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This is why I find novelizations interesting.
Panel four is not some dramatic thing. Something got screwed up when I made it and I don’t have time to fix it.
Surprisingly that’s not tied to my stat issues. I don’t usually screw up that badly. And yet I’m clearly doing something wrong because my subscriber count and readership numbers don’t match up. There are time I wonder why people subscribe, either due to my own deflated ego or just confusion in my site stats. I’m also not pulling anything off of X-Twitter or Tumblr that my stats show, yet I get likes on Tumblr promotions and usually nothing on X. Why DO people follow me when they don’t appear to be interested in what I’m posting? Joining the strange stat issues the host has been having due to search engine “crawlers” and a glitch they fixed, and there are times I wonder if the site is worth it.
That’s my way of asking just why you guys follow the site? I’m curious where to put priorities.
One of the things taking my time this week and leading to a rushed comic (I still don’t know what happened to the background in panel 4), besides hoping a better comic topic would come along, is reorganizing my desk to include some necessary things and deal with the clutter that piled up. I talk about it in this week’s Clutter Report. Back here, we have the next Chapter By Chapter review of Star Trek: The IDIC Epidemic, the Golden Age comic review, and whatever else comes up. Hopefully people like it.
Have a great week, everyone!
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Black X’s chief is wondering about all the corpses in their cells.
Smash Comics #9
E.M. Arnold (April, 1940)
I’ve been making a proper list of comics to avoid and which to keep reading. This so far has been good reading so I can pop it up on my “read” list, which is nice. Anthologies means you never know what you’re going to get or if it will be worth it. Imagine buying the comics at the 2026 equivalent of $2.39…wait, given what comics go for right now that would still be better. Still, pretend you’re a kid because they still made comics for kids, or you just want something for the train ride home or the dentist waiting area. The Great Depression is over but the fallout hasn’t quite cleared out and now you’re in a war where everything is precious.
You want something that is going to give you enough entertainment, and serialized storytelling in comics are limited while shared universes are nonexistent. You want your anthology to be more good stories than bad or you just waisted perfectly good money that could have gone to something more important. Let’s see if it was worth it this issue as well.
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Happy Batman Day, everyone! This is when we remember the debut of the Dark Knight in Detective Comics #27, which you can see my review of here. So we have to do a Batman-themed Showcase. As much as I would like it to be Mask Of The Phantasm, it’s not available free with ads on YouTube (legally, at least), so here’s the next best thing.
I’ve been rewatching Batman: The Animated Series as part of my breakfast rotations (Batman Fridays) and I’ve noticed something different versus even Kevin Conroy’s later works. Bruce is coming off a bit warmer…except to the villains of course. I think something changed around the time it moved to Kids WB, but I’m only in season one and my memory might be hazy. I plan to do an article if my memories check out. There’s just more nuance to how Batman is written and voiced versus the flat version that became the late Conroy’s performance. It’s something I’ll get into at a later date.
Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero is the last time we would see the writing style and character models from the Fox Kids series. It’s also the finale of the Mr. Freeze/Nora story in the DCAU, or would have been if they didn’t change his character for the Kids WB show just to have him in there. Luckily Batman Beyond came along and gave Victor Freez a proper sendoff. This wasn’t the last DCAU Batman story. That would be Mystery Of The Batwoman. However, while it kind of feels like an extended episode compared to Mask Of The Phantasm or Return Of The Joker, Freeze capturing Barbara Gordon to use her organs to save Nora is still a darn good story. Not having time to go through all of the Batman movies available on YouTube as of this posting it seemed the best one to go with. Enjoy.
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If you’re not hearing the line, you didn’t see the movie.
The superhero suit. Call it a costume, call it a uniform, call it a supersuit, call it a fashion nightmare, it’s one of the important details of designing a superhero, or even a supervillain. It’s one I think about a lot when I create a superhero: how does the outfit match the skills, powers, style, personality, and budget of the hero in question? Author Caroline Furlong, who shouted out one of my Daily Video posts (bless her heart), goes over how important the supersuit is for superhero world building. And not sorry, Edna, but something that does include the capes! That’s a bonus flashback from me, when the trend of civilian outfits was going on.
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Come on, Templeton. You of all people should give me a better cover to work with than this.
Holmes Incorporated #3 [Final Issue]
Ty Templeton’s Comic Boot Camp (August, 2012)
CREATOR/EDITOR/COLORIST: Ty Templeton
COVER ART: Adam Gorham
ASSISTANT EDITOR: Kathleen Gallagher
LETTERER/PRODUCTION: KT Smith
I said I wanted to go over the more recent anthologies left in my Drive Thru Comics library as bonus filler articles. So we might as well start by getting this series out of the way. Created by Templeton, the goal of this series was to allow his students a chance at published comics, a way to check their skills. The concept of the series is that the descendants of Sherlock & Mycroft Holmes and John Watson gather together to solve unusual cases. Imagine if the hound of the Baskervilles had been a cybernetic mutant werewolf working for the cultish Red Headed League and you’ll get the idea.
BW Media Spotlight 