universal’s halloween horror nights 31 (2022)

we made our triumphant return to halloween horror nights! honestly i’m pretty sure we’re gonna try to do this basically every year if we can.

universal’s halloween horror nights 30 (2021)

this year’s halloween horror nights will be my third! it’s turned into a pretty awesome tradition for me and one of my partners. we went to halloween horror nights 29 in 2019 on our first date. 2020’s was, of course, canceled due to the early stages of the covid-19 pandemic when the powers that be were pretending to actually try to prevent its spread. but when halloween horror nights returned to universal the following year, so did we!

universal’s halloween horror nights 29 (2019)

this year’s halloween horror nights will be my third! it’s turned into a pretty awesome tradition for me and one of my partners. we went to halloween horror nights 29 in 2019 on our first date. and i just love that this was the case? it combines one of her biggest special interests (theme parks) with one of mine (halloween). how perfect is that?

star trek: discovery books megareview

 “what happened before no longer exists. what will happen next has not yet been written. we have only now.”

star trek: discovery: desperate hours (novel 2017)

by david mack

star trek tie-in novels have never been considered “canon” by anyone with the authority to make such decisions, so i’m not going to make a habit of talking about their breaks with continuity. that being said, the first discovery novel depicts an encounter between the shenzhou and the enterprise that was just immediately reduced to the status of fanfiction by the plot of season 2.

the thing is, it’s really good fanfiction.

men in black megareview

the first men in black movie was in theaters as a fathom event for its 25th anniversary, so that felt like a good excuse to spend some time exploring the franchise!

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

the men in black & the men in black book ii (comic 1990-91)

writer: lowell cunningham

artist: sandy carruthers

now that i’ve read these, i think it’s even more impressive that they made such a good movie out of them.

alien vs. predator megareview, part 4 (2017-present)

what was supposed to be the third and final part of this megareview ended up ballooning to an unmanageable length, so i ended up having to pull a hunger games 3: part 21 and split it into two parts. so here we go.

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

alien: covenant (movie 2017)

the origin of humanity is not, in any way, shape, or form, the “only question that matters,” nor does it render any other concerns meaningless. weyland (and ridley scott, for that matter) can fuck right off with that bullshit. i would be willing to chalk it up to weyland being one of the series’ great villains were it not for the fact that the narrative and thematic intent of the film absolutely bear the importance of his fetish out. we also get an acting captain whose entire character is “christians are so oppressed you guys.” ridley, what happened? where did you acquire this ax that you won’t stop grinding?

teenage mutant ninja turtles megareview, part 1 (1984-1998)

teenage mutant ninja turtles, book i (comic 1984-85)

written & illustrated by kevin eastman & peter laird

well, here it is. the comic that started it all. this graphic novel collects colorized versions of the first three issues of kevin eastman and peter laird’s original comics that conquered the world with a merchandising empire that no one saw coming, least of all them.

these comics did include some of the differences i’d always been told to expect from the turtles i’ve known and loved since the cartoons, movies, and video games of my early childhood, but not as many as i expected! true, it is a bit more violent, with the turtles being willing to kill some of their adversaries, but by the second issue leonardo is already telling his more hotheaded brother raphael that the turtles kill only as a last resort.

oh, that’s the other thing. i was primed to expect the turtles themselves to be nearly interchangeable, but they actually have much more fully-formed personalities than that even in these earliest days of the comics! leo was always the honorable leader and raph was always the hotheaded angy boy, all the way back in issue 1! and donnie has been the tech guy since at least issue 2, when he tries to hack baxter stockman’s computers to solve the mouser problem.