You can’t celebrate Christmas without Batman and Frank Miller and Santa getting shot – Wanted: Santa Claus — Dead or Alive!
Frank Miller’s first dalliance with Batman was certainly no harbinger of what was to come. The man who would go on to write and draw the seminal The Dark Knight Returns and script the deft origin of the Caped Crusader in Year One had his first brush with the character back as the calendar turned from 1979 to 1980, in a throwaway story in DC Special Series. Though it has been reprinted multiple times, it hasn’t been quality that has sent it back to the press. Because of what Miller did in later years with those two great works (he, it should be noted, went on to forge some, how shall we say, not so great works) everything under the Miller/Batman banner got elevated, including one-off bits in anthologies. He only contributed pencils in the 10-page effort that was his Bat-debut, and his visceral style — one that, when married with Klaus Janson’s inks, would help define both Batman and Daredevil — was still forming. He was still a kid. Which makes reading it something akin to going through the Faulkner’s Mosquitoes, in that you have to squint real hard to see any hints of what was around the bend.
I actually have that original issue of DC Special Series (#21) around here somewhere. Unfortunately, it’s squirreled away in an unmarked box along with other miscellaneous books (which don’t even warrant a “Misc.” written in black marker), and by the time I found it next Christmas would already be here. So that I could yammer about it today, I went out and pulled my old faux-leather-bound The Complete Frank Miller Batman tome off the shelf, blew away the dust, and cracked it open. (It’s because of that lush binding that you’ll see some blurring at the edges of a couple of scans. Apologies.) And here we are.
(A confession: I used to pour over this gorgeous book incessantly when I was a kid. It was in my book bag when I went to school. It was on the floor next to my bed as I slept. I could quote chapter and verse of the aged Batman sparring with the government-stooge Superman and Jim Gordon’s descent into big city corruption. But I can’t once recall EVER reading the little reprint in the middle. It might as well have been entitled “The Batman Story In This Book Everyone Skips Even Though It’s Short.”)
Of course, the rush to yak about this premier Miller foray into the Gotham streets lies not so much in his presence, but the subject matter. Yes, as the “Wanted: Santa Claus — Dead or Alive!” title would indicate, this is a Christmas story. A Christmas story with a department store Santa (where have we seen that before?). A Santa who has also run afoul of the law (Ibid.). And stark, over-the-top Christian imagery. IT HAS EVERYTHING.
The story, written by Denny O’Neill and inked by Steve Mitchell, centers around a reformed criminal working as Kris Kringle for the holidays (not the first job I’d think of if I were his parole officer), but one who can’t escape his past. He’s roped in by crooks to get them into the store so they can go wild robbing the joint. All this is just a setup so we can get to the OH GOD THEY SHOT SANTA part:
AVERT YOUR EYES. OH, AND MERRY CHRISTMAS. (Frosty the Snowman, teller of horrifying Christmas stories, would be proud.)
Batman has been on the trail of the thieves for a while, and when he confronts them he uses the merriest method possible to subdue his quarry:
Yes, Batman eschews the batarangs for miniature Christmas trees. Again, and sincerely this time — MERRY CHRISTMAS.
All this is fine and dandy, but the big payoff is a bit much. You see, in the first panel of the story we have Batman coming across a burgled Nativity scene, where someone has stolen the star. This large display is right outside the store, and when Batman emerges to find the fleeing crooks, who are dragging the poor befuddled Santa with them to finish him off, there’s — MIRACULOUSLY — a brightly shining star illuminating the hiding cons:
So the star led the Three Wise Men to the manger in Bethlehem, and reappeared almost 2000 years later to help Batman find common criminals. It helped Magi deliver gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus, and helped Batman deliver his fistacular war on crime and guns (the latter seeming much more important in the last week) to a would-be murderer’s jaw. Huh. Biblical signs work in mysterious ways.
There’s really nothing to this plot — not one of O’Neill’s finest, and he did have some finest — and the only reason it hasn’t been relegated to dim memory is its status as an early exemplar of Miller’s developing craft. You can see some of it above, with the angles and action that would one day pull in readers beyond the usual comic-buying demographic. He was still hemmed in here, though, by the conventional. Well, conventional in whatever sense that Santa crooks and miniature tree throwing stars and astral miracles are conventional. But the big successes weren’t long in coming.
As stated above, this story has been reprinted multiple times, including in a trade entitled DC Universe Christmas. Maybe you can track it down in time for the holidays. In case you, you know, want to chuck A Christmas Carol aside and read something else to the kids gathered at your feet. Make sure to show them the pictures, though! Especially Santa getting shot! Nothing beats casual Christmastime gunplay!
Enter this old Bubble Yum sweepstakes and maybe win prizes that look like they’re from the dusty section of a pawn shop!
I have to ask: Is completing the maze really necessary? Do you really want us jumping through all these hoops, Bubble Yum people?
Take heed, all you folks who line up outside Apple Stores for the latest must-have junk. One day your space age gadgets are going to seem just as clunky as that assemblage above, and won’t seem more advanced than a Mattel Intellivision. AND WON’T YOU FEEL STUPID THEN.
Batman has a thought balloon that just doesn’t fly in this goofy Hostess Twinkies ad
The shutdown of the once unstoppable Twinkies machine has had several aftereffects. People are out of work. Executives are lining up large bonuses for themselves. Morbidly obese slobs — the ones that need cranes and teams of firemen hacking away door jambs to leave their houses — are desperately searching for substitute processed confections. Yet out of that despair there’s a ray of light. We can all rejoice that Batman will never again be forced to combat silly cosplay villains at dog shows and think such dopey phrases as “dog-gone disaster.” It’s like Orson Welles hawking frozen peas, in that it makes my soul shiver with empathic shame. This garbage may be okay for the Hulk, but the Caped Crusader is another ballgame.
I’m not sure if that one dog-gone line makes me cringe more than Wolverine’s jumbling of anchovies and “Bub” in the service of his Pizza Hut overlord. They’re both head-shakers.
Spend “Superman’s Last Christmas” with the Parasite, a foster brother and a random newsreader – Superman #369
Not only is this a Christmas-themed issue, with Superman and classic foe the Parasite slugging it out over Metropolis’ version of Rockefeller Center, knocking over the giant Christmas tree and scattering ornaments in every direction. It also has the personal distinction of being the earliest (I think) Superman comic book that I ever had. Well huzzah, huzzah. Going by the March, 1982 date in the indicia, I was three going on four years old when this comic came out, and this would still have been in that period when someone else, probably my parents, possibly my grandparents, had to buy my comics for me — I doubt anyone was dropping a buck into my hand, hustling me out the door and telling me to go entertain myself. So someone looked at this cover and thought a very nearly nude purple guy (the Parasite is one of the more naked villains out there – maybe it’s the purple) punching someone on Christmas was wholesome entertainment. Okey-dokey.
It’s the cover (art by Rich Buckler and Frank Giacoia) that I remember all these years later, and some of the imagery inside rings bells. Nothing about the story. There’s a reason for that, more than just the fog of time intervening and obscuring trivial things like comic book shenanigans. You see, this comic (written by Cary Bates, with art from Buckler and Frank McLaughlin) is a mess. An absolute, unadulterated mess. Which maybe would have made it more memorable had I been a more mature reader at my first encounter with it, but, being all of four years with limited reading abilities, it no doubt absolutely bewildered me. It does now. About a zillion things happen in this one, self-contained bit of story, with sub-plots, odd walk-on cameos, exposition and overly complex schemes galore. MERRY CHRISTMAS.
It starts with Superman saving a family from a sinkhole that’s about to swallow their house (“Mom, Dad, a sinkhole isn’t going to open up and kill us all, right?”). This interrupts the mission he’s on, which he returns to after depositing the threatened house at a safe remove. You see, Superman is roped in every year to flying the Metropolis Christmas tree to its ceremonial spot and trimming it in record time, and it’s a duty that he’s getting a bit tired of:
While I think we all sympathize with Superman’s holiday lament, there are some prices you have to pay when you’re the most powerful do-gooder on Earth. Kind of like how, if you want to be President, you have to sit through a lot of very, VERY bad chicken dinners. LIVE WITH IT.
Hey, it wouldn’t be a Christmas comic book without an evil Santa Claus, right? (Spider-Man certainly thinks so…):
I’m wary of Salvation Army Santas to this very day because of that sequence. More on that green-coated muggee in a moment, who goes by the name of Cory Renwald — and more on the Santa, for that matter.
His tiresome duties done, Superman retires to the Fortress of Solitude, where he relaxes in what looks to be a zero-gravity tanning booth — even Supermen need spa weekends, apparently. While kicking back he has some bittersweet memories of his childhood with Ma and Pa Kent (special cameo by Superbaby):
(Sometimes I have to remind myself that both of the Kents had passed on in the old pre-Crisis continuity. Like now.)
Who interrupts this trip down memory lane? None other than the Parasite, who Superman quickly dispatches in a rather comical manner (special cameo by the giant golden key):
If you can dodge a wrench Parasite, you can dodge a ball.
Have you ever wanted to know what a Daily Planet/WGBS holiday party looks like? Here you go, with an awkward eggnog-fueled make-out session thrown in to lend vérité:
We really need Morgan Edge or Perry White dancing on a desk with a lampshade on their head to complete the tableau.
Now we come to one of the odder moments in the entire book. Lois has someone that she wants Clark to meet — a real person, as in a person that actually exists here on our Earth. New York readers may remember local NBC news anchor Carol Jenkins:
I have no idea what lay behind this bizarre cameo. Ms. Jenkins probably knew someone, or knew someone who knew someone. Incidentally, she has a website, and she uses her appearance here as the header background. I would too.
It’s around this time that the story completely spins out of control. I won’t delve into it deeply because I don’t have the energy, nor do I want to “spoil” it for you, should you want to read something instead of, you know, ramming your head into the garbage disposal. Highlights: The Parasite was disguised as Santa, and was also pretending to be Cory Renwald’s contact (Cory’s a secret agent, btw) so he could use him as a stalking horse to break into Clark Kent’s apartment to help further his schemes to suck away Superman’s powers, though this particular gambit seems a tad overcomplicated, and Superman triumphs by poisoning himself. Did I mention there was a real newswoman named Carol Jenkins in this? I did?
For all the nonsense, there is actually a moment of some significance in these pages. Mr. Renwald later meets with Kent to share a secret. See, it turns out that he was ALSO cared for by the Kents as foster parents, if only for a few months, and that brief time turned his life around:
So Clark is a little bit less alone, and this should leave us all with a warm, contented glow. Until you think for a minute and wonder why the Kents would never so much as mention Cory’s name to their adopted boy. No framed photographs? Nothing? Out of sight, out of mind? Did he break Martha’s family heirloom plates or something?
To steal a line from Top Gun, this comic writes checks that its body can’t cash. And backdates them. At times it’s like you’re about to drown in exposition and backstory — kind of like the new Hobbit movie, now that I think of it. The story is a mess (almost a glorious one, in its way), and I suppose I’m just lucky that young me didn’t cast this comic down and vow to never ever again decipher the senseless scribbles know as “writing.”
But hey, it’s the holiday season. Peace on Earth. Good will towards men. And comics. All is forgiven.
The old Star Trek: The Motion Picture ad/poster pretty much outcolors the whole movie
This past year I did a thing called “Marvel Super Special March,” where I — revelling in my own wit, I assure you — looked at some of the old Marvel Super Specials in, you guessed it, March. I’ll be doing that again this year, and one of the books that’s going to be on the docket is the adaptation of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. That much-maligned movie, one that actually stands apart from its brethren in just as many good ways as bad, rightly took a lot of hits for jettisoning the verve and color of the classic series, replacing it with mid-life crises and uniforms that looked like itchy pajamas. In fact, the rainbow effect on the poster shooting out of the heads of Kirk, Spock and Lieutenant Ilia represents the sum total of the non-gray spectrum involved in the production.
Anyway, meet back here in March. THE MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL ADVENTURE IS JUST BEGINNING.
Marvel really knew how to tie in Christmas with their relentless hawking of subscriptions, what with Santa Iron Man, Spidey-stockings hung by the chimney with care and caroling super-villains. Who wouldn’t be proud to hang a wreath such as this one on the front door?
A question is begged: which character on the above Mighty Marvel Wreath of Yuletide Merriment would be most offensive to the most devout Christians, i.e. those that rail against drift away from Jesus and towards “X-Mas” and fat guys on sleighs? Conan, the ancient heathen who wallows in wenches and often finds himself elbows deep in blood? Or Dr. Strange, the master of the occult? It’s a toss-up — though I’d bet on the latter.
Stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread – The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”
That line from The Fellowship of the Ring was the first thing that I thought of when I heard that The Hobbit, already spread over two movies, was going to have another tacked on. I doubt that I was the only one who had that lament of the worn out Bilbo Baggins pop into their head. There aren’t many of us who read J.R.R. Tolkien’s great book and thought “Gee, it would be kind of neat to see this on the silver screen. In a trilogy.”
Yet here we are. The opening chapter of a new Middle Earth cycle of films has arrived, with Peter Jackson and his creative team returning to the environs that made their names and fortunes. We’ve been burned over the last decade with hallowed talents returning to their roots, whether it came in the form of the stale, underwhelming Star Wars trilogy, or Indiana Jones dabbling in yawn-worthy science fiction. And let’s be frank: prequels start with inherent disadvantages. You know where things end up. This has a lot of odds cutting against it.
Does Jackson succeed? Will trilogy lightning be twice bottle-caught?
The answer, sadly, is no. An Unexpected Journey feels more like The Phantom Menace than it does any of its Lord of the Rings cinematic forebears. It pains me to say that, because no one enjoyed going to the theater to watch Aragorn, Frodo, et al more than me, and it was a bright opening for a new millennium of movies. Nothing will ever diminish how much fun was had back in those days, but this film tries its damnedest. There are high points, but the ebbs are very, very low. Some observations:
- No one can forget the stirring prologue to Fellowship, as dense, mind-numbing backstory was condensed in a thrilling sequence that set the tone for the ten hours of movie that were to follow. The Last Alliance of Elves and Men was just words on the page before, but Jackson brought them vividly to life, as Sauron forged rings, lost the One, and gave our story its raison d’être. There’s a prologue here as well, as we meet the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain and see how the dragon Smaug drove them from their glorious, treasure-packed halls. Then this bleeds over into the returning Ian Holm and Elijah Wood, reprising their Hobbit roles in a cloying LOOK THIS IS CONNECTED TO THOSE OTHER MOVIES bit. The whole thing drags. And drags. And drags. And…
- And then the Dwarves show up, in a dinner scene that takes forever. (I saw one reviewer note that it appears to unspool in real-time. It feels like it.) None of them apart from Thorin are more than ciphers — though to be fair, they weren’t in the book either. Thorin, though more developed, spends much of the film as a prick who isn’t all that fond of the dead weight that Bilbo represents. And there’s some heavy exposition in his case that takes the form of a slow-motion flashback, which, like the opening, drags on no matter how many beheadings and dismemberments are crammed in.
- Martin Freeman’s performance is the true bright shining light of this film. His Bilbo is all that you could hope for if you read and cherished the book. He’s a simple little man yet no one’s fool, who comes to realize that his contented but staid life in the Shire might no be all that it’s cracked up to be. So he signs a contract, becomes the troop’s burglar (in theory), and plunges into his grand adventure. The film’s greatest success comes when it keeps its focus on the character who’s, you know, the title of the whole thing. There’s a lesson there. (Also, it turns out working with David Brent was excellent training for a riddle-battle with Gollum.) I wish we stuck more closely to him, instead of wandering all over the place. Speaking of which…
- Remember the great scenes from the book that centered on Radagast the Brown? Neither did I. A character that’s only mentioned in passing in the texts of Tolkien’s work, this odd, simple-minded wizard (who appears to use bird droppings as hair gel) serves as the entry point to get the Necromancer into the film’s narrative. He represents one of the many times that they movie runs off the rails, and an attempt to incorporate broader Middle -Earth events into the rather straight-forward quest tale. Some ardent fans of the books were disappointed that Tom Bombadil was cut from the Hobbits’ journey to Rivendell in Fellowship. Well, imagine if the film had devoted an entire sub-arc to him. And made him really cringe-worthy. Jackson has grown far too indulgent since his greatest triumph. Who is this and why are we supposed to care?
- Ian McKellen naturally gets the most screen time of the returning cast, and his Gandalf is still the warm, resourceful and somewhat absent-minded wizard of old (or new — whatever). He was the character triumph the last time around, and he still has much of that — no pun intended — magic, even if perhaps he gets too much screen time at the expense of Bilbo. (It’s The Hobbit, not The Wizard.) The rest of the veterans — Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Christopher Lee — have what amounts to cameos, as they all debate what’s to be done about the vague threat of the Necromancer (which we know will become much more). On a side-note, it’s good that we got these films now, because Christopher Lee is looking every one of his ninety years. His voice has lost some of its great resonance, though it’s kind of neat to see the icy evil gone, and to now get an idea of the man who Saruman once was. He’s haughty here, but still very much on the side of good. (And hell, maybe he ages in reverse, like Merlin, which would explain him looking older when he’s supposed to be younger. Yeah, that’s the ticket.)
- I didn’t want to see this in 3D, and I thought the screening I was at wasn’t going to be in that format. But then the “Put in your glasses!” note came up, my heart sank, and I had to slink out to the front to get the goofy spectacles that they neglected to provide when I walked in. My God, I hate 3D. It’s less offensively used here than in most films, but it’s still an utterly useless gimmick, and makes static scenes like the dinner sequence goofy pop-up books. (I have no comment on the 48fps debate. It is what it is. I’m pleased to report, though, that I didn’t get a headache or barf. So there’s that.)
- Jackson still has an eye for scope and sweeping panoramas. Let’s be frank: these movies have been tourism advertising for New Zealand that no pile of dragon’s gold could ever buy. Verdant glades and endless mountains are abundant. And there’s an incredible scene past the middle of the film that finds our travellers with an unbelievably dangerous front row seat as Stone Giants duke it out. It’s like watching Ali-Frazier from the kneecaps of Frazier, let’s put it that way. Some of the action is needlessly silly — fleeing from Goblins is more a Bugs Bunny cartoon than another heart-stopping Bridge of Khazad-dum Balrog escape (does anyone ever break a bone in Middle Earth?) — but there are moments where you’ll be amazed.
- Andy Serkis’ motion-capture Gollum performance shows just how far that craft has advanced in the intervening decade. The entire Riddles in the Dark face-off is magnificent, with poor Smeagol in his element for the first (and last) time. It’s like being in a basement with a murderous, schizophrenic child, and Freeman and Serkis deserve a lot of credit for breathing life into this iconography.
- This film’s runtime is less than any of the LotR entries, yet it feels longer. That was the most amazing thing about those films: they always (well, right up until the last twenty minutes of The Return of the King) moved along with such effortless grace. Plot points all fell into place like the tumblers in a lock caressed by an expert safe-cracker, and it was such a pleasure to have it all wash over you. Though all chapters in a larger story, they could stand on their own as individual films. Journey feels like you’re having a bucket of story thrown on you. There’s no flow whatsoever. GET BACK TO BILBO. (Some online wags have started tongue-in-cheek speculation that, instead of Extended Editions, this time around Jackson will put out Unextended Editions, which excise all the corpulence. That’s actually not a terrible idea.)
- By the end, all I could think of was “There are two more? Two?” Most everything in this film feels forced, as if the entire endeavor is one of obligation. Look into the bonus features on any of the old DVDs and Blu-rays and you see the joy that everyone had in making the first three. I doubt highly that you’ll see things like that in the next box set. Too much bread, folks. Too much bread. And going to the next installment will be more out of obligation too, which is a sad development indeed.
This isn’t a terrible film, and many people will surely walk out of the theater thoroughly entertained. If so, good. But I couldn’t help but feel that this is like going to a mediocre class reunion, where the ties that once bound are frayed at best and the pot roast is undercooked. Maybe if Guillermo del Toro had stayed on the project things would have gone better. Maybe he would have brought a fresh perspective. Or maybe Jackson has made the best film you can — or at least the best one that you can when you’re trying to stretch it out over three Christmases. No one will know on that.
If anything, An Unexpected Journey proves that you can’t go back again. Though the next two films will try.
Two and a half pairs of hairy Hobbit feet out of five.
Should you dine at a Big Boy restaurant during your holiday travels, remember that Big Boy himself IS A LOWDOWN DIRTY THIEF – Adventures of Big Boy #358
Chalk this up as another of the odd corners of the comic book world that fill you with untold delight when you discover them, right alongside Beauty and the Beast adaptations and truck driver superheroes. Yes, Big Boy, the chunky, smiling restaurant mascot, with his big eyes and terrible fashion sense, had his own comic book. Well huzzah, huzzah. Having never once in my life so much as set foot in a fine Big Boy establishment (the first time I had ever heard of the chain was in Austin Powers, when Dr. Evil launched himself into orbit with his Big Boy escape vehicle), the Big Boy mythos stretches out before me like a dream, a limitless horizon of untold potential. As it might for you. We are all Big Boy. Or something.
Adventures of Big Boy wasn’t a flash in the pan promotion that faded after a few editions, as the number in the above post title will attest. The title ran from the mid 1950s-to the mid-1990s, which means Big Boy had exponentially more staying power than, say, Aquaman. (It’s just so easy…) That’s forty years, people. Forty. Years. The very first Big Boy comics were actually published and sold by Marvel, and for a long time the series had variations according to what part of the country they were distributed in and what franchises were located in those territories (Bob’s, Abdow’s, et cetera). Which would make collecting an entire run of the books a living nightmare for any Big Boy aficionado — if there is such a monster. (Seriously, you thought the Whitman variants and the 30 cent/35 cent books were/are annoying? Welcome to hell.) Soon enough Big Boy’s title became a handout, a thin, stapled-up version of an activities-laden placemat, one filled with enough puzzles and words and pictures to keep a kid’s mouth shut while the rest of the family tried to down their hamburgers and fries. To wit:
The covers were printed on the same rough newsprint as the interior, which added to the cheap feel of the affair, and, considering their origins, it’s a wonder that they all weren’t rendered translucent from spilled grease, with enough ketchup stains to make them look like a Dexter scene. As it is, you can almost smell cooking meat rising from the open pages.
During his decades-spanning run, Big Boy encountered any number of foes and friends (in one issue, Superman himself) along with major crises and minor annoyances of a mascot’s life (Big Boy goes on a picnic! Big Boy runs for President!), and at all times he was accompanied by gal-pal Dolly and his faithful pup Nugget. And in this issue (published in 1987) he ran afoul of the law itself. Just to give you an idea of the fine storytelling at play, here are a couple of scans from the Law & Order themed story within (Script: K. Bernhard, Art: Manny Stallman). First we have Big Boy coming upon an interrupted jewelry store heist, where he bumbles his way into being mistaken for the thief:
As Big Boy is hauled away by a policeman, Nugget runs off Lassie-style to fetch Dolly. Which is perfect, since apparently this young girl is the legal mind of choice for arrested restaurant mascots:
You know what I’d like to see? Big Boy thrown into the hoosegow. Now THAT’s a story I’d read. Even pay for. Big Boy meets Oz.
There you go. Big Boy: The Comic Book.
Pretend you’re Jimmy Doolittle with this B-25 model, raining down righteous ordnance of justice
Nothing brings a smile to a child’s face quite like imagining he’s avenging a sneak attack with his own bold raid deep into enemy territory. Maybe even throwing a wartime “KILL THE NIPS” racial tinge into the fantasy. The perfect sentiment for the holiday season! Santa Claus drops off presents, Jimmie/Jimmy Doolittle drops off bombs — pretty similar! Ho ho ho!
The second (or third, depending how you look at it) Man of Steel trailer will make you believe a man can mope!
Outside of this past year’s Avengers, there’s no comic book movie I’ve had higher hopes or deeper fears about than Man of Steel. Superman’s big comeback after Superman Returns (and Stalks) is eagerly anticipated in these quarters, even if there’s more than a few questions around here about Zack Snyder’s directorial sensibilities being up to the challenge. And all we’ve had to go on up to now were cell phone videos of Comic-Con footage and the two artsy-fartsy teasers from the summer, which were very much lacking any Superman. No more.
I’ll say this: The trailer looks sharp, with big cosmic stuff galore (which we’ve never truly seen in a Superman film), Henry Cavill looks the part (though the lack of red around the waist is sure to be distracting, and will make the unbroken blue of the Superman suit look even more like feety pajamas), and I remain intrigued about the heavyweight talent (Costner and Crowe) playing Clark Kent’s two fathers. Costner’s delivery of the trailer’s best line — “You have to keep this side of yourself a secret.” “What was I supposed to do? Just let them die?” “Maybe.” — has me encouraged.
But the Superman that I know, the Superman that we all know, is a straight-ahead champion. Truth, justice, all that. He’s the light. Batman is the dark. Kal-El shouldn’t spend most of his time moping around, his brow constantly furrowed like he has the worst case of Kryptonian indigestion ever. I worry that in trying to gin up drama, Snyder and Christopher Nolan have stepped too far away from the foundations of the character. I worry, but I don’t know. The Donner/Reeve Superman knew how to smile. I hope this one does.
In scanning early reaction to this newest imagery, the word “pretentious” kept cropping up. Maybe. As always, though, judgment is reserved for the final product. I think most people reading this will be there in the theater no matter what. I will.
I’m not bashing the Spider-Man, Captain America and Hulk posters offered by this old Christmastime ad. It’s just that they look like something that should be tacked in a kid’s bedroom, and not being a kid anymore (believe me, I wish I was) they’re not really my cup of tea. But the Fantastic Four #1 cover is something different. A real, genuine (well, reproduced genuine) piece of art. A cultural touchstone of sorts. Slap a frame on that bitch and you have something fit be a part of any grown-up’s home decor.
Which brings me to a Christmas gift suggestion for yourself or the comic lover in your life.
My Christmas present to myself this year was something I’d had my eye on for a while. Several months ago it occurred to me that their had to be places out there where you could buy oversized classic comic book covers. I’ve long adored Steve Ditko’s cover to The Amazing Spider-Man #33 (the primary colors, the Ditko water droplets, etc.), so much so that it was one of my very first clunky posts here on the blog. So I typed the appropriate keywords in Google, found that such a monster was being sold at a couple of online outlets in various sizes. I chose one site — AllPosters.com — and sat on the purchase for a while, mulled it over in my head, and then bit the bullet.
It arrived last week. I assure you, there was a pealing of bells and an angelic chorus when I tore open the package and beheld the product within. Here it is — I put it next to my copy of the actual comic for some scale:
And here it is, hanging above my desk in the World Headquarters (note the Stephen Strasburg bobblehead on the lower left — I’d show more of the desk space, but there’s an old saying about seeing how sausage is made and never wanting to eat sausage ever again):
Yes, I know the quality of the pictures taken on my phone is atrocious. SO SORRY THAT I’M NOT DIANE ARBUS.
I had the print mounted on wood, and in that process the AllPosters people coat it with a clear substance that protects the image and isn’t reflective. In short, IT LOOKS GREAT. I’m happy as a pig in slop. There are any number of classic covers you can get if you dig around enough — Art.com also sells similar merchandise. The prints themselves are relatively inexpensive, though the framing/mounting process are a bit of a hit. You can also get stuff in a variety of sizes, and that can lessen the cost a tad.
I’m getting no commission from anyone to write this post, nor some discount on a future purchase. Nor is this meant to be an Oprah “Favorite Things” Winfrey-like exemplar of conspicuous consumption. I just wanted to give a quick idea on a holiday buy that others who pass through here might enjoy. I’m very happy with my GIANT AWESOME STEVE DITKO SPIDER-MAN COVER POSTER, and you can be too. Such things are worthy of both the grown-ups that we are and the children that still lurk inside.
Playing your Airwolf and WWF wrestling video games with a corded controller was just so gauche
These would have come in handy back in the day, when I’d go over to my friend’s house, we’d play his Nintendo and get all crazy and wind up accidentally yanking it off the shelf by the controller cords. You try intense Double Dragon and Double Dribble sessions when you’re ten years old without breaking something. There were always some tense moments as we rebooted the machine and worried whether it would come back on, lest we faced the wrath of his parents. I therefore have great empathy for Kid Remote’s plight.
Incidentally, while I knew there was a WWF wrestling game (the Hulk Hogan shirt-rip cover is emblazoned on my memory) I had no recollection of an Airwolf game. You could re-enact the Jan-Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine infused helicopter adventures in eight bits? Where did — screw it, where DO — we sign up?
Santa Claus is back, and he has a gun. And sunglasses. And cigarettes. – The Spectacular Spider-Man #112
The “Evil Santa” angle is a frequently probed outgrowth of Christmas-time. There have been roughly 1.7 billion cinematic takes on this subgenre, and they’ve mostly been unspeakably awful. A random yet prime example of the potential terribleness is Santa’s Slay, which had the wisdom to fuse the thespian talents of SNL alumnus Chris Kattan (Mango, Mr. Peepers, etc.) with those of professional wrestler Bill Goldberg. We’re talking direct to video dreck here, folks. The quarter bin of films.
Comics have had their share of this as well, and the Spider-Man mythos is no stranger to Santa Claus imposters (that terminology is a bit redundant, since all Santa Clauses are Santa Claus imposters when you get right down to it). Years ago on this very site we looked at one of the more memorable faux Santas, as Wilson Fisk donned red garb and a fake beard in a newspaper giveaway, only to comically (fitting) float up to the heavens by story’s end. Hard to top that. Yet here we go with another Spider-Man fake-Santa-palooza, this time in the web-slinger’s secondary ongoing title.
No, that’s not Frank Castle in a fake beard up there on the Kyle Baker cover, in deep disguise to break up a violent smuggling ring that’s infiltrated Toys for Tots or something. This time around (Script: Peter David, Pencils: Mark Beachum, Inks: Pat Redding) we have a department store Santa who’s actually a career criminal, using holiday duties as a front for scoping potential break-in targets. (Apparently background checks aren’t and never have been a priority when it comes to seasonal employment. Lesson: Be careful whose lap you sit on.) Our evil St. Nick has incapacitated and squirreled away the jolly old elf who was supposed to be listening to kids’ requests a couple of days before Christmas, and he intersperses their fondest desires (Optimus Prime and Stinkor are two of the 1980s toy buzzwords that grace these pages) with queries about where they live, what they have in the house, etc. And once the children leave with their folks, he dutifully records his intelligence on a notepad, while looking all sinister and stuff:
What’s Peter Parker up to just before Christmas? He’s having one of his usual mope-fests, which have always seemed to be an adjunct to his guiding “great power, great responsibility” bedrock. In this case it’s his difficulty in finding someone to spend Christmas day with that has him all hangdog. He calls up Aunt May, but some missed signals and misunderstandings leave him thinking that she already has plans. And this brings us up to the secondary focus of this comic book: women and their genitorectal regions. Seriously. This comic book repeatedly lingers on the backsides and general nether areas of the female members of Spider-Man’s universe. (I’d like to thank God that Aunt May was skipped.) Here’s Mary Jane, sudsing up in the bath as Peter rings her but hangs up before leaving a message:
Why not just strap up her legs and do a full gynecological exam?
An out of costume Felicia Hardy gets in on the call and hang up action, as she writhes and juts in a nightie cut real high:
Let’s take a break from the voyeurism and get to one of the most depressing moments in Spider-Man history. Here’s Peter Parker spending a quiet night half-dressed and talking to himself. Well, not himself — talking to something even more alarming:
Buck up, Pete, I too have had moments like this. “Happy Arbor Day, potted plant that I sometimes remember to water.” But pull yourself together, man. Peter talking to his black costume isn’t as depressing as Frosty the Snowman’s donkey story, but it’s a leading indicator of a superhero losing his marbles. Look at the care he took to arrange it so that it was “sitting” in the chair. GET AHOLD OF YOURSELF. YOU’RE YOUNG, HAVE POWERS, A RECLINER AND A CABLE SPOOL COFFEE TABLE. LIFE ISN’T SO BAD. (We should note that having a cable spool coffee table can be chic, but it can also signify acute loser status. I think the latter is the case here.)
We now return to our regularly scheduled ladies’ hinders programming. Jordan, the boy whose info we saw fake-Santa jotting down, lives with his mother and her two roommates in an apartment that’s coincidentally (what a coincidence!) right next to Peter’s place. All three of the ladies also wear sleeping attire that makes it look like they could roll out of bed and walk right into a Flashdance music video, as we see when sinister Santa makes his move:
All this ruckus sets of the slumbering Peter’s Spider-Sense, and in no time Spider-Man crashes through a window and has bad Santa on the run. Our villain heads to the roof in his bid to escape, and once there he has an unexpected run in:
So he ran into the real Santa. Hey how about that. Let’s just hope it wasn’t Nick St. Christopher.
After this disappearing act, no one is more surprised than Peter to find out that the crook has shown up back at the scene of his original intelligence-gathering, with mended ways and armed with new gifts (Peter is stuck covering it for the Daily Bugle, which proves that he’s still getting the worst assignments at that paper despite working there for twenty-plus years):
What’s in the note?:
Santa knows all.
Peter David’s story, coming fairly early in his career, lacks the self-aware smarm that would mark some of his later output. This is a good thing. This is a dopey tale, but decent holiday fill-in material. I’m not sure what the hell was going on with all the gratuitous butts, though, and I only scratched the surface with the scans I included. There are many more if you’re so inclined to track this down — you know, if you’re into that sort of thing.
And there you have it. Bad Santa, with a dollop of ass. MERRY CHRISTMAS.
Between Daisy air rifles and Schwinn bikes, young boys in postwar America really had it made. Look at that sexy bitch up there, with her front and rear racks and dangerous curves. Just imagine the Mark IV Jaguar gleaming next to your trimmed tree on Christmas morning — here’s a real one, in the flesh, to jumpstart your fantasies. No wonder those appley-cheeked kids (they look like the youngsters in Twas the Night Before Christmas) have eyes wide open with delight. HUBBA.
Making whipped detergent Christmas trees and Frosty the Snowmans is fun for kids of all ages! Wait, what?
This little how-to page was found on the inside front cover of the comic in yesterday’s infinitely depressing Frosty the Snowman post. I have to confess, never in all my born days have I heard of using whipped detergent for Christmas arts and crafts projects, yet here we are. It begs the question: What detergent would make for the best whipping? The old standby Tide? The Chuck-Norris-approved Era? The cheap, probably carcinogen-laden generic stuff?
And would your whipped detergent decorations really last from year to year? Will aliens doing archeological excavations on a long-dead Earth dust off detergent snowmen with their brushes and think we worshipped three-tiered blobs in scarves and top hats?
Jared
blog into mystery 