Starstream #1 - Atop the Fourth Wall

Welcome to Atop the Fourth Wall, where bad comics burn. In this episode, Linkara looks at a comic adaptation of "Who Goes There," the story that would eventually become John Carpenter's "The Thing."

http://atopthefourthwall.com

Originally uploaded October 1st, 2012.

ORIGINAL INFO: Man is the warmest place to hide… except when he cranks the air conditioning up.

RUMINATIONS: As it often was the case… I needed a break.

That summer basically had me going for three months of storyline material EVERY week with the exception of the 200th episode in order to get Linkara through all the story beats before he could get back home. I knew I was going to be doing a lot more intense, emotional story stuff for the next several weeks with lots of different characters and costume changes… so I needed one week to give myself a rest and catch up. The story really SHOULD have ended with the Clone Saga review later that month, but it just realistically wasn’t going to happen without a little rest and something a bit easier to look at. The nice thing about the Starstream review was that while it was a familiar story to me, it was also written very much with an older comic style, meaning lots of dialogue was goofy and mockable.

This also premiered “Thing Tucker” as Al, the title card artist, affectionately referred to him. The Thing’s original form, as presented, is goofy as all hell. In theory it’s frightening, but in execution… well, as you can see, it made for a more adorable tiny mascot than it did as a fully-fledged monster. The name derives from the fact that Al believed that if the tiny Thing was ever given a voice, it would sound like Chris Tucker. We’ve never tried to see if that’s the case by making Thing Tucker an actual character – just a fun little in-joke in all the Halloween title cards from them on out.