January 18, 2026

Jake & Leon #669> The Wolf Folds

Plus she’ll still be a producer.

I’ll have more to say on this on Tuesday, but let’s not assume that Kennedy leaving Lucasfilm solves the problem. DC Comics wasn’t repaired when Dan DiDio left, neither was Marvel Comics when Joe Quesada left, and Les Moonves made sure as he went out the door at ViacomCBS that Star Trek would remain in the hands of Alex Kurtzman. I no longer celebrate when someone leaves. I celebrate if the replacement actually gets things back on course. I have about as much hope for Star Wars’ “restoration” now as I did then, which isn’t much.

Over at The Clutter Reports this week I have that big checklist project I need to do, and I need the right notebook. Or maybe the right binder.

I need to double check but I think I’ve read all the Drive Thru Comics freebies that currently interest me. If so, I still have a library at Globalcomix and Neon Ichiban to go through. By then both what’s left of ComiXology and Drive Thru Comics may have given me new offerings. We’ll see how all of that goes down. Meanwhile, Thunderbolt returns on Tuesday, which means Tuesday is going to be a lot of me complaining. At least we have the continuing Chapter By Chapter review of the novelization of Doctor Who: The Rescue and CBS Transformers to go over. We’ll see what happens the rest of the week. Have a great one, everybody!

Posted by on January 18, 2026 in Jake & Leon, Movie Spotlight, Streaming Spotlight and tagged , , , , , , , .

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January 17, 2026

Saturday Night Showcase> Space Academy episode 5

So I hear the first episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is available for free on YouTube. I think Samsung Plus is offering it as well. Not that it matters either way because I don’t care. The marketing felt nothing like Star Trek, I don’t care how many voice overs you use from actual characters from better shows. I’ve seen a few reviews and it sounds worse that I was expecting. Actually, some of the backstory reminds me of that failed animated series pitch that also decided to tear the Federation apart by ruining warp travel. I wonder if Paramount ripped itself off. You’re better off reading the comic from the 90s that spun off from Deep Space Nine and showed Nog at the Academy than this garbage.

To see the concept done better, we return to a show I discussed many years ago, Space Academy. This show, one of the few live-action productions by Filmation, also featured a bunch of cadets of a “federation” learning how to become space explorers. As the commander, Lost In Space‘s Jonathan Harris played Campu, a far different role from Doctor Smith. A further Star Trek connection would be that James Doohan played the commander of the Star Command garrison on the same planetoid in the spin-off show Jason Of Star Command, a previous Saturday Night Showcase entry. which serialized adventure of a man with superhuman strength fending off an invasion from outside the galaxy. And a couple of actors playing the kids also menaced the Enterprise in “And A Child Shall Lead Them” from the original Star Trek. Sadly, some of the actors of this show passed away according to Wikipedia (question the source).

Since I already did episode one in a previous Showcase, I’m jumping to episode 5, “There’s No Place Like Home” which shares some ideas with the Starfleet Academy episode according to reviews. Loki is given the chance to find out where he came from. The youngest member of the team, he’s put in a moral quandary when the source of that information has a request in return, to steal an explosive formula that might be more explosive than he knows. It’s up to him and his friends in Blue Team to save the day, but can they? Well, the show has 13 episodes so you can hazard a guess. Enjoy.

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Posted by on January 17, 2026 in Saturday Night Showcase, Television Spotlight and tagged , , , , , .

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January 17, 2026

BW’s Saturday Article Link> Evil Has Become Good

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. —Isaiah 5:20 NIV

In a fictional sense that’s what we’re getting, as the villains of fiction are just given sympathetic backstories anymore. Their tales are being rewritten entirely so that the Wicked Witch, Maleficent, and Cruella DeVille (a name that speaks to her role in the story) are only some of the characters who were actually the heroes all along and the heroes are actually evil. It’s a form of propaganda I haven’t seen since a small group of Transformers fans back in my newsgroup days insisted the Decepticons were the actual heroes and the stories we grew up with were propaganda. Yes, this actually happened and I don’t know how serious…most of them were. One I know was way too serious, but that’s another conversation.

The Literature Devil, usually known for videos and his Morning Nonsense podcast, has started a Substack version of his old The First Edition YouTube channel and for his second article he looks at Maleficent and Elphaba specifically and how their stories compare with a fallen to darkness take on the wicked Queen from Snow White in the retexualized fairy tale series Once Upon A Time. In the article he goes over how you can have a villain fall to darkness and still be the villain while seeing the tragic events that corrupted him or her. There’s a difference between the fallen character and just changing the entire story. Plus, as I’ve gone over before while defending pure evil characters, villains serve a role in the narrative and taking them out of that role ruins the story.

Posted by on January 17, 2026 in Book Spotlight, Movie Spotlight, Television Spotlight and tagged , , , , , .

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January 16, 2026

CBS Transformers> The Second Draft part 2: The New Old Autobots part 1

In part one we took a look at the new scenario. Instead of the glowy orbs possessing vehicles (an idea that somehow popped up in some mediocre works like Vanpires and Robo Wheels) we finally connected to the original miniseries. Set five years later, somehow the Decepticons won, because Saturday morning needed a new in medias res to drop the audience into. It’s a strange obsession. Now the Autobots are rebels, with the Decepticons allowing for wacky real world hijinks so long as they get their slave workers working on being slaves. They really didn’t want to give up on the original idea. Did they really hate “More Than Meets The Eye”?

In this section of the draft we’ll be looking at the Autobot files. Like in the first section, the Autobot character bios are done in the style of a computer report printout from the 1980s. Whoever our researcher is has asked for Autobot details and the computer that the Autobots don’t need according to CBS delivers. In the original draft only Optimus was close to his traditional depiction. Sideswipe was the furthest since they made him a girl, part of CBS’s quota of female characters even in a show targeting boys despite the belief that kids don’t like girl characters and therefore don’t buy the toys of girl characters. I just don’t know why it had to be the Autobots. The show we got just gave us human girls until season three. I’m not against the idea of female Autobots (just keep Simon Furman away from them). It’s a question of how important it was to have the Transformers have girl characters. Anyway, the solution of original characters was a much better one than turning Sideswipe into a girl. Now he’s a boy again…and nowhere in the show.

Look on the bright side, Sideswipe. At least you aren’t getting the treatment Bumblebee is. They’re still doing my bot dirty, but I don’t have to cover that until next week. The profiles are kind of long in this format so I have to split them up. This installment we’ll see Optimus, Jazz, and a new character. Except one has the wrong name and I swear somebody ripped somebody off when making these. You’ll see what I mean.

AUTOBOT PERSONNEL ARCHIVES
SUBJECT: CURRENT AUTOBOT OPERATIONS AND PERSONNEL
TIME FRAME: APROX- 1988

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Posted by on January 16, 2026 in CBS Transformers and tagged , , , , , , .

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January 16, 2026

“Yesterday’s” Comic> Science Comics #1

Electro was embarrassed to learn this is was actually a new wave spa. 

Science Comics #1

Fox Feature Syndicate (February, 1940)

Back when Fox Feature was putting out good content, we get yet another new comic to go with Mystery Men, Wonderworld Comics, and the others they were putting out. Interestingly, this is also the first time I heard of a bit of science called the “Comicscope”, a cheap cardboard projector that showed comic pages on the wall. Sounds impressive until you read this article from Kirby Museum and the only thing it had going for it was that it was free after subscribing to their action library and that it was something new for 1940. I would love to see one of those builder channels try to build something better but just as cheap to make. (It’s pretty much cardboard and a light bulb, but some people are nostalgic for Easy Bake ovens and that was cooking with a lightbulb I hear. Never had one.)

[Read along with me here]

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Posted by on January 16, 2026 in Yesterday's Comics and tagged , , , , , , , .

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January 16, 2026

BW’s Daily Video> Adv. Of The Galaxy Rangers Demo Reel

From uploader “beverly crusher“:

this is the pilot/demo reel that (series co-creator) robert mandel talked about [posted below], this is what they shopped around to the individual television stations to show what the show was going to look like, some of the voices of the characters were changed before it went in to distribution, so the voices that you hear here aren’t necessarily the voices that you hear on the released episodes.

Posted by on January 16, 2026 in Animation Spotlight, Television Spotlight and tagged , , , , .

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January 15, 2026

Free Comic Inside> Transformers Energon: Evil Wins

Free Comic Inside logo

At the time of writing, I wasn’t planning to have so many Transformers things at once but somehow that happened. I want to get my schedule back on track and the only thing to discuss is Starfleet Academy is currently up for free on YouTube. I don’t hate myself so I’m not watching it.

This time we’re returning to Transformers: Energon, the second toyline in the so-called Unicron Trilogy, three toylines whose backstory involved the return of Unicron and the first time we got the character in toy form. There are very few Transformers pack-in promotional minicomics. This series was produced by Dreamwave Productions, who were doing the in store comics at the time. That was before Pat Lee tanked his own company because he was using the money to buy cars for him and his family and not paying anyone else. It’s too bad, because Dreamwave made some of my favorite Transformers stories. Dreamwave is for me what Skybound is for some fans now.

Simon Furman was writing the Energon series at the time, but I don’t know if that includes the minicomics, as they lack credits. Thankfully they also lack the shoving in of the same dialog in three languages to match the packaging and save production costs (English, Spanish, and French). Furman, at least in his Marvel US run, didn’t seem to be interested in any of the gimmicks in the toyline at the time, barely using transforming, the whole gimmick of the franchise. His Pretenders were practically Action Masters before Action Masters were introduced. The Head, Target, and Powermasters were as ignored as he could get away with, even rebuilding Optimus Prime around Hi-Q, his Nebulan partner. Given that the animes never really used the Armada and Energon gimmicks to their full play and story potential, him not doing so is within the norm. Energon’s gimmick on the Autobot side was combination, making it my favorite of the trio and one of my favorite lines overall. Like with the Armada Mini-Cons, the idea missed a lot of battle potential beyond “they’re totally stronger now, trust us”. It’s a shame, really.

The minicomics also have only eight pages to make the toys look cool. Transformers using minicomics is rare. The only other time I know of it happening in US toys was a comic strip in G1 to promote their “decoy” figurines that were packaged with the toys at the time. So they don’t even have time to really delve into the gimmick of the toys. Can they at least pull off a good story in eight pages?

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Posted by on January 15, 2026 in Free Comic Inside and tagged , , , , , , , .

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