Cartoons

It may just be my imagination, but cartoons are not like the ones that were around when I was growing up.

I don't just mean the styles or the fact they're not ALL out to shill products to the masses.

Tom & Jerry, for instance.

What I grew up with: Tom constantly trying to eat or poison Jerry or another cute animal. Jerry constantly beating the crap out of Tom, getting him caught in presses/grills/waffle-irons.

Now: Tom and Jerry have more of a rivalry going. One-upmanship, chasing that's stopped by a third-party, no weapons or poisons involved.

The changes aren't major, but they're there. A better example though is...

Scooby-Doo

What I grew up with: Scooby and the gang finding people in masks or the odd actual monster (ignoring the movies which were crawling with Classic Monsters). Bank robbers, creepy old people, swamps...

Now: Scooby and the gang still encounter fake monsters and threats, but in just two episodes of Scooby-Doo Mystery Inc, they encountered Cthulu and a neighbourhood of parents willing to abandon their demoniacally-possessed children and move away from the town. Also, Velma has to contend with playing second-fiddle to Shaggy's friendship with Scooby and Daphne is constantly trying to get Freddy in secluded places akin to a sexual predator.

As an adult, Mystery Inc. is hilarious, but as a parent it makes me wonder what my kids think of it.

It's not like cartoons back in the 80's and 90's were more straightforward though.

The main good-guy in Transformers was beaten to death in a feature-length movie.

In Teenage Mutant Ninja/Hero Turtles, they showed that the best way to deal with enemies is to throw them into a hellish dimensional limbo. And stupidity = evil.

In Gargoyles, the rich are so damned evil. Or aliens, as shown in Biker Mice From Mars.

In the 90's, superhero cartoons were full of lasers. Nobody owned metal ammunition. Cartoons made recently, there are totally guns. Avengers: Earths Mightiest Heroes has guns, for instance.

Taking another example from Avengers - in that, the evil organization HYDRA was behind World War 2. A group led by Germans and, at least in the present, populated by Americans amongst other nationalities.

What will Little Billy say when WW2 comes up in history class? He knows Captain America is fictional as he's a character in and on hundreds of things. There's no HYDRA lunchbox though. Will he think it strange that Teacher is saying the Nazi's started the war, so many decades ago, when his primary information source - television - showed that it was HYDRA?

I'm probably over-thinking it - any kid who believes HYDRA is real, will think Captain America is, too. Right?

How Frequent Should Comics Be?

52, Countdown, Trinity, Brightest Day, Amazing Spider-Man - over the past 5 years these titles have have all come out more than once a month.

The thing is do we want them so often? Sure, 52 was an 'exercise in seeing if it could be done', so they said. It would explain why Countdown (To Final Crisis) was so bad. They wanted to capitalise on the fact 52 was successful, by making another weekly story, but they didn't have a thorough idea of what it should entail. Trinity was better, but that's probably because they knew they had done such a poor job with Countdown.

Brightest Day is bi-weekly, probably thanks to the previous three years being drowned by weekly stories. I just remembered that I forgot to include Wednesday Comics in this - a newspaper-like comic that I didn't actually bother reading.

I'm certain that the fact DC had so much commercial success with their weekly comics, Marvel decided to try it out. Thankfully it's been limited to one title - Amazing Spider-Man. It ran at three issues per month until this past October, and is currently at 2 issues per month. It's had a longer run (101 issues) than the weekly comics had (they ran for 52 issues each), but it was more hit-or-miss as it had a rotating band of creators.

But do we want comics sooner? Is weekly too much? I used to always be chomping at the bit for a new issue of whatever was great (X-Factor), but now I wonder if I'd grow sick of it. Part of the fun of comics is wondering what will happen after the cliffhanger. Will the hero be injured? Will someone rescue them? Time portal? Dimensional rift? Alien cyborg? Einstein's brain in a chimp's body?

If it's a weekly fix, it removes some of the suspense. Unless you follow the solicits, each minor hero could be killed in their next appearance. Heck, Ms Marvel was appearing in New Avengers even though she'd been dead for three issues of her own title, so even that isn't set in stone.

So - do you prefer it all in one hit like a graphic novel? Or do you like the slow torment of a monthly/bi-monthly/yearly (Spawn) title?

New Host, Same Old Symbiote

So it was announced that the main symbiotes of Marvel would be getting new hosts - I can live with that. The new Carnage will be a woman and the new Venom will work for the Government.

This is the cover to Carnage #2 and he still looks pretty male... Perhaps that will change at the end of the mini - wouldn't want to give away too many details on a cover. Like boob-size - It might be Power Girl!

No, it wouldn't...

But I'm glad Carnage stayed away for a long time, but is now coming back with a new host. Sentry ripped him apart in space, in New Avengers Volume 1 #1 - New Avengers is now on Volume 2. So he's been gone for long enough, and Cletus' death has stuck - if Cletus was the host at the time... It was never discussed, though the symbiote did seem to have a host at the time.

As for Venom - Mac Gargan is being removed as the host and being returned to villain duty as Scorpion. Strange to make a step-back, but someone clearly has plans. And the fact Venom will be an ongoing written by Rick Remender is a good sign.

Venom as a government agent has been done before. A couple of times. But so has the fact 'the symbiote is bonded to the host at a cellular level - so they can NEVER BE SEPARATED AGAIN.' That's the trouble when your ongoing series is actually a load of miniseries run back-to-back over a period of several years... People don't bother to read them all.

Making him a government black-ops agent is fine with me. The host is usually unwilling and resentful - but if you're changing for someone who WANTS to work for the government...

Originally I thought the new host would be Mr Negative. I still think there's a chance of that. Most people's money is on Flash Thompson though. He's an army-man, so the chance to work for his country - whilst kitted out like his favourite superhero - will appeal and make him want to stick at it, no matter what the symbiote says. And if Mac Gargan is any indication, the symbiote talks incessantly. Probably a habit it picked up from Peter Parker...

More On Character Deaths

After my post yesterday, I was asked in the comments about the death of Cable, which also made me remember that another Marvel character was killed off recently.

So, Loki and Cable have both kicked it recently. Both in crossovers, in fact.

The thing is, neither of them are dead.

Loki had a Siege one-shot where he bought off Hela so he would never die - the next month he 'died' in a tearful scene with his step brother Thor. Also, it seems people didn't read that one-shot, as more than one person thinks Loki is dead.

Cable 'died' in the finale of Second Coming whilst holding a time-portal open, covered in the Techno-Organic virus which had threatened to consume him since birth. When the portal snapped shut, his arm was left out of the portal, severing it and giving Hope a great trophy for her wall.

The problem with this is the fact that Cable is a time traveller. If he can't survive being thrown willy-nilly through time via an out of control time portal, nobody can. Sure, he's approaching (if not over) 60 years old by now, but he's a a slippery one. If X-Force don't find him before 2012, I'll be very surprised - he banded the original X-Force together, which is why he joined forces with the most recent iteration twice.

"But Ace, what about the T.O. virus you mentioned?" you may ask! It was probably all contained in his arm. You know, despite it being a different arm from his original, and actually bereft of the T.O. virus, as per Cable & Deadpool... I forget the issue number, but it was after Deadpool had lobotomised him and found a techno-organic alien lifeform that he used to restart Cable's brain.

I'll look it up.