50s, Slaves, and Point One

Daily Ramble 85: 50s, Slaves, and Point One

Today’s ramble is a bit of a hodgepodge. I take a look at some more of the airport in Secret World Legends, step up to the second episode of American Gods, and take a look at the Marvel Now! first issue.

50s at the Airport

Since I made it out to the airport yesterday, I headed back there again today. I know there are a bunch of missions out there and I want to get through them. The Black Helicopters mission covered one end of the airport but there was plenty more to investigate. I’d have to be careful though – coming out of one of the sewers I ran into a section of the beach where there were level 50 missions and bad guys. I’m definitely not ready for that.

I backed away and headed back to the sewer away from them. One thing I will say is that this seems like a strange airport. With the sewer down the middle of the twin runways there could be some serious problems if a plane veered off one. But I grew tired of chasing zombies through the sewers…I’m gonna head to the buildings next time.

First Watch: American Gods – Episode 2 – The Secret of Spoons – Coming to America

This Coming to America segment takes place in 1697 and focuses on the slave trade as we start out on a ship full of slaves. One of the slaves is praying to Anansi and asking for intercession even though he’s got nothing to offer as sacrafice. He says he doesn’t know what’s happened to his mother who was on the boat with him and Orlando Jones walks down the stairs and let’s the slave know that the sailors threw her off the boat because she wouldn’t ‘service’ them.

Jones is playing Anansi and he’s there to let the slaves know they’re black. And they’ve been black since the sailors decided they were white. They get to show up at the land of opportunity to be slaves. It’s really a horrible thing to think about, but this show tells things like they are or were. Anansi, or Mr. Nancy as he becomes known as, says the only good thing is the tobacco they harvest for free is gonna give a bunch of the white guys cancer down the road.

He paints a bleak picture of 300 years of subjugation and racism and encourages the slaves to get angry and revolt. To take over the ship and slit the throats of the Dutch who’ve captured them. Then burn the ship in sacrifice to Anansi. He then breaks the chains of the men and they rise up and assault the Dutch sailors and burn the ship. The spider, Anansi, makes it to land though the men do not.

Quite a powerful scene and other than the fact that Anansi takes the form of a spider multiple times it got it’s point across…I don’t like spiders so much though. This no-holds-barred attitude is nice to see in a major TV series and I think it’s part of what makes this show so good. There’s no couching racism or slavery in anecdotes or metaphors, they come right out and tell it like it was. This is how things really happened in the 17th century and how a lot of Africans came to America.

Ok, so I only looked at the first 10 minutes of the episode this time around but I’m gonna try to get moving to watch 15 minute segments or so rather than scenes (of which there are a bunch) – otherwise it’ll take me forever to get through each episode.

Marvel Now! Point One

The Marvel Now! Point One issue collects 6 stories that’re gonna be part of the Marvel Now! property. I’m not too sure what it is other than an event or something that happened within the Marvel Universe back in 2012. As for event though, I’m pretty sure it’s not a distinct event like Age of Ultron or Age of Apocalypse, but rather just a “restarting point” for some of these titles.

As I read it, I enjoyed the 6 stories even though I had little background from where they were coming from and the way they’re put together is an attempt to pique reader’s interest in upcoming issues. That said, the stories seem kinda interesting, from the Loki recruitment of Young Avengers to the Ant-Man vendetta against Doctor Doom. This issue also contains an origin story for Star-Lord and from what I can tell, this was a couple years before Guardians of the Galaxy became popular with the movie. The bottom line is that these stories are decent jumping on points for the titles and while I only plan on reading those that are related to Comic Book Herald’s Fast Track, I think some of these titles might show up – I’m not sure. In any case, the issue is decent and the fact it covers 6 stories I feel like I learned a bunch. I’ll break things down further later on.