He-Man and the forces of good fight Skeletor for the freedom of Eternia! Cannon Films presents … MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE! This time around, I’m going to take a look at the 1987 live-action adaptation of the popular toy line, Masters of the Universe, which starred Dolph Lundgern as He-Man, Frank Langella as Skeletor, and Courteney Cox as Julie. I’ll give my review as well as my history with the entire Masters of the Universe franchise. Plus, listener feedback!
Note: I have a new Apple Podcasts feed and am on Spotify! Just search for Pop Culture Affidavit!
Ramona Quimby, Age 8. The paperback edition from the 1980s. That Dell Books border was a mainstay for kids’ paperbacks. Image from Amazon.
I have had so many discussions with Stella about the literature we read in our formative yearrs. While I realize that pointing out the difference in ages (she’s nine years younger than I am) is a running joke, it applies here because what was “Young Adult” literature was different for eachof us. I am sure that there was some overlap of titles we’d find on the Scholastic Book Club flyer, but I also can say that YA lit was at the beginning of its boom years when she was in middle and high school and barely existed when I was a tween (in fact, the word “tween” didn’t exist when I was a tween).
I realize that’s a bit of an exaggeration. There certainly were books aimed at a middle or junior high school audience, but the great ones were few and far between and I found my refuge in Star Trek, Star Wars, and Robotech novels as well as more adult works by Stephen King. But I didn’t get there right away because while I am sure that my fandom for a franchise like Star Wars would definitely motivate me to read at least one novel, something before all of that made me want to read.
Looking back, I always had books in my home. My parents had a good stack of novels and when I was little, I owned a ton of Golden Books and Curious George books. I can’t remember when I graduated from those to works that were more complicated, but I want to say that it probably started sometime in the first grade. I have done an entry about the McGraw-Hill readers and also have a memory of grabbing these Reader’s Digest collections in the back of Mrs. Hickman’s room and reading through them one by one. I cannot tell you what any of them were about, of course, but I did understand them, and by the time I was in the second grade, I (and a number of my friends) had children’s novels and textbooks to read or read to us.
But that, of course, is probably the case for so many of us, and there has to be some specific books that I can set apart from the rest as truly formative. And of course, I have a list.
My generation’s weekends always began with The Smurfs.
Or maybe it was The Snorks? The Shirt Tales? The Super Friends?
No matter what the show was, we all share a common memory of sitting in our parents’ TV room every Saturday morning watching cartoons. I’m not sure when this particular tradition started–children’s programming had been part of Saturday morning television since Captain Kangaroo and The Howdy Doody Show in the 1950s–and I knew that it died out in the Nineties and 2000s as cable networks started becoming the place to go for endless hours of cartoons. But Generation X can lay a significant claim to sitting ont he floor in your PJs–possibly while eating some sugary cereal–and watching nearly four hours of cartoons. I mean, they’re such a part of our childhood that we remember even the more random ones that didn’t have a toy line, like Camp Candy or Kidd Video.
But when I think about my Saturday mornings, the often began a little earlier that 8:00. Sometimes by a couple of hours.
Maybe it’s just me because I have never been able to sleep in on Saturdays (well, with the exception of when I was in high school and college), so for much of my childhood, I would be up way before the ffirst cartoon started and because nobody else was awake, I had to fend for myself. Sometimes, that meant making myself breakfast or cleaning my room (for some strange reason I remember emptying out my dresser, folding all my clothes, and then putting everything back). Sometimes, I played with my toys. Very often, though, there was television.
Look at Wikipedia’s listings for daytime television int eh 1980s, and pre-cartoon Saturday mornings are listed as “local programming.” I didn’t have the luxury of cable as a kid, so I made do with seven channels: the three networks, WNEW (which would become WYNW, the Fox affiliate), WWOR 9, WPIX 11, and PBS (WNET 13). WPIX was usually the best bet for early morning cartoons because they’d run shows that had falled out of their afternoon lineups, so you’d catch Voltron or later seasons of Transformers a couple of years after they’d faded away. On the networks, though, the programming was completely random.
The Crimson Avenger’s first cover appearance was Detective Comics #22.
#JSApril has been a blast, and if you’ve been following long, you’ve heard people talk about 85 years’ worth of comics, including my own episode about the Justice Society’s battles against the villain Extant. I hadn’t scheduled anything else for this month, but then I fell down a Crimson Avenger rabbit hole.
Now, if you want to be pedantic about it, The Crimson Avenger was technically a member of The Seven Soldiers of ictory and I believe showed up in All-Star Squadron (but don’t quote me on that), but I figure that makes him a JSA-er once remoed or something. What’s most important is that he was DC Comics’ first masked hero. Debuting in Detective Comics #20, he predates Batman by roughtly half a year (although he is not the first super hero because thats still Superman, who debuted a few months prior). And he’s not the most original character, either, borrowing a concept from The Green Hornet and a costume from The Shadow.
By the way, I’m saying that more or les to get it out of the way because I don’t feel to harp on it.
Anyway, I came by the hero via Secret Origins and then the four-issue miniseries that spun out of that Secret Origins issue, both of which were written by Roy Thomas. THese were both part of Thomas’ post-Crisi efforts to make sure that the Golden Age heroes had a firm place in DC continuity and their stories could continue to be told. In fact, many of the first year or so of issues featured Golden Age characters, something I believe that was back-door piloted in the last couple of issues of All-Star Squadron.
It’s JSApril! All this month, comics podcasts and blogs are celebrating the original super-hero team, the Justice Society of America. For this episode, I’ll be talking about one of the JSA’s darkest hours, their battle with Extant in Zero Hour, followed by their re-match/redemption in “The Hunt for Extant”. I’ll also talk about Extant’s origins and the Impulse One-Shot “Bart Saves the Universe.”
For more JSApril content, look for #JSApril on social media or check out JSApril: Celebrating 85 Years of the JSA at the Fire and Water Podcast Network.
Note: I have a new Apple Podcasts feed and am on Spotify! Just search for Pop Culture Affidavit!
And for more JSApril, look for #JSApril on social media and check out this list of all of the contributors to JSApril, and thanks to The Fire and Water Podcast Network for putting all of this together!
I’m not one for countdown list, but since the NES was released in the U.S. 40 years ago and because it wwould become the hot thing for several years and ubiquitous in our lives by the end of the decade, I have been thinking about what my favorite games were. But come on, I’ve already blogged about Bases Loaded and Ice Hockey and do you really need to see me gush about The Legend of Zelda, saying things that have already been said a million times?
The flap to the Deluxe Set box, which my wife still owns.
Besides, not everyone got the marquee games all the times and there were always those random games that we loved even if they weren’t top tier. I got my NES–the Action Set with the gray zapper that I received for my 11th birthday–I got a few games with it aside from the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt cartridge (which I played all the time). Some of them were marquee games like Zelda, but there were others that people bought for me because they might have looked interesting (or maybe I did ask for them). What I always found cool ws that Ninetndo did publish its own line of games and they all had different categories. My wife still has her old Nintendo–she had the Deluxe Set with R.O.B.–and one of the box flaps had info that detailed all of the games series that Nintendo offered. In case you want to know, they were:
Action (Balloon Fight, Clu Clu Land, Ice Climber, Kung Fu, Pinball, Super Mario Bros. Urban Champion)
Adventure (Kid Icarus, Metroid)
Arcade Classics (Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong 3, DonkeyKong Jr., Mario Bros., Popeye)
Programmable Series (Excitebike, Mach Rider, Wrecking Crew)
Robot Series (Gyromite, Stack Up)
Sports Series (10-Yard Fight, Baseball, Golf, Ice Hockey, Pro Wrestling, R.C. Pro-Am, Rad Racer, Slalom, Soccer, Tennis, Volleyball)
Now, I am not sure if this list is comprehensive (and I’m pretty sure there was a poster with all the games listed that was included with the NES but it wasn’t in the box). I also didn’t play all of these games and even among the ones I played, I didn’t own all of them. But one of the great things about the NES and your friends all having it was that you were always borrowing one another’s game cartridges, and by the end of the 1980s, you could rent them from the video store. So I got a lot of exposure to some of the more random games, and I thought I would do a rundown of my favorite Nintendo-produced games from the early, pre-Zelda NES days. I’ve got eight altogether and I’m going to count them down.
If you’ve been listening to my show, you’ve been hearing ads for an exciting crossover event: JSApril! During this entire month, a huge number of comic book and pop culture blogs and podcasts will be doing their part to celebrate the original super-hero team, The Justice Society of America. The JSA made its debut in 1940 and all of these blogs and shows are going to be bringing coverage from throughout that entire 85-year history. My contribution, which will cover the JSA fighting against Extant in both Zero Hour: Crisis in Time and “The Hunt for Extant” in the Geoff Johns JSA comic book series, will come out around April 21.
In the meantime, check out this list of all of the contributors to JSApril, and thanks to The Fire and Water Podcast Network for putting all of this together!
Return with me to a galaxy far, far away! My occasional miniseries “Following the Force” is back with a look at Attack of the Clones! In this episode, I’m going to cover four novels that take place between the first two prequels and then look at the film itself along with its comic book adaptation and novelization. Plus, listener feedback!
Note: I have a new Apple Podcasts feed and am on Spotify! Just search for Pop Culture Affidavit!
It’s become an annual tradition at this point to spend my first episode of the year talking about The Uncollecting, which is my effort to downsize my geek stuff. This time around, I’m joined by Relatively Geeky’s own Professor Alan to talk about various aspects of “uncollecting”, from the economics to the personal.
Note: I have a new Apple Podcasts feed and am on Spotify! Just search for Pop Culture Affidavit!
When Brett was little–and I mean preschool-aged–they used to think that seasonal graphics on the weather report were the most hilarious things ever. The winter forecast had a snowman. Thanksgiving had a turkey. And Christmas, of couse, had a tree.
It doesn’t take much to keep a four-year-old entertained, but it made me think of when I was younger and I used to look for the same thing when I was watching the local news. I wasn’t a news junkie or anything when I was in elementary school, but for some reason I came to know who all of the personalities were, especially the sports and weather guys.
The other thing I always loved seeing were the holiday bumpers. If I happened to be watching television on Thanksgiving Day, there would be a “Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at channel 5” message at some point during a commercial break. The same could be said for Christmas and New Year’s. It got to the point where I was such a dork that I looked forward to seeing them every year.
I haven’t been watching television on the holidays in recent years, although I do see them from time to time. So, in the spirit of the season, I thought I’d look at a few that I found on YouTube. They’re all from the New York area, which is where I grew up.
The first is from WNBC 4 in 1977. Obviously, I never saw this when it aired because it’s from the year I was born. But in itself, it’s an interesting relic of television past–the quick bumper for a show that will be on later in the week. There are still some iterations of this around, but they usually have to do with local news shows and not locally programmed specials. I guess it’s also a fun fact to point out that up until I think about the mid-1990s, the Rockefeller Center Tree lighting was a half-hour show that wasn’t cheaply produced per se, but didn’t have the “network special” aspect it does these days. Plus, the feel of this–a still and a muffled narration due to 1977 television quality–has the feel of staying up past your bedtime.
Next up is WPIX 11 from 1984. I’m nto sure when this was first recorded because I found it on YouTube in several places, all with different years listed. I’m not surprised that it appeared several times over the years; WPIX was one of those stations that recycled stuff like this -and would re-air stuff from the Eighties way into the Nineties. What makes this interesting to me are three things: its length (it’s nearly four minutes long), the overtly religious content, and the fact that the guy speaking at us is the general manager of the station. Who these days–or at any time, really–knows who the heck the general manager of a television station is? I mean, for a second, I thought this was the PathMark guy.
Anyway, I wonder if this would even fly today. Because aside from the message, who is going to devote this much time–this much ad space–to something like this?
This one, from WNYW Fox 5 in 1998, is an example of a type of promo I’d see frequently–the idea that the people on the local news were a kind of family (and maybe by extension your family?). Like I said at the top of the post, I developed a knack early on for recognizing the people who were on television, and over the years I remember noticing when someone on one station moved to the other or even moved up to the network, like Al Roker or Sam Champion.
I live in a much smaller market these days and for a long time, the familiarity of the people on the news is still a valued commodity. I don’t know for how long, though, especially since local news stations keep getting bought out and staff is being reduced (my local weekend news has completely disappeared, for example). While I’m not going to flip a table if the weather guy changes again (because they change all the time), promos like this are nice in an age where the news seems less and less friendly.
And finally, there is the WNBC Sing-Along.
WNBC — 4 New York — is the New York City area’s undisputed champion of station promos. There’s more to write about at a later time, but right now is the time to look at one that’s been a tradition for a very long time. Granted, I have not watched television in New York in a few years, so I can’t tell you if that’s true, but I know that well into the 2010s, the entire WNBC staff would gather outside of 30 Rockefeller Center (which is where the station broadcasts from) and sing Christmas carols. The promo would air in 30-second and one-minute forms and would be just another commercial in a commercial break. And me being the dork that I am, would always look to see who I could name whenever it came on. This one’s from 1994 when I would have been a senior in high school.
Seeing this and all the reast always meant that Christmas break was coming and for a little more than a week, I’d be able to turn school off and enjoy a lot less structure in my day. Thinking about them now helps me recapture that feeling as I leave work behind and try to have a happy holiday season.
Pop Culture Affidavit 