Star Wars: Darth Vader Volume 2 Shadows And Secrets Review

Star Wars fans i've reviewed alot of the movies over the years heck i've even taken a crack at reviewing some episodes of Rebels (might do a full review of that soon BTW) but i've never reviewed anything from the Star Wars comics or read any of them for that matter well now that changes with my review of Star Wars: Darth Vader Volume 2 Shadows And Secrets.

As far as I can work out the plot of this arc is Darth is secretly trying to find out who blew up the Death Star while at the same time trying to prevent the Empire from finding out who stole some weapons. I'll full on admit I havn't read the first six issues of this series and to me that's a damn shame because the plot presented in this book is generally really interesting altho they don't really go into detail as to why Darth can't go looking for Luke.

While reading the book for the life of me I couldn't work out where in the timeline this book takes place because the opening statement makes it sound like it takes place after A New Hope but then a character says something about Jabba not being with them so that made me wonder if it took place after Return Of the Jedi and yes I know Vader dies in that movie it was just me having a blonde moment and forgetting about Vaders death but yes story wise this does take place after A New Hope.

I will admit even the idea of Vader knowing who Jabba is is honestly kinda exciting since there pretty much the two biggest bad guys in the whole series at least for the general audience but for me what would have been even cooler is seeing them interact in this story since it would be a battle of wits Vader can't kill Jabba because there would be a bounty on his head before Jabba's body hit the floor and Jabba can't kill Vader because he would have alot of the empire after him.

Working on this book was writer Kieron Gillen and artist Salvador Larroca and I have to say that the art in the book is truly freaking gorgeous heck just look at the above picture if you want prove of how great the artwork is and the same thing can also be said for the writing in fact the quote on the back of the book was saying how good the writing is and that was from a website called Newsarama and I have to agree with them this book is so well written to me this felt like it could have been a movie all itself.

Speaking of the writing Darth himself is written so well in this book and i'm not sure if many will agree with this statement or not but the way he's written here is better then how he was written in the prequel films this book presents us with a more morally complex character you see him play the empire in order to get what he wants which also brings out his more cunning side and to me that helps make him a more rounded character since now he's more then just the emperor's muscle he's a human being.

I'm not really sure if anyone agrees with me on this or what people think of this character in general but I really did enjoy the character of Aphra she's a fun spunky character and her interactions with Darth are some of the best scenes in the whole book altho there is something about her that I just don't like and it's the fact that she's another smuggler to me that trope in Star Wars is getting really stale and of course she comes with a tragic backstory and i'm sat here thinking "not every thief needs a tragic backstory" it doesn't take anything away from the character but it doesn't add anything either.

Honestly the Aphra character must have been popular because she now has her own ongoing series Doctor Aphra which is re-teaming writer Kieron Gillen and artist Salvador Larroca and I hope that she continues to get more popular because I can really see her showing up in either a TV series or in a future movie that's how much I believe in her.

I admit I wasn't expecting this book to be as gruesome and as gory as it was you straight up see get things put through there throats and you see them get holes in there body it doesn't distract from the main focus of the story in fact it might add to it since it shows you how violent the empire can be instead of just telling you about how violent they can be and that to me is really refreshing to see in any Star Wars media.

Now I picked volumes two and three of this series and any rational person would expect volume three to cover the Vader Down storyline since that was the next story told in the series but no volume three instead covers The Shu-torun War which is issues 16-19 plus the Darth Vader Annual and for some reason they chose to release Vader Down as a limited series which to me is quite strange because now if I want to see that storyline and continue this pretty sweet Star Wars comics collection instead of going to the next number in the collection I have to search out a separate book.

Overall I really did enjoy this book and it made me look forward to reading Volume 3 but at the same time this book was so good that Volume 3 now has a lot to live up to so this book gets a modest 8 out of 10 from me.

Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue Review

Well then cartoon this is a review that i've been putting of for a while now and well I thought it's finally time to get around to it and yeah it's as bad and as strange as others make it out to be so here is my review of the infamous Cartoon All-Stars To the Rescue.

The plot of this special basically is a kid is on drugs and a bunch of cartoon characters try to convince him not to do them anymore. The first of many mistakes that this special makes is that it demonizes all drugs all drugs aren't bad in fact some of them can and have been used to save lives the second mistake it makes is how the cartoons appear isn't consistent Bugs , Daffy , Tigger , Miss Piggy , Gonzo , Michaelangelo , Slimer and Huey, Dewey, and Louie all appear for no reason when all of the other characters are at least shown as either products or in pictures.

Starring in this weird thing is Ross Bagdasarian as Alvin and Simon , Townsend Coleman as Michaelangelo , Jim Cummings as Pooh and Tigger , Paul Fusco as Alf , Danny Goldman as Brainy Smurf , Janice Karman as Theodore and Lorenzo Music as Garfield. 

Now the sad thing is this was the first time that both Bugs and daffy were played by someone other then Mel Blanc since he died before production could begin so in this special both were played by Jeff Bergman who is honestly good as the characters but the stuff both he and the rest of the cast are given to work with just isn't good and sadly that hinders all of the performances.

Before I get onto the animation I would like to point out that this is technically a Disney product since the executive producer of the special is Roy Disney and the company distributing the special on VHS was Buena Vista a company which was ran by the Walt Disney Company so even tho it doesn't have the Disney name on it they had some hand in the special.

The animation for the special was done by Wang Film Productions who's only claim to fame is this special and boy I can see why that is the case because the animation in this special is terrible even for 1990's standards it's bad and from what i can gather the production schedule for this was a pretty fast one which might explain why the animation is bad but if your making a drug PSA you'd think that alot more effort would go into the animation.

I have to bring this up again because it doesn't make any kind of sense but if your making an anti drug PSA then why the heck are bringing in Michelangelo who is perhaps the turtle who is most on drugs wouldn't make more sense if they had either Leo , Donny or Raph take his spot I know the makers of this special are choosing characters who the kids like but from a storyline perspective it makes no sense at all.

You want to know how much faith Disney had in this when the actual makers came to them to ask if they could use there characters the only characters Disney let them use was essentially there "B" characters so instead of Mickey , Donald , Minnie and Goofy we get Winnie The Pooh , Tigger and Huey, Dewey, and Louie and i'm not counting the muppets characters since they were still owned by Jim Henson at the time but even so that just goes to show you much faith they had in this special.

Now i'm British and I was born a few months (which for those who don't know was April 21st 1990 in America and June 22nd 1990 in the UK)before this special came out but from what I can recall stateside this thing was not promoted as an anti drug PSA in fact there was no scenes of the kids shown in any of the previews it was just the scenes showing the cartoon characters working together and that was it now I complain about hollywood lying to us in there trailers and it turns out that TV companies have been doing it since the freaking nineties guys people would have watched the special anyway because of the characters there was no need to lie to them.

Speaking of lieing to us there's two lies right in the poster for one Michelangelo who is in the special isn't featured anywhere on the poster and Smurfette isn't in the special but for some reason IS on the poster the only reason I can think of that they put her in the poster is because they thought it might make them seem sexist if they didn't include at least one female character but it makes them seem more sexist because she's not in the actual special.

Now for you disney nerds out there you'll be shocked to learn that this special features a song written by the late Howard Ashman and it's honestly the best thing in the entire piece which is saying something since it's a special featuring alot of great and funny characters and the music was done by the great Alan Menken among many others but the music isn't that good and the song "Wonderful Ways To Say No" is great or at least great by this specials standards.

Overall this special is as bad , as weird and as strange as they make it out to be and i'm glad that I didn't have to watch this when it first aired and no I don't agree with the IMDB score of 6 out of 10 and if you want to watch this special the only way you can see it is on Youtube because there's been no DVD release only a VHS release and so this special scores a 2 out of 10 from me.

Disenchantment Review

Well then cartoon fans it's so rare that I get to bring you a review of a Netflix series that I was actually looking forward to seeing and that's actually really good but here we are so here is my review of Disenchantment.

The premise of the show is Bean a rebellious princess , Elfo an Elf and Luci her personal demon get into all sorts of adventures. Now I know that this series sounds episodic and for a while that's how I would have described but you have to see a good chunk of the episodes because there are small story details thrown into each episode and I honestly thought that the pacing for each episode was really freaking good.

Starring in the show are Abbi Jacobson as Bean , Eric Andre as Luci , Nat Faxon as Elfo , John DiMaggio as King Zøg , Tress MacNeille as Queen Oona and a bunch of other characters , Matt Berry as Prince Merkimer and Sharon Horgan as Queen Dagmar. 

Casting wise the show did a great job because after the first or second episode I couldn't imagine anyone else playing these characters and it helps that the actors are really good in the show there are performers who you expect great performances from those being John DiMaggio and Tress MacNeille but as someone who hasn't heard of Abbi Jacobson I was surprised at how good she was in this show.

The animation was done by Rough Draft Studios who also animated shows like Futurama , Drawn Together and who's sister studio Rough Draft Korea animated a little known show called The Simpsons and I have to say that the animation in this show is honestly pretty good I couldn't think of a single time where there was an odd looking drawing or thinking that something would have been better if they took another crack at it.

In terms of character design to me that's where the show fails a little because they look like the typical characters that Matt Groening would draw so they don't really standout honestly you could just recolor Beans skin yellow and she would look like a Simpsons character and speaking of which Elfo totally looks like Bart except colored green with more hair and he wears a hat.

When this show was announced it was announced with a two season order and after watching how episode 10 ends I want the second season right now because I have to know what happens next that's how good this show is and when I normally do a series review I would usually watch a handful of episodes but because I fell so much in love with this show and it's characters I ended up watching all ten episodes and I don't regret a single moment of it.

After doing some research i've come to the conclusion that this is also a Futurama reunion for some of the producers and cast since both Tress MacNeille and of course John DiMaggio starred in the show but in terms of the producers Matt Groening , Josh Weinstein , Bill Oakley and the mad genius that is David X. Cohen reunite for this show but there not the only team to get back together as several writers and directors from The Simpsons also work on this show.

In all honesty I wasn't expecting this show to be as graphic as it was I knew that since it was going to be on Netflix it would be a little more mature but even so I was still shocked we see limbs get chopped off alot there's sex jokes and alot of blood I have no idea what the official rating is for the show but in my eyes it should be at least either TV 14 or MA but that's just me.

Alot of animated shows don't really have good continuity they won't reference past events or anything of the sort but this show does it alot there are times when a character would do a call back to a previous episode and instead of it being used as a joke it would be used to show us how far the characters have grown and it would also be used to advance some things story related as well.

For me at least the jokes in this show were really freaking funny for the most part I was laughing at least three or four times an episode there was even a Goldfinger joke in there which I loved because that is my all time favorite James Bond film but tho the jokes don't come as much in episodes 9 and 10 and I think that's good because those shows have a lot going on in them so stopping to tell a joke wouldn't work and just to give you all some friendly advice when watching this show read the signs trust me you will no regret it at all.

Overall this is such a good show I cannot wait for the next episodes to come out which is hopefully soon because this show is so damn good and so funny but it does have it's fair share of problems so it gets an 7.5 out of 10 from me.

  

Marvel Rising: Initiation Review

Marvel fans it's not often that the company releases a new animated feature n fact the last feature film that was animated was an anime called Iron Man and Captain America: Heroes United and that was released in 2014 well in order to get people hyped up for there next animated feature Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors Disney and Marvel have released six shorts called Marvel Rising: Initiation so lets get this review started.

The plot of the shorts is Gwen Stacy is now going by the name Ghost Spider and is determined to hunt down the person who framed her for murder. Yeah for a Disney show it has a pretty dark plot line but tho the plot is used more as a set up for the movie so don't go into it expecting there to be any real conclusion but I will say that each of the episodes are really well paced.

Starring in the short series is Dove Cameron as Gwen Stacy , Chloe Bennet as Daisy Johnson , Kathreen Khavari , Milana Vayntrub and Kamil McFadden. When going through the list of actors I was honestly shocked at how many of them have played these characters and yes I am counting Milana in there since she is also playing Squirrel Girl in the New Warriors TV show but even so it's great that both Marvel and Disney got alot of actors back for these shorts as well as the film.

Speaking of the actors I thought the performances were really good and I knew right when I saw the cast list that alot of these actors have young fans who will defend there work no matter what and in this case if any of those fans were to say that certain actors in this series were good i'd happily agree because they'd be right.

I can't find a company credited with the animation heck there's not even any end credits for this series which is a shame because the animation for this show is easily better then some of the recent Marvel animated shows (i'm looking at you Spider-Man) all of the characters have really unique looks to them so your not going to confuse characters and there's alot of really fluid movements and that for me really helps sell the action scenes.

Now when I found out that each episode was going to be around five minuets in length the first thing I did was check the comments section of any streaming site which had the series up because I knew that alot of people didn't like that format when it was done with Vixen , The Ray and Constantine and to my shock there was very little to no comments about the short run time so I have to ask why do people think that it's ok to hate on DC for doing it but then say nothing when Disney / marvel do the exact same thing guys if your going to hate one company for doing it then go and complain when it's rival does the same thing.

One of the few complaints that i've seen is that the writing for Squirrel Girl is bad and that leaves me wondering if people no that she's not meant to be a serious character yes that's no excuse for any kind of bad writing but you can't go comparing her to characters like Ms. Marvel or any other serious character that's just not fair you have to judge her either on her own or with other less serious characters.

Disney kind of released this series without many people knowing about it I think there was only one teaser released and even then it was a clip from either episode 2 or episode 3 you would have thought that they would have put a little effort into promoting not only this series but also the film and judging by how things are going I don't think the film will get much of a push either.

I want to make it very clear that I have no idea at what time this series aired or if it's still airing but Disney did air all six episodes on August 13th and oddly enough it aired on Disney XD I say that because not only has the company made more of an effort in putting more animated shows on there main channel but the movie itself is due to air on Disney Channel so surely it would have made more sense to air this mini series on Disney channel rather then Disney XD.

I will say that for me at least it was a wise choice in making Gwen the main character of this series since she is the most popular character and I do like the way she's used in this series heck for me she's easily this series best character she gets some of the best lines and is involved in literally all of the action scenes.

While Gwen gets alot of the best lines she doesn't get alot of the funniest lines instead that honor goes to Squirrel Girl and i'd say she has the funniest line in the whole series I won't spoil what the line is but just the line itself pokes fun at tropes seen in alot of anime and it's one that had me laughing out loud.

Since this is an action series we have to talk about the actual action scenes and I thought that for a series that only has six episodes and those episodes only being around 5 minuets in length there's quite a bit of action thrown in each episode and I thought that the action was pretty good would it have been better if the show had a longer running time who knows but for this series the action scenes were really exciting to see.

Overall the shirts I thought were pretty good and I think should please a lot of fans and hopefully keep them happy until after the FOX merger has happened but it's also a series that has flaws like for example it doesn't finish the story it sets up so now I have to wait until sometime in late 2018 for Marvel Rising to come out so I can see how it ends so this series scores an 7.5 out of 10 from me.

Mega Man: Fully Charged Review

Cartoon Network is back with a new show and this is one that alot of people have been looking forward to and i'm betting those people are now very disappointed so here is my review of Mega Man: Fully Charged.

The set up of this show is Aki Light is a normal half human half robot boy who has the ability to transform into the hero Mega Man and protect the citizens of Silicon City.For me the set up does work but to me it feels like the standerd CW arrowverse show except without the charm and very dumbed down plus there's no real story I do however like the pacing in each episode it's nither to fast nor to slow.

Starring in the show are Vincent Tong , Ryan Beil , Caitlyn Bairstow , Cole Howard , Garry Chalk , Michael Adamthwaite , Brian Drummond , Ian Hanlin , Andrew McNee , Kathleen Barr , Samuel Vincent and Travis Turner. In terms of acting the show does fair a little better since alot of the actors in the show are pretty good in this show but my issue is they aren't given anything to really work with so the actors can only do so much.

The episodes are eleven minuets in length and for me that's not enough time for an action show for me an action show should be twenty two minuets and since this show has eleven minuet episodes it means alot of stuff either gets rushed or just flat out isn't there. I've watched the first ten episodes of this show and i can safely say that the characters just aren't that interesting nor memorable and I believe that if the show had longer episodes they could easily fix those problems.

I honestly wish I could tell you who did the animation for this show but I can't find any listed company which is good because I have alot of bad things to say about the animation of this show for some reason they chose to animate this show using CGI which just looks awful and can at times be nightmare fuel but then there are times where the animation looks cell shaded and it just comes of looking pretty bad.

As I briefly mentioned before there are ten episodes of this show out on demand right now so that means you don't have to watch this rubbish on CN you can just watch it online and not give them any of your money that's how bad I think this show is and yes you could argue that this show is good for little kids but the Mega Man franchise has a lot of adult fans so any new product from that show is going to get alot of attention from them so while a kid might like me as an adult I don't like it.

To say that there isn't much humor to be found in this series would be an understatement during all ten episodes I didn't laugh once I honestly think that's some sort of record again there might be little kids out there who find this show funny but to me and i'm gonna guess many others it's just not funny at all none of the jokes worked.

One of the things which got really annoying for me very early on was the fact that for no reason what so ever at random points in episodes the show would morph into the style of the old Mega Man games I wouldn't have minded it so much if there was a reason for it happening but there is none at all it just happens and it's very irritating and pointless.

The action scene i'll admit can be fun heck i'd go as far to say that there the most fun part of the episodes you get to see Mega Man use alot of his gadgets and you get to see some pretty cool looking villains however there is one slight issue that I have and that's that they give Mega Man a power up every single episode power ups should be saved for important episodes we don't need to see a hero get one everytime they enter a fight it makes it seem boring and pointless.

Overall this is the second worst show that Man Of Action have been involved with (the first being THAT Ben 10 reboot) and I can clearly see why this has a 3.2 on IMDB it has a lot of faults so it gets a 3 out of 10 from me.

Deadpool vs Thanos Review

Comic book fans for awhile now both Deadpool and Thanos have been getting pretty popular both thanks to successful movies with deadpool starring in the hugely popular Deadpool films and Thanos from both the Guardians films and Infinity War and so in 2015 the heads at Marvel decided to put them together in a four issue series so here is my review of Deadpool Vs Thanos.

The plot of this series is people suddenly stop dieing and it's up to Deadpool and his new BFF Thanos to find there ex Death and restore balance to the world. Yes you read that right folks the merc with a mouth has to team up with the mad titan and honestly there scenes together are where this series shines best and the story pretty much plays out like a buddy cop movie and that to me makes it more fun.

Now then of course there are more characters in this book besides from Deadpool , Thanos and Death so we also have Black Talon and , Ajax aka Francis and mephisto and all of those in there own way contribute to the plot of the story in there own unique way and that's good because otherwise they'd come of as nothing more then cameos and just looking at how Black Talon is dressed i'm sat here wondering why he hasn't been used in and then mocked in a Deadpool movie his costume is rif for mocking.

The art for the book was done by Elmo Bondoc who has only worked on this book and I think I know why because the art in this book isn't that good i'm not in any position to pass judgement but I feel like he could have done one or two drawings of some scenes better just to help improve the quality of the book it self.

The writer is Tim Seeley who's worked on two many comic books to mention and I will say that the above image is perhaps the best Deadpool scene that i've seen in a long time it's Deadpool at his most idiotic and the scene it self is just so well written while your laughing at Deadpools antics you also no that something is really messed up.

As you can no doubt tell this book is pretty mature I don't really think that needs saying since it's a Deadpool book but since I saw young kids being taken to see his movie I thought i'd put that out there but yeah this book does contain alot of blood which you can see in the above picture and there are one or two swear words thrown in there so just a heads up incase there's nothing in here for little kids this is a series meant for teens or older.

As I mentioned before this series was four issues long and it ran from November to December 2015 and what helps it standout a little bit is it's actually set before Marvel Now! I know this because Deadpool himself comes right out and says it and I think it's cool that Marvel released something set in an old continuity.

I think I brought this up in my Cosmic Avengers review but I got this book for a really low price of just £5 and i'm choosing to review it now because i'm thinking of doing a spoiler filled review of the Deadpool extended cut so this post has come at just the right time for Deadpool fans.

For me the best part of this series is seeing Deadpool and Thanos together because they seem like characters that shouldn't work when you put them together and yet in this series that pairing does indeed work but tho this also leads to my major issues with the book it's called Deadpool Vs Thanos and yet for 99% of the time there not fighting each other that would be fine if the series was say six issues long and then you just have them team up for the first three and have them fighting for the back three but here in a four issue series it doesn't work I payed to see Deadpool beat up Thanos not to see them team up.

There are alot of funny jokes in this series and rather surprisingly for a Deadpool series there's very few fourth wall breaks I guess that's because Ryan Reynolds knocked them all done with that epic sixteen wall break in the first movie but tho all of the jokes in this book had me laughing and they were also in Deadpools character like he straight up kills a guy before he reveals Doctor Doom is in the series and he then makes a crack about new comic book day which I found to be funny as hell.

Overall this was a very good book to read it's one that I had alot of fun reading but it also has some issues which i've covered in this review but even still it scores a 7.5 out of 10 from me.

Tiny Toon Adventures Review

Hello there toonsters the Looney Tunes have always been and will always be popular characters but in the early nineties something different was done with the characters and before you all say it no the characters weren't turned into little kids instead a new series was created that showcased the next generation of Looney Tunes so here is my review of Tiny Toon Adventures.

The set up of the show is rather hard to explain since there's no plot or premise at all it's the next generation of Looney Tunes living life , having adventures and attending ACME Looniversity where all the teachers are the old cast of characters and each of the episodes would almost always have a different set up but I will say that the pacing of each episode is pretty good at times but there are some episodes that feel slower.

Starring in this show was Charlie Adler , Joe Alaskey , Danny Cooksey , John Kassir , Maurice LaMarche , Tress MacNeille , Gail Matthius , Don Messick , Candi Milo , Rob Paulsen , Kath Soucie , Cree Summer and Frank Welker. Yeah I know that there are alot more actors in this show but that's the thing there's a lot more actors heck i've not even scratched the surface of the people that are in this show.

All of the actors in this show give really great performances and as you can see by who's starring in the show that's not really a surprise alot of the cast members are legends and while this show might not be the best example of their work it's still a group of really fine actors and actresses giving it there all and they are all really good and most importantly really funny in this show.

What helps make this show stand out is the fact that there were several different animation studios involved with each episode while Warner Bros did infact produce the show they didn't do the animation instead companies such as TMS Entertainment , Wang Film Productions, AKOM and StarToons but there was one studio that got let go after the first season due to there inconsistent levels of quality and that's Kennedy Cartoons. 

The overall quality of the animation isn't that bad it still has the same amount of passion init that the classic Looney tunes shorts would have had except now they actually have a budget but tho with that being said there are some episodes where the animation isn't that great but they are few and far between at least in my eyes.

Honestly guys the broadcast history of this show is more interesting than the animation history because the pilot episode and the first season ran on CBS but then from 1992 onward the show aired on Fox kids I guess CBS had figured that they had seen enough of the characters since the first season had a whopping sixty five episodes but it seems strange that CBS wouldn't continue airing a hit show.

The show lasted alot longer then what people think because even tho the show only had three seasons like I said that first season was sixty five episodes and lasted nearly a full year but out side of that the show also had a direct to VHS movie called Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation and two TV specials called Tiny Toon Spring Break and Tiny Toons' Night Ghoulery so they made alot of Tiny Toons content and I can guarantee your never going to see the same episode twice because in total there are close to one hundred episodes.

When I went into this show I wasn't expecting there to be alot of adult jokes in it but low and behold in the second ever episode there's a Watchmen reference it's a quick little reference but near the start of episode two on the chalk board behind plucky there's some text that reads "who watches the ducksters"or something like that and it's a nod to Watchmen and i',m sat here wondering if any kid ever got what that was a reference to.

Honestly alot of the jokes in this show are funny there's a really funny anti-smoking episode which was in the first season and so it aired before the infamous "One Beer" episode and it's full of small little jokes all of the jokes in this show are so funny and so well written that you can see why alot of the same staff went on to work on Animaniacs they are that talented and not afraid to poke fun at themselves.

I cannot talk about this show and not mention the theme song to me the Tiny Toons theme song is so good that t should be remembered for years to come in that one minuet intro we get a brief introduction as to who all the characters are and what there personality trait is and it helps that the theme song was done by Bruce Broughton who's worked on alot of great shows even recently he's done the opening to The Orville.

Overall i'm so glad that I went back a re-watched this show (yes I watched it growing up) it is a very funny show and one that I recommend any Looney Tunes fan watch but the show does have some problems tho so it gets an 8.5 out of 10 from me.