Sometimes writing this type of column requires the skills of an experienced curmudgeon – which, lucky for me, is how I got the job. But only a child with a weak bladder pisses over everything he likes, and I am not a child. I am an adult. With a weak bladder, but hey, I’m staring Medicare in the face.
Unlike some of my ilk, I still read comic books – not exclusively, but I read a lot of ‘em. I read a few out of curiosity and a few others just to see what my friends are up to. But I focus on the comics I actually enjoy (hence my annual “Top Nine” list). With comics characters and adaptations proliferating all across the media, the same is true with comics-based movies and teevee shows. And what’s making my little fanboy heart go pitter-patter? Spoiler Alert: look at the artwork up by the headline.
I have enjoyed Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. ever since its debut in Strange Tales #135. This comic book came out in the early summer of 1965. An endless sea of masterful writers and artists succeeded Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (for the record, Kirby plotted those early stories) and the most significant, the most interesting, the most awe-inspiring, was from a relative newcomer named Jim Steranko. He imbued the property with so much raw energy and skill that the property is still running off of the momentum he provided some almost a half century ago.
I love the way S.H.I.E.L.D’s been handled in the movies. It’s so… Marvelesque. It’s been handled by people who get it. So it should come as no surprise that my fanboy anticipation is entirely invested in the new teevee series, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Of course I can be disappointed. This sort of thing has happened before. The right people get it wrong. But given how S.H.I.E.L.D. has been handled by Marvel’s movie division and the fact that Joss Whedon is the show’s overseer and Clark Gregg unsplatters himself from the movie storyline to reappear as Agent Coulson in this new series, I have every right to expect a solidly entertaining experience.
On Tuesday, September 24, nearly three weeks from today, I’ll find out.
And then I can move on to Doctor Who’s anniversary.
After all these years, it’s still fun to be a fanboy. I’ll grow up to be that old geezer at the assisted living center, completely not acting his age.
Hoo boy. My Uh-Oh sense is screaming its fool head off.
Here’s the inevitable backstory. In the late spring of 1965, Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. replaced The Human Torch in Marvel’s Strange Tales monthly. I liked the Human Torch in Fantastic Four, but this series was sadly second-rate. I also liked Nick Fury and his contemporary appearance in the just Big-Banged Marvel Universe. But I really loved the teevee series The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (damn; typing all those damn dots is gonna wear real thin) so the new Nick Fury was met with a minor adolescent fangasm.
Timing is everything. U.N.C.L.E. was just ending its first season, and the next two would suck the chrome off of a mid-sixties Buick. Over at Marvel, Stan and Jack were just warming up. A couple years later Jim Steranko would take S.H.I.E.L.D., and comics, to a whole ‘nother level. My feelings towards U.N.C.L.E. remained positive, but in a more hopeful sense. That hope actually paid off in the show’s final half-season, and the series remains iconographic to this day.
Meanwhile, S.H.I.E.L.D. became a critical part of the Marvel Universe – but attempts at maintaining it as an ongoing series proved unsuccessful. It attracted some great talent, but not great sales. I doubt most humans were aware of the organization until Iron Man 1 came along.
Maybe it was the success of the Marvel movies that finally got the Man From U.N.C.L.E.movie off the ground. I hope so, as that appeals to my sense of Cosmic Balance. Guy Richie is directing it, and Tom Cruise and Armie Hammer are starring as Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin, respectively.
Uh-Oh.
I can’t say anything about Mr. Hammer except that his great-grandfather, Armand Hammer, became the world’s wealthiest man by selling lots of stuff to the Soviets. This appeals to my Cosmic Balance thing. Nonetheless, he is barely noticed in the trailers to the upcoming movie The Lone Ranger, in which he plays the lead but Johnny Depp plays the Star. But I can say a lot about Mr. Cruise.
Tom Cruise is, in my opinion, a good actor. Sometimes great. He stars as the continuing lead in the Mission: Impossible series. He stars as the continuing lead in the Jack Reacher series. In both series, as well as most of his movies I’ve seen, he doesn’t play the character, he makes the character Tom Cruise. That’s fine for M:I – his character is original, even though the series is not. But, as noted, I have a fondness for Napoleon Solo, the human being spy who kidnapped other human beings to engage them in adventures that even Alfred Hitchcock would find amazing. If the movie is called The Man From U.N.C.L.E., I want to see Solo on the screen and not Cruise.
I also have a fondness for S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson, who earned those feelings in a whole lotta recent Marvel movies. The same guy, Clark Gregg, is playing the character in the new teevee series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Perhaps that Cosmic Balance can be described by the old sawhorse “What goes around comes around.” But I gotta tell you, my fanboy reaction to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is one of great anticipation.
In this space last Saturday, my dear friend and adoptive bastard son Marc Alan Fishman stated “modern comics are writing rings around previous generations. We’re in a renaissance of story structure, characterization, and depth… I’d like to think we the people might defend the quality of today’s comics as being leaps and bounds better than books of yesteryear.”
Simply put, the dear boy and my close pal and our valued ComicMix contributor is full of it.
Don’t get me wrong: there’s a hell of a lot of great writing out there today, and I agree with his opinions about most if not all of the young’un’s he cites. Today’s American comics reach a much wider range of readers. There’s also a hell of a lot more comics being published today – although those comics are being read by a much smaller audience in the aggregate – and I take no comfort in saying there’s more crap being published today as well: Sturgeon’s Law is akin to gravity. Marc’s comparison to the comics of the 1960s and 1970s is an apples-and-oranges argument: the comics of the pre-direct sales era, defining that as the point when most comics publishers virtually abandoned newsstand sales, were geared to a much younger audience. Even so, a lot of sophisticated stories squeaked through under the “Rocky and Bullwinkle” technique of writing on two levels simultaneously.
As I said, there are a lot of great writers practicing their craft today. Are they better than Carl Barks, John Broome, Jack Cole, Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer, Archie Goodwin, Walt Kelly, Harvey Kurtzman and Jim Steranko … to name but a very few (and alphabetically at that)? Did Roy Thomas, Louise Simonson and Steve Englehart serve their audience in a manner inferior to the way Jonathan Hickman, Gail Simone and Brian Bendis serve theirs today? Most certainly not.
Then again, some of the writers he cites are hardly young’un’s. Kurt Busiek has been at it since Marc was still in diapers. Grant Morrison? He started before Marc’s parents enjoyed creating his very own secret origin.
Marc goes on to state that John Ostrander and Dennis O’Neil would say that the scripts they write today are leaps and bounds better than their earlier work. I don’t know; I haven’t asked them. But I can offer my opinion. Neither John nor Denny are writing as much as they could or should today because they, like the others of their age, they are perceived as too old to address the desires of today’s audience – which, by the way, is hardly a young audience. I wonder where this attitude comes from?
But let’s look at the works of these two fine authors from those thrilling days of yesteryear. John’s Wasteland, GrimJack, Suicide Squad, and The Kents stand in line behind nothing. As for Denny, well, bandwidth limitations prohibit even a representative listing of his meritorious works, and I’ll only note Batman once. Let’s look at The Question. A great series, and he wrote that while holding down a full-time job and while sharing an office with a complete lunatic. Then there’s Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Iron Man, The Shadow… hokey smokes, I wake up each Thursday morning (in the afternoon) blessing Odin’s Bejeweled Eye-patch that Denny is writing his ComicMix column instead of spending that time doing socially respectable work.
I am proud of this medium and its continued growth – particularly as its growth had been stunted for so long. And I’m proud of my own service to this medium. But, as John of Salisbury said 953 years ago, we are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants.
And, standing on those shoulders, we swat at gnats.
The opening night of the movie Blade, I was sitting in a packed Magic Johnson Theater in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles. Crenshaw is a predominantly black community, so needless to say the crowd for a black superhero movie in a black neighborhood in theaters owned by a black sports superstar was overwhelmingly Jewish. The Jews, they so love to hang in the hood. Black hats, long black coats – they roll big pimpin’ style.
I kid, I joke. The audience was crushingly African American. There was a lot of excitement in the crowd. When the lights went down the audience started to clap and that’s rare in a black movie house. To have a black crowd clap for a movie before they have seen it is extraordinary.
Black people rarely do that. We take our leisure time seriously. We are also very vocal about entertainment and we expect our monies worth. If a black crowd does not like a film – no that’s wrong – if black people don’t like a movie we will not be shy about voicing our opinions immediately.
Yep. I freely admit we can be a bit loud in the movies but for us it’s part of the show. To be fair we only tend to get loud during action and horror movies. You will seldom hear, “Yo! Henry Fonda! Don’t get in that motherfucking row boat!” during a screening of On Golden Pond.
Black people by in large don’t go see a film. We go to the movies. What’s the difference?
My Left Foot, film.
Die Hard, movie.
Still confused? OK, try this. A film is a motion picture that many may consider art. A film will have these elements in it: a story, a point of view, and a message. It will make little or no money but will win lots of awards and always features white people.
A movie will have these elements; some kind of story that won’t be important, shit that blows up, sex, violence, vampires, it will only win special effects awards, it will make tons of money and always features white people.
The one thing you will find in both a movie and film is white people. From time to time you will find black people in movies but you will always find white people in every movie ever made. Most times those white people will include Nicolas Cage.
But, (man, I wonder why Peter David hasn’t pimp slapped me yet) I digress… As I was saying, black people take our movie going outings very seriously. We don’t clap just to clap (that’s why we have sex), we clap to show appreciation for the work. So the reaction by the sold out crowd at the Blade opening was quite the pleasant surprise to me. Clearly some of the applause was because this was something rarely seen in movies, a black superhero.
When the credits began Wesley Snipes got quite an ovation and the crowd continued giving props to some other recognizable names. Then up on the screen came this gem: “Blade created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan.”
“Oh, yes!” I screamed like 40-year old woman who just had her first orgasm after being married for 20 years. “Oh hell yes!” Much, like I imagine that 40-year old woman would react, I did not notice that everyone else had stopped hollering and were looking at me. A large, as in large like the Hulk, man noticed my outburst had occurred during the “created by” credit.
“What you yelling for?” He asked. “I know Marv Wolfman, one of the guys who created Blade.” I said, hoping this guy wasn’t a Crip because I had on a red sweater.
He asked, “Is he a brother?”
What? Is he a brother? Marv Wolfman? I mean come on! Before I could answer I noticed that there were others listening and realized that I could dampen the mood of the crowd. But I’m not a lair so I told him the truth.
“He’s my brother.”
“Right on!” Someone shouted!
That was a great moment in what would turn out to be a great night.
The move was wonderful. The crowd loved every minute of it and me? I was in cloud nine.
Blade was a great movie. It featured a black superhero but it was not a “black” film. Nope. It was a superhero movie, period. Not long afterwards I ran into Marv Wolfman at Comic Con in San Diego. I recounted to him my interaction with the Bulk (black Hulk, get it?) and he was pleased as can be. Up until I told him he did not know that he had gotten an entire card in the credits. A “card” is what the credits are called in the industry it’s a big deal when your name is the only name on a card or is shared with just one other name. Big Deal. Marv created Blade at a time when black superheroes were few and I mean very few. Here’s the kicker: Blade does not have to be black.
Nope.
Blade could be just another white guy who kills v. The character works just as well as a black character as it does a white character. Marv created a good character and that’s why it works.
I’m of the opinion the color of the character really does not matter as long as the character is a good character. That said I’m a comic book fan first and I get a little pissed when a character I’m familiar with in the comics has a race change in the movies. You would think that as a black man and a black comic book creator I’d be happy that Nick Fury was turned into a black man.
Nope.
I liked Nick Fury as a badass white super spy.
That’s because of the Steranko comics. Jim Steranko’s Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. was one of the greatest comics ever! When Fury was changed in The Ultimates it pissed me off. When I saw Samuel L. Jackson as Fury in Iron Man it pissed me off even more.
I know Sam Jackson, Sam Jackson attends my annual Comic Con parties, Sam Jackson is a huge comic book fan, Sam Jackson is a great actor, alas Sam Jackson is not Nick Fury.
I want my comic book heroes to be like the comic book. I can hear some black people now “Man we need more black superheroes… and you’re stupid, Davis!”
I know we need more black superheroes, but Nick Fury will always be the cool ass super spy white guy in the Steranko comics to me.
The fact is I care that Nick Fury is not white in the movie because he’s white in the comic book. Did it stop me from seeing The Avengers?
Here comes that 40-year old first time orgasm woman again, Oh Hell No!
Did I like Sam Jackson as Fury? Damnit, yes, yes I did. Did anyone seem to care in the two sold out showings of the movies I sat through that Nick Fury was black?
Nope.
Did Blade not make a zillion dollars and spawn two sequels?
Yep.
And speaking of Spawn (damn I’m clever) did Spawn, another black superhero, not make a grip in movies, television and toys?
Yep.
Was Static Shock (still seen in reruns to this day) not one of the highest rated animated shows on television?
Yep.
I’m told often, black doesn’t sell. Clearly that’s bullshit. Just ask Will Smith, the biggest star in the world. He has played a few superheroes and all made serious bank.
With these examples and many more why does Hollywood still think that “black means death” when it comes to black superheroes?
In fact, I’m so far away from being a prude the next level in my open mindedness would be to become a prude.
I’ve met a lot of prudes in my life and nothing makes a prude more prudish than their views on sex.
Me? As long as it does not include kids or animals I say what ever floats your boat sexually, have at it. You would have to be into some sick shit (kids, animals, Republicans) to disgust me.
I’m not quite at the point that I’m disgusted by the depiction of some women in superhero comics but I’m far from all right with it and have not been all right with it for a while now. It’s just a real turn off to me and it’s also one of the reasons a lot of people still think comics are juvenile fare at best.
The depiction of super titty women is not something I consider as important to be concerned about like some sicko who’s into gerbil love or some other crazy action. I guess for the most part absolutely unrealizable depictions of women with breasts as big as a weather balloons is harmless, except for giving young men a bullshit unrealistic view of women and demeaning women in all sorts of ways. But other than that, it’s harmless.
But-that does seem to be what the audience wants, though it seems to me the 38 double-D tits, tiny waist and banging booty that appear to be the preeminent portrayal of women in comics is just silly in this day and age. Yeah, I can hear the decades old ridiculous argument “they are drawn that way for the 15-year-old boy audience.”
Really? So those 15-year old boys are not into the guys in tights that beat up on other guys in tights, which is the reason most superhero comics exist? So doing away with the big titty women would result in those 15-year old boys no longer reading about the men in tights who like to pound other men in tights?
Oh, wait a sec.
Perhaps the reason for the big titty women is to insure that no conservative family value group complains that comics are nothing but guys in tights pounding each other.
That can’t happen. It would destroy the sanity of marriage.
So I guess we are stuck with the 15-year-old boy defense for the reason that big titty superhero women are on the rag…I mean all the rage!
Heh.
That defense is weaker than OJ’s but it’s working just as well I guess. It’s the cop out of all cop-outs and artists who spin that line are just wrong or really horny.
I mean really.
The only thing that’s possibly worst than comic’s big titty women are the big titty women in some video games. Have you seen Catwoman in Mortal Combat VS. The DC Universe? She looks like a porn star that has seen way too many one eyed monsters. I mean…damn.
I often wonder what the wives and girlfriends of the artists who draw big titty super women think. But then again, maybe that’s the problem. Maybe most of these guys have no wife or girlfriend. Maybe they just need to get laid.
Well if that’s the case I’m not here to judge, I’m here to help. Follow the steps below and your pent up frustrations will soon be a thing of the past.
Step 1. Go to a bar.
Step 2: Buy the ugliest or the fattest girl a drink or seven.
Step 3. Get real drunk yourself.
Step 4. Take her home.
Step 5. Tap that.
Note: for even faster action, buy a fat and ugly girl the drinks.
This works. Trust me. How do I know? It’s in the Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain handbook and just look how much tail those guys are getting.
On the very, very slim chance there is a woman artist out there drawing big titty women in comics the followings are steps that you can use to get laid.
Step 1. Go to a bar
Step 2. Look for the guy trying to get a fat or ugly woman (or both) drunk.
Step 3. Go up to him and just say “yes.”
Step 4. Let him take you home and “tap that.”
Step 5. In about two minutes after he is “tapped out,” leave and go home and work.
By the way, shame on you for being such a slut.
Look, kidding aside, I’m a big a fan of big titty women with tiny waist and banging booty as the next guy but I prefer real and not plastic.
That’s the problem with the way some artists depict woman. Their depictions just do not ring true.
Yes, I know that neither does a guy who comes from another planet and can bend steel in his bare hands and who, disguised as Clark Kent is tapping the ass of one of the few female characters who is not a big titty woman. I know that does not ring true either but that’s a non-truth I can live with.
The new guys would do well to take a page from some of the masters of comic book art. They took the time and effort to draw women with grace, style and attitude and those women were hot!
Gwen Stacy as drawn by John Romita Sr. is the hottest comic book woman character ever created bar none.
Who’s hotter? Nobody.
Gwen Stacy was not a superhero but she was still a piece of ass to beat any other piece of ass.
Female agents of SHIELD as drawn by Jim Steranko – hot!!! Nick Fury’s girlfriend Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine as drawn by Jim was sexy beyond words.
Jack Kirby’s Sue Storm was so fine that she was my second pretend girlfriend. The first was Gwen Stacy and the third was Laurie Partridge.
Yeah, I had a thing for white girls. I had to have a thing for white girls; there were no black women in comics or on TV for my 10-year-old self to develop a crush on.
I’m proud to say as a proud African American man, all my crushes now are of women of color…Asian.
What?
I don’t expect anything to change anytime soon with regards to super big titty woman but maybe some artist will read this and check out how the greats did women.
Give that a sec.
You know, if those comic book artists who draw those outlandish women would simply draw less big titty women the big titty women they did draw would become that much more of a sex symbol because she would be rare.
That would be sexy.
I miss you Gwen Stacy. I’m sad that the Green Goblin broke your neck.
New York, NY (October 3, 2011) A Never-Ending Battle, the first episode of a new film from the creative team responsible for the award-winning PBS documentaries Broadway: The American Musical and Make ‘Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America, will be screened in front of an audience for the first time at the New York Comic Con, the East Coast’s largest and most exciting pop culture convention.
Featuring rare footage along with new interviews with legends such as Joe Simon, Stan Lee, Jim Steranko, Neal Adams, Michael Chabon and Jules Feiffer, segments of the first episode – “A Never-Ending Battle: 1938-1954” – will be previewed on Friday, October 14, 2011 at 4PM in Room 1B01 of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center at 655 West 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan. An on-stage interview and Q&A with filmmakers and cultural historians Michael Kantor and Laurence Maslon will take place immediately following the screening.
“We’re really excited to preview our film to fans at New York Comic Con,” said Emmy Award winning filmmaker Michael Kantor. “Because so many incredible talents have given us interviews, I think of this screening as kind of like attending six all-star panel sessions at once. We are also very eager to get fan reactions and feedback.”
“As a comics fan from back in the days of Second Sundays at the McAlpin Hotel, it was a privilege for me to sit down and hear so many legendary creators spin new tales I had never heard before,” added Maslon, the film’s co-writer, as well as an associate professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. “This documentary series will mark the first time that we’re able to tell the grand epic of the American comic book heroes on a scale that they deserve.”
The event is open to all registered attendees of the New York Comic Con, space permitting, and has been made possible by special arrangement with Ghost Light Films, Inc., Reed POP and Bonfire Agency, LLC.
After last year’s Christmas special, what’s in store this season from FELICIA DAY and THE GUILD over the next few months? And what about the new web series she’s working on? Plus Stan Lee & Jim Steranko – together again?
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Sure, love is like a drug sometimes — but what kind of drug? Is it a quick pick-me-upper like caffeine? Is it the kind of drug that makes you taste colors? Heck, some might argue that it’s the type of drug that makes you look like Nick Nolte’s mugshot after a couple of weeks.
As a special Valentine’s Day treat, Journalista points readers to a pair of stories that deal with exactly that question, in their own ways.
Honestly, I didn’t even have a chance to read the story. I started looking at the art and woke up two hours later covered in Sun Chips and Kool-Aid. It’s THAT good.
This one tells the tale of Edith, a girl-next-door type with a world of opportunities and a steady beau, who makes a couple of bad decisions and ends up seduced by the "jungle beat" of hazy dance clubs and a pill-pushing, smooth-talking stranger. Soon she’s stealing from cash registers and acting like a funnybooks version of Amy Winehouse.
… But seriously, folks, who hasn’t had a first date like that, right?
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.
RECOMMENDED READING: Awww…you know.
Dennis O’Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.
Grab your pencil and connect the dots between Howdy Doody, The Fugees, sold out GI Joes and Teri Hatcher! Confused? You won’t be after you take a break to join us on ComicMix PodCast #27 filled with our usual weekend fun – including the first of our ComicMix Comic Book Masters series, featuring a rare interview with Jim Steranko.
Sometimes writing this type of column requires the skills of an experienced curmudgeon – which, lucky for me, is how I got the job. But only a child with a weak bladder pisses over everything he likes, and I am not a child. I am an adult. With a weak bladder, but hey, I’m staring Medicare in the face.
, 
Next we have 
Suddenly, the air was full of bats!
