The lost episode of Pimp My Ride.
Solitaire #6
Malibu Comics/Ultraverse (May, 1994)
“A Chip Off The Block”
WRITER: Gerald Jones
LAYOUT: Jeff Johnson
PENCILERS: Stephen B. Jones
INKER: Barbara Kaalberg
COLORING: Keith Conroy & Foodhammer!
LETTERER: Susan Dorne
ASSISTANT EDITOR: Phil Crain
EDITOR: Hank Kanalz
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Personally, I rather liked “Scream Of The Shalka” and K9, though I still haven’t finished the latter. The backlog never ends.
And that miss was because I didn’t have time to make it.
The sad thing is this I was prepared for.
Over at The Clutter Reports this week I posted a video, but not as filler. I honestly wanted to take a look at how decluttering could possibly make you messier. The host makes some good points, but everybody’s journey is different.
Here at the Spotlight this week we continue the Chapter By Chapter review of the novelization of Doctor Who: The Rescue and see the rest of the Decepticon forces profiles for the second attempt at bringing Transformers to CBS’s Saturday morning lineup. Not sure what else is coming but hopefully it will be worth your stopping by. Have a great week, everyone!
Fighting boredom by moonlight. Making bad puns by daylight. Always making fun of a anime fight. They are the ones named Team Four Star.
Known for their fan favorite Dragon Ball Z Abridged and various spinoffs, Team Four Star are a group of anime fans who make fan based parodies of anime and even the original Final Fantasy VII. They’ve tried branching out into other projects, but DBZ specifically and anime in general are their bread and butter. They have even done official dubs outside of the Abridged format they popularized, though I’m not sure they created. Recently they tried their hand at the first Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon anime series.
Based on the manga by Naoko Takeuchi, Sailor Moon follows the adventures of Usagi Tsukino, a teenage girl who is destined to become the hero Sailor Moon, and her growing group of friends who become her allies, the Sailor Scouts. DIC did a very censored dub of the series, which got taken over and equally censored for US broadcast TV, and these would later air on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block, the former action block turned anime showcase. More recently a more faithful adaptation, complete with gay couples and a bit more violence (this is a manga/anime series for teen girls, after all) was released on home video and later streaming.
This is not that adaptation. Team Four Star released this in parts but just yesterday dropped a collected version of the abridge with some extra jokes in the credits. It follows the first anime, the first full story arc of the manga which ended with a reset before it was unreset because money probably. Note that there are swears, a gay couple not in the manga, blood where even the anime didn’t have it, a lot of puns, acknowledging some curious age difference romances, and more swearing. It’s still funny and not too graphic and they missed any jokes about the suit-up transformations, though not the miniskirts. If you’re okay with all that…enjoy.
If you think Diana of Themyscira doesn’t have her own rogues gallery, then you don’t know Wonder Woman. She has her own recurring enemies. They just rarely make it out of the comics. Cheetah and Ares tend to be the most known, while Giganta was at least on Superfriends and Justice League Unlimited with Circe, and Ares was in the good movie (and the good animated one), but there are others who could be tapped by show and movie creators. Bounding Into Comics contributor Billy Oduory lists a bunch that haven’t had a chance to shine.
(Yes, I know Egghead up there is a Batman villain from the 1960s series. I don’t have enough Wonder Woman fighting villains images, and none of them were her own.)
Too many parts.
So we already looked at the Autobots and last time we checked out the humans. Now it’s time to check in on the villains of our story, the Decepticons.
In the original draft the Decepticons were all dead, basically existing as orbs of energy that possess vehicles. Now they not only survived the war, they succeeded in conquering Earth, and by the time of the pitch have held it for five years. In the actual show, or rather the movie in that universe, the Decepticons would conquer Cybertron by 2005 while the Autobots had two moon bases and Earth. The show would focus on a handful of Decepticons as the villains instead of the entire toyline like we got in the show.
This section, continuing the computer printout style format, started with this information being classified unless you knew the password: freedom. We then get an introduction to the Decepticons from the computers that CBS didn’t think the robots needed.
AUTOBOT MILITARY DEFENSE FILES
SUBJECT: DECEPTICON OPERATIONS AND PERSONNEL
TIME FRAME: APROX- 1988
THE DECEPTICONS ARE AN EVIL RACE OF TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED ROBOTS. THEY CAME TO EARTH LOOKING FOR A NEW ENERGY SOURCE AND FOUND A MEANS TO CONQUER THE UNIVERSE. THE INNATE ABILITY OF A DECEPTICON ROBOT IS TO TRANSFORM FROM ITS BASIC ROBOT FORM TO THE FORM OF A “DECEPTIVE” MECHANICAL OBJECT: JET, TANK, BATTLESHIP, OR EVEN THE MORE MUNDANE FORMS OF A JUKE BOX, STEREO, OR COMPUTER.
The first Transformers battleship was actually an Autobot. The main line never gave us a jukebox or computer, and the stereo was a boom box Autobot. Jets and tanks were the only things both groups would have, getting their tanks at the same time, with the Decepticon getting a triple changer and the Autobot a “minicar” sized tank.
THE ABILITY TO MECHANICALLY TRANSFORM HAS A TWO-FOLD PURPOSE: FIRST IS DISGUISE, THUS GIVING COVER IN TIMES OF DANGER AND THE ABILITY TO SPY WITHOUT DETECTION; SECOND IS TRANSPORTATION. IN THEIR ROBOT FORM, DECEPTIONS CANNOT FLY, BUT HAVE ONLY THE POWER TO TAK£ LARGE LEAPS AS WOULD BE POSSIBLE WITH
THEIR SUPER-STRONG, NUCLEAR POWERED HYDRAULIC LEGS. BUT IN THE FORM OF A TRAIN OR JET OR SHIP, THEY CAN FLY, SPEED ACROSS THE GROUND, OR STREAK ACROSS THE SEAS.
And yet in the show both sides could fly in the pilot (it was Marvel) but in the series it’s a plot point that only the Decepticons could fly in robot mode without a jetpack. You’d think with the “seeker” toys having jets on their feet at least they could fly but I don’t know if they planned to redesign the characters besides Muffler. After a reminder that these files are top secret (despite being information about your enemy and not your ally), we start with the Decepticon leader, Negator. Everyone remembers Negator, cruel leader of the Decepticons, right?
Turned out “Cash” was the name of the tiger. It was not a good prize.
Thrilling Comics #1
Better Publications, Inc (February, 1940)
We’re getting near the end of this month of comics. March might actually start some time in March…if that makes sense to you. We have another new comic, and one I’m going into completely blind. This could be a mistake, it could be amazing, or somewhere in between. For the record, this is not the debut of either Doctor Strange you’re thinking of, though to make the connection stronger his real name is Thomas Hugo Strange. Is he the strange one or just the adventures he has? We’re about to find out and see who he’s sharing the comic with, and whether or not I’ll be checking out any further issues.
The Clutter Reports (my other site) Atop The Fourth Wall Crisis On Earth Prime Lean Into Artcast Bully Says “Comics Oughta Be Fun” Siskoid’s Blog of Geekery
Cartoon Hero’s Lair SF Debris Four Million Years Later
BW Media Spotlight 