More action than you’ll see inside.
Space Ghost #2
DC Comics (February, 2005)
“Purge”
WRITER: Joe Kelly
ARTIST: Ariel Olivetti
LETTERER: Richard Starkings
EDITOR: Joey Cavalieri
I don’t think this is going to get me on Project Rooftop. At least I hope not.
Soooooooooo…..you know how the CW has been targeting young people with things like the Arrowverse, the re-imagined Archie characters into a teen drama, whatever it was they did to The Tomorrow People (bonus link to old BW article), and all their other attempts to target the advertiser beloved 18-49 age group? You know, the ones who still buy stuff they don’t need or don’t have anything yet when moving into their first home. Wellllllll….turns out that wasn’t working. Yeah, it seems they actually are hitting people in the high 50s. Heck, Fox is skewing younger and they’re only a year earlier.
Why is this? Well, the Variety article I just linked to does note that younger people are going with streaming services. Meanwhile the older group are the ones who grew up on the DC heroes and Riverdale characters and probably want to see what’s happening to their beloved characters while the CW also has shows like Who’s Line Is It Anyway? and the show where magicians try to fool Penn & Teller for bragging rights. WarnerMedia ditched CW Seed for the regular CW website and then shoved everything else on HBO Max in their increasing push to make that service work. Anything else the 18-49 crowd are watching online through smart TVs, streaming boxes, computers, tablets, and cell phones. Does this mean new primary network owners Nexstar will change course? Time will tell.
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They’re using the Geoff Johns reimagining as the core of their Shazam movies and even he got that right.
Yes, I know this is was last week’s Jake & Leon but a recent interview by Johnson in Vanity Fair just came to my attention that made it even more fitting now. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson seems to hate Billy Batson after reading this interview. It’s not about accuracy, it’s about ego and fighting the “big name”. I suppose that shouldn’t be a big surprise seeing as he comes from the world of professional wrestling, where fighting the top name in the organization gets you the most attention by fans and by the bookers looking to see who should be the current champion.
Then again, I doubt he knows who Billy Batson is, since I’d be surprised if he read a comic book. He certainly didn’t read Shazam! or any of the previous Fawcett comics. He wants Superman, he wants to be an antihero if not outright evil, and he doesn’t care what the comics are doing. This is another example of how celebrities see storytelling versus the fans who want to see the characters they love continue on in a different media format to see what that format can do with him. Art Of Storytelling, the article series here at BW, has gone over what each type of media can do that others can’t. (I’ve run out of those so the series will be shifting focus next time I do one.) It’s why I also enjoy Star Trek comics, audio dramas, games, and novels. I want to see what they can do but I want to feel like it’s the same franchise. As we see in the interview with Johnson it’s all about ego…like most Hollywood celebs.
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Not sure who’s more better off here.
Sonic X #22
Archie Comics (September, 2007)
“Decoe and Bocoe’s Not-So-Excellent Misadventure”
WRITER: Joe Edkin
PENCILER: James Fry, assisted by Ian Thompson
INKER: Terry Austin
COLORIST: Josh Ray
COVER ART: Patrick “Spaz” Spaziante
LETTERER: John Workman
EDITOR: Mike Pellerito
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Hey, NASA’s finally going back to the moon after a few decades. But they’re sending a mannequin named after a recently deceased member of the space program. For our purposes he and the other “moonikins” are getting their own online comic. Sure, why not?
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Forgive the clickbait-style title. I’m in a bit of a hurry today.
There are times I wonder if a good or at least decent production is thrown off due to one detail that gives the wrong impression. Obviously a bad adaptation can ruin a good story for fans of the source material that should have just been an original idea, but that’s something I admit too. Let me give you an example, Robert Townsend’s The Meteor Man was the first actual all-black cast superhero movie. It’s actually a pretty good movie. So why didn’t it do any better?
My theory is that Townsend around this time was known for his movie Hollywood Shuffle, which is still a praised movie, and a series of HBO comedy specials. Both were known for social commentary, mostly the treatment of black actors and characters forced to play their stereotypes, as well as rather raunchy humor. The Meteor Man has neither of these. Instead he wanted to give black kids a superhero they could look up to in a story that bypassed those stereotypes in order to raise inner city black kids up. This caused Townsend’s usual supporters to give the movie a pass and in my opinion this unwillingness to let Townsend do something other than raunchy commentary may be why the film never got a decent chance. It’s like when Seth MacFarlane created The Orville without the humor he uses in The Family Guy. the difference is MacFarlane got a better chance as Star Trek fans looked for something closer to the franchise they loved and weren’t finding it in CBS’s offerings.
So I want to try something with a certain Saturday morning cartoon that also is only known for one thing, this time being something it added that is the only thing mentioned. The actual story seems ignored by most internet critics, but I’m not going to say what it is just yet. I’m not going to list the character until I talk about the premise first. Then decide if my theory in something like The Meteor Man has some merit and we can be biased over silly things. (And no, screwing up the source material isn’t silly. There are reasons this material was popular enough to get an adaptation in the first place.) As a friend of mine used to say: “let me pitch it to you”.
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“I told Neelix to clean this pool!”
Star Trek: Voyager–Splashdown #2
Marvel/Paramount Comics (May, 1998)
WRITER: Laurie S. Sutton
PENCILER: Terry Pallot
INKER: Al Milgrom
COLORIST: Matt Webb
LETTERER: Chris Eliopoulos
EDITOR: Tim Tuohy
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