Thursday, February 27, 2014

TRULY GONE AND FORGOTTEN : E-MAN



E-ManThere’s no character I’ve more reluctantly queued up for this Truly Gone & Forgotten feature more than E-man, because I hate to admit that this bright, colorful character’s time is probably done – not that he ever seemed to fit in any of the venues which hosted him.

Created by Nick Cuti and Joe Staton and originally published in Charlton Comics, he was even an odd fit for a company which produced the Blue Beetle, Spookman and Son of Vulcan. Played for straight superheroics with dashes of light humor and occasional flat-out farce, you had here a comic which involved a hero battling life-and-death stakes but starring characters with punny sobriquets like Nova Kane and Alec Tronn, ominous and recurring menaces rendered in Staton’s breezy style and partnered up with pint-size private dicks and a walking, self-aware koala bear which took it upon itself to routinely break the fourth wall.

They got websites where you can watch girl bustin' bulbs.
Beginning his existence as a self-aware burst of energy born in the Big Bang, E-Man subsequently spends “millions” and “thousands” of years (cosmology is not a strong point) bouncing around the universe, hungry for another intelligent life form to provide him with company. When an impending invasion of the planet Earth puts him in the company of exotic dancer Nova Kane, E-Man quickly adopts a human identity, transforming his energy to matter in the fashion of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, after which he takes his super-hero codename (E-Man being short for “E=mc2 Man”).

Gifted with the power to fly, shoot energy bolts and transform his body a la Plastic Man, E-Man made for a light and fun character. The question of why a shape-changing alien entity uncountable eons old would wear the shape of a handsome white male and pick up a relationship with the first human female he meets aside (although that gets addressed in a later, slightly retconned story), he seemed to exist in a world of limitless possibility where light comedy and adventuring heroics could go hand in hand.

After ten solidly entertaining issues with Charlton, E-Man was revived with First Comics during the big indy boom of the Eighties, albeit now under different writers (a royal flush of DC Comics’ roster at the time, featuring Martin Pasko, Paul Kupperberg and a Mike W.Barr guest gig, before Staton picked up the pen) and turning in a distinctly satirical bent. E-Man’s enemies – both recurring and passing – included parodies of the X-Men (and a Dark Phoenix theme that didn’t excuse the creators from its satire), Elfquest, 2001, Pogo and a few more, and entered the annals of “most unexpected crossover ever” by sidling up next to First’s sexy space opera Warp.
I feel like holding her nose was maybe just plain hurtful.
 E-Man has enjoyed a few brief revivals over the last few decades, but never seeming to find a comfortable fit – he was too light-hearted for the relevant 70s, too satirical for the self-important 80s, and too sporadic for the creator-owned booms of the 90s and 21st century … although surely there’s always hope for a shape-changing superhero who’s happy to hop across genre.


Wednesday, February 26, 2014

"YOU HAVE TO NUMB IT. YOU KNOW, NUM NUM NUM NUM NUM NUM NUM NUM!"

POWER PACK #51/#52 – The Numinus

Stunt casting is a tricky business, because you’re ostensibly hiring a performer strictly on the basis of the amount of recognition they’re generate as themselves – you know, it’s Nicole Richie and she’s shooting at Chuck! It’s Britney Spears an she’s trying to hump How I Met Your Mother’s friend! It’s Prince as an awkward purple paperweight, or whatever it was Bob Dylan was doing on Dharma and Greg that one time! Actors are theoretically cast to bring life to a character and to reinforce the suspension of disbelief which the story needs to survive, but stunt casting deliberately suspends that disbelief for the sake of the novelty.

So say you have a book about a quintet of precocious grade schoolers who have a talking spaceship and were given super-powers by a race of magical horse people, you might think your suspension of disbelief is already a notably fragile glass unicorn and you’re going to want to avoid waltzing smack into it and knocking it to the floor. Especially if your book has historically been criticized for its depictions of deadly violence directed at young children and is ramping up to a climax involving the genocide of an entire race in the course of an intergalactic blood feud, you might find yourself thinking “This is not the time to bring in Whoopi Goldberg”.

I mean, I know they're space horsies, and you know they're space horsies, we all know that they're space horsies,
but it's kind of jarring that their ancient enemy would ever relate to them in that context ...
Well, at least they brought her in BIG. Hitting the landmark fiftieth issue of Power Pack, the crusading children (the four siblings of the Power family, Alex, Jack, Julie and Katie, and their friend and youngest son of Reed and Sue Richards, Franklin Richards) find themselves witnesses to the attempted planetary genocide committed by Maraud, matriarch of the reptilian race of “Snarks”, against her people’s hereditary enemies the Kymellians (those are the magical horse-people), while simultaneously attempting to save from death their “smartship” Friday (who is literally saved by LOVE, I swan), and rescue their parents from well-intentioned alien brainwashing while a quartet of Kymellian heroes use them as target practice just for the ever-lovin’ heck of it and a supernatural deity is trying to possess one of ‘em.

(The horse-people superheroes, by the way, are called Force 4 and are comprised of the imaginatively titled Teamleader, the ethereal Ghostmare, and the powerful Thunderhoof and his pal Firemane. These last two guys are great because they come off as bro-hams, one a gentle giant and the other a brash frat jerk. If only I could think of some word to describe horse people who are bros, like bro ponies of some sort, if only there were some word…)

So anyway, there is a lot going on, and by no means did a four-thousand foot tall Whoopi Goldberg make any of it seem any clearer.



Whoopi (or her likeness, anyway, I don’t think she was helping to write this nonsense) is represented by “Numinus”, a towering cosmic being whose name references the concept of the “numinous”, the presence of the divine, and not – as I originally thought when I first read the book, and which I’m really ashamed to admit out loud, but brace yourselves, because here we go – a portmanteau of “Negro” and “Luminous”. LOOK, I DIDN'T THINK IT WAS COOL EITHER. “They’re not—“ I asked myself, incredulously, “They’re not calling her ‘Negro Luminous’, are they?” That is seriously what I thought. I’m sorry. America has a lot of healing to do.

Numinus turns out to be a cosmic entity who controls individual moments of saving grace, and it’s implied in her Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition Update entry that she is “more powerful than Galactus”, which I guess is true in the sense that “Hey I found a nickel” beats out “Hey, my planet is being melted”.  We find out, through the course of her exposition, that she’s the benevolent universal presence responsible for things like stepping in dog poop but when you look down you see a twenty dollar bill on the ground, or Lt.Col. Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov sparing the world a nuclear apocalypse because he decided the missile alert he received was totally bogus (that’s eighties-talk), or that plastic bag scene in American Beauty. Somebody had to be responsible for that.

Breaking the basic literary rule that you can use magic to get your characters into trouble but not to get them out of trouble, Numinus ends up pointing out that all of the galactic carnage and countless deaths was actually for the best because one of the horse-people superheroes becomes a godlike being and they all find a new planet to live on in the end. So. Score.

Wait, explain how the pink pearl eraser part relates again ... 
Undoubtedly the best part of this story is that there’s a character in the book named “Aelfyre Whitemane” (you know, of the Connecticut Whitemanes. In fact, I went to school with an Amanda Whitemane, I wonder if there’s any relation) whom every casually refers to as “Whitey” so you not only get characters running around yelling “You leave Whitey out of this!” and “We thought you guys were so great – like Whitey!” and (I love this one) “They called Whitey a sorcerer, but he really was just a throwback to the olden days!”, you get Whoopi/Numinus saying the line “Whitey showed me that love and respect are everyone’s birthright”. Terrific. Well, we do our best.

In the second part of her appearance in Power Pack, Numinus is colored purple which helps a little in making her look less like a giant Whoopi Goldberg balloon for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade but on the other hand it basically just makes her look like a purple Whoopi, which sounds either like something you do with a wet finger to an unwilling participant or something you have to pay extra for during a trip to Thailand. Or both.

Uh, this seems to be getting a little intimate...


Tuesday, February 25, 2014

BATMAN LEADS AN INTERESTING LIFE : THE DAY THE BAT CRIED

I sometimes wonder – assuming that the everyday world of the DC Universe is much like the everyday world in the real universe – if DC’s Earth is as obsessed with Batman as ours is, and how does Batman feel about that? What does the DC Internet look like, and how can he get anything done if every three seconds someone is creating a new Batman meme, typing Impact over a photo of a fat dog with two shaved ice cones tied to his head with rubber string. Batman must avoid Tumblr like the plague. Imagine if his bat-smartphone had those little Google cards on it – “Who’s playing me in the movie? Shit, focus Bruce, the Penguin just murdered like fifty babies, wait, they cancelled my cartoon? Ugh, well, at least this guy who said the Batmobile gave him feels has a hundred and twenty five likes and reblogs. Gah, fuckin’ Robin – enough with the Candy Crush requests.”

I expect Batman would probably be pretty sick of his popularity, which is also the premise explored in The Adventures of Jerry Lewis No.97, Nov.-Dec. 1966, when Batmania was at its peak and DC was still publishing those awesome humor comics starring television and movie celebrities. It’s a bygone age, we’ll never see The Adventures of Daniel Tosh or Dave Chapelle’s Laffs and Gags. More’s the pity.

The Adventures of Jerry Lewis revolved around Jerry, his rotten nephew Renfrew and their housekeeper, a genuine witch named Witch Kraft (Over in the Bob Hope comic, the local high school was staffed entirely by movie monsters of the Universal variety, so there was a theme unifying these books. I’ve never read the Jackie Gleason comic which DC produced, so as far as I’m aware it had Cthulu selling newspapers on the corner). When Kraft has to leave the house, Renfrew – caught up in Batmania – convinces his uncle to don costumes with him and emerge into the night for the cause of justice as Ratman and Rotten the Boy Blunder.



They’re not the only idle saps trying on crimefighting for fun, which is how they run across the original Dynamic Duo – exhausted from having to chase all over town after their hapless imitators.  There’s Catman and Kitten and Fatman and Tubbin, Flatman and Ribbon, Sadman and Sobbin,  and in a more enlightened time there probably also would have been Thatman and This’un, @Man and ROFLin, and Scatman and Cruthers.

Teaming up with Jerry in order to rescue Renfrew/Rotten from the clutches of The Kangaroo (who turns out to be Witch Kraft in disguise), it’s probably the most realistic Batman story I've yet to read – Batman and Robin spend the majority of it exhausted and put out by their admirers and bored with the ridiculous hoops their colorful crooks inevitably put them through. I also think it’s better than The Long Halloween.

They meant "Bat-Pooped"


Thursday, February 20, 2014

TRULY GONE AND FORGOTTEN : "COMICS" MCCORMICK


For as long as there have been comics, there’s been comics fandom – and as long as there’s been fandom, there’s been, recursively, comics about fans of comics.

Most of the comics which feature comic book fans and collectors as their protagonists aren’t typically all that kind – consider the number of comics and television shows you’ve encountered where the avid collector is portrayed as an unclean, juvenile wretch, an obsessive-compulsive criminal, or just an all-around unlikable jackass. Even the few where an avid comic book aficionado is the hero have a tendency to play the protagonist for laughs as a well-meaning but incompetent dolt.

Well, not so with “Comics” McCormick, one of – if not THE – first comic book fan to be the star of his own comic feature. Created by Ed Wheelan as a supporting character in a number of books (EC’s Fat and Slat and Land of the Lost, Holyoke’s Catman and Terrific), Comics is sort of a pint-sized Walter Mitty with his imagination fixated firmly on four-color misadventures. Billed as the world’s #1 comic book fan, “Comics” - even his mother and sister call him that – often finds himself lost in idle fantasy, battling terrible super-menaces, spies and crooks either alongside famous (more or less) heroes or adopting super-powers of his own.

If my math is correct, there were only nine “Comics” McCormick stories ever published, but he packs a colorful catalog of criminals and comrades into those brief appearances – Alongside heroes like Captain Catapult, Voltage (Man of Lightning), Waterman and Marvel Maid, “Comics” helps stick it to baddies like the black-caped Super-Robot, the insidious Dr.Hunchback and the sinister Octopus (bearing a resemblance to the Octopus appearing in this week’s Batman Leads An Interesting Life feature – see , I told you to bear with me!), and likewise picks up a few super-powers of his own, including invisibility, electric powers and a quick turn as a human bullet!



Like other successful light comedy pieces from the Golden Age – say, for instance, Sheldon Mayer’s excellent Scribbly or John Stanley Little Lulu, of which “Comics” McCormick put me in mind on more than one occasion – the strength of the series lies not only in its imagination but in its supporting cast. Like Scribbly and Lulu, “Comics” has a large number of women in his cast – he has a pair of boy chums (the chubby schoolmate Wilbur and the their cook’s son, Ajax), but his mother, sister, his girlfriend Rosalie Brown and family cook comprise the remainder of his dramatis personae, with only kindly Officer Kelly providing an adult male influence on the strip. Even “Comics” nemesis is his comics-disapproving schoolteacher, Miss Slate.

In fact, among the high adventure and boyish daydreams, there’s a surprisingly timely message about inclusiveness in “Comics” McCormick – when Rosalie is submitted for membership in the boys’ “Little Conquerors Athletic and Reading Club”, Wilbur raises a fuss about admitting a girl to a boys club – “Girls don’t fit in as Conquerors, shux, anybody knows that!” he argues. “Comics” is quick to list off a parade of superheroines in his defense – “How about Super-Dame a’ Lady Wonder an’ The Pink Pigeon an’ the Crimson Canary? How about them, huh??!!” he demands of his chastised pals, who promptly vote to allow Rosalie in, to her delight.

With comic fandom currently struggling to cast off its image as an aggressively exclusionist, intensely gatekeepered boys’ club, there are probably few other comics characters so well-suited to embody the appeal and inclusiveness of the medium than “Comics” McCormick, a character who is just aching for a comeback…

Of course, maybe we could do something about how Ajax looks and talks.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

PUT IT ON MY BILL - THE OFFICIAL HOWARD THE DUCK MOVIE ADAPTATION


Marvel Super-Special #41 - Howard the Duck
Kyle Baker is almost undeniably one of the most-respected graphic novelists of the last thirty years, having produced one of the funniest books to grace the medium in The Cowboy Wally Show and one of the most acclaimed in Why I Hate Saturn – not to mention some of his more underrated works like I Die At Midnight, or his still-fondly-remembered mainstream comic runs on Andy Helfer's The Shadow and DC’s Plastic Man. A master of the form, all around.

So when I stumbled across a copy of the comic book adaptation of the motion picture of George Lucas’ Howard the Duck, how else could I choose to look at it except as Kyle Baker’s Great Lost Volume! It’s either that or weep salt tears until I dehydrate and die.

Howard the Duck, the movie, holds tremendous power in comic book fandom – if nothing else can save Elektra, X-Men 3:Last Stand or Man of Steel, it’s the reminder that “At least it’s not as bad as Howard the Duck.” It’s the Citizen Kane of the worst movies ever made, except now that I think about it the Citizen Kane of the worst movies ever made is Plan 9 from Outer Space. Howard the Duck is the Battleship Potemkin of movies that make The Godfather III look like The Godfather. Wait, maybe it’s the Space Battleship Yamato of the Oh God movies. I've lost my thread. Where am I?

He's pus with a bill!
Until Howard the Duck, George Lucas’ name had been attached to American Graffiti, Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, so it’s understandable that no one recognized the movie for the warning sign it actually was. Two great franchises and an American classic (and I know I’m not mentioning “Willow” here and – well, is this shameful to admit, I've never seen it? Although I understand it basically to be Star Wars skinned with a sword and sorcery coat and guest starring Lenny and Squiggy as white smurfs?) and the next thing you know the guy keeps leaving the digital equivalent of oreo-cookie-stained fingerprints all over the Star Wars movies - adding slapstick robots, bouncing Han Solos and farting Dewbacks willy nilly every decade or so. We should have seen it coming.

If you've never seen the cinematic version of Howard the Duck, then don’t bother buying a lottery ticket – you've already used up your lifetime luck allotment. Allegedly intended to be a wacky, zany, wonky, bonky, zonky, “fun” movie about a singing nymphet, a sexually promiscuous duck-man who resembled an oversedated pillow following a debilitating stroke and the half-scorpion/half-knife-vagina monster which brings them together, it’s actually kind of a slog.

I remember catching Howard the Duck in the theatre – for the record, I have excellent taste in films, but the only other major motion picture coming out that weekend was Friday the 13th Part 6, so don’t even start with me. I took a date. At least we made out, although I’m still angry with Howard the Duck for creating the confusing adolescent visual of a near-naked Lea Thompson cavorting with a gross bird imp.

Gross.

I understand the idea of a movie which is so bad it becomes good, or at least a movie which is so spectacularly bad that it’s a phenomenon of garish incompetence (one of your humble editor’s favorite movies is 1997’s Batman and Robin, for instance, if only for its Kaufman-esque endurance in trudging through depths of uncomfortable unwatchability, and the scene where Pat Hingle stumbles half-drunk through a soundstage and almost knocks over a façade. “Ivy, you just met the most dangerous man in Gothaumble sumble” *smash*), but this movie. This movie. This'un.

No one gave Baker a
model sheet for the
Dark Overlord or, for
that matter, used the
words "Pulsating tooth
vagina on legs" while
describing it.
Allegedly, the only reason Lucas decided to go forth with Howard was because he was contractually obligated to produce another live-action film, and he felt he had the technology to make a man-duck believable. It’s a terrible reason to make a movie, forcing a narrative to be built around the frame of a technology, particularly considering the ultimate effect; Lucas wanted to see a live action man-duck walk the silver screen – as have we all since the dawn on mankind - and what he got instead was something that looked like a wizard’s wet beard eating a block of cheese.

It’s to Baker’s credit as the book’s artist that his caricatures of the assorted actors – Lea Thompson, Jeffrey Jones and Tim Robbins, just to namedrop a few for the unlikeliest SEO trifecta possible – are spot-on, but he absolutely refused to approach Howard in any other manner than his comic book likeness. Whether that was an artistic or editorial decision, it’s for the best, because the movie Howard did actually resemble something like a McDonald’s fish sandwich turned inside out and moved like a diminutive epileptic who was cursed by a wizard. Which is not even to mention the eyes, the eyes on that robot duck puppet looked like weary testicles lost forever in a fog of velvet toenails. Correct artistic decisions were made in the context of the comic, to be sure, in the face of what appeared to be a used albino teabag which was the size of a Selectric typewriter

Scripting the adaptation was editor Danny Fingeroth, who simultaneously seems like the best and worst candidate to approach the book – if you are, after all, merely adapting an existing script, then you’ll want an editor. With that being said, though, Marvel had on speed dial a whole cadre of Seventies vets whose drug-addled early days made them more than suitable for tackling the typical Howard vibe. Gerber, of course, would have been the best choice to write an adaptation, but he spent the period of promotion surrounding the movie’s release in an apparent state of shellshocked optimism, brutally let down by the finished product.

Rule one: never let Jeffrey Jones show you a videotape.
As far as goes the adaptation, Fingeroth did his duty in terms of representing in the book what happened in the film (minus the music by Thomas Dolby, which had been one of the few high points of the film – we only get the lyrics, none of which are exactly Maya Angelou. It’s pretty much an even trade, though, considering that Baker thankfully spared us any rendition of that walking rubber glove orgy that passed for Howard in the film). The absence of extrapolation, though, underlines the toothlessness of the source material – what had been one of Marvel’s odd, experimental, existential stabs of the 1970s had been repackaged, neutered, and dumbed down within an inch of its life.

The film has its strengths, too, in a perky Lea Thompson and a surprisingly comedically gifted Tim Robbins – I have to admit, I've seen the man in a thousand serious roles and I still think of him as a comic actor, if just because of this film ... and his hairstyle. Jeffrey Jones wins hearts and minds as a demonic Mister Rooney, although he’s let down by the number of scenes which requires laser beams to erupt from his eyes and a scary Michael Ironside voice dubbed over his real one. Imagine that happening in Deadwood. Now imagine Swearengan played by Ian McShane in the Howard costume. It’d be what the bacteria inside your intestines might look like in a striped suit.

Of course, these strengths don’t translate to the comic book adaptation, which suffers the worst of all possible worlds; no music, no performances (for better or worst), no special effects, but still the same lame plot, time-wasting chase scenes and allegedly comedic asides, all having shunted the elements which made Howard the Duck a desirable read in the first place. As far as the masterpieces of Kyle Baker goes, I rank this under, um, Nat Turner, but slightly higher than … um … the alien races he penciled for The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. No, wait, higher than that.

Still, since Disney now owns Marvel, Lucasfilm – hell, AND the Muppets – live-action Howard the Duck could show up again anywhere. You might be in the middle of the next Star Wars movie or Muppet movie or the inevitable Star Wars Muppet Movie (don’t get excited, it’s just words) and right when you least expect it, BAM – Darth Howard! Consider yourself warned.

This was all shot in a single take, like the opening to Touch of Evil.


Tuesday, February 18, 2014

BATMAN LEADS AN INTERESTING LIFE : THE MYSTERY OF THE CRIMSON AVENGER


World’s Finest Vol 1 No.131 February 1962 – THE MYSTERY OF THE CRIMSON AVENGER
Superman, Batman and Robin all glided out of National Periodical’s Golden Age and into DC Comics’ Silver Age without much in the way of cosmetic or substantive changes (as did Wonder Woman and Green Arrow, altho to not much acclaim), while other heroes got a complete revamp; you already know that Flash came out of his transition as a jet age speedster, Green Lantern a space cop, and the Atom as a size-changing scientist (which is, I think, also one of Stephen Hawking’s many accolades. Little known fact, that: Stephen Hawking can shrink to the size of an ant but retain his full human strength, thanks to the seemingly magic powers of his miraculous Wonder Chair. PS Neil DeGrasse Tyson has a ring that lets him turn himself into a sea serpent or to shoot lightning from his hands. Carl Sagan had death eyes. Check your library for more science facts), while Aquaman and Hawkman quietly adopted whole new backstories while maintaining a relatively unchanging cosmetic front.

Others, like the Black Canary, got a hall pass to Earth-1 and others were replaced with pale imitations (I’m looking at you, Red Tornado).

Like you can fuckin' talk, pixie boots.
A few – very few – other Golden Age heroes made the transition to post-war existence, with middling levels of success. Prairie troubadour cowboy hero The Vigilante, for instance, ca-a-a-a-asually strolled into Earth-1 a short while before his predecessor and the rest of the Seven Soldiers of Victory were rescued from time-tossed limbo , and Earth-1 Spectre and Wildcat just sort of appeared without much fanfare.

Preceding all of these, however, was a revamp of the Vigilante’s crimefighting comrade and DC’s first costume crimefighter, The Crimson Avenger, in the pages of World’s Finest.

In the midst of pursuing The Octopus Gang, a cadre of clever crooks who operate under a villainous mastermind wearing what appears to be fifty pounds of unwashed laundry as a costume, the World’s Finest team is interrupted by a brand-spanking new superhero calling himself The Crimson Avenger (after a “former lawman”, which he doesn’t specify if he meant the Earth-2 hero or mama Avenger’s little boy Crimson, a cop in his old neighborhood). Armed with a batch of bizarre weapons and decked out in a costume that resembles what you might get if you cross one of Santa’s elves with a Ku Klux Klansman, the well-meaning but only mostly-competent crimefighter gets on Superman’s and Batman’s mutual nerves almost right away.

Oh my god, Batman actually detectived something!
I’m not a hundred percent sure why that is, he’s actually surprisingly good at beating up criminals, despite being a doughy middle-aged inventor in his spare time. The only reason he ends up stepping on any of the established super-toes in the region isn’t really his fault, it’s because Robin steps in the way of one of his super-scientific weapons – and isn’t that what Robin is there for? There’s a reason Batman’s always standing behind him in all of those promo shots – “Shoot the boy!” he seems to cry.

The Avenger is loaded up with a terrific armament of weapons of his own invention, including a gun which shoots flame-rings, another gun which shoots restricting force bubbles (which Robin learned at his cost), yet another gun which turns people into Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons, a ring full of knockout gas, and a sedan-mounted battering ram cannon WHICH SHOOTS A GIANT FLYING ROBOTIC RAM’S HEAD and already he’s my favorite superhero ever, this guy.  Plus his insignia kinda of looks like a triple-A Baseball franchise logo and I admire his bold sense of graphic design.

C.A. unfortunately DOES end up getting kidnapped by sea-themed supervillain The Octopus, a baddie who resembles an old comedy villain from this Ed Wheelan strip I remember (Bear with me until this week’s Truly Gone&Forgotten feature on Thursday) and his weapons are turned against Supes and Bats, but isn’t it sort of their fault? If only they’d decided to work WITH the new Crimson Avenger instead of discouraging him at every turn, maybe they could have ALL gotten guns which turn people into fat floating babies.

This is hilarious.


Friday, February 14, 2014

JIMMY OLSEN, RED-HEADED ROMEO : DAY FIVE

For the week leading up to Valentine's Day, Your Humble Editor will be presenting a selection of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen's romantic gal pals. Today, we meet ...
Jimmy, those are "Aunt Kisses"

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen No.74 (December 1963) – Jimmy Olsen’s Secret Love
Jimmy Olsen and Lucy Lane are terrible for one another – Jimmy is impulsive, thoughtless and needy, Lucy is fickle, jealous and hectoring. But what if they adopted completely different disguises and personalities, would it work out then? No, because that’s nuts.

Still, that’s exactly what happened in an epic series of romantic misadventures which ran through Jimmy Olsen comics from 1963 to 1965 – even The Crisis On Infinite Earths only took a year!

First off, the key coincidence – Lucy is assigned by the head of the airline to go undercover as a rotten fink, reporting on slacking airline employees. Sure, it’d be nice if Lucy were catching the mechanics getting high by the fuel pumps or the pilots flying with their dicks out, but no, she just starts handing out demerits for stewardesses who flirt with passengers. A thousand demerits for Hufflepuff!

To accomplish this, she dons a red wig and a phony British accent which I have to imagine sounds like a college kid who refuses to stop re-enacting Monty Python and the Holy Grail for you, and emerges out the other side as Sandra Rogers, a movie starlet visiting America for the first time. I guess having that backstory is SUPER-IMPORTANT in her mission to admonish the flight staff having moments of genuine human attraction to other living beings, an emotion which is alien to Lucy Lane.

Jimmy Olsen, for his part, is disguised as Magi The Magnificent, a “famous” magician (BUT HOW, HE’S MADE UP) in order to sneak up and catch jewel thief “Slick Eddie”. Of course, Slick Eddie might recognize Olsen, which is why he’s adopted the subtle disguise of a man in a tuxedo and top hat. Still, the best part about it is how they weren’t sure the story was going to be O.Henry-ish enough so they had to name Jimmy “Magi”…

They have fun together, these two.
Eventually Sandra/Lucy and Magi/Jimmy meet on the airplane/flying whorehouse (evidently) where they hit it off tremendously, united by Magi’s hatred of blondes and Sandra’s hatred of Jimmy Olsen. With so much in common, how can the romance go awry?

It ends like most Jimmy Olsen stories should, with Lucy and Jimmy trapped on top of a frozen glacier dying from exposure.  Superman comes along and ruins the whole thing, but at least he separates the young lovers and prevents them from living an unhealthy lie…

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen No.78 (July 1964) –The Return of Jimmy’s Lost Love!
…or did he? Six months later, Jimmy and Lucy are back at each other’s throat, sniping about imagined slights and sabotaging every attempt at even basic civil conversation. These kids really have it all, I hope it works out.

When Lucy is given another undercover assignment – someone’s been stealing things from planes, and this time it isn’t the TSA officials – she leaps at the chance to become Sandra again. By terrific coincidence, Jimmy happens to see her crossing the tarmac, and since he keeps a disguise kit in the trunk of his car – this is where most other psychopaths keep bodies, but bless Jimmy for defying the stereotype – he makes a rush change into Magi the Magnificent Bastard.

The pair help catch the thief – he’s been sawing his way through the nose cones of planes and stealing bags with the help of a long hook, and then I guess the planes depressurize once they’re in the air and everyone dies? – and then, suddenly left alone without excuses to dodge one another, they’re confronted with their lies and the chance to finally come clean, admit their true identities, and come to long-sought realizations about the truth of themselves.

But no, Magi just says he’s going to fuck off to Tibet for a while and Sandra says she’s got to go pursue her career – her movie career, by the way, which is kind of an easy career to check up on – so that’s the end of that, right? Back to their spiteful, bitter romance go Jimmy and Lucy …


"Me, a living mass of ground beef - a witness! Gosh!"
Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen No.82 (January 1965) –The Wedding of Magi and Sandra!
…goddamnit! Bored on Saturday evening, Lucy dresses up as Sandra and prowls the park looking for muggers to belittle, and Jimmy happens to be driving by so – how big is Metropolis, anyway? I swear to god, half of these stories someone just happens to be walking or driving by at the right moment, it’s a city of what 10 million people? Or is it twelve? Twelve whole people, four streets, and all the storefronts are Superman-based, it’s like Downtown Disney but people live there who aren’t forced to by secret corporate police. One assumes.

Anyway, “Magi” craps out some lame story about having teleported to Lucy’s side from Tibet, and then helps emasculate a mugger, feeling for the first time the joy Lucy experiences when she breaks a man’s ego to brittle ribbons. Having lived – truly lived – for the first time in his life, Jimmy caps off the post-coital experience by jumping into the ocean and faking Magi’s death.

Lucy gets to mourn for a panel before we shoot into the unspecified future to find Jimmy glumly proposing to a joyless Lucy, and the two are off to a resort to stew in their bitterness as they wait for the justice of the peace to sleep one off (he claims it’s measles, but come on).

Only food play keeps them together.
The weirdest part about this chapter in the Sandra and Magi saga is that Jimmy and Lucy … go through with it? They actually end up married, and then resent it immediately, secretly plotting behind each other’s back to end it with an annulment (or murder, probably murder, I have a feeling it might end in murder).

When a snooping Lucy finds Jimmy’s disguise kit, complete with familiar Magi costume, she shows up to dinner dressed as Sandra, and pretty soon the two are throwing down in one of those public fights some couples have where it looks like they might start fucking on the table if no one comes along and hoses ‘em down? All throwing cake in each other’s face and sneering insults through the frosting. Face it, you’re turned on.

In the end, Lucy and Jimmy comes to some sort of acceptance about their mutual deception and find out they were accidentally not married anyway, by the contrivance law of that county as established in the late eighteen-hundreds. Weirdly, the couple fade into some sort of pleased acceptance of the absurdity of their situation, allegedly having gained additional respect for one another (they end up married for real – albeit briefly – in Jimmy Olsen 100, besieged by an army of Jimmy’s paranormal exes, but there’s another story). I guess the lesson here is fall in love with a dressed up, one-dimensional version of your significant other and pine for that peerless perfection in your heart all your days, until you find out it was all a cynical lie perpetrated by a partner whose words of love were born and killed only on their own lips, stranger to their heart. Mazel tov!



HAPPY VALENTINES DAY




Thursday, February 13, 2014

VALENTINE WEEK : TRULY GONE & FORGOTTEN : SPIDER-WIDOW AND THE RAVEN

I have no idea why she's doing that thing over on the side there.

She’s a fright-masked debutante with un penchant for vigilantism and a pocketful of black widow spiders, he’s a man with a giant purple bird costume and what appear to be khaki-color Dockers from the JC Penney’s collection.  Together they’re the Nick and Nora Charles of golden age comics except for about a hundred reasons – can they find true love in an age before Craigslist?

The Spider Widow and her eventual inamorata and sidekick The Raven are a pair of Quality Comics superheroes who never quite made it over into the mainstream DC Universe after the latter company snatched up the former’s copyrights, which is why you may have seen Plastic Man and Blackhawk comics in the sixties and seventies, but never a Spider Widow title. Well, that’s A reason.

Cab fare.
Unremarkable on her own, Spider Widow (aka Dianne Grayton) debuted as a bored debutante who discovers one day that she can control spiders, which I can do too if I have a stiff piece of cardboard and a drinking glass. “Whoosh,” I command, “Get thrown out my front door like you didn’t expect that to happen, spider,” and it does! Deciding to fight crime and Nazis, Spider Widow dons a rubber hag mask and otherwise form-fitting black dress and descends into the nightmares of criminals who have to now deal not only with a fear of poisonous spiders but an sexual attraction to a horrible witch with terrific tits.

She’s not solo for long when she’s joined by The Raven, another amateur vigilante with a pretty great bird costume which he ruins by painting the legs green. Fuck are you, Raven, a parrot? Swooping in to assist the Widow, Raven was alerted to the danger by a Help Wanted ad directed at the spidery superheroine. I assume it was a help wanted ad, anyway, not something in the personals. “SSW (Single Spider Widow) seeks BFM (Bird-Faced Man) for NSGT (Nazi-smashing Good Times) for fun, friendship, more. Pls include photo, NFB (No Fat Birds)”

The Spider Widow and Raven end up getting involved in a back-and-forth with The Phantom Lady, Quality’s highest-profile female superhero, with whom the Widow engages in a deadly – if temporary – feud crossing into both of their titles (Police and Feature Comics). I have to assume it all resolved itself in a subsequent ménage a trois, and so did you probably. Comics! They’re for the emotionally mature!

JIMMY OLSEN, RED-HEADED ROMEO : DAY FOUR

For the week leading up to Valentine's Day, Your Humble Editor will be presenting a selection of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen's romantic gal pals. Today, we meet ...
This has GOT to be treason or something.

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen No.69 (June 1963) – Jimmy Olsen’s Viking Sweetheart
It must be interesting to have a fan club, think of all the ways they celebrate your life and accomplishments – arranging scrapbooks and photo albums, organizing events, building robot Viking maidens for you to fuck. It’s like being a king!

Jimmy takes his fan club on an ill-fated ski trip which is derailed by our red-headed hero hound-dogging after a disinterested Lucy Lane instead of hanging with his devoted pals. Not soon after ditching his entourage, Jimmy finds a red-headed Viking maiden trapped in the snow, and in short order begins a whirlwind romance with the flame-haired Holga. Holga, say it slow and it’s like a chimney fire choking itself out.

Unfortunately for fans of keeping their lunches down, Holga turns out to be a sophisticated robot – why, her control panel has a viewscreen and NINE settings, including “activate”! – under the control of Jimmy’s fan club. Ostensibly they’re trying to shore up his confidence and stick it to Lucy Lane and not use the recorder feature to create a Jimmy Olsen sextape … or so I assume. I don’t know how deep their fandom runs.

The Olsen/Holga relationship goes all the way to engagement and then to the next step any young couple takes immediately thereafter, meeting Jackie Onassis. I think Jimmy’s fan club may have crossed over from merely horrifying to actually violating federal law in some fashion. Do you think they were at all panicking when Jimmy proposed? “This is getting way out of hand, Alan” “Shut up Dennis, I’m fixing it, I can fix this!” It’s like the Breaking Bad of using robot Vikings to seduce your journalistic hero.

In the end, Lucy stumbles across the control panel and viewscreen and, furious that she’d been thrown over for a robot – you and Jennifer Aniston, sister -  Lucy hits the second most baffling button on the panel, “Treat Jimmy coldly”. Why do they even have that button? Worse yet, what does the one labeled “Act independently” do? Let’s not give robots too much power, kids, that’s how we get Terminators.

Why even HAVE this button??

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen No.73 (December 1963) – Jimmy’s Inter-Dimensional Romance
Jimmy’s got good luck with women from other realms and dimensions finding him so attractive that they have to cross immeasurable distances just to be with him. Welp, that luck’s about to change!

This is fucked up.
Trying his hand at sculpting – like he doesn’t have enough to keep him occupied – Jimmy’s finds himself to compelled to carve a particular likeness which, the following dawn, becomes a living woman named Rona, from the 7th Dimension! Even more shockingly, she claims to have been trapped in that marble block, and good lord how did Jimmy Olsen afford a marble block? Cub reporter’s salaries must be immense.

Rona falls for her savior, creating for him with her mental powers a chemical he can drink (always with drinking chemicals, this guy) which gives him a Superman physique. In fact, mentally creating chemical drinks out of thin air isn’t only how Four Loko does it, it’s Rona’s stock in trade, because it turns out – SHE’S A HORRIBLE MURDERER! With a dozen husbands poisoned and turned into statues (I don’t know how that works) behind her, Jimmy was set to become number thirteen! And still, compared to a life with Lucy Lane, how bad would it be?

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen No.85 (June 1965) –Love Me, Love My Beast!
Hey, that’s what my tattoo says!

I never had a dream that didn't start like this...
A radio telescope trained on distant space brings saucy Shara of the planet Salan to Earth’s shores, and into Jimmy’s arms. Accompanying the alien ambassador is Gnor, a pancake-faced dung beetle with arms for tits and Robin Williams’ body hair problem, her loyal pet who will not leave her side. Which is handy if you happen to ask yourself “I wonder what Clint Howard would look like in a tangerine poncho covered with pubic hair” because you can just look to the side and go “Oh, right, like that.”

Gnor isn’t merely a persistent pet, of course, he’s a parasitic alien who feeds on the life force of others by way of what is politely described as a “leash” around his neck but which is probably his weird alien genitals. Exhausting Shara’s energy supply, Gnor foists his enervating glottal tubesteak on Jimmy and starts suckin’.

Luckily Superman comes along at the end and causes Gnor to blow up, just straight-up murderin’ that guy, just … just POP, and that’s that. Tsk.

...And I never had one that didn't end like this.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

VALENTINE WEEK : THE MANY LEERS OF DOBIE GILLIS

What is even ...

The licensed humor comics which DC produced in the 1960s produced some legitimately great examples of the genre. Primarily, later issues of The Adventures of Bob Hope and The Adventures of Jerry Lewis, both largely the products of writer/artist Bob Oksner, turned in some truly weird and enjoyable issues, like Lewis’ teamups with DC’s most stalwart superheroes or Hope’s super-powered nephew Super-Hip. Personally, I’m a fan of Sgt.Bilko, the comic adaptation of the classic Phil Silvers comedy series (and its subsequent spin-off featuring Private Doberman), also a product of Oksner and company.

Get that sample to the lab immediately,
this giraffe is terribly sick!
The ridiculously productive Oksner was also at the helm of the comic adaptation of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, another well-regarded sitcom about a girl-crazy fella whose desperate need to be loved breaks his sanity, leading him to stage conversations with invisible audiences and to pal around with an imaginary “beatnik”, a creature of pure fiction, played on the show by Gilligan S. Island (deceased).

Oksner may have been the go-to guy for the licensed humor books not only for his breezy style and decent comic chops, but because of his skill with likeness –his Lewis, Hope and Silvers are swell caricatures of the original comedians. With Dobie Gillis, though, Oksner was either restricted from caricature or finding it difficult with star Dwayne Hickman’s weird rictus of a face (no, he’s really quite handsome), although he found more freedom with Maynard Krebs’ likeness (Later on, Oksner’s caricature of Bob Denver would be freed into a protected wild area called Gilligan’s Planet, where he would be allowed to mingle with others of his own species).

So Dobie manages to maintain, through his comic series – all twenty-six issues – a sort of terrifying, manic leer:

Just imagine what his O-Face looks like.

It's an uncomfortable stare which seems to be half starving dog and half possessed ventiroloquist's dummy, but then again I've seen the show and I think that was possibly what they were actually going for.

Even as I came to terms with that face, though, you get something like this. Are they role-playing or is she magic?

This is a little game they like to call "The Prospector and The Lost Mine"

JIMMY OLSEN, RED-HEADED ROMEO : DAY THREE

For the week leading up to Valentine's Day, Your Humble Editor will be presenting a selection of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen's romantic gal pals. Today, we meet ...

The complicated Kryptonian key party of lies begins!

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen No.57 (December 1961) – Jimmy Olsen Marries Supergirl
This book-length adventure falls thankfully into that Silver Age category of the Imaginary Story, which is lucky for Jimmy’s lifelong efforts to stay off the sex offender registry.

Writing a story on the Midvale Orphanage – where Superman’s teenage cousin Supergirl resides when slumming with mortals – Jimmy inadvertently exposes a plainclothes Supergirl to a chunk of red kryptonite which turns out to behave like some sort of super-roofie. You’re probably aware, if you’ve made it this far through a catalog of Jimmy Olsen anecdotes, that red kryptonite has unpredictable effects on super-powered Kryptonians, only once per exposure, for a period of twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Remember that time frame, it’ll become important. Or, well, as important as anything ever gets in these stories.

The Red K has the effect of removing Supergirl’s memory AND super-powers. In a whirlwind – because it has to be – Jimmy takes her on their first date, proposes, introduces her to all his friends in Metropolis, gets married, takes a honeymoon trip, comes back home, struggles with their personal finances, quits the Daily Planet and goes job hunting, plus he bought a house somewhere in there, and then Supergirl’s memory returns. On the outside, that was 48 hours.

Since unnecessary duplicity runs in the family, Supergirl – whom Jimmy still only knows as his wife Linda  - decides to break the news of her dual identity to him gradually, after making him fall in love with her super-identity. Again, did everyone in Metropolis have dysfunctional families? How is tricking your husband into having an affair meant to resolve anything? This isn’t a Superman comic, it’s the Red Shoe Diaries. Maybe it’s a Kate Bush song. I don’t even, you guys. Jimmy’s gonna have a nervous breakdown.

♫  Every now and then I fall apart ♫ 

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen No.59 (March 1962) – Jimmy Olsen, FREAK
I’m glad someone finally noticed.

Beautiful space brunette Princess Ilona of the Sunev galaxy (you know the one, right? By the Arco station?) drops outta nowhere in the middle of Jimmy’s pointless daydreaming about Lucy Lane, the only thing nature abhors more than a vacuum. Although Ilona comes from a race which wears the Michelin Man’s skin as clothing, they otherwise have terrific taste, and she admits she’s come across the galaxies to find Jimmy Olsen, her idol, and marry him.

That is straight-up a solid put-down.
Jimmy knows a good thing when he sees it, which is why he has a closet full of green checked jackets and red bow ties, so he signs on with Ilona’s offer right away. Man, that’s dangerous, Jimmy, you don’t really know anything about this girl – what if she’s a white supremacist? Maybe her people consume their mates. Hey, what if she has a tattoo of Mickey Rourke’s face on the inside of her thigh? You gotta get to know a girl, Jimmy…

For instance, Jimmy did not know that he was to be Ilona’s fifth husband in her man-harem (Hold on, there’s got to be a lame man-centric pun about that. A he-rem? That can’t be right), and likewise didn't know that the other four husbands were jerks with reality altering belts that turn Jimmy into something that looks like a cross between a volleyball, Rupert Grint and an airplane’s inflatable emergency slide. Wait, I can do better – it turns him into Andy Richter. No, wait, that was cruel – how about Louis Anderson?

Anyway, they use ray beams to turn him into a fat, weird, shaggy weirdo and then worse yet we learn that their names are Vangar, Duran, Rogor and Berek, which for some reason I find more offensive. Still, Jimmy finds polygamy a turnoff and so arranges for Superman to help him drive his devoted, sexy, wealthy, fawning fiancée off into space so he can go back to being Lucy Lane’s punching bag, because he hates joy.


Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen No.64 (October 1962) – Jimmy Olsen’s Super-Romance!
No, Jimmy and Superman don’t just break down and confess their undying love for one another, it’s another space-lady with an eye for the redhead cub reporter who occupies the romance of the title.

Allura, Princess of the Ashtar Galaxy, contacts Jimmy Olsen through the magic of those TVs people used to have in the Sixties that were bigger than refrigerators. A long-time admirer of Jimmy’s, she sends him a “Menor Band” which increases Jimmy’s intelligence a thousandfold. “I get a real kick out of being a mental giant” says Jimmy Olsen, the man who routinely wanders in front of ray beams and drinks chemical formulas like soda pop.

You can make it work, mini-Jimmy.
The mentor band is a bit of fluff that fills the chewy nougat center of this story, killing time until Allura can begin to entice her intergalactic inamorata to join her forever on her alien kingdom. Yep, the beautiful and devoted queen of an alien planet isn’t enough for Jimmy Olsen, she has to sweeten the pot with SUPER-POWERS, fresh piping hot super-powers granted to any Earthman who visits her planet’s double suns.

When Jimmy does get there, he discovers that Allura’s people are giant-sized, and so being so terribly mismatched Jimmy chooses to leave her behind, knowing there is no way they could ever truly be together as long as he was small, and that nothing would ever allow him to be a giant, and probably six times over the next three months he’ll wander in front of a ray or drink a chemical that turns him into a giant. THINK AHEAD OLSEN.

Most unsettling part of this story is that the infants of Allura’s world have the proportions of full-grown adults but are only as tall as human Earthlings. Jimmy describes this as “They were as large as I am, what a weird development” and mostly I was thinking how bizarre it was that there was a planet where babies had tits or muscular abs and stuff. Truly disquieting.



Tuesday, February 11, 2014

VALENTINE WEEK : THE DEADLY WEDDING OF ROBIN AND BAT-GIRL

I honestly know at least three people who might make this their actual wedding theme.
The Batgirl and Robin team-ups which ran through the Batman Family anthology (What a weird title for a comic – Batman Family, starring his dead parents and all the ancestors who were actually time-travelling Bruce Waynes!) maintained a few occasional ongoing plotlines, including the duo’s ongoing battle against the original Joker’s Daughter. If you can’t tell her apart from the new Joker’s Daughter, then I assume the medication isn’t working and we’ll have to increase your dosage.

The pair also battled MAZE, a highly secretive criminal organization whose attempts to assassinate the less-Dynamic Duo come to a head in Batman Family #11. Hired by an unnamed older gentleman to snuff Batman’s sidekicks (or at least these two, I don’t know if he had any designs on Mogo the Bat-Ape), Maze makes a couple of muffed attempts at a basketball game, inside a parking garage, and then finally having decided that the problem with their strategy was that they hadn’t yet been unnecessarily complicated enough for a Batman killing, staged a fake wedding for an apparently kidnapped and drugged Batgirl and Robin at the Ford Theatre after the culmination of which the whole audience would stand up and shoot them to death. Now we’re talking! Someone get a giant typewriter in here and we’ll hit all the marks!

The end.


The Batgirl/Robin team-ups had an interesting life in the letters page as well with at least a few readers a little concerned about the apparent age difference between the pair, whose dialogue was– inevitably – a little flirtatious and the relationship portrayed as attracted, if not romantic. Keep in mind that Barbara Gordon was a congresswoman and Dick Grayson a teenaged college student (although the lettercol did its best to firm up the age difference at the minimum stretch – 19 for a still-teen wonder, and the minimum age for serving in congress, 25, for Babs. It’s not exactly Byrnesian in its extremes, but still…). Promising a wedding between the two – even obviously staged as a deathtrap – was probably acknowledging that concern with a tongue firmly placed in cheek.

Although I do like Robin’s tuxedo.

What school of martial arts is this, exactly?


By the end of the tale, it turns out that a disguised Robin had been paying MAZE to attempt these assassinations in order to collect the entire criminal crew in one room and creatively slug them into prison. Either that or Robin’s making a really serious cry for help. All hiring the mob to take potshots at him. I bet he cuts, too. If Batman doesn’t eventually acknowledge this, it’s gonna end in Robin breaking down in the middle of a fight and the Ventriloquist having to reassure him that everyone gets tired sometimes, it’s okay, it’s gonna be all right, and is there someone he can call to come pick him up?

AAAAH AAAAHH AAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!



Popular Posts