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Maybe they need to call in a cleaning crew. Or an exterminator.
I made this comic because I thought I was going to be doing more dusting this week. Instead I just helped my dad and organized the BW Media Library a bit more. At least I had something for this week’s Clutter Report.
This week’s Art Soundoff entries are going to be a bit different. Because Friday is BW’s 10th anniversary! Yep, I actually worked on this site for 10 years this Friday and I’ll be talking about the site on Art Soundoff this week. There will also be the Friday anniversary post (Star Trek: The Next Story Bible will be posted on Thursday this week) going over my favorite articles of the past year. I wish I had something bigger planned but given the level of audience participation I’m not sure what I could do. I’m open to suggestions. We’ll also be starting Tom Clancy’s Op-Center on Chapter By Chapter this week. So I have much to do as usual. Let’s see how successful I am at it.
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A long time ago my old comic reviews looked at issues #7 & #8 of Antarctic Press’s Gigantor comic. While the previous issues were new stories these two were an adaptation of “The Struggle At The South Pole”, the first episode according to the dub order. Based on the manga, and adapted from the anime, Tetsujin 28-go, (or Iron Man #28, no connection to that Stark guy), the series follows the giant robot, his controller Jimmy Sparks, his creator Bob Brilliant, and their world government agent contact Inspector Blooper. Those are the English names by the way. In the far off year of 2000 Gigantor fights evil armies and giant robots. First the Eugenics Wars and now this. I really haven’t been paying as much attention to the news lately. What’s next, an alien spacefortress crashing on an unpopulated island?
The show gained popularity in the US under the Gigantor name and still maintains a level of popularity among giant robot and specifically the super robot arm for creating the anime genre and for bringing it to the West. Tonight I bring you one of the two versions who have hit the US. There are four in all but the last two have never been given the Gigantor makeover. In this episode the international police beg a 12-year-old kid to use his big robot to fight water cannons in the South Pole. See, you can make anything sound silly.
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Shoulder pads make a last-ditch attempt to survive the 90s.
Superman Adventures #39
DC Comics (January, 2000)
“Reunion”
WRITERS: Evan Dorkin & Sarah Dyer
PENCILER: Bret Blevins
INKER: Terry Austin
COLORIST: Lee Loughridge
LETTERER: Phil Felix
EDITOR: Mike McAvennie
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Science fiction is loaded with technobabble, that odd non-science that is supposed to sound like science. Technobabble isn’t just technology, or at least people don’t always use it exclusively for tech. It encompasses a lot of made-up science, to add a sense of believably (though not exactly realism because the “science” barely holds air) to the world. And for a franchise that has inspired so much actual science, Star Trek certain does a lot of technobabbling.
[12/10/2024: Pretty sure I used the infamous “multimodal reflection sorting” bit but the video I was using disappeared and I couldn’t find another version. So enjoy Reginald Barclay being Reginald Barclay.]
As we get closer to the end of the guide it’s time to start going over all the fake and questionable science as well as the general terminology of Star Trek: The Next Generation as of the start of season one, and how it connects to 24th century life. Since this is still going to need multiple articles and most of this stuff may not be all that interesting unless you’re really into Trek Tech, in which case you already probably know more about this than I do, I’m going to list everything but I’m going to go through most of it quickly, maybe a sentence or two so the really interesting pseudo-science can be explored. Let’s see how much confusion we can undo, if any of it.
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And you thought keeping your cat off the curtains was hard.
Robotech: Return To Macross #26
Academy Comics, Ltd (November, 1995)
“One Minute”
WRITER: Bill Spangler
ARTIST: Michelle Birchfield
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