The Final Episode #47: Spider-Man (1967 - 1970)

 

The 1960s were one hell of a decade. So many things happened in that short ten year span. I don't think we will ever have a decade just like that. From Civil Rights to the Beatles it all happened in the 1960s. It was a time of uproar and Batman with Adam West. You could probably fill just one history book with stuff that happened in the 1960s and I'm not talking just goofy pop culture stuff this blog talks about. You could definitely fill a book talking about 1960s pop culture and such. I have a weird connection to the 1960s and 1970s because TV back in my day was well TV and not streaming. You'd watch Mister Ed or Dennis the Menace because you broke the head of your Donatello figure and had to wait at least a while for your dad to fix it. You needed Donatello for that serious TMNT/Real Ghostbusters team up you had going on! Then your dog eats your Real Ghostbusters and you are really sad. That's what actually happened to my Real Ghostbusters a dog we had got in there and ate them. I was very sad. We ended up giving that dog away. I think I was scared of it. Yes this has me talking about the importance of the 1960s and a dog eating my Real Ghostbusters. You can clearly tell I wasn't paying attention to the teacher when we were learning how to create a good opening paragraph.

When I heard that Paul Soles had left to meet his maker. I knew I had to talk about this show and it's Final Episode on my very popular blogs very popular column of sorts (I feel like I'm in the New Yorker whenever I talk about columns but they talk about boring shit and I talk about The Identical which is clearly cooler!). I'm honestly surprised I'm not on the LAST Spider-Man show that they've put out by now. Which I think is Ultimate Spider-Man? or is that still running? It does not look very good and I'm still angry at Marvel for canning Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Anyway Paul Soles was MY Spider-Man (he also voiced Hermey the gay elf from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer). Whenever I read a Spider-Man comic I still hear his voice. It's pretty wild. Paul was a very memorable voice actor and worked in Canadian movies and tv up until even the 2010s. Pretty wild.

Now for the history behind the show. It was a joint product between America and Canada. All the voice actors were Canadian (Paul Kligman played the best J. Jonah Jameson and I don't want to hear otherwise). The company that did the first season was Grantray-Lawrence Animation. They were an animation company from Canada that lasted from 1954 and 1968...yeah not very long. The only noteworthy thing they really ever did was the Marvel cartoons, before going bankrupt and having Krantz animation (who co-produced the stuff with them) for seasons 2 and 3 of Spider-Man. Oh and a young hooligan named Ralph Bashki worked on season 3. Which was the weirdest season. There's a clear connection between those two things. The show ended in 1970.

This was a show that I HAD to see every time it came on. Every single damn time. As with every other Spider-Man cartoon. I would be pissed every time we had to go clothes shopping or some other shithole place. If you're bringing me out when this show was on it better be close and that place better have a television. I'm pretty sure this goofy show with its janky animation (which is used again and again and again) was what made me a fan of Spider-Man. It's still a lot of fun to watch these days. Even if its to watch for how weird and ridiculous it is. I have no where else to put this but one time when we went to Blockbuster and I ended up wanting to rent a Spider-Man tape. I think my dad was angry about this because the tape was like 5.99 to rent (Seriously when you could rent 7 movies for 7 days for 7.77 at other places I can't argue with him. Those places gave you a deal and still got the new releases I'm surprised Blockbuster still made it here in Newfoundland. I guess a brand name works on people). I did get to rent the tape and I think my dad was angry. It was not a very good story but I felt like telling it anyway. Still I'm surprised my dad cared about this because my parents would rent the same movies for me and my sister like 8,000 times and not buy them outright. 

 So you can tell from the 4 paragraphs of me going on about a lot of stuff that this Final Episode is not very good. It's pretty bad in fact. It's a clip show and Spider-Man doesn't end up talking to the news reporters on Meet the Press or the cast of The Fugitive all animated like. Nope he talks to a kid who wants to go to Podunk. I guess he thought "this podunk little town" was a real name of a town?. Spider-Man falls into a boxcar and they talk about the kid wanting to be a hero. Which means clips from better episodes. One starring Mysterio. Like at least half of that episode. No I'm not joking. They also two random clips from season 3 which much have been really recent. Kinda weird I guess but not weird as fucking Webster meeting Worf. Seriously you gotta up your game if you are gonna go out on a fucking clipshow you lazy bastards.

FINAL VERDICT: I will talk about the other Spider-Man shows because they actually end on an actual story and not HEY LETS REUSE CLIPS BABY. I didn't like clip shows (except for that episode of The Simpsons with Troy McClure) when I was a kid and I don't like them now (except for that episode of Webster where he meets WORF of all people). I think this might actually be the worst clip show because at least others tried a BIT harder to put in clips from previous episodes. And they didn't put in any clips from the actual season that was running on tv at the time, but yes expect the Final Episode for every Spider-Man cartoons, even the ones that ran for 25 episodes. Just to annoy portnoyd.

Hollywood please stop rebooting every single thing under the sun. PLEASE.

 

Yes, I decided to remind you all of the Reboot of well Reboot. The show pretty much became some weird power rangers knockoff If I'm remembering peoples complaints well enough but I didn't watch it. Probably will after I discuss the original Reboot. I think that's what I dis like the most about all these reboots is that I have to put original in front of the word. Oh and all the really dumb concepts that people come up with that I will trash in this dumb little rant of mine. Anyway this might be a two parter or more because there are so many reboots that are coming up that I want to yell about because they sound so stupid.

I'm going to be honest and at least say a few things that should be said. I don't think every reboot is terrible idea. I don't think taking something from 30 or 40 years ago and deciding to reboot it again in a different style. I enjoyed what I saw of the She-Ra reboot. I thought it was cute and funny and will probably end up watching more of it. I gotta give credit to anyone who directs or makes a good reboot, you gotta be at least somewhat honest to the original concept AND give it enough of a new spin to make it feel fresh. I will also say that some things are kinda timeless, Beavis and Butthead while making fun of music videos also made fun of dumb motherfuckers via well Beavis and Butthead and dumb motherfuckers are always gonna be around.

Okay so I didn't think I'd have enough to bitch about but you know what yes this article which I will link here has already given me enough shit. here is the link to the shitty article. The first thing that pisses me off is they are already deciding to reboot Criminal Minds. You know when that show ended? LAST FUCKING YEAR. If you HAVE to reboot something, like it's sitting in your back pocket burning a hole into your asshole and the only way to get rid of it is to reboot something then I dunno pick something older? Something that may have been an interesting idea but didn't work well? I don't know just not a show YOU DECIDED TO CANCEL AFTER 42 SEASONS IN 2020. Why THE FUCK even CANCEL the fucking thing Paramount you dense fucking SHITBAGS.

I'm sure you want to try do something wholly original with your reboot (which is so weird to say you know) but this is not the concept any human being wants to see. Apparently Clueless a fun movie from the 1990s that spawned a fun sitcom also from the 1990s and they are doing a sequel-boot apparently that's now a mystery drama. That's nothing related to Clueless. That's pretty much the TV show Riverdale except I know no one cares about making it batshit crazy or memorable or anything. That's just someone jamming a square peg into a circle hole. Not even am I that stupid!

Oh and another thing stop trying to turn things like Powerpuff Girls into serious grim dark shit. What the hell that's the last fucking thing any person who wanted to see that thing return as. It's a new show and Bubbles or Buttercup is a sex crazed black bisexual and the Professor is a lousy bum. I don't care if they change the race of a character in a new hip thing. I really don't. It just feels like its gonna end up being lazy when they don't do anything with the whole thing of her being a black lady? It's like if you are gonna get sad weirdos shitting their pants online all day and night over it you should go whole hog and actually do stories and plots with her being a black lady. but yeah the script of this leaked out and it's a doozy of a pickle. I think I could write a better spec script to it.

Oh I found another list HERE I dunno I'll come back to this later.

Movie Review #37: The Identical (2014)

 

I really don't know where to begin with this movie so I guess I will just talk about religious films for a second here. They've been a part of Hollywood since like forever. They made Ben-Hur in like 1925. The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur (the 1959 version) probably being the most famous. They have kinda gone the way side in the decades since my father was a child but Christians still make indie movies for themselves. They have been having a bit of a resurgence now in the 2010s/2020s. All kinds of famous or at least used to be famous Christians like Kevin Sorbo and Dean Cain make them now. They are usually not very good but this movie is a special kind of not good.

The Identical is uh a very weird movie. You see this is pretty much about a guy who stole Elvis Presley's entire life story. This movie starts in the middle of the Great Depression in like 1935 with two people waiting for their baby to arrive. It happens that the Baby arrives and it's TWINS. The real dad goes to Preacher Ray Liotta's tent church and after one sermon of his decides to give him one of the twins. Oh, Preacher Ray Liotta's wife is Ashley Judd and he mentions her miscarriage in the middle of the sermon. Yes all these people needed to know about that serious and personal information. It's only 5 minutes in and I already knew I had hit bad movie GOLD.

So they give up Dexter Ryan Hemsley who becomes Reece Ryan Wade. His birth parents have a fake funeral for the baby who they apparently had for one day before they gave him up. Yes. This happens before the movie hits the 10 minute mark. I was amazed too. Preacher Ray Liotta wants him to become a preacher like him and he wants to become a musician. Preacher Ray Liotta is not happy with the music at all. We then turn to 1952 or thereabouts where he and his friend Dino are playing underage teens (despite the guy playing Ryan Wade being like 30 and Seth Green (yes, THAT Seth Green) playing a teenager at 40 years old. To be fair I do think Seth Green will still be playing teenagers at 70 years old so that's not that bad really. Just dye that bastards hair red and he will look like hes 16 until he dies.

He gets up on the dance floor and starts singing then a damn police officer comes in and says something like this "This place is like my mood... DARK and Stinky." Yes this is a club full of a lot of black people in it. He also says hootie weed. I do not think that has ever been a name marijuana has ever been called but I know very little about the devil's lettuce. Anyway Preacher Ray Liotta makes him go to the army. After the army he ends up trying all kinds of things before he's forced to go to school to become a preacher by his dad. He ends up telling his dad he does not want to be a preacher.

All while this is happening his brother has become a superstar Rock Star like Elvis Presley. His name is Drexel the Dream Hemsley. Everyone comments on how he looks just like him. He also has a record of his identical twin brother on it and he never thinks to ask his parents about this. So he ends up in a chance meeting with his birth mother after finding this information out due to talking to this girl and her friend. The girl is named Jenny and they went on a date to the club back in like 1952 or 53 or whatever. His birth mother is up there dying and he sneaks in to see her just because he's a fan of Drexel the Dream Hemsley. He also sings her this song of Drexels that was her favorite. She even calls him Dexter and he STILL doesn't go to his parents and ask questions. Oh and the fact that she is close enough to this hospice to be taken care of means that Drexel and his birth father must not live THAT far away from him. 

So he ends up marrying Jenny and she puts him in a Drexel The Dream Hemsley sing a like contest and he wins. He also gets sorta almost close to getting to talk to Drexel the Dream because he shows up. This is the only time they kinda meet together while both are still alive. He gets a job going from county to county as The Identical. They end up making a ton of money but he quits when he can't make his own songs (they also say that Elvis exists in this universe which means why the fuck is anyone listening to this shitty half assed version of Elvis instead of the real thing? Like why put Elvis and this Elvis knockoff in the same universe?) right after this Drexel the Dream Hemsley dies and his brother goes into a deep depression.

Preacher Ray Liotta is trying to make him go into preaching YET again like a big baby but he ends up having a mild heart attack. While pulling EVERYTHING apart in a room to find Preacher Ray Liotta's pills he ends up uncovering the letter that Preacher Ray Liotta was given by his birth father. This gets him to go to Drexel's house where he finds his birth father in the grave side in the backyard. He tells him who he is. They have a nice moment together. Then they go back to Preacher Ray Liotta and they have a nice moment together. It ends with him bringing back the Identical show himself but singing some of his own songs along with Drexel's.

FINAL VERDICT: I think every human being on this planet should watch this movie. It is amazingly bad. Hilariously so. It's sad in a way because everyone in this film is acting their heart out, but it's like The Book of Henry. It's a story that just doesn't work period. It's amazing the acting talent a movie like this got. It even has Joey Pants and the little person who played Kramer's friend in Seinfeld. This movie is so amazingly bad that it will change your life. Watch it with someone and don't tell them ANYTHING about it and have them literally go insane from watching this foolishness.

The Final Episode #46: The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin (1986 - 1987)

 

Worlds of Wonder was one hell of a toy creator business. They were created in 1985 by two ex-Atari employees. They were the creators of Lazer Tag AND the toy that this show was based around, Teddy Ruxpin. He was a teddy bear that would talk to you via cassettes, and if you are way too young to know what a cassette is then please leave my sight immediately because you are making me feel very old.  You are making me feel like I will turn to dust and explode. Oh and Worlds of Wonder also helped Nintendo out in businesses during its first few years in North America. You wanted Teddy Ruxpin well you had to buy some Nintendos too. Strong arm those small businesses! They made more money than God but thanks to a lot of issues they uh, ended going under. A cop thought a Lazer Tag gun was a real gun (and I assume shot the kid using it because thats what cops do even in 1987.) Nintendo decided they could go it on their own, and Teddy Ruxpin stopped making money. They tried to use junk bonds to help their stock market price but with the 1987 stock market crash kinda fucked them in the end. by 1991 they were gone. 

The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin was created by Ken Forsse (who created the toy too, and the animatronics for Welcome to Pooh Corner a tv show the internet seems to love) and this is where I gotta stick up for 80s cartoons. Everyone goes on and on about how all 80s cartoons had no thought or care put into them and were just random shit made to sell people toys. I don't really believe that. Yeah they were made to sell toys but the people  behind a good number of these shows cared about the product. Everyone goes on about some CRAP GARBAGE like Adventure Time having an ongoing story throughout the show and guess what so did The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin 25 years previous to that dumb show. I don't like Adventure Time. The ongoing story in The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin involved an old city called well The Hard to Find City because it was a city that was hard to find, duh. They created some crystals and well Teddy Ruxpin ends up finding them. Monsters and Villains Organization wants them to TAKE OVER THE WORLD! 

The episode is pretty much a recap of the entire series. With some clips and everything. It has two plots really. It starts up with LB the weird little monster creature who worked with Tweeg one of the villains of the show getting married to Buffy another weird little monster creature. They are apparently called  Bounders. Weird name. When I was a kid they were my favorite part of the show along with Tweeg and they still made me laugh today. A guy who owns an awful hotel asks them if they have any reservations and LB goes no but they have serious doubts. I laughed at that. It doesn't take much for me to laugh at things you should know that by now. M.A.V.O. wants Tweeg to pay his dues and LB comes in for him at the end after knocking him off their copter thing. I guess they missed him despite seemingly wanting ot kill him. Bad guys are weird. Anyway he calls Tweeg Twink in this episode and I wonder if someone on the Teddy Ruxpin staff was gay. I know Filmation was apparently the gayest place in town, but this was made by DiC not Filmation.

The other half of the episode is just Teddy and his friends recalling the story of the crystals and their adventures. They find out that the creators of the crystals called the Kind Ones were actually Illops which is what Teddy is. They then head out to see if they can find any more Illiops and M.A.V.O. ruler Quellor the Supreme Oppressor's (which is clearly the coolest name ever) has stolen one of the crystals back and tells Teddy that he won't have those crystals for long and the show ends up on a cliffhanger. Just like Duckman.

I don't know if I ever saw this episode as a kid but I did watch quite a bit of this show as it was something that YTV showed AND NTV showed. NTV was second only to TBS in showing the best stuff during the early hours of the morning. Like 6 o clock. I mean you'd be tired during school but Sailor Moon was more important! That's because of our friends at Atkinson Film-Arts animated it. It was enough to let them show it for a full decade or more after it ended. It was a fun show and I always wanted a Teddy Ruxpin of my own.

FINAL VERDICT: The amusing B-Plot helps this episode stay above mid level when it comes to rankings of these episodes. It's certainly not the recaping and clip using A-plot or the FUCKING CLIFFHANGER. Damnit son I want to know now what was gonna happen and someone better tell me.  Oh and Les Lyle and Abby Hagyard the adults from You Can't Do That on Television were voice actors for the series. If that isn't cool than I don't know what is. Much better than Adventure Time. This show had BARTH!

Movie Mini Reviews #1: The Furies (2019) & The Orange Years: The Nickelodeon Story (2020)

 

This is something new that I'm trying. I'm going to give mini reviews to some movies like I used to do with tv shows and comics back in the early days of this blog. I do watch quite a few movies and I do like talking about them even if I can't get several paragraphs out of them. Weird that I chose said image for the top there because I could talk about those three movies for like 80 paragraphs they are all so good. Killer Klowns From Outer Space is one of the greatest things  ever filmed and if you disagree well poop on you jerk. Anyway I've decided to pick two movies to discuss because well why not they deserve some discussion.

Our First movie is 2019's The Furies. It's a Shudder exclusive that I'm sure I could get several paragraphs out of but I don't want to really ruin the fun of this one. This is a really neat fun little take on the old The Most Dangerous Game formula. I'm a sucker for movies of this type. This one has 7 women being captured and taken to a place where 7 beastly men attack and try to kill them. That's all I'll say about this because it's really worth going in as fresh as possible with this movie. Well I'll also mention that this movie is gross as fuck with it's violence. It even had a scene that made me go ARGLEBARGLE HARGLELARGLE but I always do that when something involving trauma to that body part happens in any movie. It's a no go people! The acting is pretty good I thought at least and I think you all should give this movie a looksee. 

The Orange Years: The Nickelodeon Story is a decent and fun documentary. It's just got some flaws. It starts off with a bit of history from Nickelodeon before going into talking about every BIG name show on the channel. I think it would have worked better if they showed how boring some of the Nick shows were before You Can't Do That On Television showed up because holy hell were some of them bad. It also skips a lot of shows that I wish they had talked about like Angry Beavers and Hey Arnold and I think they should have talked a little about today's Nickelodeon. I know people my age only care about Nickelodeon of their childhood but it would have felt better as an ending then just feeling like it abruptly stops after they talk about Kenan and Kel (a show I never watched because I don't think YTV ever brought that or All That to Canada. At least not to my knowledge). Also kinda weird that they didn't talk about the scandals related to that weirdo who loves Feet and was on Head of the Class and has a last name I can't spell and also John K from Ren and Stimpy maybe this documentary was finished before that stuff happened but they were still trying to get it released. Still it's pretty fun to listen to the kids from Are You Afraid of the Dark talk about the show. Also the guy who played Frank I think that was his name in Are You Afraid of the Dark now has a Robert Z'Dar style chin. It literally takes up like 80% of his face. It's pretty amazing. I would also like to point you to the poparena YouTube channel because that guy is talking about EVERY Nickelodeon show and It's pretty great. 

Well that was the first look at some movies I didn't have enough to say about but I still wanted to talk about. I'm sure this will not happen as much as regular movie reviews but I still felt like these two movies deserved some discussion. Anyway have fun and remember to play nice!

The Final Episode #45: Everybody Loves Raymond (1996 - 2005)

 

It's been too positive around here lately. It's time to get a little angry so I've decided to discuss a sitcom I never liked even though I would watch it quite a bit because it was on during shows I DID like. This show came on CBS and was in a block of programming that had Becker, The King of Queens (I like this show. Piss off) and everyone's favorite old black man circa 1996 Cosby. He is no longer everyone's favorite old black man. You know because of all the sexual assaults' he committed. It's a shame I have to mention that every time I mention him or a show he was in. I just want to talk about how 11 year old me thought Doug E. Doug was a comedic genius and deserved all the love and respect. Cool Runnings is a gosh darn classic of cinema and if you disagree you can fuck off right into the sun.

This show apparently started thanks to a skit Ray Romano did on the Late Night Show with David Letterman in 1995. David Letterman was even a producer on this show. I am now waiting a full month to review the Avengers comic with him in it as punishment. You hear that DAVE I KNOW YOUR READING THIS AND I DONT MEAN DAVE W I MEAN THE FAMOUS DAVE YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THAT REVIEW AND NOW YOU GOTTA WAIT ANOTHER MONTH DICKHEAD. I would also me remiss if I didn't mention every one of these shows (and The Nanny) all crossed over on each other. I like that most of Television is in the same continuity because of so many crossovers. It's pretty amazing. We will talk more about this whenever I discuss St. Elsewhere.

You all know about watching a show because it was on the same channel and another show was coming on. We all did it. Just watch something we thought was pretty shitty but we'd watch it just because it was after or before a show we did like. I watched this show for at least a few seasons because of Cosby. They both premiered the same year of 1996. I think the only episode I was ever excited for was an episode that mentioned Pokémon. It was not worth getting excited over. The big problem was about 98% of episodes were the same damn plot. Ray gets angry at Debra or Debra gets angry at Ray and they are miserably depressing and bitter at one another. I do not get why they were married when they got angry at each other over sometimes really dumb shit. Oh and you can say the exact same for his mother and father they really should have gotten divorced in like 1956 or whatever the fuck. I could take this shit if it was like really funny and it never was. I mean Peter Boyle that sweet beautiful man could get a laugh out of me but it was never really worth the 30 minutes I spent being annoyed by everything else.

So this brings us to the Final Episode which was so creatively called The Finale. Yep. They didn't give a shit anymore in 2005 during the shows 9th season. This episode is Ray whining about an easy surgery to get rid of antoides or some shit in his throat that was causing sore throats all the time. I was already annoyed like 3 seconds in this movie. His mother babies him like usual and then he does have the surgery and OH NO he almost dies! I wish the bastard had died and the episode ended right there. I'd give them credit for ending it so depressingly and darkly.  They all realize they really love Ray DESPITE THE FACT EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE FUCKERS BICKER WITH EACH OTHER SO MUCH TO THE POINT THAT THEY SHOULD NEVER SEE EACH OTHER EVER. Ray and his mother don't know about the fact it was hard getting him out of anesthesia. They end up finding out because the rest of the stupid episode needs to happen. Ray's mother finds out and during Ray and Debra getting ready to bone she comes in and man I didn't realize how creepy this shit was until I wrote this. It's like some Psycho shit in here except she's not a corpse at this point. God damn this television show is awful. Ray and his wife say they like each other and your supposed to be happy about that but no I'm not. These two will be at each others throat over Ray farting at a party in 1986 or some dumb fucking horse shit reason a week later. It finally ends with these assholes at the stupid table being the stupid annoying assholes they usually are.

FINAL VERDICT: I never liked this show ever. It was incredibly annoying. I do not want to see these bitter angry assholes yelling at each other over dumb horse shit. I do not enjoy that. I will never enjoy that. I hope that no one brings a reboot of this show out. I'm sure it's coming though because we ALL need to revisit every single thing from the past no matter how awful it was. Fuck this show right in the ear.

Comic Review #28: DC Festival of Heroes: The Asian Superhero Celebration (2021)

 

I think every person should get to have a superhero that's like them in some way. I know people go "DUR WHAT ABOUT A TRANSGENDER ESKIMO IN A WHEELCHAIR LOL?" and the thing is I'm sure a talented person could make that into an interesting hero.  I dunno said transgender disabled eskimo could turn into two people for some reason and one is very strong and can go around beating ass. I'm just pulling stuff out of my dickhole right now but I don't see why comic books can't try to do this. I'm just saying an interesting character can come from anywhere. I do think these stories and characters should be well made because if you're gonna half ass representation you shouldn't bother. However I think very highly of this little book. It was very neat to see. DC Festival of Heroes: The Asian Superhero Celebration is very well done and neat to see them happen. 

First off before I get into my favorite stories (this thing is big and I don't intend on talking about all the stories right now I might come back for some later. I'm only going to talk about my three favorite stories from the book. I just love this book because I get to yell at someone who will never read this and will never care either. So I watch dumb assholes talking about how diversity and SJW wokeness is ruining comics. I do this because I hate myself sometimes and I can't find anything to put on to listen to. I usually quit very soon into the video and just rewatch some other video I've seen 30 times previously. There's some British chode who calls himself HeelVsBabyface and he was going on about how DC and Marvel "replace" their heroes with black and Asian versions of them (hint: they don't. they create legacy characters which I've always liked the whole concept of Legacy characters honestly. Most people did until the legacy characters started being women or Muslims. If you were to ask me I'd call Barry Allen the first Legacy character because he was made after Jay Garrick the original Flash, and Barry Allen came out in 1956 so they have been doing this thing for a very long time) and he said that they forget about the old black and miniorty characters they created for some reason. he blathered on about the old characters not being woke enough or something and thats when I closed the video and went off to do something else. I do not understand how people who agree with this stuff can literally watch the same video by twenty different boring assholes each day. It's maddening.

Oh the point I was getting to is that several characters in this book are decades old now! What! A culture warrior on youtube LIED to your face?! Holy shit! I thought they were all honest and respectful and not willing to say dumb shit so that they can get superchats from dickheads who don't know why the fuck they are fucking angry. Oh no a superman movie where supermans black OH NO! How about you just don't watch it and move on with your damn life. That is if it even comes the FUCK out. But yes, two of these characters first appeared in 1983. One in 1994 and the other I believe in 1999 or 2000. Wow such disrespect for these old characters. Portnoyd is going to just skip right past commenting on this like usual because he hates Asian people and also when I talk about YouTube idiots.

My favorite story of the bunch was done by Mariko Tamaki and Marcus To. It stars Cassandra Cain one of the like 4 or 5 Batgirls. That's not including the 2 or 3 Batwomen that have existed either. Batman has a huge family for a big weirdo who says he's a loner. Anyway the story involves her trying to learn how to speak which was because her father, I think he was the Batman villain King Snake. I'm not sure because I don't know everything about this character like her scary fans on Twitter do. Do not sass this character on twitter or you will probably end up dead in a ditch. I like how it's a big deal to her to get speech down perfect. She also has to save some teenage nerd who is really smart and the bad guys wanted. It ends with her saying You're Welcome to the kid. It's a very nice and sweet story. I liked it. The art is also incredibly nice too.

My second favorite story involves the Chinese Superman and the Connor Hawke guy teaming up. I again don't know much about either character because the majority of comics I've read are from 30 years ago at least which predates the creation of both characters. I liked how Connor Hawke thought The New Superman was a gloryhog because he left before New Superman tried to get him to come over to get some attention. They fight a robot dragon. That's cool! It also has the New Superman and Connor Hawke eating dinner together at the end. I like a happy ending. I'm a big sappy goof.

The last story I will comment on right now is the first appearance of a character called the Monkey Prince. I'm pretty sure that this character is probably related to the story Journey to the West which also was a big factor in inspiration for Dragon Ball Z however the two stories are completely different. This one starts off with the Monkey Prince shapeshifting into Shazam to mess with Dr. Sivana. Dr. Sivana is apparently taken over by a demon (that later on appears to be a deer. How wild!) who escapes after he is knocked unconscious and the Monkey Prince has to fight the deer demon. I like that I get to type the words deer demon out. Anyway he fights them and the REAL Shazam shows up and the Monkey Prince doesn't actually like superheroes, he feels they are all arrogant. All kinds of amusing stuff happens and the demon is beaten. I liked this story and I will probably pick up the new Monkey Prince series that pops up soon. I like the fact that he's a superhero that feels other superheroes are arrogant. I like the weird ghostly guy that only he can see. I like that his parents are apparently supervillain henchmen due to lack of work AND I like the fact he's friends with Billy Batson without knowing he's Shazam. I will definitely give his series a shot when it's out.

FINAL VERDICT: While I only talked about 3 stories I pretty much liked all of them. Most of them are only a page or so it's kinda hard to get a paragraph out of them without telling you the entire thing and it's always more fun to read them right? The art in every story was really nice and you get a very unique and nice groupings of artists. It's really cool if you ask me. I would recommend this book to you. It's a little pricy but you get like a good amount of pages. I'll be back to talk about scary SJW stuff when they put out DC Pride and Marvel Voices Pride in like June. So stay cool!

The Final Episode #44: Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996 - 2003)

 

I like to connect things to one another, you know like Lego. There's actual Lego sets out there these days that I would buy like a big child except I don't have $300 for them. There's this awesome Daily Bugle set that's coming out in June and you get the first official Daredevil, The Punisher AND Blade Lego figures with it. If that isn't cool I don't know what is!? Whenever I watch a movie I like to watch a few like it. Like a few horror films or what not. I kinda wish I could connect everything to everything else. I don't know if that means I have some weird mental disorder or what but I like them. I was originally going to discuss a comic book written by a guy who would has done tons of TV work involving famous cartoon characters but I went with this. I like to connect two different things together, in this case a comic book and a sitcom.

As you can see the last thing I talked about prior to this was Archie Meets the Punisher which was all about the Archie universe meeting the Marvel universe and thus showing that they are connect and it's all in canon. That's right the Marvel Universe, DC Universe and Archie all take place in the same universe. I will not take any disagreements on the matter. They are now all the same universe and if you dislike one you dislike that ENTIRE universe. I have now ended all dumb arguments on that shit. Actually most arguments I see now online are about diversity in those universes and why that's bad so I kinda want the WHATS THE BESTY UNIVERSE or SUPERMAN COULD BEAT THE HULK arguments back. Personally I just want Superman and the Hulk to team up and fight evil. and maybe kiss each other.

So before I got off on a tangent that makes no sense well that comic connects to this show because Sabrina was a member of the larger than you think Archie universe. Did you know there was a spy book in the 1960s called the Man from R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E. also Archie as Superheroes. Jughead was Captain Hero after what some weirdos call sub sandwiches. Yeah, Archie's wild. They also have their own set of Superheroes too. So Sabrina the Teenage Witch was created by Dan DeCarlo (who drew 8,000 Archie comics and created Josie and the Pussycats) and George Gladir (who wrote 8,0000 Archie comics and worked for Cracked magazine. I should review some Cracked magazine issues) and first appeared in Archie's Madhouse in 1962. That's right Sabrina predates Bewitched but they just really have one thing in common and that's the whole magic angle really.

Sabrina The Teenage Witch was yet another TGIF show and yes I will make sure I talk about every TGIF show on this thing, at least the ones that lasted more than a season. I'm not trying to search for things like Baby Talk or Billy. I don't want to watch a ripoff of Look Who's Talking or a spinoff of the Billy Connolly character from Head in the Class. He was the guy who took over for Howard Hesseman. Fuck anyone who takes sweet old Howard Hesseman away from me. Fuck them in the rear. It started in 1996 and ended in 2003. However It did NOT end it's run on ABC's TGIF block because that ended in 2000. Sabrina The Teenage Witch and (bleh) The Hughley's both went to The CW before it became a channel that shows comic book shows (is there anything on that station that didn't first appear in a comic right now in 2021??)

I really liked watching the TGIF years of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. I had a crush on Melissa Joan Hart and I think she's still beautiful and I don't care what you jerks have to say about it. I also had a crush on her nerdy friend, Libby I think her name was. I know there was a Libby I forget if she was her nerdy friend or the bitchy teenage girl. I forget which. The first four seasons were about Sabrina living with her aunts and trying to not let anyone know she's a witch and getting through high school. She also has a talking cat who was once a warlock named Salem who is the best character in the show. My sister named her cats Salem and Josie.

Anyway I was a big fan and I was actually very happy when I saw a later season episode when NTV show them. I don't know if they were in reruns or what but I was happy until I watched it and I didn't really like the new get up. The aunts end up leaving in season 7. Her new friends including one played by Punky Brewster were not that great. They were in college or a job or something. I was not with this new Sabrina. Yeah I know she couldn't stay in High School forever but it just stopped being fun. I don't know if it was just that episode or what but I was not with season 5 and onwards of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and didn't bother to find out when the show was being shown on NTV. 

I thought this episode was a two parter because the file I download I MEAN THE DVD I HAVE OF THIS SHOW connected both it and the last episode. I only watch two parters that are really connected and these aren't. All I'll say is the first episode I watched was about a bachelorette party that Sabrina has. I will save the rest for when I run out of Final Episodes of shows I want to talk about and then decide to create The Penultimate Episode. I can't promise that will ever happen but I'm having fun talking about this nonsense so who knows. Anyway the Final Episode was entitled "Soul Mates" and is about Sabrina getting married.

I'm pretty sure at least 32% of Sitcoms ended with a marriage. Either that or them leaving their house for a new one. It's a pretty worn plot by the time Sabrina ended in 2003 and I think they actually do something new here. I'm not an encyclopedia on these things so someone can tell me if this happened before this. Sabrina is having doubts about her wedding and the concept of Doubt shows up to tell her about Alan or Adam or Arnold or whatever her new shitty boring ass boyfriend's name was. I've only seen this guy in two episodes and I don't like him. He sassed Salem and I do not respect that in the slightest.

She gets her stone and his stone and finds out that they are NOT soul mates. Sabrina's cousin Amanda (who is actually played by her real life younger sister Emily! Wild!) end up showing up. They talk about Harvey and Amanda even goes to find Harvey and give him a stone. I guess everyone other than Sabrina knew about these stones except Sabrina. Sabrina is fretting over the fact they aren't soul mates and that pretty much ends the marriage. It gets Sabrina to call off the whole thing and she ends up leaving with Harvey. I'm sure there were some wedding episodes that ended with them not getting married but I doubt there are any that had the wife go off with her boyfriend from the earlier seasons. I'm glad for that because Harvey was way cooler and a lot more fun than boring dirthole man. 

FINAL VERDICT: This was a very meh episode. I guess it was because the episode before it was a better. It was neat to see Aunt Hilda again and to see Sabrina's mom and dad (I don't believe we ever saw them before this). It just feels weird that it ends with Sabrina just leaving a dude she was gonna marry to go with another guy at the last second. Like she doesn't even know he's showing up or anything. Not great but I would still rate it higher than Bewitched because this show at least didn't repeat an earlier episode for it's Final Episode like that show did. 

 

Comic Review #27: Archie Meets the Punisher (1994)

 

It's finally time for me to discuss Crossovers and knowing me and this blog then you know I'm going to pick the weird ones, the ones that make you go "what the holy hog fuck were they smoking when they came up with this comic?" because well those comics are always an incredibly fun to read. The ones where they take something popular and put it in a place where it might not belong. Ones that should be in any collection. I can't actually think of any of these "weird" crossovers that aren't really fun to discuss and review and to read. After realizing that I needed to talk about a few of these crossovers on my blog I went to my Facebook group and gave them some crossovers and they picked Archie Meets the Punisher. A clear winner with 5 votes.

I've already talked about The Punisher before in the story where he becomes a black man (no seriously this exists) but I finally get to talk about Archie Comics. Archie was created all the way back in 1941. He's a teenager who gets into wild and wacky Teenage adventures. Trying to get dates with Betty and Veronica (Betty is the lady he should choose because Veronica is a piece of shit. She should just go with Reggie because they are both pieces of SHIT.) but I enjoyed Archie a lot as a kid and read about 5,000 of them. It was hard to go past a checkout counter and NOT want to read a wacky Jughead adventure. Jughead is still the best Archie related character and one of the best comic book characters of all time. Also Riverdale is the best comic related TV show ever and I will not hear another word of discussion about comic shows.

The original concept apparently involved a murderer in Riverdale who like kills Archie's parents. After he comes home from Riverdale opening new security stuff to BE ABLE TO SEE IF KIDS HAVE WEAPONS. Jughead's carryin' a fuckin UZI! This is probably the least Archie thing possible because Archie is stuck in 1963 for the last 40 years. The guys who published Archie Comics pretty much said no but the people working there including Victor Gorelick (who worked there from 1957 to about 2020 He was 16 when he started and 78 when he sadly passed away. He must have really liked Archie to work at that company that long.). Batton Lash came up with a better concept which I shall discuss right now!

There's a criminal that goes under many names that the Feds want. I'll call him RED. Red looks pretty much like Archie Andrews except with the biggest fucking set of chompers I've ever seen and I've seen Gary Busey's teeth a whole hell of a lot. Anyway he escapes to Riverdale and we change settings to Archie getting in trouble with Veronica due to her shitty little cousin causing him to dose her with a hose. I guess Archie should have looked where he was spraying first, but still it's that little shits fault. I do not know if he appeared in Archie comics before but I'm sure he has.

Archie runs afoul of some mobsters that want to kill Red but it seems Red is pretending to be a industrialist and is trying to get help from Mr. Lodge, Veronica's dad. Veronica ends up taking Red to the big dance at Riverdale High. Archie ends up being saved from the mobsters thanks to the Punisher shooting off a warning shot. He meets up with the Punisher and they both think "How could this happen to me?" or something like that. It's a funny scene and probably my favorite in the book, well it might be but another scene is a great contender.

Jughead throws a rock to distract the Punisher and they both try to go to the police who don't believe Archie because all kinds of shit he's done in the past because Archie is kind of a doofus. Archie, Jughead, The Punisher and the Mobsters after Red all show up to Riverdale High and shit goes down, but not before The Punisher gets Ms. Grundy a 192 year old teacher at Riverdale High feel something erotic. It's very amusing. Red grabs Veronica and escapes to another part of town. The Punisher, Microchip, Jughead and Archie are at Pop's which is really funny seeing grumpy old Punisher in a malt shop. Microchip was very excited about malts earlier in the story so I hope he enjoyed his malt. They get a call from Red and Veronica gives Archie a clue so they all go to where the balloons are held for the big parades. 

The Punisher gets Red into a corner and tells him that Red is no longer necessary as a guy named Scooter was at the dance and is ready to tell the cops everything. This is a neat in joke for people who know way too much about comic books. You see Swing with Scooter was one of DC's Archie like comedy books in the 1960s. Neat little reference there! Red actually gets trapped by a balloon and it ends up flying off into the distance. I'm pretty sure Red died despite The Punisher going "Yeah the Feds will get him" Red is also bald and complains about pigeons while flying away. The comic ends with Wolverine finding a mutant that looks just like Jughead. Man I want that comic to happen but after 27 years  I doubt it ever will.

FINAL VERDICT: This comic was a lot of fun. Made me laugh several times. I loved how Batton Lash actually took Riverdale AND The Punisher seriously. Sure there were a few jokes about how outdated Riverdale is. Moose has a I like Ike button for crying out loud but you can tell that if he didn't know about Archie he learned a good amount before writing this crossover. He made sure that fans of both Archie and the Punisher could enjoy this comic. I only have one minor nitpick and that's The Punisher saying he was working with the Feds when he's a guy that should be in prison. Oh and the Punisher ends up kissing Ms Grundy on the forehead at the end. What do you bet that I could find some erotic fanfiction of that duo? I'm betting I could very easily. Anyway this is a fun comic that you should pick up if you enjoy either The Punisher or Archie. I also dug how he put some of Marvel's teen comedy characters like Patsy Walker (aka Hellcat) and Mille the Model into the story. That's really neat little touches.  This definitely makes me want to check out more comics done by this guy.

The Final Episode #43: Daria (1997 - 2002)

 

Is this the first Spinoff series that I've ever talked about? I think it might be. Well Spinoffs have a history going back to the pretty damn early days of television. The first spinoff was a spinoff from the Adventures of Gene Autry. That spinoff was called The Adventures of Champion. Champion was Gene Autry's horse. Yes there were so many fucking western shows made back in the 1950s and 1960s that fucking Gene Autry's horse got a show. What a fucking waste of celluloid. No I refuse to talk about that show because it's stupid. If it isn't Mister Ed than I don't care about your horse related entertainment. 

Speaking of spinoffs, there are a whole hell of a lot of them. Did you know that the Andy Griffith Show was a spinoff? Happy Days was apparently a spinoff of a sketch show called Love, American Style. I didn't know this until I made a quick google search to learn about this stuff before I wrote these stupid articles. I just blather on about something for several paragraphs and Port says that thing is bad and I tell him he's a stupid asshole (I have a feeling he's going to trash this show, I just know it). Anyway spinoffs are a tricky thing, some are pretty good and last for seasons and some end up lasting 12 seconds and people forgot about it. There are also some that somehow last seasons and they are absolutely shitty like Young Sheldon. Fuck Sheldon.

Uh. Okay Enough discussion of spinoffs as a whole and let's talk about this one spinoff. Daria was a minor character on Beavis and Butthead, which is a a show I need to see more of. I didn't watch too much Beavis and Butthead as a child. Anyway Daria the character in Daria the show moves from Highland to Lawndale to go to high school. Daria is a very saucy lady who won't take no guff. She teams up with Jane Lane who also take no guff. Every character in this show was a lot of fun to watch. I think my favorite characters were Daria's dad and the angry teacher whos name I forget. My least favorite character was probably that Tom guy because he broke up the duo of Jane Lane and Daria. It's unforgivable to break up a duo. That's like breaking up Cheech and Chong. Fuck you Tom. Ya shitbag.

Daria was a show I watched quite a bit of when it was on YTV. I really don't know if I just gave up on it or YTV stopped showing it because I do not remember. I do know that later on I watched them thanks to the beauty of piracy.........I mean buying completely legal DVDs that I don't even know exist. Yeah this show had music issues because it appeared on MTV. Also sometimes I can get a paragraph about how I remember the show and sometimes I can't. I'm not perfect people. I'm not William Faulkner or some shit.

Anyway the Final Episode of Daria if we want to get technical was a Made for TV movie called Is It College Yet? which dealt with all the characters getting ready for college. I don't do  Made for TV movies (except for one exception we will get too because it sounded to amazing not to talk about.) This is for two reasons really. 1.) It's harder to find some Made for TV movies and 2.) It doesn't feel like a TV episode because its really bigger in scope. So look for the one Made for TV movie I will talk about because well it's the only reason why I ever wanted to talk about that show. I'm not even sure I can get a copy of said Made for TV movie.

The Final 30 Minute Not Made for TV Movie Episode of Daria was called Boxing Daria and appeared on our Television Screens on June 25th, 2001. (Is it College Yet? came out in 2002 for any interested parties) This was a pretty serious little episode that starts off with the really nice teacher man trying to get Daria to talk to a bunch of upcoming students and she doesn't want them to think Lawndale High is a good place so she refuses. Daria's mom is getting the fridge removed and during that the movers forgot the fridge box. This triggers memories in Daria's mind about a time her parents had a fight over her. She can't even get rid of the box. After a discussion with her parents she runs out and drives to see Tom (the fucker left to go to the Coast. What assholes go to the coast except rich pieces of shit. Daria you can really do better than this shitbag)

She ends up in a damn car crash, well not really a crash but an accident. She ends up talking to Jane over this entire thing and finally gets the courage to talk to her parents over this entire thing. They finally fix everything up and there's even a nice scene where Quinn, Daria's fashion obsessed sister who doesn't want people in their school to know they are related has brought the box upstairs to her room with a nice note saying "I dont know if you need this or not" or something like that. It's very nice because she spent time literally complaining about having to move a box during this episode. It ends with Daria trying to be a bit more outgoing but still being her self by doing what the Nice Teacher guy whos name I don't remember but still being the same saucy woman we all loved.

FINAL VERDICT: I enjoyed watching this show way back in the late 90s and early 00s. It was fun and charming and Daria was a great fun character. I also has a good time revisiting this episode for the blog.  If you liked Daria then this was a good send off to the show. If you didnt well you're a grumpy gus just like Portnoyd.

Comic Review #26: Batman: A Word to the Wise #1 (1992)

 

Zellers was a Canadian chain of department stores. They started all the way back in 1931 and were created by Walter P. Zeller. I wish my last name was Zeller. Z is a cool letter and needs to be used in more words and names. Anyway Zellers was a big place for me as a kid. I don't believe we got a Wal-Mart until the mid 1990s so it was all about Zellers and K-Mart for department store fun! It was a fun place to go to as a kid. It kinda went downhill near the end. At least the one near us in St. John's Newfoundland. They went from like two stores to just one. One was up near the Village Mall and the second was right near my house for the longest time until it went to Stavanger. When it went to Stavanger it kinda went down the shitter. It seemed that they kept all kind of old shit just out there at full price. YES ZELLERS I AM THE ONLY HUMAN BEING WHO WOULD WANT A TALK BOY FROM HOME ALONE 2 IN 2002 SO LOWER THE DAMN PRICE. Sadly they would end up going out of business in 2013 when most of the stores were sold to Target which was a giant failure. I doubt they were even there a full year. The last remaining Zellers stories ended up being closed in 2020 after 89 years. I will forever think fondly of Zellers and their very own Teddy bear Zeddy. I still want a Zeddy and I'm 35 years old.

You might be wondering to yourself "Why in the purple poop covered fuck are you talking about a defunct department store and the Teddy Bear associated with it during a comic book review, Stupid!?" Well you negative nancy I will tell you this in 1992 Zellers had a deal with DC comics over Batman Returns. They had trading cards that they gave away for free AND different shirts than America got! Now that's cool! This Comic book was a part of that deal. It was one of many PSA comics. This comic tackles reading and why you should read. I believe in literacy because when you know how to read you get to read Batman comics and how cool is that?!

This comic was written by Len Wein. I think this is the first time I get to talk about him. I think he might be my favorite comic writer. At least in the top 5. I loved the stories he did. He co-created Wolverine and Swamp Thing and wrote at least a few stories for every single character in the rosters of DC and Marvel. I mean in the 1970s and 1980s. Okay maybe he didn't write any Rex the Wonder Dog stories but he wrote the hell out of Batman and Superman and Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk. He sadly passed away in 2017. The comic was drawn by Curt Swan, Dick Giodano and Carmine Infantino. Three of the best artist in Superhero comics ever! Curt drew Superman for like 35 years. Carmine drew The Flash among a ton of other comics and Dick Giodano drew everything. Even a Hogan's Heroes comic. If that's not cool than I don't know what is!

The comics plot is pretty simple but I still dig it immensely. It involves the Joker pretty much trying to find a rare 1867 Canadian Geography book. They have three of them. One of them is in Newfoundland. It's one of the few times my province ever gets mentioned. It's in a pretty fun Captain America story and the character of Marina from Alpha Flight was from Newfoundland. I also have to sadly mention that Newfoundland appears in some Rob Liefeld X-Force issues. It's a very gross feeling knowing that. He then goes to Toronto to get the second book but a young girl accidently took it. Batman goes to her but he's too late because the Joker is at this place too. That clown bastard never gives up. He gets the book and leaves to go to Calgary to find the third book. 

This is where Batman and the teens go to Zellers to buy some western gear to go to fight the Joker. I'm pretty sure they HAD to mention Zellers once in the comic and this was the best way possible. I just wish Batman was wearing a Cowboy Hat. We finally find out why The Joker was ripping these books apart. ONE of them had a parchment that gave him the right to become the owner of North America. That's right The Joker owns Canada AND America AND Mexico. So you all have to get out or get murdered by a lunatic clown. Batman and the kids finally beat the shit out of the Joker and his gang. Batman shows him that the parchment document is out of date by one day. The Joker had 125 years to find this and he wasted them like a moron. 

FINAL VERDICT: I really enjoyed this comic. The plot has lots of actions and fun interactions between the Joker and Batman. The Zellers moment is a lot of fun to me as a Canadian. I don't know how easy it is to find this comic in America but Canada has many many copies of it. I will have to find the Spider-Man 5 part story where he goes around Canadian cities. That was a comic that was always in our school room and I would totally secretly read the first part instead of listening to Mr. Kelly like 8,000 times. Mr. Kelly was boring. Spider-Man is cool. It's the reason I will end up getting a shitty job but I'm still not sorry I did it!

The Final Episode #42: The Raccoons (1985 - 1992)

 

Well, Usually with my Facebook group I pick 5 shows and we vote on them, once one of those shows is gone we vote on the other four and I do all five shows before I go on to do anything else. It works out pretty well because they were all shows I planned to talk about. Right now there's a poll for 4 shows going on right now and only one vote. I'm impatient and I just want to talk about another TV shows ending so I decided to just do an different show. This show has been rattling around in my brain for a little while and maybe talking about it will put in the back of my mind again. Anyway I've decided that we will talk about the Canadian cartoon series The Raccoons.

I've said on this silly blog many times that the smoothest liar of all is memory. I stand by that. You could be certain about so many things but be proven to be wrong. Not saying we shouldn't trust our memories but if say money is on the line don't be 100% certain. Check that shit out. Anyway my memory was wrong again and I thought this show was animated by Nelvana. I had like at least a paragraph talking about how much I liked a good amount of Nelvana's output. They were a really neat Canadian cartoon animation company. Anyway that will have to wait till I talk about The Care Bears Family or Babar or one of their other shows.

The animation companies that did this show were Atkinson Film-Arts (sadly I do not think that Rowan Atkinson worked on these cartoons but it would have been cool if  he did because I am a big fan of Mr. Bean). They animated the first four specials and the first season in 1985. They animated the original Care Bears specials. So I get to mention the Care Bears more than once in this article instead of just once if I was correct about this show actually being animated by Nelvana. That's always a plus. I love those fuzzy rascals. At least I imagine Care Bears to be fuzzy. They would also help DIC Entertainment, the greatest of all American animation companies in animating Dennis the Menace and The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin. Then Kevin Gillis the creator of the Raccoons created his own animation studio with Sheldon Wiseman called Gillis-Wiseman Productions. 

So I must talk to the people in America about something. In Canada we have to have at least I believe 60% Canadian Content on our TV shows. They are not too picky with what counts. I mean Sailor Moon and The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin count as Canadian content because Canadian animation studios or voice actors worked on the show with the American people.. Yes, everyone in the original Sailor Moon dub was Canadian. No, I don't know why they used terms like Dweezil (I think that was the term wasnt it) to insult people. That might be a Vancouver thing. Probably is. People in Vancouver are weird.  Very very few of the cartoons and shows made purely by Canadians were good. They just felt forced and shitty. I mean I need to talk to you people about Yvon of the Yukon or Mega Babies sometimes. I pretty much skipped an insane amount of Canadian content because it was piss poor. The Raccoons is one of the exceptions to this rule.

The Raccoons was about several Raccoons living in a Raccoondominum. Melissa and Ralph were a married couple and Bert was their friend. They ran a newspaper and ran afoul of the big bad industrialist Cyril Sneer. Cyril was the name of my Grandfather. I like that name. It's fun to say and fun to type. Cyril Sneer had 3 Pig henchmen who were my favorite part of the show alongside Bert Raccoon. They were a hoot and a half to watch. That's almost an extra hoot there people! You don't give out hoots for nothing! Cyril had a son Cederic who was the nerdiest cartoon character of all time. OF ALL TIME. Then again have you ever heard of someone named Cedric who wasn't incredibly nerdy? Of course not. They also had some side characters like a sheepdog and a crocodile who was married to a chicken. 

The Final Episode of the Raccoons was entitled Go for Gold and it appeared on March 11, 1991 in Canada and an entire year later in the USA. August 28th, 1992. 3 Days before my 7th birthday. I hope you Americans celebrated that by watching this episode! Anyway this episode has Cyril Sneer retiring because he has what I think was a heart attack. He just collapses at his desk and is told to stop working. This ends up with Cedric becoming the head of Sneer Enterprises. He ends up meeting with a guy named Mr. Steel and he well swindles the hell out of him. for a Million Dollars.

You might be wondering how he swindles Cedric well he's going to do a triathlon with TV coverage and Ads and everything. Except the TV Coverage is just him covering it with one damn camera. The ad is so small people wouldn't even notice it. AND he gets his son Rod Steel to help him. Rod Steel is like jacked as FUCK. He also cheats. But you've seen this episode even if you haven't seen this cartoon. A ton of cartoons did this plot. It's the "RACE" episode. I don't mean race as in skin color I mean race as in running and shit. Care Bears did it (TWICE). The Simpsons did a soapbox derby race thing. It was a very popular plot to use during my time. The Raccoons does this plot well but it's also the 9,000 time you've seen this plot. No matter how well it's done you get pretty darn bored of it.

 I just want to talk about Cyril Sneer who I think was an interesting villain. He started out as pretty much wanting to destroy all of the Evergreen Forest just to make money. I should also mention that he's an Aardvark. and he's Pink. I don't think Aardvarks live in Canadian forests. Or are pink. But over the course of the show he was shown to have shades of gray. He helps Bentley a kid Raccoon from running away by telling him about how running away ruined his life. He literally throws money at the pigs when he finds out they ruined a place in the forest that even he cared about (It was a pond that everyone thought was their secret spot. The pigs dump toxic waste in the pond). It was interesting to see a character like that grow even if it was just a little bit. That kinda thing was pretty rare in kids cartoons back then. If you were a bad guy you were the biggest baddest dickhead humanly possibly.

FINAL VERDICT: I enjoyed this show. Sure it could get a bit preachy at times and a little saccharine too, but I dunno I don't mind that stuff very much. It's a very charming wholesome show. They are remaking it and I must say that the remake designs look awful. They look like a new cartoon these days. I don't totally mind that design style for new stuff but it always looks weird when they remake something within that style. However I won't get angry at it like the people who shit their pants over Thundercats Roar. I, uh, just won't watch it. It's pretty simple not to act like a jackass and not watch one of the 86,000 reboots and remakes and reimagining that are being pumped out.

The Final Episode #41: 3rd Rock From the Sun (1996 - 2001)

 

Well it's back to letting Facebook choose which television show's final episode will be discussed and they overwhelmingly decided on this show with six votes! Yes I'm happy that it got six votes because my facebook group for this blog is just poeple I make read this so I'm glad anyone decided YES WE WANT TO SEE YOU TALK ABOUT THIS SHOW! Therefore I will grant them their wish because it's the only thing I know how to do, which is to talk about television shows and comic books. Anyway we come back to a sitcom after....two posts. I swear I had forgotten about California Dreams yet again. and I mistyped it again as California Games. I will never get away from California Dreams, blast my need to discuss different types of cartoons and different types of sitcoms. I needed to talk about at least one completely forgettable teenage sitcom. I swear it had been longer than that. I need to tape a note to my computer screen saying "YES YOU REVIEWED CALIFORNIA DREAMS DON'T FORGET ABOUT IT ASSHOLE"

3rd Rock from the Sun was a sitcom that ran for 5 years and 6 seasons between 1996 and 2001. It started mid season on January 9th, 1996. It replaced what I assume was another sitcom about Tony Danza and Aunt Becky from Full House as a married couple and Tony Danza was a wacky detective. That show was called Hudson Street. Even sad losers like me who watched TV all the time do not remember this show and I remember Ask Harriet in which Mr. Turner from Boy Meets World cross-dresses to become big in some office job. This is another reason why you shouldn't listen to me. I remember Ask Harriet.

3rd Rock from the Sun was yet another "gimmick" sitcom in which the shows comedy was based around a gimmick. Like in Bewitched where the comedy came from the lady being a witch, or Gilligan's Island was everyone stuck on a island and trying to get off. It's like more than just "Here's a family and their wild problems" like 5,000 sitcoms were done. I think gimmick sitcoms more than less are pretty great but the gimmick usually does get tired a bit more quickly than a sitcom whos situation comes from workplace or family situations. Most of these shows are really funny but really should not last longer than 5 seasons at the most. 

3rd Rock from the Sun was a show I remember my ENTIRE family watching for at least years. It was something I'd actually come out of my room at the back of the house where I'd spend most of my time watching what I wanted on my TV to watch this show with my family. It was something we all enjoyed. It was a thing we all did together and I remember the show fondly. I think we watched it together for at least three of the six seasons before I just felt like spending all of my time alone because of well reasons I don't want to get into on a silly fun blog where I talk about things like the Punisher becoming a black man. I do believe I continued watching for at least another season. This was also around the time where I'd go to Jumbo Video and rent like weird terrible movies that no one else could love except me. 

The Final Episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun came out on May 22, 2001. It's a two parter that involves stuff that happened in a two parter before hand. There's an alien named Liam Neeson and no he's not played by Liam Neeson. He's played by John Cleese. Honestly I think it would have been more amusing if he actually was Liam Neeson but I don't think the show had the money to get him in its last season. John Cleese just wants to turn everyone on earth into a monkey and turn earth into Planet Monkey World. Dick can't have this so he turns HIM into a monkey. Problem is that Mary has FINALLY seen what happened and is freaked the fuck out about it. Dick pretty much ends up telling her he's an alien at the end of this episode. Meanwhile Harry dates a woman who works at a fancy cafe and a gas station and dresses differently at both places and he ends up thinking she's two women. He sets up two dates with twins. Sally is saddened that Don has quit being a police officer after she finds him hiding in a freezer after a robbery. I guess the police where at the robbery too? I dunno. 

Anyway part 2 of this two parter has Sally making Don a man again instead of a wimp who wants to sell muffins. I should mention that Don is played by Wayne Knight who is very underrated and the fact we don't get all kinds of great Wayne Knight comedy in movies and TV shows today is proof perfect that the future is a piece of shit and I hate it. I also like Sally's actress Kristen Johnston, she works perfectly against Wayne Knight. These two were probably my favorite part of the show. Tommy comes back for the second part and they decide to have a party to say goodbye. Yes this was a long line of shows where a cast member left but this time they didn't recast him. I think it's honestly a better thing to not recast someone if you don't have too, 98% of recasting do not work and I'm including Dick Sargent replacing Dick York in Bewitched here too. I'm sorry boomers and people who watched the show on Nick at Nite but you are wrong the second Darrin sucked. Just let the truth wash over you.

Mary plans to come with them but while they are waiting in their car to be beamed up they start talking about things from Earth that they will miss which makes Mary decide not to go. Dick decides to make her forget using alien powers which just turns out to be smacking her in the back like a big goofball. I remember watching this episode once years after it had shown and I SWEAR she is freaking out to someone about not remembering 6 years of her life. I'm glad that my memory is wrong and you can easily write over this part when they bring back 3rd Rock from the Sun for one season that doesn't work as well as the original stuff because YES YOU KNOW THEY ARE GOING TO BRING IT BACK. It would have been weird to see her just freak out about not remembering and you can easily make it so that Dick just messed the fuck up like he usually did.

FINAL VERDICT: I loved this show when it was on and while I gave up after a while, I did think these two final episodes were pretty amusing. I really think the entire cast worked well together and were really amusing. It was also the only good thing French Stewart was good in, but I'm in a good mood and going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Other than this the man was in things like Inspector Gadget 2, not a single person is going to do good in a sequel to the live action version of Inspector Gadget. Not even if Gregory Peck came back to life.

Movie Review #36: Hook (1991)

 

This is gonna start out on a little bit of a rant, you know the usual rant I give about "culture warriors" against anything woke or what they see is woke or what YouTube dildos tell them is woke. You know the people who are mad at the fact Disney gave Kathleen Kennedy a job at doing Star Wars shit, or maybe it was George Lucas. I really don't know. My biggest problem with these people, despite the fact they yell and scream and harass and make shitty YouTube videos that I end up watching and COMPLAINING ABOUT BECAUSE IM A STUPID ASSHOLE is the fact that they don't know what the fuck they are talking about. Look at the perfect example of Kathleen Kennedy who has been a producer on the following things and this is going to be a long list here: E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Poltergeist, Gremlins, The Goonies, Back to the Future (ALL THREE OF THEM), Young Sherlock Holmes, The Money Pit, An American Tail, Innerspace, batteries not included, Who Framed Motherfucking God damned Roger Fucking Rabbit?, The Land Before Time, Gremlins 2, Arachnophobia, Cape Fear, Curly Sue (shut up I liked this when I was a kid), Tiny Toon Adventures, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Congo (shut up I love this movie), Twister, Jurassic Park 2, Jurassic Park 3, Adventures of Tin Tin and todays movie Hook. She got the job because of her proven track record WITH BEING A PART OF ALL THOSE FUCKING MOVIES AND TV SHOWS ADN I DIDNT EVEN LIST ALL OF THE FUCKING MOVIES SHE'S BEEN A PART OF! That's my biggest complaint is the fact they don't get any fucking facts right and just blow shit out of their asshole about how she's the worst person on the fucking planet.

This brings me to another thing I decided to rewatch this movie because apparently Disney is being lazy and shitty again and going to make another Peter Pan, probably a remake that won't be as good as either the original animated Peter Pan or the movie I'm going to get too after I yell a little more. People please stop going to watch these remakes, PLEASE. I do not want to see the entirety of the past regurgitated in front of me. I do not want to see thrown together remakes of everything from Mister Ed to Ms. 45. I don't, please for the love of God go away from this. I mean at least try something that hasn't been beaten to death like Peter Pan. It's over. It's done. We do not need the 47th version of Peter Pan. It was done already well by Disney 60 years ago. I'm complaining because I know my dumb ass will end up watching these movies and being like "I should have done literally anything else with my time instead of this" of course it's not originality the YouTube and Twitter dickfuckers are yelling about its about how scary diversity is. Well they must have forgotten about this movie because The Lost Boys were already done diverse 30 years ago in this movie.

Now that I've gotten the dumb bitching out of the way let's discuss this movie, which I found utterly charming to rewatch. I do believe we had this on VHS but not an official VHS. One of those vhs you have with like 3 episodes of Mama's Family on it along with two movies. Like the you made sure every second of the tape was used to put something on it. I could be wrong on that but I do believe this was in our taped off TV VHS collection alongside other gems of cinema as The Sandlot and Child's Play 2 (which my dad taped off tv in the middle of the night and took out the commercials for us which I'm sure he loved doing. It was good then but now I kinda wish we had the commercials just so I could get nostalgic over silly shit). All I know is that until this rewatch all I remember is the ending fight where Captain Hook gets eaten by a Crocodile that they turned into a clock. It's a weird movie.

Anyway the plot of this movie is as follows, Peter Pan has grown up and become Peter Banning, a joyless man who cares more about work than his family. A family that he constantly disappoints. A family he constantly leaves to work over. He misses his sons baseball game and all kinds of stuff like that. They end up going over the Merry Old England to meet Granny Wendy (yes the Wendy from the old stories) and how her granddaughter Moira is what made Peter decide to leave Never Never Land in the first place. This is where Captain Hook decides to kidnap Peter's kids and then Tinkerbell comes and brings Peter Pan to neverland. It's up to Peter to become Peter Pan again and take down Captain Hook. He's got to learn how to fly and fight and crow again!

This is a movie where you can tell that every single actor within it is having a great time. Robin Williams is fantastic as an adult Peter Pan. He goes from a serious adult to a goofy child and it doesn't feel off. He's funny and entertaining and when he's sad over his kids you can feel it. It's one of his best performances. I will die on this hill. Dustin Hoffman and Bob Hoskins as Captain Hook and Smee are literally no joke having the time of their lives playing these two. I will say that this is the BEST movie performance of Dustin Hoffman. You can shove The Graduate right up your asshole and sit on it. He is Captain Hook. The only other person to ever come close is whoever voiced him in the Disney movie from the 1950s. He and Bob Hoskins are having so much fun here that I wished they had a movie of their own. I could watch those two for days. I was going to make some dumb joke when I first started writing this about how bad Julia Roberts is as an actress when I realized that this is the only movie I've ever seen with her in it and she's pretty good as Tinkerbell. Plus getting up in her ass is boring now. We've done all the Julia Robert sucks jokes people. Let's find some other actor to yell at. The kids are all great too. 

FINAL VERDICT: If you have kids this is a really fun movie to show them. I know it might seem like a lot seeing as this movie is 2 hours and 21 minutes but it never feels boring. It's very well paced and you don't realize the movie is over until it is over. I highly recommend watching or rewatching this movie. It was an incredible amount of fun and we need no more Peter Pan movies because I don't think they can top this. Well done Stevie Spielberg!!!!!

Comic Review #25: The Punisher #60-62 (1992)

 

Yes sir! It's about time I got around to this character. I can't deny that I love the Punisher. I know it's weird that cops of all people wear the skull of a crazy lunatic but I can not and will not deny that I love the character. I love it when this guy ends up working with other heroes and he's forced to use rubber bullets (it wouldn't be till I was an adult that I would find out that rubber bullets are really bad and Spider-Man should be like "Don't do THAT either" but I digress). Anyway I may complain about a lot of the 1990s output of Marvel Comics but damn if they didn't have some wild and fun comics during this era too. 

Mike Baron wrote Nexus and Badger. I've uh, never read a single issue of either series but they are on the list of comics I'd like to collect and own. I just never come across many 80s indie comics around here in Newfoundland. I bring up Mike Baron because he wrote or plotted the first 63 issues of this series and man if you like the Punisher you need to check these comics out. They are like a crazier version of a Death Wish sequel and I didn't think that was even possible (note to self: Review Death Wish for this blog) 

If you've read this blog you know that I dig comic book stories that were well strange like you wonder how high the people writing these comics were and with this one I imagine they were pretty high. I also imagine the editors at Marvel Comics were high too to let this one go past. I'm incredibly fucking glad they did though because holy hot hell this is a gem of a comic book story. First off before we get to why this story is weird we need some backstory (You can kinda guess why the story is weird from the cover I posted there if you need be) 

The story before this called "The Punisher: The Final Days" and it itself was pretty wild. It took place through seven issues and in those seven issues The Punisher has to work for the Kingpin or Microchip will die. The Punisher goes to kill the criminal the Kingpin wants him too and he gets found out by the police due to you know the Kingpin calling them. The Punisher also thinks the Kingpin got to the Judge but I can't remember if that's actually true or if the Punisher went to prison because THEY KNOW HES THE PUNISHER AND HE'S YOU KNOW KILLED 47,000 CRIMINALS AT THIS POINT. Like the crazy fuck has got to know that right? Anyway it turns out that Jigsaw the only returning Punisher bad guy because he usually blows the shit out of the rest gets the best of him and fucks up his face. The Punisher then escapes the prison and gets his face fixed by a plastic surgeon who is now an ex-junkie prostitute. I'm starting to wonder if I should have saved this story for a whole review but I guess that's wrong now.

So now we get into why this story is wild and weird and well uh, you know that ex-junkie street walker who was a plastic surgeon (man I'd read that life story) turns the Punisher from a white man to a black man. Yep. You might have heard of this story because a lot of blogs have covered it but you know I couldn't stay away from such a strange concept. This story is plotted by Mike Baron but scripted by Marc Mclurin. The Police literally stop The Black Punisher in his car. Luke Cage (now just called Cage) comes in and they beat the shit out of these racist asshole cops. It's pretty great watching their racist asses get some.

The Punisher and Luke Cage end up teaming up to fight a gang and there's the usual Luke Cage trying to keep The New Black Punisher from killing anyone. He fails because well It's hard to keep the Punisher from shooting a criminals dick off really. It seems that only Spider-Man can do that. He's good at letting criminals keep their dicks. Anyway they have a lot of fun scenes together and this makes me want to check out the Cage series which I haven't read mostly because I don't have access to buying them. I mean I could get them on the internet but that kinda takes the fun out of collecting you know? Anyway they take the gang out and in the end a guy the Kingpin hired wants to help some other guy take down the New Black Punisher and that's where issue #62 comes in. 

The New Black Punisher is working with Cage and isn't killing ANYONE or even using a weapon so he's all like "Is this the end of the Punisher?!?" and I'm like nah bro Marvel needs you to keep on existing to make money and more importantly there's only been like a week or two that has past since this issue and last issue and in the last issue you killed like 30 people. Maybe wait at least a few more weeks before thinking you are not into murdering criminals anymore.  

So the Asian dude with the weird hair who was working for the Kingpin (oh during the time The Punisher was becoming the New Black Punisher the Kingpin ended up in prison or on the run or something. Probably something that rascal Daredevil had done to him.) ends up kidnapping the Streetwalking Ex-Junkie Surgeon and gets her back on the smack so that she can ID the New Black Punisher (who is also losing pigment after all this time and will soon become the Old White Punisher again) and The Punisher gives in and everyone tries to beat him to death because they think he is unarmed but they are totally wrong because he was given a weapon back to him from a lady that appeared in the previous issue. He pretty much kills the SHIT out of everyone and shows why you shouldn't fuck with the Punisher regardless of race.

FINAL VERDICT: I don't know how the later issues of this Punisher series are but man oh MAN do I love the Mike Baron issues. He was a genius and making crazy action shit. This isn't the only weirdo story that was done by him. Either way man anyone who is reading this HAS to read these issues. They are cool AND good.

The Final Episode #40: Pepper Ann (1997 - 2000)

 

This is a good interesting companion piece to my California Dreams thing for one reason. One Saturday Morning was ABC last real chance at keeping Saturday Morning Cartoons a thing. It was well a Disney based thing that started in 1997 and ended in 2002. It was pretty much all Disney stuff so if you liked Disney you were in for a hell of a ride if you weren't you wouldn't care about it. It wasn't just shows either they had bits in between the shows at One Saturday Morning HQ or whatever they called it and stuff like Ms Munger's Class or whatever that was called. I'm pretty sure that show got them into trouble too but I'm sure I'll get into that when I get desperate enough to talk about it in an entire article which yes, WILL happen.

So I must say that I loved the Disney Afternoon and I loved One Saturday Morning. Disney had tweleve years behind them at this point making cartoons for television. They started in 1985 with The Wuzzles and no I won't be spending an entire article talking about The Wuzzles because they fucking suck and I just wish we could say that The Adventures of the Gummi Bears was first. Anyway One Saturday Morning had Recess, Brand Spanking New Doug, 101 Dalmatians: The Series and today's show of discussion Pepper Ann.  I mentioned in the City Guys post how I would go from channel to channel to find something to watch on Saturday Morning, it wasn't the case for One Saturday Morning because I watched that entire 2 hour thing, unless we'd go out to the mall sooner than usual. I'd actually like to see what was on YTV at the time during One Saturday Morning but I have no idea how to get that information on the internet. 

Pepper Ann was created by a lady named Sue Rose, who was the first lady to create a cartoon series for Disney! Cool information huh!? Anyway she was sorta almost famous for this set of commercials or whatever called Fido Dido. I do not remember Fido Dido at all. She would also go on to co-create Angela Anaconda which was a deeply depressing and weird cartoon series. I was not a fan of that show then and I don't think I'll be a fan of it now. Both I believe ran at different times for different channels (Angela Anaconda was on Fox) I don't know for sure but I think Sue Rose put more effort into Pepper Ann 

Pepper Ann was similar to Doug as it was the day to day life of a 12 year old girl named Pepper Ann Pearson, her two friends Nicki and Milo, and her sister Moose (who I no joke thought was a boy until I was at least 23 years old) and the trials and tribulations that went along with it. I now know that portnoyd will trash the show just for this because he was like 38 years old when this show came out. Damn old geezer. Uh, anyway It was a simple fun show with a goofy cast of weirdo characters and some nice down to earth stories. She'd also talk to herself via a mirror and stuff like that. I dunno but it certainly has a Doug vibe to it but I also think its a better show than Doug.

Pepper Ann's final episode has the incredibly creative name of The Finale and came out on November 18th, 2000. It's actually a pretty neat little finale, giving us two stories in one. It takes place now where Pepper Ann is an adult, around 27 years of age seeing as they say this was 15 years after Middle School. She now lives in the far off future time of 2012.. It makes me feel weird and sad that 2012 was almost a decade ago and no we did not get cool floating signs for our towns or flying cars. I'm still fucking pissed that it's 2021 and we don't have flying cars. I WAS PROMISED A FUCKING FLYING CAR BY THE JETSONS  AND BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II AND I WANT MY FUCKING FLYING CAR EVEN THOUGH I DONT DRIVE DAMNIT. IT'S THE FUCKING PRINCIPAL OF THE THING YOU JERK"

Okay with that outburst out of the way Pepper Ann works making EDUCATIONAL video games about diseases and stuff. Her boss says it doesn't have the oomph it needs and I'm like damn thing will never have any oomph because it's an educational video game and the only one of them that was ever any good was Oregon Trail. I mean have you fuckers played Captain Novolin. It will make you want to punch a diabetic person in the face instead of learning about diabetes.

Uh, with that other outburst out the way she gets a letter from her mom about the Middle School reunion. I don't even think that's a thing but whatever. She ends up talking to her new friends about how she isn't going but in the end she goes feeling bad that she didn't keep in contact with Milo and Nikki. The episode also flashes back to the last day of Seventh Grade in which Pepper Ann is reminded of the Year Book and how she looks ridiculous in several pictures which peeves her off. It goes back and forth throughout the episode until she learns the lesson of she should have been happy to just enjoy a day with her friends.

The Future part of the episode has Pepper Ann finding out that they are going to dig up the old Time Capsule (Are these even a thing schools did, I know Saved By the Bell had an ending like that too?) and in it are letters from the kids at 12. Pepper Ann remembers that she talked about all kinds of embarrassing shit about all of her class mates and her two friends because she was mad. She also talked about getting with her crush Craig. They set off a wacky plan to get the letter. Milo would sing to get everyone's attention while Nikki talked to Mark Hammil (who is also the president in 2012. Also Pepper Ann's mom married Alex Trebek. I don't know if that was a running gag that she had a thing for him but I hope it wasn't and they just randomly ened up together because I think thats funnier for some reason)  of course the wacky plan doesn't go as well planned but she still gets the letter (I remember the letter actually getting read out but memory is the smoothest of liars), reconnects with her friends AND maybe ends up with a date with Craig AND has some new ideas for her stupid video game. 

FINAL VERDICT: I had a lot of fun re-watching this show. It was neat to see the characters I enjoyed so long ago in a new light. My favorite character was the fat German kid who is now sleek and svelte. I had forgotten about the two black twins (who are married to a set of twins AND have two sets of twins AND they all have rhyming names and yes they are voiced by Cree Summer. Who the hell else would voice them?). I also don't have anywhere else to post this but I just remember on Jump the Shark some weirdo getting upset about the feminism episode of this show. It's Disney so you know that any take on any issue like that is just "hey woman exist be good to woman" and if you get angry at something that benign I'd hate to see how he thinks about TV of today. Anyway this was a fun rewatch.