October 15, 2023

Jake & Leon #575> Subscriber 501

Now if only my reader count matched my subscription count.

Here’s a little bit of behind the scenes. Over the past week I gained my 501st subscriber. (Welcome.) I’m always happy to see that I did something that caused somebody to fill their email box or RSS feed with a report that I posted something because they liked what they saw and want to see more. Thank you all for caring.

The odd thing is my reader count is still in the mid 100s, occasionally going past 200. It’s that kind of number difference that makes me wonder what I did to cause someone to subscribe, and while they won’t read everything I do (I don’t read everything on other sites I’m subscribed to) I am curious what I wrote or showcased that caused them to subscribe and how often they still read afterwards. It’s one of those bits of data that will help me improve because for some reason my two most popular article are on things I probably won’t address again, especially the top post, that I also wish wasn’t so popular. It’s the one about JewWario’s fall from grace when certain information became public that I only posted because I championed his work in the past. Sometimes you need to be better than your heroes.

[EDIT: WordPress just told me I registered 15 years ago today, though I wouldn’t start actually posting to the site until late November. Still plays to my problem keeping up with milestones.]

So thank you all for subscribing and I am curious what it is about BW Media Spotlight or The Clutter Reports (or even The Tronix Tumblr, which I never get to post anything new of my own to) that caused you to subscribe. Speaking of which, today’s Clutter Report has me doing more comic sorting and finding enough of one series to start a new sub-category on the Comics For Sale section.

Coming up this week? More Chapter By Chapter reviewing of the Batman: Knightfall adaptation, and we begin phase two of the Beast Machine Hunters series by getting to the actual story bible for season one of Transformers: Beast Machines. Plus whatever comes to mind or my attention this week to discuss. Have a great week, everyone, and thanks for checking the site out.

Posted by on October 15, 2023 in Jake & Leon and tagged , , , .

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October 14, 2023

Saturday Night Showcase: Mothra Vs Godzilla (aka Godzilla Vs The Thing)

With the success of the Godzilla movies, Toho was in for a surprise: kids loved seeing the giant monsters destroying cities. I mean, it shouldn’t be a surprise. Kids love dinosaurs and here are building sized dinosaurs destroying buildings like sand castles. Of course kids are going to love it.

While the original movie had been a way to process and warn about further atomic testing, the second was just a good ol’ fashioned monster vs monster fight, like kids bashing their dinosaurs together. A franchise was forming, but if you’re going to have monsters, wouldn’t be nice to have a few heroes, since the Japanese government wasn’t going to be able to come up with a counterweapon so easily? The last one was considered so dangerous the inventor sacrificed himself not only to stop the monster but to keep a new one from ever being made.

Meanwhile there was finally a sympathetic monster in Toho’s growing library. Mothra followed a giant moth who only came to Japan to rescue her doll-sized priestesses, destroying Japan and a fictional country in the process. Hers is a tale of what happens when humans let greed overcome common sense. Nowadays the theme has transitioned to something more ecological but at the time it was just greed is bad. So in what we would now call a shared universe, Mothra would become our hero. The enemy was obvious. In his last two movies, facing Anguirus and King Kong, Godzilla was still the bad guy, and thus he would be in this movie as well.

Mothra Vs Godzilla, known in the US originally as Godzilla Vs The Thing–nowadays Godzilla Vs Mothra, shows yet another bunch of greedy morons. When Mothra’s egg is washed up in Japan after a storm, they decide to bring it further inland and build a theme part around it. The twin pint-sized princesses reach out to a pair of reporters and a scientist (because of course they do) in order to retrieve the egg before it hatches and smashes a few cities getting back to the water. However, a new problem comes into play when Godzilla, who loves smashing cities because he’s too much of a jerk to walk around, doesn’t care that Mothra’s egg is in his path. Tonight I have the original subbed via YouTube and a link to the English dub because Internet Archive is a pain to embed. Enjoy.

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Posted by on October 14, 2023 in Movie Spotlight, Saturday Night Showcase and tagged , , .

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October 14, 2023

“Yesterday’s” Comic> The Blue Beetle #29

Chain mail apparently isn’t what it used to be. Also, you’re welcome, ladies.

The Blue Beetle #29

Holyoke Publishing (January, 1942)

Two more of these to go before it returns to Fox. Most of my issues I had with the Fox run were the weirder stories, the Golden Age’s anthology routine meaning that outside of the main character I didn’t care for most of the comic, and the annoyances of doing a multi-story comic review. Holyoke has its own problem: they’re boring. There’s also a lack of consistency with what came before, like losing the infamous bulletproof chainmail armor, the addition of a sidekick even I can’t support in a manner that already makes him unlikable, and they seem to think supporting the troops against the Axis Powers means you don’t need to write good stories. I’m not going to miss this run but there is still the unknown factor of what the second Fox run will be like.

We’ll worry about that when it’s time. Right now let us get through this issue. And by us I mean me.

[Read along with me here]

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Posted by on October 14, 2023 in Yesterday's Comics and tagged , , , , , , , , , .

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October 13, 2023

Beast Machine Hunters> The First Story Bible finale

Last time we finished Marv Wolfman’s story treatment but the whole story treatment includes one last section. In this part the focus is a description of the Maximals and Vehicons themselves, and while there are two more books to review in this series it is the end of the Beast Hunters version of what became Beast Machines.

The biggest issue with Wolfman’s treatment–outside of more typos than me, not remembering who was supposed to have Silverbolt’s spark, and that in four seasons the Maximals seem to still have trouble transforming because even without the page order mistake in the file I couldn’t follow the timeline of events–was that what he was pushing was way too ambition. He went over four seasons and it still didn’t end. The background character count would have been impossible given computing power at the time and a Fox Kids/YTV/Hasbro shared budget. And in four seasons not much really seemed to happen. If what we got was too condensed this wasn’t condensed enough.

I am kind of curious how much of the characters’ personalities they got right. We already know he hated Rattrap, seemed to keep the season 1 personalities of the Beast Wars survivors, and retread plot ideas from all three seasons. We’ve seen in previous story bibles that not everything makes it to the final product and I’m sure that will continue as we dive into the season one and season two guides. However, I wasn’t impressed with Wolfman’s story presentation. Let’s see if the short character profiles fared any better.

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Posted by on October 13, 2023 in Animation Spotlight, Beast Machines/Hunters: Transformers and tagged , , , , , , .

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October 13, 2023

“Yesterday’s” Comic> Star Power #11

“What’s Lara Croft have on me? Guns? I’ve got superpowers that are also my best friend.”

Star Power #11

(August, 2015)

“The Mystery Of The Zel Gux Dynasty” part 1

WRITER: Michael Terracciano

ARTIST: Garth Graham

[Read along with me here]

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Posted by on October 13, 2023 in webcomics, Yesterday's Comics and tagged , , , , , , , , , .

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October 13, 2023

BW’s Daily Video> George Lucas Explains The Force

This was a recording from the Clone Wars writing room meeting, as featured on one of the Blu-Ray collections. I guess none of the modern Star Wars writers were in the room at the time.

Posted by on October 13, 2023 in Movie Spotlight and tagged , , , , .

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October 12, 2023

James Gunn’s DC Universe Is Already A Mess

Alternate title: Scrappy-Doo and Guess Who.

It’s the closest thing to a James Gunn image in my library. It still makes me happy. Sometimes I remember why I make a weekly comic strip.

However, it’s not Gunn’s treatment of my childhood nostalgia that is bugging me right now, unless you want to get technical. I did grow up with the DC Universe and their now abandoned takes on the aspirational hero with fun stories and adventures that could be done in one issue but still have ramifications in later issues. Of course I also loved the DC shows I grew up with because they followed the same formula. Sadly this is no longer the case.

That’s not what we’re here to talk about though. I’m not trying to trash Zac Snyder when I say it was a mistake for Warner Brothers to use him as their “Kevin Feige”, the only who was supposed to create their own DC Cinematic Universe. Snyder is good for the stories he tells but the stories he tells are not in line with the DC superheroes or why so many fans like those characters. His more cynical perspective on superheroes worked to adapt Watchmen but that book ran counter to the DC heroes as well so it was in good company. The “DC Extended Universe” bombed for the most part, and that included stuff he partly or entirely wasn’t part of with the exception of the first Wonder Woman movies. Even that film did stuff wrong, while the first Shazam movie was based on Geoff Johns’ re-imagining of the original Captain Marvel so I don’t even care if it was good or not. At any rate Warner Brothers was forced to end his “Snyderverse”, though some of the ways they did so wasn’t really fair to him no matter how happy I am he’s no longer ruining my favorite heroes.

Unfortunately James Gunn comes with his own issues, and right now he seems to be making the same mistake as the New 52. (By the way, someone next week remind me to go over the current Dan DiDio situation.) While Snyder kind of borrowed from that with his darker tone, Gunn is following one of their other mistakes: he isn’t committing to the reboot fully enough. Some of his statements are really confusing considering the direction he’s going, and what’s coming with him FROM the Snyderverse to the Gunnverse.

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Posted by on October 12, 2023 in DC Spotlight, Movie Spotlight and tagged , .

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