Saturday Night Showcase: Switch Runners

As Comic-Con is underway, and tomorrow is supposed to be “Kids Day” at Comic-Con, how about we do another web comic. To be on the Showcase, it has to be available online. Earlier in the week I mentioned the site Sugary Serials, a “Saturday Morning” approach to comics. Granted, cartoons based on toys would be more like “weekday afternoon syndicated”, but that doesn’t matter, since this toy doesn’t exist. But if it did, would you buy it? Find out for yourselves as you read…

click to read tonight's Showcase

Created by Mark Rudolph and Jerzy Drodz of the Art & Story podcast, Switch Runners tells the story of a group of humans crashed on an alien planet. The planet contains a kind of energy called “Ovidian” that allows their vehicles to transform MASK-style into combat modes, or “switch modes”. Unfortunately for our heroes, there’s an evil on this world formed from three creatures who needs that energy to reform himself and…do evil things. If there’s a fault here, is that the back-story isn’t really given. Details like how they got on this planet comes from a commentary they did on the first half of the story and other mentions in their podcasts. I’m not saying that this needed to be an “origin” story, since how many 80’s shows, with or without a toyline, gave us an origin until far into the story, if then? However, a simple blurb explaining the series plot, like in many openings or the back of the “toy” package would have sufficed. Something like…

Crash landing on an alien planet, a group of humans find an amazing energy that allows their vehicles to turn into mighty battle machine. But the evil Tritanius seeks the Ovidian power for himself. All that stands between his army and galactic conquest are…the Switch Runners!

I won’t be expecting a check anytime soon.

I think we’re coming from slightly different angles, though. I’m thinking “comic based on a cartoon/toy line” and their thinking cartoon, maybe something closer to the “cinemanga” that’s been popping up, which gives the impression that you’re watching a cartoon. If you listen to the podcast, they actually did a few tricks to give it the cartoon feel. I won’t spoil it for you. See if you can find it yourself, and then check the podcast.

I really can’t fault them for it. Some of my complaints about Marvel doing a cartoon spin-offs is that they don’t always resemble the source. Even the Star Comics line, which were at least written like the cartoon (as opposed to their run on Gargoyles) weren’t drawn like it. I’m hoping great things come from the Walker/Jones run on Batman: The Brave and the Bold over at DC, though. So it’s more my mindset than anything they did wrong. (If you remember my review of Silver and the Periodic Elements, Drozd even included commercial bumpers. At least they don’t show up in Switch Runners. That would have been overkill.)

I’m hoping they do another Switch Runners. I really like the characters (although Talika needs to chill a bit–I’d like to find out what her real issue is with Anchor) on both factions, and doing a comic/cartoon based on a non-existent toy is an interesting concept.

I didn’t really leave myself room to post panels, so just read the comic again. 🙂