Well, it seems we have yet another example of a celebrity in their declining years being taken advantage of by their manager. First it was Stan Lee and now Nichelle Nichols, the original Uhura from the Star Trek franchise. I never met her because the only time I saw her at the ConnectiCon she attended was for a brief moment since she had gotten sick that year and was confined to a wheelchair. I wasn’t going to go up to her at the hotel’s nightclub while I was off-duty and bother her, but someone I know did get to meet her at the airport and said she was a real nice person. It’s a shame crap like this happens, and you know it doesn’t just happen to famous people.
However, it does get the report of your GoFundMe to fight back against the act of elder abuse, which has been set up for Ms. Nichols. Is nobody in the actual entertainment industry paying attention to this crap before it gets worse? It’s bad enough it happens to everyone else but Hollywood really sucks at supporting their own.
Usually I’m one of the combatants in this, aren’t I?
Instead there are two articles here to break down. By now you may have heard that the newly formed WarnerMedia, as part of their questionable mission to lop all their properties under one system, just cut a whole lot of people, including their editors, from DC Entertainment’s comics division in addition to sending Dan DiDio packing. This part of DC Comics’ restructuring under the new masters and of course this has restarted speculation that DC Comics will soon die. Especially from one particular source.
I swear Rob Salkowitz is basically running a campaign to end DC Comics. After surviving publisher Jim Lee did an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Salkowitz took to ICv2 to continue to write DC’s eulogy and the end of superhero comics at a time when superheroes across TV, movies, and video games couldn’t be better. Granted I’m not completely in Lee’s camp because he isn’t saying a lot and of course he’s trying to calm people down whether DC’s future is in jeopardy or not. However, I think Salkowitz is invested in the end of this publisher given the last time I dissected one of his commentaries for Forbes on the same subject and this one. Clearly some changes are needed over at DC but I’m not sure Rob’s implied solutions (or what I got out of his commentary) are good ones.
Word has come out that the DC Fandome virtual convention will actually be two days over two months as well as a separate event for kids…wait, DC does things for kids? Anyway, here’s the full story on that from DC themselves.
For an alternative if Western comics, or at least DC news, isn’t of as much importance, a quartet of popular fan-made conventions, including BW fave ConnectiCon (most of my BW Panelling episodes and every episode of BW At The Press Junket took place there when I had the money or press pass to attend), are doing their own convention this weekend, only it will take place Friday-Sunday. League Of Conventions will stream on Twitch and ConnectiCon is joined by Magfest (a popular destination for my reviewer friends), Anime Next (guess what they’re about) and Kogaracon (I have never heard of them) and feature numerous events on a wider variety of topics. Here is the official website with the stream’s intended schedule. (Though ConnectiCon at least has dealt with last-minute changes which I’m guessing other cons have dealt with as well.) I’m sure it’s more interesting that that other convention going on right now. You won’t see Joe Biden in a mech suit.
I’m honestly morbidly curious about Marvel’s take on Ultraman. Superheroes rarely had happy days before the current mindset kicked in and the current regime isn’t always ready to do a superhero story. I can only guess they’ve heard manga has been outselling them and got the wrong idea why. So has everybody else at one level or another, but that’s another article. Maybe they’ll do a good job. I don’t know. That’s not the point of this article either. So what is?
In the comments for the YouTube posting of this trailer a bunch of people thought they’d be smart and make sure anyone stupidly dumb enough to insist Marvel was ripping off Way Big, the Ultraman-inspired alien form from the Ben 10 franchise, that they’re a bunch of dumby heads for not knowing this is a franchise of Japanese heroes and it’s a good thing we smarter tokusatsu fans were here to educate you. Yes, they do come off that full of themselves. To which I responded:
Can we shut up about Waybig already? You guys do know that four different Ultraman series were dubbed in English and aired on regular TV, right? There was even a cartoon pilot produced by Hanna-Barbera, Ultraman: The Adventures Begins. I’m guessing someone has heard of Ultraman, Ultra 7, Towards The Future (co-produced with Australia), or Tiga and may know something other than Ben 10. They may not understand the full history but I see so many comments immediately assuming the people not interested in tokusatsu is going to get that wrong without giving them a chance. There are crossover fans too you know.
These are American comic fans. How about comments about DC’s Ultraman, the first in a string of evil Superman stand-ins?
What I forgot to mention is that some of these shows had American produced or translated comics on US shelves. While the entiretly of the Ultraman franchise is not as well known in the US (even I don’t know all the characters), the franchise is not completely unknown to these shores. Marvel even had “Ultra Darius”, who popped up in an issue of their short-lived VR Troopers comic, which they wouldn’t have bothered with if the champions of the Land Of Light weren’t at least present in US entertainment history. They may not have the fame of Godzilla (who had his own MTV award so yes, toku smarties, the “normies” know Godzilla) but here’s a history of the franchise on US TV and in comic stores.
To combat online privacy studios are finally offering shows on a platform that doesn’t require subscribing, like YouTube, and bringing in ad revenue. Now a bunch of anime studios are coming together to form their own legal streaming YouTube channel. I just hope they come out with English subtitles someday because YouTube’s auto-captions are junk and so is their auto-translator. Together it’s unreadable.
