I’m in favor of never speaking about this show again. I’m also in favor of reviewing bad media, and I hear it’s not even a good show outside of the animation itself, as a warning to future storytellers. Lucky for me I don’t have HBO Max so there’s no chance of me watching it. Plus since it’s not really a Scooby-Doo series, just cosplayers in a terrible murder mystery about horrible people, I don’t have to review the intro, either.
For The Clutter Reports this week I just repurposed the discussion on comiXology’s future from earlier this week. I did alter a few things for that audience and had time to catch a few typos.
This week we have the next Chapter By Chapter review of TekWar. I’m not really sure what else is coming but hopefully it’s worth checking out. Have a good week everyone!
I can never find the full intro, so this not completely accurate. Still it’s kind of important for our open.
The New Adventures Of Mighty Mouse & Heckle & Jeckle was Filmation’s attempt at bringing back the two Terrytoons theatrical shorts. it’s also not to be confused with Ralph Bakshi’s Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, which also aired on CBS but in 1987. Heckle & Jeckle, the out of work magpies, were reimagined as bumbling detectives. A third segment featured Filmation original story Quackula, the tale of a vampire duck–long before Danger Mouse met Duckula–who for some reason spent every night trying to scare the bear who lives in the house Quackula’s egg coffin was kept in. Don’t worry, it wasn’t very memorable. The show aired on CBS in 1979.
Mighty Mouse was the star attraction here. Originally intended to be called Supermouse, I guess they heard about the Captain Marvel debacle and decided to change it to Mighty Mouse. There is one cartoon that left that has relics of that concept, with Mighty Mouse still wearing blue and signing his autograph as “Supermouse” despite being called Mighty Mouse. Terrytoons would revamp the concept a few times, the version Filmation was inspired by for their Mighty Mouse shorts were based on The Perils Of Pauline. It would feature future co-star Pearl Pureheart, a girl mouse and MM’s love interest, being threated by Oil Can Harry, your typical serial villain. Filmation would make a series of shorts with these three, giving Harry a mindless sidekick named Swifty, in unrelated stories where they almost seemed to be acting since the shorts took place sometimes in alternate time periods.
Filmation was also inspired by the serial format itself, as seen with their Flash Gordon series. The only recurring storyline was the serialized Mighty Mouse And The Great Space Chase. The story found space queen Pearl as the head of a galactic federation being menaced by Ming-type villain Harry The Heartless and Swifty. Each segment would end on a cliffhanger and if memory serves there would be two installments per episode. Filmation would collect these segments for a direct-to-video movie, something that has been done with other classic serials like Zombies Of The Stratosphere. Someone uploaded the VHS tape, which explains the static at one point, to YouTube so I get to introduce you to a big part of my childhood. Enjoy. I know I will.
Artist’s representation of Twitter decades before its creation.
Mystery Men Comics #2
Fox Features Publications (September, 1939)
Wonderworld Comics just wasn’t holding my interest. Outside of The Flame and a couple of other comics most of them I could do without or even ignored come review time (like Don Quixote’s modern day adventures). Hopefully Mystery Men will have better luck. I started reading it because it’s where Blue Beetle began and that was the character I wanted to follow. We’ll see if I stick with this or jump to his solo series.
I have made my dislike of “evil Superman” stories clear: I am not a fan. It’s usually done by somebody who doesn’t get the character, is too cynical to believe someone with Superman’s powers wouldn’t kill and turn evil despite how many heroes are practically at Superman’s level in the DC and other universes with nobody complaining about how Captain Shazam isn’t evil, or characters like Marvel’s Guardian despite his changing sides depending who is on the Shi’Ar throne at any given moment. Nope, it’s just Superman they can’t believe, the “boy scout” who is kind, compassionate, and loves humanity.
Sucker, you better HOPE anyone with that level of power is more like Superman than Homelander. That’s how the fantasy works!
That’s not to say that you can’t tell a story that looks at someone with Superman’s powers and make an interesting story about someone without Clark’s morality, but you need that morality and Clark Kent/Superman himself as the template to base your hero on, especially if you ARE going with the moral superhero route. As proof I bring you the following video by Overly Sarcastic Productions, a channel I don’t usually follow but have seen videos for. I was pointed to this by a recent article by Caroline Furlong, so thanks for pointing out a new addition to my Defending Superman playlist over on my YouTube channel. Since I’m trying to get my schedule under control this admittedly long video (with some rather uneven swear censoring) is just what I needed.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe, or rather the people working on it, have no set rules about time travel and the multiverse, another bit of proof that they no longer care about putting out a shared universe or even a competent product. With the upcoming release of a third Ant-Man movie, this one delving further into the multiverse, John F. Trent at Bounding Into Comics goes over all the contradictory statements about time travel and the nature of the multiverse between the movies and shows.
Here’s another compared to the comics: in a trailer or clip or wherever I saw it for Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, someone refers to the main MCU as 616, a joke based on DC calling their primary universe Earth-1 when they have a multiverse. That’s an intended nod to the comics…except that’s the comic universe. The whole point of Marvel’s numbering system is that each continuity, each show and comic and video game and movie (and probably other media formats as well) are in their own universe and thus have their own designation in the multiverse. According to the Marvel Database, the MCU is listed as Earth-199999 according to volume 5 of Official Handbook Of The Marvel Universe A to Z. So in other words, the people behind the MCU right now have absolutely no idea what they’re doing when it comes to time travel and the multiverse, and now they’re doing even more stories with that theme and introducing their version of Kang. I see this ending poorly.
I have no idea what’s going on with ComiXology these days. Just recently I posted a BW Ramble v-log about how they finally fixed the Guided View feature they dropped when Amazon bought the digital comics service and decided to integrate it into Kindle, and now they’re cutting a huge chunk of their workforce. Almost 75% according to Bounding Into Comics. Yes, with people being allowed into that area of space we call “outside”, which I vaguely remember visiting once or twice, demand for at-home media has gone down. Streaming services are not making as much money as they were during the lockdowns and that’s only partly blamed on Netflix doing terrible anime live-action remakes and movies of dirty dancing pre-teens, Amazon working over Tolkien fans, and basically everything Disney is doing to their animated properties, comics, and Star Wars. Part of it can also be blamed on our current economic issues and I won’t go into a political rant here because I’ve discussed that stuff too much lately and yet will probably have to again.
Even people currently working at ComiXology is complaining about the layoffs, not to mention high ranking types who are already hitting the job sites for work. That’s certainly bad news in this climate and I wish them all the best of luck, but BW Media Spotlight isn’t a business site, it’s a storytelling site. Digital comics, for some, have replaced physical comics because they take up less floor space and are a bit cheaper since there isn’t printing costs to deal with…I mean, in theory they’re cheaper. However, with such a huge drop in people running the site this is a format of comics that may take a hit of its own, and frankly just pushes my belief that physical comics are still superior in the end.
BW Media Spotlight 
How To Properly Satirize Superman
I have made my dislike of “evil Superman” stories clear: I am not a fan. It’s usually done by somebody who doesn’t get the character, is too cynical to believe someone with Superman’s powers wouldn’t kill and turn evil despite how many heroes are practically at Superman’s level in the DC and other universes with nobody complaining about how Captain Shazam isn’t evil, or characters like Marvel’s Guardian despite his changing sides depending who is on the Shi’Ar throne at any given moment. Nope, it’s just Superman they can’t believe, the “boy scout” who is kind, compassionate, and loves humanity.
Sucker, you better HOPE anyone with that level of power is more like Superman than Homelander. That’s how the fantasy works!
That’s not to say that you can’t tell a story that looks at someone with Superman’s powers and make an interesting story about someone without Clark’s morality, but you need that morality and Clark Kent/Superman himself as the template to base your hero on, especially if you ARE going with the moral superhero route. As proof I bring you the following video by Overly Sarcastic Productions, a channel I don’t usually follow but have seen videos for. I was pointed to this by a recent article by Caroline Furlong, so thanks for pointing out a new addition to my Defending Superman playlist over on my YouTube channel. Since I’m trying to get my schedule under control this admittedly long video (with some rather uneven swear censoring) is just what I needed.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on January 27, 2023 in DC Spotlight and tagged commentary, Superman.
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