Showing posts with label daredevil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label daredevil. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 3, 2022

PodCast 207-B: "Elektra" (2005) - Part 2 - A Superheroes Every Day episode w/ Danny and Ryan




Watched:  07/16/2022
Format:  Amazon
Viewing: First
Decade:  2000's
Director:  Rob Bowman, I think





Well. Here we are in Part 2 of talking about a not-good movie. We continue on our journey of discovery as we track the progress of a ninja, a girl you kind of wish she wouldn't work so hard to protect, and people really committed to dressing up as ninjas. Plus, flying bedsheets as cinema. Let's talk flying electric snakes.


SoundCloud 


YouTube


Music:
Breathe No More - Evanescence, who is terrible, y'all.  I'm sorry.  Someone needed to tell you.



PLAYLIST TITLE GOES HERE

Sunday, June 12, 2022

PodCast 201: "Daredevil" (2003) - A Marvel Madness Episode w/ Danny Horn & Ryan




Watched:  06/09/2022
Format:  HBOmax
Viewing:  Second
Director:  Mark Steven Johnson




Danny and Ryan break a Signal Watch record, talking about a movie for longer than the run-time of that movie. Because when it comes to 2003's superhero offering, we need to take this to court and then give it the beatdown. We're jumping off skyscrapers of logic and throwing billy clubs of criticism as we echo-locate what it's all about.


SoundCloud 


YouTube


Music:
Daredevil Theme - Graeme Revell
Guardian Devil - Graeme Revell


Marvel Madness Playlist

Friday, April 15, 2016

Marvel Watch: Daredevil Season 2



If you think my movie watching has slowed to a trickle, you'd be right.  We're still neck deep in TV and baseball right now.  I haven't even watched my BluRay of The Force Awakens quite yet, but I did lose all of last night watching the disk of bonus material (totally great, btw).

We also blitzed our way through Daredevil Season 2, or as close to a blitz as you're going to get out of us.  We basically finished the series in about 2.5 weeks, which is really fast for us, even for a 13-episode series.

Last night's post should give you an idea of the regard in which I hold the source material of Daredevil comics produced by Frank Miller in the early 1980's.  But, to be truthful, I haven't read them in over a decade.  That's all right.  The show only references them loosely, doing what Marvel has done so well so often over the past decade: keeping the origins largely intact, remembering who the characters are at their core (and not in the squishy "well, which canon?  who are you to say this isn't Superman?" way DC has done), and boiling down stories to work better in the medium in which they're appearing.

Daredevil Season 1 carried the burden of the origin and establishing their corner of New York not just for Daredevil, but - as it turned out - for Jessica Jones and Luke Cage.  In all honesty, I thought both Daredevil Season 1 and Jessica Jones Season 1 could have been tighter.  They seemed to be 8 or 9 episode shows spread out over 13, and that meant a lot of filler.

I think those of us who watched Daredevil S2 can agree, if this season had an issue, it wasn't that not that we were hoping it'd pick up the pace a bit.

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Frank Miller Takes Over the World



I have an employee who is into geek-culture stuff in a way that doesn't include actual comics.  She likes horror movies, Army of Darkness, and watches the TV shows and movies based on comics.  She just finished watching Daredevil (so say we all), and she was wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt with art from the 90's cartoon while she was talking to me about the show.

"You know," I said, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a by-product of Daredevil."
She eyed me, somewhat skeptically.
"Frank Miller made ninjas cool in comics via the Daredevil comics run they're adapting for the show.  After that, ninjas were everywhere in comics, but Miller did them best.  It was the 1980's and Eastman and Laird were drinking beer and figuring out what might be popular for a comic and, hey, NINJAS.  The 'Teenage Mutant' part is referring to some X-Men stuff.  New Mutants, I think."
The look of skepticism was giving way to a bit of fear.
"Yes, I think you can argue that Bruce Lee started the craze, but in comics, I point to Frank Miller."
"Okay."
"Yeah," I said, refusing to let it go.  "The crazy turtle uses sai, right?  Elektra!  That's Miller.  What's the name of the bad guys the Shredder works with?"
She felt a trap.  "The Foot?" she ventured.
"Uh huh.  And the name of the ninjas in Daredevil?"
"...the Hand?"
"Right.  Now... let's talk about how Frank Miller is responsible for Batman v. Superman."
She was not impressed.
"Directly or indirectly, Jack Kirby and Frank Miller are responsible for everything in media right now," I concluded.
I don't think she bought a word of it.

In general, I'd argue the conversations the comics kids are having online these days don't seem to talk so much about what's happening in their comics as they do the characters in broad strokes, undergrad 101 media criticism of race and gender (which I welcome) and the creators, like they're following demi-celebrities who might talk back to them.*

Sunday, January 17, 2016

Marvel Television: Jessica Jones and the New Era for Marvel



I'm about two months behind everyone else finishing the Marvel Netflix series Jessica Jones, a spiritual sibling of the much celebrated Daredevil, and as far from the TV-logic and twee shenanigans of Agents of SHIELD as you're likely to get.

I'm going to throw this out there, and I'll ask you to stick with me:  Jessica Jones may be, to live-action superhero media, what Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen were to comics in 1986.

Way back in the late-90's/ early-00's, I was reading a lot of this new kid, Brian Michael Bendis, who had some indie success with Goldfish, Torso and other gritty crime books (and Torso is still an amazing read, the based-on-real-events story of famed lawman Elliot Ness trying to find a serial killer in Cleveland after putting Capone behind bars).  He followed this by teaming with Oeming on Powers, a "cops in a world with capes"  comic with a decidedly Rated-R bent, and I followed that series for years.  Around 2001/2002, Bendis and Gaydos brought Alias to Marvel and minted their new MAX imprint - a line of comics with a hard "R" rating, but absolutely within the Marvel Universe.  Something even DC blanched at, separating Vertigo from DCU proper circa 1994.

This was about fifteen years after the atom-bomb of Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns exploded in the comics world and, in the aftermath, the idea that comics could reach an adult audience was left behind in the radiation and sand burnt to glass.  Bendis was part of the generation who came into the field when a few things were happening.  (A) Reaching an audience older than 17 was now possible - which meant the very real-world problems facing actual humans could be discussed in comics, even with a superheroic bent, which (B) meant that the comics companies were setting up imprints to deal with this idea, keeping their mainline branding safe for the parents associations who would show up and breathe fire and throw comics retailers in jail from time-to-time for not carefully shelving their wares.  And, of course, (C) Marvel was dealing with bankruptcy.  I have very little positive to say about 2001-era Marvel honcho Bill Jemas, but he was certainly willing to try new things, and all of that risk-taking has indirectly led to the Marvel we think of today.

Alias showed up in this market as a sort of indie-within-the-Big-2 title.  It was something to see a character who smoked and drank and had sex with Luke Cage (which she does in the first few pages of the series - so I feel spoiler free), and met Carol Danvers for coffee.  It was a detective series.  There was something in her background we'd get to sooner or later, some dark reason she'd quit heroing, but at the outset, it seemed to just be a series about a failed superhero making ends meet and seeing real human foibles and crime in the underbelly of the Marvel U.

So... the TV show.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Let's Finally Talk Marvel's "Daredevil"

I'm not a rabid fan of The Man Without Fear, but on and off over the years, I've enjoyed reading comics about Marvel's foremost punching bag, Daredevil.  Of all of Marvel's staple characters, since the 1980's at least, Daredevil has been like a weird superhero/ noir/ gangland epic soap opera that mostly lost it's way when it veered too far into the rest of Marvel's superheroing and was at it's best when it kept even the costumed heroes and villains a bit more grounded and spent a lot of time with Murdock out of costume.*



If I were to recommend runs, I'd really recommend the Frank Miller era (the man's work just keeps bearing fruit) and the unbelievable Brian Michael Bendis era that had tremendous impact not just on Daredevil - forever changing the character while making him, somehow, even more Dardevil - but on the concept of dual identities in comics.  

So when I saw the initial previews of the Netflix-direct Daredevil show, I was a little shocked to see how much it looked exactly like a mix of Miller, Romita Jr., Mazzucchelli and Klaus Janson's work on the book and the Bendis-era Maleev tones and compositions.  And while Miller's story took place with Daredevil well established in the Marvel U, it certainly harkens back to his work.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

A Whole Lotta TV: Kimmy Schmidt, Daredevil, Batman, Americans, Mad Men, Flash and more - keeping me from movies

I realized I hadn't been posting a whole lot, at least not about movies.  But I've also been watching a metric @#$%-ton of TV lately.

Like a lot of you, I heard the Tina Fey produced Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was pretty good, and at 22 minutes per episode, only 13 episodes and that each one was like eating a box of Hot Tamales or Mike & Ike's, it was the first series I've binge-watched since I was home with the flu and watched 2 seasons of Archer.


A concept that, no doubt, HBO would have insisted been a brooding melodrama with plenty of sexual dysfunction and nihilism, this take on "what happens when a girl is kidnapped at 14 and doesn't leave her bunker cult layer until she's 29ish?" is, instead, super upbeat, life-affirming and a hell of a lot of fun to watch.  The brand of humor feels akin to the dizzy chaos of early 30 Rock, and even if we only ever get these 13 episodes, they were pretty damn enjoyable.  But, yeah, I guess there's a second season guaranteed by Netflix (where the show is living), so I'm down with that.

Anyway, it's not often I watch 13 episodes of something so fast I don't even mention it between start and finish, but there you are.

And before we move on:

Saturday, April 11, 2015

B-Day Watch: Guardians of the Galaxy and Superman - The Movie

This weekend marks my 40th birthday.  As such, I'm taking it easy and enjoying some of my favorite movies.

Last night was a recent favorite, Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), because it will be a while before I see Rocket Raccoon in anything, and I will rewatch Captain America 2 just prior to Avengers 2.

Es muy bueno!


It's actually a little surprising how well the movie holds up upon multiple viewings in a single year.  And, man, you don't hear much about it, but it's also a very pretty movie.  Space isn't a black field with white dots - it's a nebula cloud of Kool-Aid colors.



And, this morning I got up early and put on Superman: The Movie.  Not much new to see on a 50th or so screening of the movie, but I wasn't going to let a "Ryan gets to watch whatever he wants this weekend" window go by without Superman.

As the credits rolled, Jamie asked me if I'd seen it 100 times yet.  And, I don't think so...  but you never know.  It's possible.  I know I've seen it a few times per year every year since 2008 or so, and before that I'd watch it a lot more than that.  So...  yeah, I have no idea, really.

I also started Blade Runner last night and realized I was exhausted during the "let's kill the eyeball guy" sequence, so I didn't finish.  Sometime this weekend, though.

Oh, and Daredevil is pretty @#$%ing right on.  Check it out on Netflix.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Marvel's "Daredevil" show looks a whole lot like Daredevil without the red outfit



I've been pretty jazzed about the idea of a Netflix-direct Daredevil show since they announced the idea.  For those of you who follow Daredevil as a comic, this looks more or less as depressing and grim as the comics that we like, for some reason.  And it's clear they aren't about to make the same mistakes as the ill-fated film version which made me a sad panda.

I really do think it takes a while for Matt Murdock to seep in as a character, so multiple episodes of expanding on the backstory, on what makes Marvel's longest running case of Catholic guilt tick is a welcome bit of TV in my book.

Daredevil owes his continuing relevance to the Frank Miller era of the 1980's (as do comics, in general), and it can't hurt to refer to the take Miller put on the character that transformed him from a chipper blind attorney to a... chronically depressed blind attorney.  I assure you, them's is good comics.

This is supposed to be followed by a take on the Brian Michael Bendis series, Alias - which I think they're calling Jessica Jones or something in order not to refer to the Jennifer Garner TV series, as Garner would go on to play Elektra in Daredevil for some reason, and if we called it Alias, I'm pretty sure the universe would collapse in on itself.  Then, a Luke Cage TV series, which... man, this one was obvious.  Had to be done.

Now, enjoy the time The Hulk met Daredevil.



And, of course Stan Lee makes a cameo around the 1:13 mark.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

The Comics Haul: 8.15.2012


So this is what I picked up after 2 weeks away from the shop.

2 issues of Atomic Robo (ongoing series and a mini), Popeye ongoing #1, a Daredevil Annual, Saga #6, the new Allred project - which is an old Allred project, It Girl!  I have no idea what It Girl! will be about, but I'm betting that at least I'll like the art.

And I came across Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #30 in pretty iffy condition, but it's a book I've been lacking from my Jimmy Olsen collection and one of my favorite Jimmy covers, so there you go.

The Phantom Eagle I picked up on a whim, but it's a Marvel war book from the 60's-era Marvel and obviously meant to grab some of that sweet, sweet Enemy Ace money.  Several years ago Garth Ennis used the character in his book War is Hell: First Flight of the Phantom Eagle.  I hadn't thought much about the character since, but the cover jumped out at me and I figured it was a good addition to my aviation comics.

Yes, I sort of buy and collect military aviation comics.

Shut up.

I also put a few sheckles down on my lay-away copy of Action Comics 101, a comic that I will one day actually have in my home.

Digitally, I've picked up the one-shot Busiek and Lieber comic, Thoughts on a Winter Morning, published here by MonkeyBrain Comics.   It's a lovely slice-of-life story, and makes you wonder what else Busiek would be writing about if he walked away from superheroes and whatnot for a bit.  It's a nice meditation on time and perspective, and uses the medium of comics beautifully.  At least, it seemed so on my laptop on guided view.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Some good reads: Memorial #1 and Daredevil #7

If you haven't been past your comic shop yet, or you might be heading back soon, I wanted to pitch two comics to you.  One is a brand new series, the other one of Marvel's oldest mainstay characters, and so it gives me two very different things to discuss and recommend for different reasons.

Memorial #1 
written by Chris Roberson, art by Rick Ellis and colors by Grace Allison

I have a feeling that if issue #2 continues on from where issue #1 started, and this thing expands the way I think it could, we're going to be looking at one of the "next big things" for comics fans.

In TV and comics, there are ways to lay groundwork while laying out tantalizing bits of "what's really happening" or setting up a mythology, and its difficult to pinpoint how a series on TV like Lost can do this so well, and then the reboot of V comes along, and it has all the fun of solving a big book of word problems.

It has to do, of course, with clearly defined (and new but readily understood) characters, buy-able circumstances for characters that set an internal logic from the beginning, what was presented as hints about what's happening without being unnecessarily oblique.

If this were a TV series, I think we just saw the first half-hour of the 90 minute pilot, and it was very promising. We get a lovely tabula rasa set up for our start, that we know we'll populate with backstory, despotic fairytale queens, and plenty of hints about who our villains are, and the circumstances that led them to villainy.  Its a compelling soup of familiar and unfamiliar, and I am very curious to see where it heads.

Mostly, unlike so many #1's I've read in the DCU relaunch, this didn't have me wanting to know more to guess how they would do this, or fix it, or how this compared to my expectations.  This was starting fresh, and it felt fresh and absolutely necessary against the backdrop of the state of the industry.

Give it a shot.  You can find Memorial #1 from IDW out as of Wednesday, Dec. 21 at your local shop, and online at comixology.

Recommended for fans of Sandman, Fables, Unwritten and Books of Magic.

Daredevil #7
by Mark Waid, Paulo Rivera and Joe Rivera with colorist Javier Rodriguez


The constant push to write for the trade and the industry's devotion to the 6 issue storyline has meant that we've all but lost a vestige of the 80's on most of superherodom in comics.  When writers like Claremont were on books like X-Men, as powerful as a multi-issue story-arc could be (and how that was handled differently them plotting out over years sometimes), often it was the stand-alone story between stories that worked as a short story, and revealed character in the way day-in-the-life or short-form stories can.

Waid has always been talented, but of late, the man has been firing on all cylinders on all of his projects.  On Daredevil, he's rescued the character from a whirlpool of negativity that started in the 1980's with Miller's work, was used to excellent effect in some of Bendis's run on the character, built upon by Brubaker, but essentially left Matt Murdock with nowhere to go.

Waid continues to play off this problem in this issue, as the mission of this run has been to make Matt Murdock a character whose stories people might want to read for enjoyment, not endure out of duty.  Matt Murdock, the character, has reclaimed life, and as readers, we get to enjoy that, too.

This issue follows Murdock in a set of unfortunate circumstances leading kids to safety through a snowstorm.  the subject material shouldn't feel like an 80's throwback, but I simply can't point to enough periods in the past 20 years when a writer was offered the opportunity to tell this kind of revealing story in a mainstream book, or saw the potential in such "ordinary" circumstances.

Its a straight up amazing read, and shows not just why Daredevil works as a character, but why Waid's understanding of character and what real drama can look like in a comic about men in tights, keeps the whole thing engaging and reminds readers how this medium and this genre can work on a very good day.

 


Tuesday, September 20, 2011

JimD's Daredevil Deposition of Mark Waid!

JimD, the original Signal Corpsman, and one of the contributors at the always fine Abnormal Use law blog, has landed an interview with comics scribe Mark Waid (one of my personal heroes).

As you may know, Mark Waid is currently writing (Here Comes) Daredevil, and like everything else the man has touched the past decade, its just another darn fine comic.  Our protagonist, Daredevil, is, by day, attorney Matt Murdock.  And thus: our connection.

Don't take our word for it - read JimD's post and then go to your local comic shop this week and find Daredevil #4.  And then buy the previous issues if they're on the shelf.

You have to like it.  Cap AND Daredevil.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Signal Watch Reads: (Here Comes) Daredevil 2

(Here Comes) Daredevil #2
writer - Mark Waid
penciler - Paolo Rivera
inker - Joe Rivera
color artist - Javier Rodriguez
letterer - VC's Joe Caramagna
asst. editor - Ellie Pyle
editor - Stephen Wacker


What? I'm looking at a MARVEL comic???? Everybody just breathe easy, and we'll get through this.