If you haven’t heard the news, I’m the new cohost of Wizards The Podcast Guide To Comics! If you’re not familiar, Wizard: The Guide To Comics was the hottest comics news magazine of the 90s. Launched in 1991, it would run until 2011, when it ceased publication with issue #235. Wizard alums are all over entertainment, from co-creating Robot Chicken to leadership roles at Marvel and DC. Well, some years ago, my pal Adam started a podcast where the goal was to go through each issue of the magazine, one episode at a time, to get a feel for what was going on in the comic industry at the time of publication. Over the years, he has gone through two Michaels and a Steven in the cohost chair, but their busy schedules no longer allowed them to regularly contribute. We have a great time over on Remember That Show?, but I’ll admit I was surprised when I got the call to join his primary podcast! Anyway, I was a huge Wizard fan, and I’m excited to take this trip through comics history, with you guys along for the ride. I want to thank everyone for the kind words I received after the announcement this week, and I’m really looking forward to sharing the Wizard gospel with as many folks as possible. Ya know, until we get to the period where the magazine was kind of competing with Stuff to be a chauvinistic boys’ club, but we’ll handle that with class lol.
So, upon listening to a recent episode of the Totally Rad Christmas podcast, I found myself compelled to watch the 80s film Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. I mean, everyone knows Elvira, but I didn’t really know her, ya know? Growing up, she was just the cardboard cutout you’d see at the beer & wine store. She wore a black Morticia Addams dress and had great tits. She was right up there with Spuds MacKenzie and The Noid as the patron saints of 80s commerce. I remember she was gonna have a movie, but it’s not the kind of thing I would have asked my mom to take me to see.
If you haven’t seen it, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark follows the horror movie hostess as she tries to raise $50,000 to help finance her Vegas showcase. Well, wouldn’t you know it that a rich relative just passed away, and she’s been invited to his small town for the reading of the will. So, it’s a “fish out a water” tale, as the boobily entertainer interacts with a bunch of quiet, conservative small towners. The men are attracted to her while the women are threatened by her. To top it off, you’ve got Edie McClurg as the main Town Karen, intent on running Elvira out of town. Meanwhile, the teens love her, because she represents a world outside their podunk town, and they take every opportunity they can to hang out with her.
I knew she was quick with the quips, but she’s also kind of annoying. I mean, a little goes a LONG way. I know a lot of folks out there hate Deadpool for the same reason, but I guess he never got to me as bad. Here, however, Elvira’s saving grace is that spectacular cleavage. I know how chauvinistic that sounds, and I’m exhibiting “The Male Gaze”, but it’s simply mesmerizing. In fact, I spent a lot of time wondering if it was real or a prosthetic. I haven’t seen a chest that glorious since Ricardo Montalban in The Wrath of Khan, and he swore that was his real chest. I guess, due to the age at which I first encountered her, I always thought of Elvira as old. Cassandra Peterson (the lady who portrays her, if ya don’t know) just turned 74, which means she was only 37 in 1988 when this was filmed. I just assumed her costume was rigged with some sort of Spanx precursor, but there’s a scene of some teenagers watching her get undressed and, well, she kept it tight. Respect.
Anyway, it was certainly a movie, but I didn’t love it. That said, I can understand why it would have its fans, and it clearly has attained a sort of cult status over the years.
Next up, Lindsay and I watched a HBO documentary called The Alabama Solution, as I had read about it and it sounded interesting. Basically, a documentary crew is onsite at an Alabama prison to film an annual picnic that is given for the inmates. While there, certain inmates start to tell the camera crew that there are horrible things going on at the prison, and they want to get the word out about those injustices. The guards quickly ask the film crew to leave, but not before they manage to give their contact info to some of the inmates. It seems that contraband cell phones are a big problem in prison, but these inmates are using them to document the issues and try to inform those on the outside. We’re talking everything from busted plumbing to abusive guards. Also, it’s pretty easy to acquire drugs, so the addicts are overdosing and not receiving the counseling they’d been promised. The documentary tackles the issue that a lot of folks write off inmates, saying “They’re criminals, so what do they think they deserve?” What you find out, though, is that the system is beyond broken. There are folks who received 15 years for breaking and entering, when nothing was even stolen. In recent years, Alabama’s parole rate has dropped by 72%. They simply aren’t releasing anyone because they make more money by loaning the inmates out to local business as free labor. So, the documentary follows a group of inmates who have demanded to be heard, through communication and nonviolence, while the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) does everything it can to thwart them. Whenever a leader arises, who motivates the others, that guy suddenly finds himself in solitary confinement.
I think there’s another reason this documentary spoke to me. You see, my great uncle (my grandmother’s brother) did time in an Alabama prison when I was younger. Drunk driving. He killed a woman. It’s a whole thing. I remember visiting back in the 90s, once he was released, and he took me to a local place for a hamburger. I wanted a burger, and small town folks don’t immediately think “McDonald’s”. No, he had to take me to the local joint, with the Coke clock on the wall, next to the menu board. Well, they wouldn’t serve us – or rather, they wouldn’t serve him. I figured this was some of that Down Home Racism I’d heard about, but no – they were relatives of that woman he’d killed. I didn’t really understand what was going on then, and found out the dynamics in later years. I don’t think the prison system was anywhere as bad when he was in there as it is now, but even if it were a fraction of what was shown in that documentary, it was too much. The prison system is built upon the concept of rehabilitation. Even if a person can’t return to society, their lives have value, and they can still contribute. They interview the head of ADOC, however, who clearly doesn’t believe in rehabilitation. So, if that’s the case, what are we all doing here?
What I walked away with was how ADOC simply doesn’t care. Yeah, there are guards who go overboard (one kills an inmate during the time the documentary is filmed), but Alabama isn’t exactly going out of its way to make inmates’ lives harder, nor are they presenting them with humane accommodations. They’ve simply turned their backs on them. There are roughly 11 facilities in the Alabama prison system, and governor Kay Ivey has kicked off a plan to consolidate those 11 into THREE megaprisons. Research, however, has shown that the megaprisons will have roughly the same number of beds, so this wouldn’t remedy the overcrowding issue (It was reported that Alabama prisons were at 200% capacity, with 1/3 of the necessary staffing to maintain them). Each megaprison was estimated to cost just under $1 billion, however construction has begun, and it is now looking like the project will cost 3x initial projections.
The big standout to me, however, is how ADOC has conveniently turned a blind eye to the cell phone thing. Sure, they tell the media that there’s a contraband problem, but it would be an easy one to resolve – if they wanted to. My kids’ school is pretty much complete cinderblock. You get out of the outer hallways, and there is no signal. For anything. So, the only way you’d make a call, or stream video, would be to hop on wifi. When I say the inmates have phones, we’re not talking flip phone TracPhones from 7-11. These are smartphones, with screens (albeit sometimes cracked) and video. ADOC could squash it if they wanted to, and I think that’s what bothers me the most: I think they like to give the inmates a false sense of hope. “Let ’em have their little protests.” The inmates organized a work stoppage across all 11 institutions, and ADOC gradually starved them out until they came back to work. That remaining facility held out about 2 weeks, but ADOC broke them in the end, and it will serve as a message to anyone who even thinks of trying something like that in the future.
I’m not some hippie saying “Release the prisoners!” but there has to be a decent standard of living. Otherwise, what’s the point? I’m not alone in that, as one of the Alabama officials begins a hearing by saying that the only way to actually ensure that an inmate doesn’t commit another crime would be to put them to death. Then, he goes on to make it sound like they’d do it, but the grace of the state and human compassion won’t allow them to do that. But you could tell he didn’t mean any of that, nor did he want to say it. He didn’t care if they lived or died, and the prison conditions proved that. Still, from the prisoners’ perspective, why carry on? I was sort of surprised that the suicide rate wasn’t higher than it was. It also frightened me that I went there that quickly: Why haven’t they ended it already? I guess you could say this thing took me to some bad places, so I don’t know if I can recommend it, per se, but I do think everyone should see it.
Trailer Park
Wonder Man (Disney+, January 27)
What did I just watch? I don’t hate it, but it’s like MCU Get Shorty. First off, don’t go to IMDB looking up this series, as there’s a spoiler in the cast list. What I don’t get, however, is that X Mayo (the actress who plays Simon’s manager) is all over this trailer, yet not listed associated with it anywhere on IMDB. Were those hastily done reshoots? I don’t really know what we’re in for here, but that’s not a bad thing. Plus, the racists will still kinda get their white Wonder Man. Just gotta wait and see what this is all about, I guess.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (Paramount+, January 15th)
I’m really at a loss for words this week, as I don’t know what to do with this. The only streaming Trek I’ve watched was Picard and Lower Decks, so I don’t know much about Discovery or Strange New Worlds. What I do know here, however, is that I hate the special effects. The old shows dealt in scale models and perspective, while everything here is CGI. Now, I know they’re trying to sell us on the whole “This is the 32nd century” aspect, but I don’t feel like they have to go this hard on the visuals. It’s one of those situations where they spent more time figuring out how to do it, rather than if they should do it. And when you do CGI on the cheap, it comes out looking like a Syfy series. It ends up looking like this. If I wanted to see stuff like this, I’d watch The Ark. I mean, this looks a lot like that show, which is fine for what it is, but it ain’t Star Trek. Either way, I’m gonna need some e-tailer to make those Starfleet varsity jackets, though.
Run The Numbers
I read a bunch of comics this week, but we’re only gonna talk about three of them.
First up, I read The War #3 from BOOM!, which wrapped up collecting the serialized story from the monthly Hello Darkness series. I wrote about it a few months back, saying that The War was probably the best offering from what was a wildly inconsistent horror anthology. Created by Warren Ellis and Becky Cloonan, it follows a group of friends who are faced with some impossible choices after the US suffers a nuclear attack. I had said that it was so dark that I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to finish it, but finish it I did.
It’s a powerful story about regret, and realizing when it’s simply “too late”. The problem with comics, though, is that it’s an industry filled with edgelord “geniuses” who come up with these great concepts, only to give you a middle finger at the end. Almost like a “Fuck you for caring for these characters!” Mark Millar does it frequently, and Ennis does it here. We get it. You’re the coolest guy in detention. This was such a heavy, five-minutes-from-now story, and he shits all over it with the last page. I can’t even begin to explain what’s on it, nor is there any explanation given for it. In fact, I didn’t believe what I saw until a letter from the editor at the end of the book confirmed my suspicions. Just skip this. It’ll probably get an Eisner nomination, but it doesn’t deserve it.
Next, I was doing some cleaning and randomly came across a copy of Stormwatch #1 I had gotten out of a dollar box a few months ago. Now, growing up I wasn’t much of an Image Comics fan. I know they were the coolest guys in comics – having left their high profile jobs at Marvel to strike out on their own – but all of their characters looked uninteresting and/or felt like they were derivative of existing Marvel characters. I would eventually find myself reading Jim Lee’s Wildstorm books, however, as I was a big Gen13 fan, and I loved his X-Men work.
Two things occurred to me while I was reading this issue: It was clear that Image put artists over writers, as the ads for other books always highlighted the art team, but sometimes never even mentioned the writer AND Wildstorm actually attempted some universe-building, which I’m always a sucker for. For example, Stormwatch is a team that operates out of a space station that also serves as the staging area for “sister organization” Youngblood. Now, Youngblood was a Rob Liefeld team book that was housed under Liefeld’s Extreme Studios imprint, yet here was Lee tying it into what he was doing with his Wildstorm imprint. There was no obligation for them to work together, but it was great when it was organic. Lee, however, learned all the worst lessons from working with Chris Claremont on Uncanny X-Men, as the Wildstorm universe got convoluted FAST!
There’s an evil multinational corporation called International/Operations (I/O) that seems to be responsible for everything bad. The WildC.A.T.S. are a Covert Action Team deployed to take down threats, while Stormwatch is more of a superpowered intelligence organization, sanctioned by the United Nations. Its members benefit from diplomatic immunity, and they can wreck shit on foreign soil.
So, Stormwatch focuses on Jackson King, codename: Battalion, who is on what he believes to be his last mission before he steps away from his Stormwatch team. They’re tasked with saving a school bus full of refugee kids, which they manage to do just before King’s friend is murdered. Later, at the friend’s funeral, the same villains attack King at the cemetery, and try to kidnap his brother – who seems to have latent powers.
The thing you’ll notice immediately is that it’s a book of pinup art. There’s no movement, no real action. Everything is posed. There’s nothing “kinetic” about any of it, even during fight scenes. It’s like co-plotter Brandon Choi said “This character is a beautiful woman”, and that’s what was drawn, even though she’s just a knockout in a doorway. There’s more attention to detail with the lines in her outfit and security badge than the story as a whole. It just goes to show that these books were style over substance, despite the appearance that they had tried to inject some sort of substance into it. There’s too much worldbuilding for me to say they didn’t care, but they didn’t pace themselves correctly. I read another Wildstorm team book just before it, called Savant Garde. One of its team members was a “Nympho-droid” that had gained some sense of agency. After both, I thought to myself “These books were made for virgins.” Then, I remembered I was a virgin when these were published, and I wouldn’t have liked them even then. So, I don’t know what to tell ya. I guess there’s a reason DC finally gave up on trying to integrate the Wildstorm concepts into their revised timeline.
Finally, I read Star Trek: Voyager – Homecoming, which is a miniseries set just after the end credits of the Voyager series finale. The ship has finally returned to Earth, but is immediately boarded by a contingent of admirals. After Captain Janeway formally transfers command of the ship over to Admiral Paris, they realize the other admirals have disappeared, and the crew find themselves locked out of Voyager’s systems. Oh, and the ship is moving…away from Earth. Everything you remember from the finale is still going on, so B’elanna Torres has just delivered her baby, and Tuvok is still suffering from what I’ll call “Vulcheimer’s”. So, they still need to get him to a blood relative or he’s gonna end up losing all mental capacity. Anyway, it turns out that the admirals aren’t actually human, but rather shape changing members of Species 8472. *sigh*
I know we live in this period of Voyager apologists, but I maintain that Species 8472 is one of the dumbest ideas in a series chock full of dumb ideas. If you know anything about the 24th century era of Star Trek, then you know that the Borg are the worst thing out there. They assimilated Picard, they blew up half the fleet, and they’d later kill Lt Commander Neal McDonough. I mean, that last one wasn’t a surprise. It was like “Here’s a brand new ship, and all the crew members you remember. Oh, and this new guy. You’re gonna love him!” It took all of the might of surviving Starfleet and naked Picard to vanquish the Borg the first time. Then, they came back with their Queen! But Voyager, determined to go all “Anything Picard can do, Space Amelia Earhart can do better”, brought back the Borg, and Janeway wasn’t scared of them. In fact, her crew would encounter the only thing that the Borg feared: Species 8472. It’s like that Family Guy joke, about how the only thing that can beat Jaws is Bigger Jaws.
Species 8472 lived in “fluidic space” *eyeroll*, and they can’t be assimilated by the Borg, as their physiology and technology are too advanced. Yet, this one busted ass ship, on its own, with no Starbase around, managed to survive all of that? Sure, Jan. So, they’re back. Anyway, this series is probably gonna knock the socks off Voyager fans, but I’m one and done here, as I just don’t care enough about this crew to stick it out. Your warp mileage may vary.
Will Around The Web
Well, you already heard the Wizards news, but that wasn’t the end of the week’s podcast festivities! Adam & I released the latest episode of Remember That Show?, where we discussed 1999’s Batman Beyond. It felt like a great “crossover” show for both audiences, so be sure to check that out here, or wherever you find podcasts.
Also, I wanted to clarify how I’ll be posting podcasts going forward. You see, I always do a personal post on here for each episode of Remember That Show?, where I give a little behind the scenes info on the whole thing. I do that, in part, because RTS doesn’t exactly have an online presence. Sure, there are a few social media accounts, but the only real web presence is the site where the episode links reside. Meanwhile, Wizards has a robust online presence that Adam puts a lot of work into, so I’m not going to get in the way of that. So, I’ll link Wizards appearances here, but they won’t have their own dedicated posts.
Things You Might Have Missed This Week
- M. Night Shyamalan has signed on to direct a TV series based on the Magic 8 Ball toy. Yup, you read that correctly. Can he pull it off successfully? “Outlook Not So Good”
- Apple TV+ has gotten rid of the “+”, which seems to imply you’ll be paying the amount for less quality? Anyway, the only folks with Apple TV have “diversified investments”, so I don’t understand anything about their lives to begin with
- MTV has pulled their programming outside of the US, as it appears TikTok has avenged the Radio Star. A true end of an era!
- Butterfly (starring Daniel Dae Kim) and Countdown (starring Jensen Ackles) have been canceled at Prime Video, surprising no one. I wouldn’t be surprised if we start to hear rumblings of a Supernatural revival by Christmas.
- It was announced that Yellowjackets will end with season 4. Originally meant to run for five seasons, it sounds like the creators are bending to overwhelmingly negative fan reactions to the last season, and packing it in early.
- After 17 years, the prophecy finally comes true: T-Pain is collaborating with Crocs for his “Boots With The Fur” line.
- We lost two entertainment greats this week, in Diane Keaton and D’Angelo, who passed away at 79 and 51 respectively.
I got nothing for ya here. They announced a whole Disney+ Taylor Swift Eras Tour docuseries, but it’s like “Read the room, Tay Tay!” Nah, that didn’t get the West Week Ever. I dunno. I’ve got to run to Baltimore Comic Con, so we’ll try this again next week. Go listen to my podcasts!
