Monthly Archives: July 2022

Elektra 25.1: Go Ninja Go Ninja Go

Elektra,

We always knew that it was our destiny… The day would come when Ryan Stearns of the Signal Watch and I would face our fears, and record a podcast episode about Elektra, the utterly failed 2005 sequel to the Ben Affleck Daredevil movie.

Join us for our two-part adventure as we discuss this spiritual sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, where we talk about career criminals who don’t understand the concept of evidence, ninjas that burst into green powder when they die, and why you actually want to hear the “schwing” sound when someone pulls a knife on you.

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Swamp Thing 3.30: And Another Thing

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Marvel had the Glob, Skywald had the Heap, Warren Publications had Marvin the Dead-Thing. There was the Bog Beast at Atlas Comics and the Monster in the Muck at Charlton, while Gold Key Comics offered the Lurker in the Swamp, and the Beast of the Bayou.

As bizarre as it sounds, there was actually something of a vogue in early to mid ’70s funny-books for human corpses emerging from the murk, walking the earth shrouded in goo, and getting involved in other people’s problems. If these stories teach us anything, it’s that some things just refuse to die, especially the propensity for comic book writers to copy off each other.

Honestly, the fact that even one of these lunatic ’70s swamp monster characters managed to survive through the decades as the star of a superhero comic is hard to believe, and yet we find ourselves blessed with two of them: DC Comics’ Swamp Thing, and Marvel Comics’ Man-Thing. It just goes to show what you can achieve, when you put an infinite number of monkeys in charge of your pop culture.

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Swamp Thing 3.29: The Book of Jude

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“These people are blemishes at your love feasts,” Jude declares, “eating with you without the slightest qualm — shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind. They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.” I know, right?

“But you, dear friends,” Jude continues, “by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.”

But naturally, we don’t have time to wait for the mercy of J. Christ; the movie is only 91 minutes long, and the clock’s ticking. We’re going to need a quicker way to dispense eternal life, and here it comes, courtesy of a big soggy swamp zombie.

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Swamp Thing 3.28: The Notebook

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“I’ve got to go back and help,” says Cable, and the audience asks: Help with what?

I mean, the way I understand the current scenario, Agent Cable has completed her primary mission. She’s trying to prevent a magic spell from falling into the wicked hands of a sinister wizard, and the spell is written down in a little red leather notebook, which is the only place to keep anything.  Cable currently has possession of the notebook, and the bad guys are busy having stupid boat fights with a big green monster, so this would be an opportune time for Cable to start looking around for some car keys. Cable wins, bad guys lose. End of movie.

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Swamp Thing 3.27: The Boat Fight

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“Every time you’ve seen the girl, you’ve seen the beast,” says international villain Arcane, issuing instructions to his demented henchmen. “We’ll find the girl; the beast will follow.” That’s a good plan, except now they have to find the girl.

Luckily, Cable has managed to find an excellent hiding place: in the middle of a lake outside of Los Angeles, about 2,500 miles away from the South Carolina swamp where they filmed the rest of the picture.

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Swamp Thing 3.26: The Chatterbox

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There are a lot of things that Swamp Thing doesn’t say in this movie, and here’s one of them: “Who knows how far up the rot goes in Washington? You’re not safe calling anyone!”

Which is probably for the best. I’ve been having a good time lately, kicking holes in this silly rubber-suit movie, so it’s time for me to put the stick down for a minute, and appreciate a good decision.

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Thor: Love and Thunder 97.1: Things That Happened to Thor

Thor: Love and Thunder,

And hardly anybody even noticed, was the really annoying thing for all the people who made the Swamp Thing movie. They worked as hard as they could, in the middle of a swamp, and some of them were good at their jobs and some of them decidedly were not, and eventually it turned into a movie that hardly anybody watched. It made so little that Box Office Mojo has a blank space where the domestic and international gross is supposed to be.

Meanwhile, all the way over here at the other end of history, the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe effort — Thor: Love and Thunder — made 143 million dollars this weekend, and people are talking about how disappointed they are.

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Swamp Thing 3.25: Crushed

Swamp Thing,

I tell you what, when Alec Holland concocts nuclear plant food, the man delivers. That glowing green potion of his not only bridges the divide between the plantae and the animalia, it also produces some high-powered propulsion that can blast a well-stocked science lab right back to the stone age.

I mean, all Alec did was splash about two fingers of the stuff onto the floor from a height of several inches, and it turned the contents of the entire building into a smoldering ruin, up to and including the computer equipment, the security system, the plants and stairs and electric lights, even the cooper’s digger. Gone, all gone.

Well, they told us it was powerful, what with all the recombinant animal nuclei and everything. It was supposed to solve world hunger, which I guess technically it would, at least in the immediate blast radius. The only thing I can’t figure out is why Arcane thinks that he should put it in his mouth.

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Swamp Thing 3.24: Shaggy Bog Stories

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So Swamp Thing is running amuck, I think is where we left things, rearing up out of the mire from whence he came, and taking sides in local disputes. Bad men are shooting holes in the petroleum industry and ferociously hassling female G-men for school supplies, and now a big shaggy heap of vines, roots, mud and miscellaneous has decided to involve itself in the situation, through the medium of tearing the roof off cars, tossing white guys around and generally playing in traffic.

At this point, the audience is shifting in its seat, and asking, what the hell is this thing, and more importantly, why isn’t it flying an airplane?

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