Okay, first, a couple of brief updates:
1. Okay, so I didn’t realize that the alternate Earth on which the Fantastic Four movie took place was numbered after Jack Kirby’s birthday (Earth-828) until folks brought it up in the comments. Post has been updated accordingly.
2. In the comments on Friday’s post about the Superman story and the cutting of Siegel and Shuster’s credits, it was pointed out that Tom Brevoort did a very thorough job outlining the changes in the different printings of that story. So, basically, my post was more or less redundant, and I could have saved everyone some time just by linking to that post in the first place, had I known about it.
I think the bafflement of my younger self trying to work out the internal logic of the story still stands, however.
Anyway, used to be in ye olden dayes I’d scour the internet making sure I wasn’t going to trod over well-traveled ground with all my posts about, for example, how great All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder and Frank Miller’s The Spirit were. I would go down the list of the recently updated sites on the Comics Weblog Update-A-Tron 3000 to see what other people posted that day before I wrote my post and anyway, I’m feeling much better now.
Can’t say I’m never going to cover a topic not already covered by someone else. If I do, I’m not trying to step on any toes. But at the very least, I promise to bring my own spin on things, my personal perspective. No cheap listicles here! …Unless that’s all I’ve got time for, then LISTICLES AHOY
I am still taking your questions or topics, so query/topic-ize(?) away! Just follow the rules, please, and take it easy on your pal Mike.
I’ll probably start answering these pretty soon, so Watch This Space for your responses!
Thing I was not expecting here in the Year of Our Lord 2025…a new Robert Crumb comic:
Man’s 81 now and doesn’t seem to have slipped at all artistically. His writing has been…hit or miss, sure, but one more comic from the old master is certainly something to which we should pay attention.
Now, if we could get a new Freak Bros. comic out of Gilbert Shelton, well, I’m sure I’d just about plotz.
Speaking of The Spirit, I stumbled on an old RKO film from 1951 called “His Kind of Woman,” featuring Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, Vincent Price, Raymond Burr, Jim Backus, and Tim Holt–and boy, Robert Mitchum would have been excellent as Denny Colt, The Spirit, if they had adapted Will Eisner’s best-loved character for films back then.
The film starts off slow, but heats up in the second half, when Mitchum is fighting the villains on a boat, and the staging of those shots totally reminded me of how Will Eisner choreographed his fight scenes in his Spirit newspaper comics. And Raymond Burr is excellent as the mafioso heavy.
Vincent Price kind of steals the show, and it is both funny and offbeat seeing him and Robert Mitchum team up.
That new Robert Crumb comic cover looks great –it appears to be an homage to
Atomic Age Charlton Comics covers.
https://youtu.be/oKH-nziPEj8?si=lxfQpNYHLZTval1T
“All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder”
Did they ever finish that thing?
It’s astonishing how age seems to have barely diminished Crumb’s fine linework, if at all. On the other hand, alas Peter Bagge and Gilbert Shelton’s art in recent years has definitely grown scratchier.
Speaking of Update-a-Tron, can you let them know “Eye on Comics” has been taken over by some Korean gambling concern and should be removed? I don’t see any contact info there.