This series will be a brief, semi-comedic review of the CW superhero shows. You can check out last week’s review post here. The only shows discussed will be ‘Arrow’, ‘Flash’, and ‘Supergirl’. There WILL be some spoilers discussed, so only look at the reviews you’re up to date on!
For the second week in a row, ARROW ruins a perfectly good antagonist. Michael Emerson has put on a great performance as Cayden James this season. This episode dumbs him down to an absentee father, spoiling his demise with the uninformative flashbacks. The reveal of Ricardo Diaz being the mastermind isn’t exciting, because we know so little about his character. The Siren-vs-Canary fight is interesting, but one action sequence does not a good ARROW episode make. Where the season will go from here is unclear, as the show has now broken its season-long villain build-up. But without Michael Emerson, it’s a future that will be lacking in anticipation.
SCORE: 6/10 Basketball Games
WEEKLY WIN TALLY:
The Flash: 5.5 Weeks
Supergirl: 4.5 Weeks
Arrow: 2.5 Weeks
What show did you think won the week? Does Legends of Tomorrow or Black Lightning take your vote? Let us know in the comments below!
Image Comics’ new anthology Twisted Romance (with work by Alex de Campi, Katie Skelly, Sarah Horrocks, and Megan Cubed) offers up three very unique, genre-bending and, multi-medium takes on the concept of love.
Twisted Romance #1 Stories by: Alex de Campi, Sarah Horrocks, and Magen Cubed Art by: Katie Skelly, Sarah Horrocks, and Magen Cubed Published by: Image Comics
Just in time for Valentine’s Day comes this strange and intriguing new anthology of love stories (also bonded by the presence of the supernatural). This issue features three stories: the comic Old Flames by Alex de Campi & Katie Skelly, Leather & Lace (a prose story) by Magen Cubed, and Red Medusa by Sarah Horrocks, a more experimental type of comic tale.
Old Flames Art by Katie Skelly
Old Flames
This piece of comics storytelling takes up the bulk of the page count and is considered the main feature. Old Flames is a dark story told deceptively cartoonish. A tale about succubus type beings drawn with the energy and pop of a bright cartoon or webcomic. Alex de Campi writes what on the surface seems like a horror story or revenge fantasy (and those elements are there) but when looked at deeper has themes of loneliness, regret, and redemption. Old Flames is also an entertaining read with a couple of good plot twists. It looks and feels great with all the expressive, bright and colorful images that came out of Katie Skelly’s pen. Old Flames is great. It’s short, fast, a little dark and kinda sweet.
Old Flames Art by Katie Skelly
Leather & Lace
Leather & Lace is a prose story, yet it still feels like it belongs in this comic anthology as writer Magen Cubed uses some good descriptive visuals to create some great images in your head and has some strong dialog. It’s also a story that combines romance and the supernatural; in this case two star-crossed, love-eyed monster hunters. Leather & Lace is actually the most ‘romantic’ of the three and giving away too much would spoil the fun but it is safe to say it will leave you smiling.
Red Medusa
Red Medusa Art by Sarah Horrocks
Red Medusa is the most bizarre entry, as it plays loose with its narrative, its art and pretty much everything else in its arsenal. Sarah Horrocks creates some really eye-catching figures and panels that bring to mind Bill Sienkiewicz (New Mutants) and some Melinda Gebbie (Lost Girls) too. There is a mixed texture and media look to the art that makes it tangible. Red Medusa may have to be read a few times to decipher a narrative but that’s the point in a comic with art like this.
Conclusion
Twisted Romance is the kind of comic that is important for the medium. It offers new genres and mashups in interesting ways by unique creators, truly living up to its name. The first issue, with its three tales, has something for just about anyone.
Star Trek: Discovery’s first season finale, “Will You Take My Hand?” will air shortly, capping off the crew’s first season in action. It has been an eventful season so far with the introduction of the Klingons’ new look, a mutiny, a four-episode journey through the Mirror Universe, and the death of the U.S.S Discovery’s captain.
Discovery, despite the difficulties that viewers have had tracking down episodes of the show which airs exclusively on CBS All Access in the United States, has enjoyed very favourable ratings and has already been green-lighted for a second season. Producers have promised fans of the show that the questions they have will all be answered in time: plot points that appear to have fallen by the wayside will pop up again leaving no loose threads.
Star Trek: Discovery – The Klingon Question
Although the issue was handled relatively poorly in Star Trek: Enterprise, I’m looking forward to finding out why the Klingons look like gigantic walking cockroaches rather than either of the two looks that Star Trek fans saw in the past. I know that other people watching the show have made peace with the new look, but for better or worse I want an explanation.
Star Trek: Discovery – A Madwoman at the Wheel
Viewers will likely get a chance to see how Emperor Georgiou fares as captain of the Discovery in the season finale, as long as she doesn’t blow her cover. But, after this next episode, I wonder whose butt will be in the big chair next season.
Commander Saru looked pretty good sitting on the dais, but because no previous Star Trek show or movie has featured a ship with an alien captain, and because Doug Jones must be expensive, I wonder if the command structure aboard Discovery will change after Season One’s end.
Star Trek: Discovery – Final Thoughts
Discovery has suffered from a few ongoing problems during its first season, specifically a general lack of success executing what seem like good ideas and a faster-than-light pace to each episode’s plot. That said, so did every Star Trek show that has ever aired. My personal favourite, Star Trek: The Next Generation took a couple seasons to fully develop into the stellar show it became.
So, I’ll stick around for the next season if only to hold the writers and producers to their promise that all questions will be answered.
For tens of thousands of years, man has tried to tell stories to each other in one way or another. It likely started with grunts and a form of caveman charades. But it grew to become art, oratory tales, music, television, and film. Mixed into all that is the stage, where people like Willy Shakespeare and Arthur Miller unleashed wonderful stories. At the heart of everything we do here at Monkeys Fighting Robots, whether it’s the latest Batman comic or Marvel movie, is a desire to tell stories.
All this brings me to The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, a play written by Kristoffer Diaz circa 2009 that returns the theatrics of wrestling home to where those theatrics began — the theatre.
Life-long wrestling fan and pro wrestler Macedonio “Mace” Guerra (Pierre Jean Gonzalez) is a technically perfect athlete with zero charisma. Mace plays the role of a perennial loser in the ring. He’s the wrestler who makes the other wrestlers look good. Mace wrestles for the fictional THE Wrestling where the star of stars is Chad Deity (Garrett Turner). Deity is loaded with charisma and stage presence but lacking in wrestling skills.
Gonzalez does the “heavy lifting” in the ring to make his opponents look better than they are. But Gonzalez also does heavy lifting in the play, leading it from start to finish and spending very little time off stage. Gonzalez makes it look effortless, splendid stage acting that’s made all the more difficult when fighting, flying, and falling is also part of the show. Contrasting Gonzalez boyish enthusiasm for the sport is the outrageously magnetic Deity. Garrett’s work here reminded me of Jim Carrey in the 90s as Garrett uses an impossibly malleable face to puntuate some hilarious dialogue.
Mace’s story is so closely connected to anyone who’s ever done a job where there’s little appreciation. Mace makes the bad wrestlers look good. He also lives in a duality; Mace understands and, in fact, loves the nature of wrestling and how it’s greater than the sum of its parts. But, reality doesn’t appreciate the cog in the machine so-to-speak as much as it values what the machine produces and that’s money.
And let it be known, the audience will
experience the elaborate entrance of Chad Deity
towards the end of the first act.
Mace narrates the show as it introduces his passion for the squared-circle. Mace has been in love with wrestling since childhood, and now he gets to be a wrestler. He uses toys as a metaphor for comparing his skill to those of the popular wrestlers who are usually the worst wrestlers. Mace fails to provide the level of crowd control that the hyper-charismatic Chad Deity provides. And let it be known, the audience will experience the elaborate entrance of Chad Deity towards the end of the first act. It definitely lives up to the hype.
Todd Allen Durkin as Everett K. Olsen, is the head of THE Wrestling who is a typical semi-sleaze bag of over-the-top personality. Through Durkin’s money-grubbing smile is something to love. Mace brings a friend into the wrestling fold, an Indian from Brooklyn named Vigneshwar Paduar (Raji Ahsan), who is chock-full of street-smart charm. Paduar has what Mace lacks, but the fast-talking man doesn’t have the desire to wrestle and his short-lived career in the ring is riddled with terror and being forced to play a terrorist.
The Elaborate Entrance throws in some live wrestling action into the second act. The high-flying fun takes place in a ring like any other wrestling event. It’s choreographed here by Jamin Olivencia, a pro wrestler who also doubles as three wrestlers throughout the show. The action mixes up the usual pattern of a show; it also continues to push the story forward so that it creates the right blend of character and action.
The award-winning play isn’t merely about wrestling.
The unique part of theatre stems from its in-the-moment nature. From performance to performance, the words stay the same, but from show to show, things are just a little different than before. Each person that sees a show sees an almost entirely original version of the same story. I bring this up because The Colony theatre on Miami Beach and Asolo Repertory Theatre created a multimedia experience that mixes the precise acting and blocking of theatre with pre-recorded and live video. Scenes play out in a way that allows viewers to watch the action on the stage or see an alternate angle on the video screens.
The award-winning play isn’t merely about wrestling. Mace touches on that deep desire we all have to reach some greater dream. Also, slinking in and out of the story are issues that relate to politics, race relations, and stereotypes. Wrestling is notorious for using cartoonish cliches to the industry’s advantage. The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity is a wild wrestling show, with bombastic characters that serve a story with deeper layers. The entire show is a look inward at ourselves as individuals and a country. Do we face reality or escape permanently to false narratives?
It has been a while since anyone has covered the Green Lanterns of Earth. It has nothing to do with the book’s quality, it just was lost under all of the events. Recently, Jessica and Simon have successfully stopped an insurrection on the distant planet of Ungara. Liseth Vok, one of Ungara’s greatest artists, tried to convince her world to force out any refugees and keep to their own planet. The Lanterns step in, defeating the villainess before she could do more harm to the people. Now the Lanterns go back to fighting something more frightening than evil alien extremists: DATING!
**Some Spoilers Below**
Story:
After helping out a town recover from a flood, the Green Lanterns are asked by another hero to find her lost friend. Simon accepts the case after revealing the missing person is a superhero he dated a while back from Caper. What’s Caper? It’s the newest dating app made exclusively for heroes, which piques Jessica’s interest. As she signs up for it, Simon goes to Cyborg to get a lead where the hero vanished. They soon realize that it’s more than just one hero missing as the list grows to dozens. While Cyborg can’t put the pieces together, the Green Lanterns find the connection: all of the missing heroes are on Caper. This leads to the Lanterns to track down the headquarters of the app as well as a surprise guest character.
This isn’t meant to be a deep, thought-provoking story, but the truth is it doesn’t have to be. You have a pair of fun characters confronting a present-day topic. There is great humor, cool action, and a plot you want to follow. Not because it’s trying to convey some deeper meaning, it’s just a fun set up for a possibly fun story. The last arc devolved from Lanterns performing epic feats to heavy-handed social commentary. There isn’t anything wrong with social commentary, but sometimes you just want a lighter or sillier story. This current story has the potential to turn into heavy commentary as well, but until then, just sit back and have fun.
There is one thing that does bother me about this issue though. The Caper app finds the user’s perfect match for them, and for Jessica, it’s Simon. For 40 issues, Simon and Jessica have grown to be an amazing team and great friends. Why now is this whole romantic angle coming in? In fact, why is there a romantic angle at all?
Art:
The art team does a fantastic job in this issue. Barnaby Bagenda does an extraordinary job designing the Lanterns and their powers. As I mentioned in the Secret History of Task Force X reviews, Bagenda does great work in a sci-fi environment, so having him work on a Lantern book promises imaginative designs. Add that with Ulises Arreola Palomera’s colorwork. Each character is able to pop off the page beautifully. Together, they create a wonderful book to look at.
Conclusion:
Overall, this is a fun issue. It has great humor and cool action from our leads. The art team goes above and beyond and really brings the issue together. If you need something to read this week, give this issue a shot.
The newest droid in the Star Wars Universe, L3-37, voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, that will appear in the upcoming Solo: A Star Wars Story, is unique in many ways. It is not only voiced by a woman, which is huge because, you know, it’s 2018, but also because it is self-modified.
“She’s a complete individual in the galaxy,” Jon Kasdan says. “We wanted to have it be a completely different kind of droid than you’ve ever seen in the movies. And we definitely wanted it to be a female. We thought it was more than time for that.”
Waller-Bridge will bring her ‘fearless and awkward sense of humor’ to the L3 droid. We have yet to hear her as the character, but if you have yet to see her in anything, check out the show she created and stars in, Fleabag, on Amazon.
“The idea is that she’s sort of a mutt, if you will, of various parts of different kinds of droids who has improved upon herself,” Kasdan said.
L3 will serve as a ‘partner-in-crime’ to Lando Calrissian, with whom there is a working relationship and understanding, though it has yet to be seen if the two will be as inseparable as Han Solo and Chewbacca.
“Her A.I. is way up there in terms of I.Q.,” said director Ron Howard. “She’s capable of some pretty interesting conversations and Phoebe is hilarious and brilliant and really helped bring that character to life in ways that are funny and surprising.”
Solo: A Star Wars releases nationwide in theaters on May 25, 2018.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the speculation floating that Michael Bay will helm the Lobo film is currently false. In fact, the presumed production cost would be upward of $200 million, which is leading to Warner Bros. to have second thoughts regarding the project.
THR also claimed that Bay has not yet been offered the gig and there is a rumor that the studio is not too ‘keen’ on the character. So, that said, this project might be on the back burner for now, especially since it is not even present in DC Comics’ upcoming DCEU films list.
An R-rated superhero film is worth a shot from DC when you consider how much success Marvel has had with Deadpool. If done right, the character could be a hit as he is a fan-favorite character. One that is also foul-mouthed, cigar-toting and with an insatiable hunger for mayhem.
If you don’t know anything about the character, here’s a quick rundown. He was born on the utopian planet of Czarnia. He is the last of his kind because he wiped out his entire civilization so that he could be the last of his people. His name, in his native tongue, actually means, ‘He who devours your entrails and thoroughly enjoys it’. He rides around the galaxy on his rocket-fueled motorcycle as the self-proclaimed ‘best bounty hunter in the galaxy’. He is a weapons expert with super-strength, healing powers and washes it all down with an unquenchable thirst for blood.
Screenwriter Jason Fuchs is actively penning a rewrite in hopes of keeping the project afloat. His rewrite would reportedly scale down the production, which would make WB happy, but not Bay, who prides himself on big-scale action production.
Little else is known about this proposed project, let alone what he would actually look like. His current ‘style’ is below, but he’s definitely been through some ch-ch-ch-changes.
The position of director has been a controversial one for Solo: A Star Wars Story. Following the exit of Phil Lord and Chris Miller, veteran director Ron Howard took the reigns. It was reported that Howard had to reshoot upwards of 80 percent of the film. That was obviously a tall task and Howard was able to get some help from a familiar Star Wars face.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy revealed that George Lucas was able to lend his expertise to the Solo production:
“He had intended to just kind of stop by and say hi, and he stayed five hours. There’s even one little moment in a scene that — I can’t tell you what, sorry — but in the scene on the Millennium Falcon where George said, ‘Why doesn’t Han just do this.’ It actually is a funny little bit that will probably get a laugh. And Ron happened to be by the monitor and not inside the Falcon and he goes, ‘Oh that’s a great idea,’ and ran in and said, ‘George wants us to do this.’ So that was pretty cool. I think George felt pretty great about that. He could revisit these characters, and I think he felt so comfortable, obviously with Ron being there, that it was just fun for him.”
Lucas sold his company to Disney in 2012 for over $4 billion. Since then he has watched Disney make three films that broke the $1 billion mark at the box office which surely gave him a bit of an itch to get back to the franchise. Hopefully, Lucas was able to give Howard some advice that will help him deliver the film that fans are hoping for.
Board the Millennium Falcon and journey to a galaxy far, far away in Solo: A Star Wars Story, an all-new adventure with the most beloved scoundrel in the galaxy. Through a series of daring escapades deep within a dark and dangerous criminal underworld, Han Solo meets his mighty future copilot Chewbacca and encounters the notorious gambler Lando Calrissian, in a journey that will set the course of one of the Star Wars saga’s most unlikely heroes.
Solo: A Star Wars Story hits theaters May 25, 2018
A deleted scene from Justice Leaguehas found its way online, giving fans a look at the iconic black Superman costume, which was rumoured at the beginning of production.
It seems like the scene was either cut for time, or it didn’t fit with Joss Whedon’s version of the film. However, Warner Bros. has included the new footage in the upcoming Blu-Ray release and now its made its way onto YouTube.
In the footage, we see Clark (Henry Cavill) walking through the Kryptonian ship, where he finds multiple suits. While he picks his typical red, yellow and blue costume, the highly-discussed black suit is visible in the background. It’s also worth noting that the scene features Hans Zimmer’s Man of Steeltheme, which is something that I wish Justice Leagueand Joss Whedon had used more of.
Check it out below:
Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists newfound ally Diana Prince to face an even greater threat. Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to recruit a team to stand against this newly awakened enemy. Despite the formation of an unprecedented league of heroes — Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and the Flash — it may be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions
Justice Leaguewill be available on Blu-Ray and DVD from March 13th.
Supergirl #18 hits your local comic book store on February 14, but thanks to DC Comics, Monkeys Fighting Robots has an exclusive 5-page preview for you.
Supergirl #18 is written by Jody Houser and Steve Orlando, with interior art and cover A by Daniel Henriques and Robson Rocha, Stanley “Artgerm” Lau created the variant cover, Michael Atiyeh worked on the colors for the interior and Cover A, and Steve Wand handled letters.
“Artgerm” Lau’s background in graphic design and advertising is a significant influence in the Supergirl variant this week. The over-the-top 70s vibe he gives Supergirl is stunning, combined with the textured logo makes this a must-have print. DC Comics needs to produce this for the 2018 convention season.
Houser has made a name for herself with her work on Mother Panic for DC Comics, Faith for Valiant, and the adaptation of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story for Marvel Comics. Orlando has been working on Supergirl since 2016, from the launch of Rebirth.
About the issue: “PLAIN SIGHT” finale! Director Bones and the D.E.O. put innocent lives at risk when they unleash a psychotic alien on the National City Solstice Semiformal with the hopes of exposing Supergirl. With the alien claiming the only way the Earth can stay pure is to eradicate Supergirl, Kara finds herself pushed to the edge and forced not to stay silent anymore. Supergirl must finally stand as the hero National City needs.
Check out the 5-page preview below, click on the image to expand or scroll past to see the images as well.
Are you reading Supergirl, how have you enjoyed the run so far. Comment below.
