Jessica Jones: All Trailers & Photos

So, we are officially one week away from the premiere of Marvel/Netflix second venture of the year as well as this year’s second, solo female led Marvel production: Jessica Jones.  As the premiere rumbles towards us there’s been a steady drip of teasers, trailers, photos and more so I’ve compiled everything we know about the show so far in one easy spot.  This will cover all of the important photos and trailers you might need to watch and break them down to get an overall sense of the tone and content we’re going to be getting from Marvel’s big Thanksgiving release.  So, let’s talk about Jessica Jones. 

Static Thoughts - Blackadder Goes Forth

Edited by Robert Beach 

On this day 97 years ago, the guns of World War 1 finally fell silent as on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month the Great War came to a close. The war had a total military and civilian casualty report of close to 38 million people, owing mainly to the sausage grinder that was trench warfare in the bulk of the war.  For literal years, the trenches would sit ideally as generals ordered their men into suicidal headline rushes across No Man’s Land. By all accounts, it was one of the cruelest and most nightmarish experiences of “combat” in human history.

who would’ve thought there was a comedy in all that?  

Well, it turns out geniuses thought that because in 1989 Richard Curtis and Ben Elton gave us just that with Blackadder Goes Forth, the 4^th and final season of the acclaimed BBC sitcom Blackadder starring Rowan Atkinson, Tony Robinson, Hugh Laurie, Tim McInnerny, and Stephen Fry. The season is remembered as one of the show’s absolute best and is often cited as the perfect vision of World War 1 in public consciousness. 

Comics Rainbow: War Heroes

Happy Veterans/Armistice Day everyone, may this day of remembrance for the end of the Great War as well as a general appreciation for all those who serve find you well.  With that pleasantry both stated and in mind I’m going to be talking about war comics today on Comics Rainbow, specifically the war comics of DC but first; a bit of comic book history.  After the end of World War 2 superhero comic books seriously tapered off in popularity with a handful of exceptions like Batman and Superman powering through.  It’s not exactly clear why this happened but the best bet would be the major shift in the tastes of comic readership heralded by the end of the war.  Prior to World War 2 the comic reading public actually skewed older, hence the emphases on pulpy violence like The Shadow, but when World War 2 came most of the comic reading public shipped off overseas and the new readership was much younger. 

However, by the time the war ended that new readership had aged and suddenly had new heroes: their fathers and brothers returned from World War 2.  So, at the dawn of the ’50s there was an explosion of war comic books, the 5 big ones being produced by DC comics and written by inventor of Flash and Lady Cop Robert Kanigher.  As the ‘50s dragged on the 5 major comics (G.I. Combat, Our Army At War, Our Fighting Forces, and Star Spangled War Stories) began to develop a roster of reoccurring characters that ended up permanent fixtures of the DC Universe as the superhero craze reemerged in the ‘60s.  Those are the characters I’ll be giving the full spectrum look at today; shades, shames, successes and all. 

Panel Vision - Comic Book Apocalypses

So, Fallout 4 has just been unlocked to the unwashed masses of planet Internet, which most likely means this article won’t be read by many but if you’re one of the few without access to this next great step in human achievement, this is for you.  The release of Fallout got me thinking about apocalypse/post-apocalypses, one of the most interesting elements of fiction while simultaneously one of the most under-explored.  Apocalypse and post-apocalypse fiction is fascinating as a template but often filled up with the same exploration of robots, aliens, zombies, and wastelands, there’s very little variation is my point.  So, because I endeavor to shine the light of obscure nerdy knowledge into the darkness of mundanity these are 10 comic book apocalypses and post-apocalyptic wastelands I’ve chosen to spotlight, I’m not going in any specific order or value set, they’re just a bunch of doomsdays that are worth sharing. 

Movie Monthly - Rollerball

Welcome back to Movie Monthly’s celebration of the very thin crossover line between sci-fi and sports this November with a look at all things future, techno, and athletic.  Last  week we looked at Robot Jox, the story of a distant future wherein nations hashed out their disputes through the tried and true method of giant robot fights, this week we’ve got arguably the opposite inverse film with Rollerball, the 1975 dystopian future sports film starring James Caan.  It’s actually kind of amazing how much Rollerball serves as a counter point to Robot Jox; corporations instead of nations, teams instead of individuals, entertainment rather than politics, a well known star with an actual career rather than “that guy from Alien Nation,” a really awful remake in 2002 instead of a reappraisal by nerd culture in recent years, and most key of all: Rollerball was the product of ‘70s pessimistic futurism while Robot Jox was the result of ‘80s blockbuster fun giving way to ‘90s shallowness and polish.

Cover Story - Top 15 Nick Fury Covers

Edited by Robert Beach 

Hello, and welcome to Cover Story: digging as little into comic books as we can. Cover Story isn’t exactly a new column around here as I’ve been doing “Top Cover” lists since August. now, I’m just giving it a name and making it an official weekly column alongside Comics Rainbow and Movie Monthly. With that said, let’s dive into this week’s cover subject: Nick Fury. 

I’ve already talked at length about Nick Fury earlier this week and how he served as Marvel’s super spy answer to James Bond, and how he’s been through numerous iterations in his 50-year history.  I’m mainly focusing on him because Spectre came out this week, and I’m a sucker for topicality. At the same time, Nick Fury’s various covers feature work by some of the greatest artists in comic book history, including Jim Steranko, a towering legend of the medium and concept artist for Indiana Jones. So let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the top 15 Nick Fury covers. 

Warcraft Movie Trailer

If ever there was a studio that embodied the difference between winning and leading it’d be Universal.  They basically struck gold with the Fast & Furious movies and have been letting that box office money pit accumulate while floundering about in search of fellow hit makers and it’s served them well with equally successful hits like Pitch Perfect, Despicable Me, 50 Shades of Grey, and this year’s mega box office smash Jurassic World.  The thing is that “experimentation” really is the Universal approach as none of their efforts have been in order to define trends or lead the pop cultural scene, simply attempts to get money making films. 

That’s why, even though Jurassic World made unfathomable amounts of cash and Fast & Furious is on its 8^th film I’d never call Universal trend riders or taste makers.  So their latest venture, a collaboration with Blizzard Studios to bring the massively successful Warcraft franchise to life on the big screen is throwing me for a bit of a loop as it actually seems like the most financially successful yet culturally irrelevant studio in Hollywood has finally decided to step up to the plate and lead the way for a change. 

1st Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Set Photos Debut

Edited by Robert Beach 

The importance of the Harry Potter franchise to the modern age of fantasy, blockbuster, and cinematic landscape cannot be overstated. This franchise is a pop culture phenomena second to none; a tremendously popular book series that was translated in something close to its entirety to the big screen in a radical cinematic experiment of letting the actors age through the films over the course of an entire decade.  

Modern pop culture, geek and nerd pop culture specifically, just doesn’t make sense without Harry Potter. Especially for Warner Brothers, the company that spent nearly 10 years dominating the entire fantasy genre thanks to the double barrel blast that was the Potter films and the Lord of the Rings movies. And now, with the fantasy power vacuum still unaddressed since the recession of Game of Thrones’ influence over the medium, and the Hobbit films having run their disappointing course, WB is returning to the Harry Potter well one more time for a prequel series all their own entitled Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and we’ve just received the first set photos.

Static Thoughts - James Bond Jr.

This latest weekend has marked the premiere of Spectre, he fourth film in the Daniel Craig run of James Bond films and continuity that started with Casino Royale in 2006.  At time of writing I haven’t seen it yet but given that I write about nerdy pop culture jazz on the Internet I’m basically contractually required to get in on the fun.  The only problem is that I don’t have a dedicated movie column and James Bond actually hasn’t really spread far beyond the realm of film.  

Unlike a lot of similar heroes he’s never branched out into comic books despite his widespread popularity and longevity James has never made it to television…well, almost never.  Yes, today we’re discussing the ignominious classic of the early ‘90s James Bond Jr., an animated show set smack in the middle of the dead years between Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan that brought James Bond to the small screen as well as comic books, video games, and action figures. 

Alice Through The Looking Glass Trailer

One of the weird things about the late 2000s trend of up-jumping classic fairy tales, seminal works of literature we all know from childhood, and even bible stories and myths into fantasy blockbusters is that very few of these films have actually been successful.  Sure, we’ve cranked out film after film in this genre like Mirror Mirror, Jack the Giant Slayer, Pan, Hansel & Gretel: Witchhunters, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Dracula Untold, Hercules and countless more but for the most part they’ve all been total failures, regardless of actual quality.  That same disclaimer, regardless of quality, applies to the smattering of financial success within the genre, almost all of which seem to come from the pop culture warriors at Disney. 

To some extent it makes sense that Disney are the folks making the most money on easily accessible revisions to classic fairy tales, myths, and literature given that’s been their bread and butter since before World War 2.  At the same time however, Disney did more than anyone to launch this particular trend with the 2010 mega-hit Alice in Wonderland, which ended up the 2^nd highest grossing film of the year, beating out competitors like Harry Potter 7 and Twilight: Eclipse.  Now, Disney returns to the Alice well 6 years later with a sequel minus Tim Burton entitled Alice Through The Looking Glass.