Disney Magic Kingdoms

Geek Punditry #98: Playing in the Kitchen Sink

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I’ve never been much of a video gamer. Oh sure, I’ve played SOME, but the last time I owned a console was when my parents gave my brother, sister, and me a Sega Genesis for Christmas one year, to give you an idea of how long it’s been since I had regular access to any platforms. Still, I live in the year 2024, so even though I don’t PLAY video games, I get constantly bombarded with the advertising for them and have a basic knowledge of what at least the most popular ones are. Because of that basic awareness, there was a moment not that long ago where I felt a bit of an urge to get into a new game: when I heard about Multiversus. This is a video game that draws characters from dozens of properties owned by Warner Bros, including characters from Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo, Rick and Morty, Steven Universe, Adventure Time, Game of Thrones, and of course, the DC Universe. A fighting game in and of itself doesn’t really appeal to me, but…a game where I can pit Superman against Bugs Bunny or Tom and Jerry? Where the Powerpuff Girls can take on Jason Voorhees or Beetlejuice? Where Gizmo from Gremlins can face off against Agent Smith from The Matrix? 

It’s like being a kid again.

And did I mention the Iron Giant? Did I mention the Iron Freaking Giant?

I didn’t play a ton of video games as a kid, but I DID have a lot of action figures, and while some kids are meticulous about keeping the different lines of figures separate, I always mashed mine together. I saw no contradiction in having my G.I. Joes interact with the Masters of the Universe even though, relative to Duke and Snake-Eyes, He-Man and his crew were giants with a serious thyroid problem. And although there was no way Lion-O from Thundercats could actually fit inside and ride Optimus Prime, that didn’t stop me from PRETENDING he could as they rushed off to tackle Darth Vader and his army of B-level DC and Marvel villains culled from the Super Powers and Secret Wars lines. (Side note: a personal dream of mine would be to begin a collection of those superhero figures from my youth. I don’t need them in the packaging or in mint condition, but I at least need them to have all the limbs and, when appropriate, capes. There was also a short-lived line based on Archie Comics’ Mighty Crusaders that I would like to include. Christmas is coming up, people.)

In a way, I think this is even why I like certain modern toy lines. Things like Funko Pops take characters from virtually any franchise you can imagine and recreate them in the same style and the same scale, something I would have been all over as a child. Even LEGO has appeal for that same reason, although LEGO’s appeal obviously goes much further.

Anyway, Multiversus seems to run with this idea in the same way that I would have when I was a kid, and although I still haven’t (and probably will not) play the game, I AM reading the comic book miniseries based on it, Multiversus: Collision Detected, written by Bryan Q. Miller with art by Jon Sommariva and covers by Dan Mora, who is perhaps my favorite artist working in comics today. The comic is fun and wild, with the characters from the different universes all spilling into the DCU as the Justice League tries to make sense of what’s going on. It gets really crazy when the bad guys show up, including the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz and, wildest of all, The Nothing from The Neverending Story. Obviously there was never a “Nothing” action figure back in the day, but you better believe this is the kind of story I would weave on the living room floor with mountains of figures from every conceivable IP of the 80s battling it out with one another.

“Yeah, a collision of FUN!”
“For the last time, Stuart, stop pitching taglines.”

There is a certain thrill that comes with combining characters that we don’t normally see together. Comic books do it all the time, with crossovers between different publishers and different universes. Marvel and DC just last month released the first of two giant omnibus hardcovers collecting most of their crossovers to date, a hefty volume that’s a testament to the fact that geeks like me love stuff like this. How would these characters who should never meet react to one another? Would they fight? Would they get along? Would they team up? Would they fall in love?

Considering the love lives of their respective mentors, only having an impermeable dimensional barrier between them is practically a win.

For some reason that last one is often a sticking point in crossovers. There’s a certain segment of the population that thinks that the best love story Tim Drake (the third Robin) ever had happened in the pages of the DC Vs. Marvel crossover, when he and the X-Men’s junior member Jubilee fell for each other in a tragically doomed romance that had to end when their universes were separated again. In the 90s, Valiant Comics and Image Comics based their Deathmate crossover on the fact that their nigh-omnipotent characters Solar and Void met and came together, causing their universes to merge. 

Other crossovers are based on how ridiculous the idea may be. Archie Meets the Punisher is a real comic that happened because their respective publishers recognized that the two properties couldn’t be more different from one another, but somehow turned into a story that was not only entertaining, but respectful of BOTH very diverse universes. Then there was the Star Trek/X-Men crossover, a story that you will NEVER convince me wasn’t conceived entirely around the page where Nurse Chapel calls for “Dr. McCoy” and both Leonard “Bones” McCoy of the USS Enterprise and Henry “Beast” McCoy of the X-Men answer at the same time, then look at one another incredulously.

“My work here is done.”
“Lobdell, we need 47 more pages.”
“I already wrote the only one that matters.”

I think this mashup madness is the main reason I’m still playing one of the few mobile games I play, Disney Magic Kingdoms. It’s an idle game, where you build up your theme park by adding rides and concession stands and the like, but the real appeal to me is the ability to “collect” characters from various Disney-owned properties, including not only the classic Disney characters and the films of the Disney animated canon, but also the characters from Pixar, the Muppets, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars. Earlier this year they started adding properties from the franchises they acquired in their absorption of 20th Century Fox as well, beginning with the heroes of the Ice Age movies. While I don’t expect them to add EVERY IP in their catalog (it’s hard to imagine the Xenomorph from Aliens running around outside Dumbo’s Flying Elephants), I’m really surprised that they have not yet started including Marvel characters, but I also suspect it’s only a matter of time.

Marvel is slowly starting to take advantage of their corporate parentage as well. They’ve done crossovers where the Predator has fought Wolverine and Black Panther, and another where the Avengers deal with Aliens. Less likely but more fun, we’ve had a series of one-shots casting the Disney heroes as the Marvel superheroes. So far we’ve gotten Donald Duck as Wolverine and Thor, and upcoming specials will give us Minnie Mouse as Captain Marvel and the Fab Four (Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy) as Marvel’s Fantastic Four. They’ve also taken their popular “What If?” comic book and released an Aliens miniseries based on an alternate universe where Carter Burke, Paul Reiser’s character from Aliens, survived. And as a curious note, the comic book is co-written by Paul Reiser himself. No further miniseries have been announced yet, but I thought the Aliens comic was really entertaining, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing more “What If?”s based on Marvel’s corporate siblings like Predator, Planet of the Apes, or Star Wars either. 

Got my fingers crossed for “What if Goofy Became the Punisher.”

(That joke is WAY darker when you realize it has to be Goofy because, canonically, he’s the only father in the group.)

We don’t get these sort of “everything but the kitchen sink” crossovers much on TV or in the movies, though. Oh sure, we get the occasional crossover like Godzilla Vs. Kong, Freddy Vs. Jason, or Kramer Vs. Kramer, but real multi-universe mashups are kind of rare. I think it’s part of the reason that we all loved Who Framed Roger Rabbit? so much. Yeah, it’s a great movie, but it’s also the only place, canonically, where we’ve ever seen Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny together, or Donald Duck face off against Daffy Duck. The film also included Droopy Dog, Betty Boop, Woody Woodpecker, and a real Who’s Who of cartoon stars of the 30s and 40s – and as those are still the greatest cartoon stars of all time, we loved it. Wreck-It Ralph would do the same thing with video game characters, and the Toy Story films did a lot of that with the classic playthings of our youth, and yeah, we love them for it.

Eat your heart out, “DeNiro and Pacino in Heat.”

And of course, let’s not forget the greatest crossover event of all time, 1990’s Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, which combined the forces of the Smurfs, the Muppet Babies, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Garfield, Winnie-the-Pooh, Alf, the Looney Tunes, Slimer from The Real Ghostbusters, and Huey, Dewey, and Louie from Ducktales in a half-hour anti-drug special that’s so bizarre you have to imagine that they were actually ON drugs while making it. (This is a real special, people. Don’t take my word for it, you can watch it on YouTube.)

And yet, even THAT has a certain weird charm to it. 

It’s important to remember that the people who make cartoons, movies, comic books, and video games, were once children as well – at least, until they are all replaced by AI – and as such they enjoyed throwing their toys together just as much as we did. That’s why I’m digging the Multiversus comic, why I’m reading the “What If” specials in which the Disney stars become Marvel heroes. It’s not because I’m looking for something huge, something life-changing, something of great profundity.

It’s just fun.

And honestly, guys, shouldn’t that be enough?

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. If you’ve played Multiversus, he’s got a question for you: have they overpowered Shaggy in deference to his status as a meme? Because honestly, that would be kinda cool. 

Geek Punditry #72: They Call it The Streak

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My streaks, as I write this, are in mortal danger.

Last night, a nasty storm ripped through my part of Louisiana. Although my family is fine, no one was hurt, and we didn’t suffer any real damage, our power was knocked out at about 11:30 pm and, as of right now, they’re not estimating that it will be returned to my street until about midnight. We live in a weird nexus of energy, right near the parish line but connected to the grid in the neighboring parish, so when weather strikes it is not at all uncommon for us to lose power while the street on the other side of us still has theirs. When I left the house to go to work this morning, I saw that not only was the street to the west still juiced up, but so was the eastern territory to which we are ostensibly connected. In other words, it is literally JUST my street that is out of power.

So my streaks are in trouble.

It’s weird how many of us have started to carve away little corners of our lives in deference to keeping a streak intact. I kind of blame Wordle. Wordle didn’t start the concept of a streak, of course, but I think that the rush of popularity when that particular game was new and fresh is what kickstarted it. If you guys recall, back in 2021 the then-new Wordle game added a function that allowed people to share their results on social media. Suddenly, it became the hot thing, and everybody’s Facebook wall looked like they were showing screenshots of a Tetris game that only had blocks in green, gray, and gold. That’s what made Wordle catch fire, but I think one of the things that has kept that fire burning is the concept of the “streak.” How many days in a row can you play? How many days in a row can you WIN? Falling asleep at night without at least having attempted the day’s Wordle is unthinkable to the devoted. 

My Wordle for the day looks like a duckie.

Then came the Wordle imitators – the ones specific to different TV shows, sports, genres. Similar daily games started to crop up that asked you to guess movie box office totals from the past. Other games were based on Major League Baseball or the NFL. Then the New York Times bought Wordle and added it to their own growing accumulation of word games (they’ve got to do something to get people interested, no one is buying newspapers anymore), and each of those individual games has, of course, its own streak counter. And the streak CANNOT BE BROKEN. If your spouse suddenly leaps from bed at 11:45 and sneaks off downstairs, don’t worry. They’re not cheating on you, they just remembered that they haven’t done today’s “Connections” puzzle.

Besides the NYT word games, I have two other game apps where I’ve got a streak going that I admit I feel nervous to allow to lapse. It’s ridiculous, of course. There’s no practical benefit to maintaining said streak. There’s no prize or reward, except for the occasional in-game bonus, that makes it worth your while to be certain there’s five minutes carved out every single day for this particular game. And yet somehow, the idea of intentionally walking away and abandoning my streak gives me the same kind of anxiety I would have if I realized that I hadn’t eaten that day. Worse, actually, because Lord knows I could afford to skip a meal or two, but if I skip a day of playing Disney Magic Kingdoms I might not unlock Zeus in the all-new Hercules mini-event. It’s a terrifying thought.

The most inaccurate thing in Disney history is portraying these two as loving parents.

Other streaks give you little, silly awards like badges that you can only view in the app or share on social media. It’s not like they give you an actual prize, an actual medal, an actual award. I can’t walk into a coffee shop and claim a discount by flashing my Spirit Pegasus badge (believe me, I’ve tried). So why do it?

Because streaks help breed consistency, and while things like the Disney game are admittedly silly, there are other areas of my life in which consistency has real value. 

There are two streaks I’m on that I’m actually proud of, both of which are terribly close to reaching a solid year and both of which I feel I’m better off for having maintained. The first is in the Beanstack app, an app that I was introduced to last year when my wife Erin signed up the entire family for the library’s summer reading program. That particular challenge does have a few physical prizes – we got umbrellas last year for signing up, for example. We were to use that app to log our reading each day. Perhaps it’s the part of me that’s terrified to lose a streak, but of the three of us in the household, I am easily the one who used it the most. And when last summer ended, I realized I could continue to use Beanstack to track my reading, even though the summer reading challenge was over. I’ve always been an avid reader, but that reading fell off considerably after my son was born. My fear of losing my Beanstack streak has brought it back to me in force. As of right now I’ve read at least a few minutes (usually more, of course) every day for 353 consecutive days. I have logged 69 separate books at 11,822 minutes of reading time spread across 451 sessions. At this rate, I may well turn out to be the Joey Chestnut of licensed Star Trek novels, and I’m okay with that.

With summer approaching again, yesterday Beanstack let me know that my local library is once again participating in the summer reading challenge and asked me if I wanted to sign up for it again. I certainly did. Later that day, I got a text from my wife (whose email address is the one attached to the family Beanstack account) asking why she just got an email informing her that I had earned a free minitool that I can pick up at any library branch any time after June 1. That moment of confusion on her part, in and of itself, made the whole challenge worthwhile.

The other streak I’ve maintained comes from a website (not an actual app, oddly enough) called 750 Words. This is a site used to track not your reading, but your writing, with the goal of logging a minimum of 750 words a day. And guys, I’m ecstatic to announce that as of this column you are currently reading, I’ve hit 363 consecutive days, just short of a year. A lot of those words were generated via these very Geek Punditry columns I give to you every Friday. Many of them, up until January of this year, were in the service of Little Stars. There have been other assorted short stories and pieces of writing effluvia, and then a while back I started the new novel I’m working on (which I occasionally will update you on in my handy dandy newsletter). And on some days when I just plain have no juice and no energy for anything in a creative vein, I keep a journal. But whatever the case, I’ve gone almost an entire year writing at least 750 words a day, and I am quite proud of that. And yeah, I give the credit for that to me not wanting to break my dang streak.

Who knew that this would turn out to be the all-time writing motivator?

So to these last two streaks, at least, I owe a debt of gratitude. And I’m glad I live in an era where, even if there’s no power to my laptop computer, I can turn out 750 words on a tablet or phone, because it’ll still count, dang it. And I’ll play my silly little games. And I’ll read, if I have to, in the dark, to make sure that streak doesn’t die.

Because sometimes it’s the little things that make it all count. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He is currently on a 17,067-day uninterrupted streak of not wearing Crocs, and he has no intention of stopping that any time soon.