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R.I.P. MARTIN PASKO
It has been reported that writer Martin Pasko best known for his work on Superman and Batman: The Animated Series has passed away. He was sixty five.
He became a regular writer for DC Comics in the early nineteen seventies, and continued throughout the eighties and nineties, moving into television writing. He worked on Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, and won an Emmy Award for his work on Batman: The Animated Series.
Pasko was never a "big name" writer - indeed, you may never have been aware of him. But as the Paul Levitz, the former president of DC posted on Facebook,
“the odds are you've read his work, credited or not, or enjoyed a comic or cartoon or TV show or even a theme park event he made better..."
And that is a heck of a legacy. Our heartfelt condolences go out to Mr Pasko's family and friends.
The vagueries of YouTube mean I can't single out an episode of Batman TAS that Pasko definitely worked on, but he was part of the show's DNA, so here, in his memory, is some of it:
BIG CHANGES TO THE FUTURE OF BATMAN?
There were big plans for the future of characters at DC. Under the banner of "5G" we had been told to expect another full re-boot of the entire DC Universe - including the retirement of Bruce Wayne as Batman and his replacement with Luke Fox.
Then former DC boss Dan DiDio - who was the guiding mind behind the whole 5G concept - was fired and very shortly afterwards the whole industry went into lockdown. (The two events are unrelated of course, but it does mean that the publisher got a little breathing space...)
Now we learn from Bleeding Cool that Oscar winning writer John Ridley, who was supposed to be taking over penning Batman after #100 of the current run has been paid a so-called "kill fee" for the work he's already done. Kill fees are payments made to creators who have worked on a project the publisher has decided to spike, so if Bleeding Cool's report is accurate even if the 5G reboot goes ahead it very much looks as though the future of Batman will be different than envisioned.
This may meet with the approval of some fans - there had been a degree of eye-rolling at the plans for yet another reboot so soon after DC Rebirth, which itself came hard on the heels of The New 52.
I guess we'll see...
Read the full Bleeding Cool report HERE.
MANDOLORIAN SEASON 2 STILL ON FOR OCTOBER
The pandemic has caused all sorts of creative projects to have their release dates pushed backwards as production or post production work has been halted.
Disney CEO Bob Chapek has gone on record to reassure fans that season two of The Mandalorian is still on track for it's original October release, which means there will be some new stuff to watch come October.
SAPPHIRE AND STEEL
One of the best SciFi shows of the seventies, we're genuinely surprised it's never had a re-boot.
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