John Byrne’s New Vision of STAR TREK
STAR TREK journeys to its strangest new world yet: A Photoshopped comic book by John Byrne.
STAR TREK journeys to its strangest new world yet: A Photoshopped comic book by John Byrne.
Since the Live-action portion of this retrospective got so long (so much bad TV, so many boneheaded choices, so many heroes, so little budget!), I split off the animated section into a separate post, so here we are.
We talked about the history of superheroes on TV a couple of weeks ago, and got through the 1960s. Naturally we can’t leave off there, so here’s part 2, covering the ’70s and ’80s. After Batman ended, the networks moved on to other genres. There were a lot of westerns, WWII shows, sitcoms, cop shows, doctor shows, detective shows, and a handful of sci-fi shows, some of which were close enough to superheroes for me.
It’s Super Bowl Sunday but Travis is busy reading other people’s comics and watching that Melissa McCarthy sketch on SNL. Also, Lady Gaga!
We’re wrapping up Sherlock Holmes Month here at the Atomic Junk Shop, and since we started it with the fourth season of Sherlock, I thought it’d be appropriate to finish it with a look at an earlier attempt to create a Sherlock Holmes for the modern day: ZERO EFFECT.
Released 19 years ago on January 30th, 1998, ZERO EFFECT didn’t make much of a splash in theaters, but it developed a cult following on home video. Written and directed by Jake Kasdan, it stars Bill Pullman as quirky private investigator Daryl Zero and Ben Stiller as his beleaguered assistant, lawyer Steve Arlo.
Last week I wrote about Dick Gautier, and mentioned that one of his first major roles was on Mr. Terrific, CBS’ ill-fated attempt at grabbing some of the heat generated by ABC’s Batman. That got me to thinking about the fallout from Batmania. There were a few shows, specials, and most especially cartoon series that tried to get some bat-mojo going. I thought I’d dig up some of the ones I remember.
This week, I’m going to talk about the Watson Problem. But to get there, I have to talk about Sherlock Holmes first. (That’s the trouble with these two. You can’t talk about one without also talking about the other.)
I’m getting a bit tired of Asshole Sherlock Holmes. We’ve had variations on him for 30-40 years now, and it’s getting a bit stale.