Have Disney’s Superkitties Been Naughty To An Indie Comic Creator?

Created by Paula Rosenthal, Superkitties follows four costumed felines in their battle against evil.

Created by Shane Davis, Starlight Cats follows four costumed felines in their battle against evil.

We’ve seen big companies complain about people swiping their properties while hypocritically using fan art, or ideas from smaller creators in their products. The biggest known disaster was Star Trek: DIscovery using the idea of giant tardigrades, an actual arthropod but very small, as part of a method of otherspacial travel…an idea that seemed to be taken from an indie video game developer. Despite the differences in methodology the concept alone is too close to be considered coincidental.

That brings us to Superkitties, a recent Disney Junior animated series about kittens who are secret superheroes in a human world. I recently did a review of the first few episode of the show, which is why I got concerned listening to my favorite wake-up podcast claiming the idea may have been taken from an indie creator. For the record, this doesn’t change any of the positive or negative comments I made about the show. It is a good superhero show for younger kids and has many positive messages in the episodes I’ve seen. (I’ve watched maybe one or two since the review.) Also for the record I have not read Starlight Cats and I’m going solely on the successful Indiegogo campaign from 2020 and the solicit for the complete comic on publisher 9 Lives Comics’ website. So did I pull a Bitsy-style “oopsie-kitty” and promote a theft? Let’s compare and see.

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“Yesterday’s” Comic> Captain America #1 (2005)

The fact that the Grand Comic Database calls this “2005 series” instead of a volume number, or that a title that lasted this long even has so many #1’s is part of the problem. That’s for some other time, though.

“I told them to wait until I got clear.”

Captain America #1

Marvel Comics (January, 2005; appearing in the comiXology digital trade “Winter Soldier Ultimate Collection”)

“Out Of Time” part 1

WRITER: Ed Brubaker

ARTIST: Steve Epting

COLORIST: Frank D’Armata

LETTERER: Randolph Gentile

ASSISTANT EDITORS: Nichole Wiley & Molly Lazer

EDITOR: Tom Brevoort

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BW’s Daily…Wait, Did I Predict This?

The winner takes on Bruce Campbell.

That was all the way back in 2012. I just found out this happened in 2015.

Did I predict this team-up, or did they actually listen to me…and why did I have to wait for Commercial Sins in 2022 to find out about it?

Chapter By Chapter> TekWar chapter 28

Chapter By Chapter 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.

In our last installment it took two chapters to get the story going since chapter 26’s cliffhanger didn’t seem like the right spot to end on while chapter 27’s actually worked as a cliffhanger. We’ve met Warbride and brought some questions to her status as good guy, her jealous boyfriend Vargas, and Jake got to get some punches on him even though he took a few to get them. The shocking revelation I won’t list on the homepage-appearing section because you should only be spoiled if you read along and we are nearing the end of the story.

We’ve eight chapters to go so there’s still some time to wrap things up. However, that will require a lot less time spent on how in the future our story is, one of the recurring problems of this story, and getting on with the investigation. On that end, let’s get on with the reading.

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“Yesterday’s” Comic> Runners: Bad Goods #4

In a sense this actually IS about a parking ticket.

Runners: Bad Goods #4

Serve Man Press (August, 2004)

WRITER/ARTIST: Sean Wang

PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: Peggy Twardowski

Read the color version at Runners Universe.

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BW’s Daily Article Link> Cowboy Bebop’s Creator Even Hates Netflix Bebop

If you think it’s just fans of Cowboy Bebop who hated what Netflix did to the anime classic, you should hear the creator’s opinion. Shinichirō Watanabe couldn’t even make it through the first scene without being disappointed in how little they understood his series and character. I’d link to the Forbes interview but you only get a small number of three reads (if you don’t get sick of the pop-ups like I did) so the site is pretty much useless. Bounding Into Comics has a summary for us though, as Watanabe also discusses working on The Animatrix, the animated shorts based on the Matrix movies, while the article also notes that Dragon Ball’s creator hated the live-action American “adaptation” of his work as well.

This is what happens when you put people with no respect for the source material in charge of the adaptation, and we all know animation and comics are beneath Hollywood, even when they come from Japan.

Jake & Leon #550> Weird Adaptation

They even kept the dog.

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!