We’ve seen Japanese idol groups use mecha, why not have an American idol fight crime?
Idolized #0
Aspen Comics (June, 2012; as posted to comiXology)
“Every Little Thing She Does Is Tragic”
WRITER: David Schwartz
PENCILER: Micah Gunnell
no inker listed, so is the penciler just the artist?
COLORIST: David Curiel
LETTERER: Josh Reed
EDITOR: Vince Hernandez
The comiXology copy includes the cover to the right by the comic artist but with Peter Steigerwald on covers and the photo cover by Michael Schwartz, with Rachel Clark playing the protagonist.
It’s time to return to the McDonalds transforming Happy Meal toys nobody remembers, or rather their DC Comic minicomic pack-ins. For those of you new to the Commandrons, they were a quartet of toys created by Tomy. In the US McDonalds snagged these would-be Transformer rip-offs for their Happy Meals, though elsewhere they were released on store shelves without the minicomics and would also be added to the Canadian “Super Alternators” line. Here’s a more detailed history, which has two commercials they found online. For some reason they involve adults instead of kids. One is just a regular promo….
…and the other more silly. Listen very closely to the background effects, though.
Is it just me or did they use the classic Transformers sound effect for the Commandrons’ transformations!!!! The “communication beam” is another Sunbow sound effect but unless they were purposely trying to scuttle this non competition (or trying to prove to me that Floro Dery was right to ignore the actual toy designs as much as he did) I don’t think they were involved. Also, the “forces of darkness” according to the minicomics is some jerk businessman (back when that could be two separate things in fiction–occasionally) upset that the four rescue worker robots were joining four kids to save people for free rather than make him money. Well it looks like he’s going to try to make his own. Let’s see how that works out for him.
If you want to play this story out, kids, eat more hamburgers. Also, find a time portal to 1985.
Commandrons #3
McDonalds/DC Comics (1985)
“The Copy-bots”
No credits given because the creators didn’t want to be seen working on a kids promo comic. Too good for it, I guess, but that’s why I do Free Comic Inside, to show that these can be good stories as well, even if it is a cheap pack-in to a toy. Respect your work if not the product. Then again not respecting the product leads to modern “adaptations”, doesn’t it?
Henry Cavill has announced he will not return for season 4 of the Netflix “adaptation” of The Witcher. This article seems to speculate that Cavill left (to be replaced by Liam Helmsworth) because the book strayed too far from the source material, with one of the writers who left stating that the writers room was outright hostile to the source material, openly being uninterested or full on hating the books. I don’t follow the franchise but it’s not surprising given Netflix’s history of terrible live-action adaptations of anime. If the writer of that article is right, I wish he showed the same pushback towards Zac Snyder’s “Superman”, a character Cavill also claims to love.
Sorry, but this topic is going to come up on this site until DC and Warner Brothers stop screwing up this character. Superman is my favorite superhero and one of the standards for how a superhero should be done, so when they get him wrong I worry about the future of the entire superhero genre. I don’t need this dark and gritty Superman. It’s not what draws me to this character and has drawn me to him since I was a little kid. And yet we get emo Superman, evil Superman, replacement Superman, but not the real thing…and in many cases they were calling the character Superman.
In my continuing quest to make sure the proper Superman isn’t forgotten in a sea of namesakes and analogs I came across a video by The Alternate Look on YouTube going over the problems of creating a Superman story in the 21st century. It’s longer and I have thoughts attached to it, so this is a feature article tonight instead of just a quickpost.
BW Media Spotlight 