The RETURN of Solarman!!!

~It's been awhile since...
                                              this......

Doctor Doom may not sue you- but Disney will!

Stan Lee likes to say Doctor Doom is 'not really a villain; because it's not illegal to want to take over The World......  If he walked up to a Police Officer and said that he wanted to rule The World- he couldn't be arrested for it.'  (I'm paraphrasing, here...)

-Where that falls apart, though, is while the desire may not be a crime; most of the things you'd need to do in order to take over The World would be... so... yeah.

 

Anyways- with a brand new reboot comic series coming soon from Scout Comics (because ROM Spaceknight isn't the ONLY forgotten Marvel Comics character getting a new book at another publisher!!!) I figured it was HIGH time I took a look at the final Marvel Comics issue of David Oliphant's Solarman with #2!  Written again by Stan "The Man" Lee, and illustrated by Mike Zeck, and Nestor Redondo.

-And away... we... go!:

~Sunbow & Star Comics bring you: Visionaries!

Knights Of The Magical Light!!!

   You know, I think the biggest "fault" of this show was that it was way too high-concept for kids (and even for its own damn self) at the time. -You're taking Thundarr The Barbarian, Brave*Starr, Dungeons & Dragons, and King Arthur and the Knights of Justice- and throwing them all in a fucking blender... Yes, I remember watching it, and liking it- but I did not love it... And in the end, anyone who looks back at Visionaries- just says: "Oh, yeah- those were those Hasbro toys with the holograms, right?" or as I say: The less cool Supernaturals...
   But the show was so much more than its action-figure's gimmicky-premise. I was amazed, in re-watching the series for this post, how many of the visuals from the show I remembered so vividly.
The animation was absolutely beautiful in many scenes, per episode- due to Sunbow Productions sending a large amount of it to Japan to be done by TMS Entertainment.  -Resulting in random moments of pure, detailed, fluid 80's anime-style gold!  -Particularly, I noticed, on the episode Trail of The Three Wizards...
   Issue #2, which is what I'll mostly be talking about here, is basically the last couple minutes from the end of episode 1: The Age of Magic Begins, and a few ideas/scenes from episode 2: The Dark Hand of Treachery, but reworked- with much more detail, character development, and explanations given. The exact opposite of what happened previously with Solarman...

-If you are unfamiliar with Visionaries, Google is your friend... but here's the basic outline:

 "A violent, angry man- that one..."  -It's like he's talking about everyone on the Internet! 

But if the age of technology is over- then there is no Internet. Unless... MAGIC INTERNET!

-Fox Kids & Marvel Comics bring you: SOLARMAN!

~The #1 issue I'll be talking about in this post is an adaptation of the cartoon show's failed pilot- originally made, and released on VHS in 1989 to tie-in with the Marvel comic of the same name; Solarman (penciled by Jim Mooney, and created by David Oliphant.) It eventually aired as a "special" in 1992, on Fox Kids.

The episode clocks in at around 22 minutes long... Now, how long does it usually take you to read a standard super-hero comic? -Five, maybe seven minutes? Ten to twelve minutes at the most.  So, right from the start- they have to condense the script down by, at least, half... and it's Stan Lee who adapts this too!  -That combination makes this comic SO hilariously, generically, matter-of-factly straight-forward.  I can't stop laughing at it, and reading these ridiculous conversations aloud (which really freaks out my cat)... 

-I just had to share some of this little gem with you.

 

UBIQUITOUSLY STANDARD-SPACE-PLOT MODE HAS BEEN INITIATED:

Teenage Mutant Gun-toting Turtles!

Yeah- that's a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle with a gun.  Bodycount was a weird book...