Jumping in Headfirst

This one's for the continuity freaks. Action Comics And just like that, in twenty pages, the New 52 "reboot" is eliminated.  Bleeding Cool talked about it earlier this week and it seems to be true: Dan Jurgens has folded both the pre-Flashpoint timeline as well as N52 together into one giant timeline.   Sort of .  The reality is that things are more pre-Flashpoint now than they are N52.   Lois wouldn't have revealed his identity in this timeline.  It's doubtful Superman "became Doomsday".   And the whole "two Supermen" stories are pretty much done now; there's only ever been one Clark. But all isn't exactly restored.  As Clark has the Fortress recall his history for him, they flashback to his "death" and the replacements that took over for him: Steel, Cyborg Superman, and Eradicator.  Only...there's one missing: Kon-El/The Kid himself, Superboy.  He's nowhere in Superman's memories, and with a recap th...

Our first week back with The Flash from the third series break, Barry visits the future in an attempt to save Iris.

Back from her mid-mid-season break, it's Supergirl!

We're back to Shadowcraft.  Honestly, since I've been making myself play this game more I believe all the hype now.  Shadowcraft is...just fucking busted.   This is going up on Day 5 because my internet went down for most of the day, but not to worry I'll be doing Day 5 today as well.  Enjoy!

This is actually another really good episode of this series.  I have to give the show props, its never been less than decent and a lot of the time it's actually great.

I said this show was going to be either excellent or complete trash with little in between, and so far I'm not too far off on my prediction.  Re:Creators is a dark horse favorite for me this season.

Took a break for the weekend, but I'm back to finish the rest of things off.  Fair warning, I fucking face planted today.  There aren't any cool miracle stories, just a series of Ls.

Astro City It's amazing how Kurt's characters can draw from so many sources that they eventually take on a life of their own.  Like, this girl is clearly something like Deadpool--she's not only aware that she's a comic book, but she can hear what are seemingly cosmic beings when they refer to her or her father, the superhero known as The Gentleman.  At the same time, her wholesomeness and ability to "summon" a super-powered adult when trouble is near makes her a lot like Billy Batson/Captain Marvel. You wouldn't think that combination would work well, and yet it leads to this heart-warming (and heart-breaking) tale of this immortal girl, who despite being stuck as a child forever, has irrepressible levels of optimism.  A girl who lost her father but wished so hard to have him back that he re-appeared....with superpowers, no less!  Of course it's later revealed that he's a figment of her psychic abilities, but to generate someone that powerful...

Here's how I know I'm a sucker for massive universes: I was never a big fan of Naruto, but three episodes in and I'm almost completely sold on Boruto.  The fact that you know the background characters--their loves, their successes, their failures--made me far more invested than I would've been if this had been a completely new series. Boruto continues the story of the Naruto universe, but it's been over a decade since the Last Great Ninja War, and all of our favorite kids have grown up and had children who've grown up to be old enough to enter the Konoha Ninja Academy themselves.  Only, in the decade-plus since they were young, the world has changed: technology has flooded the world.  Railcars and video games mean industry has become a much larger driving factor for the world economy over the ninja.  So the Ninja Academy has changed too, teaching it's students much more than merely ninjustsu. What I love about Boruto is all of the call backs, getting ...

I'm back again, this time playing the meta deck du jour, Midrange Shadowcraft.  Looking at the stats, this deck is so far ahead of the rest that it's only a matter of time before something in it gets nerfed.  But in the meantime, I can use it to climb really easy, riiiight?   Well.  Let's see.

Welcome back to an admittedly late edition of Bottom of the Pile.  If you didn't know, Bottom of the Pile is an article where I take some of my favorite comics of the week and do commentary on them--it can range from funny remarks to discussing the comic in context of the world around it both in-universe and in a meta sense, or full on mini-reviews, depending on what I'm feeling about it.  When your comic is so excellent that I want to save it until the end, you wind up...at the Bottom of the Pile.   Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows Renew Your Vows hasn't really gone into what the superhero landscape of its Earth looks like.  Bear in mind, this is essentially the same Earth from Secret Wars where Regent had basically conquered the planet and taken all the superheroes and villains' powers for his own...or had them killed, so we should actually be fairly light on heroes aside from our friendly neighborhood spider-folks.  This issue gives us a glimpse at...

It's Springtime, and the television airwaves of Japan are filled with all sorts of new product placement ads anime!  Now considering as of this season I'm working my way through no less than 20 different anime series (half of them older series, admittedly), I'm basically just looking for reasons to drop series at this point so I have proper time for the rest.   Does The King's Avatar make the cut?

The eleventh Kyuuranger arrives!  1.)  The biggest problem I have with this episode is that there's so much about it that expressly goes against the stuff that was just set up last week.   The whole "there are only nine Kyurangers" was enough, but that's thrown out the window now that Kotaro has a Kyu Blaster--if there can be only nine, what's the point of having a tenth Blaster?   Well, maybe they just keep spares. But then: nevermind being "chosen" by a Kyu Globe, Xiao said that there are "Skill Globes" and "Change Globes".  No matter how many times Kotaro tries with all these Skill Globes, none of them were going to let him transform regardless.   You'd think someone would've told him that instead of watching him try Globe after Globe and look like a goof.   I mean, for Draco Commander to happen the spirit of that constellation itself had to come down and grant Xiao his powers, and that's just not going to ...

Real quick, I just wanted to get my thoughts of the Thor: Ragnarok trailer out.

We're back with what's easily my favorite episode yet!

I'm going to try and do the episodes I missed in the last three weeks since they're on break until the end of April.

Avengers Y'know, you'd think Spidey would be used to the fact that there are multiple versions of the Hulk that have actually had varying levels of intelligence, with most of them being quite smart.   But then, not gonna lie--I have no idea how much contact he's had with the Hulk at all.  If he's just working off general knowledge, I can totally see him just seeing the Hulk as some idiot. This issue finally wraps up the "Kang War" storyline, with all the various Avengers across time working together to obliterate Kang's massive, history-spanning empire.  Everything's kinda wrapped up in the neatest of bows, though there are some cool moments in there--like Ant-Man being responsible for saving the day not once but twice --but there's still something kinda...flat about this whole storyline.  Like, they took Kang out entirely but I guess I've been conditioned to think that shouldn't just be the end of things. Still, the next arc tea...

The Library is going to be a new column focused on the video game side of things. As I'm a terribly slow player and even games bought at launch often take me months to complete, more often than not these articles won't be straight-up reviews but some thoughts on and around the games I've finished.   As I just finished Watch_Dogs 2 two weeks ago at a local gaming lock-in, I thought this title was the most apt for the first choice.  Enjoy!

The tenth Kyuuranger arrives!

Adam Strange-Future Quest It's fun that this special doesn't take place during some nebulous period during both these characters' lives--the heroes in the Future Quest world are all wary of Adam Strange because he arrived through a strange vortex like the monster that nearly destroyed them in the Future Quest maxi-series (hopefully), while Strange has lost his memory after the monumental showdown he and Hawkman had over during Death of Hawkman.  Together, Adam Strange, Birdman, the Quest Family and Dino-Boy and Ug all figure out a way to bounce Adam off another Zeta Beam and send him home--all while dealing with evil spies and angry dinos in probably the most fun book of these little crossovers. It is too bad Adam went home, though. Arguably, Adam Strange fits better with these Hanna-Barbera characters than he does in the DC Universe, what with his jetpack, raygun and general 1950's spaceman dress style.  In fact, if I felt like I knew Future Quest was being cont...

As we get closer to the premiere of not only Wonder Woman , but Justice League , I thought it might be interesting to discuss how Warner Bros' got to the point where so many people are on the edge of their seats for DCEU films not out of excitement because they know the films will be good, but out of concern that the films just might be terrible.   To be fair, there are plenty of people who are in love with Man of Steel, Batman vs. Superman, and Suicide Squad, and that's okay: the cast and crew worked hard on all those films and it's good that they've developed a fanbase.   This is really for everyone else--those who might be curious on why the DCEU just can't seem to nail their films.  Follow me, brave reader, but I warn* you, however; this is quite the tangled clusterfuck of stupidity, and we're going to have to be careful about which cord we tug at first to unravel it all. *Other warning: I'm not a fan of these movies, and I'm not exactly going...