The Cars - Let's Go (live, 1979)

I never watched much of the Midnight Special while it was on, since mostly I was watching late night monster movies. I saw it a few times, usually at the end of the show, but none of the bands ever interested me. Still, I know KISS was on a few times, and many others I'm sure I would have liked to have seen, even back then.

Dinosaurs!

Way back in 1993 or 1994 I published the fourth issue of Xenorama, and that featured a plethora of dinosaurs in various movies and television series.  I did it in part to capitalize on the then success of Jurassic Park 2 or whatever it was called.  Since I was paying for everything out of pocket at the time, I don't think there was that much success then, but it was still fun to watch all those movies (on tape) and write about them. 

Media-Con 2015

This post is about the 1.5 days I spent at the 2015 Con in general, not the panel I did.  That's being saved for a later post.

I got to the Con about 9 AM, which was an hour early, so I had breakfast at the Marriot.  It was good, and all the hotel people were decked out in superhero shirts.  I managed to suppress the urge to ask them if they knew anything about their shirts, since to them I'm sure it was just a wonderful chance to get out of their usual hotel outfits and wear some t-shirts.

Ultra Seven #2 The Green Terror

Just started watching this show again, since I haven't ever seen it subtitled.  This second episode is well named, dealing with an invasion from space by plant-like aliens.  I saw it under the dubbed version called "Shrubs from Space" and I don't actually remember that much about it.

Mothra's Day

Isn't every day Mothra's Day?  It certainly should be.  I haven't watched the Simpson's regularly now for several years, but I'm not one of those fans who proudly proclaims the shows best years are way back.  Still, it's rather hard to believe that the show has been on for 25 years.  I know that beats Gunsmoke's record now.  It's the "Longest-running animated American series, longest running American sitcom and longest running scripted prime-time series."  All that is pretty amazing, overall, and I think it's fair to say it's an institution now.

Action Scenes from Pulp Serial THE SPIDER'S WEB (1938)

I'm halfway through watching this fun serial, and as I reviewed it earlier in a previous life, it's action packed and filled with bullet ridden bodies, both from The Spider and his antagonist, the Octopus. It made for one popular serial that year, but busybodies complained and the sequel was toned down.

The Spider's Web

1. Night of Terror

a series of accidents is plaguing the transportation industry. the Octopus calls and tells the heads of industry what he will hit and they are powerless to stop him.

at the Octopus' (garden in the sea?) Den he gives his men orders. he also brings a Mr. Roberts in, and plans to take over his company. he wants to control the nerve centers of the country so he can take over the country. then he kills Mr. Roberts, dead. then he plans on having Mr. Richard Wentworth join Mr. Roberts.

Richard and Nita are out flying. Richard claims since they are getting married there is no more Spider. she doesn't quite believe him. he calls his man Jackson at Wentworth Airfield, but Jackson is attacked by the Octo's men. Ram Singh shows up to help Jackson.

Ultraman n/a

I know, I know, I'll get to the review of the Media-Con panel in a bit. Meanwhile, here's an interesting video that sort of ties in with the comic. It just surfaced recently and was blocked here, but some enterprising people got it available for us, and with the Ultraman song dubbed into it.

"Six Men of Evil" The Shadow #24

I've never read a Shadow story before.  I'd heard they were pretty great, but I heard that about the Spider and the one I read was not that good.  But since I got a free copy of two Shadow stories (this being the first, from 1933) at Media-con last week I thought I'd give it a shot.  These two stories are some of the weirder ones from the vast amount of novels published.  It's interesting that the Shadow was a more "realistic" pulp hero, at least in the early years, as opposed to the Spider or Doc Savage.

Minions (2015)

It's cute, but not great.  Everyone loves the Minions, but overexposure can cause people to turn on a dime faster than you know (see any one-two hit wonder for example).  The Minions are great supporting characters (See Despicable Me 1 and 2) and having seen their "solo" movie that's just confirmed.  They are funny, but just not enough to carry a movie.  They are truly second bananas.  There are a lot of fun bits in this movie, just not quite enough to carry it's relatively short running time.

T Minus 2 Ultra monsters

One of the coolest things about Ultraman and his various brothers and cousins is the wide amount of monsters and aliens they showcase and fight.  It's amazing the amount of variety that these artists can come up with after 50 years.

T minus 3 Hiroko Sakurai

If I remember correctly, this was Comic-con in 2004, whenever Ultra Q had been released on DVD for the first time in Japan.  That is "Fuji" from Ultraman, and she was so nice and sweet.  I still have her autograph somewhere, along with the promo material they gave me for the Ultra Q release.  Who knew it would actually have a (somewhat) legit R1 DVD release with subtitles over here?  Not this guy, I'll tell you what!  Hiroko spoke English much better than I spoke Japanese, by the way.

T Minus 4- Eiji Tsuburaya day

I think August said his real birthday is July 10th, and it's only fitting that I'll be hosting the Ultraman panel at Comic-con that day.  It would be his 114th year on this planet, and it's really nice and still surprising at all the love he got today.  I mean, even Google had the game to play online, which was amazing to me.  Ten years ago I would never have thought this was possible at all, and here we are, celebrating a true master's life.

Countdown... t minus five

Wow, this trip is sure coming up fast! Spoke to Ashlee tonight about the format of the panel and it should be a lot of fun. I've got some trivia questions ready to go, and I think they range from easy to arcane, so we can weed out the nerds. Yes, that is a joke.

the LAST Marine Boy episode

The time is upon me... I am about to watch the last episode of Marine Boy.  In the 15 plus years now that I've been watching this cartoon, this episode has never been available to anyone.  I had the 77 episodes in various quality and was watching them and taking notes.  When I started, I didn't even know how many were made, let alone if any were missing.  Even when it was aired in Australia this was the missing episode at the time.  Heck, we didn't even know the name of it. 

the Origin of Captain America

I posted this a couple years ago and that one is gone, so here it is again, the original motion comic books (just called cartoons back in 1966)! Gantry-Lawrence Animation did a pretty good job on the first and second season of Spider-man, but when they licensed some other Marvel titles they animated them as little as possible, and by using the actual art from the comics.

Ultra Comic!

This arrived in the mail yesterday.  I've only read a little bit but it's very interesting.  This what I'll be hosting my panel on little over week, so I better read it a few times.  It's set about 20 years in the future from the original Ultraman timeline, so that makes it about 2013 or so?  Hayata is older and has a son and both have some after effects of Hayata merging with Ultraman.  It's been some time since Earth has had a giant monster or alien invasion, so people have sort of forgotten what the Science Patrol was there for to begin with.

Blondie - Accidents Never Happen

Today is Debbie Harry's xxth birthday (cause I don't really care how old she is). In honor of that, and of her being one of my entrances into the world of "punk" and "new wave" I wanted to present one of my favorite songs of theirs, "Accidents Never Happen" as done live on the Midnight Special in 1979.