March 24, 2022

Art Of Storytelling: Stop-Motion Puppetry

Let’s write a real article at least once this week, what do you say?

In the previous installment of this series, which I had to go back to remember because it’s been far too long since I’ve done one, we talked about puppets. I said I would talk about stop-motion next time and surprisingly I remembered! Like before I’m not going to go into the history of stop-motion, nor will there be a huge focus on stop-motion as a special effect, like early Star Wars movies or the works of the late great Ray Harryhausen. I’m more interested in fully stop-motion animated production, though the reason the former died out completely and the latter seemingly on the decline are pretty similar. And yet stop-motion refuses to really go away. Stop-motion productions can be found on YouTube rather easily, from shorts to short films thanks to modern toy articulation or just not having another option available.

So where does stop-motion shine? Is there really a type of story that stop-motion could work for like no other?

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Posted by on March 24, 2022 in Art Of Storytelling and tagged , .

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March 24, 2022

“Yesterday’s” Comic> Sonic X #6

“And I thought the ball pit was bad. I’m actually missing the pool!”

Sonic X #6

Archie Comics Publications (May, 2006)

“I Never Promised You A Chao Garden” part 2

WRITER/LETTERER: Joe Edkin

PENCILER: Tracy Yardley

INKER: Andrew Pepoy

COLORIST: Ben Hunzeker

COVER ART: Pat “Spaz” Spaziante

EDITOR: Mike Pellerito

MANAGING EDITOR: Victor Gorlick

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Posted by on March 24, 2022 in Animation Spotlight, Television Spotlight, Video Game Spotlight, Yesterday's Comics and tagged , , , , , , , .

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March 24, 2022

BW’s Daily Article Link: Tom King Strikes Again (on Guy Gardner)

Hey, a Guy Gardner moment I actually like. That’s rare.

As the caption gag notes, I’m not a huge Guy Gardner fan. He’s like the embodiment of everything more liberal writers get wrong about conservatives, can be a bully at times, and only gets to be cheered on through the few redeeming qualities he does have. Well, screw that the underworld as Tom King has decided yet again to make a superhero (loosely as Guy matches that description) into a psycho before killing him off. Bounding Into Comics contributor Spencer Baculi reports that King decided to have Guy be a crazy stalker to his ex-girlfriend Ice before she and Christopher Chance, the Human Target, are forced to kill him in King’s latest chapter of his The Human Target series. I have a few questions I’m betting King didn’t think about:

  1. What are the Guardians Of Oa, not to mention other Green Lanterns, going to think when his ring comes back, the usual result of a dead Lantern so it can find a new owner? Are they going to go after a woman who can freeze people and a guy who makes himself look like anyone else?
  2. Did we really need an Ice/Human Target romance?
  3. What does any of this have to do with a story in which Christopher was poisoned while disguised as Lex and now need to find the cure while Ice tries to prove that Fire wasn’t the guilty party?
  4. If this is canon, does that mean now Guy is dead in-universe (since being shattered and the pieces left to melt usually means your dead, even in comics where that’s not tied to your powers) and now nobody can use him? In the same vein, how does that affect the Green Lantern comics King isn’t working on and are those writers okay with it?

This is just a bad idea all around. What is it with Tom King ruining superheroes? No wonder it doesn’t feel like Dan DiDio hasn’t left when all his acolytes are still working on stuff for DC Comics.

Posted by on March 24, 2022 in Death of DC and tagged , , , , .

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March 23, 2022

Why Are Batman Movies Afraid Of Robin?

I wasn’t going to do this twice in one week, especially in a row, but it’s still that kind of weak and when YouTube suggested this video to me I knew being the daily quickpost wasn’t going to be enough.

Batman and Robin. To many generations you can’t have one without the other. Whether he’s Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown (which would be a she but that’s not important right now), Damian Wayne, Carrie Kelly (also a she), or Bobbie Chang, Robin exists for a number of reasons both as a storytelling element and within Batman’s life personally. And I don’t just mean the gag from Tiny Toon Adventures about drawing all the fire. If anything Robin might have to pull Batman out of the line of fire, or at least pull him back from the edge. That was one of the reasons he was created early in Detective Comics, to pull Batman away from the same level of darkness as one of his pulp hero inspirations, the Shadow.

While animated series, even ones that start early in Batman’s career, like Kids WB’s The Batman which oddly introduced Batgirl first, live-action movies haven’t used the Boy Wonder very well. In total only five live-action productions have used Dick as Batman’s sidekick, and we’ll get into Titans later. Even the animated theatrical Batman movie many claim to be the BEST Bat-film, Mask Of The Phantasm, takes place during a period in the DCAU and Batman: The Animated Series where Dick is at college. Why is Warner Brothers seemingly scared to use the Boy Wonder in their stories? YouTube video essayist Patrick (H) Willems decided to take a look after the movie also called The Batman continued the tradition of a Grayson-less Bat-Cave. Note that there’s somewhat more swearing than you’re used to from something in a BW article.

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Posted by on March 23, 2022 in DC Spotlight, Movie Spotlight and tagged , , , .

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March 23, 2022

“Yesterday’s” Comic> Star Trek: Telepathy War (crossover finale)

So this is what that new CBS dance show is like?

Star Trek: Telepathy War

Marvel/Paramount Comics (November, 1997)

“Reality’s End”

WRITER: Chris Cooper

PENCILER: Patrick Zircher

INKER: Steve Moncuse

COLORIST: Kevin Tinsley

LETTERER: Albert Deschesne

ASSISTANT EDITOR: Polly Watson

EDITOR: Bobbie Chase

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Posted by on March 23, 2022 in Television Spotlight, Yesterday's Comics and tagged , , , , , , , .

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March 23, 2022

BW’s Daily Video: Misquoting Tolkien

Note: May contain swearing.

Catch more from Just Some Guy on YouTube

 

Posted by on March 23, 2022 in Book Spotlight, web series and tagged , , , .

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March 22, 2022

The Further Troubles With comiXology 2022

When I first saw this latest video by NerdSync I thought it was going to be a good daily quickpost. However, the more I watched it the more I wanted it to be a feature article. Hopefully this will be the last crazy day for a while so I won’t need to make filler posts, but this is one I’m building off of. It’s a regular article with a video to go over Amazon’s history with comiXology better than I could.

As we’ve talked about earlier Amazon has decided in their lack of wisdom to merge comiXology and Kindle. It was one thing when they wanted to give you the option of using the Kindle app and device because that would mean less apps on a phone and less space taken up if you can’t move your app to the SD card. As someone who bought a new phone only because I didn’t have space to update the bare minimum requirements (I only have apps for travel and waiting room time, not everything under the sun) I can appreciate the option. The problem is that Kindle really isn’t optimal for reading comics. The missing “guided view” feature aside zooming in and panning around the page isn’t an option because Kindle was designed with Amazon’s original items for sale: books. Specifically, Kindle is made for ebooks, not ecomics. The existing comiXology app was fine for it, as was the comiXology website, which I used to post comic reviews on because back then it was easy. I didn’t do that as much when some of the community bits were removed and I just kept them to my own site. (Copy/paste isn’t that hard, folks.)

The new integration between Amazon’s Kindle service and comiXology has made reading those comics a lot more difficult. The Kindle Cloud, which I didn’t know existed because there was no link to it in the comiXology section (that’s how they spelled it if you’re wondering what I’m doing–X’s are cooler than C’s, you know) isn’t designed for a good reading experience so losing the online browser was a mistake. I understand wanting to simplify your services and browsers/apps, but Amazon just wasn’t ready and the reading experience has taken a hit. Scott Niswander over at NerdSync sums up the basic problems and I have my own thoughts on the current situation.

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Posted by on March 22, 2022 in Comic Spotlight, Internet Spotlight and tagged , , , , .

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