Sunday, February 26, 2023
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
Sunday, January 1, 2023
Comixology: Library and Annotations | Fan Made Commercials
Recording my guest appearance on Superhero Cinephiles was a fun, wonderful experience. The host was incredible, and the conversation was excellent. Preparing for it, balancing the comic, a notebook, and a pen was a lot more frustrating than expected. What's worse is that it was completely unnecessary. I remembered not just all regular features using a Kindle affords, but I also remembered manually drawing underlines and highlights, and putting notes in the margins of unformatted PDFs that professors occasionally send us. It wasn't perfect, but it was still all on a single tablet and required one hand.
Credits
Voice Acting
Kiyana Morgan
Music
Christophe Beck's Ant-Man Theme
Owned by Marvel/Disney
Photos
Adobe Stock & Shutterstock
Script Consulting
Julia Yorks – The Baby Writers Podcast
Software
Figma for UI & Final Cut Pro for editing
Play with the Figma files however you’d like
Annotation & Library
Inspiration
Superhero Cinephiles & Nerdsync
ComiXology & Kindle by Amazon
Comics owned by their respective creators or publishers
Purchased through ComiXology or, more likely, Humble Bundle
I’m affiliated with neither
Special Thanks
SUNY New Paltz Comic Books United!
My school’s comic club showed me the wide world of comics outside of the movies
Thursday, November 24, 2022
Midnight Mass - Book III: Proverbs | Guest Appearing on Gateway Episodes Podcast
Months ago I recorded for Gateway Episodes, a podcast about finding the right episode to use to bring people into a show that they love and want to recommend. Derick McDuff recommended the third episode of Midnight Mass. Naturally, we talk about what, if anything, I missed, and then we really get into this fantastic show and our thoughts on it.
Thank you Undercast Company for having me and introducing me to Mike Flanagan's work. Honestly, I do still have to watch this Midnight Mass, but it finally is the next one on my list.
I was very much brought in by the story and haven't forgotten it since. Coming off The Banshees of Inisherin, this is the perfect time to properly dock at Crockett Island.
Monday, August 29, 2022
Ant-Man: Movie (2015) | Guest Appearing on Superhero Cinephiles Podcast
From the episode's page, because Perry covered it really well, "This week, Perry is joined by video editor and writer Eddie Thomson of Why We Watch to discuss 2015’s Ant-Man! We discuss the long road this movie took to getting made, from Edgar Wright’s long involvement in the project, switching over to Adam McKay and eventually landing in the hands of Peyton Reed. We also talk about how the heist film aspect helps set this apart from the rest of the MCU and why not every movie needs to end in some world-ending threat."
For people interested in talking with Perry, see what's available to discuss and his contact form.
Our discussion on the Nick Spencer comics is a Patreon exclusive. Re-reading them years later was not entirely what I expected, and that's one of the things that we talk about. It was a great experience though, and it inspired me to cobble together a variant cover for one of the issues.
Like the Doctor Strange poster, this was done with re-used assets in Blender, and then it was finished in Photoshop. The main challenge was laying out and rendering the apps separately and posing Scott. The main issue with Scott is it's an FK rig, so the arms and fingers had to be rotated individually, instead of if it had been an easier-to-pose IK setup. Also I’m sure the scale is ridiculous, but I wanted to balance readability of the phone with showing some background, and perspective is hard.
Friday, July 22, 2022
Amazing Spider-Man: Family Business (2014) | Graphic Novel
A plain-clothes Peter Parker is nearly captured by private military contractors. That's weird. He's able to escape capture with the help of his long-lost sister, Teresa Parker. That's weirder. And now they need to go globe-trotting to stop The Kingpin. If this story threw many more curveballs, there's a chance people might've checked out, but it doesn't. Instead, it just gets more enjoyable to read and, frankly, just stare at because of the artwork. Amazing Spider-Man: Family Business is part of an Original Graphic Novel line called Marvel OGN, so it's like a longer, self-contained, single-issue. It's written by Mark Waid and James Robinson, painted and covered by Gabriele Dell'Otto, and penciled by Werther Dell'Edera.
The best thing about stories that go off the rails is that it makes buying into ones like this pretty easy. We don't need to forgive "Sins Past," or anything like, but we should give them a bit of a break because of what they allowed future writers to get away with. Plus long-lost siblings reveal themselves in comics, Law & Order: SVU episodes, and even our world all the time. Waid and Robinson do introduce the story gently though, with a standard, but very entertaining, crime-in-progress.
Peter stumbles onto a truck that's full of shop-lifted laundry detergent, intended to be resold to wholesalers, and then smaller retailers. We get great quips, like "Stop in the Name of Mr. Clean," great panels, and a good sense of where this Spider-Man is right now. No Parker industries, so this is the only way to keep Family Business somewhat grounded.
Once the main story kicks off with Teresa's introduction, they're quickly "Jason Bourne-ing," as Peter calls it, to places like Monte Carlo, Switzerland, and Cairo.
As a fan of the show Archer, Monte Carlo was easily my favorite destination. It took a few minutes to confirm, but someone somewhere will rest easy knowing that Peter and Sterling Archer both don't know the first thing about Baccarat. At least they both clean up nicely.
They're there to get information to lead them to their parents' safe house. They're nearly stopped by a villain named Cyclone, and I really like the way his suit is analyzed. Spider-Man figures out that this version of the character isn't a mutant, so it'll be quick work to basically tear out his battery pack. Still, it would've been nice if Teresa could've helped. The best parts of this story, dealing with this relationship and their relationship with their parents, is where the writing does have some hiccups.
We only get to experience so much of these these two learning about each other, and their mom and dad, because of the constraints of about a hundred pages. Shorthand dialogue about power and responsibility is well-used, but it still feels like a workaround because the plot has to keep powering through. Other times, it is a bit on the nose. The Monte Carlo contact tells the two that Richard Parker was a wisecracker, instead of it being shown in one of Waid and Robinson's flashback scenes. Yes, this stuff should be in there but in a less clunky way. Luckily, the buy-in of the sibling storyline doesn't really have this problem.
Since there's no time to do a DNA test or something, what Waid and Robinson come up with is that Teresa has a family photo and Peter's expertise as a photojournalist tell him that it's not doctored. Doubt is in the back of his mind and ours, but things are addressed well, and nothing about the story really feels cheap because of that doubt. A costume change for Spider-Man is handled similarly, and outside justification for that is the artists get to have more fun. It just works. And again, this part of the story is not the wildest thing to happen in comics, other pop culture, and everyday life. What is wild is that they meet The Kingpin in Cairo.
Leaving out some details, what Family Business comes down to is a male Parker is able to unlock a vault full of Nazi gold that's also guarded by a robot. Nick Spencer's Ant-Man runs into a robot just like this a year or two later, and I recently re-read that for a (Patreon exclusive) guest appearance on the Superhero Cinephiles podcast, so the suspension of disbelief is still going strong here. Plus, this was around the time of the Webb/Garfield movies that were all about Peter's parents, so that probably helped some readers at the time. Now, I'm not so sure. I also wonder if this book has much of a legacy outside of the art and Wilson Fisk's iconic look?
Vincent D'Onofrio as Wilson Fisk | Copyright 2021 Marvel StudiosThe closest comparison I can make to Dell'Otto and Dell'Edera's work is Alex Ross because of how it's painted. A quick comparison can be made with the Ross art in my Uncle Sam review, but a better one can be made by looking at his work in Marvels and Kingdom Come. Where Ross excels is scope and detailing, but, as far as I know, work like this in comics is still incredibly hard to come by outside of covers, and any instance of it should be celebrated. Personally, a character like Teresa should be, too. She's definitely not well-known.
I wish she was. Peter having that connection felt really heart-warming, as unexplored as it felt at times, but I couldn't find too much on the character after that, but if I'm missing something please correct me. As far as Family Business goes, Fisk and the robot are stopped, the day is saved, and there doesn't seem to be any major lasting impacts to the story. Some of that is probably by design because of the self-contained thing, but something about a bombshell like this just defusing, one that could've opened up the world of a character, doesn't feel right. This isn't even where Cindy Moon (Silk) was being kept, which is where I thought the story was going, but that just goes to show what casual reading gets you sometimes. Anyway, someone on Reddit said that the Webb/Garfield movies created the perfect universe to introduce and adapt her story, and they're right, but the MCU wouldn't be a bad fit either.
For those who've seen No Way Home or ready my review, they know that that Peter could use literally anybody in his life just popping up right now, and while writing around Doctor Strange's magic to make this happen logically would be quite difficult, it could be incredibly rewarding for Peter, his sister, and the fans who feel especially close to them.
Update: It looks like Chip Zdarsky featured her a few years later in his Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man run.
Tuesday, June 14, 2022
Prometheus Poster | Knocked Up Style
This poster may be one of the worst, and potentially most offensive, creative ideas I've ever had. Some stupid part of me hopes it sparks better work that can break through to people who still don't realize how necessary abortion rights are, and how scary the country is about to be for people who can get pregnant. That's why it's hopefully worth sharing.
For context on the mashup, if you don't know, please read "Is ‘Prometheus’ a Feminist Pro-Choice Metaphor?" by Megan Kearns.
Please donate to your local, or non-local, abortion fund. A list of funds is available here, and it's suggested that you do a search to quick make sure that sites and lists like this are up to date.