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So this week’s comic shipment is thankfully a little lighter of a load than in the previous weeks, what with those new comics days with six simultaneously-released Batman comics and three Deadpool comics and such. And that’s a good thing, since we have a shorter “new this week” window due to comics showing up on Thursday (at least in the U.S.).
Some new items of interest:
- Achewood Vol. 3: Home for Scared People is the latest print collection of the long-running and popular webcomic. The hardcovers for this series (and other Dark Horse web-to-print comic reprints) have all been quite handsome-looking and packed with content…lots of value for the price.
- Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers #1 – Pal Ian expands his Disney comic empire with this, a second Disney cartoon comic featuring his sharp scripting. Ian’s probably feeling what I’d be feeling if I’d been given the scripting chores on a Land of the Lost comic.
- Marvelman Family’s Finest #6 – sold a bunch of the first issue, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be the only person at the shop buying this last issue. The lettering may be a tragedy, but I’ve been enjoying the unpretentious, simplistic fun of the stories…but it seems that while there’s still interest in the character, reprints of the original stories are not what the people want. (Yeah, I know, “no duh.”) I get the feeling we’ll be seeing a new Marvel Universe version of Marvelman before we get the reissues and continuation of the Moore/Gaiman storylines from the ’80s / ’90s.
- Lady Death #0 – When the Crossgen version of Lady Death came out, the primary complaint about it was that she was wearing too many clothes. …And this was coming from the female fans of the character. Well, if those readers are still around, I suspect this’ll be more to their taste.
- Rasl #9 – Latest installment of Jeff Smith’s sci-fi adventure/crime/mystery series…took an issue or two to get into it, and now each issue doesn’t come out quickly enough for me! Nice work, quite a switch from Smith’s previous project Bone.
- Shadowhawk #5 – I suspect this series must sell for somebody somewhere. We’re getting a copy for the rack, which will end up going in the back issue bin at the end of the month. I don’t want to cut the order entirely, because you never know when someone might come in looking for it, and it’s just one comic, after all, so it’s not that much of a burden to carry it. But, man, poor ol’ Shadowhawk.
- Boys #49 – While I generally enjoy this violent and dark-humored anti-superhero comic, I think maybe I’m about ready for this freaks-and-bastards parade to wrap up. Especially with the series getting stretched a bit thin with a couple of additional concurrently-running mini-series in the last year or two. Still sells relatively well, though, so why am I complaining?
- Classic Marvel Figurine Collection #134: Son of Satan and Classic DC Figurine Collection #69: Detective Chimp – at last, they can fight!
- Gumby’s Gang #1 – The return of Gumby to the comic stands, though without creators Bob Burden and Rick Geary from the previous series. I do love Gumby, so I’ll give it a look, but the new guys have big shoes to fill.
- Wolverine: Best There Is #1 – sigh.
- She-Hulks #2 and Ant-Man & The Wasp #2 – the first issues of both of these sold out pretty quickly for us. Here’s hoping everyone comes back for the next installments!
- Jonah Hex #62 – Well, the movie didn’t kill the comic, but it sure gave it its best shot. By the way, I finally watched the movie the other day via the Netflix, and…man, instead of rolling the end credits at the one hour, 12 minute mark, this film totally should have gone another forty-five minutes with some full-on sci-fi Hex action. …You know I’m right.
§ September 29th, 2008 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on "Oh, man, this guy’s going on for a third day about the whole ‘death of Jonah Hex’ thing? This blog sucks."
Well, yeah, I do have a few more things to say about Hex, but only briefly. Don’t panic.
I was going to bring up some of Jonah Hex’s other time-travel/non-traditional western encounters, specifically in light of his appearance in the recent Justice League animated series, where Hex clearly is aware of the concept of time travel and is able to I.D. the Leaguers as being from the future. Well, you folks beat me to it in yesterday’s comments section, with this anonymous commentator whipping out specific cites to Jonah’s wandering about the DC Universe. ‘Course, he gives out the titles in shortened form, and if you’re able to identify them all in row without stumbling, you get a cookie. (NOTE: Get your own cookie, I’m not gonna mail you one.)
What’s interesting, I think, about the Justice League cartoon appearance is that the idea of Jonah being the Old West character that Weird Sci-Fi/Horror Shit Happens To is apparently been mainstreamed into the character’s concept. Even in the current Jonah Hex series, which while generally playing the comic as a straight western, featured supernatural elements in its Halloween issue. I think I remember reading somewhere, too, that one of the proposed concepts for the theoretical film adaptation would have incorporated the Vertigo Comics’ horror-themed Hex stories. (I didn’t Google that up, so if someone has more recent, reliable, movie information, feel free to drop it in the comments.)
So, in short, I like the well-traveled-in-time-and-space Jonah Hex. Here’s to more of that sort of thing.
An addendum to the fate of Hex’s stuffed body following the Secret Origin‘s tale related yesterday. I was looking at the Wikipedia entry, and it states that the body eventually made it into the hands of Booster Gold, who placed it into his “Planet Krypton” restaurant (and visible in the Kingdom Come collection-only epilogue, if I recall correctly). I’m now going to imagine Booster Gold wrestling Hex’s body from the hands of the elderly Tall Bird, because it’s both cruel and amusing and I’m a bad person.
By the way, this blurb was on the cover of Hex #18, the last issue of that series which I was also discussing yesterday, and while I was all ready to make fun of it:
…I am, after all,
still talking about this series, 20+ years after its conclusion. It’s a classic
to me.
Following up on yesterday’s post:
Reader Ha-rel asked why ol’ Jonah Hex was dead, stuffed and mounted in the first place, and the really short answer, without trying to explain the entire story (as seen in DC Super Special #16, 1978), is that after he was killed in a tavern during a card game, his body was acquired by a traveling circus and put on display.
And the last page of that story followed Hex’s body from circus to antique shop to warehouse to standing in front of a wild west theme park in the early ’70s. And honestly, those last two panels, featuring Stuffed Hex just standing out there in the rain while a kid with toy guns play-shoots at him…that’s really one of the saddest, most pathetic scenes in comic book history:
We do get a sequel of sorts in
Secret Origins #21 (Dec. ’87), which both
R.D. and
Dwayne — Dwayne who runs this
swell Jonah Hex weblog and I hope doesn’t mind me encroaching on his territory a bit, here — pointed out contains a second case of Hex’s dead ‘n’ stuffed body taking a life. In this case, it’s more of a mysterious “who could have pulled the trigger…except the
ghost of Jonah Hex, woooOOOOoooo!” thing instead of that dope triggering the guns himself as shown in
yesterday’s post.
In any case, this story, which takes place presumably in the mid/late-’80s, ends with a character promising to retrieve the mounted body so that Jonah’s still-living common law wife, Tall Bird (last seen in that DC Super Special) can put it to rest properly.
More on that in a moment, but now it’s time for some CONTINUITY!
In the Secret Origins tale, Tall Bird relates that Jonah once briefly disappeared to another world:
…which, as that footnote indicates, is a reference to that great series
Hex, with Jonah Hex trapped in an apocalyptic future:
Man oh man, do I love
Hex. I’ve
spoken about it before (and funny how there I’m coy about revealing endings, but now I’m all about the Hex spoilers), but one of the things I love most about this series is its last couple of pages in
Hex #18 (Feb. 1987).
It’s the year…oh, I don’t know, 2048 or something, and Hex is recovering from injuries and just sorta killing time, toolin’ around a warehouse filled with antiques and amusement park materials. And what does he come across but…
…and thus, like the
Secret Origins comic that follows, establishes that Hex does eventually get back to his rightful time. How he does so is something that’s never been revealed, far as I know, and I doubt it’ll ever be addressed, unless it turns up as a
Booster Gold plot-point or something.
And going back to the ending of that Secret Origins story, the happy ending that the story seems to give us, with the impending recovery and return of Hex’s body to his wife, is undercut by what we’d read a few months prior in Hex. Tall Bird’s intention was to burn the body, apparently, but it obviously doesn’t happen if the body is still around for “Road Warrior” Hex to discover in that future warehouse. Don’t know if it was stolen, or if Tall Bird simply died of old age before she should have anything done, or what…regardless of the reason, the closure of the story is not quite so closed after all.
It’s a nice, dark twist, which only has its full impact if you’d been keeping up on your Hex comics, which clearly not many people were since the series was canceled after 18 issues.
But really, consider again that the Hex series ends with Jonah Hex face-to-face with his own stuffed and mounted corpse:
I am both appalled and amused and damn if I don’t love this comic.
image sources:
Hex #1 (Sept. 1985) – cover art by Mark Texeira & Klaus Janson
Hex #18 (Feb. 1987) by Michael Fleisher, Keith Giffen & Carlos Garzon
Secret Origins #21 (Dec. 1987) by Fleisher & Gray Morrow
DC Special Series #16 (1978) by Fleisher & Russ Heath
§ September 27th, 2008 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Just how bad-ass is Jonah Hex?
HE KILLED A GUY
WHILE HE WAS DEAD, STUFFED AND MOUNTED
from DC Special Series #16 (1978) by Michael Fleisher & Russ Heath
Okay, trying to not worry about problems about to hit the comics industry, between a distributor’s ongoing collapse and tariff-caused price and supply issues, so I’m going to look back at relatively happier times. Like, the October 1985 Bud Plant retailer catalog and its ordering tips for shop owners!
As I’m sure most of you know, since I keep bringing it up, I started working in comics retail in 1988. However, even prior to that I had an interest in the goings-on behind the scenes in the industry and other people’s commentary on same, hence my early adoption of ‘zines and mags like The Comics Journal. As such, I’m always looking for more information from that period, as to what perceptions were of certain titles and publishers and such.
As always, going through these tip sheets raise questions that I want to ask my former boss Ralph, from whom I was buying comics during this period. I’ll post follow-ups next time, if necessary.
This time I’m going up through the DCs, and then I’ll do the rest of the list later in the week. Okay? Okay! Then away we go:
First, here’s the great logo for the column this issue, “The New Mutips,” which is high-larious.
The first tip here, for the Robert Williams 3-D comic from Ray Zone:
…reminds me of what a big deal the 3-D gimmick was at the time. A later entry in this list (not pictured here) notes that the market for 3-D comics is “saturated,” but apparently a wild Robert Williams 3-D comic would stand out enough to be recommended so highly here.
At my Previous Place of Employment, we had a section in the back issue bins just for 3-D comics, and it was pawed through on the regular. We even had a large stock of 3-D glasses that we gave out with each purchase of a 3-D comic. (And when that old shop shut down, did I claim all those 3-D glasses for my own self? Maaaaaybe.)
Now, Fish Police was, for a time, a very hot comic. Hot enough to eventually become a…well, short-lived TV show, but hey, how may small-press comics from the mid-1980s got on TV? …Um, aside from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Like, I’m sure TMNT goosed some executive into looking for other possible hit comic-to-other-media properties, and thus Fish Police.
Anyway, this is one of those comics I wish I’d read at the time, because it does look like it’d be right up my alley. Ah well, maybe I’ll luck into a run of it here at the shop someday.
Speaking of lucking into a run, that’s exactly what happened with Elementals, where about 90% of the series showed up in a donation to the store, and I pulled them aside to read, someday, in the far off future when I can actually find the time. It was always one of those series that intrigued me, but just never jumped on board as it was running. Ah well, at least I have (most of) them now.
It’s interesting reading here that there were delays in production and a perceived drop in quality in one of the early issues. So much so that the ordering recommendation is not based on that “lower quality” issue, but on the one before it. Now, I have read at least the first half-dozen issues of the series, and I don’t recall #4 being “off” from the others around it, but maybe I’ll take another look with this in mind.
Hoo boy, on the topic of late books, I knew Continuity had its timeliness issues even as a mere Comic-Buying Member of the General Public, and not the aloof and powerful comics retailer I am today.
As a fan, I didn’t really follow anything by them, as none of it appealed to me. The anthology book Echoes of Futurepast may have been the one title I would’ve read, due to Arthur Suydam’s involvement (I was a big “Cholly and Flytrap” kid, having read those stories by Suydam in Epic Illustrated), but I just never got around to picking it up.
I do recall that some of the Continuity books did have their followings and sold well, like the two mentioned here. Plenty of folks had them on their pull lists when I started working at the shop. The eventual Deathwatch 2000 crossover event kinda put an end to all that, I believe.
Gasp! I read DC Digest, at least occasionally at the time! I’m guessing these did better on newsstands than in comic shops, hence the reaction in the tips column here. Anyway, when my eyes were up to it, these digests were nice little collections, and many of the early ones helped catch me up on DC’s history.
Textual evidence that Hex (the post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventures of our favorite weird western cowboy) was in fact a not-unpopular book! It’s remembered as a freak occurrence today, a bizarre footnote in Jonah Hex’s history, but for a while there, people did buy it. Heck, I bought it! Still have ’em all! Of course, the series ended 10 issues later, so not enough people bought it for long enough, but for a brief period of time, the beauty of Hex graced our shelves.
Omega Men #38 would be the last issue, sadly. And this person ain’t wrong…this was a really good sci-fi superhero series. Actually, the whole series makes for a good comic, but once Todd Klein and Shawn McManus come on board with #26, it becomes something great. It’s so hard to believe this run of theirs was so short.
The first issue featured, of course, the Golden Age Superman, recently given the bum’s rush out of DC’s continuity by that self-same Crisis on Infinite Earths. But, you know, they got classic Superman artist Wayne Boring to draw this, so I’m not complaining.
I honestly don’t recall if Booster Gold was perceived as A Hot Item at the time. I know it got a little more promotion than most DC debuts (I still have my “Go for the Gold – BOOSTER GOLD” pinback button), but I feel like it’s probably more appreciated in retrospect than it was at the time. (In fact, if you want to know more about Mr. Gold, you can’t do better than this site right here.)
Pretty sure these were all unused inventory back-up stories that longer had a home after the main Atari Force series ended. Regardless, this, and the parent series, were outstanding comics and went away too soon. Even the original digest-sized comics that came packed with Specially Marked Atari 2600 Game Cartridges were fun. I would gladly have read a hundred more issues of this, but am happy with the few that we got.
Oof, harsh burn on the Seven Soldiers. In fairness, All-Star Squadron, a book devoted to the World War II adventures of super-heroes on Earth 2, floundered a bit following Crisis‘s removal of any extraneous Earths beyond the one featured in all the other DC Comics.
• • •
Okay, I’ll wrap it up next time, along with some extra info from Ralph should he be willing to tolerate my grilling. Everyone stay safe out there, and I’ll see you on Wednesday.
Just a brief almost-Low Content Mode today, so what I have here are some of the oldest digital images I have in my possession, downloaded via my America Online account. I think it was from an official DC Comics section on AOL.
The date in the subject line to this post appears to be when they were acquired, or at least copied to an old floppy disk before getting backed up to a CD-ROM. As such, I’m not sure of the exact date, but regardless it’s still about three decades ago.
Of course among these pics (converted from their original giF format to these here newfangled jay-pegs)would be some Swamp Thing, like this neat color-hold image:
…and a more traditional preview panel from the comics:
Here’s another color-hold pic, this time from the Vertigo Jonah Hex books:
Here’s an interesting illustration of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman:
…and here’s an image from (I believe) Jerry Ordway’s Shazam! graphic novel:
This is the sort of thing where I’d wished I’d kept better notes as to what has going on at the time re: the online comics world in the early World Wide Web days. If only someone would have told me then I’d start doing a comics blog about ten years later, to which I’d say, of course [old joke coming in], “what’s a blog?”
I’m pretty sure the DC area on AOL was what you’d expect, “coming attractions” and blurbs and images promo-ing their product, but at this late date I can’t even picture what it looked like. I do have a better memory of the general comics message boards that AOL hosted around that same time (I can even remember a screen name or two of other users), where there seemed to be a lot of focus on price speculation. (That may have been earlier than 1994, before the market crash began to take hold.)
I’m sure someone out there has a better retrospective of the early comic book presence on AOL. But all I have are these images, backed up decades ago to floppies, then backed up again to CD-ROMs, and probably someday backed up to whatever new file storage format I end up using next. Not sure what I’ll use them for again, since posting them to this site is probably the only real use I’ll get out of them aside from occasionally pulling them up on my computer when browsing old files and feeling nostalgic for a time I barely remember.
So this is what I’ve been busy with at the shop since Sunday…a sizable collection acquired from someone just trying to clear out space in the house. It was something inherited from a family member and that he didn’t really have any use for, thus it was to his local friendly neighborhood comic shop for unloading.
This ended up filling about four and a half long boxes, having been delivered to me in a variety of plastic storage bins that, I should remind you, are not the ideal place to keep comics. I could tell a lot of time was spent sorting, organizing, and cataloguing these comics, but alas not as much attention was spent to keeping them in nice condition. They’re…pretty rough, by and large. Intact and readable, but…well, I’ve already processed a big stack of these and the highest grade I’ve given to anything so far is a single VG+.
It’s mostly late ’70s/early ’80s, but it’s material I’ve been short on from that period. Lots of Spider-Man, Jonah Hex, Warlord, war comics, that sort of thing. While low grade, it’s all sellable goodies and even if they average out only a buck or two apiece, I should do pretty well on these. The trick is finding the time to get them all processed…I’ve been spending pretty much every spare moment I’ve had trying to work on these, but spare moments can be hard to come by, especially with holiday traffic.
But that’s a big part of why I like running a comic shop: getting to play with old comics! Even if they’re a little beat up, they’re still deserving of some love and a good home.
A little bit of interesting comics trivia, via a copy of Yellowjacket #9 (Charlton Comics, 1946) provided by Customer Sean. Along with stories featuring the title character, and a story with the somewhat Wonder Woman-inspired “Diana the Huntress,” was an installment of “Tales of Terror.” Your host introducing said story: the Witch:
Not to be confused, of course, with the Old Witch introducing stories at EC Comics a few short years later:
The Overstreet Price Guide is on it, with describing the Witch and the “Tales of Terror” debut in Yellowjacket #7 in terms that make it fairly clear that the later EC Comics version was…inspired heavily by its Charlton Comics cousin:
“…Narrated by the Ancient Witch, wearing a red cloak, stirring her bubbling cauldron at beginning and end of the story, just like E.C.’s Old Witch 5 years later; tells story ‘The Avenging Hand’ similar to ‘The Maestros’s Hand’ in Crypt of Terror #18”
Sounds like this old Charlton may have introduced (or at least used previously) the story format that EC Comics would lean hard upon for their popular horror comics line. Overstreet credits the initial story to Alan Mandel, a person I don’t believe worked for EC later, so it’s not like he brought the concept to him. And perhaps the format and host character are broad enough to have been a wild coincidence, but however it happened, it remains a fun bit of comics history.
So the problem with saying “LEMME TELL YA WHAT COMICS I LIKED READING, OH, A DECADE AGO” is that now I have to depend on my dumb brain to dredge up specific memories from those books. What’s getting in the way is that most of these books I read once, as they came out, and only very rarely did I go back and read a whole run of issues in succession to more firmly lodge events in the ol’ mental file cabinet.
Thankfully, nearly-decade-younger-me, when I was sprightlier and full of hope, I did a three-part overview of the New 52 launch titles (one an’ a two an’ a three). Looking over these posts, they do seem to bolster some of my partially-retained thoughts on the titles, though I seemed to have been more faintly-positive about the Superman title than I thought I would have.
Interestingly, I noted in my discussion of the Green Lantern books that “four were too many, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they added a fifth” and, well, hello solo Sinestro series (which I kinda pushed for in those older posts of mine). In retrospect, I did enjoy the GL books from this period, which (coincidentally I’m sure) were among the least-affected by the New 52/Flashpoint changes of the Big Name DC titles. Plus, I’m in the bag for Green Lantern stuff already, and somehow too many GL titles didn’t burn me out. …Reading my old recaps did remind me 1) Red Lanterns was a far better series than it had any reason to be, and 2) I miss Larfleeze. He had a later-wave short-run New 52 title that I liked quite a bit.
Okay, to the Super-books…I thought then, and still do now, that the main Superman book by George Perez was cluttered and confused, though as we’ve learned in the years since Perez faced some editorial issues on that book so it’s not entirely on his shoulders. Plus, as I’ve said before, if Perez can’t make your costume look good, then the problem is with the costume. Anyway, remember when Lois had another love interest? That blonde guy? Whathsiname? That was weird.
Okay, I’m supposed to be focusing on the titles I liked here, but reminding myself how crummy Superman was makes me appreciate Action, with Grant Morrison writing “Young Superman,” all the more. I’m sure he faced as much editorial finagling as Perez did, but somehow Morrison managed to make it work, mostly, as I recall. After Morrison left, both books kinda fell into the doldrums ’til we got the “Superman’s Identity Revealed!” storyline, which was actually compelling and then eventually undone, of course, which I’m sure isn’t a precursor for anything happening in the Superman books now.
Also of note in my original analyses, I said that reading these Superman books was like reading an “Elseworlds” or parallel-Earth Superman book. Given how this version of the character was eventually replaced by the post-Crisis/pre-Flashpoint Superman, I guess the DC Continuity Gods agreed.
Some of the oddball books were fun as well…that O.M.A.C. series was definitely Kirby-Ahoy, as it should have been. It was too beautiful for this world, alas, and was amongst the first wave of cannings. Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. was also a blast of welcome weirdness, one that didn’t depend on any of the New 52 nonsense to just do what it did. In fact, neither did OMAC, really. It’s almost like the farther removed from the “event,” the better the books are.
The obvious one you’re probably expecting me to mention is Swamp Thing, which, yes, I liked well enough. The main issue with these is a fanboy-ish one, that arbitrary changes were made to the character’s history and supporting characters (especially Arcane) that don’t really add anything except “it’s different now.” I’ve gone on about this before, and my own realization that they’re not writing these for people who’ve read every single comic with Swamp Thing in it, but for new-ish readers who may be vaguely familiar with ol’ Moss-Head. But overall I think I enjoyed the comic, once they got past the set-up and Swamp Thing was actually in the book.
It’s funny but Justice League Dark was a title I was lukewarm on at first, but it became a comic I enjoyed quite a bit and still follow now, even if it’s been relegated to a back-up in the main Justice League title. And no, not just because Swamp Thing is in it…I like seeing all the horror characters just sort of crammed in here together, plus Detective Chimp. What kind of soulless monster doesn’t like Detective Chimp?
All-Star Western I didn’t pick up ’til the time-travel stuff kicked in, because I do love Jonah Hex travellin’ through time. I know, I know, recent Jonah Hex comics were good the whole time, but it took the gimmick to get me in there. I’m shallow, what can I say. (Remember that time travel stuff started as part of DC’s planned “WTF?” cover stunt ’til someone realized “maybe having an implied ‘fuck’ on the cover isn’t the image we want to sell?” Oh, for those pre-Titans TV show days….)
A couple later-wave New 52 books I really enjoyed, like Justice League 3000 (then 3001). I got a real “anythiing could happen/L.E.G.I.O.N. ’89 vibe from it, which 1) was helped along by being new characters removed from regular DC Universe happenings, and 2) L.E.G.I.O.N. writers Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis wrote this too. I really kept hoping they’d bring this back someday, but given DC’s current publishing strategies, seems unlikely.
In addition: Constantine (fun seeing Johnny playing in a superhero universe again), Batwoman (stunning art), Animal Man (can’t think of a specific reason why I liked it, but I always like Animal Man), Secret Six (writer Gail Simone being evil, always a positive in my book), Batman Incorporated (continued over from pre-Flashpoint, which remained good but felt undermined by the relaunch).
So as you can see, I did like quite a few of the New 52 books. I mean, I couldn’t read everything, but what I kept up with I enjoyed (except maybe most of the Superman comics, which I sorta hung in there on out of inertia, which is a terrible way to read a comic but a lot of us have one of those in our reading lists). There were a couple of books I mentioned back then as ones that I liked, but afterward I’d drop (like Aquaman) or I just can’t remember anything about (like Firestorm). Maybe I’d still like them now? Once I find an eighth day in the week, I’ll do some rereading.
ADDENDUM: I am reading your comments, and thank you for them. Just wanted to let you know I’m not ignoring them just because I’m not addressing them in these posts yet. I’ll get to responding eventually!
Okay, on to the DC Comics films. But first, Thom reminds me that I forgot Into the Spider-Verse, which really is a fantastic film and quite possibly the best of the bunch.
Also, if folks want to leave long ol’ comments on my posts, that’s fine with me! So long as they’re reasonably on-topic, y’know? And everyone has been lately…haven’t had epic-length disturbed rants show up in quite a while. I mean, c’mon, leave those to me.
So, DC Comics movies. Hm. I’d been thinking about how I was going to approach this topic, since there’s definitely a shift in filmmaking between the Christopher Reeve Superman films and, like, Birds of Prey, and my initial instinct is to split them up into different “ages” but, sheesh, that would be too confusing, what industry would do something like that?
The elephant in the room is the Snyder-verse films Man of Steel, Batman V Superman, Justice League, which are pretty divisive among fans. Personally, I generally like them, though I can completely understand why people wouldn’t. The dark tone, the odd choices (jar of urine in my superhero movie? sure, load it up) adding up to productions that seem like the exact opposite of what the characters are about. Well, okay, maybe not Batman, but surely Superman should be bright and cheerful and Henry Cavill has such a winning smile it’s a shame it was barely used.
But I did enjoy this more somber rendition of the characters, while realizing, yeah, maybe a lighter touch might have been more appropriate. So, mixed feelings on these, but generally positive. And I’ve noted that Justice League, while having some of the tone problems of the other pictures, I thought was successful in being a bit more of a cheery adventure. With grave-robbing, sure, and the buckets of “we gotta get that Avengers money” flopsweat, but it was all in good fun. And I have to say, my favorite scene in any modern DC superhero movie is still that fight sequence between a newly revived Superman and the rest of the heroes (particularly as he “slowly” becomes aware of the Flash).
The Snyder-verse-adjacent flicks, Wonder Woman and Aquaman, were more to everyone’s tastes, I’d imagine. Certainly lighter in tone, well, aside from the whole “World War I” thing in WW, but seemed to be more crowd-pleasing than their dour brethren. Of all the films, Aquaman was the one that felt the most Marvel-like, extremely jokey and high in the “we’re having a good time here!” energy. But that was the film, I’ve said before, where I felt like I was seeing the seams in superhero movie-making, where every point felt predictable, every reveal unsurprising. I don’t know, not saying it wasn’t likeable, and that the actors weren’t all watchable and entertaining. Maybe it was just my mood that day, but for whatever reason this film felt more like “product” than the others, like something specifically constructed to get after some of that Marvel money. Maybe I’ll need to rewatch it at some point and see if my opinion improves.
Okay, this is going to go on forever if I keep up all this typing. So:
Shazam – good, still don’t like the Billy/Captain Marvel relationship has been altered to “Tom Hanks in Big” status, but that’s how it is now and I have to live with it. Also hate he’s called “Shazam” now, because I’m a nerd. Anyway, Shazam’s characterization put me off, but I get it’s the “has to learn to be a hero” trope and that’s just how it’s done.
All the Batman movies – the 1966 one is a favorite because Adam West is Best Batman, of course. The Keaton-etc. films were an exercise in diminishing returns, with Keaton’s performances elevating the first two, along with the Tim Burton weirdness. The fourth is goofy fun, brightly colored and very silly and enjoyable on those terms.
The Nolan films may have been better as a duology, but then we wouldn’t have had a million impressions of Bane from the third film, which is just straight-up comedy gold. I remember when the first one had trailers in theaters, folks groaned when they realized it was a Batman film, as the previous movie Batman and Robin was still fresh in everyone’s minds. But that film turned out good (actually convincing you “well, of course he had to dress up as a bat”), but I think the second one is the best. Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker is one for the ages, and it’s a film about moral ambiguity and moral choices and it’s all amazingly effective.
Of the Reeve Super-films, the first is of course the best…I know people like the second one quite a bit, and it is fun, but I don’t think it’s as…well, well-made as the first. Third is fun and goofy, and the fourth is an abomination. Reeve is great in them all, of course, but I wish he was surrounded by better material. Definitely classic scenes in those first two films, combined with some inexplicable ones (levitate-people-with-your-finger-beam power, Superman’s magic chest-emblem cellophane net).
And there are a few others: Superman Returns, in which Brandon Routh is great, but everything’s too mired in trying to be the Reeve film. Birds of Prey, a fine, and funny, adventure romp which gives Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn a proper venue. Constantine, which turned out a lot better than it had any reason to be, despite not quite getting the title character right (I mean, beyond the hair and accent). Watchmen, which I adore but recognize it falls apart the farther away it gets from the original plot…great cast, though. Catwoman, which almost seems like it might be okay, at first, but it’s all lies.
And there are others, but let’s get this down to “worst” and “best” so we can all move on with our lives.
WORST is definitely Superman IV, and I say this even though I couldn’t even finish Supergirl. Supergirl at least had the charm of Helen Slater. Superman IV looks like, if I can borrow a phrase from Mystery Science Theater 3000, everyone’s last known photo. It’s cheap looking, it’s unpleasant, it’s made by people who seemingly had contempt for the material. I know Reeve cowrote it or plotted it or something, but it’s dire.
I want to plug Jonah Hex in here too, but folks are rewatching it and finding new entertainment in it, and I’d like to see it again before it vanishes. Suicide Squad wasn’t great, but it had good performances (Will Smith, the aforementioned Robbie) so it may live.
BEST is…well, I think Joker is actually the best-made of the bunch. It holds together as a story, the deterioration of the main character is tragically fascinating, and it just plain looks great. I understand the qualms one could have with it, but maybe that’s part of what makes it so fascinating.
But I think I’d watch The Dark Knight before I’d see Joker again. It’s more fun and a little easier to take. And it’s a little thought-provoking as well, which I appreciate from my funnybook movies.
Now, like I did with the Spider-Verse movie, I left out the animated feature films (and I’ve seen them all!). And I still want to say Return of Swamp Thing is my favorite. Do any of these other movies have Swamp Thing driving a jeep with Heather Locklear? I submit to you, dear reader, that no they do not.
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