Super Villains Just Need To Be Bad Sometimes

Super Villains Just Need To Be Bad Sometimes

Comic books are something I write a lot about. Mainly because I read a lot of them. Yes, I am a nerd. But that's ok. I'm sure any girl willing to accept me is more than likely going to be into comic books as I naturally have a stupid superman/Clark Kent curl when my hair gets long enough. Though I don't think I have a Lex Luther.

On the subject of super villains, you ever notice that super villains are a little off these days. Well, at the very least they really try hard to make these characters scary or over the top evil. What ever happened to the good ol' fashion bad people just doing bad things on a small scale? Take for example Joker in the following panel.



God what assholes. He just took that kids report card. Now how will his father ever trust he got good grades? Batman should really do something about this. Though more than likely he's busy being a millionaire playboy.

Then you have Lex Luther. He's not always doing high priced crimes or attempting to expose Superman as the illegal immigrant that he really is. Sometimes he just wants to steal cakes.



You see this? This is glorious. I could read shit like this all day. And if you're like me, then maybe you should pick up the 4th World books by Kirby. This is pretty much what Darkseid does the whole time. At one point he builds an evil amusement park on Earth. Sadly it didn't make it into Final Crisis. In this park he tortures some of the main characters behind the scenes. Sure, this is all typical super villain stuff, but there's one scene where he makes a little kid cry by being an asshole. The kid's grandpa yells at Darkseid, but he basically responds with "I'm Darkseid. Deal with it."



And if you're not into the basic "Badboy being Bad" deal, perhaps you should read it for all the unbelievably fucked up deathtraps Darkseid sets up. I think it was Serifan and Vykin, and they stuck Vykin in a hole in the roller coaster so that his head popped out, then they hooked Serifan up to a leg press. Every time the roller coaster was coming, Serifan had to time the leg press exactly, because the leg press was wired to sink Vykin below the oncoming coaster, allowing him to not die. Serifan had to perform this task repeatedly for hours if not days, Lost-style, nonstop, or his buddy would die.





In short, Darkseid is the most evil villain ever and Kirby is the fucking man for walking the line of being mean to kids as well as creating death traps for the heroes.

Look Out For The Fall: Day One

Fall Look Out: Day One

The name of this blog is WeirdTV. So perhaps I should cover some television news, right? Here's a show you should look out for in the fall. It's called Day One and is from the same creative forces of Heroes and takes place during the first day of an Apocalypse situation. Here's a trailer for it



I'm sure there's going to be a lot of people who will just write this off as a Jericho rip off. To them I say, guess what, Jericho wasn't anything new to begin with. They've been making apocalypse shows since the beginning. You have the Omega man, Planet of the apes, plenty of Twilight zone shows, Hell, that whole Surface mini-series was about an apocalypse. So don't give Jericho too much credit. While the concept was great, the acting was beyond terrible.

Somethings to really get excited about this is that Javier Grillo-Marxuach is joining the show as a supervising producer. His short lived and much entertaining show Middelman was canceled, but the fact that he has the experience with science fiction does say a lot to the future of this new Sci-fi on network television show. Something that is often as great an idea as putting balloons in a razor balde factory.

I mean, Day One's visuals look cool. It'll of course suffer from bad acting from the cast which is generic (Pretty White Kids with Problems: The Alien Invasion Edition) and the less said about the dialogue the better. I don't think it matters though. Even if it does end up being good it's a sci-fi show on a network. Hell, I'd be shocked if it makes to episode four before being shuffled off to a Saturday time slot in the summer to burn off it's episode order.

Then again, Jericho wasn't Scifi. I mean, it's not like NBC hasn't tried before. Do you remember Surface? Wow what a total shit fest in terms of quality. I suppose the only thing that Surface had going for it was scale and momentum. The sea monsters kept increasing in threat and the implication while they got plenty of reasons to get Lake Bell naked and wet. As proof of the momentum, by episode 2 you had this.



And at the very least the Surface larva(?) ate a dog, it was a glorious creepy television if nothing more for the look of interest in the kids watching the pool. I mean, that right there is all sorts of signs that that kid is going to grow up to be disturbed.



Jericho survived only because it's subject matter was interesting, but the show itself was the worst about a post Nuclear war society since WOOPS! So here's hoping that DAY ONE actually delivers on the goods. Though, I'm sure like Heroes, the series, if it does last past season one, will just end up sucking terribly with bad story arcs that make no sense.

So that's a fall preview for you now. Stay tuned for more on what you're going to staying tuned in for in the fall.

We Can Be Heroes, Just For One Day... I Just Wouldn't Want To Be.

We Can Be Heroes, Just For One Day... I Just Wouldn't Want To Be.

A show is born to innocence. A show demonstrated it was good. Why then did it go so horribly wrong? Was it will? Was it destiny? Was it complete fucking incompetence? To fight evil, one must know evil; one must journey back through time and find that fork in the road, where Heroes turned one way and shows of lasting quality turned another.

You made me this way, Heroes. Ever since I watched season two, the most drawn-out, tedious, needlessly-slapstick-and-romance-enhanced torture session of my life, I've hungered for punishing entertainment experiences. I have come to feed on the anger and betrayal. That pain, I'm always so grateful for it now, because it's the only time I know I'm still human. But for all the wretched movies and music I've voluntarily inflicted on myself in the past year, nothing managed to sustain its horribleness for eleven hours. A numbness filled my mind with cotton and ice.

Finally, I've found a way to recreate, and perhaps even surpass, my initial agonies. I stored season three episodes in my DVR, where they undoubtedly tainted other recorded programs with their rotting putrescence, until I could no longer bear the cursed anticipation, then I subjected myself to a fourteen-hour marathon. I endured an evil twin, amnesia (again), more jittery quick cuts than the entire Saw franchise, and more variations on the phrase "How is this possible? You're dead!" than I could have imagined possible. As soon as the ordeal concluded, my eyes retreated behind a glazy film, and I started scribbling the revelations laid bare by this masochistic viewing approach.

A Goonies-related epiphany:
Angela Petrelli is a slight variation on Mama Fratelli's tale. Disappointed with the antics of her two favored sons, a sinister Italian matron unleashes a monster child who's been kept in captivity. Like the Fratelli mutant, Sylar turns out to be a misunderstood nice guy - at least for a few minutes. But remember, Sloth didn't stay tame forever, either. He became pretty goddamn brutal in his spinoff sequel The Hills Have Eyes.

New catch phrase that must end now:
Claire Bennett: "It ends here."
Peter Petrelli: "This ends now."
Noah Bennett: "This ends today."

Let the old catch phrase fucking die, already:
Hiro Nakamura: "Save the cheerleader!"
Nathan Petrelli: "Save ourselves, save the world."

Most accurate occupational depiction:
Freshly appointed Senator Nathan Petrelli, who manages to avoid any congressional votes, duties or appearances throughout the entire season.

Worst introduction of a mystical black man:
Wandering shaman Usutu eventually gets to feed time-travelling imp Hiro hyena dung while spouting wise-elder quotes like "The future can only be the future for so long, then it becomes the present" and "Evil forces gather. The dark sun rises." First, though, he must crack a Britney Spears joke and deliver a product-placement quip ("No service here [in the African desert], you should've gone with Sprint"), as if he were devised as a comic foil for the two already-clownish characters with whom he briefly interacts before being beheaded.

Best unintentional reference to Hayden Panettierre's horrifying singing career:
Electric Elle, discussing Sylar's botched hanging: "Maybe his suicide was a wake up call."

Grace in the face of tragedy:
1) Angela Petrelli's not-at-all suspicious first words to the doctor after learning the husband she'd poisoned had died: "I'd like a cremation as soon as possible."

2) Tracy Strauss, twin sister of split-personality skank Niki Sanders, wears fashionable white and retarded oversized sunglasses to a press conference at which her husband, President Nathan Petrelli, laments the deaths of 200,000 people in a nuclear blast. On a related note, most of the zombie-eyed future sketches are vague, with unspecific locations and broadly rendered faces that, if used as police sketches, would place half the city under suspicion. However, the painting of this disaster considerately includes a "Welcome to Costa Verde" sign in front of the mushroom cloud.

Abstinence-inducing sex scenes (Not coincidentally, these were the only two sex scenes):

1) Wrong-headed scientist Mohinder says he needs to make useless twin Maya angry in order to stop her fatal Hershey's tears from flowing. He starts espousing idiotic theories and touching her inappropriately, but this turns out to be alarmingly unrelated. After injecting himself with super powers, Mohinder enjoys a brief stint as a sweaty shirtless douchebag, during which he rips off Maya's shirt during an unwatchable seduction. It's worth noting that Mohinder later crawls nakedly out of a gelatinous afterbirth cocoon.

2) Nathan saves Tracy from plunging to her death during a sub-Charmed flying sequence. Rewarding him with spectacle, she demonstrates the ability to freeze objects with her touch. Nathan observes "your hands aren't even cold," then kisses her immediately. Ladies, take note: Suicidal depression and frigidity are the ultimate turn-ons!

Files of the Forgotten:

Remember Monica Dawson, the little girl who inspired beleaguered New Orleans viewers to stand up and cheer with her inspiring ability to mimic what she saw on TV? Well, she died, I guess. But fear not, Katrina-ravaged metropolis, for I predict she will soon be available to inspire you and teach you how to live and love again! It seems Monica revived when a funeral-home worker watched an idiotic sci-fi soap opera that featured multiple resurrections.

Remember Caitlin, the uninteresting Irish lass with whom amnesiac Peter had an interminable tryst before leaving her stranded in a disease-infested futuristic dystopia? Apparently Peter doesn't. Neither do the shows writers. Eh, good fucking riddance.

Blue-Collar Comedy Villain:

Flint's power seems pretty lame (see, there's already someone who makes fire with their hands, but his flame burns blue). However, he serves another purpose - recruiting slack-jawed yokels to watch one of their own kick ass on that city-folks show with the Indian fella and his fancy science words. This balding hick drawls plenty of yee-haw punchlines ("you want him crispy or well-done?") Even when he attempts to rape a hostage, he's still providing redneck comic relief ("I hear Stockholm Syndrome is like Spanish Fly!")

Mohinder's Burden:
Mohinder's narration seems to exist outside continuity, as you might expect someone who's rapidly becoming a reptilian deathbringer to have a bit more of a panicked tone to his philosophical ramblings. However, they're actually Future Mohinder's punishment for killing two people, even though his victims were conveniently a wife-beater and a drug-dealer. He's been sentenced to babble incessantly, ignored by all who hear him.

There is good and there is evil. Right and wrong. Heroes and villains. We're a ship without a storm, the cold without the warm, the throw before the toss, the hand that writes and quickly moves away. We wait in silence for these times when sense can be made of this show's ludicrous plots, when meaningless characters come into focus. And if we have the strength to be endure absolutely anything, then what we find there, staring back at us, is our own reflection, bearing witness to the duality of life. And each one of us is capable of both the dark and the light, of good and evil, of either, of all.