“I’m sorry you don’t like the Repulsor Massage, sir, but all sales are final!”
Marvel Adventures #17
Marvel Comics (August, 1998)
Spider-Man & Iron Man: “Between A Rock And A Hard Place”
WRITER: Ralph Macchio
PENCILER: Andy Kuhn
INKER: Harry Candelario
COLORIST: Kevin Tinsley
LETTERER: Michael Higgins
EDITOR: Mark Bernardo
One of the reasons I would never want to be a celebrity is the paparazzi hunting me down and taking tons of pictures of me and anybody I was with, as if my whole life needed to be documented by them and shared with people who only like me because I’m famous. For some reason people thinks as soon as you become successful at a particular list of professions or just show up at the best parties they get to know every detail of your life, but how would they feel if it was happening to them?
In an article for Acculturated writer Bethany Mendel compares how one of Kim Kardashian’s kids responded to a paparazzi storm, the actions of Halley Berry to reign the paparazzi in, and the death of Princess Diana and her boyfriend (after she divorced Prince Charles) after the paparazzi chased them into an automobile accident. I understand why Diana was so popular but not the depths of that popularity that led to photographers chasing her car. Hey, did you know Diana’s last name was Spencer? Apparently nobody cares even today. She’s just Princess Diana or Lady Di even though she divorced the prince. And somehow they claimed her body. Forget royalty, I don’t understand people.
Like the last two chapters, chapters 16 and 17 were close enough together that I read them both. I wonder if I’m also anxious to get to the next book, but more on that next week. I’ll just say this is going to be a bit different than my usual review. I know I grabbed a few followers after this book, and there are more normal books to come once this special installment completes, but it’s one that’s rather important to my comic-loving side, but one I don’t think most of the people who target it have read. I’ve got more sci-fi planned afterwards and the first return to normal books will be another tie-in. I’m just trying to decide which one. Back on topic:
We last left our hero unconscious on the floor of the bakery covered in evil juice and the counteracting powder. Our final two chapters are the aftermath of the fight between Crede and Hoylt. Will it be a happy one?
and
We have flowers and a crown respectively for our images.
“Oh Rao, not my origin story AGAIN!”
Superman: The Man Of Steel #0
DC Comics (October, 1994)
Peer Pressure part 1: “A Whole New World”
No credits given, just a bunch of last names. So I’m grabbing this list from the DC Database fanwiki:
WRITER: Louise Simonson
PENCILER: Jon Bogdanove
INKER: Dennis Janke
COLORIST: Glenn Whitmore
LETTERER: Ken Lopez
EDITORS: Mike Carlin, Frank Pittarese, & Chris Duffy
Rue McClanahan at a book signing for her book My First Five Husbands. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It doesn’t stop getting weird in the universe, does it folks? USAopoly, known for making licensed variations on the popular Monopoly game, is taking Clue and putting the cast of The Golden Girls into it! Instead of murder it’s “who took the cheesecake”, the food that the girls would usually eat while discussing their problems because cheesecake is of course the greatest food ever. I’d say you can’t make this stuff up, but apparently somebody did and now we have Golden Girls Clue.
For example: Aunt May.
Jake & Max’s quest to create their webcomic continues.
I’m really curious what happened to that issue of Spider-Ham that isn’t in the longbox, plus I have more of the Zero Hour Aftermaths that are in a different place with other DC and Marvel comics I pulled a long time ago before doing a proper comic organizing. So this week over at The Clutter Reports I’m going to jump right into the next phase of the Comic Organizing Mega-Project! And hopefully this will be the last one before the final organizing of the comics as I go through them.
If I don’t find that comic then I’ll start reviewing the Phantom comics I have yet to review, because those are next in my longbox. There are also a bunch of issues of Marvel Adventures that aren’t in there, but I think I gave up on the series at some point, so all I have left is a jump to #17, a Spider-Man/Iron Man team-up. I have to decide if I’m going to continue with tie-ins or return to the main Marvel Universe…which means lifting a heavy box again every week. I’ll decide by next week, depending on what the organizing project does for me this week.
You can blame my friend Sean for inspiring tonight’s Showcase. Good or bad is up to you though. Ask most 80s kids about Lazer Tag and they’ll tell you it was awesome! And probably forgetting they misspelled “laser”. The initial set came with a belt, the sensor, and the greatest laser gun toy ever, the Starlite. Use the Starlite to score points on the Star Sensor; 6 hits and it’s over. Additionally you could get a vest to hold the sensor instead of the belt, as well as a hat or helmet with its own sensor. These didn’t look like toys. Kids looked like they were playing with daddy’s futuristic combat gear. Even the ads were these huge future combat scenarios with competitors in serious battle.
And then there was Photon.
Oh sure, the game was supposedly more interactive, and Enertech created “Photon Training Centers”, a mock combat arena that is still used to this day (we even have a couple “Laser Challenge” game areas here in Connecticut even though we never had an official Photon center that I know of). But the things LOOK like toys. The helmet looks cheap on its own, never mind compared to Lazer Tag’s Starhelmet. You can see how weak the Photon’s gun looks compared to the Starlite in this very advertisement. It’s no wonder Lazer Tag is the game everyone remembers.
But just as Lazer Tag had a TV show, the NBC Saturday Morning cartoon Lazer Tag Academy, Photon also tried to use TV to promote its game. However, they went syndicated, and live-action…using a couch-cushion budget that featured miniature set pieces and so much blue screen you’d think the wall ran on Windows. (There’s an extra pun there I didn’t intend. Sorry.) It won’t be a surprise to kids TV fans that the budget was this low when you learn DIC Entertainment was behind it. Right up to the end their live-action shows were so cheap that if you saw a high-quality one they probably only distributed it for another production company. Look at Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad and Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters From Beverly Hills, the other sci-fi action shows they produced. The former had Japanese stock footage to play with, and they still only had three sets…one of which was a darkened bedroom where all you saw were the villain, a computer, and a scanner! DIC made some good cartoons, but lousy live-action shows.
So did Photon do a decent job working around their weak budget? Kinda?
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
