Spontaneous Musings

1. Instead of going to the Highline Park in Manhattan as previously planned, I chose to Take a 6.1 mile hike in Prospect Park -- which is an extremely large park in the middle of Brooklyn and about twenty-five minutes from my apartment. It rivals Central Park and is among the largest city parks in the world and US. I walked to a small waterfall, along a bustling brook, up various hills, across miles of green meadow with trees, and through woodland. Also along a lake front.

Every time I go, it's always different.

NYC is like that. Each year I find something new that I'd never seen before. And I've lived here 23 years. Also you can walk twenty - thirty minutes in any direction and run across a completely different city. It's like there's fifteen different urban and suburban and rural landscapes all cramped into one place.

Anyhow it was a lovely walk, with my music as company. By the end, my muscles were very sore. Not used to long walks. Also, it was a good idea to take the walk in Prospect Park. The Highline would have taken an hour and twenty minutes to get to -- most of that time on a subway, the rest walking on hot pavement in between tall buildings and around a lot of people. (Less now than next week, but still.) And it was in the 80s today. At least Prospect Park had a breeze and shade, lots and lots of trees. The Highline is a Park on an old elevated railroad track, an has mostly flowers, sculptures, and grass, and walkways, some trees, but not quite as many.
It's sort of park/art museum elevated above the city. I've never been -- but I've seen pictures. (It's about an hour subway ride from me -- and I commute an hour and twenty minutes, approximately two hours and forty minutes round trip to work every day. On weekends I like to avoid the subways and just walk everywhere. My preferred mode of transportation is walking. It's why I like NYC, I can walk everywhere. I honestly don't know why all these people insist on driving -- it's horribly bad for your body to drive everywhere. Especially in NYC, where you're more likely to be plowed into by a wayward bus. (Those buses are not safe, I don't care what people say.)

2. Finished House of X # 3 -- which is quite good and leaves us on a bit of cliff-hanger. Also the writers provide the readers with an alphabet for the new Mutant language (Kraokan).The writer decided they should have their own language. Looking at it reminded me of why I struggle with languages and writing science fiction novels. Although there are ways around having to create your own language, and not everyone cares that much. Most sci-fi and fantasy novels don't do it. Mainly because it is really hard to do well, you have to be a linguist to pull it off, and more than a little anal-retentive. (i.e JRR Tolkien -- who after seeing the exhibit on his art at the JP Morgan, took anal-retentive to a whole new level. The man was obsessed with miniscule details of his world. There's a reason it took him forever to write his books -- he designed not one, but three languages, down to origins, prior to writing his books. And based the language on his tracings of the origins of the British tongue. Not only that, but he drew his characters. Illustrated his books. Illustrated and designed the covers. Approved the type face. And spent an absurd amount of time on things like creating maps of each place. Which sort of explains why the books at times read like travelogues.)

Anyhow -- apparently Hickman is of a similar vent. He created a language. Has explanations for everything in his world, and what each thing is -- written in the comic. Along with plot, character, and script. But I have never seen so much work go into world-building in a Marvel comic book in my life. Or any comic for that matter -- and yes, I read the Sandman comics.

Takes the comic book format for a whole new level. I've borrowed from comixcology other Hickman comics -- such as Fantastic Four and the Avengers -- which he rebooted first. X-men is his first love however, he wasn't a fan of the other series as a kid, so this is a different thing entirely. Also the story he came up with -- he plotted out over twenty years ago. He's been tweaking it. So, we're reading Hickman's fanfic. It's good fanfic. And it should be noted that pretty much everything after Stan Lee and Jack Kirby is fanfic, and like a lot of fanfic, it's way better than the original. As much as I hate to admit it, I agree with my brother -- art often happens in the interaction.

3. Speaking of Marvel...apparently they've plotted out their movie and television releases into 2026. Kevin Fiege ripe off his success with producing the MCU up to and including Endgame -- gets to oversee all the other properties.



From what I've been able to gather, most things won't drop until 2021-2022. Which means they haven't filmed them yet. The first movie to be releases in Black Widow in May 2020, followed shortly thereafter with various television series -- Falcon and the Winter Solider is first (and it explains what happened at the end of Endgame -- they are going to explain that ending and what it means in the limited series.) What movie fans don't know about superhero comics -- is that the writers often will explain things later in another comic, over here. Which you have to go on a scavenger hunt to find. My problem with comic books is you can't just read one series, you have to jump around, because they do cross-overs, also they like to hide important character tid-bits and backgrounds in other comics that have nothing to do with the character, or don't appear to. They did this in the films as well, requiring you to watch them all -- if you really wanted to know what happened to so and so at this point in time, or why they are doing this? Reading comics can at times feel like hunting pieces to a puzzle. It's easy to fall down the rabbit hole and get obsessed because of this --- I mean it's fun to some of us to have to hunt the story down.

WandaVision appears to be taken from two different comics. Vision's limited series where he creates his own family. And what Wanda does in House of M, creating a family for herself. Apparently this takes place prior to the Doctor Strange film and sets up that film.

Hawkeye will take place before various other series. Each series apparently builds on the next and will inform the movies. What Marvel is cleverly doing is creating a screen version of it's comics franchise. Yes, you could watch these on their own without buying the others -- but there are things in each that inform the others. Honestly if you are serial writer -- you can learn a lot from reading comic books.

Jeremy Renner at Comic Con on Hawkeye

And everything we know about Hawkeye from Disney +. Apparently the Hawkeye movie focuses on Hawkeye training Kate Bishop to become the new Hawkeye. And Monica Rambeau (the little girl in Captain Marvel) will be first introduced in WandaVision.

Here's the list announced at the comic con:

At San Diego Comic-Con’s heralded Hall H, Marvel Studios and Kevin Feige announced just that. MCU Phase 4, or at least the part that spans May 2020 through November 2021, includes not just five movies but also five Disney Plus series that, unlike Marvel’s past television efforts, will exist more firmly within the Marvel movie canon. Here’s the bare-bones rundown, with MCU movies in bold:

Black Widow: May 1, 2020
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: fall 2020 (Disney Plus)
The Eternals: Nov. 6, 2020
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: Feb. 12, 2021
WandaVision: spring 2021 (Disney Plus)
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: May 7, 2021
Loki: spring 2021 (Disney Plus)
What If...?: summer 2021 (Disney Plus)
Hawkeye: fall 2021 (Disney Plus)
Thor: Love and Thunder: Nov. 5, 2021

Go read about them all HERE.

Apparently Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - has been pushed back to 2022 or 2023, due to issues with the director, James Gunn, who was kicked off for a social media faux pas, then after the cast and crew rallied for his return, invited back -- but he'd since signed on to direct Suicide Squad 2 (yes, apparently enough people bought tickets to it to warrant a sequel -- it ranks as one of the worst superhero action flicks that I've seen in my life. Batman and Robin is the worst. Yes, DC has the distinction of creating the worst superhero flicks in history. ) So they have to wait until he completes that one. (Why can't they find a new directly, preferably a female director -- I'm sure there are plenty around?) Anyhow it will take place after Thor: Love and Thunder, not before.

Now, because of the Disney/Fox merger -- Marvel has re-acquired the rights to the Fantastic Four and the X-men. Due to the fact that they never did anything with him and the rights finally lasped, Marvel has also re-acquired the rights to Namor.

While they can't do a Hulk movie (because the rights are owned by Universal, the last two movies were done by Universal and not really part of the MCU as a result. They can however do a She-Hulk series, since she isn't owned by Universal or the rights lapsed at some point.)

They are landing the ground-work for the X-men with the Eternals. And, most likely waiting for people to forget the most recent X-men films before rebooting them, and in the meantime rebooting in the comics -- to build a new fandom. You can learn a lot about story franchise building from Marvel and Disney or how to do it right.

DC should take notes. They have made horrid decisions regarding their film lineups. Focusing more on villains, and far too dark and gritty.

4. Television critic tries to compare Dark Crystal and Carnival Row to Game of Thrones and finds them lacking.

Sigh. I wish people wouldn't do this and would just judge things on their own merits. I think one of the inherent flaws in human nature is this incessant desire to compare things or have things compete against each other.

Dark Crystal is based on a movie released in the 1980s, that is populated by puppets from the Jim Hensen Creature Workshop. It's not stop-motion animation. It's puppetry. If you aren't a fan of puppetry -- that will be a problem. Also it was set up as a children's fantasy tale and coming of age story, not based on a Medieval War that lasted more than a decade and killed half the population of Britain.[ETA: I am exaggerating for dramatic effect.] (Considering the number of Wars humans have had -- it is sort of insane we're still alive and haven't exterminated ourselves yet. Certainly wasn't for lack of trying.)

Martin's fantasy series was based on real events and was set up as hyper-reality fantasy, with very few fantasy elements -- which were used sparingly. Sure there was a lot of world-building, but most of it was based on real historical events. It's far less metaphorical and far more literal in representation. Which is why it was so appealing to non-fantasy fans and the mainstream audience. A lot of fantasy fans didn't like it that much, and most fantasy fans didn't read it. I don't really think of it as fantasy to be honest. More a British Shakespearean Costume Drama with a lot of blood gore, and dragons/zombies thrown in.

Carnival Row is a Victorian Steampunk fantasy based on a series of comic books. It's nothing like Game of Thrones. Comparing the two is akin to comparing well, Harry Potter to the Hunger Games. Or Star Wars to Farscape.

Makes more sense to compare it to something similar to it. Carnival Row to say Peaky Blinders or that Victorian Series with all the monsters -- that I can't remember the name of. It starred Eva Green as Mina. Dark Crystal to Neverending Story or Labrynthe, both of which were fantasy series with puppetry. Or at the very least?
On what it is trying to be, and it's own merits. If it doesn't work -- okay, but I'll be more willing to listen to why you think it doesn't work if you aren't trying to compare it to something that it has very little in common with, outside of the fact that both have fantastical elements somewhere in the story.