Category Archives: world history

This Marvel Zombie Is In Deep Denial About This Being His Favorite Superhero TV Show [Update: Not Named “Ms. Marvel”] :)

Posted on by toddpanther

#supermanandlois #superman&lois

Lana (finding out that Clark is Superman and talking about how he took his sweet time coming back to Smallville after he abandoned her to find his way to the cape): Did you ever love me?

Clark: Oh, Lana, of course I did.

Lana: (PAUSE) Just not enough.

I was determined to hate this show when it premiered and initially I was successful. A Superman TV narrative without Metropolis, The Daily Planet, etc.? A re-tread of Smallville? Superman with a brother? No. This ain’t the Thor movies.

But almost two full seasons in and after me pretty much memorizing Season 1, it’s clear this is the best Superman TV show ever. And that’s not easy, since there’s 70 years’ worth of truth-justice-American-way-TV to evaluate (including the very-good, just canceled homage show Naomi). The message of this well-written, well-photographed show–if you don’t take care of your family, every part of it, and do the hard work of sustaining that care every day, your family and you will fall apart–is clearly articulated by its expert use of nearly 100 years of Superman lore.

Lana will heal because she’s not jealous of Lois; she has her own beautiful and loving family to fix. And that’s the point of this show. Everyone’s busy keeping their family foundation solid. It be hard.

The best compliment I can give this show is that the only Marvel TV shows I ever put on loop are Disney+’s WandaVision followed by Daredevil. So for the CW’s Superman and Lois, a proud and strong DC product, to join that ranking is fantastic.

My Latest Book Review, On Radicalism And Technology,…..

Posted on by toddpanther

….can be found here, right below the above discussion on Black Power Media!

Doctors Old And New

Posted on by toddpanther

This news is not surprising (folks on the Web have been re-attaching David Tennant to the role for months), and I think it smacks of desperation after a serious ret-con left a bad taste in many mouths. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy to see these two again!

Book Micro-Review: The True Believer

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A Revolutionary For Our Time: The Walter Rodney Story.
Leo Zeilig.
Chicago: Haymarket Books, 340 pp., $22.95.

Quite a revelation about the power and pitfalls of complete faith in a revolutionary Tanzania and Guyana. The un-mentioned truth of this just-the-facts bio is that the Black world still produces people exactly like this in terms of energy and focus, but the difference is that they are completely and happily colonized. Reading this book from the 2022 prism was like absorbing very detailed speculative fiction. Rodney is the grassroots servant-hero personified, the Bizzaro version of what Harvard Law School will continue to turn out, thanks to its success with Barack and Michelle Obama and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

I Guess It Really *Is* A “Family Affair”

Posted on by toddpanther

My God, who wouldn’t want to adopt Buffy, Jody and Cissy? As a lark, I started binging Family Affair on Prime. It’s a show I vaguely remember from early-to-mid 1970s syndication, since its span (1966-1971) reaches into my zygote-to-“I’m tree-years-old” period. This New York City sitcom was so goody-goody CBS added it to the list of popular rural shows it canceled–all those segregated Mayberrys and Junctions–so the network could enter into the Norman Lear years.

I admit to thoroughly enjoying the show, but I get CBS’ point. Star Trek is more realistic than some episodes. 🙂 Viewed from a 21st-century cultural mirror, the premise could be described as almost a monochrome Diff’rent Strokes: Bill Davis (Brian Keith), a well-off Westside playboy who is Hugh Hefner’s vision personified, adjusts to his dead brother’s kids, who are dumped on him and his valet, Giles French (Sebastian Cabot, also known as the narrator of the original Winnie-the-Pooh Disney animated classics). Davis’ and French’s smoothness-ness interruptedus, the upscale, not-motley crew quickly gel as a family. Although this first season is about the children’s trauma of being orphaned, separated and emotionally abandoned (“Do you really love me? Am I really staying here?” is a common and recurring theme), the tyke’s tears are always dried, their concerns forever found and met.

One particular episode had me on a steady chuckle. Through a misunderstanding, Buffy and Jody, the 6-year-old twins, are left on their own in New York City. They walk around by themselves, Buffy holding a $20 bill visibly in her hand, and nothing bad happens to them. In fact, a nice Latino sees the little darlings and immediately helps them find their way back to Uncle Bill. I mean, who wouldn’t?

Then there is reality:

No Buffys, Jodys or Cissys in Haiti or Cameroon. Wah-wah.

When I saw Biden with this kid, I subconsciously thought, “Whew! Buffy’s no longer in danger! Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming” 🙂

CONGRATS to Black Power Media….

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….for its daylong telethon for Dhrouba bin Wahad. I have long thought he is an important Black decolonized political analyst and public intellectual and I think, as an important Black Power-infused thinker, he is beyond worthy of both support and assessment.

114-Word Review of “The Batman”

Posted on by toddpanther
The Darkest Knight

Those who know and love the top stories of the last 30 years or so of Batman comics–particularly those of the last 15 years–will think this is two-thirds of a masterpiece and forgive the exposition-ish info dump at the beginning of the third act. The film’s last part attempts to serve the needs of both epilogue and the now-customary post-credit let’s-set-up-the-next-two-films. This outing is so powerful it will make you forget any Batman film not named The Dark Knight. After this soon-to-be trilogy, the only future film direction I’d see is Batman Beyond because it would be the only part of this soon-to-be 90-year-old character that will not be mined by then.