I saw an article in my RSS feeds from Bleeding Fool titled “Elon Musk’s Vision For A Starfleet Academy Meets Resistance From ‘Star Trek’ Star“. At first I thought Musk had come up with some ideas for what he might want to see in the announced Starfleet Academy show, which I’m betting won’t be nearly as good as the original comic set at Starfleet Academy. Sadly, that wasn’t the topic, but it would have made for an interesting article. In case you’re interested, it’s just Robert Picardo mad at Musk for wanting to create a real Starfleet Academy because political internet drama and I don’t care. Although, I do now wonder how the US Space Force is trained. I still think they should have called it Starcom but…oh, apparently that’s what they call their Academy. I’m flexible.
Even if Paramount’s new owners manage to get rid of Alex Kurtzman and Secret Hideout, and they can’t do it fast enough, I don’t think they’d accept a story pitch from Musk, who is not really known for making science fiction. Space X is science reality. Still, it would be fun to break down his idea for a Starfleet Academy storyline or series. Denied this article topic I had an idea during lunch: replace Musk with me. Not at Space X. I can’t even run this place. I mean what would I like to see in a Star Trek show if I was allowed to develop one? Starfleet Academy itself would be easy. Just do the comic and continue the story from there. Not sure how you’d handle Nog, as Aron Eisenberg passed away in 2019. Still, I want to do something a bit more general Star Trek. So I wouldn’t be bringing back any of the previous crews outside of cameos, though it might be fun to get the fan films and fan series to cameo to build out the universe, also as cameos. I wonder how Skydance feels about fan films?
No, this will be an original ship, let’s call it the USS Elon in honor of the article that sparked this off-the-top-of-my-head dive. I actually considered USS Musk but considering…other definitions of the word “musk, Elon sounded a bit more spacy. So don’t expect this to be some deep, thought out pitch like I did years ago for Godzilla. That’s three links, by the way, which I bring up only to show off an old article and pad out the homepage. What I’m doing here is just coming to me as I write. More of a first concept than any real draft. So what would I do?
BW Media Spotlight 
Can We Call Manga “Comics”?
With the current discourse about manga outshining comics, one has to ask…aren’t manga “comics”?
“Manga” essentially translates to “motionless pictures” last I heard. In other words, comics. It’s not used to describe storyboards. I think. It’s comics from Japan. My comic-making program used to be called Manga Studio, but called Comic Studio in Japan. (Once animation was added they changed it to Clip Studio.) The use of “manga” for “Japanese comics” by the same people who can’t translate the Japanese word for “plan” has come to grow on my nerves. The same for “anime” and car…well, that’s a whole other discussion since it involves Western animation fans who throw a fit if you call Don Bluth’s work a “cartoon”, so we’ll open that kettle of fish some other time. The same for “comic” and “graphic novel”. Some people “need to get over themselves. Also, “Trekkers” is the people who worked on the show and “Trekees” is only a bad term if your boring and want to be “sophisticated” to a group who looks down on science fiction. You don’t see the “Whovians” complaining! Okay, now I’m going off topic. Or just off.
I use “manga” on this site because it has become part of the discussion, and thus I kind of have to. However, it’s grown to having French and Korean comics referred to as the French and Korean word for “comics”, a shorthand that only works if you know what “manwah” means. I’m only going by context. The only Korean I ever learned is “Opa Gangnam Style” and I’m not even sure that’s right and only have a mild understanding of what it means. (Referring to the Korean answer to Beverly Hills, I think.) The video I’m building this article from is by a fan of AMERICAN comics though, deciding that manga shouldn’t be called comics, or at least explaining why he doesn’t. He makes the case that they are in fact so different that in his mind it’s wrong to refer to them as comics. I don’t think his perspective is wrong necessarily, but I will go over why I don’t agree with it.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 3, 2024 in Comic Spotlight and tagged comics, commentary, debate, discussion, manga, manga vs comics.
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