Jake & Leon #577: Galactic Positioning System

The sad part is that isn’t even Saturn.

See? Shralk is just lost and that’s why he didn’t show up this October. It’s totally not because I forgot to do it until I found the launching comic for the storyline while doing the anniversary post. No, why would you think that? Don’t think things like that. I said stop!

Over at The Clutter Reports this week I took the opportunity of still doing the comic pricing to do a discussion piece about segmenting your decluttering and how it’s a process that has benefitted me in the long run. Not every method works for everyone but it’s been working for me thus far. I even took some time to clean-up my desk somewhat, though a larger reorganize is still incoming.

What happens here this week? Well, I was going to do a week of article links for the daily quickpost because that’s piling up like the Comics By Perch episodes but then I learned something neat that leads to a Monday video post. Not sure what will happen the rest of the week. Meanwhile, we continue the Chapter By Chapter review of the Batman: Knightfall novelization on Monday and the next installment of Beast Machine Hunters as we continue to look at the Maximal descriptions for season 1 Beast Machines in that story guide. In between will be…other topics. Have a great week, everyone!

Saturday Night Showcase> Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla

I know it’s not the next one chronologically but I couldn’t let Godzillaween go by without something for my favorite G-Foe, Mechagodzilla!

Why do we need evil Superman when we already have Bizarro and General Zod (plus other evil Kryptonians like Zod) to do it for them? Black Adam is supposed to face Captain “Shazam!” Marvel for a reason. They’re the evil opposite, the result of what happens when someone uses the hero’s own powers and talents for evil instead of good. You don’t need “what if ‘X’ turns evil” because you already have it!

Well, if Godzilla is going to be the Guardian Monster then someone has to be the evil counterpart. Enter: Mechagodzilla. While more recent continuities have made Mecha G a creation of the Japanese government to fight the evil again Godzilla, the original was a creation of evil aliens to attack Godzilla and RULE THE WORLD! Tonight we see his first appearance, when a priestess (who this time ISN’T from Mars or Venus…I think) has a vision of monsters on the rampage, it’s shocked to see Godzilla turning back to smashing cities. Except Godzilla is a good kaiju now and has finally started walking around Japanese cities. What’s going on? And can Godzilla’s new friend King Caesar help him and Anguirus stop his evil twin? Let’s just say there’s a reason Caesar doesn’t show up a lot in this franchise.

This is an interesting twist. The one on YouTube is English and I have to send you to Shout TV (the recently rebranded Shout Factory TV just to mess with previous articles and tags on this site apparently) for the Japanese version. No, this isn’t the original American dub Godzilla Vs. The Cosmic Monster, it’s a brand new dub of the original Japanese. Either way, choose your favorite language and enjoy.

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“Yesterday’s” Comic> The Blue Beetle #31

“This isn’t Pismo Beach!”

The Blue Beetle #31

Fox Feature Syndicate (June, 1944)

Home again, home again. Jigga jig jig. After settling their debts Fox Feature reacquired the Blue Beetle and presumably other characters but this is the series we’re focused on. As we’re about to enter this comic I’m curious if these are left over Holyoke stories just as Holyoke did when they took over the title or all brand new stories. We have THREE Blue Beetle stories this issue while we usually only got one or two from Holyoke, and they even gave Joan Mason her own story. There are also some new characters but none of the classic Fox heroes. Granted I won’t miss many of them that showed up in this comic. The less “Spark” Stevens I have to get through, the better.

[Read along with me here]

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Beast Machine Hunter> The First Season Guide part 2

Last time on Beast Machine Hunters we got a look at the story for season one as they planned. As we’ve seen in previous story bibles not everything matches up all the time but what we’ve seen thus far was actually quite accurate to the Transformers: Beast Machines we got.

In this installment we begin looking at the characters as depicted in the new show with our five Maximals: Optimus Primal, Cheetor, Rattrap, Blackarachnia (still spelled in the guide as two words but I use the toy spelling which is one word), and Nightscream, aka proof you can’t create a breakout character or know just who the audience at large will relate to. Nightscream was created for this show and while I’m sure he has at least one fan I never met him or her in my time in the Transformers fan community or since so if you’re out there…why?

With that, we’ve got a lot of profile and just from going over Optimus’ I’m not even getting all five Maximals in on this one  installment so let’s get to it. It’s Optimus Primal and Cheetor. In the last show they developed a father/son relationship, right down to the rebellious teenager in season three. Let’s see how the suggested depictions match up with the end product.

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“Yesterday’s” Comic> Star Power #13

“I thought I was the flying one?”

Star Power #13

(February, 2016)

“Star Power And The Mystery Of The Zel Dux Dynasty” part 3

WRITER: Michael Terracciano

ARTIST: Garth Graham

[Read along with me here]

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BW’s Daily Video> Comics, The Truth, And Going Too Far

This is the last Perch video of the week. Because I’m scheduling this for Friday. Next week, something else. Maybe my article link backlog? Haven’t done a Daily Article Link in a while. Some minor cursing in this one.

Catch more from Comics By Perch on YouTube

Jake & Leon: Best Of Year Fourteen

Hey, I’m on time this year! Bless you, Google Calendar!

For those of you who came in late: Back when I was doing weekly new comic reviews before it started taking up too much of one of the only days I had to do household chores, I was running out of interesting ways to introduce the article each week. Intros are harder than they look. It’s how you hook the reader in to checking out what you have to say. So while fooling around with different art styles I tried one I really liked. Then I tried to redraw it and couldn’t. Repeated attempts led to failure so I gave up for the day. The next day I tried again and lacking the frustration of the previous day’s failures I actually did it. So I gave him a friend. The original was called Jake and the new guy Leroy…though when I introduced them on this site I ended up writing “Leon” and liked it better. Turns out that was a benefit to the logo having two names with four letters.

When I decided to change the new comic reviews to one a day to give me time to do other stuff than read comics (as much as taking a day to just read comics is a great way to spend the day) it became a list of article links I found during the week, but that meant some weeks I had to struggle to find enough articles. So I just did what is now the daily quickpost with articles or videos and gave my Sunday post over to Jake & Leon with updates for what’s coming in the next week and linking to this week’s article over at The Clutter Reports.

Every year I try to spend some time to go over my favorite comics of the previous year. Some were really good jokes or commentaries, while others just mark some artistic achievement. This year I missed a few Sundays due to time, illness, not having a good comic idea in time, or just something else occupying my attention. Still, I did more than enough to have some comics I’m really proud of.

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