blitzkrieg

Nexstar is the majority owner of it now with Parmount and WBD holding minority stakes in it.

Disney actually does the same as Marvel doesn't publish the Disney comics and they also license out Star Wars to IDW for kids comics. In fact the Marvel characters are licensed out to Scholastic for kids graphic novels which outperform anything Marvel puts out in bookstores.

There really aren't that many other options out there that make sense that could be argued as a "Top 20 Network" unless they're going end up on ION or start doing their broadcasts in Spanish. If they end up on The CW, it'll be interesting what kind of time slot they get with affiliates having a lot of control over their non-prime time programming.

The Ultimate Invasion collection seems to have been downsized to just a regular TPB. It's still weird that it's not coming out to March when 2-3 months after publishing is usually the norm for Marvel collections. With the first issues of the new Ultimate books landing in January, you would think they would be rushing to get it out. Plus the current listing doesn't have it including Ultimate Universe #1. Do wonder if Hickman potentially convinces Marvel to do linewide collections like they did with the X-Line.

As someone who is just getting back into reading DC, I would be fine with them being dropped.

You are correct. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSzal0pjosc I skipped the majority of the NXT 2.0 Era up until World's Collide which also has me very confused at what was going on with Ciampa's look back then.

Speaking of which, we might actually not get a horror cinematic segment this year. Maybe we can get a Bron/Chucky segment.

Not really. Joe Gacy would be the closest but he's really more cult-ish than supernatural. Plus he's seemingly off-air with a crisis of confidence after The Schism fell apart.

Thought they did a good job of using the main roster people to facilitate the NXT roster and not overshadow them. That said the show seemed really packed and I wished some things got a little bit more time to breathe. Felt like Asuka and Roxanne never really got on the same page in their match. Roxanne has been using a lot of complex pins which look great when she's able to execute them but both this week and last week she's had a bit of difficulty with them. I imagine they'll go smoother with time, especially as her opponents get to know her spots. The announcement of Shotzi and Scarlett being hosts for Night 1 of Halloween Havoc is a nice tie-in to their haunted destinations videos and like that we have Shotzi/Kiana in the future. Gallus/Big Brawling Brutes was fun with some creative spots. Ridge Holland still might be my most improved wrestler for 2023. Nice seeing Tegan Nox showing up and possibly show some heelish overtones. A lot of her Main Event stuff had her working as a heel and think it might work out better for her than spunky babyface. Certainly would be more exciting than a tag team with Natalya which seemed to be what was being teased on Raw. Shockingly John Cena was masterful dealing with the crowd and it's amazing how much better Bron is as a heel than he ever was as the vanilla babyface. Like the "Bada Bing, Bada Boom" battle royal concept especially with how little the tag team division has been featured since No Mercy. Ilja/Dom was fun. Nice mix of Ilja's dominance and Dom cheating to get on offense. LA Knight was a nice treat for the crowd but really had no bearing on the match till helping to prevent the interference at the end. Dijak stealing Corbin's thunder to set up the three way #1 contender match was a nice swerve. Still think we get Corbin/Ilja at HH with Dijak having the unfinished business with Thorpe. I didn't feel like there was a whole lot of doubt that Lola was going over Dani Palmer but they both got to spotlight some of their stuff in a solid match. Still feel like the crowd actually subtracts a bit from Vice's matches but that might just be me. The kick that Vice hit on a jumping Palmer did look great. The Brian Pillman Jr. spot wasn't where I expected them to go with him but it has me interested. Haven't been really blown away by the little of him I've seen in the past but maybe in a less workrate centric environment he might be able to find something to lock on to. Hayes/Breakker was probably the least of their matches but they continue to work in a lot of new spots. The saving of the top rope spot ended up looking nastier than anything they were potentially going for. Really have to wonder how much longer they can keep Bron on Tuesdays before moving him up to the main roster. Not sure how much there is left to do with him except maybe letting Von Wagner get some degree of comeuppance. Gotta love them continuing to roll out Jade Cargill to keep people guessing. Also will be interesting to see if they actually pay off the possibility of Ava Raine joining the Bloodline.

The Undisputed Tag Champs are allowed to appear on both shows which gives Cody a storyline reason to be back in Roman's orbit.

Walker Stewart officially announced as Kevin Kelly's replacement for New Japan. His first show will be Fighting Spirit Unleashed in Vegas, so thinking his live Japan debut will probably be Power Struggle.

Announced for Raw tonight: Gunther/Ciampa contract signing. Becky/Nox for the NXT Women's Title. McIntyre on MizTV again. Nia Jax vs. Shayna Baszler. Xavier Woods vs. Ivar. Previously announced Jey Uso vs. Damian Priest match is no longer listed.

https://www.youtube.com/mkI7xXAQ2oE?si=BWo9VIcMKw0WDJJm Kelani calling out Blair. I get that she's understandably upset about Ikemen Jiro being released but feel like wrestling Blair Davenport is far from the best way to cope.

Definitely one of those situations where the truth is stranger than fiction. Best wishes for Cates and it's nice to see that he can at least have a sense of humor about all he's been through.

Boogz's career is kinda interesting. He gets over with the crowd in NXT with the whole air guitar/rock out thing but spends his whole time in NXT working dark matches and house shows. He gets called up to play an Old Spice commercial character. He finally gets basically his NXT character back and gets paired with Shinsuke and gets pushed and faces The Usos at WrestleMania but gets injured and really never ever gets back to that level after his return. So reckless speculation but he Boogz might have been one of the few talents from NXT that might not have been that excited when Triple H took over the main brands.

The NXT releases are really going hurt the Chase U attendance numbers.

That makes a lot more sense, I was thinking it was probably more of a Grizzled Young Veteran situation than an outright cut. Feel like he's going have a hell of a barnstormer and podcast appearance tour. Also wouldn't be surprised to see him back in the 'E in 2-3 years.

Think from the time the brackets were announced that Butch and Bate was the match everyone was looking forward to and it didn't disappoint. They've obviously had better matches before and have better matches in them(which feels like the story of all the tourney matches) but they put on a really good 12 minute tv match. Loved Butch pulling the nasty side out of Bate and both of them countering and borrowing each other moves. Love the ending building on the Axiom/Butch match where after Axiom kicked out of the Bitter End he didn't know what to do, where tonight when Bate kicked out he just went ahead and hit a nastier move to get the win. Think Duke's stock probably has risen the most from the tourney. Going into the tourney he kinda felt like an odd inclusion but I feel like he held his own throughout. I like Coffey being framed as a legit singles threat after having been mostly a mouthpiece since Gallus came back. Wasn't surprised that Duke setup the tie, was surprised that they did the 3-way tonight and that it wasn't a way to put Frazer in the finals. TakeOver Blackpool rematch in the finals! Liked what I saw from Lola and it does feel like they're high on her. That said I find it kinda distracting when the PC crowd decides that they're going chant(or boo) for someone in a manner that really doesn't reflect what they've actually done on TV. Reminds me a little too much of the old Impact Zone crowd. I appreciate how much they seem to scale Dom's offense and control segments by the "caliber" of opponent he's facing. He gets to show off a lot more of his offense and actually hits it on NXT, where on Raw/Smackdown he is more of a punching bag. Liked picking up the DQ win, causing Melo to take the Torpedo Moscow, only to get his comeuppance and eat the superkick from Dragon Lee. The Scrypts/Brono/Lucien segment wasn't anything horrible and at least gave them some time. Can't say that I'm particularly excited about them vs. Hank and Tank next week either. Also while No Longer Los Lotharios seem to be a lock for a four team tag match at No Mercy, it's kinda a bummer how they've been given basically no time to define their new gimmick after the vignettes. Liked the main event. Tiff continues to look good, they continue to do a good job of presenting Lyra as a big name on the NXT brand, and feel like Kiana is really getting a chance to show her stuff. Plus I feel like they already set up five matches for next week's show. Coffey/Dunne should be good but I'm really looking forward to see what Dijak and Thorpe can do with a strap match.

I'll third(or fourth) that Kofi shouldn't have kicked out of the moonsault. If they were going have Kofi win the match then they probably should have just had Ivar miss the moonsault. That said Kofi and Ivar really went out and put out a match that made up for the original match not happening and made me really want the 2 out of 3 fall tag match even more. With New Day looking extra motivated and Viking Raiders continuing to look great, I think they have a shot at topping their Viking Rules match from Smackdown. Now if only the tag titles weren't stuck in single wrestler purgatory. On the Jade thing, I do wonder if you don't hold off and have her debut in a city where AEW does good business. You're in Chicago for Survivor Series or if you're going wait even longer you have the Rumble in Tampa.

Announced for Raw: Jey Uso vs. Drew McIntryre Cody Rhodes vs. Dominik Mysterio Richochet vs. Shinsuke Nakamura New Day vs. Viking Raiders 2 out of 3 Falls

Episodes go up on Hulu on Saturdays before making their way to Peacock/WWE Network on a 2 week delay. Similar to Main Event.

The upgrade probably will mostly mean that I'll spend a lot more time going through the back catalog. I have no problem casting to my tv but it can be a chore finding stuff on the website or going from event to event. As someone that has been only watching New Japan for about a year and a half, I rarely spend a lot of time in the back catalog just because of the tediousness of having to either use the clunky search feature or going page by page through every event from a year.

Been coming to terms with the fact that I've been more of a console buyer and video game magazine reader than an actually game player. So been working on working my way back through all the games that I never played. My most recent foray was Fear Effect for the PSX. Remembered magazines talking about it and seeing ads for it but pretty much had zero clue about the actual gameplay going into it in the present. Think it's safe to say that if I had played it when it first came out I would have been sitting there with a print out from Gamefaqs and still wouldn't have probably got half way through it. The controls are very much in the vein of early survival horror 3D action games, so it took me a while to get the hang of things. Even taking that into consideration the game really seems to expect you to die till you figure out what you're suppose to do, then probably die some more while you figure out how to do what you're suppose to be well enough. That said the majority of the deaths didn't actually feel cheap and mostly just motivated me to figure out how to get past parts where I would get stuck. The puzzles had solutions that weren't hard to find if you took a moment to look around in the game. Though there were two where I just ended up brute forcing them and another two where I was in the ballpark but still had to look up solutions just because I couldn't figure out what the game wanted from me. Honestly I was kinda surprised how much the game crawled up in my brain. First game in a while that I just constantly wanted to get back to.

Went into my local Barnes & Noble, for probably the first time in 20 years, and really could feel why the book market penetration for most mainstream graphic novels is so poor. The main western comic section is about a quarter the size of the manga section and it's just a jumble of stuff. Sure, there's a shelf of Batman stuff but, unless you know what you're looking for, nothing sticks out. The only things that really stuck out were the self-contained series like Invincible or Saga. This was in steep contrast to the much smaller young adult graphic novel section which was much more shoppable and browseable which was located at the end of the young adult book section.

NJPW World is getting a long overdue overhaul (https://www.njpw1972.com/159104). Native apps, search overhaul, and offline viewing seem to be the big bullet points. Changes come with a price increase: from ¥999 JPY to ¥1,298 JPY for Japanese subscribers/current international subscribers and $9.99 for new international subscribers. With the current state of the yen, it'll be slightly cheaper for current US subscribers than the $9.99 for new subscribers.