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The retrofest continues. Last night I completed the Gerber Defenders run after what, 30 years, and today a few episodes of the recently-reissued Johnny Sokko compilation. Like Shout’s ウルトラセブン from last year, video quality is positively barbaric (my early Nineties ジャイアントロボ Laserdisc seemed like a remaster), but it’s excusable this time around, as they got the American dubbed version, which I’ve only seen in my youth as the “Voyage into Space” remix. Man, we would go nuts when that showed up Saturday afternoons.

I haven’t seen anything yet like that artsy Ultraseven episode, but the body count is simply staggering for a children’s show. Closing in on half a century of enlightenment later, I can’t imagine a 10-year-old being revealed as a master spy then getting shot dead in the back by his former masters, outside of maybe SVU.

I’ve always sung praises to Roddy Frame and Aztec Camera, but never heard the extended version of their Jump cover until nearly thirty years later. Or maybe I did, and it just works so much better for me now in my ripe old age.

Who was directing this episode? It starts with a man beating his wife in front of a bunch of kids. There are crazy POV shots, every conversation takes place in darkness, and the final battle plays out like genre samurai film.

What’s more, who wrote it? This, the last bit of (subtitled) narration:

And so the invaders from the planet Metron were defeated, and their plan was foiled. A terrible scheme, to exploit man’s trust in his fellow man. But please, don’t worry. This story could only happen in the distant, distant future. Why is that, you ask? Because in today’s world, there is not enough trust to exploit.

I may love it now, but I can only imagine how it warped young minds back then. Wait, one of them was me?!

Can’t say much for the Total Recall remake, including but not limited to its merits nor the very need thereof, but of all the things to bring back:

In high school I thought it was deliciously subversive to sport a sweatshirt with all twenty letters of this prostitute‘s name ironed on; too many in fact, that it took two rows in Britannic Bold, if I remember correctly. (The Black Zaphod Beeblebrox jersey in a smaller-sized Cooper Black did fit on a single line. Jersey, heh.)

I’m practically beholden to Disney for at least until the boy’s old enough not to be horrified by the imagery, but that doesn’t make them any less the copyright hypocrites, and this merchandising just proves it. (As effective as they may sometimes seem on their own, I did vow to refrain from mortal links—wtf, after all, was this one about—but the Tumblr-style headliners will do.)

It only took twenty-plus years, but I finally got one of my favorite comic miniseries animated (the Dark Knight Returns on the horizon; Doom Patrol beyond that, in a parallel universe through the black hole), and apart from a few omissions, like the memorable line above, it was as faithful to the source material as I might have insisted upon. Each and every storyboard, so it was almost like watching those Marvel cartoons from the Sixties “come to life”, and as glad as I was that they kept the now-retro 90’s references of Princess Caroline and the Porsche 928, I miss Mazzucchelli’s art most of all.

Woke up with a longing-from-long ago for Sugar Smacks, which have apparently since been updated to drop the unhealthy but apt moniker and imbue the once-innocent mascot with Poochie-like ‘tude.

from to (Speaking of temporal displacement and eating, remind me one day to elaborate on my new approach to Chinese food: chow down by moving your stomach two hours into the future.) My usual grocers didn’t stock it at all, leading me to suspect more food-related intrigue before finding it on the shelves at former strike-buster Stater Bros. The retro bug was again short-lived, as a single bowl left even my Mountain Dew-hardened frame jittery for the rest of the day, but it did prompt research into the ever-elusive discontinued C.W. Post cereal of my youth. The rock-like granola will probably be too hard for my teeth now.

Must be all the comics I’ve been reading lately, or the feeling of empowerment from last night’s speed feat, but this morning I was quite the badass, at first offering to protect a young feline stowaway from behind a long curtain hiding bloody bathtubs. “Not even the Thundercats could stop me,” I assured her. Then I was outside, watching said cartoon, wherein John Travolta led a squad of mafia thugs, the lot of them having been pulled through time & space to do the bidding of their evil master (Mumm-Ra?). In addition to the novel amalgamation, I remarked how surprisingly good the animation was, pointing to the detailed light work on their jackets, but my companion was less impressed, replying that she’d seen this one and the villain was someone not so unfamiliar.

A group of us stormed their headquarters, taking a stairway up from a market on the street. The first room upstairs was for a conference, and I marched through, not taking notice of its participants like a determined 이병헌. (Come to think of it, my stride was more 高倉 健 in The Yakuza, wasn’t it?) I finally met with resistance from an Asian bodyguard who shot me once, and as that had no effect, threw shuriken, which I simply removed from where they had lodged in my arm and returned; unfortunately for him, he didn’t possess my inexplicable regenerative superpowers à la Warren Ellis. The next few along the way I tossed out the windows, describing my technique of immediately surmising the situation, noting all possible tools available to me, then acting faster than apparently they could react. When I felt the realism challenged, I decided that maybe I ought to be breaking the glass with a chair or something before throwing their relatively soft bodies through them. The boss was an invalid old man, helplessly sprawled across a bed, and his young wife pleaded for mercy. Their child was a newborn with an affliction that required it be fully wrapped in bandages. I picked up the bundle and held it to my shoulder as if it were my own, and felt compassion.