I’m lucky enough that every family member and friend who served in wartime came home…although to be more accurate, THEY’RE the lucky ones. Unfortunately some came home with emotional scars as war is hell. We need to take a moment to thank those who died so the rest of us could live free, and honor those freedoms they fought for. Take some time this Memorial Day to honor the ones who never came home, and thank those that did for their service. Have a happy and safe Memorial Day.
I’m too tired to come up with a gag.
As I write this, it’s Saturday Night, the first day of my paying job, helping set up a new store in the area. It’s a temporary job and based on how I feel right now that might be for the best, even if further shelf stocking would be easier with less item. I am not up to going back to the register. That’s one thing I know for sure. I was never happy there and my math skills are not the best. Still, this does have decent pay and by the time it’s over I should have enough money to get by for a while, barring some emergency. At least I hope so. It depends on how long I make it through the process.
What that means is BW Media Spotlight operations, as well as The Clutter Reports, are going to be slow to nonexistent until the job is done or I give up. I’d rather not give up as I made a commitment and they’re paying me, but I do have to keep an eye on my health. I’m going to try to get the annual Memorial Day video posted, but I have to find a good one on a Sunday night or be late Monday night. As for the Chapter By Chapter review of Star Trek: The Vulcan Academy Murders, I’m going to try to get it in. Maybe I can still get some daily videos in as well, or the next Saturday Night Showcase, but I make no promises.
To save my sanity, however, the daily comic reviews are going to go on hiatus until the job’s done, and while I can estimate based on what happened Saturday, I’m not sure how long that will be. My apologies to anyone following the events in the Ultraverse where we have quite a few cliffhangers, or what’s happening with Sonic and Knuckles, or getting to the debut of the new Dan Garrett Blue Beetle, but I didn’t have time to prepare anything since I got maybe 24 hours notice. As soon as my temp gig is over, I’ll return to normal BW operations…if I haven’t killed myself yet.
Have a great week, everyone. Hope to see you all soon or get something done on the site during this slowdown.
One last trip with rookie patrolman Dan Garret we need to cover, and it’s the radio show.
Comics have never been treated fairly by the rest of the media landscape but they used to be in far better shape as radio dramas and movie serials based on them were usually accurate enough. Not always, and I could point to specific failings of a bunch of them that I’m aware of, but close enough to make the readers happy. Airing on CBS’s radio network from May to September of 1940, The Blue Beetle took the chainmail armor wearing hero from Mystery Men Comics and gave him his own radio adventures. Along for the ride would be Mike Mannigan and Doctor Franz, with Joan Mason as a recurring character if memory serves.
The origin of the Blue Beetle is a bit better pulled together: how and why Dr Franz gave him the Vitamin 2X and the various gadgets at the Blue Beetle’s disposal, using a “magic ring” in place of the visual symbol of “you’re in trouble now, boyo” from the comics because there’s no visual here as well as using it as a cutting laser, and the friendship between the three though Mike would still be pursing the Blue Beetle as a vigilante are all on display. I would listen to these old radio shows while going on walks and now I get to share them with you, as a final farewell to the original version of the Blue Beetle and his circle of friends.
Old Time Radio Researchers on Comic Book Plus and the Internet Archive, the latter being my hosting source for this installment, has the episodes split into two parts, possibly where the commercial break would be, but the first adventure has each part listed as a separate episode, while the others are parts 1 and 2. “Origin Story” and “Smashing The Spy Ring” features the origin of the Blue Beetle and his war on crime. So sit back and listen to the theater of the mind as our heroes deal with evil spies in the first story of The Blue Beetle. Enjoy.
If you’re an actor with dwarfism good luck finding any work. As it is there aren’t many diminutive characters, but once Peter Dinklage became the self-appointed voice of the whole community, it’s gotten worse. Disney wanted to take the Dwarfs out of Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs and now Taika Waititi is planning to pull them out of Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits Apple TV series, plus introduce a new character as leader, who of course is a girl. The bandits are full size humans now, and it sounds like there may be other issues that annoyed Terry Gilliam, the director of the movie. Spencer Baculi of Bounding Into Comics has the details.
For many of us comic fans, there are two Blue Beetles we’re aware of. Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle, and Jaime Reyes, the third and current (as of this article) Blue Beetle. There may be awareness of the first Blue Beetle, Egyptologist Dan Garrett, but by the time DC Comics purchased the Charlton heroes he was long gone, mere backstory for Ted and for Jaime’s scarab.
What you may not have known was that there was a fourth Blue Beetle, the original version of Dan Garret (note the one less “T”). I knew him from three sources: Linkara’s “Blue-Sky” retrospective on the character dating back to his earliest appearances to his most recent at the time of the retrospective’s completion (I think it was still during the New 52), the old radio dramas I had started listening to on my walks, and during my suffering through Seduction Of The Innocent where comic hater Fredrick Wertham actually thought Dan turned into a giant beetle to fight crime because somehow the child therapist couldn’t translate the words of a child. That’s a summer that I and those of you who joined me in reviewing that insult to non-fiction will never get back, and I apologize to both of us.
On the other hand, I learned that some of those older comics are in public domain and thus websites could legally post them. So using Comic Book Plus (a better “plus” than most streaming services) I delved into the early adventures of Dan Garret, rookie patrolman, in coordination with the movie based on his namesake that kind of does turn into a giant bug man. I started with his original 1940s appearances in Mystery Men Comics, which I am considering going back and finishing but at the time I opted to jump straight into his solo comic…which was still an anthology like the comic he came out of for awhile, then got sold to another company, then went back to the original company, and then went to Charlton who did four comics with that concept and cast before doing the total re-imagine we know today and will be getting into in the Friday verison of “Yesterday’s” Comic.
As “Yesterday’s” Comic says good-bye to Officer Garret and his friends and before saying hello to the archeologist Dan Garrett and his friends, I wanted to look back on the forgotten history of the Blue Beetle and see what we missed out on, and what went wrong as the series went on. This isn’t a deep retrospective, just me going over my afterthoughts on the whole series up to this point and the Beetle that continuity forgot, plus what if any legacy came from it. Watch the video I linked to earlier for a closer retrospective on all the bearers of the Blue Beetle mantle. This is the highlights.
Dan, that’s not how you play “Battleship”.
The Blue Beetle #21
Charlton Comics (August, 1955)
Well, we’ve reached the end of this incarnation of the Blue Beetle, four runs under three different publishers. The numbering on this short run took over from The Thing!, not to be confused with the Marvel Comics hero, and from here would be taken over by Mr. Muscles. I don’t know why the first two issues were all reprints, hence why I didn’t cover them, the previous issue had one reprint and three new stories, and this one has another “Joan Mason: Reporter” reprint, a reprinted text story, and two new Blue Beetle adventures, and ends the series here. Instead we’ll have a re-imagine of the whole thing next week, but one more for the road with Dan, Mike, and Joan, shall we?
Catch more from MongoPangolin on YouTube
*Sigh* Waste of a perfectly good cheesecake.
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 