BW Media Spotlight

examining the art of storytelling

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September 4, 2021

Saturday Night Showcase: The Barbarian And The Troll episode 1

When I first found out Nickelodeon put episode one of this show up I wanted to do a Saturday Night Showcase for it since I had reviewed it when it first aired. And then I didn’t get to it…though in my defense I haven’t had what you’d call a good year. So let’s get that bit of unfinished business dealt with.

For those of you who missed, The Barbarian And The Troll is a weekly comedy action show for Nickelodeon I hope is getting a season two at some point. The show is funny, has good character development, and it’s all done with puppets. Tonight you latecomers will meet Brendar the Barbarian, who searches for her brother as part of her complicated and mysterious backstory, and Evan the Troll, who wants to ditch the bridge toll life and become a musician. Both are going against their various groups (Brendar the Royal Order Of Warrior Princesses and Evan his father) in order to achieve their goals and will make friends and enemies along the way. Tonight is how it all began. Enjoy.

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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 4, 2021 in Saturday Night Showcase, Television Spotlight and tagged Nickelodeon, Puppet, Saturday Night Showcase, The Barbarian And The Troll.

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September 3, 2021

Honey The Cat, The Obscure Sonic Character?

Originally this was going to just be a Daily quick post, and then I saw some additional information in the comments that extended the length of this article. (As it is, the replacement was longer than normal for a quick post but still barely made the length.) So I figured why not go with it? I’m still a bit gunshy when it comes to the topic I wanted to talk about this week for reasons that will become obvious when I get to it, the “work” schedule was thrown off a bit this week, and the other topic I could discuss is not the fun Friday post I would prefer and more of a rant against more Hollywood hating animation and fans of the IP they’re working on. I can save those for next week. So let’s talk Sonic characters.

With a game series, numerous comic series, and a bunch of cartoons in both America and Japan, there are a lot of characters in the Sonic multiverse. While everyone has a favorite no matter how obscure it’s difficult to really follow every character and there are some that will probably be forgotten while others will elicit a “who?” from all but the most die hard of fan or fan who happened upon the character at the right time. Then there are characters that only gained any spotlight because the fans found out about them even though they weren’t meant to exist.

That’s close to the case of Honey The Cat (that’s her in the first box of selectable characters on the Sonic Universe cover above), a character that only existed in unfinished code in the Sonic The Fighters game as a nod to the game that it was inspired by. And yet, fans found out about her, liked her concept, and fought to get her some recognition. While she still hasn’t reach the level of some characters it’s worth looking into for the trivia alone. Johnny Vector goes over the history of the game, its ties to other Sega fighting games that led to her creation, and what the fanbase did to bring her to light.

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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 3, 2021 in Comic Spotlight, Video Game Spotlight and tagged Archie Comics, Honey The Cat, Sega, Sonic The Fighters, Sonic the Hedgehog.

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September 3, 2021

BW’s Daily Video: Superman’s British Anti-Smoking Ads

I can’t believe it took me this long to show you guys this.

Onyx the Archwyvernlord usually posts video game plays on his YouTube channel

I have to give the voice actor credit. His fake American accent does get better between the three videos. Not good, but better, and he might be trying to lighten Clark’s voice a bit from Superman’s. I can’t really tell. I do have to ask…was Nick O’Teen just in town the same day as a British school field trip to Metropolis, USA? Those kids didn’t even try to sound American, while I kind of wish “Jimmy” hadn’t tried. Frankly, I’m surprised Nick survived the first cartoon. Even Lex didn’t get the level of abuse Nick does, and Lex tried to kill him more than once. At least he didn’t smoke. Superman would have offed him like Injustice Joker.

While the ads were made for British kids to get them to avoid cigarettes, the animation was done in the US, by Richard Williams Animation Studio. Animator William Goldberg (and this is according to a poster in the comments so don’t quote me on this if it’s wrong) “offered to just dub it over so DC wouldn’t have to but the DC staff said that superman stood for American ideals and hated the thought of him having a British accent”.

If that’s true, I guess some things actually do change.

Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 3, 2021 in Animation Spotlight, DC Spotlight, Television Spotlight and tagged British TV, PSA, Superman.

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September 2, 2021

A Primer For Shang-Chi And The Mandarin

I don’t claim to be an expert when it comes to Shang-Chi. Sadly, the person most tied to the master of kung-fu in our old blogging circles is no longer with us and I really would have loved to see his thoughts on this movie. I could probably just do a Daily Article Link to some article on his site and call it a day. Not that it would do me any good as webmaster mind you. However, I did find some experts, one of whom will be involved with two of the three videos below.

I am a bit more aware of the history of the Mandarin, and that’s only because I’m a fan of Iron Man. If you only know the Marvel Cinematic Universe and not the source material, the Mandarin in Iron Man 3 won’t be as disappointing nor do you care that now we will never see Tony Stark go up against his arch nemesis because politics and kissing China’s behind. (Never mind that the Chinese government in the Marvel Universe has their own issues with the Mandarin as he wants to take them over along with the rest of the world.) While I don’t know how Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings is approaching the Mandarin personally I do know how they’re approaching his signature rings and it’s wrong.

I do get that the Marvel Cinematic Universe wants to try their hands (no pun intended) at a martial arts movie, and this has been one of the MCU’s strengths, the ability to go beyond superheroes into the larger cosmic and mystical wings of the Marvel multiverse. However, the MCU used to be good at adapting 616 to this new universe, something that stopped around the time of Marvel’s deal with Sony to get Spider-Man in the MCU, Sony insisting they wanted to hold on to as much of Spidey’s iconography as they could in case they wanted to continue their stranglehold on the license they’ve only gotten right maybe three times in the movies and not even in the same series, plus some cartoons they probably don’t acknowledge outside of streaming rights. Even then some of the recent two Spidey shows are not quite proper adaptations, especially that last one. The PJ Masks ripoff they’re dropping on Disney Junior gets more right than the previous show.

To prepare you for the upcoming movie that comes out tomorrow I’ve found three videos going over the history of Shang-Chi, the Mandarin, and the actual story of the ten rings. I will also have some additional commentary because this isn’t a simple video post. This is the feature article.

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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 2, 2021 in Marvel Spotlight, Movie Spotlight and tagged Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Comics, Marvel Universe, Shang-Chi, The Mandarin.

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September 2, 2021

BW’s Daily Video: TARDIS Touchdown Techniques

Catch more (maybe someday) on Paul McSmith’s YouTube channel.

Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 2, 2021 in Television Spotlight and tagged Doctor Who, Special effect, TARDIS.

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September 1, 2021

Thor And The Marvel Super Heroes Cartoon

Okay, two things I have to bring up before I get to the actual article. Why is Hulk so short in the group shot at the end and why in a kid’s show is Namor referred to as “erotic”? Did it mean something else in the 1960s?

The Marvel Super Heroes was cheap even by 1960s levels. I mean, watch a Spider-Man cartoon from around the same time and realize the animation was better than this show. By barely animating actual comic art, something that you’d see in 80s Little Golden VHS collections (we’ll have to discuss that some day) using their licensed books, the animation is in name only but still just barely more than the animatic style “motion comics” they still occasionally make today. The stories also came from the comics they were based on and led to clumsy dialog that just about worked in the comics of their day. Makes you look at Filmation’s DC shows from that time in a better light, doesn’t it? They used original stories and art and still had more animation than their Marvel counterparts.

Scott Niswander over at NerdSync did a video recently about the Captain America segments of the show, which led him down the rabbit hole of The Marvel Super Heroes. I would have waited for the Iron Man episodes, the one show I probably actually cared about, but I think he blew all the big behind-the-scenes info for the “Mighty Thor” segment (plus going to the doctor has messed up my schedule so I need a topic for tonight) so I’m going to post this one, too. Besides, if you’re a fan of the God Of Thunder and the city of Pittsburg you may find some interesting history here as well.

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