Ink and Paint: Hypocrisy Is Magic

So I want to talk about MLP. I know, that way lies madness, especially since only the craziest parts of the fandom are online. Look, if I used that as my barometer, there'd be no blog, as the internet is Crazy Garden. But yeah, back to ponies.

To be precise, I'm talking about the Equestria Girls spin-off that's due to appear. By all indications, it's a movie that will naturally be accompanied by toys and not a series. At least not yet. Right now, it's a whopping 90 second preview. And those 90 seconds are all it took for whole swathes of the internet, including otherwise respectable creators, to declare it the worst thing ever, the most ugly thing ever, and the most sexist thing ever.

I think all of that is not only ridiculous but also incredibly hypocritical. First, let's address the worst thing ever charge. This is because of the perceived notion that the characters will be changed beyond recognition due to a change in appearance. The biggest selling point to me, the one that does lead me to recommend it, is that the characters are distinct, and so long as they stay fundamentally the same (i.e. Pinkie Pie is cheery & crazy, Rainbow Dash is a total ass, etc.), then what I feel is the basic core of the series & its greatest asset will be the same.  The second thing is in the eye of every beholder, and while some of it is questionable (doggy Spike just looks rough), my years of reading the Legion & X-books leads me to like anything that has a casually technicolor population.  But the one I really wanna address is that last one.

Smart people, including former creatives who worked on the series in the past, have decided that EQ is super sexist by virtue of the new humanoid designs.  This I flat-out don't get.  Like I said before, MLP has very varied personalities for its heroines, and so far that will remain the same according to the evidence.  I've heard the few who bother to explain it site the plot (which to be fair, doesn't seem too inspired outside of the beginning from the trailer), the appearance of a single guy who is nice to Twilight Sparkle & thus must be her love interest, the decision to set it in high school, and the prevalence of skirts in the outfits.  I can understand the first two complaints, but apparently I'm in the minority that still believes in "wait and see"; yeah, I'm as tired of forced romances & inexplicably popular bitchy girls as the next person, but this is MLP & there's probably more than meets the eye, since it is a world full of magic (and personally, I thought the guy looked like her brother).  But those last two?  First, since when is "high school" a girls' only domain?  Is Wolverine and the X-Men also terribly sexist for being about a high school, by that logic?  The mere setting is enough to have people writing it off now?  And second, I thought that judging a female's appearance/worth/tastes/perceived personality strictly through dress was more sexist than merely wearing a skirt.  In fact, isn't Rarity that whole lesson embodied, to not write off the traditionally "girly" as something bad like I've seen done here?

The hypocrisy is striking - what is okay and even praiseworthy when the characters are animals becomes awful & bad & regressive when attached to humanoid females.  It's the same Goddamned thing, just in a new shape that's closer to our own.  That even creators who wanted to improve things, who share the same goal of making girls' animation more than just pink-tinted preschool crap, are parroting complaints that run counter to their own past works is really disheartening.  For all that MLP wants to believe it has made things better for female characters, it has instead shown that those improvements are not allowed for anything other than pastel critters.  And not letting your heroines be human is more insulting than any tired popularity plot could ever be.

Archival #5: Mela Versus Marathon, the Epic Struggle

The best description of nostalgia I've ever heard (no idea where) is the sweetest poison you'll ever taste.  That's pretty accurate.  I was recently hit with a wave of nostalgia for the very hit-or-miss output of one French animation studio, Marathon.  First, there was the announcement of the horribly named but otherwise promising new series Lolirock, followed by a rumor making its way through the Toonzone forums that their flagship series Totally Spies is due to return to CN in the fall.  I would dismiss the latter but (a) it was confirmed by one of Marathon's main execs and (b) Jenn Hale's interview on Talkin' Toons confirmed that she was indeed recording new episodes sometime last year.  So that one may get a... fifth or sixth chance.  I lost count.

I won't pretend Marathon's works were fine art - in fact, they were anything but.  But they had a very appealing pseudo-anime aesthetic, and the general tone of their series even at their worst was breezy & fun.  It's when they became a little breezy, flying straight over to laziness, that their series suffered, and otherwise promising ideas wound up being torpedoed via what felt like a lack of care.  It's that track record (along with that damned name) that keeps me from being totally behind Lolirock.  Here is an Archival of three of my more babbly, maybe more critical reviews of three of Marathon's series.  As usual, look for these italicized additions for some hindsight.

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(Originally posted 8/1/2006 as "I'm not mad, I'm disappointed. Well, maybe a little mad."  Team Galaxy is the only series that can tie or even best the Ben 10 franchise for sheer volume of wasted potential.  Even Butch Hartman did a backdoor pilot for "high school in space" that was better than this, and that was with his reoccurring tropes.  So let's start with the TG rant.)

Congratulations, Marathon. You finally made a show I didn't like. Team Galaxy is the suck, if it's preview episode is any indicator.  (Team Galaxy was never picked up in the States but it did air in Canada.  The "preview episode" was someone posting it in chunks on YouTube.)  Here's why:

1.) The main characters are really dull/irritating. Josh, the main hero, is either dull or bizarrely spastic/immature. He's inconsistent. Brett, the kid, is extremely annoying; he's in the Danny Chase mode of 'super-smart kids who are complete braggards', and that's never funny. Finally, Yoko is the worst of the bunch. Let's see... she's The Girl, which is always disappointing; she's a 'sensitive artist', a trait she shows mostly by being very shallow, self-centered, air-headed, & Valley-ish; and finally, she's meant to be a voice of reason but comes off as naggy, because her earlier behavior doesn't suggest she's suitable for the role. So you have an uninteresting, one-third almost offensive, trio of leads.

2.) Dull plot that's been done lots of times before by other series/movies. A perfect new student arrives, but even though he's got amazing skills, he acts weird. Turns out he's the vanguard of an alien invasion! Oh, no! I think I've seen this plot a few times before without the school trappings. On MST3k. A serious step-down from TS's cracktacularity and Martin Mystery's surprisingly obscure sources (crystal skull, anyone?).  (Martin Mystery is probably my favorite Marathon series.  I don't care if the heroes pick at each other constantly, I don't care if it's an In-Name-Only adaptation, I don't care even if Martin's designated love interest was annoying & shrill as fuck.  It was just plain FUN, and I loved recognizing some of the more obscure references to the paranormal.  It appealed to the part of me that grew up watching Real Ghostbusters.)

3.) Bad, bad, BAD voice acting. I can make peace with the use of Canadian VAs. Some of them are very good (i.e. the Evo cast, many of which would turn up in MM). But you didn't cast any of the good ones for this. You didn't even get a decent voice director who'd make sound decisions. Brett & Yoko's voices make my ears bleed; they're both nasal, high-pitched, and needlessly raspy. The guys' voices (Josh, EvilAlienDude, other random normal-male students) are indistinguishable. The aliens' voices are all in that high-pitched-warbly-vocoded-and-thus-wacky mode. And do not get me started on the fighter pilot who's apparently a princess and is screaming about her ship about to crash while sounded like Scarlett O'Hara getting the vapors.  (Josh was voiced by Kirby "Flatten That Reading" Morrow, who I consider proof that a VA can somehow get by on good looks.  I've never liked his voice work, and knowing that you have Sam Vincent *right* *there* made it even worse.  But whoever did that alien princess earns points for ballsiness.)

4.) If you're gonna have aliens, please use them. Why does a school for space pilots with lots of aliens look just like every other goddamn school on Earth? Why do you have a wacky cowboy teacher? Why is the school run by a human? Why are so many of the fighter pilots apparently human? You have all these neat aliens, and when you aren't using them to display your mad voice-mixed skills or stupid one-off not-gags, you're using them as set pieces. This doesn't really feel like a school that services the whole galaxy. It feels like a high school with some weird exchange students.  (This was a huge sticking point to me, since Martin Mystery actually showed that Marathon could handle non-humans relatively well.  Again, even Hartman's backdoor pilot made good use of the aliens, even if it was to underline their basic personalities.  At least it was something.)

5.) Finally, YTV, enough with the Canada references. They're not funny. You forced them into your airings of Martin Mystery, which worked better in the stateside airings as an 'international' show and didn't lead us to think that Canada's full of ghosts, zombies, & aliens. And just because your bad guy freezes things doesn't mean he has to be from Canada. We get it, you're the Canadian CN. You don't need to hijack Marathon's shows to remind us. And Marathon, stop letting them do it.

Overall, I'm very disappointed. Marathon can do and has done better than this. This feels like something a network exec would devise, not a production company with an otherwise good track record of derivative-yet-fun series. You lost the fun while making Team Galaxy. This is just plain derivative.

Hell, I can do better than Team Galaxy. And you know what? I think I'll try.  (Yeah...  I'll get back to you on that one.)

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(Originally posted 4/14/2007, when it looked like Totally Spies had finally been totally cancelled.  No commentary, since it kind of explains itself.)

Yes, even though I thought Cartoon Network had removed it months ago, it turns out it was only just now cancelled. This is a mixed bag for me.

On the plus side for the series, the first two seasons were great. They were silly, fun, and knew how to work an everyplot. They convinced me that TRAJQ was a fluke and that Jenn Hale was a good VA. They were capable of subtle satire (quick, watch the first two seasons and see how many times Clover's fashion/dating/popularity schemes blow up in her face). They broke away from trends that I found annoying and had the girls answer to parents who weren't their clones. Finally, they had a more fun than anything rival in Mandy, who simply took everything Clover did or would do to a higher level.

On the minus side, the second season really planted the seeds of the series' downfall by having the typically braindead "dull as anything guy to fight over" subplot; David was a character whose sole personality trait was preachiness, and thinking it was a good idea to bring him back for the last season was a sign of just how much the writing staff had stopped caring. Then with the third season, all by Andrea Taylor & Jenn Hale were replaced by subpar Canadian VAs (not even the good ones they used in Martin Mystery) as a money-saving measure (the California VAs are part of the SAG and thus have to be paid union wages, while Canada's VAs don't have any unions; it's a lose-lose situation because the Californians don't get work, and the Canadians get slave wages). Then you had the rather implausible decision to put three minors in their own super-house just for the kewlness of it. Then Mandy became more and more of a full-fledged villain. Then the satire with Clover's behavior was lost. Then more douchy characters (including a very Sue-ish version of the already perilously close Brittany and especially super-trainer-with-no-personality Dean) were added to be admired. About the only good new addition was retro-obsessive villain Boogie Gus; I gotta respect a man who wants to bring back the 80s.

The final straw had to be the last 'big movie' style story, which I'm glad I didn't see. What little I've seen had Mandy & her two lackeys as out and out villains (eeevil spies), the girls' mothers redesigned as not only clones of their daughters but spies as well (one of the things I loved was that Sam's mother only looked a bit like her and had some pudge, but the series didn't want to maintain any of those subtle bits of realism by the end). And of course, the series' most over-used, ill-motivated villain, Tim Scam, was wheeled out yet again. I am so glad that CN buried it.

It was good, then it sucked, and then it died. Such is the way of nearly all TV shows.

Of course, I'd be remiss not to talk about the fandom. Not since the JQ fandom has there been such a crazy speciman. On one hand, you had the grown-up fans, who liked the show, warts & all - Matt, Xada, the MIA Mez, Devin, Theo. Yeah, there was a tendency for things to swing towards porn, but when you have a show that sneaks in all manner of weird fetishes, you come to expect that. On the other hand, you have what Matt nicknamed, quite aptly, the Junior Jesus Squad. They were younger fans, and almost all of them were Fundamentalists. Their leaders saw them as protecting both the JJS and the show from such horrors as homosexuality or acknowledging that Clover was pretty promiscuous. It's from them that most of my MSTing fodder the self-insert stories spring. I kind of distanced myself from both ends, mostly because I could see both going down the JQ path of divisive cliquishness. That, and talking about how much the show had started to suck was getting boring.

Really, between Team Galaxy's overall stupidity (and again, bad casting - who the hell thinks Kirby Morrow can act, anyway) and the fourth season's overall blandness, you could clearly see that Marathon had lost the touch that made early TS and Martin Mystery so much fun. Pity, really. Still, I had some fun times, met some fun people, and overall, I'll look back on TS with fondness.  (Crossing my fingers that the new season won't suck... now.  Probably won't help.)

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(Lastly, Originally posted 9/21/2008, when the spin-off Amazing Spiez!  was first announced.  This is just a reaction to the announcement.  Yes, I watched it when CN aired it for a hot minute, so I'll be putting some clarification in there.)

Seriously, what the hell happened to you? Totally Spies and Martin Mystery were watchable for only half of their runs, Team Galaxy was garbage, and you have a CGI cartoon that's so ugly I can't watch enough of it to form an opinion. You used to be cheesy, predictable but still entertaining fun, and somewhere along the line, you decided to coast. Like I've heard it said, when you coast, there's only one direction you can travel in before you finally crash.  (Guess who was cranky when she wrote this...)

So I receive word that you've decided to do a sequel/spin-off thingy to Totally Spies, and I'm thinking, "Okay, this could be decent. The spies' kids or students they train or something." It sounds salvageable, until I see...

This.  (Don't click that - the best I can do is good ol' Wikipedia for a description.  I can't find the original horrible sample picture, which is probably a smart move on Marathon's part.)

Let's ignore the fact that Marathon can't even get their owned properties right (WOOPH? As in "woof"?) and concentrate on the other stuff that bugs me:

- The 'z' pluralizer. Hasn't that trend died? Yeah, I know, Marathon's always been a little behind, but this has been long played out.

- Another "Two lines, no waiting" story set-up. They actually got progressively worse at doing these, rather than better. Don't ask me how that's possible.

- What the hell is wrong with the proportions of the girl in the picture? Her head's bigger than her torso - width & length! Yikes!  (Again, this is from the sample picture.  Once the show started, she looked much more in proportion.)

- Here's the biggie. We go from a series very much centered on a butt-kicking team of stereotypical but still competent girls to a typical "bunch of guys and token destined-to-be-bitchy-or-useless chick" set-up. I've got some choice words about that.  (The sister, Megan, really did kind of fit the description.  She did that "girl = activist" thing that Lisa Simpson hath wrought, which kind of makes me twitchy.  But to be fair, she wasn't as bad as I expected.)

Now, my disgust with this recent trend towards marginalizing the female team members in the Legion cartoon is well documented, and seeing that it's actually part of a larger not-just-one-company trend is just nauseating. Apparently, it's okay for girls to have to force themselves to identify with a male character, but it's anathema to have boys relate to one of those scary boobie creatures. Is there a fear that having a favorite female character and being male will somehow make your son turn out gay, thus making this some sort of stealth homophobia? Or is it good old-fashioned Marketing moronics?

And you just know that the girl will either be (a) useless damsel in distress, (b) obnoxiously bossy & nasty to try and pass her off as mature, or (c) a horrible mixture of both. This is one of the things that kept me from enjoying "Ben 10" - Gwen was the only girl and swung between these two extremes; once they made her likable & capable in "Alien Force", I was able to go back and watch it again, knowing that it's just a phase before she reaches awesomeness. But most shows don't give you this opportunity. As far as we know, the team girl will always be useless & snippy, and that's all she can ever become.

As much as I hate "Kim Possible", the show proved that boys would watch a show with a female headliner, so I don't know why we're actually going backwards as far as an audience acknowledging that female characters can be, well, characters.  (And until that actually starts to improve again and not just with pastel horsies, I will keep harping on it.)

I hope Marathon will at least make a publicly viewable trailer of some sort, to see if it will really be as bad as it seems. But, y'know, that might mean making an effort to reach someone besides YTV's buyers (who seem to buy everything Marathon makes). I'll honestly be shocked if a Stateside station picks this one up. They have that CGI thing on Toon Disney, but you never know with them anymore. With Team Galaxy and everything that's followed, they shot their reputation in the knees.  (In the end, Amazing Spiez! wasn't on par with early TS, but it was enjoyable enough.  Each of the kids had a distinct personality that was never rendered null & void for the sake of the plot, and while they never really did anything with it, I liked the notion of a skeevy rival agency for the spies' bosses.  Still, it was very off-the-peg, and the notion of the Clark family's parents both being spies when they were younger made it feel a little bit too much like a Spy Kids variation when it was brought up.  If it came back, I couldn't be mad but I would be surprised.  It was just kind of... there.  Here's hoping Marathon's efforts in the future can avoid that fate, since in a way, being forgettable is worse than being so bad that people will seek it out to laugh.  One can always hope, I suppose.)

Nerdstalgia: Muppets... Again? Only After the Season 4 DVDs, Please

I love the Muppets.  Ever since I was a spoiled child whose parents got cheap HBO and got to see the Down at Fraggle Rock behind-the-scenes special, Jim Henson has been one of my heroes.  As I get older, I appreciate his creations more & more not just out of nostalgia but out of an ability to see more than just silly felt & foam creatures doing silly things.  So it pains me to admit that, well, as much as I love the Muppets, I didn't really enjoy The Muppets.  And I kind of dread The Muppets... Again! to a degree.

Any movie that requires you to watch the deleted scenes for the basic plot & character beats to make sense is a movie that has failed.  There were three key flaws to it: Its main thematic driving element was an appeal to nostalgia without anything to really back up the feeling presented, it focused too much on a new creation at the expense of the existing well-loved characters, and it focused too much on the roles played by the human guest stars.  There's a fourth one, but that's larger than any movie can possibly address.

Let's start with the simpler problems.  The Muppets was built around assumed audience nostalgia for the original Muppet series & movies, but it did nothing effective to remind viewers of what gave them that nostalgic feeling; the humor wasn't as sharp or even in focus enough to evoke that feeling again.  Worse, there was nothing to explain to viewers unfamiliar with the Muppets why someone might be nostalgic for them in the first place, so it effectively alienated the audience through an appeal to nostalgia with nothing but nostalgia to back it up.  Second complaint is Walter, a wholly uninteresting character - boring design, boring personality, boring gimmick, boring spotlight song.  The lion's share of the movie focused on him, making him what TV Tropes used to call The Wesley - a character their creator loves & dotes on at the expense of the rest of the previously-established cast.  If he is given less time, I don't think anyone except Jason Siegel would mind.  And speaking of Mr. Siegel, there's the third complaint - for a Muppet movie, it felt like an inordinant amount of time was focused on him & Amy Adams as well, mostly because they were the "real" stars.  They felt like a waste of time, and the other guest stars' role, especially compared to the 80s movies, were total wastes as well.  It felt like a Muppet movie made by a committee that had only seen maybe two or three clips from The Muppet Show on Youtube in their entire lives, not one made by people who actually cared about reviving the brand.

But like I said, there was a bigger problem and that is this: The Muppets, as a brand & concept, are too sincere enough for the modern era.  I'm as big a sarcastic asshole as the next guy, but there seems to be a vibe that anyone who doesn't hold that as their default reaction is being naïve at best.  The Muppets - and honestly, most of Jim Henson's work - is all about sincerity & optimism & seeing the good in the world.  I don't think you could show a general audience The Muppet Movie without them being incredibly dismissive of its personally very touching positivity.  I'm sure many people who got the DVDs before Disney abandoned them were rolling their eyes at the classic "Turn the World Around" segment instead of taking in its message.  We're a very cynical, snide, pessimistic world now, and I just don't think that Muppets as a concept are capable of being accepted as anything but objects of oddly-placed nostalgia except for those of us that are life-long fans.

So because I don't think it'll play any better than its predecessor, I can't really get excited about The Muppets... Again!  It feels like a Ricky Gervais movie with a side of Kermit, not an actual Muppet movie, in each & every description I've encountered.  But this is a bitter world, and bitterness is the antithesis of everything that drove Jim Henson's body of work.  Optimism, friendship, silliness, & openness aren't easily welcomed anymore unless they're attached to a political movement, not to silly felt & foam creatures.  I'd rather see the Muppets confined to the safe zone of nostalgia than dragged kicking & screaming & throwing penguins into today's general tone.  It has its place, and those that do it can frequently do it very well, but that place just doesn't include the Muppets.  And for that reason, I feel like a bad fan for being more worried than excited by their continuing revival.

(Unrelated-but-not: I'm putting this out here.  I cry every time I hear "The Rainbow Connection"... with the sole exception of its reprise in The Muppets because it felt so forced.  It's a song I love so much I want it sung at my funeral.  Let's hope they don't try to shoehorn it in again.)

Omnicommentary #5: Designated Fight Time,Yo

For those familiar with my Twitter feed, I said these would be back next month.  Well, I'm home sick with a particularly weird thing, so I might as well do something halfway practical with my time.  Behold - the return of the Omnicommentaries!

Legionnaires #5: New Life, New Death!

Creative Team: Tom & Mary Bierbaum (writers); Chris Sprouse (artist); Karl Story (inker); Pat Brosseau (letterer); Tom McCraw (colorist); August 1993

Legion Roll Call: Andromeda; Apparition; Catspaw; Computo; Cosmic Boy; Ferro; Matter-Eater Lad; Shrinking Violet; and Ultra Boy.

Miscellaneous Notes: I have nowhere else to put this, but it's worth a mention.  Mile High Comics is opening another Mega-Store, now in Anaheim!  Rob Liefeld is appearing in person on June 25th, but that's not important.  No, what is important is that Jim Shooter is appearing on the 26th.  So let's travel back in time and see if we can convince him not to take the run on the Threeboot together, everyone.

Summary: McCauley sends "his" Fatal Five to take over New Earth's capital and give him control; however, the Legionnaires are there on a diplomatic visit, so they're ready to stop the Five.  Unfortunately, Ingria (McCauley's arm candy & acting Emerald Empress) freaks out, scared of actual combat.  Thanks to her own Eye, Cera sees this and dismisses Ingria as an "insult" to the title of Emerald Empress.  After a bit, Ingria panics & bails, leaving the rest to take the chairperson hostage and hold the Legionnaires at bay.  Ingria returns to McCauley, who blows off her pleas for love & comfort.  Unfortunately, Cera shows up and incinerates her, ready to claim both Eyes for herself.

Continuity Notes: I honestly have no idea where Tharok was that he managed to miss the Earth first being conquered by the Dominators, then invaded by the Khunds, and then blown up.  Either way, he's now mostly under McCauley's control, although an adrenaline rush allows him to gain brief moments of independence.
McCauley is openly using the Fatal Five to stir up unrest so he can gain political power & take over New Earth (of course!).  He doesn't care what happens to them or anyone else in the process, so he's mostly an off-the-peg bad guy.  Most interesting is his germophobia, which escalates with him so afraid of contamination that his paranoia makes him immune to a Charma lookalike's advances.

We Get Letters: Nearly all of the letters join me in expressing sympathy for Cera Kesh.  One of the replies says that Live Wire is learning from his bad behavior, but mark my words, you never actually see it in the book itself.  Oh, and the coming attraction list has LoSH Annual #4, the "Bloodlines" tie-in.  Come and meet Jamm, a totally radical skater dude who has nebulous mind control powers he uses mostly to make the female Legionnaires disrobe.  Y'see, cuz he's totally funny!  Sigh...  I guess Hitman really was the only good one, even if I personally dug Anima.

I Love the 90s: Back cover ad?  MORTAL KOMBAT!  Home systems, September '93.  Hope you had a Genesis.

DC Commercial Break: There's a truly hideous cover ad for JLI's "Bloodlines" tie-in.  The new guy looks like he stole Judge Dredd's armor & dyed it purple-black.  Big Ben's tower is apparently free-standing in the middle of a lightly wooded field.  Ralph Dibny, the DCU's resident attention whore, suddenly has a mask, and the less said about Power Girl's costume, the better.  This... isn't an effective ad.
The company news page is extra weird this month.  The text gets progressively smaller, the pipeline has a list of parody titles, and the outside frame has random observances.  Here's one - "Can we not have any more 'Unplugged' concerts by people who need to be plugged?"  So it wasn't just me?  Huh.

Commentary: Finally, an issue free of Live Wire's douchebaggery and Saturn Girl's OOC Lifetime-y-ness.  Most of the issue is a huge fight designed to showcase both the Legionnaires and the Fatal Five; it does so quite well, ending on a logical & interesting cliffhanger.
Cera crosses the line in this issue when she kills Ingria; it's unclear how much is her own will and how much is the Eye's, though, which is intentional.  Her string of Code-approved insults directed at Ingria suggests it may have been mutual.  After all, seeing a rent-a-diva horn in on the gig that gave your life new meaning has to smart a big.  (BTW, my favorite insult from Cera's tirade is "Utter poultry!"  What does that even mean?)
I can't help but feel sorry for Ingria.  You get the sense that she was told that this would be a big, fun lark, and she's get to play around & wear fun clothes (including a clean, sharp costume design) & travel.  But her freak-out is so bad that even the Persuader feels the need to step back and console her.  By the time McCauley tells her he never loved her, her death almost feels like a mercy kill.  Had Ingria lived, she'd no doubt be completely broken.
All in all, it's a good issue.  While fight heavy, it's done in such a way that it doesn't feel lazy, and the cliffhangers for the tandem final showdowns are suitably effective.  As for next issue?  Prepare for the most awesome thing ever, courtesy of Mr. Tenzil Kem.

Terrible TV Time #3: Late Night Zombies

So apparently NBC is yet again trying to reinvigorate their late night shows by swapping out Leno on The Tonight Show again. Mark my words, even with a good lead-in, this will play out just like the Leno/Conan switch did. And I don't think Jimmy Fallon has the cult following that Coco does to go with him if he too is forced to leave. In fact, if he does badly, NBC may be forced to give real thought to canceling The Tonight Show altogether. It won't be Fallon's fault, though -it will be the fault of a zombie TV genre.

I am actually hard-pressed to find people my age who think the traditional monologue-music-and-guests late night format isn't tedious. I'm not the only one who DVRs Conan to breeze through the interviews or bands I don't care about, and the same goes for Craig Ferguson's show (who I personally find most interesting when he just decides to "get real" with his viewers). The big two late night shows are either nonentities (Leno's corny, shmoozy Tonight Show) or sad reminders of earlier innovation (sleepwalking Letterman). And no one particularly likes Jimmy Kimmel. This is a bit of a generalization, but among my fellow TV/pop culture nerds, that's the consensus.

So who is the audience? Late night may be the last TV venue aimed at the over fifties. Baby Boomers seemed to be the eagerest to both embrace Leno & bury Conan, giving me yet another reason to hate them. But that market hates change, hates innovation, hates anything that might force them to acknowledge that media has changed since Carson's heyday. So late night stagnates, providing them their last safe place to doze off to every night.

NBC will probably never cancel The Tonight Show, since it's too much of an institution; same with CBS and The Late Show. But the day will come someday in my lifetime when they will be forced to do something different with them than just what worked in the past. Without a strong host (the strongest on network is probably Letterman, but even he feels tired), this genre just comes off as somehow more padded than a reality "results" show. Whether it morphs into a whole new creature under the same name as its old audience dies away or is just canned for reruns remains to be seen. But this may be the first true step in seeing a zombie genre laid to rest.

Ink and Paint: Magical Maidens

Two posts in as many days?  Yeah, I know, Satan's probably looking for the blankets right now.  But thanks to the very smart & insightful Jeff Harris on Twitter, I have another rambling train of thought to address:

"Speaking of that new Sailor Moon series, when are we going to see anything from it? A sketch, a publicity shot, anything? I know more about Ladybug than the new Sailor Moon, and they've been working on that for a couple of years." - Jeff "Nemalki" Harris

Once he said that, I realized he was right - I haven't heard anything about Toei's new Sailor Moon series since last year.  Usually, about now, you'd at least see ads or a one-minute preview making the rounds; after all, the series is supposed to air in May of this year.  Yet, Toei's been pretty silent.  But I have a theory.

Y'see, Toei is one of the biggest backers of a new international streaming service that's due to roll out called Daisuki.  I wouldn't be surprised if, when they finally make the service public, they're holding the new Sailor Moon back as a marquee debut for Daisuki.  It's an internationally known franchise, so what better show to use to promote your new site than subbed legal streaming of a much-anticipated revival?  Of course, since the details on Daisuki are still rather basic, that's just me wishing & hoping at this stage.

The other series addressed, Ladybug, has a whole different set of issues.  The awesome preview vid for this Toei/Zagtoon international show has been making the rounds and has many people (myself included) pretty psyched to see the end product.  What I'm doubtful about is ever seeing it legally in this country.  The best I can hope for is a quickie dub that airs at 3AM on Nicktoons because this country is so hostile to the notion of a female-headlined series unless it has a vocal, somewhat obnoxious male following.  (And let's hope we never have 48 conventions for "Ladybros" or something.)  But again - Toei co-owns Ladybug, Toei is part of Daisuki.  Daisuki is my best hope of seeing Ladybug legally & subtitled as well as new Sailor Moon.

And since we're talking Toei and magical girls, I'd be remiss if I skipped mentioning Precure.  What I've seen of the latest season, as well as finally seeing both Fresh & Heartcatch before the Youtuber's account was nerfed, makes me desperately want to see more.  I'd love if the series as a whole - and not just the subtitled Hawaiian air version of the very first series - appeared on Daisuki.  Yeah, it would probably overpopulate the fandom, but again, it would also show that "magical girl" is not synonymous with "bad romance & dull action" a la the one example available on TV right now.

I guess the end result of all this is that I hope Daisuki isn't a load of hot air.  That Daisuki is a success and offers more than icky moe stuff or stuff that's already more than readily available.  It is the best hope of seeing a wider variety of magical girl offerings just because of the players involved.  And if Daisuki is the reason the new Sailor Moon has been hidden from previews, I am okay with that.  I am keeping my fingers crossed that maybe - just maaaaybe - I'm not totally wrong this time.

Ink and Paint: On CN, Amethyst, and Action Comedy

There's a lot of stuff I want to write about: resuming the Omnicommentaries, some X-Nonsense stuff including an epic takedown of my personal least favorite X-run, and God knows what else.  But for now, I wanna do something immediate.

I wanna talk about the Amethyst shorts that became the only thing worth watching most mornings on DC Nation (lone exception being the Thunder & Lightning shorts).

These shorts were perfect - they told a set story, they managed to have likable characters with realistic growth, they made excellent use of their game theme, and they had an ending that doesn't preclude visiting this world again.  The designs were lovely, the writing sharp, the acting as well.  I watched each one and wished it was a series so I could see more of Amethyst & her world.

But then I remembered this was Cartoon Network we're talking about and got mad again.

Unless I hear that (a) this will have a sequel or (b) some of the other shorts will continue or show up, I am pretty much done with DC Nation.  The shorts were literally the only things I liked, and even then, they spent more energy hyping the painfully puntastic "Farm League" shorts than the ones with actual skill & care in them.  The shorts series that actually were funny, like the Plastic Man & Animal Man ones, have been reruns only.  The other ongoing story, "The Sword of the Atom", has vanished mid-plot (although I might have been one of maybe five people who liked it & its old-school adventure vibe).  The one main series I sort-of like is ending, and the two replacing it... well, here's some thoughts.

I might give Beware the Batman a shot, but overall it looks sort of bland.  And while the "Teen Titans Go!" shorts were frequently very funny & clever (I have a lot of nerd love for the Mad Mod one), they appear to have outsourced the animation to a kid just learning how to do Flash instead of whatever more fluid & professional studio the shorts used.  It looks dreadful.  I haven't heard about any new shorts except for that "Farm League" crap, nor has anything said for short series that were previewed a while back (like that "Doom Patrol" one).  I know CN doesn't really like action shows anymore, and that they've made it clear that DC Nation was foisted on them by the Home Office & wasn't something they wanted to air, but if that's the case, just cancel it instead of letting it deteriorate.

The fundamental problem with DC Nation and CN in general is that whoever is in charge right now cannot fathom the concept of "action comedy".  Action comedies work for Nick (TMNT, Power Rangers) and the Hub (Aquabats), and they fill a niche that isn't terribly well served.  Their attempts to appease action fans are either stuff they're contractually obliged to air (like the newest Pokemon series) or stuff they're trying to mutate away from being action-y at all (looking at you again, Ben 10, and your sad slow decline).  They fail to realize that you can have an action comedy that doesn't skew too hard toward either end & can be satisfyingly in the middle.

CN is trying to farm some of their old concepts like PPG for revivals, but that one has me worried - no one from the original has been tapped to come back & I have a feeling it'll skew too hard towards dumb comedy as a result.  They take new, viable stuff like Amethyst and let it slide off the pier.  They brag about being "Number One Network for Boys 6-11!!!" while their competitors happily snatch up every market by having more variety and rewarding quality instead of nerfing it.  They squander their licenses and back catalog, letting their newest competitor instead buy them & use them to get higher & higher ratings.  Outside of their cult comedies, I don't hear people talk happily about CN that much anymore.

Cartoon Network decided to celebrate their tenth birthday by being worse & worse.  DC Nation was just the latest victim, and I'm sure that their decline will pull down the revivals as well.  It depresses me endlessly to see a channel & name that once stood for unlimited possibility & appreciation  of all aspects of a genre - from 70s SatAm to 40s shorts to modern action to anime - shoot itself repeatedly and proudly in the head and not make any attempt to stop.  They have their one single gender, five-year-niche audience (which the suits probably further narrow down by race, even though they'd never say so publically - that is how demographics in TV are done, sadly), and even though that audience will want more sooner than they think, they're fine with that.  And that will hurt them, sooner than they think.  But sadly, they'll never realize it.