Netflix Says Yes to More Punisher

In what might be the least surprising news of the day, Netflix has reportedly ordered a Punisher Spin-Off series. I have yet to watch Daredevil Season 2 but from what I understand The Punisher plays a large roll in the first 4 or 5 episodes. A couple of the more mainstream media outlets like Entertainment Weekly didn't really think the Punisher stuff was that great but from the buzz on twitter a lot of net nerds really really liked it so I'm not surprised at all that Netflix would order a spin-off.

If I had to take a guess, I don't think this will be the last time Netflix will green light a spin off based off one of their Marvel properties. I'll bet this will become pretty standard practice. Marvel's original deal with Netflix was for 4 series. Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Iron Fist, with a small mini-series team up show with all those characters in it called The Defenders. Even with the short 10-13 episode seasons they use that's like 52 episodes, more when you start including the second seasons. That's a lot of time to sort of test the waters with new characters that Marvel doesn't have movie plans for. Hopefully, fingers crossed we can get a Runaways series out of this. If Ned Stark losing his head blew your mind, the finale of Runaways would like... double blow your mind.

Who do you love now? Hover bikes!

Evil Scientist and possible Cobra weapon designer Colin Furze built a fully functioning hoverbike. And by fully functioning I mean impossible to steer and holy crap that thing is going to kill someone. He wants to start selling them to the public next year, which doesn't sound like a problem at all. Nope, no lawsuits here.

Pre Vis Action

Pre Vis Action is a short film created by Yayan Ruhian, Cecep Arif Rahman and Gareth Evans, 3 guys best knows for their work on The Raid. It went up on youtube a few months ago but up until recently I wasn't able to embed it. Here's the quick description:

In a time of civil war, a young warrior is given the task of delivering a treaty between two rival lords. During her journey through the woods however, she finds herself hunted by two assassins intent on intercepting her message of peace in a bid to maintain the fear, instability and violent rule of their leader.

I hope this is a precursor to something bigger. I'd love to see a genre movie like this from the guys that made The Raid. Really I'd just like to see anything from those guys. It was cool seeing them in The Force Awakens but they didn't really get to run on any walls and snap any necks in that.

Normal Links

This is Just a Normal Day in Russia. The third link here is super depressing so let's start things off with something fun. Man those Russians sure are crazy. I really want to know the story behind all those raw chickens and the row of computers. Is that some sort of Counterstrike level I've never seen?

Destin Sandlin Straps Himself Into a Falling Helicopter to Prove Neil deGrasse Tyson Wrong. Is it just me or are people starting to get tired of Neil deGrasse Tyson's shit? I don't really need an astrophysicist to tell me that the science behind some popular movie is kinda garbage. Just tell me what we need to bring back Pluto and cut it with all the cute "um actually..." nonsense.

'I Hope You Get Raped Again': Women Sportswriters Listen to Men Read Vile Tweets About Them. Sweet Fancy Moses, what on earth is wrong with people? Why would you say that to someone? Especially, over something as trivial as sports? It's insane. This whole world has gone insane.

I get it when bratty teenagers who don't know any better call people homo on Xbox Live, teenagers are stupid and do stupid stuff. I don't think I'll ever understand why an adult would enjoy lobbing horrible racist or sexist insults to people on social media. What do you gain from that? Does it really make you feel better about yourself to say you're going to kill or rape someone? People are the worst.

Investigating the Avril Lavigne Conspiracy. The Avril Lavigne doppelganger conspiracy is one of my favorite because of how ridiculous it is. Like some Avril fans just can't get over the fact that the girl who sang Sk8ter-Boi would grow up to marry the guy from Nickleback. If you ask me that's exactly the kind of thing the girl who sang Sk8ter-Boi would do.

On the other hand the Katy Perry grew up to be JonBenet Ramsey thing is totally true.

Get Those High Waisted Shorts The Hell Out Of Here.

I like pleated skirts and ponytails as much as the next guy but I don't think I will ever understand cheerleading. I get the appeal of cheerleading, I've seen all the Bring it On movies several times, but when I try and look at it through an objective lens, I can't shake the fact that it seems incredibly sexist. It was born in an era where women weren't allowed to participate but were expected to support the men and in the last 50 years it's been super sexualized to the point where no one even thinks twice that every NFL squad has a bikini calendar.

Yes, I know there's more to cheerleading than short skirts and Eliza Dushku bikini car washes but... I don't know, it doesn't seem like the more positive points of cheerleading culture offset all the weird sexist stuff. Anyway I bring this all up because the University of Washington put out a helpful infographic (seen above) to aspiring cheerleaders that just emphasized how weirdly sexist (and possibly racist) having cheerleaders is. Why do they all have to be tan with long wavy hair and no tattoos? Isn't it bad enough that you have this thing that's kinda sexist and almost exclusively caters to the male gaze but they also have to adhere to beauty standards of the 1950s?

That might be my real problem with cheerleading. Why do they all have to look like fembots? I think I'd be more forgiving if there were a few cool tomboy cheerleaders. Maybe just one or two girls with a mohawk on every squad.

The funny part about this is that the UW retracts this infographic saying it's inappropriate or some nonsense like that but they never say the tips were wrong. I guarantee you that if you want to be a UW Cheerleader you should still follow it's advice. Cheerleading is weird.

Product Placement in Transfers 4 Was Really Smooth

I never did see Transformers 4, I mean what's the point. The first film is good enough, I mean it's not a great movie but it's kind of enjoyable. Shia LaBeouf gets crapped on a ton but he acted his ass off in that hunk of garbage. The robots smash into each other and fight a bunch, I don't know. The Transformers cartoon is pretty terrible, what were people expecting?

On the other hand Transformers 2 and 3 are really just unenjoyable pieces of garbage. I forgot they even made a 4th one until I saw this edit on reddit. I'm guessing it made money, I think they're making a 5th one. Who cares, I'm here for the awkward product placement.

I'm actually a big fan of goofy product placement, at least I'm a big fan of it in terrible movies or goofy TV shows. Remember a couple years ago when every NBC show took place in a subway? That was fantastic. I just love the idea that the producers have such little faith in their movie being a hit they have to take an extra million from Goodyear to highlight some tires.

2016 Emerald City Comicon: Amazing Cosplay part 2

Hey kids, here's part two of BeatDownBoogie's Emerald City Cosplay video. It's just as good as part 1 but with like different people dressed up in different costumes. Sometimes it's the same people but they're still in different costumes.

Hey, you know what sucks? Trying to put together a new look for the blog. I thought I had this cool template all picked out but when I tried to actually get it working there were a couple problems that I couldn't look past. Now I know I'm going to send all my spare time this week looking at templates and not actually finding anything I like. If I don't find anything by friday I swear I'm just going to use one of the lame blogger templates. Webdesign from 2008 is still cool, right?

X-Men: Apocalypse | Final Trailer

The Final trailer for X-Men: Apocalypse hit the interwebs today. It looks good enough, I guess. I like that the movies have finally embraced the main attribute of X-Men comics books: incredibly confusing continuity.

Eventually the X-Men movie had to be rebooted. Kudos to Fox for doing in the most confusing way possible, by spreading out that reboot over 3 prequels, 2 of which involve time travel and alternate realities. To be fair though, Fox has yet to make an X-men movie I haven't liked. Even X-3, which is kind of a shit show and was obviously rushed into productions, had enough parts I liked (Maddrox FTW!) that I eventually bought it on DVD.

In completely unrelated website news I plan on rolling out an update to the template I'm using this week. I'm sure there will be at least one or two days where barely anything works while I get it all figured out. Pretty much business as usual.

The Rise of Links

DC Restructures Vertigo, Fires Shelly Bond, Internet Explodes. DC's Vertigo line of comics is an adult imprint that back in the day had some of the hottest comics on the market Books like Sandman, Preacher, Fables, V for Vendetta, Hellblazzer, many of which have seen movie or TV adaptions. Over the last couple years though the line hasn't done as well as in the past, so it's not a huge surprise that the editor in charge of the line, Shelly Bond, was recently let go under the guise of restructuring.

The big surprise though was the absolute shit storm this caused on-line. A lot of creators with bridges to burn immediately labeled the move as terrible and started lobbing scathing accusations to the remaining DC management, at one point a very prominent editor was called out for being a serial sexual harasser.

For a number of years DC has had a bit of a dark rumor cloud hanging over it when it comes to their management and editorial staff. Sexual harassment allegations have been around for years. It's even been rumored that an artist was taken off a very prominent project a few years back because the co-publisher was sleeping with his wife. It looks like Shelly Bond's firing was the straw that broke the camels back as far as creators actually naming names and pointing direct fingers. It's going to be very interesting to see what DC's response is. Hopefully if anything comes out of this it will be a safer work environment for people who just want to make good comics.

5 Movie And TV Plots That Mean The Writer's Out Of Ideas. I'll eat my hat if this article wasn't a direct reaction to the season finale of The Walking Dead. Still, it's written by David Wong so it's worth the read.

I really think what makes most people upset about the cliffhanger on the Walking Dead finale is that it was completely unnecessary. It's the most poplar show on cable, they don't need to resort to storytelling tricks to keep the audience engaged. I 100% guarantee that if they had just showed who Negan had killed they would have had just as much buzz going into the next season as they do now AND they wouldn't have pissed off so many fans. It was just a terrible terrible idea.

The rise of the $400 smartphone. Man, when did $400 for a phone become the cheap alternative? I'm still wrapping my head around buying a phone off contract. The last phone I bought was a Nokia under a two year deal and it cost me all of $100 out of pocket. I guess when you're talking about something you use every day and in theory will for a year or two, $400 isn't that much money but I'm not the kind of person that just has that sort of cash laying around. For me that's a big purchase that requires a bit of planning. Ugh, I hate it when I have to think about things like this, it takes all the fun out of buying something new. Where do I get one of those Obama phones?

Prince Performs “Purple Rain” During Downpour

What a weird 24 hours. First WWE legend Chyna dies then Prince? I was never a HUGE prince fan but I was a fan. I have a couple Prince albums, I'm pretty sure everyone in the US is required to have at least a couple Prince albums. I remember when he did the soundtrack to Batman, it made Batman feel like a real thing that anyone could like not just nerdy kids who live on boats.

Here's his performance during the Superbowl from a couple years ago, go ahead and skip all the talking heads from the NFL at the beginning. Man that was a good halftime show. Watch him play guitar, dude wasn't human. Maybe he didn't die, maybe he just returned to his home planet.

My Ideas

via - PoorlyDrawnLines

2016 Emerald City Comicon: Amazing Cosplay

The fine folks at BeatDownBoogie have put together a pretty good Cosplay video for this year's ECCC. I can't believe how many of these I missed. There was a whole troop of Halo guys I didn't see at all. I remember them from last year and they were amazing. Maybe they were there when it was margarita time at Pacific Place.

I'm still undecided about dressing up next year. It was kind of fun putting together a costume but I didn't really like the idea that anyone was looking at me. It's kind of like you want someone to notice your costume but at the same time you don't really want someone judging your costume. I don't know, it's weird. I said on twitter that maybe I don't really like dressing up I just like bedazzling things.

Hello There Rita Repulsa

So the first image of Elizabeth Banks as Rita Repulsa was released by Entertainment Weekly today. Congrats to Saban Entertainment on all the confused boners today. There's at least 4 different fetishes going on here. I have zero idea who the target audience is on this movie but I've got a dollar that says Lord Zedd shows up dressed like Voldo from Soul Calibur 2.

Hollywood Links

5 Things I Learned Making The Biggest Flop In Game History. Everyone's heard this story, right? ET was the game so bad that it bankrupted Atari and nearly killed the entire home console market. Well, that's not quite the truth. Yeah the game isn't that great but the truth is Atari was a company so poorly run it was destined to fail. ET was actually a huge hit for them, they sold over a million and a half copies of the game but in their infinite wisdom they had printed over 5 million copies. A mistake they repeated when they printed over 12 million copies of Pac-Man completely ignoring the fact that they had only sold 10 million consoles. Long story short here is that Atari was run by coked up morons.

Rob Schneider And Jennifer Love Hewitt Are Officially The ‘Worst’ Actor And Actress In Hollywood. Clearly the people that put this study together never saw The Client List. Man that was a great show.

Another Day, Another White Guy at Marvel: Benedict Cumberbatch to play Dr. Strange. This is an old article but it relates to the mixed reaction the Doctor Strange trailer got last week. First things first, I have zero problems with Dr. Strange being played by a white guy. Yes the character might have originally been Asian (as a few interviews with the creator have suggested) but outside of those early issues 50 years ago he's never been identified as anything other than a plain old white dude. However, I do agree with the articles overall point. Marvel is quite literally going to have 8 movies staring blond white guys named Chris (3 Thor, 3 Cap, 2 GOTG) before one movie staring either a woman or a person of color. Throw all the white guys named Robert in there and you have 11 movies before they get around to the Black Panther or Ms Marvel (which was delayed again).

I could go on for a couple more paragraphs on the Might Whitey trope but eventually I need to get to work today.

I know this sounds all Social Justice Warriory but I don't care. I looked at my pull list the other day and right now books with a female lead dominate what I'm collecting. Squirrel Girl, Hellcat, Black Widow, Silk, Batgirl, Harley Quinn, Black Canary. I don't know, Marvel is the so called House of Ideas. I'm just looking for a bit more diversity when it comes to their movie ideas.

Watch The Titanic Sink in Real Time

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that whoever is reading this right now doesn't have 2 and a half hours to watch a CGI Titanic sink in real time. Or maybe you do, this is a no-judge zone.

The other day my wife laughed at me when I told her I've seen Titanic at least 10 times (5 times in the theater). I don't know what it is about the story of the Titanic but I've been fascinated by it ever since I did a report of Robert Ballard's discover of the wreck way back in 6th grade. If there's a NatGeo or Discover Channel special on it you better believe I'm watching it. It probably has something to do with reading too much Clive Cussler and Peter Benchley as a kid.

There's your lesson kids, don't read too much. If you do you might end up accidentally listening to way too much Celine Dion.

GOJIRA!

It's the year 2016 and they're still making Godzilla movies with a guy in a big rubber suit. That's kinda fantastic right?

I don't think I'd ever go to a theater and watch this, it still looks pretty campy. I mean what's up with the giant tail on Godzilla? That looks like it could get pretty tentacly really quick like. Still, if this was on el Rey one weekend I'd definitely check it out.

He-Man: The Real Masters of Eternia

Finally someone reworked footage from the original He-Man cartoon into a parody of the Real Housewives of whatever crappy city Bravo can send a film crew to. It's cute enough. I kind of wish it had more Real World Las Vegas to it. You know that He-Man and Teela had at least one pregnancy scare.

2016 Emerald City Comicon: The Recap

Emerald City Comicon is like second Christmas for me. Except that it's twice as expensive and this year it was hot as balls. I actually got sunburned on my walk from work to the light rail station on Thursday. Sunburned! In April. Someone get Al Gore on that.

The convention this year was a blast. A lot of dorks on Facebook were concerned that new ownership for ECCC would mean all sorts of drastic changes but I barely noticed any. Little things get tweeked and moved around every year, frankly the changes from 2013 to 2014 were bigger than they were this year. They added a 4th day this year, which was fine. It was only a half day and since it was on a Thursday it was way less crowded. Next year I might try and take advantage of that and get more signatures and sketchbooks while moving around is a bit easier.

Nathan Fillion's panel was the only one I went too over the weekend. It was pretty fantastic. He was really funny and charming. Most of his time was spent answering questions from the audience and the audience actually brought their A game. Nothing worse than when the audience tries to make the panel all about them and sort of ruins everything in the process. Hopefully next year I'll hit up a few more panels.

I didn't meet or get as many signatures from comic book pros as I have in previous years but I had WAY better interactions. I don't know if it was the pros or if it was me. Either way I had a blast. I also had a lot of fun with the friends I went with. I think drinks at lunch really helps the convention going experience. Even if comics aren't your thing I definitely think it's worth the ticket just to people watch. Heck it's worth it just to meet new people. I didn't make any new friends or anything while I was there but I did talk with a bunch of people and everyone was super cool.

I'm already looking forward to next year. It's the first week of March instead of April so it's only 11 months away! Below is a bunch of links to some picture galleries. If you've got a few minutes to kill they're worth checking out.

Pictures I took of Cosplayers. I made it a point to take more/better pictures this year. I got about a dozen good pictures. That's not terrible, right? Next year I'll either have a new phone or a fancy camera (both are on the 2016 Christmas list) so I'll try and get a few more.

A quick recap of my haul. I was doing really good sticking to my budget this year until I took the family on Sunday and we blew a bunch of cash on T-shirts. Man, the t-shirt racket at ECCC is strong. I didn't even get one for myself it was just shirts for the family and it was still 65 bucks.

Pat Loika's gallery of ECCC Images. Pat Loika is a guy I follow on twitter, he takes great photos of any convention he goes to. He has a lot of pictures of the pros in artist alley, which is cool. Most people just take pictures of the cosplayers.

2016 Emerald City Comicon Costumes from Seattle Refined. A lot of people were bummed when the star of Supergirl, Melissa Benoist, had to cancel at the last minute but this cosplayer was the spiting image of her.

Social Scene: Snapshots from Emerald City Comicon. Dude, this guy's Thanos costume was insane. Even the people working at the con were doing double takes when he walked by. Amazing work.

ECCC 2016: Cosplay Gallery by ComicVine. Learned something new this weekend. My son has a big ol crush on the rabbit from Zootopia. He got so shy and clingy when he saw her. It was hilarious.

Pixlr's 2016 ECCC Gallery. The Pixlr people had a pretty nice booth set up by the entrance where you could get pictures taken in your cosplay. It looked really legit and they have a ton of really good pictures here. If they're there next year maybe I'll throw my son in there.

Marvel's Doctor Strange Teaser Trailer

Meh..

Seriously, this trailer fills me with a lot of meh. I wish I was excited as all my friends on twitter last night. I just don't know how many more of these origin movies I can take. Doctor Strange was a doctor who lost the use of his hands in an accident and learned magic. There, that's his origin. You really want to see 2 hours of that?

And don't even get me started on the whole white guy learns mysticism from a white Tibetan monk played by Tilda Swinton. I'm not saying it's racist but it's not not racist. If I was an actor of Tibetan decent I'd be pissed.

Also the special effects all look like they're lifted from Inception. Seriously the two biggest effects shots of the trailer look like they come DIRECTLY from Inception.

I don't know, I'll still keep my eye on this and If it gets good reviews I'll probably go see it in the theater but this is hardly a must see for me. I can't believe how quickly I turned on this in like a 12 hour period. Oh well, we still have Suicide Squad.

The Zombie Apocalypse is Terrifying When You Are High On Pain Killers

A couple brothers decided to get internet famous by pranking their sister while she was high from wisdom teeth surgery. It's pretty high-larious. It's already a day old so you may have already seen it. I'm still trying to un-bury myself at work and at home. I can't believe how behind I am after missing just 3 days of work. I barely do anything!

I feel like this is a prank that could have gone horribly wrong with the wrong brothers. Like some yokels in Alabama would actually give their sister a gun and push her into a funeral parlor to see what happens. Don't try that at home kids.

The Doctor Is In

Hey there poster for Doctor Strange. Looking good. I'll see if I can get a babysitter that day. With all the terrible luck I've had trying to get out to see Deadpool 7 months notice sounds just about right.

Suicide Squad does the Ballroom Blitz

Hoooo doggie was Emerald City Comicon fun this year. I've got a lot to unpack and am massively behind at work so instead of talking about it lets just post this new Suicide Squad Trailer. It's pretty good. Word on the street is that Warner Bros ordered a ton of really expensive reshoots after the beating Superman v Batman took. I guess we'll just have to wait and see if that's a good or bad thing. If nothing else the movie has given us several good trailers and a lot of cosplayers in fishnets and hot pants. That's a lot more than the Fantastic Four ever gave us.

Rogue One: Teaser Trailer

I hope you really liked The Force Awakens because you're getting a new Star Wars movie every year. I'm impressed with Disney's plan here, there plan of having these one off "Star Wars Stories" films between the releases of the main franchise is a cash grab worthy of George Lucas. I'm all for it of course. I know I'm a spoiled nerd, I'd much rather watch more Star Wars movies than Avengers 3 or Zack Snyder Kills Superman 2.

WonderCon 2016 Cosplay

Here's a cosplay video from our friends at Sneaky Zebra. I hadn't even heard of WonderCon before last year and this year they had 60,000+ show up. That's a pretty big convention. Its held in Anaheim, so maybe some of that success has to do with people either being fed up with SDCC or not being able to get tickets to SDCC. Either way that's a big show. Lots of cool costumes in this video. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts a couple of these people show up at ECCC this week. I always like being that guy who says "hey I recognize you from the internet". No uncomfortable conversation has ever started out that way.

Samantha Bee Vs Comic-Con

Ok, this isn't really Samantha Bee vs Comic-Con. It's just a short clip from her show where she pokes fun at the scantily clad side of comic book art. It's short but it's pretty funny. I like her show a lot, which is weird because I never liked her a whole lot on The Daily Show. Or maybe I did? I always liked it when she was interviewing people, not so much when she was pretend reporting from a location. That's a weird hair to split, but here we are.

My opinions on pin-up art and how females are represented in comic books are far to complicated for me to get into here but rest assured they're very well thought out and if you heard them you'd be like "damn, Kevin really makes some great points".

Sold Out!

Ugh, Emerald City Comicon starts on Thursday and holy crap, my butt's sweating just thinking about it. For whatever reason I decided to humor my son this year and wear my Han Solo costume, he really gets a blast out of dressing up and this year he's going as a Stormtrooper so he was REALLY pushing me to go as Han. Now my Han Solo costume is pretty janky so I decided to make a couple upgrades to it, with one condition. It all had to be done on the super cheap. I bought a new vest for 7.99 at Value Village and even that sort of broke my costume budget. It wasn't even a vest, it was a jacket that I ended up cutting the sleeves off of.

The final piece I needed to finish my new holster arrived via amazon today so I think I have everything I need. I just need a couple hours to put everything together. If everything looks as good as it does in my head I might dress up for a couple days, not just the day I take my son. I don't know man, I'm pretty nervous about looking ridiculous. Of course, it's ECCC for every great costume you have like a dozen people who look ridiculous but are having a hella good time looking ridiculous.

Posts are going to be pretty sparse this week. I'm going to try and put together a couple of posts Thursday and Friday night but we'll see. You can always follow me on instagram and twitter if you want @newbachu and @kevinnewburn, I'm going to try and have a bit more #content on my social media steez this year.

The Heart of A Man

Via - Poorlydrawnlines.com

Top 10 Most Offensive Video Games

Man do I hate April Fools day, I just spent 15 minutes putting together a post about this cool new motherboard design and it turned out the whole thing was an April Fools day hoax. So instead here's another Youtube list. I've got like a dozen of these things saved up for when I have nothing else to blog about.

Maybe if I get some free time later today I'll do an entire post dedicated to the mistake of wearing a wrestling t-shirt to work. I've had to explain my Daniel Bryan "Yes Yes Yes" T-shirt about a half dozen times already. Good times.