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Chapter By Chapter (usually) features me reading one chapter of the selected book at a time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as a read-along book club.
The previous chapter showed us that not every action scene has to be a fight. Even with the tensions on display, the action was focused on stopping a potential disaster in an already existing disaster situation.
The chapter we’re looking at today doesn’t feature any of the original cast. That’s not a problem if that isn’t the trend. Author Jean Lorrah is trying to set up the tensions. She focuses more on personal drama, but unlike too many woman writers today we know from the previous book and the scene in the gym in a previous chapter that she can handle the action and tie it into the personal drama. We even saw that last time.
I do hope that the crew plays a larger role soon. This is the second time I’ve read this book but the first one was so very long ago that I barely remember it. It’s a new–ish experience for me. We’re going to check in with the Vulcans created for this book, a subplot I hope works and isn’t just an excuse for the writer to reuse some of her old characters. Thus far I don’t see a reason for the Followers Of T’Vet to be here, though I do understand reusing doctors she’s familiar with in a story that’s going to lean more on them than the previous one. Let’s see how she does.
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That Martinez guy got around on this production.
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I plan a big declutter project this week that I knew I could work around…and then every other @$%$#% thing has to happen and suck time away! I won’t even be able to report on it until next week and I had to cut this week’s comic review AND Jake & Leon despite it being planned out because I also have company coming over, we had to install a new washing machine, my dad needed help with a few other things, I got a bunch of comics sold…which was going to Canada (and the US postal system being what it is we’re still waiting for them to arrive) and this already was a bigger project than I was intending. Any one of these and it wouldn’t affect my schedule. All of them combined and I didn’t make the fair I was hoping to visit and get out of the house to do something other than shop or something medical related. I hate this week! The deaths of celebrities whose work I enjoyed didn’t help, but it’s been a personal punch in the bolts for me as well.
At least that project is done and I can discuss it next week. This week I had to use a buffer I just put together before starting the video inventory, a video primer for Transformer collecting, since it involved things I bring up in Transformer toy reviews that I’m hoping to get more done of. I just didn’t want to use my one buffer so soon after putting it together.
I should have the next Chapter By Chapter review of Star Trek: The IDIC Epidemic up on time, unless something else goes wrong and let us not rule that out at this point, and whatever else comes out. No big project this week so hopefully I’ll have a comic review next Sunday and the comic that would have gone up this week as well as the Clutter Report for what I did all last week. Whatever the case, have a great week, everyone.
Week.
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This is a week of bad timing, for cartoon fans and me personally.
I’m going to spare you the major details, but a declutter project that I could have worked around was joined with a bunch of surprise distractions that ate up most of my week. I’ll save it for the update, but I don’t know if I’m going to have a comic review this week as I write this, and I can’t even go over the project until next week because I’m too mad. Sort version: I hate this week.
The fact that it took three big celebrities one day after another didn’t help, either. Dolly Parton, then Tim Curry, and then Peter Cullen. Parton and Curry were known to be dealing with different medical issues, while if anything was announced for Cullen’s cause of death I’ve been too buried in home videos to find out. I want to do a good tribute to some of my favorite Tim Curry and Peter Cullen roles, since Dolly Parton wasn’t known for voice acting, but I’m swamped. I seriously hate this week!
Fortunately, Orbital Bacon can least give me something to post, though I wouldn’t have made all the same choices. No Saturday Supercade and no Vitor: Starfire Champion, but this is the best I can do. Did I mention I hate this week? In addition to Saturday morning podcasts, he does a weekly livestream on Saturday mornings, recapturing the Saturday morning experience…even though many of his choices come from syndication. This week he did his own tribute to Cullen and Curry, including some of the obvious choices. I’ll put a list of timestamps to all the shows he covered so you can pick and choose, or sit back and watch all the old shows and commercials from a programming schedule long past. Enjoy…before some copywrite bot forces it down.
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“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20 ESV)
Hollywood, and those who share the mindset in other storytelling forms, seems to have done exactly that, and former actor and failed LA mayor candidate Spencer Pratt would know. He was the villain once, but in the era of deconstructing heroes and making villains “well rounded” and sympathetic while hurting and killing the masses may be working their way into the real world. Or so he claims, as reported by That Park Place. Seeing as even definitive kids show evil like Megatron and Skeletor have joined the Wicked Witch Of The West, Maleficent, and Cruella DeVille (her name is almost LITERALLY “cruel and evil”!!!!) in being shown to be the good guy the whole time, it’s hard to disagree with him even before he calls out real world murderers being given the same treatment by the general public.
The goal of the villain is to show the path you shouldn’t take, to be catharsis against the evils of the world, and represent the obstacles we face in life either metaphorically, spiritually, or in actuality. (Though I doubt many of us are going to face an evil magic user or space robot. A woman who wants to kill puppies, we shouldn’t rule out.) That’s hard to find now in the name of being more “mature” and the negative effects are hard to ignore in world both fictional and real.
BW Media Spotlight 
Why We Need To Save Superheroes
I’m starting to see a trend that bothers me, and it’s not just from the usual suspects. I understand where they’re coming from, but in a sense there’s a group of modern media critics in the superhero circles that don’t realize they’re doing the same thing as the Hollywood culture when it comes to superheroes and other cultural icons of fictional heroism like Indiana Jones or Luke Skywalker. They’re following the suggestion of Kylo Ren:
Only in their case it’s giving up. The commentary is “the stewards of your nostalgic favorites have culturally ruined these corporately owned characters, so forget them and create new characters”. I’m all for creating new characters. If the current writers, editors, directors, and whomever else gets blamed along the line refuse to do what these characters have come to stand for, then by all means create the characters that do what they used to.
That doesn’t mean we as fans have to completely abandon those characters, many of whom are recognized around the world. That’s why the usual suspects want to change them, either for some sociopolitical agenda or more often their own egos and preferences, using the culture war as a shield for their “improvements”. That’s also what they want. People who don’t follow the patterns of media and storytelling are used to seeing Superman and thinking they know what to expect. If they like that, they’re going to tune in. If not, they’ll go elsewhere and not realize these heroes no longer act heroic because the current creative team doesn’t believe in heroes, or at least doesn’t want you to. (Conspiracy theory goes here.) So they want you to give up, and there’s a very good reason we shouldn’t. The video I posted today is tied into that, so if you missed Real Fake Wizard’s commentary, go watch it now (it should open in a new tab) and come back here while I build off of that and explain why we need to be the ones protecting our heroes this time.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 1, 2026 in Comic Spotlight, Movie Spotlight, Streaming Spotlight, Television Spotlight, Video Game Spotlight and tagged commentary, fans vs creators, Hollywood versus comics, Hollywood versus fans.
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