Tim O’Neil makes a good point about the Watchmen comic containing its own defense against any film adaptations.
New comics weblog: I Was Ben. Nice, clean design, good back-to-basics comics blogging, has me listed in the “Old School” links section. I’m “Old School,” baby, and don’t you forget it! Also, I happen to know at least one of the people behind this site has a long blogging history, comics and otherwise, so I totally vouch for him. Go, visit, encourage this behavior, because I want to keep reading it.
Pal Dorian posts the truth about Sean Connery, somehow manages to implicate me. Also, Dor has posted a brief discussion he and I had the other day, in case you want to see what we get up to when you’re not looking. No, no, nothing dirty. C’mon.
§ March 11th, 2008§ Filed under UncategorizedComments Off on "Darkseid is one tricky hombre."
So Monday night, I found myself watching an episode of the mid-’80s version of the Super Friends cartoon, when Firestorm and Darkseid were featured characters. The episode was “Darkseid’s Golden Trap,” in which Darkseid and his henchmen, Desaad and a nearly-unrecognizable Kalibak, travel into distant space to attend the 532nd Annual Intergalactic Criminal Auction, or whatever it was called. I do remember that it was specifically referred to as the 500-something-th annual, which had me wondering which time scale from what alien world they were using to determine the “annual” bit of that title.
Anyway, Darkseid’s there to bid on a piece of Gold Kryptonite to use against Superman. Even though the bidding begins at something like 100,000 bleens (bleens being the currency of choice among space criminals, apparently), Darkseid simply says “I bid…one bleen,” thus showing that even being on the Super Friends doesn’t make him any less of a badass.
It so happens that some Super Friends (Wonder Woman, Black Vulcan, and Firestorm) are there in disguise to get the Gold Kryptonite themselves for safekeeping, and Darkseid finds them out and catches them, and blah blah blah. Back on Earth, Superman, Batman, and El Dorado discover there’s trouble…well, actually, Darkseid gives them a space-call to tell them 1) he captured the other heroes, and 2) he’s got Gold Kryptonite, instead of just keeping his mouth shut and quietly putting together some kind of secret Gold Kryptonite trap that could catch Supes by surprise. No, he’s got to tell him ahead of time so that the Friends can go chasing after him, whip up a cunning plan to defeat him, and prepare for the fact that he has Gold Kryptonite.
Okay, look, here’s what I would have done if I was Darkseid. First, I’d fire Desaad. I mean, honestly, that guy gives me the creeps. Second, okay, I’d still make the space-call to the Hall of Justice to let the Super Friends know that, hey, I got your pals here, oh my, I guess you’d better come and rescue them. What I wouldn’t do is say, “oh, and by the way, I have the one known piece of Gold Kryptonite, so y’all better plan ahead.” No, I’d wait for Supes, Bats, and, er, El D to show up, let them give me the “Your plans are finished, Darkseid” speech, and when Superman tries to put the cuffs on me, whip out that Gold Kryptonite out from under my lead-lined hat. “What th–!? Gold Kryptonite! I so totally wasn’t expecting that!” Superman would shout, as his powers depart from him forever. And now there’s nothing, nothing to stop me from conquering the universe! Ah HA HA HA!
Er, yeah.
Now this guy, El Dorado:
Okay, I had to grab these stills off of some Youtubed SF footage, and not from the show I watched, so I apologize for the quality. But as I was watching El Dorado in action, it sorta looked like that he had the superpower of having whatever superpower happened to be convenient at that moment. He can read minds, he was able to create armor around himself, and he was able to cast an illusion over Batman, making him look like Superman long enough to fool Darkseid into throwing the whole chunk of Gold Kryptonite at him.
However, El Dorado had the best line in the entire episode, as he summed up Darkseid like so few others have been able to:
“Darkseid is one tricky hombre.”
Yes. Yes, indeed. God bless you and your wisdom, El Dorado.
A couple other things that shouldn’t have surprised me, as I’m pretty sure I was aware of both of these things before, but clearly haven’t thought about them in a while. For example, it was good to hear The Man himself, Adam West, voicing Batman. Even though they had him saying some ridiculous things throughout the course of this story, he can sell a Batman line like nobody else.
I was completely wrong about this, but I swear to you, some of the background aliens in the auctions sequences early in the episode looked like they were drawn by Skip Williamson. That’s one of the reasons I watched the credits so closely. I know, I know, that’s the talk of a madman, but I wish I did have screenshots from this episode to prove that I’m not crazy for thinking so, I’m not.
Just now, I was looking up something else about this episode, and noticed that Rene Auberjonois voiced Desaad. “Clayton, nooooo!”
So anyway, Super Friends. I haven’t sat through an episode of this in years, and this was, in fact, the first time I’d seen an episode from the Darkseid era of the show. And really, Firestorm’s rock-solid ‘n’ unmoving flame-hair was very distracting:
I know it would have been a pain to animate, but c’mon, just look at it. It’s like he’s wearing a blooming flower hat.
But hey, the show was good for some laughs, and even in this somewhat lessened form, Darkseid is still Darkseid. More or less.
§ March 10th, 2008§ Filed under watchmenComments Off on “…He sure as hell is angry, but he does have moves.”
Okay, I’m pretty sure someone else in the comicsweblogosphere has already covered this at some point, but I don’t remember anyone doing so off the top of my head, and I’m not gonna check and see because I still want to post about it. Plus, I mentioned this comic to pal Dorian and Employee Aaron, and they were all “nuh uh,” and I was all “yeah huh,” so I’m gonna post it here just in case any of you out there hadn’t heard about it or seen it either.
Anyhoo, Question #17 (June 1988, by Denny O’Neil, Denys Cowan, and Rick Magyar) features our hero in his civilian identity as Vic Sage, having boarded a plane flight after picking up some choice reading at the terminal newsstand.
And the reading material in question?
First off…sure, it’s an in-story plug for one of DC’s high profile projects…a fairly blatant one, even more so than that one from The Flash.
Second, of course Rorschach stands out to Vic Sage, since Vic’s alter ego as the Question was a real-world inspiration to the Watchmen character’s look.
Third, that certainly looks like Gibbons’ art from that one promo image in the fourth panel. Moore and Gibbons aren’t credited at the beginning of the comic with anything in this issue, but they are given a special “thank you.” I wonder if either of them were even aware Rorschach went walkies into this book, and out of their control.
Anyway, Vic and his ’80s hair start reading, and it’s apparently compelling reading since he immediately nods off. And how tough of a guy is Vic Sage/The Question?
He provides hardboiled narration for his own descent into sleep, that’s how tough.
He immediately jumps into dream-sleep, and he relives some previous tragedy in his dream, only with Vic in Rorschach’s costume instead of his Question duds:
Vic wakes at that point, calling the experience “weird,” which, okay, fair enough. He also reminds everyone to rush right out and buy the critically-acclaimed Watchmen trade paperback by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, now out in stores! And it makes a great gift! (Okay, he doesn’t really say any of that, which I’m only saying to nip the “huh? That’s not in my copy” comments in the bud.)
Later, after imbibing a little too much at the local gin joint while trying to drink a potential information source into giving up the goods, he finds himself in a fight with said source that Vic only just barely wins. The excitement and the drink get to be a bit much for him, so once he’s back at the hotel:
Er, not that Rorschach would laugh. At anything. And you know, come to think of it, “Dead Air TV Static” is a good design for a pair of pants.
There is one more Rorschach reference in the book, after the Question gets the tar beat out of him again, and he’s being driven off to some nefarious fate, he manages to moan out Rorschach’s signature phrase:
And there you go. Question #17. Your Watchmen collection just isn’t complete without it.
Next: those Captain Atom and Legion of Super-Heroes issues you need to complete your collection of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.
§ March 9th, 2008§ Filed under UncategorizedComments Off on The awesome power of Being Lynda Carter.
So I was doing a little restocking of the Battlestar Galactica back issues, and if I had to see this cover, so do you:
Also, I’m still a little annoyed (just a little, no big whoop) by the closeness of the logos for the comic book based on the original ’70s TV series, and the comic based on the Sci-Fi Channel revival. Here’s the ’70s version:
And here’s the “modern” version:
They’re marginally different, but if you’re going through a bunch of these at once, trying to keep them straight can be mildly problematic, particularly with the occasional cover featuring an unrecognizably-drawn character or two. And this is coming from someone who’s watched both versions of the show…someone else more unfamiliar with the properties would likely find this just a tad more frustrating.
Again, it’s not that big of a deal. Just a minor gripe, really. However, the series based on the original TV show is actually called Classic Battlestar Galactica, according to the indicia inside. We couldn’t get a tiny “c l a s s i c” above the logo or anything?
(And yes, I know the cover illustrations should make it obvious which series is which. But they don’t always…particularly when the old-style Cylons pop up on the covers of the modern-era series.)
In other news:
I mentioned on Thursday that nearly all our copies of last Wednesday’s Cable #1 had loose centerfolds. I’ve since heard from a couple other stores that they had bunk copies of Cable #1 as well…along with some other Marvel books from that week. And I’ve noticed a copy or two of the new Clan Destine is a bit iffy as well.
As long as it was just the one comic with a loose centerfold problem, there was a chance that maybe, just maybe, Marvel might produce replacements. But if it’s more widespread than that, the likelihood that Marvel would essentially reissue a week’s worth of new books is incredibly small. Maybe I’ll be surprised, but I’m not betting on it.
I was going to cover a couple more points people have brought up about the Watchmen costumes, and just spent about twenty minutes fiddling with what I was going to post, and then I realized that, really, enough’s enough. I think you all know where I’m coming from by now.
But, I wanted to keep this next part of the post, just to remind everyone that Lynda Carter managed to make even this costume work:
…just through the awesome power of Being Lynda Carter. Huzzah!
“Make way for the Fat Fury! The unlikeliest superhero of all time makes his mark in this new Dark Horse archival series.”
[…]
“Herbie Archives Volume One is the first of a new archive series collecting the finest works of 1960s comics publisher ACG.
“Herbie Archives Volume 1 collects the earliest appearances of Herbie, as he battles monsters, bends time and space, and gets the better of Fidel Castro! Herbie is a delightfully weird, all-ages barrel of laughs!”
§ March 7th, 2008§ Filed under UncategorizedComments Off on A commercial service announcement.
Well, since I brought up the other day that I’ve had a devil of a time trying to get any of my customers to buy this at the shop, and that both Dirk and Tom have pointed out this particular retailing failure of mine in their respective weblogs, and that I’ve heard from a couple folks that they can’t find any copies at their shops, I’ve decided to take drastic measures.
Plus, every copy you purchase through our store will be lovingly and carefully hand-packed by yours truly, and prepared to withstand the tender mercies of the postal office.
…
I apologize for the blatant sales pitch, but at least I don’t do this sort of thing too often. You’re all still my pals, right?
§ March 7th, 2008§ Filed under watchmenComments Off on “Likely The #1 Story On 80 Percent Of Comics Sites” – Tom Spurgeon
Okay, like you all haven’t heard enough about the Watchmen movie costumes over the last day or so…well, it is kind of a big deal, as one of our little picturebook industry’s most high profile, and most beloved, funnybooks finally lurches its way onto the silver screen, and we’re all interested in how it’s gonna turn out.
Granted, most of us are…skeptical, or cautiously optimistic, or, um, a tad excited. After all, it’s a very complex, very dense work, as much about the superhero genre as it is of the superhero genre, and most people are fairly convinced that if it can be botched, it will be botched.
Now, I didn’t think I was too hard on the stills we all saw yesterday. I was somewhat taken aback by the Night Owl costume, as it seemed a little too Hollywood-movie-ish for what was supposed to be a goofy Batman-esque analog, as well as possibly indicating a serious missing-the-point problem at the script level (as eloquently explained by Mr. Kevin Church). Otherwise, the rest of the outfits seem fine, my qualms mostly being 1) still not overly impressed by Rorschach, but willing to be convinced otherwise, and 2) Silk Spectre’s pose seemed a little too…superhero-y for what I know of the character from the source material, which is really about as nit-picky a complaint as you’re likely to find. Otherwise, her costume, considering the inspiration for the character (her particular character archetype being, paraphrasing Alan Moore, “the lady who looks good in tights”) is just dandy.
So, basically, if the film turns out to be not any good, it’s not going to be because of the costumes.
But it got me to thinking. As I’ve probably said on my site in the past, and I’m too lazy to go looking for it right this moment, one of the main points of Watchmen is the deconstruction/reexamination of the tropes of superhero storytelling. (I wonder if the full impact of that particular ingredient is lost on readers coming to the book late, after having read countless regurgitations/waterings-down of those same ideas in two decades’ worth of comics that followed.) Given that the average movie-goer likely to see a Watchmen film hasn’t read any comics, a movie version of Watchmen, assuming it still includes that aspect of the work, would be wise to stick to attacking clichés familiar from other superhero films. Okay, yes, I know there’s probably a lot of overlap, but one cliché that’s more an issue in the films is the ridiculous, unnecessarily-detailed, overly impractical, sculpted-muscle superhero outfit.
You know, like the costumes of Ozymandias and Night Owl in those promo stills.
I was okay with Ozy’s costume looking like it did, since that level of…ostentatiousness, I guess, seems fitting to the character. But if we’re approaching the Night Owl character as someone who put a lot of money and time into building himself an over-the-top supersuit, which doesn’t necessarily make him a better superhero, but makes him feel like a superhero — and a costume that the audience would recognize as “yeah, that’s what every impractical costume looks like in every superhero movie I’ve seen” — well, in that case, I can live with it (which I’m sure comes as a great relief to the filmmakers). Especially if we see that he has a whole closetful of similar costumes for different occasions, as seen in the comic.
In that context, I find myself appreciating the Rorschach costume a little more…sure, it still looks kinda dorky, but that works in contrast to the overly-slick costumes of the other heroes. Obviously Rorschach didn’t have the money or skill to give himself…I don’t know, a trenchcoat with sculpted stomach muscles. He’s playing at being a superhero like the fancy uptown folk, and this is the best he can do, with an awkward, ugly outfit. With that particular perspective hurdle of mine overcome, I can begin to see how the creepiness of Rorschach’s character can work itself out in the film.
Of course, that’s a whole lot of justification on my part, assuming Watchmen the movie approaches the complexity of Watchmen the comic book. If the film is just an X-Men movie with different costumes (“To me, my Watch-men!”), which it could very well be, then all that typin’ is moot, I guess.
Ah, well. We’ll see in a year. I’m certainly still interested in checking it out when it’s finally released. And despite any griping and complaining and nitpicking that may occur between now and then, we’re all gonna see it. Don’t you lie to me. You know you will.
Anyway, that’s far more about Watchmen costumes than you’ve ever wanted to read. I promise, when Lost Girls: The Movie makes its approach, I’ll try not to be so obsessive.
From work, the other day:
“Hey, get this…what if Rorschach from the Watchmen was instead…HORSHACK from Welcome Back, Kotter?
“‘Up your nose with a rubber hose, Dr. Manhattan!’
Here’s the official site for the International Jack Benny Fan Club.
