BW’s Morning Video: Batman Day

Don’t get me wrong. It’s totally cool that Batman got to have his own day during his 80th anniversary celebration, but why wasn’t there a Superman Day? Are we getting a Wonder Woman Day at least? That said, the fact that Batman is so important to so many shows the importance of superheroes. Look at all those kids so happy to meet Batman and Robin (which looked like the Tim Drake version so that makes this whole “Drake” nonsense even dumber). Kids love superheroes. Why aren’t kids given their own stories with these characters beyond some lame graphic novel that comes out once in a blue moon? Oh right, because we need to convince people like Bill Maher that superheroes aren’t just kids stuff. How’s that been working? You also need to do Batman right or else he may not be as popular by his next milestone. I don’t see signs of that happening either.

Jake & Leon #425: Birdbrain Naming

Jason had to steal his name from the Joker. At least Stephanie had an identity to fall back on.

Yes, Red Robin was a dumb name, especially if you live in an area where the restaurant exists. However, I thought you were supposed to come up with a BETTER name, not a worse one. Not if you’re Brian Michael Bendis apparently. First Superman, now Young Justice, what will he ruin next?

In this week’s Clutter Report the Transformers Universe reviews continue, this time it’s the first versus review as I compare Beast Machines Snarl to his Universe repaint. Same character, same mold. And this one isn’t without a casualty.

I already have a another video from Cartoon Cypher ready to post for Tuesday thanks to a goof on my part, as I forgot which video I teased the week before and had already written the article up before I realized my error. We’ll also close out the G1 Transformers intro reviews from Japan-exclusive casts before finally moving on to Beast Wars. And it’s time for the third story of Robin Hood’s recruitment drive in this week’s Chapter By Chapter. I just have to figure out what to do with the other two days. Enjoy the week, folks!

Saturday Night Showcase: Transformers (Armada) Video Game

Tonight’s Saturday Night Showcase is a bit of an experiment. As the odds improve that I may finally be able to do that let’s play/playthrough/whatever game play series I’ve been wanting to do for years I want to see what would work for the BW audience specifically. Additionally we have one more Transformers Armada continuity to go over and tonight seems like a decent time for it.

In 2004 the then-current incarnation of Atari (a long history and at this point it’s really just a name, not the Atari that kicked home consoles into high gear) licensed a rarity among Transformers video games: a good one. Well, rarity at the time. The stuff put out in recent years not tied to the movies have been pretty good, and War For Cybertron won the fourth slot of the let’s play series. The game, simply titled Transformers, was only released on the Playstation 2 so I have never played it and probably never will. Below you’ll see three videos (unless your on the home page, in which case it’s after the “read more” tag). They’re all the same game but different experiences. The first one is one video but the other two are playlists of videos by the same player that you can watch in one sitting or click to go to the playlist (the first one just goes to the YouTube channel but the longer playthrough names will go to the playlist) and watch as many in a row as you want.

The first is a straight-up movie edited from the gameplay of RandomBlackGamer. It’s the shortest experience but there isn’t a lot of story to this game and you’ll miss a lot of the play. The second is a let’s play hosted and played by Sooo Mungry and is actually a playlist of videos. It is a longer experience but he said right at the outset that he wasn’t going after every Mini-Con. That’s why my experience of choice was the longest playlist. I wanted to see all the different Mini-Cons, although some are just recolors. Each color is its own team, and offers bonus abilities. There’s no host for this one, just the straight playthrough by Forever On The Road Of Playing. This player is hunting every Mini-Con and every unlockable “data-con” that just unlocks bonuses in the galleries. At the end I’ll put a poll so let me know which experience you went with. It will help me decide how to go with my own gameplay series.

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“Yesterday’s” Comic> The Army Of Dr. Moreau #1

“That tree could use some eyedrops.”

The Army Of Dr. Moreau #1

Monkeybrain Comics (2013–posted to comiXology on October 23rd)

WRITER: David F. Walker

ARTIST: Carl Sciacchitano

COLORIST: Sara Machajewski

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The Many MANY Intros Of Transformers: G1 Japan part 1

The Transformers as a series concept comes from Hasbro and Marvel comic creators in a joint venture that worked with the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero line. However the toys come from Japan, primarily licensed from various Takara lines. You can find that info rather easily but someone there liked the concept enough that they re-release those toys themselves as Transformers, or rather “Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers” because Japan like to make sentence length titles for stuff whenever possible. This also included bringing in the shows, already produced by Toei for Marvel Productions and Sunbow, to their TV screens. They aired all of our shows and when for whatever reason Hasbro opted to end the series Takara made their own shows, taking the Transformers concept in their own direction. I’ll get more into that in part 2.

For this part I’m focusing on the intros for the shows brought over from the US as well as two shows featuring the classic G1 characters in their designs. This will also give you a taste of the altered concepts since two of those shows are Japan original but feature the Autobots and Decepticons we all know and love. Except over there they changed the faction names to “Cybertron” and “Destron” respectively for some reason. The planet was thus named “Seibertron” (although some Japanese sources still call it Cybertron so who knows?) and all the Autobot and Decepticon related spin-off factions, as in Maximals, Predacons, and I believe the Vehicons used those names. I’m going to try to unconfuse that as much as I can but we’re only worried about Japan’s take on Autobots and Decepticons right now. This first set of intros focuses on the characters most of my readers know best, like Convoy, Rodimus Convoy, and Megatron. Look, I’m sticking with US names describing these shows just to avoid any more confusion than we’re already getting. Let’s just start the first intro.

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“Yesterday’s” Comic> Simpsons Super Spectacular #5

This is one fight Radioactive Man is staying out of.

Simpsons Super Spectacular #5

Bongo Comics (2007)

LETTERER: Karen Bates

EDITOR: Bill Morrison

Homer Simpson/Pieman: “Captain Cupcake And Pieboy”

WRITER: Mike W. Barr

PENCILER: James Lloyd

INKER: Andrew Peopoy

COLORIST: Rick Reese

Radioactive Man: “Mufelatto The Aliment Man”

WRITER/LAYOUTS: Batton Lash

ARTIST: Ramona Fradon

COLORIST: Robert Stanley

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BW’s Afternoon Article Link: Is Harley Quinn Taking Over The DCEU

By the time I shut down for the night I realized I hadn’t done a Morning Article Link or today’s comic review. My schedule got a bit goofed. When I’m done here I’ll get to work on the comic review. Tonight’s article is thankfully already done.

Birds Of Prey‘s marketing seems to be focused on Harley Quinn (with a recent movie poster not doing Huntress or the other heroes and villains any favors) and she’ll be in two more DC movies plus her own show on the DC Universe streaming service. It looks like Harley (or at least Margot Robbie’s interpretation, which is a whole other discussion given regular Harley’s toxic relationship with the Joker) is going to take over what should be ensemble movies featuring the Birds Of Prey, Suicide Squad, and Gotham Sirens in the theaters and it’s making one group wonder if maybe Harley is just going to take over as the new flagship of the DC movies. I wonder what that says for Superman (yes, I know what Bendis is up to…I’ll rant about it next week I’m sure) and Batman?