After a year of offstage shout-outs, citations and cameos, Ainsley Hawthorn comes on the show to complete the Hawthorn collectors set, and also to talk about the 1985 animated spectacular Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer!

Does Rainbow Brite fit the definition of superhero? How is this movie a functional rebuke of Orwellian dystopia? Why can't anyone in Star Trek: The Next Generation figure out how to use a bed? And how many Akira tattoos does Anthony have secreted around his person?

PLUS! We rate history's greatest horses in our new, short lived, quickly off the rails segment "Horses More Magnificent Than the Most Magnificent Horse in the Universe"! We're still workshopping the title.

Get ready for a deluge of obscure references being described with even more obscure references as the team loses all touch with modern reality and dives into the pot-o-gold at the end of the Rainbow. YAY RAINBOW!!!

Look folks, your hosts are old, okay? They're from the twentieth century. They remember video tapes and also when it was a hip idea that Tony Stark was dating Shannon Elizabeth. But they're not as old as Norse mythology, so they're going to stand next to Thor: The Dark World in public just to seem young and with-it by comparison and see how that goes.

What's the scale of technological development on a world that has laser guns but still uses swords and ox-drawn carts? Why is Natalie Portman's character, a doctor of physics with three degrees, written to speak like a tweenish babywoman? And if you are investing a few billion dollars into twenty movies and five or six television series to build up to an epic story about the Infinity Stones, why the hell can't you get even the colour of the stones right!?

Anyway, enjoy this second foray into Thor, hey? Or else Andrew and Anthony have to commit Norse Seppuku.

PS: The amazing Ring Cycle comic we are talking about which we did not have at hand and subsequently forgot all the details of is The Ring of Nibelung by P. Craig Russell (and not Charles Vess. Sorry. But you should go check it out.

Andrew and Anthony turn the superhero genre upside down and see what happens when instead of action and adventure you dial up the horror and existential dread with the superpowered sci-fi series Stranger Things!

What makes this story of a kid given strange powers by lab experiments and running away to have adventures different from 99% of Marvel comics? How is our reaction to Eleven formed by gendered archetypes we've been beating at since The Odyssey? And why the heck does everyone like Barb? She's pulling a reverse Friday the 13th! But hey, maybe there's a little Barb in all of us.

Welcome to the Kid Danger genre! Plus, the guys wax poetic about Stephen King's It, catch a powerful case of Anthony's Disease wishing the CG Demogorgon was a rubbery '80s abomination instead, and lose their sanity gazing into the impossible unknown of Katsuhiro Otomo's linework in Akira.

This week we take to the skis! Sorry, skies. And blast off with the cult 1991 Disney adventure movie The Rocketeer!

How is it that a movie this in love with flying never got off the ground? Did Dave Stevens somehow grow Billy Campbell in a lab to look exactly like his drawings? Is Cliff Secord the living embodiment of male entitlement? And where does Andrew get off hosting a movie podcast when he has apparently seen next to no movies?

Tell him No Time for Heroics is back from vacation with new episodes. Tell him Howard Hughes said so.

PS; This one's in memory of Jon "Ten bucks a shot" Polito, who passed away just two days after we recorded this podcast praising his work. He joins a cast of top notch character actors. Enjoy!

PPS: Here's the books Anthony recommended at the end of the episode!

Five Came Back

The Collaboration

Last week of back issues, and we're going out with one of the most popular graphic novels turned middlingly popular movie of all time, V for Vendetta!

Back to your regularly scheduled complaining next week!

Sticking in 1996, this back issue fetures Fox's tv movie/aborted pilot Generation X!

Your heroes are enmeshed in a diabolical web of criminally labour-intensive intrigue and moving house, so on this sunny Summer day, and to celebrate our one year anniversary, let's all enjoy a look back at some of our favorites, starting with the purplest hero of them wall!

I mean all. Ugh, all this spackling...

Possibly a first in the history of podcasting, Andrew and Anthony get to take revenge on a fan for requesting a horrible movie this one time by forcing them to come on the show and watch that movie's sequel. Listener Meghan Murphy joins us to take on 2011's Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance! 

 Would this movie have been better if the kid had been named Seamus O'Bullfighter? Is the moment when Ghost Rider turns a titanic industrial digger into a hell-machine the greatest moment in the history of cinema? And welcome to the show cave-dwelling, tattooed Christopher Lambert! 

 PS: Don't look up that "first in the history of podcasting" thing from before, it's undoubtedly not true. 

 PPS: The audio gets really screwed up for reasons unknown half way though. We're still trying to figure that one out. Though really we may have unintentionally replicated the experience of watching a Neveldine/Taylor movie, which is that it's really loud and kinda hard to follow, but if you do it's a pretty great time.

Well, Suicide Squad is coming out... but it's expensive to go to the movies and also we don't wanna. So instead we sent a confused and put-upon mother to our local Blockbuster that no longer exists and had her rent the Suicide Squad ripping-off mockbuster Sinister Squad!

Isn't it redundant to have a personified Death that is trying to kill people? Why is the Pied Piper, the only character in this movie with mind control in his original fairy tale, the only one here without mind control powers? But the hundred-million dollar question: will this rip-off prove to be a better movie than Suicide Squad?

Help us carry on the grand tradition of mythpunk stories not really translating to the screen, and at the same time reset our ratings scale for movies that are really and truly poor with 2016's Sinister Squad!

It's our 50th episode! And we're spoiling ourselves by watching one of the greatest entries in the superhero movie genre and immediately questioning its place on top... Superman: The Movie!

Is this movie the best Superman comic that we've yet made? Why does Jor El care about inspiring an alien race when his whole planet is dying? If you were trying to blend in at a '70s newsroom, why play a bumbling, attention-grabbing anachronism?  And the fact that Otis sounds like the Jawas aside, how perfect is John Williams' score in this?

So join us, you diseased maniacs, as we celebrate our fiftieth show!

We talk a lot about comics becoming movies on the podcast. Here's a movie that became a comic, but in the process evolved into something truly ambitious and bizarre. This episode we read Jack Kirby's 2001 comics adaptation.

2001: A Space Odyssey, a product of two geniuses in two different media, Stanley Kubrick in film and Arthur C. Clarke in print, filtered and translated through a third. 

We're breaking format to take the ultimate trip and check out what happens when you take an already great work of art and hook it up to Kirby's dream machine.

In short, the new seed is the spirit of our own self belief. Think about it.

Pictured here: omgwtf

We've got a special request to talk about X-Men Oranges Wolverine! So I guess that's what we're doing now.

Could we please have a movie where an actress of Lynn Collins caliber plays something more than a love interest who dies to motivate a dude? And oh man, Wolverine? Northwest Territories? Daniel Negreanu? Get ready for the most Canadian movie since Men with Brooms.  Also get ready for more fakey French Canadian accents cause Gambit returns!

Spoilers? This movie has next to nothing to do with wolverines, which is disappointing as they're like totally badass out there in the woods. Oh well!

PS: It's our last full episode before our big 50th and also before we take a brief Summer vacation. Stay Tuned!

Superman and Wonder Woman had a daughter. And all she wants is to get to school on time once in a while.. But all these bullies, martial artists, killer robots, and alien invasions keep getting her stuck in detention. No Time for Heroics tackles its first anime movie and gets tackled back by Project A-Ko!

Is this just a long-form Warner Brothers cartoon dressed in fighting robot clothes? Whose project is this anyway? And why, why all the cartoon boobs? Even some of the guys have cartoon boobs. Japan. Why.

There's a dearth of female superheroes in North America, so we're heading across the pond. Okay, maybe a couple ponds. It's the 30th anniversary of Project A-Ko, and we're starting the party by remembering that Project A-Ko exists!

Andrew's been hurt before in his long-standing relationship with Sam Raimi. But maybe if they just get back together for an afternoon of Darkman (1990) and hash out their differences, they can make it work. Maybe?

If Darkman's masks degrade in the daylight, why does Darkman never do anything at night? Would it have made Durant a more evil-seeming villain if he was building dioramas of famous scenes from history out of taxidermied mice? How is it that Sam Raimi was so effectively able to turn Liam Neeson into Bruce Campbell, both literally and figuratively? And how the heck do 3D printers work!?

What is it about Darkman? What Secrets does he hold? We're going to find out today, but spoilers? Mostly those secrets are crispy and melodramatic. 

Welcome to an episode of No Time for Heroics that is THE SAME... yet somehow changed... as we head back to 16 bit world of Super Nintendo and the superhero-killing world of 1994 with the Death and Return of Superman.

What does a game (and storyline) in which Superman kills two people say about him as a hero? Could Sonic Blast Man be a member of Kickers Inc.? Is it a fashion faux pas to say you liked leather jacket era Superboy? Did anyone get that Kickers Inc. reference?

In the course of recording this episode, both Anthony and Andrew died, and were replaced by four impostors. Oh wait, isn't that eight impostors? That's probably too many. Also, we totally had extra mans, so it was no biggie.

We're welcoming Disney Animators Ross Blocher (Frozen, Big Hero 6, and also of Oh No Ross and Carrie) and Dale Baer (of The Rescuers, The Lord of the Rings, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Lion King, and oh yeah, today's movie to name a few) for our first foray into the heroes of myth and legend with Disney's 1973 classic Robin Hood!

Why is Little John played by Baloo? Why did Walt Disney hate 101 Dalmatians? What's the terrible secret of Prince John's mother? What's the deal with Don Bluth?

It's legends talking legends as we get deep into the history of Robin Hood movies, cartoons, and the Walt Disney Animation department, post Walt Disney. 

Get ready for some high stakes espionage action as Andrew and Anthony welcome back Pepper Pistolwhip, (in her disguise as mild mannered Jill Butler) to talk about Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Would you watch a movie about Cap just reading a book about Watergate going "Guys, wtf?"And just what the heck is a Winter Soldier? Is it like a Summer Soldier, just in the Cold War? So what's Spring Soldier, like a mattress or something? OMG guys, sleeper cells!

All this plus Andrew's wife Ainsley tries to remember what the heck happened in this movie based on one viewing a while ago. Spoilers: Black Widow was in it.

It's game night at No Time for Heroics, and the guys are checking out Capcom's 1994 beat-em-up X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse for the Super Nintendo.

Shouldn't Apocalypse be in the game with his name on it? How pleasurable would a surprise encounter with the Brood on some cheery day be? Who's the treasurer of the Hellfire Club? Why is Gambit so... so cool you guys?

Nothing can stop the Juggernaut! But we did, I guess. Join us as we jump on the bandwagon and do our very first video game review!

On this episode the guys check out Mark Millar and Matthew Vaughn's IRL superhero "black comedy" Kick-Ass!

Is it possible to have a mafia that's just a whole room of Tony Sopranos? Is it necessary to have a minute long screed convincing us that teens masturbate at the drop of a hat? Does Hit Girl just serve as a catharsis ex machina? Why the hell hasn't Andrew seen Breakfast Club?

Roger Ebert said about this movie "Shall I have feelings, or should I pretend to be cool?" and I guess we don't haven any feelings either, because we're just the coolest cats around, dig? Not like Ebert cool. Cooler than a jet pack, but not as cool as Nicolas Cage doing an Adam West impression. (So cool).

Come back with us to a time when newspapers had the death of Superman on the front page (beneath the fold) and Nicolas Cage was prime non-skullfaced hero potential with a documentary about what could have been, The Death of Superman Lives.

Is it possible that Superman Lives would've been a better movie than the ones we got? What is it about Kevin Spacey that makes everyone want to cast him as Lex Luthor? Are we the only ones okay with a movie in which Superman fights a giant space spider? How many people not in this movie have put Tim Burton in a headlock?

And hey, now that you've heard the episode, you should check out the documentary if you haven't already! You can pick it up in the format of your choice right here. It's a real labour of love on the part of director Jon Schnepp, so head over there and help support it!

We take on The Strangest Super-Heroes of All (tm) and check outone of the movies responsible for making the cinema comic-friendly,2000's X-Men.

What do Canadians do for fun that isn't beating people to pulp in acage? What does this movie have to say of the influence of the homevideo market on theatrical cinema? Is "naked" a valid characterchoice?

To ME my X-Listeners! Oh wait, that sounds like ex- listeners. Andwe don't want that at all! For we just love you all so verymuch.

Artist Jesse Codner is on the show to teach us the ways of Ryan Reynolds. Those ways are green and fibrous. At least according to 2011's Green Lantern.

Why is "xenobiologist" a profession in a world that has never encountered aliens? At what CG effects saturation point does a live action movie just become a cartoon? Is it necessary for a hero to be a mess that treats women as disposable sex toys to be truly heroic?

Too bad this movie did so poorly. Now they'll never let Ryan Reynolds start in another superhero movie. Oh well!

Let's have some real talk, Americans. What the heck is a homecoming? Is it like a prom, only homier? That's just one of the questions stumping your Canadian hosts after watching 2005's Sky High.

Is this kid's Mom trying to get him hooked up with the school president? How does this manage to be Twilight before there was a Twilight? Is this the biggest Kids in the Hall reunion in recent years? Why the heck isn't Kurt Russell starring in all the movies?

Enough of these broody, slaughtery modern heroes... let's get all bubble-gum popish with 2005's X-Men-Batman '66-Harry Potter mash-up, Sky High!

An ozsploitation superhero musical with Alan Arkin, Christopher Lee, and music from Richard O'Brien of 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' fame? Sometimes the mere fact of a movie existing is a miracle in itself, and that's the case with 1983's forgotten collection of weirdness, the Return of Captain Invincible!

Did the folks that did The Incredibles just lift the beginning of this movie wholesale? Does every deli owner in Manhattan just have a machine gun fish lying around just in case? Can a movie with a song made up entirely of the word "bullshit" say something serious about the post-heroic age?

What the world needs now is a shining hero! What the world needed back then was something else I guess, cause only like five people saw this. Into the blue for crissake!

Well, the audio gods were not kind to us this week and ate our episode. It was totally going to be sweet too, you woulda loved it. Oh well!

Instead we decided to roll out a new feature we're going to have from time to time, the No Time for Heroics ONE SHOT!

These'll be just a brief discussion on anything that doesn't fit the format of the show, but that we think you might like anyway.

And what better way to start with Andrew and Anthony sitting down to watch the new trailer for Star Wars: Rogue One!

Enjoy! Barring more smiting, we'll be back to your regular programming next week.