Sorry, gang…other stuff got in the way. I’m a bad, bad blogger who needs to be punished.
Er, anyway.
See you tomorrow.
Mikester
A look at DC’s Justice League movie build-up.
Of course, one of the major problems DC Comics and Warner Brothers face in getting the Firestorm movie off the ground is that there have already been multiple movies in recent years using the name Firestorm, including at least one major studio release. Not that there isn’t precedent for other, perhaps more descriptive titles for the character: the full name as used in the original series, Firestorm the Nuclear Man, may fit the bill, but perhaps seems a bit too…I don’t know, unserious? for the grim, gritty direction of the DC Comics film universe. The other title used by the 1980s comic series relaunch, Fury of Firestorm (also appended with “The Nuclear Man,” but we can likely safely ignore it in favor of the main portion of the title) may be more in line with said direction. Then again, there may be a third option if DC/WB truly wishes to avoid marketplace confusion, by adapting Marvel’s strategy with the Avengers film and titling the project DC Comics’s Firestorm and I’ll leave discussion whether to form the possessive with ” ‘s ” or just the apostrophe for others.
Now, this is all just blather about the title of the film itself…what of an actual live action film version of Firestorm? The character has, shall we say, one of the more garish appearances, even by superhero terms, though if I recall correctly there was an editorial reply to a letter of comment, or perhaps just an offhand remark in an interview (I’m working on 20+ year old memories here, so bear with me) that the costume was deliberately over-the-top, an overexcited teenager’s idea of what a superhero costume should look like, and given that the dominant half of Firestorm is teenager Ronnie Raymond, well, there you go. However true that explanation might be (and I suspect there may be some after-the-fact rationalization), if they intend of keeping the costume for the movie, an undercurrent of “can you believe this guy’s get-up?” running through the storyline would be the way to play it. However, I say it’s 50/50 whether his fiery hairdo makes the transition.
And it probably goes without saying that the origin will need some tweaking. The ’70s origin of Ronnie hanging with nuclear power protesters who, without Ron’s knowledge, plan on blowing up a power plant…well, that’s a no-go, having the hero even tangentially associated with terrorism, so we’re almost certainly looking at an adaptation of the current New 52 version of the character: Ronnie paired with fellow student Jason Rusch, and Martin Stein as the scientist responsible for their fusion. And if the villain in the first movie isn’t Killer Frost, I’ll go out, buy a hat, preferably a small candied one, and eat it, because if the villain isn’t a bigger, badder version of the hero (and Firestorm does have a few of that type of arch-nemesis), it’ll be a villain that’s thematically opposite.
And then there’s the Red Tornado movie. Man, I don’t know. First, if, as rumor has it, Marvel’s going to have the Vision in Avengers 2: The Ultronening, they’ll corner the market on the “if only I knew what it was like to be…human” thing all superhero androids seem to go through. Second, okay, granted, this movie won’t be out for a while, but right now you think “tornado movie,” you think Sharknado. Or okay, maybe Wizard of Oz, but mostly right now, it’s Sharknado, just grant me my premise here, so there may be some residual association between the hokeyness of that SyFy spectacular and DC’s desperate attempt at padding out the cast of their Justice League movie that may affect audience acceptance. And third, you never know if there may be other worries about brand confusion…not quite to the extent of Firestorm’s issues, but all it takes is one letter from one studio lawyer to trip up DC’s big movie plans.
Let’s not even get started on villains. There’s his creator, the evil supergenius T.O. Morrow, and the Construct, who fought RT in his own mini-series, aaaand that’s more or less it. Maybe there was somebody in Primal Force, but I bet there are people at DC who don’t even remember Primal Force. However, on second thought, the Construct sort of fits the “bigger, badder version of hero” villain formula, so maybe that’s enough to build a movie around. I mean, if you can make a halfway decent movie with Doctor Octopus as the villain, I guess anything’s possible.
Now, about that Wonder Woman movie:
Oh, yeah, like that’s gonna happen.
images from The Fury of Firestorm #1 (June 1982) by Gerry Conway, Pat Broderick and Rodin Rodriguez; Red Tornado #1 (July 1985) by Kurt Busiek, Carmine Infantino and Frank McLaughlin; Wonder Woman #300 (February 1983) by Roy & Danette Thomas and Keith Pollard
You’re going to what now?
from Love and Romance #6 (June 1972)
In which I link to things I wrote seven years ago.
I have to be completely honest with you, when I started to read this comic, for about half a second I thought “oh dear, the color printing is off-register” until I realized I was being stupid and that it was entirely intentional. It’s a pseudo-retro look that doesn’t really look like anything associated with this particularly property before, but still works perfectly well, like you’re watching an old TV show on a color television that doesn’t have the “hue” and “tint” dials set quite right…a feature, not a bug.
The comic itself gets the tone of the TV show about as close as it’s able, given that most of the actual impact of the show comes from seeing actual adults dressing in these costumes and acting out plots and situations right out of the comic books. (I went into more detail about this some time ago.) Twisting it back into a comic book makes it a peculiar artifact of a short-lived fad from before a whole lot of us were born…but that’s okay, because the comic gets much of what made the show so endearing. The earnestness and sincerity of the heroes, the goofiness of the villains, the moral lessons, the big ol’ sound effects, the overall cheerfulness…it’s a Batman comic that makes you smile, and when was the last time that happened? Yes, it lacks Adam West reciting the dialogue out loud to you, but trust me, you’ll hear him in your head anyway as you read.
This is one of those comics that I buy every month, out of my long-standing interest in Clive Barker’s creations, but is another case of my perhaps having lost the thread of the plot(s) over the last, what, couple-or-three dozen issues, reading one a month, every month, for years. I should, like I did with B.P.R.D., bust out all the issues of Boom’s Hellraiser run and read ’em in a row. Like with B.P.R.D., I still “get” the general thrust of the series, but I certainly feel like I’m missing some nuance and some subtle points here and there. I mean, as nuanced and subtle as you’d expect a Hellraiser comic to be. Anyway, while I’m still enjoying the individual installments as they come, a reread is definitely in order.
So the last few issues of this series, formerly Batman and Robin until the latest Robin’s untimely death, have been sort of entertaining in a completely bonkers kind of way, with Batman teaming up with various members of the Bat-family and generally yelling at them and being a jerk in the context of apparently mourning and rejecting the finality of his loss. Which, you know, that’s a not-unheard of response to someone’s death, but it makes for some odd funnybook reading. A few months of this was probably enough, and it looks like there’s some turnaround in this new issue…some closure and healing, I guess, in the appropriately superheroic and melodramatic manner…but not completely closed in order to string along the subplot of Carrie Kelley still thinking her former-student-who-was-secretly-Robin is still alive.
And that’s another weird thing about this series, taking Carrie Kelley from Frank Miller’s beloved Dark Knight Returns (and slightly less beloved but still, I think, bizarrely wonderful Dark Knight Strikes Again) and plugging her into the New DC Universe. The conventional wisdom is that, like in Miller’s works, she’ll become Robin…the subplot of Bruce allowing her to think Damien is still alive certainly seems like one road to that result…but really, who knows. It still feels a bit odd to see her removed from her original context, but maybe if she does eventually become the new Robin, maybe when Marvel and DC start their intercompany crossovers again she can team up with Elektra.
Pretty much Superman’s only horror story, brought to us by Steve Gerber and Gene Colan (with a follow-up drawn by Rick Veitch), finally under one cover and with non-muddy printing. There is a bit of dissonance seeing the art reproduced so cleanly and brightly after reading it on decaying newsprint for so many years (similar to my reaction to the Irv Novick Batman book), but it really is one of the best Superman stories of all time, and if you haven’t read it yet, you should read it now. I wrote a spoiler-filled review of it for another website if you want more info. But really, just get it. It’s great.
It’s like Free Comic Book Day in July…
…just like that one year when Marvel didn’t have a movie opening in May, but it did in July, and God forbid we not have a Free Comic Book Day that wasn’t tied to a Marvel movie. Anyway, as I promised way back when, all those two months ago, here are some of the other photos taken by Semi-Occasional Employee Mark of this year’s FCBD event:
A shot of one and 1/3 tables loaded with comics, just prior to opening the doors to the waiting hordes:
A slightly blurry photo of the slightly blurry Employee Timmy and Employee Aaron and Employee Aaron’s moustache:
Kempo, wife of Employee Aaron, doing terrible things to comics with her mighty elbows:
And here I am, crashing Kempo’s photo op with my ridiculous head of hair:
Goku finally meets the one foe he can never defeat:
And here is Goku again, back in happier times prior to his terrible beating:
So there we go…a little scrapbook of additional Free Comic Book Day memories, to keep with us in our hearts until the abject horror of having to prep for FCBD 2014 seeps in.
Let me save you the trouble: “no, Mike, it’s just you.”
So pulled off the shelf from our stack of Superman Unchained #1 was a copy that had a translucent blue strip of tape that stretched around from the front of the cover, across the spine, and across the back:
…but still cut off at the edges so the book could be opened and read normally. The tape is applied straight and evenly, so it’s not like it was just dropped on there by accident. My guess, knowing nothing about the actual details of comic printing and production, is that a pile of unstapled covers was taped together for storage/shipping and that the cover with the tape stuck to it at the top of the pile wasn’t removed prior to assembling the whole package.
Or someone at the distributor is exacting revenge upon me for some long-ago slight, randomly affixing pieces of tape neatly to comic covers prior to packing them into shipping boxes destined for our store. I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE, PHANTOM COVER-TAPER!
In somewhat related news…I had told myself I was going to drop all the Superman titles following the end of Grant Morrison’s entertaining run on Action, making that my first break from regularly reading those titles in over 30 years. But, well, you know how funnybook fans are, and I kept going despite myself…only to find that Superman has been improving, and Action managed to keep my interest after Morrison’s departure. Overall, I feel like the storytelling on the titles have been…loosening up, I guess? Less concerned with trying to establish the New 52 status quo for Superman, and more focused on having a little fun, I’d think. Yes, there’s the stuff with Superman’s relationship with Wonder Woman that nobody’s particularly happy about (and to be fair, they did provide some in-story evidence for this particular turn of events being a bad thing, forthcoming Superman/Wonder Woman ongoing series notwithstanding). And that new costume is still terrible.
In general, though…I’ve been liking the Superman books lately. The first issue of Batman/Superman wasn’t bad, and the first issue of Superman Unchained, taped cover or not, was definitely a Big, Fun and Loud Superman Adventure…your big-budget Superman movie on paper. I don’t really want a half-dozen ongoing Superman books…Scott Snyder and Jim Lee taking over Action Comics would have been just as good, but of course wouldn’t have received the attention and sales the Brand! New! First! Issue! did. But there are all those comics anyway, and at least they’ve been mostly readable, he damned with faint praise.
So anyway, have any of you folks noticed an upswing in the Superman titles lately? Not saying they’re perfect, or outstanding examples of the medium…they just seem…a bit improved. Is it just me?
This is a very lazy post…
…in that I’m linking to someone who’s linking to stuff that I think is neat. Christopher Elam informed me that Megaton Man creator Don Simpson is blogging again, and not just on one site, oh no. On multiple sites, devoted to specific titles and characters. Chris has got the list right here, and you can see lots of unpublished pages, sketches, process material, etc. on all of Simpson’s sites. Note that some of the sites (particularly the Bizarre Heroes one) are Not Safe For Work, so wait ’til the boss ain’t lookin’.
So how do you get me to buy Modeling with Millie?
Well, actually, it doesn’t take much to get me to take a look at a Millie the Model comic, but by God, if it’s filled with art by Herbie cocreator Ogden Whitney, it’s a must-buy!
Whitney had illustrated several romance books during his career, but I haven’t come across too many of them at the shop, simply because romance comics are few and far between in the collections we see. But, just this past week, we picked up a pretty good stack of ’60s and ’70s romance titles in conditions that we can charitably describe as “mostly readable.” This particular issue, Modeling with Millie #54 (June 1967), also the last of this particular iteration of Millie the Model comics, was actually one of the better-conditioned copies in the collection, topping off at a glossy Fair to Good.
And oh man, the art inside…even when Whitney was trying to play it straight, the characters usually looked like the wiring needed some work behind their eyes, there:
Or here, where you can enjoy some ’60s-style rockin’ and / or rollin’ lyrics along with a swell fashion display from Millie (click on the following image to Super-Millie-Size it):
More snappy lyrics, more splendid fashion:
The last story of the book opens with Millie getting way into Fantastic Four #63:
…which makes her wish for superpowers of her own:
…though she gets derided a bit for her choice of reading material:
That doesn’t stop Millie from dreaming herself up as a superhero:
…and performing incredible feats of strength while providing important moral messages:
“Also, don’t snap bad guys’ necks! Excelsior, friends!”
And is this Whitney’s only drawing of the Thing?
I don’t know just how much Marvel work he did, but I would have paid good money to read an Ogden Whitney-drawn Fantastic Four story.
images from Modeling with Millie #54 (June 1967) by Gary Friedrich and Ogden Whitney
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