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r u o e Insid Univery se x a l a G y b Welcome to SPOILER! You may have noticed our world is not what it should be at the moment. From one end the COVID virus is kicking ass and taking names, and on the other end there are riots and unrest. I guess the pandemic wasn’t enough! The mandatory quarantine, washing our hands a thousand times a day, staying away from loved ones, being bored in the house, bored in the house, bored in the mother f***ing house. Not to mention all things that we love dearly got derailed; every planned event on this glorious Earth including our beloved Comic Cons. On top of that, the utter standstill of comics, films, and basically every TV show; they all just stopped production or were sadly cancelled entirely. It’s why I can’t say, “Hey, look at this issue! What an ambitious page count and amazing aesthetic. Look at the well-written articles by our absolutely talented team of writers and editors. Look at the wonderful out-of-this-world design by our fabulous designers. Look at the art and the quality, wow.” No, No, No, I can’t say that, I won’t say that! Not at all. As I’ve stated in previous issues, this is no small feat. It’s an extraordinary one made easier by a team of wonderful, like-minded, and passionate creators from all over the world. That is why I must make a promise! No matter what is going on around our planet—pandemics, riots, or unrest—we are committed to inspire your imagination. We want you to enter our universe, no matter what your fandom may be. United We Stand. I am super excited for the era of SPOILER Magazine. Your magazine! We are in the roaring ‘20s, beyond the golden age of show biz. It truly is the year of Unity. We are the luckiest generation for simply living in a time where anything is possible. Together we will get through all of this. I know this for a fact because we are geeks, we are nerds, we are fans, and we are humans. So, let’s take pop culture very seriously. It’s not kids’ play (or is it?). Regardless, it’s a way of life. It seeps from our veins. It’s in our souls. I know you understand what I’m saying because you’re the same way! As I have said before, we’re not the first entertainment magazine, but we would like to be your choice in the sea of entertainment media out there. Let us be your family and this magazine your home. Join us for the amazing journey ahead. Stay safe, stay healthy, stay curious, with open minds and open hearts. I love you all…
OUR TEAM Editor-in-Chief Galaxy Print Editor Sara Hope
Art Director Kent Klarks
Design and illustration Supervisor Ronald Garcia Design Manager Zerologhy Design and illustration Simeon T. Aston Kieran Squires Copy Editor Charles Willington Ethan Brehm Staff Writers The Greatest Writing Team in Our Universe Matthew Mclachlan Vanessa Bellew Robert Napolitano David Grand Phuong Pham Natalie Reade Michael Bernardi Ethan Brehm Moses Gamer Social Media Manager Thor the all mighty Advertising Ads@SpoilerMagazine.com Sponsorship sponsorship@SpoilerMagazine.com Press Please send all press releases to: press@SpoilerMagazine.com Please send all review material to: review@SpoilerMagazine.com Subscriptions For all subscription enquiries please contact: sub@SpoilerMagazine.com
Check out our website for details on how to get our DIGITAL EDITION Circulation Do you want this magazine at your local book store, comic book hangout, toy shop, or anywhere else for that matter? Let us know, we can make it happen. circulation@SpoilerMagazine.com SPOILER Magazine is published by Spoiler Magazine Publishing. Nothing in this magazine can be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher. Whilst every effort is made to ensure all information in the magazine is correct, details maybe subject to change. All photographic material is copyright to the relevant owner and appears with their kind permission. Visuals are used in a review context and no copyright infringement is intended. All rights reserved. SPOILER Magazine is printed in the USA
Galaxy Galaxy EDITOR-IN-CHIEF @ComicConRadio
SPOILER Magazine 7095 Hollywood Blvd Hollywood, California 90028 “Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening” - Galaxy
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FEATURES
58 Tim Rozon The Coolest Guy on Syfy A comic book fanatic with the coolest stach, leading droves of fans across the globe and now into space.
26 Clive Standen The Next‌
48 Adriyan Rae Rising to the Stars
From a Viking king to a council of dads, Clive is truly the next anything he wants to be.
Beauty and brains is an understatement. She kicks a** but with a girl next door charm.
SPOILER MAGAZINE TABLE OF CONTENTS
72 Star Trek 2020: A Vision of a Better Future A journey through the Star Trek universe
14 The Cave: A Case for Batman the Superhero We dove deep into the mind of the caped crusader. Beware!
the watch
68 Obscurity Spotlight:
Dennis Dunphy A.K.A. Demolition Man (D-Man) Is a column in which we highlight a comic character you may not know, and give a brief history of why that is and who the hell they are.
34 Marty Mcfly Ass High Schooler
38 Star Wars Rise of the Apologist Exploring the questionable aspects of The Rise of Skywalker, the sequel trilogy overall, and how Star Wars reminds us that, just like family, it’s possible to love something and still not like it.
104 The History of Black Widow may 2020|
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116 8 Star Wars Origin Stories We Would Love to See Happen
36 Space Appeal With Jim Hapscomb A fast-talking salesman and punch-up artist helps Hollywood hit-makers find that special something for their bland stories in his latest product pitch.
the base 96 How to Love and Enjoy Comics for People Who are Afraid to Love and Enjoy Comics The Non-Geek’s Guide to Getting into Comic Books & Graphic Novels
22 Why Mental Illness is So Prevalent in Horror Movies
122 Ranking All 8 Movies in the Rocky Cinematic Universe 18 Morbius vs The Virus 20 Cosplay for Charity 56 Vagrant Queen 106 Rollo 108 Comic Book Review 120 Cosplay on a Budget
10 Covid-19 vs The Geekdom
126 New Comic Con Docuseries
www.spoilermagazine.com | Follow us on Instagram: @SpoilerMedia
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COVID-19 VS THE GEEKDOM By: Matthew McLachlan
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running while we got fat in our underwear, shared Tiger King memes, and watched Rick & Morty, so the least we can do (besides clap for two minutes a day) is officially thank them for being the best among us. So, from all of us at Spoiler Magazine, we salute all the doctors, nurses, firefighters, police, EMT, grocery store clerks, liquor store employees, and last but certainly not least, the God damn delivery drivers who absolutely knows us on a first name basis by now. Thank you. Okay! So. Covid-19. What an asshole, right? It took all the Geek-tastic things we were looking forward to and took a big ol’ crap on them. Hey, I don’t like that visual, either, but a crap’s a crap. One of the biggest Geek-centric industries that took a wallop during all this stupid pandemic mess, was the ever-so-financially stable industry of comic books. I’m sure you didn’t even hear about how bad the comic book industry suffered because people were
spamming you with other highly depressing articles, but let’s just say it got real bad. How bad? Well, Diamond Comic Distributors, the company that physically makes most of your favorite comic company’s products, had to halt distribution of literally everything. While this doesn’t necessarily affect consumers of digital comics and those fancy folk who get comics sent to their home, it was still a huge blow to most of the comic book industry and a swift kick in the pants to the brick and mortar comic shops we know and love. Now, the good news is, there were steps to get comics made again quite quickly as well as many grassroots movements to save the mom and pop comic book shops. One of the biggest movements is Diamond’s launching of “Back the Comeback,” which is, as they put it, “a multi-phased campaign focused on supporting local comic and game stores as they reopen, restart, and rebuild.” So, if you have the time and left-
Netflix/Dadrian on DevianArt/Anadolu Agency San Diego Comic-Con/CDC
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ovid-19 may not sound as threatening or scary as other things in pop-culture with numbers in the title, such as T-1000, LV-426, or Transformers 7, but it did make quite the villainous impact on the world, especially within the world of Geekdom. One of the biggest gut punches of the pandemic was the mandatory quarantine that derailed every planned event on Earth, including the Geekdom’s much beloved San Diego Comic Con. On top of that, everything we Geeks know and love came to a complete and utter standstill: Comics were halted, all films were delayed, and basically every TV show stopped production or was cancelled entirely. Covid-19 really mucked things up for most, but it’s been exceptionally rough for all within the Geekdom. And I’m here to bitch about it using splashes of sarcasm, halfway decent fact-checking, and a dash of optimism. Now, before I dive deep into my highly intelligent views on all this, I hope it goes without saying that everything I’m about to complain about is nothing compared to the sacrifice and courage all essential workers and healthcare professionals had to work through during the chaos that was this pandemic. All these people kept the world
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over money from your stimulus check, go help these havens of Geekdom stay afloat. And to the neckbeards who don’t, I look forward to the next comic movie coming out and hearing you argue with fourteen-year-olds during Call of Duty over how “the comic was soooo much better, bro.” The film industry was probably the hardest hit industry during the living pajama nightmare that was this Zod-damn pandemic with every film in production coming to a screeching halt, resulting in tens of thousands of people losing their job. Needless to say, the film industry had to do some major damage control. With the few films that were ready for im-
mediate release and all movie theaters closed, many companies had to look to streaming services or video on demand for release, which made me miss paying $27 for a medium popcorn and Buncha Crunch. For films a little further down the pipeline, release dates were pushed back to the Fall and in some cases, early 2021, including some of the Geekdom’s most anticipated comic book films. And then it gets a little trickier as all films that were in the middle of filming when the world stopped had to completely shut down production indefinitely. Now, I’m sure a lot of the filmmakers used that time to tighten aspects of the script and even hop into the editing booth to edit what they already filmed, but, unfortunately, the only thing they really could do was wait out the crisis until the go-ahead to continue production was given. And I don’t know about you, but if I had to wait a second more than I had to to see Robert Pattinson in The Batman, I was going to She-Hulk rage through my apartment building. Yeah, I know She-Hulk retains her intelligence and emotional control when she’s angry and that I’m crossing comic universes, but you watch
The Batman screen test and not get antsy! The good news is, the film industry is a mega-beast and isn’t going quietly into the night anytime soon. We will be getting all of our movies, it just might take a little longer than we thought. Luckily for the film industry, patience has always been one of the Geekdom’s strongest virtues. Kindness… not so much. Let’s try working on that shall we? Ya idiots! TV might have been the most wild west of all the mediums that was affected by this absolute piece of giant donkey sh*t of a pandemic. With all shows in production being shut down completely, some were put on the shelf for the foreseeable future, while others were straight-up cancelled. The problem with a lot of TV shows (mainly cable) is that they film a chunk of episodes, edit them, and then air said show before they’re even halfway through filming the season. Netflix, HBO, and other streaming services on the other hand film all their episodes, spend months editing them, and release the entire season at once, or quickly one after another, while also having a smaller episode count. And may 2020|
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of you who lost more than just time and patience, we at Spoiler Magazine and everyone within the Geekdom are here for you and we sympathize. And for those whose mental state/ health was tested during that period of time, you are awesome, strong, powerful, beautiful, and we love you. And as much as all the pandemic nonsense was a real sh*t hand to be dealt, I truly believe that it and the quarantine will end up making our community and culture even richer in the long run. I mean, think about it; during all of this, people around the country, even the world, took up all sorts of hobbies and interests that they always felt they never had the time to pursue in the past. All of a sudden, a large chunk of the world started reading and writing plays and screenplays, they put on concerts, did acting workshops, took art classes, wrote comics, drew comics, and everything in between! I bet you, I bet you, years from now we will talk to some of the greatest people within the arts community and the Geekdom and those people will tell us that they began working on their craft during the Covid-19 pandemic. They
will have found their calling during a time of darkness and helped change the world for the better. Wouldn’t that be great? And hey, listen, if you sat around and did nothing during all of that, don’t even sweat it. We all did what we needed to during that time. And because of it, the world will never be the same. Perhaps it’ll even be better. And sure, you’ll probably have to explain yourself every time you sneeze for the rest of your life, but hey…you’re here. So, enjoy it my Geeklings.
Gilnature/Getty Images/ LucaLorenzelli
with that shutdown, cable networks were desperate to get content and scrambled to find anything they could get their hands on. So, basically, all those awesome and original new shows that were pitched to them that they thought couldn’t possibly compare to their definitely unique cop dramas or their not boring at all doctor romance shows? Yeah, they’ve gone ahead and asked people to film a TV show in their apartment with an iPhone instead. On the other hand, I do think some TV has actually benefited from quarantine, giving a more stripped-down version of certain shows and showing that less might actually be more. I mean, nothing improves Jimmy Fallon like watching his kids do what we all wish we could, climb all over him to stop his monologue by any means necessary. That might seem like a lot of negative stuff, but I do think there is a lot of positive to be had from this pandemic. If a boy can dream, my biggest hope is that this quarantine made us all stop for a long while and take a good look around to see what’s truly important. I’m not gonna get all kumbaya on you, I’m just saying that, in the last few years, the world has felt like it’s been spinning a little bit faster than normal and maybe this time to slow down and take a breath is exactly what we needed. I hope you were like me and the worst thing that happened during the pandemic was not knowing what to watch next, your pants got a little tighter, and only a few popped blood vessels when trying to call unemployment. For those
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Batman suit design by Vimal Kerketta
the cave
A Case For Batman the superhero By: Matthew McLachlan
A column dedicated to The Dark Knight, his Bat-family, and the world he fights and protects… and other silly Batman stuff. In this reoccurring segment, we dive into the world of The Dark Knight, his friends and enemies, and everything else around him. In this issue, we discuss the non-argument of whether or not Batman is, in fact, a superhero. He is. Deal with it. The author made us put in that last part.
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does not possess any of these things, he is not actually a “super” hero, and is, in fact, just your standard, not too special, “hero”. This is, of course, a made-up rule. It has never been a thing. However, NeckBeards within Geekdom have done their damnedest to use this “solid evidence” to denounce Batman as a superhero for years now. Well, NeckBeards, I pray to Zod that none of your favorite superheroes include Iron Man, The Punisher, Green Arrow, Black Widow, Star Lord, Nick Fury, Rorschach, War Machine, Hawkeye, and countless other non-powered super-heroes because…well… that would make no Zod damn sense, now would it?
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The argument stems from the idea that because Batman does not possess any of these things, he is not actually a “super” hero, and is, in fact, just your standard, not too special, “hero”. This is, of course, a made-up rule.
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Batman/DC Comics/Jim Lee
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n the world of Geekdom, there are an endless amount of debates that aren’t really debates at all, yet they still pop up from time to time, usually when alcohol is involved. A few examples include: Did Han shoot first? Was the Game of Thrones ending bad? Is Cobb awake at the end of Inception? The answer to all of these non-debates is a resounding “Yes”, but I’ll let you all argue about them over your craft beers while your girlfriends just want to go home. I, on the other hand, am here to discuss another non-debate that seems to have gained unnecessary traction over the years. One that I have found myself in the middle of on more occasions than I’d like to admit, alcohol or not. An argument that I have a very hard time believing is still even a thing. And that is, of course, the question of whether or not Batman is actually a “superhero.” This argument stems from the idea that in order to be a superhero, you need to be “super”. Meaning you must possess some sort of super abilities or powers. So, because Batman
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the cave
My favorite excuse for Batman not being a superhero is, of course, “he’s just some guy with money.” Even typing that makes my butt clench with fury. I guess I’m confused as to what it is people think Batman actually does with all his money, bribe criminals into submission? He’s not Venmo-man! I assume what people mean is he uses his money to buy cars, gadgets, and other things and those are what make him so good at what he does. Well, I’m sure you can go on YouTube and find half a dozen teenage millionaires wearing armor, throwing smoke bombs, and whipping tiny bladed boomerangs at each other, but I do not see them becoming vengeance or the night. But let’s entertain the idea for a moment that money is the sole reason Batman is successful at fighting crime…please remind me, because my memory must be going, of all the times Mark Zuckerberg disarmed a doomsday device while being shot at or the dozens of various crime organizations Bill Gates shut down with his bare hands or that one time Warren Buffet fist-fought a God-like alien and kicked its ass around town. Huh! Weird! I just can’t seem to think of any, can you?! The only superhuman thing a billionaire
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like Jeff Bezos is doing is somehow getting me my Amazon packages yesterday and that’s because I pay him for it. Now, let’s get down to the good stuff: why Batman is a superhero. Regardless of his fortune and lack of super powers, Bruce Wayne is not “just some guy.” And to think as much would be ridiculous. He spent his entire young adult life training, all around the world, to be the best at, well, literally everything. After his parents died, he vowed to rid Gotham of crime, which meant pushing himself to the edge, mentally and physically, in every possible way in order to fulfill that vow. The guy has mastered 127 different forms of martial arts, achieved peak human conditioning and strength, gone through various courses and training to raise his intellect and IQ to genius levels, learned detective skills that make Sherlock Holmes look like Scooby Doo, and has
a willpower stronger than the knees that broke his unreasonably strong and perfectly sculpted back! We’ve all seen people push themselves harder than we thought possible, maybe because there was something driving them further than everybody else, and Bruce Wayne takes that idea to a whole new level...
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I’m sure you can go on YouTube and find half a dozen teenage millionaires wearing armor, throwing smoke bombs, and whipping tiny bladed boomerangs at each other, but I do not see them becoming vengeance or the night.
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Some would even say, superhuman levels. See what I did there? Bruce Wayne isn’t a normal person who bought his way into crime fighting, he’s a broken human being who pushed himself to every possible limit there is to be the very best and he used all of the resources at his disposal to aid in his pursuit of a crime-free Gotham. So, the reality is, Batman is a superhero because he doesn’t
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have any superpowers. He pushed himself to the strength, speed, agility, and intellect of Captain America without ever needing the cheat-code that is Super Solider Serum to do it. All he needed was some old-fashioned family trauma and an unhealthy amount of strong will. In fact, in basically every iteration of Batman in which he does gain some kind of superpower, it isn’t like, “oh, hey, Batman can fly now.” Nope! The dude becomes a God! Other superpowered beings crap their spandex when “the human” gets all the superpowers you idiots keep complaining he didn’t have before! So, let Batman be a human, ‘cause he scares the hell outta the other heroes when he does have powers. And as far as the definition of “superhero” goes, a superhero is someone who fights crime on the same level of others who do have powers. That’s all. No powers required, just the ability to keep up and stay alive. Which Batman, the superhero, has very much done. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Bruce Wayne is not “just some guy.” And to think as much would be ridiculous. He spent his entire young adult life training, all around the world, to be the best at, well, literally everything.
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MORBIUS VS THE VIRUS By: Robert Napolitano
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impossible to deny his talent. Much like Ryan Reynolds with The Green Lantern, the Joker role Leto took on came with its criticisms and likely left a little chip on his shoulder. I might be wrong and it didn’t phase him one bit, but as a fan of his I don’t buy that for a second. He had a unique take on The Joker, but it just didn’t connect with audiences in the way Heath Ledger’s or Joaquin Phoenix’s did. Some might take that as a knock on him, but to the people on the fence about Jared Leto I give you my word he’s not only one hell of an actor, he’s a perfect fit to play Morbius. Michael Morbius is a scientist who suffers from a rare and untreatable blood disease. He takes matters into his own hands to try and cure himself which leads to him becoming afflicted with a form of vampirism. Morbius obtains all the super human abilities that come with being a vampire, but even better is the fact that he doesn’t obtain any of the weaknesses vampires are usually associated with. This is where things take off and Michael Morbius has to fight off his thirst for blood in order to be the hero he’s capable of becoming. This may sound like the plot to every other superhero movie, featuring a protagonist who’s faced with adversity and trying to figure out how to overcome it to reach his full potential. But what makes Morbius different is his inner demons pulling
him towards being a super villain despite his desire to be the hero. This is rarely the case, but when it comes to Morbius I don’t think this is the type of movie that only super hero and comic book fans will enjoy. It’s gonna be dark, it’s gonna be gritty and you better believe it’s gonna be bloody. Morbius is set to hit theaters March 19th, 2021 and while the delay really sucks, it’s only fitting that a virus is what stands in Morbius’s way.
Morbius/Marvel Studios
t pains me to say this, but I want to start this off by letting you know some good news and some bad news, if you haven’t already heard. Thanks to the unfortunate circumstances Covid-19 has presented us with, we have to wait another full year to finally see Marvel’s Morbius on the big screen... WHACK! That said, given this global pandemic there’s obviously much more serious problems than a movie being delayed, but for the sake of keeping things light and on topic I’ll digress. Now for the good news. This movie is shaping up to be a MAJOR hit. A strong lead like Jared Leto, a solid cast built around him, and a director [Daniel Espinosa] whose career has been trending upwards for some time now. If you haven’t seen his 2017 film “Life”, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds, I’d suggest you go check it out. It’s a sci-fi space horror with a great cast, unique vision, and a thrilling ending (I saw it twice in theaters and I’m not even a big fan of space movies). On top of these pieces all being in place Morbius also has the most important ingredient needed, a badass protagonist with an origins story we’ll be able to feel and connect with. Something I love about Morbius is that he’s an anti-hero. And since he’s so well known for being an arch enemy of Spider-Man, he almost has to win you over for you to really get behind and root for him. Fans of the comic book series, like myself, will be the first to tell you that’s exactly what he’s going to do. Even if you find yourself rooting against him at times he’s the type of character that you either love or love to hate. Sounds to me like the perfect part for an actor like Jared Leto. He’s had his ups and downs on the big screen, but it’s
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cosplay for charity
Not Just Playtime By: Phuong Pham
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the Rebel Legion. The 501st Legion and Rebel Legion are both cosplay clubs with a focus on Star Wars properties. They are known for their high-quality costumes and incredibly high standards. Every costume submitted to the 501st and Rebel Legion is vetted to make sure it is as screen accurate as possible. Once the costumes have been approved, Darth Vader, Stormtroopers, Reys, and Jedis will dispatch and “troop” in promotional, charity, or community events. These events can be anything from a Make-A-Wish request to a premiere for the latest Star Wars movie. Furthermore, both 501st and Rebel Legion have different branches (referred to as “garrisons” and “outposts”) the world over. Since the inception of these two organizations, we have seen cosplay groups utilize other properties, as well. For instance, the Avengers Initiative has the same high standards for costuming with regards to Marvel characters (with a focus on the Marvel Cinematic Universe.) Each costume must be vetted in the same way. And these are
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Unfortunately, Chris Evans and Gal Gadot are not in a position to visit numerous hospitals...but Captain America and Wonder Woman can.
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just a few of the many groups that exist in the charity cosplay community, today: from Star Wars to Marvel to DC to Disney, there will always be a hero to help those in need.
Comic Attack /Chris Z Photography/Wonder Woman/DC Comics
he number one question cosplayers probably get asked by those who are far removed from the COMIC CON and cosplay communities is, “Why do you do it?” For many of us, it’s an escape from the doldrums of everyday life and stressors. However, there are even more benefits that we can draw from cosplay than just stress relief. One manner in which people are engaging in cosplay to benefit society is by using it to contribute to charitable services. It has been well-documented that celebrities such as Chris Evans and Gal Gadot have previously visited hospital patients. In character unfortunately, Chris Evans and Gal Gadot are not in a position to frequently visit numerous hospitals...but Captain American and Wonder Woman can. A growing movement in cosplay is using cosplayers’ attention to detail to give back to the community. All over the US (and in other parts of the world, as well) there are cosplay organizations that lend their time by using their expertise to brighten the days of children undergoing prolonged hospital stays or providing moral support to impoverished families. Some of the bigger organizations that do this are the 501st Legion and
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WHY MENTAL ILLNESS IS SO PREVALENT IN HORROR MOVIES Psychological films use mental disorders like an instrument to work their way into our brains and connect with us in ways we don’t even realize.
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ver the years we’ve seen a ton of different genre’s of Horror films. There’s slasher, monster, zombie, super natural, found footage, sprinkle in some vampires and a deadly virus, the list can go on and on. When it comes to both box office success and critical acclaim though, the one that has been the most captivating and consistent of them all is Psychological films. This is for good reason. Of course stories about the apocalypse or a maniac serial killer can be entertaining, but they’re not usually made to connect with us on a deeper level.
Take a movie like M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, he took an illness known as D.I.D (dissociative identity disorder) injected it with steroids and made easily one of the years best and most profitable films of 2017. Now you might not have 24 persona-
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If you do suffer from a mental disorder I hope you’re able to take films about it as a compliment.
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lities living inside you, one of them being a super-villain, but that doesn’t mean we can’t connect to characters that lose their innocence young and are never the same. Now take a film that was just remade this past year called Jacob’s Ladder where a war veteran comes home and suffers from PTSD that causes him to lose his sanity. The most common age for people suffering from PTSD is their early twenties which means even a relatively young audience can already relate to all types of trauma weather they fought in the war or not.
Go way, way back to the 1960 film Psycho. Those that suffer from schizophrenia will be the first to tell you that it’s not as over the top as films portray it. But take a lonely momma’s boy that loses her and can’t find a way to cope with it. Obviously dressing up like her and thinking she’s still alive is far from healthy, but the sadness and pain that can lead a person into such a dark place is far too relatable. If you do suffer from a mental disorder I hope you’re able to take films about it as a compliment. Horror films dramatize mental disorders to an extent far different than reality and even still audiences can’t help but relate. If your average viewer can connect with Kevin Wendell Crumb, Jacob Singer and Norman Bates, then they can connect with anyone. No matter the disorder we’re all “normal”. Otherwise these films wouldn’t have to exaggerate so much in order to keep us entertained. Nobody’s as sane as they want others to believe, movies like these are just a fun way to bring that to light.
Glass/Universal Pictures/Psycho/Paramount Pictures Jacob’s Ladder/Carolco Pictures/TriStar Pictures/Shutter Island
By: Robert Napolitano
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clive standen the next... C
live Standen may have played all sorts of rough, tough, mean, and exceedingly badass characters throughout his acting career, but the second you talk to the guy, you see how truly sweet, funny, and annoyingly charming (in the best possible way) he actually is. In fact, it’s almost unfair how great the guy is while also being a 6ft 2in hunk of muscle. There should be a limit to how many abs you’re allowed to have with a great personality like that. #balance. Typically known for his portrayal on The History Channel’s Vikings as the morally flip-flopping, always shirtless, and definitely not a threat to your relationship character of Rollo, Clive has since moved on to star in several brand-new shows such as Mirage, Council of Dads, and more. We were lucky enough to catch up with him on a lazy Saturday to ask him some questions about acting, cartoons, Robin Hood, wasps, his man-crush on Viggo Mortenson, and the graphic novel he’s currently working on:
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By: Matthew McLachlan & Galaxy
Even on the boats! It was ridiculous, we’d even have fights on the boats. They’d bring these little lunch bags or snack bags onto the boat because we’d have, you know, maybe thirty rowers and then all the crew and the actors who were on each longboat and they’d bring these little brown paper bags that’d often have a granola bar, an orange or some piece of fruit, and then maybe half a sandwich just to keep you going, but they often became little food fights in the middle of the ocean or the lakes because people would be getting oranges or something thrown at them from across the boat (laughs). Really childish stuff.
Clive Standen/Vikings/History Channel Taken/NBC/Ask Men
Looking back on your career, what would you say was your personal favorite performance? Well, I’d say without a doubt now it’d be Rollo from Vikings, because I’ve been able to develop him over 60-hours of TV which has been an incredible privilege to do that. He is such a formidable character to get beneath the skin of because he transforms himself nearly season to season, so it’s always been refreshing for me to kind of wipe the slate clean with that character and kinda go in a different way each season. So it was exciting to get to be a part of that journey. Definitely that character. What’s the most random and funny story from your acting career you can think of? I know everyone has one. Well, we had many during the filming of Vikings. It was a very big, practical jokes kinda set. Travis Fimmel is our lead actor and he’s quite a prankster.
Just to survive on set of Vikings you’d have to kind of get your prank-hat on and everyone had to try and beat the last one. I remember one of the memorable pranks we did was covering all the crew member’s cars from top to toe in Saran wrap all the way around the car and then spray it all with shaving foam, so it was a big white mess. It was there until we finished work. We would take people’s phones and duct tape them to the top of the studio where you’d need a cherry picker or one of those giant cranes to get up there to take it down. You’d have to have eyes in the back of your head, because someone was always trying to prank you or was out to get you. (Laughs) It was all fun and games, though. When you’re on the top of a mountain, in hailstorms, and the freezing cold all day, no one really takes themselves seriously when you’re jostled around with pranks and the fun of that.
Which of your roles was the most difficult for you to capture? The most challenging kind of transformation for me was a film I did called In Like Flynn in Australia based on a young Errol Flynn. I played this character Charlie who was a cross between Robert Shaw, Donald Pleasance, and a homeless man I grew up with who was quite a character who had a big presence. I was playing a fifty-five-year-old man and I was only thirty-five at the time, set in the 1930s and I had these big mutton-chops and put on loads of weight trying to capture this alcoholic crazy sailor who’s got imaginary friends and all sorts of stuff. The day in and day out of that was tough because I gave him gout in one leg, transformed the voice and it was this weird hybrid of the original “British Empire coming over to Australia” so it’s kinda half British half Australian accent, I mean there was a lot of time involved in getting under the skin of that character, took me a long time. Luckily, I had enough prep time. Very proud of that one. And really anything that scares me a bit, I like to take on the challenge.
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SPOILER MAGAZINE
What makes you smile and what scares you the most? My children. Every day. My youngest son’s outlook on life makes me laugh all the time.
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Let’s see. Dad jokes. Bad puns. Little moments of perfection. Ones that no one else shares that are just for you to see for a second, like the world has opened up just for you. I love those little moments when you catch yourself going, “No one else can see this but me,” and it gives you a little smile on the inside. And what scares me? Wasps. (laughs) I generally don’t like wasps. Spiders are fine, anything that is in the room that usually scares people, I’m fine. As long as I don’t go near it. But little wasps that buzz around your head and you can’t get rid of them and they’re in your ears, that’s the kind of thing that freaks me out. (laughs) If there’s a big spider or a big snake, or a crocodile, as long as it’s over there and I can see it, it doesn’t freak me out. If it’s up to me, I won’t go over and touch it. But wasps are my kryptonite.
Clive Standen/Council of Dads Taken/Jeff Lipsky/NBC
Is there a role you have not played that you would like to play someday? In the theatre world there’s the role of Chris in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. Henry V is something I’ve always wanted to do since I was a kid and saw Kenneth Branagh performing it on screen. If they were remaking Highlander I’d love to play Kurgen because I can guarantee that I wouldn’t mess that up while also keeping the legacy of Clancy Brown’s Kurgen alive. So, that would be a good role to play. Even Jack Reacher would be great. I know Tom Cruise played him in the films, but now they’re doing a television series based on the actual books, which I think would be fantastic, I think that’s a great character to get underneath. And, of course, James Bond is every British man’s dream to play. (laughs) But we’ll see. Oh! And Escape From New York! Snake Pliskin! One of my all-time heroes. Even my dog’s named after him. But I think I’d do a great job of a 2020 version of Snake Pliskin.
Who is your celebrity crush? Viggo Mortenson as Aragorn. (laughs) I think if I was in the presence of Viggo Mortenson, that’s the one person I wouldn’t know what to say. I would get completely star struck. I think he’s an incredible actor and all the characters he plays. And I’m a massive Lord of the Rings fan. The person who plays Aragorn will always be my hero. What’s your biggest pet-peeve? People that are late. So many actors think that the world revolves around them and they’re late for everything. I think it’s such a bad habit to get into. Even doing Comic Cons! When you do them, you’re at the hotel with all these different actors and they tell you to meet down in the foyer at 9. But they’re actually intending to leave at 10 because there are always those actors who are so late that they tell everyone to meet at 9 because they expect everyone to be an hour late! So, I get there at 9 and realize I’m waiting around for an hour for these actors who couldn’t be bothered to get up in the morning (laughs). I’m even thinking as a fan as well, they’re at those Comic Cons, standing in line for a very, very long time and then not only was that person supposed to turn up at their booth at, like, 10am, they’re strolling up at 11:30 and they’ve got a coffee in their hand. And you see those guys at Comic Con all the time! And everyone’s probably in a queue for one actor and they’ve got a panel to go to a couple of hours later and they’ve planned their whole day out, but because some actor wanted extra bacon and eggs or couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed or set his alarm in the morning, those people’s whole Comic Con day is put into disarray. Drives me up the wall.
In one sentence, describe your job. I get to go to work and do my hobby. It’s the old saying, “it’s not a job if you’re doing what you love.” The other answer is I get to lie for a living. (laughs). Have you ever had a moment where you were talking to a friend and you thought, “Whoa, i just did the best scene of my life!” but it was in reality? You have this thing as an actor, you don’t always “get it.” You start at the beginning and get to the middle and the end of a scene and you don’t really know what you did because you were so in the moment that you’re not monitoring yourself, you’re not monitoring your performance, you’re not monitoring the other actor and the nerves, the fear, it’s gone. You get to the end of it and you have no idea what you did! That’s usually your best take. That’s usually your best performance because you just
leave yourself alone and are in the moment. It’s very hard to know until it comes out or until you get people turning around to you saying, “That was great!” It’s usually when you get to the end of a scene and you’re feeling like it’s actually a great scene, it probably wasn’t. That’s when you get all these comments and notes. Because you were too hard on yourself, you were monitoring yourself, you weren’t quite entirely present. So, it’s a very hard question to answer because I often feel that the best performance I do is when I get that moment where I wasn’t monitoring myself, I have no idea what came out of my mouth, what I did, because I was just listening and I was entirely present. Especially in theatre when you get off stage, people say, “That was an incredible performance!” and you’re like, “Was it?! I have no idea what I did! (laughs) I was just riffing!” But that’s the best feeling in the world. may 2020|
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What cartoon do you still like to watch if you still watch any? (laughs) Well, I’ve got 3 kids, so I haven’t stopped watching cartoons. There are certain cartoons that when your kids want to watch them, you’re like, “Oh, not again. I can’t watch that. I can’t watch Frozen for the fifteenth time.” But Finding Nemo I can watch over and over again. SpongeBob SquarePants. The Simpsons. My young son is into all of these animes like Bleach and things like that. But I like the old-fashioned cartoons. Tom and Jerry still makes me laugh. (laughs)
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We heard that you’re currently writing a graphic novel! I am, yeah! I’m working with a wonderful producer, Barry Levine, who produced Oblivion with Tom Cruise and we’re making the graphic novel in the hopes of turning it into a brand-new TV show. It’s set 4 years from now, with a war in America, and there are seventeen states left that remain and it’s very… complicated (laughs). But, yeah, we’re hoping to turn it into a TV show. It’s called American Carnage.
Clive Standen/Council of Dads/Taken NBC/Vikings/History Channel
Did you ever read comics growing up? Oh, yeah! I love comic books. My favorite, actually, because I’m not sure if it was ever made it to America, but there was an old comic called Toxic when I grew up with a guy called Marshal Law, who was a superhero who killed superheroes. After the Vietnam War, there were lots of super-soldiers given powers and lots of the veterans were now going around using those powers to rob banks and become supervillains. As soldiers they had a lot of genetic testing done, so, for instance, Johnny Flame was in so much pain all the time because he was literally on fire. So, these people were nasty, horrible superheroes, and Marshal Law was employed by the government to wipe out all superheroes. Kind of the anti-superhero song, so I used to love that comic book. I’ve always thought Marshal Law would make a really good film! My brother is four years older and he was always on the forefront of all these things, so I’d always get his hand-me-downs and was always a few years behind, but that was one of them.
tales of Robin Hood to capitalize on the money the film was making, so they were casting for different roles and I was really young so they were looking for Little John’s son and that was my job. It was like a live reenactment where tourists would be taken on adventure walks and I would be in a tree saying, “Quick! Get off the road, the Sheriff’s men are coming! The Sheriff’s men are coming!” And then men would gallop by and grab me, throw me on the back of their horse, and gallop off. And then Robin Hood would turn up and say, “Where’d they take him?” And Little John would say, “Where’s my son?!” The tour would end up around Major Oak and there’d be a massive skirmish and Robin and his men would fight the sheriff and his men to get me back. We’d have jousting, we’d hit cabbages with swords, all sorts of stuff (laughs). But I was doing that when I was fourteen years old. Because it was more fun than working in a clothes shop or a McDonald’s or something like that. It was cash in hand, and I had no idea I wanted to be an actor at that point, I just really loved dressing up and having fun! Getting paid to have fun for a living! Which is still what I do! (laughs) You actually grew up and worked in Sherwood Forest! Is that in Nottingham? Is that a true area? Sherwood Forest is all the land surrounding Nottingham, which is exactly where Robin Hood came from. In the center of Sherwood Forest, there’s a ginormous tree that now needs ballasts to hold up the branches it’s that big. It’s called Major Oak which is where they believe the real Robinhood probably slept. But, yeah, I lived about fifteen miles from Sherwood Forest and I remember Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was at the cinema and I was about fourteen years old and they wanted to do the may 2020|
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Who was your favorite Robin Hood leading star? Oh, it has to be Errol Flynn! I mean the swashbuckling! (laughs) I will always be a fan of Errol Flynn. That’s actually another character I’d like to play is Errol Flynn in the later years of his life. I mean, no one
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turned up to his funeral and he was such an amazing guy and in Hollywood they laid out all these chairs thinking this major movie star was going to have all these fans turn up to his funeral and no one did. I mean, it was such a sad end. It was a little bit like Elvis Presley dying on the toilet. What are your top movies you would like to maybe star in. 8. Highlander 7. Escape From New York 6. Short Circuit 5. Uncharted 4. Jack Reacher 3. A serious pirate film, it would be wonderful. 2. Alien or another Aliens. Something set before Aliens and Alien 3. 1. James Bond
What’re some of the things you like to do in your spare time? My passion really is scuba diving, I love the ocean. Any time I can get a little time off or I can go somewhere, I love to get in the ocean and just be underwater and see as much as I can. Anywhere I can go where there’s whales, dolphins, and sharks I’m generally a happy person. What do you feel about celebrities who date fans? (laughs) I don’t know! I’ve never met anyone who has, but to each their own, love is love, I suppose! At the end of the day we’re all human beings, no matter what we do for a living. I always think as well, people always ask, “What do you do for a living?” and that’s one of the first things you ask when you meet a new person and I always thought it would be better to start a conversation with, “Are you happy?” Ya know? “What makes you happy?” And that’s the most important thing. And if two people love each other, that’s all the matters.
Clive Standen/Council of Dads/Taken/NBC
Did you go through any special training for that? Were you an athlete? Back then, these guys would make their own armor underneath their costumes and we’d just smack each other with metal swords, like, real steel swords! (laughs) Which were just blunt but there were still all sorts of injuries. If there was a health and safety officer, we would’ve been closed down overnight, but back then, we’d camp in the forest, get up, put on a big show for the tourists, and get paid cash in hand by the Sherwood Forest boys. Back in those days, you didn’t seem to care so much about health and safety (laughs).
SPOILER MAGAZINE
COUNCIL OF DADS THURSDAYS 8/7C NBC may 2020|
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marty mcfly ass high schooler By: Matthew McLachlan
Marty McFly may have had one helluva traumatic experience travelling through time a whole bunch, almost getting killed a few times, and having accidental incest with his mom, but this article proves why Marty actually had the BEST high school experience ever. Or at least it TRIES to.
M
artin “Marty” McFly might seem like your typical American teenager journeying through the endless joy that is high school, but there’s something very special about Marty’s high school experience that makes him stand out from everyone else at Hill Valley High and any other high school for that matter. Could it be that he’s best friends with a scientist/physicist/inventor who steals from terrorists? That he’s been shot at by said terrorists in a mall parking lot in the middle of the night? Or maybe it’s that he accidentally became the first human time-traveler in existence? Either way, there’s
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no denying that what Marty went through in high school was pretty special and, well, traumatizing. But despite him having gone through more crazy situations than most in high school (and remember, I’m talking about high school) I would argue that Martin Seamus McFly might actually have had the best God damn high school experience than anyone else on the planet, trauma and all. Think about it, the kid had the time of his life! (Heh. Time pun) He got to visit the past three times, the future once, and experienced three different versions of the present! I mean, holy sh*t! Only cool thing I ever
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I would argue that Martin Seamus McFly might actually have had the best God damn high school experience than anyone else on the planet, trauma and all.
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Back to the Future/Universal Pictures/Back to the Future: The Ultimate Visual History/HarperCollins Publishers
did in high school was fart in class and work at Pizza Hut! Just kidding, I didn’t work at Pizza Hut. The kid’s got stories that will last him a lifetime and he did all of it in only 19 days (by his perspective). Now, I know there was some stress involved in all of this, with the, ya know, whole possibility of destroying the entire space-time continuum and all that, BUT…the whole thing was all still pretty exciting! Adventure and excitement may not be what a Jedi craves, but a puberty-stricken high schooler would eat this sh*t up! Even though most teenagers act like they don’t care, you know they love a good adventure as much as the next time-traveling kid. And even if you can honestly say that this wouldn’t have excited you as a teenager, take it from me, someone who’s the ripe old age of [REDACTED], I’ve witnessed all my high school friends have half a dozen kids and get jobs they hate, wishing to Zod they could do something half as cool as what they used to in high school. So, you’re either lying to yourself, or maybe you just get a normal amount of sleep and don’t work at a drive-thru. My only real problem with Marty McFly having all of these time travel adventures is that it was Marty McFly who had them. I mean, you give the greatest adventures imaginable to the kid who was already really freakin’ cool? That’s not fair. And he wasn’t even just “high school cool”, he was, like, regular cool! And how many people did you know in high school that were actually regular cool?! His fashion was on point, he was the leader of a band, and did sicky-gnar-gnar tricks on his skateboard all through town! I mean, for f*ck’s sake, AN ENTIRE AEROBICS CLASS WAVED TO HIM AS HE SKITCHED A RIDE TO SCHOOL! It’s one thing to have been the school loser and be brought on the greatest adven-
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there’s no denying that what Marty went through in high school was pretty special and, well, traumatizing.
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ture any human being has ever experienced, but you basically brought the most popular kid in town along! I mean, imagine if Doc Brown sent a nerd to the future! Freakin’ Gilbert. Gilbert the Nerd. He would’ve had the time of his life! Granted, Gilbert probably wouldn’t have gotten anything done ‘cause he would’ve been nerding-out too hard trying to appreciate the science behind everything and gotten beaten up by Biff in the first 5 minutes of being there. So, yeah, okay, maybe choosing a cool kid was the way to go. Besides, I can’t imagine Gilbert having the social strength to shred Johnny B. Good in front of the entire student body. All I’m saying is, even with all the crazy antics like being knocked out three times, almost dying twice, and spending a whole week trying to get your parents to make-out so you could actually exist only to accidentally have incestual relations with your mom, it still would’ve been the time of anyone’s life! Okay, maybe, um… maybe the incest part would make it not worth it, but… hey, he got to drive a DeLorean! And that’s cool, right? Right? Hello? may 2020|
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SPOILER MAGAZINE
Space Appeal
with jim hapscomb By: Michael Bernardi
A fast-talking salesman and punch-up artist helps Hollywood hit-makers find that special something for their bland stories in his latest product pitch.
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There’s nothin’ you can’t do with it. There’s nothin’ it can’t do for you.
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won’t believe it. It’s so simple. It’s gonna sweep your whole industry and then it’s gonna grab the broom and sweep it again. You want to know what it is? It’s space. Outer space.
pow!
Your stunned silence tells me you’ve heard me. That’s right my friends—outer space. There’s nothin’ you can’t do with it. There’s nothin’ it can’t do for you. I’ve been helping creatives for years by working in my special brand of outer space. The campy spa-
ce classic, Flash Gordon, started out as a film named Gordon about a mentally handicapped boy trying to make the football team. Then, for a small fee, Jim here added flash to it.
pow!
But why do you need what I’m selling, you ask? Let Jim be frank. I know many of you have been struggling as of late. It’s plain as day. Remakes. Reboots. Soft reboots. Live action remakes. Soft reboots of live action remakes based on TV shows. Jim feels your pain. What do you do when you make a great film such as The Lion King, but you’re fresh
Armageddon/Touchstone Pictures/Friday the 13th Warner Brothers Pictures/The Fifth Element/Gaumont
H
ow ya doin’ folks?! I’m Jim Hapscomb of Topdown Creekriver, Indiana. I can tell this is gonna be a great Great GREAT product pitch today because I can see that I have a room FULL of writers, producers, directors, and—hold on—let me squint my eyes here…yup! Even some studio heads! I see Kathleen Kennedy from Disney over there! A little soon after Episode 9 for you to be confidently out and about, but OK! So, we have the whole kit and caboodle of creative forces here today and ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you, have I got something that’s gonna knock your socks off. You simply
out of ideas 25 years later? You make The Lion King again! Sure! Kathleen gets it! Hell, back in the day you all were making two of the same movie at once!! Remember the years of Dante’s Peak and Volcano? And who can forget Stir of Echoes and The Sixth Sense? Look at this guy up front. I can tell he’s thinking of Deep Impact and Armageddon. They were both in space, I know. Guess which one Jim fixed up? That’s right! Armageddon. They said, Jim, we got another space disaster movie coming out against us, how do we outdo it?!! They’re both in space, Jim!!! I looked them dead in the eyes and said, “Put Aerosmith in space.”
pow!
Please, please, save your applause! I applaud YOU for being here today. This limitless potential I’m selling is for YOU! There’s no property that I can’t add outer space to. I’m the secret force behind almost every outer space associated project you can think of. Roland Emmerich came to me with a
script that was a gay romance between a charismatic Marine and a quirky scientist at a 4th of July BBQ. I said, “Roland, I’m gonna add space to it.”
pow!
It became Independence Day. Around that same time, I had a buddy come to me with a script about basketball. He said, “Jim, we want Michael Jordan for this.” He showed me the script. It was called Jam. I shook my head, took out my pen and wrote “Space” on the cover.
pow!
The rest is history.
Thank you! Thank you! For a bargain I can use the vacuum of space to clean up your story! Now a few of you might be thinking, “Jim, that’s impossible. There’s no way my characters are going to outer space. It makes no sense.” WRONG! I put Jason Voorhees in space. That’s right. Friday the 13th in space.
pow!
Did putting him there make sense? NO! But it made money! And far more money than I charged for my services. I can even do it on an actor by actor basis. Somebody said to me, “Jim, I really like Sam Rockwell as an actor, but I’m not sure what to do with him.”
pow!
I put him in Moon—endless Sam Sam Rockwells. Rockwells. I watched Ocean’s Eleven and said, “Hmm. I’m gonna add some some space.” outer space.” outer
pow!
Clooney in Gravity, Damon in The Martian, Martian, Pitt in Ad Astra. Astra.
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I can use the vacuum of space to clean up your story!
And, bonus, Gravity was origioriginally a bioabout pic about nally a biopic IsaacIsaac Newton Newton the perspectitold fromtold thefrom perspective of the ve of the apple. That’s two apple. That’s killing twokilling planets planets with ONE asteroid! with ONE asteroid! I bet you’ve heard that old de
debate about Die Hard, right? Is it a Christmas movie? Well I made it a space movie.
pow!
The Fifth Element! Now settle down! Settle down folks! I’m here today for ALL of you. We’re gonna send them all to space! Well, except for you comic book fellas. You all just hang in the back and we’ll talk after. You’ve pretty much sent everyone from Batman to Bazooka Joe to space. Thanks for your time, everyone! Just remember what Jim Hapscomb of Topdown Creekriver, Indiana always says! “Shoot for the Moon! If you miss, I’ll put your script in the STARS!!” may 2020|
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SPOILER MAGAZINE
rise of the apologist By: Michael Bernardi
T
he fans speak! The Skywalker Saga has come to a close and a collective shrug has spread across the galaxy like unwrapping socks on Christmas morning. Sure, it’s a gift, but, you know, it’s socks. No, no, no! I needed them! I do remember I said that a while ago, yes. Yeah! Yeah! I see the little Death Stars on them. They’re cool. I’m glad I got them. It’s better than not having them. Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker proves once again that, like any gymnastics routine, it’s hard to stick the dismount. And J.J. Abrams is no Kerri Strug circa 1996. And no, Simone Biles would not have been a better reference here. As the debate over what Episode IX is and what it could have been rages on here and elsewhere, the endeavor to levy constructive criticism and find the balance between light and
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dark, Jedi and Sith, and Abrams and Trevorrow continues. There are questions that must be asked. First, however, readers must race to google “Strug, Atlanta ‘96”… Wars, especially star wars, are pretty intense because of what’s at stake. So what are the stakes in this star war and where is their intensity? Yes, Emperor Palpatine now has the capability to destroy multiple planets with his fleet of Death Star Destroyers. We even SEE one destroy a planet. It’s the planet named…umm…with the girl in the helmet from The Rocketeer named…Zori…umm…you know! The one that looked really cool in promotional material and then did virtually nothing except jam in exposition for an unnecessary “scoundrel” retcon of Poe’s backstory? Zori Bliss! Here’s the thing, though: I didn’t care about that planet.
Star Wars/Disney/Lucasfilm
Exploring the questionable aspects of The Rise of Skywalker, the sequel trilogy overall, and how Star Wars reminds us that, just like family, it’s possible to love something and still not like it.
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He [The Emperor] gives Kylo the line from Revenge of the Sith about the dark side being a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural—which is the Sith Lord equivalent of saying, “Don’t worry about it.
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Star Wars/Disney/Lucasfilm
The audience is given no attachment to that world; therefore, there are no stakes tied to its destruction. Remember Alderaan? Hell yes you do. I bet you also remember that they’re peaceful and they have no weapons. Why do you remember that? Not just because you’ve seen A New Hope 1,000 times since its release in 1977, but because you were shocked when they blew it up! Princess Leia was a cool, mouthy rebellion leader until Tarkin literally threatened her whole world and she started begging him like a child not to do it using those very words. Oh, and the planet in Rise of Skywalker is Kijimi. I had to look it up. The point here is the audience shouldn’t be apathetic about the destruction of an entire planet. If I want to not care about seeing stuff blow up, I’ll watch a Michael Bay film. It was also so sad when Chewbacca died in The Rise of Skywalker. If you blinked, though, you might have missed it. That’s because we were shown he was alive about eight seconds later. I barely had time to register he was dead let alone be overjoyed he was alive. And
to further prove how hesitant the writers/producers/director were to take a risk and raise the stakes, the audience found out he was alive before the other characters did. So we ended up passively observing their shock when they see Chewie alive rather than sharing it. It was like hearing Darth Vader tell Luke that he’s his father in The Empire Strikes Back, but two minutes before that we got a scene where an officer asks Vader, “So are you gonna tell him you’re his dad?” And Vader responds, “Eh, probably.” It kills the moment later on. They did a similar thing with C-3PO in The Rise of Skywalker. This droid has nervously scuttled his apprehensive comic-relief through nine films and three
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So why wasn’t story priority number one to make sure 7, 8, and 9 stayed true to the overarching tragedy of Anakin?
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wars and, at last, he gets his serious hero moment. He takes one last look at his friends before making the ultimate sacrifice like the warrior he’s always been and gives up his entire memory and the “person” he’s become for the cause. But wait! Is that R2-D2?! It sure is. He plugs into the droid and C-3PO is back to his old self like it’s Happy Days and R2-“The Fonz”-D2 just hit the side of the jukebox to start the music. Am I glad Chewie and Threepio are alive? Of course. But when stories allow for characters to “die” and “return” it cheapens the emotions and lowers the stakes. Which leads me to… Why is the Emperor back? Not that I’m upset he returned. I was ecstatic when the first trailer revealed it. He is the ultimate villain of the saga. Everything that’s happened has been because of his evil scheming. From the perspective of the rhyming or cyclical nature of Star Wars’ storytelling, I felt like it made sense to see him one more time. The problem was the execution of his presence. We never even had a hint of him in the two whole films before that. There was speculation that Snoke was the Emperor in some form, but nothing more than speculation. Even worse than no previous foreshadowing of his continued existence is the almost complete lack of explanation for how he is alive. He gives Kylo the line from Revenge of the Sith about the dark side be may 2020|
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ing a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural—which is the Sith Lord equivalent of saying, “Don’t worry about it.” The Resistance doesn’t do any better with the explanation for Sidious’s return. The best we get is a hobbit’s off-handed comment about “cloning” and “dark magic.” It’s fair to say that in the Star Wars universe, the films especially, some things simply need to be taken as they are. There isn’t always time for exposition or detailed explanation. It is, after all, an entire universe. However, we got an entire subplot about Poe being a former spice runner with an angry ex-girlfriend. It would stand to reason if there was time for that then there would be a tad more detail provided for the return of the Emperor—a man we saw get thrown down an endless shaft and explode into windy, blue energy. Hey! There’s a possible explanation, Chris and J.J.! All that blue light and strong wind that came out of the shaft after Palpatine was thrown down it was actually his dark side
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essence (because Sith can’t technically become force ghosts). It was preserved in the remains of the Death Star and transported through Sith force rituals to Exegol. Perhaps it turns out he DID know how to cheat death like Darth Plagueis, but would not share his secret in order to further punish and enrage Vader. There you go. I can’t come up with the ideas, but I can criticize and change them. It’s worth noting that the novelization of The Rise of Skywalker directly states that the body of Palpatine we see is a clone version that is deteriorating from trying to hold in the power of his dark side essence. And for those of you who have read the Aftermath trilogy which takes place after Return of the Jedi (and is canon), you know that the Empe-
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I can’t come up with the ideas, but I can criticize and change them
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ror had a plan in place for his death called The Contingency. It dictated that the remains of the Empire would retreat to unknown space to recover and essentially reform into The First Order. All they needed to do in the film is mention that it’s taken all that time to put Darth Humpty Dumpty back together again. Ultimately, whether or not the Emperor came back in this film, I have a more important question… Where the hell was Anakin Skywalker’s force ghost? It seems to me that it’s
critical to have him fully appear in this film. He is the glue of this whole saga. He is the original Skywalker. And if Palpatine IS going to come back, then Anakin should have as significant of a presence. If it’s not fully within the final confrontation, then at least appear to both Rey and Kylo at some point either together or separately. I think a character-driven scene between Kylo and Anakin would have been fantastic. A repentant Anakin tries to guide his grandson back to the light. Perhaps
Kylo refuses, perhaps it changes him; regardless, it provides solid ground for his decision as a character. He worships his grandfather. Luke could even be there. He did tell Kylo he’d see him around. What a great opportunity for Ben’s uncle to say, “Well, I know you’re not going to listen to me, but how about your grandfather?” (Cue studio audience “Ooooooooo”). That, or any version of that, could take place somewhere very important that we never see in the sequel trilogy: Musta may 2020|
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far. It’s where Vader was “made” in his battle with Obi-Wan. It’s where Vader’s castle is. Why do we never see Kylo go there? It seems odd to me that at the end of the saga the filmmakers would continue to introduce so many new places when a good way to close up loose ends and story lines is to return to their origins. No Mustafar. No Naboo. No Coruscant. Coruscant, the former capital planet, would have actually come up in a totally different version of the final film that came to light recently… That version is Duel of the Fates, Colin Trevorrow’s script for Episode 9. I have to say that title is amazing. It uses the name of what is one of the most recognizable and impactful pieces of music that John Williams wrote for the entire saga. I would have loved to hear that music one more time in the climactic battle between Rey and Palpatine. I defy you to listen to Duel of the Fates and not get amped. As a matter of fact, playing “Duel of the Fates” over a supercut of all the Rocky training montages will allow you to go back in time and beat the shit out of your childhood bully. Trevorrow’s script did a lot differently. It would have given
Rose Tico an actual role in the final film instead of what she got which was, “Sorry, guys, I can’t come. This paperwork isn’t going to alphabetize itself.” It also did this crazy thing where it followed the established continuity of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. Incidentally, I don’t care if you didn’t like The Last Jedi. The Rise of Skywalker is proof that when you try to “fix” things with the next film, that next film suffers. Better to stay the course and be creative with the elements that you have. The sequel trilogy started out like an improv exercise. It was all about “Yes, and…” That may not be a perfect system for cohesion and story-arcs, but it’s better than what happened which was J.J. said, “Yes, and,” then Rian said, “Yes, and,” then Colin said, “Yes,” and… got fired, then J.J. said, “No, but…” Why do it like long-form improv, though? Why wasn’t there a more concrete plan? There are those who would claim there was one. Maybe there was a skeleton of a plan. J.J. says he intended for the Emperor to return. Rian says he and J.J. talked, but also that he had ideas in mind already. It’s unclear, but that’s my point. There’s more to say about The Rise of Skywalker specifically,
but I think it’s time to zoom out and ask a bigger question: What was the purpose of this whole sequel trilogy? Say what you want about the prequels (and we’ve said a lot), they had a specific story to tell over three films. There was connective tissue. Now, was that connective tissue already present by default? Yes. They were leading to an established story from the original trilogy. The sequels, on the other hand, were treading new ground. They had no destination, sure, but they could have done more to tether themselves to what came before. Not in the form of fan service like “It’s a not-a-Death-Star Death
Star!” or “You’re Palpatine’s granddaughter!” or “Now Kylo is Ben like Grandpa was Darth then Anakin!”, but in service of a connected story. George Lucas has said over and over that the first 6 episodes are the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker and, therefore, he would go on to say that was the reason he didn’t necessarily think that there would be a sequel trilogy. And yet, we got one. So why wasn’t story priority number one to make sure 7, 8, and 9 stayed true to the overarching tragedy of Anakin? As I said, his presence should have been more than a melted helmet. Did anyone think to find the goddamn prophecy that Anakin was supposedly the manifestation of? That would have been something Kylo Ren could have been in search of or stumbled across only to learn the truth was that the prophecy was, in fact, misread like Yoda suggested. Perhaps the Jedi took the prophecy too literally. The chosen one was to bring balance to the force within them. After all, doesn’t Anakin possess great power along with great fear, great anger along with great love? The only solution to fear and anger is to embrace them and work through them using the positive and the productive. Tamping down those
evil, negative feelings NEVER goes well. At least that’s what therapy taught me. So maybe the Jedi DID need to end and something new needed to rise in their place. I have to figure that’s why “Rey is the start of the Grey Jedi” was such a popular fan theory. An entirely new concept of the Jedi—of their balance and practices—needed to be the thing that rose from the ashes of the Jedi, the Sith, the Republic, and the Empire; otherwise, what is the purpose/point/lesson of nine films chronicling the most significant upheaval in the history of the civilized galaxy at the hands of (arguably, perhaps) the most powerful Sith Lord ever, Darth Sidious, and his apprentice Darth Vader who literally started out his journey as the “chosen one”? Instead, we get no explicit change. Rey takes the last name
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“Skywalker” which is sentimental and cool and definitely made me tear up when I first saw the film, but ultimately holds little importance when compared to the catastrophic events of the story up to that point; in fact, it sort of confuses the issue because the Skywalker name should come to a CLOSE at the end of this trilogy of trilogies. It shouldn’t be continued by Rey or Kylo or Kylo’s old roommate or even the future Grand Master of a Jedi council. The name Skywalker should come to represent a time of metamorphosis in the galaxy. The “chosen one” is more than a person, he or she is the opening and closing of a generational lineage of triumph and tragedy. They’re basically the galactic Kennedys. While the prequel trilogy will always suffer from poor execution and misallocation of focus, the sequel trilogy will always suffer from purposelessness and missed opportunities. The
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general critic and fan reaction to The Rise of Skywalker has not changed how I feel about it or the whole saga. I’m still an apologist for what I love and I love all these films. I love the Star Wars universe. It broke my heart when I first saw Revenge of the Sith and I knew that, no matter how much I wanted Anakin to make the right choice, he was going to turn to the dark side. I am still taken by the moment that Darth Vader tells Luke that, no, he is his father. The journey
of Rey and Kylo, particularly as it pertains to them as a pair, has been captivating to me. I am happy to have gotten to see this through to the end. At last the Skywalker Saga is complete and the good outweighs the bad. Oh, and Finn was also in Episode 9.
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ADRIYAN RAE Rising to the Stars By: Robert Napolitano & Galaxy Adriyan Rae might not be a household name just yet, but we won’t be able to say that for much longer. Born in a small town in Delaware, the star of the new SyFy Network series Vagrant Queen has been making some real strides in her acting career. Having had nearly a dozen roles in films and TV shows, Adriyan’s been putting in work onscreen since 2015, but it’s her new role as Elida that has us talking. If you haven’t seen Vagrant Queen yet I suggest you check it out for the simple fact that it’s so different from what Sci-Fi fans have become accustomed to *SPOILER ALERT* a science fiction show with a black female lead, and one that kicks ass to boot.
Adriyan Rae
Now I didn’t get to meet Adriyan personally, but whether it’s her positivity, her 4.0 GPA, her love of science or her annoying cleaning habit, she gives off that lovable girl-next-door charm that’s impossible not to find endearing. Recently, Adriyan sat down with our main man Galaxy for a fun and insightful interview. Enjoy.
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So Adriyan, what are you doing in your spare time during the crisis? I’m doing a lot of home workouts. A lot of meditating, reading and honestly a lot of work for the craft. A lot of acting classes, writing classes, research and also a lot of interviews. I know I was your first interview, how many do you have in the bag now? I want to say at least twenty. Now be honest with me, was my show maybe the coolest? Your show was amazing, really. And you definitely made me feel comfortable especially for it being my first interview ever. You guys made me feel like I knew what I was doing ‘cause you guys know what you’re doing so it was really great and I’m very grateful I got to have you guys as my first interview. We’ll brag about that don’t worry. So everybody wants to know, would you ever date a fan? I mean my criteria for dating doesn’t go based on a fan or actor or any type of career or category like that. It’s more based on the person, their character their energy and how we interact and, you know, build and get to know each other. That’s more so what I base my dating on... Also I want the guy that I date to be my biggest fan.
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With that said how would someone get your special attention? Humor. Humor is like the gatekeeper to me. Even the people in my DM’s, it’s really nice when you guys send really nice messages and things like that, but it’s always the DM’s that have humor in it where the guy’s trying to hit on me, but he has a really funny line that actually gets you like, “Oh, maybe I’ll at least say hi cause that was a really good joke”. So it’s humor. Since your show came out [Vagrant Queen] have you seen a change in your social media? I have more followers which is cool. More engagement. With Twitter I used to never have any posts or anything to tweet or any engagement and now I have a lot of that which is really cool and I get to interact with a whole bunch of new people, new and old. And also
my social’s cool because people are getting to know me as a person on my social. They watch Vagrant Queen and they’re like, “that was cool”, and then they come to my social’s and they get to see the aspects of me as a person and are like, “oh wow I didn’t know you were like this, this is really cool”, and we get to engage and actually talk as people rather than Elida and fan.
Who is the messiest person you know? (Laughs) He’s gonna kill me. I’m just gonna say his name is Patrick and he’s the messiest person I know, but the most sweetheart amazing person as well. Who would you be for Halloween? I really wanna be Harley Quinn. Nice, and I’m sure there’s gonna be a lot of Vagrant Queens running around out here. That would be really cool to see. Oh it’s gonna happen, trust me. What sports do you like watching? I love watching football. Hockey is great to watch as well. I like contact sports to watch, and a little weird fun fact, I really like to watch curling. The game that’s in the Winter Olympics, it’s so cool to me. Do you like pickles? I love pickles. Oh my gosh I really
love them, but I hate sweet pickles. Only Dill. If you owned a boat what would you call it? I would call it The Queen. I know you probably haven’t done this yet, but once you feel that you could afford this item what would you want your craziest purchase to be? I would want to purchase an island. That would be baller! Do you know how to cook? Yes I do. What is your favorite dish to cook? I make a really good lemon pepper chicken with kale greens and angel hair pasta. Do you sing in the shower? Yes, all the time. It’s a concert. (Laughs) Sometimes it’s Beyonce, sometimes it’s Adele just depends on my mood. What’s the weirdest question you’ve been asked ever? Ones that you’ve asked me. (They laugh.) No, you mean in an interview or from a person? From a person, an interview, anything. I’ve been asked some really weird things, but I think the weirdest is when someone asked if they could smell my skin. I really didn’t know what to say to that. What was your favorite subject in school? Science, hands down. What was your favorite game that you played as a kid? My favorite was don’t let the balloon hit the floor. It got real intense, we were doing ninja
tucks, jumping over stuff, it was really serious. [Laughs] So with that what’s the dumbest way you ever got injured? I decided that I was going to rollerblade outside and I was rollerblading and I seen some rocks and it was drizzling outside, I was very young, and I said to myself, “The rain is dodging the rocks on the ground so I can too.” So I would skate over these rocks and a rock got stuck in the rollerblade of course, I go forward, a rock goes in my knee and then I’m just there by myself and crying, then my mom who is an apartment manager, her maintenance man comes and picks me up off the ground like I’m in a movie and I’m just crying for bloody murder. My mom asked what’s wrong and I said “I couldn’t dodge the rocks.” That’s the dumbest way I’ve gotten injured, thinking I could dodge rocks like raindrops. may 2020|
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A Adriyan Rae
What’s your most annoying habit? Cleaning. So you’re one of those? Yeah, I’m obsessive about cleaning, it’s like I annoy myself and others. So sorry.ry. Especially with the crisis? Well that’s the thing, everything that everyone’s doing has been my normal life. I mean I didn’t go out in gloves and a mask, but I never touched buttons, I never touch door handles. You know when people are at the cross walk and they hit the button I was always the person to kick it with my foot and people were like, “You’re so extra”, and I’m like, “actually I’m not, that button has like poop on it and, you know, lots of bacteria and viruses.” Now everyone gets it. Who is your biggest inspiration? My mother. If you could visit somewhere right now where would you visit? Somewhere warm where coronavirus can’t thrive. I would say if there was no crisis and I wasn’t breaking any rules or laws and I wasn’t putting anyone in danger, just let that be clear, I would love to go to Turks and Caicos again. You’re gonna have a long life, a very amazing career, what would you like to be remembered for? I hope that they remember that I touched their life in a positive way and that I helped them get through and showed them different perspectives of things that they could think about and made sure that they felt uplifted and encouraged. Things like that.
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If there’s a language you could speak, a second or third language, what would it be? I’d love to know French fluently. It just sounds so beautiful, someone could curse you out in French and I’m like, “I love you too.” What’s your favorite song right now? One song I’m really into right now would be an Instagram song that’s going around with the challenge, but it’s called “don’t rush” and it’s really good. What do you feel about Tik Tok? My team recently asked me if I wanted to get one and I was like, “No, not feeling it”, and then these things came out about how it was sold to this old communist in China and there was all this conflict around it. I do think it’s cool that everyone is finding a way to entertain and stay uplifted and happy in the midst of everything that’s going on with Tik Tok. I think that’s cool for sure. What are your top five stay at home movies right now that you recommend people to watch? Hitch, I love Hitch. Contagion, and then... Hmm, I mainly watch shows rather than movies.
A y Oh so let’s mix it. Movie and shows, top five. The Office for sure. Oh you knew that one right away. Yes, I love The Office. Vagrant Queen, Hitch, The Outsider, Succession. That was a good one. What’s the most useless thing that you can do really well? I can twist my arm all the way around. I guess it’s not useless if someone tried to apprehend me I could get out. I think it’s my elbow that’s double jointed cause it’s the lower end of my arm I can twist it all the way around. What’s a good accent that you can do? I can do a pretty good British accent.
Let’s hear it. No I can’t do that one, no. (She says in her very convincing British accent). There you go! So Adriyan, what is your biggest pet peeve if you have one? Mouth sounds. Oh my God that’s mine too, I hate it. Sometimes it cringes me and I wanna like choke them. Is that how you feel? (Laughs) Yes. That and fidgeting, like when people tap pens incessantly, they don’t may 2020|
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R even realize it. They click them, click, click, click, click, click, click. I just wanna judo chop the pen out of their hand, it makes me insane. Now this one’s a little messed up, but if you could miss a body part, which one do you least mind losing? Let’s see, I need all my toes, I need my legs, need arms. I guess I could get rid of a boob since I have two of them. Or a nostril. Or one ear. I would get rid of something that I have two of and I’d get rid of one. Except for eyes, need those. Were you a good student? Excellent student! Graduated with a 4.0. For the last one I’m gonna give you two questions and you pick the one you like the most; Were your parents strict? Or what was your favorite toy growing up? Can I answer them both? Let’s do it. My parents were very strict growing up. So strict that I was the girl that wasn’t aloud to wear
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makeup, I wasn’t aloud to get my eyebrows done, I wasn’t aloud to watch Harry Potter cause it was witchcraft. So yes my parents were very strict. And my favorite toy growing up, this was the nerdiest thing ever, but it was my microscope (laughs) it honestly was. I used to find anything I could and try and put it under the microscope. My mom got me a little one cause I loved science since I was tiny and it came with a piece of onion, and now I know you can look at an onion and see mitosis really well. So it came with a piece of onion that you could look at the slide for, it came with a bee wing that you could look at the slide for
and then I used to go out and look at grass or dirt, I used to put whatever I could under this microscope to look at it closer. It was my favorite toy. We wish you a billion percent good luck and we hope you rise to the stars. Tune in to new episodes of Vagrant Queen Thursdays at 10/11c and go follow Adriyan on Twitter & Instagram @AdriyanRae
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By: Ethan Brehm
F
ans of indie comics rejoiced when Syfy ordered a television adaptation of the creator-owned comic book series Vagrant Queen, written by Magdalene Visaggio and illustrated by Jason Smith. The first season, consisting of 10 episodes, premiered on March 27 at the 10pm time slot. Based on the 6-issue Vault Comics series, first published in 2018, the story follows Elida, a young queen who has her throne violently usurped at 10-years-old, becoming an orphan and wandering the galaxy to evade the revolutionary forces who want her dead in order to extinguish her bloodline. Fast forward fifteen years and Elida is still on the run as an outlaw and a thief when she encounters an old frenemy, Isaac, who claims that her mother, Xevelyn, is actually still alive and in hiding. Cautious at first, believing that she’s being set up, Elida eventually decides that she doesn’t really have a choice to believe Isaac in case he is, telling the truth. Along with Isaac, Elida teams up with mechanic Amae and sets out on an adventure to
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rescue her mother by going back to her former kingdom-the very place she’s made an effort to avoid all these years. Her mission also lands her back on the radar of Commander Lazaro, who has wanted nothing but to find and kill Elida since her disappearance all those years ago.
Vagrant Queen is one of two comic book series currently adapted for Syfy, the other being Dark Horse Comics’ Resident Alien (out this summer), but several others are currently in development as well. Although the network is no stranger to comic book adaptations (see the short-lived Krypton), Vagrant Queen is the first in what seems to be a new committal by Syfy to tap into the indie comics game. Syfy also has plans to adapt Image Comics’ Five Ghosts and Oni Press’ Letter 44 in the near future.
Vagrant Queen/Syfy/Vault Comics
True to its source material, Vagrant Queen vows to do away with prophecies and other space opera cliches, focusing more on a grounded premise with relatable characters, but amidst an outer space setting. According to Visaggio, “I wanted to do a book about someone running from their past instead of eager to uncover it, where the mystery wasn’t in some mystical power or forgotten legend, but in a young woman struggling to make her own way in the universe” (Vault).
Not only does the show, like the comics, vow to break away from these stereotypes, it also takes a specific route tonally. Following the lead of the groundbreaking Guardians of the Galaxy films, Vagrant Queen, along with Resident Alien, adheres to a fresher type of comedy that prioritizes a more irreverent flippancy over the stereotypical and tiresome tongue-in-cheek humor that riddles most of today’s superhero fare. Vagrant Queen deals with hefty topics, but won’t take itself too seriously. Leading the way are stars Adriyan Rae as Elida and Tim Rozon as Isaac. Rozon is no stranger to making us laugh, as he’s done countless times in the CBC show Schitt’s Creek, while also having the conviction of a dramatic performer as well. Rae isn’t a newcomer by any means (SuperFly, Light as a Feather), but here she’s finally able to take the lead and flex her own comedic chops and will garner tons of new fans along the way. Produced by Blue Ice Pictures (Critters Attack! and The Banana Splits Movie), the series is sure to fulfill its guarantee of being both fun and violent. The first season was filmed in Cape Town, South Africa and features an all-female team of writers and directors, led by creator and show-runner Jem Garrard (Mech-X4, Killer High). Fans of the comics should note that this isn’t the end for Vagrant Queen in the paperback medium, either, as Vault plans to continue releasing more books in the series, and is currently in the middle of the second arc for Elida and company with the mini-series, Vagrant Queen: A Planet Called Doom, which launched issue #1 back in January. A lot is in store for this IP, and something tells me this is just the tip of the iceberg.
The show tackles some heavy themes like ideological purity and the destructive and counterproductive results of the extremes certain individuals will go to force their revolutionary goals-a sentiment we’ve seen before, sure, but the nature and context of these themes here will achieve something never really seen before within this genre, subverting the norms and going beyond the limited rawness we typically see in comic book adaptations. may 2020|
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tim rozon The Coolest Guy on SYFY By: Ethan Brehm & Galaxy
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beginnings back in his home town of Montreal. In this interview, we talk about Tim’s childhood, River Phoenix, chess, his rescue cats, and the issues that arise when walking around with a giant mustache. We also discuss his venture into writing graphic novels. With his second book-an installment in the expanded universe of Wynonna Earp-out this year, it’s evident that Tim understands the medium better than most actors do. And if fans didn’t already love him enough, this is just the cherry on top. A self-proclaimed nerd, Rozon claims he’s not nearly as cool as his characters, though we have our suspicions. As you’ll see, Rozon is both insanely cool and down to earth. Like someone you could grab a beer with after work. If you didn’t already know who he was, you’d never guess he was famous. Probably because there’s not a pretentious bone in his body. This string of luck really couldn’t have happened to a better dude.
Tim Rozon/Wynonna Earp/Syfy/IMDb Public Image Management
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hen it comes to the perfect situation, Tim Rozon can tell you all about it. A comic book fanatic himself, Tim happened to land major roles on a couple of TV series based on indie comics, and now gets to tour the convention circuit, living out his dream first hand. Even without the conventions, Rozon is a busy man, doing double duty on two different shows. Entering its fourth season, prior to being suspended due to the coronavirus outbreak, SyFy’s modern day western, Wynonna Earp, sees Rozon as the infamous (and immortal) Doc Holliday. Due to a strange sequence of events, which involved the near-cancellation of Wynonna Earp last year, the actor was also able to get cast on a second series on the same network. Vagrant Queen, also based on a comic book, features Rozon in the secondary lead as the goofy Isaac Stelling-a much different character than the mustachioed western gambler. Things definitely seem to happen for a reason, as Tim can attest to. And this kind of fortuity isn’t lost on a guy like him. His perspective still very much intact, Tim is truly able to appreciate everything that’s come his way throughout his career, with the help of humble
Tim, I know on the radio show, we know where you’re from and where you started and all that, but what made you want to become an actor? River Phoenix. I watched a movie called Running On Empty when I was a kid and I saw River Phoenix in it. And I was just drawn to the vulnerability of this kid. I was a pretty shy kid and there was something about River that was different from all the other actors on TV. I could relate to that kid. I’m like, “There’s something with that guy.” And then it was the first time I realized, “Okay, there’s other kids out there like me that are kinda shy and vulnerable and it’s good. And it’s okay.” Then I followed some of his other movies and then I just wanted to get into acting and be a movie star.
Creek, which is an incredible show and I really loved it. But I remember I just said to the universe, “If I could have anything I would love to play like, a cowboy next, or an old west character, or something from a comic book,” just so I could get to San Diego Comic-Con, because, people who don’t know me should know that I’m a huge comic book fan and that I’ve collected comic books for a long time. So I’ve ben a huge fan of comics and Comic-Con, so to get to San Diego was kinda like the mecca and was the end game for me. And then oddly enough, after kinda asking the universe for this, I swear to you not even a month later this audition came across for this character named Dolls. Deputy Marshal Dolls on
Wynonna Earp. And I read it and I loved it. It was based on a IDW comic book and it was amazing. Of course I didn’t get Deputy Dolls. That part went to Shamier Anderson. But a week later they did call me back and say, “Hey man, we wanna see you for Doc Holliday.” And I’m like, “THE Doc Holliday??” They were like, “Yeah!” And I was like, “Man, I thought this was a contemporary piece?” And then they gave me a little bit of a breakdown on the character of Doc and that he had been trapped in a well for 130 years and that he would be the original Doc Holliday. And I was like, there was no way I was gonna blow this chance. That was one of the auditions that I’ve ever felt the most confident about. I just did it. I knew that character. I couldn’t wait to send it. Sometimes you’re nervous ‘cause-pretty much what you do is just get judged for your performance, but I couldn’t wait. And it was the same for the screen test. Because screen test is when you go in and you gotta read it for all the producers and the network. And these can be very, very nerve-racking scenarios. But not in this case. I was so excited-that’s the word. I was excited to be Doc and I couldn’t wait to get into the room. I asked the universe, man, and it all came through. And the first time I went to SanDiego Comic-Con was with the show Wynonna Earp and it was incredible. I can’t ask for anything else. Whatever happens, man-look man, we’re all gonna turn to dirt at some point. I’m good. That’s it. Just someone go up there for me and say, “The kid’s good,” because I can’t ask for anything else.
Wow, that’s pretty cool, man. Well, you’re an actor now, and you’re in a TV series called Wynonna Earp. It’s an amazing show. Were superhero or paranormal or any of these other types of series in your path, or did you just fall into these things and become a fandom star now? I distinctly remember asking the universe for this part. [laughs] I was lucky enough to be on a show called Schitt’s may 2020|
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You know, your mustache has its own following as well. Would you say it has its own personality? Listen, man, this mustache…you guys need to understand. When I’m on TV and I got the hat and the guns and the coat and a little bit of that Doc swagger that I’m able to get when I’m on set, it’s awesome. But when I walk around day to day with
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this giant mustache, it’s not the best. People say stuff. You know? People look at me weird. I hear on the daily, “[eye rollingly] Nice mustache, bro.” And anybody who calls you “bro” it’s never endearing. But thank goodness for all the hipsters, because now there’s some other dudes walking around with mustaches, so I’m not alone. And it is what it is.
Well, you know, the people love it out there. And I know it must be a very extensive grooming ritual. I don’t touch the ‘stache. The ‘stache belongs to a makeup artist by the name of Gunther Shetterer. I do not touch the mustache. I don’t do anything. I don’t even touch a hair on it. It’s only Gunther who’s
allowed to touch the mustache. I don’t know what he does, exactly. He’s got the measurements somewhere. Sometimes he puts in oil, sometimes he doesn’t. He’s the only one who touches it, he’s the only one who trims it. I just grow it. I just show up and make sure I’ve got enough mustache to make everybody happy.
Wynonna Earp/Vagrant Queen/Syfy TV Guide/Public Image Management
That’s a pretty good way of getting things. And you fit Doc Holliday perfectly. It resonates off you. You have a tremendous following. Do you think your younger self would be surprised to see where you ended up now? I mean, you’ve been acting all your life. You’re a lifelong actor. I mean, yeah, 100%. I don’t take one second of this for granted. Let alone to be a working actor. Just to get work as an actor is such a blessing. But to get parts that you really, really, really love - man, that doesn’t happen for everybody. So I don’t take it for granted for a second. I’m very happy with where I am in my life. And I hope nothing changes. If I did Wynonna Earp for the next 20 years then I’d be the happiest kid in the world. Oddly enough, my second favorite part is probably Vagrant Queen as Isaac. So then, boom, this part of Isaac comes along, and this is a guy who resonated with me in so many ways also. I’m like, “I have to get this part.” And again, it just happened to be based on a comic book. I just had to get it. So, I dunno, I’m really lucky. And I’m really thankful.
You’re lucky you have the ability to grow one like that because not everybody can. Meant to be. What advice would you give a young actor seeking what you have currently? Never give up. Never ever give up. I shouldn’t be here. I far exceeded anybody’s expectations of me, I’ll tell you that. Look, I don’t talk about this stuff much, but I come from a single-father household. And we didn’t have a lot, me and my two brothers and my dad. I came from pretty much nothing. So no one expected too much out of me, and I just never gave up. Don’t let anybody tell you you can’t do something, because you can. Because I’m pretty sure everybody thought I was gonna do nothing. So, Vagrant Queen how cool is that series? It’s very cool, 9pm Fridays on SYFY. Another great TV series under your belt [laughs]
What can you tell fans about the show? Why’d you take the role, and who are you on it? I play Isaac Stelling. It’s based on the comic book by Magdalene Visaggio and Jason Smith from Vault Comics. If anybody hasn’t read that comic book, run to the comic book store and get the copy. There’s actually the new one out now. So you can get the newest graphic novel, they just started releasing the single issues for that one. But it’s an incredible book. The show stays close to the book, but obviously it goes its own way. There are other characters that come in. Listen, it’s amazing. It’s a space adventure full of heart, full of humor, full of delinquency, full of fun. It’s just fun. Adriyan Rae plays our Vagrant Queen and she just kicks alien ass all across the galaxy and I get in the way. And we have the amazing Alex McGregor from South Africa-we filmed in South Africa-playing may 2020|
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Between Vagrant Queen and Wynonna Earp, which one would you say is more challenging? I mean, they both have their different challenges. The challenge is which character do I love more [laughs]. Because I actually love playing both characters. You know, Isaac is a little funnier. People will notice in Vagrant Queen I finally get to be more funny. As in Doc Holliday, he can be a little bit serious from time to time. You have a lot of other funny characters on Wynonna Earp, so you need someone to kind of ground it with the realness sometimes, and sometimes Doc is very real. Whereas Isaac, he’s pretty funny. It could be he uses humor as a defense mechanism for, you know, some of the things going on in his life. I’m telling you, Vagrant Queen was just fun from
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day one until the last day. When we shot night to morning, it was just fun, fun, fun. You work with two amazing leading ladies. On Vagrant Queen you work with Adriyan Rae and on Wynonna Earp you work with Melanie Scrofano. Which one of the leading ladies do you favor working with the most? [Laughs] If you think I’m stupid enough to answer that question… Yeah, no comment.
It was a trick question. To be honest, I’ve been playing supporting roles to strong female leads my entire career. It just worked out that way. I started off on this Nickelodeon show for the N Network called Instant Star where I played this boy band music producer. And the lead of that was this amazing girl by the name of Alexz Johnson and she played the pop star that was trying to become famous, and I played the mentor character. So I’ve been used
Public Image Management/Wynonna Earp/Syfy/Kate Trish
the part of Amae. And it’s kinda the three of us against the galaxy and it’s pretty sick. I cannot wait for people to see it. The show runner is amazing, her name is Jem Garrard. She not only directs and show runs, but she wrote the majority of the scripts. So when you have the head writer as the director/show runner with you every day, you know you’re in good hands because nobody loves that show as much as she does. So all the hard work she puts into it, it comes out, so you want to give just as much, you know what I mean? I gave 100% for this part because it was just so worth it. You just know what you’re doing is special and awesome.
to playing the supporting role to strong female characters my whole life. I know it’s like a thing now, but I’ve been doing that for 20 years. It just seems to be my thing and I wouldn’t change it for the world. These girls are kick ass. And don’t forget [on Wynonna Earp] you have Dominique Provost-Chalkley and Kat Barrell and on Vagrant Queen you have Alex McGregor, and both my show runners on these shows are strong females: Jem Gerrard and Emily Andras. These are powerhouse women here, man! So it’s pretty awesome. Do you have a favorite performance by an actress? It would probably be the entire film Run Lola Run. It was a German movie with an actress by the name of Franka Potente. And she’s incredible. One of my all-time favorites. What’s the most fun you’ve ever had on set? I think it’s how you view things. I’m a pretty chill, happy guy, so I have fun wherever I am. I mean, Africa’s special. All of South Africa was very special to me. I remember one day in particular, Alex McGregor, who plays Amae, and I were out in the woods and I was just lookin’ around, man, and there were all these aliens and there were laser blasters coming towards us and special effects were blowing things up. And I looked over at her and she was going crazy and I was going crazy. There’s a special moment between action and cut where just anything can happen. You just escape from everything. It’s the best feeling and you’re just acting in this world and I was gone in this weird forest with aliens and shit blowing up all around me. And I’m like, “This is the best job in the world!”
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in my life. And he’s taught me a lot. Writing comic books, I’m telling you, if nothing else worked and I just did that, I’d be happy doing that too.
What do you feel is the biggest misconception about you? I don’t think people have cared enough to make conceptions about me [laughs] so I wouldn’t know. Look, I play some pretty cool characters, I’ll say that. I’m not as cool as these characters. I’m a pretty nerdy guy. When you called me, I was playing Borderlands 3. Like, I’m a gamer. I’m looking around and I see comic books lying around my place right now. I like to read comic books. I’m a loner and I like to game. And I’m definitely not, myself, as cool as some of these characters that I play, that’s for sure. That’s why I ask that, because Wynonna Earp has set this thing
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for you. You have fans that cry over you. I’ve seen it. And I know in real life you like comic books, you read them, you call yourself a nerd. You’re also creating a comic book, right? Just finished my second graphic novel, co-written with Beau Smith called Bad Day at Black Rock. When we last spoke I had just finished Season Zero, but Bad Day at Black Rock has come out this year too. So I’m super excited, man. Writing comic books is just the best feeling. To have a mentor and a guide like Beau Smith and to get to write with someone who’s been in the industry for that long, it’s a blessing, man. That is one special, humble man, and I’m very, very lucky to have him
The fans love you the way you are now, so the books are an addition. A lot of people ask, “Why take Vagrant Queen while you have Wynonna Earp?” What was the reason to be on these two huge shows that are gonna be on simultaneously? The character. I mean, the character of Isaac came along and it was just one of those things where I really had to be on. Don’t forget, last year we were in the fight for Wynonna. I didn’t even know if I even had Wynonna. We almost lost our show, man! So, as an actor, I just lost my show, so all of us had to audition again. That’s what happens, the agents just throw you back out there. I was lucky enough that this part came that was amazing and it happened to be through SyFy, so when I got the part of Isaac and then Wynonna came back, they had already known, date wise, that it wouldn’t conflict at all. So it was never a problem for me to do it, because at least it was the same network, and they don’t have to fight with each other and there’s never gonna be a problem there. It
just worked out perfectly. But for me, I didn’t know if I had Doc Holliday anymore. I had come to terms with the fact that I might have lost this character last year. Last year was hard, man. Last year this time, I didn’t know if Doc Holliday was ever coming back, my friend. And trust me, it hurt. I went through, like, a full breakup inside my soul, because I didn’t get to say bye to that character. None of us got to say bye to each other. That was the thing. But God bless these Earpers and these fans that fought for Wynonna. We’re back, man! We don’t take one second for granted this year. We’re so happy on set. Everybody’s just doing some of the best work we’ve ever done because we realized we almost lost it.
I heard from the grapevine, and I can mention it now, that Melanie Scrofano, Miss Wynonna Earp, herself, is directing in the new season. That is correct. Wow. How does that feel? Look, selfishly, I was the happiest guy in the universe because Melanie Scrofano is probably the best actor I’ve ever worked with in my life. She is an incredible actress. You can not half-ass it or fake it for one second in a scene with Melanie Scrofano because she will eat you alive. She can play heart and humor better than any person I’ve seen, and go back to them so quickly, faster than any actor I’ve ever seen in my life. So, selfishly, I knew I was gonna get these amazing notes. These inside actor notes with Melanie about my character, so I couldn’t wait. I was so
Feeling the Vibe Magazine/Wynonna Earp Syfy/Lake Placid: Legacy
Well, I heard this little thing that almost broke up the TV series has given it so much energy and power that the rumors around say the show’s gonna go on for another four to five seasons because of this. Because there’s just so much love behind it. Do you feel that? Yeah man, sign me up. I got no problem. I’ll do Wynonna Earp forever. It’s a great cast and some of the best friends I’ve ever made are on this show. So, yeah, I love it. I’ll do it forever. The best fans in the universe.
In the universe. I consider myself an Earper. I consider myself one of them. I get just as much from them as they get from the show. So yeah, it’s amazing.
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proud of her this year. I’ve never been so proud of another human being in my life. From season one I told her she should direct. She had always wanted to, and this year she took the leap and she killed it. She absolutely killed it. She was not only great with the actors, but she was really, really good with the crew. She knew her shots. She knew what she wanted. She knew how she wanted to get them. And she got them. Yeah, she’s my hero, man. Wynonna Earp is pretty awesome, but Melanie Scrofano-she’s next level. It goes back to working with these amazing actors and actresses. And being in the position you’re at, where do you think it’s gonna go from here? Because you’re on top of the world right now with these two TV shows. [laughs] Well I hope you’re not thinking it goes down. I’d like it to stay here. Let’s just coast here for a while. I’m not asking the universe for anything else more, if that’s what you mean. I’m not greedy, man. I’m very happy. I’m very content. And I’m very thankful and grateful for where I am right now in my life and the things I have. And I would not want to lose either one of them. You have a particular accent on Wynonna Earp. Was that hard to develop or did that come easy? I’m not good with accents. Like, if you asked me to do British, it would probably sound like an Australian or German guy. I cannot do accents. But for some reason, the one accent I’ve always been able to do is that Doc Holliday accent. I’m telling you, some things are just meant to be. And it was just meant to be. So with the two rough schedules, Wynonna Earp and Vagrant Queen, I know your summers are gonna be taken. Will fans be able to see you at any conventions? Or would it be non-summer ones? You know, I’m not against doing them. I would love to do them. It just depends on whether or not I’m working. If I’m
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working, working trumps all. Last year I didn’t get to do too many at all, but that’s just because I was working all year, and I can’t complain about that. So yeah, if I’m not working, you’ll see me. If I’m working, that’s the only reason you won’t see me.
What’s one accomplishment you haven’t done yet that you want to do badly? Like I said before, I’m so grateful for everything I’ve had, but you gotta have goals and dreams too. I need to be in a video game, man. I gotta make that happen. I’m a huge gamer. Oddly enough, I’m from Montreal where Ubisoft has one of their studios. They use so many actors out of my city, and I oddly enough never work out of my hometown. I’ve never really filmed there. I did Being Human, and that was about the extent of my career at home. But I would love to be in a video game of some sort. That would be awesome. If I got to play a video game where I got to blow my own head off. That would be pretty sick.
Tim Rozon International/Lake Placid: LegacySyfy/Hookinmouth.net
So what’s one ridiculous indulgence that you regularly splurge in? Is there anything ridiculous that you like to do? No, but everybody’s bugging me now because I’m obsessed with chess. I do take Skype lessons. My teacher is from Sardinia in southern Italy and every second week on Saturday mornings I have Skype chess lessons. And the rest of the cast, they all think I’m crazy ‘cause I’m obsessed with chess. But it’s a great game, man. I love chess. I love chess, and I love Catan. Board games, too. If you’re having a party and it’s a board game type of party, I’m comin’. If it’s a regular party, I’m probably gonna
ghost you. But if it’s a game party, I’m there. What’s a book you’re reading now? The comic book that I’m reading right now is Vagrant Queen: A Planet Called Doom because that just came out. The first two issues of that are out. So I’m reading those because, obviously, I’m a huge Vagrant Queen fan. Book wise, I just started reading The Alchemist again. I’m sure everybody knows that book, but everyone should read it once in awhile. It’s like my on set book. And then I have my chess book with me at all times. You’re dabbling in many different things right now, which is all fandom based. So with all of that said, do you have any pets? Yeah, I have two cats. I have the Zuzu and the Squish. They’re rescue cats. Are they calm? Yeah, they’re chill. They’re like me. I mean, they’re rescues, so if you came over, they’d probably hide, but with me they’re little f*ck faces. Do you imagine yourself at 70? No, I don’t think about stuff, but sure. I think I’m gonna make it to 70 if that’s what your question is. But I don’t really think about what I’m gonna be like when I’m older. What do you think the right retirement age would be in Hollywood? Never! Just keep acting! Why stop? You stop when you wanna stop. I think I’d stop when I didn’t like it, you know? I love it right now, so I wouldn’t stop. If I didn’t like it anymore then I wouldn’t do it. What can fans expect from Wynonna Earp this season? The fans have waited a really long time and the fans fought really hard for us, and they’re gonna get the season that they deserve. That’s all I can say. I can’t say anything, spoiler wise, but this is the season they’ve been waiting for. This is the season they fought for.
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Obscurity Spotlight
DENNIS DUNPHY A.K.A DEMOLITION MAN (D-MAN) By: Matthew McLachlan
A column in which we highlight, for better or for worse, a comic character you may not know and give a brief history of why that is and who the hell they are.
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This character is a halfhearted concoction of third-tier superhero ideas, powers, and backstory with a dash of devastatingly bad body odor.
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ro ideas, powers, and backstory with a dash of devastatingly bad body odor. I am speaking, of course, of Demolition Man! Not to be confused with the 1993 cult classic of the same name that made waaaaaay more money than you probably think it did, this Demolition Man has everything you wished that movie had: Professional Wrestling, superheroes running a call center, and becoming a champion amongst homeless people. No. Wait. The movie had that last one. Created in
1987, Dennis Dunphy first made his appearance in The Thing #28 and appeared later as his alter ego Demolition Man (or D-Man) in Captain America #328. Dennis Dunphy, an aspiring athlete, receives strength augmentation treatments by Power Broker, Inc., a criminal corporation which provides individuals with superhuman physical abilities, but for a price. Kinda like HelloFresh, but instead of organic treats, it’s a drug addiction to superpowers. Under the influence of his newly acquired habit, Dunphy finds himself too strong for normal sports, so he turns to the only other logical option: professional wrestling. Obviously. But not your janky human professional wrestling, Dunphy joins the Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation (UCWF), a
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n the 1980s, a new era for comic books was beginning to take shape. Stories got grittier, characters went darker, and the idea of what a comic book character and story could be was completely redefined and taken to a new, deeper level. And while the world of comics was beginning to take these hefty steps towards humanity and exploring our inner demons, from out of seemingly nowhere emerged a brand-new Marvel superhero for the world to chew on. Now, I hear you saying, “Hey, Matt, if this character was created during this massive culture shift, they obviously encompass and represent the complexity and entropy of this brand-new comic book world, right?” Hahahahahahaha. F*ck no. This character is a halfhearted concoction of third tier superhe-
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I am aware that creating superheroes is difficult to do. And I know that inventing a unique superpower mixed with an interesting backstory for said superhero can be an impossible task, but holy sh*t Demolition Man is rough.
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superhuman professional wrestling organization. But, unlike regular professional wrestling, the UCWF was scripted. And after refusing to throw a fight, Dunphy is tricked into attacking everyone around him, has his powers taken away, and goes through severe withdrawals. And that’s just the first paragraph on his Wikipedia page. Eventually, Dunphy regains his powers and looks a gift horse in the mouth by investigating the people who gave him his powers in the first place. And it is at this point in which D-Man is given his infamously plagiarized costume by none other than Mr. Subtle Fashion-Statement himself: Captain America. He may be able to fight Nazis all through Europe, but do not ask him to dress you. Now, if D-Man’s costume looks familiar to you, it’s because you have eyes. And yes, what you’re seeing is literally someone wearing DareDevil’s yellow suit with Wolverine’s mask on his head. I’ve tried looking into why D-Man’s costume is such a blatant rip-off and the best I could find was someone yelling into the internet void: “Yo, that looks better on DareDevil, just sayin’.” The rest of D-Man’s history is kind of a sh*tshow. It’s discovered that his superpowers give him a heart condition, so even
though he can lift up to 15 tons, he actually can’t or he’ll die. He then has a heart attack due to said condition and takes a break from crimefighting to run Captain America’s Hotline as a call center manager. After that, he becomes delusional and unstable, leading him to steal a civilian’s jewelry thinking they were the infinity stones, go on the run, become the leader of the criminal underworld, win a pie eating contest at an Avengers picnic, and finally… find his way back to crime fighting as a partner to Sam Wilson’s new Captain America. And what, pray tell, is Sam Wilson’s explanation to all of D-Man’s previous nonsense? “He’s a survivor.” Geez, can I use that excuse? Now, look. I am aware that creating superheroes is difficult to do. And I know that inventing a unique superpower mixed with an interesting backstory for said superhero can be an impossible task, but holy sh*t Demolition Man is rough. He is the comic book equivalent of someone saying, “Okay, you can copy my homework, but make it look different” and someone, aggressively not listening, then rubs said homework in the dirt for an hour. And the worst part is, I really don’t think Marvel hides
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the fact that D-Man’s a walking punchline. There are countless times since his creation that have seen him be the butt of other heroes’ jokes. However, in recent iterations, it seems as though D-Man has begun to receive some much-needed upgrades: They’ve cleaned him up with a cool new hipster look (the rich kind, not the bike riding kind), given him a loving boyfriend, and even upgraded his costume with the addition of battle armor. Does this mean that Demolition Man has begun to take some long awaited steps out of obscurity and into the spotlight of cool? Perhaps. Although, it doesn’t help his case when the writers have him try on his brand-new battle armor for the first time and his first words are, “I finally look cool!” D-man, from all of us here at Comic Con Magazine, you’re doing great sweetheart. Best Appearance: Captain America asks Demolition Man to join the Avengers for a mission to stop Flag-Smasher. On said mission, the heroes discover a doomsday weapon at an enemy base, leading D-Man to crash a plane into the base to save everyone. D-Man was not killed, but was later found living among the Inuit, having suffered wounds that rendered him mute and in a stupor. Thank you for your service, D-Man.
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M Worst Appearance: At one point, D-Man becomes a hero of a subterranean group of homeless people called the Zero People and, while doing this, (and I swear to Christ this is real) became so smelly, he would drive off villains and heroes with his stink. So, in essence, his stench became a superpower. Marvel, you sonuva b*tch. Random Fact: In New Avengers #7, D-Man is one of many heroes interviewed to be a nanny for Luke Cage and Jessica Jones’s newborn child. He apparently cries the whole time and his only lines are “I am so lonely...”, “I think I came off desperate before--” and “Does Captain America ever talk about me?”. Yikes. Worst of all, when Jessica Jones says her mind is made up on a nanny (Squirrel Girl), Luke Cage quips “D-Man it is.” to which she responds “Cute.” The guy is a war veteran, people! Leave him alone!
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If D-Man’s costume looks familiar to you, it’s because you have eyes
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Star Trek/ViacomCBS
By: Vanessa Bellew
It began, as all great things do, with an idea. That idea was not Star Trek. But its journey to becoming Star Trek shaped what the Federation and the 24th century would be as surely as the experiences of its beloved creator shaped the man behind the franchise; as surely as the franchise continues to shape our 21st century world and how we imagine our future. may 2020|
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THE IDEA
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expected to end in a quickdraw shootout, but while lead writer on Have Gun, Will Travel, Roddenberry began submitting scripts in which the climax was solved without violence, or in which Paladin, the main character of the show, played no part in whatever violence occurred. As Gene once said in a 1991 interview with The Humanist, “I think we sanitize violence and escape any real feeling about what it really is. Television violence has no agony in it — or anything else, for that matter. People who are shot clutch their breast with a brave little smile and die…but off-camera. Violence is an ugly thing. When it is done, it should be done for the sake of the ugliness so that you are saying to the audience, ‘This is a terrible thing, even the hero is doing an ugly thing’. There should be a comment on that ugliness.” By the late 1950s, with a few awards under
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No, Star Trek did not come to Gene Roddenberry at a dangerously high warp, straining its engines to the brink of physics, but rather in little thruster bursts: an ethical boundary drawn here, an actor found there.
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his belt, that quiet progressive streak had grown like an unsupervised tribble nest. When asked to develop a show called Riverboat set in 1860s Mississippi which included not a single black cast member, Roddenberry argued so much that he lost his job. Frustrated, he briefly considered moving to England, only to be offered more money and his first producing credit by an American company called Screen Gems, which also backed his first pilot. It was during this time that he began collecting
Star Trek/ViacomCBS
ene Roddenberry didn’t always know he wanted to create the Starship Enterprise. He didn’t even always know he wanted to be a writer. In fact, he originally set out to follow in his father’s footsteps and majored in police science before the onset of World War II. He was a pilot — first in the Army Air Forces and then for Pan Am — then a police officer, then the speech writer for William Henry Parker III, the controversial anti-corruption Chief of Police of the Los Angeles Police Department. It was then he began to advise on the writing of a television program about a crusading District Attorney, the hilariously-named Mr. District Attorney, which eventually led him to write for the show under a pseudonym. By 1956, Roddenberry resigned from the LAPD and embarked on a career as a screenwriter. Surely this is the moment, you might think, free for the first time of his former martial identities, when our intrepid hero begins to write about aliens and spaceships and peace. But, ah, gentle reader, that is not always how humans work. No, Star Trek did not come to Gene Roddenberry at a dangerously high warp, straining its engines to the brink of physics, but rather in little thruster bursts: an ethical boundary drawn here, an actor found there. Gene Roddenberry spent his early writing career on procedurals and Westerns. His time as a police officer and a pilot in the war perfectly suited him for the kind of John Wayne Americana fare that made up the majority of the network television landscape at the time. But however much he fit into the demands of these hypermasculine genres, they never quite fit into his. He began subversively. TV Westerns at the time were
the puzzle pieces that would eventually fit together to make Star Trek. The main characters of Roddenberry’s first pilot were named Philip Pike, Edward Jellicoe, and James T. Irvine. He was contacted by an actress newly arrived in Hollywood who wanted to meet with him, launching a friendship and eventual romance with the one-and-only Mother of Star Trek, Majel Barrett. His second pilot was about a lawyer, played by our very own DeForest Kelley. He first entertained the idea of a show about a multiethnic crew on a ship — though it was an airship and their mission took them around the world, not around the galaxy — in 1961 after seeing the movie Master of the World, but as the time wasn’t right for a science fiction show on TV (this writer thinks the time is always right), he instead created The Lieutenant in 1963, set on a Marine base. The cast and crew was littered with stars that would eventually shine in the Star Trek universe: Majel Barrett, Gene L.
Coon, Joe D’Agosta, Gary Lockwood, D.C. Fontana, Leonard Nimoy, and Nichelle Nichols. Nichols’ first television role was an episode of The Lieutenant in which Roddenberry openly portrayed interracial cooperation. Called “To Set It Right”, it featured a white soldier and a black soldier finding common cause in their roles in the Marines. The Pentagon had been approving scripts for the show, but withdrew their support in the wake of the episode’s airing. The Lieutenant was canceled after its first season.
But Roddenberry was already dreaming up something entirely new. That’s right, reader. He took a few of his earlier ideas, especially that one about the multiethnic crew on an airship, and set them in outer space. He called it Star Trek. Yes! You may be thinking, “Finally, Roddenberry knows what he’s about!” But, ah, gentle reader, that is not always how humans work.
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went into production in November of 1964, caught in time between the hopeful highs and violent lows of one of the most volatile years in United States history. In July of 1964, the Civil Rights Act ordered the integration of schools across the country, and a summer of brutal race riots began in Harlem and spread quickly to New Jersey, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. By the end of 1964, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was presented with the Nobel Peace Prize. In the midst of this, Roddenberry put a black woman in a position of authority on the bridge of the Enterprise. From the second pilot onward, Nichelle Nichols played Lieutenant Uhura, an African-born, Swahili-speaking communications officer. The ramifications of that choice are still being felt. The stories by now are the stuff of science fiction and television legend: Martin Luther King Jr. himself convincing Nichelle Nichols how important it was she stay on the show, a young Whoopi Goldberg running through the house yelling about a black woman on
THE EVOLUTION The fight to create Roddenberry’s ideal Star Trek began almost immediately. On one side were Roddenberry, Desilu Productions (including producers Herb Solow, Bob Justman, and, of course, Lucille Ball), his writers, the cast of the Enterprise’s intrepid crew, and history. On the other side were NBC, oppressive moral codes on what was allowed on television at the time, a strict bottom line, and an American television audience who had never seen anything like Star Trek. Though Roddenberry sold the show to Desilu Productions and then to NBC as a space Western — “a Wagon Train to the stars” — he privately discussed his vision as something closer to Jonathan Swift’s subversive adventu-
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re story Gulliver’s Travels. The galaxy he intended to create was post-scarcity, post-sexism, post-racism, post-religion. Humanity would have achieved its fullest potential, having united centuries before upon First Contact with the Vulcan species. The reigning power in our sector of space, The United Federation of Planets, would be an intergalactic cooperative government modeled on the United Nations. Roddenberry’s crew, part of the peacekeeping and exploratory armada known as Starfleet, would not only be multiethnic; it would be multispecies. The network was less than thrilled. The mid-1960s were a turbulent time in the American political and social landscape. It was the height of the Civil Rights Movement. The infamously discarded first pilot, “The Cage”,
Star Trek/ViacomCBS
TV who wasn’t playing a maid, and the first interracial kiss that almost wasn’t, saved from the cutting room floor by a wily Bill Shatner. Things were far from perfect, of course. Uhura had to wear a revealing and impractical uniform and occasionally made choices or said things that were tone-deaf to the realities of being black and a woman, even in the 24th century. The character never got an episode of her own and had shockingly few lines, but Nichols’ portrayal is ever-present and alive in the background, reacting, opinionated; fully human. In the US, the Civil Rights Movement was at its chaotic apex, the Vietnam War and the last American draft had been going for over a decade, and the Women’s Liberation Movement was just getting started. Meanwhile, the world held its breath each time Russia and the United States found a new way to test each other in a Cold War that had launched nearly the moment World War II ended and would still be going by the time Star Trek: The Next Generation began. American children regularly hid under their desks in drills to prepare for Russian
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Roddenberry built the perfect vessel to fly cloaked past the censors’ sensors.
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nukes. On the island nation of Japan, reconstruction in the wake of World War II and the devastating effects of nuclear war was ongoing. It was an effort spearheaded by the US, who had dropped the bombs, and whose own Japanese citizens were still struggling to recover from years of imprisonment at the hands of their neighbors and friends. In Roddenberry’s future, humanity was beyond such things. Despite the network’s persistent protestations, Ensign Pavel Chekov, a Russian wunderkind, and Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, a Japanese American, took their positions on the bridge. Actor may 2020|
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George Takei, who spent years of his childhood in an American internment camp for the crime of a shared ethnicity with one of America’s then-enemies, was cast as the swashbuckling Sulu. With the global social and political temperature at such a fever pitch, a more cautious writer might have made a point to avoid controversial topics. But, ah, gentle reader, that is not always how humans work. Roddenberry built the perfect vessel to fly cloaked past the censors’ sensors. “[By creating] a new world with new rules,” according to his assistant Susan Sackett, Roddenberry said, “I could make statements about sex, religion, Vietnam, politics, and intercontinental missiles. Indeed, we did make them on Star Trek: we were sending messages and fortunately they all got by the network…If you talked about purple people on a far off planet, they (the television network) never really caught on. They were more concerned about cleavage. They actually would send a censor down to the set to measure a woman’s cleavage to make sure too much of her breast wasn’t showing.” Of course, Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov were all later additions to Star Trek. Roddenberry’s first attempt included Majel Barrett as Number One, a no-nonsense woman who was the executive officer of the Enterprise, a sadly-doomed Captain Pike, and Mr. Spock as a much more human
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third-in-command. When NBC rejected the pilot and recommissioned a different version (”Where No Man Has Gone Before”), they also demanded some changes. It seemed the network executives didn’t think the world was ready for a woman in any kind of command, with the added insult of that historical cliché about how it was also this particular woman. She was too logical, said the men in charge, too unlikeable. But given that her character involved a secret romantic fantasy for her captain, the legacy of her impact on representation for women if she continued in the series would have been complicated. Instead, the alien Spock was promoted to executive officer and essentially given Number One’s logic-driven personality. Leonard Nimoy took that and ran with it, wrapping it up in a blanket of Tolkien obsession and cultural Judaism until he shaped the Vulcan race into
what we know and love today. Rounding out the series cast were three more white men from Earth — Captain Kirk, a Starfleet maverick from Ohio, Dr. “Bones” McCoy, a disgruntled divorcé from Georgia, and engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott from (you guessed it) Scotland — and two additional white women who appeared infrequently and rarely without controversy — the Spock-infatuated Nurse Chapel, played by the previously-ousted Majel Barrett, and Yeoman Rand, whose sole purpose seemed to be
having feelings for Captain Kirk. This trope of making sure that nearly every recurring woman on the show had a romantic interest in one of the men continued through to The Next Generation with Dr. Beverly Crusher and Counselor Troi, though with much more nuance and success. With the cast set and a viable pilot in the can, Star Trek finally aired on NBC with “The Man Trap” on September 8, 1966. It ran for three seasons, finally getting canceled a mere month before man first landed on the moon. During the three
years we saw of its five-year mission, the crew of the Enterprise encountered everything from a deep v-neck on Ricardo Montalban to infestations of furry lumps (not on Ricardo Montalban). They traveled through time, were split in twain, fell in love, fell in lust, went into heat (and what an “Amok Time” that was!), were captured and tortured and forced to fight and/ or kiss. They caught strange diseases and encountered new species, fought injustice both within and without the Federation, and occasionally played fast and loose with the Prime Directive. Kirk developed quite a reputation for going where no (hu)man had gone before, if you know what I mean. Sometimes the strange scenarios the Enterprise endured were allegories for all the things Roddenberry wanted to discuss with the American public. Sometimes they were frothy episodic romps through Soundstages 9 and 10. Gene Roddenberry presided over his writers throughout all of it, making cuts and changing scripts with a near-papal authority. His vision was firm and his edicts absolute, often to the fervent chagrin of his crew. Roddenberry was adamant in his design to show the full flower may 2020|
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of human possibility. Though there was sometimes violence — the producers and the audience always loved a good space battle or grappling match with a Gorn — Roddenberry was determined that his characters, when in their right minds, would reach for physical conflict only as a last resort. He wanted Star Trek to portray a humanity beyond war, materialism, and prejudice, not as an impossibility or a final destination, but as a daily struggle to transcend our animal natures. This is reflected constantly in the choices each of the characters makes, in the ways they make amends after falling short and conducting themselves in a questionable manner, or in the ways their fellows choose to trust that anomalous behaviors come from a place of secret nobility or undiagnosed illness. On Kirk’s Enterprise, there are arguments and squabbles over the best course of action, over the moral righteousness or precariousness of their options, over the very ways in which each character sees the universe. This is most notable in the trio of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, who respectively represent that mythological storytelling
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triumvirate of Id, Ego, and Super Ego — the manifestations of the pursuit of pleasure, the practical demands of reality, and the conscience. Without one of the three, the character of the entire crew is unbalanced. Without Bones, the relativistic morality is missing. Without Spock, the pragmatic maturity is gone. Without Kirk, nobody’s having any fun. But the three of them can also not exist without discord between them. Many of the best moments in The Original Series come down to the sometimes reluctant friendships they’ve built over their years of service together, the respect for one another’s skills, souls, and opinions. These things did not appear magically in the first episodes; they were earned one episode at a time by the writers, the actors, the audience, and the characters themselves. It is satisfying when Spock finally has a drink with Bones and Kirk
because it took us so long and so much work to get there. We weep at his sacrifice in The Wrath of Khan because he so rarely has expressed his affection for Kirk, but in that moment because we have been on this journey with them from the beginning, we feel as though we too are losing something irreplaceable when Spock promises Kirk, “I have been — and always shall be — your friend.” As Gene Roddenberry once said, “To do a science fiction series and have the characters come anywhere near human is an accomplishment.” And, ah, gentle reader, that is how humans work. The Original Series ended in 1969 after 79 episodes, despite an enthusiastic letter writing campaign from the fandom, but it began running in syndication almost immediately. Its growing cult popularity led to the creation of Star Trek: The Animated Series, about that same Enterprise crew, which aired on Saturday mornings from 1973
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to 1974. With every year that passed, more and more people discovered Star Trek in syndication, finally leading Paramount (formerly Desilu) to attempt a new series. It was called Star Trek: Phase II and included a mixture of returning characters from Kirk’s Enterprise and new characters to replace Kirk and Spock, whose actors were too expensive or no longer interested. After the Paramount television division folded, the project was repurposed by the head of Paramount Pictures into Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The cast of The Original Series would go on to make a total of six motion pictures from 1979 to 1991. Shatner would make a seventh with the cast of The Next Generation. In the nearly 20 years that passed between the last live action episode of The Original Series and the official conception of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the world — and the United States especially — had gone through a drastic transformation. After the hippies and rock and roll, after integration and assassinations, after “Tricky” Dick Nixon and second-wave feminism, the Space Race and Vietnam and recession, the late 1980s were a strangely conservative but ultimately hopeful time. Thanks in no small part to
The Original Series, Americans had come to accept a certain amount of diversity in their lives and on their TV screens. No television show to come after it had been quite so progressive or inclusive, but the very existence of Nichelle Nichols and George Takei in living rooms across the country altered the fabric of society. In fact, Nichelle Nichols would go on to work with NASA to help recruit young women into STEM fields. The Western world that existed when The Next Generation was born was slightly less oppressive of women — they could more easily get divorced, apply for credit cards in their own names, serve on juries, and obtain legal abortions, for instance. There were government structures in place for people of color experiencing prejudice, even if they didn’t always work in actuality. It was finally legal for interracial couples to be mamay 2020|
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rried. Harvey Milk had become the first openly gay politician elected to office in California. Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Justice, and Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman Justice, were appointed to the Supreme Court. Sally Ride was the first American woman in space. In the wake of Vietnam, many Americans no longer trusted their government, but they had seen how powerful the people could be when they rose up as one for a just cause. The Civil Rights Act, and its ban of discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, had been in place for decades. There were young adults who could not remember a time before such a thing was the law of the land. The arc of the moral universe was long, but it seemed mostly to bend toward justice. But Harvey Milk had been assassinated after only eleven months in office. The AIDS pandemic was raging through marginalized communities, decimating a generation of artists and creatives. The Reagan administration was reluctant, even negligent, in addressing the growing epidemic due mostly to a belief that it was a “gay plague”. The LGBTQ community also expe-
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rienced (and still does) a disproportionately high percentage of abuse, violence, and murder. Women and people of color were still fighting harassment and discrimination in all areas of their lives, but especially in the workplace, where pay disparity, a lack of upward mobility, and gender- and racially-motivated aggressions were commonplace. In communities of color, the ravages of CIA-seeded cocaine and heroin were compounded by a racist War on Drugs that focused not on rehabilitation but mass incarceration. The USSR was in its final throes and would collapse entirely during the run of The Next Generation. The Cold War was soon to end and the Gulf War was soon to begin. The world had evolved and so had Gene Roddenberry. Because, ah, gentle reader, that is how humans should work.
Roddenberry was the first to admit that his understanding of the world and his stances within it were in a constant state of questioning and growth, a phenomenon he called ‘The Education of Gene Roddenberry’. He readily confessed by the end of his life that there were things he regretted about The Original Series, usually regarding choices made to appease the network and the censors. By the time Paramount approached him about taking full creative control of a new Star Trek series, he had officially declared himself a secular humanist, a philosophy which posits that human beings
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are capable of making ethical and moral choices without the aid or judgment of religion. No one who had seen an episode of Star Trek was surprised. In the 1991 interview in The Humanist, Roddenberry said, “[My political philosophy] would have to be similar to the philosophy of Star Trek because Star Trek is my statement to the world. Understand that Star Trek is more than just my political philosophy. It is my social philosophy, my racial philosophy, my overview on life and the human condition. I have been able to comment on so many different facets of humanity because both Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation have been so wide-ranging in the
subjects they’ve covered.” Though twenty years had elapsed in our timeline, a century had passed in the worlds of Star Trek between Kirk’s command of the USS Enterprise and her new captain, Jean-Luc Picard. Roddenberry was in a different phase of his life — the last phase of it, as it turned out. He had matured and his vision for Star Trek had matured with him. He wanted even less violence in the second series. He had learned there could be just as much drama from a high stakes trial as from a battle for life and death. This new captain reflected those changes. If Kirk was something of a space frontiersman, a Texas Ranger in the
stars, Captain Picard — played by the classically trained Patrick Stewart — was an intergalactic Renaissance man (and the only non-American captain to lead a show so far). The Enterprise was still Starfleet’s flagship, the first and most essential cynosure of the Federation’s intentions, but its mission was focused less on the business of risk for its own sake and more on diplomacy. There were even families with children on board this new, harmonious version of the Enterprise. The Id, Ego, and Super Ego of Kirk, Spock, and Bones existed entirely within the person of Picard, who Roddenberry described as “an explorer, philosopher, and diplomat.” Picard, in echo of Roddenberry, believed wholly in the power of humanity to transcend its baser drives and in the personal responsibility of all beings to contribute to that transcendence. If the thesis of The Original Series was a bold vision of what we could accomplish when we work together, The Next Generation posited that individual growth was the basis for species evolution, that humanity should be judged not on its worst moments, but on what may 2020|
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we do now that we know better, and that it is on each of us to deliver. As part of this more nuanced ideal, Roddenberry had decided with all his creative stubbornness that in the century between The Original Series and The Next Generation, human beings would have outgrown their interpersonal differences and quarrelsome tendencies. It was a noble construct, and one that required the series to become a melodrama in which all the conflict came from outside the ship and its crew. But, ah, gentle reader, that is not always how humans work. From 1986 to 1991, with Gene Roddenberry at the creative helm of Star Trek: The Next Generation, his writers — many of whom were young people who had grown up watching The Original Series — fought to do away with this ruling. Their reasoning was two-fold: it was detrimental to the quality of the show, but more importantly, it was unrealistic to think that even at their very best, humans wouldn’t struggle with themselves and with each other. How else could they grow and transcend if they were never forced to compromise with or question themselves or their friends and fellows? In many ways, it was this insistence on external conflict that arguably makes the first
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season of The Next Generation the weakest season of the show (the other parts involve the show finding its feet and a lot of terrible sexist and racist casting/writing choices). In other ways, however, the mandate allowed for some incredibly progressive portrayals of people with different abilities, genders, needs, and backgrounds cooperating seamlessly in a high-stress workplace and socializing in a large community. Old lovers respected and supported each other for years through fleeting and sustained romantic pairings, through heartbreaks and violations and family issues. Trauma and illness were usually treated with weight and care. The crew was overwhelmingly compassionate and considerate of one another’s shortcomings and unique difficulties. While on Kirk’s Enterprise, Bones might refer to Spock as a “green-blooded son of a bitch”, the vast majority of the crew of Picard’s
Enterprise takes the time to teach and understand one another, to cater their behaviors to better serve the unity of the whole. “Star Trek,” Roddenberry once explained, “was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms.” If The Original Series was tolerance, The Next Generation was to be a special delight. This was often the case, but not always. Whereas Roddenberry once spent a good deal of his time during The Original Series fighting censorship, the network, and the producers to cast and write what he wanted, for The Next Generation, he would be one of those producers. He would have no one to blame for the final decisions and discordant notes but himself. The three highest-ranking officers on the new series, Picard included, were once again played by white men (sometimes painted green). The second-in-command, “Number One”, was Commander William Riker, a man with Kirk’s heart
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under a philosophe’s mentorship. An Alaskan with an undiscriminating libido, Riker would ultimately value his time with Picard so much he would turn down command of his own ships to stay on the Enterprise. He would also grow a righteous beard. The next in line was Lieutenant Commander Data, a humanoid android and one of only three sentient synthetic beings in the known galaxy. Data, who did not experience emotions like his comrades, and his personal pursuit to better understand and emulate the humanity to which he aspired would ultimately be credited by a generation of neurodivergent fans with helping them come to terms with their own abilities and social differences. His bodily autonomy and personhood would be the subject of some of the best episodes in Star Trek canon. There were two black men on the bridge of the new Enterprise, though Michael Dorn was
playing an alien and covered in Klingon prosthetics. His Lieutenant Worf was a war orphan, adopted and raised by Eastern European humans and with a similarly complicated relationship to his native culture that Spock, a half-human half-Vulcan, had experienced in The Original Series. Though Worf began as a relief officer on the bridge, he would quickly be promoted to
Chief Security Officer. Lieutenant Geordi La Forge, played by Roots actor and Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton, was the helmsman and then the Chief Engineering Officer. From the United States of Africa — specifically Somalia — and named after quadriplegic fan George La Forge, Geordi was blind from birth and used a VISOR attached to his optical cortex to see the electromagnetic spectrum. The three women who originally began on the bridge were also entirely played by white actors. Although Lieutenant Tasha Yar, who was Chief Security Officer before Worf, was initially meant to be Latina and then Asian, Roddenberry’s final casting decision put the blonde Denise Crosby in the role. A survivor from a colony planet with a collapsed government, Tasha was inspired by Vasquez from Aliens and could, according to concept, defeat most of the rest of the bridge officers in martial arts. Her biggest claim to fame — and one of the biggest missteps in The Next Generation’s seven seasons — came in the second episode of the series, when she had sex with the “fully functional” Data to prove to audiences she was not a lesbian. The character was killed off toward the end of the first season when Denise Crosby, frustrated with her lack of development, left the show. The
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with extreme upset by fans, and a campaign spearheaded by Patrick Stewart himself eventually brought Gates McFadden and Beverly Crusher back by the third season. The writer she clashed with left the show. And, of course, there was the eventual recurring character of Guinan as played by Whoopi Goldberg, who took quite a cut to her usual pay rates to be on the show that had once starred Nichelle Nichols. The Next Generation pilot “Encounter at Far Point” aired on CBS and in syndication on September 28, 1987, mere months after the Challenger explosion. Over the next seven seasons and 178 episodes and four movies, it would become the most financially viable and popular of any series in the Star Trek franchise, as well as the most awarded. At its worst, the show fell back into ridiculous sexist and racial stereotypes and tropes, undervalued its women, made some of its men creeps without consequence, and missed some
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remaining two women were Dr. Beverly Crusher and ship’s counselor Deanna Troi, and though they would eventually have their own stories and episodes, they were introduced in the pilot mostly as love interests of Picard and Riker, respectively. Deanna Troi was a half-human half-Betazoid, making her an empath and sometimes-telepath, and was designed to be an object of sexual desire for the audience…and the producers. She would be mis- and under-used for the majority of the show’s run and repeatedly subjected to those tired sci-fi/ fantasy tropes for women: rape (both physical and psychic) and mystical pregnancies. Dr. Crusher, meanwhile, was the widow of Picard’s late best friend and mother of Gary Stu boy genius, Wesley Crusher (no offense to actor Wil Wheaton, who is lovely). She was played by Gates McFadden, who spent most of the first season behind the scenes fighting the writers about sexist content and a lack of development for the women characters, until one of the writers demanded she be fired. She was replaced during the second season with the underrated Dr. Katherine Pulaski, who was, like Bones, prejudiced against one of her crewmates and suspicious of transporter technology. However, the change was met
huge opportunities to be truly groundbreaking (e.g. the androgynous race in “The Outcast” could have been played by men, as Riker’s actor Jonathan Frakes hoped). At its best, it would spend whole episodes exploring controversial topics like torture, imperialism, gender identity and sexuality, bodily autonomy, personhood, corruption and conspiracy in government, capitalism, witch hunts, addiction, technology advancement, racial and cultural identities, post-war prejudice, gaslighting, the dichotomy between freedom fighters and terrorists, and religion, and anodyne topics like integrity, loyalty, what makes us human, mortality, family, regret, ambition, and the lingering effects of trauma…sometimes against Roddenberry’s express wishes. In between, it took us along on daring adventures, wooed us with romance, and delighted us with character-dri-
ven high jinks. The Next Generation, like The Original Series before it, changed the very landscape of television. It was, after all, one of the first shows to do a true season finale cliffhanger (”Mr. Worf—fire”), saw the beginnings of multi-episode and -season arcs, and, according to The Mary Sue, passed the Bechdel Test a progressive 44.9% of the time. Gene Roddenberry’s health was already in decline in the late 1980s as he began work on The Next Generation. After years of regular drug and alcohol use, he developed cerebral vascular disease and encephalopathy. Though he remained at the creative helm of The Next Generation, his final co-writing credit was in the first season, and, according to producer Rick Berman, his direct influence lessened each year. He had his first stroke in 1989, leaving him wheelchair-bound, and another in early October 1991. On October 24th, 1991, at the age of 70, Eugene Wesley Roddenberry died. His wife, Majel Barrett, was by his side. In 1985, Roddenberry became the first television writer to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 1992, he
was one of the first humans to have their remains carried into orbit. Much of his legacy is still being written — literally, now that Star Trek is back on television — but the ways in which Gene Roddenberry changed our culture and how we tell stories has been undeniable for over half a century. Now, you may be thinking, Star Trek’s evolution has ended. How can an idea continue to grow when its creator is dead? But, ah, gentle reader, that is not always how ideas work.
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THE LEGACY With Roddenberry gone, creative control of the franchise fell to Rick Berman and recently-promoted showrunner Michael Piller, who had only just managed to establish a stable writing staff on The Next Generation after two years of chaos. The general consensus among critics and fans is that the third season was when the series finally started fulfilling its potential. It’s certainly the point at which the show began to produce consistently quality and frequently great episodes. Does it mean something that this stabilization and increase in caliber occurred largely as Roddenberry was no longer able to contribute to and control the series? While it may be part of it, the truth is much more complex. The Next Generation would not exist in the way it did at its core without Roddenberry’s insistence on the nature of Star Trek and on the progress of the 24th century, but it wouldn’t become truly great until he relinquished control. Roddenberry was needed to design and build the ship; those who came after him were needed to make that ship fly. But it couldn’t fly while he was keeping it docked. There’s a special kind of modern phenomenon that seems to exist only in franchises like Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Harry Potter — the kinds of revolu-
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tionary creations with a clear heart, soul, and message that altered the trajectory of storytelling and defined a generation who grew up dreaming of those fictional worlds. The Originator has an Idea, often radical for its time, fights for that Idea, builds on that Idea, puts it into the world, changes everything… and over the course of life, grows beyond or away from the person they were when they first conceived of the Idea. When the Originator is next put in charge of that Idea, after decades of the Idea germinating out in the world and the world itself shifting, the Originator is surrounded by the now-grown children whose imaginations were built by the Idea, whose
worldviews were structured around the essence of the Idea. The children are now the age the Originator was when the Idea was new, they know the Idea with a zeal that can only come from adolescent obsession, but most importantly, they know their world and their time with a freshness and understanding that only the young can have. The ideal is a collaboration, with both the Originator and the generation they helped shape listening to one another to create a version of the Idea that is radical and relevant while still retaining that heart, soul, and message that changed the world in the first place. But, ah, gentle reader, that is not always how Ideas work.
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Roddenberry’s infamous attitude — and not necessarily an incorrect one — during the first two series was, “’Who knows what Star Trek is? I do!’” But often it is the audience, the reader, the viewer who groks the true breadth and depth of a work of art, its meaning, its impact, when the artist knows only their intention. Who knew what Star Trek was? Michael Piller must have known some of it because he ran The Next Generation through its most critically and commercially zoetic period. Ronald D. Moore, a kid who slipped a spec script to one of Roddenberry’s assistants on a tour of The Next Generation’s set and ended up becoming one of the most influential showrunners in modern television, must have known quite a bit of it. Moore’s long-time writing partner, Brannon Braga, who started as an intern on The Next Generation and eventually showran Voyager and co-created Enterprise, probably knew a good amount. Did Rick Berman, who would successfully produce all seven seasons of The Next Generation as well as create and produce Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and the tragic early 2000s run of
Enterprise, know what Star Trek was? Critics and Trekkies have been debating that question for the last twenty years. Berman himself told The Chicago-Sun Times in 1994, “I don’t believe the 24th century is going to be like Gene Roddenberry believed it to be, that people will be free from poverty and greed. But if you’re going to write and produce for Star Trek, you’ve got to buy into that.” It’s that exact opinion that led Berman to create Star Trek: Deep Space Nine with Michael Piller in 1993, when The Next Generation was still on the air. It would be the first series in no way overseen by Gene Roddenberry, the first series to take place on a space station rather than a ship, and the first series with a black captain as the lead. Commander (and then Captain) Benjamin Sisko was unlike any Starfleet lead we’d been asked to invest in before; he was widowed in the Borg assault while Picard was assimilated, a single father to a teenage son, and a black American man from New Orleans who would present the
most succinct version of the show’s revolutionary thesis in the second season: “Do you know what the trouble is? The trouble is Earth—on Earth there is no poverty, no crime, no war. You look out the window of Starfleet Headquarters and you see paradise. It’s easy to be a saint in paradise, but the Maquis do not live in paradise. Out there in the demilitarized zone all the problems haven’t been solved yet. Out there, there are no saints, just people—angry, scared, determined people who are going to do whatever it takes to survive, whether it meets with Federation approval or not.” Deep Space Nine would boldly go where no Star Trek had gone before. It would may 2020|
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delve deep into religion, into the privilege of a Federation with a decidedly Western mentality, into who gets to be righteous, when, and why. It would take place at the edge of Federation space in the immediate aftermath of a long and traumatic Cardassian occupation of the Bajorans, whose whole way of life was now centered around fighting the Cardassians at any cost. The station on which the majority of the action takes place and the officers and civilians who reside there create a sort of chunky intergalactic cultural stew (or a wriggling intergalactic cultural gagh?), where each group is struggling to be heard, to receive justice or revenge, to survive or thrive. It is as though Starfleet has been given control of Mos Eisley, with barely enough authority to keep the cantina lights on. The crew was the most diverse of any series yet. A black man was in charge, a white Bajoran woman was second-in-command, a white “joined” Trill woman was Chief Science Officer, and though Dr. Julian Bashir never specifically notes his ethnic background, Alexander Siddig, his actor, is of North African descent. The remaining recurring characters were Sisko’s son, a young black man, a family of ruthlessly capitalistic Ferengis, a pair of deliciously enigmatic Cardassians, a shapeshifting head of station security, and, from the Enterprise-D, Lieutenant Worf and Chief Miles O’Brien. Over its seven seasons and 179 episodes, Deep Space Nine took a deeply nuanced view of life when that final frontier is an actual frontier, of the complicated nature of conflict, prejudice, trauma, and war, and ultimately of what it takes to make good people do bad things. By the end of the show’s run in 1999, every sentient power in the Alpha and Gamma Quadrants of the Milky Way were decimated, their morals twisted, and their
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citizens forever changed. It was one of the first television shows to commit to season-spanning story arcs, effectively altering once again how we tell our stories. It passed the Bechdel Test 57.8% of the time, and, among other things, included one of the first same-sex kisses in TV history. In 1995, following the release of the first The Next Generation movie (also starring William Shatner) and with Deep Space Nine in full swing, Berman, Piller, and final showrunner of The Next Generation, Jeri Taylor, co-created Voyager, a new Star Trek series about a science vessel and a renegade Maquis ship whose crews team up after being transported more than 70,000 lightyears from Federation space to a quadrant of the galaxy no known species had ever explored. The initial trip kills a good portion of both crews, damages the ship, and leaves them all a 75-year journey from charted space. Like Deep Space Nine, its thesis was based on the complexities of human behavior when those who have always known justice and plenty more are faced with true adversity. What happens to the paragons of Starfleet when they’re stranded far away from
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their families, their homes, and their resources, and surrounded by rebels, criminals, and the unknown? The show was meant to be a return to an earlier kind of Star Trek, in which the crew didn’t get along and the conflict came just as much from within the ship as outside it. The crew was a mixture of Starfleet officers, Starfleet-officers-turned-freedom fighters, and aliens from the new species being encountered in the Delta Quadrant. Captain Kathryn Janeway, played by Kate Mulgrew, was the first woman captain to lead a show, and a straight-forward scientist trying to gain control in an impossible situation. The rest of the crew was diverse in theory, though often ethnic identities were handled clumsily and reinforced stereotypes
more than offering any kind of true representation. While there is much that is commendable and worthwhile (including a staggering 86.9% Bechdel Test passage rate) in the seven seasons and 172 episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, it didn’t take long for the thesis and premise to be forgotten in favor of sexier, less challenging storylines. But at least, you might be thinking, Star Trek was trying to push boundaries and create something new, even if they sometimes didn’t succeed! But, ah, gentle reader, that is not always how Star Trek works. The last of the Star Trek series Rick Berman produced was Enterprise, a prequel set a century before The Original Series, when there was not even yet a United Federation of Planets. The captain and most of the crew were white men, with the exception of a white Vulcan woman in a skin-tight catsuit as executive officer, a black human man as helmsman, and a Japanese woman as communications officer. Even the aliens on the crew were played by white people. In many ways, Enterprise felt like a huge step backward. It was a show without a thesis. It had a soft rock theme
song, threw its highest ranking woman into a sexy Pon Farr scenario in the second episode, and was generally panned by critics and fans alike. The pilot aired just weeks after the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the aftermath would eventually influence a major plotline on the show. Despite the science fiction community’s great love for Scott Bakula, who played Captain Jonathan Archer, the show was such a flop that it effectively killed the two-decade-long run of the second coming of Star Trek. It ran for four seasons and 98 episodes. Since then, though there have been fun, high budget movies helmed largely by J.J. Abrams and featumay 2020|
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ring the rebooted and updated characters from The Original Series, over a decade passed before anyone was allowed to blow the dust off the bridge consoles and create something new. As always, the world has changed in the interim. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Western world went on a panicked lockdown that is still going to this day. We are in our 19th year of a war in the Middle East with no current indication of its ending. Social media and the internet have transformed the way we interact with one another, smart phones have become a pivotal fixture of our day-to-day lives, and there is no longer such a thing as privacy from the government or corporations. A foreign power hacked American elections. The Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was legal, but also that corporations were people. We experienced the worst recession since The Great Depression. The United States elected its first black President for two terms and a woman was the Presidential nominee for one of the two major political parties for the first time in the country’s history. We have just impeached a President for only the third time in 244 years. Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to ever leave our solar
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who is the first black woman to lead a Star Trek series. 2020 will be a banner year for Star Trek. Discovery will begin its third season. CBS All Access periodically drops what they call Short Treks, mini-episodes that provide additional materials to their other series. Star Trek: Picard, which is not a prequel and follows the last adventures of an aging Admiral Jean-Luc Picard, premiered in January and is already renewed for a second season. The first animated series since 1974, Lower Decks, has a two-season order. There is already a joint commission for a children’s animated series between CBS and Nickelodeon. A series about Section 31 will star Michelle Yeoh’s mirror universe version of Philippa Georgiou and will be the first Star Trek led by an Asian woman. There are talks regarding a similar series based around Christopher Pike as portrayed by Anson Mount. There has not been this much consistent Trek activity since 1995. But what does it mean? What system. We have successfully landed four rovers on Mars. The world is facing an unprecedented climate crisis. Instead of hiding under their desks from nuclear bombs, children now hide under their desks from active shooters. We could use the hope of Roddenberry’s vision now, perhaps more than ever. Star Trek: Discovery debuted on CBS All Access on September 19, 2017 after a rocky development. The brainchild of Alex Kurtzman and Bryan Fuller, it takes place a decade before the events of The Original Series. The show involves the recasting of several key characters from the crew of that original USS Enterprise, including Captain Pike and Number One from “The Cage”, a young Spock, and Spock’s parents Amanda and Sarek. It follows the exploits of mutineer Michael Burnham,
Star Trek/ViacomCBS
boundaries are we seeking to push in the year 2020? Discovery has already had its fair share of controversy because of the diversity of its cast and characters, including the first openly gay couple in Star Trek TV canon. But Star Trek can do more. Star Trek was made to do more. It is a vessel designed to consider the darkest, most painful parts of ourselves, of our world, to explore the ills and injustices of our present society with the objective distance of a Vulcan scientist, the empathic heart of a naked Betazoid, and the stubborn daring of a human being. In the 1960s when Gene Roddenberry was creating the first series, 2020 seemed so far in the future that he set a terrifying eugenics war in the 1990s and a complete breakdown of our major superpowers by the mid-21st century. He placed First Contact with the Vulcans, when Zefram Cochrane tests out the warp drive, in the 2060s, 100 years from when Star Trek was born. That’s only
40 years from now. How can we take Star Trek into our vision for the 21st century? How can the vision of Star Trek lead us into a brighter future? Television these days is vastly different than it was in the early 2000s. We’re living in the golden age of streaming services and narrative risk. Shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and Game of Thrones have changed the way we experience things on the small screen as surely as Star Trek ever did. Star Trek must keep up, one assumes, with the times. Star Trek must continue to evolve. The new style of Trek is exciting and cinematic with twists and turns and neverending action. The writers and the characters are more cynical, the tone is darker, the humans are more flawed, dependent on vice, more reminiscent of our pre-
sent than Roddenberry’s future. It is not the ponderous and episodic fare of its earlier incarnations. The two current series are piloted by their plots with the characters and dialogue strapped in for the ride. If Discovery and Picard have thesis statements, they have yet to reveal them. None of this is inherently bad or wrong or not Star Trek. Certainly both series are exploring traditional Star Trek themes in their own ways. It’s just different, as The Next Generation was different to The Original may 2020|
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Series, as Deep Space Nine was different to The Next Generation. As we enter this brilliant new age of Star Trek saturation, of Star Trek possibility, how can we adapt the break-neck pace of modern television with the room to think and breathe that has so long been the backbone of the franchise in order to create something entirely new, radical, and relevant? How do we satiate a television audience used to drugs, cursing, and nudity without sacrificing the humanist optimism that is the beating heart of Star Trek? Each cultural and moral taboo we consider now, each ethical dilemma the crew of a Starfleet ship faces in 2020 is a chance for a kid watching at home to see themselves on TV for the first time, to consider the world from a unique perspective, to remember that they are not alone, to remind us all that we can do better. The year is 2020. Star Trek is back. The future is in our hands. Why not boldly go where no Trek has gone before? For Roddenberry. For the next generation. For ourselves. Because, ah, gentle reader, that is how Star Trek should work.
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How to Love and Enjoy Comics for People Who are Afraid to Love and Enjoy Comics By: Matthew McLachlan
The Non-Geek’s Guide to Getting into Comic Books & Graphic Novels
H
ere’s something you already know: Superheroes and other comic book characters are everywhere these days, so it’s kind of surprising to me that very few have actually ever read a comic book in their lives. I started asking people who love comic movies and television why they don’t also read comics and received all sorts of answers. Most were valid, some were dumb, but basically every answer involved things that could easily be alleviated by a few basic tips and explanations. So, why hasn’t anyone ever done that? I mean, you’ve got plenty of people who are interested, so why hasn’t someone educated people on how to get into comics? It’s gotta be
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someone within The Geekdom smart enough, funny enough, and knowledgeable enough to explain how comics work in an understandable, interesting, and hilarious way to the un-Geek masses! But who could it be?! Well, my Geeklings, I think I might know the perfect guy. *Does finger guns for an alarmingly long time* It’s me. I’m talking about me, I’ll do it. First things first, I am baffled, baffled I say, at the amount of people who do not know the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel. Some of you reading this right now are saying, “Hey, Matt! I didn’t even know there was a difference between Comics and Graphic Novels!” And to you I say, “Buckle
Superman/DC Comics/Jim Lee
Love comic movies and TV shows but never read a comic book in your life? Perhaps you always wanted to but a few main factors stopped you from diving in. Well, this article helps navigate you through the most common problems stopping you from reading comic books and leads you into beautiful Geeky pastures. Like a Geek horse.
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They can go on for years and years with many different (and sometimes ridiculous) storylines that keep the characters fresh and always on new adventures. So, if we are to keep the television metaphor going, Graphic Novels are like a limited series. It’s one contained story. It is literally a novel with pictures. Hence, GRAPHIC NOVEL. See? You get it. Another qualm people seem to have with comics isn’t so much the how, as it is the what.
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If you don’t know what to read next or just want a recommendation, your local comic shop employee will gladly help guide you on your newly found path through the Geekdom.
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”
Often times, I’ll get this line, “Eh. I’ve thought about getting into comics, but superheroes just really aren’t my thing.” And that’s okay! Wanna know why? Because comics can be about anything and usually are! The superhero genre is just one chunk of the comics world that just so happens to be the most popular! Imagine if you asked someone if they listened to podcasts and they said, “eh, I’ve thought about it, but I don’t really like Joe Rogan.”
What a shame it would be if people who loved podcasts let you go on thinking that all podcasts involved a problematic meat-head talking about MMA and aliens while stoned with Mike Tyson. I promise you, there are so many different types of comics out there, no matter what you fancy, and they’re all begging to be read! “But Maaaaatt!” I hear you shouting at the physical or digital pages of this magazine, “If I don’t know where to start and I think all comics are based on superheroes, how will I know what to read?!” Okay, first of all, stop yelling. Second, I gotchoo, my Geeklings. What I’ve done, because I’m great, is I’ve compiled a list of my favorite Comic Book series’ and Graphic Novels (of which you now know the difference) that having nothing to do with superheroes and that are all easy stories to pick up on. You’re welcome. Here’s the list:
Watchmen/DC Comics/Blankets/Top Shelf Productions Marvel Comics/Sex Criminals/Image Comics
up ya sonuva b*itch, ‘cause we gon’ educate ya!” The difference is very simple: Comic Books are ongoing while Graphic Novels are a contained story. Think of it this way: a comic book is basically a TV show in book form. They’re released in what we in the biz call “issues”, a monthly booklet of 20ish pages worth of story, not unlike an episode of your favorite television show. Confused? Don’t be. 1 issue = 1 TV episode. And much like TV shows, Comic Books can go on for as long as they want. 30 issues, 300 issues, doesn’t really matter. However long the creators think it will take to tell the story. The thing that trips people up is when they hear how some superhero comics have been around for generations and are currently on issue #400+ and still going. Don’t be alarmed. Think of comics from places such as Marvel and DC like soap-operas.
“Blankets”
by Craig Thompson (Graphic Novel)
This graphic novel is usually the first thing I tell people to read if they are unsure about comic books because it is so beautiful, entertaining, and human. No superheroes and machismo here, folks, just a beautiful slice of life story that punches your heart in the stomach in the best way possible. An autobiographical tale of a young Craig Thompson’s journey through faith, family, his first love, and finding his passion for art, Blankets gives you all the feels while being absolutely stunning visually. It’s hard for me to play down my enthusiasm for this graphic novel, so I’ll be completely honest with you: This is one of the most beautiful pieces of media I’ve ever experienced. I make people from all ages and walks of life read this and I am happy to say that it has also impacted them in the deepest of ways. Even a teenager I used to babysit said that even though he knew he was too young to relate to the actual events, he looked forward to when he could reread this and connect with it on a personal level. A TEENAGER SAID THIS! The story is as beautiful as it gets with each panel feeling like its own art piece, so it’s no wonder why most people who have this as their introduction to comics develop a brand-new outlook on what the genre can be. Pick this title up and get ready for the feels.
“Sex Criminals”
by Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky (Comic Series)
This one is pretty ridiculous, but a whole lotta fun. After Suzie, a librarian, and Jon, an actor, meet at a party and sleep together, they discover that they share the ability to freeze time when they orgasm. Yup. As their relationship develops and their sexual histories are explored, they decide to rob the bank where Jon works in order to save Suzie’s endangered library. Now, I’m gonna take a wild guess and say that when you saw a list of comic recommendations, you didn’t expect there to be orgasming time-freezing bank robbers, now did you? Or maybe you did, I don’t know your life. As bonkers as this concept is, it’s surprisingly heart-warming, human, hilarious, and the art is beautiful. may 2020|
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This series is still on-going, which means you have the chance to read it and catch up before it reaches its completion. Heh. Sure, this title isn’t exactly the easiest one to explain to friends and family when questioned about your recent interest in comics, but that’s just something you’ll have to get used to. Some of the best non-superhero comics/graphic novels are totally bonkers, and push the limits of what storytelling can be. Which is a perfect segue into the next titles...
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The superhero genre is just one chunk of the comics world that just so happens to be the most popular! ters/storylines, and shining a light on the government’s views (or lack thereof) on gender equality, it’s kinda baffling that this title wasn’t one of the first comic adaptations made into a TV show.
by Emil Ferris (Graphic Novel)
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by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra (Comic Series)
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You’ve got HBO greenlighting Stephen King novels into limited series before he even finishes the damn things, why not pick something ripe for the times? Concluding back in 2008, this title is a quick read of only 60 issues (though sold in a set of 5 books). It’s one of the few titles you will want to own, as I find myself needing to reread it every year or so as it is just that good. Now go see what happens to Yorick Brown and his monkey!
“My Favorite Thing is Monsters”
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“Y: the Last Man”
This graphic novel has the perfect amount of weird, dark, beautiful, and heart. Definitely one of the more serious titles on this list, the story and art are some of the best you’ll find within any graphic novel. What makes this piece special is the personal journey the writer endured leading up to writing this. Emil Farris, who was already a working illustrator and toy designer, contracted West
Nile virus at the age of 40 which paralyzed her from the waist down and made her lose the use of her right hand, preventing her from drawing. After going back to school for her M.F.A. in creative writing, Emil started My Favorite Thing is Monsters as a way to help her recover physically and emotionally. The graphic novel took her six years to complete, averaging
DC Comics/Vertigo/Fantagraphics Marvel Comics/Image Comics
Set in a world where every living mammal with a Y chromosome (humans, animals, even embryos and sperm) dies simultaneously except for an amateur escape artist named Yorick Brown and his pet capuchin monkey named Ampersand, this title is one of my absolute favorites. It takes the concept of “what if there was only one man on a planet full of women” and spins it into a hyper real, hilarious, heart-punching, and incredibly personal high-speed chase. And if you’re worried that the story is about women from all over the planet just fawning over this guy, fear not, most of them think he’s an idiot. It’s great. With nothing but badass female lead characters, great writing, strong LGBTQ charac-
one page every 2 days, using only a Bic ballpoint pen for the pictures and a Paper Mate felt tip pen for the text. And on that note, I want to say to our editor, Galaxy, that I promise to never complain about anything ever again. The story itself is set in 1960s Chicago and is the fictional spiral-bound diary of 10-year-old, horror-loving Karen, who draws herself as a werewolf-like monster as she attempts to solve the mysterious death of her upstairs neighbor, Anka, a holocaust survivor. As heavy and weird as this sounds, this story does something to your heart and imagination that few graphic novels and comic books are able to duplicate. This is a must for all up-coming Geeks in the comic world and definitely a step into the world of weird, but does so with so much heart.
“saga”
by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (Comic Series)
The only reason this whole article isn’t just me yelling at you to read Saga is because I get paid not to. But the other reason is because as amazing as this comic is, it’s also weird. Like, even for comic fans it’s weird, though surprisingly easy to get into. Somehow mixing two very different genres seamlessly, Saga is what happens when Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings have a baby but with a lot more naked bodies, murder, and peo-
ple not complaining about the prequels. The comic tells the tale of husband and wife, Alana and Marko, both from longwarring extraterrestrial races who flee authorities from both sides of a galactic war as they struggle to care for their daughter, Hazel, who occasionally narrates the series as an unseen adult. Currently on hiatus, the two creators recently told fans that said hiatus indicates that they are halfway done with their story and gathering their energy to finish the story right. So, jump on this kooky little bandwagon now, future-Geeks, and join the rest of us in seeing where this award-winning crowd favorite ends! Now, if none of these titles tickle your fancy, then have no fear, as this brings me to my final point for getting into comics… don’t be afraid of your local comic-shop Geeks! If you don’t know what to read next or just want a recommendation, your local comic shop employee will gladly help guide you on your newly found path through may 2020|
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“
Graphic Novels are like a limited series. It’s one contained story. It is literally a novel with pictures. Hence, GRAPHIC NOVEL. See? You get it.
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And there you have it! You’ve taken your first baby steps into the Geekdom! Now, please take all of this newfound knowledge, apply it at your leisure, and know that we here at Comic Con Magazine welcome you into the Geekdom with open arms. We’re here to help you grow into the most beautiful Geek you could possibly be and look forward to hearing about your journey and the exciting comics you discover along the way! Now get out there and get reading, you beautiful Geeklings!
Image Comics/DC Comics
the Geekdom. A lot of people feel intimidated when approaching these lovely pillars of Geek-knowledge, but don’t be! What every Geek loves more than Geeky things is talking about Geeky things with others. Pick their brains, ask them questions, and be completely honest that you might not have any clue where to start! You can mention to them all of the suggestions I listed above, and they may completely agree or steer you towards titles more suited to your individual needs! Point is, they’re there to help. If your worst fears come to fruition and you find your local Geekspert being rude or looking down on you for not knowing Comic Books and Graphic Novels, fear not! Those types of Geeks are what we in the biz call, “assholes.” They occur in every field of employment and do not reflect the Geekdom as a whole! Just recognize that they’re an asshole and go find someone else more friendly!
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The History of
Black Widow W
ith her own standalone film Black Widow coming out this year, it may be important to learn about the history of the stunning Russian assassin. While we’ve learned a bit about Black Widow within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, she has an even richer history in Marvel Comics. The character of Black Widow was created by the late great Stan Lee. Although Black Widow’s first appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is in Iron Man 2, her debut in the comics came in 1964’s Tales of Suspense #52. In the films, we learn that Black Widow (real name, Natasha Romanoff) is the ultimate femme fatale. She meets Tony Stark and Pepper Potts under the guise of a notary public who has come to
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finalize Tony appointing Pepper as CEO of Stark Industries. Later she reveals herself to be the ruthless assassin we all know and love when she saves Happy Hogan from some of Justin Hammer’s security detail. But what can we learn about Black Widow by looking at her comic book history that hasn’t yet been addressed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? While Avengers like Steve Rogers and Peter Parker had relatively normal childhoods, Romanoff was not granted such a privilege. Black Widow’s name is derived from the Soviet created ‘Black Widow Ops’ program,” the very same program that turned her (and many other young girls) into the perfect female assassin. During the program, these girls were trained in what
is called the “Red Room” facility. In fact, fans of the television series, Agent Carter may also remember another member of the Black Widow Ops program: Dottie Underwood. During the series, Dottie proved to be one of Peggy Carter’s most challenging adversaries, so it comes as no surprise that she has the same training as the Black Widow, herself. Although it may seem like Black Widow dulls in comparison to Avengers such as The Incredible Hulk or The Amazing
Black Widow/Marvel Studios/Marvel Comics
By: Phuong Pham
Spider-Man, she actually has many impressive abilities. While it has yet to be addressed in the films, Black Widow has delayed aging and in actuality, is roughly the same age as Captain America, due to the biotechnology augmentations she underwent during her time in the Black Widow Ops program not only that but she also has enhanced endurance; so much so that in Black Widow Vol. 4 #1, she is depicted as being able to undergo surgery while being completely conscious throughout the whole procedure. Additionally, Black Widow also has a healing factor much like Wolverine. However, this
ability comes with one drawback: sterilization. The Black Widow program prevents it’s ‘participants’ from having children due to their bodies rejecting the fetuses. However, the Marvel Cinematic Universe suggests that a sterilization procedure occurs upon graduation from the program to ensure that the girls will be invulnerable to emotional attachments (in this case, a child.) While not addressed in the MCU, Black Widow actually has a lot in common with the Winter Soldier. The success of Bucky Barnes’ brainwashing and biotechnological enhancements paved the way for Black Widow Ops. Bucky’s memories of Steve Rogers were wiped clean, causing him to murder Tony Stark’s parents and nearly take out Captain America, as well; but Bucky isn’t the only one who was a victim of memory manipulation.
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But what can we learn about Black Widow by looking at her comic book history that hasn’t yet been addressed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
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The Black Widow Ops program also manipulated Black Widow’s brain by implanting memories of her being an accomplished ballerina for the Bolshoi Theatre. This was done in an elaborate effort to craft a fictitious history for Romanoff and the other girls to have a sense of loyalty to the soviets of course, we all know that Black Widow defected from the U.S.S.R. based on the timeline of the movies and the rest is history. It will be interesting to see how the MCU will condense Natasha Romanoff’s history and what aspects of her life prior to the Avengers they’ll choose to focus on and what changes will be made in her upcoming film. Black Widow is set to be released in theatres on November 6, 2020. may 2020|
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Rollo By: Ethan Brehm
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Normandy (where Standen also got to flex his comedic chops a bit as well), Rollo’s personality has become very nuanced and his journey has been far from boring. A jealousy-filled, vengeful little brother is a trait we’ve seen before in TV and film, but perhaps no one has conveyed these passions as convincingly as Rollo, much credit to Standen, himself. Despite getting a diminished role in his final full season, his was still the most intriguing storyline from those episodes. The brother of Ragnar, the legendary Scandinavian king, has been overlooked his entire life. Even as boys, his parents always favored his brother, and as adults, watching Ragnar’s rise to power wasn’t easy as the whole kingdom praised the king and gave him all the credit, while Rollo stood by his side, often his most loyal subject, and was in many ways better than his brother. Creator and writer Michael Hirst and his team do a brilliant job making us root for both
sides, wanting them to just get along at the end of the day. But we all know brotherly dynamics aren’t that simple, and not all that easy to deal with-especially when there’s jealousy and resentment at play. Standen’s Rollo provided a semi-counterpoint to Ragnor. Rollo was conflicted by his loyalty to his brother and his desire to step outside of his shadow, very often leading to betrayal. However, their dynamic proved that just because someone is of a higher rank doesn’t mean they’re better at everything. A superior warrior-perhaps the best of his realm-and with the proper resources, probably a better strategist, as seen through his
Clive Standen/Vikings/History Channel/A&E Networks
T
he two best episodes of the vastly different fifth season of History Channel’s Vikings are the ones where Rollo makes his encore appearance. After the death of Ragnor Lothbrok in the previous season, the series seemed to have placed his resentful brother on the back burner. With no Ragnor, what would drive Rollo? I suppose that logic checks out. But the truth is, Rollo’s climb to the top of the military hierarchy in France was one of the best subplots of season 4-if not the series up to that point. Unfortunately phasing out his character meant we wouldn’t get to see the rest of his story unfold. For now, we’re left to relish in those couple of all-too-brief moments as Rollo bows out one last time. Rollo is played by Clive Standen, whose acting career is rooted in theatre. Growing up a mere 15 minutes from the legendary Sherwood Forest of Robin Hood lore, Standen’s first acting gig saw him doing live Robin Hood reenactments involving actual swords that caused actual injuries. He was 14-years-old. I suppose you could say this was training, if not a sign that he would go on to portray a ruthless Viking full-time. Standen gives arguably the strongest individual performance of the series (he, himself, calls it a personal favorite of his career). Becoming a fan favorite, Rollo’s knack for an unpredictability that has shown both great betrayal and also great loyalty, is what makes his character so much fun to watch. Seeing him grow from a heathen in the truest sense to the commendable war hero as Duke of
o central figures. Standen, as well as the show runners, felt Rollo’s story was over in Vikings, which is why he was essentially written out, but his final moments gave us the best plot twist of the series. There have been murmurs about the character’s return for the second half of the sixth and final season later this year. So we’ll have to wait and see if Hirst can find another way to let us see the infamous Rollo one last time. Until then, you can look for Standen in his new series Council of Dads, where he shows his range as a man who helps take care of a dying man’s kids.
victories in Francia, Rollo ended up getting his glory when he left his Viking people to become Duke of Normandy, ultimately stifling and putting an end to the Vikings’ attacks on Paris. In many ways Rollo was a more intriguing character. Where Ragnor was unflappable, Rollo was the changing current driven by emotion and passion. Ragnor operated efficiently within his society, but Rollo was constantly trying to find his way in the world. And amidst a people who are very set in a particular way of life, it was difficult for him to truly grow until he left, much to the displeasure of his peers. Perhaps no character changed more than the formidable Rollo. There was always a refreshing sense of unpredictability. But while other, more predictable
characters’ decisions didn’t always make sense, Rollo’s inner-conflict always fit the complexities of his character. Sometimes he can be unlikable, but that’s often the point. There’s a nobility to his uncertainty, and that exposed vulnerability evokes empathy that other characters don’t necessarily receive. In the second season, his spiral to rock bottom is oddly commendable amidst a society laden with pompous ego. It also makes his redemption later on feel more rewarding. In one sense, he does win the brotherly battle. Vikings is a show that places both hero and villain on either side of its battles-and sometimes those qualities can simultaneously be inside the same person. Within the world of the series, the line between bad and good is often blurred, and Rollo’s a perfect example of that. Even if Rollo doesn’t return, the upcoming Vikings spin-off series, Vikings: Valhalla, will feature Rollo’s descendant, William the Conqueror, as one of its
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SPOILER MAGAZINE
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crimson #12 Written by: Brian Augustyn Art by: Humberto Ramos
The Bad: The dialogue
slows down the story a lot more than I would have liked. It isn’t necessarily bad, but there is much more than needed. It’s hard to get in a good flow when we clearly see a man holding a shield and yet the character feels the need to tell us he’s
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score
5.5 holding a shield. Obviously we can already see that, but thanks for the reminder. Reading on-the-nose dialogue takes away from the illustrations which is this issue’s strong point.
The Veredict: In movies and
TV a big rule is “show don’t tell.” Same goes for a comic book, if we can see it, there’s no need for a verbal reminder. That said, the tone is on point. It took a little while for me to get invested, but deserves some credit for a strong finish that has me curious what’s to come next.
Crimson/DC Comics/Cliffhanger
The Good: The drawings do a great job of giving off the eerie feel you would want out of a comic book based around vampires. Right off the bat it’s easy to root against the temptress and from then on it feels like all the best bits involve her. Augustyn did an excellent job fleshing out her character. By the end, you might be questioning if you would be strong enough to fight off her manipulative ways if you were Alex (our protagonist).
Punisher;
Hot Rods of Death #1 Written by: Charlie Huston Art by: Shawn Martinbrough Colors by: Lee Loughridge The Good: If you like your comic books action packed and pedal to the metal, then this is right up your alley. It opens with a perfect setup for what’s to come and doesn’t let you turn one page without being reminded that Frank “Punisher” Castle is a total badass. The action and violence stand out and keep the story flowing at a fast pace and keep us on our toes from beginning to end.
9.0
before they reach their inevitable demise.
The Veredict: Before the shootouts, car crashes and occasional Molotov cocktail being thrown there are some very cool moments shared by Frank & Billy, two old war buddies reconnecting to kick a little ass. These moments do a great job of setting up the motivation behind the violence that ensues and give us that extra bit of reason to root for Punisher. He’s not known for being a funny guy by any means, but thanks to the relationship that’s established early on we’re able to get a couple good laughs along the way.
The Punisher/Marvel Comics
The Bad: The only down part is that the payoff sneaks up on us quick. For such a good story it would have been nice if our hate for the antagonists was cranked up another notch
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deadpool kills the marvel universe #1 score
9.0
Written by: Cullen Bunn Art by: Dalibor Talajic Colors by: Lee Loughridge
The Good:Do you like rooting for the bad guy? I know I do. Shout out to Cullen Bunn for making it easier than ever. He isn’t the first to make Deadpool out to be a villain and I hope he’s not the last (Hint, hint movie studios). Obviously the Marvel universe already exists and most of us know Deadpool’s origin story, but this issue does a fantastic job of setting up a new and fresh beginning for Wade Wilson. One that prepares us to see very little of Mr. Wilson and a whole lot of Deadpool.
The Veredict: I’m yet to read a Deadpool comic book written by Cullen Bunn that I think is anything short of excellent. The Merc With a Mouth has a few moments of witty humor in there of course, but really it’s the tip of the iceberg for him. I love when superheroes go head to head so maybe I’m a little biased, but like I said Deadpool is made out to be the anti-hero right away and even though he doesn’t face a hero in this first issue, it’s safe to say that he has all the motivation in the universe to stack up an impressive body count over the next three issues.
Deadpool/Marvel Comics
The Bad: There’s very little I don’t like about this one. It starts out a little slow, but once it gets going it never looks back. The only other flaw, if you want to call it that, is that by the end of the first issue we haven’t seen
Deadpool go up against any of Marvel’s heavy hitters yet.
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deadpool kills the marvel universe #2 Written by: Cullen Bunn Art by: Dalibor Talajic Colors by: Lee Loughridge The Good: Blowing one of
the worlds most beloved superhero’s brains out within the first few pages sets up a tough precedent to live up to. Luckily for the readers Deadpool does that and then some, here. Watching the biggest and baddest of Avengers having to conspire and team up just to stand a chance is both exciting and humorous to every diehard Deadpool fan. Whether he’s chopping heads off or causing explosions, the violence drawn on the page is also top notch.
The Bad: I would have liked a couple of the battles to have gone on a little longer. For such epic showdowns most of them seem to fly by like a second round knockout. We find out that Black Panther, Tigra, and
score
9.5
Iron Fist have already met their maker which I think would have been an issue well worth adding to the series so we could have watched that play out.
The Veredict: Deadpool’s on a rampage. He’s out for blood and it looks like any super hero out there who has disrespected him over the years will soon regret it. So far, this series isn’t Deadpool at his funniest, but it’s easily his most badass. I would love to see more of a back and forth in these fights. At the end of the day, if you can’t kill him, so you can’t win, (and so far no hero has even come close.) Maybe it’s time for one of Marvel’s big, bad super villains to take another crack at it. Judging by the ending, we’ll soon find out if any of them stand a chance. may 2020|
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araknis #3 Written by: Michael & Mario Ortiz Art by: Michael & Mario Ortiz
The Bad: The story itself doesn’t draw me in as much as I’d like. Araknis has some obvious similarities to Spider-Man. He’s basically Spider-Man if Peter Parker and the spider that bit him were hopped up on steroids. The problem is the comic doesn’t nearly have the heart Spider-Man does. And while it’s not totally fair to compare him to a super hero as iconic as Spider-Man, that’s bound to happen when your name and origins story are that of Araknis. The Veredict: There are plenty of really good indie comics that have stood the test of time, but there are a lot more that haven’t been able
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score
7.0
to do so. This one falls closer to the former. The story isn’t really one that does a great job of pulling me in, but the art is right up there with some of the best DC & Marvel have to offer. I can’t put it up there with indie comics like “Transmetropolitan”, “100 Bullets”, or “Preacher” but again, artistically it might top all of them and that alone makes it worth checking out.
Araknis/Morning Star Comics
The Good: The art is about as detailed as any comic book I’ve ever read. The way the colors jump from cool tones to popping off the page is really pleasing to the eye and helps keep it interesting. In the first half, all the action consists of our hero getting smacked around and (wo)man handled, but by the midpoint, that changes drastically. Once Araknis gets loose, nobody’s safe, and that’s when the fun really begins.
wolverine
the best there is #1 score
4.0
Written by: Charlie Huston Art by: Juan José Ryp Colors by: Andrés Mossa
The Good: Right off the jump, there’s something off-putting about Winsor, our antagonist. It doesn’t take long for him to get his hands dirty, and by then I already can’t wait to see Wolverine get his claws on him. The subtlety of Winsor’s character goes a long way in making us wonder what kind of evil genius he is and how much of a chance he stands. As for Wolverine, himself... At least the cover looks cool.
The Veredict: In the opening, Logan looks like a naked gimp, yeah that’s weird, but as soon as it becomes clear that he’s in a mutant version of a dog fighting ring I was right onboard. However, the idea is much better than it’s execution. I don’t read Wolverine comics to see Logan party like a college kid and use his claws to cut hair like the local barber. When you say it out loud it actually sounds like the complete opposite of what I want out of a Wolverine comic. This is the first issue of the series so I still want to give it a chance, but it’s off to a pretty poor start.
Wolverine/Marvel Comics
The Bad: The story opens up with Wolverine being treated like a rabid dog, but he soon digresses into a hairstylist which feels every bit as weird as it sounds. There are a lot of little quips that feel like they are supposed to be a lot funnier than they actually are. But what throws me the most here is the story’s tone. I can’t figure it out.
It doesn’t have the intense feel of a good Wolverine comic. And while a fresh approach can be a great thing, it can also backfire, which in this case, I would say it does BIG TIME.
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8 Star Wars
Origins Stories we would love to see happen
By: Ethan Brehm fter the relatively underwhelming success of 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, Lucasfilm and Disney have seemed to scrap many of the spinoff ideas they were been planning. Paired with the mixed reviews from The Rise of Skywalker, it feels like the two studios may be a little less hasty to pull the trigger from now on. However, the praise of the Disney Plus series, The Mandalorian, seems to have restored faith in the possibilities of expanding the already expansive Star Wars universe, causing us fanboys to brainstorm our own ideas for what we could possibly see in the future. There’s a lot of material out there in the form of novels, comic books, and several animated series, that the people behind the new film and television division of Star Wars could have a lot to pull from as inspiration. That is, if they wanted to.
Here, we explore just a few of the countless possibilities for origins stories within the universe: Jabba the Hutt
To many, there’s no character in the Star Wars universe more elusive than Jabba the Hutt. The crime lord was the bane of Han Solo’s existence, and probably vice versa, but before George Lucas decided to tamper with the theatrical cuts of the original films, the name “Jabba the Hutt” was shrouded in mystery for episodes IV and V during their original releases. That is, until we finally got to see what the
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infamous gangster looked like in Return of the Jedi. The Han Solo prequel was divisive to say the least, but only gave us glimpses of what a Star Wars underworld could look like. And to be honest, those were some of the best parts of the movie. There’s a lot of Jabba material to work with in the expanded universe, including the Clone Wars TV series and the pseudo-canonical novel, Tales from Jabba’s Palace, so creating a mob-themed film or show surrounding the infamous villain may even write itself. Lucasfilm actually had plans for a Jabba the Hutt project back in 2017, but have since been pretty mute on the idea. There are so many fan favorites who hang out at Jabba’s Palace that the possibilities almost make your mouth water.
Star Wars/Disney/Lucasfilm
A
Greedo
Speaking of banes of Han Solo’s existence, Greedo is one of the most notable Star Wars characters to only appear in a single scene, so it’s only natural for us to wonder about the bug-like bounty hunter’s story before ultimately meeting his fate on Tatooine. Perhaps digging into some of the stories from the 2017 anthology novel, From a Certain Point of View, would provide a solid launching point.
r5-d4
Luke’s companion droid almost wasn’t R2-D2. In fact, the Jawas initially sold Luke’s Uncle Owen a droid named R5-D4, who Luke affectionately referred to as “Red”. But the astromech blew his top, prompting Luke and Owen to believe the droid was broken goods. They returned Red and sought out a working droid instead-R2-D2. R2 was undoubtedly crucial to the overall mission of defeating the Death Star, and R5-D4’s self-sacrifice is a big reason for the Rebel’s success. An origins story about an unintelligible droid would be unique to say the least, so perhaps a Disney Plus mini-series would be a suitable outlet to tell the droid’s tale. The show runners could turn to Rae Carson’s canonical short story “The Red One” for inspiration.
c-3po
We’re told the protocol droid was built by a young Anakin in The Phantom Menace, but neither the droid nor Darth Vader seemed to recognize one another in the original trilogy. Even Obi-Wan curiously never addresses whether or not he’s seen Threepio before. So what happened between the events of Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope? We know his memory was wiped, but there isn’t a ton of content out there about what happened during those gap years. Elsewhere in Star Wars lore, we would come to find out that Anakin didn’t, in fact, build C-3PO from scratch, rather fixed the broken droid to better sustain the heat and terrain on Tatooine. So it would also be interesting to see Threepio’s past before winding up in the young Jedi’s hands. may 2020|
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qui-gon jinn We see Qui-Gon well-represented in various Star Wars media, but his only feature film or television depiction is from The Phantom Menace, along with brief force ghost appearances in the Clone Wars series. There’s a lot in the expanded universe detailing the Jedi Master’s history, especially in comic book form, so it would be great to see how he was brought up and even how he met his apprentice, Obi Wan.
Captain Phasma One of the frustrating missteps by the Star Wars sequel trilogy is never revealing the much-teased identity of one particular Stormtrooper captain. The expanded universe has been kind to Captain Phasma, giving us a lot of information about her past. She’s also well-represented in the Star Wars
Resistance animated TV show. However, animation isn’t for everyone and maintaining the same live-action style as the medium which she was introduced in should not go understated. (Imagine Han Solo’s death coming in a cartoon TV show rather than a theatrical movie. That wouldn’t really fly.)
snoke
There may be no character evoking more questions and theories in the sequel trilogy than Supreme Leader Snoke. Apparently a creation of Palpatine, fans still want to fully know the circumstances surrounding his existence. Did he have free will all along, or could he have betrayed Palpatine at any time? How far back were Palpatine’s plans made? And what was he planning on doing with the rest of the “Snokes” he had stored in jars on Exegol? Fans of the sequel trilogy would, no doubt, love to see his trajectory, detailed in some of the comic books, come to fruition in another medium.
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The Millennium Falcon We see the world’s most famous spaceship switch hands a couple times throughout the cinematic universe, especially in the Han Solo prequel. But who built this bucket of bolts which made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs? Who was the original owner and how did it wind up in the hands of
Lando? The Star Wars universe is riddled with appearances and mentions of the craft, including the knowledge of its involvement in the Clone Wars and even a brief cameo in Revenge of the Sith, but there’s no definitive enough saga to explain all that this ship has seen. We want to know more!
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cosplay on
a budget By: Phuong Pham
T
“
What once was a small subset of fans has swelled enormously over time in the convention community, but how does one get started in such an involved and time consuming endeavor?
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Online Marketplaces
online marketplaces
Online marketplaces can be a bit of a hit or miss with their products. The biggest issue that many people encounter is that online shops often post photos of costumes that are nowhere near the quality of the product they ship to consumers. This can be increasingly problematic when these manufacturers are overseas and wait time for shipments can be incredibly long. Additionally, if there is an issue with the
product, international shipping costs become a hassle. One such solution to this is buying gently used costumes from other consumers online via eBay, Facebook Marketplace, etc. Custom made costumes are definitely expensive and hard to come by. However, purchasing a custom made costume from someone with roughly the same measurements ensures that your purchase is a quality product.
Blizzard Entertainment/Instituto Internet Time Magazine/Maestrando
he past few years have seen an epic surge in popularity of the practice of cosplay. What once was a small subset of fans has swelled enormously over time in the convention community. But how does one get started in such an involved and time-consuming endeavor? It is certainly easy to be intimidated by all the enormously talented cosplayers seen at conventions and featured in online publications. However, some tips and tricks may be able to help you traverse the expansive terrain that is cosplay.
Thrift stores like Goodwill are fantastic places to get started in cosplay. Granted, you may not always find something incredibly screen accurate but they are great for getting that starter piece you’ve been needing.
thrift stores
If you are like me and are not exactly skilled at sewing and creating your own pattern from scratch, thrift stores can be an invaluable place to find a base piece that you can modify to appear more screen accurate or find something close enough to the original. The first costume I ever created was Cinderella’s ballgown from the classic Disney film and that was crafted from a $30 secondhand prom dress.
online tutorials and forums Cosplay used to be incredibly difficult to do before the age of the internet. Prior to the digital age, cosplayers had no resources other than the source material and their own imagination. Today, with the help of the internet, cosplayers are able to get multiple high-resolution photos of costumes, go on forums to chat and share ideas with other cosplayers, or search instructional videos for relevant tutorials on projects all to better realize their creative vision. Jumping into the cosplay community has never been easier with all these online resources available to both veteran and potential creators. These guidelines are just a few tips and tricks to ease into the cosplay community. Have fun with future projects and keep creating!
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RANKING ALL 8 MOVIES IN THE ROCKY CINEMATIC UNIVERSE By: Ethan Brehm
T
he age old question of which Rocky movie is the best is never an easy one. And now, with the inclusion of the serviceable Creed spinoffs, the answer becomes even more muddled. No Rocky film is perfect, and each has its flaws, always making for an interesting, and often times aggressive conversation. Every fan has his or her own favorite, but here we try to break down the good, the bad, and the just okay.
8. Rocky IV
Even at 90 minutes, the Cold War-inspired story is stretched much too thin, which would explain the odd amount of montages-even for a Rocky film. Other than the iconic death that catalyzes the overall plot into motion, Rocky IV is uneventful and unnecessary, as
though Stallone simply ran out of creativity. He recreates his proven formula once again, but this time it feels much more empty. A bright spot is Dolph Lundgren as Ivan Drago, who remains stoic as long as necessary, giving us a truly despicable villain.
Although Rocky III redeems itself in the 2nd half, we can all see it’s not great. Over the years the movie has become a fan favorite due to its campiness and absolutely ridiculous villain played by Mr. T. Rocky III is the series’ jump-the-shark moment in every way possible. Oozing with over-the-top ‘80s glitz, the film adequately pairs those sensibilities with that of Balboa during this stage of his career. Good or bad, this one still has a certain type of rewatchable quality.
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6. creed II
Creed II can come off as soapy at times, but the film’s overall premise has integrity. Connecting the plot to the tragic events that took place during Rocky IV involving Apollo Creed and Ivan Drago, this follow up to writer/director Ryan Coogler’s 2015 smash hit was more than just a cash grab. Though it also pretty much wrote itself. While definitely missing Coogler’s sensibilities, Creed II possesses themes that are much less straight-forward than its predecessor, becoming more complex and even nuanced. However, the film seems to be bogged down by the increased depth, often times having trouble organizing its own thoughts. Also, the ending might be the worst in the series.
Rocky/Creed/ Mayer Studios Inc.
7. Rocky III
5. rocky
4. creed In many technical aspects, Creed is better than almost every other Rocky movie, but maybe the issue is that much of it doesn’t feel like a Rocky movie at all. Which wouldn’t even matter if it didn’t try so hard to be one. Creed is definitely flawed, but also brings a new vibe to the franchise as a whole-one that better suits a spinoff like this. The film tackles some interesting themes, and finds poetic closure to past events, but still feels completely separate from the first six installments-for better or worse.
y
This may be blasphemous because of what this movie meant back in 1976 and how it inspired the countless underdog stories that came after it, but the first Rocky is a little overrated. But that’s not to say the movie is bad. Just like the Italian Stallion, himself, Rocky has heart. In his first film, Balboa is a nobody boxer who hasn’t made anything of his career. And when some freak opportunity presents itself, he finally works hard and gets what he wants with very few obstacles in his way. In the films that follow, the conflict is more palpable, but here Rocky has it pretty easy.
Warner Brothers Pictures
3. rocky v This one gets a bad rap. But the reasons that many fans give for why they detest Rocky V are the same things Rocky films have been doing all along. Maybe it’s just that by now people are finally starting to notice. Truthfully, what makes Rocky V so enjoyable is how it’s different from the rest of the pack. Finally
breaking away from the tired formula, the story revolves more around Balboa and his young son, and for once we can’t map out the trajectory in our heads before it happens. Rocky V may not be the most popular in the series, but this one provides us with perhaps the most realistic storyline of the bunch. may 2020|
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2. rocky balboa
There’s nothing quite like the ending of a Rocky film. Despite what happens during the rest of the stories, those final moments of each movie always give us goosebumps, even tears at times. The ending of Rocky Balboa, aka Rocky VI, is no different. Probably the most beautiful of any in the series. The film deals with age and how it shouldn’t define us. Rocky’s struggle here is palpable, reminding us of our own evanescence. Stallone as Balboa faces the one opponent that will never lose-time-and the look in his eyes makes you believe that perhaps he knows the feeling all too well. But he also knows that getting old is a gift. As not everyone gets the chance to see their own old age. And even those who do are not always lucky enough to be able to leave what they love on their own terms.
1. rocky ii The most underrated and under-talked about in the series, Rocky II gives us a taste of everything that’s good about these movies. We dive deeper into Rocky as a person, and finally get a sense of his flaws as well, better rounding out his character. The themes are much more interesting. Much of the story is about Rocky becoming famous and recognizable-automatically bringing more meaning to the first movie. It also shows how easily the public forgets about him and what he’s accomplished. Unlike the first film, Rocky actually has his back up against the wall. He’s being
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laughed at by his peers, and his relationship with Adrian actually has some kinks to work out. It’s nowhere near as easy this time around for our hero. And by now, we know the characters well enough to appreciate their journey more. We’re also given the funniest moment in the entire franchise when Rocky can’t get any of his lines right when filming a commercial. True gold.
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new comic con
C
onventions have been uniting fans from all walks of life for decades. Most 30, 40, even 50 years, but their history is rooted even further back than that. This month, Geeky Films officially announced COMIC CON, a six-part documentary series, as currently in production and expected to be broadcast in the Fall of 2021. The series will break down the history of fan conventions, detail their inner workings, and showcase the culture and massive successes of various conventions - Comic Cons in particular. There’s something almost unexplainable about why conventions are so addicting, and the docuseries will attempt to grasp just how Cons have transcended comic books, themselves, to become a confluence for fans of television, film, anime, and various other mediums by talking to attendees from all over the world and getting a feel for their love affair. COMIC CON will take us behind the scenes of one of the nation’s new favorite pastimes while also exploring what it takes to run these
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massive conventions which bring in thousands of people from all around the world every year. COMIC CON will pull back the veil on each stage of putting one of these mammoths together. Everything from gathering volunteers to landing celebrities and panelists, the series will take you through the steps needed to create these havens for fans, while also showing
you the passion of the people who make it all happen. Each episode will cover a different convention around the world and show you behind the scenes. You’ll get interviews with fans, comic executives, and celebrities who also happen to be in touch with their geeky side. Showrunner and creator, Galaxy, has worked in the Comic Con world for over two decades and knows what it takes to make these run smoothly. Comic Con and other conventions like it have moved mountains to help bring comic books, anime, and toys to the mainstream while welcoming in the film and television companies who, in recent years, have embraced the Con lifestyle and the properties they represent. This docuseries will dive deep within the fanbase, talking to attendees about their own fandom, their dedication to cosplay, and how these conventions were the first to bring them closer to their favorite actors, celebrities, and iconic figures of the past and present. COMIC CON premieres Fall 2021.
Daniel Knighton/Getty Images/John Price/U-T/San Diego Historical Society
docuseries
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