deerstalker

One Piece, a legendary high-seas adventure starring Iñaki Godoy as Monkey D. Luffy, Mackenyu as Roronoa Zoro, Emily Rudd as Nami, Jacob Romero as Usopp, and Taz Skylar as Sanji, sets sail August 31, only on Netflix.

It has been nearly five years since we saw Rick Grimes and Michonne together onscreen. Their great apocalypse love story took a tragic turn in The Walking Dead season 9 when Rick “sacrificed” himself on that bridge. Of course, we knew that Rick didn’t die. Jadis found him and took him on one of those CRM helicopters. But, poor Michonne thought her man was dead for many years until her big discovery at Bloodsworth Island led her to look for him. We saw a glimpse of their separate predicaments in The Walking Dead’s final episode.

Thankfully, we are finally going to get a sweet reunion between this pair in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, which is the official title for the Rick and Michonne spinoff series. At this year’s SDCC, fans got a teaser trailer for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live showing Rick and Michonne in action. 

Michonne looks incredible in this clip, as she speaks about losing someone years ago and finding out that he’s alive. We also see Rick doing one of the things he does best: killing walkers. Do we learn anything? Not at all. Does it matter? Nope. It is just exciting to get a teaser trailer with Rick and Michonne back in action again.

The Meaning Behind the Rick & Michonne Series’ Official Title

The Ones Who Live is also a perfect title for this series. Rick originally said that line in reference to his original group in The Walking Dead’s fifth season. He told Deanna, who led Alexandria, that his group knew what to do because they knew how to survive this harsh world. And, in the show’s final episode, we hear many of the characters utter that line, including Rick and Michonne. Through all the villains, death, and despair, they are still alive and their love lives on. 

What Is The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live‘s Release Date? 

We still don’t know exactly when The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live will hit AMC. It is coming sometime in 2024, which feels both close and still too far away. Either way, Rick Grimes and Michonne are back and that sparks so much joy.

The post THE WALKING DEAD: THE ONES WHO LIVE Teaser Trailer Brings Rick Grimes and Michonne Back appeared first on Nerdist.

In November 2022, two Black farmers in Houston opened a grocery store to provide much-needed food, produce, and other staples essential to living a regular life in an area with food insecurity.

According to Houston Public Media, Ivy Walls and Jeremy Peaches opened The Fresh Houwse Grocery Store, which is located at 5039 Reed Road in Sunnyside. The Houston neighborhood has limited access to fresh food, and the owners opened the grocery store to give residents some healthy food options.

The low-income neighborhood has been named a food desert by the United States Department of Agriculture.

“Food in low-income neighborhoods like ours, Sunnyside, and South Park had higher levels of gastrointestinal bugs found in the salad mix, versus those in higher income neighborhoods and more fluent neighborhoods, salad mixes found there,” Walls told the media outlet.

Many Sunnyside residents do not have access to a vehicle, and a grocery store is more than a mile away. Without transportation, people in the community are forced to settle for unhealthy food options.

Walls and Peaches grew up in Sunnyside and attended Prairie A&M University. Both own other businesses, Walls owns the Ivy Leaf Farms; Peaches owns Fresh Life Organics. To get the funds to open the store, a fundraiser brought in $27,000 in seven days. Then, they received a business grant from a philanthropist in the state that was used to renovate the space.

“We really saw the need for our community to have access to fresh produce,” Walls said. “And not only fresh produce but to have the education of farmers and to know your farmer and really push for a sustainable food system.”

Walls said folks in the community have embraced the store since it opened in November. In time, she hopes the concept can be incorporated into other areas in the city that are food deserts, and that building a food system that’s community-dependent is in the works.

Legendary Pictures has cracked the code on the next medium for expanding their Godzilla and King Kong-centric monster-verse: animation. Out of nowhere like a gift wrapped in silk and dropped from the sky by Mothra herself, Skull Island arrived on Netflix. With a Western anime aesthetic and a partnership with Powerhouse Animation, this cartoon pulls no punches and looks good doing it. Super self-aware, clever, and more witty than any animated action series needs to be, Skull Island delivers a nice Summer binge.

Another One

Skull Island picks up on the momentum of the cultural success of the Godzilla and Kong movies (five under Legendary Pictures, so far). If you’ve seen the movie Skull Island, that’s exactly where this takes place, thirty years in the future with an older Kong than in the movie; but younger than in Godzilla vs. Kong. The monster-verse is monster-verse-ing for real.

We come to Skull Island for two things: more monster verse lore and Kaiju fights! The fights do not disappoint! They aren’t as frequent early on, but once they get kicking, they go for it. The team on Skull Island indeed took their time with the scale and scope of the conflicts. They feel as visceral as the film versions, which can be difficult to capture in an episodic animated series – but they pull it off. Adding to the Kong mythos is wild after being around since 1933, but Skull Island manages to do it without making a heavy lift for viewers.

New but Old

Despite being a new animated series with super clean visuals and fluid action animation – Skull Island is bringing back some of that old-school grit. About to date myself here, but I’ve got to ask. Do y’all remember Jonny Quest? The Hanna-Barbera banger from the 60s with the intro composed by Jazz legend Count Basie? Yeah, Skull Island is moving in that vein. Jonny Quest opened every episode with a body being bagged. Skull Island is giving three bodies an episode. Not just extras and nameless characters, but straight-up main characters with monologues getting monster mashed.

On the flip side of that more intense and graphic violence is a quippy repartee so constant that it almost feels out of place. Mind you, it’s all well written but goodness gracious! After the first episode, Sull Island shifts into rapid-fire wisecracks. If there’s a Guinness World Record for quips in a series, this has got to rank high.

Variation Over Diversity, Huh

Without a tremendous amount of fanfare, Skull Island boasts a lot of different skin tones for the characters. Not just the core characters, but even the nameless monster fodder red shirts. The cast is diverse and made up of heavy hitters from TV, movies, and voice work. The performances are all very decent. More decent than any series about a Kaiju island should be. Benjamin Bratt, Mae Whitman, Nicholas Cantu, Betty Gilpin, Darren Barnet, and Phil Lamarr?!? This is an A-Team of talent.

We Gotta Go Back to the Island

With a group this strong and lore this deep, it’s hard to imagine that this flew under the radar. Let me tell you now if you have any love in your heart for Kaiju-type things, you’re going to love Skull Island. Great action elements and great storytelling aren’t knocked off track by the quickly quipped pace of the series. If Legendary and Powerhouse Animation wanted to, they could keep this going for a long time and open the floodgates for some great monster-verse series in the future. Binge this on Netflix if you’re here for a good time, streaming now.

Cover image via Netflix

Want to get Black Nerd Problems updates sent directly to you? Sign up here! Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram!

The post ‘Skull Island’ Review: A Kaiju Gift for All appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.