Tagged: Superman

Review: ‘X-Men’ Animated DVDs Volumes 1-2

x-men-vol-11-7698575In the 1970s, Chris Claremont was arguably the first comic book writer to advance Stan Lee’s style of writing for the Marvel super-heroes, delving deeper into his characters and exploring what it meant to be born a mutant in a world that feared the different. As a result, much as everyone glommed onto [[[Spider-Man]]] in the 1960s, Chris’ [[[X-Men]]] in the 1970s became the new standard for popularity.

Television was slow to recognize the resurgent popularity in super-heroes, not really adding a comic book to screen adaptation for years until [[[Batman: The Animated Series]]] debuted in the wake of the wildly successful Tim Burton film. With its critical acclaim and ratings success, the networks began looking for other series and they finally learned how popular Professor Xavier’s students had become in the intervening years.

Marvel Animation produced a very faithful comic book adaptation which debuted October 31, 1992 and ran for five seasons, totaling 76 episodes. It was the tipping point in making the franchise a big deal for merchandise and eventually, the long-awaited live-action film version.

The first 33 episodes have been collected into two volumes, released Tuesday by Buena Vista Home Entertainment, cannily in time for the [[[Wolverine]]] hysteria. The first volume of X-Men covers the first sixteen episodes from the two-part pilot “[[[Night of the Sentinels]]]” through “[[[Whatever it Takes]]]”.  Volume two starts with “[[[Red Dawn]]]” and ends with “[[[The Phoenix Saga]]]” Parts 1-5.

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Review: ‘Max Fleischer’s Superman 1941-1942’

From 1941 through 1942, Max and Dave Fleischer rewrote the rules for animation and people have been trying to match those results ever since.  When no one had previously tried adventure in animated form, the Fleischers took their lessons from [[[Popeye]]] and applied them to [[[Superman]]] with astounding results.

The seventeen shorts, released by Paramount Pictures, were the closet anyone would come to bringing Superman to a live action feature film until Richard Donner achieved that goal in 1977 (and people have been trying to match that goal ever since).

Warner Home Video has previously included the cartoons as part of their mammoth tin can set of Superman features but now there’s a two-disc set, Max Fleischer’s Superman: 1941-1942 , which was released this week. Technically, one wishes they cleaned the prints a bit better before transfer but these are better than most of the public domain dubs that have been circulating since the 1980s.

The fluid action and rousing Sammy Timberg music remain indelibly etched in my mind from first experiencing these in the 1970s.  The plots are very simple, given the standards of the day, so there’s a threat, Lois gets in trouble, and Clark becomes Superman to save the day. Repeat seventeen times.  Given their short running time, there was no attempt at anything more than the most surface of characterization and the comics offered little in the way of recurring villains at the time (yes, including Lex Luthor). What they could have borrowed from the radio series, along with voice actor Bud Collyer, was kryptonite but chose not to do so.

Interestingly, there’s a warning on the box reading that the DVD set “is intended for the Adult Collector and Is Not Suitable for Children”. Hogwash. This is over-reacting to the mindset that children are fragile and the sight of Superman battling a dinosaur or a gang of robots would ruin their psyche.  If anything, this is a perfect vehicle for introducing smart heroic adventures to children as they seek outlets for such fare.

The extras are culled from elsewhere but are worth watching if they’re new to you. First, there’s The Man, The Myth, Superman which does a nice job surveying heroes prior to the Man of Steel’s arrival in [[[Action Comics #1]]]. Second is First Flight: The Fleischer Superman Series which clearly establishes how the brothers went from Koko the Clown to Superman and easily surpassed other animation studios. Trailers for other animated offerings and the [[[Green Lantern]]] featurette round out the set.

Bottom line: if you do not own these in any other manner, buy this set. If you already have all seventeen episodes, there’s little reason to buy them again.

The 2009 Will Eisner Comic Industry Award Nominees

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  • April 8, 2009

The nominations for the best of the year are finalized. Ballots with this year’s nominees will be going out in mid-April to comics creators, editors, publishers, and retailers. A downloadable pdf of the ballot will also be available online, and a special website has been set up for online voting. The results in all categories will be announced in a gala awards ceremony on the evening of Friday, July 24 at Comic-Con International. More information about the Eisner Awards can be found by clicking here.

Congratulations to Simone & Ajax creator Andrew Pepoy on his nominations for Best Short Story and Best Continuing Series, and to all the other nominees!

Here’s the full list of nominees… (more…)

Review: ‘Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology’ on Blu-ray

The current era of the super-hero movie can trace its roots to 1989 and the release of Tim Burton’s [[[Batman]]].  For the first time since Richard Donner’s [[[Superman]]], the comic book heroes were taken seriously and adapted for the screen with love and care.  In between, there was failure after failure as no one in Hollywood seemed to understand the source material.

Even Michael Uslan, who did understand, spent 1980 through 1988 trying to mount the film with little success. The stars seemed to finally align as Frank Miller’s [[[Dark Knight]]] in 1986 showed people what could be done with the character and suddenly Warner Bros. was interested. They tapped Burton, coming off the success of [[[Beetlejuice]]], a director with exactly the right sensibilities to take the Dark Knight and present him in a way that made you forget Adam West’s interpretation (at least for a little while).

You’re reminded of what a masterful job he did by rewatching Batman on a new crisp transfer as part of the Blu-ray box set Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989-1997, on sale today. Gotham City is a dark, scary place, and its populace needs Batman, a vigilante protector. The architectural look, from designer Anton Furst, coupled with the moody lighting and off-kilter sensibilities of its director made Batman something to marvel at. He got fans to get over their complaints that Michael Keaton was the wrong choice to portray Bruce Wayne.  Instead, Keaton was a conflicted everyman who had some serious issues driving him to don the costume and endure the withering barbs from Alfred (Michael Gough). Jack Nicholson’s Joker nearly stole the movie but was a terrific foil for the hero.  The movie’s far from perfect with story holes and logic gaps (one bullet can take down the Batwing?).

Burton and Keaton came back for [[[Batman Returns]]] which unfortunately offered us no new insights into the hero but did give us refreshed looks at both Catwoman and Penguin. Selina Kyle’s story arc is the strongest in the film and Michelle Pfeiffer gives a strong but sympathetic performance.  Danny DeDevito made for a creepy, grotesque Penguin but his arc was taken from a 1967 plot and felt it.  The uneven storylines never meshed well and the movie felt divided.

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Rare Super-Porn Discovered!

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  • March 4, 2009

We just got an email from our old pal, Craig Yoe!. Craig sez:

 

I’d like to tell you about my brand spanking new book and blog. 

 

I recently discovered incredible, previously unknown, fetish art by the creator of Superman, Joe Shuster. The artist and his writing partner, Jerry Siegel, had sold Superman for 130 dollars. When they sued to get the rights back they lost and got drummed out of the comic book industry and Shuster fell on hard times. It was unknown that to get by and/or because of a personal interest in the subject, Shuster then did S&M porn for under-the-counter booklets called "Nights of Horror," sold in Times Square in the early fifties. The back story I uncovered involves the Mob, showgirls, neo-Nazi Jewish juvenile delinquents, inspired by Shuster’s art, known as the Brooklyn Thrill Killers, the famed anti-comic book crusader Dr. Frederic Wertham, Senate investigations, cops on payola, the books being banned by the Supreme Court, teenage girls being horse-whipped in the park, two murders…and dare I say MORE?

 

I have a full color coffee table art book I wrote and designed coming out April 1 (no fooling!) about all this, Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster.The publisher is the number one leading art book publisher in the world, the prestigious Abrams. I’m blogging about the book and revealing lots of rare art and info that didn’t fit in "between the covers."

 

Craig’s too modest to note that his book also sports an introduction by Stan Lee.

 

Considering the fact that, at the time they purchased Superman, one of DC’s owners had been actively engaged in publishing what was considered by the post office censors “pornography,” this is a rather ironic story.

Sadly ironic. 

The Un-Ethics of Watchmen, Part 1: A Bird’s-Eye View

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  • March 2, 2009

drmanhattan-8414138Editor’s note: With the imminent release of Watchmen, we thought we’d try and get a different perspective. So we asked Alexandra Honigsberg, a professional ethicist and genre author, to read the book for the first time and delve into the ethos of the world created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

If super-hero comics are the literature of ethics, then Watchmen is the literature of un-ethics. It is the template for what not to do and makes Batman look like a Boy Scout, even at his darkest Dark Knight. They make Dirty Harry look clean. There’s a new saying on the street that Bitch is the New Black, it Gets Things Done. Well, these guys and gals are certainly the biatch. But is there any way to redeem their actions so that the ends justify the means? Or, more importantly, that even the most inhumane or inhuman retains some sense of what it means to be human?

The study of ethics is the exploration of the good life and how to live it. Now by the “good life” I don’t mean the bling life. I mean a life that is honourable, virtuous and, on a profound level not shaken by the winds of change, happy. Happiness (or pleasure or joy or The Good). That’s the end, the ultimate goal, or what Aristotle calls “that at which all rational beings aim.” Ari makes a fine distinction between the acts of a man (animal, non-rational) and the acts of a human (rational) or what some of us might term the mensch (gender neutral). One of the biggest invectives that Laurie hurls at Dr. Manhattan/Jon Osterman is that, after working for so long in the lab and being so all-powerful (the man not only to end all wars, but end all worlds), he ceases to be human. Moore emphasizes this with quotes from Nietzsche, who claims that when we become evolved enough we will not need rules, we will have become extra-moral – the superman (not the Nazis’ bastardization thereof) who has no need of ethics as we now know them. But are we still human? Extreme means change the agent and therefore change the end (e.g., The Comedian’s total amorality). Can we still give a damn if we’re all god-like? Or in the midst of so much horror that no human could reasonably be expected to survive unscarred (think of the Holocaust), are we still human? What’s human? What’s life? What’s good and who decides? Who gives authority to whom and why?

 

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Review: ‘Wonder Woman’ DVD

wonder-woman-dvd1-9359032The DC Universe series of animated features got off to a rocky start with the [[[Superman vs. Doomsday]]] offering but has gotten steadily better.  [[[New Frontier]]] was pretty amazing and now they offer up [[[Wonder Woman]]], which may be the closest we get to a feature about the Amazon Princess for quite some time.

And I’m pretty okay with that, given how good this direct-to-DVD offering is.  It’s not perfect, but it’s entertaining and a great introduction to the character. If you’ve been following the interviews we’ve been posting here at ComicMix, you know that it comes from the usual suspects behind the animated DCU along with a very strong voice cast.

The movie posits that Wonder Woman exists in a world of her own and there are no references to the greater DCU, allowing you to dwell on the mythological background that spawned the character.  Created by William Moulton Marston, his grasp of the Greek mythology he predicated the character on was shaky at best and frankly, it wasn’t until the George Perez-driven version of 1987 before anyone explored the Greek gods and their role in the Amazons’ world.

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Review: ‘Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe’

Crossovers are nothing new to comics.  Who could forget when the [[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]] found their way into a [[[GrimJack]]] book, or when the Punisher visited the Archie Universe?  Well, apparently, they can cross into game universes too.  As if to answer the challenge put up by [[[Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter]]] over almost 11 years ago, Midway has released [[[Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe]]] for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.  Building on the series’ newer 3D fighting mechanics, the new title boasts a refined move set, two separate storylines, three new kombat modes, and, of course, a new roster featuring DC’s mightiest heroes and villains.  So how does the game fare?  Read on…

So, how would the DC characters find themselves caught fighting the kombatants from Earthrealm?  Well, due to several well-timed attacks during battles, both [[[Superman]]] and the lightning God, Raiden, cause a tear in each universe that cause their worlds to collide (and their greatest foes, namely Darkseid and Shao Kahn, to conjoin).  These events are played out in both ends of the story mode, which you can play either from the DC perspective or the MK point of view.  In this mode, players don’t choose their characters. Rather, as the chapters in the story progress, the character they control is swapped out as the story focuses on each new fighter.  This allows the players to get a good handle on several different fighting styles, as well as the differing angles and roles each character has in the story.

Playing the story mode is where fans of DC will really get the most enjoyment out of this title. As focus shifts from hero to villain, other characters flesh out the story and interact with whomever you play as, either in battle or in aid.  And honestly, as hokey as the story sounds, the excellent cut scenes really make it work within the confines of what we know about these characters.  So how are characters like Liu Kang and Scorpion able to put the beat down on Superman and [[[Captain Marvel]]]?  Well, as the worlds collide, they take on each other’s properties.  Since the world of Mortal Kombat is a magic-based realm, and Superman is susceptible to magic…yeah, you can kick Kal-El’s ass.  This also makes our heroes a bit more aggressive…the rage builds within them and the urge to fight grows, making each character stronger and more brutal.  This “Rage” is built up over time in battle, and is unleashed as a yellow aura around the character that strengthens attacks and allows you power through your opponents’ hit,not allowing them to knock you back.

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The top ten influences for ‘Lone Justice: Crash!’

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  • January 13, 2009

Lone Justice: Crash! is the new graphic novel from the Harvey award nominated team of Robert Tinnell and Mark Wheatley. This two-fisted pulp adventure began yesterday on ComicMix, but the roots of the creation of Lone Justice: Crash! started long ago.

Creating a new graphic novel doesn’t happen in a vacuum. And people like Robert Tinnell and Mark Wheatley are easily influenced. So readers would be well advised to take a look at what other creative efforts have had a hand in shaping the look and feel.

First – we start with what has warped the mind of Robert Tinnell, in his own words:

1.) MARTIN – First and foremost I have to acknowledge George Romero’s film, MARTIN. Much of what I write is inspired by this brilliant little deconstructionist vampire story and the way it so grounded fantasy in reality, in banality, actually. I often say, quite sincerely, I consider the film an American classic. So if you’re reading LONE JUSTICE: CRASH! and detect a deconstructionist approach to the superhero genre, bear in mind that in addition to the obvious comic book influences, Romero’s flick continues to linger in the background of my mind.

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Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

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  • December 25, 2008

May you all find what you’re looking for, be it peace, love, courage, funding, or that copy of Superman #74 in very fine or better.

We bring you a little bit of a New York holiday tradition as you open your presents:

 Through next year we all will be together, if the fates allow. Even if we have to muddle through somehow.

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