Trapped in a world he was not designed to cope with, Dave-El (the true Kryptonian name of alleged Earth creature David Long) writes about comics, Doctor Who, Star Trek, politics, the absurdity of the human condition and whatever other nonsense that befuddles his unbalanced mind. This is.... I'M SO GLAD MY SUFFERING AMUSES YOU!
The Odyssey from director Christopher Nolan is currently in theaters amassing major box office and glowing reviews.
It's 3 hours long.
Or you can cover the epic tale in a few minutes. Your Friday Video Link is a summary of Homer Simpson as Odysseus.
Keeping this post short and sweet, guys! Got a lot on my plate.
Until next time, remember to be good to one another.
When I wasn't doing my 50 year comic flashback posts every month, I missed some months with some comics that were influential in my nascent comic book collecting days.
One of those months was December 1975 and one of those issues was Detective Comics#457.
It starts off with this gorgeous cover by Dick Giordano with colors by Tatjanna Wood.
I actually did a post about this issue back on July 24, 2014, almost to day 12 years ago.
I've been doing this blog that long.
What have I done with my life?
Sorry. I need to sit with myself and be depressed.
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OK, I'm back. So if you don't mind, I'm going to let my 12 year younger self do most of the heavy lifting for this post.
Old person me will return at the end.
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Today I wanted to take a look at a story that I read way back in my youth, a story that continues to be a favorite of mine and of many other Bat-fans, "There's No Hope In Crime Alley".
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| by Mike W Barr, Alan Davis and Paul Neary , Detective Comics#574 (1987) |
So you know what this means!
Yep, it's a....
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We're back up and running tomorrow with a comic book themed post.
Until next time, remember to be good to one another.
While the title change indicates the change in focus from Louis de Pointe du Lac to Lestat de Lioncourt, the shadow of all that occurred before still looms large over what is happening now.
Such as the terrible fate of their daughter Claudia.
After presumably killing Lestat at the end of season 1, Louis and Claudia booked it to Paris in the 1940's and became involved with a vampire community called the Théâtre des Vampire. Louis gets a new lover and mentor in the form of the Vampire Armand.
Spoiler: Lestat ain't dead and was a patron of the Théâtre des Vampire. For Claudia's role in trying to murder their patron, the Parisian community sentence her and her vampire lover Madeline to death by sunlight.
It was a horrible, violent death and watching a defiant Claudia, along with Madeline, crumble into dust is a terrible scene that remains burned into my memory.
And Louis's biographer Daniel Malloy puts things together that Lestat was not the enemy Louis and Claudia thought he was and it was Armand who was working against Louis.
Daniel completes and publishes his book "Interview With A Vampire" and gets turned into a vampire by Armand and that brings us to The Vampire Lestat.
The Vampire Lestat is frontman for a punk rock band called "The Vampire Lestat". He's on a bus tour of a various mid-sized venues, building a small but devoted cult following.
Lestat is tapping into centuries of pain, loss, longing, desire, rage, guilt, yadda yadda yadda crafting songs for his big kick ass album.
Lestat is also in a love/hate/obsesssive/sexual relationship with his mother, the Vampire Sofia. Yes, Lestat is fucking his mother and we could try to explain it or just go with Lestat's excuse,"It's different for vampires."
When Louis finds out about this relationship, he will not agree that "it's different for vampires."
SIDE NOTE: Jennifer Ehle who plays Sofia was born in Winston-Salem, NC and attended the North Carolina School of the Arts.
Louis, using various aliases, has built an empire of property, think Monopoly but with actual hotels and also vampires. Louis has discovered Regina, a diner waitress who looks like Claudia. Louis acually pays Regina to pretend to be Claudia.
In the background of all this is Armand who is up to sketchy shit, slyly plotting against Louis and Lestat. Helping him with all that is Daniel Malloy.
And the big thing rumbling through the vampire community at large is something called the Great Conversion, a plan to bolster the number of vampires in the world.
And there's the Talamasca, a secret society that's trying to navigate the perils of a world with vampires and witches in it.
That is a LOT to keep track off.
OK, back to Louis and Regina...
Regina's read the "Interview With A Vampire" book and gets the details right but this doesn't provide the closure Louis is looking for regarding his guilt over Claudia's fate.
So Louis and Lestat arrange a meeting with a Mayfair Witch (oh, do I need to start watching Mayfair Witches?) to conduct a seance. The witch sommons the spirit of Claudia and she is not happy. At all. Most of her rage is directed at Louis.
Yeah, Lestat is a total prick but he never hid that. But Louis tried to pretend he was better than that and it's his fault Claudia was condemned to existence as a vampire.
Also wherever Claudia's soul has been since her death in Paris 80 years before, Madeline was not there with her and she's not here in now and this really pisses off Claudia as she screams Madeline's name before vanishing.
Well, that was a lot. Sitting on a park bench, processing what they just witnessed, Lestat and Louis chat with a warm and gentle familiarity. Perhaps there's an actual chance for our gay vampire couple.
Until Armand and Daniel slice their heads off.
Wait! Who did what to who how now?
Which brings us to the season finale.
Armand has Louis's head and his body hooked to wires and shit in a makeshift lab while he torments and tortures him. He also has Lestat's body but not his head.
Lestat's head is buried in Daniel's bowling bag. Inside his dying brain, Lestat is put on trial by manifestations of his maker Magnus, Sofia, Louis, others he had turned into vampires over the centuries. They accuse him of squandering his vampire existence and condemn him as a failure.
Lestat asserts himself against his accusers. If he is a failure, it means he tried to do something with his life.
I can't begin to summarize or analyze these twin torments that the severed heads of Louis and Lestat endure.
Let's just cut to the end and Louis and Lestat get their heads sewn back on.
The episode ends with Lestat looking out from a balcony as the sun rises on a burned and shattered world.
The Great Conversion went too far? That's a question for another season.
If Interview With A Vampire felt more (for lack of a better word) grounded, The Vampire Lestat leans harder into absurdity, with Lestat's drama queen rock star and the growing threat of an exposed vampire community demanding more than a furtive existence in the shadows. Add in some full on mad scientist shit (Lestat and Louis spend time as just heads and then get them sewed back on to their bodies? Really?) and The Vampire Lestat is a wild and chaotic ride.
I'll be honest, I'm not sure I understood it all but damn, I had a blast trying to hang on to whatever this was.
Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.
Hello! Regrettably, today's post is about Donald Trump.
After Spain defeated Argentina 1-0, Trump showed up at New York's MetLife Stadium at the FIFA World Cup final to present the trophy and ruin everyone's fun.
Let me quote what the crowd had to say about that:
Anyway....
On with the regularly scheduled program.
Last week, Li'l Donnie Trump decided to put on his Presidentin' Pants and stake out some prime real estate on television to present a message from the White House on a matter of utmost importance.
Whine like a bitch about the 2020 election.
You might think Trump's war with Iran that's spinning out of control would be something to command his attention but from what I can tell, that little dust up he started in the Middle East? Yeah, he's bored with that. Despite the continual loss of American lives. (At least 3 U.S. service members were killed this weekend.)
Hey, remember how all the MAGA faithful fell in line for their lord and savior because shit cost too much in 2024? And how he promised that he alone would could make prices come down? And now in 2026, shit costs MORE? Hey, you dumb motherfuckers, that shit ain't on Li'l Donnie's radar.
His delusional mind tells him he has created a goddam golden age of America and everything is great and wonderful and your hamburger costs LESS no matter what your eyes tell you at the grocery store.
Trump's net worth has grown exponentially since he returned tot the White House with all the insider trading and foreign entities buying up his goddam bitcoin to curry favor and influence. For Li'l Donnie himself, I guess it has been a fucking golden age.
You have to pay more for food and gas? Fuck you!
der Führer has more important things on his mind.
Someone as "wonderful" and "perfect" as himself could not have lost the election in 2020.
He could not have disappointed his dead daddy by losing an election.
So he clings to his fantasy that big ol' meanies took his precious election victory from him to make him look bad.
The vaunted address to the nation offered nothing new, just more spewing of his baseless accusations of a rigged election.
Trump claimed he declassified a bunch of documents that would prove his point.
These documents were posted on the White House website and... well, I'll be damned those documents do have some information about election interference.
Gee, Li'l Donnie did NOT mention that in his speech.
Trump did mention China and the docs do reference China's intent to put their thumb on the scale of our electoral process because they really did not want Trump to win.
But those some documents provide nothing to show China acted on that intent.
Did Donald Trump not read these documents first?
Don't be silly! Of course he didn't.
Poor li'l Donnie can't read.
Another things these documents do not do is point to any of the alleged weaknesses in election security that Trump whines about that he claims "Dumocrats" use to steal elections.
Trump takes out the "B" in "dumb" because he says people don't know there's a "B" in "dumb".
Well, I guess his people might not know that.
Trump used his speech to again push for the Senate to vote for the SAVE Act and abolish the filibuster if that's what it takes to pass it.
Would it surprise you there is nothing in this so-called "evidence" Trump presented that alludes to any of the problems the SAVE Act is supposed to address?
As you can see from the additional graphic below, my other fandom is visiting today, Doctor Who.
Today's topic is Star Trek crossing over with Doctor Who?
Can it happen?
According to Akiva Goldsman, showrunner for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, he was certainly trying to make it happen.
In ST: SNW season 3's "The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail", there is a blink and you'll miss it image of the TARDIS caught with the Enterprise by a scavenger ship.
While discussing the Doctor's Easter Egg appearance in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Goldsman said he had been actively working with Russell T. Davies on pulling together a crossover.
Goldsman said, “We were trying with Russell to do a crossover. We were for years. Again, these are the near misses, but we got not unclose, and we had some really cool conversations about it. And so, certainly in our view, I mean, Pelia traveled in the TARDIS. Why not?"
Russell T Davies has expressed his desire to make a crossover happen: "We would love to announce a crossover between Star Trek and Doctor Who!"
"If anyone can make that happen... it’s fans that can make that happen! Two great big broadcasters, two great big empires – and their lawyers! – would have to come together, but we can do that, can’t we?"
Well, no!
Does the BBC and Paramount not want our money?
With both Star Trek AND Doctor Who not in active production, the chance of any kind of in canon crossover is very remote at this time.
Where TV shows may not enter, comic books will not fear to tread.
In the Doctor Who episode "Space Babies", in which the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) declares to companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) that they should visit the Enterprise sometime.
Ruby knows them as characters in a TV show. The Doctor knows them to be real.
That was in 2024.
But 11 years before that, this was sort of the premise of a little something-something I wrote and posted back on Sunday, May 26,2013.
The Odyssey from director Christopher Nolan is currently in theaters amassing major box office and glowing reviews. It's 3 hours long. ...
