Film Flashback: Dragon Inn (1967)

During a Criterion sale earlier this summer, I picked up Dragon Inn, a 1967 Taiwanese wuxia film directed by King Hu. I had seen Hu's Come Drink with Me (1966) from Shaw Brothers Studio and liked it so I decided to give this one a try. 

The titular Dragon Gate Inn is in sparse populated border area in northwest 15th-century China. There, three martial artists become involved in a plot by the power-hungry eunuch, Cao Shaoqin, and his ruthless Eastern Depot agents to assassinate the exiled family of a minister who was framed for treason and executed.

Hu's desert setting, design of the inn, and framing of the landscape recall Hollywood Westerns and perhaps Italian ones. His approach to fight choreography and fight scenes are swift and close quarters, at least until the final battle, more like Japanese chanbara films of the era than the wirework and dance like choreography of a lot of wuxia.

The toning of down of some (some!) of the eccentricities of the wuxia genre, and the Western style setup of a group of competent strangers defending an isolated location against the badguys makes this a good "gateway" wuxia to show someone new to the genre.

DC in the Early 80s

 Over on my other blog, I've been chronicling the week-by-week offerings of DC Comics from January 1980 cover dates to the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths in December, 1985 (cover date March 1988). I thought it would be interesting to compare the titles being published at the beginning of that period and those published at the end as an indicator of the change DC experienced over this period. 

So here are the DC publications in January of 1980 (cover dare April 1980):

In this list, superhero titles share the stands with war, horror, Western, Sword & Sorcery, and science fiction titles. These make up over 40% of the total offerings. Batman and Superman titles make up over 50% of the 15 superhero comics.

In lists to follow, ongoing titles are in black, new ongoings are in green, limited series in blue, and series that were cancelled from one list to the next are in red.

Here are the publications in July of 1983 (cover date October 1983), halfway between my chosen start and end points:

Ten of the 1980 titles are no more, and 7 of those cancelled titles were non-superhero books. Only House of Mystery remains of the old horror line. Still, it isn't a complete shift to superheroes. Of the new titles we have Sword & Sorcery (Arak) and high fantasy (Amethyst and Arion), war (Blackhawk), and horror (Saga of the Swamp Thing). I suppose Omega Men could be considered a science fiction or at least space opera book of a sort, too. What is definitely disappearing is anthology books, though. G.I. Combat and House of Mystery are the only two left.

Limited series, a relatively new phenomenon, account for 4 of the current series (I miscolored Ronin).

Now, let's take a look at the comics being published in December of 1985 (cover date March 1986):

Sixteen of the series in 1980 are now gone, and those include Wonder Woman and World's Finest with runs back to the Golden Age, and Flash, that ushered in the Silver Age. Teen Titans, the Outsiders, and the Legion of Super-Heroes join Batman and Superman in the ranks of heroes with multiple books, though theirs exist to capitalize on the different tastes of the direct market. The Tales of books are also both reprint series.

Of the new titles in the '83 list, only the superhero or superhero adjacent titles (Swamp Thing and Omega Men) are still around. Of 31 ongoing titles, only 7 are non-superhero books (not counting the genre-straddling Omega Men).

Limited series are even more common than in '83 as are licensed books. There are two ongoing series (Star Trek and V) of licensed properties.

Return of the Avatar

 My daughter has been rewatching Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender, so it was serendipitous when I saw the news the other day that the sequel film Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender was going to be released to Paramount+ later this month!

I've known about the upcoming film for some time that fills in some of the period between the series A:TLA and The Legend of Korra, but I was expecting it in October, because that was its original release date. Speculation on the internet suggests this moved up release date had to do with the film getting leaked to the internet back in April. It's unfortunate that this may have led to the cancelling of the release to theaters, but an earlier date is welcome.

Here's the final trailer for the film:

Another Reminder You Should be Reading Flash Gordon

I've praised Dan Schkade's on-going run on the Flash Gordon comic strip on King Feature's Comics Kingdom (and apparently still in some newspapers), but I felt like I should do so again. It's really good, so I don't want you to forget it.

Historically, those that followed Raymond on the strip have stuck to the formula of fantasy adventure in exotic locales. Some of the early authors also mimicked the Raymond strips frequent love-triangle melodrama, but that seems to have fallen away in later years. What came in instead though is a tendency to use only the sandbox of the Raymond years as canon rather than the interplanetary adventures of creators than followed.

Schkade's follows the sticking to Mongo approach and seems to stick mostly with a "Raymond years only" canon, though there are occasional nods to later writers and to Flash in other media beyond the strip. What Schkade adds that no one else has (outside of some of the comic book versions) is a further depth to the world. The various rulers of Mongo have their own motivations and political aspirations that made them allies against Ming, but rivals in the post-Ming world. Ming has a backstory and point of view that makes him understandable if no more commendable. As in the strip above, we get the point of view of someone who follows him.

Schkade does this without changing the essential nature of the strip from fast-paced adventure. It's a worthy addition to Flash Gordon's storied history, and I hope it gets collected in a physical format one day.