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Friday, February 07, 2003 ( 2/07/2003 02:50:00 PM ) Bill S. INSERT CHICKEN LITTLE JOKE HERE – Watching Ari Fleischer on the tube for a brief moment, I was once more made aware of the cavernous gulf ‘tween real & pulp life. On Fox’s 24, we’re been in the midst of a terrorist plot all season as Middle Eastern baddies threaten to blow up Los Angeles w./ a nuclear device. We know this is no idle threat since they’ve already destroyed the hq. of the government’s anti-terrorist unit, yet hours into it, the president still hasn’t told the American people anything. Back in the real world, someone sneezes on a telephone line and our heightened alertness codes dramatically change color. # | ( 2/07/2003 08:33:00 AM ) Bill S. THE FIFTEEN-MINUTE COMIC – A few quick thoughts on some comics that’ve crossed my path this week. Despite all the pre-release publicity it's received, I may be one of ten genre comics fans to’ve actually picked up a copy, so here goes: read the 1st ish of Ron Zimmerman & John Severin’s Rawhide Kid mini-series. Not as broad as I expected (but, then, I was half anticipating Blazing Saddles II). The whole first half plays like a typical western comic, though the second veers into Zimmerman's usual jokiness. Solid, if unexciting Severin art; a few joking references to how “well-dressed” our hero is; a thudding anachronistic scene where the young boy narrating the story has a comic heart-to-heart w./ his Sheriff dad; plus a final sequence where the buff Kid dishes the dirt on his contemporary western heroes. (On the Lone Ranger’s sartorial splendor: “I can certainly see why that Indian follows him around.”) Hardly worth the big ol’ “Parent Advisory EXPLICIT Content” box it rates on the cover, but we’ll see. Been waiting for Neilalien to weigh in on Michael Gilbert’s Double Shot take on Marvel’s Doctor Strange. Found it amusing myself but not up to the writer/artist’s best. It really does read like the kind of featherweight five-page feature you would’ve found in the back of Strange Tales in the early days, which was clearly Gilbert’s intent. Me, I’d rather see the guy given free rein to do a full-blown mini-series w./ the character. Also lugged home the Winter Special Issue of The Comics Journal, which features a 60-plus-page selection of “Cartoonists on Patriotism.” Have only dipped into it so far, but I can’t resist quoting this editorial note from the mag’s content page: “Cartoonists were given the thankless and well-nigh impossible task of writing and drawing about patriotism in this most patriotic of political climates. If we had an elected president, he surely would give them all a commendation.”I’m all for the TCJ specials, but their size is sure-as-heck unwieldy: just tryin' to keep this massive tome on my lap so I could type the abovewritten quote was a hassle. This last somehow slipped under my radar ‘til I saw it in the store this week. Fantagraphics has just published Spain’s comic adaptation of that great noir carnival novel, William Lindsay Gresham’s Nightmare Alley. Remember seeing the ‘47 Tyrone Power movie version on TV as a kid (under the mistaken impression at the time that it was a horror movie – it is a horror story, but not in the way you expect it to be), and I can still recall how disturbed I was by it. Spain is a master at rendering gritty low-life, so this really looks a great artist/source material fit. I'm looking forward to reading this over the weekend. . . Update: Neilalien has since posted his fannish take on Doc’s Double Shot appearance. # | ( 2/07/2003 07:45:00 AM ) Bill S. VANISHING WEB PAGES – So I’m scanning my blog, idly checking to see if any of my posts have generated comments, and I get to the posting on Clone High U.S.A.. Two images that I’d linked to from the MTV web page devoted to the show are now just boxed X-es, so I follow ‘em back to MTV’s program pages and see that the page devoted to this show is no more. So what’s the deal? Were the lads at MTV so freaked out by this week’s open-mouthed kiss 'tween clone Lincoln & ADD-addled Gandhi that they’re pulling the series? (Mass hysteria as millions of homophobic teenboys run screaming out of the room!) Perhaps, as in the infamous Beavis and Butthead frog baseball ep, the network was deluged w./ complaints by outraged concerned parents, worried that broadcasting this show’ll lead to more guy-to-guy kissing in real life. Beats me. All I know is I’ve taken the pic codes out of my original posting – and I’m continuing to find this cartoon series laff-out-loud funny. # | ( 2/07/2003 06:18:00 AM ) Bill S. GILES GOUT BOY – Quick personal bitch-&-moan time, gang, so you can skip this if you only want pop culture talk. Couple of years back, I first experienced a sharp throbbing pain in the region of my toes: it was on my left foot, this first time, and it hurt like hell whenever I tried to walk on it – and it hurt when I didn’t try to walk on it. Thought I’d somehow sprained the thing, though I was damned if I could remember how it’d happened. (Jumping jacks in my sleep, perhaps?) It felt a bit better if I kept the foot elevated, but as soon as I dropped the foot back to the floor, the blood would rush back and the pain would return. The foot looked swollen but not distressingly so. Went to work hobbling and that night at home, my wife suggested putting an Ace elastic bandage on the foot to deal with the sprain. This we tried, but it offered no relief. If anything, it made things even more uncomfortable. Had a lousy night sleeping, and so I ultimately went to our family doctor. Diagnosis: I had gout. Gout!?!? Images of a fat old man with his foot wrapped in bandages – something out of an old English novel – immediately came to mind. How archaic! Didn’t even know people still got this ailment, and here I was, limping around w./ it. Couldn’t be a sexy disease: no, I had to get something used by 18th century satirists to connote privileged excess! Gout comes as a result of too much uric acid in the body (yeah, it’s humiliating even to discuss!) Basically, this fluid crystallizes in some of the more out-of-the-way joints and produces inflammation. It can come from excess consumption of rich foods like red meat or anchovies – or from regular alcohol use – but some folks (like yours truly) can just plain be predisposed to it. (For the record, I gave up drinking over a decade ago, though I’ll still indulge in non-alcoholic beer – and I can’t get anyone to share an anchovy pizza w./ me.) If left untreated over time, gout can lead to kidney disease or high blood pressure. A source of comedy, yes, but nothing to ignore over time (as if you could!) Putting an Ace bandage on my foot, incidentally, was not the treatment of choice. I had little crystal shards in me! Compacting ‘em was only making things more painful. Woke up yesterday a.m. to my first attack in eight months: the right foot this time, and as I moved in bed, I could feel the aching pressure in the joints around my big toe, exacerbated by the weight of sheet and blanket. Damn! Was prescribed some medication when I first had the ailment, but I’d used it up: over-the-counter pain relievers can only prolong the problem. So I’m phoning the doctor this a.m. for a refill and holding back on the dog walks (can already see the disappointed look in Ziggy Stardust’s bi-colored eyes) – and this time I’m not getting out the Ace bandage. Back to the pop stuff later. . . # | Wednesday, February 05, 2003 ( 2/05/2003 05:56:00 AM ) Bill S. “LOSER” – Last night’s Buffy was one of those Let’s Turn Everything The Audience Thinks It Knows Is Happening Upside Down eps – and a pretty spiffy ‘un at that. (Good news for Rupert Giles fans – or is it?) Best fake-out moment: when Willow & slayer trainee Kennedy kiss (we were all set up for a freaky shapeshifting moment, but not the way it turned out). Best geekboy moment: Andrew & Xander sharing another comic book consensus, this time over Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Also liked the way they managed to squeak in a second, more prolonged kiss ‘tween Willow & Kennedy by initiating it as a “boy/girl” embrace: way to make the magic work for ya! I continue to wonder how anybody can carry on a conversation in The Bronze when there’s an edgy alterna-band onstage, though. # | Tuesday, February 04, 2003 ( 2/04/2003 02:31:00 PM ) Bill S. GOO-GOO-GOOD CHARLOTTE – Picked up a budget reissue of Good Charlotte’s (Epic/Daylight) debut the other day. I’ve read both raves & slams of this band, whose second release is getting play on MTV (and also provided a track for a recent ep of Smallville). To some hard-core rock/rap fans, this whole new guitar-pop revival is practically a sign of the Apocalypse – and the Good Charlotte boys four of Satan’s Minions. As a power pop junkie, though, I’m personally diggin’ the whole scene. Sure, a lot of the music’s trivial crap, but it’s driving trivial crap! Listening to Good Charlotte, I found myself almost immediately thinking of 70’s CBGB’s also-rans like Wayne County & the Electric Chairs or post-Robert Gordon Tuff Darts. A lotta fun to watch in a seedy club w./ some beers in ya, I bet – even if you don’t remember a single song after it’s all over. Lots of plaints about being picked on and misunderstood done to sped-up glam rock chords; the occasional nasal acoustic yearn song: nothing too surprising, but it does the (cheap) trick. Pure adolescent poppery, in other words – and if you think you’ve outgrown such stuff, well, good for you. Don’t know if I’m predisposed to get their more recent release, but that’s okay. Never bought more than one Plimsouls release either (to pull in a pertinent example from the 80’s power pop movement). But I like the one I own. . . # | Monday, February 03, 2003 ( 2/03/2003 12:52:00 PM ) Bill S. "NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED TO . . ." – When I first heard that Dick (Runnin’-Out-Of-Law-and-Order-Franchises) Wolf was producing a new version of Dragnet, my first thought was, “Which Dragnet?” Depending on your age, the venerable cop series was either: a noir-ish b-&-w low-budget police procedural starring Jack Webb, a full-color debate-athon deifying Jack Webb or a moderately amusing movie comedy featuring Dan Aykroyd. After viewing the premiere of this newest, “Inspired by Actual Events” model, I’d say the producers are going back to the show’s earliest radio/teevee incarnation. (So does that mean no five-minute monologues on What It Means to Serve-&-Protect?) The 21st Century Joe Friday (Ed O’Neill, looking his usual lumpy self, but reserving the Al Bundy hostility for those who deserve it: pedophiles & “media maggots,” for instance) still engages in crisply delivered sentence fragments – though not to the point of 60’s Webb-ian self-parody – and still appears to have no life outside the job. He works out of Robbery/Homicide under a suitably stern-looking Lindsay Crouse and has a youngish partner Frank Smith (Ethan Embry – nuthin’ like the original fat model) just out of Vice. As if to emphasize the age discrepancy between Friday & Smith, at one point we see the former put on a pair of reading glasses. The cases & suspects confronting our duo are way seedier than anything the old crew would’ve handled: a copycat serial rapist/killer imitating the Hillside Strangler;The whole hour I kept expecting O’Neill’s character to break into one of his patented expressions of Bundy-esque disgust, but to the actor’s credit, he never did. Friday narrates in his familiar clipped style (wouldn’t be Dragnet if he didn’t, right?), and at one point, they put a neat fillip on the whole voiceover spiel by using it to reflect our hero’s thoughts as he comes upon the big clue that’ll break open the case. Like most cop shows these days, the camerawork is grittier and less hero worshipful. (One of the few details I recall from a trip to Universal City as a kid was the fact that 60’s-era Dragnet sets were one of the few on television to include ceilings, since Webb was fond of placing the camera so it looked up at its hero cops.) Not much different from an ep of Law and Order or C.S.I., actually, though we still get those great epilogues tallying off the guilty party’s sentence. If the show has any fatal flaw, it’s in its pacing. Even in its half hour format, Webb’s Dragnet could be excessively deliberate. But at an hour there were moments when even the refs to premature ejaculation, semen traces & sado-masochism finery didn’t suffice. Yet just when I’d start to mentally drift, Friday would do something like persuade the uncooperative serial killer groupie by threatening to report her pets to Animal Control. Don't recall Jack Webb threatening a hutch of bunny rabbits, though I bet he could have . . . UPDATE: Cartoonist & encyclopedic comics fan Fred Hembeck has a new blog (which I learned about from Mark Evanier), and he discusses the new Dragnet, mentioning the one important aspect of the show that I missed: its four-note theme song. It’s a lot less ubiquitous than it was on the old show (they don’t use it to punctuate every li’l dramatic point), but as arranged by ol' pro Mike Post, the theme’s been inoffensively updated without losing its original flavor. In any event, it definitely beats the lame rap song they used to cap the Aykroyd flick. . . UPDATE II: Carino Chocano has a funny, dead-on take on the premiere in today's Salon – and you only have to sit through a quick 24 promo to read it. # | Sunday, February 02, 2003 ( 2/02/2003 11:25:00 AM ) Bill S. STILL MISTER INTEGRITY AFTER ALL THESE WEEKS – I see in Entertainment Weekly that Queens Supreme has been axed by CBS after three episodes. I favored that series over another recent Friday premiere, NBC's Mr. Sterling, which once again shows how in tune w./ the American viewing public’s tastes I am. Actually, I’ve continued watching Sterling, and the show’s not bad. Last Friday’s ep, for instance, contained a moment where our hero turns a committee around by simply asking for a roll-call vote on an amendment that would stave off a 1% Medicaire cut. The cloak of anonymity removed, none of the party hacks are willing to put their name on something that’ll bite ‘em come election time. It was one of those procedural details that you know reflects the way our elected officials operate – more so than the gimmicky subplot that housed our hero in a HUD project (though they’ll probably milk that ‘un for urban pathos later in the season) – and it’s moments like it that'll keep the poli-drama fans in our house watching. # | ( 2/02/2003 07:58:00 AM ) Bill S. COLUMBIA – Watching the same footage again & again on CNN yesterday, listening to NPR in the car, I couldn’t help but recall the Challenger disaster. (I was working in a children’s group home at the time and spent a lot of time dealing w./ their shocked reactions.) I hate that the only time we get this much coverage of the space program is when something godawful happens. I don’t really have anything elegant to write about the event itself (Josh Marshall has taken care of that for me), but my thoughts all weekend are repeatedly going out to the crew and families who’ve survived them. # | Saturday, February 01, 2003 ( 2/01/2003 04:21:00 PM ) Bill S. SOME CLOWNS IN CIRCUS COSTUMES – Several weeks ago, I did a piece for this blog & Blogcritics, discussing some of my favorite ongoing genre comics. I received several responses (not to mention, a nice plug in Journalista!), but the most insistent comments came from a reader who thought I should’ve included Marvel’s The Ultimates in my personal survey. I hadn’t read the book at the time and said so. I’d gone through some trade reprints of Ultimate titles featuring Spider-Man & X-Men – and as handsome as they looked, there wasn’t much in ‘em to prod me into digging more deeply into the Ultimate Marvel Universe. I know it’s standard to re-tell and reinvent comic book characters for a new generation – how many reboots has Superman seen, for instance? – but neither parallel universe series seemed sufficiently different to justify a whole line o’ Ultimates. Dude, I was told, after I’d made this point to my interlocutor, the Ultimates are nothing like Marvel’s old Avengers series! So I acquiesced and picked up a copy of the recent trade reprinting the book's first six issues. My reader was right. This is a major revisionist job on Marvel’s longstanding Lee-&-Kirby superhero creation, The Avengers. The book starts out promisingly: in the European Theatre, circa 1945, super soldier hero Captain America is on a mission alongside a group of convincingly tough-talking grunts, including journalist Bucky Barnes. The soldiers are understandably skeptical about Cap, (“Dressing some clown in a circus costume. . .” one of ‘em says. “What age do you think we are?”) But their skepticism vanishes when they all venture into battle. Scripter Mark Millar and artist Bryan Hitch establish a strong tone at the outset: hard-bitten, gritty, w./ lots of obscure rain-drenched battle imagery. Hitch (who’s also worked on The Authority & Justice League of America) has a flair for big group battle scenes, so he’s in his element here. The whole first chapter/issue leads to a moment that long-term Avengers readers know is coming: Cap’s struggle to disarm a launched rocket that’ll wind up in his getting dumped & frozen in the cold Atlantic waters. So far, so good. Unlike Marvel’s original Avengers – which only took one issue back in 1963 to establish its basic team (though Cap America didn’t appear ‘til issue #4) – Millar’s Ultimates are a bit slower getting out of the gate. For one thing, where the original series was built around characters who already had their own established titles (Ant/Giant-Man & Wasp, Hulk, Iron Man plus Thor), the core cast of Ultimates is introduced as the series progresses. Next three chapters in the book are primarily devoted to presenting this crew in presentday surroundings – it isn’t ‘til the series’ fifth issue that we see ‘em fight as a team. This makes the bulk of the book more character-driven, even if the characterization is more than a bit dubious at times. Among the changes in these Ultimate Incarnations:
That somewhat dorky exchange aside, Steve Rogers’ Cap can be an affecting figure. He’s always been one of the more interesting Marvel characters: a man reflecting square-jawed democratic values he knows are out of time (even his contemporary peers don’t always get what he’s going on about), who always is aware of how much he’s lost. In one scene, Steve visits the home of his friend Bucky & former fiancé – the former is dying of lung cancer, and the latter is too aware of how old she looks to let him see her – while later we learn that he’s moved back into his old New York neighborhood, which is now a drug-riddled slum. Though unsaddled w./ the broad doubts & neuroses of his fellow Ultimates, he remains an isolated figure. By the end of Chapter Four, we’re told there’s already public doubt about the need for this new super-group. So Doc Banner does what we’ve all been waiting for him to do: unleash the Hulk to give the gang a real menace to battle. Learning that ex-lover Betty is dining w./ Freddy Prinze Jr. (does Sarah Michelle know?), Banner/Hulk rampages through Manhattan, screaming for the head of the Scooby Doo star. Which finally brings us to Chapter/Issue Five’s climactic battle scene: the monstrously horny (bet we don't get that in the Ang Lee movie!) Hulk screaming for Betty – so he can give her what ol’ puny Banner apparently can't – and brutally killing civilians along the way. (At one point, we’re told, he slays a fat man just so he can steal his pants.) This is no childlike tantruming Hulk, but an ugly brutal monster: smashing into Giant-Man, he bellows that he’s gonna tear off his head and use his skull like a toilet bowl. (Sure don’t imagine TV’s Lou Ferigno delivering that line, but then how many lines could he deliver?) The whole crew comes out in force, and Wasp displays a startling use of her powers by flashing her breasts before the Hulk to distract him. It also rains a lot, thanks to Thor’s hammer. I can see the reason for doing big FX-laden battles in the rain & dark in movies – where you can use both to mask wires, etc. – but after viewing two rain-blurred fights in this book, I really started missing day-lit primary colors. It’s a comic book, guys: you can show us anything you want! Our team prevails by chapter's end, changing the monster back into his weedy Banner self (where he’s promptly straitjacketed), then hushing up the scientist's involvement in the Hulk rampage. But despite – or perhaps because of – this victory, we don’t end Book One on a happy note. In the final chapter, we get a depressing glimpse into the married life of Hank & Janet Pym. Still sulking over the fact that he got his ass kicked in the Big Green Fight, Hank holds up in his lab. When wife Janet attempts to pull him out to a dinner at Tony Stark’s, he snaps back jealously, and things escalate into a full-blown physical fight between the two. The panel where Hank first hauls off and hits his wife is even more dismaying than the scenes where Hulk threatens to rape Betty (if only because we know that the good guys are gonna prevent that appalling act from happening), and are about as far from the original characters as you can get. But does the scene make any sense? As it plays, the moment works. Millar & Hitch do a decent job building their scene (we’re given a hint that this is not the first time the two have come to blows) and even capture such subtleties as the moment where, mid-fight, Janet apologizes for starting a conflict that really is more Hank’s fault than hers. The fight also ends on an ambiguous note: Janet being overwhelmed by ants that have attacked her on Hank’s command (as he tells her in an ominous full-face close-up, “You shouldn’t have made me look small, Jan!”), then a full-page scene of Pym seated in the wreckage of lab, bemoaning what he has done. Very effective. And yet – and yet . . . for the first time since I started this series, I suddenly find myself growing all fanboyish. A bit that I would’ve accepted in a newish superhero title like The Authority can’t help but feel off when it’s built around characters who’ve been around for ages, even if they are supposed to be the new-&-improved Ultimate versions. It’s not like I have any great love for the first Hank Pym. Truth be the told, the original version was a stiff. But I’m even less enamored w./ the idea of making the guy a wife beater. Call me old-fashioned. In the end, the issue ultimately comes down to this: when does revisionism cross over into shock value contrariness? It’s a dividing line that probably varies from reader to reader, but we all recognize when it’s been crossed. It’s that moment when you suddenly feel a sinking sense of betrayal by the actions of a bunch of featherweight figures on glossy paper. Aside from its success as a marketing gimmick (“This ain’t your Daddy’s Ant-Man, that’s for damn sure!”), I remain unconvinced about the viability of the Ultimate books. “Why not simply write good versions of the original characters?” think I. Isn’t that what the company’s been trying with, to name one example, its current Marvel Knights Daredevil series? But what do I know? The past few months have seen more Ultimate titles – Ultimate Adventures & Ultimate War (that last now puts the line in the same league as Troma Films) – along w./ an Ultimate Daredevil/Elektra mini-series, clearly demonstrating their comic shoppe cachet. Me, I’m just a cranky ol' critic who, on finishing this book, felt the need to cleanse my mental palate w./ a simple Lee-&-Kirby komic. Okay, now I've read The Ultimates. # | |
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