Lewis Lovhaug: Linkara, Dr. Linksano

Quotes 

• Linkara : In 1977, producer Robert Stigwood sought to adapt a stage play of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band into a film musical. Despite an incredible soundtrack of Beatles songs redone by the Bee Gees, Peter Frampton, and a host of other musical talent, it was a box office bomb, yet was still adapted into an issue of the comic series, "Marvel Super Special".

• Linkara : The book was a nightmare to work on, with no support from the studio and a script that changed every day. It ran late, not that it mattered anyway, because the movie tanked so hard that it was decided to not release it in America. Strangely, instead of making the next Super Special, an adaptation of the pilot episode of "Battlestar Galactica", into issue 7, the numbering persisted, and so in America, it jumps from issue 6 to issue 8. But yes, this book was in fact published in non-English-speaking countries.

• George Burns : Hello, I'm George Burns.

  [beat] 

  George Burns : Just roll with it. I'm here to serve as your narrator through the events of "Atop the Fourth Wall"'s 400th episode. You see, given the source material, Linkara decided he needed to do this as a rock opera, so he'll be singing all his lines. You'll need me to navigate you through the jokes properly.

  [Suddenly, however, he is interrupted as someone reaches into the frame and hands Burns a piece of paper, which he looks at briefly] 

  George Burns : It seems Linkara couldn't afford the budget to do the whole episode singing, so there will be musical moments throughout the review. I am, therefore, superfluous. But I still get paid, so either way, I win. Our story begins on a familiar futon, where everyone was wondering just how Linkara would open the episode...

  [Cut to Linkara on his futon] 

  Linkara : Four hundred episodes. Eight years. And with such a long time between the start of this show and this current point, it's easy to forget our roots. Most of the reviewers who started around the same time I did were inspired by the Angry Video Game Nerd. And so, in his honor, I must ask this: WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

• Linkara : So we've got an album of songs by the Beatles, turned into a musical, turned into a movie, turned into a friggin' comic book! You know, at least when they adapted "Street Fighter: The Movie" into a comic book, the transformation from source material to end product involved some similar elements. We've gone from an auditory medium to one completely bereft of audio! It's totally understandable why this thing ended up being a disaster on almost every level. How did nobody at Marvel realize what a mistake this would be? They were knee-deep in this before anyone stopped and said, "Oh, God, what are we even doing?" But what's more baffling is that despite all that work and money they already spent on it, they decided not to release it in the U.S.A.! I mean, you did the work already. Sure, it wasn't going to make that much money, but you could've serialized it as a backup story for other "Marvel Super Special" issues, or even released it as a double feature with something else. There were other solutions than "Hope nobody notices there is no issue 7!"

• Linkara : The great thing about doing this as the 400th episode is that it covers two topics we've talked about at length in this show, combined together to highlight the follies of each: the aforementioned singing and music part in a comic, plus a movie adaptation! But then we have a *whole new* problem on top of those. It's a movie where 90% of the dialogue isn't dialogue! It's song lyrics! Song lyrics that don't necessarily match up with what's happening in this story because they were written under entirely different circumstances and context. And one song, "Come Together" is, by John Lennon's own words, gobbledygook! As in, it's utter nonsense! And thus, I must ask that question that started this: WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

• Linkara : While this was still early in George Perez's career, he was the best pick for a project like this, since he's one of those artists who works best when he's dealing with a cast of hundreds, with great, dynamic action scenes, distinctive characters, and awesome facial expressions. He had already done "Marvel Super Special #4", which was a biography about the Beatles, where he emphasized design and imagery to try and talk about the Beatles' music, since of course they couldn't actually put any music in the thing. Doing the Beatles comic is what landed him the "Sgt. Pepper" adaptation, but according to an interview, the book was a disaster from start to finish. They got no assistance from the Robert Stigwood company, and the movie script was still being changed during filming. So elements from the comic were getting dropped or when new stuff was being added. He even said that he was happy it never got released in English. Fortunately for me, one of my wonderful fans took up the task and not only translated it, but altered the artwork of the scans to be in English, so the majority of you out there can follow what's happening. Thanks, Sheila!

• Linkara : "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band" was an album conceived up by Paul McCartney. The idea was that the album would be as if it had been made by a fictional band going by that name. This would allow the songs to be highly experimental with shifting tones, as well as new sound work and types of instrumentation utilized in it. It was definitely something the band needed, thanks to the exhaustive tour schedule they had been going through. Blasphemous as it is to say, though, I actually prefer the movie versions of these songs to the original Beatles ones. As said, they were experimental, and as a result, they sound experimental, like a rough draft or something. Some of them are still great, of course, but I just feel that for some, the Bee Gees perfected them. Then again, what the hell do I know? Four hundred episodes, and I'm still never gonna be as popular as the Bee Gees.

• Linkara : The cover is... bizarre. It's a photo cover, combining various bits of promotional artwork in one image, but the problem is that that means we have multiple copies of the titular band appearing on it, even in the same outfits. Hell, they actually copied and pasted the shot of them with their arms outstretched from the middle into the lower-right of the page. And here we see George Burns applauding the clones while he's sitting inside of a cheeseburger, like he was some bizarre fast food-themed Davros. And can I just ask? What the hell is going on with the shots of Barry Gibb? Up top, he's okay, but in the middle shots, he looks like his head has been squished a bit. How could they do that to him?

  [cut to the Bee Gees on an episode of "SNL"] 

  Barry Gibb : I'm Barry effing Gibb!

  Linkara : Welcome to Sgt. Pepper and his Lonely Hearts Clone Saga! Look, there's even an oversized George Burns terrorizing the people down there!