BW’s Daily Article Link> Fake Religion Isn’t Easy

I was once part of a group fan project creating a virtual fourth season of the original Transformers cartoon that continued on from “The Rebirth”. My story would have explored a Nebulan religion I made up with the theme of spiritual faith’s positive contributions to society. Part of the project was to keep it something you’d see in this 80s cartoon made for kids to sell robots. It’s not like the cartoon didn’t explore religion in the past, like Astrotrain being a false god or “Face Of Ninjika”. It didn’t push any one religion, and mine did not completely reflect my Christian beliefs but it was an interesting plot, or so I thought. Sadly the project fell through and I never finished anything more than the basic framework of the plot.

So I know that creating a fake religion, even in a project for kids you don’t want to push towards the occult or something, is not an easy task. However, if you’re going to have one you’d best know how to make it work in your world since it’s part of your world’s culture. Author Caroline Furlong goes over one book seriesThe Spirit Animals and how it created the concept of a religion but didn’t really follow through with making it work beyond existing.

Chapter By Chapter> Batman: Knightfall chapter 13

Chapter By Chapter (usually) features me reading one chapter of the selected book at a time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as read-along book club.

That’s right, only ONE chapter this week. Last time we read three because one was really short and the other two weren’t what qualifies to me as a full chapter. We did get to see a couple of the villains captured and a bit more about Batman lore for those who don’t know the comics, but since I do it wasn’t very exciting for me. I guess it’s just a hazard of an adaptation like this but at least I admit my biases in reviews even if I find praises for things I don’t like and the mistakes of those I do. Reviews are subjective in the end, even if we agree on what makes a story technically good.

This time it’s all one chapter, 11 pages and a paragraph. To me that’s a good length for a chapter. Now we just have to see if we get enough story out of it to move the plot along and how well it stands on its own.

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“Yesterday’s” Comic> Tandy Computer Whiz Kids: Safeguarding The Environment

Want to bet that’s the most computer usage we’ll see this issue?

Tandy Computer Whiz Kids “vol 2 #2”

Radio Shack/Archie Comics Publications (July, 1991)

“Safeguarding The Environment” & “Archie And The History Of Electronics”

WRITER: Mike Pellowski

PENCILER: Howard Bender

INKER: Jon D’Agostino

COLORIST/PRODUCTION: Barry Grossman

LETTERER: Bill Yoshida

EDITOR: Victor Gorelick

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BW’s Daily Video> Superman And Batman Animated Team-Ups

Not including Superfriends because Warner Brothers doesn’t seem to realize they own all the animated DC properties not in public domain (the Fleischer shorts for example).

One last Superman tribute, even though we’re a day past April. Meanwhile, back to the Batman novel review. Of course Superman will continue to pop up on this site until people stop writing him wrong.

I’m pretty sure the site will end before that happens.

BW Programming Note> Let This Be The Last Crazy Week

Yes, no Jake & Leon this week. Thanks to stuff happening here at BW HQ very little got done this week and I’m not happy about it. The only thing I was able to do with The Clutter Reports this week is the same announcement I’ll be making here in a moment, and it only affects followers from Twitter. Hopefully (I’m getting tired of using that word) there will be no more disruptions and I can get back to pulling myself together.

So, if you haven’t heard Twitter and Automatic, the parent company of WordPress–whose hosting service I use for BW Media Spotlight and The Clutter Reports, aren’t getting along at the moment. I haven’t heard Twitter’s side of things but WordPress claims that Twitter wants too much money for technojargon that allows WordPress to auto-update to Twitter. Every time I make a new post it updates. Well, that’s not going to happen anymore unless they can come to an agreement. That means I’ll have to manually post updates to the BW Twitter Feed. It will still work for other services, so it still sends an update report to The Tronix Tumblr, which will at least take care of my personal Twitter feed, but for the official BW feed I’ll have to post manually. That means you won’t see a new post update when it actually posts but when I get a chance to post to Twitter that a new article has gone live. The schedule is:

  • 6 AM ET: Daily Quickpost (Daily Video or Daily Article Link usually) Monday through Friday
  • 12 PM ET: “Yesterday’s” Comic Monday through Saturday (old comic reviews: Tandy Computer Whiz Kids ends next week and the Ninja Turtles will take over Monday, with whatever’s next in line of Marvel comics from my comiXology library on Tuesdays, Sonic The Hedgehog on Wednesdays, random comiXology library review on Thursdays, random physical comic library I have yet to review on Friday–spinoff of the Tron 2.0 game starts this week, and Blue Beetle from Comic Book Plus on Saturday) with the Clutter Reports on Sunday
  • 6 PM ET: Feature articles. I’m still doing the Chapter By Chapter review of Batman: Knightfall on Mondays, and Saturday Night Showcase on Saturdays with Jake & Leon and the update on Sundays. The rest of the week depends on what their is to talk about.

That’s my usual schedule. You can keep updated on when the new article drops immediately by subscribing through the email or RSS feed subscriptions in the sidebar. Or if you use WordPress reader you can follow that way. Otherwise I’ll update Twitter when I get on. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it’s kind of out of my hands until they start playing nice with each other again. Have a great week, everyone!

Saturday Night Showcase> A Few Superman Fan Films

How do we end Superman half-month? Well, I haven’t really done fan films lately, and the only indie production I’ve done in awhile is the Lackadaisy pilot. So tonight I’m going to watch a few Superman fanfilms and critique them.

So I typed “Superman fan film” into YouTube and it showed me a bunch of different offerings. I’m going to take the first five completed films and see if they actually capture the true spirit of Superman and his friends (if they show up). Maybe we’ll even finally have a redheaded live-action Jimmy Olsen…since apparently animation has decided to stop doing it anymore if My Adventures With Superman is any indication. If Hollywood and even DC no longer seem to care about their characters maybe the fans picked up the slack. Or not. It depends on whether or not the focus is on the “super” or the “man”. I want to come for the former and stay for the latter, since Superman’s powers now are a basic power set in superherodom. Let’s see what we got.

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“Yesterday’s” Comic> The Blue Beetle #10

This pineapple on pizza debate is getting out of hand. Meanwhile anchovies are in the corner laughing.

The Blue Beetle #10

Fox Publications, Inc (December, 1941)

I do like that all the Blue Beetle stuff seems to now frontload the comic, with the anthology stuff behind. I still look forward to when Blue Beetle just has his own comic, because that’s just how things are where I’m from (the Bronze Age of comics). Such is the evolution of the comic book as a medium. These did start out as being reprints of newspaper strips after all.

Read along with this issue at Comic Book Plus

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