Film Review: Masters of the Universe (2026)

Lighthearted nostalgic adventure that doesn't take itself too seriously

Saturday mornings in the ‘80s were a sacred time for fantasy loving kids, a time when they could indulge in a range of fantastical animated adventures. Some cartoons were available in the after school hours as well. Long before cable gave us 24-hour kids and cartoon channels, and before streaming services gave us on-demand access to thousands of superhero shows, weekend and after school cartoons were the primary gateway to adventure. Among the curated selection of kids cartoons was He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. The series, based on an existing toy brand, gave kids the animated version of action figures from Mattel’s Masters of the Universe collection. In full disclosure, I will note that I am not a He-Man (or spinoff She-Ra) superfan, although I watched some of both original shows in their original runs and have sometimes watched other iterations of the series, including Netflix’s She-Ra reboot. I mention this because the 2026 Masters of the Universe feels very intentionally grounded in that original sense of childhood nostalgia. Depending on your perspective, you may find this a joyous relief or an irritation. For me, despite the film’s many shortcomings, I mostly found it to be the former: a fun, optimistic surprise in a sea of otherwise perfectly appropriate and timely cinema bleakness and intensity.

In the 2026 adventure, Adam is the young prince of Eternia, a magical kingdom with talking animals and sorcerers. He is small for his age and hesitant to fight. As a result, he is pushed around by the other kids in their weapons training sessions and looked down on by his father the king. Despite this, he is friends with his strong friend Teela and is encouraged by his teacher, Teela’s dad, the head soldier Duncan. Adam’s home is Castle Grayskull, home to a sacred sword of power and protected by a mage known as the Sorceress. When the evil sorcerer Skeletor and his partner Evil-Lyn attack the castle, the king’s forces are overwhelmed. The queen, who is from Earth, is forced to send Adam and the sword to safety through a portal to Earth. But in the fall to Earth, Adam loses the sword. Suddenly (one time skip later), fifteen years have passed and Adam is going on Tinder dates and working in HR in Oklahoma City. Despite his average life, he is obsessed with memories of his home planet (although no one believes him) and is determined to regain his lost sword. When he finally finds it, it triggers an attack by a fantastical creature, which leads to a rescue by his now grown-up friend Teela, who takes him back to Eternia. Adam must use the sword and his own inner strength to rescue his parents, free his people, and retake his kingdom from Skeletor.

The major strength of this film is the lead actors. Nicholas Galitzine is believable and enjoyable as a likeable but insecure everyman who knows he’s destined for more than the drudgery of his day job. Camila Mendes, who did several seasons as Veronica in Riverdale, is excellent as the no-nonsense, sharp, grown-up-in-the-room in all of the scenes. Idris Elba is, as always, perfect as Duncan, who ranges from tough teacher to substitute father figure to defeated and depressed drunk to fierce soldier. Kristen Wiig is also funny as Duncan’s sarcastic robot companion. There is even a Dolph Lundgren cameo, where the former He-Man actor gives Nicholas Galitzine some cryptic advice about the way to be a hero.

There are many funny moments in this film, including the opening scene where Adam is telling his complicated life story to his eyerolling blind date. Although not all of the jokes hit, the story is, for the most part, amusing and very kid-friendly. Unlike other superhero live-action films, Masters of the Universe opts for comedy and camp as its primary tone. The choice is a bit unexpected in this age of edgy superhero interpretations that are either grim or cynical. Masters of the Universe is closer to the tone of the Barbie movie or the live-action One Piece series. But it opts out of Barbie’s cerebral social commentary sarcasm or One Piece’s balance of outrageousness and grim intensity. It’s most similar in tone to the 2017 live-action Power Rangers, a film that tried to balance a modern, edgy aesthetic with classic, campy, kids show nostalgia. Power Rangers was a film that started off edgy/cool in the first half and then jarringly dove into campy kids nerdiness in the second half. However, Masters of the Universe has a clear target audience and vibe in mind, and stays consistent in its tone of lightness, kid-friendly playfulness and self-aware nostalgia.

In fact, the film is very self-aware of its campy nostalgia. Adam reps the old Prince Adam outfit by wearing a pink button-down shirt and jeans in his non-He-Man scenes. He repeatedly acknowledges the goofiness of some of the things he says or does, admitting that many of his choices are based on a child’s worldview and childhood memories he wants to reconnect with. Although he is an adult, it is clear he is emotionally stuck in his childhood trauma, loss, and insecurity. In the original He-Man animated series, Adam’s fearful or lackadaisical attitude was an artificial cover for his alternate identity. In Masters of the Universe, he has genuine hesitation and insecurities. And when he transforms, everyone around him knows he’s the same person with the same insecurities. This evolution of the premise is an asset to the story, to humanize both him and his connection to his friends. And it avoids the always annoying trope of close friends not noticing that the hero and their clearly identical alter ego are the same person.

However, despite the appeal of the story and the fun tone, there are some elements of the film that are confusing. Given the intentional and thoughtful characterization of Adam, it’s odd to leave out any reference to his childhood upbringing on Earth. He talks about life on Eternia as if it is the only thing he knows. In other lost prince/princess stories, we get at least a quick explanation of their survival. Superman was adopted by the Kents; Emma from Once Upon a Time was raised in foster homes in the U.S. The absence of even a passing explanation for his survival was a distracting plot omission that felt like a missed opportunity to give this Oklahoman Adam some personal context. His bestie and roommate Hussein is a likeable but underused character who mostly disappears from the plot without an opportunity to get to know about his connection to Adam. Another strange choice is an extended detour into Adam’s day job at a human relations company where his obsession with swords gets him in trouble. There is a particularly protracted scene of his boss (an excellent Sasheer Zamata) lecturing him on sensitivity in a way that paints her as a semi-villain (she seems almost like a corporate counterpart to Evil-Lyn), and the scene is clearly meant to mock corporate sensitivity lingo. The fact that a consent joke is twice used as a derisive punchline is another strange choice. Later in a crucial moment on Eternia, Adam initially opts for negotiation and empathy when everyone wants him to fight, but he is soon forced to abandon that approach in favor of fighting. This throughline is a confusing theme in a film that is otherwise fun, optimistic, and likeable.

Like many films lately, Masters of the Universe is at least thirty minutes too long, especially for something that is primarily a comedy adventure. It is a film that has plenty of kid-friendly content and doesn’t take itself too seriously. The very last scenes and the first post-credits scene emphasize this lightheartedness with a big homage to the original 1980s cartoon in its final send-off. Although it deals with themes of empathy versus aggression and self-confidence versus insecurity, the overall story is mainly a fun reminder of childhood imagination and adventure. Depending on your mood, that may be just what you need.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Highlights:

• Self-aware nostalgia
• Solid acting
• Kid-friendly content and humor

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Comic Book Review: Absolute Martian Manhunter

Lean, green and cosmic in a way you've not seen before

Illustration: Javier Rodriguez

I’ve not been a reader of comics featuring superheroes for the longest time, and certainly not DC or Marvel, but then my friend dropped a copy of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow on me, and the rest was, as they say, history.

Call it my own snobbishness at the idea of superheroes, my weariness of superheroes fighting for the status quo, or just a fear of how to get started with a medium that has more options than grains of sand on the beach. Anyway, I arrived at DC Comics only recently, and a friend recommended I start with the first collected volume of Absolute Martian Manhunter, written by Deniz Camp and illustrated by Javier Rodriguez. This volume covers issues 1-6. There’s a second coming in August 2026, which will take the story to the end of issue 12.

I’m delighted to say it was nothing like what I thought I was going to get. The artwork is really trippy, colourful, unexpected and full of emotion. The Martian Manhunter here isn’t the one you know from the Justice League, but a cosmic entity travelling by consciousness and protecting the emotions of the vulnerable from the physical disasters that unfold when we lose ourselves in fear or hate or despair.

This was interesting to me in a number of ways—by making this something that wasn’t about people in capes but about one of those same heroes appearing in an unexpected (to me) way, it gave me both a way back into these characters but also provided something novel, surprising and with a lot of room to do more than focus on a superhero to the exclusion of everyone else.

Absolute Martian Manhunter has the eponymous character inhabiting people to make themselves present on Earth, and they’re here investigating an imbalance in people’s psyches. This manifests itself as radicalisation—the kind that leads to riots and violence and hatred and death.

Yeah, it’s a little on the nose, but as a metaphor for examining what divides us and how you might overcome that, it’s a lovely little story.

This first volume is a complete arc, which felt great because it does a great job introducing this unusual take on the character, laying out his concerns but also introducing the human characters through whom MM is intervening in human affairs.

The main character, John Jones, is an FBI agent (one assumes pre-Kash Patel, given the Bureau’s competence in this comic) who starts to investigate how 24 people died in the same way but were killed by 24 different and unrelated perpetrators on the same night. Each attack appears carried out by a lone wolf—except, of course, they’re all done in the same way at the same time.

These baffling crimes are heinous and devastating, but also have an uncanny element to them which Jones can’t get his head around. That is until MM arrives in his head and turns his head upside down. Having a cosmic entity invade your consciousness will ruin your day, and Jones spends as much time trying to survive the arrival of MM in his psyche as he does investigating the how and why of these crimes.

This creates a tension in the story between Jones and MM that feels, if not quite a battle, then certainly a fraught journey of acceptance and challenge—especially around trauma and what we do with it even when we do want to talk about/process it.

Alongside this is the series antagonist, a White Martian who MM explains not as an actual White alien from Mars but as another cosmic power who seeks to destroy because that’s its fundamental nature. The White Martian is built of hate and corruption and violence, and to the extent it wants something rather than being a force of nature, these are the things it wants.

I found the political underpinnings of this interesting, suggesting that hate and violence and extremism are as much a viral meme (in the worst sense of “virus”) that eats its host alive regardless of the cost. In this sense there’s a peak transmission rate and infection rate that, ultimately, results in complete eradication, but this end point is of no concern, only the journey of violence and destruction.

AMM supposes that sometimes those who want to destroy have no other goal than destruction. In a world in which we constantly hear idiots telling everyone they’re “disrupters,” it’s hard not to see how such an approach finds so little resistance—because most of us are built to assume that people want something longer term—stability, peace, calm, predictability. When something comes along that wants none of these things and actively doesn’t care about negotiating, the future or how this all ends, well, our defences are pretty weak to that. AMM suggests there are ways of defeating such radicalisation and attacks, but they aren’t easy, and they’re not momentary ripostes but ways of being that require practice and vigilance.

Highlights:

• Incredible colouring
• Neatly done psychological story
• Cosmic horrors

Nerd coefficient: 6/10, a really great take on a classic DC character.

Reference: Camp, Deniz, and Rodriguez, Javier. Absolute Martian Manhunter [DC Comics, 2026].

STEWART HOTSTON is an author of all kinds of science fiction and fantasy. He's also a keen Larper (he owns the UK Fest system, Curious Pastimes). He's a sometime physicist and currently a banker in the City of London. A Subjective Chaos, BSFA and BFA finalist, he's also Chair of the British Science Fiction Association and Treasurer for the British Fantasy Society. He is on bluesky at: @stewarthotston.com.

Film Review: Disclosure Day

It’s not about the power of whistleblowing. It’s about the power of movies

The common refrain I keep seeing in most reviews of Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day is that the 79-year-old-director is too behind the times if he believes that showing people the truth will suffice to fix the world. Those complaints don’t give Spielberg enough credit. It’s too literal to read Disclosure Day as a movie about secret alien files. It’s like reading Inception as a movie about psychonautic espionage. There’s no way Spielberg isn’t aware that we’ve fallen into a cynical, post-truth world, and yet this is the movie he chooses to make at this point in history. I suspect the guy knows what he’s doing, and he knows that, precisely because we’ve stopped placing any trust in truth, this movie’s plea for unafraid openness to each other is the message we need to hear.

Moreover, I think Disclosure Day is Spielberg’s Inception: it’s his personal statement on what moviemaking means to him. (Yes, I know The Fabelmans exists. But that one merely tells us his point. This one shows us.)

It would be one thing if Disclosure Day had stuck to the character of Daniel, the hacker who steals a trove of secret government videos that prove aliens are real, and just followed him on his race against time to make the files public. That would be the kind of movie we’ve seen a thousand times, the kind of movie the haters believe they’re criticizing. But the message of Disclosure Day is not “Our problems would disappear if the truth were exposed.” What it’s trying to say is, rather, “Our problems would be seen more clearly if the truth were received.” That’s where the character of Margaret comes in. Healing the world takes more than having someone brave enough to make others see; you also need someone brave enough to do the seeing.

The power of seeing has been a constant in Spielberg’s work, most obviously noticeable in his signature move of framing a character’s awestruck face. In a couple scenes of Disclosure Day, which have been unfairly mocked by reviewers, a character who is not very well hidden manages to sneak away from the bad guys who are looking for them. That’s not a mistake in scene composition; it’s fully intentional. In this story, what marks the bad guys as bad guys is that they don’t want to see. In a movie that is so explicitly about moviemaking, that’s got to be the closest there is to a definition of evil, and that’s why the two heroes in this movie are one who shows and one who sees.

In parallel with Daniel’s quest, we follow Margaret, who after an encounter with a mysterious bird gains the power to read into people’s souls, speak in their language, understand their deepest truths. What is happening is that she has become the ideal moviegoer. Margaret sees a stranger and instantly understands their whole life. That’s what happens to you when you sit at the movie theater. Later, she gains the power to show people hidden parts of themselves. If a movie is well made, that’s also what should happen to you at the movies: the story should tell you something about you. In the most symbolically charged sequence of Disclosure Day, Margaret visits a replica of her parents’ house, which is for all purposes a movie set, so she can relive a repressed memory of a childhood encounter with aliens. She’s watching a movie that turns out to be about herself.

That’s how Spielberg feels about movies. He’s showing you a story he made up for his own reasons, but he hopes it reveals a truth about you.

There’s a scene in the middle of Disclosure Day where Daniel shows his girlfriend a sample of the files he stole. If you pay attention, you’ll see that an opening in the wall lets a bit of sunshine enter the room from behind her head. It looks just like a movie projector. That’s the Spielberg formula in a nutshell: let me show you something that will change your life. He’s been saying this, in various ways, throughout his career. In his adaptation of Minority Report, people are judged based on movies made about them (in the original novelette, the reports were written). In the night scenes of Jurassic Park, the only sources of light are the heroes’ handheld lanterns that expose the hidden dangers, effectively movie projectors that create the next bit of action.

In Jurassic Park, the idea was: let me show you… a simulation of life. In A.I., it was: let me show you… a simulation of love. In Minority Report, it was: let me show you… a simulation of you. And in Disclosure Day, the trick is turned on itself: let me show you… what’s on the other side of the simulation. Spielberg has already said plenty about the power of seeing. Now he’s trying to tell you that he sees you, and he hopes to provoke in you the no less transformative experience of feeling seen.

Disclosure Day opens at a wrestling match, a quintessential simulation if we’ve ever seen one. And the very first shot is a boot stomping on the camera. Of course Spielberg knows there are dangers to the power of seeing. In Jurassic Park, you’re safe as long as you’re invisible to the T-Rex. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the hubris of trying to see God is what kills you. In Minority Report, your eyes are the key to how the state controls you. In Disclosure Day, the villain finds perverse uses for an alien machine that (quite literally) lets him see through someone else’s eyes.

Many have called Spielberg naïve for making a movie about his belief that movies can save us. That critique is not only unfair, but also logically self-defeating: if he didn’t believe that, he wouldn’t be making movies in the first place. How else would any sincere art exist? It’s only fitting that the ending of Disclosure Day has the entire planet turned into a movie theater, all of humankind joined in the experience of seeing something that makes them feel seen. Is that schmaltzy? Very well, let it be schmaltzy. It’s not like jaded cynicism has taken us anywhere worth being at.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Book Review: Rainmaker, Rainmaker, by Kevin B. Hillstrom

A creepy, evocative Dust Bowl tale of con-men and folklore 

cover painting by William Holbrook Beard, 1885

Remember high school English class? Remember MAN VS. MAN, MAN VS. NATURE, MAN VS. GOD, etc? In my high school lit class, we did not use A03-style tags. These categories were mutually exclusive: if this then not that, certainly not both, let alone all of the above! But Rainmaker, Rainmaker, rises above such artificial categorization. It is all of these, and more. It's a skillfully written, deeply unsettling book that risks, I fear, being lost in the maelstrom of traditionally-published books that bear the advantage of professional marketing and word-of-mouth and established writer reputations. 

Unless I can change that here, today. Because this creepy story of folklore and con-men and Dust Bowl desperation does not deserve to be overlooked amidst the unnavigable volume of 21st century publishing.

MAN VS NATURE: Greenheart, 1936. A once prospering farming town on the great plains of USA is now crumbling under the destruction of the Dust Bowl. Storms bring blinding, choking, unbreathable dust that leaves behind dead bodies, drowned on dry land, their lungs choked with dirt. There is no water; crops will not grow; starving rabbits infest the land and eat everything that grows. 

MAN VS MAN: Into this slow, scrabbling decline, a stranger comes to town: Gideon Starling. He brings with him wealth, glamour, impossible tales of exotic travels. He has been everywhere, done everything. And he promises that he can make it rain in Greenheart. 

He hires our narrator, a teenager named Will Thorpe, pays him handsomely, and asks of him nothing more than his company. Oh, and also, everything he knows about everyone in town. Basic information, nothing huge: what do people say, what do they think, who do they like, who do they hate? Gideon makes friends; he sows hope. But not everyone is as dazzled by his worldly charisma, and fault lines develop.

MAN VS GOD: Who is Gideon Starling? What makes him so unnaturally compelling? Why does the reader find him disturbing -- well before Will starts having doubts -- and mistrust him so deeply that she finds herself putting the book down and avoiding picking it up again without proper mental preparation? Because I want to be very clear here: for all his charisma in the town of Greenheart, for all his sinister vibes, on the page Gideon Starling is no sexy shadow daddy. He's creepy as hell. The events of the first half or more of the book correspond to a straightforward enough bit of literary fiction about con men preying upon desperate people in an evocative setting; but the mood and tone make it clear that something much more disquieting is going on.

Properly exploring that last A03-style tag would bring me into the realm of spoilers, but playing properly coy would make it impossible for me to remark upon some of the most lasting and successful elements of the book. I'm not going to be shy about pointing out that the cover image, a 19th century painting by William Holbrook Beard of a fox-king receiving tribute from his woodland prey subjects, is less metaphorical than it first appears. I'm going to remind people of that awful realization that Julia experiences in The Magicians that a Trickster-fox is everyone's favourite bit of folklore until he actually works his mischief on you, at which point you realize that some types of mischief are not cute and quirky, but absolutely fucking awful. And I'm going to remark what a brilliant concept it is to have creatures from folklore falling into their own portal fantasy, ending up trapped in a world where their magic doesn't work and they must scrabble to survive. 

Just as the farmers were betrayed by nature, finding themselves trapped in someplace weird and terrifying, where everything they thought was true and reliable -- the rain, the wind -- no longer works as it should, so too are these creatures trapped in the wrong world, unable to return to the home they knew. Just as those displaced Dust Bowl farmers become itinerant wanderers, seeking to find a new place, to make a new life, so too must these creatures find-- or make -- or ruthlessly carve -- a new niche for themselves. Some are more successful than others; some make allies, some exploit enemies. Some betray the innocent. The best stories have layers, and the layers that make up this tale -- the unearthliness of the Dust Bowl, which drowns its victims without water; the unexpected cruel humanity of these trapped, homesick creatures of myth and legend -- make a compelling narrative.

Hillstrom is not the only writer to have recently observed the otherworldly potential of the Dust Bowl as a setting. Last year's excellent The Antidote, by Karen Russell, told a very different type of story that built on many of the same components as Rainmaker Rainmaker: the brutality of the jackrabbit drives, the terrible dust storms, the role of Works Progress Administration photographers as key sources of documentary evidence. They're wonderfully evocative narrative tools, and the fact that two such different books have come out so close to each other makes me wonder -- why only two? Why do writers not use this setting more often? It's fantastic!

There are a few issues this book that could have been tightened up. Some revelations rely on a rather tired trope of meeting someone who just happens to have some very esoteric knowledge conveniently stored in his home library. Others rely on essentially tying the hero to a chair and monologuing at him. But where some tropes are deployed in conventional ways, other issues of pacing are nonstandard, but thereby effective and novel. A leisurely epilogue might feel like an oddly slow fade-out, but it has the effect of properly acknowledging that people's lives can extend beyond the main events of a book. Learning how these characters grow and move apart and experience joys and successes and griefs and utterly mundane disappointments does a lot to make them more real than when they were merely actors in a fantastical story.

Give this book a read, friends! There is gold to be found in the roiling tumult of self-published, indie-published, small-press-published books that struggle for visibility in the shadows of the big names. It is my privilege to dive therein and come out with treasures to share with you. This is one such treasure. Please come and have a gander at it.

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The Math

Nerd coefficient: 8: Well worth your time and attention

Highlights:

• Evocative Dust Bowl setting
• Folklore
• Con men

References: 

Hillstrom, Kevin B., Rainmaker, Rainmaker [2026].

Russel, Karen., The Antidote. [Knopf 2025].

CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative or on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/ergative-abs.bsky.social.

Graphic Novel Review: Absolute Wonder Woman (Volumes 1 and 2)

An intriguing new backstory for a beloved superhero

It’s hard to believe that Wonder Woman has been around for almost eighty-five years. Over the years, the strong willed hero Diana has evolved from a bold fantasy icon in World War II to various iterations of female power tangled in a range of artistic expressions that both support and undercut these ideals. In addition to decades of comics, Wonder Woman has appeared on television, in live action series, in a variety of cartoons, and, most recently, in big screen films. In most versions of the character’s story, Diana is a born as an Amazon princess, raised on an idyllic hidden island of strong women who pursue intellectual as well as physical strength, but most of all, maintain their isolation from the rest of the world. Diana’s life is changed when an American pilot crashes on her island and Diana rescues him and soon finds herself drawn into the problems of the rest of the world. She becomes a champion for humanity, particularly in America, fighting evil humans as well as supernatural creatures, while trying to fit in with modern American culture.

Absolute Wonder Woman is a part of a new D.C. Comics series which reimagines our favorite Justice League superheroes with very different and far more bleak backstories. Written and designed by Kelly Thompson, Hayden Sherman, Mattia De Iulis, and Jordie Bellaire, Absolute Wonder Woman shows Diana’s journey to heroism starting from a very an unexpected origin: life in the underworld. The story is collected in two volumes, The Last Amazon and As My Mothers Made Me. Both volumes are told in both the present time and in flashbacks which reveal elements of Diana’s upbringing and elements of her unique character. Both stories dive straight into the action without much backstory and then pause to show unexpected memories that tell the hero’s story.

The Last Amazon 

The Last Amazon opens with an attack of monsters on Gateway City. The attack is terrifying but Diana warns it’s only the beginning of a larger attack by a mega-monster known at the Tetracide. Then we get her backstory. Unlike other versions of the Wonder Woman story, Diana was stolen from her mother's home on Themyscira, as a baby, and thrown into the underworld where she is left with an angry witch named Circe who lives in an area of hell called the Wild Isle. Even as a toddler, Diana shows the ability to fight off lethal creatures but can also show them unexpected kindness. Circe is initially indifferent to the child but grows to love her as she raises her in the desolate, monstrous environment. But as a young woman, Diana’s difficult but loving world is changed when an American pilot, Steve Trevor, is transported into hell and attacked by a hydra. When Diana saves him they become friends and she makes a stunning sacrifice to send him back to the world of the living. Later she arrives in his home, Gateway City, to fight of the attacking Tetracide. Aiding her are Steve, his assistant Etta Candy, Etta’s sister Gia, and historian Barbara. The story moves back and forth between the present time and flashbacks to the Diana’s childhood. The Greek gods are regular elements of the story and participants in the adventures. The Tetracide is an interesting antagonist since its power lies not just in its physical strength but also in its ability to affect people’s emotions. To deal with it, Diana comes up with an outrageous plan with dangerous consequences for herself and others.

Although the primary story is filled with action and intensity, the characters are mostly developed via the more slowly paced backstories. We see Circe’s wise influence on Diana. And, we see Diana’s own moral determination from a young age as well as her feeling of spiritual connection to a culture from which she was cut off. In addition to the serious dialogue and the heavy emotions, the story is interspersed with nice moments of humor that humanize the characters and ground readers in the contrast between our everyday reality and the world of gods and monsters. For example, when Diana does an intense, Greek mythology interspersed, explanation of her need to replace her severed arm Gia responds simply by saying, “Arms are…good to have.”

Steve’s character is appealing and supportively green flag throughout the adventure. He is brave without being egotistical, morally strong while being emotionally honest and vulnerable. Despite his ties to the closed-minded government bureaucracy, it is clear that Steve is squarely in Diana’s corner and trusts, supports, and relies on her. There is no overtly romantic dynamic expressed or at issue in the narrative but the two are uniquely bonded. In one tense scene, Steve expresses his gratitude for Diana before choosing to stand with her when she is in a very physically dangerous mental state. It’s a sweet moment of connection after a lot of fighting and intensity.

Visually, Steve is drawn in a way that is so neutral and minimalist that he almost blends into the scenes. Although he is beloved, the visual and narrative focus is on Diana, who is portrayed in a boldly pragmatic design that is solid, and powerful. Rather than the often used red, white, and blue strapless swimsuit style seen in other versions of the character, Diana’s main outfit in Absolute Wonder Woman is drawn as tough battle gear that fully covers her, including muted red pants with weapons holsters and a matching top with battle armor layers, heavy black over-the-knee boots, arm pads and gauntlets, and a heavy black sash around her waist. Her facial features are similarly bold and solid rather than delicate and she is designed as very tall as well as strong and muscled. In their early encounter in Hell, Steve comments on how tall she is and notices her dramatic eyes which are a contrast to her heavy dark hair. In a later scene in Hades’s throne room, Diana's look changes and she is drawn in a more life-like art style with a stunning character design that fits the stark underworld setting.

As My Mothers Made Me

In the second volume of the graphic novel, Diana enters a new struggle in the wake of the Tetracide attack. She discovers a scientist using remnants of the battle to create a weapon in the mysterious Area 41. Diana finds a maze of monsters and trapped mythical creatures who are being held prisoner under the rule of Clea, an ancient Atlantean. Although aided by Steve, Etta, Gia, and Barbara, Diana becomes separated from them and is mostly on her own in this volume although she makes some new allies along the way. 

As the title implies, this volume is less about the big battle adventure and more about Diana’s internal character, personal fortitude, and moral compass. Faced with multiple potential dangers and adversaries, Diana repeatedly chooses compassion, patience, and forgiveness, when she can. But, as she notes, she will also kill if needed. This balance of kindness and pragmatism defines her character. The primary story of escaping the Area 41 maze is framed by a backstory of Diana’s childhood attachment to a turtle who she saves from a monster. Her adoptive mother Circe is fascinated by Diana’s strong moral compass which is grounded in a combination of kindness and strength and pragmatism.

As My Mothers Made Me is noticeably female driven, with almost all of the characters, from the villains to goddesses to the allies, being women. Unlike The Last Amazon, the story is also almost entirely a Diana focused adventure. The supporting characters in her original squad, Steve, Etta, Gia, and Barbara, have much less time on the illustrated pages. Most of the tale is about Diana navigating various levels of the prison while helping those she meets. This second major adventure emphasizes her journey from compassion to lethality when needed, and her struggle to navigate a balance. The coloring and character design is similar to The Last Amazon but each chapter is interspersed with gorgeous stand-alone cover portraits of various interpretations of Diana. It is worth a pause to enjoy the artwork and the unique art style of each piece.

As My Mothers Made Me also offers the first hint of a future crossover with other alternate versions of Batman and Superman. Absolute Wonder Woman is an intriguing exploration of those in bleak circumstances still finding their way to self-fulfillment, personal and societal connections, compassion, and purpose. The volumes have an appealing technique of using the larger adventures as a tool to tell a more personal and internal story. The artwork also reflects the changed worldview with intense, bold interpretations of the beloved character. Overall, this latest underworld version of Wonder Woman is an unexpected and enjoyable reboot of the popular hero’s adventure.

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The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Highlights:

• Dark reimagining
• Morality and pragmatism woven into traditional plotting
• Innovative, intriguing art style

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Book Review: The Palace of Eros, by Caro de Robertis

On making Mount Olympus' foundations shake

I first discovered the work of Caro de Robertis (they/them) with their novel The Gods of Tango, which follows an immigrant from Italy’s new life in Buenos Aires in the early twentieth century, embracing that quintessential Argentinean dance and music, and transitioning gender in the process; I was interested because I am an amateur ballroom dancer and can dance the American bastardization of Tango reasonably well, but know vanishingly little of the original. Since then, I have read some of their other books, including Cantoras, a spellbinding, heartbreaking saga of lesbian life under the dictatorship in Uruguay, and The President and the Frog, an odd little novel that dips into the supernatural. But in their most recent novel they take the speculative plunge: The Palace of Eros could be considered another entry in the recent subgenre of feminist retellings of ancient myth (as my esteemed colleague on this blog Roseanna Pendlebury has deftly discussed the failings of said subgenre).

Unlike Pendlebury, I will admit to you that I am not the ideal audience for this novel, and in all likelihood not the ideal audience for de Robertis’ oeuvre in general. I am heterosexual, cisgender, and male, ethnically mixed between a smorgasbord of western Europe on the one hand and the Philippines on the other. I am autistic, with no romantic relationships in my life thus far. I have no cultural link with Latin America, but I speak Spanish reasonably well if not fluently. Nor am I particularly fluent in classical mythology. A more narrow-minded person may ask why I would read this book to begin with. I would first retort with the well-trod benefits of reading widely, of learning other perspectives, of opening your mind. I would then provide this quote from Jean-Paul Sartre’s introduction to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth:

“Europeans, you must open this book and enter into it. After a few steps in the darkness you will see strangers gathered around a fire; come close, and listen, for they are talking of the destiny they will mete out to your trading-centres and to the hired soldiers who defend them. They will see you, perhaps, but they will go on talking among themselves, without even lowering their voices. This indifference strikes home: their fathers, shadowy creatures, your creatures, were but dead souls; you it was who allowed them glimpses of light, to you only did they dare speak, and you did not bother to reply to such zombies. Their sons ignore you; a fire warms them and sheds light around them, and you have not lit it. Now, at a respectful distance, it is you who will feel furtive, nightbound and perished with cold. Turn and turn about; in these shadows from whence a new dawn will break, it is you who are the zombies.”

The novel is a queer reinterpretation of the story of Psyche and Eros. In this novel, the former is the youngest of three daughters of a farmer. She is said to be the most beautiful, and her father is intent on using that fact to marry her off to a man that could benefit him. She and her sisters are made to sit quietly in their living room as her father socializes with the men of her town. Later, she is displayed as a sculpture would be at an auction, gawked at, leered at, but never actually engaged with in any substantive form. She is objectified in the sense that she is reduced to the status of an object to be traded away, as something to be hopefully received by the suitors, and to be traded away for benefit by her father.

It is at this juncture that Aphrodite, goddess of love, takes note, and is disgusted that men find Psyche more beautiful than her. She sends her child, Eros, to make her fall in love with a monster. Note how I said ‘child,’ and not ‘son,’ as Eros is traditionally male in mythology. Here, Eros presents femme in most contexts but can shapeshift across the gender binary (including sex organs). Though a character whose gender expression is quite fluid, Eros is referred to with she/her pronouns throughout the novel, and that is what I will use here. She is an embodiment of sexual desire, as in classical mythology, but a more expansive, more liberatory, queerer form; she loves both men and women (expressing confusion when contemplating why her mother has only ever had sex with men). More piercingly, she asks why her crossing of the gender binary is so rankling to the other gods, as they change species with regularity. If a man can become a god, and a god can become a swan, surely a man can become a woman, and a woman become a man, so the logic goes, and it is a hard logic to argue with.

Much as in the original myths, Eros arranges to whisk Psyche away to a pleasant valley with an opulent palace filled with luxuries. There are sumptuous meals that are refilled every day, and supplies for art, and baths, and a very big bed. Every night, when Psyche goes to sleep, she is joined in the dark by a person she at first calls, for lack of a better term, her ‘husband,’ who makes her swear to never bring light into the room, leaving ‘him’ anonymous, and to never ask who ‘he’ is. The ‘husband’ is of course Eros, hiding her transgressions against the Olympian patriarchal order by roof and by anonymity. The two will only meet in the marriage bed, in pitch black. This raises two significant themes in the book.

Firstly: if the word ‘Eros’ appearing in the title wasn’t enough to clue you in, there is a lot of sex in this book. The lovemaking sessions between Eros and Psyche are emotionally tense and psychologically deep. Consider that Psyche’s sole exposure to any form of human sexuality beyond rumors of the mechanics involved in heterosexual intercourse is to be leered at as essentially a trophy, to later become the second-class partner in an unequal arrangement as she is ripped away from everything and everyone she loves (her sisters and her mother in particular) to be part of a man’s status game (there is very much a dynamic of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ evident in the way the menfolk of her town behave). It is here that she gets to experience sex as a joyful thing, as something that she can take pleasure in. Eros clearly cares for her needs, and knows how to keep things exciting (the ability to change between male and female forms is used to great effect here). This is a very strongly embodied liberation: liberation not as an abstract concept, but as a thing that exists physically, on the skin and in the nervous system. At first, this appears to be eroticism without the shackles of patriarchy, without the weight of societal expectations, without the status-jockeying and the need to marry a man simply to have basic human needs met. At first.

If all of the above raises some thorny issues of consent in your mind, you have struck on the second theme I was mentioning. Eros has effectively kidnapped Psyche and, without explanation, given her everything she could ever want. Eros resolutely refuses to give any actual identifying information about herself to Psyche, and has made it clear that this cornucopia of gifts will only continue if Psyche agrees to her demands. At first, Psyche is happy to accede due to the novelty of the whole thing, but as time goes on she begins to grow bored with not having any company, and insulted by a lack of explanation. Psyche eventually begins to probe the boundaries of what Eros has allowed and finds answers, to Eros’ great displeasure.

This is the sort of thing that, if left unexamined, would be disturbing, but de Robertis is brave enough to tackle this issue head on. Eros has designed this arrangement to accomplish a number of things: to rescue Psyche from Aphrodite’s wrath, to explore the erotic opportunities of freely transcending the gender binary, and to hide this threat to the Olympian patriarchal order from the eyes of Zeus. Eros is herself deeply traumatized from the way her gender non-conformity has been persecuted, and empathizes deeply with Psyche. But as those with relative privilege so often do to those with less privilege, Eros treats Psyche not as an equal, but as a charity case, to be manipulated and prodded in the service of the former’s sense of self-preservation. In this arrangement, what little agency Psyche has is at Eros’ allowance (and there is some agency; Psyche is thrilled by the ability to engage in artistic expression in the palace, as she takes up painting with gusto). She is not treated as deserving the dignity of a clear answer to what’s going on, the dignity of real consent. What becomes so crushingly clear is that, in her attempt to escape patriarchal norms, she has recreated them in this palace, in this valley, allegedly away from it all. The great tragedy of the bulk of the book is seeing this logic play out; Eros and Psyche both are getting a crash-course education in breaking patriarchal norms, but, as Paulo Freire wrote in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “The oppressed find in the oppressors their model of 'manhood,’” and that in face of education that is not liberatory, the oppressed will only seek to become the oppressor.

It is at this point I am going to spoil the ending because it is too rich in thematic content to leave unremarked upon. Those interested in the story should exercise caution.

Psyche ultimately storms out of the palace and tries to find her way home. Eros, distraught, is found out by the other Olympians and is now in deep trouble with them for breaking their rigid gender norms. More gods get involved, some of whom are on Psyche’s side, and eventually Psyche and Eros come to see each other again, Psyche having reclaimed a sense of dignity and Eros having reckoned fully with the implications of what she had done to Psyche. Eros asks Psyche if she wants to stay in the relationship, and after thinking about it, she says yes. Eros says she will find a way to marry Psyche, and turn her into a demigoddess. One way or another, she says, the Olympians will accept her, and this arrangement. The novel ends not long after.

This is an ending that feels narratively satisfying, but has implications that some may object to. One objection I consider is that this is an abuse victim choosing her abuser, and I was more than a little worried at first. But, thinking about it more thoroughly, I came around to the ending. The novel has made clear the nature of why Eros did what she did, not out of malice, but out of a limited imagination. I can see how Psyche herself could have come to that conclusion in regards to Eros, her mind being opened by her positive experiences within the palace - experiences which would lead her, later, to seeing the issues of the palace arrangement itself. She comes to understand how Eros came from a situation not unlike her own. She understands, then, how Eros came to act the way she did, and she can forgive. That’s what makes the most sense to me, anyway.

This ending, again, is narratively satisfying, but thinking about it more, I find that it has a lot of potentialities that are simply left alone. The idea of the Olympian gods having to recognize a same-sex marriage and a god/dess who jumps across the gender binary at will implies a titanic (no pun intended, but appreciated) shift in the cosmology of this version of Greece, and will doubtlessly resonate in the mortal realm. As an SFF reader and writer, and especially as an alternate history aficionado, I find that this is where de Robertis is most obviously a writer of literary fiction. I quote from a piece in Strange Horizons by Ada Palmer, which is my framework for this particular issue:

 “But one nearly-universal characteristic of contemporary mainstream literary fiction (as nearly-universal as technology is in SF or magic in fantasy) is a focus on a powerless character making an internal journey to come to terms with the world. It may be a journey of finding joy or finding despair, but the world is the challenge, and whether it's static or changing is despite the characters, not because of them. Lit fic thus does not teach any models of how the world changes or how history works, other than the powerlessness model of the individual being ground along by progress, like Charlie Chaplin trapped in the gears of Modern Times. In fact, when literary authors want to talk about characters changing the world, they reach for the tools of SFF or historical fiction, as in Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, Lessing’s Shikasta, Spufford’s Golden Hill, Piercy’s Gone to Soldiers, and Mantel’s Wolf Hall—all of these authors established themselves first as mainstream authors but used genre tools when they wanted to address the genre question of how the world changes.”

The story of Psyche and Eros as presented by de Robertis matches this conception of literary fiction, albeit in a slanted form. Psyche, clearly, has no way of changing the brutal patriarchal order she had the misfortune of being born in. Eros, though, is a bit trickier - she has divine power, but she is presented for most of the novel as being incapable of changing the gendered order of Olympus. This is why this ending was a bit unsatisfying as a work of speculative fiction, whereas for a literary novel it is just fine. The part of me that loves SFF that depicts societies undergoing great change, whether sprawling (like Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 - a book that was pivotal in my political development - or The Ministry for the Future, what Henry Farrell called the ‘apocalyptic systems thriller’) or smaller-scale, localized books like Sim Kern’s The Free People’s Village, found this to be a very abrupt sense of what the narrative’s sense of possibility - we’ve spent almost three hundred pages in a situation where the world must be endured, not changed, but now we have a way to potentially change it! That left me wanting more. Looking at this novel from an SFF perspective, Eros and Psyche are two characters who exemplify very well K. S. Villoso’s point about how worldbuilding and good characterization reinforce each other when writing speculative literature. De Robertis saw fit to let setting mold character, but not character to mold setting. I know literary authors aren’t usually in the habit of writing sequels in the way that SFF writers are, but I really, really wanted a sequel to this book where Eros and Psyche rip the ideological floorboards out from under Olympus and from classical Greece at large, and see what new world emerges.

I finished this book empathizing with Psyche’s desire for dignity, for personhood, as an autistic person of color aware that his government is targeting people like him. I do so, though, with the understanding that as a cisgender heterosexual man I am very much not the target audience, and that there are nuances to this story, and the way it is told, that I have simply missed. My privilege doubtlessly blinds me to things here. I wondered for a while if I were the right person to review this book, being so far removed from the people it’s really about. I can say that it is an engaging, intelligent novel that I enjoyed a lot. I came to the conclusion that I, as someone with the privilege of having a platform like Nerds of a Feather, should use it to amplify good books that wouldn’t get coverage elsewhere in the SFF ecosystem. Ultimately, I believe that if this review brings this book to someone who will benefit from it on a level much deeper than I would, it is worth it.

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Reference: de Robertis, Caro. The Palace of Eros [Primero Sueño Press, 2024]

POSTED BY: Alex Wallace, alternate history buff who reads more than is healthy

Film Review: The Mandalorian and Grogu

Want to watch basically just a no-stakes, super-long episode of The Mandalorian on a huge movie screen this summer while eating popcorn? You can.

A long time ago (3 years), in a galaxy far, far away (Hollywood)...

Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau had just finished writing season 4 of The Mandalorian TV show. But amid all of the hubbub of the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, LucasFilm decided to hold off filming it and instead prioritized making a Mando movie. And that, my friends, is why The Mandalorian and Grogu exists. 

Once you learn this, everything all starts making a lot of sense. Here are the answers to a few questions I know you'll have right off the bat:

• Yes, it's essentially a two-hour episode of the TV show that's released in time for summer blockbuster season. 
• No, it doesn't reveal any interesting lore or invest in heavy world-building.
• Yes, it has the typical Filoni-esque easter eggs, fun cameos and Clone Wars-style easy, clean, G-rated storytelling.
• No, there's absolutely no reason this had to be a movie.
• Tragically no, (for me), the Armorer isn't in it. 

The plot

Our guy Din Djarin is enjoying life as a single dad and contracting for the New Republic. As per usual, he's tasked with a tit-for-tat mission: If he agrees to rescue Rotta the Hutt, son of Jabba the Hutt, his aunt and uncle will provide intel on the location of post-Imperial Warlord Commander Coin. 

He finds out that Rotta, voiced by an unrecognizable Jeremy Allan White, is a popular gladiator on the cyberpunk planet of Shakari. The whole plot revolves around Djarin rescuing and/or escaping from various monsters, creatures, and aliens and double-double crossing the Hutt aunt and uncles. 

There's not much to it, though it does get a little convoluted. It's the standard fare of any Mandalorian episode, really. Problem --> learn about McGuffin to fix said problem --> encounter difficulty --> Obtain McGuffin --> Watch Grogu eat something.

What makes a Star Wars movie a movie

Lest it sound like I'm one of those fans who pooh-poohs nearly every Star Wars entry into the canon, The Mandalorian and Grogu isn't a "bad" film, and this is coming from someone who used to post weekly Mando recaps here. There's just...not much to think about. And maybe that's okay! If the goal for LucasFilm was to launch a fun Star Wars movie for the summer that's just a popcorn movie, I have absolutely no qualms with that. There are definitely things to like about it (more below). 

But Star Wars movies, in general, are emotional gateways for fans. Watching Luke stare into the binary sunset on Tatooine, witnessing Anakin and Obi-Wan's final duel on Mustafar, and experiencing Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor's final embrace on Scarif— these are the moments that stick in our hearts and have followed us into adulthood. Even the polarizing Last Jedi had moments of awe, shock, and absolute sadness.

For a Star Wars movie to have no stakes goes against everything we love about the franchise. Djarin and Grogu get into some tough scrapes in this movie, but there is never a single second where you worry about them not coming out on top. There's even a scene where Grogu has to take care of Djarin for a few days as he lies unconscious recovering from a venomous dragonsnake bite (in a great parallel to Pedro Pascal as Joel recovering in The Last of Us — he's always a down-on-his-luck single dad, isn't he?). 

The things I liked

I've probably said this before, but I like any glimpse into the Star Wars universe writ large, and seeing gorgeous tableaus on the big screen is always a delight. I particularly enjoyed:

• The murky, swampy Hutt planet of Nal Hutta, including the rusty towers that folks will recognize from Jabba's palace on Tatooine. That little bit of continuity just hits different.
• Visiting the cyberpunk planet of Shakari was an interesting addition to the Star Wars "clime-as-planet" database. Though futuristic in shape and feel, it was actually inspired by 1920s Prohibition-era Chicago. It felt lived in and different from the hyper-modern versions of Coruscant we've seen over the years. 
• Ludwig Göransson, who also does the score for the TV show, really outdid himself with the Shakari theme. He takes the Eastern-style pipe and synth leitmotif we're familiar with and incorporates streaking synths and neon audio bursts that creates a Blade Runner-meets-Star Wars vibe. It's Outrun/vaporwave/synthpop but set in space. It slaps.
• The various monsters and beasts are a blast to watch — but then they better be, as it's the only action/plot device in the film. 
• If you live long enough, you get to watch your heroes become X-wing pilots. Seeing Sigourney Weaver don the iconic helmet and go careening through an alien planet was absolutely Ripley-level badassery.

At the end of the day, I'm glad I went and saw this on the big screen on the Thursday before Memorial Day. It was me and a handful of other hardcore Star Wars fans, and we all laughed and reveled together at certain points. It didn't affect me emotionally at all, but maybe that's not always necessary for a fun movie. Like I mentioned earlier, I appreciate any time spent in a galaxy far, far away.

I just may not be able to convince other folks to go with me. 

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The Math

Baseline score: 6/10

Bonuses: Martin Scorsese as an alien food stall owner; the killer synth score;

Penalties: No real soul; Grogu is experiencing Flanderization; absolutely zero stakes; I cannot take a Hutt with six-pack abs seriously.

Gonk droid count: 0

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.