NOC Recaps Arrow: Training Day
I can admit when I’m wrong. At the end of last week’s episode of Arrow, when it was revealed that Thea has been training on the island of Corto Maltese1 with her biological father Malcolm Merlyn, I thought the follow-up episode would be a slog to get through.
Fortunately, episode three — titled, fittingly, “Corto Maltese” after the fictional island nation in the DC Universe — was a pretty great hour of television and moved a lot of plotlines forward for what is increasingly looking like an action-packed season of superheroing.
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Lost in Translation: Scarlett Johansson and ‘Ghost in the Shell’
As our friend Angry Asian Man pointed out earlier this week, Scarlett Johansson has been offered the role of Major Motoko Kusanagi in Dreamworks’ live-action remake of Mamoru Oshii’s ground-breaking anime Ghost in the Shell. And well, she’s white. Which to many of us here certainly feels like more Hollywood whitewashing at first glance. Particularly to anyone following the on-again off-again plans for a live-action remake of Akira with an all white cast or M. Night Shymayalan’s tragic The Last Airbender.
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Things I Finally Did Right in Artists Alley
by Greg Pak | Originally posted on GregPak.com
In our book Make Comics Like the Pros, my co-writer Fred Van Lente provides some spectacular advice about how to work a comic book convention. This year at the New York Comic Con, I took Fred’s advice seriously and did my Artists Alley table up right for the first time. And I had my best con ever!
So here’s what I did:
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NOC Recaps The Flash: Fire and Frost
Another Tuesday and another strong episode of The Flash has come and gone. Unlike Arrow, which I admittedly bolted on after three episodes during its debut season, or even Gotham, which I continue to hate-watch for some reason, I’m pretty sure I’m all in on The Flash. While there are some superhero TV tropes that might get annoying eventually — Barry’s unrequited pining for Iris, for instance — there’s enough good to keep me tuning in. Episode three, “Things You Can’t Outrun,” introduced yet another baddie from the DC Universe while foreshadowing the debut of another classic DC hero.
Don’t Be Silent! Things You Can Do about GamerGate
by Patrick Miller | Originally posted on Tumblr
I have spoken to a lot of people in the games industry who are frustrated about GamerGate but shaky on the prospect of speaking out themselves; they’re worried about receiving death threats, or drawing unwanted attention to their employer, or just overextending themselves getting involved in an exhausting conversation.
All of these are valid concerns! The problem is that good people being silent on the matter is what enables this to continue; many of the folks who organize under the GamerGate banner (both harassers and non-harassers) genuinely believe that they’re speaking up for the silent majority who share their beliefs but aren’t brave enough to speak out. (Personally, I tend to assume that people are jerks despite their good intentions until proven otherwise; IMO the hard part of being a good person isn’t thinking the right thing, it’s doing the right thing). In other words, silence is interpreted as implicit permission to continue.
So, here’s the thing. Speaking out doesn’t mean you have to wake up every morning and only get out of bed after reading the previous night’s GamerGate stuff for twenty minutes and getting angry. (I will say it’s pretty good at getting me out of bed, though). There are a bunch of different ways that you can make your voice heard, depending on how your personal HP/MP are doing.
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When Gotham is Ashes, You Have My Permission to Die
Whatever issues you might have with The Dark Knight Rises, Tom Hardy’s portrayal of Bane is probably one of the most divisive. Either you loved it or you hated it. Nolan’s take on the villain deviated so much from the comics, it was a wonder why he even chose to go with Bane in the first place. Another strike against Nolan’s Bane is that you could also argue that the character was racebent from the way he’s depicted in the comics. Or not. Personally, I rather enjoyed Hardy’s completely wacky and out there interpretation of the character. Not only are his mannerisms and fuddy-duddy English accent so utterly imitable, but he made a character that is admittedly boring on page really compelling on screen.
The reason that I just spent 100+ words talking about Bane in The Dark Knight Rises is because last night’s episode of Gotham used the opportunity to introduce Venom, the drug responsible for Bane’s abilities in the comic. And the whole time, all I could think about was Tom Hardy in his ridiculous face mask.
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Diggin’ In the Carts: A Sound Test for Your Childhood
I love video game music. Ever since I started playing them back in the NES/Famicom days, I have always appreciated the catchy tunes from various games. This never went away as games evolved; if anything, my love for them only expanded. I would say at least 50% of my iPod library contains music from video games ranging from the 80s to the present day.
Nowadays, accessing the music you wanted to hear is pretty easy; usually a search on YouTube will do it. But back in the day, you had to either go to that specific part of the game or record it yourself. Props to my dad who had the fantastic idea of using an audio recorder to record Magic Sword through the SNES by going through each song in the sound test for a couple of minutes and recording it onto a cassette for me to jam to while on the move.
But now? I can just type that on YouTube and voila!
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Is it Batman v Superman or The Dark Knight Returns?
Because, really, it can’t be both.
Just before the weekend — and right after Warner Brothers had rocked DC fanboys’ world by announcing no less than ten superhero movies over the next five years — the rumor mill got churning once again as an extra on the set of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Ridiculous Movie Titles leaked to a local reporter that Hunger Games star Jena Malone had been cast as Robin in the 2016 blockbuster, reuniting her with Sucker Punch director Zack Snyder. Though it has yet to be confirmed, the internet lit up with excitement at the prospect of seeing the first female Robin1 depicted on the big screen.
While I’m all for more gender diversity in what is so far a very testosterone-heavy cast, the fact that Carrie Kelly may end up in the movie is actually really disappointing to me. Mainly, because I’m tired of Frank Miller.
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NYCC 2014: We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat…
Hello Everyone! My name is Raphael, and I’ll be a regular contributor here at The Nerds of Color! New York Comic-Con may have ended a week ago, but here are my thoughts after attending my eighth NYCC.
I’ve been going since its inception, but this was my first as a civilian — working the Midtown Comics booth for the last six years — and it’s definitely a different experience (the lines). The one positive is that since they decided to stick to the current layout (with the Show Floor on the main floor, autographing and panels downstairs, Artist Alley in Javits North) for the last couple years.
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Return of the Dragon Tides Starring Bruce and Brandon Lee
In this week’s episode, guest host Nelson sits down with Artistic Justice Games’ Alex Lim to talk about the company’s latest project, Dragon Tides, and officially licensed tabletop game featuring the likenesses of Bruce and Brandon Lee. The project is only a few thousand dollars away from its goal on Kickstarter.
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The White Runner
One of my hobbies is to look at movie posters and just insert the word white into any movie featuring a white protagonist, which is something like 90% of all movies. Or, all “mainstream” movies not starring Will Smith or Denzel Washington.
When my fourteen year old son and I saw Wes Ball’s The Maze Runner in September, I was surprised at how good the production values were. From the previews I was expecting a somewhat cheesy, low-ish budget, formulaic sci-fi teen film like The Host (based on the Stephanie Meyer book; hell yes, I should have known better. And truly, it was three times as bad as any of the Twilight films, which at least had some strengths, although I don’t remember them now… Robert Pattinson’s glitter? Vampire baseball? Rome?).
Caution: spoilers ahead.
NOC Recaps Arrow: Oh Sara, No Time is a Good Time for Goodbyes
After an action-packed season premiere, complete with a shocking twist ending, you knew the second episode — titled “Sara” — was going to be all about the fallout.
[Ed. note: I can’t be the only one who was thinking of the old Jefferson Starship song throughout this episode, right?]
Spoilers ahead.
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Why Creators Should Look at Conventions Differently
Originally posted at Black Nerd Problems
For a comic fan, attending a convention is a mass gathering of distant relatives — the one you play Titanfall with online, that guy whose reviews you browse online, that girl you haven’t seen since the last convention — all in one place. It’s a family reunion of sorts, and in the case of New York Comic-Con, it’s a big one. But for those of us who are artists, designers, writers, cosplayers, or any other type of creator, a convention is more than a fan space, it’s a networking opportunity for you to share your work. These are your future collaborators, guidance counselors, business partners, and consumers, so approaching a convention from that perspective means the difference between being a fan of someone else’s work, and being on track to add fans of your own.
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Warner Finally Unveils its DC Superhero Movie Slate
Looks like Warner Brothers and DC Entertainment have responded to the gauntlet thrown down by the folks at Disney and Marvel Studios. After the nerd community was rocked by the news that Robert Downey Jr. was joining the Captain America threequel, DC hit back with its entire slate of DC-based superhero films for the next five years.
In a special presentation to shareholders, Warner Brothers head Kevin Tsujihara revealed which DC heroes would be getting movies through 2020. Remember, there have been rumblings all year that this ambitious slate of superhero films would be coming out eventually. Now that we know which films will be coming out and when, all I can say is… meh.
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Meet Marvel Comics’ New Asian American Superhero
by Phil Yu | Originally posted at Angry Asian Man
On Sunday at New York Comic Con, Marvel announced that its newest superhero, an Asian American woman bitten by the same radioactive spider that gave Peter Parker his spider-powers, will star in her own book.
Introduced earlier this year in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man to much speculation and fanfare, the mysterious Silk, aka Queens resident Cindy Moon, was apparently a classmate of Peter Parker’s — and the second person bitten by comics’ most famous radioactive spider. But instead of donning tights and battling the likes of the Green Goblin and Electro, she’s been locked away in a bunker for ten years.
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NOC Recaps The Flash: Better than the Multiplex
Yesterday, I went on a bit of a rant about how DC was getting trumped by Marvel on the big screen. The opposite is true on the small screen. Sorry, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but there’s only one comic-based superhero show to watch on Tuesdays: The Flash on The CW. After one of the best pilots of the season, how was Team Flash going to follow through on episode two?
Well, by fully embracing its superhero-ness, for one. Grant Gustin’s opening narration even poked fun at similar type internal monologues — *cough*Arrow*cough* — before diving right into the action. And this week’s cold open was literally on fire as we saw Barry saving folks from a burning building.
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Hatsune Miku Confuses David Letterman
Last week, late night viewers were treated to a performance by none other than Hatsune Miku, the Japanese pop star that’s actually a hologram. Making her American television debut on The Late Show with David Letterman, the virtual idol left the Ed Sullivan theater dazed and confused.
I have mixed feels about this.
Captain America vs. Iron Man vs. Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of OMG, is This Really Happening?!
That screeching sound you heard last night was the internet grinding to a halt when Variety broke the news: Robert Downey, Jr. was in final negotiations to star in Captain America 3, aka the movie that made the Justice League blink. Now you might be wondering, why is it still a Captain America movie if Robert Downey, Jr. is in it and not, say, Avengers 2.5? Well, I’m glad you asked!
If all the rumors turn out to be true, the casting of Downey essentially confirms that the popular “Civil War” storyline from the comics is coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe — a move that fans have been clamoring for ever since Stark and Cap almost came to blows in the first Avengers flick.
Gotham & Sleepy Hollow: More Mixed Feelings on Monday Nights
This week both episodes of Gotham and Sleepy Hollow left me feeling a lot less meh, especially Sleepy Hollow. During Gotham, I noticed on my Twitter timeline either a lot of rage toward the Arkham storyline or a lot of excitement seeing the asylum for the first time on the show. Since I am not a reader of the comic books and unfamiliar with the Batman canon, perhaps I am less disturbed and annoyed by the way Arkham (and the role of the Wayne family) was introduced on the show.
Episode four of Sleepy Hollow, on the other hand, had an embarrassment of riches for #Ichabbie shippers. Those golden shipper moments in combination with some great action and comedic scenes made this episode much more fun to watch and live-tweet.
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Tom Mison Reads Amazon’s Free The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Audiobook
Just in time for Halloween, Amazon is giving away a free download of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow through its Audible store. Here’s the kicker for all you SleepyHeads, though. The audiobook is narrated by none other than Ichabod Crane himself, Tom Mison!
Unfortunately, this version is the original Washington Irving classic so there are no references to Moloch, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or George Washington’s secret society of supernatural soldiers, but that’s not stopping Sleepy Hollow fans from downloading the book in droves.
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Five Nerdy Movies to Celebrate Columbus Day
Every second Monday in October, many folks across the country get to enjoy the day off from school and/or work to celebrate Chris Columbus, the director whose filmography has grossed nearly $4 billion worldwide. Though, I’ve always found it odd that the federal government would name a holiday after a director who, despite the overwhelming box office of his films, isn’t the most innovative or important filmmaker in American cinema. I mean, shouldn’t Spielberg or Scorsese or Spike get a holiday before this guy1?
That said, it’s Columbus Day, and you’re already sitting at home. So why not fire up the blu-ray player and watch one — or all — of these nerd-friendly movies by the man most famous for teaching Macaulay Culkin how to shave. Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!
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Hello, Kitty!
by Lynn Chen | Originally posted at The Actor’s Diet
Now open at the Japanese American National Museum — the happiest exhibit on the planet.
My childhood!!!
Giveaway: Win a Walking Dead Glenn Action Figure
by Phil Yu | Originally posted at Angry Asian Man
AMC hit zombie drama The Walking Dead returns for its fifth season this Sunday, October 12. Last season left off on a bit of a cliffhanger, with Rick and his merry crew of walker slayers finally reuniting, but captured and locked away in a train car by some mysterious new adversaries. How will they get out this jam?
And of course, we get to see Steven Yeun as our favorite Asian American zombie apocalypse survivor Glenn Rhee. According to this interview in Entertainment Weekly, Steven says Glenn “is a leader” in season five.
So check it. To celebrate the return of The Walking Dead, I’m giving away some official Walking Dead Series Five Action Figures by McFarlane Toys. Who wants a Glenn action figure? Scroll down for details.
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