cartoons

They didn’t even bother to mention the interactive menus on the packaging.

filed under Categories batman, cartoons 3 Comments

So I finally received my copy of the Batman Vs. Robin animated movie from Diamond this week, and this is some sticker that’s on the box:

talon
Don’t know if that means anything to anybody that hasn’t read the comics…is there any kind of larger media presence for Talon and/or the Court of Owls that I don’t know about, that would make this sticker of use in attracting your average consumer in a Best*Mart? “But Mom, this movie has Talon and the Court of Owls! We have to get it!” Or is it enough that perhaps the very presence of the sticker ballyhooing their presence will pique curiosity: “Huh…these characters are apparently important enough for the manufacturer to go through the extra expense of printing and applying these stickers to the packaging…surely I, as a Blu-ray/DVD consumer, can’t let all that effort go to waste.”

Okay, I’m pokin’ a little fun. But honestly, one would think the promise of “BATMAN VERSUS ROBIN” would be enough get get someone to pull the trigg…OOH, sorry, Bruce, poor choice of words.

The movie itself is fine…not one I’d put on the TV to entertain the four-year-old in your life, because it starts off with a sequence that’s pretty much pure nightmare fuel. But it certainly delivers on the title, and I like the fact that this new movie builds off the previous Bat-imation film that introduced the Damian Wayne character rather than just leaving that as a stand-alone. I know the last couple of Justice League cartoons are effectively in sequence as well, but those are sort of blandish and empty (particularly the recent Throne of Atlantis), while these Batman films have a little more weight to them. There is one significant bump in the road, a flashback sequence that introduces the Court of Owls concept via a bedtime story in the most awkward bit of storytelling you can possibly imagine, but otherwise everything flows well, and violently, enough. I appreciated the clarity of the fight scene choreography, and I hope what I just typed right there turns up as a pull quote in an ad someday.

Anyway, I liked it. I hope they do at least one more to wrap up the Damian storyline…or, even better, maybe they can tackle the whole Batman Incorporated thing. That would be pretty amazing in animation. Plus, they still need to introduce this vital character.

Jealous of the “writing cartoon books” part, not the “you’ve probably passed away by now” part.

filed under Categories cartoons, paperbacks 5 Comments

Also rescued from that collection I was talking about a couple of days ago were a few of these Flintstones paperbacks from the mid-1970s:


I like the look of these, particularly that moody cover on The Bedrock Connection. Inside, the artwork (usually alternating pages with the prose, but sometimes sharing a page with some text) was…occasionally off-model, one might say. But it sufficed, I suppose, even if they cheated with similar poses and layouts in the images, like when they followed this pic:


…with this one just two pages later:


I think they’re supposed to be in the same place, but the moon has moved farther away, the house suddenly sprouted another tree and a new window treatment, the rocks at their feet have changed positions, etc. “Suddenly, Fred and Barney found themselves in a parallel dimension, just slightly different from their own. ‘Darn you, Gazoo!’ bellowed Fred.”

Here’s the first page of Gentlemen Farmers, to give you bit of a taste of what these books are like:


“A tall, thin who?” you may be wondering? The Thin Whiteschist Duke himself, David Boulderie? No, it’s this terrifying looking gentleman:


…who seems a bit creepily outside the standard Flintstones model, but not as much as this guy from the first page:


…which looks like some freakish proto-Barney who’s somehow escaped the studio’s round file and has entered the fictional world of the Flintstones to stalk and eventually confront his successor. Kinda like that Simpsons episode where Current Bart confronts Tracey Ullman Show Bart which is something that actually happened I’m assuming, and I didn’t just imagine it.

Anyway, I was posting some of these scans to the Twitter when Twitter pal Teresa asked who the author was. I repliced “Horace J. Elias,” and Teresa discovered that the fella wrote a whole lot of cartoon-related books. I’m assuming that’s an actual guy and not a pseudonym used by the publisher for the army of people they had cranking these out, but I didn’t have much like finding any info on the fellow. I did find this page on one of those ancestry sites which could be him, but I have no idea. Anyway, here’s to you, Horace…you had a good gig writing books based on cartoons, and I’m just a bit jealous.

Please enjoy this first draft of my review of that JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time DVD.

filed under Categories cartoons, justice league, movie reviews 8 Comments


[Some minor SPOILERS AHEAD]

So I was clued in by one of Johanna’s recent posts that there was a new Justice League animated feature that was going to be available exclusively at Target stores, which seemed to come as a surprise to pretty much everybody. According to this interview with the director, there was a desire for a DC superhero cartoon that maybe skewed a little younger than the usual DC Direct films that could be marketed alongside the toylines, and this was the result.

They really want you to know that this is an “original movie,” since it not only tells you so in a blurb directly printed under the title, but this sticker is affixed to the front of the package as well:


And this sticker is slapped on the box too, reminding you about Superman’s 75th anniversary last year:


As for the cartoon itself…it’s entertaining enough, with plenty of superhero versus supervillain action and a simplistic time-travel plot. The Legion of Super-Heroes are involved, kinda sorta, with Dawnstar and Karate Kid as two potential members of that future super-team who find themselves in the present day, trying to prevent Lex Luthor from using Legion villain the Time Trapper to destroy the Justice League. Dawnstar is given, in addition to her traditional super-tracking powers, some kind of magical glowy energy-healing ability that seems to primarily exist to provide a quick ending to the climactic battle of the movie. Karate Kid’s ability to spot structural flaws are given enough of a flourish to be a visually-interesting super power, and his martial arts skills are given a good showcase in a battle with Robin.

The character designs are New 52-inspired, with too many seams and not enough red trunks:


…though Superman doesn’t have that terrible collar, which is a plus. Bizarro does have red pants in this cartoon, in case you were worried. I should note that Superman’s design, from his costume to his facial features, do fluctuate somewhat throughout the feature, which is a little distracting.

One of the major highlights in the story is when everybody time travels back to Smallville, with the villains attempting to prevent the Kents from rescuing baby Kal-El, and the heroes trying to keep history on track. It’s a very funny, slightly surreal sequence as the good guys and bad guys play keep-away with Baby Kal, who is repeatedly referred to as “Superbaby.” This Silver Age fan approves.

While mostly enjoyable, if slight, there are some minor quibbles with the film, such as Robin’s characterization as a bit of a petulant child (meant to be comic relief, and probably funny to the target (heh) audience, but may grate on old people like you and me). Plus, the Time Trapper’s ultimate gambit, to apparently…wreck stuff around Earth with time vortices, I guess? — doesn’t seem like much of a final battle beyond giving heroes one last action scene to show off their stuff.

One surprising positive: this dude shows up, and though my initial reaction was “oh, no,” he’s actually one of the more entertaining parts of the film:


Yup, that’s the jester-ish Toyman from the ’70s Super Friends cartoons, redesigned into apparently being some kind of robot-toy-thing himself:


…and a brief shot of a display in a 31st century museum gives us his extremely depressing fate:


The original Toyman of the ’70s cartoons was mostly just annoying. I want to know more about this Toyman, who is less annoying and more creepy and / or goofy.

Bonus features on this disc include two of the original Super Friends episodes, both involving some kind of time travel, and I haven’t watched them yet because I’m sure I’ve seen them before and therefore they have already stolen away enough of my life.

Overall it’s a fun cartoon, despite some minor issues, and hopefully will lead to more all-ages original animated features based on DC properties. …By which of course I mean “Swamp Thing.”

Skip past the second image to avoid minor spoilers for the third Iron Man movie.

filed under Categories cartoons, movie reviews, superman 2 Comments


So Iron Man 3 was better than Iron Man 2 and neither are a patch on Iron Man No Number but Is Now Referred to As Iron Man 1, but all in all, like I once said about the X-Men film franchise at a time when there were only three X-Men films, that we got three watchable and generally likable Iron Man movies at all is relatively miraculous.

I did have the same problem with this film that I did with the previous installment, that too often during the film I found myself thinking “why am I being shown this when I could be seeing Iron Man doing stuff instead” — particularly during that middle “Tony Stark, Action Spy Detective, Goes to Tennessee” segment of the film. But, I can’t say I wasn’t entertained, and you end up getting more Iron Man armor action than you can handle during the film’s climax, with too brief glimpses of the dozens of different armored suits Stark apparently assembled between sequels.

Okay, the “not enough Iron Man action” is kind of a terrible complaint…Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark carries the show whether he’s in armor or not, and I did enjoy the film. And it’s not as if I was expecting beginning-to-end Iron Man fight scenes…I realize there’s such a thing as “pacing.” When you get right down to it, the amount of Iron Man action was exactly the amount and of the correct quality for the story they were telling, he said as if anyone cared what he thought. I guess the old fanboy in me wanted more Iron Man in action at the height of his powers, outside of struggling against both technological and psychological failures, but I guess that’s what the Avengers movies are for. That this film, along with Downey’s portrayal, makes us like and care about the “civilian” identity as much, if not more so, than the superhero identity, is its real strength. Tony’s a cool dude that sometimes wears super-armor and his movies are fun…what am I complaining about, really?

Also, it’s nice that Bruce Banner was played by the same actor in more than one feature film. The lack of MODOK is points against, however. And, as always, not enough Miguel Ferrer, which is my gripe about pretty much every film.


In other news, I saw the new direct-to-home-video-disc Superman Unbound film, adapting that “Superman meets the REAL Brainiac” story that ran in the comics a couple of years back. …Well, that was certainly a Superman versus Brainiac story, with some neat visuals and an interesting subplot about Superman’s overprotectiveness of people in his life. Plus, the story ends on a big life-changing decision, which would probably have an impact on the sequel they spend time setting up at the very end of the film (a scene placed during the credits, actually) should one ever come, which it won’t.

It was fine, but honestly, though, I wish DC would just straight up adapt some classic Silver Age stories for their direct-to-DVD film program for a change…it’ll never happen, but it’s nice to think about. …At least the Batman: The Brave and the Bold cartoon took care of that need for a few years.

I’m just going to go ahead and apologize right here in the post title: I’m sorry.

filed under Categories batman, cartoons, movie reviews 15 Comments

“Skinny little Hansi.”

 
 
 

“She grew up. She filled out.”

 
 
 
[There may be SPOILERS ahead for The Dark Knight Returns, both animated and comic-ated.]

Now I suspect it’s going to be hard to believe that one can forget a large, gun-totin’ woman named Bruno, topless save for some kind of adhesive swastikas placed over her breasts, and yet this is apparently what happened to me prior to popping in Part Two of DC’s direct-to-DVD/Blu-Ray animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. If I had remembered, I’m sure it would have crossed my mind at least once to ponder “I wonder if they’re actually going to go through with that” or “I wonder if they’ll tone it down a bit.” Instead, it came as a complete surprise to me when Bruno showed up on screen. And it certainly is a different experience seeing Bruno in a four-minute fully-animated action sequence on a 50-inch screen as opposed to seeing a handful of panels in a comic book. And by “different” I mean “that’s going to come as a shock when Mom puts this on for Little Billy and then walks back into the room when Bruno’s onscreen fighting Batman.” Yeah, yeah, it’s PG-13 an’ all, but man, that felt like a bit much. So of course I got a screenshot and shared it with you on my site. You’re welcome.

As for the parts of this cartoon that aren’t about topless Neo-Nazis: what I was really looking forward to was Michael Emerson’s turn as The Joker. Emerson was probably the best part of that TV show Lost, playing an evil and slimy little jerk who was still at least somewhat sympathetic and certainly charismatic, and that performance comes though in this role as well. A bit of Emerson’s voice work on the Joker reminded me of, oddly enough, Paul Lynde, which I’m guessing was likely more coincidental than deliberate, and is certainly not a complaint. (And of course, when one thinks of Paul Lynde in relation to Batman, this comes to mind.) His Joker was definitely creepy and unsettling, and probably the high point of this whole endeavor.

And speaking of the whole endeavor…one of the most intrinsic parts of the original Dark Knight Returns comics was the constant internal dialogue running throughout, revealing each character’s hopes, fears, etc., as well as providing the most affecting and emotional points of the story. When Alfred dies as the Wayne Mansion burns, just seeing him drop onscreen doesn’t have anywhere near the impact of reading Alfred’s “Of course” when the same thing happens in the comic. And when they push the dialogue from the comic’s internal thoughts to the cartoon’s external voice…well, let’s just say having Commissioner Gordon outright say “I think of Sarah…the rest is easy” as part of a retirement speech to a roomful of people lacks the gravitas it has when he repeats it to himself in the comic.

And that whole business with Superman nearly being killed by the atomic explosion, and his subsequent revival. In the cartoon, it’s simply weird and grotesque. In the comic, with Superman’s inner pleading with Mother Earth, there’s that undercurrent of sadness and despair and desire to protect that’s left unspoken, nor even implied, in the adaptation. …I suspect some enterprising group of fans will someday make a reedit of these films, filling in the lost narration themselves, that the cartoons sorely lack.

Not to say that these films are entirely without merit…the big set pieces still work just fine: Batman’s battle with the Mutants leader, the last confrontation with the Joker, the climactic fight with Superman. And even the nearly last bit of business, with Carrie and Clark at Bruce’s grave site…that was pulled off nicely. I also appreciated that they didn’t stray too far from the comic’s 1980s origins, keeping Reagan as President, and there’s even a brief shot somewhere near the end of the film, which of course I can’t locate now, showing a storefront for “VHS / BETA” or something like that. Or maybe I imagined it. You make the call.

Overall, the Batman: The Dark Knight Returns animated adaptation was an interesting experiment, if flawed, with some nice voice work. I understand the choices the filmmakers made…well, my jury’s still out on the Bruno thing, but I guess fans would have complained if she wasn’t there…but in my opinion the loss of the internal dialogues from the comic cut most of the heart out of the story.

Well anyway, if these Dark Knight cartoons do well, maybe we’ll get an animated version of the sequel Dark Knight Strikes Again. That I’d like to see.
 
 

If you’re wondering about that Hansi comic, here you go.

My two cents’ worth, times two.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, cartoons, pal plugging, retailing 3 Comments

So I had a fellow bring by a couple of comics he wanted to sell…an issue of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1960s series) and a copy of Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, both of which had these taped to the front covers:


As it turns out, these comics were stored in such a way that the tape essentially dried out, and with only minimal effort these additions came right off, leaving behind only minor discoloration where the tape had once adhered to the paper. And while I offered the customer many times that long ago asking price of two cents apiece, it still wasn’t a whole lot, since the comics otherwise were in what we like to call “previously well-loved condition,” and the customer opted to hang onto them. He did thank me for taking those tags off the covers, and now, here they are, for you to enjoy.

Also, please don’t tape things directly to your comics. Unless you’re going to bring them to me and I can show them on my site and say “look what this person did to his or her comic…can you believe it?”

• • •

In my End of Civilization post from a few days ago, I noted the existence of the Batman and Robin action figures done in the style of Aardman Animation and how I was baffled that such a thing would even exist. Now…well, it is sort of amazing that such a thing is in the world, these Bat-Aardman figures, but I honestly hadn’t realized there are actual animated shorts by Aardman featuring these characters. A quick Googling reveals that this is hardly news to anyone except me, since I 1) cancelled my cable long ago and thus haven’t seen this DC Nation thing, 2) don’t read comic websites aside from my own, because I’m so amazing and perhaps somewhat self-aggrandizing, and 3) don’t really have a third thing. In short, that these animated shorts passed me by is just One of Those Things, I Guess, and since I do enjoy Aardman’s output, I should track ’em down someday.

But honestly:


…this is a thing that is real. Just look at it. …Look at it.

• • •

Normally, I’d just delete spam comments, but this is a comment in French extolling the virtues of hentai, so I just left it after editing out the website address because it made me laugh. YOU WIN, SPAMMERS.

• • •

So I discovered (or, given my usual track record for such things, “found out long after everyone else” — see earlier this post) that our funnybook distributor Diamond Comics apparently has a Twitter account.

Huh. Well. …I mean, I’d happily run that account for them, for, you know, the occasional drop shipment of some coin of the realm, but, well, there might be a conflict of interest there for me.

• • •

In other news, pal and fellow Bureau Chief Euge, AKA ADAM WARROCK, will be performing at our shop in a couple of weeks! This will soon increase the number of Internet pals I’ve met and touched in person by one! PREPARE TO BE TOUCHED, EUGE.

I still look forward to the All-Star Batman cartoon.

filed under Categories batman, cartoons, swamp thing 10 Comments

A few folks have emailed me about this over the last week or two, and now that I’ve finally watched DC’s latest direct-to-DVD cartoon, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part One, I can finally comment on Swamp Thing’s cameo:


Here’s another look at the rack, with the camera pulled back a bit so you can more clearly see that the proprietor of this shop needs to maintain the timeliness of this stock a little better:


I mean, that Swamp Thing came out in ’88, Crisis on Infinite Earths came out in 1985, etc. Someone doesn’t believe in “back issue bins.”

A couple of other notes about this DVD (or, rather, the Blu-ray, which had the special features I’m about to comment upon):

1. In one special feature, they flash a number of “groundbreaking” or “important” comics on screen, and apparently included this one as part of their “one of these things is not like the others” game.

2. The Bob Kane documentary lists Kane’s birth year as 1915, notes that Kane was asked to develop a new superhero in the wake of Superman’s initial success in 1938, and also mentions (a couple of times!) that Kane created Batman when he was 18. …The numbers ain’t addin’ up, there. I get that there was probably some fudging of dates here and there over the years for a number of reasons, but it seems funny that these “facts” were included in this documentary without comment when a moment of math reveals some issues.

At least Bill Finger got a mention, however. And it was nice to hear about Kane’s reaction when he first saw the crowds waiting for the first Tim Burton Batman movie.

3. The actual cartoon itself was pretty good…yeah, I know, why get the cartoon when most of us already have the original comics memorized. But I liked seeing how they adapted it, and I enjoyed the voice work…though what I am sure is the real highlight of the performances, Michael Emerson as the Joker, is yet to come in Part Two.

4. Though members of the Mutant Gang repeatedly say “nasty,” at no time, as far I noticed, do any of them say “balls nasty,” which is a damned shame, what that is. Almost a deal breaker.

Just a little housekeeping.

filed under Categories cartoons, fanzines, golden age, I cast magic missile, scans 9 Comments

So, remember those British Dungeons & Dragons ‘zines I posted about a few days ago? I threw them on the eBay, and most of them brought in $10 to $15 apiece, with a couple in the $30 range. But that Dragon Lords #1, with the signatures?


I started that at $8.99, by the way. Figured I’d get about ten or twelve bucks for it. …Guess I’d better break into that additional case of Dragon Lords #1 I have in the back room…!

Now, about that housekeeping promised in the subject of this post…I’ve had a few scans just sitting on my computer’s desktop, awaiting my use here, and I’m never seeming to get around to creating posts about each of them. Thus, I’m just going to throw them all into this post. Enjoy!

We had this copy of Choice Comics #2 from 1942 in our shop for all of, oh, I don’t know, five minutes before selling it off, but I managed to get a couple of scans from it anyway. I enjoyed Bingo the Kangaroo’s dismissive response to superheroes on the cover there:


I mean, we were this close to Kangaroo/Parrot Buddy Comedy-Adventure being the dominant genre in the comics industry. If only things went slightly differently…if only.

I also got a scan of this tough guy:


This is pretty much what every angry ‘n’ anonymous commenter on every Internet message board and comments section looks like, so don’t mess with ’em.

Marvel recently released a bunch of “Avengers Art Appreciation” incentive variant covers for many of their titles, which featured the characters from the movie as depicted in a variety of art styles, and regardless of whether the comic sporting said variant had anything to do with The Avengers. But I thought this one by Steffi Schutzee in the style of Al Hirschfeld was nicely done:


They all look great, but Hawkeye is particularly amazing:


And finally…cast your minds back to the innocent, carefree days of 1975, where Six-Year-Old Mike sat in front of the TV in the living room, enthralled by the giant bird-monster featured in this episode of Return of the Planet of the Apes:


“Mom! Mom! Look at this!” Mike shouted to his mother, but alas, she didn’t come to the room in time to see the bird-monster cart away these…buffalo-things:


So, Dad, if you’re reading my site at home right now, be sure to call Mom over and show these to her, so she can see what she missed nearly four decades ago.

Oh, and this has nothing to do with anything, but I mentioned on the Twitter that I was reading this amazing article about the even-more amazing history of TV’s ALF, and pal Ian…remember pal Ian, he wrote some comics, I hear…he replied to me with a link to a YouTube video of the ALF cartoon’s theme. I’d never heard that before, and it ain’t half-bad. Thanks for exposing me to that, Ian…I take back most of the bad things I’ve said about you!