“If you loved someone the way that I love her, then you’d know that what you’re doing right now is unforgivable.”

It’s tempting to look at the absolutely jaw-dropping box-office of Brand New Day (third highest grossing film of all time, baby) and conclude that any worries about the MCU’s continued viability have been put to bed but I’m honestly still a little dubious.

Right now, I think the same thing is happening to superhero movies that happened to superhero comics in the nineteen fifties. Immediately after the big bang of Superman’s debut in Action Comics #1 in 1938, superheroes became a huge part of the cultural zeitgeist during the war years. But, after the war ended interest in superheroes cratered for a lot of reasons too long to go into here, thus bringing to an end the Golden Age of Comic Books. If you have even a cursory knowledge of comics history you probably already knew that. But, what’s sometimes forgotten is that the genre did not completely die.

Superman, famously, not only rode out the collapse of the superhero genre but was even more popular a decade after his debut thanks to radio, movie serials and TV. But even in the comics, the Superman family of titles kept going strong and he wasn’t the only one. All through the fifties Batman, Wonder-Woman and (for some fucking reason) Aquaman were consistently published. These were characters so beloved (and also Aquaman) that they were able to survive the collapse of their genre.

And, as it has so often done before, the history of the superhero genre in movies has repeated what happened in the comics. What it boils down to is that here, in 2026, the really big names, like Superman, Batman and Spider-Man can still put bums on seats. We are not back in 2014 where Marvel could release a movie about, say, Beta Ray Bill teaming up with Power Pack and Howard the Duck to run a Thai restaurant on Mars and still expect it to make a billion dollars.

Maybe I’m wrong (I am, after all, always wrong about everything) and I’ve no doubt that Doomsday will make all the money in the world. That movie is pretty much as sure a bet as anything in this life is. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no risk involved to Marvel. Transformers: Age of Extinction made huge money but so many people saw it and hated it that it poisoned the well for The Last Knight. If Doomsday is not just successful but successful and loved, then we have the opportunity for a real comeback as a new generation of fans is created and old fans who dropped have their interest re-ignited. But a financially successful but loathed Doomsday could actually do more damage long term than a good one that failed at the box office.

Anyway, that’s all in the future.

I’ve come to realise that within me are two wolves. And by “wolves” I mean “middle aged white dudes”.

On the one hand, I try to review these movies as movies, judging them as works of art on their own merit. But the guy on the right keeps complaining about things they changed from the comics. I try to keep that guy in check but I don’t want to ignore him entirely either. Yes, total fidelity to source material is neither possible, sensible or even desirable. But if, for example, a movie adapts a book and absolutely butchers its themes and characters, then that is a flaw of the film and it is valid criticism to point that out. I bring this up because this review is definitely going to trend negative but my criticisms are going to be more Comic Book Guy than Anton Ego. As a movie on its own, it’s fine. But as a Spider-Man movie I think it’s fucking terrible.

Man, the comments are going to be fun on this one.
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Why I Love* Playing: Fire Emblem Fortune’s Weave

Hello again. A while back I had some gushing praise for the most recent entry in my favourite game series, Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave. However, I wrote that a mere piddling eighty hours into my play-through and I have now finally at last, completed it.

And while I do still absolutely recommend it and I will still probably consider it my favourite Fire Emblem this time next year, I do have criticisms. So if you were considering buying it and were on the fence, maybe read this first.

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Bats versus Bolts: Universal Women

Dracula brought Universal back from the dead.

In 1931, Carl Laemmle Junior made a bet on the sickness and depravity of the American cinema-going public and made out like a goddamned bandit, turning his father’s ailing, indebted studio into a money-making powerhouse (for a while) and cementing Universal’s reputation as the natural home of American horror cinema.

It is a truth Universally (heh) acknowledged that a studio in possession of a hit must be in want of a franchise and Dracula’s Daughter debuted in 1936, five years after the original.

Likewise, plans for a sequel to James Whale’s classic Frankenstein were being laid even before the movie was released. After the rapturous response of early test screenings, the ending was re-shot to allow for the monster’s survival. Whale was tempted back to direct and proceeded to give as few fucks as an openly gay man in 1930s Hollywood might be expected to give; bupkiss, and by all accounts just decided to have fun with it. He had fun with it, and the result is widely regarded as even better than the original, one of the greatest films of Hollywood’s Golden Age and altogether quite good.

Dracula’s Daughter, by contrast, is primarily known (where it is known at all) as an obscure curio mostly of interest for its queer subtext.

Well, I am also an obscure curio mostly of interest for my queer subtext and I’m going to spoil something right now: this particular bout of Bats versus Bolts might be a lot more closely fought than you’d expect.

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Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000)

Hey, you know that series of novels featuring impossibly gorgeous vampires that’s sold more copies than The DaVinci Code?

If you said “Twilight”, hang your head in shame and face the wall.

Hideyuki Kikuchi, as well as having a name that cheers you up when you say it, is the author of the Vampire Hunter D series, clocking in at a whopping 58 novels. The story tells the story of a “Dunpeal”, a half-human, half-vampire vampire hunter in the far, far distant future. It is also not, as I had assumed, a manga. I learned this when I ordered the first omnibus for research only to find myself holding a novel roughly the length of Lord of the Rings with four days before the review was due to go up.

My contribution to the male reading crisis notwithstanding today’s movie is the second anime adaptation of Vampire Hunter D; Bloodlust from 2000. The first was 1985’s Vampire Hunter D which I haven’t actually seen but sound off in the comments if you’d like me to cover it.

The reason I wanted to review Bloodlust (apart from needing something vaguely spooky for October) was that I’ve had the DVD for this sitting in my collection for around a quarter of a century and yet I’d only viewed it maybe once and I could remember precisely two things about it:

  1. It was one of the single most beautiful pieces of animation I’d ever seen.
  2. I didn’t really enjoy it.

But I’m older, wiser, greyer and more infused with a sense of apocalyptic dread now. Time for a reappraisal.

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Why I Love Playing: Fire Emblem

We.

Are.

So.

Fucking.

BACK.

Ha ha, you fools! This cute little blog series where I talk about under appreciated indie games was just a cunning ruse to lure you into a false sense of security. Now, you are trapped and I can reveal my true motive; evangelising for my favourite game series of all time; Fire Emblem.

Fortunately for me, we’re in one of those blessed periods of history where creator Intelligent Systems actually seem to know what they’re doing and I don’t really have to hard sell this. Fortune’s Weave has been out for a few weeks now and is good enough to make a body not regret dropping half a grand on a Switch 2 despite the fact that its technical improvements on the Switch 1 seem purely hypothetical.

Trust me, if I was trying to sell you on this series in the aftermath of Fire Emblem: Engage it would be much rougher sledding.

Jesus Christ. Were you designed to be viewed through 3D glasses?
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A Little Bit of Curry: Over the Garden Wall (2014)

And so we come to the end of Shortstember 2026 and we close out with a Tim Curry performance that we’ve actually already covered on the blog; his voicing of Aunty Whispers in 2014s Over the Garden Wall.

This role, obviously, has historic significance as it was Curry’s first role after his near fatal stroke in 2012. And, on the one hand it is definitely noticeable. Curry’s delivery has utterly changed and if you didn’t know it was him voicing the character you probably would never guess. All the more incredible then that we have yet another case of Grand Theft Curry, with Curry managing to be quite possibly the best element in the entire production, a production that absolutely bursting at the seams with fantastic actors giving fantastic performances.

Curry’s new voice, slower and weary sounding, perfectly brings to life the massive turtle-eating witch who may not be wicked exactly but has certainly found a way to turn this whole “girl lodger possessed by a man-eating demon” situation to her advantage.

What I find so heart-breakingly wonderful is that you can still hear the performance of a man who absolutely loves acting and who is having the time of his life. He knows how to wring just the right amount of camp menace out of each line. There is a wonderful sense of play with his deliver of “And no one shall be…devoured, tonight?”

He is relishing this role, as he relished every single role that ever crossed his agent’s desk.

I didn’t know Tim Curry and it’s always important to remember that, no matter how big a presence in our lives an actor has you never really know them. All I can give you is the impression that his work left me with.

That this was a man who loved his life. I cannot imagine Tim Curry getting up in the morning and saying “fuck, I have to act today”. This, I think, was a man who got to spend his life doing something that made him happy.

Good for him.

“Oh, God. That’s awful. That’s never gonna work.”

It’s actually quite hard to pin down when Supergirl first appeared as a character because, once you have Superman, the idea of Supergirl already exists in a conceptual form and it’s just a matter of time before someone puts pen to paper and actually draws her. There were several Supergirls and Superwomen before the one everyone is familiar with, and even more after her. Sometimes she’s the future daughter of Lois Lane and Clark Kent. Sometimes she’s a fallen angel. Sometimes she’s an alien shapeshifter or a refugee from an alternate reality. And sometimes she’s Claire Kent, the identity Clark took on when he was changed into a woman by an alien witch as punishment for being sexist.

Man, those are some woke rural Kansans in the fifties. Good for them.

But the most famous and long-lasting version of the Maid of Steel debuted in Action Comics in 1959 drawn by Al Plastino and written by Otto Binder, who I don’t think gets enough credit for being a genuine trailblazer in terms of creating female superheroes. He also created Mary Marvel for Fawcett and Miss America for Marvel (confusing, I know).

This version, Kara Zor-El, the blonde teenage cousin of Superman, has endured as one of the most popular and iconic female superheroes in the medium probably second to only Wonder Woman (at least prior to the MCU). And, like most long-running superheroes she’s undergone many changes in her portrayal. Early on she was depicted as essentially her cousin with a higher hemline but modern stories have leaned into the interesting wrinkle of Kara actually being raised on Krypton and having a much more alien perspective on Earth than the All-American Clark.

She’s a fascinating character with a rich history who deserves a great movie.

What she got was one of the WORST MOVIES EVER MADE.

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A Little Bit of Curry: Peter Pan and the Pirates (1990)

I have, as regular readers of this blog know, strong feelings on JM Barrie’s seminal masterpiece Peter Pan and Wendy and its many adaptations.

Peter Pan and the Pirates was an animated series that ran on Fox Kids from 1990 to 1991 and, like all animated adaptations had to contend with comparisons to the Disney version of the nineteen fifties. This obvious comparison (and, I suspect, a desire to avoid leaving blood in the water for Disney’s lawyers) is why we get some of the most radical visual departures from how these characters are usually portrayed with the biggest change doubtless being the series’ depiction of one Jas. Hook.

Now, I’ll be honest I really don’t like this design. I get that the white hair and the black outfit is a deliberate subversion but the hook and crossbones on his his hat is goofy and his face looks more like a background henchman than a devious pirate king.

But, my God, none of that really matters because the creators got Tim Curry to voice him and we get probably the single best depiction of Captain Hook in any medium. I personally prefer Jason Isaacs because he looks perfect but Curry just eats this part alive.

And the great thing is, that for once the writers seemed to realise the gift they’d been given and they proceeded to give him Shakespeare. The writers delighted in giving Curry the most verbose, beautifully ornate dialogue and letting him go to town.

But for all the fun (and it’s is very, very fun), Curry gets at the darkness and majesty of the character in a way that very few actors have.

In the episode Ages of Pan, Peter succeeds in trapping Hook, tying him to a tree and threatening to kill him with a crossbow. And Hook faces him, entirely unflinching, and psychologically destroys him with words alone.

This? This is what Hook should always be.

Evil, Sexy, Evilly Sexy or Funny Accent?: Mostly evil, with a soupcon of Funny Accent given how he pronounces boy as “boi” like he’s on Total Request live circa 1998.