Category Archives: Comics

Comics, Movies, Podcast

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Black Widow & Cruella

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Jesse
Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Latest posts by Jesse (see all)

This summer has seen the release of two entries in two of Disney’s biggest franchises, both starring major female stars who are both once-and/or-future fake redheads. Doesn’t that seem like enough to warrant a big discussion of Black Widow and Cruella?! Marisa convened a SportsAlcohol.com podcast to discuss how Black Widow fits into both the MCU and ScarJo’s career, and to figure out what the hell is going on with Cruella and why it’s a surprising fit for star Emma Stone.

During our chat, we wound up further discussion the mysterious viewership and economics of the pivot to streaming, which, in true franchise-friendly fashion, we spun out into a separate bonus episode, also available below!

We are now up to SEVEN (7) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

  • You can subscribe to our podcast using the rss feed.
  • I’m not sure why they allowed it, but we are on iTunes! If you enjoy what you hear, a positive comment and a rating would be great.
  • I don’t really know what Stitcher is, but we are also on Stitcher.
  • SportsAlcohol.com is a proud member of the Aha Radio Network. What is Aha? It’s kind of like Stitcher, but for your car.
  • You can download the mp3 of the Black Widow/Cruella episode here and the streaming-biz discussion episode here
  • Our most recent episode or two will sometimes be available on our Soundcloud
  • You can listen to the episodes in the players below.

Black Widow & Cruella:

The Disney Plus Premier Access Experiment:

Comics, Movies

THE SUICIDE SQUAD is a gory, beautiful reboot of the same old thing

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Jesse
Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Latest posts by Jesse (see all)

Here’s one sign among many of how the world of movie franchising has expanded over the past 20 years. It’s not as if there weren’t 20th century sequels—hundreds of ‘em!—but there was a time where the idea of a follow-up to a movie called Suicide Squad, especially one that inspired such mixed reactions, would be a cheap premise for a joke about Hollywood’s bankruptcy. Whaddaya call it, Suicide Squad 2: Still Not Dead? Suicide Squad: This Time We Mean It? Now the central idea behind Suicide Squad, wherein bad guys are forced onto impossible missions with low probability of survival, feels ready-made for sequels. If an actor gets too fussy, kill ‘em off. If the whole thing goes sideways, start over with a new squad. And if people love it, well, no one in comic book movies really stays dead, anyway.

People did not love 2016’s Suicide Squad. It was a mess, taped together by a great concept, the star power of Will Smith, and the allure of the popular DC Comics character Harley Quinn, making her live-action debut. It was then slathered in gluey, trailer-ready pop songs—only this time, the trailer figured out the playlist first and the movie was forced to follow suit. It still made a tonna dough, as Harley Quinn might say, and a sequel was being developed around the same time that James Gunn, director of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies over at DC’s rivals Marvel, found himself with some free time. Parent company Disney had recently been tricked into firing him for some untoward old tweets and DC, apparently being the place for reformed villains, scooped him up quickly enough to get the Squad rolling again. (Gunn was since rehired by Disney and Guardians 3 is in the works again.)
Continue reading THE SUICIDE SQUAD is a gory, beautiful reboot of the same old thing →

Comics, Movies, Podcast

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Zack Snyder’s Justice League

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Jesse
Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Latest posts by Jesse (see all)

Not long into Zack Snyder’s Justice League (A Zack Snyder Film), Marisa started taking notes, just feeling in her bones that this would be a podcast. She was right to suspect it; we’ve certainly covered our share of superhero movies on this site, including a recent overlong review, a ranking of DCEU movies, and an earlier podcast about the state of the superhero movie back in 2017. But not even flop superhero movies stay dead, as Zack Snyder’s Justice League is here to prove. For SportsAlcohol.com’s Zack Snyder’s Justice League Podcast, Marisa, Jesse, Rob, and Ben all watched Snyder’s four-hour epic and lived to talk about it, at a comparably brief two hours. We cover everything from Jack Kirby to graverobbing, from Joss Whedon quips to tortured food metaphors. So while you wait for a third, black-and-white version of Justice League to drop on HBO Max, enjoy our latest SnyderChat!

We are now up to SEVEN (7) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

  • You can subscribe to our podcast using the rss feed.
  • I’m not sure why they allowed it, but we are on iTunes! If you enjoy what you hear, a positive comment and a rating would be great.
  • I don’t really know what Stitcher is, but we are also on Stitcher.
  • SportsAlcohol.com is a proud member of the Aha Radio Network. What is Aha? It’s kind of like Stitcher, but for your car.
  • You can download the mp3 of this episode directly here
  • Our most recent episode or two will sometimes be available on our Soundcloud
  • You can listen to the episode (and a bunch of great songs!) in the players below.

Comics, Movies, Podcast

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: The New Mutants

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Jesse
Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Latest posts by Jesse (see all)

Well, after two and a half years of trailers, blown release dates, rumored but nonexistent reshoots, good buzz, bad buzz, and corporate acquisitions, the movie event of the pandemic is finally here: The New Mutants is out in theaters to accidentally close out the X-Men movie series. Improbably enough, four core members of the SportsAlcohol.com brain trust found a way to see this movie safely without press screenings or VOD. (Please don’t go out to even a semi-crowded movie theater to see The New Mutants or anything else; it’s playing at drive-ins, and some theaters are doing private auditorium rentals, if you are so moved.) So naturally, Jesse, Marisa, Nathaniel, and designated X-pert Rob had to get together to discuss this momentous, uh, footnote to X-Men movie history. Consider this the long-delayed sequel to our last X-Men movie episode! And consider it our last episode about the Fox era of X-Men on film… or is it?!?! Consider this your starting buzz for a Magik spinoff in 2022!

We are now up to SEVEN (7) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

Comics, Movies, Podcast

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Dark Phoenix and the X-Men Movies

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Jesse
Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Latest posts by Jesse (see all)

It’s been almost 20 years since the first X-Men movie made the world safe for high-quality big-screen superheroes, and somehow the ensuing film series is only now winding down, with the release (and flop!) of Dark Phoenix, combination sequel, prequel, and remake that marks the final big team X-Men movie greenlit before Disney finalized its acquisition of Fox. While New Mutants and maybe another Deadpool remain on the docket at DisneyFox, it seems likely that the X-Men as a full-fledged franchise is going away for a while, likely to re-emerge as part of MCU Phase 7 or whatever. So this seemed like a good time for Rob, Sabrina, Nathaniel, Marisa, Jesse, and Jon to sit down and talk about all things XCU: Dark Phoenix, the series as a whole, the highlights and the failures, and, of course, Michael Fassbender’s beautiful face. It’s a lengthy but somehow also zippy discussion and we all wind up making fun of Beast at some point for some reason. Poor Beast. But long live the X-Men!

We are now up to SEVEN (7) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

Comics, Movies, Podcast

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: The MCU and Avengers: Endgame

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Jesse
Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Latest posts by Jesse (see all)

Hey, did you guys hear about this Avengers movie? It’s like, the end, except like, not? It came out a month ago, but Avengers: Endgame will likely stand as the biggest-grossing superhero movie (maybe even biggest-grossing movie, period) for a good long while. The SportsAlcohol.com crew has talked a lot about the Marvel Cinematic Universe on our podcast in the past, whether it was about Spider-Man, or Captain America punching Iron Man, or mitigating some of the praise for the Guardians of the Galaxy, or enthusing about Ultron, or getting psyched about a new take Thor. We skipped a big Infinity War discussion, but we’re back now with a sum-up about our reactions to Endgame, its predecessor, and the state of the MCU in general (including our work on a group-voted MCU list that isn’t actually complete yet, since the new Spider-Man movie is coming out next month). Disagreements and weird preferences abound, so now that you’ve finally had a chance to digest all three hours of Endgame, let us tell you all about what we loved and hated about it! (Fuck you, soul stone!)

We are now up to SEVEN (7) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

Comics, Movies

Shazam! is another superhero movie that’s not like all the other superhero movies that aren’t like other superhero movies

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Jesse
Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Latest posts by Jesse (see all)

Shazam!, based on the DC Comics hero originally called Captain Marvel and originally not published by DC Comics, stars Zachary Levi, who once appeared in a Thor movie for Marvel Studios. Levi plays the hero; the bad guy is played by Mark Strong, who also played a supporting role (and unrealized future bad guy) in Green Lantern, based on the DC Comics hero, but unconnected to the current DC Comics movies. Shazam! also co-stars Djimon Hounsou, who also has a supporting role in Captain Marvel, currently in theaters, a separate character from Shazam, the former Captain Marvel, and based in part on the Marvel Comics hero originally called Ms. Marvel.

Shazam! is about a teenager learning to wield his superpowers responsibly, like Marvel’s Spider-Man; it’s also concerns the effects of those superpowers on family dynamics—sort of like The Incredibles, a Disney film which is not based on a comic book, but owes a lot to the Fantastic Four, whose movie rights were recently welcomed back into the Disney fold when Disney completed its purchase of 20th Century Fox’s film division. The end credits of Shazam! feature charmingly scrawled drawings of the main character’s superheroic antics, followed by a post-credits scene goofing on another superhero, both elements that recall Deadpool, an offshoot of the X-Men series, which was also recently absorbed back into Disney via Fox. Disney, of course, owns Marvel, and Captain Marvel, but not Shazam!, which belongs to Warner Bros., which owns DC, which bought the character from Fawcett, the company that originally published stories about Shazam, back when he was called Captain Marvel.
Continue reading Shazam! is another superhero movie that’s not like all the other superhero movies that aren’t like other superhero movies →

Comics, Movies, Podcast

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Spider-Man Movies, Ranked

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Jesse
Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Latest posts by Jesse (see all)

Longtime readers and listeners of the SportsAlcohol.com World Wide Web Brand may have noticed that we kinda dig on Spider-Man. In fact, one of our most popular pieces ever, and the site of our only (so far) bona fide comment war is about Spider-Man 3; our first-ever podcast episode was about The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and we’ve recorded on related films since then; Rob has written about Betty Brant while Marisa has written about the songs of Spider-Man.

So yeah, we dig on this.

To celebrate the release of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, we did something different: Marisa, Rob, and Jesse threw together a straw poll to rank out every major Spider-Man and Spider-Man-adjacent movie of the past 20 years. That’s right: In this podcast, we talk about them all. The animated highs! The amazing lows! The venomous middles! It’s all here, in a compact hour-long episode with multiple post-credit scenes! Basically, it’s a Spider-Man extravaganza for our new age of superhero abundance. It’s the next best thing to what I know you’ve all been craving: PICTURES OF SPIDER-MAN. While you wait for your photographer to come back with those, have a listen to us!

We are now up to SEVEN (7) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

Comics, Podcast, TV

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Riverdale, Season 2

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Jesse
Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Latest posts by Jesse (see all)

Hey, remember how last year we watched Riverdale all season long and then wanted to talk about it? Well, your SportsAlcohol.com Riverdale fan club may be down a member (I see you, Maggie) (and I understand) but a bunch of us are still watching this hot teen mess and we needed to talk it out: the ever-metastasizing stupidity of Archie, the evil lurking inside Betty (IS IT, THOUGH?), the gang obsession of Jughead, and whether or not Veronica is, in Marisa’s words, “pulling an Orphan.” In this brisk, enthusiastic episode, we find things to praise about Riverdale Season 2 among our many complaints and questions. Psyched for Season 3, guys!

We are now up to SEVEN (7) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

    • Comics, Movies, Podcast

    THE SPORTSALCOHOL.COM PODCAST: Justice League, Thor: Ragnarok, and The Comic Movies of 2017

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    Marisa
    Gripes
    Marisa
    There are contrarians, there are iconoclasts, and then there is SportsAlcohol.com co-founder Marisa. A contraiclast? Her favorite Springsteen album came out this century, so she is basically a controversy machine.

    Also, she is totally not a dude!
    Marisa
    Gripes
    Latest posts by Marisa (see all)

    So, 2017 begins to wind down. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, buddy. But, as the year comes to a close, we launch—with apologies to Liz Lemon—out year end wrap-wrap-wrap-up. And, as with all things, we begin with an examination of facial hair, fever dreams, and superheroes. How do Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok and Zack Snyder/Joss Whedon’s Justice League fit into the pantheon of the gods: the MCU and DCEU? More importantly, how do they stack up against this year’s other comics output, namely Logan, Wonder Woman, and Spider-Man: Homecoming? We discuss:

    • Which 2017 comic movie has the best villain?
    • “Immigrant Song” needle-drop: perfectly cheesy, or cheesily perfect?
    • Would You Rather: The Dark Lord Dormammu or Malekith the Dark Elf?
    • How long should Ben Affleck continue to play Batman: forever or infinity?
    • And, because you rely on us to go there, we do spend an awful lot of time talking about what’s going on with Henry Cavill’s face.

    We are now up to SIX (6) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast: