#looking at the year ahead it just more reprints of all star

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

Maddening how DC largely ignores this entire era, never really collecting or reprinting any of it except for Death of Superman, which is far from the best story it produced. That and the Wedding seem to be the only bits of the Triangle era widely available, which is just crazy, but not all that surprising. DC has never been all that fussed about reprinting Superman stories from the silver, bonze and modern age, except for a select few.

[maxwell-grant]

Your Top Five Pulp Heroes that you wish were better known? By Pulp Hero fans, I mean. Since pretty much all of them except Conan and Tarzan are fairly unknown.

It’s actually quite hard for me to narrow it down to just five, because I’m having to choose between characters that are my favorites that I wish were more well-known and appreciated (which is all of them), and characters that aren’t quite my favorites but I very much think should have achieved great popularity for a myriad of reasons. So instead I’m going to pick some of each. These are not necessarily ranked by their importance or my personal taste, just 5 characters I felt like highlighting in particular. 

Honorable mentions goes to characters I already talked about prior and don’t want to repeat myself on. These aren’t “lesser” picks, just ones that I already talked about: Imaro (who in particular definitely feels like he could, and should be, a pop culture superstar if he was only more well-known), Kapitan Mors (who’s got a lot in common with one of my favorite fictional characters, Captain Nemo, but also has a lot of interesting things going on for him as his own character). Sar Dubnotal (a character that appeals a lot to me and I think should be included much more often in pulp hero team-ups). The Golden Amazon (again, definitely a character that feels like it’s just begging to have a pop culture breakout, even comic books rarely if ever have female supervillains this ruthless and over-the-top), The Mexican Fantomas (who absolutely deserves a better name than what I’m calling him here, because he’s incredibly awesome and leagues ahead of just being a knock-off). And of course my homeboy, The Grey Claw, whom I would consider Number One of the list if it wasn’t for the fact that his obscurity has left him untouched by copyright and I got plans of my own for the character that wouldn’t be possible if he was more well-known, so I guess I’m ultimately glad he’s obscure (even if I’m still bothered by how little he’s known). 

Allright let’s go:

Number 5: Sheridan Doome

Sheridan Doome appeared in fifty-four stories and three novels from 1935 to 1943. As chief detective for U.S. Naval Intelligence, Lieutenant Commander Sheridan Doome’s job was a grim one. Whenever an extraordinary mystery or crime occurred in the fleet, on a naval base, or anywhere the navy worked to protect American interests, Doome was immediately dispatched to investigate it. Fear and dread would always precede Doome’s arrival in his special black airplane. For, in an explosion during WWI, he had been monstrously disfigured. 

He was six feet two inches tall; had a chalk-white face and head. It appeared as though it had once been seared or burned. For eyes, he had only black blotches; glittering optics, that looked like small chunks of coal. His nose was long, the end of it squared off rudely. He had no lips, just a slit that was his mouth. His neck was long, as white and as bony as his face…. Sheridan Doome looked more like a robot than a human being. He was tall and ghastly; his uniform fitted him in a loose manner. Long arms hung at his sides; his face was a perfect blank. He had no control of his facial muscles; consequently, his countenance was always without expression, chalky and bony.

But behind the ugliness was a brilliant mind. Sheridan Doome always got his man. Before Sheridan Doome became a staple in the pages of The Shadow magazine, two Doome hardcover mysteries were written in the mid-1930’s by acclaimed hard-boiled author Steve Fisher (I Wake Up Screaming) and edited by his wife Edythe Seims (Dime Detective, G-8 and His Battle Aces). Age of Aces now brings you both books in one huge double novel, presented in a retro “flip book” style. This book is currently Out of Print.

I sadly don’t have any more information on the character other than this. The book is unavailable for me to acquire in any capacity, and the text above is taken from the Age of Aces website as well as Jess Nevins’s personal profile for the character. I’m not even sure if any of those 54 stories even exist anymore, since although he was published as a backup in Shadow Magazine, there doesn’t seem to be reprints of them anywhere, at least as far as I can find, and the original Shadow magazines have largely turned to dust by now. 

A character who combines aspects of The Phantom of the Opera and The Shadow, whose adventures are set in a backdrop that can easily lead to ocean adventures? That’s like, what, three of my favorite things in the world combined. I really, really wish I could at least read the stories this character stars in, but as is, this description is all I can provide. Again, time really has been cruel to the pulp heroes. 

Number 4: Harlan Dyce

This is another character I’ve only been able to learn about through Jess Nevins’s archives and have not been able to attain any further information on, which is sadly the case with a lot of pulp heroes that nowadays only seem to exist as footnotes in his Encyclopedia or records in libraries. I don’t post more about these characters because I really would just be copying the stuff he wrote without much to justify me quoting him verbatim, and I hate the idea of doing that.

I especially hate that in Harlan Dyce’s case though. Here’s his description

“Dyce had brains, taste, money, ambition, and a total lack of physical or spiritual fear. But—

“Dyce was thirty-three inches tall and weighed sixty pounds.

“That was all the world could ever hold against him. That was what had made the world, most of it, in all the countries of the world, stare at Harlan Dyce, billed in the big show as “General Midge.””

Harlan Dyce is a misanthropic and venomous private detective. He has an “amazingly handsome face,” and the aforementioned brains. But all anyone sees is his stature, and he hates that and turns his cold eyes and acid tongue on them. 

The only person Dyce likes and gets along with (besides his dwarf wife, a former client) is his assistant, Nick Melchem, a six-foot tall former p.i.’s assistant with bleak eyes and a strong body. Melchem ignores Dyce’s stature and treats Dyce normally, which Dyce responds warmly to.

Dwarfs may be the single most maligned group of people depicted in pulp magazines, even more so than the Japanese in the war years or the Chinese during the peak of the Yellow Peril’s popularity. Evil dwarfs, murderous dwarfs, sexually depraved dwarfs, they are all loathsome, ugly cliches that are, sadly, the only instances you see of dwarf characters being represented at all, with the only ones who are awarded any measure of sympathy are doomed henchmen or tragic villains.  Even outside of the pulps, the only other examples of heroic, protagonist dwarfs I can think off the top of my head are Puck from Marvel Comics and Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones.

I’m not gonna say Harlan Dyce is great representation because I’m not a little person and can never make that kind of claim for a group I’m not a part of, but Harlan Dyce may be the first time I’ve ever seen a dwarf character in pulp fiction who was not a villain or a murderous goon or a victim, but an actual person and a heroic protagonist, and that definitely counts for something. I’m not sure how popular this character was or could be if someone picked up the concept and ran with it (and I’m pretty sure he’s public domain), but I definitely think this is a character that should exist and should be popular. 

Hell, this character has Peter Dinklage written all over it, give it to him. Maybe then he will get to play a smart, fearless, cynical, misanthropic but good-natured and heroic character in something where he actually gets to keep these traits until the show ends.

Number 3: Audaz, O Demolidor

Audaz is a Brazilian character who was created and published by Gazetinha, the same publishers of Grey Claw as well as properties exported from elsewhere like Superman and Popeye, and much like The Grey Claw, he is also completely unknown even here. I’ll get to Audaz more in-depth sometime but here I’m going to provide a quick summary: 

Audaz, The Demolisher is a gigantic crime-fighting robot controlled and piloted by the brilliant scientist Dr. Blum, his close friend Gregor and the child prodigy Jacques Ennes, who pilot the giant robot from a massive laboratory inside it's head rather than a cockpit. He takes on a variety of ordinary human criminals, mad scientists, supervillains and invading armies, towering over skyscrapers and grappling with jets.

Audaz was created in 1939 by illustrator Messias de Melo, a year before Quality Comics's Bozo the Iron Man and 5 years before Ryuichi Yokoyama's Kagaku Senshi, and decades before the debut of Mazinger Z. Although he is not the first giant robot of science fiction, he is the first heroic giant robot piloted by human pilots, and thus the first true example of "mecha" fiction.

Number 2: Emilia the Ragdoll

This is another Brazilian character, although nowhere near as obscure as Audaz as even a cursory Google search can show. Although Brazil did not have a “pulp era” in the same way the US had, we’ve long gotten past the point of sticking to it as a definitive rule, and I’m including Emilia as a pulp hero because she’s a 1920s fantasy literature character who was created under a publishing company that released pulp stories, because she doesn’t quite belong in the mold of fantasy literature characters she takes after, and because I like her and if I was putting a bunch of pulp heroes together in the same story, I would definitely include Emilia in it. It’s not like she really has anywhere else to go, now that she’s public domain and she’s outlasted her franchise.

As you can tell by the above image, Emilia’s had a lot of variations over the years and that’s because the work she was created for, Sítio do Picapau Amarelo (Yellow Woodpecker Ranch/Farm), has become a major bedrock of Brazilian fantasy literature, one of the only works created here that you can find substantial information about in English if you go looking for it. Here’s some descriptions of Emilia’s character:

Emília is a rag doll described as "clumsy" or "ugly", resembling a "witch" that was handmade by Aunt Nastácia, the ranch's cook, for the little girl Lúcia, out of an old skirt. After Lucia takes her on an adventure and the doll is given a dose of magic pills, Emília suddenly started talking, and would never stop henceforth.

Emilia has a rough, antagonistic personality, and an independent, free-spirited and anarchist behaviour. She is rogue, rebellious, stubborn, rough and intensely determined at anything she sets her mind on, eager to take off on just about any adventure. She is often immature and behaves like a curious and arrogant child, always wanting to be the center of attention.

She is extremely opinionated even when she constantly and confidently mispronounces words and expressions. Her attitude often gets her into trouble, and she very often has to fight against the villains who attack her home on the Yellow Woodpecker Farm and mistreat her friends.

In the stories, Emilia often takes the role of a heroine who travels through different realms and dimensions, as the books include not only figures from Brazilian and worldwide folklore, but also several characters both real and fictional, such as Hercules, King Arthur, Don Quixote, Thumbelina, Da Vinci, Shirley Temple, Captain Hook, Santos Dumont and Baron von Munchausen.

She's fought scorpions and martians and nymph hordes, her arch-enemy is an alligator witch, she rescued an angel from the Milky Way and tried to teach it how to become a human, and once shrunk the entire population of Earth to try and talk the president of the United States into ending war forever.

To little surprise, she has become the most popular character and the series’s mascot.

It’s a little strange to consider Emilia underrated considering she is one of the most famous original characters of Brazilian literature, but hardly anyone outside of Brazil even knows who she is, and regardless of the quality of the original stories (and Monteiro Lobato’s views on race that tar much of his reputation), Emilia definitely feels to me like a character that should be a lot more popular globally. 

She is the only character from Yellow Woodpecker Ranch that has transcended the original stories, since she was always the most popular character and there’s been a couple of stories written about her that usually separate her from the ranch and just set her out on the world by herself. The latest story about this character has been a series called The Return of Emilia, that’s about her stepping out of the books in 2050 and discovering a Brazil that’s been ruined by social and ecological devastation, and traveling back in time via a flying scooter in order to try and prevent this calamity. 

Now that she’s public domain, I definitely think there’s some great stories that can be told with the character that just about anyone could get to, and I definitely think she’s a character that deserves more appreciation. Anything goes in stories starring her and it’s that kind of free-for-all freedom that I think can benefit future takes on pulp heroes. I would be very happy to place Emilia among them.

Oh yeah, and there was one time she kicked Popeye's ass by tricking him with a can of mouldy cabbage instead of spinach, making him sick and then beating him, which possibly puts her as one of the all-time badasses of fiction, except she would be pissed at not being number one and likely embark on a quest to beat everyone else just to prove she could, because that’s how Emilia rolls.

Number 1: Luna Bartendale, from The Undying Monster (1922)

Not necessarily my favorite of the bunch, but one who sort of epitomizes what you asked, a character who is both incredibly obscure and incredibly underrated in every sense. Despite the book being somewhat known, mainly thanks to the movie, the character is so obscure that I don’t even have an illustration of her to display here, not even fan art, just one of the book’s covers that I think best conveys it. Luckily, the book is also available freely online, so you can all go check it out here. The movie adaptation does not feature the character of Luna Bartendale which makes it pointless to talk about.

To not spoil it too much, The Undying Monster is a very fascinating book, ahead of it’s time in quite a few ways. You expect it to just be a detective story centered around a werewolf cursed, except the subtitle of the book is “The Fifth Dimension” and then it goes to talk about dimensions of thought and post-WWI trauma and love and hypnotic regression that travels through time and ancient runes and Norse mythology. It’s not exactly an easy book to get through in one setting, but I’d recommend it much the same if only because it’s got supersensitive psychic sleuth Luna Bartendale, literature’s first female occult detective, and she’s an incredible character who absolutely feels like she should have become a literary icon. 

She lives in London but is world-renowned for her many good deeds. She is a small, pretty woman, with curly blonde hair, dark eyebrows and a high-bridged nose, and a slight build. She has a voice described as a light soprano that "does not make much noise but carries a long way". 

Petite, bedimpled and golden curled, Luna is completely in charge of events, dominating every scene that she appears in with her welcoming disposition and cleverness. 

Bartendale has various psychic powers, including mind reading. She is well-versed in psychic and occult lore, is a “supersensitive” psychic, and has a “Sixth Sense” which allows her to trace things and people through both the Fourth and the Fifth Dimension. (The Fifth Dimension is “the Dimension that surrounds and pervades the Fourth–known as the Supernatural”).

Her extensive knowledge of occult rites and practices puts John Silence, Carnacki and Miles Pennoyer to shame, and she beats them all with her "super-sensitive" gift of being able to psychically connect with troubled souls and hypnotize them.

She uses a divining rod for various tasks, including psychic detection and tracking, and distinguishing between benevolent and malevolent forces. She has various (undefined) powerful psychic defenses, can carry on seances, and can even cure a person of “wehrwolfism.” And she can always rely on her massive, intelligent dog Roska for help.

Luna sadly doesn’t show up in the book as often as I’d hoped, but everything about this character is so delightful. In a lot od ways she hardly feels like a pulp hero, at least the ones I usually talk about. She feels like a lost protagonist from an incredibly successful kid’s adventure series where a kind and eccentric detective witch and her giant dog go around solving occult mysteries and encountering all sorts of weird supernatural beings while counseling and helping people, like Ms Frizzle meets Hilda. Like this character is just waiting for Cartoon Saloon to make a film about her.

Its not so much “this character should/could be popular but it’s clear why that didn’t pan out”, it’s more me being confused as “why the hell isn’t she super popular? This character should have had a franchise ages ago, holy shit put her in everything””

[popculturebuffet]

Blacksad: Arctic Nation Review: Digging Two Graves

Welcome you beautiful technicolor rainbow. And today I continue my black History Month coverage, this time with one that was suggested by Kev, my patreon on patreon and the blog’s biggest supporter, who sent me a bunch of things I could review for Black History month and, loving this comic and feeling given the events of last year with George Floyd that have had rightful shockwaves ever since, it was perfect.  

For those needing a refresher Blacksad is a spanish produced french released comic series about John Blacksad, a grim private detective in a 1950′s set world full of anthromphized animals. It has gorgeous art, endless atmosphere and utterly captivating stories. Last month I covered the first story, Somewhere in the Shadows, since this one was only number two and I could track the series evolution better, and I loved the series and could make room on the schedule so there was no real reason NOT to do it. And since i covered most of the series background that time, I can dive in quicker to this one. So join me under the cut to see how the series evolves and to see a black cat take on white supremacists with the help of a smelly weasel. 

First things first.. the cover, which is from the original version and was lovingly reprinted in my copy, is goregous and simple: John grimly and camly carrying a scared child through a bilzzard past the wreckage of a plane. It’s instantly eye catching, our black furred hero in a bilzzard of white.. and also serves as a great metaphor for a story dealing with white suprmacy as well as our hero trying to find the child he’s trying to keep safe on the cover. It’s just perfect. 

We open in the Line, a city in the arctic, with Blacksad morosely narrating how one day he’ll write his memoirs, as he figures they’ll sell well given the public’s grim fascination with murder. We soon find out why tha’ts on his mind as the comic “pans out”... to show a black bird with a long neck horrifcally and publicly hung in a hate crime. It’s an utterly ghastly sight I will not be sharing, but needless to say it sets the tone and the setting in one horrific image. 

John’s interuptted though by the introduction of Weekly. Weekly is a local journalist who true to his name, only takes a bath once a week and immidetly pisses off john by being nosey, assuming john is also a journalist and casually remaking about this horror show being a hate crime. Despite this terrible first impression.. Weekly goes on to be John’s best friend and sidekick, providing some levity in his grim world for the audience, while as we’ll soon see being FAR more useful and competent than his demeanor and lack of hygine lets on. 

For now though, John has to go meet his client: Miss Grey, a schoolteacher whose hired John to find a missing girl, Kaylie, one of her students. Those around the neighborhood are relcutant to look into it, including Kayle and the police, who as we’ll learn very soon are white suprmacists, simply blame it on the Local Black Claws gang. Miss Grey also fills us in on the line’s backstory: it was once a propserous suburban place.. until the local plane plant closed down, leading to a rise in crime and unemployment with the place slowly but surely falling into decay.  Despite this she’s determined to stay and fight.. and John is touched by her noblility and tells her he will do everything he can. And while that’s a natural thing to tell your client.. it feels genuine, that John senses this woman’s deep resolute will to keep going, and feels for her as the ONE PERSON who cares a small child went missing and isn’t either ignoring it or simply being a racist dickhead about it.  John may hide it under lairs of cynsim and grumpus... but he’s good man and as we see he’ll go to hell and back to do the right thing. 

We soon properly meet the titular Arctic Nation... who are as you would expect, a white suprmacist group, calling yesterday’s lynching a necssary thing and spouting your usual horrifying rhetoric about a white world and stuff. The Arctic Nation are also made up almost entirely of Arctic Animals.. and honeslty that’s a way to do a white supermacy metaphor I never thought of, simply having the fur be black and white, and using the fact most arctic animals are by nature predators to give us some naturally intimdating looking antagonists. One of them also is clealry not Happy John’s around, nor that John rather than be afraid or look nervous in the slightest... is simply pissed as he should be and simply dosen’t give a shit.. and given assholes like this love attention and pissing people off, it probably makes him even madder. Good. 

John runs into Weekly again, and while still not happy to see him, Weekly is nothing but friendly and offers peace and a warm drink in a cold land.. and John takes him up on it noting in narration that since they are clear outsiders here... why not? Any port in a storm and given the blizzard of white supramcey just outside, John can’t help but take refuge in a diner. There’s also a really nice touch in  their drinks with John having a simple .. alchohol ( I don’t drink sue me) and Weekly having something called a burobon mlikshake . Weekly outlines that the Line is about to explode with racial tension with two diffrent suprmacist groups: The arctic nation , who he freely and rightly mocks and the aformentioned black claws. 

Before they can continue though two of the goons from outside come in and harass an old black bird at the counter, saying can’t he read the sign.. before he’s revealed to be blind. They confront John next... who gloriously takes NONE of thier shit, wirly pointing to his patch of white fur, which indicates him as mixed race in this unverse and says does this count. 

The racist asshole dosen’t take the hint that maybe this isn’t going to work and tries provoking john by threatning ot turn him into a coat.. and john insults his, and his whiteness and we cut over to the head of the white suprmacist rally asking the owner to call the police, the owner only relcutantly agreeing when we see the supremacist asshole fly into the bar. 

So naturally we next see our heroes in the office of Karup, the local police chief, polar bear and not even hiding it white suprmacist who talks proudly about his confederate saber on the wall and asks if John knows who it belonged to. His response is priceless. 

Damn.. it takes balls of fucking platinum, on both of them, to be called into an unapolgetic white suprmacists office and roast him to his fucking face. It’s what we should all do granted but still, props to both of htem. it also shows Weekly, desipte being kinda sketchy.. is every bit as brave as his friend, and takes these fuckers every bit as seriously. That is to say they both KNOW their in danger.. they just don’t CARE, feeling rightly that simply cowtowing to Karup like he wants is not worth thieir damn time, and that he deserves no fear, no respect and nothing he wants. Just mockery for clinging to an outdated and horrific set of ideals like all white supremacists then and now. Karup is forced to let htem off with a warning as his wife shows up.. and Weekly wolf whistles at her because awesome he may be he is not a class act and this is still the 1950′s where that was okay for some reason. 

We next catch up to John that night where he’s taking in a driving movie involving giant ants. 

He’s naturally here not to take in a good b movie, nor is he being forced to watch it by mad scientests, but here to find Kaylie’s mother Dinah, who agrees to talk to him after her shift.. and John grabs a peak at her ass while she walks away.

Dinah has good reason for not calling the cops though... as she puts it, she has no faith in white justice, and given the police chief had a fucking confderate flag in his office, and many STILL do today, yeah fair point. We also find out she used to work for Karup, so she knows damn well he won’t be helpful at best or use looking for as an excuse to lynch more innocent black men at worse. Of course John, while symaptehtic brings up something about Oldsmill, and gets rightfully slapped for it. 

We next see John talking to weekly, who he’s just kind of accepted is his sidekick now. Their grocery trip is interupted by the claws, who show up, beat up the racist shopkeep.. and then harass our heroes, beating up weekly to get him to say their innocnet of the kidnapping. This however.. shows that while not AS bad as Karup, clearly.. their still not good people. Weekly GLADLY would’ve printed what they asked if they’d actually asked, and instead they beat him up to do so, and the person who did so dosen’t endear himself further by asking john “What happened to your snout brother?”. As with last time, his response is fucking perfect

He wisely backs off though is still confrontational about it. Weekly wonders if john really was going to shoot him, and my response is...

He absolutley would’ve. John asks if he’s really going to print that crap.. and of course Weekly is. That’s where the story is, and he points out he’ sa star reporter and his name apparently comes from coming in with a big story once a week. John isn’t amused.. but could use Weekly’s help and tell shim to keep an eye on Karup’s household for him since he can sneak in there and be far less notecable. And he agrees. I’ll go ahead and say it.. weekly was an invaluable addition to the story and a missing peace for Blacksad they needed: like robin to batman, he provides someone for him to talk to, a bit of badly needed levity, an dprovides blacksad an ally no matter the case or situation, and one who has every reason to help both because hteir friends.. and because it’ll get him a good story, and his background as a reporter gives good reason as to why he’s good at this.

Something else to note is John has also taken on more of a sarcastic streak as you can tell and I love it: instead of being grim all the time it gives a human touch to him.. while still making him utterly badass as he usually uses it to disarm an asshole flexing their power over him. It simply adds some shades to his already wonderful personality. 

We finally meet Oldsmill who denies having anything to do with it, as the rumor is his heavily inbred son is Kaylee’s father and Oldsmill belivies it was karup since he was apparnetly married to a black woman once. Oldsmill is also a racist ass blaming the downturn in things on black people instead of you know, the plant closing. John has what he needed.. and has a good shot at oldsmill pointing out if he actually mixed races his son might of turne dout okay instead of a braindead inbred moron. 

Weekly hides in the bushes at karups.. and soon finds his wife plowing the head of the arctic nation we met earlier,  huk, behind his back. “I love this job!”.... dude.. no just.. no. Don’t watch people have rough sex that’s just.. no. But he found out more as tailing them afterwords, he found them at a table with Kaylee’s mom, clearly wanting her to keep quite for some reason with Dinah not wanting her to suffer. Naturally she’s John’s next stop.. but instead he finds her brutally murdered, her body twisted and him lamenting that someone so full of life.. has lost hers and even if he achieves his goal now.. Kaylee lost her mother. And involved in whatevers’ going on or not.. she clearly loved her kid and whatever she got caught up in she died.. simply for proioritzing her daughte’rs own saftey and wellbeing over it. She was also stabbed with what John suspects to be.. a saber. Hmmmm.

John has no proof.. but decides fuck it, and goes to confront Karup anyway. His wife speaks up against him as does Huk... but given Weekly told john about her taking Huk in through the back door yeah... that dosen’t go great. And after Choir practice, Karup beats the every loving piss out of Huk for it, and tells him before that that, now weekly's’ actually printed the story he said he was going to, it’s open season on him and blacksad. 

So unsuprisingly, Blacksad suspects he’s been kidnapped when we catch up with John and interogrates the blind bird from earlier, whose trying to sell weekly’s camera, and successfully batman’s him into taking him to where Weekly is. Menawhile Karup confronts his wife.. who mocks him and has no sympathy and accuses him of being a pedophile like everyone else has. He takes it badly and tells her to get out and to no one’s suprise.. has an arctic nation flag in his drawer. I do not get what this was supposed to prove as we know he’s a white suprmacist piece of shit and that previous scene with Huk showed that he’s directing the nation from beihind the scenes. 

While the Bird brings john through and John laments his time as a vetran,  we find their headed for a nation meeting, complete with Klan style robes.. and Karup getting ambusehd. someone having put bloody children’s clothes in his trunk. Karup is hunt and while he clearly IS innocent, given Huk both presented the evidence and let’s face it it was either him or Karup’s wife jezebel, and I have no sympahty because not being a pedophile does not make him any less of a horrible abusive piece of  shit. 

Someone we DO actually care if they live or die next is weekly, whose terrified, the defiance from earlier gone.. which is fair as he knows he’s about ot die and dosen’t know John.. is right there, revealed via his paws as he prepares weekly to escape and has infilrated the nation in the robes. John’s next action is also utterly badass as he SWINGS FROM THE NOOSE, KICKS OVER THE BURNING CROSS THE NATION SET UP. 

Huk escapes and unsuprisingly is behind the kidnapping.. and the Magpie from earlier knew it and tires to stop him and gets shot. John kills one of the white suprmiacists and makes his wya out, finding Weekly, who escaped as john instructed and the two find the bird man.. is not dead and he takes htem to Kaylee. He dies in a really tearjerking scene, clearly senile and clearly talked into this. 

Naturally the next day, John reveals via narration that the Line’s remaining police didn’t give a shit about what happened, a racist paper actively comended it as “how justice should go” and that Huk escaped... and naturally John isn’t going to let that shit slide down the glass. Huk however is dead when he finds him having gotten his but clealry this dosen’t quite satisfy john. 

John listens to the song “Strange Fruit” while dressing up all fancy and looking damn good I must say. He’s preparing for a funeral and Weekly tries to help his pain.. by offering him the shots of Huk and Jeezebel.. only John spots something and tells weekly to get all he can on Karups first wife. 

Turns out the funeral is Karups... and John confronts the widow who tries to brush him off.. before tearing her shirt open to reveal a black spot.. which while a neat reveal.. GOD that’s fucking creeptastic. Seriously while this story is moving, brilliant and all sorts of things i’ll gush about.. it has some REALLY creepy undertones at times with John’s treatment of Dinah, Weekly taking pornographic pictures of two people without their consent, and now this.. I mean it’s not exactly unsuual for the time but you may want to not make your heroes look like sex monsters is all i’m saying. 

We finally get the full story: Dinah and Jezebel are Karups children the product of his first marriage that was geninely loving.. until Karup turned bitter and racist and upon finding out she was pregnant drove his wife out to the middle of nowhere in the middle of winter and left her to die. ...... sorry I was just fondly remembering him getting his neck snapped by the noose. Anywyays their mom did surivive long enough to give birth but the sheer pain of well.. everything collapsed on her and she eventually passed when they were young. Both sisters wanted revenge and since Jeez could pass for white, she married her own dad, and got some satstifactoin over not letting him touch her, and got Kaylee into the house. So she seduced Huk, even if clearly by the panel sleeping with that piece of shit greatly hurt Jez to do, and used him to set up the fake kidnapping scheme to frame Karup as a pedophile. 

As for why Dinah died.. if it wasn’t obvious by now Huk did it not realizing Jez and Dinah were sisters and took Dinah’s udnerstandable worry about her daughter.. as concern she’d squeal. His death and who did it should be obvious and given he’s almost as big a piece of shit as karup, only barely avoiding that because his murder wasn’t his own PREGNANT wife. Jez assures John it’s all over and her mother and sister can rest in peace.. but John cuts through this with one simple fact: “What about Kaylee?” Sure Karup deserved it.. but going so far int heir revenge cost a girl her mom, and the weight of this finally hits Jez who merley collapses saying “i’m cold” knowing that in the end.. her revenge wasnt worth it. And really that’s the center of the story: Revenge.. and how it’s ultimately hollow. To quote Mr. Miyagi from the karate kid on revenge, as I feel it’s UTTERLY relevant to this story “You might as well dig two graves”. The sisters COULD’VE had a decent life on their own, living as who they were in spite of karup, leaving the line behind when they could and taking Kaylee with them. Instead? While Karup and Huk rightfully died and those deaths are a good thing.. the arctic nation shows no signs of slowing down and likely didn’t losoe EVERYONE in the factory fire, a child is orphaned, Jez wasted her life as someone she wasn’t to get revenge on a man who didn’t even know she existed. While two very bad men died.. it cost two other lives and a child’s innocence to do so. 

So we close at Miss Greys, having taken Kaylee in for obvious reasons. John encourages Grey to keep going, that maybe with someone like her.. this region might get better. While the adults are lost... maybe the children can be better. Though John sadly looks at Kaylee, after she pelts week with a snowball, and i’ts clear from both of their faces the events haunt them. While john saved her.. he still couldn’t save Dinah. We end though on a very lovely scene: as John and Week prepare to get the hell out of dodge their job done, Weekly, seeing John’s very haunted by the events reveals the real reason behind his name: the boys only think he changes his underwear once a week. And this gets a hell of a laugh out of john... and ends a very dark story with a very grim resolution on a hopeful note: Things may of ended terribly.. but with the nation weak.. there’s some hope at least things might get better... and sometimes a little hope is all you need. It’s also a nice show of how far the two have come: From John really destesting week.. to the two being the close friends they’ll be from here on out, there for each other no matter what. And it really shows in the endings: Last album ended iwth John morosely sinking back into the shadows. Here while not much happier.. it ends with him at least.. not alone.. and with some hope things will get better. They have to. 

Final Thoughts:

Arctic Nation is a masterpice. While the sexist comedy bits have not aged well the story is THROUGHLY relevant, a story of revenge, prejudice and standing up to prejudice, and after the last four years of having a president blantly favor white suprmacists and corrupt cops while things only got worse.. seeing John stand up to that flavor of monster with bravey, wit and most importantly no fear, was UTTERLY cathartic. It’s a captivating story that keeps you hooked the whole time. 

And while on it’s own the story is very good and stands firm, as the second adventure for john.. it improves on somewhere in the shadows in every way except the art, which was already perfect last time and is just as excellent this time and is easily some of the best comic book art period. But the narrative is far more intresting this time going from a pretty standard noir setup to a fairly unique one as while “hero is stuck in a town where he’s an unwelcome outsider” isn’t new, having that blended with white supremacy is brilliant and provides an unyileding wave of tension over the story, as our hero is ONLY not lynched right away because his enimies are being careful and trying to appear resonable when their just bigoted bullies with delusions of grandeur like all whit esuprmacists. Our hero is not safe, he is not welcome, but he WILL NOT give up on a child whose been lost and needs his help. It’s a far more gripping setup and the payoffs including the awesome warehouse climax and the huge reveal at the end, all feel oh so worth it but the journey is never boring. THe additoin of Weekly was also easily the best move, as while he probably wasn’t intended to be permenant, his goofball demanour, skill beneath that, and great dynamic with John add some levity to the grim nature of blacksad’s world, and give him someone to work off of so we don’t get all the exposition via the narration, allowing it to breathe and come about when needed rather than be a constant presence. While Somewhere in the Shadows was good.. Arctic Nation is a masterpiece, and teh series would keep that level of quality and nuance from here on out. 

I’ll be taking a break from blacksad for a while, so I’m genuinely not sure when i’ll be getting to red soul as I have other projects I deserpately need to get back to in april first, but i promise he’ll return some day. For now if you liked this review, follow me for more including weekly reviews of ducktales and amphibia, a lena sabrewing retrospective and if you really like this you can chip in a buck or two a month on patreon. The more contirbutions I get, the more likely i’ll hit my stretch goals and I have some pretty neat ones so check it out, there’s a link on my blog. And  see you at the next rainbow. 

[edorazzi]

Well, here we are again! Twitter said yes to a review post for a Miraculous magazine that suddenly showed up in my local area. ‘Tis the season after all, and by that I mean someone bought it for me as a joke birthday gift and I was way too happy about that.

I’ve done previous reviews of the Miraculous Christmas calendar, Easter egg set, superhero fashion dolls and action figures, so let’s dive into the unknown world of merchandising yet again!

(As always, if you enjoy my posts, please consider checking out my Twitter page or supporting me on Patreon for lots of bonus content!)

4 FREE GIFTS! PACKED WITH ACTIVITIES! MEET THE KWAMIS! PRANKS & LOLS! CUT-OUT MEMES! FANGIRL ALERT! NAIL ART! 100% OFFICIAL! I’m overwhelmed! It feels like I’m having a seizure just from the packaging!!! 

I should preface this by saying I haven’t bought a magazine like this in years. Possibly ever. I read things like the Beano, Animals & You and the odd Disney Princess zine when I was a kid but I have no idea what to expect from a free-gift-packed kiddie magazine in 2019. If the outside is anything to go by we’re in for a wild ride.

I’m noticing that it says “Miraculous #20″ on the back. Does this mean I’ve missed 19 previous issues? I’m genuinely a little upset by that. My local area is a complete dry zone for Miraculous so I haven’t had the chance to pick these up.

First step: let’s separate everything out and get a look at these freeeee giftssss. Except they aren’t free, because this magazine was like £3.99. This does seem to be the current trend - it’s kinda rare to see any kids’ zines without the excess packaging crammed with ‘free’ stuff. Is it really too expensive to just produce the magazine? Probably, in this economy.

Chat Noir is revealed on the cover! He was on the back of the plastic jacket, but it’s still nice to see the kids as a front-cover duo. Apparently we’re going to learn to draw Pollen, too, which sounds fun. I’m actually liking the look of the gifts as well, but we’ll get into those in a minute.

This hairbrush............. is adorable. Oh my god. It’s pretty cheap and flimsy but it functions the way it’s supposed to, and the Ladybug design has been taken into account in a better way than “it’s red/black, that counts” (lest we forget the UTTER BULLSHIT of the Christmas calendar, and YES I’m still mad about that). I don’t know how well I expect the outer sticker to last, but if it can take a bit of wear and tear this would be an adorable little travel brush. Nicely done, lads!

These nail stickers? Also adorable. They remind me of the kiddie makeup sets I had when I was little, back in the early 00s when plastic stick-on nails and decals were all the rage. Are they still a thing? That’s nice to know.

There are 13 designs (that I can count) - a Queen Bee mask, Chat Noir pawprint cake, macaron, cupcake, heart-print cookie, Ladybug stud, flower, lightning bolt, love heart, Marinette heart, bee, fox tail and star. The majority are directly related to the show and that makes them feel special. No Carapace though? :(

I’ve put a little Marinette heart on my furthest finger. At the time of typing this up (about a day later) it’s still firmly in place. I haven’t really knocked it around, granted, but it’s not flimsy enough to fall off after five minutes either. It’s also really cute to look at. Guess I’m still a decal-loving 2004 girl at heart......

These stickers though!!! Wow! They’re those holographic and slightly-puffy kind and they feel like pretty good quality, and the designs are so cute! I can’t fault these, they’re absolutely adorable. I immediately want to stick them everywhere.

So I’ve stuck them everywhere. I’m especially proud of the light switch pun. My room looks GREAT.

I saved these “mystery stickers” for last because I’m weak for the thrill of mystery bags, and there wasn’t anything on the packaging to indicate what kind of designs to expect. And OH!!!! OH, IT’S MY BOY!!!! Look at him!!!! 

I made jokes with the Christmas calendar about all the Chat Noir items being stolen ahead of time, but that’s definitely NOT the case with this magazine. I have been SPOILED with the presence of my cat son.

These stickers are similar to the sticker sheet (and the Chillin’ Out design is reprinted), but they’re puffier and non-holographic. I’m deeply allured by the “decorate your phone or tablet” suggestion on the packet, but I’m going to see how the previous stickers withstand the wear-and-tear of my laptop lid before adding any more. If I damage these beautiful Adrien stickers I’ll be devastated.

Those are our free gifts! They’re actually very fun and cute, I’m really happy with them! I guess now it’s time to get into the magazine itself...........

I genuinely almost forgot the magazine was the main part of this package. I figured I was done, but we’ve barely even started! Here’s a splash page of the kwami. Kwami with a capital K? Kwamis? I still feel like it should be singular-lower-case-k-kwami. I’ve never been happy about this “miraculouses” business either.

But is that--

It IS!!!! It’s Nino!!! 

I guess this is the new flavour of Miraculous tie-ins. Now they’ve broadened out to a full team we’re seeing a lot more of Adrien alongside the girls, and Nino is the elusive hero who shows up once in a blue moon. At least this time his name isn’t in the title of the gotdam show.......

Anyway, I can see I’m supposed to draw my “fave Kwami”. Better get to it.

Felix just wants a break. Just one break. But not in this magazine.

Speaking of seeing more of Adrien (and, tragically, less of Nino), this is the kind of splash page I want to see! Both kids are here! The banner themed with Marinette’s signature flowers is a nice touch too; that’s associated with her arts ‘n’ crafts in the show already and it makes sense to apply it to the creative portion of this magazine too.

I LOVE the promotion of Chat Noir nails as something the little girls buying this magazine will definitely want to try. I’d expect them to do Marinette vs Ladybug nails, but instead we get a boyish option! Hell yeah!

I’m a little confused by the Queen Bee masks apparently going on the Chat Noir nails though. I guess they’re friends? Is this secret AdriChlo confirmation? Watch out, Marinette, Kagami’s not the one to be worried about.

SURE WOULD BE NICE TO HAVE SOME TURTLE STICKERS FOR AN ALL-BOYS THEME BUT I GUESS NOT HUH

Next up is a short merch catalogue (why would you put the big bold arrow pointing right to the underoos.....). Would those Chat Noir socks come in my size? Asking for me.

Then there’s......... this page. FANGIRL ALERT. God. It’s like the Ladyblog, if only the Ladyblog ever gave a heck about reporting what Chat Noir’s up to.

THE SPELL WAS BROKEN AND THE FANDOM IMPLODED WITH JOY.

I really have to wonder what age range this is meant for. Do kids know what a “fandom” is? Do little girls consider themselves “fangirls”? I guess most kids have enough internet access to figure it out these days (all the hashtags and LOLs and memes speak volumes), but I can’t imagine being young enough to fit the target range of this magazine while also knowing these terms. I dunno.

(Also, the definition of ‘implosion’ is ‘an instance of something collapsing violently inwards’, so I’m not sure that’s the word they’re looking for. Unless the return to the status quo in Dark Cupid and the continuing stagnation of the love square was enough to make people quit in frustration? Probably.)

I’m filling it in, of course. Because I must.

I gave up on the pre-approved ratings system pretty much right away, but I think this is an accurate rating of my LadyNoir opinions. 

I might be kinda cynical about it here, but I am actually pretty fond of how this magazine sells Ladybug and Chat Noir as a couple. The show’s portraying it as very onesided lately, with Chat pining over Ladybug who has absolutely no interest in him (Glaciator was a TERRIBLE episode and I’m still hurting from it), but reading this zine I’d guess they were already dating. It’s cheesy, but in a nice way.

I have to laugh at “the most amazing thing about this super duo is that they always look out for and protect each other” though. Chat’s usually pretty focused on LB, sure, but there are endless instances of LB using Chat as cannon fodder and just generally abandoning him to get mauled by akuma while she carries out her personal private plan to save the day. Maybe we’re just focusing on the better-written episodes, huh?

Moving ahead. I’ve been dreading this page since reading “Plaggs Pranks & LOLs” on the back of the packaging. I feel hatred in my very bones just looking at it.

I like that there’s ONE instance of the term “ladybird” in the joke column. This is a UK-based magazine and that IS the word we tend to use over here - “ladybug” is an Americanism - but it’s like they’re worried kids could have got to the middle of this magazine about a superhero named Ladybug and then not understand the bug jokes. Maybe whoever was writing this page slipped up?

OH NOOOOO. MARINETTE, NOOOOOOOOOO.

THIS IS WHY FELIX GOT RID OF YOU, PLAGG. THESE ARE ADRIEN’S PROBLEMS NOW.

(mmm whatcha saaaaay)

I mean........... YEAH, I guess, but we absolutely did see Plagg destroy Felix with an entire shelf of heavy books. I guess he’s nicer with Adrien. It’s all fun and games until someone has a nervous breakdown in the library.

I do love the concept of Tikki getting glitter-bombed by Plagg through the mail. She just curiously opens up the little letter which got slipped into Marinette’s purse, and-- WOOSH. One entire wall of Mari’s room is glittery except for a little Tikki-shaped silhouette. 

Next up is a two-page comic which is absolutely adorable! Look at those little chibis! The warm and soft colour palette! This is nicer than most of the official Miraculous comic book art I’ve seen, I hope they keep giving this artist work.

Nino’s here too (and he looks great!), and I like the touch of Marinette and Adrien playing as each other’s superhero characters. Adrien even wins the match, though I guess there’s something to be said about Ladybug beating Chat Noir (again)...... 

It does raise the question yet again of where this tie-in merchandise is coming from! They’ve had action figures, a movie, music video features, now an arcade game... Who’s getting the royalties here? Who’s profiting? Is this how Fu can afford to buy all those rare ingredients for the magic potions?

Over the page we have an activity to Design your Secret Lair! Right away I love the Marinette theme of the page, the soft pink and flowers, and the drawing space looking like a page in a binder with marker tabs and everything.

I have to design my secret lair, of course: 

What do you think? I’m very creative. I’ll need an adult to send in the drawing of my hideout but I think I’ve really got a shot at those unicorn headphones.

Now we’re on to puzzles and character pages. I don’t know what ol’ Gabe is doing trying to meet a 13 year old girl in the dead of night without telling anyone, you’d think if he’s got that much free time on his hands he could be spending it with his son.

I don’t know how those points in Ladybug’s power profile are awarded or what they mean, but you can tell this is a fan magazine. Official sources would have put her at a 10.

Standard House of Villains page! Most of these were good episodes but I’m deeply offended Riposte isn’t on here. Maybe her motives weren’t dramatic and cartoonish enough to be up in the ranks with Glaciator and Gorizilla?

“Cat Noir’s dad is also the evil Hawk Moth”, huh? I mean that’s not WRONG, but is it really something to put in his power profile when Adrien doesn’t even know yet??? Feels like we’re kinda jumping the gun on the poor boy. What if he picks up this magazine?

Apparently he’s one point weaker than Ladybug (seriously???), two points faster, equally as agile, one point less skilled and two points less cool. Despite all those lesses he still comes out at an equal 9, which is a relief! These kids are a team, putting either of them below the other would have been a big no.

I did the colouring page too, naturally. Je suis un artiste.

Now we’ve got a page fresh from the Ladyblog, a Miraculous quiz! Not a lot of excitement, but it’s nice to see Alya getting her own section.

I like that the qualifications of “you could be Ladybug herself!” are knowing what city Marinette lives in and what school she goes to. Well done, Mari! You’re doing your best!!!

TEACHER I AM SO HUNGRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

I gotta say, I’m not so sure about decorating donuts with fondant. I’ve never tried it so I could be wrong, but it feels like rolled icing instead of frosting(?) would be too heavy for an entire donut. The texture is totally different.

I mean I guess if you’re going to load your kids up on sugar you might as well go all the way. They’re going to look like they’ve eaten something horrible with all that black fondant, but they’ll have fun. Adrien would love these.

WHERE’S NINO. THIS IS JUST UNFAIR. You’ll have four out of five heroes, then a double of Marinette and Tikki? Maybe this just goes to show how little memorable dialogue Carapace has.

Though if “Spots On!” is Marinette’s dialogue and not Ladybug’s, why are the other transformation phrases attributed to Rena Rouge and Queen Bee instead of Alya and Chloé? Surely they could have picked something better for Marinette to justify having her on this list twice instead of Nino.

The next page brings us one of those flowchart quizzes! And ouch, yet again the absence of the other heroes is obvious. I can understand not including Chloé here since she’s technically not a “friendly” character yet, but no Nino? Alya and Marinette are close friends, but Adrien doesn’t really hang out with them without Nino around. Having the three of them together just seems strange.

I do like the little fashion page! They’re all cute and affordable and easy to find on the high street here. I’d love to see how other issues of this magazine are structured; is there a different fashion spot every time? Styles to channel each individual hero would be adorable.

Moving on to a tutorial for a Ladybug notebook! I would have made this, but I didn’t have the time nor a notebook to stick it to.

Between this and the donuts, it seems weird that these designs are based on, like... an actual beetle, eyes and antennae and all. Shouldn’t it be Ladybug’s symbol? These come across more like “fun animals” arts ‘n’ crafts instead of themed after Miraculous specifically. I think if I made this (or decorated the donuts) I’d miss out the head and match the spot pattern to Ladybug’s symbol. 

The hidden message design is adorable though. I can see this being a craft kids are super proud of.

Another activity page! I didn’t have a go at these but they’re pretty standard. It’s cute that the coded message designs are the same as the stickers and nail decals!

Also, apparently Ladybug’s ‘secret’ is “LB mask + heart + CN mask”, which was (somehow) stolen by Volpina. Is that the secret Hawk Moth was talking about earlier in the magazine? Is he blackmailing Ladybug with revealing she has a crush on Chat Noir? How did Volpina ‘steal’ this secret? Is LadyNoir finally reciprocated???? THIS IS A WHOLE EPISODE IN ITSELF, I NEED ANSWERS--

Next page we have an ad for another girly magazine (Quizzes! LOLs! Celebs! Cringes! Puzzles!). I think I’ll pass, no matter how appealing that giant microphone pen is. 

And a “Miraculous Identity” quiz! Tikki’s apparently super fickle with her wielders, three seasons of relentlessly praising Marinette and now she’s telling us we’re the Chosen Ones. You can’t fool me with those big ol’ eyes.

My inner superhero is Marvellous Fox, by the way. Though yet again I’m noticing we don’t have turtle options...................

And on the back cover... the memes. Oh, sweet lord, the memes. They’re hashtag-SoRelatable! And I can cut them out to keep! Oh boy!!!

Is this what kids do when they have limited internet access? Cut fresh memes out of magazines and carry them around? I need to know.

That’s a very sinister Ladybug at the bottom of the page though. What’s-- What’s she going to do to me if I don’t cut out and keep these memes. Ladybug what are you going to do if I d--

Well that brings us to the end of the magazine! And yet again I’m surprised by how much time it takes to just put a bunch of photos together and write about them.

This is a neat little magazine all in all! The ‘free gifts’ are pretty nice, there’s a fair amount of content and the whole thing is pretty cute for young fans of the show. I could see myself buying this again - if it ever shows up on shelves, Miraculous is so scarce around here that I fully expect it to disappear again after this one issue - just for the free junk, but it would be interesting to see how they’d structure different issues too!

I notice we never did get that promised tutorial on how to draw Pollen; the one advertised on the cover. Was the “draw your favourite Kwami” activity supposed to cover that? I’m not sure that really counts.

If you got this far, thanks for joining me on this Miraculous journey! We’ll meet again whenever I get another piece of weird ML merch to cover. Bien joué!

[arecomicsevengood]

More Quarantine Movies

Going to put up this log of what I’ve seen now, as some of the stuff I liked the most is leaving The Criterion Channel at the end of the month. I really don’t know if anyone gets anything out of these posts, these are mostly synopses and they’re maybe spoiler-heavy. Let me give you the gist of it now: Otto Preminger’s a really good filmmaker whose movies are really interesting, Jean Arthur’s a great actress who enlivens everything and is also in a bunch of good-to-great movies. Also, I didn’t write about it but I rewatched Death Race 2000, that movie rules, feels relevant to today’s politics, and is leaving Criterion Channel at the end of the month.

The Pawnbroker (1964) dir. Sidney Lumet

Based on novel by Edward Lewis Wallant, whose The Tenants Of Moonbloom was reprinted by NYRB Classics with a Dave Eggers intro. Also some of the earliest nudity in a mainstream American film. About the misanthropy of a holocaust survivor, living in New York City, and interacting with black people who vaguely feel like racist caricatures, in part because it’s a movie about a misanthrope told from his perspective. A ton of movies about race from this era feel dated, this feels legitimately edgy, which is a term that gets thrown around somewhat ironically now or viewed as a pejorative, like something trying to offend, this does feel like a genuine attempt to be honest and push things forward (I really was not expecting that nudity) but also doesn’t feel totally successful, definitely not particularly enjoyable.

Shockproof (1949) dir. Douglas Sirk

I haven’t seen Sirk’s later melodramas, this one intrigued me in part because the screenplay was written by Samuel Fuller, and it’s sort of a pulpy noir thing. A woman, fresh out of jail, ends up living with her parole officer who is trying to keep her on the straight and narrow and away from her criminal ex, but they end up falling in love. There’s a thing where the male lead’s younger brother talks about how the lady is beautiful that I sort of wish wasn’t in there, feels creepy to me. There’s a bit of a shift in the narrative with the third act, where the lovers end up on the run, the once-upstanding man now a criminal on account of love, but they are having the endurance of their love tested by circumstance, is one of those things where a story which felt somewhat unique over the course of its telling shifts into something more recognizable.

…And The Pursuit Of Happiness (1986) dir Louis Malle

I have watched most of Louis Malle’s feature films at this point, I believe, and had a vague curiosity about what his documentaries were like. This one, made shortly after he’d moved to the U.S. and married Candice Bergen (something that comes up in Susan Seidelman’s Smithereens, in that some prostitutes read aloud from a fashion magazine that discusses it) he made a film talking to various recent immigrants. He covers a lot of ground, covering people working as doctors, large communities living in housing projects and causing racial tension with black neighbors (who both resent the smell of the food they cook but also suspect they don’t know their rights as the property developers plan to evict everyone and have the projects demolished). By and large everyone spoke to believes in the notion of the American dream of working hard to get ahead. Malle also speaks to anti-immigration think tank people and border patrols. Nothing too surprising but a lot of ground gets covered in a short amount of time. If I didn’t learn anything I at least admired that it felt non-didactic. Anything with more of a point of view or an argument would probably be disingenuous were it to present itself as enlightening.

The Baron Of Arizona (1950) dir. Samuel Fuller

Based on a true story, although with fictionalized elements, about a dude (played by Vincent Price) who becomes a master forger to falsify land grants and claim the entire state of Arizona as his own. Not a great movie, though that’s an interesting story. I bet I could guess what elements were made up for the sake of making a movie out of it, it has this tension of being interesting and unbelievable (although unbelievable by way of rote moviemaking formula), but also the story takes place over an extended period of time and so has some of the structureless feeling of a biopic.

House On Haunted Hill (1959) dir. William Castle

I’m going to confuse this with The Haunting Of Hill House for my entire life, that’s just the way it is. This stars Vincent Price, who’s always great, doing the famous premise where a group of people meet up to spend the night at a haunted house to win money. Vincent Price has a contentious relationship with his wife, who’s openly contemptuous of him and wants his money. There’s a moment where everyone at the house party is given a gun, each in a coffin. There’s a few “twists” all sort of being of the “there was a rational, non-ghost reason for everything” although any of them individually sort of strain the limits of credulity as something that works as a hoax. Vincent Price is basically not the villain, so much as his wife is, although he’s such a ham that loves being creepy that this again strains credibility in that the conclusion of the movie plays against the style with which the previous action has been presented. An enjoyable viewing experience.

My Name Is Julia Ross (1945) dir. Joseph Lewis

This one’s about a woman, looking for work, who falls into a scheme that kidnaps her and puts her up in a mansion, where she’s kept drugged and basically is told to assume the identity of a woman who was killed. I found this one pretty nerve-wracking, as it’s pretty nightmarish, basically about psychological torture. I found this one under Criterion Channel’s Columbia Noir collection, but before these films were considered noir, they were thought of as melodramas, but it’s also sort of a horror film about being gaslighted. There’s a part where they remove a stairwell and try to trick her into falling down? What’s funny is that one of the things that sort of separates this from horror is how quickly it resolves, whereas later work would I think give the audience the satisfaction of seeing the villain be punished in some way, the ending that just goes “then everything worked out alright” ends up making the structure feel more like the whole movie’s reason for being is just to see the protagonist suffer.

God Told Me To (1976) dir. Larry Cohen

Did I write about this already? I watched that a few months ago. Pretty wild basis in seventies grit about people going crazy, committing murders, then goes to a weird/confusing place involving some sort of holy entity in human form, the police procedural aspect butting up against this strangeness which doesn’t feel entirely thought through, and is in fact sort of incoherent, makes for a movie that is, in fact, still pretty good and worth watching although a bit tedious by the end.

Zombi Child (2019) dir. Bertrand Bonello

This I guess just came out in America this year, to the extent that anything came out this year, in theaters, it coming to streaming is basically its release. The zombies in this are of the old-school voodoo sense, taken seriously as a system of belief juxtaposed against French colonialism, as a Haitian teen feels at odds with her circle of friends, flashbacks to Haiti occur. When you watch a bunch of older movies new movies just seem to be not as good. Bonello’s not a bad filmmaker though, he’s able to capture a sort of sensual aspect of particular moments and moods, just not in a way where they then coalesce into a narrative of shifting emotion.

Anatomy Of A Murder (1959) dir. Otto Preminger

This movie is close to three hours long.  It has a Law And Order procedural quality, taking up much of its second half with a courtroom drama, where Jimmy Stewart does a proto-Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer routine. He’s protecting a man accused of murdering the woman who raped his wife. The subject was surely shocking for its time. It becomes pretty clear, extremely quickly that the husband is an abusive piece of shit, but the main thrust of the narrative is still tasked with following the lawyer trying to get him off. Lee Remick, from Experiment In Terror plays the beautiful and doomed wife, who flirts with Jimmy Stewart. Some of these interactions feel weird from a modern perspective, because Stewart’s reaction is like “Yes, you’re a beautiful woman and any red-blooded American male would enjoy looking at you, but it is my duty as a lawyer to paternalistically insist you cover up!” Preminger is sort of known for pushing the envelope, and this one has a lot more talking about sperm and Lee Remick’s vagina than you’d expect. One of the things that’s meant to be a “quirky character detail” is that Jimmy Stewart is into jazz- The score, by Duke Ellington, is great, but there’s also a pretty corny cameo by Duke Ellington where Jimmy Stewart sits in with him, a second pair of hands on the piano. Still, I guess it’s better that he physically appears in the movie than there just being a scene where it implies Duke’s music is played by Jimmy Stewart, as the music is way too good to just be a lawyer’s quirky hobby. George C Scott, from Hardcore, plays the legal expert on the other side. After being pretty long, there is this sort of abrupt, (although well-foreshadowed) downbeat ending, where the jealous and abusive husband flees town to avoid paying his lawyer and to go somewhere quiet he can beat his wife to death, but said ending is played for this “you can’t win them all I guess, shame about the lower classes” quality from Stewart, who is dead broke all movie but seems like he just enjoyed being able to do work for once, even if it’s for a total shitbag. Good movie! Feels thorny and interesting.

Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) dir. Otto Preminger

This is even better. Great Saul Bass credits sequence too. A psychological thriller where the disappearance of a child gives way to the police not being able to confirm the child is real, and doubting the mother’s sanity, becoming pretty nightmarish, dreamy, and exhilarating by turns. Gets to a place of “huh, I wonder what is going on” and then when that finally resolves there’s a pretty extended sequence of silent escaping/hiding, which is, one of those things that films do really well and is super-satisfying. It plays out amidst this background filled with interesting supporting characters, who all, for the first half of the movie, feel like moving parts in this somewhat inscrutable narrative machine.

The Man With The Golden Arm (1955) dir. Otto Preminger

This one I don’t like. Stars Frank Sinatra, who I find annoying, as a recovering heroin addict who relapses again. While I normally like the sort of scenery-chewing supporting cast that shows up in Preminger things, I really didn’t Sinatra’s nerdy best friend, or his wife with Munchausen’s syndrome. While with the other Preminger movies there’s this feeling of a slow reveal of what the plot is with this one I feel like as soon as you know that Sinatra is out of rehab (which you learn pretty quickly) you can guess the movie will be about how he relapses and then tries to get sober for real.

The Human Factor (1979) dir. Otto Preminger

Preminger’s final movie, based on a Graham Greene novel, featuring Iman making her film debut. Movie is mostly about intelligence agencies seeking out the mole in their mist, with intentions to kill whoever it is once they’re certain. It stars Richard Attenborough, as the source of the leaks. Halfway through the story becomes interspersed with flashbacks about Attenborough and Iman’s romance upon meeting in Africa. Continues the habit of ending on a moment that maybe feels like it should be expanded upon or made more resonant.

Bonjour Tristesse (1958) dir. Otto Preminger

This stars Jean Seberg as a teenager being raised by a single father, David Niven, who’s kind of a cad/ladies man who’s very permissive with his daughter, who seems likely to grow up rich and spoiled and find another rich man to take care of her. Deborah Kerr plays the woman who Niven ends up falling in love for real with, and the conflict is then between this woman taking on a maternal role and a daughter who is resentful of this. Deborah Kerr is in Black Narcissus, a movie I love, and here she comes off as smart, the voice of reason. Seberg destroys her father’s relationship by taking advantage of his sort of innate desire to flirt and be liked by women, driving Kerr to commit suicide, and the whole film is then told in flashback by Jean Seberg a year later, as she flirts with boys but has a great sadness and emotional distance about her, which is both inherited and self-inflicted. I’m partly just writing these plot summaries as my way of remembering what these movies are about, but this one is nice because I get to account for complicated characters who are both pretty eminently understandable. I keep getting hung up on the fact that movies today now have a much dumber idea of what a female character is. Maybe it’s something as basic as the fact that, as people read less, it’s rarer for literary novels to be adapted? As I talk in terms of “less good roles for women nowadays,” which is a cliche, it’s obvious enough that bad roles for men follow, as everyone is only as good or interesting as who they’re playing off of.

It’s also funny to think, in this era of “comic book movies,” that very few artists can make a character come to life with body language and facial expression the way an actor can. “Literary” cartoonists like Dan Clowes or Tomine play into the mask quality drawing creates, generating inscrutability as part of their effect. Many of the biggest names in “noir” comics are removed from the melodrama elements of actor’s performance in favor of an aesthetic based on paperback covers, which makes for something far less lively. Meanwhile, Blutch is an amazing artist who would probably do a great job telling lively character studies in a genre form, but he’s way more preoccupied with these Godard-style interrogations of film’s cultural meaning.

Separate Tables (1958) dir. Delbert Mann

From the same year as Bonjour Tristesse, and also featuring David Niven and Deborah Kerr. Deborah Kerr’s good in this- while she is sort of uptight in a maternal way in Bonjour Tristesse, here she’s sort of crippled by repression her mother imposes on her. It’s a totally different character, but she remains defined by various manifestations of repressed energy; I would say she’s most known for playing a nun in Black Narcissus. She’s again opposite Niven in a sort of romantic context, though Niven’s character is meant to be a neurotic freak and he’s not really convincing in that capacity. I couldn’t really work out what the deal is with Niven’s character, he gets arrested in a theater, seemingly because he takes his dick out to show women? Or that’s how I interpreted what was being discussed, but he’s mostly defended by everyone except this lady you’re supposed to hate for how domineering and judgmental she is so maybe it’s something less bad. I honestly couldn’t figure it out because it seemed like the thing I was guessing they couldn’t talk about. This movie also features Burt Lancaster and Rita Hayworth as a couple that broke up once before and are reuniting now. This movie is pretty dull in a way I didn’t know whether to attribute to it being British or it being based on a play, as it feels extremely both.

Seance On A Wet Afternoon (1964) dir. Bryan Forbes

This one’s British too, and features the quality I recognize from British television, where the stars are not attractive, which always feels surprising. This one’s got a pretty great title, and a great premise. This woman, a professional psychic, convinces her husband to kidnap a child so she can comfort the parents and get publicity. The cinematography’s great. I got pretty nervous watching this, I think I am feeling more sensitive to movies as of late, way more willing to find things upsetting and nerve-wracking than usual. I can partly attribute this to the feeling of taking something in from a different cultural context, that leaves me unsure what to expect, but it’s also true that nowadays I sort of constantly have this feeling of “I don’t know how bad things are going to get” about the world in general, and it makes sense that I would apply that to films.

Only Angels Have Wings (1939) dir. Howard Hawks

Jean Arthur’s amazing in this - saw her the first time in The Devil And Miss Jones and then there’s this whole Criterion Channel featurette video running through what her whole deal is: This vulnerability/innocence crossed with an attempted toughness that really is very charming. Here she plays an entertainer just stopping briefly in town who gets hit on by some pilots, and develops feelings of impossible love for a man (played by Cary Grant) whose insistent toughness and refusal to show fear (despite having a dangerous job, of a pilot, that makes everyone who cares about him fall to pieces with nervousness). It’s this very universal type of entertainment, where there’s all these special effects shots of planes flying and a drama of men being men that’s nonetheless anchored by this love story, carried by the fact that Jean Arthur is very real and complex. She’s also a legit comedic actress, which I think makes her feel richer and more watchable than someone without a sense of humor would be. Rita Hayworth plays Grant’s ex, a woman who couldn’t take his daredevil ways but is now married to another pilot who has to do dangerous flights essentially to make up for an act of cowardice that got someone else killed. She’s got her own charisma obviously (and Cary Grant’s equally solid, in this sort of old-Hollywood glamor way) but Jean Arthur feels very alive in a way that carries the movie.

The Talk Of The Town (1942) dir. George Stevens

This one also stars Jean Arthur opposite Cary Grant, but it’s less interesting, partly because of a domestic setting and some stale-seeming comedy. Cary Grant plays Lionel Dilg, (great name!) who breaks out of prison and hides out in Jean Arthur’s attic, with a hobbled ankle, while a preeminent legal scholar moves in. There’s a love triangle between the three of them, and a friendship between the escapee and the scholar. Grant’s been unfairly framed for arson for political reasons by his boss for pointing out the factory where he works is a death trap. The people of the town are easily turned against this sort of leftist agitator  by a last and biased judge. Insanely enough, there’s a movie called “The Whole Town’s Talking” also starring Jean Arthur but it has no relation to this one.

The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936) dir. Stephen Roberts

Upon realizing that many of these Jean Arthur movies were leaving the Criterion Channel at the end of the month, I started taking more in. This is a murder mystery, with screwball comedy accents, and again I’d say it’s really good, although the “comedy” premise wherein a woman sort of plows through the life of a man with no real respect for personal boundaries is the sort of thing that works in a movie even though it seems totally nightmarish when looked at from a certain angle. She writes mysteries, he’s a doctor, people are getting murdered. He is played by William Powell, from The Thin Man movies, which maybe these resemble. I guess the bickering couple that solves mysteries is a trope but it’s one that I don’t think has had any currency in popular culture since Moonlighting, which was in my lifetime but before I would have had any awareness of it. (I would probably enjoy it up until the point where I got bored of the formula.) I thought this was great and would make a good double feature with L’Assassin Habite au 21.

History Is Made At Night, 1937, dir. Frank Borzage

This has Jean Arthur in it too, but the reason I became aware of it was Matt Zoller Seitz tweeting about it. Partly this is because the description on the Criterion site is so bare-bones it barely seems like anything, but it turns out this is because the plot is completely insane and has a ton of twists and to talk about them very quickly veers into spoiler territory. It is, in brief, a love story. The first totally insane in it is the handsome male lead does the “drawing a ventriloquist puppet on his hand” thing and the woman’s totally on board. An element that doesn’t spoil the plot, but does seem somewhat incongruent with the tone, is there’s a French chef character for a comic relief. It’s really good. I’m pointing out the lightest element but the story’s villain is believably sociopathic.

Secrets (1933) dir Frank Borzage

Not nearly as cool or good. While History Is Made At Night feels like a cohesive story that’s just pretty crazy, this one feels divided into acts that have nothing in common with each other. First act is romance, between a rich man’s daughter and his banker. They run away together. I’m basically unsure of when this movie takes place timewise, the rich lady is wearing massive layered gowns I know would’ve been out of fashion by 1933. The second act is a western where they make a home together and have to fight off bandits! But the action is shot in a a pretty disinterested manner. Third act, I’m pretty on edge and bored, but the banker is now the governor of California and is having an affair with another woman, and they’re at a party together, and then the ending feels epilogue style as they’re both old as hell and they have fully-grown children and they’re talking about how they’re taking their leave of the kids to discuss their secrets. Female lead is Mary Pickford in her final film role. I guess this is a remake of a silent film, which was itself based on a play. Yeah this movie sucks basically.

Bitter Moon (1992) dir. Roman Polanski

Sure, I’ll watch a sex criminal’s erotic thriller that’s way too long. Hugh Grant is a married guy on a boat who has a French dude talk about all the sex he and his wife have because he knows Hugh Grant wants to fuck his hot wife. Said wife is played by Emmanuelle Seigner, Roman Polanski’s actual wife since 1989. This is a bad movie by pretty much any metric. It kinda feels like the social function of erotic thrillers is not to be a more socially-acceptable form of pornography, but rather to be pervy enough to remind the audience why you shouldn’t talk about sex publicly and have that be your whole thing. The French, of course, misunderstand this.

The Burglar (1957) dir. Paul Wendkos

Another noir, written by David Goodis. This one is a little formulaic, in terms of what you think of crime movies as being “about.” A burglar, who learned the trade from his adopted father, works with that man’s daughter to commit heists. His gang doesn’t like her. Once the two of them are separated, a corrupt cop seeking to steal a burgled necklace for himself tries to pursue a relationship with her as a means to an end, while a woman allied with him works on the burglar. A drive to New Jersey gets stopped by cops, violence quickly escalates to make the situation more dire. Members of the gang die. Not a bad movie but by no means essential.

My Brother’s Wedding (1983) dir. Charles Burnett

Criterion Channel removed the paywall for a bunch of Black-made independent films, this is one of them, Burnett’s follow-up to Killer Of Sheep. Seemingly starring non-professional actors, it’s about the conflict a guy feels as his brother is planning to get married to a rich woman he resents, and the loyalty he feels to a guy who just got out of prison who everybody hates. The main character is a good dude who wants to help out this pretty dangerous friend the best he can. The film captures his pride and resentment.

Dial M For Murder (1954) dir. Alfred Hitchcock

A few iconic-seeming shots of Grace Kelly in the role of a Hitchcock blonde, i.e. her standing at a phone while someone looms behind her about to choke her, and later standing traumatized. Suffers a bit from clearly being based on a play, with a ton of dialogue, particularly in the second act. The first act is able to provide this very particular type of satisfaction, where someone outlines a “perfect crime” in dialogue and then we see it play out and it falls apart and happens completely differently. It’s funny the criminal gives themselves away due to mistaking one key for another, because this sort of structure really does feel like a key fitting into a lock, things perfectly designed for one another, parceled out at the right time.

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Governors, White House Race to Reopen America

An arms race of sorts has emerged between red states and blue states to reopen America, with Democrat and Republican governors developing rivaling plans to lead their states out of the darkness of the coronavirus crisis while the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force and President Donald Trump’s ultimate decision looms large over the country. Hundreds of millions of Americans are under some variation of stay-at-home orders in every state in the union, with all 50 states also having active disaster declarations—the first time such a crisis has ever swept the nation in her nearly 250-year history. The president has called the decision to reopen America for business the biggest he will ever make in his presidency, and his life, and is expected to roll out a new task force from the White House on Tuesday to detail his plans and lead the effort from Washington. The president has also said it is his decision—and his alone—to make, arguing Monday that he has the authority as the nation’s commander-in-chief to override any governors or local officials nationwide who may get in his way. That being said, while some Democrat governors have expressed unease with moving too quickly—in other words, they want to go on their own timetable, not Trump’s—there is an emerging competition between various governors nationwide to see who can get there first safely for the people of their state. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, is eyeing a plan rollout as early as this week to begin opening parts of his state back up for commerce. During an interview on Sean Hannity’s program on Fox News on Monday evening, Abbott reiterated the need to get Texas back to work as early as this week—and definitely ahead of the previous schedule of May 1. “We want to open. Texans love to work. Texans are dying to get back to work,” Abbott said during the Hannity interview. “We want them to get back to work, but we have to do so in a very safe way so that we don’t regenerate the spread of the coronavirus in the state of Texas. But we’re working on strategis as we speak with medical experts and business leaders to find the right strategy so we can unleash our economy.” He added that he believes Texas—and many other states—can reopen well before May 1. “I think most states can reopen even sooner than later. We don’t have to wait until May 1,” Abbott said. The White House, sources familiar with the matter told Breitbart News, has a list of approximately 20 states they intend to begin the reopening process in as soon as potentially later this week but definitely before the end of April. The virus, public health and federal officials admit, has not lived up to the dire predictions that doomsday models had originally forecast. The vaunted Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) model from the University of Washington has been notoriously wrong, predicting first anywhere from 100,000 to 240,000 dead Americans, then dropping that several times in subsequent weeks down to 93,000, then 81,000, then down to 61,000. The IHME model, which is what the White House used to extend the original “15 days to slow the spread” out from ending at the end of March all the way until now April 30, has also been even more incorrect when it comes to hospitalization numbers. In fact, a little-noticed revision to the model—one of many that the organization has made in the past several weeks—announced that the United States has already passed the proverbial “peak” of the curve of the virus days ago when it comes to hospitalizations and now the modelers admit the virus is in retreat. 1/ Yes, the geniuses at @IHME_UW have updated their model again. According to them, we are now PAST the peak of hospitalizations – which were cut yet again, to 57,000 beds from 94,000 in the previous forecast (and 262,000 in the April 1 forecast – April Fool’s!)… pic.twitter.com/sCioDU9gtG — Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) April 13, 2020 Part of the reason why U.S. officials at the federal, state, and local level relied on these now demonstrably flawed models to make their public policy decisions is because they had no real-world data on the threat of the quickly-spreading disease. Chinese Communist officials in Beijing lied to the world—including the World Health Organization (WHO), which dutifully reprinted the inaccurate information the communists provided about the disease’s spread—and then Europe was rocked quickly by it as the virus took a major toll on Italy then Spain then France and the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, the coronavirus scared the public as celebrities like Tom Hanks and several NBA stars were infected early, and lawmakers like Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) as well as Reps. Ben McAdams (D-UT) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) were all infected. Each of those U.S. lawmakers has since recovered, but their infections combined with the infection of U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson—who was admitted to the ICU in a British hospital for treatment as his condition worsened, something he has since bounced back from as he continues his recovery outside the hospital—gripped American leaders with fear that even they were not invincible to the threat of the coronavirus. Despite all the high-profile cases, and what appeared to be a nasty perfect storm heading into April where U.S. hospitals would have been overrun and not enough ventilators would be available to treat the public as the virus spread, the models and projections have not come to pass. The models have been so badly inaccurate, in fact, that even Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel on Monday morning that the White House team is no longer using them—but instead making decisions on real world data. “It’s important to know that models are projections when you don’t have data,” Adams said. “Our original models were people’s best guesses, and/or they were informed by experiences in very different cultures and very different places. What the American people need to know now is we actually have data and we’re tracking that data and we’re not as reliant on these models as we are as say ‘this is what’s happening in California, this is what’s happening in New York, this is what’s happening in New Orleans.’ We’re following that data every single day and we’re giving that data to the community so they can make intelligent and informed decisions about when and where to reopen. It’s not going to be light-switch—just like it wasn’t a light-switch going off, it’s not going to be a light-switch going back on. Different communities will reopen sooner than other communities and they’ll have to do so based on their testing data—not a model, but actual data—and their capacity to be able to follow up on cases and isolate them. I feel confident that some places will start to reopen in May, June—other places won’t—it will be piece by piece, bit by bit, but it will be data-driven.” On that note, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo—a Democrat—said on Monday that his state has contained the virus, a huge win for the country as New York has represented the American epicenter of the disease. “We can control the spread. Feel good about that,” Cuomo said early on Monday, also adding, “because, by the way, we could have got to a point when we said we can’t control this damn thing.” “The worst is over,” Cuomo also said. After announcing those breakthroughs against the virus in New York, Cuomo then led a conference call with several Democrat governors from neighboring and nearby states like New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and others to discuss reopening the country. That effort came as the governors of Washington state, Oregon, and California each announced a pact between those western states to discuss reopening the country. This very interesting analysis came in just as the three Democratic governors of CA, OR, and WA announced a pact to reopen WITHOUT an explicit goal of no infections or deaths. (A long way from no @nfl season, as @CAgovernor said just days ago.) https://t.co/IBcM25I946 pic.twitter.com/5Nqw5yy29D — Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) April 13, 2020 Several other GOP governors in a number of states in addition to Texas are looking at reopening before May 1, too, Breitbart News has learned, though much remains in flux and depends on data that keeps rolling in this week. What these efforts by the White House and by these various governors—Republican and Democrat from all different parts of the country—could end up forcing, however, is essentially an arms race to reopen America. “Whoever figures it out first, good on them,” a former Trump White House official told Breitbart News. “They should be competing over who can safely open back up for business first and then instill confidence in their neighbors around the country, all while President Trump keeps edging the country back from the brink. if Texas leads the way or California does, it really doesn’t matter. We need to get the country back in business.” Read the full article

[ink-logging]

More Superhero Comics, Revealing My Reactionary and Facile Engagement with Art as Little More Than the  Accrual of Social Capital, Benefiting Nobody But Myself, 4/7/19

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 4: The Tempest #5 (of 6), Alan Moore, Kevin O’Neill, Ben Dimagmaliw, Todd Klein: This is an often very funny issue, set up like a pasted-together UK edition of old US pre-Code horror and crime comics, which, in addition to being funny, plumps up the page count as the plot moves maybe two or three tics forward in advance of the very-last-issue-of-LoEG-ever. The conservative in me wonders why we’re being this digressive in the penultimate number of the entire saga, but then -- at least since “The Black Dossier” -- this project has been more about positioning various strands of fiction and their accrued cultural baggage against one another than telling a propulsive adventure story. Anyway: the realm of Faerie, having easily survived an attempted nuclear strike on the collective imagination by a military-corporate black ops fiction squad comprised entirely of various revamps of James Bond, has brought in every character from every game, comic, cartoon, TV show, movie and book reality with everything for a HUGE apocalypse! 

Scenes of bedlam involve: the life story of Victorian painter and murderer Richard Dadd; cameos by Stardust the Super Wizard and David Britton’s Lord Horror; the oeuvre of musician Warren Zevon, brought to terrifying life; a Corbenesque image of a nude muscleman’s massive dick flapping into battle in 3-D; Mick Anglo’s Captain Universe, presented by Moore in unmistakable evocation of his own Marvelman/Miracleman stories of decades ago; a ghost wearing the word CRIME on his head a la Charles Biro’s Mr. Crime, the greatest American comic book horror host; at least one figure from the annals of racist caricature firing powerful sound waves from his mouth; a monster named Demogorgon, the leviathan of Populism, which the heroes allegorically cross as a footbridge en route to a safehouse named the Character Ark; a page-long parody of Batman (via the forgotten UK superhero playboy character the Flash Avenger), describing his origin as motivated entirely by hatred of the poor; a text feature telling of UK comics artist Denis McLoughlin, who worked consistently since the end of WWII, never made enough money to retire, and spent decades as an elderly man drawing for survival on titles he hated, eventually taking his own life in his 80s; and the secret of what happened to all the British superhero characters after the midcentury, which is that they were all eaten by Capitalism, pretty much. I laughed a bunch, but if you think LoEG is tedious shit, this probably won’t turn you around.         

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Savage Dragon #242, Erik Larsen, Ferran Delgado, Nikos Koutsis, Mike Toris: The latest installment of the longest-running Image comic written and drawn by one of the Image founders, now deeply dove into problematic network tv drama stuff. The Dragon’s relationship with his partner Maxine is still strained in the wake of her sexual assault, a video of which the Dragon viewed in the police archives; meanwhile, the mother of one of the Dragon’s young children has been telling them all the truth about their parentage, further disrupting the peace of the household. Also, a formerly aggressive sex robot has joined the gang, dressed as an anime maid. And, the Dragon reluctantly teams up with the mid-’00s-vintage sexy heroine character Ant (which Larsen purchased from creator Mario Gully a few years ago) to foil a scheme by elderly elites to project themselves into the bodies of mythic gods in order to provoke the Rapture. Most interesting to me, however, is a bonus segment in which Larsen presents newly-lettered pages of his preliminary solo work on “Spawn” #266 (Oct. 2016), which would later be filled out by contributions from Todd McFarlane, colorist FCO Plascenscia, and letterer Tom Orzechowski. 

As usual, I prefer the ‘unfinished’ version (top) to the official release product (bottom).

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Superman Giant #9, Erika Rothberg, ed. 

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Batman Giant #9, Robin Wildman, ed.

These are two of those 100-page DC superhero packages they sell for five bucks exclusively at Walmart (for now; later this year they’re gonna have them in comic book stores too), which marry one new 12-page story per issue with three full-length reprint comic books from elsewhere in the 21st century. I just wanted to know what was inside them. Here is what I found:

-The new Batman comic is written by Brian Michael Bendis as a very conspicuously all-ages prospect, where the story is about nothing more than what it’s about, and the title character is presented as a serious-minded but inquisitive and compassionate man of adventure. This issue -- just in time for the remix of “Old Town Road” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus -- Batman and Green Lantern travel back to the Old West, trade in their superhero outfits for cowboy clothes, and meet up with Jonah Hex. Nick Derington draws the heroes smooth and squinting with Swanian sincerity, and Dave Stewart colors it all bright and sunny. This is not my thing at all, but it’s confident to the point of acting like almost a rebuke to the rest of the book, where literally everything else is chapter whatever of a nighttime doom ballad drawn by either Jim Lee or something trying very hard to look like him. 

-Like:

I can spot the differences, sure - if nothing else, reading superhero comics trains you to spot differences in otherwise similar things. But, there is absolutely an aesthetic at work. The top page is from an issue of “Nightwing” that tied into the 2012 “Night of the Owls” crossover in the Batman titles, produced by a seven-person drawing and coloring team fronted by pencillers Eddy Barrows & Andres Guinaldo. The writer, Kyle Higgins, has Dick Grayson fight his semi-immortal great-grandfather, who is an assassin for the Court of Owls: one of the more popular recent Batman organizations of villainy, presented here as a fascist group mediating society’s function through murder from the gray space between social classes. The Graysons, therefore, are the Gray Sons, but Nightwing resists the pull of destiny by winning a big fight, slinging the villain over his shoulder, and walking away toward a better future of just beating the shit out of bad people instead of killing them, I think. The Batgirl story -- from 2011, written by Gail Simone -- is comparatively orthodox, finding the character gripped with uncertainty about the superhero life and going about some downtime character-building activities, though most of it’s a big fight with a villain with a tragic past. The penciller, Ardian Syaf, kind of has trouble blocking the action so that characters’ movements are clear; I think Syaf is best known for having his contract with Marvel terminated in 2017 for slipping what were widely interpreted as anti-Christian and antisemitic references to Indonesian politics into an X-Men comic. 

-There is a whole lot of Jeph Loeb among the reprints. He is not a writer who has been in critical fashion for much the past two decades, but he has undoubtedly sold a lot of comics for DC, and they probably feel he can do it again. The Batman book is serializing (deep breath) “Hush”, a 2002-03 storyline notable for its extraordinarily easy-to-solve central mystery, and generally being a taped-together excuse for Jim Lee to draw as many popular Batman characters as possible across 12 issues; it sold like hot cakes. The highlight of chapter 9 is probably a bit where a three person fight ends in one panel, and then one of the characters leaves, and then a second character wakes up from unconsciousness and also leaves, and then the first character comes back and nurses the third (also unconscious) character back to health, and then Batman arrives, all in the transition between the aforementioned panel and the next, which takes place in the same room; such is the befuddling desire to race ahead to more spectacle. Jim Lee (with Scott Williams and Alex Sinclair) is indeed Jim Lee (et al.) throughout, though at one point the team drops a howler of a swordfighting panel where Batman’s blade appears to grows to JRPG length due to what I think is the colorist filling two whoosh lines with the same hue as the swords.      

Meanwhile, the Superman book is serializing a 2004 storyline from “Superman/Batman” -- the series where Loeb has Superman describe the action on the page with his own Superman-branded captions, and Batman does the same with Bat-captions, and Superman says tomayto and Batman says tomahto -- in which the late Michael Turner, one of the rock star 2nd generation Image artists, illustrates a new introduction for Supergirl. But this isn’t quite the same comic that was originally published... can YOU spot the difference?

Is this like how Walmart won’t sell CDs that have an explicit content sticker, but with teen superhero g-strings? It’s hard to explain to younger readers how the low-rise/thong panties combo forever sealed the horniness of a generation of het male superhero artists into the late 1990s, and maybe DC doesn’t want to face that. Or, they’re just leery of how Turner slipping some peekaboo glimpse of Supergirl’s underpants or bare thighs into virtually every panel in which she is depicted below the waist might affect the marketability of the comic in 2019 - although I guess it could have happened in an earlier reprint somewhere too.

-The new Superman comic is a series of 12 splash pages depicting a race between Superman and the Flash. There is very little sense of speed, because Andy Kubert (inked by Sandra Hope, colored by Brad Anderson) draws the characters as frozen in time in a way that prioritizes muscular tension in the manner of contemporary superhero cover art; at one point the two characters part the sea with the force of their bodies, and it looks to me like they’re gesticulating in front of a theatrical backdrop. And, anyway, the story pulls back almost every other page to depict Batman standing on a ledge, or Lex Luthor in a sinister chair -- or some birds flying next to a building, or the Earth as viewed from space with streaks on it -- as the race occurs deep in the background or off to one side. The point is not excitement, but reflection, as imposed upon us by the between 13 and 21 narrative captions and/or dialogue balloons pasted atop all but the first page. 

The writer is Tom King, whose “Mister Miracle” (with artist Mitch Gerads) gets a double-page advertisement later in the book, festooned with breathless blurbs from major media outlets. His narrator here is a little girl who is literally chained in captivity, clutching a Superman doll, and delivering her soliloquy in a manner of a superhero-themed TED talk with handclap repetitions on the nature of contradiction. Being faster than a speeding bullet is a CONTRADICTION. Being as strong as a locomotive is a CONTRADICTION. Leaping tall buildings in a single bound is a CONTRADICTION. Superman is about to lose the race, but then he wins, because to beat the Fastest Man Alive is... a contradiction. No wonder the GQ entertainment desk was blown away. DC comics do this kind of thing a lot, where they just have the writer tell you how great the characters are, and since you’re still reading superhero comics in the 21st century, you’re expected to pump your fists in recognition, because you and the writer and everyone at DC are just big ol’ fans... but I am not, because I am Jesus Christ, the only son of God. 

-Elsewhere in the Superman book is an issue of “Green Lantern” from 2006, drawn by Ethan Van Sciver (inked with Prentis Rollins, colored by Moose Baumann), who is known today mostly as a conservative ‘personality’ online. He also netted more than half a million dollars last July in a crowdfunding campaign to make a 48-page comic book which he has not yet finished; funny to see an American right-winger on the French schedule. Funnier still to see the kind of people (mostly guys of a certain age) who mill around such personalities croaking about how diversity is ruining comics, because ALMOST EVERY FUCKING STORY IN BOTH OF THESE 100-PAGE BOOKS IS DRAWN BY EITHER SOME DUDE FROM THE 1990s OR SOMEBODY WORKING EXPLICITLY IN THAT STYLE, but - I guess when you’ve been pampered for so long, every paper cut feels like a ripped limb. Speaking of dismemberment, the writer here is Geoff Johns, who is often pegged as a superhero traditionalist, though he also has a grasp of gory pomp which occasionally pushes the comics he writes into a Venn diagram set with loud youth manga... at least in terms of how the action plays out, all broad and pained. So, needless to say, he’s currently writing “Doomsday Clock”, which is DC’s present attempt to extend the publication life of the valuable “Watchmen” property, so that they needn’t return it to the original creators, per the original writer, Alan Moore.  

-To hear Alan Moore say it, the America’s Best Comics line was done on a work-for-hire basis as a means of ensuring prompt payment of the various creators from Jim Lee’s WildStorm, the original publisher. WildStorm was then acquired by DC (Jim Lee is now their co-publisher and chief creative officer), and Moore -- who has been (fairly) criticized in the past for taking ethical stances that cause financial harm to his artistic collaborators, who are in a less economically flexible position than writers in the comic book field -- allowed the line to continue under DC’s ownership, as to cancel everything would disadvantage everyone working on the titles. One of those titles, “Tom Strong”, was written by Moore and pencilled by Chris Sprouse for a while, and then there was a long line of guest creators, and then Moore and Sprouse came back when the ABC line wrapped, so that the concept could reach its logical termination point in an apocalyptic manner... Moore does love an apocalypse. The final story in the Superman book is a very recent, late 2018 issue of “The Terrifics”, in which we find an attempt to revive the DC-owned Tom Strong characters as players in broader DC stories. Jeff Lemire & José Luís are the primary creators. Jack Cole’s Plastic Man is there, as well as the John Ostrander/Tom Mandrake version of Mister Terrific. It’s a lot of offbeat characters; we even see Moore’s own parody of Hoppy the Marvel Bunny, because, I mean, Alan Moore does a lot of riffs on preexisting characters too, right? It’s a big blob of cartoon whimsy, filled with available characters running around. If they’re available, you might as well roll ‘em out, off the new releases rack and into a supermarket reprint package stacked in a box next to squeeze toys and discount Pokémon merchandise, which I bought, because it was really cheap.

-Jog                   

[comixconnection]

CHOOSE YOUR THREE FREE COMICS!

The following titles will be available at Comix Connection on May 4th (while supplies last!). Everybody gets to pick three! For every food donation* you bring in for the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank you may select an additional free comic book!

*food donations must be at least two months in date to allow for food bank processing time! expired or soon-to-expire items will not be accepted. please check your labels!

We know the line for the FCBD comics can get long (if you want to come in and shop first, you can skip the line and head straight inside!) so in an effort to both entertain you while you’re in that long line and to help it go a little faster by giving you a preview of the various titles so you can decide ahead of time what looks good, the Comix Connection Counter Monkeys have read and reviewed all of the available FCBD books! Take a peek!

CHOOSE YOUR FREE COMICS:

This preview of the Under the Moon: A Catwoman Tale graphic novel introduces us to a young, pre-Catwoman Selina Kyle and the difficult adolescence that led her to become everyone’s favorite feline fatale. Plus, get a sneak-peek at the upcoming Teen Titans: Raven graphic novel coming from DC Ink later this summer for $16.99. Want more? Pre-order Raven now or grab a copy of Under the Moon off the shelves today!

CONTENT NOTE: while this sample has been rated ALL AGES it does deal with some heavy subjects, including animal death, and the books themselves are intended for TEEN READERS.

Shiver your way into a galaxy far, far away in this spooky one-shot starring Han Solo and Chewbacca on a galactic treasure hunt during their pre-Rebellion scoundrel days! Want more? Discover the whole era-spanning adventure in the Tales from Vader’s Castle graphic novel, on the shelves now! [ALL AGES]

Marjorie is not excited to go visit her grandmother in the country for Mother’s Day, even though her best friend is coming along for the ride -- secretly of course, because Wendell is a ghost! This down-to-earth haunting pits Majorie against the pressures of growing-up and finding herself, but it’s Wendell who gets the star make-over in this issue! As in the graphic novel, this one-shot deals with the topics of grief and loss in a way that is both approachable and touching for all ages. Want more? Pick up the Sheets graphic novel where the two friends first met, on the shelves now! [ALL AGES]

This two-for-one issues gives you the first ever comic book venture for the beloved video game Minecraft, a teaser for the upcoming graphic novel. in the first story, a cheerful “Griefer” gets some grief of her own when real life consequences collide with her digital destruction. Plus, everyone’s favorite super-siblings decide to give mom and dad the gift of a “Date Night” that gives them more than they bargained for in a short story set after Incredibles 2. Want more? Pre-order the $9.99 Minecraft graphic novel now, or picks up the latest issue of Incredible: Secret Identities on the racks now! [ALL AGES]

A hilarious, lighthearted romp through the world of the Justice League as the world’s greatest heroes answer their fans’ most pressing questions -- such as Superman’s biggest mistakes and Hawkgirl’s dietary preferences. This two chapter preview of the upcoming graphic novel, Dear Justice League exposes the funny side of ordinary super life. Want more? Have us pre-order your copy of the $9.99 graphic novel out later this summer! [ALL AGES]

In this special preview of the upcoming graphic novel Ghost Hog, new ghost Truff the hog gets some lessons in how to haunt -- and the dangers when things go wrong! -- from her friends. Plus, catch a preview of Pilu of the Woods, a sweet graphic novel about family and woodlore as a lost little girl meets a lost little dryad and both have to fight their own dark sides to find their way home. Want more? Have us set aside the first Ghost Hog book for you at $12.99 when it comes in next week, or grab a copy of Pilu of the Woods off the shelves now! [ALL AGES]

It can be hard being a Villain Kid in Auradon and even harder when you’re coming from the Isle of the Lost. Dizzy Tremaine is worried about her first day of school so she seeks out some fortune telling from Celia Facilier, but can she trust what the cards tell her...or Celia? Sneak a peek at this preview of the upcoming Disney Descendants: Dizzy’s New Fortune graphic novel coming out later this month. Pre-order your copy now for $12.99 or grab a previous Descendants story off the shelf now! [ALL AGES]

Discover the beginning of Ash Katchum’s partnership with Pikachu in this preview of the Pokémon The Movie: I Choose You graphic novel -- and if you think it was all smooth sailing for these two famous pair, you’re in for a rough surprise...just like Pikachu! Then, follow Red as he captures his first Pokémon and begins his journey to being a great trainer in the preview of Pokémon Adventures Volume One. Want more? Order the full story of each volume today! [ALL AGES]

A long, long, long time ago -- 40,000 years in fact -- neanderthal siblings Lucy and Andy founded an Adventure Club with their human neighbors to explore their prehistoric world. When they go chasing a meteorite that fell from the sky, they might have found more than they bargained for! But don’t worry: every Lucy & Andy story comes with a back-up feature where modern scientists fill-in the details that Lucy and Andy haven’t figured out yet! Find out more in this one-shot adventure, and then check out their ongoing hi-jinks in the collection of Lucy & Andy Neanderthal graphic novels. Grab one off the shelf or order yourself a copy today! [ALL AGES]

The Lumberjanes are a sensation of adventurous scouts who best magical monsters through the power of friendship, and this issue spotlights two of their stories: first, get a preview of the first part of the upcoming Lumberjanes: Shape of Friendship original graphic novel when a visit to the boys’ camp gets a little knottier than expected and second, enjoy a short story of one time Ripley had to use her wits to save Jen from certain doom! Want more? Pre-order the Shape of Friendship OGN today, or pick up a previous volume of the intrepid scouts’ many adventures from the shelves today! [ALL AGES]

In this collection of short, spooky tales, Casper the Friendly Ghost struggles to stop his friends from pulling mean pranks on one another and goes out of his way (and out of orbit...sort of) to make new friends. Enjoy a haunting from the world’s kindest ghost while you alternate groans and giggles over the antics of his less-than-kindly friends and neighbors. Want more? Grab a Casper issue off the racks today! [ALL AGES]

This underwater one-shot introduces us to Alex the Parrotfish, who is eager to head to the big city of Coralton and find a job! Unfortunately for Alex, his quest runs into a few hiccoughs (some with big, pointy teeth!) that threaten to leave his plans high-and-dry, not least of which is that on the reef everybody has a very specific role in the ecosystem...which you can learn more about in the backup Guide to the Bahamas which identifies all the different fish Alex met along the way, and more! [ALL AGES]

Meet Gillbert, a small sea creature, and his underwater friends. Gillbert is the son of the king and queen of all the oceans, but today he just wants to sleep in! Too bad for Gillbert that today is Everything Day, when you can do Anything...except sleep, at least if you have friends like his! Read the first chapter of Gillbert’s newest adventure by Art Baltazar, creator of Tiny Titans and one of the greatest cartoonists of kids’ comics working today! Want more? Check out the first volume of Gillbert’s adventures, Gillbert the Little Merman vol 1, on shelves now, or grab some of Art Baltazar’s earlier work and see where all that AW, YEAH! got started! [ALL AGES]

One of the classics of comic book history, in this FCBD special Little Lulu is as bold, troublesome, and adventurous as ever! Despite being created in the 1930s, Lulu remains an empowering little girl: assertive, independent, and imbued with expert comedic timing, Lulu was a defining comic of post-war America today this protofeminist icon is ready to bring her gags and giggles to a new audience with a collection of reprints starting later this year. Get in on this not-so-lost treasure early. Want more? Sign-up for the upcoming first volume now, or begin with the John Stanley: Giving His Life to Little Lulu HC and learn about her seminal creator and the history he and Lulu influenced. [ALL AGES]

In this one-shot issue, the Thirteenth Doctor and her friends find themselves in an interstellar amusement park for some rest and recreation (and don’t forget the snacks!) until a rigged game of chance exposes a darker underside to all the shiny, happy fun. Can Yaz, Ryan, Graham, and the newest incarnation of the BBC’s famous Time Lord save the day? Find out here! Want more? Grab an issue of the new Thirteenth Doctor series off the rack, or explore the exploits of the previous twelve incarnations in some of our collected adventures off the shelf or by special order! [ALL AGES]

Written, drawn, and colored by legally blind (no, really!) New Zealander Richard Fairgray, Blastosaurus is the story of the titular mutant triceratops with fists of fury and a heart of gold and the two young kids who become his best friends. Overcoming his beastly nature, good ol' Blasto fights monsters, vampires, and mad scientists who use farts as a weapon. The result is a fun comic with a goofy sense of humor where anything is possible. Think Hellboy running through a MAD Magazine, with a little bit of the bizarreness of Creepy or Eerie thrown in. If you like dinosaurs, punching evil, and think flatulence is funny, this is the book for you (and your kids)! Want more? Grab a collection, or dig into the recent back issue bins for some single issues! [ALL AGES]

This treasury of British comics stacks-up a monstrous plethora of humorous hi-jinks, from sharks to soccer to super heroes and back again! In the grand tradition of classic comic strip funnies, this packed-to-the-brim collection of short tales is ready to tickle your funny bone from dawn to dusk to full moon! [ALL AGES]

Co-created by football star (or “soccer” for we uncultured Americans) Cristiano Ronaldo, this new secret super team stars a fictional version of the famed kicker turning his sports skills toward world-protecting. It’s bright, silly, and kids-centric, fleshed-out with sidekicks like the super-baseball bat-weilding Sita Shaolin and the hammerhead shark-headed hockey stick-swinging Kaiju King, but the key of the team is the power-borrowing sphere that Ronaldo has to deliver to the bad guys via his super soccer kicking skills! Think Teen Titans Go, but with football (soccer). Want more? Keep your eyes peeled for more Striker Force 7 comics in the near future! [ALL AGES]

Brought to you by the producers and animators of the hit TV show and features all your favorite characters; Bob, Linda, Tina, Gene & Louise, this issue reprints three impossible Bob’s Burgers stories: one featuring a carnival ride that does a lot more than just spin, one that involves a magic wish melting with regret, and one of Tina’s fanfiction extravaganzas! Want more? Order one of the earlier Bob’s Burgers collections and relive watching the show all over again! [ALL AGES]

The world of Marvel’s movies might have reached an end point for the moment, but things for the comic book Avengers are dicier than ever! Preview upcoming adventures for two series in this issue. First, Tony Stark finds himself facing eerily familiar faces in a time he never wanted to see, while Namor and the Squadron Supreme heat up the oceans and Captain America and Captain Marvel lead a team of heroes deep into Shi’ar space! Then, read the first chapter of the new Savage Avengers series staring such “classic” Avengers characters as Wolverine, Elektra, Punisher, Venom, Blade, and...Conan!? There’s no slowing these heroes down, True Believers! Want more? Grab the first issue of Savage Avengers off the shelves today, or dive into the ongoing Avengers title for adventures both near and far! [TEEN]

Read the full first issue of Hope, a brand-new ongoing superhero comic. The “Ultras” first showed up five years ago, changing the world with their powers. Some people love them, some people fear them, but for unassuming mom Julie Lavelle they were a carefully-guarded secret...until the car accident that changed everything. Where will the ultra named Hope go from here, and with so much loss will she be able to find her namesake within herself ever again? Find out here, than come back later this summer for Issue #2 where things, somehow, get worse! [TEEN]

Two of television’s most beloved series (one long-running and one far, far too short) return to comics! First, preview the new Firefly series set before the tragic events of the Serenity movie that reveals some ugly skeletons from Mal and Zoe’s wartime closets and strains the crew’s bonds like never before. Then, go back to Sunnydale where everything old is new again with a modern reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy is back in high school again for the first time, surrounded by familiar faces...but how different will things be when she’s slaying in 2019 instead of 1997? Enjoy a modern twist with a classic taste (of blood!) and grab your stakes...and browncoats! Want more? Find the first issues of either series on the shelf today, or delve into the classic collections of the previous Dark Horse stories. [TEEN]

This two-for-one issue explores both the darker and lighter sides of the Spider-Man mythos! In the first story, prepare yourself for danger as Eddie Brock introduces us to the brutal beginning of Absolute Carnage, a Venom-event starting this August. Then enjoy the lighter side of super-heroics as Miles Morales and Peter Parker face-off over an epic conflict of their own...who really has the best pizza in NYC? Want more? Check out the latest issues of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Miles Morales Spider-Man, Venom, or Amazing Spider-Man on the shelves today -- or read-up on previous events in our extensive collection of various spider-rific comics! [TEEN]

What if experiencing a school shooting was so traumatic that it, and other natural and human-produced horrors of the 21st century, actually triggered superpowers to manifest in the survivors? That is the brainstorm behind Humanoid’s first ongoing comics initiative, H1. This FCBD “Ignition” preview gives us a story about these brand-new superheroes (and villains!) trying to find their place in the world...and they aren’t content to stand by and watch the status quo! Also take a behind-the-scenes peek into the creative process and characters of this blisteringly topical political premise: Spearheaded by comic book legend Mark Waid, Humanoids looks ready to break into the superhero market with a set of relevant and wholly original stories. Want more? Sign-up for the first issue next month’s debut of Ignited now. [TEEN]

It’s School Picture Day in Riverdale, and that of course means drama -- but there might be more at work today than Cheryl Blossom’s demands for more flattering lighting! When nasty notes turn up anonymously dropped in the yearbook suggestion box, will our small town friends be able to stick together and solve the case, or will someone do something that everyone will regret? The new Riverdale: Season Three comic series features adventures set between the episodes of the hit show, and as always in the town of Riverdale the moment you start digging for answers the more secrets you expose! Also enjoy some behind-the-scenes sneak peeks as well as an excerpt from the prequel novel Riverdale: The Day Before. Want more? Grab the latest issue of the new Riverdale series off the rack, or explore our variety of collected editions from the traditional Archie Digests to the modern re-vamp of the Archie and Sabrina series and, of course, the show-inspired Riverdale comic itself! [TEEN]

Canada's perennial titular superhero has seen sporadic publication since its creation in 1975, but has been appearing more consistently since 2015 as part of Chapterhouse Comics. This preview of the newest Captain Canuck series starts with a "top secret" dossier to catch you up on recent in-world history, as well as background on some of his allies and enemies. We also receive a small hint of the action to come as the Captain and his French Canadian partner, Kebec, fly into an underground lair for some robot-bashing action! [TEEN]

The beloved Robotech series continues with a revolutionary new revisioning! Jump on board for the next big event right here with this mind-blowing first chapter of Robotech: Event Horizon, beginning this summer with Issue #21!  Plus a Curtain Call backup featuring...Minmei!? Check it all out here, then grab a collected edition of the previous issues or sign-up for the start of Event Horizon this summer! [TEEN]

Time-displaced warrior-queen Malika struggles under the burden of the Dragon’s Doom in this preview of her newest adventure, Malika: Fire & Frost. An enchanted sleep sent Malika 500 years into the future but ancient curses do not give up their hold that easily...and neither do her adversaries! The quest for the Dragon Stones is a dangerous one, but what happens when someone new gets caught-up in the fight? Read the first chapter here, then check out the previous two volumes in her epic chronicles: Malika: Warrior Queen on shelves now! [TEEN]

What if one day, all the animals all over the world woke up and started talking? That is the story of Animosity, an epic adventure following human girl Jesse and dog Sandor across the resulting cataclysm. But Jesse and Sandor are not the only ones with a story to tell. In this one-shot, bio major Meredith and Neon, the beta fish who loves her, have to face the terror of life outside the tank. Want more? Grab the first volume of Animosity off the shelves today! [TEEN]

Mel has a secret: she thinks she’s dying. She’s also a clandestine superhero tasked with protecting all of mankind. A chance meeting in a cemetery between the bleeding woman and a kid hiding-out with her sketchbook changes everything...except the fact that being a superhero isn’t easy. Is Jessie up for the challenge? Find out in this FCBD reprint of the first issue of Punchline, the new super-powered super-star from Antarctic Press! Want more? Order the first volume of the sold-out series, Punchline: Blood Sisters, today! [TEEN]

In this adorably meta story, witness the epic throw-down between Sakura and Karin -- both in and out of the game! Can Sakura’s hard-earned skills perfected through after-hours practice at the arcade where she works compete with Karin’s meticulous, expensive training? Who will be the world champion of Super Chibi Puzzle Gem Fighter Ultra Turbo Arcade Edition? Fine out here! Want more? Raid the back issue bins for previous issues of Street Fighter, or grab a collected edition today! [TEEN]

This manga-style two-for-one issue features a story from the world of My Hero Academia and one from The Promised Neverland. In the first, enter a world where 80% of all people are born with “quirks” that give them super-powers! It’s an exciting, hyper-active world full of heroes and villains...but what about the 20% of people who aren’t born “super”? Jump straight into the action with a fight scene that’s more than meets the eye, and find out! Then in the second story, visit the orphanage where eleven-year-old Emma lives with her thirty-seven beloved siblings, enjoying an ordinary life of family, games, and companionship...along with the strange Daily Test, numbers tattooed on their necks, and a fence to keep them from ever going outside! Want more? There are multiple volumes of both manga available now, so grab one today! [TEEN]

Worlds collide in this special FCBD one-shot! When Tala and Eddie, estranged father-daughter duo on the run from good guys and bad guys alike, finally get their hands on an “escape hatch” to another world it seems like all their troubles are solved -- but the world where the Goon lives is never trouble free! When one pair contains a man trapped in the body of a pug and the other contains a newly-minted dogcatcher with a love of violence, is there any way things can end well? Plus, a back-up featuring Eric Powell’s appalachian horror comic, Hillbilly! Want more? Collections of all three series are available now, or grab the first issue of the new Goon today! [TEEN]

Red 5 Comics brings out a two-for-one sampler of high-concept post-apocalyptic stories. In The Dark Age, a mysterious mist destroys all the metal on Earth, immediately plunging society back into a medieval kingdom of wood, brick, and glass. In Afterburn, the world is scorched by a super-powerful solar flare and the story follows a group of thieves and mercenaries breaking into the most dangerous areas of the old world, attempting to recover lost artifacts for the remaining aristocracy. For readers looking for dark, mature stories of a dismal future, this comic is a perfect choice! [TEEN]

In this two-parter from Dark Horse, enjoy a one-shot set in the aftermath of Stranger Things where Nancy struggles to reconnect to her brother and find a way for both of them to return to normal life. Then preview the new series Black Hammer ‘45: Tales From the World of Black Hammer with a foray to the werewolf-riddled battlefields of World War II and a glimpse of the future of the ghostly Jack Sabbath. Want more? Pick up the first volume of Black Hammer, a series that takes the traditional tropes of the super hero world and twists them into new, marvelous, and weird new shapes, or grab the first volume of the Stranger Things tie-in comic exploring Will’s time in the Upside Down off the shelves. You can also sign up for the prequel series, Stranger Things: Six due out later this month! [TEEN]

In the sci-fi/horror world of Midnight Sky, things are always dark. But things are not always what they seem. In this unexpected dystopian tale, we enter a world where light reveals the people who have been replaced...but by what, and why? And how far will one mother go to protect her children when one of them is no longer human, and the other has a strange power that might save -- or doom -- them all? Plus, a preview of Long Live Pro Wrestling, when a fed-up announcer gets a little too honest for his boss and becomes a social media sensation, a short haunting by Gutt Ghost, and previews of several upcoming titles from Scout Comics! Want more? Sign-up for your favorites today! [TEEN]

Discover the strange, steampunk world of Lady Mechanika in this special issue which reprints her original 2010 debut one-shot as well as excerpts from two of her neweer adventures: The Clockwork Assassin and La Belle Dame Sans Merci. The mysterious mechanical woman stalks the streets in search of answers to her own origins -- but could she be a murderer herself? And how will she protect her friend Mr. Lewis from the dangers posed by an even more mysterious woman than herself? Gawk at the breadth of Lady Mechanika’s world, then grab a collection of her adventures off the shelves today! [TEEN]

In 1992, Todd McFarlane’s Spawn burst onto the comics scene. Today you can relive that moment with this reprint of that very first issue, complete with an exclusive new cover by Francesco Mattina. Enjoy a look back at the moment that started it all...or if you’ve never read Spawn before, now is the perfect time to jump on board before the movie! Want more? There are almost 300 issues of Spawn out there today, available in back issue singles and collections! Grab some today! [TEEN]

This two-part issue from Valiant Universe begins the newest saga in the life of nanite-infused ultimate soldier, Bloodshot, as well as setting the stage for the events of the Fallen World event due later this year which will pit the aforementioned Bloodshot against Rai, a haunted cyber-samurai. First witness Bloodshot at his most unstoppable as he seeks to save a doctor from those who would use her talents to make more beings like him; then explore the strain between truth and faith when “heaven” falls out of the sky in the opening salvo of Fallen World. Want more? Pick up a collection of Bloodshot or Rai or sign-up today for their new adventures in either the solo series or the Fallen World mini-series! [TEEN]

Return to the classics with this excerpt from Zagor: The Alien Saga. Originally created in 1961, the story of Zagor combines science fiction, horror, and westerns in one adventurous whole. Here, discover how the titular Zagor and his friend Chico first encountered beings from another world...and the darker, more familiar face beside them! Want more? Order a collection of this classic comic book today. [TEEN]

The main story of this one-shot features Dragonfly and Dragonflyman -- the same hero, but in two different worlds: one colorful and campy, the other gritty and dark! Juxtapose the biff, bam, pow! aesthetics of old school heroism with the grimdark hyper-violence of the nineties and today, and see how familiar faces can turn strange. But what will happen when cheerful Dragonflyman and grizzled Dragonfly change places in The Wrong Earth? Lay the groundwork of their worlds here, and then check out the back-up features introducing Captain Ginger, the feline captain of a ship full of interstellar cats, and a quick trip through the unfriendly world of Edgar Allen Poe’s A Snifter of Terror. Want more? All three series have collections available now! [TEEN]

When humanity left planet Earth behind, fleeing a dying world for a new start in the stars, they nuked it behind them in an attempt to wipe-out the vampires left behind. Unfortunately, in the shadow of that nuclear winter, those vampires evolved. Now with the bloodsucks on the brink of achieving space flight and coming after their wayward food source, humanity has one last chance to save itself: the Interceptor program. One surgically-modified, heavily-trained, even more heavily-armed warrior to wipe-out the vampire threat for good. But when she gets to Earth, she finds something she never expected... This kinetic, fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek comic sets up a battle for Earth the likes of which you’ve never seen! Want more? Pre-order the $17.99 graphic novel due out later this summer that reprints the original series, or jump straight to the sequel with the new four-issue Reactor mini-series, available now! [TEEN]

This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the first appearance of the Vampirella character in Vampirella #1, a Warren Publishing horror magazine and sister publication to the company's Creepy and Eerie magazines. As is befitting such an anniversary, Dynamite Comics is bringing out a new series with a new creative team to craft stories for the wry badgirl vampire. In this preview, we see our favorite scantily-clad bloodsucker endure assaults on social media, determined to discover her whereabouts and her secrets. The real treat in this FCBD exclusive is a bonus story, originally published in 1993, written and illustrated by comic book legends Kurt Busiek and Arthur Adams. Want more? Sign-up now for the new ongoing Vampirella series beginning later this summer! [TEEN+]

Jump in mid-action to the latest adventure of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as they race through the city to save their friend and survive multiple ambushes! Then, discover the history of the saga back to the very beginning a long, long time ago in the back-up feature. Want more? Check out the reading order in the back of this issue for where to get started and then grab one of the TMNT’s collected editions off the shelf, or just keep going from here with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turltes #94, out later this month! [MATURE READERS!]

Jump feet first into the frenetic world of Deadly Class, ongoing comic and hit television show! What do kids going to assassin school do to blow off steam? Hit a concert, of course...but sometimes the work comes with them. Does making art actually change the world? What about revenge? And can you hold onto who you are when the world is trying to shape you into something else? If all that can be packed into just one issue, imagine how much goes on in the entire series...or stop imagining it, and pick up the first volume today! [MATURE READERS!]

In 2017, Emil Ferris published her first graphic novel, the unprecedented and brilliant My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, an exploration of everything from the trauma of a lonely childhood, the Holocaust, and totally awesome horror comics, all drawn with ballpoint pen and a perspective never seen before in comics. This only came about after Ferris experienced severe brain damage from a severe case of West Nile Virus and used drawing with a ballpoint pen as a form of physical therapy. This FCBD-exclusive provides an inside look into how My Favorite Thing Is Monsters emerged from that tragedy and includes Ferris's own guide to drawing monsters. Want more? Find the original graphic novel on our shelves today! [MATURE READERS!]

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT SUPPLIES ARE LIMITED AND ALL FCBD TITLES ARE FIRST-COME, FIRST-SERVED! WE SUGGEST YOU HAVE IDEAS IN MIND FOR BACK-UP BOOKS IN CASE YOUR FIRST CHOICE IS GONE!

Many of these books tie-in with comic series or graphic novels currently available in our stores, while others are previews for books that are soon to be released! If you enjoyed your free comics, or if you saw an interesting one in the list that you didn’t have the chance to grab that you’d like to read, ask one of your friendly neighborhood Comix Connection Counter Monkeys for help! We’ll be glad to give you more information -- or even order you some goodies!

[jana-hallford]

Love and Rockets: Mid-Century Space Theme Valentines

I am a “Space Age” child, born after the launch of Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite. On October 4, 1957 the Soviet Union sent Sputnik into an elliptical low orbit, beginning the “Space Race,” with the USA and the USSR competing for milestones in space exploration. This was at the height of the Cold War, and tensions ran high. Some of my teachers recalled being officially reprimanded by the government for failing to provide sufficient science education, thus allowing Russia to get ahead. But there was also tremendous interest and support for our space program, and a sense of optimism and pride. While science fiction films from the 1950s such as “Forbidden Planet”(1956) presented a vision of a space-faring future, Sputnik kickstarted the real-world race to the first stop: Earth’s own moon. 

Here is a collection of children’s Valentines from that era, all with a Space Age theme. They are fun and fanciful. Many of them draw heavily from popular serialized space fantasies, such as the 1950 - 1955 television series, “Tom Corbett: Space Cadet.” Even when actual astronauts began going to space, using functional helmets and space suits, Valentines generally continued to mirror the earlier models for a long time.

Mid-Century Valentines with space images and themes. From my personal collection.

Mid-20th Century space theme Valentine made to hold a lollipop, from my personal collection. The  five-digit zip code would date it 1963 or later, although the art is very 1950s. It was already a bit dated looking by my school days, yet a much younger pinner on Pinterest remembered it from the 1980s. I have since seen Valentines with this image with and without the lollipop information, so it was used a lot. This proves my point that Valentine art tends to get reprinted for years. 

No helmets or space suits here -- just a 1950s girl and boy and a rocket.

Vintage Valentine with a female astronaut, right out of the old space serials. 

A cute teddy bear rides a 1950s rocket on this vintage Valentine.

Vintage broadcast-theme Valentine with a little girl astronaut in a space-opera inspired helmet.

Vintage Gibson Valentine from my personal collection, with a sweet astronaut bunny in a bubble helmet.

A ray gun seems to replace Cupid’s arrow in this vintage space-theme mechanical Valentine scene. The boy’s upper body moves, presumably from the ray gun blast.

Vintage Valentine with a planet pun, bubble-helmeted astronaut, and rockets.

Vintage (1960s) “Out of this world” Valentine with an astronaut duckling. From my personal collection.

Another vintage Valentine of our space duckling from my personal collection, this one with a quintessential Mid-Century atomic symbol. What’s not to love?

Vintage Valentine with girl astronaut and “blast off” and “orbit” references.

An astronaut boy, girl, and dog “on top of the world” in this vintage Valentine illustration.

Vintage Valentine with astronaut boy brandishing a huge ice cream cone. That bubble helmet is sure to get in the way.

Vintage “Space in my heart” Valentine with an astronaut girl. From my personal collection.

The proverbial “little green man” or space alien pilots a flying saucer in this vintage Valentine scene from my personal collection. Space exploration opened up the idea of life on other planets for much of society. Sightings of UFOs (unidentified flying objects) and even reports of alien encounters flourished during this time.

1960s Gibson Valentine from my personal collection, with a female space traveler carrying tickets to her destinations. She’s bringing her hat box and her cat. (The same package of school Valentines included a similar image of a male in a space helmet, hitchhiking with his dog!) The art style is very typical of greeting cards I remember from my childhood.

An astronaut boy says “Hello!” on this vintage Hallmark Valentine. He and his dog both wear bubble or fish-bowl type space helmets. The art style is 1960s or slightly later. 

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, some Valentine illustrations of helmets and space suits started to look more like those actually in use. The “giant leap” reference clearly dates this one after the historic Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong became came the first man to set foot on the lunar surface.

Vintage “set phaser to stunning” Valentine, showing the influence of “Star Trek.” Until the original “Star Trek” television series (1966 - 1969), such a weapon would have been referred to as a “ray gun,” “blaster”, or “laser gun.” Although the original series had refences to phasers set to stun, Captain Kirk never gave the command “set phasers to stun” until the second season of Star Trek: the Animated Series (1973 to 1974). The order was heard often in later series. Star Trek provided an important, positive vision of the future. Nichelle Nichols, famous for portraying Lt. Uhura in the original series, later worked for NASA, recruiting women and “minorities” for the space program.

Two dozen vintage space-theme Valentines from my personal collection. I grew up in an era of dramatic developments in space exploration. But there was also still a definite male bias when it came to all aspects of science. I remember being a little self conscious checking out library books about science with titles like “The Boys Book of Space.” Yet girls in these space images are very well-represented, presumably because these sets were designed and sold for school Valentine exchanges, with an equal number of boys and girls. Happily, later the ranks of real-life astronauts  became much more diverse, both in terms of gender and ethnicity.

Valentines shown here range from the early 1950s to the early to mid-1970s. This was a golden age of space exploration. I hope we can get back on course. Humans need big and lofty goals. Besides, a bold, visionary space program IS an economic stimulus package!

[catching-up-on-comic-books]

Binge Reading Journal - November 13, 2018 - the tenth day of reading Marvel’s Dark Reign (Part 3)

Secret Invasion- Requiem

Now they reprint Court-Martial by Jim Shooter (boy genius writer), Bob Hall (an underrated penciler), Dan Green on inks and Janice Chiang on Letters. This story was first featured in Avengers #213 in 1981 featuring the smack heard ‘round the world.

Hank Pym, now working under the name of Yellowjacket, is standing in front of Iron Man, Thor and Captain America. All in full uniform in their private mansion where no one can see, or get in or out. BUT this is a serious matter. Full uniform must be worn! Iron Man says that Cap has leveled some serious charges against Yellowjacket. Thor lets him know that if the accusations are true he will face formal court-martial! Thor wants the record to show that he and Iron Man are presiding as judges.....wait wait wait. These are just a bunch of dudes wearing really tight clothes in a swanky clubhouse. There’s no military sanction. Tony Stark is footing the bill (through the Maria Stark Foundation) so they can run around and smash things!

According to the Marvel Database, they’re a non-profit organization like the American Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity, recognized by the National Security Council of the US and the UN as a peacekeeping organization, ain’t nobody being court-martialed....pppsshhhh. Just be all like, “Hank you’re a jerk! Here are your things and go away.”

Well, these boys are going to go through this farce anyway. Cap states that the day before, during a mission where he was fighting a mysterious woman attacking Washington D.C. He managed to convince her to stop when Yellowjacket shot her in the back, which caused her to continue fighting. Iron Man asks for an explanation to which he has none. His own personal thoughts, legible in a bubble to the reader shows him thinking that he was a jerk and acted over eagerly to be the star on his first mission since rejoining the team.

Thor (who’s not really pretending at any of this because he actually is a Norse god) says they will convene for three days until the formal court-martial (hahahah) and suspends Hank until then so hand over your Avengers ID Card, Hank!

Hank pleads a little at this but Iron Man reminds him the rules, which he helped write, are firm on this.

I don’t think The Salvation Army has ever court-martialed anyone and they call themselves an army!

Janet is in the hallway outside the court-martial ichamber. Tigra asks why so down? Tigra, by the way is hanging from one of the rafters in the ceiling because it helps her relax. She wonders why Janet is so hung up on that strange guy anyway. Can we remind 2008 Future Tigra, who’s having Skrull-Hank babies, she thought Hank was strange in 1981?

Hank leaves the room and practically shoves Janet aside, telling her to leave him alone when she asks how he is. He immediately regrets it an apologizes before she walks away. She comes in for an embrace and say sweet consoling things to each other. TIgra doesn’t get it.

As the other founding members go their separate ways, each one remembers their own mistakes from the past.

Cap recalls when, during a heated battle against Nazi soldiers, he reacted to a noise behind him and instinctively threw his shield. It was a little girl, an orphan, collecting the brass shells for money. He barely missed hitting her when she bent down to pick up a shell. Cap realizes that he nearly made the same mistake as Hank.

Iron Man is going over Hank’s files and pictures, As a founding member his history is tied in closely with the Avengers’ history. However, Hank never really seemed to settle in, taking on guises such as Giant-Man and Goliath. Tony feels that Hank always felt outclassed by himself and Iron Man, so he’d leave the team to try to come up with some scientific breakthrough to prove himself. One of those wound up being Ultron, the Avengers’ greatest enemy. Then he had an accident in the lab which triggered a mental breakdown. That’s when he started calling himself Yellowjacket. However, the schizophrenia was cured (can’t be cured.)

Schizophrenia, and other mental disorders are a pulp fiction trope, used to explain away erratic behavior. It is usually used by writers with very little understanding of the actual condition. Actually, a rigorous new definition of schizophrenia was fashioned for the ''Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition,'' or ''DSM-III,'' which was published by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980.

Nevertheless, Hank and Janet got married. As Iron Man continues reminiscing, he recalls how Ultron returned and forced him to create Jocasta from Janet’s brain waves. Iron Man wonders if Hank will ever stop looking for redemption. Is it fair to turn away from a friend who needs help, should he be punished for a mistake anyone of them could have made?

Janet and Hank head home, Janet stopping to sign autographs for fans waiting outside the mansion, none recognizing Yellowjacket. They head to their residence in Cresskill, New Jersey. (Did he always live there? Should I redo my ant speed calculations from that earlier issue?) Ah wait, their butler and other staff greet Janet like she’s the Queen of England and Hank is something she stepped in. She’s the rich one, inherited her father’s wealth which he made from science, with all his alien teleportation stuff. Not a lot of scientists manage to get rich. Usually the career path of a scientist is to become tenured at a university, write a lot of books and speaking engagements, they manage to make a decent living. Usually they work for companies and universities collecting meager salaries for the opportunity to science.

If a scientist manages to discover something, and patent it and comes up with a practical use for it, then there is an opportunity to become rich from it. A couple of rich, like Craig Ventner. Dr. Ventner, much like Hank Pym, is a biotechnologist, biochemist and geneticist. He was involved in mapping the human genome. Then he founded, Celera Genomics, institute for Genomic Research and the J. Craig Ventner Institute and Human Longevity, Inc.

At Celera, Ventner and his colleagues completed sequencing the human genome (Ventner’s genome specifically) three years ahead of schedule, beating the government funded Human Genome Project (your taxes at work.) Ventner’s discoveries, patents and stock ownership in the companies he’s founded made him very rich. Forbes estimates that his net worth (as of 2017) based on his stakes on two of his startups is about $300 million.

It seems like taking some real world examples, there’s some untapped story ideas to mine; what did Janet Van Dyne’s father discover and patent that made him rich and how has it impacted the world; how can Pym cash in on his own discoveries (not to mention Reed Richards, Hank McCoy, etc.).

Janet tries to get Hank into the bedroom, but he takes the laboratory over the seductive advances of his wife.

Hank admits he hates going to the lab because it reminds him of his failures, except there is one success he’s had in the lab: Robotics (wait, no that never turns out well.

Cut to three days later, Tigra is asleep in her private quarters, Bob Hall draws her in the nude but all the naughty bits are tastefully covered. She wakes up to the sound of Jarvis approaching her door. Jim Shooter makes it a point to say she slipped on a satiny negligee. It’s like the only reason Tigra was created was to get some weird furry fantasy going for the readers. A startled Jarvis, who’s never owned a cat apparently or else he wouldn’t be surprised by her behavior, is presenting Tigra with her first weekly stipend check.

She is surprised to learn that the Avengers get paid a salary. He clarifies that it is a modest stipend to cover living expenses, which most Avengers traditionally refuse, he adds in a snidely way. Hmmmm. Let’s see....Black Panther is the king of his own country so mega-rich; Thor, Prince of Asgard, so rich he doesn’t even need money; Captain America, probably collecting a lot of military back pay. See, Jarvis, most Avengers refuse the stipend because they’re already rich; not because they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.

He continues to economically shame her by pointing out that those that do accept the stipend are the ones that live at the mansion and have no outside means of support. Tigra finally gets a chance to read it and notices it is for one thousand dollars. Which in 1983, like $2,534.53 today or $131, 795.56 a year. That is a pretty good haul on top of room and board for Tigra.

Jarvis reminds her that the court-martial is at four o’clock that day. Meanwhile, Tony Stark is making an excuse to leave a board meeting at Stark International Headquarters, because writers think the best way to show a busy CEO is at a board meeting (not true, board meetings occur maybe just once a year unless there is an emergency, trope alert)

Thor finishes up some surgery but leaves the cleaning up for his colleagues, who grouse at Blake leaving (oh, sorry at this time, Thor is still using the Don Blake alter ego) for them to clean up despite being the best surgeon ever.

Captain America, already in the Avengers library and in full uniform, is wondering if he will have the courage to look Hank in the eye even though it is the most difficult thing he’s ever done. More difficult than watching Bucky die on that rocket? More difficult than giving up your Captain America identity to become Nomad? Well, we all chose our own cross to bear.

Speaking of crosses to bear, a few hours earlier, Janet hasn’t seen Hank since they came home three days earlier. She decides to go check on him in the lab. Finding the door locked, she shrinks down and squeezes in to the door crack to discover Hank putting in the final touches of programming of the robot, which will allow it to target each Avenger by their brain waves. Which it does as o soon as it senses Jan in the room. Hank is infuriated, Accusing Jan of spying on him. Hank explains he has built a robot called Salvation 1 and she’s going to help him test it out. It grabs Jan but her sting is useless against it. He explains it is built out of Adamantium. Ok, so according to the Marvel Database:

Creating even a small amount of Adamantium is astronomically expensive, and only a few people know the complete formula. Adamantium is created by mixing certain chemical resins together. The exact composition of these resins is a closely guarded secret of the United States government. When these resins are mixed and kept at a temperature of 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, the resulting liquid can be cast or worked into a particular shape. After an eight minute 'flux period', the mixture sets and becomes solid regardless of temperature. Its molecular structure is extremely stable, and its shape can only be altered by precise molecular rearrangement.

So I don’t know how Hank had enough Adamantium lying around to build a 15 foot tall battle robot he just conceived three days prior. He designed Sal with a secret weak spot that will shut down the robot with one well-placed stinger shot, thus making him a hero when Sal attacks the Avengers. That’s the plan at least. But Janet won’t let him go through with it.

There it is.

On Jim Shooter’s website, he posted on March 29, 2011:

In that story (issue 213, I think), there is a scene in which Hank is supposed to have accidentally struck Jan while throwing his hands up in despair and frustration—making a sort of “get away from me” gesture while not looking at her.  Bob Hall, who had been taught by John Buscema to always go for the most extreme action, turned that into a right cross!  There was no time to have it redrawn, which, to this day has caused the tragic story of Hank Pym to be known as the “wife-beater” story.

So, henceforth Hank Pym is known as a wife beater.

Let’s cut to the court-martial proceedings. Captain America states his case: Yellowjacket shot a hostile in the back. Hank has never been know to act cowardly so the act was a case of misjudgment. It is tempting to write off as a mistake since any one of them can make the same error.

However, as an Avenger they cannot. An error by any one of them can result in the loss of lives. They have a tremendous responsibility and thus must judge themselves harshly.

I bet one can look back at previous issues of the Avengers, or Iron Man or Cap, or Thor and find situations and scenarios where they’ve all made costly mistakes like Hank Pym. Alas, this can’t turn into a retrospective of the Avengers.

Iron Man asks Hank how he pleads or if he wishes to defend himself. Hank pleads not guilty. His argument is that although his mistake may have seemed treacherous but he wondered if Cap ever considered treachery from the enemy. His actions may have actually saved lives! Perhaps because the enemy was a beautiful woman, perhaps Cap liked her! Like Liked her! That’s why Cap is upset, because Hank hurt her!

Everyone is feeling second-hand embarrassment at this point. Iron Man asks him to stop. Hank asks Janet to back up her story. She lowers her sunglasses and reveals a shiner. Thor is shocked, wondering if Hank actually hit her. Hank goes for the remote control to summon Salvation 1. Janet pleads to him to not do it.

Sal bursts through the wall (kind of hilariously, no disrespect to Bob Hall, but considering the statement Shooter made on his blog post, about Hall being trained by Buscema to always go for the drama, it kind of comes off as comedic. Iron Man being flipped upside down, Tigra kind of in a Bugs Bunny pose, Yellowjacket exclaiming “Ah!” In faux surprise.

When Thor strikes it with his Mjolnir without any effect, Janet let’s them know it’s made out of (very expensive and rare) Adamantium and Hank built it and designed it to destroy them. Hank realizes Sal is way too brutal and may actually defeat everyone. He goes for the super secret shut off switch but Sal throws him against the wall. Sal grabs Hank in his giant pincer claws, crushing him when Janet runs up and shoots the switch with her stinger, deactivating Salvation 1.

Hank, shamefully leaves.

[sportscardsdtor]

Ryne Sandberg Binder Collection

Page 42

'93 Upper Deck Fun Pack '92 Fleer All Stars '92 Fleer Heritage Series '93 Upper Deck All-Star Scratch Off (Roberto Alomar) '14 Panini Hall of Fame Baseball 03/10, Diamond Kings '93 Upper Deck Wall Stars Glow Stars, Sticker '94 Bowman '19 Topps Allen & Ginter '01' Topps Archives Reserves,1983 Reprint, Chromium

This page of the binder is very fun to visit. So many colors and types of Ryno cards. We start with card number one, where Ryno is popping up for a slide in the true 90's themed card. Go to number six and that motif is card over on the page. Well it is from the same release, now that I write about it.

Skipping over to the third card and Sandberg is in a classic 1908 Cubs uniform. The photo is sepia type with a green border. Funny how small that leather glove is. We need more uniforms that look like this.

The All-Star scratch off can be in two parts of my collection. Ryne Sandberg for this collection here, and the Roberto Alomar for the Puerto Rican collection for the 1995 Dream Team collection.

The favorite card of the page is the ninth card of the page. A chrome refractor version of the 1983 Rookie cards from Topps Archives. It just looks better in person than it does on screen.

So reading the back of the cards, I found out that 5 players finished ahead of Sandberg in the Rookie of the Year voting. Steve Sax, Johnny Ray, Willie McGee, Chili Davis, Luis DeLeon. Also there was a trivia question that I did not know the answer to. Q: What feat did Ryne perform in a 13-8 loss to the Pirates on Sept. 9, 1992? A: .mals dnarg reerac driht sih degguls enyR (Answer is backwards, LOL)

Until next time

For a little more insight visit sportscardsdtor.yolasite.com https://www.instagram.com/p/Cclc37wFxlx/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[brevoorthistoryofcomics]

In January of 1977, I turned ten-years-old. And around that time, I would up getting my second book collection of vintage comic book stories--a book that, up until that point I didn’t even know existed. We found it in the remaindered section at Two Guys, a regional low-rent department store chain, kind of like the K-Mart of its day. And because I had money that had been given to me for my birthday, I was able to buy it. By that point, it was twelve years old and had gone through several printings--it was, in fact, the very first collection of vintage comic book stories ever published, coming out in 1965 just ahead of the Batman TV show craze.

THE GREAT COMIC BOOK HEROES began life as an article that Jules Feiffer had written for Playboy magazine, of all places. It was a nostalgic look back, warts and all, at the comic books that were a part of his youth and the state of the industry a few years later when he was able to get into the business working for Will Eisner. From there, Feiffer went on to be a successful syndicated cartoonist, his strip primarily appearing in the Village Voice, as well as an accomplished playwright. He was so well-regarded, in fact, that he was able to convince a number of publishers to reprint stories from their back catalog in this hardcover collection--publishers who, up to this point, has never really worked in concert before. 

As no good reproduction materials existed, Feiffer worked in concert with DC’s Jack Adler to pioneered a process by which old comic books could be photographed under certain conditions to create a usable black line image, and then recolored. This same process was later used on many of DC’s reprints, in particular the FAMOUS 1st EDITION treasuries--I gather that the reason its use wasn’t more widespread is that it was more costly and time-consuming than was considered worthwhile for a regular comic book release.

Feiffer was also enough of a bigwig in 1965 that he was able to negotiate a minor detente in the legal agreement between DC/national Periodicals and Fawcett Publications, enough to allow him to reprint a single page’s worth of Captain Marvel. In 1977 when I read this book, I didn’t understand why this was a big deal (and in fact I had read this same story twice before already.) I believe it was the one and only exception ever granted, at least up until the point where DC began licensing the rights to Captain Marvel from Fawcett in 1973.

I will confess that, when I first bought this volume, I didn’t read any of Feiffer’s text. That seemed like work to me, who needed it? It was the stories that I was here for! I was hypnotized by the reproduction of one of the comic books that Feiffer had made and sold on the neighborhood street when he was a kid. I had begun to make my own comic books before this, and so this was a very primal point of connection for me--I think I may have read the text of just that one “chapter” (they were all short enough that they were only three or four pages long.)

I also didn’t read the stories featuring the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner and Captain America that were included in the volume. Why would I? I had learned from past experience that I adamantly disliked Marvel comics, decried them whenever I was asked about them, so there was no need to investigate these stories. It would literally be months, not until the summer of 1977, when, on one dull day with nothing better to do, I finally cracked and read through both Feiffer’s full text and the three Marvel stories. And they (along with the write-ups on Timely in the Steranko History of Comics, coming soon) were enough to compel me to give Marvel another chance. But we’ll get to that in due time.

The one disappointing aspect of Feiffer’s book to me, coming to it twelve years later, is that there were already a number of stories in it that I’d read already. Because Feiffer tried to hit all of the mainstays of the big comic book houses in his reprints, and as often as possible, the opening or origin installments. The only times he varied from this approach was when there was some other aspect of the character or the strip that he was trying to highlight--a number of these series took a little while to completely crystallize in their final forms, and Feiffer took that into account when choosing his stories.

So what was reprinted in this volume? It opened with a two-page origin of Superman, taken not from ACTION COMICS #1 but rather from the more expanded version first shown in SUPERMAN #1. Thereafter, he ran a story that he sourced from SUPERMAN #3 but which was first published in ACTION COMICS #5. It’s really the first full story in which all of the quintessential elements of the Superman series coalesce: the Lois-Clark-Superman relationship in particular. There are several pages in the middle of it that were clearly reworked from newspaper strip samples, panels extended and reformatted into comic book pages haphazardly. 

Following the single page of Captain Marvel he could show, Feiffer then reprints the origin of Batman, from BATMAN #1 (which I’d read), as well as the first story featuring the Joker (likewise). This was about a year in, by which point Robin had been introduced, and wit the debut of the Joker all of the elements were in place. But not new to me. Next was a relatively late Human Torch story from MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS #20--like Batman, by this point the Torch’s young partner Toro had come into the series, and it had settled down into typical super-heroics. But I didn’t read it, not yet.

A pair of stories that I’d already experienced came next: the first adventure of the Flash (my third copy of it!) from FLASH COMICS #1 and the first installment of Green lantern from ALL-AMERICAN COMICS #16. Next came a solo Spectre story from ALL-STAR COMICS #1. I was familiar with this early version of the Spectre from the FAMOUS 1st EDITION reprint of ALL-STAR #3, but he wasn’t especially interesting to me. Because he was already dead and could do literally anything, there wasn’t a lot of drama to be found in his stories. Even as a kid, this deficit was apparent to me. Superman, at least, had to struggle to accomplish whatever his goal was.

Next came an adventure of Hawkman, sourced from FLASH COMICS #5. Here, Feiffer skipped the earliest adventures of the winged wonder so as to showcase the work of Shelly Moldoff on the strip (and in particular how often he was swiping Flash Gordon panels by Alex Raymond, which happened everywhere.) This was followed by a Wonder Woman story from WONDER WOMAN #2--actually, it was a single chapter of a four-chapter larger story, but I wouldn’t discover this for decades. Feiffer chose it as a good example of some of the strange sexuality that was operating under the hood of what at first glance appeared to be a patriotic heroine series. This was the stuff that really made Wonder Woman sizzle, and the lack of which one of the reasons why her series had such a lack of pop in the 60s and 70s.

Then came a Sub-Mariner adventure from MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS #7, by which point creator Bill Everett had worked out the bugs. I didn’t read it for several months, but essentially it’s an orgy of destruction, as Namor returns to Manhattan to carve out vengeance for his undersea race by wrecking and destroying his way across the city--he even at one point accosts Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. There isn’t much plot, only carnage--and it ends with Namor’s friend Berry Dean warning him that the Human Torch would be on his trail. But that historic meeting wasn’t included.

I also skipped the origin of Captain America, from CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS #1. It’s a pretty crude piece of work, like most of what was reprinted in this volume. There are only hints of the explosiveness that Jack Kirby would bring to the comic book page in the next few issues, to say nothing of the next few decades. The pages were a little bit more jigsaw puzzle-y, but only a little bit. That would change as Kirby got going on Cap.

Next came the first Plastic Man adventure, from POLICE COMICS #1, and which I’d read a few weeks earlier in SECRET ORIGINS OF THE SUPER DC HEROES. It was still a fun tale, but one that only hinted at the inventiveness that Jack Cole would bring to the character and to the page. I felt the same way about the Spirit based on the story that Feiffer reprinted here. He spent a lot of time talking up how innovative and impressive a series it was, but from this sampling, I just couldn’t see it. Part of that, no doubt, is that most scholars consider the best period of Eisner’s Spirit to run from around 1946-1950 or so. But Feiffer was working for Eisner for most of that period--he wrote several of the most memorable tales--and so his interest was in the earliest Spirit adventures, the ones he read as a kid.

So it was a highly-enjoyable volume, and one that would have a greater impact on me over the course of time, but also slightly disappointing. But I was glad to have it, in particular because its existence came as a total surprise to me. At this point in time, there were precious few compilations of old comic book stories, so each one was like a treasured gem.

[twilight-adamo]

As Dreams Are Made On: The Mixtape - Liner Notes

Hello everyone! I am currently in the process of gathering my thoughts on Brave New World and trying to get the next installment of These Our Actors (which will focus on Rosalie) just right, in addition to trying to find my thread on Out of the Blue and other non-Twilight projects. This has been complicated by the fact that I’ve been fighting a couple rather nasty nose and throat bugs of late, and so this weekend I’m doing my best to relax and recover.

In the meantime, I thought I’d start offering up my notes on the Spotify playlist I posted a while ago and why I chose the songs I did. For anyone who didn’t see the link, here it is:

https://open.spotify.com/user/12153099402/playlist/5IYjYDbcM6qvQ2hgGnOCGF?si=orkjWU50SjKm7xbPSF_r5w

Since many of my choices do relate directly to specific plot points, there are potential spoilers ahead, so I’m putting this behind a cut. I won’t get through every song in this post, but I’ll add additional notes in subsequent posts as time allows.

As I think I mentioned before, I find playlists to be a very useful tool in my writing. It’s possible to spend too much time tinkering with playlists, of course, so I try not to do it in place of writing or outlining - this is just something I work on when I’m occupied with non-writing tasks that allow for a certain amount of downtime. Each song tends to relate to a plot point or an emotion I’m trying to evoke in a certain part of the story, and the sequence generally follows my outline of the plot, though I’ll sometimes put the playlist on shuffle if I’m feeling stuck and want to try and shake things up, and I sometimes end up adding, removing, or resorting various songs as my understanding of the plot evolves. Since As Dreams Are Made On is done, the current version of the mixtape - all 49 songs - is now pretty much in its final form, but when I’m working on a story, the associated playlist is very much a living document and subject to change.

Music has always been a hugely important part of my life, thanks in large part to my mother, who was an influence on much of my creative output. I tend to think of myself as a visual and verbal person first and foremost, but music has the power to set my mood, to reawaken old memories, to align my thoughts, and to soothe my emotional turmoil. My personal tastes are fairly eclectic - my mother favored country, and I’m still fond of the genre, but I also listen to a lot of pop, classical pieces, musical theatre, folk music, movie scores, and so on. Spotify has been kind of a godsend when it comes to building playlists, though there are unfortunately a few pieces which should be on the mixtape but aren’t simply because they’re unavailable on Spotify. I’ll try to make a note of those missing pieces in the appropriate sections.

Right, well, without further ado, let’s get to the songs.

Pieces and Pieces - The Rough and Tumble This song’s sort of a thesis statement for the whole story, in a way. The refrain, in particular, speaks to me of where I was going: Nothing is lost when it’s been found again / Everything’s found where it was lost. Cass/Bella (or CB, as I refer to her, when I’m not simply calling her Bella) has seemingly lost a great deal, but she comes to gain a great deal as well, and to recover things she thought lost to her forever. The line “I will make you mine again, pieces by pieces” also speaks to me of the story’s dramatic climax, where the nature of CB’s relationship with Alice becomes clearer.

Where Is My Mind? - Pixies Here’s where we’re getting into the actual sequence of events. This one might be a little bit of a cliché, but it reflects CB’s confusion when she wakes in the world of Twilight. It’s also just generally one of my favorite songs.

Turning Page - Sleeping At Last This is the first of many pieces pulled directly from the soundtrack of the Twilight films, and the first song that centers a character other than CB, as it reflects Alice getting hit by the mating bond full-force. It’s a lovely piece, but I think there’s an undercurrent of anxiety and some slightly ominous elements that suit Alice’s mood well. Love at first sight sounds like a pleasant prospect, but it’s also a frightening one, and neither Alice nor CB would have chosen it, given the chance to choose.

Iowa (Traveling, Pt. 3) - Dar Williams Another of my favorite songs. I listened to a lot of Dar Williams in college, and listen to her fairly often still, but I keep coming back to this one in particular. As a lifelong New Englander, famed for what my great-grandmother called ‘the Yankee reserve’ (which means we don’t tend to wear our emotions on our sleeves and generally we keep to ourselves), these lyrics in particular speak to me:

But way back where I come from We never mean to bother We don’t like to make our passions other people’s concern And we walk in the world of safe people And at night we walk into our houses and burn

So, to me, this song speaks of CB’s struggle with her own emotions as her life in Forks begins and she grapples with the mating bond and all it implies. And it also speaks to her background as a lifelong Bostonian, who doesn’t like to be a bother but nevertheless finds herself in a whole new social context and a position where she needs to reach out to others to survive.

Heads Will Roll - Yeah Yeah Yeahs This is Rosalie’s introduction to the story. I don’t really know why, it just seems to suit her, somehow.

Bela Lugosi’s Dead - CHVRCHES It may be physically impossible for me to write about vampires WITHOUT using this song. I just felt like I had to fit it in somewhere, and the first meeting with the rest of the Cullens (sans Carlisle and Esme, of course) seemed like a good spot.

Looking for a Place to Shine - Deidre Thornell Hear the Bells - Naomi Scott I’ll be honest, I don’t have a lot of compelling reasons for these two. They just seemed to fit the sort of transitional period between the first meeting with the Cullens and Leah’s introduction a little later on.

Red Eyes and Tears - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Leah’s introduction to the story. Again, it just seemed to suit her.

New For You - Reeve Carney We’re back to Alice with this one. It sort of reflects her own emotional turmoil in dealing with the mating bond and having to accept that CB doesn’t necessarily reciprocate all her feelings just yet.

Fearless - Taylor Swift Well, this one actually comes up in the story, so you can pretty much guess where it fits in. Again, though, it’s one of my favorite songs, and speaks to the joy that I think love should carry with it, and the idea that love should drive us forward and make us better. It’s been a serious contender for the first dance at my hypothetical wedding for a long time (though “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri may be beating it out now).

The Mercy of the Fallen - Dar Williams More Dar Williams! This one...I don’t know. Somehow, it speaks to me of love and acceptance, of individuals who are all burdened and broken in their own ways reaching out and comforting one another. And that, in turn, makes me think of CB’s first visit to the Cullen house: her first real conversation with Rosalie, her introduction to Carlisle and Esme, all of that. This is where she really starts to build bridges, I think, and where she and some of the others begin to open up to one another.

Bella’s Lullaby - Carter Burwell, Dan Redfeld and Elizabeth Hedman This is of course one of my favorite pieces from the Twilight movie score, and includes a leitmotif that comes up more than once in both the films and in my playlist. I couldn’t find the original version from the score itself on Spotify, but this cover works. Of course Edward plays it on the piano at this point in the story, reading it out of CB’s thoughts, and I think she adopts it in a sense as a sort of personal theme. Every time I listen to it, it makes me think of soaring pine trees and crisp, cold air, and I find the melody very soothing.

Missing Piece: Star by Star - Cassandra Lease and Melissa Carubia Someday I’m actually going to get together with the friend who helped me with the arrangement on this one and record it. It probably won’t go up on Spotify, but I’ll likely post it somewhere. This is the song I wrote for my mother’s memorial service; the lyrics are of course reprinted in the story in their entirety. This is probably one of the most personal elements of the story, the point where I really started to spill my guts across the page. I obviously backed off a little from my own life once I introduced Callie to the story, but there’s still a lot of my soul buried in the text; sometimes, I think, too much.

Bella’s Lullaby (Extended Mix) - The Twilight Orchestra I’m not really sure why this shares the name Bella’s Lullaby when it doesn’t seem to have much to do with the shorter piece, but whatever. This is just a lovely piece that sets the mood for Alice and CB on the rooftop and the events that follow.

Possibility - Lykke Li Similarly, this is more of a ‘setting the mood’ song. I don’t think the lyrics quite fit, in their entirety, but this basically represents CB awakening to the possibility of forming a real attachment to Alice, despite her qualms.

Shake It Off - Taylor Swift Another (highly anachronistic) Taylor Swift song that shows up in the story itself. I can be an extremely basic white girl at times.

Bad Reputation - Avril Lavigne The Joan Jett version isn’t on Spotify! I don’t know what to tell you! This cover’s pretty good, though. Another Leah song, and something I imagine might be playing in the dive where CB introduces Leah to fried pickles.

Nothing to Lose - Minusworld My friend Melissa’s band! Get their EP, Giant Blazing Sword, wherever you buy digital music! Listen to them on Spotify and Bandcamp! Anyway, I think this is the track playing during Leah and CB’s encounter with the scary assholes in the alley, and when Emmett and the others get their big damn hero moment.

In Place Of Someone You Love - Carter Burwell, Dan Redfeld and Elizabeth Hedman We’re skipping ahead a bit here. This piece comes after the shopping scene and CB’s attempt to analyze Rosalie’s abilities, when she’s in the dream of the burning house, trying to save her memories.

The Forgotten - Green Day This piece represents CB’s emotions after she wakes from her brief coma, as she struggles with losing her memories and burning away parts of the world she left behind.

Black Is The Colour - Cara Dillon And this piece represents CB’s acceptance of her feelings toward Alice, her confession of love despite her reservations. It took me a while to find a cover I liked, as I very much wanted to use a version that had a woman singing about another woman, for obvious reasons.

Okay, I think that’s pretty much all I can handle for now. More to come soon!

[evansrogerskitten]

New Orleans

sub!Dean x OFC 

Dean stumbles upon an old memory. 

Created for @spnkinkbingo Square Filled: Dom/sub 

Warnings: NSFW, 18+, dom/sub, BDSM, restraints, smut WC: 676 On AO3 A/N: Obvs none of these images are mine. I tried to find the original source for the manip in the top corner, I’d be happy to give them credit. Thanks as always to my beta @letsby​

My SPN Kink Bingo | My SPN Masterlist

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“So get this, I think I’ve tracked it to a library in New Orleans.” Sam launches into a description of the cursed Cajun object they’re tracking but Dean’s not listening.

For some reason his brain has spit out a memory he hasn’t thought of in a long time. He can’t believe it’s been thirteen years. A lot can happen in over a decade of death and terror.

“Dean?”

“What?” Dean responds gruffly, the accelerator pedal shifting under his boot.

“So I was saying about the first victim that...” Sam’s rambles on again but Dean is staring at the road ahead.

Dean remembers that night very well. It was 2005 and god, he’d been in way over his head. He’d just finished up the job in New Orleans, Dad wasn’t answering his calls, and Dean was starting to worry that maybe he should just suck it up and go to California and find Sam. But then his buddy Richie called, said he was a promoter at a new club and Dean should come to the opening. Last thing Richie said when he got off the line was, “Oh and Dean, clean up little and wear a nice black suit.”

That should’ve been a red flag. But Dean was twenty-six and cocky as hell, so when he arrived at the brand new club decorated in red lights, smoky shadows, and black marble he grabbed a beer and started chatting up a redhead. She was older, late thirties, and after a drink and a dirty bump and grind on the dance floor, she introduced him to a couple of her friends and invited him to a private party in a back room.

Dean blushes slightly as he remembers the rest. What was the woman’s name? Cherry? Sherry? She called the shots. The Cuban twins, Dean doesn’t even know if he got their names. There was a lot of good stuff at first, really good stuff, just sitting back and licking salt off each other’s tequila covered lips before roaming fingers peeled off his suit. Yeah, that night was a first for a lot of things.

All these years later, he can still remember the struggle and then the freedom in deciding to give up control. The sex toys the women played with while he watched. The round bed Cherry Sherry restrained him to, snaps clipping into place. The slaps on his skin that stung so perfectly good he wept, wanting more. The orgasms that made him so high he trembled. He loved feeling weak under her, even though even he knew he had the strength to stop it. It was all too good. He didn’t understand the escape they’d shown him that night until he was much older.

He admits to himself that even under his killer alpha exterior there’s a submissive in him that was released that night. He owned it, letting her lead him, giving her the power even though he could stop it all in one sacred syllable. His tongue rolls over that word silently now, his own secret safety if there had been a need again since then. After the last decade of stress and agony and the weight of the world bearing down on his shoulders- god, sometimes he wished he could give all that power over to someone again. Find that mix of pleasure and pain where he didn’t have to be the hero, didn’t have to be The Dean Winchester. Somewhere he could just consensually be at someone else’s mercy and find a safe space in that surrender. He wanted that chance again to trust someone else to test his limits and bring him back to zero.

“Dude,” Sam insists, getting his attention back. "What do you think about the plan?"

“What?” Dean grunts, looking up from the weary highway. He adjusts in his seat, realizing he’s getting hard from the memory. Whips and restraints have never been his thing, but New Orleans...Dean bites his lip and cranks up a Bad Company anthem on the radio. New Orleans was something else.

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Thanks for your love and support, my stars!

@elizlyn @andillica @devikafernando @virtualgirlfriendsan @50shadesofyes @gallifreyansass @ria132love @letsby @emoryhemsworth @wotinspntarnation @theblackthrone @mrs-meghan-winchester @mytreasures4eternity47 @multireality @dreaminofdean @supernaturallymarvellous @tryingnottocutyou-k @sgarrett49 @pleasantlyenslaved @spnandsims @izawrites @kittenofsarcasm @thisismysecrethappyplace @linki-locks11 @randomparanoid @tumbler-tidbits @peaceinourtime82 @assassin-inthe-scoutregiment @deanscarlett @barnesandnobleoffanfictions @thing-you-do-with-that-thing @akshi8278 @a-distantdreamer @pisces-cutie @dean-winchesters-bacon @covered-byroses @mirandaaustin93 @akshi8278 @mamaredd123 @winchesterenthusiast @sammycomesfirst @codyshany316 @winchester-writes @andromytta @impalaimagining @supernatural-jackles @but-deans-back-tho  @wheresthekillswitch @imagining-supernatural @mrsbatesmotel53 @negans-dirty-girl @leatherwhiskeycoffeeplaid @jarpadandjensenaremyheroes @just-another-busy-fangirl @mrswhozeewhatsis @atc74 @notnaturalanahi @dracotomanddeansprincess23 @spn-dean-and-sam-winchester @wonderfulworldofwinchester @tinyvelociraptor2319 @witchofletters @samsbeecharmer @67obsessions @hi-my-name-is-riley @cameronbraswell @bobasheebabyficlibrary @wonderfulcollectionglitter @wayward-and-worn @spnfanfic-reblogs @squirrel-moose-winchester @ravenangel33 @lonely-skys @adoptdontshoppets

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Do not copy and paste my writing anywhere without my consent. This work is property of evansrogerskitten. Characters aren’t mine, but this fanfiction is. These works contain material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of these works may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. An electronic reference link to the original posted work may be provided for purposes of promotion or assistance of publication by the readers discretion, if proper credits are given to the author in the re-post. 10/13/18

[newyorktheater]

Lin-Manuel Miranda and Leslie Odom Jr in Tick,Tick…Boom in 2014

Miranda in Mary Poppins Returns

A scene from the original

Daveed Diggs, Okieriete Onaodowan, Anthony Ramos, and Lin-Manuel Miranda

Lin-Manuel Miranda is making his film directorial debut in a movie version of “Tick,Tick…Boom!” an early, semi-autobiographical musical by “Rent” composer Jonathan Larsen about a struggling musical theater writer. Miranda performed in a production of the show at City Center’s Encores! in 2014 (pictured above with his Hamilton co-star Leslie Odom, Jr.). But that’s not the only film news involving Miranda. We already know about his starring role in “Mary Poppins Returns,” which will be in movie theaters in December, and the plans to turn his musical “In The Heights” into a film, aiming for completion in 2020. Now there is a report in  the Wall Street Journal,that “Hamilton” may also be coming to the local cineplex.  ‘Hollywood studios are currently bidding for the big-screen rights to Lin-Manuel Mirandas hit musical..  But in an unusual twist, the “Hamilton” movie won’t be a filmed adaptation. Instead, it is a recording of the show made in 2016 with its original cast, including Mr. Miranda in the lead role.” Bidding could go as high as $50 million, which seems reasonable considering that the show reportedly has grossed nearly $400 million in New York alone since opening in 2015.   Meanwhile, the composer, director and actor prepares to take “Hamilton” to Puerto Rico, as he explains in this interview on the Today Show. https://youtu.be/zHv4G1xw3As Below more news about filmed theater, involving Bruce Springsteen and Jennifer Hudson, among others, as well news as about staged theater — the latest theater awards, the closing of an Andrew Lloyd Webber show, the new seasons at Lincoln Center, The Flea, The Bushwick Starr, a “critic’s corner” that features some (more) sad news and some controversy; and an unusual break for the over-40 theatergoer.

The Week in New York Theater Reviews

Stephen Payne, Josh Charles, Armie Hammer, and Paul Schneider in Straight White Men

Straight White Men “Straight White Men,” a thought-provoking play by Young Jean Lee with a terrifically entertaining cast of Broadway newcomers including Armie Hammer, Josh Charles and Paul Schneider as rowdy brothers, might to some theatergoers seem designed initially to mislead, and ultimately to befuddle. By its title alone, one could assume – incorrectly – that the play will be an acid satire. This impression is fortified by an unusual prologue….What follows, though, is more or less the same play that I saw at the Public Theater in 2014, a sympathetic and straightforward look at a family of four adult men, gathered together to celebrate Christmas. Each has adjusted to the world, and their privileged place in it, in different ways.

Jelani Remy, Shavey Brown, John Edwards, Dwayne Cooper, and Max Sangerman.

Smokey Joe’s Cafe Near the beginning of “Smokey Joe’s Cafe: The Songs of Leiber and Stoller,” the new Off-Broadway revival of the long-running Broadway musical revue, performer Jelani Remy does a double back flip while singing the Elvis hit, “Jailhouse Rock.” It is the most memorable example in the show of what we can call The Bergasse Workout, which I’m naming after the production’s inventive and obviously demanding director/choreographer Joshua Bergasse…Five men and four women deliver 40 musical numbers in 90 minutes – no time for idle chat…or any dialogue whatsoever.

Josh Lamon as Prince and Lesli Magherita as Princess

Emojiland “Emojiland,” an entry in the 2018 New York Musical Festival, is set inside a smart phone, with the resident emojis facing a “textistential” crisis —  the phone is due for a software update. That’s in the first act. In the second act, they face a virus. A dozen talented performers, including Broadway stalwarts Lesli Margherita and Josh Lamon portray Smiley Face 😀 and Angry Face😠 and Worried Face 😟 and Weary Face 😩 and a whole raft of icons I’ve never used before, nor knew they existed — 📻🙄💂‍♂️💀ℹ🤓😎👷‍♀️🤴👸👮‍♀️🤰🏽😘, including 💩 pile of poo. The result is a hilarious entertainment, mostly — though one is greatly tempted to call it two-dimensional. If Sand Were Stone Billie has Alzheimer’s. “If Sand Were Stone,” an entry at the 2018 New York Musical Festival, presents Billie’s deterioration over a span of two years, and its effect on her husband Marvin and daughter Margaux. The title of the musical comes from a quote by Jorge Luis Borges, reprinted in the program: “Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand. But we must build as if the sand were stone.” I can’t recommend this musical. There’s too much that doesn’t work…Yet it’s hard to dismiss Fire in Dreamland

The Week in Awards

New York Innovative Theater Awards 2018 nominations for the best Off-Off Broadway Third Annual Samuel French Awards: The Secret Garden  (writing team Lucy Simon & Marsha Norman), Award for Sustained Excellence in American Theatre Doug Wright, Award for Impact & Activism in the Theatre Community for his work as president of the Dramatists Guild Antoinette Nwandu, the Next Step Award, support for a playwright, composer or lyricist working toward the next level of their career.

The Week in New York Theater News

School of Rock will end on Broadway on January 20, 2019, having played 1,307 regular performances, just over three years.

Bruce Springsteen reminiscing at the Tony Awards about his hometown while accompanying himself on the piano, before singing “My Hometown.”

Springsteen On Broadway will be shown on Netflix Dec 15, which is also the final night of its 236-show Broadway run at the Walter Kerr. CATS is being made into a film. Jennifer Hudson, Taylor Swift, James Corden, and Ian McKellen will star. Lisa Brescia, six-time Broadway vet (Elphaba in Wicked, Donna in Mamma Mia) takes over from Rachel Bay Jones as Heidi Hansen in Dear Evan Hansen starting August 7   Here’s a twist. During previews, Gettin The Band Back Together will offer 40 tickets per performance for $40 each for people 40 years of age and older. “because we know 40-year-olds have responsibilities and bad backs that may prohibit them from sleeping on sidewalks.” Use code BT40440. The musical opens on August 13th.

New Seasons Off and Off-Off Broadway

At Lincoln Center: 1. A new play by Tom Stoppard “The Hard Problem,” about a young psychology student facing difficult questions. eg. Is altruism possible without self-interest? Directed by Jack O’Brian. Opens Nov 19 2. “Plot Points in Our Sexual Development” a contemporary queer love story Oct 6-Nov 18. Written by Miranda Rose Hall, direccted by Margot Bordelon

The new Flea theater

2018-2019 Season @TheFleaTheater on the theme of “Color Brave”

Scraps, about a police shooting, Aug 15-Sept 24 Emma & Max, about city’s well-off and worn-down, Oct 1-28 Hype Man, Nov 10 – Dec 1 Also, plays by @KristianaSpeaks & #ThomasBradshaw https://t.co/GG5qpg56uV pic.twitter.com/NKdmxRz23V — New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) July 18, 2018

The Bushwick Starr’s Tenth Anniversary Season Ugly by Raja Feather Kelly Sept 5-8 The Things That Were There by David Greenspan  Oct 10-Nov 4 The Infinite Love Party by Diana Oh January 11 – February 2 Suicide Forest by Kristine Haruna Lee February 27 – March 16, 2019 The 9th Annual Big Green Theater Festival April 26 – 28, 2019 CABIN by Sean Donovan May 22- June 8 Details

Critics Corner

1. Another Theater Critic – and Newspaper — Erased

Well, 17.5 years later, the Daily News and I have parted ways. It was a great ride that included 12 seasons of reviewing Broadway and off; writing 100s features, news stories and more. Head high, heart heavy, eyes forward! Any leads – I’m up!

— Joe Dziemianowicz (@TheJoeDShow) July 23, 2018

Joe is one of many at the Daily News who’ve been laid off. The Daily News will cut half of its newsroom staff…The paper was sold to @tronc Inc. last year for $1, with the owner of @ChicagoTribune assuming liabilities and debt.

A year before @tronc laid off half its staff at @NYDailyNews, it paid $15 million to its chairman, Michael Ferro, resigning just ahead of sexual harassment allegations against him.@AlbertBurneko asks angrily: Shouldn’t something like this be illegal?https://t.co/uAEku791li

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) July 24, 2018

2.

Theater criticism must be supported, says @thestage editor @smithalistair, for these six reasons: pic.twitter.com/6fRPFNHQ4n

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) July 22, 2018

3. Fat Shaming Review? In Laura Collins-Hughes’ review of Smokey Joe Café: “Ms. Umphress, by the way, is bigger than the other women onstage, and the costume designer, Alejo Vietti, doesn’t seem to have known how to work with that, dressing her in an unnecessarily unflattering way.” https://

A thought. @collinshughes @nytimes @hellerNYT #bodypositivity pic.twitter.com/JGbDzboo05

— Alysha Umphress (@Cristalzheat) July 23, 2018

It is in no way shameful to be big, let alone bigger than the other women onstage. My remark about the costuming reflects on the designer. This is not the first time I’ve noticed a designer seemingly at a loss about how to dress a larger woman well.

— Laura Collins-Hughes (@collinshughes) July 23, 2018

RIP Gary Beach, 70, nine-time Broadway veteran, a Tony winner for his role as flamboyant theater director Roger De Bris in The Producers

“This administration gains its power by fomenting a sense of hopelessness. We defy it with a spirit of celebration, of abundance, and of connection.” – theater director & educator @LPortes67 at opening of #LTCCarnaval18 (celebrating Latinx theater artists/@CafeOnda) at @DePaulU pic.twitter.com/QyIvW871mZ

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) July 20, 2018

Lin-Manuel Miranda Goes Hollywood and to Puerto Rico. Hamilton Too? The Week in NY Theater Lin-Manuel Miranda is making his film directorial debut in a movie version of "Tick,Tick...Boom!" an early, semi-autobiographical musical by "Rent" composer Jonathan Larsen about a struggling musical theater writer.

[ayearofpike]

The Tachyon Web

Bantam Books, Inc., 1986 197 pages, 14 chapters + epilogue ISBN: 0-553-26102-9 LOC: CPB Box no. 677 vol. 12 OCLC: 14404988 Released July 30, 1986 (per B&N)

The Tachyon Web is a network of satellites that creates a sort of hyperspace fence. It defines the boundaries of the Union, and no civilian craft is allowed to venture across it. But the Excalibur, piloted by high school kids, finds a loophole – literally – in the form of a star gone nova that shorts the Web and allows them to get through. Of course, messing with interstellar nuclear physics never goes smoothly, and the Excalibur is crippled. In the effort to save their ship and themselves, the friends discover a whole race of people also fleeing the nova, also without much knowledge about their future, and also fearful and anxious about the days ahead.

When I got into Pike, he was well into his career as an author, and already the majority of his books were published under the Archway Paperbacks imprint of Pocket Books. When I went looking for his new books or stuff I’d missed, that’s the bulk of what I would find on the shelves. There were a couple ways to know I’d not read one: 

The inside front cover had a long list of Pike’s books under Archway, so I could go down and check or cross them off as I easily found them.

On the author notes page, after the history and outside interests, he’d list all of his works (getting longer by one every time), not limiting himself to the Archway stuff.

The Tachyon Web was always in those author notes, second-to-last. (Getting Even never was.) But without a printer or a publisher, I had no idea how to find this book. Remember, this was pre-Internet, pre-public-Web. I couldn’t just Google it because it was pre-Google. I couldn’t ask Amazon to find it because it was pre-Amazon. (Earliest purchase in my Amazon history? Getting Even, which I requested in January 1998.) 

My only sources were the bookstore or library card catalogs, and while everything else had gotten a reprint (my copies of Slumber Party and Chain Letter are like 20th printings), The Tachyon Web never did. It was also a time when bookstores could, like, survive, so they didn’t have to put used and new books together on the shelves. My school library snootily didn’t carry Pike (though they sure had goddamn Stephen King and R.L. Stine) and the regional one didn’t have a copy. My local bookstore had a used and out-of-print book finding service, but come on: they’re looking for historical editions of classics of literature, not some pulpy juvenile sci-fi paperback that’s only eight years old. And so I resigned myself to never seeing this one.

But then this happened.

Reprint, Pocket Books, 1997 211 pages ISBN 0-671-69060-4 OCLC: 970433587 Rereleased January 15, 1997 (per B&N)

Now that I think about it, I have to imagine that Pike was subtly putting pressure on Pocket to reprint this story. Why would he include it in his accomplishments if it went away so fast because it actually sucked? (N.b. consider the absence of Getting Even.) Wouldn’t he have known that as he grew in popularity there would be a groundswell from fans to get an easily accessible edition of this story that almost no one had ever seen? Regardless of their critical acclaim, the sales of the books alone would have been enough to give him some leverage to have this one put out there again.

I mean, I can see why it might have disappeared so fast back in the day. The Tacyhon Web is hard sci-fi: lasers, aliens, spaceships, hyperdrive, force fields, supernovae. It’s not what anybody was looking for from the Slumber Party guy. Let’s be real: authors get pigeonholed into genres from the start, teen horror was historically (and probably still is) marketed to girls, and sci-fi has long been a no-girls-allowed clubhouse. The shift in YA speculative fiction to female-driven future dystopia stories, I could argue, isn’t so much a loss of traditional sci-fi as it is an adaptation of that traditional horror to bring in some sci-fi elements. Which Pike eventually figured out, but again, he wrote largely before YA was received critically as “real books.” And honestly, his type of fiction might be more of a reason than a victim.

More than any of his other books, The Tachyon Web requires Pike and his readers to think about the implications of meddling in the affairs of another culture. Eric and his friends can quite literally save an entire race, but is that their right or their place to do so? Should we share this huge technological leap with a people who might not be ready for it? What if the Kaulikans are greedy and protective, and start to use the new power to subjugate humans? What does it say about humans that we immediately think this about someone else? This examining of culture and society is all in the narrative, to be sure, but not with the degree of complexity that either sci-fi fans or readers from the future have come to expect. It just wasn’t asked of a teen author in the ’80s, and Pike doesn’t waste too many words on it.

None of this consideration keeps Eric from playing great white savior for the Kaulikans, either. (Though, as he’s described as a soCal boy with brown skin and black hair, I imagine Eric as Latino. More hidden representation for me!) See, he fell in love with the first alien girl he laid eyes on, and now he wants to make sure she can live beyond the spaceship. His friends mostly buy the human party line that we can’t give our tech to an unproven people, and he has to literally hijack Excalibur to give it to the Kaulikans. Except, oh shit, here comes the human army to take the ship back! Turns out they’ve been watching the whole thing and let the fucking sun explode on these people without helping. And now their orders are to retrieve the hyperdrive at any cost, but the Kaulikans obviously can’t let the hopes of an entire people, now within their grasp, be simply taken away from them. We’re at an impasse.

If you thought the humans would see the light and let the Kaulikans have the ship, you’re better than the people in charge. If you thought they’d escort the Kaulikans somewhere safe and then take the tech away, you’re overthinking a solution. It ultimately comes down to one dude with a conscience who has suffered a terrible loss in his past, who knows that he should help but has been ordered not to intervene, who has been looking for an excuse like Eric to act like it wasn’t his fault that the aliens discovered the tech. So he gives up instructions to build the hyperdrive on what amounts to an SD card (which can conveniently be read in alien computers). The humans get Excalibur back, and Eric’s friends are going to be OK, but he was sitting in the meeting so he knows too much and can never go home. It’s a good thing he already found love, just like it says on the back!

If I hadn’t been so into Pike when this reappeared in 1997, I’m not sure I would have been eager for or even interested in this story. (When it came out, all we’d gotten for a year was Spooksville stories and Last Vampire sequels; I was aching for something different.) The characters just don’t have the depth we got in Slumber Party, which is still the gold standard he’s trying to write up to at this point. The situation is an interesting one, and the problem arises because of mistakes the characters themselves make, but it gets a little too big a little too fast. The expectations and limits on kid lit at the time simply didn’t give Pike enough room to explore everything that needs to be addressed. And the reprint is just that: aside from some edits to improve understandability, it doesn’t change anything.

But then, these limitations might be what make the story realistic: we’re stuck trying to understand interglobal and racial dynamics from the perspective of an eighteen-year-old who’s never wanted for anything and has to absorb and process injustice on the fly. He’s still neurotic and insecure, like all of Pike’s main characters, but he lives in a society that prizes his culture, his language, and his abilities. It’s got to come as a shock to see that this foreign one is not only considered inferior, but that we aren’t even going to risk contact, let alone help it survive. Interesting that YA fiction is the genre taking so much more initiative to make us think about these issues today, where thirty years ago a book on it didn’t perform and almost went away forever.