Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #15 – “Crushed (Part 3)”

* Part 3 of 3 of the Crushed storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #15 – “Crushed (Part 3)”! In the previous installment, Kamala and Kamran bond for a bit over their Inhuman-ness, but Kamran turns out to be one of those stone cold asshole Inhumans who think they’re better than regular humans, and Kamala ain’t havin’ that nonsense. Also, Aamir brutally tells Bruno that he and Kamala will never get together because they’re from two different worlds, bro! Heh heh heh.

Kamran knocks Kamala out and she wakes up in a strange lair of someone called Lineage, who looks like an octopus-headed red devil wearing a suit. We don’t know much about him yet. Let’s find out more!

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #15 [July, 2015]
Written by: G. Willow Wilson
“Crushed (Part 3)”

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #15

Lineage welcomes Kamala again and motions toward old friends Kamran and Kaboom. Kaboom has a neck brace like a nerd.

Kamala is like YOU THINK YOU KNOW A GUY. YOU THINK YOU KNOW A GUY FOR 17 HOURS AND THEN YOU ALMOST KISS AND THEN HE ZAPS YOU AND THROWS YOU IN A LOCKED ROOM. YOU THINK YOU KNOW A GUY. She calls Kamran gross. He doesn’t deny it, but he does point out that that’s not how Kamala felt last night when he was ready to do the penis in the vagina thing if she was, as the kids say, DTF.

“I never thought anything like this would happen!” Kamala whines.

“Who’s going to believe that?” responds a punchably smug Kamran. “You got in the car of your own free will. As far as anybody knows, you chose to be here. You put yourself in this situation.”

Can’t argue with logic when it’s presented to you so concretely and succinctly, I always say. Kamala’s eyes bug out about this revelation. “Is he right?” she thinks. “Is this my fault? Is this what I deserve?”

Ah, the gaslighting commences!

I take back what I said about Octopus Head. It actually looks more like a, uh, a bunch of pointy crystals. “Kamran only wants what’s best for you, Kamala,” he says, lifting her chin. “Same goes for me. You’re a very powerful Inhuman, kid. You deserve to forge your own path, not take orders from a big dog and a queen on a power trip.” Ah, he’s referring to Lockjaw and Queen Medusa! I pay attention! Who says I don’t?? I will punch their butt.

In short, Lineage wants Kamala to be part of the Inhumans Rule and Humans Drool family. And what if she says no? I’ll tell you what happens if she says no. Lineage gets snarly. That’s really about it. He sneers like Elvis.

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #15

Bruno’s gonna be hanging from a meat hook by his anus in about 15 minutes.

Kamala tries to keep him talking while fumbling around her coat pocket less-than-surreptitiously for her phone and calling up Bruno, who is sitting in chemistry class getting taught by Rick Sanchez. Two rings and then a hang up on his phone, which is code for SOMEONE IS RAPING ME OR MAYBE SOMETHING NOT AS SERIOUS AND AWFUL, BUT STILL HELP PLEASE. Bruno books it from class and he’s on his way to help!

Lineage, obviously, notices Kamala moving her hand in her coat frantically and brazenly. “What’s that in your pocket?” he asks. “Definitely not a cell phone,” she answers.

“I’ve thought about your offer,” she continues, throwing the phone at his head. “My answer is no.” Then she starts running, huffing and puffing, while the three baddies give chase! Meanwhile, Bruno is belting down the streets of Jersey City like a fucking lunatic, pushing everyone out of the way, screaming into his phone to get a GPS lock on the girl of his dreams, and finding out that Kamala’s currently in New Attilan, the home of the Inhumans. What’s she doing there??

Does Bruno know about her powers? I don’t remember. I don’t think so? Maybe? Could be? Possibly? I don’t know. Fuck it.

Kamala runs down the hallways of whatever facility she’s trapped within. Kaboom tries to spark her ass and ends up catching up with her. The sparks have rendered Kamala’s powers currently useless. She has to run now with tiny little Kamala-sized legs. Darn.

Kamala heads toward the two lumpy-headed jail cell guards. She slides through them less-than-gracefully.

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #15

Getting road rash is a fantastic start!

More running and escaping continues. She finds the training room and unlocks it with her handprint. “Initiate Kamala Khan training program. Legendary module.” She waits in the room, arms akimbo with satisfaction, while Kaboom catches up. “Legendary module initiatied,” the computer says as a dozen very large, grotesque monsters and robots appear before Kaboom’s eyes. They all zap her with lasers and shit while Kamala escapes out the door.

Meanwhile, Bruno is using a big stick to steer a tiny little boat while the owner of the boat yells at him. After slowly making his way to New Attilan, Bruno is like “well, now what?” The New Attilan guards stop Bruno is his tracks. “Whoa, hey, whoa! I’m cool! Queen Medusa knows me!” he stammers while the guards shove large pointy sticks in his direction. Then they grab him with the intention of throwing him in the brig. So much for a rescue! Dingus.

No longer being persued, Kamala runs around the halls looking for a doorway out. Everything looks the same, she gets lost, she finds a dead end. “Hi. You look lost,” says Kamran the Jerkhole.

“What do you want me to say, Kamran? You won? You outsmarted me? You’re right about everything? Fine. Whatever. You won. Now let me leave.”

AU CONTRAIRE, SISTER. Kamran wants you to march your butt back into Lineage’s office and apologize for making Kamran look like a fool. Kamran turns all translucent-y and winds up for a punch. It’s at this point that Kamala no longer feels guilty about breaking Kaboom’s neck. “You want a showdown?” she says. “You want to pretend this is the big climactic battle of your own personal action film? Fine with me.”

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #15

Rawr!

She grows her hand to the size of a watermelon and crushes Kamran’s fist. She throws him against a wall. It’s Ms. Marvel time! “I thought you were this romantic hero. But you’re not even a villain. You’re just a bad guy’s lackey in a pair of nice shoes.”

You go gurlfriend. Real queen shit. She tries punching him with an enormous fist and misses somehow. Kamran pulls out a little glowing marble and throws it in Ms. Marvel’s direction. She grabs it and feels it starting to explode, so she squeezes the bejeezes out of it. And then she throws it back at Kamran. “GAAAH!” he screams in large red letters, and then he’s like “YOU WIN THIS ROUND, BHHHAAAAAAAA!!!” while Kamala runs away.

Lineage strolls on over to the smoldering Kamran. “I’m just gonna come out and say it, big guy – I’m disappointed,” he says fatherly. Kamran cries and all but begs for forgiveness. He asks if he should start going after Kamala again, but Lineage says no for some reason. “See what she does next. There are other ways to make her pay.”

Anti-climactic!

Kamran points out that Kamala’s the only Khan with Inhuman powers. Her whole bloodline out of their control if they lose her. Lineage tells him that, no, she ISN’T the only Khan with Inhuman powers! Cliffhanger!

It’s going to be Aamir with the power of pooping his pants at will.

Ms. Marvel rounds a corner and sees Bruno being held up by the back of his shirt by two burly, manly guard men. “Hey, Ms. Marvel. Got your missed call. I came to help,” he says with a sheepish grin. So Ms. Marvel kicks the guards, grabs Bruno by the shirt, and runs off. Looking for a way out is a bust again… until they find a garbage chute.

They land in the river. Everything’s fine now.

Kamala starts losing it a little. Bruno hugs her and she spills everything that’s been bugging her over the last few issues. Bruno promises to pick Kamran up by the hair and drop-kick him. Kamala feels like her heart is broken. Even though, again, she only knew this guy for half a day.

She appreciates Bruno’s friendship, though! The end.

Final Thoughts

Good story! I like the part where the handsome love interest was a total jerk and Ms. Marvel handed his ass to him on a platter made out of shit.

Only one more story from the Marvel NOW! Ms. Marvel series. I’m pretty sure I’m going to find some other Kamala Khan in the future. That girl has got it goin’ on.


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Maniac – Pharmaceutical Experiments and Elves

Through the Idiot Glass Disclaimer: There will be spoilers. If you’re even remotely interested in this show and you haven’t yet seen it, or if you’ll be mad if you accidentally read any possible spoilers about it, I’m going to chalk it up to “not my fucking problem”. You have been warned.
Discussion Subject: Maniac, Miniseries (2018) (Netflix)

Maniac
Just like Mr. Robot, Maniac is a series that blipped its way onto my radar due to my extreme love of Severance and my desire to find anything and everything that is similar.

I purposely avoiding reading anything about the show before diving in. Did it work for me? Find out by reading on, or you can just as well click that X in the top right of your screen. That’ll work too.

The Premise

Robot poop cleaners milling about the sidewalks, people paid to be walking advertisements, tiny apartments with Star Trek-like desk consoles. Jonah Hill as the schizophrenic and depressed Owen, the black sheep of a very wealthy family. His brother is on trial for sexual misconduct. Emma Stone as a down and out lowkey junkie, Annie, with borderline personality disorder. Both, for their own reasons, decide to participate in an experimental pharmaceutical study that claims it can cure all mental disorders with a series of three pills: ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’. They’re grouped with other similar sad sacks and get strapped up to these machines that cause them to confront their demons through alternate personas. A mishap in the lab causes Owen and Annie to be bonded together in every dream scenario, creating an unusual friendship via an accidental connection.

Maniac

Owen… I hated you in Superbad. I liked ME better in Superbad.

The B-plot involves Justin Theroux as Dr. James K. Mantleray, a complete basket case of a scientist with crippling mommy issues who oversees the experiment. His mother, Dr. Greta Mantleray (Sally Field), is a world-renowned psychologist who is tasked with treating GRTA, the super-computer modeled after Greta’s intelligence and personality, who reacts strongly to the death of the original scientist overseeing the experiment. It gets a bit convoluted.

The series ends with Owen testifying truthfully in court about his brother’s crimes and Annie patching up a touchy relationship with a grief-stricken father, both fulfilling the “confrontation” part of their experiment. Annie busts Owen out of a mental health facility and the two travel to Salt Lake City together. Nothing about the series or the ending suggests a sexual relationship, but these two are totally going to bone in Mormon Land. The end.

Maniac

It’s like 2001: A Spacy Odyssey except fuckin’ Justin Theroux is in the way.

My Half-Baked Thoughts

To say the least, this was a disappointment. The first two episodes were great! The worldbuilding was pretty cool, with this retro-futuristic setting that reminded me of Back to the Future Part II‘s idea of a not-quite-so far off future. I liked seeing these miserable characters meander a little bit through their lives before submitting themselves to the psychological pharmaceutical study, with the details behind Owen’s family’s predicament and his desire to escape his life, and Annie’s dysfunctional family situation and her desire to escape her life. I liked the setup of the study environment, where the participants are all assigned little sleeping cubbies and white pajamas and the rooms were filled with retro computer equipment and scientists with really shitty outdated glasses. I liked the whole backstory with Annie’s sister’s death after she takes the “A” pill. This was all fantastic stuff.

Maniac

Bankrupt business in the front, really shitty party in the back.

I thought that I was going to get more of the same throughout: character studies of these two young hot messes and the past events that shaped them to be who they are today and why they are compatible with each other based on reality. The show lost me completely on Episode 4, the first shared fantasy episode. Owen plays mulleted Bruce. Annie plays non-mulleted Lin (but still mulleted in her heart). They are a married couple who engage in a nutso sitcom-caliber plot about a stolen lemur that Lin needs to recover for a hospice patient before it’s made into a hat. It was not only wholly uninteresting, but I felt like I was cheated out of some real character development.

Episode 5 had these two become the personas of Ollie and Arlie, two debonair con artists from the 1940s who join an occult party in order to find some sort of magical Don Quixote book pages. It felt like yet another disposable story from an episode of, say, Psych. Again, Ollie and Arlie are alternate reality personas with alternate reality characterizations that do nothing to forward the plot nor their engaging characters. And it happens again and again. Owen becomes the son of a mafia family, then an Icelandic UN agent who accidentally kills an alien. Annie becomes an elf in a fantasy epic, then a CIA sleeper agent. I’m bored, I’m bored, I’m bored.

Maniac

I think Bobby Hill read this series once.

The side plot with Justin Theroux’s character was marginally more interesting, but there was a certain element of creepiness with his relationship with Sally Field that I found too off-putting to become invested in. I didn’t like that he built the computer to resemble his mother. I didn’t like how weird and sweaty and stressed he got around her. I didn’t like his relationship with fellow colleague, the stick-up-her-butt Dr. Azumi Fujita. It all served to remind me that I was getting cheated out of two characters I found appealing.

I did understand, and therefore appreciate, the meaning behind the alternate reality dreams. Owen’s theme was family turmoil. Annie’s theme was dead sister guilt. This was meant to be their brains’ way of working through and confronting their issues head on and, due to an accident with the wiring, they both happened to be sharing their experiences. That’s cool on paper, and could’ve been cool on screen, but the narrative didn’t land. It was instead presented as an episodic anthology. Even THAT is cool on paper! Jonah Hill and Emma Stone have good acting range! They can play different characters! But no, it was instead dull and meandering and inessential. Much like my blog posts.

Maniac

Maniac may cause cerebral hemorrhaging and excessive nosebleeds.

Thankfully, the experiment was over at the beginning of Episode 10 and everyone could get back to their lives. Needless to say, it picked up again for these final 37 minutes. Owen testified in court and threw his sexual predator brother under the sexual predator bus. Annie confronted her father, who was a totally cool and easygoing Hank Azaria, by the way, and they both discussed Annie’s sister and mother. In the end, Annie decides that it was worth keeping hers and Owen’s relationship going, and she convinces him to bust out of the loony bin. I liked all that stuff. THAT’S character development! That’s what I wanted the whole time!

I suppose, in the end, I was looking for something eerie like Severance. Maniac had the potential to be eerie, but they went in a completely different direction with it instead. And it just wasn’t my thing.

Worth the Watch?

Most of the reviews and opinions are overwhelmingly positive, so don’t let my pissy wet blanket ruin your good time. Odds are wonderful in your favor that YOU, yourself, the dipshit reading this, are going to like it tremendously! Action romance thrills suspense mental disorders intrigue and mullets! Go nuts.


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Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #6 – “Chapter Six: St. Patrick’s Day”

* Part 6 of 13 of the Batman: The Long Halloween limited series *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #6 – “Chapter Six: St. Patrick’s Day”! In the previous installment, Batman and Catwoman spend some time together and then they spend some time together out of costume and neither knows each other’s secret identities, which is insane to me.

A car full of Falcone’s men get killed! Not the car. The car doesn’t get killed, but the men do. Chalk another up for Holiday! He is someone to admire, that’s for certain.

Bruce Wayne gets seduced by Poison Ivy, who all but spreads her legs and wraps them around his butt in the universal gesture of courtship.

Anything else? Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent weren’t able to question Bruce Wayne yet about his Falcone connection, but I’m sure we’ll also not get that at all in this issue either!

OK, that’s enough.

Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #6 [May, 1997]
Written by: Jeph Loeb
“Chapter Six: St. Patrick’s Day”

Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #6

A guard turns the key in a locked cell. “Step away from the door” he says to a pair of eyeballs in the dark. Early parole for this lucky so-and-so at Gotham Penitentiary. She – yes, a woman! Women can be criminals too, as it turns out! — returns to Carmine Falcone’s office. “I’ve missed you, Poppa,” she says. “You have been away too long, my daughter. The family needs you now. I need you,” says Carmine.

Yeah, this broad is gonna be dead in about six pages.

Bruce Wayne, now the Gotham City Bank President, has to sit in on his monthly BORED MEETING, get it? He speaks, but it’s like someone else is talking. In short, the bank and Falcone Imports should do business together. He’s given the go-ahead of a $350,000,000 wire transfer right to Falcone’s bulging pockets. The other board members are thrilled, but what’s with the change of heart??

…

Bruce Wayne leaves through the elevator in a haze. Here’s his change of heart: Poison Ivy’s scratchy, itchy pussy has gotten to his brain! As Bruce leaves the bank, Selina “Scratchy Itchy” Kyle tries to get his attention with no success. When Bruce opens his car door, Selina notices that’s filled with… gasp… ivy.

Back at the precinct, Gordon and Dent pore over their case. Bodies are piling up, and Dent is excited that the mafia families are killing each other. Makes less work for them! Gordon disagrees because he’s a “good cop” (there’s no such thing).

Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #6

The Jackson Pollock painting here is right! You stink, Dent!

“What do you want to do about Bruce Wayne?” Dent asks. “With what we suspect about the connection to the Roman, we could hurt them.”

Jim Gordon talks about Chicago instead for a minute, the parade downtown and turning the river green for St. Patrick’s Day. That actually happens, they dump gallons of dye into the river every year. Isn’t that fucked up?

This St. Patrick’s Day ain’t green, though, Dent. It’s red. Blood red. Holiday is gonna strike again and they’re no closer to figuring out who it is than they were five months ago, gawddurnit. So, I guess Gordon’s point is to stop focusing on Bruce Wayne and focus on Salvatore Maroni. That guy is the cheese today.

Whatshisface is eavesdropping outside the office. Vernon the Nerd. The assistant, the one in Maroni’s pocket. He’s going to get a meat hook in his butthole Action Jackson-style if he keeps this up.

Elsewhere, Carmine’s sister Carla is shooting her gun for fun into a piece of paper with a target on it. It looks like she’s in her kitchen. Carmine’s daughter, Sofia, pays her a visit. They hug. Drat that Carmine, he never said anything about getting busted out of da joint! Give your auntie a kiss now, sugar.

Carla shows Sofia the gun that killed Alberto. She “forgot” to give the evidence to the police. It’s the same gun that was used to kill her son, Johnny. “I’m going to use this gun, Sofia. I’m going to get this cafone ‘Holiday’.”

Sofia is about seventeen feet taller than her aunt. She tells her that their going to hit Maroni on St. Patrick’s Day. “Poppa believes that Maroni either is Holiday or knows who it is.” And on top of that, money is flowing from the bank. All is good in the Falcone family right now! Except all the sudden murders, that is, I guess.

Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is having a lovely dinner in his manor with his sweetie.

Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #6

My sensitive ivy is all a-flutter!

Things go well until Catwoman trespasses and breaks and enters and runs along the table and starts trying to beat up Poison Ivy. “You’re like a weed that’s come into someone else’s yard,” Catwoman says, kicking Ivy’s face. “A weed that needs to be torn out by the roots!”

Bruce grabs her neck and tells to stop. Catwoman, instinctively, lets out a “MRROW!” And then she starts trying to rip Bruce to shreds with her cat claws, and his chest bursts open to reveal all this fucking ivy. Then he collapses. And Poison Ivy has disappeared.

At 5:02am, a whole bunch of people get shot and then a chandelier falls and people die. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

That morning, when reasonable people are awake, Sofia and her driver approach Maroni’s house only to find it already broken into. “Someone beat us to the punch,” she says. “This changes things.”

That night, Catwoman is playing with the Batsignal and summons Batman to the roof. He tells her to knock it the fuck off before he gets the spray bottle.

Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #6

HE’S IDENTICAL FROM THE NOSE TO THE CHIN! FIGURE IT OUT, ALREADY!

“Why? Why do you help?” Batman asks her.

“In time. You’ll see.” Catwoman flips away.

“I… am no longer in the green,” Batman thinks. “Poison Ivy is no longer in my system. But, her spell made me do… things that will have to be repaired. The bank. My reputation. I… owe Catwoman much…”

We end with Mr. Carmine Falcone pushing a stack of money over to Poison Ivy on the other side of his desk. “If it hadn’t been for Catwoman’s unexpected interference… think of how much more we could have accomplished,” she says.

“Miss Ivy. If there’s one thing I learned in business… it’s to expect the unexpected.”

Final Thoughts

WELL THAT SETTLES THAT. I’d bone Poison Ivy, probably. Dude should’ve stayed addled.


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East of West, Issue #39 – “These Brothers of Destiny”

* Part 10 of 16 of the The Apocalypse: Year Three storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: East of West, Issue #39 – “These Brothers of Destiny”! In the previous installment, Thomas the Texas Rangin’ Hunter was able to fanagle his way into sniping the shit out of John Freeman VIII with the help of his ruthless father. Ruthless! Without ruth! Ruth’s not here, man. That’s for sure. No ruth to be seen anywhere.

That’s about it. These issues can usually be summarized in one sentence, such as “Xiaolian crushes her sister’s head” or “Bel Solomon farts out his baked bean dinner”.

How will this one be summarized? I can’t wait. I predict “Andrew Archibald Chamberlain sticks Bel Solomon’s head in a deep fryer”.

East of West, Issue #39 [October, 2018]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“These Brothers of Destiny”

East of West, Issue #39

War is pretty hot. I mean, not temperature-wise (although who can say?). Too bad she spends most of the series as a little boy and then as a little man. A shame, really.

Flashback to a small meeting of the Chosen. Ezra Orion is mad at Hu Mao, Xiaolian’s older sister, for showing up. Her father was supposed to come, not some kind of pissant offspring envoy. “The Premier will never return here. To you. I am all you get,” she says to him. Hu’s the Chosen now, bitch. What up? What up?

Cheveyo asks her if she’s thinks she’s sooooo clever. She responds that it’s just how things are. So can it.

Cheveyo argues that a perception of how things are might entirely be how things are. Illusions and tricks and sleight of hand. “Are you sure you have a place here?”

She tells him to “get fucking bent, old man.” John Freeman VIII likes her fiestiness! Curiously, she introduces herself as the only child of the Premier. Freeman gives her a word of advice: you can trust cranky old Cheveyo and Ezra Orion, but don’t trust these two fuckers over here. *jabs thumb in the direction of Archibald and Bel Solomon, lookin’ like members of ZZ Top*

Archibald calls Bel an “exquisitely rumpled specimen”. I’m moist in the loins.

East of West, Issue #39

Break out those fuzzy guitars! “Sharp Dressed Man”! “Sharp Dressed Man”!

Speaking of cranky, Bel wants to know why they’re all wasting their time meeting again. Working on bringing about the end of the world due to the Word of the Message and all that other dipshittery. Bel’s the skeptic, remember? Every group of Chosen needs a skeptic, I always say.

They all watch a projection of the Message, sliding by like a marquee sign. Here’s the major takeway phrase: “The end of all things.” Debatable that an end doesn’t mean a new beginning. We could agonize for hours – days – over that one! Join us in the agonization, Hu. Join us, goddamnit.

Hu thinks that this new beginning nonsense is a load of… well, she likes it. The rest don’t. Bel argues that the Message is just a guide, like the Bible or Zagat’s restaurant books! They all actually answer to a higher power, and the higher power is dead. “And it happened right in front of us,” says Bel. “We all watched.”

So, ergo, don’t talk to Bel about the Message and the end of times. It’s all hooey. Peace out.

“How things were is not how they always will be.”

“How things are is not how they will end.”

Flashforward to the present, where things that were are not how they are now and it won’t end that way either (see, I’m paying attention). Wolf wonders if eating Ezra Orion has caused the Word to end up in him. At any rate, he can feel it squirming around in there like worms in dirt. He recites some Words from the Message, and Crow thinks it’s all hooey. Peace out.

Wolf would smile if it were nonsense, but he will not smile. He will never smile again!

East of West, Issue #39

I think this might be one of them Taylor Swift songs.

A floating orb drone swings on by with some information for them. “Seventeen minutes ago we received a proximity alarm from a perimeter drone. There was a breach fifteen miles southwest of here.” Shit, not Gary Busey again! That guy’s always trying to get through!

Wolf uses the orb as binoculars and sees Mao’s army at their door. And it’s sizeable enough. Lookin’ pretty hale and hearty, actually.

“So… what do you want to do about it?” asks Crow. Well, it depends on what Xiaolian Mao wants to do, innit? Let’s go pay the heartless wench a visit…

Elsewhere, Our Favorite Incompetent Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse approach the dead Psalm that was hired to kill Babylon way, way back. A dozen issues ago or so. “Well, if you were wondering how bounty hunters would fare in our fair city of Babylon… There’s your answer,” says Conquest. He steps on its skull. “Look here, dummy. You could have died for something that mattered.” Like Scientology! Or Trumpism.

They can feel Death in the air. Literally. Death and his son. They’re nearby. The air is thick and heady. With Death, you see. He wears some of that good Old Spice stuff. Very pleasant. Anyway, are we all ready to meet up with him again?? Who brought the Chex Mix? Famine, you fuckhead. Did you forget the Chex Mix?

“I suppose you have some sort of plan for how to deal with him?” Conquest asks War.

“…” War responds.

“That’s what I thought.”

Famine, meanwhile, picks up the metal Psalm helmet and takes a look at a prompt on the screen.

East of West, Issue #39

Hmm…getting that chip implanted in our brains may be a better idea than we thought…

“I might have some ideas we could noodle on…” Famine says. “I think you’re going to like this.”

Woop woop! Resurrect the Psalm. That’ll do what, exactly? I don’t remember! Something! Man, I gotta reread through this whole series again some day… catch what I missed the first time around.

What’s Archibald up to??? He’s watching his many security cameras. “What do we have here?” he says, taking a big puff on his stinky cigar. “It appears to be a bounty for a man already possessing an embarrassment of riches.” He watches as Mao and Wolf approach each other. “I have done plenty. I have earned this. For I am blessed with fools for enemies and now they gather… Kindling for the fire.”

He continues patting himself on the dick and asks himself if he should indulge himself one last time. One last time…

And then there’s Death and Babylon riding their beasts of burden, telling jokes and swapping war stories… then suddenly Babylon sees a giant bird in the sky. Balloon scans the suspicious creature. “Don’t bother. That ain’t no bird,” Death says, readying his pistol. It’s the Psalm robot thing and it’s buzzing up a frenzy!

East of West, Issue #39

NZZZZZZ! PSALM’S GETTING ANGRY!! NZZZZZZZZ!!!

Death shoots the thing right in the face and asks Babylon where this little fucker came from. “I thought there was only one of these things left and you killed it?” Balloon suggests that maybe some of the 150 Psalms went dormant during the Union purge. At any rate, not good. Death realizes this, because about 30 more suddenly descend from the sky, all NZZZZ-ing all day. Death screams for Babylon to get the CUNT out of there as fast as possible. And don’t look back! Go find a Dairy Queen or something, kid. Beat it.

“Don’t worry, Babylon,” Balloon says as they book it away. Death is getting swarmed and it doesn’t look good. “Your father will be fine.”

It doesn’t look good.

“He’s Death itself. What can stand against that?”

It looks like the Psalms killed him, lol

“I dunno… a buncha weird cyborg cult people?” Babylon watches the carnage from behind a rock, far away. Even Balloon is pessimistic now. Babylon wants to go back, but Balloon urges him to stay put. Let’s go find that Dairy Queen…

Nope, the red guy and the blue guy and the greenish-yellow guy show up. “Hello there, Babylon…” War looks quite smug. “Are you ready to become what you were born to be?”

Final Thoughts

Is Death dead? Did Death die a death. Did Death am become death? This is a wild series, ain’t it? When Death can die?

I have no other commentary. Death death death death death.


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Level 16 (2018)

Tagline:
Purity has a price.

Wide Release Date:
February 20, 2018

Directed by:
Danishka Esterhazy
Written by:
Danishka Esterhazy
Produced by:
Stephanie Chapelle, Michael McNamara

Starring:
Katie Douglas
Celina Martin
Peter Outerbridge
Sara Canning

Level 16

PREGAME THOUGHTS

Honestly, no real thoughts here. My 7-year-old daughter couldn’t sleep on a Saturday night and was hanging out with me on the couch, so I picked something that looked interesting enough for me that was also about girls. I guess it’s not for kids, but she got bored about ten minutes in anyway. Turns out it’s a movie about farming teenage girls for their skin, so maybe she was better off not learning about this shit until she was at least…seven and a half.

THE 600(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

Welcome to a boarding school circa whenever. Groups of girls live on sixteen floors, graduating to new levels as they get older. Things are suspicious right away: the “academy” is run by a woman named Miss Brixil (Sara Canning), the girls are under constant surveillance and treated with miltary strictness. They are taught to stick to feminine virtues of cleanliness and obedience or else they get punished with isolation. They don’t even know how to read, man. These kids ain’t learnin’ nuthin’. They are all told that they are getting groomed for adoption, so straighten up and fly right or else you’ll never get picked up by Mr. and Mrs. Fauntleroy Chanel Aston Martin.

Level 16

Big Brother is always watching you. Do something funny! Do a cartwheel!

Main girl Vivien (Katie Douglas), and fellow “classmates”, gets bumped up to Level 16 where she reunites with old friend Sophia (Celina Martin). Sophia knows the ropes of Level 16 and advises Vivien to never swallow the vitamins they are given as they are actually sedatives. The first night, Vivien (pretending to be fast asleep) gets carried off by a big tough Rowdy Roddy Piper-looking Russian guard (along with a another girl) to be viewed and inspected by “prospective parents”. They’re keen on Vivien, and they follow Miss Brixil to discuss “purchasing” her. The girls are then carried back. Later, when talking to Sophia, Vivien learns that one of the guards has appeared to be inappropriately touching the girls. So this place is fun all around.

Apparently there’s a fever going around the boarding school! And the only prescription is… more vitamins! In the form of “vaccines” that cause rashes and seizures! Whoops! Dr. Miro (Peter Outerbridge) is the facility’s doctor and he looks a bit like Martin Mull as Gene Parmesan. Miro is nice to Vivien until he infers that Vivien isn’t taking her vitamins, so he dopes her up with a shot of condensed vitamins. Uber sedatives. She gets loopy for a bit, but then regains composure by the next night. Sophia knows that the one guard, Alex, has been touching the girls. Next time they catch him coming in the room alone while pretending to asleep, they’ll attack the guy and steal his keycard. Yeah. Teenagers fighting a buff Russian dude. Good luck.

The plan has a hitch: One of the other girls, Ava (Alexis Whelan), suspicious of Vivien’s behavior, reports her to the authorities. Vivien gets locked up for the night in solitary confinement. It’s up to Sophia to do it alone! And she almost does! But then she is caught before she can rescue Vivien, so then she gets locked up. Ugh. Girls, am I right?

The missing keycard is a big fucking deal. Miss Brixil and Dr. Miro line all the Level 16 girls up and holler at ’em. A girl named Rita (Amalia Williamson) is forced out of the room for punishment, and until the card turns up, it’ll be one girl per day. That night, Vivien finds the keycard behind her bed, busts out of the room, busts out Sophia, and they both discover a creepy operating room full of creepy bags that presumably have creepy corpses. One of the corpses is Rita with her face removed. They then discover a video in a lounge that reveals their “boarding school” to actually be a farm for skin rejuvenation transplant victims. Hilarity ensues!

Level 16

Yum! Dinner’s ready!

Let’s wrap this sucker up. They try to warn the other girls. They capture Miss Brixil and force her to confess. Miss Brixil herself underwent the skin rejuvenation transplant. They all run away. Vivien and Sophia escape to a locked shed. Dr. Miro tries to coax them out, but Viven thwarts him by slicing up her own face with a razor making Miro go “noooo! arrrrgh! noooo!” and then he’s in trouble with the government and he gets shot. The girls get rescued by the local police and every goes and gets ice cream.

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — General Movie Thoughts

I enjoyed this movie more than I expected to. More than I should’ve, too. I recognize that the story was a little thin, the plot wasn’t that original, nor was the acting great, but it was a fun little story that was oddly compelling. At first it gave me TV movie vibes, but that’s because every single actor here is some who-cares Canadian. Right? Nothing says “TV movie vibes” like filthy, filthy Canadians!

Note: The views presented by Tom do not necessarily reflect the views of TomWritesAboutStuff, its parent company, its subsidiary companies, and Tom himself even though he just wrote them down.

Level 16

Owwww, ahhhh, waahhhh, this is what being Canadian feels like, waaaahhh!!

The case against the movie is damning, honestly. It feels like a stretched-out episode of The Twilight Zone or a very subpar Black Mirror. Hell, you can even make a throwaway X-Files episode out of this premise. These girls have been raised in this hellhole since infancy. They have never seen sunlight, they don’t know how to read, they don’t have families, they don’t make contact with the outside world, and they don’t seem to engage in any stimulating activities whatsoever. Yet, they do seem to have the ability to understand that there isn’t something right about the little world they live in, and Vivien later understands that the place is nothing but a farm to raise young girls for their faces without any context about how the outside world really works. Maybe this is how every boarding school on Earth operates! Maybe it’s just a rite of passage, you know, losing your face. How the fuck would they know literally anything? These girls are probably not even allowed to take a shit. I guess my bottom line here is that it takes a huge suspension of disbelief to accept the premise at face value without nitpicking details and questioning the inner workings of the world outside of the context of the story itself.

Level 16

Hmm… thhis is one looks juicy and fresh. Does she come with a side salad?

That all being said, I did accept the premise at face value and I didn’t hate the movie. Also, I’ve seen and enjoyed enough episodes of fantasy/sci-fi TV in my lifetime that my tolerance threshold is pretty high. I readily ate this shit up anyway.

TOPIC 2 — Plot Holes

Yeah, ok, maybe I will nitpick a little bit here! I’ll even reiterate some points because I’m just so dang curious about them.

  • The girls can’t read or write, but they talk casually like high schoolers to one another. In such a dystopian, helpless setting, presumably raised from birth (?), wouldn’t their speech be completely childlike? They do hint at this a few times, when Grace smiles meekly and asks what word is on her dress, or when one other girl jubilates that the vitamin they’re getting that day is blue. It seems like this is how most of their conversation would be, trained to not bitch or complain or have negative thoughts?
  • Raised from birth? Raised from toddler age? Were these girls abandoned in front of fire stations? How were Dr. Miro and Miss Brixil able to just scoop up these girls for their purposes? Are these Russian girls that the Russian government are turning a blind eye toward? Why don’t they have Russian accents? Are they speaking Russian and it’s just translated to English for movie purposes? What about Sophia? She’s Asian! None of this makes sense!
Level 16

IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE! RAWR!

  • There are cameras everywhere, and it’s directly shown that these girls are constantly being watched, but why doesn’t it amount to much? Vivien and Sophia are constantly running around the halls like squawking chickens and yet not one person is shown in some sort of surveillance room keeping an eye on anything. ESEPCIALLY in their dormitory? The one place you’d expect to have fucking cameras? Is it just assumed that they’ll be nice little girls and take their sleep pills, because throughout the movie we see Vivien and Sophia running around their dorm like squawking chickens when they should be knocked out cold. Put a fucking camcorder on a tripod in the room or something.
  • What kind of punishments were the girls actually afraid of? These girls were literally getting farmed for their faces, so Miro and Brixil couldn’t be able to lay a hand on them. That leaves solitary confinement? Fat chance, idiots. If it were me and they placed me in a stinkin’ cage, you’d better believe I’d be rapping my skull against the bars like I was trying to play “Flight of the Bumblebee” without my hands. There’s literally no punishment these girls would actually have to realistically endure. Someone take away their Nintendo!

There are others, but I’m hella bored now.

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

All of the girls are named after classic Hollywood actresses: Vivien (Leigh), Sophia (Loren), Ava (Gardner), Rita (Hayworth), Olivia (de Havilland), Clara (Bow), Hedy (Lamarr), Audrey (Hepburn), Grace (Kelly), Veronica (Lake), Greta (Garbo), May/Mae (West), and Natalie (Wood)
Ok, fine, this isn’t bad trivia at all. I don’t even know what to make fun of. I would’ve preferred a few more, I guess, like Lauren (Bacall) and Pauly (Shore).

Other than the title there are no opening credits.
Yeah, I suppose this is what passes for trivia on a shitty Netflix original movie that no one watched but me. Perhaps the movie’s budget didn’t allow funding for opening credits! That would certainly be a Thing.

Though it is not be explicitly shown or stated, it is likely that Miss Brixil is is also the woman in the videos during some lessons. Both women have platinum hair, similar clothing style, and signature red lips.
SIGNATURE RED LIPS. That’s what I want on my gravestone.

Level 16

Check out those signature red lips in action!

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

Nah. It felt like an extra-long X-Files episode, which isn’t terrible criticism, but at least with X-Files you get a screen full of sexy-ass Fox Mulder. I liked this movie enough, but you won’t. Don’t even bother!


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