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“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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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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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.

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.

Get 25% of Help! I’m Being Eaten by a Bear!

Hello, hello! My next picture book, Help! I’m Being Eaten by a Bear! is going on sale 3rd of November and you (yes YOU!) can preorder it from Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/help-im-being-eaten-by-a-bear-neil-sharpson/1149062217?ean=9780593616703. Use the code PREORDER25 and tell ’em mouse sent ya. I’m really proud of this book which was illustrated by the amazing Dan Santat who also illustrated my last book, Don’t Trust Fish.

“Gee Mouse, isn’t that your picture book that has now spent five weeks on the New York Times bestseller list?”
“I know, I know, so humbing.”
“Gee Mouse, didn’t you once tell me that the New York Times bestseller list is an opaque elitist metric whose connection to either raw sales or artistic merit is tenuous in the extreme?”
“That was old, loser Mouse. His opinions mean nothing!”

Get Help! I’m Being Eaten by a Bear!

Sorry, I meant, get the book. I’m not actually being eaten by a bear and you don’t have to get help.

The Day the Earth Blew Up and Coyote Versus ACME

Since the nineteen sixties Warner Bros has had what must be a uniquely frustrating problem:

They own some of the most beloved and iconic cartoon characters in history but have no viable format with which to use them. The Looney Tunes were the absolute masters of the theatrical animated short, which these days is like being the world’s best court jester. Impressive, but how exactly does one make money from that?

Each one of these characters was honed by a process of rigorous cinematic evolution for one purpose; deliver as many fantastic gags as possible within a seven minute span. And, like any creature that evolved for a super-specific niche, they don’t handle changes to their environment well.

Part of the problem is that their style of comedy is primarily visual. Oh sure, there’s plenty of great verbal comedy but the bulk of the laughs come from Mel Blanc’s delivery and some of the most sublime animation ever put to film. And you’re just not going to get that on a TV animation budget. Especially not Mel Blanc.

As for movies, Warner Bros have tried to make the Tunes work in feature animation for decades. These were usually anthology films, taking several classic shorts united by a common theme (horror, sci-fi, show-biz) and weaving them into a loose narrative. At their best, these films are fine. But they are very obviously classic cartoons interspersed with visibly weaker animation and an audibly older and tireder Mel Blanc. They don’t really work as movies and that comes down, fundamentally, to just the different nature of how Warner Bros crfated these characters compared to, say, Disney.

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Why I love playing: Spiritfarer

If you’re someone who’s had to deal with depression at any point in your life (and if you’re not, hello, freak) then here’s a piece of advice that’s stood me in good stead: keep a list of the media that makes you happy.

I have a collection of movies (Emperor’s New Groove, Big Lebowski), TV Shows (Frasier, Simpsons) and books (literally anything by PG Wodehouse) that have served me well when the black dog is scratching at the door and whining to be let out so that it can shit on the lawn of my mental health. To these I add Spiritfarer, a cosy management sim by Canadian indie developer Thunder Lotus Games released in 2020 for Windows, Mac, Linux, PS4, XBox One, Switch, Android and Stadia.

It’s a lovely, sweet, relaxing game about DEATH.

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Justice League Unlimited: “For the man who has everything”

I make fun of Alan Moore sometimes, but rest assured it comes from a place of purest admiration. He’s who I want to be when I grow up.

When I’m in my seventies I want to be a mouthy old beard engaging in magic duals with gender-ambiguous wizards, worshipping a snake god and complaining about everything all the time.

“That’s not true! I stop when I’m asleep, don’t I?”

And today, while hacking my way through this goddamn draft, I will take a break to briefly review what is (I believe) literally the only adaptation of Alan Moore’s work to receive his blessing, Justice League Unlimited’s second episode, For the Man Who Has Everything.

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