Cryptozoologist from Maine stars in comics, and former Power Rangers actress writes one
The Bangor Daily News wrote about a local cryptozoologist who had a character based on him featured in a Scooby Doo comic:
I also noticed this Variety interview with Amy Jo Johnston, once a cast member of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in the 1990s, who's now writing a comic adaptation of it (and there was at least one licensed series in the 90s too):
It should be noted the Power Rangers franchise was also tarnished after one of the actors, Ricardo Medina, was convicted of manslaughter, and that inevitably makes it difficult to watch the shows going forward when you know one of the cast was later charged with a very serious offense. As a result, it's hard to look forward to such nostalgia based on the sad developments that later occurred.
Loren Coleman, the cryptozoologist who in the next two years plans to open a permanent cryptozoology museum in Bangor, is no stranger to the media, having written more than 40 books and consulted for TV programs on Fox, NBC, the Travel Channel, the Discovery Channel and the History Channel.I wish I could say it's cool to have your likeness translated into illustrations (and some famous creators of the past like Stan Lee and Julius Schwartz did this too), but considering where a creation like Scooby Doo's gone these days with PC mentality, that's why I can't look upon this with the admiration I'd like to. How do we know it won't be tarnished by traces of wokeness? And even then, not many people may want to finance the products of a company that's sold out to the same.
But now he’s made his way into another form of media: comic books. A character based directly on Coleman is in the latest edition of “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?”, out this week in comic book shops and bookstores around the country.
“Scooby Doo” writer John Rozum, a longtime fan of Coleman’s, attended the grand opening of the second iteration of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland in 2009.
[...] It’s not actually the first time Coleman has been featured in a comic book. In the early 2000s, a character based on Coleman appeared in two issues of DC Vertigo’s “Swamp Thing” reboot. The character’s name was Coleman Wadsworth, a cryptozoologist trying to track down Swamp Thing in the Louisiana bayou.
I also noticed this Variety interview with Amy Jo Johnston, once a cast member of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in the 1990s, who's now writing a comic adaptation of it (and there was at least one licensed series in the 90s too):
It’s been 30 years since “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” premiered, but Amy Jo Johnson, who played the original Pink Ranger, isn’t finished with the franchise quite yet.She means the completed recordings, right? Well, that's odd, yet there's surely a lot of examples like that in Hollywood, just like there's comics creators who've worked for the Big Two who don't read anything other than their own takes on the creations. But, what if the "difference" turns out to be political? It's a shame that one has to take a cautious view of these new takes on old, but after PC was introduced to this franchise with the 2017 movie adaptation, who knows what we can expect?
After raising $250,000 in less than 24 hours via a Kickstarter campaign for the “Power Rangers: A 30th Anniversary Comic Book Celebration,” Johnson will write a brand new “Power Rangers” comic book series with publisher Boom Studios, Variety can exclusively announce.
Debuting the series next year, Johnson collaborated with her partner and director Matt Hotson to co-write it. She recalls coming up with the idea before the pandemic hit in 2020. “I was daydreaming about it and mentioned it to my boyfriend, Matt. He said, ‘Why don’t you try to write it as a comic book?'” Johnson tells Variety. “We had all the time on our hands, so we daydreamed up this entire comic book series knowing the 30th anniversary was coming.”
The new comic series is something that Johnson has been elated about for quite some time. “It has been so hard to sit on this and not talk about it for a year — three, really,” Johnson says. And she promises that the new series would be “different” from the original, “in the sense that it’s my version.”
For inspiration, she went back and watched the original episodes — for the first time. “I honestly had never watched [‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers’],” Johnson says.
It should be noted the Power Rangers franchise was also tarnished after one of the actors, Ricardo Medina, was convicted of manslaughter, and that inevitably makes it difficult to watch the shows going forward when you know one of the cast was later charged with a very serious offense. As a result, it's hard to look forward to such nostalgia based on the sad developments that later occurred.
Labels: animation, golden calf of LGBT, history, indie publishers, licensed products, museums, science, violence
