FINALLY.

As of 1 June, at long last, my local cable company will be adding Cartoon Network to its channel lineup in my municipality. I've only been fighting them for two years trying to get the same channels subscribers in neighbouring towns have been given by the same cable provider, grr, argh.

All kinds of good there -- I've missed my Samurai Jack terribly, along with Adult Swim, Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, and reruns of classic toons old and new, from the original Space Ghost to Batman Beyond.

What has me most excited, though, is that I'll be able to watch "Star-Crossed," the long-delayed season finale, at the same time as all the other JL fans in North America.

Finally.

And I've got until July to get my hands on tapes of the episodes I've missed thus far... which, sadly, is all of them (okay, I saw parts of two eps -- does this count? no!) despite my having given a blank tape to somebody (who shall remain nameless) who promised to tape it for me and then never did. I have two VCRs and a respectable library of dubbable slashfodder to trade, y'all.

Justice League! Woo hoo! Toonslash, here I come.

Free Comic Book Day?

For the last two years, the first Saturday in May has been "Free Comic Book Day" -- an unabashedly commercial "holiday" on which anyone could go into a participating comixshop and receive one free comic. (For the direct-sales comics retailer nearest you, call 1 800 COMIC BOOK; newsstands and chain bookstores don't participate, nor offer for sale the full variety of titles available at the specialty shops.)

The bad news, is Free Comic Book Day will not be observed the first Saturday of May, 2004 -- tomorrow, 3 May. The good news is, Free Comic Book Day has just been moved to later in the year: the first Saturday in July, which will fall on 3 July this year. Probably the best part of Free Comic Book Day is that not only the Big Two -- DC and Marvel -- but a number of smaller, independent comic-book publishers also participate. I find it's a great opportunity to check out books I might not have read otherwise.

And hey, free comix. You can't go wrong with that.

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Semi-randomly: Looking at my LJ userinfo stats earlier, I noticed that I have posted 2,147 comments in others' journals, and received 1,326 comments on my 274 posts. I suppose that means I have a surfeit of good comment karma?

Did anybody notice I posted two new stories yesterday?

Like a GIP, only with content

At long last, I have a Virgil/Richie icon to call my very own.

::looks at icon::

::evil pointy grin::

Go get him, Richie.

In case you don't recognise them, the boy sitting on the bed is Virgil Hawkins, AKA Static, teenaged superhero of Dakota City, USA (one of those DCU cities like Gotham, Keystone or Metropolis), and his best friend about to jump him is Richie Foley, AKA Gear, Static's partner in crime-fighting and all-around gayness. If you don't recognise them, you NEED to be watching Static Shock on Kids' WB.

Tomorrow morning, Saturday, 1 May, Kids' WB will air the all new episode "Linked" (season 4, episode 10). The preview episode description up at TVTome reads: "Static and Gear help a football star being blackmailed by Chainlink, a powerful metahuman."

Also, starting next Monday, 3 May, the weekday-afternoon Static Shock reruns will move from 3:30 to 3:00PM. Like the Saturday-morning episodes, these will air on your local WB station or affiliate; I recommend TVGuide.com for finding the WB station serving you (though not for much else; they typically do not list episode titles for upcoming episodes of WB cartoons).

For everyone playing the home game: Yes, the Static Shock cartoon is based on an excellent comic by the sadly now-defunct Milestone Comics (DC retains the rights to most or all Milestone characters), titled simply Static (and not to be confused with Static-X); and yes, the version of Richie in the comic, called Rick, was canonically gay.

The show doesn't take all the risks or, for lack of a better word, have all the "edge" of the comic, but it's still a damned good show. It tackles more issues than most kids' cartoons -- not that that's saying much -- and without getting preachy, except in the Very Special Episodes which they keep to one per season. (The first of these, "Jimmy," dealt with the issue of gun violence in schools in an impressively realistic manner and is prodigiously homoerotic-subtext-laden to boot.) I came for the quality writing, and stayed for the delightfully slashy vibe between Richie and Virgil, which makes up for occasional abyssmally bad episodes.


Highlights of upcoming reruns include:

Monday, 3 May, 3PM: "Hard As Nails" (3.1)
Guest-starring Batman, Alfred, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, when Static follows a lead to Gotham.

Wednesday, 5 May, 3PM: "Blast from the Past" (3.15)
Guest-starring Soul Power, an African-American hero with electrical powers from a previous generation (similar to DC's Black Lightning, AKA Jefferson Pierce); Soul Power has tremendous levels of subtext with both his former sidekick and their former arch-nemesis.

Tuesday, 11 May, 3PM: "Sons of the Fathers" (1.8)
This is the episode in which Virgil finally gets to go hang at Richie's house, Richie runs away from home, and possibly the gayest tag-line ever ends the episode.

Thursday, 13 May, 3PM: "The Big Leagues" (2.1)
The first of the now-numerous Batman guest appearances, as he and Toon!Tim the red, red Robin come to Dakota on the trail of the Joker, who also guest-stars.

Also, the most recent new Saturday-morning episodes are being rebroadcast on the following Friday afternoons, giving viewers who miss the new ep on the previous Saturday a second chance to catch it before the next new one. Now, if they'd just play the older reruns in order...

More complete schedule info here.