Kid Characters: The Right Way & The Wrong Way

Some people just really hate kid characters, even among those who don’t hate kids in real life. Mostly it’s the kid haters, though.

There’s this idea from a rather vocal group that kids don’t belong in stories, even when the stories are made for kids. They tell you “kids want to be the adults, not the kids, and they want to see the adults do the cool things, not kids.” Yeah, that’s bogus. You can have both. You don’t have to be part of the false “representation” movement to want to see kids like yourself doing cool things. It’s why so many shows star teenagers, the next level for kids. The adults will usually get to do all the fun stuff because they’re older and more experienced, but you can have kids be cool in your stories, too.

The problem is so many writers don’t know how to write kids, or they have a goal for kids in their stories that don’t quite work the way they’re written. Now some I can defend. Scott Trakker is hated by a friend of mine in the Morning Nonsense “best chat” but when he’s written well he can add to the story. The trick is knowing when he can help and when it’s best he doesn’t. I don’t hate Scott, though most recent versions of MASK have tossed him out entirely while giving his dad a new paint job. There are some stories that he shouldn’t have been in, but I can go story by story and find ones where he actually adds to the plot and makes it interesting, freshening up the MASK vs VENOM stories. That might be fun someday.

Instead I want to focus on two really good kid characters, two of my favorites in fact. And these aren’t the little kid “Disney/Nick Junior” variety. These are the regular Saturday morning and syndicated shows for older kids not quite pre-teen yet. I’ll go over why they work and why I like them. Between those two, however, I’m going to show you a counterpoint with two really bad characters that show why some people hate kid characters in shows not about kids. I’m not so naive that I don’t realize how it can be done wrong. I just want to show how it can be done right. Going back and forth will make it fun. I also want to say that the fact that both of the good choices were girls and the bad choices were bad isn’t me turning “woke”. It’s me choosing a particular age group and finding the two best examples of both based on memory or recent viewings. These are old shows and they didn’t do that nonsense back then. The only boy option that came to memory were Jonny Quest and Hadji, and that’s stacking the deck.

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“Yesterday’s” Comic> Amazing Mystery Funnies #19

The day Don Knotts lost it!

Amazing Mystery Funnies #19

I finally started a spreadsheet of Golden Age comics I want to read and ones I’d decided to stop reading. That should cut down how long it takes me to start doing the Friday reviews. Do you care? Probably not. I just need to fill out the intro, and this comic is on the “keep reading” part of the list. That’s all I’ve got. Let’s get to the anthology.

[Read along with me here]

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BW’s Daily Video> 250 Years Of American History In 9 Minutes

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Why I’m Not Interested In James Gunn’s Supergirl

I was going to do a BW Vs article responding to a couple of articles in Variety about the failures of the Gunnverse Supergirl movie and why Hollywood is failing superheroines. I felt I’d be leaning too close to the culture war by the end and I’m trying to push back in my own way. So I chose a different path: why don’t I want to see it?

Trailers, interviews, preview clips, and backstage video are all supposed to get you hyped to see a movie, to convince you to spend time and money watching the film they’re promoting. All those things convinced me to NOT watch Craig Gillespie and Ann Nogueira’s take on the Maid Of Might as envisioned by James Gunn. Apparently I’m not alone, as the movie is bombing like it was at a party with a free open bar…fitting given that this is based on a Tom King story about Kara going off to get drunk on her birthday by finding a red sun planet with a lower drinking age.

The reviews, including reviews by women like JesterBell and Snarky Jay, have further convinced me to avoid this. The occasional mid rating goes against the more vocal apathy or outright rage, even from people who attacked other reviewers who complained about it. Remember Angry Joe Vargas from the Channel Awesome days, before Mike Michaud ruined the project in the name of tighter controls and ticking off the creators not part of the main videos? He decided to go after members of the Friday Night Tights crew over their complaints about the movie’s promotional info and when they finally got to the theater…only to rage against the movie himself after seeing it. It’s not how I expected two corners of my internet experience to cross paths but there we are. Curious how alt.toys.transformers ends up being part of this. (I’m not against a transforming Supermobile in theory, Hasbro!)

That’s all I’m going to say about that or Milly Alcock’s comments. Some are out of context (though she hasn’t bothered to clarify), some were made to make the…particular social viewpoint website that interviewed her happy during Pride Month, and the rest is the usual nonsense from actors and actresses who care more about what they’re making and who they’re working with than the source material and it’s fans, both of whom are responsible for making the thing you’re being paid more money in an day than I’ve ever had in my bank account to work on. What I haven’t already gone over in past controversies doesn’t fit with this site’s mission.

Instead I’m going to go over all the information I’ve seen and heard about this movie and flat out tell you why I want nothing to do with it or the rest of Gunnverse. There’s a reason this is in the Death Of DC category, and tied to the reason I have that category in the first place.

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“Yesterday’s” Comic> Sneakers & The U-Force #1

Your parents named you after footwear?

Sneakers And The U-Force #1

OmniLegend Tales (2010)

“Introduction”

ALL OF IT: Nana Kumi-Amankwah

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BW’s Daily Video> Jazza Vs The Odyssey part 2: The Gods

Check out part one if you missed it yesterday.

Catch more from Jazza on YouTube

Sony Vs Physical Media

Over at The Clutter Reports I’ve defended physical media even during the declutter process. There are good reasons to own your own copy of something, but the entertainment industry has fought that since the debut of the VCR and the home video market. Now the gaming companies are pushing for the same thing. Sony dropped quite a bombshell to open the month of July, with this announcement from their official blog by Senior Director of Content Communications for Sony Entertainment:

As consumer preferences and the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital, physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028. Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only. This transition has no impact on games that already released, or will be releasing, prior to January 2028 in disc format.

This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs. This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.

We’ll continue to prioritize our resources to drive innovation in how players can access games and provide choices as to where players prefer to purchase new games, whether that’s at retailers or PlayStation Store. We remain committed to delivering a world-class gaming experience to our fans and we thank you for your continued support.

Whether you play video games on the PlayStation or not, this might affect you. Cord Cutters News is wondering how this will affect home video of shows and movies produced by Sony, and whether that will shift to completely streaming. That means any new content from them or a chance to own a copy of older content might go with the games.

The broader question now emerging is whether DVDs and Blu-rays themselves could face similar pressure next. Sony has already implemented major reductions in its recordable optical media operations. Production of blank recordable Blu-ray discs, along with related formats such as MiniDiscs and MiniDV cassettes, ended in early 2025 following earlier workforce adjustments in the company’s optical media division. These cuts reflected declining demand for consumer recording media as streaming and digital storage options expanded.

So whether you’re a gamer or movie collector this discussion is rather important.

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