Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This week, Bennett looks at S13 of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Pixar’s Turning Red, and the final issue of The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries.
Last Friday, March 4 at 8 pm ET was the long-awaited premiere of Season 13 of Mystery Science Theater 3000, but those that missed it needn’t worry; they probably couldn’t have watched it anyway. It was part of a “soft launch”, intended exclusively for backers (such as myself) of their “Make More MST3K” Kickstarter which raised $6.5 million in May 2021. As I outlined back in April 2021 (see “Big Chungus Unleashed“), the money raised went not just for another new season of the show but to create the Gizmoplex, a streaming platform where fans can find both old and new MST3K content.
This new content will include 13 new episodes, 12 new shorts as well as various live “premiere events,” like A Tribute To Manos -The Hands Of Fate, a celebration of one of the worst movies ever made, made famous and infamous by MST3K. This public beta will end in May and after the “grand global opening,” people will be able to buy a subscription to the Gizmoplex.
This was the first new episode of MST3K since 2018 and I’m happy to report that it was worth the wait. It’s pretty much business as usual on board The Satellite of Love for Jonah Ray and the bots. They’re funny as always, though to really excel at movie riffing you need the right sort of cinematic material to work with. This time they’re aided and abetted by Santo in the Treasure of Dracula, an exceptionally wonky movie that combines a life regression/time machine, a masked Mexican wrestler, vampires and a graveyard treasure hunt. New episodes will premiere monthly.
Back in February, I wrote about Disney’s Encanto, the animated feature about a magically gifted family, and its adaptation, Disney Encanto: The Graphic Novel (see “Missing The Mouse“). Well, Pixar has another movie about a girl with a magical gift premiering this Friday on Disney+ (the theatrical release for the same date was canned in January-ed.) that has every earmark of being both a huge success and a franchise in the making.
Turning Red is about Mei Lee “a confident, dorky thirteen-year-old torn between staying her mother’s dutiful daughter and the chaos of adolescence” who when overcome with extreme emotion “Hulks out” into a giant red panda. Although so far it’s gotten nothing but rave reviews, it has a lot of potential negatives; for starters it’s a period piece set in early 2000s Canada. Plus, there’s some franker than usual talk about (gasp) menstruation.
But from the various ads, trailers, and clips I’ve seen on YouTube, it’s hard to imagine any of that keeping kids, its principal audience, from enjoying the heck out of it. And like Encanto there’s music; the primary plot revolves around a boy band called 4*Town, the music for which was provided by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell. It’s not my usual kind of thing, but I’ve got to confess, “Nobody Like U” is awfully catchy.
I could be wrong, I very often am, but I think Turning Red is going to be a tremendous success. And if I’m right, having a couple of copies of
Disney/Pixar Turning Red: The Graphic Novel, a full-color hardcover with a release date of May 24, 2022, might be a smart idea.
And finally, I’d like to say a fond goodbye to one of my favorite comics, The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries (see “The Batman Who Smiles, Occasionally“), as a 12-issue mini-series whose final issue shipped this week. Writer Sholly Fisch always does a remarkable job of loading his kid-friendly mysteries with deep dives into DC Comics lore, but he really outdoes himself with “Too Many Crooks.” In it, the extended Bat-family crosses swords with Batman’s rogue gallery, which includes appearances by such obscure villains as Mr. Camera, Dr. No Face, The Eraser and The Batman Revenge Squad. There are also cameos by the international Batmen Of All Nations as well as The Bat Squad, a Mod Squad-“inspired” trio of detectives, Mick, Margo, and The Major, who Batman encountered exactly once in the pages of The Brave and the Bold #192 back in 1970. Oh, and Shaggy and Condiment King share a nice moment.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Source: ICV2
