Frezno's Comics Challenge: The Straight Story Six Part 5 (Material)

Welcome back, once again, to the Comics Challenge. We are just a little bit late because I spent the last days of November on a weekend trip, and I did not get to do this before leaving because I was focused on finishing Non-Specific November Writing Month. I did indeed hit my word quota, and I still need to finish the story, but with 50k in the bag I can let that rest for one more day and get back to my comic book obligations... and fuck me, what a comic book we have here. Material Volume 1 (there sadly do not appear to be subsequent volumes) is a tight and poly-authored little thing that nevertheless contains lots and lots of depth. I'll go as deep as I can, but I only need scratch the surface long enough to wring some coherent words and analysis out of the book. Which I'm good at doing, and will do so now. There has been a running theme throughout the TV shows I've covered on the blog between 2022 and 2024, a concept which I coined a phrase for: The Dark Heart Of America. From the ugly historical microcosms of Quantum Leap, to the systemic rot lurking in the id of small-town America in Twin Peaks, to the battle against crime and the darkening of one's soul in Miami Vice, it's been there. Material is a comic about the dark heart of America, but the way in which it's told and the heady concepts it plays with are of definite interest.

Frezno's Comics Challenge: November 2024 (The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion)

(TW: Anti-semitism, the recent election.)

Sometimes, like as we saw with From Hell, comics can be a form of magic. At times it can create something wonderful and resonant with that power, but at other times there are some really dark synergies at play. Case in point, this book. It's not even the fault of the book, as it's a very important and powerful text that makes the world better for existing. No, it's just the timing of things. My esteemed comics critic and guide on this journey, Sean Dillon, selected this one for the month of November. They could have given it to me in March, or in May, or in any of the other months, but he picked this one for November. They informed me of this selection on October the 19th. Two and a half weeks later, in the United States Of America, the world plunged backwards into hell once again. We will deal with the horrific synchronicities at play in recent world events in a bit, but first as always we must define the book and its author.

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 16 (Halloween II)

Boo.

Well, here we are at last. Halloween! I am banging this one out at just after 3 PM, having literally finished watching the film in question moments ago. I do this because I want to be closer to the front door to greet the children who are expecting sweet treats and/or tricks. So, let's sort this one out as quick as we can before I get interrupted by like 20 knocks on the door. October 31st, the end of the marathon, has traditionally been the slot for the Halloween franchise. Michael Myers and all that. I've covered pretty much every film, and my options are slim. It was either The Curse Of Michael Myers, Rob Zombie's take, or this film which slipped under my radar for so long. I chose to get this one out of the way, and the slip under the radar was deliberate. I do not care for Halloween II. I did not like this movie the first time I saw it. I might have seen it a second time, I don't know. What I do know is that I gave it another shot just now, and it also failed to connect. Maybe I wasn't fair to the thing, given that I started the morning with a rewatch of the original. As one is a direct sequel to the other, in fact picking up right where it left off, maybe I'm not being so unfair. If it wants to pair itself with the original so bad, then I'll judge it by those standards.

Frezno's Comics Challenge: The Straight Story Six Part 4 (Mary Tyler Moorehawk)

Alright then, before Halloween comes, it's time to talk about another comic. Really, it's rather fortuitous that it's this comic in this month. Dave Baker's Mary Tyler Moorehawk, you see, is this curious little thing which feels like the House Of Leaves of comic books. No, I'm not doing the densely layered footnote joke again, it'd add another two hours to the post and cheapen the bit.¹ Right up front then, in declaring that this is the House Of Leaves of comic books, several questions present itself. Questions like "what does it even mean to be the House Of Leaves of comic books?" or "Can you adapt House Of Leaves into a visual medium such as the comic book?". Let's see if we can get to the bottom of this. Not to rehash everything I said on the book again, and if you've not read that go over here and do so, it's good, but House Of Leaves used the metaphor of the labyrinth to construct itself a labyrinth of words on the page. It did this in various ways, but the main two were arranging the words on the page to mirror what was happening in the story, and drowning everything in verbose footnotes as either a parody of pretentious academia, a digression into a nested narrative, a mirror of the labyrinth theme of the book, or all of the above. With that defined, let's try and answer that first question. Let's try and pin down Mary Tyler Moorehawk.

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 15 (Longlegs)

Oh, we're really dwindling down to it now. Halloween approaches, and I can feel it in the air. Those last gasps of summer that you feel during the end of September and into the beginning of October are all gone now. The crisp cold of fall has arrived, and it's only going to get colder from here. There's an obvious tradition here on the spooky marathon for Halloween itself, and so in a sense this is our last exploration. Certainly, it's the last film I've never seen before that we're doing for this one. What do we have here today, then? Longlegs is a film I knew nothing about going in, save for one tiny bit of osmosis. Thanks to my pal Sean (you'll be getting your other comic book post tomorrow, friendo) I had it in my head that this resembled Twin Peaks in a fashion. It does, but it does it with its own flourish and style completely different from David Lynch and Mark Frost do it. That's not unwelcome, however, and I found this film growing on me.

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 14 (X)

Alright, time for the Jenna Ortega half of this thing. Which, she's actually only a supporting character in this, oops. Look, I wasn't going to watch the Beetlejuice legacy sequel for this. Probably could have done a little Wednesday for it. Oh well. Look, even if she's not the focus and it doesn't end too well for her in the motion picture, I didn't know that going in. In fact, I didn't know much of anything going in except that this was a Ti West picture. We've covered his work twice thus far, first with The House Of The Devil and then technically in the first V/H/S movie. His segment was one of the better ones, it had a particular scare that used the found footage format well and a wild twist. Still had a man be shitty to a woman though, so not helping that particular film's vibes. So, again, no idea of what I was getting into when going into the movie X. What I got certainly was interesting, so let's jam with it a little.

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 13 (Abigail)

In this scene Melissa Barrera shows the 
importance of masking.

Before we get going here, a little bit of a tangent on why I'm doing this film and the next one. Last year, as you may recall, there was a strike and so for the Halloween marathon that meant not talking about any struck studio films as a stand of solidarity. Included among this was 2023's Scream VI, and so true to my word I did not talk about it. I did, however, watch it eventually. I do not remember it all that well. Scream V was a master class of a self-aware slasher, updating itself both for another generation of horror movie evolution it could reflect as well as making its killers the ultimate escalation of toxic fandom: committing murders so that Hollywood would adapt them into a trope-laden slasher movie that would get back to basics and not do any innovative shit like that Rian Johnson guy done. Scream VI was too soon to have anything to say about the state of horror or fandom or anything interesting like that. It has some half-hearted messaging but its most meta moment has the movie shrug and go "It's a sequel to a legacy reboot which means anything can happen!". The anything, in this case, was a bunch of callbacks to the Scream franchise and also pissed-off family members of one of the killers from the last movie deciding they were justified in pretending to be friends with the protagonists before killing all their friends and then laughing about how they're the good guys in the climax. 

Why are we talking about Scream? Because of what happened next. Namely Melissa Barrera getting shitcanned from Scream for (gasp) saying that maybe all the Palestinians shouldn't be fucking killed! Her costar Jenna Ortega followed suit, and that left the new Scream series without its leading ladies... at which point they have just called Neve Campbell back as a desperate pandering plea to the Scream fans out there. WE'RE SO SORRY THEY SAID THE MEAN THING, THEY'RE FIRED NOW, BUT LOOK WE GOT YOUR OLD FAVORITE FINAL GIRL BACK PLEASE GIVE US MONEY! It is as cowardly and craven a business decision and appeasement to "the fans" as The Rise Of Skywalker, and the people behind it should fucking know better considering they made assholes like that the fucking killers two movies ago. As a result, here's my line in the sand. No more Scream on the spooky marathons. I really dig some of the older ones, and Scream V did light my world on fire with how much it seemed to get that toxic fandom can and would escalate into literal death for the sake of a fucking motion picture. Life does not imitate art, and they have sided with that fandom. Let them have Scream VII. They're toxic fandom, they'll probably hate it because a black woman dared to appear on screen or something.

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 12 (Splatterhouse 2)

We once again find ourselves in an unexpected place, but nothing too unexpected. This did start as a video game criticism blog, after all. I haven't done that at all this year since the masochistic nightmare of Final Fantasy II, but what the hell? A quick one for old time's sakes... and I do mean old times. We previously looked at Splatterhouse on the very first iteration of the Halloween marathon, in 2016. Holy Christ that's a long time ago. It's a bit of a messy post, but what do you want from me, I was banging out 31 of these things back then. They can't all be winners. Let's try and give this one some craft to make it a winner, though, and give it some context. To wit, then: Splatterhouse was a 1988 arcade game from Namco, a sidescrolling beat-em-up game with a sense of the visceral to it. Instead of just punching dudes in the face and making them fall down, you punch ghouls hard enough that they burst into pools of bloody guts and gore. It's a neat little arcade game with a lot of depth, creepy atmosphere, and enough gross bloody stuff to interest any gore hound who loved Freddy and Jason at the time. In 1992 a sequel came out, this time on the Sega Genesis. It fits at home there, the Genesis having originally been marketed as this graphical powerhouse that could give you the gaming ideal of the time, Like The Arcade BUT AT HOME! 1992 feels a little late for that sort of thing, being post-Sonic for the Genesis, but whatever. What is happening with Splatterhouse 2?

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 11 (Godzilla Minus One Minus Color)

Now that we have that magical ritual out of the way, where were we? Ah yes. Talking more about kaiju movies, specifically one I really love. I've seen this one once before, of course. I couldn't wait for the spooky season to come around and I really wanted to see it, so I saw it. I was absolutely blown the fuck away by it. If I may be so bold, Godzilla Minus One may be the best Godzilla picture of them all. It's a stellar picture that mixes the spectacle of the giant monster with real and raw human emotion and angst, all of it born from the specific vibes that were in the air in post-war Japan. Movies like Godzilla 1984 or GMK tried to do that back to basics approach, where they were only in conversation with the 1954 original and building off of that. Godzilla Minus One does it better than any of them, because it takes a different approach: Rather than being a story-based followup building off of "in 1954 a giant fucking monster rampaged through Japan", Godzilla Minus One is a tonal twin to the 1954 original. That somber mournful tone of a country still reeling from an atomic horror, struggling to rebuild when half its world was blasted to bits by an incomprehensible thing of infinite power. Other Godzilla movies I like have struck near that vibe, of their present-day Japan using Godzilla as a metaphor for present-day anxieties like the Cold War or the 2011 tsunami. Godzilla Minus One nails it, and goes even further beyond.

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween Day 10: Frezno's Comics Challenge October 2024 (From Hell)

I love it when I get to kill birds with one stone and do a combo of two running series on the blog. In this case, I get to do a spooky marathon post and deal with the main Comics Challenge for October. It's quite helpful, and we definitely have a fitting comic here with From Hell. Last time on the Comics Challenge, we got to talk about Grant Morrison. Here's another titan of comics, one Alan Moore. Yes, that grumpy old bearded Northerner what worships a snake god and hates the fuck out of the comic obsession with superheroes. I don't have much to say on the man himself, I'm not writing about any magical war he fought on the battleground of the comic book or anything like that. From Hell, however, is quite the book indeed. It alights my imagination and gives me a lot to talk about, so I'll try to keep to some form of brevity.

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 9 (Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack)

It is once again time for an annual staple during this here spooky marathon thing, as we transition nicely from Japanese tokusatsu to Japanese kaiju pictures. They're in the same boat, so to speak, and we even get to talk about Godzilla again on here! It feels like it's been a while since I've done that, as I spent like three years going on about Gamera in the 1990s. Gamera 3 is still really good, y'all. The pal who got me watching those Gamera movies also got me to view this one with them, and they really like it a lot. I definitely have a swirl of thoughts about... what's the full title of this again? Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack. Just rolls right off your tongue. They call it GMK for short, so fuck it, let's do that. This isn't Non-Specific November Writing Month, these things don't have a word count. What is there to say, then, about GMK?

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 8 (Kamen Rider Shin)

You know, it wouldn't be a spooky marathon if we didn't get some Japanese media in here. In the past I've dabbled in anime, and of course a little of kaiju cinema. Good old Godzilla will be showing up soon enough, I promise, but before that it is time for Kamen Rider. I've been dabbling in karate bug men for quite some time now, having been on a podcast which covered all of the Zero-One series and is now partway through covering the Build series. I also did Shotaro Ishinomori's Kamen Rider manga as one of the Comics Challenge things, I believe as part of the Straight Story Six. Most helpfully, perhaps for this, I've seen Hideaki Anno's Shin Kamen Rider. That movie is quite distinct from Kamen Rider Shin, which we'll be talking about today, but it's quite good. It's a real love letter to 70's tokusatsu and karate bug men guys beating each other up while ruminating on the cycle of violence and the hateful spread of fascism. It is, I'm sorry to say, a better movie than Kamen Rider Shin. That's not to say this doesn't have its charms, just that I didn't have enough of them. Let me try and explain.

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 7 (A Dark Song)

Okay, so I got a little carried away there. Whoops. Still, I'd like to think I did that particular book and its intricacies justice. With that out of the way, it's time for another one of those ones that I didn't pick, but that friends of mine did. A Dark Song is not a film I'd ever heard about, or indeed knew anything about going in. I just sort of sat there and let it wash over me. It was an interesting experience, and there's quite a lot going on here but now I get to sit here and try to make sense of it. That's what we do here, and it's what I'm going to do again, so let's talk about this weird little object of a motion picture.

A Dark Song is a magical ritual movie. I don't think the actual film itself is an invocation of anything, but the narrative focuses in great detail on a magic ritual to summon an angel and the movie reflects that in some ways. Rather than a quick scene of casting an incantation and offering a sacrifice or something, the ritual in this movie takes up the majority of the film. It is a slow, laborious, and detailed process that takes literal months with two people locked together in a house, surrounded by a magic circle, and taking every step in order to eventually complete this ritual. It is a tense and fraught thing as the magician hired for this job by our protagonist butts heads with her on several occasions, can be downright mean, and does some real heinous shit in the name of "purifying" the ritual and keeping it on track. It's deeply unpleasant stuff, bordering on watching an abusive relationship play out before our eyes. Though the movie has more visceral horrors in its climax, this is the real horror lurking at play for most of the movie: the fact that this man could snap at the woman at a moment's notice.

That sense of isolation permeates the movie, its setting, and its main theme. Our main protagonist, Sophie, is that isolation. She has retreated to this house to perform this complicated and torturous summoning in order to get vengeance on the occultists who killed her young son. She has isolated herself from the family she has left, in dogged pursuit of this, and endures unspeakable pain and torture in pursuit of this purpose... but the one thing she won't do is ask for forgiveness. That isolation and self-loating is at the very heart of the movie, at the very dark heart of Sophie herself as she goes through the painful months of the ritual. Many of the reviews I saw after watching it called it a "slow burn" movie and it's easy to see why. It just ruminates in this space, these awful feelings, this terrible mood... and then escalates. Its ending is what set the movie a step above for me, though, and I'm choosing not to spoil it but let us just say that enduring this pain and even more causes Sophie to change her mind and find something new to cut against that isolation and hate. Shall we say, perhaps, that Sophie believes in the song in her heart? Cheeky reference, I know, but that's what I got to close this one out. This is a pretty good one, and it grew on me. I don't have much more to say on it. Sometimes, counter to the luxuriously detailed ritual, less is more. Take that less, and enjoy it, and maybe seek this one out this spooky season if you can handle the subject matter.

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 6 (House Of Leaves)

(Special thanks to Sean and Lena for once-overs and ideas. For best results, read in a browser.)

Ba da ba ba

I'm haunted

By the hallways in this tiny room

The echo there of me and you

The voices that are carrying this tune

Ba da ba ba¹

This has been a long time coming. For over 15 years, House Of Leaves has been one of my all-time favorite works of horror. Why, then, have I never covered it for these myriad of marathons? Part of it was the time commitment needed to delve into it, with life being busy in addition to having to juggle 31 other writeups and the time to watch or read them. Even when I slashed that number in half for my own sanity and free time, the book eluded me. This was the year I decided to finally revisit it, and to my delight I discovered that my critical analysis skills had grown enough to be able to cover it. Thanks to my work all year on the Comics Challenge², I have gained the ability to properly talk about the brilliant and strange things this book, this tome, this mysterious artifact contains within its twisty little passages. I am only scratching the surface of House Of Leaves, but that is all I need to do for this. A peek inside the labyrinth. If you choose to delve fully into its maze, then be it on you. For now, just a peek.

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 5 (Nothing But The Night)

 Let's just run with this theme for a bit, shall we? Last time we talked about a strange piece of British media that I likely never would have covered had it not been suggested by a pal. This time, we are going to do that again. Whereas The Worst Witch was family friendly, this is not. Thanks to my British (allegedly) pal Rain, I put my eyes in front of a piece of 70's British horror called Nothing But The Night. Hey, it's got Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in it! You know, from all that other British horror! And it was written by Brian Hayles, who also wrote a whole bunch of good Doctor Who like Curse Of Peladon! And also created the Toymaker. Oh. Oh dear. Well, nobody's perfect. Still, there are good things to say about this film and there isn't a racist cartoon in it so that's always a plus. Let's do our usual thing and dive into it, because it was certainly a film that I watched.

I'm going to be honest. I spent the majority of this watch wondering why in the hell I was doing it for this marathon. Not because it was bad, it was a quite fine example of old British character actors talking to each other and stuff, but it was more of a mystery thriller than anything spooky per se. Yes, the movie opens with bodies being disposed of in various ways to hide how they were murdered, like shooting them at point-blank range to make it look self-inflicted or putting them in a car and having it go off a cliff. There's even a wild fakeout where what seems to be the dashing young protagonist of the movie gets it like 20 minutes in. Someone's picking off these people, and everyone who isn't the assumed protagonist is a trustee in some orphanage so the assumption is that they're being bumped off to get the trust funds or whatever. There's also this traumatized orphan girl who was in a bus crash having nightmares about shit being on fire, and her estranged mother's this problematic ex-con who killed a bunch of people. She's the red herring of the movie, but lord do they spend a lot of time with her crazed vendetta of getting back at the orphanage or... whatever she was up to.

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 4 (The Worst Witch)

Sometimes I encounter shit on this blog and wonder what in the world I'm doing putting it in front of my eyes. The open suggestions are a good thing, usually, but at times they lead to oddities like this. Thanks to my pal Kat, I therefore find myself looking at something that once again steers away from the blood and gore of spooky slashers to something with more family friendly Halloween vibes. A classic tale about magically adept youth at a British school for witches-- NO NOT THAT ONE JESUS CHRIST ALMIGHTY ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND SHE WANTS HALF OF THE FRIENDS I CARE ABOUT TO FUCKING DIE GOOD GOD NO!!! No, we're talking about The Worst Witch. I remember they had a show based on this in the late 90's, probably imported from Britain, and it aired on YTV up here in Canada. I only know of it, however, and so I instead sat down and watched a 70 minute children's movie about witches today. It was alright, and a little weird in places.\

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 3 (V/H/S 85)

See? Something spooky and scary, with blood and gore and screams and other such macabre stuff. The fact that I'm even back here again to begin with is something of a small miracle. Last year we covered the first entry in the V/H/S series. I really didn't like it. It was lurid in ways beyond just handheld camera footage of people getting stabbed in the throat, as many of its segments were just fucking mean to women in a gross frat boy kind of way. Juvenile misogyny of the worst kind on screen. That and the fact that I'm still not over one of the segments of this creepy VHS tape horror anthology being done in the style of online video chat. The fact that it's decent body horror (albeit once again shitty to women in the form of gaslighting them) is irrelevant in the face of abandoning the goddamn gimmick of the movie you're making. I don't think it's too much to ask for all your segments to share the VHS tape aesthetic. Point is, I would have written this whole thing off if it weren't for pals telling me that some of the later ones are really good. So I gave it a shot with this, from just last year. If they can't nail the found footage VHS horror anthology aesthetic in a movie whose segments are set in the 80's, then there's little goddamn hope.

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 2 (Miami Vice: Shadow In The Dark)

Would you look at that? We're back here again. At the start of the year (which feels like it was a million years ago now) I sat down and watched all of Miami Vice. In April, I wrote about it. I had much to say, but I specifically saved one bit of discussion and sent it forward in time by six months. That brings us to the here and now, to one particular episode which aired in the third season on Halloween night of 1986: Shadow In The Dark. Even back then, all those months ago, I knew this episode was something special. Now that I have the knowledge of the whole show with me, I can declare that not only is this episode a pure distillation of one of its core themes, but it actually does it better than some of the big dramatic arcs to come. What terrors await in the humid dark of Miami? Come, and let me show you.

Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 1 (I Saw The TV Glow)

 Well, here we go again. Welcome, one and all, to... what the hell am I calling this again? Hold on. I am looking it up. Ah. Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween. Catchy title. I've been doing this for several years now, you run out of titles. Regardless, please enjoy these posts on spooky media that will be uploaded on every odd day in October, culminating on Halloween with luck. What a film we have to start with. Let's get one thing out of the way, right now, as we define this. I Saw The TV Glow is not your typical horror film. There is no mask-wielding maniac, no supernatural spirit, no buckets of blood. For many this seems to be a dealbreaker... but there are layers to the terror in this, and it's of a particular nuance that seems to elide some folks. I'm going to try and pin it down for you, but first I need to tell you a story about myself. It involves events I've discussed before, but you need the full scope to understand exactly where and how this film hit me where it hurt. If you've not seen this film before... Please, for the love of God, watch it before reading it. Don't let me spoil it for you. We on the same page? Good.

Frezno's Comic Challenge: The Straight Story Six Part 3 (Ducks)

 (TW: sexual assault) 

On July 1st, 1992, the world came to an end in my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador. After 500 years of prosperity, the lifeblood and livelihood of the Newfoundlander ran out. The noble Atlantic codfish, fished to near extinction by the advancements of technology in the modern age, of high-powered ships with draggers literally trawling the ocean floor of all marine life, siphoning up the codfish with more volume than it could repopulate itself. The moratorium which dropped down from the Canadian government was swift, but crushing. Thousands of men, who had fished all their lives and whose fathers had fished all their lives and who had fathers who fished all their lives, going back generations all the way to the heady days of John Cabot and the "discovery" of Newfoundland, out of work. I was seven years old. My generation, the early millennial. The first crop of Newfoundlanders for whom the fishery was not a viable career path. Something had to be done for the tradesman among my peers. Many choices were made, but one that saw some success lay thousands of kilometers away. In the oil sands of Alberta, a far-off place of frigid winters landlocked on all sides, where no soothing ocean breeze could tickle the senses and soothe the soul. Many made that journey. I was not among them, but many did. Some of them are even in the book we'll be talking about today.

A Quantum Microcosm, Shared In The Entanglement Of Synchronicity (New Quantum Leap Season 2) [Part 4]

(Continued from Part 3)

Here we are, then. The last dance. After this bit of analysis, or summary, or whatever I've been doing for the past couple thousand words ends, it's it. Quantum Leap goes away, possibly for good. It's momentous, but I shouldn't eulogize just yet. I should get to talking about the heart of the horror which is about to confront us. Shockingly, it involves discussing yet another running B-plot. I mean, holy shit. I talked in the intro about missing the trees for the forest, but Jesus. Between the Addison and Ben plot, and the Ben and Hannah plot, and now this? That's so many balls being juggled in the air. Remember when this was a show about going back in time and saving people? The simpler days we had. Somewhere, buried in the inky ichor of what this show has become, that ethos remains. Let us define our enemy, then. The final boss of Quantum Leap, the Dark Heart Of America personified. Let us talk about Gideon Rydge.

That third running B-plot thankfully does not require much set-up. In fact, let me try to do it with some brevity. During the timeskip of three years, and in order to leave a pilot light on should Ben ever return from his quantum leaping, Ian made a secret illicit deal with the mysterious Gideon Rydge for a quantum chip. Since you don't want a tech billionaire knowing that time travel is real (even fucked-up time travel like Project Quantum Leap), the function of the chip was kept secret. Rydge, however, put some backdoor code or something into the chip which would transmit data back to him once the chip activated. So now, during all of this relationship drama and the incidentals of saving people, we have a little B-plot wherein Ian, their partner Rachel who works for Rydge, and Jenn try to solve the problem by themselves and plug the leak. Keeping secrets and not trusting your colleagues is a bad idea, and so by about episode 10 Gideon Rydge has found out about Project Quantum Leap and what it is. The shit hits the fan, and someone has to take the fall... and so Magic resigns from the project, naming Jen as his interim successor. This lasts about one episode before Gideon Rydge storms in with armed soldiers and takes over Project Quantum Leap. A tech billionaire with access to time travel. Very bad. Oh, but it gets worse.

The episode this happens in, As The World Burns, is the aforementioned Towering Inferno riff wherein Ben the firefighter has to save Hannah and her son from their burning apartment complex in Baltimore in the 1970s. We talked last time about Hannah's role in this episode, and how she and her swap code are the hope to get Ben home. Annoyingly, just as the gang have decoded that shit, Gideon Rydge comes in to ruin everything. What I didn't talk about last time was Jeffrey Nally, Hannah's son. Having lost his father to a tragic accident, Jeffrey harbors a fair bit of hate and resentment in his heart. He finds it weird how his mom and this random-ass firefighter are talking like they're old friends, and slowly things get even weirder for him. Like how this firefighter seems to know something his dad used to say about courage being a choice, and uses it to motivate Jeffrey during their thrilling escape. Or the fact that his mom gives this random firefighter a kiss after it's all over, and then said firefighter looks all confused and wonders what he's doing here. Yes, Jeffrey is there and witnesses the leap-out, but there's more. Most of their things were destroyed in the fire, but Jeffrey managed to save just one document, and he reads it at the end of this episode. He reads it, in fact, in tandem with the present where Gideon Rydge takes over... which brings us to the final episode of this season. The final episode of Quantum Leap that there is currently, and might be for good. Welcome to Against Time.

To further the collapse of priorities, the leap is an incidental thing here. It's the 1970s again in California, Ben is a racecar driver, and his racecar driver father is about to suffer a heart attack in like 30 minutes. It's a simple leap, really. Standard. We have gone so far from our remit that the actual leap, the going back in time and putting right what once went wrong, has become the sideshow for the main macrocosmic attraction. Or has it? Let's see, but first we define our antagonist. First Gideon Rydge appears as a hologram, to come face-to-face with Ben and let him know why he's doing this. Maybe you figured it out. I did, on broadcast. As I said, As The World Burns and Against Time aired back-to-back. By the time the latter started up, I had my suspicions. They were confirmed. Gideon Rydge is Jeffrey Nally, all grown up. Over 50 years and with hate in his heart, he became a tech billionaire genius, part of the 1%, and eventually took over Project Quantum Leap. All of time and space is at his disposal now, the threat that the military could never capitalize on fully realized. History as the plaything of the \living embodiment of the Dark Heart Of America. As the arbiter of history, Rydge is a petty little creature who plans to use his mother's swap code to change places with Ben, and then lock him up with a picture of Addison in his cell. All so he can remember, every day, what he failed to save. Why is Rydge doing this?

In his mind, Ben is the man who killed his father. The one thing that Jeffrey saved from that burning building was the letter Ben wrote to Hannah, the Back To The Future thing that warned about Josh Nally's aneurysm. Rydge states to Ben what he believes to be the simple cold truth. You killed my father with this piece of paper. As it so happens, the night Josh Nally died, he found this letter. A letter that Ben signed with love, which Josh rages against. HANNAH HOW DOES A STRANGE MAN NAMED BEN KNOW ABOUT MY BLOOD CLOT AND WHY IS HE SAYING HE LOVES YOU IN THIS LETTER? The assertation that Ben is a time traveler only adds more fuel to the fire, and Josh Nally rushes out of the house on a dark and stormy night to drive away from it all, getting into the car accident that will kill him. We have finally arrived at the very heart of this maelstrom. Love and hate swirling together like matter and antimatter, threatening to explode it all. Gideon Rydge, the living embodiment of the Dark Heart Of America, of hate and anger and capitalism and manifest destiny, a monstrosity which looks upon that which puts right what once went wrong and hisses "YOU MADE ME, AND NOW I SHALL UNMAKE THEE." All the hate and heartbreak we've dealt with this season was exorcised from Ben, and now he stares it dead in the face like Frankenstein looking into the watery eyes of his monster. Dear God in heaven. How do we combat this? How do we defeat the personification of the Dark Heart Of America itself, given flesh?

Don't you know by now, dear reader? You heal it. You put right that which once went wrong.

They even break out the old handlink. Maximum
nostalgia, here at the very end.

The exiled of Project Quantum Leap team up with Magic, who has brought the two Calavicci girls, Beth and Janis, along with him. They're going to use Janis's old makeshift accelerator from the last season to get in touch with Ben and advise him, and that solves part of the problem... but let's focus on why they're helping. Beyond that it's the right thing to do, I mean. There's a touching scene set to Sam's old theme from the original show (I am not immune to propaganda) in which Beth and Janis know their original history. They know that Beth originally never waited for Al, and that Sam in his ascension to a Mirror Image went back and changed the ending for his friend. Janis and her sisters would not exist were it not for Quantum Leap and Sam Beckett, and so of course she's going to help them stop Rydge. Here in the final moments of Quantum Leap (though we didn't know it at the time) it's a perfect invocation of the original ethos of the show. A reminder of why we're doing this, why we're even here. We're here because the human personification of a golden retriever did the right thing 97 times over, without hope and witness and reward. Because it was the right thing to do. Sam may be gone, but one wonders: What would he do in this situation? What would he do if confronted with the Dark Heart Of America given flesh? Gideon Rydge with his riches and his hate? I think he'd do what Ben does here, or something very close.

Because there is a plan for stopping Rydge. The raceway Ben has leapt into is very close to where Hannah and Jeffrey live, here in the past. Ben rushes over there in his racecar, and there's a handcrafted 70's computer made by Jeffrey in his garage. This one piece of tech is the stepping stone to the rise of Gideon Rydge and his empire. Smash it to pieces, and you alter the course of history. You change things so that Rydge cannot come to pass. Ben takes a hammer, and has a think about it. It would be so easy to do, especially since we've already had a material cost to the Dark Heart running rampant. Jenn Chou, head of security. She went back in to do a hack on Rydge, to stall him from activating the swap code. She's discovered, held at gunpoint, and refuses to back down... and so is shot dead for it. Now, we should pause here. Back when Doctor Who's last season ended, I made a big to-do about people who watched UNIT get discount Thanos snapped and immediately cynically went "OH THAT MEANS THIS IS GETTING UNDONE THEREFORE THIS EPISODE HAS NO STAKES ANYMORE BAD TV DOCTOR WHO IS DEAD FOREVER'. On broadcast seeing this, I knew this was getting undone. The characters talked about the ramifications of changing Rydge's history changing their personal history. Rydge, for all his evils, still made the quantum chip. Without it, Ben would not have gotten back and none of this would have happened. Things are going to work out, and sometimes it's okay for TV to do that. The point is not the if, but the how. Here's how Ben wins.

He has a hammer in his hands, considering beating the shit out of this computer. His friend's dead, his other friends are exiles, and this tech asshole is about to make history his own personal playground. This cannot come to pass, and yet Ben hesitates. He hesitates because Jeffrey has named the computer after his father. Ben, dear sweet loveable Ben, sees the tree in the forest. He doesn't see the first stepping stone to creating the loathsome Gideon Rydge. He sees the creation of Jeffrey Nally, a confused and hurt teenage boy who lost his dad and still isn't okay with it. The way forward becomes clear. Don't win with hate. Win with love. Instead of fighting Gideon Rydge, the answer is healing Jeffrey Nally. He finds Jeffrey, and he talks straight with him. He explains everything about himself, about grief and loss and how it can metastasize into cancerous, venomous hate. He explains what he does. He saves people, changes their lives for the better, because it's the right thing to do.  He does more than that. He demonstrates by bringing Jeffrey along with him. There's still an elderly racecar driver with a bad heart to save. How fitting is that? It's healing one literal heart that helps heal Jeffrey's metaphorical heart, as he uses his scientific know-how to help Ben build a makeshift defibrillator. The man is saved, and Jeffrey comes through it all with a little more understanding of who this Ben guy is and why he means so much to his mom... and it is enough. The promise of redemption rejected by Richard Martinez is kept here with Jeffrey Nally. The antagonist of the season is shown that the power of Quantum Leap is a force for good, not bad... and trusts in it to find their own personal healing. Martinez was unable to look past his hate. Gideon Rydge of the year 2026 was unable to as well. Jeffrey Nally, however, was... and that's beautiful.

The day is saved, the timeline restored, what once went wrong put right. Gideon Rydge is now one of Project Quantum Leap's generous backers. Jenn is alive and well. All is right with the world... and we even have the swap code. Ben can come home, but he needs a body to swap with. It's Addison who steps up. Addison, whose relationship with Tom reached amicable dissolution after they both realized she still loved Ben. Addison, who Ben has done so much for. He started this entire endeavor to save her, and so this is her returning the favor and saving him. To return him home. Except... Hannah reminded us of something in her last appearance, at the end of this. Home isn't a place for Ben. It's a person. The swap code sends Addison adrift through space and time, but recall the law of quantum entanglement. Two particles in a shared state. Ben is still here, but so is Addison. They are together again, adrift in the macrocosm of time and space. Quantum Leap ends with them running off into the sunset (well, actually the middle of a warzone) together, and though I was imagining what the structure of a season 3 could look like.. this is it. If this is how it had to end, then it's perfect enough. The two separated lovebirds end up back together. Love wins out over hate. In a way, the new show finally heals the wound left upon itself on the original Quantum Leap's ending. The tragedy of Sam Beckett never coming home, never getting to see Al or Donna or Sammy Jo ever again. Not this Quantum Leap. This Quantum Leap gets to reunite its star-crossed lovers, and end on that note. Beautiful.

That's it, then. Quantum Leap, done and dusted. I will admit, part of me soured on it during the middle part of writing these. I started all this off by claiming I was conflicted about this season, that I both loved and hated it. I love it for the message of positivity, how love conquers over hate. I hate it for accelerating the macrocosm, for sidelining the simple act of making ordinary lives better in favor of its overarching plotline. For missing the trees for the forest. There was a serious part of me that wondered if such hubris, such a departure from the original remit of the show, was its death knell. If Quantum Leap had failed, had let the macrocosm overtake it, and that was why it had to go away. Hell, I fled to it to escape the macrocosm of other shows. I should be infuriated that it has happened again, right? I don't think that was entirely the case. It's still an alright season with its heart in the right place at the end, and I think a lot of why I feel this way about it is how I ended up covering it. Things once again feel kind of bloated, with a lot for me to talk about that isn't just the specifics of a leap or its themes. I got to do that here at the end, with Jeffrey and putting right what went wrong with him, so that was nice. Other than that, it's an okay season of television that ended up not doing well enough to greenlight a third okay season of television. It happens.

So, then, we say goodbye to Quantum Leap. Goodbye to that show which I fled to from the macrocosm of other franchises. Goodbye to the show that mellowed me out, made me appreciate something simpler and better. A show which made me laugh and cry and feel so many wonderful things. Quantum Leap. Dear sweet Quantum Leap. You found me at my very own Jeffrey Nally junction point, didn't you? A bitter weirdo with hate in their heart, raging about the betrayals of utopic media. Frothing at the mouth about the Hollow Pursuits of an anxious mess, about Timeless Children robbed of their mercury and moral initiative, about Uranus and Neptune in retrograde and the Rise and Fall of a space empire at war. You saw all of that, and you healed the hate in my heart. You showed me that things could be better, and helped quell that mess in my mind. Ypu put me right just as I was about to go wrong. For that, I thank you dearly. I give you these words from my healed soul out of love and adoration for you, as you sail off into that great unknown. A part of you will always stay with me, as I hope a part of me will always stay with you. Sam. Ben. All the rest. May you always have an angel by your side. 

Happy leaping. 

A Quantum Microcosm, Shared In The Entanglement Of Synchronicity (New Quantum Leap Season 2) [Part 3]

(Continued from Part 2)

We avoided it, for a time, but we can avoid it no longer. Into the swirling maelstrom of macrocosm we go. Into the churning choppy waters of Arc Stuff. It's big and grandiose, but here on its edges before the dark waters we will still find something simple and human to guide us. All of this, all of what is to come, was started with one small act of kindness. These harsh waves began with but a ripple in the water of time. Think back to what we learned long ago, when Sam Beckett faced his Mirror Image: the lives a quantum leaper touches do themselves touch other lives. Every leap, when you think about it, is a massive rewrite of interpersonal macrocosmic history. Each one makes the world a better place, putting right what once went wrong. These changes are never usually shown, only implied by the hologram reading out a lovely little summation at about minute 40 of each episode. New Quantum Leap Season 2 plays different. It will show the full scope of one such change; how it makes one person's life just a little better, albeit not without some hardships and adversity. That's just life, though, and the macrocosmic ramifications will come home to roost later. For now, let's see the change. Let's see what Ben did.

In order to understand, we have to go back to Closure Encounters. The Roswellian conspiracy leap which flirts with the idea that UFOs are real before revealing it was all just top secret military stuff. What I neglected to mention was one particular person Ben meets on this leap. He strikes a rapport with a young waitress named Hannah Carson. Do remember that at this time Ben is still reeling from having just been told he's lost Addison because it was three years and she didn't wait for him. Hannah, then, is just the sort of friend he needs on such a leap. She's sweet, charming, and also knows a little about physics herself. Hannah is a brief side character on this leap, but she is a nice enough young lady. So it is that, before leaping away, Ben writes down some info about a Princeton physics program for women that will start up in the future. A sweet gesture. Something to help Hannah get out of dead-end Arizona, to go and live her dreams of being a scientist. A kindness as Ben is hurting. This one kindness is the foundation for the entire arc. Everything that happens from here on happens as a result of this (or has already happened as a result of this, depending on how much predestination we believe in, but put a pin in that), and we get to see it very soon.

Which takes us nicely back into Secret History, the treasure hunt for Einstein's fusion generator formula which also has copious amounts of Nazis getting punched, losing swordfights, and getting arrested. Fittingly, there was a secret history here which I was evading last time, and here it is. Ben is assisted in this leap by none other than a slightly older Hannah Carson. Furthermore, Ben actually tells Hannah that he is a time traveler from the future in this second meeting. Again, we need to sit back and focus on the significance of all this. Ben even muses at the end of the episode that leaping doesn't work like this: he meets people, works hard to improve their lives and make a difference, and then never sees them again as he leaps off to the next problem to solve. The pool of people who have met a quantum leaper more than once is quite small: you can't count them on one hand, but you can count them on two. Add to that the number of people who know that the person in front of them is a quantum leaper from the future? That's like, three people from the old show (two of whom are Evil Leapers) and Richard Martinez. A significant thing has happened here. Ben Song and Hannah Carson have become quantum entangled, ensnared in a web of fate and predestination that will tug at their heartstrings. Again, at the end of the episode, Ben straight up kisses Hannah. He's hurting from his breakup and there's a clear sense of rebound and struggling to heal his heart, but here he is making a connection again with someone else, entangled across this woman's timeline. What will come of that? Many things.

Notably, right after this is the witch trials episode, in which Ben fully heals from the hate in his heart. This second meeting with Hannah is clearly an inspiration for that, and finding a real and tangible human connection is what helps him get over that misery. The power of the microcosm yet again. 'Twas love, everyone... and yet, the macrocosm looms. It seems dainty and innocent enough now, but last time was a struggle to talk about things that weren't the arc. Having exhausted that, everything else is major. Hannah Carson, the whip-smart curly dimpled physicist who Ben had a meetcute with, is going to keep popping up. Literally right after this, the next episode is their third meeting. Nomad is a Cold War-era spy thriller set in Egypt, in which Ben has to help an Egyptian superspy codenamed Nomad to make it out of the world of espionage and intel alive. Hannah is also here, and also helping. Fittingly, Ben is also a nomad given the whole leaping through time thing, and Hannah gets to muse that maybe a place isn't Ben's home, but a person. Could it be Hannah? We luxuriate a bit on the second act low point when it seems like Nomad has been captured by the East and is surely dead, the leap a failure... but would it be so bad if Ben got to spend the rest of his life with Hannah in the past? The leap is a success, but the fact that the very failure of the series parameter can be met with a "Well, look on the bright side" says volumes. I do enjoy Ben and Addison's relationship here, though: they both care for the other very much, even if they're not in love right now, and just want what's best for their respective ex-partner. Fittingly, now that Ben has learned this skill, he and Hannah are about to have a relationship much the same.

The very next episode, Off The Cuff. is also a Hannah leap, though in its defense there was a Christmas break between episodes here. It's also the final Hannah leap before the two-part finale, so the macrocosm is growing. Hannah's involvement is a twist this time, as initially this is just a leap involving Ben as a bounty hunter trying to get a guy into custody while being stalked by hired goons trying to kill the bounty. I feel like Quantum Leap really likes the idea of bounty hunters as a leap concept. The old show did it at least twice in my memory, maybe even three times, and Season 1 of the new show had that one with the bounty hunters who got married at the end. I guess hilarity ensues when you're handcuffed to your enemy for an episode. Anyway, the bounty is named Kevin Nally, and halfway into the episode he has the bright idea of hiding out from the hired goons (and getting medical treatment for Ben who's been a little banged up from the escapades) at his brother's farmhouse. This gets us to met Josh Nally, a doctor who treats Ben's wounds. We also meet Josh's family, including his son Jeffrey and his wife Hannah. OH SHIT MIC DROP THERE SHE IS. Yeah, so since Ben has been jumping across her timeline by massive gaps of years and years, Hannah has settled down with a nice young man and started a family. Showing how much he's grown, though, Ben isn't saddened by this. The pair still have that connection, that spark between them. To make a long story short, the day is saved and science is used to drive off the goons trying to kill Kevin, but Addison has a bit of bad news just before Ben leaps: Josh Nally will die of an aneurysm in 18 months. Before Ben can warn her, he leaps.

Okay, so bummer there. The next two episodes we've discussed already (the treasure hunting one and the one with the pesticide company getting exposed), but there is some minor Hannah arc stuff which happens. In the first, Ben reacts to being unable to warn Hannah about Josh's impending death with a clever idea: he pulls a Back To The Future and writes a letter to Hannah, to be delivered to her in 18 years, warning her to have her husband checked out for that health condition in order to save his life. It's a wonderful idea, but it doesn't work: as is relayed next episode, Josh Nally still died. The aneurysm was treated successfully, but soon after he was killed in a car accident. What a shame. Ben tried, but the assumption here is that Josh Nally's death was just an unavoidable accident, or maybe even a fixed point sort of thing that has to happen. The latter is a little gruesome to think about, considering what comes up next, but we can't confront that yet. Speaking of not confronting things, there's only one Hannah episode left. We'll really jam with its ramifications next time, but to give a quick summary of As The World Burns to set the stage: The apartment complex in Baltimore which Hannah and Jeffrey moved to after Josh's death catches fire, and Ben has leapt into a firefighter in order to save a whole bunch of people from the blaze. There's one very important thing which pays off here, and now we have to face a different macrocosm: We have to talk about the back at the project plot, and the swap code.

A magic spell to heal the lonely heart.

Right at the midseason break, Tom Westfall reveals this top secret piece of super-code that the government has in archive which could theoretically do a quantum leap swap: that is, Ben could trade places with someone in the present and return home to everyone. It is, however, a very advanced code, and Ian struggles with decoding it for quite some time. During the fire, Hannah gets trapped by some debris and Ben has to rush off to save Jeffrey from the flames. At that moment, Hannah codes in dust, revealing that not only was she the super-genius behind the code, but that she has the missing piece needed to complete it. Let us stop here and revel for a minute. All of this, this expanse lasting about three decades of Hannah Carson-Nally's life, culminates here. Ben was not thinking of his own personal gain when he gave Hannah the tip to go to Princeton all those years ago. He was just making one life a little better. Business as usual for a quantum leaper. The sheer scope and consequence of that one decision rippled, and is still rippling. All of this, all that has happened and will happen. Swordfighting Nazis for Einstein's formula, thrilling chases to escape Soviet agents in Cairo, barricading a farmhouse against gangsters hellbent on invading it and killing you, and escaping a towering inferno while trying to save as many people as you can. All of that, because Ben was kind to a random waitress once. Now look at what the rippling has unearthed: the swap code, cultivated in the mind of a genius for half a lifetime, to get Ben back to his home. This is the power of Quantum Leap. No, wait. That's not quite right. It is that, yes, but it's more. This is the power of love.

But, as love beats in the heart, so does hate. Ben's one act of kindness changed the trajectory of Hannah's life. It brought them together, and it brought Ben his salvation. Salvation from the anguish of his breakup, and the possibility of returning to his home. There are darker consequences, though. Ben did his best, and he did it all in the name of love... but ripples can uncover dark things within the waves. As Ben and Hannah's hearts beat for love, the dark heart of America beats for hate and misery and imperialism and all those other horrible things we talked about. Ben's actions have given that dark heart a good and strong defibrillation, and now it's awake. It's awake, and we have to deal with our season's antagonist. A certain irony has not escaped me. I started this off by accusing this series of losing the trees for the forest. Some thousand words in, all I've really done is tell you all the arc shit that's happened. I feel as if I've let you all down again, and for that I apologize. I can only hope you've been liking the words, but even I feel as if the macrocosm has weighed down on us. We're in the eye of the storm, in the middle of the black hole here now.

The end of Quantum Leap approaches. The end of love, of life, of putting right what once went wrong. One last desperate battle with the dark heart of America. Let's go.

(Continued in Part 4)

A Quantum Microcosm, Shared In The Entanglement Of Synchronicity (New Quantum Leap Season 2) [Part 2]

(Continued from Part 1)

Well, actually, I can only tell you half that story. There is a massive series of swirling macrocosms at the heart of New Quantum Leap Season 2, and the full tale of Ben and Addison's loss and healing is caught in that maelstrom. More to the point, most of the episodes are caught up in that particular arc as well. To take things in all at once would dilute the focus I am going for, so I find myself furtively turning the rudders to try and cut against this grandiose current. I can't avoid it forever, but if I can avoid it for around 2000 more words then all the better. Mercifully, there are still some standalone leaps to talk about, and even some of the ones tied into the arc have elements to them that can still be discussed here. Consider this segment one last dance with the original remit of Quantum Leap: putting a leaper up against the dark heart of American history itself, looking that darkness right in the eye and defying it. Making the world a better place, one ordinary life at a time. It will not satisfy the macrocosm's hunger, but it will sate it just long enough for us to prepare. 

A Quantum Microcosm, Shared In The Entanglement Of Synchronicity (New Quantum Leap Season 2) [Part 1]

Well, how about that? You came back to hear some more about the new Quantum Leap. Or you came here fresh and are all confused now. I don't know, I just take this conversational tone to get my foot in door. Whatever the case, last time we discussed the first season of New Quantum Leap. To make a long story (which you hopefully read or will read) short, it radically reinvented the structure of the show, adding in B plots and season arcs and mystery boxes to be opened with gasps and oohs and ahhs. I thought it was pretty good, and not without its merits. It did good enough to get a second season, and that is what I'll be talking about here for an amount of words. Notably, though, this is it. Somewhere along the line, Quantum Leap failed with its second season and it did not get renewed for a third. For the first time since I began this journey in 2022, I know a world where there is no new Quantum Leap on the horizon. It's unfortunate, but I am okay with it. I have made my peace, and we will discuss the thirteen episodes we got... but what went wrong?

Frezno's Comics Challenge: September 2024 (Annihilator)

Here we are, once again, and this time I'm really being challenged. Not since the great Unflattening have I had to cover a comic with such intricacies going on under the hood. I'm not sure I fully understand it myself, but by God I have an angle on it and I'm going to try. I tried this time, Sean. I want that on the record. It might help to quantify and clarify what and who we're covering this go around. Annihilator is a comic written by Grant Morrison, a comics legend and a Scottish magician of some import and influence. I've encountered them before, long ago on the Halloween marathon. Their comic Nameless is one which, I'm sorry to say, completely stymied my critical analysis skills to the point where I threw up my hands and went "I don't get it". I've never done that before. Shameful. Now I've learned a little about talking about comics (just a little) and I'm back up against the infinite imagination and incantations of Morrison. Alright. What have you got for me?

Coming Soon: Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween

 Hey all! It's been a little bit, and I have been cracking at words when I can break through the crippling sense of writer's block. It's a lot, but I have to deal with it because the busy fall season is fast approaching. November with its Na-- They did what? Uh okay, I mean... Non-Specific November Writing Month. I have some stuff in the pipeline here for September. A few more Comics Challenges, and New Quantum Leap Season 2. Then I can get at the main stuff. Which, here's the announcement and leadup to one of them. That's right, October approaches and it is once again time for the SPOOKY MARATHON in which I spend every other day on here briefly talking about something spooky. I got like half a list made up, but for the rest that's where you come in! I am open to spooky media suggestions, so please follow the... following guidelines.

-I think at this point I know my way around the Internet and can get my hands on most cinematic material, but for obscure edge cases keep that in mind.

-My only real trigger/phobia, beyond a very specific case, is wrist or throat slashing. If such scenes are signposted in the movie such that it's obvious they're going to happen, I can avert my eyes in time. If there's only one or two such scenes in the movie, it's fine with a warning. If it's something where such things are the main method of murder, that's a hard pass.

-I am open to other media, like brief forays into TV shows or comics or what have you, but it's not my main area of expertise and I'll need a relatively affordable or even cost-free way of access to cover it. This part I may be able to handle on my own, but it's a case-by-case basis and depends on context.

I don't have much else to say but that, I'm actually banging this out before I run to the store and do yardwork so it's a fun race against time. Woo, deadlines. Here's a picture of Juniper from Fields Of Mistria, a farming sim game I've been streaming on Monday nights. I'm love her. Happy September, and see you soon for comics and Quantum Leap and then the spooky stuff.

Frezno's Comics Challenge: The Straight Story Six Part 2 (My Adventures With Superman: Jon Kent)

Oh good Christ. I suppose I had to confront this madness sometime during all of this. After 3/4ths of a year broadening my horizons, covering corporate magical girl wars, space capitalism, the unflattening of perspective and consciousness, road trips through the dark heart of America, and the pitfalls and perils of wishing... I have arrived to face down the monolith that is Mainstream Superhero Comics. And it's the Mainstream Superhero to boot. Well, a version of him, anyway. The contrast and shock is palpable. It's as if, after a night of classy dining at a new restaurant and tasting hereto unknown dishes with their own flavor palates and unique buildups which set your taste buds alight with fresh boldness... your dessert is a pack of Oreos. There's nothing wrong with Oreos, per se. Sometimes you're just in the mood for something trashy that's not good for you, because of the sweetness. It's junk, but a little junk can be fine. Sometimes. After a night of fine dining, though? Not so much.

Frezno's Comics Challenge: August 2024 (Shubeik Lubeik)

But first, a good comic. Hello, and welcome back once again to the Comics Challenge. It was around this time in the Criterion Challenge when I started losing steam because all the interesting movies I wanted to see had been seen, and I was winding down to the ones that felt like work. There was also the fact that I got what I needed out of that challenge at this point. That's not true here. I still have lots to learn about comics criticism, but I am enjoying learning it. I am also enjoying broadening my horizons and learning more things about more storytellers on this weird and wild Earth of ours. To wit then, we're off to Egypt this month for Deena Mohamed's Shubeik Lubeik. That's enough preamble, so let's get on with it.

Frezno's Comics Challenge: July 2024 (Pluto)

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. Well, it will end when Sean runs out of comics for me to cover for it, but I just really wanted to make that specific Emerson Lake And Palmer reference to get my foot in the door of talking about this. For the second time in a row and the third time overall, we're in the wide world of black and white comics. Once again it's a manga, but it was a doozy. Naoki Urasawa's (or really, Urasawa X Tezuka if we're being technical) Pluto is the longest thing I've had to cover by far here. 65 serialized chapters of manga. If I had more time, I could spin this into a really long deep dive coverage of all its themes and foibles the way I do with Quantum Leap and other things (Season 2's next, incidentally). As I had a bit of a whirlwind for the first half of July 2024, however, that led me on a bit of a time crunch. I think it's going to make the piece better. Some of that good old-fashioned brevity which makes the Twin Peaks posts I did last year sing. Let's do a little of that and talk about Pluto.

A Quantum Microcosm, Shared In The Entanglement Of Synchronicity (New Quantum Leap Season 1) [Part 4]

(Continued from Part 3)

We have already made much about how the first season of New Quantum Leap runs on the theme of trust. To that point, then, the antagonistic thematic force of such a series can only be mistrust, which is exactly what we uncover when the full scope of the mysterious mystery is revealed to us. Breaking linearity once and for all, let's talk about what is learned when the answers are before us. 30 years into the future, in the year 2051, the world has ended thanks to global thermonuclear war. The remnants of the United States military blame Project Quantum Leap for the apocalypse, assuming that somewhere somehow they must have broken time and created this horrible timeline where everyone is dead. In a last ditch effort to use the power of quantum leaping to put right what once went wrong, a loyal soldier and patriot named Richard Martinez is sent leaping through time and space. His leaps take him to at least three other moments in time where a wrong must be corrected, and his ultimate goal is Project Quantum Leap itself, in the year 2018, where he will put the needs of the many over the needs of the few and destroy the quantum leap accelerator himself there. With no illusions as to his own ability to get back, Martinez is like many soldiers before him in making the ultimate sacrifice and making the hard choice to lose some lives in order to do what he thinks is right.