Instead of being chased by cops, this vigilante is chased by the fire department.
Wonderworld Comics #3
Fox Feature Syndicate (July, 1939, as posted to Comic Book Plus)
Again, we have a flurry of comics to review so let’s get to it, lightning round style. Names are given by Comic Book Plus if they aren’t in the story itself so I don’t know where they came from. Also they say some of the names listed in the credits were pen names to make it look like there were more people involved or something. I don’t see the point myself. It’s not getting the writers any more money.
Considering I’ve skirted the heavy stuff the past few days, this week’s Saturday Night Showcase is going to double as a review, and I’m still coughing myself crazy, let’s have a lighter topic.
The Facts Of Life is a spin-off of the NBC sitcom Diff’rent Strokes. I don’t know if Charlotte Rae was being given her own show in the same manner as Robert Guillaume when his character on Soap, Benson DuBois, was given his own starring role but the seeds of Edna Garrett’s new role were already in the parent show. Daughter Kimberly went to the Eastland School (which in Facts Of Life is in Peekskill, New York while the Drummonds lived in New York City) and on occasion her friends would visit her at home. A backdoor pilot once had Edna and Arnold helping Kimberly and some of her friends at their dorm put on a play. This led to the first season of the series, with Mrs. Garrett becoming the dorm mother to the others (Kimberly still lived at home…wonder what the daily commute was like?) However, this would be changed from season 2 onward.
One of the reasons for the change I think is that the original format had too many girls to follow, so in season two they chose three of the girls, added in a new one to the dynamic, and put them alone as punishment for going to a bar while underage. They had to work in the school cafeteria, with Mrs. Garrett moving there to become the school dietician and keep an eye on the girls. Even after the punishment was over the group stayed together because they had bonded, and would remain a group even after school until Charlotte Rae, who played Edna, left the show to focus on theater.
But what about those other girls? While they made cameos in the early seasons they eventually disappeared altogether. What happened to them and did the producers make the right picks for the three that remained from the original format?
Riri Williams, aka Ironheart, is a somewhat controversial figure in Marvel comics not for existing as the…usual suspects will claim, but because of how she was created. In canon Riri only decided to be the next Tony Stark because she misunderstood a quote by Sally Ride, believing the only way to find her path in life was to be told she couldn’t do something rather than chasing a dream regardless of what others said of your ability to achieve it. (Imagine if her clearly annoyed teacher had gone with “fine, you’ll never be the world’s greatest plumber” instead of “you’ll never be the next Tony Stark”. She’d be trying to join the Mario Brothers or something.) The only reason she exists is Brian Michael Bendis wanted to make a hero for his daughter (she’s black I’m guessing) and decided to do so at the expense of Tony Stark. The sad thing is I like the idea of Riri and in better hands than what Marvel currently has to offer she actually might have been good.
A trailer out of Marvel Hong Kong posted to YouTube (and given how Disney has treated black characters in promoting things to China, who pulled a Disney a few years ago and absorbed Hong Kong, which they’re trying to do now to Taiwan, I’m surprised they’re even getting a movie about a bunch of Africans) has given us nothing of any real value about the movie but we do get a sneak peak into Ironheart’s live-action debut. It’s…armor.
Audio dramas refused to die with radio going full music or all talk, and comic adaptations coming to audio seem to be part of keeping this media format alive. Batman recently got an audio drama series and now Nexus, the superhero series created by Mike Baron and Steve Rude, will also be headed to podcast, with Baron serving as Executive Producer.
