Big Blue Arndt: October 2006 Archives

I have nothing more apropriate.

I dare you not to smile.

some would say "panda attack"

I will not.

I throw in my two cents here, because I can, on the South Park Steve Irwin thing. There's a couple of things.

British broadcasting watchdog Mediawatch condemned the episode as "grossly insensitive."

Its director, John Beyer, said: "I think this is in bad taste. Steve Irwin's family are still grieving."

"To lampoon somebody's death like that is unacceptable and so soon after the event is grossly insensitive. It is not what the family would want to see."

We'll approach this from the Logical Libertarian perspective, as opposed to a reflexive libertarian perspective, who cares if the family would want to see it, if "it" is something that the family in question is unlikely to see? Stating that the Pope offers fealty to a "Giant Queen Spider" isn't something that will offend the Pope if the Pope will never hear or see it. The Pope doesn't watch South Park, and if the Irwin Family is "still grieving", as if it's an active verb, then they probably won't watch South Park and I doubt they'd do it anyway. What are the odds that they would take break from grieving just long enough to get offended.

Second of all, "bad taste" in a South Park gag? Did he miss the "Cripple fight" with Timmy and Jimmy? What are minimal markers for standards and practices and taste and sensitivity for this program? I'm not criticizing the program, I'm advocating that people apply some common sense when handing out condemnations to invidual episodes.

Third, if Hutch is right about the Crocodile Hunter's earlier death on the program, then the stingray doesn't fit in with the South Park canon, and I only note that because the series is remarkably and geekily freakish about maintaining a certain amount of continuity, just so long as Kenny doesn't stay dead. The stingray would thus be an anachronism, much like the Justice League of America 'Times Past' stories or "Incarnations" stories that John Ostrander wrote, where Lex Luthor has a Kryptonite ring or the Atom stands at a six-foot height while wearing a full, visible costume.

Suddenly I just lost a lot of people. That is what you get when I write as I go along.

Fourth, let's try to take a complete look at how Irregular Webcomic handles the death, considering that that the maker has a continuing theme of "Steve and Terry" (as opposed to Steve and Terri) comics.

Honestly one would second-guess himself into insanity if he constantly and forever was concerned about implicit approval of total strangers.

Here's why!

Damn you, Goldberg!

Check out over on Comicon Pulse an interview with Chuck Dixon as he writes the Freddy Kreuger series, drawn by Kevin J. West and Bob Almond.

Now personally I've never found much attraction to the Nightmare on Elm Street movie series (or most of the franchise in any media) because I don't think that villains make very good driving forces (the main characters, as opposed to the motivating force for the main characters) for stories, let alone interesting stories, in general. That is, it is only with some exception do we find stuff where the Bad Guy can lead the story or stories and it's really good.

That really is why I don't watch much in the way of slasher movies because it ends up being super-villians without super-heroes. The first and best purpose of the antagonist in stories featuring a repeating hero, a serial protagonist, is to get his measure, stand as a counterpart, and make him interesting. The Flash, Batman, and Spider-Man all have great rogues' galleries. Superman stands mostly without a great rogues' gallery because the majority of his stories throughout a lot of his better decades don't involve face-offs with evil gods or brawls. On a similar track the Punisher never developed a good adversary because at the end of a good character arc the Punisher would kill him. Ironically Chuck Dixon solved this problem a few years after he was finished writing the character on a continuous basis.

More to the point a lot of a good story is an interesting conflict. Superman's vintage stories, as I said, didn't have a martial focus for the most part, which is how a character that powerful survives when his villains are mostly on the weak end. Hannibal suffered as the Anthony Hopkins character ran around making everyone look like chumps so there was no real satisfaction for anybody. The Terminator is a great movie because while the bad guy is seemingly invincible and nearly unstoppable, the non-titular protagonists are persistant, usually quite clever (except when neccessary to the plot) and the hero, Kyle, is passionate, self-sacrificing, interesting, man-pretty (for the ladies in the audience), and more importantly actually holds his own against an unbeatable foe while spewing narrative backstory. Terminator 2 has entirely different character arcs, but sets up a similar sort of battle where one character is clearly outmatched by his opponent but not so much that the presented fight is painfully one-sided. That's why I loved The Mummy and that's why most people with taste love the original Creature From the Black Lagoon. The men pursuing the Creature were tough, heroic, smart, and it's not unbelieveable that these guys prevailed.

In general stuff that is truly headlined by the bad guy doesn't work very well dramatically. I can probably name only twenty different series or stories, including movies, books and comic books. That number could probably get boosted to fifty I get some help, which is still a relatively small number concerning our genre interests. I'm not worried about that problem with Chuck Dixon writing Freddy. Even though the baddy must return every issue to fight again if there is anyone who can continuously come up with stories where darkness doesn't crush (or that the bad guy is suddenly whomped at the last minute) and the conflict itself is interesting, it's Chuck Dixon. He is known for writing action comic books, not cheap suspense stories.

Finally Finally Finally take a step in Game 1 towards a World Championship.

Screw bad Marvel cartoons.

Now we go with something we haven't seen in 22 years. The Tigers are in the World Series.

Now this is TV that matters!

The irony is, why must my favorite baseball team wait until I am across the country to strike BIG!?
While the rest of my brethren celebrate together I miss the comunal festitvities. How odd...

Sue me. Hilarity.

Family Circus cartoons, and phrases from Nietzsche's writings, all thrown into a randomizer.

Seriously: all hail the Shat. George Lucas should tribute him.

Nathaniel, shannon Ledene, Jacob Rubin!!, and NBarnes answered my pop quiz properly and correctly and in Mighty Marvel fashion they each get a No-Prize.

Mister Gillins got it wrong, and thus ironically he recieves just as much as the other guys. Mind you he was correct to have fun watching the movie. There have been movies where no one has a right to have fun watching the film. Can anyone provide examples of this besides Schindler's List and Hudson Hawk?

Where was I? Right. They got it first, they got it right, and I just gotta make a big deal about all of this.

Also: if the magic spell is that something cannot occur, physical strength cannot overcome that macguffin. Deux ex machina is all that can overcome that macguffin. Frankly, I wish that more cartoon adaptations of comic books too more and more nuances and details from the source material rather than simplifying the stuff as if viewers or fans of the source material are simpletons or children. Green Lantern's ring can't affect yellow and Martians are vulnerable to fire. Thor's hammer can't be lifted.

Little details can be fun and/or clever to work with or around. They also provide fun explanations for other little details. Why is Sinestro's ring yellow? Why does the Atom have a tiny chair that floats/hovers at eye level for all the other Justice Leaguers sitting at the meeting table? These are not pop quizes! Sinestro wants to kill Green Lanterns; Atom's costume is really tiny and turns invisible when stretched to Ray Palmer's full height. It really is a matter of taste, but the more tiny details you arm your story and setting with the more stuff you have to play with later.

I live you with the interactive section/question: what movies, in the vein of the really bad or the really solemn, are movies that you would declare it illegal or unseemly, socially unacceptable to have fun watching?

I am here to broadcast to the biggest audience that I can reach, and it unfortunately can't be as large as would be truly effective, to tell them that the design and styles in the brand new Fantastic Four cartoon series that just recently started is not an American anime-esque thing or really directly influenced by anime, nor is it anime, and you won't find an informed and educated person saying that it is anime or talking about it as if it was of anime.

It's French!

It's made in Europe, and designed in an animation style born from Europe. That animation style was probably developed from Japanese stuff, for all I know, but the origin of the style is old enough that the comparison isn't valid. It would only help the young to know that examples of this style in America includes The Magician (which was a program on Fox Kids every Saturday morning and produced by Gaumont) and the syndicated Highlander: the Animated Series (also produced by Gaumont).

More proof? There's a reference in the first episode to "'Smurfs'", which is at this point a program more notable in that continent that on this one.

I have more to say about the program, but the comments are curmdudgeonly so I am sure you do not want to read them yet.

Do you?

Until Hulk lifted Thor's hammer.

At least Giant Man got more respect here than he has in about ten years of comic books.

Quick Quiz: why shouldn't Hulk be able to life Thor's hammer?
Hint: It has nothing to do with how heavy the hammer, named Mjolnir, is.

I know the answer. You people go fetch.

Rom Russell and Alan Kistlerare disqualified.

The reason I want more of that stuff is because it was so different than George Lucas' prequel trilogy. In fact, when Obi-Wan is telling Luke about the old days you get the idea that the stuff in those cartoons is what he was talking about and the stuff in Lucas' live-action movies were a dream sequences that Emperor Palpatine had between the second and third movies.

I mean, the Clone Wars was referred to as an epic thing with a good and an evil when it was referred to in the first film, then according to the fifth and sixth films the Clone Wars was a gigantic farce, a smokescreen so Ian McDarmid could transform a corrupt and collapsing slow-moving, useless, ineffective, toothless, stupid, worthless Republic (a "democracy") into an Empire that could actually perform evil deeds openly, while simultaneously keeping peace amongst most planets and systems.

Not only was the main battle for two movies something that for the sake of being a plot wasn't something that actually mattered (because Evil Lord Sidious commanded both armies)... your main conflict isn't actually a conflict... what defunct English class did Lucas learn from? Every teacher in my high school would have failed his sorry keister. Mr. Zonyk would have destroyed this animal mother. He also would retroactively fail me for this post. Not only was the main conflict not an element of actual drama because the antagonist was the orchestrator of both armies, but the story's plotter couldn't show us a Republic that a sane viewer would see as worth saving. When we get to see the Republic it's already falling apart and the parts that are stable are the parts easy to use to scapegoat the leader and slam him, despite being one of the only innocent characters.

Essentially the prequel trilogy is crap for those and many other reasons.

The Clone Wars cartoons suffer from none of those problems.

Honestly, for all that Obi-Wan referred to Anakin Skywalker as a figure to be respected in the first movie, Anakin Skywalker is a child or a punk teenager for two movies, and an antagonist for the majority of the sixth movie. Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan's peer and buddy cop movie buddy, as well as general comrade, was seen by the viewers for thirty minutes. Then he gets seduced by evil, broods a lot, turns evil, and why do I care what happens to a character that appeared for thirty minutes? There's no big loss. We only get an Anakin I would ever like for thirty minutes out of three movies.

The cartoons? Out of two hours of cartoons, he spends an apropriate amount of time as Obi-Wan's partner.

Yes, I am asserting that I know more about plot, pacing, thematic elements, and all sorts of stuff relating to storytelling than that sixty-year-old millionaire. I assert that he forgot a bunch of stuff over a large period of time because manoman.... considering how the prequel trilogy was plotted between 1979 and 1984 in the dialogue of three movies, why go against that plotting with new ideas that go against logical workings for storytelling?

Forget it.

How many of guys have posted in the pas two or three days?

Shite, man!

And where is BatNeal?

How is BatNeal?

Stuff from that George Lucas cartoon article stood out to me.

So Lucas has Indiana Jones coming up the pipe?

"We're working on it. We haven't agreed on a script yet," Lucas said.

They've been "working on this" since I was in high school. They have been accepting and dropping scripts since before I went to college and after I went to college. I made a joke on Monitor Duty that Harrison Ford will die before a script is approved and at this point I gauruntee that Mr. Ford will be so old that the Indy character will be a CGI creation.

So about the cartoon's setting....

The series is set during the time when the Republic is fighting a civil war against separatists led by Count Dooku. The mythic period hasn't been dealt with too much in the popular "Star Wars" movies, so "it's a fun place to go," Lucas said.

Of course it hasn't been dealt with much! The prequel trilogy starts at a point when nothing fun or interesting was happening! If we only had three movies to immerse ourselves in this kind of stuff then why waste one of them on a time period where the most interesting bad guys are Thai hypercapitalists with a spindly robot army whose most interesting acts are reactions to a trade embargo by putting forth a blockade of a planet with no military.... I'm bored typing that.

oh, and in Episode I Darth Vader is cute. Awwwww.

By the time we get to Star Wars in the second Star Wars trilogy, we are at the second movie and really the Clone Wars start at the end of that movie and the Clone Wars wrap up more or less in the first and third acts of the final movie, with a lot of time left over to focus on children being slaughtered and then utter dialogue confusion by Lucas on which characters were speaking in absolutes and which weren't.

How little have we seen of the Clone Wars era?

The show is planned as a continuation of the Emmy-winning "Clone Wars" that aired in 25 episodes on the Cartoon Network from 2003 to 2005. That series used limited animation. The new version will use 3-D computer graphics.

25 animated shorts with lengths between three minutes and fifteen minutes each. We've spent about 100 minutes in the animated Clone Wars. There are two DVDs each with approximately one hour of content, and both are priced the same as a two hour plus Star Wars movie.

I think we can revisit the era without retreading much.

I'm not going to go into an explanation of the mechanics and definitions and virtues of wiki technology, especially as to its primary use as a reference database mechanism. Essentially it allows easy building and coding of webpages within an infrastructure and if I understand the terminology its a relatonal database. However, the coding is easy to use if you have learned it and gotten use to it and as far as I am concerned that is difficult. I also think Wikipedia is largely crap. Needless to say an encyclopedia that anyone can write is an authority that is anti-authoritative. Some wikis are totally public and some are public with a required registration.

Specifically there was databases/encyclopedias built by specific agencies for specific topics. I like those. Most of those are reliable. Not even noting levels of reliability, the following wiki-formed web references are deemed notable by me.

The list is subject to change.

Kids WB is still running. Kids WB has first run broadcast rights. There have been three episodes so far. The weblog Legion Abstract, which is dedicated to the Legion of Super-Heroes, mostly in comic book form, has actually reviewed all of the episodes of the cartoon series thus far.

Hutch has not been watching three weeks of children's cartoons on Saturday mornings.

Here is the review of the first episode, which is the premiere, bringing Superman (Superboy, Clark Kent) to the 31st Century and introduces us to the animated Legion and the animted Fatal Five; here is the review of the second episode which brings us Timber Wolf; the third episode is reviewed here and apparently it brings us Superboy making special friends.

I'll point out that I have seen the first ten or fifteen minutes of the first episode, and maybe that was only on youtube. I saw all of the second episode and only the last ten minutes of the most recent episode.

I do have some thoughts on it. I'll share them later. Maybe in late November after employment is terminated.

I give you a cure.

I make no promises.

Vote "YES" for Michigan proposal 2!

That's right. The United States government has is launching projectiles to the surface of the moon precisely for the purpose of damaging it, causing an explosion, and launching a field of debris massive enough to be seen from the planet Earth.

Some idiot (watch me burn another bridge) when assembling the music for the Fantastic Four movie soundtrack picked a lot of songs that aren't in the movie and left out some song that were!

Since I don't own a copy of the movie and Amazon and traditional databases lack the knowledge I want I have to ask you guys.

Everyone remember that part of the film where all the FF are getting acclimated and such in the Baxter Building and it was basically bonding? It was a montage set to music and the centerpiece of the whole thing was the wake-up prank with Johnny and Ben. What was that song, that music that the sequence was set to?

What was the song and who was the artist? Thank you.l

I very much identify with those fellows that drew this strip. Around and around and around we go.

If so, I cannot imagine that there is any reaction to it whatsoever.

We must not all make the same mistakes regarding the Teen Titans cartoon that I made with Sports Night.

Let it go, or suffer.

Also keep in mind that we at Monitor Duty actually get notified every time these comments zap in, so trust me, I can tell the volume of response. and the emotion.

While I am here, a handy postscript: I think DC Comics, Warner Bros, Cartoon Network, and the producers and creators of Justice League were immensely short sighted to cancel that animated program. That series literally had over 200 episodes worth of potential. That's 200 good episodes of 200 good stories.

He quickly review the lifespan of the classic, popular, and now-somewhat-well-remembered Mego toyline, the Micronauts.

Bill Mantlo is mentioned too.

I'm royally cheesed, frustrated, and have zero time to search the internet further.

I was looking for a decent-sized cover for a certain issue. Google provides none!

Good thing I remember comics.org. Batman: Gotham Kngihts #18

I don't have a copy of the issue.

Although, it would be nice to have a certain single panel from it...

1) Where the heck is BatNeal?

2) Hutch, if William Shatner is so dang easy, I want to see/hear yours!