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I still maintain that everyone should watch ANNIHILATION if only to appreciate what happens when scripting, cinematography, performance and basic editing fall away from a project, all to better appreciate it when a movie does care about such things.

Also, it led to this delightful bad movie review-retrospective of the entire film:
https://jabootu.net/?p=610

Well, I can say this: Sony's contract with Tom Holland would unquestionably see Holland required to perform in any Sony films they want him to perform in. Sony owns the film rights to Spider-Man, Holland is their employee as the actor who plays Spider-Man, and they have what's effectively a loan on Holland to Marvel Studios for MCU appearances in Marvel Studios films, and the use of Kevin Feige's services for Sony's Tom Holland films with the name "Spider-Man" in the title.

Sony can put Tom Holland's Spider-Man in any Sony-based film they want -- but at Marvel Studios' request, they have not done so, instead creating a Sony live action movie universe that seems to have a lot of Spider-Man's friends and enemies but not Spider-Man himself, because Spider-Man and the MCU combined have been more successful for Sony than having their own Spider-Man. Sony further loaned out the use of Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire's Spider-Mans to Marvel Studios as well as Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock.

I imagine that in time, Sony will exactly what Slider_Quinn21 theorizes they would do with Tom Holland's Spider-Man, simply to exercise their use of an intellectual property and their access to an actor.

All I can say is, the first VENOM movie was kind of fun. The second movie felt like the same movie as the first one, at least to me, and chaotically less fun, at least to me. And I am currently confined to quarters at present because my doctor just diagnosed me with pneumonia and says I have to avoid human contact for 48 hours after I start on the antibiotics, so I may well watch MORBIUS if only to offer an informed opinion on it.

I am deeply intrigued by MADAME WEB because I love women with superpowers and MADAME WEB seems to offer at least four of them in one movie.

Tom Holland filmed one day on the first VENOM movie for a cameo scene, but Marvel Studios asked Sony to cut the scene and Sony complied. Holland was featured in a B-roll cameo in the VENOM sequel, showing up in news footage.

https://www.cbr.com/report-tom-holland- … by-marvel/

There was some intention for Tom Hardy to feature more prominently in NO WAY HOME, but it didn't work out.

https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a3971 … nate-role/

There was this situation in CAPTAIN AMERICA (Vol. 3, 1998) where writer Mark Waid wanted to have Captain America fight Kang the Conquerer. However, Kang turned out to be tied up in an AVENGERS plot, so Waid was forced to reveal that Kang in his story was actually a different character, Korvac. It happens!

I am sick at home and watched the VENOM movie, which I didn't see when it first released in 2018. It made no sense to me: Venom is an evil version of Spider-Man. How are you supposed to do Venom without Spider-Man?

But I liked this movie. I was grudgingly impressed by how actor Tom Hardy's idiosyncratic twitchiness turns Eddie Brock into a struggling, frantic, moral, reckless journalist. I was grudgingly appreciative of how Venom is presented as an alien parasite from a horror movie whose bodily possession and eventual symbiosis with Eddie is played for terror and amusement. I was grudgingly admiring of how the Venom concept was reconfigured from dark mirror image of Spider-Man to a horror monster who falls in love with humanity and becomes a superhero. I was grudgingly entertained by the insane action sequences where Venom engages in chases and battles and drags Eddie along like a puppet.

Tom Hardy is a brilliant actor and director Ruben Fleischer did an impressive job at reimagining Venom as a copyright that had to function without Spider-Man. I still don't understand what Sony is playing, creating a Spider-Man cinematic universe with his villains and supporting cast (VENOM, MORBIUS, KRAVEN, MADAME WEB), but... VENOM is a fun movie. Maybe it doesn't matter how tired or fragmented a copyright is so long as it's given to talents who really embrace the material?

I should note: despite my masking with a KF94 in public and outside my private office at work, installing a HEPA air purifier in my private office, bringing a battery powered air purifier to restaurants, and getting a flu shot every year (along with two COVID vaccines every year), I still caught a cold a few weeks ago and still have a lingering post-viral cough. But it is my first cold in three years.

It's odd that you have such disdain for projects that you, by your own admission, haven't watched.

I myself was not keen on watching PRODIGY because... I didn't want to watch it if it were going to get cut off in mid-storyline by Paramount Plus writing it off. I'll watch it now that Netflix will stream it.

The opening of THE MARVELS with Kamala was pretty endearing to fans of her show. I concede that there aren't that many fans of Kamala's show.

This is an interesting article on how Marvel's fans have gotten older, and the current generation of potential superhero fans don't really want to go to the cineplex:
https://www.salon.com/2023/11/17/the-ma … -audience/

From the STAR TREK thread:
https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 901#p14901

Wil Wheaton's blog entry on masking is here:
https://wilwheaton.net/2023/11/mind-you … be-a-dick/

While outdoor transmission risk is negligible, a mask reduces it to non-existent. But even then, I don't see why anyone needs to take issue with anyone else's headwear.

I'm finding some of this baffling. I recognize that Wil Wheaton has offended you due to his behaviour at fan gatherings. You're someone who pays for the chance to meet actors, and I take it that Wheaton has failed to give you a good experience on at least one occasion. I have never met Wheaton and don't know what he's like in person, I've only read his books, and I've recently been informed that the writer is not their writing. I am sorry that you had a bad experience with Wheaton.

However, I don't see why you, someone who regularly declared the supremacy of N95s over all other masks, would take issue with a minor-league celebrity answering a question on his blog, explaining why he wears masks at indoor gatherings, and using his platform and near-non-existent fame to normalize wearing masks at public events to ward off illness. Note that the mask he was wearing, which looks to me like a KF94, is what I myself wear.

The thing about KF94 and KN95 masks: they block particles going in and out, unlike a surgical which only blocks particles going out. When you wear a surgical mask, you need everyone else to wear one too or you might as well not wear it at all. When you wear a KF94 or a KN95, you don't need anyone else around you to wear one; the protection is going both ways. To wear one of these masks is to tell everyone around you that your measures are for you and sufficient for you.

I'll respond to the other stuff in the STAR TREK thread when the Pfizer isn't hitting me as hard, but if you dislike Wil Wheaton, I am absolutely sure he did something to incur your wrath.

Bit late, but PRODIGY has been picked up by Netflix which will stream the first season and then, in 2024, the second season.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv … 235615236/

Why isn't THE MARVELS financially successful? I think there are unfortunately a number of creative and marketing factors at play.

Well, there may have been too long a time gap between the film and its Disney+ tie-ins. The characters of Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan made their full debuts in Disney+ TV shows. Monica was in CAPTAIN MARVEL as a child, but the adult incarnation only appeared in WANDAVISION. Kamala Khan was first onscreen in MS. MARVEL. WANDAVISION was two years ago and didn't lead into THE MARVELS. MS. MARVEL ran from June 6 - July 13 in 2022 and while it ended with a lead-in to THE MARVELS, it was over a year in the past when THE MARVELS premiered.

THE MARVELS may have been poisoned by forced synergy. Disney+ shows have a smaller audience than the mainstream moviegoing public. ENDGAME sold over 35 million individual tickets, LOKI reportedly streamed to 2.5 million households in its first five days, and MS. MARVEL reportedly streamed to 780,000 viewers in its first five days. THE MARVELS, in presenting itself as a movie with Monica, Kamala and Carol, may have given the impression that viewers who hadn't watched WANDAVISION and MS. MARVEL would have no interest in THE MARVELS.

Some have claimed that Disney has diluted the Marvel brand with Disney+ Marvel shows. They point out: ENDGAME was a huge release at a time when Marvel movies were all cinematic events of cultural significance. ENDGAME was one of three Marvel Studios releases in 2019. Marvel Studios 'only' released four movies in 2021, three in 2022 and another three in 2023. But from 2021 - 2023, Marvel released nine TV shows on Disney+. The argument is that WANDAVISION, LOKI, HAWKEYE and SECRET INVASION, by featuring lead Avengers characters from the films, made the films less special; films no longer seem like an event if their characters appear in view-on-demand shows.

I'm not entirely sure I'm convinced of this as these shows were fairly short, ranging from 6 - 9 episodes. But Kevin Feige might feel that the shows dilute the brand. Judging from the MCU: THE REIGN OF MARVEL STUDIOS book, Feige did not want the MCU on TV back in the days of AGENTS OF SHIELD and was very much pressured by Disney CEO Bob Chapek to produce TV for Disney+.

Speaking on a marketing level, THE MARVELS was definitely damaged by actor's strike. Brie Larson, Iman Vellani and Teyonah Parris couldn't make public appearances to promote Carol, Kamala and Monica. They couldn't appear in public showing off their sisterly bond on talk shows and at conventions; they couldn't post social media videos of the three of them hanging out as friends who adore each other; they couldn't show off the 50 megawatt chemistry of their onscreen connection.

But also on a marketing level, I think THE MARVELS was hurt by how Marvel never really gave Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers, a distinct and vivid personality that defined her in the cultural consciousness, and this is despite CAPTAIN MARVEL earning 1.131 billion at box office.

Carol Danvers suffers from an undefined personality. Slider_Quinn21 once said of Supergirl on the CW SUPERGIRL TV show: Kara Danvers (no relation) was defined by being 'nice'; there was nothing else to her character. I would argue that Kara was defined by being 'superhumanly nice' to the point where it was a legitimate superpower. Slider_Quinn21 was sort of right in that compared to the tormented warrior Oliver Queen and the neurotically hurried Barry Allen, the Kara character was far less distinct.

However, not every character needs to be written as a hypercomplex contradiction. Kara was a very simple, straightforward character who was defined by actress Melissa Benoist bringing charm, liveliness, humour and appeal to the role, much like Marty McFly having no characterization in BACK TO THE FUTURE but made dynamic through Michael J. Fox's comic timing and hilarious reactions to absurdity.

Marvel attempted something very much like the Supergirl template with Carol Danvers. Carol has amnesia and is defined by actress Brie Larson having an subtly militaristic bearing, an affable and lightweight charm that gives way to severity and forcefulness if pushed. The problem: SUPERGIRL, a weekly TV show, had plenty of screentime to let Melissa Benoist show Kara in everyday life and render her character with physical comedy and emotionality.

CAPTAIN MARVEL was a two hour movie, THE MARVELS is a 105 minute movie, and these feature films are not designed to let the audience spend an extended and regular amount of time with Brie Larson's body language, mannerisms, expressions and reactions. Where SUPERGIRL could let Melissa Benoist spend 30 minutes of the premiere being Kara Danvers and about 12 being Supergirl and still get the audience back next week, CAPTAIN MARVEL was juggling the Kree, the Skrulls, Carol's amnesia, Carol's lost identity -- so that by the time Carol gets something of her identity back, the movie was nearly over. Unlike, say, WONDER WOMAN, the CAPTAIN MARVEL movie did not present Carol Danvers with a strong identity or a distinct sense of what she respresents and what she stands for.

When WONDER WOMAN ended, everyone had a very clear sense of who Diana was: Diana is a warrior peacekeeper who loves the world and everything in it except for war. Diana lives for bringing peace into crisis. But who is Carol? What does she stand for?

CAPTAIN MARVEL fashioned her as a nearly empty vessel for Brie Larson's screen presence, and while Brie Larson is a magnetic, warmly endearing person, the amnesiac character she played meant she was limited in what she could do. WONDER WOMAN ended with Diana having endeared herself to the audience: she was the superhero who would not only save you but see the best in you and hug you. CAPTAIN MARVEL left Carol still rather blank, appreciated not for her vague personality but for how she would play a critical role in ENDGAME.

CAPTAIN MARVEL has been heralded as a smash hit because of its feminism and inspiring roles for women. It was wonderfully feminist and inspiring... but it also had a poor sense of geography in its action sequences, an overstuffed plot that limited Brie Larson's performance, a certain blandness in its overall direction.

I suspect that while the women-forward approach was good marketing for CAPTAIN MARVEL, it was successful at box office because CAPTAIN MARVEL was viewed as a key prequel to how ENDGAME would wrap up, so viewers enthralled by INFINITY WAR stirred viewers to watch CAPTAIN MARVEL, eager to see what seeds it would plant for resolving ENDGAME.

THE MARVELS doesn't have that advantage as critical viewing before an ENDGAME-level release (not that many movies do).

Ultimately, the success of CAPTAIN MARVEL may have been a bit of a mirage when it comes to Carol Danvers. Neither CAPTAIN MARVEL nor ENDGAME made Carol as personable and vivid as, say, Robert Downey Jr. in IRON MAN. Neither CAPTAIN MARVEL nor ENDGAME made Carol as dynamic and fun as Paul Rudd in ANT MAN or Chris Pratt in GUARDIANS.
Brie Larson is perfectly capable of being as endearing as Downey Jr. and Rudd and Pratt -- but the amnesiac character she was saddled with didn't allow her to make full use of her talents. And the marketing department had no ability to market Carol, Kamala and Monica because Larson, Vellani and Parris were on strike, no way to show the moviegoing public the fun, women-friendly, sisterly bond of these three characters with these three performers.

In addition, the film seems to have been edited to be as fast paced as possible. While Carol, Kamala and Monica have excellent chemistry throughout, there is a certain minimalism to the amount of screentime they get to just hang out and be; at one point, their interactions are compressed into a training montage. The movie survives it, but this lack of decompressed time with the characters also deprived the film and its marketing of more personal time with the characters.

As a result, there was not a huge audience hammering on the cineplex doors. There was only a very limited number of people eager to see THE MARVELS, eager to spend more time with Carol. There was only a very small audience who'd watched WANDAVISION and MS. MARVEL, who'd enjoyed Monica and Kamala, who wanted to see them on the big screen. There were only a few who were eager to join Carol Danvers on her cosmic sleepover adventure with Kamala and Monica.

Marvel movies have reached success with broad, mainstream audiences, but Carol's blandness and THE MARVELS being the culmination of two small screen shows meant it was making its audience narrower instead of wider.

As someone who loved Monica in WANDAVISION and adored Kamala in MS. MARVEL, I was so happy to see them with Carol in THE MARVELS. As someone for whom Brie Larson's acting strengths excuses any scripting weaknesses, I was delighted to see Carol back and with Monica and Kamala. But... I'm just one viewer. And right now, I can't imagine what someone who hadn't seen WANDAVISION and MS. MARVEL made of THE MARVELS. I have to think they would have been confused by who Monica and Kamala were, and would have been sufficiently confused that they would have stayed away.

It may have been better to just do CAPTAIN MARVEL II as Carol's story instead of tying it into two TV shows with a smaller audience than a mainstream superhero action film.

I've been reading MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios, an unauthorized history of Kevin Feige's Marvel Cinematic Universe by journalists Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales and Gavin Edwards. It starts with Marvel in bankruptcy and Feige being an assistant on the X-Men movie series. It provides an in-depth journey for Feige and Marvel from Iron Man to The Falcon & The Winter Solder and Wandavision at which point, the journalists have had fewer years to interview the participants and it gets quite vague. But some takeaways for the moment:

The ABC, Hulu and Netflix shows are addressed one chapter of this 30 chapter volume. The dismissiveness is telling. Basically, the Marvel CEO at the time, Isaac Perlmutter, set up a Marvel TV division within Marvel Entertainment that was separate from the Marvel Studios film division. Feige protested the MCU becoming weekly episodic TV instead of massive feature film events.

But Perlmutter wanted TV ad revenue profits and went ahead with the TV division despite Feige's concerns. Perlmutter had Marvel Studios' hire, Joss Whedon, commissioned to produce Agents of SHIELD. Feige protested his Avengers II director being distracted by TV and Perlmutter blocked from Feige from any TV involvement.

Perlmutter situated the Marvel TV offices far from Marvel Studios, and forced Marvel Studios to grant access to Jaimie Alexander (Sif), footage from The Winter Soldier, Samuel L. Jackson, and the Age of Ultron tie-in. But after Perlmutter was removed from authority over Feige, Perlmutter couldn't force anymore crossovers and Marvel Studios refused to tie in with the Netflix shows.

There also seems to be some sort of conflict between Joss Whedon and Kevin Feige that has made Feige unwilling to use Whedon's characters on Agents of SHIELD. It may be that Whedon agreeing to do a TV show was viewed as a betrayal of Marvel Studios or some other conflict tied into Whedon being revealed as an abusive boss, but Feige is noticeably steering clear of any of Whedon's original creations.

Perlmutter was cited as having a strong hand in the Marvel Creative Committee that oversaw and controlled the MCU films from Iron Man to Iron Man III. The Creative Committee was infamous for blocking female-led films and prominent female superheroes or supervillains, and it was peculiar, because that committee included comic book talents like Brian Michael Bendis and Joe Quesada who are not, to my knowledge, misogynists.

The book uncovers how Perlmutter was using the Committee to block any characters and films that Perlmutter didn't believe would lead to toy sales, and Perlmutter did not believe that female action figures sold well enough to justify female superhuman characters or female leads, which is why the Committee was thrown out of Marvel Studios along with Perlmutter. This seems to have indirectly led to Joe Quesada and Brian Michael Bendis both leaving Marvel, having been dismissed from any involvement (and pay) in the feature films.

The film notes that Feige as a producer tends to have an attitude: "We'll fix it in post." Iron Man was filmed without a completed script, with special effects designers and directors and actors feeling out the story during filming and writers drafting scenes on the day they were shot, and then Feige would assemble the film in the edit bay and rework things with dialogue recording and digital alterations and limited reshoots.

Feige's improvisational inventiveness and flair for creativity crashed hard on Iron Man II, a film made in less time than Iron Man and therefore with less time to refine and rework. This approach yielded, on the whole, good and often great results from Thor straight through to Endgame. However, a shift in leadership at Disney when Bob Chapek took over, has seen Feige severely overstretched. Chapek wanted more movies more often and more shows more constantly. This saw Feige working not only on movies but also Disney+ shows; Feige was now expected to weigh in on comic books and merchandising and theme parks and whatnot.

The history also points out: at numerous points, Feige had some vital creative partners, but due to circumstances outside Feige's control, many have slipped away. Joss Whedon was to be a key collaborator in the MCU, but he left and seems to have been encouraged to stay away. James Gunn was expected to become a vital part of the MCU films, but then Gunn was fired off of Guardians of the Galaxy III. Despite being re-hired to the film, Gunn was not available to be re-hired in his Marvel producership. Victoria Alonso, a vital producer overseeing effects production, was abruptly terminated for reasons unclear. The excellent comic book writers on the Creative Committee were thrown out with Perlmutter.

Anthony and Joe Russo were alienated from Marvel and Disney due to Disney trying to scam Scarlett Johansson out of her pay. Feige is having to shoulder all these burdens from all these departures, and it's not easy to find successors compatible with Feige's approach. The book notes that the third Ant Man and the fourth Thor features were regarded as middling-to-poor, and it all stems from Feige's improvisational assembly tactics becoming a liability when Feige's team is depleted.

The book says that Kevin Feige is wonderful, but there are only 24 hours in a day, and there are simply too many movies, shows, comics and rides for one person to handle. The book declares that while Kevin can raise the quality of any project he touches, there are now too many movies and shows and that there is only so much Kevin to go around. The book ends on a somewhat pessimistic note, unsure if Feige is coming to the end of his path with Marvel... unless Feige is able to find new collaborators or if Feige willing to reinvent the way he works or if Feige manages to once again achieve the run of success he had from Iron Man to Endgame.

I'm not sure how much of that I agree or disagree with, but it's an interesting and informed perspective.

One thing that jumped out at me: the book reports that Samuel L. Jackson was angry during the filming of Avengers that Whedon had written scenes that called for Jackson to run. He was similarly displeased on Captain Marvel for having to run. He was relieved that his action sequence in The Winter Soldier involved sitting in a car. The book points out: Jackson was 60 in Iron Man, 65 in Avengers, and 74 years old in Secret Invasion.

It occurs to me that this could have been a huge problem in trying to present Nick Fury as an action hero lead in Secret Invasion or in most Marvel movies, which may be why Jackson's roles were always brief and aloof, and why making him an action lead in Secret Invasion was less than successful.

I guess... I never realized that Samuel L. Jackson was anything but ageless, probably due to movie magic.

I'm glad you brought this up. This is something I've been contemplating with regards to SLIDERS.

I personally don't feel Topaz is really adding anything that isn't originally there. I don't think Jim_Hall feels the same way, and that's very reasonable.

Jim_Hall and I discussed upscaling as pertaining to facial enhancement on still images. That's a slightly different situation: we were using AI to sharpen up the faces on old SLIDERS publicity shots that Jim_Hall had bought and scanned and restored with painstaking effort and care.

Topaz Gigapixel rebuilds faces well, but they often look sharper than the rest of the photo. There was often a razor-sharp face on a blurrier neck with fuzzy hair and clothes. We found that for the most part, we had to erase most of the facial enhancements and kept only a small amount of sharpened facial elements, and it was often subtle to the point where we might as well have not done it. In one area where we differed: I preferred to keep the AI facially-upscaled eyes and mouths. Jim_Hall preferred to not even have that.

I deferred to Jim_Hall entirely on this as the photos were for his site and they were his photo scans.

But to me, Topaz is 'just' stretching the images, albeit in a highly intricate and detailed way that uses different methods for different image elements, and machine learning is clearly more reliable on rebuilding faces in photos.

Topaz uses a massive library of algorithmic functions with multiple function sets for specific textures (grass, skin, metal, concrete) and visual elements (eyes, hair) to add new pixels effectively. Ultimately, it's a way to stretch the image to a larger size. It isn't using the same technique for each part of the image, but multiple techniques on each element of the image. It isn't adding new content, just supporting existing content. Sometimes, it fails because Topaz is dependent on grain and SD video often lacks the grain needed for a quality AI upscale.

I don't feel Topaz AI as it exists would -- or even could -- change historical footage via upscaling. It would be stretching it, ableit in a complex and dynamic way.

But what if that changed?

We are at a point where AI can generate images based on text-based prompts. I think AI image generation could ultimately serve to recreate the videotape damaged episodes of SLIDERS, episodes 1.02 - 1.09 of Season 1. As pneumatic and I have noted: the videotape masters for those episodes don't even have an SD level of detail. AI sharpening doesn't work on them because the 240 line videotape format has eliminated all the film grain. Restoration is not possible. One future solution is using AI to engage in frame regeneration.

AI image generation will eventually be able to use images as prompts, and to look at a low resolution image and then generate a closely matching high res copy. One could convert episodes 1.02 - 1.09 into individual frames (24 frames per second) to produce a still image for each frame of the episodes. These stills could conceivably be fed into an AI algorithm to generate an HD image with the same elements and composition and colour, but with extrapolated sharpness and texture to replace what's missing within the low resolution image.

This would not be building on existing pixels to stretch the frame to a larger size like Topaz. Instead, it would be creating a new image that regenerates all the SD elements at HD resolution with AI taking some guesses to fill in an HD level of detail on clothing, hair, skin, props, textures, etc.. These replicated frames could then be reassembled into a video that matches the original audio. This would not be an upscale. This would be a reconstruction.

AI images right now can suffer from looking more like digital illustration than actual photography, but it's improving. Duplicating existing frame images would make it easier to generate photorealism. AI can already receive image input; eventually, it'll be able to generate a new version of the image input at a larger scale.

I wouldn't want studios to create HD versions of SD shows via AI reconstruction, but it might be good for special effects shots and missing film. One of the greatest difficulties in bringing older TV shows to HD: the special effects don't exist on film, but on SD videotape. STAR TREK and STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION had to have all the effects rebuilt for HD. It proved so expensive that most studios today are not rebuilding SD special effects in HD, but upscaling the SD effects shots. Upscaled special effects shots tend to have a fuzziness and lack of crisp definition due to the lower resolution and blur of older generation video effects and computer graphics.

For THE X-FILES in HD, FOX was not able to find a number film reels. Special effects background plates, stock footage and backgrounds were often missing from the film, along with more mundane sequences. While the restoration team rebuilt the effects where they had the film to do so, in some cases, they had to resort to upscaled SD videotape that didn't match the rescanned film around it.

BABYLON 5 and LOIS AND CLARK: THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, while rescanned and reassembled from film, didn't attempt to rebuilt any effects at all. Instead, they used upscaled SD effects shots to save money. This looks okay in BABYLON 5 because those original effects looked like Playstation 2 even when they first aired. But for LOIS AND CLARK, any time Superman speeds or flies or uses heat vision, it goes from blu-ray quality to VHS. I think those are areas where, in the future, missing film and special effects shots could use AI reconstructions generated from SD image inputs.

It would disappoint me if NBCUniversal went the AI upscale and reconstruction route for all episodes of SLIDERS. A studio should rescan the film and rebuild the episodes, and they should limit AI frame reconstruction to effects shots.

But on a fan level -- if NBCUniversal isn't going to remaster SLIDERS, then I think it would be a great fan project to use AI reconstruction on the low-res videotape episodes of Season 1.

The HD release of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER on Disney+ and other streaming services is god-awful. It looks like FOX rescanned the original negatives, but then had it automatically cropped to 16:9 without any actual human oversight, and applied the same high brightness colour processing to every shot. As a result, night scenes now look like day, sunrises look like afternoons, actors are cut off at the top or bottom or sides.

Bizarrely, the show was shot with Panavision cameras on 16mm film and there is a 16:9 image possible, but FOX's widescreen HD version often shows production staff and camera operators at the right or left sides and didn't adjust the framing to crop them out or digitally paint them out. There's also a hideous digital noise reduction filter applied at the same strength to all shots which makes human faces look like plastic.

I dug out my DVDs. Then I fired up Topaz and re-read all the posts in this thread.

I thought about how the DVD release of BUFFY has all the wonderful film grain of 16mm film and is perfect for an AI upscale to mine all that grain and raise it from 576i to 720p while adding the right level of replacement film grain afterwards.

I reviewed pneumatic's guidance on how the frame rate should be adjusted from DVD 29.97 fps to 24 fps.

I noted that it might be good to apply a moderate level of colour saturation increase.

Then I decided screw it. I don't have the energy to go through this. The 16mm DVD transfer stretches fine to a TV. I'm just going to leave it alone and enjoy it as it is.

Kimon, who is basically THE X-FILES equivalent of Temporal Flux, was discussing Amazon Audible with me. I was bemused that FOX licensed THE X-FILES to Audible, and Audible's approach was very different from what it did with BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER.

With THE X-FILES, the creative approach was the decision that Audible wouldn't bother to write anything new and specific to the audio format. Instead, they printed off Joe Harris' first 25 comic book scripts for the IDW comic book series, had someone replace all the visual description with new dialogue, booked David and Gillian to record a first reading with no rehearsal, called this alternate continuity a prequel to the televised Season 10, and then told the suckers -- I mean, the fans -- to shell out their hard earned money for this microwaved regurgitation.

In contrast, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER saw BUFFY actress (and novelist, director and screenwriter) Amber Benson write an original script and the production involved rehearsals. Why did BUFFY get the royal treatment while THE X-FILES got rehashes comic book scripts -- comic book scripts in an audio medium!

Kimon pointed out: SLAYERS: A BUFFYVERSE STORY did not actually feature Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy or David Boreanaz as Angel. SLAYERS is about the supporting cast characters: Spike, Cordelia, Tara, Anya -- actors who don't cost as much as A-list stars. In contrast, THE X-FILES had David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson.

Kimon theorized that hiring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson to read for Audible with no rehearsals over the course of two half-days probably cost 80 - 90 percent of the budget of the average Audible project. This could be why Audible didn't write anything new for their audio drama and instead used pre-existing scripts even when those scripts were for comic books, a visual medium totally opposed to audio drama.

In contrast, James Marsters, Charisma Carpenter, Amber Benson and Emma Caulfield Ford could be hired for less and with rehearsals included. They don't command the same price for their time.

I've been enjoying the multiple revivals of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, all set after the original TV show, all focusing on characters who aren't Buffy, all set in alternate continuities to each other. There's novel series SLAYER and CHOSEN by Kiersten White and the novel series IN EVERY GENERATION and ONE GIRL IN ALL THE WORLD by Kendare Blake as well as the Amazon Audible drama SLAYERS: A BUFFYVERSE STORY written by Amber Benson (!) with Christopher Golden and featuring James Marsters as Spike, Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia (!), Amber Benson as Tara, and Emma Caulfield as Anya (!). All three are separate stories that don't tie into each other. And while the Kiersten White series ties into the Dark Horse SEASON 8 comic books, the others choose their own path.

I'm especially astonished by the Audile because I honestly thought Amber Benson, Charisma Carpenter and Emma Caulfield were absolutely fed up with BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Also, their characters are all dead. But it turns out they're only fed up with it if Joss Whedon is involved, and they are happy to return if Amber Benson writes a story to bring them back.

I'll have more to say on all this later, but to bring BUFFY back as as spin-off media that focuses on new characters or supporting characters, and to give each product its own continuity.. well, that's intriguing.

It could be that the announcement was premature or it could be that Twitter is not particularly reliable after its current owner fired too many engineers and stopped paying a lot of bills.

Actually, thinking about it, it was only ever on the VHS release.

Still reading Patrick Stewart's autobiography...

There's a story where the serious, dour Patrick Stewart was appalled by all the laughter and goofy quipping of his castmates during the first season of STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION and then summoned them all to a meeting where he told them all off for blowing takes and cracking wise instead of solemnly and seriously performing the work of acting. "We are not here to have fun!" he roared at them.

Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes, Michael Dorn, Marina Sirtis, Gates McFadden and Denise Crosby contemplated this thoughtfully and collectively laughed in his face and with each other, their uncontrollable giggling continuing for a prolonged period at which point Stewart fled for his trailer with his dignity in tatters, realizing that the gang just did not take him very seriously.

There's also a neat anecdote where during Season 3, the married Patrick Stewart was seeing very little of his wife due to his filming in LA and her being in England. Stewart found himself falling in love with guest-star Jennifer Hetrick (Caroline in "Last Days", Claire LeBeau in "The Seer") and dating her while realizing that he wasn't in love with his wife anymore and filing for divorce. Stewart and Hetrick dated for a little while, but the constant pursuit of tabloid photographers was too much for Hetrick, hitting a breaking point when, on a private island vacation, they had to travel separately to get there and lasted two days before Hetrick had simply had enough. Stewart spent five more days alone on the island knowing that his girlfriend was done with him, his ex-wife was furious with him, his children loathed him, and his castmates thought he was a joyless pain in the ass and a joke.

It's so bleak that it's funny. Stewart later recounts that in later years, his TNG castmates will regularly mock-snarl at him, "We are not here to have fun!" which he agrees is extremely well-deserved.

The official Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline was published a few days ago. It only includes the movies and Disney+ shows. Not included are: AGENTS OF SHIELD, AGENT CARTER, INHUMANS, RUNAWAYS, CLOAK AND DAGGER, DAREDEVIL, JESSICA JONES, LUKE CAGE, IRON FIST, THE PUNISHER or DEFENDERS.

Noticeably, the AGENT CARTER show, despite being showrun by the CAPTAIN AMERICA: WINTER SOLDIER screenwriters, is dismissed in favour of the AGENT CARTER ONE SHOT short film (which the TV show initially contradicted and seemed to replace). The ONE SHOT covers the events of Peggy's post-WWII life instead of the TV show version.

Kevin Feige had a foreward where he says:

I think it's a shame, I understand some of why Feige has made this decision, but I'm also baffled by how his DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN choices seem contradictory.

In terms of how Feige personally feels about the Marvel TV shows: it's pretty clear from looking back that when they were first made, Feige was shut out of TV.

Ike Perlmutter ran Marvel Studios (film), Marvel Entertainment (TV and publishing and merchandise). Perlmutter wanted the Marvel brand name earning money in broadcast licensing and ad sales, so he commissioned AGENTS OF SHIELD and blocked Feige from any involvement, instead ceding that and Marvel TV development in general to Joss Whedon (who was also on the films) and Jeph Loeb.

This was offensive. Perlmutter had tasked Kevin Feige to be the architect of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, yet given Feige no authority of the MCU TV shows. It's a bit like telling Kevin Feige that he is to design every room of a house except for the kitchen which Joss Whedon will build without any input from Feige.

Joss Whedon was to connect AGENTS OF SHIELD to the AVENGERS movies, but eventually, Whedon left both Marvel film and TV. Perlmutter's intereference on Feige's films made Feige ready to resign from Marvel. Disney removed Perlmutter from overseeing Feige and granted Feige full control of the film division.

But Perlmutter, being a major owner in Disney after it purchased Marvel, still retained control of TV, publishing and merchandise, and was still free to make TV shows that Feige couldn't have any influence over (but which Feige was not beholden to follow). Furthermore, Perlmutter was so incensed by Feige's new independence that collaboration was now impossible.

Feige's response/non-response was simply to block out TV entirely and act like it didn't exist. He had no control, so it was pointless to worry about it, and TV was always going to have to follow the films' lead anyway. At one point, a journalist asked Feige, in a phone interview, what he thought of the INHUMANS disaster and Feige jokingly pretended that the phone wasn't working.

There was a lot of great television that came out of the TV division, but I suspect AGENTS OF SHIELD, JESSICA JONES and LUKE CAGE didn't come from Perlmutter as much as they escaped from Perlmutter.

Some contradictions and peculiarities did arise between film and TV. AGENTS OF SHIELD established that a lot of unaware civilians were latent Inhumans who were starting to manifest powers; no Marvel film has ever acknowledged that a segment of the population is spontaneously developing superpowers.

AGENTS OF SHIELD introduced the Darkhold, a magic book which reappears in WANDAVISION but looks nothing like the version in AOS. However, DR. STRANGE II reveals that any Darkhold is "a copy" of the original spells, allowing multiple versions.

SHIELD returned to the forefront of the US government's counterintelligence branch in Season 4, but the movies never acknowledged this and SHIELD grudgingly went underground again in Season 5 and stayed so for its series finale in Season 7.

The major breaking point: AGENTS OF SHIELD synced up with AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR showing Thanos invading Earth, and Season 5 of AGENTS OF SHIELD ended just before Thanos erased 50 percent of all life in the universe. AVENGERS: ENDGAME showed the erasures reversed five years after INFINITY WAR... but Season 6 of AGENTS OF SHIELD made no reference to the Thanos erasures at all. The AOS writers explained that they had no idea what was happening in ENDGAME, mentioned a one year time gap between Season 5 - 6, but were short by four years. They asked the audience to 'pretend' Season 6 was set before INFINITY WAR even though Season 5 had been set contemporaneously with it.

However, the AOS writers accidentally created a suitable explanation: the Season 5 finale had featured the SHIELD agents landing their plane in Tahiti to bid Coulson farewell. ENDGAME had shown the erased people restored, in some cases without much memory of their erasure. The simplest explanation: the erasures and restorations happened after the team landed in Tahiti at which point they bid farewell to Coulson, took off in their plane, and only realized in mid-flight from news reports that they had ceased to exist for five years. Then they coped, adjusted, and resumed their usual business, and the "one year later" reference is set after this. This ties in perfectly well with how relatively normal the post-restoration world is in SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME.

But even so, AGENTS OF SHIELD's lack of direct tie-in and coordination with ENDGAME made it clear that AGENTS OF SHIELD was basically an unwanted media tie-in novel with all the importance of a forgettable STAR TREK novel.

The seventh season of SHIELD maintained that SHIELD was continuing as an underground organization with a robotic duplicate of Agent Coulson... but no Marvel film or TV show has referred to this version of SHIELD and Nick Fury doesn't call on them for help in SECRET INVASION (although Fury's overall behaviour in that series is baffling).

Perlmutter was eventually ousted from Marvel entirely. Feige was made head of film and TV and publishing and so came the Disney+ shows. Feige has never been publicly caustic or insulting about the TV shows, but he has specified that they were from Marvel Entertainment (Perlmutter) and not Marvel Studios (Feige).

Feige approved Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk (DAREDEVIL) returning to the MCU and then specified that if Daredevil ever appeared in a Marvel Studios production, Charlie Cox would play the role and Cox did indeed appear in SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME. There were no real inconsistencies that couldn't be bridged.

But then something odd happened. Something Slider_Quinn21 foresaw on February 13, 2019:

This is where we seem to be with DAREDEVIL.

Feige approved a Disney+ DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN series, cast Charlie Cox as Daredevil and Vincent D'onofrio as Wilson Fisk -- but didn't rehire Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page or Elden Henson as Foggy Nelson. The character of Vanessa Fisk, played memorably by Ayelet Zurer, was recast with Sandrine Holt.

Fans theorized that Karen and Foggy would be omitted and written out, or that their absences indicated that Feige didn't consider the Netflix DAREDEVIL to be 'canon' but would reuse Cox and D'onofrio. Now Feige has said, in a somewhat diplomatic way, that he does not consider anything outside the MCU movies and Disney+ originating shows to be canon to the core MCU timeline, but those non-Feige shows are part of the Marvel multiverse.

Even so, Feige's attitude towards DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN makes no sense to me.

By rehiring Cox and D'onofrio, Feige was effectively establishing a link to the Netflix show and its stories and continuity, and the Karen Page and Foggy Nelson characters are a vital part of the ensemble around Cox. If the BORN AGAIN isn't meant to be in continuity with the Netflix show, then someone who isn't Charlie Cox should play Daredevil and someone who isn't Vincent D'onofrio should play the Wilson Fisk.

It's alienating for Cox and D'onofrio to be present but Woll and Hensen to be absent and very dismissive of the other actors who made Cox's incarnation of Daredevil so much more special than Cox alone.

The reality, however, is that production on BORN AGAIN has stopped: the showrunners have been fired, production is to start over, and no filming can happen until the actors' strike ends. There is currently no DAREDEVIL being filmed, which means it is completely up in the air whether or not BORN AGAIN will reflect the Netflix show or flat-out ignore it. New showrunners have been hired, the rumour is that the show was originally a comedy legal drama that will now be closer to the dark action of the Netflix show... but there's absolutely zero indication that Woll and Hensen will be included.

Feige has never outright dismissed the non-Feige shows and still hasn't, even in his foreword to the official timeline... but I'm uneasy when it comes to DAREDEVIL.

I don't mind SHIELD not getting mentioned, but it would really disappoint me if a new DAREDEVIL series with Charlie Cox were dismissive to Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Hensen and their characters. Bringing Cox back is drawing on a memory and fondness for that specific trio of actors, not Cox alone. If Cox had been recast, there would be no expectation of Woll and Hensen.

I hope that the new DAREDEVIL showrunners will understand that.

Loved the season premiere, haven't gotten to the rest of the episodes yet. I'm betting it's awesome, though.

My understanding is that in THOR, Loki is lost in space and presumably encounters Thanos who suggests an alliance and gives Loki the scepter with the Mind Stone. In AVENGERS, there seem to be a few scenes where Loki isn't entirely on board with the Mind Stone's influence, particularly where Thor points out the chaos that Loki has unleashed.

But I'm actually not sure LOKI the TV show forgets that. Noticeably, Loki is only a few days removed from AVENGERS in the LOKI series, but his characterization has shifted from 'cackling supervillain madman' to 'amoral scoundrel' very suddenly while flat-out admitting that he hurts people because he feels weak and putting a scare into someone makes him look stronger than he feels.

The second season of LOKI is, what, a week since AVENGERS? And Loki has gone from being a nutjob ranting about how everyone's a peasant to be ruled to consoling a police officer who lost his temper and suggesting some pie to calm down, and Loki is also no longer easily bated into violent tantrums.

That said, thinking about it, maybe Loki has never really been aware of how the Mind Stone affected him.

I think DAREDEVIL is another project like SECRET INVASION. Like the SECRET INVASION storyline, the Daredevil character was an intellectual property and brand that Feige wanted to see produced under his banner. He commissioned a series, accepted a pitch that was very different from the Netflix version... and it didn't turn out the way he was hoping. Because of the actors strike, he had the chance to press pause and rethink it.

It's easy to backseat drive and say that a DAREDEVIL show where Daredevil doesn't show up until Episode 4 is clearly mismanaged. But the truth is, you could say that about a lot of daring creative choices if taken out of context, such as how Daredevil didn't appear in costume on the Netflix show until the Season 1 finale and didn't appear in costume at all for all of Season 3.

Anyone could, without watching the SHE-HULK finale, declare that it's stupid and silly for She-Hulk to protest the climax being a superhero/supervillain fight and demand that the writers change it into something more low-key. Anyone could declare that it's ridiculous to show Daredevil in costume walking out of She-Hulk's home in the morning after having spent the night.

I would think that Feige probably thought the DAREDEVIL D+ series ideas were interesting, but when he saw them onscreen, they didn't live up to how they'd been described or how he'd imagined them, so he put the show on hold.

I would agree: the Disney+ era of Marvel TV shows have been produced like feature films and they've run into issues where it's a lot easier to address narrative issues on a 2.5 hour movie than on a 6 - 10 episode TV show. They're probably filming entire the season throughout their shooting schedule instead of one episode at a time. Two shows stand out to me as suffering for it.

THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER's villain is Karli, whose evil plan is... to provide refugees with food and shelter. Which makes Sam and Bucky the villains if they oppose providing refugees with food and shelter. The series ends up having Karli murder people for no good reason because it cannot otherwise justify Sam and Bucky hunting her down; furthermore, Sam and Bucky do nothing for the refugees.

This was an oversight from writing the whole series all at once and not stepping back to review it episode by episode. And had THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER been filmed like a more 'traditional' series, an episode could have been inserted to show Sam and Bucky doing something for the innocent people Karli was trying to help. This odd lapse, to me, made the show seem oddly tone deaf and witless and blind to its own narrative.

WANDAVISION also made an odd oversight: it never seems to decisively confront how Wanda is a villain for kidnapping an entire town of innocent people and treating them as playthings.

Yes, there are multiple scenes where SWORD faces Wanda and where Vision is furious with Wanda about this. But in the ninth episode finale, nearly all of Wanda's enemies are treated as villains: Agatha Harkness is a power hungry thief, the SWORD director Hayward leading the anti-Wanda taskforce tries to blow up the town and its people, whereas Wanda, still a kidnapper, is regarded as heroic for saving the town and grudgingly releasing everyone from the captivity she was keeping them in with no real regret or remorse or attempt at reparation.

This seems to be an error where there was no chance to address it, which made it both awkward and appropriate when DR. STRANGE II dismissed WANDAVISION trying to present Wanda as heroic and made her a flat-out villain. I think that WANDAVISION oversight happened from shooting all the episodes at the same time and reshoots being too difficult for such a large production; I think WANDAVISION should have made it perfectly clear that Wanda is a villain.

I was pretty happy with SHE-HULK and LOKI and MOON KNIGHT, but I think Marvel TV production can definitely run into problems with its approach. At the same time, lots of shows are shot in a more episodic fashion and are still tone deaf: note how THE X-FILES revival season took on an anti-vaxxer tone and implied that non-biological children are can never be loved by their parents.

I think that Marvel might consider the approach of Blumhouse, the horror production company. They did the HALLOWEEN deboot (not a typo). Their approach to lower budget filmmaking: they commission a script and then storyboard the script and assemble it into a cheap animatic with scale-salary voice actors performing all the dialogue. Then they determine, based on storyboarding, animatics and vocal performances, if this looks and sounds like a movie they want to greenlight. I think Feige might consider adopting something similar for his TV projects, even after greenlighting them, so that scripts can be adjusted in advance of filming them. This would allow him to address mishaps like Sam and Bucky having no concern for starving refugees or presenting a mind controlling kidnapper as the hero.

I am only three episodes into SECRET INVASION, a show so boring and uneventful and devoid of interest that I'm vacuuming while it plays (with headphones). But I can tell you exactly what's wrong with SECRET INVASION and it's totally obvious what's wrong with it: the SECRET INVASION storyline is a first season of a TV show that has no business being the first season of a TV show.

SECRET INVASION is about shapeshifters impersonating humans. This means that SECRET INVASION requires that the audience be highly familiar with the characters so that the potential that some or any or all of them are impersonators is compelling and disturbing; we need to know their behaviours and speech patterns and mannerisms and screen presences to look for discrepancies in the actors' performances.

On AGENTS OF SHIELD, we had spent over three seasons with the characters before we entered the LMD arc where we didn't know which team members had been captured and replaced with killer robots, so it was unnerving and frightening. On SECRET INVASION, our characters are people we barely know, so the potential that they are impersonators is hardly concerning.

Who is Nick Fury? Who knows? Fury was a limited presence at his height, more an informant making guest appearances and cameos than a main character. We don't know him well enough to tell if he might be an impostor or not. Who is Talos? Who can say? We've known him for one full appearance in CAPTAIN MARVEL and a cameo in FAR FROM HOME and since he was a shapeshifter from the start, we have no baseline for the character. SECRET INVASION is not the right story to tell without a well-established cast that has made regular, consistent appearances. SECRET INVASION would have been a great eighth season of AGENTS OF SHIELD. Instead, it's Season 1 (and probably the only season) of a Nick Fury show.

If a show about shapeshifting aliens can't use impersonation as a plot device for suspense and terror, then there's no point doing it. There is no point to doing SECRET INVASION. I would say the same about the original comic, too, where nobody that important ever turned out to be a Skrull.

The show has plenty of other problems too. It's very obvious that multiple showrunners have passed through this project because the series is clearly a clumsy mismash of different writers' mismatched drafts. The most obvious problem is the lack of exposition: where has Fury been since AGE OF ULTRON? Why didn't he find the Skrulls a home as promised? I can tell from the fumbled plots that don't explain these raised questions: the showrunner was fired in mid-scripting and didn't complete his work; the incoming writer had to whip up more pages slapdash based on actor availability and location bookings and wasn't able to work out the story.

It's interesting: when AGENTS OF SHIELD first aired, there was a certain air of impostor syndrome to it. It claimed to be a SHIELD show set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it only had a brief cameo from a supporting SHIELD character from AVENGERS (Maria Hill) and none of the superheroes appeared on camera. Later, it claimed to be set after THOR: DARK WORLD, but the TV budget sets and effects, when compared to the lavish production of a feature, made AGENTS feel like a fan film phony. Eventually, the tie-in to WINTER SOLDIER and a guest-appearance from Samuel L. Jackson closed the credibility gap.

In contrast, SECRET INVASION has Samuel L. Jackson in a lead role and SECRET INVASION feels like even more of a fan film phony than AGENTS OF SHIELD ever did, and it's not closing the credibility gap at all. Nick Fury in SECRET INVASION feels like a fake. The Fury we met in AVENGERS and got to know more in WINTER SOLDIER was a master spy. The Nick Fury in this show is an inept, incompetent spy. He runs about aimlessly in a public space and haplessly allows a terrorist to detonate explosives; he's facing shapeshifters but makes no plans for his comrades to easily identify him and gets his friend killed; his intelligence skills consist of demanding information from villains who have no reason to give it; he issues death threats to people who are perfectly willing to die.

Nick Fury should be written like Ethan Hunt in the latter-era MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movies: a trickster, simultaneously an improvisor and a master-planner. Ethan Hunt is a well-written spy in the last three M:I movies because the actor and writer/director on those films were able to lavish time and creativity. Nick Fury demands the same level of attention, but SECRET INVASION is rushed hackwork due to some strange personnel changeovers behind the scenes.

SECRET INVASION does not seem to have had a consistent creative hand, so a lot of its choices are not fully mined or developed.

But even if SECRET INVASION had boasted a consistent creative team, SECRET INVASION as a series is just an exercise in self-sabotage. The concept demands a level of familiarity with the characters that would require at least one season to get to know them first. SECRET INVASION is unable to create any vivid sequences of impostorship because these characters are strangers or near-strangers. SECRET INVASION should have been a season of AGENTS OF SHIELD or a second season of FALCON & THE WINTER SOLDIER or a second season of MS. MARVEL or even a second season of WANDAVISION or LOKI. It should not have been the first season of anything.

One of my favourite comic books is INSUFFERABLE by Mark Waid, which was released as a digital comic on the unfortunately now defunct web comic site Thrillbent. And, for some strange reason, I can't seem to buy the digital comics even when they're said to be for sale. And I wanted to read it again, so I grudgingly bought the hard copy, a trade paperback containing the entire series for $45 USD.

This 2012 comic is about two former superhero partners: the hard-edged, seasoned Nocturnus who trained his teen sidekick Galahad in the ways of crimefighting only for Galahad to become an ungrateful jerk who was also more successful and popular than Nocturnus who now has to struggle to hold back his resentment.

Anyway, the comic came in the mail yesterday. I haven't bought a hard copy book in over ten years. This trade paperback is so heavy and thick with its 440 heavy, glossy pages opening it makes me fear I will break the spine. There are two pages, Pages 139 and 140, that are printed in reverse order by mistake. I had to install new lightbulbs in my bedroom lamp to read it because I've been deliberately keeping the light dim for reading on my e-reader or my tablet and this is the first thing I've read in years that doesn't have a backlight of some sort. Reading INSUFFERABLE is inconvenient and a little annoying.

That said, the comic remains one of the funniest takes on superheroes ever and it is well worth the trouble and expense. I'm going to scan and print Pages 139 - 140 and use double-sided tape to put them back in the book in the correct order.

It's a great series. I wrote about it earlier:

When it comes to netbooks, I am a bit like a former cult member. I still feel a certain fondness for the idea of a netbook. I mean, wasn't it a great idea? To spend $200 USD on a 10.1 inch laptop that, while hardly a gaming machine, was suitable for banging out emails and social media posts and handling your online business. A travel laptop that you could drop out a window by mistake and replace without causing a global economic crisis. The idea was spectacular and compelling and enticing: a cramped but usable burner laptop. The junker car of mobile computers. Even today, I find myself open to buying a 10.1 inch laptop.

The reality was... not quite that. The main issue with netbooks is that because the profit margins were so low on these products, manufacturers cut a lot of corners making them. I had the Acer Aspire One, the Asus Transformer T100 TAM, the Asus Transformer T100 Chi and the Asus Transformer Mini T102. All were cheap and awful: the Acer Aspire One battery went dead in a year, the Asus T100 TAM was was so badly sealed that dust would get under the screen, the T100 Chi's trackpad would randomly go dead; the Mini T102 developed white spots on the monitor. The only netbook I ever had that was actually good was the HP DM1 with the AMD E-450 processor, 4GB of RAM, a 120GB SSD -- and this was indeed the well-built, reliable, low weight netbook I'd been looking for, but I gave it away to a friend who was going back to school.

I got the Asus Vivobook L210, an 11.6 inch laptop with an Intel Celeron processor and 4GB of RAM... and it was unusably slow. I got the HP Elitebook Folio G3 which used the low power Intel Core M and even with an SSD and 8GB of RAM, Windows 10 ran so slowly that web browsers were constantly freezing up. It became clear: most of my netbooks had been during the days of Windows 7. But Windows 7 gave way to Windows 10, and where Windows 7 ran well on Intel Atom processors, spinning hard drives and 2GB of RAM, Windows 10 really demanded a solid state drive and at minimum 8GB of RAM with at least an Intel i3.

Ultimately, the smartphone and tablet killed the netbook. No one wanted to buy these poorly made, underpowered computers when smartphones offered more responsive performance and tablets offered better multimedia playback at a lighter weight, even if they didn't have the versatility of physical keyboards.

I'm currently using the HP Elitebook 830 G5 with an i5 processor and 8GB of RAM and an SSD. It's thin and light enough... but despite being a good value laptop, it certainly wouldn't be cheap to replace like a netbook. I still long for the return of burner netbooks. It will never happen, the profit margin is too low.

Developments keep proving TF right on this. Cryptocurrency has proven to be useless, has no value backing it up, and it is also a massive scam.
https://slate.com/technology/2023/10/sb … cards.html

This sounds fun. I hope you don't change the name. REWATCH PODCAST is quite stuck in the brain. I am severely behind on your podcasts on HEROES, so you shifting gears will let me catch up a bit. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on HEROES downright peculiar trajectory.

I too am excited for a second season of the QUANTUM LEAP revival.

Joe Biden is letting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman go without consequences for murdering a Washington Post journalist. The US is too dependent on Saudi Arabia as a trading partner and oil producer and economic power to cut ties or enact any repercussions.

https://vox.com/world-politics/2023/10/ … ears-later

Fairly or unfairly, it would seem that consensus politics are simply not where we will see right and wrong handled as right and wrong. Instead, it's a matter of political and economic allegiances and a fear of crashing an oil-dependent US economy.

Sometimes, as a voter, there are no good options. If I were in a position to vote in the next US election, I would be voting against Trump by voting for Biden, but examples like this one are why Biden hardly epitomizes my values and why I don't feel good about it and why I don't believe that we should present Biden as a saint even though we all know Trump is a demonic hellspawn from the dawn of time. (Some people worship the hellspawn.)

I never really know what to make of all the statistics except they seem to mean whatever you want them to mean.
https://www.google.com/search?q=biden+a … mp;dpr=1.5

Polls at this stage aren't really meaningful or useful. In fact, given how off the polls were in 2026 and 2020, I don't know if they're ever meaningful or useful anymore.