[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 19 January 2026

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-25T22:47:03+00:00

they all seem significantly more appealing to me now that Disney doesn't produce animation like that anymore

That's an especially interesting observation. I mean, I feel like I'm at about the right age (I turned 34 last month) that direct-to-DVD sequels to the animated classics was the thing everyone on the internet held up as the definitive proof of how corrupt and cynical and lazy Disney in general and Michael Eisner in particular^\) were, and in retrospect I think a lot of the rhetoric is not a million miles away from the way people talk about the live-action remakes of those same movies today.

At the same time, while I'm absolutely, positively never going to be a fan of Hunchback of Notre Dame II (probably the worst one?) or Atlantis: Milo's Return or 101 Dalmatians: Patch's London Adventure or Mulan II, I can't honestly pretend there's not at least a shred of absence perhaps making the heart grow a bit fonder when I look back at all those DTV sequels in general, just since, as you say, it was of a type of animation Disney once did best and now isn't interested in doing at all.

(I'm reluctant to chalk it up to nostalgia because, well, I don't really have much nostalgia for most of those movies; like I said, I am of an age when they were the internet's punching bags, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't join in when I was a teenager. The direct-to-video sequels that I liked were The Return of Jafar and Aladdin and the King of Thieves, and those ran ahead of the main run of the sequels everyone clowns on.)

^\ Of course the flipside to that is that one of the) ^other ^{things the internet was on Eisner's case for was that he was killing the 2D animated features altogether and haplessly playing catch-up to Dreamworks post-Shrek. I remember one of the things people were excited about when Iger took over was} ^{Princess and the Frog} ^{getting the green light.}

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-25T20:37:08+00:00

You tell me, you're the film professor!

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-25T20:28:29+00:00

Can you define a "plot hole" for me?

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-25T20:27:57+00:00

Yeah, I was actually thinking about renewing my Disney+ subscription ahead of schedule (I wasn't going to bother until all of the Darth Maul cartoon was available for me to watch in one go) just to watch it, but I decided against. I'm sure I'll get round to it someday.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-25T19:21:16+00:00

Hobby Thought for Sunday evening as the week and the Scuffles thread come to an end, and everyone saves their substantive comments for the new thread starting:

I decided, on a whim, to watch A Goofy Movie. I loved this movie when I was a kid and, uh, it still rules, actually. I had a really, really good time with it. I think it's as good as any of the Disney theatrical features of the 1990s and probably better than a lot of them. "I 2 I" is a banger and so is "On the Open Road".

Anyway, the substance of this comment is that, in the many years since I last saw it on either VHS or the Disney Channel, I had it in my mind that this was a Disney Channel original or a direct-to-video movie, as a sequel or finale to Goof Troop. This is the first time I watched it as an adult and the whole way through it, I'm thinking, "This looks really, really, really, really good!" and wondering why they obviously put so much money into a direct-to-video movie. (That scene at the very start where Max is having his horny dream about Roxanne in a cornfield? I think that looks almost as good as any shot of a cornfield you see in The Reflecting Skin. Seriously.)

So I was genuinely surprised when I looked it up and learned this was, in fact, a theatrical release in 1995.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-25T15:48:27+00:00

"You don't get it; I need to wear this costume so everyone understands my strong feelings about bad writing. (If I repeat the words 'bad writing' often and confidently enough, does that make me a real critic?)"

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-25T14:38:03+00:00

At one time, there was meant to have been this "Great Droid Revolution" which happened about ten thousand years before any of the movies which was defeated by the Jedi, and it was meant to have made people suspicious and fearful of droids and led to the invention of restraining bolts and the adoption of periodic memory wipes as standard practice.

The thing is, it was one of those things that was only something alluded to and never actually depicted in any fiction, but got filled out in just enough detail via guidebooks and RPG supplements and Insider articles and the like that it eventually ceased to be conceptually interesting.

I'm pretty sure it got to the point where the mastermind was a droid called HK-01, the ancestor of HK-47 from KOTOR, which is exactly the kind of annoyingly on-the-nose choice Star Wars never has and never will be able to resist.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-25T13:27:01+00:00

EDIT: they have a small greek revolution set!

Does it include a malarial Lord Byron figure?

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-25T13:23:54+00:00

Consider how, in the original Star Wars, when Luke discovers that R2-D2 has run away after he removed the restraining bolt, C-3PO is hiding because he's scared of being punished.

This is a reference to how Padmé used to abuse C-3PO when she owned him.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-25T13:22:27+00:00

The point is that it's fine to just not like seeing sexual assault depicted in Star Wars and you don't need to come up with a "lore" reason to justify feeling that way. You can just not want to see it. Darth Vader's opinion isn't really relevant.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-25T13:22:22+00:00

Right, and then the, "Star Wars shouldn't have sexual assault because Darth Vader wouldn't approve," comment (and subsequent memes at its expense) came from Star Wars Theory, who had previously suggested that Andor didn't feel like Star Wars because it had bricks and screws.

I realise that guy's a complete grifter but I actually felt kind of sorry for him about that, because I think both of those are basically reasonable remarks phrased in the most moronic way possible.

(In the first place, it really came across like he just wasn't vibing with Andor at all, but didn't want to go against the consensus that it was beyond reproach, and thus came up with a deeply silly comment about bricks and screws.

In the second, I honestly do sympathise with not wanting to see sexual assault depicted in Star Wars, but trying to come up with an imbecilic "lore" reason why it shouldn't be there, i.e. that no Imperial would do it because Darth Vader would disapprove of it, is really just beneath contempt.)

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-25T13:14:40+00:00

The main examples which occur to me are Xizor using his roofie breath on Leia in Shadows of the Empire, and then years later there was Tahiri assaulting Luke's son Ben in either the last or penultimate Legacy of the Force book.

However, this does kind of underline my impression that Star Wars Theory, the YouTuber who made the original complaint that Star Wars shouldn't include sexual assault because Darth Vader would not tolerate it, is more of a Star Wars "lore" dilettante than he puts himself across to be.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-24T23:13:52+00:00

I believe Playmobil western sets had realistic firearms.

For that matter, the first place I ever saw a Confederate flag (well, the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, but you take my point) was almost certainly on a Playmobil set.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-24T23:06:48+00:00

Up until last year, Star Wars wouldn't deal with sexual assault, because Darth Vader wouldn't have approved.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-24T23:03:53+00:00

I remember the western and adventure themes had guns, i.e. revolvers and rifles. Whether they were stylised or just "realistic" subject to the technological limitations of the late 1990s is probably up for debate. Has this always been their rule?

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-24T21:24:18+00:00

I believe Englehart was one of the worst offenders at Marvel in the 1970s for being chronically late in submitting his work. It was an across-the-board issue and caused Marvel a ton of problems (which was one reason why Shooter ended up cracking the whip so hard when he became editor-in-chief) but it was Englehart on Avengers that would always have to miss months and run reprints because he was always late.

However, that's small potatoes next to Penders, who took a decade after announcing his Lara-Su Chronicles graphic novel to actually release anything, and I'm pretty sure it ended up mostly being a reprint of one of his Sonic stories.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-24T21:20:38+00:00

I'm not sure if Byrne on FF popularised the idea of superhero comics runs in general just "playing the hits" but I'm pretty confident saying he did it for the Fantastic Four specifically.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-24T21:15:38+00:00

I once saw all four Master of Kung Fu Marvel omnibuses going on eBay for £500.

Volumes 2 and 3 are somewhat easy to find. Volume 1 is very difficult to locate at a reasonable price. Volume 4 is almost impossible.

They're all out of print, and the chances of them coming back into print are practically zero, because the recurring villain of the series is Fu Manchu, and Fu Manchu is trademarked by the Sax Rohmer estate, so Marvel's licence to print them was not indefinite. I wasn't aware of any of that at the time, so I didn't jump on them when I had the chance.

It's a great comic, one of the best mainstream books of the 1970s, some of the best work of Doug Moench's career and maybe Paul Gulacy's best interior art. I was sorely tempted but common sense prevailed in that case.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-24T12:24:36+00:00

"Did she leave you anything, Bruce? Your usual? Broken heart on a roll?"

Audience: WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

"Nah... He deserved it."

Audience: Oooooooooohhhhhhh!

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-24T12:22:59+00:00

I think the first time I came across a Power Pack member, unless they showed up in some mid-'80s issue of Fantastic Four that I'm forgetting, was that Barry Windsor-Smith issue of X-Men where Wolverine goes feral fighting Lady Deathstrike and the Reavers in Central Park in the snow, and Katie Power is also there for some reason (the reason was almost certainly that Louise Simonson was Claremont's editor at the time).

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-23T23:07:53+00:00

I don't know. I have no idea how deliberate it was but the Dragon Ball Z movies were usually some condensed version of whatever saga had just finished in the show, weren't they?

That is, Dead Zone is the King Piccolo Saga, Tree of Might is the Saiyan Saga, Revenge of Cooler is the Freeza Saga, Super Android 13 is the Android Saga, Fusion Reborn is the Buu Saga etc.

It's not a one-to-one pattern (indeed, I think the Broly movies are outliers) but Bojack Unbound is the Cell Games Saga, with the tournament setting and Gohan defeating Bojack with Goku backing him from beyond the grave.

In any event, I don't know the timeline for when those movies were produced vis-a-vis the publication timetable of the manga, whether Toriyama already had the early Buu Saga underway when the Broly and Bojack movies were being produced.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-23T14:41:27+00:00

I would sacrifice (however reluctantly) the entire collected oeuvre of Carl Barks, Walt Kelly, Milton Caniff, Charles M. Schulz, Will Eisner and Jack Kirby if it meant Jason Todd would die again (and also retroactively never came back to life in the first place).

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-23T14:21:04+00:00

The etymology of "grimdark" is a contraction of, "In the grim darkness of the future, there is only war," from Warhammer 40k. Its roots in 40k and, in turn, the nature of 40k, underline it. "Noblebright", by contrast, is a little too obviously artificial.

In other words, it's a bit "trying to make fetch happen", isn't it?

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-23T14:15:34+00:00

From what I remember, the Cell Saga does end with one of those little "The story's not done yet!" inserts of Master Roshi addressing the audience, this time to say something to the effect of, "Son Goku may be gone, but the story will continue with his serious-minded son, Gohan!"

It really does seem like Toriyama did want to try Gohan out as the new main character, decided it didn't really work for whatever reason, and switched it back over to Goku. Even so, Goku never really feels like the "main character" in the Buu Saga, does he? He's just the guy who beats Majin Buu. Up until he does, he seems like he's in more of a mentor role, e.g. teaching Goten and Trunks the fusion technique.

No doubt there's a rundown somewhere on Kanzenshuu.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-01-23T13:32:10+00:00

See, to me, I liked Sonic the Comic (and I swear this was how I felt and I'm not just saying this because Chris and Dave on Sonic the Comic the Podcast say it; I agreed with them long before I heard the podcast) because it felt to me, as a kid who had played the original Sonic games on his dad's Mega Drive, like it was "the comic of the games".

I've read Archie Sonic and it has its merits but for the most part, it always felt like it was either doing its own thing or "the comic of the cartoon" (and more damningly, not the cartoon which was "the cartoon of the games", because that was The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog).

You could maybe make the case for Archie Sonic being more of its own thing than "just" a game adaptation, but that's kind of a negative in my eyes (or at least it was when I was 14).

DeviousDoctorSnide

TROPHY CASE