Someone saw the live-action movie.
Speed Racer #23
NOW Comics (August, 1989)
WRITER: Lamar Waldron
PENCILER: Norm Dwyer
INKER: Jim Brozman
COLORIST: Michele Mach (fitting)
COVER ART: Norm Dwyer & Jorge Pacheco
LETTERER: Dan Nakrosis
EDITOR: Katherine Llewellyn
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Slight difference: The monthly periodicals need to stop being part one of the later trade and tell a story the way that format can. As I’ve said before, graphic novels are movies and monthly comics should be more like a TV show. I do agree that comics need to reach beyond the comic store (as much as I like comic stores) and return to the general audience at a price that benefits from impulse buying. “I have a few extra bucks, let me see what this comic is like. Oooh, I may consider getting more issues. I can get back issues where?”
Also making the mainstream comics friendly (not necessarily targeting) to kids is also a good idea. This is how comics became popular in the old days and restricting them to adults loses a good chunk of your potential audience. Something to think about but they don’t think anymore.
It’s not easy to love something that seems to hate you. For example anyone whose favorite food makes them sick, or learning that the people behind your favorite show loathes anyone who doesn’t share their worldview 100%. As a Christian I love science fiction but science fiction doesn’t love me because I’m a Christian…and that seems to hold true for any other religion, whether they want to write it off as “that group’s culture”. Look, if it involves worshiping some form of deity IT’S A RELIGION, NOT A CULTURE! That’s not even putting down people of other spiritual views than mine. If anything I’m standing by them if not their religion. Sci-fi seems to be the domain of atheists, many of which are very much anti-religion because it isn’t science-y enough. I’ve gotten used to it but it’s irritating that my favorite genre keeps telling me my God doesn’t exist…or that he’s really a little grey man from another planet. Grey is the new green in aliens you know.
(And this is not the point where you start pointing me to great Christian science fiction. I’m talking mainstream SF and my reading list is long enough without recommendations right now. Maybe when my list is a bit lower I’d like to check some out, but so much of Christian fiction is preaching to the choir and losing the mainstream rather than being a witness to the Lord.)
We’re not here to talk about that, though. It’s along those lines, and apparently something that affects the way we view real life ancient societies and our own technology. The trope is called “ET Gave Us Wi-Fi“, and any science fiction fan is aware of it. You know that cell phone, tablet, or computer you’re reading this on right now? Aliens. Microwave ovens? Aliens. Velco? Sci-fi loves to blame Velcro on aliens. Now there are times when the trope on a general level can actually work, but there are also uses that diminish the accomplishments of the human race…and some people believe it might actually be true, which only makes the trope even worse.
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You can check my own thoughts on the “mis-aligned continuity” here at the Spotlight. Also check out my Chapter By Chapter review of Transformers Exodus. Maybe they didn’t intend a tight continuity but that’s one of my problems with it. It just comes off as a mess for me. Remember, this is a group that had members trying to reconcile the G1 cartoon and Marvel comics for some reason. I still blame the Transformers Prime folks for messing this up while Exodus isn’t even a good adaptation of War For Cybertron, even with the usual caveats of novelization. It’s like a mostly new story.
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This won’t mean much in the archives but I’m going to have save this week’s Robotech comic review for next week. I have to watch the episode (one of the few New Generation episodes I have access to) to go along with the comic and I didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before, so my schedule is kind of messed up. I’ll have a bonus daily post instead and we’ll get into that next week. Sorry.
“Resistance is futile.” “Not according to our track record.”
Star Trek: Voyager #10
Marvel/Paramount Comics (October, 1997)
“Ghosts”
WRITER: Laurie S. Sutton
PENCILER: Jesus Redondo
INKER: Sergio Melia
COLORIST: Glynis Oliver
LETTERER: Chris Eliopoulos
EDITOR: Tom Tuohy
The Clutter Reports (my other site) Atop The Fourth Wall Crisis On Earth Prime Lean Into Artcast Bully Says “Comics Oughta Be Fun” Siskoid’s Blog of Geekery
Cartoon Hero’s Lair SF Debris Four Million Years Later
Gatekeeping And The “True Fan”
My natural sounds machine has a bad volume control button. The thing either goes super loud or turns off unless I beat on the darn thing. It doesn’t help that whenever my cordless phone in the charging base by my bed seeks out the base unit it causes a buzzing in the natural sound machine speaker. So I’ve been using my “mini-tablet” (short version: phone company shouldn’t have sent my dad a smartphone) as an experiment, using natural sounds videos on YouTube–I recommend The Relaxed Guy or for music LoFi Girl if you try this idea–as a replacement. So far it seems to be working out. While waking in the morning, rather than reaching for the radio that for some reason isn’t picking up my preferred “wake up” radio station very well lately I’ve used morning podcasts on YouTube.
You’re probably wondering what this has to do with the title of this article.
Yesterday that morning podcast was catching a bit of the Literature Devil‘s “morning nonsense” stream, which he doesn’t seem to archive on YouTube. (Maybe for his Patreon supporters or something.) I didn’t catch a lot of it but two items stood out. Sadly I can’t seem to find anything on this new “run a cafe” campaign for Dungeons & Dragons, though I did have a few thoughts on that I posted to the chat as he talked about it. The other is a video by another channel that has popped up here in the Spotlight more than once, Comics By Perch. It’s cool when channels I follow also follow other channels I follow. I mean, cooler when they follow mine but given how seldom I get videos out it’s easier to follow this site for my reviews and commentaries. When I post a video, it comes here anyway.
Perch’s video goes over an article by Forbes contributor Ollie Barder, where he uses anime fandom to go over the modern online accusations of “gatekeeping” by the usual suspects. I’ll go a bit over that but LD made the case that the various geek fandoms have never gatekept in the past and can’t. I’ve been in this grouping too long to not know better, but what the usual suspects are calling gatekeeping really isn’t…but I can give you examples of what actually is.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on January 12, 2022 in Uncategorized and tagged commentary, Fandom, geek culture.
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