The British sci-fi series Blakes 7 is finally coming to Region A blu-ray--at least the first season. Amazon has it up for pre-order with a projected release date of December 10. It came out this month in the UK. For the uninitiated, it's about a rebel who leads a group of convicts and outcasts in a struggle against the totalitarian Terran Federation. Jason and I reviewed the pilot here.
While the budget of the show leads to some dodgey props and less than impressive special effects, the stories and generally good as well as the acting.
So, apparently it was announced at NYCC back in October that Atlas Comics is coming back. They've got an exclusive partnership with Walmart to distribute merchandise, including a line of collectible action figures with Mego...
There's also the obligatory (these days) movie deal with Paramount.
While I have some nostalgia for Atlas and Jim and I used to bandy around ideas for how Atlas could be relaunched, I think that maybe a third of the characters need to be forgotten, a third could be cool with some revamping, and a third are good "as-is" but unfortunately might not standout in a crowded marketplace. Spawn seems to have nabbed Grim Ghost's schtick, for instance.
Anyway, there's a good chance they'll get me to pick up a few issues.
Typically, on/around Halloween, the Radio Classics channel on satellite radio runs a series of horror episodes from the Golden Age of radio. Traveling for work back in 2021, I happened to catch a lot of them. I think these were the best I heard:
"Three Skeleton Key": A lighthouse off French Guyana is overrun by thousands of rats from a wrecked derelict. Stars Vincent Price.
"House in Cypress Canyon": A strange tale of something bestial lurking in a new, post-war subdivision.
"Poltergeist": No relation to the film of the same name, other than being a tale of a malign spirit moved to horrible vengeance by a desecration of a graveyard.
"Behind the Locked Door": A sort of Lovecraftian horror story about some discovered in a cave near Lake Mead.
"The Shadow People": They can't be seen in the light, but a young woman finds out their deadly reality.
When Skybound/Image started the Energon Universe back in 2023, I was only mildly interested. And that interest was more curiosity at why they chose to start this shared universe of Hasbro toy properties, named after a substance from the Transformers with a completely original comic, Void Rivals. It was a title whose whole point of existence seemed to be to provide the surprise reveal of a Transformers link--which for marketing purposes had to be spoiled pre-release so it couldn't be a surprise.
Well, I still don't understand the point of that as I haven't read Void Rivals, but when I read a review of Duke #1 written by Joshua Williamson with art by Tom Reilly, I got onboard to the universe in general.
What they're doing is sort of Ultimate G.I. Joe (in the sense of Marvel's original Ultimate Marvel Universe), but the more realistic/modernized version of the cartoon G.I. Joe universe than Hama's original comics. Duke #1 opens at a point before there's a G.I. Joe, where Duke is a traumatized soldier (he saw a bud crushed in the hand of a giant transforming robot who the reader might recognize as Starscream) and his command structure (personified by Hawk) tells him he's mentally ill and dismisses what he saw.
Duke hooks up with a group of conspiracy theorists and discovers a link between the robot alien technology and M.A.R.S., who seem to be building a private army with advanced tech. The conspiracy group is killed, and Duke has to go on the run. Hawk is forced to send other elite troopers to bring him in--a group which the informed reader will recognize as including Rock-n-Roll and Stalker. Duke is renditioned to some sort of secret prison where he meets...
At this point, you are either the sort that this will appeal to, and you are already sold or it doesn't interest you at all, in which case these series probably aren't for you. I will say I think Williamson's stories for both series are a nice balance of fan service and inventiveness. The world is made more "real" in the sense of implications of alien technologies and human motivations, while retaining all the fantasticness (perhaps goofiness) of the source material. I wouldn't have thought he could make Cobra-La work, but he pretty much does.
These series were soon joined by a Scarlett and a Destro limited. Admittedly, I didn't find either of these as engaging as the first two, but I have also circled back at read the first volume of Daniel Warren Johnson's Transformers. All in all, the Energon Universe has me looking forward to what they are going to do next.
Volume 3, Issue 2 of The Spider magazine (July 1934) is as clear an indication as any that Norvell Page (writing as Grant Stockbridge) is not going to pull any punches with his Spider yarns. His first Spider outing saw kids dying from the bubonic plague unleashed by the villain. In this one, we're only a few pages in when a young member of a club of wannabe Baker Street Irregulars, "The Spider Fan Club," is tortured to death by a gang of modern-day pirates using a knife charged with electricity.
This is part of a larger plot where the gang, led by the beautiful villainess who calls herself Captain Kidd, is using a pulpy invention to electrify rails so that that glow with almost magical "green fire" and electrocute all the passengers of trains so their corpses can be robbed without any witnesses. The trains are sent rolling on to their destinations with no one living on board.
It's a hell of a lurid set-up, and Page is up to the challenge of delivering on it. The pirates set some pretty good death traps for the Spider to have to escape from. There's also a bit of a mystery regarding a kidnapped inventors missing granddaughter that isn't a big point but has a nice little payoff.
The only thing missing, maybe, is any hint of femme fatale regarding Captain Kidd. The righteous and driven Spider finds her utterly loathsome (and with her disregard for human life, who can blame him!), and though Page says she is attractive, he doesn't give her the sort of loving description a Robert Howard would have.
Get The Spider: The Corpse Cargohere. Tim Truman did a loose adaptation of this story in comics format in the 1990s.
Xum's Who is a fan expansion of the DC Who's Who by Xum Yukinori, artist, podcaster, and comics fan, who unfortunately passed away in 2019. His son Isamu completed some of Xum's unfinished entries and got them all together for a limited print run. They are gorgeous dives into forgotten corners of the Pre-Crisis DCU.
For instance, Volume I gives entries to the Earth-One Superman and Wonder Woman, characters left out previously because of the erasure of their universe.
Characters deemed too minor for the official run like the Mikaal Tomas Starman, the Teen Titan character Golden Eagle, Lady Cop, and the Batgirl villain Lady Viper get their due. There are also characters whose exclusion from the original run seems odd (Giganta) and some whose exclusion points to the agenda behind the original run's compilation (Sugar & Spike).
I'm still waiting for someone to do an entry for the Black Eagle and his squadron of Tuskegee airmen but despite that lack, Xum's Who is a great thing to have in print.
Presnell's book lacks the first-hand production detail and photos which made Kesler's book so great, but he does offer a solid review of all the episodes and does highlight the historical context of some episodes. He also offers up some fun trivia in infographic format.
I think it's a good addition to the library of any Wild Wild West fan, and for a fan without a copy of Kesler's book, it's essential.
Anticipating receiving the copy of the Micronauts: The Original Marvel Years Omnibus Vol. 2 I preordered soon, I finally got back around to revisiting the contents of the first Micronauts omnibus--stories I haven't re-read in twenty years or more.
I noticed something in those first few issues that I either didn't notice before or had forgotten: the timeline of Baron Karza's rise to power is confusing.
Micronauts #1 (January 1979) by Mantlo and Golden and Rubenstein, opens with the scions of Homeworld's royal family, Prince Argon and Princess Mari being pursued and captured by the forces of the despotic Baron Karza. We are told that the king and queen have been killed, but given their kids are still on the run, every suggestion is that this is a recent event. Karza's coup/revolt appears to be a relatively new thing, though certainly it has been going on long enough he has significant forces at his command and alien allies (the Acroyear) from elsewhere in the Microverse.
Next, we see Arcturus Rann return to Homeworld has his 1000 years long voyage of exploration--and quickly get captured himself. We soon find out that after Rann left on his trip, warp drive was discovered, and the species of the Microverse were connect while he was in flight. "Within six months" of the advent of warp drive (whenever that was) the Microverse was at war thanks to Karza. Rann has heard of Karza. He was his tutor 1000 years ago!
While the information here is unclear, it would suggest at least that Karza's revolt isn't brand new. Perhaps it was centuries after Rann left that warp drive was invented, but whenever it was Karza was in position to launch a war of conquest against other worlds.
Finally, the protagonists of our series are all united in the arena, where Karza and his ally, the Acroyear ruler Shaitan are going to watch their struggles from a position of honor. Shaitan says to Karza:
"It's been almost 24 xats since your insurrection, Karza, and still you enjoy the unswerving loyalty of the rabble!"
We're given no idea how long a xat is, but clearly 24 of them is sufficient time that Shaitan seems surprised the people still support Karza, so I don't think "hours" or "days' would be a good translation.
We also find out Dallah and Sepsis who we've heard people swear by before were Rann's parents. They were deified by the resistance after they were martyred for defying Karza "almost 1000 years ago."
Where does all this leave us?
Almost 1000 years ago, Karza killed the rulers (presumably) of Homeworld Dallah and Sepsis in the Body Banks.
Either that or some other event marks the beginning of his insurrection "24 xats" before the present.
In the present, he has only recently killed the King and Queen of Homeworld (who aren't Dallah and Sepsis), and only at the start of this story manages to capture their children and their entourage.
We're given contradictory clues that Karza somehow both began his coup a long time ago, yet only recently completely it, and we have two royal families with an unclear relationship.
Perhaps there is further information in later stories that would clear this up. Certainly, I can think of a backstory that would make sense of it all, but I do wonder what Mantlo intended?
It's been reported on Mike Grell's website that two volumes of a Mike Grell's The Warlord Omnibus is coming in 2025. What will be in them? Well, certainly First Issue Special #8, Warlord volume 1 issues #1-71 (most of the issues after 52 were either scripted or ghost written by Sharon Grell, but Mike gets sole credit in the issues), Warlord Annual #1, and the 1992 limited series issues #1-6.
The 2006 reboot had nothing to do with Grell's series and is best forgotten. The 16 issues of the 2009 series were written by Grell (and sometimes drawn by him), so hopefully they'll will be in the 2nd omnibus. There's also a guest appearance in Green Arrow (1988) #27-28 by Grell and Jurgens that hopefully gets included.
I wish the full run of the original series was getting collected. Even though the Grell issues are my favorite, I started reading Warlord in the Burkett era/Jurgens era, so I have some nostalgia for that stuff too. Still, if having it relegated to apocrypha is how it must be to get Grell's Travis Morgan saga in omnibus format, then so be it.
There have been a lot of really catchy cartoon theme songs over the decades. Here are ten from American action/adventure cartoons (that call is debatable, but I wanted to exclude strictly comedic ones like The Flintstones, for example) that I think one could make a good case for being among the best. Here they are in chronological order.
Jonny Quest (1964) Trey: This fast-paced, Space Age jazzy number composed by Hoyt Curtin really says action and speaks strongly of the era when it was recorded. According to Curtin in a 1999 interview, the band used for the sessions was a jazz ensemble with four trumpets, six trombones, five woodwind doublers, and a five-man rhythm section including percussion. It stands among the greatest theme songs of all time, period.
Jason: I agree completely, but I must confess I can only regard this banger (and everything before 1985 on this list) through an obscuring mist of nostalgia. Coupled with the attractively Alex Toth-designed highlight reel of explosive violence and weird mystery, this complex, hyper-condensed piece of music captured my tiny heart from the first bongo beats. How could any TV cartoon series live up to the high bar set in this opening sequence? When I saw the show, it was many years in syndication, and the contrast with the then-current Saturday morning fare was profound. Even the theme music was more grown up!
Trey: Like the next one on my list, this catchy tune has escaped from the realm of cartoon themes into pop culture in general, being covered many times and even appearing in-universe in Spider-Man films. It was written by lyricist Paul Francis Webster and composer Bob Harris. The music was recorded at RCA Studios, New Yorks, and the vocals at RCA Studios in Toronto (where the cartoon was produced) featuring 12 CBC vocalists (members of the Billy Van Singers, and Laurie Bower Singers groups).
Trey: This bubble-gum pop earworm was written by David Mook and Ben Raleigh, and originally performed by Larry Marks. It's probably the most covered theme on this list.
Jason: It's a perfect piece of pop, quintessentially of its era, and ranks up there aesthetically with any "Sugar Sugar" or "Yummy Yummy Yummy" you'd care to name.
Super-Friends (1973)
Trey: Another one from Hoyt Curtin, this is a more of a rousing, martial piece. The producers must have known they struck gold, because they kept it for 13 years, changes to narration aside. It is certainly eminently recognizable. I like this remix for a Cartoon Network promo by Michael Kohler, "The Time is Now."
Jason: A stately call to arms for the forces of good! This type of instrumental-only action show theme song, often characterized by blaring brass sections and delivered with Wagnerian exuberance, practically constitutes a genre unto itself and dates back to the Fleischer Studios Superman shorts from the 1940s.
Trey: In the early 70s, America was in the midst of a "kung fu craze," this show and theme rides that wave. It's short of funky, but also recalls the cliched "Oriental riff" and perhaps borrows a bit of inspiration from Schifrin's theme for Enter the Dragon. Scatman Crothers who voices the main character also sings here.
Jason: That this song is diabolically catchy, I cannot deny. It has stuck with me through long decades during which I neither sought out nor otherwise encountered the source material.
Trey: This theme is a pure slice of the 80s and credited to the duo that dominated the era, Shuki Levy and Haim Saban. Levy's got a page devoted to his theme work, here.
Jason: MASK marks the spot on the timeline after which I will no longer be buoyed by any shred of nostalgia, having ascended to the snottiest and most dismissive epoch in my extended adolescence. I don't recall ever having heard this before, but I am immediately struck by the Flashdance-adjacent aesthetic.
Trey:SilverHawks may be a lazy attempt to iterate another hit from the ThunderCats template (see also TigerSharks), but I think it's got a superior theme song to the original. It was composed by Bernard Hoffer who did a lot of work for Rankin-Bass but was nominated for an Emmy for composing the theme used in the PBS News Hour (originally The MacNeil-Lehrer Report).
Jason: The haunting refrain of the title elevates the pop appeal of this theme, while also delivering the first genuine guitar shredding (or is it synthesizer? Or, heaven forfend, keytar?) yet heard in this listing. This is another first listen for me, and the professional craftsmanship is again evident. It's almost like there's a few surefire formulae in this theme song game.
Trey: This iconic instrumental song with a futuristic (in now a very dated way) vibe was credited (as so many 80s and 90s cartoon theme songs were) to Haim Saban and Shuki Levy, but was written by Ron Wasserman who was under contract to Saban at the time. Wasserman says of the composition and recording in a 2022 interview: "I’d learned to play or emulate any instrument so I would have played every part. Just me, a MIDI keyboard, and a computer."
Jason: So iconic I know it, though I don't think I've watched a full episode of this series. While I am enjoying listening through this listing, maybe I'm starting to develop cartoon theme song fatigue at this point. Do I hear a bit of Miami Vice in this ditty, or have I taken leave of my senses?
Teen Titans (2003)
Trey: This was a well-written series with perhaps a deceptively cartoony look. The great power poppish theme song was written and performed by Japanese pop rock duo, Puffy AmiYumi.
Jason: This one I enjoy without resorting to ironic detachment or nostalgia of any kind. There's more than a small debt to Johnny Rivers' "Secret Agent Man," but it's so dang catchy all is forgiven.
Trey: My daughter loved this show when she was younger, and still revisits it's occasionally. It has a very catchy theme written and performed by Patrick Stump, who Wikipedia tells me is lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of Fall Out Boy.
Jason: Stump correctly ascertained that a Spidey theme needs to be propulsive enough to communicate the frantic action that will (presumably) follow. It's as good as any post-Fallout Boy emo tune I can currently recall (don't ask how many). Still, good stuff for the kids. Did your daughter enjoy the theme?
Over the summer, I decided to check out the men's adventure paperback series Fargo by John Benteen after discovering it was cheap on Kindle. I became aware of the series thanks to the upcoming graphic novel adaptation, Fargo: Hell on Wheels, by Howard Chaykin.
Amazon bills the series as a Westerns, and I suppose some of them are, in the same way The Professionals (1966) or Fist Full of Dynamite (aka Duck You Sucker) (1972) or other adventure films in Western locales are considered Westerns. They take place in the early 20th Century (1912-1915 in the ones I've read so far) and involve imagery and action out of Westerns (tough men in wild country on horseback with guns), but they involve a range of locales more again to traditional adventure pulp. They range to the jungles of the Philippines and Panama, as well as the more traditional Mexican desert or Yukon.
I've read reviews that refer to Fargo as sort of a "Western Conan." I can see what they mean in that Fargo is tough as hell, irresistible to women (apparently due to sheer manliness, as he is described as unhandsome and hardly has a scintillating personality), and good at most everything in his warrior and outdoorsman purview. However, Benteen's attention to detail regarding gear and preparation for obstacles his hero faces, and his penchant for pitting Fargo against enemies that appear to be a match for him, serve to make the series feel more grounded and realistic. Only slightly pulpy instead of completely so.
Benteen's prose is lean in the mid-Century way, not pulp purple. His action and dialog are punchy and mostly effective but without any lyricism or descriptive vistas despite their natural locales. Unfortunately but predictably given their genre and when they were written, they carry a strong streak of misogyny, some of the volumes more than others. There is also some cultural and racial insensitivity lurking in there too, but in the volumes I have read the narrative is generally sympathetic to both Native Americans and Latinos, though Fargo does exhibit some ill-feeling toward the Moro, who he fought in the Philippines.
They're all quick reads (under 200 pages) and fast-paced. So far I've read:
Fargo (vol 1): Set in 1914 during the Mexican Revolution, Fargo is hired to rescue an engineer (and his mine's haul of silver) from deep inside that war torn and escape bandits with revolutionary pretensions.
Panama Gold (vol 2): A prequel set in 1912. Fargo is asked by Teddy Roosevelt himself to investigate and thwart an attempt to foreign powers to use a mercenary army to sabotage the nearly completed Panama Canal.
Alaska Steel (vol 3) In 1914, Fargo is hired by a movie starlet to find her wayward husband so he can claim his oil money inheritance. The problem is, he has disappeared in the Yukon where he was seeking his fortune as a prospector.
Apache Raiders (vol 4) Fargo is back in Mexico in 1915, smuggling guns for Pancho Villa. He encounters a "lost" tribe of Apaches (a group that never got sent off to Florida) whose leader is planning a general Indian uprising.
Massacre River (vol 5) Perhaps the pulpiest of the stories I have read, Fargo is in the Philippines on a job to escort the daughter of a Chinese businessman to her arranged marriage. If Filipino insurgents weren't enough trouble, there is a family of wealthy, Confederate Lost Cause holdouts, looking to create a new empire and kicking the U.S. out of the islands.
In 2018, TwoMorrows released Comic Book Implosion by Keith Dallas and John Wells, which was an oral history of the DC's 1978 plan for an "Explosion" that ended in failure: The DC Implosion. I talked about the book here.
This year, Dallas and Wells came out with an expanded edition, this one with color. I haven't read it yet, but Amazon tells me it has "additional coverage of lost 1970s DC projects like Ninja the Invisible and an adaptation of “The Wiz,” Jim Starlin’s unaltered cover art for Batman Family #21."
I've been enjoying the latest incarnation of the Flash Gordon comic strip in digital format on the Comics Kingdomwebsite. Cartoonist Dan Schkade relaunched the series on October 22, 2023, and has been doing daily and Sunday installments ever since.
Schkade's series starts right after the defeat of Ming (in Raymond's 1941 strip) and tells the story of what happens as the uneasy alliances of the revolution fall apart and the different kingdoms jockey for power. I think it's a novel approach: something fresher than either a complete reboot we've seen so many times or bland "further adventures" in a world without a strong central conflict.
His design sensibility is strong too. It is broadly "classic," but draws a lot on the 80s film that many readers will be familiar with and adds modern, often light science fictional/space opera touches.
Schkade gave an interview to The Comics Journal regarding his approach here. You can check out the strip on Comics Kingdomhere.
Issue 3 of The Spider magazine (December 1933) is the debut of the writer most associated with the series, Norvell Page, writing under the house name Grant Stockbridge. This wasn't his first sell, but it was definitely his big break in the pulps, though he'll go on to other pulp work including creating the historical Sword & Sorcery character Hurricane John.
If Doc Savage kind of has the sensibility of an 80s action cartoon, Page's Spider novels are perhaps most like the 30s version of the lurid, bloody excess of late 80s-early 90s comics. His debut story, Wings of the Back Death, features New York City being held hostage by a madman threatening to unleash the bubonic plague unless he's paid off. Infectious disease is a big concern in these stories (the first systemic antibiotic had only been introduced in 1932); there's another Spider novel titled "The Cholera King."
Anyway, the first onscreen death of via the plague is a over the top scene where the children of a wealthy woman have been threatened and the Spider has seen that a police cordon is set up around the house. But the wily Black Death infects a cute puppy and sends it into the backyard! The children are playing with it under the eyes of the policeman as Spider runs toward them shouting "shoot the dog! shoot the dog!" He snatches up the little boy and does the puppy-killing himself.
Cut to the little boy dying horribly, spitting up blood, while the doctor and the Spider look on grimly and the kid's mother pounds on the door sobbing because they won't let her in!
Despite that, this one is actually a bit subdued compared to the high body counts and grisly deaths of later Page Spider novels.
In his analysis of the formulae or subgenres of the Mystery genre, Hoppenstand points out that the detective-avenger protagonist tends to pursue conservative ends, and their foes are often demonized anti-status quo forces. Here though, I think an alternative reading is possible. The Black Death is in his civilian identity a banker. He first blackmails not the city but wealthy individuals and all the graphic scenes of people dying of the plague involve the wealthier segments of society. It's true that the Spider's alter ego is a wealthy man, but he spends most of the novel being pursued by the Establishment as the police try to kill him even though he's out to save the city. It's true that in the end, it's revealed that the Black Death works for the advantage of some foreign power, but we are never told which and that's only revealed in one line of dialogue near the end. Wings of the Black Death seems to offer the vicarious thrill of getting to see the wealthy stripped of their privilege and dying of disease, and the spreader of the pestilence is an agent of the financial industry. A very topical foe for the Great Depression!
Page's story really moves. There is a lot of action, though also some movie serial-esque cliffhanger repetitiveness. There is, of course, some pulp clunkiness to the prose--none of the poetry here of a Clark Ashton Smith or even a Robert E. Howard--but I find it superior to say Lester Dent's work on Doc Savage.
I've been able to watch the entirety of the new Batman: The Caped Crusader show on Amazon Prime. The show brings Bruce Timm back to the animated Batman--thought also apparently features J.J. Abrams, Matt Reeves, and Ed Brubacker and executive producers.
Originally, the show was presented maybe as an update or maybe even continuation of Batman: The Animated Series and was to stream on Warner Bros' Max service, but neither of those things wound up being the case. Rather, BTCC ends as a kind of second take on some of the ideas behind BTAS, but also it has been updated for a 2024 audience.
Timm has said aesthetically he wanted to "blend the atmospherics of Universal horror movies and the drama of Warner Bros. gangster movies and the action of Republic serials and mix it all together with a lot of film noir on top." BTAS took place in a retro- decopunk 1990s, but BTCC seems more placed in a more of a relatively more grounded, alternate 1940s. There is much less high tech (no computers or bat-gadgets) and alas no police airships, but SWAT gear and psychiatric facilities seem unaccountably modern. Indeed, Arkham looks perhaps as modern on the inside as we've ever seen it. The racism and sexism of the 40s is understandably discarded in deference to modern sensibilities, and we get a multiethnic main cast (more so than the modern comics!).
This is a more "adult" perhaps, certainly grittier take. The Gotham Police department is corrupt, not unlike it was presented in Batman: Year One. I'm fine with this approach in that respect, but a focus on "realism" and noir means the villains are less flamboyant, and most seem likely "done in one," not recurrent menaces. While this adds some greater poignancy in some cases (the tragedy of Harvey Dent, for one), I don't know that it's worth the tradeoff.
In general, the cast is very good. Hamish Linklater may not quite deliver the goods as Batman/Bruce Wayne as well as the late, great Kevin Conroy, but he does a much better Batman voice than the majority of the live action portrayals. Everyone acquits themselves well, but I think Minnie Driver wasn't the right choice for the Penguin.
At the end of the day, I definitely think it was worth seeing, and I do hope it gets a second season, but I liked some aspects of BTAS better. High points here are the re-imaging of Harley Quinn and the character arc for Bruce Wayne/Batman who is clearly early in his career.
The short-lived Fantastic Four radio program debuted in 1975 and ran for 13. It adapts 13 issues of comic and featured a young Bill Murray as Johnny Storm!
The style of the show is somewhere between Old Time Radio and an audiobook, meaning it has a full cast and sound effects, but relies much more on narration than is typical of OTR.
The entire show can be found several places on the internet, but here it is on Youtube:
In 1985, NPR ran a Doc Savage serial in the style of old-time radio. The series adapted two of the original novels by Lester Dent Fear Cay and The Thousand-Headed Man, in 13 episodes. The latter adaptation was done by Will Murray, who has also penned original Doc Savage novels.
The series was released on CD by Radio Archives, but it also appears to be available on a couple of places on the internet, including here.
I finally got around to watching Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny this past weekend. I liked it more than I expected, and some quibbles aside, I think it's a nice ending to the series.
It got me to thinking about the Indiana Jones film series in general, and I realized something that I hadn't before. An internet search tells me I'm not the first to have the basic idea--maybe even Lucas has said things that alluded to it, but no one has really looked at the implications over the whole series.
The Indiana Jones films can be viewed as a series of unsuccessful attempts to bring the protagonist to redemption and the end of his arc.
The Arc and the Ark
The Indiana Jones of Raiders of the Lost Ark is not a good guy. This has been obscured a bit by him becoming a franchise hero and a pop cultural figure, but it's clear in the first film. I don't just mean with in regard to the colonialist elements of his work and adventures when viewed through a 2024 lens, I mean textually. Indiana Jones is a thief, as the opening sequence shows us. Maybe he steals artifacts to put them in museums instead of for the black market, but it's still theft and he's paid for it. The major difference between him and Belloq is that Belloq chooses to work with the Nazis and that's a step too far for Indy.
Let's not forgot he also enters a relationship with his mentor's teenage daughter when he's in his mid-twenties, then runs off and abandons her.
All of this was intentional because one of the inspirations for the character of Indiana Jones and his appearance was the roguish Harry Steele (Charlton Heston) in Secret of the Incas (1954). At the end of that film, Steele has at least partially been reformed by the love of a good woman--and conflict with antagonists more villainous than himself.
It's a lot like what happens to Indy in Raiders. He reconnects and rekindles his relationship with Marion, and he becomes motivated to stop the power of the Ark from falling into Nazi hands. In the end, the cynic and skeptic comes to respect the Ark's power and survives the apocalyptic judgement on the evildoers it unleashes. He and Marion head off together in a happy ending.
Back to the Temple of Doom
Really, Raiders seems like it's meant to be the ending to Indy's story. He gets his redemption and heads off into the sunset. The first sequel, Temple of Doom, respects this arc by being a prequel. It's a story of the old Indy before he met the Ark. Sure, he does return the stones to the village they belong to rather than steal them, but he was always a rogue with a heart of gold, so the occasional lapse into heroic action is allowable.
The only problem with ToD from this perspective, I think, is that Indy encounters the supernatural, which the Indy of Raiders seems skeptical of until he sees it in action. One would think he would be more of a believer if he had encountered such things before. I think this is the first indication of a formula beginning to develop.
Grails, Skulls, and Dials
The subsequent films are all sequels to Raiders, and more then ToD, tend to follow its formula. In order to do this, they have to backtrack a bit, not necessarily unrealistically, on Indy's redemption arc. Also, he's a bit less in need of that redemption because he's portrayed somewhat more heroically in these films. Nevertheless, we get the arc repeated with Indy reconciling with his father, reconciling with his son, his goddaughter, and again reconciling with Marion (in two films!). As with Raiders, a supernatural force and a battle with evil to possess it (and a realization that it can't be possessed) is the vehicle for this reconciliation. The needs of the franchise demand he never fully learns his lesson and gets his happy ending.
Last Crusade adds another interesting element that highlights this arc in case anyone was missing it. We have a flashback where the young Indiana Jones is in conflict with a treasure-hunter who is almost a double of his adult self over the Cross of Coronado. In the context of the more heroic version of Indy that developed since Raiders, Indy's "it belongs in a museum!" focus is contrasted with the venal treasure hunter. But curiously, the young Indy explicitly models his adult style on this hunter. The film remembers what the franchise is trying to forget. Adult Indiana was pretty much indistinguishable with the treasure hunter until he encounters the Ark.
I think the best part of Kirby's Fourth World Saga is the arc revealing the events leading up to the current war between New Genesis and Apokopolips that begins in New Gods #7 (1971) and culminates in Mister Miracle #9 (1972). It is not really the story of a warrior, but rather that of a man who runs away from war. Scott Free is an escape artist, and what he wants to escape is others defining who he is.
Izaya the Highfather may have given his only begotten son to avoid war with New Genesis, but we see little in the way of paternal affection toward that son even after his escape. Indeed, both rulers are in a very real sense more fatherly toward the boy they fostered than the one that is actually their kin. It's Darkseid, the horrifically authoritarian parent, that seems to want Scott Free on his team and gives him a pitch like Darth Vader gave to Luke:
Perhaps Scott Free is genetically or spiritually predisposed toward goodness, but it's Himon, the inventor hiding in the slums of Apokolips, a benevolent serpent in Darkseid's anti-Eden, that puts him on the path away from being a cog in the Apokolips war machine. Himon helps him make his first and perhaps greatest escape. And that's what he does. And that's what he keeps doing.
If the new gods are actually gods, well, Mister Miracle would be the sort classified as a dying-and-rising deity, like Adonis or Tammuz--or Jesus. He's sent to Hell as an infant but escapes not to return to the Heaven of New Genesis but to go to Earth. His career (and comic) become about ritually recapitulating this act, escaping death again and again.
Scott Free in Kirby's stories is not an active participant in the gods' war. Steve Gerber, the second writer to follow Kirby on the Mister Miracle title makes explicit what Kirby only implies: Scott Free has a vision of the warring gods as racers going round and round a track. To join in is to be stuck in the loop. Scott Free's destiny, this story tells us, is to become a messiah and offer a different way. This messianic element is certainly not explicit in Kirby's issues; on the other hand, Scott Free recruits Big Barda to his defection, and she in turn brings along the Female Furies. He also gets a disciple in the form of Shilo Norman. His stage name proclaims his wondrous nature: Mister Miracle.
We'll never know where Kirby's Mister Miracle might have done, ultimately. The summer of 1972 saw the end of Kirby's run on two of his Fourth World titles, Forever People and New Gods with their 11th issues. Mister Miracle escaped their fate for a few more issues, but most aspects of Kirby's wider mythology were dropped from the title, in favor of more off-beat superheroics of the sort Kirby would bring to Captain America and Falcon and Black Panther upon his return to Marvel. Since that time, Mister Miracle, like all the New Gods characters have been stuck in that loop Gerber warned about, cycling toward different creators' visions of their Neo-Ragnarok.
The story in New Gods #7 reveals the pact that had maintained a truce between New Genesis and Apokolips and the origins of Orion and Scott Free, infants exchanged to be raised on worlds not their own. Orion became a warrior for good, albeit one constantly challenged by his nature. Scott Free was given over to Granny Goodness to be trained to conformity, perhaps to become another cog in the Apokolips machine, except that his nature wins out and he escapes. Mister Miracle #7 (1971) has Scott and Barda return to Apokolips to face the horrors of their upbringing and its architect.
The social order of Apokolips is a little hard to fathom. On one hand, we are shown Granny's fascist training camp orphan where conformity and submersion of individuality is all important. On the other hand, the villains from Apokolips bedeviling the heroes of the Fourth World titles are a diverse, even eccentric, lot. It's unclear how many of the villains we see are a product of Granny's tutelage, but certainly Virmin Vundabar and at least some of the Female Furies seem to be.
I suspect some of the Apokolipsians (Doctor Bedlam, Desaad, Kanto) are products of the older, aristocratic society of Steppenwolf and Heggra that Darkseid has transformed into a fascist state. The others are probably the most "successful" graduates of Granny's schooling. These strong-willed enough to retain some individuality, while still being conditioned for Darkseid's service. This presumably is the outcome Darkseid intended for Scott Free. Unless the irony of the son of High Father being merely a faceless grunt in his army appealed to him. This seems unlikely to me, because Darkseid seems more calculating than pointlessly cruel.
Mister Miracle #7 gives us our most extended look yet at the hell that is Apokolips. It's an armed camp emblazoned with grim, fascistic slogans. Workers are dressed something like a combination of Medieval serfs and German work camp prisoners. Here, they're attacked by Kanto, an assassin who looks like he grabbed his style from the Italian Rennaissance. He's a man of honor after a fashion. He let's Free and Barda go out of respect. His sort of evil is out of place in the more mechanized, modern Apokolips.
I had intended to talk about Mister Miracle #6 and Funky Flashman this week, but instead I read Forever People #8 (on sale February 1972), and I feel like that better encapsulates the oddness of what Kirby was doing with the Fourth World saga.
There is a lot going on in this issue. A man known as Billion-Dollar Bates lives out in the desert with a barrier and deserted town guarded by para-military private security. He's involved with a Satanic cult called "The Sect" who has a ritual space beneath his mansion and wears weird looking masks. He's holding a group of prominent citizens against their will with some "power."
If that isn't enough, someone is infiltrating Bates' compound, wearing the masks of the Sect, and killing his guards. Then the Forever People show up.
Ultimately, we discover that Bates (like time-lost Sonny Sumo) has the "Anti-Life Equation," the innate ability to control minds. Unlike the virtuous Sumo, who worried about ever using the power, Bates has made himself wealth and powerful--and still has the desire to gloat to others about his deeds. It ends badly for him:
The infiltrators are Darkseid and his minions. And accident keeps Darkseid from the Anti-Life Equation: bullets through Bates. This is the second time Kirby has introduced the Equation in the flesh, and the second time he takes it off the table. Presumably he feels if it's ever here to stay he's reached the climax of his story.
With his ribbon tie, big cigar, and jowled face, Mister Bates is a rich man caricature. His very name hints at the self-gratifying nature of his use of the power and the way he has lived his life. He also fancied himself a "wheeler dealer," he tells his captives, but then the Sect revealed the true nature of his power. His life blessings almost literally derive from Satan.
The weirdest thing in this issue is, when confronted with the Forever People, Darkseid starts sort of playing drill sergeant and lines them up to berate them. Later Darkseid reveals it was a ruse to throw the Forever People off-guard, suggesting he fears them a bit. It's not at all how Darkseid is portrayed in the modern DCU.
One thing that virtually all of the continuations of the Fourth World saga by other hands seem to miss is that it isn't just a superhero action epic, but like all good mythologies, there are things going on beneath the surface.
New Gods #6 (on sale in October of 1971), continues Orion's struggle against the Deep Six, a group of Apokiliptian fishmen with the ability to mutate other lifeforms. They are not the best villains of the saga by any means, but Kirby uses them in issue 5 to reveal things about Orion, and in this issue, "Glory Boat!" to tell an allegorical story about war and its human cost.
The setup is almost Biblical. A great sea creature recalling Leviathan and all the primeval, Chaos monsters of the depths, a family, emblematic of humanity as a whole: the bellicose and overbearing father, the "conscientious objector" son, and the daughter who doesn't get to do much between the two's bickering. God of war Orion also has someone to play off here, his friend, Lightray, embodying the enlightenment of New Genesis.
Where Orion's instinct is to destroy his foes, Lightray strives to show a better way, to rehabilitate. He succeeds in transforming one of the Deep Six's creatures into the service of our heroes. Unfortunately, for the humans, the Deep Six are drawn back to the boat.
The father freezes, having some sort of breakdown when confronted with the creatures. The son, the peacenik, goes on the offensive, attacking the Apokoliptian Jafar. Jafars kills him, mutating his face into that of a featureless, metallic mannequin. Lightray opines that the war has taken "another faceless hero."
Lashed to the mast, the father bears witness to what is to come. Orion and Lightray take the son's body and launch themselves into a possibly final attack against the remaining Deep Three, in an epic two page spread.
But Lightray and Orion are not destined for some Neo-Vahalla just yet. The boy goes "to the Source" and the New Gods live to fight another day. The father, still on the mast amid the wreckage of the ship is left to wonder (as Kirby tells us): "What is a man in the last analysis--his philosophy or himself?"
It's heavy-handed perhaps, but no more so than work of the writers that would come to be seen as seminal figures of the 70s leading the "maturation" of comics.
Back during the pandemic, I realized I had not read the entirety of Jack Kirby's run on his so-called "Fourth World" titles at DC in the 1970s (Forever People, Mister Miracle, and New Gods, and ok, it starts in Jimmy Olsen, but I'm not reading that) since the black and white collections of 1999, so it seemed like a good time to revisit the series. I did that in a haphazard fashion, and these are the notes I made at the time...
These titles were supposedly an attempt to write a new mythology for the modern age, an idea Kirby had had at Marvel, but never got to execute. The titles are interrelated but not strongly interlinked (not unlike Morrison's Seven Soldiers over 30 years later). Last night I read Mister Miracle #3 and 4 both published in 1971.
Mister Miracle tells the story of Scott Free, a man from another world, who befriends, and then assumes the stage persona of an aging escape artist known as Mister Miracle. While Free's athletic and escape abilities are impressive, he accomplishes most of his escapes by using advanced alien technology. Scott Free is being hunted by agents of the planet Apokolips. So far, we've seen their human, organized crime agents, Intergang, and the monstrous orphanage matron, Granny Goodness.
Issue #3 introduces us to Doctor Bedlam. Bedlam is a being of pure thought, and very malign thought at that. His psychic assault upon Mister Miracle and his assistant, Oberon, is almost Satanic (or maybe Outer God-like) in intensity--only Free's "Mother Box" device protects them.
Bedlam draws Free into a trap in an office building. After a confrontation with what is essentially an android body possessed by Bedlam, Free must make his way through 50 floors of people turned into violent suffers of psychosis by Bedlam's "paranoia pills."
Bedlam is a great concept, particularly within the Apokolipsian pantheon, who all are some sort of aspect of oppression. His name comes from the nickname of Bethlehem Royal Hospital, which at one time represented the most frightening and dehumanizing aspects of mental asylums. Bedlam seems a personification of the snake pit asylum. He is almost literal madness in human form, or rather in the form of a number of faceless automata--suggesting the evil of systems, not individual actors.
Free's escape through 50 stories is likewise a great story conceit that would work well today. The choice of a single office building and an urban setting as opposed to some sort of small town or even city street, seems to suggest the deleterious mental effects of corporate employment, or maybe the paranoia induced by office politics. It's not hard to see Kirby's experiences at Marvel as informing these choices.
As good as it all is, Kirby seems to have a dilemma as to how to deal with the amazing feats of his super-escape artist. The "trick" of the last three of Mister Miracle's daring escapes are related to Oberon as he and Scott make dinner, and all involve the use of one really versatile device. Oberon's response seems to sort of lampshade the shakiness of it all:
The other weak spot is a couple of panels of Big Barda (who is introduced this issue). Perhaps is was the inker (Vince Colletta) that let him down, but I suspect being a one-man band essentially on some many titles just sometimes led to him being rushed.
Despite the attention lavished on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, and even Star Trek or the Alien universe, I feel like the science fiction franchise most consistent in quality is the Planet of the Apes. Sure, it's not without its duds (Burton's film) and lesser lights (the last original film, the cartoon, perhaps), but the Wyatt/Reeves reboot?/prequel? series of the 2010s defied sequel gravity and only got better as it went along. (To me, anyway. Some would say Dawn was the high point. Either way, War was still good.)
When Reeves left and Disney acquired Fox, I had some trepidation about where the series would go. Happily, it seems like Wes Ball has things well enough in hand, at least with this first installment. While it's not as good as the best of the 2010s series, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was more enjoyable and more substantial than any other existing-franchise entry I've seen in the theater since the end of the pandemic--though perhaps that's damning with faint praise.
Anyway, it's "many generations" after the time of Caesar. He has become a mythic/religious figure. His name is borrowed. and his legacy evoked by an up-and-coming bonobo tyrant who (like King Louie in the Jungle Book) wants the technology of humankind. He needs (ape) slave labor to get it at it and a mysterious, young human woman, so when he captures Noa's village and kills his father, the young chimpanzee makes common cause with the human.
There are hints of Beneath of the Planet of the Apes in here, and (perhaps unintentional, perhaps not) Biblical echoes with a hero named "Noa," but those are as they should be with an ape installment. The special effects are amazing, and it makes me mad the Marvel Cinematic Universe films often seem sloppy. I guess when your whole premise requires motion capture, you have to get that thing right.
I miss Andy Serkis here like everybody else, but he trained the new cast of apes well. It probably could have been a bit shorter, particularly for a film that is a lot about establishing a new conflict, but I'm not immediately sure what I would have cut.
All that to say, if you liked the previous ape films you should see this one. If you haven't seen any of the new apes films (which lately I've discovered a large group of folks that haven't) then you should see those and see this one.
You can also check out the watch and commentary Jason "Operation Unfathomable" Sholtis and I did of the much less good but still entertaining 70s Planet of the Apes TV show.
Story Title:"Smell of Brimstone, Stench of Death!"
Penciller: Dave Gibbons
Writer: Mike W. Barr
Inker: Gary Martin
Letterer: Dave Gibbons, Gaspar Saladino
Colorist: Adrienne Roy
Trey: This comic was the end of the road for The Brave and the Bold, a series that started in 1955. It was initially an anthology book of adventure strips featuring the likes of the Silent Knight, the Viking Prince, the Golden Gladiator, and Robin Hood, but with issue 25 it got a makeover as a "try out" book for new concepts/characters. The original Suicide Squad got their start here, as did the Silver Age Hawkman, and then in #28 a little group you may have heard debuted: The Justice League of America.
With issue #50, it became a team-up title, and with issue #74, exclusively a Batman team-up book. The title was the first to feature Neal Adams on Batman and the place where Adams' redesign of Green Arrow debuted.
I didn't know any of that stuff when I read this issue as a kid, though. What captivated me about this issue was this was the first place I was exposed to the idea of Earth-One and Earth-Two. Here was a Batman and Robin that acted like the ones I was used to in the cartoon, and then this darker, serious (and somehow sadder to 10 year-old me due to his Robin-lessness) other Batman.
Jason: The contrast between the golden age pastiche and the state-of-the-art early 80s Batman (and the Earths portrayed here is stark, both in style and substance. I felt a pang that the kinder, gentler, zanier Batman of old depicted here was by this time no longer available in the comics. The Earth-Two stories I remember from the Adventure Comics a handful of years before this were as modern and "adult" as anything else on the stands at the time. Earth-Two Batman was already officially, canonically "dead", at least as much as can be managed in the comics!
Trey: In the main story, Earth-Two Nicholas Lucien is a B-grade villain with a devil gimmick who is defeated by Batman and Robin and put into a long coma by a head injury. He revives 28 years later in Arkham to find himself an old man, and Batman dead and thus beyond his vengeance. Unwilling to accept this, he mentally reaches out to that other him he always sensed existed, a respectable businessman on Earth-One. He essentially possesses that version of himself to execute a terroristic plan to lure Earth-One Batman into a trap and kill him.
And then, there was a preview for a brand new comic! Batman and the Outsiders. New comics with a whole slate of new (some just to me, some completely new) characters. That was not the sort of thing that happened every day, in my experience.
Jason: Indeed! With no generic filler or reprints, this special double-size issue delivers bang for the buck admirably, especially for its era.
Trey: The main story isn't as mindblowing as I found it to be as a child, but I still think it's a good one, in no small part to Gibbons shifting art styles for Earth-One and Earth-Two. I also think Brimstone as a good central motif for a Batman villain and could have been used more, though I do like the implication that Golden Age Gotham might have been awash in theatrical criminal wannabes and almost-wases. I also think it's a nice twist that the so-called World's Greatest Detective never knows what exactly was going on here.
Jason: The opening pastiche sets the tone for the level of realism one is to expect from this incarnation of the Caped Crusader. By the time we're asked to swallow the whole possession from another, more cartoony reality angle, the premise seems perfectly reasonable in the context of this tale and we need not ask questions. The Golden Age sequence was delightful, and the incrementally more sober Late Bronze Age sequence delivered as well.
Gibbons turns in a hell of a job here. His trademark precision and beautifully rendered backgrounds, his eye for meaningful details (one of the hoods' cartoony cauliflower ear, etc.), and his ability to present multiple styles that transition seamlessly elevate this work and render harmless any flaws in the story. It's an early career tour de force, I tell you!
Trey: It's also billed as a Batman and Batman team-up, but the two Batmen never meet.
Jason: The cover is nebulous enough to fit within the ethical standards of comics of the day. It doesn't actually guarantee anything. Never trust a cover, as the savvy spinner-rack devotee of 1983 already knew!
