Batman, Robin, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson and Henry Kissinger’s doppelganger request the pleasure of your company – Detective Comics #357
This is yet another of the countless imposter stories that have cluttered up the comic book landscape over the years. “You’re Deathstroke? But I’m Deathstroke!” You know the drill. Though it may get tired, it’s still an effective way to pique interest, and it does in this instance. Decades after publication, Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson sitting across from their costumed alter-egos got me to open up this issue’s cover. You go with what works, you know?
There was a Flash version of the trope presented here not too long ago. That one also featured the art of Carmine Infantino, who’s always a welcome addition to any party. Again: Stick with what works. The script here comes from John Broome, with inks from Joe Giella – the ”Plus 2″ on this party invite. And how do we get to the ”Huh?” cover? Well, it all starts when Bruce and Dick are invited to be panelists (for inexplicable reasons — I can see wealthy industrialist Wayne as having things to say, but who in their right mind gives a crap about some doofus kid’s opinions) on what has to be THE MOST BORING SHOW IN THE HISTORY OF TELEVISION:
It makes The McLaughlin Group seem like 24. (The host, William B. Williams, looks like the bastard love-child of the aforementioned Mr. Kissinger and Phil Silvers of Sgt. Bilko fame.)
The program has at least two viewers, dim-witted hoods left behind while others go out on a caper, and whose lumpy skulls would be a phrenologist’s dream study:
The guy with the dark hair reminds me of a sweaty, sexually aroused Hector Hammond. Believe me, I wish he didn’t.
They get the bright idea to sneak down to the studio, drop some handy gas down a ventilation shaft (they have it just hanging around their ratty apartment), knocking everyone out and kidnapping Batman and Robin. Which they do, leading to some remorse on the part the show’s host:
Quite the eye for talent.
The hoods, now that they have the Dynamic Duo, and not having thought through Stage 2 of their master plan, are perplexed as to what to do with them. They unmask the still unconscious pair, but, of course, have no idea who they are (or that they’re frat boy fakers). They get the bright idea to let them wake up and go home, and they (the hoods) will follow them back to wherever the Batcave is. The kids go back to a frat house, which doesn’t seem at all remarkable to these knuckle-heads. Then their crime boss gets wind of this whole thing, has an apoplectic “YOU DIDN’T KILL THEM?” fit (he’s the Moe to their Larry and Curly), and has them take him to the “lair” so that he can finish the job. They find the boys doing what fraternity brothers have been doing from time immemorial — yes, sitting in their underwear, eating sandwiches:
When I was in college fraternities were more about having sex with goats and group vomiting, but I suppose things change.
By this time Bruce and Dick have gotten away from the studio and, as Batman and Robin, have gone to the frat house themselves to follow up on the kidnapping. They arrive just in time to prevent the mistaken assassination, with Robin handling the boneheads and Batman tackling the head idiot with flagpole gymnastics:
I think Chris Farley pulled a similar high-risk maneuver (with a palm tree) in Beverly Hills Ninja. Great minds…
The final coup de grâce comes when these two combatants crash into a research facility, one with a convenient wind tunnel. I can think of no better artist than Infantino to illustrate the resulting chicanery:
When you incorporate a wind tunnel into your final blow, you have earned — earned – a KAZOWIE. (Look at the stiff, parallel to the ground body of the hood, and Batman stepping into his final blow — really, who would be better than Infantino at this? This sequence was made for him.)
All is well, and the scheduled television unmasking can finally go off without a hitch, with Dick stating/thinking the obvious:
Yeah. Thanks. Never would have got that on my own.
This is standard Silver Age fare, but I have to think — though I certainly have a Carmine-centric bias — that the wind-aided KO elevates this issue above many others. The image of the ugly con launching backwards like a human bullet is good for a laugh. (The frat boys dining in their boxers is funny as well, though for other reasons.) The “unmasking” angle? Whatever. In this case, it’s a means to a goofy end.
This comic was reprinted in one of the cheap, dreadful black and white Showcase trades (Showcase Presents: Batman Vol. 2). If there’s any justice in the world, someday we’ll get some shiny, full color love for this era. THE BATMAN WIND TUNNEL PUNCH DEMANDS IT.
The Cosmic Cube can eat a Twinkie without barfing. It is truly the most powerful object in the universe.
Twinkies must be the most mocked of all foodstuffs. Need to make a painfully obvious joke about the apocalypse and the things that will survive it? Twinkies are there! There was even a Twinkie knee-slapper in the most recent (and God-awful) Ghost Rider film, a dash of “humor” that fell, the same as the rest of the flick, like a lead balloon.
The unmitigated stupidity of this Hostess ad, one of the many that over the years have humiliated co-opted heroes and villains, is truly something to behold. It might even trump the Wonder Woman “pussy” experience. Here the Cosmic Cube, one of the great hyper-powered devices in the Marvel Universe, one prominent enough to be the binding agent of the cinematic Avengers series, has dumb thought balloons and falls in love with a Twinkie. Huzzah. And I don’t mean “love” in the ”enjoys eating — a lot” sense. I mean it in the “dry-hump the living hell out of that cream-filled confection” sense. Look at the little bugger in the second to last panel. HE IS HAVING THE TIME OF HIS CUBE LIFE.
So Captain America carries Twinkies around with him. Good to know. Too bad he had his Bicentennial training interrupted, whatever the hell his Bicentennial duties were. And the Red Skull can go wallow in shame for all eternity after that last line of his.
SHIVER ME PIGGY BANK
“Avast! Swab the decks! Hoist the mainsail! A penny saved is a penny earned!”
This is the last of the delicious 1940s ads from that Golden Age Daredevil book. If this treasure chest bank came with a hollowed out pegleg in which you could keep a stash of rum, THEN MY WORLD WOULD BE COMPLETE.
The Avengers flashmob Cloak and Dagger’s book (Special Cameo by JOHN BYRNE’S GIANT OBNOXIOUS SIGNATURE) – Cloak and Dagger #9
There are times when you forget that Cloak and Dagger are a rather remarkable crime-fighting duo. They can easily appear as just another lackluster pairing that you don’t really care all that much about, one whose titles have relied on heavyweight guest stars to move copies — much like this issue. The only Cloak appearance that I can remember from my younger days is when he managed to wrap up the Infinity Gauntleted Thanos, only to have the Mad Titan blow him up like the Hindenburg. OH THE HUMANITY.
When I was younger I didn’t know that interracial couples were once a big deal. I wouldn’t even have been able to tell you what an interracial couple was. Then comes the time when we grow up and learn about racism and bigotry and all those other things. (Yeah, thank God for growing up, we really couldn’t get by without knowing about that.) It’s only then when this pair of crazy crime-fighting kids become sort of kind of maybe significant.
Cloak and Dagger, though they’re more platonic than romantic, are trailblazers. There had, of course, been other cross-racial pairings in comic books, whether you take the something like the noted Captain America/Falcon pairing, or even the Gold Key adaptation of the television barrier-buster I Spy. But C&D were cross-gender, a situation that in earlier decades — and residual fumes of this still exist — would have dredged up all the old “Get your hands off the white woman” awfulness. And they were headliners. They had themselves a regular title, a place of their own, though all incarnations of it haven’t had much staying power.
(If I might carve out a moment to semi-relevantly daydream… Ever read much of William Faulkner’s work? His bibliography has long been a nourishing stew for so many, and whenever I see C&D, I wonder what the Mississippi laureate, with his life-long chronicling of the South and its ante- and postbellum travails over race, would have made of this funny book ”miscegenation.” In his (utterly magnificent) Absalom, Absalom, the Southern psyche was so torn up over men with even a drop of black blood mingling with the flower of white womanhood, incest was easier to accept. With the African-American Cloak’s insatiable hunger for light, a need so easily satisfied by Dagger’s light powers and one into which readers could easily find a sexual subtext, unreconstructed Southern heads might have had Scanners explosions.
Faulkner spent some time his writing scripts in Hollywood. I confess to allowing myself a fantasy of him penning a comic or two. Meltzer who?
Anyway. Daydream over.)
If Cloak and Dagger boldly went where no comic characters had gone before, they still have had a hard time getting a solid footing in the star-studded Marvel U. (I could care less about them, but I’ve always liked that Cloak’s power was his cloak, and Dagger’s power was light-daggers — I enjoy costumed vigilante onomonopia.) Their origin (two runaways linking up on the streets), their powers and their anti-drug milieu could be a bit trite, and Marvel had to resist the never-ending temptation to sawdust the meatloaf with a revolving door of noted guest stars. It was often a temptation too powerful to resist. Take this issue (Script: Terry Austine, Art: Mike Vosburg, Don Cameron), which transpires during the “Acts of Vengeance” storyline, one of the umpteen forgettable cross-overs that have come and gone over the years. Cloak and Dagger are recruited by a variety of D-level villains to help attack the Avengers, to which they agree, secretly planning to help the Avengers when the time is right. Fine and dandy. But those Avengers are the true stars of this issue, as even a Captain America-chaired civic meeting is more worthy of notice:
“Thor, please read the minutes from the last meeting.” “Verily.”
New Yorkers are in one of their semi-regular uprisings over the super-powered beings in their midst, and apparently only Robert’s Rules of Order can calm them. Then the “Who?” villains bust things up — “And you are? And this is regarding?” – and they have one very familiar face in their ranks. Have you ever wanted to see She-Hulk battle a gas-spewing robot Hulk with novelty gags popping out of its mouth? Yes? Then this comic, my friend, has just what the doctor ordered:
A lot of civilians get caught in the middle of the big fight between the villains and the heroes, and it falls to Cloak and Dagger to evacuate them. When I was reading this, it occurred to me that the reluctance of some to accept Cloak’s help — by entering his shadow realm and passing through it to safety – could be a metaphor for bigotry. Or maybe they’re just a bit leery about walking into the creepy guy’s abyss-cape. YOU DECIDE:
The two of them do manage to employ their powers in the actual defeat of their erstwhile doofusy villain partners, as witnessed by Cloak acting like a drain and sucking the (LAME) Hydro-Man down:
The issue ends with C&D sharing a quiet moment in their abandoned church digs. Cloak reads the blind Dagger a story. I don’t know if that’s a nice ending or a super-trite one. Again: YOU DECIDE.
There are also some pin-ups in the back of this slightly over-sized issue. I found this one interesting:
It’s nice. John Byrne is nothing if not a reliable, gifted artist. And his signature box isn’t quite as GINORMOUS this time around. BUT IF I MIGHT QUIBBLE FOR A MOMENT. Do we really need to the “second time I have drawn Cloak” commentary? Really? Do we care? Is this another example of Byrne injecting himself into his art? I admit to being predisposed to seeing obnoxious in many of the things that Byrne does, but I’d like to point out that the other pin-up artists featured in this issue — Charles Vess, Mark Texiera, Howard Chaykin and Walt Simonson – felt no need to annotate their work. Maybe if it was the first time I could see slapping a footnote on there (eh, maybe not), but this seems silly.
I know, it’s just a pin-up. It rubs me the wrong way, that’s all. Maybe I should relax. Fine. Whatever the case, I look forward to seeing the 17th time that Byrne drew/draws Cloak. I’ll know it when I see it, because he’ll tell me.
Back to the stars. It’s perhaps too much to say that these two young heroes were fictional trailblazers. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that Cloak and Dagger, and their unremarkable title, were a sign of the (improving) times. Maybe it’s that they were the first casual strollers on a trail that had already been blazed. Still, that a dumb 1980s kid like me could see their book, not find anything strange about it and pass it right on by, might be a small, odd – but welcome — marker on the continuum of progress. We’ve come a long way from Faulkner’s fictional Mississippi. Pat yourselves on the back America.
If you want to see this forgettable issue from a forgettable cross-over reprinted in a lush, over-sized volume, “Acts of Vengeance” has an Omnibus, the existence of which proves that there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that can’t be crammed into a big fat expensive hardcover. It features some of the Todd McFarlane Cosmic Spider-Man, so there’s that. I’m don’t know whether or not the John Byrne annotated pinup made the cut. MY GOD I HOPE NOT.
Right now John Elway is strapping Tim Tebow to a couch and dusting off his Nintendo.
I saw some recent reports that Tim Tebow, three years into his professional career, is finally seeking remedial training for his dreadful throwing mechanics. I wonder if head Bronco John Elway has considered pulling his eponymous John Elway’s Quarterback off the shelf and going full Clockwork Orange on Jesus Christ Quarterback, propping his eyes open with toothpicks so he can get a look at how quarterbacking, albeit 16-bit quarterbacking, is done. You know, shame him like a dog that just pissed on the floor. Tebow can take bespectacled Danny Wimpasinger’s (surname purchased at Surnames ‘R’ Us) place on the sofa.
Get the eye-dropper ready.
Eva Mendes for flaming urine. Seems like a square deal. – Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
I can’t remember much about the first Ghost Rider. Peter Fonda played the devil, I remember that. (Ooh, he was Captain America in Easy Rider — how META!) Sam Elliot and his great voice were in there too. Eva Mendes was a vapid Cleavage Delivery System. There were evil elemental henchmen whose powers consisted of floating around and standing still while Ghost Rider dispatched them without a whole lot of effort. And Wes Bentley, the boy whose piercing eyes stormed the entertainment world in American Beauty, was well on his way to career and personal rock bottom. I thought he looked drugged. Turns out he probably was.
I kept a movie journal back in those pre-blog, pre-Facebook 2007 days, in which I wrote down thoughts about the films I watched. I pulled it off a dusty shelf when I got home from the theater last night, just to see what I thought of the first film back when it was fresh (I haven’t seen it since). I was bored and disappointed. That’s all you need to know. The bar was set quite low for this redo/sequel/requel.
I was curious about whether Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance would succeed. I wanted it to. I wanted Neveldine/Taylor to bring their Crank mindset to Johnny Blaze’s asphalt world, to whip out the defibrillator paddles and maybe zap Nicolas Cage back to life.
Do they?
No. This movie blows. Hard. That’s the short of it. Some thoughts, with the mildest of mild spoilers mixed in:
- First, a gripe about general moviegoing conditions. The theater was mostly empty when I saw this, not a good sign at 7:00 on a Friday. One of the clusters of people was a four person family, with the two children, a boy and a girl, being in the “barely able to walk, ’Daddy can you carry me?’” age bracket. Yes, these model parents apparently thought that a loud, stupid movie about a flaming skeleton that kills people would be charming family fare. The girl mewled and cried throughout. Hollywood needs to understand that it’s not piracy that’s killing the movie experience, it’s garbage like that.
- The movie has the barest semblance of a plot, a boring ”END OF THE WORLD” tissue of prophecies and rituals and devil-children that was done to death about twenty years ago. It’s like a Michael Bay movie, but without the lovingly crafted grandiosity and glistening boobs. While I appreciate the film’s willingness to hurl us right into the action without laboring over hours of exposition, the breathless pace could use a few more quiet moments. Well, maybe not, because the few times this thing slows down it’s only to throw in the lamest cliché or joke that you can imagine. If you’ve seen the trailers, the film is merely an extended director’s cut of those.
- Yes, the flaming pee stream from the first preview is in the movie. And there’s also a reprise. EXCELSIOR.
- The Nicolas Cage we get here is more the Wicker Man “NO NOT THE BEES” Cage than the Wild at Heart Cage. He’s palpably disinterested, and rarely rouses himself into any semblance of caring. When he tries to be crazy and dangerous, it’s laughable. The man is in financial straits and has piles of bills to pay, and “in it for the money” underlies his performance — or the lack thereof. You can almost hear the creditors dunning him as he somnambulates his way around.
- There are brief, crudely animated interludes that provide backstory, which are blandly, badly narrated by Cage. They’re quite forgettable. One also contains an atrocious joke, whose punchline you can see coming from miles away, though you’re unsure of the form it will take until it hits you in the face. It’s patently, cringingly unfunny. When you see Jerry Springer, you’ll know what I mean.
- Ciarán Hinds plays Roarke, the stand-in for the first film’s Mephistopheles. He was a pleasant distraction, not for anything that transpired onscreen, mind you, but because I thought back to his time as Julius Caesar in HBO’s Rome, and fondly remembered what a great show that was. Then I thought of how that series’ notoriously expensive production led to its cancellation after two seasons, and I got sad. We never even got the movie that we were promised. Then I thought how studio execs managed to scrape together enough cash to finance this steaming pile, and that got me all irate. IT WAS A HELL OF A RIDE.
- There’s a hot gypsy broad with a lot of eye-shadow in this, one who fathered the son of the devil because of a bargain with him to save her life or YOU KNOW I DON’T REALLY CARE. She’s fetching, though. She can pick my pocket any day. And Idris Elba, fresh off his dignified turn as Heimdall in Thor, plays a French priest facilitator (when your belief system includes angels that turn into motorcycle-riding demons it’s time to lay off the Communion wine) who sets Blaze/Ghost Rider on the trail of the devil-kid who has to be saved. Elba’s dignity is still intact, but it’s a bit dinged after being in this. It’s like going into an airplane lavatory after a big fat guy drops a deuce — you carry some of that stink out with you.
- Part of this movie was lensed in Turkey, and I swear to God some of the scenes were set in the same spots where the Turkish Star Wars training scenes were shot. Fitting. Could Kemal Atatürk have foreseen what his country’s Westernization would entail?
- Christopher Lambert. Remember him? The Highlander guy? Who waaaaaants to liiiiiiiiiiive foreveeeeeeeeeeer? Princes of the Universe? Yeah, him. He’s in it too, providing graphic evidence of why men with full facial tattoos cannot ever — EVER – be trusted. His presence also serves as a final confirmation that we are ass deep in B-movie territory.
- Ghost Rider. The only times this movie remotely resembles a real, authentic, gen-u-ine movie spectacle is when the Zarathos pops his flaming head out and does that Ghost Ridering thing. His design is darker and more angular than it was five years ago, and there are a few small but delightful character touches to go along with it, like the creepy swaying he does in his first appearance when deciding who to kill. Also, he can now turn any motorized conveyance into a hellish approximation of his motorcycle, which I’m betting will lead to endless audience musings about him in flaming Go Karts and John Deere riding lawnmowers. There’s a lot of forced stupidity (see: flaming pee), but there’s still lingering appeal to seeing his flame-wreathed cranium on a silver screen.
I hated last summer’s Green Lantern. This could be worse. Most of the reviews I’ve read for Spirit of Vengeance, even the (majority) negative ones, have said that this is better than its predecessor. I’m not so sure that it is. I doubt it. The first was recognizably a film, and Cage had more invested in what he was doing. This is a watery mess.
I’m done. I don’t want to think about it anymore.
Because of the not-saving grace of Ghost Rider himself, the movie is rescued from a shutout. I give it one flaming urine stream out of five:
I’ll take the Buck Rogers Ray Gun. He can keep his dopey helmet.
This proud solicitation was found in the other day’s Daredevil book. Coming from a much later decade, I’m far more familiar with Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century than his old-time inspiration. But all of us — ALL OF US – can get behind a nifty Buck Rogers Sonic Ray Gun, one you can proudly point at imaginary foes while making preposterous, spittley approximations of what you imagine a ray gun would sound like.
It has a Cyclotron Chamber, people. A CYCLOTRON CHAMBER.
There’s a Yancy Street playset, right? There better be a Yancy Street playset. – The Superhero Catalog #1
Every year when the Super Bowl rolls around there are breathless news stories announcing how much the 30 second ads during that year’s telecast are going to cost. The number goes up and up and up. There’s always some angle in the coverage that the amount paid is out of step and obscene, that we should all bow our heads in collective societal shame. “At a time when there are children starving in the world blah blah blah.” Maybe so, though worrying about the price tag on Super Bowl ad space is the most First World of First Word Problems.
But you can’t say that the ads are overvalued. It’s the one time of the year when people give a crap about commercials. They’re actual content, not something begrudgingly tolerated at best or at worst completely missed with DVR skipping and convenient piss-breaks. If anything, the brief blocks of Madison Avenue time are vastly undervalued. People want to see these ads. They’re part of the show. They can’t get enough of them. At the party, when dopes like me are trying to listen to Chris Colinsworth’s caustic analysis of the last 3rd and 1 stop, the yentas are still yakking about the talking E-Trade baby.
Ads as content. That brings us to The Superhero Catalog.
I’ve managed to acquire several of these “comics” over the years (including a couple this past weekend). The Super-Hero Catalog and The Heroes World Catalog – and other iterations –are ads. All ads. All GLORIOUS ads. They’re so glorious, the 50 cent cover price is like the Super Bowl business. Undervalued. This is like when a kid was little back in the day and flipped through the department store Christmas catalog, but in this case the Christmas catalog is 100% toys and games and comics and I’M ABOUT TO LOSE MY MIND OH MY GOD. It’s muffin tops. It’s pudding skins. It’s all the good stuff. Not a vegetable in sight. It’s content.
I realize that this was published in 1976, and that the offers and order forms have long ago expired. I wasn’t even born in 1976. The secondary market for many of the gadgets and gizmos is exorbitantly expensive, and sadly, I’m a grownup now and can’t have toys cluttering up my single-guy-still-trying-to-bag-broads domicile. But flipping through this mag is like a dreamy FAO Schwarz shopping spree. There’s a “Just imagine…” element at play, and a strong one at that.
Here’s the mission statement from inside the front cover — note some of the recognizable names on the production crew, including Jim Salicrup and Roger Stern:
Most of the ads reproduced within are regurgitations (or perhaps they’re predecessors — gurgitations?) of ads that have been featured here before. A few: the Mangler, Ricochet Racers, Rock Reflections of a Superhero, Marvel Mirrors, Medallions, Pillows, and Mood Rings. And oh so many more. There are also a number of fresh presentations that caught my eye, including this eye-popping two page spread of early, pre-movie revival Star Trek goodies:
So one of the half and half cookie bigots from Cheron got an action figure. But what about the other 50% of that planet’s population, the ones that looked like Lokai and not like Bele? Where’s their representation? DAT’S RAYCISS. (And the “Mission to Gamma II” playset was actually released as a “Gammy VI” playset. Whatever. With it you could quite nicely approximate Vaal from “The Apple,” that’s for damn sure.)
There are roughly 1.5 billion t-shirts within, including the patriotic offerings shown here. Screw “Fonzie for President” – can I get one of the devilish Stan Lee “Excelsior!” shirts? Please? PLEASE?:
There are also — surprise — a number of genuine comic offerings, like the classic Son of Origins trade seen on the cover. The bouquet of treasuries was acutely painful. It taunted me. They. Are. So. Hard. To. Find. Nowadays.
Though it’s hard to uncover a clunker product in these pages, a few snuck through, as demonstrated by the terrifying dolls on the top half of the back cover. Baby Wonder Woman’s dwarf arms are disturbing IN THE EXTREMIS:
I admit to having a bit of a doll-phobia, but those are particularly repulsive. (The Super Friends placemats might make up for it. They’d definitely make any big dinner party special.)
You may see one of these Catalog books in back issue bins sometime. You’d probably flip right past it. “Ads? I’m supposed to buy ads? Pshaw!” But if the price is right, it’s money well spent. Trust me on this. I swear on the Red Stan Lee Excelsior T-Shirt.
A shy Rick Barry would like you to consider making Spalding your basketball of choice
“While I’m shooting underhanded free throws and sporting my 1970s floppy dog ears General Madine haircut, there’s no basketball I’d rather have in my hands than a Spalding.”
I came across this Rick Barry Spalding ad the other day – sadly lacking a Jack Davis caricature – and couldn’t help but contrast his long, successful career, one without any fan love, with the Jeremy Lin Linsanity that’s swept the American sports landscape in the past week. It’s amazing what not being a Grade A jerk can get you.
Barry has to be grinding his Grade A jerk teeth somewhere. And blow drying his hair.
Daredevil. Not that one. The other one. The unblind guy with a boomerang. – Daredevil #53
What’s that? You came in here looking for the horned Matt Murdock? Or, God help us, Mike Murdock? Sorry to disappoint. But perhaps you’ll be pleased to make the acquaintance of this red and blue togged gentleman. Myself, I was always a little curious about him. I always saw his title when I turned to the Daredevil section of the Overstreet guide, and got all confused by the seemingly inflated prices before the “oh, the Golden Age one nobody gives a fig about” realization set it. I vowed to one day purchase one of his books and peruse its old-timey pages. I have now done so. THIS IS A PROUD DAY.
For the equally uninitiated, the original Golden Age Daredevil, created by Jack Binder, was one of the earliest costumed superheros, making his Lev Gleason Publications debut as a backup in Silver Streak. His origin was revamped immediately after his introduction, and the change left him a costumed hero whose boomerang skills were honed by Aborigines in the Australian outback. Crocodile Dundee, eat your heart out. This particular issue, in the middle of his comic’s run, also featured his young sidekicks, the Little Wise Guys, a not-so-Little Rascally, Boy Commandoish group of kids who shared his ”Illustories.” The Wise Guys’ popularity eventually led to them taking over the series, booting DD out of his eponymous mag (they have sole possession of the second feature in this book, which was a taste of things to come). Ouch.
Charles Biro, who carried most of the story and art water on the series and turned Daredevil into one of the finer titles of the era, tackled the art chores on this issue’s cover and the scripting on the Daredevil-infused feature within. Norman Maurer pitched in with the interior pencils and inks. And that Daredevil story? I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the read. Biro’s writing rolls along nicely, at the breakneck, golly gee-whiz speed that makes the Golden Age so (sometimes maddeningly) special. Where else can you go from a museum office to Egypt in the space of one panel?:
That’s like the graphic cousin of a 2001 jump cut.
The crux of the story is that they’re all off to find some lost treasure, so that it can find a happy home – away from its native land – in a North American museum. “White Man’s Burden, Lloyd my man. White Man’s Burden.” There are, of course, a number of lethal obstacles in their way, and Daredevil and his fellas tackle them with a mixture of cunning and brawn. (And as for their made up Pharoah’s tomb quarry, all I could think of was the Three Stooges when they’d go off in search of King Rootin-Tootin’s cache.)
Maurer’s art is the real star of the tale. It’s magnificently detailed, though perhaps it plays for favorites with me by employing my preferred 3×3 panel layout format. I LIKE ORDER. I was particularly taken with this page, which features Daredevil trying to rescue himself and the boys from the cover’s onrushing water predicament:
I love the last panel in the middle row. No dialogue. The shadows behind the Wise Guys. The detailed hieroglyphics on the tunnel walls. This is quality work, no matter the decade. I’d say it wipes the floor with most of the flash and sizzle of modern garbage. “How am I supposed to read a comic book without blood and cleavage? ANSWER ME!”
And there’s action, too — don’t go thinking that this is a dull archeological dig, or like the last half hour of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which had all-man Indiana Jones taking no positive action and simply fleeing assorted threats. Is it dull to root a scoundrel out of an armored truck by making a firebomb — MacGyver-like – out of a shirt, sand and gas? YEAH, I DON’T THINK SO:
Would I still rather read a Gene Colan Silver Age Daredevil book? Yes. But this material holds its own. It really does.
Daredevil and his companions have passed into the public domain, allowing current publishers to incorporate their into their respective universes. The most prominent of those modern appearances occurs in Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon, where DD and the boys may have crossed paths with Fast Willie Jackson. (And watch out, Dragon, because the Wise Guys have been known to boot people out of their own digs and move in like hermit crabs. You have been warned.) Also thanks to public domain, you can find full Daredevil issues on the internet without guilt or fear of SOPA persecution. Many Golden Age books are dated dreck, but I can’t say that about Daredevil. He’s worth a look.
Get this, a jaw harp, a stone jug and a washboard and you could form the world’s most depressing hillbilly orchestra
I pulled this out of a Golden Age book that will be featured here in the near future. You know, the Golden Age, i.e. that sepia-toned time when all a young man needed for happiness was a girl, a v-neck sweater and an ornately detailed harmonica. Gosh!
The Protocols of the Elders of Amazo – Superman Special #3
I remember quite vividly having this comic many moons ago, and it’s managed to hang around in the back of my subconscious for the last couple of decades. The contents haven’t been perused in those intervening years, which means that there was something that remarkable within had to make it tattoo itself onto the cerebellum. I can tell you that it wasn’t the standard classy cover from the recently departed Eduardo Barreto that locked this baby in (though it’s quite good). YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO WAIT A SECOND FOR THIS SHOCKING REVEAL. Sorry. Scumbag move, I know.
Having bought and re-read the book in recent weeks, I beg your indulgence that I might whinily complain for a moment. Lend me your eyes and ears. Here’s the moan: This comic is terrible. TERRIBLE. It’s the most unspecial Special I’ve ever read in my entire life, and believe you me, I’ve read some awful crap.
Why’s it so bad? One word: AMAZO. Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t have any issue with the character, his origins, or his appearance. That’s all fine and dandy, though the look he sports here makes me think of a half-costumed Vulcan drag queen. The problem is that there’s a storytelling trap that goes along with the power-copying ability of the Justice League’s android nemesis, and it’s a big one. He makes writers feel that they have to take a checklist of the League’s roster and go down from character to character to make sure that Amazo employs, if not all, a substantial number of the members’ powers. The end result is always like reading a plot laundry list. “Look he’s screaming like Black Canary now he’s shrinking like the Atom OH MY GOD HE’S TALKING TO FISH.” The extra page count in this ”Special” exists solely so that we can run the fantastically boring “Amazo’s Stolen Powers” gauntlet. Get it all in, boys!
There are other demerits here, make no mistake. That Superman comes off as a doofus is pretty bad (you’ll see). But Amazo is the worst. The interminable checking-off stretches the Superman vs. Amazo contretemps to unbearable lengths, so far it makes the Quiet Man fight seem like Mike Tyson’s 91-second K.O. of Michael Spinks. It’s the proverbial sawdust stuffed into meatloaf. It’s like reading the phone book, all the way from Aaronson to Zuckerman.
Join me, so that you might share my vexation! Or go completely in the opposite direction! Your choice!
“Amazo Means Mayhem!” (Plot: E. Nelson Bridwell, Script: Len Wein, Pencils: Irv Novick, Inks: Pablo Marcos) starts when Superman makes his first colossal bonehead move — or the last in a series of bonehead moves, depending on how you look at it. He’s rebuilt the previously destroyed Amazo and brought him to the impregnable Fortress of Solitude, where no one could possibly steal- OH SON OF A…:
Another proud moment in the career of the big blue banana.
Who pilfered him? It’s now that we come to the reason that I remembered this book — though not it’s mediocrity — for so many years:
Professor Ivo, Amazo’s creator. This. Guy. Grossed. Me. Out. Still does. I don’t if the scaley crap on his skin is worse, or the way his nose links up with his lower lip. Probably the latter. THAT’S NASTY. But the sight of him makes me want to throw up (really), though I guess that’s what you have to go for with the self-loathing, desperate for longevity Ivo. Misson accomplished. Big time. Congrats all around.
One final thing about the good Professor, because, though he appears again in the story, I won’t allow his mug to appear again in this post. I’ve long thought that his look here is close to what an anti-semite sees in their foul anti-semitic nightmares. Something like that frightful visage above probably kept Henry Ford up nights (…zzzzassemblylineszzzzjewszzzz…). Ivo is like an inadvertent avatar for the International Jewry bogeyman. I admit, I’m no expert in the dark world of Jew-hatred, so I could be off-base. Just an impression.
Anyway, Ivo has stolen Amazo so that he can drain Superman’s powers to help with Ivo’s never-ending quest to cheat death and get his non-ipecac face back. And Clark has more problems than the missing Amazo, as even his Ron Burgundy day job offers him no respite:
This one even follows him home after a night on the town with Lana Lang:
No paint left over for some extraneous “WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN” graffiti?
Clark opts to tackle one problem at a time, and changes into the cape and tights and to face off with Amazo (who had earlier called out the Man of Steel at the WGBS studios). This is when we get the 438 page laundry list. One. By One. We go through. The powers. Like counting sheep. In hour 47 of the battle, Superman finally immobilizes his foe when he uses Plastic Man’s (or Elongated Man’s — I didn’t really care at this stage) stretching against him. But Superman — as seen above — can also be a super-idiot:
Ohhhhh. The ring. Forgot about that. Even though it was used moments before. AMAZO EVEN USED IT ON THE COVER, YOU DOPE.
The fight is one big stalemate, so Amazo dashes off to the Fortress of Solitude to re-arm, planning to syphon off the collective powers of the Bottle City of Kandor’s denizens. He’s in for a rude surprise:
Superman has a thing about punching foes through the torso. That’s rather chilling when you think about it.
Supes then reprograms Amazo and uses him to trap Ivo, who will go on having a face that makes me want to vomit. Problem #1 solved. But there’s still the whole secret identity thing, which is the bigger logistical nightmare. Will Kal-El be outed like a superhero Rock Hudson? He’s already put two and two together and tied the notes to a magician/hypnotist named Presto, the nephew of the Daily Planet’s obituary editor, who had learned — but promised to keep secret — Superman’s identity when he hacked into the Fortress of Solitude’s computer. (I’m getting dizzy.) Here’s how that reveal went down:
So this douche was just leaving the taunting messages for a bit of “fun.” Superman resists the temptation to have a reprise of the Amazo climax and punch a bloody hole in this guy’s chest. I’m not sure I would have been so calm.
Instead he opts for one of his least used — and perhaps non-existent — powers:
Yes, super-hypnosis, which ranks right around the cellophane S-symbol from Superman II in the “give me a f–king break” index. But who am I to mock? SEND SOME OF THAT MY WAY, SUPES. I wish I could forget…forget…forget…
Some things are better left unsaid, and it turns out some things are better left un-reread. I still appreciate the Novick/Marcos work on Ivo, which retains its retch-factor over the course of years, but this is one of the weaker “Special” efforts from that time period. I can’t help juxtaposing it with the contemporaneous Superman Annual #10 that I reviewed here a number of months ago. That was extra-long as well, and it also had one of the dumbest plot devices ever unfurled (the astral Sword of Superman). But it was a fun, grin-engendering tale. This isn’t. This is dull.
With Amazo, though, and his de rigueur checklist, ”dull” might be a congenital defect, and one that’s hard to overcome.
Practice with Boaterific and one day you too can flip a cruise ship on its side and abandon it before the women and children!
If truck stop playsets aren’t your cup of tea, then maybe you should try these Boaterific toys. Work yourself up to a Joseph Hazelwood/Francesco Schettino degree of maritime incompetence. Sink that bitch!
Young Bill Mantlo, Young Keith Giffen and Young Klaus Janson bring you the very nude debut of WOODGOD – Marvel Premiere #31
That’s one of the few character mastheads that looks like it could use some Murphy’s Oil Soap.
It’s a ridiculous feature of comic books that superbeings, godly creatures with powers far beyond mortal ken, wear undies. The Silver Surfer had two things back in the day: the Power Cosmic and tighty whities. Fin Fang Foom — a dragon, of all things – wore his Fruit of the Foom’s. Preposterous. But it was, and is, a welcome addition. None of us wants to get any more familiar with these characters’ packages.
We’re not as fortunate here. At no point in this comic do we get acquainted with Woodgod’s little Woodgod. Throughout the book it’s either shrouded in shadow or covered by his satyr body’s hair, which extends Tony Shalhoub-like over much of his body. But he is very, very nude. Man-Bat nude.
Not to get hung up on that, though. Moving on.
Woodgod. It’s hard to write that with lower cases. WOODGOD. Bill Mantlo would go on to dash off scripts for Rom, Micronauts and countless other characters. Keith Giffen would become, among other things, one of the foremost chroniclers of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Klaus Janson would one day form a great byline with Frank Miller, whose famous pencils he made his own. But for one brief, goofy moment early in their careers, these guys teamed together to create one of the strangest minor characters in the Marvel Universe, Marvel’s Pan. And Jack Kirby even did the cover for this moment, as if to further drive home that this character would surely enter the august pantheon in the MIGHTY MARVEL MANNER. Fantastic Four –> Thor –> Woodgod.
Well, Woodgod didn’t. But his debut is still worth a gander, if for no other reason than to see three comics veterans at the formative stages of their working lives. Not at their peaks, mind you. Far from it. But feeling their way around, much like their fictional chimera.
Strap yourself in.
What a way to begin — we open with this odd-looking dude wandering down an abandoned street. FULL FRONTAL wandering:
Woodgod, in a dull, absent-minded search for his pops, meets only two other living things here on this dusty lane, a man and a dog. Both attack him. He kills them both, as he goes into a red-eyed kill mode. Not much else to say besides that, but remember that Woodgod met a living man. That’ll be important in a sec. For now, though, it’s enough to note that both encounters touch off flashbacks, including one to some of his very first moments on Earth:
Yeah, doc. I’m sure he’s never going to pick up on the cloven hooves.
Woodgod is the product of some Frankenstein/Dr. Moreau/tampering-in-God’s-domain experiments by David Pace (a scientist, obviously) and his wife. It’s not clear what the motivation was for Woodgod’s creation, whether the Pace’s are a childless couple taking matters into their own crazy hands. But when do mad scientist’s ever need a reason? I’m harkening back to Dr. Mephesto in South Park, who once spliced Swiss cheese with chalk and a beard. Just because.
It isn’t long before rumors of what’s going on up in the forest filters back to the nearby townspeople. Or, more precisely, the townspeople in a bar. And what happens when liquored-up hillbillies get an inkling that there’s something unnatural happening in their neighborhood? You guessed it — METAPHORICAL PITCHFORKS AND TORCHES. Rifles in this case.
They march up, bombard Dave with some “We come fer the creecher” threats, and, well, you can probably guess what goes down:
The drunk yokels then bust into the lab, where they spot giant jars of pink/purple mist (you can see the jars behind the ”proud parents” in the second interior scan — and in the lower left panel above). Not understanding what they’re seeing, confused drunken yokels do what confused drunken yokels have been doing for millenia, and bust things up. This releases poisonous gas — apparently the good doctor and his wife were also weaponizing Pepto-Bismol – which kills everyone except the head-shot Woodgod.
And that brings us up to date.
Back in the present, there’s a shady organization, who sponsored Pace’s work, that’s checking up on what’s going on, and they’re more than a little curious about how the town got wiped out and what the hell that thing is that’s roaming up and down the streets like a naked tumbleweed. They decide to investigate, donning hazmat suits and mounting up on their stupid looking flying contraptions:
“Floater.” Somehow appropriate.
They move in to attack the genetically-enhanced Woodgod, who fights back and hits them with everything at his disposal, including the U.S. mail:
The men and their dopey contraptions are shot down in rapid succession, and one man dies instantly when Woodgod busts open his faceplate and exposes him to the toxic air. Yes, the deadly air that killed every man and beast for miles and miles around, but not that the dog and the man were traipsing about in a few pages and a few moments before. IT DOES NOT SEEM THAT THIS WAS A WELL THOUGHT OUT PART OF THE PLOT.
We end with some ambiguity, as the head g-man is spared Woodgod’s wrath:
It really makes you think. About what, I don’t know. But it sure makes you think.
And what are we to make of this? First, let’s deal with the art. It’s stiff. You can see hints of the future styles of the two artists, especially Janson’s aggressive — and some would say overwhelming – strokes, but here it just feels cramped. I’M NOT BITCHING. Just observing. It takes time for people to get their groove. Even in something as simple and dopey as writing a blog, and takes some time to get your feet. I cringe when I read some of my earliest posts, that are — wait for it — incredibly stiff. I empathize, and this blog here can by no means be considered art, much less commercial art flung out to the teeming multitudes. And you can tell that Giffen and Janson put work into this comic. Young. Hungry.
Same with Mantlo. He’s trying so hard here, maybe too hard. Take Woodgod’s ”scream” verbalization, which I think is supposed to be a simple mind’s symbol for man’s inhumanity to man. Violence, that sort of thing. I think. I don’t know. The point is, Mantlo’s trying so hard to make this little comic deep, into some Rod Serling meditation on the folly of man, when really all it should be about is the silly FrankenPan that gets grown and grafted and inadvertently unleashed on the world without any pants. Like Giffen and Janson, he’s young and hungry, and probably a little over-eager. This outpaced ambition detracts from the comic’s objective quality, but it’s endearing, and that latter point matters more than the rest.
Quibbles aside, this is still a decent read. Mantlo’s Rom stories are some of the foundation cement of my comic life, and I’m always happy to see his name in the credits. I was here. And it’s fun to read him macheteing his way through an early script with Giffen and Janson at his side, even with the glaring error (or what appears to be one, I might have missed something) of the toxic, deadly, inescapable poisonous gas that kills everyone except for the man and the dog. All is forgiven.
And I could be way off-base with my observations here. Just inklings I guess, but it really seems that the exuberance of youth permeates the newsprint.
Woodgod. WOODGOD. He is what he is. FrankenPan has made a splattering of subsequent appearances over the years, including one in Marvel Team-Up that followed up on the events in this origin story. Track it down — along with this one — if you’re desperate for more of his godly wood. I’m shocked — SHOCKED — that Woodgod has never received the Omnibus/Archives/Masterworks/Absolute treatment. Who wouldn’t want to see his hairy shoulders and exposed yet shadowy crotch in a lush, oversized volume?
Hulk smile at you, BUT HULK WAG FIST AT YOU TOO.
I’ve posted the DC Comics Joker/Milk Duds version of this ad before. This one lacks the negative “poison foodstuffs” associations, but if I might make one brief observation about the cheerful characters below:
Well, a few observations. First, Red Sonja should go easier on the rouge. “Back off the red, Red!” Second, that may be the dumbest Ben Grimm has ever looked, like someone just popped him in the face and he’s seeing stars. Or he’s drunk. Third, Spider-Man’s pose for some reason (maybe it’s that the webbing print forms an optical illusion that his hands are facing the other way, I don’t know) makes me think of Liberace. “I wish my Uncle Ben was here.”
The last thing. Remember the Comedy Central cartoon Dr. Katz? In it, a psychologist would counsel a stream of comedians/celebrities that plopped themselves on his couch, all of whom did their routines or recounted stories of varying hilarity. One ”patient” was funyman Lew Schneider. He had a spiel about the conflicted way that men hug, with the pat on the back that goes along with the embrace. “I’m hugging you, BUT I’M HITTING YOU.” View any episode of The Sopranos for countless examples of the man-hug.
The cheerful Hulk above, with his toothy grin and clenched ham hock fist, reminded me a lot of that routine. HULK HAVE TROUBLE ARTICULATING EMOTIONS.
Captain America is the only one that comes out of this thing unscathed. He must have a good agent.
Anyway, you could certainly win a whole lot of crap in this sweepstakes. Here’s the rest of the booty:
I had a couple of parachutes for my G.I. Joe and Cobra figures as a kid. They somehow violated all laws of physics by making the plummeting men fall faster than they would unaided. The parachutes were a lot of fun, that is, if you enjoyed watching your beloved toys violently corkscrew into the ground from an upper-storey window. It doesn’t look like the chute above is of vastly superior quality.
Recreate Close Encounters of the Third Kind’s opening scene in a sandbox. YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO.
Laughlin: What the hell is happening here?
Project Leader: It’s that training mission from the Naval Air Station in Ft. Lauderdale.
Laughlin: Who flies crates like these anymore?
Project Leader: No one. These planes were reported missing in 1945.
Laughlin: But it looks brand new. Where’s the pilot? I don’t understand. Where’s the crew? Hey! How the hell did it get here?
Doesn’t the whole “no glue, no paint, all you have to do is snap them together” thing take away some of the essential ethos of model building? You know, the glorious tedium? The painstaking painting? The agony and the ecstasy? Why not just buy a complete plane, one ready for action, if you’re just going to half-ass it?
I ask these questions as the grown up version of the kid who’d make a complete hash of a model and then violently chuck the glue-riddled Frankencar against a wall.
Then again, if you have to forge your own Close Encounters playset in a hurry, ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES.
Eat your greens!
I want to be clear before I start busting Mr. T’s balls. I like the guy. When I sat down and read this comic, it occurred to me that he might have been the very first African-American actor that I could recognize as a kid, one where I knew who they were apart from the role that they played. Between his B.A. Baracus A-Team days and his terrifying turn as Clubber Lang in Rocky III (HE KILLED MICKEY — BASTARD), he was hard to miss for a youngster. And he played both a hero and a villain. Such range. Plus, and this was the cherry on top, he wrestled in the WWF, teaming with Hulk Hogan to beat the living hell out of Rowdy Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff. He was a human Swiss Army Knife. Versatility, baby.
While few have ever capitalized on a fearsome glower more than Mr. T, behind it there’s a guy who’s not full of himself. His growling public persona has always been ripe for satire, and he’s been more than willing to take some ribbing. He has a sense of humor about it all. You cannot not like that. Finally, he beat cancer (T-cell lymphoma — you think he and his doctor wryly smiled at that diagnosis?), or, to perhaps put it more accurately, he knuckle-sandwiched it into a bloody, insensate pulp. I tip my cap to him for these things. Truly.
I debated whether or not to include this comic among the Black History Month selections. February is a time when individuals like Booker T. Washington, Dr. King and Frederick Douglass get careful, deserved consideration, not a guy famous for grumblingly flattening people. But, if he lacks broader significance in the African-American historical scene, Mr. T has a good deal of cachet for me personally, and he assuredly has a spot in the entertainment pantheon. And, fortunately(?) for us all, he had this comic book, in which fools were pitied and jibber-jabber was not allowed. Ripe for picking.
On to said comic.
The leitmotif of this 1994 series was supposed to be Mr. T’s positive message to the world. What positive message, you ask? I wish I could tell you. Because, apart from a back cover ad that should leave T cringing in shame all these many years later (more on that in a moment) and ads for T-Force t-shirts, there’s little evidence of what the bedrock of Mr. T’s credo was. Unless said credo involved using punches and kicks to resolve all of life’s problems, because all of life’s problems devolve rapidly into S.E. Hinton gang fights. If that was the theme, than it was received loud and clear. Not just received loud and clear. It’s drilled into our heads. Over. And over. And over. And over.
Other issues, including the Neal Adams-pencilled premier (reviewed amusingly here), could get a tad far-fetched, with T displaying nigh-superhuman abilities while battling hordes of folks who seemed miles out of place in his inner city stomping grounds (no Fast Willies around, though). This selection (Script: Mike Baron, Art: Tony DeZuniga,Cover: Jeff Butler) is tame in that regard. No ninjas or cyborgs or aliens. It starts with our eponymous champion putting some of his Rocky experience to good use as the corner man — I’m sure he watched Burgess Meredith like a hawk – for a journeyman fighter stepping into the ring with a champ. But first T and his charge have to get to the ring, and in this surly crowd, ready for a racially-tinged battle of black fighter vs. white fighter, that could be challenging. Challenging for anyone else, that is, besides a guy who face-kicks first and asks questions later:
Instant orthodontia. Stay in school!
T’s fighter loses a questionable decision after knocking down his opponent (if you have to steal a premise, steal from the best). During the fight he noticed some commotion in a dark corner of the hall. When he’s done with his corner duties, he investigates and butts his nose in on a drug deal:
Respect your elders!
That face re-arranged, T heads back to his neighborhood, where he escorts a landlady on her rent-collecting rounds. Sure enough, they’re soon beset by toughs, too many for T to handle alone (as hard as that is to believe). A young acquaintance spots the trouble and (off-panel) apparently uses Jack Bauer’s 24 teleportation device to get two people across town instantaneously — the two erstwhile ring opponents, now bound by a common desire to savagely concuss scumbags:
Ebony and Ivory, punching together in perfect harmony. Drink your milk!
Finally, T confronts a local crack-dealer, one that’s further corrupting the wayward youth we saw earlier at the fight. The dealer’s in the middle of making the kid lick his (the dealer’s) shoes (licking shoes would be bad, but one imagines that a drug dealer’s footwear would have a higher than average germ count) when T comes around a corner. T engages the dealer in a Socratic dialogue concerning the relative merits and dangers of JUST KIDDING HE PUNCHES THE GUY IN HIS F–KING FACE:
Don’t do drugs!
And that’s the comic. It’s a Mobius strip of short-fuse pugilism. It’s like watching someone run errands on a Saturday, with all the attendant ennui, but with punches when they leave the Home Depot and kicks when they stop at the ATM. There’s some adrenaline, but no point, no message. Unless the message is that drug dealers are bad. If it is, THANKS VERY MUCH FOR THAT.
Oh, and then there was this:
The three faces of T (Pensive, Playful, Jolly), I guess. I still prefer the four faces of the Bat. At least he wasn’t trying to get his hand into my pocket. I wonder if anyone ever left a “Your comic blows” message for our good 1980s relic. (Seriously, if anyone out there actually had some “T-Time,” I’d love to know what his motivational message was.)
So, yeah, T trolled in the lowest of depths, the Stygian 900 number perdition, along with Dionne Warwick and Miss Cleo and their huckster ilk. Everyone has to make a buck, and I don’t begrudge T his need to make a few dollars, but it’s as lame as lame can be. And maybe this ad summed up the whole enterprise. Comics were hot at the time (though the bottom was falling out — this comic came with a stupid trading card to lose like a Secret Wars hologram shield), and you might as well make money from a Mr. T comic as anything else. Such is the logic of an industry’s boom. Still, with the “positive message” crap (don’t do drugs and sock those who wrong you?) being posited as the backbone of the title, the whole thing reeks of hypocrisy. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth, like a fabulously wealthy televangelist. A crappy bad taste.
Again, I like Mr. T. He’s a part of my childhood. Even if he was/is a goofy pop culture blip, I still don’t like to see him part of such a stupid, pointless, blatant money grab, even one from going on two decades ago. It sucks. It’s funny in an unintentional ”God, this is dumb” way, but that’s about all that can be said for it.
Anyway. There you have it. A little slice of T-Force.
Mr. T, feeling that his trademark gold chains conflicted with his work with the underprivileged, has in recent years forsaken his back-breaking jewelry. The comic died a quick death a long, long time ago. The hair remains. So does the glower. I doubt that the 900 number does. I sincerely hope not.
Rommel, you magnificent bastard, Rat Patrol read your book!
I’ve never ever seen an episode of Rat Patrol. I do, however, like its premise that four G.I. dudes — an Army Fantastic Four – could pretty much take on the entire German Afrika Korps. “Take a breather, Patton. We’ve got this one.” And this hobby kit couldn’t possibly be worse than the plain vanilla ”box of men.”
Jared M.
