The Thing #1

Welcome to a special post of Into the Longbox. Why is this special? Well, this mini-series starring the Thing combines two of my favorite things. The Thing from the Fantastic Four and one of my new favorite writers, Walter Mosley. A few years ago I read "Devil in a Blue Dress" and was so impressed that I've been working my way through his books. Specifically the Easy Rawlins novels for right now. I bring this all up because he is a black author of well renown, writing a comic book about one of my favorite characters. I couldn't have paired this combo any better than if I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I might have mentioned before that I am always hesitant when an author or a celebrity steps into the comics world to write a comic book. Before getting my hands on this book, I read an interview with Mosley which you can find here. What impressed me is he spoke to why he liked the Thing and something clicked inside me that explained why The Thing appeals to me so much. I've thought it, but never had written it out. I have always thought of him as the black character of the Fantastic Four. The guy that was different that never fit in anywhere and was always feared based on his appearance alone. Mosley more eloquently states that in his interview.

To add to this, he also did an intro AND afterward to a book on the Fantastic Four. So he has more than earned his chops and shown a genuine passion for this particular comic series.

Anyways, when I found out months ago this book was happening, I was super excited and even marked it on my calendar! So what did I think? I thought it was pretty good. It didn't blow me away, but that is because I placed unrealistic expectations on it. It was a very respectful homage to the earlier era of the Fantastic Four. 

A few things stood out to me. First of all, Mosley is a pro, but new to comics. You wouldn't be able to tell here. Most new authors tend to overwrite and fill the pages with a bunch of exposition. Mosley does not do that here. He wisely lets his artist do some of the heavy lifting to convey what he wants to get across. Side note, Tom Reilly does a really good job on this book. Also, the dialogue is never cringy. I thought it was spot on and felt like Mosley has the voices of his characters. At least importantly, Ben Grimm's. This is another problem with unfamiliar writers to the comic character. 

Mosley manages to drop in a lot of familiar touchstones of the Fantastic Four. The mailman Willy Lumpkin. They're in the Baxter Building. Reed Richards (of course) shows up and is preoccupied. The Fantasti-Car and Alicia Masters. There's even a guest appearance by Hercules. This feels very old school Marvel in a good way. You can tell he has a respect and reverence for these characters. I feel like he wrote what he loved as a kid.

This is a first issue, so there is a lot of moving all the pieces around. What is established is that we get sad-sack Ben Grimm, a staple of that era. Nothing ever goes right for the guy, even when he sometimes has good intentions. There's a mysterious villain lurking behind the scenes doing villainy things, but that will get revealed more as we go. Right now, his intentions are not clear. 

When I read a book by black writers, there are certain things that are said or shown that helps me tell, even if I didn't know their race. There are a small voices here, like showing more black and brown characters in the background or featuring them more prominently in the story. At one point, Ben identified himself as non-white. Some may hate that moment, but in the context of that moment in the story, it made sense. Even the idea of introducing a black love interest to Ben. It's these little things I appreciated.

I mentioned the art earlier and I wanted to point out something that varies depending on who's drawing the Fantastic Four. Does the Thing have teeth or not? Some authors draw him with teeth, others do not. In this case, Reilly draws the Thing with no teeth, so we just have a rocky guy and a cavernous, open mouth. The art is beautiful and the colors work very well here. There's a specific color palette used for dream sequences and featuring the cloaked villain. 

With the resurgence of the Fantastic Four, I hope this book sells well enough that they let Mosley have more work. He is probably too busy to ever do the main series, but I think letting him play in his own corner of the sandbox would be a good idea. I recommend checking this out. I'll report back on each issue!

Eternals

My review will be as lazy as this movie. Zing.

As sure as the sun will rise everyday, I will go to see a Marvel movie. This was only the third movie I've seen in theaters this year and since the pandemic started. It's no surprise that those three movies were "Black Widow", "F9" and now this. 

I was EXTREMELY skeptical of this movie. Marvel is now navigating the fringes of their catalogue since they burned through all their top sellers. This is minus X-Men and Fantastic Four properties, which they now own now. This movie seemed like way more of a reach than Guardians of the Galaxy. I was not going to see it, but of course, like I said before, it's a Marvel movie. I have a moral obligation to go see it.

So how was it? It was fine. Not great. Not terrible. There was some marvel-ness in it with the humor and the wise cracking heroes. I'll touch back on this a little later. It also was a movie that was a good stand alone. It's in the Marvel Universe, but they don't bring in any cameos or really rely on anything that has happened before. So that in itself is refreshing. However, this movie also feels pointless. I know it is setting the stage for big things in the next phase, but I don't know how many of these characters we'll actually want to see again.

I will say that this is an extremely beautiful movie. I have never seen a Chloe Zhao movie, but she was the right choice. Also, Marvel never passes an opportunity they couldn't milk. Having an Oscar winning director for their movie is sure to attract a different audience.  Since no one really knows these characters except for their tens of fans, this gave her the space to do whatever she wanted. The visuals of Celestials are striking, especially near the end of the movie. There are some wow moments there.

I think the action was standard Marvel fare. After watching the martial arts mastery and some of the hand to hand stuff in Shang Chi and Black Widow that I truly enjoyed, it's a shame I'm subjected to laser beam fights again. I may have said before, but that type of stuff no longer thrills me. Give me some good hand to hand fighting any day of the week.

I truly don't get the hate for this movie that I have heard about. I think this is an inoffensive film as far as movie watching goes. When I peel back a little deeper, there is something else that bothers me and this is where I put on my tin foil nerd hat. The problem with this movie is that Marvel has painstakingly built up this shared universe and every movie has to somehow fit into it. They act as if any of them could show up anywhere. This movie does not feel like it fits. They will now have to back pedal and explain how it is important. It is getting harder and harder to justify a lack of cameos from any of the heroes we've seen from all the movies. When you have world ending stakes as shown in this movie, it is hard to believe that not ONE of those heroes would show up here. What's the point of Avengers if no one is avenging anything? Also, these last few movies exist on a very undefined timeline, so the completist like me has their head exploding trying to fit this movie in.

The only other thing about this movie is the characters are fine. I found myself liking the actors more than who they were portraying, because with so many characters, we don't spend a lot of time with them. They all end up being archetypes anyway. You got a smart guy, a super strong guy, a flying guy, strong woman, strong man, etc. You might as well call this the legion of super tropes. Because these characters are essentially blank slates that don't get too much done with them, it is hard to root for each of them. We do see some interpersonal relationships form, but some are told better than others.

I want to touch on one last thing. I mentioned before about wise cracking heroes. I know that is Marvel's bread and butter, but it's got to stop. Not EVERYONE can be a wise guy. You can have compelling heroes without them having to hurl zingers all the damn time. I don't need everyone of my characters to be funny. In this way, this movie broke me. I finally reached my limit. They need to save the wise cracks to someone like a Spider-Man or Deadpool. The ones where that is something inherent in their character. Whew, okay. Rant over.

I've rambled on enough ,but would I recommend anyone see this movie? I think there is some merit in seeing some of this scenery on a big screen, but ultimately? Save your money. Watch it when it comes to Disney Plus and call it a day.

What If...?

I have no excuse for why I haven't talked about this up until now. I watched each episode as it came out and it definitely left an impression. Now I have to sit here and try to think about how I felt a few weeks ago, but I will do my best.

Overall, I really enjoyed the show. It took me a while to get into the animation style, but after a while, I accepted it. What helped was having a strong voice acting cast. They included as many as the original actors as they could legally get. The most touching for me was hearing Chadwick Boseman reprise T'Challa a few more times. I felt those performances.

This show is in the tradition of the comics, with the twist being that it is focused on the movie properties. I get that because that is what people know and is the best hook for drawing people in. In the comics, it is a concept that allowed Marvel to take some wild swings at pivotal moments in their history. In this show, they cherry pick what they think are some big moments from the movies and go from there. I'll be honest, some of them don't make a lot of sense, but I like the story that comes after. For example, Yondu abducting T'Challa instead of Peter Quill. Not something you would have thought of, but the episode works. Sharon Carter being Captain America instead of Steve Rogers worked better in that vein, I feel. I could go on and on.

In the first few episodes, I felt they didn't take the concept far enough. Everything seemed to be tied up in a bow or ending on a kind of happy note. As they went along, they got darker and more real stakes appeared. The Doctor Strange one in particular. It culminated in a crossover of all the characters we met at the end in what was a satisfying finale.

Not every episode is a winner. Although kind of fun, I didn't really enjoy the episode about Thor where the premise is, what happens if he didn't have a brother (Loki). I liked they had the principal cast from the first movie, but that is where my enjoyment of it ends. It felt like it was positioned in the lineup as a palette cleanser after seeing so many episodes that got super dark. 

Like the other couple of Marvel shows, it became appointment television. Also, doling out one episode at a time is a way to sustain the excitement. If they all came out at once, I would have binged them in a weekend and promptly forgotten them by the week's end. This way you get to sit with each episode for bit.

If you have watched all or most of the movies, you can watch this show. I will warn you, since it is so heavily reliant on the movies, if you didn't see them, you will be lost as to why some of the episodes are important.

X-Men: Anime Series

Look, I realize this show is like ten years old. However, Netflix saw fit to inform me of it being available a few months ago and I had to watch it. I vaguely remember this being some kind of experiment that Marvel and Madhouse embarked upon back in the early part of the LAST decade. Anime was getting even more hot, you see and Marvel had to get a piece of that action. Cause...Marvel. I definitely dismissed it then and I kind of dismissed it now, but given my uncanny (see what I did there) ability to watch just about it anything, I made myself watch this.

If nothing else I was curious. Well, it's definitely an anime. It made me go through some complex feelings that I'm going to work out here.

First off, I didn't like this. At all. At first I was trying to think, "Am I just not that into anime any more like I used to be?" or "Would I have liked this ten years ago when it came out?" I still like anime, but I don't consume it as much as I used to and I am now super picky about what I watch. All I have watched the past year was either Dragon Ball Super (DBZ holds an untouched place in my heart), Lupin III (I'm a huge Lupin fan. Maybe I never said that out loud before) and that's it. Oh, I did watch Yasuke on Netflix as well. That gives you an indication of my limited palette lately.

Anyways, back to the X-Men. It felt like run of the mill anime from that era. It's technically sound, but you take off the X-Men title and the character names and this could have been anything. If a studio gets the Marvel license to go nuts, I expect them to grab a few toys out of the toy box. In the very least, I expected Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Or Sentinels. Hell, ANYTHING X-Men related.

Instead what we get are some random ass, made up anime villains that stay with us for all twelve episodes. I was hoping this would be episodic, not a full serial. To me, it was slow moving or non-sensical. It jumped back and forth between the two.

Let's get to the X-Men they chose because I have THOUGHTS. It has inspired me to do a separate post eventually about my favorite team of X-men or who I would put on a team. As any fan knows, there have been so many different configurations over the past forty years.

In this series they chose Wolverine, Beast, Storm, Cyclops, Emma Frost and then added Hisako Ichiki (aka Armor). Hisako plays the Jubilee, Kitty Pryde, etc. role in this series. You know, the new X-man that gets introduced into their world and has to learn on the fly. As teams go, this one feels basic. Their power sets kind of compliment each other. There isn't much characterization to be found here as they are basically boiled down to their power set and a few tropes. Wolverine is the hot head, gruff one that is nearly indestructible. Beast is the smart guy. Cyclops is the all too serious leader. Storm is...just there. White Queen is the mean lady with a soft spot for her students. Armor is the newbie.

They don't even use their powers in compelling ways. Wolverine's claws are almost as long as his body, which is patently ridiculous. Storm simply shoots lighting for the most part and so on. The color palette feels muted in mostly dark blues and blacks. This show is just so boring an uninteresting. We don't see any of the trademark team up moves from the team. In fact, even the action is kind of boring and stilted. As anime fans, we have seen more and DEMAND more. This show does not rise up to meet the challenge. It does a disservice to the X-Men. 

The animation is good, I mean, that's what you expect. Without a compelling story or characters to drive it, it's just not worth it. At least in this show, I don't think it was a good mix. 

Unless you are like me and curious, I would avoid this show.