Fan Art of the Day

I don’t know if it always come through (this is sarcasm, by the way), but I’m generally of the opinion that fans of Gargoyles should be fans of TMNT (2003) and that fans of TMNT should be fans of Gargoyles, and that the two are a natural fit.  Unfortunately, a lot of the internet doesn’t agree with me, possibly because TMNT flew relatively under the animation world’s radar.  So when people who are not  me do put them together, I get really happy.  Like when I found this, by artist ~JEDI-Sheng:

TMNT fans may recognize recurring character Angel, who guest-starred in the episode “Fallen Angel” and made sporadic appearances throughout the show.  She, of course, has been turned into a gargoyle, which is a common thing among Gargoyles fan artists.  It’s not the most original of designs, but then again, originallity isn’t the point here.  She does better on that score with her original characters, who manage to have some neat design elements.  In any case, I’m glad to see stuff like this.

Gargoyles Noir: “The Silver Falcon”

Written by: Cary Bates
Original Air Date: September 12, 1995
Introduces: Martin Hacker; Dominic Dracon; Pal Joey (unidentified); Mace Malone (Mentioned only)
Timeline placement: October 27- October 28, 1995
TMNT episode I could make a forced comparison to: Ep. 4.01: “Cousin Sid”

Magic Tech: “Legion”

“Without trust there can be no clan.”–Goliath

Written by: Marty Isenberg, Robert N. Skir
Original air date: September 6, 1995
Introduces: Desdemona, Iago
Timeline placement: September 6, 1995 (Coldstone’s auto-repair activated) – September 20, 1995

Note: I’m going to try something a bit different here and combine the synopsis with my actual thoughts—it seemed to smooth things over when writing about the episode.

Puerto Rico Gargoyle News?

Oh, this is too good. Today’s edition of the Primera Hora newspaper—one of Puerto Rico’s major newspapers, which really, helps explain why the island is in the sorry state it is—had this article on something that has apparently being going on in the past few days.  Apparently people have been claiming to have seen gargoyles flying around.

I know, right?

Here’s an excerpt from the article, given my quick-and-dirty-translation treatment.

While Canóvanas’ mayor, José “Chemo” Soto, cleared out the dust from his hunting uniform in order to set in motion a plan to capture the strange flying beast—which many claim to have seen in cities such as Guanica, Lajas, in San Germán—Primera Hora looked into the opinions of a historian, a psychologist, and a sociologist. All agreed that the phoenomenon doesn’t exist.

For example, as historian Ricardo Alegría sees it, the stories of gargoyle “attacks”–which share certain similarities to those of the mythical chupacabras, since both are believed to act during the dark of night and to suck the blood from its victims—are simply yet another story in our folklore.

[…]

“I find that detail very interesting because the term “gargoyle” is an architectural element from medieval buildings in Europe, which could specifically be seen on cathedrals. They’re monstrous figures, made in stone, which were placed on rooftops to collect and dispose of rainwater though various holes,” the educator pointed out about what at first was a decorative figure. There is one known gargoyle in Puerto Rico, atop a Miramar chapel, in Santurce.

Wikipedia explains that myths referencing gargoyles date back to the Middle Ages, and related with the popular interest in bestiaries and other hellish torments. Others assure that, at night, the stone gargoyles become beasts of flesh and blood, which then return to their stone state at dawn. [bold mine]

Perhaps that is what Chemo and his hunting partner, Reynaldo Ríos, are thinking, as they ventured last nigh to look for the Boriqua gargoyle among the ruins and tunnels of the old sugar mill, in Guánica, where they assure lie the skeletons of its victims.

So yeah. Desire to bang my head against several hard objects at the idea that a major newspaper considers “looking at Wikipedia” to be valid research nonwithstanding, the fact they’ve actually considered “our” gargoyles mythology to be worth mentioning is awesome.

“Bad Future”

It took two weeks, but finally my first Gargoyles /TMNT AMV (and my first AMV ever, I might add) is complete.  Take a gander:

Like I said last week, there’s a bunch of similarities between “Future Tense” and “Same as it Never Was”, and I thought this would be a cool way to display them (and as a bonus, possibly increase blog traffic).  The final video ended up being a bit too long–I originally only wanted to use “The Real Folk Blues”, but it would have meant cutting off too much awesome footage, and I realized there was no way I was going to be able to tell a coherent story with only six minutes’ worth of footage.  In any case I’m satisfied with how I managed to par it down.

Just to be clear: this in no way reflects the kind of story I intend to tell with this blog–I just did it for fun and to see how well I’d do.  I think I did rather well, but I think that about everything I do.  What do y’all think?

Also, curses to whoever designed Windows Movie Maker to freeze up whenever you look at it funny.  Big mistake on my part, and one I shan’t repeat again.

Top 10 Gargoyles / TMNT similarities

I’ve mentioned before that part of the reason why I began this blog in the first place was due to the large amount of similarities between both Gargoyles and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons–more so, even, than you would expect from show designed for similar audiences and which had a couple of writers in common. Since I’m still working on the big Monsters of NY project, I thought I’d do something simple for today’s update, so lo an behold, a list listing what exactly those similarities are.  Most can’t be considered anything but coincidence, others would seem to be a result of shared writers,

Note that this list does not include  elements which one would expect to see in an action cartoon–for example, the fact that both teams include a resident genius isn’t notable at all.  These are things that are eerily similar, even when placed under a microscope.

The Element	Gargoyles	TMNT (2003)	Ian has some ’xplaining to do.
Skyscrapers aren’t enough.	The Eyrie Building, a skyscraper with a castle atop it.	The Foot Tower, a skyscraper with a pagoda atop it.	Of all the elements in this list, this is the one I have the most problem classifying as coincidence.  While I don’t really know whosd idea was it to design Foot Tower in this manner–was it a character designer, the writers, a showrunner, or even Peter Laird?–depending on who it was, the possibility that the Aeirie Building provided some direct inspiration goes from “far-fetched” to “quite plausible”.
Evicted	The ‘goyles lose their home in the pilot, although they don’t leave until ep. 9.	The turtles lose their first lair in the pilot, and finding and establishing a new home is a priority in the first few episodes.	While the loss of a home is a common starting for fictional stories (see “Krypton, Planet”), this a bit more specific than that.   While being driven out of their homes is a standard part of most TMNT adaptations, the series played considerably more emphasis on its loss and in the seearch for a new home.  And of course, the slow loss of the gargs castle home drives the first half of season 1.
Sentient nanomachine colonies are the new black.	Matrix	Nano	Granted, nanomachinery is currently hot, and this particular iteration is well on its way to being a standard action cartoon trope, but there is a crucial element that makes these two characters more than different takes on a common trope: the fact that both started as misguided destructive forces, only see the light and join a secondary good-guy team (The Redemption Squad and the Justice Force, respectively).
The Great Helicopter Heist	In “Her Brother’s Keeper”, the Trio take The Pack’s Helicopter as their own.	The TMNT take helicopters belonging to the Foot and the E.P.F.	There’s really nothing I can say about this, except that it may end up being my new standard: your show may be good—maybe even great—but it won’t be balls-to-the wall awesome until your characters steal a helicopter.
The Future Doesn’t Look Good at All	“Future Tense”	“Same as it Never Was”	Two cartoons with  “bad future” plots? Not surprising at all.  Two cartoons with “bad future” plots which involve the on-screen deaths of most of the cast, heel face turns, and some very similar imagery and staging?   Okay, now we’re getting weird.
Woobies	Coldstone/Othello	Leatherhead	This one is sort of a stretch: the similarities between characters aren’t obvious, but they’re definitively there.  Both characters are more-or-less consider kin to the protagonists (Coldstone is clan; Leatherhead came to be via the same process as the turtles); both are initially made to believe that the protagonists are evil in their initial appearance; both are believed dead at the end of their initial appearance.  Then, once they are reunited with their kin, they’re prevented from joining them because of their mental instability (Coldstone’s multiple personalities, Leatherhead’s anger).
Hey, why don’t we ditch our supporting cast and setting for a while?	The Avalon World Tour	Fast Forward	While the storylines weren’t similar, its effects sure were: extended storyarcs downplaying the established supporting cast (who, while not entirely gone, appeared much more rarely) and setting, establishing a bunch of new ones, and resulting in a permanent addition to the cast upon the storyline’s end, which came not long after each arc’s end.
There’s something different about you dude…just like the last ten times.	Coyote, the ever-upgraded robot who gets a new design with every successive version.	Baxter Stockman, the cyborg who gets a new body every couple of episodes.	Cartoons usually try to stick to one design per character, so when a series makes a point of periodically changing the character’s appearance, it gets noticed.  Coyote changes looks more frequently, but Stockman, thanks to his greater prominence, has more.
And we shall become men of business.	Lexington will eventually help create Lexington-Xanatos Corporation.	Donatello will eventually help create O’Neil Tech.	This is another weird one, since it doesn’t seem to stem from any storytelling trends, and because they’re both events that we know will happen, but haven’t actually gotten to see, or even know much about.
Engagement jewels are bad news.	Xanatos and Fox get engaged; Eye of Odin turns Fox into a savage fox-woman.	Casey and April get engaged; Ring of Yin turns April into a demon-woman.	This one would totally feel like a stock plot, except that engagements (and subsequently, weddings) are rather rare in western action cartoons, which makes these shared plots seem less coincidental than they could be.

Electric Boogaloo: Recap

In preparation for tomorrow’s (I hope) update on “Electric Boogaloo”, here’s a synopsis of what’s gone on so far.

The Story So Far

Over the past several years, the crime lord known as The Shredder has consolidated almost all organized crime in New York City under the control of his Foot Clan.

Twenty-oh-four: With the Shredder reportedly killed under mysterious circumstances and his 2nd in command Hun missing, the various elements of The Foot’s crime empire have begun fighting amongst themselves.  Thus far, three main factions have emerged: the Foot remnant, led by the Shredder’s Elite Ninja; the Purple Dragons, a street gang usually in charge of most of the Foot’s lower-level criminal activity; and The Five Families, a consortium of old-school gangsters that had been bought out by the Shredder, and who consider the current confusion to be their best chance at a comeback.

After a few skirmishes, the battle for control of the city finally grabbed the public’s attention when fifteen men were found dead at a Canal Street warehouse.  In response, the New York Police Department organized a special task force to deal with the escalating violence–one which, whether by design or happenstance, includes many of the same people who in 1996 formed part of the Gargoyle Task Force.

One of the people not in the Task Force is disgraced cop Longer, who relishes the opportunity to regain his lost reputation and honor.  To that point, he has begun investigating the strange going ons on his own, aiming to…what, exactly?

Thanks to a series of lucky accidents, the Task Force has been able to make some headway into the investigation, and they now have a vague idea of what they’re dealing with.  Meanwhile, task force members Martin Hacker and Lin Koyobashi have been making inroads of their own, and not quite of the positive type…

Dramatis Personae

The Detail:

Gordon Miller: Lieutenant assigned to head the detail by Chief of Detectives Sterns.  A pragmatist and realist, he has little hope of closing the case, but plans to do his damnedest.

Gargoyles Comics: Bomb BOOM! (With Requests)

With the “Make a REAL Gargoyles movie, Disney!” Facebook group now a thousand-person strong, the leadership has begun stressing the importance of the second possible front in the battle to get Goliath and Co. back.  Greg Bishansky writes:

Currently, Boom Studios is publishing “Darkwing Duck” comics, and will soon be publishing “DuckTales” comics, as well as a comic based on “The Incredibles.” They are doing a spectacular job, if I say so myself. So, let’s all contact them and ask them to produce a “Gargoyles” comic book. Here’s a link to a simple form to contact them online:

http://blog.boom-studios.net/contact/

Ask for “Gargoyles.” Let’s prove that there is demand for more product based on our defenders of the night.

So yeah.  From what I understand of the situation (although my word is worth less than some others’) BOOM!  is, at the very least, open to considering the idea.  All we need to know is prove to them that the audience exists, and, should they take the plunge,we’ll do all we can to make their efforts succeed.

Like before, I’ve written a letter, which I’ve already sent to them via their message service.  If you’re not quite sure how to approach the issue, feel free to use it as a template, adding why you think they should bring “Gargolyes” back.

As a youth interested in the comic book industry, I have noted your recents attempts to cater to 90’s nostalgia with books like Darkwing Duck, and your apparent success of such a strategy.  As a fan of the Disney afternoon and properties as Duck Tales, Tale Spin, and the rest, I would like to encourage you to broaden your liscencing net to include one particular property: Disney’s “Gargoyles”.

“Gargoyles” is most easily described as Disney’s answer to “Batman: The Animated Series”, crossed with a little bit of “Ninja Turtles”.  Starring a group of living gargoyles transplanted from medieval Scotland into modern day Manhattan, it mixed fantasy, science fiction, mythology, Dan Brown-style conspiracies, real-life history, and a bunch of awesome characters into a tasty and nutricious broth.  More importantly, its tone and approach was unlike anything Disney was doing at the time, embracing complex characterization and storytelling that set ablaze the imaginations of thousands of fans, fans which then became instrumental in keeping the franchise alive after its cancellation, and which eventually made it possible for the series to be resurrected in comic book form–and you know how challenging getting those off the ground can be.  Although sales of the comic book were satisfactory–enough to prompt the publication of a spin-off mini-series–publisher Slave Labor Graphics was unable to renew their liscence agreement, returning the franchise to limbo.

Hence, we turn to you.  Given your excellent track record so far, the “Gargoyles” fandom has concluded that BOOM! Studios would be an excellent new home for their favorite characters, should you choose to take upon the challenge.  What’s more, we would be comitted into helping you succeed.

After it was announced that Disney was commisioning a gargoyles-themed film not based on their existing “Gargoyles” property, fans of the franchise sprung into action, deciding to take advantage of the uptick in interest in order to push for the franchises’ ressurection.  To that point, we have established a Facebook group, “Make a REAL ‘Gargoyles’ movie, Disney!”, which has grown to include more than a thousand people in less than a month–not bad for a series that ended thirteen years ago.  This is an active fandom invested in the property, who would be willing to do almost everything to help their franchise thrive–a good place to start I’d say.

Is success guaranteed?  Not at all.  Then again, neither was Darkwing Duck, and that’s going rather smashingly.  All I’m asking is for you to consider giving “Gargoyles”  a fair shot.

Thank you.

Foxy Lady: A Look at the Many Looks of lady Fox

While most of the characters in Gargoyles adhere rather strictly to the limited wardrobe animation convention–unless there’s some sort of special occasion, they’ll wear the same outfit every time–two exceptions stand out: the first is Coyote, whom doesn’t so much change outfits as change bodies, and the second is the lovely Fox Xanatos (née Janine Renard), who given her eternally variable status (She’s a member of the Pack! She’s a prisoner!  She’s a martial artist!  She’s pregnant! She’s a used-car salesman) doesn’t reallyhave too much of a chance to obtain a standard look.    Today, we take a look at the many looks of Fox.

Still on hiatus

Just to let y’all know.  I’m done with two of my classes, and should be done with two others by this weekend.  By the end of next week, I should be done with all my classwork, and by August 2, the blog should be back to its regular schedule, with a review of “Her Brother’s Keeper”, a critique of Fox Xanatos’ wardrobe, and if everything goes well, the next chapter of “Electric Boogaloo” posted that week.

Also, this video?  Is awesome.

I loves me some Robotech, and The Shadow Chronicles is a pretty darn big guilty pleasure of mine.  Seeing it mixed with that absolutely gorgeous Macross Zero footage…bliss. If only the space battles in “Turtles in Space” and “Worlds Collide” had looked that good.

Also, if I ever get around to reuniting the resources necessary to make Gargoyles/TMNT AMV’s, I’m definitively using that song.