BW Media Spotlight’s Best Of Year 13

Still catching up to the year I should have been celebrating last week. The past few years have been a mess so forgive me for missing out on my own anniversary two years in a row. Every year I usually celebrate my favorite articles over the past year. This year we’re looking at November 16, 2021 – November 15, 2022.

For the late comers, while recovering from a pair of hospital stays I came upon comic and geek blogs and thought they were really cool. Some of them even had the same thoughts I had when it came to storytelling and the same interests in the types of stories to discuss. When I noticed my comments were multiple paragraphs, I decided that rather than flood their blog I’d start my own. And here we are.

So which articles of two years ago do I think stand out? It’s a long list but should give newcomers the best example of what to expect around here. (Hi, by the way.) Thus it is time to get to it.

• The Continued Destruction Of Superman: It hurts me to watch my favorite superhero get torn apart either because DC wants to stop dealing with the Siegel & Shuster estates or because they can’t write Superman properly anymore.
• Boba Fett Is Overrated!: That’s right, I went there and I still mean it. Outside of the armor what did Boba Fett actually do in the original trilogy? Stand around, that’s all he did.
• DC’s League Of Super-Pets Movie–What They Got Wrong: I wasn’t going to put this on the list, but then I remembered Batwheels exists and it shows Krypto The Superdog wasn’t a fluke. So yes, here’s what issues I had right from the trailer. Someone in the comments got mad at me but I think I made my reasons clear.
• ET Gave Us Wi-Fi: From the “Trope Shark” series, I think this line sums up the problem nicely: “Hoomanz is too dum to mak tings, we need smarter spacepeople to giv us stuf.” That stuff can be anything from smartphones to indoor plumbing. And Velcro. Aliens love giving us Velcro and the heck with the guy who actually invented it.
• How I’d Do A Transformers Comic run [part 1|part 2]: I’m not happy with how Skybound did their Transformers comic right out the box. First off, dead Bumblebee. I on the other hand had what I thought was a pretty good approach, but Robert Kirkman didn’t come to me to make it happen.
• In Defense Of Snow White’s Roommates: Someone buy Peter Dinklage a copy of Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs because apparently it’s okay for him to review it without seeing it but not actual critics.
• Why You Can Blame Amazon’s Not-Tolkien On Battlestar Galactica: Everyone is mad at The Rings Of Power because it’s a bad adaptation, but I was warning about this before “woke” entered the lexicon. I point that out in this revisit of why I call the SyFy show “Battlestar Namesake”.
• No, We DON’T Need Power Rangers For Adults: What’s wrong with kids getting to have something for them? You grew up on Power Rangers and you moved on and have plenty of other superheroes pulled away from kids or you didn’t and shouldn’t be ashamed of watching a good superhero show that isn’t afraid of bright colors. That’s my commentary, anyway.
• BW’s Daily Bragging: I’m A Wikipedia Source: Yes, Wikipedia is using my Saturday Night Showcase article on Transformers: Cyber Missions as a credited source. That’s really neat, whatever mess Wikipedia is.
• Batman And The Theme Of Obsession: While it isn’t intended, you can see how the villains give in to their obsessions and the only heroes that do the same are the ones that fail in Gotham City.
• Hollywood Versus Masked Heroes: Notice how many times the superhero takes off his mask or helmet so you remember a famous person is playing him or her? It’s really annoying.
• My Attempt To Make Sense Of The G4TV Debacle: I tried to get past all the anger on both sides of the debate and get into what New G4 did right and what it did wrong, as well as a brief look at what killed the old G4. Ultimately there are already shows, YouTube and streaming, that already do everything they did but better. I did a further autopsy of New G4 months later.
• Why I No Longer Believe Bruce Wayne Is The Mask: I used to be one of the confused, that there was no real Bruce Wayne, just Batman. I have since rethought that point of view and gave my reasons why. I tend to refer to this article quite a bit.
• Why A Proper Adaptation…Is Really A Good Thing: The title takes a shot at articles that say the opposite, trying to convince the reader that changing everything love by the fans who made a property popular enough to get adapted was a positive. Here’s why they’re wrong and getting the source material as accurate as you can within the necessary media translation is a better idea.
• Definitive Versions Vs. The Source Material: Taking a look at why some franchises with multiple continuities have a set “definitive” take on the characters and some don’t, and why the definitive version isn’t always the source material.
• BW Vs. Bounding Into Comics: There Are Still Good Kids Shows: I complain about what’s out there but this was my chance to point out they are still making good shows for kids; just not good animated shows for older kids. The writer I was responding to didn’t seem to care about cartoons.
• Joe Quesada’s Exit And The Future Of Marvel: Quesada leaving Marvel altogether didn’t necessarily indicate Marvel would suddenly “get good” again. Turns out I was right. Under Disney it’s still falling apart and killing the MCU in the process.
• 5 MORE Strong Women Characters I Grew Up With and 5 Still More Strong Women Characters I Grew Up With: Just as the titles say, and I could do more. Stop telling me strong women are something new. Women acting like men isn’t even something new, but at least back then femininity wasn’t treated as a bad thing and that’s what set their heroics apart from the guys’.
• A Better Way To Approach Creators Of Bad Adaptation: Another “cooler head” article. This time I’m trying to find a better way to get creators to understand why we don’t like their bad adaptations than yelling at the creators on Twitter when they’ve been conditioned to ignore that by their Hollywood superiors.
• BW Vs. ScreenRant: Black Adam Is A SuperVILLAIN!: ScreenRant forgot that, Dwayne Johnson forgot that, but Pepperidge Farm remembers. And so do I.
• How The Epic Is Ruining Casual Story Enjoyment: I have nothing against big, planet-shattering stories, but those used to be the exception. Now you have less and less chance to enjoy a show casually. And these are by the people in Hollywood who hate continuity.
• What I’ve Learned From (and about) Superheroes: I love superheroes, and part of that is what they taught me about being a good person and what it actually means to be a superhero besides costumes and powers.
• The Slow De-Casualing Of Modern Storytelling: In a similar vein to the rang about epic storytelling, even the ways we get our stories now is being turned from an impulse buy for casual entertainment to something that requires more effort to get to.
• Building A Better Multiverse: The multiverse concept isn’t new, but using it to remake everything badly is. I don’t think the idea of the multiverse itself is bad, just how they’re using it. So I show how to use the gimmick better.
• Who Are Superheroes Actually For?: This should be easy to answer, but we live in a period of social media meltdowns.
• The Joker Doesn’t Need A Name: He doesn’t need a name, he doesn’t need an origin prior to his unintentioned chemical bath…just knock it off! It goes against the whole point of the character.
• 5 Other Things That Were “In The Comics”: Some of the bad ideas in movie adaptations of comic characters is that the idea was already in the comics…although they were bad ideas there as well. Still, if you want to play that game here’s a few I’m expecting to see because they were also in the comics…and were bad ideas.
• Why Marvel Studios Should Recast T’Challa…And Why It Won’t: Even the actor’s family told Marvel to recast T’Challa after Chadwick Boseman’s passing. I predicted it wouldn’t happen and in a follow-up I went over why fans were unhappy about it across racial lines.
• Unmasking The Scooby-Doo Tropes You Think You Know: I think I overdid the “malt shop” gag, but since I was going over all the Scooby-Doo intros that October I thought it would be interesting to go over all the supposed tropes in the franchise people are falsely convinced were ALWAYS part of the franchise.
• The DC Super Twins Nobody Is Talking About: Though it turned out they’re not actually twins. One is older (the girl I think), but even now nobody talks about them. They’re also a poor substitute for watching Clark raise his biological son.
• Hollywood’s Continued Elitist Media Bias: One of the reasons the adaptations are so bad is that they look down on fantasy, comics, cartoons, video games, and superheroes in Hollywood.

And that covers the 13th year. This time next week (barring whatever) I’m done playing catch up and it’s time to finally go over this year’s set of my favorite made-by-me articles. See if your favorite pops up, if you have one.