“Why are the lights so yellow?” “What light?”
New Avengers #9
Marvel Comics (September, 2005)
“The Sentry” part 3
WRITER: Brian Michael Bendis
PENCILER: Steve McNiven
INKER: Mark Morales
COLORIST: Morry Hollowell
COVER ART: David Finch, Danny Miki, & Frank D’Armata
LETTERER: Albert Deschesne
PRODUCTION: Deborah Weinstein
ASSISTANT EDITORS: Aubrey Sitterson & Molly Lazer
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Andy Schmidt
EDITOR: Tom Brevoort
Yeah, I’m trying to figure this one out myself. Usually I complain that Hollywood has this weird obsession with doing live-action versions of shows and concepts created with animation in mind, but here’s a case of the reverse being true as they want to make a cartoon out of Good Times. The original show was a live-action sitcom about a black family trying to escape poverty, focusing the maid from the show Maude, which was about the cousin of Edith Bunker from All In The Family. Yes, it was a spin-off of a spin-off that took the same idea that Perfect Strangers did with Family Matters by spinning off a popular character into her own series by showing her with her family. I wonder if that makes JJ Evans their Steve Urkel?
Good luck, Norman Lear. Animated spin-offs of shows are rarely even close to being as good as the sitcom they’re based on.
Only a few chapters left in this book. And since I’m running out of stuff to talk about in the opener I’ve been giving random thoughts about Doctor Who and my experience with it. I want to talk about the TARDIS console room, the main always-used set. There have been many designs over the years but in modern Who, ever since the TV movie, I think they try too hard. Look at the original:
I think I fast forwarded to when they first enter but even the thumbnail works. Later TARDIS designs had a more high-tech look to the console itself but seemed a bit cramped. The original on the other hand was a bit more roomy, though not the grand cathedral of most modern TARDIS rooms. For example:
Not as many decorations because the third Doctor was trying to get it working again, the roundels are a bit too large (that would be tweaked eventually) but none of them are painted backdrops racing to meet airtime. I’m not going to go through the whole history here (I found this video that goes up to Matt Smith if you want to see them all–forgive the “desktop” term, a dumb line from the Fifth/Tenth’s short) but the point is these early sets were roomy without overdoing it. The new ones seem to be large just to be large and I’ve not really been a fan of either of them. Sometimes simple is the best. Though I do miss the monitor being tucked away. What did the Third do, buy a television set?
Of course after the previous chapter if our current team doesn’t hurry up they won’t have a TARDIS to control. So let’s check in with them.
“No, you’re supposed to put you FOOT down, not your fist!”
Justice League Unlimited #35
DC Comics (September, 2007)
“The Cycle”
WRITER: Matteo Casali
PENCILER: Scott Cohn
INKER: Al Nickerson
COLORING: Heroic Age
LETTERER: Robert Clark
EDITOR: Rachel Gluckstern
For reasons known only to self-absorbed Hollywood celebrities, DC Fandome’s second half later this month will feature a re-creation of the classic Adventures Of Superman radio drama, with the audio done by today’s celebrities. And I have to ask why? If they aren’t modernizing anything except the cast, just air the actual recordings. You can find the entire series on the Internet Archive and I think someone even uploaded them to YouTube. If they were doing a lost recording I could understand but that’s not how I read it. Bet they don’t even come close to what made Bud Coyer’s Clark/Superman different.
Of course those answers were never solved either.
This was a fun storyline to make but that style takes more time than the usual Jake & Leon style so unless I had a chance to do some work on it the comics came out late. Still, I learned how to do a few things and it was overall fun to do and I hope I get an opening to do something like it again. Next time: Leon’s review.
Meanwhile I found a nice video for The Clutter Reports on playing realtor to help motivate you to clean up. Hopefully the email project will be where I want it soon so I can do something else before losing my readership. It’s smaller than this one but I only do it once a week.
As for what’s coming up this week, plans keep falling through so outside of the next installment of Doctor Who: The Time Travellers (coming to the end) and hopefully getting the second half of the intro discussion into Art Of Storytelling I’m not sure. I would like to finally get that Finally Watched in, but we’ll have to see what happens. Have a good week, folks!
Square One Television was another attempt by the Children’s Television Workshop to go something besides Sesame Street. It lasted for five seasons. The production company is now called Sesame Workshop, so I guess they just embraced what was working for them. Square One was similar in format to the original The Electric Company, only instead of teaching reading it taught math. The show had skits, music videos, and recurring segments, like the Mathman video game.
The one from episode was Mathnet, a serialized parody of Dragnet, following the cases of Kate Monday (later Pat Tuesday when the segment moved from Los Angeles to New York for some reason) and her partner George Frankly as they solved crimes using mathematics. This is closer to the Bloodhound Gang segments from 3-2-1 Contact in that the story played out at the end of the show during the week as the character would try to solve a particular crime. While I’m not usually into police shows this was my favorite segment, and by the time it debuted in 1987 I was probably too old to be the target audience. However, the skits were funny, some jokes were clearly meant for the parents who were watching with their kids, like Sesame Street and The Electric Company, and Mathnet played into my enjoyment of serials. Plus who doesn’t like Dragnet? Not many.
On YouTube I found a video collecting the fourth serial, “The Trial Of George Frankly”, as Frankly returns from a fishing trip only to be accused of robbing a bank. While George (being a parody of Dragnet‘s Bill Gannon from the more well-known 1960s version of the franchise) is usually not quite aware of the world around him this shows that he is smart enough to expose his own framer with help from Kate. It also has James Earl Jones as their boss, Thad Green, who was also left behind when the setting moved to New York City. See if you can figure out the crime before Kate and George do.
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
