April 10, 2022

Jake & Leon #523: Into The Hamiverse

You’d think drawing either Spider-Ham would be easier than people for me. You’d be wrong.

I’m disappointed that the new Spider-Ham replaced the original, who was never able to have an appearance outside of the comics. If memory serves new Ham made his debut during the “Web Warriors” storyline or whatever it was called and apparently someone had heard of Spider-Ham but didn’t research it and just figured he was some Looney Tunes knock-off or possibly Howard The Duck. And that’s the one currently in the animated stuff. The original Peter Porker that began in Marvel Tales got the short strand of the webbing.

Over at The Clutter Reports this week I’m looking for a good comic price guide website. I found one that might work but frankly I would like a few so I can get a good average. Before you start throwing sites at me read the article and make sure I didn’t mention it.

These declarations seem to fail miserably but I’ll try anyway. I’ve been trying to do another Finally Watched for a while, if only to clean out the DVR a bit. So this week I want to do a Finally Watched week and see if I can get at least one actually watched. I have my four movies in mind (because the Chapter By Chapter review of Robotech: Before The Invid Storm is still going on) and I’m even going to do a Finally Watched edition of Saturday Night Showcase of a small indie project I’ve been waiting to watch since I heard of it (hopefully it lives up to the hype). How much of that happens depends on time, life incidents, and whatever breaking news causes me to divert my attention. Have a good week everyone and wish me luck!

Posted by on April 10, 2022 in Animation Spotlight, Jake & Leon, Marvel Spotlight and tagged , , , , , , , .

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April 9, 2022

Saturday Night Showcase: The Ultraman (1979)

The Ultraman, or as the Ultraman fan wiki posts it, The☆Ultraman, is something different for the Ultraman franchise, animation. Yes, the 8th entry in the series, co-produced with Sunrise (at the time Nippon Sunrise) of Gundam fame, made it’s first but not last journey into the world of animation. Officially recognized as “Ultraman Joneus”, the hero even got his own live action suit in the “Ultra Galaxy Fight” web series on the official YouTube channel.

When strange letters appear in the sky after the skies brighten people know something is up. However, this batch of Ultramen have apparently not learned Japanese so whatever it says they can’t read it. Japan, being Japan and knowing where this stuff leads, created the Science Guard Party (according to the wiki but it’s not what the strangely questionable subtitles for a Mill Creek Ultraman subtitling and Shout Factory “Tokushoutsu” streaming preview). Of course one of them will soon be merging with an Ultraman to fight monsters. See if you can guess which one.

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Posted by on April 9, 2022 in Animation Spotlight, Saturday Night Showcase, Television Spotlight and tagged , , .

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April 9, 2022

“Yesterday’s” Comic> Scooby-Doo Team-Up #39

Like Scooby cares. You could serve food on a foosball table and he’s eat it.

Scooby-Doo Team-Up #39

DC Comics (August, 2018–as reprinted in volume 7 of the digital comiXology trade)

“Victory Through Scare Power”

WRITER: Sholly Fisch

ARTIST: Dario Brizuela

COLORIST: Franco Riesco

LETTERER: Saida Temofonte

EDITOR: Kristy Quinn

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Posted by on April 9, 2022 in Animation Spotlight, DC Spotlight, Television Spotlight, Yesterday's Comics and tagged , , , , .

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April 8, 2022

Corridor Digital Vs. Batman’s Disappearance And Clark Kent’s Disguise

This wasn’t what I was going to end on but the universe kind of worked against my plans this week. So let’s end on something fun.

One of the best Batman running gags is when people turn around and he’s vanished. Part of Batman’s training is ninja level stealth tactics (perhaps even by actual ninjas) so if you don’t get bogged down in “realism” too far there is some logic to it. Meanwhile, Superman’s Clark Kent disguise is still a topic of ridicule, though we’ve covered that topic more than once. And yet Kyle Hill won’t shut up in his videos about how lame he thinks the glasses guise is. Once again IT ISN’T JUST THE @#$%$#% GLASSES!

The Corridor Crew at Corridor Digital decided to look at these two tropes to see if it’s actually possible to hide in plain sight like Batman or if a disguise can fool people when it’s very simple. To answer this question, producer Jake Watson didn’t use special effects but actually learned how the “pros” do it. This is the results of his two tests.

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Posted by on April 8, 2022 in DC Spotlight, web series and tagged , , , , , .

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April 8, 2022

“Yesterday’s” Comic> Space Ace #1

It’s “Take Your Baby-fied Arch Nemesis To Work” Day.

Space Ace #1

MV Creations (September, 2003–more on that in a moment)

WRITER: Robert Kirkman

ARTIST: Paulo Borges

COLORISTS: Pat Duke & Grafik Sismik

LETTERER: Lithium Pro

ART DIRECTOR: Matt Tyree

EDITOR: Leanne Shaw

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Posted by on April 8, 2022 in Animation Spotlight, Video Game Spotlight, Yesterday's Comics and tagged , , , , , .

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April 8, 2022

BW’s Daily Article Link> Chris Pine On Star Trek’s Kelvin Failure

With talk–again–of a fourth movie in the “Kelvin” timeline of Star Trek movies, will they learn from the failures of the last three movies? While you can talk about the political issues and Bad Robot wanting to get part of the merchandising rights, and all the problems with the licensing when Viacom split Paramount and CBS, actor Chris Pine has another reason to add. In this summary of a Deadline interview (which they also link to), the second official Captain Kirk portrayer suggests that trying to reach a larger audience at the expense of what made Star Trek beloved enough to make a movie in the hopes of increasing their wallet size may have backfired against the three movies he was in. Although I have heard good things about the third movie, I’ve only seen the first and thought it was a good Star Wars movie (that’s not a typo), while the more I hear about Into Darkness the less I want to.

Posted by on April 8, 2022 in Movie Spotlight, Television Spotlight and tagged , , , .

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April 7, 2022

Scanning My Collection> The Ninth Doctor’s Magazine Adventures Collected

I’ve made it known that I wasn’t thrilled with Russel T. Davies original run on Doctor Who and I’m not excited to see him come back. Credit where it’s due. I do believe he grew up loving the old series and while I’m still convinced he only brought it back to TV–the BBC were considering an animated webseries, “Scream Of The Shalka” being the only result of that–so he could get Torchwood made as sci-fi had a worse history until some BBC heads than at Fox, he did bring it back. Gone was the serialized format and the budget was larger and benefited from new special effects techniques like computer generated effects. It doesn’t feel like the same show despite being in the same continuity, but at least it wasn’t Chris Chibnall’s run. Still, put me among those who enjoyed Moffat’s run more despite having some issues with that one as well.

Meanwhile, Christopher Eccleston was a rather good Doctor. The last survivor of the Time War, this Doctor was trying to recover from the PTSD of that war and his time as the War Doctor. However, the War Doctor only exists because Eccleston didn’t want to return to the character. He had a terrible time during his run and didn’t want to return to the role, one of the reasons being his treatment by BBC Wales as well as some personal issues he was going over at the time. Well, someone at Big Finish was able to convince him to continue the Ninth Doctor’s adventures in audio form…and NO ROSE TYLER!

I hope I get to check this out, but today we’re looking at a Panini Books’ collection of comics from the Ninth Doctor that appeared in Doctor Who Monthly…and sadly there is Rose Tyler.

Okay, enough of that nonsense. The collection contains five stories so this will be short summaries of all of them.

They seem pretty happy they’re about to smother from lack of air. Unless the Time Vortex has an atmosphere.

Doctor Who Magazine Special #13: The Ninth Doctor Collected Comics

Panini Publishing (April, 2006)

LETTERER: Roger Langridge

CONSULTING EDITOR: Scott Gray

EDITOR: Clayton Hickman.

Further credits will be given as I get into the reviews themselves.

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Posted by on April 7, 2022 in Comic Spotlight, Scanning My Collection, Television Spotlight and tagged , , , , .

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