POPS GUSTAV

Contradicting Cagle

2012-01-15T18:48:00.005-05:00

Time was, pre-Internet, if you wanted to comment on an article in a publication (be it magazine, newspaper or comic book), you had to write or type it out on what we used to call “paper,” fold the letter, place it in and envelope, attach a stamp and toss that puppy in the mailbox, hoping that the editor would see fit to publish your thoughts either rebutting or endorsing the impetus. While modern technology has made the effort far more, well, effortless, the whole business of getting worked up over something you read is a timeless tradition, both honored and dismissed. This is, of course, something I have done a handful of times in my geeky life.

The brilliant comedian Paul F. Tompkins caps off his 2007 album, IMPERSONAL with a bit entitled, “Letters to Magazines.” In said piece, Tompkins points out the inherent silliness of penning glowing endorsements to periodicals, particularly the pop culture pabulum known as ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY.

Tompkins does, however, grant a slight pass to those with a bone to pick, adding, “I can maybe understand it if you’re mad at the magazine… there’s something in there that got a bee in your bonnet!... ‘Dear Magazine, I am most displeased!’ …I hope they print it, you have struck a blow for all of us!”

Such was the case with a letter I sent to EW in December in response to an “Editor’s Note” from the magazine’s managing editor, Jess Cagle. The painfully middlebrowed Cagle (another recent issue found him extolling the many virtues of Tom Cruise) puffs up a cover story interview with Steven Spielberg, projecting his anointment of Steven’s godhood onto his readers with the following incendiary (to me, anyway) declaration: “Most of you have stories of being… profoundly touched by the work of Steven Spielberg—arguably (well, who would argue?) the greatest filmmaker in history.”

Resisting the urge to rip out the page and wipe my ass with it (the toilet being, I would wager, the most popular place EW is read, worldwide), I instead went straight—well, some minutes later, anyway—to the computer and fired off the following response:

Dear Mr. Cagle,

Regarding your statement wondering who would argue that Steven Spielberg is the greatest filmmaker in history: I’ll take that dare. Spielberg’s short-sighted philosophy of a simplistic black-or-white morality works fine in the context of a cartoon like RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, but badly undermines the gray complexity of human behavior in more serious films like SCHINDLER’S LIST and AMISTAD. Furthermore, his cloying sentimentality (first displayed in ET, a film that has not aged well) can at times evoke the emotional depth of a greeting card.

Spielberg—perhaps even more than George Lucas, as Steven’s taken seriously—is the epitome of the shift from the explosive auteurism of 70s cinema to the glossy sheen of the modern blockbuster (even SAVING PRIVATE RYAN was only visually impressive). Forget Welles, Hitchcock and Hawks, Steven Spielberg isn’t even in the same league as David Fincher, Wes Anderson or (especially) Christopher Nolan, three directors capable of producing crowd pleasing cinema with a real emotional richness. Hell, THE DARK KNIGHT had more to say about human nature than THE COLOR PURPLE.

If you ask me (and you kinda did), Spielberg peaked with JAWS, his only true masterpiece.

Karl Heitmueller Jr.

I was not shocked that the letter wasn’t published (Come to think of it, they’ve never printed any of my letters), and it’s not even a very original thought. Hell, entire books have been published laying the blame for the state of modern mainstream cinema at the doorsteps of Lucas and Spielberg. But for America’s pre-eminent entertainment magazine (such as it is) to make such a definitive declaration just pissed me off. And, thanks to the democratizing power of the Interwebs, I have now gotten that off my chest. Take THAT, Jess Cagle!

And I hope Paul F. Tompkins approves.

COLLECTOR'S EDITION Excerpt #5: The Motion Picture Log

2011-10-20T12:55:00.001-04:00

It was the dawn of the Eighties, or the end of the Seventies, depending upon how you look at those things. In January of 1980, having just turned 15, I decided that I needed to start chronicling my motion picture attendance. I felt that my keen critical analysis demanded to be put to paper, that future generations would benefit from my unique perspective and razor sharp deconstruction of the art form of film. So I took a hardbound 6x8.5” sketchbook, grabbed some markers and started The Motion Picture Log.

From the start, I took the Log very seriously. As with commercial books, I left the first page blank, followed it with a hand-lettered title page and a disclaimer about accompanying photos being © the respective production companies and used without permission (the photos were mostly clipped from New York Times ads procured at the Paper Shack, but more on that elsewhere). The next page held an official introduction:

The following is a list of movies I have seen over a period of several years. The entries go as follows: Title; Date, Price of Admission; Theater seen in; Number of times I saw it; Who I saw it with; The cast; General notes and what I thought of the film; Rating; And my rating of the film...
* - P-U! Awful! Terrible!
** - Eh! Pretty bad, not awful.
*** - Average
**** - Good film. Worth money.
***** - Fantastic. Great film.
Note: I am not Gene Siskel. This is not meant as a guide for the general public. This is merely a reference book for me to remember things I’ve always found the need to with movies. So what are you reading this for???

Ah, the grammatically challenged self-absorption of the teenage geek. If memory serves, a prototype volume also listed what snacks were consumed, but I guess I was at least prescient enough to realize that I wouldn’t give a crap whether I had Sno-Caps or SweeTarts with my popcorn in years to come. After a year and a half, I realized that my incisive five-star system wasn’t wide ranging enough, so I switched over to the numerical grading, penning this addendum to the introduction:

--- New 1-10 rating: Read like the movie was a girl.

At least I didn’t switch over to a grading system that utilized the names of objects of lust at the time (“This movie was a total Jan Smithers!”).

The first movie entered in the first volume was STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE (which may have dictated the formal “motion picture log” tag instead of the more colloquial “movie diary” or “flick journal”).

For the record, I saw STAR TREK on January 5th, 1980 with my pals Bill and Jeff at the Wonderland Cinema in Lancaster PA and the ticket cost four bucks. I noted the cast (it wouldn’t be until 1984 that I’d start listing the director), film rating and gave it a short review. “Great job on all cast members - esp. DeForest and the Enterprise!” Awkward syntax aside, I feel proud that I was one of the first cineasts to note the burgeoning acting ability of the federation starship. Who can forget the NCC-1701’s heart wrenching turn as the blind gospel singer in THE COLOR PURPLE?

STAR TREK: TMP rated four and a half stars. I often waste time trying to determine the protocol of things that are entirely open. It’s MY frickin’ Motion Picture Log, I can rate movies on a sliding scale of bacon to rocking chairs if I want, but I seriously debated whether or not “halves are allowed.”

When I moved to the 1-10 grading system, I retroactively re-graded the films in the log, and the movie was given an 8. Which now seems a tad high. I think I’d bump that down to a 7 or perhaps a 6 and a half (if halves are allowed). And in fact, at numerous places throughout the Motion Picture Logs, initial ratings have been crossed out and replaced with one reflecting second thoughts.

My Pauline-Kaelocity continued. The Kristy MacNichol / Tatum O’Neal virginity flick, LITTLE DARLINGS evoked this passionate critique: “Eh! Some of this film was good, but other parts stank.” Upon viewing THE SHINING, I noted, “Although it isn’t an exact adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, it is fantastic.” Which is funny because I’d never read the book. That summer I saw THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK five times (despite having the climactic twist spoiled in advance) and I deemed the “sfx well up to par,” which was really pretty low in 1980.

In that first year, I also included “Interludes.” The first one came early in 1981, after two screenings of CADDYSHACK, where I wrote three and a half pages worth of memorable quotes from the comedy, including “Thank you very little,” “No one likes a tattletale, Danny…. Except of course, me,” “Hey baby, you wanna earn 14 bucks the hard way?,” “You want your fat?” and my personal favorite, “Don’t sell yourself short, judge… you’re a tremendous slouch.” What I couldn’t predict at the time was how superfluous this transcription was… to this day, myself and millions of other dorky men (and a few women) can practically recite the whole of CADDYSHACK verbatim.

The second “Interlude” tried to make up for the oversight of not starting the Motion Picture Log at a younger age. Omitting kiddie fare such as BEDKNOBS & BROOMSTICKS, I retroactively rated as many pre-Log movies I’d seen in a theater as I could remember, bestowing solid 10s on JAWS, NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ANIMAL HOUSE, SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE and ALIEN, while the lowest grades went to WHEN A STRANGER CALLS, SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND and THE SWARM.

It’s also worth noting that a large percentage of the movies in the first volume were seen at the Park City Cinemas, situated in the bottom floor of one of the secondary arms of the local mall where my friends and I hung out every Friday after school. The Park City Theater had two screens, one dedicated to discounted second-runs of mainstream fare, the other showcasing what the marquee out front referred to as “Two Adult Hits.” For those of you born after Jimmy Carter left office, lemme explain. In the days before home video and the internet, most people got their porno fix at actual movie theaters, frequented primarily by businessmen on lunch, unemployed guys with nowhere else to go and taxi drivers trying to impress Presidential campaign volunteers. It was always hilarious to watch the men buy their tickets and hide their faces as they rushed behind the black curtain into the no doubt stickier side of the cinema (they almost never paused for popcorn).

For those of us still in High School, the cool thing about the Park City Cinemas was that its mere presence and cheap ticket price ($1.50 in 1980) meant that we went to see almost anything that was playing. Sometimes it was something we’d already seen (like SUPERMAN II, which got bumped up to six times listed in the Log), but every so often we’d plunk down to view something that our little teenage sensibilities might not have otherwise: ORDINARY PEOPLE, FORT APACHE, THE BRONX and ABSENCE OF MALICE being three examples. Of course, I didn’t like any of those movies (saying about ORDINARY PEOPLE, “Okay – not great, in my opinion.”), but at least I saw them!

Some of my reviews took on a poetic simplicity. In regards to HALLOWEEN (in re-release), I decided “Best victim, but kinda dense: Jamie Lee. Jerk: Donald Pleasance.” I called BRUBAKER “realistic as hell,” and who should know the penal system better than a teenager from rural Pennsylvania? Well, at least I had the cinematic good sense to realize, even back then, that SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT 2 was “not nearly as good as the first one.”

My review of CHARIOTS OF FIRE, over three decades later, evokes a stinging regret, not because I didn’t appreciate the film, but because it reminds me of how rude my friends and I were at the showing. I wrote, “We were pretty much in stitches at some of the performances… there’s really not a lot to say about this; It was good and we were unusually obnoxious. So much so that at the end, a man in front of Chris turned around and stared at him and a woman commented ‘obnoxious kids’ when she left. Heh. Sorry, but oooo, we were soooo funny!!!”

No doubt. Yeesh.
________________________________________________________________________________________
from the forthcoming book, COLLECTOR'S EDITION: Confessions of a Pop Culture Obsessive-Compulsive
by and © Karl Heitmueller Jr.

Talk to the hand... lettering

2011-10-07T09:43:00.003-04:00

Of all my beefs with modern mainstream comics, computer coloring and lettering are near the top. I’m not enough of a purist / luddite that I think those two steps in the comic art process should still be done by hand; certainly computers have made those jobs not only easier, but given the artists a much broader palette in which to work. The problem comes from a frequent lack of judiciousness on the part of the colorist or letterer.

A lot of times the color artist gets so excited about the full spectrum of colors and effects that there’s no restraint, resulting in overdone, garish, distracting color, enhanced with gradients, flares and all kinds of effects. The resultant busyness is exacerbated by the lack of panel-separating gutters and margins in modern comic books, creating an overall cluttered look to the page.

Lettering, as I’ve stated before, just looks better to me when done by an artist with a pen. The organic expressiveness of hand lettering is far more appealing to these jaded fanboy eyes than the rigidity of fonts, even dynamic ones.

Still, I get why captions and dialogue balloons are done using typeface. I can even see the appeal of computer lettering for sound effects. But I have a hard time understanding when computer lettering is used to illustrate writing that is done by the hand of a character in the story.

I picked up a few of DC Comics’ new first issues from their rebooted universe, and the results have been a very mixed bag (see my 50 WORDS OR LESS… blog for reviews). BATGIRL #1 is one of the better entrants, and I’m happy to see Babs Gordon back on her own two feet. The story (by Gail Simone) is promising and Ardian Syaf and Vicente Cifuentes’ art is pretty damn great… except for a few details that stuck out like nipples on a batsuit.

The very first panel shows the villain (a guy named The Mirror who seems to be straight out of FINAL DESTINATION) holding a list of names of people who somehow escaped death. The list is handwritten, but instead of the names being drawn, they’re typeset (presumably by letterer Dave Sharpe) in a font that approximates loose handwriting. It’s jarringly unbelievable (and probably took more time to type and lay out than if it would’ve just been scrawled in ink).

But even less convincing is a scene later in the book wherein Barbara Gordon’s new roommate shows how much of a rebel she is via a hand-painted scrawl of “FIGHT THE POWER” on the living room wall. The words were supposed to have been painted with a wide paintbrush, but are obviously, painfully printed on the wall with a font. WHY? Why wasn’t this done with a brush pen on the original artwork, or, if it’s going to reappear in later issues, wasn’t it created on paper, scanned in and saved as a Photoshop file that can be re-placed in the future? It doesn’t look like it was painted on the wall; it looks like the roommate (as yet unnamed) bought some giant vinyl letters at Staples and placed them on the wall after carefully making chalklines so they’d be straight. Not very anarchic.

Conversely, on the very next page, we see a nameplate on a desk that, for some reason, IS hand-lettered, to ill effect! Here’s an item that SHOULD’VE been done in a font for bland uniformity. It’s an odd juxtaposition.

Technology is just a tool, as much as a pen, ink or a ruler. It’s a relatively new tool as far as the comic book medium goes, and as with any new tool (or toy), there’s as much an art in deciding when to use it as how. Don’t make me quote Jeff Goldblum in JURASSIC PARK. You know what I mean.

Prince Street News debuts in BACK ISSUE #51

2011-09-19T11:17:00.000-04:00

It's plug time, kids! The first installment of Prince Street News, my comic strip about comics has just hit the stands in the new issue of Michael Eury's BACK ISSUE MAGAZINE, #51, an all-interview issue featuring writer Steve Englehart, artist Walt Simonson in conversation with frequent collaborator Erik Larsen, a writers discussion between Doug Moench and Len Wein, letterers Janice Chiang and Todd Klein and the final interview with the late colorist Adrienne Roy.

My strip is the centerspread of the magazine, printed in full color. It's entitled, "Icon" and it's about the evolution of Superman's appearance in light of his new costume in the comics. I'll post the full strip on my art site, TOUGH GUY GOODS and SERVICES when BI #52 comes out, so if you want to see it now, head on to your local comics store, Barnes & Noble or order Back Issue from the TwoMorrows website.

The next episode of PSN will be in BACK ISSUE #54, the Liberated Ladies issue, shipping in January, 2012. It's a look at the thin line between acceptably sexy and exploitatively silly in the context of superheroine costumes.

COLLECTOR'S EDITION excerpt #4: Found a Job

2011-08-16T10:32:00.003-04:00

In the late 1960s, magazines such as EERIE, CREEPY and FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND featured advertisements for “200 feet 8mm HOME MOVIES” of old horror and science fiction films like I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN, THE BLOB and a particular Saturday afternoon monster movie favorite of mine, WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST. Also available was the clunky 1943 BATMAN movie serial, its twelve chapters edited into six 8mm reels. The full-page ad—replete with then-contemporary BIFF! BAM! POW! embellishments—erroneously touted the low budget, unintentionally campy series (unseen for decades) as “spine-tingling,” but neglected to mention that the edited reels did not contain any audio!

To facilitate viewing, you could also order, for a mere $9.98 (plus $3.00 shipping and handling) a portable 8mm movie projector, with accompanying screen. In those ancient pre-VHS days, this was the only way a collector could build a library of movies (unless, of course, he owned a motion picture studio).

When VCRs hit the market in the 1970s, compiling a home video collection was still pretty much inconceivable due to the high cost of commercial videotapes. Since the home video industry was initially focused on the rental market, the studios would charge an average of about $75-100 per cassette, knowing that Blockbuster Video was going to make many times that on rentals of each unit. Once VHS recorders became ubiquitous, the average list price lowered to make videotapes more affordable to the general public.

But even after VHS became the standard format, building a library of TV shows was next to impossible. The few shows that were available on videotape were either samplers of “best” episodes or merely the pilot and maybe one or two subsequent shows. Which meant that we pop-obsessives had to make them ourselves.

I began collecting movies and TV shows in the late 1970s, but in the beginning, it wasn’t on video.

When I was 13 years old, my father bought me a portable Panasonic tape recorder, the kind with the little built-in speaker and the row of control buttons on the front. My younger brother had received one for his birthday a month earlier and I was stealing it from him and using it so much that I had to be given my own (much to Ken’s disgust).

I recorded some songs off the radio, made some “comedy” tapes (look for the CD reissue of my Three Mile Island and Superman interviews sometime soon), but mostly, I taped stuff off of TV. At first I just recorded random things like theme songs, commercials that I liked, favorite Warner Bros. cartoons and stand-up performances from THE TONIGHT SHOW. But soon, I started recording full television shows.

I’d set the tape recorder on a stool right in front of the TV’s speaker and kneel before it—call if genuflection if you will—manning the Record/Pause buttons to edit out the commercials. Timing was crucial, I had to make sure I got the very beginning of the show and every bit of the broadcast right through the end theme. If anyone walked into the room while the tape was recording, I’d make the “shushing” motion with my finger at my lips. However, if it was a show that displayed the name of the episode at the beginning, I would speak the title aloud into the mic, in as dramatic a timbre as my changing voice could muster. Aside from that, the only acceptable background noise was laughter during comedies (my own laugh track enhancement, I guess). But any questions about what was going on (my Dad was always one of those “Who’s that? What did he do? Did that guy kill that other guy? Where is this?” viewers) were angrily ignored. Yep, I was one annoying little dork.

The first show I recorded regularly was CBS’ misfit radio station sitcom, WKRP IN CINCINNATI . 60-minute cassette tapes (bought at Lafayette Electronics in three packs with no clamshell cases) holding one episode per side began filling my desk drawers. Every episode was given a title—which I had to make up in those pre-IMDb days—and labeled with volume numbers. I started recording WKRP around the time that the first 1978-79 season went into reruns, so I didn’t have a complete chronological archive in order, but that didn’t matter. Hey, I’m anal-retentive, not insane .

With WKRP, there was added pressure to get the entirety of the end credits theme song, a rockin’ number with some really hard to decipher lyrics. While most of the time, the song would be interrupted by a voiceover of a CBS announcer telling us what hijinks were coming up next on ONE DAY AT A TIME, there were a few instances where the song played in full . I would listen to the tape over and over again, trying to figure out what the hell that guy was singing. It sounded like he was telling a bartender that he was going, going, going like mad, aw-haw.

While singing karaoke to the end theme wasn’t in the cards, I listened to those tapes frequently enough that, to this day, there are whole episodes of WKRP I could perform as a one-man show (such as the one where the staff crafts a bouncy jingle for the Ferryman Funeral Home and the amazingly prescient episode where the horny, leisure-suited salesman Herb Tarlek and his family enter reality TV hell by appearing on a show called “Real Families”).

The next show that I regularly recorded premiered in 1980 and took up twice as much tape as WKRP, being an hour-long drama about a former navy intelligence officer who lived for free on a wealthy novelist’s estate (to the perpetual annoyance of its major domo) while eking out a living as a private investigator, often employing the begrudging assistance of two friends with whom he fought in Viet Nam.

That’s right. I audiotaped MAGNUM, P.I. For years. And listened to it. A lot.

Okay, so maybe the Hawaii-based detective show wasn’t exactly Mamet, but I found the banter of Magnum, Higgins, Rick and T.C. (and sometimes Robin Masters, voiced by Orson Welles, which I knew was a big deal even at the age of 15) highly entertaining, and I still hold the opinion that the first two seasons of that show were some really well-written little dramas (it got spotty after that). Besides, the show’s score (including both themes, the initial jazzy one by Ian Freebairn-Smith that was replaced with the more iconic Mike Post anthem in the tenth episode) was sometimes as good as a James Bond soundtrack as far as I was concerned.

Again, there are some bits of dialogue that remain forever lodged in my brain, popping out of my cake hole in Pavlovian response to the proper stimulus. Any time someone orders a boilermaker at the bar where I tend, I pull out a line from the first season episode “All Roads Lead to Floyd” explaining that “a beer and a shot—that’s one drink.”

I audiotaped all Steve Martin’s NBC comedy specials of the late 1970s, and made compilations of skits from SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, SCTV (for my money, the greatest ensemble sketch comedy show of all time), and LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN. The nice thing about recording those shows was that if a sketch, monologue or interview wasn’t worth keeping, I would stop recording, rewind to the end of the last good bit, then start again with the next segment. Depending upon when I decided to kill the bit could cause some stress, however, as I had to make sure to get to just the right spot before the next recording could start. There was a lot of frantic FF and REW button pushing.

As far as movies went, the only time I audiotaped a film off of televison was when ABC aired an extended cut of SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE in 1982. The full 182 minutes took up three cassettes, but it was worth it. It would be almost two decades before some of the added scenes would make it onto home video, and to this day, a scene where Otis “feeds the babies” (meaning some offscreen lions or tigers) has somehow remained absent from any deluxe reissue.

Random bits recorded off of television fell under a catch-all umbrella series called FOUND A JOB, named after a song about a television-writing couple from Talking Heads’ second album, MORE SONGS ABOUT BUILDINGS AND FOOD. FOUND A JOB was also the destination for the rare times when punk or new wave groups that I loved would appear on TV.

When DEVO’s single, “Whip It” became an unexpected hit, the band made an incongruous appearance on THE MERV GRIFFIN SHOW. When Merv—manifesting his usual awkwardness when interviewing anyone outside of the mainstream—remarked to Mark Mothersbaugh, “And it must be a THRILL to have a big commercial hit!,” the bemused flower-pot-helmeted lead singer countered dryly, “Oh, it is a thrill, Merv.” Merv cracked up, but I really don’t think he got the joke. It didn’t matter; I did.
_________________________________________________________________________________________

from the forthcoming book, COLLECTOR'S EDITION: Confessions of a Pop Culture Obsessive-Compulsive
by and © Karl Heitmueller Jr.

Frattoo-Pop!

2011-08-04T15:02:00.002-04:00

As much as I despise jam bands (and oh, do I despise jam bands), I think my most visceral rock hatred is reserved for the much-and-justly maligned genre known as Emo. The merger of introspective lyrics with loud and fast guitars, whiny vocals and hardcore imagery that broke big in the early aughts with horrible bands like My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy sounds more painful to my ears than a thousand covers of “Box of Rain.”

Now, I grant you, this music is not for me. I am, as they say, Old. And if you’re an angsty teenager, then I shall let the baby have his or her bottle. Copy those New Found Glory lyrics onto your Facebook page and swoon over those Dashboard Confessional heartthrobs to your wee heart’s content. Someday you will grow out of this phase and realize this music is poop. Hopefully, anyway.

But what galls me the most about Emo is the self-denial, the fact that barely anyone who plays or listens to it acknowledges that they are, in fact, Emo. For some reason, these deluded souls seem to think they’re part of some scene that has something to do with what we used to call punk rock. And aside from fuzzy, fast guitars and a visual look that’s only punk as Hot Topic defines it, I don’t see it. The melodies under the fuzz are usually as light and poppy as a Bieber song (they even used to have the same hair… and even Justin fucking Bieber finally ditched that stupid ‘do!).

There’s a kind of frat boy mentality to many (not all, but many) of the practitioners and fans of this music that pisses me off in the same way I can’t stand it when jocks sing along to “London Calling” on the jukebox (even if they only know the line “I live by the river!”). I hear them using terms like “aggro” and “chillin’” and talking more—way more—about their tattoos than politics, or even music. Image is paramount with these bands, moreso than any musical genre this side of hip hop.

I recently bore witness to the lead singer of an Emo band actually boasting about his punk rock cred onstage, decrying singers who use “fake rock star voices” right before launching into another song that sounded like it was straight out of the American Emo Idol Songbook in that patented, clichéd whining squeal that they all use. When he later said something to crowd about not being afraid to sing along because it was “a punk rock show,” I could only mutter to myself, “No. No, it’s not.”

I understand how these bands want to shy away from a term that’s so derided. After all, Mudhoney and Tad hated the term, “Grunge.” It’s a blanket with Small Pox. So I propose a new tag to replace the word “Emo,” one that I think sums up the music far better anyway: FRATTOO-POP! Frat boys with tattoos who play pop music! And it rolls of the tongue like a brand new lip piercing!

Just please, for the love of ThereIsNoGod…. Please stop calling yourself Punk. And your earlobe plug looks stupid.

More Red Shorts Mourning

2011-07-29T14:01:00.003-04:00

I popped into Target today, and—as always—hit the action figure aisles to see if there was anything to add to the collection. A bunch of new lines were on display, including the Young Justice figures (none for me), the Batman Legacy line (nope), the Funko Pop Vinyl figures (hmmm… have Superman already, but Batman looks pretty nice), and, in the kiddie aisle, Fisher-Price’s new DC Super Friends HeroWorld figures (an awkward name, that).

I flipped through the figures on the peg, past Batman, the Joker, Mr. Freeze until I saw it, hiding in the back, almost embarrassed. The Superman figure… sans red shorts.

Now, the funny thing about this figure is how transitional it is. Obviously, when this line was first designed, this was going to be the classic Superman model with the old costume. But at some point, DC decided it was time to start introducing the redesigned character to the toy shelves, starting with this little guy.

This figure is half-classic / half-new, with the old boot scallop, yellow belt and regular shirt-sleeves, but the new high collar and all-blue pants (the extraneous texture is irrelevant). But if you look closely at the sculpt, you can see that there are lines where the red shorts and low collar were originally designed to be painted. Even the artwork on the side of the box features Superman in his traditional togs.

I stood in the toy aisle and wept openly, again mourning the pointless demise of an iconic design. After frightening off a small child, I pulled myself together, put the figure in my basket and walked to the cat food aisle.

What, I’m not gonna buy it? Yeah, right.

Smurf the Smurfs! (10 classic cartoons worthy of big-screen adaptation)

2011-07-29T10:52:00.005-04:00

Following in the footsteps of fellow Saturday morning stalwarts Scooby Doo, Speed Racer, Yogi Bear, Inspector Gadget and many more, the Smurfs at long last make their big screen debut (only a decade or two after most would really care), begging the question: What other classic cartoons could possibly be left for a live action / CGI movie adaptation? Well, lots, actually, but we’re only listing the top ten (along with some cast and director suggestions).

SPACE GHOST
Before he was a snarky talk show host, Hanna-Barbera’s “Batman in space” fought evil aliens with his teenage sidekicks Jan and Jace and their monkey, Blip (not to be confused with the Wonder Twins’ space monkey, Gleek). A tongue-in-cheek live action version in the vein of THE INCREDIBLES could appeal to both kids and nerdy adults (and, if he wouldn’t mind mining the same territory, could be a perfect fit for director Brad Bird). Bruce Campbell, you’re not too old to don the diaphanous cape and save the galaxy from Brak and Zorak!

GARGOYLES
A group of living gargoyles in ancient Scotland are cursed to remain stone until their castle rises above the clouds. When a billionaire relocates the structure to Manhattan centuries later, the beings return to life at night, where they battle the evil denizens of the city. Now that Disney owns Marvel, this well-regarded ‘90s gothic superhero cartoon from the Mouse House seems like a no-brainer. Finally, a superhero movie that Tim Burton wouldn’t screw up!

THE SIMPSONS
The time is not ripe… not yet (as the disappointing SIMPSONS MOVIE showed). But someday, perhaps a decade after the show finally ends its historic run on TV (assuming that day ever comes), nostalgia is going to demand that Homer, Marge, Maggie, Bart, Lisa and the denizens of Springfield be resurrected, and since replicating an icon is an impossible task, why not try a live version? The big question is, where are they going to find so many actors with jaundice?

BETTY BOOP
There are two ways to go here: A period piece set in the flirtatious flapper’s milieu of the 1930s could deal with the struggling singer’s career aspirations in the midst of the depression (with Dita von Teese in the title role?). OR, bring Betty into the present, as a wacky artist who, along with her eccentric friends (Grampy!), fights a group of corporate real estate developers with their eyes on the loft building they all share (or some David-vs-Goliath tale). Zooey Deschanel, perhaps? Or (dare I even suggest) Katy Perry?

DEXTER’S LABORATORY
Genndy Tartakovsky’s stylistically groundbreaking 1996 series introduced boy genius Dexter, whose seemingly endless hidden laboratory remained a secret from his clueless parents, but sadly, not his pesky older sister, DeeDee. A live adaptation would be tricky, but could be done, hopefully capturing the multi-leveled humor and sharp satiric quality. Sounds like a job for Spike Jonze!

THE JETSONS
A live version of Hanna-Barbera’s modern space-age family has been bandied about for years, but as with so many cartoon and comic book movies, it took time for filmmaking technology to reach the point where it could do the concept justice. The opportunity is there to make the movie a smart commentary on our ever-increasing reliance on technology and gadgetry, which would require a smart, seasoned filmmaker like John Landis or Harold Ramis… with Stephen Colbert as the beleaguered employee of Spacely’s Sprockets, George Jetson and Christina Hendricks as Jane, his wife?

DARIA
Here’s a thought: Instead of repositioning MTV’s cynical cartoon heroine of the late 90’s as a live action teenager today, why not imagine Daria Morgendorffer as a woman on the cusp of 40, wallowing in the kind of tough self-analysis that middle age brings upon the lifelong nonconformists (Hello, Janeane Garofalo)? If Judd Apatow makes the movie, she’ll endure painful laser tattoo removal treatments, throw away her record collection, marry an accountant, have lots of babies and live happily ever after! Aw, nice!

SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS
It seems as if next year’s Spider-Man movie reboot is aimed more at the TWILIGHT set than the older fanboys who ate up Sam Raimi’s unabashedly retro superhero flicks. But if that film flops, why not go even younger with a live action adaptation of this ‘80s kiddie cartoon, featuring Spidey (Daniel Radcliffe needs a new franchise) teaming with the flaming hot Firestar (comeback for Lindsay Lohan, perhaps?) and the wisecracking Iceman (Frankie Muniz, your trainer awaits). They could even use that stupid poodle or whatever Aunt May’s annoying dog was in that show. Nah, maybe not.

WACKY RACES
H-B’s swingin’ sixties series pitted a diverse group of racers in eleven crazy, souped up cars against each other in road races across the country every week. Would the evil Dick Dastardly in his Mean Machine win by any means necessary? Or would the trophy go to Professor Pat Pending in his Convert-a-Car? Lazy Luke and Blubber Bear in the Arkansas Chug-a-Lug? Or what about the goth Gruesome Twosome in their Creepy Coupe? Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, here’s your chance to make up for LAND OF THE LOST!

NARUTO
I guess. I can’t stand anime, but I know lots of you folks love it, so I just picked a popular anime series at random. Hey, it’s got teenage ninjas and it’s fast paced and there’s colors and stuff! Win-win, right? What’s that? THE LAST AIRBENDER was based on an anime series? Oysh… next.

ELMER FUDD
Of all the classic Looney Tunes / Merrie Melodies characters, the short-tempered schlub with the speech impediment is the most viable for a live action translation. And while it may seem like a fool’s errand, think about the possibilities of a black comedy set in a world that’s recognizable, but not quite real; Alexander Payne or Wes Anderson could meld the anarchic, surrealistic sensibilities of the classic Warner Bros. cartoons with a postmodern pathos to possibly create the first cartoon adaptation to screen at Sundance. Paul Giamatti, get to work on that rhotacism!

Okay, that was eleven, but the Naruto entry doesn’t count. Oh, and I know Miss Lion was a Lhasa Apso. I have the Internet, too, you know. The point is, as with comic books, the cartoon well is nowhere near empty, at least as far as Hollywood producers are concerned. Whether or not Internet reports of HONG KONG PHOOEY: THE MOVIE are true or not is beside the point; The fact is, it’s possible.
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POSTED on STARPULSE.COM

Summer Superhero Movie Recap: What Worked, What Didn't, What Comes Next

2011-07-25T11:12:00.005-04:00

Now that Captain America has slung his mighty shield across the cineplexes, 2011’s summer superhero quadrumvirate—Thor, X-Men: First Class, Green Lantern and Cap—is ripe for a recap (SPOILERS WITHIN, PROCEED WITH CAUTION): What worked, what didn’t, and most importantly, what comes next? (Oh, and even though they bested all four DC and Marvel characters at the box office, I'm not counting the Transformers or Harry Potter, okay?).

THOR
Released: May 6. Worldwide box office to date: ~$444 million. Rotten Tomatoes rating: 6.7/10
Marvel Comics’ God of Thunder kicked off the superhero summer in a film directed by the Shakespeare-bred Kenneth Branagh, successfully introducing another lesser-known Avenger (ala “Iron Man”) to the general public.

WHAT WORKED: The scenes in Asgard are beautifully majestic, and the casting is pretty spot-on (with a few exceptions). Chris Hemsworth is suitably godlike, and the scenes of him learning his way in Midgard (uh, Earth) are pretty funny. Tom Hiddleston embodies Loki’s jealous conniving with abandon, never veering into caricature. Idris Elba as Heimdall, the Asgardian gatekeeper practically steals the show. And for the fanboys, Jeremy Renner’s cameo as Clint “Hawkeye” Barton was a nice “Avengers” tease.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK: Well… a lot, actually. Natalie Portman adds to her already substantial geek-film résumé while lacking any true gravitas as astrophysicist Jane Foster (Why exactly does Thor fall so hard for her? I can’t tell). Kat Dennings’ wisecracking Darcy is a grating rom-com stereotype who adds nothing to the story. But Thor’s biggest problem is one of scope: The Destroyer (a simple, mindless automaton) as a threat just doesn’t feel big enough, especially as the scene is confined to the tiny New Mexico town (it’s kind of like if the Phantom Zone villains had been defeated in East Houston, Idaho in “Superman II”). And alas, verily do I wish the Mighty Thor wouldst have spake in the regal Shakespearean dialect of the comics.

WHAT COMES NEXT: “The Avengers,” of course, and the post-credits scene teases that Loki is going to attempt to gain control of the Tesseract / Cosmic Cube, a Marvel Comics artifact that grants its possessor unlimited power (see the last film on this recap). After that, Thor is scheduled to return in another solo adventure, only this time without Kenneth Branagh at the helm.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS
Released: June 3. Worldwide box office to date: ~$345 million. Rotten Tomatoes rating: 7.4/10
Marvel Studios’ mutant prequel had maybe the lowest profile of the four films, making its wide critical success a pleasant surprise for the fanboys (it was the film I was anticipating the least, but enjoyed the most).

WHAT WORKED: The 1962 setting allows director Matthew Vaughn to mine some new territory for the genre, and tying the public emergence of mutants to the Cuban Missile Crisis is a hoot, even if I wish they’d have milked the MAD MEN-milieu a bit more. Leads James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender both shine as the pre-Professor X and Magneto, and Kevin Bacon does some superb scene-chewing as the all-powerful Sebastian Shaw. The action is fantastic and that little cameo by a certain established X-Man is great fun (regardless of the profanity that offended so many delicate parents).

WHAT DIDN’T WORK: Sadly some of the supporting cast is either forgettable (Riptide, Housefly—er, Angel Salvadore and a sadly underused Banshee) or just plain bad (January Jones… Emma Frost is supposed to be diamond, not wooden). But the biggest beef with First Class is that it confusingly contradicts some of the continuity established by previous X-Men movies (such as when Charles ended up in a wheelchair and the presence of an adult Emma Frost, who appears as a teen in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”).

WHAT COMES NEXT: Reportedly, First Class is supposed to be the first in a prequel trilogy, but with so many of the most popular X-Men used in the modern-day first three movies, they’re going to have to settle for some more mutant B-listers. My guess is that if Hugh Jackman weren’t still strapping on the adamantium claws for another Wolverine film, First Class would’ve been a simple reboot, allowing more of the comics’ original X-Men besides Beast (Cyclops, Angel, Iceman and Jean Grey, aka Marvel Girl) to be the founding members of the team.

GREEN LANTERN
Released: June 17. Worldwide box office to date: ~$146 million. Rotten Tomatoes rating: 4.6/10
The only DC Comics entrant in the superhero sweepstakes this year was a critical clunker and quickly fizzled at the box office, putting a serious damper on Warner Bros.’ attempt to build a successful cinematic DC Universe beyond Batman.

WHAT WORKED: The Green Lantern Corps has a vast mythology in the comics, a unique hybrid of science fiction and superheroics, which is actually captured pretty well in the film—as far as it goes. The planet Oa, the blue-skinned Guardians and the many otherworldly ring-bearers all look great. The special effects team did a really good job of bringing the different manifestations of the rings’ power to life. And Mark Strong makes an absolutely perfect Sinestro.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK: Almost everything else. Casting Ryan Reynolds as a smart-alecky Hal Jordan (the opposite of his personality in the comics) may have worked if they didn’t tack on his pointless crisis of self-doubt. Blake Lively is yet ANOTHER too-young, too-thin, too-inconsequential, forgettable female lead. Peter Sarsgaard is a great actor, but Hector Hammond is a dull, pointless villain. The film should’ve been a cosmic adventure taking advantage of its sci-fi pedigree, with numerous Green Lanterns battling Parallax as he cuts a destructive swath through space, heading towards Earth where the newest member of the Corps proves his mettle alongside his ring-wielding brethren. Ultimately, “Green Lantern” feels like a compromised product, a movie that could’ve been great until executives started worrying it wasn’t going to appeal to a wide enough audience and demanded more romance! More angst! More jokes! More toes on the costume! Yeesh.

WHAT COMES NEXT: The big difference between DC and Marvel is that Marvel has its own studio, and thus more autonomy in how its characters are depicted onscreen. DC Entertainment merely serves in an advisory capacity to the filmmakers who adapt their properties, and it’s rare that they end up in the hands of a visionary like Christopher Nolan. If a Green Lantern sequel is, uh, green-lanterned by Warner Bros., here’s hoping they have a little more faith in the source.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER
Released: July 22. Worldwide box office opening weekend: ~$66 Million. Rotten Tomatoes rating: 6.8/10
The final piece in the Avengers puzzle starts in WWII and ends in Times Square today, setting the stage for next year’s superhero epic.

WHAT WORKED: Sadly, not a whole heck of a lot. The evolution of Cap from USO monkey to super soldier is a nice embellishment of the origin. Tommy Lee Jones and Stanley Tucci are great, as always, and Hayley Atwell sure is pretty. But other than that, the best that can be said of “Captain America” is that it’s a serviceable final lead-in to “The Avengers.”

WHAT DIDN’T WORK: There’s a lot of wasted time and potential in this two hours (I’m guessing deleted scenes on the DVD will help). Like Ryan Reynolds in GL, Chris Evans was okay, but lacks the kind of emotional heft necessary to portray the “man out of time” he’ll be in future films. The Howling Commandos (as they’re called in the comics) are barely introduced, indicative of the lack of character development in this movie. Hugo Weaving’s Tesseract-wielding Red Skull is more cartoony than the version in the Avengers animated series. And, as predicted, the downplaying of the Nazi threat in favor of the fictional Hydra neuters any historical weight to the drama (a real missed opportunity). Ultimately, the entire film feels like an extended trailer for “The Avengers.”

WHAT COMES NEXT: Did we mention “the Avengers?” After that, of course, plans are for the star-spangled superhero to tackle modern day tyranny in his own sequel.

Four superhero movies in three months is certainly testing the tolerance for an oft-maligned genre, but those suffering from DC/Marvel fatigue will only have the rest of the year to recover. 2012 is going to be the biggest superhero movie year ever. Aside from Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, the Black Widow, Hawkeye and the Hulk teaming up in Joss Whedon’s “The Avengers,” there’s “The Amazing Spider-Man” reboot and the conclusion of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, “The Dark Knight Rises.” (Zack Snyder's "The Man of Steel" was just pushed from December 2012 to June 2013). And that’s not mentioning The Lone Ranger, Judge Dredd, Men in Black 3, John Carter (Warlord of Mars), Underworld: New Dawn…

In short, there’s still a lot of evil to defeat. The problem with superhero movies isn’t really that there are too many of them (after all, it’s just a genre… few people decry romantic comedies or horror films or police dramas based merely on their ubiquity). The problem is that the studios are often afraid to take creative chances, resulting in movies that feel like rote retreads (again, “The Dark Knight” being an enormous exception to the rule). Let’s keep our fingers crossed that when the Avengers assemble and Superman re-returns, there’ll be some true creative super-vision behind the films.
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ORIGINALLY POSTED on STARPULSE.COM

Bronze Beauties #32: CAPTAIN AMERICA

2011-07-19T22:31:00.001-04:00

For comics fans, Captain America has been a sometimes anachronistic symbol of a simpler time, when good and evil were more black and white, when patriotism didn’t carry a sheen of arrogant jingoism. In the 1970s, Steve Rogers, like many others in the “Me Decade” spent a lot of time trying to “find himself,” but at least Steve had a good reason to feel lost. After all, he had only been unfrozen from that ice for a short time. If you have no idea what I mean, you will after CAPTAIN AMERICA hits the theaters this weekend.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #130 (Oct. 1970) by Marie Severin & Joe Sinnott
I love this cover because it features three of the lamest super villalins in comics history: Whirlwind (who spins around really fast), the Porcupine (who has a suit that shoots spikes) and my favorite, Batroc the Leaper (who can jump really well)! Still, the clean lines of the Marie Severin cover are a joy to behold.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #140 (Aug. 1971) by John Romita
In the 1970s, Cap’s sidekick was the Falcon, who was, believe it or not, the first major African-American superhero, introduced in #117 in 1969. I know, right? Comics were not the most forward-thinking medium prior to the Bronze era.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #162 (June 1973) by Jim Starlin and Joe Sinnott
Cap covers often had a poster-like quality to them, which was generally scorned by Marvel’s action-oriented editors. I still remember being blown away by seeing this one on the newsstand when I was in the third grade. I particularly like the drooling dude at the bottom.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #166 (Oct. 1973) by Rich Buckler & Frank Giacoia
Hands down, my favorite Cap cover of all time, and it’s purely because of nostalgia. If that cover were drawn today, those would totally be zombies instead of mummies.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #255 (March 1981) by Frank Miller & Joe RubensteinIn the early ‘80s, writer Roger Stern and artist John Byrne had a memorable run on CAP, during which he actually ran for President. This 40th anniversary issue retold Cap’s origin and featured this cool retro cover by Frank Miller (way before he became a batshit parody of himself).

Rocking the Retro RAZR

2011-07-18T13:05:00.001-04:00

The first time it happened, I was shocked. It was April, 2009, I was sitting at the Sinatra Bar at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas with Lysa, Jeff and Alison and a few other people after Mark and Jessica’s wedding. I was loving being enveloped by Sinatra memorabilia and music, but curiously noted hearing some songs repeated. I asked the maître d’ why the selection was so sparse given Frank’s vast recording legacy. He told me that Steve Wynn made three compilation CDs of his favorite Frank songs and they remain in constant rotation.

I couldn’t believe how short-sighted and controlling this was (the idea of the staff getting sick of Sinatra songs made ME sick), so I pulled out my cell phone to text a few fellow Frankophilic friends and share the story. As I tapped my thumb on my Morotola RAZR, correcting T9’s misinterpretation of “Sinatra” as “Phobura,” the sister of the bride let out a gasp, and laughingly exclaimed, “OHMYGOD, look at your OLD-FASHIONED PHONE!!”

My first reaction was to defensively point out that there was no crank, rotary dial or cord attached to the device, and, unlike the iPhone-toters at the bar, I actually had service. I chalked up my phone-derider’s scorn to the fact that she lived in Los Angeles, where anyone who doesn’t have the very latest technology is beyond contempt as a human being (and in all honesty, it would take another year or so before anyone back home said anything about my “old phone”).

But the past few months, it seems as if every time I use my cell—that exact same RAZR—in public, someone has to make some kind of comment. “Look at you, rocking the RAZR!” or “Oh, I used to have one of those!,” they’ll remark with a nostalgic wistfulness, as if I had just pulled a red, white and blue plastic Fisher-Price Chatter Phone pull-toy with the rolling eyes out of my pocket.

See, here’s the thing: While I acknowledge that my phone is now “old” (in the current technological context), I am in no rush whatsoever to get rid of it and replace it with a smart phone, for a number of reasons.

First of all, I have enough distractions in my life, I don’t need to be carting Google and Facebook and video around with me 24/7. The constant pull of media in my home is enough, thanks, I don’t WANT to take it with me everywhere I go. No, really. I probably only bring my iPod with me on treks into the outer world about 30% of the time. I’m aware of my media addiction, and relish the fact that when I run errands or go to work or do social things, I’m forced to step away from the screens and the speakers for a few hours.

The second reason is that my old RAZR still works! Why should I get rid of something that still functions perfectly well (and only costs me about $60 a month)? I have nothing but disdain for planned premature obsolescence in the 21st century. Technology has allowed corporations to finally perfect the kind of marketing begun by car companies in the 1950s, where the consumer is made to feel inferior if they hang onto their out-of-style OLD thing (durability notwithstanding) because this year’s model is so much nicer… and it has tailfins!

Granted, the difference between a RAZR and an iPhone is more than tailfins, but the concept is the same. And we’re much bigger suckers than our grandparents ever were. Just imagine going back in time and telling them that they have to buy a new TV and telephone every couple of years or the neighbors will think they’re Communists! Your ears would get a boxing (still not sure what that means, tho’).

I’m no luddite, but I’ve never been a first adapter. I just don’t get people who are in such a rush to pay tons of money to in essence be a beta tester for new technology. Who gives a shit if you’re the first one on your block with the shiny new toy when we all know that in a year or so, version two will have most of the inevitable kinks worked out in addition to new, added features, all for LESS money? Apple may as well strike a deal with Louis Vuitton or Yves Saint Laurent to plaster their ugly logos all over the first iteration of every new technology. It’s the same kind of conspicuous consumption.

I completely skipped the DiscMan, holding onto my old cassette Walkman right up to the moment I bought a third generation iPod. It was the only time I ever felt shamed into upgrading technology. It was somewhere near the end of 2003, I was sitting on the subway, listening to some compilation cassette, the bulky, yellow Walkman safely hidden in my jacket pocket when the tape snapped to an end. As I pulled the machine out of my pocket, I glanced around the train car and saw someone avert their eyes, a suppressed smile pursing their lips. I felt a rush of mortification, and shoved the lemony antique into my backpack. It was the last time I ever took the poor baby out into the world.

I also resisted getting a cell phone at all for as long as I possibly could, buying my first flip phone in 2004. I held on to that one and its subsequent replacement until they died. I only replaced my first RAZR because I dropped in the toilet, learning the hard lesson: If you’re going to text while peeing, hold the phone off to the side. It’s mind boggling to think that three phones (not counting the pee cell) in eight years is, by contemporary standards, a ridiculously low number.

I picture a giant warehouse somewhere filled with mountains of old, discarded, fully functional cell phones, waiting for some kind of resurrection. I actually think there could be a niche market for “old-fashioned cell phones” in the retro world of rockabilly. For the uninitiated, this particular rock and roll subculture is so ridiculously image-conscious that they make Lady Gaga look like Louis C.K. What’s that, Slim? You’re going to wear your cuffed jeans with your motorcycle boots and your black T-shirt tonight? With the mechanic’s jacket or the leather one? Ah, great choice! Don’t forget the pomade and Marlboros!

These people base every single aspect of their lives—clothes, hairstyles, tattoos, cars, beer, favorite movies, authors, artists and of course music—on the rather narrow parameters set by the Rockabilly Handbook. As such, they generally eschew modern conveniences in favor of the vintage (manual transmissions and Zippo lighters are mandatory).

But cell phones have been around long enough that the early small flip phones, with their red LED or black and gray LCD screens and inability to text or snap a picture now seem hopelessly retro. All it would take would be for some smart entrepreneur to find a stash of discarded Motorola 180s, paint some red Hot Rod flame details on them, and BAM! Holly von Hootenanny can call her boyfriend Stu DaBaker if they get separated at the road rally! They just can’t text each other. But that’s not cool, anyway.

There are only a few smart phone features that I truly covet. One is GPS. Knowing that you can’t ever got lost would be a really nice feeling, whether on foot or in a car (and I know that the iPhone is behind the Droid in this area). It would also be nice to always have a relatively good camera with me, just in case the aliens happen to land while I’m heading to the Taco Truck or William Shatner ever stops into the bar for a drink while I’m working.

Another feature I wouldn’t mind having is (he admitted, somewhat sheepishly) Twitter. I signed up for Twitter when it first started in 2007, then quickly lost interest partly because it was 90% worthless dross, but primarily because I realized it was a medium for mobile devices, where brief, reactive thoughts can be posted in real time. As I didn’t have a smart phone, it felt kinda silly for me to Tweet (ghad, I hate that verb) from my home computer, so I deleted my account.

I rejoined Twitter this year on the advice of friends in publishing who informed me that prospective authors simply aren’t taken seriously unless they have a solid presence on the major social media sites (ahem. @karlheitmueller, thanks). And so, I’m back to Tweeting (seriously, can we call it Twatting or something a bit less precious?) via my computers, which means that if I think of something worth posting while out and about, I have to jot it on a piece of paper and stick in my pocket, hoping that by the time I get home it won’t have lost any of its crisp, timely perspicacity / sarcasm / indignation / etc (and yes, I still think it’s 90% worthless).

Other than those things, I think I can live without everything else a smart phone has to offer, as I have for, well, all of my life. I have an iPod if I wanna take my music with me, I always carry a pen and a little notebook for moments of inspiration or information, I have my brain, which I prefer to use over Google when trying to remember the name of the girl who played that part in that movie with that guy, you know the one, what was it?

I realize I’m sounding very grumpy Grampa here, but any time I’m with a group of people and a question of historical or cultural fact pops up, it drives me batty that the reflex has become to just grab the iPhone and look it up. If you know that the information is buried somewhere in your brain, doesn’t it make sense to work that muscle and wrest it from the cranial wrinkles? (Of course, if the info was never there in the first place, then Google away, my friend.)

But I’m not kidding myself. I know the day will eventually come—probably sometime within the next year—when I end up carrying a damn mini-computer in my pocket like the rest of the neck-craned masses. And, as with every other modern convenience that I was slow to adopt, I’m sure once I have an iPhone or Droid or whatever, I’ll soon wonder how I ever got along without it. I’ll load it up with apps and I’ll play Scramble on the train or check Facebook in a bar or use the Star Trek phaser app to pretend to stun some self-entitled double-wide Bugaboo pusher on the street.

I just hope that at least part of me will hate myself for doing it.

COLLECTOR'S EDITION excerpt #3: Buttons and Blows

2011-06-28T11:06:00.005-04:00

My KISS fanaticism continued for a few years, but in early 1979, during my freshman year of high school, I was introduced to the music that would totally change my life. Shortly after Christmas break, one morning on the bus, I was talking with my friend Kevin about how I really liked some of this “new wave” stuff I was hearing on the radio, like Blondie’s “One Way or Another” and the Cars’ “Just What I Needed.” Kev’ told me that he had a few records I had to hear, and one day after school, I went over to his house. Kevin pulled an LP with a green, black and fluorescent orange cover, removed the vinyl from the sleeve and put it on his turntable, skipping to side two, track two, his favorite song on the album.

Drums, bass and guitars exploded in my ears, following a singer passionately exclaiming in a distinct, guttural British accent, “They offered me the office, offered me the shaaaaaa-op! They said I’d better take anything they gaaaaaaa-ot! Do you wanna make tea at the BBC, Do you wanna be, do you really wanna be a caaaaaaahp?”

“Listen to how angry he sounds!” Kevin instructed. And I listened. Oh, how I listened.

The song was “Career Opportunities” off of the debut album by the Clash, and thus I was ushered into the previously-dismissed world of punk rock. Granted, by 1979, the movement was almost over, and, being a 14 year-old white boy in suburban Pennsylvania, it’s not like I could relate to much of the political content, but the energy, the anger, the intensity was all ridiculously inspiring. Kevin loaned me that record as well as the equally incendiary NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS, HERE’S THE SEX PISTOLS to take home and get to know. Finally I had found music besides superhero themes that spoke to me. A few weeks later, I gave all of my KISS albums to my younger brother (a gesture I would later come to regret).

In short time, I was an avid fan of this music and began acquiring records by Elvis Costello, DEVO, Joe Jackson, the B-52’s, the Pretenders, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Specials, 999, the Romantics, XTC, the Psychedelic Furs and other bands that fell under this wide, but unifying anti-mainstream umbrella. For the first time, I felt a genuine, deep connection to rock and roll, and it started to change the way I looked at the world, as well as myself.

In December of 1979, the Clash released their third album, LONDON CALLING, a two record set that remains, to my mind, the single (or, technically, double) greatest rock album ever recorded (I usually don’t like absolutes, but this one I hold). I bought LONDON CALLING the week it came out—January of 1980 in the states—at the record department at Sears at the Park City Mall, and vividly remember showing it off to the friends I ran into at the Salad Haus.

On Thursday, March 6, 1980, I attended my very first rock concert: The Clash on the LONDON CALLING tour at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby PA just outside of Philadelphia. The ticket cost $7.50, and I went with my friends Kevin, Bill, Al and Nathan, as well as Kevin’s dad. We bought our T-shirts (including bootleg shirts outside the theater) and I got a copy of THE ARMAGIDEON TIMES "program" from the tour and we settled into our seats. Kevin's dad was cool enough to get a seat a few rows away from us so as not to cramp our punk rock style.

There were three openers: The B-Girls, a somewhat middling new wave combo and two reggae acts, Mikey Dread and Lee Dorsey. To say that the reggae acts were cooly-greeted is an understatement, but it points to how diverse and forward-thinking the band was. Finally, the rightly-tagged “Only Band That Matters” took the stage and tore into “Clash City Rockers,” beginning an hour and a half of incendiary punk magnificence.

At the time, of course, I had no idea what a big deal it was that I was seeing this band, at this time, on this tour. In fact, despite being near the back on the orchestra level, it was still so loud that I went to the lobby to sit out the encore, something that makes me wanna go back in time and kick my 15 year old butt back into the theater. But I couldn’t have predicted that over thirty years and literally thousands of rock shows later, as far as my concert history is concerned, nothing would ever measure up to number one .

Despite my worship of the Clash and the Pistols, I made a concerted effort to not refer to myself as a “punk rocker” mostly because I didn’t feel I deserved the honor… I wasn’t quite that downtrodden. Unless you count the non-stop abuse my friends and I received from our classmates for liking this music, an animus that even extended to the Police and U2, two bands that were in 1981 considered too freaky by the jocks and the preppies that were our arch-enemies.

In the Twenty-Aughts where, to quote Jane’s Addiction, nothing’s shocking, it’s hilarious to remember how the mere addition of a Dead Kennedys button to your sweater could garner you an afternoon in detention, as my friend Mike learned. Granted, it was a DK’s “Too Drunk to Fuck” button, but buttons and T-shirts didn’t have to bear profanity to garner us “punkers” (a much despised term) ridicule and abuse.

The day after seeing DEVO in Philadelphia on their NEW TRADITIONALISTS tour in 1981, my friend Bill and I wore our concert tees to school. But, as with most DEVO merch, these weren’t simple white shirts emblazoned with a logo; They were the same shirts worn by the band on the cover of that album, blue shirts with a black V-neck collar and black short sleeves. The left sleeve said “New Traditionalists” in red arcing letters over the face of an astronaut, and the DEVO logo was on the left breast in red and black circles. Yeah, they were kinda goofy. That was the point. But Bill and I received non-stop abuse the entire day (especially if we happened to be together at any point).

I also got loads of shit for the Go-Go’s baseball shirt I bought at their concert on the University of Pennsylvania campus a few weeks later, due to its fuchsia sleeves. My homemade B-52’s shirt, emblazoned with the line “I’m not no limburger!” drew much ridicule, and not due to the intentionally bad grammar. And the one day I wore a skinny new wave tie to my no-tie-required public school… you’d have thought I was walking around in a ballerina tutu. But to me, their rejection was a badge of honor.

The thing that made our social ostracism relatively easy to bear was that my friends and I (well, most of us, anyway) weren’t passive about this punk rock thing. We worked at it. It wasn’t easy to find this stuff back in those days before technology made everything instantly available. We’d buy Trouser Press and expensive imported copies of British music mags New Music Express and Melody Maker to read about new bands. We’d listen to the two local college radio stations, Millersville State College’s WIXQ and Franklin & Marshall’s WFNM and hope that the DJ would say the name of the band of that cool song we just heard so we could go to the mall or downtown to Stan’s Record Bar to try to find it that weekend (a number of my friends also made frequent drives to Philadelphia or Baltimore to go record shopping, but I only joined them once or twice).

One popular means of acquiring music that was not an option for the new wave fan was any of the record and tape clubs that advertised in seemingly every magazine in the 1970s and ‘80s. While the prospect of 13 LPs for 1¢ might have been enticing to the financially challenged teen, the selections left much to be desired if you were of the punk persuasion. An ad for the Columbia House Record& Tape Club in the August 1979 issue of PLAYBOY lists 259 selections (available on LP, 8-track, cassette or reel-to-reel). Of those 259, the only ones I would’ve considered buying at the time were The Cars’ selt-titled debut, Blondie’s PARALLEL LINES and PLASTIC LETTERS and Elvis Costello’s ARMED FORCES. That’s four out of 259, and by that point I think I owned all of those already .

Amazing as it is consider in 2011, I also discovered cool bands by watching SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. The Monday after the B-52’s performed “Rock Lobster” and “Dance This Mess Around” on SNL in 1980, my friends and I convened before homeroom to discuss how mind-blowingly awesome they were as most of our classmates derided the Athens band as “weird,” “stupid” and that most suburban of pejoratives, “gay.”

The ridicule extended beyond my classmates. One particularly notorious event occurred at the one and only “Bring Your Own Records Dance” held at my high school. Barely anyone who attended the thing dragged their heavy vinyl along, but my friends and I did, and so GJ the DJ (no, really) was obligated to play some Buzzcocks and Rezillos, to which we merrily pogoed on the squeaky gym floor.

Until one of the teacher chaperones, Mr. Meany , came up to our little group of new wavers and said that no more of our records were going to be played. Stunned, we asked why, as we were practically the only people who were actually dancing at the “dance.”

“You guys aren’t dancing. You’re doing THIS,” Mr. Meany said as he, I shit you not, bolted forwards and slammed his shoulder into me, knocking me backwards. My friends stood stunned as I regained my footing only to have him slam into me again, repeating his judgment (I wonder if he’s a fan of SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE these days).

Somehow, probably because I was a giant wuss, I was able to maintain my cool and pointed out that we weren’t even gently slam dancing, that our skanking and jumping may have been unusual in the eyes of those who only did the grinding, hand-on-butt slow dancing, but was totally harmless. Even at the time, I realized that Mr. Meany was trying to get me to physically retaliate so he’d have a legitimate reason to eject us from the dance, but, despite a steady diet of superhero vengeance coursing through my psyche, I refused.

Instead, we just took our records and sat on the bleachers, feeling righteous indignation over the breadth of our ostracism from the mainstream. Fuck this school, basement parties were way better anyway.

And we did have basement parties. I’d drag my stereo and records to the basement and set them up on the washer and dryer, move the piles of boxes out of the way and make room for my pals and I to pogo around the metal poles to Black Flag and Dirty Looks and GenX. As I was a non-drinker in high school (although I never applied the term “straightedge” to myself), my friends would do their illegal imbibing outside throughout the evening.

Towards the end of my senior year in high school I started a relationship with one of the girls in our little punk clique (It was her Elvis Costello t-shirt that first caught my eye, and for that reason I shall refer to her as Alison). Our punk rock devotion was the main thing that Alison and I had in common, much to her parents’ chagrin. They far preferred her prior boyfriend, a conservative, slightly older guy who worked in a bank and hated the music Alison listened to. Of course, her parents didn’t know that he was also a giant cokehead, but I have a feeling that even if they had, they still would’ve liked him more than this rebel-rousing “punker.”

Due to this disdain, Alison’s parents refused to allow me to take her to our senior prom, which was actually okay with me, as the prospect of renting a tux to dance to Journey songs didn’t exactly thrill me, nor most of my other pals. And so we planned our own unofficial prom. We got dressed up in our new wave finery and had a fancy-schmancy dinner at a downtown Italian restaurant before adjourning to my parents’ basement for some formal slam dancing. Man, how I wish I had photos of that event, especially after it was crashed by a bunch of people who ditched the official prom to come join us in the basement.

See, a funny thing happened during the last semester of my senior year. All of a sudden, this new wave / punk stuff started to become a little more popular, thanks in part to this new cable channel called “MTV,” which stood for “Music Television” and showed these things called “music videos.” And since new wave bands were practically the only artists who had videos ready to go when the network premiered, suddenly acts like the Buggles, Wall of Voodoo, DEVO and Siouxsie and the Banshees were getting wider exposure than ever they had ever dreamed possible.

And suddenly, the popular kids at Hempfield were hosting “Punk Parties,” where they’d, at least for one night, stick safety pins in their polo shirts and spike their hair and play music that just a year earlier was deigned unfit for human consumption. Of course, they didn’t go out and BUY any new wave records, they just asked to borrow them from one of my punker peers. I never, ever agreed to loan any of my precious vinyl to any of these posers, and not just because they STILL wouldn’t have invited me to the party.

Finally, in June of 1982, I graduated from high school, and while our official graduating class song was Bette Midler’s “The Rose,” for me it was the Clash’s “Clampdown,” with its empowering message, “Let fury have the hour / anger can be power / do you know that you can use it?”
________________________________________________________________________________________
from the forthcoming book, COLLECTOR'S EDITION: Confessions of a Pop Culture Obsessive-Compulsive
by and © Karl Heitmueller Jr.

Bronze Beauties #31: GREEN LANTERN

2011-06-14T15:58:00.002-04:00

It’s an undisputed fact that DC Comics’ trinity of most iconic superheroes is Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. But who’s #4 in the DC Universe? Until now, it’s been kind of a toss-up between the Flash and Green Lantern, but after this weekend, the scales may tip in GL’s balance with the release of Martin Campbell’s big screen adaptation of the story of Hal Jordan.

I have no idea what’s going to happen with the GREEN LANTERN movie. Like most fanboys, I wasn’t initially crazy about the casting of Ryan Reynolds (Hal Jordan is not exactly a smart-ass) and the toe-baring CG costume. But with each subsequent trailer, it looks like they nailed the vast scope of this part of the DCU and have done a remarkable job of priming the general public as to the concept of the Green Lantern Corps. Whether they have interest in this unique combination of superheroics and sci-fi remains to be seen. The main drag for the fanboys is that we know in advance how the movie’s going to end (ditto CAPTAIN AMERICA).

In 1959, editor Julius Schwartz re-envisioned the mystical ring-bearing golden age Green Lantern as a science fiction hero, our space sector’s chosen recruit for an intergalactic peacekeeping force, the Green Lantern Corps. As written by John Broome and drawn by Gil Kane, Green Lantern was one of the key figures of the 1960s Silver Age superhero renaissance.

But GL was perhaps even more important to the emergence of the socially relevant Bronze Era. In early 1970, Neal Adams’ striking cover to GREEN LANTERN #76 (now cover-titled GREEN LANTERN / GREEN ARROW) indicated that the times were (yes, I’m going to say it) a-changing. DC Comics was being infused with—some veterans said taken over by—fresh, idealistic young writers like Denny O’Neil, who took over the title with this issue. Using the comic as a platform to tackle social and political issues, O’Neil paired GL (depicted as a conservative symbol of the establishment) with Green Arrow, who had recently been revamped from a mere Batman clone into a radical, van dyke-sporting leftist. Along with Black Canary and a member of the Guardians of the Universe (who oversee the GL Corps from the planet Oa), the “hard-traveling heroes” crossed America in a beat-up pickup truck, tackling such Earthbound issues as environmental abuse, racism, poverty, sexism and, most startlingly, drug abuse.

GREEN LANTERN / GREEN ARROW was one of the first superhero comics to push the boundaries of the formerly staid genre, ushering in the Bronze Age of Comics. In GL #87, John Stewart was designated as the new sub for Hal in case of emergency, becoming one of the first African-American superheroes. Neal Adams and Dick Giordano’s realism-based illustrations further signaled a change in the medium. And while the series only lasted until #89, its impact has never gone away.

Green Lantern bounced around the DCU for the next handful of years, starring in backup stories in THE FLASH, appearing in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and other random titles, until his own comic was resurrected in 1976. This time, the series went back to its more science fiction ‘60s roots, and over the next few decades, readers met more and more members of the universe-spanning Corps.

To sum up what came in the next few decades would not only take another couple of thousand words, but the taste in my mouth would go from sweet to sour as Hal Jordan was one of the main casualties of the so-called “Dark Age” of comics in the 1990s. Suffice it to say that Parallax (the evil entity of the new movie) was involved and Hal Jordan died and there were some replacement Green Lanterns with really awful costumes and eventually DC Comics realized that they needed to bring back Hal and everything’s kinda back to normal now (the number of times DC’s gone back to the core characters after failed “reboots” makes you wonder if they’re ever going to learn their lesson…. Based on recent news, apparently not).

Despite GL #75 being released in 1970, it’s still very much a Silver Age book, and I include it here primarily to showcase the stark change from that issue to the groundbreaking #76 (which, coincidentally, hit the stands the very month I started buying comic books).

From top to bottom:
GREEN LANTERN #75 (March 1970) by Gil Kane
GREEN LANTERN #76 (April 1970) by Neal Adams
Incidentally, a copy of this comic book recently sold at auction for $50,000, making it the highest price paid for a Bronze era comic book.
GREEN LANTERN #86 (November 1971) by Neal Adams
GREEN LANTERN #88 (March 1972) by Neal Adams & Dick Giordano
(This issue reprinted old stories)
GREEN LANTERN #123 (Dec. 1979) by Gil Kane
Years after he'd left GL, Gil Kane returned to work sporadically on the comic, starting with this beautiful cover harking back to the character's Silver Age iconography

All artwork ©DC Comics, inc.

On the Importance of the Red Shorts (a fanboy rant against the new Superman costume)

2011-06-09T17:21:00.009-04:00

by George Perez, SUPERMAN #1

For the past few weeks, I’ve been living in denial. I knew it was coming, but I held onto that one tiny sliver of hope that the teaser I saw was an aberration, perhaps a spare, second design to be used only on special occasions. But no.

This is Superman’s new costume. And if you thought the geeks got bent out of shape about Wonder Woman’s do-over last year, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

For those of you not versed in such matters, DC Comics is in the process of revealing an upcoming reboot of their universe. In a few months, all of the major DC titles will restart with new #1 issues, in a few cases replacing books that have been running for three quarters of a century, with numberings in super-vision-eyeshot of a thousand. Additionally, most of the characters’ costumes have been either completely redesigned or given some simple “modern” tweaks, in order to make them, according to artist and co-publisher Jim Lee, “more identifiable and accessible to comics fans new and old.”

Excuse me? “More identifiable?” How is this MORE identifiable than one of the most iconic designs in not just comics, but all of pop culture history?

This is just the latest manifestation of the kind of short sighted flash(point) over substance that’s defined mainstream comic books for the past decade now. Overarching, complicated “crossover events” dominate DC and Marvel comics, making it nigh-impossible for any casual reader to just pick up a comic book and have any clue what’s happening. To complicate matters further, both publishers have numerous different versions of some of their most popular characters running concurrently. It’s a fucking mess.

art by George Perez

So, yes, a periodic house cleaning is not a bad idea. DC’s 1985 CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS streamlined their “multiverse” into one cohesive universe and timeline, but of course, within a decade or so, things became muddled again and thus began a series of tweaks and redefinitions that’s become practically ongoing.

I don’t buy any comic books on a regular basis any more, but I still love the art form and particularly the superhero genre (it’s just that these days, I mostly get my fix from OLD comics and other media adaptations). When I do buy modern comics, it’s usually in the collected trade paperback format, which gather extended storylines under one cover. But even then, the end result is often still so reliant on previous and/or related stories and convoluted continuity that it’s impermeable to the lay reader.

I recently bought Geoff Johns’ FLASH: REBIRTH, thinking that it was the story of the resurrection of the Silver/Bronze age Flash, Barry Allen, who gave his life to save the universe in the aforementioned CRISIS. I liked what Johns did with a similar storyline in which Barry’s contemporary, Hal Jordan came back to life and retook the mantle of Green Lantern.

But as I started reading the book, I realized that Barry was ALREADY BACK, that it had happened in another comic, and that REBIRTH was about tying up all the loose ends that go along with undoing an already Byzantine mythology. By the end of the second chapter, I was so lost that I just tossed the damn thing on my elimination pile (the fact that Ethan Van Sciver’s stiff, clunky art hurt my eyes only added to my enmity).

So the concept of a universe-wide restart isn't the problem itself. And in fact, I WOULD pick up some regular comics (especially with DC’s new lower price point) if I could follow what was going on. But what’s been revealed thus far just feels like they’re going about it in a wrong-headed way.

One of the most successful tweaks of a character was Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s BATMAN: YEAR ONE storyline in 1987. Unlike Miller’s DARK KNIGHT RETURNS series of the year prior, YEAR ONE was part of the “official” continuity, a slight reworking of the story of the caped crusader’s nascent career and burgeoning relationship with a Lieutenant Jim Gordon. It was a fantastic story, beautifully rendered, and left an impact on the character felt to this day.

And here’s the thing: BATMAN: YEAR ONE wasn’t a mini-series, nor was it the beginning of a renumbering of the character’s titular comic book. The four-part story simply ran in BATMAN #404 through 407. Nobody was confused, and certainly nobody ignored it. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the story was the thing, not a gimmicky renumbering or costume modification.

Tim Burton's Superman

Although Batman’s costume has been tweaked quite a bit over the years. But Batman’s visual look, while certainly distinctive, is more open to interpretation than Superman’s (or Wonder Woman’s, for that matter). The unique elements of the Superman outfit are SO iconic that all previous efforts to significantly alter it have fallen flat (moreso in the movies than the comics).

Superman’s costume HAS gone through slight modifications since he was introduced in 1938. The boots, cape, belt and of course, S-shield evolved over the years, settling into the iconic standard by the mid-40s. The specific details have stood the test of time: The M-Shaped double scallop at the top of the boots, the circular belt buckle, the pentagon with the five floating yellow shapes creating the S shape, the tucked-in cape. These may seem trivial, but they’re all intrinsic parts of the whole that, when abandoned, just don’t look right.

So let’s check out this new design. There’s a high collar, that turns the cape's ends into epaulets somehow attached to the neck. We’ve got a ridiculous red (utility?) belt with a superfluous pentagon buckle. Those boots, I have no idea what the hell they are. The armor-resembling calves and knees. The pointless detail piping on the shirt and legs. The bottom arc of the S is no longer rounded. And, perhaps most predictably, the red shorts are no more.

At this point, I’m not sure if this is a Jim Lee redesign or if it was done by George Peréz (who drew the image, from the forthcoming SUPERMAN #1). Certainly, it has all the earmarks of an overdone, awkward Pérez design (he may be one of the most popular comic book artists of all time, but his costume designs are the worst… check out Jericho and Dick Grayson’s first Nightwing outfit, to name just two). But the S and the high collar scream Lee.

art by Jim Lee. Meh.

I have to admit, I am not a fan of Jim Lee’s art. Lee broke out in the 1990s, one of the superstars of the “Dark Age” of comics, when over-rendered superheroes with Schwarzenegger physiques and ridiculous weaponry gritted their teeth and killed anything in their way. This was a period when one of the hottest artists in comics was Rob Liefeld, a cartoonist with perhaps the worst grasp of anatomy in the history of the medium. While Lee wasn’t as bad as Liefeld, his style of rendering always left me cold, and I’ve noted in recent years that while he’s somewhat adept at drawing muscular, spandex-clad men with facial scruff in their 30s, mechanical devices and vehicles, other than that, he’s lost. His women look like men with grapefruits taped on their chests, his older characters are botoxed to the point of no return and anyone without a hero’s physique somehow still manages to look ripped (his version of the Joker is more comical than Cesar Romero’s).

art by Gary Frank. Yes!

Jim Lee became the co-publisher of DC in 2010 alongside Dan DiDio (with Geoff Johns anointed the Chief Creative Officer). All three of these guys are bona fide fanboys, to be sure (and, FLASH: REBIRTH aside, Johns has written some great comics… his SUPERMAN: SECRET ORIGIN was maybe the best version of that oft-told tale I’ve ever read). But they also all seem to lack a faith in the characters whose destiny they currently control.

There’s a reason Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman have lasted uninterrupted for nigh 75 years. They are innately perfect pop culture creations, so distinct at the core that they can be adapted to fit the changing technology and times. But, and here’s the rub, they have all become so much bigger than their comic book incarnations that while DC may own the copyright (for now anyway, in the case of Superman), they don’t own the characters. They belong to the public and the public doesn’t like it when icons are changed, especially if there wasn’t anything wrong with them in the first place (insert overused, but apt New Coke metaphor here).

As with Electric-Blue Superman and Mullet Superman and SUPERMAN RETURNS Superman, this redesign will hopefully (and probably) turn out to be a temporary aberration (regardless of what costume Henry Cavill’s Kal-El wears in THE MAN OF STEEL).

Superman’s design appeals to the id, the dramatic combination of simple shapes and primary colors strikes as much a chord within us as his strength of character. It’s not only pointless, it’s flat out demeaning to think that he needs an “update” or has to get rid of his red shorts because they’re “silly” or not cool. Superman is beyond all that. He’s Superman.

art by Drew Struzan. Awesome.

COLLECTOR'S EDITION excerpt #2: The Superman Peace Poster and the Revenge of the Baby Brother

2011-06-07T11:01:00.003-04:00

Through the 1970s, I faithfully read SUPERMAN and ACTION COMICS, as well as most issues of numerous other comics that featured the Last Son of Krypton, including SUPERMAN’S GIRL FRIEND, LOIS LANE (the separated words connoting an entirely different meaning than the compounded “girlfriend”), SUPERMAN’S PAL, JIMMY OLSEN, SUPERGIRL, THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, WORLD’S FINEST, and more.

Images of my favorite superhero practically wallpapered my bedroom. An artist friend of my aunt’s made me a black light painting of Superman in flight over a meticulously-delineated bed of dozens of interlocked S-shields. I had a Thought Factory poster of a beautiful painting by movie poster artist Drew Struzan depicting a regal Man of Steel posing with arms akimbo, cape draped over his left shoulder, his right foot propped up on a rather random-seeming panel enlargement from a Superman comic book.

And then there was the Superman peace poster. In 1971, a full-page ad in DC Comics touted two different sized posters of Superman (in new drawings by Swan and Anderson) flashing a peace sign. The smaller one—awkwardly named "Super Right on Target"—was an upshot of the hero in front of a circular stars and stripes motif, a stern expression on his face, his left hand raised in the co-opted V for Victory sign.

Since my parents wouldn’t spring for the full $3.50 + S&H for both, I chose the second poster, a two-by-six foot whopper depicting the Action Ace in full flight, arms extended above his broadly-smiling head, his right hand flashing the two-fingered peace sign. When it arrived in the mail, I pulled it out of its protective cardboard tube, and thought my eyes would pop out of their sockets. While even at a young age, I thought the legs seemed a bit truncated, this almost life-size image may have been the most magnificent thing I’d ever seen. It was proudly taped to my bedroom door with masking tape donuts all over the back (I can hear some of you gasping even as I type those words), a proud sentry to my own Fortress of Solitude for about four years. Until that day. That awful, awful day.

My brother Ken, my only sibling, is six and a half years my junior, which is a pretty big age difference. It wasn’t until I was in college and he was in junior high school that we finally started to relate to each other as members of the same generation. Prior to that epiphany, we were practically arch-enemies. Not that I didn’t love him, but I loved torturing him more. I would hide in his bedroom closet at night while he was fixing his bedtime glass of chocolate milk, then wait for him to nestle into bed before tearing open the door and howling like a homicidal maniac, sending Kenny into a panic. I would sit on his chest and pin his arms with my knees while tickling him until he practically peed his pants (his main defensive move was to try to spit on me). I would turn off all the lights while we were in the attic and pretend there was someone else up there with us.

Yep, I was a dick.

On one particular sunny afternoon when I was about 12 (placing Ken somewhere around six), I was performing some rite of torture on my little bro’ which drove him into a particularly hyperactive fury, chasing me around the house as I laughed, secure in the knowledge that he’d never be able to catch his much longer-legged, faster elder brother. Eventually tiring of the game, I ran into my bedroom and slammed the door, locking it to keep the ravenous Tasmanian Devil safely on the other side.

I remember almost immediately thinking, “Oh, no….” as I realized my tragic mistake. One second later, I heard a long, loud RRRIP coming from the other side of the door. I turned the handle, the simple button lock popping as I pulled the door towards me just in time to see the bottom half of the Superman peace poster fluttering to the floor.

Kenny just stood there in shock, unmoving, knowing that he’d struck the deeper blow, that the dynamic of our battle had instantly changed, but also fully aware that I was going to be PISSED. And so, my temples pulsing with rage, I did the only thing I could think to do: I punched my baby brother in the stomach as hard as I possibly could, so hard that it lifted him off the ground before he fell to the tiled linoleum floor, gasping for breath.

Now it was my turn to be scared. I backed into the bedroom and shut the door, still upset about the poster, but hoping that I hadn’t just killed my only brother.

Ken recovered. As for the poster, rather than simply taping it back together, my mother cut the bisected Superman figure from the background and mounted it on heavy posterboard, thus protecting it from further rending, I guess. I decided the repaired poster would better serve me taped to my bedroom ceiling, and not just because I could pretend that Superman was flying overhead, reminding me to love my brother. I knew Ken couldn’t get to it up there.
___________________________________________________________________
excerpted from the forthcoming book
COLLECTOR'S EDITION: Confessions of a Pop Culture Obsessive-Compulsive
by and © Karl Heitmueller Jr.

Bronze Beauties #30: X-MEN

2011-06-01T15:25:00.002-04:00

Many years ago, I wrote that a movie adaptation of the Uncanny X-Men would never happen because of the vast number of superheroes that would all require exposition and character development, leaving very little time for actual storytelling. Additionally, the general public just wouldn’t be able to accept a movie with that many characters in crazy costumes.

Of course, Bryan Singer proved me wrong with 2000’s X-MEN, a movie that deftly juggled eleven mutants, good and evil and told a story that was compelling and cohesive (in addition to dealing with the “yellow spandex” via a terse one-liner from Cyclops). X2 introduced even more characters, but was an even better movie. However, by the third film, Brett Ratner’s X-MEN: THE LAST STAND, the overwhelming number of heroes and villains finally trampled the story, and the whole thing felt like a catalogue for action figures more than a good superhero yarn. X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE was even worse, pulling characters seemingly at random from the Marvel Mutant Universe.

If I were a bigger X-Fan, I might be more bent out of shape about the declining quality of those movies, and really have no idea what to expect from this week’s prequel, X-MEN: FIRST CLASS. I love the idea of a superhero period piece set in the 1960s, but the trailers have left me mostly cold (even without the presence of Iceman, who, in the comics, was one of the first students at Professor Charles Xavier’s School for the Gifted).

Like most fanboys, I ate up Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s X-MEN series of the 1970s / 80s, although I grew weary enough with Marvel’s subsequent mutant overload to lose my taste for all the various and sundry X-titles by the middle of that most dayglo of decades.

I actually had a hard time selecting covers for this Bronze Beauties installment, as X-MEN’s covers weren’t the most stunning on the spinning rack in the 1970s. Now, if I were to include some of Jack Kirby’s, Jim Steranko’s or Neal Adams’ covers from 1960s, you’d see some really gorgeous comic book covers, but this is Bronze Beauties, not Silver Stunners… however, if you’re interested, take a gander at the first two pages of covers at the Grand Comics Database.

From the top:
X-MEN 66 (March 1970) by Marie Severin & Sam Grainger
The Hulk takes on the original X-Men: Cyclops, Angel, Beast, Iceman and Marvel Girl

X-MEN 95 (October 1975) by Gil Kane & Dave Cockrum
The second regular issue featuring the All-New, All-Different X-Men includes the Native American mutant, Thunderbird, who had the sad fate of being killed off in his second adventure (He should’ve been tipped off by his absence from the cluster of X-heads by the logo). To date, Thunderbird has yet to make it to any of the X-Films, despite the built-in merchandising possibilities for both booze and cars.

X-MEN 101 (October 1976) by Dave Cockrum
This is one of the most pivotal issues of the series, in which the formerly tame Marvel Girl becomes the all-powerful Phoenix (whose story really should’ve been the full thrust of the third X-Men film).

X-MEN 114 (October 1978) by John Byrne & Terry Austin
All of the X-Men died except for Beast and Phoenix and there was never another issue of their comic book (yeah, right). This cover is a nice example of how in the comics, Wolverine is really short (Storm just towers over him).

artwork ©Marvel Characters, inc.

COLLECTOR'S EDITION excerpt #1: The Paper Shack

2011-05-20T10:55:00.001-04:00

My girlfriend refers to me as an “archivist,” a term far preferable to “anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive, time-wasting collector freak.” But regardless of the tag, since about the age of 12, I’ve been saving clippings from magazines and newspapers, compiling files of art, articles and pictures relating to topics of interest, be they comics, music, movies, TV, illustration or images of pretty ladies.

For a long time, I used the justification of the artist’s morgue. I had read that comic book artists kept files full of reference material of any physical objects that could work their way into stories they might have to draw. As a teenage aspirant of that vocation, I followed suit and compiled marker-labeled manila envelopes of clipped pictures of guns and cars and airplanes and animals and buildings and uniforms. I also had files designated, “Male Poses,” “Male Clothing,” “Female Poses” and “Female Clothing” (those last two being by FAR the most overstuffed envelopes).

Back in the days when I still lived with my parents, my files were primarily fed by what was known as “the Paper Shack.” The Paper Shack was a shed that sat on the property of the church that abutted my suburban cul-de-sac. It was the provenance of the Boy Scouts of America, a receptacle for paper recyclables that churchgoers and other local folk would drop off to be collected once a month and taken to the recycling center. This, of course, was in the pre-pick-up 1970s and early ‘80s, when recycling was a nutty novelty.

To me, The Paper Shack was a glorious treasure trove of free pulp, ripe for the pickin’ (it was also a place that I would go to make out with my 5th grade girlfriend, but that’s another, frankly secondary story).

The Paper Shack was about a hundred square foot, prefab corrugated white metal shed with a door that latched with a simple hook-and-eye lock. There was no floor, it sat on a bed of pebbles at the edge of the parking lot, within eyeshot of the rear entrance of the church. There was no lighting aside from what leaked in through the spaces in the metal and from the door, and after a good rain, whatever papers were on the ground were surely soaked. In the summer, it was stifling hot inside, with a musty odor that wasn’t altogether unpleasing. It was also a haven for bees, and more than once I walked out with a red bee-sting bump in addition to whatever magazines I happened to score that day.

The Paper Shack housed mostly newspapers, usually just the local rags, The Lancaster New Era (to which my parents subscribed) and the Intelligencer Journal. Papers from neighboring Harrisburg and Reading sometimes mixed in, as well as the odd Philadelphia Inquirer and every once in a while, a New York paper or two. The gold mine (as far as newspapers were concerned) was The Sunday New York Times. To me, living in what I later discovered was a “D market” for motion picture releases, the plethora of huge movie ads in the Times Arts & Leisure section was like a guidebook to a seemingly unattainable world of pop culture. At one time, an entire wall of my bedroom was papered with full-page Times movie ads (most for movies I hadn’t even seen). I think the first time I fantasized about moving to New York City was looking through the Sunday Times right there on a mountain of newspapers in the Paper Shack.

Of course, there was also the rest of the paper. While at the age of 12, I had little interest in New York politics, Travel & Leisure, the stock market or real estate, I did notice (as Woody Allen pointed out in MANHATTAN) that those lingerie ads were really erotic. A semi-obscured bra ad in the Sears Catalogue looked like a postcard picture of a Mennonite woman compared to a full-page ad of an underwear-clad supermodel shilling for Saks in the Times (Which in turn was nothing compared to when the Victoria’s Secret Catalogue made its way to the Paper Shack in the early ‘80s).

The other coveted booty of the newsprint variety was the comics sections from other towns’ papers. Lancaster’s aptly-titled The Sunday News had an okay comics section, with the main problem being a complete absence of the superhero strips that were common in the late 1970s. When I would snag a New York Daily News section, which carried both Spider-Man and The World’s Greatest Superheroes featuring Superman (quite a title, that) on nice white tabloid sized paper, THAT was a find, like a giant free comic book.

But even those newspapers paled next to actual magazines. As I dug through the mountains of paper, uncovering a big bundle of magazines was like hitting the jackpot. Again, usually, the stack would be disappointing, comprised of catalogues and a wad of boring mom-mags like Good Housekeeping or Redbook. Of the news magazines, I’d only take Newsweek, because I had a subscription to Time and the others didn’t have enough pop culture coverage (Sorry, US News and World Report). While People and US always made the cut, more general interest publications like Life and Reader’s Digest or supermarket tabloids like The National Enquirer would only come home with me if the pickings were otherwise slim or something on the cover grabbed me. Sports magazines, however, may as well have been used toilet paper.

The most recurrent worthwhile score was the fashion magazines. I was probably more aware of the differences between Bazaar, Vogue and Cosmopolitan than any other heterosexual twelve year-old boy in the world (or at least south central Pennsylvania). But this is the thing that I never understood about the stigma of being a guy looking at an issue of Elle: Fashion magazines are filled with photographs of beautiful women, often in clothing and poses as provocative as something out of a so-called “men’s magazine” (remember, it was an issue of Glamour that George Costanza’s mother caught him with in SEINFELD’s legendary masturbation episode, “The Contest”).

And the women in fashion magazines were not just gorgeous, they were often (of import to my ilk) famous; Erin Gray modeled lingerie for Bazaar at the very time moulting fanboys were drooling over her as Wilma Deering on BUCK ROGERS! I actually purchased this particular issue off the newsstand, loudly proclaiming that I was picking it up for my mother, so that the clerk wouldn't guess that I was buying it for Erin Gray wanking material.

One of the pitfalls of being pop culture obsessed is that you tend to have an inordinate amount of celebrity crushes. Sure, almost everyone mentally compiles a short list of unobtainable famous folk they’d smooch (etc.) if they had the chance. But few people are so pathetic as to actually clip pictures of them out of magazines. As someone who fell prey to the easy to navigate world of mainstream sex symbols—Diahann Carroll of JULIA was my first crush, according to my mother—I was one of the millions of males in 1976 that owned the iconic Pro-Arts Farrah Fawcett-Majors (as she was known at that time) swimsuit poster. But it didn’t stop there. I plopped down money at Spencer Gifts and through mail order ads in comic books for 2 x 3’ odes to Cheryl Tiegs, Susan Anton, Tanya Roberts and about five more different Farrah posters (my favorite being a 6' behemoth of Charlie’s feathered-tressed Angel straddling a bicycle in front of a sparkly blue background). I owned two, count ‘em, TWO posters of Loni Anderson, the only possible explanation being that it was 1980, my taste in women was still maturing and she had inordinately large breasts.

Naturally, there was a Lynda Carter Wonder Woman poster, which served as a crossover for my adulation of both sexy ladies and superheroes. And I even scored a huge poster of Blondie’s Debbie Harry in white go-go boots and shorts, clutching her naked breasts (not sure whatever happened to that one, it’s probably worth a fortune today).

My files of magazine-clipped pictures of women fell into two primary categories whose distinction is only pertinent to pop culture nerds: Famous and Not Famous. And while there were certainly images of unknown models that tweaked my hormones, they rarely delivered the impact of women from TV or the movies. In addition to the usual suspects, there were those sadly neglected actresses who were never immortalized by poster companies: Jan Smithers (Bailey from WKRP in CINCINNATI, the MaryAnn to Loni Anderson’s Ginger); MORK & MINDY’s Pam Dawber; Valerie Bertinelli, before she was sullied by Eddie Van Halen; Joanna Cameron (Ohhh Mighty ISIS) and the list goes on…

This is not to say that I had no interest in naked ladies. I certainly did. But in all the years of Paper Shack rummaging, there were only a handful of strikes that yielded that particular vein of gold known as the “dirty magazine.” When it DID happen, it was like stumbling across a Brinks truck with the door hanging open.

The first Penthouse Magazine I found at the Paper Shack (the May 1978 issue) left an impact on me that I cannot overstate. I had seen girlie mags before, but they were always of the tamer bent. One day when I was about ten, I found my father’s small stash of early ‘60s issues of Gent, Rogue and Playboy in a high cupboard over the oven in the kitchen. And my Uncle Tim always had the Playboy Playmate Calendar hanging in his basement workshop. But, while there was undeniably objectification going on, Playboy of that era seemed tempered by an air of respect absent in most media centered around photographs of chicks showing their tatas. (Remember, I’m talking about the magazine as it was up through the 1970s, I can’t speak for what it or Mr. Hefner evokes these days).

The women in those more genial publications were presented more along the lines of art to appreciate rather than pieces of meat to fuck. And they didn’t show the vag.’

So to my still forming tweenage id, sex was more mystical than dirty. Penthouse was the first time I’d ever gotten a bird’s eye (so to speak) view of the vagina. Hell, even in close-up! And then there was Penthouse Forum and Xaviera “The Happy Hooker” Hollander’s “advice” column, in which “readers” wrote in to share their erotic adventures, providing me with some serious “reading” material for frequent treks to the bathroom. But even Penthouse didn’t prepare me for the one time I came across a bag containing some even more hardcore stuff, ala Hustler, Club or Gallery. For the first time, I saw what anti-pornography feminists meant when they called such material violence against women. Aside from shots of genitalia so close up as to seem like gynecological textbook illustrations, the overall tone belied a sense of resentment towards women that I just didn’t like.

But whether I was foraging a Penthouse or a Newsweek, the omnipresent danger of being caught was the same. The optimum time to hit the Paper Shack was a weekday afternoon around dinnertime, when the church was usually completely vacant. The pastor, his staff and the groundskeeper had left for the day, so the coast was usually clear—but not always. As I’d dig through the paper bags and twined bundles, there was nothing worse than the crunching sound of a car pulling into the gravelly church lot. I would quickly grab my ill-gotten gains, stash the pile somewhere in the back for later retrieval and nonchalantly exit the shed as if I were simply dropping off something myself. The fact that I was usually covered in sweat and newsprint may have tipped off some of the more astute recyclers, but in retrospect, they probably didn’t care that some teenage dork was stealing newspapers from the recycling.

Still, the fear was strong, and so I decided I needed a lookout...
___________________________________________________________________________
Excerpted from the forthcoming book
COLLECTOR'S EDITION: CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE
by and © Karl Heitmueller, Jr.

The Rules of MOVIELINES

2011-05-16T12:24:00.004-04:00

While trekking the damp, muggy 10K of AIDS Walk yesterday, Y, the Apple Queen, LTBeartaur and I passed the time by playing a game I made up some years back called MOVIELINES. I’ve mostly played this at the bar with the staff on really slow nights, but yesterday it dawned on me that it’s actually a pretty fun way for a group of nerds to spend a couple of hours.

The game works best with about a half dozen players, and at least two of them should be fairly hardcore movie geeks. This is because you have to be able to remember five lines of dialogue from each film chosen, as well as some pertinent information on its history.

Players take turn being the ACTOR, delivering the lines to the AUDIENCE. The Actor thinks of a film (it should be a popular movie that people have probably seen, or the game doesn’t work) and then delivers five lines in descending levels of difficulty. For example, if doing JAWS, you don’t start with “You're going to need a bigger boat,” you use something like “I don’t need this working class hero crap,” then build with ”Okay, so we drink to our legs!” followed by “For that, you get the head, the tail, the whole damn thing” and “Smile, you son of a bitch!” The point is to say a line that’s somewhat vague, that sparks recognition, but not immediate identification and go from there. If a line mentions a character that will give the film away, it’s at the Actor’s discretion whether or not to say the name.

Every member of the Audience gets one guess, and if nobody is right, then the Actor gives the first of a series of four clues: Decade of the movie’s release, followed by (after the second line is given, again if nobody gets it) number of words in the title, then the film’s genre and the final clue is the name of one of the supporting actors (not one of the leads). There is no clue after the final line (which should be the most obvious one).

MOVIELINES isn’t really a game that you score, with winners or losers, because it’s rare that the playing field is level. The scenario is usually a few giant nerds (like me) playing with people who may well love movies, but use their brain wrinkles for more important things than memorizing lines and release dates and actors. In this case, the Actor role is taken by whomever thinks of a good film to do, and sometimes that’ll be the same person two or three times in a row. It’s still a fun game.

Let’s play!

1. “I like pizza, too, but I’m not going to marry one.”

HINT: 1970s

2. “We’ve got rats in the attic. You better get some traps.”

HINT: Two-word title

3. “Father, could you help an old altar boy?”

HINT: Horror

4. “You’re gonna die up there.”

HINT: Lee J. Cobb

5. “That’s much too vulgar a display of power, Karras.”

I’m gonna guess that hardcore movie geeks may have gotten that with the first line, serious cineasts with the second, lots of people with the third, many more by the fourth and if you didn’t figure it out by the end, then I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time. Oh, and your mother sucks cocks in Hell.

Announcing: COLLECTOR'S EDITION: Confessions of a Pop Culture Obsessive-Compulsive

2011-05-13T18:00:00.001-04:00

This is the big project that's been taking up most of my time this year (and will continue to do so for the bulk of 2011). But I thought it was time to let the cat outta the mylar (if you get that reference, you will see yourself in this book).
________________________________

COLLECTOR’S EDITION: Confessions of a Pop Culture Obsessive-Compulsive by Karl Heitmueller Jr. is an examination of the changing nature of popular culture from the early 1970s to today in the form of a memoir. Mixing history, humor and criticism with sometimes embarrassingly personal anecdotes, Heitmueller paints a picture of a life that, at the age of 46, continues to revolve around pop trappings that are usually abandoned upon adulthood. But it’s also about how the evolution of technology has radically altered the consumption of culture, making it easier to acquire and perhaps less meaningful in the process.

COLLECTOR’S EDITION is divided into chapters that deal with the numerous aspects of Karl’s obsessions: comic books, music (both collecting and compiling), Christmas, action figures, recording TV shows, books, self-publishing, archiving and a three-decades-running compendium called, “The Motion Picture Log.” There are also chapters on how sports just doesn’t fit into the equation and why Star Wars lost its luster for the author (while Superman perhaps means more than ever).

Peppered with illuminating sidebars, anecdotal comic strips and illustrations, COLLECTOR’S EDITION tries to explain the collector’s mentality, and posits that loving STUFF may not be such a bad thing after all. Readers who share the malady of nostalgia will find much to which they can relate, while those who’ve never felt the urge to scour eBay for a long-lost relic of their childhood will hopefully gain insight to the mindset of an oft-ridiculed demographic.

E-MAIL FOR PUBLISHING INQUIRIES OR MORE INFORMATION

Bronze Beauties #29: SUPERBOY

2011-05-13T17:48:00.001-04:00

In honor of tonight’s final episode of SMALLVILLE, here’s some SUPERBOY Bronze Beauties, including a few that tie into the television series.

Superboy was created by (appropriately enough) Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel and made his first appearance in MORE FUN COMICS #101 in 1945. The tales were light-hearted adventures of a young Clark Kent donning the red, blue and yellow costume to help his Smallville classmates get out of jams such as rigged soapbox derbies and poorly-attended birthday parties. The character moved to ADVENTURE COMICS in 1946, eventually earning his own titular title in 1949. Over the years, Superboy aged into a teenager and his stories got bigger and more cosmic, no more so than when he met the Legion of Superheroes from the 30th Century (in ADVENTURE #247 in 1958).

The Legion eventually proved so popular that they first shared, then took over the comic from Superboy, leaving the Teen of Steel floundering without his own book until 1980. In the late 1980s, after John Byrne’s MAN OF STEEL reboot eliminated Superboy from the mythos (having Clark first put on the costume as an adult), new Superboys have been introduced into the DC Universe.

Only last year, in Geoff Johns’ masterful SUPERMAN: SECRET ORIGIN (the latest “definitive” origin of the Last Son of Krypton) was the original Superboy reintroduced into the canon. In a respectful nod to other media’s influence on the character, Johns incorporated elements from SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE as well as SMALLVILLE into his version of the story, affording the decade-running TV show a level of respect not shared by most fanboys (due to its many liberties taken with the legend).

While I agree that SMALLVILLE ran at least four seasons too long, I accept it on its own terms, as a sort of “Elseworlds” version of the story in which Superman took longer than every other member of the JLA to appear (rather than inspiring them in the first place). And while I certainly have my beefs with the show, its portrayal of Clark Kent / the Blur / Superman (as of tonight, anyway) is not one of them. The writers stayed true to the spirit of the character, solidly embodied by Tom Welling. For that, I thank them.

I also have a particular soft spot in my heart for SUPERBOY because the first cover below was my very first comic book; My father knew that I really liked Superman (due to the Filmation cartoons of the late 1960s) and grabbed a comic book for me as an impulse on the way home from work one day in 1970.

And Pandora’s Box was opened.

From top to bottom:
SUPERBOY #164 (April 1970) by Neal Adams
(Don’t worry, Pa Kent’s not really dead, that’s an android duplicate in the car)

SUPERBOY #171 (Jan. 1971) by Carmine Infantino & Murphy Anderson
In honor of Smallville’s AC (Aquaman), the first DC hero to guest star on the show

SUPERBOY #175 (June 1971) by Neal Adams & Dick Giordano
Bringing to mind the 2001 pilot, in which a kryptonite-weakened Clark was strung up like a scarecrow

SUPERBOY #180 (Dec. 1971) by Curt Swan & Murphy Anderson
No Smallville tie-in here, it’s just that everything about this cover is amazing (Clark Kent: Madcap Millionaire!)

SUPERBOY #204 (Oct. 1974) by Nick Cardy
Because Smallville featured appearances by all four members of the Legion depicted on this cover (from left, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Brainiac-5 and Cosmic Boy)

Artwork ©DC Comics, Inc.

With one to go... Smallville final season recap catch-up

2011-05-10T15:28:00.002-04:00

After ten years, this Friday the CW's SMALLVILLE comes to a conclusion, presumably beginning the story of Superman (as opposed to "the Blur," the superhero name Clark Kent has been using for the past few seasons). While it's true that a story that should've ended at least five years ago has been dragged out to the overall detriment of the show's legacy, this final season has mostly been a pretty good one for fans of the Man of Steel.

What fans have to remember is that this is as much an Elseworlds story as RED SON or any other adaptation. Aside from the inherent restrictions in adapting Superman for television (or at least as they were in 2001, when the show premiered), once SMALLVILLE became a hit, the producers of this show had to figure out how to elongate a story long past its logical conclusion while still staying true to both the show's edict and the legacy of the character. And they didn't do a bad job, considering.

I'll write a bigger piece on the legacy of SMALLVILLE after the finale this weekend, but for now, here are the links to my Starpulse recaps of the past nine episdes just in case you wanna get caught up (the earlier links can be found here).

Season 10, Episode 12: COLLATERAL
Season 10, Episode 13: BEACON
Season 10, Episode 14: MASQUERADE
Season 10, Episode 15: FORTUNE
Season 10, Episode 16: SCION
Season 10, Episode 17: KENT
Season 10, Episode 18: BOOSTER
Season 10, Episode 19: DOMINION
Season 10, Episode 20: PROPHECY

Hmm, the recap for "Fortune" seems to have vanished into the ether(net), so I'll fix that when it's found by the Starpulsers.

Bronze Beauties #28: The Mighty THOR

2011-05-10T11:26:00.010-04:00

In the early years of this glob, I posted a recurring feature called “Bronze Beauties,” spotlighting comic book covers that I loved from the era in which I came of the age, the 1970s, aka “The Bronze Age of Comics.”

I realized the other night that I never did a BB entry for any of the four big superhero movies coming out this summer, and so the feature has again been resurrected, at least through the summer (but probably beyond).

Kicking things off, here’s some covers for Marvel’s God of Thunder, the Mighty THOR!

Thor was introduced in JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #83 in 1962, created by Stan Lee with Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby as a mixture of Norse mythology and Superman (in the early years, Thor appropriated some of the Kryptonian’s sillier powers like super-ventriloquism and freeze-breath).

Thor was one of the rare Marvel Comics that actually got better after Lee and Kirby left the title. A series of stalwart Marvel Bullpen writers, including Gerry Conway, Len Wein and Roy Thomas worked with the quintessential Thor artist, John Buscema to build one of comics’ most expansive (and at times befuddling) milieux.

Thor was never one of my favorites, but as with most comics of that era, these covers feature a mixture of elements (I love that logo) that grab my id and twirl it like Mjolnir (see the movie, you’ll understand). Unlike most Marvel Comics, THOR often used posing pin-up style covers that were more akin to DC’s style (something that I, as a DC nerd, always appreciated).

From top to bottom:
THOR #182 (Nov. 1970) by John Buscema & Joe Sinnott)
THOR #217 (Nov. 1973) by John Romita
THOR #236 by Gil Kane & Al Milgrom)
THOR #257 (March 1977) by Jack Kirby & Joe Sinnott)

©Marvel Characters, inc.

Crisis on Earth-1993

2011-04-29T17:14:00.003-04:00

From the ages of about 4 to 29, I had one specific career goal: To draw comic books. Specifically, to draw DC Comics comic books. For two and a half decades, I practiced, studied, drew and worked towards that goal. I even published some of my own comics (initially with my best friend Nathan as my writing partner, then later doing full duty as writer-penciler-inker-letterer) in preparation for the gig.

In 1993, I finally felt ready to give it a shot and packed up my portfolio and traveled to New York for a portfolio review with the publisher of the characters I loved the most. In addition to my own comics, I included prepared samples of pages featuring Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, the Justice League and other DC heroes.

Some of the pages were unfinished pencils, some were fully inked. I also did a few pin-up style drawings, even though I knew that’s not what editors are looking for when they review artists’ work. They want to make sure that you know how to tell a story, not draw a pin-up, but since those iconic posing covers of the Bronze age were one of the things that made me love DC Comics so much, I threw some in anyway.

I think I also wanted to show that I could letter, and, honestly in retrospect, maybe that’s what I should’ve pursued. I was never more than an average artist at best, but at lettering? Immodestly, I'll say that I think I'm a pretty damn good letterer. Sadly, of course, lettering is now almost always done on computer, and so it’s pretty much a moot point.

Anyway, the outcome was meh. My work was greeted with encouragement, but not really enthusiasm. According to the editors I saw that day, I had a good grasp of storytelling and perspective, and a nice eye for detail, but my draftsmanship needed work.

And of course, they were right. There are some pretty stiff figures in these pages, and I still can’t draw machinery or anything mechanical to save my life.

But instead of continuing to develop my superheroic craft, I moved on. But part of the reason was that in 1993, comics were hip-deep in the so-called “Dark Age” of gun-toting anti-heroes delineated by the likes of Rob Liefeld and Todd McFarlane, driving my interest in the genre to an all-time low. I was far more into alternative comics like LOVE & ROCKETS and EIGHTBALL, and so I decided to focus on that aspect of cartooning, where I’ve had a wee modicum of success over the years.

To be honest, I’m not sure why I’m posting these. Certainly I put a ton of work into these pages, but today, more than a few of them are pretty embarrassing. I guess maybe after all these years, I finally feel enough distance to document the last gasp of a dying dream without it hurting too much!

I’m putting this stuff here rather than on Tough Guy (my art site) because they’re so old, and really not representative of the kind of work I try to do today. I don’t want people to judge me based on these pages. Not that I could do better than this today, I’m so out of practice as far as this stuff goes that I have no idea how I’d do if I sat down to draw a straight superhero page today.

This is not to say (in case it needs to be said) that I’ve lost interest in drawing superheroes. Even a cursory look at Tough Guy quickly reveals that’s not the case. But my dream of doing superheroes professionally has shifted from appearing in ACTION COMICS to contributing to BIZARRO COMICS (if it ever gets resurrected) or doing a comics-themed spot illustration for WIRED or ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY or getting a chance to continue my PRINCE STREET NEWS comic strip for COMIC BOOK ARTIST.
In any case, for the first time anywhere (except for the Batman origin, which was on Tough Guy before I moved it here), here are the pages I took to DC Comics that day (most of them, anyway… there are a few that, even in context, aren’t worth posting). Click on any of the pieces for a larger version (if you DARE!).

I guess I should do some annotating, especially for the non-geeks in the audience.

BATGIRL
This faux-ad was a little prescient. This was a period after Barbara Gordon had retired from being Batgirl, but before anyone had taken up the mantle to take her place. I thought it would be a cool idea to have someone take the identity without Batman’s sanctioning, and he would be none too pleased. But then again, when is Batman too pleased? One of the main reasons I did this page was to highlight costume design (I made up the very early-90s costume that Batgirl is wearing). In these nascent computer days, I was still using press-on letters for things like the blurbs at the top and the bottom. The Batgirl logo was press-on type enhanced with hand-drawn extensions. Oh, and zip-a-tone. I LOVED zip-a-tone.

BATMAN SAVES ROBIN (pencils only)
Robin tries to reason with two Gotham City toughs while a third plans to drill him with her gat! Luckily, Batman is nearby. Eh.

THE JOKER’S CRYING
Reason enough to summon the Batman to Arkham Asylum, no? A really bad Batmobile and some really stiff figures, but I thought it was pretty decent storytelling. The concept was stolen from an Alan Moore issue of SWAMP THING, by the way.

TIM LIKES DINOSAUR JR.
I wanted to draw a few domestic scenes, as I presumed that most portfolios the editors saw were weighted towards fight scenes. What I didn’t realize at the time (since I apparently had stopped reading BATMAN regularly) was that the new Robin, Tim Drake, wasn’t Bruce Wayne’s ward, that he had a father (who has since been killed off). Whoops. I still like the idea of Bruce Wayne only listening to his father’s music (which was jazz), that once his parents were killed, he had no time nor desire to cultivate his own taste in popular culture. Again, the lettering’s the best stuff here. Sigh.

LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT
This was designed as an ad for a speculative issue of LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT in which Batman somehow encounters versions of himself as portrayed in film and television. The missing lettering was done on computer, printed out and rubber-cemented onto the art. Which of course means that it’s long gone (hence the gray streaks at the bottom).

BATMAN ADVENTURES (pencils only)
Bruce Timm’s monumental BATMAN animated series was only about a year old when I did these pages, and his sleek amalgam of Alex Toth and Jack Kirby was just starting to influence comic book art. DC’s THE BATMAN ADVENTURES was a youth-oriented adaptation of that cartoon, and this and the next page were (sort of) done in that style (although the Joker and Harley are really off-model). I do recall that first panel got some praise for the use of perspective.

BATMAN ADVENTURES (pencils only)
Oof, that big creature is one horrible design. This was done to show action and page flow. The only thing I really like about it is that last panel insert of Batman standing over the felled villain.

THE LEGEND OF THE BATMAN
Again in the style of the animated series (a bit more on-model than the others, but still not right on), this is a fairly straight adaptation of the classic two page origin from 1939’s DETECTIVE COMICS #33. The Batman logo was based on the art deco logo for the series, but I drew it by hand. A real mixed bag, I detest those last four panels. Yeesh.

THE FLASH (pencils only)
Another pin-up, mostly included because the plane and the car actually don’t look THAT bad. Oh, and the logo wasn’t done by hand, it was Xeroxed from a FLASH cover and pasted on.

GREEN LANTERN TRAINING SESSION
Oboy. Aside from Hal Jordan, Kilowog and Sinestro, don’t look for any of these other members of the Green Lantern Corps in this summer’s movie; I made ‘em up. From left to right, we have African-Planet-Female-GL, Insect-Horse-GL, Blind-GL-wth-Tiny-Seeing-Eye-GL and Nerd-Planet-GL. I’m not sure, but I seem to recall it was in my head that it wasn’t really Sinestro attacking them, but a training construct or something. Doesn’t matter. These pages suck!

JUSTICE LEAGUE SQUABBLES AGAIN (pencils only)
In the late ‘80s / early ‘90s, the Justice League was going through some real identity crises (no pun intended), with the roster and tone of the book constantly shifting. During this period, there was an awful lot of Marvelesque in-fighting going on at their HQ, and I decided to draw one of those squabbles. The roster here is Fire, Bloodwynd, Martian Manhunter and Guy Gardner. If you don’t know who they are, don’t worry about it (although to date, only Bloodwynd hasn’t appeared in an animated series…. Aw).

DR. SIVANA’S UNSTOPPABLE MONSTER (pencils only)
A bunch of DC superheroes team up to stop a monster created by Captain Marvel’s arch-nemesis Dr. Sivana in this five-page story. I’m not that good at monsters (as we’ll see again later), nor is Mary Marvel my forte. Tell you what I CAN draw as well as anyone on this planet, though, and that’s Superman’s S-shield. I musta’ drawn that effin’ thing fifty thousand times in my life. Anyway, I kinda like the Daily Planet scenes and the last panel on page 4, but other than that… again, meh.

DR. SIVANA’S UNSTOPPABLE MONSTER(page four inked)
Of the five pages, I only inked and lettered this one. By the way, Batman? Really hard to get right, as you can tell here.

PHANTOM LADY
Faux-cover done for the Quality Comics character acquired by DC. She’s best known for her headlights, as they were once so quaintly called. This was done to showcase another costume redesign.

ROSE AND THE THORN
Faux-ad, again primarily to showcase costume redesign (That’s not an exposed nipple-less right boob, that’s a neck-high top that’s a different material than the leathery stuff to the right of the thorns… oh, never mind) and lettering (the logo was done by hand). Man, that sweatshirt on Rose is atrocious.

SUPERGIRL (pencils only)
That’s Lex Luthor in the beard. That’s his girlfriend, the non-Kryptonian Supergirl in the biker shorts (another costume design that hasn’t aged well). So much backstory here, I don’t even know where to begin, so just won’t even bother (the Superman titles were pretty complicated at the time). Look it up if you want. More stiffness, but again a pretty decent storytelling flow. I guess.

LOIS AND CLARK LOUNGE
Another domestic scene, and a homage to the first Superman film. And apparently, Lois Lane had a problem with a bad receding hairline in the early 1990s.

SUPERMAN AND THE RECKLESS PHOTOGRAPHER (pencils only)
I still kinda like this one.

SUPERMAN SAVES THE AFRICAN VILLAGE
Another bad monster / alien design. The fist punch is okay, though. And I NAILED the S! Heh.

SUPER INSPIRATION
This was a page for a full-length Superman story that I wrote called “Clothes Make the Man” about the iconic power of Superman’s costume. In this segment, a fashion designer is struggling with his new line until he sees a news story about Superman, which inspires him to create an entire line of clothing based on Superman’s costume. Would probably look better in color. And not in the early ‘90s.

CLARK STANDS UP LOIS
More really stiff anatomy (the crooks in that last panel make me wince, but Superman’s okay there) and the women’s faces are pretty angular and harsh. But I do like the idea. And look how nice Superman’s S looks!

So, thanks for taking the time to look at my portfolio. What’s that? Don’t call you, you’ll call me? Ah, crap. Rejected again.
_____________________________
all characters are ©DC Comics, Inc.

It is the Wrong 'em Boyo!

2011-04-23T16:49:00.001-04:00

I have spent much of my four and a half decades on this Earth acquiring things. I am a “collector,” as they say, of numerous aspects of popular culture: Music, comic books, action figures, movies, Superman memorabilia and Creature from the Black Lagoon stuff, to name just a few obsessions.

Of course, as with most collectors, issues of money, space and/or a waning of interest can cause periodic purges. Over the years, I’ve gotten rid of more than half of the comic books I’ve bought, and the records and CDs I’ve sold number in the thousands (although probably most of them I got for free). Trying to keep a collection balanced and free of chaff is an ongoing process.

The collector’s mentality being what it is, however, it’s not uncommon for regret to rear its ugly head down the road, and many geeks / nerds / whatever epithet you prefer often find themselves shelling out big bucks to replace something they at one time decided was mere detritus. And it’s usually at a loss. (And this is a wholly separate issue than re-buying beloved childhood items that were destroyed from use… Major Matt Mason, I miss you!).

I have to say, for the most part, I haven’t come to regret losing most of what I’ve purged. There are exceptions of course (Oh, MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL #1 starring KISS, what was I thinking???).

Although there is one specific item from my past that I wish I still had more than any other, and it’s something that’s so rare, I only came across an image of it on the internet last week (after searching for it many times over the years).

It’s the so-called UK “Subway” promo poster for the Clash’s self-titled debut album from 1977. This monster measured about three by five feet, reproducing the black and white photo from the cover of the record, with fluorescent pink logo and fuzzed out typewriter lettering running across the top declaring “NEW ALBUM… NEW ALBUM… NEW”. At the bottom was a white banner for promoting a live show.

The image here is slightly different than my poster in that mine didn’t promote the Swansea University show (at least I don’t think it did), and this jpeg has been rather sloppily retouched on Paul Simonon’s and Mick Jones’ legs using some digital program.

My poster was also torn, a big chunk was missing from the bottom… or top, again, I can’t exactly recall… but that was okay, it made it even more punk rock.

I also can’t remember where I got the damn thing. I’m pretty sure I was in high school, and I think I picked it up at a record store for a dirt cheap price due to its condition. And while certain details remain fuzzy, I DO know why I don’t own it any more.

No, I didn’t sell it. It wasn’t stolen. I didn’t lose it in a fire or a flood. I gave it away. To a GIRL.

She shall remain nameless not to respect her anonymity, but because I can’t remember what girl it was. I think it may have been that girl who had the pet rats. I know that, like myself, she liked the Clash. And since I’m fairly certain I wanted to kiss her, I thought maybe the pot would be sweetened by offering up a token of my affection. Whether I reached my kissing goal or not is lost to the brain wrinkles. I’m gonna guess No.

In a life that, like everyone’s, has seen its share of bad decisions along with the good, this one ranks pretty high. I know, lucky me, one of my “worst decisions” revolves around a POSTER that I gave away. Guys in jail are cryin’ me a river.

But today, in my middle-aged, perpetually arrested adolescence, oh how I would love to have that fuckin’ thing framed and hanging on my wall between the SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE one-sheet and the original Dan DeCarlo art from the cover of ARCHIE’S JOKE BOOK #101.

How much would I pay to replace this great, lost icon? Hard to say. If the day ever comes where I actually find a copy for sale, it might be relative to how much I had in the bank at the moment. Or it might have more to do with my emotional state at that particular juncture. We nostalgics tend to lose perspective (and besides, who needs to eat that much, anyway?).

But Rat Girl… if you’re out there… and it was you… and you still have it… you know where to find me.

POSTSCRIPT, MAY 2011:
Shortly after writing this post, I did another search on eBay and found a smaller version of this poster for $6.00. Sold. Okay, so it ain't exactly the same, but for now, at least, it's close enough...

Batman vs. Superman

2011-04-18T23:21:00.001-04:00

This is an oldie but a goodie from 2006 when I went geek-to-geek with Jon Wilde and Bob Fingerman on the age-olde and ridiculous geekgument as to who would win in a battle, Batman or Superman? My account of the event is here, but I thought I'd embed the video here and post it because I think it may have been the last time I pontificated on the tee-vee!

Video Game - E3 2011 - The Loop

Toy truck lacks verisimilitude

2011-03-24T14:42:00.000-04:00

I saw this on eBay the other day, and remember having it as a kid. I also remember, even as a child, thinking that in the comic world of Metropolis, this newspaper delivery truck would be highly unlikely, unless it was the crux of a story in which someone in DAILY PLANET distribution discovered Superman's secret identity, had the design department make a sign revealing said information graphically, and then got it manufactured and put on the side of the delivery van.

But if the goal was nefarious, then wouldn't the designer of the sign have made the headline something less celebratory? Maybe something like, "Man of Steel Causes Millions in Structural Damage Battling Giant Robot!" or "Property Taxes Rise Again Thanks to Stupid Alien!"

Or, maybe this was from one of those "Imaginary Stories" from the 1960s where Clark Kent is revealed to be Superman and Perry White decides it'll be a great boon to circulation to publicize the fact that the Man of Tomorrow is on their staff!

Or maybe the designers at Corgi just didn't care about making their Daily Planet Van believable within context! I am sure that Richard Donner did not approve.

Man DOWN! (Kissing the ass of the crappy beer drinker)

2011-03-19T15:59:00.003-04:00

There are few things more pointless to complain about than advertising, especially beer advertising, but every once in a while, a commercial riles me to the point of distraction, and talking about it is the only way to cleanse my mental palate.

Such is the case with a current Miller Genuine Draft 64 commercial entitled, “Toast.” A member of a wedding party seated at the head table is vainly attempting to get the guests’ attention by tapping his glass of wine with his knife. Noticing the wan sound, a cocky blonde groomsman to his left asks what he’s drinking.

“64 Calories of Pinot Grigio,” he responds awkwardly (I don’t think I’ve ever felt the urge to point out the caloric content of any beverage in any context, but I understand the need for speedy exposition, so I’ll go with it).

“Yeaaah,” the other guy sneers, handing off his bottle of MGD 64. “No self-respecting drink should make a sound like that.” The groomsman tries again, and as he taps his knife on the beer bottle, a much louder tink echoes through the banquet hall, garnering the attention of all.

The implication here is that the wine drinker is a pussy—especially after his speech subsequently bombs—while the hale fellow downing the MGD 64 is a man’s man. Aside from the asinine implication that wine—even Pinot Grigio—is not a worthy choice of wedding beverage, all this commercial proves is that a beer BOTTLE has more mass than the relatively thin wine glass. If the impotent (presumably) groomsman were drinking coffee, he’d have wiped the floor with the MGD 64 drinker.

But the whole point of light beer commercials (and MGD 64 is just light beer with a more masculine sounding name marketed to guys) is to try to make the drinkers of the watered-down brew feel like they’re drinking real beer, and thus are real men. It’s a pathetic, transparent ploy, but the sad fact is, as someone who serves lots and lots… and lots… of light (and “lite”) beer to overgrown frat boys, it works.

Taste in all things being subjective, I’ll still make the daring statement that from a savory standpoint, light beer sucks. The only reason to choose a Diet Bud (as I sometimes call it) over a “Bud Heavy” (which I never, EVER call it) is because you’re worried about your waistline. There’s a time and a place for such concerns, and when you’re talking about the difference between actually enjoying a tasty, hoppy brew and sucking down a pale, watery semblance of same, Beer O’Clock is not it. Have a salad instead of fries, or a glass of water instead of a Coke. Life’s too short to compromise on the truly important things. And I’m only being slightly sarcastic.

Miller Lite’s equally-grating “Man Up” commercials pretend that theirs taste better than other light beers, but that kind of qualitative claim isn’t held up to any legal standard. In this series of ads, über-hot female bartenders viciously mock male customers who don’t care how their light beer tastes (and carry man-purses or buy antiques). What makes those commercials teeth-gratingly annoying isn’t the bitchy bartender, it’s that if you’re going to tell a patron to “man up,” you’re not going to suggest a different light beer; you’re going to slap a Guinness and a two shots of Knob Creek in front of him, down one of the shots, then charge him for everything.

But, in another aspect of advertising that annoys me to no end, there’s no gender swap version of the “Man Up” ads, and not just because there’s no feminine version of the phrase (although I’d argue that “Man Up” could work in this context just because I think women should drink like men, too). We’re not going to see a commercial where the bitchy, self-entitled fashion victim is berated by the hunky bartender for having no light beer preference because (a) it’s somehow acceptable for girls to choose drinks by caloric content alone and (b) funny commercials cannot hinge the gag on men demeaning women.

The other risible aspect of the “Man Up” ads is how they encourage the kind of frat boy mentality that leads to nonconformists getting the shit beaten out of them after last call. While I’m certainly not going to defend dudes who carry so-called “Man Purses,” or 90% of the people trying to squeeze into skinny jeans, making fun of them in the context of a Miller Lite ad just feels… dickish. Which is, I’m sure, just what they were going for. Advertising isn’t stupid; it’s a carefully calculated science, and these people know to whom they’re talking and how to talk to them.

A similar case of demographic ass-kissing is seen in the Keystone Light commercials featuring the “always smooth” Keith Stone, a facially-scruffed, trucker cap-wearing dude who hangs out in convenience stores munching ten-foot long meat snacks and rescuing comely damsels-in-distress. These ads are mildly amusing, even though their goal is to affirm that beer-bellied white trash guys are completely justified in wearing their “No Fat Chicks” shirts under their puffy vests. The mere fact that Keystone Light is the official beer of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series (I don’t even know what that IS!) instantly negates any and all possibilities of “smoothness.”

But most beer commercials can be boiled down to simple Pavlovian response. COORS = BOOBS. CORONA = BEACH. PABST BLUE RIBBON = ANNOYING HIPSTER. Okay, so that last one isn’t officially marketed yet, but give it time.

Again bowing to subjectivity, the beer commercials that offend me the least tend to be for the beers I enjoy the most, and those commercials are usually about the taste of the beer rather than the image they carry. Sam Adams actually explains how their distinctive brews get their flavors; The Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man in the World” ads have a smart balance of parody and patronization. Guinness commercials need only display close-up beauty shots of the heavenly concoction settling in a sweaty pint glass to get its connoisseurs’ mouths watering.

Yet I still pine for the as-yet unrealized beer commercial that would put the male light beer drinker in proper context:

OPEN ON: CHAD, FRESH OFF WORK FROM HIS JOB IN FINANCE PUSHES HIS HAIR INTO HIS PARTY-TIME MINI-FAUXHAWK AND PUSHES THROUGH THE CROWD AT THE BAR, WAVING HIS CREDIT CARD, TRYING TO GET THE ATTENTION OF THE BUSY RED-HEADED BARTENDER, JOSIE.
CHAD: Yo, I need a beer!
JOSIE IGNORES CHAD AND CONTINUES TO WAIT ON THE QUEUE OF CUSTOMERS AHEAD OF HIM.
CHAD: What’s this chick’s problem, anyway? YO!!!
JOSIE SHOOTS A STINK-EYE IN CHAD’S DIRECTION WHILE WAITING ON SOMEONE ELSE.SHE FINISHES THE TRANSACTION AND FINALLY GETS TO CHAD.
JOSIE: What can I get you?
CHAD: Whattya got light in a bottle?
JOSIE: Well, if you’d have taken five seconds to survey your surroundings, you’d have noticed a display of all of our bottled beers right behind me, including a handful of tasteless light beers, any of which I’m sure will serve the purpose of getting you wasted enough to justify date raping whatever superficial bimbo impressed enough with your enormous clanking gold watch to follow you home to your art-and-book-free condo, while simultaneously giving you less to worry about when you “hit the gym” tomorrow morning before returning to your soulless, money-grubbing career where you’ll look at porn at your desk and rally your boys to go somewhere to watch the game and grab some ‘za tomorrow night.
CHAD: (Pause) Gimme a Miller Lite.
JOSIE: Did you want to start a tab?
CHAD: No, just run it.
JOSIE: We have a $20 minimum on cards.
CHAD: Whatever.
ANNOUNCER: MILLER LITE! Your taste in everything else is lousy, so what the fuck.

Last Call!

Flaming foam heads at Disneyland and Hitler action figures.

2011-02-18T12:43:00.008-05:00

As a rule, I steer clear of internet message boards, both posting and reading. The usually banal, petulant, grammatically challenged, unedited blatherings of the highly opinionated (yet oddly often uninformed) denizens of the virtual world just depress me as we wind our way quickly and decidedly towards Idiocracy. But every once in a while, I’ll forget my rule and toss a few thoughts on some pop culture related board, usually regretting the foray into the troll-crammed morass.

A few weeks ago, when Marvel Comics killed off Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch of their cornerstone superhero group, the Fantastic Four, I posited a theory on the Comic Book Resources message board, subject-lined “Anyone smell Disney in this?” I suggested that perhaps Marvel Comics’ parent company (as of 2009) wasn’t too keen on the flammable superhero, harking back to a false rumor in 1978 that the DePatie-Freleng Saturday morning FF cartoon ditched the Torch for H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot for the same reason. If the day comes where Spider-Man, Wolverine and the Hulk mingle with Mickey, Donald and Goofy in the forms of giant wandering foam-costumed characters at Disneyland/World/Galaxy/Universe, maybe a big flaming guy trying to hug the tots would instill more terror than joy.

Of course, I was mostly joking. But I set off an instant firestorm (no pun intended - besides, that’s a DC superhero). Rabid Marvelites immediately sprang to the company’s defense, claiming that Disney has absolutely NO say on anything that happens at the so-called House of Ideas, that the storyline that killed Johnny was planned before the House of Mouse even bought Marvel, and most of all that the artistes in control of the Marvel Universe would never, ever, EVER do anything for commercial purposes! It’s all about the ART!

Well… Okay. Let’s tackle these responses one by one.

• Disney has no say as to anything that happens at Marvel. Then, could someone explain to me why, for absolutely no narrative reason whatsoever, in December, concurrent with the release of Disney’s TRON: LEGACY, a bunch of Marvel Comics featured variant covers depicting their heroes clad in futuristic, glowing TRON-style costumes? What, Marvel did it on its own accord as a show of camaraderie towards its new overlords? Disney may not be sitting in on editorial meetings, but anyone who thinks they’re not taking some sort of role in their new acquisition is simply naïve.

• The storyline was in the works for years. As I haven’t read FANTASTIC FOUR in about 25 years, I’ll just have to take the fanboys’ word on this one. Like I said, I was mostly joking.

• Marvel Comics places Art over Commerce. Ahem. Okay. Fanboys seem to live in a myopic vacuum where, perhaps because they’re aware that comic books just don’t sell that much anymore, they think that the publishers aren’t beholden to any kind of corporate bean counters, that they just create art for the fans, and if it sells, it sells, if it doesn’t, well, nobody cares.

It's true that, in the case of Marvel and DC (and probably Archie and Dark Horse and a few other publishers), comic books are loss leaders that exist primarily to perpetuate and create characters that can be licensed for merchandise and media, where the real money lies. Batman movies and T-shirts and action figures and mugs and masks et al allow DC to publish the seemingly endless stream of comics featuring the various and sundry Batmen cluttering up their universe these days. But the bottom line still matters. The tale of the (no doubt temporary) demise of the Human Torch may have been masterfully told. I don’t know, and frankly, don’t care. But I do know that killing off a major character sells books, and I’m sure that was the reason that Marvel let it happen.

But let’s talk about another, more sinister case of the bottom line dictating story in the context of a Marvel character.

In March of 1941, nine months prior to America entering World War II, the cover of CAPTAIN AMERICA #1 pictured the red-white-and-blue superhero slugging Adolf Hitler, proving that Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s character knew who the enemy was before Roosevelt did. While he wasn’t the only, or even the first patriotic superhero, Cap embodied America’s battle with the Axis powers more than any other comic book character before or since. Captain America’s arch-enemy, the Red Skull, was Hitler’s head of espionage, sabotage and other terrorist activities against the Allies.

But in the upcoming movie, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving, best known as Agent Smith from THE MATRIX) is an agent of HYDRA. HYDRA (it’s not an acronym, but it is capitalized) is the Marvel Comics criminal organization bent on controlling the world, with roots that stretch from ancient Egypt through Nazi Germany and ancient Japanese ninja orders. But HYDRA is not a Nazi organization.

The first clue came when early information on the film referred to the Red Skull as an agent of HYDRA, which, in the comics, didn’t exist during WWII. Then late last year, the Disney XD cartoon, THE AVENGERS: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST HEROES (which is a great show, by the way) aired an episode set in the 1940s, with Captain America fighting the Red Skull, an agent of… HYDRA. The cartoon made it clear that it was HYDRA, not the Axis powers that overran Europe and pulled America into the war. And Disney's pretty big on corporate synergy (I'll make an early prediction that the Hulk in the Avengers movie will be the talkative version of the unjolly green giant).

There’s a lot of debate right now as to whether the Nazis will even be mentioned, let alone depicted in CAPTAIN AMERICA. Thus far, the images released depict nary a swastika, while the Red Skull and his minions bear HYDRA patches and symbols. The imdb cast listing doesn’t have anyone playing Adolf Hitler -- or Mussolini or Hirohito for that matter (as a curious side note, in Captain America’s last film, a 1990 straight-to-video disaster, the Red Skull was a scarred Italian musical prodigy, but he still worked for the Nazis!). But IF the Nazis are completely excised from the film, Paramount and Marvel run the risk of CAPTAIN AMERICA being prejudged as a whitewashed trifle, regardless of whether it’s a good movie or not (of course, much of the film's young target demographic doesn't even know who we fought in WWII, so at least they won't give a crap).

There are obvious reasons for Paramount and Disney/Marvel to not want Hitler in their kid-friendly wannabe blockbuster. It’s hard to market a movie in certain parts of Europe if that dark period of history is treated lightly or in a fictionalized genre setting. But an even bigger reason is that licensees of CAPTAIN AMERICA need to be able to use the bad guy as well as the hero and it’s kinda hard to get swastika-emblazoned toys on the shelves at Target (although Walmart might not have a problem).

Marvel’s official stance is that it doesn’t matter what precise brand of fascism Captain America fights, that he’s a symbol of freedom in the face of all tyranny. But this feels like a case of rationalizing the substitution of the Third Reich for HYDRA. It’s hard to imagine that in the halls of the house that Stan & Jack built, there’s not a little bit of consternation over this major alteration of Cap’s backstory.

Let me point out that I'm not one of those closed-minded, hardcore fanboys who doesn't understand that movie adaptations need to change certain elements of their source material to fit the different media. Christopher Nolan's Batman needs all that bulky armor. I get it. But as I've said many times, there should be a sense of respect paid to the legacy of the character.

In the comic book world, there are few absolutes. Characters die and come back to life all the time, the laws of physics are mutable, and superheroines’ bra cup sizes fluctuate wildly between D and DD. But when you’re dealing with characters that have evolved into icons, certain elements of their stories become set in stone. Superman’s powers come from being born on Krypton, but his values come from being raised in Kansas. Bruce Wayne becomes Batman to avenge his parents’ murder. Hulk smash. And Captain America, in World War II, battles the Nazis.

‘Nuff Said.

POSTSCRIPT, April 2011:
So, as more information is leaking about CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER (or, as it will be known in foreign markets, simply THE FIRST AVENGER so as not to alienate any anti-Americans who probably won't notice the character's red-white-and-blue—and, uh, brown—costume or realize what it represents), one rumor is that the Red Skull starts as a Nazi, then defects to HYDRA because they have a cooler logo. Or something like that. Hey, I'm at least relieved to know that the movie won't completely erase the Axis powers. But we shall see how this thing goes over. I smell a potential lead balloon.

Zap & Co., BBC, Steve and Me.

2011-01-26T15:37:00.005-05:00

It wasn’t easy being a punk rock kid in Lancaster PA in the early 80s. Not just because jocks were quite fond of pushing “punk faggots” into the lockers for wearing a DEVO T-shirt (and they weren’t even punk… I always considered myself more of a “new waver”). But in this small, conservative town, living a life outside of the mainstream didn’t leave you a lot of options for socializing or shopping.

One enormous exception to this was a vintage clothing store on the 300 block of North Queen Street in downtown Lancaster known as Zap & Co. Zap was opened in 1973 by Steve Murray, a man who cut a singular figure: 6’4” tall, with a huge walrus mustache and long, jet-black hair pulled back into a ponytail, Steve was usually clad in black jeans with a sharp blazer over a cool vintage print button down or, in the warmer months, shorts paired with a Hawaiian shirt. Zap (run at the time by Steve and his first wife) soon established itself as a fixture not just amongst hippies and later punks, but by Hollywood as well. Scouring the country for more than simply old stuff, Steve’s discerning eye selected only quality vintage clothing, jewelry and furnishings and he became known as a go-to guy for film and television set decorators and costumers. Woody Allen’s RADIO DAYS and BROADWAY DANNY ROSE, John Waters’ POLYESTER and CRY BABY, TITANIC, the third AUSTIN POWERS movie and TV’s THAT '70s SHOW are just a few productions that featured items purchased from Zap & Co.

In 1985 (or 1984, I’m not sure), Steve teamed up with two friends to open an independent record store in the building he owned across the street from Zap at 315 N. Queen. BBC Records (standing for Back Beat Corporation, but named as such to evoke a cool, import image) was run by British expat Paul Pendyck, a Lennon-bespectacled bloke with a sly wit. While I was at the time working at Sam Goody at the Park City Mall, I still did much of my record shopping at the independent stores downtown (Stan’s Record Bar being the other one) and BBC’s large selection of imports made it a frequent stop. I got to know Paul and Steve a bit more, and one day in 1986, Paul asked me if I’d like to work at BBC part time. Ironically, it was a case of mistaken identity, as Paul had me confused with another guy who kinda looked like me who played in a local band. Regardless, I got the job and soon quit my gig at the chain store.

Two years later, Paul was leaving BBC to open his own shop (it’s remarkable to note that this tiny town featured at one point as many as five indie record stores, three of them dedicated to non-mainstream music) and I had two options: Go with Paul and continue working part time or stay at BBC and take over as full-time manager.

The transition was not smooth; in fact, there was a ton of drama, but this is not the time nor place, so I’ll just say that for me, it was a no-brainer. In July of 1988, at the ripe old age of 23, I became the manager of BBC Records, a job I’d hold for the next seven years and eight months.

While BBC under Paul certainly leaned a bit left of center, there were still Steely Dan LPs (and a few CDs by this point) mixed in amongst XTC, Joy Division and the Smiths. I wanted to make BBC an all-alternative (even though that word wasn’t really the tag yet) store, weeding out the Springsteen and Beatles in favor of more stuff that wasn’t filling the endcaps at all of the chains (and back then, not only were there a handful of chain stores ala Camelot Music and Goody, but the big department stores still had record sections).

Now, Steve loved the Beatles. He came of age in the 60s and would tell tales of watching them on THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW and seeing them play live (he was very much a John guy, not a Paul guy). But Steve’s a cool guy, and he liked a lot of stuff that I did. He realized that my goal was to make the store appeal to a SMALLER clientele than it currently had, but he liked the idea of BBC representing something hipper.

And then, at the close of our discussion of my vision for BBC, Steve said something that stuck with me. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “One last thing… and this is the only time I’m ever going to say this: You’re the manager… but it’s my store.”

And I swear, he never said it again. Steve gave me full reign of the store, never telling me what to order or how to decorate it or who to hire. He never asked for first pick of the promos that we got (oh, the cornucopia of free stuff I got in those years!). When I wanted to expand the store and turn the back room into a video rental space for cult films, foreign films and music videos, he said yes. When that venture didn’t work, I had the genius idea of giving the store a secondary focus on the genre of music that I had recently begun to love: Jazz. The worst-selling genre of music in the industry. And Steve said okay. He made me feel it was as much my store as his.

Of course, Steve’s ownership of the building meant that BBC’s overhead was relatively small, which gave me some breathing room in terms of ordering stock. If we had a good month, Steve would pay himself a small rent from the store’s account. In leaner times, that might not happen. And we had some lean times. There were days when the register would tally less than $50 and some weeks we had nothing to add to the new release wall in the front of the store. But never once did I receive a directive to bring in some Spice Girls and Billy Joel to balance our stock on the Cavedogs and Throwing Muses.

In fact, there’s only one time in eight years that I recall Steve ever pulling the owner card on me. We had purchased a large record collection (from the son of the collector who had recently died) that included a pristine copy of CHET ATKINS IN HOLLYWOOD. I had the record put aside, along with a bunch of others, to buy myself. But when Steve saw it, he claimed it. Now, I’m not sure whether it was for the lush guitar pickin’ or the luscious blonde on the cover…. Knowing Steve, it was probably the latter.

To say Steve has an appreciation for the ladies is an understatement, but no woman has been as consistent in his life as Hilda, the silver mannequin that stood sentry in various incarnations at the entrance of Zap over the decades. Steve’s distinctive usage of mannequins in his window displays over the years is legendary. One display created a bathroom scene in which a woman sat perched on an actual toilet. In Lancaster, this innocuous display caused a small furor, a perfect example of the parochial atmosphere in which the 300 block of North Queen Street was a haven for artists and misfits.

But Steve’s Hippie/Punk attitude wasn’t confined to his music and window displays. He was always politically active as well. In late October of 1988, vice-presidential candidate Dan Quayle (the proto-Palin) came to what the local news referred to as “the Susquehanna Valley” for rallies in York and Lancaster. While George Bush (the first) and Mr. Potatoe-Head were pretty much a lock in this very conservative hamlet, those of us who didn’t love the Reagan era and dreaded its continuation felt the need to let our minority voices be heard.

Which meant everyone who worked at all of Steve’s stores, including his third, DMZ, a foreign / domestic military clothing store with an ironic sensibility…. Two fake missile heads sat outside the entrance to the store, and much of the clothing was dyed black and blue. Since most of the time, Steve’s stores were staffed with one employee at a time, it wasn’t like we could draw straws to see who got to go picket the rally. So, grabbing our Dukakis / Bentsen signs (look it up) and making a few of our own, in the middle of the afternoon, we all taped “Gone to Protest Quayle” signs on the doors and closed up shop for a few hours.

Local new coverage was mostly fawning over Quayle and interviewing supporters who said things like, “He’s no Jawn Kennedy, he’s better lookin’, ‘at’s fer sure!” and “I’m against Duh-Diya-ka-kis cuz’ he’s for letting prisoners out on hol--- on weekends, and I’m uh, and--- killing babies. I am definitely against that.” Such is the discourse in Lancaster county. Philadelphia’s KYW, however, gave some airtime to the protesters including Steve, who declared, “Dan Quayle is unqualified to be vice-president, and everyone knows it!” Zap employee Douglas Campbell also got to air his opinion that Quayle espoused “a lot of high-blown bull.”

When we returned to the store later, there was a note stuck under the door of BBC that read, “I like Dan Quayle, who I went to see and music, which I came to buy.” The anonymous, disgruntled author went on to tell us that they would not be purchasing any more CDs from us and to keep our politics separate from business. But that wasn’t Steve’s ideology. The way you live your life should follow through to all aspects of it, and for Steve that included politics.

Words don’t seem sufficient to describe the atmosphere that Steve created for Zap, BBC and DMZ. All of us who worked for him felt like…. Okay, I’ll say it. Family. But with less anxiety. It was more like this small club where you really loved all the members and had three really cool clubhouses and amazing perks. When we would stay open until 9pm on Fridays (unlike the rest of the week when we were only open until 6), Steve would go around the corner to the Harmony Inn and buy six packs of beer for us, which we would sometimes share with customers who often just hung out at his stores as if they were a gathering place, not a mere retail establishment.

Coworkers became friends. In the summer of 1989, I recruited Rex Litwin from Web of Sound (a more punk rock indie store likewise located downtown) to be my assistant at BBC, beginning a lifelong friendship. Regular customer Troy Collins couldn’t decide whether he was into rock and roll or jazz (it couldn’t be both) and would buy and trade and re-buy the same CDs so often that I ended up hiring him so he could at least enjoy a discount. When Rex left BBC to take over running DMZ for Steve, I hired Rob Mancini as my new assistant, a friendship that would take us both through the wringer, but eventually on to bigger things. But I digress.

Christmas Eve in particular was a highlight of the year, and not just because we actually made money during the holidays. Early in the day, Steve would go to the liquor store down the street and pick up a few cases of champagne, which he would distribute to the three stores. The bubbly started flowing around noon, being offered to anyone who came through the door until by the time we closed (arbitrarily whenever business slowed down), we were all just soused enough to make the subsequent staff party a joyous affair (and then we would all somehow make it to our respective family gatherings).

Over the years, of course, life marched on. Steve got divorced. Steve got married. So did Rex. So did I (all in the span of one year). Employees came and went, some good, some not so good. The alternative boom that Nirvana begat helped business, but the recession really kicked us in the ass. DMZ closed. Steve and his wife Elizabeth had a daughter in 1994. From 1992 to 1994, my wife Erin and I lived in the apartment above BBC (following Rex and Adrienne’s residence there the prior two years). And starting in 1989, BBC Records became the setting for THE RETAIL ADVENTURES OF KALLI & REX, a monthly comic strip I did for Warner Bros. Records’ DIRT, a faux-zine their alternative marketing dept. sent to record stores and college radio.

In March of 1996, my marriage having ended, the door opened for me to at long last leave Lancaster for the environs of New York City and, dragging Rob with me, I moved to Hoboken NJ. Despite spending most of my then-thirty years in Lancaster, it wasn’t hard to leave. Except for quitting BBC. As with most things, time has certainly colored my memories with the rosy tint of nostalgia, and it wasn’t always nirvana (pun intended) but it’s no exaggeration to say that my time there shaped who I am more than probably any experience in my life.

After I left, BBC remained open for a while (with my friend Kris Margiotta taking over as manager), but by the late 1990s, record stores were in the beginning of the death throes, and Steve eventually decided to close up shop and relocate Zap from across the street into the much larger space at 315 N. Queen. Over the past decade, Steve filled the new Zap with so much vintage goodness that you could eventually barely squeeze through the clothes, jewelry, shoes, books, posters, housewares, barware et al…. but it was always worth the squeeze.

I still dropped by Zap frequently when I’d return home to Lancaster for a visit. Stopping in on Christmas Eve for a champagne toast remained a tradition, one that I don’t think I missed the entire 14 years since I left. And I was always greeted with a hug and a smile by my former boss, who still let me go behind the counter, even though it hadn’t been my privilege for many years. It just always felt like home. In 2007, I was excited to bring my girlfriend Lysa to this place that meant so much to me and introduce her to Steve. And, despite quite a bit of gray streaking through his ponytail and ‘stache, Steve was still Steve, as vital as ever.

Steve has always been a champion of downtown Lancaster. He spent many hours (as did another former boss of mine, Rich Ruoff of the Chameleon Club) fighting an uphill battle against the migration of many businesses to the ever-burgeoning strip malls surrounding the city proper. He’s worked with the Merchant’s Association, fought to keep a landmark downtown building that housed the Watt & Shand department store from being demolished by a developer, and stubbornly refused to give up on the idea of downtown Lancaster as a cultural destination. All of Steve’s hard work has contributed to a remarkable resurgence of the city in recent years (spurred on greatly by the construction of a minor league baseball park on the edge of town).

In 2008, Steve and Elizabeth opened a sister store, the Zap Home Collective, a huge space around the corner from Zap, devoted primarily to larger furnishings that the original location simply didn’t have the room to display (when the marriage came to an end last year, the store was renamed Hinesight, but it remains). Over the years, many of them inspired by Zap & Co., other alternative businesses opened on the block (and elsewhere downtown). Some have stayed, most have gone, but Zap was a constant that its followers always counted on. We needed it to be the anchor of Lancaster’s hipster cognoscente, even if we’d moved far away. It was just good to know that it was there.

And now, it’s gone.

On Thursday, January 20th, a fire tore through 315 N. Queen Street. Zap was destroyed, its vast inventory, carefully collected over almost four decades, gone. Doug Campbell, who had been living in the apartment upstairs wasn’t home at the time, but lost everything. And Steve, who, since his divorce had been living in the loft apartment behind the store in the back of the building, suffered third degree burns over 30% of his body as well as severe smoke inhalation and other injuries. As I write this, less than a week later, he is in a medically induced coma, where he’ll remain for the better part of a month while his body fights to heal. This morning he had the first of many skin grafts to come.

The community outpouring was instant and emotional. A prayer vigil turned into an impromptu testimony to Steve’s impact on the city and its people. Facebook exploded with groups trying to gather donations for Doug and Steve. Overseeing much of it has been Katherine, Steve’s 16 year-old daughter, who has shown remarkable maturity, strength and resolve through this tragedy.

At this point in time, we can’t know what’s going to happen. Anyone who knows Steve believes that he’s going to get better. He’s too much of a force of nature to let any stupid fire take him down. As for the future of Zap & Co., well, that’s going to be up to Steve. While many have dug through their closets for vintage items to donate for a rebuilding, it seems premature (taking nothing away from the sincerity of the gesture). Selfishly, we all want Zap to rise from the ashes because we can’t imagine Lancaster without it. I’ll admit it, I hope that Steve DOES rebuild. And if he does, I’m going to do whatever I can to help. But the only person who can decide that won’t be able to tell us what he wants to do until he wakes up.

Zap WAS Steve. And, regardless of what the future holds, Steve will always be Zap.

If Steve doesn’t want to rebuild, if Zap & Co. is now just a memory, the devastating tragedy of its loss is outweighed by the measure of its staggering legacy. This was not just a store, this was an oasis, a haven for not just punks and hippies and set decorators and actors and architects, but for anyone who cared about making life in Lancaster PA seem just a bit… not just cooler, or more stylish, but, in every single way, better.

POSTSCRIPT:
Anyone wishing to make a contribution to help Steve, please go here and thank you.

In addition, here's a link to an album on Facebook of my time at BBC (you don't have to belong to Facebook to view)

Serious Spitballs (Jon Stewart's Dilemma)

2011-01-06T14:26:00.002-05:00

One Sunday in May of 2009, some friends and I were having dinner at Cowgirl (formerly the Cowgirl Hall of Fame until the museum of the same name in Fort Worth, Texas forced an official change), a western grub-n-hooch hangout in New York’s west village, when we noticed that Jon Stewart and his family were dining at a booth near our table.

Now, normally, I’m completely averse to the practice of celebrity free rides. It makes absolutely no sense that the richest, most overpaid people in the world constantly receive gift bags worth thousands of dollars, free admission to anywhere and anything, and bar tabs that usually amount to an autograph and a tip.

But this was Jon Stewart, stalwart host of THE DAILY SHOW, a voice of reason and righteous satirical anger that had, we all agreed, played an enormous role in helping us get through the eight horrendous years known as the Bush Administration. And so we told our waitress that we wanted to pay his check. Between us, it was only about $20 per person (including a healthy tip assuming that Jon would’ve left likewise), a small price to pay for preserved sanity.

When the waitress told Stewart that his bill was taken care of, he appeared surprised and a tad uncomfortable, asking whom his benefactors were. The waitress pointed to our table and he came over and thanked us. We fed him the line about the prior eight years, he laughed, thanked us again and rejoined his family as they left the restaurant.

I hadn’t been a big fan of The Daily Show when its host was Craig Kilborn. His frat-boy demeanor always put me off and the show’s humor at the time was far more weighted towards (as Geraldo Rivera anachronistically charged a few years back) making fun of old ladies slipping on ice. Social and political satire became more of the show’s stock-in-trade when Stewart took over the show in early 1999 (finally fulfilling the Kilborn-stymied vision of the show’s co-creator, Lizz Winstead, who left the show in 1997).

Most critics agree that the renamed THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART found its voice during the coverage of the 2000 presidential election, presciently dubbed “Indecision 2000.” The frequent and maddening spin coming from both sides of the political spectrum was laid bare in a way that neither the major networks nor cable news outlets seemed capable (or willing). And while the show certainly leaned to the left, it was never mere partisan propaganda, calling bullshit on Democrats as well as Republicans (the circumlocutory John Kerry was a particularly easy, but frequent target). The Daily Show was the antidote to the O’Reillys and Hannitys blindly hewing to the right wing rhetoric in the face of such annoying obstacles as facts and figures.

But The Daily Show was further altered by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. When an emotional Stewart returned to the air, he proclaimed that the show would be different, that easy potshots at President Bush’s frequent malapropisms would be tabled, at least for a while. Naturally (and necessarily), the Bush-Bashing did return, but The Daily Show retained a sense of purpose it had found in the wake of 9/11. The number of political guests now outweighed celebrities plugging movies (although they never completely went away). Serious issues were dealt with in an intelligent, informative manner that never lost sight of the primary objective of being funny.

Throughout the Bush years, the Daily Show exposed fraud and hypocrisy and ignorance and corruption and incompetence in government and church and the media and business and society. They made use of thoroughly researched, mind-boggling video montages of politicians and religious leaders and Fox News pundits contradicting themselves or practicing hypocrisy over and over and over again. Critics began to talk about The Daily Show not as a faux-news show, but a legitimate outlet for information and discourse.

Jon Stewart, however, steadfastly refused to acknowledge that his little comedy program was to be taken seriously. He repeatedly stated that he was merely hosting a snide cocktail party on the fringe of politics, taking part in the discussion (often vociferously), but never truly impacting any outcome… even when there was evidence to the contrary.

In October of 2004, Stewart appeared on CNN’s CROSSFIRE, one of those double-headed shouting matches where a liberal and a conservative square off against each other and rarely do more than tow the party line. Expecting a lightweight interview with a comedian, hosts Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson were stunned to be pilloried by Stewart, who repeatedly implored them to “stop hurting America” with their predictably partisan, pedantic, ultimately unproductive screeching matches. A petulant, defensive Carlson did battle, but ultimately lost, as CNN president Jonathan Klein cancelled Crossfire the following January, citing Stewart’s spot-on critique as one of the reasons.

When Barack Obama was elected President in 2008, some worried that The Daily Show would lose its edge in the environment of a Democratic administration. After all, they weren’t going to have George W. Bush to kick around anymore! Of course, when the realities of American politics came crashing down, and those who had had hoped for sweeping capital-C Change had to settle for lower-case, The Daily Show remained essential, holding the new President to his word (in addition to keeping tabs on Congress and those Tea Party morons and Fox News and that Palin thing that refuses to go away...).

But as gridlock and compromise became the hallmarks of Obama’s first two years in office, you could almost see Stewart’s ever-graying hair start to fall out from anxiety. This was supposed to be the new world. And everyone was still just yelling at each other.

And so Stewart, along with Stephen Colbert (whose COLBERT REPORT has been The Daily Show’s equally vital faux-evil twin since 2005), held The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington DC in October of last year. Billed as another plea to bring civility to our national discourse, the rally was an enormous success in terms of attendance, with its estimated 200+ thousand people far outnumbering the crowd at Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor Rally” likewise held on the National Mall the previous August.

As entertainment, the rally was hit-or-miss. As a rule, comedy doesn’t tend to play well on such a large scale, especially satire (although an off-key duet with Colbert, “The Greatest, Strongest Country in the World” was pretty great). A bizarre 20 minutes was wasted on the MYTHBUSTERS guys performing pointless experiments on the crowd such as measuring the richter scale of a simultaneous jump. The musical guests (including the Roots, Sheryl Crow and Jeff Tweedy with Mavis Staples) often felt like mere filler.

But the rally’s biggest problem was that it tried a bit too hard to be non-partisan. In a serious, twelve minute show-capping speech, Stewart inferred that there’s really no difference between Red and Blue State-dwellers, that we all want the same things, and that it’s only the media and entrenched bureaucratic public servants stirring up the fear and animus that keeps America from fulfilling its promise. But Stewart’s own show has aired hours of field reportage displaying all kinds of fear, hatred and ignorance from plain ol’ folks across the fruited plains. The media may stir the pot, but America filled it up.

In December, Stewart’s righteous anger zeroed in on the Republican-filibustered 9/11 First Responder’s Bill (officially known as the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act). As Republicans cherry-picked what kind of government spending was excessive (tax cuts for the rich = fine), an entire episode of The Daily Show highlighted the issue, including a decidedly non-comedic middle-segment interview with a group of ailing first responders. The next week, a revised version of the bill passed Congress, and was signed into law on January 2nd (a Sunday! Horrors!), with Stewart getting a fair share of the credit.

As he enters his 12th year of hosting The Daily Show, Jon Stewart’s consternation over things not being better is perhaps starting to overshadow his own stated mission of simply being funny. Certainly Stewart realizes that he’s become a player, and not just a referee. How can he not? For years, polls have shown that people trust The Daily Show to deliver the facts more than the cable or network news outlets, and with good reason. This is not to say that there’s a suitable breadth of information to get one’s news solely from Jon Stewart… but more often than not, the stories that do get covered on The Daily Show (and the Colbert Report) are better “reported” than on the so-called “real news.”

Comparisons of Stewart to 1950s crusading journalist Edward R. Murrow have become frequent, with the key difference, of course, being Murrow was not a satirist, he was a reporter. Jon Stewart’s only real problem is that he cannot admit that he does indeed make a difference. The second he does, everything changes. The Daily Show would lose its satirical credibility, it would become pompous and, ironically, weaker. It’s a fine line that is, at the moment, being precipitously straddled.

Of course, there are many who would argue that The Daily Show crossed that line long ago (mostly those who continue to defend the invasion of Iraq, believe that gay marriage will lead to end times and still think that trickle down economics could work, it just needs a little more time!). I don’t think it has. But I’m in the choir.

The Daily Show may have become more than just a little comedy show off to the side, but it’s still, at its core, just shooting spitballs at power. Okay, so the spitballs now have the size and weight of cannonballs, but they’re still composed of wadded up napkins covered in goo and (usually) delivered with tongue in cheek. Its accomplishments in the real world only cement its place as the most essential show on television.

And I still think that $20 at Cowgirl was a bargain.

Smallville Recap Catch-Up....

2011-01-05T12:22:00.000-05:00

This teaser poster was just released for SMALLVILLE's return this month for the second half of its final season. Note that the Superman reflection under Clark seems to be that first promotional image of Brandon Routh that Warner sent out as SUPERMAN RETURNS went into production. Man, they really are keeping Tom Welling out of that suit as long as they can!

I still hate the fact that they're using Bryan Singer's much-maligned version of the S-shield, especially in light of the fact that SMALLVILLE is an entirely separate version of the Superman story loaded with contradictions to the origin and history set by the movies. But I guess I should be grateful that they're going to use the red-and-blues at all!

Before the series returns, here are links to my Starpulse recaps of Season 10 episodes 3-11.

Season 10, Episode 3: SUPERGIRL
Season 10, Episode 4: HOMECOMING
Season 10, Episode 5: ISIS
Season 10, Episode 6: HARVEST
Season 10, Episode 7: AMBUSH
Season 10, Episode 8: ABANDONED
Season 10, Episode 9: PATRIOT
Season 10, Episode 10: LUTHOR
Season 10, Episode 11: ICARUS

Although it's been said, many times, many ways....

2010-12-22T19:29:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas to you.

CATFISH stinks

2010-11-08T17:04:00.001-05:00

I saw the movie CATFISH the other day. You know, “the other Facebook movie” (besides THE SOCIAL NETWORK). I went in with a little bit of knowledge about it: Guy meets girl online, travels to meet her, drama unfolds. I knew that it was being presented as a documentary, but for some reason I had it in my head that it might’ve been bullshit. Maybe it was the über-dramatic tone of the commercials in contrast with the predictable outcome of the setup. Maybe it was something I’d heard or read. Or maybe I just have a really good bullshit detector.

Because I am utterly convinced that this movie is at least 90% bullshit.

In a spoilerish nutshell, CATFISH is about Yaniv “Nev” Schulman, a New York photographer who shares a studio with his filmmaker brother Ariel and their friend Henry Joost. When one of Nev’s photographs is published in a newspaper, he receives a painting of the photo from a little Midwestern girl named Abby. Nev develops a long distance, mostly virtual friendship with the girl and her family, including mother Angela and 19 year old sister, Megan. Through Facebook, Nev and Megan develop a long-distance relationship, but when Nev and his pals drop by the family’s house in Michigan, they discover that the entire interaction has been a lie concocted by Angela, who did the paintings herself, posed as Megan and does not live the kind of life she presented to Nev.

From the very outset, this whole thing felt staged. There’s no real reason given to the impetus for filming Nev’s life other than his brother finds him “interesting” (well, that makes one person). The dialogue… er, conversations of the three protagonists feels as forced as anything in a Kevin Smith movie. Leaps in logic abound: Especially for a movie about how modern technology has altered our interactions with other people, it’s a bit of a stretch to imagine Nev didn’t immediately Google the supposed 8-year old artistic prodigy and debunk Angela’s story. A postcard with a smashed penny attached is mailed to Megan for no reason whatsoever other than to serve as an unlikely callback prop later in the film. Lines like “Your voice is not at all what I expected” are pure setup. And a final monologue from Angela’s clueless husband that gives the film its title is so unbelievable I actually laughed out loud.

There are two possibilities here. One is that three douchebag (I’m sorry, Nev has a tribal trampstamp; No non-douchebags get tribal trampstamps) wannabe actors / filmmakers set out to create a BLAIR WITCH PROJECT about the internet and recruit people to be a part of it.

The second, more likely possibility is some kind of mixture of reality and fiction. Perhaps Nev really did receive a painting in the mail from Angela claiming (for whatever reason) to be a small girl. And then maybe (unlike in the movie) the media-savvy Nev quickly (and easily) used the internet to debunk her story. Maybe Angela really is a somewhat sad, mildly disturbed, struggling artist who lives with her husband and his two severely retarded teenage boys (one of whom died shortly after the film was shot) and kinda wishes her life had turned out differently. And maybe Nev and his pals decided to exploit that and craft a “documentary” exposing this sad woman in the guise of making a revealing statement about social media and our culture (for those of you who weren’t paying attention for the past decade).

If that’s the case, then Nev, Ariel and Henry are more than just annoying douchebags: They’re pure evil: Narcissistic, self-serving, manipulative, exploitative, soulless assholes.

I’m all for stirring shit up. I’m also okay with elaborate media hoaxes if they’re entertaining and artful. Andy Kaufman was a genius (Joaquin Phonenix, not so much). I actually liked THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, I thought it made amazing use of its economy of imagery and believed the performances (for better or worse, Heather Donahue reminded me of someone I used to know). But that film was very much a product of its time. I doubt it would or could work as believably today. The internet has made it nearly impossible for anyone to keep the wool pulled over anyone’s eyes for more than the time it takes to do a Google search.

The bottom line is, regardless of which scenario is true (the only possibility I refuse to accept is that the story unfolded as presented), CATFISH is not a good movie. There are a few interesting visual touches (such as using Google Earth to depict the distances between the boys and their quarry) that are going to age as nice time capsules, but that’s certainly not enough to recommend the film. At the end, I stood up and asked aloud, “Did ANYONE buy that for a second?” but not one person answered me. Whether it was because they disagreed or were just scared of the agitated guy barking in a Manhattan movie theater, I have no idea.

Which is why, in order to get my distaste for CATFISH off my chest, I turn to the internet. And as soon as this is posted, I’ll link to it on Facebook. Ooh, maybe I’ll see if Nev wants to be friends with me.

Nah, probably not.

Wonder Woman conspiracy theory and some casting suggestions

2010-10-19T18:12:00.002-04:00

I realize that this glob is fast becoming "Karl Talks About Superhero Movies and TV Shows," but here's another Starpulse link to a piece I wrote giving some casting suggestions for David E. Kelley's announced new WONDER WOMAN TV show. As my pal John pointed out, Kelley's not exactly known for casting Amazonian female leads, so it remains to be seen whether or not Diana will be a Hollipop.

But it did get me thinking about Jim Lee's Wonder Woman costume revamp from earlier this year. DC Comics is notorious for altering their comics to fit media adaptations. In the 1970s, Billy Batston started tooling around in an RV with Uncle Dudley in a weird echo of Filmation's SHAZAM! TV series and Green Lantern John Stewart's costume was changed to fit the JUSTICE LEAGUE cartoon version, just to name a few examples (at least Batman never got rubber nipples).

About a year ago, Warner Bros. (DC Comics' parent company) formed DC Entertainment in an attempt to bring more superhero synergy and catch up to Marvel Comics' success rate on the big screen. In the year since, there's been much restructuring at DC and the future of the company is anybody's guess (although I think their recent move to lower comic book prices was a good one.... one of the big things keeping me away from the comic stores was a $5.00 price tag on a regular comic).

But I'm cynical enough to wonder if maybe the whole costume change for everybody's favorite Amazon Princess happened because DC knew that in a few months there was going to be a public announcement of a new WW TV show. It's easy to imagine a production company saying they were interested in bringing the character back to television, but (like Joss Whedon when he was writing his ill-fated Wonder Woman movie some years ago), didn't want to use the red, white and blue spandex. DC knows that when you mess around with someone as iconic as Wonder Woman, any alteration is bound to be controversial (while bringing about the no-such-thing-as-bad publicity). The last time Diana's costume had a major makeover was 1982, when the eagle she'd sported on her chest since 1941 was replaced with an easier-to-trademark stylized WW. Even that subtle alteration caused ripples with the fans (although of course, not as much as when she gave up her powers altogether in the early 1970s to become a martial-arts wielding Emma Peel type). But to radically alter the look of one of the so-called DC Trinity because of a TV show would not go over too well with the fanboys.

But if the costume were changed in the comics FIRST and then later used on TV? Well, who could cry foul at that?

Just a theory. Let's wait and see. But JESUS, that's an ugly costume.

SMALLVILLE Season 10 Recaps

2010-10-03T16:51:00.003-04:00

I'm doing the Starpulse recaps for the tenth season of SMALLVILLE, a show that started out okay, got stronger, then lost its steam as its success forced the overlong delay of bringing the story to its foregone conclusion.

When SMALLVILLE premiered in 2001, the concept of a young Clark Kent discovering his nascent powers and learning of his Kryptonian heritage was a novel take on the oft-visited character of Superman. Tom Welling’s sensitive masculinity was a perfect fit for the would-be Man of Steel and while the show took some time to find its voice, by the second season, it had blossomed into a solid addition to the Superman legacy.

By the ninth season however, SMALLVILLE had overstayed its welcome, and not just because of the crippling loss of Michael Rosenbaum as Lex Luthor in season 7. From the outset, SMALLVILLE was a finite story, the ending of which everyone knows: Clark Kent becomes a reporter for the Metropolis Daily Planet and dons the red, blue and yellow costume of Superman.Since Clark was a junior in high school when the show started, that left about six years worth of stories to tell, including the opportunity to deal with Clark’s college years, something rarely tackled in any medium (aside from the best-forgotten syndicated ‘80s SUPERBOY series).

But despite a show-guiding edict of “no flights, no tights,” the producers quickly began to prematurely integrate elements of SuperMAN’s world. The first danger sign came when Metropolis was transplanted from its traditional east coast locale to Kansas, within spitting distance of the Kent farm. By the fourth season, Lois Lane was on board. In season 5, Clark met fellow DC Comics heroes Aquaman, Cyborg and Impulse (many more have followed, including series regular Green Arrow). Soon characters were getting married and, astoundingly, most seemed to breeze through college in about a year, with barely a nod to that most transitional stage of life. Season 7 introduced Clark’s Kryptonian cousin Kara, aka Supergirl, and by the 8th season, Clark and Lois were working alongside each other at the Daily Planet.

The problem is that after nine years, Clark Kent is an adult (Welling is 32!), and while our hero (known as “the Blur” due to his super-speed obscured presence) sports a black trenchcoat covering a silver “S” shield T-shirt, he’s still not Superman. While earlier seasons had Clark struggle with what he thought was a despotic Kryptonian destiny, by now, especially with so many other superheroes around, Clark should be Superman. He’s supposed to be an inspiration, not a derivation. By dragging out the story, SMALLVILLE had become kryptonite to the spirit of the character of Superman.

Now that they've come to the final season, the march towards finally putting Clark Kent into the Superman suit is under way. Darkseid is going to be the major villain, attempting to keep Clark from fully coming into the light (and bringing the rest of the Justice Leaguers and Society members along with him). I'm not going to post the full Starpulse recaps on Pops, but here are the links for the first two recaps (obviously laden with spoilers).

Season 10, Episode 1: LAZARUS
Season 10, Episode 2: SHIELD

Avengers Assembled!

2010-09-20T17:58:00.004-04:00

For comic book fans, one of the highlights of last month’s Comic-Con was the panel that brought together, for the first time in public, the entire roster of The Avengers, the Marvel Comics super-team headed for the big screen in 2012. Since the end of 2008’s Iron Man, in which Nick Fury approached Tony Stark to discuss “the Avengers initiative,” fanboys have been teased with hints and cameos in almost every Marvel superhero film. After next summer’s one-two punch of Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, all the individual pieces will be in place to launch what could be the most epic comic book adaptation of all.

All those costumes in one film could be overwhelming for those who can’t tell a Kree from a Skrull, so we thought we’d give you a primer on who’ll be fighting for the best room in Avengers Mansion (yes, they have a mansion).

CAPTAIN AMERICA (Chris Evans)
Cap’s solo film (currently filming under the direction of Joe Johnston) uses the comic’s World War II origin story, in which a frail, 4F army volunteer becomes the sole recipient of a super soldier serum, turning him into a perfect human specimen. While official images have been sparse so far, a Comic-Con photo of a standee picturing Cap’s red-white-and-blue shield encased in ice would indicate The Avengers movie is going to adapt Stan Lee’s deus-ex-machina of a suspended-animation Cap being unfrozen decades after WWII by his would-be-teammates (to say how he got there would probably spoil the end of Captain America’s first flick).

IRON MAN (Robert Downey Jr.)
Following two successful Iron Man films, as well as an Oscar nomination for his turn in Tropic Thunder, you’d think Robert Downey Jr. wouldn’t be crazy about the notion of being part of an ensemble superhero film. Then again, the Iron Man role is primarily responsible for his career resurrection, and Downey still seems to be having a blas tplaying the part. Besides, his brash, likeable armored Avenger is likely to be the film’s biggest drawing point (at least as of now). As far as his role in the Avengers, besides those repulsor rays, the team relies mostly on Stark’s more human power: his vast wealth subsidizes the super team.

WAR MACHINE (Don Cheadle)
Downey’s going to have some familiar faces on set… Don Cheadle is reprising his role as the ultra-weaponized Iron Man counterpart, War Machine, who, in the comics was a member of the West Coast Avengers, a subsidiary of the super team that fought crime when they weren’t taking meetings with publicists and surfing (or so we assume).

THE BLACK WIDOW (Scarlett Johansson)
Although never referred to as such, Black Widow was Scarlett Johansson’s character’s code-name in Iron Man 2. In the comics, the Russian counter-spy has slinked all around the Marvel universe, as an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., partner of Daredevil, member and even leader of the Avengers as well as the B-list supergroup the Champions. It should be interesting to see how / if The Avengers tackles the Widow’s stormy romance with our next superhero…

HAWKEYE (Jeremy Renner)
Marvel Comics’ answer to DC’s Green Arrow, the master archer has been a minor character in the Marvel Universe since the 1960s, and a major player in the Avengers for most of its existence. The Hurt Locker’s Jeremy Renner seems like a glove-fit to play the brash bowman, currently the only major hero who’ll be introduced in The Avengers rather than his own film first. One thing seems certain, though… the character’s onscreen costume will probably bear little resemblance to the ridiculous purple suit he wears in the comics.

THOR (Chris Hemsworth) and LOKI (Tom Hiddleston)
The Asgardian Gods of Thunder and Mischief respectively, brothers Thor and Loki square off in next summer’s Kenneth Branagh epic, but with Hiddleston listed in the cast for the Avengers, perhaps by the end of Thor, they will have punched and made up (at least to form an uneasy alliance in The Avengers)? It’s more likely that Loki will take part in whatever massive evil requires a team of super powered heroes to conquer. In any case, how the movie balances the grit of Iron Man with the fantasy of Thor will be interesting to see.

THE HULK (Mark Ruffalo)
After Ang Lee’s overly introspective HULK and Louis Letterier’s video-gamey reboot, hopefully third time will be the charm for Marvel’s grumpy green giant. Mark Ruffalo takes over the role of Bruce Banner from the departing Edward Norton. Since the 2008 film established Banner’s transformation as a gone-wrong attempt at recreating Captain America’s super-soldier serum, we can assume that plot point will play in The Avengers. There is speculation that the impetus for the team’s initial formation is to capture (and recruit?) an out-of-control Hulk.

AGENT PHIL COULSON (Clark Gregg)
In addition to handling exposition, perhaps Coulson will do chores that the computer butler Jarvis cannot (in the comics, Tony Stark’s butler is a human who does double duty as major-domo to the Avengers).

NICK FURY (Samuel L. Jackson)
The glue holding together the cinematic Marvel Universe isn’t Stan Lee (although an Avengers cameo feels guaranteed), but Sam Jackson’s leader of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division (S.H.I.E.L.D.). It’s been reported that in the film, Fury, and not Captain America will be the leader of the Avengers, which could lead to some conflict of styles and ideals perfectly suited to the angsty, clashing Marvel Universe.

At this point, the plot is a tightly guarded secret (The Infinity Gauntlet, a jewel-encrusted glove that grants the bearer control of the universe could come into play). The selection of Joss Whedon as director should please fanboys, as his Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly showed he’s adept at balancing action and characterization.

So now it’s hurry up and wait. If both Captain America and Thor’s films turn out to be duds at the box office, that could put a serious damper on the excitement for The Avengers… with the mainstream audience, that is. As for the fanboys, nothing short of recasting David Hasselhoff as Nick Fury could keep them away.
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NOTE: This piece originally appeared on STARPULSE on August 8, 2010.

TV's 6 Most Satisfying TV Finales

2010-09-20T17:49:00.005-04:00

While ABC’s claim that Sunday’s LOST finale is “the Television Event of the Decade” may be a bit hyperbolic, there’s no denying the excitement... and anxiety… that surrounds the final episode of a beloved TV show. Rabid fans of any series demand not just closure, but emotional resonance. After all, we’re saying goodbye to good friends here, not just clearing space off the DVR schedule. With that in mind, here’s our list of the Six Most Satisfying TV Finales of All Time.

SEINFELD “The Finale” (1998)
Granted, the much-maligned two-part ending to the legendary show about nothing is not the funniest episode of the series, despite the return of co-creator Larry David. But the finale is ultimately satisfying because it’s an unflinching, unsentimental reminder that, despite the immense popularity of these characters, Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine are perfectly horrible human beings: Self-absorbed, vain, immature narcissists, really. Avoiding a cuddly M*A*S*Hification (in which antagonists become good guys) of its anti-heroes, Seinfeld stuck to its “No hugging, no learning” edict to the very end, making it finale manna for misanthropes everywhere. Anyone who expected or wanted Jerry and Elaine to get engaged at the end had this show confused with FRIENDS.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER “The Gift” (2001)
We’re cheating a bit here, as this intended closer of the seminal teen vampire series turned out not to be, when UPN picked up the show from the WB for two more seasons. But as finales go, this one packed a wallop, especially coming on the heels of the heartbreaking episode, “The Body,” which dealt with death as powerfully as any drama (with or without demons). In “The Gift,” Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) sacrifices herself in place of her sister Dawn by throwing herself into, and thus closing a portal opened by the evil Glorificus that will merge all dimensions and literally unleash Hell on Earth. For fans of the Scoobies, the final shot of Buffy’s tombstone, reading “She Saved the World. A Lot” carries far more resonance than the actual 2003 finale, in which Buffy becomes just one of many Slayers presumably headed to Cleveland (no, really).

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION “All Good Things” (1994)
While sci-fi fans were robbed of a proper finale for the original Star Trek series (unless the 1991 film “Star Trek VI: the Undiscovered Country” counts), the crew of the Enterprise NCC-1701-D got a proper send-off in this two-parter pitting Captain Picard against his arch-nemesis Q in a final battle to determine the worth of us pitiful humans. Picard’s time-shifting leaps will now feel familiar to LOST fans, and while the series had suffered a politically correct softening over the years, this resonant finale is a grand testament to Gene Roddenberry’s humanistic, optimistic vision of the future (and a much better sendoff to these characters than the tepid 2002 film, “Star Trek: Nemesis”).

SIX FEET UNDER “Everyone’s Waiting” (2005)
It’s no surprise that a show about mortality would end its five-year run with a heart-tugging finale (even after killing off its main character three episodes earlier), but nobody was prepared for the emotional wallop of Six Feet Under’s final six minutes. As Claire (Lauren Ambrose) pulls out of the Fisher Funeral Home driveway to begin her 3000 mile trek to New York, we flash forward to red letter days good and bad for the family, including the deaths of every major character, cramming about 80 years of story into six minutes that defy even the casual viewer to keep away from the box of Kleenex. And speaking of said tissue product…

THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW “The Last Show” (1977)
One of the greatest sitcoms of all time was one of the first to make its finale a true event, and its storyline proved to be prescient. In the episode, station WJM is sold to a new company that streamlines the news operation by firing solid workhorses Lou, Mary and Murray, while keeping the incompetent anchor, Ted. In the final scene, everyone gathers in the newsroom for a tearjerking group hug punctuated by a hilarious huddled shuffle to grab a box of Kleenex off of Mary’s desk. This is a prime example of a show going out on top (Mary killed the show, not CBS), and it set the precedent for all finales to follow.

THE SOPRANOS “Made in America” (2007)
Okay, haters, pay attention. Tony Soprano was not killed at Holsten’s while munching onion rings and rocking to Journey in the final episode of The Sopranos. Nor was Carmela. AJ or Meadow. Oh, someone was most definitely whacked, but it wasn’t anyone onscreen; it was us. The startling conclusion of one of the greatest shows in television history made the audience a part of the story with its final act. Confirming Bobby Baccala’s theory earlier that season that when you get killed, “you never see it coming,” rapt Sopranos viewers were so focused on every seemingly innocuous person and activity in that final scene (Who are those guys? Why can’t Meadow parallel park? Did that man look at Tony?) that when the screen abruptly cut to black, we never saw it coming. Anyone who moans about the lack of a neat little bow tied on The Sopranos really wasn’t paying attention for those six brilliant seasons. But for those who reveled in David Chase’s gloriously gray microcosm of pursuing the American Dream at the dawn of the 21st century, “Made in America” was as delicious as those onion rings.

Honorable Mentions go to THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW, NEWHART, THE FUGITIVE, CHEERS, JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED, GILMORE GIRLS and THE WIRE. But we refuse to put the saccharine-sweet FRIENDS finale or that overblown M*A*S*H ending on this list.

How will LOST’s farewell fare? Only time (travel) will tell, but we have a feeling that people who hated The Sopranos’ finale will again be angry. LOST has always been about bending the mind and leaving more questions than answers… and that’s not a bad thing.
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NOTE: This piece was originally posted on STARPULSE on May 20, 2010

Marvel & DC Slugging It Out on the Big Screen!

2010-09-20T17:41:00.004-04:00

With Iron Man 2, Kick-Ass, The Losers and Jonah Hex all hitting the multiplex this summer, the onslaught of comic book movies shows no signs of slowing (for better or worse). Leaving the Green Hornet (who started as a radio show) and Scott Pilgrim (indie press slacker hero) for later debate, we’ll get you up to speed on the heavy hitters from comics’ Big Two, DC and Marvel that are heading to the big screen in the next few years, culminating (supposedly) in epic team-ups for both universes!

MARVEL COMICS:
THOR (May 2011)
Kenneth Branagh is directing Chris Hemsworth (Captain Kirk’s father in Star Trek) as the Norse God of Thunder, another creation from the Stan Lee / Jack Kirby juggernaut of the 1960s. In the movie, the arrogant Mjolnir-wielding warrior is sent to Earth by his father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins) to learn some humility, and ends up protecting us from an invasion led by his evil half-brother, Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Expect some major battle action and cosmic scenery in this one.

THE FIRST AVENGER: CAPTAIN AMERICA (July 2011)
First debuting in 1941, Cap is considered the moral cornerstone of the Marvel Universe, so there’s a lot riding on the Joe Johnston-helmed flick, spanning WWII through today. Casting Chris Evans as the hero seems risky, and not just because he’s already played a major Marvel character (The Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movies); the smart-alecky Evans doesn’t have the inherent heft of say, Mark Valley (TV’s Human Target) or Jon Hamm (Mad Men), but Marvelites are hoping for the best.

THE AVENGERS (May 2012)
Captain America’s solo film is the final building block needed for The Avengers, the Marvel supergroup comprised of Cap, Thor, Iron Man and other heroes, presumably uniting to reign in an out-of-control Incredible Hulk (Edward Norton reprising? Maybe.). Sam Jackson’s Nick Fury is the uniter, and no doubt other B-list heroes (the Black Widow? Hawkeye? Ant Man?) will round out the roster in the ultimate superhero blockbuster. Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly) has just been confirmed as director.

SPIDER-MAN (2012)
Non-fanboys may find it odd that Marvel’s most popular character won’t be in The Avengers, but in the comics, Spidey’s traditionally been a loner. Besides, this reboot (to be directed by music video director Marc Webb) puts Peter Parker back in high school, still a little too wet behind the webbed ears to play with the big boys. Nobody’s been cast yet, and there are fears amongst the fanboys this movie will try to appeal to the teen set.

X-MEN FIRST CLASS (2011)
After the commercially successful, but critically-drubbed X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Marvel’s mutant franchise is in a state of disarray, with numerous films in various stages of development. First Class would be a sort of “X-Men Begins” taking us back to the first group of mutants brought together by Professor X. Bryan Singer was at one point slated to direct, but now is listed as producer on the film. Meanwhile, X-Men Origins: Magneto, X4, another Wolverine film and a Deadpool spinoff are all on the potential slate.

ANT MAN (TBD)
One of Marvel’s smallest (literally and figuratively) characters has been in development for years, with Shaun of the Dead’s Simon Pegg slated to direct. While most fanboys fear a less-than-reverent treatment of the shrinking scientist, we relish the thought of Pegg’s snarky sense of humor being attached to a somewhat silly character.

Meanwhile, over at DC COMICS:
GREEN LANTERN (June 2011)
The only major DC film currently in production, Green Lantern has potential to meld science fiction and superheroics as no movie has done yet. Ryan Reynolds plays the test pilot recruited into an intergalactic police force who wield rings that grant the user almost unlimited power. Director Martin Campbell proved his action mettle with the stellar James Bond reboot, Casino Royale, giving fans high hopes.

SUPERMAN: THE MAN OF STEEL (2013)
After Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns proved to be a letdown, Warner Bros. turned to Batman rebooter Christopher Nolan to oversee a new film version of the quintessential superhero. At this point, the movie is being written by David S. Goyer and Jonathan Nolan (with nobody cast, nor a director selected), reportedly featuring Lex Luthor (again) and the alien android Brainiac in a story that focuses on Kal-El’s Kryptonian heritage.

BATMAN (July 2012)
After the smash commercial and critical successes of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s return to Gotham City brings a sigh of relief for Batfans. While no villains have been confirmed, rumors swirl about Catwoman (Kate Beckinsale? Angelina Jolie?) and the Riddler (Johnny Depp?). What’s most intriguing is Nolan’s declaration that this “final film” will bring a conclusion to the story, in stark contrast to the infinite milieu of the comics. Could this be the end of the Caped Crusader?

SHAZAM! (TBD)
The character of Captain Marvel (Shazam is the name of the wizard who gave the hero his powers) has been in development off and on for about a decade. In the wake of The Dark Knight, Warner Bros. seems to feel that every superhero movie has to be dark and serious, but this whimsical, light character has always had a hard time being adapted to a serious tone. Time will tell what route an inevitable film takes (we’re hoping for light).

JUSTICE LEAGUE (TBD)
With The Flash, Wonder Woman and Aquaman also in development, DC plans to follow Marvel’s lead and eventually produce an epic film of their superhero group, the Justice League (of America). In 2007, Director George Miller was hard at work on the film, which was tabled in favor of establishing the individual characters in solo films before teaming them up. But following Marvel’s lead may not be the best take for the League, as Christian Bale’s über-realistic Batman just wouldn’t work in a movie alongside aliens and super powered adversaries. Besides, at this point, waiting until every member of the roster has his or her own film to lead into a Justice League movie would take probably a decade at least. If Warner is hot to make a super-team film, they should treat it as its own unique entity. After all, different versions of their characters already exist simultaneously in various media. It wouldn’t necessarily dilute the strength of Batman to have two different versions of the hero on film.

The bottom line is, both DC and Marvel have an almost bottomless well of characters that Hollywood can mine, and as long as moviegoers continue to line up to see costumed do-gooders, odds are someday we’ll be reporting on Michael Cera suiting up for Elongated Man: the Motion Picture.
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NOTE: This piece was originally posted on STARPULSE on May 5, 2010

Christina Hendricks vs. the Hollipops

2010-09-20T17:29:00.004-04:00

Hollywood’s IT girl of the moment is Christina Hendricks, the voluptuous redhead who plays über-secretary Joan Harris on AMC’s MAD MEN. Hendricks (for those of you not paying attention) is a throwback to an era of Jayne Mansfield and Russ Meyer, the antithesis of the Size 0 pretzel sticks dominating the tube and screen. But with Hendricks in the running for Esquire’s Sexiest Woman Alive, could she signal a new standard of beauty in Hollywood?

Don’t hold your breath.
This is not to say that Christina Hendricks isn’t hot. Oh, she most undoubtedly is. But part of the allure of the actress lies in the character she plays on TV. Joan is, despite the circumstances of sexism and paternalism in the 1960s, a strong woman, smarter than the men who think they’re dominating her. Joan carries a steely resolve as she suffers the slings and arrows of a society that underestimates her as a servant or mere eye candy, or, in the case of her ineffectual husband, a piece of property. All the while, she embraces her sexuality, and not just because it’s a powerful weapon in her arsenal. Joan is a sexual being, and she’s comfortable with it, which is enticing to both men and women.

To varying degrees, we can’t help but attach personality characteristics onto actors of the parts they play. But it doesn’t seem to be too much of a stretch to think that Christina Hendricks is as comfortable in her skin as Joan. She’s certainly not a celebrity to demand Photoshop liposuction in her magazine spreads.

Beauty is subjective, of course, and some people prefer thin. But surely I’m not the only person who finds the diminutive Alexis Dziena (Eric’s annoying love interest on ENTOURAGE last season) being presented as a bikini-clad sexpot in the execrable FOOL'S GOLD to be more than a little disturbing. Her tiny, rail thin body looks, well, more like that of a child than a woman in her mid-20s. But in Hollywood, Dziena is the rule, not the exception.

Hendricks is the latest Hollywood anomaly of the “big girl” who steals the thunder from the parade of starlets whose bodies barely seem substantial enough to hold the weight of their heads (I hearby coin the term, “Hollipops” for these walking candy sticks, feel free to propagate at will). But the fact remains that film and TV is dominated by actresses like Kate Bosworth, Olivia Wilde, Keira Knightley, The Olsen Twins (do they count as actresses?), Katie Holmes, Lara Flynn Boyle, anyone on 90210, Rachel Bilson, Rachel McAdams, Sienna Miller, Jessica Alba, Thandie Newton… the list goes on and on, as it has for decades.

There’s even a sizeable sorority of formerly voluptuous actresses who have since caved (literally and figuratively) to the teensy weensy standard ala Jennifer Connelly, Angelina Jolie, Christina Ricci, Renee Zellweger and Lindsay Lohan, just to name a few.

The point is, don’t believe it when people herald the ascendancy of Miss Hendricks as the dawning of a more enlightened age of realistic body types in the movies and TV. After all, most articles about Christina have to go back a half a century to finds a comparable bombshell in Marilyn Monroe (the same go-to comparison of every curvaceous star since). Nobody’s writing articles about how Olivia Wilde is bringing to mind the era of Twiggy.

But for those of us who find women with curves alluring, let’s raise a toast to the Bombshell of the Moment… however fleeting it may be.

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NOTE: This piece was originally posted on STARPULSE on April 28, 2010.

The Best and Worst of Martin Scorsese

2010-09-20T17:03:00.002-04:00

With Shutter Island about to open, cineasts are holding their collective breath wondering if the latest film from legendary director Martin Scorsese will add to his legacy or continue what some perceive as a decline from the Robert De Niro era to the Leonardo DiCaprio years.

THE WORST

THE COLOR OF MONEY (1986)
Paul Newman and Tom Cruise star in this superfluous sequel to the 1961 pool hall classic, The Hustler. Cruise is in full-on cocky mode (whether that's good or bad is up to you), while Newman seems to be sleepwalking through a film that isn't terrible, but, to its detriment, never truly feels like a Scorsese flick.

GANGS OF NEW YORK (2002)
Despite the rightly-lauded star turn by Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill the Butcher, this film is a mesmerizing mess. Its look at warring street gangs and political unrest during the Civil War is marred by an unwieldy, sprawling screenplay, a horribly unconvincing performance by Cameron Diaz, some awful soundtrack choices and an overstuffed climax. This film also marks the beginning of Scorsese's "DiCaprio period," as every film since has starred the man-child actor, often playing against type (more on that later).

NEW YORK, NEW YORK (1977) / BRINGING OUT THE DEAD (1999) (tie)
Set in 1945,"New York, New York" is Scorsese's attempt at putting his stamp on the musical genre and is an awkward misstep (which flopped at the box office). Old-fashioned visuals and big musical numbers are populated with unlikable characters (played by the mismatched Robert De Niro and the perpetually-histrionic Liza Minnelli) in an unhappy storyline that ultimately pleases only die-hard Scorsese fans. "Bringing Out the Dead" stars Nicolas Cage as an on-the-edge EMT in a film that's uncharacteristically unfocused, a style-over-substance Taxi Driver-lite, with a saner hero and a happier ending. It just doesn't work.

THE AVIATOR (2004)
Scorsese's lavish biopic of legendary filmmaker / industrialist / billionaire wackadoo Howard Hughes features gorgeous cinematography, an interesting (if somewhat sentimental) screenplay and some incredible performances (Cate Blanchett's Oscar-winning turn as Katharine Hepburn could've easily been mere caricature). The problem lies in the miscasting of the lead. Acting chops aside, Leonardo DiCaprio is not a chameleonic actor ala De Niro and simply does not have the physical gravitas to be believable playing someone as imposing and intimidating as Howard Hughes (he's also hard to buy in The Departed). For us, it kills the whole film.

THE BEST

MEAN STREETS (1973) / AFTER HOURS (1985) (tie)
Two very different odes to New York: "Mean Streets" (marking the beginning of Scorsese's cinematic relationship with Robert De Niro) is an unsentimental, unflinching and riveting portrait of gray morality set in the small time Little Italy underworld. The black comedy "After Hours" takes a bored / horny Griffin Dunne down the rabbit hole of 1980s Manhattan after midnight, alternately aided and accosted by a motley cast of characters including a beautifully sad Teri Garr as a Monkees-fixated waitress and Cheech and Chong as two art-loving burglars.

RAGING BULL (1980)
Robert De Niro is transcendent as troubled 1950s boxer Jake LaMotta in what many consider not just Scorsese's masterpiece, but the best film of the 1980s. All of the director's themes are here: Guilt (Catholic and otherwise), redemption, violence, Italian-American identity, family, and the definition and demands of manhood. Much of this film ain't easy to watch, but it's all beautifully choreographed with some of the most disturbingly arresting violence (shot in unforgiving black and white) ever put to screen.

THE KING OF COMEDY (1982)
Scorsese's most overlooked film, this black comic tour de force stars De Niro as a wannabe stand-up comic so desperate for fame that he (abetted by Sandra Bernhard) kidnaps a Johnny Carsonesque TV host (played brilliantly by Jerry Lewis) and holds him for ransom in exchange for a spot on the show. Filled with moments so painfully awkward they make Curb Your Enthusiasm feel like Full House, this pitch-perfect satire on media and celebrity (both how much it costs and how much some refuse to earn it) now seems frighteningly prescient in this era of fame-at-any-cost.

TAXI DRIVER (1977)
In a word, duh. Scorsese's harrowing portrait of loneliness, obsession and descent into madness remains utterly vital after over thirty years. Working with screenwriter Paul Schrader and star De Niro (in his most iconic role as the titular Travis Bickle), aided by Michael Chapman's stark cinematography, a stellar supporting cast, spare but genius editing and Bernard Herrmann's haunting score, Scorsese sets the template for modern collaborative filmmaking under a strong guiding vision. New York City never looked uglier...but you just can't look away. An undisputed classic.

As with any "Best/Worst" list, this is subjective (no doubt many of you are screaming about the absence of Goodfellas). And in the case of this director, "worst" is contextual; Even Scorsese's "bad" films contain more to make them worth watching than most directors' entire oeuvre. This is why "Shutter Island" needs to be more than just a good thriller: We hold Marty to a high standard. Here's hoping he again rises to it.
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This piece was originally posted on STARPULSE on Feb. 17, 2010.

An Open Letter to Christopher Nolan on Rebooting Superman

2010-09-20T16:46:00.003-04:00

Dear Chris,

Congratulations on being handed the reins of one of Warner Bros.' most valuable properties, albeit one that seems to cause no small amount of creative consternation.

Relax, Mr. Nolan, I'm here to give you and the team you'll select advice on how to handle Superman.
I'm one of many fanboys who was, let's say underwhelmed with SUPERMAN RETURNS. Using Richard Donner's classic 1978 film SUPERMAN as a springboard wasn't necessarily a BAD idea, but Bryan Singer and his writers, despite the best intentions, created a movie not exciting and inspiring, but ill-conceived and waaaay too mopey.

There were lots of mistakes. Superman abandoning Earth for five years was dumb. Giving Lois Lane a kid was REALLY dumb. There wasn't enough action. Some of the casting could've been better. But the movie's biggest problem was that, unlike Donner's film, SUPERMAN RETURNS didn't GET the character.

Chris, here's the thing to remember: unlike Batman (with whom you've done brilliant work), Superman is not tormented, conflicted, nor in any way DARK. Yes, Kal-El is the orphan of an entire world; yes, he has sacrificed a normal life in order to help mankind (side note: I'm one of those who chooses to pretend that the marriage of Clark Kent & Lois Lane in the comics is a temporary aberration in the overall legend). But he has no angst. In fact, he's a pretty well-adjusted guy.

Therein lies the paradox that eludes most people: What makes Superman interesting is how he is absolutely UNcorrupted by his absolute power. He could rule the world, but all he wants to do is help. It's not a conflict. For Kal/Clark/Superman, there was never any other choice. He's not vain, he's not arrogant (remember, the S-shield is his family crest; he didn't name himself Superman). This utter selflessness is what drives power-mad narcissists like Lex Luthor crazy.

But let's talk about what a Superman movie SHOULD be in this era of unlimited digital effects and serious superhero films.

The first step is choosing the right villain. SUPERMAN RETURNS may have shot itself in the foot by using Lex Luthor as its bad guy. Luthor may be Supes' arch-enemy, but he's not exactly a spectacular character. To reach modern movie expectations, the Man of Steel needs to do battle with one of his more cosmic foes. Brainiac, the alien android who collects civilizations around the universe could work. If Lex Luthor has to return, maybe he could be responsible for the creation of Bizarro, the Superman-clone gone awry.

(Oh, and since Warner will no doubt demand more than one enemy for merchandising purposes, please take a note from James Bond: Use a B-lister like Toyman or Silver Banshee in a pre-credits action sequence that requires no exposition and doesn't muddle up the main story… that NO superhero movie has done this boggles my mind.)

But for the primary adversary, I think the best choice is the massively powerful and sinister über-villain Darkseid. Created by comics genius Jack Kirby in 1970, the character's complex back story would have to be simplified for a movie, but at the core, the notion of an alien despot bringing an army of parademons and super powered baddies to conquer the Earth sounds like a pretty cool movie to me. The main thing is, for a successful reboot, Superman needs an adversary he can CLOBBER.

One of the problems with SUPERMAN RETURNS is that Superman was always being REACTIVE; he caught, deflected, repelled, etc., but never threw one punch. The giant machine gun sequence ended with the implication that super-butt-kicking was about to take place, but we didn't SEE it! And the only scene to feature a Superman-Luthor confrontation had our hero getting the crap beat out of him! Aside from the plane scene, there wasn't much to cheer in SUPERMAN RETURNS.

In fact, SUPERMAN RETURNS may be the SADDEST superhero movie of all time. Not that a Superman film should be a comedy (as SUPERMAN III painfully proved), but there needs to be a sense of whimsy amidst the adventure.

It wasn't just the tone that was too dark in SUPERMAN RETURNS; while Bryan Singer vociferously defended the decision to make Superman's costume darker and more complicated, it was another wrong move. In his 1978 film, Richard Donner wisely embraced the bright elements of the character (both literal and figurative), knowing that while they may empirically be corny, you don't mess with an icon. Cynics and hipsters may mock Superman for his goody-goody image, but he appeals to the id, to our innate desire to see good triumph over evil… his primary status as the quintessential superhero is visually represented by the primary colors of his costume: red, blue and yellow, not maroon, blue and gold. Go ahead and do some slight tweaking (the blue is up to you), but don't go crazy with superfluous design (oh, and while it may seem inconsequential, please note: Clark Kent's black hair is parted on the right; as Superman, the part is on the left, allowing for the trademark S-curl… Singer screwed that up, too). And Chris… the red shorts stay.

One thing that Singer got right was casting another unknown in the lead (Brandon Routh was fine, if lacking the laid back masculine charm of Christopher Reeve, but those were big red boots to fill). Unlike with masked heroes like Spider-Man or Batman, suspension of disbelief is needed to accept that it's Superman onscreen, not a well-known actor in a Superman costume (and don't cast too young). When it comes to the female lead, please pick someone more consequential than the slight Kate Bosworth. Lois has to be ballsy and formidable in addition to beautiful… see if Evangeline Lilly or Zooey Deschanel is available. I trust that you'll avoid any stunt casting… we don't want to see some American Idol castoff as Jimmy Olsen.

The bottom line is, as you've done so well with Batman, and as Richard Donner did with Superman, make sure that whomever ends up directing the next Superman TRUSTS the spirit of the source material. There's no need to retell the origin, everybody knows the basic background of the Last Son of Krypton. There is a real opportunity to make the most spectacular superhero movie of all… the raw materials are there, many of them remarkably untapped; the (super) ball's in your court.

If you need more advice, feel free to give me a call. I'm in the book.
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Originally posted on STARPULSE.COM on Feb. 17, 2010.