My Favorite Storytelling Elements Spider-Man “Kraven’s Last Hunt”

Published on January 24, 2019January 20, 2019 by KyraLeave a comment

Most critics dub “Kraven’s Last Hunt” the greatest Kraven story ever told and one of the best Spider-Man stories. It features plenty of comic book action, but the character studies are what set “Kraven’s Last Hunt” from other Spidey tales.

The world no longer appreciated Kraven’s physical prowess. It no longer marveled at his courage, and most animal rights activists condemned him—he was a hunter after all—and the world he lived in no longer made sense. Before he met Spider-Man he’d never known defeat or humiliation. Now Kraven has fallen ill. He knows the end is near, but before he goes, he vows to reclaim his honor and prove his superiority over Spider-Man. He went out for one last hunt.

“Kraven’s Last Hunt” embraces Kraven’s personal struggles. It blends aspects from classic literature and recurring themes to find a deeper truth. Kraven doesn’t just want to kill Spider-Man. In fact, Kraven doesn’t kill Spidey when he has the chance. He buries Spidey alive on his complex and assumes his identity. There’s even a moment where Kraven rescued Mary Jane, Spidey’s new wife, and she can see through Kraven’s disguise. Kraven falls short of being a hero. He never was one. This is a story that questions what it means to be a hero.

Kraven also thinks he can drive Spider-Man past the point where he ceases to be a hero. A rat-like monster named Vermin stalks the streets of New York while Spidey rests six-feet under. Kraven beats the creature unconscious, brutalizes him, and takes him prisoner. After Spidey comes to, he wants revenge for the time Kraven took from him. His anger leads him to Vermin, who Kraven uses as pawn to see if Spidey is strong enough to do unto Vermin what he did. Spidey proves that he’s strong enough not to.

There are so many themes of what makes a hero and what makes a good person that it’s easy to see why “Kraven’s Last Hunt” is high on most critics lists of Spider-Man stories. It not only portrays Kraven at both the height of his powers and the lowest, it does a great job in its portrayal of Peter and Mary Jane’s young marriage.

Readers see how MJ deals with Peter’s disappearance and how she’d react if Peter ever died in action. It’s a great window into the life of someone who must stay up late, worrying if their loved one is okay. In short, “Kraven’s Last Hunt” is a triumph and a must read for any Spider-Man fan or Spidey newbie.

Is there anything about “Kraven’s Last Hunt” that you liked that I didn’t mention? If there is, message me and I’ll give you Jim’s phone number to complain to him. Or you could let us know in comments.

Geekly’s Free Video Game Summer: August 21, 2016

Published on August 21, 2016September 30, 2018 by KyraLeave a comment

Hi, guys. I didn’t forget you, I’ve just been dealing with housing issues (my house is constantly under construction) but you don’t want to know about that. You want more games. This week’s Geekly’s Free Video Game Summer is brought to you by video game versions of collectible card games. I know I cover tabletop games with my other reviews, but there are plenty of free-to-play video games that use the collectible card game model. Just to clarify, you collect cards (of varying rarity) in a collectible card game and make decks out of the cards you collect. It’s a decent game model for a free-to-play game and there are plenty of free-to-play collectible card games out there. Let’s get started.

Final Fantasy Portal: Triple Triad

Full disclosure: there’s a lot more to the Final Fantasy Portal besides Triple Triad, but the only thing I’m covering here is Triple Triad. Ah, I loved Triple Triad in Final Fantasy VIII. It’s the collectible card game within the role playing game. Players would collect cards of characters found within the game and challenge random non-player characters to card duels. The rules are simple.

You play on a 3×3 grid. Every card has four values for each one of its sides (left, right, up, and down) and these values are printed in the upper right-hand corner of the card. You play cards in the 3×3 grid and if your card’s value on one side is greater than your opponent’s you take control of their card (kind of like Othello). Whoever owns the most cards at the end of the match wins. In the original game, players only obtained characters from Final Fantasy VIII, but Final Fantasy Portal’s version of Triple Triad includes all numbered entries in the Final Fantasy franchise and that’s a lot of fun.

The original Triple Triad weaved in elemental play—the card based on the Brothers summon had an earth element and its values were doubled against cards with a lightning element—but Final Fantasy Portal’s Triple Triad omits elements and adds same and plus to the gameplay. Same is okay; if you play a card that matches the values on cards that share two or more sides, you flip over any opponent’s cards adjacent to the card you played. Plus functions similarly to Same but you add the values of the cards on all sides and if the sum is the same, you flip over all opponent cards. I hate the Plus rule.

Plus can negate any good card you may have. If one side is an 8 and the other is a 9, all your opponent has to do is play a 2 to the 9 while playing a 3 to the 8; both sides would equal 11 and you just lost some of your best cards. You can dictate which rules you play in versus mode, so you can avoid the Plus rule and it doesn’t diminish my enjoyment of Triple Triad, but how hard would it have been to assign an element to each character? Still, Final Fantasy Portal’s Triple Triad is a faithful port of the popular Final Fantasy mini game. And wouldn’t want to construct a deck with the best characters from Final Fantasy lore? This one’s staying in my collection, but I’m not sure how often I’ll play.

Order & Chaos Duels

On the surface, Order & Chaos Duels looks like a Hearthstone clone, but there’s more going on beneath the surface—not much but a little. Like Hearthstone, you assume control of a hero who has their own innate ability and you’re trying to knock your opponent’s hero’s health to zero. You cast minions and spells to buff your minions or debuff your opponent’s minions. All of this should sound familiar to Hearthstone fans. Order & Chaos’s twist is that it matters where you play a minion.

You have five locations (one row consisting of five spots) you can play your minions, each minion has attack and health, and if you lower your opponent’s minion to zero health in a spot or there is no minion in the spot, your minion attacks your opponent directly. This simple addition offers more strategy, and that’s a good thing, but I never felt as if I had agency in a game of Order & Chaos.

Sure, you set up your minions to defeat your enemy, but unlike Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering, there’s no way to counter anything your opponent does—or at least these counters are few and far between. Most of the time you’ll set up your minions during your planning phase, pass the turn to your attack phase, and once you’re done attacking, your turn’s finished.

There are also alternate ways of winning in both Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering (namely you helping your opponent run out of cards: milling their deck) that just doesn’t exist in any tangible way in Order & Chaos. The play styles don’t offer much variety either, so I’d say Order & Chaos is a pass.

Epic Cards Battle

I’m not sure if Epic Cards Battle even qualifies as a collectible card game. Sure, you collect cards but you don’t build a deck so much as you pick your best card or two and play them ad nauseam.

If I didn’t like the lack of agency in Order & Chaos, I hate the lack of agency in Epic Cards Battle. All you do is pick the card(s) that has the best combination of attack, health, and speed and see these cards battle it out on their own with no input from the player. Some of these characters/cards have special abilities but gameplay boils down to those three statistics and whose cards have the better of those statistics. Epic Cards Battle puts more emphasis on scantily clad women than it does gameplay. If you’re into that sort of thing, Epic Cards Battle might be a decent game. If you want something more from your gaming experience, I’d skip it.

Card Lords

Card Lords combines elements from several games in this review and it does so in a satisfying way. It could be that it deploys a similar art style as Card Wars 2 (which I’ll cover later: foreshadowing, baby) and I like that art style, but it does use the best part of Order & Chaos, which is “card placement matters.”

Akin to Epic Cards Battle, Card Lords has players select their best cards. Unlike Epic Cards Battles, it feels more like you’re building a deck, or at least assembling a team with abilities that play off each other well. There’s a lot of repetition to Card Lords’ gameplay but it’s enjoyable in small doses, and players will get small doses because Card Lords also uses the ubiquitous energy resource found in free-to-play games. You’ll play a few matches before you have to wait an hour or so—or spend money (and that’s how the developer’s get paid). But unlike most free-to-play games that use energy, you don’t have to wait long; it’s literally an hour or less.

The last element Card Lords introduces is developing your cards. You can power up your cards so they’ll gain special abilities (another thing we’ll see again in Card Wars 2) and you get a sense of developing your team/deck. You also have slightly more control in Card Lords than you do in the previous two entries (Epic Cards Battle and Order & Chaos), but it still doesn’t have as much strategy as I would like. There are few moments when you wouldn’t use your cards’ special ability as soon as it’s available to you and battles still come down to who has the best stats. Still, Card Lords is worth a look.

Cardstone

Cardstone is a Rogue-like dungeon crawl that just happens to use cards as its means of combat. You collect cards as you journey deeper into the dungeon, but if you die, your deck resets and you have to rebuild your deck the next time you enter the dungeon. That’s curious.

Cardstone plays more like a deck-builder game (a game with set cards and you build your deck each time you start a new game) instead of a collectible card game (a game where you build your deck over time and your deck remains the same unless you make changes to it). I like the idea of a free-to-play deck-builder game, but I’m not sure if Cardstone’s combat works as well as I would like.

Players face a new creature in the dungeon with each round. Sometimes a creature will run away if you have too high a level—you do gain levels and increase your health, even if your deck resets—but when a creature stills around, you cycle through your deck on a timer. Every three or four seconds, you draw a new card from your deck. You’ll see that card rotate on the screen until you use it or it disappears (gets discarded). This mechanism leads to players drawing healing cards when they need to deal damage and damage cards when they need healing. It doesn’t matter early in the dungeon, but the deeper you get in the dungeon, the harder your opponents get and the less likely it is you’ll get the right cards. Funny how that works. This perceived cheating by the AI makes Cardstone the most frustrating game of this bunch. I don’t know how many times I fought a creature to a first one who deals damage wins scenario, only to draw into five consecutive healing cards. Note: do not play Cardstone if you’re easily irritated.

I like Cardstone’s concept but I’m not sure how long it’ll stay in my collection. It’s another game that’s worth a look. You may find it enjoyable.

Dengen Chronicles

I was intrigued when I first downloaded Dengen Chronicles. It’s a collectible card game, but the cards are hexagonal shaped and the board is laid out like a honeycomb. Unfortunately, there’s little to no strategy.

Like many other games in this list, the winner of Dengen Chronicles boils down to who has the best stats: attack and health. But the board factors into the equation. Character/card placement matters, but it matters in the worst possible way. During the first turn, whoever has a character/card in the top point of the star deals damage first to the first, opponent character/card located clockwise on the star. So, whoever gets to play their card/character first typically wins. Sure, the next round shifts who deals damage first to the next point clockwise on the star, but by then the damage is already done.

Dengen Chronicles overlays a convoluted element chart on the board. Each section of the honeycomb represents a specific element and only characters with that element can be played there—you get bonus attack if they have multiple copies of that element printed on their card—but all you have to do is build a deck that has a strong showing in the first, third, and fifth elements, and you can dominate most games.

The only issue with that strategy is that everyone tries to use it (player versus player) and who wins is the person who goes first. At that rate you may as well flip a coin and call heads or tails instead of playing Dengen Chronicles. For me this game is a strong pass.

Card Wars 2

Full disclosure: there is a physical, printed version of this game and I haven’t yet played it, but I have seen Adventure Time and like the Card Wars episodes. Card Wars 2 is one of those few games where I don’t ever mute the game. John DiMaggio’s Jake the Dog walks you through the tutorial and the rest of the cast voice the characters they portray in the cartoon.

The game itself is a good representation of the Card Wars found in the animated series. They’ve got everything, including Jake’s favorite element: Corn. You can pick any element you want to play. Each element has a distinct play style, which is something that’s missing in many of the other games on this list. You can even mix-match cards from various elements to build an awesome deck, and it’s a lot of fun to experiment. Compared to the other games on this list, Card Wars 2 is a must play.

But Card Wars 2 isn’t all sunshine. It uses an energy system, which isn’t bad, and players can also upgrade their cards. I’m not against upgrading cards either but how you upgrade cards matters, and with how Card Wars 2 is set up, you could spend real-world dollars trying to upgrade your cards the preferred way. The first way you can upgrade your cards is by leveling them up. The problem with this method is that your decks are capped off at a certain numeric level, based on your player level. So if you level up your cards, you might only be able to put a 40 levels of cards in a deck, and if you have a card you want to use that’s level 40, one card could be your entire deck. The better way to upgrade your cards is to enhance them, and to do that you’ll have to collect items and merge them with your card. These items are difficult to acquire and this is where Card Wars 2 tempts players to make in-game purchases.

If you’re patient with leveling yourself up as a player and then leveling up your cards, Card Wars 2 can be enjoyable and free. If you’re impatient, you could spend a lot of real-world money or you could get frustrated. Card Wars 2 is the most enjoyable game on this list and a must play for an Adventure Time fan.

Well, I hope this longer group of games makes up for the couple of weeks I missed. Until next we meet, thanks for reading.

Geekly’s Quirky Video Games: June 3, 2016

Published on June 3, 2016June 2, 2016 by KyraLeave a comment

QuirkyVideoGame

We’ve neglected video games up to this point on JK Geekly because readers might get confused between video game and tabletop game reviews or news, but I don’t see why we can’t have the occasional video game post. So let’s begin a series of posts that cover quirky video games. We read plenty of reviews or thoughts about mainstream, big budget games, so let’s explore some weird.

These quirky games are ones that have interesting mechanics, stories, or tackle seldom discussed or covered topics. Some are great, others are not so good, and there may be a few that I’ll discuss that some readers won’t even consider a “game,” but all of them are intriguing on some level. The great thing is that a fair number of these under-the-radar games have a small price tag. That’s part of the appeal—my tabletop game habit leaves me a little cash poor. Without further ado, let’s get to this week’s quirky video games.

TheStanleyParable

The Stanley Parable

This one’s not really an under-the-radar game. Video game enthusiasts often mention The Stanley Parable when discussing bizarre video games. Even though you may want to slap the smug look off of their face—and I imagine that some of you are thinking the same thing about me right now—when a video game aficionado says you should try The Stanley Parable, they aren’t wrong. You should try The Stanley Parable.

You play as the titular Stanley as he attempts to escape his drab office space and soul crushing job. A voice-over narrates his every action, and The Stanley Parable does a great job of marrying voice acting with the action on the screen. The unnerving narration functions as comedic relief one moment and bone chilling dread the next. If you download The Stanley Parable from Steam, you’ll even experience a little meta-gaming. You’ll find such achievements as don’t play The Stanley Parable for a year, play The Stanley Parable for the duration of a Tuesday, and click on office 430’s door five times, but the narrator berates you for trying to earn such an easy achievement and coaxes you into doing more tasks.

I probably said too much already. I don’t want to spoil anything else but let’s just say that The Stanley Parable is equal part slipstream and modern Aesop’s fable. It fits the bill for a quirky video game.

LifeIsStrange

Life is Strange

It’s difficult to discuss a storytelling episodic video game without mentioning Telltale Games, because they invented the genre, but I’ll try to limit my mentioning of Telltale while covering Life is Strange.

Life is Strange may have perfected the Telltale Games episodic model. This game tweaked a single mechanic: you can reverse time. Life is Strange’s protagonist can turn back time the duration of a scene—about 5-10 minutes—so you can see what the short term effects of a decision are, but since you can’t reverse time to any moment in the game’s narrative, you won’t know the long-term ramifications of your actions.

Adding that twist could make it sound as if decision making in Life is Strange would be easier than your typical Telltale Game, but it’s the opposite. There are moments where you agonize over which course of action is the best. During an interview, one of Telltale Game’s executives said, and I paraphrase, that Telltale judges the writing of their games based on whether or not gamers will have close to a 50% split between two disparate actions in a scenario. Since you can see these percentages at the end of each episode (for both Telltale and Life is Strange), you can tell that there are three to eight decisions where Telltale episodic game series yield an even split. Life is Strange has five to eight decisions each episode that meet those statistics. Life is Strange out does Telltale in the one statistic Telltale Games uses to gauge the effectiveness of their writing.

Okay. Let’s put a pin in Telltale talk and discuss over aspects of Life is Strange. The time reversal mechanism also yields some interesting puzzles. You control time, not space, so you can walk some place, warp back in time, and you’re elsewhere when the rest of the world catches up to you. That’s trippy, and the resulting puzzles and problem solving are fun. You also have to show how observant you are so you can convince people of your powers. Those moments presented a nice memory game. In fact, there were plenty of subplots and side games to be had with Life is Strange. The writing—for the most part—and the gameplay’s variety are strengths. You play as a teenage girl, and Life is Strange captures what it’s like to be a teenager. That could be a good or bad thing, but regardless, Life is Strange is an earnest game.

It isn’t all sunshine. The voice acting leaves a little to be desired. The lip syncing between the audio and visuals can be distracting too. I don’t mind it when voices don’t match lips—that could be an anime fan thing—but since I noticed the lips not syncing, that could be a deal breaker for some folks. Life is Strange also suffers from the inevitable time travel plot holes, and the last episode, to be polite, was shaky in the writing department, but the overall experience is top notch. If you have any interest in episodic storytelling games, you should give Life is Strange a try.

TheStaticSpeaksMyName

the static speaks my name

The last quirky video game for this week may be one of those “games” that aren’t really games. the static speaks my name is more of an experience that plays out in ten minutes. Seriously, you’ve spent more time reading this post than the time it’ll take to play this game. I just heard some of you groan through cyber space and appreciate you guys reading this post. Really, I do.

Anyway—the static speaks my name is dark and morbid. You play as a man who’s obsessed with a painting of twin palm trees on a small island. You learn more about him and his mental state (similar to Stanley in The Stanley Parable), and I’ll stop there so I don’t spoil it for you. the static speaks my name is a free game on Steam and you can play the “game” as quickly as I can ruin the ending.

I will say that the real psychological game comes at the very end. I know that what I’m about to say is fuzzy (if you haven’t played the game), but if you play this game, take your time during the ending. It’s disturbing, but you could discover something about yourself.

That’s all I have for Geekly’s quirky video games. Hopefully, this will be an ongoing post. Thanks for reading.

Top 12 Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies

Published on May 5, 2016May 4, 2016 by KyraLeave a comment

Captain America: Civil War opens tonight and that marks the beginning of the Marvel cinematic universe’s third and final stage. I figured it was time we ranked each Marvel movie, so here we go.

MarvelMoviesNumber12_ThorDarkWorld

12) Thor: Dark World

Marvel movies are notorious for not developing their villains—this will be an ongoing theme—but Thor: Dark World went a step further with under developed villains. You could omit the movie’s villain and not miss a thing. It takes a special Marvel movie to have a meaningless villain (the dark elves, not Loki, as they were the main villain). The rest of the movie didn’t fare much better. Natalie Portman fought through a script she hated. You couldn’t tell she loathed the film from her performance but her alleged ire was the only thing that was memorable.

MarvelMoviesNumber11_IronMan2

11) Iron Man 2

The next two films could switch places, and often do on a regular basis for me, but Iron Man 2 earns the lower spot on the list, despite trying to develop its villain. It’s a mess. Tony’s alcoholism was touched, his illness took center stage after a while, and Ivan Vanko’s backstory dump through expositional dialogue was no dynamo. The movie put too many story threads into two hours and ended up flat. There was little chance the sequel could recapture the excitement of the original, but where’s the joy?

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10) Iron Man 3

Iron Man 3 had more humorous moments than Iron Man 2, but it also had more issues. Seriously, these last two movies could switch places. I hate revisionist history, and Iron Man 3’s villain, set up as the mastermind behind everything Iron Man through flashbacks, played like revisionist history. Renaming a well-known Marvel group like AIM to The Ten Rings was a cheat, and Marvel had one larger than life role for an Asian actor (The Mandarin) and decided to make him a punchline. Hollywood has only cast an Asian or Asian-American in 50% of their TV shows and movies in the last several years (per The Screen Actors Guild), so a buffoonish Mandarin was a terrible look. Oh, and I don’t like having a figurehead villain with a real villain pulling the strings behind the scenes, even if the figurehead villain wasn’t the Mandarin. It’s been done. It’s not clever; it’s a lazy attempt to be clever.

MarvelMoviesNumber09_IncredibleHulk

9) The Incredible Hulk

It’s a testament to how little I think of the previous three movies that The Incredible Hulk doesn’t make for a compelling lead character; he’s too overpowered. He’s great as a side character, a force of nature, or another loose end the Avengers have to tie up. Ed Norton Jr. did an adequate job as Bruce Banner, and Abomination was developed as well as a one-note villain can be, so this movie made it this high on the list despite its hokeyness.

MarvelMoviesNumber08_CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger

8) Captain America: The First Avenger

Ever wonder why Captain America movies always have subtitles? Those subtitles are what the movies are called overseas. That has nothing to do with the movie’s quality, I just thought it was interesting. Anyway, the first Cap movie was good. Chris Evans made a convincing Steve Rogers, the origin story went off without a hitch, and I liked Bucky and the addition of the Howling Commandos, but I’ve never seen a character portrayed by Hugo Weaving come across as flat as the Red Skull, one of Marvel’s best villains, and he was a huge, under developed yawn. There’s that term again: under developed.

MarvelMoviesNumber07_AvengersAgeOfUltron

7) Avengers: Age of Ultron

I could’ve swapped Age of Ultron and The First Avenger, but oh well. Avengers: Age of Ultron was yet another Marvel movie that didn’t develop its villain—big shock, I know—but I can’t blame it. The film stuffed as many characters as it could into one film and the bloated cast resulted in Ultron getting twenty to thirty minutes of screen time for a movie that bears his name. Age of Ultron also suffered from the law of diminished returns. We’ve seen these scenes—or similar ones—before and the movie needed more than Marvel’s tried and true CGI goodness. Hawkeye had some great moments, while the relationship between Black Widow and Hulk was a head scratcher.

MarvelMoviesNumber06_Ant-Man

6) Ant-Man

Despite being the final movie in the Marvel cinematic universe’s second wave, Ant-Man shrank down the plot’s scope—pun intended—and delivered a film akin to earlier Marvel films. It made characters the heart of the story. The film couldn’t quite capture the same magic of the earliest Marvel movies, but it came close. The humor was welcome. It presented a fun, super-hero twist to the heist movie genre. And Paul Rudd and Michael Pena were a joy. Sure, the main villain was under-developed—like most Marvel movies—and a greater Hydra threat loomed in the background, but the focus was on family and that made the characters relatable. I’m not sure how many more character-driven movies remain in the Marvel cinematic universe, but Ant-Man was one of them.

MarvelMoviesNumber05_Thor

5) Thor

Loki has daddy issues. It’s a common trope and colors him as a character in broad strokes, but the God of Mischief has had more character development than most Marvel cinematic universe villains, and that’s a great thing. And it’s not the only thing Thor does well. I’m not a huge Thor comic book fan, but the movie does a great job setting up character relations and developing them through actions instead of expositional dialogue. Okay. There was a lot of exposition, mostly from Odin, but a lot of other movies only build their characters through dialogue, and Thor uses the snot-nosed son of Odin’s actions as the main characterization vehicle.

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4) Avengers

This one is a spectacle. I marvel at how they balanced the character’ screen time in this one. Folks were thinking Avengers was an impossible movie to make because of the sheer number of characters needed on-screen, but Joss Whedon pulled off a miracle. I would’ve rated this movie a little higher, but viewers need context for this movie. You can’t watch Avengers without first watching at least two or three other movies—you’ll see this argument come up again real soon—and some of the scenes are a little hokey, but man, Avengers was a great popcorn flick. And I love the Hulk as comic relief.

MarvelMoviesNumber03_IronMan

3) Iron Man

I had to give the movie that kicked off the Marvel cinematic universe some respect. Iron Man also holds up really well, unlike its sequels. This is another movie where the character’s actions define who he is. Iron Man could’ve spent a lot of time having Tony ponder the meaning of life—and he does a little bit of this while he’s in captivity—but that’s not who the character is. Iron Man doesn’t tell as much as it shows who these characters are, and that’s wonderful. It also helps that Robert Downey Jr. was born to play the role and he’s a delight.

MarvelMoviesNumber02_CaptainAmericaWinterSoldier

2) Captain America: Winter Soldier

When this one was out in theaters, I couldn’t get enough of it. Winter Soldier shook the Marvel cinematic universe to its core. It developed its characters really well and took secondary characters—like Black Widow—and elevated them. Winter Soldier was also the most faithful adaptation of a comic book to the silver screen. It’s amazing. But this is where the context issue comes into play. While you could say that every Marvel movie—except for Iron Man—is a dependent film, Winter Soldier suffers the most from lack of context. I showed Winter Soldier to someone who said that they love Marvel movies. It turned out that they hadn’t watched Iron Man 2, the first Cap film, or many of the other ones on this list, and they had no idea what was going on. Winter Soldier changed the Marvel universe but it’s also dependent on the rest of the Marvel universe to make any sense. Still, it’s fantastic.

MarvelMoviesNumber01_GuardiansOfTheGalaxy

1) Guardians of the Galaxy

I really should switch these top two, but I showed Guardians of the Galaxy to the same guy who hadn’t seen Winter Soldier, and it was a much different experience. Similar to Winter Soldier, the Guardians were well developed. But while Winter Soldier leaned heavily on plot twists, Guardians of the Galaxy had more memorable moments. Each character—with the exception of the patented Marvel movie underdeveloped villain—had their own moments to shine. Guardians is also the movie that made me yearn less for a Star Wars sequel—no offense, The Force Awakens. That’s not bad for a group Stan Lee forgot was a Marvel comic.

I know that was a long post, but there’s a lot of Marvel movies. These rankings are subject to change. In fact, I may change them soon. There are so many great Marvel movies. Let’s enjoy this comic book movie renaissance. Thanks for reading.

Actor, Director and “Star Trek” Icon Leonard Nimoy Dies at Age 83

Published on February 27, 2015March 8, 2015 by Kyra1 Comment

We don’t usually write tributes to those we lost on this page, but we don’t usually lose an acting icon either. Leonard Nimoy might’ve tried to separate himself from his most famous character in his 1975 autobiography I Am Not Spock, but that was illogical as the pointy-eared, emotionless, half-human Spock, and the progressive world without prejudice of Star Trek in which Spock inhabited, shaped Nimoy of as a person.

Nimoy—who passed away on February 27, 2015 at the age of 83 from the end-stage of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—later wrote a follow-up autobiography I Am Spock that showed him embracing his iconic character. To many Sci-Fi fans he was Spock, and he was the only Star Trek original cast member J. J. Abrams insisted on returning in his Star Trek reboot. But Nimoy was so much more than Spock.

The Boston born Nimoy started as a child actor and worked steadily on television before and after Star Trek, appearing on disparate shows such as Sea Hunt, Gunsmoke, and Mission: Impossible. In the ‘80s, he established himself as a film director, overseeing two back-to-back Star Trek installments (The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home) before directing the 1987 hit, Three Men and a Baby.

Once Nimoy got comfortable behind a camera, he shifted to photography, snapping pictures that hung in galleries and collecting some of his works in the book The Full Body Project, which he collected photos he shot of nude plus-sized and obese women. He later said that he wanted people to accept their bodies and show the bodies that people lived in, not the body types that fashion magazines sell.

That kind of sentiment speaks to how Nimoy’s involvement in a socially conscious series like Star Trek shaped his worldview. Through most of his work, Nimoy endeavored to shape the world into a brighter future.

Merry Christmas

Published on December 25, 2014November 30, 2014 by KyraLeave a comment

JK Geekly wishes you a fun and safe holiday. We hope you enjoy the day, but don’t eat too much candy.

Happy Sinterklaas

Published on December 4, 2014November 30, 2014 by KyraLeave a comment

Well, Happy Sinterklaas Eve to be exact.

Tomorrow is Dutch Christmas or Sinterklaas, named after the traditional figure which is in turn based on Saint Nicholas. Saint Nick’s birthday is tomorrow, December 5th.

My family celebrates Sinterklaas, so we won’t have a Geek Out piece this week, but we hope you have a nice holiday. Make sure you leave plenty of carrots for Sinterklaas’s horse, and you’re sure to get a chocolate letter and a lot of speculaas in your wooden shoes.

Prettige Sinterklaas.

Giving Thanks

Published on November 27, 2014November 7, 2014 by KyraLeave a comment

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

We hope you’re having a great day watching oversized balloons, gobbling down turkey, and spending time with friends and family. Thanksgiving is steeped in family traditions, and one of mine is to site what I’m thankful for this year. So, how ‘bout some quick thanks.
I’m thankful for tabletop games, CW superhero TV shows, Bob’s Burgers, Antoine Bauza, Vlaada Chvatil, Bruno Cathala, and even Richard Garfield. Let’s not forget about Marvel movies, Sentinels of the Multiverse, Ed Brubaker, Neil Gaiman, and how about the original writer. I can’t forget JK Geekly, my bud Jim, the internet, and even the concept of a blog. And I’d be remiss to not thank the people that make all this happen my family. I love you Jen, Season, Tynan, Mom, and Dad.
I’ll cut off the list here because I could go on for paragraphs. I’ll grab a turkey leg, drown it gravy, and return you to your regularly scheduled program. Have a great day, everyone.