Paperback Flashback: Planet of Peril

Continuing with some Sword & Planet reading, I decided to check out one of ERB's earliest imitators: Otis Adelbert Kline. Kline was an editor and literary agent predominantly, but he wrote a number of adventure stories in a Burroughsian vein in the 30s and 40s. The Planet of Peril, serialized in Argosy All-Story Weekly in 1929, is his first planetary romance, and the first of a trilogy about Robert Grandon of Terra on the planet Venus.

Overall, the beats of the story are various much in the mold of A Princess of Mars. Grandon arrives on Venus (Zarovia) by telepathic transmission, gets in some danger, meets a friend, meets a girl, then has numerous perilous episodes before he and girl can be united marriage. And of course, Grandon ascends to a place of rulership. 

Kline's prose is probably as good as Burroughs' and his adventuresome perils are as imaginative as the typical Burroughs work (if maybe not quite as good as ERB's best): there jungle beasts, intelligent, giant ants, and lecherous potentates. The pace is quick and punctuated with serialized adventure fiction cliffhangers. Kline seems to have put just as much thought into his Venusian neologisms and invent biosphere.

The differences between The Planet of Peril and the Barsoom stories are interesting. John Carter's combat prowess is explained by his status as a sort of eternal "fighting man." Grandon, by contrast, is just a bored rich guy. On the other hand, Grandon's transport to Venus is given more of a story justification (if a pseudoscientific one) rather than just happening. Also, unlike the Barsoomians, Kline's Venusians can and do employ armor when it would benefit them to do so. Vernia has the interesting wrinkle of being more of an antagonist than Dejah Thoris, but on the other hand, Kline doesn't sell her allure with near the facility that Burroughs does his Martian princess.

Overall, if you like Burroughs' planet romance fiction, you'll probably like Kline's.

Fantastic Four: First Steps

Last night, I caught Fantastic Four: First Steps. It's been a good summer for superhero fans, with films from both Marvel and DC that easily above average for the genre. It's unfortunate, perhaps, that coming out in close proximity means the films will inevitably be compared to each other.

Like Superman, FF eschews the origin story to jump into a universe where the characters are already firmly established (4 years for the FF, 3 years for Superman) and well-loved by the public. FF pits new challenges against its protagonists, who are both heroes, celebrities, and effectively politic players through what is (I guess) an NGO. The first is a happy one: Sue's pregnancy. The second is the arrival of the Silver Surfer (though the name is never used in the movie, I don't think) who heralds the coming of Galactus.

Again, like Superman, FF gets a bit episodic with the overall narrative, as the team conceives and tries and generally fails at different means of stopping the threat. Franklin Richards is born in what may be films first zero gee birth sequence while they are feeling Galactus' relentless herald through space, after a failed attempt to negotiate with World Devourer.

FF has a more serious tone that Superman, despite having a bit less darkness to it. (While the world is imperiled there are no on-screen murders or torture, for instance). There are less jokes, though, and decidedly less of the typical Marvel quipiness.  The warmth of the team and their connection as a family does come through, though.

If I have a complaint about the film, it is with these family dynamics. The often (in the comics) fractious team members are pretty harmonious. A reasonable choice given how plot heavy it is, but none of the team get any sort of individual arc, except arguably Reed. There are gestures in that direction, but only gestures. Reed and Sue get a decent amount of character development and a bit of growth, but Ben only has the surface features of his comic portrayal, and Johnny, his hot-headed youth and womanizing attenuated to only shadows, doesn't really have anything else to replace, save perhaps a certain impatience and doggedness. He's worst served by the script.

Still, the performances are good with what they have to work with. There are tense sequences. The mid-century design sensibility manages to break the Marvel sameness to give it a distinct style. Galactus maybe should have been worked on a bit more to shore up imposing solidity, but we do get to see a giant in a goofy helmet stride through New York City, as that's something.

Paperback Flashback: Warrior of Llarn

I'm rereading a pulp novel from the 1964 I read a few years ago (well, technically I'm listening to it as a audiobook this time).

Gardner Fox isn't exactly known for his great contributions to literature, though he made substantial contributions to Golden and Silver Age DC Comics. According to Wikipedia, he's co-creator Barbara Gordon, the original Flash, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Doctor Fate, Zatanna and the original Sandman, and he's estimated to have written more than 4,000 comics stories. He also wrote a number of stories for pulp magazine in their heyday, and I feel like his work is always competent, and often above average for their output.

Warrior of Llarn is a Sword & Planet yarn in the vein of Burroughs' Mars and an original paperback, not a fix-up of his older pulp work. Earthman Alan Morgan gets transport to a distant world by means as yet mysterious. He saves a princess and gets involved with a war between two civilizations. The level of technology of the world is a bit higher than Barsoom, and Fox provides a Dune-esque (a year before Dune) explanation for why people with energy weapons might still use swords. Like Fox's earlier Adam Strange stories for DC, the planet has suffered a nuclear war in the past, which is the cause of its strange creatures and current lower level of civilization. Fox's story is old fashion, even quaint in many ways, but he's accomplished at delivering the goods. Whatever the books faults, it's not boring.

Fox wrote a sequel, Thief of Llarn, which, if memory serves, is a bit better than the first.

Jame Gunn's Superman

Last night, I attended a special showing of James Gunn's Superman. My short review is: I liked it a lot. I think it's the best Superman movie ever (with the caveat that it likely wouldn't have been made without an existing tradition of Superman films to build and comment upon), and one of the best superhero movies period.

I was a bit worried, honestly, when I heard Gunn was going to helm this one. I've enjoyed his previous films, but they often engage in a level and type of humor that while fine on an individual film level, I have come to like less when it's the standard for superhero films. There's often not a lot of space in the movies between having fun with superheroes and making fun of them. 

Also, as specifics for this film became to come out, I had other concerns. It seemed like it was overstuffed, like Gunn was trying to jumpstart an entire universe with one movie. That sort of ambition has proved hubris for superhero movies before, I feel like. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, I think most everyone would agree, seems at times to be spewing out product solely to point to future products.

Happily, my fears weren't realized. The film has humor, yes, but it isn't farcical or even particularly quippy in the tired manner of CMU films. It does eschew any of the reverence or perhaps mythic tone that has been a part of Superman's cinematic portrayals since the first Donner film--to the detriment, I think, of later films like Superman Returns or Man of Steel. This film is lighter, definitely, but critics of the "darkness" of the Snyder films should reckon with this films inclusion of government sanctioned extralegal detention, torture, Lex Luthor murdering an innocent man to coerce Superman, an extralegal execution by a superhero, and a shocking (well, as shocking as something that was foreshadowed with the subtlety of a flare) reveal about Jor-El and Lara.

Through this all, Superman, however, stays good and strangely innocent. This is the character at his most "Blue Boy Scout." It's to a degree not seen, perhaps, since the Superfriends. Gunn seems to have gotten an aspect of the pre-Crisis Superman (perhaps from Morrison's All-Star Superman) that isn't much talked about where Superman suffers indignity and hurt to solve problems in the name of not resorting to violence or at least to minimize violence before he acts. It's a thing that most sets his stories apart from Marvel Comics stories or even his fellow headliner at DC, Batman. While it likely started as a means to not have stories end too quickly through use of amazing power ultimately sort of became a character trait.

The film is perhaps objectively a bit of a too rich superhero confection, but its kind of in media res plotting makes things move along so that it's not ponderous. Further, the inclusion of multiple other heroes doesn't seem to be merely to build a universe. The narrative needs those other heroes so we can see Superman inspiring others to be better, and we can feel the limits of his personal abilities. Even Superman sometimes needs a friend.

There are things I didn't care for. The Kents are rural caricatures in a way they've never seen before and that's distracting and unnecessary. It might be a mistake to have Lois raise very good points about the unilateral use of force in complicated geopolitical situations only to ignore them, or perhaps imply it's okay 'cause Superman's really, really good.

But dodging ethical questions and realistic implications has a long history in comics, so I can't get too upset about it here. Questionable portrayals of the Kents are hardly new to Superman media. 

Overall, these feel like talking about the icing. The cake is really good.

Jim Shooter

As I'm sure you know, Jim Shooter passed away this week at the age of 73. While Shooter got his start at a wunderkind writer for DC in the 1960s on stories with the Legion of Super-Heroes, it is his tenure as Marvel's Editor-in-Chief where he probably made his biggest mark. Certainly, that is where comics reader of my generation will most remember him.

No doubt due to my age at time, but the Shooter work most dear to my heart is Secret Wars. Secret Wars II, well, not so much.

Though I was a latecomer to it, I enjoyed his work with Bob Layton, Don Perlin, and Barry Windsor-Smith on the first year or so of Solar, Man of the Atom. It was both a solid addition to the post-Miracle Man and Watchmen wave of superhero deconstruction and a second attempt at the "realistic supers" approach he tried with the New Universe.

But these are just the ones that stand out for me. Shooter wrote a lot of comics, and no doubt helped shape others (for good and ill) to their final form as an editor. He had a big impact on the industry.

Attack of the (Star Wars) Comics Clones

The cultural phenomenon that is Star Wars had an effect on comic books, even in its first decade. Despite my pithy title, it's unfair to call these guys clones exactly, but some sort of force is clearly with them. Since science fiction comics and Star Wars draw on some of the same influences, it's not always easy to know what is Star Wars inspired and what isn't. Chaykin's Ironwolf had a rebel fighting a galactic empire in '74--3 years before Star Wars. Still, if one looks at Chaykin's followup Cody Starbuck (also '74) the pre-Star Wars appearances have the look of Flash Gordon and the widespread swordplay of Dune. In the post-Star Wars appearances, costumes have a bit more Japanese influence and guns are more in play; both of these are possibly Star Wars inspired innovations.

Star Hunters (1977)
Empire? A sinister Corporation that controls Earth
Rebels? Sort of, though the protagonists start out forced to work for the Corporation
The Force? There's an "Entity" and a cosmic battle between good and evil
Analogs? Donovan Flint, the primary protagonist, is a Han Solo type with a mustache prefiguring Lando's.
Notes: If Star Hunters is indeed Star Wars inspired, its a very early example. The series hit the stands in June of 1977--on a few days over a month after Star Wars was released.

Micronauts (1979)
Empire? A usurpation of the monarchy of Homeworld.
Rebels? Actually previous rulers and loyalists; a mix of humans, humanoids, and robots.
The Force? The Enigma Force, in fact.
Analogs? Baron Karza is a black armored villain like Vader; Marionette is a can-do Princess; Biotron and Microtron are a humanoid robot and a squatter, less humanoid pairing like Threepio and Artoo.

Metamorphosis Odyssey (1980)
Empire? The Zygoteans, who have concurred most of the galaxy.
Rebels? A disparate band from various worlds out to end the Zygotean menace.
The Force? There's Starlin cosmicness.
Analogs? Aknaton is an old mystic who know's he's going to die a la Obi-Wan. He picks up Dreadstar on a backwater planet and gets him an energy sword.

Dreadstar (1982)
Empire? Two! The Monarchy and the Instrumentality.
Rebels? Yep. A band of humans and aliens out to defeat the Monarchy and the Instrumentality.
The Force? Magic and psychic abilities.
Analogs? Dreadstar still has than energy sword; Oedi is a farm boy (cat) like Luke; Syzygy is a mystic mentor like Kenobi; Lord High Papal is like Vader and Palpatine in one.
Notes: Dreadstar is a continuation of the story from Metamorphosis Odyssey.

Atari Force (1984)
Empire? Nope.
Rebels? Not especially.
The Force? Some characters have special powers.
Analogs? Tempest is a blond kid with a special power and a difficult relationship with his father sort of like Luke. There are a lot of aliens in the series, so there's a "cantina scene" vibe; Blackjak is a Han Solo-esque rogue. Dark Destroyer is likely Vader-inspired, appearance-wise.
Notes: This series sequel to the original series DC did for Atari, taking place about 25 years later. The first series is not very Star Wars-y.

Neon Visions

The mysterious and pervasive algorithms of the internet offered me this book the other day: Neon Visions: The Comics of Howard Chaykin. I'm interested in checking it out. Though I'm not familiar with the author, I agree with his contention that Chaykin's contributions to the field haven't been analyzed with the same sort of detail afforded other creators. 

Once I got around to reading it, I'll report back.