“And when I’m done with you, I’m going after the Justice League.” “That was yesterday.”
Iron Man volume 3 #19
Marvel Comics (August, 1999)
“Machinery Of War” part 2: “Smart Weapons, Foolish Choices”
PLOT: Kurt Busiek & Roger Stern
WRITER: Roger Stern
PENCILER: Sean Chen
INKERS: Stucker & Cannon
COLORIST: Steve Oliff
LETTERING: Comicraft
EDITOR: Bobbie Chase
In our last group of chapters the bomb went off. I’m guessing we’ll be looking at the immediate aftermath in Seoul and finally see Op-Center. While we wait for the body count, let’s check the chapter versus page count for this week.
This also means we’re looking at numbers 9-11, which given how that day felt like something out of a Tom Clancy novel is almost appropriate. So three chapters this week. So I guess we’re NOT seeing Op-Center this time around. Given how short these chapters are I don’t feel as short-changed as I normally would be. Okay, let’s get on with it!
No, no, I’m reviewing the Iron Man comic tomorrow.
JLA: Year One #7
DC Comics (July, 1998)
“The American Way”
WRITERS: Mark Waid & Brian Augustyn
PENCILER: Barry Kitson
INKER: Michael Bair
COLORIST: Pat Garrahy
SEPARATIONS: Heroic Age
LETTERER: Ken Lopez
EDITOR: Peter Tomasi
Does this mean he also eats stars, Tanukis, flowers, cats….
I wish I could take credit for the art, but I can only take half-credit. Thanks to a time crunch I used official Mario and Luigi art as my roughs, but I did have to add original facial expressions and arm positions, plus I tried to make it as original as I could. So I still have one over Greg Land. 🙂 The point is still clear though. Not every character touching an item means he or she is eating it. Otherwise a lot of people eat first aid kits in shooter games.
Over at The Clutter Reports this week I helped my dad reduce our overload of Christmas decorations. Because you can have too much of a good thing.
This week in reviews we have more from Op-Center, an original IDW Transformers movieverse miniseries that I haven’t reviewed (I think I reviewed the others when they came out as BW was active by then) and I think that will be it from Cybertron unless I get more comics in the…no, wait, there are some collections I might review for Scanning My Collection once I’ve run out of DC’s Secret Files comics. So I have maybe four days to dig out the next franchise to review. I think I know what’s next, but I say nothing now. It would be nice to get another movie review in but we’ll see about that. We are nearing the end of the story bible for Star Trek: The Next Generation and we still have more terminology to get through before that’s completed. I also have a commentary in mind I hope to flesh out in time but we’ll see about that as well.
And of course Art Soundoff continues. So we’ve got something you might enjoy this week.
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 “It’s Just A Kids Show” Argument
I’m not here to talk about the quality of this or that show. If I mention something in passing it really doesn’t matter when it comes to this topic. And I’ve honestly seen a few variations of this argument used, from “show” to “comic” to “video game”. And it’s one that no matter how it’s being used is very dismissive of children’s entertainment. You know the one.
“It’s just a kids show/comic/video game.”
Whether it refers to an entire medium or a format (like animation) it’s an argument used in the past to limit a production but is now being used to fend off critics…possibly by people who either haven’t seen/read/played it or just likes it for whatever reason and will lay the smackdown on anyone who puts it down. For the sake of my fingers I’ll be sticking with “kids show” as a general reference but if I refer to comics and video games specifically, and I expect to, I will note the difference.
While this “argument” is also used to put very little effort in, thus doing a disservice to kids, saying it doesn’t have to appeal to adults because it’s for kids is also saying they don’t have to put in any effort to be good, which is basically the same insult. Compare cartoons for kids versus cartoons for adults (like Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim” lineup) and I would say kids shows put more effort into their product than their elder-targeting counterparts. Unless you’re importing from Japan adult toons are more often than not subversive comedies, while kids get action shows (except on Cartoon Network), comedies, and even shows we’d call “slice of life” in anime, from as far back as These Are The Days or Devlin (the latter I saw on reruns on USA’s old Cartoon Express block as a kid and really liked it) to something more recent like Hey Arnold. No, kids shows like My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic or the Netflix She-Ra & The Princesses Of Power don’t have to entertain adults, but the former does and the latter has plenty of detractors. Why is this the case?
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on November 27, 2018 in Television Spotlight and tagged commentary, Doctor Who, kids show, My Little Pony, She-Ra.
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