Ugly Ass Shoes: Redux
Not long ago I posted a “grimly-amusing-in-retrospect” shoe advertisement with O.J. Simpson as the celebrity endorser. Consider this a companion piece.
“No boots work better for slinking away into the night after murdering your ex-wife and some random wrong-place-wrong-time guy than a pair of Dingos!”
Strumpet! Harlot! Jezebel! – Intimate Confessions #18
There’s something bewildering about the publication history of these old Intimate Confessions books. There were originally four of them published in 1958 (I think), but they inexplicably were numbered 9, 10, 12 and 18. This comic is actually a full reprint from 1964 (I think), when I.W. Publications reprinted all four of the books. I think. Honestly, I’m a bit worn out from trying to piece together the background of these things through Google searches and the like.
There are a ton of stories in this book, so, since I don’t have enough hours in the day or days in the week to cover them all, why don’t we just focus on the cover tale? It’s the cream of the crop, luckily enough.
Here’s the teaser for “Woman of Shame!”:
No, Hugh Hefner is in no way involved in this plot.
How did this lovely young lass come to this lowly state? Let’s find out!
We open as we do so often in romance comics, with a couple already in love. They’re both in college and are making plans for their mutual future (he gives her his frat pin as a token of his love — I’m already smelling problems) when the young lady, Nancy, receives a telegram with some devastating news:
With her father gone (days before his time, judging by the elderly looks of Mama), Nancy takes up the mantle of providing for her invalid mother. She sends a letter to Tom, her beau, telling him that the engagement is off and she’s not coming back to college. That tearful task completed, she sets out in search of work. Rejection after rejection smacks her in the face, but just when she’s about to give up hope she runs into a willing employer. She’s a bit suspicious of his eagerness to hire a young woman with few qualifications, and her suspicions turn to horror when she realizes what the prospective job (taking pictures at a night club) entails:
I think the moustache and going by the name “Ace” would have been clues that this guy isn’t 100% motivated by altruism.
Nancy’s desperate for work, so she can’t look a gift horse, even a seedy one, in the mouth. Her fears are allayed the next night though, when she shows up to be outfitted and receives reassurance from a somewhat scary looking house seamstress:
Thus buoyed, Nancy takes to her work like a natural. She snaps her pictures and develops a rapport with the club’s patrons. Things are going well, and then old Tom comes for a visit. He proposes to her, but things explode when he surprises her at her job (and she hadn’t told him the nature of her work):
I’m sympathetic to Nancy’s plight, and Tom seems like a frat-boy dick, but methinks the lady dost protest too much. I don’t think Annie Leibovitz and Gloria Steinem are swelling up with vicarious pride here.
Nancy cries herself to sleep that night, but the tears don’t last long. When she takes her mother to a doctor’s appointment a short time later, the doc (Eric), a familiar face to both ladies, makes quite an impression on this younger of the pair:
I think you see where this is going. The two enter into a whirlwind romance, but it all threatens to collapse into a heap when Nancy finds herself the subject of a feature story in the local newspaper:
It must be a slow news day for the Daily Shopper when it reaches into its “Local Woman Has Breasts” story pile.
Poor Nancy is crestfallen, sure that Eric will ditch her just like Tom did. When he comes over later she can’t face him, but Eric isn’t there to break up with her:
The thought of the gray-haired mother prancing around while scantily clad kind of takes the edge out of the happy ending, no?
This is a fun little story, and hopefully Eric whisks Nancy away from that job of hers. I have a bad feeling that it won’t be long before “Ace” asks her to orally service some valued customers in a back room. And if anyone has more information about the background of these Intimate Confessions books or suggestions for who the artist might be, feel free to chime in.
We really can’t poke fun at this one
It’s kind of hard to mock the Special Olympics, even lovingly. Unless you’re Johnny Knoxville or South Park.
Superman seems like the type of guy who’d show up at a Special Olympics event. I can especially picture the Christopher Reeve version making an appearance.
No mediocre movie shall escape my sight – Green Lantern
I went into this movie peeping though my fingers afraid of what might lurk. It’s an important film, the first one to feature a member of the DC superhero clique not named Batman or Superman, and as such a bellwether of whether or not more get made. Or even, dare we hope, whether we might get a decent Justice League flick someday to go along with next year’s Avengers. I had misgivings about many things going in, and the advance word was, how shall I say, less than stellar.
I’m here to tell you that this movie commits the greatest sin a summer movie can. It’s boring.
While there are certain things to brighten the dismal aspects, they’re more than weighed down by the junk. Some observations:
- Ryan Reynolds wouldn’t have been my first choice for Hal Jordan. I always envisioned Hal, for obvious reasons, as being a Chuck Yeager/The Right Stuff kind of guy. I look at Reynolds, I see Van Wilder. I see a douche. That said, he’s actually pretty good here. I’d like to see him in a Green Lantern movie that isn’t bad, in much the same way I would’ve liked to have seen Brandon Routh in a Superman movie where he wasn’t stalking Lois and her family.
- Blake Lively is dreadful as Carol Ferris. For much of the movie she looks like she’s in some contest to see how little she can move her mouth while she talks. She’s lifeless. The “Lively” is the falsiest of false advertising, and whenever she’s onscreen it’s a dose of generic Ambien. I almost fell asleep during her big “talk to Hal about his new gig” scene. Almost fell asleep at a matinée. She reminded me of the marionettes in Team America: World Police, and I’m left wishing that a puppet could have taken a crap on her. Maybe that would’ve livened (haha) things up.
- While the computer-generated costume works better than I thought it would, I still can’t shake the idea that it’s a green version of Slim Goodbody. And I miss the white gloves. I really do.
- The script flops around like a dying fish, and it’s not helped along by some shoddy, jumpy editing. There’s no humor here, and the dialogue (especially Earthside) is wooden.
- Giant clouds make for poor villains (See: Rise of the Silver Surfer). Parallax is an improvement on Fantastic Four II‘s Galactus (Now Featuring a Face and Voice!), but I’m still a tad underwhelmed.
- The only times where the proceedings pick up any sort of steam are on Oa. Tomar Re is wonderfully realized, with a pitch-perfect gentlemanly vocal performance by Geoffrey Rush, while Kilowog comes off well in spite of Michael Clarke Duncan’s voice booming out of his huge porcine head. I would have liked to have heard a little more rasp in there, but that’s just me. Marc Strong’s Sinestro, however, is marvellous. An arrogant, harsh Lantern who’s also the best of the Corps, he’s everything that you could want for one of the classic comic villains. And that’s the best part — he’s not a villain here, but a Lantern desperate to save Oa and the Corps from the threat of yellow energy, no matter the cost. His respect for Jordan by movie’s end makes his eventual fall worth something, and his willingness to fight fire with fire lays the groundwork for it. Unfortunately the filmmakers jump the gun on all that in a credits scene that comes completely out of left field and ruins a moment that should have been in a sequel. Maybe they realized that this was D.O.A. and knew they wouldn’t get one.
- Much is made of how Abin Sur trapped Parallax and sealed him in a prison in the “lost sector.” But the prison itself is so laughably weak, some stranded aliens literally stumble onto it and accidentally free him. You know those “In Case of Emergency Break Glass” fire extinguisher containers? It has the impenetrability of those. This was the first of MANY problems I had here.
- Back to Tomar Re for a second. He flies like a fish would fly, and his uniform is scaly while others are sinewy. These were small details I liked. I wish there were more like that.
- I read some complaints about the effects work, but I found them to be well done, if tragically well done in service of a limp story. The only quibble I’d have is that when the Guardians were speaking, my brain screamed “FAKE!”
- There’s surprisingly little action here, and we barely get a glimpse of the other Green Lanterns battling Parallax. Things wind down before they even have a chance to get started. I fear material was saved for a sequel that may never come.
This is a big disappointment, one that will make even fans of the Alan Scott Green Lantern shake their heads. Some people seem to be liking it, but I can’t concur. I’m joining the Anti-Green Lantern Corps. While there were bits and certain characters (no Ch’p, though…) that I could get behind, it’s an inescapable truth that I didn’t enjoy any sustained stretch of this movie. For that reason, it gets a very harsh one and a half Sinestro Widow’s Peaks out of five, making it a “don’t waste your time seeing it in a theater” boondoggle.
Just say no – Reagan’s Raiders #1
Ronald Reagan is the first President that I can remember. I was born when Jimmy Carter was in office, but it wasn’t his toothy grin that first seared itself into my little consciousness. No, it was Reagan’s dark helmet of hair that I remember first, the gleaming coif that told the Soviet leadership This guy isn’t fucking around and started the process that tore down that wall. I’m trying to not mix any politics into this thing (though that’s kind of hard in a post like this one, I admit), but I have a lot of fond memories of the guy, and I was saddened by the living death he suffered for many years at the hands of the dread demon Alzheimer’s. The stories one would read were terrible, like the former leader of the free world looking into a fish tank in the reception area of his post-Presidential office, seeing a small version of the White House placed in it for decoration, and pointing at it and saying “I remember a place like that…” Or the Secret Service agent that was detailed to spread leaves in the swimming pool so an absent-minded Reagan could skim them up, never noticing the man that was replenishing the supply that kept him happy and occupied. Those are the sorts of things to soften the enmities of even his most ardent political foes.
One of my grandmothers had Alzheimer’s. It’s a bitch.
Anyway. Moving on…
Reagan was a ripe target for satire during his years in office. His long time in the public eye, his old, successful — but corny — film career and his never-failing polish made him easy pickings, even beyond the usual shellackings U.S. Presidents take. Because of Reagan’s general likability much of it was good-natured, but even the less friendly roasts were fun. Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury, no bastion of conservative Republican thought, took aim in a way that was highly entertaining, fusing Reagan with the ’80s icon Max Headroom to create the amalgam know as “Ron Headrest.” Even when cartoonists were sniping like this, Ronnie somehow managed to come out okay (much to the chagrin of those who wanted to take a bite out of him). The teflon President indeed.
That even applies to comic book parodies, including perhaps this one, which I had no idea even existed until I stumbled across it in a dollar bin. A muscled up Reagan dressed like Captain America, firing a machine gun and wearing a John Rambo style headband?
Where do I sign up?
I was really hoping for some X-Presidents style action, like this:
Vodpod videos no longer available.No such luck. This comic book, sadly, is terrible from the word go.
It starts out as you’d expect, with Reagan bemoaning the rise of terrorism, which in this book is backed by some half-ass Masters of Evil knockoff. The Gipper decides to take matters into his own hands, and to that end lets himself undergo an experimental procedure to make him a scourge to all evil-doers. Here he is getting zapped, watched by his two predecessors:
It’s all downhill from there, folks.
What follows is a bewilderingly bad adventure, as Reagan and his super-powered Cabinet (yes, Caspar Weinberger, George Schultz et al. also underwent the treatment) stop their foes from assaulting nuclear facilities. This book doesn’t know what it wants to be, and it fails at everything it might try to be, know what I mean? There’s no political commentary, there’s no bite, Reagan is neither mocked nor deified, the plot is scatterbrained and nonexistent, and the humor, well, the humor, if you can call it that, is a lot like this:
Poor Dick Ayers pencilled this thing, and maybe he was happy for the work, but I can’t fathom that he was thrilled with the content. The black and white art is pretty dodgy at times, so it’s very possible that he couldn’t have cared less about the finished product (Rick Buckler also contributed). He did manage to insert a familiar (though unnamed in the book) face into these dismal proceedings, perhaps a momento from happier, more fulfilling times:
I know, the eye-patch is on the wrong side. So sue me.
I looked for the name of the scripter for this book, and never having heard of Monroe Arnold before, resolved to find out more about the person who threw this flaming bag of crap onto the world’s doorstep. I didn’t have to look far, because there was a handy dandy mini-bio included on the inside cover:
Well, this certainly reads like a first-time effort.
Considering the source, I shouldn’t be crestfallen about the many-leveled failure of this book. The company that published it, Solson Publications, wasn’t exactly known as a purveyor of quality storytelling. They were the direct-to-video of comics. Dreck. Raiders only had two more issues, but that almost made it the Methuselah of their line.
But…
I have a feeling it’ll be equally as disappointing as Reagan’s Raiders, but someday I’ll have to get my hands on The Texas Chainsaw Samurai. Leatherface in traditional Japanese garb certainly seems a worthy successor to Reagan-as-Rambo. It couldn’t be any worse.
One of the things that I and so many others have always loved about the Green Lantern mythos is the diversity of the Corps. It’s an odd bunch. It’s the Star Wars Cantina set translated into an intergalactic constabulary, and that makes it so wonderfully odd. Anyone familiar with them can reel off their favorites, from Mogo to Rot Lop Fan (though the latter might not even be a real Lantern, now that I think about it). Perhaps the most promising feature of the new film is the fact that they’re going whole hog with the Corps, and not just giving us a “Hal gets his ring on Earth” storyline.
Amongst the nigh-endless roster, I always had the biggest soft spot for Salakk (I know his name is often spelled Salaak, but it’s Salakk in this book, so…). His reedy body, his excess arms, his vaguely equine alien head, and his grim but dutiful personality all fused together into a character that I dug and still dig. His evil-looking but strangely engaging eyes (especially as depicted here) remind me a bit of my feelings about Hulk’s old pal Sym. And hey, in this issue he gets himself a woman, even if the cover makes it look like he’s sucking up her face like an anteater drawing in some dinner.
In “…I Am!” (Steve Englehart/Ian Gibson/Mark Farmer) Salakk is in the year 5711, and he’s just found out that his brain was wiped and the identity he had been operating under, Pol Manning (a venerable alias that dates back to Hal’s earliest Silver Age days), isn’t really his. He’s understandably pissed at the future-lady who furthered the deception (Iona):
Salakk realizes that Iona, who truly believes he’s Pol Manning, is herself suffering from mental problems. He simmers down, but that still leaves an unsolved issue, the one that caused the Solar Council, the rulers of future Earth’s solar system, to call once more on the help of a Green Lantern. B’rks, sentient, highly evolved chipmunks (I think) and relatives of fellow Green Lantern Ch’p (who’s also in the future), have made a claim for Earth, and are threatening war if they don’t get it:
Ooh, I bet the humans are soooooo scared…
An exasperated Salakk realizes that he’s going to need some backup, and interrupts some test pilot macking to get it:
The first Green Lantern cock block?
Hal, who had once held the mantle of Pol Manning himself and had been President of the Solar Council, arrives in the future with gal pal Arisia on his arm. When he’s brought up to speed, the Lanterns and the two sides reconvene at a nice wooded spot. Hal makes a reasonable proposal — why doesn’t the Solar Council give the B’rks a non-Earth planet? He also probably thinks to himself They really had to drag me all this way and interrupt my lady-killing for this shit?
It looks like both sides are receptive, but Doctor Ub’x, Ch’p’s old enemy from his home planet and the one responsible for creating these new B’rks, won’t settle for anything less than Earth. He summons a horde of armed B’rks to do away with the Solar Council and the Lanterns (see, isn’t this great?). When the Lanterns get into a protective formation, they’re confronted with a stunning betrayal:
No, Ch’p! No!
Ch’p reluctantly sides with his sort-of-kinsmen, and then, to save bloodshed, challenges his fellow Lanterns to two-on-two combat, a doubles version of the old single combat, with himself and Ub’x (who has a powered staff — save the Anthony Weiner jokes, folks) against any two Lanterns, winner take all.
Hal and Salakk meet the challenge with great sadness. And the battle is fought with great goofiness:
Yes, Ch’p just flattened Salakk with a giant fucking acorn.
Ch’p and Ub’x are (surprise) defeated, but Hal is magnanimous. He imposes the terms that he originally proposed. The B’rks get their own world, but not Earth, and Ub’x humbly accepts. But this leaves the little matter of, um, that betrayal stuff. Salakk, being Ch’p’s closest friend in the Corps, takes it especially hard, while Ch’p rends our hearts and saves his ass with a description of his loneliness:
With that (kind of) resolved, the Lanterns take their leave. Iona is all teary about Pol/Salakk departing, but he gives her the “what must be, must be” treatment. Or does he?:
The other three Lanterns return to their conifer-ringed Earth base, and then it’s Ch’p’s turn to say goodbye:
If you take one thing away from this book, it has to be this: One of the primary goals of the Green Lantern Corps is to get its members laid.
Really, how can you not love this stuff? I realize Ch’p is a bit of a joke Lantern — he’s a BUCK-TOOTHED RODENT WITH A POTBELLY THAT WEARS OVERALLS AND A BOW TIE — but his relationship with Salakk and its sad (and temporary) ending in this book make it a worthwhile read. Kudos to Gibson and Farmer for their work on Salakk, especially the profile shots of him. He’s never looked better.
I realize that it’s too much to hope that both Salakk and Ch’p will worm their way into the movie this Friday, and I suppose I should be happy that I’m getting Tomar-Re and Kilowog in all their verdant glory. But is it wrong for me to wish for clear, easily spotted cameos of Salakk and Ch’p? I don’t think so.
Want to make gooder your English?
This is one of the many “Shamed by your English?” ads that used to appear in comics. I’m not questioning the credentials of Don Bolander, but I’ve always been curious how a pair of glasses awkwardly held to the side promoted the premise that this was a man not only of intelligence, but one who could take the shame out of a person’s reading game. A cursory Google search shows that Mr. Bolander made this pitch from the early ’50s up to the ’70s (at least) in not only comics but also magazines ranging from Popular Mechanics to Ebony, often accompanied by that very same (sometimes reversed) picture. It was plagiarized and spread across the Atlantic, in an early version of “going viral,” and was also parodied in Alan Moore’s wonderfully nostalgic (and subversive) 1963. Quite a career for a simple advertisement and its variants.
Everybody has their hustle. Even bespectacled men of letters like Mr. Bolander.
I recall this one sitting in a stack of comics that my grandparents kept on an end table next to the couch in their house. For my easy access and reading pleasure whenever I was there, I guess. Man, they were a couple of great people.
Even though I hadn’t read this comic in probably twenty years — up until a week ago — I could quite clearly remember its John Byrne/Art(hur) Adams/Dick Giordano content. You see, this comic book taught me two valuable life lessons, one of which I’ve carried around with me in the back of my head for decades. Decades. Yes, plural.
Here’s the first, less important one: Cut off jean shorts on a leggy blonde can be a good thing.
To wit:
Incidentally, I’m not sure about the Mr. Peanut t-shirt. Could there be something Joe Camel-ish about him? Or do I need to get my head off that *ahem* track?
The big lesson needs a little set up. To summarize the plot of this book, the above blonde (named Skeeter, of all things) is being hunted by her neighbors in the deep south, who’ve assembled in a torches and pitchfork type of mob. She finds safety, but is later revealed to be a little more than meets the eye. The story is like some weird combination of Dracula, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Southern Comfort. Suffice it to say, some bad, creepy, evil things go down. Said bad things gets the attention of both Batman and Superman, but Batman is the first to come into contact with Skeeter’s long legs and Daisy Dukes. Things go south (no pun intended) fast:
Batman crashes through the thin walls of the her shack, but plops straight into quicksand:
Could this be the end of the Batman? Where’s the announcer from his old TV show when I need him?
Superman is the next one to come up against this devil in cut off blue jeans:
Uh-oh. I think you see where this is going — though this isn’t the second bit of vital info.
Magic.
Yes, Superman wilts in the face of her mystical assault like a plantation belle with a case of the vapors. And she gets real ugly real fast:
Batman to the rescue:
And get ready, friends. Here comes the lesson that I’ve carried around with me all these years. Are you ready? Okay:
Now you know! And knowing’s half the battle!
The story wraps as most of the early post-Crisis encounters between the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader did, with them (and their Art Adams Jay Leno-jaws) less than cordial in parting:
I’ve never once questioned that assertion that a person can swim in quicksand, so every time I’ve seen a movie with someone doing that slow “I’m sinking!” bit (I’ve never had a chance to test the assertion myself), I quite literally think Let yourself sink, you idiot. You can swim your way out. Batman said so.
My most recent “usage” of this knowledge came during Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, when, after I got done thinking I’m watching an Indiana Jones movie that sort of blows, I thought Just swim out, Indy. You don’t have to grab the snake. And pull a Marvin Gaye on that annoying kid of yours when you get out.
According to various points on the web, you actually can swim in quicksand, depending on its depth. So Byrne wasn’t full of it when he wrote that. And it was with great trepidation that I looked that up, because I’d hate to have been misinformed all these years. By Batman, no less.
You learn something every day. That’s a good thing, even if what you learn is practically useless.
The heat is on
In light of the recent heat wave I’ve been sweating through, this ad seemed quite appropriate. Kind of makes you wistful for the days of yore, doesn’t it? A simpler time, when you could look forward to comics, including classic JLA/JSA crossovers, without dreading another lame retooling of venerable characters.
But hey, this time around we have some hacky costume tweaks from Jim Lee coming (I’m sure popped collars and Gatling gun phalli will save comics as we know them). So that’ll make it all okay.
When I think of the Avengers, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch aren’t the first two members that spring to mind.
This comic comes from one of the darker periods of the team, when Captain America had left the group and they were left with Hawkeye, Hercules, Goliath, Wasp and the brother/sister mutant duo to fill out the roster. That list of names reads to me like a slightly augmented Great Lakes Avengers roll call.
To crib from a classic Rick Pitino press conference meltdown, Thor and Iron Man aren’t walking through that door.
But Magneto is in this. So what the hell. Why not crack it open?
Before I dive into this book, I need to briefly comment on something I’ve always felt about Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, something called up by the cover. Um, does anyone think that they come off as, uh, a bit too close? Kind of? I’m an only child, so maybe I’m not the best person to critique sibling relationships, but do brothers and sisters really cling to one another well into adulthood? These two are always together (okay, not always, but it seems like it). They kind of give me that creepy Donny and Marie Osmond vibe, which Family Guy so delightfully distilled:
You kind of wonder if Vision ever looked at Wanda and asked “Does your brother always have to be around?”
Enough of that. Let’s get to the story. In Roy Thomas and John Buscema’s “Mine Is the Power!” we open with a wandering Hercules, who’s on his own on a deserted Mount Olympus. His dialogue is less, how shall we say, lusty here (more Thor-ish), as he discovers the reason for the disappearance of his kindred gods:
I’m sorry, but a Hercules without a beard is not a true Hercules.
This Typhon guy apparently banished all the gods to some other dimension or something. Back to this confrontation in a sec.
Back at Avengers Mansion, the remaining members are having a discussion that echoed my thoughts when I looked at the faces in the upper left-hand corner of the cover:
Amen.
We next get a slice of not-so-happy superhero domesticity:
While all this is going on, Magneto (accompanied by the servile, more Igor-y than normal Toad) is trying to woo his kids back into the Evil Mutant fold. He whisks them to his new rocky island hideout and then shows them his new super-villainy Rube Goldberg contraption:
Wanda and Pietro are unimpressed by his man cave, so Magneto cooks up a new scheme. He plans to manipulate things by playing on Quicksilver’s mistrust of humanity, and for a venue he chooses the United Nations:
Hey, in a building with turbans and fezes, the helmet doesn’t look quite as goofy, does it?
The remaining Avengers see on TV that Magneto is at the U.N. and head over to avert the inevitable chicanery. Magneto addresses the General Assembly, but his demand for an Israel-like homeland for mutants doesn’t go over so well, which is exactly what he wanted. When he magnetically hurls a microphone at one of his diplomat hecklers, all hell breaks loose and the Avengers show up. This is when helmet-head reveals the crux of his plan:
Witch down!
This (understandably) sends Quicksilver into a rage. He lays a speedy smackdown on Goliath and Hawkeye, and isn’t even placated by some of the Wasp’s sweet nothings:
Magneto dispatches her with a pen(!) and the reunited Evil Mutants march off. What’s left of the Avengers head back home to lick their wounds:
Our heroes, ladies and gentlemen.
Oh — remember Hercules? He’s still fighting that Typhon fella, who’s summoned a big angry ape to fell our favorite demigod. If you’ve ever wanted to see Herc wrestle King Kong, this may be as close as you’ll ever get:
Even though he stops the simian, Herc still gets bested in this round:
Not the best day in Avengers-land.
Magneto definitely supplied the star-wattage for this book, and without his ever-pissed presence things would have been pretty dim. I know I sound ungrateful and spoiled, but reading an Avengers book without one of the real big stars can be a less than enjoyable experience. Then again, that’s the point here, and perhaps it’s part of what made Thomas such a good scripter. He seized on that disappointment and wove it into the story, showing us the Avengers at one of the lower ebbs in their history, before the days when they had a reserve roster that encompassed seemingly every hero in the Marvel Universe. And you certainly can’t complain that this booked lacked for action, what with the Magneto hijinks and Hercules flailing around on one of his quests. What looked to be lackluster turned into a good read.
And yes, folks, Cap came back to the Avengers. Many times.
The No Nyuk Zone – The Little Stooges #3
Hey, is that a cousin of Hanna-Barbera’s Speed Buggy there?
I had no idea that there was such a monster as “The Little Stooges” until I stumbled across this book a month or so ago. I love the Three Stooges. And let me define what I mean by “Three Stooges.” I mean Larry Fine, Curly Howard, and Moe Howard. And Shemp Howard, when poor Curly had his strokes and couldn’t continue appearing in the shorts. Joe Besser and Curly Joe Derita do not exist in this dojo. The Besser shorts were bad, but the Derita stuff was painful to watch. Larry and Moe were old by then. It looked like the physical material really, really hurt at that point. And they weren’t so funny anymore.
But back in the golden olden days the Stooges were about as entertaining as anything going. I realize that they’re not everyone’s comedic cup of tea (Is there any truth to that old idea that most women hate them but most men like them?), but how could you not love it when Moe would angrily rake a saw across Curly’s head and then find, much to his surprise and chagrin, that the saw’s teeth got the worst of the exchange?:
Or when Larry would pipe in with a “Hey, stop picking on him, you bully!” and Moe would take a pair of pliers, grab Larry’s nose with them and twist it around a whole 360 degrees? Or any of the endless sound effects that accompanied the beatings?
I’m smiling just thinking about it.
Just for the hell of it, here’s one of my favorite Stooges shorts (and one of their earliest, from 1935):
It has to be noted that Moe literally BROKE HIS RIBS on that pratfall at 3:11 of the first part, but still managed to stand up and deliver the well-deserved slaps. It’s that all-in physicality that one has to admire in these guys, but it was also what made the latter-day features (in addition to the absence of Curly and Shemp) so hard to watch. I seem to recall a bit on The Simpsons making that same point.
The Little Stooges falls right into the midst of that latter-day awfulness.
Perhaps picking up on the “we’re to old for this shit” vibe that the last Stooges live-action movies contained, the little versions were actually the children of Larry, Moe and Curly Joe (I very much wish that the last one could have been plain ol’ Curly’s offspring). Really they’re more spritely versions of the characters with a couple of modish haircuts and hipper duds (Who hasn’t asked how Moe would look in bell-bottoms?) thrown into the mix, and Lord knows what women mated with those mutts, but yeah, okay, we’ll roll with the offspring bit.
The content inside is reminiscent of the Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham comic (remember that?) from the ’80s, but without the modest cute-animal charm. It’s your typical marketed-for-kids fare, which means it’s repellant for most sentient creatures. Reading this was a chore, in the sense that roofing the house in 100 degree heat is a chore. It’s a hodgepodge of story elements, with car washes, races, hidden cash and nefarious villains all bopping around what passes for a plot.
I did pull out a couple of bookending scans for you. Here’s the first page:
And here’s the final panel:
Way to end a story, guys. I wouldn’t have been able to rest if I hadn’t seen Little Curly Joe’s bulbous ass — and it also looks like he’s letting one rip, so make that a final exclamation point on this sordid affair.
This was written by Jeff Maurer and drawn Norman Maurer, another familial duo (son and father), much like the Howard brothers in the Stooges. And there’s another, more profound connection: Norman was married to Moe’s daughter and became the manager of the group after the shorts came to an end in the late 1950s. He was also the driving force behind the various Stooges comics, later features and animated series that kept the boys in the public eye over the years. After the Stooges came to a (merciful, perhaps) end, he went on to write and work on a lot of Hanna-Barbera cartoons, including, yes, Speed Buggy.
Small world, eh?
Really, I don’t want to badmouth the efforts of the Maurers in bringing this Stooges book out. They tried something different. It failed. No harm, no foul, but it simply doesn’t work, and for characters I enjoy so much that’s a tough pill to swallow. Hence my displeasure.
If I could deliver a good, solid Moe slap to it, I would.
With all due respect to the Megos, utility belts, tiaras and bracelets on display, the real stars of this ad are the Superman and Wonder Woman Underoos emblazoned across the top, “above the fold” as it were. Ah, to be a kid again. When you could run around in your underwear and not have the cops called on yo’ ass.
You really don’t see a lot of “dancing kids in underwear” commercials these days, do you?
When I was deciding what war-themed comic to feature back on Memorial Day, the decision came down to a Nick Fury book and this one. It was a dead heat, but in the end I succumbed to the overwhelming masculinity of the Howling Commandos at their howlingest. I think you can understand.
But I love me some Unknown Soldier, so why not take a look at this one now? After all, it doesn’t have to be a special day to celebrate our real and fictional servicemembers. And this one has a great hook to get us interested. Could this Joe Kubert cover be telling us the truth? Could the Unknown Soldier have executed the ultimate of pro wrestling heel turns and gone over to *gasp* the Nazis?!
Let’s find out.
Written by Bob Haney, with art from Dick Ayers and Gerry Talaoc, “Destroy Wolf Lair…and Die!” wastes no time in slapping us in the face with this most disturbing of apparent betrayals:
Nein!
Really, when it comes to great turncoats it’s down to Benedict Arnold and this one (if true). Take a back seat, Rosenbergs and Robert Hanssen.
The mysterious, ever-bandaged Unknown Soldier is using his powers of disguise to operate as a German sub commander by the name of von Luckner, and he’s not screwing around, as the crew of a British freighter will readily attest:
How…how could you?
If there are tears welling up in your eyes, take heart. We’re given a flashback to explain this terrible treachery. The Brits have captured a German submarine (U-227 — I wonder if Jackée was a part of the crew…), and now have a plan to infiltrate the “Wolf Lair,” a base that’s been the bane of vital Allied shipping. Enter the Unknown Soldier:
Breathe a sigh of relief, folks.
So “von Luckner,” whose real identity is even hidden from the sub’s skeleton Brits-as-Germans crew (they think he’s a German turncoat), leads his boys into the Wolf Lair with a secret cargo of explosives to blow that place to hell. After sinking the British ship (more on that in a sec), explaining away their recent radio silence and the loss of so many crewmen (hiding from the Allies and swept away during a hasty submersion, respectively), Soldier/von Luckner is welcomed back into the fold. There are some close calls at being found out, but with the help of his crew he worms his way out of them. Then he learns that there are French prisoners at the base:
Not wanting to cut down innocent Frenchmen in the explosion, the Unknown Soldier concocts a plan to seize on this Gallic dissatisfaction with German wine and bust them out. He reaches into his trusty cache of disguises and becomes “Emile Deparc,” a collaborationist wine-monger. He fills up a bottle with nitroglycerine and talks his way past the guards into where the hostages are being held, and let me tell you, they look about as French as they possibly can:
I can practically hear Inspector Clouseau asking “Does the minkey have a leesance?”
The Unknown Soldier tosses the bottle against a wall, blasts it to kingdom come, and he and the French fight their way out of there (much like Fury and the boys in the comic from last week, now that I think of it). They hook up with the erstwhile sub-crew and make their way to safety and await the detonation of the time-delay explosives. The Germans, now realizing that the sub may carry their doom, make a snap decision:
The Germans try to get the ship out of the base, watched from a distance by the anxious Unknown Soldier and friends, but fail. The Wolf Lair is destroyed. Later, back on British soil, there’s a chance for some levity:
Ah, that patented Unknown Soldier humor.
A couple of observations…
First, I’m left wondering why the Unknown Soldier had to blow up the British freighter at the beginning of the story. Yes, you could say that it was necessary to establish his bona fides so that he could infiltrate the German base, but the attacked vessel wasn’t in on the whole plan. There’s going undercover, and then there’s going undercover, know what I mean? It seems that this is the latter. Couldn’t they have given the freighter a little heads up? There’s no indication that any lives were lost, but it strikes me as a heck of a gamble to risk them like that. And the British crew on the sub had no compunction about firing on their fellow countrymen?
The second thing is the German suicide mission at the end. It’s not really remarked upon in the story itself, but you have to admire the courage of the souls that tried to get that sub safely away from the base. I know that it’s bad form (to say the least) to ever root for Germans in a World War II context, but I have to say a little part of me felt bad for those guys — they were going to die no matter what, and they met their end trying to save their comrades. I’m reminded of that old Winston Churchill quote about Erwin Rommel, delivered on the floor of the House of Commons at the height of that conflict: “We have a very daring and skillful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general.” There’s a little bit of that here. You have to respect their guts.
This is a good one, especially for that last bit, which sort of drowns out the weakness of the freighter aspect. I like a story that, even if inadvertently, gives you something to chew on.
Onward, Unknown Soldier.
Feets, don’t fail me now!
When I hear “AAU,” I think of the organization that’s currently undermining college basketball, not a “Shuperstar” who fought crime and hawked shoes while inserting foot puns in every possible sentence. Color me enlightened.
“Arch” enemy. Indeed.
Now we’ve come to the next course in this summertime smorgasbord of comic book movies, this entry not moving forward, but travelling back in time to a little decade called the ’60s. Unlike the other three big comic movies of the summer, this one isn’t centered on a fresh cinematic character, but is the fifth installment in a venerable franchise (is ten years venerable?), a return to the X-Well. Just to give you my enjoyment track record when it comes to the X-Universe, I liked the first, liked the second even more, thought the third wasn’t very good but was at times serviceable (at least it had team-wide, simultaneous action), and found the Wolverine entry to be a confused, bumbling waste of Hugh Jackman’s talents.
I had some concerns about this one. My knee-jerk reaction to it being a prequel wasn’t positive (George Lucas has made me pretty skittish about such things). The decision to have a lot of the focus centered on young teen mutant recruits, while logical, reeked of pandering to the Twilight crowd. Since we moviegoers are now apparently ruled by those goddamn people, I had to swallow that one and move on. Finally, many of the early promotional images were amateurish and positively dreadful, looking like they were entrusted to an intern hastily trained in Photoshop (see above).
Then the trailers came around and piqued my interest. Maybe X-Men: First Class would work after all. Maybe Bryan Singer returning (as the producer) to the franchise and teaming with Matthew (Kick-Ass) Vaughn, and throwing mutants into the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis, would re-inject some energy into the works.
Verdict?
To a degree, it does. I’d rank this one a bit ahead of the first in terms of overall quality (that’s a blunt comparison, but I’m just trying to give a general idea). Frankly, I enjoyed Thor more, but that may have had a lot to do with never having seen the Norse corner of the Marvel U. onscreen before. There’s not a great deal of new ground plowed in First Class, not a sin in a prequel, but an inescapable truth nonetheless. Others are going to disagree, and I don’t begrudge them their opinion, and please don’t get me wrong — I had a pretty good time watching this film. But I see a lot of gushing commentary about its quality, and I can’t get onboard to that degree.
Here’s some observations for you. I’ve tried to scrub the spoilers out of them, especially since I had one of the movie’s more joyous surprises ruined for me by an idiot reviewer.
- Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan did excellent work in originating the roles of Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr (or Lensherr — I’m going with the spelling they have on IMDB), and we owe them a debt of gratitude for that, but James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender may surpass the output of their more aged predecessors. Seriously. They both bring a youthful energy to the characters that’s truly the best part of this entire film. McAvoy’s Xavier is a soft-spoken charmer, using his godly mental powers to gently influence and guide (sometimes coming across as a mind-reading Tony Robbins, sans the banana hands) while at the same time employing a physicality that we rarely associate with the wheelchair-bound Professor X. Fassbender’s Lehnsherr is the thoroughbred in this race. He brings the fire, the anger, the charisma that I’d always envisioned Magneto to possess. You fear him when he’s against you (especially if you’re an in-hiding former Nazi), but you want desperately for this man to be on your side. The film’s best moments are when the two share the screen. You believe their friendship. You believe that it pains the both of them that they can’t see eye to eye. And you understand why, in the earlier (or would that be later?) films, Xavier refused to give up on his old friend. Those two are the main reason to see this. I’d pay good money to watch another movie focused on them working together, but it doesn’t look promising that the inevitable sequel-to-the-prequel will recreate that dynamic.
- Kevin Bacon isn’t quite the Sebastian Shaw that we know from the comics (nor is the Hellfire Club for that matter), but that magnificent smoking jacket is in there, and so are the sideburns. I’ve always appreciated Bacon for his likability on and off the screen, and I enjoyed finally seeing him turn up in a comic book movie. Others may not respond to his performance, but I like the charming evil he brings to a super-powered guy who plots global destruction while hanging around on yachts, in nightclubs and aboard submarines.
- January Jones is eminently forgettable as Emma Frost, while Jennifer Lawrence does similar things with Mystique that McAvoy and Fassbender do with their characters (though not quite up to that level). She’s sort of the wild card between those two, a life-long friend to one but philosophically sympatico with the other. You clearly understand as the film comes to a close why she ends up with Magneto, and that adds a welcome layer to the character.
- Thanks to the endless retcons and reboots that the comics world has endured over the years, I’ll let the inconsistencies with ages and such in the previous films pass. There’s a painfully obvious use of ADR at one point to explain why Sebastian Shaw looks the same in 1944 and 1962, and you half-wish the filmmakers could have recorded something to account for why Frost is older here than she will be in the temporally later Wolverine. Perhaps she ages in reverse like Benjamin Button and Merlin. Or maybe they’re just shitcanning the last two movies.
- The pacing often seems a bit off. Sometimes things leap and rush along a bit too fast, and you wish the film would slow down and catch its breath. There’s something missing here, some ingredient that holds the film back from being one of those transcendently good comic book experiences. The narrative needs some more glue or baling wire to hold it together and bulk it up, more grist for the mill.
- There are a couple of cameos. One is guaranteed to make even the most jaded of souls smile.
- The young folks that make up the titular “First Class” try their best, and they’re not given tons of screen time, but they could be better. I may be off on this, but there were times when they were speaking and I thought “Did young people in the 1960s really talk and act this way?” I expected them to put earbuds in and start texting on their iPhones at any minute. That said, I did like the training sequences — especially Havoc’s and Banshee’s — in which they harness their strange, untamed abilities, and I also dug those nifty old-timey uniforms (though the best classic duds appear at the very end). And at least the kids were better developed than the henchmen baddies, who were simply a devilly Nightcrawler (Azazel) and a waterspout guy (Riptide).
- Never trust a stripper. Especially one sired by Lenny Kravitz that has insect wings and spits fire.
- I might be spoiled by the effects extravaganzas I’ve seen over the years, but I was a tad underwhelmed by the climactic action sequence, even if Erik hoisting a sub out of the water is a joy to watch. You’ve seen the money shots in the previews, and there’s not a lot more than that. Also, the dramatic confrontation between Charles and Erik that follows is staged somewhat, I don’t know, hokily. The two actors manage to make it work, as does a stray bullet’s sad trajectory, but it’s a closer call than it should be.
- I wasn’t completely sold about Beast in the film, acting or otherwise, but all that changed when he snapped and had a savage “FUCK YOU!” moment with Erik. All was forgiven after that.
There you have it. It’s pretty good. I’m not as gaga as some, but I don’t want to rain on anyone else’s enjoyment. You may love it. I hope you do. There’s certainly more than enough to latch onto.
I give X-Men: First Class three (almost, but not quite, three and a half) out of five Kevin Bacon/Sebastian Shaw sideburns, making it a Blog into Mystery “see it when you get the chance”:
Jared
blog into mystery 