Mike Flanagan Is Overrated

This one has been a long time coming, and honestly, I think it's about time we talk about Mike Flanagan and how he is (in my opinion) seriously overrated. Mike Flanagan is a name now well known in the horror sphere for some time now, and with his most recent accolade being a miniseries remake of "Carrie" (because that's what we need in 2026), I think I need to discuss why I think he's overrated. Let's dive in.

What To Make Of AI Art?

So AI is a thing now, for better or worse, it's here and it's our job to deal with it as best we can. One of the many uses of AI now on the horizon is AI Art as seen above. So what to do about AI Art? Is it a good thing? Bad thing? Some think it's a horrible thing, and others disagree, so where do I line up? Let's dive in and talk;

Who or What Is A Fan?

Yes, I know, an honest-to-God article after all these...weeks? So a while back I was a part of a conversation between two coworkers here the topic of fans came up and one of my coworkers was expressing how bad it is for actors to disrespect fans (specifically "Star Wars" fans) and the other coworker stated that he has no respect for "Star Wars" in general as these are the people who bullied Kelly Marie Tran off of the internet due to her character Rose Tico and made the Jar Jar Binks actor suicidal. I never thought much about fandoms, and while I consider myself to be a fan of quite a few things I tend to shy away from fandom circles in general but this got me thinking, and when I get thinking an article is soon too follow to join me if you will as we figure out who or what is a fan?

Knowing The Difference: Timelines, Universes and Dimensions

This is a bit of a weird article because I had a dream I wrote this very article and I decide to write it in real life. What spurred this article on was 2 things. I was having a discussion with some friends about comic books and how the terms "timelines" and "universe" are used interchangably while meaning two completely different things and "Mortal Kombat 1's" use of the terms "timeline" and "realms" and seeing as how the multiverse is quickly becoming more known in the cultural lexicon I decided to definatively breakdown each term and explain why they're not interchangable. Let's get to it.

Reboots, Revivals, Remakes and Adaptations

So let's have a chat. It's been a minute since we shared a chinwag and now theres lots to talk about.  First of all, where have I been? At work...being a dad...playing "Majora's Mask" on my N64, working on a super-secret project *coughs* who said that?! *coughs*, long story short I've been around, I've just been lazy and though I've been wanting to write an article the will do so continues to elude me. But thankfully today I decided to sit down and actually write an article (obviously) and BOY HOWDY do we have a topic considering so much has happened in this particular sphere and by that I mean entertainment. I've been saying for a LONG time now that the current producers within Hollywood have NO creativity and I've been proven right time and time again. Now I'm not here to write about how I'm always right about these topics (and I am and I'd love to but that'd be self-serving and I don't do that on this blog...shut up!) and I'm not exactly going bemoan the lack (or non-existent) creativity of the Hollywood system, I am however going to discuss the topic and posit a few questions that hopefully I can answer.

However, before we get into the article proper I think it's wise to define some terms because people use certain terms interchangeably and that's not how those terms work so allow me to define my terms before we dive in;

Reboot: This is usually reserved for TV shows. Reboots are NOT Revivals! For example "Rosanne" returned to the airways now under the title of "The Conners". This is NOT a Reboot, this is a Revival. They're continuing the same story with the same cast. A Reboot would be the current "Charmed" series on The CW, different cast, new storyline. Essentially starting the series over from square one. With little to no connection to the previous series except in name only.

Revival: A Revival is also reserved for TV shows. When a show finally reaches its series finale and bows gracefully off the small screen that's usually the last time we'll see any of those characters UNLESS of course, the show gets a revival. For a revival, the main cast (or lead actor) usually returns to squeeze one more adventure out of their character. Note also the same actor and same characters. This is NOT a spin-off the features the lead character, rather the lead character is BACK and the show is back. Perfect examples of this would be: "Dexter", "24", "Prison Break" and the previously mentioned "Rosanne/ The Conners" revivals. All of the shows have had their respective series finales years ago only to return years later.

Remake: Now this is a tricky one because while remakes and reboots are often the same things there is a subtle difference between the two, a remake CAN retain the same actors, a remake is often a re-tooling of what's come before it. Since movies can be redone to death, more often than not a remake will either breathe new life into the material or update it for a modern audience. For example "The Shining" came out in 1980, Stanley Kubrick's version anyway, Stephen King hated that version and decided to have his own version in 1997 via TV mini-series. There's also "Carrie" which came out in 1976 and "Carrie" which came out in 2013. Remakes are usually about updating old material, think of it as giving an old car a new engine and a fresh coat of paint. Some are better than their originals, others are not (looking directly at you "Charlie and The Chocolate Factory"...you know what you did.) but ultimately remakes are something that is here to stay and are not in and of themselves a bad thing.

Finally, we have;

Adaptation: Adaptations and remakes are very often the same things except for a one caveat, adaptations are often a transferring of medium or language. For example, all of the Marvel movies are adaptations, the source material is the character's respective comic books and while what's in the books don't entirely reflect what's on-screen, all of the primary trappings that make that character that character are present (or at least they should be...) The same goes for "Romeo and Juliet", it was a Play before it was a movie. Basically, all movies whose origins are not movies count as Adaptations. Likewise, foreign films remade for American audiences are adaptations as well, and while Yes, you can call them remakes and be perfectly accurate, the point is that considering the film in question began life in a different culture and different language, certain things might not come across as poignant to audiences unfamiliar with said culture. Case in point the original film "Oldboy" featured a hypnotist at the end of the film with Oh-Dae-su (the main character) asking to make him forget a certain event in the film (I'm not gonna spoil "Oldboy" if you haven't seen that movie you NEED to watch it...seriously, that movie rules), the American adaptation featured no hypnotist as American culture doesn't have much mysticism to it with regards to hypnotism and things of the like. Therefore this aspect was "adapted out" of the remake, therefore disqualifying it from being a proper remake, you understand?

We shall not speak of this ever...

And YES, before you start I do understand that "The Shining", "Charlie and The Chocolate Factory" and "Carrie" are all adaptations as well but as I've said they were made once and made again so while YES the original films are all adaptations the remakes are remakes, hope that makes sense. Anyway. Now that we've defined our terms, let's dive in!

Hate Watching: And Why I Don't Do it

So The CW has begun production on a live-action "Powerpuff Girls" TV show, after promptly checking to make sure it wasn't April 1st and Ashton Kutcher or Gaten Mazaratto weren't lurking about, I decided to accept this as the reality I live in and figured that I'd get a blog post out of it. However, not the kind of blogpost you'd expect but a different one, which one? I'll tell ya, after the break;

The Curious Case Of Feedback

 So here we are, once again, I wrote about this in a Strange Log but I felt like this needed to be a much longer article since this is an increasing issue, at least for me and that is feedback. Feedback on what? Well, everything pretty much. Here's the thing, I've hand-drawn and written over 60 graphic novels, all of which are 60 to 100 pages long, and I made them strictly for the consumption of myself and my family, those were not meant for the public because I wrote them for me, for my pleasure, therefore I don't require feedback on those, I know they're good because they're for me. However, when I do put something out there, something that I am making for the public to enjoy, a little feedback would be nice, since the blight has plagued our land and lands abroad I've been contemplating several projects I could take on, and each one I've replied back to myself "But it won't get attention.". I'll elaborate more. Here we go.

The Difference Between Western and Eastern Animation

So this article was going to be a lament about how I am currently unable to watch "Infinity Train", an animated series I noticed in passing at my local Wal-Mart, and while I misread the title to read "Infinity Rain" (let's face it the font makes it very difficult to find the "T") it nonetheless caught my interest. But this article isn't going to be about that, this article rather is going to be about exactly what the title states. What brought this on is during my research of "Infinity Train" which now looks (pun intended) infinitely more interesting than I initially assumed, I came across an interesting quote from the series creator in regards to whether or not this series will receive a 4th season, and I quote;

“I strongly believe that we can push animation into a more mature direction outside of the purely comedy space. If adults were able to finally understand that comic books aren’t just for children, then they’ll also be able to learn that animation isn’t either. Whichever studio produces the show or movie that finally breaks through and teaches that lesson, then that studio just got their own Marvel,”

This gem coming from series creator Owen Dennis and thus begins this article. Let's dive in;

What Is "Edgy"?

Let's talk about something. So after watching "Goblin Slayer" and after reading a few comments I decided to discuss the topic of "edginess". A lot of things are accused of being "edgy", the previous direction of The DCEU for one, but a lot of people (one being myself) have watched "Goblin Slayer" and said it was "edgy" and not as a compliment. So in this blog, I'm gonna explain why "Goblin Slayer" is NOT edgy and what IS edgy. Spoilers for "Goblin Slayer", let's dive in!