Transformation 190: A New Year Star

2/1/2016

Happy new year!

I'm not feeling great, so will the adventures of Skullgrin the film star cheer me up?

Sadly it turns out he's barely in it, meaning it's down to Sky Lynx to save the day. Once again.

It's all in my look at Monstercon From Mars! Part 1.

4 Comments

Ryan F

3/1/2016 12:51:53 am

The best joke in here is when they start taking photos of Skullgrin, and the Director starts going ape, in case Skullgrin mistakes the camera flashes for weapons, which I believe actually happened in King Kong. Of course, this issue completely subverts it when Skullgrin says something like 'Of course I know those are only cameras, I'm not stupid!' (or something like that).

Can't say Im a big fan of this one, overall. Guess my main beef is that when Budiasky rips off other entertainment industries, it's like a doff of the cap: Budiansky is obviously a big Springsteen fan, and even in the Wrestling story, the actual wrestlers themselves don't come out of it too badly. Usually his spoofs are more, I dunno, gentle?

But I'm a big fan of crummy b-movies, and I kinda hate how Budiasky makes everyone in the industry - the director, the actors - come across as complete a-holes. I dunno, there's just a mean-spiritedness to this story that I've always found a bit unbecoming of Uncle Bob's talents: I'd take King Con, Car Wash or Interplanetary Wrestling over this any day of the week!

Felicity link

12/11/2019 08:55:17 pm

I see your point, although FWIW Carrissa Carr/Ethel Stankiewicz is shown to be a nice person and even Jake Colton has moments of decency. Public relations wizard Mitch Keno seems like an OK person. It’s mainly Rollie Friendly, who would let Circuit Breaker kill Skullgrin just to have an ending to his movie, who seems completely cold-blooded.

SImon Hall

4/1/2016 10:00:28 pm

Whereas I , on the other hand, think its great! I really like this story. Its full of silly gags and probably Delbo's best art on the series (I love his rendering of Skullgrin's Pretender Shell) and its just a big load of daft fun.

I can see that Bob's humour can be a bit snide sometimes ... as with the whole Donny Finkleberg character... but there's fun to be had with those caricatures of Hollywood types. They're certainly some of Bob's more memorable human characters.

This story also made Skullgrin one of my favourite characters, and I was pleased to pick up a decent condition original toy last year.

I HAVE DONE THE QUIZ!

Felicity link

12/11/2019 09:02:41 pm

Rollie Friendly can pass for a director from the 1980s although his hair, sunglasses, jacket, and shirt look more like a 1960s director who bought his wardrobe just before pant legs and shirt collars started getting flared.

I definitely take Rollie Friendly to be a Roger Corman type, both in his appearance (though the real Roger Corman would have been much older by the 1980s) and role at the studio as boss/producer/director. However, as with Donny Finkleberg, I don’t think it should be taken as an attempt to say that this is what Roger Corman is really like.

Mitch Keno looks like GB Blackrock in the sense of having black hair and a mustache but he also looks like a very young Ed McMahon.

Good point about Jake Colton; he does resemble Sam Jones in “Flash Gordon” but also looks like a throwback to space opera actors an earlier era, from the pompadour to the jumpsuit.

Carrissa Carr on the other hand has awesome 1980s hair!

José Delbo draws people, backgrounds, objects, technology, vehicles, weapons, etc. very well and Transformers pretty well so this is a good story for him.

“Visionaries” did indeed end halfway through the Quest for the Four Talismans, and we never did find out how it would have ended. Maybe someone can ask Gerry Conway someday. My friend who got me into “Visionaries” wrote a script for a seventh issue, the quest for the Fire Talisman IIRC, which I tried to draw, but my drawing ability was not up to it.

Transformation 190: A New Year Star

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