Into the Longbox

I put season one, because there is no way this doesn't get a second season. It is more than deserving. Oh, hello. Welcome to my review of the recently finished She-Hulk series on Disney+. Another in an exponentially growing list of Marvel properties getting TV shows. The money train left the station a long time ago and it seems just about any and everything is getting green-lit. Fortunately, they have all mostly been successful in one way or another. I think this show falls in the success category. I will put this out here. I'm a little biased. I've been reading every iteration of She-Hulk for almost the last twenty years. She does the fourth wall breaking that Deadpool does, but less annoying. Correction, Deadpool does the fourth wall breaking SHE does. It's just his property got released into the public first. Anyways, I was excited for this show when I heard it was happening. I was even more excited when I heard that the talented Tatiana Maslany was cast as the titul...

Sneaky Marvel. This just snuck out to Disney+ with little fanfare, but what a nice surprise it was. I remember seeing a trailer for this a while back and then instantly forgot about it. Being as we're in Halloween season, it's perfect timing. Let me get right to it. This is the Marvel short we didn't know we needed. It was a lot of fun. It harkens back to the old days of monster films. It's in black and white for the most part, with pops of color here and there to accentuate things. There's the cigarettes burns in the top right corner of the screen as if it was on a projector. The way some of the shots are framed and just the general vibe of it had an old monster feel. However, the action and special effects were not. There was some great hand to hand action mixed in here and that kind of stuff is my bread and butter. There were legitimate moments that made me go, "Oh SHIT", which is the space I like to be in when I see some cool martial arts moves come ou...

Life got in the way, but I finally saw Thor: Love and Thunder a few weeks ago. Since it's now on Disney+, this review can be relevant. I'll dive right in and try to keep this short. First off, I love the goofy, bumbling persona they have created for Thor in the MCU with the last few movies. This was the right direction to go in because he was so self serious, that he was boring. This direction breathed new life into him. Did I enjoy this movie? Yes. Was it as good as Thor: Ragnarok? No. But that's not a bad thing. It's still easily one of the better Thor movies. One of the criticisms you may have heard about this movie is that some of the jokes don't work. I agree that it's true. My only defense is, what movie that has comedy had ALL the jokes work in it? None. So let's set that expectation. One running joke that specifically annoyed me are the pair of screaming goats that Thor gets. Yes, we remember this meme or whatever from a few years ago. I feel like th...

I finished up Ms. Marvel a few days ago and what a delight it was. I have so many things to say about this show, so I will just jump right in. I'll spare you the requisite "I've read the character since she came out, blah blah blah". Before I dive into other stuff, I really like how Marvel is getting creators from the ethnic backgrounds their shows are representing. Furthermore, we get to spend times in those locations as opposed to New York. For Moon Knight, it was Egypt with an Egyptian showrunner. For Ms. Marvel, we spend time in Pakistan with actors and directors from Pakistan. Furthermore, it delves into the everyday life of a Muslim. Portrayed in a positive light, which as you can imagine in America, is not common. Let's be honest about that. Each of these shows had a unique, authenticity that is new for main stream TV. I'm glad that a wide audience will be able to watch these shows and potentially learn something. If Marvel plays it's cards right, i...

A month after it's release, I finally got to see Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. To be honest, I thought it was okay. This phase of Marvel movies and TV shows has been haphazard at best. I don't want to hear how the pandemic changed things. There are important people that can figure this out. I am glad that Marvel is at least trying to reach into their toy chest and see what works. Right now, they are coasting on the goodwill they have built up over the last decade.  Admittedly, it's hard to see where this movie and all their other recent shows fit into the larger tapestry. Unlike the other movies (Black Widow, Eternals, Shang-Chi) though, this movie at least feels like it will have some larger implications for the MCU. I think this movie and the last couple of shows (re: Wandavision) have been negatively affected by our expectations for cameos or easter eggs that are going to change the Marvel Universe. We KNOW Disney bought Fox movie properties, so we are ex...

Even though I finished this show weeks ago, I haven't gotten around until writing about it until now. At first, it was to search my feelings. Did I like the show? Am I only liking it because it's a Marvel product and I'm such a fanboy? Then it turned into, "Man, I don't want to talk about this, I don't remember anything." However, I have an obligation as "that guy that loves comics" that you know, so here we are. Ultimately, this show is kind of a mess. Before I go further (and I will probably say this a lot), Oscar Isaac is fantastic. He and he alone is the reason to even give this show a chance. I'll spare you my thoughts on what I know about Moon Knight. Like most of the audience, barely enough. He has always had a cool look, but in the Marvel Universe, there is a glut of characters all based out of New York, fighting crime. Not all of them are winners. Marvel has spent a lot of time trying to get a guy over that has a cool look, but not m...

A few months ago, I reviewed the first issue of The Thing mini-series written by Walter Mosley. It's been a few months and the series has wrapped. I thought it was time to come back to this and share my thoughts. Overall, I thought it was really good. As much as I like Mosley, I always worry when a novelist comes to write a comic book. It's a completely different medium and some writers understand that better than others. Less is more. You can convey actions in the panels without having to explain everything. You can be shown. Here, Mosley clearly understood the assignment. There were many pages without dialogue, so that the action could happen. What was most surprising to me is that Mosley is a huge fan of old school Marvel. He fondly remembers those comics from when he was a kid. So with that kind of aesthetic and thinking, I thought this would harken back to those days of overwritten comic books where the pages were chock full of exposition and clunky dialogue. That was not...