September 27, 2020

BW Update: Jake & Leon Take A Break

After the craziness of the “Herodude & Enemies #1” storyline I needed a comic break so the gang’s taking some time off. They’ll soon be moving back into the studio and resuming the usual format so that will be nice. So what else is going on this week?

Over at The Clutter Reports, my attempt to redo the drawer dividers met with a bit of a snag but hopefully I got something good out of it.

Back here at BW we’re in the final two chapters of Doctor Who: The Time Travellers for Chapter By Chapter [HUGE AFTER THE FACT CORRECTION: this IS the final chapter!] and I’m determined to get a Finally Watched in this week as well. The Tuesday Marvel reviews will be interesting for a while, since the next comic (speaking of a break this will give me a break from The New Avengers…or would if not for Tuesday’s feature) features an original story I’ll review this week and a series of reprints of classic Spider-Man adventures, including one with Spider-Woman, plus a Spider-Man 2099 and a Spider-Ham story, that I’ll be reviewing on their own just because there are a bit too many for one daily review. These are full-length stories. So this week’s review will be the stuff exclusive to that comic including one I thought I reviewed because I actually own a solo reprint of it. At any rate that should hold me for the next five weeks before returning to Bendis’ New Avengers.

Otherwise I hope everyone has a good week and if none of this does it for you I still have one or two free days to find something to discuss. Stay awesome, folks!

Posted by on September 27, 2020 in Uncategorized and tagged .

Leave a comment

September 26, 2020

Saturday Night Showcase> The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes

Debuting in 1963 The Avengers brought together some of Marvel’s greatest heroes at the time: Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, The Wasp, and Ant-Man came together to avenge those who were wronged. They’ve had minor popularity outside of comics until they finally received a movie in 2012 as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and are now very well known. Unlike their DC counterpart the Justice League, which has a number of different incarnations in cartoons (we’re counting Super Friends) the Avengers haven’t had as many animated appearances, even counting The Super Hero Squad Show, though unlike Super Friends no traces of the Avengers beyond concept could be found. The first were adaptations of comic stories as part of The Marvel Super Heroes and if you think Filmation didn’t do a lot of moving in their animation watch that some time. Avengers: United They Stand was a weak-willed attempt to give them their own show. There was a shared continuity on Disney XD but with Spider-Man and the Avengers having been rebooted and wherever Marvel Rising fits in good luck finding consistency.

Considered the greatest of the Avengers toons is Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, a 2010 animated series building off the success of the Iron Man and Incredible Hulk films to do a modern take on the Avengers. The show only ran for two seasons and fans were not happy when Avengers Assemble took its place. We’ll see if we can figure that out next week since I think Marvel HQ’s YouTube channel has those episodes, but good luck finding anything on a “kids channel” on YouTube as they’ve pretty much made it impossible to search for anything. (How that helps them comply with COPPA is beyond me.) Sadly the first episode of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, the two-parter “Breakout”, is not there unless its buried along with the preview shorts. While they’ve started uploading the show to Marvel HQ, the next episode in continuity, and tonight’s showcase, is “Some Assembly Required”, and still features the original core team from the comic while previewing upcoming events. Oddly it starts with the same kind of supervillain prison break as The New Avengers but for different reasons, which would be explored during season one as the Avengers and it’s rotating roster would hunt down the escaped felons. You’ll also see Bruce Banner serving as Hulk’s mentor of sorts, a mutual agreement between Bruce and the Hulk as they try to prove Hulk isn’t a monster, which plays into tonight’s story. While it isn’t the first episode it’s still worth watching so enjoy.

Continue reading →

Posted by on September 26, 2020 in Animation Spotlight, Marvel Spotlight, Saturday Night Showcase, Television Spotlight and tagged , .

Leave a comment

September 26, 2020

“Yesterday’s” Comic> DC Super Hero Girls: Wonder Woman Day

“Ares, can’t you just buy a mirror?”

DC Super Hero Girls: Wonder Woman Day Special Edition #1

DC Comics (July, 2017; posted to comiXology May, 2017)

WRITER: Shea Fontana

ARTIST: Yancy Labat

LETTERER: Janice Chiang

ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Brittany Holzherr

EDITOR: Marie Javins

Continue reading →

Posted by on September 26, 2020 in DC Spotlight, Yesterday's Comics and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

Leave a comment

September 25, 2020

The Cultural Failings Of Disney’s Live-Action Mulan

In Disney’s ongoing quest to replace their animated classics with poorly thought out live-action remakes we have the 2020 remake of Mulan, in which tiny dragons are too silly but wire-fu superpowers are perfectly fine…neither of which are in the actual Chinese tale. This was also rigged up to continue to pursue the Chinese movie market that Hollywood has decided is the new status symbol…and they hated it. They also put out a more faithful adaptation, probably in anticipation of this Western makeover. Ghosts Of Tsushima this is not…but I’m just going by Gaijin Goombah’s reviews since I know nothing of Japanese lore nor have I played the game. However, he says that game showed actual research into the period and region the game takes place in, with only a few changes to make the game interesting. The animated Mulan is on my Finally Watched list but this live-action demake (that’s a remake that’s actually worse than the original but can’t necessarily be classified as not-stalgia or mockstalgia) is not. So outside of the obvious what went wrong?

Well, according to Xiran Jay Zhao, who started her own YouTube channel just to make the following video it’s that the creators didn’t even do the homework Ghosts Of Tsushima did, which was also made by Western creators who aren’t even descended from the country the story takes place in. Instead cultural inaccuracies in Mulan are marred by concepts Western audiences may understand but the Chinese audience would have rejected…and apparently so did the Western audiences, not helped by their end credit support for Chinese groups that may be involved in human rights violations. Oopsy! However, I’m also a white person with little to no understanding of Chinese culture and the actual tale of Mulan so let’s let the expert explain what they did wrong and how they could have done it better. Note there is some swearing.

Continue reading →

Posted by on September 25, 2020 in Movie Spotlight and tagged , .

Leave a comment

September 25, 2020

“Yesterday’s” Comic> Scooby-Doo #44 (DC)

“Rut rhut arout the ramifications rov raving rour ratoms rorn arart rand….”

Scooby-Doo #44

DC Comics (March, 2001; posted to comiXology September, 2014)

PENCILER: Joe Staton

INKER: Dave Hunt

LETTERER: Ryan Cline

ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Harvey Richards

EDITOR: Joan Hilty

“Planet-terrorium”

WRITER: Rurik Tyler

COLORIST: Paul Becton

SEPARATIONS: Digital Chameleon

“The Jerzy Devil”

WRITER: Terrence Griep, Jr.

COLORING: Digital Chameleon

Continue reading →

Posted by on September 25, 2020 in Animation Spotlight, Television Spotlight, Yesterday's Comics and tagged , .

Leave a comment

September 25, 2020

A Spambot Tries To Teach Me Poker

This is a bit off-topic but it’s been that kind of week and this one is more fun. Any blogger on a decent host has some kind of spam filter. WordPress, my host, uses Askimet, which doesn’t simply delete the spambots. It holds it in a folder to be checked, just in case an actual poster was accidentally sent to the spam folder. Most of the time they do okay, though every now and then one sneaks through and gets posted. Some of these spambots are rather amusing, and Gary over at Crisis At Earth Prime (check the RSS feed at the bottom of the page) shows off a few of these as well as the often scary search requests that bring people to his site. I’ve had a few of those but I’ve never had anything like this…a spambot who seemed more interested in reaching the webmaster than any posters.

I’ve had excerpts from a story about a Christian family sitting down to dinner and discussing God but they weren’t in any kind of order. However, this set of spam posts bounced around to numerous articles and the way it showed up in my filter actually gives a full article about tips for playing poker. I don’t play poker. If I ever went to a casino I might play a few hands of Blackjack, maybe roulette or the slots, but not poker. So I don’t know how useful it is. What I found fascinating is how this post, sent to random articles one paragraph at a time formed an almost complete article in my spam filter.

Continue reading →

Posted by on September 25, 2020 in Uncategorized and tagged , .

1 Comment

September 24, 2020

Sing Me A Story: Heroes (by David Bowie)

logo for the Sing Me A Story article series

In previous installments of this series I’ve looked at songs that have been used for the wrong reasons. It sounded good on paper but like that time Ronald Reagan’s campaign rally manager or whomever decided that Born In The USA, a song protesting the US (and for some reason the Vietnam war despite Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band performing the song in 1984) was a good idea for a Presidential campaign for a candidate who put his patriotism as a reason to vote for him, actually listening to the lyrics might have been a good idea. For example, everyone who keeps using “Big In Japan” by Alphaville to discuss someone being famous in the Land Of The Rising Sun is choosing the wrong song with that name…unless you want to tie being popular in Japan to a couple on drugs. Cable company Frontier Communications promoted teachers with a song from the 60s protesting teachers and the things he hated they were teaching like the police aren’t evil. Oh the time they have changed.

So what song do you often hear about being heroic? Celebrating first responders? The people on the frontlines of the death plague of 2020? Doing good things for the community? I bet one of the songs you recognized was David Bowie’s “Heroes”, the title cut from the 1977 album that has gone on to be one of Bowie’s most famous songs. Bowie died from cancer in 2016, not telling anyone because he was focused on finishing what would be his final album, but this is a song that became of the must-perform songs of his concerts. Is it actually about being a hero though? Well, it depends on how you define “heroism” I guess.

Continue reading →

Posted by on September 24, 2020 in Sing Me A Story and tagged , , , .

Leave a comment