Two Rooks and a Boobytrap

I don’t necessarily have a theme for today’s ramble but I liked the title so I grouped these topics together. Basically, I’ve got a book chapter, a comic book issue, and a TV show episode that I wanted to take a quick look at today.

For my Comic-Con Graphic Novel Book Club we’re taking a look at a title by Brandon Thomas, Khary Randolph, and Emilio Lopez called Excellence. I’m not familiar with the story but in addition to this being a part of the book club reading list, it’s also a title I selected myself back in my pull list from May 8th, 2019.

Excellence #1 sets the stage for what looks like an interesting tale of magic and life lessons as we start at the beginning of Spencer Raymond Dales’ life. He’s born into one of the leading magical families in the Aegis and there are high hopes for his abilities. Unfortunately, he does not exhibit his powers at the normal age and instead shows a delayed onset which causes some concern.

Once Spencer starts using his magic he quickly learns that there is more than simply emotion to his use of magic and with the aid of his grandmother is able to prepare for the assessments. In all, he passes the tests and advances from the designation of Rook to that of Patron and begins his ascendency in the Aegis. We’ll have to check out the next issue to see where his powers take him.

Memories from Long Ago

While I remember my first introduction to Japanese Anime as the times I used to watch Speed Racer, I recall my first love affair with the genre as the Robotech franchise I watched in high school. This was a great series with adult themes, continuing story lines, giant aliens, robots, and pretty much anything a young high schooler could appreciate. I remember racing home to watch each episode after class and then discussing it the next day with my friends at school. It was my first experience with “Must Watch TV”.

Now that I am older, I can just go to one of multiple streaming services and rewatch the show I loved growing up.

I’ve decided to do that and picked Amazon Prime as my service and I actually purchased the series so I could make sure I wouldn’t lose access for any reason. Well, I suppose Harmony Gold could pull the plug – they have made so many bad decisions about the franchise – but I think I should be pretty safe.

So today I kicked off my rewatch and jumped in to the first episode, Boobytrap.

I have to say it’s everything I expected. The music is awesome, the opening sequence is great, and I even get chills as the Veritech Fighters battle the alien Zentradi. I am gonna enjoy rewatching this!

So, the first episode, Boobytrap, sets the stage for the series and the basic premise is that in 1999 an alien ship crashed on Earth and the people of the planet joined together to research and rebuild the spacecraft. It takes them 10 years and as they’re getting ready to launch the newly christened SDF-1, alarm bells sound and we see a fleet of alien ships has entered the solar system. In response to the incursion, the SDF-1 powers up and fires it’s main cannon destroying two of the enemy ships and a war breaks out between the aliens and Earth.

With that idea, we’re primed for some exciting and at times crazy stuff.

I want to go through and as I watch, provide some ideas on which episodes I recommend and perhaps even give reviews of some of them, but for now, I’m happy just rambling as I have about this show and how much I love it.

More Letters

While I’ve already gone in depth into the second chapter of The Rook, I wanted, in similar fashion to the first chapter, to go briefly over it again before continuing my deep dive.

Chapter 2 of The Rook continues the adventures of Myfanwy Thomas but we slow down a bit. While the first chapter deals with a lot of chase scenes and zapping people with her powers, here, we start to learn a bit about our heroine’s history.

We learn about the Checquy and how this secret government organization has been around for centuries protecting Great Britain and the world from all kinds of supernatural baddies. We learn that at the age of 9, Myfanwy is taken into the group and trained to hopefully become a spy and that job that she does have as a Rook in the Checquy is most likely the reason she’s lost her memories. And we learn that whoever erased her memories will probably be trying to kill her next.

It’s a Wrap

I could easily ramble on about all sorts of stuff I’ve been doing lately but these three topics were at the top of my head and they’re also items I want to look into further. I’m definitely gonna continue my reading of The Rook and eventually get back into my deep dive into the story. I’m also happy that I started rewatching Robotech since that is such a fun show and brings back so many good memories. Finally, I’m glad my Comic Book Club has decided to read Excellence since it’s something I’ve been meaning to get around to for a while.

On the whole, I enjoyed all three of my topics today and look forward to continuing my exploration of each of them.

Ramble 2020.02.17 | Two Rooks and a Boobytrap