Month: November 2006

And now, the many sound effects of Captain America #181:

from Captain America #181 (January 1975) by Steve Englehart, Sal Buscema & Vince Colletta

(A family of comic fans have picked out their comics at our store and are ready to check out. The little girl of the family, about 5 or so, wants a comic book too, so the other family members try to help out)

Older sister/aunt/whatever: “So look, there’s Action, there’s Cable/Deadpool, there’s X-Men…”

Little girl: “Oooh, there’s Krypto! I like Krypto, I’ve seen him on TV!”

Older sis/aunt/whatever: “Krypto? Really? Nah, you don’t want that. Look, here’s Martian Manhunter, Witchblade….”

Okay, when I heard “Witchblade” I had to step in and gently suggest that, really, you should probably get the little girl the COMIC SHE’S ACTUALLY INTERESTED IN. It’s a good read, perfect for her age group, and (I didn’t say this next part, though I really should have) a lot more appropriate than freakin’ Witchblade, for God’s sake.

And, thankfully, they did buy her Krypto, grudgingly, but made the little girl very happy. So disaster has been temporarily averted, as I’m sure the family is going to continue to give her grief over picking Krypto over something “cool” like Captain America or Outsiders or some darn thing.

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So we recently bought a good-sized collection…well, we bought a small portion of it, and the rest of it ended up getting dumped on us anyway (which is where a lot of my recent Starlog scans and quotes are coming from, but more on that later in the week). Anyway, in one of the old Famous Monsters of Filmland mags we found a folded-up Playboy poster featuring nekkid Bo Derek from Tarzan the Ape Man (the one with how much Keeffe? “Miles O’Keeffe!”*).

Another item in this collection was a copy of the Kitchen Sink Press ‘zine Weird Trips, which cover-featured an article on the infamous murderer Ed Gein:

However, the previous owner of this comic added a special bonus feature to this mag: a period newspaper clipping featuring the obituary of Mr. Gein:

I wonder what other surprise bonuses are hiding in the pages of the books in this collection?

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Speaking of stuff from old Starlog mags:

“Join the Starpool fleet and cruise the galaxy with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock at your side. Whatever your mission – school, work, or around the block, you’re part of the Federation with Spock and Kirk in the back seat of your car. It’s not a carpool. It’s a starpool!

“Here’s how it works!

“Starpool kinetic passengers move as your car moves. Face and hand mechanism attach easily to back seat car windows. Spring-action hands wave any time the car is in motion. Spock gives his famous Vulcan salute. Kirk delivers an important command on his communicator.”

* Totally stolen from Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

Pal Dorian pointed out to me that there’s a Newsarama message board thread discussing that “comic book stores are dens of sin” article I’d Googled up the other day.

Some reactions are as follows:

“I used to have a friend growing up whose mom would take a Sharpie to his comics and edit out anything she found ‘offensive.'”

“My kids read some of my comics and if there’s anything that I think might be a bit much for ’em( I know my kids so I have a good idea what that is in regards to the 11yo and 17yo) I just talk about it with them first and if they want to read the book still I leave it up to them.”

“what a minute, this article is 4 years old!”

“Someone please tell me that this woman [note – some posters in this thread seem to think the article was written by a woman] is not complaining that comics, which really haven’t been targeted towards children in years, are not for childish enough. Please tell me that she isn’t complaining about something that she comics to be, due to her own unwillingness to accept change. This is like someone writing a letter explaining they’re outrage because they went to the South expecting there to be slaves, and found none.”

“Did her child read the Boys issue 4?”

“The hard core fans have had years to become accustomed to, and even rather jaded about, things that a great many people, especially parents, would find very shocking. While I wouldn’t use the sort of rhetoric this article contains, I do believe parents could use some warnings about what sorts of things are likely to be found in comics, so they’ll know that they need to supervise their children’s reading of them.”

“As a librarian, I thought you’d value the idea of letting people decide about materials for themselves. Certainly if these weren’t comics, you’d feel differently.”

“I didn’t say anything at all about advocating censorship. I said that parents are often deeply ignorant about the content of today’s comics, and that they need to be made aware of them so that they will know to keep a closer eye on their childrens’ exposure to them.”

“I know this is a stretch, but perhaps parents should actually LOOK at what their kids are interested in and police the material themsleves. […] Of course, its much easier to blame others and act like the entire world should be sanitized just in case a 10 year old gets his hands on something.”

“Protecting children means censorsing adults. Didn’t you know that?”

“I think it’s funny too,that some folks have insinuated that the problems with education and the youth are all the fault of parents. Couldn’t be the fact that many (not all) people today under 30 have absolutely no sense of personal responsibility and have to blame evryone but themselves for what’s wrong with them.”

“no one is attacking all parents in general. Just the ones who don’t want to take responsibility for their kids, or how they turn out. Sorta like blaming your kids delinquency on some mythical generational flaw.”

“Yes parents need to keep track of what their kids are reading, but that doesn’t dismiss the fact that many comics are almost blatently dishonest with their rating systems. And this going to come back to haunt the industry someday.”

“It’s worth repeating – this article was written in 2002. The stupidity of it is timeless, though.”

I haven’t talked about this week’s new comics day yet, but thought I should mention a thing or two before it becomes “last week’s new comics day.”

First, I finally held a copy of the Complete Dick Tracy Volume 1 in my hands, and boy, it sure is nice. It doesn’t have the sewn-in bookmark visible in the promo image I posted, but the reproduction of the strips are excellent, even including some color strips shot from original newspaper sections. This is very much the proto-version of the strip, with Dick Tracy only approaching his razor-sharp profile near the end of the volume, but it all looks beautiful and entertaining. So, yeah, as soon as I scrape some pennies together, I’ll hopefully buy a copy for myself.

Speaking of coin of the realm, and lack thereof, I’ve been shedding books from the read pile over the last couple of weeks. This week I dropped Mystery in Space (I like Starlin’s “The Weird” back-up, but the Captain Comet lead story isn’t doing it for me), last week I gave up on Trials of Shazam (I love the Marvel Family characters, but I haven’t warmed to this series) and Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters (forgot to pick it up, decided I didn’t miss it). On the chopping block: Green Lantern Corps (stuck it out for the issues drawn by Dave Gibbons, not sure I care enough the non-Guy Gardner characters to keep reading).

Back to stuff from this week I did read:

Pirate Tales – another of Boom! Studios’ anthology books, this time focusing on…well, guess. I do loves me the pirate comics, which we don’t see enough of, and the highlights of this collection are “Jerky” by Chris Ward, Keith Giffen, and Rafael Albuquerque (a short horrific bit about pirates adrift on a raft at sea) and “The Walk” by Joe Casey and Jean Dzialowski (with the nice gimmick of several full page images, each page functioning as a separate panel, giving us a panoramic view of the ship). It’s fun reading, and even when you come across the occasional piece of clichéd dialogue like “Avast ye scurvy dog,” well, you’re willing to forgive it. If no one said “Avast ye scurvy dog” at any point during the proceedings, I’d have been disappointed.

Tales Designed to Thrizzle #3 – the new issue of Michael Kupperman’s humor book from Fantagraphics is…well, beyond description, really. If you liked what you saw in the first two issues (and I did), there’s more in this third issue. Plus, there’s a history of porno coloring books. Look, don’t ask me to explain.

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And now, for no good reason, two letters from Starlog #29 (December 1979)…this first one is either an extremely sarcastic critique, or the writer just took his bathroom breaks at the wrong times:

“…Frankly, I was confused by the movie Alien. Perhaps you could help me. I saw quite a lot in the picture. There were all those flashing lights and those billowing colors of smoke. I was particularly amused by the actors, portraying present-day, foul-mouthed, drunken chain-smokers somehow transported into the future, still wearing their Hawaiian shirts, ball caps, and briefs. I thought that old carnival trick ‘man with head through hole in floor talking’ was a real pip. However, it’s the title of the show that puzzles me. Was there supposed to be an alien in there someplace? I looked and looked, but never saw one. A friend told me that was the whole idea – it was supposed to be hiding. The only out-of-this-world creature I noticed was Sigourney Weaver – great body, rotten actress.”

And now, a letter from Grandpa:

“…If you and your sister magazine FUTURE LIFE continue to publish articles lauding today’s disco and punk rock, I shall be forced to stop buying your otherwise excellent publications. These are not rock fanzines you are putting together. Leave this to the cretinous rock pulps that dominate today’s newsstands. STARLOG and FUTURE LIFE are far too intelligent to cater to the simple-minded dolts who listen to this production-line music. Rock is boring, repetitous. Once you’ve heard one song, you’ve heard them all. If rock is the music of the future, give me the triassic era any day. I’d rather tangle with a raging Tyrannosurus [sic] Rex than the deafening blare of noisy discotheques.”

“Felix Silva [sic], in the role of Twiki, Buck’s companion robot (inset) had some hot times under set lights. Says producer [Leslie] Stevens: ‘We kept frying our midgets.'”

from “Buck Rogers Becomes The Movie” (Starlog #21, April 1979)

Here’s a little something I found while Googling around the other day. It’s a few years old, so it may have been discussed out there in comic book internet land already, but even so, I thought I’d shine a light on it anyway.

“Many parents are unaware of how bad comic books have become. Some drop their children off at comic stores, thinking that the kids are taking the easy route into reading that they themselves enjoyed as children. But comic stores have become little more than gateways into pornography and graphic violence.

“It used to be that you found a few bad comics amid the adventure stories and tales of superheroes. Now, the decent comics are difficult to find. Most of the titles are bizarre, with some being openly pornographic, such as Purgatori, Bettie Page and Lady Death. They are chockfull of nudity, homosexuality, violence, and demonic portrayals. Some openly attack religions and religious believers, particularly Christians. Many also have foul language, with repeated use of the F-word.”

[…]

“A few good comic books remain that are consistently imaginative and nonexploitative. The Archie series is a good example. Archie comics have become the top-selling comic books in America. This is partly because of their quality and wholesome consistency. But they are also a dominant market force because there are few competitors. Disney and Marvel also put out quality comic books for the most part.

“But most comics publishers seem to have lost any concern they ever had for the effects of their product on impressionable young minds. The head of DC comics, which publishes some good comics but also now routinely features sex, violence, foul language and even anti-Christian themes in some of its products, said in an interview that she wanted to push the envelope as far as possible.”

[…]

“The Federal Trade Commission recently issued a report accusing the music industry of aggressively marketing adult material to children. It’s time for them to look into the comic book industry’s deceptive and seductive marketing. Congress can hold hearings to shine a light on the dark corners of the comics world. Meanwhile, law enforcement authorities don’t have to wait. They can prosecute people who would exploit children. Merchants who sell smut to children should be put behind bars, where they can encounter first-hand some of the tender, loving behavior inspired by their products.”

For a dissenting opinion: the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

So I guess I’ve decided to celebrate my new, expanded bandwidth by posting a boatload of pictures this week. For you folks on dial-up, I apologize…I know what that’s like, so I’ll try to ease up a bit.

So, in the news:

It’s been going around again that Jack Black will not be Green Lantern, according to that video interview which will automatically start playing if you click on that link, so watch out, you. Apparently the last time he said he wasn’t doing it didn’t stick. And, again, that’s too bad…I know it’s the unpopular opinion, but I would have liked to have seen it. It could have been a good larf. Besides, some people are just so gosh-darned antsy about their superheroes being “properly treated with respect,” so nit-picky about every detail, that a full-on superhero comedy featuring one of the “world’s greatest superheroes” (that most of the general public had never heard of, aside from this cartoon) would have either forced them to just unclench a bit, man, or would have just plain broken their will altogether.

Let’s see…I like the idea of Black as GL, I enjoy All-Star Batman…why do you people even look at my website? Clearly I’m a bad person.

In other news:

Okay, I haven’t mentioned the whole Marvel Comics crossover with the Guiding Light soap opera, but…um, not that TV soap operas are paragons of realism, but isn’t making one of the characters into a superhero, with actual super-powers, kinda pushing the boundaries just a bit?

I took to the soap opera message boards to see the reaction:

From Soap Opera Network – “Are they really doing this?”

“Now, please tell me the oldest soap in Daytime is not going to have a superhero on their show. What is the deal with this storyline and what do GL fans think about it?”

“I just can’t believe this is happening. I’m stupified right now.”

“They have to be smoking crack to come up with an idea as crazy as this.”

“I have a feeling this is a fantasy episode as seen through the eyes of Harley’s kids. Kind of a ‘Super-mom’ episode… at least that’s what I hope. If it’s anything meant to be taken seriously, CBS is getting one PO’d e-mail from me.”

“Get off the back of GL for thinking outside the box like every other show does. They are doing what they need to do and special episodes are fun for fans and for the actors themselves.”

“Supernatural stories have been poorly received on every soap except those specializing in them (Dark Shadows, Port Charles). Why a traditional soap like GL would do this is beyond me.”

“I understand that comics are serial type reading, but that does not mean they should have a place on the oldest soap around. Passions, perhaps but not my GUIDING LIGHT.”

“Comic books and soap operas DO NOT MIX This stupid crossover will only make people switch the channel or stop watching”