“Yesterday’s” Comic> Police Comics #6

DC’s current Plastic Man wouldn’t have missed the woman changing in there.

Police Comics #6

Comic Magazines, Inc (January, 1942)

I don’t have to tell you what became of Plastic Man. In recent years he’s become one of their bigger characters, but that was a long time coming. His first post-comics appearance I’m aware of is a cameo in the first season of Superfriends, getting a mouse out of a computer. Like fellow cameo Green Arrow (from a later episode), he didn’t get to join the full team, but he did get his own cartoon as an agency superhero working with a woman named Penny, who was really into him, and Hula-Hula, a Hawaiian with bad luck who also happened to have informants all over the world. This was never explained.

In the next season Penny somehow won over Plastic Man, who in the first season was into his Chief (though she seemed to hate his stretchy guts). They married and had a son, Baby Plas. We’re not up far enough in the comics to know if Plas had a child in the comics, but I like to think this is the same son from the alternate universe “Injustice” stories, in which Plastic Man has really shined besides appearances in Batman: The Brave & The Bold and Justice League Action. The others that DC have picked up from the future Quality Comics haven’t fared as well, but we’ll touch on them in later comics.

[Read along with me here]

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BW’s Daily Video> Animating The Old-Fashioned Way For The First Time In 2026

 

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Chapter By Chapter> How To Completely Lose Your Mind chapter 3

Chapter by Chapter features me reading one chapter of the selected book at the 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 read-along book club.

Last chapter we saw Pocket Vinyl start their goal of 50 states in 45 days (unofficially breaking the 50 day record) with the local states. Now it’s time to truly venture from home. 3 states down,  47 to go.

I’ve never been interested in beating a world record. Some records sound really cool and other seem to exist just to exist, but I’ve never wanted to be the best at anything. I’m not against becoming the very best like noone ever was, but if I ever achieved that it would be a bonus, not a goal. I just want to be better now than I was then and better later than I am not. I do find trying to achieve a record interesting and I’m rooting for them…even though it actually already happened and what the result was they’re still active and together. If someone else has that goal, more power too them and I wish them luck provided no innocents are hurt in the process and no damage is done to the attempters. It’s just not for me.

In this case I would think some of the nuance of the travel would be lost just trying to perform every state, sometimes twice a day. If I was going to go cross-country (and me being me that would require an RV with a decent bed, toilet, shower, and kitchenette) and visit every state, I’d like time to really enjoy the place. In Kino’s Journey, the title heroine only stays in a town three days, enough to understand the place but not enough time to settle down and miss out on the rest of the journey. I might go a week, then depending on the state just go to a different part of the state (Texas and California are huge) or just move on to the next one. It might be fun, but I know I’d miss being home. I never even had a sleepover more than a day because I just wanted to go home that bad, probably obnoxiously so (little brat that I was). I’ve stayed in a hotel for conventions over the weekend but nothing was better than sleeping in your own bed. And not getting up early for a press junket.

Enough about me, though. The homepage is filled enough. Let’s get back to our performers.

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“Yesterday’s” Comic> Prime #13

“You should know I taste terrible.”

Prime #13

Malibu Comics/Ultraverse (July, 1994)

SELECTED COVER ART: Norm Breyfogle

COLORING (BOTH STORIES): Mickey Rose & Violent Hues

“Double Dangerous”

WRITERS: Len Strazewski & Gerald Jones

PENCILER: Darrick Robertson

INKER: Mike Machlan

ADDITIONAL COLORING: Keith Conroy & Tim Duvar

LETTERER: Dave Lanphear

EDITOR: Hank Kanalz

“The Destiny Trail” prologue

WRITER: Gerald Jones

PENCILER: Scott Kolins

INKER: Jon Holdredge

LETTERER: Patrick Owsley

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BW’s Daily Video> 5 Race Swap Rules Versus “Black Snape”

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A relevant comment was posted by Rakso5809:

Snape fails point one too, because his background is culturally relevant. He’s a man who grew up in the brutal, gritty poverty of Cokeworth, a fictional former factory settlement, dominated even years later by the smell of coal and soot, broken, cobbled stones and the chimney of an old mill looming over the whole area. He’s a representative of this British subculture, a child whose parents never managed to escape poverty, despite the mother being a witch. His character was formed by his abusive childhood under a father who represents this impoverished lowest cast of a society who moved on from them and forgot them. That history is defined by certain traits Snape absolutely personified in the books. The harsh and unforgiving treatment of children, as he himself experienced it during his youth as a standard he could never shake, the ruthless bitterness, the lack of emotional regulation. That’s all part of this heritage we learn about in The Half Blood Prince. He’s a remnant victim of strict authoritarian upbringing, of a father who most likely compensated the shame about unemployment by excessive drinking, and the poverty grown from industrial revolution and technology. There were no blacks in those communities, and they were often incredibly racist and bigoted, breeding grounds for nationalism and extremism. It’s a culture that bred the hooligans and Britain’s white supremacist equivalents.

So it adds a very important baseline for the character of Severus Snape, it explains why he was drawn to Voldemort, who provided scapegoats he could blame for all his misfortunes, and offered a alluringly easy way out of his misery.

It makes his eventual betrayal of the Death Eaters so much more impressive. Very few young men ever managed to leave those hate groups in real life. They rarely ever get out. It shows why he could never overcome his bitterness, he’d never learned how to do it. It explains why he hates Harry so much. With his authoritarian upbringing, Harry seemed weak, snobbish, ungrateful for all the attention he got and all the chances he had. Coming from a London suburban area, Harry was the impersonation of everything Snape grew up to despite, and he couldn’t see Harry’s suffering as it was, due to his own harsh background.

The host agreed that he did miss that, as he isn’t from England, and thus the swap actually does break all five rules.

Jake & Leon #679> Easter Gift

No greater gift can be given than your life.

I almost didn’t have an Easter comic this year because I forgot to make one. 2026 is not starting off on the best foot. I only posted an old Easter comic for The Clutter Reports this week because I couldn’t get that project started. Of course things went wrong, and I had to get this comic out on time. I’m actually seeing the work schedule work, or how it can work at least. Now if I can just make money from it. I may need to find a job I can handle.

In the meantime, chapter 4 of How To Completely Lose Your Mind for our first Chapter By Chapter graphic novel and Act 3 of the never used CBS Transformers script “A Robot’s Best Friend Is His Dog” are coming this week. The book has a while to go still, while CBS Transformers is almost done. I also got an award nomination I need to go through at the first opening this week, and then we see what else is going on.

Have a great week, everyone!

Saturday Night Showcase> Godspeed (Pilot)

Here’s something that’s been in my Watch Later list for too long.

Godspeed is a pilot that posted to YouTube in late 2023. Created by Olan Rogers of Final Space fame, the pilot follows a girl on a dying Earth, the result of something in space. She travels with a karaoke robot around the area looking for signs of life, signs of hope. Her biggest worry? That she’ll be forgotten, even though she still hopes that her uncle will come save her.

The pilot seems to be an episode one. While going over the pilot for CBS’s failed Transformers attempt for Saturday morning, I came across the Transformers Wiki entry on the failed pitch and this statement:

  • The pilot’s odd backstory is another example of meeting the network’s requirements, what with the whole conquest of Earth happening offscreen. In the section “HOW TO WRITE A PILOT”, Scott brings up the crucial detail that “99 OUT OF A 100 TIMES THE NETWORK DOESN’T WANT AN “ORIGIN ” PILOT. “The reasoning being that an origin story is usually unrepresentative of the show as a whole, while a random adventure can better demonstrate what the show is going to be like on a week to week basis.
  • Another piece of advice is that if “you’re trying to sell a show to a network exec, you want to reveal as much of the show as you can in the pilot.”

Remind me to bring that up again in the next part of the pilot script review. This, however, is an origin pilot, as where Iris starts isn’t where she’s going to end. Events lead to her true adventure. Here we’re just setting up the reason for the adventure. I guess either method makes sense.

The pilot has some decent sized actor and voice actor credits: “Featuring the voices of Troy Baker (The Last of Us), Claudia Black (Farscape, The Nevers), Bryce Charles (Big Nate), Coty Galloway & Olan Rogers (both from Final Space) and a few surprises.” I don’t know who the surprises are, but Bowie the karaoke bot sounds a bit like Patton Oswald to me. At any rate, enjoy.

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