Monday, March 11, 2024

Adult Siblings Versus...Episode 91: Spider-Man (2002 Film)

Working our way through the back archive of the Adult Siblings Versus...continues. This episode, we looked at the  the 2002 Spider-Man film and discuss the singe greatest portrayal of a superhero character in film:

J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson.

"Get me pictures...PICTURES OF SUPERMAN!"
".....I mean 'Spider-Man'. Sorry everyone."

More details after the jump.

Thursday, March 7, 2024

Adult Siblings Versus...Episode 90: Class Act

As I continue to dump out the old episodes form the past quarter, today we look at the episode of Adult Siblings Versus...where we looked at the fourth most famous movie by 90s rap duo Kid ‘n Play; Cass Act, where in at no point does a house party occur.

Their movie career is like a dark, alternative universe path that Will Smith avoided

More details after the jump.

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Adult Siblings Versus...Episode 89: Project A-ko

Alright, I will try to catch up to the actual podcast, as we are quite behind.

In this episode of Adult Siblings Versus...we looked at Project A-ko, which in a way was the patient zero of our anime obsession when we were kids.

If you're only ever going to watch one sci-fi, lesbian school girl anime
Make it this one!

More details after the jump.

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Black Superheroes: Nick Fury, Jr.

Step 1: Make him black. Step 2: ???
Step 3: New readers, somehow!

Name: Marcus Johnson

First Appearance: Battle Scars #1 (2012)

History: Marcus Johnson lived a relatively normal life. He was raised by a single mother and entered the army out of high school, where he eventually became an Army Ranger. While serving overseas in Afghanistan, he was informed that his mother had been murdered. Returning the Untied States for the funeral, Marcus was ambushed by assassins and the super criminal mercenary known as the Taskmaster, the same people who killed his mom. While he was rescued by SHIELD and Captain America, he was deliberately not told why he and his mother had been targeted. Soon Johnson was attacked again only to be saved by the man revealed to be his long-lost father, none other than former Director of SHIELD Nick Fury. In the ensuing adventure, the two teamed up, got captured, Johnson lost his eye during torture (and it just happened to be the exact same eye his father famously is missing), and the two managed to defeat the man behind the whole plot; Orion. Afterwards Johnson agrees to join SHIELD as its newest agent, taking the name that is revealed to have been his birth name: “Nick Fury, Jr.”

History: Overly contrived plotline that suggests the publisher has no respect for its readers, thy name is Marcus Johnson. I don’t often write these Black Superhero profiles about characters I despise and, indeed, I don’t hate Baby Fury as a character in the same way I hate the Sentry (may his MCU appearance Rest is Piss).  However, his creation is the most extreme version of a concept I hate in comic books. I generally don’t mind changes of characters’ traits in adaptations so long as the spirit of the character remains intact, but every so often Marvel or DC will take that change and implement it back into the current comic and that’s the thing I loathe; it becomes a snake eating its own tail. In this case, having a white, cigar chomping ,World War II vet named “Nick Fury” was apparently bad for business when Samuel L. Jackson was playing the character in the biggest movies of the 21st Century. You know what that means; MINORITY REPLACEMENT, BABY!

Haven't seen the marketing team this power mad since the Clone Saga 

It's more complicated than simply replacing, say, Ray Palmer with Ryan Choi. In fact, to tell the full story of how Fury Lad came to be we must start eleven years before his first appearance. In fact, this is actually the story of four separate characters over two separate mediums.

More on Kid Fury after the jump.

Thursday, February 15, 2024

Black Superheroes: Lightning

I don't know why she's naked in her powered form
Seems kind of weird for a teen hero

Name: Jennifer Pierce

First Appearance: Kingdom Come #1 (1996); Justice Society of America (vol. 3) #12 (2008)

History: Jennifer Piece is the youngest daughter of the legendary protector of the Suicide Slum, Black Lightning. As with her older sister Anissa, she was born with a dormant metagene that emerged in her adolescence. Despite this, Black Lightning made it clear that he would not allow either of his children to follow in his footsteps as a hero. Where Anissa gained to ability to control her density, Jennifer instead gained powers similar to their father; the ability to generate and control electricity. In addition she gained the power to fly and to generate an electric aura that came in the form of a golden and spiky appearance. The day she graduated college Anissa, defied their father and became the hero known as Thunder. Over the next few years Black Lightning watched his oldest daughter struggle to find her footing without his help and it made him second guess his decision. With Jennifer, who was having a hard time controlling her abilities, he decided to take the opposite route and make sure she was trained properly in the use of her powers and in fighting crime. To that end he had Jennifer join the Justice Society of America so that they they could give her the mentorship she needed. Soon after she became known as “Lightning.”

Beta Says: If she, along with her sister, hadn’t appeared in the CW Black Lightning show a few years back I’d be certain that Jennifer would be forgotten. In the comics it has been quite a long while since we’ve seen the second daughter of Jefferson Pierce. Hell, the last time we saw was I think at least two reboots ago, so I’m not even sure if she still exists in the current DC continuity. I would say that she is a whole category below Thunder in relevance in the DC Comics, which is a bit annoying considering she debuted with a bit of hype. It’s interesting that she fell in the background, as Jennifer is actually a much older character than you’d think, because the character actually debuted twelve years earlier in the fantastic and historically relevant miniseries Kingdom Come. Sort of.   I shall explain.

 More on the golden child of the Black Lightning clan after the jump.

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Black Superheroes: Blade

"Some motherf@#$ers are always trying to ice skate uphill!"

Name: Eric Cross Brooks

First Appearance: The Tomb of Dracula #10 (1973)

History: Tara Vanessa Cross-Brooks, who was in labor, sought shelter at a brothel in London, England. A doctor was called in after she started experiencing complications, but it turned out that it was a vampire in disguise: Deacon Frost. Frost drained Tara of her blood before being chased away. Sadly, Tara did not survive the incident. Her son, Eric Brooks, who was still in the womb when she was bitten, lived despite odds. Because of the circumstances of his birth, Eric was born with a natural immunity to vampire bites and an innate and deep hatred of all vampires. He was raised in the brothel for a few years before he came under the tutelage of veteran vampire hunter Jamal Afari, who trained him in his profession. Over the years Eric became an Olympic-level athlete, a top notch fighter, and a master of weapon combat, though he was especially skilled with knives and daggers which earned him the nickname “Blade.”

Blade would become one of the most prominent vampire hunters in the world, with clashes with the legendary vampire Dracula to his name and teaming up with other famous hunters. However, his life took an unexpected turn years later when he encountered Morbius, the Living Vampire. Morbius bit him and, likely due to his significantly different nature compared to other vampires and possibly because of Blade’s unique physiology, the British hunter had a sort of mutation that granted him super strength and more obvious vampiric traits (including fangs and a bloodlust) but an immunity of sunlight and other weaknesses. With his training, years of experience, and his newfound powers, the “Daywalker” is the most famous, skilled, and feared vampire slayer in the world.

Blade is the only one capable of stopping Morbin Time
Well, Blade and Box Office returns...

Beta Says: Wow, I cannot believe that I’ve been doing Black Superheroes Month since 2011 and it took me all this time to remember to write about Blade, who was the goddamn most famous comic book character in America for a bit. I think it’s two reasons: 1) I feel like I kept pushing Blade back saying “I’ll do him next year” in favor of a character I found more interesting and 2) I sometimes forget Blade exists, as he’s actually not all that popular in the comics. He’s a C-tier character at best and yeah, every few years Marvel will try to give him an ongoing, but they always end up canceled. It’s crazy to think that Blade is kind of ho-hum in terms of comics prevalence, considering he single handedly saved the concept of superhero movies.

More on the weird dichotomy of Blade after the jump.

Thursday, February 1, 2024

Black Superheroes Month IX: Black Power

I uh...I'm not sure who everyone in this picture is
Well, this is embarrassing

Another year, another chance to write about Black Superheroes.

For the uninitiated, there is a common misconception that there are not very many black heroes in superhero comics, so every year (…mostly) I write a series of blogs about various characters to showcase that there are actually a lot of black heroes around, but most of them are horribly underutilized. This year, unless something goes wrong, I will be writing three profiles throughout the month of February. All my previous articles can be found here.

This year I struggled to pick who to talk about, partially because I have way too many male heroes to choose and way too few female heroes to pick from (there is actually a deeply concerning lack of black superheroines out there, sadly). Originally, I was going to make Sunspot of the New Mutants my featured character this year, as the last few years (and the last forty years actually) there has been controversy over whether or not a character who was depicted as Afro-Brazilian in his early appearances should be drawn with dark skin or be played by a black actor, and I’ve gotten f**king sick of it. However, a different character I should have thought of earlier came to mind whom I realized I had to do ASAP and since the third character this year is non-negotiable as well it was either Sunspot or a profile on a female hero, and since I don’t like the idea of this being an all-dude month I’ll talk about all my very angry thoughts regarding poor Roberto next year.

Later we learn his secondary mutation is "White Washing"

Next time instead will look at a character that is overdue being looked at on this blog, as for a brief time they were the most famous and popular comic book hero in all of pop culture.


Saturday, January 20, 2024

Adult Siblings Versus...Episode 88: Stop! (war)Hammer Time!

 Still catching up with the backlog of episodes of Adult Siblings Versus...

This episode goes completely off the rails, as I bombard my sister with too much information about he tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000. When I said this was a nerd blog I f**king meant it!

My main army are the Space Wolves
And yes, I do prefer the doggo helmets

Also here's a video I made using an audio clip form the episode


More details after the jump.

Sunday, January 14, 2024

Beta's Top Ten Favorite Movies of 2023

Today marks fourteen years since my first bog post on Beta is Dead. As has been the custom, I will celebrate by sharing my To Ten Movie list of the past year, in this case 2023.

As usual, take in mind that this is my personal list of favorite movies, not an objective “Top Films of the Year” list, since I didn’t watch every single movie. This is just my personal opinion and, frankly, I’d be interested to hear your favorite movies of the year in the comment section.

Some quick notes about some honorable mentions: I really enjoyed The Marvels and Blue Beetle (especially Blue Beetle) but neither appears on the list because there were just way too many better flicks this year. I still want to make a special note that they were both good and should have done better at the Box Office. Also, Barbie just barely got edged off of the list, and I struggled with this quite a bit. I think it was great, and on any other year it would have made it on here easily. However don’t be surprised if you see the other half of Barbenheimer shortly.

Full Top Ten after the jump.

Monday, January 1, 2024

Adult Siblings Versus...Episode 87: Home Alone 2 - Lost in New York

 Happy New Year. I'm trying to catch up on past episodes of Adult Siblings Versus before it goes completely off-the-rails. For Christmas, we revisited Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and were pleasantly surprised how unique it was.

Just kidding; that shit was trash.

Do the exact same thing as before and you'll make all the money

More details after the jump.

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