There are worse Blue Beetle villains I could think of to bring back.
Blue Beetle #53
Charlton Comics Group (December, 1965)
“The People Thieves”
no credits in the comic, and Comic Book Plus only lists the artist, Tony Tallarico
Sorry the scans are kind of wonky. They could have tried to straighten out the pages.
Catch more from NostalgAK on YouTube
Here’s the link to James Eatock’s video on the promo video. Cereal:Geek is another YouTube channel to check out.
Not the Veteran’s Administration. The title was getting long, or I would have written voice actress, as in Minnie Driver. Driver voices the gender-swapped version of the character in Batman: Caped Crusader, the show that Warner Brothers themselves tossed out and Amazon Prime grabbed like a dog with table scraps. I don’t even hate the show. I don’t even hate Driver’s portrayal. When I reviewed it a couple of days ago, I praised her singing voice. She did a good job voicing Oswalda Cobblepot.
She’s just not the Penguin.
First appearing in Detective Comics #58, Oswald Cobblepot is a mob boss named for his deformity and penchant for tuxedos, both of which combined given them the appearance of the namesake arctic fowl. The Penguin has appeared in every continuity I’m aware of outside of Elseworld one-shots, and he’s even been in some of them. There might be some games he was out of. I don’t know EVERY bat-continuity out there, but he’s made an appearance in the ones I know of. Done right, he would have made a good introduction to this new timeline, since we’re doing another “early Batman” story and that means fighting mobsters rather than supervillains.
I’m not going to slam Driver, who probably never read a comic book or watched a cartoon in her life, for not knowing who the Penguin is, or enjoying her version enough to attempt to defend it since she couldn’t care less about the source material. The fault of the bad adaptation is on Bruce Timm, JJ Abrams, Matt Reeves, and the episode writers, which is Timm and Jase Ricci according to IMDB. On the other hand, saying something stupid that proves you don’t know what your talking about and thinking you’ve owned people who knew who Penguin was while you was playing with Barbie (wow, Driver’s a few years older than me so I had to adjust that, and she’s still pretty hot) is something I’m going to get on your case on. There’s a difference between defending your version and acting like that’s how it always was. To wit, this interview with GamesRadar where she calls Oswald a “genderless creature”. Prepare to lose a brain cell.
Okay, guys, you don’t have to rip off Golden Age anthologies, too.
Lucky Comics Showcase #1
Lucky Comics (February, 2002)
COVER ART: John Michael Helmer
As you can tell from the cover, this comic contains three stories: Beetle Girl, Crom The Barbarian, and Flame Girl. The girls are of course tied to Golden Age superheroes while Crom is a take on Conan. Perhaps this is supposed to be the guy Conan prays to? I don’t know. Good or not, this isn’t a series I would connect to.
Meanwhile, past showings of Beetle Girl in these reviews have not been the best showing for Dan Garrett’s daughter, Flame Girl is new, and I only have limited exposure to The Flame, the guy who travels through flames but also has a cool car and airplane. That will at least be something different. Crom we saw in one of the Free Comic Book Day specials.
The future of the Power Rangers franchise seems to be in trouble at the moment, and it wasn’t (insert your favorite villain here for an overused gag) that’s responsible, but the current rights holders. Hasbro is already putting outfits and other items from the show on auction, and there has been no announcement of a new show despite Super Sentai, the Japanese superhero franchise Power Rangers is based on, continuing to make more shows.
Sentai, Japanese for “task force”, can trace its roots to the 1970s, but only really gained that name in the third series, a project that intellectually spun off of Spider-Man that was originally intended to be Captain America. There’s a lot of weird in that sentence we won’t get into. The point is, Haim Saban tried a few times to bring an American version of the show to Western kids, eventually succeeding with Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. From there every year had a new incarnation for a new generation, but while the show thrives in Japan, the road in the US has been a more bumpy one.
So what hurt the franchise, and does it have a future? Let’s discuss, and be glad I’m not lame enough to call this article “Stop, Stop, Power Rangers” or some other cringy nonsense.
All the characters thrown in here and Tails is talking to someone who isn’t part of the cast. Or even in the comic.
Sonic The Hedgehog #69
Archie Comics Publications (April, 1989)
LETTERER: Jeff Powell
EDITOR: J. F. Gabrie
“A Day In The Life”
WRITER: Karl Bollers
PENCILER: Steven Butler
INKER: Pam Eklund
COLORIST: Frank Gagliardo
Lupe & The Wolfpack: “Weathering The Storm”
WRITER/INKER/COLORIST: Ken Penders
INKER: Sam Maxwell
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 