William West Anderson;
September 19, 1928 – June 9, 2017
Word came out over the weekend that actor Adam West has passed away at 88 years old. I wanted to talk about his career besides Batman, the show that got him famous, as well as typecast, but this article in The Hollywood Reporter already covered most of what I would have said anyway. I do have a few things to add, so this is going to be shorter than I expected, but I should say something.
Why can’t Fox give us this Nightcrawler?
Uncanny Origins #8
Marvel Comics (April, 1997)
Nightcrawler: “From Circus Freak To X-Man”
WRITER: Bill Roseman
ARTIST: Mark Campos
COLORIST: Scott Rockwell
SEPARATIONS: KGM
LETTERER: Jack Morelli
EDITOR: Terry Kavanagh
The death of Supergirl, featured on the cover for Crisis On Infinite Earths #7. Art by George Pérez. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The cover of Crisis On Infinite Earths #7, which tributes the death of Supergirl in the storyline (meant to make Superman the only living Kryptonian again, unnecessarily since they rebooted the continuity anyway) is one of the most homaged covers in comics. Gary from Crisis on Earth Prime has a gallery of as many homages as he can find, as well as earlier covers that may have inspired the famous one.
It came from a rainbow in his fingertips. (How’s that for an obscure reference?)
Action Comics #0
DC Comics (October, 1994)
“The Yesterday Man”
WRITER: David Michelinie
ARTISTS: Jackson Guice & Denis Rodier
COLORIST: Glenn Whitmore
LETTERER: Bill Oakley
ASSISTANT EDITOR: Chris Duffy
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Frank Pittarese
EDITOR: Mike Carlin
Screenshot of Julie Andrews from the trailer for the film Mary Poppins (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Or at least not the original. To show how distracted I am lately I didn’t even know they were doing a Mary Poppins sequel, Mary Poppins Returns, with Emily Blunt taking over the role. Apparently they offered Julie Andrews, who made the film version of the character a childhood classic for years, a cameo. I doubt the same kids are coming back so why not? Also, why not a remake since you have to recast pretty much everybody to begin with and it’s not like Disney hasn’t been remaking their own work lately. However, Andrews turned down the offer and she has a good reason.
All I know is Blunt better be dancing with cartoon animals and magic chimney sweeps or what’s even the point of a sequel?
I don’t have a problem with her giving up. I have a problem with her putting her friends in danger to supposedly stop them from protecting others.
I’m just going to copy/paste from the archive description to further comment:
This one’s been stirring in me for a while, if only because I see Tim reading her the riot act she deserves once he comes back and sees the lengths Steph went through to force her friends out of the superhero game. I know she was also being manipulated by a group doing the tired old “if it weren’t for the heroes we would be safe from their now totally unopposed villains” cliché or “if not of the hero stopping us we wouldn’t be doing the evil acts” lie cliché, but that just makes it worse. She should be smarter than that, no matter what grief she’s feeling believing Tim is dead. She attacks her friends, threaten to expose Batman, and I just wanted to smack her one, which isn’t the reaction I want to have! Between Roy Harper’s reaction to Lian’s death and Stephanie’s reaction to Tim’s faked death I don’t think DC knows how to handle grieving heroes.
For those of you wondering what I’m talking about, this episode of Comicstorian summarizes. It disappoints me.
In this week’s Clutter Report, I have some surprise new storage space! Now I just need to figure out what to do with it. Also, I’m restructuring the “clutter for sale page” into sections of what I’m trying to get rid of. I’m not limiting it to that page of course. Only people who go to the site will see it. But it’s a first step.
This week’s comic reviews will include the last of the Zero Hour Aftermath Superman stories, but there are more Aftermath stories to tell since I found the rest of them recently. I suspect most of those will be going away since they were set aside originally a long time ago. We’ll also have the last of the Charlton Comics run of The Phantom I own, but not the last of the Phantom comics I have yet to review. (I’m pretty sure I did the entire Moonstone run but there are so many more to go over from other publishers. One of them is from the UK.) I’m also starting my Seduction Of The Innocent run and it’s pretty easy to find a transcription online that’s free to read or I’ve even see copies for sale, and maybe even the local library has it. I hope somebody is reading along with this one. I’ll also be doing a tribute to the late Adam West and another installment of the He-Man Newspaper Strips recently collected by Dark Horse, which is available digitally from Amazon if you don’t like physical media. I like physical media, but this book is impossible to put in my scanner, so I may be using photos to break the text wall. I don’t have the luxury of scans by others like last time.
Another week, another bunch of ramblings from me. Hope you enjoy the ride. It cost you nothing unless you get early access via Patreon. There may be a few bumps though. I’m in Connecticut and Connecticut is a series of hills.
The Clutter Reports (my other site) Atop The Fourth Wall Crisis On Earth Prime Lean Into Artcast Bully Says “Comics Oughta Be Fun” Siskoid’s Blog of Geekery
Cartoon Hero’s Lair SF Debris Four Million Years Later
Chapter By Chapter Special> Seduction Of The Innocent ch. 1
Normally, Chapter By Chapter is me reading a fictional book one chapter at a time to study each part of the story. In this special review series however we are looking at Seduction Of The Innocent, a non-fiction book as the writer, Dr. Fredric Wertham, tries to make the case that comics were a bad thing for kids in the 1950s. The book had a huge impact on the comic industry and fans. We will examine what he is saying not exclusively by today’s standards, but the time in which the book was made to see where Wertham was right, and where he was horribly wrong.
Introducing the Subject
Like the last book we looked at, there is an opening–then an image, now a quote, to set people up for what the chapter will discuss. In 1950s leaving something in the King’s English, which by the way is giving Firefox’s spellcheck a headache, wasn’t as pretentious as it comes off today. I think. I grew up a few decades later. And this chapter is the set up to a thesis on how comic books are warping kids’ minds. Don’t worry Fredric. One day comics will do everything they can to exclude children as much as possible until they remember then need the next generation or see that an indie creator that isn’t abandoning children is making money. Or someone rightfully complains that girls aren’t being properly represented, which will be “fixed” in the most unhelpful way they can get away with. Just be patient.
I considered trying to fix the words or spelling to something more modern, but if we’re judging this book for what it is and what it was, I’ll leave it and let you play musical words. In this opening chapter Wertham seems to be explaining events that led him to create the study that led to this book, and the odd thing is there are times Wertham and I both shake our heads…but for entirely different reasons.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on June 12, 2017 in Comic Spotlight, Seduction Of The Innocent and tagged Chapter By Chapter, commentary, Dr. Fredric Wertham, Seduction Of The Innocent.
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