Wow, That Was Fast

Well, I sent off the novel on Friday, and on Saturday, I got an email from Charles Ardai, the editor/publisher of Hard Case Crime. And it was the nicest rejection you could imagine, but it was still a rejection.

Which leaves me in a bit of a tough spot, because it was so completely designed for them, including the length. 53,000 words is a really short novel, perfect for them, but a hard sell anywhere else. And I can't see trying to pad it out to 70-80,000 words. That's half-again what I've written already, and the story just won't support that.

And then there's the genre problem, which was part of what made Hard Case say no. Death Wave is a crime novel, a noir revenge thriller, but it has science fiction overtones and elements. Albert Einstein has an early cameo, and there's a MacGuffin which is a notebook by Philo Farnsworth, which gives it an alternate history flavor as well. And it's funny, at least in the early chapters, so it's hard to tell right at the start what kind of story it's going to be.

I tried to telegraph that ahead of time with my opening sentence, which starts with the words, "The day I baked Hyman Mankiewicz...," which at least lets you know there's death in the works (and death in some abundance, I should say), but I can see how that might throw some people off.

I suppose I could rewrite the opening to make it darker, and cut down on the speculative elements. But I wanted the book to have its own distinct flavor, and those things give it that distinctiveness.

So I'm getting ready to put together a submission for Tor, and I'll try to keep my eyes open for other possible publishers. I would really like to get onto Codex again and see if anyone there has a suggestion, but I kind of burned my bridges with them with my post-election blow-up.

Which sucks, because Codex was a great group, and I really liked the people. But I can't see going back there again.

Oh well. Just have to keep trying.

Out of the Vault- Zot #10 1/2

So last week, I said Scott McCloud was riding high on the success of Zot. I guess I should have said "critical success," because sales on Zot weren't that great. But Zot had given McCloud a lot of recognition, and in Eclipse Comics, he had found the sorts of publishers who were willing to take chances on weird ideas like the oversized DESTROY!!.

Or like the other book McCloud brought out during the summer of '86, in the lull between color Zot #10 and the introduction of the more mature black-and-white Zot #11. That book was Zot #10 1/2, and it was the opposite of DESTROY!! in many ways. If DESTROY!! was the biggest comic put out by a reasonably large publisher that year, then Zot 10 1/2 was the smallest, a minicomic written by McCloud and drawn by a guy named Matt Feazell.

Feazell was part of a movement (or perhaps you could call it a mini-movement) to make something called minicomics, which were just comics drawn on a normal 8 1/2" X 11" sheet, then photocopied, folded into quarters, stapled and cut to make a little 8-page comic. Obviously, on pages that small, you can't draw in much detail, unless you're really super-obsessive. Feazell's comics featuring a stick-man named Cynicalman had a charming simplicity that melded perfectly with McCloud's own charm.

The story's only 6 pages long, fun and direct, involving hi-jinks between Zot (love the lightning bolt insignia on his stick-chest) and series villains Dekko and Dr. Pweent trying to steal secret growth and reducing formulas. Cynicalman makes a guest appearance to foil the villains. And Godzilla ends up in there, somehow.

The story was simple and fun, and cheap at 25 cents. It's tempting to try to make some grand statement about how there was more entertainment value in those 6 pages than in today's overpriced comics monstrosities, except that, 1) it would make me sound like a bitter fuddy-duddy, and 2) I haven't bought a comic in over a year, and haven't bought them regularly in a few years. I don't know what kind of entertainment value readers are getting today.

But in the summer of '86, we got value.

Fine-the-EFF-ally

Typed my last revision on Death Wave this afternoon. And then did probably a profoundly stupid thing--rather than read it through again to see if it's any better, or to just to catch any new or old typos, I saved the file and sent it to Hard Case Crime straightaway.

Because I've been letting my fear and lack of confidence keep me frozen into inactivity for too long. And I needed to break out of that and not give myself another excuse to delay. I needed to get that book out the door and out of my system so I can move on to other things.

And now I have.

Corinne Bohrer is cautiously optimistic.

Big Game Wednesday - Happy Jack's Podcast

So I somehow ran across this podcast, through a link chain from Propnomicon. But these guys are pretty hysterical, and Tappy really reminds me of guys I gamed with back in my SC days. And the funniest thing, they pointed me to a webshow named Gold (which I don't love as much as they do) which had a scene set in The Last Grenadier, which was a game shop in Burbank I visited a few times back when I lived out there. It's apparently still in business, which amazes me. I don't know of any game shops out here which have been in business continually for over 25 years like that. There are comics shops which also sell games which have been open that long, but not dedicated game shops.

But the thing is, between playing RPG's with Sargon and Co. on Mondays and listening to this podcast, I have the urge to run my own game again. Which is an idiotic idea. I don't have the time, energy or attention to do all the stuff I need to do now. Trying to toss GM'ing in there also would be ridiculous.

But in an attempt to get it out of my system, I did download some free game-related PDF's, and I'll probably spend some time screwing around with some of the old rulebooks I dug out of storage recently. There was a game I bought called Hong Kong Action Theater that I never really dug into, and then there's the Open D6 stuff I just downloaded, which can be adapted into a kind of Hero-lite, I hope. Because I really love Hero, but I don't know if I have the patience for it anymore, and the people I would want to play would REALLY not have the patience for it.

I may just play around with some notes for a campaign setting, and maybe in a year or two, when the game I'm currently in possibly winds down, I may offer to run the next one.

Or not. But at least I'll get it out of my system.

(ETA: Forgot to say, the Happy Jack's guys go off on some really long tangents, and the podcasts tend to last something like an hour and a half. They're entertaining, but long, so if you don't have the patience to listen to something that long, or can't listen while you're doing other things (like I tend to) then maybe this isn't for you)

Movie Monday - Batman, 1989 Part Two

So last week, I discussed the good aspects of Tim Burton's 1989 "Batman." But I also mentioned that the film hadn't aged well, and that I had never liked it as much as some of my peers had.

So what didn't I like?

I didn't like the way the film veered into cartoonish comedy as we got further into the Joker's story. In the process of preparing this recap, I finally hunted down the Sam Hamm screenplay that had the fanboys raving and drooling before the movie came out. And frankly, I can see why they didn't make the film as written. The script gets the Joker as crazed madman down fairly pat, but doesn't include enough "joke" in the Joker. Plus, the plot gets a bit too convoluted in the last third.

So I'm guessing that the changes made between the Hamm screenplay and the novelization (which was adapted by Craig Shaw Gardner from the screenplay) are due to Warren Skaaren's rewrite, which improves on the Hamm draft in several ways--it streamlines the narrative, gives Batman a more central role in creating the Joker, and simplifies the Joker's final gambit while making it more Joker-y. On the other hand, it eliminates Robin and makes Joker the killer of Batman's parents, which I don't love it for.

But when I read the novelization (before I saw the movie) I was excited, because it seemed to have just the right balance of humor and menace in the Joker character. He was a psycho, but he was a funny psycho. Yet behind that humor was definite menace.

But Tim Burton seemed determined to undercut that. For instance, the scene where Joker confronts Grissom right after his transformation starts out with the noir tone that the screenplay and novel had in common: Jack Napier, in shadow, confronts Boss Grissom about setting him up. Grissom thinks to kill Jack, but Napier beats him to the punch, pulling a pistol before Grissom can reach his. Then we get the big Joker reveal, and at that moment, we are seeing the best live-action Batman villain to date. Then Joker shoots Grissom, and shoots him again, and behind the back, and over the shoulder, and the music changes from menacing to this Blue Danube-y waltz that sounds like something you'd hear during a trapeze act at the circus, and the entire dramatic impact of the scene is gone.

And Burton does this over and over again. Vicki Vale survives a gas attack at the Flugelheim Museum due to a Joker-supplied gas mask, then the door opens and in walks the Joker along with several thugs. One hits a button on a boom box, and suddenly, it's a musical...

With the Joker gang dancing along to one of the Prince tunes that comprised the other soundtrack (Warners released two soundtracks for the movie: one of Danny Elfman's orchestral score, and one of Prince's songs "inspired" by the movie).

The big climax, where the Joker shoots down Batman's high-tech Batplane with a looooong-barrelled pistol he pulls from his pants was another moment that totally undercut the dramatic tension of the scene.

None of this was helped by a series of inept or subpar performances. Robert Wuhl plays Allie Knox as the worst reporter ever, asking jokey questions in interviews designed more to show the other reporters how clever he is, rather than elicit actual information (for instance, after Grissom's death, another crime boss holds a press conference to announce that Grissom left him all his business interests--Knox's question: "He must have really liked you. Did you two do a lot of time together as kids or what?")

Kim Basinger's Vicki Vale is no better. Supposedly a smart, professional photographer recently returned from a combat zone (so good, in fact, that she gets credited on the cover of Time magazine--"Pics by Vicki Vale"), Basinger's Vale comes across as a total ditz. The Basinger Actor's Toolbox includes wearing glasses in scenes where you are supposed to be smart, wearing short skirts in scenes where you are supposed to be sexy (she's very good at this one, admittedly), and biting your lip to indicate thought.

Michael Keaton similarly portrays Bruce Wayne as an absent-minded bumbler, perpetually confused and socially inept.He takes Bruce Wayne through an amazing range of emotions, from smitten with lust...

to blinded by grief and rage.

Can you see a real difference between those two scenes? He just looks befuddled in both. Granted, the Sam Hamm screenplay included a lot of over-hyped language in the latter scene:

A moment later, it's all over but the screaming. VICKI emerges from the crowd and finds BRUCE slumped against the wall, nearly catatonic. She moves to touch him.

As if by reflex he reaches out and GRABS HER BY THE ARMS -- with a grip so strong it could crush bone. She GASPS, looks up -- and sees, in his traumatized EYES, a look so raw, so desperate, that it virtually defies comprehension.

Even the best actor would be hard pressed to do justice to that sort of overheated prose. But Keaton doesn't even seem to try. Plus he uses the same trick as Basinger, donning glasses in his "smart" scenes to make himself seem thoughtful. And all he has to do as Batman is stand still and let the costume cast dramatic shadows.

Which was another thing I didn't like about the movie. In the comics, Batman was a guy who had become obsessed with avenging the wrong done to his parents, so he had trained himself to the peak of mental and physical perfection. But in the movie, he's just this rich guy who has bought himself some superpowers. He has a suit of specially sculpted body armor, a ton of gadgets on his belt for every possible situation, a super car, a super airplane.

And while I kind of like the concept of Batsuit as body armor (although it makes Batman so immobile that he literally has to bend back at the waist to look up)...

I'm not a huge fan of the influence it had on other superhero adaptations. For instance, in The Flash TV series, he was given the same type of heavy, sculpted, virtually immobile body armor even though he's supposed to be a lithe runner.

Similarly, in the many excellent Batman cartoons, he often becomes too dependent on having the right gadget on hand at all times. I just watched "Superman/Batman: Public Enemies," and about halfway through, as Batman hit one villain with a handful of exploding batarangs followed by a bunch of pellet bombs, it struck me that he had been fighting a succession of villains for a good percentage of the film's running time, but seemed to show no sign of running low on whatever gadgets he needed, let alone running out. And that portrayal seems to originate from this movie's version of Batman, where instead of using an all-purpose batrope and batarang, he has a bunch of specialized winch guns for all sorts of situations. Batman always had gadgets, but never this many or this specific.

Likewise, although the Batmobile looks wicked cool in this movie, the 20-foot-long auto was unwieldy to drive, resulting in one of the s-l-o-w-e-s-t car chases ever put on film. It's not as noticeable on first viewing, but on repeat viewing, you realize that the Batmobile never gets above 30-35 miles per hour during the big chase against the cops and the Joker's goons. Not impressive for a jet engine on wheels. Batman would have done better to keep the crappy Mercury.

Worst of all, though (for me, anyway) was the miscasting of the Joker. Yeah, you read that right. Look, I think Jack Nicholson could have made a really good Joker if he had taken the role around the same time as he did "The Shining." Nicholson showed in that film that he could portray a convincingly homicidal psycho who was both menacing and funny at the same time. But by the time "Batman" rolled around, Nicholson seems to have gotten lazy. With every big scene, Nicholson seems to make a dramatic choice I disagree with, opting instead to play off the wacky Nicholson persona. He looks like he had great fun making the picture. I just wish I had nearly as much fun watching it.

Next week: Catwoman and Penguin

Dollhouse Winding Up

Watched the latest episode of Dollhouse yesterday. All I can say is...

Dude.

I'm sad that Dollhouse is ending after this season. But one perhaps-positive side-effect is that it has forced Joss Whedon to get his story moving. So many shows with an overall mystery arc pad and stretch that story unbearably, hoping to make it last for as long as the show needs to last.

The first halves of both seasons of Dollhouse had touches of that. In a sense, we needed that gradual build-up, especially in the first season, to ingrain the basic concepts in us and let us get to know and like the characters before it started hitting us with all the action later. The first half of this season slowed down some, and it's necessary to slow down sometimes. And maybe Whedon thought he had time to take it easy. Maybe he thought that the word-of-mouth buzz that saved the show late in the first season would let him continue for a good long while.

But it didn't happen. Fox announced they were canceling the show, and now Whedon is rushing through the second half of the season, trying to wrap up the story he meant to tell over a period of maybe years.

And in one sense, maybe it's going a little too fast. But in another sense, you wish other shows had felt the same type of urgency (I'm looking at you, Prison Break--yeah, don't try to hide in the back, you know I'm right). And I've got to admit, the ride is exhilarating.

Oh, yeah, and Chuck returns tonight. I'm afraid the shark, she has been jumped with this one, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Out of the Vault- Destroy!!

Sometimes, a publisher will put out comics that are extra-large, like folio size or whatever. I used to have a whole ton of them from Marvel and DC, including Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-man, Batman vs. the Incredible Hulk, The Mighty Thor (reprinting his battle with Mangog), Dick Tracy vs. Flattop, and reprints of Action #1 and Batman #1. The Big Guy and Rusty, the Boy Robot was another one. And in 1986, Eclipse Comics put out DESTROY!!

This one was so big, it barely fit in my scanner sideways. So if the cover scan at right looks a little goofy, it's because I had to paste it together from two scans and had trouble getting the colors to match properly.

DESTROY!! was written and drawn by Scott McCloud, who was riding high at the time on the success of Zot! Billed on the cover as "The Loudest Comic Book in the Universe," Destroy!! depicts a no-holds-barred battle between two absurdly powerful superheroes.

Red Basher is busting up Manhattan while shouting "DESTROY!!" at the top of his lungs when Captain Maximum arrives to put a stop to the violence. Turns out, the Captain and the Basher are friends, erstwhile teammates. Captain Maximum offers the hand of peace and friendship to Red Basher, and well...

So the fight is on.

That is, once Captain Maximum finally comes to rest a couple of pages later. The battle escalates in insane proportions, as Captain Maximum first tries to calm down, then beat down, the Red Basher. Finally, he just wants to shut him up.

Here you can get a sense of McCloud's excellent sense of timing, the ebbs and flows and quiet beats he manages to achieve even in the Loudest Comic Book in the Universe. On the one hand, five bucks for a 32-page black-and-white comic book story seems awfully steep. But then again, it was not only a fun story, but the book was the size of a place mat, so there was value for your money.

In an editorial on the inside back cover, McCloud talked about the genesis of the story, about the way that folks like Alan Moore and Frank Miller and Rick Vietch in The One had been raising the stakes like crazy.

It's like all of us--even the supposedly progressive ones--are still playing "King o' the Hill" with Jack Kirby. Just trying to do that one big explosion, that one powerhouse punch, that one bitchin' close-up that'll just be bigger an' badder than anything...HE ever drew.

And the funny thing is that, even though on first reading, you're like, "Wow, that was way, WAAAAY over the top," on second reading you're thinking, "Yeah, that was big, but imagine what would have happened if... (insert bigger thing here)." It's human nature.

J-Men Forever

In the mid- to late 80's on Friday and Saturday nights, USA Network used to have a show called Night Flight, a cornucopia of music videos, animated films, stand-up comedy and the occasional feature. It is remembered fondly by the people who used to watch it.

The coolest thing I ever saw on Night Flight was this clip from an old animated film in black-and-white, featuring the Devil conducting a bunch of dancing demons and street garbage that transformed into living creatures. It was amazing, both for its bizarre imagery and for the ambitious effects it attempted, like moving camera and motion blur, decades before ILM made such a big deal out of their Go-Motion process in "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Dragonslayer."

I finally tracked it down a few years ago on the Internet. The clip was from "The Mascot," a 1934 Russian film animated by Ladislaw Starewicz. Here's the bit I saw (though it was edited a bit to be faster-paced, if I remember correctly):



But you see, the point is, I tried to order the DVD of this off of Amazon using a gift card I got for Christmas, but they were out of stock, so I settled for the second best thing I ever saw on Night Flight, but hadn't seen since.

"J-Men Forever."

Basically, a couple of guys from a comedy group called Firesign Theater edited together a bunch of clips from Republic Serials like "King of the Rocketmen" and "Captain Marvel," then dubbed in a bunch of funny dialogue on top of it, with help from DJ Machine Gun Kelly. The basic plot is that the King of the Moon, a mad villain known as Lightning Bug, tries to conquer Earth using sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, and only the heroic yet hapless J-Men can stop him. It's fast-paced and funny, with a pun in virtually every line. Someone's posted it on YouTube, but I can't embed it, so go here and watch a bit.

It hasn't aged tremendously well, just because drug humor isn't the comedy gold it seemed to be in the 70's and 80's. It seemed a lot funnier when I was 23. But I enjoyed seeing it again.

Kick-Ass

So I found this Youtube trailer (it's a Red Band trailer, which means adult content--the language is definitely NSFW), and my jaw dropped. It's for a movie called "Kick-Ass," and it's apparently based on a comic book by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr. The trailer features a foul-mouthed teenager named Hit-Girl killing a bunch of bad guys in stylized, hyper-violent ways. Oh, and a brief appearance by Nicolas Cage in yet another comic book adaptation.

But what really got my attention was that the music they use in the trailer is the "Banana Splits Theme" by 80's L.A. punk band, The Dickies. I love The Dickies. I just wish somebody outside of L.A. had ever heard of them.

Oh, and apparently Hit-Girl isn't the real star of the movie. The official trailer is here.

Movie Monday - Batman, 1989

It is hard to imagine now with just how much eagerness and trepidation fans were looking forward to Tim Burton's 1989 feature adaptation of "Batman."

You have to understand, most fans of Batman had never, ever seen the character they loved on screen. The last live-action version had been the Adam West Batman from the 1960's, a campy take on the character inspired by the 1940's serials and the comics of the 50's and early 60's. Since that series had been cancelled, Batman had appeared with Robin on The New Scooby Doo Movies a couple of times, been a regular player (with Robin) on Super Friends, had another brief animated series with Robin (voiced by Adam West and Burt Ward) from Filmation Studios, and appeared on a couple of live-action TV specials with Robin, played by Adam West and Burt Ward.

But the Batman younger fans had been reading about for almost two decades was a different, darker character. Robin had been sent off to college in 1969, and since then, Batman had been adventuring solo in his own books, or with other adult heroes in his team-up books. The Batman being portrayed on television in the 70's and 80's was an older, obsolete Batman; hell, for the mid-70's Filmation series, they even reached back to 50's comics to pluck Bat-Mite from obscurity for comic relief.

And especially since Frank Miller had virtually rebooted the character with his miniseries, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, fans had been anxious to see Batman "done right."

So when a screenplay by a guy named Sam Hamm started making the rounds among fans in the mid-80's, people got excited. Hamm's screenplay was a darker, noirish take on the character, heavily influenced by Miller's first miniseries as well as Miller's Batman: Year One storyline. Hamm portrayed a dark Gotham of crime and corruption, with the Joker portrayed as the psycho killer he was originally, and not the kid-friendly Clown Prince of Crime he later morphed into.

So people were jazzed by Hamm's screenplay. But on the other hand, Hollywood was known for taking beloved characters and fucking them up royally. And it didn't make people any more confident when they learned that the director was the guy who did "Beetlejuice," and before that, a movie starring this guy:

Not only that, but the director had cast Michael Keaton as Batman/Bruce Wayne. Michael Keaton was best known for his starring roles as Beetlejuice and Mr. Mom. "Oh no," we said over our new comics every week, "they're going to do Batman as a comedy again."

But the studio insisted that this Batman would be played straight, and pointed at Keaton's role as a hockey player in the romantic comedy "Touch and Go" as proof that he could handle the physicality, and at his dramatic role in "Clean and Sober" as proof that he had the dramatic chops the role needed. Plus, hadn't Moonlighting funnyman Bruce Willis just stunned everyone with his amazing breakout turn as an action hero in "Die Hard?"

And then we heard that the Joker would be played by this guy...

And we got jazzed again. "How perfect," we thought.

And when the trailer came out, showing us the dark costume bursting in through a skylight and the Batmobile with freaking machine guns on it and Keaton growling, "I'm Batman," we were sold.

And then the movie came out and did insanely huge business, so Warner's gamble payed off. But I have to admit, I was disappointed with the movie at the time, and it hasn't aged all that well.

It starts well, though. The movie grabbed us fans by the balls with the very first shots of Gotham City. I mean, to go from that 60's TV series backlot to this:

You could hear the collective "whoa" from the audience. A family of tourists is leaving the theater and trying to find their way back to the hotel. Dad leads them through an alley, where they are robbed by a couple of gunmen. Mom screams, and up on a tall building, a dark figure in a cape is listening.

As the thugs count their loot, they discuss rumors of a giant bat that has supposedly killed some of their fellow street criminals. As one of the thugs dismisses the rumors as mere hearsay, we see this behind him:

Suddenly, they are attacked by The Bat! They pull out guns and shoot the apparition. He falls, but immediately gets back up and kicks one of them through a door. He trips up the other one with a rope attached to a bat-shaped boomerang, then dangles the thug over the edge of the roof. "Who are you?" the thug cries.

"I'm Batman." Then he jumps off the roof and disappears.

In only a few minutes, we've established that this is a darker, more dangerous world, and a darker, more dangerous Batman living in it. And long-time comics readers sighed in relief. This was Batman done right.

And as ridiculous as the movie got later, that first impression was strong enough, along with a succession of visually breathtaking moments, to change the equations on everything you ever thought about Batman movies.

Because before the movie was released, it was sometimes hard to imagine a movie without any of the basic touchstones from the 1960's series. Even if they got rid of the comedy and the main actors, would they also replace the perfect Batmobile with something lame? Would they replace the theme song? And the answers, of course, were yes and yes, and we ended up not missing them. The new Batmobile was just as cool in its own way as the Barris-customized 60's version...

Like a jet engine with tires bolted on. And Danny Elfman's bombastic, martial score was perfect for the movie's darker tone, with no hint of the jazzy guitar theme from TV.

In fact, pretty much the only thing that carried over from the 60's TV version was this:

So the plotline in a nutshell:

Reporter Alex Knox and photographer Vicki Vale (played by Robert Wuhl and Kim Basinger) team up to investigate the mysterious reports of the Batman.

During their investigation, they meet millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton). Vicki then goes on a date with Bruce and sleeps with him that same night (Batman got busy!), but the next day, he lies and tells her he's too busy to see her again.

Meanwhile, mob enforcer Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson) has been sleeping with his boss's wife or mistress or somebody. Napier is a vain and violent man...

Who is sent by Boss Grissom (Jack Palance) to eliminate incriminating evidence at the offices of Axis Chemical, one of Grissom's front companies. What Napier doesn't know is that Grissom has been tipped off to Napier's cheatin' ways by corrupt cop Eckhardt...

Recognize him? Let's try it with a different hat:

Yes, it's Porkins (William Hootkins). Anyway, the chemical plant job is a set-up planned by Grissom to get Napier killed. Both the cops and Batman show up at the chemical factory and there's a big set-to. Napier is shot through the face (cheek to cheek) by a ricocheting bullet, then falls into a vat of chemicals. Everyone assumes he's dead. But between the wound and the chemicals and the botched surgery by a back-alley butcher, Napier ends up with this familiar visage:

Napier, now the Joker, kills off Grissom and the other crime bosses in town to consolidate his power. Then as he descends into madness, he begins a reign of terror. He contaminates cosmetics with a special nerve toxin that causes people to die with their facial muscles drawn into a tight smile (in the movie, it's called Smilex). Batman manages to foil that plot, rescuing Vicki Vale in the process.

Eventually, Bruce and Vicki fall in love, and she discovers the secret of his dual identities. But before they can enter their new relationship, Batman must stop the Joker from poisoning the entire city at a 200th anniversary gala.

Although there are a lot of familiar names and faces in the film, the real star of "Batman" was a guy moviegoing audiences had never heard of: Anton Furst. He was the art director who designed the retro, grit-rust-and-rivets look of Gotham City, as well as the new Batmobile and Batplane, which gave fans a little wet spot in their pants when this image appeared on screen:

Along with costume designer Bob Ringwood and director of photography Roger Pratt, who gave us dramatic images of Batman that almost look as if Alex Ross painted them.

Of course, it helps that the suit is sculpted rather than sewn, so for the first time on screen, you see a comic book character displaying the same extreme hypermuscularity you see on the comics pages.

There were also scenes that seemed drawn directly from the comics themselves, such as this shot of falling pearls during Bruce's flashback to his parents' deaths...

That is an homage, shall we say, to this moment from Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.

BTW, that's a brilliant piece of silent storytelling there by Miller, since it's obvious that the reason the string of pearls breaks is the recoil of the pistol blowing Mom's head off. And the idea that Bruce would fixate on the memory of the pearls rather than the sight of his mother's head coming apart... It feels just right.

So with all this neat stuff in the movie, what's not to like?

Well, basically, once you get past the opening 15 minutes or so, the progressively sillier tone and the performances. Oh, most especially the performances.

But we'll talk more about that next week.

Vault Extra - Death Duel With the Destroyers

So I mentioned yesterday that the Destroyers, super-powered henchmen of Saker who were the Elementals' first opponents, had originally appeared in a RPG supplement published two years before the comic book. This is that supplement (and I hope you appreciate this, because I had to dig through about ten boxes before I figured out where I had these stored).

"Death Duel With the Destroyers" was the first scenario for the Villains and Vigilantes role-playing game published by Fantasy Games Unlimited (independent scenario publisher Judges Guild had earlier published a scenario titled "Break-In at Three Kilometer Island" - I owned it back in the day, but it is long since lost - it wasn't very good, anyway).

And right here, you can see one reason why I preferred V&V to Champions early on. The production values on V&V products were pretty good, and never better than this awesome cover by Willingham. You get a real sense of action and adventure here, and the color illustration is gorgeous, especially compared to some other companies' products at the time. Nowadays, all the companies have amazing artists, but back then, the companies were so small and paid so little that they were lucky to get even halfway decent illustrations on their products.

The adventure itself is fairly standard: a madman named Doctor Apocalypse demands that Manhattan be deeded to him, and sends first a mysterious storm, then a gigantic robot to prove that his demands are serious. Defeating the robot leads the players to the Destroyers' headquarters.

The Destroyers themselves are pretty much the same in both supplement and comic. The members have pretty much the same powers and abilities, and similar appearances. Slight differences in costume and background information are to be expected. The biggest difference is that the comics' Chrysalis is named The Iron Maiden in the scenario. I'm sure it was changed to avoid infringement suits of some kind.

One of the coolest things about the scenario is that not only do you get game descriptions of their powers and personalities, but each character also gets a little comics page devoted to them. Annihilator battles Microgirl. The Iron Maiden dons her armor. Electrocutioner zaps The Raven (who I think was Bill Willingham's personal character in his game campaign, so in a sense, it was like he was zapping himself).

And here was where I discovered something I'd forgotten (or never noticed).

On the page featuring Ratman and Behemoth, they are shown having just defeated a heroine named Morningstar, which ended up being the name of the leader of the Elementals. So even though the scene in question doesn't appear in the Elementals comic book, I like to think that game-buyers like myself got an odd little preview of the Elementals comic two years before its publication.

The sequel adventure published later that year was "The Island of Doctor Apocalypse." And though the not-so-good doctor bears little physical or background resemblance to Saker from the comics, the characters do share a common source for their powers--otherwordly demons whom they have subjugated in order to siphon power from them.

So there you have it: the Secret Origin of the Destroyers from Elementals. I hope you enjoyed it.

Oh, and all that digging through boxes has unearthed some really unusual stuff, so the next few weeks' worth of Vaults should be fun. See you then.

Out of the Vault- Elementals

I know I had issue #1 of this back in the day, but it seems to have come up missing. There have been times when I have gotten desperate enough for cash to sell off some pieces, so it may have been sold. That makes me sad. So the cover image here is from issue #2.

Elementals #1 was published by Comico in 1984. The Elementals were four people who had died in unrelated accidents at the same time and were then brought back to life by the elemental powers of the earth to protect the natural order from an impending threat to all existence. They were Morningstar (fire), Vortex (air), Fathom (water) and Monolith (earth). The book was pencilled and written by Bill Willingham, who had spent most of his career up to that time doing illustrations for game companies, including some artwork for Dungeons and Dragons. In 1982, he wrote and illustrated an adventure module for the Villains and Vigilantes game titled "Death Duel with the Destroyers." This was followed up by a sequel adventure, "The Island of Doctor Apocalypse."

And in 1984, the Elementals got their own book (they had appeared once before as a back-up feature in Justice Machine before Texas Comics went out of business), in which they faced off with (guess who?) the Destroyers. They lost that first battle and were then taken off to the island of Doctor... Saker, an immortal sorcerer who has been gathering supernatural energy for two thousand years and plans to release it in the form of a devastating weapon called the Shadowspear. The opening arc spanned five issues, in which the Elementals learned just how powerful they were and just how difficult their job was likely to be.

Unlike a lot of the mid-80's independent comics I've featured here, Elementals was a hit from the first issue, mainly due to Willingham's dynamic and detailed art. Willingham's style was distinctively his own, although it was in some ways similar to Michael Golden's. And apparently like Michael Golden, Willingham had trouble meeting deadlines. Guest pencillers were a frequent feature of the book.

But Elementals was also interesting from a story standpoint, because it was a superhero book, but a totally unique one. I don't know if any other American comic book combined such disparate elements as central features of their storyline.

On the one hand, Elementals was a book that took place in the more-or-less "real" world, so superpowered violence was often deadly, and bloodily so. The violence and its consequences were often depicted with a realism not seen in other superhero comics. For instance, the infamous "vomit page" from issue 3, in which one of Saker's soldiers yaks up her lunch after seeing Vortex's mutilated body, described in clinical detail by her companion (I am proud to have the original artwork for this page gracing my wall at this moment, BTW).

In another issue, Vortex and Fathom attempt to quell a fire in a skyscraper, only to run into the pesky problems of physics, which cause their efforts to make things worse rather than better. The Elementals also encountered problems of fame and politics and love, depicted more realistically than the histrionic melodrama that was Marvel's usual fare.

But on the other hand, the powers of all the super-powered characters were supernatural in origin. Not only that, but all the characters with powers had died and been resurrected, making this perhaps the first super-zombie book ever. It also provided a handy explanation for why characters could be killed and yet return later. Death for a superhero is not just impermanent, but a prerequisite.

And one thing that made the depiction of the supernatural stand out in Elementals was the distinctly Christian nature of it. Not that Willingham's book was a Christian tract; exactly the opposite. Willingham's antipathy to Christianity was a central feature, from Saker's origin story (Saker was a thinly-disguised Lazarus, raised by a vain, demon-sired Jesus for the sake of his own vanity) to the multiple depictions of TV preachers as hypocritical villains. Saker's reference to himself as the "Prince of the power of the air" is a quote from Ephesians 2:2, which is usually interpreted as referring to Satan.

I eventually stopped reading after 22 issues. The first five-issue story arc had been fascinating, but then the series devolved into a succession of one and two-issue stories, some of which were excellent and some less so. But eventually the inconsistency and bitter tone of many of the stories got to me (along with the frequent guest artists who just didn't have the same flair with the characters as Willingham did). When Willingham in issue #22 introduced the Rapture, a Christian supervillain team who took their code-names from Bible verses, I decided enough was enough and quit.

That was in 1988. The series continued, first under Willingham and then under publisher Andrew Rev, who purchased the rights from Willingham, for another 8 years. Not a bad run for a comic inspired by an RPG supplement.

Staking 2009 In the Heart

It's funny to me just how many people hated this year. I've mentioned before that I attended a non-Thanksgiving dinner this year themed "Thanks for Nothing" by some friends who've all had bad years. But I also saw that one of my fake Facebook game-friends had posted pictures from their "Unthanksgiving" get-together, as well. And I happened to hear Glenn Beck on the radio a while back, talking about what an awful year it has been. And today, I saw some news article or other where they were talking about people who will not be sorry to see 2009 in their rear-view mirrors and hope that 2010 starts on a more hopeful note than 2009 ('more hopeful note?'--remember that when 2009 started we were less than a month away from the coronation of B.O. the First, signalling the start of a new era when the Earth would cool and the oceans would stop rising, we would no longer have to worry about mortgages or jobs or health care, everyone in the world would be America's friend, bird and beast and flower would be one with man and death but a dream--how much more hopeful could could people be?).

Then again, my wife had a wonderful year (and I hate to think how much her thriving may be a result of my leaving).

As for me: I started the year employed but desperately unhappy in my job. I was launching a new webcomic and hopeful about that, but not so much about anything else. I spent much of the year broke and unemployed, and end it underemployed, in debt and barely hanging on financially.

But the year ends with hopeful signs. Barring unforeseen disaster, I should be starting a new job in late January with the potential to be earning more in a year than I was a year ago, which can help me resolve my debt problems. I'm on the verge of finishing and submitting a new novel. Several folks who were more in the line of acquaintances last year are friends now. 2010 looks like it could be a much better year than 2009, and not just in the "How could it be any worse?" sense.

So whether you had a good year or a bad one, here's hoping that we all*, each of us, will see that better future we hope for come to pass.

(ETA: Except for those rat bastards who cheated me--they can suffer and die for all I care)

Movie Monday - Batman, 1966

Not so much detail in this one, but lots of pics.

So in 1966, a TV series debuted on ABC featuring Adam West as Batman, with Burt Ward as Robin. Featuring a campy, tongue-in-cheek tone, energetic performances by a host of celebrity guests as villains, and a kick-ass mind-worm of a theme song, the show was an instant hit. And while the show was in summer hiatus after its first season, they filmed a quickie theatrical feature with the same cast.

According to Adam West on the DVD commentary, they had actually intended to make the movie first as a way to sell the series (many series of the 60' and 70's started life as TV movies--The Six Million Dollar Man, for one). But the TV series sold without the movie. So the movie was filmed the next summer, both to cash in on the series's popularity here in the U.S. and to help sell the series in syndication overseas.

The movie opens with Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson racing to stately Wayne Manor in answer to a distress call. Alfred the butler and Aunt Harriet (a new comedy relief character invented for the TV series) wave at the boys as they dash into the house. That's all we see of Aunt Harriet in the entire film.

Bruce and Dick perform the ritual so familiar to viewers of the TV series--flipping up the head on the bust of Shakespeare to press the button that opens the secret panel to the Batcave. No chintzy grandfather clock entrance here.

The Batcave is new and improved, a big set with lots of colorful scientific gadgets. Yes, the silly labels are present on everything, but look past that and you see that this is a hell of a set. And right in the center...

YES! Finally! The Batmobile!

And what a Batmobile. George Barris really outdid himself on this car. Unless you're a real hard-core fan, you probably can't name more than five cars Barris customized (off the top of my head, I can name six, but only because I watched Fireball 500 recently), but this one will always top the list.

But since this was a movie, and therefore required to be bigger in scope than the TV show, they decided to add some new elements. We see the first new element within the first five minutes, as Batman and Robin race to the airport to board the Batcopter.

It's not really all that impressive; it was simply an old Bell 47 helicopter with a Bat-paint job and a couple of wings attached (according to this website, the wings made the thing dangerous to fly, but I gotta say they looked pretty cool).

Batman and Robin take the chopper out to sea, where Batman climbs down a rope ladder and attempts to drop onto the deck of Commodore Schmidlap's yacht. But the yacht disappears (!) and Batman is dunked into the ocean, only to emerge with a pissing rubber shark attached to his leg!

And this is where you can separate the audiences for this film. For some folks, the rubber shark is a perfect piece of camp--obviously, laughably, intentionally fake. And given how ridiculous the entire Batman concept is, the shark simply fits right in. For others, for the true fans, the shark is a humiliating reminder that this movie is not laughing with Batman (as if Batman ever laughs), but laughing at him.

So Batman escapes the shark before it explodes (yes, it's an exploding shark), and soon Batman and Robin are consulting with Commissioner Gordon and Chief O-Hara (another character added just for the series) about who may be behind the deathtrap. They discover that not one, but four of Batman's arch-enemies are currently at large.

And finally, we get to see adversaries who originated in the comics--the Penguin, the Riddler, Catwoman, and the Joker. But which one is behind the plot?

Batman figures out from studying photos Robin took of the disappearing yacht that it was actually a sophisticated projection apparently originating from a buoy. So he and Robin take the Batboat (a really cool speedboat custom-made by Glastron) out to the buoy to investigate.

Unfortunately, they are pinned to the buoy by a powerful electromagnet, while Penguin fires torpedos at them from his submarine, a contraption that manages to be simultaneously goofy and super-cool.


The Caped Crusaders barely manage to escape with their lives, and in conference with Gordon and O'Hara, divine that their adversaries are not one, not two, but all four supervillains, leading Gordon to wax all Lovecraftian on us: "The sum of the angles of that rectangle is too monstrous to contemplate!"

Preach it, brother.

Meanwhile, the villains devise a plan to kill Batman so he can't foil their ultimate plot, which involves a mysterious device invented by Commodore Schmidlap of Big Ben Distilleries (the owner of the missing yacht), whom they have kidnapped. Catwoman assumes the guise of beautiful Russian reporter Miss Kitka and asks for an interview with Bruce Wayne. The plan is to kidnap Wayne and use him as bait in a trap for Batman.

So Bruce Wayne takes Kitka out on the town, where we finally get to see the millionaire playboy actually acting like a millionaire playboy...

Adam West cuts a suave figure in a tux, and Lee Meriwether is fucking gorgeous in that dress.

Meanwhile, Robin and Alfred (in cunning disguise) follow along in the Batmobile, having been alerted to a threat to Miss Kitka by a Riddler riddle.

But it is all for naught. The villains capture Bruce and spirit him away on flying umbrellas.

Whenever I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, this is the image I think of during that early broom scene. The kidnap enables screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr. and director Leslie H. Martinson to insert a dirty joke.

I'd like to seize Lee Meriwether's brazen snatch.

Of course, the plot fails to lure Batman into a trap, but Bruce is able to escape on his own. He returns soon after as Batman to rescue the lovely Miss Kitka, only to discover that she is gone and a bomb has been left in her place.

And not just any bomb, but the most old-fashioned of cartoon bombs, a big black ball with a hissing fuse.

This sequence is another Rorschach test for fans. If you hate funny Batman, you loathe this sequence just because it is so intentionally funny. If you don't mind funny Batman, you love this sequence, because it is brilliantly constructed. Batman frantically tries to dispose of the bomb, but is sequentially foiled by hippies, gluttonous fat twins, Salvation Army band, woman with baby carriage, nuns, lovers and even ducks. Finally Batman can take no more and busts out with, "Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb!"

The smoke has barely cleared when Penguin appears, claiming to be Commodore Schmidlap. Penguin has used Schmidlap's invention, an instant dehydrator, to convert several thugs to powdered form, which he has secreted upon his person. He convinces Batman and Robin to take him back to the Batcave, where he rehydrates the thugs and sics them on the Dynamic Duo. Unfortunately, he uses unstable heavy water, so it's a short fight as the thugs disintegrate on contact. Ick.

Batman and Robin decide to try the reverse of Penguin's plan. They allow Penguin to gas them and steal the Batmobile (once they've gotten safely out of the Batcave, of course) in order to track him to his hideout. This plan involves them riding another new gadget, the Batcycle. Oh, the toys.

They switch to the Batcopter, which is knocked out of the sky by one of Riddler's skywriting Polaris missiles. Luckily, they survive the crash, and the riddle lets them know where the villains will strike next: the United World headquarters! They race there, but are too late. The villains have dehydrated the members of the security council and made off with them, demanding a huge ransom for the return of the world's top diplomats.

Brilliant plan, right? Except for the part where Batman and Robin track down Penguin's sub and force it to the surface with Bat-depth charges, leading to one of the series's signature BAM! POW! fights on the deck of the sub. The bad guys are rounded up and Batman's heart is broken when he discovers that Miss Kitka is actually his mortal enemy, Catwoman.

There's a goofy final sequence where they have to separate out the spilled diplo-powders into their separate diplomats, and then it's over.

So that's the movie. And a lot of younger fans not only think of the Adam West Batman as the first real live-action Batman, but they also hate him because he's so campy and unserious. And it's true: not only are the movie and series terribly silly, but their campiness was probably a huge influence on Joel Schumacher's approach to the later movies, which I'll discuss in a few weeks. So in their minds, the 60's Batman doubly sucks: it's not only a cheap and campy slap at the GREATEST COMIC BOOK CHARACTER OF ALL TIME, but it also reached out from beyond the grave over twenty years later to kill the first good movie series bearing the character's name.

But here's the deal: yes, it's silly and campy and over-the-top, and yes, the 60's television production values pale in comparison to modern big-budget treatments. But the series and movie are pretty good on their own terms. They were intended as comedy and they succeed as such.

Look past the violence done to the Batman legend and you see a ton of talent on display here. The theme song by Neal Hefti is instantly memorable and hummable, and Nelson Riddle's soundtrack music fits the action perfectly. The scripts at their best are witty and fun. The Batmobile has become a modern icon. Adam West and Burt Ward, smarmy as they may be in real life, play their parts with conviction, and in West's case, with brilliant comic timing. And the costumes looked pretty darn good, very true to their comic book counterparts at the time.

The villains' performances are memorable, too. Say what you will about the greasepaint over Cesar Romero's mustache, but he has great fun as the Joker. Frank Gorshin is brilliantly over-the-top as the Riddler. Burgess Meredith's quacking, waddling performance as Penguin took a nothing-burger of a comic book villain and turned him into a central part of the Batman Rogues Gallery. I'm sad that Julie Newmar didn't make it into the movie as Catwoman, but Lee Meriwether did an excellent job.

The point is, yes, if the Batman series hadn't existed, those awful Schumacher films wouldn't have been made the way they were. But if the Batman series hadn't existed, those Tim Burton films probably wouldn't have been made, either. Batman was a reasonably popular comic book character in his day, but he wasn't an instantly recognizable pop culture icon until the series made him that. And it was that iconic status that got Warner Brothers to put up the huge bucks it cost to make the Burton film I'll talk about next week.

So in a sense, the Batman TV series of the 60's was the true genesis of Batman's pop culture status, and the inferior serials can be forgotten, right?

No. Because if you think about the way the TV series was structured--two episodes a week, the first episode ending on a cliffhanger, with a breathless narrator telling us to tune in for the next thrilling episode--then you realize what inspired the creators of the series. William Dozier, the producer and creator of the TV series, was inspired not by his love of the comic books, but by viewing the old serials and realizing how outrageously silly and laughable they were. His brainstorm was to turn that unintentional hilarity into intentional comedy. And he did an excellent job of it.

So it's a continuum. Batman serials inspire Batman TV series which inspires Batman movies. As we continue to progress down the timeline, we'll see the same elements cropping up over and over again, as each new version both continues elements from the previous version and adds new things as well.

Next week: Mr. Mom versus Jake Gittes.