Fear The Walking Dead Episode 1 Rant

Fear the Walking Dead?

Fuck the Walking Dead.

Nothing happens in the main series. Even less happens in the spin-off series.

Every character is fine talking in exposition, 'Look, kid, you got bullied, but now you are tutoring your bully! You're smart!'

'How come you're not in class? Is it because you are smart enough to teach it, but you also don't always necessarily play by the rules?'

But then they have trouble talking about the dead rising, and cannibals. Why didn't the main character (I assume) just be straight up about the cannibal in the shooting gallery (I actually liked that line)?
And then the step-father went to the scene of the zombies? In LA? Fuck that. Even if your son was hallucinating, you are still in LA.

Which brings me to my next point. I'm not sure if it was only in the comics, or if it was in the show as well. But a big reveal is that the living people are the walking dead, not the zombies. Which makes sense for this show, since it's set in LA. In which case you should definitely fear the people. I think the zombies detract from what you should fear.

Also, what the fuck was up with that black kid being the drug dealer? And then wanting to kill his mate? I know exactly how that scene came up in the writer's room. The writer's created a character, that was meant to symbolise lost innocence of the main character (I'm sorry, I didn't take any names). Then later on the studio came to the writers and was like, 'Hey, nothing happens in an entire hour.' Then the writers just decided to make the black nice guy a drug dealer, and then a fucking murderer. In for a penny. And then the writers justify it by having it as a twist.

And how fucking stupid is the mother? I get it, AMC can't have a sympathetic woman on their channel. But for fuck sake. Someone puts 4 and 4 in front of her, and she has 2 sets of 4. 4 and 4 is 8. Figure it out. People are rising from the dead. Kids are downright telling you that zombies are eating people. You investigate a murder and walk up to the zombie and get bit? Good. You're a dumbass. But also, wouldn't it have been better if the mother wasn't a complete pile of shit?

Also, we know from The Walking Dead (now known as 'Not the completely shit one') that people come back from the dead regardless of being bit or not. The first episode takes place over a couple of days. Do you know how many people die a day? Fucking heaps. I'd say Family Guy was spot on. People would realise that people weren't dying in 10 seconds. It would be all over the news. It was just unreal that the only person who met 2 zombies was a heroin addict. Fucking hell.

I can't wait for the next episode. Just kidding. Fuck this show.

Burst Culture

Hi readers, thanks for your continued support. I see that this blog has been getting consistent pageviews. I've sort of left it running without adding to it. The big reason is I've started the site burstculture.com. Me and a mate from Uni have been posting heaps of content. It's been operational for a month and it already has more posts than I've put up here (granted I've stolen a few old posts from here).

It's a balloon bursting. 

I wanted to call the website Culture Burst, but someone had seen this blog and decided it was a good name. So they set up their own website with my name. But Burst Culture is a much better name. It's better alphabetically, and probably in other ways. I even have a logo on the website.

So check it out. It is a lot more on Movies and Television but we are also doing a podcast.

So thanks for your continued support, and if you want to read more from me, check out the website. Follow me on Twitter. Like us on Facebook. Do what you need to do.

I love you.

Jeff Smith's Bone

I just tore through Bone.

I was intrigued to read it as I had heard that it was one of the funniest comic books ever. Turns out I was thinking about Chew.

Regardless, Jeff Smith's Bone was fucking nuts.

I didn't know what to expect, I have the 1300 page black and white omnibus on my desk. It is a behemoth. The most apt way to describe it is if Carl Barks and J.R.R Tolkien put their works in a blender. It's an epic, high fantasy powerhouse. 

Three Bones from Boneville get lost in a medieval Valley. Fone Bone (Mickey Mouse), his cousin Phoney Bone (Scrooge McDuck) and his other cousin Smiley (Goofy) get ran out of Boneville and have to find their way back.

That's pretty much the story. Until they end up siding with the dragons against the rat creatures in a war that leaves no man or bone safe.

It's nuts. It has everything. The blurb for The Princess Bride would fit perfectly on the back of Bone.

I'm stoked that I didn't read Bone until after it was completely released. The individual volumes were released from 1991 until 2004. My life until I was 13 would have been waiting to find out what happened next. Reading it as an omnibus if I ever wanted to know what happened next I would just read another 100 pages.

The pacing was amazing, the character development was amazing, the world was completely fleshed out. I loved the heroes, the villains, the background characters. It would be amazing to own the coloured version, but an extra $90 for colours was too much for me, personally.

I'd recommend buying the book, because I like to flip through pages and smell them. But if you are interested Issue #1 is available for free, and in colour, on Boneville, Jeff Smith's website.

More than Meets the Eye Issue #1 Review

I'm not a Transformers fan. I had the toys when I was a kid in the 90's. I smuggled Scotch into the cinemas when the first movie came out. Optimus Prime turns into a truck and Bumblebee can't talk. But Humble had a Transformers comic bundle and I needed to donate some money to a children's charity. With all this in mind let's see what I thought about Transformers: More than Meets the Eye Issue #1.

The first chapter is titled The Death of Optimus Prime. Optimus Prime believes he is dead because he is in an unknown location. He believes it is either Robot Hell or Robot Heaven. He checks the co-ordinates on his GPS and it turns out he is on Cybertron, the home planet of the Transformers. He then tries to figure out if he is in the past or the future. It turns out he is in the present. He walks into town and is saddened to realise that he doesn't recognise any of the Transformers walking around and even more saddened that they don't recognise him. This goes on for about 5 seconds until he is reunited with his best friend Sideswipe.

I have no idea if this comic is a continuation of the cartoon or another comic series. But it is clear that there are millions of years of rich Transformers history that I am completely missing out on. Chapter 1 does serve as a good jumping point because the key points of Transformers are relayed. In 20 pages I understand that the Autobots beat the Decepticons in war. The Autobots (somehow) restored their home planet. Optimus Prime passed the leadership position to Bumblebee (who can talk now) and the Transformers hate the Autobots because they remind them of a war they all hid from.

There was one character that stood out from the rest, and that was Flamebot. He is a red Autobot that wants to go off on mythic quests instead of hanging around on a planet that hates him. Already I see him as the Indiana Jones of the Transformers Universe. I don't want to read about robots playing Game of Thrones, I want to read about Transforming Fire Robot going on adventures looking for Robot Knights.

Writer James Roberts shows new readers a glimpse of a much deeper universe. He doesn't assume that readers will know everything about Transformers and instead subtly guides readers through what they need to know. There were a couple of spelling errors that should have been fixed by now, especially for digital copies, but they were few and mostly unnoticeable.

The art by Alex Milne is ok. My biggest complaint I have with the art is that sometimes I couldn't figure out which robot was talking or if a robot had been introduced earlier. I don't fault the artist. There are a lot of characters that have to look a certain way and it just so happens that they end up looking alike. I can see this problem being remedied in later issues as I am pretty sure the story leads away from the densely populated Transformer planet and instead focuses on a lot less characters.

The story perfectly fits the comic book format, A movie with this many Transformers would need a budget of $500 billion. This story might be too mature for cartoons but could potentially work.

Overall it was a solid first issue and I will definitely read more. If you like the movies then you will like anything. If you remember Transformers fondly from your childhood you will love this series. If you barely have a passing interest in Transformers then you will enjoy this.

You can buy it here or download it here.