Author: Robert Greenberger

All the Hulk Feels
By Dan Santat
Abrams Fanfare/40 pages/$19.99

This Mighty Marvel Comics Picture Book, aimed at 4-8-year-olds, conveys a wonderful message about managing anger. This is a particularly challenging age for kids who act out when they lack the vocabulary to express their feelings.

Visually, Dan Santat, known for his work on The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend and Are We There Yet?, presents a Hulk that’s not too frightening to readers. This is a fascinating blend of the more childlike jade-jawed giant and the angry behemoth seen most everywhere.

Across the story, the Hulk and his alter ego, Bruce Banner, exchange messages about how they’re feeling and how neither fully understands what the other is going through. It nicely resolves itself while in the background, the Leader is working to free an assortment of deadly threats, including the Abomination and Juggernaut (not your typical Hulk foe).

However, the story makes little sense. Banner transforms into the Hulk while driving because he dislikes a song on the radio. After punching the console, he walks out of the car and leaps away, winding up at a fast food restaurant where the Leader happens to be there, disguised as an employee.

The Hulk is scaled down here but is still too large to comfortably fit in the car (which should be shredded) or on a restaurant table (which should not perplex him but further enrage him). We also have Hulk and Banner sharing their feelings via notes on the same sheet of paper, which can’t possibly contain all those words. We’ve never known the Hulk to read or write (let alone spell). Instead, this entire exchange needed to be in their shared conscience, which would have also provided Santat with some great visual opportunities.

The climax, with the villains escaping, is resolved off-panel.

While well-intentioned, the story does not serve the message particularly well.

Frank Herbert didn’t necessarily intend to create a large, enduring legacy like Dune became. But once the novel finally arrived in the mid-1960s, it was immediately embraced and spawned several sequels until Herbert’s death. His son Brian, in concert with Kevin J. Anderson, has been keeping the flames burning bright with a series of prequels and sequels that further the ideas first presented sixty years ago.

Herbert thought on a grand scale, his history spanning tens of thousands of years, so HBO Max’s Dune: Prophecy is set 10,000 years before events found in Dune (and therefore, the first two Denis Villeneuve film adaptations). While drawing material from Herbert and Anderson’s Sisterhood of Dune, it charts its course, focusing on the evolution of the female-centric Bene Gesserit.

Legendary Entertainment is used to thinking in grandiose terms given their work with Godzilla and King Kong, and here, plans for the TV tie-in began in 2019, well before the first feature film was released. The six-episode first season aired last winter and is now available on 4K Ultra HD from Warner Home Entertainment.

There are timeframes running in parallel, tracing the relationship between two sisters: Valya Harkonnen (Jessica Barden) and Tula Harkonnen (Emma Canning) as they leave home for training in the mystic order. As adults, the two (Emily Watson and Olivia Williams respectively) contend with changes within the order, including a threat in the form of Desmond Hart (Travis Frimmel), who is the fly in the Sisterhood’s ointment, immune to Vialya’s Voice, a power that compels people to do her bidding. The emperor has no use for the Bene Gesserit and wants them eradicated.

As one would expect, the two timelines are populated with friends, kin, and enemies, sometimes making it hard to track who is who and who is out to get whom. Still, there are many familiar terms and images, notably the Sandworm of Arrakis. Despite the ten-thousand-year difference, it still looks and feels like Villeneuve’s Dune. There are enough intriguing details and character moments to make each episode interesting and keep you coming back.

In the hands of showrunner Alison Schapker, the stories have some pleasant, compelling moments and fun characters. The series boasts an attractive and talented cast, which connected with the audience, leading to a second season being commissioned before the first season was completed airing last December.

The series is available as either 4K or Blu-ray without a combo pack or digital code. The HVEC/H.265 encoded 2160p transfers in 2.00:1 is rich in visual detail, nicely capturing the color palette, and looks fabulous on a home screen. It pairs quite well with the immersive Dolby Atmos audio track.

Alas, being a repackaging of the series, the Special Features are drawn mainly from the Inside the Episode packages that accompany most Max productions. Disc One also offers up Entering the Dune Universe (2:58) and Houses Divided (2:47). Disc Two provides us with Truth or Lie (5:38) and Expanding the Universe (2:32) while Disc Three has Behind the Veil (34:45) and Building Worlds – Home Entertainment Exclusive (HD; 13:04) is another production design focused featurette. One wishes the features were as rich in detail as the episodes themselves.

Dune: Prophecy

Iron Man: Something Strange!
By Dean Hale and Douglas Holgate
Abrams Fanfare/96 pages/12.99

After three team-up books featuring Spider-Man, the young reader line shines the spotlight on Iron Man and Doctor Strange, and it’s a fun time. Aimed at 5-9-year-old readers, the book ostensibly is about an alien infestation that comes to shellhead’s attention when the Avengers’ communication system fails. It turns out the ten little creatures are the offspring of an interdimensional creature who is none-too-happy to be on Iron Man’s plane of existence.

When the Golden Avenger runs out of science-based options, he takes Thor’s advice and seeks supernatural help from the Master of the Mystic Arts. Here’s where the real theme emerges: science versus magic becomes a running gag between the two heroes. With just an hour to collect the children of Great Gargantos, Scourge of the Outer Planes, Tonty Stark challenges Stephen Strange to see who can corral the most children.

Dean Hale is no stranger to writing young superhero stories, and here, he does a fine job simplifying all the heroes into child-sized personalities without losing Stark’s egocentrism. He finely weaves in humorous cameos from the Avengers and Spidey. It’s interesting that the most wisdom comes not from the armored Avenger or Sorcerer Supreme but from Ms. Marvel, in another cameo. The only sour note is his bad explanation for why the armor’s AI is named Friday.

Douglas Holgate’s art is well-suited to the characters and the story, keeping things easy to follow and filled with nice little touches throughout. Ian Herring’s colors keep up with the frenetic pace.

This is a solid addition to the Mighty Marvel Yea-Ups from Abrams Fanfare.

Song of the Lioness Book One: Alanna
By Tamora Pierce, Vita Ayala, and Sam Beck
Abrams Fanfare/256 pages/Hardcover (($26.99), Softcover ($17.99)

Tamora Pierce crafted Song of the Lioness, a four-part story tracing the making of a hero in the form of twins Alanna and Thom. Across the young adult novels, she dealt with gender and bullying, set in a fantasy realm where the forces of good and evil and politics play out. It was an acclaimed series, earning plaudits and awards.

Now, Vita Ayala and Sam Beck begin adapting the story in a set of graphic novels, beginning in mid-May with this first volume. Having never read the novels (or any Pierce to be honest), I find that this requires the adaptation to stand on its own.

The twins possess magical talents, something their father frowns on, and they contrive to defy him, with Alanna going to court to train to be worthy of becoming the first female knight while Thom goes off to learn the ways of sorcery. To fight stereotypes, Alanna disguises her prepubescent self as Alan.

Smaller and slighter than the other would-be squires and knights, Alan is bullied by many other boys. Slowly, she earns the admiration of her peers, notably Prince Jonathan, who is also in training. Alan excels in skilled arts such as archery and is clearly the most learned of the trainees.

Slowly, Alan makes friends, sharing her secret with a few. She posts letters to Thom so we get the merest glimpses of what he’s up, hinting that I suspect his story for subsequent volumes.

In time, events bring Jonathan and Alan to Persopolis, the one major desert city, but it was said to keep an eye on the Black City. Determined to learn the secrets of this storied metropolis, the pair sneak in and discover evil magic.

Ayala does a fine job moving things along, although besides Alan and a few others, most characters remain static and uninteresting. Alan is made to be The One, so special and earnest that all come to admire (or envy) the trainee. It’s a bit much, but it is tempered by the internal fight she waged to be taken as she is.

Beck’s art is presented only in black and white in the ARC sent for review, with just a hint of the full color to come in the final form. The color will help a lot since Beck too often ignores backgrounds and details. More than a few panels make you wonder what’s going on while some spreads are poorly constructed, so figures are lost in the perfectly bound gutter.

Aimed at the 12-16-year-old market, this stands fine on its own, but the prose version is probably a far richer read.

My Mighty Marvel First Book: Fantastic Four
Art by Jack Kirby
24 pages/Abrams Appleseed/$12.99

Marvel Hello Heroes: Spider-Man Swings Through
By Sabrina Moyle & Eunice Moyle
48 pages/Abrams Books for Young Readers/$14.99

Abrams’ various imprints have done a fine job producing works for Marvelites of all ages, notably a series of board books for their youngest readers, indoctrinating them early. What I find most interesting about their My Mighty Marvel First Books is that they all use classic Silver Age artwork to tell bare-bones origin stories.

For their thirteenth offering, they finally get around to Marvel’s first family, the Fantastic Four, just months before the feature film is in theaters. No writer is credited, but all the art dates back to the series’ legendary run, except the cover, which is penciled by Jack Kirby, who receives a nice bio in the back.  To my practiced eye, there are costume details and touches that make for an inconsistent reading experience, but the target audience is unlikely to notice. We gain insight into their origin and a glimpse of a few of their opponents, including, of course, Galactus.

The board book offers several fold-outs (fold-ups?) to make things seem particularly impressive, including the team’s name from issue #1.

A new line, aimed at first through fourth-graders, is the Hello Heroes, presenting a quirky look at the heroes. Already out is Captain Marvel, and here is one featuring the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Sabrina and Eunie Moyle have an unconventional style for a superhero comic, but it works for younger fans. What isn’t great is the lack of a coherent story, but more like page after page of Spidey swinging through the city or crawling through sewers and interacting with friends and foes alike. As a result, readers who are already familiar with the Spider-Verse animated films will recognize his variants and Easter eggs from other realities. There’s some fun to it,, but the lack of coherence for a beginning reader is of concern.

Conceived by Barbara Pyle and media mogul Ted Turner, Captain Planet was an ecological hero way ahead of his time. The animated series ran for years with some nifty design work by Neal Adams and his Continuity Associates. Each episode featured an adventure and a lesson (of course). It endeared itself to a generation of viewers and remained an enduring figure from the 1990s.

Now, Warner Home Entertainment has released Captain Planet the Complete Franchise, with 41 hours and 31 minutes of environmental goodness. For silly legal reasons, the show has two titles evenly split among its six seasons: Captain Planet and the Planeteers (animated by DIC) and The New Adventures of Captain Planet (animated by Hanna-Barbera) for the final three seasons.

Gaia, the spirit of Earth, was voiced by Whoopi Goldberg, who set the tone and standard for the entire series. She was accompanied by a voice cast that included Margot Kidder (who replaced Goldberg in season four), Meg Ryan, Martin Sheen, Jeff Goldblum, LeVar Burton, Ed Asner, and Dean Stockwell.

As Gaia awakens after far too long, she is unhappy with the shape of Earth and sets about to repair things, with the help of teens drawn from the continents, granting each power — earth, fire, wind, water, and heart — to help save the world. United, they summon forth Captain Planet (David Coburn). The excellent captain can be felled by pollution and similar harmful environmental factors. Our teen heroes —Gi (Janice Kawaye), Kwame (LeVar Burton), Linka (Kath Soucie), Ma-Ti (Scott Menville), and Wheeler (Joey Dedio) — respond to Gaia’s alerts via their solar-powered Geo-Cruiser.

Their recurring foes include Hoggish Greedly (Ed Asner), Hoggish Greedly Jr. (Charlie Schlatter), Rigger (John Ratzenberger), Verminous Skumm (Jeff Goldblum/Maurice LaMarche), Duke Nukem (Dean Stockwell/Maurice LaMarche), Leadsuit (voiced by Frank Welker), Dr. Barbara “Babs” Blight (Meg Ryan/Mary Kay Bergman), MAL (David Rappaport/Tim Curry),  Looten Plunder (James Coburn/Ed Gilbert), Argos Bleak (Scott Bullock), the Pinehead Brothers (Dick Gautier and Frank Welker), Sly Sludge (Martin Sheen/Jim Cummings), Ooze (Cam Clarke), Tank Flusher III (Frank Welker), Zarm (Sting/David Warner/Malcolm McDowell), and of course, the good captain’s evil twin, Captain Pollution (David Coburn).

The DIC episodes were very much formula, and when H-B took over, backstories and more depth were added throughout, making for a more enjoyable viewing experience. Still, there were many times the themes were heavy-handed, making them feel like an “eat your spinach” experience.

It did spawn The Captain Planet Foundation in 1991, as Pyle donated a percentage of the show’s merchandising revenue to do some actual real-world good. It ran a decade until new parent company TimeWarner shit it down. After the disastrous AOL merger, the foundation was resurrected in 2007 and continues to do good work.

The series looks fine on DVD, reproduces the original animation well, and offers Dolby Digital audio. Little expense was spent on cleaning and unifying everything, although the entire package is a lavish one. Not a single special feature has been included.

Okay, I get it. The West Wing is a fantasy. But it’s not just a liberal fantasy television series. It is a series that celebrated patriotic Americans who all thought they were working to create a better country. The staffers in the west wing of the White House and their president strove to bring their best efforts, and as we watch, we see them try and fail, we see them try and succeed, and we see them try and not get everything they wanted. There was no breast-beating or pouting on national television.

The 1999-2006 series celebrated patriotism and intelligence, two things lacking from way too many elected officials today, making us long for the Bartlet Administration. Long overdue, Warner Home Entertainment has chosen the show’s 25^th anniversary to finally release The West Wing: The Complete Series on Blu-ray.

Created by Aaron Sorkin, using leftover material from his entertaining The American President, he created a rich, varied cast of characters. With producer/director Thomas Schlamme, they cast one of the finest ensembles you could hope to find on American prime time television. They oversaw the first four seasons before burnout and drug problems led Sorkin to step aside, with Schlamme with him. The fifth season saw Executive Produce John Wells step in, and it was an uneven season, but it found its footing. Seasons six and seven introduced fresh characters as the next election loomed, and it found new energy, ending on a high note.

Even its weakest episodes were stronger than most of its network competition, rivaling the upcoming Golden Age of cable as it competed with series like The Sopranos. We saw the struggles to run a country each week, along with their horrible work/life balance. Their little personal time often involved attempts at romance, which gave rise to many wonderful relationships.

We also learned a lot about how the government works and issues large and small. Sorkin would have people bring him the boring, and he somehow would have it turned into fascinating badinage and debate.

The show has endured, not just through cable and now streaming accessibility. Still, it spawned the first series rewatch podcast, The West Wing Weekly, and has spawned numerous mini-reunions for good causes (most recently, on the Emmy Awards). The show’s enduring nature and its influence over many worthy causes were also celebrated in What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service, written by two of its stars, Melissa Fitzgerlad and Mary McCormack.

The 156 episodes, across 28 discs, carry over the 20+ commentaries, behind-the-scenes featurettes, unaired scenes, gag reels, and more from the DVD editions. The 1080p transfers are sharp and clear, with a fine DTS-HD MA audio track. Alas, only English captions are available, which I think is a missed opportunity, as there was a lack of anything new to celebrate 25 years (the live recreation of an episode done as a Democratic fundraiser would have been welcome). The plastic cases cram the discs in place and can be easily dislodged, which is another shame.

In spring 1994, I was reading a series of articles in The New York Times about pilots for the forthcoming TV series, and they profiled a series featuring six twnetysomethings trying to adjust to adulthood. It sounded promising so my wife and I sampled the NBC series the following September.

And Friends has been running somewhere on television ever since. It is now 30 years old and to celebrate, Warner Home Entertainment recently released Friends: The Complete Series, debuting on 4k Ultra HD for the first time. Every episode is included along with a variety of bonus features making this an ideal addition to your video library.

What’s interesting about the series today is how it has endured despite aspects no longer appearing as fresh. The creators, David Crane and Marta Kauffman, cleverly found six types that could bounce off one another with heart and humor. With director James Burrows handling the pilot, all the elements from the first episode were there and remained in place for the next decade.

Largely set in two adjacent apartments in Manhattan, and their favorite coffeeshop, the six worked to live with running gags about their jobs (or not having jobs). They never seemed to worry about paying the rent or utilities, so their struggles were more about relationships—finding them or keeping them. They loved and lost, laughed and cried, and turned to one another for support. Over the course of ten seasons, we saw two couples form, one long-simmering and filled with pathos, while the other unexpected and funny. By the time they turned the lights out in an hour-long finale, they had become part of the national dialogue.

The show endures because the character relationships feel real and their affection for one another is evident from when Monica’s friend Rachel turns up in her wedding dress, having run away from her wedding and is immediately adopted by the others.

Wisley, the showrunners, plotted out the character arcs for each season well before writing and filming began, serving the characters first, then the gags. This may be one of the reasons why it is among the series I continually find my high schoolers watching via streaming.

The series has 23 triple-layered 4K discs and two dual-layered Blu-rays for the special features. They’re tidily packaged in a nice plastic case that fits snugly on the shelf. The 2160p transfers, framed at 1.78:1, look just fine, and as you remember, the series back in the CRT days. That said, the color is oddly saturated throughout and look just a wee bit off, enough to nag at veteran fans.

The 4K discs come complete with a fine DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio, serving the dialogue and music just swell.

The Special Features are mostly taken from previous Blu-ray and DVD editions of the seasons such as the audio commentaries with executive producers Kevin S. Bright, Marta Kauffman and David Crane.

On the first bonus disc, we get a new Friends: Through the Peephole (15:18), hosted by Warner Bros. archivist Matt Truex, examining some of the 2,000 props and costumes. There is also the less interesting trivia contest How Well Do You Know Your Friends? (6:37).

Each season carries over the other Blu-ray extras such as trailers, music videos, shorts spotlighting the series’ international appeal and other topics.

The second disc contains extras imported from seasons 6-10, so we have gag reels, Gunther’s chats about each subsequent season, and various Friends appearances on talk shows plus the Extended Broadcast Episodes – “The One Where Rosita Dies,” “The One Where They All Turn Thirty,” “The One with Joey’s New Brain” and “The One with the Truth About London.”

I suppose the Max reunion special should be here, but it isn’t, which is a shame. Overall, though, it’s nice to have the entire series in one place, so you can watch at your leisure and not worry about the show vanishing from your favorite streaming service or cable channel. As promised in the catchy title song, one of the last to chart on top 40 radio, they’ll be there for you.