“Yes, I helped conquer, experiment on, and torture your people. You can’t take a joke?”
Robotech II: The Sentinels book 2 #4
Eternity Comics (December, 1990)
“The Hunted”
WRITERS: Tom Mason & Chris Ulm
ARTIST: John Waltrip
COVER COLORIST: Paul Mounts
LETTERER: Patrick Owsley
Ever since an advertisement for a call Santa hotline screwed up and led kids to the predecessor to North American Aerospace Defense Command‘s secret phone number to find out when Santa’s getting to their area NORAD has kept track of Santa Claus’s ride through the midnight skies. There’s a website you can follow his progress on (I don’t know if they got the kinks out of the app but you can still go to the site via the tablet/smartphone’s browser and usually it still works), that also includes new games unlocked during the year, Christmas music, and a few other goodies.
English: Screenshot of Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed in the American film It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). The film lapsed into the public domain in the United States due to the failure of National Telefilm Associates, the last copyright owner, to renew. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It’s A Wonderful Life has become a holiday classic. While it might be due to saturation, it still manages to find an audience and has been homaged, parodied, and ripped off numerous times. That’s when you know you’re work is a classic. But did you know it was based on a short story? Philip Van Doren Stern’s The Greatest Gift came out in 1943, three years before the movie. Like the original Total Recall, which was based on the short story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, Frank Capra took the story and built a larger story, changing or adding to that story to make George Baliey’s story work as a full length movie.
So what was changed? The team at CineFix takes a look at both versions of the story with a short synopsis of the differences and similarities between the short story and the feature film.
And to think this all started with a food fight.
Star Trek #42
DC Comics (September, 1987)
“The Corbomite Effect!”
WRITER: Mike Carlin
PENCILER: Tom Sutton
INKER: Ricardo Villagran
COLORIST: Michele Wolfman
LETTERER: Agustin Mas
EDITOR: Robert Greenberger
It’s not only cable/satellite, and movie theaters competing against streaming services. Home video has also been affected. Rental stores all but disappeared when Netflix rose up and numerous subscription, ad-based, and hybrid services are popping up to challenge them. So how are DVD and Blu-Rays trying to convince people physical media still has a place? Variety takes a look at how the home video market is solving that issue. Personally I find there are benefits to having options off the grid.
This is why Tony switched to repulsor propulsion instead of the rocket boots.
Iron Man volume 3 #54
Marvel Comics (June, 2002)
“Book Of The Ten Rings” part 2
WRITER: Mike Grell
PENCILER: Michael Ryan
INKER: Sean Parsons
COLORIST: Arisia Rozegar
LETTERER: Chris Eliopoulos
ASSISTANT EDITOR: Marc Sumerak
EDITOR: Tom Brevoort
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
The Mixed Messages Of Swearing
BW Media Spotlight is not completely a swear free zone but I choose not to use them in my work. Whether it’s an article, a comic, or a video I just don’t like using them, and there are plenty of people okay with that. If you see or hear hard cursing on this site it’s a video by someone else or something I linked to. This is my preference and it seems to work for me. I do swear in my personal life when I’m upset but I tend to prefer pseudo-curses because they’re fun and help me relax. Yes, I’ve heard that some mental health professionals thinks it’s a good emotional release to reduce stress but making myself laugh and being silly does that a lot better for me personally and I can do them in polite company. The stress release is still there and I exercise my creativity by coming up with new ones or properly using old ones.
However, the way we approach swearing and discuss the issue is a bit odd. Why do we get so bent out of shape about cursing in some situations but find it hilarious in others? This is not a discussion Hollywood can handle. I remember when the “S-word” was taboo but now even programs that censor other swears let that one through. (I blame that one episode of South Park but its message was about overuse of swearing as much as it was how uptight we are about them.) Maybe the hope is that we can weed these words out? Is that hope gone? The problem is they don’t do a good job in kids shows of discussing that issue.
Or a whole lot of other issues as sometimes TV for kids that address issues tend to mangle the message to the point that it either doesn’t make sense or cause whole other problems, with solving the actual problem not exactly assured. The Mysterious Mr. Enter is starting a new series of discussions called Mixed Messages tackling that very failure, and first up he goes into how these shows try to talk kids out of swearing. As you can guess there will be a lot of bad words in this one kind of by nature, so if you don’t like swearing, don’t click the play button.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on December 3, 2019 in Animation Spotlight, Television Spotlight and tagged censor, commentary, kids shows, swearing.
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