I don’t think I agree with all of his choices. Certainly not Jessica Jones as she has never had a real impact on the Marvel Universe. Maybe more than…say, Northstar, but that’s hardly a high bar to hurdle. If I were to do something like this, and I don’t go in for those fad-style lists like the “X” Iceberg or “X” Mount Rushmore, I’d look more at who had an impact on their respective universes as a whole in each period than what sold. The fact that he couldn’t find much in current day comics tells you a lot about current day comics.
In the early days of this site, and back when Channel Awesome was still the site every reviewer wanted to be part of, one of my recommendations was TJ Omega, host of a show called TJ TV. The tagline says it all: taking revenge on my childhood. Not that every show he reviewed was bad, but they were all kind of weird. Sometimes they were weird in a good way, and sometimes it was Van-Pires, but I’m jumping ahead here.
TJ (Tyler James) found the review and let me know it wasn’t his first, or only, review gig. While TJ TV was on Blip before Maker Studios ransacked it to look pretty for Disney, he had a YouTube toy review show called Plastic Addict, looking at poorly designed toys, including Transformers. In fact, mostly Transformers. While the scripted shows are something he doesn’t have time for, he still discusses toys and related media on YouTube. The thing is sometimes kids finds those reviews, so he wasn’t comfortable putting more colorful language into his show. You know…swears.
One of his Patreon stretch goals was bringing back TJ TV without the language, and he recently hit it. The new format matches his usual daily discussions but he’s still looking at weird and terrible shows. For example, Van-Pires, a Power Rangers wanna-be that makes Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters From Beverly Hills look like it has more effort put into it. If you’ve never heard of this show before, I’m sorry. And if you have…learn that we share your pain because I made the mistake of watching a couple of episodes when it aired. It’s worse for Tyler…he watched the whole thing in 2024. Since I’m under the weather today, we’re watching this. Which tells you where my head is right now.
While the live-action DC movies have been continually panned at least since Man Of Steel and getting less and less numbers until The Flash hit an all-time low and Batgirl was deemed unleasable, the animated direct-to-video movies have had the opposite effect. Now with James Gunn wanting to use animation to prop up his DC movieverse, the future of the current continuity of DTV movies is uncertain. Then again, so is Gunn’s ability to properly adapt the DC multiverse, so this may end up being a bigger disaster, as it’s now ruined a comic adaptation that fans were already enjoying. At first, it looked like Gunn was actually giving some love to animation, but if it ruins animated DC movies while failing to save the live-action ones, the opposite effect may occur. This is why we can’t have nice things.
I seem to be doing a lot of Morning Article Links this week. I really need to space them out better with the videos, which have taken over the Daily Quickposts lately.
Here’s something that comes up in mind now and then. In the 1980s and 1990s, not so much nowadays, there were a bunch of shows made for kids to sell toys with an odd source: R-Rated movies. And these toys/shows were made with kids in mind, since the adult toy collector market didn’t really exist at the time and grown-ups were still afraid to be caught watching anything that didn’t feature Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, or their friends.
Why did they exist? My theory is that movie studios wanted to promote movies like RoboCop, First Blood, and Men In Black that they didn’t want to avoid the shows parents and kids watched together, like the still-existing “family hour” or sports shows. So they created trailers that were safe to show around kids…who saw what looked like G.I. Joe or a police officer cyborg fighting bad guys, and a market was born.
Not all of them were very good. RoboCop the cartoon was okay on action, but the best thing that can be said about it is “at least it wasn’t RoboCop: Alpha Commando“. You also have James Bond Jr, who is actually James’ nephew because the 10 years olds shouldn’t hear that James probably has more kids than Nick Cannon. (I watch a lot of Masked Singer so it was the best example I had. Sorry.) Some things should never have even been tried to crossover the age gap, like the Police Academy franchise. However, some of these shows were actually quite good. I’m going to break out a few of them and explain why at least some of the hate these shows get are coming from hypocrites!
You’ve seen him in comments, now read one of his articles. Nate Winchester of Hunting Muses goes over how stories connect us and form a culture. And he uses examples of computers and stories that we’re all familiar with. Although I have not watched Supernatural so there’s actually a point lost on me…which may actually help prove his point on how we’re losing that cultural connection with the degrading of modern stories.
BW Media Spotlight 
BW’s Daily Article Link> The Story Connection
You’ve seen him in comments, now read one of his articles. Nate Winchester of Hunting Muses goes over how stories connect us and form a culture. And he uses examples of computers and stories that we’re all familiar with. Although I have not watched Supernatural so there’s actually a point lost on me…which may actually help prove his point on how we’re losing that cultural connection with the degrading of modern stories.
Tell others about the Spotlight:
Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on January 24, 2024 in Uncategorized and tagged commentary, stories and culture.
Leave a comment