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Saturday, May 03, 2003 ( 5/03/2003 03:18:00 PM ) Bill S. PUNCHLINE RUINING FACT CHECK – Actually, after I wrote the previous post, I spent most of the afternoon in the backyard picking up broken branches and mowing the lawn. # | ( 5/03/2003 01:07:00 PM ) Bill S. FREEBIE FEST – It’s windbreaker weather on this year’s Free Comic Book Day, but I’ve foolishly left my jacket at home. I’ve gotten out of the house earlier than usual this Saturday to make it to the opening of Acme Comics – hopefully, to beat the crowds, since the event has received front page play in our local newspaper, The Daily Pantagraph. The comics shop is one of two situated across the street from each other in downtown Normal, IL. (talk about an embarrassment of riches!) but it’s the only one that has chosen to play up the event. As I pass the store, sharking for a parking space on cramped Beaufort Street, I see that they’ve moved the store’s trade paperback racks out into the sidewalk. The better to make room for the freebie hunters. When I hit the store, it’s five minutes after opening – and Jim and company are still frantically pulling piles of comics out to display on a table, apologizing to the line of parents, kids and unshaven fan types about the delay. Nice to see a decent-sized crowd, I think. Last year, Acme was stuffing extra copies of the Ultimate Spider-Man #1 reprint into customers’ bags for weeks after the fact. I get in line behind a father and his pre-school boy; the former asks a store worker what among the display is appropriate for the child, while the latter is bedazzled by the bounty of garish covers all around him. Recommended freebies: Donald Duck Adventures, Batman Adventures and Courtney Crumrin – though Kochalka’s Peanut Butter and Jeremy is inexplicably skipped. Staff also point out a Transformers comic, but apparently the kid isn’t into giant robots. What character does the boy really go for? Flash! he happily announces, which makes sense to me. What full-of-beans kid doesn’t at least partially relate to the Fastest Man Alive? When I reach the table, I decide to just take titles I haven’t read already, skipping Marvel’s reprint of Ultimate X-Men and Oni’s Courtney Crumrin (which I've already reviewed in its trade paperback incarnation). Wind up with something like thirteen books, anyway, though I don’t hold out much hope for some of ‘em. (The cover to Future Comics’ Metallix, for instance, is just plain ugly!) Still, the Alternative and Slave Labor samplers look promising, and I’m curious as to whether there are any similarities between Oni’s Skinwalkers and the Tony Hillerman novel of the same name. Also spend some money, of course. (I can’t go into a bookstore of any type without opening the wallet.) Using my regular shopper’s discount, I buy a copy of the X-Force hardcover, which reprints Peter Milligan & Mike Allred’s full run on the title up to the point it changed to X-Statix. I’ve read about half these stories already, but on this X-Men weekend it seems apt to fill out the full run of the only X-title I’m regularly reading. Besides, buying the book eases the irrational guilt I’m feeling about grabbing all those freebie titles. Drop my booty into the car and sally across the street to see how competitor Metropolis Comics is doing. The shop is considerably less packed and for good reason. It doesn’t even have a sign advertising Free Comic Book Day in its window, and when I go inside to purchase a copy of Image’s Jack Staff (unaccountably missing from Acme’s stock), the clerk just offers me a free comic from a box of store overstocks. As a shop, Metropolis has always seemed more marginal than Acme, even within the loose entrepreneurial yardstick of comic book merchandising. Where the latter is brightly lit and typically filled with customers, the former is more, well, subterranean. I look through the clerk's offerings, grab a copy of an “Elseworlds” Batman book by Mike Mignola (t’would appear to be a Lovecraft pastiche). Only when I get home do I notice that the book is second of a three-part mini-series. Aargh, burned again! I arrive back from my excursion about an hour after I left. It’s eleven o’clock, and I’ve got the rest of a brisk, gorgeous, sunshiny spring day ahead of me. Think I’ll stay inside and read some comics. # | Friday, May 02, 2003 ( 5/02/2003 06:20:00 AM ) Bill S. THE FIFTEEN-MINUTE COMIC – A few more books that didn’t vanish from my short-term memory right after I finished reading ‘em: Batman #614 (DC): See where Jeph Loeb & Jim Lee’s Disney ride through the Gotham Universe is topping the pre-orders, but to date I can’t see what the fuss is about. Only spiffy thing that scripter Loeb has done to date is to introduce a Previously Unseen Figure From Bruce Wayne’s Past, convince us that he’s the hidden villain behind the goings-on, then kill him off mid-story. Gotta admit that fan art fave Jim Lee is not to my particular tastes: he takes the sculpted body thing to a level that leeches his figures of personality, but unlike a Rich Corben, you never get the sense he’s getting any kicks out of doing so. Biggest misdemeanor: after Cooke & Allred’s provocative redesign of Selina Kyle, Lee (and inker Scott Williams) manage to drain all the kinky sexiness out of her, making the character look like a muscular Amelia Earhart, not a slinky reformed cat burglar.Other books briefly noted: Namor #1 (Aquafan Tegan nails this ‘un, which gives us a nekkid young boy Namor who appears on an American beach in the 1920’s – and not a single period prude pops up to say anything about it!); Marvel: The End #4 (found myself wondering how Neilalien took this installment, which briefly kills off then revives Doc Strange and the rest of the Defenders) and Amazing Spider-Man #52 (anybody else struck by the similarities between this and Bruce Jones’ recent Captain America mini-series? Have Marvel’s writers been passing 'round a DVD of Casino or something?) More when I’ve got enough to comment about. # | Thursday, May 01, 2003 ( 5/01/2003 10:39:00 AM ) Bill S. AN APOLOGY – The management wishes to offer its sincere apologies for the threatening tagline and gratuitous use of the f-word that appeared in the previous posting. Clearly, the author is an impressionable type who should not be exposed to the corrupting influence of bands like the Cramps. We currently have him on a strict regimen of Enya CDs for the rest of the week. Again, we apologize to anyone who may’ve been offended by today’s review. (We see that Bill has also posted this same piece on the Blogcritics site. But since they’re all a bunch of foul-mouthed gits over there, fuck ‘em!) # | ( 5/01/2003 08:36:00 AM ) Bill S. PAGING DR. F. – The back cover to the Cramps’ newest foray into psychobilly dementia, Fiends of Dope Island (Vengeance), tells the tale. Our heroes are posing and glowering menacingly at the viewer, all blackened eyes and bad-ass retro costumes, gold drapery behind ‘em like something out of David Lynch’s lavatory. It’s the same background the group used for 1986's A Date With Elvis, which makes perfect sense since it’s pretty much the same album, anyway. Hell, the Cramps have been reworking the same record ever since their first long-player, Songs The Lord Taught Us, debuted in 1980. Those of us who love the band’s brand of psychotronic psilliness won’t complain: it’d be like beefing because Night, Dawn and Day of the Dead all have the same basic plot. “So what?” the answer goes, “it’s what I wanna see/hear!” Cramps fans know what to expect by now: revamped Link Wray instrumentals and record junkie obscurities, Ivy Rorscach’s ear-scraping gee-tar fuzztones, Lux Interior’s inbred tone-free Saturday afternoon horrorshow vocals (he growls as much as he sings), lyrics emanating from some late-nite drive-in speaker of your mind, echo chamber production. It’s all part of the show, and if some of these elements have since been overplayed by scores of wannabe Rob Zombies, the Cramps arrived there first – and they did it with purer elements: deranged rockabilly (Jerry Reed’s “Oowee Baby” gets the patented Cramps treatment here) and Pebbly garage punk (“Hang Up”), all-but-forgotten crudities closer to the roots of real rock out-there-ness than any punk or metal band could’ve imagined. “I want to stay out of trouble, but trouble is too much fun,” Lux snarls on “Dopefiend Boogie,” mere moments before he denies contemplating stealing your stereo. Elsewhere, he’s calling on “Dr. Fucker M.D.” (helpfully parenthesized, “Medical Deviant,” in tribute to a cheesy Italian cannibal flick) for two weeks worth of pills, hiccoughing psychotically and announcing that he’s “Elvis Fucking Christ,” dedicating a crude electric blues cut to John Agar, and admiring some sweetie out of a Russ Meyer exploit-flick by proclaiming that “She’s Got Balls.” All the while Poison Ivy keeps on strummin' them junk guitar riffs, proffering feedback and engaging in the best sustained psychedelic freak-out (“Wrong Way Ticket”) since her advantageously inept work on the band’s premiere single, “Surfing Bird.” The Cramps are primarily the Lux & Ivy Show, though the strength of their albums has also waxed and waned with their shifting rhythm section. Without strong bass-&-drums, this swampy play-acting can grow plenty sludgy, but happily, that isn’t the case with this outing. Returning drummer Harry Drumbini and bassist Chopper Franklin ground the album and keep it from oozing too deeply into the googoo muck. “You can go to Devry Beauty School or get a job,” our rockin’ anti-savior sez. “Or you might join a devil cult o’ some evil heart throb like me. . .” In these benighted days of molded American Idols, of forced piety and patriotism, the Cramps’ brand of z-pic sleaziness and keep-it-simple r-‘n’-r throbbery are just what Doctor Fucker ordered. . . (Yeah, I know that closer was predictable – you wanna make something of it, bub!?!) # | Wednesday, April 30, 2003 ( 4/30/2003 08:50:00 AM ) Bill S. THE COUNTDOWN (REALLY) BEGINS – Moments worth remembering from last night’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer:
# | Tuesday, April 29, 2003 ( 4/29/2003 02:48:00 PM ) Bill S. IT’S A SMALL WORLD, AFTER ALL – Today’s ¡Journalista! links to a Daily Pantagraph interview with Jim Schifeling, owner of the Normal, IL., comic shop Acme Comics, discussing the upcoming Free Comic Book Day. Got nothing to add to the story except to note in the interests of bloggish self-absorption that Jim is the guy who fulfills my weekly comics needs. # | ( 4/29/2003 06:30:00 AM ) Bill S. THUNDERBELTS AND IRON MAIDENS – The acronym (The Higher United Nations Enforcement Reserves) may connote a multi-national agency, but when you get down to it, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (DC Archives) were an all-American group. A short-lived superhero series from the mid-sixties, the Agents came out under the previously unknown Tower Comics imprimatur: three years after Marvel launched its line with the first issue of Fantastic Four. Today, the Tower line is fondly recalled by Silver Age comic book aficionados, less for its characters and stories and more for the quality of its art. Tower’s line of superhero books was overseen by the great Wallace Wood, a troubled but gifted artist known among fans for his EC s-f and Mad comics, plus his work on early issues of Marvel’s Daredevil. A dynamic and detailed cartoonist with a flair for rendering zaftig pinup babes, Wood tended to flit from assignment to assignment, much to the consternation of his fans (his run on Daredevil, though it changed the look of the character for the better, only lasted six issues). With a coterie of comic pros (Reed Crandall, Gil Kane, Dan Adkins, Mike Sekowsky), Wood put his visual stamp on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and its offshoots. The result was a line of superhero books that instantly looked great – even if the stories didn’t always approach the same level of visual presentation. I was unprepared by DC Comics’ recent hardcover reprint of this series. The comics company has been doing a strong job respectfully reprinting many of its superhero series as 200-plus page hardbound Archives – including a few works from outside the DC line like Will Eisner’s Spirit or the first Mad comics – but I’d have thought that the company would’ve gone for one of its as-yet-unprinted series (Superboy, say) before settling on this relatively obscure batch of books. I’m not complaining, mind you, just more than a little surprised. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents was Tower’s flagship superhero title, a large 68-page book (most comics typically ran half that size) sold on newsstands for a quarter. Its lead was a superlunk named Dynamo, who received cover prominence and two stories per issue. Premise behind the book was fairly simple: a brilliant scientist is murdered by enemy agents, leaving behind three prototype inventions: an “electron intensifier” belt, invisibility cloak plus a cybernetic helmet capable of “magnifying a man’s brain power several times over.” Each device is given to a single agent; it’s the belt that transforms amiable everyman Leonard Brown into dynamo. Once he fires his Thunderbelt, it adapts to his metabolism and becomes fatal to anyone else who tries to wear it. In one episode, an enemy agent is vaporized after putting on the captured Dynamo’s belt. The remaining prototypes are taken up by NoMan (aged scientist Dr. Dunn, who in addition to the invisibility cloak, can shift his “entire mental makeup” from one android body to another) and Menthor (a double agent named Janus, who undergoes a subconscious personality change once he utilizes the helmet – a ripe idea that Tower’s writers never fully explored). To abet our super-powered heroes, an “international” team called the Thunder Squad also appeared in the early issues but thankfully didn’t last. The Squad was so colorless that when one of ‘em died in issue #2, you barely remembered who he was. But Dynamo was the star of the show and for good reason. For one thing, the guy actually had a personality, which is more than you can say for the rest of the cast. A wall-smashing he-man (Wood loved to render bricks, flying out at the reader), Dynamo’s enhancement had entirely gone to his brawn – and not a bit to his brain. He was regularly captured by the baddies, especially the armored femme fatale Iron Maiden. Though Wood was an artist capable of rendering men’s mag cuties without a stitch of clothing on ‘em, he clearly was of a generation that appreciated good tease. His Iron Maiden appeared fully covered (all we saw was the lower half of her pouty face) in shapely medieval garb; only thing we knew about her was she was mercenary, attracted to Dynamo and hot. Our poor hero was caught between his own attraction for this dangerous beauty and the equally curvaceous, but safer, agency secretary Alice Robbins. But the best thing about Dynamo was his capacity for performing all sorts of goofy superhero acts for no other reason than the fact that they looked cool. One of our hero’s favorite means of transport, for instance, was to jump out of a plane sans parachute and let his increased body mass protect him on impact. In one story, he even hitched a ride on a rocket – a pretty expensive jaunt – then plummeted into the ocean. First time I read it as a smarty-pants adolescent, I remember wondering why the guy didn’t plunge all the way to the ocean floor and drown trying to swim back to the surface. T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s nemeses were fairly standard comic book types – world-conquering Warlords with more than a trace of Ming the Merciless about ‘em, mad scientists who clone a park of dinosaurs decades before Michael Crichton thought to do it, an array of anonymous evil agents – and the relatively short (ten-thirteen pages) plots are frequently utilitarian at best. About half the scripts in the first four issues are uncredited, and these frequently are the weakest entries. Volume One’s intro writers, Robert Klein & Michael Uslan, make some extravagant claims about some of the book’s offerings, even comparing a later Iron Maiden tale (“Return of the Iron Maiden”) to Will Eisner’s hero high mark Spirit. The comparison does no service to the Tower tale, though, which inevitably flattens when held alongside Eisner’s more floridly movie-mad eight-pagers. Artists Wood and Reed Crandall (best known for his work on Blackhawk) do a nifty job recreating a Hollywoodized Middle-Eastern setting, but the results just aren’t as consistently witty as Eisner. (Iron Maiden does get a decent moment in this ‘un, though; leading a bound Dynamo across the desert on a camel, she notes, “Capturing you is getting to be a habit!”) It’s better if you just take these stories on their own terms: simple and concise, frequently silly, superhero tales with work by some of the era’s best American comics artists. Coming out as they did in the midst of Marvel’s elevation of extended plots and heightened adolescent angst, Tower’s books already seemed anachronistic in 1965. Reading these stories today, though, they can readily stand up against much of Marvel’s melodramas. Nowadays, many Americans have mixed emotions about any organization that claims the United Nations as its sponsor, but, I've gotta tell ya, back in the day – when dinosaurs walked the streets and underground races plotted to overthrow the surface dwellers – we were damn glad to have a group like T.H.U.N.D.E.R. around. . . # | Sunday, April 27, 2003 ( 4/27/2003 09:37:00 AM ) Bill S. PLEDGIN’ MY TIME – After a three-week delay, we finally got to handle phone duty for our local NPR station’s spring pledge drive. The station, WGLT, delayed its previously scheduled drive because it opened the same week of the war with Iraq. I thought the decision a good one – following a one-hour war briefing with a request for money would’ve seemed pretty tacky – but the rescheduling put some holes in the original volunteer ranks. I’ve written about doing a pledge shift for the radio station before. GLT, which is aligned with my alma mater Illinois State University, is predominately a jazz station. But from Friday night through Sunday, it shifts to blues programming. It’s also a source for NPR’s two big news programs, Morning Edition and All Things Considered, which I typically hit while driving an hour to and from work. Aside from Fresh Air, we don’t get the other NPR interview programs, which I'm told skew a bit more liberal in their POV. Living in a predominately Republican stretch of the Midwest, I suspect that wouldn’t go over well with the station’s corporate sponsors. Two of McLean County’s big money sources, after all, are agribusiness and insurance, entities that aren’t typically associated with flamin' liberalism. Last night, I was one of three holding down the phones from 8:00 to 11:00 for blues deejay the Delta Doctor (wife Becky had volunteered to plug one of the gaps during Friday afternoon’s jazz programming). The shift passed quickly: a record-breaking number of phone calls, plus some time swapping phone line anecdotes. One of the other volunteers, Steve, recalled a call from last fall where a listener phoned in to bitch at him and the station for even having the pledge drive. “You get plenty of tax money from me already,” he groused, “so why you asking for more?” It was one of those conversations, Steve said, where you knew any answer you gave was gonna tick the guy off more. He’d called to argue, not to hear about shrinking federal funding and the growing costs of running a radio station. I suspect the guy was less in arms about pledge week and more p.o.ed about the that that the station was receiving any govt. money. Me, I’m not bothered by the fact that this tiny li’l FM station is receiving some of my tax dollars, though if pressed I’d also opine that life would be better if stations like GLT could survive purely on volunteer donations and university support. (Because it's part of the university Communications Department, the station has a mix of professional and student workers – and also functions as a teaching facility.) It’d probably mean longer and more frequent pledge drives, though. In the years since we’ve started volunteering, the station has done its best to speed the fundraising process. Online pledging has definitely helped with this. While overseeing the phones, periodically we heard a merry wav. from the Pledge Central P-C indicating that another donation email had just arrived. Each ding! brought applause from the phone folk. Most public teevee/radio audience members find pledge drives to be a pain in the ass. But speaking as a volunteer, I enjoy my time at the phones. Still tune out the plaintive pleas for money when I’m just a member of the audience, of course. But when I do it’s from the smugly self-satisfied perch of someone who sez, “Hey, I’ve already made my pledge. No need to convince me!” # | |
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