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Gargoyles

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Comment Room Archive

Comments for the week ending October 23, 2022

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Jurgan> I agree.
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"Black Lightning getting his mojo back was amazing. Seeing him walk through the smoke with bolts of lightning arcing out of his hands was my first "Oh mah gawd! That's so cool!" of the season."

To me that seemed more tragic than awesome. He was hoping not to have to use his powers to hurt anyone but realized that he had no choice.

Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]

Jurgan> It would be hard for DeLamb to not reveal his powers in this situation, it's not like the average person can shrug off being whaled on by an enraged young adult coated in molten rock.

Black Lightning getting his mojo back was amazing. Seeing him walk through the smoke with bolts of lightning arcing out of his hands was my first "Oh mah gawd! That's so cool!" of the season.

Matthew
Ain't nothing crazy 'bout me but my brain!

Yep, and yet in his first Batman Jazz review he found that Fortunate Son was suppose to be a tribute to Rock N' Roll.

Problem is that the only fans of it in comic are criminals or in Robin's case showing some stupidity like asking why the villain throwing a grenade into a studio office is so bad.

And besides Bruce witnessing some Rock N' Roll fans engaging in destructive action, there is a flashback to his childhood where Thomas turned of the radio cause he disapproves.

And that takes place right before they see the Zorro movie. So basically they inserted Thomas Wayne showing dislike for Rock, on the same night he and the family are mugged.

Antiyonder

Young Justice 3x03: Eminent Threat
Not too many thoughts on this one, but it was fairly good. I’m glad they’re focusing on a small core cast so far.

Garfield being the first “openly meta” celebrity is a good joke/parallel to real world issues. “Have you tried… not being a mutant?”

Baron DeLamb started as a clever villain, goading Brion into attacking him in public. But he overplays his hand and people realize he’s the villain. If he were smarter, he would have just let Brion whale on him and not revealed his own powers.

I like seeing Halo trying to navigate while not speaking English. I’m enjoying her so far and seeing her “healing factor” in action.

Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]

Todd: It might be a reference to an infamous Batman comic where he declares how much he hates rock and roll. Linkara has made a running joke out of it for years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_yt0ryQpc
Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]

KARRIN BLUE - Thanks.
Todd Jensen

Todd: You don't have to apologize, you yourself didn't do anything wrong, and your response is understandable too. Also, I think the punk rock joke is about that one Batman comic where he hated punk music and rock and roll, where the villains were evil musicians, and where his initial hatred of punk came from listening to it right before the night his parents died.
Karrin Blue

TODD: [SPOILER] I actually did "call" Lumity from her very first appearance, mainly because their initial dynamic is nigh-identical to that of Akko Kagari and Diana Cavendish in the 2017 anime "Little Witch Academia," for which they are overwhelmingly the most popular ship.

While it's unclear whether the parallels (girl who comes from a non-magical lineage going to magic school to learn to be a great witch, inspired by the white-clad heroine she admired in childhood, whose adventures bring her steadily closer to the academy's top student: a rich, aristocratic girl who initially comes off as a stern rival who disparages the main character's efforts, but actually has a heart of gold) were originally intended, the more weeb-ish segments of TOH fandom latched onto them immediately, and the crew clearly took notice.

Indeed, Akko's uniform can be seen in the latest episode (the one hanging on the wall in the far right), so if they weren't aware of LWA when the show started then they certainly are now: https://64.media.tumblr.com/1797c53857ac4f1ea043d9ee9058ff71/e7a3987ce4910ea3-18/s640x960/c15aba92fc3101df602a0c464b6fa8fb1988ba63.jpg [/SPOILER]


In other news, so ecstatic to see those first preview pages for "Here in Manhattan"! And the first cover for issue #2 may honestly be best Thailog has looked in any official art to date.

The old-hat brony in me is also pleased to see that Tony Fleecs remains in the cover rotation, and drawing what he does best.

Masterdramon - [kmc12009 at mymail dot pomona dot edu]
"Inside of every demon is a rainbow." - Charlie Morningstar

ANTIYONDER - I'm afraid I don't get the significance of Batman disliking the title "Punk Rock Unicorn".

[SPOILER] Another bit of "Thanks To Them" that stood out to me; the scene where they're learning Spanish, Vee is doing the best, and Amity wistfully recalls when she was at the top of the class. (Amity still strikes me as one of the great illustrations of character development in the series, by the way - how many of us, after seeing the episode that introduced her the first time, would have imagined that she and Luz would become a couple? Lilith is another good example.) [/SPOILER]

Todd Jensen

Todd Jensen, but anyone is free to chime in of course>

1. [SPOILER] The Star Trekesque show's time period just makes me think of how the Double Dragon movie from the 90s also was just set a decade later instead of say a century or at least a few decades. [/SPOILER]

So the next Phoebe and Her Unicorn book (April 4 2023) is Punk Rock Unicorn. The volume that Batman would likely declare off limits in Wayne ManorXD.

Though regarding a minor bit in what is likely in it, [SPOILER] the cast sings for a page to which we are told to leave to the imagination as singing doesn't come off well in a medium purely visual. Linkara likely felt validation without any clue whyXD. [/SPOILER]

Antiyonder

KARRIN BLUE - Yes, I probably shouldn't have phrased it that way, and I am sorry for saying that. It was an immediate response to learning that they came up with the Collector after getting the bad news about Season Three.

I rewatched "Thanks to Them" on Disney XD today. A few other thoughts on it that I forgot to include in my initial review, or which came to me while watching it again.

[SPOILER] One of the funniest moments was the description of the "Star Trek" counterpart as people in the 1990's imagining what life in 2008 would be like - and it certainly encourages another look in how accurate the predictions of life in the early twenty-first century have been like. No flying cars yet - though I wonder how many sci-fi writers back around 1990 or before ever imagined the existence of smartphones or social media.

The public library in Luz's hometown evidently has old-fashioned tastes; how many libraries these days still have card-catalogues? (Thank goodness they kept it - it led to that delightful scene of Amity discovering how different it is from the card-catalogues in the Boiling Isles' own library.)

The date "1613" for Philip and Caleb's arrival in New England seems remarkably early; seven years before the Pilgrims. (Unless maybe it was meant to be "1630"; "thirteen" and "thirty" are easy to mistake for each other.

Anyone else spot Hop-Pop from "Amphibia" on one of the posters at the veterinary where Camila works? [/SPOILER]

Todd Jensen

*even if in a different role, darnit.
Karrin Blue

I don't know, I think given how the concept was being worked on by the writers, I think we'd have gotten something along those lines no matter what - maybe not as the surprise new boss enemy, but in some form.

... basically, my point that I keep coming back to is: given how abrupt the news was, and how much we won't get to see properly, and how the season was cut short for no real reason, I find it unfair to the crew, and a poor estimation of their skills, to go 'well, it wouldn't have been as good if they'd been treated fairly and had gotten the support from the network they should have had.' Why write off so much material? Of course it's interesting to see what choices get made in adversity, but attributing those efforts to the show getting canned early because of an executive's biases, just doesn't sit right with me (especially because I'm still salty at how much they clearly had planned that'll probably never get properly done. A character concept that the writers were passionate about would probably have ended up in the full-length show, even if in a different show, but all the character work and setup that we'll never see... agh, it drives me nuts. Here's hoping the crew can reunite for some lost-adventures animated episodes in a few years, or works together on another project sometime...)

Karrin Blue

To be clear, he wouldn't have existed in the third season either.
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Karrin > The Collector wouldn't have existed at all in the second season if the third season hadn't been truncated. The decision to shorten the third season was made before the second season and it motivated them to do things like put in the Collector.
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I don't think it's fair to the crew at all to say that a character would have been less creepy or less well used if they had all the time they were originally planning on having. I think they'd know how to pace things properly, especially since giving the game away too early wasn't a problem they had in previous seasons.
Karrin Blue

My brother had an interesting question:

“On a related note, could a Gargoyle go under water as dawn comes, hide as a rock out of site all day, then pop up at nightfall perfectly fine? I think yes.”

I think the answer is no, gargoyle skin is porous during the day so they still need oxygen, right?

Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]

[SPOILER] I assume that Morgan's hair being grey is an "art error"; the other characters look around the same age. (I've wondered whether the crooks in the car were meant to be the "three street thugs".} [/SPOILER]
Todd Jensen

Todd - Good points.

The first 8 pages of Gargoyles #1! https://www.cbr.com/disney-gargoyles-debuts-series-eight-pages-preview-greg-weisman

It doesn't have dialog, so it's not too spoilery but, [SPOILER] Morgan with grey hair! And Gnash is adorable. [/SPOILER]

Landon - [<- Gargoyles News Twitter Feed]

[SPOILER] Yeah, Word of God was that he spent the rest of his life in an insane asylum, but apparently Greg changed his mind.

If the synopsis is accurate, then it confirms that Maggie and Talon's child is a mutate, which I had wondered about for a long time. [/SPOILER]

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Oh, and I just got a peek at the covers for the second issue. Tony Fleecs really seems to like having the cast interact with dogs.
Todd Jensen

LANDON - [SPOILER] I certainly hadn't expected to see Dominic Dracon again; I'd assumed that the devastation that he received at the end of "The Silver Falcon" over the real fate of the stolen jewels that he'd spent most of his life searching for would have been too much for him. (I know that the radio play crossover with "The Spectacular Spider-Man" isn't canon, but I really liked its depiction of Dominic in that one, frantically searching for the diamonds everywhere. It made a great parallel to Mace Malone's own fate, opening one door after another in the Hotel Cabal, convinced each time he did it that he'd finally found the right one....) [/SPOILER]

ANTIYONDER - Thanks for the link. I was amused to learn that the Caretaker got in as a response to the news about the third season being truncated. (Given how effectively creepy he's been, too, it might suggest that there were some good aspects to said truncation.)

Todd Jensen

Oops. Well depends if it work for their dynamic, but [[SPOILER] ]when the first Grimwalker/Clone of Caleb is made, maybe The Collector suggests Belac, which prompts a dismissive eyeroll from Belos'. [/SPOILER]
Antiyonder

https://www.ctinsider.com/entertainment/article/Disney-The-Owl-House-CT-dana-terrace-17515083.php

So among other things, if Disney does give the property another chance at all, Dana would still be willing to do say comics of the lost adventures or older characters in their youth.

So if they got to do that certain episode teased in O' Titan, Where Are Thou? A Gargoyles bit if Dana is familiar with the show....

[Spoiler]The Hexside Squad accidentally animating some sand and having to tame it.

Vee in a good natured jest responding: "Congratulations guys. You beat up a beach.".

Antiyonder

Gargoyles #2 is scheduled for January 11! The slightly spoilery synopsis:

Dynamite's all-new ongoing series, in continuity with the epic Gargoyles television series continues!

[SPOILER] The Gargoyles have awakened from their stone sleep - but will it be in time to save Maggie the Cat and her unborn mutate child from Thailog and Sevarius? Plus, don't miss the return of Dominic Dracon! [/SPOILER]

And the covers:

https://twitter.com/FromEyrie/status/1583428026284802048

Landon - [<- Gargoyles News Twitter Feed]

So I got the recent Phoebe and Her Unicorn Volume 16 Unicornado.

Even before 2020, I got older and previous recent releases from Amazon. Working it into one of the comic store stuff. Good especially when the single issue stuff is minimal.

Also while TSSM likely won't be topped a the Spider-Man show, I can at least say the Spidey cartoon arguably does the simple fun stuff better.

But then I willing watched and enjoyed Hamtaro upon turning 20. On that note, Tom Wilson recently joined the show and doing the voice of Sandman, as well as Stephanie Lemelin as Electro.

Justin Shenkarow (albeit from the Goliath Chronicles) has voiced the Rhino from Season 1. I just like to imagine him as a Harold Berman who turned to crime cause he lacked a Football Headed friend to steer him in the right direction in life.

Also Kari Wahlgren as Detective Stacy.

Antiyonder

And yet Luz never picked up on her second mom resembling her version of RyokoXD.
Antiyonder

Yes, and personality-wise as well Eda is partly inspired by Ryoko and by Slappy the Squirrel from Animaniacs.

I was a big fan when I was a kid and Tenchi Muyo was showing on Cartoon Network, too!

I really think you'd like The Owl House.

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The only thing I know about Owl House is that one of the character models is based on Ryoko from Tenchi Muyo, which was my obsession for a good three or four years.
Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]

[SPOILER] Indeed. For the most part, Camila Noceda = Parenting Goals, and we see that her moment of weakness in sending Luz to Reality Check Camp was brought on by pressure and not wanting Luz to be bullied like she was in school.

Yeah, it's nice that Anne Boonchuy's parents thought she could handle going back to Amphibia and all, but if I were in one of these parents' shoes, I would absolutely go back with my kid like Camila did.

I won't be surprised if Vee continues to live in the Human Realm when this is all over. [/SPOILER]

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Got to watch the first episode of Season Three of "The Owl House" on the library computer, using the link Antiyonder posted. I enjoyed it, too (though it felt different watching it there rather than at home).

[SPOILER] We learn a lot more about Luz's mother Camilla - including that she was much more accepting of Luz's fantasy tastes than the first episode suggested (She was even a big fan of a "Star Trek"-counterpart series). And she was certainly accepting towards Luz's friends (I found her welcoming Amity as Luz's girl-friend touching, but one little detail stood out to me even more - a photograph of her and Vee in her basilisk-form in her room.) She even accompanies Luz and the others back to the Boiling Isles at the end - how often does that happen in a portal fantasy?

I wondered who the legendary hero was whom they were discussing at school, whose story prompted Luz's outburst (based on her own guilt over having unwittingly helped Philip/Belos); was that an actual quote the teacher was reading from ancient literature, or something the writers had invented? Something worth researching.

Belos continues to show himself as one of Disney's creepiest animated television villains - including the "possessing various local animals to death", and his "you'll thank me for this later" (a remark that ought to sound familiar to everyone here - at least, everyone who's seen "Hunter's Moon").

And we have our first casualty in the season - Flapjack's self-sacrifice, a sad though moving moment.

I might have more to say later, but this should be a good start. [/SPOILER]

Todd Jensen

David Reyes > Welcome aboard!

Matthew > Oh, it's very good and definitely worth watching. It has good character development, which is really important for me, as well as the right balance between humor and drama.

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I haven't seen the first episode of Season Three yet, unfortunately - it aired this weekend against other shows on other channels that I wanted to watch as well, so I'm hoping to catch it in rerun (apparently next weekend) - except for a brief catching the opening on YouTube.

I've mentioned this before, but on the truncated third season: I initially thought that might not be a bad idea (the way the second season was heading [SPOILER] with first the Draining Spell, then the Caretaker getting free [/SPOILER], the "just three episodes" approach seemed a better idea - there wouldn't be much room for side-adventures with all the chaos unleashed on the Boiling Isles by those events). But [SPOILER] Luz's friends being stuck on Earth did have the potential for a full third season - with presumably the return to the Boiling Isles and saving it from the Collector being for the last few episodes [/SPOILER] so I do think it was an unfortunate loss. But at least we got a third season to wrap up the story.

[SPOILER] I'll have to wait until I get to see the full episode, but the glimpse I aught was appealing - including Luz's friends discovering that Earth rain is a lot gentler and more pleasant than Boiling Isles rain (complete with Luz and Amity dancing in it). [/SPOILER]

Todd Jensen

The gargoyles are definitely a non-nuclear family, but they're all of the same clan, hatched and raised together - usually when people say 'found family' I take it to mean, well, people who go out and find each other after leaving the different homes they were born in.
Karrin Blue

Oops. Sorry on spoilers.
Antiyonder

Fair enough.

So re asking my question from a year ago or so, but barring how drastically different Gargoyles is from even the more recent serials, anyone think the communal approach by gargoyle clans are fairly in line with a found family, especially with the main cast. Like how it insures one is seldomly alone or overlooked?

Heck I thought about it cause of one of my speculations of The Owl House:

[SPOILER]1. Well general spec here, but Camila and Eda (plus Raine) happily share parenting duties with Luz, even say Vee if she visited.

2. Hunter, I have wonder about. By the end of Season 2A (Yesterday's Lie), possibly Eda, even Raine or Darius given Any Sport in a Storm and Camila by the end of King's Tide.

Camila had the most time with him, but he may still desire some Isle living. Maybe.

I mean if Luz can be co-parented, why not him. So basically I imagine Camila, Eda, Raine and Darius even if not living together 24, yeah parenting group.

Antiyonder

Ah, I think extrapolating that to 'other good things were the result of mandates from the studio' is a bit unearned - especially when the other ones we know about are things like 'can't Luz be more traditionally feminine and gender-conforming' and the ever-bewildering choice to have the third season of an extremely popular show cut to 3 44-minute episodes out of nowhere because some executive didn't like it. So I'm rather dubious that "several mandates were for the best" or that what you listed were mandated at all.
Karrin Blue

Karrin Blue> I mean I:w heard that Season 2 reflects how Dana would have done things to begin with.
Antiyonder

Were those executive mandates? The magic school pastiche and three-man band are both fairly built in. And even if it was some exec who said 'add another character' or 'the kids like that Harry Potter stuff, do that,' (as opposed to the cast and setting changing as the story moved from concept to reality and the writers hashed things out and added new parts), it would've been the crew doing all the work to actually make them part of the story.

As to the tone - I think a gradual darkening of the tone was always part of the plan, but that's different from some executive going 'this is too dark For The Children/Disney Brand, censor it' and the crew getting more leeway later on.

Karrin Blue

Sad thing is that I think several mandates were for the best. Gus besides his dynamic of Hunter provides Luz with yet another friend.

Hexside for Luz to have a better school environment and gave us the best school Principal Bump.

And the light hearted Season 1 makes the dark turn even more impactful.

Antiyonder

I'd say it's very good! The characters are fun, the humor is good, there's a plot that rewards looking back at old episodes for details in the background, and just visually it's very pretty and well-animated. Unfortunately, since the last season got cut down from ~20 episodes to three, there's likely to be a lot of threads left hanging or tied up hurriedly, but that's really no fault of the crew, who did their best with what space they had. It's a fun take on a portal fantasy series and, even aside from enjoying the major plot beats, I really like how they handled a lot of the episodic plots (like - there are a lot of plots that, in a different show I'd expect to be nothing but secondhand embarrassment and derision, that here are really sweet and sincere.)
Karrin Blue

There's been a lot of chatter around Owl House, how good is the series?
Matthew
Ain't nothing crazy 'bout me but my brain!

Can't believe I'm just stumbling across this. GG 4 the win and can't believe there are still so many people involved in Gargoyles HAHA I was on the reddit group for a while.
David Reyes - [dreyes824 at yahoo dot com]
https://www.modestomobiledetailing.com

So we have now Two episodes of The Owl House Season Three. There knocked off several numbers.

Thoughts on Thanks to Them? Well before the story stuff:

1. https://twitter.com/happylotl/status/1581485502288404480

Monster Slayer Academia from Yesterday's Lie could have been a reference to just My Hero Academia or it along with LWA, but finally a clear cut reference to it's spiritual sibling/cousin.

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRfTRN1F5Ys

A good move on Disney's part even. Episode is free for viewing in NA. So if possible watch as Weisman would recommend for his shows and give it or any video on Disney Channel or Disney Television Animation a like.

[[SPOILER] ]
1. So besides the more notable coming out, Lumity (the term) gets a shout out.
Basically a(nother) thank you from Dana.

2. Yeah I bet Willow had to resist the urge to just kiss Hunter like crazy.

And even a possible thing between Vee and her now named friend Masha (a spoiler free review from friend suggested them to be non binary via nail polish colors).

Yeah Luz and Amity are going to so hit both couples with shipper names. Masha might go for that. They did favor Caleb (Wittebro) and Evelyn (the witch who lured him to the Boiling Isles and most certainly a Clawthorne).

3. So Flapjack, casualty of War or rebirth likely on the table for this little pancake.

4. Yeah I kind of thought Philip might have been someone who really wanted glory as opposed to genuinely believing he is doing good for all humans.

Among other previous cases his near petrification of Luz. He undoes and stops it not cause she appeals to a sliver of decency, but cause she called him Philip.
And it seemed like even then he waited in order to scare a human kid as much as possible.

5. That's a reason I imagine he went back to the Isles. It's all he has left.

And maybe he before Luz and the others reunite with their friends, he hopes to pick off a witch at a time hoping it will go unnoticed or that The Collector will be blamed.

Or he figured Luzura's mom wouldn't follow him to the Demon RealmXD. Smart ass answer of the year.

6. So if Odalia has any presence, first hope is Camila (and Eda) putting her in her place.

Or her admitting she screwed up and tries to kiss up to Mittens, Alador and the rest only to be blown off.[ [/SPOILER]
]

Antiyonder

First.
Todd Jensen