The Pope of Comics

Congratulations to my Catholic readers--if there are any who haven't been put off by my occasional references, when appropriate to the subject at hand, to my unashamed atheism and liberal politics.  Most Catholics I know are staunch Republicans and refused to even vote for one of their own for President back in 2004 because he belonged to the wrong party.  Not to mention that more than a few of them actually belief in God.

Sorry, got sidetracked again.  Happens a lot. Maybe I should hire myself an editor.  Anyway, as I was about to say, there's a new pope as of two days ago.  This is the fourth time during my lifetime, including twice in 1978 alone, that the cardinals of the Catholic church have gathered to select a new leader for their little cult. (If I had any Catholic readers left, they're gone now)  The first two times, I actually sort of cared.  Though, in retrospect, I don't think I ever really believed, I was raised as a Catholic and attended mass regularly until the mid-1980's when I went off to college and got away from parental influence. Plus, I did think that it was kind of cool that the second pope chosen in '78 was one of my people--a Pole.  

The history of the papacy during the past four decades has been one of precedents and historic firsts.  The election of John Paul I to replace the late Paul VI (I remember reading a satirical headline in National Lampoon that declared, "John Paul Elected Pope; George, Ringo Miffed") was pretty much business as usual for the church, until JP I, in turn, died a mere 33 days later.  Though the reign of Pope John Paul I was by no means the shortest in history, it is, according to Wikipedia, in the top ten.  John Paul I's tenure of little more than a month was followed by the election of the first non-Italian  pope in more than something like four hundred years.

I suppose you could call it ironic that one of the shortest papacies was followed by the second longest papal reign in Catholic history.  John Paul II served for over twenty-six years.

After JP II's death in 2005, he was followed by Benedict XVI, a German with a somewhat questionable past.  (He's in his 80's and from Germany...you do the math.)  After an eight year reign marked by all sorts of controversies, Benedict broke centuries of precedent by becoming the first Pontiff to leave the office standing up for almost six hundred years.  

The new pope, Francis I of Argentina, continues the tradition of breaking with tradition by being the first from the "New World" of the Americas, and the first from the Jesuit order.

What the bloody hell, you may be screaming at your computer screen by this point, does this poorly researched treatise on recent religious history have to do with comics, which is what this damned blog is supposed to be about?  Well, John Paul II, during his quarter century plus reign, became one of the most popular popes in history.  Not only was he beloved by Catholics, but he made quite an impression on non-Catholics as well.  He also ended up making a few appearances in comic books over the years, including two that recounted the story of his life.

The first of those was published in 1982 by Marvel as part of the short-lived line of hagiographic comics produced in co-operation with the Catholic church that also included the Mother Theresa comic I wrote about last year.  (...and, relevant to the new pope, I believe there was also a book about St. Francis of Assissi, after whom the new pontiff renamed himself)  I have not actually read this comic, but the cover blurb promises "The Entire Story! From his childhood in Poland to the assassination attempt!"  The Life of Pope John Paul II was written by Steven Grant.  Grant's other credits from the decade include the 1986 Punisher mini-series, among other, more typical mainstream comics fare.  (The Pope and the Punisher...Now there's a team-up I would've loved to see.  I mean, if Frank Castle can meet Archie Andrews, then why not?

The second sequential retelling of John Paul II's life, The Life of Pope John Paul II...in Comics!, was published in 2006.  As it came out after John Paul II's death, I imagine the latter volume offers a more complete picture of the pontiff's life. 

In addition to those two biographies, the Comic Book Data Base lists a handful of other appearances by John Paul II in some perhaps surprising titles.  These include Vertigo's Kid Eternity, DC's Wonder Woman, and Marvel's Thor.  I don't know the nature of his appearance in Thor, but its interesting to imagine one of the foremost representative of Christianity meeting one of those "other gods" inveighed against in the First Commandment.

On a completely different note, and totally unrelated to anything I've written here so far, there's one thing I've been wondering as I mentally composed this post.  Why do popes take a new name when they get elected?  Why couldn't I, if I became pope, just be Pope Raymond I?

Book Review: Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken

In his introduction to the unofficial fan-published novelization of the Doctor Who serial "Revelation of the Daleks", author Jon Preddle states, "There are only two ways to write a Doctor Who novelisation - the proper way and the Terrance Dicks way."   I really don't know what he means by that.  After reading Dicks' official adaptation of the Fourth Doctor adventure "The Keeper of Traken," I can't tell you what exactly Preddle sees as wrong about Dicks' approach.
The story begins as the Doctor and his young companion Adric are returning to "N-Space"; the "N", I shall assume, standing for "normal"; from a parallel dimension called "E-Space"; with no indication given here just what the "E" is for; where one of the Doctor's companion's, Romana, along with the robotic dog K-9, had chosen to remain.  Immediately upon their return, the pair are diverted from their planned journey to the Doctor's homeworld of Gallifrey to the Union of Traken, a planet with a reputation as one of the most peaceful and serene in the universe, by the Keeper, the centuries old ruler of Traken. He warns the Doctor that a great evil has come to Traken in the form of an alien presence the Trakens have named the Melkur, but which is in reality an old enemy of the Doctor's, who seeks to influence the passage of power as the  ancient Keeper prepares to step down and pass on the mantle of Keeper to one of the members of the planet's ruling council.  This old enemy, who is near death, seeks to use the power of the "Source", which is, as the name implies, the source of the Keeper's power and longevity, to renew, or (big SPOILER), "regenerate", himself.
"The Keeper of Traken" was the penultimate serial in Tom Baker's seven year tenure as the Fourth Doctor.  From a continuity standpoint, it is important for the introduction of Nyssa, the daughter of one of the Traken council members, who would begin traversing time and space alongside the Doctor and Adric in the very next story,  and Tom Baker's last, "Logopolis", thus being, I suppose, more associated with the Fifth Doctor, as well re-introducing the aforementioned old foe (OK--I'll just come out and say it, spoilers be damned.  It's the Master), who would figure prominently in the next couple of story arcs.
At 124 pages; and I've read that the publisher of the Doctor Who novelizations was at the time imposing a limit of 128 pages on the length of the books; Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken appears, although I admit that I've never seen the original serial, to be a straightforward, no-frills accounting of the events of the TV episodes.  Little time is spent introducing the reader to the main characters, although with this being, as the title page tells us, the 37th in a series of novelizations of a TV show that had by time of the book's publication in 1982 been running for nearly two decades, it can reasonably be assumed that the target audience for the novel was no doubt quite intimately familiar with the Doctor and needed no such exposition.
Keeper of Traken is a quick--you could probably devour it in a single afternoon if you weren't distracted---yet entertaining read.  I still don't know what Mr. Preddle, as quoted above, sees as deficient about Terrance Dicks style or approach. In fact, I wouldn't mind reading more Doctor Who novelizations by him--and he did write quite a few I understand.

The Newest Disney Princess: Princess Leia

You might have heard this already, but it seems that the Walt Disney Company has purchased Lucasfilm.  You know, when I first saw links to this start popping up on my Facebook wall, I initially thought it was some sort of Halloween prank.  But when trusted old media news outlets like The Washington Post (via The Associated Press) are reporting it, then I suppose its got to be true.  Even better, or worse, depending on your point of view, the House of Mouse is promising that there will be a new Star Wars film coming to a theater near you in 2015, with further adventures to follow every couple of years thereafter.  

Marvel's final Star Wars Comic--for now at least.

Except for the first movie (that's the first first movie, not the second first movie), I'm not that big of a fan of the Star Wars franchise.  Thus, I'm neither thrilled nor overly chagrined by this news.  However, I can't help but wonder, being a comics blogger, how this is going to affect the industry I'm unhealthily obsessed with, specifically Dark Horse Comics, current publisher of Star Wars adventures in sequential form.  After all, it seems only logical that as proud owner of its own comics company, Disney would want to produce Star Wars comics in-house, and thus bring the license back to original home at Marvel Comics.  

I just now as I type this heard some economic expert on the International Public Radio program Marketplace say that Disney is "pursuing a strategy of buying big entertainment companies and monetizing that content across all divisions of the company."  That little bit of financial double speak would seem to argue for the Star Wars franchise returning to Marvel once Dark Horse's license expires.

As with all things, only time will tell and when there are any more newsworthy developments, I'll let you know.

Slightly Off-Topic: Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea Movie Reviewed

So, I arrived home Sunday from the monthly gathering of the Sunday Comix cartoonists group in time to catch the last forty-five minutes of Voyage To The Bottom Of Sea, the 1961 feature film by Irwin Allen upon which he later based the 1964-68 TV series of the same name, and I kind of feel like writing about it here.  Sure, this is supposed to be a blog about comics, but when it comes down to it, its my damn blog and I'll write about what I damn well want to write about and you don't have to read it if you don't want.  I haven't written anything for quite a while, so maybe I need to write about something other than comics just to shake loose the mental cobwebs, break down the mental blocks that are keeping me from writing, and get my fingers used to the feel of the keys again.  I do try to tie my tangents on this blog to comics in some way, however, and in this case its not really a stretch, as there were comic books based both on this movie and on the TV show inspired by it.

Anyway, even though I missed over half the movie, I had seen it before, though its been many years, so I knew the basic plot.  Besides, it appears that I didn't miss much.  It seemed as if not much had really happened up to the point I started watching.  At least not compared to the final twenty minutes or so, in which everything comes to a head and events seem to be happening all at once.
The basic premise of the film is that something has caused the Van Allen radiation belt surrounding the Earth to catch fire, heating the planet and threatening all life.   Admiral Harriman Nelson, in defiance of the United Nations and all world governments, takes his experimental sub, the Seaview, on a quest to save the world by firing a missile which, he believes, will extinguish the fire in the sky.  This is the movies, after all, where just about any problem can be solved by shooting it.

So, at the point that I joined the film, the Admiral is convinced that there's a traitor on board attempting to sabotage the mission, especially after an attempt is made on his life.  The Seaview's captain, Lee Crane, however, is beginning to think that the Admiral is mentally unstable.  Thus he also begins to doubt whether Nelson's plan will actually work.  To make matters worse, approximately half of the Seaview's crew, believing the end of the world to be at hand, desert to spend their last days with their loved ones.  At the same time, the crew learns that the United States has dispatched its entire submarine fleet to find and stop the Seaview.
Finally, all the various plot threads converge as the films barrels toward its conclusion.  The ship reaches its destination, arriving at the exact position and time at which the missile must be fired.  Convinced now that Nelson is nuts, Captain Crane moves to relieve him of command and stop the missile from being fired.  Meanwhile, one of the pursuing subs catches up to the Seaview and begins firing torpedoes at them just as the traitor reveals herself by sabotaging the ships nuclear reactor, taking a fatal dose of radiation in the process.  After eluding the attacking sub, the Seaview is then attacked by a giant squid. (After all, you just can't have a submarine based science fiction film without a giant squid.  It's like a law or something.)  Then, as if all that weren't enough, a religious zealot, believing the sky fire to be "God's will", holds the control room hostage with a bomb to stop the missile firing.  In the end, of course, the missile is fired, the flames are extinguished and the Seaview heads triumphantly home.

What really makes this film work despite its frankly ridiculous premise is that the actors portraying the Seaview's crew totally commit to the premise.  They seem to really believe in it and thus effectively sell it to the viewer.  Because of this, what could have turned into high camp becomes a tense and involving science fiction thriller.
Even with the scientifically questionable idea of the atmosphere catching fire, the most unrealistic part of the film, and the subsequent TV series, is the Seaview itself.  Anyone who's ever seen any other movies or TV shows set on a sub will be immediately struck by just how roomy the Seaview is, with its wide corridors, spacious living quarters and huge control rooms.  Even the crew dining area is gigantic.  This ship must be just crazy big, though the exterior shots don't really give a feeling for that scale. Its kind of like an underwater version of Doctor Who's TARDIS, bigger on the inside than on the outside.

This movie can be seen as foreshadowing the remainder of Irwin Allen's career.  As I've already mentioned, it inspired his first, and longest running, TV series.  The success of the TV version of Voyage would lead to the creation of the far campier Lost In Space, and the less successful The Time Tunnel and Land of Giants.  Furthermore, the dubious, and, for the most part, totally made up, science upon which the film is predicated would become a hallmark of Allen's TV output in the 1960s. You could also say that with its all-star cast, which includes Walter Pidgeon, Barbara Eden, Peter Lorre, Joan Fontaine, Michael Ansara and Frankie Avalon, facing impossible odds while trapped together in a confined space, Voyage set the template for Allen's string of blockbuster disaster films in the 1970s, especially The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. 
 For me, watching Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, especially the series, carries with it a certain nostalgic resonance.  Voyage was a favorite show of my father's and I sort of feel a little bit of a connection to him whenever I watch it, or Mission: Impossible, which was another show he watched whenever it was on, mostly Saturday afternoons as I recall. Though, even without that extra layer of meaning, I'd still enjoy this movie, and if you have a chance to see it I'd definitely recommend that you do so.

The Fundamental Things Apply

We are not here today to debate the wisdom of DC Comics attempting to produce prequels to the most revered graphic novel of all time.  That debate continues on a host of other sites all throughout cyber-land.  No, I wish to dispel, instead, the notion that the mere existence of  "Before Watchmen," no matter its quality, will somehow diminish Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' original.   The truth, most likely, is that in a year's time, Watchmen will continue to be a bestseller and "Before Watchmen" will be all but forgotten.  

After all, who remembers As Time Goes By?

See.  I didn't think so.

I loved Casablanca the very first time I saw it on television.  Of course, I was high at the time, so I didn't quite trust my judgment.  Therefore, I went out and  rented it on VHS a few days later and found myself loving it even more.  I've enjoyed it just as much each of the countless subsequent times I've seen it.  The most recent was just a couple of weeks ago, when Casablanca kicked off this year's CAPA Summer Movie Series at the Ohio Theater in downtown Columbus, Ohio. 

Anyway, back in the 1990's, there was a minor trend of producing novels that were sequels to classic motion pictures.  This was around the time that Scarlett, the follow up to Gone With The Wind, showed up in bookstores.  As Time Goes By by Michael Walsh serves as both prequel and sequel to Casablanca.  It seeks to answer all the questions that fans of the film were supposedly dying to have answered.  The novel begins by detailing the exact events that made it impossible for Rick Blaine to return to America, then picks up after the movie, reuniting Rick and Louis Renault with Ilsa Lund and Victor Lazlo.

The problem with the book is not that its bad, because it really isn't.  It's just completely unnecessary.  Like Watchmen, Casablanca is a whole unto itself.  While there may be some questions raised as to Rick's past, the film leaves the answers up to the viewer's imagination, rather than  spelling everything out in dreary detail.

Another problem is that the book's revelations are so painfully obvious. 

In spinning his tale of Rick's past, Walsh draws inspiration from the moment in the film where Renault ventures to guess the circumstances that brought Rick to Casablanca.  Louis wonders, "Did you abscond with the church funds? Run off with a senator's wife? I like to think you killed a man. It's the Romantic in me."  Rick replies that it was a combination of all three.  Well, Walsh strained his somewhat limited imagination to come up with a scenario that truly is a combination of all those elements.  

Of course, its really no spoiler for me to reveal that this festival of fan wish fulfillment culminates with Rick and Ilsa ending up together, and Lazlo dead for good measure. 

For me, As Time Goes By adds absolutely nothing to my appreciation of Casablanca.  More importantly, and more to the point of this post, it takes nothing away from it, either.

The same is true of "Before Watchmen."  I broke down and bought a copy of the first issue of  Minutemen last week.  I'll have a full review of it coming up. However, whether I liked it or not, just the fact that DC published it in no way affects how I will view Watchmen in the future.

It Was 40 Years Ago Today--Nixon, Kirby, the Great Disaster and the End of the 60s

It was forty years ago this very morning that the 1960's ended. 

Allow me to clarify that seemingly chronologically challenged assertion.

You see, I vaguely recall having read something in Reader's Digest many years past about the concept of "sociological decades", measured not by calendar years but by the duration of the social trends that come to define the decade in the mass consciousness.  Thus, the 1960's began when shots rang out from the Book Depository in Dallas, Texas in late November of 1963 and ended, by my reckoning at least, on a late spring night in Washington, D.C. when five men, later revealed to  be in the employ of the Committee To Re-Elect The President, were apprehended in the act of breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate apartment building.  

In Rolling Stone, Hunter S. Thompson wrote, "The slow-rising central horror of 'Watergate' is not that it might grind down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a president whose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of cheap shots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might somehow fail to learn something from it."
Yet the human animal is not especially noted for the ability to learn from its mistakes. We tend to either learn nothing, or worse, gradually forget what we learned when the crisis passes. Worse yet, we will learn all the wrong lessons and forget them eventually nonetheless.  In the Watergate scenario, the case appears to be a sad combination of the latter two pathways.  Any half-hearted attempts by a Congress newly emboldened in the aftermath of Nixon's downfall to rein in the power of the executive branch and make it more accountable to the legislature and the American people have long since fallen by the wayside.  During the first dozen years of the 21st century, this proud nation has drifted farther in the direction of a so-called "imperial presidency" than that poor doomed bastard Nixon ever dared dream even in his most megalomaniacal moments.  The only executive power that Congress in recent memory has seemed interest in curbing is his power to get a blowjob from a starstruck intern in the Oval Office while simultaneously talking on the phone to the President of Russia.

When I was casting about in my mind for some way to tie the remembrance of Watergate and  reflection on its legacy that I wanted to inflict on the blogosphere on this unhappy anniversary to comics, I remembered Kamandi #15.  I dug it out of one of the nearly dozen boxes of old comics piled precariously in the corner of my bedroom closet, but didn't actually get around to rereading it until I'd already composed the first portion of this post.  Thus, I was actually pleasantly surprised to discover that with only a minimum of rhetorical sleight of hand I could bend my analysis of the issue to fit the themes of the first part of this post.

Like many comics scribes of the Bronze Age, KIrby, when acting as his own writer, plundered liberally from the prevailing pop culture and current events to fuel his mad masterpieces.  The Kamandi series itself, set in a future world after something called the Great Disaster, when intelligent animals rule and the  remnants of the once proud human race  are reduced to mere pets, or worse, seems little more than Kirby's take on the Planet of the Apes concept, with not just apes, but bears, tigers and even snakes among the ruling class.  Thus, the idea that Kirby would use Watergate as fodder for a comic book story comes as little surprise to anyone who really knows what they're talking about.  In early 1974, when this comic would have been appearing on the nation's newsstands, Watergate consumed a very thick slice of the American zeitgeist.
At last we arrive at the story itself, which picks up pretty much where the previous issue left off.  In order to save Kamandi's life, Tuftan, the Tiger Prince, has apparently made a mysterious bargain with the department store owning snake Mr. Sacker.
In fulfillment of the pact, Tuftan and his Tiger Troops, accompanied by Kamandi and the dog scientist Dr. Canus, ride off toward the fabled mythical city of Washington, D.C. in pursuit of the legendary Watergate tapes.  Its not made clear why exactly Sacker wants them, though his emporium is filled with pre-Disaster artifacts looted from the ruins of human civilization and it is likely that he wishes them to be but one more item offered for sale to wealthy collectors of antiques and curios.
After a long hard ride, Tuftan and his party arrive at a place called "Stake Out" on the outskirts of the legendary city.  I assume that "Stake Out" is meant to be what remains of some real life locale in our nation's capital, but I can't tell exactly what is supposed to represent.  As the troops settle in to explore the place, Tuftan and Canus soon find themselves abducted by a troop of gun toting apes who take them to the headquarters of their arcane cult in the ruins of the Capitol building.
Soon, the two captives are taken to the "hearings," a bizarre ritual that mocks the Senate Watergate hearings which were taking place on national TV at the time that Kirby would have been writing and drawing this issue.  There they are confronted by a panel of apes who "indict" them for "planning to steal the sacred Watergate tapes--the voices of the Spirits!"  For this, Tuftan and Canus are sentenced to death by means of a strange weapon that uses soundwaves to kill.
Kamandi and Tuftan's Tiger Troops arrive, as the cavalry always does in tales like this, in the nick of time to rescue their prince and the scientist.  After defeating the apes, the tigers dismantle the sound weapon to discover the very Watergate tapes they had come there in search of used as the source of the machine's deadly sound waves.  Canus attempts to play one of the tapes, but it breaks after playing only a snippet of what I assume is meant to be Nixon's voice saying, "I want to make this perfectly clear--".   Tuftan decrees that Canus should not bother to mend the tape, for, as Kamandi observes, "It doesn't mean much--NOW--".
Kamandi #15 is not one of Kirby's best works.  In his greatest stories, the events move at such a frantic pace that questions like my above query as to why Sacker wanted the cursed Watergate tapes in the first place would never have occurred to me until long after I'd finished reading.  Here, though, that lapse in logic threatens to derail the whole endeavor, but doesn't quite bring it down completely.  Nonetheless, the tale serves the purposes of this post well enough.  For the apes who worship the spirits of Watergate have learned from the affair, but the lessons they have absorbed are quite obviously the wrong ones.  They endlessly and pointlessly rehearse the charade of "hearings" again and again in the manner of subsequent Congressmen who seem to think that the way to make a name for themselves is to uncover any little hint of scandal, motivated not by altruism  or patriotism or a quest for the truth, but by self-aggrandizement or simple, mean spirited vengeance.
Ultimately, in the wake of Iran-Contra, the Clinton Impeachment and the depradations of the George W. Bush administration, we must every now and then take time to remember the lessons, if any, has our country learned from the Watergate scandal and  ask ourselves whether they are the right ones.

Meeting Mr. Danny B

I know that this is supposed to be a blog about comics, yet try as I might I can't come up with any way to connect what I'm about to write to that topic.  It is about art, however, and, as anyone inside the Columbus, Ohio alternative comics scene will tell you, comics are just as valid an art form as any, so there. 

Anyway, I find myself unable to decide between two leads for this piece, so I'm going to use them both.

1) In the wake of the rather dramatic rent increase accompanying the recent remodeling of my apartment, I've given serious thought to moving once again just as soon as I can set aside enough money to pay for the deposit/first month's rent.  Last night confirmed for me, however, that if I do move, I want to stay in this neighborhood, identified by a pair of arches on both ends as "Old North Columbus," so called because this area actually used to be a separate municipality named North Columbus until it was annexed by Columbus proper  sometime in the 1840s. (I jokingly refer to it as the CVS District, because on the corner by both of those identifying arches is a CVS/Pharmacy.) 

2) As I begin to write this, it is a warm Memorial Weekend Sunday morning.  The sky is, as my first girlfriend, Kelly, once said on a similarly warm and sunny spring day in the late 1980s, "...just the perfect shade of blue" and even the fluffy, white, non-threatening clouds that served only to add a touch of contrast to the azure expanse have drifted on.  Across Wilcox Street from my apartment building, two dozen or so paintings still lean against the south facing wall of Andy's Carry-Out.  If you were to come by right this minute, you could grab one or more of them to brighten up your own abode.  That is, after all, what they are there for. 

Ever since I moved here little more than a year ago, Jonathon Riddle and I had occasionally noticed these paintings on boards propped up against Andy's wall, prompting Jonathon to wonder just what the heck they were doing there.  He mused that perhaps some sort of tragic automobile accident had occurred at that corner and this was some sort of memorial to the poor victims.  Fortunately, the real story, which we learned on Saturday evening, is nowhere near that sad and bloody. 

We had just gotten in Jonathon's car to go to a party for a friend of ours , a fellow member of the Sunday Comix cartoonists group, who had graduated high school that afternoon when I glanced over and noticed a car parked by Andy's and a young man in shorts and a grey t-shirt pulling paintings out of the back seat and placing them against the wall.  I mentioned to Jonathon that if he wanted to know the meaning of those enigmatic paintings then this would be a good time to ask.  

That's how we met Danny, or, more properly, "Mr. Danny B," which is how he signs his work when he signs it at all.  "I'm not doing this to get famous," he told us.  Well, then he shouldn't object to me writing about him.  Nobody's going to get famous from being mentioned on this blog, where my page views stay pretty consistent at about fifty per day regardless of whether I post anything new or not.  Of course, one must wonder how much Blogger's stats can be trusted when they're telling me I had almost five hundred page views in the month before I even started the blog. 

Back to Danny B.  What follows is my best attempt, relying on my middle aged memory, to reconstruct the conversation, which might be easier if I hadn't had so much to drink at the party.  I wish I'd had a note pad or a tape recorder with me, but when I left my apartment, I hadn't planned on encountering anything worth writing about.
Danny told us a bit about himself and his art while never pausing in the task of arranging and rearranging the pieces against the wall of the beer distributor.  A lifelong resident of Columbus, he has been placing his works on that corner for about three years now, dating back to the time when he used to live in the Old North area, in, I believe, the very building in which I now reside.  He estimated that he's set outer some two hundred pieces during that time. Its his way of making the neighborhood, and the city, a more colorful and interesting place.  His form of street art is reaction of sorts to graphiti, which he dismisses, for the most part as not art.  Though he does admit that sometimes, in places such as under bridges or on train cars, it can indeed be worthy of the name.  Apparently, according to Danny, as long as the numbers on the side of the car remain visible, nobody will bother to paint over the graphiti.  I got the sense that he had delivered this talk before to others who'd wandered over to talk to him, curious about what he was up to.  Still, he sounded spontaneous and genuinely excited about what he was saying.
 When he lived here, he revealed, he used to watch that corner after putting out his latest display and observe as passers by would stop and look at the painting and perhaps grab one or two.  He chuckled as he said that the liked to imagine someone sitting in their living room and staring at one of his paintings while they were high.   However, alteration of your brain chemistry is not a prerequisite to appreciation of Danny's work.
A drummer in a local band which he didn't name, Danny told us that, late at night, when he can no longer practice his instrument lest he disturb the neighbors, yet his creative juices still run high, he will turn to creating what he calls his "splatter paintings" on found boards and bits of wood.  Many of them are enhanced by gluing on photographs of models taken from magazines or found objects.  He especially likes to work with used lighters, shell casings and remote controls.  To  hang them, he attaches lengths of old power cords or phone or computer cables.
One piece, strung with an old phone cord, painted in bright colors and adorned with a row of discarded lighters, a spent shell casing, a volume knob from an old stereo (I want to make a Spinal Tap joke here, but, unfortunately, this one did NOT go to 11.) and a rubber toy shark, similar to ones that I'd played with as a child, caught my eye and I picked it up as a quite literal last minute gift for our young graduate.  Jonathon picked out a mostly blue piece with a black and white photo of an elegant young model pasted pretty much square in the center for himself and cajoled the artist into attaching a rare signature to it with a rapidly drying out old Sharpie.
To wrap this up, and to tentatively tie it to comics, we later told Max Ink, founder of Sunday Comix as well as, more importantly to my tale, writer and artist of the acclaimed graphic novel series Blink, about our encounter with Danny.  Max's stories all take place here in Columbus, and he takes great pleasure in spotlighting the people and places that make this city unique and a great place to live.  One of my first thought as Danny spun his tale for us is that Max should meet this guy.  He might be able to use Danny in his comic somehow or, if not, at the very least the two could engage in a spirited discussion of art in general and it relationship to the life of this city.
Of course, I have no idea how to get in touch with Mr. Danny B, or when he might show up again with more paintings to put out.  I bet, though, that if I put a note on the telephone pole right there by Andy's on Wilcox, he'd see it eventually.  Hell, there's always the remote chance he'll stumble on this blog post.

Trivia Challenge Answer: Mudd n' Gumm

Hey, check it out--two posts in a row!  I'm on a roll.  

Enjoy it while you can. God only knows how long its gonna last.

This is going to be just a quick post to clue you in on the answer to the trivia question posed in my previous post.  For those with short memories, or who are too bloody lazy to click on the link I've so helpfully provided in the last sentence, said query was: 

What does the two part episode of Batman which featured a guest appearance by the Green Hornet have in common with Star Trek?

The answer is two-fold.  First, the two parts of the episode we're talking about were entitled "A Piece of the Action" and "Batman's Satisfaction".  The former, the hard core Trekkers amongst you will immediately recognize, is also the title of a classic episode of the original Trek in which the Enterprise encounters a society modeled after a book on Chicago mobs of the 1920's left behind by previous visitors from Starfleet a century earlier.  Of course, that second season episode hadn't yet aired by the time those Batman installments ran.

The more obvious and important link, as one of my more astute and pop culture savvy readers rightly surmised, is the fact that the villain whom Batman and the Green Hornet encounter in this adventure, one Colonel Gumm, nefarious leader of a ring of stamp counterfeiters, is portrayed by Roger C. Carmel.  Carmel is best known for his portrayal of the charming rogue Harcourt Fenton (a.k.a. "Harry") Mudd in the first season episode "Mudd's Women" and the second season's "I, Mudd".  He also reprised the role for the animated episode "Mudd's Passion".

Mudd was a great character and I wish there were more episodes featuring the character.  However, in his DVD commentary for the animated episode "More Tribbles, More Troubles", David Gerrold, writer of that episode as well as the original "The Trouble with Tribbles", states that Fred Freiberger, who had taken over as producer for Trek's third year, nixed plans for a live action sequel to "Tribbles" by haughtily declaring that "Star Trek is not a comedy."  Given the light hearted tone of the episodes in which Mudd appeared, especially the outright comedy of "I, Mudd", it is likely that attitude on Freiberger's part that also doomed any chances of Mudd reappearing to further vex Kirk and his crew.

The Green Hornet (Gutter Talk Trivia Challenge 3)

Last night, in honor of St. Patrick's Day, classic TV network Memorable Entertainment Television, a.k.a. MeTV, seen here in Columbus on WCMH's digital sub-channel 4.2, aired a four hour retrospective of the 1966-67 Green Hornet series starring Van Williams and featuring Bruce Lee as Kato. (They called it "The Airing of the Green...Hornet".) 

Now, I'd never seen this show before, and other than the Hornet's appearance on a two part episode of Batman, I was unfamiliar with this particuliar incarnation of the character.  I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw.  For a series from William Dozier, executive producer of the Caped Crusader's then wildly popular series and which, by all accounts, owed its very presence on ABC's schedule to that show's success, Hornet is not at all what you would expect.  Rather than duplicating the campy shenanigans of Dozier's earlier hit, Green Hornet is a straightforward, slightly noir tinged, fairly typical 1960's action adventure show that takes itself quite seriously.  Unlike Batman, the villains, mostly mobsters and other common criminals rather than so-called "super-villains", are somewhat more realistic, as is the violence, with characters, including a few of the villains, actually dieing and a notable lack of  cartoony sound effects during the fight scenes, which serve as a showcase for Lee's martial arts prowess.  The Hornet operates for the most part in the shadows and under cover of darkness, with much of the action taking place at night.  Green Hornet is what I suspect those hard core comics fans who to this day lament Batman's campiness would say that show should have been.  I can't help but wonder if perhaps that's part of the reason that it lasted only one season.  Was the viewing public expecting another Batman and disappointed when it got this instead?  Still, when other networks were putting pressure on producers to make their shows more like Batman, you have to credit Dozier for not just repeating himself and trying something different.

What Green Hornet does have in common with Batman is that Dozier took yet another moribund intellectual property, hoping to make lightning strike again and propel the character into a pop culture phenomenon.  The Batman comics, you may have heard, where famously on the verge of cancellation before Dozier's show spawned a global wave of Bat-Mania.  The Hornet was even worse off.  He hadn't been seen in comics since the late 40's and the radio series that spawned the character had been off the air for almost fifteen years.

It's funny--I read on Wikipedia, while doing research for this post (which, I suspect, sets me apart from 99% of comics bloggers), that on radio the Hornet's confidant in the law enforcement establishment was the  police commissioner and Dozier changed it to the District Attorney in order to avoid comparisons to Batman, which had Commissioner Gordon, yet here I've spent the preceding two paragraphs belaboring that very comparison.

Due to the fact that it lasted only one year and, unlike it's companion series Batman, aired on a traditional one day a week schedule, Green Hornet produced a mere 26 episodes, far short of the number required for daily "strip" syndication, and thus has been rarely seen in the intervening 45 years since its initial run.  I, for one, would love to see more.  I believe that the show is available on DVD, and I hope that MeTV can find some room on its schedule for more episodes in the near future.

Anyway, I promised a trivia quiz in the headline for this post, so here it is:

The question concerns that aforementioned crossover with Batman, and invokes yet another iconic 60's TV series, namely the original Star Trek. 

And thus, I put it to you:  What does the two part episode of Batman which featured a guest appearance by the Green Hornet have in common with Trek?

The answer tomorrow--Same Bat-time (more or less), same Bat-web-site.

By the way, for those who give a crap, the second of my series on Firestorm, reviewing Fury of Firestorm #1 from 1982, will eventually appear.  There's no hurry, is there?  We are, after all, talking about a thirty year old comic.

Just Sit Right Back and You'll Hear A Tale...

I believe that I can aver with a certain degree of confidence that I would be a different man today if not for Sherwood Schwartz.  Who can say how I might have turned out if I had not been exposed early and often--every afternoon at either four or four thirty--to reruns of Gilligan's Island.  I might even have actually made something of myself.  

I wouldn't classify Gilligan's Island as a guilty pleasure, for I am not ashamed of it in the least.  I offer no apology for my love of Gilligan, the Skipper and the passengers of the S.S. Minnow, nor can I really explain it.  It simply is.

My affection for the show is common knowledge to readers of my on-line comic strip Wasted Potential.  The strip was peppered throughout its four year run with allusions and references to Gilligan's Island.  Early in the strip's run I mentioned Schwartz by name, dedicating the following installment to him for all the hours of entertainment and escape from reality that I found in his most famous, and ridiculous, creation.

(click to enlarge)

Sherwood Schwartz, creator of Gilligan's Island, The Brady Bunch, and several not so well known TV shows such as Dusty's Trail, which reunited Schwartz with  Gilligan star Bob Denver and was, essentially, Gilligan's Island in the American Old West, died early this morning at the age of 94.

Star Trek Actor William Campbell Dead at Age 87

I was saddened to learn today that William Campbell, the actor best known, at least, I would wager, to readers of this blog, for roles in the original series Star Trek episodes "The Squire of Gothos" and "The Trouble With The Tribbles", died on Thursday.  He was 87 years old.

In "The Squire of Gothos," Campbell was Trelane, the titular Squire of the planet Gothos, a seemingly omnipotent being ultimately revealed to be just a petulant child.  In "Tribbles," he was flamboyant Klingon commander Koloth, a role he would reprise three decades later on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  

In addition to Trek, Campbell appeared in numerous movies and TV shows during his nearly fifty year career, including co-starring with Elvis Presley in the King's motion picture debut, Love Me Tender.  

According to his obit in the LA Times, Campbell was also briefly married to Judith Exner, a woman who would go on to have an affair with JFK.

TV Review: "The Cape"

Remember way back in the 1970's, when the producers of the TV version of The Incredible Hulk went out of their way to make viewers forget that the show was based on a comic book?  Brian Cronin, author of the web column "Comic Book Legends Revealed", says in his book Was Superman A Spy? that the real reason producer Kenneth Johnson changed the name of the Hulk's alter ego from Bruce to David Banner was not that he felt that the name Bruce sounded too homosexual, as long standing legend has it, but that alliterative names like Bruce Banner or Peter Parker sounded too comic booky.  The makers of NBC's new superhero drama The Cape, on the other hand, seem to be bending over backwards to make you think that their show does have comic book roots, even though it does not. Not only do they take pains to mimic the dark look and feel of such successful comic book based films as Batman and X-Men, but the title character takes his superheroic name in the story from his son's favorite comic book character.  

Overall, I would say that The Cape is a fairly decent show for what it is.  What it is is basically what I surmised in my last post, "a standard issue Batman/Daredevil pastiche."  To that I might add "...with some elements of Robocop and the Spirit thrown in for good measure." The latter include the idea that the protagonist is presumed dead, and an evil corporation that controls the city's police force.

There are a few scenes early on that invoke the campiness of the 1960's Batman TV show.  I'm not sure that this was intentional, as, for the most part, the show takes itself very seriously.  On the few occasions do seem to be  trying to be funny, it usually falls flat.

There is one funny bit, however, at the end of the first hour.  In my last post, I opined that "The Cape" was just about the lamest name for a superhero ever. Well, it seems that the producers are somewhat aware of that. After the Cape foils a robbery at a convenience store, the grateful shopkeeper asks him his name.  After our hero tells him, the merchant replies, "The Cape? Oh, well, you'll work on it."

To sum up, The Cape is not great, but its not horrible.  There are worse ways to kill an hour on Monday nights.

"The Cape" Debuts Tonight On NBC

NBC launches its new super-hero drama The Cape with a two hour movie tonight at nine.  I'll give you my review after I've actually watched the thing, but I do have a couple of first impressions based on the ads and previews I've seen so far.

This seems to be an attempt on NBC's part to win back the audience of its previous comic book inspired hit Heroes. In fact, after tonight's premiere, the show will even be settling into Heroes' old Monday night time slot.  However, unlike Heroes, this new show looks to be a more traditional take on the urban vigilante sub-genre of superheroes, complete with such classic genre tropes as a costume and a secret identity.  Perhaps too traditional.  The previews so far aren't showing me anything that I, and probably ever other reader of super-hero comics, haven't seen before. In other words, The Cape appears to be a pretty standard issue Batman/Daredevil pastiche. It will have to distinguish itself by adding some extra dimension to the tried and true formula, but the ads aren't showing me any yet.  

The biggest problem with this show is the title.

The Cape?

Are they serious?

That has got to be the most uninspired name for a superhero character since... well, since "Superman."  Plus, it's been used before.  I came across a comic book with the same name which appeared totally unrelated to this show as I was browsing the new releases at the Laughing Ogre comic shop on Wednesday.

I'll be watching when the show starts in a little over two and a half hours, and some or all, or none, of my preliminary opinions may change by 11 p.m.  I'll let you know in a day or so.

"Mars Needs Moms": Does Earth Need This Movie?

You are probably never going to find a bigger fan of cartoonist and author Berkely Breathed than the author of this very blog.  About six feet behind me as I sit at my computer desk typing this, the top shelf of my book case sags under the weight of every Bloom County/Outland/Opus book, from Loose Tails to the latest volume of the Bloom County Library, including the three children's picture books-- A Wish For Wings That Work, Goodnight, Opus, and The Last Basselope--that Breathed wrote featuring Mr. P. Opus. Next to all of these sits a copy of his non-Opus children's book Mars Needs Moms.  So, when I first heard about the forthcoming movie based on the latter, I was looking forward to seeing it.  Then I started to read more about it, and watched the trailer, and now I'm not all that excited about it all of a sudden.

If the filmmakers had done what they really should have, which is simply bring to life the wonderful paintings with which Breathed illustrated his book, they might have at least produced a good looking film.  Instead, we are treated to another disturbing journey into the uncanny valley courtesy of the same folks who creeped out little kids with The Polar Express a couple of years back. 

Storywise, it appears that the film suffers from a common problem that comes from attempting to turn a fifty page picture book into a two hour feature film. That is, it appears overly padded and weighed down with a lot of unneccessary business simply to fill out the running time.

Of course, these are just my first impressions based on the trailer and they may change after I see the film.  Yes, I do still plan on seeing it, but it's definitely a wait-'til-it-hits-the-dollar-theater kind of deal.

Second Annual Post In Commemoration of My Mother's Birthday

What do DC Comics  and my mom have in common?

Both turn 75 years old this year.

Today, in fact, in the case of my mom. 

Happy Birthday, Mom!

(Of course, you realize this doesn't get me off the hook.  She's still expecting me to call her.)   

By The Time We Got To The Statehouse We Were 60,000 Strong And Everywhere Were The Signs of A Celebration (Dredging Up The Past Part VIII)

(The election coming up a week from Tuesday is being hyped as an important one for both major parties.  The GOP has dreams of taking over Congress, and the Democrats want to prevent that from happening.  In order to forestall losing his tenuous legislative majority, President Barack Obama has been on a last minute, whirlwind get-out-the-vote tour across the nation and sometime last week, he stopped here in Columbus, Ohio.  While I didn't make it out to see him this time, I did attend his last minute rally on the grounds of the Ohio Statehouse two days before the election that voted him into office two years ago. The next day, I wrote about the event for the Sunday Comix blog.  What does a political rally have to do with comic books, you might ask?  I managed to make the connection.  Read on to find out how.)

Did you know that the next President of the United States of America is only two inches tall?
Or so he appeared to me at the Barack Obama rally at the Ohio Statehouse yesterday. It could be, of course, due to the fact that I was quite far from the speaker's platform. In a crowd of 60,000, however, I suppose I was lucky to have been able to see him at all.
I am, either by nature or due to certain events in my past life, if not a full blown cynic then at least a dedicated skeptic, and while I did vote early for Obama, I didn't quite buy the whole hope and change message. Until yesterday. Perhaps it was because I was surrounded by 60,000 cheering true believers, or maybe it was something about actually hearing what was, to be honest, mostly the standard issue stump speech that he has delivered hundreds of times and I've heard most of on the news, in person and from the man himself. I can't really say, but by the end of the rally, I had, to quote a sketch from Saturdays SNL, "drunk the Obama Kool-Aid." I wish I could vote for him all over again. Hopefully, I will be able to vote to re-elect him in four years.
Anyway, this is supposed to be a comics blog, so I'm going to connect this to comics presently.
The 60,000 attendance figure, more than twice what had been expected, comes from National Public Radio's All Things Considered. The NPR correspondant also noted Obama's muffed attempt to reach out to the geek vote. Challenging his opponents self-styled image as a "maverick," the candidate repeated his charge that John McCain voted with George Bush over 90% of the time on economic issues, saying that McCain was more a sidekick than a maverick, "like Kato with the Green Lantern." The NPR reporter correctly pointed out, and I got as he said it, that Kato was, in fact, the sidekick of the Green Hornet.
This gaffe, is in an odd way, reassuring. After all, the POTUS has more important things to do than read comic books, especially super-hero comics.  I bet Dubya knows the difference between the Green Hornet and the Green Lantern, although I picture him as more of an Image comics reader. I can picture him, in the summer of 2001, poring over every detail of the latest issue of Spawn or The Savage Dragon while the now infamous briefing paper entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Targets Inside US" languished unread in the bottom drawer of his desk beneath a half-eaten bag of stale Cheetos.
I end this rant with a reminder--no--an admonition to all of you to get out and VOTE!

The Man Behind the Magician: Meher Baba and His Influence On The Works of J.M. DeMatties

Does the man in the picture to your left look familiar to you?
If you've read J. M. DeMatteis' Dr. Fate or Seekers Into The Mystery he should. 
In the former, he shows up as the Guide, a.k.a. the Old Man, who leads the souls of Eric and Linda Strauss to their ultimate destiny.  In Seekers, he is seen in the form of the Magician, the enigmatic guru who holds the key to Lukas Hart's redemption. 
In real life, he was Meher Baba, an Indian spiritual leader who believed himself to be the latest manifestation of the Avatar, or the incarnation of God in human form.  According to Baba, the Avatar shows up on Earth every 700 to 1400 years or so and past incarnations have included Jesus, the Buddha and Muhammed. Baba taught that all major religions were equally true and valid and that the true path to salvation was faith and devotion to God.  As the article "Who Is Meher Baba" from the web-site The New Humanity Times states it, "To truly love God requires that we love and embrace everyone and everything as a dimension of God."
The influence of Baba's teachings are obvious in most of J.M. DeMatteis' work, and in Dr. Fate and Seekers Into The Mystery he makes it explicit.  Both works concern the evolution and perfection of the human soul through reincarnation and both feature Baba as a character in the story.
At the end of his Dr. Fate run, in his farewell message on the letters page of #24, J.M. DeMatteis sums up the philosophy behind the story and essentially dedicates the tale to Meher Baba:

In a comics universe that seems to be getting progressively more cynical and down beat, we tried to do stories that looked the darkness square in the face and said, "No. This life is worth living, this world is a rare and wonderful place, and the God that rules over it is compassionate, loving, and sitting on a throne in our very hearts." That vision would not have been possible without the love and guidance of Avatar Mehar Baba.  Jai Baba!

You know, I may not buy into the stuff he says about God, but there's certainly something to be said for the notion that not all super-hero comics have to be dark, cynical and downbeat, or, as they were often referred to in the 80's and 90's, "grim and gritty."  Look it up in your thesaurus; "violence" and "pessimism" are not synonyms for "realism." The idea of embracing your fellow humans with love and respect, God or no God, appeals to me as well, despite the way I behave and the things I say sometimes.
You'll notice as you read Dr. Fate and Seekers Into The Mystery that the Guide/Magician never speaks.  That seems to be a reflection of the vow of silence Meher Baba took in real life and stuck to for nearly half a century.  From July 10, 1925 to his death in 1969, he reportedly spoke not one word, communicating instead through writing and gestures.  His silence was supposedly part of what he termed his "universal work."  In his own words, "Because man been deaf to the principles and precepts laid down by God in the past...I observe silence."
In recognition of this, many of Meher Baba's followers, including DeMatteis, observe Silence Day every July 10.
More info on Meher Baba can be found in his Wikipedia entry, and at what appears to be his official web-site.

We've Come So Far...But There's Still A Long Way To Go It Seems and other further thoughts on Warner Todd Huston

You know, I thought I'd said all I had to on this subject, but there are a couple of things I still need to get off my chest.

"I should start this discussion by saying that there isn’t anything wrong with enjoying comic books, even as an adult. They can be fun, for sure. But to imagine that comic books offer anything other than lowgrade entertainment is laughable. Comics are not high art (in fact, most of them are horrible even as graphic art) and they most certainly do not equal anything of the sort of deep, consequential literature. Comics are a childish, formulaic, lowest common denominator form of entertainment. It doesn’t make them evil or useless or bad necessarily. It just makes them low-end, fun. They are nothing to be taken seriously. If you are someone that lives for your next comic, or you want to claim that comic books are 'art' worthy of serious consideration… you need to get out of your parent’s basement a little more often. Still, they can be fun if treated as the mindless entertainment that they are. Call it a guilty pleasure, something that for a few hours or so might help you take your mind off the harsh glare of reality."

Even though, if I really had to, I would classify myself as a liberal and I am registered to vote as a Democrat, I'm not really all that political.  I am, however, passionate about the comics art form.  Thus, even more than his trite, mean-spirited, and false generalizations about liberals, which are really just boilerplate conservative talking points and not even really worth acknowledging, let alone taking time to   refute, it is the above quoted passage and others like it from the recent bloviating by right-wing nutbar Warner Todd Huston over a minor detail in one panel of a recent issue of Captain America which I wrote about on Sunday that really raises my hackles.
Hanging out, as I do, mostly with fellow cartoonists, comics readers and other similarly enlightened sorts, it can be easy for me to think that comics' decades long struggle for mainstream acceptance as a serious art form and entertainment medium has finally been won. After all, movies based on comics are among the top grossing films of the past decade, and  the film adaptation of Harvey Pekar's American Splendor became an indie sensation when it debuted at the Sundance Film Festival; mainstream bookstores feature burgeoning graphic novel sections featuring everything from the collection of the latest Batman storyline to alternative titles from publishers such as Top Shelf and Fantagraphics; and Time magazine even named a graphic novel, Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, as the best book of 2006.
Given all that, its somewhat of a shock when I read something like Huston's piece and find myself slapped in the face with all the same myths and prejudices about comics that are almost as old as the medium itself. The first anti-comic book rant  to gain national attention was a piece by children's book author Sterling North entitled "A National Disgrace" which first appeared in the Chicago Daily News in May of 1940 and was subsequently reprinted in dozens of papers nationwide.  Personally, I think North was just jealous because comics were read by more kids than his books, but that's way off topic, not to mention too simplistic an explanation.
The age old charges against comics are all there in one big, odious lump in Huston's paragraph: the idea that  all comics, by their very nature, are poorly drawn and barely written trash paired with the implication that comics are, and can only ever be, fit only for children and illiterates (later on he urges comics fans to read "real books" once in a while); and the stereotype that adults who read comics are socially inept losers who still live with their parents and are most likely still virgins. I'm surprised he didn't include the Wertham inspired charges that comics turn children into criminals and/or homosexuals.
Given Huston's spouting of these hoary old cliches as if they were gospel truth, its quite easy to forgive Robot 6 blogger Carla Hoffman for assuming, as she seems to in her post "An Open Letter To Warner Todd Huston", that he had never before actually bothered to read a comic book. Nor, for that matter, despite his anemic claims to have been a comics collector during his misspent youth, does it appear based on what he writes that's he's ever even met anyone who's ever read a comic book.
I suppose that Huston isn't the only one still clinging to these ridiculous, outdated and provably false ideas, but fortunately their numbers seem to be dwindling.
It seems to me that if you want to assume that comics are just for children, its not the political meaning of the panel that offended Huston that should bother you.  The panel depicts a protest rally where one of the signs reads, "Tea Bag the Libs Before They Tea Bag You!" which to Huston indicates that the panel is meant to depict members of the so-called Tea Party movement and paint them as rascists. What really should bother someone worried about what the impressionable kiddies might be reading is that the message on the offending sign is, in fact, truly offensive. It is clearly a reference to the pornographic connotation of the term "Tea Bag," which could lead to some embarrassing moments when Junior asks what the sign means.  Now, I'm not advocating for the return to full power of the Comics Code, but if Marvel were still submitting their books to the Code Authority, this whole flap would never have happened, as there's no way they would have let the book go out with that phrase in it. 
Another thing that bugs me about Huston's rant , and doesn't concern either his political views or his attitudes towards comics, is the hypocrasy he exhibits when he chides certain of his critics for misspellings and poor grammar in their comments, while his post is riddled with examples of the same. One particularly ticked off blogger takes Huston to task for his misuse of punctuation, and you'll notice that in the quote with which I led off this post, he writes "low grade" as one word, and there are many more examples scattered throughout his text like Easter eggs for anyone obsessive enough to hunt for them.  Because of the dash-it-off-and-hit-send nature of most blogs, I'm willing to forgive a certain amount of typos, misspelled words and grammatical errors, UNLESS the writer seeks to act as a self-appointed grammar cop, criticizing the errors of others.  If you're going to do that, you'd damn well better make sure that your own glass house is in order. That's why you can be assured that I will have thoroughly proofread this post before you read it.
Finally, I want to address his BS about the so-called "first rule of journalism." According to Huston, Hoffman supposedly violated said rule by not attempting to contact him before writing her piece.  Later on, however, responding to charges of bias, he admits that both his and Hoffman's columns are opinion pieces, and, therefore, by their very nature, biased.  That is certainly true, and it is also why opinion writing is NOT journalism, and thus not subject to the "first rule," which, by the way, I'd never heard of before, and I was a Communications major in college, so I studied journalism.
This, of course, is just my opinion, and now that I've expressed it, its time to move on to other things.
By the way, and I'm not this if this manufactured controversy had anything to do with it, but when I was at the Laughing Ogre, the comics shop just down the street from my apartment, I noticed that they were sold out of Captain America #602.

Neno Curates Album Cover Exhibit At Wild Goose Creative

Michael Neno, best known to comics cognoscenti as the creator of Michael Neno's Reactionary Tales and the hot off the presses The Signifiers, is a man of wide ranging interests in comics and beyond.  His association with Columbus, Ohio based arts community Wild Goose Creative has afforded him a unique opportunity to share those interests with the world.  Last month, he led a panel of local comics artists, which also included Lora Innes and Jonathon Riddle, in a discussion of their work in progress.  Beginning this Thursday, Neno will present the exhibit "Long Hair Music: Classical Music's Response to the Counter-Culture," showing at Wild Goose's headquarters at 2491 Summit Street.  The show spotlights classical music album covers from the 1960's and 70's, most the work of designers Christopher and Peter Whorf, which traded on the psychedelic imagery of the era in an effort to entice youthful buyers of rock records to try something different.  The covers come from the Neno's personal collection and will be on display through March 28.  Thursday's opening coincides with the beginning of this weekend's Columbus Comedy Festival at Wild Goose.

This article about the exhibit appeared in yesterday's Columbus Dispatch.

Off-Target: "Human Target" Take 2

When I first saw The Human Target in the back of The Brave and the Bold #143 ("The Cat and the Canary Contract" by Len Wein and Dick Giordano), I thought the character was pretty cool and that the concept would make a great TV series. It seems that I'm not the only one struck by that thought, as last month a new Human Target series debuted on Fox.  This is the second attempt to bring Christopher Chance to the small screen.  The first version aired briefly on ABC back in 1992 and starred Rick Springfield. (Yep, the guy who sang "Jesse's Girl," which I still maintain is one of the worst songs ever, despite being perhaps the only hit song ever to include the word "moot". Odd casting, perhaps, but nowhere near as bad as the Hoff playing Nick Fury.) Human Target v2 stars Mark Valley in the title role backed up by Chi McBride and Jackie Earle Haley.  McBride and Haley are always good no matter what they're in, and the show is probably worth checking out at least once just for them.

Now, don't get me wrong, Human Target is actually a pretty good show. It's an exciting action/adventure series of the type that we don't really see that much of any more.  It kind of feels like a throwback to the PI shows of the 70s and 80s, such as The Rockford Files or Magnum, PI. What it isn't, however, is The Human Target.
The problem is not that the Human Target concept doesn't translate to TV, it's that the producers didn't even try. The basic idea of the character, as created by Len Wein and Dick Giordano and first appearing in Action Comics #419, is that if someone is trying to kill you, you hire Christopher Chance, a master of disguise who will in effect "become" you, disguising himself as you and taking your place until he catches the killer, or, as the cover of B&B #143 proclaims, "If you're marked for murder, he'll replace you on the bullseye". In the new version, however, Chance merely goes undercover as someone close to the intended victim; no longer a "human target," but simply a bodyguard, which makes the series a lot less interesting than it could and should have been.
Well, I guess I can always hope that this show tanks and someone tries again in another eighteen years.