You know the drill! Time to talk about upcoming episodes, History of Power Rangers, and other projects going forward!
Schedule of Upcoming Episodes
12/5 – My Little Pony 2015 Holiday Special
12/12 – Ghostbusters: Past, Present, and Future
12/19 – Elvira’s House of Mystery Special #1
12/26 – Another 15 Screw-Ups of AT4W
1/2 – Digimon: Digital Monsters #1
1/9 – PATREON: Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl #1-6
1/16 – PATREON: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1
1/23 – Trouble #3
1/30 – The Star Wars #4
As always, the schedule is subject to change based on whims, a lack of material for the review, or acts of God preventing me from making the episode, although in any of these cases I’ll try to keep people informed.
Storyline
Well, as has been pointed out on previous occasions, the original plan was for “The Sleepwalker” to end on Halloween for a number of thematic reasons for this storyline, buuuut that did not end up happening. I do apologize that this one has dragged on for so long (over a year now since it started right before October 2015). I had also hoped as a backup that the storyline would conclude in February, as old storylines had done, with a double feature. It’s looking less likely for that to happen, as well. The simple fact is that October was a bit hellish doing Longbox, the storyline (which was a bit of a last minute job BECAUSE I needed its own storyline), and that I was building the two proton packs seen in that episode.
Still, I’m very happy that everyone seemed to like how it turned out, especially with the cameo appearance by Nella and, well, calling back to an old storyline in someone else’s videos. What’s amusing to me nowadays is that the Dark Nella storyline was happening back around the time the Entity arc was happening, so many people at the time thought there would be some overlap and crossover, which of course didn’t end up happening… aaaand now five years later I’ve ended up tying together that stuff into the overall mythos I’m building, anyway. Also a great deal of thanks to Lindsay Ellis for giving the go-ahead for the storyline, especially since she’s no longer the Nostalgia Chick and has been separating herself from that. Go check out her series Loose Canon if you haven’t already.
Going back to the Sleepwalker, yeah it’s looking less and less likely I’ll be able to have it done for February. Simply put, this storyline is complex and I want it to turn out right. I’ve taken some punches this year in that regard and rewritten a lot of stuff, but I’m pretty confident you’ll like how this all turns out. The storyline NEEDS to end by May, at the very least, since I have the next two storylines outlined and I’m eager to work on them, as well – the long-awaited one I’ve been hinting at at conventions and the like called “Contest of Champions” and then the tenth anniversary storyline of the show. I can’t recall if I’ve mentioned the name of that storyline publicly, but in case I haven’t I’ll keep it a secret for now. But yeah, “The Sleepwalker” NEEDS to conclude in early 2017 so I have enough time to do Contest of Champions. The Sleepwalker and the tenth anniversary storyline are both more serious ones (as serious as a comic review show can get, anyway), so I really want to make sure we have a fun breather arc in between.
History of Power Rangers
Nope, no release date yet for the Dino Charge History of Power Rangers. And before anyone asks, no I’m not giving opinions on it yet. Why? For two simple reasons: one, why are you asking me that instead of waiting for the videos, where I will give my thoughts more in-depth and detailed? And two: I’ve only watched the first two episodes. Yeah, I have other things going on and I kind of needed a break from Power Rangers, especially when I was working on a movie and the massive insanity that was the five-part retrospective to Megaforce.
As for why no History videos for it for a while, that’s even simpler – as I’ve explained before, part of my contract as being part of “The Power Force” (that fan promotional thing with Saban that I rarely take advantage of) is that any videos relating to Power Rangers need to have footage from official sources, AKA DVDs. Dino Charge’s DVDs are only through season 1 at the time of this writing, with the first DVD for season 2 coming out in January. I’ll buy the DVDs in the intermediate time and try to start working on it, but realistically it’s going to be a while before they come out. Sorry, people. I may decide to split it into two seasons for the retrospective, but part of the reason that worked with Mighty Morphin’ was because I knew where the series was going. It’s difficult to offer critique and analysis of character and story arcs when they’re only half-finished.
So yeah, sadly no History of Power Rangers for a while, but I will announce release dates when I have something for you all. Otherwise, what I WILL announce is that I’m going to make a hell of an effort to get the rerelease of Zeo ready for youtube by Christmas. December is always the most profitable month of the year, so getting it out during this month makes the most sense. $2+ patrons will of course get to see it a day early, so look forward to that when it happens.
Longbox of the Damned
Really happy that everyone seemed to enjoy this year’s Longbox selection! As stated above, the reason videos came out late this time around was simply the fact that I was working on the Halloween storyline, Longbox, AND the proton packs all at the same time. Couple that with the fact that I had just moved the month before and it screwed over my schedule big time, meaning I was writing Longbox well into October when I should have had all the scripts completed and done with by then. Still, I got them all out WITHIN October, which is the important part.
I’m also glad that people enjoyed the summer Longbox videos last June. This coming year will see another (in case you didn’t know, the summer Longbox videos were a result of the Patreon reaching $2000 a few years ago and will continue to do so unless I revise my milestones or if I drop below that point) following a similar format, with someone other than Moarte hosting (although there will be no twist ending).
Otherwise, if I haven’t officially announced it yet, I’m working on a Longbox of the Damned MOVIE! Bear in mind that the script is not yet done, and even if I got it done before 2017 (which I won’t), it’ll likely be another 2-3 years before I’m ready to launch a crowdfunding campaign for it as I did for Atop the Fourth Wall’s movie, if only because the logistics on this one will be quite a bit different. For one thing, while there might be some guest stars of reviewers, the main characters of the story will NOT be any of said producers and I’ll likely be looking for local actors to play many of the roles. Hell, there will be new problems to encounter with it since, let’s be honest, Longbox is not as popular as Atop the Fourth Wall (although I wish it was) and I fear I won’t attract as much interest to the project as a result. However, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.
The only other thing I’d like to hear about is whether people would like me to assemble a master playlist of all Longbox videos on youtube. I like separating them all out by year to keep things from becoming unwieldy, but some have expressed a desire to have a way to binge all of them, so I’d like to hear thoughts on that.
Let’s Play Pokémon Omicron and Gaming In General
As I’ve been saying in the PO Unboxing videos, I’d like to start doing more gaming content on the site. It’ll take some time to organize that since I need to learn how to capture game footage off my TV, but I definitely think that’d be something fun to do… although another thing is that it probably won’t happen until I finish Pokémon Omicron. So what’s the story there? Well, the good news is that the latest stream we did a week or two ago was a big success! Got about five hours worth of footage that brought us to a point MUCH closer to the end of the game (as far as I know, anyway), so I’ll probably keep doing the scheduled streams for the time being to help us keep plowing through it, even though it’s still taking a while to get that footage up and edited. After that? Well, even if I don’t get regular gaming content up and running in the near future, I’d love to start doing another Pokémon Let’s Play – this time a Nuzlocke of a regular game in the series, since that’s something that I know where it will end.
The next scheduled stream is January 9th at 7 PM Central time.
PO Unboxing
Just a reminder that PO Unboxing videos have no set schedule, especially since I have other stuff going on that prevents me from doing them. I would once again like to respectfully request that you NOT send a million things to us. We’ve finally begun organizing our library and even keeping records of what we have, which we’ll be able to cross-reference for those asking if we own something already (possibly sharing publicly with people, as well) and we ARE limited greatly by how much space we can put in. Holy crap you guys you have no idea how many comics out there begin with the letter “S,” and that’s not even counting Superman, Spider-Man, Star Trek, and other big franchises.
But yeah, we have A LOT of comics. We really do appreciate donations of those and toys and whatnot, but sending us huge boxes of material is a bit of a problem. Sending a few comics or even just one is fine, but massive collections (especially if they’re ones you just bought yourself) will likely end up being donated because of overlap of stuff we already have or just “This is not interesting enough for a review.” Hell, if you’re spending money on that? It honestly would be better spent using that money for a charity or, hell, if you still want to support the show, contributing to the Patreon. Speaking of…
Patreon-Exclusive Content?
There’s no arguing with it, especially as I’ve mentioned it before: the Patreon is stagnant. It’s not getting worse, but it isn’t getting any better. I’ve mentioned this before where I’ve asked for new tier suggestions for fans, but sadly nothing has really jumped out at me as something interesting enough to do in that regard. I have the milestones, but even the promise of doing other American tokusatsu shows doesn’t seem to be enough (yes, it’s at the highest milestone, but still).
As such, I’m wondering if maybe a better solution would be Patreon-exclusive content. I’ve already discussed making a behind-the-scenes video exploring my new home JUST for $5+ patrons because I feel I’ve been neglecting behind the scenes stuff for those at that level, but what other Patreon-exclusive content do people recommend? I’d be interested in doing a Patrons-only poll for new episodes like the Cinema Snob, Movie Nights, and Lindsay Ellis have all done – basically giving you three options for a comic review and letting the patrons vote on what the episode will be.
Any thoughts on all of that? Let me know!
