Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x02 "Children of the Comet" (2022) TV Show Review

 Hey everyone! Happy Friday! How are you all doing? I'm great. My family is having it's first barbecue of the season tonight, so I'm really looking forward to that. Right now though I'm here to talk about "Children of the Comet", which is this week's episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. So let's get right into it. There will be some spoilers for the episode because I want to actually talk about parts of it rather than just give my overall thoughts on it.

One of the things that I love about SNW (Strange New Worlds) is that we're finally getting to learn about characters that have been part of the franchise since 1966, but were never fully developed on screen. Even though Uhura is celebrated as the first black female character to be a lead on a TV show, being that TOS was produced and aired in the '60s, she didn't actually have much development. While Roddenberry had tons of background information written up about Uhura, as shown in the 1968 book, The Making of Star Trek by Stephen Edward Poe, under the pen name Stephen E. Whitfield, but he never used any of it on the show itself. Uhura's first name, Nyota, which actually originated in novels and comics in the '80s, wasn't made canon until Star Trek (2009) and wasn't made canon to the primary timeline until the pilot episode of SNW. So it was kind of nice to learn about a character that I've been with for so long.

One of the benefits of SNW returning to character and exploration/discovery types of storytelling is that it brings back the casualness that Star Trek used to have in the TV shows from the '60s through to the mid 2000s. For example this episode opens with Pike and the crew having dinner together in Pike's quarters, which is something we haven't seen since Enterprise went off the air in 2005. During the course of the classic shows, there were many episodes that opened where the crew would be on the Holodeck, in Ten Forward, playing poker in Riker's quarters, or just hanging out together in some capacity. But because Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, and even Prodigy focus more heavily on the heavy, galaxy threatening, high stakes situations, we never really have that down time and when we do it feels out of place on those shows. So to have a return to form here is amazing. Especially because it shows the audience just what kind of person that Pike is outside of the missions, and beyond what little we saw in "The Cage". It also shows how comfortable the crew is with him as their captain. While characters like Chapel, Hemmer, and Uhura haven't been there for very long, Una, Spock, and Ortegas have, so they're able to relax around him in a way that we haven't actually seen in the Star Trek franchise before. I genuinely laughed at Pike's story about chasing a Nausicaan who had no pants during Pike's stint as an ensign, or a cadet, in the security department. 

I also appreciate that Uhura is unsure of herself at such an early stage in her Starfleet career. Normally when we see Starfleet Cadets, they're confident and so sure of themselves, apart from Wesley Crusher in the seventh season of TNG, and Tilly in season 1 of Discovery, that it can be almost off-putting at times. So to have someone like Uhura, who hasn't yet become the legendary communications officer of the Enterprise, be unsure of herself and her status within Starfleet, it's refreshing.

Now one thing I wasn't too sure of was Sam Kirk. Being that he's essentially a brand new character given that he was a corpse played by William Shatner in the season 1 finale of TOS, and everything else we know about him comes from non-canon novels and comics, I wasn't sure how he would fit on the ship since we got him for less than a minute at the end of the pilot. I thought the actor who played him did a good job at establishing Sam as a character. I don't know how many episodes the character will appear in given that he's not a main cast member, but I think he'll stick around for the rest of the season as an Ensign Ro/Chief O'Brien type character. Though he did sort of act like the Redshirt of the group when he touched the alien artifact that the away team came across on the comet's surface, so that was fun. He didn't die though, which is good, since he has to live long enough to make it to the end of TOS season 1.

I also liked Hemmer's introduction. Even though he came aboard at the end of last week's episode, it's clear that enough time has passed that Hemmer, Kirk, and the others have been onboard long enough that introductions weren't necessary. He simply fit in with the rest of the crew. Which is nice to see.

Doctor M'Benga was absent from this episode. Unlike with Adira mid-way through Discovery's fourth season though, M'Benga's absence feels more like what we'd see on TOS or TNG, where the episodic nature of the show means that not every character needs to have a storyline in every episode and can simply not appear if they aren't required for the episode's story. It also shows that Chapel is capable of handling away mission prep when Medical needs to be involved. 

Speaking of Chapel, I like that we saw her flirting with Spock in this episode, unknowing to the Vulcan science officer. One of the things that Nurse Chapel, unfortunately, is known for on TOS is her crush on Spock. In a way that was meant to almost be fan insertion since so many young women who watched Star Trek in the '60s, had fallen in love with the character themselves, though Spock could not reciprocate, and Chapel ends up being that on the show itself. Here though, it's sweet, playful, and doesn't define the character. It also fits in with her more playful side that we saw in last week's episode.

This episode felt like a TOS episode. Right down to Pike trying to peacefully hold off a potentially hostile race while the landing party complete's their mission on the surface of the comet. I'm also glad that the race they encounter here, simply known as the Shepherds, answered Pike's hail instead of merely attacking the ship outright. This is the kind of thing that Kirk dealt with alot in TOS, and it's the kind of thing that has been sorely lacking in all of the modern Star Trek shows up to this point.

Overall this was another solid episode. You have no idea how happy I am that Strange New Worlds is such a good show so far. As much as I love Discovery and Prodigy I have my problems with them and there's still alot the showrunners can do to improve both shows. But SNW's format is really helping the quality of the storytelling and the ability to give us characters that we can care about and enjoy watching on screen. Even Spock feels alot more like TOS Spock on this show than he did in Discovery season 2. 

And that my friends is all I've got for you for today. But, I will be back next week with more reviews and other blog posts including posts about the magazines for both Star Trek and Star Wars. So until then have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.  

The Orville: New Horizons (Season 3) Trailer Discussion

Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm pretty good for a Thursday. It won't be long before the second episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds airs on Canadian television and I'm pretty excited for it after how good the pilot was last week. However, the final trailer for The Orville: New Horizons a.k.a. The Orville season 3 dropped earlier this afternoon, along with a new poster for the season and I kinda wanna talk about it. So let's get into it.

 I'm not going to say too much about the new season 3 poster, but I love it. The thing that bothered me about the season 2 posters is that Alara Kitan, played by the wonderful Halston Sage, is on both of them, but Talla Keyali, played by Jessica Szohr, isn't shown at all. I'm pretty sure it had already been announced that Halston Sage was leaving the show by the time the second season's teaser poster dropped online and when the second poster was released like two weeks before the season premiere, we definitely knew that Halston was leaving the show, but Talla didn't appear on any season poster, nor did she show up in either of the trailers for the season. On this poster though, we've got the new character for the season, Charly Burke, who I'll be talking about shortly, AND she's appeared in the trailer that dropped earlier today, which means that she'll be an important addition to the cast, like Talla was in season 2.

The trailer itself was awesome. It gave each character a shot, which is good because the strength of The Orville, like Star Trek in the '90s, has always been its characters. From Ed to recurring characters like Yaphit and Dann, the show has a solid cast of characters. Honestly, this trailer has made me excited to see the only new character coming onto the show, Lieutenant Charly Burke, played by Anne Winters.

I'm not familiar with Anne Winters's work. She was on 13 Reasons Why but I've never seen it, nor have I seen the other movies and TV shows that she's been in. But from this trailer alone, I think Charly Burke is going to be a very interesting character. One of the things I've heard people say online about the character is that it's going to bring back that young, innocent energy to the show that Alara brought to it in the first season. When Talla came on in season 2 you very much felt the difference between her and Alara. Alara was the youngest member of Ed's senior staff on the ship, despite being a Lieutenant and holding the position of Chief of Security. Her age left her insecure and unsure of her place on the ship. Whereas Talla was older so she was more experienced and confident than Alara was. And you even saw that in how Alara interacted with the rest of the crew versus how Talla interacted with the rest of the crew. But I think Charly will bring that more innocent energy that Alara had back to the show.

I also think that Charly and Gordon will end up being a thing by the end of the season. Based on the trailer, Charly is the new navigator, which is a position that hasn't been permanently filled since LaMarr got promoted to Chief Engineer at the end of the first season. And because she's the new navigator, she'll be working with Gordon closely being that he's the ship's primary helmsman. Being that Gordon and LaMarr became best friends while LaMarr was the navigator, either he and Charly will become very good friends or they'll start hooking up, similar to how LaMarr started hooking up with Ensign Turco after he moved down to Engineering and they started working together.

Aside from the spotlight that Charly Burke had in this trailer, it had a real emphasis on a mix of continuing the Kaylon threat plot from season 2, the exploration factor that has been as much a part of the show as it has been on Star Trek, as well as the personal consequences that the events of "Identity Part 2" has on Isaac. The "Identity" two parter came late enough in the season that it never circled back to Isaac and how people handled his decision to turn against his own people. He just simply went back to work as Science Officer as if nothing had happened. So it'll be interesting to see how they handle it this season.

I think that's all I have to say about the trailer and the poster. I am really excited for season 3 of The Orville. It's been a little over three years since season 2 ended and I am itching to return to the Orville after a very long shore leave. Mind you, I did rewatch the first two seasons with my sister last year, so it hasn't been THAT long since I last joined the crew for their adventures, but it'll be good to get back.

That's going to be it for me for tonight, but I will be back tomorrow for my review of this week's episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which airs here in Canada in an hour and a half. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

The Hardy Boys 2x01 "A Disappearance" (2022) TV Show Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. So normally I'd have a comic book review out for you today, but I had a dental appointment today and it got moved up to this morning from this afternoon, so I haven't had time to do a comic book review. However, the first four episodes of the second season of The Hardy Boys dropped on Disney+ up here in Canada (it being on Hulu in the U.S.) and I just finished watching the season premiere. Which means I'm here to talk about the season premiere. So let's get into it!

The weirdest thing about this episode is that both Joe and Biff are older than they were in season 1, because season 1 was filmed near the beginning of 2020, almost a year before the season dropped on Hulu in late 2020, and in alot of these cases, two years can make a difference. There's also a different actor playing Fenton Hardy, and a different actress is playing Jesse Hooper, Biff's mom, and I guess the chief of police in Bridgeport now that Chief Collig is gone, but I'll get more into that later.

The episode opens six months after the events of the first season and Joe is a bit upset that he and Frank didn't get the recognition for stopping The Circle, led by their grandmother, Gloria Estabrook, and is looking for a new case so that they can be recognized finally. Frank on the other hand, just wants to live a normal life, and go to work and school, and hang out with his friends, including his girlfriend, Callie Shaw. But, when a classmate of Joe, Biff, and Phil goes missing, the Hardy Boys work together to find him.

Honestly, I really enjoyed that Joe is looking for a new mystery because in the original books, both boys were always willing to dive into a new case no matter what it was. Now, on the show, I don't think the boys will be travelling around the world like they did in the original books, so all of the cases they get, in however many seasons this show ends up having, will come to them in Bridgeport and will take them around Bridgeport rather than around the world. Joe was one of my biggest problems with the first season since they made him, and Biff, the unlikable younger kid characters rather than teenagers like Frank and his friends. So hopefully this season brings both of them out of that mode because they were both annoying in season 1.

I also respect Frank for wanting a normal life after the insanity of his mother's murder, and the revelations about his grandmother's involvement with The Circle. TV Frank doesn't have that same thirst for adventure that Book Frank does. So naturally he isn't going to immediately jump into another mystery. As he said to Joe in this episode, solving their mom's murder was something they had to do for themselves, for Fenton, and for Aunt Trudy, putting The Circle out of commission was just a bonus. 

We don't get very much with any of the other characters in this episode. Aside from Fenton, but even he didn't do a whole lot in the episode. I still love the returning characters from last season though. Though Phil is a little more annoying this season, given that he was actually in most of this episode. I didn't mind him in small doses last season, but having him in most of the first episode, and probably most of the season as a whole, might become a problem.

I find it interesting that the events of this episode is tied to the season 1 finale and the shadowy organization running the cleanup from everything that happened at the end of season 1 with The Circle and The Eye. I don't know where any of that is gonna go, but I'm intrigued to find out as the season goes on. Especially with how it relates to the Hardys and their friends. 

I don't really have much else to say about this episode. I enjoyed it, but being a serialized story, like season 1 was, this episode only represents a piece of the whole story, so I don't really even know what exactly is going on with this season as a whole yet. Especially because Disney+ didn't drop the entire season all at once, just the first four episodes of a ten episode season. So we'll see what happens, but I'm excited for it.

Alrighty that is going to be it for me for today. I'll be back on Friday with my review of this week's episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and I think I might post something on the magazines of Star Trek tomorrow. So until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you later. Take care. 

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x01 "Strange New Worlds" (2022) TV Episode Review

 Hey everyone! I am back once again with another TV show review. This time I'm going to be talking about the first episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which also happens to be called "Strange New Worlds". Again, there will be some spoilers for this episode, so if you haven't seen it yet, don't read this review until you do. Now, without further ado, let's get into it.

I've had mixed feelings about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ever since it was announced because on the one hand, I wanted to see Anson Mount and Ethan Peck get their own Star Trek series. On the other hand though, the people involved in this show are also some of the ones that botched the first seasons of Discovery and Picard, so I was dreading what they'd do if they had an entire show to focus on Pike, Spock and the crew of the Enterprise. Thankfully this episode eased those fears.

One of the things that I love about this show so far is that it's truly episodic, the way TNG, early DS9, and Voyager were. This episode felt like a complete story with a beginning, a middle, and an end and now the crew can go on to more adventures in the coming episodes. 

I also love how the show hit the ground running and did a Prime Directive story right out the gate. Not just a Prime Directive story, but a good Prime Directive story. One that takes what's going on in the world today and using a new civilization as allegory for that stuff, rather than shoving it in our face like season 2 of Star Trek: Picard did. Which works so much better honestly. 

The new cast is incredible. And I love that everyone who was introduced in this episode got a moment to shine, and we got a few details about each of them. With Discovery we didn't even learn the majority of the Bridge crew's names until the second season, and even then most of them have been shafted for other characters. I honestly don't have a favourite or a standout in this episode because they were all so good, but I do really like Jess Bush as Christine Chapel, Christina Chong as La'an Noonien-Singh, and Celia Rose Gooding as Nyota Uhura. We didn't get a whole lot with Dr. M'Benga or Lieutenant Ortegas, but both were pretty solid as well. I especially liked it when M'Benga announced what he and Chapel called a "Delta Scorpi VII", which is a reference to a similar incident where a being from another planet woke up in the Enterprise's Sickbay and ran away, Ortegas replied, "Always when I'm in the captain's chair". Which makes me wonder if that's a sly reference to the TNG movies where something happens to the Enterprise-D and the Enterprise-E every time Riker is in command (i.e. the ship getting destroyed, assimilated, or damaged), or if it's a sign of things to come when Ortegas is in command of the ship.

The one thing that I was a little unsure of was having that scene with Spock and T'Pring that was shown in the trailer, simply because I couldn't remember whether or not it was mentioned in "Amok Time" how long it had been since Spock had seen T'Pring last. So I rewatched that episode again just to be sure, and it wasn't mentioned at all. Which means that scene doesn't clash with what Spock said (or didn't say) in that episode, which takes place after this one. I didn't have much of a problem with it anyway, because I always felt that Vulcans clung to the ancient ways a little too much, and so I felt that if Spock hadn't seen T'Pring since they were children, it was weird to have them get married. Which is why I don't understand arranged marriages and betrothals in some cultures that populate the real world. But, I liked T'Pring in this episode alot better than I liked her original version in "Amok Time", so it didn't come off as weird in this episode the way I was afraid it would. 

I'll be honest, I really liked the connections that the characters we already met on Discovery had with the new characters being introduced in this episode. Like, Pike was friends with M'Benga because they were posted in each other's hometown, and served together in both places, and that Una (Number One) had rescued La'an from the Gorn when Una was an ensign and La'an was a child (or a teenager). I think Ortegas was part of Pike's crew prior to this episode because she was already familiar with Pike and Spock. Uhura just fit in really nicely. I'm interested to see how Chief Engineer Hemmer and Lieutenant Sam Kirk, who is Jim Kirk's brother, gel with everyone in the next episode, since they didn't show up until the end of this episode.

Overall this was a wonderful, strong, start to Strange New Worlds. I really hope things keep going the way they did in this episode, because it was fun to watch. It was optimistic, full of heart and the characters were fantastic. It wasn't trying to be Star Trek, it IS Star Trek and I am very excited to see what next week's episode brings because I read the synopsis and it sounds awesome. I definitely recommend watching it week to week. Because of the episodic nature of this show, I'm going to try and review the show each week because it'll be a complete story each week so I won't be spending ten weeks saying, "I guess we'll see how it works at the end of the season" because that could get tedious. Especially with shows like Picard, where basically not a whole lot happened in each episode.

Alright folks, that's going to be it for me for this week. I will be back next week though for more reviews and posts. So until then have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Star Trek: Picard Season 2 (2022) TV Show Review

 Hey everyone! Happy Friday! How're you all doing today? I'm doing pretty well actually. So I'm going to have two reviews out for you today. The first is this one, where I'm going to be reviewing the second season of Star Trek: Picard now that the season finale has aired/dropped. The second is going to be my review of the pilot episode of the new series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. There will be spoilers for both of these reviews so if you're not caught up on season 2 of Picard or haven't watched the first episode of Strange New Worlds, then don't read these reviews until you do. With that out of the way let's get right into it with season 2 of Star Trek: Picard.

My history with this show has been mixed. Season 1 was good in execution and in premise, I just didn't care for how dark and violent it was. Season 2 was interesting in concept, but failed miserably in execution. Oh don't get me wrong, there are some things that I enjoyed about this season, but as a whole it was bad. Okay, bad might be the wrong word. This season was boring and pointless. Again, there were alot of good ideas in this season, it's just the way it was done with the time travel being the entire season, and how it tried to tie in to an event in Picard's childhood just didn't work.

Time travel has always been an element of Science Fiction that I've disliked. Mainly because it's not consistent from one series to the next. Even Star Trek's various incarnations doesn't have set rules for how the characters travel back through time or how their presence in the past will affect their own present. But, because up until this season, time travel has always been a one to two episode affair in every other Star Trek series and movie ever produced. And honestly, I had hoped that that would be the case this time. It wasn't. The entire season was set either in an alternate timeline, or in the past. And that's not Star Trek.

I don't mean that in the way that the idiots online have been wailing about since Star Trek: Enterprise debuted in 2001. I mean that because of the setting being the year 2024, only two years in the future from now, it feels more like a season of DC's Legends of Tomorrow or the series, Timeless or any other generic Sci-Fi show. And because the season is set in what is basically present day, the mental health stuff they were trying to do with Picard and his childhood trauma of seeing his mother hang herself because she was mentally ill, felt too realistic and not Star Trekkie enough. And I don't mean that to be insensitive. It's just other Star Trek shows, especially the last couple of seasons of Discovery, have handled the topic of mental illness alot better than this show did.

As those of you who have followed my blog for a very long time know, one of my friends committed suicide back in 2007. For those of you who are new to the blog, her name was Sarah and she suffered from severe mental health issues for years. We had been close during my final two years of high school, even after she'd been forced to transfer schools because she was getting bullied so bad and our principal was an idiot who only cared about his own image and success, and didn't care about us at all. And I can say that because I graduated 16 years ago and he's not my principal anymore. 

My point in telling that story is that season 2 of Picard handled that poorly. Star Trek has done stories about suicide in the past, most notably the fourth season TNG episode, "Half a Life" where David Ogden Stiers played Timicin, a scientist who was required to undergo ritual suicide at the age of 60 according to the laws of his homeworld, Kaelon II. TNG also tackled suicide in the fifth season episode, "Ethics" where Worf is paralyzed and considers suicide as Klingons believe that disabled warriors are a disgrace to their families as they were not given the honor of dying. In that episode, Worf asked Riker to assist him, but Riker refused, as did Worf's son, Alexander. But here, it felt pointless and felt like Picard's guilt over his mother's death, despite the fact that he had nothing to do with it, could've been resolved in an episode or two at most. Not something to be dealt with over the course of the entire ten episode season. In fact the only episode where that plotline had any impact at all was the episode where Picard was in a coma following Dr. Adam Soong, played brilliantly by Brent Spiner, hit him with his car. And even then it was mostly included to make Picard, and the viewers realize that Maurice Picard, Jean-Luc's father, wasn't an abusive character. Except the way he handled his wife's illness was to lock her in a room by herself, was very much an abusive thing to do to someone with a mental illness. So yeah, that storyline was handled poorly because it's obvious that the writers have no clue about how to deal with mental illness and just forced it in, probably because Discovery did such a good job with that topic in it's third and fourth seasons.

I also didn't really care about Rios's storyline this season all that much. Cristobal Rios was one of the best part of Picard's first season and I got excited when it turned out he was going to get a new storyline this season. Except it turned out to be the stereotypical love story that you'd find on a show that airs on The CW and wasn't all that interesting if I'm being honest.

I realize I've been picking apart everything in this season so far. Because it's crap. But there are things that I really liked this season. Like Seven of Nine and her storyline. While I find it confusing why Starfleet refused to let Seven join on the basis that she's Borg when they let Icheb in, I do appreciate that we finally got the reason why Seven didn't join Starfleet when Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant in the series finale of Star Trek: Voyager, "Endgame". The immediate aftermath of Voyager's return home is such an untapped sector of Star Trek lore since the TV show never dealt with it aside from Janeway getting promoted to admiral, and Chakotay becoming the captain of the U.S.S. Prodigy, as we've seen so far in season 1 of Star Trek: Prodigy. And none of the novels that dealt with it are canon.

I also loved seeing John de Lancie back as Q and Whoopi Goldberg back as Guinan. We haven't seen Q since his appearance in the seventh season Voyager episode, "Q2", which aired a little over 21 years ago, and we haven't seen Guinan since Star Trek Nemesis came out in 2002. So I was glad to see both of them back in those iconic roles because they were both awesome parts of TNG.

I don't have anything to say about Agnes Jurati and the Borg Queen, because that storyline was also boring and pointless. Annie Wersching and Alison Pill did a wonderful job as both of those characters, but they had nothing to do but cause trouble for absolutely no reason at all. Same with Adam Soong, who, as antagonists go, kinda sucks. Even his descendent, Arik Soong from season four of Enterprise was a better antagonist than Adam was.

The big surprise this season happened in last night's finale episode. Wil Wheaton showed up as Wesley Crusher for a scene that didn't last for more than two minutes, and he didn't have any interaction with Picard, but having Wesley back after all these years felt good to me. Especially since next season we're getting Riker, Troi, Beverly Crusher, Worf, and La Forge back, and makes me hope that Wesley will be back again too. 

Overall this was not a good season of television for me. Which is really disappointing because I had such high hopes for Star Trek: Picard when it was originally announced by Sir Patrick Stewart himself back in 2018. But for whatever reason neither of the first two seasons have worked for me, with season 2 just being really bad. I am going to watch the third/final season though because the rest of the characters I grew up with are coming back and I'm hoping that it'll be a fun ride instead of a third existential crisis for Admiral Picard. Because that's what this show has been, and it's sucked.

Alrighty that's it for me for now but I'll be back shortly with my review of episode 1 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Later.

The Comic Book Longbox: Batman Beyond: Neo-Year #1 (2022)

 Hey everyone! I am back once again with this week's comic book review. Today I'm going to take a look at a comic that I just got on Sunday, when Brad dropped by, Batman Beyond: Neo-Year #1. So let's get right into it.

I have an interesting history with Batman Beyond. When the series aired from 1999 until 2001 it was on YTV here in Canada. However, my siblings and I didn't watch it for whatever reason. We were still watching YTV as Animorphs, Radio Active, Digimon, Pokemon, and reruns of Sailor Moon, but I don't remember any commercials for it during any of those shows. However, we did have access to The WB and it's kids block, The Kids WB, when we were up at the cottage with our grandparents so I remember watching Batman Beyond from time to time up at the cottage but that's it and I've never watched the series from start to finish, though that is on my to do list since I have the complete series DVD set.

The comics on the other hand are a completely different story. The first comics came out from 1999 until 2001 and were directly based on the TV show, similar to the The Batman Adventures, Batman & Robin Adventures, and Superman Adventures that were tie-ins to Batman: The Animated Series, The Adventures of Batman & Robin, and Superman: The Animated Series. Following the end of this run in 2001, Terry McGinnis began making appearances in the main DC Universe, most notably in Batman #700 (2010), before a third series debuted in 2010, prior to the 2011 change over to the New 52. A fourth run ended after eight issues in 2011. There were also a few other series that got published from 2012 until 2020 during the New 52 and DC Rebirth, leading up to this issue.

So when this issue starts Terry is still Batman, but Bruce is dead, and someone named Donovan Lumos has taken control of Wayne-Powers Industries (Derek Powers had taken over Wayne Industries in the original continuity of the TV show). Terry is on the run as the Batcave, Wayne Manor, the Batmobile, and everything else is gone. The only thing Terry has is the Batsuit.

I actually enjoyed this issue. Even though I haven't seen every episode of the TV series, I do like the idea of a futuristic teenage Batman. And while Terry isn't a teenager anymore in this book, it's still a spin-off of that basic concept, which is cool. Terry doesn't have any of his supporting cast, aside from Commissioner Barbara Gordon, another carry over from the TV show. Not sure where Max or Dana are in at this point in the Batman Beyond comic book continuity. But that's okay because I'm glad the issue focused on Terry given that I haven't read any of the Batman Beyond comics before now. 

The art in this book is done by Max Dunbar, whose work I'm not familiar with, though according to the DC Wiki, he's worked on the most recent Damian Wayne Robin series, as well as Batman: Urban Legends. So he's a more recent DC artist. Also, he's Canadian, from Victoria, British Columbia, according to the DC Wiki, so that's pretty cool.

Like I said, I enjoyed this issue. Unlike alot of comics these days, this one doesn't require you to have too much knowledge of what had happened in previous Batman Beyond comics as it does a really good job of catching you up on what's relevant to this issue's story, which is a problem that I had with I Am Batman #1, which I've reviewed on my old blog, The Review Basement, but I'll review it on here at some point. If you can get your hands on it this is a great issue to pick up. I have the variant cover rather than the original one, which is fine because I actually like the variant cover, which you can see at the beginning of the review. It's the second image that I have in this post. 

And that my friends is going to be it for me for today. I will be back on Friday though for my reviews of Star Trek: Picard season 2, and the pilot episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. So until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Some Pre-Series Thoughts on Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)

 Hey everyone! Happy Star Wars Day, I hope all of you Star Wars fans are celebrating with a favourite movie, TV show, video game, comic or novel (or all five options). Right now I just want to give some pre-series thoughts on the upcoming Disney+ series, Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi. So let's get right into it.

Unlike with every other Star Wars series that's been made for Disney+ over the last two and a bit years, I'm the most excited about Obi-Wan Kenobi because I went through middle school and high school watching Ewan McGregor play Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Prequel Trilogy and he was the best part of those movies. I also enjoyed Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader in those movies too. But I also don't have any particular expectations for this limited series, because I pretty much already know what it's going to be with very few surprises.

Because we're revisiting the character ten years after the end of the Prequel Trilogy (nine years before the original movie), there are certain things that will be done. Like, Obi-Wan isn't going to be leaving Tatooine since he's supposed to be presumed to be dead by most of the Empire, though I'm pretty sure that Vader knows that Obi-Wan is still alive, since Kenobi did have the high ground at the end of their Lightsaber duel in Revenge of the Sith. 

However I do hope that we see why he chose to tell Luke in A New Hope that Darth Vader killed his father instead of that his father became Darth Vader. Because while the novelization of Return of the Jedi tried to justify Obi-Wan and Yoda's decision to do so, that novelization was written in 1982 and published in 1983, before there were prequels or even spin-off TV movies and animated series. And the movies themselves never explained his reasons for doing so. Though based on the trailer that dropped this morning I suspect that Uncle Owen had something to do with it. Especially because in A New Hope Luke believed that Anakin was the navigator on a spice freighter.

The part that concerns me the most about this show, is the Inquisitors. This show takes place only four years before the start of Star Wars Rebels and alot of the stuff with the Inquisitors and the Empire in general  on this series will most likely overlap with what we got on that show. Particularly in the first season. I understand why the Inquisitors are on this show, given the time period it's set in, but personally, I don't care for them that much. Then again, I didn't really care for what we got of them in the Legends continuity either. So maybe it's just a me thing.

My other concern about this show is the same thing that happened with season 2 of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. This show has one less episode than The Book of Boba Fett and two less episodes than season 2 of The Mandalorian (and season 1 but I'm focusing on season 2 only), and a problem that these shows seem to have is that the people writing it and producing it want to go big with it and end up introducing too many elements. As a result, they end up leaving alot of loose threads because they only have six to eight episodes to tell the story that they want to tell. So I'm hoping that these people don't go too big because an Obi-Wan Kenobi series set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope should be a smaller, more intimate, series than something like The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett ended up being. But I have this feeling that, just like with the other two shows that I mentioned, as none of the animated shows seem to have this problem, Obi-Wan Kenobi is going to go too big and the audience is going to be left frustrated like we were with The Book of Boba Fett earlier this year. But I have my fingers crossed that that won't be the case and that we'll get a fun, frustration free Star Wars live action Star Wars series.

Despite my concerns with this show, I am really excited about it. I mean, this is an element of the Star Wars Universe that has barely been touched upon before, aside from a couple of Legends novels in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The one question I have about this show is how much, if any, of Obi-Wan's storyline will be taken from John Jackson Miller's 2013 Legends novel, Kenobi? I mean there was also the couple of issues of Jason Aaron's run on the main comic book title, Star Wars, from 2015 that dealt with Obi-Wan's adventures on Tatooine during this time period as well. So definitely lots of inspiration for the writers to pull from. Though I do wish we will have a few surprises along the way.

Alrighty that's going to be it for me for now. I'll be back later with a comic book review where I'll be reviewing a recent addition to my comic book longbox. So stay tuned.