Chapter By Chapter: The Death And Life Of Superman ch. 21

Chapter by Chapter features me reading one chapter of the selected book at the time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as read-along book club.

We now have four Supermen: The Cyborg, The Kryptonian, Superdon’tcallmeboy, and Man Of Steel. Only one of them isn’t claiming to be Superman and none of them actually are. You’d think four new superheroes plus Supergirl and Bibbo would make this city even safer, but this is a comic story from the 1990s and nothing is ever that easy. It’s actually going to get a lot more dangerous before we’re through. Let’s see what the damage is this time!

We have the Kryptonian, with Superman’s memories, claiming his “Clark Kent” side is still dead. We have the Cyborg reading as Superman biologically and also claiming his memories but we saw him tapping into Hamilton’s machine. We have Superboy, who is an escaped clone with incomplete programming, and we have the one sane one in the bunch who is just a man in high-tech armor he built in the basement of an apartment complex. Not really the recipe for easy sleeping at night for the citizens of Metropolis. How can things get worse? We’re only three parts into this story and with 29 chapters in the whole book while we’re on 21, it’s most likely going to.

Chapter 21: Reign Of The Supermen part 3

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“Yesterday’s” Comic> JLA: Year One #1

They also have the power to be in color in a black-and-white photo.

JLA: Year One #1

DC Comics (January, 1998)

“Justice League Of America: Year One”

WRITERS: Mark Waid & Brian Augstyn

ARTIST: Barry Kitson

(although the comic lists the three together as “storytellers” and I had to find out which is which via a fan wiki–I thought only Kurt Busiek comics in this period pull that on me)

COLORIST: Pat Garrahy

SEPARATIONS: Heroic Age

LETTERER: Ken Lopez

EDITOR: Peter Tomasi

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BW’s Morning Article Link: Happy & Sad Star Trek News

In a morning article link I pointed to a story about an upcoming Star Trek anthology show (which may or may not be a response to negative fan reaction about Discovery) and that Patrick Stewart would be returning as Jean-Luc Picard for one of those stories. Now we have video of Stewart’s response and he seems to be really happy about it.

Contrast that to word that Nichelle Nichols, the former Lt. Uhura. Word came out that she may have dementia, a syndrome that hit my recently deceased grandfather. It’s a shame to see this happen to her, even though she doesn’t seem to have it as bad yet. Pray for her, folks.

Jake & Leon #374: Owl-lywood

Not since the days of Woodsy and that Tootsie Pop owl have they appeared in this many commercials.

I just realized that I could have really pushed the pun and called the strip “Hooray For Owllywood”, but it’s too late now. Has anyone else noticed these three ads featuring owls? Speaking of just realized, there’s one for some sleep aid too. Maybe it IS a conspiracy.

I really want to try to get that BW Panelling episode done. It’s edited but I’m having trouble saving it in a format I can upload without shrinking the video. There’s some setting I’m missing. I also want to get the Finally Watched in but at least I got a pilot review in last week. I also found my next Versus article, which should be interesting.

We’re now starting the ongoing DCU Batman Beyond tie-in comic as well as JLA: Year One, a miniseries telling a lost story of the first Justice League Of America. Everything else is continuing as it has been. But I hope you find something you like this week.

Saturday Night Showcase: Dinosaucers

Thanks to some technical difficulties the BW Panelling I planned is going to have to wait. Instead, we have this:

I checked my email last night and saw a promo for a new Dinosaucers comic, and the creator of the show appears to be the writer. But I’m not seeing the tone of the show in the tagline.

Reptilon has just found its sister planet— Earth —complete with water, fauna, and a billion pieces of MEAT.

I highlighted that last part, as if the bad guys of the show, the Tyrannos, are coming to eat us. It just sounds a bit more vicious than the original show. Now maybe that’s what Michael Uslan had wanted the show to be, a bit more dark and serious (although being a kids show in the 1980s probably not involving eating people), much as the creator of Miami Vice finally got his version when he made the movie. But since gritty remakes of the more fun shows of my childhood are the trend this is kind of odd to me. Especially after skimming an episode list to see Uslan had written some of the sillier plots, like the one about dino-Santa Claus or the time Plesio, the plesiosaur, fell in love with the Loch Ness Monster, or other episodes involving Earth culture and customs, often with the dinos misunderstanding how we humans work. Kind of like Fizzbin in my comic.

The original series is about evolved dinosaurs from the planet Reptilon, one of those planets on the opposite side of the sun from us some sci-fi likes to go with. For reasons unexplained members of the competing factions, the benevolent Dinosaucers and the evil Tyrannos, come to Earth and bring their battles here. The Dinosaucers are led by the kind Allo (an allosaurus) and the Tyrannos by the nasty Genghis Rex. The Dinosaucers, as shown in the intro, ally themselves with four humans who help keep their existence on Earth as secret as possible, giving them rings that can temporarily boost their strength and reflexes. The plots are generally silly. Tonight I’ve chosen one of the more relaxed plots by Uslan (who was also one of the producers and wrote or co-wrote numerous but not all the episodes)…and it still gets silly in execution. In episode 5, “Divide And Conquer”, the Tyrannos plant a fake news story as part of a plot to draw out Allo and his second-in-command, Bronto Thunder (the apatosaurus was originally called a brontosaurus, and he has a girlfriend named Patty Saurus–the dino puns run wild on this series). Enjoy!

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“Yesterday’s” Comic> Superman Adventures #36

That girl must have really ticked off the fashion police. What’s she wearing for a top, her scarf? She had a full shirt in the story. KID’S comic cover, guys! Yes, I’m old!

Superman Adventures #36

DC Comics (October, 1999)

“This Is A Job For Superman”

WRITER: Mark Millar

PENCILER: Aluir Amancio

INKER: Terry Austin

COLORIST: Marie Severin

SEPARATIONS: Zylonol

LETTERER: Phil Felix

ASSISTANT EDITOR: Frank Berrios

EDITOR: Mike McAvennie

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Star Trek: The Next Story Bible–Changes

Change is the only constant. Some people reject all change while others embrace all change. Both groups are idiots! Good changes are good. Bad changes are bad. But change is often necessary in some form.

Moving the Star Trek Universe to the next century allows them to play with new and fresh concepts, although if fan films have taught us anything it’s that new stories can be told with new crews but in the same universe. Granted, the first one I linked to is set in the future period, and the other two are variations of the same show, but I have surprisingly few examples in Saturday Night Showcase to show off. Tonight’s section of the story bible for season one of Star Trek: The Next Generation will be looking at what’s changes between the original and TNG, plus if space allows a summary of the crew. (There will be longer character profiles later in the bible.) Then we should be done with set-up. So let’s finish setting up already.

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