Spiderman: Hero or Menace?

So, previously, I’ve introduced you to the very strange conversation that I had in Rome, and run off at the mouth about The Flash and the probability of an all good, all powerful being. There’s supposed to be a post in here about angels, but I’ve pushed it back to talk a little more about the deeds of ordinary human beings. Everyone reading this has wondered what kind of superhero they would be or daydreamed about fighting crime, maybe in a mask or, maybe not.

As a child, I idolized Batman. Heck, I still idolize Batman. What I have yet to do is take that last step into becoming a masked vigilante. Lancaster, Pennsylvania isn’t really in need of any, but apparently Seattle is. The Rain City Superhero Movement, a group of masked activists who fight crime in Seattle, Washington have taken it upon themselves to use their talents to make their city a safer place. According to their fearless leader Phoenix Jones, they are all possessed of a sense of justice, combat skill, and an awareness of the risks they assume in unsupervised crimefighting. To quote Phoenix:

“Everyone on my team either has a military background or a mixed martial arts background, and we’re well aware of what it costs to do what we do.”

So, what do these real life superheroes do? Well, they battle anarchists, stop strong-arm robberies, halt vandals and protect ordinary citizens, though they do occasionally end up in jail or exacerbate the original situation. All this besides running through the streets in the middle of the night, looking like the dude from Kick Ass.

Rome, part 2.

So, when I say “Rome, part 2,” that’s something of a deception. I’ve since left Rome and traveled to Florence, but since it will be a continuation on what happened to me in Rome the other day, I don’t feel so bad about deceiving you. Also, it’s gorgeous here.

In my previous post, I wrote about a conversation I had with two priests in Rome which prominently featured Chuck Taylors, superheroes, angels, and theodicy. I’m going to break this continuation up into two posts, one about superheroes and theodicy and a second about superheroes and angels. So, let’s get up to speed on what I’m talking about when I say “theodicy.”

Briefly, a theodicy is an attempt to argue that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being is probable, even in a universe where, as Paul Draper puts it, “gratuitous evils exist.” This is perhaps most famously put in that way which the early Christian apologist Lactantius attributed to Epicurus:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

In Brightest Day: Tim Drake and Torture

Even to this day, I’m blown away by Batman Beyond. I mean, it is so horrifically underrated, I have nightmares about it. 

I started watching it again recently. The complete series is on Netflix now, and man, I’m already hooked. However, I don’t want to touch on Terry McGinnis quite yet. I think there is something that’s staring me in the face that I need to touch on. Can you guess what it is?

In Brightest Day: Is Virtue a Disability?

While doing research another topic for In Brightest Day, a weird philosophical question popped up in my head. For most good guys, virtue is a trait that they use to set guidelines for their task. Villains, as most of you know, don’t have virtuous guidelines. They will do whatever they want in order to win whatever they want. So, in essence, heroes are stupid.

 

Let’s Compare the New Pope Francis and Batman!

So in honor of a new Pope being elected, I decided to compare Pope Francis and Batman… for science.

Top 20 Romantic Couples in Geekdom (10 Canon/10 Fanon): 2013 Edition

Those of us here at LGG&F are back again and working tirelessly to compile and vote on this years top 10 canon and top 10 fanon pairings in Geekdom. Last year’s list can be found here.

Now onward to see who made to this year’s list!!

Saving the Environment and Geekdom

When it comes to geeks trying to save the planet, things can get complicated. It either tends to be really heavy-handed and naïve or to demonize anything involving saving the planet.

The big conflict is often between saving the environment and the march of progress, and many stories tend to proclaim one as good while demonizing the other, which is obviously problematic.

So You Want to Read Comic Books 2.0: Superman is Cool

Do you see the guy currently dominating this banner? Who is it? Is it Superman? Damn right, it’s Superman! But it has come to my attention that some people who are new to comic books think Superman is lame.

I’m only going to say this once. Superman is cool.

The main reason that many people think Superman is lame is because of how he has been mishandled in movies and TV shows. Furthermore, people tend to think that Superman is actually this really great, squeaky clean guy and, thus, has no depth of character or anything interesting to offer. They couldn’t be more wrong.

“There You Go” with Dino Andrade: Part 3

First parts of the interview here and here

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MadameAce: Now the Scarecrow, he’s a Batman villain that has been re-imagined a lot, over and over again. How did you envision him when you first started playing him? I know you talked about the demon in the human body and whatnot, but I’ve just seen so many different versions of him.

Dino Andrade: Being a long-time Batman fan, the first thing that I did was look back at the first, the original Arkham Asylum graphic novel which then I got the script and discovered that the two had absolutely nothing to do with each other. After that, I started looking at darker versions of the Scarecrow. One of my favorite versions of the Scarecrow, although he’s not in it for very long, is in the series Batman: Vampire where Scarecrow has human fingers sewn into his costume and stuff like that. He’s this terrifying character and I really liked that interpretation.

That was kind of my jump off point from there because I knew that Arkham Asylum was going to be much grittier than anything that had been seen or done before on video games or comics and so on because, of course, Chris Nolan’s Batman, which took a grittier tone, was so successful. I believe that was part of the mandate for Arkham Asylum: to go for darker territory than Paul Dini and company were allowed to do in previous television incarnations. That’s why I purposely studied Batman: Vampire which is probably the darkest Batman story there is.

“There You Go” with Dino Andrade: Part 2

Read the first part of the interview here.

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MadameAce: I know you said that you experienced some disappointment when you did that role, but in the early days what were your thoughts on doing voice overs?

Dino Andrade: At the time most of what I wanted to do in voice over was basically to [have it] work as a stepping stone. I really wanted to get into doing on-camera. I started doing a lot of commercials at the time. I was doing commercials for McDonalds, Delta Airlines, various things like that kind of working my way up. I was also doing a lot of training with The Groundlings comedy / improv. I’m a very physical actor, physical comedian. This was something that I felt might be the future for me, but it was very disappointing: unfortunately it seemed that 90% of what I was being sent out for was one Mexican, cholo gangster after another. It is so not me! That was very discouraging and I decided that, “you know what, if I’m going to get into these projects I might as well make them myself.” So I decided to leave acting for about ten years and spent the 90’s being involved in independent filmmaking, writing screenplays—I sold six screenplays, none of which were produced. [laughter]

Stewi: You still got paid

Dino Andrade: I still got paid. I think it was Kurt Vonnegut who said that the best thing that could ever happen is to sell a screenplay and have it never get actually made so your work isn’t screwed up. [laughter] So my work has not been screwed up six times, but it was kind of cool that I sold them. I also produced one independent film called Bob’s Video that ran the film festival circuit for a year and got me to travel around the country which was really fun. In the end, in the 00’s, I decided to go back to acting and to my original love, which was animation and fantasy, which then meant voice over. Even that was somewhat accidental.

There was a director who was working on an anime show called Vampire Princess and I was being told about that. And I thought, “well maybe I can get in on that as a writer. I’ve never done anime writing, but maybe I could give that a shot.” It turned out that he was also working on another show called Saint Tail and his wife was casting it and when I was contacting him I wound up contacting his wife and his wife thought I was an actor calling in for a scheduled  telephone audition. I said, “…sure! Yes, that’s me,” and so I wound up auditioning completely cold, had no copy at all, so I just had to make up something about, “oh yeah, I didn’t get it. The courier didn’t make it. The fax machine died,” or something. I don’t remember. So they fed me the lines and I auditioned and they said great and I got a small part on Saint Tail. I took that as a sign and said, “okay! I guess this is what I’m supposed to be doing.” I returned to voice over at that point.