DANDY SPACE LOG 2-10 & 2-11

I now have my hands on Space Dandy (thanks, Helen!) so I can finally complete my Dandy Space Logs. Here's the penultimate entry, with the two most romantic episodes in the Dandy canon.

Season Two, Episode Ten - Lovers Are Trendy, Baby!

To shake off her meathead ex, Scarlet hires Dandy to be her stand-in boyfriend.

He's Dandy, Baby: Dandy thinks he's worth way more than 750 woolongs per hour. He's a decent skier and a hell of a swimmer. He does have a tendency to get overexcited and steal things off nearby children, such as toboggans and binoculars, but he insists it's just borrowing. While on the beach with Scarlet he flirts with other girls, and later takes her to BooBies, where he flirts with Honey. On the other hand, he can be pretty gallant, offering to give Scarlet a piggyback home when her shoe is broken, fighting off an alien spider (and destroying her apartment in the process), and standing up to her ex. While he's with Scarlet, he's a lot luckier, catching a bunch of new aliens (see below), although it's actually Scarlet who captures the bunch at the ski resort.


The Scarlet Woman, Baby: Scarlet broke up with her hunky boyfriend Dolph months ago but she's been unable to shake him off, although Dandy points out that she hasn't been completely straight with him. Her solution is to take her paid holiday and hire Dandy to pose as her boyfriend. She draws up a contract and a rigid schedule of fun, and specified that there be no unsolicited physical contact (i.e. no kissing) initiated by Dandy. Although they continually aggravate each other, Scarlet and Dandy do start to develop feelings for each other. It's pretty likely she picks his outfits for the trip as well, unless he's secretly into the preppy, knotted sweatshirt look. Scarlet looks pretty amazing in her swimsuit (it manages to stay just the right side of fan service). Both Scarlet and Dandy are huge fans of a star called Chuck, who starred in such movies as Karate Kommandoes.

When Dolph turns up, he's flying a huge mecha, and blows up half of the orbital they're on out of jealousy. He also tries to hypnotise Scarlet, which is pretty damned evil. Fortunately, he's arrested on charges of assault and stalking, and is banned from going within ten thousand parsecs of Scarlet.

They're Sidekicks, Baby: Having spent a week hunting an alien on Dandy's say-so for no reward, Meow and QT basically bully him into taking Scarlet's job.

I Know This Planet, Baby: The planet Trendy is a moon-like rock, but it is covered in pressure domes that house different environments, including a ski resort and a beach. There are orbital stations as well, including Yamashita Colony, where you'll find Cafe Bar Crystal. There's also the Orbital Escay, an escalator that takes visitors into orbit to watch fireworks. Trendy has Trendy police, who are pretty trendy.

They definitely speak English in Dandy's universe (at least in the English dub, of course).

We're Alien Hunters, Baby:

At the ARC, we catch a glimpse of a gigantic metallic alien from nebula M78. As well as being a real nebula in Orion, this pegs the alien as being an Ultraman.

Dandy also catches a giant cuttlefish alien which goes for 5000 woolongs, and a bunch of aliens at the ski resort that look like a snowman, an oni and even Santa Claus.

Scarlet is freaked out by a spider in her bathroom.. which is fair enough, because it's the horrifying head-spider-thing from The Thing.


The Bottom Line, Baby: A very sweet, heartwarming episode, although those closing scenes on Yamashita are a gutpunch. Everything is back to normal at the end, of course, although you can't watch this without desperately wanting Dandy and Scarlet to get together.

REVIEW: Archer: Dreamland

Archer is possibly the best, most definitely the funniest, animated series of the 21^st century so far. Over its now eight seasons, it's moved from international espionage, through adventures under the sea and in outer space, to season-long adventures in cocaine smuggling and the PI business. And now, it's become a film noir, albeit a batshit crazy one.

Season seven ended with Archer grievously wounded, face down in a swimming pool. As we enter season eight, subtitled Dreamland, we find he has been lying in a coma for three months. In his head, he has conjured up his own fantasy world, set in 19-something (probably about 1947; amazingly, this is the least anachronistic season yet). Like the previous run, Archer is part of a PI agency, only this time, it's just him and his partner. Or at least, it was.

Following the death of the great George Coe in 2015, Archer's long-suffering valet Woodhouse has been absent from the series (although he was recast for a single season for Archer Vice). In a surprisingly touching sentiment, Dreamland is not only dedicated to Coe, but the death of Woodhouse is the driving plot point, occurring both in “reality,” and in Archer's fantasy, in which Woodhouse was previously his partner. Which is a hell of a step-up, even if he was still a heroin junkie.

The season-long arc revolves around Archer's quest to discover who is responsible for his partner's murder. It's the most coherent storyline we've yet had from a season of Archer, which was pretty all over the place even during the Vice story, but as Archer himself says, he does have a tendency to get sidetracked. Limiting the run to only eight episodes helps, of course; there just isn't room for too much meandering adventure. Archer's fantasy world is populated by fictionalised versions of various characters from the series, including all his former-ISIS chums. Some of the changes are fairly minor and predictable: Cheryl/Carol is now Charlotte Vander-Tunt, even richer than her “real” counterpart and just as unhinged; Lana is a lounge singer who you don't want to mess with, and Mallory is the owner of said lounge, the Dreamland club, and also a mob boss. Known simply as “Mother,” she slips into that role extremely comfortably.

Other characters are changed in unexpected ways. Cyril, always a dick but pretty sympathetic in a pathetic sort of way, becomes an out-and-out villain as a crooked cop. Pam undergoes a sex change, albeit with the same face and voice, as his partner Detective Poovey. Her personality is much the same as usual, albeit less sex-crazed. Then there are characters who slip into the postwar environs just perfectly: Ray is a musician for an otherwise all-black band, and Krieger is Krieger, as always. A very welcome addition to the regular cast is Jeffrey Tambor as Trexler, Mother's opposite number once again as a rival crime lord. Oh, and Barry's back, although now he's called Drake and he's more insane than ever. (Other Barry's back as well.) Seriously, his storyline comes to the fore in the final two episodes and he is absolutely terrifying.

Everything is done in Archer's signature style, with action, violence and inappropriate humour to spare, and the animation is gorgeous. Although the story is more concise, there are still plenty of bizarre non sequiturs. It's a weird set-up, all told, with the story never quite clear about how much is real or not. Everything is supposedly in Archer's head, but not only does he have flashbacks to WWII, there are long scenes that don't involve him, and involve knowledge that is kept from him. There's even a running joke concerning Poovey's fantasy involving a dozen Chinese whores (really, it's easier to watch it than to explain it), which is supposedly a fantasy in the mind of a fantasy character. Possibly, just possibly, this really is a parallel universe, which just might be born out by some of Archer's dialogue in the last episode. If so, it makes the events mean something more. Because, after all the developments and twists, there's no real resolution. I wasn't expecting Archer to wake up, but for there to be some kind of psychological resolution for him. Even after a thrilling adventure, it all feels a bit inconsequential.

Which might not matter if Dreamland focused more on humour than story. Try as it might, this season just isn't as funny as the previous ones were. While the last few seasons haven't quite lived up to the original ISIS years, they've still been pretty hilarious, while Dreamland feels a bit tired joke-wise. The adventure makes up for this, but only until that last episode, where it all feels a little pointless. Season nine has already been revealed to continue Archer's fantasy, in a new setting as Danger Island. Maybe we'll get some kind of closure with the tenth, and final, season. Or maybe there'll be a different fantasy setting with every episode. Personally, I'm still holding out for a Trek-themed “STARcher.”

This review was typed in Georgia.

This is a fine article on depression, dark thoughts, and interdimensional chaos adventures.

Rick, Morty, and finding comfort in cartoons

Comics to Screen: Spider-Man: Homecoming observations and spoilers

Spider-Friends!

Liz would appear to be the MCU's version of both Liz Allen, one of Peter Parker's many romantic interests in the comics, and Valeria Toomes, daughter of the Vulture. Liz was the primary live interest of Parker in the Spectacular Spider-Man's first TV season., where she was portrayed as mixed race rather than the comics' traditional apple pie American blonde. In the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, Liz becomes Firestar, the superhero who was part of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Sony was previously planning a spin-off movie featuring a team of female superheroes, and while it looks like this has been cancelled, if it ever gets the go-ahead again, Firestar would be a likely inclusion. Liz also has links to Flash, Ned and Harry Osborn in the comics, and is the stepbrother of the villain Molten Man, although she doesn't appear to have any siblings in this version. Valeria Toomes tries to distance herself from her father's activities in the comics, and eventually works for SHIELD. Again, it's easy to see this becoming part of the narrative if the character returns to the MCU in the future.

Michelle Jones likes to be known as MJ, confirming that she is the equivalent of Mary Jane Watson, albeit as a new and very different character. While she doesn't have much in common with Peter Parker's girlfriend and sometime wife, she does act as an observer character keeping him on his toes in the same way, and making her MJ hints very strongly that the two of them will get together in the future of the MCU. I'd lay good money that the next Spidey film will see them develop something of a romance, but will also introduce Gwen Stacey (or an equivalent character) to complicate matters.

Donald Glover plays petty criminal Aaron Davies, and mentioned having a nephew in the borough. That nephew is Miles Morales, the second Spider-Man of the Ultimate Comics universe and currently one of two Spider-Man, along with Parker, in the mainline Marvel comics. Glover voices Miles in the Ultimate Spider-Man animated series, and campaigned to play Spider-Man during the run-up to The Amazing Spider-Man. Director Watts was aware of this and cast Glover in his movie, setting up Miles for potential inclusion in the MCU in future.

Jacob Batalon's character Ned is probably named after of Ned Leeds, a recurring character in the comics, although he has no official last name in the films yet. In the comics, he is a friend and rival of Parker at the Daily Bugle, and is eventually brainwashed to become the third villain known as the Hobgoblin. There is virtually no chance that Ned here is going to live the life of Ned Leeds in the comics, and hasn't much in common with that character. Exec. producer Eric Hauserman Carroll states that Ned is a composite of several characters, but the character he has most in common with is Ganke Lee, best friend of Miles Morales. Ganke goes by the name Ned as an alias.

Spider-Foes!

The criminal called Gargan is best known in the comics as the Scorpion, hinted at, not exactly subtly, by the scorpion tattoos on his neck in the film. The version in the film is based on the Ultimate comics version of the character, who was a petty criminal. As well as being a recurrent villain as the Scorpion, he becomes one of several characters to take on the Venom symbiote, and even acts as Spider-Man for a short time, albeit in a not-very-heroic way. Given that Sony have resurrected their plans for a Venom movie, I think it's highly likely we'll see Gargan as either the Scorpion in the next Spider-Man film, the new Venom, or both. The rights issue is complicated around reusing characters from this film, however.

The film features two versions of classic Spider-Man villain the Shocker, who wields gauntlets that produces sonic shockwaves. In a nice touch, the gauntlets leave a yellow residue on his jacket sleeves which approximates the look of the comic version's costume. Initially it is Jackson Brice, better known as Montana, who wields the gauntlets and the name Shocker, taking the lead from the Spectacular Spider-Man animated series, which combines the two characters. He doesn't last long, and is replaced by Herman Schultz, the traditional holder of the title.

Sony's previous Spider-Verse lineup included Sinister Six, which went on the backburner along with much of their plans, in spite of a lot of set-up being included in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. However, with the Venom movie back on the cards, we might see Sinister Six enter production after all. The Vulture was an original member of the Six, with the Shocker joining the Sinister Six and Sinister Seven at different points. The Scorpion never technically joined the Sinister Six, but Mac Gargan was part of the team during his time as Venom, and he was a member of the equivalent group, the Insidious Six, in the classic 90s Spider-Man cartoon, and a couple of versions of the team in the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon series. As all three villains survive the events of Homecoming, there's a pretty good chance they'll be in the Six should the movie eventually materialise.

Michael Chernus's character, Phineus Mason, is better known as the Tinkerer, an inventor of great skill who has provided numerous comicbook villains with technology and equipment, and has been affiliated with the Sinister Six, the Ultimate Six and the Masters of Evil in various iterations. In Homecoming, he adapts Crossbones's weaponry into Shocker's gauntlets and creates the Vulture's flying armour from Chitauri and Stark technology. His whereabouts are unconfirmed at the end of the film, so it's a cert that we'll see him again. Odds on he creates the Scorpion suit for Gargan.

Spider-Cameos!

Among the many names listed in the credits are some notable inclusions among Liz's group of friends. Jorge Lendeborg plays Jason Ionello, J. J. Totah is Seymour O'Reilly and Ethan Dizon is Tiny McKeever, all part of the general gang of popular dickheads in classic Spider-Man comics and animated shows. More surprisingly, traditional Parker-love interest Betty Brant is listed, played by 16-year-old Angourie Rice. Betty Brant is normally based at the Daily Bugle during Parker's journalist career, rather than a kid as she is here. Tiffany Espenson plays Cindy, who is likely a reference to Cindy Moon, who has quite recently been introduced as the superhero Silk in the comics, a character who was bitten by the same spider as Parker.

Most of the teachers are basic background Spider-Man characters, but Coach Wilson, played by Hannibal Buress, dates back further, to Stan Lee's 1955 creation Meet Miss Bliss, in the pre-Marvel days. The headmaster of the school, Principal Morita, is seemingly a descendant of Jim Morita of the Howling Commandos, and is played by Kenneth Choi, who played the earlier Morita in both Captain America: The First Avenger and Agents of SHIELD.

Director and producer Kirk Thatcher appears briefly as an ageing punk on the streets, reprising his cameo from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (he's the arsehole on the bus who Spock nerve-pinches). This conclusively proves that the MCU and Star Trek share the same universe.

Some guys just doing their job

Damage Control, the clean-up company here owned, like everything else, by Stark Industries, first appeared in 1988, gaining their own title in 1989. They've appeared several times since then, leading their own comedic adventures while also being significant players in major Marvel Comics events. This is there first appearance in the MCU, although the film makes it clear that they've been doing the hands-on work behind the scenes since Avengers Assemble, although previously we've only seen SHIELD agents cleaning up battle sites. In the comics, the company was initially jointly owned by Tony Stark and Wilson Fisk, and given the timescale here, there's no reason this can't be true of the MCU. It's founded by Anne-Marie Hoag, played here by Tyne Daly, and the character is the current owner of the company in the comics. Two years ago, ABC ordered a pilot for a Damage Control live-action TV series from Ben Karlin, intended as a comedy series set within the MCU, but so far there has been little news on this. Given the appearance of the company in Homecoming, it's quite likely the series will be developed at some point. 

REVIEW: Spider-Man: Homecoming

Marvel and Sony have made friends again, and the fruit of their joint labours is the latest Spider-Man, the sixth of the modern era. (How you count it overall is matter of debate.) Fans sighed a deep cynical sigh when the Spidey cinematic series was rebooted for the second time in about five years, following the Amazing Spider-Man franchise, which was cut short after it failed to pull the crowds as expected. Young Tom Holland became the second Englishman to play Peter "radiaoctive spider-bite" Parker in last year's Captain America: Civil War, which introduced this newest take on a character who first appeared in 1962 and has been swinging across screens for almost as long. Impressively, director Jon Watts and his writing team have managed to create a film that feels both modern and very traditional.

Taking Peter Parker back to high school is the best thing they could have made. Although he didn't spend all that long at school in the comics, there's something right about setting his inaugural adventures during his formative years as a wee fifteen-year-old. Watts has made a very canny choice in his approach, deliberately giving the film the feel of classic John Hughes movies. The language is bluer but the humour less so, but overall there's a definite feeling of The Breakfast Club, with a little hint of Ferris Bueler's Day Off (and some very deliberate references to that last one). On the other hand, the kids deal with very modern problems, no one is ever more than an inch away from their phone, and everything is on YouTube. It's a film for teens that also appeals to anyone who remembers being a teen.

Tom Holland is absolutely spot-on as this younger version of Parker. This is a Parker film more than a Spider-Man one, and it's clear that Watts has more interest in the kid's personal life than his superheroics, but that's to the film's benefit, not it's detriment. We've had plenty of superhero battles lately; it's on its characters that a film like this succeeds or fails. Holland is perhaps the greatest screen Spider-Man we've ever had. He was a big success in Civil War, but it's here that he proves he can hold a feature, indeed a franchise. He gives Parker an easygoing but slightly nervy charm, and easily convinces as a brilliant but uncertain American teenager, in spite of being a 21-year-old Englishman. (Amusingly, Holland attended the Bronx Science High for a short time in preparation of the role, and no one believed he was playing Spider-Man.) He's signed up six films, including three Spider-Man films, so we have two Spideys and two team-ups to look forward to.

Peter Parker is nothing without his supporting cast, though. Spider-Man's story has always been a soap opera, full of love triangles, close friendships, rivalries and complex relationships. Homecoming makes this into one of its greatest strengths. Parker has to balance his "Stark internship" (i.e. his trainee Avenger status), his relationship with his aunt, his friendships and difficulties at school, potential romances, and a ruthless villain who, in classic Spider-Man style, is linked to his life in unexpected ways. It's a tangled web, indeed.

Thankfully, the other players in the film are uniformly excellent. The loudest shout-out has to go to Jacob Batalon as Ned, Parker's best friend and uber-nerdy computer geek, who stumbles upon Parker's secret and spends much of the film squeeing at his role in a superhero narrative. I'd happily watch a Ned spin-off, where he amiably goes about his business thwarting villains with tech smarts and sudden bursts of courage. On the other side, there's Tony Revolori as Flash Thompson, who is both Parker's quiz team rival and the popular dickhead of the school. If this sounds an unlikely combination, it is, but it works because of the way this version of Flash is presented. Unlike the traditional football jock, the school bully concept has been updated to the overconfident but maladjusted rich kid, who's always going to get what he wants and doesn't give a shit about anyone else.

This updating and, in some cases, complete rewriting of characters works very well. A case in point being Homecoming's MJ, no longer Mary Jane but Michelle Jones, played by Zendaya. Why she's the main female credit on the film I don't know; apparently she's a big thing in the States. However famous she is, she does a brilliant job of making the sulky outsider MJ into one of the best things of the film. Completely unlike the MJ we know from the comics, rather a new character who is positioned to take her place in the narrative. This MJ has the vibe of Ally Sheedy's character in The Breakfast Club (she even goes to detention voluntarily). Some people have, predictably, kicked off about the changes to characters, especially the race changes for the, originally all-white, set-up, but this is a more accurate reflection of how a school in America looks today. And we know that there's a whole Spider-Verse of different versions of Parker and his associates, so there's room for wildly different interpretations of classic characters.

What I don't understand is why she is credited and publicised so much higher than Laura Harrier, who portrays Liz, who is somehow top of both the brainy and popular cliques and Parker's love interest for the movie. Harrier gives a very sweet, likeable performance but isn't a pushover (one thing Spider-Man has long been good at is strong-minded female characters). Again, Liz is a variation on an established comics character, tweaked for this new telling, and forms a vital part of the new ensemble - far more vital than MJ does.

Another fine example of this: Adrian Toomes, aka the Vulture. Michael Keaton is exceptional in the role, giving a very real performance as the most three-dimensional villain we've ever seen in a Marvel movie. It's a common complaint that the villains in the MCU are paper-thin, with the notable exception of Loki. Ego was a huge improvement in the recent Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, but really, neither Loki nor Ego are particularly complex, although they are better characterised than most. Toomes, however, is an ordinary man pushed to extraordinary actions by a events beyond his control. He is a man desperately trying to take back control, for his own sake, and his family's. Both the script and Keaton's performance sell this perfectly, giving us a villain who has a genuine moral code that happens to be at odds with the majority's, a character with actual personality instead of a list of traits. And he is as unlike the life-force sucking Vulture of the comics as he could be.

Toomes is driven to his extreme, extra-legal career by Stark Industries' appropriation of all alien and unfeasible technology that lies around the MCU following the various climactic battles. It's a logical extension of these battles that a salvage industry would develop to take advantage of the repercussions, and equally feasible that the powers that be would try to take this source of profit for themselves. That said powers are wholly or partially responsible for the destruction in the first place is all the more effective. It's a better and more subtle examination of the nature of the 1%, corporate greed and collateral damage than Batman vs. Superman could ever hope to manage. It's also notable that both Keaton's Vulture and his Batman could believably exist in this world (different publishers not withstanding), and would be diametrically opposed to one another. Birdman, of course, is the evolutionary midpoint between the two.

The opposite party to Toomes in Homecoming, then, is Iron Man. Some worried that this was going to be an Iron Man film in all but name, but it's Parker's film through and through. What Stark provides is a mentor figure and provider of hardware, and he's surprisingly mature in both counts. There's finally a sense that Stark has actually learnt from his past mistakes and is trying to make sure others don't make the same, but it's never at the expense of Parker's development. "If you're nothing without the suit, you don't deserve it," becomes this film's version of "With great power comes great responsibility," and it's just as vital to Parker's understanding of his role as hero. And while Stark is the opposite of Toomes and they are pit against each other, they never meet, with their battle for control occurring entirely through the proxy of young Parker.

The only point that the film falls down is the actual battles between Spider-Man and the Vulture. While the action is, for the most part, very impressive, as we've come to expect from Marvel, but the climactic final confrontation is so overly busy that it's almost impossible to tell what's going on. There are flashes on interesting visual effects, but they're rather lost in the maelstrom. There's a sense that the huge battle is only there because of convention, whereas the main dramatic beats have already been dealt with. Still, this is a pretty small complaint for a film that gets so much right.