The webcomics blog about webcomics

What They Don’t Teach Us Pseudo-Journalist Hacks

I'm humming the theme song as I type this. Can't help it.

Committing actual journalism takes a lot of time. I don’t wish to journalise more today, so we’re going mega-brief. And since every webcomicker and their dog is running filler or taking off for a significant part of the next 10 days or so, the coming days may be brief as well. I suspect that you’ll deal.

You know what? This isn’t new, but it escaped my notice until now. New Star Blazers stories, more than twelve chapters worth, are being released as a webcomic.

I was twelve years old when the first English language dub of the Space Cruiser Yamato series was syndicated in the US; by sheer chance I was sick and home from school at 2:30 that afternoon when something new showed up on channel 9. After half an hour of animation that was nothing like the rest of the cartoons I watched, I was astonished to see that this was merely the first episode and the story was “To be continued”. There was an ongoing storyline! More characters than I could count! After a couple of days I had to go back to school, but I followed the show as often as I could; unfortunately, it got yanked from the schedule before summer vacation came around, and I was barely able to piece together the full story of those 52 episodes.

Since that day thirty years ago, I’ve discovered around the world, guys of a certain age know that this cartoon holds a special power over them. It predated the ability to record TV cheaply, boxed sets of favorite stories, and magazines or discussion groups that gave easy access to others that shared our interest. For decades, we had only memories, and now there’s more stories aimed straight into my amygdala.

I’ll be honest — the webcomic doesn’t match up to what I watched bundled up in bed with half a grilled-cheese sandwich forgotten in my hand. Nothing could. But damn if reading it doesn’t bring back some memories.

Dudes of a certain age, get into your pajamas, plop yourself under the covers with your laptop, and start reading. It’s not the same, it can’t be the same, but it’s a hell of a ride.

wait, we get to run filler over Christmas? No one told me.

But seriously, thanks for the Star Blazers link! That was probably my first taste of “Japanimation” (as Anime was called way back in those cold, dark, olden days) and while I’m not a big Anime/Manga fan I have many fond memories of running home to watch the show after school.

Are you sure it was Ch.9? I remember it being on ch. 5 …

And since every webcomicker and their dog is running filler or taking off for a significant part of the next 10 days…

Hmmm… Maybe I need to get a dog?

My father and I used to watch this cartoon every day after I got home from school. It was one of the few “children’s cartoons” I can remember where violence actually had consequences (i.e., people weren’t just fighting robots, and people actually died). I loved this show.

I actually have a “comic book” that retells the story using actual stills from the show. It only goes as far as the Pluto outpost, though. Ah well.

I guess I’ll have to give this new comic a look!

[…] bunch of Star Blazers stories are available as a webcomic. (Via Gary Tyrrell, who seems to be all excited about […]

RSS feed for comments on this post.