John Rakowski: Bike Tourist Extraordinaire
Not to quibble with John Rakowski or his transcontinental bicycling adventures (he’s at least less obnoxious than the insufferable U.S. Royal), but I’ve encountered most of his listed hazards — cobblestones, terrible roads, surly postal workers, wrong-way riders, contemptuous drivers — on and off my bike right here in the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area. And Rakowski never dealt with fat tourists and obnoxious hipsters flopping around on clunky Capital Bikeshare rigs, texting and taking cell phone pics AS THEY’RE RIDING, now did he? His precious Browning would have been a crumpled lump of scrap after battling them for one day.
Instead of pawning Hostess cupcakes off on people he’s rescuing, here Superman is using them to ward off total global annihilation. I think it’s safe to say that should an advanced alien civilization ever judge Earth’s worthiness for survival based on the quality of a Hostess food-like product, it’s put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye time. Despite the rosy conclusion that this ad posits.
The alien in the lower left-hand corner with his eyes bugging out of his head is either A) filled with orgasmic delight from the cupcake’s fluffy texture and rich flavor, or B) about to drop dead from disgust. My bet would be on the latter.
The Battletoads used their valuable ad space to take an unnecessary swipe at the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Amphibian on reptile crime is never a happy occasion. Why can’t toads and turtles just get along? And more importantly, where does Frogger stand in all this?
Pacific Dim? – Pacific Rim
The giant robots vs. giant monsters spectacle of the summer has finally arrived. Director Guillermo del Toro, someone who’s built up a great deal of street cred with consumers of science-fiction/fantasy (see Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy), has also long been a fan of both the mecha and kaiju genres (I was more a devotee of the former as a kid — Tranzor Z, baby). As such, Pacific Rim is one of the biggest vanity projects around, but it has one major thing going for it: despite it’s roots in material long honed in anime and by men in rubber suits, it’s original. In a summer whose big releases have been an Iron Man sequel, a Star Trek sequel to a Star Trek reboot, a Superman do-over and a Lone Ranger bomb, this is refreshing, a mark on the plus side of the ledger even before the lights go down and the film unspools.
But is it any good? Read more…
As much as I might crave one of these slumber bags (or sleeping bags, as the civilized world prefers to call them), I’m guessing they were probably made for children, and would only come up about waist-high on giant lummoxes like myself. But then they’d be good for sack races at company picnics and such. Win win. Which to choose, though? Spider-Man? Captain America? Both, with a cheerful Hulk thrown into the mix? All three? (All three.)
Pair one of these with your plastic Thor pillow, and have yourself an R.E.M. repose of Rip Van Winkle soundness.
Replacement superheroes — when new characters step like hermit crabs into the capes and togs of venerable icons — are a dicey business. In an effort to shake things up and stimulate sagging sales, you run the risk of alienating the core comic book readership that treasures the way things have always been. Comics are always about new and better, but they’re also about staying true to what has come before. It’s tricky. Hence, substitute heroes are usually here and gone before you know it, much like subs in elementary schools. The real deals are back in class to wipe the spitballs off the walls and scrub the graffiti from the chalkboard. They have all the staying power of character deaths, which is to say none at all (well, except for one). We want Bruce Wayne to be Batman. We want Steve Rogers to be Captain America, not U.S. Agent. We want our bacon to come from a pig, not this hippie vegan seaweed crap, thank you very much.
Enter the Eric Masterson Thor. He was here. Then he was gone. And this is where it all got started. Read more…
1990 NBA Hoops: For when you need to know Tom Chambers’ middle name right now, damn it
Nothing against Tom Chambers, who had the most savage high-flying dunk in the history of huge, lunky white men, but I think Dan Majerle’s armpit might have been a better basketball card selling point. But what the hell do I know.
It’s Doane(?), by the way.
The Inferior Five round out the “Awful DC Ad” troika
Amazingly enough, the Inferior Five have the dreadful late-1960s ad with the most dignity. It’s a weak class, but still…
This was found on the page opposite the insufferable Swing with Scooter nonsense posted here last week. Since it seemed DC had tempted fate by having these two God-awful monstrosities facing one another, perhaps inviting a tear in Einsteinian space-time or something, I thought I’d put a little buffer between them. Yet this text still needs to be seen. Oh yes it does. Because it’s a wonder torch-carrying, pitchfork-wielding villagers (from Squaresville?) didn’t storm the DC offices after it was unveiled.
DC managed to distill every teeth-aching bit of hepcat-speak from all the Teen Titans books of this era and condense it into eight lines. Quite amazing, really.
Apparently Andy and George have been taking lessons in the hard sell. ALL RIGHT. ENOUGH. I’LL BUY THIS CLUNKY DEEP SEA DIVER G.I. JOE, BRONZE HELMET AND ALL. Just stop talking at me. Please.
I have to think that Frogman G.I. Joe is laughing at poor Deep Sea Diver G.I. Joe. And that plain old tough as nails Green Beret G.I. Joe is laughing at the both of them.
Of all the great characters in Justice League lineup, the one who got the most humiliating treatment during the Silver Age was J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter. Over the years he became one of the most dignified characters in the DC Universe, but back then he took the plot pipe even worse than Aquaman. Not only did he wind up playing constant House of Mystery second fiddle to the infuriating Dial H for Hero adventures of the sockamagee!-spouting Robby Reed. Oh no. He was also saddled with the most embarrassing sidekick in recorded history: Zook. Words fail to capture the full extent of Zook’s small, nude, baby-talking awfulness, and what made him worse was that he more often than not the one bailing poor J’onn out of an overwhelming scrape. J’onn getting turned into a Martian sock puppet by a giant-headed clown? Check! J’onn getting his body switched with that of an average thug and then pummeled? Check!
As if it wasn’t bad enough already that when Mr. J’onzz went to the superhero haberdasher he was blighted with the “Fruit Loops Chippendale” ensemble, you know? Read more…
Task Force may or may not have been a great game, but its ad had the craziest battle ever
Let’s get this straight: Tanks firing at battleships from the tops of cliffs? Battleships steaming at full ramming speed towards shore? Fighter planes zipping all around and in between? In fact, did one of the tanks actually clip one of the fighters? Would this not be the most insane battle ever? Midway Shmidway?
Not since the musical opening montage to G.I. Joe: The Movie has combat looked so deliriously absurd.
The Vac-U-Form was the 3D printer of its day
The new millennium has seen the advent of 3D printers, which finally (though still for a good chunk of money) give average shmoes a Star-Trek-like power to create something from nothing in their own home. Like, well, guns. Set your phasers to kill, as it were. So maybe they’re not the best thing in the world. Lest we forget, the Vac-U-Form brought a similar godlike power of creation to 1960s youth.
How did Vac-U-Form work? Hot plates, molds, and the sucking/forming power of a vacuum produced fairly well-shaped plastic toys, making it the male — or unisex — version of the Easy Bake/Curl/Care trilogy of girl stuff. As this brief article from a few years ago points out, the hot plate part would surely run afoul of the more modern nanny state — can’t have kids exposed to heat, after all. (Oh, for the days when children could amuse themselves with rusty nails and bags of broken glass. Damn you, Mayor Bloombergs of the world.)
You couldn’t Vac-U-Form yourself a workable gun though. Let’s hear it for progress.
Trading Card Set of the Week (Special Fourth of July Edition) – Desert Storm (Pro Set, 1991)
Though the Fourth of July isn’t an American holiday explicitly devoted to military remembrance, it’s a day for flag-waving like no other. And there were few times in the 237 year history of the United States of America when the flags flapped as happily as they did after the successful prosecution of Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Read more…
While it may be that we’re still digging out of the pop-consciousness damage done by the BAM WHAK THOK 1960s Batman series, it and The Adventures of Superman defined the live-action image of the World’s Finest duo for generations of fans. And, though I’ve never sat through one second of any old Superboy cartoon, the one hawked above did have Krypto in it — so how bad could it be? But It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman was/is another matter entirely. Yes, decades before Spider-Man showed up on Broadway to turn off the dark (and cost more than most countries’ GDP to produce — and maim people), there was a lavish Superman song-fest in those same environs. I’ve read it wasn’t actually that bad, though never in all my travels have I encountered a living soul who’s willing to swear to that under oath. But hey, it actually existed, unlike the aborted Captain America show.
Sadly, most of America remembers this musical Superman (if at all) from an altered, ill-advised ABC TV production in 1975, several years before the Richard Donner film hit the big screen. It was stab your face awful. I defy any man, woman, child or family dog to sit through the following first segment and not have their blood boil. Good God, it makes Hee Haw look intellectual and dignified — and Superman shouldn’t have the physique of R. Crumb. There’s camp, and then there’s, well, this:
Hot Lips Houlihan, get out of there! While you still can!
Between this and the Swing with Scooter ad, it’s been a hell of a couple of days here on this site. Anyway, YOU’RE WELCOME, PLANET EARTH.
Jared
blog into mystery 