A Bigger Implosion

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'm eager to check it out.

Gordon's Alive!

I've been enjoying the latest incarnation of the Flash Gordon comic strip in digital format on the Comics Kingdom website. 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 Kingdom here.

The Spider: Wings of the Black Death (1933)

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.

Batman: The Caped Crusader Review

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.

Flashback Radio: Fantastic Four (1975)

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:

Flashback Radio: The Adventures of Doc Savage (1985)

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.

Some Thoughts on the Indiana Jones Franchise

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.