Plans for 2025

 So here we are, less than two weeks away from the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025. I had planned on doing another Christmas related post for you this week, but, instead, I'm gonna talk a little bit about what I hope to do on the blog in 2025. Let's get into it.

In 2025 it's going to be ten years since I first started my original Word Press blog, the Geek Outpost. Back then I just wanted to talk about what I was reading and watching such as comic books, novels, movies, and TV shows. No real theme or goal, just that it had to be geeky. So I would talk more about Star Trek or Star Wars than I would a sitcom like Friends or That '70s Show. Though The Big Bang Theory was not off the table since it was still on TV in 2015, and was also geek related. I was also exploring Marvel Comics a little bit since the MCU was so popular and outside of a few Spider-Man comics that I had as a kid, almost the entire run of the Runaways, a few issues of the Marvel Star Wars series from the '70s and '80s, and a few issues of Marvel's Star Trek comic from the '80s, I'd never read any Marvel books before. And I was reluctant to do so at that point since I already knew I was a fan of DC Comics, particularly Batman. But, with how popular Guardians of the Galaxy had been back in 2014, I wanted to be prepared because we still didn't know what Infinity War and Endgame were going to look like or what Marvel was planning for the MCU afterwards. 

My blog has changed over the years, and it changed platforms in 2020, and now it's become the very thing that I wanted it to be from the very beginning. A place where I can talk about the shows, movies, TV shows, TV channels, comics, books, and toys that I grew up with, as well as anything else that I wanted to talk about on here. That's going to continue in 2025. The blog will still be nostalgia centric, but there are shows that I want to watch and talk about here. Thanks to a very good friend of mine I have all six seasons of the Sci-Fi series, The Expanse, on Blu-ray, so once the holidays are over, and I've finished watching The Batman (the 2004 animated series, not the 2022 movie starring Robert Pattinson) and Young Justice (and done blog posts on both), I'm going to sit down and watch The Expanse. And then I'm going to talk about the show. I thought about doing reviews for each season, but I feel like that's going to be too tedious for me as this is going to be my first time watching the show and I feel like I'm going to have too much to talk about in each season and then forget to cover it in a full series review afterward, so I don't want to deal with that, and have decided to talk about the show once I'm finished the whole thing. Which is the opposite problem of what I had when I watched Community back in 2020.

On the comic book front, I'm going to dive into Robert Kirkman's 2003 superhero series, Invincible in 2025 as well now that I have all 25 volumes of the trade paperback collected editions. I thought about doing individual reviews for all 25 volumes, but I decided it would be simpler to just write about the comic book series as a whole. I've got other comics and books that I want to talk about in the new year as well, but I'll save them for a surprise as the year goes on.

I also have tons of movies and shows and so much else to talk about in 2025, it's gonna be great. I don't have any kind of release schedule planned out for the new year though. Just because there will be weeks where I only want to put out one post for the week, and other weeks where I want to put more than one out. I also have to work around medical appointments, as well as hanging out with friends and family. Blogging, just like any kind of content creation, can easily consume your life and I prefer to strike more of a balance between blogging and the rest of my life. 

With all of that said, I want to thank you all for reading my posts. I've gained new readers this year thanks to the wonderful people on the VHS Club Podcast and YouTube channel. Particularly the show's hosts, Katie and Nat. Speaking of Katie and Nat, I just wanna take the time to announce that on January 9th at 9 pm EST I will be making another guest appearance on the show. This time we're reviewing the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Encounter at Farpoint" and talking all things TNG and Star Trek related VHS. So definitely stay tuned for that.

Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for tonight, and it for me for this year. I will be back in the new year. So until then merry christmas, happy holidays, happy New Year, and I will see you all in the new year. Take care.

My 90's and 2000's Experience: My Childhood Christmas Movies and Specials VHS Collection

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. We're shifting gears and getting into the Christmas spirit here in the Geek Cave this week. Today I'm going to talk about my childhood Christmas movies and specials VHS collection. Let's get into it!

Up first is The Berenstain Bears' Christmas Tree. I loved the Berenstain Bears when I was a kid, and I had a ton of the books. I don't even remember who gave this tape to me or when. I just remember watching it at least once during the Christmas holidays when I was growing up. It was a little weird having actual voices connected to the Berenstain Bears, just because I mostly knew them from books since I didn't watch the 80's animated series. Just this special. I don't have this special anymore, but it is available to watch on YouTube.

Next up is The Nutcracker Prince. I haven't seen this movie in probably twenty years or so, but I remember watching it with my sister all the time at Christmas. In the U.S. the movie was released on VHS by Warner Bros, but in Canada it was released by Cineplex Odeon Video in collaboration with MCA Home Video. Kiefer Sutherland voices the titular Nutcracker Prince. It did get released on DVD in Canada and the United States in 2004, but it's long out of print, and outside of two releases in the U.K. (one in 2001 and the other in 2007), the movie hasn't been released on DVD since then and has never been released on Blu-ray or 4K. 

Alpha's Magical Christmas is a really weird release for the Power Rangers franchise. It's a sing-along direct-to-video special and isn't canon to the show or even to the 1995 movie, yet, it exists. I think I got this after Mighty Morphin Power Rangers had been removed from Global, so apart from the five episodes that I had on VHS that had been taped off Global and YTV for me in early 1994, this special was the only way I had to watch Power Rangers at all, since I didn't have the movie on VHS yet. It's pretty cheesy, but it's still fun to watch. Oddly enough Shout! Factory included it on one of the two bonus discs in the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Complete Series DVD set back in 2013, though I don't know if it was included in the 2016 re-release of the box set, or the 2018 steelbook release of the series. So even though I don't own the VHS anymore, I still have it on DVD since I have the original 2013 complete series box set.

Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas is also a bit of a weird one too because it's the first direct-to-video midquels for Beauty and the Beast and it's a Christmas one. I've watched it at least once on Disney+ back in like 2021 or 2022, but I definitely watched it more when I was growing up because of my sister. In fact, I actually think that this one was my sister's tape, but it was in the family VHS collection in the family room. This was a 1997 release too, so my sister probably didn't even get it until either Christmas 1997, her birthday in 1998 or Christmas 1998 at the latest. 

I've talked about Waiting for Santa a lot on my blogs over the years, but it was part of our Christmas specials VHS collection when I was a kid. We got it pretty late. I'm pretty sure we didn't get it until 1994 at the latest, just because it got re-released again in 1996, 1997, and 1998, and we weren't getting Barney tapes that late. While I've watched the later Barney Christmas specials on YouTube about a decade ago, Waiting for Santa is still my favourite, just because it was from pretty early on in Barney's history, and was part of my generation of Barney.

When I was a teenager, we got the live action How the Grinch Stole Christmas on VHS. We never owned the original animated version on a retail VHS release, though we did have it taped off of TV, and we still do as I found that tape. So getting this one was the next best thing. I really do enjoy Jim Carrey in the role. It just felt a little too stretched out given the story it's telling. Even watching it now, it feels pretty stretched out. I have it on DVD now, and I also watched it on Netflix in like 2019 or 2020, but I have no idea if it's still on Netflix or not. 

Is there anyone who was born between 1959 and 1995 who hasn't watched Frosty the Snowman? This one was always in the rotation, whether we watched it on VHS or watched it during its annual airing on Global or CTV. I even did a full lookback at the special itself as well as its history on home video last year. I have it on VHS and on DVD as part of a box set of classic Christmas specials.

Next is Disney's 1998 Christmas movie, I'll Be Home for Christmas, starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Jessica Biel, and Adam LaVorgna (with the last two being regulars on the WB drama, 7th Heaven). It's not the best Christmas movie, or even the best comedy movie, but it's still pretty funny.

The Teddy Bears' Christmas is a pretty obscure Canadian made Christmas special from 1992. I don't think it ever had a DVD release, but it was released on VHS by Family Home Entertainment. I remember watching it on VHS, though I think I also saw it on TV at one point, though I don't remember whether I saw it on TV before or after we got it on VHS. If at all. It's on YouTube. 

Finally we have The Muppet Christmas Carol. This is one of my favourite movies of all time and I finally got it on DVD last year or the year before. Prior to that I would put it on on Disney+ to watch, and before THAT, well, I hadn't seen it for years because I don't have the VHS anymore and I didn't have it on DVD yet. But, I have it now, so I'm pretty pleased with that. Christmas is always fun with the Muppets.

And that was my Christmas movies and specials on VHS collection from my childhood. Next week I think I'm going to talk about my current Christmas specials and movies collection because I have a lot more on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray now. In the meantime though, I might have other blog posts coming this week, but we'll see because I have a dental appointment on Wednesday and I might be getting my flu shot on Friday, so we'll see. Until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Superman & Lois Season 4 Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Sorry for the lack of posts last week, but I got my most recent Covid shot and I didn't plan any blog posts just in case I had any side effects from the shot. I didn't, but, I still chose not to plan anything and then not be able to do it. It is however, the Christmas season once again, which means I'll be doing a few Christmas related blog posts next week and the week after, and then I will be going on my two week hiatus for Christmas and New Year's. Today though I'm gonna do a quick review for season 4 of Superman & Lois as the series finale aired last night and even though this blog has become retro and nostalgia based, I've reviewed every season of the show between my two blogs since 2021 and I wasn't going to leave out the final season. There will also be some spoilers for the season, in case you haven't watched it yet, or haven't finished watching it. So, let's get into it.

When this show was first announced I was nervous because it was another Arrowverse show airing on The CW and while Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow all had strong first seasons, all four shows began dropping in quality by the third or fourth season, so I was afraid that Superman & Lois would suffer the same fate. It didn't. One of the smartest things the showrunners did was sever the show's connection to the Arrowverse in 2022. This was around the time that Batwoman, Black Lightning, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow were being canceled, and the production crew was getting ready to work on season 9 of The Flash, which was that show's final season. And because the crossovers the Arrowverse producers had planned for Superman & Lois got canned due to Covid restrictions, which caused a ton of logistics issues, it made no sense to keep the show in that continuity. Despite Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch playing Superman and Lois on Supergirl and in the "Elseworlds" and "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossovers. And I think that made the show better.

I think I was worried about season 4 the most simply because season 3 ended on Superman fighting Doomsday on the moon, and with season 4 being the final season and it being only ten episodes, I was afraid they weren't going to be able to do The Death of Superman justice in such a limited format. However, they didn't do that. Oh sure, Doomsday killed Superman, and we saw the effect his death had on Smallville, but the season was actually about Superman and Lex Luthor, played by Michael Cudlitz, which is another departure from the Arrowverse, as Jon Cryer played Lex in that show. So it feels like the writers just wanted to do a classic Superman vs. Lex Luthor story. The battles between Superman and Doomsday and the final battle between Superman and Luthor were some of the best fights I've seen in a CW DC Comics based TV show in a really long time.

While Lana, Sarah, Kyle, Jon Henry, and Nat don't appear in every episode, they still appeared throughout the season pretty regularly. Which was fine with me, because the way the media was saying it was that they would only be in one or two episodes and that's it. With a cast like this, the writers did a great job of balancing the storylines for an ensemble cast. Most shows aren't good with stuff like that.

This season, and its finale, showed that these writers and showrunners get Superman. They understand what he's about and what he's supposed to represent. Which is something the movies and past TV shows haven't really gotten right since the original Christopher Reeve movie in 1978. Supergirl sort of did, but being that Superman only appeared a handful of times as a support character for Kara, the writers on that show didn't have much of an opportunity to work with Tyler that much in terms of developing the character.

I'm glad we finally just got evil Lex Luthor without trying to make him sympathetic or try to deconstruct and analyze why he is the way he is. The comics have been trying to do that for at least 20 years, if not more, and we got seven seasons of that on Smallville in the 2000s. Michael Cudlitz did an amazing job in the role. This was something else I was nervous about just because they didn't fully introduce the character until the final two or three episodes of season 3 and so that season, outside of Lois talking about him, didn't really give me a good sense of what this version of Luthor would be like. He was great in the role though, and I loved it whenever he was on screen. Especially during his interactions with both Lois and Clark. 

I'm not entirely current on the comics, but I remember them doing a storyline where Superman revealed his identity to the world, so when they did it in the show in episode 7 of this season, I wasn't all that surprised, and unlike the million times Oliver revealed his identity as the Green Arrow to the world on Arrow, prior to the final reveal at the end of season 6, the writers didn't try to reverse it at any point in the final three episodes of the show.

One of the things that I really liked and appreciated about Superman & Lois as a whole is that The CW didn't make them ramp up the drama between the characters like they've done on other comic book based shows on the network, dating back to when it was The WB and Smallville was starting back in 2001. For the most part the network executives left the producers and writers to their own devices, so they could make the Superman show that THEY wanted to make instead of the Superman show the network and/or Warner Bros. wanted them to make. 

Overall season 4 of Superman & Lois is a great season of television, and I'm glad the show went out on a high note. I'll admit though that I am going to miss the show. This was the best show to come out of the Arrowverse, and never once did I feel it was a slog to watch. I think that's because the show was so positive. Especially in comparison to other modern superhero and comic book based movies and TV shows. If you've never seen this show before, I highly recommend it. I also recommend giving it another try if you couldn't get into it at the beginning and fell off of it after the first season.

And that my friends is it for me for today. I might do a more Christmasy blog post later in the week, but we'll see how things go. I'm supposed to be having a friend over to hang out tomorrow, but if the weather sucks, I'll just have to re-arrange things so that I do the blog post on whatever day my friend isn't coming over on. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

My 90's and 2000's Experience: Star Trek Generations

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Sorry for my absence last week, but I decided to take the week off as there wasn't really anything that I really wanted to talk about. This week however is a different story. Today is the 30th of the theatrical release of Star Trek Generations, the first movie to feature the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. So let's get into it.

Released on November 18th, 1994, my first encounter with the movie was when my dad and I went to see the 1994 live action version of The Jungle Book and I saw that the theatre we were at was playing the movie, so I asked my dad if we could go see that instead, not understanding that the tickets we were given were specifically for The Jungle Book, and not just a gift card for the theatre we were at. He said no and explained to me why. This was in January, 1995. I also had the movie's poster up on the wall at home, which was cool.

For Christmas in 1994, or maybe in 1995, my brother, my sister, and I each got an action figure from the movie, I got Picard, my sister got Guinan, and my brother got Worf. Because I hadn't seen the movie yet, I didn't know that the uniforms that the Picard and Worf figures had on were designs that had been scrapped in favour of the uniforms originally introduced in the first episode of DS9. I still thought they were cool though as they kinda reminded me of the uniforms worn by the TOS characters from The Wrath of Khan to The Undiscovered Country. Except for the base that came with her for her to stand on, the Guinan figure came with the exact same accessories the original figure from the TNG line came with, except here, they were orange instead of blue. The base was the combadge design made for the movie, but debuted in the season 3 premiere of DS9, rather than the original combadge design from TNG.

I eventually saw the movie on VHS when it came out in the summer of 1995. However, this release wasn't the retail release. It was the rental release. Back in the 80's studios often put their home video releases out to the rental market first, before releasing them to the public. By the summer of 1995 however, that was a practice that nobody used anymore, with the exception of Paramount for their home video releases of Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, and Star Trek: Insurrection for whatever reason. 

My parents rented it for us. While it's not the most popular Star Trek movie, it's still one of my favourites. I think because it has Kirk and Picard teaming up to take on a threat that Picard and his crew couldn't handle on their own, which was something the movie was heavily marketed on. Of course I was shocked by the destruction of the Enterprise-D, though nobody else was apparently because Paramount included it in the movie's trailer, like they'd done with the destruction of the Enterprise in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock a decade earlier, and would do again 22 years later with the trailer for Star Trek: Beyond.

I think I also like this movie because even though they used the TNG sets, they modified them to look more cinematic. The bridge especially looks really good. Though watching it explode was heartbreaking as this was how the production crew destroyed the TNG sets since the show was over, and they needed to re-dress certain sets like the transporter room, corridors, holodecks, shuttlebays, cargo bays, turbolifts, and possibly sickbay for Star Trek: Voyager, which was set to debut in January, 1995.

I also like Data's journey in the movie, from getting his emotion chip installed, to learning how to control his emotions rather than the emotions controlling him. I kinda felt that Scotty and Chekov were superfluous in the movie. But that's because they were only there because their dialogue was so generic that Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley refused to come back since the dialogue wasn't specific to Spock or McCoy. Which is unfortunate. Especially because Spock could've had a much larger role in the movie as he still would've been able to assist Picard and the crew in locating Kirk. So, here's the scenario for this that I came up with.

On the Enterprise-B in 2293, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are on the ship with Captain Harriman and Ensign Demora Sulu. Kirk dies as he does in the movie, but Spock does not believe he is dead or anything like that. And neither does Guinan, who was also there during that era. Then, on the Enterprise-D in 2371, Picard and his crew are having difficulty in stopping Soran, and knowing that Spock believes Kirk is still alive, Picard recruits him to help locate Kirk before Veridian III is destroyed alongside the Enterprise, just as the ship is in the movie. 

My dad finally got Generations on VHS after the retail version came out in early 1996, and of all the Star Trek movies, I think this one, along with Star Trek III, and Star Trek V, is the one I watched the most, even by the time I got Nemesis on VHS in 2003, it was still the Star Trek movie featuring the TNG cast that I watched the most.

 

Sometime in the mid to late 2000s I got Generations on DVD. Specifically the 2004 two-disc special edition DVD release. Then in 2019 I ended up downgrading to the 1998 single-disc DVD release, along with First Contact, Insurrection, and Nemesis. I decided I didn't need both versions, and I didn't need all of the bonus features on the special edition DVDs, so I got rid of the four special edition DVDs for the TNG movies, and replaced them with the four single disc releases.

I vaguely remember my dad having the comic book adaptation of Generations published by DC Comics, along with the comic book adaptation of the TNG series finale, "All Good Things...", which was also published by DC, but I don't know what happened to either of them. I did get a copy of the comic for my own collection a few years ago, and I really enjoy it. 

I never owned it, but when I was in the sixth grade I borrowed the junior novelization of Generations from my fifth grade teacher's classroom library in January or February 1999, when I was stuck inside during the shorter recesses or the really cold recesses that we had. I don't remember much about the book itself, but I do remember that it had those eight, glossy, pages of colour still images from the movie, including one of Riker, Data, Troi, and Worf on the bridge either just after the Klingon Bird-of-Prey was destroyed, or as the saucer is crashing onto Veridian III.

Overall, Star Trek Generations is my favourite of the movies featuring the TNG cast. I still watch it pretty regularly. I own it both on VHS and DVD, and I love it. I can't believe it's been thirty years since the movie first came out. It's insane to me how that happened. The funny thing is is that I decided to do this post today because I wanted to talk about the movie. I had no idea it was the movie's 30th anniversary today until I looked at the release date on Wikipedia.

That's it for me for today. I'll be back soon with more posts. I'm not quite sure what I'll be talking about next, but in two weeks the series finale of Superman & Lois is airing so I'll definitely be talking about the end of the show after the finale airs. So join me for that in two weeks. In the meantime I have other posts I want to do before the Christmas season officially kicks off in December. So until then have a great rest of the evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90's and 2000's Experience: The View-Master Stereoscope

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing okay. Today I'm going to be talking about something I didn't think I'd be able to talk about after experiencing it in the modern day as an adult. I'm talking about the View-Master Stereoscope toys I had as a kid, as well as the reels that were made for them. If you grew up in the 80's and 90's you'll remember these little devices. So let's get into it.

This is probably the version of the View-Master you'd remember if you grew up in the 80's and 90's. It's also the one you see in shows like Stranger Things or The Goldbergs whenever the View-Master is needed in an episode. I also had this version when I was a kid, but it was actually the second one that we had. I do remember seeing one of these at the hospital or at school when I was in kindergarten or grade one. 

This is actually the first one I owned. I honestly don't remember when I got it exactly or who got it for me, I just remember playing with it alot when I was a kid. In case you don't know what a View-Master is, it's this device that you place these flimsy white plastic reels which show images from a movie or TV show or just random pictures and you press a button or slider on the right hand corner (if you're looking into the view finder) to change images, much like you would on a Stereoscope from the 50's and 60's to look at old pictures on. Each press of the button turns the reels around to change the 3-D image you're seeing. I had several reels to go with my View-Masters. Let's take a look.

First up is a random preview reel (Canadian apparently) that shows single images from three cartoons, a live action show, and random shots of Calgary, Alberta, the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario, and the Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Quebec. The cartoons are just a random shot of Spider-Man that looks like a cartoon but is probably from a View-Master reel set from 1977 or 1978, an image from the 1973 View-Master reel set, Superman Meets Computer Crook, and a shot of Mickey Mouse facing the bear from the 1939 cartoon, The Pointer. The live action show is from the Electra Woman and Dyna Girl segment from The Krofft Supershow, which first aired in 1976.

The next set I had was called Hollywood Mickey. This was actually the only set that I had that was complete. I think this was just some stills that were never part of a cartoon or TV show, because I can't find anything online to suggest that the reels are actually from a previously released cartoon and for the time it was too modern, if you wanna called early 90's modern that is, for it to be from a Mickey Mouse animated TV show (Mickey Mouse Works wouldn't come out until 1999). So it was most likely stuff made specifically for this View-Master reel set. 

Believe it or not, this next set was my introduction to the live action Ninja Turtles movies. I had reels A and C, but not Reel B for the first movie. While I'd seen the original 1987 cartoon series, which was my first introduction to the Turtles, and read the Archie Comics series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures, I didn't see any of the movies until the early 2010s when I got the three live action movies and the 2007 animated movie on DVD in a four-pack. So this was my experience with the first two movies when I was a kid.

Yes, I also had the first two reels for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. The reason that I didn't have all of the reels for these sets, besides Hollywood Mickey is because they were all second hand. Chances are my grandparents found them at a garage sale or something like that.

The last set we had, which I'd forgotten about until last week, is the set for Beauty and the Beast from 1991. We only had Reel B and Reel C, which goes from "Be Our Guest" to the end of the movie. I don't know why I didn't remember that. Probably because we had that movie on VHS and we watched it all the time. 

I don't have an image of it, but I remember we kept both View-Masters and the reels in a red and green The Real Ghostbusters lunch bag with Slimer on the front. The reason I even came up with this topic is because last week my dad was going through some stuff in our basement and found the second View-Master and all the reels we had. We got rid of them, but before we did, I spent an hour going through all of the reels. Which was pretty cool given that I hadn't seen them in about 20 years and I actually thought we'd gotten rid of both View-Masters and the reels back then. I'd had no idea that they'd stayed around for all those years since they were no longer in my personal possession. So it was cool discovering that we still had them stored away down here in the basement.

And that my friends is it for me for today. I've got some movies to watch thanks to my friends at the VHS Club Podcast, so that's what I'll be doing this weekend. I'll be back next week with more posts. Until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you later. Take care.

My 90's and 2000's Experience: Halloween

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for Halloween. As you can see from the title of this post, I was very intentional on when I was going to write it. I'm not going to be super fancy with this post, I'm just gonna talk a little bit about what Halloween was like for me personally growing up in the 90's and 2000's. I did this on my old blog, The Review Basement in 2020 for my now defunct series, Living with Disabilities, but this will be a broader look at it. So, let's get into it.

As many of you know I'm not a big Halloween person. I don't dislike Halloween, it's just not my favourite day of the year. It was different for me growing up because for most of my childhood I couldn't eat anything, so trick or treating never appealed to me the way it would other people. As it is, my parents took us to visit all the grandparents so they could see our costumes. It was the 90's, we didn't have social media and Messenger to send pictures to relatives on and being that it could be expensive to get a roll of film developed, we saved cameras for really special occasions like birthdays and Christmas, or any other time that Nana was over with her camera. 

Not being able to eat also meant that candy and chocolate was pointless for me, so my parents and grandparents had to get creative for treats for me for Halloween. So instead of chocolate or candy, they'd get me books or comics or a VHS tape or a toy. Something that I could have so I wouldn't feel left out since my brother and sister would get candy and chocolate. After 1993 it was a little easier since I could eat things like Aero bars and I could still experience the sensation of eating regular food without worrying about getting fat or things like cholesterol and other nutritional things. 

On the school side of things I actually got into Halloween a little bit more. We were allowed to wear our costumes in the afternoon throughout elementary school, as we'd have the class Halloween party that afternoon, or the afternoon closest to Halloween if Halloween was on a weekend that year. I had a pretty decent variety of costumes. Commander Riker, Batman, a Ninja Turtle, Robin, and Darth Vader were all characters I dressed up as. But for the most part, aside from the one year we went trick or treating in my neighbourhood, Halloween consisted of me listening to spooky songs on the radio. MAJIC 100, one of the local radio stations that was a staple in my house at the time, had an entire evening of songs like the theme from Ghostbusters to "The Monster Mash" lined up for people to listen to.

1996 was probably the most memorable Halloween for me. Mostly because we had a Halloween party at my house. My brother, sister, and I each got to invite one friend over to hang out, eat candy and chocolate and watch the Winnie the Pooh Halloween special that came out that year, Boo to You Too! Winnie the Pooh. The special aired on October 25th and I remember my dad taping it for us, so I think we watched it on VHS with our friends on Halloween rather than on October 25th, which was a Friday, with Halloween being on a Thursday, exactly like this year oddly enough.

The other thing that made Halloween in 1996 so memorable is that two days before Halloween, on October 29th, Toy Story finally came out on home video after being in theaters for about nine to ten months (it was in theaters for a long time even compared to other movies out at the time). Disney had commercials for it all over the place on TV for about a month leading up to the release date. Including several times during the October 25th broadcast of Boo to You Too! Winnie the Pooh. 

I think that's gonna be it for me for today. I just wanted to come on here quickly and talk about Halloween a little bit. Like I said at the beginning of this post, nothing fancy. But, I hope you all have an amazing Halloween and have fun whatever you're doing tonight. I'll be back soon with lots more blog posts, including one on something I thought we didn't have anymore, but just discovered we did still have, but are getting rid of. And that's the only teaser I'm giving you. You'll have to wait until next time to find out what that thing is. So until then have a great evening, Happy Halloween, and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

WildStorm's Star Trek Comic Book Series Overview

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back with another Star Trek comic book overview. Unlike the DC and Marvel overviews that I did in 2022 and 2023, this one is going to be a single post as I'm talking about the WildStorm Comics run that came out between 2000 and 2001. And because all of the comics came out over the course of a year and a half, there won't be that much of an organization to how I talk about these issues. Basically I'm going to talk about them by series, beginning with TOS and going to Voyager. One more thing about these comics as well. I've never read a single issue of the WildStorm Star Trek comics. I didn't even know about them until over a decade after WildStorm lost/gave up the Star Trek license. So I'm not going to have a whole lot to talk about with them. Let's get into it.

The TOS run of WildStorm's Star Trek comic book series, is the shortest of the entire run. WildStorm put out two one-shots, All of Me and Enter the Wolves, and that's it. The first issue has to do with a scientist who creates a device that can bring people from parallell universes into the main Star Trek Universe, so as an example, it could bring Spock from the Mirror Universe into the regular universe, and the Enterprise is sent to investigate and stop him if necessary. The second comic tells the story of Spock and Sarek's relationship during the Lost Era, or the 70 years between Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and season 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation. All of it was mentioned in the episodes of TNG that Sarek and Spock appeared in. The short version is Sarek opposes the Cardassian petition to join the Federation and is a sequel to the 1994 novel, Sarek, by A.C. Crispin, who also wrote this issue. What's bizarre about that, is in actual canon, the Cardassians never petitioned to join the Federation, and so Spock and Sarek disagreed over the war. Which makes more sense, since I highly doubt the Cardassians would join the Federation as a member world, given they'd lose their autonomy as the Cardassian Union. 

Next came the TNG series, which had three one shots, and two four issue mini-series in it's line. The first was the four issue mini-series, Perchance to Dream, followed by a one-shot called Embrace the Wolf which was the TNG sequel to the TOS episode, "Wolf in the Fold". Then another four mini-series came out called The Killing Shadows, followed by a second one-shot called The Gorn Crisis, which is the only WildStorm Star Trek comic I heard about as an article on it was published in a 2001 issue of the magazine, Star Trek Communicator. What's interesting about this one-shot graphic novel is that it was written by Kevin J. Anderson and his wife, Rebecca Moesta, who wrote the Star Wars: Young Jedi Knights series together from 1995 to 1998, and who each had individual writing credits on '90s Star Wars material. The final one-shot, Forgiveness, was published in 2001, wrapping up the TNG comics.

DS9 also had a comic book by WildStorm. However, it was a single four issue mini-series called N-Vector. I really don't know very much about these comics and trying to write a synopsis for each one-shot and mini-series would make this post longer than it needs to be. If you want to learn more there are synopses for all of these comics on Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki. As for WildStorm itself, aside from seeing ads for them in the comics that DC published in the 2000's, as the publisher became an imprint of DC in 1999, and reading a run of Gen13 and the 2005 Danger Girl mini-series, Back in Black, I'm not as familiar with WildStorm, being that they weren't part of the DC Universe when I was introduced to comics in the early 90's, and they were more mature and not appropriate for someone of my age in 1992. Even when I was in high school, WildStorm books weren't that easy to find compared to Marvel and DC, and again, because of my preferences, I wasn't interested in any of the WildStorm books. Even now, I have no desire to read comics from WildStorm.

At some point during this era, WildStorm did a four issue TNG/DS9 crossover comic called Divided We Fall. This story is set in the same continuity of the DS9 relaunch novel series, which began in 2000, so the comic involves the characters introduced in the novels. Which is interesting.

The Voyager comic consisted of three one-shots and one mini-series. The second one-shot was actually the comic book adaptation of the video game, Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force, which came out in 2000 for the PC and the Mac, and 2001 for the PlayStation 2. The mini-series is also only three issues, instead of the four issues that the TNG and DS9 mini-series had. 

In January, 2001, a one-shot special issue was published. It contains six stories set in different eras. All four live action shows that existed in 2001 were represented in this issue.

The final comic I can talk about in this overview is Star Trek: New Frontier - Double Time. Star Trek: New Frontier was a series of novels, novellas, and eBooks written by Peter David that Pocket Books published between 1997 and 2015. Unlike other Star Trek novels, this series didn't include any of the core cast members as the central characters in the series. They might show up from time to time, but the series focused on original character, Captain Mackenzie Calhoun, and the crew of various starships called Excalibur. Calhoun's crew consists of side characters from various shows and books. Including Captain Elizabeth Shelby from "The Best of Both Worlds" and Zak Kebron, a Brikarian Starfleet Officer who was a classmate of Worf's at Starfleet Academy in the first three books in the Young Reader series, Star Trek: The Next Generation - Starfleet Academy. I actually wanna do a blog post on New Frontier sometime because it's pretty cool, but the series was created in response to the criticism that nothing could really happen in the Star Trek novels as this was before any of the relaunch series began publication and the TNG movies were still coming out alongside new seasons of DS9 and Voyager. With none of these characters showing up in the shows anymore, you could develop them and have them change and grow in ways that the main characters from the TV shows and movies couldn't outside of the shows and movies.

WildStorm had the shortest run of any Star Trek comic book publisher, being that it really only lasted a year to a year and a half with no ongoing monthly series. I think that's because by the time WildStorm had the license, Star Trek was becoming less and less popular, and with WildStorm being not very well known at the time, and Star Trek comics also not being as well known by 2000, it made sense that the comics probably didn't sell very well. Especially because the TV shows and movies were still coming out on a regular basis, so there wasn't that thirst for Star Trek stories in other mediums that there would be after Enterprise went off the air in 2005. 

I honestly don't know if I'll do an overview series on the Star Trek comics published by IDW. Mainly because there are just so many of them and most of them are mini-series and one shots like WildStorm published. Plus, even though I have read some of the IDW runs from the last five or six years, I haven't read any of them from 2007 to about 2018 or 2019, so that's a huge chunk of the comics I haven't read. So I don't have alot of history with the IDW comics, but I definitely have more than I do with the WildStorm and late 90's Marvel runs. We'll see though. In the meantime, I'll be back with more posts in the near future. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.