Saturday Night Showcase> Stam Fine’s Star Trek: The Next Generation Retrospective

Every now and then a review, commentary, or in this case retrospective goes a bit too long to use as a filler article post. The only exception I’ve made is Jay Exci’s breakdown of everything wrong with Chris Chibnall’s time on Doctor Who, and that’s because if you can find four hours of content and the comedy is only a small part of it, it’s worth showing.

Tonight’s video is not that long, only about an hour and a half. While not a story itself, it is a good way to introduce Stam Fine Reviews to you guys, as it goes over the history of Star Trek: The Next Generation. As of this writing his look at the first season is up on his YouTube channel, but he started with this overview of the entire series, briefly touching on the movies and Deep Space Nine due to it’s connection to TNG. Sadly he kind of looks down on the Filmation series from the clips he used but everyone makes mistakes. He’s also looked at the original series and the movies (not the animated series because he doesn’t review any animation, the poor sap) and both Voyager and Enterprise if you want to check that out.

Also, for those of you who come here due to the limited use of swearing, he does that thing where he censors the f-bomb but not the s-bomb because nobody understands why South Park talked Comedy Central into letting the latter go to make their point to both sides of the discussion on cursing on television. Look, YouTubers, either censor both or censor neither, but please choose lane. Hollywood, too, but they’re a lost cause at this point. Enjoy.

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BW’s Saturday Article Link> Disney Animators Defend Classic Disney

Believe it or not, my introduction to “Zip-A-Dee-Du-Ah” (I question Firefox’s spellcheck, as right now I’m not that instead of Chrome) was a disco cover for the Mickey Mouse Disco album, which I still have around here. There was a time when Song Of The South wasn’t the pariah that modern Disney thinks it is today. Apparently that doesn’t include people who worked on it, nor do they think Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs needed a live-action demake. Nice to see defenders who know better than the guys ruining Walt’s legacy.

“Yesterday’s” Comic> Keen Detective Funnies v2 #8

Either this magnifying glass is defective or the Micronauts are having a bad day.

Keen’s Detective Funnies volume 2 #8

Centaur Publishing (August, 1939)

The last one was mixed but had enough interesting stories in it for me to give it a second chance. Not that I really remember any of them outside of the crime-fighting centaur, and that’s all I remember of that. I wonder if maybe having too many stories in one issue makes them harder to remember? Nothing really stands out beyond concepts and maybe an odd scene or two.

Admittedly, Golden Age comics were just an excuse for the printers to make some extra cash between magazines, but legends came from this period. You’d expect big memorable stories, but instead I’m starting to realize why National Comics did as well as it did when the only memorable characters today are the ones they bought or had just enough presence that someone found them and revived them. Speed Centaur was not one of those, and neither is the Masked Marvel and his two lettered friends. Let’s see what this issue has in store.

[read along with me here]

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BW’s Daily Video> The History Of Agatha Harkness

Catch more from Comic Drake on YouTube

 

Are The G1 Transformers Too Stupid To Exist? [Part 2 of 2]

Yesterday we looked at Media Zealot’s takedown of the Decepticons and other threats to the Autobots. This time the Autobots and presumably their allies get their turn in the spotlight. And this is the G1 US cartoon exclusively. That’s not counting more recent things that bother me about the Autobots, like the caste system based on alternate modes when we know they can alter those modes whenever they want, or making the Autobots the bad guys and Optimus just the guy who was less evil than the guy whose slogan was “peace through tyranny” on the tech specs.

Despite having the supposed combined wisdom of the Autobots in his chest for the accessing, Optimus has made his own share of boneheaded decisions. I just know we’re about to hear about that time the Decepticons made a remote controlled duplicate of Optimus and somehow they thought having the two race in tractor trailer mode would help decide who was the real Optimus. Every Transformers fan brings that up for a reason. I’d also expect to see that time the humans so easily believed the Autobots were evil and Optimus didn’t come up with a solution to clear their name and instead left Earth to its fate, did nothing about Ark security, and has lost more to Laserbeak than he has Megatron.

Let’s see if I’m right in part of the The Transformers: Too Stupid To Exist. Prep yourself for the occasional cursing.

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BW’s Daily Video> Spider-Man Vs Drugs

This is a companion to a previous post from the same series of PSA videos for schools. I posted the other one that’s been found discussing child abuse. There are two others I hope I get to see.

Are The G1 Transformers Too Stupid To Exist? [Part 1 of 2]

To attempt to get a full week out with all the distractions, I’m going to drop a two part installment of Media Zealot‘s “Too Stupid To Exist” series, pointing out all the flaws in the plans of the villains, and occasionally the heroes. Sometimes you accept stuff for the sake of the story, but that doesn’t mean we can’t analyze those flaws later and see how to avoid them, or at least laugh at how silly it is.

The original Transformers cartoon will always be part of my nostalgia. It’s one of my favorite multiverses as the versatility doesn’t stop with shapeshifting robots. I can’t say I’m a fan of all of it, mind you, even just what I’ve seen. The Skybound comic everyone is drooling over is still too violent for me, and killed off Bumblebee right at the start. The Bayverse and its live-action counterparts rarely care about the robots while focusing on humans that aren’t very interesting. Funny enough, Bumblebee is the exception. EarthSpark I just found boring in the first story and just couldn’t bring myself to watch further episodes. From what I did catch previous shows did the only interesting parts better.

Still, even I made fun of Megatron’s dumb schemes in my Challenge Of The GoBots review because his ideas are kind of odd for a war that was about resource allocation to conquer the universe (it’s an 80s kids show), and we can make fun of him and Galvatron (you debate among yourselves if they’re the same guy or not) for his really dumb ideas. Let’s not forget that the Autobots make their own mistakes, and other factions show up with equally odd plans. Cue the Zealot, who isn’t as fond of the 80s kids show, but still points out that the Decepticons in particular and Cybertron in general lasting 4,000,000 years (give or take a few hours) is kind of silly. Note that there will be a few swears now and then, but it’s not habitual.

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