Episode 653 - Star Treken
Sep 18, 2023
Today we're talking about STAR TREK! Star Trek is a pretty influential piece of pop-culture. Most interesting to me is that it's a future that is NOT a dystopia. It's a large scale vision of a future world where everything is NOT terrible and collapsing in on itself. You can count those on one hand. It's worth talking about just because of that. Instead of taking the boring, tried and true dystopia route the creators of this world decided to explore a premise of “what happens when a world actually works?”.
Topics and Show Notes
Star Trek has had many versions, from the original series in the 1960s, to the animated 70s version, the movies, the 3 big series in the 1990s, the revival prequel series, and my personal fave: the animated “Lower Deck”s. Out of all Star Trek I've seen I have to say that The Next Generation, Voyager, and Lower Decks are my faves, along with the The Wrath of Khan. But Lower Decks really stands out as a classic because it pays homage to all of classic Star Trek as well as seamlessly updating the culture to today's political environment and being amazingly funny at the same time.
It is extremely rare for an IP to accomplish this. In almost every single case the creators will butcher the IP by changing everything, crapping all over the original incarnation and being super clunky and embarrassingly amateur with incorporating modern cultural ideals to do with things like gender equality, racial diversity, and sexuality. Lower Decks is as smooth as silk in that regard.
Which version of Star Trek is your fave?
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by The Spook Control - Starts off creepy then bursts into high speed, action oriented racing sounds, setting your pulse aflame and dangerously fast! Full on electronica.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
FIRST BOYFRIEND Infamous Delinquent Kazuki - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/sep/11/featured-comic-first-boyfriend-infamous-delinquent-kazuki/
Featured music:
The Spook Control - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Spook_Control/ - by MSK314, rated E.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 644 - Psychocast
Jul 17, 2023
We're talking about the pop-culture myth of psychopaths and sociopaths and other stuff like serial killers. Yes those conditions do exist, well sort of (not exactly with those names), but the pop-culture versions we know from the media are mostly myths. The real things aren't as exciting or flashy as the versions we know and love/hate from movies, comic, books, TV shows and podcasts.
Episode 643 - Cultcast
Jul 10, 2023
With the release of the new Indiana Jones film comes some questions… We haven't seen it yet but we hear a lot of people don't like it and it's already being called a flop. But is that because it's actually bad, because people want it to be bad, or because it doesn't match people's expectations? What's the real story? It's hard to know at this point.
Episode 640 - Aliens
Jun 19, 2023
We base our images of aliens in comics on aliens in TV shows and movies mostly, because those are the ones we all know. But movie aliens have been generally based on humans because it's less expensive, easier to come up with a costume and makeup for an actor, and it's also easier to make those aliens relatable. “Aliens” even THINK the same as we do, have the same motivations, wants, needs, prejudices, opinions… Almost 100% of the time aliens in media are US, just a weird version of us: distorted reflection.
Episode 635 - Warcast
May 14, 2023
We're talking about WAR here! Trying to leave out politics, though that's really hard with war because it's basically ALL politics but on fire. So we're talking mainly about depictions of it or at least aspects of it, in art and the media. Both Tantz Aerine and myself work on war comics, Without Moonlight and Pinky TA respectively (plus Tantz also does Brave Resistance with Pitface), so we have some knowledge of the subject from a creator perspective.
Episode 630 - Entitled
Apr 10, 2023
The Quackcast this week is about entitled bossy Karens. In fact it was originally going to BE “the Karencast” but the whole “Karen” thing is a bit sexist and pejorative. So why a Quackcast on overly entitled people then? Well aside from we stealing it from Tantz's newspost on Friday, those kinds of people make great minor villain characters. They can be comic relief baddies but they can also be deceptively dangerous when they really DO have connections to back up their arrogance!
Episode 628 - Cover me!
Mar 27, 2023
We're talking about the importance of a good cover in this cast. Another technical comicscast! I love making coves, they're one of my fave things because I get to stretch my artistic muscles and get a little more flashy and creative with my art and graphic design. They can also be pretty dread things to work on when you've used up all your creative powers on your actual comic and have nothing left over…
Episode 626 - I didn't do nuthin'
Mar 13, 2023
Today we talk about an unusual type of villain, a secret type of bad guy and a particularly nasty one: the person who maliciously does nothing. This is a person who COULD intervene to resolve a dire situation or save someone, they could do it easily; they know how, they have the means, they're not scared or unsure, and it doesn't mean much risk to themselves, they just choose to sit back and watch the person die or the situation collapse… either because they know the result will benefit themselves or they're just curious to watch the person die or the everything turn to crap for the victim or whatever. Either way they COULD easily intervene but they choose not to.