Tagged: Iron Man

What’s Next with Magneto & Iron Man

News
April 27, 2007

No, not what’s Next, that’s opening up this weekend. It’s based on a Philip K. Dick story and starring Nicholas Cage, Jessica Biel, and Julianne Moore. To paraphrase Lawrence Peter Berra, it’s Deja Vu all over again.

No, I’m talking about what’s coming down the pike. First, from USA Today, here’s a new pic of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark:

Second, from Cinematical, we see that the ever busy David Goyer (Blade, Dark Knight, Jumper, Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD) has been tapped to direct the new Magneto prequel movie. While my immediate scary thought was Hannibal Rising with mutant powers, Patrick Walsh comes up with something even scarier: "Ashton Kutcher in a purple helmet and Seann William Scott in a bald cap. "

DENNIS O’NEIL: Who knows what evil lurks…? Part 3

News
April 24, 2007

I had it easier than many comics writers. I began in the business as an assistant to Stan Lee in 1965, when Marvel was just completing its metamorphosis from obscure Timely Comics to publishing phenomenon, and Stan’s vision of what a comic book company could be was pretty much complete. Implicit in the writing part of the job was the requirement that I imitate Stan’s style – after all, Stan’s style was Marvel. That made the job simple: imitate Mr. Lee successfully and I was doing it right.

Of course, I bridled a bit at having to imitate anyone. After all, I was in my 20s and had been doing comics for about two days, and therefore, according to my lights, I was deeply wise and fully knowledgeable about…oh, name it, and don’t forget to include comics. As Bob Dylan sang, “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” Now, in my sexagenarian salad days, I’m grateful for my Marvel initiation because everyone begins by imitating someone, and I didn’t have to seek a model or wait for the churning of the universe to provide one – I learned the trade by having to imitate the comic book scripter who was at that time, arguably, the best.

Here are a few words from a man who is well on his way to becoming my favorite mainstream writer: “Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master… Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.” Those observations are from a Harper’s Magazine piece by Jonathan Lethem titled “The Ecstasy of Influence,” which you can read on Harper’s website. They bring us, at last and via the long way around, to the subject of this installment of the arc (or miniseries, or series-within-a-series or whatever the hell it is) that began with what we called “Who Knows What Evil… Part 1.” Those of you who were kind enough to read the earlier installments may remember that I suggested that the creators of Batman may have been…well, call it “intensely aware” of The Shadow and other popular culture creations.

Let’s assume that they were. Did that make them wicked, weaselly thieves? No, no, and again, no. Remember: everyone begins by imitating someone. As Anthony Tollin said in a phone conversation, those early comics guys (who were barely out of adolescence and in the process of inventing a medium) had no one to emulate except authors from other forms and the newspaper strip fraternity. Since they were generally not from society’s loftier precincts, with ready access to elitist amusements, their entertainment was comic strips, movies, the pulps, and maybe radio, and it was natural – inevitable? – that they’d seek inspiration in those media. Where else?

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Robert Downey Speaks!

News
April 17, 2007

In a comprehensive article noting the planned Wolverine, Batman, Green Lantern and Justice League of America movies, the London Telegraph interviewed Robert Downey Jr. about his thoughts about his latest alter-ego, Iron Man:

"He’s a superhero who is just a man," says Downey. "Not that I wouldn’t play a guy who got bit by a spider or who has some freaky connection with bats, but I think this is a little more accessible.

"I guess that when Stan Lee created the character back in the mid-1960s, to see if he could base a superhero on a hard-partying, womanizing billionaire who manufactures weapons, and still make him likeable enough to sell comic books. He clearly won his bet.

"Tony Stark is someone who has the ability to be right at the forefront of science and we are finding out more and more nowadays that science and mythology are becoming somewhat interchangeable. Some of the things that seemed really far-fetched aren’t any more."

Iron Man co-stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges andTerrence Howard and is set for release in spring, 2008.

DENNIS O’NEIL: Who knows what evil lurks…? Part 2

News
April 17, 2007

Suddenly, the air was full of bats!

The “air” here is metaphorical and if you’d allow me to fully ripen the trope, possibly to the point where it emits a faint odor, it might read, The air of popular culture in the 30s and 40s was full of bats.

Let’s see. There was a Mary Roberts Rheinhart novel and an early talkie adapted from it, both called The Bat, and there was a pulp hero also called The Bat and, a bit later, another pulp do-gooder who labeled himself The Black Bat. Am I forgetting anyone…? Oh yeah. A comic book character that was introduced in Detective Comics #27, dated May 1939, as Batman. Like an estimated eighty percent of your fellow earthlings, you may have heard of him.

And, again metaphorically, standing behind the Batman and maybe some of the others was one of the greatest pulp heroes, The Shadow. The writer of the early Batman stories, Bill Finger, made no secret of his admiration for the Shadow novels. He went so far as to admit that the Shadow’s influence on his batwork was extremely direct when he told historian (and author and artist and publisher) Jim Steranko, “I patterned my style of writing Batman after the Shadow.” And: “My first script was a take-off on a Shadow story.”

Which brings us to Anthony Tollin. Remember him? I introduced the two of you a couple of weeks ago in this very feature. I told you that a company Anthony owns has been issuing reprints of the Shadow books. Recently, he sent me an early copy of one of those books, titled Partners of Peril, and suggested that I might want to compare it to the first Batman adventure, The Case of the Chemical Syndicate.

Of course there are differences. After all, the Shadow novel is probably around 50,000 words long and Batman’s debut is six comic book pages. But there are also similarities. I won’t even try to describe them all – see Robert Greenberger’s ComicMix article, or Anthony’s text piece in the book itself – but they are manifold. In a phone conversation a few hours ago, Anthony mentioned the most obvious, among which are:

Both are about a – yes! – chemical syndicate.
The heroes of both get involved in the proceedings while visiting a law-enforcing friend.
Both feature virtually identical death traps, which each hero beats in the same way.
Both heroes offer the same whodunit-type explanation at the adventure’s end.
Both heroes spend a lot of time on a rooftop after a safe robbery.
The denouements of both stories are, again, virtually identical.

Et cetera.

As I wrote in the earlier column, anyone with even the dimmest interest in pop culture or comics history, or who just wants to sample the kind of entertainment that kept pops or granddad reading by flashlight under the covers, or who’s just in the mood for capital-M Melodrama combined with capital-H Heroics, might want to see if the Shadow has anything for them.

For me, the stuff has another aspect, one which is as modern as hip-hop. But that’s for next week.

Back in gray?

News
April 12, 2007

The first glimpse of the titular main character from Jon Favreau’s Iron Man was recently posted thanks to our friends over at IGN.com.

Keep in mind – this is the very first suit built our hero, as first seen in the comics. So don’t expect the shiny red and gold suit we see today. The film stars Robert Downy Jr. as the billionaire alter ego of Iron Man, Tony Stark, playing along side Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) Jim "War Machine" Rhodes (Terrence Howard) and the evil Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges).

Those of you may remember the director Jon Favreau for playing Foggy Nelson in 2003’s Daredevil, or for Dinner For Five, his movie-talk television series that appeared on IFC between 2001 and 2005.

DENNIS O’NEIL: No evil lurks this week

News
April 10, 2007

Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I know I promised, at least implicitly, to deliver Who Knows What Evil Lurks – Part 2 this week. But that will take some time and maybe digging, to write and, honestly, I have the luxury of neither. By the time you read this, I’ll either be at or returning from Juaniata, Pennsylvania, where I’ve been invited to be the guest of Jay Hosler and maybe shoot off my mouth in public a bit. I’ve been busy doodling notes for said mouth-shooting; hence no dissertation on lurking evil.

I thought about just blowing off this whole column thing, or delaying it until I was back here in scenic Upper Nyack, and rested. But… I promised editor Mike Gold and PR goddess Martha Thomases that I would deliver a minimum of 500 words each and every week. And I made the same promise to myself. Sternly, I said to myself that I had to respect the deadline, even if the deadline in question is largely of my own making.

By the way, I don’t hate deadlines the way a lot of writers and artists seem to. Maybe that’s just because I lived with them for so long – for over 40 years, they were a constant part of my life. What can be said against them is that they can be a pain in the ass. What can be said for them is that they can impart focus to a project and they can be an impetus to stop kvetching and worrying about your ability to leave civilization breathlessly in your debt (and maybe sit on David Letterman’s couch) and just, please, get the damn thing done.

A couple of paragraphs back – I’ll wait while you check – I mentioned Jay Hosler. Doctor Hosler teaches biology at Juaniata College, is a proponent of evolution, a comics enthusiast, a writer, and a cartoonist. He’s done two graphic novels which I found educational and very entertaining. You’ll find the titles below.

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Big Iron Man screw-up

News
April 9, 2007

Newsstand distributors have released some misprinted copies of Iron Man #16, wherein pages are printed out of order. Expect to see these on eBay shortly going for far more than their worth by any objective measure.

Reports of copies of Iron Man #16 printed with their pages out of order appearing in various Borders bookstores in the midwest started surfacing over a week ago, but it must be stressed that not all newsstand copies are the misprints.

The direct sale version of Iron Man #16 has been delayed for this very reason. The "correct" version will be in comics shops this Wednesday.

The question that leaps to mind isn’t "how could this have gotten through?" as the printers are, like anyone else along the assembly line, only human; but, "there’s still newsstand distribution?" In fact, most towns have their central newsstand outlets, big-box bookstores like Borders, supermarket spinner racks, and convenience store shelves. However, only a fraction of the comic book titles published are distributed outside of the comic book shop network.

DENNIS O’NEIL: Who knows what evil lurks…? Part 1

News
April 3, 2007

Meet Anthony Tollin.

I did, more than 30 years ago, at DC Comics. Anthony was tall, friendly, didn’t look like a New Yorker, and wasn’t. He came to Manhattan from Minneapolis in 1973, worked a couple of jobs, and then landed at DC, where he stayed for 20 years, proofreading, color-coordinating, helping Jack Adler manage the production department – necessary chores, done well away from the spotlight, that transform the raw materials of artwork and script into a printed artifact. Along the way, Anthony got married, and divorced, moved to another state, and when he retired from DC, settled in Texas, where he lives and single-parents his lovely and gifted daughter, Katrina.

If you talked to Anthony much, you soon discovered that he had a number of pop cultch enthusiasms, not the least of which was comic books. But his real passions – I don’t think the word is too strong – were always The Shadow novels, mostly written by Walter Gibson under the pseudonym Maxwell Grant and published in the 30s and 40s in the pulp magazine format, and old radio shows, particularly the crime and adventure programs that were the first cousins of the pulps and comics. If ever I had a question about either of these subjects, Mr. Tollin was always my first go-to guy. I never needed a second.

Those passions are still part of the Tollin gestalt, and now he’s found a new way to both share and make a living from at least one of them. Since July, a company Anthony started has, in partnership with something called Nostalgia Ventures, been issuing reprints of The Shadow books. The price is $12.95, quite modest considering that in one volume you get two novels and reprints of the original illustrations, a feature that’s both unusual and, I think, a real value-adder. The book that’s on the desk next to my computer would certainly be mistaken for one of the old pulps – same size, same kind of cover and font – until you picked it up and found that, in fact, both the cover stock and the interior stock are considerably better than anything that bore the original work. Inside, there are the novels, plus a couple of pieces by Will Murray, another expert and go-to guy, and an adaption of a Shadow radio show.

And as a comics fan you should care… why?

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Downey’s looking pretty Stark these days

News
April 2, 2007

Robert Downy Jr as Tony Stark (right) and Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Pottson the set of the now-filming Iron Man movie. Set for release on May 2nd, 2008 and directed by Jon Favereau (who played Foggy Nelson in Daredevil), the movie also stars Terrence Howard and Jeff Bridges.

Tagged: Iron Man

What’s Next with Magneto & Iron Man

DENNIS O’NEIL: Who knows what evil lurks…? Part 3

More Marvel video games

Robert Downey Speaks!

DENNIS O’NEIL: Who knows what evil lurks…? Part 2

Back in gray?

DENNIS O’NEIL: No evil lurks this week

Big Iron Man screw-up

DENNIS O’NEIL: Who knows what evil lurks…? Part 1

Downey’s looking pretty Stark these days

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