#mst3k fan comic

[chordsykat]

Hey comic fans! Signal boost incoming!

My friend and former editor at Sonic, Paul Castiglia, is working in conjunction with Eisner Nominated creators, the people behind MST3K, and an original cast-member of the 35mm Robot Monster film to bring you this Kickstarter!

What is Robot Monster Comics in 3-D? The cult-classic 3D movie inspired by 1950s Golden Age comics finally becomes its own gorgeous 64-page, hardcover 3-D graphic novel. But we need your help to make it happen.

The campaign currently has 12 days to go and is at 70% funded! If you love old movies, kaijus, sci-fi, or just those oldschool 3-D glasses, you should get in on this Kickstarter -- Reblogs appreciated even if you can't back it :)

Visit https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/3dfilmarchive/robot-monster-comics-in-3-d-64-page-graphic-novel

[lifeaftermeteor]

The Fandom Binder

For those of you among the 'fandom olds,’ you may recall a time where we actually printed copies of art and fic we enjoyed - many of us being unable to create websites or save too many files to our computers at the time...long before the likes of Google Drive and AO3.  This was back when fandom was nurtured by individually maintained series, ship, and/or character shrines connected by webrings like Anime Turnpike.  

Some of us printed these fandom treasures and organized them in binders, now presumed lost to time and the trash heap years ago.

Well...rummaging around in my parents’ storage space, guess what I found.  My fandom binder!

Apparently I had a thing for collages - I actually covered my half of my freshman dorm room in a much larger version of the above. 

So come with me as we wade through my teenage fandom days...

The inside cover is a treat, with a quote meant to be terrifying and empowering (?) alongside a snarky comic about Gackt’s dick.

The first folder included only a TIME article on phobias, a few damning pages of notes from my high school calculus class on which I scribbled all my pent-up teenage angst and anger, and a printed out email flame (no joke) to someone who apparently my friends and I were having it out with.  

We’ll skip those and jump into the actual fandom content.

First out of the gate is Digimon Adventure, which had grabbed me in 1999-2000 via the Fox Kids channel programming.  We have here some print-outs of MST3K-ified (or “MSTied”) Digimon fic, most of which involved the Digi Destined serving in the roles of Mike/Joel and the bots.  Such fics were initially permitted on Fanfiction.Net before they were purged alongside other content guideline updates between 2000-2005, since they were both (a) reposting someone else’s work and (b) script format.  

This is followed by fanart printouts (Yamato was my clear favorite, second only to the amount of Taito I printed).  And a saved note to a friend printed in computer class that extolled the fact that Odaiba is REAL. 

I have no words. I can only assume that my little brain was just so used to stories in made up locations that the thought that the series would involve a real city just was too much for my little fangirl brain to handle.

Moving right along...

This note is followed by printouts of various fanart, predominantly of Yamato and the Taito ship.  This is in turn followed by extensive planning, character costume designs, and inspiration art printed off of Elfwood (c.2001-2002) for the fantasy AU / isekai fic, The Realms (which, yes you can still apparently find the first two chapters of via FF.net).

After that, we also have a printed, separately bound copy of my first ‘official’ (i.e., posted) multi-chapter fanfiction, An Unexpected Death, which took about 1.5 years to write and upload...and is also still on FF.net

Moving past Digimon, we land in Gundam Wing territory.  Like the previous section, we kick off with printouts of fics, art, and other fun things.

I apparently kept some notes passed between my friend and I.  As was typical of the day, fans all interacted with the characters as if inhabiting the same universe.  Emojis made regular appearances in our script-format notes (I also apparently shared half-formed plotbunnies via scripts).

We also had grand plans of co-authoring a “the GBoys are undercover at our high school” story, which was also common at the time among fellow fans.  Here is the rough idea of the school schedule: 

I also found some casting for a Matrix AU...

...and the makings of a roadtrip series of quintessential “American” locations: 

We wrap it all up with some truly phenomenal crackfic by Celes Maxwell: 

Closing out the remainder of the binder is some JRock fanservice, an autograph from Gillian Anderson (c.1998), and a random table of contents that only had empty pages or nothing behind them.  Presumably all these sections had more content, but I can say without a doubt they are GONE at this point. 

.

.

.

So yeah, that’s my fandom binder, put to good use between 1998-2004.  Show me yours!

[adultswim2021]

Space Ghost Week

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #66: “Curses” | November 27, 1998 | S05E09

The official sequel to “Story Book House". The saga is finally complete! This one starts off with James Kirconnell tossing and turning in bed. What follows is a nightmarish episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast, where Space Ghost becomes a vampiric beast who needs to consume living humanoids to satiate his blood-cravings. That’s because he was sprayed with a pink fog that turns you into a guy-like-that by a supervillain’s dastardly device. Space Ghost devours guest after guest, including noted wad Moby. His interview spawned the line “Nobody Cares, Moby”, which went viral purely out of spite towards Moby.

We also have “hard to work into a show” comic Emo Phillips. Fun fact: I sent this episode to a woman in Canada because she was a big Emo Phillips fan and she asked me if I could tape it for her. I filled the tape with other American stuff she wanted to see, like MST3K and The Adventures of Pete and Pete. I remember including the “Pavement” episode too. I think she liked some of it. She sent me Tom Green tapes, I think, and Rick Mercer’s “Talking to Americans” special. Anyway, the moment where Moltar is so repulsed by Emo’s comic mannerisms that he walks back his warning to him after knowing Space Ghost is likely going to murder him. Emo gets chomped, I am sad to say. 

Shirley Manson is rejected by Space Ghost for not being meaty enough. Shirley Manson is one of the hottest women on earth, and between this and “Chinatown” this might be one of the most fuckable seasons of the show. This is by process of elimination, and not actually a good thing. I wouldn’t wanna be at that orgy. All making small talk with Michael Moore while the chicks are all busy getting railed out by Denis Leary and Ben Stiller and everyone else is doing cool-ass gay stuff. Merrill Markoe is fully clothed, reading a book, and shooting dirty looks at everybody. She won’t even talk to me about The Lewis Lectures. 

James Kirconnell awakens! “I just had the most horrible dream, in space.” One of the best endings ever. Great episode!

[popculturebuffet]

Screwhead Fiction Double Feature: Evil Dead II: Beyond Dead by Dawn Review: Honey You Got Real Ugly (Comission for WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy screwheads and welcome back to Screwhead Fiction Double feature, my look at some of the Evil Dead Comics. And since we looked at the beginning of Dynamite comics absolute mountain of Army of Darkness comics, it only makes sense to look at another company who tried to do the same thing but fizzled out for a number of reasons: Space Goat Publishing and their first comic following the other half of the license rights for Rami's goretastic franchise, Evil Dead II: Beyond Dead by Dead under the cut

Bad Goat:

Space Goat was what seemed to be a talent agency that worked with other comic companies and what not before branching into publishing. It's clear on some level Shon Bury

Wanted to do what Dynamite did, use liscened comics as a springboard to get into the game. ANd it worked: from what I can tell Beyond Dead by Dawn was a success and over the handful of years Space Goat published several Evil Dead minis and spinoffs, and they went on to make comics for Terminator and The Howling.

Now you'd likely think that the company simply ran out of gas. Their far from the first comics company to go belly up, nor the first I intend to cover on this blog. For instance if all goes well I intend to start covering the Chucky Comics next year. It's something that happens.

What happened with Space Goat though is far scummier, somehow being both a fairly common story and an entirely bonkers unique one at the same time. I got most of my info and any screencaps from the blog Funk's House of Geekery, which was invaluable and THESE TWO posts. To make a long painful story you can read from someone who actually was there on the ground level short: Space Goat did a kickstarter for a boardgame based on Evil Dead 2. That in itself sounds kickass and were I aware of it I might of backed it as , while I wasn't a horror fan quite yet, EDII is one of the few horror films I saw before diving in deep after seeing IT and one I loved.

I'm glad I didn't as it turned out it was a thinly planned out scam. See after getting the Evil Dead II game backed Space Goat launched ANOTHER campaign for terminator, and fans were understandably uneasy. It's one thing to do MULTIPLE kickstarter campaigns That's fine. Things I love like MST3K, Rifftrax and Team Starkid rely on them , in the latter cases on an annual basis pre covid, to put on shows. But all three are reliable sorts who backers can trust and who have experience and all made good on previous campaigns. Space Goat hadn't done a game before so this was already worrysome for backers. Shon being outed as an abusive shouty mess of a human being didn't help matters.

So not surprisingly it was as shady as it looked: it's theorized that Space Goat did the Evil Dead kickstarter.. but instead of actually making a game, they used the money to get the Terminator license, understandably expensive, and planned to use THAT money to fund both games, and when that went under budget they used it elsewhere and hoped no one would notice. Backers went ignored, infighting started in the comments, things got ugly as they tend to when Kickstarter projects go bad.

Then Shon and co got UTTERLY vile with it by launching a video for ANOTHER crowdfunding campaign to get capital to "expand the business". Which is code for "OH SHIT WE SPENT ALL YOUR MONEY PLEASE HELP US BUT WE TOTALLY DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG GUYS" no one bought it, and the game sadly went unmade while Space Goat burnt up on rentry as it damn well should.

So the question is even with all the grifting, conning and theivery, is "beyond dead by dawn" any good?

Honey, You Got Real Ugly Look I don't judge works based on their parent companies. I try to avoid say buying games from Activision and Ubisoft because their companies suck, but at the end of the day most works of art are the product of the artists and companies generally interfere and do harm (with some exceptions) rather than steer every step of the way. Unless a fault with the work is something the company could correct, it's generally not their fault. The comics faults are it's own.

The premise isn't one of them as once again we have an Evil Dead comic that has a really good idea to continue things just not the execution to actually pull it off. Unlike Army of Darkness: Ashes 2 Ashes which happened when the franchise was in a coma and wasn't coming out of it for at least a decade, Evil Dead II happened while the franchise was still alive as ever: The soft reboot had come out just two years ago and in what I don't remotely belivie was a concidence, Ash Vs the Evil Dead premiered the same year, and the Army of Darkness comics were still going strong. So the time was right for it, but the problem was unlike Army of Darkness which could just pick up where the films left up a combination of not having the rights to that film, said film having already done that and Ash Vs the Evil Dead planning to do the next thing in the queue, follow ash decades later, meant they had to go another route

The route chosen is pretty clever and spiffy, and takes unique advantage of having things the Dynamite Comics simply don't: Beyond Dead by Dawn follows the deutragonist and fan faviorite of Evil Dead II, Annie Knowby after the film. You may be wondering how as she had a bad case of

Last time we saw her. Well this comic follows her into HELL. Yes after having to dance around it due to budget, this comic shows us the Evil Dead version of the underworld, where all the swallowed souls go. Annie is free thanks to the evil dead not having time to deadite her, but is outgunned, outmanned and outnumbered.. but not outplanned. She plans to use the kandarian dagger to absorb souls and free her parents souls allowing them and all the other victims of the evil dead to rest.

The outmanned part is still an issue and since this franchise woudln't be the same without him but we can't use him since present day him is busy on TV, Annie uses the necronomicon to create a simuacrum. Granted it's clearly pulling this spell out of it's ass, but I do like it cleverly using the fact Ash's hand is still there after killing Annie and dead after Ash finally kicked it's wrist, and creates a new ash who only has the memories up to getting cut off and isn't happy to be here but helps anyway.

As I said the setup isn't bad: Ash and Annie have to fight through hell and free her parents. But that's when the problems start. Kicking it off we have the fact that hell is BORING. Yes.. .really> hell. That hell. The setting dozens of shows have made interesting versions of> That one. The fire and brimstone. It's not remotely intresting. I'ts just a brown cavern like endless expanse with the ocasoinal fleshy structure while only the demon with the souls in it, which is supposed to be some kind of god looking KINDA interesting nd kinda is pushing it. It's a green thing that just dosen't have the horror or power you'd expect for one of the gods behind the necronomcion. Add in the fact the demons are almost all just red winged guys, which while not ab ad look is generic and you get the problem. You have a wonderful setup for a truly unique evil dead work but no effort put into actually making it feel unqiue. It's generic in a franchise that dosen't really.. do generic.

Each film feels unique, interesting and has awesome makeup and gore effects. 3/4 of the films only have the one setting, the setting is one of the most iconic in horror for a reason, being perfectly run down, claustrophobic and inescapable as if you go within the woods your dead.. but staying inside is just as fatal and Army of darkness gleefully gives us a castle, a dark graveyard, a small shack with tiny people and more to play with. The monsters inside are some of the most awesome looking in horror with the deadites having a simple shriveled up look yet also having some impressive ones like the cellar woman, the giant monster, or evil ash.

This comic just doesn't have that creativity: it's got a creative premise, but it doesn't continue to innovate BEYOND that. A good hook is fine, but you have to be able to bring it WITH that hook or no one's going to care. Say what you will about Ashes 2 Ashes, I certainly did, but it at least had fun set pieces, took the series global and while the first half was weak and off tone, it made up for it. This book just doesn't have the time or patience to really get into things or fine fun things to do. This story could've easily gone over a few minis but for some reason is crammed into three issues. It has no room to breathe and as such chokes; The characters don't really feel fleshed out or like people with Ash literally being a copy of himself and ANnie despite ENDLESS narration, and I do mean it they do not let up for the first two issues, not really growing much beyond the first film and when she does it's because she's apparently soul bonded with ash. Oh yeah they apparently share traits thanks to being bonded. This goes nowhere other than one of the worst pms jokes of all time

Next up we have tonal issues. Look like last time I get it, it's hard to strike the right ballance with an evil dead proprety. II did such a good job it's hard to match that tone. It's why even if I prefer EDII to Army of Darkness, I didn't mind it going broader or the remake going back to the originals grim tone. Those films have problems sure, but trying something new and exciting isn't one of them.

But you have to HAVE a tone and the comic can't decide if it's an action piece, horror or a comedy. As such the comedy that does show up comes off flat, with said PMS joke.. seriously this was 2015 I can forgive some of the less savory parts of the originals for being of their time but come the fuck on man. This was 2015. Stupid PMS jokes like that shoudl've been on their way out, not in this comic and on modern family. It's a thing that happens not something that turns you into the hulk.

But we also have Annie tryign to find a virigin to stab.. which makes her come off heartless as she's trying to murder someone and the comic didn't make it clear she was just going to.. release the soul later. We also get fat jokes at a guy's expense because the writer of this comic is twelve and his parents shoudldn't of let him see Evil Dead II much less write a comic about it for a get rich quick scheme cleverly disguised as a publishing company. She could just.. ask to kill them telling them they'll be set free but that might be too many steps.

Outside of tone character wise it feels flat. Annie is trying to rescue her parents, but it's hard to tell who she is outside that. The movie did a decent job showing her as an ensastic person who geninely loves this research and out of the five people in the cabin was the only one besides ash holding the brain cell. So i'd love to see more of her but the writer can't really decide what to do with her other than have her ramble in the first person a lot. She's not obnoxious but it's disheratning ot see a character with a lot of potetial brought back to just be kind of vauge and not move much up from where she was at the end of evil dead 2: sh'es about the same. As for Ash it feels like just.. the basic beats for Ash> There's no real character stuff on being connected spirtually to someone else, any feelings for annie, the people he just lost (since being in the same continuity as vs the evil dead, the original film is once again canon), or anything> He's just army of darkness ash but Ashes 2 Ashes at least gave that ash an emotoinal moment.

Artwise it's decent with Oscar Bazulda doing a really good job, having it be mildly stylized but realistic enough to land. Again monster design isn't great, but comics are colabrative and writer Frank Hannah could've put more focus on working with Oscar to make a good monster design instead of jokes about Ash having PMS.

Beyond Dead by Dawn ends with our heroes unswallowing the souls, putting them in a knife and escaping setting them free and setting up the sequel as apparently not ALL THE spirits freed are exactly peaceful. And I am kinda curious to see if this get sbetter so maybe, just maybe.. we'll read from the necronomicon again some day.

For now though Beyond Dead by Dawn.. is disapointing. It has a truly fantastic premise, but rushed pacing, a lack of creativity beyond the basic premise, and a lack of a real tone of any kind sink what coudl've been an excellent sequel before the other sequel. A lack of effort leading to a real loss of potetial.. kinda sums up Space Goat as a whole huh? Thanks for reading screwheads. Follow for more, consider joining my patreon and i'll no doubt see you within the woods again… thanks for reading.

[hakhub]

Tag Game- 9 People I'd Like to Know Better

Took from @exmeowstic (hi how are you I haven’t heard from you in 6 months! Drink water, have a good one)

last song: Angel- Massive Attack Definitely one of the newer fixations. Love their sound tho. Pls hmu if you have album recs for triphop/industrial!

currently watching: rewatching Utena with some friends once a week and other than that binging MST3K when I’m chilling out at home.

currently reading: Going Clear (Lawrence Wright)- EXCELLENT nonfiction read on the insanity of Scientology and by extension LRH. Buck wild so far. Also got a copy of Leviathan Wakes (James SA Corey) waiting to be cracked open.

Comics wise I’m reading Aliens Earth War when I can.

(bonus!) currently playing: coming back to Monster Hunter World! Also FGO on the side.

current obsession: Many things!

Trigun (AAAAA Stampede has made a fandom renaissance and I finally get the opportunity to info dump inappropriately on the new fans about how much I love TriMax. LIV/RAZ PROPAGANDA MACHINE LEGGO)

Dead Space (anyone that lets me rattle on for 100 years about space horror probably knows why and this is one of them lol)

Street Fighter 6 (I literally do not have enough money to find a copy and the game is sold out everywhere I look but someday I’ll get to play it instead of watching Daigo and Higuchi clips auughhh)

My Big Dumb OC Project (War/Cry)

anybody who wants to can write up answers! Random frens: @ayyydra @beetlebrownleaf @halite-reblog @leastofallourselves

[owlsounds]

I assume there's a decent amount of crossover between comics fans and MST3K/Rifftrax so I wanted to post about this thing that might get overlooked because it is heckin' niche.

Comics related on 2 fronts: OG Capt Marvel obviously, but also Gail Simone and Matt Fraction helped write the riffs!

[fractiouslemonofficial]

HI-KEEBA!

(share and post today with your favorite MST3K quote if you’re as much of a pathetic MSTie as I am.)

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[captainsparklefingers]

9 FANDOM PEEPS TO GET TO KNOW BETTER

Tagged by @grayintogreen and I never typically do these but why not, you know

3 Ships You Like: Widomauk (Critical Role), Stucky (Marvel mcu and I gusss in the comics as well but that would really only apply to post ice Steve due to the whole 'thats your teenage sidekick' thing), and hm...let's go real old school and say Anastasia/Dimitri from both the movie and the musical. I've got other ships I'm interested in, I can give you several more from CR alone, but it's hard to say if there's some sort of pattern that I can pick up with what I like and get interested in. Like there's definitely ships I feel like I SHOULD like and certainly understand buy just... don't. I guess.

3 (Hazbin/Helluva) Ships You Like: okay okay okay. So, Huskerdust, M&M, both of which feel like no brainers. I really enjoy Chaggie and Cherrisnake, and I am fascinated by the deeply fucked up dynamic between Stolas and Blitzø. Look, I can see and angle for a lot of stuff here, I'm not gonna be picky.

Unless Valentino is involved. Fuck that guy, he sucks, Vox deserves better.

First Ship Ever: oh God, okay, I thiiiiink if we're not going with baby's first Mary Sue esque OCs and character I like, the first was Tobias/Rachel in Animorphs. It's at least the earliest I remember, and it still punches me in the gut. I might like my happy endings but sometimes you just need a ship that ends like a sucker punch to the gut.

Last Song You Heard: Mad World by Tears for Fears. I really like Tears for Fears and a lot of 80s New Wave music in general.

Favourite Childhood Book: OKAY LET'S THINK FOR A SECOND. CUZ THERE WERE A BUNCH. GOD. When I was real young I was a big fan of the Madeline series, the Babar books, the writings of William Steig (particularly The Bone)... there's this book called Ruth's Bake Shop that I adored, and this book called Messy Jessie that was very relatable...

But I adored the Animorphs books. So much. I got into those in the 4th grade after my favorite teacher introduced me to them and I was absolutely hooked. What a series. Honestly, I wanna reread em.

(Honorable mention to the HP series, which feels a little bit tainted now given everything but I really liked as a kid.)

Currently watching: I'm so bad at watching TV for the most part, especially by myself. But I'm rewatching Hazbin and am planning to do so for Helluva as well. I watch CR and d20 weekly, I watch a lot of Game Grumps, and I also tend to watch a lot of Mst3k and Rifftrax. Also, Julia Child. Lots of Julia Child.

Currently Consuming: I'm ALSO bad at eating in any way resembling consistent or healthy behavior...but I'm working on improving that. Right now I'm having two pieces of toast with ricotta.

Currently Craving: oh God, so many things at different times, all the time. I'm trying to develop better eating habits in general (and need to make myself cook more but the combination of my much loathed job sucking all my energy and my much enjoyed but poorly times gym classes get me home later than I'd like makes it difficult)... I guess right now I'm craving Moe's, I enjoy their burritos a lot and their El Guapo salsa is one of my favorites. Like I'd eat that shit all the time if I could.

I'm honestly not sure who to tag here...I suppose if you're in the fandom and interested, consider this an open invite?

[signalwatch]

Dug was Here Selections: The Skydivers (1963), Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967), Pumaman (1980) Watched between:  01/12 - 10/14/2024 Format:  MST3K on YouTube Viewing:  First on All (I think) Director:  No Selection:  Consensus - us, MST3K live feed My father-in-law had some outpatient surgery and, thus, Dug, my brother-in-law, was here for a couple of weeks.  He capped off his visit with a stay with us.  Dug is the foremost MST3K/ Rifftrax fan in my life - and while I've been a fan since I was 14, he's the guy who remembers stuff about episodes from the show that I haven't seen since high school. I won't be writing these movies up, but I can say I finally ticked Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967) off my list, which had been there since discovering Joi Lansing about 20 years ago via The Adventures of Superman.  But I also knew, for 20 years, this was going to be a rough ride.  The movie is a weird, all-star bash, including Lon Chaney, Basil Rathbone, John Carradine and a bunch of Nashville musicians, for whom it was intended to be a showcase. There's also some yellow-peril as there's a spy story going on, also a gorilla and ghosts.   The Skydivers (1963) is a movie made by sky divers about sky divers, and it's like they knew one day MST3K would exist, and would need content. The Pumaman (1980) is an Italian produced, British-shot movie about a superhero with alien-gifted powers of a puma.  Like flying, and walking through walls.  It makes no sense, and has Donald Pleasance as the villain, wearing a sort of leatherette jumpsuit.  Cannot recommend enough. Anyway, a good time was had by all.      https://ift.tt/bnHd0KT via The Signal Watch https://ift.tt/7erVCNM January 15, 2024 at 08:26AM

[mysteryscribbletheater3000]

While I'm working on full color, finished comic art, I'm also prone to stupidity like this. Happy Area 51 Raid Day, you Naruto running fools! 😆

[schlock-luster-video]

Today in science fiction movie / McDonald's commerical history: on December 24, 1988 Mac and Me debuted in Japan.

Here's some art to mark the occasion!

[ellawaddella]

Went to see the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Live show Sunday. As usual it kept me laughing. Here was one of my favorite moments. @mst3k

[mysticorset]

I just watched Crazy Rich Asians!

And while, obviously, it was amazing and I loved it,

I really want to watch it again, but like, an annotated version that will explain the Asian cultural references that absolutely went over my head. The mahjong game at the end is the most obvious example, but I am certain that I missed out on other stuff.

[adultswim2021]

Space Ghost Week

Wherein we cover an entire season of Space Ghost Coast to Coast over the course of a week

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #42: “Switcheroo” (aka “Switcheroo II”) | September 12, 1997 | S04E09

This episode is titled “Switcheroo”, but enterprising fans have taken to calling this “Switcheroo II” simply because there is already an episode called Switcheroo. What will you call this? Brother, you’re going to have so sort that out for yourself.

In this episode: Space Ghost has his original guests (boring guys) swapped out for sci-fi legends Bill Mumy and Mark Hamill. They were poached from a sci-fi convention that was attended by (or maybe run by) Zorak and Moltar (sorry, I forgot the precious plot details). Meanwhile, Space Ghost pouts and gets jealous that Moltar and Zorak have a better rapport with them than he does. Eventually Space Ghost tries to put on his own convention and it’s a failure.

There was a brief period of time when one of my main hangouts online were South Park related. I forget if this happened on my main hangout board (GoTimmyGo.com) or an offshoot board started by a member of that board, but there was a sub-forum dedicated to other cartoons that weren’t South Park. I started a Space Ghost thread, encouraging people to tune into Space Ghost Coast to Coast on Cartoon Network, which had ceased airing new episodes and seemed like it was quietly going away from the schedule altogether. Adult Swim was looming on the horizon but I didn’t know that.

I remember this being among the first episodes to air after my rallying cry of “hey internet friends, let’s all watch Space Ghost reruns and talk about them in this thread”. This was the era when I would record the show and take said recordings and transfer them to the ends of my Mystery Science Theater 3000 tapes. I edited the commercials out of those MST3K episodes, leaving about 30 minutes at the end of each tape, so I’d put a couple random SGC2Cs on there. The two shows just seemed like they went together really well.

My point is, I remember this episode specifically because I watched it “with” my internet friends, and I remember thinking it was kind of a mediocre episode. Maybe that’s because it actually is, or maybe that’s because I prefaced this one with the promise of greatness. It’s another one of those episodes where the writers are jazzed to have this legendary guest so they lean on a theme. Star Wars is heavily referenced, obviously. In 1997, Star Wars had a resurgence because it was re-released in theaters, but Star Wars nerds were nowhere near as obnoxious as they are now. I guess the prequels were on the horizon, sure, but to those not following too closely (me) it just felt like Star Wars was living a natural life-cycle that every other big-budget sci-fi trilogy had: A series of films that were hits but with diminishing returns which has one final hurrah as Saturday Morning programming (or a comic book) and then hibernates until it’s either released on a new home video format or an anniversary reunion happens. It was good enough for Back to the Future, Robocop, and Alien. Why not Star Wars?

Two big laughs: Space Ghost saying “Duke Fartknocker”. I also remember loving him trying to interject during Moltar and Zorak’s sci-fight with “What do you think of those Ghostbusters?”. Still funny!

DVD NOTE: you can find two deleted bits from this episode. One is of a disheveled man showing up in Space Ghost’s monitor claiming to have escaped from the planet Moltar seemingly made-up earlier in the show. There’s also a parody Star Wars crawl presumably meant to open the episode. Pausing it treats you to a direct Spaceballs reference.

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/24/2021: ELVIRA, MISTRESS OF THE DARK

During Elvira's 40th Anniversary Very Scary, Very Special, Special on Shudder, the apparently immortal horror heckler (she looks exactly the same as she did when I was a little kid, WT actual F??) does a bit where she pretends to read rude letters about her own movie. One of the messages, from a "Leonard Maltin", complains that there was no character development, and while this is all for laffs, that was really the general complaint about ELVIRA: MISTRESS OF THE DARK. Unfortunately, it's hard to disagree, and this points to a paradox within the character herself. The figure of the horror host forms a sort of bridge between fans and the films we love, but when her routine so favors cheap digs and low blows, is Elvira really with us, or against us?

Somewhere I heard, probably more than twice or thrice, the basic admonishment that nobody tries to make a bad movie. Making a movie at all is a huge challenge, and you can assume that anybody who showed up to work on one was trying as hard as they could. And like, I think that's a pretty good benefit of the doubt to take to any viewing experience. I can't convince myself that this is literally always true, but even if we do take for granted that every movie is made with the best of intentions, that still doesn't cover the toll taken by financial hardship, production hangups, lack of inspiration, inexperience, and just plain old incompetence, among other enemies of art. Luckily, movies that suffer from these ails can still be enormously entertaining at a certain mental remove, as per the great Mystery Science Theater 3000, which was certainly a major contributor to the modern craze for irony that lingers on to this day. The thing to note is that MST3K always had a warm glow of affection around it, at least in the Joel Hodgson years; perhaps this aura of sympathy stems from the creator himself being a prop comic, and his uber-independent production being not that far removed from the never-say-die creative spirit of a grade B or Z genre movie. In any case, while Hodgson's style of sarcastic commentary caught on in a big way, his baseline love of (as he put it) "weird, adorable movies" takes more soul than some viewers have to offer, and it can feel as if most people enjoy watching something "cheezy" because it gives them a chance to spew some sort of repressed rage in the form of nasty, condescending commentary that doesn't rise to the level of comedy, and that doesn't have much purpose for anyone but the spewer.

Where the hell was I going with this?

Oh yeah. I want to know what Elvira's whole deal is supposed to be.

Cassandra Peterson seems like a lovely person. An interesting person, even. Somebody I wouldn't mind being stuck in an elevator with. She's had an eventful life, one that probably required a lot of chutzpah, and any friend of Pee-wee Herman is a (theoretical) friend of mine. But right at the beginning of the movie about her busty, bouffant-sporting hostess character, Elvira herself says something that I found suspect. Well actually, she does it twice, once immediately in the first scene, where she tears into the Roger Corman classic IT CONQUERED THE WORLD on her TV show, a mockup of the real-life KHJ-TV series Elvira's Movie Macabre. Pointing her finger down her throat, she quips that the movie was "about an hour and a half too long," which is way harsher than even Leonard Maltin was in his own measured review. Seconds later, after being groped by the station's sleazy new owner, Elvira quits, ranting to her agent, "As soon as my show opens in Las Vegas, I'll never have to host another one of those crappo horror movies again!"

Hmmm.

So anyway, even though Elvira doesn't have the dough to launch her own Vegas revue, she gets a fresh start when she inherits the fortune of her mysterious Great Aunt Morgana. She travels from Kansas to Massachusetts with dollar signs in her eyes, only to discover that her winnings are a dilapidated mansion, an ornery toy poodle, and an old recipe book—actually a powerful grimoire, which is the envy of Elvira's Uncle Vincent (William Morgan Sheppard), actually an evil warlock and the only other survivor of her magical bloodline. Elvira's journey of self-discovery is fraught with peril, not only from Vincent, but from the even more menacing Morality Club and its president, Chastity Pariah (the incomparable Edie McClurg), who virtually runs the town. Luckily, Elvira has a little help in the form of local teens who are raring to rebel, and a new love interest in the person of THIS guy.

That's right, Daniel Greene, the arm-wrestling cyborg from Sergio Martino's HANDS OF STEEL, which is a much, much stranger movie than either MISTRESS OF THE DARK or IT CONQUERED THE WORLD could ever hope to be.

But I digress. Even though ELVIRA is ostensibly a movie about being true to yourself, it's hard to get a read on what the main character is about. When you first meet her, she makes it pretty clear that she hates her job AND the movies she has to watch for it. Later in the film, when she learns that her suitor operates the local movie theater, she urges him to run a midnight program with the shlocky movies she has been toting around in the trunk of her car. We catch some of her act, in which she joyfully heckles ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES from her signature velvet fainting couch, but that movie is itself an act of heckling, and doesn't tell us much. If you're like me, you kind of want Elvira to champion these movies instead of seeing them as an albatross around her neck; for her ribbing of them to be tempered with reverence. Which it sometimes is, and sometimes isn't. And you kind of want her love of horror to tie in to her essential, indomitable difference from normal people. Unfortunately, she doesn't seem at all impressed by Great Aunt Morgana's gothic digs, or even her own magical origins. She only sees her newfound powers as another way of getting enough money to go to Vegas.

Incidentally, the showgirl thing is autobiographical for the star and co-writer, who started dancing at The Dunes when she was only 17. Peterson is also really from Kansas, like her character in the movie, so you'd think this story was wide open for exploring themes of self-acceptance and the embrace of originality. The fact that Elvira is an orphan isn't even mentioned until half way through the plot, when more is revealed about Morgana, and this just feels like a huge missed opportunity. Elvira might have been wondering all her life why she's so different, and where she came from, as she doesn't seem to fit in anywhere. She might have found validation in the search for fantastical escape that genre fans have in common, which is reflected here in the wild turnout for the midnight movie extravaganza at the local theater. But instead, at the beginning, middle, and end of the journey, Elvira remains exclusively focused on getting the money to go to Vegas. Please don't mistake me for looking down on that ambition! The lady can twirl a mean pair of tassels. But still, I just wanted a little more Elvira in my Elvira.

It shouldn't be, but Elvira's car is really the star of this movie.

I don't mean to sound naïve; obviously Cassandra Peterson really does love these movies, or else she wouldn't be, you know, Elvira. But MISTRESS OF THE DARK should have been a big opportunity to give us a little more than snark and sneers. It should have been an opportunity as big as PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE—after all, it was co-written by the late great John "Jambi" Paragon!—but the character is just not that well exploited. When various reviewers complained that there was not enough character development here, they really meant of anyone, because the cast is just too voluminous for anybody besides Elvira to get much individual screen time. But, I would have been happy with just a deeper dive on Elvira herself. I hear that she's trying to get a new movie made today, which may wind up being animated. She can sign me up for that, as long as she's serving something a little meatier than MISTRESS OF THE DARK.

[duhragonball]

I think you're right, although I'm not sure if Cinema Sins and its ilk are the cause or just a symptom.

I'd argue that this goes back a long way, maybe even as far as Mad Magazine, which spoofed pop culture and inspired load of imitators over the decades. Maybe it's even older than that. But yeah, Cinema Sins kind of crystallizes the problem, so it makes a good illustration of the fallacy involved.

Like Mad's movie parodies, I think Cinema Sins is somewhat "obligated" to rip on just about *any* movie, good or bad. That's not a problem in itself, since nothing is immune from criticism. I generally liked Godfather Part I, but I watched that clip of Peter Griffin complaining about it and it almost felt like he was reading my mind. It does insist on itself.

But Cinema Sins probably can't just do a video complaining about how Godfather I drags on in places. They have to find nitpicks to point out, like they would do for a bad movie. And if they can't find a serious problem, that only increases the temptation to exaggerate a minor problem, or just invent a problem out of thin air. The formula for the videos is more important than the quality of the critique.

Years ago, I uses to read a website called "Mr Cranky", who was basically doing a parody of Siskel and Ebert with an insult comic twist. He'd rate movies with bombs instead of stars, and even the good movies would get one bomb, though he struggled to find anything bad about them. I stopped reading him when he started using the reviews to rant about the Iraq War. Even when he stuck to his gimmick, it was becoming clear that he was running out of ways to say every movie was a crime against humanity, and the war protest stuff only underscored that roasting "Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever" wasn't really worth the effort.

I'm not above lambasting stuff I don't like, but at some point you have to be willing to give equal time to the good stuff, or your "angry tirade" humor will lose all impact. This is why the Angry Video Game Nerd will occasionally cover good games, or give a bad game credit where it's due. It keeps things fresh by reminding you what a good game should be, and why the bad ones are so frustrating.

But I think a lot of internet wannabes see acts like AVGN, or MST3K, or Cinem Sins or whatever, and they try to ape the formula without understanding the nuance. It's like how everybody used to try to get into pro wrestling because of the Rock, and they knew how to wear sunglasses and act like an arrogant horse's ass, but they couldn't learn how to run the ropes or do a thousand squats or all the other boring parts the Rock had to learn just to get hired.

The other thing that irks me is when I see people making snap judgments based on parodies or reviews, or just other people discussing things on Twitter or wherever. That's how you get all these dopes who post bad DBZ takes based on Team FourStar videos. They're eager to watch a series of 10-minute parody videos, but reluctant to take the plunge and commit to a 400+ episode anime series. That's because they're not interested in Dragon Ball; they're only interested in the engagement they get from making cheap jokes and "hot" takes.

To be clear, I'm not gatekeeping here. You're not a "fake fan" for not seeing the entirety of a series. But I've seen people who have only watched an arc or two, and they generally keep their opinions and critiques confined to the parts they actually saw. They're not talking shit about Majin Buu when they've only seen the Saiyans Saga, for example. The phonies are the ones who rip on stuff because they saw someone else do it and wanted to pile on without knowing any better.

That's also what leads into this brittle mindset where anything that happens in pop fiction is meant to represent some endorsement by the author. "Oh, Goku hit Gohan once, I guess that means Akira Toriyama likes child abuse!" That's intellectually dishonest, and I think most people understand that, but a lot of people have been conditioned to turn everything into a hill they need to die on.

I asked someone once to elaborate on why they called the Cell Saga "broken", and it basically boiled down the old story about how Toriyama's editors kept having him tinker with the villain. As far as I know, it's a true story, but it's also a behind-the-scenes story. The finished product should be judged on its own merit, not the chaotic environment that produced it. You don't have to like the Androids/Cell arc, but you can't just cite editorial directives as your critique. What's wrong with the comics themselves?

But I never got an answer, which I think was because this person wasn't prepared to give one. They just decided that the editor situation at Shueisha automatically disqualified the arc from being good. That's unfair to the arcs they *do* like, whatever those are, because apparently those are only deemed "good" for having less public awareness of editorial meddling. That's barnyard logic.

Anyway, it all stems from this desire to "defeat" media people don't like. People want a mathematical proof to justify not consuming or enjoying a piece of media, and that's bonkers. I lost interest in the MCU years ago, and that's good enough reason for me to not watch Eternals. I literally do not care enough to go to the trouble of seeing it. I don't trust the studio anymore, I don't have any investment in the characters, and the novelty of a bunch of actors standing around in superhero costumes wore off a looonng time ago. I'm not even saying it's a bad movie. It's probably good, but they haven't overcome my apathy and I'm not expecting that to chance anytime soon. I don't need to cite backstage shenanigans or stage a one-man boycott in protest of a line of dialogue. I don't need to make a video lambasting all the problems with the plot. I can just stay in my lane, and everything is fine.