A monster is messing with the Christmas trees and only Touh the elf can become Captain Yuletide and save the day. Just try telling that to his overprotective sister, Missy. Can even two Captains Yuletide and Bryce The Green-Nosed Reindeer handle…”The Treemendous Menace”? Download this year’s Captain Yuletide #5 (in easy to open PDF format) and find out.
With Captain Yuletide coming out tomorrow I thought I’d show one more Christmas special from the new Christmas special playlist on my YouTube channel. A Muppet Family Christmas brought together the three big Muppet TV shows as of Christmas 1987–The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and Fraggle Rock–into a Christmas special. It’s the only time Kermit has worked with the Fraggles and I think the first time he worked with Muppets of both shows outside of Big Bird’s cameo in The Muppet Movie. The special aired on ABC, and this is before they were bought by Disney, who also owns the rights to the Muppet Show Muppets. (The Sesame Street Muppets are owned by Sesame Workshop, still known as the Children’s Television Workshop at the time, and the Fraggle Rock Muppets I believe are still owned by the Jim Henson Company.)
The special finds Fozzie inviting the Muppets from the theater and Sesame Street to his mother’s farm for Christmas, not knowing that she was planning to go away for Christmas and rented the farm for Doc and Sprocket, who were looking for a quiet Christmas. Also there’s a hole to Fraggle Rock in the farm for some reason. (Fun fact: Doc and Sprocket are different in other countries, so their scenes would be more familiar to the kids in those countries, so if this aired internationally they were probably confused.) There are some good stories in there and the usual Muppet hilarity. There’s also a video with the Muppet versions of the Muppet Babies. Enjoy.
Since August (with an intro in July) I’ve been taking a detailed look at the story bible for Star Trek: The Next Generation season one. The final draft is available online, but a later season draft is up on the official Roddenberry website if you want to check that out. The story bible reviews I’ve done so far are about comparing the original intentions to what actually appeared on-screen. It’s what I did with Batman: The Animated Bible and it’s what I did here. This is what I find fascinating going into these old story bibles for canceled shows and if I get to review another one that’s also what I’ll be looking to do. And if anyone knows a good one in my wheelhouse let me know and I’ll see if I can make something of it.
This last article is a wrap-up of my thoughts. If you want to go into more detail, feel free to check out the rest of the series. I’m going to summarize how I thought the Writer’s Guide did versus what we saw on-screen in that first season. Shows and characters evolve as a series continues on but how did it start off?
So how did Vertigo, DC’s edgy sci-fi imprint, decide to celebrate the Christmas season? By taking the religious icon tied to that season and make him look pathetic. Second Coming is an upcoming title, announced in December, that imagines God sending Jesus back to Earth to learn how to be a better messiah with Superman analog called Sun-Man. The fact that Jesus, the Son of God who was sent to Earth as one of us to teach us on a level we could understand and take the weight of sin upon himself to break the barrier between sinner and salvation with his death and resurrection, needs a not-Superman to teach him anything is already bordering on blasphemous right at concept. Of course we can assume they aren’t stopping there as you read the solicit:
Witness the return of Jesus Christ, as He is sent on a most holy mission by God to learn what it takes to be the true messiah of mankind by becoming roommates with the world’s favorite savior: the all-powerful super hero Sun-Man, the Last Son of Krispex! But when Christ returns to Earth, he’s shocked to discover what has become of his gospel—and now, he aims to set the record straight.
It should be noted that the writer of this story is Mark Russell, an atheist who wrote a book trying to tell Christians what their own Holy Book says, and it seems like he’s going to go through that again. To put this in perspective let’s look at the opinion of another non-Christian, Mim Headroom, and see what the problem is with this on a conceptual level. Note that he’s more willing to be vulgar than the BW norm but it does go into a bit of hypocrisy about this title versus other religions. Then read the thoughts of an actual Christian as I set up my thoughts.
I may have chosen the wrong book to read this close to Christmas. One day out and we’re back to talking about a bombing. A fictional one thankfully, but it’s still an odd topic on December 26th. Happy Boxing Day I guess.
Frankly, our heroes are not getting the best showing. Op-Center’s director is going to be distracted by his son and one of its investigators has to deal with his wife’s death right in front of him. They are not going to be at their most effective and this is the first time we’ve seen them, but at least the latter is a problem that I can get behind for the sake of the story and the former is still a bad thing he has to deal with. Meanwhile, one of his subordinates thinks he’s sexually repressed, another wants to relive him of that despite him being a happily married man, and his second-in-command just decided to go off to play war hero, leaving a younger and more experienced solider in the tight unit behind just as someone seems to want to restart the Korean War (and not to bring M*A*S*H* back) and the still new Op-Center is 50/50 in results of previous missions, meaning the future of the whole operation is in serious jeopardy. I wouldn’t want to be in Hood’s place for anything.
Why only two chapters this week? Well, look at the page count:
Meanwhile, chapters 22 and 23 are kind of the reverse; a short chapter followed by a normal-length chapter. That means the best way to review these next four chapters is in two articles. This book is really weird with how it lays out chapters. So let’s see what happens in this section.
As you can tell there’s no Jake & Leon this week. My drawing time has been focused on Captain Yuletide and I’m still going to miss the deadline. Also I don’t think anyone will be reading on the 24th and 25th (Christmas Eve and Christmas Day) so no articles those two days. I won’t be doing the daily comic reviews this week, but I will try to get a few Morning Article Links in. the Chapter By Chapter review of Tom Clancy’s Op-Center will happen Wednesday, with the final thoughts on the story bible for Star Trek: The Next Generation on Friday as usual. I’ll probably post a filler video for Thursday. Next week we’ll resume regular content and hopefully by then Captain Yuletide #5 will be done.
For the rest I point you to the v-log I posted earlier this morning about what else I have planned. Have a merry Christmas or enjoy December 25th or whatever is it you do that day.
What I forgot to mention is that one YouTube goal is to finish adding closed captions to previous BW videos. As of this description Challenge of The GoBots and The Little Drummer Boy have been captioned as test runs of the various methods I have available, but i want the whole library captioned by…let’s say April.
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
