Bad Duck! Halloween Challenge Night 10

 When I was a youngster the Simian house was not awash with the comic form. We had, it would be fair to describe, an ‘assortment’ of juvenile reading material beyond an admittedly not bad selection of classic literature courtesy of the Children’s Library collection. But beyond the Robinson Cruesoes and Robin Hoods, your graphic narrative examples were lean pickings: some Disney Time magazines, the odd pickup from a church fair, the obligatory Phantom one-off, and a random assortment of Gold Key Comics, offering such variety as Tarzan, Star Trek, and Disney Characters. It was the latter that held most of my interest – particularly the Donald Ducks and Goofies, two of what I still regard as the heavy lifters of Uncle Walt’s menagerie.

One particular favourite of the Double D's was Trick or Treat, in which The Don met his comeuppance via the agent of Chaotic Good, Witch Hazel which he behaves like an absolute rotter to his becostumed, door-knocking nephews. It’s a great story, told with economy and illustrated by the reliable Carl Barks, and I treasured that issue. We lost it in a reliable Mum Purge in time, of course, but the memory lingered long after.

Recent gob smacking discovery was mine then when I found the ORIGINAL ANIMATION on Disney Plus – complete with jaunty song (which sounded quite unlike the simple mute rhyme in the comic version). It was a thrilling find, matching my memory of the strip so very closely it was as though it had come to life. The reality of course is the reverse – the comic was the adaptation, and even expanded the story – so, maybe a mission then to find a copy…

Donald Duck 'Trick or Treat' (1952)

Trick or Treat in either form is marvelous. The Big D in all his adult mischief and self-righteous rage is the perfect foil and victim because of his unscrupulous trickery to poor Huey, Louie and Dewey, and his apoplectic frustration at being bewitched, bothered and bamboozled by Hazel and her broomstick Beelzebub still had me cackling when I revisited it this evening. A masterpiece, with all of the Halloween trimmings, including some great and memorable detail: the Duck abode having (presumably for one night only) an empty wheatfield within reach to convey the harvest season, the reliable silent abetting of Beelzebub, and the weird but on point rendering of a Junior Duck’s eyes as black spots when dressed as a ghost (he never takes it off – is it makeup?)

So yes, here is possibly THE Disney Halloween joint – ten minutes of your time definitely not wasted, and a vintage Halloween in a catchy wee morsel. Sure, Lonesome Ghosts has the big Three animated characters predicting Ghostbusters years before, and the even older Mickey and the Haunted House is creepy in its own way, but Trick or Treat has the right balance. I’ll be revisiting it again next Halloween, I’m sure.

Halloweenometer: A perfect score!  

… but is there anything from the House of Mouse that could match it…?

Pumpkinwatch: A real beauty - animated and everything!

Comic Scene

 In all my life I've never wanted NOT to be part of a scene. My curriculum vitae is in part a lie. Of course I can work alone unsupervised; but it's in a group that I thrive. Put me on the team, coach!

We are social animals, most of us. Genesis 2:18 and all that. Music, theatre, tabletop gaming, scouts, bands, filmmaking. Working collaboratively increases my creativity, and so it was with me and the short-lived Dunedin Comics Collective, among whose number I counted myself from roughly 1994 to 1997, two or three anthologies, and a challenging but very fun one-day mass draw-in at a local café for... was it a charity thing? I don't remember.

Here's a picture of the majority of us - mostly male, not entirely all Pakeha, and with a range of experience and ages. I was probably somewhere in the lower middle age-wise, but older than the youngest I knew, a funny and surreal kid called Toki, to feel like I was something of a late starter. I was, of course. My comics life didn't really start until I was approaching my mid-twenties and towards the end of my first big music-making phase, and it was a pretty decent outlet, if not necessarily successful. I was among some very significant talents, and when the Dunedin crew linked arms with co-creatives from other university cities like Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland, it really felt - briefly - like we were part of a bigger thing. We found our name in local comics directories (a little pointlessly including mailing addresses - how many of us would stay in the one flat for more than a year)

But here we are, clutching our copies of Treacle, the local comic, proudly. In this one are my creations Libido and Mortido, probably in their last and most accomplished form. I've labelled this 1994, but I really don't know.  Toki's in there, somewhere, and the wonderful Fin, behind me at left rear is a guy whose name eludes me now, but whose path I would cross later on as a rival in a student film competition, which he and his cohort would win. Centre front, my old chum Guanoland, with whom I would make the film and who may recall more than I now. Out of shot, and probably taking the photo, our group leader and host for the day Tony Renouf, stalwart of the Dunedin small press scene and a man of great energy, enthusiasm and drive. I owe him a lot for getting me on my start. The downhill run to ... well, not much farther is all my work. I probably needed to stay in the group, to be honest.

Here's to you, guys, wherever you've been drawn to.

The Midlands Cuckoos

The Bojeffries Saga by Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse

"Where do we go when we die?"  "Vhe Gho to Blutty Hyingland!!"

- Uncle Festus Zlutodny 

After months of seeing this on the shelves at the local library and not knowing much about the title, I finally borrowed it-  this beauty born from two trusted creators. So glad I did.

The Bojeffries Saga, a stuttering but undefeated epic spanning the pages of Warrior, Dalgoda, A1 and eventually its own full collection by Top Shelf Productions. Jobremus Bojeffries lives in Northampton with his children Reth and Ginda (a man-frightening giantess with subatomic powers), brothers/uncles Fester (vampire) and Raoul (werewolf with the smell of and taste for dog), grandfather (on the brink of onmipotent protoplasm) and the baby - which is nuclear. Their terrace home is dimensionally precocious and equipped with a curiosity dampener to keep mere earthlings out (but, alas, not rent collectors.)  And with all of this awesome potential, what do the Bojeffries family intend with the world of man? Well, simply to live in it. And be left well alone.

His monsters aspiring to living small, circular daily lives. Moore specialises in pulling the spandex pants of goshcrikey comicking down to reveal the everyday absurdity. He doesn't necessarily mock the format; it's too useful, and he clearly loves it and speaks its language.  His co-conspirator in this endeavour is similarly fluent. Parkhouse is a comics powerhouse, a writer, script editor and formidable artist in a caricature style. We have Parkhouse to thank for the early Stockbridge and Voyager cycles in Doctor Who Weekly, as well as the later Luke Kirby stories in 2000AD, not to mention the comic's early Nineties bete noir Big Dave, which may well share some of its DNA with Bojeffries.

There’s hay to be made in the satirical approach to comics; take a successful formula from other media, skew it with a local variant or a ‘what if?’ Question in the time-honoured style of Alan Moore adherents like Mark Millar and Grant Morrison, remove the adolescent power fantasy nonsense, and with luck you get what Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse do so well. The truly bizarre - skewed so much further it’s hilariously familiar. And so Bojeffries is as much a salute to England's working class, Moore and Parkhouse's "Jerusalem", though the title may well be ironic, ostensibly set in the Eighties, and then the Nineties and beyond. It is more or less timeless; weirdness locked in its own suburban eddy.

Each member of the family gets their own story - some more than one if you include the 24-page epilogue which brings the family up to date (as of 2014) and includes a good number of pop culture cameos and a torturous phonetic narration (with occasional insight by a similarly phonetic Gok Wan) Each story is a cracker, helped immensely by the characterisations of the family - near-ultimate power combined with ineptitude and bathos. Parkhouse renders them with an expert hand, and is unafraid to use a lighter pen for thinner strokes - just a hint of holding line around the edges of characters, but otherwise as true and ephemeral as Lowry's matchstick men. 

 And ephemeral is what Bokeffries may well be described as, too. Bits and pieces pulled together by the universe into an improbable creation, shuffling through "Hyingland"'s pot-holed streets on the way to the bingo. I love it, and will probably buy it. And I haven't even mentioned the musical episode yet.



 

Carlos Ezquerra

Some very sad news to wake to this morning: Carlos Ezquerra has died, after a ten year battle with cancer.

This is a huge blow for UK comics fans, and in particular fans of 2000AD and Judge Dredd. The affectionately-named 'King' CarlosEzquerra can be fairly described as one of the fathers of Dredd, providing the first designs of the future lawman, a mix of Death Race's Frankenstein and Conquistador - fitting for a Spaniard, perhaps. And to me, somehow, Carlos' work evoked a Mediterranean sensibility more than any other artist in Tharg's stable.

Carlos draws himself as one of Tharg's art droids

Ezquerra's work is there from Prog 1, and continued through to 2018, with very few breaks. He was a warhorse, from the likes of Battle (Easy Company) and Starlord (gifting the world of comics the brilliant space western Strontium Dog and its mutant bounty hunter Johnny Alpha), and even ventured to other IPC/Fleetway titles - a brief stint for Eagle, plus Crisis and inevitably the Judge Dredd Megazine. As the ubiquitous Dredd and Strontium Dog artist Ezquerra surely occupies the highest triumvirate alongside Bolland and McMahon. Speedy, prolific, and still eminently collectible, we'll see his work for some time to come.

The phrase 'making it your own' is a cliche, but so applicable to Ezquerra's adaptations. Dredd is such a robust character that he's endured countless interpretations, but despite occasional flirtations with other considerable talents, there's really only been one Strontium Dog artist, and even in prose I can't picture anybody in the role of Harry Harrison's 'Slippery' Jim DiGriz than Carlos' James Coburn lookalike in the Stainless Steel Rat series.


For me, though Ezquerra's  style barely changed, that was its greatest strength. Instantly recognisable, effortlessly consistent, but with a worldly, carnal appeal. His dredd and Alpha are virtually the same cloth - burly and tall, but not ridculously muscly, while his women (vampire bounty hunter Durham Red, femme fatale Angelina DiGriz) are pultritudinous, leggy and unapologetically curvy. Like many of the Dredd artists he delights in grotesques - besides Strontium Dog's colourful cast of mutants, Carlos drew a mean brace of Fatties for Mega City One. Even the robotic Blackblood on a rare outing in ABC Warriors is given an idle killer's pot belly. All with a knowing wink, each consistent and so meaty you could slice them like salami.

I still can't quite get my head around the Dredd mega epics entirely to his name: Apocalypse War, Necropolis, Inferno, Wilderlands - not to mention all those epic Johnny Alpha tales - Portrait of a Mutant, Wanted, The Killing. Phew.

My early collecting of 2000AD can be summed in Ezquerra covers: my earliest 2000AD cover by Carlos: Prog 181 (Johnny Alpha "It's taken my best shot - and it still won't die!), my earliest Dredd cover by Carlos: Prog 245 ("Let the Apocalypse Begin!"), and many more followed, of course. There'll likely be a huge tribute in the pages of 2000AD to come, and in the mean-time heartfelt tributes from the likes of Pat Mills, Karl Urban, and a good number of Thargs and Megazine editors past and present.

The King is dead, but his legacy will live forever.

Been Caught Reading

This week I got kicked out of a shop. Well, not quite kicked out,. Escorted as I left in mortification, really.

Waiting for a few minutes after a wee walk while I was having some family prescriptions filled (not a euphemism), I stopped in at one of Wellington's few remaining shops with a healthy number and array of magazines in. I do this from time to time, not regularly, and try not to overstay my welcome. Ocasionally - but really not often, to be honest - I might buy one.

This week I picked the wrong time to flick through a magazine and two comics (fan-style - never cover-to-cover) in under five minutes. From behind me came an approaching voice and a familiar complaint:

"Hey, mate - you can't do that here. This isn't a library"

I was so surprised and taken aback I nrealy blurted out "but I'm a librarian!', which would have been a very daft thing to say. Instead, I mumbled an awkward assent, carefully replaced the magazine back in its shelf (no chance of buying that now), and walked out with the owner behind me. I guess I was the only customer in the shop, but I don't remember checking either in or out.

This picture: United States National Archives

I won't return. I think the message was clear enough, and I'll check my behaviour next time I'm in a newsagent's. I've lived in this city for twenty years now and, as said, have been an occasional customer to this particular shop, buying papers, gum, chocolate bars, stamps and, yes, magazines. But if I could be called a 'regular', then probably not the best kind - certainly in the eyes of the owner.

 Walking back to the chemist shamefaced and a little rattled, two thoughts came quickly - some sympathy for the owner, and an acknowledgement that I am part of the problem. I didn't go into the shop to buy a magazine (but I might have - occasional impulse purchases are not outside my habits)
 and who knows if I was the first, the fifth, or the tenth visitor to abuse his floorspace there that day, that week, that month. Maybe I am that kind of 'regular.'

It must be a hard time for a newsagent in this age of dwindling print sales, electronic subscriptions and the added impact of high turnaround titles like the weekly Prog. Nobody walked out of that shop happy this time, but next time I'm in a magazine shop will be different.

Jim Baikie

As mentioned elsewhere, my entry point into 2000AD prog-wise was the early 300s, and in those initial issues a short-lived strip was begining to wind down.

Skizz, by Alan Moore, was the story of an alien interpreter from Tau Ceti crashing to Earth and evading the Authorities with the help of a local kid. It was E.T, I knew, but I also recognised that Moore had other things to throw into the mix: this wasn't the autumnal suburban hills of California that Interpreter Zhcchz was dragged into, but central Birmingham amid the bleak early 80s winter of Thatcherism, record unemployment and bleak opportunity Its human protagonist is Roxy, a girl - still a newish thing for 2000AD and in retrospect predicting Moore's realisation of the same in Halo Jones.  In short, it's E.T meets Boys from the Blackstuff by way of a little bit of contemporary TV (Philip Sandifer nods towards the likes of Minder and Grange Hill, but therese are minor influences at best), and while the clash of realism and fantasy would recur in the years that followed in the comic, this was the first roll off the slipway, and one of the best-remembered.

Key to me is Moore's script alongside the art of Jim Baikie, whose time at 2000AD was just beginning, Baikie had come from a variety of UK illustration jobs, often working on various licensed products and titles (Monkees, Star Trek, Hammer House of Horror, Look In and Countdown, for which he provided some Doctor Who art) plus forays into TV spin-offs such as Charlie's Angels, The Fall Guy, and more recently, Terrahawks. Like Moore he had a previous association with Warrior magazine, and was imported into Tharg's team from there. Baikie has a pen-based apporach, with  nice heavy brush on shading anfd a flowing approach to his linework. I can see a lot of contemporaries in his work - Jim Burns and Steve Parkhouse in particular. He likely co-created the look of the kangaroo-like Skizz with Moore, but he could do fantasy well enough - although it's the realism in his work which sells Skizz and becomes a recognisable trait in his work. Baikie's humans arent the elongated strips of sinew that Mick McMahon rendered the likes of Dredd and Slaine, nor the beefcake slabs of muscle under Bisley's tenure, but realistic, unexaggerated forms. His Dredd looks harder for this, and importantly for Skizz, his Lol,Roxy, and tragic no-hoper Clarence Cardew look as though they've come off a Birmingham high street - their fates accrus a pathos because of their recognisability.

Outside of Skizz Baikie also turned his hand to Dredd, helping out with the mega epic Oz, and providing some memorable shot stories and one-shots - in particular the three-part Hitman with its loathsome, toad-like human assassin, and the classic In the Bath which features early 90s cranky Joe Dredd doing what he does best... well,that would be telling.

Baikie went beyond the parent comic to work on spin-off Crisis, where he collaborated with John Smith on the action-oriented New Statesman, as well as turning up Stateside for a brief run on Star Wars. The relaunched Eagle magazine saw him team up with fellow Scot John Wagner for their dinosaur romp Bloodfang, which I look forward to covering in a future instalment of Where Eagles Dare.

In the early Nineties he returned to Skizz for the second series as an artist-writer, giving the story a more satirical edge, but the first story remains the superior, and I'd say so because of its more worldly elements. 'Reliable' is an epithet I apply to a lot of artists who turn in just that sort of work - consistent, faithful, relatable, and it's no dismissal agaist the likes of innovative artists like those above. Blaikie's work remained no less recognisable and was always faithful to its subject. Those first few encounters with his work in Skizz made a big impression on me, and no doubt will remain for some time.

Rest in peace, sir.

Jim Baikie 28 February 1940 – 29 December 2017

Justice Denied

Holy cow, how did this happen?

I've been careful since Batman v Superman... and probably since before that, to champion movies where the outcome wasn't entirely guaranteed to be positive. I've felt guilty doing so, and would rather not, but in the wake of F4ntastic Four, Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Suicide Squad, you can understand if I feel somewhat of a jinx.

Whether you're a DC/Warners fan or not, this movie should not have 'failed' as soundly as it did; and yet the numbers are damning - and now I've seen it for myself. And, knowing I should prepare for disappointment, I went in with medium expectations. My paragraph above notwithstanding, I left before the credits came up -  in part because it was a daytime screening on the last week and I had a life to get back to; but it was hardly like being torn from my seat. This movie is a bewildering disappointment.

The fault is not with the characters; the Justice League should sell the movie themselves, most being recognisable now for over fifty years. I do believe Whedon at least worked to rule, if he didn't quite bat his best. 

The back story should be known well enough by now - initially helmed by Zack Snyder, this movie was to be in part a culmination of his three (or five?) story arc, but for a family tragedy which saw him stand down from the production, and Warners to swiftly helicopter in Joss Whedon in to finish the job. The history of trilogies being finished by a new director has been patchy at best - and in the superhero genre you can look easily at the Christopher Reeve Superman movies and Bryan Singer's X Men franchise to see clear and cautionary examples of what happens where there's a disjoint. Whedon had a brief: cut down the run-time to enable more screenings; add more humour; convert the doomladen Snyder vision into an audience friendly Marvel-like one. It doesn't work.

Many of the jokes don't land or just don't fit (an alien anal probe gag would struggle past the Nineties, let alone the Twenty-teens) , scraps of Whedon's script for his unfilmedWonder Woman have been reused, and there's an odd disjoint where scenes which feature in the two trailers have obviously been reshot for the movie. Timing? Grading? Mood? It can't be to add to the story, because al signs point to the Whedon version drastically cutting Snyder's story down to a more chewable (or boltable) size. Like its principal (well, only) villain.

As a threat Steppenwolf comes across as vague and somewhat undersold. He comes to Earth after Mother Boxes, but with no clear motivation after that - is it terraforming? Is it conquest? Who is this 'Mother' he refers to? And who is he talking to?

The frustration lies in knowing at least some of what there could have - or should have been, fed in tantalising scraps  by Snyder's friends and allies.  So what we're left with is this cut-down could-have-been - which has inevitably been compared to the Marvel model and Whedon's bigger, brighter, more confident and much more loved Avengers. But this is not good, and after the mixed batman v Superman, and the financially successful but critically thumped Suicide Squad, this will be a tough move to come back from.

And so is the plight of the DC movies fan: a wild pendulum between moderate success and painful failure. Cynicism and ridicule. I don't know what Zack Snyder's vision might have been outside this botched remix, but it could at least have been a little more complete, and a lot better looking. 

The fans deserved better.  

Where Eagles Dare

So, the season of Doctor Who is now over, and the airwaves from Sofageddon Towers will go quiet until the inevitable swansong of Peter Capaldi at Christmastime.

Or is it?

Actually, it's not! Dave and I have, we must admit, been flagging a bit in our Who fandom of late, and rather than sputter out under the strain of supporting ebbing enthusiasm, we've diversified into comics.

Where Eagles Dare is our brainchild, a look back at the [New] Eagle of the 80s and early 90s, which brought a very boys-own stab at a magazine-styled comic into the age of the latter Cold War, Thatcher, New Romantics, home computers, The A-Team, and god knows what else.

These factors are a point of interest in themselves - because whereas the likes of the splendid 2000AD-themed podcast Space Spinner 2000 have an embarassment of riches to cover the heyday of the late Seventies to late Eighties in that title, poor Eagle probably peaked early, and the following drop was one marked with the dreaded staples of UK comics - mergers, cheaper printing, and reruns of old stock. But we'll see where we go, and as the magazine element of the comic has an eye on the real world, it just might be interesting to cover that, too.

Oh yes - and there are those photo strips, too.

So if you're at all curious, head over to the Sofageddon Wordpress site and give Dave and I a listen!

Where Eagles Dare 1 - The Eagle Has Landed!

The Little Shop - second Hour

Now, I'm not normally a fan of the phrase "dairy conversion" most of the time, but here I'll make an exception.

Here's the latest on my Little Shop of Hours:

It turns out etching in brickwork can be five parts misery and five parts delight when it comes to painting! But on the whole I'm deid chuffed with the colours of the bricks (done somewhat on the fly) and once I'd sorted out a fitting colour for the sills and window frames (good old, though now a little clumpy Catachan Green) things fitted in better. Which is more than can be said for the roof section, which seems to have warped in construction, but we'll get there. Up next: winders and doers!

Wonderful

Wonder Woman (dir Patty Jenkins, 2017)

So this is what winning feels like?

After the turbulence of DC's first three (and largely male-dominated) superhero outings, the time has finally arrived for Diana of Themyscira/Wonder Woman to fully take the lead. Very happily - and despite assurances from too many places that WB could do no right, Patty Jenkins' film is a triumph.

It's not only director Patty Jenkins who is vindicated here, of course. There's the matter of the casting of Gal Gadot by Zack Snyder; set up in BvS and, by all accounts, widely regarded as the highlight of that movie by audience reaction. Gadot's early casting image and announcement was, while not controversial, not without comment from the peanut gallery  and a fair amount of it negative. "Too skinny!" "too dark!" "Not American-looking enough!" (??) "She should be [insert actor from other IP/MMA fighter]. But once again, Snyder's casting eye has been proved dead-on, and our new Wonder Woman is truly a household name. Not bad for an actor on the verge of quitting Hollywood.

Gadot is helped along the way of course by a very capable supporting cast: Connie Nielsen is majestic as Hippolyta, Robin Wright is formidable, Chris Pine every bit his charismatic self as romantic lead Steve Trevor, Danny Huston intimidating as Ludendorf, David Thewlis layered in his role, and Ewan Bremner and Lucy Davis? Just fantastic. The story is straightforward, but not too by-the-books, and I would say perfect for a full-length debut. There are equal pars humour and emotion, and the film's European and WW1 setting is both unusual and novel - we definitely need to see superhero movies escape modern day US more, and with a near-immortal as its hero Wonder Woman was a very good choice indeed

There are a few weak spots, naturally. The setting, as contained as it is, occasionally makes the film seem small in scope, and the CG-heavy finale, while de rigeur, doesn't counteract this. But when used for Themyscira it's wonderful, and the intimacy of the movie actually helps the story (plus Diana and Steve's dance in the snow at Veld looks beautiful)

Foe the moment, though, the big win for Wonder Woman the movie and character is its message. The power of love is a tough sell - even tougher in an age of digital explosions, outlandish set pieces and  epic battles. Unless those things are part of the message (in which case, god help us all), then the story has to go small - but Wonder Woman does it's damnedest to have it both ways, throwing in sacrifice, mercy, and the unforgettable bravery of the No Man's Land scene, and Diana emerges from all of these things stronger, more sure of her purpose, and still the same idealist she was as too adorable youngster back on her island paradise. That's winning.

The next movie is going to have to work very hard to top this.

The Little Shop... of Hours

I love a little shop!

Specifically, I love THIS little shop. J Grubb's General Store, located on the outskirts of the Gloucester village of Stockbridge; an unassuming hamlet which by quirk of the space-time continuum has hosted the odd alien incursion and dimensional breach since the 17th of October 1979.

 

As it happens, the Doctor likes this shop, too - or has at least enjoyed its services on at least one occasion. Over the years and since its debut in the first ever Doctor Who Weekly feature strip The Iron Legion, Grubb's Store has been an essential part of Stockbridge, which has now been a location in six comic stories, five Big Finish audio stories, and has been visited by no fewer than five incarnations of the Time Lord in question.

I love this shop so much I decided some time ago to make a model of it to scale with my metal figures. It's actually going to be the first model of a building I've ever made for that scale (it may be my first ever in any scale, come to that), and as usual, I'm making it with as few bought pieces as possible.

The shell is a workplace cast-off - an easy-assemble pencil holder made from sturdy card and rescued from a recycling bin during a clean-out, while its 'skin' of brick, slate and wood is also scrap card. I toyed with the idea of purchasing ready-moulded styrofoam brick walls, but wanted to see if I could make them myself. It took a while, and so far the project has been bested by the usual hurdles: bad measuring, planning on the fly, time. Here's the work so far...

1966 And All That

The true strength of a pop cultural icon lies in their resilience. Heroes and villains come and go, but the greatest of them endure through generations and interpretations. Yes, there may be periods when they are considered out of vogue, but being strong figures they are bound to return - perhaps as a farce, or a revisionist retelling, or as a mirror to contemporary society's travails.

I speak of the big ones: Robin Hood. King Arthur. Sherlock Holmes. Batman. The Sixties version.

No, come back, I'm not mad. I wasn't even mad in 1989 when I sniffed at this rare product of high camp and sixties psychedelia and walked away. Tim Burton's reinvention of the character was just around the corner and the big bad Nineties introduced a less colourful, more serious take on the character. The Dark Knight was the order of the day, and the Caped Crusader had quickly become For Selected Audiences Only. I eschewed the series' self-knowing silliness and cheap later episodes, and those misspent afternoons screwing my youthful freckled schoolboy nose at the hyper kinetic hi-jinks our neighbours' colour TV provided every same Bat-time same Bat-channel.

So what changed for me to rediscover the West and Ward Batman? Well it wasn't the TV show, though I do want to 'reconnect' with it in some form - the Blu Rays look mighty tempting. Of course the car I rediscovered to my surprise in the Dark Knight Rises extras. It was also the Bat-history, dutifully documented, directed and delivered by that doyen of the Detective Comics dynamo, Mr Jim Moon that got my attention. And it was the comic strip.

Yes, again, the Wellington City Library has done itself proud and has a pretty decent collection of the recent Batman '66 anthology series, being a set of new Batman tales told with the energy, the enthusiasm and the tongue-in-cheek aesthetic of the 1966 series. When they're good they're very very good- not since Lego's Batman '66 set have I been so relieved to see Caesar Romero's painted moustache so faithfully rendered beneath his Joker makeup. And Burgess Meredith's Penguin, Frank Gorshin's Riddler (who owes his reputation purely to the TV series and Gorshin's talents), the triumvirate of Catwomen in Kitt, Merriwether and Newmar plus other TV-only villains, like Egghead, Bookworm, Louie the Lilac, Ma Parker, Shame, King Tut and Marsha Queen of Diamonds. The captions recall the exclamations of the show's cliffhanger closers, the title fonts are perfect, and over all there's a spirit of fun in the series, even in recent years with its canon-bending introduction of anachronistic characters like Harley Quin and Bane.

For the most part the series sticks close to its roots, even with occasional crossovers to contemporary TV series (Green Hornet, Man From Uncle, The Avengers) and shout outs to the future (including a seemingly irresistable nod to a certain Seal song during a Poison Ivy outing). In case you're wondering, Batgirl gets as good as she gave, and there are some intriguing stylistic ventures also - notably a meta trip to Japan for the Bat trio where an encounter with Sixties comic villain Lord Death man. Trippy.

And trippy is as it should be. The '66 series is something to be celebrated, particularly amidst the sturm und drang of the Snyder films and Arkham video games. There was a time when Batman was fun, and was in on the joke, and those days did more for the survival of the Bat brand than anything in its comics. At The Warehouse in Whanganui recently I picked up a copy of the West and Ward Batman movie - until recently all you could get of the original series. Jet Jr and I watched it when it came home with me and we had a blast.

All of this presumably comes from a relaxing by Fox on its grip on the old TV series, leading to a minor snowstorm of retro products. The final release of the full series is the obvious jewel in the crown (those extras!), and the comic follows  of course. Batman 66 Lego is utterly adorable:

But no Batgirl minifigure? For shame!

And after the success of West, Ward and Newmar's animated reunion in Return of the Caped Crusaders there's now a follow-up in the works, featuring Two-Face voiced by - who else? William Shatner. Holy Dream Casting!

Steve Dillon

Just bloody gutted to read this this morning. 

Steve Dillon was one of my early art heroes. Coming into the world of Eagle's second generation return, and then into 2000AD meant that a banquet of inspirtional art was suddenly opened to me after childhood years of rote caricatures and established characters through Disney comics and UK kids' titles. I've not thought until now just how immediate the variety of styles and techniques hit me. There was no way any of these guys - the O'Neil's, Ezquerras, Kennedy's and especially McMahons would ever be mistaken for something from Key Comics. As I got older these stylistic and idiosyncratic outings became more and more intimidating as I vainly tried to copy them and develop my own confidence in drawing.

Cry of the Werewolf

Fortunately, among these artists was a younger name, only eight years older than me, whose style was more relateable. Assured, yes, but solid - really solid, well-defined and very 'readable'. Steve Dillon's  art was easy to aspire to, but reliably more complex than its his clean lines and nice black and white balancing suggested. That said, though, if there's a style that I took to most readily, it was Steve Dillon's. I mean this as no damped-down praise - Dillon was a master of ink, confident in every line, especially given his young age, and I've no doubt that I'm not the only young artist who ran to his deceptively-effortless work as a masterclass (paging Guanolad...)

City of the Damned

The rest, for Dillon at least, is history. Some early Doctor Who Magazine work, initially as a backup artists, but later to provide the work for Steve Parkhouse's last regular story The Moderator in which both Parkhouse and Dillon combine two then near-inconcievable Doctor actions - the Time Lord crying and shooting a gun, and turn the result into something very Doctorish indeed.   Lots of 2000AD, including three of the big hitters in the Eighties - Judge Dredd (the momentous death of series regular Judge Giant is pictured here, from Block Wars), Rogue Trooper and ABC Warriors plus some lovely covers for Zenith), and then, into the Nineties and more recent years, Transatlantic success, the most notable being Preacher, which he co-created with fellow 2000AD alumnus Garth Ennis. His line of stories for The Punisher has already been credited on several comic boards as being the reason some readers returned to the series, Dillon was that effective, that readable.

54 is no great age to depart this earth, though the very young age at which Dillon started his career (drawing Nick Fury and the Hulk at sixteen! And thanks to the keen foresight of Dez Skinn) means there are decades of his work to see, and a mighty field of followers who saw and were inspired by his instantly recognisable style, an who went on to draw for 2000AD, DWM, Marvel and DC. With the late Brett Ewins he co-created the influential breakaway pop-culture comic  Deadline and from that venture we have Peter Milligan, Jamie Hewlett and Tank Girl among others. The comics world has indeed lost a great storyteller.

As others have said already, completely unexpected. Thank God his prodigious start and global success means his talents and influence won't be forgotten.

 RIP.

The Moderator, Doctor Who Magazine

Four Squares 2: Golden Years

I'm back watching The Flash, and still really enjoying it. This year the particle accelerator which made our hero's metahuman enemies is gone, replaced by a wormhole singularity which is now feeding him bad guys from a parallel Earth - Earth 2. And, of course, it has also brought in this guy:

 Yeah! Jay Garrick, baby!

The version of the Flash from Earth 2 or, as we might otherwise know him, 'old 1940s Flash' or thereabouts. It's one of the many cool things about the show that it has actually been this series which has ushered in the established comics model of multiple worlds. It was a concept that originated in the Flash comics, and it's given the show a boost that it didn't yet need, but which in an expanded DC TV universe, needs no futher explanation.

I also love the look of Jay Garrick, with his slight Dieselpunk look and the Mercury kettle helmet. Hell, I like mostly all of the old school hero costumes with only a few exceptions, and their heroes' grouping, the Justice Society of America is a territory that I also think is rich for mining.

One of the other things I did leading up to season 2 was re-connect with the Golden Age of [DC] super heroes. The sole comic I own representing that era is a revisionist story The Untold Origin of the Justice Society collected into a tidy A5-ish pocket comic book, which I picked up from a local dairy years ago on the way to an intermediate school camp. Though I never reconnected with the story or the characters, I do still really like them. In their best stories there's a simple honesty to them that genuinely evokes a Wartime, pre-Marvel era, where many of the Justice Society's members nod more to their detective comics origins - millionaires and scientists sworn to thwart crime with gadgets, physical superiority and very limited superpowers.

I also picked up a few JSA collections from the local library, the best example being The Justice Society Returns!, which owes more than a debt to the aforementioned origin story, but builds other characters into the mix and heightens the profile of some more enduring, second-tier heroes; so out go Superman and Batman, but the likes of Hourman and Johnny Thunder get a much-deserved promotion. It's a pretty good, serialised story all told, with all the major players essentially getting a chapter of their own, and if there's a deluxe reprint - well, I'd be tempted to get it.

But as I say above, I think this is an era still ripe for use in today's comic book entertainment world. There are examples already of period-era heroes - Marvel's Captain America and its spin-off Agent Carter are obvious examples, and of course DC's Earth 2, the home of its Golden Age heroes, is now a Flash/Arrow-verse reality - and of course before he was making Man of Steel and Batman v Superman, director Zack Snyder cut his superhero teetch with the Minute Men of the Watchmen cinematic adaptation. 2017 will see a Wonder Woman movie which will tell a story spread over several decades, including the Second World War - perhaps it's not unreasonable to expect a few cameos there?

For me, though, the appeal of the Golden Age superhero is one of relatability. I will never have super powers or wield fantastic gas guns, magic rings or rods of power, but the vulnerability and human frailty of many of these early year super heroes is something I find more and more interesting as time goes by.

All the Jackals and the Undead

"All the jackals and the undead just can't wait to wipe the last of us out
First there were others like us, then there were none."

I didn't intend to blog about this again, so apologies, but this has been on my mind for the whole week.

The Fantastic Four is crashing globally in cinemas, the latest in a long series of battles it has had to fight since day one. Why? Lots of reasons: director hassles, studio hassles, reboot hassles, fan anxiety - that last one for me is the clincher. Logically The Fantastic Four property should not have a large and influential fan base - its last movie was in 2007, and Marvel cancelled its comic line last year, pointedly killing off likenesses of Fox's forthcoming movie in strip form (real classy, guys). And yet I think fan activity, and in particular fan vitriol has played a large part in the negative pre-publicity of this movie. And it seems I'm not alone, here's award-winning writer Peter David's view.

Look, films are hugely difficult things to make, and lots of films - sometimes incredible films  are borne of terrible shoots. Marvel' Studios' movies have not been immune, with directors leaving films during or pre-production (Thor 2, Ant Man), and even some of its most celebrated creators seemingly swearing off the whole game (stand up, Joss Whedon.) But it makes big, successful movies, and it has a very large and very vocal army of fans who apparently resent any studio who has 'their' heroes. Two years ago it was Sony's Amazing Spider-Man, this year it's The Fantastic Four. This fan resentment, fan entitlement is expressed online on websites like Comicbookmovie, where fan made 'editorials' are the by-word for the site's existence. The bad mouthing turns into a partisan headline, and this bleeds through to modern news media which, under-resourced and fighting for relevance in an ocean of free competition, jumps at clickbait articles for its own hits - and with that imprimatur fan opinion becomes reported as fact.

Of course I'm over-simplifying, and of course FF's troubles are many. But bad press sticks, and I still think this film has been unfairly maligned by... 'enthusiasts' with questionable loyalties. And poor judgement. You kids want a Fantastic Four movie series, and you think the way to do this is to sabotage the box office of the current movie - and that the average movie-goer will notice the difference when it switches studios and turn out in droves? You're crazy. And you deserve your stereotype.

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Fandom makes me uncomfortable most of the time. I've made the best friends I have ever had through fandom, and yet I take to social fandom like I take to dancing - under duress, with great awkwardness, and best left after a few drinks. It's not a club to which I readily subscribe; I just get a bit lost amongst it, Organised fandom can be a toxic thing, but it can be a wonderful and supportive thing as well - and some fan communities can be lovely, bonkers collectives of mutual enthusiasm.

And when a group shares the love with its fans, neat things can happen - like this, the official video for The Darkness' title track off their latest album. Ostensibly a song based on the character of Crow from Hawk the Slayer, more than a few reviewers have taken its defiant tone as the voice of a dying music form: pure, fun rock and roll. Fittingly then, a fan army provides the backing chorus in the track, and some appear in the video - a shambles of awkward, excited enthusiasts, bouncing, dancing, singing and just enjoying themselves. And that one particular fan - what a mover! Well played, sir. Well played.

Death Race 2000 (1975)

It is the distant future, the Year Two-thousand. The US is an autocratic state with an alleged enemy in France, and a nation has an obsession with the Death Race, a coast-to-coast rally where pedestrians, zealots, onlookers and even one's pit crew are fair game for vehicular carnage and point-scoring along the way. Race favourite is the shady Frankenstein, a patchwork man in black who is close friend with Mister Pesident, and wants to get closer still...

I've been thinking about watching this movie for years on curiosity value alone, and now I have - job done. And do you know what? I really enjoyed it!

I'm sure that a lot of this is down to timing. Twenty years ago I'd likely have taken this film in as a dated piece of seventies tat, much as I did Rollerball or The Omega Man. Ten years ago I'd have been a little more forgiving, but now, with my extracurricular activities involving kitbashing model cars into Mad Max-styled vehicles of pedestrian destruction, its time seems finally annointed. What a movie. Also, teenage me was an idiot. I might be edging towards the actual 100 points in Death Race's arcane scoring system, but I'd like to think I know the value of a decent Roger Corman movie.

But teenaged me was also a comic reader, and in particular a 2000AD reader. The DNA of 2000AD is all through this movie - future dystopias? Check. Ultraviolence and amoral heroes? Check. It's long been said that the initial look of Judge Dredd was based on the image of Frankenstein on the movie's poster; how satisfying then for a fan of the comic and films to see Dredd's spiritual godfather beating several layers of unholy crap out of Sylvester Stallone - Awesome! I swear that this is more a comic brought to life courtesy of Corman than the likes of Fantastic Four or Battle Beyond the Stars, and it seems fitting that the comic sequel was the work of 2000AD's Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill, when their previous creation Marshall Law bears more than a passing resemblance to David Carradine's Frankenstein. 

There's just a real anti-authoritarian, gonzo vibe throughout that transcends the occasional performances, the low low budget, and the small cast. in places it is outlandishly violent, but it is by and large he violence of cartoons, and it shares the gleeful twisted humour of Mills and Wagner's best works. The themed cars and outlandish identities (Nerothe Hero, Machine Gun Joe, Matilda the Hun) are fun, the design work a little bonkers - especially Stallone's gangster suit pinstriped helmet, and although the cast is perhaps a little too white-bread, it serves its female characters pretty well, and I must admit I felt quite sorry for Calamity Jane's lonely three-point-tun into oblivion when her time came. Plus, not knowing the twist in the story meant that I was quite taken in by Frankenstein's concluding gambit.

Time's been rather kind to this film, making the movie's more outlandish plot points almost self-fulfilling in real life, from the Fox-style cynical TV coverage, the vilification of France as the enemy of 'Amurrikkin freedom', and even the President accusing a foreign power of sabotaging the telephone network has to be the Seventies equivalent of cyber-terrorism.

So yeah, a big thunbs up from me, and a nice wee birthday present for me over the weekend as I contemplate getting closer to the age when I too might be wheeled wheezing out into the street in front of a hospital, perhaps to meet my maker under the wheels of an oncoming novelty cat-shaped death machine or something. In the mean-time I rather fancy catching this again, perhaps in a double-bill with Rollerball.

Cape Expectations

This is a synched trailer review from a Batman perspective. You can read Kal-Al's Superman-oriented review here!

Over the past weekend I spent an inordinate amount of time online, trawling a handful of websites, pushing the Refresh button at intermittent intervals. Oh, and reading. I did this because I was never going to go to San Diego ComiCon – hell, I’d be hard-pressed to get to Armageddon this weekend, but virtually at least, SDCC was where it was at for me. And why? Because of this trailer specifically:

Yes, in Marvel’s absence, the weekend belonged to Warner Brothers and Fox Studios. And Disney – but dammit, every day is Disney day with or without Star Wars, so enough about that. Let’s talk about the Bat and the Boy Scout. And, also the Amazon! And the Villain – or the one we see here, at least.

The trailer was pretty much everything I’d hoped for, but most of all it’s impressed me with how smart it is. Directly referencing the climactic Battle of Metropolis from Man of Steel is a great start, and should immediately shut up the ‘concerned moviegoers’ who, three years on, are still bellyaching over the destruction wrought in Superman’s death-match with the physically superior and battle-ready General Zod. Moreso, it places Bruce Wayne in the middle of the battle, in a breath-taking sequence loaded with modern imagery. 2016 will see the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11; Zack Snyder’s choice to film the collapse of Wayne Financial’s tower from street level, and frame it from the experience of the average person in the street, can only reference one major recent real-life event. It’s brave, and it’s immediately resonating and it works. The sight of an un-costumed, quite human Bruce Wayne running into the debris cloud is jaw-dropping.

At ComicCon there was much made on both DC movie panels (for BvS and Suicide Squad) over how these movies are anchored in a real world context – yes, there are spandex(ish) suits, capes and super powers, but the real world reactions and impacts are, I think, a new addition to the genre. Super hero comics already work in a heightened version of reality, so this change down is a significant revision, and a smart move on the producers’ part to create points of difference for DC’s heroes and villains. These are deliberate images – the rooftop appeals for help from flood-bound families recalling Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, the familiar rainbow-coloured placards outside Kal El’s hearing in the Capitol deliberately recalling those of the Westboro Baptist Church demonstrations are another. Maybe more than that, they are touchstones of US culture, a trigger against what looks like Superman taking on a global work roster (saving a Russian rocket crew, appearing in a Day of the Dead gathering.) In response, Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor appears to be baiting his (unseen) audience's patriotism, resorting to a national xenophobia, recasting himself as a modern day Paul Revere in the droll “the red capes are coming!”

So this is the set-up, but there's still much to see – Jeremy Irons' Alfred in the flesh as Bruce's moral core, the Joker's handiwork over a fallen Robin costume, some nifty visual echoes of Frank Millar's iconic Dark Knight Returns cover. And, of course, Wonder Woman in action - at long last!

I'm still sold on this movie, even moreso than I was with the teaser trailer a few months back, and even moreso even after liking the casting of Ben Affleck. It seems we're stuck with a grim and gritty Batman for some time yet (thank god then for the 50th anniversary of Batman '66 next year and the animated movie tribute!) but while Christopher Nolan's similarly 'real world' Dark Knight trilogy left me cold in the end, I think Snyder's Batman will be the best Batman to date; and I think the injection of super powers and godlike heroes into his world will be for the betterment of Gotham's finest.

Next trailer will hopefully show even more. Roll on 2016!