Oh, this is the last issue? If I knew I would have worked this in somehow just so I wouldn’t have to read it again. Ah well. I’m having that kind of Tuesday.
Go for the forehead! It’s an easy target! Can’t miss it!
Thunderbolt #60 FINAL ISSUE
Charlton Comics (November, 1967)
WRITER: Sergius O’Shaughnessy
EDITOR: Dick Giordano
“When Flies The Dragon”
CREATOR: P.A.M.
ARTIST: Pat Boyett
“The Prankster”
ARTIST: Jim Aparo
Sunday I was so busy and tired that I forgot until Monday morning that yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr Day. I like to find different posts to make sure there’s always a version up here in case any of the others go down, so this year we’re going with audio.
Remember that King believed in peaceful protest and led the civil rights movement in the hopes one day nobody would have to because everyone would be free and not be judged by skin color but by character. That’s supposed to be the goal of the race war, not to fight the race war.
In our previous chapter we started the second episode proper, a pet was lost, and I forgot to note that our crew is back together.
We are now halfway through the book visually, but that doesn’t account for the four pages list of other novelisations plus an order form for posters based on production art or something. So maybe we were halfway through the story when we started last time? Not sure. Point is we’ve reach the halfway point. There have been some added scenes that I can only assume are there to pad out the book. Novelizations (or “novelisations” if you’re British) are usually interesting to see what got lost on the cutting room floor or cut from the recording for time. Here we have Marter taking advantage of being a book that doesn’t need a budget for costumes to fill in gaps, which not only helps with the mental visuals of the scene but you can bring them back to watching the episodes. This lets your brain fill in gaps left by the budget, and classic Doctor Who never had much of a budget.
With that in mind (heh) let’s head back to see how Vicki handles her pet being lost and maybe what our villain will be trying next.
Turns out they both have the same dentist.
The Night Man #8
Malibu Comics/Ultraverse (May, 1994)
“Savagery!”
WRITER: Steve Englehart
PENCILER: Kyle Hotz
INKER: Thomas Florimonte, Jr
COLORING: Mickey Rose & Foodhammer!
LETTERER: Dave Lanphear
EDITOR: Roland Mann
Plus she’ll still be a producer.
I’ll have more to say on this on Tuesday, but let’s not assume that Kennedy leaving Lucasfilm solves the problem. DC Comics wasn’t repaired when Dan DiDio left, neither was Marvel Comics when Joe Quesada left, and Les Moonves made sure as he went out the door at ViacomCBS that Star Trek would remain in the hands of Alex Kurtzman. I no longer celebrate when someone leaves. I celebrate if the replacement actually gets things back on course. I have about as much hope for Star Wars’ “restoration” now as I did then, which isn’t much.
Over at The Clutter Reports this week I have that big checklist project I need to do, and I need the right notebook. Or maybe the right binder.
I need to double check but I think I’ve read all the Drive Thru Comics freebies that currently interest me. If so, I still have a library at Globalcomix and Neon Ichiban to go through. By then both what’s left of ComiXology and Drive Thru Comics may have given me new offerings. We’ll see how all of that goes down. Meanwhile, Thunderbolt returns on Tuesday, which means Tuesday is going to be a lot of me complaining. At least we have the continuing Chapter By Chapter review of the novelization of Doctor Who: The Rescue and CBS Transformers to go over. We’ll see what happens the rest of the week. Have a great one, everybody!
So I hear the first episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is available for free on YouTube. I think Samsung Plus is offering it as well. Not that it matters either way because I don’t care. The marketing felt nothing like Star Trek, I don’t care how many voice overs you use from actual characters from better shows. I’ve seen a few reviews and it sounds worse that I was expecting. Actually, some of the backstory reminds me of that failed animated series pitch that also decided to tear the Federation apart by ruining warp travel. I wonder if Paramount ripped itself off. You’re better off reading the comic from the 90s that spun off from Deep Space Nine and showed Nog at the Academy than this garbage.
To see the concept done better, we return to a show I discussed many years ago, Space Academy. This show, one of the few live-action productions by Filmation, also featured a bunch of cadets of a “federation” learning how to become space explorers. As the commander, Lost In Space‘s Jonathan Harris played Campu, a far different role from Doctor Smith. A further Star Trek connection would be that James Doohan played the commander of the Star Command garrison on the same planetoid in the spin-off show Jason Of Star Command, a previous Saturday Night Showcase entry. which serialized adventure of a man with superhuman strength fending off an invasion from outside the galaxy. And a couple of actors playing the kids also menaced the Enterprise in “And A Child Shall Lead Them” from the original Star Trek. Sadly, some of the actors of this show passed away according to Wikipedia (question the source).
Since I already did episode one in a previous Showcase, I’m jumping to episode 5, “There’s No Place Like Home” which shares some ideas with the Starfleet Academy episode according to reviews. Loki is given the chance to find out where he came from. The youngest member of the team, he’s put in a moral quandary when the source of that information has a request in return, to steal an explosive formula that might be more explosive than he knows. It’s up to him and his friends in Blue Team to save the day, but can they? Well, the show has 13 episodes so you can hazard a guess. Enjoy.
The Clutter Reports (my other site) Atop The Fourth Wall Crisis On Earth Prime Lean Into Artcast Bully Says “Comics Oughta Be Fun” Siskoid’s Blog of Geekery
Cartoon Hero’s Lair SF Debris Four Million Years Later
BW Media Spotlight 