Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys: The Death of Nancy Drew (2020) #3 Comic Book Review

 

Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys: The Death of Nancy Drew #3 feels like the midway point in the series, with things starting to shift around for the three protagonists. It's also the issue where the concept of the series is starting to break down a little bit. At least for me. 

I've only read a few books in the The Hardy Boys Casefiles series when I was growing up and never read the Nancy Drew Files books either. So my experience with these characters comes from the original books. Which means it takes me a little bit to get used to anything that deviates from that original tone and style. I've enjoyed the previous two issues in this series, but it's still weird for me to read the Hardys and Nancy in this kind of situation. Oh sure, the bad guys tried to kill these characters in their respective books back in the day, but it was never so bloody in those books even though the danger was quite real. It's a good series so far, but it's called The Death of Nancy Drew, and with the way issue #1 ended the title is probably the wrong one for this series.

There isn't much character development for any of the three main characters. Frank and Joe are Frank and Joe and Nancy is Nancy. There really isn't any difference between the way they are in the novels and the way they are here in the comics. Which is fine, you know, I'm glad Del Col isn't trying to change the characters except to make them 2020 characters rather than characters from the '20s, '30s or '50s. But at the same time, because these characters have been around for almost 100 years and have been in movies, comic books, TV shows and novels, it's really difficult to do anything with them without completely changing their personalities, which no fan of either book series would want to do unless absolutely necessary. So the fact that Del Col didn't do that and managed to keep things interesting is pretty cool.

The one thing I probably could do without is the romantic undertones of the issue. I know that Frank and Nancy have sort of been a thing since the Super Sleuths series that was published from the late '80s until the late '90s, but this isn't that series, and Del Col isn't actually doing anything with it, beyond Frank mentioning his crush on Nancy and then the classic trope of someone telling their crush that they love them, while hopped up on drugs after surgery or because of an injury or whatever the case is. You know the typical romantic drama stuff that's been going on since the advent of the soap opera. It should be cute, but it takes away from the severity of the situation the three detectives find themselves in. I dunno, maybe it's because the DC/CW superhero shows have really soured me on romance in comic book based TV shows, that that dislike for it has now bled into comics themselves. 

The other thing that I have a problem with, is a problem that I have with this series as a whole, not with this particular issue. There was another mini-series that came before this and as the series goes on I see more and more connection between the two. I haven't read the previous series, so I have no idea what it was about, aside from the brief recap at the start of the first issue of this series, which makes it harder to get into because you feel like you came in in the middle of the movie or the second season of a TV show that relies on the viewer to have seen the first season and know what's going on. This series does a better job of trying to be a standalone story, but that connection is still there and every once in a while the writer reminds the reader of that connection and it does make me want to go back and read the previous series. So I guess it's not really a problem so much as it is an annoyance that comic books have in general these days.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall The Death of Nancy Drew #3 is a good issue with a pretty great reveal at the ending that ties the Bobbsey Twins into everything going on with the Hardys and Nancy Drew, which is still REALLY weird to say. The romance element is unnecessary but it isn't super intrusive. Yet. I'm giving Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys: The Death of Nancy Drew #3 7/10 stars. The story is still interesting, but there isn't much world building or character development at this point in the story.

Blog Update (August 20th, 2020)

 Hey guys! How's your week going? Honestly, mine has been pretty good. So as you may have noticed, I haven't posted anything this week. I did that on purpose. I decided to take the week off, except for this post, and relax. Which got me thinking about the blog and it's direction. So that's actually why I'm doing this Blog Update right now. 

So originally I was going to do a whole series of reviews on seasons of Television, going through however many seasons of a show I had access to, including the complete series for several that are on Netflix, Disney+ and in my personal collection, starting with Star Wars: The Clone Wars. But three days ago I started watching Full House on Netflix, with no intention to review it and I found myself actually relaxing with the show before bed, instead of paying attention to it so I could review it when I was finished. Just randomly too. Like I hadn't even planned on watching Full House from the very beginning, until the minute I turned Netflix on on Monday night. I honestly had to keep myself from laughing too loud because my parents had gone to bed.

So, in the spirit of the fun of watching TV as relaxation before going to bed, I'm not going to do movie and TV show reviews the way I've been doing them. Instead I'm going to just write about a show at some point while I'm watching it and post that as a discussion type post. Same with movies. After I finish watching a movie, I'll just talk about it a little bit. That just takes off the pressure of watching a show to review in a certain amount of time. All of my reviews and discussions will continue to be spoiler free, but I think it'll be easier because then I can just watch the show as slow or fast as I want to and not worry about getting it finished in a timely fashion, even though I have all the time in the world to get this stuff done in.

As for my book and comic reviews, I'm gonna be continuing doing them the way I've been doing them in terms of layout and style. However I'm gonna stick to doing single issue comic book reviews as I can do those quickly and easily. Book reviews aren't going to change, though I am going to be doing them a lot more often than I have been doing them. I'll be alternating between the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels and other books just so I'm not burning myself out with Star Wars books, which can happen, because there are a lot of them. So stay tuned for that.

That's it for me today. I'll be back tomorrow with a review of the 3rd issue of Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys: The Death of Nancy Drew, which I just got a week ago. So I will talk to you all later. 

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) Movie Review

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is not unique among movies made from multi-part episodes of a TV series. However it is a rare one that got a theatrical release rather than a TV airing or a direct-to-video release. Which is actually my problem with this movie. It doesn't feel like a movie. It just feels like a 98 minute episode of the animated series that followed it. 

George Lucas loves Animation. Since before he made the original Star Wars movie in 1977, he'd wanted to be in the Animation department of a studio. In fact, if memory serves me right he had actually applied for the Animation department at Warner Bros. before that got shut down. Which explains why he was so heavily involved in the production of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, both the movie and the TV show. Naturally, George would want to make a Star Wars animated movie to promote the upcoming series. Which is basically what this movie is. A promotion for the TV show that debuted two months after the movie came out in theatres. 

Story wise, this movie is actually a better pilot for a TV show than it is as a movie. That's not a bad thing considering this movie was an afterthought that George had after he saw footage from the show on the big screen at Skywalker Ranch. However, it was a strange decision to put it in theatres since it didn't do very well at the box office. But I don't think it was going to do very well because The Dark Knight and Iron Man were big that year and I don't think any movie could really stand up to them. Not to mention it doesn't stand up against the first six live action Star Wars movies either. 

Personally, I enjoyed this movie. But I enjoyed it as a feature length pilot episode rather than a TV series. I actually went to see this movie in theatres. It was the summer of 2008 and I was still on summer holidays from college. Brad and I went a week or so after it came out and we had fun. I don't remember seeing any commercials for it on TV or on YouTube at the time (very early YouTube) but I knew that the movie was coming out because of Star Wars Insider, the official Star Wars magazine, which is still in publication today. I think Brad and I had also seen the movie poster in the lobby of the theatre when we went to see The Dark Knight. I also knew that the TV show was coming out and that it would be airing on CTV so I remember being super excited. I'll get more into that when I do my season 1 review.

My favourite thing about this movie is the dynamic between Anakin and his new Padawan, Ahsoka Tano. They play off each other in a way that the authors of the books chronicling the adventures of Obi-Wan and Anakin between Episode I and Episode II didn't get quite right. I laughed at their back and forth banter and I loved how Ahsoka integrated herself into the Clone Trooper company that Anakin commands. Most of the awkwardness comes from the fact that Anakin doesn't think he's prepared to take on a Padawan of his own, despite both Yoda and Obi-Wan assuring him that he is. Which is a far cry from where Anakin is in the Prequel Trilogy, especially in Revenge of the Sith. I think it works though because there are only a handful of novels and comics that came out prior to this movie and show which showed us the Clone Wars since the prequels only showed us the beginning and the end of it, with nothing in between being shown. And with those novels and comics being considered Legends now, all we have are this movie and the show that it started.

Dooku's plot is kind of dumb. Well okay, maybe dumb isn't the right word for it, but it felt kind of pointless since Palpatine was planning to discredit the Jedi on a larger scale once the Clone Wars were over, so to discredit and villify them on such a smaller scale, especially when Sidious expected it to fail is kind of a waste. Especially since the Jedi figured the plan out fairly quickly. The plan made tactical sense, since the Separatists need to control the movement of ships through Jabba's territory in order to defeat the Republic, it's just their execution was poor.

I think the worst part of this movie is that they introduced Jabba's uncle, Ziro the Hutt, way too late in the film and that was pretty unnecessary. I get needing someone on the inside, but Dooku or Ventress could just as easily have bribed a member of Jabba's court to get Jabba's son out of the palace on Tatooine. Also, I know this movie and it's resulting TV series are canon, but back in 2008 there was no way they knew that Disney was going to be buying Lucasfilm and Star Wars, and ending the original Expanded Universe, but where's Jabba's uncle, Jiliac the Hutt from the Han Solo Trilogy? In Legends, particularly in the pre-Prequel era novels, and possibly comics, Jabba is still fairly young for a Hutt when Han and Chewie start working for him. As a result Jiliac was the one in charge of the Hutt Family, with Jabba assisting him. I looked Jiliac up on Wookieepedia and he/she only appeared in the Han Solo Trilogy and was mentioned in the Legends novel, Shadow Games, which I have not read as it came out in 2011 and I don't remember reading about it in Star Wars Insider. I guess George Lucas and Dave Filoni chose not to incorporate Jiliac into the movie or the series and Jiliac will forever be in Legends. 

Anyway, like I said, I think they introduced Ziro way too late in the movie. I checked while watching the movie last night, and there was ten minutes left in the movie when Ziro was introduced. It would've worked fine if this had been a TV episode rather than a movie, because Ziro does appear later on in the series, but for the movie, it feels shoehorned in. 

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall I really enjoyed Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It's a great introduction into the world of the TV show, but as a movie it's lacking in comparison to the live action Star Wars movies. If I'm being honest though, you could actually skip this movie and go right into watching the show. I remember when the first episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars aired back in 2008, I'd seen the movie two months earlier, and even though I'd seen it, I didn't feel watching the movie was necessary to enjoy the show. Especially because the first episode focuses on Yoda and a group of Clone Troopers and none of the other characters appear in the episode (Editor's Note: I'm going to feel pretty stupid if I watch the episode and discover that Ahsoka and Anakin show up, but I haven't seen the episode in 12 years so I don't remember it all that well). I'm giving Star Wars: The Clone Wars 7/10 stars. The story and animation are pretty good, but throwing Ziro in at the last minute and Dooku's plan in general feels pointless.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1185834/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3

Batman: The Adventures Continue (2020) #1 Comic Book Review

 

Batman: The Adventures Continue #1 reminds me a lot of the old Batman Adventures comics that DC put out in the '90s and early 2000s based on Batman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures. And that's because it's exactly like those books and those shows. Set in the time of the fourth season (known as The New Batman Adventures), this comic captures the tone and feel of both the show and the comics that were based on it. While I wasn't able to watch the show on a regular basis, I loved the comics and they were kind of my gateway into Batman as a comic book character, having already seen the 1966 live action series in reruns from an early age. 

The story is your classic episode of Batman: The Animated Series. After fighting Bane, Batman ends up taking on a giant robot, with Lex Luthor in control, because there's no such thing as just a Batman comic anymore. Especially if it's based on a TV series, where it couldn't be just a Batman show during this particular period of the show's history. Batman has to figure out why Luthor is in Gotham City and figure out how to stop him, without the aid of Superman, who's gone missing. 

Alan Burnett and Paul Dini are the writers of this book, and they are the best people to write this book outside of the original writers of The Batman Adventures, because they were writers on the original TV show back in the '90s. Burnett was also a producer on the show as well. So to have these two come in and write this comic is pretty awesome, even if they're working with their fanboy brains and throwing in as much DC stuff as possible into the book without putting EVERYTHING in. I mean, the book opens with a fight between Batman and Bane, and in true Batman: The Animated Series style, they included the classic shot from Batman #497 where Bane is holding Batman above his head, screaming "I WILL BREAK YOU!", which they also did on the show. Twice. Yeah, there's a reason companies tend not to want to let fans work on the shows and movies they produce. 

What I love about this book is the artwork. The reason I love the artwork is that Ty Templeton, who was the original artist on The Batman Adventures, is the artist on it. Which is pretty spectacular. I got to meet Ty at Ottawa Comiccon two years ago and I really enjoyed talking to him. He even signed my copy of The Batman Adventures #1. Even though they decided to go with the designs for The New Batman Adventures rather than Batman: The Animated Series, Templeton's work is spot on with the look of the later version of the show, just as it was with the art style for the original comic in the '90s. 

My favourite scene is where Bruce is at a party, talking to Veronica Vreeland, who showed up on the show in seven episodes in total, five in the original series, and then two in the continuation. It's a classic scene where Veronica is trying to persuade Bruce to settle down and start a family, with her specifically, but Bruce, ever the bachelor due to him being Batman, gets out of it somehow. In this case, Lex comes over and gets Bruce out of his predicament, which is oddly unlike Lex. Yes, I've seen a variation of that scene a number of times on the show and in the movie, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, but reading it in comic book form is pretty great.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall, Batman: The Adventures Continue #1 is pretty good for a comic that's a digital first series and for a comic serving as a continuation of a 28 year old beloved animated TV show. It's not the best, but I had fun reading it. It was cool seeing a return to the DC Animated Universe in comic book form after 17 years. I'm giving Batman: The Adventures Continue #1 7/10 stars for having good artwork but once again using the overdone Bane "breaking" Batman shot that isn't shocking anymore like it was 27 years ago when Jim Aparo drew it for Batman #497.

Quick Announcements

 Hey guys! Just some quick announcements before I get to work on my comic book review for this week. I've made some decisions concerning the blog and I think you're really going to enjoy what I have in store for you guys on the blog in the coming months. 

I've decided to work on some season reviews for some TV shows. The first three that I have in line for you are The Goldbergs, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. And then the season 1 review of Star Trek: Lower Decks will be squeezed in there when that wraps up in a couple of months. I love reviewing movies, but, I also had a blast reviewing all six seasons of Community and talking about The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin when I did the Teddy Ruxpin VHS reviews. There's just something about TV shows that movies lack. And that's longevity. While you're only with a movie for a maximum of three hours, you could be with a TV show for years. Don't worry, I'm not abandoning movie reviews altogether, but they won't be prevalent like they used to be. 

I'm also taking the blog back to it's geeky roots. As in everything I review will be part of geek culture, but not necessarily pop culture. Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Power Rangers, DC Comics, Marvel Comics (but mostly DC), Lord of the Rings, The Big Bang Theory, Disney, non-aligned Sci-Fi shows, A Song of Ice and Fire, and a ton of other movies, books, TV shows, comic books and video games that are on the geek spectrum. My Disney Sing-Along Songs VHS reviews? Geeky! Manga and Anime? Geeky, but not super prevalent in this blog. James Bond? Definitely geeky! Hannah Montana? Big fat nope! I mean, I guess it could be, but it's not something I watched when I was the age that is appropriate to watch it, so it's not being included on this blog. Even though I technically could get away with reviewing it under the Disney division of Geekdom (yes, I just made that up, there isn't actually a Disney division of Geekdom, or is there?). Same with the Home Alone series. It's fun, it's nostalgic, but it's not geeky. 

Now, you're probably thinking, "Wait a minute! The Goldbergs isn't geeky!" and my response would be "Uh yeah it is!". Yes, I am reviewing The Goldbergs because it was created by a geek and is about him, growing up in the '80s, with his family. So yeah, The Goldbergs is the geekiest show you're ever going to get without it being Science Fiction, Fantasy or based on a comic book. Lol. 

I'm also going to be bringing back the Star Wars book reviews. I wanted to take a break from them so I could read and review the Odd Thomas series. And I've got three more books in that series, but I won't be reviewing them here on the blog. I'll be enjoying the last three books in the series on my own time. 

Alright guys, that's going to be it for today. I'll be back shortly with a comic book review. Not Power Rangers though. Instead, I'm going to be doing a single issue review this time. I'll be reviewing Batman: The Adventures Continue #1. Later! 

Odd Thomas #4: Odd Hours (2008) Book Review

Odd Hours is probably my least favourite book that I've read in the Odd Thomas series so far. It feels almost like a reboot of the series, because while Odd is there, none of his original supporting cast appears at all in the book. They're mentioned, but not shown and at this point Odd's state of mind is getting as tiresome as Oliver Queen's constant amnesia when it comes to learning the same lesson over and over again on Arrow. And yes, I will forever reference that show when talking about Odd Thomas because in a way they are similar characters. Except Odd is much more engaging than Ollie is. Anyway, my point is that we're now four books into the series and we should see some sort of progression for Odd's character. Not necessarily in terms of Odd still mourning Stormy's death from the first book, after all it's only been like eight and a half to nine months after the first book, and that kind of loss takes a long time to deal with. But he's also not becoming a darker or lighter character. He's just the same as he was two books ago in Forever Odd, before Danny was kidnapped because he knew Odd and his secret. 

The book itself is very much like the plot of the first book, except larger in scale, and the bad guys are slightly more competent this time around than they were in Odd Thomas. Though they were still stupid enough to think that Odd was actually a federal agent, whereas he's just a dude who can see dead people and fights crime with that ability. But hey, if they were smart they wouldn't be criminals right? Of course Odd uses their assumptions to his advantage, because he's smart and knows he needs every edge he can get over the bad guys.

Most of the new characters introduced in this book are one offs that we're never going to see again. The only character that sticks around, Annamaria, was hardly in this book. Apparently she's important in the next book, Odd Apocalypse, but she's got no role in this book at all, other than to make Odd aware of the problems that the town he's in, Magic Beach, is having. So why introduce her in this book? Why not wait until the book that she's important in to introduce her? You know, like the way Danny wasn't introduced in the first book because he wasn't important until the second book. 

The one thing I did like about this book is how Odd got Frank Sinatra's spirit riled up enough to go into Poltergeist mode so that Odd could escape the corrupt police chief and his henchmen. I mean, yeah, it's just recycling that scene from book 2 where Datura riles up one of the remaining spirits in the casino and Odd uses that to escape from the bad guys, but, at least here it's a little more imaginative because Odd does it himself instead of urging the bad guys to do it. Also it taught me the lesson that you should never say that Rod Stewart is better than Frank Sinatra, in front of Frank Sinatra's ghost. He'll mess your stuff up real bad if you do.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall, Odd Hours isn't as good as the first three Odd Thomas books. It's not badly written by any means, but four books in and Koontz was already starting to recycle plot threads from the previous books, which isn't great when you got three books left to finish your story in. I still like this series as a series and I love Odd Thomas as a character, it's just this book wasn't great. It's not unreadable by any means, it just could've been a lot better. I'm giving Odd Hours 5/10 stars.

Links: https://www.deankoontz.com/book/odd-hours/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd_Hours 

Living with Disabilities: Doctors and Appointments

 Hey guys! I'm back with another installment of my living with disabilities series. Today is just going to be a quick one. I wanted to talk about doctors and appointments and how my entire life has consisted of going to said appointments and tests and procedures over the years. Like I said, just a quick post today.

When I was a kid, my mom tried her best to schedule all of my appointments for a single day so that I would only have to miss a single day of school rather than multiple days in a row or one day every week. This was a bit tricky because we didn't know whether a doctor would want me to go for bloodwork or x-rays or whatever other scans and then go back to see him (or her) within the same day. Which meant additional waiting times. But we'd try and factor that into the equation when booking the appointments so that none overlapped. Oftentimes, especially in my later childhood/early teen years, there would be a huge chunk of time where my mom and I would end up walking around the hospital for a few hours between appointments. And because we lived a good thirty to forty minutes from the hospital, there was never any point in going all the way home and then going all the way back between appointments.

One appointment I had that was never booked on the same day was seeing the Hematologist at the Medical Day Unit on the sixth floor of the hospital. That was generally an all day affair as it would involve bloodwork, talking to the doctor and even having an IV started for a blood transfusion because my blood cells were low and needed to be replenished. Those were the days I was grateful that MDU had a playroom on the floor where my mom and I could go while I was being transfused. I could play with toys, read books, play the Super Nintendo they had there though that was pretty difficult with an IV in my hand, and play board games while I waited for the blood transfusion to be finished. More often than not I was usually the last kid to be on the unit. At least, I was the last one in the playroom. There were other kids who were in beds because they'd just had some sort of procedure done.

Another appointment that took most of the day was Cardiology. This is because I had to see the doctor, have an Echo done and an ECG done, and even though all of it was done in the clinic on the third floor of the hospital, this was back in the '90s and technology wasn't as advanced as it is today, so we actually had to wait for the doctor to get the results. I did get to watch a lot of movies and videotapes in that clinic. 

The movie that was usually playing when I was in the Cardiology clinic's waiting room was the 1973 animated Disney movie, Robin Hood. Inevitably though I would never get to see the whole movie because they would either call me into an examination room or into the Echo room for that test. And it was always at the same point in the movie that they'd call me in too. It was always at the part where Robin Hood is in disguise and is about to be exposed at the Archery Tournament, and I never got to see the end of the movie. I'll be telling that story more in depth at another time.

Now, while I was in the room getting the Echo done, the technician would put on one of two VHS tapes for me to watch while she did the scan.

One of the tapes that the technician put on for me is Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey. I had this movie on VHS at home, but I liked it a lot, so I would request this one quite often. I would probably only get as far as the part where Shadow, Sassy and Chance started heading for home, near the beginning of the movie, but, like I said, I had the tape at home so it didn't matter that much if I didn't see the rest of the movie.

The other tape that the technician would put on for me was short enough that I got to watch the whole thing every time it was put on for me. That was the 1992 VHS release of Barney's Campfire Sing-Along, the fifth tape in the Barney and the Backyard Gang series. I'll be talking more about this when I get to reviewing it on the VHS reviews. Having an Echo done is where I remember watching this tape for the first time.

So there it is. What doctor's appointments were like for me growing up. These days I still have appointments. They're just spread out across the year and I only have to go see most of them once a year. The only appointment I have more than that is the dentist to keep my teeth clean. Otherwise I have a lot fewer appointments than I did when I was a kid. And the ones I went to when I was a kid, weren't all gloomy or anything like that. I had fun looking at/reading the books, playing with the toys, playing the video games and board games, and watching the movies, even if I didn't always get to watch the whole movie. Sure, some of the appointments were unpleasant because I had to have bloodwork done, an X-ray done, or have an IV put in for a blood transfusion, but all that unpleasantness was done to keep me healthy and I am very grateful for that.

I'll be back tomorrow for my first VHS review of a Disney Sing-Along Songs tape. I'll be starting with the first tape in the series to ever be released, Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. So stay tuned for that. Until then have a great rest of your Sunday. Later.