May 15, 2024

Scanning My Collection> Sonic Returns The King

Apparently my Sonic The Hedgehog Archie library still has mistakes, but I might have caught it sooner had I not mistaken it for another “director’s cut”. If you recall in “Yesterday’s” Comic, we’ve been going over Sonic and Tails chasing Ixis Naugus after the return of King Maximilian Acorn and his being freed of the crystal. There was a gap between issues where things happened that I remembered reading originally but wasn’t coming up in this reread. When did Naugus get here? What was that talk about dismantling Robians? I knew it happened but it seemed to be missing.

I should have checked the Sonic Super Special comics, because that’s where things went down. It got lost in the rotation somehow and when I finally saw it I thought it was a director’s cut or some other story. This is my fault and to get things back on track I’m doing a Scanning My Collection review to get caught up. I hope I don’t have to do this again. I have a bunch of Sonic Super Specials bunched together while in “Yesterday’s” Comic we have big revelations in Sonic The Hedgehog and Knuckles The Echidna coming out after these events. So let’s fix my mistake and hope the reading order doesn’t have any more mistakes like this.

No, He-Man as the superstrength. You have superspeed.

Sonic Super Special #4

Archie Comics Publications (1998)

INKER: Pam Eklund

COLORIST: Karl Bollers

LETTERER: Vickie Williams

EDITOR: J. Freddy Gabrie

“The Return Of The King”

WRITER: Karl Bollers

PENCILER: Sam Maxwell

“Down And Out In Downunda”

WRITER: Michael Gallagher

PENCILER: Nelson Ortega

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Posted by on May 15, 2024 in Scanning My Collection, Video Game Spotlight, Yesterday's Comics and tagged , , , , , , .

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May 15, 2024

“Yesterday’s” Comic> Knuckles The Echidna #19

I’d make a weatherman joke but this isn’t normal weather for them at this time.

Knuckles The Echidna #19

Archie Comic Publications (December, 1998)

“The Forbidden Zone” part 1″: “Whatever Happened To Queen Alicia?”

WRITER: Ken Penders

PENCILER: Manny Galan

INKER: Andrew Pepoy

COLORIST: Barry Grossman

LETTERER: Vickie Williams

EDITOR: Justin Gabrie

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Posted by on May 15, 2024 in Video Game Spotlight, Yesterday's Comics and tagged , , , , , .

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May 15, 2024

BW’s Daily Video> An Examination Of Mass Effect’s Asari Race

Catch more from OrangeRiver on YouTube

 

Posted by on May 15, 2024 in Video Game Spotlight and tagged , , .

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May 14, 2024

Why The DCAU Should Be Allowed To Rest

I’m not a huge X-Men fan, so even if I had Disney+ I don’t think I’d be watching the current X-Men ’97. I don’t have anything against it, and I hear it’s better than anticipated…which may be why Disney fired the showrunner over a PG Onlyfans account. Doing things the fans like seems to be the opposite of current Disney’s goal, but that’s a whole other discussion. This resuming of the 1990s Fox Kids cartoon seems to be doing well and its fans actually enjoy it.

This has led to another big return being hoped for by nostalgic fans of the DC Animated Universe, specifically Justice League Unlimited. Bounding Into Comics contributor JB Augustine even wrote a piece asking for it back, which would go against James Gunn’s plans for combining animated and live-action productions into his shared DC Gunniverse. Not that it’s stopped My Adventures With Superman or the announced Batman: Caped Crusader shows, with varying levels of adaptation even though the now Adult Swim airing Superman show seems to have found an audience for finally getting Superman right. It’s just the world he lives in they royally screwed up, which is why I can’t get into it. Pretty boy Deathstroke is just wrong and I just saw a clip for season two that makes Amanda Waller full on evil in ways the last season of Unlimited didn’t even reach. And I’m one of a select few who didn’t like the Cadmus storyline or the “Epilogue” episode.

The DCAU was some of the best comic adapting out there, and even gave us new characters like Harley Quinn, Renee Montoya (which has been ruined by DC and further adaptations), and the villainess Livewire. I fully enjoyed all of it, even the shows that Bruce Timm didn’t work on. Static Shock was a version of the Milestone hero Static I could more get into tonally (so I have no ill will towards My Adventure With Superman fans and wouldn’t with the Snyderverse fans if they and Snyder himself weren’t such jerks about it at times) and while I didn’t get the chance to get into The Zeta Project, it was a unique addition thanks to the backdoor pilot in Batman Beyond, set in the DCAU thanks to a crossover with the Batman of the future. It was great storytelling and a good adaptation of the DC multiverse. Does that mean it deserves another chance like the Fox Kids X-Men are getting? I’m not convinced.

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Posted by on May 14, 2024 in Animation Spotlight, DC Spotlight, Television Spotlight and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

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May 14, 2024

“Today’s” Comic> Ultimate Universe Free Comic Book Day 2024

Well…it’s a collection of people. Look, I’ve got nothing. I make fun of covers, not pin-up posters pretending to be covers.

Ultimate Universe/Spider-Man FCBD 2024

Marvel Comics (2024)

COVER ART: Ryan Stegman, JP Mayer, & Brad Anderson

Spider-Man: “Target: Peter Parker”

WRITER: Zeb Wells

PENCILER: Ryan Stegman

INKER: JP Mayer

COLORIST: Sonia Oback

LETTERER: Joe Caramagna

ASSISTANT EDITOR: Kaeden McGahey

EDITOR: Nick Lowe

The Ultimates

WRITER: Deniz Camp

ARTIST: Juan Frigeri

COLORIST: Frederico Blee

LETTERER: Cory Petit

ASSISTANT EDITOR: Machelle Marchese

EDITOR: Wil Moss

Also features a Venom story by Al Ewing, Iban Coello, Frank D’Armata, and Clayton Cowes

ASSISTANT EDITOR: Tom Groneman  EDITOR: Jordan D. White

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Posted by on May 14, 2024 in Marvel Spotlight, Today's Comic and tagged , , , , , , , , , .

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May 14, 2024

BW’s Daily Video> Owen Likes (the original) Ultimate Spider-Man

Catch more from Owen Likes Comics on YouTube

I didn’t connect to this comic the same way he did, but all of us who got into comics have this story. The story of how a particular comic or event got them into comic. Mine are scattered around this site, as it was a multipart journey. This was also the GOOD Ultimate Universe comic. It’s easy to see why it affected him the way it did.

Posted by on May 14, 2024 in Marvel Spotlight and tagged , , .

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May 13, 2024

Chapter By Chapter> Star Trek: The Vulcan Academy Murders chapter 24

Chapter By Chapter (usually) features me reading one chapter of the selected book at a time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as a read-along book club.

Tonight’s chapter is short, but so is my time. Five pages will have to suffice, as the next chapter is a more acceptable chapter length by my review standards. In the previous chapter, McCoy…learned a bit about how Sarek and Amanda met.

I hate to repeat myself, but as great as the character pars were I kind of wish Lorrah had come up with a different plot that would have allowed me to focus on them. Even making the story about the still experimental procedure itself would have allowed for what Lorrah seems to actually want to do here without the distraction of the murder subplot. That’s kind of my issue. The title of the book should be about the plot, not the subplot, and that’s what the murders have become. I know Lorrah could have just made this a medical drama within the Star Trek framework, because that’s what she did in The IDIC Epidemic, the follow-up that was the novel I read first and enjoyed enough to go back and find The Vulcan Academy Murders. If memory serves, and I do still own the novel and may do it for a future Chapter By Chapter if I and the Spotlight are around that long, the plot involved a disease that affected mixed race–as in races of different planets, not someone with a different shade of melanin but still from the same planet and thus the same race in Star Trek and my eyes–people. The race was on to find a cure, but there was character drama among xenophobes and among the medical staff. It challenged the limits of “infinite diversity in infinite combination” but stayed focus on the plot and how it affected the characters.

Here, the murders have become an afterthought. Every now and then Lorrah remembers it but then it goes away again to focus on building Vulcan lore and the romance story going on. All of that has been really good, though creating canon lore in a non-canon story, which most novels are, is always an iffy move at best. Let’s see how this all plays out in this short chapter.

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Posted by on May 13, 2024 in Chapter By Chapter, Star Trek: Vulcan Academy Murders, Television Spotlight and tagged , , , , , , .

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