“Not my fault my car can’t fit your fat a…” “Shut up, bird!” “That’s hurtful.”
Charismagic #0
Aspen Comics (December, 2012)
“The Void”
CREATOR/WRITER: Vince Hernandez
CHARACTER DESIGNS/ARTIST: Khary Randolph
COLORIST: Emilio Lopez
LETTERER: Josh Reed
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Personally, I miss sidekicks. This is what happens when your movie makers hate fun and hate kids.
Making Peter Parker into Charlie Brown meets Archie Andrews, the ever unlucky girl chaser, was bad enough. Now it seems the adaptation trend we’ve said was also desired by the comic writers is proving more and more true.
We’ll be looking at two different articles from Bounding Into Comics contributor Spencer Baculi that you may want to check out for context. First we have his response to an April 1st article that’s less interested in April Fools Day than I am. The actual article, also linked to for context, comes from AIPT Comics, whatever that stand for. It features new Amazing Spider-Man writer Joe Kelly, the same guy who thought giving Space Ghost a grimdark makeover that included his unborn child being ripped from his dead wife’s body by the hero’s former mentor and his psycho subordinates, was a great way to update a 1960s Saturday morning cartoon for kids that also aired in syndication in the 1970s and was back on air in the 1980s before getting a late night talk show parody that probably defines how people think of Space Ghost. Tim Burton and Len Wein you’re not, Joe!
The other article to be looked at is Spider-Editor Tom Brevoort at it again, again arguing with fans who want the Spider-Marriage restored on his Substack. Together they show the pattern we’ve seen with adaptations is where they might want to take the comic. Absolutely positively? Maybe not, but it does show that “regression” is the word for the day at the Spider-Man offices. Every Spider-Man adaptation tries to start Peter at high school even if it isn’t his origin story, and they love doing those as well. (Control the origin, control the character.) Ultimate Spider-Man started him as an adult with a family, which is not the same as watching Peter balance his two lives as we see the kids grow up. and all the joys of early fatherhood. (May I never hear the term “girl dad” again, unless someone finally shows the same excitement from being a “boy dad” because dad was a boy once. Nothing against girls at all. I wouldn’t mind one of each, though at my age that seems more and more unlikely.) It seems the writers who insist they never want Peter to be old (except when running a science company started when Dr. Octopus stole his body) are doing everything they can to shove him back into a teenager. These two articles certainly point to rather strong evidence I’m right.
“Just throw characters everywhere. That’ll generate excitement.” [facepalm]
Archie Comics Publications (2000)
COVER ART: Spaz & Penders
COVER COLOR: Josh D. Ray
COMIC COLORS/SEPARATIONS: Josh & Aimee Ray
LETTERER: Vickie Williams
EDITOR: J.F Gabrie
Sonic The Hedgehog: “Law Of The Land
PLOT: Evan Skolnick
WRITER: Jim Spivey
ARTISTS: Suzanne Paddock & Harvo
Knuckles The Echidna: “The Best Of Times, The Worst Of Times”
WRITER: Ken Penders
ARTISTS: Steven Butler & Pam Eklund
The strangest things can cause a stray thought in my head to become something. Not surprising, waking up and listening to a podcast is one of the potential causes of such things.
Yesterday (as this goes live) I was listening to Literature Devil‘s Morning Nonsense podcast that YouTube makes him archive behind a paywall because the algorithm is a joke. In yesterday’s episode, recurring co-host Stuart “Stu” Jones of The Loading Crew (autoplaying introductory video alert if you click on that), a tabletop RPG commentator and author, and Lit Dev were discussing love in Japan (long story). Stu mentioned that the Japanese language didn’t have a word for love until fairly recently because in ancient Japan loving your spouse was considered a weakness. My guess is this is because your enemies could target her to force you to bend to their will or to get revenge through her if she wasn’t a spy looking for a foothold to get to his master or a personal grudge against him directly, but he didn’t elaborate and it’s not really important to the conversation at hand.
He did say the following, and I’m paraphrasing from memory, so feel free to correct me: Stu noted that it was considered more important to be loyal to your emperor or shogun or lord or something around those lines. This would include if your master was on the evil jerk side, but then he makes the comment along the lines of “so when is it okay to turn on your master?” “when you can win”.
My response in the chat: “That suddenly explains Starscream.”
Much like I’m betting you are right now, both hosts were rather confused by that statement, and I don’t know if they saw my response since I had to leave and can’t afford to send a superchat. So I’m going to explain that statement to them…and to you. Note that as I worked on this article I ended up moving away from a direct connection to Stu’s history lesson, because sometimes a small thought just gets the ball rolling, and this is one steep hill. Decided to keep the article title because that’s how this got started. Pretty sure somewhere in there I explain my statement, though. Happy to clarify anything if I didn’t.
In this issue, the Little Prince turns traitor and spies on Earth. Or that’s what I got out of the cover.
Space Adventures vol.3 #35
Charlton Comics Group (August, 1960)
I’m not sure how many more Captain Atom stories there are in this comic before he gets his own series, but that’s as far as we’ll be going. I might return to the title if the Friday edition makes it to 1960 (we’re currently still in 1939), but for now this is still the Tuesday look at pre-DC versions of characters. Still, I’m not just going to read Captain Atom, which means we have four stories to review for this anthology. Let’s get to it!
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
BW’s Daily Video> Disney’s Fillmore and How Fiction Is Not “Just Stories”
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The fact that this was produced and distributed by Disney for theIr Saturday morning block on ABC and ironic given how many Disney-purchased studios and Disney itself seems to have forgotten this message.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on April 2, 2025 in Animation Spotlight, Television Spotlight and tagged ABC Saturday Morning, commentary, Fandom, Fillmore!, kids TV, Review, Shady Doorags.
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