Hi guys, Sharp-O back to celebrate this summer’s biggest superhero release – The Incredibles 2 – with a review for the Stretching & Speeding Elasticycle from Jakks Pacific!

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JJ and his amazing friend Jason realize who they are and the limits that entails. Whooo, this episode brings that to the forefront a couple of times. Two white dudes talking about Black Panther and Get Out as well as a few other issues that feel super white. Still, we are who we are, and I think we do pretty damn well. Also, it is the birth of a new segment! Finally!

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Within the canon of Marvel Comics, there’s many kinds of enhanced individuals but those born with innate abilities tend to fall into two distinct but similar categories: Inhumans and Mutants. Both gain their powers from traumatic experiences, both are maligned by baseline humans and both have television shows currently airing so I figured I should compare the two for funsies. Don’t worry, no spoilers here!

I’ll be judging both Marvel’s Inhumans and Fox’s The Gifted based on three categories: Story, Characters, and Production Quality. Fairly simple, right? We’ll see!

Inhumans – Story

After the Royal Family of Inhumans is splintered by a military coup, they barely escape to Hawaii where their surprising interactions with the lush world and humanity around them may prove to not only save them, but Earth itself.

It’s Space Game of Space Thrones, essentially, except with shoddy acting and sterile sets. While this shouldn’t be too bad as a concept, we’re thrust into the lives of these extraterrestrial beings with only a fleeting mention of a connection to the Terrigen contaminant we’ve seen in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. so unfortunately the audience can be kind of lost on initial viewing without prior knowledge of the characters.

The Inhuman Royal Family will be spending the majority of this 8 episode run on the stunning island of Hawaii and the unique cityscape and surrounding nature makes for a nice change of pace to the usual stock sets used in other Marvel productions.

With the cast splintered, we’ll be seeing lots of unique experiences for the relative aliens and maybe some good character development, all culminating in one final show with the main antagonist, Maximus.

The Gifted – Story

Two ordinary parents take their family on the run from the government when they discover that their children have mutant abilities, and join an underground community of mutants who have to fight to survive.

It’s your basic X-Men plot but not one that the Fox X-Men movies have tackled at all and with such a tight focus on two distinct groups of characters, this series aims to put a spotlight on all of the social commentary and allegorical story-telling ideas that X-Men stories are lauded for and in the current social climate, that’s a great thing.

With a Government-backed black-ops group intent on hunting them, the strife that the Struckers and the members of the Mutant Underground find themselves in definitely has echoes of The Underground Railroad or The French Resistance and this will lead to some fascinating character dynamics and some great set-pieces over it’s 10 episode run.

Inhumans – Characters

Let me give it to you straight, there’s only a couple of decent actors and, sadly, one of them isn’t Iwan “Barry Bolton” Rheon. Maximus’s actor struggles to act and put on his ropey American accent and his performance sadly suffers for it. Isabelle Cornish as Crystal is vacuous, uninteresting and your visual bathroom break cue. Eme Ikwuakor and Ken Leung provide decent performances as powerhouse Gorgon and calculating Karnak, respectively.

Rounding out the main cast are Anson Mount and Serinda Swan as Black Bolt and Medusa, the king and queen of Attilan. Serinda Swan is a little stiff in the first episode (much like her hair!) but as we see her adapt to her new situation and act proactively to reunite with her peers, we see that she’s got a little more depth than we first see. Interestingly, she appeared twice in Smallville as Zatanna Zatarra, which is neat. Anson Mount’s stoic Black Bolt portrayal is bang on and I have to admire his dedication to the role, creating a unique set of Inhuman signs to communicate (he hopes to create a functioning fictional language like Klingon or Dothraki). Between that and his quite comical expressions in the second episode, I think he was a brilliant choice for the role.

Of course, the actual best character is the 2,000 pound CGI teleporting doggo, Lockjaw! He’s adorable and he’s the only reason I wanted to see the show in the first place so I’m thankful that VFX company Double Negative did a fantastic job of rendering him, even if he doesn’t exactly fit into most scenes well.

The Gifted – Characters

The characters of this show can generally fall into three categories: the Strucker family, the Mutant Underground, and the jobbers du jour, the Sentinel Services officers.

The Struckers (no relation) are your typical family unit but with the added twist of the father being a prosecutor that specialises in putting mutants in jail but this doesn’t go the way you expect. The Mutant Underground are a motley bunch of B-List X-Men, Morlocks and new creations with a nice diverse cast and unique array of powers. Special mention goes to the adorable Jamie Chung (Blink) who is best known as Chi-Chi in the awful Dragonball Evolution and as the voice of GoGo Tomago in Big Hero 6.

From the pilot episode, I feel much more connected to most of these characters than any of the Inhumans cast and I think that’s down to the more grounded storytelling of The Gifted.

Inhumans – Production Quality

As I’ve said before, all the scenes shot in Hawaii are utterly gorgeous and very foreign from what we usually expect whereas Attilan, the Inhuman City on the moon, splits between barren royal accommodation to barren peasant-caste mine areas. Attilan feels sparce, sterile and lifeless. Even the Inhuman haven in AoS had more character to it!

Not only that but the use of Inhuman abilities is very limited. Every one of the Royal Family gets their moment to exhibit them but that’s about it and they’re all mostly underwhelming, lacking the punch I was expecting. The costume designs are a little weird too but I can chalk that up to space fashion.

The Gifted – Production Quality

The Gifted has a more subdued colour palette but more variety in it’s atmosphere than Inhumans does. The night-time opening has harsh neon glows while the suburban family life has a muted sepia feel and the cold blues of the industrial complex and prison facilities all add to the atmosphere in the show and giving it a more film-like quality overall. In terms of powers, The Gifted does not hold back; with each character using their powers offensively, defensively and even in fun/mundane ways!

The show oozes quality on par with it’s kooky cousin Legion and can easily stand up to any Marvel show on visuals alone.

Verdict:

This is purely down to my personal taste and I’ll give my best reasoning for which show I recommend but know that while I enjoyed both shows to an extent, one was clearly superior and that show was The Gifted.

The Gifted feels very much in line with it’s universe and it’s predecessors while Inhumans feels the most disconnected of the Marvel shows so far, mostly due to it’s bizarre subject matter. Not only that but while The Gifted has a lot going for it, Inhumans necked itself out of the gate by being a mediocre TV pilot that was shown on IMAX screens; further highlighting its flaws and thus gaining the infamous criticism that it’s garnered.

I highly recommend The Gifted if you’re a fan of the X-Men, the movie franchise, Legion or all of the above and I cannot do the same with Marvel’s Inhumans.

JJ and his amazing friend Jason are back from what feels like a million billion years between episodes. The pair talk about usual podcasty catching up stuff for the first roughly an hour, then dive into the pool of joy that is Spider-Man Homecoming. (JJ may have spent a lot of time talking about the value of Flash Thompson, but it is the attention to details that make the movie the happy place that it is) There is plenty of spoiler notice, so feel free to listen up to that point if you don’t want anything spoiled.

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JJ and his amazing friend Jason are under the weather. They are both feeling just fine, but at the end of the episode, weather conspires to rush things to a close. They also talk about Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2, but not until the end and give a sizable spoiler warning. Mainly the two just try to get back into the podcast groove and talk about how JJ bought a toy in a way that was cutting edge…back in 2000.

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It’s been almost three years since I reviewed a set from the first LEGO Guardians of The Galaxy theme and doesn’t time fly? As of writing, I have not seen Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 2 and I don’t even know what the synopsis is so I’m going into the latest LEGO sub theme completely blind.

Why are the Ravagers attacking? No clue! But what I do know is that I’m digging the changes LEGO has implemented in this new sub theme and I’m going to flarkin’ review this set!

76079 Ravager Attack consists of two bags of assorted parts (around 197 pieces), an instruction booklet, sticker sheet and a comic that helps with the context of the set somewhat. Apparently Taserface (who knew that was his name?) usurps leadership of the Ravagers from Yondu and hunts the Guardians on behalf of the golden Ayesha. Neat!

As always, we’ll check out the minifigures first and we have Mantis, Taserface and Rocket Raccoon. The newest member of the Guardians, Mantis, doesn’t have any accessories but has a unique hairpiece featuring antennae and an alternate angry face. Speaking of faces, Taserface’s is one of the ugliest I’ve seen depicted on a LEGO noggin. He’s got a cool top knot-long beard combo and has a big brick-built stud shooter bazooka. This is my first time handling a Rocket minifig and while he’s pretty big for such a small character, his unique head/shoulders sculpt is impressive and he even has a tail waist piece. He comes with two assorted blasters.

The first bag and half of the second consists of Taserface’s M-ship, an odd name but maybe that’s just the class of ship that it and the Milano belong to. The first bag contains the top half of the ship, building most of it’s impressive wingspan which actually accounts for the majority of the ship.

It’s a deceptive little build, making the final product appear much bigger than it actually is, at least to my mind. It’s like a reverse TARDIS, way bigger on the outside compared to the underslung cockpit. I really dig this sly little ship and it’s simple yet robust build.

The latter half of the second bag builds up the tree and gatling stud blaster. It’s simple but flourishes this small piece of forest with a splinter of the Milano’s hull plating and the make-shift cannon built by Rocket and Mantis to give it some pop and make it part of the story.

The M-ship, gatling launcher and Taserface’s bazooka all fire their studs super-effectively, enough to  warrant the extra studs that came with the set.

The 76079 Ravager Attack set, for being the gateway GoTG set that retails for £19.99, offers a lot of play value, three unique minifigs and a very interesting build for it’s price point and I doubt any LEGO or Marvel Superheroes fan would be disappointed. You can find this set at most good retailers, instore and online and also on the LEGO shop.

JJ and his amazing friend Jason have not been drinking enough water. It doesn’t really play into the news of the week, but JJ talks about how driving to the most boring place EVER (no hyperbole.) leads him to wake up kinda thirsty. The duo also tries to talk about some of the recent trailers and some cool items on Netflix, but they get sidetracked and Thor himself seems to make it hard for Jason to record.

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This alternate universe is boned and I kind of want the show to stay here. It’s really interesting but I bet we’re only going to get two more episodes before we’re back to the real world.

But for now we get to enjoy the family dynamic of the Mackenzie family! Ol’ Mack-Daddy is everything I imagined it would be. He has a fantastic arc this episode, when he reluctantly sells out Daisy to HYDRA-May and turns to the resistance to help. Now, I might be projecting a bit here but does Hope, Mack daughter, remind anyone of the Inhuman super-genius Moon Girl? Maybe it’s just the hair and technical prowess but that’d be an interesting way of including the character!

Speaking of Inhumans, we get to see more of the Nazi-esque checking of papers and see the cramped conditions that the rescued Inhumans suffer in the Resistance base, led by Mace! I have to wonder if Mace is actually Inhuman in this world and if there are other active Inhumans. They need some serious firepower if they’re going to take on HYDRA.

In the HYDRA camp, the almost mind-rapey manipulation by Madame Hydra continues as we see the depths of her infatuation with Fitz. It’s so cringe-worthy, having shades of Hive-Ward controlling Daisy. It’s like she made this bizarre fan fiction world just to be with Fitz and she’s probably treating him the worst out of everyone.

Then again, Jemma always gets a kick to the quad when Fitz proves her entire emotional speech to Ward wrong by straight up murdering Holden Radcliffe’s ex-girlfriend. It’s a horrible scene to see Fitz go dark but even worse when you think about what that’ll mean when he’s freed from the Framework. In the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. comic book, Fitz is actually a HYDRA double-agent so maybe this is the first step towards having him turn heel!

With the stage still being set, we can only wonder what this wicked world will reveal next and we’ll just have to wait until next week and hope we have No Regrets.

JJ and his amazing friend Jason get real. JJ talks about ongoing issues with social anxiety and how he is really trying to change the face he puts out into public, but don’t worry, it does not stay serious for long. The pair then talk about the movie Logan, basically. There are many tangents and talk of what is going on in “geek culture”, but they do come back and touch base with claw guy before splintering again. They also touch a little on the new Netflix series Iron Fist but neither have seen more than two episodes, so don’t expect much depth there.

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We’re back for round two of this year’s LEGO Superheroes Mighty Micros and this time it’s Marvel that’s up to bat with a trio of terrific sets.

We get a nice mixture of franchises showcased this time with Spider-Man, The Avengers and X-Men all getting the spotlight! Let’s get started with Marvel’s golden boy himself…

Spider-Man! Scorpion! A match up that doesn’t happen nearly often enough in my eyes because Scorpion is a pretty cool villain, design-wise.

The Spider-Man minifigure is much like last year’s but with an all-new, all-different wince! Or a wink. I suppose it depends on your perspective. Scorpion, meanwhile, looks like an adorably cartoonish version of his minifigure in the LEGO Spider-Man: Web Warriors Ultimate Bridge Battle. Both minifigures also come with an animal accessory tied with their theme.

In terms of the karts in this set, I’d initially written the Spider-Man one as uninspired until I realised that it was a simplified version of the infamous Spider-Buggy and I kind of walked back that opinion. It’s cool but still not as cool as Scorpion’s brutish claw-tank-thing! This thing is essentially a box on wheels but between the claw-like appendages and integrating Scorpion’s own tail pieces for the vehicle’s stinger is pretty clever.

Over with the X-Men, we have the comically mismatched Wolverine and Magneto. We don’t see the X-Men often enough in these sets so it’s great to see them here (and I’m hoping next year will see Deadpool in a mini-chimichanga delivery truck).

The minifigures are just as adorable as ever but, in an ironic twist, even more-so because Wolverine is an immortal, ninja-slaying samurai Canadian and Magneto is a holocaust survivor who has a mad-on for a human genocide. These two characters, out of all of Marvel’s characters, should not be this cute.

Again, their associated karts are hilarious! Wolverine is flying around in a shrunken Blackbird jet and Magneto has a giant magnet on it! They’re both really fitting with the characters and exemplify the tongue-in-cheek humour that I really like about this line.

Finally, with The Avengers and in the spirit of the future movies, we have Iron Man vs. Thanos. Earth technology versus space magic. Tony shouldn’t be looking anywhere near as cocky as he is.

In terms of minifigures, Tony’s Iron Man design is so simplified that it looks like a Halloween costume and he’s not helping his credentials by bringing a spanner to an Infinity Gauntlet fight. It’s no wonder that Thanos has the kind of manic glee on his face that comes from a sadistic villain who knows he’s going not only murder the hero but wipe him from existence. Quip your way out of this one, Stark.

The karts are equally laughably one-sided as Iron Man’s is a variant on The Flash’s from last year but with a quartet of repulsor jets. On the other hand, figuratively and literally, Thanos has used the Reality Gem to conjure up a kart shaped like the Infinity Gauntlet! That’s decadent and arrogant on a truly cosmic level but if I had a complaint, it’s that the gold used for this kart isn’t uniform, with some blocks cast in a metallic gold while the rest are a dull, lighter gold. It’s kind of the same problem that Wonder Woman’s jet faced but still, it’s a brilliant show of Thanos’s silly side and that’s saying something from a cosmic villain who once pestered D-Tier hero Hellcat in a ‘Thanos-copter’.

Once again, the creativity of the LEGO Marvel Superheroes Mighty Micros line shines through again with a brilliantly clever and fun set of builds. You can purchase these online and in stores for £8.99 each and I highly recommend picking them up for yourself or the Marvel fan in your life!