The snow is melting. The air does not burn. The end of this nasty ass winter is in sight.

Speaking of ass, I have been working on a little flash fiction thing I call:

Artie the Arsewhole.

It's about a superhero who is “helping”. I’m going to get that on Bluesky soon. At first, I was working on something I thought would be good for flash fiction. But I did not understand the assignment and ended up making the first chapter of a writing project.

And I decided that if I’m going to do a writing project, it might as well be a sequel to something I wrote to completion back in the summer of 2024. So, I’ve been working on that, when I had time.

Honestly, I’ve been at my day job all week and man, I’m beat. The improvement of the weather has given me a slight second wind that is keeping me going. But besides hanging out with some friends this coming weekend, I have no real plans when I do have a day off.

I might check out that new Captain America: Brave New World movie. It’s got Red Hulk, which I’ve been looking forward to since the first Hulk movie with Edward Norton. Also, the same actor who played the mad scientist “the Leader” is actually playing the Leader in this movie. In this Captain America movie, and not a Hulk solo movie. 😕

Which, I get it. Mark Ruffalo is a great actor but to be in a mo-cap suit all the time or have the Hulk be CGI’ed in without his input, yeah, I get why there is not a solo Hulk movie. But to have such staple Hulk villains be the antagonist in a Captain America movie is an interesting decision.

I’m all for it, the more villains in the MCU (that won’t be killed off after one movie) would be a good thing. Too many heroes running around without recurring villains, which has been a thing in comics dating back to the golden age. And since Loki and Thanos, there really haven’t been any memorable baddies.

Also, I did look some stuff up about the movie and its doing more deep MCU cuts besides having Tim Blake Nelson come back to play the Leader after 17 years. Apparently, the movie is going to revolve around the consequences from Eternals. 😦 Yeah, Eternals, that movie of a Jack Kirby property with a lot of good, big name actors but didn’t do well at all. I thought it was okay but at the end of that movie, this big space titan [I mean Celestial] is killed and its corpse has . . . of all things, adamantium.

Wolverine’s bone-metal is going to be added to the MCU finally, which is cool. More space or weird scif-fi metal is a good thing. Can’t just be vibranium all the time. And what about that new element Tony Stark made in his lab in Iron Man 2? Really haven’t called back to that in a while. What was it called . . . apparently, it was vibranium 🫤but it was also referred to as Badassium 😄. Bring back Badassium, that would be cool.

So the Captain America movie is all about the nationals of the world scrambling to possess the new cool metal that might rival that of vibranium. It also features retired super soldier Isaiah from Falcon and the Winter Soldier being brainwashed. Man, that is a lot of deep cuts from the MCU that, I will be honest, people who do not follow the MCU would not know or remember.

I mean, calling back to Eternals is a bold move but I guess that dead Celestial had to be used for something. I mean, it's pretty hard to miss. But, really, this movie is taking a lot of stuff mainstream audiences would have forgotten about or simply not have seen. I feel this Cap movie is more for the fans that are still going to theaters.

I’m almost talking myself into seeing it sometime soon. I mean, I could wait until it's on Disney+ which it certainly will be eventually. Truth be told though, since Endgame, I’ve been losing track of the whole MCU. I know a Fantastic Four movie is coming out this year, which I’m looking forward to. It’s called Fantastic Four: First Steps, which is funny because my very first writing project to completion was subtitled “First Steps.”

Wow, I talked more about an MCU movie that I haven’t seen than about anything else. But I made it a personal note to just let my fingers fall on the keyboard when doing these updates. The randomness adds a little spice to things. 🌶️

Good luck and HULK-SMASH!!!!

—Buck

PS: I’ve been watching the anime RE:Zero which is so damn brutal. But so freaking GOOD! It’s distracting me from finishing this. Damn it! No good anime while blogging!