The comics-loving audience won’t soon forget the time when Green Arrow exclaimed “NEEE! Speedy is een JUNKIE!”
I don’t have much to say about this comic. I’ve profiled a foreign Green Lantern book here before, but unlike my limited (and fading) grasp of French, I have absolutely no working knowledge of Dutch. I’m not entirely sure of the effect the translation here has on the original Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams script, other than making the reader look for windmills, clogs and marijuana in every panel. I also don’t want to dawdle on looking at the book, lest this post take on a moronic “Dance for me, monkey!” parlor game vibe. “Look, dey’re talkin’ Dutch or sometin’! Huhuhuh!” And lastly, everyone knows the story of Speedy’s dalliance with needles and opiates by rote at this point.
But, just to give you a feel for what our friends in Holland got when they read this — with its recolored Adams/Dick Giordano art — here’s some bookends. The first page, with skulking toughs waiting to take out an oblivious Oliver Queen:
And the last few panels, which give us the mainlining money shot:
Hey, where’d Speedy’s costume go? And Green Arrow’s hat? “O, lieve God!” indeed.
Join salty-tongued baseball manager Dick Williams as he philosophizes on the merits of BB gun ownership
All baseball managers come pre-installed with chewing tobacco and a profane vocabulary, so I’m a bit surprised this ad didn’t have a few more four-letter words and barnyard allusions. And, apart from the obvious coordination benefits, I’m skeptical about the baseball cross-training advantages of BB guns that Mr. Williams advocates here. “Your team slumping at the plate? Get them Daisies!”
Still, this is less eyebrow-arching than classroom ads and living room shooting galleries.
Is it just me, or is that a harrowing first panel or what?
This is another of the old Superman PSAs that pimped the wonders of the juvenile court system. As great as it would be to have Superman show up just as you’re about to get the piss knocked out of you by your old man (even better than Spider-Man stepping in), I’m guessing the beating would happen anyway as soon as the Man of Steel went off to fight Brainiac, Lex Luthor or whoever. And maybe — just maybe — Superman shouldn’t be so middle of the road on this one. It might be okay to flat out side with the kid here.
Were you all fired up to read Jack Kirby’s Silver Star back in the day? No? Yeah, no one was.
Everyone who loves comics loves Jack Kirby. Or almost everyone. There are holdouts out there who wear anti-Kirby iconoclasm like a badge of honor (like I do with Neal Adams). Anyway, the vast majority of us love Kirby. But the imaginative premises of his fertile mind started to get a bit thin in the later stages of his career. Silver Star, the “Homo Geneticus” creation of his 1980s Captain Victory period, is one of the more tired looking of these latter-day concepts. The alliterative Morgan Miller — born in a 1970s unproduced screenplay — looks like Kirby fused Galactus with Orion, then said “screw it” and moved on.
Have to love the Kirby dots though. And I like the “Visual Novel” terminology A LOT more than the offensively overused “Graphic Novel” — a soapbox I’ll mount at some later date.
Hey, Aquaman has a new blue costume. Kids will LOVE him now. – Aquaman (1986 Mini-Series)
Lord knows that I rip on Aquaman just as much as anybody. Maybe more than most. It’s so easy. Anyone with water-based powers is susceptible to whatever the equivalent of bullying is within comic book fandom, from Namor to the Man from Atlantis. But you want to know what I find even more infuriating than Aquaman himself? When people try to shine him up, gussy him up with a new costume and a new grooming style. That always sucks. Own him, you know? If you’re going to write and draw a damn Aquaman story, man up and do it, with the green pants and orange top and clean-shaven looks. What the hell was that look he sported in the past decade? No shirt, a cyborg arm, long hair and a beard? Was he supposed to be underwater Cable or something?
Lame. The kind of lame you only get when you try to tart up lame. Lame².
This series, published after DC’s first massive spring cleaning of their ever-jumbled universe, gives us a fresh take on the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths Aquaman. (Unlike the old Wonder Woman’s rearview mirror post-Crisis sendoff, this mini looks forward.) Not that there are any radical departures from the nuts and bolts of Aquaman’s Atlantean lore. Familiar faces are found in their customary roles, whether Mera or the Ocean Master, and it’s not like he was switched out with Hawkman and became Lord of the Clouds or some B.S. like that.
The biggest difference here is an obvious one. A new costume. An ugly, new, used very briefly costume. One that makes him look like a figure skater or something. Are there sequins on it? If not, why not?
Not a fan.
That’s not to say that the series is bad. Actually it’s pretty good. Writer Neal Pozner and artists Craig Hamilton and Steve Montano craft a story that richly re-orders and expands DC’s undersea regions. New realms are added to the map, magic and sacred objects are incorporated, quests are begun for stolen seals, and for a brief moment you actually start to think that Aquaman’s environs might be an interesting place to visit — and revisit. The art is quality, and the script does its damnedest. There’s an extended sequence in the final issue where Aquaman looks back on his history and seems to come to peace with his place in the universe, with several splash-pages giving us a timeline of his life, and it’s perhaps one of the best bits of Aquaman storytelling that I’ve ever read. (A low bar, granted…) Some of the dialogue in the series is a bit glib, but that’s a minor complaint. The thing reads well.
But there’s that costume.
The storyline reason for the fresh duds is that the varying shades of blue will provide better cover for Aquaman as sneaks around the ocean depths. Camouflage. Of course, by the end of the first issue Aquaman — in true Aquaman fashion — is captured, so we’re not exactly dealing with an Elfin Cloak of Invisibility here. So really THERE’S NO POINT TO IT WHATSOEVER, other than to make Aquaman more modern and, heaven help us, hip.
(Shakes head.)
The main impetus for the story’s action is our hero’s long-standing sibling rivalry with his nutcase brother, Ocean Master. He attacks Aquaman’s surface home with a new panoply of powers, and has his usual “No, YOU’RE the booger!” set-to with his bro:
I prefer Thor and Loki’s family squabbles, but that’s just me. And pretty much everyone else.
Again — back to the costume. Here’s Arthur getting the duds and getting nude. A little something for the ladies:
Yeah. I’m sure you’ll be able to handle anything that comes your way, Artie. No need for the JLA signal. YOUR COMPETENCE OVERWHELMS US.
I’ve made my feelings on the camouflage clear. Again, NOT A FAN. But I’m willing to concede that others might me more amenable to a change of sartorial pace for Aquaman, and I present you with this “The Pen is Mightier than the Swordfish” (…) letters column from the last issue to give some opposing viewpoints:
Aquaman sported the blue tights once more, in a one-off special in 1988, and then went back to the orange and green that we know and, well, not love — perhaps tolerate. Yeah, know and tolerate. At least, until the next time he was scheduled for a futile reinvention.
Short? Don’t want to stretch yourself out with a torture rack? Then try these simple Tom Cruise-style lifts.
I remember quite clearly when I first watched the Stephen Spielberg-directed War of the Worlds, and more specifically its unbelievably well-crafted first appearance of an alien tripod. It was probably one of my favorite extended movie scenes of the past decade, a moment that reminded me why I go to theaters and put up with people talking and noisily thrusting their fat fingers into huge vats of buttery popcorn. Seeing such a sight on a big screen makes it all worthwhile.
But there were a few frames in that scene where I was dragged kicking and screaming out of the effects-laden drama unfolding before me. Spielberg has long understood that a simple trick to help give an audience a childlike sense of wonder is to keep the camera low, because that way you’re looking up at what’s going on in the world — like a kid. He did that in this scene, placing the camera right on the ground as Tom Cruise scurried and the alien war machine rose up through the city street.
Problem was, at that low vantage we got a good look at Cruise’s shoes. And all I could think of was how thick the soles were. We’re talking New-York-delicatessen-pastrami-sandwich thick. Webster’s Dictionary thick. Whatever a not-that-tall leading man has to do to squeeze out an extra inch or two, you know?
I’m not trying to pile onto the omnipresent “Tom Cruise is short” internet trolling (though I probably am, intent be damned). It just made me laugh. And this ad for lifts made me think of Cruise fleeing tripods in his gigunda platformy shoes. All “get taller” ads make me think of Cruise. But this one really did.
Chuck Norris laughs at this comic’s paucity of spinning heel kicks – Jace Pearson’s Tales of the Texas Rangers #11
There’s an entire generation out there that probably thinks all Texas Rangers (the law enforcement kind, not the baseball kind) know every manner of martial arts, and rarely have to resort to using their issued sidearms. That they’re nigh-superhuman, with hyper-masculine beards to go along with the de rigueur hat. That they’re all cut from the same Chuck Norris mold. Thanks, Walker, Texas Ranger. You’ve spoiled being a Ranger for all of them.
Mr. Norris’ Walker may have been the most recent and most famous TV Texas Ranger, but he was by no means the first. Jace Pearson, as played by Willard Parker (and seen on the photo cover above), patrolled the airwaves for several years in the latter half of the 1950s in Tales of the Texas Rangers. (The franchise had existed as a radio drama before that.) It combined the by the book morality of Jack Webb’s Dragnet with any of the million or so Western dramas of the day. The short-lived comic series, of which today’s issue was a part, was a standard-for-its-time companion to the show. In all the versions, Jace, often with his partner Clay at his side, would range over the wide open fields of Texas, battling crime as his horse-riding forbears had done before , just with a lot less Comanches threatening to ride in at any moment.
But he never kicked anyone in the face in a most spectacular manner. Which is a shame.
Ted Ushler provided art in this issue (as he did with the Davy Crockett one-shot profiled here last month), and while reading this story — the scripter is unknown, btw — I found myself thinking “this is a perfect time to spin in midair and nearly decapitate your foe, Jace” all too often. The propensity for cartoonish violence (to go along with the awkward drama) was one of the standout features of the improbably long-running Walker, and it also gave Conan O’Brien one of the best bits Late Night ever had. (Does he still have the Walker Lever on the TBS show? I guess he probably can’t because of rights issues. Oh well.) This kung fu cowboy silliness will cloud my views of the Rangers until the day I die. Likely that’s true for others.
There are three stories within this comic, and Jace matches the battle prowess of Walker to varying degrees in each. I’ll give you a brief look.
Here’s some scrubby convict, with his state issued jumpsuit and stubble, getting the drop on our hapless hero in the first tale:
Walker would have been the one shooting the gun out of a hand, methinks.
Here’s Jace getting a rock to the head:
Seems to me that a well-timed aerial sweep of a foot would have deflected that crude missile quite nicely.
Jace isn’t a complete milquetoast. A pansy check-cashing scheme in the second story proves more amenable to his ground-based brand of physicality:
I’ll say this for Jace: I don’t think Walker ever used a stack of soup cans to catch his man (or men.) So Jace gets points for this finale to the third of this issue’s entries:
Of course, he ruins it in the next panel by dropping an awful, awful pun:
HAW-HAW indeed.
There isn’t much to recommend this comic to a modern reader. The stories are plodding and unoriginal (the first two share a “twist” — the victim of a crime turns out to be a criminal himself) and the art, while at times offering clean views of sere, open Texas land (which evokes but doesn’t match the art in the Roy Rogers book reviewed here a long time ago), can’t overcome that. And there’s always that Walker nonsense in the back of your head. Chuck Norris may have spoiled all Texas Ranger properties for us forever. Jace, with his steely blue eyes, would not be happy.
Ah. Keanu Reeves. On the game console of your choice. Your move, early 1990s gamer. Place this where you will among the John Elway’s Quarterback — Spy vs. Spy pantheon. (There’s technically some George Carlin in this, too. So there’s that.)
Have you seen The Avengers yet? If you did, it was pretty great, wasn’t it? YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT IT WAS. I’m still walking on air about it. (And I’m beginning to think that maybe I should have given it the full five out of five on my “toothy Hulk smile” metric.) The comic book movie that we always dreamed of was finally dropped into our laps, and it was as close to distilled perfection as we’re ever going to get. I live within a ten-minute walk of a multiplex, and it’s a constant struggle to not go over there every night and watch the damn thing. It’s the kind of movie that you make plans to see again as you’re walking out of a screening. It’s a miracle that I’m not on a first-name basis with every employee at that theater by now.
We’ve all been psychically high-fiving each other for days now, like fans of a team that just won a championship. The World Series. The Super Bowl. In that vein, I thought it might be nice to take a victory lap of sorts, a quick look at a random issue of Tales from Suspense featuring Iron Man and Captain America, whose clashes and eventual respect and teamwork provided some of the best drama in the film. I’ve talked about ToS comics here before, but it seems a fresh trip down memory lane is in order. And this comic drips with heavyweight talent. It’s great to see how much of the artistic work was eventually incorporated into our recent celluloid acid trip. It’s as if Jack Kirby and Gene Colan were doing storyboards in the production offices.
That said, many of the story elements are what we generously call, here on our evolved post-millennial moral perch, “products of their time.” There are racial and political angles to the Iron Man portion that at worst offend and at best give one pause, and Captain America patronizes Sharon Carter/Agent 13 to a stunning degree. There’s some Mad Men in this little comic — the only thing Cap doesn’t do is pinch his gal pal’s behind.
Still, this is quality 1960s sequential art myth-making. Neither of the stories here is a standalone, but they can stand alone, if you will. The Tony Stark half of the equation (scripted by Stan Lee, art by Colan and Frank Giacoia) has Iron Man battling that classic Cold War foe, the Titanium Man, who’s under control of the not-as-insulting-as-Egg-Fu Asian villain, Half-Face. (“Two-Face” was taken.)
What’s that? You have a sudden hankering for a full-page splash of Iron Man locked in mortal combat with Titanium Man? And to have it illustrated by Genial Gene, the man who could get blood from the Man from Atlantis stone? FEAST ON THIS:
There was a fluidity with Colan’s Iron Man. That was a quality in all of his work, but no one else has ever drawn Rivet-Head with such — there’s no other word for it — malleability.
This story, set in the bloody peak of the Vietnam War, the milieu so intricately wound up with Iron Man’s origin, has a healthy dose of anti-Commie propaganda. Half-Face is a man (literally) consumed by his work for the Viet-Cong, to the detriment of his family — as can be seen in this fluffy-bordered flashback:
And then he had his face blown off in a lab accident, one that offered a chance for the customary evil Asian buck-toothed caricature to be accentuated. Wonderful.
And our hero… While Stark was always the playboy, there was definitely a greater amount of Red, White and Blue patriotism in his classic portrayal, clearly seen in these last panels:
All for one and one for all. U S A. U S A. I have a hard time imagine Robert Downey Jr.’s Stark having such thoughts. Not that he should, mind you. I like Movie-Stark the way he is, with altruism woven in with irreverent prick. Just saying. (And if he did have them, there’d be some snappy pop culture references in those thoughts, surely.)
It’s been indicated that the next Captain America movie will have Steve Rogers closely associated with SHIELD. The CA story here is appropriate then, because it has him neck-deep in SHIELD vs. AIM hijinks (and the introduction — off-panel — of MODOK). And he’s also ensconced in a wonderfully silly Jack Kirby-designed SHIELD apparatus (script again by Lee, art by Kirby and Joe Sinnott):
Do not let any ladies see you in that, Cap. You’ll never again know the touch of a woman, perfect physique and blond good looks notwithstanding. It’s like Dukakis in the tank.
Here’s Cap going through his ass-kicking floor routine, with improbable contortions that I was grateful to see replicated in the Avengers stunt work:
Now for the bad.
Cap only breaks out the demeaning wordplay at a few points here, but the story feels weighed down with it, as if every other word of his mouth was “doll” and/or “toots.” That he refers to a resourceful female agent, Agent 13, as “little girl” is sure to send every hair-trigger feminist into a frothing rage:
“Little lady” seems enlightened by comparison. And “girl” wasn’t a one time slip of the tongue:
Pardon me, Mr. Rogers, but who’s the one flat on his back from a paralyzing ray? Hm?
Thankfully, movie-Cap sticks to a straight-laced “ma’am” when addressing the fairer sex. Then again, Rogers and Carter eventually became paramours. So maybe “little girl” is like Spanish Fly to her. Whatever.
There you have it. Vietnam. Titanium Man. Buck-Toothed Asian villains. Rolling bowling ball attacks. “Little lady.” A rich smorgasbord of its time, but one with influence — the good stuff — that has wafted down to the present. So pop your bottle of Cristal, sit back and enjoy the moment. It’s a fun time to be a devotee of this stuff.
The X-Men join the scam artist ranks of Dionne Warwick, Miss Cleo and countless phone sex lines
There needs to be some belated “You ought to be ashamed of yourself” commentary about this 1991 “game.” Really, Marvel? Really? I mean, it’s great and all that you capped the number of minutes that each call could last and the number of calls that could be placed in a week, but still… Without even getting into the shady economics of it, the game itself sounds mind-numbingly lame, with dumb prizes that I’m sure no one ever won. That this Erik Larsen-drawn promotion occupied two pages of prime advertising real estate (this one was scanned out of The Silver Surfer #56) is even more of a blight. It’s Marvel grabbing its audience by the ankles, tipping it upside down, and shaking the loose change from its pockets.
If this had been X-Men phone sex (“I’m the Juggernaut, and I’ve been a bad boy”) or tarot card readings it would have had more class. I mean, Psylocke was in her taut, cantaloupe-jugged prime at this point. They couldn’t have done something with that?
A side note: I’ve often wondered how many times parental permission was sought out before a call was placed to one of these numbers, and how many times it was actually given. Measured in the teens, I’m sure.
My first car wasn’t a car at all. It was a 1988 Toyota van. It was the vehicle that my family had driven across the United States years before — from New York to California and back again — and it was a clunky old hunk of junk, but believe you me, I was happy to have it passed down to me. The seats in back could fold down quite nicely IF YOU CATCH MY DRIFT. Who cared that it was a box on wheels?
My point is this: The van’s speedometer went up to a bit above 100 mph. It wasn’t a high-performance machine, that’s for sure. But there was a largely unused straightaway stretch of road near my house, and I’d tickle the upper reaches of that dial whenever I got a chance. (The van would make sounds like the Klingon Bird of Prey did when it was roaring around the sun in Star Trek IV. You could almost hear Scotty giving a dire “She canna take much more!” warning.) The higher numbers taunted me. I had to reach them.
So a bike speedometer that goes up to 50 mph might not be the best gift for a young boy, especially if he’s going to mount it on the POS department store bike pictured above. GOD HELP HIM if there are any significant hills around. Better make sure to pair it with a gigunda Batman bike horn so that a path can be cleared.
A couple of things have conspired to drag this old relic out of mothballs. One, a few days ago I mentioned Bobby Ewing and his Dallas dream death on here while talking about an old Thanos-infused Silver Surfer comic. Two, I’ve been watching a lot of the NBA playoffs on TNT, and that network has been saturating the airwaves with commercials for the new Ewing-centric Dallas revival. (WHERE IS MY MAGNUM, P.I. REVIVAL?) Both these things got me to thinking. Hey, didn’t Partick Duffy star in a really bad sci-fi series in the mid to late seventies? And didn’t said series have a Marvel tie-in book? Yes and yes.
NBC’s Man from Atlantis starred Duffy as Mark Harris, the sole remaining survivor of a lost Atlantean civilization, one that can (of course) breathe underwater and whose hands and feet are webbed (GROSS) He was found by and subsequently glommed onto an oceanic research team, which made the series sort of Namor/Aquaman meets seaQuest DSV. Which sounds like Morrissey and The Cure formed a superband to drive millions of music fans into the Stygian arms of suicidal depression. I’ve only ever seen bits and pieces of the show — and TV movies — and it doesn’t look all that good. Even the “exciting” opening seems designed to put you in a coma.
The comic followed in this proud tradition.
Granted, there’s not much to build on here. The television show was a dud, with a lame premise and languid, un-thrilling underwater derring-do. (If you want good undersea TV action, best to seek out Sea Hunt.) But I expect more from Bill Mantlo, who delivered many a solid script in his years at Marvel. This early work, however, belongs more to his Woodgod phase. He did the wordifying on both of the features in this premier issue, and neither will grab you.
The first — with art from Tom Sutton and Sonny Trinidad — has a recounting (note the irregular WE’RE IN A FLASHBACK panel outlines) of the SENSES-SHATTERING ORIGIN of the Man from Atlantis. Gills — ewww:
It’s a yawner. Believe me.
Things get worse in the second. Frank Robbins provides the pencils on this one (inked by The Tribe), and it’s your typical Robbins output. Which means “hideous to behold.” No insult intended to Mr. Robbins. I’m a comic reader who’s not a fan of Neal Adams, so perhaps it’s my evaluation credentials that are suspect. But the man who once drew the worst Captain America ever manages to take his script assignment, which might have actually been halfway decent (it has some cyborg pirate with a metal ship with metal sails and probably a metal parrot lurking somewhere), and wrings whatever readability it might have had out of it.
Here’s Mr. Harris in action. It looks like his power set not only includes being able to breathe underwater and swim just as well as fish (and mammals), but also to make really, REALLY goofy faces while doing it:
Dork.
Perhaps people might take more interest in a Patrick Duffy interview, included with the extra behind-the-scenes stuff in this oversized issue. It’s of middling note to read what he has to say in the “I can’t believe I have to do this goofy crap” days before he hit the big time:
The show made it through a season plus a few TV movies. The comic flatlined after seven issues. Now you can barely find a soul on Earth that remembers either. And that’s no great loss for humanity, whether surface dwelling or Atlantean.
There are also pin-ups within, and I’ll leave you with one of them — it might rinse the funk out of your mouth. Gene Colan was able to make Namor enjoyable, but I’m not sure that he could have done the same with Mark Harris. This one page (with Frank Giacoia inks) would seem to indicate that he could — “The Dean” indeed:
Your boxes of comic books not repelling women? Give insect collecting a go. That’ll do the trick.
This ad was on the inside front cover of the Adventures of the Fly issue profiled here two days ago. There is rich irony there. (Also, the Atom might break out in a cold sweat if he saw this.)
I’ve been fortunate that most of the women I’ve (*ahem*) associated with have at the very least tolerated my more dorky predilections. But if I broke out the pins and glass cases and spread-out butterflies — you know, went all Jame Gumb — I have a feeling there’d be a vapor trail and the sound of squealing tires in the driveway.
Back in June of 2010, Washington, DC experienced one of its more stunning sports spectacles. Stephen Strasburg, a much-hyped phenom of a pitcher, a #1 draft pick with a blazing fastball and pinpoint control, made his Major League debut for the Washington Nationals. The buildup to this was unbelievable. The expectations were off the charts, and the media crush was stifling. How would he bear up under the pressure? He couldn’t possibly meet the lofty hopes of fans. Could he?
I was there that night, when Strasburg struck out 14 batters in his major league debut. (Of course, his arm exploded a couple months later, but let’s just ignore that.) The expectations were surpassed. It was amazing, one of those nights where the impossible comes true.
I’m here to tell you that The Avengers does the very same thing. Expectations. Surpassed. It’s a much hyped phenom that’s coming to town and mowing down the competition. THIS. MOVIE. RULES.
I’ve already discussed the decades-long buildup to this film here. I’ve reviewed Thor and Captain America. Now it’s time for the main event. Here are my talking points for the movie — this is a general discussion and no plot spoilers are within, but if you want to be pure as the driven snow on first viewing, you might want to come back to this post later:
- Much of this film is pure wish-fulfillment. Perhaps you once looked at the roster of characters and thought, “You know, so and so and so and so probably aren’t going to square off in this installment. Not enough time.” Wrong. Almost every X vs. X contretemps that you could possibly want can be found within this film’s runtime. And none of it feels crammed in. I once wrote that Transformers: Dark of the Moon should have been called Transformers: Just Because, since things were jammed into it, yes, just because. Not so here. Everything feels organic. And it’s not only conflict that’s well represented. The team-ups you want to see are there too.
- It’s a shame that Edward Norton couldn’t have been along for the ride simply for the sake of consistency, but Mark Ruffalo gives us the best Bruce Banner/Hulk yet. Many of the reviews say that the Green Goliath steals the show. He does. There were any number of Hulkasms that had my audience roaring their approval and laughing. And for a guy who communicates mostly through primal roars, he might have had the line of the night.
- Loki. Tom Hiddleston deserves our gratitude. A comic book movie — really, any movie — is only as strong as its villain, and Loki is even more rich a stew of evil than he was in Thor. There’s a scene where he’s talking through glass to the Black Widow that I’m sure will for many call to mind Hannibal Lecter taunting/quizzing Clarice Starling. “Tell me about the lambs.” Loki calls her a “mewling quim,” which, translated to modern English, means “whiny c–t.” It’s such a viciously perfect piece of dialogue for him. He’s every bit a wounded, jealous, and utterly dangerous God.
- I’ve never liked Joss Whedon’s stuff. It was always far, far too cute for my taste. Too much smarm. (Even his name sounds like it needs to get slugged.) I had a roommate in college who never missed an episode of Buffy. He’d park himself in front of the TV before it started like Ed Norton (the sewer one, not the Hulk one) getting ready to watch “Captian Video” in Ralph Kramden’s apartment. I used to mock him for it. But I’m eating a modest plate of crow now, because Whedon — pulling double duty as director and script-writer — nails so much of this movie. The action is superb, and the relationships between every single character are beautifully handled. And this is mostly an incredibly witty and funny film (at times the humor can get a tad thick, but it never approaches the annoyance factor of the talking-over-each-other dialogue in Iron Man 2), and a thoughtfully-conceived piece. Yes, The Avengers has a brain, with a script that soars along like a cloaked Helicarrier.
- There was a time when a lot of people were afraid this flick would turn into Tony Stark and the Avengers. It doesn’t. Robert Downey Jr. might be the brightest bulb in the marquee, but this is a true ensemble. (Stark always has new and better ways to get in and out of those suits of his, though. It takes on a “what’ll they think of next” life of its own.)
- I love Thor. I love him so much. He should be the hardest Avenger of them all to capture, and Chris Hemsworth still manages it. And I never thought Chris Evans would make a great Captain America, but he does. I’d follow this man into battle, and it’s refreshing how he uses “sir” and “ma’am” without a trace of irony (and still holds on to that quaint old one-God cosmos). The casting of this Marvel Movie Universe really has been stellar.
- On the SHIELD side of things: Agent Colson at one point uses the terms “Near Mint” and “slight foxing” to describe some of his treasured collectibles. I was in a room full of dorks, and I wondered how many of us understood this pursuit of perfection. Cobie Smulders delivers line readings that will evoke Natalie Portman in the Star Wars prequels. Flat. Fortunately for her, her body isn’t flat, and squeezing said body into tight-fitting attire was the reason she was cast. Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) gets short shrift, though for good narrative reasons, and the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) gets fleshed out (no pun intended) a lot more this time around. I was dreading her clogging up the joyous sausage-fest. I needn’t have worried. She holds her own. Samuel L. Jackson stars as Mace Windu with an eye patch. He takes nothing away, but I’m not sure how much he adds. (Hey, Powers Boothe was in this too. How about that.)
- STAY THROUGH THE CREDITS. ALL OF THE CREDITS. Do people still have to be reminded of this? I was stunned by the number of wayward souls that headed for the exits after the “final” scene. And as for the “surprise” — again, no spoiler — the next three year wait will be even more excruciating than this one has been. ANTE. UPPED. Seriously, I thought the 400 lb. land whale sitting next to me was going to crap his pants. (By the smell of him, he might have upon entering the theater.)
- The big fight will be more than what you imagine it to be. There at one point is an unbroken shot that captures all the Avengers as they battle Loki’s alien army, and I wish I could put it on a loop inside my head for the next week or so.
- There’s a great final scene where the core Avengers — Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and the Hulk — are alone together, totally exhausted from battle, still in costume and Hulked up. It’s a quiet, funny, tender moment. I loved it. As I loved this movie. (The Hulk steals that scene too, btw.)
It’s been a while since I’ve watched a film multiple times in theaters. I’ll be doing that with this one. I’ve earned it after sitting through drivel like the latest Ghost Rider. I’m not certain that it’s the best superhero movie we’ve ever had. It could be. The first Christopher Reeve Superman has always been my personal North Star in that department, but it might have to make room on the pedestal. Even more so than that classic, you can tell that everyone involved here was enthusiastic and, most importantly, proud to be a part of this. They bought in, and I thank them all so much for that.
This chunk of celluloid will blow you away. Like a Stephen Strasburg fastball.
I give The Avengers 4½ toothy Hulk smiles out of five. Only the mildest of reservations keep it from getting the full five. GO SEE THIS NOW.
Note: I saw The Avengers in non-3D. You do not need to see this in 3D. Please do not see this in 3D. Stop the 3D insanity.
(Note: I was tempted to mock the typo on the front cover, but since “it’s” one that I make a lot myself — along with the their/there/they’re muddle — I’ll let it slide. And believe me, I proof-read this parenthetical about fifteen times. God help me if one or more slipped through.)
One of the things you’re constantly hearing in reviews of the new Avengers movie (mine is forthcoming, btw) is that seeing the stars of standalone films come together in a movie dreamed about for years, and one no one ever expected to see, is insane. Crazy. OUT THERE, MAN. Maybe that’s true. Or maybe people are being too loose with the words insane and crazy. I’m here to offer up this comic book to remind us of the real meaning of the words. We’re wandering too far from their true essence. To quote Michael Keaton in Tim Burton’s Batman: “You want to get nuts? Come on. Let’s get nuts.”
Adventures of the Fly was a series from Archie Comics which, like Adventures of the Jaguar, sought to cash in on the superhero boom. To get in on the sweet action. It was of course tough to grab attention in that already crowded field, so the fine folks at Archie threw everything at the wall that they could think of to make a mark. Not a lot worked, because the comics were never hot sellers and never really caught the imagination of the reading public (though there have been later revivals of the characters, if not at a Gold Key/Valiant level). But boy oh boy, were there ever some outlandish plot point carpet bombings. This book is Exhibit A.
To give you an early indicator of the amount of madness in this thin little bit of folded newsprint, there are three Fly features within. I’m only covering two here (both scripted by Robert Bernstein with art from John Rosenberger). Why only two? BECAUSE IF I DID THE THIRD MY HEAD WOULD BLOW UP. There are limits to human endurance, okay? I’m only one man with a scanner and a blog and a lot of dopey comics lying around. I’m not Rambo. Or Blogbo.
In the first story (you’re going to have to keep track of this stuff), a mouse chews through a wire, which accidentally launches a nuclear missile. Yes, that’s right, World War III can be started for want of a mousetrap and some cheese. Thankfully, the Fly and his partner, Fly-Girl (not the In Living Color make) are on hand to save the day, hurling the missile into space like Superman in his second movie — no Phantom Zone villains released, though. But their deeds get the attention of unseen foes, who use a decoy version of their Fly World mentor…
You know, I can’t even type this stuff. Here:
Yes, intelligent mice are on a nihilistic universal crusade. WONDERFUL. Thankfully, the real Turan shows up to save the day with some zapping gun and the wordiest word balloon in comics history:
Seriously, when exactly would those lines have been delivered in the course of that panel’s events? As he was zapping? After? It seems that there’s a lot of action transpiring, but Turan still has the wherewithal to blah blah blah his interminable exposition.
You might be thinking “Gee, Jared, genocidal wire-chewing space-mice and self-decapitating robot doppelgangers of verbose Fly Men don’t seem all that farfetched.” Fine. I’ll see you all that and raise you the cover story:
A giant rainbow-colored flying horse lands on Earth and has evil world-conquering centaurs come out of its belly like baby spiders from their mama’s abdomen. I think someone had a fever dream before they put this comic together.
I haven’t really talked much about the Fly himself in this post. He’s a Joe Simon/Jack Kirby creation (there’s a lot of what I’ve read were Kirby’s ideas for Spider-Man in this guy). He gets his powers through a magic ring that he wears and rubs like a genie’s lamp. He has a dorky costume (with goggles that make you want to dump his books) and, like Daredevil, he’s a lawyer by day. But unlike Daredevil, some of his powers are absolutely revolting. Like, for instance, his ability (and Fly-Girl’s) to cocoon himself. GROSS. Not even that he can turn this cocoon into a bowling ball and hit a wicked 7-10 split on centaurs can redeem this ability:
You really need some bowling sound effects there. And a Dick Weber reference.
As a final “No further questions, your honor” point for this post, I offer you this bewildering page — which pisses on history, astronomy, mythology and anything else ending in a Y — without any additional comment from me:
Well, one comment: I’d like to point out that the Fly head shot in the fourth panel is the same as the one in the previous scan. LAZY.
Okay, two: Never is it explained why the horse goes all rainbow in the future. Or present. Or the past present. Whenever the story takes place.
This finishes with the centaurs retreating inside their horse-ship, Fly and Fly-Girl tearing its wings off (talk about irony) with what they claim is the strength of millions of ants (make up your goddamn minds on what you are) and exiling it to an uninhabited world. THE. END.
The scripts in both of these stories are leaden and terrible (this really is one of the most needlessly word-laden comics you’ll ever wade through), and the art is stiff and repetitive (there was an austere beauty to its Archie kinsman reviewed here, Jaguar, which was crafted by the same creative team). But there’s a lot of nutty stuff per capita in this book. A lot. You have to tip your cap to it in a way. Like the reaction you might have to a guy who runs naked down a crowded street covered in his own feces. Or someone who drapes their whole body in tattoos or piercings. A wow, shake your head kind of cap tip. That. Is. Extreme. This book is as out there Silver Agey as you can get. Even if it sucks, its extremism is quite an accomplishment in the boundless world of comics.
So, when you go see Avengers, and you think how crazy it is, harken back to this book, and just imagine evil mice and giant rainbow horse ships. It’ll seem a whole lot saner. And vastly more entertaining.
Jared
blog into mystery 