Popsicles and Wheaties, brought to you by Bob Feller’s crotch and Frank McCormick’s fielding percentage
I pulled a couple of baseball related ads from the Hopalong Cassidy comic featured in yesterday’s post. The first has pitching legend Bob Feller hawking Popsicles in his old-timey groin-accentuating pose:
“Popsicles” is close to “testicles.” Just saying.
Next up is a smiling Frank McCormick and Wheaties. I’m all for plugging a ballplayer’s less glamorous but equally meritorious stats, but touting a fielding percentage and only a fielding percentage for a guy who was a 9-time All-Star and an MVP seems a bit odd:
I say all this as a former 1st baseman, the spot where they stick the big lanky galoot with feet of stone. .999 is pretty damn good, don’t get me wrong.
At least this Golden Age Wheaties spokesman only has one chin.
There was a time not that long ago when Columbus Day was celebrated without irony, when the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria carried daring explorers, not brutal conquering Europeans who would enslave a darker-skinned continent. There was also a time when “Injun” could be uncorked in a comic book without any attendant shame, when a strapping, upright white man would stand alone against red warriors. His moral rectitude would be his greatest weapon against the tomahawks and arrows of marauding savages. It made him invincible.
Hopalong Cassidy was one such white man.
I sort of miss Columbus day (still get the day off, though), but we can all be glad that this kind of tale has gone by the wayside.
Cassidy, a fictional sheriff whose print adventures were adapted into very successful films in the 1930s, got his own comic book in the next decade. An olden days King of All Media. His adventures were the standard “stick up for the little guy” flavors that you would expect, as he battled crooks, gamblers, ne’er do wells and, yes dirty Injuns. The cover story in this issue is an illustrative little microcosm of the character’s guiding ethos and the racial mores of the time.
Let’s take a gander.
It doesn’t waste any time. “Injun” is unfurled on the very first page:
Hopalong follows the sound of the war drums, and then pleads with the riled up Indians to uphold the “paleface laws”:
Can’t argue with a savage…
Widow Walker is a fetching young lady with a disputed strip of land and charming little children. A damsel in distress! One with a brood! Like any virile young man given the chance to strut before a single broad (kids or no), Cassidy springs into action, barricading them inside her protective stockade. Before he can give her the Josey Wales “You gotta get mean!” lecture, the Indians attack. It’s touch and go as Hopalong sends one of the kids for help:
Unable to scale the walls or break down the door, the Indians resort to flaming arrows. This sets fire to the widow’s shelter, and it’s all Hopalong can do to get her and her son away from the flames. Their only choice is to flee the stockade, and just as Hopalong is about to make his heroic last stand, the cavalry shows up. When the renegade chief attempts to beat cheeks and regroup, Hopalong brings him down:
A new chief. An “honest injun,” I’m sure. THE END.
Remember the show-within-the-comic “Storm Saxon” in V for Vendetta? Sometimes this story feels like what you’d imagine that show to be like. Look at that (well-rendered and vibrantly colored, I must admit) cover, with the Aryan champion fending off the low brutes of the wilderness. Not easy to overlook. Taking another tack, you could also forge a revisionist interpretation of the story, with the “evil” chief simply reclaiming land that was likely stolen from him in one of the, oh, I don’t know, 2,846,301 broken treaties. It was probably swindled away from them for firewater.
It’s easy for one to get chagrined by stories like this one, but the modern, cloying reaction to tales in this vein is equally nauseating. The “Cherokee Hair Tampon” set grates just as much, and sometimes moral relativism (sorry, Ditko) can be a wonderful thing. I’ll take my cowboys and Indians each with some shades of gray, thank you very much. Wherefor art thou, Jonah Hex?
All that said, the art in this story — and on the cover — is solid. Sometimes Golden Age books can look a bit primitive, but the action scenes here have detail and energy. And to be fair in a broader sense, this “Injun” feature is one of several stories within (Golden Age value for your dollar), and none of the others have anything nearly as insulting.
A product of its time. An interesting one.
Mary Marvel, does the Captain know you’re dressing that way?
I can well imagine that a cowgirl Mary Marvel modeling her own line of dungarees and plaid shirts awakened primal urges in a few 1940s teenage boys. And a few girls, for that matter.
I never guessed that Mary was a fashion dilettante, the Serena Williams of her time. Golly.
Why would boys and men like Wonder Woman? TV Guide investigates! – TV Guide, Jan. 29 – Feb. 4 1977
The Lynda Carter Wonder Woman was before my time, but I thought folks might enjoy this TV Guide article from during its run. Like a lecher’s eyes, this fluff piece goes straight to the star’s rack:
38, men! 38!
I flipped through the rest of this edition. Apart from the expected Welcome Back, Kotter and Barney Miller promos, I found this Phil Donahue blurb to be rather funny:
“The male homosexual.” They make it sound like an episode of Wild Kingdom. I don’t know how our society continues to survive without Phil’s hard-hitting journalism.
Anyway. Wonder Woman. I like that this Guide had a comicy cover for it (though it doesn’t quite match up to some of the Star Trek editions). That’s about all I can offer. Now the show is quite dated and makes The Six Million Dollar Man seem hip and prescient, but I can’t fault any program that gave the world one of the funnier bits from the earliest days of David Letterman’s CBS show.
Government surplus! Get your government surplus here!
I might be underestimating the cognitive capacities of those who would order a surplus parachute, but I think a prescription drug ad-worthy DonotuseparachuteforactualskydivingConsultalicensedskydiveinstructorbeforeattemptinganyairbornedeathdefiance disclaimer would be welcome.
Also, sign me up for the $278.00 Jeep. Lemon or not.
I’ve been debating whether or not to buy The Mighty Thor Omnibus. The Amazon page for it has been a tab on my browser for the last couple of days, and I look at it now and again, itching and tweaking like a meth-addict. I don’t generally buy trades (they don’t have the old comic smell), but the Marvel Omnibi are an undeniable cut above the rest. I only have the Ditko/Lee Amazing Spider-Man compilation, and it’s unironically placed alongside my dusty old Faulkner-, Tolstoy-, Maugham-, etc.-penned tomes. Amongst equals.
Time to pull the trigger on that bitch.
What got me pumped up to maybe buy it was this issue of Thor. I bought it a couple of weeks ago, one of the few issues that I lack from this stretch, a run of the book that was so ungodly (no pun intended) magnificent it assuredly violates grandfathered anti-sodomy statutes. Stuff this good simply cannot be legal — too many dopamine receptors firing away. It’s awesome enough to make me violate my personal blog imperative to spread characters and titles out a bit. A Thor tale (battling commies, of all things) was featured here a month and a half ago, but screw it. I’m ALL THORED UP.
An added bonus is the big villain on the cover. Not only is he another in a proud lineage of underwear-sporting (Fruit of the Foom) creatures, but he’s as close as we’ll get to an actual melding of NFL coach-turned-deer-in-the-headlights-studio-analyst Tony Dungy with his paler, separated at birth twin, Bat Boy (of Weekly World News fame). Some pictures to illustrate (and to prove I’m not completely out of my gourd):
Enough of that nonsense. Thor beckons, for we have a threat beyond mortal ken to deal with. Thor says so!:
The relative kens(?) are immediately thrashed out in this Stan Lee/Jack Kirby/Vince Colletta masterpiece. The Man-Beast (one of the least imaginative monikers ever) materializes before Thor and Jane Foster and sets out to conquer the universe while no doubt marking his territory by peeing all over it (I’m getting flashbacks of Jack Nicholson in Wolf). His first step is to use his advanced intellect and supreme strength and pound the God of Thunder into the ground like a railroad spike, but the sinews of Thor have a little something to say about all that:
There are some great sound effects in this one. “ROK!” is the tip of the iceberg. Keep your eyes peeled.
The man behind this million years hence wolf is, no surprise, the High Evolutionary (in his very first arc). Like all mad scientists, he sometimes has a hard time keeping his experiments in line, in this case the Island of Dr. Moreau-y New-Men of his genetic research colony, Wundagore. So what’s his big plan for subduing this particular rampaging creation?
A giant Rube Goldberg dog whistle:
I mock, but it works. The Man-Beast covers his big, sensitive ears and flees, but takes refuge inside a vault (perhaps Burgess Meredith is reading somewhere in its innards). This is bad, because the HE has stored all his genetic advancement gear in there, and the wolf, if left to his own MILLION YEARS HENCE devices, will create a private army of animal-men. Thor is about to pound the sealed door down in a violent display of Norse bravado, but the High Evolutionary stays his hand:
Ghostbusters. Crossing the streams. Important safety tip. ‘Nuff said.
The High Evolutionary has a solution for this little roadblock. And Thor says something you could take as mildly dirty:
I think all us men should incorporate “My hammer strikes for thee!” into our dirty talk.
They’re too late — the wolf has formed his small army. They come thundering out and Thor makes a valiant stand. Some of the High Evolutionary’s good guy assistants mount a cavalry charge to help even the odds, leading to this glorious (I SAY THEE GLORIOUS) Kirby splash page:
Thor unleashes the full might of Mjolnir, accompanied by wondrously onomatopoeiac sound effects:
“FTOP!” and “BKAM!” sound like rejected names for trolls.
The Man-Beast is felled. Threat averted. Done and done.
The High Evolutionary pulls off his helmet and offers us a flashback rundown of his senses-shattering origin, and I’m fairly certain that his is the only one that includes a bipedal (and underwear-wearing, of course) Dalmatian:
And don’t forget to WATCH MARVEL SUPER-HEROES ON TV IN ON CKLW-TV 9 IN DETROIT!
The High Evolutionary and his minions blast off to find another part of the galaxy where their genetic experiments won’t be able to harm others:
The Space Seed solution. And I’m sure it’ll work out just as well. The Wrath of the High Evolutionary. Seriously, the guy later put the MAD in mad scientist, so it’s a bit odd to see him nice and (relatively) sane in these pages. Maybe Thor could have fired Mjolnir into that ship’s fuel tanks and saved us a lot of grief and forgettable (I’m looking at you, “Evolutionary War”) crossovers. And Dungy/Bat Boy/Wolf monsters.
That’s it. I’m almost out of breath. What a ride.
Kirby was at the peak of his formidable powers here. It didn’t matter whether he was depicting mano a mano fisticuffs (though perhaps nothing can top the close quarters combat with Hercules) or a bodies upon bodies melee as in the splash page. He wielded a pencil like Thor handled Mjolnir — with devastating aplomb. You can feel the concussive force of every blow.
All the moving parts were greased and rolling, the pistons were firing, and this hot rod was roaring down the comics road (lest we think that this was only The Jack Kirby Show). Lee’s stupendously stilted verbiage and alliteration were never better, and the unsung Colletta’s inks only amped Kirby’s work — “Ably Embellished” was never empty praise when it came to Vince. The Marvel Bullpen in those days was the 1927 Yankees of comics. Just don’t ask me to tell you who was Ruth and who was Gehrig.
This issue isn’t included in Volume 1 of the Thor Omnibus. I can think of no better advertisement for buying that first collection. WE NEED IT TO SELL A BILLION COPIES TO ENSURE THAT WE GET THE SECOND. It’s really not that expensive when you think of all you’re getting. And it makes a satisfying thud when you set it on a table. Not a “BKAM,” but close enough.
SUBSCRIBE TO MARVEL COMICS OR THE KINGPIN WILL KILL YOUR PARENTS
One of the many villain-centric subscription ads. Horse’s head. Bed. You have been warned, Marvelites.
Bullseye holding a pie (THE PIE OF DOOM) undercuts some of the unspoken menace, don’t you think? I suppose that’s the point.
It’s not often that I come across a comic adaptation for a movie that I’ve never heard of, and that’s especially true for movies that have come out during my lifetime. That applies quadruply here, with a cartoon produced right when I was in the cartoon demographic wheelouse. Welcome to the world of Rock & Rule.
It turns out that there was good reason that I’d never heard of this 1983 animated Canadian feature, which features post-apocalyptic rats, cats, dogs and rock music on an Earth where all humans are dead and gone — picture a Kamandi-less Kamandi with a soundtrack. It never got a theatrical release in North America, and our continent only saw it on cable, a limited VHS release and scores of bootlegs. MGM was the big overlord studio that pulled the plug on its release, and that banishment almost killed the small studio (Nelvana) that crafted it. It was the first feature-length English language cartoon produced in Canada (a narrow category, granted — “And now the nominees for Best Actor in a Period Drama about Charlemagne…”). It was almost the last.
That’s the Inside Baseball background of the film. With my curiosity roused, I decided to watch the thing. Thanks, YouTube (and sorry, ghost of Jack Valenti).
I wanted to like it. The animation is excellent for the time, and some of the character design is nice. The main villain, Mok, a rock star fusion of Mick Jagger, Trevor Goodchild from Aeon Flux and Aladdin‘s Jafar (voiced in his songs by Lou Reed and Iggy Pop) — who wants to summon a demon, as all good rock superstars do — left me cold, but the two leads, Omar and Angel, sortofkindofalmost work. Omar, the lead singer in a two-bit rock band (song vocals by Robin Zander of Cheap Trick), is given the sullen, pouty burn that chicks so dig (even if he has an inexcusably off-putting snout). Angel, his fellow vocalist in their band, is the real standout, another in a long line of anthropomorphized cartoon babes that are disturbingly fetching, and whose singing voice is provided by Blondie herself, Deborah Harry. These two characters have a nice romantic tension. They clearly love each other with the throbbing energy that only courses through the veins of young rockers, while at the same time Omar is jealous of any hint that Angel might outshine him.
That’s the good.
The bad is that the story plods. Angel’s voice is the last element that Mok needs to summon a demon to kill a lot of people (I don’t think he put a lot of thought into the second stage of this master plan), and the whole things centers around her abduction, Mok’s attempts to win her cooperation, and Omar’s vain efforts, with two thinly-drawn bandmates, to get her back. Along the way there are some forgettable songs by recognizable names (Earth, Wind & Fire threw one on the pile), and none of it engages in the least. All is conveyed in juvenile tones, which is grating in a film whose sex and devils are clearly aimed at adults.
Then there’s the grand climax of the film, which contains a “twist” that anyone with more than one firing synapse can see coming before the end of the first reel. Trust me, discussing it is no spoiler, and I need to do so to make a final, whiplash-inducing point. As stated above, Angel’s voice singing a certain progression of notes is the key to bringing a big fat hell-monster to this dimension, and she obligingly screeches them at a concert after Mok drugs her. The beastie belches its way into our realm and starts gobbling up hapless concertgoers, and though Omar is able to (finally…) free Angel, it looks like all is lost.
But no. Angel decides to sing the monster back to hell, in a reprise of a tune that she crooned earlier in the film, a song that, instead of singing with her, Omar turned his (large) nose up at before stalking off the stage. That jealousy thing, remember? Alas, the song has no effect with Angel singing alone. Evil demon-flames threaten to consumer her, until OMAR JOINS IN, FULFILLING SOME FREAKING PROPHECY OR SOMETHING. The singular pronouns in the lyrics turn plural. Ugh.
All this was foreshadowed with the subtlety of piledriver. My teeth were grating waiting for the inevitable to play out. And my hand was raised and ready to punch a hole in my laptop’s monitor, the information superhighway version of Pantera’s Vulgar Display of Power album cover.
But I didn’t. I’m typing this on that same laptop. What saved it from a Elvis-shooting-the-TV fate?
This song somehow, in a strange, hideous alchemy, reversed my thinking on the whole movie. It. Is. So. Dumb. But. I. Love. It. So. I didn’t do a complete 180 degree turn. I still think the film is a misfire, but my opinion has softened. Considerably. I’ve taken off the brass knuckles. BECAUSE BLONDIE AND CHEAP TRICK TEAMED TOGETHER TO SAVE THE WORLD AND SEND A DEMON BACK TO HELL AND MAKE THE SUN COME OUT AND CREATE A RAINBOW AND ROLL THE CREDITS. TO A TUNE THAT I WAS HUMMING UNTIL I WENT TO BED. SAINTS PRESERVE US.
I’m sure this will lack the requisite context to generate a similar reaction in anyone else, but here’s the finale if you’re curious:
Okay, movie. We’re cool. But don’t try to pull this shit again.
And now, the comic.
So what if nobody saw the thing in a theater. It got a Marvel Super Special! That’s a bit like getting a board game parting gift after losing the Showcase Showdown, but beggars can’t be choosers. Take what you can get, Nelvana.
There’s a different tack taken with this adaptation, as actual imagery from the film is used to illustrate it. This makes a whole lot of sense when it comes to old-timey cel animation, which when you think about it is nothing more than rapidly flipped panels. The translation (overseen by Bob Budiansky and director Clive Smith) sometimes gets a bit stiff and awkward as words and narration (from scripter Bill Mantlo) are shoehorned in when there were none in the movie itself. Take this section, which goes along with the above embed:
The wordiness is perhaps unavoidable. Whatchagonnado?
Of more interest are the articles in the back. There’s a lot of the typical “Making of” material, most of which falls into the “been there, done that” category. If you’ve seen one character’s early design sketches, you’ve seen them all, you know? I found some of the info about how the songs were written and recorded intriguing, including the “Send Love Through” finale fusion. Turns out Harry and Zander never set foot in the same studio, which makes sense after hearing the way they sang over one another in their duet. Read more about it:
I feel bad for this movie. It suffers from inevitable and unfair comparisons to the revered Heavy Metal and Ralph Bakshi’s treasured oeuvre. People worked hard for years on this thing, designing, drawing (no computers, kids), financing the production and lining up significant recording artists, only to have the rug pulled out from under their feet before any release. They tried, and that’s more than can be said for a lot of crap out there. Without failures there would be no splendid failures, and without splendid failures there would be no splendor. I don’t know if that makes sense, and I don’t know if Rock & Rule would qualify as a splendid failure. I’m afraid that dreaded backhanded “cult classic” compliment is the best it can muster.
It has a spot in the affections of many that I can’t fully back. I think a lot of that warmth comes from its former hard to locate/forbidden fruit aspect (it’s now available on DVD and Blu-ray), not so much the quality animation. But I have my own cherished yet terrible rock-soundtracked cartoons (*cough* Transformers: The Movie *cough*), so I don’t begrudge folks their fandom. And, what the hell…
“Now as one, we’re gonna show, it’s our one desire…”
Head to the Palisades on the World’s Finest duo’s dime
That has to be THE LARGEST BAT SYMBOL IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.
Here’s a coupon to the now-defunct Palisades Amusement Park (…they paved paradise and put up highrise condominiums…). In case you have a flux capacitored DeLorean and a hankering for cotton candy and rickety roller coasters. Maybe it would even be better than the Sea World water skiing spectacular. Doubtful.
I hope they featured some manner of breast-themed Wonder Woman ride.
Lame Ghost Stories (or I Bought This Comic Because It Promised A Haunted White House And All I Got Was One Page Of Crap) – Ghosts #37
Bait. Switch.
I was going to craft a nice little Halloween post, one centered around the “Haunting of the White House.” A nice local D.C. story. And then I opened the thing and there was this one page of the wimpiest, most unfrightening ghost blurbs that you could possibly imagine:
I feel like Charlie Brown: “I got a rock.”
Even a poltergeisted Grover Cleveland chamber pot would have been better. I was going to look at the rest of the comic, but I can’t now. It sickens me.
Trick, no treat. Happy damn Halloween.
“It’s Big Bubble-Blowin’ Time!” *sigh*
100 CHUNKS IN EVERY POUCH!
I suppose you could consider this an appendix to the Ever-Lovin’ October. Fantastic Four Gum. Well.
I’m tempted to dismiss the above corruption of the Thing’s beloved catchphrase as childish marketing, all in a spirit of fun, but a part of me cringes, like listening to a late-in-life Orson Welles wrestle with a frozen peas commercial. I’ll have to keep reminding myself that the Thing isn’t real, that he’s a fictional character without any dignity to wound. BUT HE’S REAL TO ME, DAMMIT!
It ain’t right.
This is the end. My only Ben, the end. (An Ever-Lovin’ October Concludes) – Marvel Two-In-One #100
It’s with sadness that I begin pulling the curtain down on the Ever-Lovin’ October. I wish I could have thrown more Thingified issues into the mix, but I think there was a good cross-section presented, more than enough to show what made Marvel Two-In-One so unique and fun. The Thing didn’t exactly disappear after the end of his series, as he still had his own eponymous title to satisfy the cravings of devoted Grimmheads. It wasn’t the same, though. Cramming the Thing into improbable pairings brought out the best in him.
Hey, the month isn’t over yet. We’re rushing the eulogy. For the grand finale we have a pairing from the series closer that’s as senses-shattering as any you could conjure up, one that needs a DOUBLE-SIZED ISSUE to do it justice.
It’s the Thing. And Ben Grimm. It’s impossible! It’s a mind-bender! It’s like a wet dream of William Shatner’s ego!
This comic (Script: John Byrne, Pencils: Ron Wilson, Inks Frank Giacoia & Kevin Dzuban) requires some ‘splainin. Back in issue #50 (also scripted by Byrne), Ben had travelled back in time (or what he thought was back in time) to try to cure himself of being the Thing. He succeeded (after Clobberin’ Time fisticuffs with his former self) but when he returned to the present he was his same old craggly monster. Pull out the hankies. Life goes on.
Now it turns out the egg-head Reed Richards may have been a tad off in his calculations:
It wasn’t the plain vanilla past that Ben had leapt back into, but an alternate universe past. One where New York was still New Amsterdam (I guess there were no goatees to clue them in that something was amiss). I’m not all that clear on the geo-political implications of such a difference, like whether that world is ruled by clogs, windmills and bifurcated doors, but there you go. New Amsterdam.
Sue shows up and yentas Reed into a night out. Instead of doing a Tom Cruise in Risky Business routine (he’s already in his briefs, folks), Ben decides to travel into that other reality and see how alter-Ben fared. He plugs that day’s date (March 23, 1983 if you’re curious) into Doctor Doom’s time platform and materializes on the roof of the other Baxter Building.
He’s stunned by what he sees. The streets are empty, the buildings are cracked and crumbling, and, in what should be labeled GIANT CLUE NUMERO UNO, Galactus’ Earth-destroying device from his first appearance is still perched in its appointed place.
Ben wanders around for a while, surveying a bleak landscape that looks like something out of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and is assaulted by raggedy, savage people. After he fends them off he has a convenient “Regis, what are you doing here?” reunion with himself:
It’s catch up time, and we learn that alter-Ben went into exactly the line of work that we’d expect a powerless Ben to enter, as his former team made an equally obvious choice for his replacement:
I wonder if that’s the same bar where Ben shared a drink with the Sandman…
It was rough for alter-Ben to watch his friends going off on all kinds of adventures. That envy didn’t last long, though, because events soon took a bad turn. Bad bad:
The Fantastic Four quickly become the Fantastic Zero. Cue the funeral dirge. So speaks Galactus!
If only they’d given Spider-Man his own blue uniform…
It turns out that there was another difference in this alternate reality — no Silver Surfer. No herald at all. No Firelord, no Terrax, no Morg, nothing. So there was no Power Cosmic-imbued character to go Benedict Arnold and help prevent the tuning-forked world devourer from sucking the blue marble dry. Without this reinforcement the flower of Earth’s pantheon (Avengers, Hulk, X-Men et al.) fell before his might, and Galactus drained the planet of its precious bodily fluids, its essence. Sterling Hayden was onto something.
All this is laid on our Ben in alter-Ben’s underground refuge, a subterranean encampment where other people are also living. Ben is racked by guilt, thinking that if he — or alter-he — still had powers, things might have been different. And there’s another problem, made clear by the fact that alter-Ben is leading a John Connor-like resistance. But resistance to what? Before alter-Ben can spill the beans, the hideout comes under attack by trollish goons. They only go after Ben (hmmm), and he’s subdued — but he goes down swinging!:
Enter the villain:
Holy sheep dip indeed.
During an interrogation the bound Thing recounts his own history to the skeptical Red Skull, along the way trying to figure out how this guy rose so high after the Galactapocalypse. There are some nice visual cues in this trip down Marvel memory lane:
No Thing. No fight with Johnny Storm. No discovery of the Sub-Mariner in Fantastic Four #4. Hence no Namor hurling a Steve Rogers ice cube into the water in Avengers #4, hence no thawing of Captain America, and without the Star-Spangled Avenger bopping around the Red Skull stays in stasis and waits out Galactus’ wrath. The Skull keeps his precious bodily fluids, his essence (“I do not avoid women, Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence…”) and emerges fresh as a daisy. The Mighty Marvel Butterfly Effect. He awakes with a world in shambles, ripe for the picking. The Nazis rise again under his guidance, and now he’s brought their acute brand of evil to American shores. Got it?
Throw Nazis on top of the end of the world. And the Thing is down for the count. BLEAK.
Not to worry. Alter-Ben may be without a rocky exterior and super-strength, but he still has the heart of a hero. He sets out to find his other self, Nazis be damned. It’s like Willis Reed limping back into Madison Square Garden, but with Yancy Street diction. He rounds up some compatriots, captures a Nazi patrol, steals their uniforms and infiltrates the Red Skull’s HQ/concentration camp (set up in the shadows of the crumbled World Trade Center). Once inside the gates he sees a petty atrocity, one inflicted on what is (sadly) for him an unfamiliar face:
There’s nothing like seeing a blind woman beaten down into the mud by Nazis to make you want to kill yourself. Like those animal cruelty commercials that pop up on TV now and again. THIS IS NOT A WORLD I WANT TO LIVE IN.
Alter-Ben raises a ruckus and our Ben uses the distraction to break his bonds. The righteous hands of justice turn the tide, curb-stomp the Nazis, and the Red Skull gets his ass cornered like Qaddafi. But the Skull still has his Mr. Fuji Dust of Death!:
EPIC FAIL!:
PWNED!
Ding dong the Skull is dead. Now things still suck, but at least they suck without Nazis hanging around. Ben and alter-Ben exchange good lucks (one hopes that alter-Ben will cross paths with a hopefully-still-alive Alicia), and alter-Ben tells his still-Fantastic counterpart to not blame himself for all that’s happened, because even if he had been powered that wouldn’t have tipped the scales against Galactus. Cold comfort. Ben returns home.
And here’s the final sequence of the series, the last rehashing of the well-worn “heavy is the brow [literally] that wears the crown” trope, with the baby blue eyes center stage:
So endeth the series.
First the micro. There are minor faults in Byrne’s script. It’s never really laid out what the Red Skull wants with the Thing, or even how he knew about him and where to find him. One can assume that he simply wanted to eradicate a dangerous foe, but for all we know he wanted to tie Ben down and drain his blood for nefarious schemes. That’s the downside. But the weaving in of Marvel lore, including visual reprises of Namor and Captain America’s Silver Age introductions, is delightful in much the same way the usual eclectic team-ups are. Perhaps more so. Byrne has never been a writer that can blow your mind — few can — and he can be a prickly bastich, but he’s dependable. He’ll hit a solid single in the clutch. That’s what you get here, a script (in conjunction with fine artwork) that touches all the bases.
Sorry for all the baseball references. I watched a lot World Series games in the last week and a half.
Now the macro. Getting mad at Two-In-One for not being perfect, for indulging too often in the Ben Grimm Woe Is Me World Tour, is a bit like being angry at the Beatles for churning out a lot of fluffy rock (Well, yeah…). The heavy dose of pathos is part and parcel of all that works. The humor isn’t intentional, but springs organically from Ben’s working man personality and how it processes the outlandish. The action is two-fisted, but rollicks and rolls and shows Ben for the true hero he is, one that fights to the end and never gives up. The pairings can be awkward, but the contrasts draw out the qualities that make Ben one of the most endearing lugs in the long history of comic books. A lummox. A galoot. A guy who you know (KNOW) dresses as Santa every Christmas for the kids.
There was a steadfast undercurrent of compassion and kindness throughout the series. One gets a warm glow whenever it’s revisited. It’s a favorite, and I hope the few clumsy paragraphs I’ve thrown out about it convey that love. I could rattle on indefinitely, but I’ll zip my lips before a rattly baritone gives me a “Shut yer yapper!”
Excelsior.
Mr. Cobblepot? Is that you?
Anyone else think of the Penguin when they look at this mid-1980s ad for the Intellivision Pac-Man clone Lock ‘n’ Chase? Not the biggest leap to make, especially when that newsprint aroma is wafting into your nostrils.
The ad seems omnipresent whenever I read comics from that era. That and the one for Burger Time. The game couldn’t have been any worse than Pole Position, right?
If watching two hot prehistoric babes lock limbs and wrestle is wrong, THEN I DON’T WANT TO BE RIGHT – Anthro #6
There’s nothing more boner-inducing than two hot Betty and Veronica proxies pulling hair and entwining legs and tugging hair and almost accidentally kissing. If you want proof, just look at Anthro and that face of contentment. Friends, I live a rich life. I’d bet my own stash of hides and stone tools — hell, the whole cave — that he’s crossing his legs to hide his flagpole. Ladies, ladies, please…There’s plenty of me to go around!
As the cover tells you, this issue (Story & Pencils: Howie Post, Inks: Wally Wood) brings us Anthro’s senses-shattering wedding. To get to that point, though, our pubescent Cro-Magnon has to find his bride-to-be Embra (the blonde), who’s out in the forest somewhere. He sets out to track her, deploying his full panoply of hunting skills:
Horse sniffles are a tracking tool? Really?
It’s not his babe that Anthro finds first, but a savage white lion. After a pitched man vs. beast battle in which he loses his horse and barely escapes death, he’s bailed out by a hideous bow-wielding racial caricature:
Is this World War II propaganda? Did I miss something?
Hoy Sen — might as well call him that — provides a penumbra of safety for Anthro, but our teen eventually wanders off and then finds himself trapped — but it’s a good kind of trapped:
Inventor of the copout. Groovy.
Anthro tags along back to his bride’s village, and after some preliminaries we get to the advertised Stone Age nuptials. Interrupted Stone Age nuptials:
I don’t know about you, but I love it — LOVE IT — when a raven-haired beauty fiercely and defiantly strides.
Nima, our fetching brunette, had given Anthro an amulet for luck (Hey, maybe a Conan or Spider-Man medallion!), and such a gift binds the givee to the giver. It also means that we’re about to watch TWO BABES CATFIGHT FOR HIS LOVE:
I’m saddened to report that neither Embra’s nor Nima’s tattered dresses fall off their nubile young bodies. Nor did they grease themselves up. Can’t win ’em all. They do however batter each other into unconsciousness, and it’s then that Anthro gets the “bad” news:
Maybe I’m blinded by beauty, but I’m not seeing the downside here.
And that’s it. Poor Anthro’s series got torpedoed after this, rendering that “NEXT ISSUE” blurb a taunt. That means we didn’t get to see the Big Love domestic bliss play out. Tragedy.
Anthro, who along with Kamandi formed teen bookends for DC’s human race, had a title that didn’t work all that well. Post’s light comedy was ineffective, and the pre-historic adventures lacked the savagery that would put the “first” of our kind to any sort of true test. The art was satisfying, but that couldn’t raise it up. It was Archie in loincloths (there’s a hellish picture). It was a jack of two trades, yucks and cavemen, and master of none. God help me for saying this, but Korg was a better read. A CHARLTON BOOK was a better read!
All those Anthro faults can be seen in this final issue. The copout jokes, the buck-toothed Asian caveman and the sweaty grappling of two supple young babes weren’t enough to levitate it out of the muck and mire.
WOULD IT HAVE BEEN TOO MUCH TO ASK TO HAVE THEM GODDAMN KISS?!
Make My Medallions Marvel!
Hand-Antiqued? Is the phrase “Authentic Cubic Zirconia” going to make an appearance?
I present you with these variants on the simple Conan medallion. Make yourself a geeky Flavor Flave with a necklace! Fill the void left by the Phi Beta Kappa key that somehow eluded your grasp by buying a Spider-Man key chain!
And men, do not, I repeat, DO NOT, give Spider-Man jewelry to the one you love. It’s a risky proposition. If you have to ask whether or not you should give such a gift, then you definitely shouldn’t. Knowledge for life. You’re welcome.
Jared
blog into mystery 
