Spoilery Thoughts on Next Black Panther

This contains spoilers for Avengers: Whatever Whatever and Spider Man: Far From Shabby.

So I found out while watching the new Spiderman movie on my b’day yesterday that the people who had been snapped out of existence by T. Hanos were de-snapped 5 years later having not aged a day. For the purposes of spidermanning, it meant some kids were younger than their little siblings, which is kinda funny. But I started to think about the ramifications for other parts of that world.

Wakanda lost a king and got a replacement that was immediately rocked by some turmoil. Then that king got snapped, along with half of Wakanda, after battling and losing against an alien Grimace. I can’t imagine the average Wakandan thinks highly of T’Challa given those events, and do think they’d be quick to blame it on T’challa opening the borders.

I know some of the Black Panther comics involved dealing with movements for Wakandan democracy, but haven’t read them and don’t know how they went. But it’s a really safe bet the next Black Panther movie is going to include some amount of that.

T’Challa is going to come back to a kingdom in some level of turmoil. Maybe his mom will be acting as a regent, maybe his sister be queening. Maybe they will have capitulated to some form of democracy or republic. And you know there will be an agitator who is xenophobic, maybe racist, pushing to become a strongman “reformer” …

What I’m saying is I’d like to see if they make a bad guy of an African Trump. I don’t know how I’d feel about that kind of character being held up as symbolic of democracy itself, opposed only by an ostensibly righteous monarchy. That’s a mess. But it might be funny to see that orange scrote lampooned in the film. What do you think?

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Ophelia, Call the Police

I guess I’ll be the first person to reference this prominently on the internet. It is really hard to find anything about the movie “Us” on the web still. I hope that doesn’t mean people are sleeping on it. One of my few quibbles about its execution is that I wanted more, and that would only be possible with a bigger budget. It’ll be harder for Peele to get the kinda budget he deserves if this one doesn’t crush at the box office like it ought to.

Anyhow. Ophelia, call the police!

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Watching “Us” Tonight

I’m watching “Us” tonight. And I won’t stop making nagging posts about it until everyone comments here that they’ve bought tickets or made plans.

EDIT – I saw it. My work week’s starting now-ish so I don’t know if I’ll get a full review in. It was a good time.

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A Correction on “Us”

When I tried to get tickets for “Us,” I could only find 7 PM showings. I assumed the theaters were, for whatever reason, giving it a limited run. However, I was very mistaken. I wasn’t aware the release date had been bumped to the 22nd, and I also wasn’t aware that it’s normal for shows to have night time showings the day before the official release. I was shopping for tickets on the 21st, so only showings were 7 or later.

That’s nice tho. I’d hate for there to be anything holding back that movie’s conquest of the universe, and I found out there isn’t. Also, it explains why the internet has been so quiet about it. The hype will happen when people start to see it.

That’s all for now. Also, see the movie, or I’ll box your ears.

EDIT TO ADD: Incidentally, this means I’m going on opening night, which I didn’t want to do. O_o

EDIT TO ADD:

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The Doppelpocalypse is Nigh

Content Warning: Cinematic Horror

Jordan Peele’s new movie “Us” is coming out in a few days and by rights this movie should just demolish the box office. Maybe it will, but it’s starting at a big disadvantage. When I went to buy tickets, there were no showings before 7 PM anywhere. Most theaters are only showing it once or twice a night. Why? What the fuck is that?

This movie has – no exaggeration – the best trailer I’ve seen in decades. It’s exciting as hell. I’m vibrating with anticipation for it. I’m not going to get a chance to see it until the 21st, but I got it locked in. I’m going. A borderline agoraphobic dude is braving a movie theater for the first time in nine years to see it with me. If you like horror at all – especially action-oriented horror like zombie movies – you better go too.

The original trailer is way better than the cut that aired for the super bowl. If you missed it when it dropped, drink it in here and now babies. Feel it. Jordan Peele came up with a concept similar to Invasion of the Body Snatchers but with so much more electric potential.

He’s created a new type of apocalyptic monster scenario, which the world has been in desperate need of since zombies got squeezed bone dry by every trendchasing loser in hollywood. I want there to be instagram filters to make people look like these doppelgängers. I want every artist dork on the internet to be scribbling up their doppelsonas. I want the fanfic sites to get creepy with it.

I’ve got a bunch of speculation I could get into, like you can find on youtube easily enough. But that might feel spoilerish to some of you, so I’ll leave it be. But I do want to mention something other internet heads have missed. I think the rabbits in the hall may be, in part, a small homage to a Japanese movie called Suicide Circle. Toward the end of that movie, there is a scene of surreal horror taking place in a small brightly lit space, with tiny yellow chicks running all over the floor. That movie is far from a favorite, but if I’m right, that would show the breadth of the horror content Jordan Peele has consumed on his way to becoming a master.

The Doppelpocalypse is nigh. Be there for it.

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Reasons to Live Are Good

I rarely get music news from Japan. I love a few bands, but for some reason they don’t cross my mind every day, I can lose track. But I found out several years ago Kaori from Yellow Machinegun started another band called Suzisuzi, which means “vein” in Japanese. They are old school thrash punks, not young people, but exactly what you would hope to see in rock stalwarts. They crush it. And added bonus, one of these tracks is a retail worker anthem:

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Open for Commissions Again

I’ve started paying back a new debt and it’s wiping me out beginning of every month. Once again, I’m putting out the sandwich boards. Will work for food. And money for xmas presents ;_; Anyhow, hit me up if you got some money and I can do something for you.

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Inktober 2018, the Rest of ‘Em

Content Warnings for Images: Blood, Gore, Artistic Nudity, Sexual Creeping

Here’s the rest of the month, 12 days late. I’m not going to put a proper visual caption on these. They’re OK for a bit of visual distraction if you can see, but they just aren’t worth the effort to describe. It’s so much digital ephemera. For this (my first) Inktober, I combined the Monsters & Mythology prompts plus the Official Prompts.

Going with the spirit of Inktober I didn’t allow myself much digital work. For example, I allowed myself no additional strokes or distortion / warping – though I broke the distortion rule for the image of the “Zmey.” I don’t have every color in the universe, pen-wise, so I did allow myself subtle use of adjusting contrast, hue, saturation, brightness. I felt some drawings looked too spare without a base color, so I added a fill or gradients to those.

You can still tell I did the under-drawing for all of these with a yellow sharpie, so I couldn’t erase it. I think that kinda stuff looks fun in a drawing but I know some people hate it, so sorry about that. In this batch, I put more effort into disguising that somewhat with color replacement on a number of the pictures.

As I got through the last half of the prompts, my content got a little more creepy. Let me know if anything was too much. Proceeding thus,
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Open for Commissions

I need money really badly at the moment. No emergency, but some urgency. My household is experiencing that “food insecurity” that gets mentioned on the news. I need money for groceries for a few weeks.

Here are some samples of my art, from my Inktober posts. Also, you can check out my portfolio at http://www.christophocles.com/ Hit me up in the comments below or to great.american.satan@gmail.com …

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