BW Media Spotlight’s Best Of Year 14 (Finally)

Crohn’s. Diverticulitis. Blood clots. Hernias. It’s amazing I’ve even reached fourteen years of doing the site at this point. So yes, I forgot a few years and have been getting caught up on anniversary “best of” posts. And yet, here we are. Heading into year 15 of this site because I’m possibly an idiot and because I just feel like I did something worthwhile. Now I get to cover my favorite articles from November 16, 2022 through November 15, 2023. That means while I’m proud of some of the articles I wrote this week, I’ll save them for next year’s anniversary.

If I don’t forget.

For those of you coming in on this one, back in 2008 I was sent to the hospital–twice–with Crohn’s Disease, a digestive disorder that basically means the immune system in my gut has become the Punisher without what little moral code Frank Castle has. While recovering I discovered numerous blogs discussing comics and other media, and began to notice that my comments were getting into paragraphs of length. So I said the heck with it, took the “BW” from the comics I used to make in my teens, and BW Media Spotlight came about. It’s all in the about section so let’s get on with this. It’s time to finally get this year’s best articles a second chance to show their stuff.

• Big Bad John And Its Sequels: One thing I really love about doing the “Sing Me A Story” review series is learning things about songs I wouldn’t otherwise. I like music but I’m not someone who otherwise goes into songs the way I do shows and comics. This was also I think my first or second encounter with the “answer song”, a song written by or for a different performer by a different songwriter in response to the first song. There’s a whole Big Bad John Extended Universe, kids!
• Is Representation Becoming a Marketing Gimmick: That’s my theory, anyway, that Hollywood studios aren’t as activist as their creators, but is just using them to make review-proof (allegedly) movies they don’t have to put effort into. That doesn’t help marginalized social groups, it makes them suckers for supporting it.
• Transformers: Rise Of A Concerning Interview: Wondering why Rise Of The Beasts didn’t do so well? For me it started with this interview focused more on the humans’ ethnicity than the robots. Then there’s the continuity concerns. Kind of cooled me off to it.
• CBR’s War On Clark Kent: This could have been a BW Vs article but it’s not an official series anyway. I take on TWO CBR writers upset that Superman was getting his secret identity back. They hate the idea, I explain why I think they’re wrong. Later in this cycle I also looked at why superheroes keep secret identities even from their friends after the fallout over the way My Adventures With Superman and the animated version of Invincible handled the reveals. Apparently I talked about secret identities a lot this year. Here’s another one.
• Why The 1966 Animated Grinch Steals Christmas: TWO feature length adaptations of a book the size of a modern manual try to explain WHY the Grinch steals Christmas, and both involve bullying. I go over how unnecessary that really is and why the best adaptation is the half-hour short.
• The Lost Issue Of Star Blazers: The Magazine Of Space Battleship Yamato: Having completed reviewing the Argo Press comic magazine in “Yesterday’s” Comic, I happened to come across an official website with scans of all the magazines and the unpublished issue #12. I also made a mock-up of what the cover would have looked like. I have skills.
• Dissecting CBR’s Worst Comic Trends List: While I disagreed with two of their writers on Clark Kent, one had a great list of what comics are doing wrong outside of the social nonsense.
• Hollywood “Auteurs” Versus Geek Media: One of many articles I’ve had to write pointing out that snobbish movie directors love it when superheroes and sci-fi fail. They’re also part of the group that pushes the lie about superhero fatigue.
• How DC Comics Is Suckering Critics With “Pregnant Joker”: Remember that controversial story about the Joker have a clay baby by coughing up part of Clayface? I do because the critics wouldn’t shut up about it. This is one of those cases where the level of rage was actually benefitting DC Comics with a story that wasn’t worth talking about.
• The Great Miles Morales Debate: Before “Peter Parker/Miles Morales Is Spider-Man” hashtags were warring on Twitter I used two comic commentators to go over the good and bad of Miles Morales, as well as what I agreed and disagreed with both of them on.
• Wait…Did I Predict This: A gag I made in an old Jake & Leon comic happened a few years later, with a team-up Old Spice users had (probably) been waiting for.
• Have Disney’s Superkitties Been Naughty To An Indie Creator?: Under concern was the surface similarities to Shane Davis’ Starlight Cats. Having reviewed the show prior I decided to do a little investigation.
• Defining The Term “Woke Media”: Admittedly the article itself isn’t one of my best. It uses two other commentaries to help make the point, though I add enough to make it work. However, before you call something woke or accuse others of calling it woke, maybe find out what the term actually is before you trash someone out of ignorance.
• Sing Me A Story: Goodbye, Earl: Yes, another Sing Me A Story article loaded with “answer songs”, as well why there’s a flaw in the original story. Not that the responses were any better, if not worse.
• Nickelodeon’s Mutant Mayhem (Or “My Issue With Nick’s Turtles): The short version is they’re focusing more on the Teenage (and sometimes Mutant) than the Ninja. At least they got the Turtles part right.
• two Vs Comicstorian posts: Well, one really. “Another Pro Spider-Marriage Post” is me challenging Benny’s assertion that the Peter/MJ marriage is a bad idea. The other, “Tim Drake’s Problem Isn’t Redundancy” is more of a minor disagreement.
• The Major Role Studios Play In Bad Adaptations: Sure, the directors and screenwriters (and in some cases the producers) have the most blame, but it’s not like the studios themselves care to deal with the problem.
• Is DSTLRY The Next Wave In Comics?: Your answers should be either “no” or “dear God I hope not”.
• Assigning Bat-Roles: I did an article earlier this year about superteam families, but this is a better use of the idea, as I try to figure out how to make most of the Batman Family (there’s a couple I’m not familiar enough with) work on the team and in the comics. I did a similar one using the Spider-Man type Marvel “spider-army”.
• How Diversity Writing Is Ruining Diversity Characters: I’m surprised I don’t reference this one more often, given how what they call “representation” is actually BAD representation of “marginalized groups” (aka not a straight white dude) because it actually does them a disservice in execution. It kind of prove how little they actually care about such people. A later article also went into how it may actually breed more resentment than unity.
• Hollywood’s Continuing War On Animation: It’s not that animation is better, but that it’s better for certain types of stories. Hollywood egos won’t stand for it. This was after a live-action version of How To Train Your Dragon was announced. I haven’t even seen the franchise and I know it’s a bad idea. Why? History. Then they came for Bambi and Luffy, but despite Netflix’s poor track record with live-actionized anime, I hear One Piece is actually quite good. I’m not expecting the same luck for Bambi.
• Landry Walker Responds To My Tron 2.0 Review: When I was out of action for a good portion of 2016, Landry Walker did a check to see if I was okay because I wasn’t posting. I think that makes us friends, ever since my positive reviews of Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures In The Eighth Grade. So I warned him that I was reviewing SLG’s Tron comic, a sequel to the video game sequel to the 1980s movie long before Tron: Legacy, Tron 2.0. (I need to finish that game.) He told me there were some fascinating stories behind what went wrong with that comic, which he did with his late creative partner, Eric Jones, and since I still have online streaming issues we conducted the interview over Twitter. I wouldn’t mind getting to actually talk to the man someday. So this was the first written version of BW Chats. Includes links to the reviews so you know what we’re talking about.
• Preschoolers Are Getting The Best Superhero Shows?: Adults are getting grimdark or quirky imitations of superheroes, regular kids are getting el zippo, but the preschool and elementary school-aged kids are living the superhero high life. I’d be jealous if I cared about target audiences according to Hollywood. I just watch and enjoy them anyway.
• Does The Origin Story Need ALL The Stakes?: You’d think being the origin of the hero should be enough, but if you’re Hollywood it also needs to happen for the biggest, world-shattering reason possible, instead of just one villain’s mad scheme.
• The Themes Of Transformers Factions: It’s heroic Autobots versus evil Decepticons, and their descendants. How is this so hard?

There we go. All my favorite articles by me over the past year, thus concluding my catch-up of Best Of Year X articles. Did I miss your favorite?