October 31, 2019

BW’s Morning Article Link: New Ad-Supported Streamer For Halloween

With Art Soundoff starting tomorrow (which I forgot to mention on Sunday) I thought the last Morning post for the next few weeks could help promote a new ad-supported free site since all the focus right now is on subscription services. Dark Matter TV focuses on horror but will also cover sci-fi and “true crime” shows, including a Jackie Chan movie. It should be fun for those of you who enjoy horror on Halloween night. With that we say goodby to the morning article/video post until December, because it’s time for…

See you tomorrow.

Posted by on October 31, 2019 in Streaming Spotlight and tagged , .

Leave a comment

October 30, 2019

Video Games And Violence: The Research

This one has been sitting in the “filler video” cue longer than I intended. It’s time to fix that.

If you’ve been here long enough you’ve seen every new piece of media being blamed for the rise in crime. That’s rather easy compared to solving the actual cultural problems. Blame it on a movie, blame it on comics, blame it on television, blame it on video games. That’s the way people scared of something new will use to look like they’re solving the problem because it’s something they didn’t grow up with and thus do not understand. Naturally people aren’t apprehensive about new things will question those comments and even more naturally people who love those new media will gladly defend it. Neither side do so from an unbiased perspective because like everything else nobody wants their point of view challenged. “Agree with the hivemind I’m part of or be shunned/eliminated” is the order of the day. Just look at Twitter these days. There’s a reason I’m not on there much unless I’m posting something I want to promote.

Mathew “MatPat” Patrick of Game Theory decided to actually put his defense of video games against accusations that violent video games make people violent to the test by actually looking at the research as unbiased as he could to see if the world his newborn son will grow up in is indeed a world better off without his favorite media. Was his defense justified or does daddy have some explaining to do?

Continue reading →

Posted by on October 30, 2019 in Video Game Spotlight and tagged , , , .

Leave a comment

October 30, 2019

“Yesterday’s” Comic> Star Trek #12 (DC 1st series)

“Just another few days and we’ll have him!”

Star Trek #12

DC Comics (March, 1985)

“New Frontiers” part 4: “The Tantalus Trap”

WRITER: Mike W. Barr

PENCILER: Tom Sutton

INKER: Ricardo Villagran

COLORIST: Michele Wolfman

LETTERER: John Costanza

MANAGING EDITOR: Tom Condon

ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Robert Greenberger

EDITORS: Marv Wolfman & Mike W. Barr

Continue reading →

Posted by on October 30, 2019 in Movie Spotlight, Television Spotlight, Yesterday's Comics and tagged , , , , .

1 Comment

October 30, 2019

BW’s Morning Article Link: The Batman AI Script As Comic

Tom King is a robot?

DC may be overdoing the Batman but he is popular enough that DC thinks they’re doing the right thing. Remember that Morning Video where someone allegedly used AI to create a Batman script? Midnight’s Edge did a dramatic reading but someone else went and made a whole comic. And yes, Alfred still has to give birth to Robin. It is his job after all.

Posted by on October 30, 2019 in DC Spotlight and tagged , , , , .

Leave a comment

October 29, 2019

An Overdose Of Batman

This is still my favorite Batman scene. Yes, I do like the character, why do you ask?

Batman is not my favorite DC superhero (that’s Superman followed by Firestorm) but he is #3. I grew up with Batman as sure as I did Superman and have enjoyed the exploits of he and his crew. However, DC specifically and Warner Brothers in general can’t seem to stop themselves from putting out as much Bat-material as possible. Most of the direct-to-video movies are Batman stories. Their most recent movies have either starred or cameoed as much Batman as they could. And if they couldn’t BE about Batman then the character would be reworked to feel like Batman, like they’ve done with Superman recently. This isn’t just in the movies as the comics themselves are very Bat heavy or at least Bat inspired. Look what they did to Barry Allen for example. A hero inspired by another hero is now one dead parent and one parent framed to make him darker, and then they ruined poor Wally when Rebirth brought the original Wally West back.

Recently Tony Isabella called out DC for their overuse of Batman. Now this could just be because he’s pissed off that Batman is leading a team with Black Lightning in it rather than Black Lightning leading the Outsiders without him (he’s said as much so that’s not total speculation) but he may actually be right about that. Ewan Paterson and Zoë Miskelly from What Culture examined Isabella’s comments and noted that the DC universe may be overloading on Dark Knight goodness.

Continue reading →

Posted by on October 29, 2019 in DC Spotlight and tagged , .

3 Comments

October 29, 2019

“Yesterday’s” Comic> Iron Man vol 3 #49

“Well, I wanted a hot time tonight.”

Iron Man volume 3 #49

Marvel Comics (February, 2002)

“‘Nuff Said” didn’t just steal one of Stan Lee’s expressions, it was a gimmick created by then publisher Bill Jemas and Editor In Chief Joe Quesada that for a change made for interesting storytelling. (You know what they say about broken clocks.) The challenge was to do an entire story without dialog. Apparently this issue not only decided not to have a title it didn’t have any credit either. I had to go to the Grand Comic Database to find them.

WRITER: Frank Tieri (his last issue, and he’s only credited on the cover and in the sample script pages at the back of the book)

PENCILER: Chris Batista

INKER: Rich Perotta

COLORING: Edgar Tadeo; Avalon Studios (either Tadeo worked for Avalon or they did the separations)

LETTERER: Randy Gentile; Sharpefont (I’m assuming Gentile worked for Sharpefont but the only lettering he had to do if that were computer readouts unless he helped the art team with some of the in-world lettering. There aren’t even sound effects in this comic and as mentioned no credits.)

ASSISTANT EDITORS: Jeff Youngquist & Marc Sumerak

EDITOR: Tom Brevoort

Continue reading →

Posted by on October 29, 2019 in Marvel Spotlight, Yesterday's Comics and tagged , , , , , , , , .

Leave a comment

October 29, 2019

BW’s Morning Trailer: Star Wars’s New Mandalorian Trailer

So he will be able to talk in this series. Jon Faverau talked about wanting to explore the “darker side” (I’m not sure if the pun is intentional) of the Star Wars Universe. I’m not saying there isn’t story potential there or that I wouldn’t want to at least give the first episode a watch to see if I like it (I can’t afford Disney+ anymore than I can Hulu, Netflix, or any of the other subscription-based services out there) but I kind of come to Star Wars for the light action and fun of it, which seems to be a dying art in every franchise I love that isn’t still making kids-targeted stories.

Quick programming note: The comic review will be late today. I was super busy with more important stuff yesterday and didn’t get to it like I usually do.

Posted by on October 29, 2019 in Movie Spotlight, Streaming Spotlight and tagged , , .

Leave a comment