“Don’t worry, kids. It’s the abandoned district of New York. Because there totally is one.”
Thunderbolts #5
Marvel Comics (August, 1997)
“Growing Pains”
WRITER: Kurt Busiek
PENCILER: Mark Bagley
INKER: Vice Russell
COLORIST: Joe Rosas
LETTERER: Dave Lanphear
EDITOR: Tom Brevoort
One of the big YouTube memes is taking modern trailers and re-editing them in the style of trailers past. Gary over at Crisis On Earth Prime found this one for Thor: Ragnarok, the upcoming third movie in the Thor series of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Hey, that looked pretty cool–but it doesn’t feel like a Star Trek show. Which means it’s the perfect intro, because that’s Star Trek Discovery in one sentence. Pretty cool, but not Star Trek.
I have some free time this week if you want me to review all the Star Trek show intros (the movies would be harder). However, I didn’t put down Star Trek: Enterprise for its lack of a Star Trek-ish intro. I put it down because the rest of the show followed suit, and sadly this series is the same way. Heck, it was marketed outside of commercials celebrating having a woman of color in charge…but she’s the first officer. There is an Asian lady as captain, which is a first, but she’s being replaced by a white man on the ship that we’ll actually be following. And yet she’s still more likable than Katherine Janeway. A shame to lose her, actually. My point is the Star Trek universe is one in which color and gender aren’t supposed to matter, which it didn’t for the ads I saw. Of course we can debate that based on some episodes, but that’s a whole other topic. What the real question is…why doesn’t this show work when it so easily could have? There are going to be spoilers here, including a big one that I have to talk about.
“I need better mosquito repellent.”
Steel #9
DC Comics (November, 1994)
“Bad News”
WRITER: Louise Simonson
PENCILER: Frank Fosco
INKER: Mark Stegbauer
COLORIST: Robbie Busch
LETTERER: Pat Brosseau
EDITOR: Frank Pittarese
Megan Fox, Shia LaBeouf on the Transformers 2 set. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I seldom agree with Lindsay Ellis, the former Nostalgia Chick, about social and political issues. She’s very liberal, I’m very not. And this comes to modern feminism as I think the movement has lost their way, but that’s only important for the link. As part of her multipart examination of the Michael Bay Transformers movies called The Whole Plate (based on a line by one of the characters in the first, only thing close to enjoyable movie in the Bayformers franchise) she’s had a subseries about how feminism pertains to the movies.
Interestingly she’s defending Megan Fox’s character, Mikaela Banes, in this episode. She points out that her sexualization comes not from how she is written but how the camera decides to look at her. You may end up with a little more respect for the character, and less for Bay. You may or may not feel sorry for Fox.
There are days I’ve made that mistake, too.
I need to design an official set for the break room.
With Star Trek: Discovery just about to air we’ll be taking our last break from Seduction Of The Innocent so I can review the pilot that will be airing on CBS while the rest of the series is exclusive to the All Access streaming service run by CBS. I’ll be honest, I’m trying to go in with an open mind but the more I hear the less I like. Now I’m starting to wonder if it will actually be good but I know it won’t be Star Trek. Have you seen and heard what they’re doing to the Klingons? This is what NEW alien races are for!
But I won’t be idle. The Prize Fight for “Dog Days” is coming Friday, I’m diving into the next story from the He-Man newspaper strips, and I’m hoping to come up with some other cool stuff. Next week and the week after we’ll finally finish going over this book, with a wrap-up the following week before going into our next Chapter By Chapter book, and it’s back to fiction I can summarize and review in one article per chapter. I’m looking forward to this one now that I’ve finally seen the movie. Speaking of which, I’m hoping to get another Finally Watched in this week if I can.
Prepare for my review of Discovery tomorrow night.
Why does this guy’s ramblings matter and why this chapter specifically? Because the complaints being made against comics were also being made against video games, with people demanding government take action often by people who didn’t know what they were talking about. The Jack Thompsons and Joe Libermans of video games were the Fredric Werthams and Sterling Halloways of comics. When a new medium comes along kids will favor the new thing but eventually older people see the potential for entertainment in it, so the creators try to cater to older audiences. But then you have the real old audiences who see this as an affront to what they kids should be doing.
And I’m not against sending the kids outside to play when it’s a beautiful day out, but I still see ads where video games always looks like the bad thing do to. The only ads I’ve seen where kids and their parents and grandparents play video games together were ads for the Nintendo Wii and Wii U, since Nintendo was looking at people who grew up with games and their kids. Rare is the ad with dad and son playing together that isn’t selling video games and even rarer with the grandparents. There’s an instant dislike to media we didn’t grow up with and someday something else will come along like comics, television, or video games that will either be written off as a fad or declared the enemies of children, and the government will be forced by their constituents to “do something about the problem”. For the children of course, but it’s really just “get rid of that newfangled thing”.
Hopefully the last time we’ll be doing this chapter.
The Clutter Reports (my other site) Atop The Fourth Wall Crisis On Earth Prime Lean Into Artcast Bully Says “Comics Oughta Be Fun” Siskoid’s Blog of Geekery
Cartoon Hero’s Lair SF Debris Four Million Years Later
