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Let’s just get this over with. DC Entertainment, which not only covers the comics but the TV shows, movies, and HBO Max content, is kind of a mess at the moment. That’s to be expected really, given that all of Warner Brothers’ various subdivisions are in a mess as Warner Brothers Discovery tries to figure out what they’re doing with the new fusion. David Zaslav, as noted before, really doesn’t care about the comics. He’s a TV guy, part of the same Hollywood system that looks down on comics except when it can be exploited for the media he cares about.
So what’s happening with their “DC Studios” content? After ditching the low-returns The CW TV network and cancelling the race-swapped Batgirl not for the race swap but because the movie was apparently so bad they’d lose less money NOT releasing, Zaslav has been trying to save the DC brand when it comes to TV and movies. (Again, not the comics.) There have been some interesting and controversial changes, and before I drop into full Christmas mode here at the Spotlight, followed by a Christmas break, I wanted to look at some of those controversies and how positive or negative they really are going into 2023 and beyond.
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If I have any chance of getting this year’s Captain Yuletide done by December I’m going to have to lighten my load on articles this week. There are a few topics I want to talk about and a few more Christmas specials and music I’ll be adding to the playlists, so I’m going to make this pre-Christmas week a little shorter on posts. There are a couple of topics, at least one of which is time-sensitive and already a bit late thanks to general posting schedules anyway, that I want to get out so I’ll work on those, but no comic or book review this week.
I know this leaves a few cliffhangers. Jake Cardigan is caught in a trap and he can’t walk out, Tails and Rotor are on solo adventures while Knuckles looks for his new friends, and I’m almost done with the WildStorm Robotech comics, thus ending that franchise of currently owned comics for a while. (I’d like to get more in the future.) And the week after Christmas I take off altogether to reset before the new year. This has not been a very creative year thanks to illness, though thankfully no surgery like last year or 2016, technical issues, and just a sort of drained feeling as to how much is messed up right now in my life. In fact I didn’t get to talk about it during Art Soundoff because I couldn’t get myself to work on that thanks to health issues. It’s kind of annoying and getting my sleep cycle back on track has been another concern. Still, this has to be done if it can lead to a better comic, which is where all these posts are supposed to be leading up to, making me a better storyteller.
Everything should go back to normal on New Years Day, but we’ll see how well that prediction goes. Hope you all have a great week and a Merry Christmas (or whatever holiday you follow…still hope December 25th is a good day for you) and I’ll try to get the comic done before the ball drops in Times Square.
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While a certain vocal portion of the internet keeps trying to convince me that…a certain R-rated action movie is a Christmas film under the false belief that they can’t watch it at Christmas unless they get it declared such (if you don’t like heartwarming movies, fine…watch what you want but stop trying to convince me it isn’t just a movie set at Christmas, I don’t care how you have to stretch minor points to prove your case IT’S NOT WORKING!!!!!!) I have strong criteria as to what makes a Christmas movie versus a movie set at Christmas…which cancels so much of Hallmark Channel’s current library of “romance movies with the same two or three plots, just set at Christmas and involving vaguely Christmas things” TV movies. The Christmas Special playlist on my YouTube channel and embedded here every December was created for that purpose. There’s still a wide enough range…just not as much blood and dead bodies.
Miracle On 34th Street is most definitely a Christmas movie, and one that’s on my list of great Christmas movies. You all know it by now. A department store Santa Claus has to prove he’s the real deal in court. It’s a Christmas classic for a reason, and YouTube is an embeddable host who has it on their website legally and free with ads. However, as of this writing they don’t like other websites embedding it. I don’t know why; you’d think they still get the ad revenue. Lucky the embed below (which I’ll keep up in case they change their minds) has a built-in link to the movie so hopefully you can still watch it in your area. Yes, I’m going with the original 1947 movie instead of the 1997 movie I haven’t seen yet or the TV movie adaptations that frankly are not as good. Enjoy!
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So you can afford a car, a plane, and a boat, but not even a lousy train ticket?
Wonderworld Comics #6
Fox Features Publications (October, 1939; courtesy Comic Book Plus)
I think I’ve decided how to go through these comics. This is not the only anthology comic and there’s no continuity in the Golden Age. So I’m going to do the anthology comics first, since some of the stories in the solo titles, and the Flame from this comic does have a solo series (no love for Wonder Man), are just reprints from the anthology before having solo-original stories. So I’ll do all the anthologies, then go back for the solo offerings.
Also of note is that the scans at Comic Book Plus are missing a few stories, so I can only review the stories actually in this issue. This also includes the text stories I don’t usually review but the full story is missing for the tales absent while no pages appear to be missing from the ones that are here. I’m guessing the only copy they could find so many decades out was minus a few tales. So here’s the ones I can talk about. Link is in the opening above.
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If you don’t follow the daily comic reviews, Star Blazers: The Magazine Of Space Battleship Yamato was produced by Argo Press, a division of Voyager Entertainment. Voyager had been re-releasing the original Star Blazers dub of Space Battleship Yamato as well as the two Yamato movies The New Voyage and Be Forever Yamato. However, the comic didn’t sell well, first forcing them to drop the magazine section “Analyzer” to focus on the comic story, and then canceling partway through the adaptation of Be Forever Yamato.
Earlier this month, while I was setting up Christmas decorations I knocked over the little rack where I keep the comics I’m reviewing for that week and learned my copy of issue #10 has disappeared somewhere between getting out of the comic drawer earlier that week and that occasion. I don’t know what happened to it but I do have it somewhere and I needed to review it with the rest of the series now. So I went searching for a digital copy online. I figured I’d have to use a…legally questionable scan site to keep the reviews going but then I found Cosmo DNA, a Star Blazers fansite produced by Bruce Lewis and Tim Eldred, who worked on the comic portion of the magazine. I was happy to see they had a copy of #10 but I was in for a surprise.
Oh, I don’t like where this is going.
Lewis and Eldred were both fans of Star Blazers and each made a pitch to Comico to make a comic based on the series. Lewis wanted to make an original story and Eldred wanted to adapt the third season that had limited distribution in the US, the “Comet Wars” story arc in which Earth deals with a new threat in the form of the Comet Empire. Instead they worked on Robotech and Captain Harlock comics for Malibu’s “Eternity” imprint, which eventually allowed them to work on the Star Blazers comic magazine for Argo Press. Turn to a few weeks ago and I found their website, Cosmo DNA, and a section that featured PDF reprints of their entire run…and the unpublished 12th issue. Sadly, only a couple of pages were actually drawn, with no coloring. The rest of the file contains the script and some rough sketches of certain scenes and pages. Still, I got away with reviewing the info on the unpublished Transformers: Energon finale that had less than that available to me, so let’s see how this adaptation would have ended.
Also, I used the image they had there of the undressed cover art, small as the image file was, and images of other covers, to make a mock-up of issue #12’s cover, as seen on the left. Going through the book, all they need is a letterer and colorist and conceivably they could actually make the comic. Had I the time I might try to do just that for the practice, though it probably wouldn’t have been as good as what Eldred or the other colorists and letterers would have done, but I have my own project that I’m way behind on.
So here’s the page with all the scans. Scroll down and find the PDF file for #12 and check out the full history of Eldred and Lewis’s run while also seeing the issues you missed. Then you can search for my reviews here (I’ll help for this story arc:, then check out my review of the script. I’ll help for the reviews I’ve already done for this story arc, including the comic prelude story:
- ISSUE #6: prelude part 1
- ISSUE #7: prelude part 2
- ISSUE #8: prelude finale
- ISSUE #9: adaptation part 1
- ISSUE #10: adaptation part 2
- ISSUE #11: adaptation part 3, where we left off this afternoon
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“Okay, who broke the asteroid?”
Star Blazers: The Magazine Of Space Battleship Yamato #11
FINAL ISSUE
Argo Press (May, 1997)
“Be Forever Yamato” part 3: “Trial By Fire”
WRITER/LAYOUTS: Bruce Lewis
ARTIST: Tim Eldred
COLORIST/LETTERER: John Ott
BW Media Spotlight 