THE AVENGERS trailer! 1950s style!

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Iron Baby

YouTube – IRON BABY.

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comic book super-heroes tv themes

This was rescued from the ancient vintage ComicBookResources’ Apr 20, 1999 TV Themes website. Incredibly a lot of the sound-files are now on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine servers and are not just dead links so they are available for download. Read the rest of this entry »

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Iron Man 2 Trailer!!!!

Awesome!

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Disney acquires Marvel Comics for $4B?

Reportedly, Disney has purchased Marvel Comics for 4 billion dollars.

In related news, “Spider-Man 4″ is now filming, with Spidey battling the evil Dr. Flubber.

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“Offline” indeed

I was reading this archived message board post about how Nightcrawler was created.

Why? I was learning more about Dave Cockrum and had found a link to it.

This message board post from 2002 is Dave’s write-up about how he first conceived of Nightcrawler, pitched it to DC as a member of the Legion, and then brought it over to X-Men as a member of the New X-Men.

Dave posted to the board as “Dark Bamf”. Then I looked again at the board member information when this caught my eye:

“Member Is Offline”

Dave Cockrum passed away in 2006.

“Offline” is an interesting euphemism.

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25 years later, Larry Hama’s life makes sense

Larry Hama’s name is synonymous with G.I. Joe. He is known throughout comic fandom as the guy who wrote the bios for the action figures, as the guy who took what could have been a rather silly and short-lived toy line and brought it to life with deep characterization during his very long run on the G.I. Joe comic book.

For 25 years, people have been throwing out the line “And knowing is half the battle!” whenever they were talking to Larry. Until this week, he never knew this was a line from the G.I. Joe cartoon show (or rather, the PSAs at the end of the cartoon show). Larry had never seen the cartoon.

Just imagine what it must be like to have heard this phrase for almost half your life and never realized people were trying to make a joke for your benefit. Larry must have thought this was just some popular aphorism! Now, after ages of wondering, he finally knows why.

And knowing is half the battle!

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Frank Springer has died

Frank Springer died Thursday April 9 2009.

I do not know whether he was a good man. There was a (too) brief article in Newsday.

Frank Springer, a longtime Long Islander who was a prolific comics artist for such strips as “Terry and the Pirates” and “Rex Morgan, M.D.,” died Thursday at his home in Damariscotta, Maine, of prostate cancer. He was 79.

Frank Springer stands out to because he was/is a definitive artist/penciller in the original run of the American Transformers comic book series for Marvel Comics. That is where he stands out to me.

Appropriately I learned of the man’s passing from this BWTF.com node.

cross-postedhere

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Odd bit of plagiarism

As some of you remember, I got into comic books because of my late uncle Leslie, whose worn stacks of comics I would read whenever I was at grandma and grandpa’s.  He was into the old Marvel monster books, some of which were narrated by three witches.  Stories like a giant alien mummy inside the pyramids who would bust out and then remember too late that they were entombed because they couldn’t stand exposure to Earth’s atmosphere.   An alien conqueror who challenges all Earthlings to beat him in a one-on-one competition, and a guy challenges him to a sleep competition to beat his record of 1000 years.  That sort of thing.

One story in particular stayed with me because I’m arachnophobic.  A young boy is punished by his mom by being locked in a spider-filled closet.  As he grows up, he becomes an exterminator who specializes in killing spiders.  He gets a thrill stomping on them, taking revenge for what his parents did to him. Then one day a beautiful woman hires him.  He goes to her house, is shown into a dark room and plunges down until he falls into a giant spider-web.  A gigantic spider with the face of the woman (no explanation is given for her transformation) crawls towards him, saying, “You hate spiders?  Well, spiders can hate, too!”

Creepy!  I remember that story so vividly, right down to the look of some of the panels and the structure of the sentences.

Here’s the thing:  I’m reading a story in my “Showcase Presents: House of Mystery Volume 2″ and there is a story called The Exterminator that follows the exact same story I just told you, except that the artwork and dialogue has differences.  It’s either obvious plagiarism that would make Joe Biden blush, or a writer used his own story twice for two publishers.

I wish I had the original from my Uncle Les’ collection, but I don’t because apparently at some point Grandma got it in her head that comic books were turning Les into a Satanist and most of the stack went into the burn pile.  (Stupid 1970s.)  Does anyone else remember this story?

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Captain America is in good hands

Joe Johnston is a name that should be better known in the movie biz. His first film, “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” is a classic. “The Rocketeer” was a wonderful film, not only in capturing the feel of the comic book but as a period piece. (I re-watched it this year and was shocked to realize that Howard Hughes is played by Locke from “Lost”!) Speaking of period pieces, he also did “October Sky,” about four boys in a dead-end coal mining town who decide to pursue rocketry; if you have not seen it, put it on your Christmas list. I have yet to watch it without getting choked up at the end. He did “Jumanji”, which wasn’t my cup of tea but that’s probably due to Robin Williams being in it.

Joe directed “Jurassic Park 3,” a significant improvement all around over Spielberg’s “Lost World.” It’s the first JP movie where the kid was smart and not annoying. There is a joke with a phone’s ringtone that is the best bit in the movie. The ending’s a dud, but that’s entirely due to Spielberg’s animal rights meddling. It was supposed to have the main characters about to be eaten by the spinosaurus when a Blackhawk helicopter whooshes in and blows it away, but Spielberg quashed the idea. Steven Spielberg may have gotten his big break by detonating a shark, but since then he’s adopted this ideal that you have no right to hurt an animal just because it’s trying to eat you… or hadn’t you noticed that nobody ever hurts a dinosaur? Thus, the ending just has the army arrive and not do anything.

Oh yeah. Johnston, when he was working in special effects, worked on a few small films called “Star Wars”, “Empire Strikes Back”, “Return of the Jedi” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

Here’s hoping that his directing “Captain America” does for him what “Spider-Man” did to the cult film director Sam Raimi.

Hat tip: Dirty Harry, who points out that the Prince Caspian writers are also the writing team for Cap.

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Spidey 4 and 5 are on, with Raimi and Tobey

Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire are onboard for Spider-Mans (Spider-Men?) 4 & 5.

Too bad they raced through about 3 movies’ worth of plot and villains for Spider-Man 3.

Here’s an idea:

How about, for just one movie, Spider-Man takes on an original villain? How about a psycho killer? Or maybe terrorists?

It’s not something we think about doing for superhero movies, of course, but in comic books there are often some of the best stories where the villain isn’t just the same old costumed guy back again. Of course, with Batman you’d have to make about 30 movies before you ran out of fascinating bad guys, but Spider-Man has burned through just about all the big ones.

I can say this because as a DC-only fan I approach all of the Marvel movies with just as much ignorance as the general public. I realize the Spidey fans reading this are all hyperventilating about how I’m overlooking the obvious _______ but I have to tell you that to the general public the only “Name” Spidey villains are Green Goblin, Doc Ock and Venom. I know there’s also some electric villain, and a guy with a big globe head (though one of my friends told me that’s really a Daredevil baddie), and the 8-year-old son of one of my friends instantly recognized that the one-armed professor in the movies is actually The Lizard, who I’d never heard of before. (I’m not even going to consult Wikipedia on this, but let me guess: he tries to use lizard genes to grow back his arm and it turns him into a lizard. Am I right?)

So any Spidey-villains from here on out are unknown to the general public. How about doing what “Dark Knight” did and just focus on an excellent story that makes sense? (While you’re scripting, I’d also leave out dance routines and 70s music.)

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Iron Man reviews today and tomorrow

First off: I should have a review of Iron Man tomorrow, if my day pans out. Plans are to spend Free Comic Book Day appearing at Jimmy Jams alongside my buddies Tom Nguyen and Gordon Purcell, then head out with everybody who’s willing to see the movie on Saturday night. (Tommy and Gordy are heading off to another convention for Sunday, so they’ll miss out.)

I’m trying to avoid the reviews until I can make up my own mind, though I’ve encountered a few. “Dirty Harry” gives it 3 stars and some high praise, though he says that the film becomes a bit ideologically unfocused after 40 minutes. I’ve also been hearing nothing but good things about Robert Downey Jr’s performance, about his age and personal history lending well towards personifying Tony Stark.

Here’s looking forward to tomorrow!

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Who Am Iron Man?

Is Iron Man’s movie going to be based on the original character, the old fiercely anti-Communist patriot, or is he going to be another John Henry Irons moaning “I made all my money selling munitions and I suddenly realized that someone could get hurt”? That seems to be one of many questions dogging the blockbuster-in-waiting.

A lot of us just don’t know what to think from the trailers, and now the early reviews and leaks are making us even more leary. Are we being shown all the macho stuff in order to hide an “America is the real enemy” message, or could it be that Hollywood will hew more towards the pro-military themes that made Transformers a hit? Is it even possible for Hollywood to make a movie about an arms manufacturer without his shutting down the company and donating all his money to fight world hunger by the end of it?

Stan Lee based Stark’s personality on real life anti-Communist Howard Hughes, essentially wondering what if Hughes spent his money on flying armor instead of a wooden plane.

For more fears about the upcoming film, check this out:

Wildly Popular ‘Iron Man’ Trailer To Be Adapted Into Full-Length Film

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G.I. Joe Makes Doll History

I know I haven’t posted in a while. The reason is, I’ve been preparing a major, lengthy post on G.I. Joe. To prepare your palate, I thought I’d start you off with an appetizer. A little history here to those of you who don’t know the story of G.I. Joe inside and out (and can’t be troubled to head over to Wikipedia):

G.I. Joe was invented not out of some ideological drive to teach kids to love soldiers but mainly to give boys a dolly that their dads would tolerate.  Girls had Barbie dolls they could dress up; boys now had do- I mean ACTION FIGURES.  And yeah, the action figures come with different outfits which the boy can accessorize, but at least there were guns and grenades as part of the ensemble.

After 5 years of tremendous popularity, in 1969 they ran into a problem: Vietnam.  Soldier toys weren’t as popular due to the anti-draft movement and that bastard Walter Cronkite.  Young American lads were growing disheartened when they’d come home from school to find their G.I. Joe figures covered in spittle from Hippie Barbie, who was flipping them the bird and shrieking that they were “Betsy-Wetsy-killers”.

Hoping to salvage their toy line, Hasbro decided to turn America’s fighting man into a vague adventurer.  Instead of fighting the enemies of the USA, he’d contend with serious threats such as avalanches and jungle rot.  Fine, manly adventures, sure.  What it had to do with being a G.I. is a good question, but it still wasn’t sissy stuff.  This era is actually the most well-known to the public for several reasons:

1. The debut of the “kung-fu grip.”
2. A new technique for flocking hair, leading to the well-known image of G.I. Joe as having curly hair and a thick beard.
3. Talking G.I. Joe.

After a good six-year run, this G.I. Joe line petered out.  For antagonists, the Joe “team” was fighting aliens from outer space.

Then Hasbro tried “Super Joe”, a smaller toy line of superpowered G.I. Joe figures.  This was obviously followed by G.I. Joe being a dead product for several years.

G.I. Joe was reinvented in 1982 as “G.I. Joe, a Real American Hero”, with the singular being quite inappopriate in that there wasn’t a person by that name anymore.  Now G.I. Joe was an American special missions team which fought the terrorist organization known as Cobra.  The team was headed up by Duke (who never used the monicker “G.I. Joe” but is for all intents and purposes the main character) and is a diverse team of men and women with special training and weapons.  For instance, the Sheena Easton-looking chick over there, Lady Jaye (otherwise known as Lady J, or sometimes Lady Ray, or occasionally as Lady Ray Jay but never as Ms. Johnson), had special javelins that she threw…at, you know, tanks and robots.

This has been the G.I. Joe toy line as we have known it for the past quarter century.  The toy figures were Star Wars-sized, allowing for vehicles and playsets. The toy line was boosted with a robust animated series (including several full-length mini-series and an animated movie) and a very long-lived comic book by military-trained writer Larry Hama, who created backstories for all of the characters and gave them a depth usually lacking in the average toy.  Both the animated series and the comic books have been revived in recent years due to the 1980s nostalgia that also brought back He-Man, Transformers, Battlestar Galactica, Night Rider, Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace, etc…

As for the toy line, they began issuing anniversary 12″ reproductions of the classic G.I. Joe and Adventure Team characters.  The G.I. Joe name was even used for a series honoring real life heroes such as Ernie Pyle (the roving journalist who coined the term, whose own life was told in the movie “The Story of  G.I. Joe”) and platoon Sgt. Mitchell Paige, one of the greatest heroes of Guadalcanal.

That’s all for now.  Next, the history of the media Joe, and then my major article.

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Suspension of Disbelief ends

One of my favorite comics-related weblogs, and most underrated weblogs has ended as of the last day of 2007. Loren Collins’ Suspension of Disbelief has been there to correct the record and lend advice whenever the creators of our fictional worlds committed major and noticeable errors regarding the real world elements that are included in these fantasy universes. One of my favorite (albeit guest-) posts is this one, which although the image is broken, indicates a moment where George Perez is drawing New York and putting two famous buildings in close visual proximity whereas in real life the two famous landmarks in such geographical disparity that you would have to look in two different directions at once to see both edifices simultaneously. In theory the geography of the Marvel Universe’s 616 earth is nearly identical to the real world, that is, the fictional world is a pastiche… and George Perez didn’t research the real world skyline before creating the fictional view.

Just as Dr. Scott from Polite Dissent is a doctor correcting medical errors in comic books, Loren Collins used his legal training to correct the legal errors in comic books, actively seeing trials depicted in issues and then criticizing how realistic the trial portions were, as we have little choice but to imagine that many of the legal structures of the comic book universes are the same as the real world, except when explicitly declared otherwise. In which case there is speculation or conjecture as to how the law is different, where the differences are never explicitly stated.

In many instances the mistakes actually detract from the quality of the comic, and distract the reader. It works that way for some lawyers, doctors. For Phil Meadows he cannot merely enjoy a building without deconstructing it in his head and I could not watch Smallville’s political election plot lines without getting a sense of nausea. President Luthor did it to me worse.

My buddy Jim MacQuarrie often covers stuff that Loren misses, although his usual mission in the course of the weblog is/was to correct the many archery errors that crop up because pencillers who draw Green Arrow, Hawkeye, or Speedy often mess up royally as to how it actually happens, regardless of the ease of research. Even writers screw it up sometimes. Archery can only work in a certain way to even work, and despite that we can let little things go, some things we would not and should not. MacQuarrie is in a good position to catch that stuff, given that he “is an NAA certified archery instructor. Naturally, his arrows are green.” He also did other things, whatever he noticed, and is Christian enough to notice when the Simpsons screwed up Ned Flanders in a Super Bowl episode.

Suspension of Belief was meant to be a group blog, but that never quite worked out. For one thing most of the registered group guys aside from Loren or MacQ posted one or two articles at best. For another I never registered as I intended to, to write about a few of the things I noticed. Hopefully if my short attention span can maintain cohesion I can write about that stuff here on Monitor Duty. (Although sometimes Loren got to it eventually, as he did with the question of whether Jonathan Kent was running for State Senate or US Senate). Another one like that is one that should been done long ago and this particular article should have been proliferated to the far reaches of the internet: Loren’s logical and legal dissection of Civil War’s Registration Act. As it is it was the lack of relevant topics near the end which led to a lack of regular posting which led to Loren Collins ending the weblog. He will continue the purposes of Suspension of Disbelief over at “the CBR blog, Comics Should Be Good.” That is unfortunate, as I do not read that weblog regularly, or anything at Comicbook Resources. I do not intend to. (Well, I will make exception for the work of August deBlieck, Junior and some other stuff as it pops up). I do not read Comics Should Be Good for several reasons, despite the weblog’s quality. However in a few months I will make it a point to go back and review all of Loren Collins’ work on that blog, to see that disbelief remains effectively suspended.

I hope I can keep my mind straight long enough to affect parallel work here.

Also: us professional comic book readers, sophisticated adults that we are, are well-aware that Suspension of Disbelief is what we engage in so that we can truly enjoy a man who can fly, without saying to ourselves, “wait! a man cannot fly!” That is part of why Superman Returns was awful. It had non-Superman moments that rendered proper disbelief suspension impossible. The weblog I eulogize was so titled because it addressed the bits and pieces that were incorrect from the standard that we view a world, and thus interfered with the Suspension of Disbelief.

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AP story on Spidey Split

FoxNews has an AP story about the current wedding wipe storyline in Spider-Man comics.

A great quip:

“Considering I have been reading Spider-Man for
exactly 20 years now, and that seems to be the amount of time Joe Q.
has decided to rip from Spider-Man continuity, can I simply return all
of my Spider-Man comics for a full refund?”

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Rob Liefeld is a great artist

One of the areas I’m awful at is art criticism.  I can’t draw much more than stick figures, so when I look at Rob Liefeld’s art I have to say, “Hey, it’s way better than I can do!”

Sure, the human body doesn’t bend like that, and that poor woman has the worst case of scoliosis I’ve ever seen, and I don’t see how it’s possible to see an overhead view and a front shot and a back shot of Wonder Girl in one panel and when I was designing a four-armed character for Metro Med the first thing I asked myself was, “How would his skeleton be modified to make that work?” while Liefeld just sticks an arm out of a body mass and calls it done.  But when all’s said and done, I can’t draw.  Liefeld can.  Those forty great art pieces by Liefeld prove it.

Be warned: the vulgarity is thick.  But warranted.

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I like Stilt-Man!

Granted, the character, when written properly and in-character, is not a joke-villain, and not a professional leg-breaker. He’s simply one of those characters that gets thrown into the disrespect-list simply because so many nerds, I mean, Marvel fans, expect all the bad guys to be a Green Goblin, Electro, or Dr. Doom.

Stilt-Man is like what most of Flash’s rogues gallery was before the majority of the most famous members murdered a de-powered Kid Flash in cold blood. The villain’s only real stupid mistake is to continue to take up residence in a major city where he’s quite likely to casually cross paths with swinging super-heroes and flying super-heroes. That alone makes him no less of a genius than Doctor Octopus, the Wizard, or Doctor Doom.

Any dude whose primary gimmick is quick getaways and easy access to stuff up high isn’t someone that should be mocked or used as a throw-away death (although that’s what happened to Kite-Man, as he died an off-panel death in 52). Stilt-Man is great for the gratuitous fight that should be in almost every issue of a super hero comic book. He has also one a few fights. It isn’t the sign of a bad character that most of his arch-enemies slightly out-class him. An armored dude with enhanced strength and elongated piledriver piston-legs isn’t one to engage in innovation, and frankly if he started shooting death rays out of his wrists or became seriously dangerous then it would ruin the character.

Mind you, all it really takes to make me like a villain that some other reader believe is lame, a joke, or silly, is to be introduced to the character in one good story where the villain is treated suitably seriously.

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Catching up with Alpine

What’s better than a G.I. Joe parody?  A well-researched G.I. Joe parody that even knows which characters are married!

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Best Galactus Story Ever (To Not Be Reprinted)

In ROM # 27, the valiant Spaceknight agrees to become the herald (of sorts) of Galactus in order to save his homeworld, Galador, from the devourer of planets. The deal is that Rom must find lead Galactus to another planet to feast on in Galador’s stead. And so Rom does that.

How could noble Rom, who values all lifeforms save those of their immortal enemies, the dread Dire Wraiths, knowingly sacrafice another world to save his own? He does so… by leading Galactus to the Dark Nebula– home of those very same Dire Wraiths!

And then, when Galactus tries to eat said Dark Nebula…

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