If you’ve ever read anything from Clifford Meth, you know he can be a ferocious writer, and ferociously talented. We like that sort of thing here, and that’s why we’ve published his stuff in the past. He’s compiling his columns and essays into a book, and you have a few hours left to pre-order it on Kickstarter:
Comic Book Babylon gathers icons HARLAN ELLISON, STAN LEE, ALAN MOORE, FRANK MILLER, JOE KUBERT, GENE COLAN, DAVE COCKRUM, WALTER SIMONSON and NEAL ADAMS into a conversation with CLIFFORD METH where anything goes. Among other stories, you’ll learn how & why X-Men co-creator Dave Cockrum became the first Marvel artist to receive a monetary settlement and lifetime royalties for his creations after years of suffering and virtual banishment… You’ll meet a well-known Hollywood film producer who doesn’t like to pay his writers (until someone squeezes his face)… You’ll read Harlan Ellison saying things no one else would publish…
This fascinating book collects Meth’s decades of comics columns and essays–some too outrageous to publish in their day–and adds never-before-revealed material. Everything is brought to life with sensational illustrations by the celebrated and beloved Marvel/DC artist MICHAEL NETZER.
What’s achieved is a startling look at the REAL villains and heroes of comics. Introduction by STAN LEE. Art by NETZER. Rants by METH. Join us!
I freely admit a bias. DC’s animated efforts have always trumped Marvel’s. Always. Super Friends smacked Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends two ways from Sunday. And for every great episode of the 90’s X-Men or Spider-Man there were two Batman or Superman: The Animated Adventures. And sure, Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and the Sensational Spider-Man were brilliant, but they don’t belong in the same breath as Justice League Unlimited and Batman Beyond.
At present moment the only animated war (and it’s a weak one at that…) that may be around is Ultimate Spider-Man against Teen Titans Go! Both are meant to skew young. But only one of them is doing it right. I’ll give you half a guess – it’s Teen Titans Go!
In the simplest of terms, Ultimate Spider-Man ultimately sucks. And that hurts to say, because my personal lord and savior Paul Dini, is a creative consultant. The show is a schizophrenic attempt at making Spider-Man for a new generation. This is after the way-better-written Sensational Spider-Man, mind you. Every single trope a cartoon can use to wave the white flag of “love me!” is plastered throughout the show. A misfit team of B and C listers meant to accompany the star? Check. Family Guy style cutaway gags every few minutes? Check. Frequent guest stars to make you forget there’s no character development? Ch-ch-check. In all the episodes I’ve sat through, the only thread that connects them all is the desperation that oozes from the pores. Here is a series that reeks of plot by committee that does anything short of shuckin’ and jivin’ in order to grab the kiddies’ attention.
On the other hand, Teen Titans Go! seems to suffer from none of this. An oddly post-modern retread of its former self, TTG takes the titular titans of 2003, and re-imagines them in kawaii form. This super deformed (more cartoony, if such a term could ever be applied to a cartoon) Titans show plays towards the micro-sized popular companion toons like Regular Show or Adventure Time. With no serious episodes to be had, TTG is a show hellbent on solely being entertaining. No secret machinations present. Where USM seeks to birth a brand new Marvel Animated Universe™, TTG seeks only to get some laughs. I should note in the wake of the cancelation of Green Lantern: the Animated Series and Young Justice I was apt to be cranky with whatever replaced them. It took literally two minutes of TTG to crack my grimace.
Normally I’m a bit more verbose, but the proof is in the pudding. As it stands, Marvel continues down a terrible path, choosing to aim at any market that will have them. DC continues to allow their creative teams to explore, experiment, and ultimately (heh) aim their cartoons with laser focus. Combine that with their continued brilliant voice casting, and smart writing? You get, more often than not, a superior product.
The studio mogul-turned-producer, blocked from working on the set, nonetheless scored a Kryptonite-proof check thanks to Hollywood’s early adopter system.
Forgive me, but I have to write about Man of Steel some more. Or, more specifically, the current marketing of Superman.
Last week, I wrote about how disappointed I was in the apparent shame felt by comics fans and Warner Bros. about Superman’s optimism.
But it’s not just that this kind of grim’n’gritty Superman is disturbing. There is also the character’s complete disregard for the welfare of the people of Earth. As a New Yorker who lives within a mile of the World Trade Center, I tend to get upset by such images of destruction. I don’t expect filmmakers to contort themselves to my memories. In fact, I can appreciate the opportunity for catharsis.
However, I would like to see some acknowledgement that there were humans living in a city that is ravaged by superhuman destruction, and these humans were affected by the smashing skyscrapers. Joss Whedon managed to do this very well in The Avengers. I am disappointed that we don’t see at least as much in Man of Steel.
New this week is DC choosing to emphasize the worst aspects of the Man of Steel Superman with this San Diego Comic-Con exclusive, a sculpture of Kal-El standing on top of a pile of skulls.
This image exists in the movie, in a nightmare. That’s the most I can say for it.
If you don’t like hopeful characters, then Superman is not for you. Don’t try to mutate Superman into something he is not, just to fit the fashion.
I’m not the only person who thought so, as you can see here and here. Even movie stars are questioning certain entertainment choices (although, for the record, I really enjoy Kick-Ass in all its iterations, and most of what Mark Millar does. YMMV).
Believe me, I understand. There is a time in the lives of most of us, usually when we are around 12 or so, when we understand that there is more to life than toys and candy, that death and destruction exist, and we strive to be mature adults who embrace reality. For me, this state lasted through college. Then, when I lived on my own and began to experience my personal share of tragedy, I grasped the value of balancing realism with optimism. I loved Jonathan Richman not only for his talent and charm, but for his fierce defense of joy.
So, if I needed to have a ceramic expression of my own aesthetic, I’d buy this instead of a Superman on skulls. There has been enough death in my life . It needs more joy.
Joy is worth fighting for. That’s why I love Superman.
It might surprise you that a writer who spent so much time writing coverage on Warner Bros. film scripts for DC and won an award for an animated TV series about Batman … Hates. Comic. Book. Movies.
Usually. Not always, but most of the time. There’s a reason for that, though.
By virtue of my peculiar set of writing credits, I am a graduate of the Berlitz course in Geek-to-Hollywood translating. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, just make enough bank off it to pay back the student loan.
Ever since comic book artist lizards first started crawling out of the four-color slime and evolving into knuckle-dragging primates with Panaflexes on their shoulders, the meme that comics are little more than frozen movies – when what they more closely resemble is storyboards with half the frames cut out of every scene – has visited a host of unfortunate consequences on the medium we supposedly celebrate here.
For one thing, the intrusion of the Hollywood mentality on mainstream comics often results in exactly the sort of Big Mistake that Hollywood itself makes. (Mistake in the art crime sense, mind you, not the ka-ching, ka-ching sense.)
“Auteurs” we have up the wazoo, but directors who write their own stuff are seldom well-served by their writers. The two disciplines aren’t necessary mutually-reinforcing. And it’s a far rarer creature than we generally assume who can do both well. Which is why I think most talented comic book artists probably should have their typing fingers broken. Not everybody who graduates from UCLA film school is Orson Welles, and not everyone who buys a diploma from Joe Kubert’s school is Frank Miller.
And, to put a metaphor into the Cuisinart and push for “puree,” this epidemic of the sins of one medium being visited on another is a two-way street. You can’t get good movies out of styling or constructing a film as if it were a comic book, though Chthulhu knows Hollywood now seems to be trying to.
The two media aren’t the same. Each has a grammar of its own which is part of its unique appeal. (After too many instances of watching Robert Downey, Jr. debase himself and repudiate his profound talent by playing flying Spam, I hesitate to use the word “charm.”) And if you conflate the two, IMO you dilute the unique appeal of both.
That, uhm, whack Batman TV series in ‘66 not only proved that, but leveraged those differences to create its signature whackness. By “transliterating” — as opposed to adapting — the tropes and conventions of one medium (the “Meanwhile…” V.O.s, the POW!s and the ZAP!s, the “I’m a duly deputized law enforcement officer” even though I look like I just escaped from Liberace’s closet) into a completely different medium, it commented on the absurdity of superheroes from a non-Geek perspective. Which is why Geeks hated it.
No amount of redesigning the Spandex as Tutti-Frutti Kevlar can hide the self-evident fact that any grown-up celebrity-wannbe who goes outside looking like that will do his 15 minutes of fame in Celebrity Rehab. But I preferred the Batman: Animated stuff because it worked in animation: everything was stylized, appropriate to the surreality of it all. You could accept that Batman existed when he stood next to a Commissioner Gordon who looked like an inverted pyramid with eyes, in a suit jacket whose lapels grazed his earlobes. By contrast, Christian Bale’s teeth-gritting just looks silly.
The live-action stuff used to make me giggle. Now, of course, it just pisses me off as much as mainstream comic book pacing does: you can’t figure out WTF is going on in any of these things unless you’ve seen the previous five entries in the series. And date night at the Octoplex still costs more than five “floppies.”
All that said, I eagerly look forward to being dragged to see Sin City: A Dame For Our Rape Culture, secure in the knowledge that I won’t be too pissed off to fall asleep on it. If Frank and Rodriguez light this one the same way they lighted the first one, I won’t be able to see WTF is going on there, either, and won’t have to care.
When I started my first term at DC Comics back in 1976, DC’s then-VP of production Jack Adler told me the story of the biggest comic book the company never published: Blockbuster. It was purported to be a mammoth reprint book, not unlike their 100-Page Spectaculars but maybe five times bigger.
But it was a set-up. Jack said there had been this young artist – now a major comics legend – who had been coming into DC’s bullpen towards the end of the day to work at space vacated by one of the production artists. When nobody else was around, he’d poke around the production product to see what was happening. He would then leak noteworthy events to the fan press… and this pissed DC off. So in order to confirm their suspicions they mocked up a gargantuan reprint book called “Blockbuster” and left stuff lying around when only said leaker was around to see it. He did, he ratted the company out, and DC confirmed his guilt.
I won’t tell you who this artist was for two reasons. Number one, I was young once myself (I am now a 14 year old boy trapped in the pathetic body of a 62 year old who deserves it back). Number two, were I in that position at that time, I probably would have done the same. Actually, I might do that today as well, but I’d do it for ComicMix. The title name was later resurrected for a weekly title featuring revivals of the Charlton heroes, but they changed it to Comics Cavalcade Weekly and commissioned a lot of work before deciding not to do it after all.
You might ask what this has to do with Archie’s thyroid. A couple weeks ago Archie Comics came out with a digest comic with serious glandular issues entitled Archie 1000 Page Comics Digest. This book, of course, reminded me of Blockbuster – except it is real.
Don’t go expecting it on the checkout racks of your neighborhood supermarket. The book is an inch and three-quarters thick. In comic book terms, that’s about, oh, 1000 pages. It retails for $15.00, which is quite a bargain, and places like Amazon have it for a hair over ten bucks. It’s also available digitally in three parts for retail price which, given the cost of printing and shipping and returns, is comparatively a rip.
Unlike Archie Comics’ other recent, slimmer tomes, Archie 1000 Page Comics Digest is mostly limited to fairly recent stories. I enjoy the early stuff quite a lot, but Dark Horse and IDW have been covering those bases with several coats of paint. No cover repros, no intros, the only additions were creator credits. 1000 pages of pure story.
I’m reminded of a time when I was even younger and the saints were battling dinosaurs. My parents would buy me one or two of those Harvey 25-centers (thinking the Archie annuals were gender-inappropriate) or maybe one of those Dennis The Menace or Disney vacation specials, plop me in the back seat of the car next to my sister (who did get those gender-inappropriate Archie annuals, which I also read) and drive off to visit my grandmother in Indiana or maybe to a wooden vacation shack in western Michigan alongside the Burma-Shave signs. They were right: those big bargain books kept me quiet for most of the trip.
If I were in my parents’ position today, I’d buy my kid this Archie 1000 Page Comics Digest in a heartbeat. Evidently Archie thinks highly of the format: they’ve got sequels set for October and December.
More power to them. At this price, you just can’t go wrong.
Neil Gaiman’s latest work, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, began as a short story and unexpectedly grew into a novella and then a novel. Neil also wasn’t sure at first whether it was going to be a story for children or adults, since much of the story, while narrated by an adult, takes place when the protagonist is seven years old. Finally the marketing dial landed on “adult;” and that makes sense, for the most part.
There is a lot of darkness in this book, which is also of a more personal or intimate nature than some of Neil’s more fantastical works. There is more of “Neil” (himself) in it as well; not in that it is his autobiographical experience, but in that it was born more truly from his personal history. This makes Ocean feel more solidly rooted in, not the almost-realistic fantasy world of many of his stories, but an almost-fantastical reality instead. The fantasy elements are tied so tightly into some pretty ugly human truths that it might be easier to view this book as reality through the eyes of an imaginative child now grown into adulthood than as a fantasy adventure.
And yet, despite the darkness and ugliness that are frequently present, there is light in this book as well, and comfort. In the Hempstocks, a solidly reliable family of women who “know things,” and are comfortably situated on the side of all that is warm and good and naturally right; in an adult’s memories of childhood haunts, which can be as bright as they are at other times dark; and in the more lighthearted flights of fancy, such as the discovery of some very unique kittens in a field. This is a book that faces darkness but also “takes pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumble.” It reminds adults of a time when they were children and took a child’s pleasure in the small things.
Yes, this is a book that will be enjoyed by adults; and yet despite, or in fact possibly because of some very intense and disturbing scenes, mostly involving the narrator’s father or Ursula Monkton, this is indeed also a book that I would have enjoyed as a child. Children’s worlds are not always made of sunshine and unicorns, much as we’d like them to be. They are often at least a little dark and twisty – whether that darkness originates in the home, or in the schoolyard, or elsewhere. From experiences like a childhood birthday party which none of our classmates attend; to the frustrations and helplessness of dealing with a controlling adult; to the threatened or actual dissolution of a nuclear family, children often experience darkness without any prior experiences to ready them for it, or guidance on how to deal with it.
For children who read, books can serve as a guide; or an assurance that one is not alone in the darkness, and that there is someone else out there who understands what it’s like to be a child in a world of adult things that are as yet only half understood. Books can be an escape, but they can also help children face realities. And books can be a comfort, when the darkness inherent in the story is balanced by light. This is one of those books that might serve these functions; for the right sort of child.
So is this a story for adults or children? Well, both. It is a book of many layers that can be approached from many angles. It is a thought-provoking story, and one that is worth re-reading and thinking about. It is a book that could be about a wondrous and frightening adventure; or about looking back at childhood through the eyes of an adult and realizing how past experiences have shaped you; or even a reminder to adults of the way our actions will impact our children, who are our responsibilities. It might also be an assurance that even if you’ve been through a childhood that gave you a hole in your heart – in which adults fought children, and the adults won, or in which your kitten was lost to you and any replacement for it was never your kitten again – you can bear it, and gradually heal, and never stop becoming a little more whole again.
There is so much substance to this short novel that I could write about what it is or is not for a long time. Instead, I recommend that you go and read it.
The Revelry
As I’ve mentioned before, this is a particularly prolific year in the life of Mr. Neil Himself. Possibly in reaction to all of the busyness, Neil decided to do a massive signing tour for The Ocean at the End of the Lane, after which he plans to take a long and well-deserved break from such events.
Washington, DC was the fourth stop on the tour, and fortunately I was able to attend. It was a great event, organized by Politics & Prose Bookstore but held at the Lisner Auditorium on The George Washington University campus. The auditorium was packed, with somewhere around 1,500 fans in attendance.
Neil took the stage at 7 p.m. and kept everyone enthralled for the next hour-and-some; first discussing the genesis of the book, which contains more “feelings” than some of his other works. “I don’t do feelings very much, being both English and male,” joked Neil. He then read from Chapter 4 of the novel, in which the narrator and Lettie Hempstock meet a very scary Thing. It is quite creepy.
After the reading, Neil answered questions collected from the audience beforehand. Some he answered with humorous efficiency:
“What was it like to work on Doctor Who?”
“It was enormously fun.”
“Do you choose your audience (adults or children) before writing?”
“Mostly!”
“Once someone has written things, what is your advice for getting published?”
“Sell the things you’ve written!”
Others he devoted more time to. A question about where the idea of the Hempstock family (members of which have also made appearances in Stardust and The Graveyard Book) originated resulted in a story about when Neil was young and his mother told him that the farm nearby was in the Domesday Book, which meant it was about a thousand years old – “and it didn’t occur to me that it would have been a hovel at that time. I just assumed that the red brick farmhouse had always been there, and that the same family would have been living there for a thousand years as well.” Neil named that imagined family the Hempstocks, and in reference to their appearances in other books, said “it just made sense that some of them would have gone off into the world.”
After answering a plethora of questions, Neil closed with a short reading from a more humorous bit of Ocean, and then stated that he would sign for us “until my hand falls off.” And so he would have, I am sure, but thankfully, despite signing well into the night, I believe he still has both of his hands. Which is good, because it’s much easier to write with hands, and I want Neil to keep on writing more amazing stories like The Ocean at the End of the Lane for a long time to come.
If you haven’t read the novel yet, I highly recommend it. And until next time, Servo Lectio!
BOOM! Studios, the comics and graphic novel publisher, has acquired indie label Archaia Entertainment. BOOM! Studios will be the surviving company and the Archaia brand shall be maintained as a distinct imprint of BOOM!.
The addition of Archaia positions BOOM!’s catalog of intellectual property as the largest independent company-controlled comic book and graphic novel library, behind only industry titans DC Entertainment (Warner Bros.) and Marvel Entertainment (Disney).
BOOM! Studios was co-founded by Ross Richie and Andrew Cosby in 2005, and is known for Irredeemable, various licensed properties like Planet Of The Apes, The Muppet Show, Farscape, and the upcoming Sons Of Anarchy, their KaBOOM! all-ages imprint with Adventure Time, and their BOOM!Town imprint with various literary comics. Archaia, established in 2002, is known for graphic novels Mouse Guard, Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand, Rust, Spera, Cowboy, and Gunnerkrigg Court.
BOOM!’s foray into feature films launches this summer with Universal’s August 2 release 2 Guns starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, based on industry veteran Stephen Grant’s original comic. BOOM!’s also prepping to shop two more Grant properties in the works: Damned, Grant’s 1997 miniseries with Mike Zeck which BOOM! is re-releasing in July, and new comic The Deceivers which boasts a set-up akin to 2 Guns with spies. Meanwhile BOOM! is currently prepping its next feature Jeremiah Harm, based on the comic book by Keith Giffen, Alan Grant, and John Mueller, which Timo Vuourensola (Iron Sky) will direct. Archaia also has a number of titles previously optioned or in development including Rust (Fox), Lucid (Warner Bros.), Bolivar (Warner Bros.), and Feeding Ground (Pressman Films).
June 24th, 2013 – Los Angeles, CA – BOOM! Studios, the Eisner and Harvey Award-winning comic book and graphic novel publisher and two-time winner of Diamond Comics Distributors’ prestigious “Best Publisher” Gem Award, has merged with Eisner and Harvey Award-winning Archaia Entertainment, the publisher of graphic novels including Mouse Guard, A Tale of Sand, Rust, Spera, Cowboy, and Gunnerkrigg Court. BOOM! Studios will be the surviving company and the Archaia brand shall be maintained as a distinct imprint of BOOM!.
The addition of Archaia positions BOOM!’s catalog of intellectual property as the largest independent company-controlled comic book and graphic novel library, behind only industry titans DC Entertainment (Warner Bros.) and Marvel Entertainment (Disney). BOOM!’s comic books and graphic novels pioneer a new business model, sharing intellectual property ownership between the company and the creators who generate the content. BOOM!’s Chief Executive Officer and founder, Ross Richie, noted, “Our creator-friendly model ensures that creatives are rewarded financially as they generate the franchises of tomorrow. Archaia operates with the same philosophy and objectives, which is one of the many reasons this combination is such a great fit.”
“We are thrilled and excited to join with BOOM!,” Archaia President and Chief Operating Officer Jack Cummins, who will continue in the same role, said. “BOOM! is very committed to maintaining the brand we’ve worked so hard to build and preserving our relationship with our creators, fans, and retailers. They’re fans of Archaia first and foremost, and are avidly working behind the scenes to expand our market penetration and carry our catalog deeper into retail channels. Archaia readers can expect the same editorial approach that has garnered industry-wide awards but we will have a much stronger platform to deliver our content in all forms and channels. I am personally looking forward to bringing our team together with the fantastic team Ross has built.”
Richie added, “Archaia has a terrific track record for creating award-winning, beautiful books with high production values. Jack Cummins, Stephen Christy, Mark Smylie, and the entire Archaia team have built an amazing publisher. With BOOM!’s resources, Archaia fans will see more of the books they love, while retailers will enjoy better business through stronger trade terms.” The companies also plan to put key items from the Archaia catalog back into print.
BOOM! Executive Chairman Scott Lenet of the venture capital firm DFJ Frontier noted, “We are excited to be investors in a profitable, growing company with a fantastic early track record of creating, curating, and marketing properties that audiences genuinely love. We have ambitious plans to continue to fund the company’s expansion in comics, graphic novels, and other media.”
August 2nd sees the release of the first BOOM! Studios feature film, the Universal Pictures-distributed 2 Guns starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, based on the Steven Grant comic book published by BOOM!. The company is currently preparing its second feature film for production: Jeremiah Harm, based on the comic book by Keith Giffen, Alan Grant, and John Mueller, will be directed by Timo Vuourensola of Iron Sky (jeremiahharm.com).
Archaia has optioned Royden Lepp’s graphic novel Rust to Twentieth Century Fox. Among Archaia’s other announced deals are the development of Lucid (Warner Bros.), Bolivar (Warner Bros.),and Feeding Ground (Pressman Films).
Recently, legendary creators including writer Paul Jenkins (Wolverine: Origin, Inhumans) and artist Brian Stelfreeze (Batman: Shadow of the Bat, Wednesday Comics) have announced to the industry that BOOM! is their new publishing home. This summer BOOM! also launched the first original comic book Clive Barker has ever created and written, Clive Barker’s Next Testament.
July sees the blockbuster release of Archaia’s Mouse Guard: The Black Axe, created by Eisner Award winner David Petersen, Cyborg 009 in partnership with acclaimed Japanese publisher Ishimori, and The Thrilling Adventure Hour based on the long-running stage play of the same name.
In 1978, we were enticed to go see Superman this way:
You will believe a man could fly.
In 2013, we have been enticed to go see Man Of Steel like this:
He can walk through fire.
He can melt glaciers with his eyes.
He can rip through metal with his bare hands.
So, how does the Man of Steel shave?
Apparently with a Gillette razor.
Or…
Fly in for Sears Memorial Day Mattress Spectacular and get up to 60% off plus an extra 10% off mattresses over $999.
Plus special financing.
Plus free delivery and haul-away.
This is something super.
This is Sears.
Does Superman prefer Sealy, Simmons, Serta, Stearns & Foster, Tempur-Pedic, or Sears’s own Sears-O-Pedic? And what size mattress – twin, full, queen, king, or California king?
According to a June 3rd article in Advertising Age by Maureen Morrison, Man Of Steel had already made $160 million even before it even opened in cinemas around the world. The British newspaper The Independent upped that ante, reporting on June 10th that Man Of Steel had snared $170 million in product placement and advertising before it opened on June 14th.
Product placement isn’t new. In the “director’s cut” of Superman, there is a scene just before Martha Kent sees Clark out in the wheat field of the farm that didn’t make it into the theatrical version – and by the way, any theories on just how long it was between Jonathan’s death and Clark getting the call from the green crystal? At the funeral Martha’s hair is grey, but on the day Clark leaves for the “North,” her hair, as Clark later describes it to Lois, is “silver-white.” Anyway, in the aforementioned scene we watch as Martha does her morning routing, yelling at Clark to “get up, breakfast!” and placing a box of Cheerios on the kitchen table. And later in the film, Superman hurdles Zod into the Coca-Cola sign in Times Square – well, Metropolis’s version of Times Square – and while attempting to save the passengers on a bus thrown by the super-villains, Superman crushes a Marlboro delivery truck (Cigarette advertising? How retro!)
But these placements were subtle, and actually added to the reality – the first voice we hear in the 1978 Superman is Marlon Brando’s “This is no fantasy.” – of the film, aiding our suspension of disbelief.
But the amount of “product” associated with the newest film is really stunning. According to Morrison’s article, “there are more than 100 global promotional partners” attached to Man Of Steel. Some of them, in addition to the Sears Roebuck Company and Gillette, are:
Warby-Parker Shades, where you can buy a pair of Clark Kent eyeglasses
Hershey’s
Chrysler, which is offering two different “Superman” S-class cars
Kellogg’s
Walmart
Nokia
Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr, where you can eat a “Super Bacon Cheeseburger”
United States Army National Guard, which is using Man Of Steel as an enlistment tool
Under Armor
Mattel
Budweiser
Toshiba
To borrow from another DC iconic hero:
Holy marketing, Batman!!!!!
• • • • •
A confession. I did go to Gillette’s YouTube site to watch four videos entitled “How Does the Man of Steel Shave?” Bill Nye the Science Guy, Kevin Smith, Mayim Bialik – a PhD. in neuroscience? Really? – and Mythbusters’ Andy and Jamie offer their theories on how Kal-el goes from heavily bearded in the beginning of the film to smooth-shaven by the time he’s fighting Zod. And I must also confess that the vids are fun and entertaining. The four hypotheses are: (1) LHC Worm Hole Theory; (2) Materials Science Theory; (3) Follicle Denaturation Theory; and (4) Baby Rocket Theory.
I leave it to you to match up the theories with their progenitors.
