What's the Scoop on Adult Swim's Black Dynamite?

Following in the footsteps of its live-action feature source material, Adult Swim’s new animated series Black Dynamite centers on its title character (played by Michael Jai White), a funky government agent-turned-assassin who is hellbent on stopping “the man,” while also protecting his eclectic family of pimps, prostitutes and orphans. While most of the original film’s cast and creative team have returned for the new show, The Boondocks creator Carl Jones has also come aboard as executive producer.

IGN recently spoke to some of the cast and crew to talk about the new series and how they worked to adapt the movie into a half-hour animated series. Jones recalled that it all started after he saw the Black Dynamite film, which White had written and created.

“As soon as I saw [the movie], the first thing that came to my mind was that this would make an amazing animated series,” said Jones. “Coincidentally, a week later, my manager called me and told me that the production company that did the movie was trying to reach out to me about developing a cartoon. So we met with Mike, started kicking around some ideas and then we took it to Adult Swim.”

During production, the new series quickly took on a life of its own, deviating from the low-budget, B movie look of the 2009 blaxploitation film and focusing instead on a slick and stylized aesthetic. “There are advantages in cartoons,” Jones continued. “You can do things that you can’t do in live-action. It actually opened up a lot more doors for us to explore. Just like the movie, we do film parodies. But now we can do a film parody of King Kong and then actually have Black Dynamite fighting a giant albino gorilla on top of the Watts Towers.”

However, White noted that there are still many similarities to the movie, particularly with the characters. “The essence of the characters is still there. That strange family unit is still evident in the cartoon. It’s not all that different, character-wise.”

Byron Minns, who reprises his role as Bullhorn on the show, felt that the series opened up new doors, allowing the characters to really flesh out their storylines. “The thing that makes the animated series special is that we’re able to delve into the characters in full,” he said. “In the series we have ten movies, and each episode is about a different character. We get to really see who these people are in different situations, how they interact as a family. In that way, it takes the movie so much further.”

Not unlike The Boondocks, Black Dynamite explores its mature themes through the use of comedy, offering entertainment for older and younger viewers alike. “I love the adult cartoons,” said White. “When a kid and an adult can watch it and get different things out of it -- this is one of those things where I think a teenager and an older adult will get different layers out of it. This is the kind of stuff that I would watch.”

Added Jones, “The interesting thing is, we have a whore house in the show, but you never actually ever see them whoring. I made it a point; you won’t ever actually see Black Dynamite being a pimp, and you won’t ever see the whores actually whoring because that’s not what [the show] is about. It’s just a way to give the world a texture that actually existed in that era, but the stories actually have nothing to do with it.”

Although the series is set in the 1970s, Jones said that the show is very modern in the way its presented. “The music of that time period, the colors, the styles, the fashions -- these are things that I think younger people can get out of it because the point of view is very young and fresh, but it’s also set in a world very familiar to people that are 30, 40, 50 years old. To me, it plays on so many different platforms and levels. You have a whole audience of fans that love animated action and fighting, stuff like that. Then you’ll get the Dave Chappelle, Boondocks social commentary and that type of comedy. There are so many ingredients that I think make it palatable for just about everybody.”

Black Dynamite also aims for a unique vision that really utilizes the animated medium while also taking advantage of its distinct period setting. “These people come from a particular slice of life,” said Minns. “They all have different backgrounds. You have a lead character, an ex-CIA assassin who goes back to the neighborhood and takes care of these prostitutes and orphans -- and in his world, that’s noble.

“We have ten crazy episodes that will explore almost any ‘70s icon that we can come up with, and that’s the beauty of animation," he continued. "We can have these people as guest stars on our show. We can bring back Elvis, we can see little Michael Jackson.”

As Kym Whitley, the voice of Honeybee, concluded, “I believe it’s going to be a hit because when I watched it I enjoyed the animation, the story -- it moved. I liked the characters, and it was something I’d not seen before on Adult Swim.”

Black Dynamite premieres Sunday, July 15 on Adult Swim.

Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he desperately seeks your approval. Show him some love on Twitter and IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes - "Infiltration" Review

Note: Full spoilers for this episode follow.

This week's installment of Earth's Mightiest Heroes tended to wear its influences on its sleeve, drawing material from a number of comics involved in Marvel's Secret Invasion storyline. As in the Black Panther story  "See Wakanda and Die," Panther was charged with repelling an invasion of his homeland. As in several issues of Mighty Avengers, Nick Fury struggled to uncover which of Earth's heroes had been replaced. And as in Secret Invasion itself, a crashed Skrull ship revealed an entire crew of what appeared to be escaped Avengers. It was a packed episode, but luckily the end result was less choppy than might be expected.

Ms. Marvel of all characters proved to be the star of the show this time. She served as the voice of moderation between the crashed "Avengers" and Black Panther's forces. Her ongoing struggle to reconcile her duties to S.W.O.R.D. with her status as an Avenger is serving the show well. And seeing Carol unleash her powers later in the episode is a treat. As much as the character has suffered a rocky history in the comics, Earth's Mightiest Heroes continues to do right by Ms. Marvel.

The battle for Wakanda was also enjoyable, albeit not quite at the scale I was hoping for. What should have been a siege of a massive and highly advanced city instead played out as a brawl between a handful of Skrull impostors and Wakandan footmen, with a few tanks and cannons thrown in for good measure. One area DC shows like Young Justice continue to dominate Marvel's efforts is in animation quality. It's hard not to wonder what this battle might have looked like with Young Justice-caliber animation. Still, the individual character match-ups were fun. The only thing cooler than one Black Panther kicking ass is two Panthers battling each other. There was also something strangely satisfying about seeing Wasp revert to full size in order to deck the Skrull Giant-Man. Call it payback for the infamous spousal abuse storyline in the comics.

Iron Man also returned to the spotlight briefly for an unexpected team-up with Doctor Doom. This episode expertly captured the uneasy relationship the two have always shared in the comics. Doom may have disdain for all humans, but even he has to begrudgingly respect Tony's scientific acumen. It's also nice to be reminded that this show isn't limited by the same character rights issues as the Avengers movies are. That fact was further emphasized with the glimpse of Nick Fury's Skrull candidate charts. These charts offered a who's who of Marvel cameos, including everyone from Wolverine to Magneto to Luke Cage. Aside from fan service, the Fury scenes worked nicely as a means of tying some loose threads together. Fury revealed the myriad ways in which Skrull agents like Captain America and Mockingbird have been manipulating recent events towards the Skrulls' end. Unfortunately, Fury was taken down before he and his remaining allies could go on the offensive. Hopefully we'll get a chance to see his abbreviated Secret Warriors squad in action before this storyline wraps up.

Much in the same way Secret Invasion itself did, I felt this episode missed some potential with the impostor Avengers. It would have been exciting to see at least one of the characters revealed as the real deal. But with the invasion plotline still unfolding over the next couple episodes, there's plenty of time yet for more Skrull-related shocks and surprises. I only hope these next chapters do a better job of capturing the full scale and scope of this conflict.

Jesse is a writer for IGN Comics and various other IGN channels. Follow Jesse on Twitter, or find him on IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Louie: "Telling Jokes/Set Up" Review

Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.

First off, I was very happy to see Lilly and Jane back this week. This show gets a tremendous amount of wonderful material out of the scenes between Louie and his two daughters, with none of the cloying, saccharine crap regular sitcoms use when it comes to cute little kids. Young Ursula Parker is especially funny and natural, and had me cracking up as Jane exclaimed, “I don’t get it! I just don’t get it!” at a knock knock joke that went over her head.

The way we first heard Louie talk about her “Who didn’t let the gorilla in the ballet?” joke early in the episode in his standup routine and then actually saw her say it at the end was a really nice touch. The standup bit was hysterical, as he analyzed her thought process when she said this joke, while the payoff was just a sweet scene between father and daughter.

Of course, the main story here was Louie’s friends trying to set him up with a woman named Laurie (perfectly played by The Fighter’s Oscar-winning Melissa Leo), without bothering to tell either of them about it. What followed was an expertly-done Louie scenario – and a much more typically strong episode for the show than the season premiere. The way Louie and Laurie were both pissed off, but then had a sense of shared bemusement about the situation seemed to be heading towards a, “Hey, maybe there will be some sparks here after all…” situation.

Her then matter of factly giving him a blow job inside her truck was a surprise (to Louie as well), but it’s what followed that brought this to that special hysterical and yet pretty messed up place Louie can go.

Her proclamation, “I just sucked your d**k. You’re gonna eat my p**sy” was just one small segment of their very funny, very on point back and forth, as she demanded satisfaction, and Louie made things worse by saying stuff like, “If I had done what you did, I would feel like a whore,” while saying that going down on her would be too intimate. This was a classic male double standard of course (he had no objections to him doing something so “intimate” to him), but made all the more direct and graphic (and amusing) by the specific acts they were so openly discussing.

But it got really messed up when she went from calling him gay (seemingly to goad him into going down on her to prove his sexuality) to simply smashing his head into the window and forcing his face into her crotch. It’s one of those fascinating things… I have no doubt if the situation were reversed with a male character doing those exact actions to a female character (the initial sex act included), it would play as a ghastly, brutal sexual assault. But when Melissa Leo does that to Louis C.K., it’s a very funny moment… even though it still is, you know, a ghastly, brutal sexual assault. In fact, it’s funny almost because it’s so f**ked up. Damn if Louis C.K. doesn’t know how to tap into that weird place others wouldn’t think of going for humor. “Lick it! Lick it!”, indeed. This is a show not afraid to go to very uncomfortable and even twisted places, and I continue to admire it for that.

Despite Louie saying he’d be up for “going out” with Laurie again, I’m guessing that he won’t be seeing her again… But this is Louie, so you never know.

Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com