Tag Archives: comics

There are things worse than gatekeeping…

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I have been very bad at writing any reviews of any of the genre series, movies, or books I’ve read in the last year. For instance, the last review I posted was for episode 4 of season 2 of Star Trek: Picard back at the end of March. Since then I’ve seen the rest of that series, watched the entirety of season one of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and the entirety of Obi Wan Kenobi, and season one of Ms Marvel… not to mention five novels nominated for the Hugo Award this year (this was the first time in a while that only one of the books that made the short list was one I nominated and therefore had already read!).

In other words, there have been a lot of things that I ought to have written reviews of in the last five-six months that I haven’t.

Most recently, I binge-watched season 1 of the Netflix adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. This isn’t going to be a full review. The series adapts the first two graphic novels in the comic series, Preludes and Nocturnes (issues 1-8), and The Doll’s House (issues 9-16; unless you have the first edition, which included issue #8 even though it had been in the previous graphic novel for various reasons). There was at least one stand-alone story in those two volumes which isn’t included in the series, but that’s a detail for a real review.

If I ever get around to writing one.

I think the series is very well done. I think the casting of the characters is brilliant. As a fan who read much of the original series in individual comic books back in the day, I have quite loved it.

There are people who don’t. There are people who claim to be fans of the original series posting angry reviews of the series–reviews that make it fairly clear that they didn’t actually read the original series. Because the recurring theme in all of the angry reviews I’ve seen so far is: why are there so many gay people in the story?

The original comics had every single one of the queer, gay, lesbian, trans, and even nonbinary characters that are in the TV series. They haven’t been added for modern day "wokeness." Mr Gaiman didn’t always use modern terminology to refer to some of the characters’ orientations and gender identities back in 1989 when he started the comic series. And yes, in the original comics there were elements around some of the queer characters that many view as problematic. But, for instance, Dream’s younger sibling, Desire, was very explicitly referred to by other characters and the narration of the original comics as "they" and explictly referred to as being neither male nor female but both and more from the beginning (which makes sense, as the Endless are anthropomorphic manifestations of mortal concepts, and Desire specifically represents/ embodies/incarnates the desires of all mortal creatures in the universe–not just straight white neck-bearded fanboys who spend their free time arguing about comic history minutia in the backroom of comic book stores).

There is a temptation to put these hot takes in the same category as the idiots who ask when Star Trek became political (that would have been September 8, 1966, when the very first episode of the original series aired). People who watched the original Star Trek series as episodes being syndicated on television during the 70s and 80s (and who were children at the time) didn’t understand the politics that were being referenced. It went over their heads. To the extent they did notice they probably just absorbed it as platitudes. So it’s sort of understandable (if not excusable) that some Trek fans can be surprised when they notice similar moralizing or critiquing in more modern incarnations of the Star Trek.

But I don’t know how anyone could have read the original Sandman and not noticed that the Corinthian was gay. Or that Hal was a drag queen who mentioned an ex-boyfriend. Or that Alex Burgess (son of the Magus) was very gay and even explicitly talked about his sexual awakening when he gave in to a crush on a gardener. I could keep going.

It’s okay if they don’t like the series. It’s even okay if they read some of the comics when they were younger and didn’t remember these details. I mean, to me it tells me they are either extremely stupid or intensely deep in denial–but denial is a powerful thing, so it isn’t inconceivable.

The issue is that a number of these folks appear to be review bombing the show with all their anti-gay vitriol. Which one can only interpret as a conscious attempt to keep anything more like this current series from being made, and to discourage similar endeavors by others.

Which gets us to the title of this post, and the sentiment expressed in the image I attached above. There are things worse than gatekeeping. One of those is trying to prevent other people from seeing/reading the kinds of stories that they want simply because those stories aren’t to your liking. There is a strong feeling among certain types of so-called fans that anything they don’t like shouldn’t exist, and if it does exist, it should not be praised or lauded and so forth.

Which is sort of ironically funny. Because while I’m willing to believe that a tiny percentage of these upset people really did read at least a few of the comics/graphic novels some years back and just didn’t understand what was going on–I’m quite certain that most of these guys claiming to be fans of the original are simply lying–and they are lying about being fans of the original because the original series is a much-lauded and award-wining comic series.

I mean, yeah, some of them are lying because they are the kinds of fanboys who don’t want any sci fi/fantasy that caters to queer people, or that doesn’t agree with their extreme rightwing politics, et al. But a lot of the others fall into this ironic category. The Sandman has been referred to as a classic. One issue of the comic series even won a World Fantasy Award (and some folks were so upset about a comic book winning the award that they changed the rules so it couldn’t happen again). The comic series won literally more than two dozen Eisner Awards. It’s won a Bram Stoker Award. Individual issues and graphic novels have been nominated for (and at least once won) Hugo awards. It has been declared by more than one authority the best comic series, ever.

So I am quite certain that there exist a bunch of fanboys out there who have never cracked a single cover of the original comics (oh, maybe they read some of the spin-offs and such written by people other than Gaiman in the years since, or they watch the Fox TV series Lucifer which was very, very, very loosely based on a couple of characters out of the original comics) but who have claimed for years to be Sandman fans, because so many other people say the series was so good.

And it was. And still is.

I realize that there is a way you could look at my rant here as a form of gatekeeping, because I am mocking these guys who are claiming to have read the original series when it is crystal clear that they haven’t. But gatekeeping isn’t about fact-checking, it’s about misusing the concept of fact-checking to tell people who are enthusing about a book or movie or series that they are are liking these things incorrectly–they are the wrong kinds of fans.

I am not pointing at people who are clamoring to get into the Sandman fandom and saying that they aren’t welcome. I am pointing to people who are screaming about how much they hate The Sandman and insisting that anyone who does like this thing they don’t like is the wrong kind of fan. Which is a different thing all together.

They are free to dislike it. That are free to say they dislike it. They are free to go watch something else.

What they shouldn’t do is try to stop other people from liking it. And they shouldn’t be lying about their past experience with the story in order to try to add fake gravitas to their hateful, homophobic screaming.

Chuck is the artist, Chas is the writer

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Many years ago the famous author Terry Pratchett was going to do a reading in the city where I lived at the time, Seattle, Washington. You had to reserve seats for the reading, though the tickets were free. My husband and another couple among our friends wanted to attent, so we reserved seats and planned to attend together. Specifically, the other couple was going to show up at our place in a Seattle neighborhood about 2 miles from the venue where Mr. Pratchett was supposed to speak, and the four of us would drive over together.

Each of us had at least one of Mr. Pratchett’s books we intended to bring with us to ask him to autograph.

We discussed the reading and our attendance plans on several mailing lists associated with the science fiction shared universe ‘zine that I was Editor-in-Chief of and that many of our friends were members of either the Editorial Board or the non-profit Corporate Board of Directors overseeing said fanzine.

So on a particular Saturday afternoon my husband and I were waiting for two of our friends to arrive at our door so we could all pile into one car with the books we wanted autographed and drive to the nearby University for the reading.

There was a knock at our door. I opened the door expected to see the two friends we were expecting. Instead, another friend of ours (who was also involved in the sci fi project as a writers of stores, an illustrator of stories, a cover artist for the fanzine, and a member of the editorial board). I opened my mouth intending to say, "Oh, you’re coming to the reading, too?"

But before I could say that, our friend, Chuck, said, "I think I’m having a heart attack, and I wasn’t sure what to do, so I came to ask you guys."

Now, at this time Chuck lived only a half mile from the place where Mr Pratchett was scheduled to read, and only 3/4 of a mile from the University District Hospital’s Emergency Room. But instead of heading to the nearby Emergency Room, our good friend Chuck had gotten on a bus, which required him to change buses halfway through, and took the four mile trip to the duplex where Michael and I lived over in the neighborhood of Ballard, Washington, to ask us what he ought to do about a heart attack.

We bundled him into our car, scrawled a quick note to our other two friends, and headed over to a different Emergency Room that was barely half a mile from the place we lived at the time.

It turned at that Chuck was correct: he was having a heart attack. There were various things the doctors wanted to do before they would let us take him home.

When our friends arrived at our duplex (this was back in the late 1990s when none of us had cell phones so I couldn’t sent a message to tell them what was happening), the note had somehow blown off the door. So they waited a while for us to re-appear, then the went to the Pratchett reading, and afterword, one of them asked Mr Pratchett to give her an autograph that said, "To Gene: Where were you, you bum? Terry Pratchett."

Chuck was, indeed having a minor heart attack, so my husband and I hung out in the hospital lobby until the doctors decided our friend was physically stable and we could take him home.

Now, while the decision to get on a long bus ride that required a transfer to get to some friends to ask what he ought to do about a heart attack very much sums up some parts of Chuck’s personality, in all fairness I have to point out that he took important and wise actions related to the health situation afterward.

For years Chuck’s primary source of income had been as a administrative person for a comic book distributing firm, and the rest of his income was supplemented by writing, illustrating, and editorial work he did for several small comic book publishing companies. After this incident, Chuck went to remarkable lengths to find a steel foundry that was doing business in Seattle, and took a job that involved a lot of physical activity at the foundry, so that he wasn’t spending every day sitting at a desk. This move prevented him from having any more cardiac events for some years after this.

In addition to being the single most prolific writer, artist, and editor of the Tai-Pan Literary and Arts Project (of which I had the honor of being editor-in-chief for about 27 years), Chuck was involved in lots of other projects: he had a patreon, he had is long-running comic strip Mr Cow a fantasy comic book series, Champion of Katara, and the related fantasy series Felicia, the Sorceress of Katara.

Chuck was also–hands down, no arguments–the very best person to read a story aloud. When, at our monthly writers’ meetings, some people had a scene, or short story, or chapter from their own work in progress to read but were feeling trepidatious about reading it aloud for critique, Chuck frequently volunteered to read there stories. And even with zero-prep time, Chuck did the very best voices.

In my opinion, his writing deserved to be read by a much larger audience than found him on the various venues he published his work on. Similarly, while I am extremely happy that I own several of his story illustrations and book covers (hanging at various places around my apartment), I think that a much larger audience should have seen his stuff. And I absolutely wish that many, many more people had gotten to hear his voice talent.

Many months ago a mutual friend (Chuck’s best friend, and a writer who is one of the few people I put in the same category as Chuck), informed several of us that Chuck was experiencing health issues but only wanted a very limited number of people to know the details.

Chuck continued to attend our monthly Writers’ Meetings for a while, but had communicated to me that he didn’t want to talk about his health situation with others. So it was only very recently that I was able to tell many of our acquaintances what was up. And when my husband and I headed into the nearby hospital this weekend for a round of sitting with him, I was convinced that there were going to be several more days of us spending part of the day sitting by his bed and either reading messages from friends far away, or talking about some story ideas I had for his universe (with his permission I had written a Christmas Ghost Story set in his Champions of Katara universe, and had discussed a few other ideas in very broad terms.)

This is not the first time I have sat at the bedside of someone I knew and loved who was heading toward what the doctors all said was the end. But on Saturday I was still very naively thinking that I would get to sit at his bedside on the the next several days I had committed to.

So I was talking about one of my silly story ideas set in his universe, trying to keep a familiar voice sounding in the room no matter how unconscious he was, when he just…

…stopped…

…breathing.

I knew that he had a Do Not Resuscitate and a Do Not Intubate Order on file, but I still (having been programmed by many years of movies and TV shows), expected something more urgent from the medical people when I pressed the red button and told them I thought he had stopped breathing.

But Chuck was gone.

A lot of our mutual friends and acquaintances have shared more interesting and illuminating stories than the one I shared above about Chuck and his many idiosyncracies and talents. I should try to see how many of those are available on line to link to.

But while I’ve been thinking about Chuck, and what he means to me, I’ve thought about a phrase more that more than one of our mutual friends have used: referencing his gentle humor. And while I’ve talked about how for years he got me again and again every month with his deadpan pretending to not know what I was talking about when I asked if he had a story to read for our monthly Writers’ Meeting, I realize that "gentle" only scratched the surface.

Chuck had a wicked sense of humor, but his humor was also always kind. I think that we, as a species, don’t always fully appreciate just how valuable kindness is, nor do we always recognize how uncommon kindness is. I, personally, am fundamentally a snarky, flippant, irreverent, and impudent a personality. Chuck was extremely clever and sharp-witted–and sometimes even impudent–but his satire and felicitousness were never cruel or biting.

Chuck was always kind.

And I think that is what is leaving the biggest hole in my heart right now. Yes, I wish I knew how several of his stories in progress would have ended if he had had more time, but I’m mostly going to miss his kindness.

Over the years I worked with him, Chuck would sometimes sign his work "Chuck Melville" but other times sign it much more formally "Chas P.A. Melville." I asked him more than once which he preferred and why. The only time he didn’t give a deflecting humorous answer he said, ‘Chas is the writer. Chuck is the artist."

So I tried to follow that guideline when his work appeard in the publication I was editing ever since. I still don’t know what precisely his two middle initials stand for. One of his sisters revealed one of the initials in a posting on his Caringbridge site. I’m willing to let the other initial remains a mystery.

In “One World, One People” Sam and Bucky Bring This Adventure to an End

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The finale of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was a lot of fun. This is a superhero story, so there was a lot of superheroics. They did a much better job wrapping up most of the problematic plotlines than I had feared in the middle.

I’ve been reading a lot of other people’s reviews of the earlier episodes, and someone made an observation that echoed something I had been thinking about, but I can’t find the review where I read it so I can credit them. Marvel had a plan for this phase of their cinematic universe, which was to be kicked off by the Black Widow movie last summer, and then we were supposed to get The Falcon and the Winter Soldier series and then after that we were supposed to see WandaVision.

Instead, that part of the schedule was reversed. WandaVision was a very out-of-the-box story and didn’t follow typical superhero combat outlines. Because we saw it first, it raised the bar. So when The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is more of a typical superhero story, we keep expecting something more because WandaVision was so different.

It has also been revealed that at least one character who was introduced in this series is also in the Black Widow movie, and that was supposed to be our introduction to them. Not sure how, if we had been able to see Black Widow first that might have changed some of our perceptions of this series.

I think the series overall was fair, but not entirely good and certainly not great. I know opinions vary on this.

But to talk about the finale and what I thought worked, I’m going requires some spoilers. Before we jump into that, because this is a Disney owned property and for some time Disney has been refusing to pay some writers royalties owned, it is nice to note that Disney and Alan Dean Foster approaching settlement on royalties

Okay, so, let’s get into it:

Warning: Spoilers Below!

We finally see Sam in a Captain America themed costume. That favor Bucky called in really paid of, because Sam’s new flight suit is a major upgrade. This episode had lots of fights, and those were all thrilling.

The identity of the Power Broker is revealed as being Sharon Carter. I was a bit disappointed in this development since in the comics Sharon was never a villain. I’m also disappointed because all the previous clues pointed to Sharon so obviously that I was certain they were red herrings. I think this is another one I have to chalk up to WandaVision having raised my expectations too high.

The political parts of the plot don’t hang together well. Camestros Felapton opined in a previous review that this is because the writers are attempting to riff on the original Captain American’s unwavering moral compass, but the writers don’t seem to have the same moral compass. Cora Buhlert pointed out more than once that the supposed villains, the Flag-Smashers, are mostly right in objecting to the policies of the Global Repatriation Council, while the GRC’s policies amount to genocide under real world international law.

I have a really hard time believing, even when half the population of the planet disappeared five years previously, that the remainder of most of the world’s governments would cede all decisions about international travel and so forth to a single committee. If you can suspend your disbelief enough to at least see the GRC’s vote as having something other than symbolic value, you can kind of muddle through that part of the plot.

The fights play out, with Sam and Bucky each getting to be probably heroic. Captain Nationalism shows up in the middle of things and for a bit it looked like it was just going to be a repeat of him murdering one or more members of the Flag-Smashers. Instead, when Karli endangers a truck load of hostages, he breaks off from the fight and tries to save the hostages.

The Karli does get killed before everything is said and done, but it is Sharon Carter who does it, under circumstances where it appears to Sam that Sharon was just acting to save him. The viewers know that Sharon had tried to recruit Karli and the remaining super soldiers to come work for her, and then Karli refused, Sharon needed to kill her or be exposed as the villainous Power Broker.

Sam gets to have a debate with the members of the GRC, the entire thing filmed not just by news camera but by dozens or more bystanders. So the whole world heard him talk about being a Black man wearing the Stars and Stripes. The speech was moving, but we still didn’t take a very deep dive into the problems of systemic racism.

Isaiah Bradley’s stories gets a good closure. We get a scene where Isaiah sees that the story of him and the other black soldiers involuntarily experimented upon is now part of the Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian. I’ve been trying to avoid reviews until I finished writing this but I did notice something on Twitter and Tumblr. Fans (as far as I can tell) are white, thought this scene wasn’t very important to the plot or was too superficial a take on the troubling relationship between the American Medical Establishment and the African American community. Whereas fans I know are people of color found the scene very moving; some declaring it the most important moment in the whole series.

I thought it was a good scene, though I would have liked a bit more of an examination of the meaning of Isaiah’s earlier declaration that no Black man should want to become Captain America. But I’m going to defer to the opinions of the PoC on how well this scene really worked.

We get to see Zemo one more time, but he isn’t talking to anyone, and that’s a shame. The rest of the super soldiers in the Flag-Smashers are killed by a bomb. The Contessa has a short scene with Captain Nationalism and his wife, where he gets a new uniform and the name USAgent. Bucky goes to the elderly man from episode one and finally confesses that he was the one who murdered the man’s son, and apparently explains about the whole Winter Solider thing. And Sharon got her pardon–which she is going to use to steal secrets from the government.’

And it seems that the powers that be are all okay with Sam declaring himself Captain America. We get a final wrap up with Bucky and Sam back in Louisiana with Sam’s sister, nephews, and all the community members we met earlier. I have to say I like that Bucky is able to smile again.

And the final title card changes the name of the show to Captain America and the Winter Soldier.

One of the jobs this series set out to accomplish was to show us that Sam could step into Steve Roger’s boots and be a great Captain America. It pulled that off, but it’s fair to say it did that in spite of the main plot of the show, rather than because of it.

The show is uneven. It worked for me, I think, because the character arcs for Bucky, Sam, and USAgent held together, again, sometimes in spite of the plot, not because of it.

At least for me, I’m left wanting to see what happens next for Sam, and Bucky, and Zemo. I want to know what kind of trouble the Contessa is going to get USAgent into. And I want to know how Sharon’s plots will be thwarted.

And I’m hoping that Loki is better.

These reviews might also interest you:

Camestros Felapton: So I guess that was Falcon & the Winter Soldier then

Cora Buhlert: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier come to the conclusion that it’s “One World, One People”

‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ finale completes its ambitious hero’s journey

Sam and Bucky Face the “Truth”

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Episode five of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was very enjoyable. The storyline made some progress on a portion of the plot that has been muddled in previous episode. They also finally made a few specific mentions of racism, rather than relying on Hydra as a stand in for white supremacy/white nationalism. They dipped a toe in, at least. It’s still unclear whether the whole story is going to hold together, and there is only one episode after this.

I can’t be more specific without some major spoilers. So if you haven’t seen the episode and don’t want to be spoiler, don’t scroll past the warning below.

Before I get into that, this show is on Disney+, and the parent company, I should remind you that the parent company, Disney, continues to refuse to pay royalties owed to Alan Dean Foster and others for novelizations and similar work.

Okay, so, let’s get into it:

Warning: Spoilers Below!

The episode picks up apparently only minutes after the end of the previous episode. USAgent, aka the new Captain America, aka Captain Nationalism has fled the scene of his street execution of an unarmed member of the Flag-Smashers. Bucky and Sam are hot on his tail.

They try to talk him into surrendering, which of course he won’t do, so we get a fight. It’s a superhero series, there has to be a fight, but I have to say I was a bit impatient for it to be over.

See, in Captain America: the Winter Soldier Bucky, as the Winter Soldier, was able to give the real Captain America quite a run for his money in combat when Cap had Black Widow and Falcon assisting. And later when Cap had to go up against the Winter Soldier alone, he lost the fight (though he won the war). So, I’m sorry, Captain Nationalism, even with the super soldier serum, is no Steve Rogers. Bucky should have been able to take him down, by himself, in half the time that the showrunners stretched out the fight against Bucky and Sam.

Okay, that’s my fanboy nerdy moment over.

It was very poignant after the fight seeing Sam try to wipe the blood of the murdered man off Cap’s shield.

I found my suspension of disbelief stretching later in the episode when we find out that, Captain Nationalism murdered an unarmed man while literally hundreds of bystanders recorded it and uploaded to the internet, that instead of being turned over to the authorities in Latvia to face charges, he apparently got back to the U.S. only to face a disciplinary hearing. If the government whisked him away, surely they would have already known that he no longer had the shield right?

Whisking him away would be a violation of international law… but in the real world the U.S. military is notorious for violating those laws and treaties when service members commit crimes in allied countries where we have military bases. We are particularly guilty of doing it when white American G.I. commits sexual assault against a person of color. So it isn’t unbelievable that we would do it. I would just feel a whole lot better had the writers made some acknowledgement that that’s what happened.

Before I get back to Sam and Bucky, I just want to say what a wonderful surprise was the cameo of Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. That’s a character who is a bit of a deep-dive. She was original introduced in the late 60s in the super-spy version of the Nick Fury comic books. She was much later revealed to be a sleeper agent all along and became a villain. There are several possibilities for how Marvel plans to use her later, but I think it is particularly telling that she shows up right after Captain Nationalism’s trial to offer him a job.

It was a very short scene, but she was awesome in it. And I look forward to seeing her interact with other characters–dare we hope she gets significant screen time with Daniel Brühl’s Zemo in a future show?

Speaking of Brühl, we get a very satisfying scene with Bucky confronting him at the Sokovia Monument before he is arrested by the Dora Milaje and taken away to that floating super prison which I believe we last saw in Captain America_ Civil War.

Sam, meanwhile, returns to the U.S. and meet with Isaiah Bradly, the black super soldier buried from history that Bucky introduced Sam to earlier. They have a couple of moving scenes. Not surprising that it is moving because Carl Lumbly is a talented actor. This is the scene where the writer’s finally stop used code, allowing Bradley to talk about the racism inherent in how he and his former comrades were chosen to test the early attempts to duplicate the last super soldier serum. Anyone familiar with the Tuskegee Experiment will not be surprised at some of the horrible things Bradley reveals.

He makes an impassioned argument that, first, certain people will not stand by and let a black man take up the name Captain America. And second that, because of the way America treats its minorities, no black man should want to wear those stars and stripes.

The action then moves back to Louisiana. Sam calls in favors from the community and starts working to fix the family’s fishing boat so his sister can sell it to save the family home. Bucky shows up obstensibly to deliver a “favor” he cashed in with the Wakandas (perhaps a new flight suit, since Sam’s was destroyed during the fight with Captain Nationalism).

Anyway, this leads to the best parts of the episode. I have mentioned so many times how episode two was so awesome because if you just let Bucky and Sam interact, wonderful things happen. There is less snark between them in their scenes here. And the scenes do a good job of dealing with the the family legacy subplot while showing realistically Sam and Bucky bonding, and trying to move past being two guys who happened to both love the same man. Er, that is, I mean, both were extremely close friends with and worked as sidekicks to.

Heh.

While it may be a bit formulaic, even the superhero trains himself montage they gave Sam felt earned and meaningful. If one of the purposes of this series is to convince fans of the Captain America and Avengers movies that Sam is ready to become the new Captain America, it seems to be accomplishing that.

The political plot still seems to be a mess. The mulit-government council the Karli and the Flag-Smashers are fighting is proposing things that are blatantly bad. So the viewer ought to be cheering for the Flag-Smashers. I can’t tell if that writers simply don’t realize this is what they are doing, or if they trying so hard to to cast what are clearly alt-right/white nationalist ideas as objectively immoral because they don’t want to offend American conservatives.

We get more clues implying the Sharon Carter is the mysterious villain known as the Power Broker. The fact that she hires the international terrorist, Batroc, who has fought both Captain America and Falcon earlier certainly doesn’t bode well for her not being a villain.

It’s still too soon to tell. In the comics the two roles that Sharon Carter played in most storylines was to be Captain America’s modern era girlfriend, or to be a spy usually working for S.H.I.E.L.D. In the latter role she often was working in what could at best be termed morally grey areas (which often caused tension between her and Cap). So it is still possible that it’s going to turn out that these clues hinting at her being the Power Broker are red herrings.

The show ends with the Flag-Smasher’s taking the members of the Global Repatriation Commission captive. Sam seems read to be a hero again. We presume he will take up Bucky’s offer to call when he needs back-up. So expect a big fight next episode.

And then, of course, there is the post-credits scene. Nothing is going to be simple.

I can’t tell, yet, if this is a series that aimed at a very difficult goal and isn’t quite pulling it off, or if it is going to completely crash and burn.

I guess we’ll find out on Friday!

You may find these reviews useful:

Review: The Falcon & The Winter Soldier episode 5 (sort of)

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Face the “Truth”

Also, this is being reported now:

Disney and Alan Dean Foster approaching settlement on royalties

Sam and Bucky: the 80s Want Their Plot Cliches Back

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I didn’t write a review of the second episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier because the review would have just been: Not as exciting as the first episode. The action scene was lackluster and the scenes with the new Captain America were not very compelling. Even when the new Cap and his buddy are arguing with Sam and Bucky the scene didn’t have any bite. On the other hand, the bantering scenes between Bucky and Sam were awesome. I would gladly watch an entire series of the two of them just snarking.

Spoilers below!

If episode two was a let down after the opening, episode three may be a full-fledged crash and burn. The biggest problem is one that Cora Buhlert called out in her review of the first episode:

> the villain Flag-Smasher is a problematic and I would have preferred, if Marvel had not used him. In the comics, Flag-Smasher is just one guy (apparently, the main Flag-Smasher in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is a woman, which is progress, I guess), not a whole organisation (though he later is part of one), and his reasons for wanting to abolish nations and borders are both understandable and actually make sense. The fact that this character was portrayed as a villain tells you a lot about what Captain America comics were like in the 1980s and 1990s, when I used to call Captain America “Captain Nationalism” and flat out hated the character. The Marvel movies did a lot to move Captain America away from the old “Captain Nationalism” model and turned him more into what he was intended to be, namely the positive side of America given form. Hell, the Marvel movies actually made me like Captain America.

This problem was more than hinted at in the first episode, in that the only thing we were told about the so-called terrorist organization is that they want open borders and for people to be able to move freely between nations. Most people living in the European Union have had that ability within the union for decades, and it has generally been viewed as beneficial economically, culturally, and socially.

American conservatives are horrified by the idea of open borders, which makes this show’s narrative lean into that Captain Nationalism idea. The new Cap being both a jerk and someone more than happy to promulgate the jingoistic propaganda is fine for a character who clearly is supposed to be one of our antagonists, but when the two protagonists also immediately assume that open borders are bad, that’s more problematic.

I had hoped that the Flag-Smashers would turn out to be a worthy exploration of some kind of justice issue, but the third episode just muddles it up even more. The leader, Karli, is also angry that people who were dusted in the blip but then came back are getting aid and resources to reintegrate with society. That sort of resentment is something that happens in the real world in relationship to refugee crises, it’s true, however the people who feel that sort of resentment are also almost always the same people who vehemently opposed open borders.

The two beliefs just don’t go together.

Later she talks about another goal: destroying industries. As if destroying some people’s livelihoods and interrupting the production of necessary goods wouldn’t make the other issues she laments substantially worse.

The main plot developments of episode two were the revelation that some of the Flag Smashers are super soldiers (and that someone somewhere has re-invented a serum like the ones that gave Captain America and Bucky their powers), and that there were African-American soldiers experimented upon during the Korean War era, one of whom developed powers like Captain America, was used for some covert missions, and then locked up in prison for years afterward.

The main action of episode three has to do with getting Baron Zemo (introduced in Avengers: Civil War) out of prison on the grounds that his connections to Hydra will help them find whoever has made the new super soldier serum. Which leads them to the fictional city of Madripoor looking for the villain called the Power Broker.

Madripoor is a cliche lawless city/state. Such settings are cliches precisely because they serve certain kinds of stories well. The similar city/planet that appeared in the Star Trek: Picard episode "Star Dust City Rag" is an example of how it can be used to move both and action and comedy plot forward. Here it’s just portrayed as a generic Asian Cyberpunk town… that doesn’t seem to have any asian inhabitants. At all. Not one. And it is supposed to be in or near Indonesia!

I could keep going on and on about the logistic and plothole problems with this episode. It’s just mind-boggling how bad it got. (Shipping containers do not work that way!)

Now, one difference in episode three is that the action scenes are generally more exciting than what we got in episode two. It’s only when you think about the plot or logic that things fall apart. We also didn’t get much fun banter between Sam and Bucky. On the other hand, Zemo is quite fun, and the actor does a really good job dancing between being charming and menacing. It was nice to see them doing something with Sharon Carter; making her be really angry about taking all of the consequences for actions in Captain America Civil War without any of the praise and certainly not a pardon, unlike some of the other characters (Bucky and Sam, specifically). It was also really fun surprise to see the character of Ayo (one of the Wakandan Dora Milaje) at the end of the episode.

I enjoyed parts of this episode. But the way the plot, motivations, and logistics keep crashing through my willing suspension of disbelief leaves me worrying that I’m not going to enjoy the series at the end.

Because I like the MCU versions of Bucky and Sam so much, I will undoubtedly stick it out. I just hope I don’t regret it.

You may find these other reviews useful:

Marvel’s “New World Order” – Some Thoughts on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

Falcon & The Winter Soldier is probably bad actually

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier meet “The Star Sprangled Man”

Why we love to hate the MCU’s new Captain America, John Walker

"Hydra" is Code for "We Don’t Want to Talk About White Supremacy"

‘Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ Uncovers Marvel’s Original Sin

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier tangle with the “Power Broker”

Edited to Add: Episode Four: "The Whole World Is Watching" is a considerable improvement, answering some of my plothole questions and moving character arcs forward. Full review soonish.

Bucky and Sam try to find their place in the “New World Order”

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© Disney+

I’m going to try to give a review of episode one of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier without doing a recap and avoiding plot spoilers until the end. This episode is a good opening act, establishing where are characters are emotionally and situationally since the end of Avengers: Edngame. The trailers I had seen had made this seem mostly like a action adventure not unlike one of the theatrical Avengers movies, with more than a bit of the buddy cop vibe that some of the solo MCU movies pulled off. That isn’t quite what we get in the first episode.

I have to admit, while I have been looking forward to this show, I was wondering really what the writers had in mind for these two characters. What do they have in common other than they were each, at different stages of Captain America’s life his best buddy and sidekick. Which doesn’t seem like enough to build a good character repartee.

The first episode acknowledges this by showing us that the two characters are not interacting with each other at all. Bucky his working with a psychiatrist to try to recover both from years of being a brainwashed assassin, and the trauma of being one of the people snapped out of existence by Thanos, only to suddenly come back into existence five years later, to find a world that has moved on.

Which is another thing that he and Falcon/Sam Wilson have in common. In Sam’s case, he’s come back from the blip to find his parents dead, and his sister struggling to keep the fishing business that has been in their family for generations afloat, on top of being a single mother.

Before I talk about any of more of the set up, I should pause here to talk about the opening. On certain parts of the fannish internet a lot of women are losing their minds over the very opening where Sam is seen using and iron and an ironing board to iron a button-down dress shirt. There are memes out there already about how sexy women find it when a man knows how to iron his own shirt. As a man who owns an iron and an ironing board and has been known to iron dress shirts and slacks and such before going to certain important social events where one is expected to dress up, the scene didn’t quite have that effect on me. It seemed, to me, perfectly in character based on how self-sufficient Sam had been shown to be in the first MCU we ever saw him in, Captain America: Winter Soldier.

Sam was ironing the shirt because he was attending a ceremony at the Smithsonian related to the Captain America exhibit there. The scene’s purpose in the story is to establish that, despite having Cap himself hand over his shield at the end of Avengers Endgame and telling Sam to take over the role of Captain America, Sam doesn’t believe that he—or anyone else—should take up that mantle.

We next see Sam in an incredible aerial battle, where he is working with U.S. government forces to try to rescue an US Air Force officer from terrorists. It is an incredible scene that looks good enough to appear in one of the theatrical MCU releases. It clearly establishes that despite his misgivings, Sam is more than capable of stepping into Captain America’s shoes. The sequence will remind you a lot of the opening of Winter Soldier, and not just because the leader of the badguys is Batroc, who was the leader of the bad guys in that fight, as well.

Bucky’s sequences with his psychiatrist and some people he has tried to befriend do a great job of showing you how much of a struggle it is for him to try to lead an ordinary life. He’s trying to make amends for as many of the bad things he did during the years he was brainwashed by Hydra as he can. And his scene include a couple of particular heart wrenching moments in that regard. While Sam is working for the government as a contract operative, Bucky is apparently just working under conditions of a pardon. Regularly meeting with his psychiatrist is one of those conditions.

The first episode also sets us up with at a terrorist organization and at least one antagonist that we can assume will be the source of conflict for the rest of the series.

I was a bit worried when we reached the end of the episode, because I had assumed this series was going to be eight to ten episodes long, and they had done a good enough job putting pieces on the board in this one that I was worried the middle episodes would drag. I have since learned that the series is only six episode long, and presuming more of them with be about 43-minutes long as the first episode was, that probably is just enough to tell the story without needing any filler.

I do have a few spoilery comments on this one, which will be behind the cut-tag below. Before we get into that: may I remind you that this show appears on Disney+, and the Disney corporation is refusing to pay Alan Dean Foster and other authors money they are owed for media tie-in novels.

Spoliers ahead!

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Seriously, every single sentence below is full of spoilers…

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Seriously, turn back now!!!

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I warned you!!!

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Seriously, spoilers ahead!

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Continue reading Bucky and Sam try to find their place in the “New World Order” →

WandaVisions Wraps Things Up in the Awesome “The Series Finale”

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© Disney+

Having now seen the entire series1, I can sum up my feelings quite succinctly: It’s f-ing awesome2!

It did not end the way I thought it would. Thank goodness it didn’t end the many weird ways that some fans, fancasts, and so-called leakers were predicting. The show ended much, much better than any of those predictions.

The last episode took the meta of all the earlier episode titles all the way to 11: “The Series Finale.” It was fun, it didn’t have plotholes, it didn’t introduce wild twists (but it had more than one surprise3). Most importantly: it is a complete story. It did not feel as if it was just setting us up for the next show4.

It also is exactly the kind of story I, for one, needed right now. But I can’t explain why without spoilers. But before I warn you not to click through or otherwise read further, may I remind you that the Disney corporation is still refusing to pay Alan Dean Foster and other authors money they are owed for media tie-in novels.

Anyway…

Spoliers ahead!

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Seriously, every single sentence below is full of spoilers…

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Seriously, turn back now!!!

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I warned you!!!

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Seriously, spoilers ahead!

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Continue reading WandaVisions Wraps Things Up in the Awesome “The Series Finale” →

WandaVision gives us some answers and fills in Wanda’s backstory

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© Disney+

The penultimate episode of WandaVision gave us a lot of answers, revealed a lie or two, and set the stage for a big battle. I think it also showed us that this show should not be thought of as a spin-off. It has leaned into the things that television does well, telling a story more nuanced that any of the big movies are able to with their set pieces and epic battles. Not that next episode won’t have a battle, because that seems inevitable at this point.

Episode eight, “Previously On” is not as delightful as episode seven, nor as fun as episodes one through six, but we’ve reached the point where answers must be forthcoming, and since the show centers around Wanda’s trauma, that means things have to be a bit more serious, at least for no. I can’t say more without spoilers, so the rest of the review will be behind a cut-tag

Before I get into it: this show appears on Disney+, and may I remind you that Disney corporation is refusing to pay Alan Dean Foster and other authors money they are owed for media tie-in novels.

Spoliers ahead!

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Seriously, every single sentence below is full of spoilers…

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.

.

Seriously, turn back now!!!

.

.

.

I warned you!!!

.

.

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Seriously, spoilers ahead!

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Continue reading WandaVision gives us some answers and fills in Wanda’s backstory →

WandaVision goes Modern while really breaking all the walls

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© Disney+

Things really got moving in this episode, “Breaking the Fourth Wall.” I think we may have learned enough that it’s possible to start making some judgement calls on some of the plot and delivery decisions made in earlier episodes. Despite the fact that there was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth during the first about hour after the episode became available for streaming. Disney+ was experiencing problems. For some people the service crashed completely and didn’t come back for a while. A lot of others experience multiple long pauses in the middle of the action. Many are inferring that a lot more fans of the show are waiting up on Thursday night until the episode becomes available, and simply overwhelmed the system.

This episode gave us a couple of answers to questions swirling around the underlying mystery and hinted at more to come. I’ve seen a few people already claiming that the reveal near the end of this episode completely eliminates a few other fan theories, and I think those people are jumping the gun. Which I will get to below. But before I get into any spoilers, I think it is worth mentioning that for the first time in the series there is a post-credits scene. I won’t tell you what it is above the break, but just in case you’re one of those people who stop playing or skip to another show once the credits start, you might want to stick around this time.

One more thing before I get into it: this show appears on Disney+, and may I remind you that Disney corporation is refusing to pay Alan Dean Foster and other authors money they are owed for media tie-in novels.

I can’t say more without spoilers, so…

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Seriously, every single sentence below is full of spoilers…

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Seriously, turn back now!!!

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I warned you!!!

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Seriously, spoilers ahead!

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Continue reading WandaVision goes Modern while really breaking all the walls →

WandaVision Brings Tricks, Treats, and a Growing Menace

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© Disney +

Last week brought us the 6th episode out of 9 of WandaVisiom, entitled “All-New Halloween Spooktacular!” I’m still enjoying the series a lot. But I realized after I finished my review last week, that if the answers to the various mysteries they are aiming to aren’t close to my guesses, the series may have gone completely off the rails. Two of my favorite fan writers have commented that it’s nearly impossible to review this series because you can’t tell whether things make sense if you don’t know the ending. So maybe it’s okay that I’m somewhat conflicted. This review is so late because I kept trying to write it without it being a long recap of the episode.

Before I begin my spoiler-heavy review, because this show appears on Disney+, I am morally obligated to tell you that the Disney corporation is refusing to pay Alan Dean Foster and other authors money they are owed for media tie-in novels.

This is the first episode where I was completely clueless as to who they were doing an homage to during the opening credits. I mentioned previously that due to various life events I watched virtually no television in the 1980s, right? So, due to very different life events1, I wound up missing a lot of television and other pop culture events in the 1990s.

Other viewers, more knowledgeable than myself tell me that the show skipped over the 1990s entirely to make a full-throated embrace of Malcolm in the Middle which aired from 2000 until 2006. And I’ll take their word for it.

The rest of my review/partial recap is rife with spoilers, so don’t scroll down or click below if you don’t want to be spoiled!

I can’t say more without spoilers, so…

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Seriously, every single sentence below is so full of spoilers you need a vomit bag…

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Seriously, turn back now!!!

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I warned you!!!

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Seriously, spoilers ahead!

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Continue reading WandaVision Brings Tricks, Treats, and a Growing Menace →