As Previously Discussed, I’m chewing on the big lump of media that is Marvel (film & TV remix ft. RDJ et al)¹ and trying to find a corner of it that I can chip off to talk about. It’s like a huge chocolate Easter bunny except it’s not chocolate, not religious (or adjacent), and much more like a metaphor than a confection. And aside from reading a huge amount of background material on wikipedia²³ I’ve mostly been slacking on the assignment. This weekend though, I took a few hours to catch up on season 3 of What If…?.

The animation is CG and… serviceable. If anything, I find it too… shiny? One the one hand, they do amazing things with lighting and effects but on the other hand, I’m perfectly fine with animated shows being mostly ‘flat’ when it comes to color and shadow. The stories are also fine. I do have one quibble: moreso than in season 1 or 2, the inclusion of certain characters seemed to rely not so much on the story they wanted to tell, and much more on which of the big movie actors they could schedule to come in and record voice lines. Weird line-ups and clashing culture is kinda the whole deal with What If, comic or adaptation, but even so I never thought the fate of multiple multiverses depended so heavily on appearances by Alexei Shostakov, The Red Guardian.

One thing I did like was how they continued (and concluded) the ‘behind-the-scenes’ storyline that was threaded through all three seasons of What If, getting super meta with “What if the Watcher did more than just Watch”.

Roughly a year ago, the “what if” banner was taken up by spin-off Marvel Zombies, which is fine for fans of Marvel Zombies but not recommended otherwise. And also last year, Diz+ started airing Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, which seems like a good use for the tech and talent they’ve accumulated at Marvel Studios Animation. There are 10 episodes in that first season and a second season already on the way, coming this Fall.

“What If” has also become, unofficially, the slogan of the whole MCU. The Multiverse™, the whole focus of the back half of “Phase Four” and entirety of “Phase Five”, could have been a way to slowly introduce all the various bits and pieces of a fractured Marvel landscape — fractured because of corporate history and ownership and pre-Disney licensing deals. These bits and pieces don’t have to be part of an all-Disney MCU but there’s at least one executive or accountant at Disney who very much thinks that just about any tv show or movie will do better, financially, if it is an Official MCU Story.

Actual implementation of the multiverse? Well…

I really liked the end of the second season of Loki. I haven’t been as enthusiastic about anything with Doctor Strange in it. Multiple Spiders-men was neat, but that movie really should have come out at the end of Phase Six or whatever — a nice dessert, a coda — and not as the unofficial kick-off of Marvel multiversal madness. And then: Doomsday. I feel like Disney is jumping right into a big Avengers title and team-up but without doing any of the ground work for it. Age of Ultron felt rushed (and didn’t really earn the Avengers badge; Civil War felt more like the Avengers movie of that cycle) but Doomsday almost feels worse. Forced. “We need an Avengers movie, it’s on the calendar”

It’ll be fantastic⁴. The directors, Anthony and Joe Russo, know their way around a big, messy action flick with way too many characters and the actors in the core roles⁵ will no doubt turn in great performances. RDJ, if he chews enough scenery, will get a best actor nom. None of that actually forgives the context in which Doomsday is being made but I’m looking forward to watching it.⁶

Once all this is put to bed (Phase Seven?), then maybe we get more Marvel alt-history. Until then, well, the question always is: What If. [/mblind]
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¹ and writing about it, which it seems like everyone else is also doing this summer

² “Marvel”, or any sufficiently large corpus is almost as much about the metatext as it is the actual text. The stuff that goes on around the thing, and the discussion of the thing. And what counts as canon (spoiler: apparently, to a sufficiently large fraction of ‘the fan base’ — it ALL counts)

³ … so. many. characters. omg. And everyone gets an entry.

⁴ Fantastic Four pun intended

⁵ I’m not even sure which characters might be the mains, here. Other than RDJ as Doom. Between F4, X-men, Old Avengers, New Avengers, Wakanda, Talokan [MCU’s Namor’s ‘Atlantis’], Team Magic, and Team Space* — I’m not even sure what you do with all of those. I’m Guessing that the New Avengers Thunderbolts Flavor and New Avengers Team Sam-is-Captain-America have some sort of clash before coming together as friends and that our Old Avengers (or versions of them) have some sort of clash with both. Still too many characters. I’d rather this was 12 to 16 episodes of television, though the budget on that would never work out at this scale. It has to be big screen. [* I’ll just note, footnote on the footnote, that Nova Corps, Ms. Marvel, & Guardians of the Galaxy seem to be sitting this one out ]

⁶ even if it’s a train wreck. especially if it’s a train wreck?

Didn’t manage to write an insightful, nuanced essay this weekend. In fact, I didn’t even do the self-assigned homework:

Instead of Marvel anything, I watched 6 episodes of the new season of Vox Machina, more Time Team [in new and classic flavors] than is recommended in one sitting, and my usual assortment of music documentaries, comfort youtube, and subscriptions.

Season 4 of Vox Machina concludes with another 3ep drop this Wednesday, so I can finish up the back half of that. I don’t necessarily feel compelled to write an insightful, nuanced essay on Vox or Critical Role or their burgeoning but still tiny RPG & content empire; like the Simpson’s Meme says, “I just think they’re neat.“

I’ll just assume most of us haven’t retired yet and still have to put in the 40 hours a week in education or employment, so like me, y’all can find it difficult to make room for a big media property. If you’re lucky, you have a partner with similar tastes in popular entertainment and you’ve set aside at least one evening a week to watch “your thing” —maybe a big binge (say, a Deep Space 9 rewatch), or current premier cable thing (House of the Dragon, whatever’s on Apple TV), or Friday movie night, or whichever of The Office/Scrubs/Law&Order/Cheers and/or Frasier¹ is your particular comfort re-watch. It is easy to get into routines and maybe harder to find room for The New Thing unless the new thing is definitely your jam. It’s why so much of a movie’s budget is marketing —trying to break through, first, through the general background noise and then through the general apathy.

The more there is of something, too, the harder it can be to convince someone to pick it up. “What? There are three movies in that trilogy? Ugh.“

A lot of folks bounce off of Marvel and Star Wars because of the “more” aspect of them.² Even setting to one side the Netflix and ABC tv shows, on Disney+ there have been sixteen different shows, some with multiple seasons, some that are sequels to other shows, with something like 6 or 8 episodes each. I’ve previously noted the number of movies.³ There is just a whole lot of Marvel and post 2012’s Avengers there’s no good jumping-on point.⁴

Well… ok there probably is one. I’m looking for it. So I can watch it and write the first Marvel Monday column. But it looks like that’ll take me at least one more week. [/mblind]

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¹ other acceptable answers include Gilmore Girls, Buffy, Friends, Sherlock Holmes but only the Jeremy Brett Granada Television/PBS Mystery ones, Just about Anything Else in that British-by-way-of-PBS-Mystery pipeline [I should do a Poirot rewatch], and M*A*S*H

² And the grognard fans, but that’s a different topic/problem/essay.

³ 37 “official” MCU movies, out of more like 70 Marvel adaptations total (not including TV; these are additional movies) which is complicated by the pre-2008 Marvel adaptations, three different studios with different pre-Disney licensing deals for huge fractions of the story universe and the whole “comic book” origins of the thing. We’re barely scratching the surface of comic shenanigans: Time-line variants and a fractured or fracturing multiverse to deal with. Also, with Doomsday, we are about one movie away from a (likely) huge retcon and maybe two to three movies away from Diz hitting the big red MCU reset button.

⁴ The Winter Soldier [2014] is damn fine movie and works as a stand-alone. Spider-man outside of Diz, the new Sony Tom Holland Spideys—those are pretty good, but I don’t like how heavily they lean on Iron Man (or his ghost). The upcoming Spider-man movie [31 July 2026] may actually be a clean, soft ‘reboot’ but we’ll have to wait and see. Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man (either 1st movie in those arcs) can be decent on-ramps but feel more like cul-de-sacs, each off in their own pocket. Great introductions to odd-ball Marvel characters and each with a trilogy —but side stories. There’s even a weird side entrance where you come in watching WandaVision on Disney+ and that leads to a whole set of movie choices that center the Magical-Mystical and Ms. Marvel and that’s a fantastic essay waiting to be written but Diz kneecapped me by putting the conclusion, Vision Quest, on the schedule for fucking December. Like, right before Doomsday. I don’t think there’s even a plot/movie/tie-in reason, they just needed a show in Q4. I’ve been looking for some other place to put the wedge. It’s taking a minute.

The proposed column, if we can call it that, is titled Marvel Mondays. Let’s see just how many that’s going to be.

Less, now; checking my notes, I first had the idea for Marvel Mondays back in February. That certainly would have been a more comprehensive look at the MCU, and actually I’m kind of glad I kicked that can month after month, because even though I like Marvel well enough (at least when the ask is only 3-4 movie tickets a year) I don’t know that I want to write that much about capes. Doomsday will premiere on 18 Dec and [*checking calendar*] hm. That’ll still be half a year. 26 Mondays between now and then.

There’s certainly enough source material — somewhere between 35 and 70 “official” movies, depending on how you want to count the various takes on the Fantastic Four and all the X-Men (once outside direct Diz control but since purchased along with Fox) and of course the Sony Spiders. Reddit, being Reddit, has a thread offering a multitude of takes, whether you want ‘official’ or not or Disney+-TV-show-inclusive or not — or diagetic chronological, or movie release order.

I’m not exactly up for tackling a full rewatch of seven seasons of Agents of SHIELD,¹ to cite one of the more peripheral works, though the 12 episodes of Loki (besides totally being worth a rewatch) are probably a bit more central to whatever multiversal shenanigans gives us a RDJ Doom to start with. Also it’s hard to skip Phase 1 though I kind of want to skip Phase 1² and even in the Big Team-Up Avengers Movies, not everyone is a starter, you know what I mean? Some capes could have stayed on the bench.³

I don’t really want to dig for Doomsday spoilers to see which parts of the MCU are going to be relevant, so we’ll have to make educated guesses. I also don’t want this to break down, stop being fun, and become just a homework assignment, so we’ll visit with some favorites in the MCU even if they aren’t going to be Doom-relevant.⁴

Let’s consider some big blocks. What the columns might actually cover.

• Captain America: The First Avenger, Agent Carter, & What If…
• Winter Soldier, Civil War, Black Widow
• Ant-Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and (with regret) Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
• Comedy and Capes: Guardians, Ragnarok, Love & Thunder, Deadpool.
• Infinity War & Endgame
• The MCU Spidey⁵
• The Sony Spiders⁶
• The Netflix Diversion⁷
• Ultron. Eternals. Inhumans. Dancing around the X-men.
• OK, fine: Let’s talk about X-Men. [X-Men, X2, Last Stand]
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings⁸
• Loki and the TVA
• The other time travel movie: First Class & Future Past
• Doctor Strange, Spider-Man: No Way Home, & Multiverse of Madness
• Capt. Marvel & Miss Marvel & The Marvels
• Not Quite Captain America: Brave New World & Thunderbolts*
• OK, fine: Let’s talk about Agents of SHIELD
• Revisiting Iron Man: Back to where we started
• The Fantastic Four: First Steps
• Wanda Vision & VisionQuest⁹

There are other corners I’d love to revisit, like Moon Knight, and there’s enough slack in the schedule that I might just do that. And some of the topics I’ve listed above might have to be split into two parts (or might demand a sequel). This isn’t a promise, or a contract¹⁰, but is the current plan. We’ll have to wait and see how much I actually have to say about Marvel. [/mblind]

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¹ I tapped out at the end of season 4 when it was first airing; I suppose I should get around to the rest someday but other that a rewatch of the Ghostrider arc, I’m not feeling it, ya know?

² Iron Man in 2008 was 18 years ago; Avengers (the first one), six films and just 4 years after that. We’ve had a long time with those particular films and those versions of these heroes. Here: Overly Sarcastic Productions – Detail Diatribe: The Lost Art of Marvel’s Phase 1 [1hr43min]. Better than I can do it and probably not the last time we’ll cite a take from Red & Blue

³ I’m not saying the Guardians of the Galaxy don’t really belong in an Avengers movie but they had to bend over backward and tie Thanos directly into those films (& two main GotG characters) to get that inclusion to work. It could have been more of a Captain Marvel thing, is what I’m saying.

⁴ especially if they aren’t relevant.

⁵ Tom Holland, basically. His Spidey is more than just behind-the-scenes studio negotiations but we’ll cover what’s on screen and just a little bit of that Sony-Disney dance.

⁶ basically an excuse to watch the rest, including the two Miles outings. And make fun of Morbius and Madame Web. why not.

⁷ I CAN’T cover all the seasons but we’ll talk about “street-level” Marvel, the crossovers and about Matt, who seems to be Disney’s Favorite Defender.

⁸ I think we need to go back and re-watch this one (or watch it) and find the place for it.

⁹ Can’t cover VisionQuest until December

¹⁰ totally non-binding, not enforceable

Like many folks—even folks who have been online for decades and grew up on, in, and involved with many different iterations of “Internet”—I find myself spending a lot of time on social media.

To my detriment. Social media¹ is momentarily engaging and gives the illusion of being both connected and informed, but it’s not good for the attention span and I feel like I’m running in circles, chasing my tail some mornings. Do I need 15 takes on Bad Thing™ before I’ve had my coffee. Do I really need to know how The Main Character of the Day™ messed up so badly that they became the main character of the day.

The link to the article editor in the back-end of my CMS sits on my bookmarks bar, just five little icons away from the Bluesky butterfly, and is just as easy to click. Except I never do, these days.² Blogging can be just as valid an outlet for my errant thoughts, and this editing window on a monitor could just as easily be my sidekick and companion during the workday, instead of the endless doomscroll on the phone. Blogging used to be the way most of us shared things online. Well, “most” in this case being the folks who had stepped away from early Facebook and hadn’t yet been trapped by Instagram. Or Twitter.

Why did we blog? It was the thing to do, for a time.

There were all kinds of blogs, back in the day (insert your slightly out-of-focus, sepia toned memories from 2006 here) and while some blogs grew (into news sites or fan sites or “content”) a lot of blogs just… stopped. No fault, no blame; and I know exactly how it is. We have limited time and attention, and as the internet mutated and developed and grew several new appendages, other bits of the internet figured out how to grab more of that limited time. The itch to share could easily be scratched elsewhere, and the back-and-forth conversation and community found new places to roost.³

This blog [rocketbomber.com] was always a bit of a shambles, without a focus for most of its existence and slowly becoming a bookselling-and-publishing adjacent space because I was employed as a bookseller at the time. That’s what I felt like writing about, the rabbit holes I’d dive into. It shouldn’t have survived.

It persists because I do — and because I’m spending the $21 a month (plus annual domain registration fees) to keep this and the rest of my Online Empire intact. Mostly because a couple of those .coms I own have email addresses attached (also, now, 20 years old) and I can’t really afford to ever let those go.

And so. The Blog, this blog, sits there unused. A elegant relic of a more civilized age.

Oh, I suppose I do get the old dog out of its comfy bed for a quick walk around the internet, every now and then. When I’m feeling nostalgic about the blogging-internet-that-was or when the social media platform du jour is either in full melt down or does something so egregious we all threaten to leave in a huff.

Occasionally I have something genuine I’d like to share, or a flag I want to run up a mast, and having the blog as that place—my place—online has been a comfort.

I still have plans. I will likely open a new storefront on Internet Street (metaphorically speaking, and mentioned on the blog previously) where I can share my game design stuff⁴ and as the design ideas grow into games and resources and physical objects, that’ll be the home and space for that portion of my creative output. But I’m also getting an itch⁵ to do some long-form writing on media. Given what I like, “media” means TV and movies, and more sci-fi (and superheroes) than not. I could wrack my brain for a new URL and blog title for writing about sci-fi but I’ve done that, I did that (all the way back in 2008) and the brand I came up with then will serve admirably now: Rocketbomber. The shout the anguished anime protagonist makes as they launch their mecha special move, and more prosaically, the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar III, the original RoBo [rocket bomber] program.

I’ll be starting with some “Marvel Mondays”, mostly just my thoughts as I rewatch various bits of the Disney/Marvel corpus ahead of the December premiere of Doomsday. And after we’re all well and truly sick of Marvel, I’ll probably shift over to Mythic Mondays, as we plumb the back catalogue for 80s sword & sorcery & fantasy flicks, and then to more generic Movie Mondays (if I have to) after we run out of schlock fantasy.

The trick, to both projects, is to step away from the time-sinks, and get back into the writing habit. [/mblind]

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¹ primarily Bluesky, in my case: the methadone of the reformed twitter user

² current exception, ah, noted.

³ Mostly discord, these days? I think?

⁴ OH LOOK an actual topic to hang a blog on! what a crazy happy idea!

⁵ an itch social media can’t scratch. and no, I don’t want to make a YouTube channel about it either.

Things don’t always go as planned, and in this case (even with a domain name purchased and a fair amount of intention) we don’t always get the online name we might want. It’s an old story; I wanted to call my very first blog Parenthetical Aside (lol. so young. so naive.) but of course that was, like, everyone’s first pick for a blog name, even back in the early early 2000s.

So I’ve edited the announcement to reflect that. We are now going with [*New Blog Name To Be Determined], which is a lovely placeholder.

The name I had intended to use (the midnight cartographer) is now apparently a new series of middle-grade fantasy books, and that’s on top of a pre-existing YouTube channel, a “cinematic alternative rock” artist on Bandcamp, and the other series of middle-grade fantasy books that was self published a couple of years ago. The space is getting a little crowded. So far I’m only out around $15 for the domain name registration, which I’ll just not renew at this point, and we’ll go for an easy re-brand.

When? And with a new blog, does that mean no more updates to the venerable RocketBomber? I guess we will see…