Buy a Babe Ruth model kit. Or Jack Dempsey will concuss you with great violence, possibly into next week.
WHAM, SLAM, thank you, ma’am. Babe Ruth, noted chunky guy and spokesperson for many vices, remains one of the most improbably-shaped sports icons of all time. (If only he had been alive in the era of Hostess confections. Oh, how the Bambino would have reveled.) Noted pugilist Jack Dempsey was a bit more conventionally physiqued for his face-smashing sport. It’s up in the air who makes for a better Aurora model kit.
We all await with trepidation the day — we know it’s coming — when some dumbbell movie studio executive will get the bright idea, or what he believes to be the bright idea, to remake Ben-Hur. There will probably be a press release touting the wonders of the 1959 classic, and promising to bring it to a new century — a new millennium, actually. There will most likely be some verbiage mixed in there about how that screen gem was itself a remake, that the story of Judah Ben-Hur had actually been movie-fied twice before, once as a short, once a silent film standard. Also that it was based upon Lew Wallace’s (turgid) book. And all this will totally ignore the central beauty that makes the Charlton Heston movie so special: it doesn’t have to be remade. (Has no one learned anything from the pointlessness of Peter Jackson’s King Kong?) Read more…
G.I. Joe’s pal Atomic Man isn’t Steve “Bionic Man” Austin, despite being a man who’s bionic
Hopefully Major Mike Power can use his super-strength as an erstwhile jaws of life to pry his poor deep sea diving compatriot out of his clunky underwater suit tomb.
“Your first mission, Major Power, if you choose to accept it, is to grow a dark Just for Men beard.”
That Mickey Rooney was for a time the biggest star in Hollywood remains one of the great unfathomable mysteries of the 20th century American experience. No offense to the former “number one…star…in the world,” but was this ad really intended to get movie-goers in seats to watch A Yank at Eton, Rooney’s insufferable answer to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court? Or was it supposed to rile you up into hurling filth and rotten vegetables at Rooney’s smug, impish face?
In a choice between this and Wake Island, here’s hoping more went to see the Days of Our Lives disembodied voice.
Can the Forgotten Prisoner of Castlemare truly be forgotten if no one knows who the hell he is in the first place?
As obscure as the Phantom of the Opera would have been to many children of the pre-Andrew Lloyd Weber/Michael Crawford 1970s, I’m guessing there were a few more who uttered a good, hearty “Who the f**k is the Forgotten Prisoner of Castlemare?” to no one in particular upon seeing this ad. No, he wasn’t from a book or a movie like his Frankenstein/Mummy/Wolf Man/Dracula kinsmen, but was instead a 1960s model kit loosely tied to a story in the old Warren mag Creepy. A couple of years ago a fellow blogger posted the entire story, in case some of you remain a little perplexed about why this prisoner was imprisoned, where Castlemare is, and just why its denizens apparently forgot their prisoners.
In fairness, it is a pretty badass model, even in its glow in the dark state. Also, did the stupid tombstones come with the kits? You know, in case you wanted to smash them or crush them in your father’s workshop vise?
Choose from this dazzling array of clunky prizes, Christmas-card-selling child of the 1940s
What dates this 1942 listing of prizes more? A Yale football set being something desirable? A flashlight from back in the days when design hadn’t quite escaped the device’s lantern antecedents? A live canary available through mail order? (Live canary or live monkey — YOU DECIDE. Also, fyi, you could get live canaries from selling seeds — live canaries of the exact same graphic design.) Gene Autry? Guns, guns, guns?
I often wonder what the profit margins were for the old Christmas card scams, where ads like the one above recruited a young selling force with nothing more than promises of prizes upon the completion of sales. Are there warehouses out there full of unclaimed, once-live canary corpses?
Dull the Slayer? – Skull the Slayer #1
Hugh Jackman’s bare-chested big screen adventures in The Wolverine have made the time ripe to tackle one of the many other comic book heroes with a propensity for half-nakedness — and boy, there are a ton of them out there. Take your pick. And enter Skull the Slayer: The Guy Who Isn’t Kull And Isn’t Son Of Satan Despite Looking Like Him On The Gil Kane Cover You See Above. Read more…
Sure, he (or she — how do you sex these things?) looks cute now, but just when you’re relaxed and disarmed, then BAM! — brine shrimp invasion. That’s a Trojan horse you see above, folks. And “Miracle of Life” my ass. Have we learned nothing from Gremlins and the like about never trusting big-eyed non-human things?
Remember this when the Sea-Monkeys slip their Sea-Circus chains and kill us all. You have been warned.
Go ape with your Cornelius and General Ursus pendants
Should you be in the market for fashion accessories to wear to the red carpet premier of next year’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes sequel, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, these pendants might be for you. As a bonus, whenever confronted with one of life’s moral dilemmas, you could always look down at the hairy face hanging from your neck and ask: What would General Ursus do? Or you could hold him firmly betwixt your fingers as you contemplate one of the finest ape-themed works of art ever devised by man. Your choice.
Some Wolverine reading from the archives for you
It occurs to me that people might walk out of the theater after watching The Wolverine this weekend and have some interest in reading more about Logan’s old adventures in Japan. The film of course mines the Chris Claremont/Frank Miller Wolverine material the most, but earlier this year another series was profiled here that shares some of the characters found in that mini and the film: Kitty Pryde and Wolverine. Click the link if you want more, to compare and contrast, bewail and bemoan to your heart’s content. Or don’t. No worries.
Coming soon to a 1942 theater near you: Wake Island, starring the disembodied voice from Days of Our Lives
This ad was found on the inside back cover of Real Heroes #7, which was profiled here the other day. Like much of that comic’s contents, Wake Island celebrated heroism in defeat, a necessary angle when Allied forces didn’t have a whole lot upon which to hang their collective hats. Island was your typical rushed Hollywood flag-waving — indeed, it was being planned even before its titular battle’s bullets stop flying. It played fast and loose with the facts of the brave American resistance and threw in a little anachronistic romance, but it did have MacDonald Carey in it as one of its stars. Yes, that MacDonald Carey, the one whose calm, soothing intonation would smooth a viewer’s entry and exit from the Days of Our Lives universe every weekday for many, many years.
Like Sands of Iwo Jima through the hourglass, so are the Days of Our Lives on Wake Island…
Snikt Redux – The Wolverine
Before Robert Downey so effortlessly stepped into Tony Stark’s Iron Man armor, Hugh Jackman made Wolverine his own. This hasn’t been forgotten in the decade-plus since the release of 2000’s X-Men (which really started the snowball that has built into the current, glorious avalanche of superhero movies), but it’s been relegated to the background. An underwhelming conclusion to a trilogy and a dreadful solo film will do that. But let it be clear: though Jackman might not have given us the Logan that hardcore fanboys would crave — NO YELLOW TIGHTS! HE’S NOT FIVE FEET TALL! — he’s given us a well-rounded character, of three-dimensions, who transcends the flat screen. It’s one of the best comic to screen translations we’ve ever had, right up there with Downey and Christopher Reeve’s Superman — and those actor/character combos themselves know a thing or two (literally two) about bad movies.
We can forgive the occasional dud when there’s such encompassing competence. Even when the surrounding movie is found wanting, Jackman remains blameless. We like him. He’s the bright spot in the awful.
Is The Wolverine, his latest foray into Weapon X, awful? Or is it what we dare not hope it could be: a good, solo Wolverine movie? Read more…
Presenting your digest of Chennualt’s Flying Tigers, Gene Tunney, Robert E. Lee, et cetera, et cetera – Real Heroes #7
Take yourself back to 1942. War had finally reached American shores. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor the previous December, and that day of infamy led quickly to a second declaration of war on the part of their Nazi pals. This was a dark time for the Allies, as Japan took island after island in the Pacific and Germany threatened to crush the still-standing British Isles and Stalin’s megalithic Russian bear. These were days when people needed things to believe in. It was a time…when they needed… REAL HEROES. (I forgot to tell you to read this opening paragraph in the “deep movie trailer guy” voice. Oh well.)
So here’s a neat little comic book from 1942 called Real Heroes. One that has a metric ton of inspirational, propaganda-ish military stories within. Read more…
Two things: One, does an ant ever really “play”? “Live” and “work” maybe, but one has a hard time picturing a group of ants swilling beers and playing cornhole. They seem a bit too industrious for all that. Two, if you ever have an ant farm and see smoke coming from that little house’s chimney, head for the hills, because the ants are about to take over.
Give full vent to your OCD with Marvel Stick-Ons!
It’s fun to have hobbies, but sometimes they get out of hand, and then you wind up on an episode of Hoarders. It’s possible that the young lad in this advertisement is going over that invisible line, into territory requiring an intervention. “Your obsession with Marvel superhero stickers is out of control, Jimmy, and it hurts us. YOU PUT A STICK-ON ON A STICK-ON FOR GOD’S SAKE.” That sort of thing. (This also applies to the DC version of this ad, though in that one the plaid couch takes away some of the “100 feral cats in a house” feel.)
Look at his face as he surreptitiously affixes Spider-Man to that door. It’s like an alcoholic hiding a flask of whisky in a toilet cistern.
Jared
blog into mystery 