Tag: Hellmouth

Homelander’s Humiliation

The Dark Herald was deeply unimpressed with the ending of The Boys, which might actually be worse than the ending of A Game of Thrones:

This last season has been a voyage of self-parody. All of the characters are completely malignant, all of them are caricatures of themselves from the first season. Billy Butcher played by the legendary Karl Urban got it the worst. A man on a path of revenge who becomes just as bad as the monster he’s hunting was turned into a cockney swearing machine. Even the show started clowning on it.

The one bright spot throughout the entire series is universally acclaimed as being Anthony Starr. His performance as Homelander has been a desperate battle for him to out-act the show’s terrible writing. But in the end, there was only so much poor Anthony could do when buried in such godawful material.

His effort to make Homelander a legendary villain was destroyed by showrunner Eric Kripke’s need to humiliate the character. Homelander’s begging for his life before Butcher kills him has already stabilized into an internet meme where the death speeches of great film villains are turned into Homelander’s ritual humiliation.

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They Were Better Back Then

I’m not sure comedy is even allowed in the Hellmouth these days. But we definitely didn’t know how good we had it in the 80s when great movies like Big Trouble in Little China were considered third-tier releases.

The brilliance of the movie is that it never tells Jack Burton he isn’t the hero.

That’s important because lesser versions of this script would have turned him into a joke. They would have had the universe stop every five minutes so the audience could be directed to point and laugh at the dumb white trucker stumbling through Chinatown. But Big Trouble in Little China doesn’t do that. Carpenter clearly likes Jack too much for that.

Jack is not incompetent because he’s stupid or cowardly. He’s incompetent because he has accidentally wandered into a world with a completely different operating system than the one he understands. He thinks he’s in a Seventies trucker action movie. Wang Chi knows they’re in a Hong Kong supernatural fantasy.

And the movie never breaks character on either side of that divide.

Jack keeps behaving exactly like the protagonist of a Kurt Russell action picture. He makes big speeches over the CB radio. He kicks doors open. He charges into danger with absolute confidence. The problem is that his confidence has almost no relationship with reality.

This is one of the few movies, like the first two Godfathers and the first Hangover, that I’ll find myself still watching 15 minutes after flipping past it. If you haven’t seen it, you should really give it a shot. Just don’t take it anymore seriously than it takes itself.

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Mr. Tubcuddle’s Last Ride

I was never that impressed with GOOD OMENS, which to me read like an inferior attempt to write a Douglas Adams pastiche; it wasn’t terrible but it was about the level of Terry Pratchett’s early Discworld novels. But the television show was popular with a certain crowd, mostly due to the two lead actors, Michael Sheen and David Tennant, until news of Mr. Gaiman’s alleged tubcuddling antics went public.

One of the bigger questions coming out of the scandal’s fallout was what would happen to the SANDMAN and GOOD OMENS series. As it turns out, the wiser decision would have been to simply end both of them on the spot, given how well the latter turned out.

Good Omens Season 3 premiered on Prime Video this week. It is not a true season, but instead a 90-minute finale episode, the compressed wreckage of what was supposed to be a six-episode third season before the show’s creator was accused of sexual assault by multiple women and removed from production.

The Guardian gave it two stars, calling it “possibly the biggest imbalance in TV history between dazzling cast and stale script.” Mama’s Geeky: “messy execution leaves much to be desired. It struggles to find its footing as a rushed finale.” A Medium writer called the script “abysmal” and wrote that Michael Sheen and David Tennant’s real-life friendship was “the only reason to watch.” The Guardian’s Jack Seale called it a “puzzling mess.” Rotten Tomatoes currently sits at 60% from critics — the lowest score in the series’ history. Season 1 held 85%. Season 2 held 88%.

To understand why Season 3 is what it is, you need to understand where Season 2 left off. Season 2 went beyond the source material, following Aziraphale and Crowley as they contended with an amnesiac angel Gabriel, matchmade for some humans, and navigated their own romantic feelings for each other. It ended on a devastating cliffhanger: Crowley professes his love for Aziraphale and begs the angel to run away with him, leaving the fight between heaven and hell behind. Aziraphale turns him down and chooses to return to heaven to become Supreme Archangel, tasked with organizing the Second Coming of Christ.

That cliffhanger is what Season 3 was supposed to resolve across six episodes. It resolved it in 99 minutes.

I don’t know why this should surprise anyone. No doubt Mr. Tubcuddle is going to attempt a comeback, sooner or later, but since his talent, which is genuine, but trivial, and mostly involves repackaging and reselling the original ideas of others, I suspect this fizzled fart of an attempt to continue feeding off the literary corpse of Terry Pratchett will prove to be Mr. Tubcuddle’s last ride.

Prime Video really should have just said no.

It’s not a good way to unwind if you value your behind

You’ll just wish you had declined when he asked you.

You don’t want to join the club

There’s no bubbles in the tub

Just say no, say no, it’s no trouble

You don’t want to join the club

There’s no bubbles in the tub

Just say no, Mr. Tubcuddle

It’s just one of the greatest songs of all time. Although personally, I prefer the deep bass funk groove of the Coraline’s Eyes mix, to say nothing of that guitar solo at 2:45.

UPDATE: After remastering the Transgressions mix, I couldn’t resist the urge to produce an even more brutally savage one in honor of the occasion, the Never Clean mix. It’s a beautiful 4 minutes and 24 seconds of pure and unadulterated contempt. It’s also up on UATV. It’s the best one yet.

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The End of Hollywood

Fandom Pulse contemplates the significance of what was demonstrated yesterday with the animated ATOB:

Big Hollywood animation budgets start at $100 million. Traditional 2D animation outsourced to South Korea or the Philippines runs into the tens of thousands per minute for anything at broadcast quality. That economic wall has kept independent animated projects in development hell for decades, talented creators with great source material who simply couldn’t afford to make the thing move. That wall just cracked.

Any indie comic artist sitting on years of finished panels now has a direct pipeline to animation at a fraction of traditional production costs. The storyboard problem, normally one of the most expensive phases of animation pre-production, is already solved. It’s called their back catalog.

The quality ceiling will keep rising as the models improve. Seedance 2.0 is one iteration. Whatever comes next will handle model collapse better, bridge shots more smoothly, and push output closer to broadcast standard without human cleanup. Day’s timeline revision from 18-24 months to “now” happened in a single experimental session. That pace doesn’t slow down.

Arkhaven has a deep library. A Throne of Bones, Midnight’s War, Alt-Hero, years of finished panels that are now, in practical terms, an animation pipeline waiting to be switched on. Day’s confidence that this becomes a feature film isn’t bravado. The math supports it.

It’s not there yet, but it’s coming, and it’s coming fast. And Arkhaven will be more than ready for it.

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The Academy Unleashes The Gay

That certainly didn’t take long. It’s not as if they actually fooled anyone:

Fans have been wondering when the woke shoe will drop even further with Starfleet Academy, but now it’s revealed that the characters played by Gina Yashere and Tig Notaro are going to be lesbian in a new interview with the cast members.

I haven’t seen it. I’m entirely confident that I will never see it. But when someone told me that at least Starfleet Academy wasn’t pushing Pride, I told them, “yeah, give it a week or two”.

Every. Single. Time.

No worries. JDA and I have something very, very cool in the works that will be coming much, much sooner than anyone imagined.

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The Name is Bezos. Jeff Bezos.

Amazon bought creative control of the James Bond franchise, and for a lot less than you’d probably imagine:

Sooner or later everyone has a price, but in the case of James Bond ‘s former paymasters it’s significantly lower than the incredible sums being reported as recently as last week. After 25 films, six 007’s and countless foiled attempts at world domination, long-term producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael C Wilson sold the hugely popular spy franchise to Amazon MGM for a widely reported £1 billion, in February.

But a recent earnings report from Wilson and Broccoli’s Eon Productions suggests the true figure is notably less than initially thought.

‘On 20 February 2025, the company entered into an agreement for the sale of its interest in the Bond franchise, all associated assets as well as its subsidiary companies, B24 Limited and B25 Limited,’ reads the report, published by Variety. The total consideration for the sale amounted to $20 million (USD).’

The deal gives Jeff Bezos and Amazon MGM full creative control of the franchise going forward, while forming a joint venture with Wilson and Broccoli to manage intellectual property rights.

If Amazon can do for Bond what it did for Lord of the Rings, it should be available for a lot less in the not-too-distant future. Sure, it’s possible they learned their lesson, certainly a lot of other film studios did. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

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The Revelation of the Mole People

PREMISE: Set in a city-sized underground bunker in Colorado three years after a doomsday event, the series follows United States Secret Service agent Xavier Collins as he seeks to discover the truth behind the killing of the President of the United States. As Xavier comes under suspicion for President Bradford’s death, he searches for answers about what really happened, and is unsure of whom he can trust as his questions lead to many shocking revelations.

It appears that the television show Paradise is an exercise of the revelation of the method practiced by the elite occultists.

Catherine Austin Fitts, who served as the assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Housing between 1989 and 1990, appeared on former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s podcast last Tuesday to claim that the United States government has spent a whopping $21 TRILLION over several years building an underground city for the wealthiest and most powerful in the country.

To help back up her allegation, the 74-year-old Fitts cited a report released by Michigan State University economist Mark Skidmore. The economist and their team said in their paper that they had uncovered $21 trillion in “unauthorized spending” in both the Department of Defense and Housing and Urban Development from 1998 to 2015.

Fitts told Tucker that money was used to develop an “underground base, city infrastructure, and transportation system” hidden from the entire country.

“We have built an extraordinary number of underground bases and, supposedly, transportation systems,” she said. “Some of these are documented as part of the national security infrastructure, but I think there are many more in the United States and all over the world.”

Fitts added that she and a team of investigators spent between 2021 and 2023 collecting “all the data and all the information on underground bases.” She estimated they had found roughly 170 in America and under the ocean around America.

Personally, I am absolutely unconcerned, mostly because I very much doubt the competence of the current globalist elite to correctly calculate or anticipate anything, up to and including an “extinction-level event”. And if that extinction-level event is the one described in The Revelation of St. John, then by all means, let the riders ride.

The Return of the King is nothing for his subjects to fear.

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Russell Brand Arrested

One can’t say that this arrest comes as a huge surprise. Although I had Jared Leto and Neil Gaiman higher on my Arrest Bingo card than Russell Brand. It’s not a great time to be a skeezy celebrity known for preying upon one’s fans, however “consensually” one wishes to insist it all was.

British police on Friday charged Russell Brand with rape and sexual assault following an 18-month investigation sparked when four women alleged they had been assaulted by the controversial comedian.

London’s Metropolitan Police force said Brand, 50, faces one count of rape, one of indecent assault, one of oral rape and two of sexual assault. The alleged offenses involve four women and took place between 1999 and 2005 in central London and the English seaside town of Bournemouth.

Police said the investigation remains open and urged anyone with relevant information to contact the force.

In September 2023, British media outlets Channel 4 and the Sunday Times published claims by four women of being sexually assaulted or raped by Brand. The accusers have not been identified.

The comedian, author and “Get Him To The Greek” actor has denied the allegations, saying his relationships were “always consensual.”

Brand is due to appear in a London court on May 2.

The obvious question this raises is if it’s only celebrities currently out of favor with the media who will be held accountable before the law or if it will go after its skeezy darlings too.

And, you know, what about those Pakistani rape gangs whose victims number in the thousands?

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A WORKING MAN Review

Fandom Pulse reviews the film based on Chuck Dixon’s first Levon Cade novel.

A Working Man with Jason Statham is out in theatres this week and is beating Snow White for the top of the box office. The movie is a lot of fun with Jason Statham’s action delivering with a great character in Levon Cade and a cool supporting cast. There are some problems with the film, however, which stem from caricature villains as well as a couple of moments where the kidnapped young girl Jenny Garcia gets a little too “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” as a strong female lead in moments. These elements were not in the book Levon’s Trade, which was a much darker, more serious action thriller, and it’s a shame they didn’t follow the tone of that book more closely.

There are always going to be changes and compromises when translating a story from one medium into another. What works in a novel, or in a comic book, simply doesn’t work on film. And, of course, different media have different tropes and cliches toward which those who are operating in that medium tend to gravitate; given that David Ayers directed both THE BEEKEEPER and A WORKING MAN, the chances that the villains weren’t going to be colorful cartoons was zero.

However, the rising profile of The Legend suggests the possibility that the next movie in the Levon Cade series will be more true to the books, especially considering that nearly all of the criticism of what has thus far been a very successful film has been focused on various elements that were never in the novel. Chuck was not involved in writing the script, but we can hope that he will be in the next one.

And there will be no Hollywood influence at all in the films on which we are presently working; I’m very pleased to be able to say that not only has The Legend’s BLACK WARRANT already been optioned by a film production company, but there is a significant level of interest in what we’re tentatively calling the Silververse, a century-long shared Arkhaven comics universe that includes traditional heroes created by The Legend, Razorfist, JDA, and myself.

RED HORNET is a 1980s superhero.

The Diversity, Inclusivity, and Equality initiatives imposed by Marvel and DC Comics has utterly destroyed traditional superheroes such as The Punisher, Spiderman, Batman, and The Phantom, but when the old heroes fall, new heroes rise.

On a side note, those who have been around for a long time will recall the eerie coincidence when, two days after I published a short story called THE DEPORTED here on this site, the small Italian town in which it was set was completely destroyed by a landslide and had to be evacuated. So, you can probably imagine the thought that crossed my mind when two days after completing a climactic scene set in an abandoned skyscraper in certain city in Asia, I was greeted with headlines that read “Massive Earthquake in Bangkok; Tower Collapses”.

Fortunately, it turned out to be a different tower. And honestly, I don’t think I can be held responsible for the fates of all the towers in Bangkok. Although if a natural disaster takes place in Stockholm this week, I will have to give serious consideration to laying down my creative pen.

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The Evil of the Devil Mouse

Just in case you didn’t fully comprehend the complete extent of Disney’s inversion and devotion to pure Satanic wickedness, note that they not only race-mixed the bird, but they even got rid of the bluebird, the innocent symbol of spring and hope, and replaced it with a carrion-eating black vulture, an ugly symbol of evil and death.

Fortunately, most Americans are onto them now. The live-action inversion of the animated Snow White appears to be bombing harder than even the most negative projections had anticipated. If the reports of a $16 million Friday box office are correct, and assuming past patterns hold, the film’s opening three-day weekend should be around $34 million, which is way below the disastrous $50 million industry projections of a bomb and even worse than the $37.5 million worst-case estimate by Box Office Theory.

This would point to a domestic total of $85 million, which would be an absolutely brutal catastrophe for the Devil Mouse, particularly in light of the fact that the flow of government funds to it are being actively disrupted.

I would go so far as to say that the Devil Mouse may not survive four years of a second Trump administration.

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