NaNoWriMo 2015 and Apologies

I kind of dropped the ball last month, at least personally I did in regards to wanting to write more blogs and failing to. Luckily, this month I'll keep that trend a-going! For those in the know, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) takes place throughout the course of November. Ever since High School I've talked about taking part, and have always let myself down. Not being in school or working is leaving me a lot of free time, so this year I'm aiming for it. 50,000 words in 30 days. I think I can do it. I'm not sure if what I write will wind up being worth editing together into a real novel, but either way I'm hoping the exercise will prove fruitful either way.

Due to this though, I'm going to probably not post much here for the month (oh look, it's already a week in!). I plan on turning the next couple of Road to Justice's into Double Features (Batman/Returns and Forever/& Robin) which will help, especially since conveniently these movies almost feel like two separate duologies. Aside from that I have at least one Games I Beat to finish up (Dragon Quest Heroes, in short, please buy it new to support the series overall, it's mostly worth it /spoilers), and hopefully something else? Another huge detracting factor is Fallout 4 and Bloodborne's expansion are releasing this month. At least that will give me more stuff to write about I guess!

Before I stop procrastinating from my NaNoWriMo (or at least before I look for something else to use to procrastinate) I do want to mention I originally intended to do at least three other Occult Origins of October. I was considering Ghost Rider, Swamp Thing, Frankenstein (one of them at least), Son of Satan, Tomb of Dracula, Blade, and many other "horror" comic icons. I'm sure eventually I'll get to them, maybe next year for Halloween?

Regardless, I hope you've enjoyed reading so far. Feel free to leave a comment, I would really love to hear from someone who isn't a robot that reads this blog! I'm sorry for the (probable) lull here, but I don't plan on abandoning good old It Is A Title anytime soon!
-Adam

Games I Beat: Batman Arkham Knight

Batman Arkham Knight
Vengeance Simulator
1 Player
System: PS4
Developer: Rocksteady Studios
Year of Release: 2015
Beaten: October 9th, 2015

So the Arkham series, you know, not my favorite series of games really. Look I like Batman, and Arkham Asylum was like "HOLY SHIT! They finally got a superhero game right!" I mean, the first Spider-Man games based on his first couple movies were good, but really Asylum blew it out of the water in my opinion. Then City opened things up, and it got a bit tedious and the plot a bit convoluted. Then Origins, the shady cheap whore of the bunch, stumbled out looking underwhelming while promising an experience mirroring the previous games. Poor girl just couldn't match up with the pros. Which leads to Arkham Knight. It's probably the best of the bunch honestly, I mean, YOU CAN DRIVE THE FREAKING BAT MOBILE!

Road to Justice: The Return of Swamp Thing

The Return of Swamp Thing
Directed by: Jim Wynorski
Starring: Dick Durock, Heather Locklear, Louis Jourdan
Released: 1989
Watched: October 22nd, 2015

Thoughts Before: After the original Swamp Thing movie, I'm not expecting much. On the other hand, there is almost no way this movie could be worse than the Superman flicks I've been subjected to as of late. Oddly, this movie wound up leading to a 72 episode television series. Apparently this movie tried to be a bit more humorous, and the show went with the original's "darker" themes. I'm morbidly curious about the TV show, they even managed to get the same guy to play Swamp Thing from the movies in the show.

Road to Justice: Superman IV The Quest for Peace

Superman IV The Quest for Peace
Directed by: Sidney J. Furie
Starring: Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Mark Pillow, Margot Kidder
Released: 1987
Watched: October 17th, 2015

(Apologies for the delay, these posts are going up on October 21st, but are being posted under their intended date. Life got in the way.)

Thoughts Before: From what I can gather, this is the least respected most looked down upon of the Superman movies. I can understand a movie series falling apart by the fourth movie, but how does a series that was never good manage to last that long. Yeah I said it. The Superman movies are fucking terrible. Every last one of them has been a boring mess with very little going for it, other than Christopher Reeve being a pretty damn good Superman/Clark Kent. Really anyone managing to pull off that dynamic well deserves praise. I just wish he had been given better movies to work with.

Road to Justice: Supergirl

Supergirl
Directed by: Jeannot Szwarc
Starring: Faye Dunaway, Helen Slater, Hart Bochner, Peter Cook
Released: 1984
Watched: October 8th, 2015

(Apologies for the delay, these posts are going up on October 21st, but are being posted under their intended date. Life got in the way.)

Thoughts Before: Yet another movie I haven't seen yet, all I know is this is supposedly pretty bad. I don't really know what expect, and especially coming off of the other Superman movies my expectations for this are incredibly low. An 80's flick starring a female superhero with very little ground to build off in regards to the superhero genre? Yikes, things aren't looking up for our maid of might! (No really, they called her that once upon a time...)

Occult Origins of October: Man-Bat

Man-Bat vs. Batman (Detective Comics #400, 402 and 407)
Written by Frank Robbins
Drawn by Neal Adams
Published by DC Comics
Released 1984 (Originally 1970/1971)

Randomly one evening while playing through a good chunk of Batman Arkham Knight, I realized I didn't really know much about Man-Bat. That night I started on a journey to assemble every single Man-Bat appearance in order, by the next day I'd gotten all my bats in a row as it were. The Man-Bat origin I'm used to plays out a little differently than how it originally worked out. With Man-Bat killing, or at least seriously pushing away, his wife/fiance after accidentally transforming into a seemingly mindless beast. This actual origin lays the groundwork for that, but it's a much more silver-age take on the concept. Zany, if silver-age means nothing to you.

Road to Justice: Superman III

Superman III
Directed by: Richard Lester
Starring: Christopher Reeve, Richard Pryor, Robert Vaughn
Released: 1983
Watched: September 28th, 2015

Thoughts Before: I know nothing about this movie other than it's apparently bad and that one time Superman hung out with Richard Pryor. Strange. I don't really know what to think, and I don't think an established villain even bothers showing up. Before deciding to start down this road of justice I thought I'd never watch this movie. I'm a little disappointed that I'm breaking that vow. When do we get to the good stuff?

Games I Beat: Ninja Baseball Batman

Ninja Baseball Batman
Beat 'Em Up
1-4 Players
System: Arcade
Developer: Irem Corporation
Year of Release: 1993
Beaten: September 24th, 2015

This, this is the sort of game that causes me to love the medium so. Four ninja baseball batmen must travel across the United States to recover pieces of a precious stolen Babe Ruth statue. This is one of the wackiest beat 'em ups I've played and I loved every second of it. Sadly, when it originally released it was pretty much ignored across the board. It's gotten some of the recognition is deserves in more recent years at least. Anyone who enjoys solid beat 'em ups and cartoons antics owes it to themselves to check this out.

Road to Justice: Swamp Thing

Swamp Thing
Directed by: Wes Craven
Starring: Ray Wise, Dick Durock, Adrienne Barbeau, Louis Jourdan
Released: 1982
Watched: September 24th, 2015

Thoughts Before: Having never watched this I'm not sure what to expect. Actually, writing this led to me finding out Wes fucking Craven wrote and directed this. So I guess this is in memorial to him. I assume this is going to be a corny monster movie, I saw the suit by accident earlier. I'm not expecting much.

Road to Justice: Superman II The Donner Cut

Superman II The Richard Donner Cut
Directed by: Richard Donner
Starring: Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Margot Kidder, Terence Stamp
Released: 1980 (2006)
Watched: September 17th, 2015

Thoughts Before: This one I remember a lot better, there were some silly moments to be sure (specifically that weird cape attack..) but I've never seen the Richard Donner Cut. It's kind of interesting. Back in the day Donner got kicked off the project for whatever reason, and Richard Lester finished the original version. Eventually though, some lost footage was found, and someone decided to reedit the film to be as close to Donner's vision as possible. I'm excited to see the changes, but hopefully it doesn't make the movie more similar to the first...