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I didn’t realize he voiced Mighty Man, but I haven’t seen it in years, or that it was his first collab with Frank Welker. Both got to work together on Challenge Of The GoBots but I didn’t realize how often they played off each other. Cullen wasn’t just Mario, but the first person to give Nintendo’s mascot a voice, though not the one we all remember. Voltron had a small cast list, and I know he was also the voice of the commander of the ship that carried the Voltron Vehicle Team, the Explorer. All the live-action history was new to me. Peter Cullen was one of those voices that pretty much made up my childhood, and it’s sad to see him gone, though good to see how beloved he was for his work. Voice actors don’t get enough credit for their talent.
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Chapter By Chapter (usually) features me reading one chapter of the selected book at a 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 a read-along book club.
Our last chapter was rather short, but it had McCoy telling Spock what Theris and later Korsal found out about the plague. Spoiler-free version: Spock can’t go anywhere near it.
We’re somewhere around a quarter of the way through the book, maybe more, and I’m realizing that so far the Enterprise crew has barely been part of it. Most of the story has taken place on Nisus with original characters, and when we have been on Vulcan or the NCC-1701 we focused on Jorrah’s original characters, both from the previous novel and this one’s newcomers. If I were to make an early criticism that would be it. We have more of the usual crew involved in the early chapters of The Vulcan Academy Murders but even the characters from the previous novel have taken a backseat to the Ninus characters, notably from Korsal’s perspective.
The previous novel’s doctors are characters she’s familiar with, so I understand using them again, maybe showing Daniel and T’Mir’s first years of marriage (well, first weeks given the timeframe), but this feels more like a story set in the Star Wars universe and the classic timeline 23rd century period rather than a story with the usual crew. I’m not against that, but the three characters prominent on the cover have done little more than exposition. Even Kirk’s fight in the gym was part of introducing Sendet’s faction more than involving the story. I’m still enjoying the story personally. It was one of the first novels I got from Star Trek if not the first (it’s in better shape than my copy of Enterprise: The First Adventure) and I enjoyed it enough to get the earlier novel that you’re not supposed to need. From a personal critic perspective, however, I have to bring it up as a flaw in the book. Hopefully they’ll feature more as we continue, but this chapter is focused on Korsal and his son, Kevin. Let’s see what they’re up to.
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This is why I find novelizations interesting.
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Panel four is not some dramatic thing. Something got screwed up when I made it and I don’t have time to fix it.
Surprisingly that’s not tied to my stat issues. I don’t usually screw up that badly. And yet I’m clearly doing something wrong because my subscriber count and readership numbers don’t match up. There are time I wonder why people subscribe, either due to my own deflated ego or just confusion in my site stats. I’m also not pulling anything off of X-Twitter or Tumblr that my stats show, yet I get likes on Tumblr promotions and usually nothing on X. Why DO people follow me when they don’t appear to be interested in what I’m posting? Joining the strange stat issues the host has been having due to search engine “crawlers” and a glitch they fixed, and there are times I wonder if the site is worth it.
That’s my way of asking just why you guys follow the site? I’m curious where to put priorities.
One of the things taking my time this week and leading to a rushed comic (I still don’t know what happened to the background in panel 4), besides hoping a better comic topic would come along, is reorganizing my desk to include some necessary things and deal with the clutter that piled up. I talk about it in this week’s Clutter Report. Back here, we have the next Chapter By Chapter review of Star Trek: The IDIC Epidemic, the Golden Age comic review, and whatever else comes up. Hopefully people like it.
Have a great week, everyone!
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Black X’s chief is wondering about all the corpses in their cells.
Smash Comics #9
E.M. Arnold (April, 1940)
I’ve been making a proper list of comics to avoid and which to keep reading. This so far has been good reading so I can pop it up on my “read” list, which is nice. Anthologies means you never know what you’re going to get or if it will be worth it. Imagine buying the comics at the 2026 equivalent of $2.39…wait, given what comics go for right now that would still be better. Still, pretend you’re a kid because they still made comics for kids, or you just want something for the train ride home or the dentist waiting area. The Great Depression is over but the fallout hasn’t quite cleared out and now you’re in a war where everything is precious.
You want something that is going to give you enough entertainment, and serialized storytelling in comics are limited while shared universes are nonexistent. You want your anthology to be more good stories than bad or you just waisted perfectly good money that could have gone to something more important. Let’s see if it was worth it this issue as well.
BW Vs Literature Devil: Why Batman Needed To Save The Joker
It’s not easy to disagree with someone who you actually agree with most of the time. I do not live in an echo chamber and there has been the occasional BW Vs article where I displayed that disagreement–admittedly too many in a row, so I think I need to widen my discussion sources. Maybe I HAVE been in an echo chamber? I still enjoy and agree with them enough to use them in Daily Videos or Saturday Article Link, but sometimes I have a different perspective. “BW Vs.” has always been more of a counterpoint deal than attacking anyone no matter how much of their views I agree with or not.
This time the counterpoint goes to the Literature Devil, host of the Morning Nonsense podcast I listen to every weekday when I’m getting up. The screen name of the pen name S.A. Rivera (I don’t think he’s revealed his true name due to his place in the cultural discussion of storytelling and the internet being the internet–or maybe he’s just shy), LD has some great takes on storytelling, heroes, and their current state in the storytelling industry…namely that it’s all being poorly done by people who hate heroism and identify more with the villain, or want to change everything to fit their tastes and worldview because anything popular needs to be made for them, like the “cool kids” of high school. Or as we call them around here, the “everything for meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” crowd. The Hollywood mindset is very high school. Take it from a high school victim. You’ve seen some of his videos posted in the Daily Video, and there’s a few in the coffer I want to use in the future.
However, I have to disagree with something he said in his latest video, “When Is Batman’s Mercy Actually Unethical?”, released on Batman Day, when the Caped Crusader made his comic debut. Not the entire video. Just one particular point he made in the ye ol’ argument “should Batman kill the Joker”, or rather in this case “should Batman let the Joker die if he’s dying?”. LD makes the case that trying to save the Joker when he should have chased the killer and let Joker pay for his sins was the wrong move. I haven’t read the comic storyline myself, but I do believe this is the inciting incident for the Bat Family cutting ties with him recently. That’s a rant for another time if I ever do read the arc to have a better idea of what I’m talking about beyond “I hate this plot and I’m sick of the Loner Batman BS”. The problem is the particular scenario as LD presents it that I have problems with. I built this article out of my comment, and altered it with other responses I saw and extended thoughts.
Like with Ra’s Al Ghul in Batman Begins, did Batman make the right move or just the right move for him? Personally I think there are times when letting Joker die wouldn’t hurt Batman’s reputation, at least with me. This particular scenario, though, I think he made the right call.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 22, 2026 in DC Spotlight and tagged Batman (Bruce Wayne), Batman: Cacaphony, commentary, DC Comics, Joker, Literature Devil.
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