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(Sorry, no score since this is just your first look at the upcoming event. Watch for a score in next week’s review.)

No, you didn’t just fall through a pocket warp and ended up in a bizarre alternate reality. That IS a comic based on a CBS Daytime Soap Opera (actually it‘s an eight pager that appears in a batch of comics coming out right now (check www.marvel.com for info on what issues carry this little comic)), and it IS being published by the mutant friendly X-friends over at MARVEL Comics… what the!

As much as you and I know a majority of mainstream bread and butter franchise titles runs like soap operas (you know who you are out there titles that run forever and then some), that fact as a whole has never compelled comic companies to go running to Daytime Soap bigwigs and make a comic based on a soap opera as far as I know… until now… because apparently somebody has the bad case of the desperations or something… wonder who.

But now that, after years and years and years of running (and running out of steam), Guiding Light has been getting a massive overhaul all over the past year or so to attract fresh blood viewers in more ways than a politician has for gathering the ineptly named soft money into his political coffers (or is that coffins?), which now seems to include a comic version… believe it or not… of one of daytime’s longest running series. Who needs this boost? I don’t know but maybe it’s not as much Procter and Gamble’s big soap that needs the boost as it seems MARVEL does… are we coming near bankruptcy AGAIN? Where the hell did THIS plan come from?!?

Why think that? Well I don’t know about you, but soap opera fans have never struck me as being the comic book collecting types.  That and from the press release I am about to refer to below it looks like it’s not so much aimed towards Soap Opera fans as it is aimed to expose Soap Opera fans to the MARVEL Universe… desperate much, Quesada? Oh, and they also (if I remember right) got this deal possibly cooking with Stephen King which makes more sense than this whole Guiding Light thing (didn’t Stephen King get a comic book deal in the past?).

There is no other reason (other than this MARVEL deal) as to why the November 1st episode of Guiding Light (part of their ongoing individually minded and focused episodal plots project known as “Inside the Light” which happens every Wednesday) is going to premiere Springfield’s first (and most likely last) costumed crime fighting heroine… damn, though it’s just as well since how many times a week can our new heroine kick the crap out of Springfield’s only megalomaniac villain Alan Spaulding anyway! Poor guy… buy lots of pain killers now dude!

Anyway this gimmick, and believe you me it IS a gimmick, which will probably be a one day gimmick at that which won’t last long… like you thought it would last long… seems to me to be a desperate ploy for attention since nothing long lasting or memorable is sure to come of this experiment in daytime ratings exposure. After all some months ago NASCAR tried this trick by having a few of their drivers show up on, surprise surprise, Guiding Light, and nobody is waxing poetic about the monumental groundbreaking day NASCAR and Guiding Light joined forces… this won’t fare better.

This is most certainly not a gimmick on behalf of The Guiding Light, because if the whole gimmick of milking the fact that The Guiding Light hit its 15,000th episode recently, as well as the fact they‘ve been working this whole Reva battling with breast cancer thing hasn’t done enough for the ratings then this won’t help things along. I mean, damn, now we need to throw in the MARVEL Universe into the fray!? Right… bleah.

But a comic is a comic, and a chance to smack MARVEL is a chance to smack MARVEL (as for once there is no legitimate defense for a gimmicky premise like this) so let’s take our first pre-emptive look at this most likely (though for once I do wish I was wrong on this one) soon to be memorable for all the wrong reasons super mistake that will be November’s 1st episode of The MARVEL Light… I mean The Guiding Light slash MARVEL Crossover event.

MARVEL, it seems, is tickled pink chiffon by the thought of the crossover… why? I don’t know! Why MARVEL does half the things it does at times is something only the mainstream reviewers here can explain (heck, even way back when I was a die hard MARVEL reader I couldn‘t explain half of the things MARVEL did, and I still can‘t)… though I’d like to see our resident MARVEL reviewers chew on this crossover for awhile which supposed to feature the Avengers as well as some Avengers villains in Springfield (stomping grounds of the Guiding Light) to see if they can make any sense of this.

Anyway crossing over with the quote “ultra-popular Guiding Light”… oh, wait, I have to bite on this one, I mean really. I have some family members who watch this soap and, well, while I’m writing my reviews I am stuck having to listen to it while working (and right now as I submit this I am listening to The Guiding Light as I write—sorta, CBS keeps fading in and out for some reason) and… well… what’s so “ultra-popular” about this show again? I can’t say I understand the so-called popularity of the show. Really. And isn’t that guy who plays Jonathan the same guy who does the PC/MAC commercials (he plays as “MAC”)? What’s so good about this show?! Uh… sorry… anyway they’re happy that MARVEL gets to crossover with Guiding Light with both the November 1st episode and the 8 pager (multiple 8 pagers I suppose though it’s only a speculation on my part) which will have this Guiding Light character running about the MARVEL Universe. Lock up your men, ladies of MARVEL Universe, and throw away the key before the event… what? Too late? Uh… sorry?

The November 1st episode is the “Springboard” from “Springfield” which is both the debut and “origin” of Springfield’s first costumed crime-fighter… whether or not it’ll include the Avengers/Avengers villains as part of the crossover with the comic remains to be seen. Now… what to name this new heroine… mediocre lass… husband stealin’ lady… spiteful bitch… wait wait I got it… Mistress Incest (oh, wait, Tammy stopped sleeping with her cousin weeks ago)… something.

The only thing, and this is a warning to you Guiding Light, just don’t use this as an excuse to cure Reva of her breast cancer because that’d be such a copout and a spit in the face of real honest to goodness cancer survivors that it‘s not even funny! If that happens people should boycott the damn show because it shouldn’t cheapen the entire situation of an all too real problem facing women by traipsing down that road!

To quote the MARVEL character I like misquoting the most… “I say thee NAY!!”

What? I don’t have a legitimate reason to worry? Yes I do. That is a legitimate fear since Reva has (as a character) been the victim of the most hokey plots ever devised in soap operas short of the rotating marriage partner mate swapping plot (that’s your ill Ridge Forrester you evil (bleep)in’ bastard), which includes but not restricted to past life regression through a crappy painting, surprise psychic powers, her multiple vanishing acts to a faroff island nation that didn’t make sense, I have both a fake imposter son and an real real evil son plot problems, and that time she was declared dead and was cloned only to come back from the dead to confront her clone (yes, I just said she was once cloned).

Here’s an interesting fact which has NOTHING to do with the crossover but lots to do with Star Trek’s recent 40th Anniversary celebration beginnings… believe it or not. The whole cloning thing involved one Roger Thorpe (I think) who was played (if my family’s memory serves) by one Michael Zaslow (sorry if I misspelled the last name). Now ALLEGEDLY he was supposedly fired or forced off from the show (allegedly) while he was sick (soon after he passed away), and his character was written off at the end of the whole cloning fiasco… but that’s not the important part.

The important part of this little factoid is if you’re a Star Trek fan you remember Mr. Zaslow as the first “red shirt” to ever die in a Star Trek episode (though to be honest he wasn’t officially wearing a “red shirt”, but you might remember him from the first few minutes of the first aired on TV episode of Star Trek entitled “The Man Trap"). (He also appeared in the start of “I, Mudd” for the record).

But back to the episode. To entice MARVEL-ites to watch the episode the entire episode is supposed to be packed with “Easter Eggs” for sharp-eyed MARVEL fans… you know, as incentive to lure you into watching the episode. This, by the way, is going to be one of the major things (if not THE major thing about the episode) I’m going to be scoring this episode on next week… more on that later.

As for the comic side it will be written by dual soap and comic scribe Jim McCann, as the Avengers and their mortal foes descend on Springfield determined to find out if the town’s newest Super Hero is really a Hero… or a Villain… must be a slow week in the MARVEL Universe. What?! The whole concept of that Civil Warthing not keeping you all busy enough? Found time to wander around a soap opera city looking for a gimmick costumed character? Really!

Oh, to pass the time in this review (before you click it off from boredom) here’s an interesting fact from the press release… for your next MARVEL Trivial Pursuit game.
FACT - “As fans will recall, Storm’s wedding dress, featured in her wedding to T’Challa in Black Panther #18, was designed by Guiding Light costume designer Shawn Dudley.”
Really…? Wow.

As for the big boss of MARVEL? According to the press release Joe Quesada is supposed to be thrilled about this “opportunity for audience cross-pollination“… sounds nasty.

Mr. Joe Quesada (MARVEL) - “This is just one more way that we’re trying to reach out beyond our usual audience in an effort to expose those who don’t know anything about the greatness of comics and hopefully come back with a few new converts. And hopefully some of our fans will find themselves with a new habit as well--Guiding Light!”

Oh… really. Oh for crying out loud would somebody please lock Mr. Quesada up in MARVEL’s comic vaults for a day? He should find 100+ examples of past “cross-pollination” ideas between MARVEL and… whatever… that didn’t quite pan out.  Of course, if we’re talking “cross-pollination” (nasty dirty naughty bee on bee action… not) then we’re once again starting with my personal favorite of cross-pollination ideas that nobody probably remembers anymore, the whole X-Men/Star Trek (set in Classic Trek TV era) and X-Men/Star Trek-TNG (“sequel” to the movie ST-First Contact) thing… you know, back when MARVEL owned the rights to Star Trek comics and used it to make the “Crossover event of two generations” or something like that… funny, few people remember that crossover event now do they! How quickly people forget! (And don’t make me bring up that whole Punisher/Archie fiasco!!)

But let’s not forget what we’re going for… the whole “cross-pollination” thing, which leads us to the content of the episode and these so-called “Easter Eggs”.  No, MARVEL, having the set of Guiding Light riddled with MARVEL merchandise doesn’t count as Easter Eggs. Anyone with a big budget and a love of MARVEL could just as well go out and buy a ton of merchandise and riddle it across their show’s sets in “honor” of the mighty MARVEL… doesn’t make it special, or anything, just makes it… well… MARVEL-ized. We’re not talking something special here.

A step above this would be stuff you can’t get on your usual store shelves. Stuff from the MARVEL offices that are totally unique to the point of them being special… now that, while not being a leap above the standard fare, would be at least a tad more special. Sure, it’ll also be a tad harder to explain how such rare stuff appeared in a town like Springfield, but it’d still be special nevertheless.

After that it’s the Easter Egg of flesh and blood human connections to MARVEL… ok, now you may cross yourself, fling the holy water and say “Begone, evil spectre of Birds of Prey!"… that wasn’t a good show, wasn’t it. Ahem. Anyway starting on the Mortal Kombat tower of visual comic tie-in pain we have Creators (comic writers and artists) to show up. If a cameo was good enough for NASCAR’s best it’s good enough for MARVEL’s best. Next up on the scale is an appearance by Stan “The Man” Lee himself, which is always special. Alongside Stan is appearances by MARVEL characters, with standard people as the characters first and topped by the theatrical movie actors/actresses reprising their roles for the show (which is the hardest to pull off, and thus the hardest to believe will happen, but something that will yield the most points to the crossover for the amount of effort put in by both parties to make the experience as memorable as possible).

So to recap.
Bottom of the list of things that they could use as Easter Eggs in this show (and yet top of the list of what will probably be exploited in said episode) is emotionless lifeless MARVEL merchandise and stuff. It’s nice, sure, and will be nicer the rarer the piece is, but even the rarest of the rare item on the episode is still about as interesting as watching paint dry. Silent motionless lifeless things (no matter how rare) is still a silent motionless lifeless thing, and it shouldn’t get you all hyped as much as living things should… it seems to me that’s only natural.

Next on the list is MARVEL creators, and above that the Man himself Stan Lee.  After that we have MARVEL characters in the episode, be it fresh faced new talents temporarily bearing the mantle of MARVEL’s characters, or the more well known actors and actresses who made these characters live in the movies, which should be the top of the Easter Egg list of treats for viewers (yet sadly most likely dirt bottom of the actual list by MARVEL for the episode).

Yes, it’s one more week to go before the episode airs (November 1st), yet I am pretty certain that as surely as people forgot the time mutant hatin’ Captain James T. Kirk (if you remember the episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before” you can see why he’s got a phaser up his butt about mutants) crossed paths with the mighty mutants of MARVEL people are sure to forget the time Guiding Light merged with MARVEL… only I am darn sure they’ll forget far faster than Trekkers forgot the X-Men crossovers… like maybe by next year nobody will remember this event, if they haven’t forgotten by Christmas.

Yes, expect a review of the “groundbreaking” episode next week… complete with a partial list of Easter Eggs and a review of said eggs (and their worth).  That’s next week, same Reva time, same Reva channel… Reva kinda sounds like the name of a an alien from Crest of the Stars, Star Blazers or Robotech doesn’t it.

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