Comic Book Brain
Fast Reviews:
Spiderman into the Spider-Verse - Complex animation effort combining CGI with comic book half-toning, plus a myriad of other effects, presenting one of the best truly comic book visually-derived films to date. Story is no slouch either, with Columbia Pictures somehow doing Marvel better than Marvel has been of late. I went into the film dreading the boredom of having Uncle Ben getting laid low (again) and the pity-party travails of Peter Parker, instead Spiderverse is a whole team of similar "Parkers" pulled together from other dimensions (one's a talking pig, Spider-Ham), each with similar back stories and dilemmas, but each individually different. Spiderverse has the interesting contrast of a nearly perfect blonde Peter Parker getting killed and replaced by a "loser" dark-haired Peter Parker who has to take over a job he doesn't want, training a schoolkid Spider-Man name Miles Moreles. They have to all get it together to stop an evil (female) Doc Ock and Kingpin who is determined to somehow regain his dead wife and son by plucking them from another dimension, apparently abusing string-theory, the idea that multiple universes are spawned by variables in outcomes. A surprisingly entertaining and better film than expected.
Aquaman - This DC Comics movie is sabotaged in places by it's heavy CGI and tendency for too much pauses in the action to explain Atlantean mythology, politics and Aquaman's background, something that seemed easier to grasp as the actors talked to each other and did things versus the sudden narrative voices popping into the film, slowing everything down and turning it into sort of a slide show. These segments aside, the rest of the movie is a fairly quick-footed adventure tale in which Aquaman (Jason Momea) has to come to terms with a crown he doesn't want (he's a bastard son but all the same first in line of royal succession for the secretive Atlantic kingdom) and he and Mera (Amber Heard) have to run around the globe a bit to sort out what to do about the fact Aquaman's half-brother (Patrick Wilson) wants the crown and Aquaman dead. This global trip gives the film an epic feel much more than the gargantuan amounts of CGI endlessly pushing across the screen. How do Atlantans live? What do they eat? Are there TVs in their living rooms? Why are they always dressed in golden Lord of the Rings armor? No idea, but we see millions of them swimming around, but never get any sense of what they are other than underwater humans complaining about surface humans, and filling up a watery stadium to watch the two half-brothers fight each other. Black Manta is in the story, too (played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) but it is peripheral to the main family fight of Aquaman's lineage. For all the money spent on this - $200 million is reported - one expects a smoother-run tale.
Origin Story
Under Frank Miller's Christmas tree:
Mattel Games Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots: Batman v. Superman Edition
Stan Lee - 1922 - 2018
Born December 28, 1922 with the name Stanley Martin Lieber. Usually billed as the original creator for Amazing Spider-Man and many other Marvel Comics characters, nearly 100% cameo appearances in Marvel-based movies, and perhaps the most famous in the popular imagination as the man most associated with comic books.
The basic history of Stan Lee is that he got his position because in the early days of Timely Comics (which became Marvel later) his cousin Jean Goodman, married to Martin Goodman, a publisher in New York City, needed help in his rapidly expanding business. Not quite 18 years old in 1940, Stanley Lieber joined Goodman's payroll as an assistant working for Joe Simon (who had co-created Captain America with Jack Kirby), becoming one more relative on Goodman's list of employees. The Timely offices specialized in using freelancers to fill up their pages, but Goodman's relatives were there to make sure the core publishing business (which did more than comics) was run efficiently. Lieber's duties eventually included some writing work, fill-in material that wasn't even illustrated, and in between chores as mundane as sweeping the floor, Lieber changed his name to Stan Lee for purposes of keeping his legal name "clean" from the stigma of comic books (then looked upon as one of the lowest ranks of publishing) so he could use his birth name later as a novelist , screenplay writer of playwright.
Official Marvel history (which I guess is now really Disney history) is that Stan Lee imbued his tales with a message when he wrote them, and that he was (along with the sometimes mentioned Jack Kirby) on the cutting edge of civil rights and other social history movements in America, as much as that they existed in comic books in the 1960s, and that under his tutelage Marvel Comics broke barriers for minority representation and on top of that used a writing style in his personally authored tales that pushed the boundaries of what comic books could be.
This 1960s resume demonstrates that Stanley Lieber did not get free from comic books, that he stayed with the business as it evolved each decade, and in fact he eventually legally changed his name to the disguise, becoming "Stan Lee" because, he would explain, it just got too complicated having two different identities.
By the 1980s Stan Lee was on the West Coast to manage Marvel properties, trying to guide them toward success in TV and movies so to boost licensing sales, something which was financially overshadowing actual comic book printing profits which were steadily decreasing across the entire industry. The future for the characters was elsewhere, and Lee wanted California climate and proximity to deal-making for that future. I took until the release of X-Men in July 2000 to show that this jump was clearly a giant success.
Tony DeZuniga
November 8, 1932 – May 11, 2012
DeZuniga co-created the Jonah Hex and Black Orchid. DeZuniga was the first Filipino comic book artist whose work was accepted by American publishers, which paved the way for many other Filipino artists to break into the international comic book industry.
Len Wein - 1948 - 2017
Leonard Norman Wein (born in New York City) was a longtime comic book writer for DC Comics, Marvel and other publications. His writing also was a part of many TV and films: Young Justice, Batman Bad Blood, Deadpool movie, the Swamp Thing films, and others.
Credited with creating and co-creating many well known characters, such as Storm (Ororo Munro) and Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler) of the X-Men, co-creating Wolverine, and co-creating Swamp Thing (with Berni Wrightson), rebooting Cheetah (nemesis of Wonder Woman), creating Amanda Waller of Suicide Squad, and also Lucius Fox at "Wayne Enterprises."
Some Obits:
Len Wein, Legendary Comics Writer and Editor, Dies at 69 - CBR
Len Wein, Wolverine Co-Creator and ‘X-Men’ Reviver, Dies at 69 - msn.com
Wolverine and Swamp Thing Co-Creator Len Wein Has Died - Comic Book
Len Wien Passes Away At 69 - newsarama
Lucius Fox creator Len Wein has died - batman-news.com
Comics Writer & Editor And Transformers Scriptwriter Len Wein Passes Away At Age 69 - tformers.com
Berni Wrightson
Official Bernie Wrightson web site
An influential comic book artist who began with various small print run independent comics in the 1960s and then became an integral part of DC Comics' mystery books of the 1970s. He branched out into personal projects (like his illustrated Frankenstein) and Hollywood design work. Along with Len Wein, Wrightson is co-creator of Swamp Thing.
Born October 27, 1948, in Dundalk, Maryland
Died March 18, 2017, Austin,Texas
Art by McCave, Colors by Zombie President
Art by Kudzu
Concerning Green Lantern
All-American Comics #16, July 1940
Unemployed artist Martin Nodell needed work in 1940, went to visit the offices of All--American Comics, showed his art samples and was told to come back with superhero ideas. Completely unfamiliar with superheroes, Nodell walked to the subway, saw a workman with a green railroad lantern, and promptly dreamed up the idea of an avenging hero who is powered by a ring which is equally powered by the light from a green lantern - thus was The Green Lantern conceived.
Superhero Popeye
Segar's Popeye is a unique figure. Bill Blackbeard argues Popeye is the original first "superhero," predating Superman by years. Kids and teens of today may find it hard to reconcile what they picture as a "super hero" with the image of a sailor man whose super power lies in eating his spinach.
But the proof of Popeye's superhero bone fides lies in the argument that Popeye gained super strength from a can of spinach and that's how he defeated his foes, not completely dissimilar to gamma rays.
In his essay "The First (Arf, Arf) Superhero of them All," from the book All In Color for A Dime, published 1970, Blackbeard's description of the Popeye that Elzie Crisler Segar created back in January 17, 1929, is the best one I've ever read:
"Segar's Popeye is a character compounded of vulgarity and compassion, raw aggression, and protective gentleness, violent waterfront humor and genuine 'senskibiliky,' thickheaded stubbornness and imaginative leadership, brutal enmity and warm friendship, who knock out a 'horsk' in a rage and nurses a baby carefully while it is suffering a fever that makes thermometers pop. He is no paranoid daydream, but a realistic, complex, often wrong but determined man of action who suffers continual agonies of decision, who pursues what he believes to be right far beyond the bounds of cop-interpreted law and order, who has to fight his very way to comprehensibility through the warp and woof of an English language that is often almost too much for him."(Page 94, paperback edition)
Blackbeard goes on to summarize the Popeye phenomenon of that era by saying that the popularity of the little sailor far outstripped anything enjoyed by the costumed heroes in capes and masks that began to appear after him, and the Fleisher cartoon versions for movie theatres drew many more people than ever showed up for the Superman and Batman serials that played at local bijou's. All of that underscores how much America has changed, as Popeye has become a fringe character in the current pop art character pantheon.
Besides Popeye, Segar also used his page space provided by Hearst to run another strip titled "Sappo." In this space Segar also provided the artwork for the original reason Hearst brought him in: "Thimble Theatre," a miniature 'movie theatre' diorama, which was a substitute for a previous strip series called "Minute Movies" by a different artist. Popeye was the unexpected phenomenon growing from a minor side character to an already established comic strip.
Elzie Crisler Segar was born December 8, 1894, and died October 13, 1938 at the age of 43 from complications of liver disease. Segar debuted his cartooning career with "Thimble Theatre" on December 19, 1919, the strip featured the characters Olive Oyl, Castor Oyl, and Ham Gravy. In a January 17, 1929 episode of the strip, the character Castor Oyl goes to find a sailor to navigate his ship to Dice Island, his name: Popeye.
