#Hawkeye Review

[thecraggus]

Hawkeye (Season One) Review

Marvel's Hawkeye colours in some of the Endgame gaps while introducing a brand new archer to the MCU's quiver of heroes.

[marley-manson]

Hawkeye not being emotionally repressed as a person, but still being emotionally repressed because he's in a situation that causes him to feel impossibly intense emotions that can't be fully expressed without ruining his or others' lives.

Because to really express his true feelings he'd have to scream until his voice gave out, desert, kill a general, etc. Constantly feeling like he's barely holding himself back, keeping himself from exploding through the relatively minor shows of rebellion and antagonism towards people like Frank, and his humour. "Joking is the only way I can open my mouth without screaming."

Hawkeye's breakdown in GFA is a fitting cap for his character for many reasons, and I think this is also one of them. It just makes narrative sense, as someone who does need to express his feelings and who is trapped in a war zone, that at some point he had to fully snap and drive a jeep through a wall.

[a-rayneart]

Just finished season 4 of MASH

I know this art blog is quickly becoming a MASH rampage (not intentional, I swear) but I really want to give my thoughts on the season 4 finale and this seems like the best place to do it.

An incomplete list of every moment that struck me in S4E24: The Interview:

Hawkeye's demeanour in this episode is entirely different than in 'Yankee Doodle doctor', particularly his behaviour toward the film crew. This is unsurprising, but still significant to me.

I loved hearing Radar talk about his earthworms. I love whenever the characters engage in genuine hobbies outside of their jobs in the army, but hearing Radar babble about his earthworms was especially lovely.

"War is just killing, that's all." - Klinger

Hawkeye is so honest this episode, and he does it all with this completely checked out look, eyes glazed over.

Hawkeye also sums up his whole entire character. He talks about putting on a 'coat' of morale just to make others stop believing in where they are because it's the only way he can feel present. He also get's asked how he stays sane, which is pretty significant foreshadowing, to which he answer with a list of frankly insane things to do. It reminds me of the S1 episode where he pretended to lose it in order to get time off, but also of all the little times in episodes where he did something that was a bit outlandish, a bit crazy, and somehow also made perfect sense, like when he (briefly) pretended to be a corpse in an attempt to get back to his father.

"There's so much more to care about," and "It just doesn't matter anymore," are two things Hawk says in basically one breath and boy is that relatable.

I've already seen this clip but Mulcahy talking about the steam and the bodies in the cold hurts every time.

Genuine, non-sexual focus and appreciation for the nurses and the jobs they do.

Referencing the episode where Radar get's drunk in Tokyo and him looking so abashed about it.

"If I knew all the answers, I'd run for God." -Klinger again

More on Klinger– Usually he takes advantage of any opportunity to display his insanity to higher ups. He doesn't do that here. He talks entirely sincerely about his joy for home and his hate for the war. You can really see every emotion on his face. He is so real.

Radar's compassion for the local Koreans. There's something special about it coming from him specifically that I can't quite pinpoint but I love it. Maybe because he comes from such a similar background but is now in a position where the people he answers to tell him that he's better than them. I think Radar must feel he has more in common with the local farmers than with his own colleagues.

I've never thought about it before, but it makes so much sense that Potter misses being around people his own age, and I could probably go on about that forever but I probably shouldn't.

Father Mulcahy looks so tired.

BJ smiles when he greets his wife and daughter, but when he looks down he looks devastated. How hard must it be to talk to his family through a TV screen. The acting in this episode it amazing.

I think it was BJ who talked about being torn between his love for the people he worked with and wanting to erase them from his memory, which reminded me of a line from the MASH fanfic I wrote before I even watched this episode; 'Nothing makes me happier than having people to miss, and that they’re far enough away that I can miss them.' (Check out my short fic, it's called After Life - Hawkeye's Poem)

The narrator ends by saying that they're doing what they do best but what they'd rather not do in a place they'd rather not be and I think that's just about the point of the show

All said, amazing episode, perfect acting, did what just about every episode of MASH does and gave me a deep sense of melancholy. I've seen a lot about this episode on here and I totally get why but I think we should also give some appreciation to the episode before it (Deluge) because I genuinely believe that that was just as good.

[artbyblastweave]

🔥Punisher: Last Gun on Earth?

This ask is referring to the fairly-obscure 2010 zombie apocalypse Elseworld Marvel Universe Vs The Punisher by Jonathan Maberry, as well as the two prequels following Wolverine and Hawkeye at different points in the same timeline. I've been meaning to do a more comprehensive write-up on this for quite some time, as it was a series distinct from but very visibly in conversation with Marvel Zombies, which Maberry was also peripherally involved with. The elevator pitch is that a fuckup by the Punisher during a hit on the Russian Mob results in a cold war bioweapon getting into the biosphere, eventually turning almost the entire human population, and most of the superheroes, into adrenaline-fueled 28-days-later style rage zombies. Content Warning under the cut for discussions of racism

Despite its many, many flaws, there was a lot I enjoyed about this series, and alongside Marvel Zombies it had a not-insubstantial impact on my own aesthetic sensibilities, which I think probably comes through in a lot of my zombie artwork. The first mini, Marvel Universe Vs The Punisher, is a pastiche of I am Legend, with Frank Castle in the role of Robert Neville, an infected Deadpool in the role of Neville's abnormally sentient neighbor Ben Cortman, and with a zombified Spider-Man the white whale that he's spent five years hunting through the remains of Manhattan. Before I get into the rancid shit, I'm going to talk about what I enjoyed:

While the series succumbs to all-too-common Punisher Wank in terms of his efficacy in taking down a number of the A-list infected heroes, it ultimately comes out the other side as a pretty competent piece of character work for Frank; the series is grimly aware that a virus turning most of the human population into a shooting gallery of sadistic cannibal maniacs would be something like Valhalla for Frank, regardless of his pretensions to the contrary. Moreover, it's subtly implied that Frank's belief that he's immune is incorrect, and what's actually happening is that a virus that turns you into a vindictive, dogmatic maniac with a hardwired us-or-them mindset had no effect on him because he was already like that. There are ultimately revealed to be thousands of other survivors in New York, all of whom have spent five years studiously avoiding him because they think he's batshit insane. Even zombie Spider-Man, played up as the Biggest Bad, is ultimately revealed to have retained enough humanity to protect his uninfected family the entire time, whereas Frank is ultimately painted as unrelenting genocide machine whose psychological inability to give quarter ultimately makes him worse than the infected.

From there the series extrapolated some hilarious commentary on the genre as a whole; the zombie outbreak was going on for months before reaching critical mass, and nobody noticed because the baseline levels of random street violence and superpowered brawls are already so high in these settings that nobody realized a lot of the fights were occurring for rage-virus reasons until Spider-Man killed and ate a supervillain on live television. The whole series can be viewed through the lens of the usual spectacle-bait crisis-crossover contrived-battle-between-heroes routine, distilled to its purest form and escalated to the point of Ragnarök; the art frequently deliberately obfuscates which combatants are infected and which are uninfected people fighting for their lives. In this way it's playing with the pre-existing logic of the superhero genre in a way that Marvel Zombies didn't.

Maberry knows how to use Deadpool in a supporting character role without having him eat the entire goddamn thing. It's a fun dynamic!

Unlike Marvel Zombies, which was deliberately unconcerned with logistics as part of the gonzo fever-dream aesthetic, Maberry put some actual thought into a semi-plausible model by which a zombie virus could overrun a superhero setting. The responsible mutagen is air-and-waterborne, causing people to start turning at random months after being infected rather than through bites or fluid contact, and sneaks around healing factors because the mutations it causes are parsed as improvements rather than disease symptoms. Mass swarms of infected, unpowered civilians are as relevant, if not more relevant, than the superhumans are in spreading the infection, leading in turn to a lot of Left 4 dead styled set piece co-op fights like the one depicted above, and leading to the failure state that a superhero might be able to mince human wave attacks all day but at a certain point they'll have chewed through everyone they were ostensibly protecting by doing so, even if they themselves survive. This is a dynamic that, ultimately, only Frank Castle is really capable of thriving within, because with him it was never about protecting people, just hurting "bad" ones.

Which leads to another major positive points- the series is also a lot more concerned with rendering the setting's downward spiral. Eight prequel issues depicting the superhero community going down fighting over the course of months, rather than folding like a dixie cup in a trash compactor for horror value. Dead Days is the closest that Marvel Zombies ever got to rendering that same process, and while that was a very good oneshot it was still a deliberately compact one-shot. Here you get tableau after tableau of survivors throwing down with zombies. Unlikely alliances, second-string deep-cut z-listers crawling out of the woodwork- all interspersed with the growing realization among the protagonists that this is not business as usual, the status quo is not going to hold this time, it's just the actual apocalypse.

Here's Punisher, Hawkeye, Iron Fist and Black Cat trying to hold the Holland tunnel. Here's Dr. Bong, Howard the Duck Ruby Tuesday and Hit Monkey making a last stand in Central Park. This shit unironically kicks ass! This is what I think a lot of people are gesturing at when they say that they want to see a superheroes vs zombies story.

And, on that note, if you're going to tell this kind of story, Punisher, Wolverine and Hawkeye are objectively three of the best characters to have as the viewpoint characters- precisely the right level of competence and street-level scrappiness to survive without having a prayer of turning the tables outright. "Shit, Man, this superhero war is fucked-" the comic.

One additional minor thing I enjoyed about the series, aesthetically, is that while Marvel Zombies was a deliberately anachronistic mish-mash where every character was depicted in their most visually iconic outfits from across decades of publication, This series was very specifically working with the Marvel Universe status quo circa 2010 when it was published- The X-Men in San Francisco, Red Hulk on the Avengers, now-long-forgotten Avengers Academy kids in crowd shots. It grounds the narrative in a way Marvel Zombies was deliberately avoiding, acting as a snapshot and a time capsule in a neat way.

Now onto the two big things I didn't like about this series, the latter of which sinks it really really badly:

One: Caption Cancer. Maberry is one of those authors who I like on balance but who also often lapses into Talking Just To Talk. How many times does the navel-gazey running commentary in the above excerpts double back on itself, and how much is it actually saying- particularly when contrasted with the story told by the art and dialogue alone? Either he felt a need to fill the space (bad) or worse, he thought that these were some kind of deep and compelling rumination on the human condition. In general the balance of exposition to action in this thing were.... all over the place, not always integrated gracefully. The best sequences in the book are the ones where the captions just shut the fuck up so we can watch these people clobber each other. This is not a problem the original Marvel Zombies had- one thing I like about Kirkman is that he's usually a caption minimalist, letting the art and the dialogue do the heavy lifting. You don't get a page as quiet and decompressed as the following in the entire 12 issue run of Marvel Universe Vs.

Two: It's Racist. Like, really really racist. The comic continuously lapses into extremely racist imagery with the infected, using the visual language of "primitive savage tribes" with seemingly zero awareness of the real-life groups that those tropes were used to propagandize against and dehumanize. It's one thing to have zombies that take human body parts as trophies- that's kind of a cool motif- it's quite another to have a zombified Hulk who braids his hair in an obvious caricature of Native Americans, complete with feathers. What the fuck, Maberry!

Moreover it's a comically unforced error- everything compelling happens outside of that imagery, it's adding basically nothing but an attack surface to the premise. 28 days later did this basic premise without the racism, Left 4 Dead did this basic premise without the racism, The Crazies did this basic premise without the racism, Fucking Crossed did this basic premise without using the same racist visual language, at least until after Ennis left the book. Congratulations- you found a way to make the zombies more on-the-face racially insensitive than Garth Ennis. Round of Applause, everyone. This specific issue is why I don't think I've ever brought this book up in depth unprompted, it's genuinely really gross.

Anyway, those are my unified thoughts on the Marvel Universe Vs. trilogy, hope you enjoyed.

[qs63]

Roy Mustang's observation diary review

I finally read the “Roy Mustang's observation diary”, and I have to say that it's a shame this isn’t translated to English. This bonus chapter is just hilarious.

For those unfamiliar with it, the “Roy Mustang's observation diary” is a Fullmetal Alchemist bonus chapter released in Japan along with the manga's 6th volume on 2003. Unlike the other bonus chapters this one is written as a Journal written by Havoc, Breda, Fuery, and Falman instead of being a graphic novel chapter.

In this bonus chapter, Central Command has grown bored of the annual evaluation to East Command and has decided to assign each East Command personnel a person to evaluate instead of sending someone from Central to do the job. Jean Havoc gets Roy Mustang. You see, Roy had recently “stolen” Havoc's crush, and Havoc is bitter and determined to teach Mustang a lesson. So he enrolls the team, sans Hawkeye, to help him observe Roy, 24/7, for 5 days and shenanigans ensue. xD

Some of the my favorite moments were:

Roy trying and failing to feed Hayate half of his lunch sandwich.

Havoc waking Roy up from a nap to “check if he was breathing because he was being too quiet”, and Roy chasing him out of the room while screaming that “Of course, I can't breathe if you cover my nose and mouth”. Come on, Havoc, you just wanted to torture him a little, didn't you? xD

Riza using her shotgun on the shooting range when Roy’s procrastination led to her workload increasing. I guess it's easy to guess when she's pissed.

Roy getting sick from Riza's tea, and Fuery being an absolute sweetheart, finding it odd because the military’s terrible tea tastes better when brewed by Hawkeye. Roy, Havoc, Breda, and Falman profusely disagree. “It's your imagination, Fuery.” Either Riza is bad at brewing tea or — most likely — she uses the tea to punish the boys when she's pissed. lol

All the Havoc and Breda banter. Poor Havoc got called out by Breda every single time he tried to spin something in his favor. Breda is such a ruthless BFF. XD

Really, this was pure gold. I totally recommend it. I love this silly team so much.

The “Roy Mustang’s observation diary” can be found as part of the “Fullmetal Alchemist Chronicle” book. As I mentioned earlier, this is not available in English, currently you can get this either in the original Japanese edition — which I own — or an official French translation.

[kacievvbbbb]

What if Mihawk gets a bad review on one of his novels because the lover/Y/N/Reader is not very relatable to the general public?

I genuinely believe he would not give one single fuck if his characters were relatable. He'd probably use his marine connections to sniff out the reviewer just to send a letter back calmly detailing exactly why they are wrong, and they simply just do not have good sex and so would not be able to judge it accurately. and then he'd tell them thta if they don't relate to the reader they should simply be better

If he was being constantly trolled or the authors of his favorite novels mentioned they were being hate stalked, he'd probably show up to a few houses.

[onekisstotakewithme]

trapper and hawkeye spending weeks convincing frank that telepathy/telekenesis is real only so they can fake having telepathic sex and annoy the shit out of him

[remyfire]

Lines that always hit so fucking good

[doctorstrangereview]

0121: Doctor Strange (vol. 2) #2

Cover Date: August 1974 On-Sale Date: May 14, 1974

And we're back to Doc's solo efforts (sort of.) It's a relief after that tiresome Giant Defenders issue with all those reprints. Well, the Defenders (sort of) guest star here as well. We're in for quite the whacko adventure.

Our splash page begins with the starling image of Silver Dagger decapitating Doc.

We quickly discover this is just a mannequin of Doc. Our Doc is still alive inside the Orb of Agamotto being tormented obstructed by that world's unreal inhabitants. The decapitation is just a stunt in Dagger's attempt to brainwash her and convert her to his religion which we will later learn is Catholicism. This sounds like the most realistic part of a comic book ever. Dagger claims to loathe using magic to get rid of magic, but it's his calling!

It appears he's done this before. Maybe someone will consider a Silver Dagger: The Early Years limited series and show us these earlier conversions. Dagger leaves Clea alone for a bit and uses the All-Purpose Amulet to show him Doc's corpse and discovering that his victim is still alive. Uh oh!

This provides a convenient segue back to that crazy Orb world where Doc is a bit discombobulated. Doc gets contemplative and philosophical. He attempts to mediate and orient himself which attracts something called a soul eater. It attempts to suck out Doc's ghost form. The attempt succeeds.

Doc is drawn into the soul eater's maw but sees a flash of silver as he's being devoured. It's the Silver Surfer, or something that looks like him, at least.

Doc encounters a bunch of other souls that have been incorporated into the soul eaters innards. Doc has no intention of ending like this. He flies to the creatures brain and works some shenanigans.

The creature "freaks out" (in Doc's own words) and as it crashes all its victims go free. Cool!

Doc and the Surfer chat. Surfer reveals that he's not the genuine article and is just part of the realm. Therefore he can't help Doc find the out door. Doc then remembers he has a physical body which has gone AWOL. Surfer points out that it walked to a nearby castle. It's not supposed to do that when Doc's ghost ain't home! The pair go to the castle which looks familiar (to me, not them.)

Inside, neither He-Man nor the Sorceress are home. Instead they find a bunch of heroes getting drunk. Around the table are his fellow Defenders, Spider-Man, a couple of Avengers, Nick Fury and public domain superhero from the 1930s, Captain Midnight. Doc's body is sitting politely at the head of the table while, next to him, the Hulk is getting angry because Doc won't talk. We know these aren't the genuine articles because Namor isn't being an angry drama queen. Frank gives us a lovely two page spread that's a bit of levity in this rather dark tale.

Doc rejoins his body and bids his ersatz fellow heroes farewell when another reveler arrives, whom the crowd address as The Queen. The Queen turns out to be an ersatz Valkyrie astride her winged horse, Aragorn.

Queen Valkyrie asks Sir Hulk who is the stranger? Hulk doesn't know but wants him to stay for tea. Doc, not wanting to tarry further as he needs to rescue Clea in the real world, declines. Perhaps he should have done it more politely as this is the reaction:

Doc has greatly softened in the decade since he was introduced, but when he's on a mission the arrogant jerk can rear its ugly head. Perhaps the knowledge that these dudes aren't real helps, but Doc makes short work of the gang.

Hulk manages to just get angrier, grabs Doc and pummels the heck out of him. But it wasn't really Doc, just an illusion. Seems an apt plan considering where he is. Revived, the entire gang comes for him again. And again he rebuffs them.

Yup! Arrogant. But powerful! The soul eater returns and Doc is about to protect the unconscious ersatz heroes when we see that Valkyrie and Silver Surfer are still awake. They explain he doesn't need to worry about the soul eater. They have no souls for it to consume! How logical in this unreal place! Doc then has the epiphany that his real foe is:

Doc realizes that he didn't escape death, he merely postponed it. He must get to the center of the Orb. Valyrie/The Queen offers him her unreal version of Aragorn who now knows how to get to the center. Doc flies off and we return to reality where Dagger has been peeping in on Doc and showing Clea to make her lose hope.

Whoa! So much going on here and Frank Brunner's art is simply wonderful. It must have been a joy to illustrate such fantastic weirdness. Yes, I'm gushing a bit. I love this arc and we're right in the thick of it. Our newly minted sorcerer supreme is thrust into a situation that probably of none of his predecessors have dealt with and has ever-mounting uncertainty. And he's got his lady friend to worry about so he really can't waste a lot of time.

As we've progressed, Englehart has improved Doc's speech to something less stilted and more formal. He knows Doc is somewhat cut off from pop culture and will have a more formal way of speaking, but not like a soap opera where everything ends in an exclamation point!

This arc gives us Doc as an explorer of the unknown. Englehart handles it well by having Doc handle it well.

The next issue tag is a bit of a lie. The next issue is reprints, but issue four will fulfil it's promise.

[jonberry555]

MAS*H Season 1 Retro Review ALL EPISODES

I love the television show MAS*H, so I thought it would be fun if I rewatched every single episode and recorded a review of said episode. Join me today along this five year long mission as I review every episode of Season 1

[reallymadefromstardust]

Am I live blogging? I think I am.

I am watching Hawkeye.

Hawkeye is like Batman but if he was way more suburban dad who loves his kids than he is billionaire

[the-masked-reviewer]

The Avengers (2012) Review

potential spoilers ahead...

This being the movie everything had been building towards is actually what I think makes it as good as it is. It expects you to have watched the other 4 movies (8 hours 9 minutes), so it doesn't do much in terms of exposition and just throws you straight to the conflict.

The characters are written so well and feel like the same ones you've been watching (something that's difficult, if not impossible to say now). The costuming, both super suits and civilian clothes, is amazing. They do so well at expressing who the characters are through their wardrobes alone.

The humor is great. Especially coming from Tony Stark and almost all of his interactions with anyone. The team's dynamics show just how new and unstable the pairings are, even at the end when they are working together smoothly, its clear they are still new and have much to learn.

It makes sense that this movie was what led to such insane fandom growth and so many memes when the quality is this high and its such a fun and enjoyable movie.

The use of camerawork to add subtly and perspective on certain characters is amazing. Specifically the framing anytime Nick Fury is on screen. For almost the entirety of the movie, you only look up at him. The only time you are eye-level or (slightly) above is when the helicarrier is actively under attack and he is put on the defensive. The second he re-gains control, the camera is back to its low angle. This use of framing does so much of the work putting Fury as the all intimidating director that he has come to be known as.

[icedgarlic]

I finished all new hawkeye omgg

[42donotpanic]

FIC WRITING REVIEW 2023

Thank you @loki-is-my-kink-awakening for coming up with this!

Rules: Feel free to show whatever stats you have. Only want to show Ao3 stats? Rock on. Want to include some quantitative info instead of stats? Please do this. Want to change how yours is presented? Absolutely do that. Would rather eat glass than do this? Please don’t eat glass but don’t feel like you have to do this either.

(I just copied @voiceoffenrisulfr who copied @foxywrites thank you both for tagging me <3)

Before we start I want to note that I hope to post 6 more fics this year and make it to 100 posted works before 2024 ^^

Words and Fics

335,338 words published in 2023

70 fics worked on

62 completed fics

most productive month: July with 74,045 words

monthly words average: 27,945 words

Top 5 Pairings

Clint Barton/Matt Murdock [16]

James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton [13]

Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson [6]

Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier [6]

James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark [6]

Top 5 by Comments

Purple and Red; all the same to me (AUgust Writing Challenge 2023) - 78

The quiet life - 17

Building a Relationship - 14

Safe Place - 13

3 Times Matt's date didn't take his blindness well (+1 where it wasn't the biggest surprise that night) - 6

Top 5 by Kudos

3 Times Matt's date didn't take his blindness well (+1 where it wasn't the biggest surprise that night) - 255

Couch already taken - 208

The Reporter and The Lawyer - The Devil and The Protector - 146

Daredevil: The Man with Trauma - 131

Fuck Ninjas - 122

Top 5 by Hits

The Reporter and The Lawyer - The Devil and The Protector - 2,251

3 Times Matt's date didn't take his blindness well (+1 where it wasn't the biggest surprise that night) - 1,725

Purple and Red; all the same to me (AUgust Writing Challenge 2023) - 1,724

Coming Untouched - 1,722

Building a Relationship - 1,529

Fandom Events in 2023

For this part, I'm only adding in Bingos that I was able to get a bingo/blackout for If you want to know more feel free to check out my masterlists in my pinned post <3

Bingos

[5/9] Any Fandom LGBTQ Bingo - Bingo

[5/5] July Break Flash Bingo - Black out

[9/9] July Break Mini Bingo - Black out

[25/25] July Break Bingo - Black out

[15/25] Marvel Rare Pair Bingo Round 1/2 - Bingo

[6/25] Masturbation Midsummer Bingo - DNF

[13/25] WinterIron Bingo - Bingo

[9/9] Writers Pride Month Bingo - Black out

Writing Challenge's

[30/30] Slash Mulitverse Daily Pride Prompts

[31/31] AU-gust Writing Challenge 2023

[5/31] Flufftober 2023

Upcoming Plans

Fic's I'm hoping to continue/complete next year:

[Clint/Bucky] Soul Marks and Metal Arms

[Clint/Natasha] To see the Bruises

[Matt/Foggy] Learning to Live again

[Clint/Bucky] Now I wear my scars just like Tattoos

[Clint/Rhodey] Bring them back (to get you back)

[Clint & Matt] Who even am I?!

[Clint/Matt] Hawkdevil AU

[Clint/Bucky] Domestic WinterHawk AU

[Clint/Matt] Building a Relationship

Writing Reflection

After I got back into writing fic this year it was something I really enjoyed all throughout this year. I discovered a bunch of fun challenges and servers, met many lovely people (sadly all online) and learned a lot. I have hyperfocused a lot, especially in the summer and I collected a boatload of prompts I would like to fill in the coming year.

I have a lot of fics already planned for the next year. There will be a lot of feels, fluff and angst/whump alike and I hope I can keep the run I had this year going.

A big thank you to everyone who supported me along the way, be it with ducking/spaghettiing fic ideas, sprinting with me, participating in challenges, commenting, sharing or even just reading and liking my fics. You folks mean the world to me and I love every single one of you. Take care and remember, as long as you do what you love you get a good grade in fandom <3

Tagging: @stripedscribe @ravenmold @endlesstwanted and everyone who wants to participate (totally not a cop-out because I lost track of my tumblr, no)

[navek15]

Forgot to post this, but a few days ago, I posted a video review of Ultimates #5, the debut of the new Hawkeye!

If you want to see what someone who actually reads comics thinks of the newest iteration of the Avenger Archer, or just want a comic review that isn’t some ragebait, grifting schmucks getting triggered by pronouns, give it a watch!

[stereogeekspodcast]

[Transcript] Season 3, Episode 8. Echo Review

The Stereo Geeks review Echo! The spin-off Marvel series is quite unlike the shows that have come before, and Ron and Mon had a lot of thoughts about it. We discuss the history of Maya Lopez, what worked for us in the show, what we would have liked more of, and why Maya 'Echo' Lopez is not like your average superhero.

What did you think of Echo?

Listen to the episode on Spotify.

Hello and welcome to a new episode of Stereo Geeks.

Today we're reviewing Echo.

And I'm Mon.

Echo is the first series under the Marvel Spotlight banner, which follows street level characters.

Essentially, it's made for non-MCU watchers who don't want to catch up on all the other stuff.

This has been a constant refrain from a lot of people that you just need to watch too many shows, too many movies to figure out what's going on.

This kind of explains why so much of the first episode of Echo is basically a recap of her adventures in Hawkeye.

Considering we only get five episodes of this show, it feels a little bit egregious for so much time in the first episode to have been dedicated to a recap.

Yeah, I have to say that one of the problems with this show is that it's quite short.

It's only five episodes.

I mean, you'd say four, considering the first one is really a recap.

If there is one criticism about this show that honestly I don't think anybody can escape, it's that it doesn't really feel like a full-fledged story.

It's half a story.

It's missing a lot of dynamics, a lot of explanations.

It's honestly missing a lot of motivations as well.

There are so many gaps.

And I'm not sure why.

You're saying this is the first show under a brand new banner.

You're saying this is basically not only just an introduction, but an entry into this sprawling universe that has been continuing since 2008.

And yet you don't actually respect it enough to give the writers, the directors, the characters the ability to tell a cohesive, full-fledged story.

And the fact that Echo, aka Maya Lopez, is the first indigenous protagonist in the MCU just makes this very weird optically.

Yeah, because to try and explain who Maya Lopez is, it's going to be a little bit tough.

She was introduced on Hawkeye, the Jeremy Renner show.

She was an antagonist.

There were connections between her and Kingpin.

Lots of excitement.

There's Kingpin in there, and she's got some kind of relationship to him.

And, you know, we see her making a very bold decision at the end of Hawkeye.

How does that affect her?

So I expected this show, which is a spinoff, to be not only telling us about Maya's history, but also who she is now, how she became the person who is connected to Kingpin.

Kingpin is a bad guy.

Anybody associated with him is a bad guy, but she's not.

Or is she?

So I just feel like there was a lot resting on this show, which four and a quarter episodes were never going to be enough.

But again, they could have done a lot, but it just seemed like there was too little time to actually give us an entire story.

What I really did like about Echo is the amount of history we learn of the Choctaw Nation.

This is basically where Oklahoma and Alabama are right now.

In the comics, Echo is Cheyenne.

She's not Choctaw.

And Alaqua Cox, the actor, is Menominee and Mohican.

I'm not entirely sure why they made this change, but I guess it works.

Also in the comics, Echo is deaf, but not an amputee.

The show actually adapted the character for Alaqua Cox's disabilities.

I think it's great.

I like the fact that they just quickly explain it away.

It's fine.

And we just move on with it.

I thought there were a few too many scenes where we were focusing on her prosthetic leg.

But then I was like, why not?

Well, that's actually something Alaqua Cox seems to have wanted to portray.

She wanted to make sure that people not only saw the prosthetic, but also that, you know, this is the person who has it and is using it.

And she was very, very insistent on not hiding it under her clothes.

So there's a few jokes about that in the show as well.

So I do understand it was like, oh, why another focus on this?

But that seems to be coming from the actor and not necessarily from a bad place.

So that's a good thing.

I am relieved to hear that.

And the thing is that there's so much action in this show.

And a lot of it, Echo is using her prosthetic leg to fight people.

And it looks really, really cool.

And it made me think we haven't seen anything like this before.

Even if we have, we haven't necessarily seen it from an actor who also has the same disability.

I think the show has got a lot going for it simply because it's doing this representation and it's doing it correctly, I would think.

That goes for the history of the Choctaw Nation that we get to see on the show.

So each episode is basically named after one of the ancestors and we keep building up, building up, building up until we reach Maya.

Everything will be explained when you watch the show.

But we get to see a lot of the history of the Choctaw Nation through these episodes.

I did try and look for a mythical Choctaw warrior called Shaafa.

I'm afraid she doesn't exist.

But in the second episode, they do play stickball, which was great to see.

It's basically what lacrosse is now.

And they actually allude to the fact that stickball was used to settle disputes at that time.

It was really very fun and exciting.

And of course, it has a story purpose as well.

Then in episode three, we get to see the Light Horsemen.

Unfortunately, I did search, but there were apparently no female Light Horse Police like we see in the show.

Well, none that we know of anyway.

Very true.

But the Light Horsemen were definitely a thing.

The show also has a lot of references to the comic books.

Yeah, let's talk about some of her similarities with her comic book counterpart.

She is related in quotation marks to Kingpin.

Her outfits, some of them have a sort of throwback to her comic book outfit.

And this is not a spoiler.

Everybody saw it in Hawkeye.

But when her father is killed, he leaves a bloody handprint on her face.

And the same thing happens in the comic books.

Noticeably, she does not have the handprint on her face as part of her uniform.

I'm okay with that.

I'm not sure what they were trying to do with that in the comics, but it's fine.

It's not in the show.

So in the comics, Maya basically has the ability to mimic anybody's movements.

She just has to see them at least once.

She does not appear to have those powers.

The powers that she does have is really her resourcefulness, her strength, her training.

So that's quite different.

I do understand why they changed that.

We do have a very similar character like that in the MCU.

But one of the things that confused me a little bit, or maybe it's because of my preferences, I don't know, there was something very real or realistic about Maya's story.

And then they have this sort of supernatural thing going on.

And I'm not sure I dug that as much as people might.

So I don't know how you felt about that.

So I was in two minds about it.

I really liked having somebody who didn't have any powers, who was literally just relying on her fists and her brain to get her through very sticky situations.

And when we did get to the part where there seemed to be something mystical about the energies around her, I thought maybe we didn't need this.

We have a lot of people who already have some kind of power, who can do something extraordinary.

Maybe we just needed somebody who was ordinary.

But I think the way it developed in the final episode, I really liked the direction they went.

I like that Maya is not the only one with this kind of power.

It just depends on who uses it for what purpose.

But I think a lot of our concerns about this particular story angle would have been addressed if there was maybe two, three episodes more.

We wouldn't have been thinking about it so much.

Yeah, I guess it kind of caught me by surprise because the two volumes that I read of Echo in the comics, yeah, that doesn't have any of this mystical stuff.

It has, of course, the connections to your past.

It was not written by an indigenous person, so not sure how authentic that was.

So apparently this is the first time that Maya Lopez, Echo has been created from an indigenous perspective, which is just shocking.

She was introduced in like 98 or something.

But I guess the reason why we're kind of excited about talking about this show are the characters.

I guess let's get into it.

Let's go first with Maya Lopez.

Alaqua Cox, her debut performance was in Hawkeye.

She was so good there, so good.

Now she's getting to carry an entire Marvel show.

She's fantastic.

It's unbelievable that this is just the second time she's actually in front of the screen.

Yeah, it just tells you when something is electric about an actor.

Her very first introduction in Hawkeye, I'm just like, I need to see more of this character.

And with every passing episode, I was like, okay, somehow we need to get more.

And I was really excited when they announced that Echo was going to be a show on its own.

I was disappointed when it turned out to be five episodes.

But having said that, Alaqua Cox is really brilliant.

Like, first, she's got resting bitch face, which is super relatable.

Like, her dad is dead.

Everything is going wrong.

Kingpin is a pain.

She is allowed to have resting bitch face.

But what I really loved about her is she imbues Maya with so much attitude.

It's just perfect.

She's perennially annoyed.

And she has these quirky little expressions when she's not happy with something.

And I feel like it's just so natural you don't see actors doing that.

So it feels like we're hanging out with a real person in a very difficult situation.

She's absolutely mesmerizing to watch.

I absolutely just loved seeing her in this show.

I honestly need to see more.

Like we need more of Echo in the MCU.

I don't care where she turns up.

I hope she turns up in everything.

Please.

She's just so fantastic.

I would love to see this character.

But Echo has this amazing community of people.

And when I say amazing, it's amazing because these people are so fantastic and I want to hang out with them.

But she doesn't always get along.

She doesn't agree with them.

They are annoying.

They've made mistakes.

And at the same time, you're like, I feel this person.

I get you.

I get why you're feeling this way, why you're acting this way.

It's a small, tight cast, but they're so good.

She's got two cousins, Biscuit and Bonnie.

Biscuit is a character who is a cliché, but he's so earnest.

He's Maya's biggest champion.

I love that about him.

And he's terrified of his grandmother, which is just so understandable.

And we have Bonnie played by Devri Jacobs, and we mention her because she recently voiced Kahuri on Marvel's What If.

She had a really small role, but I have to say, she has these looks, and I'm like, there is history here.

There is history, there is pain, and I really want to know more about this character who is so astute and so calm, but there's just like this boiling, surging sea of emotions beneath.

And the performance that really got me by Devri Jacobs was in the final episode.

We're not going to tell you what it was, but it's a short scene, but it's so good, so powerful.

And then we have Tantoo Cardinal.

She is a veteran.

She's the grandmother, but man, you do not want to cross this lady.

She's so, she's so good.

She has this no-nonsense, gonna-hit-you-where-it-hurts kind of attitude, which is just so fun.

And yet she has this really nice emotional scene with Alaqua Cox, which is just, it just really humanizes her.

Graham Greene, he plays Scully.

I think he had the best role.

Like, he's this cheeky, funny, Q-like character who's just bringing this kind of crazy cool energy to the show.

I love that.

But we've gotta talk about Chaske Spencer.

He plays Uncle Henry.

And this is a man who has so much history, just from his expressions, his emotions.

I just wanna know where has this character been and why haven't we seen his story?

What I also really loved about everybody around Maya, despite the fact that most of them haven't seen her for a long time, they've all kept up with sign language.

And I don't know whether that's because they weren't sure whether she'd come back and they wanted to be prepared or whether they just wanted to keep this skill.

But it's such a stark contrast with somebody else that Maya really is very fond of, who doesn't bother to learn the language, despite also knowing her for exactly the same length of time.

I wish we had some behind the scenes to find out how much time and energy it took for the actors to learn sign language so well, because it's very natural and very organic.

Yes, they do talk rather slowly when they're doing the sign, but it felt like they were actually conversing with Maya.

And I don't think, again, that we've seen anything like this before.

I would say in genre fiction, maybe not to this extent, where the extended supporting cast is doing as much heavy lifting with the language as the main character who knows the language.

What I liked about this show was that they play with the sound a lot.

The sound editing is very interesting.

There are points when they do cut out all the sound.

There's still music playing.

There are other times when they're like, yeah, okay, we're going to give the actors the time to speak.

So sometimes they speak out loud and they sign.

Other times it's just whispering and signing.

It adds to the atmosphere.

It adds to what Maya is feeling.

There is especially, again, that last episode, there's a lot to say about it.

In the last episode, there's a very important point when they cut out all the sound.

In fact, there are two important points.

But the emotional resonance of the second time when they remove the sound and there's just this intense, soft music at the back, it not only highlights the performances, but it puts you in Maya's shoes.

And you're like, how is she feeling with this person reacting the way they are?

And she can't hear them.

She can only see what this person is doing.

It was incredible.

That was a really incredible choice.

That last episode and the kind of scenes and technical decisions that they made me wonder if they could have actually pushed the envelope a little bit more.

How about an entire episode with just Maya's point of view?

No sound.

Let's experience the world as Maya experiences it.

I mean, we did see that on Only Murders in the Building, right?

We had that episode in the first season completely devoid of sound because we were in the shoes of the character who was deaf.

It was spectacular, spectacular.

And I just think that there should be more episodes and more shows and more productions making an effort to do different things to make us all understand what other people's experiences are.

Because honestly, a lot of folks just don't realize lived experiences are different for different people.

And how can they?

I mean, look at the MCU itself.

Some 30 or so properties, and the majority of them have been about one very narrow lived experience.

And we're already seeing so many people being like, oh, we didn't need this show, nobody needs this character.

Really?

Really, we have two indigenous characters in the MCU.

Maya and Kahhori.

That's it.

And so because we have Kahhori, we don't need Maya?

We don't need everybody in Maya's life?

Yeah, I have nothing to say to that.

If people can't see this and understand why this is just the starting point, it shocks me that this is even a conversation to be had.

It's amazing that we have this.

Because, you know, when you're watching this show, you realize that there's not just one perspective that they're changing.

Look at the kind of different sizes and shapes that the actors come in in this show.

No one comments on it.

And I was like at first thinking, yeah, you know, there are different communities where different sizes are de rigueur.

They're accepted.

Everybody just understands it.

But then I saw, oh, there's this other white lady bad guy who's also a little chubby.

And nobody comments on that either.

And I'm like, well, why can't we have this in every single property that we watch?

People are different shapes and sizes.

They live life.

Nobody comments on it.

They're just doing their own thing.

They are good.

They are bad.

Whoever cares.

This show just seamlessly does that.

The moment I saw the first fat character, my heart kind of sank, and I was waiting for somebody to say something rude or make a fat joke.

And then we had the antagonist who was a fat character, and I was like, oh, are they going to say something mean about her and nothing happened?

And then we see more fat people and nobody says anything, and there are no fat jokes.

And I was like, oh my God, is this how everybody else lives?

They're not making a statement.

They're just saying different people live in the world.

You live alongside them.

Why does it matter?

I'm just so impressed.

Were the creators even thinking about what they were doing?

I don't think so.

They were thinking about what they were doing for people who are indigenous, for people with disabilities.

I don't know if they were going as far as thinking, oh yeah, different shapes and sizes are respected in this show.

But I think it's because of that and the respect that the creators have for the characters and giving us this fully-fledged feeling of being part of this community.

And when I say community, it's like this community of people who love each other, hate each other, get annoyed with each other, make mistakes.

One of the things that we've probably not interrogated about superheroes is the fact that they rarely have families.

And if they do, it's like, you know, just because they're going to be in danger.

But Echo really delves into the fact that Maya's family is made up of real people.

They react to their anger, their pain.

They let it take them over.

Maya does the same thing.

But at the heart of it, they all still really, really love each other.

And I like the things that they didn't tell us.

You have these scenes, and they just mention something like, oh, okay, that's why it's happened.

I really like the thought that went into this.

But again, it makes me think I needed more time.

Like, where did Biscuit even come from?

And there's this revelation about Uncle Henry, and I was like, oh, really?

How come we had no inkling that this was happening?

And especially when you see the scenes where Maya is with Kingpin, young Maya and adult Maya, they are so powerful.

And it's weird to say that about somebody like Kingpin, because he's a scary guy.

Now, I'll be the first to admit, I did not finish watching Daredevil, five episodes, and I fell asleep during the sixth.

But Kingpin in this show is calm, cool, collected, and his every second on screen is menacing.

I'm actually beginning to think I should go and watch Daredevil now.

Look, Vincent D'Onofrio, the way he captured the menace and scariness of Kingpin is the reason why people are clamoring to see him again and have been ever since he went off screen.

And he is so good.

And what I liked about it is that his scenes with Maya are just so great.

Like you want to see more of them interacting with each other.

It's weird to say, but I kind of wish we'd seen more of Kingpin.

But only Kingpin and Maya together, not just, oh, let's see what Kingpin is up to.

For me, the reason why I was invested in Kingpin in this show is because of his scenes with Maya.

So you're right.

I don't really want to see Kingpin doing his own thing.

I'm not interested in that.

The reason why Maya and Kingpin scenes work so well is because her reactions to him are widely different from everybody else's.

And that is just something that needs to be seen for a longer time.

I think we could have actually done with an episode just on the two of them.

That's why I keep coming back to the same thing.

Why was this just five episodes?

I think we've come to the heart of the issue.

This show was clamoring to be a character study.

A character study of Maya, of her family, including Kingpin.

But what it ended up being was more plot heavy, with a lot of character study thrown in, but it was disjointed and disconnected.

So sometimes the motivations weren't there, or sometimes the emotional impact on the character was not felt at the right time.

I'm not saying whenever the emotional impact was felt, we weren't all tearing up.

But for example, in the first episode, little Maya goes through a lot, a shock load.

But she doesn't react at all.

Like is it dissociative?

Is it shock?

What is happening?

But we never come back to that.

The adults are reacting in a particular way, but not her.

Again, those are missing beats, perhaps because, well, most of the first episode had to be regurgitated, and the rest of the series had to be curtailed.

So there's those angles which really, it undermines the efforts of this show, and of the show's creators.

But that being said, the best part of this show are all these characters, including, I will say, Kingpin, which I never thought I'd be saying.

Now, Denofeo has also said that this show does lead into Daredevil Born Again.

Now, Born Again, if I'm not wrong, is also part of the Marvel Spotlight banner, which is strange because isn't this banner all about you don't need to have any knowledge coming in?

But this would be the third, fourth thing that Daredevil's in.

You know, if you take Defenders as a separate thing, I don't know if they're undermining their own cause.

So are you telling me that Daredevil: Born Again's first episode is going to be a recap of Daredevil and Defenders?

And maybe a bit of She-Hulk?

And also some Echo?

So basically it's going to be five shows in one.

But here's the thing, we all know it's not going to happen, right?

Echo will have to face that situation where, oh, okay, you know, we never saw anything about Echo, we don't remember her.

But oh, Daredevil, we know it by heart.

It's just the hypocrisy.

I know we're harping on about it a lot, but to get into Echo, you literally had to watch one show.

One show, people.

You needed to watch more to get to know Kingpin.

Sometimes the optics of what Disney and Marvel do is questionable at best.

On the one hand, I love the fact that Disney and Marvel are giving us so much time with Maya.

We need her.

We need her history.

We need everything that comes with her experiences in the world as a person with two disabilities.

But on the other hand, five episodes.

One thing I'll say about media, entertainment media, what it does is, it gives us an introduction to histories and stories we would have never thought to learn about or even know about.

So here, you and I are learning more about the Choctaw people.

With Miss Marvel, for example, a lot of people learned that there was the partition of India.

They never even knew about this imperialist history.

So I do think that entertainment media is a good way for us to ask questions we never knew.

So that's where a show like this, which brings in all these new voices, is so integral, is so important.

Despite the fact that you and I think it's like half a story, Echo lives by its characters.

This amazing group of characters who I would love to see again.

I don't know how we will.

Where will they show up?

Can we have a season two?

But despite the many story issues, and there are, we're gonna have to admit it, there are story issues, I would highly recommend everybody watch this show.

This is an amazing entry into the MCU canon.

At some point, I would love to see Maya hang out with the Avengers, whatever makeup of Avengers we are going to get.

And maybe finally come to some resolution with her family as well.

I just really need to see more of Maya, her family, her very visceral action scenes.

Give us a season two Marvel.

And that's it from us for today.

We hope you enjoyed listening to us talk about Echo and I hope you will give this show a shot.

Ron: You can find us on Twitter @Stereo_Geeks. Or send us an email stereogeekspodcast@gmail.com. We hope you enjoyed this episode. And see you next week!

Mon: The Stereo Geeks logo was created using Canva. The music for our podcast comes courtesy Audionautix.