You know those Marvel cartoons from the 60’s with the really awful animation and stills taken from the comics themselves? A guy by the name cyphrx took this style and made his own Avengers parody, based on what he considers the aftermath of the very first issue.
Enjoy the Newer Mightier Ultimater Avengers, but be warned, it does feature bad language and blurred out Hulk dong.
A year ago, I bought, read and reviewed Peter David’s novelization of Spider-Man 3. I thought it was pretty good and went on record to say that Sam Raimi would have to go out of his way to fuck up that movie. Wouldn’t you know it, he did exactly that. He deleted a handful of scenes that would have turned the movie’s three villains into more than ridiculous, one-dimensional jokes. While he removed all the valuable Eddie Brock and Sandman scenes, he made it even worse by hardly shaving off any whiny Mary Jane moments.
I made the decision to go for round two. This time Peter David writes a novelization based on the upcoming Iron Man film. More than anything, I was curious. The build-up has been nice. Not just with the trailers, but the feeling that there’s love in the movie. I recall Jon Favreau saying that in preparation, he had been reading every single issue of Iron Man from the 60’s on. So would love be enough to make this story work?
Yes. Yes it really would.
I’m not going to give out explicit spoilers, but if you really want an absolute blank slate to the point that you didn’t even watch the trailers, by all means don’t read this and instead just give me $5.
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.
Sorry, these aren’t comics at all, but these things happen. You can live it or you can live with it!
I got an email earlier this week (or maybe late last week) from someone I’d spoken to a couple times. She wanted to interview me at Wondercon! Being a suitably narcissistic fellow who loves the sound of someone listening to him speak, I said “Yes!”
–So, at 1030 Saturday morning, I was interviewed by the wonderful Lene Taylor of I Read Comics. She asked me my opinions on comics, race in comics, and my Black History Month series. What a start to the day! Thanks for letting me ramble, Lene. Hopefully it came through all right in the recording.
–I bought a grip of trades again. I can’t help it, man. The haul this time was Peng (signed by Rey, and shoulda been bought years ago when it came out), Dr Strange: The Oath, X-Men Legends vol 4: Best of X-Men Unlimited, Human Target, Squadron Supreme: Hyperion vs Nighthawk, and Gambit: House of Cards.
I know someone who’d kill for that Gambit trade. Eat it, Sara! It’s going for 130 dollars on Amazon! I paid half cover for it!
Cripes, she might actually kill me at that price.
–I caught some awesome panels. First was the podcasting extravaganza. It was moderated by Matt Silady and featured Ron, Josh, and Conor of iFanboy, Lene Taylor and Logan Hall of I Read Comics, Chris from Around Comics (I forgot his last name like a jerk, though I’ve hung out with him basically two or three nights in a row now), and Bryan Deemer of Comic Geek Speak. It was a fun panel, made double fun by the fact that I know/am familiar with most of the people up there. I got to ask a question about timeliness in podcasts with regards to content. Does it matter at all? Chris had the best answer: “Nope.” The others mostly agreed, with the caveat that they will cover something if it is underreported or if there’s a demand for it. Otherwise, there’s no reason to feel pressured. It was a great panel, and everyone involved did a great job. Also, Conor is incredibly awesome and has a hard life being so awesome.
–The next panel was the Animation Break-Down panel. I’ll let the convention site tell it. I added in iMDB links.
4:30-5:30 Animation Story Break (“Wait, does it HAVE to be a story?”)— Go behind the scenes as writers take an idea for an animated superhero story from one-sentence premise all the way to a full-blown beginning, middle, and end. Then the real fun begins with audience participation! The crack writing staff features Charlotte Fullerton (Kim Possible), Michael Jelenic (The Batman), Dwayne McDuffie (Static Shock), and Matt Wayne (Justice League Unlimited). Moderated by Eugene Son (Storm Hawks). Expect laughter and tears – mostly the latter.
Um, wow, what a line-up! Basically, the gimmick of the panel turned out to be breaking down a Howard the Duck vs Green Lantern Corps movie. It was pretty ridiculous (in a good way) and a lot of fun. Also, as seen below, I got McDuffie to sign a couple of trades– Static Shock and Fantastic Four, in fact. That was a great moment.
–After that, I chilled out a bit, went home, changed, and went out to the world famous Isotope Comics for the awesome Darwyn Cooke signing event. I’d volunteered to work the art table, so I stuck around upstairs for most of the night, giving people the mean mug when they get their drinks too close to the art.
Did I mention the art? We had J. Bone drawings, we had some stuff from Spider-Man Tangled Web by Darwyn and J (I want to keep calling him J.Bone, but man! that’d be weird), we had some Doop/Wolverine stuff… and we had pages from the as-yet unreleased New Frontier Animated Special. It drops the first week of March!
How were the pages? They were awesome. Beautiful, every single one of them. I saw a few pages that I kept going back to. You’ll see them when the book drops. I’ll just say that there is a note in them that just says “Think fast” and a wonderful smirk. That character should always smirk. Manoman.
How was the party? Hrm. Did you know that a million people were there? Maybe not a million, but it sure felt like it. The party was out on the street for a bit and getting across the store was nearly impossible. The guest list was completely ridic, though. There were some folks in costumes. The mascot or whatever from the new Zelda was in effect. There were some burlesque-looking girls.
There was also Amy Jo Johnson a.k.a. THE PINK POWER RANGER (according to Ron), JH Williams III, Paul Dini, Bill Willingham was maybe there, Antony Johnston stopped back in again, Ross Richie of Boom Studios was there, and a grip of people from DC Comics/Warner Home Video were there.
Repeat: Pink Power Ranger.
I might have possibly kind of told Paul Dini to get his drink off the art table before it spills, but in my defense if I did do such an unconscionable thing it was because I didn’t recognize him until Marsha, Darwyn Cooke’s wife, pointed him out to me.
Oops!
It was pretty cool talking to J. Bone and David Bullock about art and work and like that. Those were great times. Bullock did some work on the upcoming Spidey cartoon and being something of a big Spider-Man fan, it was cool to speak to him.
Oh yeah, Darwyn Cooke… he is awesome, through and through. I finally saw a break in the signing line and he signed my copy of Selina’s Big score and the print of the Isotope flyer. We talked more about the John Henry stuff. I mentioned that I was going to fanboy at him for a moment and told him that I led off my Black History Month posts with the John Henry sequence from New Frontier and he was like “That was you?!”
So, uh, Darwyn Cooke reads my blog! He also told me to post this picture.
He thanked me for feeling that the John Henry stuff wasn’t overwrought or horrible and I thanked him for writing it.
I’d brought a camera with me with the intention of taking a ton of pictures, but instead I basically just took shots of me and my friends chilling in the art room. Check the flickr set here!
Sunday is almost guaranteed to be more laid back and less awesome than today. I’m going to be trade bin diving with Keith and Ash (I want to score another Gambit book!) and just wandering the floor the rest of the show. I’m definitely gonna do a stint at the Writers Old Fashioned table, too.
Also, wandering the Wondercon halls listening to Saul Williams’s “The Inevitable Rise and Fall of Niggy Tardust” is really, really weird but really, really fitting. I don’t know why.
One quick reminder: You can still enter the contest to win a free copy of New Frontier! Go post on that thread to get it done and I’ll pick the winner Sunday night.
It’s been too long since I’ve done anything truly stupid. Wait, not true. The other day I bought that handheld Guitar Hero game out of morbid curiosity. Yeah. That was mildly amusing for about four minutes. But it has been too long since I’ve done anything truly stupid in relation to this site. I set out to fix that.
Everybody knows that Pink Floyd’s album Dark Side of the Moon syncs up with the classic movie Wizard of Oz. I’ve tried it once and it really works. The whole concept made me realize how we don’t see any other movie/music pairings like this. That got me thinking…
If such a great movie syncs up so well with such a great album, then surely the best superhero movie would HAVE to sync up with the best album ever. That’s right. I decided to watch Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker while listening to Beck’s Odelay.
Keep in mind, this is the good version of the movie, with all the torture and violence.
Hey, worst case scenario: I waste 50 minutes of my time listening to good music while watching most of a kickass movie.
I read some comics and I review them here. Just click “Read the rest of this entry” to see them. I know you’re all very excited. Happy Valentines Day!
I have been loafing off while David and Gavok are keeping the site afloat with substantial articles, but here’s just a little thing I’ve been wondering: Is there, let’s say, a fan community for movies or television shows dedicated to discussions about out of context clips uploaded by others, without actually watching the movie or show the clips are from? How about communities for book excerpts, scenes from plays, videogame demos or music samples? If not, why is this behaviour exclusive to the medium of (superhero) comics? Is it the nature of DC and Marvel’s shared universes? The sense of entitlement some people feel towards the characters? Is it the relative ease with which one can put comic book scans on the internet? I’m just curious.
As if you didn’t know, 2007 is over and done with. It’s a new year and a time to access the future. It’s time to come up with goals and hopes for 2008 and to plan for the next 365 days. Here are my New Years Resolutions:
– I resolve to finally write that series of articles about Venom’s bizarre history as a comic character, featuring such things as Venom and Carnage fighting inside the internet and the guest appearance of cyber-ninja Mace, the most forgettable shoe-horned superhero I’ve ever seen. Okay, I remember him, but that’s not my point.
– I resolve to lose about 20 more pounds. Funny thing, back before I decided to go on a diet months ago, I was going to start a ridiculous internet campaign for me to play the part of Seymour from the very end of Watchmen. So when you do watch that movie in theaters and you see that chubby guy reaching for a journal, remember to reflect on what could have been. I know I will…
– I resolve to continue to get on Wanderer’s case for never writing anything for the site. Then I’ll get depressed when I remember that he has about 29 legitimate writing jobs and I just work retail.
– I resolve to read and review every single comic starring Mr. T.
– I resolve to set aside at least a minute every day to roll my eyes at this Spider-Man: Brand New Day crap.
– I resolve to finally get going on my own comic book concept so that in a couple years, I can read it and make fun of it on this very site.
– I resolve to not fight the Monarch because I hear from a good source that he is badass.
– I resolve to lead my team to victory in the 8th Annual 4th Letter vs. Funnybook Babylon Charity Volleyball Game.
– I resolve to receive a restraining order from one Matt Fraction.
– I resolve to discover the storage freezer where writer Len Kaminski is kept. Really, that guy was totally awesome back in the day and he’s completely vanished from the face of the Earth. What the hell happened to him?!
– I resolve to make more jokes about how much Wyatt Wingfoot sucks. More like “WyamIreadingabout Wingfoot?” am I right?
– I resolve to get around to reading Sentences by MF Grimm so I can show hermanos that I’m, uh, down.
– I resolve to finally review what I consider to be the all-time worst comic book issue of all time. It may kill me, but I’ll do it.
Have a happy new year, people.
