Superhero Media: Inspector Gadget 2

One of the most read "Superhero Media" posts on this blog is for the 1999 Inspector Gadget, a little nothing film I reviewed mostly as a joke, not expecting it to do anything. Most of the review doesn't even cover the film, but discusses what would later become a "The Pitch" article about a gritty reboot of the franchise, an article almost no one has read. I mean, no one really reads my blog, in the broad sense, my most popular articles have fewer than 1000 views, and I don't care as I do this for fun and to keep my writing hand in, not for some kind of internet fame. Inspector Gadget 2 picks up essentially where the previous film left off, only with a new cast and a much lower budget. French Stewart is in the lead and pretty much every supporting character is an Australian actor, so I'm guessing this was filmed in Queensland? Seriously, everyone I know from '90s Aussie television gave me some serious whiplash.

Like, sure, get Bruce Spence in, if you're making a vaguely science fiction or horror film in Australia, you're pretty much contractually obligated to use Bruce Spence, but Mark Mitchell and Sigrid Thornton? Is this a reunion of everyone who didn't get crazy famous off Seachange? The film is about as 'good' as one may reasonably expect, with less money to do the slapstick scenes, sets and special effects, large sections of Inspector Gadget 2 look like an Adam West Batman episode, including goons in anachronistic costumes. There seems to be an attempt to move closer to the animated series than the first film, with Klaw using elaborate traps and harebrained schemes to stop Gadget and the latter lucking into winning each encounter. I guess in strict terms of adaptation, Inspector Gadget 2 is 'better' than the previous film, but I maintain that the animated series is not great to begin with, so it should come as no shock that the only reason I go through this film was because I was playing Super Mario Galaxy as it was on.

Given the backlog and that these only come out weekly, you may or may not have noticed that I'm trying to complete series in these reviews. Obviously, series that are ongoing, such as the MCU and DCEU, it's more trying to keep up than finish, but as it stands I still have The New Mutants to round out Fox X-Men, and Men In Black International is in the pipeline. Inspector Gadget 2 was an attempt at this completion, even if it seems only I bother to care about it's existence. You won't be seeing a 28mm Inspector Gadget on my gaming table anytime soon, and I really can't recommend the film to anyone who didn't grow up watching Wonderworld on Aussie television, but if, like me, you really need a break from all the Spider-Man cartoons on Disney+, there are worse things to have on in the background while you paint some miniatures.

Miniature Finished: Great Ape Vegeta

Sometimes I do some odd little projects for my own edification, usually model kits or little terrain flourishes that I don't post here because they don't relate to the overall project. This one, however is pretty much bang-on.

I picked up this Ozeru Vegeta at a games store for around $30, which I thought was a steal. I cleaned it up, removed the maker's mark, gave it a wash and glued it together with lashings of thick superglue. I filled in the gaps with plastic putty, attached it to a base and undercoated it, hoping it wouldn't get sticky as this plastic sometimes does.

And lucky me, it all turned out great. From the beginning, I planned to use the alternate Vegeta colour scheme from his first few appearances, so I used some of the luridly bright GW Contrast paints to get the base colours in, then went in with a hand brush. As Vegeta doesn't go Great Ape until the end of the Vegeta Saga, I had to make some guesses on things like hair colour, but I think it came together pretty well.

As well as being an intended entry for the Australian Plastic Model Expo, this model is pretty nicely scaled for my 28mm Supers games, being able to hold my 28mm Goku in his hand neatly. So overall, I'm pretty happy with how this minor investment turned out.

Superhero Media: Batman - Hush

Ok, here's a question for the Batman fans in my readership, is Hush actually a good Batman story? There are a lot of good elements in Hush, to be sure, and there are so many iconic Batman characters and locations that the story certainly "feels" big, but is it really? At the start of Hush, Batman is basically where he will be at the end of the story, despite the monumental events that will take place between those two points. Although I keep a copy of Hush on my shelf, I'm finding that each time I go back to it, I come away a little more frustrated than the last, and I may be giving the book up at some stage. Starting with a rescue of a young boy held for ransom by Killer Croc, right at the end of his being a criminal and not yet a cannibal monster phase, Batman has a great moment where he tells the boy to lie about it being Superman who saved him, but soon ends up chasing after Catwoman. The relationship between Batman and Catwoman is the heart of Hush, but it gets sidelined at time for assorted Batman nonsense, and sadly, doesn't continue past this story.

What I like most about the romance in Hush is that it truly grows Batman as a character, a point even discussed, though somewhat obliquely, by Alfred and Nightwing throughout the story. Batman having to negotiate the relationship, even dealing with Catwoman's being unwilling to follow his lead in a manner of another Robin or Batgirl, lift the story out of the pre-adolescant world of the caped crusader and show genuine growth in a character that rarely sees it. The rest of Hush is mostly pretty good, but as I hinted above, tends to run as something more of a highlight reel of Batman than a cohesive story. There's that scene where Batman almost snaps and kills Joker, before being stopped by Jim Gordon, and it is tied into the plot, but you could cut Joker out and drop the scene and not really lose anything. I'm not kidding that Hush hits most corners of the Batman universe at least once, from the League of Shadows/Assassins (I'm not sure which they're called in this particular instance), Batman's friendship with Superman and even a maudlin aside from Alfred.

The titular villain, a childhood friend of Bruce's, warped by years of resentment into hunting down Batman and... making his life confusing for a couple of weeks? The details of Hush's actual plan are pretty nebulous, as Batman's life doesn't really change all that much and all of the new characters are dead. Hell, Huntress goes through more of an emotional journey, in that she ends up somewhere different to where she started, rather than Batman continuing on as he did before. Probably the only 'lasting' element of the story, in that it lasted until the next reboot, was the reveal that Riddler had figured out Batman's secret identity. I like this because it places Riddler on a similar intellectual level to Batman, with now only his compulsions keeping him from winning out over the Caped Crusader. The hand-waving over why Riddler doesn't capitalise on the knowledge is a little disappointing, as that would have been a story I was interested in reading, and would have given Riddler a role in the story other than delivering exposition. I'm really keen to know if other people have the same experience with Hush as I do, does it hold up, or does each new reading lessen the narrative?

1000 Posts -

So I was tempted to actually do 1000 images for this post, but with my new job, I just don't have the time for something like that, sorry. Though I am steadily working through the massive backlog of posts that I wrote during COVID lockdowns, I am still posting some articles from as far back as 2021 sometimes, so Lead Capes often doesn't feel "current" to me. As I catch up with myself, as I surely will with more on my plate, the tone will shift and this blog will likely be something very different in another 100 or 200 posts. Until then, enjoy a look back over some of the images that have graced this blog over the past year-ish. 

Will I get to 2000 eventually, or even beyond? Who knows? There's a few hundred posts still in the backlog or that I'm working on, and there's plenty of Superhero Media that I'm yet to get to. Basically, I'll keep doing this so long as I enjoy doing so and can find the time to work on it. Things will probably change as my life changes, but this is fun and I do want to keep going. As is tradition, here's a little fun to lead out with; 

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week for more of the usual.