Showing posts with label krypto. Show all posts
Showing posts with label krypto. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Superman 2025: Krypto, The Superdog



You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

Today, James Gunn announced that, yes - after a year of playing hide-the-ball with the issue - Superman's canine companion, Krypto, will appear in 2025's Superman.  

Full disclosure - a full subset of my Super comics and paraphernalia collection is Krypto-related.  My house is littered with white dogs in capes.  There's like 7 of them in the room I'm in right now.  I am also a grown man who spends 45% of his waking time talking to a 128 pound dog with zero manners.

If you think a Super Dog is a dumb thing and superheroes can't have pets... I would like to introduce you to DC Comics' longstanding tradition of Super-Pets and related animals.  Krypto was a mid-1950's addition to the Superman canon, showing up less than twenty years after Superman first showed up in 1938.  But after the insertion of Rex the Wonder-Dog into DC's world of action-adventure, sometimes in military comics.  Batman has Ace the Bathound.  Wonder Woman has had a variety of pals, but Jumpa, her kangaroo, is probably most famous for nerds.  Robin has a Batcow.  Here's an encyclopedia of them.

It's important to remember that one of the biggest stars in movies through the late 1920's was Rin-Tin-Tin, a German Shepard. Rin-Tin-Tin and Lassie enjoyed stardom in movies and television through the 1990's.  Dogs as characters just wasn't a weird idea to people in media.  And especially when you're trying to rope in a younger audience, as comics were intended through the 1980's.

Wednesday, January 3, 2024

WB Animation Watch: Scooby-Doo and Krypto, Too! (2023)




Watched:  01/02/2024
Format:  Max
Viewing:  First
Director:  Cecilia Aranovich
Select:  Me


It's not to say Scooby-Doo and Krypto, Too! (2023) is particularly good - it has issues.  But it was better than I figured, which is possibly damning with faint praise.  Look, I'm just not a huge fan of Scooby-Doo, which is hurtful to Scooby-Doo fans, but here we are.  But I do find myself checking out some Scoob from time-to-time as they do these guest-starring movies, like the recent one with Elvira.  

As a DC Comics nut, it has a lot to love.  There's deep cut jokes exploiting a breadth of DC comics and animation history.  You'll maybe recognize bits from cartoons and movies, and you'll see items like Kandor.  Lex Luthor is a really funny supporting character here.  No notes.  I laughed.

Of course I'm a Krypto the Superdog fan, and he's in the movie, but he doesn't talk - which, look, Krypto hasn't had so much as thought-bubble in the comics since the 1970's.  But that's a bit limiting for a show with other talking dogs.  So it kinda sorta works, but.  Maybe a bit confusing?  Still, I'm just happy to see Krypto, so bonus points.

As an animation fan, it has some challenges.  My Scooby-Doo was made in the 1960's - 1980's, by the cheapest animation house outside of Filmation, so this looks like Star Wars by comparison.  But my in-house Scooby-Doo expert has assured me that they've done better by Mystery, Inc. in recent years, so I'll just agree with that.  But for someone expecting Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? style art and maybe Challenge of the Superfriends, it's... fine.  Really, it looks like the art in DC's Scooby-Doo and Batman comics that I pick up once in a blue moon if Krypto or someone shows up.   

There's some funny bits in the movie - there was a Velma's glasses bit that kills.  And I liked some of the gags about, like, the valet at the Hall of Justice.  But some of the old, worn out gags from Scooby-Doo are no fresher in 2024 than they were in 1984.  And there was no gag they couldn't stretch until you were like "I get it.  Enough."

And that included the finale "fight" that went on what seemed as long as any DC superhero movie ending - ie: way past the point where it wore out its welcome.  Which may have been a gag unto itself.  And, of course, any DC fan worth their salt could telegraph the ending twist.

I did have a couple of moments watching this cartoon that made me just sort of stare at DC over the past twenty years or so and want to ask "why do you make it so hard when this is so simple?"  Like, DC needs a Superfriends cartoon, or some version of the Justice League on Max or Cartoon Network, aimed at kids.  I know they have some marketing research that tells them "this is for people between 16 and 24", but that is *nonsense*.  They haven't even tried since I was in middle school.  And I'm old now.*

And seeing all the villains piled on Metropolis, which is treated as a gag, also made me realize why I don't give a shit about most DC events in the comics.   They aren't just the straight up Legion of Doom vs. Justice League match-up that wouldn't just feel like some wank-fest that will be meaningless to most readers.  

If they can make DC Comics work better in a Scooby-Doo cartoon - where the characters don't even really appear - than in most DC media, it may be time for a rethink.

*say what you will, but the 00's-era Justice League cartoon was airing at 7:00 at night.  That was not aimed at kids.  And they buried Justice League Action, which was great, at like 6:00 AM.  It was insane.







Thursday, October 6, 2022

PodCast 214: "DC League Of Super Pets" (2022) - A Kryptonian Thought Beast Episode w/ Jamie & Ryan

 


Watched:  10/02/2022
Format:  HBOmax
Viewing:  First
Director:  Jared Stern and Samuel J Levine


The podcast goes to the dogs as Jamie and Ryan talk 2022's furriest super-offering. Join us as we sniff around for a take on family fun in Metropolis as Superman's lesser-known pal gets his own feature and DC/ WB tries to kick-start a lucrative super franchise for the kiddos.

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DC Movies Playlist

Wednesday, May 4, 2022

New League of Super-Pets trailer



Still pretty happy with everything I've seen so far in the trailers and ads for this.  

Hey, we're getting a full DC Super-Pets movie!  That's excellent!


Thursday, July 26, 2012

A couple of quick Superman Reviews: Superman Family #3 and Superman #11

Superman Family Adventures #3
by Baltazar and Franco


The fact that this book isn't moving 80,000 copies per month is a crime.  Good-natured, action-packed, zany, bizarre and purely in love with the Superman mythos, this book is a perfect comic to hand a kid as well as your hipster pal looking for a good laugh.  If you're into a balanced diet in your comics, this is sort of the lovely pudding you should save to savor at the end of the buy pile.  Or something.

Monday, December 12, 2011

a wee bit more on Superman Family kids' comic

DC Comics' blog made a formal announcement today regarding the Superman Family Adventures comic I mentioned Friday.

It sounds exactly like the sort of thing I was hoping DC might do this year.  Well, 2012 is close to this year, so I'll take what I can get.

From the article:
This May, the Eisner Award-winning creative team of the NEW YORK TIMES bestselling TINY TITANS, Art Baltazar and Franco, will continue bringing their wonderful and unique humor to DC Comics with the new ongoing monthly series, SUPERMAN FAMILY ADVENTURES. The series will be starring (you guessed it!) the whole Superman gang – Superman, Supergirl, Superboy, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Lex Luthor, Bizarro, General Zod and … Fuzzy the Krypto Mouse!
As near as I can tell, Fuzzy the Krypto Mouse is all-new, but its been a while since anyone was added to the Legion of Super-Pets, so I welcome Fuzzy with open super-arms.  (But "Krypto Mouse"?  Could he be Streaky's nemesis?)

This is, of course, in tandem with the line of kids' Super Pets books which will soon have volumes featuring Super Turtle, Comet and more Krypto and Streaky.

I did notice on the bigger image DC provided of the FCBD comic that Superman is in his new suit.  I'll be curious how Jim Lee's design translates.

the kids love a high collar!

But, yup, that's Superman.  I am pretty excited about this!


Monday, November 7, 2011

The Superman Lawsuit, and me playing with kids' toys

On Sunday I stumbled across this new Superman toy from Fischer-Price.  While Fischer-Price has done an admirable job with Batman and DC toys of late, this is slightly different and bigger and shows up as part of their "Rescue Heroes"/ "Hero World" line.

Yes, I buy kids' Superman toys.  Especially when they come with Krypto.

Krypto does not screw around

I was carrying the item around Target when I gave the toy a second look and realized...  he hasn't got the trunks.  And he's got the chunky boots, and...  they gave him the scaling detail of the Jim Lee re-design (sort of).

Superman wouldn't want to appear un-detailed

And I started thinking: wow, the New 52 is really going to change things.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

No More Krypto - DC makes a decision with which I must disagree

According to reports coming out of the New York ComicCon, DC has decided that there will be no more Krypto in the New 52.

This makes me sad.  And this is sort of the thing that is making me wonder about the stated goal of aiming your comics at the 18-34 year old male demographic.

While I do think the comics of the 90's were aimed at an all-ages audience, the 90's Superman comics by-passed the Bronze Age in terms of "world building", but it was also one of the dullest eras of Superman as creators tried everything in their power to avoid reminding readers of the past 50 years of Superman comics and tried to pretend that Superman was just a straightforward superhero book that would fit in alongside "gritty" books.  And, hey, who should be picking up writing chores on Superman than Dan Jurgens and Keith Giffen?   Competent writers, but its a strange fit to jump 20 years backward as they're supposedly moving forward.

sorry, buddy
For me, as a Superman fan, this is disappointing.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Signal Watch Reads: Superman 712

Superman 712
Writer: Kurt Busiek
Penciller: Rick Leonardi
Inker: Jonathan Sibal
Colorist: Brad Anderson
Lettering: Comicraft
Associate Editor: Nachie Castro
Editor: Matt Idleson


Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Super Pets: Books for Kids!

DC Comics and Capstone books will soon release a line of kids' chapter books starring the DC Super Pets! I know! I'm using exclamation points! (...because I'm excited!)

For those of you not in the know, back in the day Superman editor and controversial figure (aka: well-known jerk), Mort Weisinger was all about adding new characters and accouterments to the Superman titles. Thus, you got everything from Kandor to Beppo, the super monkey. Some stuff stuck, some stuff didn't.

Superman wound up with a whole line of buddies, the most famous of which is Krypto the Superdog.

The really great news isn't just that these books are coming, but that they'll be drawn by Tiny Titans wunderkind cartoonist Art Baltazar.









Sadly, I can't really justify buying these books. I think. We'll see. I'm a bit of an impulse purchaser. But those of you with kids should totally check these things out. It's a book with Beppo and Titano! How can you go wrong?

I think I'm lying. I'm totally buying that book with Krypto and Ace the Bathound on the cover.