Carl's Doomsday Scenario

Carl's Doomsday Scenario
by Matt Dinniman
Recommended Ages: 15+

In this first sequel to Dungeon Crawler Carl, a man and his cat continue to become a galactic social media sensation as they struggle to survive a live, planetwide Dungeons & Dragons campaign with little more than their wits, Princess Donut's charisma and Carl's increasingly effective punching, kicking and stompking skills. Now they're on Level 3 (of potentially 18 – but nobody has ever gotten past Level 13). They get to choose a species and class. Donut chooses cat and former child star; Carl's choices are more surprising. I'll let you find out about his species, but I'll hint that his class involves rapidly developing bomb-making skills. By the end, you'll know why this book has the title it does. It's gonna be a big deal later on, without a doubt.

So, Level 3. It's one of the levels divisible by three, don't ya know. As such, it's an installment in a scripted fantasy known as the Overcity, which prominently features a lot of elves and skyfolk (winged creatures who lord it over everybody else). It's also a place where quests happen to you, whether you want them or not. Carl and Donut get caught up in one almost immediately – a story about a circus that became a hellscape when the Overcity fell into shadow. How they get out of that isn't what's important right now; though the outcome gives them some leverage in the entertainment universe. It's their next quest that really blows up, figuratively and literally. We're talking a Kobayashi Maru scenario for a couple of crawlers. It's almost as if the evil corporation behind the game is afraid of their success and wants to kill them off before they get too big. But a whole bunch of other crawlers get swept up in it, and before it's over, cosmic alliances may be broken, shots are fired (not only within the dungeon) and an entire civilization teeters on the brink of economic collapse. Good times.

Carl is still that "I won't let them break me" guy we all know and love – especially the foot-fetishist AI controlling the game, as evidenced by the fact that he never makes any progress toward getting shoes or pants. Donut is still the wisecracking puddy-tat who can swing in a heartbeat between cuddling and killing, purring and hissing. She also shoots rockets out of her eyes, and commands the loyalty of a rapidly growing velociraptor. Their party grows by yet another member in this book, but this gift from a fellow member of the dungeon crawl's Top 10 leaderboard could have a dagger hidden in it, if you know what I mean. It's a stage in their adventure where they gear up for levels yet to come, learn a lot and, intentionally or otherwise, make more powerful enemies than ever before. And there's still lots of levels for them to get through if they want to survive. It's nonstop scary, thrilling, laugh-out-loud fun.

It looks like there are going to be at least 10 books in this series, though only eight have been released so far. A master of LitRPG, Dinniman is also the author of such "apocalyptic fun" as Kaiju, The Grinding and Operation Bounce House.

Coyote vs. Acme

I've taken my sweet time blogging about it, but I actually saw Coyote vs. Acme on its opening day, last Friday. Of course I did. Because I've been dying to see it since the news broke that Warner Brothers tried to bury it, for tax reasons, and Ketchup Entertainment coughed up big bucks to unbury it. Rumors that it was shelved because it was a bad movie, or wouldn't make money, have now been laid to rest: it's done rather well, even compared to other Looney Tunes theatrical features. In its opening weekend, it scored a second- or third-place box office behind the unstoppable Spider-Man: Brand New Day (which even I saw, and enjoyed) and maybe also Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (which I didn't). Locally, it was up against Spidey as well as The Dog Stars this week – another movie I'm supposed to enjoy but that I have no interest in seeing. It has also gotten pretty spiffy scores on Rotten Tomatoes. So, by general consent, not a terrible movie and not a commercial failure, either. How much of its success does it owe to its (pun intended) underdog narrative? I dunno. But let me tell you what I personally thought about it.

I thought the movie blended live action and animation beautifully, with lots of Looney Tunes legacy characters appearing in roles big and small, and flesh-and-blood actors encountering them in a convincing way. You stop looking for artifacts of eye contact not quite happening and kind of forget that there was no actual coyote on set for Will Forte or Lana Condor, as Wile E. Coyote's lawyer and his niece/intern/conscience respectively, to interact with. Also, the original voice actors behind the many animated characters are gone, but the movie's voice cast (mostly Eric Bauza) did an almost perfect job of recreating the characters. The cast also features good work by John Cena, Luis Guzmán and others. I have no complaints about the production values. As for the story, it blended zaniness that did, actually, make me laugh out loud, and some tenderness that got me a little choked up.

It's a send-up of the fact that Wile E. Coyote's efforts to catch the Road Runner are never helped, and always disastrously hindered, by an endless series of gadgets he orders from the Acme Corporation. Based (loosely, I think) on a New Yorker article in the form of a facetious legal brief in the coyote's multi-million-dollar lawsuit against the company, it delves into such Saturday morning cartoon-adjacent topics as inhumane treatment of product testing subjects, shady coverups by "too big to fail" businesses, judicial and Congressional corruption (Cena: "I don't pay you to laugh, Senator!") and certain personal injury lawyers who have given up on real ambition (to say nothing of dedication to their clients) and content themselves with nibbling the crumbs of small-time litigation. It has a client who speaks only in a limited number of painted signs, who noisily builds Rube Goldberg machines in his motel room and who is quietly plotting the downfall of the Road Runner throughout his journey through the legal system.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Obviously (lump in throat) when the Road Runner shows up in court. (2) A paint can plus a brush equals a railroad tunnel ... if you ever watched Warner Bros. cartoons, I think you can guess where this scene is headed. (3) Visiting Daffy Duck in the lunatic asylum, where he assumes Will Forte is there to pose pantsless for a painting. Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo!