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Nice poster, but where’s the comic cover?
Knuckles The Echidna #5
Archie Comics Publications (September, 1997)
“Lost Paradise” part 2
WRITER: Ken Penders
PENCILER: Manny Galan
INKER: Andrew Pepoy
COLORIST: Barry Grossman
LETTERER: Vickie Williams
EDITOR: J. Freddy Gabrie
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We all know, except for those who don’t want to admit it, that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has fallen from grace. Stories that attack fans, creators that seem to hate continuity and proper adaptation, and at least one Marvel Studios producer openly saying he only wants writers who know nothing about the comics, aka the source material without which they wouldn’t have a job. Disney has been mistreating the SFX people to the point that they’re planning to unionize against Disney, and MatPat recently went over a host of other mistakes Marvel Studios are making with the movies and Disney+ series. What started out as something comic fans and casual moviegoers alike could enjoy has been ruined by activists and the “everything for meeeeeeeeeeeee” crowd.
So with curiosity I looked into an article by Fansided’s “Bam! Smack! Pow!” section about “9 Things No One Want To Admit About The Marvel Cinematic Universe“, though I thought article titles were supposed to be all capitalized. Apparently not at Fansided, and it’s one of the articles that makes you go through multiple pages so they can push multiple ads, except they don’t bury you in useless information to get you to the part you actual came for until you give up in disgust and learn nothing except “don’t read this site anymore”. It’s still an annoying practice. I’ve done this once or twice because the article is so long, with a set of links to the part you’d actually want to read but sites like those or articles like this is why I stopped. I’ll try to summarize with the right amount of context but you can check the full article for the entire post. It’s nine things over five pages so it won’t be as bad as some other sites. Let’s see what bothers writer Cody Schultz versus what bothers me about the current state of the MCU.
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The ComiXology version I have only features the debut of Namorita. The stories featuring Human Torch (the android version), Miss America, the Young Allies, and Captain America are sadly not here. It’s a Golden Age comic so you shouldn’t be surprised there’s more than one story here. At least I had a reading break.
You invited a robot whose power is being on fire to your pool party?
Marvel Mystery Comics #82
Marvel Comics (May, 1947)
Apparently the story was reprinted in two separate Agents Of Atlas books and Giant Size Marvel Adventures: The Avengers #1.
“The Coming Of Namorita”
By Ken Bald and George Klein
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If Rian Johnson wasn’t so obsessed with “subversion” there actually is a way to get the Luke they wanted for this movie (though we still wouldn’t get a proper redemption) without ruining Luke’s character, and Anakin gives us this. In the prequels Anakin is getting visions from the Force warning of Padme’s death and throughout Revenge Of The Sith this is his motivation. In the end it’s Anakin, aka Darth Vader, who kills her because the Force was warning him that the path he was on would take away everything that mattered to him and turn him from Jedi to Sith. Because he couldn’t/wouldn’t go to another Jedi for help due to the silly Jedi code against marriage (and concerns because she was a Senator) he was only getting answers from Palpatine, nobody suspecting he was Sith, not even the other Jedi. That’s how well he hid his actions.
So what if Luke’s response to the visions of Ben Solo leaning towards the Dark Side wasn’t to break out the glowing slicey stick but that he was working harder to lead Ben away from the Dark Side but that he inadvertently was pushing him the wrong way. Maybe the other Padawans and younglings were jealous of his getting extra help, or Ben was embarrassed at Uncle Luke’s seeming favoritism. Remember, Luke’s training was only as complete as it could be because he started late and left early to save his friends, and when he was able to return to Dagobah, Yoda was dying after 900 years. So he could make the same mistake the Council did and not recognize Snoak as manipulating Ben towards the Dark Side as we saw him do in The Last Jedi by trying to set up events to convert Rey as well (and Rey was rather easy to temp, as we saw at one point). This could have had Luke see the same pattern with him that happened with Yoda and even Ben, who realized something was wrong earlier but not early enough to save the youngling students. That would have been a more in-character reason for Luke to give up on the idea of Jedi, because in the end the same pattern would repeat in his eyes at the time.
However, that’s now what Mr. Subversion went with and thus we got The Last Jedi.
BW Media Spotlight 
Corporate Vs Creativity
“The Coleconauts are after us!”
Sit down, kids, and let grandpa Tronix tell you a story. Sorry if this one gets rambly but I’m feeling in a very stream of consciousness mood today, with only minor edits.
Back in my day we had a gaming machine called the Atari 2600. Yes, that thing that’s making a comeback despite using pixels the size of snack cakes. Back in my day we sent one set of boxes against another set of boxes and we liked it that way. None of them newfangled paleegon things or voice acted cut scenes. You got maybe 8 bits, one joystick and a big red button, and you were thankful to get it! Wait…where was I? I got lost in the bit.
Atari was the king of video game consoles. Nobody was making movies tied to the Colecovision. Sure it was just the one small movie about a kid who imagined his almost absentee father was the hero of his favorite video game as he dealt with spies after his dad’s company but it’s still more than the Adam ever put out. Atari was huge. They had their own comic. They had a chance to be something.
So why is Atari now just a nostalgia brand? You can trace that back to the purchase by Warner Brothers. Now I don’t know what was going on businesswise and maybe they needed WB bucks to afford to stay afloat, but they also screwed up things on the creative side. Granted, video games were still new back then but forcing the creators to follow a more corporate structure backfired. Atari had always tried to maintain a creative atmosphere, and while you can debate the specifics of how they did that, the new structure drained them of their creativity. Activision was founded because creators didn’t like that the new Atari bosses wouldn’t let them be acknowledged for their games out of fear of one of the other consoles trying to snatch them up. Creating the third party led to trash game cash grabs but Activision was putting out stuff gamers really liked. Now Activision is falling under the sway of the corporate and fans are not happy with their content, and even less with their lawsuits and treatment of “controversial” gamers. Putting Nicki Minaj into Call Of Duty probably didn’t help.
It’s not just video games. Now we see TV, movies, and comics also being hit with this wave of corporations buying studios and publishers and making them a shallow image of their former selves, Disney being the worst of it and now has practically abandoned the reasons Walt Disney started his own company. What the heck happened? The corporate mindset, which really doesn’t work with the creative mindset.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 6, 2023 in Comic Spotlight, Internet Spotlight, Movie Spotlight, Music Spotlight, Television Spotlight, Video Game Spotlight and tagged commentary, corporate, Creativity.
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