Pardon the filler for tonight but this has not been a great morning for me. Not terrible, but usually Friday the 13th is actually a pretty good day for me, at least when compared to the rest of the year. Maybe it’s because I was born on a Friday the 13th, which would explain a lot of my life if I were superstitious, and today is the birthday of my late mother and her still with us twin brother. I don’t know, but for some reason today is terrible. I’m not superstitious but enough people are that individually the number 13 is considered unlucky and people only like Friday because it’s the end of the work week for most people. Put them together and the fear begins.
From the YouTube channel History Calling we have a look at all the potential origins of this terrible day that don’t involve insane mothers and undead sons in hockey masks. Are you scared of this day?
Imagine if that had been the logo. It doesn’t really invoke what we’ve come to see Star Trek as tonally but imagine this was your first exposure to the show because it hadn’t aired yet.
I haven’t done a video vs video “debate” since that video set on secret identities years ago, so I thought it would be fun to do another one.
When Miles Morales was introduced in the Ultimate Universe nobody really blinked an eye. The Ultimate universe had already been ruined by writers who weren’t Brian Michael Bendis (I’m only partly joking when I call that ironic) after the death of that universe’s Peter Parker. Ultimate Spider-Man was an attempt to do a modern take on Spider-Man’s early years and whatever adaptation errors came from it (Peter in the main universe didn’t meet, or really have, any friends until his college years) it was still successful…and the writers that followed in other Ultimate titles just saw an excuse to make crap versions of Marvel’s most famous heroes.
When that continuity and imprint was destroyed, elements came into the main Marvel universe. One of them was Miles Morales, supposedly because he was so popular. There’s some question about that, and we have two opposing opinions. Unlike the secret identity debate however these videos were made completely apart from each other, but why not pit a defender against a detractor and see what happens? Arguing in favor of Miles’ inclusion is Drake “ComicDrake” McWhorter and arguing against is Eric “YoungRippa59” July. Yes, it’s the black man arguing against “black Spider-Man” but both make points I agree and disagree with.
Here’s the NerdSync video post (with my thoughts) to see where the Kindle reader was with comics when they first took over. Compared to what they have now, it’s an improvement.
If you’re surprised I’m discussing a preschool superhero show about crimefighting kittens…hi, welcome to my site.
While “grown-up” superhero fare seems to either favor the villains or uses superhero characters in a comedy that really didn’t need to be about superheroes, the kids shows seem to be more interested in having heroic heroes versus bad villains. Batwheels, a show about Batman’s cars coming to life to fight crime, has a more fun take on Batman than anything being put out for adults outside of that Webtoon that’s just about the Batman family in a slice-of-life between cases kind of story. I live in a world where the Batmobile is more interesting that Batman. What is even life anymore? You can’t tell a Batman story without a gory body count in the hundreds anymore?
Disney Junior, despite the current directions of the MCU and the main Marvel comics, now has three superhero shows. I couldn’t get into PJ Masks but there so much worldbuilding in this show for elementary school kids that I’m surprised MatPat hasn’t done at least three videos on it by now. Spidey And His Amazing Friends, for all its adaptation errors, seems to be doing a better job with Peter and pals than the mainline comics that kicked kids to the curb a long time ago. Other attempts, like the odd-choice filled The Rocketeer that decided to be a kids show about the descendant of a superhero their target audience never heard of and the original audience wanted to see something besides an underrated movie, haven’t done as well, but now we have SuperKitties.
Created by Paula Rosenthal, SuperKitties takes place in Kittydale, as four kittens follow the PJ Masks idea of secret crimefighters, and the Puppy Dog Pals idea of animals saving the day, just replace the pug dogs with kittens. The show just started on Disney Junior, and their YouTube channel has three stories to tease the new show, two from episode one (because that’s how kids shows and comics run now…not doing a full-length tale) and one from episode two, possibly more by the time you read this but I’m going to show the two from episode 1. After all, I’ll be surprised if you indulge me that long. So I can show what I’m talking about for as long as they keep these. I’m really hoping they fixed that one part of the intro I didn’t like, but let’s see how this stacks up as a superhero show. I’m already expecting to say this isn’t for me, but that doesn’t affect the quality of the show itself.
