January 23, 2023

Chapter By Chapter> TekWar chapters 26 & 27

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 chapter our heroes made it to Warbride’s compound. Whether they’ll actually meet Warbride herself with all that security has yet to be seen.

At this point I’m giving up trying to come up with pre-review rambling, so sorry if this looks bad on the homepage for someone just dropping in, but we’re going to get right to the review.

Ah, this should boost some time. While reading chapter 26 events seem to flow at least into chapter 27. That’s what happens when you write an intro before reading the chapter. So it looks like I’m reviewing two chapters because I want to see where this goes.

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Posted by on January 23, 2023 in TekWar and tagged , , , , , , , .

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January 23, 2023

“Yesterday’s” Comic> Runners: Bad Goods #3

They’re chasing them right out of space.

Runners: Bad Goods #3

Serve Man Press (June, 2004)

WRITER/ARTIST/CREATOR: Sean Wang

Read the color version here. I’m still using the black and white original because that’s what I have in print form.

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Posted by on January 23, 2023 in Yesterday's Comics and tagged , .

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January 23, 2023

BW’s Daily Video> Fun With TV Censorship

Ironically for this topic, the video does contain swearing. It’s James Rolfe; you shouldn’t be surprised.

Check out more from Cinemassacre on YouTube

I actually use some of these as replacement swears. It’s more fun for me to use fake swearing like that, so it calms me a bit faster.

Posted by on January 23, 2023 in Movie Spotlight, Television Spotlight and tagged , , .

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January 22, 2023

Jake & Leon #549> Dragon Hoard

Apparently OGL stands for “Open Gaming License”. I don’t think they know what “open” means.

From what I hear, and note I’m not a tabletop RPG player but I follow quite a few on YouTube, someone from Microsoft was behind Wizard Of The Coast’s “open gaming license”, in which really it’s not open. If you do anything with their game mechanics they will claim it and take all the money you earned. And if they don’t like something you did (the false “racist” accusation comes to mind, where you can’t have evil races anymore because some orc’s feelings will be hurt) they will shut you down altogether. This has sent D&D fans away from the game and to other offerings. Pathfinder seems to be the one I hear the most. Apparently they were convinced Dungeons & Dragons players were so obsessed with their game that they would pay WOTC for the right to make content. That kind of backfired in their faces.

Over at The Clutter Reports this week I posted a video talking about the different terms used by Transformers fans in discussions, and for that site’s purposes sales and auctions, in case others wanted a boost selling figures they have. It works for non-Transformers action figures as well, except of course for the parts involving shape-changing robots.

Here at the Spotlight this week I’m hoping to finally make all my posts. It seems every week I miss one because Friday didn’t have a “Yesterday’s” Comic review. We’ll also be finishing the Kree/Skrull War in the same feature this week and continuing TekWar for Chapter By Chapter. I’m not sure what else will be next but hopefully you find something you like. Have a great week, everyone!

Posted by on January 22, 2023 in Jake & Leon and tagged , , , , .

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January 21, 2023

Saturday Night Showcase> Blue-Skying: Linkara’s Blue Beetle Retrospective

When I decided that my Saturday slot in “Yesterday’s” Comic would be the Fox Features Golden Age comics it was because I was listening to the Blue Beetle radio dramas and wanted to see the comics from that period. I ended up going with the earliest of their anthologies to feature superheroes and crimefighting, Wonder Comics, later renamed Wonderworld Comics even though Blue Beetle debuted in Mystery Men. I was going to go through Fox’s offerings the way I had DC and Marvel even though they didn’t have a shared universe…and I wasn’t touching the romance comics. Well, Wonderworld Comics has lost me because out of all the stories featured in the anthology only about three characters interested me.

So I’m going back to the original idea of going through Mystery Men unless that also gets boring and I’ll just jump to the solo titles for Blue Beetle, The Flame, and Green Mask, the only superheroes they seem to have with their own series. As I was going through my “Watch Later” list for Saturday Night Showcase offerings I came up another of Linkara’s collected retrospectives, like last week’s examination of the Marvel Comics Transformers run. “Blue-Skying” covers the early history of rookie patrolman Dan Garrett, his re-imagining into an archaeologist by Charlton Comics, and his two replacements, Ted Kord and Jaime Reiz, the latter appearing to be the only Blue Beetle to get a live-action counterpart and only the last two having animated appearances. Garrett just got the radio drama. I thought this would be a good one to use as a sort of preparation for me returning to the the reason I started with the Fox Features comics in the first place. So let’s listen in as Lewis Lovhaug, aka Linkara, looks into the history of a comic character Frederic Wertham once believed actually turned into a giant beetle to fight crime, because Seduction Of The Innocent will haunt me forever, and follow his replacements…one of whom turns into a giant beetle to fight crime.

Note that the original multi-part retrospective was created in 2016 and will not update any events after that.

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Posted by on January 21, 2023 in Saturday Night Showcase, Yesterday's Comics and tagged , , , , , .

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January 21, 2023

“Yesterday’s” Comic> Wonderworld Comics #8

Superman had the better War Of The Worlds crossover.

Wonderworld Comics #8

Fox Features Syndicate (December, 1939)

Hello, homepage. I have nothing to write here to really pad out the pre-jump part of the article. Anthologies are hard to review for and that was apparently all the Golden Age had. Considering doing a different comic next week just to give myself a breather. There’s a lot of stories to go through but it’s the review part that takes time. I think not questioning the book’s actual credits will help. You can check the Comic Book Plus page for the adjusted credits if you really want. I will still use their story titles though.

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Posted by on January 21, 2023 in Yesterday's Comics and tagged , , , , , , , , , .

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January 20, 2023

BW’s YouTube Comic Critic Recommendations For 2023

In yesterday’s post I mentioned comic book critics that I follow on YouTube and that I could recommend some that put the current comic debate into perspective as far as what people unhappy with the current trends are actually saying versus what you’re being told they’re saying. I thought that tonight I’d spotlight a few of those critics, letting you hear, for example since it was brought up, what some of these critics mean when they complain about a comic or other piece of media is “woke”, though not every sample I’ll be using will touch on that, or just the issues with the darker themes for formerly fun comics. Sadly none of them are as adamant about letting kids read mainstream DC and Marvel superhero stories as I am and some of them came from the 1990s, where some of these trends truly began before politics infected every aspect of our entertainment…usually coming off more as a distraction from how bad the show is combined with lazy marketing than anything else.

In compiling this list I snagged a sample from liberals, conservatives, the politically unaligned, the biased and unbiased view alike, and people I may or may not agree with on specific topics but do agree with in broad terms or at least find their presentation interesting enough. Frankly I’m a bit concerned to even do some of these. I’ve had people in the past that I’ve promoted like the Game Overthinker or JewWario either fall into madness or was secretly problematic the whole time…and given my stats I’m sure most of you know what I mean about the second name given that my article about it gets read at least three times a day for some reason. Some of the stronger critics on the right like Eric July are not on the list because right now he’s focused on his own comic company and I want to show that it’s more that white conservative Christians (he’s not white but he is the other two, specifically Libertarian) calling out the current trends in comics. It’s a wide variety so if you want to get the full flavor of the current debate check these reviewers out as well. Let’s start with the most neutral party on this list.

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Posted by on January 20, 2023 in Comic Spotlight, web series and tagged , , .

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