As I said back in August (see "Confession Of A Comic Book Guy - I Don't Ask Questions, I Just Have Fun"), in spite of being highly resistant to the charms of both magical flying ponies and transforming robots, one of my favorite comics of 2020 was Transformers/My Little Pony: Friendship in Disguise! As I said back then, it managed to be an enormous amount of time while still taking the core concepts of the two franchises seriously. As far as I’m concerned the only thing keeping it from being absolutely perfect was at no time did a pony turn into a robot or a robot turn into a pony.
Maybe I’ll have better luck seeing a Ponyformer or Transpony next time, and happily, there will be a next time; in April, we will see the release of My Little Pony/Transformers II. The sequel, a four-part miniseries taking the Ponies to the Transformers home planet of Cybertron, will be written by James Asmus and Sam Maggs with art Jack Lawrence and Casey W. Coller. Hopefully, this will inspire Hasbro to produce an entire line of Pony/Transformers action figures. They’ve already given us My Little Prime, a My Little Pony figure with a Transformers-inspired design (see “Confessions Of A Comic Book Guy -- Playing With Toys”), but it doesn’t transform. To which I have to ask, “Where’s the fun in that?”
But now that anyone "can now do what they want with the work", I fully expect to see much more “liberal” adaptations. And since there’s already a Jay Gatsby, zombie hunter novel (The Great Gatsby Undead by “Kristen Briggs and F. Scott Fitzgerald”), I think the next inevitable permutation of Fitzgerald’s immortal character is The Great Gatsby, Superhero. I see either Zenescope or Antarctic Press as the likely publisher, but I also consider Image Comics (not Dark Horse Comics) to be a dark horse candidate.
For years I "joked" (if you want to be extremely generous) that the Saturday Morning cartoon show opposite Hanna-Barbera’s Moby Dick and Mighty Mightor in 1967 was Silas Marner, Defender of the Universe when The Great Gatsby (a title that was far less of a reach) was just sitting there, waiting to be used.
According to Wikipedia, there was supposed to have been an animated series and comic book about a “fictionalized Schwarzenegger who after stepping down from his role as Governor of California to become a superhero in order to fight crime.” Both his “real-life family and Brentwood home” was supposed to have had “fictional counterparts in the franchise.” Which made things a little awkward when Schwarzenegger’s infidelity became a national scandal in 2011.
Well, all of that has apparently been some combination of forgotten and forgiven because now we have Superhero Kindergarten an action-adventure comedy series targeting kids ages 4 – 7 about five children who gain the superpowers of Captain Fantastic (voiced by Schwarzenegger). There’s going to be a Superhero Kindergarten comic from Archie (see “Genius Signs Archie To Publish Comics Based On Stan Lee IPS”) and the series is now available on Amazon Prime.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
