Good thing Fredrick Wertham missed this cover. He’d have a heart attack.
Keen Detective Funnies #18
Centaur Publishing (March, 1940)
I don’t get the numbering system, partly because these last two issues are missing the indicia page. Already the Golden Age did weird things with numbers thanks to stupid mailing rules and trying to game the system. Last time Comic Book Plus called it volume three but the cover said #17, and now this issue is #18. Also, last issue was kind of letdown, a trend I hope gets broken this issue.
Slight corrections: Street Frogs and Karate Kat weren’t science fiction. Both were part of the weekday syndicated anthology The Comic Strip. (CBS Storybreak was CBS’s answer to ABC’s Weekend Special, adapting kids books.) They may have been anthropomorphic characters, but neither was in a sci-fi world ala SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron. Street Frogs was otherwise in a contemporary setting while Karate Kat was something out of classic detective stories, only a detective agency fought the mob instead of the police. (Don’t even remember seeing cops.) Karate Kat and TigerSharks were the only ones I liked. Street Frogs and the unmentioned Camp Mini-Mon didn’t interest me. He should have gone with TigerSharks, the lone action show in the anthology that took cues from the similarly named ThunderCats and Silverhawks. (Rankin Bass was in a bit of a rut, methinks.) Samurai Pizza Cats was a redubbed anime, like Thunderbirds 2086.
Space Ace was also part of an anthology, CBS’s Saturday Supercade. Each episode featured a number of different video games adapted into cartoons as shorts. I thought it lasted two seasons, but I question some of his research. Biker Mice From Mars wasn’t even an 80s cartoon. It started in 1994, with ExoSquad coming a year earlier and Samurai Pizza Cats started 1990, which meant it at least aired in Japan in the 1980s. If he wanted dark, he should have gone with Spiral Zone. Funny he asked about Biker Mice versus Sectaurs, because now they’re in the same universe with Robo Force thanks to Nacelle. Also tossed in Wild West COW Boys of Moo Mesa somehow.
The only one on the list I never saw was Once Upon A Time: Space while you can see Sectaurs, Thunderbirds 2086, and a look at the intro for Starcom here at the Spotlight.
Yep, I’m still blocked. Not that it matters since he’s one of those creators who ran off to Bluesky the moment free speech included his political opposites. I don’t even know why he blocked me, unless it has something to do with someone I follow. I know he blocks everybody who follow Douglas Ernst. It’s okay, I returned the favor because of his reputation of payback. So unless he follows the site directly…
I guess older Jon needed a GPS to his home dimension.
…how did he steal one of my only somewhat joking ideas? Okay, I may not be the only one suggesting this compromise because that’s the only thing that makes sense. Option 3 is that we both thought alike and I’m not sure either of us like that option. I’m going with option 2. It is true, however. Young Jon Kent is back and older Jon is still here. Don’t believe me? Then you aren’t following current comics, either. I found out thanks to the following Shorts video (hence the aspect ratio for phones when her regular videos are the normal rotation) by Sasha Woods of Casually Comics. In Superman Unlimited #11, Young Jon is back without deaging old Jon. I have to talk about this.
I haven’t paid much attention to the MCU Spider-Man. Thanks to Sony being stupid, Spider-Man: Homecoming was a good movie but it didn’t feel like Spider-Man since so much of his world was changed. I think this is the point where Marvel Studios started thinking loyalty to the source material was unnecessary, and with Disney owning Marvel and kicking out the people who made sure fans saw their favorite characters properly portrayed on screen. So I pretty much ignored all the other sequels going forward.
Still, I have a deadline and I’m finally getting a filler buffer together, so I don’t want to use it until I have enough to make me happy. So let’s look at the new trailer.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day begins what I’m assuming is a new title trend of using “day” in the title as they must ran out of titles for “home”. (Homecoming, Far From Home, and No Way Home.) So instead they chose the worst name they could have. “Brand New Day” still has bad memories for Spider-Marriage fans. Maybe they should have workshopped Can’t Go Home? Hopefully they’re smart enough to not have the trend involve using old storyline names and aren’t planning to call the next one Clone Saga or Maximum Clonage. Seriously, Sony/Marvel, NO CLONES! EVER! At any rate, it’s not everyone forgetting Peter and Mary Jane’s wedding, as Peter and Michelle Jones (Temu MJ) were never married. After the events of No Way Home, Peter had Doctor Strange make everyone forget Peter Parker existed, leading to this movie.
BW Media Spotlight 