The Toad's Burrow

     I've been going down a real rabbit-hole of comic books as of late, so it was only a matter of time before I finally went through The Superior Spider-Man. I remember the beginning of this era of Spider-Man quite well actually, which is actually pretty funny since this lines up quite well with the comics 10thish anniversary which was this year. I suppose even to 13-year old me it felt like a new, fresh, novel idea that was definitely not going to stick around forever, but be a nice change of pace. A new black suit, a new cast of characters, and someone whose a little more loose around the morals. So let's talk about it.     The first thing I'll say about this little era of Spider-Man is that it lasts shockingly much longer than you'd think. I think the Omnibus I read totaled close to like 800 pages, and they cover practically about pretty much every single topic you could. I'm not saying they beat a dead horse or something, but I feel like if you tried a chan...

      The more I write these little reviews for comic arcs that absolutely do not deserve any sort of revisiting the more I think about putting in some sort of minimum when it comes to pages/issues. But at the same time I review plenty of independent or smaller comics that are much more contained and just as short, so I suppose I'll forgo any sort of length and just talk as long as I need to. Let's talk about this one.     It just sucks. At least Superior Spiderman , which may be my next read, had a significantly longer leash to do anything. I frankly don't remember much from this era of Marvel other than people doing that clickbait thing where they talk about "Iron Man gave Daredevil his sight back" and that's it. But that's pretty much the only memorable thing about this comic. It's like 8 issues, because it leads right into Secret Wars  anyways in which everything gets erased.     What you need to know about this era? It's an "evil" To...

      Boooooo, boooooo, booooo, booooo, boooooo. This comic is so bad man. The older I get the more I realize the original Civil War event with Marvel was basically just one large way for them to play with their toys. It just seems to age worse and worse the farther away we get from it. I never really cared for Bucky Barnes being Captain America, frankly the whole Captain America situation in the comics is too confusing for me to follow at this point. But that's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about the Marvel Civil War event I got to live through, Civil War II . I will say I liked it better as a child, but in the sense that a part of me thought Iron Man should have won the first time around, so I was eager to see him get some sort of redemption. Let's talk about it.     The biggest issue with this? Captain Marvel is just hilariously wrong. There's no two ways to cut it. It's not even like the issue they're fighting on hasn't been litigated befo...

      I can't say I particularly enjoyed this comic. Yes I am a pretty big DC fan and so I read through it all. Yes, I went into this comic largely blind and supposedly because James Gunn wanted to use it as a strong influence on the DCU, a universe I am highly anticipating, especially as Lanterns  is just so good. Even still, I left feeling pretty underwhelmed. Maybe I'm just not that much of a fan of the silver age of comics, maybe I'm simply too young, or maybe it just was kind of whatever. Let's talk about it.     The nicest thing I can say about this comic is that it's fine at best. Don't get me wrong, the premise is novel, it sounds good. Wikipedia described it as a story that " bridges the gap between the end of the Golden Age and the beginning of the Silver Age in the DC Universe." This all sounds great on paper, but in practice you're just kind of left with a very strong feeling of "meh." It's an interesting alternative histo...

      Wow, just wow. A truly great book. When I was first alerted to the existence of this book, it was basically sold to me as this, a book about capitalism, anarchism and feminism all wrapped up in a sci-fi novel. It sounded too ambitious, and in a sense I think they oversold it a little bit? At least on the feminism end. Even still, this novel was fantastic. My copy (whose cover is the image for this review), was 360 pages, but I basically split it into like three chunks of 120 pages. By the end I was just savouring the last 40 pages, leaving them for the right moment because I knew it would fly by, far faster than any book has really done for me in a while. Let's talk about it.     In fact, let me deconstruct the descriptor I remember seeing online when it came to this book, and break it down piece by piece. I would say most definitely this book is sort of about capitalistic and anarchist societies first and foremost. It does this job excellently by the way....

      I have officially watched Citizen Kane . I'll admit, I've been holding off all month trying not to watch this movie. Not because I have anything against it in particular, but it was released in 1941. Like there's simply no other way to put it but after a certain threshold the likelihood of me enjoying a particular piece of media just drops dramatically. Like if you told me to listen to an album earlier than maybe 1960 I think it starts to get dicey and the odds of me enjoying it are just much lower than you'd like. In that sense I think I have a pretty clear line of demarcation when it comes to older films. Just technologically, pacing wise and especially sonically with the dialogue quality I tend to just simply not care about it at all. But this film managed to defy it all. Let's talk about it.     Now, I'm going to get ahead of everything and say I don't think this movie is some all-time great in my eyes. It's a fine enough film for my modern sta...

      Well there it is. Man I remember when this show first came out. It just had an immense level of juice it was ridiculous. The writing was great, the music was riveting, the camera work and the pacing were excellent. They just kept everything to a nice, crisp 20-25 minutes and you really never had to worry about anything. It was intense, it kept you on your toes, and it had you watch nearly the entire series all in one sitting if you tried. That's what I remember most about the first couple of seasons of The Bear. Then season three happened, and season four, and you just wondered where it all went wrong. The showrunners gave up the tight, snappy scenes for long, very character-driven scenes in which dialogue became everything. It sort of lost it's way. But now it's over, Let's talk about it.     I will say, this is probably my third favourite season of the show though. It doesn't exactly quite right the ship completely, but at the very least they understood ...

      Ok fine. I'll be the first to admit it. I had absolutely no faith in this movie being good. Like at all. When I first saw this trailer in theaters I thought it was ridiculous. Why would such a famous actor like Hugh Jackman attach his name and star in such a ridiculous premise. A whodunnit but the main characters are actually sheep? Like really? I think it was the CGI animals that threw me off. So often are movies with CGI animals slapped on it so bad these days. I was simply too wary. Yet, now I come out a changed man, I see the vision. My sister even cried during this film, I don't think I was moved that well, but for a relatively short and compact film for everyone, it's unsuspectingly good. Let's talk about it.     The humour was, actually good? Like surprisingly decent? It's so easy for those made for everyone films to simply start doing the same old-tired gags of like fart jokes or butt jokes. I am thankful to report that there is none of that. No jo...

    I did not expect to love this little graphic novel as much as I did, but boy does it have it all. The art style is fine, if not acceptable, that's probably the most I'll have to say about it. It's nothing crazy. But premise-wise, story-wise, execution-wise, thematically. I'll say this was a very, very interesting sort of pseudo-horror, near-future, sci-fi kind of graphic novel that asked a lot of interesting questions. I remember reading the first two chapters and putting it down going huh, that's pretty neat. Then I picked it up before I went to bed and I simply devoured the rest like it was nothing. Let's talk about it.     By far the most interesting part about Upgrade Soul  is the premise. It's fresh, it's great, and it really makes you think a lot about ownership, individuality, and sort of the cost of immortality. Basically, without revealing too much. An elderly couple Hank and Molly, who in their twilight years (and thanks to their considerab...