“Needs ketchup.”
Warstrike #3
Malibu Comics/Ultraverse (July, 1994)
“The Politics Of Greed”
WRITER: Dan Darko
PENCILER: Hoang Nguyen
INKER: Alex Bialy
COLORING: Tim Duvar & Violent Hues
LETTERER: Susan Dorne
EDITOR: Roland Mann
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I had to pause when he mentioned Jackpot’s super power giving machine had a “death” setting. Why would you do that?
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One would think that’s rather important to making a movie.
It’s apparently true. Principle photography in the UK is done but they either don’t have a finished script or aren’t telling anyone about it. Not even the people who need to know. This is why Marvel Studios is failing, and Feige trying to equate his “method” with how Stan Lee and Jack Kirby worked together is just foolish.
Over at The Clutter Reports this week I didn’t have any more time to do something interesting just like Saturday Night Showcase. So I got…something done. The next two paragraphs are a bit off topic for this website but I need to vent.
So it looks like my local ABC affiliate company Nexstar joined Sinclair in caving to Disney and putting Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show back on their stations. Look, he can say whatever he wants, even his hateful conspiracy theories, but I don’t accept what he put out as an actual apology and I don’t think he’s sorry. I didn’t watch the show before and I’m not watching it now. I also never watched The Man Show and he was the only thing I didn’t like about Win Ben Stein’s Money and wasn’t disappointed he left. Basically I didn’t like Jimmy Kimmel before not liking Jimmy Kimmel was cool.
Meanwhile, YouTube just admitted the Biden Administration forced them to kill channels that didn’t conform to their politics, and actually did apologize while offering to restore the channels killed in the Biden Purge. A bit late for some channels as they either moved on or moved elsewhere. So I guess “me speech” is more important than free speech. I’m sure some of these were also channels that challenged Disney properties, including Marvel Studios, but since it was Disney and Disney isn’t going to help YouTube fight the UK’s censorship plans that would actually hurt YouTube, they probably don’t care about those channels. Okay, can I stop with the sociopolitical stuff now? I just want to talk stories.
Speaking of which, it looks like the Instapundit boost has started to fall off, probably because the above two paragraphs are rare as we’re mostly about storytelling and geeky stuff ’round these here parts. Oddly, most of my stats the past few days say most of my views came from China. Weird. Well, hope they enjoy the continuing Chapter By Chapter review of Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mirror Image as well as the CBS Transformers draft explorations. I’m almost done with the Charlton reviews of pre-DC characters, but DC bought from other places, like the original Transformers toys, so we’re not in need of a new Tuesday comic review topic just yet. Otherwise, we’ll see what else there is to discuss.
Have a great week, everyone!
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Sorry, folks. I actually have one chosen but I haven’t had the chance to really watch it to make sure the video works properly, and in current day to make sure they didn’t do a censor hack job. I have years of Saturday Night Showcase/Theater to look at. Most of them still work, so maybe catch up on a favorite or one you haven’t seen yet. Hopefully there will be some big trouble next week. Yes, that’s a teaser. No, the Transformers aren’t. I just needed a monitor I have used very often.
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This week was the 30th anniversary of Godzilla Vs. Destoroyah, the final chapter of the “Showa” era continuity, the last time all the movies in a Japanese period shared a continuity to date. While a great finale, a different ending for Godzilla’s last battle was considered. JB Augustyne of Bounding Into Comics goes over the finale we could have gotten for the second incarnation of the King Of The Monsters.
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“More Than Meets The Eye” has already released in syndication, but Hasbro wanted to go with a major TV network, as the network would have picked up the costs of the show and they would have a ready station for the show, every network affiliate that carried the network’s Saturday morning programming. CBS was chosen for whatever reason. That’s not a complaint. I just couldn’t tell you why CBS was chosen over NBC and ABC. I don’t recall ABC ever carrying anything from Marvel Productions until 1987’s Little Clowns Of Happytown, VERY loosely based on the line of clown figurines. (I still have my Super Clown.) CBS did have some of their adventure and comedy shows, while NBC did all of their Marvel Comics based superhero shows.
Due to the rivalry between Marvel Productions and Marvel comics mentioned in Chris McFeely’s video, in case you thought animation didn’t trump comics in the media pecking order even back then because it was still TV, Jeffery Scott’s pitch ignored everything they already did in the miniseries and created an entire new concept from scratch than Hasbro had accepted from Marvel Comics’ Jim Shooter and the characters developed by Bob Budiansky. What came out was so far removed from what we know that it feels like an entirely different product from the start. Already this is a bad idea because kids would be trying to reconcile the two concepts. If you don’t think so, adults were still trying to force the comic and cartoon we got into one continuity despite more contradictions than the live-action movies. The comics were eventually forced to use the Floro Dery character models for the comics but the early issues used the toys as how they drew the Transformers.
Thus, the question is whether or not Marvel Productions was as smarter than their comic friends as they believed themselves to be. This portion of our look will have six chapters. The pitch by Scott, completed for February 25th of 1984, is split into backstory, Decepticon character profiles, Autobot character profiles, human character profiles, and something I don’t see enough of in these pitch bibles–sample episodes! We’ll compare them to the actual cartoon during each section, with a wrap-up section that will segue into the second draft. So let’s begin with a look at the story they came up instead of 4 million year old robots activating on Earth to resume their war.
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“Now I know how a hamster feels.”
Mystery Men Comics #6
Fox Publications, Inc (January, 1940)
Yes, we return to this comic. For anyone new here, the Tuesday pre-DC slot started as a Blue Beetle slot when the Jaime Reyes version got his own movie. The original Blue Beetle, rookie policeman Dan Garret, debuted in this comic series, but not wanting to do an anthology and just focus on the hero, I moved ahead to his own title…which turned out to be another anthology, just with Blue Beetle front and center. A few different publishers and incarnations followed, with Charlton reimagining Dan’s character before replacing him with Ted Kord, the version DC Comics bought. I had hoped to return to this series, and now here we are. That means hopefully back to the better Dan Garret stories, before the crazy powers, moving to military intelligence during the war, and then back to a cop before Charlton turned him into a magic hero with an extra T in his last name. Break out the Vitamin 2X because the original Dan and company are back in the Spotlight!
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