This is something new!
Keith is off on vacation, Jon’s sick and Scott’s cool so we’re unloading previously unheard Garbage Time content to cover our asses.
Thanks for listening everyone!
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Our intro song is a brand new jam cooked up by OKU-DA just for us, do yourself a favour and check out his SoundCloud).
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We’re kind of busy here! I had to encode this one at 64kb because we’re out of podcast hosting space. Whoops.
Hopefully the sound isn’t too tragic!
The bed music during our advertising is an old loop by Dan of Steel!
The bed music while we explain what the episode is about is Son of a Bit “Chased by a Running Chupacabra” used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Finally, the song we use in the intro is “Shiny Spaceship” by the 8-bit Ninjas. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
I wrote a little bit about gaming with my son last time around. It’s fun, and it’s shared fun with him. He gets a lot out of it, and because of that, I do as well. But this time, I want to talk about gaming around my son, and how that affects what and when I play.
I do most of my gaming on my phone now. Quick games are the most compatible with my life at this point, so lots of turn-based strategy, puzzle games, shooters or racing games. The shooters are strictly for when the kid is not around, as he is always insanely curious as to what’s going on on my phone and I don’t want him watching me shoot terrorists with high powered sniper rifles. Strategy games have lots of text and numbers, so he tends to get antsy if I play those around him, thinking perhaps I’m working too hard and should instead play “yell at the ceiling” instead.
Even on my small hand-held device, I have to be aware of what he’s seeing, so I try to play a few all-ages games in the event that he will slide up and sit on my lap to watch me play.
Our favourite over the last couple of months has been a racing game called “SUP Multiplayer Racing“. Keith called it a “hot wheels game” when he saw me playing it. That’s not too far off. It’s a 2-lane, 4 car PvP game with pretty simple controls, with all the bells and whistles that appeal to me in a car game; levelling up car parts and swank paint jobs. (If it played Snoop Dogg’s cover of ‘Riders on the Storm’, it’d be perfect, and if you get that reference, you’re perfect.)
The kid is obsessed with the game. He pressures me to progress, demanding my acquisition of new cars and lamenting any race I lose as both a titanic defeat and in critical judgement of my skills as a racer, nay, father.
I like it because I can play a few races on my coffee break, and if I do get a new paint job for my best car, I have someone I can then show it off to, without having to force the wife into pretending she’s excited. (A task she does not do well, mostly due to lack of effort on her part.)
The Dollaramas in the city just snuck a few hardcover comics into their book racks last week. I’ve raided what I could, but the stock wasn’t plentiful and as such, was gone pretty quickly.
Cheap comics always get me.
One of them I nabbed was “Batman Adventures: Masquerade in Red”. It was a delight to read, even if it was written for a younger audience. Styled after the Bruce Timm Animated series, the book looks great. Writer Dan Slott hit a great balance between comedy and action, never letting a good punch up be too far away. The opening pages with Dr Thompkins and Alfred were some of the best comics I’ve read in ages, and any book with the Phantasm in it already has me hooked.
I’m also excited as this book does skew younger that I will have some books for the boy to flip through should his attention ever turn towards the graphic novel.
–Scott is a writer and founder at 9to5. He’s a host on The 9to5 Entertainment System and does a lot of the graphic design around these parts.
So I’m a geek. I’ve always been a geek, and it’s a part of my identity and my persona. I was raised with comic books, cartoons and video games, and I love them to this day.
I am also a dad. My boy is four years old, and he’s into the things that boys are into these days; iPhone apps, Netflix Kids!, stomping on frozen over puddles and Hot Wheels. (God, I love Hot Wheels too. Oddly, I think I got really into them just as the kiddo did.)
I talked on the podcast a bit about sharing my geek hobbies with my kid, and that is a balance of sharing and dealing with rejection, but I also wanted to talk about being able to maintain a geek hobby while being a parent, and what gets sacrificed when you have a kid to take care of. The super short answer is time and money that would have been devoted to your hobby is what goes.
But the long (rambling) answer isn’t as clean cut as that, and I’d like to ruminate on that a bit.
As I type this, my kid is eating his supper while watching an episode of “Batman: Brave and the Bold”. It’s a great episode. Batman and Plastic-Man are battling Gorilla Grodd while also exploring Plas’ origins and reformation from petty crook to true hero. It’s campy, it has fun bright art, and good action. I’m a fan of the series.
Archer was not. But he is now.
The reason he is watching the show so intently now is that last month I bought a copy of the Brave and the Bold game for the Nintendo Wii, and it’s a side-scrolling, 2-player beat-em-up that the two of us play together. I don’t particularly enjoy platformers. I’ve never been great at them, but because the kiddo is super-into it, we’ve made it a special reward and we share the game experience together. He’s even confessed that he’s thinking about ways to beat the “bad guys” before falling asleep at night.
It’s full circle for me. When I was a kid, my grandfather gave me a box of comics from the 70’s which included a stack of Brave and the Bold issues. I read them down to the fibres. They hold such a feeling of nostalgia for me, a true piece of youthful innocence that I treasure. I still have these beat up books kicking around.
Those books fostered a love of comic books that I still hold to this day. My office is lined by three bookcases full of trade paperbacks, and my storage space is full of cases of single issues. Archer has shown next to no interest in any comic books, not even to try and mangle them.
He likes the idea of superheroes, but he’s not terribly into their source material. I don’t know what to make of it, but my books are out in the open in the event he ever wishes to flip through them.
All this is to say that I’ve had to adjust my hobbies to my new lifestyle. I don’t really have the chance to play countless hours of Counter:Strike or Final Fantasy anymore, but I do get “Batman” time with my kid, and that is great. A lot of my gaming has moved to my phone, where I can play in short bursts, picking it up when I have a few minutes to kill and then easily putting it down again. I read comics still, but often in the same way that I play games on the phone, a little here and there when the urge and opportunity present.
I’m thinking I’ll check in every now and then to talk about some of my geeky exploits and how they fit into this dad-life I be livin’.
–Scott is a writer and founder at 9to5. He’s a host on The 9to5 Entertainment System and does a lot of the graphic design around these parts.
Batman Beyond vs. Challenge of the Superfriends
Now, this is a real fight! Style against a complete lack of style. Kitch taking on glitz. The 70’s punching in out against the 90’s, but the 70’s isn’t allowed to punch, so it just sort of hugs it out!
Jason: Ok so first off this show isn’t that bad. But what I’m talking about is specifically “Challenge of the Super Friend”. There are 9 different versions of “Super Friends” running from 1973-1986! What we’re talking about is Challenge of the Super Friends 1978-1979.
The show is two segments: the first one is with the usual Bat, Superman, Wonder Woman and then the ridiculous Wonder Twins and their monkey. Yah, a monkey so kids can relate to it because cartoon characters aren’t enough by themselves they need a monkey. Ah the 70’s.
‘Cause everything is better with a monkey.
The second half featured Green Lantern and then a Samurai (named Samurai), Black Vulcan, and Apache Chief of the JLA fighting the Legion of Doom, so you’d have to wait (yeah that’s right kids we’d actually have to wait till the shitty part of the show was done till it got to the good stuff).
So this show has a couple of good points. JLA is cool because you get to see the DC team up and fight some pretty badass villains. This was really the first attempt I can think of to explain and expand the DC universe outside of the comic books. Which in case you’re living under a rock, is exactly what Marvel is doing right now with its live action stuff MCU. So it was ahead of its time in a way.
Ok, so that’s the good stuff. Notice it’s short ,right? So it’s the 70’s and the animation isn’t great compared to the 40 + years between then and now. It’s monster of the week with very little over-arching plot. But the show is about the “Characters” right? Yeah right. Batman in this is still essentially Adam-West-campy and literally uses “Bat-Lube” to escape Solomon Grundy at one point. Everyone else is either Freddy, Velma or Daphne while the fucking Monkey makes dumb-dumb noises, and the Wonder Twins turn into stupid things. I don’t know who decided that this show needs comic relief, or that it was more important for us to see Aquaman, Batman and Wonder Woman react to the twins bathing the monkey than to… say battling one of the villains or trying to save the world. Same writer who came up with that compelling “Bat-Lube” line no doubt
.
This show was very much a product of its time; slightly sexist, slightly racist, a little dumb. But it’s the first step and about as watchable as Fantastic Four ’78. Both these shows are time capsules of the era they were made in. This one just happens to be filled with polyester, mustaches and funky trumpets.
Scott: Challenge of the Superfriends has some real upsides that’ I’d like to touch on.
First off, the show had an amazing cast of villains in the Legion of Doom. If you go back and take a look at those 60’s and 70’s hero cartoons, you’ll see an awful lot of wonky, made for TV villains. Spider-Man versus the giant green cat. Flash fights the yellow aliens. Stuff like that. But here, we get Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Captain Cold, Gorilla Grodd, Cheetah, Solomon Grundy, Bizarro, Giganta, Toyman, Sinestro, Scarecrow, Black Manta and the Riddler.
Any piece of superhero entertainment is only as good as it’s villains. That’s why “The Avengers” was good (Loki), and “Age of Ultron” was bad (Sassy Robot).
Black Manta is a great villain for a cartoon. that voice? C’mon!
The Legion of Doom is exceptional as a foil for the Superfriends. They mean business, and they are always out to destroy the heroes and conquer the world. They have the coolest characters and they hang out in the coolest secret base this side of Cobra Commander. Solid gold.
Secondly, can you image how ballsy it must have been to introduce Samurai, Black Vulcan and Apache Chief on a kids cartoon? Stereotypes aside, they created an Asian, a Native-American and an African-American hero and just tossed them out there. That’s so progressive, it happens even before the actual Justice League of America comic book. Heck, even Giant-Size X-Men #1 was only 3 years out at that point (where they introduce the new globally-sourced team with Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Thunderbird, Banshee, and Wolverine on the team).
And yes, Samurai, Black Vulcan, and Apache Chief are far from perfect, but I still want to applaud the intent. They didn’t have to create these guys for a show like this, but they did.
Jason: Out of the 70′s and straight into the 90′s, where we dream of mid-21st century William Gibson cyberpunk style.
If you want to get into character for this one, go read Virtual Light. (Or alternatively, listen to the audio book as read by Perter Weller. Yeah that’s right, ROBOCOP!)
So this show is built on the road paved by Batman TAS, it has the same voices as Batman TAS. Notably Kevin Conroy, and Mark Hamill and really is a continuation of that show. That being said, it’s great. Starts off strong with lots of moral conflicts. Batman is really himself in this show, the kid he picks as his successor is rough around the edges but watching his character develop is great. The writing on this show is tight, and it actually creates more than it draws on the old Batman canon. The animation isn’t as slick as we’ve seen from some of the shows past the 2000 mark but considering this show is now 17 years old it’s pretty solid. The intro sequence is nice, blending cool computer stuff with classic animation. This show is a true successor to Batman TAS. More than just a dystopian ( that’s how they thought the future would be) laugh fest like Space 1999. This show catches the same vibe as Bladerunner, the future setting is just the setting, the story is the real highlight here. I think those of us who remember the 90′s will get a kick out of it and those who don’t won’t get the same nostalgia high but will still be able to enjoy the heart of the story.
As well, this show has a true beginning, middle, and end. After 3 seasons the true series finale had to be done on an episode of The Justice League Unlimited episode “Epilogue”, which neatly ties up all the great loose plot threads from the show.
Great show all around. This is one of the shows I point to when I start making my case that cartoons shifted in the last twenty or so years, to cater and grow with the audience from the 80′s as we age.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMXjtvMAFlI
Scott: Hunh.
You’re really hot for Batman Beyond.
Here’s the major downfall of the show for me: Who is Terry’s nemesis?
Hint: It’s not Joker, because he’s clearly still Bruce Wayne’s, as shown in “Return of the Joker”.
Batman Beyond, in direct opposition to Challenge of the Superfriends, has no great villains. The Jokerz? Derivative. Derek Powers? Electric Lex Luthor rip-off. Inque? Who?
I think it’s very telling that the best episode of Batman Beyond takes place in Justice League Unlimited with “Epilogue”.
Jason: True, no strong villain rises up to challenge the new Batman, while “Challenge” has a whole room full of them, (points for “Challenge”). But as a counterpoint, the protagonist isn’t clear in Super Friends either. If it’s based on screen time then it’s these asshats:
So Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman are playing second fiddle to a female version of Beast Boy and a dude who can turn into water (for which to wash his space monkey). Where does the dirt go Zan, when you’re washing the poop off your monkey? It goes in the water Zan, that means it’s in you!
I just can’t get behind that.
Burn in hell Gleek!
Scott: I will not have you disparage the Wonder Twins, Jay.
Gleek is annoying, I will grant you that. But the Wonder Twins are delightful imps, getting in and out of trouble in a stuffy, tight collared world.
Jason: Ok so take two hits of acid and form of a couch potato.
While I load up on Jolt cola and listen to Rollins band jabber on about a conspiracy theory. Wonder Twins and and weak bad guys aside, Batman Beyond is a clear winner here.
Scott: I’ll give it to BB, but it’s not clear. The edge is the one-two punch of Old Man Bruce Wayne and Ace, the Bat-hound.
The winner, by a silicon filament: Batman Beyond!
Jason’s Scores:
Challenge of the Superfriends
Animation quality: 3
Writing, 2
Voices, 2
Story: 2
Fun: 3
Nostalgia: 3
Innovation: 2
17/35
Batman Beyond
Animation quality: 3
Writing: 5
Voices: 3
Story: 4
Fun: 5
Nostalgia: 3
Innovation: 3
27/35
Batman Beyond advances, but stay tuned as next we pit “The Savage Dragon” against “WildC.A.T.s” in an all-Image throwdown!
I was in the supermarket, when I saw this:
Look at this box! It is sublime. It is textured, it’s a bit shiny, and if you close your eyes and run your finger down the front of the box, you can almost imagine that you’re Matt Damon. I cannot wait to try this stuff.
It looks alright. Little batarangs, how fun! But what’s that smell?
Did that box say chocolate strawberry flavour? Why? Why would they add strawberry? Batman doesn’t need anything more than chocolatey goodness. This “berry” flavour smells awful. Like a Flintstones vitamin. The box smelled better closed.
Tossing in some milk did not help, but it didn’t get worse.
Hrm.
It is… unlike other cereals. I really wanted it to taste like Count Chocula. It doesn’t.
Oh. Oh the chemical-berry aftertaste is really quite strong. That is not a good thing, as it pushes out all other flavours. And now it stings a little bit. This is not pleasant.
This stuff tastes like being orphaned.
So, I ate two bowls of this stuff, back to back. Do not do this. This cereal is not very good, once you open up the box. It looks great on the inside, but once you really get to it, it’s just kind of gross. I feel like Jennifer Garner.
It’s other Thursday and that means it’s time for the 9ES. On this week’s magical episode, Keith rambles on about the WWE alienating our comically minuscule audience, Jon tries to talk about serious stuff but isn’t prepared, and Scott’s levels are sort of too low. In short, business as usual at the 9ES. Questionable content: comparing Barak Obama to Drizzt Do’Urden. Hint: They both love the environment.
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The bed music during our advertising is an old loop by Dan of Steel!
The bed music while we explain what the episode is about is Son of a Bit “Chased by a Running Chupacabra” used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Finally, the song we use in the intro is “Shiny Spaceship” by the 8-bit Ninjas. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
Holy crap Batman! (Slightly relevant reference) I am going to be looking at two Loot Crates this week! Why? Well, because when I was gone they sent me the July Loot Crate (Heroes 2) and it got returned to sender, I subsequently got both July and August Loot Crates last week! So hurrah for me! The Batman reference up there is because both Heroes 2 and Villains 2 had Batman stuff. So there’s that.
Fortunately for me, both of these boxes were “big item” crates so that actual volume of stuff is on the small side (with less items but higher quality, something I’m always a fan of, more figures and collectibles, less stickers and whatnot). Let’s do this. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I was going to start this article by assuming that everyone knew what Underoos were, however, when I was talking to people in my entourage it seemed that their existence was not common knowledge. Somehow, I always knew what these things were, despite never owning them personally. I am pretty sure I wanted to own a pair though. I mean, it crossed superheros and Star Wars with the mighty power of underwear. Assuming childhood me had anything in common with grown up me, I definitely wanted these things under my regular clothes.
So, what are Underoos? Well, pretty simply they are a pair of underwear/panties with a little matching undershirt. What makes them special though is that they are themed to comic book and cartoon stars (and also Star Wars).
I’m pretty sure that the general idea here was to make kids feel like awesome superheros or whatever in their day-to-day lives, probably giving a secret confidence boost to a whole generation of nerdy kids. Real superheros wore their costumes under their normal clothes, right? You were no different. You could even be a private school kid wearing a school uniform, but underneath, you were the Goddamn Batman.
One of the things that gets me about the whole concept is in the slogan: “Underwear that’s Fun to Wear!” Does it strike anyone else as a little off that they were marketing “fun” underwear to children? If you make your child underwear too fun, aren’t you sort of encouraging children to show off their fun underwear? “Hey, look at me! I’m Wonder Woman!” You fucking put your clothes back on little girl! Maybe the 70s were a simpler time, a time where you could encourage children to wear fancy fun underwear and not expect them to just dance around and make everyone feel uncomfortable. Or, as evidenced by the commercials I’m about to share with you, maybe not. Maybe the late 70s and early 80s were just super fucking creepy and actively encouraged choreographed go-go dance routines for both boys and girls. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
It’s Thursday! Join Keith, Jon and Scott as they discuss Scott’s hatred of puppeteers, the Dark Knight Rises and what’s wrong with it (finally!), Daredevil Yellow and some bands that Scott doesn’t really recommend. He’s listening to stuff so you don’t. Also I think we talk a little about Jedi training. We cool that way.
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The song we use in the intro is “Shiny Spaceship” by the 8-bit Ninjas. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.
