8. What If... Ultron Won?

I accidentally read some spoilers for this episode. I'm not thrilled already.  I wrote that right before I watched the episode and yeah, I was right.  It should be renamed "What if we could kill as many MCU characters in episode as possible?"  because that's what it has turned into.  This episode has so many plot holes... the first one is, there are several Watchers, not just Uatu.  We have seen that in one of the movies.  Heck, Stan Lee is a Watcher!  So how are they all not showing up to pound Ultron into dust?  If he destroys all realities then they will be out of a job.  And destroying Ego and Thanos so simply?    That really makes those alleged cosmic threats look weak.  Also, once Thanos had the Infinity Gauntlet, why didn't he notice the Watchers?  And if the SNAP was so powerful that it about killed the Mad Titan, how on Earth could Ultron use it and survive?  None of this makes sense.

Attack of the MOTW- Matango

 

I saw this movie called Attack of the Mushroom People, in black and white on a Sunday afternoon.  At least, many of us remember seeing it in black and white, though it could have been an older, beat up 16mm print.  When I saw finally saw the full color version I though the monochrome movie was more effective.  And that ending!  I remembered it for many years, even though it never aired again in Colorado.  Thanks, KWGN Channel 2, for scaring the hell out of me!  I didn't like mushrooms before this, and I doubt I have eaten one on purpose since.

Superboy s.1 e 12

Kryptonite Kills: they sure didn't have a handle on the characters just yet.  I mean, in 12 episodes Clark has fallen in love with a gangster's daughter, kissed Lana and has a close other female friend in Smallville.  Lex still has hair and flunkies and Lana is, well, not as smart as Lana had become since John Byrne took over (I love Lana, and her knowing Clark was Superman was a great step for her).  This episode is the introduction of Green K, which spells troubles for everyone.  Only Professor John Peterson knows it hurts Superboy by the end of the episode.  Lex uses it for a power supply, which doesn't go the way he plans.

Sven- Blood of Dracula (1957)

 

Or as it probably should have been called, I was a Teenage Vampire.  It's pretty much a remake of I was a Teenage Werewolf.  I'm sure I have seen Werewolf, but danged if I can remember more than the final scene.  This movie was not bad, but most of the characters deserved what happens to them.  Even the vampire girl wasn't very pleasant to begin with, so it's hard to feel sorry for her.  I did like her more traditional vampire look, though.  They went for Nosferatu, man, rather than a sexy vampire woman.  That was pretty different for the time frame.  Of course, this is a science vampire rather than a magic vampire, so perhaps that's the difference?

Devil Dinosaur

 

I'm given to understand a new series called Devil Dinosaur and Moon Girl is being prepared for Disney+.  I have the collection for this original series, which is quite enjoyable, but suffers from Kirby's hyperbolic writing style.  Not a one of these dinosaurs (and other prehistoric animals) really resembled real animals, even in the 70s.  It was all 100% Jack Kirby.  It only lasted nine issue, but Devil did show up in Godzilla for two issues as well.  That's probably not cannon at this point.  I know they brought both Devil and Moon Boy to the "present" at some point, but don't know how or why.  I wonder what has happened to ol' Moon Boy?

7. What If... Thor were an Only Child?

Thank the gods for a lighter episode.  Once again, it's not even remotely a thing that we saw happen; this time Odin does not adopt Loki.  This leads to Thor being an only child and Odin and Frigga being overindulgent parents (this is on them, really, for not paying attention to the spoiled child they were raising).  Odin does the Odinsleep, Frigga goes to visit her sisters, then Thor and company go to Earth to have a party.  A BIG party.  SHIELD thinks it's an invasion and calls Ms Marvel Binary Warbird Captain Marvel back from wherever she's been.  Fights happen until Dr. Jane Foster calls on Heimdall to rat Thor out to Frigga. 

MOTW... FROM SPACE- Gezora

 

Gezora is a massive cuttlefish that lives off the waters of Selgol Island.  The natives worship it and are afraid of it, so it existed before the deadly Space Amoeba showed up and mutated it further for it's own deadly uses.  The mollusc is sent to attack the island, but is defeated and killed with fire.  I feel bad for the poor animals in this movie, as they were not really evil, just being used by a life form that was bent on taking over the world.

Kiss - The Oath (Live On Fridays)

                                           Fridays was a rather lame and unfunny ABC version of Saturday Night Live, but damn did they have some great musical acts on the show.  I posted this ten years ago, but that version is unavailable now.  Some people think Ace made up the solo, but the band knew exactly how long he was going to play.  Anyway, this is a great performance, even if Paul couldn't hold those high notes.

Xenorama #34

Go! Go! Let's go! It's the Kamen Rider issue!  This is the proto-cover I'm working on, so it will be slightly different, but I wanted to get started on it.  It will feature the most of the original Rider Series (Sky Rider is the lone holdout, as no one has subtitled the series as of this writing).  I included several of the newer ones, including Ryuki, Hibiki, Decade and Double.  This issue has been over two years in the making, since that original series has so many episodes, plus two movies and a few interesting spinoffs.  These include many of the Taiwanese movies made from the Rider movies, and even their German versions.

Sven- Dracula (1931)

 

Growing up in Colorado, KWGN Channel 2 aired a lot of Universal movies.  Sunday afternoons were filled with creatures, vampires, werewolves and mummies on a regular basis.  A certain genius friend of mine found out many years later that the station's programmer loved those movies, which is why they showed up all the time.  He also provided us with many Japanese monster movies as well.  So all of these Universal horror movies seem like old friends when I watch them now.  Of course, I see the films in a different light these days, and I don't always remember some of the fun details of the movies.  I think I was also doing other things while the movies were on, like talking to my brother or reading a comic book.  The world may never know now, though.

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

This is a great looking movie,  It is so colorful. It's also a pretty good adaption of the book, with the addition of the villain and the girls.  I liked it as a kid, but I think I like the Filmation cartoon more, since it actually has dinosaurs in it.  Scottish Professor Oliver Lindenbrook takes Alex McEwen, Carla Goteborg, Hanz and Gertrude about eleven miles into the mantle of the earth.  They are followed by the evil Count Saknussemm, who believes the whole inside of the Earth belongs to him.  He's not in the book, but it's a good addition to give the movie some conflict and drama.

6. What if Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark

This show is starting to lose me now.  Killmonger wasn't even a thought back in the first MCU movie, and they just plop him down into Iron Man's origin because they can.  And like the last episode, they don't have a proper wrap up, more like "well, things will get better, trust us".  I think four of these six episodes have now ended like this.  And I know all of these episodes have to be different, but damn, do they have to kill every hero they possibly can?  And it's nice to see Pepper Potts take a bigger role in this, and I would be she becomes the Iron Woman (I really want to call her the Iron Maiden, since Rusty had red hair as well) in the future of this world.

tiny MOTW- The Micro-Monster

 

DC had it's fair share of giant monster stories in the 50s and 60s.  Unlike Marvel though, they rarely got the great names, like Fin Fang Foom, Shagg, or Groot.  They were more generic, more like US monsters than the Japanese ones that Stan Lee must have been watching.  This Micro-Monster was a single celled creature made giant by man's hubris and experiments.  It's defeated, thankfully!  This story first appeared in My Greatest Adventure #76  of the series My Greatest Adventure (Volume 1) with a cover date of February, 1963.  I first read it in Doom Patrol 122, which was a backup story for the main one.   This was in 1973 and I was almost eight years old.  DC Comics did try to keep some real science in their stories from this time period.

Show Me STAR WARS, without Showing Me STAR WARS

 

 And he does, even if Hardware Wars (1978) is nowhere to be seen.  That was the first ever Star Wars parody.  This is really well done, and Paul himself worked at LucasFilms on the Star Wars franchise.

Sven- Abbott and Costello meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953)

 

The fifth (out of six) film in Abbott and Costello meet some kind of monster (I am including Abbott and Costello go to Mars (1953) in here as well) and it is mildly entertaining.  Bud and Lou are Slim and Tubby, police officers on loan to London.  They get in a brawl at a woman's suffrage rally at Hyde Park.  Eventually they get involved with Dr. Jekyll, which inevitably gets them involved with Mr. Hyde.  By the end of the movie, Tubby gets an injection and becomes Hyde, Jr. 

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)

 

I watched this again last night.  I haven't seen it for probably ten years or so, if not longer.  I really enjoyed it, in more ways than just the great storytelling that was present.  The way it was directed, filmed, the sets and especially the miniatures were all amazing.  It really is a great movie.  It was Disney's first big budget feature and it was a huge success.  I remember seeing it in the theater in Keyser, WV, probably in 1974, if that's when it was re-released.  The squid attack was amazing to me then, and it's even more impressive knowing how they had to film it, with wires and a massive prop.  I love that scene!

5. What if... Zombies?

 

I dislike most all modern zombie movies.  I've never seen one yet that I truly liked, since most of them end the exact same way- humanity is doomed or a small band of humans think they escape but really don't.  Seems like there can't be a happy ending if zombies are involved.  And this story holds true to form, just add superheroes.

Once again, this starts off with a premise that has nothing to do with anything- The Wasp is infected with an alien virus while in whatever dimension she is in.  It's not Scott Lang that rescues the infected woman, though.  I get why they did that differently, but it still isn't the "one slight change" that the original series was about.  It's all a downer though.  Especially when it starts with Bruce Banner wanting to warn the Avengers about Thanos.  Nearly everyone is a zombie though, and they then turn Thanos' strikeforce into zombies.  It goes down hill from there.

Marvel MOTW- Gog

 

Gog is an alien from the stars.  His race is the Tsiln.  He first appeared in The Amazing Spider-man #103 and #104, in which Peter, Gwen and JJJ all head to the Savage Land to take pictures of dinosaurs.  Turns out Kraven is there as well, and has a new, huge friend.  Kraven wants to takeover the Savage Land, which also brings Ka-Zar and Zabu into the fight.  This story does not end well for the alien, but he gets better later.  All in all, it's a rousing jungle adventure story.

yes always

  

This was on here a about ten years ago, but that version has been taken down in that amount of time.  So here it again!

Chojin Jetman (1991)

 

I've heard a lot about this 15th Super Sentai series over the last 30 years (how did that happen, again?) and am now getting around to watching the series.  Shout Factory has all the episodes available to watch here and they look great.  I am really enjoying the show.  It is the first one that actually had a love triangle in it, which I am sure made viewers want to see how that would turn out.  This was the first Sentai show to be directed by Keita Amemiya, and his influence shows.  They don't even have a giant robot battle in every episode, which I am happy about.

Sven- War of the Colossal Beast (1958)

 

Sven showed this fun sequel to the admittedly superior Amazing Colossal Man (1957) last night.  This was a movie I had seen parts of when I was around 5 or 6 years old.  I didn't ever see the titular Beast, but remember the trucks being found empty and a the giant footprint.  I knew something was up, but had other things going on at that age.  The television set was going, so I would see bits and pieces of a lot of movies this way.  As far as I know, the movie never aired in my region again, so I didn't see this film until home video, many years later.

4. What If Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead Of His Hands

 

Wow, was this a downer of an episode.  I kind of figured it was going to be like this, so I wasn't surprised.  Some of those first series What If...? stories had some very dark stories, but there were not that many.  The main one I remember is the one with the villains taking over, the the Sphinx looking for the secret to his end.  This is housed in the mind of someone on Earth, and he has to kill them to find it.  Unfortunately, he had killed the person who had it before starting on his quest.  I didn't care for that story much at all.

Terrible Ultra MOTW- Vakishim

 

Terrible-Monster Vakishim appeared in Ultraman Ace episode #3- "Go Up In Flames- Terrible-Monster Hell!".  It's a Yapool monster.  It was also one of the first Bandai Ultra Monster I bought.  Or rather, thought I bought.  Turns out I got a bootleg version.  Which is still kinda cool.  I got it in a a comic book store in Atlanta, GA.  This was way back in 1987 and knowledge of what was a real Bandai and what was a bootleg was not easily accessible.  Heck, the people who even knew there was more than one Ultraman probably numbered in the 100s (at least in the US) at the time.

The Great Taos Bank Robbery (and other true stories of the southwest)

This is a book my sister wanted me to read.  I'm two stories in and it's well written and so far quite humorous.  The book was originally published in 1973 and contains nine stories and author's notes, all in 173 pages.  The tales range from one page to about thirty.  I've not read any books by Tony Hillerman, but he's a family favorite.    There might actually be more stories, as I see there are a few subtitles after the larger titles.  I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the book.