Random Sunday Notes

It's the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Mentioned without editorial comment, simply that it's worth remembering. I don't always make it a point to post this, but I probably should.

Had my company Christmas party last night. In keeping with the economic events of the past few months, it was less lavish than previous years, and subsequently, people didn't stay as long. So I got home earlier than I'd planned, poured myself a drink and watched "Daredevil," of all things. Don't want to discuss it too extensively right now, because I plan to start blogging about movies pretty regularly soon, and I plan to concentrate, at least at first, on comic adaptations, so I want to keep that round in the chamber until then. Suffice to say that it's a movie that ages less well with each viewing.

Did something I haven't done in over a year on Friday. I bought a new comic book. Besides delving into the Vault, I've been reading through the archives of several good comics blogs lately and just got the itch. I'll write about the comic I bought tomorrow or Tuesday. But in the meantime, if you've got time to kill, look at Gone & Forgotten, Dial B for Blog and Slay, Monstrobot of the Deep!

Out of the Vault - Plop!

In mid-1973, DC launched a new title, an experimental book combining humor and horror. Titled Plop!, it billed itself as "The Magazine of Weird Humor." (Please excuse the quality of the scans; the comics are old and yellowed, and the printing quality wasn't the best to start with. I tried to clean them up as well as I could. And remember, you can click on any image to see a larger version)

See the thing about horror comics in the 70's was, they weren't. Horror, I mean. They tried, lord, they tried. While Marvel was trying the Monster-as-Superhero route with mixed success, DC continued to publish traditional horror anthologies like House of Mystery, House of Secrets and The Witching Hour. However, they were heavily restricted by the Comics Code Authority, so much so that they couldn't even use the word "horror" in the titles. So although they copied the tried-and-true format of EC comics, with creepy hosts giving pun-filled ironic introductions to stories of the macabre (a format lifted by EC from radio shows such as Inner Sanctum Mysteries and The Hermit's Cave), the stories themselves rarely managed even a single goosebump. They were more often little morality plays, where a bad character receives his just desserts in an ironic twist, and usually more funny than scary.

So in 1973, DC apparently decided to just go with the humor whole hog and created Plop!, a combination of their regular horror mags with early Mad comics. Above you can see the cover of the first issue, typical of most of the run--a bizarre random Basil Wolverton character (who has nothing to do with the inside of the book) surrounded by Sergio Aragones drawings.

The insides were just as much of a hodge-podge. Each issue had a framing sequence drawn by Aragones, featuring the hosts of DC's horror comics--Cain from House of Mystery, his brother Abel from House of Secrets, and one of the witches from The Witching Hour. The three would try to outdo each other in telling outrageous stories of things that go "plop" (that moment when everything goes down the tubes). There were no ads. Instead, between the framing pages and the four- and five-page stories would be pages of single-panel gag cartoons around subjects like monsters and prison.

Most of the gags were corny, but some of the stories were fun. Like "The Escape" in issue one, an Aragones story in which a prisoner escapes from a dungeon with the help of an army of trained rats. Unfortunately, when he and the rats escape to the outside world, they bring the Plague with them. D'oh! I also liked this Aragones story from issue 10, which has fun with the Shazam problem, namely, if saying "Shazam!" makes Captain Marvel super, why don't the bad guys do it too?



As corny as the book was, though, it was a Who's Who of big comics names. Comics legend Wally Wood did a few covers. Kurt Schaffenberger and Murphy Anderson came over to do some humorous comics featuring DC's superheroes,including this further illustration that Superman is, indeed, a dick, (although frankly Lois was asking for it).

The biggest coup of all, though, was landing Berni Wrightson, who had become a certifiable star for his work on Swamp Thing. Wrightson did stories for at least the first two issues, but the one that will be remembered for all time, the one that made Plop! an early success (successful enough to run for 24 issues, anyway), the one that will always give it a place in my heart, is "The Gourmet."

Written by Steve Skeates, illustrated by Wrightson, and winner of the Shazam Award for Best Humor Story of 1973, "The Gourmet" tells the story of Vernon Glute. Insanely rich and grotesquely fat, Glute spends his days at his dining room table eating the world's finest delicacies, including his personal favorite, frogs' legs. And Glute demands they be fresh, the fresher the better, so fresh that he has live frogs shipped to his kitchen so they can be butchered on the spot.

Then one day, the frogs have their revenge...



PLOP! heh heh

Jackie Chan Hates Glass

Pawing through the $5 DVDs at Wal-Mart, I found a special collector's edition of "Police Story" starring Jackie Chan. I had seen it many times in its dubbed version as "Jackie Chan's Police Force," but the Chinese version on the new DVD is complete with scenes cut from the American release, as well as some behind the scenes features. If you're not familiar with it, you should hunt it down and watch it. This was one of the films that rejuvenated his career after his unfortunate first foray into American filmmaking, and one whose influence profoundly affected Chinese and American action movies in general.

The basic story is pretty simple. Jackie is a cop named Chan who captures a big drug boss during a raid gone wrong. He tries to convince the boss's secretary to testify against him, but when she learns he has deceived her, she leaves him with nothing but a taped testimony that ends up getting him laughed out of court. The kingpin goes free, but lures Chan into a trap and frames him for the murder of a fellow cop. Meanwhile, the secretary decides to turn on her boss for real, and Chan must save her life when the thugs try to keep her from escaping with evidence that can put their boss away for life.

By American standards, the writing and pacing are somewhat weak. But Jackie Chan himself is an amazing performer, and this movie is full to bursting with incredible stunts and action sequences, from the destruction of the shanty town to Jackie hanging from a double-decker bus by an umbrella to a brutal climactic fight in a huge department store.

If you've seen "Tango and Cash," you've seen one of this movie's signature stunts--the semi stopping short and flinging two thugs through its windshield (in "Police Story," it's a bus and it's three guys coming through the windshields). If you've seen "Rapid Fire" starring Brandon Lee, you've seen several of this movie's stunts "homaged." Likewise, a major sequence in "Bad Boys II" is lifted from this film.

One thing that stands out to me every time I watch this picture is how much glass gets broken in it. Jackie Chan must have had a rich uncle die or something and leave him a fortune in stunt glass, because if there's glass in this movie, someone's head is going through it. In the opening sequence, guys fly through winshields. When Jackie is attacked while driving the secretary to his apartment, both the car he's in and the car that attacks have windshields and windows broken. In a fight in an apartment, one guy is thrown through a window, another smashed through a glass table. In the final department store fight, people are constantly being thrown into showcases. At one point, a bad guy ducks two punches from Jackie that very precisely target two framed pictures on the wall, breaking their glass. In the final moments of the film, Jackie punches a henchman in the eyeglasses, breaking the lenses, knocks another guy through some glass shelves then throws the big boss through a display case. It should be titled "Jackie Chan Hates Glass," seriously.

Final trivial notes: even if you haven't seen this film, you may have seen its sequels without knowing it. "Police Story 3," co-starring Michelle Yeoh, was released in the U.S. as "Supercop," and Police Story 4 was released here as "Jackie Chan's First Strike."

Seriously, if you have five bucks to spare, go to Wal-Mart and grab this.

A Heroes Huh?

I just noticed that last post was my 400th. Woo-hoo. However, seeing as how my first post was a dummy placeholder to stash the graphics I was using on the blog, this is more properly my 400th post. So yay.

Back when I was buying comics regularly, the way I decided to drop a title from my list was if I noticed that I was regularly pushing that title to the bottom of my reading stack. If I got to the bottom of the stack and said, "Oh crap, I've still got to read Flash," I knew I was pretty much done with that title (then again, simple inertia kept me reading Flash for probably two years past when I really should have stopped).

I''m noticing the same thing with Hulu, now. When I log onto Hulu to watch my slate of Monday shows, I'm like, "Heroes? Nah, later. Terminator? Yeah, but Chuck first, then Terminator, then Heroes and My Own Worst Enemy if I still have time."

I felt bad for Jeph Loeb when I learned he'd been fired from Heroes, but frankly, even though this season is better than last, it's still disappointing. That's the risk you run with series that have a central mystery. If the mystery disappoints as it is revealed, the entire series deflates, especially if you haven't managed to craft characters the viewer wants to stick with for the long haul.

I can count the characters I really like watching on one hand (Hiro, Claire and HRG), with some others I'm fairly interested in (Daphne and Elle). Some characters I used to like have turned ridiculous and annoying (Nathan and Suresh), and I was tired of Sylar by the end of Season 1.

But the thing that's got me writing about Heroes now is the lastest Hiro subplot. Hiro's brain has been regressed to age 10, and his only way of finding out what's been going on in the last few months has been to read issues of 9th Wonders, the prophetic comic book drawn by the late Mystery Sock.

We first learned that the comic was prophetic in episode 2 of season 1. Hiro uses that issue to guide him for several episodes, then in episode 19, we see Isaac shipping the "last" issue to the printers via bike messenger, which it appears never gets published, because whenever characters reference the story in the future, they're looking at unpublished proofs, not the actual issue in question. And that issue tells how Hiro travels to the future, then comes back and stabs Sylar in the final episode of Season one.

But now, ten and eleven episodes into Season Freaking Three, 9th Wonders is still being published, still depicting events contemporaneous with the show's timeline. Who has taken up the mantle of prophetic cartoonist? Oh, these are issues that Isaac drew before he died, only now the inventory has finally run out. But there is a rumor that there is one final story out there, in a sketchbook Isaac gave away just before he died.

Remember when I was complaining about "Bolt" and moviemakers purposely getting their own job wrong for story convenience? That goes double for this show, with an exec producer who is a working comics professional resorting to this kind of ridiculous retcon to write characters out of a fix. Seriously, as much as I love Hiro, I wouldn't cry if they killed him off, along with Peter and Angela and Poppa Petrelli and Sylar and any-fucking-body else who can time-travel/predict the future. It was cool for a season, but now it's seriously hurting the show. We're all getting sick of that shit. Either dump the prophecies, or at least stop making the show completely revolve around them.

Big Audio Wednesday - More Doctor Doom

So I'm coming home from work, and as I come down the exit ramp, ahead of me I see a low-slung sports car with a naggingly familiar silhouette. Low and wide, it looks sort of like a Ferrari, only with two dark rectangular attachments on either side and something slender and white sticking up from the center. "No way," I thought, but as I got closer, turns out I was right.

It was a DeLorean, fully tricked out as a replica of Doc Brown's time machine, complete with Mr. Fusion. No bullshit, Jack. Coolest drive home from work I've had in a long time, let me tell you.

This week's old-time radio show is another Fantastic Four episode, starring Bill Murray among others. In this episode, the Fantastic Four are joined by Ant-Man as they battle the return of Doctor Doom.

I don't want to spoil the hilarity for you, but let me just say, this is probably the trippiest and silliest superhero adventure I think I've ever listened to, and that includes the juvenile Power Records adventures I listened to as a kid.

Game Over, Man! Game Over!

So Lost has been running this Alternate Reality Game for several months now, basically since the end of last season, with the basic conceit being that Dharma is recruiting new members. You would log onto their site and every couple of weeks or so, a new test would appear that you could take part in, and by the end of the testing, you would be assigned to some project that would get you ramped back up into the story of Lost leading into next season. My dossier said I was going to be assigned as a psychologist. Hah.

But it seems that the financial crisis hit the makers of Lost just as hard as it's hitting everybody else, because the big announcement from Dharma was, "go to dharmaspecialaccess.com and watch a video of Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof saying, 'There's not going to be a cool game, just a few behind the scenes videos. Sorry."

So the game is no more. Boo. But Lost season 3 on DVD is coming next week. Yay. And the new season starts on the 21st (ETA: of January, that is). Double yay. I've been waiting for this a long time. Now I have to think seriously about getting an HD converter and DVR from Cox to watch it properly.

New Toy

Took advantage of the Black Friday sales to get a new TV. Now I've got one with a screen larger than a comic book. Broke it in last night by watching "Big Trouble in Little China." Good movie, although I'm reminded every time I see it that it's as much a screwball comedy as an action picture. The dialogue comes straight out of Howard Hawks pics of the 30's (except for the one time where Kurt Russell says "Fuck it").

When I first unpacked the TV and set it up, though, I paged through the digital onscreen guide to watch some test channels and noticed that there were four comic book superhero movies on simultaneously--"Superman: The Movie," "Elektra," "Batman Forever," and "Batman and Robin" (yes, two channels were playing Joel Schumacher's disintegration of the Warner Batman franchise simultaneously).

It's a measure of how superheroes have finally become integrated and accepted into the mainstream culture, not only that the movies were made, but that they draw enough of an audience to be scheduled even if they're awful.

Wow

Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State was a crazy-ass game this year. The battle of the non-existent defenses. Over 100 points total scoring, 61-41 in favor of Oklahoma. Now the BCS standings are a total roshambo, since Texas beat Oklahoma, but Texas Tech beat Texas and Oklahoma beat Tech. Leave it up to the computers to figure out who comes out on top among paper, scissors and rock.

Out of the Vault - The Searchers

Completely unrelated to the John Wayne movie of the same title, The Searchers was first published in 1995 by Caliber Comics. Written by Colin Clayton and Chris Dows and drawn by Art Wetherell, The Searchers brought together the real-life descendants of several fictional characters.

Yes, you read that right.

You see, in 1896, Charles Fort brought together several famous authors of science fiction and adventure novels--H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs--and opened a mysterious book in their presence. The book's magic gave each author vivid visions of the characters and events depicted in their novels.

Moments later, several proto-Men in Black took Fort and the book away. You can see them in the illustration at left, bearing patches reading "MIP." That doesn't stand for "Men In Plack," but for "Ministry of Incredible Phenomenon" (sic--this seems to be a Caliber thing--I just read another Caliber book published at roughly the same time, an awful X-Files rip-off titled Raven Chronicles, that features the exact same misuse of phenomenon/phenomena).

One hundred years later, the descendants of Phileas Fogg, Captain Nemo, Professor Moriarty, Professor Von Hardwigge (of Journey to the Center of the Earth), and Griffin the Invisible Man (all of whom were brought into existence by the book) team up for adventure.

The most basic outline of the premise calls to mind Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which brought together characters by the same authors depicted in this series. However, the execution couldn't be more different.

Virtually nothing happens in the first issue of The Searchers. We see the flashback to the historic meeting, then watch the various modern characters being summoned to their own meeting. But there's nothing very interesting about the characters as they're introduced. Kane Talgarth (Nemo's descendant) spends a page in a traffic jam, talking to his boss at a bank. Geneva Fogg spends a page in bed, refusing to answer her phone. John Hammett, Griffin's descendant, slaps around his coworkers at a mental institution, then reveals that his left wrist is invisible (wha?). That's as good as it gets in the first 30 pages.

In issue two, the mysterious man who summoned the various characters tells them they have to travel to the Arctic on a mysterious mission. What is it?

If I told you, you would not believe me. Best you see it with your own eyes.

Well, that's good enough for our heroes. Geneva Fogg busts out her amazing travel agent powers, whipping up a travel itinerary like that, then everyone travels to the Arctic just in time to be attacked by gunmen. Hammett the Partially Invisible Man grabs a couple of Uzi's from their attackers and single-handedly blows them all away (at least seven men, maybe as many as ten) without a scratch before attack helicopters appear overhead and blow him to smithereens. And incidentally, uncover the Nautilus buried under the ice.

At this point, we're 60 pages and almost six bucks in, and it feels as if the story has barely begun. Too many story threads out there, no interesting character conflicts, too many hanging threads (for instance, although Burroughs and Haggard were at the fateful meeting, none of their characters appears in the first two issues, or is even mentioned, aside from a brief mention of a cousin in Africa and a passing reference to Barsoom). There's a brief sequence that seems to be setting up a major villain in an Air Force pilot who beats up his wife, then steals a stealth bomber, but it comes out of left field and makes no sense on several levels, so that it was difficult to suspend disbelief and accept this guy as a legitimate menace.

I stopped buying after two issues, and Caliber stopped publishing after four, followed by a two-issue miniseries. Going back and rereading now, you know what? I don't miss it.

Thanksgiving Radio

Looks like Wednesdays for the foreseeable future will be Old Radio Wednesdays. Future weeks will feature more Fantastic Four, as well as possibly the very first appearance of Batman on the radio. But with Thanksgiving tomorrow, here's a special treat: an Very Special Thanksgiving Episode of Mel Blanc's radio show from 1946.

The scripted gags are a little weak, Blanc's character Zookie is a flimsy rehash of Porky Pig, and the schmaltz gets a little thick in places. But it's fun overall, and a good example of entertainment in a simpler time when thankfulness didn't have to be qualified.



Happy Thanksgiving.

Bolt and a New Die Hard

Saw "Bolt" yesterday. It's good. It's got your standard "you're special just because you're you" moral, but the gags are funny and the opening, which depicts Bolt's fictional TV show, is pretty damn awesome. I'd watch that show.

However, this is a pet peeve of mine. The central premise of the story is that Bolt doesn't know he's on a TV show, because they act out all the scenes and special effects in real time around him while keeping the cameras hidden. Which, as anyone who has actually worked on any type of film or TV show knows, is exactly not how you make any type of film except maybe Punk'd, but even then, they can't keep a straight face for more than a few minutes.

It doesn't bother me so much when movies get other things wrong. I don't expect civilians to get every aspect of military operations right, for instance. But making movies is their job, damn it. They should know better.

Oh well. There was also an awesome trailer that's got me really excited. It was "Paul Blart: Mall Cop," starring that guy from King of Queens. And it's basically "Die Hard" in a mall. Crooks take over a mall and hold the shoppers hostage, and it's up to mall cop Paul Blart to save the day. And yeah, it's not exactly cutting-edge to be making a parody of movie that's 20 years old, but it's one of my favorite movies, and the parody looks to be really funny.

Out of the Vault - Samuree

Yeah, it's been a while since I've delved into the vault, but now the scanner's warmed up, so let's start again. I had a hard time deciding which to do first among Plop and The Realm and Samuree, but Samuree eventually took top spot due to the squick factor that starts in the very first scene.

But let's back up for a second. I've said before that I was a DC reader in the early 70's. And one reason, besides the self-contained stories in most issues, was that DC had at least as many great artists working for them as Marvel did, guys like Nick Cardy and Jim Aparo and Murphy Anderson and Dick Giordano and most importantly, Neal Adams. Neal Adams was a legendary figure in 70's comics, known for drawing one of the most iconic Joker stories of all time, "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge," in Batman #251, and his work on Green Lantern/Green Arrow, as well as reviving the X-Men and illustrating the Avengers during the Kree-Skrull War over at Marvel.

But in the late 70's, Adams became disillusioned with the big 2 and started speaking out against work-for-hire and for creators' rights. And in the early 80's, he began producing his own creator-owned properties, first at Pacific Comics and then with his own publishing imprint, Continuity Comics.

Adams appears to have created and designed the properties for Continuity, then handed them off to other creators who emulated Adams's look as a house style. But as talented as Adams is with a pen, his character concepts were pretty sucky. During the 80's, Adams's prolific mind brought us such classics as Crazyman, ToyBoy, and Skateman.

Which brings us back to Samuree. Samuree was a generic hot female martial artist who had a brief run from 1987 to 1991 or thereabouts and then was revived in 1993 even more briefly before the great mid-90's market implosion killed her for good.

I bought the first three issues, because it was Adams, man, and even if the storytelling was crap, at least the books looked good. The first issue was typical of the series: gorgeous Adams cover, interior art by Mark Beachum with inks by Akin and Garvey and muddy colors by Liz Berube. Adams is credited with the story, and right off the bat, things feel icky.

The first page is a workout montage reminiscent of the opening of this episode of Miami Vice (featuring my high school classmate Suzy Amis), followed by this scene where a 16-year-old Samuree blatantly throws herself at an older man (as always, you can click the images for a larger version). The dialogue is not only crap ("Can you hear myself?"), but it manages to be suggestive without being the slightest bit erotic ("My body is...used" - Adams loves him some ellipses, BTW). It seems as if this guy is going to be a significant member of the supporting cast, but he barely appears in the first three issues.

Spotting a newspaper article about a hostage situation in New York, Samuree rushes to the Museum of Natural History, where she disables a few SWAT team members before running into the Revengers (Armor, Silver Streak, and Megalith) who are also trying to free the hostages. After several pages of fighting and discussion (during which we're told over and over that the slightest noise could cost all the hostages their lives), the four heroes band together and kick the terrorists' butts. However, before they can talk to any of the hostages, mysterious figures appear at a skylight, throwing smoke bombs and abducting three of the hostages--Silver Streak's father, a scientist hunted by Samuree, and Tom Savini.

Yes, that Tom Savini.

Subsequent issues don't get any better. Elliot Maggin (70's comics fixture who in his DC days not only rocked the pretentious middle initial but added the even more pretentious exclamation point--Elliot S! Maggin) took over the writing, but the dialogue stayed dumb and the characterizations wooden. The layouts tried too hard to be dynamic and were often confusing, the action sometimes hard to decipher under muddy overcoloring. The story moved in fits and starts, with backstory thrown in so randomly that it's not apparent whether the pages in issue #2 are printed in order or not.

On the plus side, I guess, Samuree did feature about 80% more cameltoe than your average comic. So there is that.

Fantastic Four on the Radio

So last week, I was listening to a ton of old Superman radio episodes from 1945, looking for the first radio appearance of Batman (which I may have found, but I'm not sure). I figured it would be a good tie-in to my recent post on "The Brave and the Bold."

But then I stumbled onto these Fantastic Four episodes from the mid-70's, and had to do this first. These make the Blue Beetle episode I posted a while back sound positively lavish. Cheap classic radio shows featured sound effects usually performed by a live prop man, with a single organ for music.

The Fantastic Four series featured a canned theme song and goofy scripts based closely on the original early issues of the comic, slightly updated in places (Jonny Storm admires a stereo with Dolby in one episode, for instance). Voice acting was mediocre, and is mainly noteworthy for a young Bill Murray sleepwalking his way through the role of the Human Torch. Sound effects are limited to a bunch of theremin farts.

So, in honor of my recent post about the first appearance of Doctor Doom, here is the radio version of that story. Let Stan Lee transport your imagination through Marvel magic and dull narration. Listen to the psychedelic wonder of the Fantastic Four's talking signal flare ("four..."). Thrill to the adventures of the Fantastic Three as they travel through time on an urgent mission. Quiver with delight as the Human Torch utters the immortal line, "This beverage really quenches my thirst," with complete conviction. Tremble with fear as Doctor Doom does a cross-promotional deal with H.P. Lovecraft by summoning monsters from Carcosa.

This, my friends, is the best of the early 60's crossed with the worst of the mid-70's, brought to you through the modern future miracle of the Internets. Click the widget to listen.

Another Food Hack

I love candy apples, the ones you get at the fair on a stick covered with a hard shell of cinnamon candy. But at the store, the only candy apple kits require you to prepare the coating in a pot on a stove to make a batch of like 10 apples. It's too much work, and too much of a hassle to store the apples after, plus often I only want a small taste, not a whole apple.

So here's my quick and easy candy apple hack.

Quarter and core an apple. Now cut an oblong trench in each apple section you feel like preparing (you can save the rest in the fridge for later; this is a scalable hack). In each trench, stand up a coin of cinnamon hard candy. I then heat the apple section in my toaster oven at about 350 until the candy starts to melt and run down the sides.

Let cool and eat.

Awesome taste, super easy to fix, complete portion control. The only kinks I'm still trying to work out are how to cut the trenches to allow maximum candy melt without losing it down the sides as waste, and how long to let it cool so I don't burn my mouth, but the candy doesn't reharden too much. But those are easy to tinker with.

Food Hacking

Since I've rejoined the bachelor life, I've started making a lot more of my own meals (partly for economic reasons, partly because I don't live as close to eating places now as I did before). Back when I first got engaged, I decided to learn how to cook, at least a little, and discovered I enjoyed it.

But what I do now, you couldn't really call cooking. I don't make things from scratch; I buy prepackaged ingredients, then "enhance" them. It's more like food hacking.

For instance, ramen. Back in college, I would buy a packet of ramen and fix it according to the instructions on the label. Bland and boring. But when I was in Korea, I noticed that they use ramen like the stone in stone soup. Cook the ramen, then add all kinds of things to it to make it more nutritious and more palatable.

So here's my current take on ramen, although I reserve the right to play with stuff with every new batch. I start with a basic package of ramen and sliced hot links or sausage or hot dogs (depending on how broke I am) for protein. But when I'm boiling the water, I add a splash of wine (usually dry sherry, though I've experimented with red as well) and a sprinkle of fresh rosemary (maybe a half-teaspoon or so). The ramen is so salty that this adds only the slightest undertone of flavor, but it makes the house smell wonderful. I boil the noodles and hot dogs, then stir in the flavor packet and take it to the bowl. Once it's in the bowl, I add shredded cheese and a splash of bitters (I could do this in the pot, but the cheese makes a sticky mess, and it's easier to only clean it out of one container).

I used to add egg, also, but I haven't bought eggs in a long time. I've got some frozen shrimp I could try, and I could add fresh vegetables, but that starts to sound too much like cooking. What I'm doing now is quick and convenient, but has more flavor and depth than simply eating what comes out of the pack. That's food hacking.

Any easy food hacks you'd like to share?

Music Bleg

I'm trying to get into the groove of writing again. I want some music to write by, but the music I have isn't really suitable. I want something instrumental, like a movie soundtrack, but not necessarily orchestral. Something heroic, but with a fun edge. Maybe something like the soundtrack to "The Incredibles," but not that, because if it's too familiar, I'll just start picturing that instead of writing my own stuff.

Speaking of "The Incredibles," my absolute favorite musical moment in that movie (maybe even my favorite moment overall) is during the Hundred Mile Dash. Dash is tearing through the forest, trying to escape from the flying saucers, when he sees that he's headed right at a lake and closes his eyes. The crashing music goes almost completely silent, except for a little xylophone, as Dash opens his eyes and discovers he's running on the surface of the water. Then he gives this awesome little laugh and accelerates as the music swoops back in, changing from tense and frantic to jaunty and swinging, baby, which almost makes up for the fact that it's the freaking Perry Mason theme (well, not exactly, but close).

That's what I want, but not that, if you know what I mean.

Exploring Tomorrow

For Mary. She won the award, now she can hear the man himself.

For your enjoyment, an episode of Exploring Tomorrow, titled "Planet of Geniuses," hosted by John W. Campbell, Jr.

(ETA: Campbell makes an interesting host, but sometimes I think he's a little too inside baseball with his comments about the origins of words and the makings of tragedy and such. Also interesting that when he quotes Murphy's Law, he initially calls it Finagle's Law and specifies that it has to do with laboratory experiments. And whenever I listen to this, I always find find myself talking back to the show in one spot. When the marshall says "And I tell you the Empire can't afford what you call 'creativeness,'" I find myself saying "And I call 'creativity.'")

The Brave and The Bold

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I was a DC reader growing up. One of the books I enjoyed was The Brave and the Bold, a Batman team-up book. Both Marvel and DC had these, books that featured their most popular characters teamed up with a different guest star every issue. So besides the continuing adventures of the Fantastic Four, the Thing was constantly going off on adventures with other heroes in Marvel Two-In-One, while Marvel Team-Up featured mostly Spider-Man running into virtually every other character in the Marvel Universe. On the DC side, World's Finest teamed Batman and Superman in every issue with frequent guest-stars.

A team-up book like this demands a versatile artist and The Brave and the Bold had one of DC's best at the height of his talent: Jim Aparo. The book ended its run in 1983 with Batman forming a superhero team called The Outsiders, whose adventures began in their own book, appropriately titled Batman and the Outsiders.

Anyway, the reason I'm bringing this up now is that this Friday, Cartoon Network will debut a new Batman series titled, guess what? The Brave and the Bold. The first episode features a team-up with the Blue Beetle (if you haven't listened to the Blue Beetle radio show I posted a few days ago, listen to it here--it's a different Blue Beetle, but entertainingly wacky). Subsequent episodes are due to feature characters like Plastic Man, Aquaman, Adam Strange, Guy Gardner, Booster Gold and Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth. If you haven't figured it out from the guest stars, the show will not be entirely serious in tone.

I'm looking forward to it.

Alternate Versions

Okay, Marvel fans, you'll have to bear with me for a while, cause this one is freaking crazy. While flipping through websites looking for material on Iron Man's past, I made a really bizarre discovery. I'm sure someone else has pointed this out somewhere before, but I've never seen it, so I'm passing it on.

But first, a brief (perhaps not-so-brief) history lesson. In the late 50's and early 60's, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were working for Atlas Comics (soon to be Marvel) riding a fad of monster books. Stan Lee has mentioned how much fun he had doing those books, featuring creatures with names like Kraa and Goom and Monstrollo and (of course, you knew I had to say it) Fin Fang Foom. But, you say to yourself, how many of those books were they really doing? I mean, sure they did some monster books, but were they really that significant?

Roll over to Coverbrowser and look at the books of the time, like Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense and you realize, yeah, they were actually shoveling those out by the metric ton. And looking at those covers, I realized I was seeing the seeds of the Marvel Universe being planted.

Number one is the obvious stuff, like issues of Journey Into Mystery featuring a monster named Hulk a year before the debut of the Fantastic Four. Other hero and villain names were also presaged, like the Molten Man-Thing and Sandman and Vandoom, He Who Made a Creature! (presaging the FF villain Doctor Victor Von Doom in name if nothing else, about whom more later)

But more than that, you can see that when Marvel introduced its heroes, it made sure to hedge its bets by keeping one foot in the monster genre.

Fantastic Four was the first of the Marvel superhero books. The cover of the first issue was dominated by a standard giant Kirby monster, with the four heroes small in the frame surrounding him. The adventure inside featured the Mole Man attacking the surface world with his army of monsters. And not only did the Fantastic Four wear no standard superhero costumes, but they were all rather monstrous in their own ways (Mister Fantastic stretching into weird shapes, the Invisible Girl reminiscent of horror movie staple the Invisible Man, the Human Torch a mass of living flame, and of course, the Thing).

In issue two, the heroes battled the monstrous alien Skrulls, and fended off their invasion by scaring them away with Kirby monster comics (literally--they showed the Skrull leaders the comics panels and said they were photographs of actual monsters--the Skrulls fled, because aliens are stupid). I don't remember the villain in issue three, but issue four featured an attack on the surface world by the Sub-Mariner commanding an army of sea monsters. In the July issue, number 5, the Fantastic Four were introduced to their most fearsome foe of all, the nefarious Doctor Doom, a mad scientist who wore an iron mask to hide his disfigured face (click the pic for a larger version).

By that time, Marvel had introduced its second superhero, The Incredible Hulk, featuring a man who turns into (guess what?) a super-strong monster. And during this period, the other Marvel titles, like Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense and Journey into Mystery, were still featuring the standard collection of monster tales.

In Aug. 1962, Journey Into Mystery introduced Thor battling (what else?) the monstrous Stone Men from Saturn. Meanwhile, a character named Spider-Man appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15. For the first time, there were no monsters in a hero's debut story; then again, Amazing Fantasy was being canceled anyway, so they probably figured why bother? A month later, Ant-Man appeared in Tales to Astonish, battling both human foes and monsters over his first few adventures, to be joined soon by the Hulk, after his own book was canceled.

The last gasp of the Marvel monster fad was in Tales of Suspense in Feb. 1963. The next month, Iron Man debuted in its pages, with nary a monster in sight. And a couple of issues later, the Marvel logo began appearing on the company's covers. The superheroes had taken over; the Marvel Age had officially begun.

But here's the thing which caught my attention: while looking through all the covers of Tales of Suspense preceding Iron Man's introduction, I saw a very familiar face. Issue #31 of Tales of Suspense, cover-dated July 1962 (the same month that Doctor Doom made his debut in Fantastic Four #5), featured on its cover "The Monster in the Iron Mask." Look at this cover image and see if anything looks familiar.


Even the color scheme is the same. Either Kirby was obviously so proud of this design, he used it twice, or else he was so insanely busy he didn't have time to do another design and literally recycled it almost whole.

Either way, now you know the rest of the story.

Iron Man Nostalgia

So for my birthday, I used a Best Buy gift card to get myself the "Iron Man" special edition DVD. Just finished watching the extras last night. A few observations:

Robert Downey Jr. is really cut. You wouldn't expect it. He usually seems so frothy and insubstantial on-screen.

It's fascinating (to me, at least) to see how far the stories develop from their starting points. "Iron Man" doesn't deviate from its early versions as much as, say, "Monsters Inc.," but then it had established source material to draw from. But it's fascinating to see, for instance, a long scene depicting the actors' process in preparing for a crucial scene in which the big money line ended up on the cutting room floor, if indeed it wasn't dispensed with before it was shot. It's fascinating to see early Ironmonger designs being referred to as the Crimson Dynamo (indicating possibly a completely different story direction). It's interesting to hear Jeff Bridges talk about how the villain was originally supposed to have been the Mandarin (indicating another completely different story direction).

They put an amazing amount of design detail into that suit.

It's funny how fake and flimsy some of the practical suits look in the behind the scenes footage, yet how completely convincing the illusion is in the final film. Never underestimate the power of lighting and framing and clever editing (and digital post-processing and sound effects and the list goes on).

It's funny how many people lie about being "fans" of the original property in this behind-the-scenes stuff.

And just because I'm thinking of it, a descent into nostalgia: Iron Man #1 was the first comic book I ever bought (or that my parents bought for me). I remember the occasion. In early 1968, I was with my father in a Humpty Dumpty store in Oklahoma City (I think, though it may have been T.G.&Y.--whatever it was, both store and chain are extinct now--FWIW, Humpty Dumpty in Oklahoma City was also the birthplace of the shopping cart). We passed a spinner rack near the front of the store, and one of us suggested the idea of getting a comic book. Dad asked me which one I wanted, and I looked them over. I didn't know who any of the characters really were, but one caught my eye.

It featured a man in red and gold with a robotic face bursting out of some sort of metal prison on the cover, surrounded by smaller action vignettes. Even at that young age, I could tell the artwork was better than anything else on the rack. Dad looked at it and asked me if I really wanted it. Colan only averaged 4-6 panels a page, where most of the other books had 6-9. Dad expressed a concern that this comic would not give me a good panels-per-penny return (he didn't use that literal language, but it was something like "don't you want one with more pictures?").

Nope, I was set, and only Iron Man would do. As it turns out, it was not the best choice. Iron Man's adventures had been running for several years in Tales of Suspense, so even though this issue was numbered "1," it picked up in the middle of a storyline. Iron Man, weakened from a several issue battle against the Maggia crime syndicate including the villain Whiplash, has been captured by AIM, who analyze his armor and create a duplicate set. No wonder I'm so tired of the "hero has to fight his evil twin" trope; it was in the first comic I ever read. But the comic didn't leave a strong impact, because I didn't know anything about the hero or the villains. The story started in the middle and ended on a cliffhanger, so I got neither a beginning nor an ending.

Iron Man #1's main legacy for me was that it turned me into a DC reader, which is how I got educated in old-school comics. Because not only did DC feature more self-contained stories in its issues (which I liked, because I couldn't buy comics every month), but as a cost-cutting measure in the early 70's, they padded their books with reprints from their vast archives.

I never knowingly threw a comic away. Comics got dumped into a big cardboard box in my closet, to be pawed through and reread when the fancy took me. Years later, as I was preparing to graduate high school and leave for college, I decided to bag and box all my comics, turn them into a real collection. Imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered Iron Man #1 toward the bottom of the box.

And then imagine my disappointment when I opened the comic and discovered what I had long forgotten. Kids today don't know how good they have it. In my day, they didn't have shelves and shelves of superhero toys, but I had apparently been excited enough by Iron Man to want some for myself. So I took some scissors and cut out some of the most exciting poses so I could stage my own fights (you might call them paper dolls--I call them '2-D Recyclable Action Figures"). Resourceful, I know, but also devastating for a guy who thought he'd disovered a hidden jackpot only to open it up and find shredded pages inside.

I still have it, though, bagged and boxed, shredded pages and all. It was my first, after all.