Tagged: Superman

How Comics Helped Create the Internet

Leonard Kleinrock was one of the men who helped create the Internet, and on his Web site at UCLA he gives the following anecdote that Superman played a big role in the whole undertaking.

It all began with a comic book! At the age of 6, Leonard Kleinrock was reading a Superman comic at his apartment in Manhattan, when, in the centerfold, he found plans for building a crystal radio. To do so, he needed his father’s used razor blade, a piece of pencil lead, an empty toilet paper roll, and some wire, all of which he had no trouble obtaining. In addition, he needed an earphone which he promptly appropriated from a public telephone booth. The one remaining part was something called a "variable capacitor". For this, he convinced his mother to take him on the subway down to Canal Street, the center for radio electronics. Upon arrival to one of the shops, he boldly walked up to the clerk and proudly asked to purchase a variable capacitor, whereupon the clerk replied with, "what size do you want?". This blew his cover, and he confessed that he not only had no idea what size, but he also had no idea what the part was for in the first place. After explaining why he wanted one, the clerk sold him just what he needed. Kleinrock built the crystal radio and was totally hooked when "free" music came through the earphones – no batteries, no power, all free! An engineer was born. …

Due to Kleinrock’s fundamental role in establishing data networking technology over the preceding decade, ARPA decided that UCLA, under Kleinrock’s leadership, would become the first node to join the ARPANET. This meant that the first switch (known as an Interface Message Processor – IMP) would arrive on the Labor Day weekend, 1969, and the UCLA team of 40 people that Kleinrock organized would have to provide the ability to connect the first (host) computer to the IMP. This was a challenging task since no such connection had ever been attempted. (This minicomputer had just been released in 1968 and Honeywell displayed it at the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference where Kleinrock saw the machine suspended by its hooks at the conference; while running, there was this brute whacking it with a sledge hammer just to show it was robust. Kleinrock suspects that that particular machine is the one that was delivered by BBN to UCLA.) As it turns out, BBN was running two weeks late (much to Kleinrock’s delight, since he and his team badly needed the extra development time); BBN, however, shipped the IMP on an airplane instead of on a truck, and it arrived on time. Aware of the pending arrival date, Kleinrock and his team worked around the clock to meet the schedule. On the day after the IMP arrived (the Tuesday after Labor Day), the circus began – everyone who had any imaginable excuse to be there, was there. Kleinrock and his team were there; BBN was there; Honeywell was there (the IMP was built out of a Honeywell minicomputer); Scientific Data Systems was there (the UCLA host machine was an SDS machine); AT&T long lines was there (we were attaching to their network); GTE was there (they were the local telephone company); ARPA was there; the UCLA Computer Science Dept. administration was there; the UCLA campus administration was there; plus an army of Computer Science graduate students was there. Expectations and anxieties were high because, everyone was concerned that their piece might fail. Fortunately, the team had done its job well and bits began moving between the UCLA computer and the IMP that same day. By the next day they had messages moving between the machines. THUS WAS BORN THE ARPANET, AND THE COMMUNITY WHICH HAS NOW BECOME THE INTERNET! …

From a comic book to cyberspace; an interesting journey indeed!

(via Wired)

Supergirl Power, by Martha Thomases

At Wizard World Chicago last week, I was struck by how many girls came dressed as Supergirl. Grown up girls wearing the new version of the costume, showing off their toned abs, to be sure, but also lots of girls younger than 12 wearing the classic outfit.

Supergirl was my first favorite super-heroine. Wonder Woman was awesome, but she was so powerful, so confident, that I could only aspire to be like her. Invisible Girl was too passive. She seemed to fade away in a fight, not nearly as active as Invisible Kid in the Legion. From the moment Kara first flew out of that rocket and introduced herself to her cousin, Superman, I wanted to be her.

Superman, being older, more experienced, and male, decided he was the one to tell Supergirl what to do. She would be placed in an orphanage, and no one would know she had super powers. She would disguise herself with a mousy brown wig, even though no one was to see her with blonde hair. She would wear drab clothes, even though her mother had made her the cute outfit with the S-shield so her cousin would know her.

As Linda Lee, Kara learned about American life in a small-town high school, as an orphan. Later, she was adopted by the Danvers, but had to keep her secret from them as well. By some amazing coincidence, I, a young girl on the verge of adolescence, found myself suddenly needing to keep secrets about my thoughts and feelings from my own parents. I might have been more open with them if they’d found a way to get me a super-cat for a pet. (more…)

Review: Will Smith in ‘Hancock’

With comic franchises pouring from Hollywood’s every orifice this year, something like [[[Hancock]]] would normally be considered a breath of fresh, creative air. This can be said for the film on paper, but it fails to deliver in the latter half of the film. That said, Hancock is still good fun in a theater, and delivers with all the things we wanted to see Superman Returns do time and time again, but never came through.

The plot follows an unruly asshole (not being vulgar, this term is important to the character) of a superhero who resides in downtown Los Angeles, attempts to keep people safe from the ever-rising crime rate, but ends up causing more damage than he prevents. This makes Hancock (Will Smith) the ultimate antihero, being hated by just about everybody in the world (or at least L.A.) He crosses paths with an up-and-coming Public Relations guru (Jason Bateman) who thinks Hancock can become the hero that the world needs, but with a little bit of help.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: The text of this review posted after the jump contains descriptions of significant plot points, so consider this your official SPOILER ALERT. -RM]

(more…)

Review: This Week in ‘Trinity’ #5

trinity5-4792955First things first: I actually, gasp, liked this issue.

For the first time ever, Kurt Busiek pulled the storylines together and gave a sense of the big things ahead. Not perfect, but much better than the past few.

What happened?

The fight against Konvikt finally reached an end, as Batman’s smarts helped the big three devise a clever knockout punch. Batman was the star of the issue, also nabbing one of Morgaine Le Fey’s underlings (which look like the rat creatures from Bone), after it had branded Wonder Woman with an omega symbol.

During a brief interrogation (ended by the rat creature self combusting), it says, "You are the trinity. But you are weakened. Breaking. Soon, you will fall." Buh, buh, BUM!

There’s a little character moment that shines, as Batman and Superman are reluctant to advise Diana to see a doctor, and she points out the inconsistencies of gender relations. It makes her character a little more interesting, which is something plenty of other writers have failed to do.

In the backup, a trio of lame villains (Whiteout!?!) try to kidnap Tarot, who has started to see the trinity in her cards (as justice, strength and the devil — guess which hero goes to which card).

They fail, not unpredictably, in large part thanks to the reappearance of Gangbuster. Which, I’ve got to say, is pretty awesome. At the end, we see Morgaine Le Fey’s creatures after Tarot.

Like I said, everything’s coming together nicely, and we have dire warnings galore. So, hope returns, although I’m still curious as to why Busiek feels the need to include only the lamest villains.

Van Jensen is a former crime reporter turned comic book journalist. Every Wednesday, he braves Atlanta traffic to visit Oxford Comics, where he reads a whole mess of books for his weekly reviews. Van’s blog can be found at graphicfiction.wordpress.com.

Publishers who would like their books to be reviewed at ComicMix should contact ComicMix through the usual channels or email Van Jensen directly at van (dot) jensen (at) comicmix (dot) com.

Life 101, by John Ostrander

My Aunt Helen turned 101 years old last weekend. Let me repeat that – my Aunt Helen is 101 years old. She beat her own father’s record, who died a mere six months after turning 100. She still lives in her own apartment, with help especially from my sister, Marge. Helen gave up smoking only a few years ago but she still has her drink now and then. She gets to church when she feels the urge. Big Cubs fan, even though they haven’t won a World Series since she was born. I kid Helen that she intends to hang on until they win another one if it takes another hundred years.

She’s so old she dated John McCain. Ba-dump bump. I think she’d like that gag. Aunt Helen is still pretty sharp. Me, I’m not so sure about.

She lived in the house next to ours in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood when I was growing up, along with my paternal grandmother and grandfather. When Pop-Pop had bought the property, Rogers Park was actually a suburb on Chicago’s North Side. Me, my brother, and my younger sister ran over there with some frequency because there we were little princes or princess – which we sure weren’t at home. Lord knows we took advantage of it. Well, I know I did.

Saturday night we’d have dinner there in front of the TV. Helen always served up the same meal: a bit of steak, Campbell’s Pork and Beans, and for dessert, ice cream cake roll swimming in chocolate syrup.

Let me take a moment to extol on the glories of the ice cream cake roll. The principle was the same as a jelly roll cake only the cake would be a deep chocolate and would use vanilla ice-cream instead of jelly. It’s impossible to find on the East Coast. Even in Chicago, the quality has gone down. The last one I had, the cake was stale, thin, and had freezer burn, as did the very artificial vanilla ice cream that was in it. I’ve wandered off the topic again but… dang! It was ice cream cake roll!

I think I remember some of the shows I used to watch during those Saturday night dinners such as Patrick McGoohan in Danger Man (which would later become Secret Agent) and Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk playing Nick and Nora Charles in a TV version of The Thin Man. After dinner we’d watch The Jackie Gleason Show that included the Miami Beach version of The Honeymooners. If we were lucky, we escaped before The Lawrence Welk Show came on. (more…)

Mark Millar Churns the ‘Superman’ Rumors

If you read this story in the Scottish Daily Record, you might think the next Superman movie is on the verge. After talking about the success of Wanted and other properties, Mark Millar essentially said he was doing a Superman movie and it was set for 2011.

"Since I was a kid I’ve always wanted to reinvent Superman for the 21st century.

"I’ve been planning this my entire life. I’ve got my director and producer set up, and it’ll be 2011. This is how far ahead you have to think.

"The Superman brand is toxic after that last movie lost $200million, but in 2011 we’re hoping to restart it.

"Sadly I can’t say who the director is, but we may make it official by Christmas.

"But fingers crossed it could work out, that would be my lifetime’s dream."

Kevin Melrose kept tabs on the claim as it spread through Millar’s message board, and seemed a little farther from reality with each passing day, culminating with "it’s not even close to happening yet."

There’s nothing new at all to grandiose claims from Millar that end up as bunk — this is the same guy who claimed Civil War was the best-selling comic of the past 15 years, then didn’t hold up his promise when proven wrong.

But there’s something about all this that really bothers me, as Millar seems to have a nagging habit of being reckless with the truth, if not outright pathological.

Take the claim that he’s "always wanted to reinvent Superman for the 21st century" since he was a kid. Except, he was a kid in the 20th century.

Dennis O’Neil’s Moving Words

Sunday afternoon. Two hundred and four days left before he gallops on back to Texas and that consarn brush that always seems to need clearing.

Listen, I want to make an offer… George and Laura, if you need help moving, just give me a call. I can be at the White House in five or six hours and, sure, I’m not as young as I once was, but I can still lift a box or two, and I’ll be more than happy to buy the pizza.

And now for something completely different…

Last week, we mentioned crossovers – specifically, how Marvel’s movie division seems to be getting ready to emulate the comic book division’s old, old ploy and engage in crossovers. The trick, as I’m sure you know, is simple: take a lead character from one series and put said character into another. Comics have, as mentioned in the earlier column, have been doing crossovers for a long time, probably beginning with Sub-Mariner and The Human Torch hassling in the early 40s. I’m not counting DC’s Justice Society title, which assembled a small herd of super doers, because these guys and gal weren’t moving into each other’s magazines, but into a separate venue. (Does anyone know of any crossing over earlier than that of Subby and The Torch?)

It didn’t stop with the comics, even way back then. About once a year, Batman and Robin took over bad-guy-catching chores from the radio version of Superman for a week or two while the Man of Steel was indisposed and the actor who voiced him, Bud Collyer, took a vacation.

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Review: ‘Superpowers’ by David J. Schwartz

superpowers-us1-4585912Superpowers: A Novel
By David J. Schwartz
Crown, June 2008, $14.95

There are two kinds of superhero novels, with very different rules. The more common – but less respected – kind of superhero novel takes characters and situations we already know from an existing comics universe and tells a story using that furniture. Those books can be amazing, like Elliott S. Maggin’s two Superman novels, Last Son of Krypton and Miracle Monday, or they can be mediocre, like…fill in your own example here. But they all hit the ground running, since they work from our knowledge of those universes. Who would read a Spider-Man novel if he’d never heard of [[[Spider-Man]]]?

The other kind of superhero novel tends to come from people outside the comics field, and usually reinvents the wheel in its vision of superheroics. (Like everything else, sometimes doing it elegantly and sometimes producing an oval object that doesn’t even work as a wheel.) Some of the better examples of that type of superhero novel are Michael Bishop’s Count Geiger’s Blues and the recent Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman. Those books often have aggressively obvious titles – [[[Superfolks]]], [[[Hero]]], that kind of thing – to immediately signal to the audience that they’re novels about superheroes.

[[[Superpowers]]] is one of the latter kind of novels, down to the title. The British cover (see the continuation) even has line drawings of the characters in costume (by Norm Breyfogle, a name we who read comics will nod knowingly at), much in the style of last year’s [[[Soon I Will Be Invincible]]]. And the set-up is quite typical of an outsider superhero novel: five undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) develop individual superpowers after an evening of drinking homemade beer. (One of the endearing things about Superpowers is that Schwartz doesn’t even try to explain their origin – something unexpected happened, and they now have powers. Period.)

(more…)

Review: This Week in ‘Trinity’ – Part 4

We’re up to week five of DC’s big weekly event, and I regret to inform you that I’ve already caught myself thinking "same old, same old."

What happened?

The fight with Konvikt continued, with all the heroes getting knocked around, including your Big Three. At least they took the fight away from civilians, but still, so far the main point seems to be that there’s nothing really special about Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman. They get their butts kicked by giant, purple aliens just like everyone else.

Quick tangent — I’m not sure if there are any other Weeds fans out there, but I find it impossible to read the name "Konvikt" and not immediately think "Dumb name" in Doug’s snarky voice.

Back to the issue, which was pretty breezy, it ends with Batman doing some detective work to take a new tack with Konvikt (dumb name), and then getting ambushed by another alien, Graak (really dumb name).

Meanwhile, villains Morgaine Le Fey and Enigma (who needs to just come out of the Two Face closet and admit to being  Harvey Dent) watch on their magic crystal ball and offer cryptic commentary.

Whoop-dee-doo.

(more…)

The Weekly Haul: Reviews for June 26, 2008

  • News
  • June 26, 2008

Just for the fun of it, here’s one last story from Heroes Con (which I reported on extensively here and here). Nobody’s mentioned this, but simultaneous to the comics convention was another big event titled “Dub,” basically a con for tricked out cars. One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen was a group of P. Diddy look-alikes gaping as a Heroes attendee strolled past in full manga gear (don’t know which character) and did a spinning kick/sword swipe right in front of them. I’m still amazed the weekend ended peacefully.

That aside, let’s turn to the week in comics, which was huge. HUGE. DC trotted out Final Crisis #2, and Marvel counter-punched with an incredible 30-plus issues. Once the smoke cleared, Marvel stood up strong, dominating another go ’round. And DC’s bad month just got worse.

Book of the Week: The Immortal Iron Fist #16 — This is a packed book, starting out with the wind down from the epic battle that just took place in the Seven Cities of Heaven. Danny Rand is a changed man, dismantling his corporation and doing whatever he can to help the world.

You can see the influence of Orson Randall, and it’s nice to see his presence linger on after his death. Danny’s transitioning into a more mature character, asking the big questions. It’s the natural result of the recent ground-shaking, and Matt Fraction’s a smart man for taking things in that direction.

There are lots of extremely well written little personal moments in this issue, between Danny and Misty, Jeryn, Luke Cage and a swarm of pint-sized karate students. But before things get too heart-warming, Fractioin ends with a game-changing reveal that’s shocking in part because of how well it’s set up, in part through brilliant page layouts.

The only question is how well the book will hold up once Fraction moves on.

The Runners Up:

Captain America #39 — There’s lots to see in this issue, as per usual with Ed Brubaker, but the main draw is the fight between Bucky and the former Nomad, both of whom are essentially masquerading as Captain America. Think about that: A revived Bucky with a robotic arm fighting against Nomad.

That sounds like something straight out of the dreadful muck of the ’90s, yet Brubaker pulls it off with ease, crafting another tense and dramatic issue with plenty of action. There’s also the continued subtle developments of Red Skull’s agenda, a nice moment for Sharon Carter and a quality fill-in artist for Steve Epting.

Daredevil #108 — We’ve finally seemed to pass the “Matt Murdock’s life can’t get any worse” stage that had dragged on for several years. He’s still miserable (and he gets his butt kicked), but he has quite the interesting case to dive into and appears to be responding well to the mental challenge (even if he does resort to  fisticuffs at one point). Also, Dakota North is quickly becoming a favorite character. (more…)

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