Author: DOuG pRATt

The Less Than Fantastic Four

(I was going to publish this months ago, but then Archive.org was hacked and taken down. Now that it’s been restored I can embed the site’s videos again.)

Jonny Quest was a big deal for me, and a lot of other young animation fans, when it appeared on ABC prime time TV in 1964-65. I have both the DVD collection of the series and the Blu-ray set, which restored Doug Wildey’s name to the closing credits.

I used to sign my name that same way, enclosed in a box like a TV screen. The series is included with HBO’s MAX streaming service.

After Jonny Quest, Space Ghost in 1966 was a big step down in animation quality for Hanna-Barbera. On the plus side, the art generally stayed on model with Alex Toth’s character designs. A year later, it was all too obvious the budget had been cut even more for The Fantastic Four.

The only way, that I’m aware of, to see the FF cartoons today is on Archive.org. Whoever transferred them from the old Boomerang cable channel did as good a job as anyone could do.

Alex Toth’s character designs are very good, but the animation rarely does them justice. Nonetheless, I’d like to see these cartoons given a proper restoration and presentation.

Mostly, I’m interested in the episodes that are adaptations of the original Marvel Comics stories. The groundbreaking Kirby/Lee/Sinnott “Galactus Trilogy” from FF #48-50 is crammed into a single episode. It’s #14 in this playlist.

President Musk

Russia’s billionaire oligarchs are allowed to exist at Putin’s discretion. They know they’re dead if they attempt to influence government policy. With the return of Trump to the White House, we now have “Oligarchy, American Style.”

Trump let the richest man in the world dictate policy, then he followed his lead, giving Musk the appearance of acting as de facto president-elect. It’s bizarre. This is a marriage of convenience that won’t have a happy ending. Until Musk has been sidelined, J.D. Vance is effectively out of the picture.

In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night

The Hubble Space Telescope, taking pictures of non-existent stars?

Last week I caught a comment on a news item about the drone sightings over New Jersey that made me wonder if it was for real or just a troll’s idea of a joke. Some guy ranted the government is lying to us about everything, including the space program. His proof? All of those fake space photos that don’t have stars.

Apollo 17

Replying to something like that can go one of two ways, depending on the assumption about the comment being genuine or a joke. If the person making the comment isn’t joking, do they simply not know, or do they have a political axe to grind?

As the saying goes, you’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. The quote has been attributed to Patrick Moynihan, but it dates back much further than that.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/03/17/own-facts/

So, what are the facts explaining why some space photos don’t have any stars?