Out on the Streets Again

  When I was laid off in February from my previous job as a consultant that was hired out to different companies I was lucky in that I immediately hired myself out to the same company that I was hired out to by my old company and didn’t miss a day of work. The arrangement I had with the company was that I would be contracted out until the end of the year and possibly more. In addition, my old employer found themselves unable to support the software I maintained that interfaced with a government entity and hired me to continue maintaining the software on a part-time basis.

  I had never worked for myself full time before and I found that I am not the greatest guy to work for. I took eight days off all year which included three half days off to go to the dentist, two days I had previously committed to playing in the Twin Ports chess tournament, and four days visiting relatives in South Carolina and seeing Ben graduate in Idaho. I did take holidays and weekends off but that was only because the company I was working for was closed because I might have been greedy enough to work eight days a week if I could have. Even when I was ‘off’ I was still working at least a half hour a day checking the program I was supporting as part of my part time duties which included weekends and holidays.

  Long before I started contracting with the company it had been purchased by a bigger company based in Minnesota. I have been through having the company I was working for being bought by a bigger company twice before and I kind of knew the script. Slowly but surely the kind of jobs that are found in every company are eliminated in the company that has been bought. Then a lot of people at the company being bought find new jobs and aren’t replaced. This time around wasn’t any different. Naturally there is a push to move the computer systems over to the buying company which in my experience takes a lot longer than anyone expects and that was no different in this case either. I was expecting to be told that my contract would be ending at the end of September when the company officially changed names. That didn’t happen but I was told in November that none of the contractors’ deals were going to be extended at the end of the year.

  The way my supervisor told me the news I think he was expecting me to be upset which I wasn’t. We had an arrangement until the end of the year and they lived up to their end of the bargain. I was told that it would be understood if I got a new job and left early. To me that wasn’t an option since I also had made a commitment that I intended to live up to. I have been working pretty hard this year and also made a lot of money and I intend to take a few weeks off to relax. I haven’t had a week off with nothing to do since I moved to Iowa in 1994 and spent 6 weeks looking for a job.

  I have a number of projects I’m planning on tackling during my time off. Whether I’ll get to them or not is an entirely different question since I started getting calls from recruiters about jobs before I let my availability be known. One call came from a recruiter who was looking for an EDI programmer. He wrote to me with the job specs and I said I was interested so we set up a phone meeting. The recruiter’s first question was how excited was I about the job opportunity and his second was how much money I wanted since I told him my excitement at the job opportunity was going to be dependent on his much the job paid. The recruiter spent most of his time gauging how negotiable the salary number I gave him was. He first told me that I was at the high end of the clients range and would I be interested if the offer came in for a little less. I said maybe if the benefits were right and then he went a little lower and a little lower until I said that I wouldn’t be interested for that number. Having settled that we ended our conversation but the recruiter called me the next day. He wanted to talk to me right away so I called him back. The recruiter told me that he was worried I would just want to work for his client for a short time until I got a better job. I asked him if he had my resume and we both knew he did. I pointed out that I had worked 13 years at one place and 7 years at another and asked if he thought I had never had chances to move on from either job. This got the recruiter on the defensive and he said of course he knew all that which didn’t explain why he called in the first place. Maybe he was trying to see if I was desperate for a job so he could lower the offer but I’ll probably never know as I haven’t heard from him since.

  I had another call from a different recruiter a few days later. This person wanted me to submit me for a job at the State of Iowa. I sent him my resume and he said he submitted it and then wanted me to send the State of Iowa a form saying that his company was my representative. I sent the form in, the recruiter confirmed it, and I haven’t heard from him either.

  Both of these ‘opportunities’ were cold-calls from recruiters looking for low-hanging fruit which is how most of the recruiters I’ve ever worked with operate. If they can’t place someone in a day or so they lose interest and don’t follow up. They are generally pointless exercises that I don’t bother with but I went along with it because I figured I needed the experience dealing with these types again. In 1994 the job market was pretty tight and I was jumpy about getting a job but in 2018 there seems to be a lot of demand for programmers so it is just a matter of finding the right place to work and I can even be a bit choosy to start with, choosy meaning looking closer to Marshalltown than the 60 mile drive to Des Moines I’ve done for 19 of the past 23 years.

I got the title for this post from this song by the inimitable band 'The Selecter' which was a favorite of mine almost 40 years ago when I DJ'd at a college radio station.

I also saw this band at the late Hurrah club in New York City over half a lifetime ago - here is a live version of the same song!

A Tale of Two Apples

  When I last wrote about my adventures using my self-directed 401K to buy stocks and write covered calls against them it was the end of September and my purchases of Exxon (XOM) and Apple (AAPL) were stuck in limbo as their stock prices had dipped so far below the purchase price and option stock price that I felt compelled to sell an option for Exxon with an expiration date four months into the future to generate cash flow while my 100 shares of Apple was showing a loss of over $400 despite my having collected over $400 in selling options on the stock over a 5 week period.

  In the intervening three months the stock market has risen upwards. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained 10% and most of my favorite stocks have gone along for the ride. Exxon burst past my option strike price of $82.50 in October and flirted with $84 days before the dividend date of November 10th. I was expecting my January 2018 option to be called in order for the buyer to collect the dividend but to my surprise the option was not exercised and I received a bonus of $154 on December 10th. With a month to go before the option expires, Exxon is in a band between $82 and $84 and it seems to be a close call as to whether the option gets exercised. Whether it gets called or not I only consider this a minor win since being stuck with the stock for an extra 4 months my ROI is 9% on an annualized basis which is good but not great and could be considered downright poor considering the length of time I had to hold the stock.

  

6/19/2017	Buy 200 XOM @83.005	-16605.95
6/19/2017	Sell 2 XOM Option @82.5 (2.06) Expiring 8/18/2017	405.65
8/2/2017	Buy 2 XOM Option @82.5 (.05) Expiring 8/18/2017	-10.08
8/18/2017	Sell 2 XOM Option @82.5 (.85) Expiring 10/20/2017	+163.66
8/10/2017	.77 dividend payable 9/11/2017	+154.00
8/28/2017	Buy 2 XOM Option @82.5 (.10) Expiring 10/20/2017	-20.08
9/5/2017	Sell 2 XOM Option @82.5 (.80) Expiring 1/1/2018	+153.65
11/10/2017	.77 dividend payable 12/11/2017	+154.00
	Total (If option is exercised)	+889.60	5.36%

  I has a much happier time with Apple. A week after my post the stock crept over $155 and I took the opportunity to collect $170 by selling another option to sell the stock for $162.50 on November 3rd. I could have done much better by waiting a week or two since Apple continued to gain momentum throughout the month and broke over $168 on October 30th. I knew that AAPL’s dividend date was on November 3rd and the risk of the stock sliding back under $162.50 was minimal so I bought my option back on October 30th at a high price and sold the same option only expiring on November 17th, picking up $60 in the exchange. The new option was exercised a week early on the dividend date of November 10th so I was happy to have an extra $60 in return for a weeks worth of patience and overall the investment gained $750 over three months for an annual return of 19.45% which I consider very good.

  

8/15/2017	Buy 100 AAPL @161.7053	-16175.48
8/15/2017	Sell 1 AAPL Option @162.5 (.88) Expiring 8/18/2017	+83.00
8/17/2017	Buy 1 AAPL Option @162.5 (.10) Expiring 8/18/2017	-10.04
8/17/2017	Sell 1 AAPL Option @162.5 (.84) Expiring 8/25/2017	+79.00
8/257/2017	Buy 1 AAPL Option @162.5 (.04) Expiring 8/25/2017	-4.04
8/25/2017	Sell 1 AAPL Option @162.5 (.90) Expiring 9/1/2017	+85.00
8/30/2017	Buy 1 AAPL Option @162.5 (1.86) Expiring 9/1/2017	-191.64
8/30/2017	Sell 1 AAPL Option @162.5 (3.65) Expiring 9/15/2017	+359.35
9/14/2017	Buy 1 AAPL Option @162.5 (.03) Expiring 9/15/2017	-3.04
9/15/2017	Sell 1 AAPL Option @162.5 (.70) Expiring 9/22/2017	+65.00
9/20/2017	Buy 1 AAPL Option @162.5 (.10) Expiring 9/15/2017	-10.04
10/3/2017	Sell 1 AAPL Option @162.5 (1.75) Expiring 11/3/2017	+169.35
10/30/2017	Buy 1 AAPL Option @162.5 (6.05) Expiring 11/3/2017	-610.64
10/30/2017	Sell 1 AAPL Option @162.5 (6.75) Expiring 11/17/2017	+669.34
11/10/2017	Sell 100 AAPL @162.50 (option was exercised)	+16244.67
	Total	+749.79	4.64%

  A few days before the Apple option was due to be exercised my 401k had become cash rich because my favorite stock Intel (INTC) had jumped from a multi-year high of $40 a share to over $47 a share from October 20th to November 3rd. I decided to cash out much of my Intel holdings because while I like the company and believe I understand the company I think that the price has grown too much too fast and I’d rather not be left holding the bag when their price once again drops because all stocks rise and fall. I kept my profit in the form of Intel stock but had the initial capital and went looking for new covered call option opportunities.

  My first purchase was with Apple which is becoming one of my new favorite option stocks because of its volatility and the seemingly eternal optimism of its stockholders. On November 7th I bought 100 shares of APPL near its all-time high of 174.70 and sold the option to sell the stock for 172.50 on November 10th for $258. My thought was that I would make $30+ for a three day investment and if the stock dropped below 172.50 I would collect a $63 dividend on the 10th. The stock stayed well over 172.50 and on the 9th I traded options, buying back my November 10th option and selling the same option for November 17th. The trade netted me an extra $64 and as a bonus the option was not exercised on the 10th which gave me $63 in dividends for a total of $159 in profit if the option was exercised the next Friday.

  IF. Unfortunately, Apple took a tumble the next week and dropped past $172.50 on its way to $169.64 a share by November 17th. I bought back my option for $4. I could have sold a new option for $50 for the next week but since I had at this point collected almost $400 on this particular stock purchase I decided to gamble a little and sold an option expiring in 2 weeks on December 1st but at a strike price of $175 instead of $172.50. I collected $70 for the option and there was the promise of another $250 if the option was exercised. Apple rose over $175 on the 27th and 28th before dropping below $170 once again on November 30th and December 1st. I bought back my option for $10 on the 30th and when AAPL jumped over $171 on the 1st I sold another option to sell the stock for $175 in two more weeks (on the 15th) and collected another $120.

  In the succeeding two weeks Apple’s share price never got to $174 a share much less the 175 strike price. I bought my option back on the 14th for $10 and got $79 for the option to sell the stock at $175 on December 22nd. This week Apple set a new all-time high stock price and climbed over $177 on Monday before settling in between $174.50 and $175.50 on Tuesday and Wednesday. At this point it is a coin flip as to whether my option will get called or not. If the option does get called I will have collected a profit of over 3.7% on my 45 day investment which works out to over 30% annually. If the price stays below 175 and I still own the stock come Monday I think I will start selling the option at a strike price of $177.50. While the stock may crash in the next week or so I consider this a big win so far.

  

11/7/2017	Buy 100 AAPL @174.655	-17470.45
11/7/2017	Sell 1 AAPL Option @172.5 (2.65) Expiring 11/10/2017	+258.35
11/9/2017	Buy 1 AAPL Option @172.5 (2.25) Expiring 11/10/2017	-230.64
11/9/2017	Sell 1 AAPL Option @172.5 (3.00) Expiring 11/17/2017	+294.65
11/10/2017	.63 dividend payable 11/16/2017	+63.00
11/17/2017	Buy 1 AAPL Option @172.5 (.04) Expiring 11/17/2017	-4.04
11/17/2017	Sell 1 AAPL Option @175 (.80) Expiring 12/1/2017	+75.00
11/29/2017	Buy 1 AAPL Option @175 (.10) Expiring 12/1/2017	-10.04
11/30/2017	Sell 1 AAPL Option @175 (1.25) Expiring 12/15/2017	+119.35
12/14/2017	Buy 1 AAPL Option @175 (.10) Expiring 12/15/2017	-10.04
12/14/2017	Sell 1 AAPL Option @175 (.84) Expiring 12/22/2017	+79.00
	Total (If option is exercised)	+658.89	3.77%

  I made two other option plays with my Intel capital as well as the cash I am accumulating from the covered call options. Both were incredibly successful thanks to an email from a blog reader suggesting that I could increase my profit by playing this option game with stocks on the low end of their yearly cycle and selling the option at a strike price close to or over the purchase price instead of looking for a small profit by selling the covered calls below the current selling price. The idea made sense to me. Buying quality stocks at yearly lows is normally a good policy anyway and collecting option money and profiting by a stock price increase is a win-win while getting stuck holding a quality stock purchased at a low price isn't an awful situation. AT&T (T) seemed like a likely candidate for me. It is a mainstay of my FMF (Found Money Fund) and has increased their now 50 cent a share dividend for 34 consecutive years. The stock was also near its 52 week low due to the uncertainty over whether the government will challenge or stop its purchase of Time-Warner. On November 9th I bought 200 shares of T for 33.87 and collected $157 for the option to sell the stock at $34 a share on December 15th. After bouncing between $33 and $34 for most of November, AT&T went over $36 a share on November 29th and over $38 a share on December 12th. My option was exercised and I sold the stock on December 15th for $34 as agreed upon for a total profit of $172.20 for a 36 day investment which works out to a return of 2.5% and 25.75% annually. Yes, I could have made more money by holding the stock and not selling the option but that was not apparent on November 9th and I am happy to have made a great return with little risk of a big loss.

  

11/9/2017	Buy 200 T @33.877	-6780.35
11/9/2017	Sell 2 T Option @34 (.82) Expiring 12/15/2017	+157.66
12/15/2017	Sell 200 T @34 (option was exercised)	+6794.89
	Total	+172.20	2.54%

  My other play in November was with another FMF standout, Phillip Morris (PM). PM is the foreign tobacco and cigarette arm of Marlboro and has provided a steadily increasing dividend for the last 10 years since it spun-off from its parent company Altria. PM was over $120 a share earlier this year but a strong dollar had depressed its earnings and was sitting at a 6 month low of 103 when I made move on November 10th, buying 100 shares at 103 and collecting $95 for the option to sell the stock at the same $103 a week later on November 17th. This ride was similar to my apple adventure. PM bounced between 101 and 103 a share for the next week and on the 17th I was able to buy back my option for $9. I immediately sold an option to sell the shares for $104 expiring 2 weeks later on December 1st for $70. I was leaving some money on the table in the expectation that if PM went over $104 a share I would collect a better profit when the option was exercised. PM never got to 104 and on November 28th I was able to buy back my option for $10 and sell another $104 option expiring on December 15th for an additional $81. On December 4th PM went over 104 and didn’t look back. It hit $110 on December 15th and my option was exercised, leaving me with a $316 profit which works out to 3% (32% annually) over 35 days. Again I could have made more by holding the stock once again I am happy to take a outstanding return with for a low risk.

  

11/10/2017	Buy 100 PM @103.005	-10305.45
11/10/2017	Sell 1 PM Option @103 (1.00) Expiring 11/17/2017	+94.95
11/17/2017	Buy 1 PM Option @103 (.09) Expiring 11/17/2017	-9.04
11/17/2017	Sell 1 PM Option @104 (.75) Expiring 12/1/2017	+70.00
11/28/2017	Buy 1 PM Option @104 (.10) Expiring 12/1/2017	-10.04
11/28/2017	Sell 1 PM Option @104 (.86) Expiring 12/15/2017	+81.00
12/15/2017	Sell 100 PM @104 (option was exercised)	+10394.80
	Total	+316.22	3.07%

  As pleased as I am with my recent option results, I can't help but think that the stock market is so high right now that it is primed for a big fall. When? No one knows and certainly not me. That is why I continue to stick with solid companies that have a decades-long history of paying and raising dividends. Even when I get stuck with XOM and APPL like I did in September I am stuck with a top quality stock that makes money and pays dividends. The higher this market goes the more inclined I am to keep my option plays of a shorter term so I can hopefully get out before the bubble breaks but in the meantime I am riding the ups and downs like a surfer and enjoying the ride.

TV Review - The Walking Dead Season 8 Episodes 1-8

   WARNING : THE WALKING DEAD SEASON #8 EPISODES 1-8 SPOILERS BELOW!!!

Season 8 of The Walking Dead featured the 'All Out War'

  AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead’ just completed the first half of its season 8 ‘All Out War’ story arc in which our intrepid zombie apocalypse survivors of Alexandria, the Hilltop, and the Kingdom seek to fight off the oppressive regime of the band of Saviors and their leader Negan who receive ‘tribute’ from all the nearby communities in return for not killing them.

  This show is still the top rated cable show but its viewership has plummeted to six year lows and barely half of the season 5 average of 14 million viewers a week. I think the reason for the drop is that instead of following our cast of a dozen or so apocalypse survivors for the first five and a half seasons there are at least 3 dozen characters to follow. We still have our core group but now there are four to six people each at the Kingdom, the Hilltop, the Saviors compound, as well as the newly discovered communities by the ocean side and the trash heap. So many groups to keep track of and visit leaves less time for the viewers to stay connected to the main characters. Season 7 focused on a character or two in each episode but left the main characters unseen for weeks at a time. Season 8 has tried to patch in snippets of each group of each episode. It is great to see stalwarts like Rick, Carol, and Maggie in each episode but in most episodes it seemed they were guest stars giving cameos instead of the main characters we should be following all the time.

  The season started with a great premise as Rick Grimes and company use information given to them by Dwight the Savior traitor to lead thousands of zombies to the Saviors ‘Sanctuary’ compound during a meeting between Negan and his lieutenants in an attempt to starve out Negan and the Saviors. Escape seems impossible with a well-positioned group of snipers ready to foil any attempt to leave the compound. Meanwhile Rick has sent teams to destroy Negan’s satellite operations while all the leaders are trapped at the Sanctuary.

RIP Shiva the CGI tiger..

  The raids work although there is a heavy toll of redshirts from the Kingdom along with the death of minor character Aaron’s husband Eric who is left by a tree to bleed out and seemingly reanimated as a zombie. The main objective of not allowing reinforcements to free the Sanctuary from the zombie horde has been met. This storyline took the first five episodes of the season and contained intense side plots. One outpost has seen two dozen Saviors surrender, leaving Hilltop leader Maggie to decide whether to execute them or imprison them which requires using resources to feed and guard them as well as the knowledge that an escape attempt or riot could erupt at any time. At the Sanctuary, Father Gabriel and Negan are trapped in a trailer in the compound and must work together to fight their way through the surrounding zombies while inside the Sanctuary his lieutenants have to deal with a worker uprising without their leader. I found Episode 3 especially intense as King Ezekiel deals with the killing of his entire army by the saviors, having to escape from his now zombified-army, and if that wasn’t bad enough the king loses his beloved CGI tiger Shiva who manages to be devoured by a half dozen slow moving zombies while protecting her master.

If James Tiberius Kirk was in the zombie apocalypse this is what he would be like.

  The first five episodes had a lot of what I like about this show - zombies and more zombies.After a great first five episodes of the season the show seemed to go off the rails with many of the main characters leaving their lane in a rush to the ‘grand’ season finale. In episode six, Rick Grimes heads to the dump to once again enlist the help of Jadis and the monosyllabic trash people. These are the same trash people that sold out our group of survivors to Negan just last season which in show time was a few weeks ago. Naturally the trash people take Rick prisoner which did have a redeeming quality in giving us another Star Trek like fight between Rick and a helmeted zombie> Rick’s Captain Kirk like victory convinces the trash people to join his side at least temporarily. Meanwhile the plan to starve out the Saviors is working too well for Darryl who decides to ram a truck through the Sanctuary walls to let the zombies eat their way to victory. This idea meets with the approval of the snipers surrounding the Sanctuary.

  Daryl’s truck breaches the Sanctuary walls and the zombies flood in but when Rick arrives at the end of the seventh episode the zombies, Negan, and the Saviors are gone. What happened? How did the Saviors escape? We never find out but we do see despite having their vehicles blown up and there outposts destroyed there are enough Saviors to outnumber the communities of the Hilltop, the Kingdom, and Alexandria. The confrontation between Simon’s group of saviors and the Hilltop on a barricaded road is especially odd. After hearing for at least two episodes how Negan wants Hilltop leader Maggie must be captured along with Rick and King Ezekiel so they can be killed and have their zombie selves posted on spikes at the Sanctuary, Simon allows Maggie to take her crew back to the Hilltop after killing the obligatory redshirt. It was the equal of the many times one of our crew of survivors or snipers had the drop on Negan but failed to pull the trigger. Naturally Maggie heads back to the Hilltop after promising to be the Saviors minions but immediately kills one of the Savior prisoners and prepares for a last stand.

  There are some vague references by the Saviors how Eugene came up with the plan to drive the zombie hoard away from the Sanctuary but that doesn’t explain what happened to the snipers. It also doesn’t explain how Eugene has morphed from a fairly useless science teacher who can barely fix a radio into MacGyver. Another unexplainable occurrence happened in the season finale. Rick, Carol, and Jerry are driving when their car is rammed violently and we cut to commercial. Jerry ends up captured by Simon and shows up at the confrontation with the Hilltop people, Carol ends up at the Kingdom, and Rick at Alexandra for a showdown with Negan. How did they survive the car crash and end up in such disparate locations? The only explanation is that it was required to advance the plot. The confrontation between Rick and Negan featured both men taking turns hitting each other with Lucille the barbed-wire baseball bat and again in the name of plot advancement both men were able to walk away from the fight.

In a massive break from the comics, Carl has seemingly met his end...

  I don’t mind all the silliness of the plot consistencies or lack thereof - after all this is a zombie apocalypse show. What I want is to see the small band of apocalypse survivors fighting zombies and other groups to survive. There were plenty of zombies this season but there is no longer a small band of survivors – there are so many characters the show keeps track of that only one or two get any meaningful screen time in any given episode. That is my biggest problem with the show at present – the show needs a purge and get the group on the road instead of the current civilization building arc. There will be one less character after the mid season finale revelation that original cast member Carl (Rick Grimes’ son) has been bitten by a zombie and presumably will pass away in the second half premiere. While I hate to see Carl go the development gives me hope for the future of the show as it is a major break from the comics (where Carl is still around years after the ‘All-Out War’). Other characters have met an early end but other characters can have their roles replaces – not the main protagonist’s son. I suspect the falling ratings may prod the showrunners to ditch the comic arc and get our zombie survivors back to what made the show so attractive which is the constant quest to new locations and survive zombie attacks.

Coming in February..Hopefully a return to a tighter cast.

TV Binge Review - The Punisher

Netflix's 'The Punisher' mixed incredible violence with plodding inaction disguised as drama.

  Netflix released their latest Marvel Comics series ‘The Punisher’ on November 17th. I waited until the Thanksgiving weekend to binge watch the 13 episodes, watching four episodes on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, three episodes on Thanksgiving, and two episodes on each of the remaining three days of the long weekend. The 2004 Punisher movie starring Tom Jane is one of my all-time favorites and I liked the Jon Bernthal version that appeared in Netflix season 2. In that series, The Punisher (real name Frank Castle) avenged the murder of his wife and children at the hands of a drug cartel aided by corrupt members of the NYPD.

  I was hoping that having dispensed with the ‘origin’ in Daredevil, The Punisher would be moving on to his war on organized crime and corruption in government. Instead the main plot brings more layers to the death of Castle’s family by linking it to a drug-smuggling ring in Afghanistan that was unknowingly aided by an elite Black Ops team named Project Cerberus that Frank Castle was part of. The team would capture, torture, and kill unquestioningly at the command of group leader ‘Agent Orange’. The project comes under the scrutiny of Homeland Security agent Madani in New York when a video of her former partner in Afghanistan being tortured and killed by the as yet unknown members of Cerberus.

  The video was sent to Madani by a former NSA agent who is shortly shot and left for dead by ‘Agent Orange’ but survives and is off the grid except for his being able to hack into seemingly every computer and camera on the planet. The NSA agent (code named ‘Micro’ who is the Punisher’s aide and confidant in the comics) then locates the Punisher and convinces him that ‘Agent Orange’ was really behind his family’s death and sets off the 13 hour adventure.

  I understand the need for a ‘big bad’ for the series but dredging up the death of Castle’s family as the reason for the Punisher’s involvement seemed like overkill to me. Since we are introduced to many of Frank Castle’s military pals from his previous life and special emphasis is given to how the Punisher will risk his life for his friends there could have been many other ways to get to the main conflict between Punisher and Agent Orange underway. Having the constant flashbacks of Castle’s family being murdered combined with Micro’s anguish at being able to see his family (through cameras he has wired into their home) but not let them know he is alive made the series extremely dark. In addition, there is the massacre of a team of Homeland Security agents (including the brutal neck slicing of Madani’s confidant Sam Siegel). The Punisher is such a dark character that the rest of the cast doesn’t need to add more to it. The supporting cast doesn’t need to bring comic relief but they shouldn’t add to the darkness. The only character that didn’t brood their way throughout the series was Punisher’s fellow ‘Project Cerberus’ member Billy Russo. Russo has a great time dressing up in nice suits, having an affair with agent Madani, and running his ‘army-for-hire’ contracting business. Unfortunately for Russo he is also Agent Orange's right hand man and gets his comeuppance by series end.

Believe it or not this is one of the least violent confrontations in the series...

  To say the series was violent would be an understatement. In all but two episodes there are brutal fist fights, gunfights with head shots at very close range, and knife work with neck slicing and regular run of the mill stabbings. Agent Madani is shot in the head, shot in the side, and has her car smashed by a truck with each incident requiring downtime. The Punisher seems to need no rest after countless stabbings, shootings, being beaten to a pulp by ‘Agent Orange’ to the point of having his teeth knocked out. The only time Castle needs a break is when Micro poisons him and when he is shot with an arrow that causes a massive infection (that is cleared up within hours after the arrow is removed. I would rather have seen the Punisher being maimed one or twice in the entire series instead of hourly. After all he has no super powers and should be wearing body armor to protect him instead of miraculously healing in time for his next confrontation.

  I liked the show primarily because of Jon Bernthal’s portrayal of the Punisher. Bernthal is unrelenting and vicious in his Punisher persona and I liked his ‘New York quiet tough guy’ Frank Castle. There was a lot of violence which OK with me but the show had a lot of warts also. With the extreme violence in each episode came a lot of slow moving plot development that seems to be a staple of the Netflix/Marvel shows. The intrigue at Homeland Security and the CIA was interminable as was Madani’s soul searching talks with her mother. The only slow moving parts of the show I liked was Castle’s bonding with Micro’s family as he infiltrates the household in order to keep an eye on them. I was expecting Castle to get involved with Micro’s wife which didn’t happen and was a nice fakeout.

This is more of the typical Punisher violence in the series.

  The overarching mission of once again finding his family’s killers intermixed with the slow moving plot development made the show lurch from one confrontation to the next. My favorite parts of the series was when the Punisher finds himself as part of the day to day violence of life in New York. In the opening episode Castle works at a construction site slamming a sledgehammer against concrete walls for hours on end in an attempt to forget his past when he stumbles on a co-worker being dumped into a cement foundation for his part in a robbery gone wrong. Castle switches from crazed sledgehammer guy to Punisher mode in a heartbeat and quickly and painfully dispatches his co-worker’s assailants. In another show Punisher saves his friend Karen Page from being killed by a PSTD suffering veteran turned suicide bomber while confronting the FBI, homeland security, and the NYPD. I would have liked to have seen more of the Punisher in the role of protector of the ‘somewhat innocent’ than once again seeking revenge for his family’s death. I can only assume the showrunners did not think the revenge plotline was exhausted in the Punisher’s stint in Daredevil.

  If there is another Punisher season it will likely be in 2020 at the pace Netflix is moving with their Marvel sagas. The stage is set for Punisher’s nemesis ‘Jigsaw’ to make his appearance. I am hoping I get to see more of the Punisher stopping random crimes in short bursts rather than the epic tale that season one attempted and failed to deliver.

Movie Review - Justice League

'Justice League' lived up to it's considerable hype in my opinion if not at the box office.

  The weekend after seeing Marvel Studio’s ‘Thor:Ragnarok’ Kathy and I went to see the DC super team flick ‘Justice League’ on it’s opening weekend. When I was a kid comic book readers were generally either in the DC or Marvel camp. Marvel was the cooler option with their large grey areas of flawed super-heroes and anti-hero villains set largely in Manhattan as opposed to DC’s white hat/black hat view of the world with the heroes living in fictional cities like Metropolis and Gotham. I was always a DC fan for a very simple reason – economics. 10 cents and later 12 cents were very hard to come by to get a comic in my youth and when I had that kind of cash to spend on a comic buying a Marvel story was almost a surety that I would walk into the beginning of a multi part story that I would not be able to afford to read to the conclusion of, the end of a story line that I had missed out on, or worse yet a crossover with another comic title that would be off the shelves before I ever had a chance to see it. On the other hand a DC comic was sure to have a self-contained story all in one issue and that made it my top choice. If these ‘comic wars’ were ongoing today I could characterize Marvel as the ‘limousine liberals’ of comics that had relatable characters but cost a lot of money to follow.

  This all changed in 1970 when DC brought Jack Kirby (along with Stan Lee the creator of many Marvel creations like the Hulk, Thor, and the Fantastic Four to name but a few) over from Marvel to create the ‘Fourth World’ of the peaceful planet of New Genesis and the hellish planet of Apokolips in perpetual war and Earth stuck in the middle. Kirby’s Fourth World got started in the formerly insipid pages of ‘Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen’ and continued in the issues of ‘New Gods’, ‘Forever People’, and ‘Mister Miracle’. The stories had overlapping plots and characters and made DC comics as hard to follow on a limited budget as Marvel was. When I got older and had more money I get the back issues of the ‘Fourth World’ series and was able to appreciate it for the epic saga it was. The addition of Apokolips, its leader ‘Darkseid’, and insidious allies like Steppenwolf, Granny Goodness, and Desaad revolutionized the DC Universe. Now DC had a cosmic scope to rival Marvel entities like Galactus and the Watchers and suddenly Superman seemed not nearly as super as before. The New Gods had made a brief appearance in the television series ‘Smallville’ but had not made it to the big screen, which made my anticipate the Justice League movie ever since I saw Kirby’s famous ‘Boom Tube’ make its appearance in the previews.

  Justice League takes place an indeterminate amount of time after the ‘death’ of Superman in last year’s Batman vs. Superman movie. The first third of the movie concerns itself with setting up the rest of the movie as Bruce Wayne (aka Batman) finds out about an invasion of the bug-like ‘parademons’ and finds out from Diana Prince (Wonder Woman) about an ancient battle for the fate of the earth between Steppenwolf and the allied forces of earthlings, Atlanteans, and the Amazons. Steppenwolf was going to recreate earth as a fire pit of a world by uniting three ‘mother-boxes’ that were split up after the battle. The parademons herald Steppenwolf’s return and he routs both the Atlanteans and Amazons to collect two of the three mother boxes.

  This leads Batman and Wonder Woman to recruit the super beings hinted in ‘Batman vs. Superman’ – Aquaman, The Flash, and Cyborg to form a super team and battle Steppenwolf. While the first part of the movie had some Batman and Wonder Woman action the assembling of the team was full of angst as Cyborg is full of angst at the half human-half robot he has become and Flash is full of angst because his innocent father is in prison for the killing of his mother. Aquaman is the funny man of the group but Seems more angry than funny. The team realizes that they cannot stop Steppenwolf from getting the third ‘mother-box’ so Batman hatches a plan to resurrect Superman using the mother box combined with Kryptonian technology. Superman is duly resurrected but is in no mood to team up with Batman so the group has to battle Steppenwolf alone until Superman rejoins the team and turns the tide to save the earth.

  Justice League was a good but not great movie and in my opinion far better than its reviews. When the team gets together the battle scenes are great. Steppenwolf made a fine villain and even though he was no match for Superman hopefully Darkseid will show up in a future movie to give Superman a challenge. The main thing I disliked about the movie was the time spent trying to introduce the three new characters to the moviegoing audience. Ben Affleck makes a great aging Batman and comes across as one scary guy even though he has no super powers. His interactions with the new members were great but there was too much of trying to get to know Cyborg by having him interact with his father and the Flash (through a macabre gravedigging scene when retrieving Superman’s body). Flash and Cyborg would have been better served by showing off their interesting powers more and talking less. Aquaman was a comic relief vehicle and had the same problem that the character has in the Justice League comics – if there is no underwater action he’s just a strongman and if the action is underwater the rest of the League is too slow to keep up.

  Wonder Woman was epic in her action scenes especially in the opening when she takes out a group of terrorists single handedly. She had a great fight scene with Batman (that was over in one punch) but she took a backseat like most of the characters when Superman made his inevitable appearance. I liked how the ‘Man Of Steel’ and even ‘Batman vs. Superman’ portrayed Superman as an alien that was distrusted by humanity and distrustful of humanity to a degree. Justice League gave Superman near-deity status and far too much screen time as he had to get his bearings after his death experience. As much as I like the Superman character the Henry Cavill version has all the personality of a block of wood and the character is still just too super for earthly adventures.

  The box office for the movie was disappointing but it was still enough of a money maker to justify more DC team-up movies. Justice League was very much like a DC comic in that it was self-contained except for Superman’s death which was covered well enough that any first time DC movie patron could follow the plot. I appreciated that this movie was only a single year after Batman vs. Superman and the same year as the Wonder Woman movie. I wish the Marvel movies could bang out the headline movies every year. Next year is scheduled to bring a Batman movie which will hopefully bring a Nightwing or Batman Beyond character. There is no Man of Steel movie on the schedule which doesn’t surprise me since Warner Bros/DC does not seem to have any idea how to make the character relatable or less super. When Superman is on the job there doesn’t seem to be any room for the other heroes to shine. Hopefully DC will be able to bring more of the New Gods saga to the movies as this is probably Superman’s best chance to have a worthy antagonist.