Well, another week has come to an end, and we’re still here, so let’s get to some pop culture!
I finally watched Weapons and, well, what were you all going on about with this one? All I heard was “Ya gotta see it! Oh, you’ve gotta see Weapons!” “Overhyped” doesn’t even come close to describing this thing. I feel like you all just did that because you had suffered, and you didn’t want to suffer alone. If you had to endure it, then others had to endure it, too. I mean, I was really looking forward to it, as the trailer was intense, and set a creepy tone. When kids are involved, it tends to kick things up a notch. Possessed kids are top shelf horror! So, when we saw that all but one of a schoolteacher’s students disappeared into the night, zooming around like they were pretending they were airplanes, well, we had to know what was going on there!
Going into it, I’m not sure I knew it was from Barbarian‘s Zach Cregger, which would have set my expectations. I knew it was sort of in that Cregger/Osgood Perkins vein, where it’s “horror”, but it’s more weird than scary. Sure, folks die in gory fashion, but there’s always an underlying dark humor to it. A large-breasted witch is killing folks, while thinking she’s still raising babies. A toy monkey is something of a serial killer. Ya know, wacky stuff like that. Had I seen Cregger’s name, I guess it would have prepared me. As I said before, it’s such a creepy premise, and it delivers on that for the first 1/3 of the movie. You see the repercussions of the disappearances, as parents mourn, while the teacher falls into hard drinkin’, showing up at the local dive bar in her finest “I’m here to drink and fuck, and I’m tired of drinkin'” outfit. Did she have something to do with it? Why did that one kid survive? Questions that needed answers. And then the movie takes a sharp turn when the survivor’s “Aunt Gladys” shows up.
Now, this is the part of the movie that sort of resonated with me, so try to stay with me here. Growing up, we were really close with all of our neighbors. It’s one of the things I’ve kept with me, as I’d rather have a Good Neighbor than a Good Fence (though I think my wife disagrees…). Well, across the street, lived Frank and Gladys. They were my first “old people” who weren’t relatives, but it was also strange in that they were also my first old people who were child-free. I mean, they didn’t call it that, and I don’t even know if they tried, but that’s what they were. As they got much older, they needed more help doing things. I briefly mowed their lawn (I wasn’t a reliable 12 year old), and when Frank needed regular shots for some medical thing, my aunt would go over there and administer them. No, she wasn’t a nurse. She just got shit done. Anyway, Gladys had been attractive back in the day, when photographs were still in black and white, and she was completely from a different era. She never worked, so she was a homemaker, but there wasn’t a lot of home to make. So, she stayed focused on her looks, chasing her youth. And, she’d get a lot of facelifts. A lot. And we’re talking the early 90s here, so plastic surgery wasn’t where it is now. With each surgery, she got creepier and creepier. I got to a point where I was actually kind of scared of her. And she looked exactly. Like. Aunt. Gladys. If they’d had kids, I’d swear this character was based on her. Since they didn’t, I can only wonder if Zach Cregger somehow made it onto our street, and that image stayed with him.
Anyway, I hate the turn this movie took. It left me with a lot of unanswered questions, and the “resolution” was unsatisfying. The end didn’t match the beginning. It’s almost like two movies were shoved together, or a good movie was damaged through studio interference. Whatever it was, it wasn’t what I expected, nor what I wanted. It’s a plot that held so much potential, yet doesn’t come close to truly unleashing it.
We’re not quite at “midseason”, yet networks are still releasing new series. And none of them are good. I’m gonna do a hit & run here, as we don’t have to get into much detail:
DMV (CBS): Workplace comedy set at, well, the DMV. SNL vets Tim Meadows and Molly Kearney are here, but it’s dull and can’t even be saved by the unassumingly hot Harriet Dyer
Stumble (NBC): a championship-winning cheer coach gets fired one championship shy of becoming the winningest cheer coach in history. So, she assembles a ragtag squad of misfits, whom she has to not only get into championship shape, but also somehow win said championship. I don’t see how this is a show. A movie, fine. But what’s season 2? I mean, Glee figured it out, but I even had issues with that plot and pacing. They can’t possibly win this season, but the show won’t last long enough for us to see their journey to become a winning squad.
I Love LA (HBO): So, we had Sex and the City, where a bunch of unlikeable barely Gen X women (except Charlotte) lived in NYC. Then, we had Girls, where a bunch of unlikeable Millennial women (except Shoshanna) lived in NYC. And, in true HBO tradition, we now have a bunch of unlikeable Gen Z women, but now they live in LA! There’s even the beleaguered boyfriend who’s clearly too good for this shit – That character is a staple of these shows, yet they usually end up making him do something that makes him an asshole, even though whatever it was he did was probably justified. Love ya, Steve and Charlie! Josh Hutcherson’s Dylan will be joining your ranks soon! Anyway, Rachel Sennott is a young professional in LA who wants to be a talent manager. To be one, though, you’ve got to have experience (but how do you get experience if no one gives ya a job, huh?), and she ends up taking on her trainwreck of a college friend who happens to be an influencer and style maven. They’re joined by Alani, who’s the daughter of a famous actor, and she’s gotten everything because of that. Whereas NYC is seen as this “cultural melting pot”, everything about LA is about how the people are all fake, and how you sort of have to become like that in order to survive there. I’ll only like this show if it ends with them realizing they’ve got to get the Hell out of there. Not even a topless Sennott scene saved this pilot for me. Someone likes it, though, as it – along with The Chair Company – was just renewed for a second season.
Trailer Park
Project Hail Mary (Theaters, March 20, 2026)
Ya know why studios do the whole “slowed down pop song in a trailer” thing? Because IT WORKS. I’ve always loved “Champagne Supernova”, but it works so well here. Maybe not lyrically, as it’s not really a song that “makes sense”, but sonically, it’s perfect. Man, Andrew Weir really loves sending normal guys into space. It’s never the ones who trained for it. No, it’s just some cornfed, likeable white guy, whom nobody wants to imagine dying in the cold vacuum of space. I actually grabbed this book recently, but haven’t had the chance to read it yet. I would watch this because of Gosling, but I also feel like he kinda takes me out of it. Ya see, I’ve been a Ryan Gosling fan for 30 years, but not for the reasons you might think. No, I know him from The New Mickey Mouse Club, where he was doing sketches with a young Justin Timberlake and JC Chasez. Then, he would go on to play Sean Hanlon on one of my favorite teen sitcoms, Breaker High. And the thing that has always shone through to me is that he has a sort of cockiness to him. There’s a chip on his shoulder. In some ways, it makes him believable, but at times – like this one – it might make him a little too cocksure. Now, maybe that’s a trait of this character, but at no point here do I believe he won’t pull this off. The stakes aren’t coming through to me, because there’s no way Ryan Gosling doesn’t win. Maybe they’ll surprise me.
Moana (Theaters, July 10, 2026)
WHY? We’ve really gotten into a bad habit of just calling everything “A.I.” when what we’re actually railing against is Generative A.I. Ya know, the thing that steals the work of others. Everything else is just Fancy Automation. Well, we also need to stop calling everything “live action”. There’s a lot of animation at work here, even if it doesn’t “look” animated. Now, I let a lot of this go until Disney did their “live action” adaptation of The Lion King. That was NOT Beyoncé in a lion costume, nor do I think she even did motion capture. No, she went into a booth, and recorded her lines. Ya know, like they do for animation! Unless Dwayne (Yeah, I’m calling him “Dwayne” now) strapped on some wings and flew around like a bird, this ain’t live action. Those ships? Not live action. Now, you might be saying, “Well, how is this different from how they make sci fi movies? They’re not actually going into space!” It’s not different, but those aren’t necessarily being touted as “live action” either. No, the marketing tact that supposedly sets these apart is that they are live action versions of past successful Disney animated hits. Now, we know what kind of corporation Disney is, and we know that this is all about the money. I just remember a time when they would have coined a new term, not only to stem the arguments, but also give them a new trademark. 30 years ago, they would have announced “Moana, now in Disney Lifelike™ format, only in theaters!”
The Moment (Theaters, January 26, 2026)
I didn’t post this video for a good reason: It might give you a seizure. I’m not even kidding. We’re talking 1999 Pokémon level stuff. It’s A24, so what do ya expect? Anything for attention with those guys. You can tell it’s A24 because Rachel Sennott is in it. She’s the Sarah Paulson to their Ryan Murphy. Apparently, it’s based on “an original idea” that Charli XCX had, but it really just looks like a tour documentary, with a tinge of her thinking she might die at the end of the Brat album cycle. It’s a little narcissistic, but 2024 WAS Brat Summer, so what do I know? This still feels a bit too late, but maybe there’s more to it that they can’t show us here? Anyway, it’s been a few minutes since I watched that trailer, and I’m still trying to get my vision back. In the Twitter days, folks would be talking about this. Sadly, I’m not sure there are many Charli fans over on Bluesky.
Run The Numbers
We’re not quite down to the wire, but there’s a little less than 6 weeks left in the year, and I still need to read 70 comics and 3 more books. It’s doable, but I need to be more focused. It also doesn’t help that I’m still reading trade paperbacks when I could just read those stories as single issues and work toward another goal.
Anyway, this week I read Jason Aaron’s Bug Wars Vol 1: Lost in the Yard, which didn’t originally seem like it was up my alley. I think I’ve said it before, but I hate Fantasy. Hate it. Dragons and swords and shit? Keep that away from me! So, when I saw this was just Fantasy with Bugs, let’s just say I wasn’t too eager to jump into it. About halfway through the issue, however, my opinion completely changed. This was such a great story, and I’m really glad I stuck with it.
The collection starts out with a foreword by entomologist Dr. Adrian Smith, head of the research lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Now, this might not mean much to most, but my ears always perk up when I hear “Entomologist”, as that’s the department in which my mom worked at the Smithsonian. So, a lot of my summers were spent at the Insect Zoo, and a lot of our family friends were her work friends. I’m not that into bugs (unless we’re talking about killing them), but I definitely respect the study of them. And it’s clear that Aaron did his homework for this book. In diary entries, the reader learns the different species of various insects, as well as the horrible things they do to their prey. Seeing as how the bugs are at war, we generally learn all of the worst aspects about them.
When the story opens, young teen Slade Slaymaker (Look at that name! Of course he was gonna have to go to war!) has just moved back to the family house, along with his mom and older brother, after the death of his father. Following the elder Slaymaker’s death, the family’s finances led them to declare bankruptcy, and this house, back in the sticks of Alabama, was all they had left to their name. Slade’s older brother, Sydney, hates the house; it was there that their father had been eaten alive by bugs, and a younger Sydney had been the one to find…what was left of him. So, needless to say, Sydney HATES bugs, while Slade picked up their father’s love for them. See, Mr. Slade had been an entomology professor, and Slade had learned everything he knew by reading his old journals.
One afternoon, Sydney flips out and kills all of Slade’s pet bugs. Slade runs off with his favorite, and tries to hide it from his brother. During the chase, his hand brushes up against something, and he finds himself in the backyard, shrunken down, in a world filled with bugs, and the warriors that command them. Not only that, but Slade now has a fractured amulet embedded in his chest, which seems to supply him with unstable superpowers. Seemingly trapped in this world, Slade will discover the different bug sects that make up that world in the yard, as well as the fact that his father knew all about this. In fact, when the bug warriors discover he is the son of Slaymaker, he becomes revered by many. Other groups make a play for the amulet, as a prophecy foretold of a “Grow-Betweener”, who could live in both the human and bug worlds. All of that gets set aside, however, when the bugs form a truce to go after their shared enemy, whom they call “The Annihirazer” – he who controls The Great Storm that can wipe away nests in an instant. Well, imagine Slade’s surprise when he discovers that The Annihirazer is what they’re calling his brother, Sydney, due to the fact that he’s been destroying their nests and hives with the lawnmower. Now, Slade has to use his newfound powers to protect his family.
The story is sort of like “Honey, I Shrunk The Kids meets 300“. I know some might say it’s closer to Game of Thrones, but that feels cliché, plus I never watched Game of Thrones to be able to agree with the comparison. You can tell that Aaron really did his research on the bug stuff, but he also does a hell of a lot of world-building. Similar to Helen of Wyndhorn, which I read earlier this year, this is a self-contained miniseries, despite the fact that it doesn’t answer all of the reader’s questions, and the door is clearly open for more story down the road. In fact, the collection teases a Volume 2 next spring, so I might have to read that one monthly, as it’s that good!
So, back before Covid, I was considering trying to become a real “geek journalist” who at least did regular reviews, so I got on a lot of media lists for publishers. This usually just ends up being Kickstarter promos, but every now and then I’ll get a review copy for something that interests me. And that’s exactly what happened when I noticed that the publisher Artists, Writers, and Artisans (AWA) had sent me the PDF of their Ronda Rousey-penned graphic novel, Expecting The Unexpected. Now, this started out as another Kickstarter project, and I actually pledged simply because the Mike Deodato art was so gorgeous. Something messed up with the browser, however, and my pledge wouldn’t go through. At the time, I figured it was a sign, so I just kinda left it alone. After pledges had been fulfilled, they released it to comic shops, and something still kept me from grabbing it. So, I was pretty surprised to find the entire file in my spam folder. I read it fairly quickly, and I’m glad I saved my $20.
Expecting The Unexpected can best be described as “Ronda Rousey fell asleep watching Kill Bill, then woke up with an ‘original idea’ that she felt just had to be captured as a comic.” In the introduction, however, she claims she wrote it on a flight from WrestleMania to a morning show appearance she had across the country. Still, I like my theory better.
Rousey is an assassin who goes by the moniker “Mom”. “Why is that her name?”, you might ask. Well, she goes around, storing her weapons and tools in an artificial baby bump, leading folks to think she’s pregnant. Once the target lets their guard down around the pregnant woman, she goes in for the kill. Well, after a few impressive freelance gigs, she’s offered a salary position with a firm that specializes in…hired killers? Anyway, this agency is run by WWE “Advocate” Paul Heyman. I mean, it’s not really Heyman, but his likeness is used for this character. For some reason. He runs this company of killers, and his son wants to take over, but Not Heyman doesn’t think he’s ready for it. The son, by the way, is WWE Superstar The Miz. For some reason. So, Not Heyman makes Not The Miz prove his worth by sending him on a mission to kill a former colleague, known as “Hapa”. This is also Mom’s first assignment for the company, and Not Heyman has already decided she’s not gonna work out. So, the job is for Mom AND Hapa to be taken out. Well, not only do they survive, but the adrenaline rush leads to a one night stand. Which leads to an unplanned pregnancy.
So, now “Mom” is about to become MOM, but she doesn’t want to bring a baby into the world, given her line of work. She tries to go into hiding, working and sleeping at a 24-hour gym, trying to figure out her options. She tracks down Hapa and tells him the news, but he’s all about keeping the baby. So, they have these ideological arguments over whether or not to become parents, while their former employer sends wave after wave of assassins to “tie up loose ends”.
It’s a fine enough story, and it’d probably make for an entertainingly bad movie. Like I said, it’s the Tubi adaptation of Kill Bill. The most annoying thing is that it wants to do that Tarantino “Do I fucking know pop culture or what?” thing, so a lot of the dialogue is just movie quotes with no reference. In fact, it’s so bad at the beginning that I kinda thought I was having a stroke. I clearly hadn’t seen the same movies that Mom had seen. It’s sort of impressive that Rousey choreographed her fights for the book, so that Deodato would have inspiration for the art. Still, two things stick out to me: First, Hapa is apparently her real life husband, former MMA fighter Travis Browne. Now, in the story, he’s drawn like an Adonis, but that guy actually looks like he installs stereos at Best Buy. He was done a LOT of favors in that portrayal! Second, everything I’ve heard about Rousey just makes me think she’s sort of a garbage person, so I didn’t really want to financially support any of her work anyway. And now I haven’t. And neither should you. At least not THIS work.
Finally, this one kinda came out of left field for me. Some backstory: I’m now the cohost on Wizards: The Podcast Guide To Comics, and the show has a long-standing history with comic creator Rob Liefeld. Basically, he hates us. Says the show tells lies, gets stuff wrong, etc, but it’s just reporting what was either in Wizard Magazine, or told to us by former Wizard staffers. He has gone on rants over on his Robservations podcast, and I’m not entirely sure what happened (this was before my time), but Adam made the call to sort of move away from the Liefeld stuff. So, imagine my surprise when he suggested we review the first issue of Liefeld’s latest iteration of his 90s Image series Youngblood. I told him I had seen it at the shop, but had put it back, since, I mean, it was Liefeld. There was no way it was gonna be good, and there was no way he was gonna finish the series. Next thing I know, I get a Patreon notification that he’s posted his review! I’m over here, like, “I thought we were doing this together!” He goes “Hey, when I propose these things, I gotta know if you’re in or out!” I was in! I was just playing hard to get. I was gonna go back to the shop and grab the thing so we could laugh at it together. But that was not to be. So, I’m going solo on this one. I did go back and get it, and here’s what I thought.
Honestly, it wasn’t terrible. The guy at the shop was selling me on it, saying “While Liefeld is very much steeped in a particular era, no one can write for that era as well as he does.” And, ya know what? He’s out of line, but he’s right. I don’t know any of these characters – all of whom are clearly derivative of familiar Marvel characters – but none of that really matters here. We’re given names, and we’re given power sets. We know they’re on an important mission, and the stakes feel pretty high. They’re tasked with infiltrating some sort of superpowered ocean liner that just appears out of thin air. On that ship is a Big Bad who’s basically Gold Stryfe (Stryfe is an X-Men comic villain who was important for approximately 6 months back in 1993). There are surprises, a character may have died, and another feels like he’s gonna die any minute, because everything seems to be from his perspective, and I feel like Liefeld is the kind of guy to go for the Shyamalan twist of “I killed my main character!”
Yet and still, I didn’t hate it. In fact, I felt transported back to the 90s, reading these books that were all style and no substance. It reminds me of a conversation Adam and I had on the last Wizards, where he asked if anyone liked the Jim Lee era X-Men. I said that we love it because those designs became THE designs for those characters (especially since they were used in the cartoon), but nobody pines for the writing as they did in the previous Claremont era. Sure, he sowed a lot of seeds that never got the chance to bear fruit, but I don’t think anyone would call Chris Claremont a “bad writer”. Overly ambitious, maybe, but not bad. But the Lee era is “Hey, Ghost Rider’s here! Why? Um, he was just in the neighborhood. Doesn’t he look cool?” Those guys who jumped ship to form Image were primarily artists, not writers. Liefeld’s art hasn’t evolved much, so I guess we can say he’s been honing his writing instead. I’m not gonna be a regular customer here, but if he manages to complete the story, I’ll definitely check out the collected edition.
Will Around The Web
Speaking of Wizards, Adam and I welcomed Rob Graham of the After Lunch Podcast to discuss 1999’s Wizard Fathom Special. Fathom was a creator-owned series by Michael Turner, which was thought to be a glimpse of the future at his publisher Top Cow. What they didn’t know at the time, however, is that he would soon decide to take his ball and form his own publishing company, Aspen M.L.T. So, we discuss what it was about this creation that made everyone feel it was a foundation upon which to build, well, anything.
One thing I didn’t get to mention, but I found pretty interesting, is that the issue contained an add for the very first Star Wars Celebration. It’s touted as this “once in a lifetime” event, but we now know that it would become a regular thing. Still, it’s pretty cool to see this thing emerge from the hype surrounding the prequels, as fans were finally getting NEW Star Wars content. Remember what that was like? When we had to wait for it, instead of Disney just shoving a lightsaber-styled firehose down our throats? Oh, and you’d better not die, ’cause they’re gonna charge ya for that hosin’ regardless! Anyway, you can check out the episode here, or wherever you find your podcasts!
Things You Might Have Missed This Week
- You would think that reality television was doing well, given that AMC announced an all-reality streaming service. Then, you hear that Bravo has greenlit The Real Housewives of Rhode Island, and you begin to realize the genre is out of ideas
- While we’re on the topic of NBC’s struggling networks, Peacock canceled Poker Face last week, but renewed Twisted Metal for a third season this week. So, when God closes a door, He opens a cellar.
- Lot of NBC news this week! So, I always forget that Friends follow-up Joey actually had two seasons, but the second season never aired its full order…in America. Well, 20 (!) years later, those missing episodes have been *legally* added to the official Friends channel YouTube.
- Wake up your gold-digging stepmom from her Wine Nap, ’cause it was announced that season 4 of The White Lotus will be set in France.
- What a week for anyone or anything named “Bubba”! I was over here, like, “Man, I never saw that episode of Mama’s Family!”
- Home Alone celebrated its 30th anniversary this week. I’d make a remark about how it’s time to look for nursing homes, but I already know I can’t afford one.
- Gearing up for his retirement, John Cena’s final episode of WWE RAW aired this week, but you might not have seen him.
We haven’t talked about Stargate recently. Probably because there hasn’t been a real Stargate project since 2011. But, man, I love Stargate. I mean, I’m a sucker for most science fiction, but I love that franchise because I sort of grew with it. The 1994 movie was sort of a throwaway affair, and it didn’t really seem to gain much of a fan base until the show came along, and folks wanted to compare and contrast. The show is where my love for the concept began.
I spent most Saturdays at home, watching syndicated dramas, and that’s exactly where Stargate was. It was part of a Showtime initiative to get into sci fi, so they were producing a reboot of The Outer Limits, as well as this Stargate adaptation, called Stargate SG-1. The thing about these shows is that they initially aired on Showtime, with the requisite nudity and language, yet there were edited versions available on your local Fox/UHF channel. Premiering in 1997, I was there that first weekend it aired. It was something new, but also something different. It wasn’t like the Star Trek stuff I was used to watching. No, it was a military show with a hard-on for ancient Egypt. Eventually, even I was like “OK, enough with the Egyptian shit!” And they seemed to have listened to me, as they moved away from said “Egyptian shit”, and began a campaign of worldbuilding the speed at which I’d never seen before. The series would last a decade, across two different networks, and I always love how a show that started out as “A group of soldiers travel through a ring to other planets” became “Stargate Command is a multinational joint operation that has figured out Faster Than Light travel, and uses it to defend Earth from those who wish to conquer it”. Seriously, in ten years, they went from walking through giant rings in the Canadian wilderness to helming starships! And MacGyver is the star of this thing?!
Outside of SG-1, we got the spinoff Stargate Atlantis. Now, I’ll admit I wasn’t as big of a fan of this one, but that’s mainly because I didn’t give it much of a chance. I was in love with the TNG-ness of SG-1, while Atlantis felt like the franchise’s DS9. Similarly, I’m hoping to eventually revisit Atlantis, and that I’ll come to love it more than SG-1, just as I now love DS9 more than TNG. Eventually, we’d get Stargate Universe, which was clearly influenced by Syfy’s Battlestar Galactica reboot, with a tone that wasn’t very “Stargate“, but still engrossing. Again, I came to this show late, and I’m still hoping that prematurely canceled show eventually gets some sort of closure.
So, this week was pretty incredible, as it was announced that Amazon MGM Studios is prepping a new Stargate series. Now, we’ve heard these rumblings before, and nothing usually comes of it. This is different, however, as the showrunner will be Martin Gero, a Stargate vet and the creator of NBC’s Blindspot. See, this is important because he knows the franchise. He started his career on Atlantis, so it’s not like the studio is bringing in a big name to “take the franchise in a bold new direction”. We don’t know much about this show, but even a new concept would surely take something from what came before, simply because of Gero’s familiarity with that universe. This is a good thing. A very good thing. Now, we’ll have to adjust our expectations to the current 10-episode (if you’re lucky) streaming model, but this is one of those franchises that had a lot of filler episodes, so it’s well suited for that. Sure, we may not get episodes like “Teal’c Gets His Own Apartment”, but I’m sure we’ll be OK. I don’t get excited by much TV these days – especially when it’s about reviving dead franchises. That said, I’m VERY excited here, and that’s why the Stargate franchise had the West Week Ever.
