FW PRESENTS - VIDEO COMICS 2!
In this follow-up episode to last year's VIDEO COMICS show, Rob, Shag, Chris, and Ryan discuss three exciting episodes of the classic 1980s Nickelodeon show, starring Hawkman, Sugar & Spike, and Swamp Thing!
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Thanks for listening!
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Great podcast guys. So far I watched the Swamp Thing episode on your new channel and really enjoyed it. The bayous are crawling with nutria and Cockney gangsters. It works! And Wrightson had such great panel composition.
Now you understand a bit of the feeling of being a Doctor Who fan, Rob. Those missing episodes, when they are found in an old tv station in Kenya or whatever…
Now I’m just imagining Rob being the F&W Philip Morris and performing Indy Jones-type adventures for the sake of Video Comics.XD
Thanks for the mention. I’m glad I was able to point you in the right direction. Now that you’ve got a YouTube channel, how about producing some of your own video comics? Chris is your very own Frank Welker!
I subscribed to the channel a few days ago but finally watching the three episodes now. I look towards seeing what will get posted there. I hope there is the odd content.
Odd content? Challenge accepted!
Great episode guys! I loved these when I was a kid. Whenever I rode my bike to buy comics, I had “Flight of the Valkyries” running through my head.
You can count me as subscribed to the YouTube channel!
Like a lot of folks, I was only aware of Video Comics due to Rib’s mention of it on various podcast episodes.
For those interested, the 2001 (at least I’m 98% sure it’s from 2001) release of KRULL in DVD had something similar as a special feature.
They scanned in the Marvel Comics adaptation of the movie, and had the films dialogue and sound effects play over the related panels.
This was a treat to listen to the four horsemen of the F & W, although I had literally never heard of Ryan Daly before this podcast.
Regarding the source of the stories: The Hawkman story was only ever in Detective #428, so the producers must have had a copy of that comic. The Swamp Thing story had already been re-printed, in a DC special in 1977. Perhaps that was the source? It was newsprint, but maybe it looked better than Swamp Thing #1?
What about the other stories? I haven’t watched the video (yet), and I don’t enough about what comics could have contained these stories, and even Amazing Mike has failed me! One cannot do a search on Mike’s Amazing World of DC Comics for Dizzy Dog! Or The Raccoon Kids! Or Custer Cat and Cheesy Mouse! Apparently every version of Who’s Who was woefully incomplete!
Hawkman is a detective. Katar (pronounced with two short A’s) How was sent to Earth to study Earth police (i.e., American) methods. Presumably that means solving crimes as well as serving and protecting.
Terry, I had a few notes on the Sugar and Spike episode that didn’t make it on the air, because Shag wouldn’t shut up. No seriously, we just never got around to them.
Sugar and Spike:
“Valentine Mix-Up” from Sugar and Spike #27, Feb/Mar 1960
The second story is from Sugar and Spike #38, Dec/Jan 1961
The third is from Sugar and Spike #25, Oct/Nov 1959. It’s the cover story!
The Three Mousketeers is from Three Mousketeers #6, Jan/Feb, 1957
Also, nearly every story in this episode is Holiday-themed, so I wonder if the folks at Video Comics didn’t just make an all-purpose episode they could run on multiple holidays?
Chris
I remember Video Comics well, and fondly. My uncle got cable before we did, and he used to record episodes and give those to us. (Sadly, I don’t think any of those didn’t get taped over.)
So random things I remember:
Sugar and Spike aired on weekends and had their own unique opening. The weekday ones were Flash, Green Lantern, Mystery in Space, Swamp Thing and Hawkman. Mystery in Space included Ultra the Multi Alien and Adam Strange. I can’t remember if they did the Space Museum or even (gasp) Star Hawkins, but it’s possible. Each title would get the whole episode, and depending on the length of the story, there were multiple segments. So you might get two Flash stories one episode, an Ultra and Adam Strange another, and then one big Green Lantern story in the next.
Swamp Thing definitely did issue #6 with the clockwork people.
A lot of the Green Lantern stories were also in the Blue Ribbon Special Digest #4, including the Earth 1/2 Green Lantern crossover with Krona. I think a Flash teamup was in there, too.
They did a fair number of Flash and Elongated Man stories. And I remember that Elongated Man sounded like Cary Grant. Well, Goober doing his Cary Grant impression at least, since that was all I knew about Cary Grant as a kid.
Generally, I feel like the episodes all felt like the reprints you’d see in a treasury or digest. So it was all that era. Some of the stories I knew, some I didn’t. And I was totally unfamiliar with Mystery in Space save Adam Strange. And it’s where I first encountered Ultra as well.
I loved the show as a kid and I’m so glad you’ve tracked it down and let Dana know how important she and her work were to so many of us.
Great episode gentleman! Rob, your tenacity and passion regarding these long lost treasures is to be commended! I know I’m going to sound like a Grumpy Old Man,, but back in those long ago days of the 70’s and early 80’s, this was all we had! And we LOVED IT! As Ryan stated, if I’d been lucky enough to encounter these, I’d have taped them immediately and then worn out said tape watching them over and over. Now, I’ll be showing them to my 8 year old via YouTube….it’s a funny world we live in. Thanks again for uncovering these forgotten gems for multiple generations in my household to enjoy!
I posted about this on Rob’s post did you guys notice the four hosts are now professional critics? Someone linked this page to IMDb under critical reviews. It both makes me happy and a little scared for their opinions to carry such weight. XD
Congratulations on the YouTube channel! Subscribed! And well done tracking these episodes down. Like a lot of people, I wasn’t aware of Video Comics until I heard Rob talk about them on various shows so it’s great to see them now in all their glory. I will definitely be showing these to my kids…….. though I may hold back on the Swamp Thing episode. That narrator sounds sinister!
I’m looking forward to Video Comics 3 (Video Comics and the Last Crusade) and anything else that gets posted to the YouTube channel. Keep up the great work!
This was a great follow up to the original Video Comics episode. I also want to thank you for your efforts, which have made some of these old episodes available for everyone to enjoy once again.
Though, all of this does make me wonder what other fabled comic books and comic book adaptations are out there waiting to be rediscovered. Perhaps, we need a new “In Search of…” style podcast to track down these mythical comic creations?
Their source for good quality images could have been the color separation proofs that would come on four sheets of acetate. Every page should have had one each in cyan, magenta, yellow, black (CMYK). When I visited DC’s offices in 1989, they gave me three of these cover proofs to take home. They are basically four clear sheets with each color on its own sheet. When you put them together, you get the whole image and it gives a really nice presentation. The solid color without the newsprint artifacts reminds me of these and I think they would photograph nicely. The clear background on the black sheet would make it really easy to move the word balloons around too.
When I worked at USA Today Baseball Weekly 21 years ago, we were in the last days of this form of printing. We had to approve the color proofs at our office and then they would transmit each color separately to the print sites. Those color proofs were far better-looking than the final newsprint magazine and would look really nice if anyone had kept them.
Just started this ep, but had to comment real quick:
1. I only listened to last year’s ep last week, so I was astonished to see a follow up!
2. I spent 3 hours going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole about the history of cable tv, because of that ep.
3. As soon as you guys mentioned needing 100 subscribers to your YouTube channel, I logged into my account. His subscribe and discovered – I was subscriber 99!
I couldn’t leave you guys hanging at 99. So my 12 year old is now a subscriber too. She was forced to listed to Video Comics ep 1 last weekend while in the car with me, so she counts!
Back to the ep now…
I haven’t heard Rob this giddy since he foreclosed on that old folks home!