“I’ll hide space in my hair. They’ll never find it.”
Star Power #16
(November, 2016)
“Star Power & The Last Jump Gate” part 1
WRITER: Michael Terracciano
ARTIST: Garth Graham
Catch more from Gaijin Goombah on YouTube
Sorry, the plushies are sold out by the time you read this.
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You know, I’m used to forgetting my anniversary…but how the heck did I missing it entirely for the last three years? Yes, 2021, the first year I forgot, had Art Soundoff and me trying to recover from hernia surgery but there’s no excuse for every year since. When Google Calendar reminded me that this year was another anniversary I thought I’d be doing the best of year 14 and moving on.
Then I go hunting for last year’s anniversary post and notice there isn’t one. While I remembered the Jake & Leon anniversaries I missed looking over the best articles of the past few years. That’s three years worth! So for the next few Thursdays I’ll be playing catch-up. At least I know what I’ll be doing on Thursdays the rest of November.
Okay, let’s focus. November 16, 2008. I had been recovering from Crohn’s first two acts of putting me in the hospital. (Can we stop doing that now?) While recovering I came upon comic blogs like Comic Coverage, Slay Monstrobot Of The Deep, Comics Oughta Be Fun, and Siskoid’s Blog Of Geekery. Siskoid is currently the only blog updating regularly. Bully The Little Stuffed Bull posts now and then last I saw, Mark Engblom ended Comic Coverage, and sadly Brian Snell passed away–although he still gets views because Slay Monstrobot still shows up in my referrals list for visitors coming to BW.
I made my first post talking about good things about the Spawn cartoon from HBO. I hate Spawn in both comics and cartoon. It’s too violent for my tastes and really doesn’t know anything about the Bible or the war between God and Satan. However, it’s well drawn, well animated, told the intended stories well enough from what little I watched, and you can rarely go wrong with Keith David voicing your protagonist. It was to show that something can be good but not to your taste and that’s okay…a lesson that seems to be disappearing in 2023 as “creators” turn things they don’t like into things they do and insist they’re making it better because it’s what they like and only their tastes matter. I call them the “everything for meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” crowd.
I hope you like that bit of history…because for the sake of archives I’m going to be telling it every Thursday until we get caught up. From November 16, 2020 to November 15, 2021 here are the article that strike me as some of my best work. Since 2021 was the aforementioned hernia surgery I’m expecting a lot of missing days.
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Yes, this is the art we’re getting.
Transformers Vs. G.I. Joe #0 (Free Comic Book Day)
IDW Publishing (May, 2014)
“Operation: Doomsday Seed”
WRITERS: Tom Scioli & John Barber
ARTIST/LETTERER: Tom Scioli
COVER CO-COLORIST: Josh Burcham
PRODUCTION: Chris Mowry
EDITOR: Carlos Guzman
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Usually Lofi Girl on YouTube is a trio of streams with different kinds of lofi music. Lofi Girl herself carries two streams, the regular one and one designed for sleeping. Meanwhile a boy (Lofi Boy) is the opposite of the main stream visually (different direction, cutest doggy versus a cat, typing on a computer instead of writing in a journal) and focuses on Synthwave. (It’s actually the boy Lofi Girl bumps into while running up the stairs.) That’s one’s my favorite for the music style and the doggy but I do use the other two as well, if I’m not using Nightride FM’s space and chill synthwave streams. So earlier this week it was interesting when both hosts and their pets suddenly vanished (no animation of them leaving like they did when Lofi Boy was introduced), even from the channel logo, and the sleep stream was replaced with a video of a snowflake slowly forming, set to one song instead of showcasing a bunch of Lofi/synthwave artists. It wasn’t a story but it was leading up this story.
Music : WYS – Snowman
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Superman doesn’t kill. Any Superman fan knows this. It’s why Zac “I don’t know what a fantasy world is” Snyder having Superman kill Zod is so looked down upon.
Defenders of Man Of Steel will try to point to various times when Superman did kill his enemies, but of course the specifics will be lost in the discussion. “See, he killed Zod here and you didn’t complain.” The Mephisto is in the details and that’s where the defenders mess up.
Since I need to reset my schedule and choose something easy to make tonight’s post I’m grabbing a video from Variant Comics chronicling every time Superman has taken a villain’s life in the comics. Can I defend them all? Will I call many of them bad writing choices that should never be used as an example because bad writing does not defend bad writing? Are there some legitimate reasons and could the problem be in how the act was treated? Arris Quinones has the list, I have the comments. Let’s make this happen!
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“Weren’t we supposed to do this a few comics ago?” “Blame the reviewer.”
Sonic Vs. Knuckles: Battle Royal
Archie Comics (1997)
EDITOR: J. Freddy Gabrie
“Battle Royal”
WRITERS: Kent Taylor & Ken Penders
PENCILER: Sam Maxwell
INKER: Jim Amash
COLORIST: Karl Bollers
LETTERER: Jeff Powell
“The Map”
WRITER: Tom Rolston
PENCILER: Dave Manak
INKER: Rich Koslowski
COLORIST: Barry Grossman
LETTERER: Vickie Williams
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