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This would usually be a skip week, but the world is still being a jerk, so we made you a bonus, entirely unedited, and almost entirely off-topic episode. This time, we talked about large things.
So, as a former New College student, I think I have a fun story about the tree that got mentioned! (I will not elaborate on *which* tree, since Jay and Miles didn’t want to, but I think I know the one) During finals my first year, I took a nap under the tree cause it was finals week and I needed to leave my dorm. After maybe 20 minutes of being asleep, I was shaken awake by a tourist who had wandered over from the Ringling Museum, and made me explain to him where he was, which is to say that he had wandered onto a college campus. I’ve never attempted to climb the tree, because that sounds scary and I am a weakling. Anyways, thanks to Jay and Miles for reminding me of that weird interaction.
You mean you didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to ask “What year is it??” and when told go “Damn those fae! That’s thirty three YEARS!”
As a tree climber, Jay, do you know Moreton Bay figs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ficus_macrophylla or Norfolk pines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria_heterophylla ? They’re both common in Australia. However, their lower branches are often cut off these days. Probably to stop kids climbing. But with their lower branches intact they’re good.
“I appreciate they’re largely to scale with the things they turn into”
*Hacking through the wall, Harris Brewis style*
MEGATRON TURNS INTO A HANDGUN!!!
He then gets wielded by his traitorous second-in-command, Starscream, who is the same size, if not slightly smaller than him in robot mode.
Anyway, I’m sure you’ve been told before, but I think you’d quite like the IDW Transformers series. Especially the last run of it that ended in 2019(?). It was very good.
The Gundam series you were thinking about, btw, was Mobile Fighter G Gundam. It is incredibly ridiculous and stereotyping aside (which probably makes it unlikely to show up on modern streaming services) it also did feature a horse piloting a giant robot. There are a lot of good things to like about that show. And a lot of things to make you wince.
The size transformations always bugged the hell out of me as a kid. Based on their sizes, Bumblebee should be about 10 to 12 ft. tall. Optimus Prime should be twice that and Starscream should tower over both of them.
And Soundwave should have been stepped on within the first three minutes of him taking his dictaphone mode, never mind his cassettes!
Weren’t there also Insecticons or something like that? Imagine taking them out with a fly swatter.
Yeah, Kickback, Chrapnel and Bombshell… but those little buggers could clone themselves to become a swarm, so the odds of them surviving were probably higher.
Waspinator in Beast Wars on the other hand sorted things out by only turning into a 10 foot tall wasp in his beast mode.
Kickback sounds like they should transform into a nice little sum of money in unmarked bills.
1. Brad Bird has somehow managed to make the best Superman and best FF movie.
2. I do appreciate that Evangelion is basically the Japanese equivalent of getting a Kanji tattoo and not knowing what it means. I actually thought that was general knowledge for a while (I remember reading it in Wizard’s anime mag back in 2001 or so)
3. I totally was the Kaiju to my action figures. I was a character (The Giant of Nasty…because I was 6 and apparently that sounded really cool at the time) who could get summoned like a primeval force from the depths. There was DEFINITELY some Power Rangers influence there. (Also, I was usually in my underwear when playing that character, so maybe some Fin Fang From influence as well?)
4. As someone who mainly knows Transformers from Beast Wars (which is amazing) and the 80s cartoon, I enjoy the Universal Ride as something that makes no sense, but is more just a feeling that washes over you. I also love that ride tech in general (the Spider-Man ride remains one of my all-time favorite rides)
5. I also get unnerved with Clone Wars when they keep killing the droids for comedic effect, even though they are established to have sentience and will even banter/complain about their jobs with each other. I also feel more sympathetic to the droids as creatures pressed into service.
6. I think Geoff Johns ultimately tried to make that case that our Earth (be it our planet in teh galaxy or our reality among realities) is special exactly because it’s the one planet that’s not a monoculture…and that, in turn, becomes its distinguishing feature. I like that as a retcon (Earth’s monoculture is a noted lack of monoculture, which makes it equally odd or almost simplified among other planets…it’s the Everything Bagel planet).
I think it was DC’s “Invasion” event back in the 88/89 (Which Bill Mantlo wrote) that introduced the idea that alien races found Earth to be a throughly weird place precisely because of the diversity of cultures and people. Most of them are a lot older civilisation than Earth has humans and so had ultimately achieved a sort of cultural and genetic homogenity, so one Dominator was pretty much identical to every other Dominator, the Khunds might look a bit different to each other, but genetically speaking they were the same and so on. It was whilst experimenting on humans that they discovered the “meta-gene”, DC’s handy catch-all explanation of pretty much every superhuman without using the word “mutant”.
Many humans have it, but it lies passive until, usually, a combination of stress and exotic stressors (Falling into a vat of chemicals, being hit by lightning, being raised by condors, that sort of a thing) trigger a transformation which will likely involve some aspect of the trigger event. So if you get electrocuted, IF the metagene activates (and there’s no guarantee it will), odds are you’ll get some sort of electrical powers, or possibly turn into rubber or the like.
I happily stand corrected!
On the Billy Ireland, Miles should know all that good art is available for viewing by the general public. It’s worth checking with current COVID rules (I believe it’s by appointment) but there’s just a form to fill out there and it’s a good idea to request material to be pulled out ahead of time. It’s also worth emailing them in advance and they do tend to give tours to comics connected folks. And of course there’s always two rotating exhibits as well as some permanent display collections.
There was a Little Nemo exhibit a few years back and it made me weepy at it’s beauty.
A really good time to stop by Columbus (uh when it’s safe to travel) is during Cartoon Crossroads Columbus a city wide festival of comics. There’s not a ton in person stuff this year (though there are a handful)but we’re hopeful 2022 will be a full return. I briefly met Jay there a few years back when he was passing through. And there will be online components this year if you want to check those out.
https://www.cartooncrossroadscolumbus.org/
And for those wanting to recreate the “I’m a Kaiju” experience, there’s “Massive Monster Mayhem” a kids gameshow on Nick, which seems to involve a lot of running around in rubber smuits smashing polystyrene buildings… I think.
I totally thought the Iron Giant too
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times over many years and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travelers and researchers.
The introduction begins like this:
“Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space. Listen …” and so on.
See also Monty Python’s “Galaxy Song”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk
I’m not sure if I should be sad that my first experience with that song was in Animaniacs. Though, given the rarity of the Pythons on American television at the time it’s not surprising.
Might you be thinking of the Animaniacs own Galaxy Song? Which is different but covers similar ground?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmfAyK6CeIg
(If they did a version of the Monty Python one that’s awesome!)
They also did a brief little number on the Solar System, back when Pluto was still a planet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19d4T8LMBEo
I stand corrected. It’s been many years since I watched the Animaniacs version. Apparently my recall was not as accurate as I had led myself to believe.
Didn’t our hosts betray their remit in a profound and important way by failing to talk about Giant-Size X-Men #1?
Or, indeed, Giant Size Man-Thing
I believe that Miles adequately addressed that one at the beginning…