Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) Movie Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back for my review of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York from 1992, also directed by Chris Columbus. I honestly don't have a whole lot to say in this intro, so let's get into the review because I have quite alot to say about this movie.

I don't understand why people like these first two movies so much. Maybe because I didn't grow up with either of them, being that I apparently saw the first movie on TV once when I was a kid, but I don't remember it, and I definitely never saw this one, so I haven't spent as much time with these two movies as I have Home Alone 3, which I'll be discussing next week.

First off, I would like to say that the entire cast is excellent in this movie. Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern are great as Harry and Marv, as they were in the first movie. While I don't like Kevin in this movie any more than I did in the first one, Macaulay Culkin still does an excellent job in the role. I'm also beginning to really love Catherine O'Hara as an actress, after having watched her in Beetlejuice, Home Alone, and now Home Alone 2. The greatest delight though was seeing Tim Curry as the Concierge of the Plaza Hotel...owned by a certain former American president, whose name I refuse to mention in this blog, ever. He shows up for a second in this movie too. 

While I've never seen the original adaptation of Stephen King's It, I mostly know Tim Curry as Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island and as the voice of the villainous computer virus, Kilokahn in the Tsuburaya/DIC adaptation of Denkou Choujin Gridman, Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, the voice of Captain Hook in the Fox Kids animated series, Peter Pan & the Pirates, the voice of the villainous pipe organ, Forte in Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas, and the voice of the mad scientist, Doctor Sevarius on Gargoyles, as well as the voice of Palpatine in seasons 5 and 6 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars after the death of original Palpatine voice actor, Ian Abercrombie in 2012.

Rob Schneider is also in this movie, but I've never been a fan of his. I mostly know him as supporting cast in Adam Sandler's early 2000s movies like Big Daddy, Mr. Deeds (my favourite), and Eight Crazy Nights, but otherwise I've never actually seen him in any movies outside of those three. He's fine in this movie, but, again, not my favourite.

My biggest problem with Home Alone 2 is that it's almost exactly the same as the first movie, just on a larger playing field. Like the opening scenes of the movie are a shot for shot remake of the first movie. And most of the trap gags in the final act are exactly the same as the traps in the first movie. With the exception of there being a hole in the floor right in front of Uncle Rob's front door. They even reference the first movie right out the gate too.

Another problem that I have with this movie is the fact that it takes place only a year after the events of Home Alone, but everyone is apparently two years older than they were in the previous movie. What? And even though they tried to make it look like Harry and Marv learned from the mistakes they made in the first one, and are anticipating everything Kevin is going to do, the kid still outsmarts them by a wide margin. 

The concept of this franchise is fine for a single movie, but it starts to break down when you try to expand it into more than one movie. Especially when you use the exact same cast of characters. It feels like an homage to the classic Abbott and Costello and The Three Stooges films, but at least Abbott and Costello and the Three Stooges all had separate situations that they found themselves in. With this movie John Hughes and Chris Columbus just did the same thing they did in the first movie and that makes it boring. 

According to Wikipedia, the critics weren't as enamored with this movie as they had been with the first movie back in 1990. For the exact same reason that I don't like it very much. Despite this movie having a budget that was $10 million more than the first one, it made $117,689,825 less than the first movie did, so apparently the audience for the movie was much smaller for the movie than it was for the previous one. 

While I didn't grow up with Home Alone or Home Alone 2, I did play the NES game for Home Alone 2. When I was nine years old I had a nurse at school who had two kids, a daughter and a son, who were older than I was. She used to bring them over whenever she was looking after my brother, sister, and I, and while my nurse was busy with me, her kids would watch my siblings. There was this one time where my parents went out for the night and my nurse, and her kids, came over to look after us. Her son brought Home Alone 2 for the NES with him and we played that together for a bit. I mostly watched him play, but he let me try it before I went to bed.

Besides the game, my only other real interaction with this movie was the trailers and TV commercials for it back in 1992, and the home video re-release trailer for the first two movies on the VHS for Home Alone 3. I'm pretty sure that either Nana and Grandpa or my parents owned the first two movies on VHS, but obviously I didn't watch them, and I can't remember who owned them or when, I just remember seeing the cases somewhere and it was either at Nana's and Grandpa's place or at my house.

As you can tell, I didn't like Home Alone 2 at all. That doesn't mean that it's a bad movie or anything. It's just I wasn't as enthralled with it as I was the first movie. Of the first three movies in this series, My ranking of this series so far is Home Alone 3, Home Alone, and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Like I said, Tim Curry was the best part of this movie. If this was your first Home Alone movie, because you weren't old enough to see Home Alone in 1990, but you were old enough to see Home Alone 2 in 1992, great. But for me it wasn't great. 

That my friends is it for me for this week. I'm away all weekend so I won't be posting anything until Tuesday as Monday is my birthday, so I'm taking the weekend off. But, I will be back next week for more reviews and blog posts. So until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

The Making of Star Trek (1968) Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back for another book review. Though this time it's going to be more of an overview similar to the review I did on the book I reviewed about The Big Bang Theory. Today I'm taking a look at the 1968 book, The Making of Star Trek by Stephen E. Poe, under the pseudonym, Stephen E. Whitfield. So let's get into it.

While books like this are fairly common for Star Trek now, The Making of Star Trek was the first of its kind. When the book was published, Star Trek's publishing program had just started the year before with the James Blish novelizations, his original tie-in novel, Spock Must Die!, and the comics being published by Gold Key Comics. And, of course, other TV shows didn't have books like this at the time. Neither did movies coming out at the time. Nerd culture was very different in the '60s. In a way it almost didn't exist. At least not the way it does now. And movie studios and TV networks certainly didn't cater to the nerds the way they do now.

Reading this book is also an interesting experience in terms of Star Trek. Back then, there was no franchise yet. It was a TV show called Star Trek that had some tie-in novels and a comic book series and that was it. There was no animated shows, no movies, no video games, no conventions, no home video releases, no sequel/spin-off TV shows, and no prequels. It was just the one show called Star Trek. Not even Star Trek: The Original Series, just Star Trek. Which is interesting to think about. There was a time where the franchise was a single TV show called Star Trek.

The book doesn't go into the merger between Desilu Studios and Paramount Pictures during the show's second season, it doesn't mention Lucille Ball's big influence in getting Star Trek made in general, nor does it deal with anything going on in the outside world. I know the book was written and published in the '60s, while the show was still on the air, but I feel like the book does a big disservice to Star Trek by ignoring these things because all of it influenced the series. Especially the stuff going on in the world outside of the Star Trek sets. Because it was the stuff going on outside that Gene Roddenberry felt the most strongly about.

Whitfield unfortunately paints a very happy, joyful, picture of the Star Trek production. We know now that wasn't always the case. Not only was it extremely stressful, but Shatner's ego was big enough that he clashed with cast and crew at times, Grace Lee Whitney left the show part way through the first season and wouldn't return until Star Trek: The Motion Picture in the late '70s. So there's alot this book doesn't go into that is instrumental in the history of the franchise. Including the more problematic stuff that was, unfortunately, part of it.

One thing I thought the book did extremely well is they devote an entire seven chapters to life in space in the time of Star Trek (they wouldn't decide on it being the 23rd Century until Star Trek II), the mission of the Enterprise, how many ships are in the Starship class (again, the Enterprise wouldn't be considered to be a Constitution class starship until the third episode of TNG in 1987 when Picard mentions it on screen), and more background information on the main cast of the show than was ever mentioned in any episode of the series. Including Sulu, Uhura, Chekov, and Nurse Chapel. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty each have a chapter devoted to them, and their actors, and then Uhura, Chapel, Sulu, and Chekov get a section of the seventh chapter of that section of the book. But considering we had to wait over fifty years to get any information about Uhura and Chapel in episodes of the show, thanks to SNW, this book is a treasure trove of information regarding the command crew of the Enterprise.

Overall, this is a decent book for its time. Not only does it talk about what Star Trek was like at the time, but it goes in depth in how a TV show was produced in the '60s. Whitfield describes every job from the executive producer to the cameraman and casting personnel. You have to remember that back then, not only was television seen as more lowly than movies, but general audiences didn't have books written about making TV shows (until this one), or DVD/Blu-ray/4K bonus features going behind the scenes, or YouTube videos detailing every movie in a filmmaker's filmography. Cinefantastique, a magazine focusing on horror, fantasy and Sci-Fi filmmaking, had just started publication the year before this book came out, though Starlog was still eight years away from beginning its publication, and Entertainment Weekly wouldn't become a thing for another 22 years. So the average person, unless they got to visit a movie or TV set, had no idea what went into making movies and TV shows. There just wasn't any interest in it the way there would be with the rise of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola and their films, Star Wars, Jaws, and The Godfather in the '70s. 

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for my review of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. So until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Detective Comics #648 (1992) Comic Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back for part two of my review of Stephanie Brown's debut in the Batman comics. This time we're taking a look at Detective Comics #648. This review is probably gonna be pretty short because not a whole lot happens in the issue. So let's get into it.

Unlike last issue, Batman and Robin don't do as much fumbling around. They figure out where the Cluemaster is gonna hit, though we don't find out what he's actually after, and they discover that Stephanie Brown is Cluemaster's daughter and not only discovers that she's the new vigilante in town, known as the Spoiler, but that she was responsible for the clues sent to the GCPD. Cluemaster sets a trap for Batman and Robin, but Bullock, Montoya, and some GCPD officers nearly got caught in it instead because Batman decided to give the cops a break for a change.

So the first thing I wanna talk about is the cover art by Matt Wagner. I love it. While Wagner has done some other stuff for DC I mainly know him as the cover artist for Kevin Smith's run on Green Arrow, which saw the return of Oliver Queen and the start of the 2000s version of Team Arrow, and the cover artist on Batman for both of the "As the Crow Flies" and "Under the Hood" story arcs from the mid-2000s. This story arc was his only work on Detective Comics though. He's also done a bunch of other covers for DC over the years. Too many to list here unfortunately. If you wanna see a full list, check it out on the DC Comics Wiki, here 

As for the story itself, one of the things I found interesting is that Batman and Gordon have another conversation about Krol becoming the mayor, and Gordon explains to Batman that Krol won't kick Gordon out of office because of Batman because he knows that Batman's career, at least in Gotham, would be over if Gordon is removed as the head of the GCPD. The interesting part is that Krol's whole arc from here until after the Knightfall saga, including Prodigal and Troika, is he starts off hating Batman and wanting him gone from Gotham City, as seen in the previous issue, and then he plans to replace Gordon if the police department doesn't shape up and stop relying on vigilantes, to becoming an ardent supporter of Batman once the Dark Knight rescues him from the Joker and Scarecrow during Knightfall, to him and Gordon being at loggerheads again because Krol approves of the new armored Batman, not realizing that Jean Paul Valley had taken the mantle, during Knightquest. So this early in his storyline, why would Krol be afraid that Batman's career end if Gordon was replaced, when that's exactly what Krol wants at this point? Maybe it's something that Chuck Dixon elaborates on in future issues of Detective Comics.

Speaking of Chuck Dixon and Tom Lyle, the writer and artist on Detective Comics during this era of Batman's publication history, they basically developed Tim Drake into a fully fledged character of his own, overcoming the shadows of Dick Grayson and Jason Todd in a way that Jason Todd wasn't able to, both before Crisis On Infinite Earths and in the post-Crisis reboot, which led to his death in A Death in the Family. Between the three Robin miniseries that they did in the early '90s, their work on the early issues of the Robin ongoing monthly series, and their run on Detective Comics, Tim Drake became an awesome character. 

Speaking of awesome characters, this issue was the first meeting between Robin and Stephanie, and while they don't yet have the working relationship that they would when Stephanie returned in the early issues of the ongoing monthly Robin series, you can see the seeds of that relationship being planted here. At least on Tim's side of things. Stephanie's not impressed that Robin was able to track her down and discover that she's the Spoiler. Robin was trained by the World's Greatest Detective, AND has all of Batman's resources at his disposal, of course he was gonna figure out her secret identity. Especially because she is completely new to the vigilante life and doesn't have the experience to hide her identity better or to erase her presence from a crime scene the way Batman and Robin can if they need to.

There really isn't much else to say about this issue because, like I said, not a whole lot actually happens in this issue. It's still a really good issue though. Especially the scene on the last page where Batman, Robin, and the Spoiler are standing on a rooftop, staking out the place where Cluemaster is going to strike next, and Batman asks, "What do you call yourself?", Stephanie replies, "Well...the Spoiler." and Batman says, "I like that". Which is kinda odd coming from Batman given how much crap he and Robin give Stephanie for being the Spoiler for the next seventeen years before she takes over as Batgirl in 2009. 

Besides the oddness of this last scene, and the conversation between Batman and Gordon concerning Mayor Krol, I enjoyed this issue and I definitely recommend tracking this issue down to add to your Batman collection, if you don't already have it. As I mentioned in my review of the previous issue, this is my favourite era of Batman. Unlike the modern era where everybody is being deconstructing what it means to be a vigilante in a city such as Gotham, or having Batman dealing with alot of Justice League stuff, this era was about Batman being Batman, and the writers telling Batman stories without much contemplation or without the larger DC Universe intruding in the stories, with The Death of Superman being the exception of course. 

Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back either tomorrow or Thursday for my review of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and whatever day I don't do that review on, I might have a book review for you. We'll see. That review might be held off until next week. Whatever the case ends up being, until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Home Alone (1990) Movie Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for this cold Friday afternoon. I'm here to review Home Alone from 1990. My opinions on this movie are a bit...controversial, but, I ask that you all keep an open mind when you're reading this review because I realize that this is a beloved early '90s classic that spawned a franchise that spans 30 years. I will be reviewing every movie in this franchise that I have access to. Which means the three theatrical movies, and the two TV movies as I have those on DVD. So let's get into it and talk about Home Alone.

My history with Home Alone is a bit on the strange side. I vaguely remember seeing the movie when I was a kid and I'm pretty sure either my parents or my grandparents owned it on VHS, but I don't remember watching it on VHS. I ended up talking to my mom about it this morning and she told me that we watched it on TV one time since we obviously didn't go see it in theatres when it originally came out in 1990. She didn't say when we watched it on TV, only that we watched it at some point. Most likely before Home Alone 2 came out because I don't remember ever watching the second movie, because Mom didn't like the first one. The next time I saw this movie, before I sat down to watch it last night for this review, was in 2019 when I watched it on Disney+. So it had been awhile since I watched it last.

Home Alone isn't a very good movie. Don't get me wrong, I like it and I have fun watching whenever I watch it, which, admittedly, isn't very often, but it's not good. The biggest problem I have with this movie is that Kevin McCallister, played by Macaulay Culkin, the kid we're following through the whole movie, is a jerk and doesn't actually grow as a character. At least, not to the point where he's actually likeable. Of course, his siblings, especially Buzz, played by Devin Ratray, his cousins, and his uncle aren't much better. In fact the only good thing that Kevin does in this movie is convince his neighbour, Marley, to call his son and reconcile with him. That's it.

I think my biggest problem with Kevin is that he does stuff that no kid would ever think of doing when faced with being left at home by his family when they go on vacation. Especially at the age of 8. If kids that age could do things like go grocery shopping by themselves and go buy a new toothbrush, which Kevin ends up stealing just because he sees Marley there and is afraid of him, then we wouldn't need our parents once we're toilet trained. And then, instead of calling the cops on Marv and Harry, he lays booby traps for them inside the house. Like, okay, I get that that's the entire premise of the movie, but no 8 year old, whether it's 1990 or 2023, is capable of acting like an adult when faced with a really dangerous situation such as two crooks breaking into their home to steal things. Especially when Kevin shows no sign of being a tactical genius on a video game or board game or anything like that.

The cast is spectacular though. Though besides Macaulay Culkin, Daniel Stern, Catherine O'Hara, Kieran Culkin, John Candy, and Hope Davis, the last two of whom don't even play major characters in the movie, this is the only movie I've seen this cast in. Daniel Stern voiced adult Kevin Arnold on The Wonder Years, I just watched Catherine O'Hara in Beetlejuice a few weeks ago, and has been in several other movies that I've seen over the years, Macaulay was everywhere in the '90s from The Pagemaster and The Nutcracker (the 1993 movie version) to Richie Rich, his brother, Kieran played Scott Pilgrim's roommate, Wallace Wells in the 2010 movie, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Hope Davis played Tony Stark's mom in flashbacks in Captain America: Civil War, and of course John Candy was in a bunch of movies in the '80s including Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird from 1985 and Spaceballs from 1987. Everybody else is unfamiliar to me outside of this movie. And, yes, that includes Joe Pesci. Though I at least know of Michael C. Maronna, as he played Big Pete in the Nickelodeon series, The Adventures of Pete & Pete, and while I've never seen that show, I've heard many good things about it in the last five years or so.

My favourite scene in the movie is the scene in the church where Marley and Kevin talk about stuff, and Marley explains why he's at the church, and Kevin convinces him to call his son, despite Marley being afraid to do so. We don't get the whole story of Marley and his son, but, we honestly don't need to. We're told just enough to agree with Kevin when he tells Marley to call his son. 

I can't really tell whether John Hughes meant for this movie to be a comedy. While there's some comedy in it, it's not a laugh a minute like most comedies are. There are some genuine, heartfelt moments in this movie. Too bad the main characters are all unlikeable for one reason or another. Though Catherine O'Hara's character, Kevin's mom, is the most likeable character in the entire movie.

What blows my mind is that Home Alone was the #1 box office hit of 1990, making a total of $476.7 million by the end of its run. I think that also includes home video sales as well, as it was also the highest-selling video of all time, alongside E.T., which is really hard to believe. Especially because on the list of highest-selling videos (VHS) on Wikipedia, it's surpassed by the 2001 film, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Mrs. Doubtfire, and a ton of Disney movies, with The Lion King being at the top of the list. Though Home Alone did outsell Batman (1989). Hm, I think I might have to do an entire blog post on this list, because it's fascinating to me.

I honestly don't have too much more to say about Home Alone. It's a good movie, it's just not the fantastic, perfect movie people seem to think it is. Maybe it's just because I didn't really grow up with it the way I did Home Alone 3, so I don't really understand why people love it so much. It's a decent Christmas movie though and fun to watch. Just don't expect to get much out of it if you've never seen it before and are planning on watching it over the holidays. It's a popcorn flick like the original The Fast and the Furious is, though if I'm being honest, I think I would watch Home Alone again more than I would watch The Fast and the Furious. That might just be me though.

Alright my friends, that's it for me for this week. I'll be continuing the Home Alone movie reviews next week with Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. I'll be putting that review out a bit earlier in the week because I'm going to my friend's house for the weekend on Friday. Besides that though, I'll have another comic book review for you next week as well. I might have other posts for you next week as well, but we'll see how things go before Friday. So until then have a great evening and a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Detective Comics #647 (1992) Comic Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm here to do a comic book review. In fact this review is going to be the first in a series of three comic book reviews that will take a look at the debut of Stephanie Brown, a.k.a. the Spoiler. This week is Detective Comics #647, next week will be 648, and in two weeks I'll be reviewing 649, as this is a three part story introducing Stephanie into the Batman mythos. So, let's get into it.

This era of Batman is my favourite. It's an interesting transition era because Tim Drake is Robin full time now and characters such as Bane and Azrael haven't been created yet, but you can see characters who would be part of the Knightfall saga start to make their debuts here, such as Armand Krol, who would be the mayor of Gotham City in Knightfall, Sarah Essen, who Comissioner Gordon would marry during this period, and Rene Montoya, who would be Harvey Bullock's partner during the mid '90s and into the 2000s, before she'd replace Vic Sage as the Question following Infinite Crisis. 

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that Stephanie Brown is not only my favourite version of Batgirl, but one of my favourite Bat Family characters of all time. But, up until now I've never read her debut storyline from Detective Comics before. I had only just started reading comic books with DC's Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation comics when this issue came out in 1992, and I think I'd only just discovered Batman through reruns of the 1966 TV series, which had just started airing on YTV around this time too. I hadn't seen any of the movies at this point. So I only really knew Batman as a TV show character, though he was all over the subscription order forms and advertisements included in all of the Star Trek comics I had. And in the 20 years or so that I've been collecting back issues of DC Comics titles, I've never come across these three issues before, until a few months ago when I found them at a local comic book store, not the usual one I go to, but its downtown location, when I was out and about with Brad one day. I grabbed them immediately. 

Stephanie's father, Arthur Brown, a.k.a. the Cluemaster is actually an old Batman villain from the Silver Age as he debuted in Detective Comics #351, which came out in 1966, near the end of the first season of the TV show. And while Cluemaster never appeared on the show, he made a few comic book appearances prior to Crisis On Infinite Earths rebooted the DC Universe, and didn't appear again until Detective Comics #607, which was published in 1989, before he reappeared here in this issue. But this issue is the first time that Cluemaster's MO of compulsively sending the police clues isn't used. Not by him anyway. Unfortunately, we as the readers find out pretty quickly who it is who is sending Gordon the letters containing the clues Batman and Robin need. Which is fine, but I kinda wish we'd found out later on. Just because Batman and Robin don't find out in this issue. I'm sure they find out in a later part of this little trilogy. 

Something else I noticed is that we see the Spoiler, but we don't know actually see Stephanie with the mask off, and we don't get any dialogue or thought bubbles or anything from the mysterious vigilante. We just see her standing there. And, actually, the way the character is drawn, you can't tell if the Spoiler is a man or a woman, so you REALLY don't know that Stephanie is the Spoiler. It's actually kinda similar to how the Phantasm was drawn in Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, which came out a little less than a year and a half later. You didn't know who the Phantasm was, until the character's secret identity was revealed near the end of the movie.

I also liked the stuff going on with Commissioner Gordon. While we've had city politicians giving Gordon a hard time about Batman since about 1971, this is the first time I recall where Batman is actually aware of the problems he causes Gordon by operating in Gotham. Because, I honestly don't remember this being a thing in any earlier incarnation of the character. Usually he seems indifferent to the whole situation. Then again Jim Gordon has become much more of a supporting character in the comics since Batman: Year One came out in the '80s. It's still interesting to see that Batman is aware of this sort of thing. Mind you, I think Krol is the last character within Gotham who opposes Batman's operations in Gotham, unless someone shows up in the comics of the 2000s that gives Gordon a hard time about Batman.

I don't have much more to say about this issue in particular. I'll do a storyline overview once I've reviewed all three issues and just give my overall thoughts on the story. This is a pretty good issue though. I really enjoyed it, and I can't wait to see how things turn out.

That's it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for my review of the 1990 film, Home Alone. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Star Wars: X-Wing: Mercy Kill (2012) Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? Did you all have a good weekend? I had a quiet one. As you may have noticed, I didn't post anything for the rest of the week after I posted my Starfighters of Adumar review. Well, I ended up having a busy week after that between going out with Brad and getting Batman & Robin and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III on VHS, completing both series on that format, and getting my Covid shot. I also decided not to watch the finale of Goosebumps. The first season really just dropped in quality for me. The first five episodes were a really strong start, but by the end it became less about the scary Goosebumps stuff, and more about the teen drama, and it ended up becoming so generic by the end that I just didn't care about any of the characters. The 2015 movie was more engaging for me. But, I'm not here to talk about Goosebumps, I'm here to talk about the final book in the Star Wars: X-Wing series, Mercy Kill, by Aaron Allston. So let's get into it.

Mercy Kill feels out of place, not only as part of the X-Wing series as a whole, being that it was published thirteen years after Starfighters of Adumar came out, but in the batch of Star Wars novels being published at the time. Mercy Kill came out in 2012, at a time where Del Rey had taken a much darker tone with the Star Wars publishing line than Bantam Books had in the '90s. I'd say that the shift in tone came with the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the United States, but Del Rey and Lucasfilm were already two years into the publication of The New Jedi Order in September, 2001, so it was more a general shift in tone for entertainment.

Despite the compelling storylines and interesting characters, the original X-Wing series was made to be a cheesy Sci-Fi series about the pilots of the squadron that blew up the Death Stars, and the background pilots from the movies that either never got any screentime or got a moment or two, such as Wedge Antilles, Wes Janson, and Hobbie Klivian. Basically the idea was to take the focus off of Leia, Han, Luke, Chewie, R2-D2, and C-3PO. In fact the entire Bantam line of books was meant to harken back to Star Wars's roots as a goofy Sci-Fi film inspired by the comic books, pulp Sci-Fi novels, and movie serials that George Lucas grew up reading and watching. Which is what Splinter of the Mind's Eye, The Han Solo Adventures, and The Lando Calrissian Adventures are like as well.

Fast forward to 2012 and the landscape of Star Wars, both in the movies and TV shows, and in the expanded universe of comics, video games, and novels, had drastically changed by the prequels and the endless playground that those movies opened up in terms of the in universe chronology, being that authors, comic book writers, and video game developers could finally tell stories set in those eras of the Old Republic, the Clone Wars, and the rise of the Empire. Eras that George had forbidden them from telling stories in throughout the '90s due to him making the movies.

At the same time authors began going much much darker and alot of times more angsty with the characters and their storylines. Suddenly Chewbacca gets killed in Vector Prime, the first book in the The New Jedi Order series, published in 1999, only a couple of months after Starfighters of Adumar was published, and by the end of the 2000s, two out of three of Han and Leia's children had been killed off, as had Mara Jade, whom Luke had married in 2000. Suddenly there were stakes, characters were more flawed than before, with Luke making so many mistakes, which nearly led to the fall of the New Republic and later, the Galactic Alliance, as well as the extinction of the New Jedi Order. Which doesn't explain why fans were so against the way Luke was portrayed in The Last Jedi, being that both versions made very similar mistakes, and both ended up leading the son of Han and Leia to turn to the dark side and become a Sith Lord. But, that's a topic for another post.

What makes Mercy Kill such a bizarre book is that Aaron Allston's brand of humour feels out of place in a book published in 2012. Because of the darker tone that Star Wars started having in the 2000s first with the novels and then the movies and TV shows, Allston's brand of humour is almost too childish. Not that you can't have humour in books, movies, shows, and comic books that have a dark tone to them, in fact it's encouraged, otherwise you get bogged down in darkness, but, things like Wraith Squadron's loose interpretations of the law on missions being played for laughs, and things like the Kettch joke from the first three Wraith Squadron books, almost feel inappropriate for a darker book.

So basically, Piggy had left Wraith Squadron near the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War, because Runt had been killed needlessly during a tense mission, at Piggy's own hands. After spending years as a math professor, Piggy is convinced by Face to return to a rebuilt Wraith Squadron to take down a corrupt Alliance general following the events of the Fate of the Jedi series, which ended five months before this book was published. While coming to terms with what he'd been forced to do to Runt all those years ago, Piggy also has to overcome his hatred of Scut, a Yuuzhan Vong assigned to the squadron. Well, "assigned" isn't really the right word, since Wraith Squadron was unofficially reformed for this particular mission, without the knowledge of Alliance Intelligence. Scut was recruited. Scut also has to come to terms with the fact that neither Piggy nor Bhindi, the field commander of this iteration of Wraith Squadron, are perfect, despite what his human adopted parents told him about Wraith Squadron, as the Wraiths had rescued Scut's adopted father during a mission to take out High Admiral Teradoc, one of the warlords who were left following the Battle of Endor, and the deaths of Ysanne Isard, Warlord Zsinj, Grand Admiral Thrawn, and the resurrected Emperor Palpatine, approximately four years after the events of Solo Command and The Courtship of Princess Leia. 

Unlike with the original Wraith Squadron members from the first three Wraith books, I didn't get a good grasp on any of the new Wraiths. I remembered Bhindi Drayson from the Enemy Lines duology that Allston wrote for the The New Jedi Order series in 2002, and Myri is the daughter of Wedge and Iella while Jesmin is the daughter of Kell and Tyria, named after Jesmin Ackbar, but, besides Scut, we don't get any time with the other new members of the squadron. It was cool having Piggy as the main POV character though given how I felt like he got shafted in the original Wraith Squadron novels.

It was also nice seeing Face, Dia, Wedge, Kirney Slane (current and longest existing identity for Gara Petothel/Lara Notsil), and Piggy back with Kell, Shalla, Elassar Targon, and Runt appearing in flashbacks. Runt and Dia haven't been seen since Solo Command, and neither has Gara/Lara/Kirney, though Shalla appeared in Betrayal, which was the first book in the Legacy of the Force series, which came out in 2006, and was written by Allston, and pretty much everyone else appeared in at least two books of The New Jedi Order in the early to mid 2000s. Kell would make one more appearance in Scoundrels by Timothy Zahn, which came out in 2013, but with Allston dying in 2014 and Disney ending the Legends continuity that same year, Mercy Kill is the final appearance of Wraith Squadron and those characters that Allston first created in 1998.

Honestly, the villain side is nowhere near as interesting as Warlord Zsinj and his people were in the original Wraith Squadron books. This time around you have the typical traitor amongst the good guys that we've seen way too many times in fiction. And this time Allston definitely didn't do anywhere as near a good a job with Thaal as he and Stackpole did with Erisi Dlarit and Gara Petothel/Lara Notsil in the earlier books. Mainly because we spent no time with him until the very end with the Wraiths catch up with him to arrest him. The thing is with Erisi, she worked for Isard because without the Empire her family would lose the Bacta monopoly, and Gara was a member of Imperial Intelligence. Her whole deal was going undercover into enemy territory and gathering intel on the New Republic for the Empire or Trigit or whoever to use against the Empire's enemies. As she said to Myn Donos in Solo Command, sending Trigit the information that he used to destroy Talon Squadron was her job. It was nothing personal. But with Stavin Thaal, he's just your stereotypical greedy bureaucrat, who decided he wanted to get rich more than he wanted to defend the Galactic Alliance. That's not even remotely interesting at this point.

  Mercy Kill is the only X-Wing book to come out in hardcover. The paperback came out in 2013. That's the copy that I have. I think I got it in either 2013 or 2014. I don't remember exactly though. I just know I got at some point before the second paperback edition came out.

That second paperback edition was the Legends banner edition. Like with every other X-Wing book, I don't own the Legends banner edition so I have no way of knowing when that edition came out. Especially because Wookieepedia, Amazon, and the publisher's website don't list the Legends banner release date. Just the release dates for the original hardcover, paperback, and eBook editions. 

Overall, Mercy Kill is a really good book, and a sad way to end Aaron Allston's career as a Star Wars author. Unfortunately he passed away from heart failure at the age of 53 in 2014, as the Legends continuity ended and before the Canon continuity books really got started. I really enjoyed it. While I prefer the Bantam era X-Wing novels written by Stackpole and Allston in the mid to late '90s, Mercy Kill is still a great way to end the series. It just doesn't feel like it fits in with the late 2000s and early 2010s Legends era. The story is very much of its time, but the humour is very much of the Bantam era novels, which can feel a bit jarring given how much more subtle the humour is in Allston's other Del Rey era Star Wars novels in comparison to this book and the rest of his X-Wing novels. 

I honestly found it interesting that Del Rey agreed to do a tenth book in the series, given it had been thirteen years since Bantam had published Starfighters of Adumar, and the X-Wing series feels out of place with the Del Rey era novels, so I thought it was interesting that Del Rey chose to do another book in the series after so many years. Mind you it was something that the fans had wanted since the last book had come out in 1999, ending the Bantam era. Which is great because of how heavy the Star Wars novels of the 2000s and early 2010s were. 

That's it for me for today my friends. It's also it for the X-Wing series as this is the final book in the series. I am going to take a little break from Star Wars books for the time being as doing all ten X-Wing books took a long time and I want to read and review a few other books before the end of the year. I will do more Star Wars book reviews in the New Year though. Otherwise, it's a lowkey week here in the Geek Cave. I have a comic book review in mind for Wednesday, and then on Friday I'll be putting out my first in a series of movie reviews where I take a look at the Home Alone franchise since it's only a little over a month until Christmas. So until then have a great night and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Star Wars: X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar (1999) Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. So, I managed to finish the ninth Star Wars: X-Wing novel, Starfighters of Adumar, last night before I went to bed, which means I'm here to review it today. So let's get into it.

Starfighters of Adumar is the final full length novel published by Bantam Spectra for the franchise. I think one of the reasons it took thirteen years for another X-Wing novel to get published is a combination of the Star Wars book license shifting from Bantam to Del Rey, and the Del Rey editors being focused on the The New Jedi Order series, and the prequel tie-in book program, which included novels that take place before The Phantom Menace and between each movie. I also think that, in 1999, Del Rey wanted to get away from the Bantam stuff because they wanted to show fans that it wasn't gonna just be business as usual for Han, Luke, and Leia like it had been in the '90s. Also, audience tastes were shifting. No longer were people wanting innocent, goofy, low stakes stories being told in their entertainment. They wanted dark, high stakes, character dramas, and so Lucasfilm gave that to us with The New Jedi Order before George ever gave that to us in the movies and the later TV shows. Plus, let's face it, the X-Wing series is a very '90s/Bantam era book series. I mean four out of the nine books in the series is written by a guy who is really good at light, fluffy, fun stories. Even Stackpole's books are still very safe compared to what Del Rey gave us in the 2000s and early 2010s.

If I'm being honest, the Bantam era is my favourite era of the Star Wars books. One of the reasons I never really got into the Del Rey era of the 2000s and early 2010s is because I found them to be too dark and high stakes. Particularly in the early to mid 2000s when The New Jedi Order was coming out. Del Rey got away from that a little bit with books like Honor Among Thieves and Crucible, but that wasn't until they were wrapping up Legends in 2013 and 2014. Don't get me wrong Del Rey has published some great Star Wars books like Kenobi, Darth Plagueis, and Death Star, but the books stopped being fun to read once The New Jedi Order began publication in 1999, and never really recaptured that sense of fun and excitement that the Bantam era novels of the '90s have. The movies and TV shows really reflect that change with Revenge of the Sith, The Clone Wars, Rebels, and everything Disney has done with the franchise since they took over the franchise in 2012. I mean look at how dark and gritty and realistic Andor is. The novels did it first though.

This is probably the shortest book in terms of chapters, as this only has 15 chapters compared to the 21 to 30 chapters that the previous books had. I think it's also the shortest in terms of page count as well. Regardless, the shorter length for the book is both a detriment and a blessing for this book. It's a detriment because this story is nowhere near as fleshed out as previous X-Wing novels have been, but it's a blessing because it's not a story that really warrants any sort of fleshing out. 

So after breaking up with his girlfriend, Qwi Xux, whom he met in the second book of the Jedi Academy Trilogy, Dark Apprentice, Wedge, Tycho, Janson, and Hobbie are sent to Adumar because the Adumari have a hero worship thing going on for starfighter pilots. However, upon arrival the pilots, currently known collectively as Red Flight, not only do they discover that the Empire has also arrived, but their liaison, Tomer Darpen isn't exactly above board, and Wedge also discovers that Iella Wessiri is there and his relationship with Qwi affected his friendship with Iella. All the while trying to convince a planet that has no world government to join the New Republic, instead of the Empire.

One of my favourite things about this book is how small the cast of characters are. Previous X-Wing books had huge casts of characters between the squadron each novel focused on, which had anywhere between 12 and 13 pilots alone, the supporting characters like Iella Wessiri and Mirax Terrik, AND the villains, which were either Ysanne Isard or Warlord Zsinj, and all of their supporting characters like Kirtan Loor, Fliry Vorru, Admiral Trigit, Prince-Admiral Krennel, and General Melvar. And because the casts for those books were so large, the authors weren't able to do as much with most of the characters, instead focusing on three or four at a time. Here, you only have four main characters and four supporting characters and the bulk of the story is solely focused on Wedge. In fact, I'd say that Wedge is the main character of this book. 

I also love the humour in this book. There are constant one-liners, mostly at Janson's expense, though there are some thrown at Tomer just because nobody in the New Republic party likes him, and I love all of them. One of my favourites is near the end when Red Flight regain their X-Wings and Wedge starts doing tricks and stuff and Janson calls Tycho over the comm and says, "Red Two, this is Three. Am I crazy, or is the general doing what he tells us never to do?" And Tycho replies, "Three, Two. Yes you are, and yes he is. Pay no attention.". I laugh everytime I read that exchange because I think it's funny.

One thing I would've liked a bit more clarification on is why, and when, Tomer decided to do things the Imperial way and then try to manipulate Red Flight into doing his dirty work for him. Janson hints at it a bit when he explains how he and Tomer know each other, but it doesn't really explain how Tomer got himself onto Adumar. I also would like to know why General Cracken was giving orders to Wedge in the first place. Especially for something that was actually a diplomatic mission, not a covert operation. Shouldn't someone like Admiral Ackbar have given Wedge the Adumar assignment? Obviously Leia couldn't, since she was busy dealing with the stuff going on in Barbara Hambly's 1997 novel, Planet of Twilight, which takes place concurrently with this book. 

 Like the other books in the X-Wing series, Starfighters of Adumar received a Legends banner edition sometime in the mid 2010s. I have the original edition because I got it at some point after I got Isard's Revenge in the early 2000s. I honestly really like this book. It's a good ending to the Bantam era as the next Star Wars novel to come out was the first book in the The New Jedi Order series, Vector Prime written by Fantasy author, R.A. Salvatore. The very final Bantam era Star Wars book to come out was the anthology book, Tales from the New Republic, which came out on December 1st, 1999 (Starfighters of Adumar came out on August 3rd). 

That my friends is it for me for today. I might have a comic book review out for you either tomorrow or Thursday, but we'll see what happens. I'm also gonna try to have my review of season 1 of Goosebumps (2023) out for you on Friday, but I'm going to get my Covid shot in the morning, so I don't know if I'll be up for doing a season review. I reviewed the first five episodes the week they dropped, so I'm really not going to feel guilty for not doing a full season review if I don't end up getting to it on Friday. But, like I said, we'll see. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Star Wars: X-Wing: Isard's Revenge (1999) Book Review

 Hey everyone, happy Friday! I'm back with another book review. This time I'm reviewing the eighth book in the Star Wars: X-Wing series, and the final Star Wars book that Stackpole wrote for Bantam Spectra, Isard's Revenge, which Bantam published in 1999, only two months after Solo Command came out. So let's get into it.

Isard's Revenge is basically the epilogue to the plot that Stackpole, and Allston told in the previous seven books, as well as the stuff that Stackpole did in the X-Wing: Rogue Squadron comics, AND his first person narrative novel, I, Jedi. This is also the last time Rogue Squadron is shown in the Bantam era in terms of publication order as Starfighters of Adumar, the next X-Wing book, and the last one to be published by Bantam Spectra, focuses on Wedge, Tycho, Hobbie, and Janson. It's also the only Bantam era novel that actually overlaps with another book. The book opens with the Battle of Bilbringi, which was the final fleet battle in the final book in Timothy Zahn's original Thrawn Trilogy, The Last Command, revealing that Tycho was Rogue Two in The Last Command, but being that aside from Wedge, Janson, and Hobbie, none of the Rogues had names in the Thrawn Trilogy, only going by their squadron callsigns, for example, Corran is Rogue Nine, Tycho is Rogue Two, etc. 

Isard's Revenge is really the only X-Wing book where you really have to have read the X-Wing comics, the previous seven X-Wing novels, I, Jedi, and the Thrawn Trilogy, to fully understand what's going on as this novel, more than any other, pulls heavily from the X-Wing comics that had been running concurrently with the novels. Even though Stackpole's prior X-Wing novels alluded to the comics, and utilized characters from those comics, such as Ysanne Isard and Tycho Celchu, those novels never actually relied on people already knowing the comics to be effective in conveying the plot. But, because Isard's Revenge is the epilogue to everything Stackpole had done in the Expanded Universe up to this point, it ends up wrapping all of that up kinda like how Solo Command wrapped up the story of the Wraiths.

I wonder if Stackpole actually didn't intend on bringing Isard back from the dead if he ever returned to the X-Wing novels, and Allston inadvertently planted the seeds of her return in Iron Fist when Face came up with his theory that she was actually alive, so Stackpole ran with it, or if that was his plan all along and Bantam simply asked Allston to lay the groundwork in Iron Fist given that Iron Fist came out six months before Isard's Revenge came out, so Stackpole was probably plotting out Isard's Revenge while Allston was writing Iron Fist, and was writing it when Iron Fist came out. It's just really hard to tell because there doesn't seem to be any indication that there was a true collaboration between Stackpole and Allston in the writing of this series, other than Myn Donos appearing in this book, but there's also no indication that there WASN'T beyond that either.

Star Wars publishing can be really confusing because there's a bunch of writers contributing to it, all at the same time, and outside of the planned series like The New Jedi Order, Legacy of the Force, and Fate of the Jedi, the authors didn't necessarily have to use anything from the books that had come out previously. Alot of them did, but not all of them. This is especially true in the Bantam era because so many books came out between 1991 and 1999 and oftentimes one author would have a book coming out within a couple of weeks of another, and occasionally one book from another publisher, particularly with the Young Jedi Knights and Junior Jedi Knights young readers series coming out. Plus there were parts of the Thrawn Trilogy that had to be retconned or completely ignored in order to incorporate The Truce at Bakura, the X-Wing series, and The Courtship of Princess Leia into the timeline, because they all take place before Heir to the Empire. And just how collaborative the Bantam era was has never really been documented outside of the acknowledgements page in each book, as the other authors would be thanked if one of their characters was used in a particular book. For example, for this one Stackpole thanks Zahn and Allston because some of their characters, Talon Karrde, Borsk Fey'lya (I'll get to him in a moment), Aves, and the Noghri from Zahn, and Myn Donos from Allston, were used in this book. 

Speaking of Borsk, our favourite Bothan, is downright nasty in this book. I still don't get how he was allowed to retain his position of political power within the New Republic after what he pulled in the Thrawn Trilogy and this book, but he does and that results in us getting him as the Chief of State of the New Republic in the first half of The New Jedi Order, which started coming out only six months after this book was published. Which, again, is hard to figure out, but I wonder if Stackpole pushed Borsk in this book because he knew he was gonna be the Chief of State of the New Republic, being that Stackpole was most likely already planning out his trilogy within The New Jedi Order (that later became a duology, but again, we'll get there) and he knew what was coming up. It's hard to tell because timeline wise, Isard's Revenge takes place right after The Last Command, in 9 ABY (After Battle of Yavin) and Vector Prime takes place in 25 ABY, so there's a good 16 year gap between the end of this book and the beginning of Vector Prime. 

This book is also feels like it's filling in the gaps in the timeline, because it shows how and why Wedge got his promotion to the rank of general. Not only is he a general in the first book in the Jedi Academy Trilogy, Jedi Search, but he's also a general when we run into him in Star Wars: Dark Empire, published by Dark Horse Comics. this book bridges the gap between the Thrawn Trilogy in the novels, and Dark Empire in the comics, which actually started coming out between Heir to the Empire in 1991 and Dark Force Rising in 1992, and ended in late 1992, between Dark Force Rising and The Last Command. So not only did the early books had to contend with each other, but they had to contend with Dark Empire as well. 

 Like with Solo Command, I didn't get Isard's Revenge until sometime in the 2000s. But, unlike Solo Command I have a better idea of exactly when I got Isard's Revenge. I got it in the fall of 2001. It was November and Grandma had taken me out to buy my birthday and Christmas presents. Because I was still being tubefed at the time, Grandma couldn't take me out for dinner for my birthday, so she often took me to Chapters to buy books and movies (Chapters sold DVDs and VHS tapes back then), mainly books. I was home by the time an episode of Star Trek: Voyager came on TV on a channel I got in my room. I got the original orange logo cover edition, but there was a later printing where the Star Wars logo was white (cover above). I'm not sure when that version came out because I actually don't remember ever seeing it on the shelf at the bookstore. I know it exists because at least one person showed it off in a Legends book haul a few years ago, but I've just never come across it.

 Then sometime in the mid 2010s, a Legends banner edition was published. And like the other books in this series, I don't own the Legends banner edition for this book, so I have no way of actually finding out when that edition came out. I just know it was between 2014 and 2017 and that's it. I honestly don't have any issues with the Legends banner editions. I mean the only difference between the original paperbacks and the Legends banner editions are the covers (front, back, spines, and inside) and the copyright page, as well as updated book excerpts. The page layouts, the fonts, and the title pages are the same. As are the stories. There were no special editions of those novels. 

Overall I think Isard's Revenge is an okay book. It's well written, but it honestly feels like Stackpole was just rehashing plot points from his earlier X-Wing, while introducing new plot points from the Rogue Squadron comics. Krennel is from the comic, but he's not mentioned in any other novel and outside of the comic, he only ever shows up in this book. Even Isard felt a bit played out. Especially with the whole clone thing, which, in universe, we'd just dealt with with C'Baoth and his clone of Luke. So it felt repetitive. 

It would've been better if Stackpole had had more books to work the story out in. Like this book easily could've been three books. The problem though is that not only did Aaron Allston write the next book, but this was the last Stackpole Star Wars novel before the license shifted back to Del Rey and Stackpole started working on his books for The New Jedi Order. So we never see Asyr Sei'lar ever again, nor do we see Ooryl, Inyri Forge, and Myn Donos ever again. And there's just alot of stuff that we never go back to since Krennel and Isard are killed off at the end of the book and Rogue Squadron doesn't show up again until Stackpole's first New Jedi Order novel, Dark Tide I: Onslaught, though chronologically, they do show up in the first book of the Hand of Thrawn, Specter of the Past, by Timothy Zahn. 

That's it for me for this week my friends. I will be back next week with my first in a five part review series on the Home Alone franchise because I have the first five movies on DVD, and I'm refusing to do Home Sweet Home Alone. At least for this year. I have other posts coming out next week too. So until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.  

Nickelodeon: Some of the Shows I Missed in the '90s

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. It's our first official winter weather day of the season, so I decided I'd come on here and talk about something I don't think I've ever talked about on the blogs. Nickelodeon. That magic channel that had American kids glued to their TVs in the '90s. More specifically though, I'll be talking about the shows I didn't see because they either didn't air up here in Canada or I just didn't know about them because they didn't air here until long after they'd ended in the U.S. So, let's get into it.

If you grew up in the '90s and lived in the United States of America, you remember this logo. It was on your TVs every day after school or on Saturdays. Here in Canada though, it doesn't hold as much meaning because unless you had satellite TV, Nickelodeon wasn't available here. Some of the shows aired here in Canada on YTV and Family Channel, but not all of them, and some aired later than they did in the U.S. Rugrats was the one I watched the most, as I talked about in my Rugrats post I did a couple of months ago. It's because of Rugrats that I even knew what Nickelodeon was, since that logo appeared at the end of each episode. So I thought I'd go through some of the shows that either didn't air here in Canada, or aired late enough in my life that I didn't know about them. 

First up is The Adventures of Pete & Pete, which is a sitcom about two brothers who are both named Pete. It aired from 1991 until 1996 in the U.S., however we didn't get it until 2000. It aired from 2000 until 2002 on Family Channel, but this was before I started watching Power Rangers on Family Channel and the majority of the shows I was watching were either on YTV or Teletoon or were on later at night like Boy Meets World, 7th Heaven, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Star Trek: Voyager or reruns of older shows like The Dukes of Hazzard and The Waltons. So I completely missed this show. I didn't even know about it because I wasn't watching Family Channel to see commercials for it. Which is something I think I'll be saying alot in this blog post.

Next is Doug. Let me be clear I have watched Doug. In fact, I used to watch Doug all the time. However, I don't remember ever seeing the first four seasons that aired on Nickelodeon from 1991 until 1994 and on YTV from 1995 until 1999. I watched seasons 5, 6, and 7, which aired on ABC from 1996 until 1999. However, I did NOT watch it on ABC either. At least, not initially. From 1995 until we moved in the summer of 1997, we watched a programming block on CJOH (the Ottawa affiliate of CTV) called BBS Master Control, which aired nothing but Disney animated shows from The Disney Afternoon, which was a two hour syndicated programming block that aired in the United States, and ABC. The host of Master Control for the years that my siblings and I watched it was Jennifer Beech, who had been a host on YTV from 1992 until 1995, known as PJ Jenn, co-hosting The Zone with PJ Phil and hosting the YTV Breakfast Zone very briefly just before she left to host Master Control. Disney's Doug was one of the shows that aired during Master Control along with Gargoyles, Aladdin: The Animated Series and many others. But I completely missed the original Nickelodeon version of Doug, because it started airing on YTV before I had regular access to the channel again, and by the time I returned to YTV in 1996 I was only watching it for Sailor Moon and reruns of The Woody Woodpecker Show, and shows that aired later in the evening such as Rocko's Modern Life and The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat. It's possible that I did watch the Nickelodeon version of Doug, I just don't remember doing so.

Next is The Ren & Stimpy Show. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we didn't get this show here in Canada until Teletoon debuted in 1997. Because I don't remember ever seeing any commercials for it until it was on Teletoon. 

This next one is REALLY weird because it didn't air here in Canada until 1999, even though the show ran from 1991 until 1994. That show is Clarissa Explains It All, starring Melissa Joan Hart. We didn't get it until Family Channel started airing it in 1999. It also only aired until 2001, so I don't know if Family Channel aired all 65 episodes across five seasons, or if they only aired the first two seasons, which had a total of 26 episodes or what. I just know we didn't get it in the early '90s, and I suspect we only got it when we did because of how popular Melissa Joan Hart was thanks to Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which was about halfway through its seven season run by the time Clarissa aired on Family Channel in 1999. Because I wasn't watching Family Channel by this point, I had no idea that Clarissa even existed. It wasn't until the last five years or so, when Sabrina was having attention paid to it again due to the Netflix series, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, that I discovered that Melissa had been on a show prior to the 1996 Sabrina Showtime TV movie airing. 

Next is The Angry Beavers. This is another one that I was aware of it being on YTV, but I actually don't remember ever watching it. 

Unlike The Adventures of Pete & Pete and Clarissa Explains It All, which both aired in the late '90s and early 2000s on Family Channel, Kenan & Kel never aired here in Canada. It didn't air on Family Channel and it didn't air on YTV. As far as Canadian kids were concerned, Kenan & Kel didn't exist. Which is really weird because both All That and The Amanda Show both aired on Family Channel in the early 2000s. The thing is, in addition to all of the American shows we get, we have our own shows that need to be included on the various TV schedules, so we end up not getting every show the American networks, cable channels, and streaming services air. 

In extension of Kenan & Kel, the one Nickelodeon Original Movie that I don't ever remember seeing commercials for is Good Burger. I don't know if that's just because Kenan & Kel didn't air here, but I never saw commercials for Good Burger on TV when it was about to come out in 1997. 

I remember seeing commercials for Aaahh!!! Real Monsters on YTV during Animorphs and Radio Active, but I never actually watched an episode.

KaBlam! is another show I didn't watch, but that we did get on YTV. We got it two years after its original American debut. I honestly don't remember this show. I think I saw it on the "Coming Up Next" screen, but I never saw actual commercials for it. 

Rocket Power is another show I didn't watch when I was a kid. It's also one I don't remember ever seeing anything for on TV either. It aired on YTV from 2000 until the show ended in 2004, but by this time I was only watching YTV for certain things like episodes of Sailor Moon S (Season 3), Sailor Moon SuperS (Season 4), Digimon Adventure 02 (season 2), and Digimon Tamers (Season 3) and that's basically it. Radio Free Roscoe was on Family Channel and Animorphs and Radio Active were over, so I wasn't watching very much on YTV by that point. 

The same thing goes for As Told by Ginger. I'd never even heard of it until I started listening to a podcast called Old School Lane, as one of the hosts of that podcast, Patricia, is a huge fan of that show. It aired on YTV from 2001 until 2004, though the show ran on Nickelodeon from 2000 until 2006, so we didn't get the whole show on TV. 

After this era, Nickelodeon shows started airing on par with Nickelodeon itself, as we got shows like Zoey 101, iCarly, and Victorious not too long after they all started their runs on Nickelodeon. Eventually Canada would get its own Nickelodeon branded channel in 2009, though most Nickelodeon shows continued airing on both Family Channel and YTV.

That my friends is it for me for today. I just wanted to talk about some of these shows that I've heard people talking about online, but never got to experience for myself being that we either didn't get them, I missed them due to not having access to the channels they were on, or I just wasn't interested in them. I will be back tomorrow most likely as I'm almost finished reading Isard's Revenge. So until then have a great afternoon and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Batgirl #1 (2000 and 2009) Comic Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back with a comic book review. Sort of. Instead of talking about one issue or a complete story arc/collected edition, I'm going to be talking about two number one issues from the same series. I'm talking about Batgirl #1 from 2000, starring Cassandra Cain, and Batgirl #1 from 2009, starring Stephanie Brown. I'll be discussing my history with both of those characters, why I like one issue over the other, and other things surrounding both issues. So let's get into it.

While Barbara Gordon had her own backup series in Detective Comics in the '70s, and a one-shot special issue in the '80s right before The Killing Joke came out, this series was the first time that a character who held the name "Batgirl" had her own series. Cassandra Cain is not a character I have a ton of history with. I wasn't reading comics when she was introduced during No Man's Land, and I missed this issue when it first came out back in 2000. In fact, I didn't actually pick it up until sometime during the Stephanie Brown Batgirl run. Aside from a few issues here and there of current stuff in the early to mid-2000s, and tons of back issues, I was pretty much away from comics until 2009, so I didn't even know who Cassandra Cain was until I got back into the hobby. 

While I like this issue alot, I like it because of Barbara Gordon and Batman, not because of Cassandra Cain. I'll be honest with you, I've never felt a connection to this character. Her story doesn't resonate with me the way Barbara's did, particularly during her time as Oracle, and it definitely doesn't resonate with me the way Stephanie's story does. And I don't know if it's just because I don't care about assassin turned superhero/masked crimefighter characters in general, or if I just don't vibe with Cassandra in particular. Because I love Batman, and I have since I saw reruns of the 1966 TV series on YTV when I was a kid, but, despite Barbara telling Bruce that Cassandra reminds her of him in her manner, Bruce and Cassandra are different enough characters, with different enough backgrounds that her situation is one that is outside my realm of possibilities, whereas Bruce's, at least in terms of losing his parents at a young age, and deciding to something constructive with that pain, in his case fighting crime as Batman, rather than turning to more destructive ways of dealing with that pain.

It also doesn't help that Cassandra doesn't talk and we don't get her thoughts at all. So she's almost a supporting character in her own book, with Barbara taking on the main character role. So that makes it hard for me to connect with Cassandra. And at this point, Babs and Bruce don't even know her name yet, because she doesn't talk, and they can't find much information on her, beyond who trained her to be an assassin. So it's difficult to really connect to her. At least for me.

My favourite scene in this issue is where Barbara is telling Batman how good Cassandra is at stick-fighting and says that she figured she had been trained by David Cain (who turns out to be Cassandra's dad), but Batman reminds Barbara that Cain is an assassin, he would not have taught stick-fighting to Cassandra. And then he goes on to say, "I did. Last week. Took five minutes". At which point Barbara is just like, "Oh you gotta be kidding me...". It actually reminds me of the type of dry humour that's in Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond. Which makes sense because The New Batman Adventures just ended a year or so earlier, and Batman Beyond had just started only a few months earlier. 

Like I said, I really don't have very much history with Cassandra Cain's Batgirl because I wasn't reading very many new comics in the early to mid 2000s when her run was starting and by the time I was back into the hobby in the late 2000s and early 2010s, Stephanie Brown had taken on the mantle of Batgirl, and Cassandra was absent, which I suspect has to do with the fact that Grant Morrison wasn't able to explore her role in Batman Incorporated because of the company wide reboot that happened in 2011 with the New 52. 

Speaking of Stephanie Brown, she's my favourite character to come out of Tim Drake's Robin series that ran from 1993 to 2009. She's had such a journey from being Spoiler to temporarily replacing Tim as Robin, to being killed off in "War Games" to returning from the dead, as all good comic book characters do, to being completely erased from continuity when the New 52 started in 2011. Batgirl is my favourite Batman related comic book series that isn't an actual Batman comic book series. It came out while I was in college, and because I'd known who Stephanie Brown was from the Robin series, dating all the way back to 1994 when my mom got me Robin #5 from the CHEO gift shop while I was in for some day surgery procedure, so when I found out that she had become Batgirl and had her own series, I got really excited. Unfortunately, I missed the first issue, but I got issue #2 and then ended up missing ten issues, because, I was in college and Brad and I weren't going to the Comic Book Shoppe quite as often as we would end up doing a few years later. So it wasn't until issue #15 came out in late 2010 that I started getting the series every month.

Eventually I got the first two trade paperback volumes, which let me catch up on the issues I had missed, and that's how I read issue #1, and the rest of the issues, minus issue #8, which ended up collected in the first trade paperback volume of Red Robin, which is a series that I've never read. Not because I don't like Tim Drake, I mean he is my favourite Robin of all time, but I didn't actually know about the series until it was about to end just before the New 52 started. It was the only Bat-Family book that wasn't very well advertised, and aside from the crossover with Batgirl, Red Robin never overlapped with the other Bat books.

The opening of this issue feels like the opening to a Fast and the Furious movie or the opening scene of an episode of some teen drama with the illegal street racing. And then Stephanie shows up in Cassandra's Batgirl costume and it feels more like Smallville or a later CW DC Comics based show. And that's because the writer for the series, Bryan Q. Miller, was a writer for Smallville from 2005 to 2011, AND he wrote an episode or two for season 2 of Arrow from 2013 to 2014, and wrote at least one episode of The Flash in 2016. So, he was the perfect choice to be the writer for Stephanie Brown's time as Batgirl. 

And while Barbara Gordon is basically the secondary main character of the series until Bruce returns and has the entire Bat-Family working on different assignments to take down Leviathan, she doesn't overshadow Stephanie the way it felt like she was doing in the first issue of Cassandra Cain's Batgirl series. Barbara was to Stephanie what Bruce was to Terry McGinnis in Batman Beyond. And I think that's because we've already had seventeen years of history with Stephanie up to the point that this issue came out since she first appeared in Detective Comics in 1992.

I think the reason Stephanie Brown, and this series, resonated with me so much is because it was about Stephanie proving to herself she could do something, it was about Barbara proving she was still worth something despite things being messy with the Birds of Prey at that point, and Bruce being dead following Final Crisis which had just wrapped up when this issue came out. At that time, I'd flunked out of the Radio Broadcasting program at the college I was going to, and I didn't have a backup. Luckily the college had a special winter General Arts program for people who wanted to go to college, didn't know what they wanted to do in college, and weren't able to start college in the fall for whatever reason. But still, because I'd flunked out of my dream program because my health got in the way, and I didn't know what else I wanted to do, my confidence was a bit shaken. So even though my problems were academic based, I still understood what Stephanie was going through. As a disabled person I also kinda understood what Barbara was going through thanks to everything going on with Bruce being gone and the Birds of Prey being in whatever situation they were in at the time. 

While I often say that Marvel heroes are who we are and DC heroes are who we want to be, I think there are plenty of superheroes in the DC Universe who are just like us. Not all of us are Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman or Green Lantern, Green Arrow, the Flash or Martian Manhunter. Sometimes we ARE Barbara Gordon, Stephanie Brown, Tim Drake, Jaime Reyes, and Courtney Whitmore. And that's why I love those characters, and why I love this series. 

Obviously, you can tell that I like Batgirl #1 from 2009 more than I do the one from 2000. That's just because Cassandra doesn't relateable to me, whereas Stephanie does. Storywise they're both still really good first issues. I do think Lee Garbett and Trevor Scott's art on the 2009 issue is better, and looks less cartoony than Damion Scott and Robert Campanella's art on the 2000 issue does though. I only have one other issue from the Cassandra Cain Batgirl series, so I probably won't cover that issue for a while, but I have all 24 issues of the Stephanie Brown series so I think I'm gonna do a major series review of that series once I'm finished the Tales of the Jedi trades that Jonathan lent me. 

That's it for me for today my friends, but I'll be back on Friday with another review of some sort. Next week I'll be starting my reviews of the Home Alone movies because I have all five of them on DVD, I have access to all of them on Disney+ (for now), and I have Home Alone 3 on VHS. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.