The DrkNite's Shrubbery

July 2020: We were halfway through a year like no other. The covid-19 global pandemic had dominated the headlines. Stay at home orders of varying degrees directed by governing bodies resulted in majority of the world's population unable to go anywhere or do anything. I think it's fair to say video games saw an increase in activity. I can confirm from my perspective at least. My part of the world was experiencing a brief respite from lockdowns. We were able to visit family. Shops were open for business, albeit with some restrictions. For a couple of months, things seemed almost normal. But case numbers were back in the news. Outbreaks had seen an increase in daily numbers and the word was we'd going to go back into lockdown. It was at this point I decided to race to my local EB Games store and pick up Ghost of Tsushima which had just released. Ghost of Tsushima from Sucker Punch Studios tells the story of Jin Sakai. A samurai during the Mongol invasion of Japan in 1274 and t...

We are approaching the end of another Hollywood blockbuster summer. And with that comes the usual analysis of box office earnings and journalistic opinions regarding the success of movies. Comic book films in particular. So what's one more piece analysing the situation from someone with no professional journalism experience? The term "superhero movie fatigue" gets thrown around a fair bit these days. Especially when recent Marvel films Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts* are unable to break even at the box office. Many things I see online will use the words "superhero fatigue" with other negatives such as "flop" or "unsuccessful." I get confused when I see them when a movie like last year's Deadpool & Wolverine makes over a billion dollars. So I decided to look into it to see if it is actually a thing or just a phrase podcasters and YouTubers are throwing out there for engagement. 2008 saw the release of two significant...

San Diego Comic-Con is on this week. So I figured I would write about how I became the comic book collector I am today. As long as I can remember, I've always been a Batman fan. I would watch the 90s animated series religiously after school. Batman Forever was the first comic book movie I remember seeing in a cinema. I even had my own Batman costume. I can't help my shelf During the 90s, I watched other comic book cartoons, especially the assortment from Marvel. X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man etc. I learnt at an early age there were 2 big comic companies, DC and Marvel, and the shows made by the latter would usually have intros by some old guy with a lot of enthusiasm named Stan. The 2000s rolled around and we were getting live action adaptations of these shows. X-Men and Spider-Man being the stand outs. But it wasn't until much later I decided to dive deeper into these stories and check out the format they originated from. It was the Batman: Arkham Asylum game that pulled me ...

My previous entry detailed how AEW reignited my interest in pro wrestling after nearly a decade. I had watched their second ever Pay Per View event and been reminded about the spectacle that is sports-entertainment. I had roughly a month before the debut of their weekly TV show "Dynamite" to catch my self up on what I had missed in the wrestling world for the past 5-10 years. I learned about "the Elite." A group of wrestlers that had made a name for themselves in Japan. Kenny Omega, the Young Bucks, and "Hangman" Adam Page. They had built up a huge following through their weekly travel vlog "Being the Elite" which not only detailed their lives travelling from show to show, but also allowed them develop their and storylines and work on their character work. I worked my way from the first episode, watching as many as I could before Dynamite started. It gave me great insight to the wrestling world outside of WWE. The independent scene, the smaller p...

Hangman Adam Page vs Chris Jericho This is the story of a lapsed wrestling fan and how an upstart promotion brought me back. The date was Sunday, September 1st, 2019. Up until that point I had not watched a wrestling show in roughly 10 years. I was a 90s kid that discovered wrestling during the peak of the Monday Night War. We only had access to WCW at the time so Nitro was where I would get my fix. Enthralled by the battles between Sting and the nWo. Entertained by a roster of bigger than life characters like DDP, Goldberg, Booker T. And amazed by the cruiserweight division featuring the likes of Chris Jericho, Rey Mysterio Jr, and the late great Eddie Guerrero. I would eventually get access to WWE Raw and be introduced to the likes of The Undertaker, Triple H, The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin. Then before I knew it, WCW went away, being bought out by WWE and folding many members of the roster into their own. My enjoyment for the sport didn't waiver, in fact during my early te...