Author: Matt Vetrano

Super Comics: James Bond 007 3-4

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James Bond 007 and all the images you see in this recap are owned by Dynamite Entertainment and Ian Fleming Publications

We’re back with even more of The Spy Who Adapted Me as we continue our journey following James Bond and his best buddy John Lee, AKA the new Oddjob, as they try to out spy each other in pursuit of a Russian man with an exploding luggage case!  So far Mr. Lee has been the main reason to read this book as he is ridiculously well-realized and utterly charming to boot, but Bond himself is no slouch and is always ready to impress when the moment calls for it!  Will these issues continue the fun and exciting adventures of our favorite new bromance, or have we already seen everything they’ve got to offer?  Let’s find out!!

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Issue 3 (January 2019)

The issue begins with M from MI6 talking with a Mr. Park from Blue House which is basically South Korea’s White House.  It turns out that Mr. Lee, the new Oddjob that was introduced in the first issue, is in fact a South Korean agent and M has scheduled this little meeting so that they can get on the same page so that Bond and Lee don’t end up killing each other and losing Russian Guy in the process.  It’s too bad that M didn’t have the foresight to do this BEFORE Bond was jumping out of an airplane in Australian, but I guess hindsight is 20/20.

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Dang!  Archer’s gonna be pissed when he sees how good that turtleneck looks on him!

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Cinema Dispatch: Trolls World Tour

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TROLLS2CD0

Trolls World Tour and all the images you see in this review are owned by DreamWorks and Universal Pictures

Directed by David SF Wilson

I know I’m a week late on this, but even with the convince of being able to watch this one at home (and let’s be frank here, I’m not spending THAT much more money than I would at the theater), I just couldn’t be asked when it actually came out and frankly I had better things to do like play that Final Fantasy VII remake than watch a sequel to an animated film I didn’t like all that much.  But even if we do have the perfect excuse to sit around and do nothing as it is now the socially conscionable thing to do, I still need to maintain SOME sort of routine to not go stir crazy in here, so fine.  Let’s buckle down and watch yet another toy commercial dance around for an hour and a half while playing all the songs your parents used to like!  Does it manage to somehow surpass the low expectations that its predecessor had set, or are we in for a LONG bout of isolation if this is the bets that studios can give us in these tumultuous times?  Let’s find out!!

Following the events of the first film, Queen Poppy (Anna Kendrick) is living out her fantabulous troll life singing songs, performing dance numbers, and being worshiped by her beloved subjects.  Her best friend Branch (Justin Timberlake) seems a bit more uneasy about the idyllic life but he puts up with it in the hope getting out of the friend zone (ugh…) to either spend the rest of his life with the troll he loves or this is some elaborate power play to become KING OF THE TROLLS!  Of course it’s not the latter (that would be far too interesting), but instead the conflict ends up being a group of ROCK TROLLS led by Queen Barb (Rachel Bloom) who is traveling across the land attacking similarly music-themed tribes to steal their magical music strings that the former King Peppy (Walt Dohrn) failed to clue Poppy in about during her Queen initiation.  Apparently each tribe of musical trolls (the trolls we know are known as the Pop trolls) has a magical string that signifies their music, and does… something.  I’m not exactly sure what, but if Barb gets all six of them, puts them on her super awesome guitar, and plays some tasty licks with them, it’ll turn all the trolls into Rock trolls which will unify the troll kingdoms which will accomplish… something.  In any case, Poppy wants to try and negotiate with Barb to see if they can unify peacefully, but it becomes clear that she’s more about taking everything over than working together, and so she and Branch along with Biggie (James Corden) have to travel the land and try to get the other tribes to work together to stop Barb from fulfilling her dastardly destiny.  Will Poppy be able to convince any of the other tribes that working together is better than falling apart?  Is there more to the history of the strings and these tribes than Poppy knows, and will that play a key role in defining the course of this current crisis?  Do you think Justin Timberlake ever wonders why he’s not in better movies or has he just resigned himself to mid-level animated shlock?

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“I was in The Social Network.  WHAT HAPPENED TO ME!?”

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Super Wrestling: AEW Dynamite (04-15-20)

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AEWDYNAMITE

AEW Dynamite is owned by All Elite Wrestling, Shahid Khan, and TNT

We’re back with another week of A Cody and His Pharaoh; the post-apocalyptic wrestling show that I keep coming up with bafflingly tortured names for!  Still, as hard as it is to make these puns, it’s not NEARLY as difficult as them continuing to try and put out shows in this environment.  Thankfully they’ve supposedly got content through May taped so that challenge is over for the time being, but having a lot of matched to show us doesn’t mean that they’ll all be good ones, so is the collection they have here the cream of the crop, or are they already scraping the bottom of the barrel?  Let’s find out!!

The episode begins with yet another Jake Roberts promo, only while last week he was sitting in chair in front of a roaring fire, I’m pretty sure this one was shot in a particularly dingy bathroom stall.  He says what he says EVERY week which is that Lance is so amazing and that anyone in his way will be utterly destroyed; including Colt Cabana who may be a great wrestler but is nowhere NEAR Archer’s league.  Is this Roberts just blowing smoke up Archer’s ass?  Well we’re about to find out as once again we start the show with his match!

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Colt Cabana Vs. Lance Archer

I kind of feel sorry for Colt Cabana all things considered.  He came in JUST as the COVID-19 crisis started to happen in the US and so it feels like he was pushed to the sidelines while other new people like Brodie Lee, Matt Hardy, and especially Lance Archer are still getting at least some form of push given the circumstances, and frankly there’s no way in heck that they’re gonna halt Archer’s momentum by having him lose in the first round.  Still, this should hopefully be a good showcase of his talents and why he got such a big reaction when he first showed up at AEW.  Before the match even begins Lance Archer decks someone in the audience, so I don’t really like Cabana’s chance’s here considering just how vicious they’re portraying his opponent.  Colt Cabana does hold his own pretty well and they do a great job of putting him over despite how clearly it is that he’s not going to win this match.  He’s in control for a good chunk of the match and is clearly a great wrestler (I’m getting a better sense of him here than at the PPV), but the key is that Lance is an unstoppable slab of meat; a force more so than a man.  Against any other opponent, even top guys like Cody or Omega, I could see it coming down to the wire and Cabana winning in an upset.  Against Lance though, no matter what he throws against him the man will not yield and Colt can only do so much before he is simply overpowered.  It’s kind of like what they’ve been trying to do with Jake Hager, but I think it’s working a lot better with Lance; mostly because he looks good outside of squash matches.  Colt Cabana won’t give up and is taking more punishment than any one person should ever take, but Lance eventually lifts him up for the Blackout (not an easy feat considering Colt is a pretty big guy himself) and drops him down for the pin.  I actually liked this match quite a bit, and while Colt may not have won here he definitely proved himself to anyone who had no idea who he is or what makes him so beloved by the fans.

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Super Recaps: The Twilight Zone (Rewind)

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The Twilight Zone and all the images you see in this recap are owned by Warner Bros Television and based on the series created by Rod Serling

Episode directed by Kevin Bray

The episode follows Jonah Beach (Eddie Kaye Thomas who played Finch in the American Pie films and the titular Freddy in Freddy Got Fingered); an obsessive gambler who may have a decent amount of skill but squanders it on his single minded pursuit of “beating the house” which in this case means beating this dude named Trevor (Ben Bass) who owns the place.  Jonah’s girlfriend April (Marisa Coughlan who was… also in Freddy Got Fingered oddly enough) works as a waitress at the casino where he spends most of his time and is either overwhelmingly empathetic to his plight or completely in denial of his gambling problem.  They have a nest egg set up for a restaurant in Florida which Jonah wants to raid for one last chance at the card table and thankfully April tells him no which is certainly the RIGHT decision but puts poor Jonah in a funk as he leaves the casino with nothing more than three bucks to his name.  A homeless with a mysterious shopping cart challenges him to a coin toss for the three bucks in his pocket, and after Jonah wins the toss he’s gracious enough to give the man the three bucks anyway.  See?  He’s not such a bad guy even if he WAS in a Tom Green movie!  The homeless man is so moved by Jonah’s generosity that he pulls a tape recorder out from his cart and gives him to him as a gift which Jonah ruefully accepts as the alternative could possibly upset the guy.  He starts fiddling with the thing at the bus stop, and wouldn’t you know it; the darn thing is MAGIC!

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“Oh crap, this thing is covered in LSD isn’t it?”

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Super Comics: James Bond 007 1-2

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JB007-1-0

James Bond 007 and all the images you see in this recap are owned by Dynamite Entertainment and Ian Fleming Publications

In case the fact that I tried to stream ALL the James Bond video games a while back didn’t clue you in (the series is NOT dead; just on hold!), I am a HUGE James Bond fan.  And the thing is, I’m a relatively new fan despite being such a big film nerd as I had only seen the Craig films, Dr. No, and From Russia with Love until I was what, twenty-five?   Sure a lot of them have aged poorly (even the REALLY good ones like The Man with the Golden Gun and Diamonds are Forever are full of cringe), but I’ve always found the character to be endearing and most importantly a character who can grow and change with times he (and hopefully soon “she”) is in.  Now yes, James Bond has dabbled a bit in comic books throughout the years, but they were all adaptations of the Ian Fleming books; even the VERY long running newspaper comic strips which are certainly interesting to look back on, but it wasn’t until Dynamite got the license a few years back that we got some genuine new adventures with James Bond in that format.  So since I, like everyone else, is basically stuck at home for the next few months (and Humble Bundle was so gracious enough to give me most of these books for a mere fifteen bucks!), I’ll be looking at a few of the series they came out with; starting with James Bond 007 which is their most recent run with the character!  Let’s get started!!

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Issue 1 (November 2018)

The issue begins at an undisclosed location in Singapore where a Russian man with a rolling suitcase is meeting with a group of men for what I can only assume are EVIL reasons, but the meeting is cut short by the deadly chops and crushing kicks of a mysterious man in a bowler hat.  Dude tears through the party like tissue paper, and yet in all the confusion the Russian man manages to escape to the elevator and gets off at the casino floor below where you know who has staked out a spot at the bar!

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“You ever see Austin Powers?  Okay, imagine that guy who threw a shoe, but he throws a hat!”     …     “NO, WHY WOULD I CARE THAT THE ACTOR IS IN JAIL RIGHT NOW!?”

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Super Wrestling: AEW Dynamite (04-08-20)

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AEWDYNAMITE

AEW Dynamite is owned by All Elite Wrestling, Shahid Khan, and TNT

We’re back with another episode of House Show of the Dead, where our valiant heroes try to put on an indie wrestling program in the middle of our present day apocalypse!  Now I was pretty down on last week’s show for whatever reason and perhaps that’s more on me because I heard that a lot of people enjoyed it; especially with the return of the live crowd to make some noise.  Perhaps I was overly critical and just need to find the good in what they can put on instead of hoping for what they can’t.  Will this week be another success for the scrappy billionaire funded company, or will my skepticism from last week prove to be prophetic?  Let’s find out!!

The episode begins with a promo from Jake Roberts who starts rambling about how awesome Lance Archer is, comparing him to standing in front of a train or jumping out of a plane without a parachute, and he even takes shots at Marko Stunt for getting his ass kicked last week!  I’m still not sure if he WANTS Cody to face him or not.  I’m pretty sure he calls him an idiot for even entertaining the idea of facing Lance but the calls him a coward if he doesn’t!  Damned if you do I guess.  In any case, the first match has already started.  Wait, what!?

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Lance Archer Vs. A Jobber

Yeah, before we can even get properly started introducing the show, letting us know that Jericho is gonna be on commentary this week (yay!) and recapping Archer’s match from last week, he’s already beating the snot out of some dude who I THOUGHT was Brandon Cutler at first but is some guy named Alan Eagleson.  We’re what, four minutes in before Archer does that Blackout move and wins the match?  This match is so fast and so furious that Jericho and Tony Schiavone just wait for him to be done with his little squash match before running down the card!  It may not be the most EXCITING or ENGAGING match in the world, but I appreciate just how quickly they got in and out; starting the show off with a BANG instead of a twenty-minute slugfest like we saw last week.  It was a DECENT slugfest to be sure, but I tend to feel that brevity is key when setting up an opening match.

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Super Recaps: The Twilight Zone (Another Life)

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The Twilight Zone and all the images you see in this recap are owned by Warner Bros Television and based on the series created by Rod Serling

Episode directed by Risa Bramon Garcia

I’ll admit that when I first saw this episode ALL those years ago, I didn’t get it.  It wasn’t like Tagged (an episode we’ll get to soon enough) which covered similar ground but ACTUALLY HAD a supernatural twist to it; from what I remember it was just a dude having flashbacks which feels a bit low key for a TWILIGHT ZONE episode.  Thinking back on it as I sit here ready to rewatch this story after so long, I may have been too naïve or ignorant to really understand what we was really going on under the hood, so let’s take a look with fresh eyes and see if there’s something to learn from all of this!  Is this a classic episode that just failed to connect with me, or will I learn that I was right to be nonplussed by it all along?  Let’s find out!!

The episode begins with Marvin Gardens (Wood Harris who’s been in a lot of stuff recently including Dredd, Ant-Man, and the show Empire) who is out on his morning jog when police sirens start to blare behind him.  Nervously, he starts to turn around and even begins to put his hands up… but the patrol car just speeds by him.  We find out that Marvin is a successful rapper living out his dreams after escaping a life of poverty.  He’s got a great and supportive wife (Kimberly Elise), a loving son who he’s a great father too, and he’s even working on an album that will make him even richer than he already is now!  Everything is looking great for Marvin… except that he keeps having these hallucinations of a police interrogation where he was beaten mercilessly and told to confess to a crime he didn’t commit and being called Dwayne; a name he doesn’t recognize.  Now already, this has got some great ideas that are being conveyed with nuance even if the performances and the LAVISH RAPPER LIFESTYLE comes off a bit cheesy.  It appears that Marvin has some past trauma with the police that’s left him with some serious scars which are now manifesting as full on delusions despite the fact that he escaped from all that and he has everything he could ever want.  Well maybe another controller for his son’s Nintendo GameCube, but other than that…

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“Hey can I have a turn?”     “No!”     “Well what about two player mode?”     “MOM!  DAD’S BEING MEAN!”     “Hey!  I’m the one who bought this for you!”     “AND HE’S SWEARING!!”     “Fine!  I can take a hint!”

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Super Wrestling: AEW Dynamite (04-01-20)

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AEWDYNAMITE

AEW Dynamite is owned by All Elite Wrestling, Shahid Khan, and TNT

Welcome back to another episode of CHRIS Jericho!  See what I did there?  Jericho is a post-apocalyptic TV show, and… you know what, never mind.  Now if you haven’t heard, due to the current circumstances AEW has finally caved and is basically suspending their story lines to do a TNT Tournament that’ll start next week.  That’s right, AEW officially has a fighting tournament filler arc and I’m sure Kenny Omega is just tickled pink at the idea if it wasn’t for… well everything else around it.  Before we get to that however, we still have this week’s show to get through, though I doubt we’ll be advancing storylines too much since we still have no idea when things can get up and running again.  Let’s see what they came up with!

The first thing they announce right at the start is the brackets for the opening round of the TNT tournament which are as follows.

Shawn Spears Vs Cody

Sammy Guevara Vs. Darby Allin

Kip Sabian Vs. Dustin Rhodes

Lance Archer Vs. Colt Cabana

Not a bad lineup I guess, and the finals will be held at Double or Nothing (assuming that show is still on) which certainly gives us something to look forward to and makes this feel a bit more than just a time killer.  Now the big question each week is what they’ve had to change to compensate for whatever regulations and best practices are in place to minimize the COVID-19 risk.  This is perhaps the most radical change yet and frankly I’m not sure how much I liked it as they’ve decided that instead of having the ENTIRE arena on display that they’d basically cut it down to a space barely larger than a school gym.  The entrance is VERY close to the ring, they put up big screens on the sides that say AEW only a few feet from the barricade, and they even have a roof above them!  The space may be smaller BUT the tradeoff is that they got a FEW more people to fill out the area between the barricade and the giant screens.  It’s not as crowded as it was on the first one of these (I’d estimate no more than twenty people total including those in the ring and the necessary crew) but we’ve got people cheering again which is definitely an improvement.  However, there is one BIG drawback this time around which is the noise of the ring itself as we are hearing a lot of rumbling and crashing throughout the matches.  I’m guessing it’s the acoustics of the new space and they’re working with what they have, but the audible rumble is pretty distracting and drowns out a decent amount of the shouting from those in the stands.  I’m still all for the initial setup if that’s feasible and frankly I’m not sure why it WOULDN’T be considering they have a decent amount of people here tonight, but I think we’ll be sticking with this format for a while as I’m pretty sure all of this is pre-recorded (no matter what that LIVE tag says in the top left corner) and they recorded a heck of a lot more than just this episode.  Anyway, on to the first match!

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Kenny Omega Vs. Trent

Trent is accompanied to the ring by Chuck Taylor and Orange Cassidy

Kenny Omega is definitely the superstar here so I wouldn’t get your hopes up about Trent getting a surprise win, but it doesn’t exactly feel like a one sided bout either as Trent is DEFINITELY the workhorse of the group.  They have a decently competitive match to start with, and Kenny even comes close to getting a hug from Orange Cassidy before Chuck drags him away, but it isn’t all THAT interesting until about halfway through when Trent decides to start playing a bit dirty.  He starts to work over Omega’s recently injured hand for all its worth which actually ends up backfiring on him as Kenny doesn’t get hurt as much as he gets PISSED, and turnabout is fair play in these situations so Kenny starts smashing him into as many things as possible outside the ring.  He shoves him into the barricades, he throws him into a pole, he even lands a German Suplex on the guy out on the ramp which looked absolutely devastating and must have SUCKED for Trent.  Eventually it comes down to both of them trying to beat the clock as they only have five minutes left to pull off their most devastating moves to get the pin.  Counters after counters!  V-Triggers!  Whatever that rope running flip that that Trent does!  They keep throwing whatever they can at each other and yet with just two minutes left to go neither of them are ready to give up the ghost!  There was a brief botch at this point when Kenny goes to the top rope and Trent is SUPPOSED to climb up there to meet him.  He slips on his way up there and so Kenny has to wait a beat longer than he was supposed to, but Trent makes it up a moment later and things go just fine from there.  Well… not for Kenny who has to eat this devastating throw across the ring, but at least things flow smoothly from there!  One minute to go and Kenny is still dazed from Trent throwing him off the top rope, but at the last second he manages to land a One Winged Angel for the pin with mere seconds left on the clock!  It was a solid enough match if a bit too long; not just for an opening match but for one in this kind of environment.

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Super Recaps: The Twilight Zone (The Path)

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TTZ0-0

The Twilight Zone and all the images you see in this recap are owned by Warner Bros Television and based on the series created by Rod Serling

Episode directed by Jerry Levine

This series claims to have two remakes of classic Twilight Zone episodes which we’ll get to soon enough, but I’m calling bull pucky on that because this episode we’re discussing today is ABSOLUTELY based on one of the classics from that original series.  Now that’s not necessarily a BAD thing as the whole reason this show exists is because of how good the original series was, and using some of those ideas in a modern context can certainly produce some interesting results!  Heck, the Jordan Peele version of Nightmare at 20,000 Feet was a BRILLIANT reworking of the fear and paranoia that was the true essence of that original episode even WITHOUT the creepy (and yet somehow adorable) gremlin dude!  Is this a similarly great remix of a classic episode, or is this a worse cover than Limp Bizkit’s version of Faith?  Let’s find out!!

The episode follows Ali (Linda Cardellini); a writer for a lousy knock off Enquirer rag where she writes stories about dying celebrities or hobbits living in Jersey, and while it’s certainly fun to write about that kind of nonsense it’s not the most noble or fulfilling career you could have as a writer.  While getting her caffeine fix at a local coffee shop, she overhears a man giving a woman advice regarding “her path” and some vague platitudes on how she should follow it.  Her interest piqued, Ali goes over to meet the man named Kanayo (played here by Method Man) and finds out that an opportunity awaits her, but she must seek it out first.  Sounds like your standard Cold Reading nonsense, but she goes back to the office and decides to call about a resume she submitted and as it turns out they were having trouble reaching her!  Her coworker and best friend Seth (Colin Cunningham of Falling Skies fame) thinks it’s all a big coincidence, but Ali is not so sure and she goes back to Kanayo several times hoping to get more advice and perhaps find the clearest way to follower her “path”.  Now if you’re ever seen more than a handful of episodes of the original Twilight Zone, this should all sound very familiar as it’s more or less a remake of the Nick of Time; a story where William Shatner and Patricia Breslin have to contend with a fortune telling napkin holder that seems to accurately predict the future.  Now the thing is, the more I think about this episode the closer I think it gets to working… without ever actually getting there.  It’s SO close and it has a few ideas that work for an update to this story, but where Nick of Time was tight and well thought out, this one fumbles with its weighty topics and never finds the right balance.

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“You’ll be in a few Avengers movies.”     “That’s good!”     “But only playing Hawkeye’s wife.”     “Oh, that’s bad.”     “But you’ll be in A Simple Favor!”     “That’s good!”     “After being in both Daddy’s Home movies and before starring in The Curse of La Llorona.”     “I don’t like this game anymore.”

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Super Comics: Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) – #27

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Sonic the Hedgehog (the comic book series) and all the images you see in this recap are owned by IDW and SEGA of America

Welp!  They’ve finally done it!  After months of repetitive drama and convoluted storylines clogging up this series, we FINALLY have an issue that I didn’t hate!  Sure there’s a bit of bitter irony in the fact that this series finally decided to lighten up a bit at the same time the world decided to turn into a nightmare (I give it six months before Death Stranding’s science fiction becomes more than speculative), but how have they managed to put a smile on my face after spending this much time so firmly hitched to the Walking Dead bandwagon?  Did they finally realize their error and went off in an entirely new direction, or have they found an angle within this miserable story arc that actually had some appeal to me?  Let’s find out!!

The issue begins with Tails and Amy working their butts off to outsmart, or at least outrun, their chosen Zeti opponent Zomom who is proving to be more difficult than they were anticipating.  It’s a fine chase with a few good twists and turns but I’m not too keen on the constant big foolish fat guy jokes, though I guess IDW has to work with what Sonic Team gives them and it’s not like Zomom showed much depth of character when he was swinging that hoagie around in Sonic Lost World.

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This guy has even less dignity than The Greedy from that Raggedy Ann movie.  At least that dude could sing!

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