It’s amazing how dangerous this fair seems to be.
Amazing Mystery Funnies #15 (v2 #11)
Centaur Publishing (November, 1939)
I still don’t know why “Funnies” is in the name when these are pretty much serious stories. Odd? Well, this month we have a fairground based superhero battling a robot, strange worlds, a centaur crimefighter, and evil psychics, but this isn’t called “Amazing Mystery Oddities”. With new tales and ongoing chapters awaiting us, let’s dive in.
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If something is changed from the source material, it’s the adaptation that’s wrong and the source material shouldn’t change to match the errors just to sell comics. If the adapters cared, and there are limits to how strict you can be with the source canon due to change in media and audience focus, they would get it right. However, Hollywood thinks they’re better than comics and thus what they want matters more than something lower on the media pecking order than the stuff they make and approve of. See also cartoons, video games, and anything nostalgic that they aren’t nostalgic for.
Filler video time because I needed a nap this afternoon after not so much a lousy night’s sleep so much as a lousy waking up.
Pilots used to be how show creators showed off that they could pull off the pitch they used to sell the network or syndicator on a project. It’s sort of a proof of concept, usually the same quality as the final show so they can use it as the first episode, but occasionally it’s a lot cheaper looking simply to show the network to pay for a proper first episode.
When putting out Knight Rider for NBC, Glen A. Larson put together a half-hour proof of concept pilot out of the footage he was putting together for a full first episode, the TV Movie/two-parter (depending on how it airs or is put on home video) we the audience got to see. While that video is currently lost in the halls of time (or possibly some dude’s basement), the YouTube channel Knight Riders Historians Official gave us an idea of what it might have looked like. I’m guessing that’s the official channel for a group of Knight Rider historians and not Universal actually creating a group to keep track of their currently unused franchise. That would be why we don’t get a proper recreation with surviving clips, as that would get them hit by Universal with copywrite strikes, but an explanation of what scenes they used and what was shot just for the pilot. Take a look.
The lack of giant koalas and people fighting is not the biggest disappointment here.
Captain Koala #1
Koala Comics (no date given, but it does mention an contest they were running until May, 2017)
WRITER: James Clifton
ILLUSTRATOR: Daniel Esperado
COLORIST/LETTERER: Nestor Tantiado
Since September of 2024 we’ve been looking at the original sales pitch and the third revision writer’s guide for the original Star Trek series. I’ve gone from wanting to do another writer’s guide/story bible to being read to take a break from it. It’s just a long time, even at an article a week, to go through, but it’s never been boring or annoying. Whether it’s fan trivia, lessons for writers, or both, they’re both worth reading. Here’s when I got my copy and there’s more where that came from. Just not for a while. Maybe in the spring or something.
I also couldn’t just copy/paste the text from the PDF like I have prior story bibles and writer’s guides. The file there was a photocopy, meaning the text is part of the image, so I had to write everything out. I put together a good system for doing that fairly quick, but it still takes time and I had to make sure any typos were on their side, not mine. Although there weren’t even close to the number of typos of the last series I did this with, Transformers: Beast Machines.
So with all that under my wing, let’s take a short look back at what we can get out of reading the sales pitch and writer’s guide for Star Trek not only when it comes to making good Star Trek but in stories in general. What did we learn about making Trek, making sci-fi, and making good stories? If you want the deep dive…where have you been since September? Well, here’s the list from the start. You might enjoy it, but this is just the highlights.
“That’s not how you use the starter’s gun! What kind of race is this?”
Knuckles The Echidna #32
FINAL ISSUE which I didn’t learn until a week later because nothing in the comic points to it unless I missed it
Archie Comics Publications (February, 2000)
WRITER: Ken Penders
COLORIST: Frank Gagliardo
LETTERER: Vickie Williams
EDITOR: J.F. Gabrie
“King Of The Hill” finale: “To The Death”
PENCILER: Ken Penders
INKER: Harvey Mercadoocasio
Espio The Chameleon: “The Worst Of Enemies”
PENCILER: Colleen Doran
INKER: Andrew Pepoy
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 Media Spotlight 