In the newest Showcase Top Ten, Blake and Kenny go through the greatest time travel stories of all time. The guys present their lists, read comments from you, and announce the final winners! In the picks, Kenny goes with Green Lantern Corps #0 and Blake takes Archer and Armstrong #2 Contact us with comments, suggestions, or anything else at Showcase@CXPulp.com!
Music provided by Music Alley from Mevio.
Episode 272: The Ultimate Top Ten Time Travel Stories
This week Blake proves that, when it comes to bringing back the dead, White Lanterns have it easy. Blake manages to resurrect a dead podcast recording so that you can hear the guys talk about the last new Lost content ever (on the season 6 DVD), the upcoming TV season including developments for Smallville and The Walking Dead, the cancellation (and resurrection) of Daredevil, the White Lantern variant covers, the movie Green Lanterns and more! In the picks, Kenny goes with Action Comics #892, Mike digs Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors #1, and Blake pimps Science Dog Special #1! Contact us with comments, suggestions, or anything else at BlakeMPetit@gmail.com!
IMPORTANT NOTE: Comixtreme.com is undergoing a few technical difficulties, including a glitch to our e-mail. For now, you can e-mail me at BlakeMPetit@gmail.com, and if you’ve sent us an e-mail since August 24, you’ll need to re-send it. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Music provided by the Podshow Podsafe Music Network.
Episode 186: White Lanterns Have it Easy
Inside This Episode:
Your good buddy Chase returns for a very special chat with Blake and Kenny about the final episode of Lost! After six years of waiting, what questions did the final episode answer? What was left unresolved? Which episodes were most important and which ones were the most fun to watch? And is the Lost Experience really over? In the picks, Chase goes with Avengers #1, Kenny digs the return of Birds of Prey, and Blake is happy with Fantastic Four #579. Contact us with comments, suggestions, or anything else at Showcase@comixtreme.com!
Music provided by the Podshow Podsafe Music Network.
Episode 172: Lost-The End
Inside This Episode:
Plus: The newest Disney adventure film has hit theaters! The boys check out Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time in this week’s At the Movies bonus episode!
At the Movies Episode 17: Prince of Persia-The Sands of Time
A lot has been written about the final episode of Lost already, just 24 hours after it finished airing, and while I have a lot to say about it I’m not going to attempt to do so now. The Showcase boys and I are going to get together soon to record our thoughts as completely as possible (and if you’d like to share yours on the show, you can e-mail Showcase@comixtreme.com), but before then I want to talk a little bit about what I think Lost, ultimately, is going to mean. I’m not going to talk about the story of Lost, but about what I think it could mean for storytelling in general.
Genre fiction has always struggled on network television, but Lost ushered in a whole wave of science fiction and fantasy based television series on the major broadcast networks. Granted, it had to trick the viewers, first by disguising the fact that it was a science fiction show and then, in the last two seasons, disguising the fact that it was ultimately a very spiritual story. And granted, a great many of the shows that have followed in Lost’s wake have struggled – Invasion lasted on season, Flashforward’s cancellation was just announced, and although Heroes lasted all the way to season four, people have been claiming the death knell was sounding since season two. Sometimes these shows will falter because the writers try to copy the Lost formula too exactly – a story so layered that it collapses under its own weight. Sometimes they falter because they don’t pay enough attention to Lost and it becomes clear that the writers don’t know where they’re going.
Lost proved that telling a long-term story can walk if there’s a clear plan, but shows that don’t know how to map that out falter, and fans that don’t love the show as much as Lost fans love theirs grow impatient. (Let’s be honest, a lot of Lost fans got impatient too). And sometimes, the usual cycle of a TV season can wound a show. I believe that the lengthy mid-season hiatus contributed to Flashforward’s demise, and although V survived, it did so by the skin of its teeth.
Here’s what I’d like to see begin to happen, and I think it’s happening already. I want to see more networks that have the courage to give a long-term story a chance. Granted, it’s up to the writers of those shows to give the fans enough up front to sustain them through to the end, and to know how to shape the story along the way, but Lost has proven that it can work. Also, I think we’re going to see more and more shows done in uninterrupted form, the way Lost was in its last three years. Film enough episodes up front that you can show the entire season without a hiatus or lengthy chunks of reruns, and show the whole season at a stretch. Some shows will be fall series, some will be spring series, some (gasp!) may even find a home in the summertime. But I think for a show of this nature, this is probably the best way to do it. British television (Doctor Who, for example) usually follows this format already, and I think American genre shows will benefit by taking a page from that book.
But the most important thing that Damon Lindeloff and Carlton Cuse showed was that if you have a plan, the courage to execute it, and a cast and crew of gargantuan talent, you can create something special. You can move mountains.
Hell, maybe you can even move islands.
Thoughts on the show itself will be coming this weekend.
Kenny returns in this all-e-mail episode! After spending about a month on assorted special episodes, the boys sit down and read a slew of them all at once — comments on Blackest Night, Lost, The Hulk, thoughts on Siege and much more! And since Kenny hasn’t read comics in a while (and Daniel doesn’t read them at all), Blake and Mike each double up on their picks — this week, Legion of Super-Heroes #1, Superman/Batman #72, Atomic Robo #3 and Booster Gold #32! Contact us with comments, suggestions, or anything else at Showcase@comixtreme.com!
Episode 171: Siege, Sentry, and lots of E-Mails
Inside This Episode:
In about 24 hours, I’ll be watching the final episode of LOST. It’s hard to believe it’s been six seasons, but even harder to believe the end is here. The writers of this show have crafted an incredibly exciting, entertaining mythology, populated it with characters you want to learn more about even if you consider them despicable human beings, and then make you care about characters that you THOUGHT were beyond redemption. It’s been a long time since any television show has captured and engrossed me so completely, and I doubt it will happen again any time soon. No matter how this series ends, the tellers have crafted a story more wholly mesmerizing than anything else on TV. My good buddy Chase once said that he thinks LOST is really the first great novel of the 21st century. I think it’s something totally new, an adventure in long-form storytelling that rewards those with patience and imagination with an experience that is more satisfying than any other. This is not the first television show of its kind, but it may well be the best.
See you all on the island.
Responding to recent requests, this week the boys talk some TV. The guys talk about the entire season of Lost just before we head into the last two episodes, including which questions have to be answered, which ones probably won’t, and predictions for the end of one of their favorite shows. Then, Blake and Daniel delve into the current series of Doctor Who — the reign of Steven Moffat and Matt Smith, why they’re loving this series so much, and what they’re looking for in the second half. Fear not though, friends, you still get a comic fix. In the picks of the week, both of the Big Two’s “new directions” are addressed. Mike goes with Brightest Day #1 (which leads into a tangent about Titans: Villains For Hire #1) and Blake takes The Heroic Age: Prince of Power #1. Contact us with comments, suggestions, or anything else at Showcase@comixtreme.com!
Music provided by the Podshow Podsafe Music Network.
Episode 170: TV Talk With Lost and Doctor Who
Inside This Episode:
The last day of school for my students is exactly two weeks from today, although many of them seem to think it was two weeks ago. While I have no intention of slacking before the semester ends, that doesn’t mean I don’t already have plans for the summer. In no particular order…
How about you, peeps? Any summer plans?
Still having connection problems, friends, and despite the best efforts of a legion of highly-trained ninja tech support workers, I still don’t know what exactly the problem is. The word “router” is bandied about frequently. So are other words, comprised mostly of four letters.
Anyway, I’ve managed to get an iPod connection and I’m using the few blessed minutes before it dies to tell you I’m getting together with the crew tonight to see Iron Man 2 with the hopes of having a Showcase review this weekend. We’re also going to try to do a quick recording about Lost and Doctor Who, if at all possible. And if the fates allow, that’ll be online sometime tomorrow. I hope.
Today was my first day back at work after my (unfortunately late) Spring Break, and you can feel that there’s only a few weeks left in the school year. Students and teachers alike are struggling with that sensation that the end of the year is rapidly approaching, and students and teachers alike are finding it hard to concentrate.
So today, as a special little secret just between you and me, I’m going to tell you what your teacher is really thinking in those “down” moments. At those times when you, as a student, are taking a test, or writing an entry in your classroom journal, or doing virtually anything else that doesn’t require any immediate action from the teacher beyond monitoring the room and making sure nothing catches on fire.
It varies from person to person, of course, because contrary to what many students will have you believe, teachers are organic human beings with different wants, desires, needs, and personalities, and not just mindless automatons that synch up their brains to the schoolboard mainframe and curl up under their desks from 2:30 in the afternoon until 7 o’clock the following morning. So this is the thought process of a purely hypothetical teacher… say ninth grade… English… tired… on the day of a test.
Okay, test papers are handed out. Told thirteen different kids today’s date, which is written on the board in the same place it has been since August. Gave pencils to five of them. Okay, so now I just walk around to make sure nobody is cheating or– oh, geez, Cindy’s hand is up. She’s going to ask me a question that any reasonable human being could find the answer to without a bit of help. Yes, Cindy, today is the third. Yes, write it where it says “date.” Yes, answer all of the questions. Okay, sixty minutes left until the test period is over.
Let’s see, once I’ve got this test graded I’ll have four test grades for the marking period, which means I just need two more to do an average for the class. That’s a relief, I was worried for a while there I wouldn’t be able to fit enough tests in. The kids complain about too many tests, but they should know we don’t actually have any control over that. We don’t have control over a lot of things. The mold, for instance. How many times now have I asked for someone to change that ceiling tile? I didn’t think any of those colors could be found in nature. The kids complain to me as if I can do anything about it. I don’t know where the extra tiles are, and even if I did—
What? No, Cindy, “Montague” is spelled correctly. Yes, I’m sure. No, I can’t tell you if the Montagues are Romeo’s family or Juliet’s. This is a test, you should know by now.
Where was I? Oh, right, theceiling. I wonder what they would say if I just took the tile off and left a hole in the ceiling. And then put a cat up there. Heh. “Ceiling cat is watching you matriculate.” Yeah, that’d be funny. Then I would spend the rest of the semester explaining that joke to people. Maybe not.
I wonder what the rest of the guys are doing this weekend. The Losers is opening this weekend, I wonder if everyone else would want to see that. Can’t really talk about that with the kids, they’d start using it to insult each other. Or me. Not that I particularly care, but once one of ’em starts it’s like a chain reaction, and they still won’t let me have a taser. If they could spend five minutes in this class–
No, Tony, I didn’t see the wrestling match last night. Which has nothing to do with Romeo and Juliet, so please be quiet and get back to work.
What was I thinking?
I forget.
…
Mahna Mahna! Doot dooooo-do-dooo-doot!Mahna Mahna! Doot dooo-deet-doot!
That was a great episode of Lost last night. I nearly plotzed when they started playing that Willy Wonka music in the end credits. That guy who was talking about a Lost/Charlie and the Chocolate Factory connection on the internet is an absolute genius. I’m gonna have to remember to blog about that when I get home.
Huh. Chad got number fifteen right. Good for him, that was a tough one. Maybe it’s finally sinking in that he can’t pass this class if he doesn’t start studying.
Cindy’s been on number twelve for a long time now. She’s just staring at it. Now she’s looking up. Now she — OH MY GOD SHE SAW ME DON’T LOOK DON’T LOOK DON’T LOOK IF YOU DON’T LOOK IT IN THE EYE IT HAS NO POWER OVER YOU AND aaaaaaw, crap, her hand is up.
No, Cindy, I promise you, one of those four answers is correct. Because I wrote the question, that’s how. No, I can’t tell you what that word means, this is a test. Use your context clues. Context clues. CON-TEXT.
Joel is already finished? He must have skipped the essay questions again. when are these kids going to realize that’s twenty percent of the test right there? That means if they get more than five multiple choice or three of the short answer wrong, they automatically fail. It’s simple math. I think it’s simple. Oh geez, what if I got the point values on the test wrong again? Okay, no big deal. Let’s just nonchalantly mosey on over to my desk so I can look at a copy… part one worth 60 points… part two worth 20 points… essay questions worth 20 points. Six… two… two… yeah, that adds up to a hundred. Okay, the point values are right.
I know these guys don’t like Shakespeare, but that’s fine. I didn’t really start to appreciate him until college. Maybe if I could show them some videos besides just the film of Romeo and Juliet. The Reduced Shakespeare Company, for instance. Or that episode of Doctor Who where he met Shakespeare.
The new season of Doctor Who has been awesome. I didn’t think Matt Smith could match David Tennant, but he’s been great. And he and Karen Gillan have great chemistry together.
Karen Gillan is hot. There, I said it. We were all thinking it, someone had to say it.
Oh geez, Cindy put your hand down. You know I can’t answer questions like that during a te–
What?
Oh. Okay. Here’s the bathroom pass. Sorry about that.
:sigh:
Fifty-two minutes and seventeen seconds left.
Sixteen.
Fifteen.
…
Karen Gillan is hot.
…
Eleven.
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