They were cast amongst the laboring class, who had no say in the matters of Krypton. Meanwhile, Kal-El wasn’t really a special child. He was the slowest amongst his peers, and he didn’t do well in school, as he never really connected with the content. He preferred to write his own reports, when society dictated he let the Kryptonian A.I. do it (Sound familiar?). So, when laborer Jor-El discovers something wrong with Krypton’s infrastructure (in this case, it wasn’t a freak accident, but rather the result of the Kryptonian version of frakking), no one wants to listen to him. Seeing no other options, he tells Lara-El, who begins working on a ship that will save them and whomever they manage to convince to leave with them. Their ark only ends up with a handful of families on it, as it takes off from a Krypton about to explode. The debris, however, destroys their ship, with Kal’s pod seemingly the only survivor. He lands in Smallville, on the farm of the Kents, who are about to lose everything due to a bad harvest. Martha sees him as an angel, as he helps them to turn things around. That is, until the Lazarus Corporation shows up, as a neighbor had reported them for an “immigration violation”.
Fast forward to now, and Kal is basically traveling the world, destroying labor camps and rescuing the folks forced to work them. It seems Lazarus Corporation owns everything, and they’re propped up by a labor class kept in line by the Peacemaker security force. When they notice something has been taking down their operations, Agent Lois Lane is assigned to the case to find out the truth about this mysterious being. There are fun little Easter eggs, like Lois hates writing, and Jimmy shows up, but he’s a freedom fighter. It’s also interesting how Kal was with the Kents for roughly a week, so they didn’t raise him like in most incarnations.
The most impactful thing about this series is that I feel like it’s the one, out of the core Absolute titles, that shows how bad this world actually is. In Batman, we’re used to Gotham being corrupt, so it doesn’t really hit home. In Wonder Woman, most of the action is magic-based, in the Underworld. When she gets to our world, it looks like any other city. Superman, however, is usually the “bright spot” of any DC Universe, as Metropolis is “The City of Tomorrow”. Not this time, though. In fact, Metropolis isn’t present. Instead, the backdrop is a bunch of Third World locales where people are merely commodities, all used toward the success of Lazarus Corp. Now, if you’re even remotely a DC fan, then you already know who is in charge of that company, but it’s interesting to see them positioned as a Superman foe, as that hasn’t been the case in the past. Still, Kal is bringing a glimmer of Hope to people who desperately need it. For now, this is probably my favorite Absolute DC title.
Will Around The Web
Over on Remember That Show?, Adam and I finally kicked off the long-awaited Come and Knock On Our Pod (#CAKOOP) series, starting with the UK sitcom Man About The House. The show served as the inspiration for Three’s Company, and we learn that the shows were more similar than we’d originally thought. However, where they are different, they are DIFFERENT! You can check that out here.
Things You Might Have Missed This Week
- If you’re mad they put a girl in your toy movie, then you probably need to schedule that prostate exam. Anyway, Kristen Wiig will voice Roboto – one of the worst He-Man characters – in the Masters of the Universe movie, and folks are upset. Surprise, surprise. She’s the reason I wanna see Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie, so I am BEYOND pleased.
- With the end of Stranger Things on the horizon, the Duffer Bros are leaving Netflix for a 4-deal at Paramount. I hear they’re working on a pitch for something called Peculiar Stuff…
- Speaking of Netflix, they must be completely out of ideas, as they’re introducing an astrology hub, which will suggest content based on the user’s astrological sign. If only Miss Cleo had lived to see this!
- As part of its divorce from NBC, MSNBC will rebrand as MS NOW, which stands for “My Source for News, Opinion, and the World”. Oh, and the peacock is gone, too. And I thought “NewsNation” and “NewsMax” were dumb names. At least they weren’t James Bond Jr. acronyms!
- The Spike Lee documentary on Colin Kaepernick won’t be released, and all parties have signed NDAs. Reports say Kaep didn’t like how he was portrayed. Um, you were part of the whole process. Oh, and remember how a few weeks ago I said Dreamer felt like a low-budget Kaepernick story? Turns out it was released by his publishing imprint!
- New logo alert! When I was growing up, we had Cracker Barrel. Now, we’ve got no Crackers, and no Barrels…
- A lot of changes coming to daytime TV, as Dish Nation, Person, Place, or Thing, and Pictionary have been canceled. Meanwhile, dancer Derek Hough is taking over as the new host of Extra, as Billy Bush steps down from his “redemption job”.
Ya know, Absolute Superman was the best thing I encountered this week. It was reminiscent of what I’m told comics *used to be*. Whenever folks talk about comics in the 40s and 50s, there were hamfisted morality tales. The heroes fought evil, and always won. Whether it was Hitler or a bank robbers, the guy in the cape always came out on top. And these were tumultuous years for folks. Coming out of a Depression, world wars, segregation – all of it caused some folks to look for an escape, and they found that in those funnybooks that they rolled up and shoved in their back pockets. Comics, however, never seemed to recover from the grim & gritty era of the 80s, with The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. Sure, they made academia take notice (even though college campuses loved the psychedelic Doctor Strange books in the 60s), but they had a bad effect on the medium. Everything became a saga, and the more parts meant there was more money to be made. Stories don’t really *end* anymore, but rather set up the next story.
Now, the Absolute books I read this week certainly weren’t self-contained, but they easily could have been. What I walked away with, however, was how all three of them were about HOPE. All of these heroes are in over there heads, going against forces that can’t necessarily be punched. Sure, you can take out the harbingers and foot soldiers that way, but they’re going against concepts and ideals, yet they’re powered by their own ideals. At the end of the day, they know what’s going on is WRONG, and they’re fighting to what’s RIGHT. These are black & white concepts in a gray world, so it will be interesting to see how they have to change their tactics to succeed. That said, they’re not letting the fact that their success probably isn’t guaranteed stop them from TRYING. NOTHING CHANGES IF YOU DON’T TRY. So, that’s why Absolute Superman Vol 1: Last Dust of Krypton had the West Week Ever.