With hermanos becoming the senior editor at PopCultureShock, it was only natural that I’d tag along. Now, as it turns out, the last three days have featured me in some fashion.
For Wednesday, it’s me doing an article for Alternate Current, the weekly thing where a guest blogger writes about whatever. Here, I discuss the five What If comics that came out over the past months, which will be available next month in trade form. Really strong year for those. If you’re by any chance interested in doing an Alternate Current article, contact hermanos.
For Thursday, it’s the very first installment of Comics From the 5th Dimension! That’s right, I now have my own weekly column, where I discuss the stranger corners of the comic universe. Read on as this week I discuss The Adventures of JELL-O Man and Wobbly, a really wacky comic written in part by Peter David and Kurt Busiek. Plus it has a Sonic the Hedgehog preview insert as a bonus mini-review.
Keep in mind that hermanos wrote that front-page headline for it. I saw that and was like, “JELL-O Man was before Bill Cosby? What? No!”
And for Friday, I sit in for another installment of Picks and Pans. Along with four other reviewers, I take a look at a handful of stuff that came out this week. For me, I went with Immortal Iron Fist, Invincible, Wolverine: Origins and Incredible Hercules.
So go and read if you’re up for it and join me every Thursday for another go at Comics From the 5th Dimension. Believe me, I have like a year’s worth of material already.
I love the idea of Brubaker and Fraction trading off arcs on Uncanny. I’m a Terry and Rachel Dodson fan. I think that they have an awesome style.
The only wrench in the works is Greg Land for me.
I’m not gonna lie– Land has a seriously sick art style. I used to dig it. His characters are realistic, though his action scenes are kinda stiff, but it’s aesthetically pleasing. Then I started noticing more and more weirdness. Didn’t I see this Storm two issues ago? Wasn’t this Wolverine from…? What’s with these facial expressions?
Land is a hard sell for me right now. Brubaker and Fraction are writing two of my favorite Marvel books and Land is the thing that will make or break it for me. Marvel released his cover for Uncanny 500 and it looks like more of the same.
Solenna, of SolArts.net, feels the same way, but she’s better than I am because she’s got proof and no small amount of skill in creating GIFs. Thanks to our own Hoatzin and FBB’s David Uzumeri in helping her source. Big ups to her for putting in all the leg work, so go to her site and show her some love.
The GIF’s 200-some k. Is that gonna lag anyone out? I figure that we’re all on broadband these days, so we can handle it, right? Direct: http://4thletter.net/gregland.gif
A while back, I read Jerry Lewis’ book Dean and Me: A Love Story. I never knew much about either guy, but I saw Lewis on Letterman shilling it one night and the stories he told sounded interesting enough that I picked the book up. It’s a heartbreaking story of two friends whose ten year relationship as business partners went to shit due to their own personal flaws and their individual growth as performers. A very good read. Keep in mind that you can’t hear Jerry when you read it, so that’s a plus.
Something interesting Jerry brought up is how Dean Martin was a big comic guy. He was huge into Superman, Batman and Captain Marvel. According to the book, after the first time meeting Frank Sinatra, it was meeting Bob Kane that was Dean’s most star struck moment. It was a neat thing to read about, since in those days comics really were made for kids and Dean Martin was the coolest motherfucker around.
One of the movies they made in their time as a duo was Artists and Models, a movie seemingly custom made for Dean. The very concept of it made me interested enough to want to track down the movie, but it wasn’t until recently that it was available on DVD. I finally got around to watching it and while it isn’t the best movie of the 1950’s, it’s still not bad. It’s definitely interesting to look back on, in terms of the comic-related parts.
To give you an idea, here’s the opening scene, where Eugene (Lewis) and his obsession with comics gets he and his roommate Rick (Martin) fired.
Eugene is mostly into a comic called Bat Lady. Not only does his obsession cost Rick work, but sleep as well, as Eugene’s always having these crazy dreams about a character named Vincent the Vulture and won’t stop screaming. Otherwise, Eugene really wants to write children stories and Rick wants to get work as an artist.
Two ladies take residence in their apartment building. One is Abigail (Dorothy Malone), the writer and artist of Bat Lady, and the other is Bessie (Shirley MacLaine), who works as her model. There’s a subplot where Eugene sees Bessie in full Bat Lady gear and is stoked to find out that the character is actually real, meanwhile giving little notice to Bessie when she’s out of costume. Rick first thinks comic art is a joke, but upon getting the hots for Abigail and realizing how he could easily make a fortune off of it, he quickly changes his mind.
Rick doesn’t have a single comic idea, but instead just steals from Eugene. Whenever Eugene talks in his sleep, Rick would just write down his ideas and secretly work on his own Vincent the Vulture series. It’s pretty ridiculous.
The comic book stuff is pretty funny to watch, just to see how little things have changed. Abigail’s editor keeps insisting that comics need to be more violent and that gore sells. Jerry Lewis’ portrayal of a comic-loving manchild is like a parody of something that barely exists yet. Not to mention his thing for Bat Lady cosplay. A mother blames violent comics for her child’s erratic behavior, yet blatantly shows that she is actually a really shitty parent. The movie is totally before its time.
I should also mention that at one point, Eugene claims on national TV, “Comic books have made me retarded.” I guess that term wasn’t so off-color back then, but it made me laugh.
It is very funny too, despite one really, really bad Rear Window reference. Jerry Lewis may be annoying at times, but with Dean there to play off of him, they really had great comedic chemistry.
It’s just unfortunate that sometime after the one hour mark, the movie goes off in a completely different direction. There’s a subplot out of nowhere on how the Vincent the Vulture comic includes half of a formula that the US government has been using for their rocket ships. So the secret service is trying to get to Rick and Eugene before the Russians can. Huh?!
Other than that, it’s totally worth a look. You can pick it up off Netflix, along with another one of their movies on the same disc.
Oh, and while I was getting that YouTube clip above, I came across this.
The comic of Jeph Loeb is fearful. Were the new scrapped vessel body and onslaught where the origin it changes read? Is this junk what?
Oh, sorry. I just tried venting at Jeph Loeb’s current work, only I translated it into Japanese and again back to English. It’s funny how that turned out, isn’t it?
If you recall, a few months back I posted an article that featured the comic adaptation of the Street Fighter live action movie. Sure, I had a ball with it and hopefully you enjoyed it as well, but something felt off about it. Having already seen the movie, it took out a lot of the flavor of the comic. That got me thinking.
There are a ton of comic book superhero movies out there and when you look at it, only recently have they been getting it right more often than naught. Back in the day, yes, we had stuff like Superman 2, but good movies like that were flukes. I like a bad movie as much as the next guy, but even I’ll admit that I’ve stayed away from these monstrosities for one reason or another.
Luckily, I don’t have to see these movies. Marvel and DC have almost always been kind enough to release these superhero stories the old fashion way, within the pages of a comic book. Why overpay for popcorn and sit in a cold theater when I can read about Shaq fighting crime while laying in a hammock in my back yard? I’m sure I won’t have to worry about bad acting or bad special effects.
This will be my first of several articles delving into the double-translated works of superhero movie comics.
The background of this movie confuses me a bit. From the little research I did after reading the comic, it was finished and released in the UK back in 1990, but then they did a bunch of re-shoots and edits before simply releasing it on video in the US in 1992. When I read a summary of the story for the finished version, it definitely shows that Stan wrote his comic about the initial screenplay of the film prior to the edits.
What’s that I said about Stan? Yes, I mean that Stan. The Stan. Stan Lee wrote the comic version of the movie with Bob Hall on art. This makes everything more interesting, since Stan Lee’s storytelling contrasts with anything you can imagine in a movie environment.
Kathryn McAllister from Hitman and Kathryn O’Brien from Punisher MAX are the same person.
There was a throwaway line in Punisher about Tommy Monaghan, star of Hitman, but I thought it was just Ennis being clever. As it turns out, it was him being even more clever than I thought.
Not only have zombies been done to death, but the joke about zombies being done to death has been done to death. If you’re going to do a zombie story these days, it has to stand out. I mean, from what I read of the Marvel MAX miniseries Zombie, it seemed really run of the mill. You need to change the ingredients to the zombie lore by either adding or subtracting. The Marvel writers removed the brain-dead instinct of the zombies to make Marvel Zombies interesting. Chris Ryall and Ashley Wood added robots and amazons to make their two miniseries (Zombies vs. Robots and Zombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons, of course) catch your imagination.
Awakening, by writer Nick Tapalansky and artist Alex Eckman-Lawn also removes a piece of what we usually subscribe to the zombie mythos. The entire concept of zombies is scary for a multitude of reasons and one of those is that once they’re on the scene, civilization dies in the blink of an eye. They’re dumb and slow, but they gain numbers like nobody’s business and become unstoppable, turning the world into ruins containing only several hundred survivors at best. It is rather frightening, but is it always necessary? You toss away the sudden apocalypse and you’re still left with shambling shells of humanity that only exist to tear you apart, no matter who you used to be to them.
The story takes place in Park Falls, where there have been a series of horrific murders and missing person reports. Our main character is Derrick Peters, a former police officer who finds himself investigating this phenomenon. He has only one real lead and it’s testimony from Cynthia, the town’s resident crazy woman (complete with SARS mask).
“If what Cynthia told me is true, it would fit with what’s happening here – to some degree, anyway. But it seems a little too bizarre to accept. And coming from Cynthia, there’s always the potential for… inaccuracies. But if what she’s saying is true, then the shit is about to hit the fan.”
It’s a good time to be Gavok because in just a couple days, I’ll be going to the WWE Royal Rumble in Madison Square Garden. The event has always been my own little “Wrestling Christmas” and I look forward to it every year. I felt that I needed to prepare in my own little way.
Like I recently acquired the DVD set of all 20 Royal Rumble shows in a big, white cube. Considering I also have a collection of the first 20 Wrestlemanias sitting around, gathering dust, I figured I would watch them all in chronological order. Right now I’m in the middle of Wrestlemania 9 (taking place in 1993). I figure by the time I’m completely caught up, it’ll be time for this year’s Wrestlemania.
That at least explains why I’ve been kind of lax here lately, though it’s hardly noticeable with the good job hermanos and Hoatzin have been doing. I knew I needed to do another Wrestlecomic article. I could cover the Chaos Comics WWF stuff from the late-90’s, but I think I’ll wait until I reach those years in my Royal Rumble/Wrestlemania watching to dive into that. I found a guy selling a manga from what appears to be the same people behind the Hulk Hogan manga, making a big deal about a huge battle royal featuring a bunch of big 80’s wrestlers.
I got the idea that this was some big all-star crossover fight that would last for an entire comic, so even if I couldn’t read any of it, I could at least follow what was going on. When I got my book, I discovered that this battle royal was extremely brief. I tried pretending I could follow what was going on in the manga, but it wasn’t working. I know when I’m beat. At least the Engrish cover refers to the story as “Super Real Fiction!” which, now that I think about it, is a strangely accurate description of professional wrestling.
So the manga thing was a bust. Now what? I decided that if fishing in the past wasn’t going to work, I’d see what’s going on in the present. I picked up a comic called Headlocked: Work of Art, written by Michael Kingston and drawn by Randy Valiente.
I used to feel kind of sorry for Iron Fist, despite not having read many of his comics. It’s stupid to feel that way for a fictional character you know little about, but I did. Everyone always thought highly of Luke Cage, but nobody ever cared for Iron Fist. Did Iron Fist get shoved back into center stage by Brian Michael Bendis? Did Iron Fist ever review old Twinkie ads with Doctor Doom and a talking fish? Have you ever heard anyone wax poetic about that awesome comic where Iron Fist beat up Doom? No, not really. All he got was a bunch of jokes about his name and costume, all while being referred to as Power Man’s sidekick.
Even Bendis didn’t seem to give him much love. If you look at Iron Fist’s appearances in Daredevil under Bendis’ pen, it feels as if he writes him out of necessity. In every appearance he makes, he’s standing firmly in Cage’s shadow. All he ever does is help out Cage. He’s the supporting character of a supporting character. Granted, Bendis did give him that awesome scene in the Pulse where Danny got all tense and insinuated that Jessica Jones is a whore. I like Jessica and all, but that was flat out hilarious.
His facial expression after that just says, “Whoa, that may have been a bit over the line… but really.”
It was Bendis’ lax treatment that made Ed Brubaker’s reveal that Danny Rand was filling in for Daredevil one of the all-time best revelations in comics. It worked out so well. It didn’t come out of nowhere, but Iron Fist was so low profile in his background actions that it wasn’t obvious. Then it succeeded to both push Iron Fist out of Luke’s shadow and give him a new lease on life by giving him his own critically acclaimed series and a spot on the Cage-led New Avengers.
