The unique romantic comedy with a paranormal twist, Warm Bodies, arrives on 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack (plus Blu-ray™ and Digital HD) for the first time ever on October 3 from Lionsgate. In this story about the power of human connection, Nicholas Hoult stars as an unusual zombie who forms a special relationship with a human girl as they struggle to survive during a zombie epidemic. Rounding out the all-star cast is Teresa Palmer, Emmy® winner Rob Corddry (Actor in a Short Form Comedy or Drama, “Childrens Hospital,” 2008) and two-time Academy Award® nominee John Malkovich (Best Supporting Actor, 1993, In the Line of Fire, and 1984, Places in the Heart). 4K Ultra HD provides over four times the resolution of Full HD and includes Dolby Vision™ high-dynamic range (HDR) to deliver the brightest, most vivid and realistic color with the greatest contrast. Written for the screen and directed by Jonathan Levine (The Night Before, 50/50) and based on the best-selling novel by Isaac Marion, the Warm Bodies 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack will be available for the suggested retail price of $22.99.
OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS
A funny new twist on a classic love story, Warm Bodies is a poignant tale about the power of human connection. After a zombie epidemic, R (a highly unusual zombie) encounters Julie (a human survivor), and rescues her from a zombie attack. Julie sees that R is different from the other zombies, and as the two form a special relationship in their struggle for survival, R becomes increasingly more human – setting off an exciting, romantic, and often comical chain of events that begins to transform the other zombies and maybe even the whole lifeless world.
4K ULTRA HD/BLU-RAY/DIGITAL HD SPECIAL FEATURES
Featurettes
o “Boy Meets, Er, Doesn’t Eat Girl”
o “R&J”
o “A Little Less Dead”
o “Extreme Zombie Makeover!”
o “A Wreck in Progress”
o “Bustin’ Caps”
o “Beware the Boneys”
o “Whimsical Sweetness: Teresa Palmer’s Warm Bodies Home Movies”
o “Zombie Acting Tips with Rob Corddry”
Audio Commentary with Screenwriter/Director Jonathan Levine and Actors Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer
Deleted Scenes with Optional Audio Commentary by Director Jonathan Levine
“Shrug & Groan” Gag Reel
Theatrical Trailer
CAST
Nicholas Hoult Mad Max: Fury Road, X-Men franchise, About a Boy
Teresa Palmer Hacksaw Ridge, Lights Out, I Am Number Four
Rob Corddry Hot Tub Time Machine, “Ballers,” “Childrens Hospital”
John Malkovich Dangerous Liaisons, Being John Malkovich, Burn After Reading
On Friday I learned that one of my childhood heroes died. June Foray passed on at the age of 99.
Ms. Foray was a voice actress working in animated features all her long career, as well as in comedy shorts and appearances on Johnny Carson and with Stan Freberg, Daws Butler, and Frank Nelson. She was the voice of Grandmother in Mulan, of Betty Lou Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas and, most important to me, she was the voice of Natasha Fatale and Rocky the Flying Squirrel on the various Rocky and Bullwinkle shows created by the legendary Jay Ward.
Rocky and Bullwinkle had a huge impact on me as a kid. All of Jay Ward’s stuff had a combination of sophisticated and low-brow humor. There were elements of satire combined with a lot of really bad puns.
Originally, the dimwitted Bullwinkle was the sidekick to the plucky hero Rocket J. Squirrel but the moose became the main character and Rocky became the plucky sidekick. As a kid, that irritated me. Don’t get me wrong; I love me some Bullwinkle but Rocky was my hero. He may have been small but he was clever, he was courageous and he could fly. If anyone was going to get him and Bullwinkle out of the traps devised by Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, it would be Rocky.
I identified with him, so it bothered me when his BF took over the lead billing. I saw it as sort of an act of betrayal. Stupid, I know, but that’s how my kid’s brain saw it and some of that brain still rests inside me. (They talk about “primal lizard brain;” I’ve got “primal kid brain.”) It didn’t seem to bother Rocky, though. Of course, it wouldn’t. He was not that kind of guy to hold a grudge.
I got the Rocky and Bullwinkle comics when I was a boy; they were oversized and cost a whopping 25 cents when everything else was a dime. But they delivered. They had the same skewed sensibility as the TV shows did. And they sort of had the voices; when I read Rocky in the comics, I “heard” June Foray’s voice. The animation was always rudimentary on the shows; it was the writing and the voices that truly made the shows live. When I heard June Foray had died, for me that sort of meant Rocky died as well.
Ms. Foray got a lot accomplished in her life. She helped get the Motion Picture Academy to create an award category for Best Animated Feature in 2001. She has her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
One last thought struck me the other day and it’ll make some of you crazy but here goes. June Foray voiced Rocky; June Foray was female. Could Rocky have been female all these years? Rocky wears the sort of flying helmet and goggles I’ve seen on pictures of Amelia Earhart. Bullwinkle is frankly too dim to notice. So – maybe.
Either way – Rocky is still one of my heroes. And so is June Foray.
So, spoiler alert. The comic industry as we know it is going to die. Well, according to Dan DiDio and Jim Lee it is. At the San Diego Comic Con – which I clearly didn’t attend because I already knew comics were dying – the DC honchos all but shook their rain sticks at the assembled retailers to eulogize the industry before revealing how they would save it.
Forgive me. You no doubt heard the thundering cacophony of my right eyebrow arching high on my face at a speed worthy of Barry Allen. The speed at which it jutted there clearly broke the sound barrier in a reflex akin only to those meta-humans with the ability to transcend space and time.
There’s literally too much to unpack from all they blabbed on about for me to fit in a single column. And rather than present evidence how the comic industry isn’t dying at all, I’d like to specifically snark back on one particular point DiLeeDoo made.
“Comic books have become the second or third way to meet characters like Batman and Superman, and we want to change that.”
Uhh… Why?!
The statement itself is a bland platitude at best. It’s big-wigs trying fluff up their retailers – as well as comic fans – into believing their medium is purer than the first or second ways fans meet their heroes. That somehow, DC’s publishing arm will find a way to get kids into the comic shop before they see any licensed character on TV, movies, or frankly… the Internet. Of all the laughable things said at this panel – forgetting the whole part where they confirmed Dr. Manhattan made Rebirth happen – trying to pit comics against their motion picture counterparts takes the cake and crams in a pie to boot.
I am 35 years old. The first time I ever saw Batman? It was Adam West on the campy syndicated re-runs, in between episodes of Happy Days. Superman? Learned about him second-hand on any number of references dropped during episodes of Muppet Babies, or an errant episode of Challenge of the Superfriends. And while I would eventually seek the printed page for more mature and significant adventures of those (and all other) characters, the tent-pole flagship Trinity of DC Comics was met in motion long before the pulp.
Furthermore, as a Gen-X/Gen-Y/Millennial/Whatever I’m classified as these days, my generation learned and loved superheroes first via these extraneous ways, because the comics themselves were mired in the muck of massive continuities. As I’ve long detailed in this space previously, when comics peaked my interest it was because of an adaptation of an X-Men cartoon I’d seen the week prior. Investigating at the local Fiction House stressed me out when I saw an actual X-Men comic was on issue 568 (or whatever), and the shop keep made no qualms telling me he wouldn’t even know where to start me out if I was wanting to collect the book.
Times have since changed aplenty, but that doesn’t mean the same issues still exist if we are to take to heart Dan and Jim’s sentiment.
A 9-year old girl goes and sees Wonder Woman with her mom. She falls in love with Diana of Themyscira and begs her mom to learn more. They venture into the local comic shop, and what then? If the cashier is worth her salt? She’ll have a great big display of the now Eisner-Award WinningWonder Woman: The True Amazon ready and waiting. But peer over to the rack, and where does our 9-year old go? Is the current issue of Wonder Woman ready and waiting? And where is Batgirl, and any other female-driven comics all set and ready for their newly minted fan?
And beyond that, how on Gaea’s green Earth would you ever suppose you’d find a way to get this 9-year old girl into the shop before she’d been enticed by the multi-million dollar blockbuster action film. Simply put, that’s proudly brandishing a knife in a nuclear bomb fight. It’s dumb to even think it, let alone declare it like a campaign promise.
To this point, credit where it’s due: Dan DiDio denoted the need for more evergreen books – titles that live outside any common continuity to tell great one-off stories – to specifically meet the needs of fans who come in (or come back) to comic books. The truth of the matter is no book will ever compete with a big release movie or a weekly television show. Video killed the radio star for a reason. And the Internet murdered the video star and put the snuff film on YouTube. To cling to printed fiction as some form of hipper-than-thou solution that could wage war with more ubiquitous platforms all in the name of changing the way the public meets their heroes is a dish I’ll never order, even if I’m starving.
To declare this was all in part to save the industry … well Dan: is it fair to have cultivated the problem only to turn around and say now you’ll save us from the very issues you created? That is some Luthor-level vertical integration if I ever did hear it.
Save me, Dan DiDio. You’re my only hope. Well, barring Image, Boom!, Lion Forge, Valiant, Aw Yeah, Oni Press, IDW, Dark Horse, Action Lab, and Unshaven Comics.
The Mystery Tweens are solidly becoming Mystery Teens in The Case of the Forked Road
, which means the boys have all seemingly lost 50 IQ points and keep punching each other for no reason. [1] So any mystery solving will be left to the girls, this time out.
Since this is a volume seven, before I go any further, there are two notes. First is that you don’t need to know anything going into this book. Well, OK: these are kids in a secondary school in Tackleford, the oddest town in England. You can pick that up from the book, and it’s all you need to know. Also, this is a collection of a webcomic
, so you can always read as much of it as you want online.
But, if you do want to know more, let me direct you to my posts about Bad Machinery books one
, two
, three
, four
, five
, and six
. You may also be interested in the pre-Bad Machinery comic Scary Go Round
, also set in Tackleford, which led to the comic-book format Giant Days, of which there have been several collections so far: onetwothreefour
.
The book version of The Case of the Forked Road, as usual, is slightly expanded from the webcomics version, with some pages redrawn a bit and others added to aid the flow. It also begins with a new page introducing the main characters and ends with several related old Scary Go Round pages — both of those introduced and narrated by Charlotte Grote, Allison’s current troublemaking smart-girl character (following a string of such in the past).
As usual, Allison is great at capturing speech patterns and the half-fascinated, half-oblivious attitude of teens — the girls discover a mystery this time, in the suspicious activities of a elderly lab assistant they call “Grumpaw.” But they have no idea what this guy’s name is, and have to go through convolutions just to get their investigation started.
They do, of course, and eventually find a fantastical explanation to the question of Grumpaw and the mysterious and strangely ignorant schoolboy Calvin. And the dangers they have to deal with this time out are directly related to the stupid violence of some male classmates. (Though the cover shows that it’s not the boy Mystery Teens; they stay offstage most of the time, and are useless when they’re on it.)
Allison writes smart stories that wander interestingly through his story-space and gives his characters very funny, real dialogue to say on every page. And I think his stories are best when he draws them himself: his line is just as puckish and true as his writing. That makes the Bad Machinery cases the very best Allison books coming out now.
One last point: if you’ve complained that previous Bad Machinery volumes — wide oblong shapes to show off the webcomic strips — were physically problematic, then you are in luck. The Case of the Forked Road is laid out like normal comic-book-style pages, just as these strips appeared online. So you no longer have that excuse, and must, by law, buy Forked Road immediately.
[1] If you think this is some kind of sexist nonsense, my currently sixteen-year-old son can tell you a story of some of his fellow students on his recent trip to Germany and Italy. These young men got into trouble because they were throwing some “hot rocks” around — as you do when you discover some rocks that are warmed by the sun, in a nice hotel in a foreign county — until, inevitably, windows got broken. There are boys who avoid the Enstupiding and Masculinizing Ray of Puberty, but they are few and beleaguered, and the general effects of the ray hugely debilitating.
The Eisner Awards were handed out last Friday, and I have to say, I’m feeling just a little bit smug.
No, I didn’t win anything. There is no Eisner Award for the Best Procrastinating by a Writer. However, quite a few of the prizes went to people and projects that I championed as an Eisner judge this year, selecting the nominees.
I’m not going to tell you which ones I’m talking about because to do so implies that I met with resistance. (You’ll have to get me drunk the next time we’re together.) As I said before, talking about the selection process the committee used, “I can say that none of us got all of our first choices, but all of us got some of them.” In other words, we had different tastes and different criteria, and that is as it should be. We talked, calmly and respectfully, about why we liked the things that we liked. We worked it out. You should send us all to Congress.
But a lot of my tastes and criteria meshed with those of the people who voted for the final awards. And that makes me feel like I have my finger on the pulse of Pop Culture Fandom.
Yay, me!
So many different kinds of books won awards. Some of this is a result of the categories because a superhero story isn’t going to win a best nonfiction award, nor will DC or Marvel win an award for Best U. S. Edition of International Material. The inclusion of several different categories for younger readers means that there will be prize-winning books for children.
Although I might not know you, Constant Reader, I feel confident in saying that there is at least one book on this list that you’ll enjoy.
This expansion in the audience for graphic story-telling is a wonderful thing, decades in the making. It should be an opportunity for all sorts of publishers. You would think that DC and Marvel are in the best position to take advantage of this since they own characters known to the entire world. They should be, but, according to this, at least one of them does not. The link describes a panel at SDCC with DC’s Jim Lee and Dan DiDio, talking about how they plan to navigate the future of comics.
They say a few things with which I agree. There should be excellent graphic novels about the characters that customers might know from the movie. These books should contain stories that are accessible to new readers, people unfamiliar with decades of continuity. I’ve been arguing such a position for decades, so I’m glad to see that there is at least lip service in that direction.
However, when DC actually publishes a book like that, Jill Thompson’s Eisner-winning Wonder Woman: The True Amazon, there is very little promotion when it first comes out, and it isn’t included in the ads that tied into the movie release.
Lee and DiDio also think that resurrecting the Watchmen universe and integrating it into the DCU will draw in newcomers. Leaving aside the morality of this (given series co-creator Alan Moore’s resistance), and only talking about it in marketing terms, I still think this is a terrible idea. The movie is nearly a decade old and does not seem to have been successful enough to earn out. The characters require a lot of explaining, which is only a disadvantage if you’re trying to sell them to people who don’t read a lot of comics.
If I had been a new comics reader today, I’d have problems wading into the Big Two waters. It would be much more appealing to me to check out Valiant or Lion Forge if I wanted a connected universe because I wouldn’t have so much to catch up.
I still think the way to draw in audiences who want to sample comics after seeing the movies and television shows is to create multiple imprints. There can be a line for geeks like me, who’ve been reading comics since the Fifties, and a line for younger readers and a line of self-contained short stories. There can be all sorts of other lines that I haven’t yet imagined. These can be tested through digital sales, to keep development costs down, and then published in paper if there is demand.
And, yes please, a line of Super-Pets.
• • • • •
Flo Steinberg died this week. She was part of the original Marvel Bullpen, Stan Lee’s assistant back in the days when that was the best job a woman can get in comics.
I met her soon after I moved to New York in the late 1970s, and since I wasn’t a big Marvel fan, I didn’t know enough about her to be intimidated. To me, she was the kind of kooky New York character I’d moved to New York to meet. She had a funky cadence to the way she spoke (at least, to this Ohio girl), and she was outgoing and enthusiastic in a manner discouraged by the prep school I attended. Flo was one of the best people you could invite to a party.
My two favorite Flo stories don’t have much to do with comics.
1) When I worked in the events department of a New York department store, I had to hire extra people to be entertainers during the holiday season. One job was to dress up like a Teddy bear. The costume was really hot and smelled after a while, but the job paid $20 an hour, a fortune back then. I was able to hire Flo for this gig a few times, and from her, I learned how many children like to punch costumed characters in the chest. Also, we called her “Flo Bear,” the kind of joke Ivory Tower elitist East Coasters love.
2) A few years later, I had another job, and I was telling her about a place I would go to get lunch. They had a salad bar, and every day, I would stare at the barbecued spare-ribs, tempted by their dripping sauce, but too worried about the fat and calories. Really, I would dream about these ribs. Finally, one day, I ate one. Later, talking to Flo, I confessed my sin. It went like this:
Me: So I finally ate one of the spare-ribs. It wasn’t very good. Definitely not worth it.
Flo: Well, at least you tried it.
Because that is who she was. She didn’t talk about life in terms of denial and defensiveness. She talked about life as something worth trying.
If you are not already watching Wynonna Earp, there’s no excuse! Season 1 is on Netflix, we’re half way through an exciting Season 2 on Syfy and the big news at San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday was that Season 3 is go.
Maddy was able to talk to the cast – Melanie Scrofano (Wynonna Earp, herself), Shamier Anderon (Agent Dolls), Tim Rozon (Doc Holliday), Dominique Provost-Chalkley (Waverly), Katherine Barrell (Officer Nicole Haught), Varun Saranga (Jeremy), Tamara Duarte (Rosita Bustillos), Wynonna Earp creator Beau Smith & show runner Emily Andras at Comic-Con and it was really fun. And while it’s mostly all the questions a feminist teenager wants to know (though we didn’t have a lot of time — so it wasn’t ALL the questions we wanted answered), we have to warn you there might be some spoilers if you aren’t caught up with the current season.
You can tell in the interviews how genuinely nice and amazing everyone is on this show. Is it because they are Canadian? Or is it because such they are just so happy to be one of the best shows on TV right now (maybe of ever)?
Was that a sigh of relief I just heard? That means you’re back. All you San Diego Comicon pilgrims. Bags stuffed with loot and a different kind of bag under your eyes because the lack of sleep will do that to you. Knees sore from being forced into space obviously meant for a Lilliputian? An autograph bestowed by your favorite demigod while you actually stood there in front of him breathing the same air!
You’re home now.
I’ve gone to a lot of these shows, probably somewhere north of 20 and my feelings are mixed, as they often are. At best these San Diego affairs are a grand gathering of the tribes, a place to re-meet professional colleagues and fellow hobbyists, folks who may not live on the same continent as you do but who share your zeitgeist and are nice people, besides.
At worst…oh my. Too much! Noise and crowds and frantic scurrying to get a glimpse of an admired celebrity before said celeb vanishes whatever alternate universe the convention organizers must make available to these Big Names to hide in between appearances… And if one of them actually speaks to you, well… oh, my! It happened to Marifran a few years ago and she might tell you about it if you ask sweetly.
For some conventioneers, it’s business. They’re looking for work and will settle for a civilized conversation with an editor, and no complaints here. And there are the editors themselves who are looking for… talent, I guess. I never actively searched for possible contributors when I attended cons wearing the ol’ editorial guise but if I found someone whose portfolio had exactly what I needed or knew that I was going to need soon, I didn’t shoo the person away.
So, some seek employment, some want to network, some might be searching for congenial company, and for some, the bigger cons – and San Diego is the biggest in the country – are a chance to don bizarre finery and compete in costume contests or be happy just to rove around looking cool. I’ve enjoyed myself just sitting in hotel lobbies watching the passing parade.
Everyone should have the San Diego Experience once. Maybe once will be enough, unless you have a fondness for heat and noise and traffic or you’re looking to buy stuff – a Star Trek uniform, anyone? – you might have trouble finding elsewhere, in which case, get yourself to the edge of the continent, live long and prosper.
I didn’t go this year. The convention staff has treated me particularly well in recent years, and there is fun to be had. But the crowds, the noise, that stuff… I can pass unless there’s a compelling reason not to.
This year, I’m particularly glad I skipped the trip because I would have returned to sad news. Flo Steinberg, a woman I met when she was Stan Lee’s assistant and whom I’ve known and cherished for a half-century, died of cancer. Maybe I’ll write about her sometimes, or maybe I’ll be satisfied with memories.
Vol. 26
does something slightly different: it collects related works. It has comic book pages and advertising art and gift-sized books (some of which could be called “graphic novels,” with only a tiny bit of squinting) and similar things — all featuring the Peanuts characters, all written and drawn by Schulz. Obviously, this was culled from a far larger mass of related Peanuts stuff — dozens of hours of TV specials, to begin with, plus major ad campaigns for many products over most of those fifty years, among other things — but Schulz managed and supervised and oversaw (or just licensed and approved) the vast majority of those.
This book has just the art and words that can be attributed cleanly to Schulz personally. Not all of it — there’s plenty of other spot illustrations, and a number of other small cash-grab gift books, that Fantagraphics could have included if they wanted to be comprehensive, but they didn’t. Instead, this is a book about the size of the others, that will sit next to them on a shelf and complement them.
Annoyingly, this very miscellaneous book avoids a table of contents — possibly because the previous books didn’t need one? — so you discover things one by one as you read it. It starts off with seventeen gag cartoons that Schulz sold to the Saturday Evening Post in the late ’40s, featuring kid characters much like the ones in L’il Folks and so somewhere in the parentage of Peanuts. Next up is seven comic-book format stories from the late ’50s that Jim Sasseville (from Schulz’s studio at the time) has identified as all-Schulz (among a much, much larger body of comic-book stories that I think were mostly by Sasseville). These are interesting, because they show Schulz with a larger palette (both physically and story-wise) than a four-panel comic strip — he still mostly keeps to a rigid grid, but there’s more energy in his layouts and he has room for better back-and-forth dialogue in multi-page stories.
Then there’s a section of advertising art, which begins with five pages of camera-themed strips that appeared in 1955’s The Brownie Book of Picture-Taking from Kodak but quickly turns into obvious ads for the Ford Falcon and Interstate Bakeries. The latter two groups are intermittently amusing, but mostly show that Peanuts characters were actively shilling for stuff a few decade before most of us realized it.
The book moves back into story-telling with three Christmas stories, which all originally appeared in women’s magazines from 1958 through 1968 (at precisely five-year intervals — what stopped the inevitable 1973 story?). The first one is two Sunday-comics-size pages; the others are a straight series of individual captioned pictures in order. After that comes four of the little gift books — two about Snoopy and the Red Baron, two about Snoopy and his literary career — which adapt and expand on gags and sequences from the main strip. (I recently tracked down and read
the one about Snoopy’s magnum opus, which I still have a lot of fondness for.)
Two more little gift books follow, these more obviously cash-grabs: Things I Learned After It Was Too Late and it’s follow-up, from the early ’80s. These were cute-sayings books, with pseudo-profound thoughts each placed carefully on a small page with an appropriate drawing. Schulz’s pseudo-profound thoughts are as good as anyone’s, I suppose.
Last from Sparky are a series of drawings and gags about golf and tennis, the two sports most obviously important to him — we already knew that from the strip itself. The golf stuff is very much for players of the game, and possibly even more so for players of the game in the ’60s and ’70s, but at least some of the gags will hit for non-golfers several decades later. The tennis material is slightly newer, and slightly less insider-y, and so it has dated a little less.
The book is rounded out by a long afterword by Schulz’s widow, Jean Schulz. It provides a personal perspective, but takes up a lot of space and mostly serves to show that Jean loved and respected her husband. That’s entirely a positive thing, but I’m not 100% convinced it required twenty-four pages of type in a book of comics and drawings.
Vol. 26 is a book for those of us who bought the first twenty-five; no one is going to start here. And, for us, it’s a great collection of miscellaneous stuff. Some of us will like some of it better than others, but every Peanuts fan will find some things in here to really enjoy.
[1] OK, a few months shy of actually fifty years — it started in October 1950 and ended in February 2000. But that’s close enough for most purposes.
It was, for its time, the coolest comic book on the racks. Lucky for me, having just turned eight years old I was at the perfect age to best enjoy it.
In fact, I already was lusting for the comic by the time it hit my local drug store. The house ad promoting the issue had been running in several of the DC comics for a few weeks, and it intrigued the hell out of me. Back in those days when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, new comic book heroes were very few and very far between, even though 1958 was something of a boom year. DC had a title called Showcase that offered new concepts a try out – usually three issues. Yes, it was joined by The Brave and the Bold, but not until the summer of 1959. Showcase begat the Challengers of the Unknown, Lois Lane, the Metal Men, and the silver age Flash, Green Lantern and The Atom… among others.
Whereas it isn’t hard to get an eight-year old all excited, this comic book had a pedigree that few others approached. It was created by, if you’ll forgive the word, legends. Julius Schwartz was the editor and the ringleader, and he reached for his A team. Gardner Fox, arguably the most accomplished comics writer in American history, did the scripting and he co-plotted it with fellow comics writer and science fiction icon Edmond Hamilton, along with the aforementioned Julie Schwartz. The cover artist was Gil Kane, and the story artist was Mike Sekowsky.
The series was called Adam Strange. It featured a run-of-the-mill Earthling who found himself transported by Zeta Beam to the planet Rann where he fell in love with the chief scientist’s daughter while flying around, usually with her, vanquishing alien invasions and monsters and such. When the Zeta Beam wore off Adam faded back to Earth, usually right after he saved the day but right before he could kiss his lover. That drove him bugfuck, and back on Earth he figured out where and when that Zeta Beam would strike next… usually just in time to save Rann once again.
What made Adam Strange work – in 1958 – was the costume. It was classic science fiction spaceman. Jet-pack, helmet, ray gun, and all red with white accents. It was designed by still another legend, Murphy Anderson. Murphy had been drawing science fiction heroes since 1944. In fact, he drew the newspaper adventures of one of the very first such heroes, Buck Rogers, and Buck’s influence on Adam’s costume was quite evident – and very welcome.
The whole thing started as a contest. DC executive vice president Irwin Donenfeld thought what the world needed was a new s-f hero and he challenged editors Julius Schwartz and Jack Schiff. Jack’s Space Ranger was published in Showcase #15 and #16; Adam Strange lived in the next three issues.
As it turned out, neither character won – yet neither character lost, either. Adam Strange became the lead feature in Mystery In Space, drawn by the near-mythic Carmine Infantino and always occupying the cover, while Space Ranger lived in Tales of the Unexpected. For the record: Space Ranger also was created by Gardner Fox and Edmond Hamilton, but the two were as different as night and day. The main difference: Space Ranger was rather typical, and Adam Strange was exciting.
Both series lasted until the mid-60s. By that time, the United States and Russia had sent a passel of humans (and a few dogs) into outer space, and the reality of what you could see on the home screen was vastly more compelling than 1950s science fiction heroes.
Of course, in comic books nothing ever goes away, and here Adam got the best of the Ranger. Adam Strange remains a vital force in the DC Universe to this day, and now Adam Strange is going to enjoy something of a starring role in the latest DC teevee show, Krypton. Mindy Newell reported on this Monday, although she revealed only a fraction of our deeply existentialist conversation.
I’m glad to see Adam is still around, but I’m reminded of DC publisher Jenette Kahn’s reaction to the character back in 1977 when Jack C. Harris and I discussed a run in the revived Showcase. She took home a couple bound volumes from the library, read them over the weekend, came back and pronounced it “dated.”
Yup. It was. And that was the point. But DC needed to develop its astrophysical borders, so Jack pretty much kept the story, which also featured Hawkman and Hawkwoman. We renamed the series Hawkman, and it did okay.
Amusingly, Hawkwoman (or Hawkgirl) will be joining Adam Strange in the new Krypton series. This will not be the same woman from the current DC/CW teevee shows as these shows (except Supergirl) inhabit a parallel universe in which Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman do not exist.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a stunning chasm between the quality of the visuals of a movie and the dreadful script tying it together. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a gorgeous film with ambitious action sequences that can keep a frenetic pass without looking choppy or rushed. It’s also got a plodding, boring script completely devoid of narrative or emotional nuance. At its peak Valerian is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before— and in its valleys is like a Mad Libs version of Avatar and The Matrix.
The big action sequences in Valerian are stunning feats of direction. There’s an action sequence where many of the characters involved are in multiple dimensions at once affecting what they can and can’t interact with. There’s a suspense beat, a chase, and then several bits leading to another chase all in this multi-leveled reality bending circumstance. Some characters integral to the operation don’t ever see or interact with the actual sequence. It’s dizzying in all the best ways. There’s also a chase scene that goes through all the different parts of this elaborate space station with dozens of alien races and their unique habitats that would have been the best sequence in every science fiction movie I loved as a child. Luc Besson does an outstanding job framing these sequences and the effects team really outdoes themselves. I don’t know how many of these alien races or habitats come from the source material, but it all looks tremendous.
It’s a struggle to praise the directing in Valerian when the acting is so terrible. Dane DeHaan performs like he’s doing an impression of mid-90s Keanu Reeves and not a terribly flattering one. He has the same flat delivery no matter what he’s trying to say. He starts the movie with a declaration of love and it sounds like he’s barely awake trying to figure out what toppings he would like on a pizza. I’ve never DeHaan impress me in a role and I’m starting to wonder what the casting directors of the world see in him that I don’t. No one else in the cast is doing good work either. Clive Owen is wooden, Rihanna was better in Home, and Cara Delevigne is acting like she can never remember the emotional tone of the last thing she said and has to guess for the next line at random. It’s like everyone involved in the production was so invested in the effects they couldn’t be bothered to care about the people.
The script is also quite bad. The story takes forever to get going and it always feels like key pieces of information are kept out of the characters hands not because it makes sense in the universe but because otherwise the whole thing would take 30 minutes to resolve. The love story seems tacked on and only moves forward because they have Valerian and Laureline tell us it does and not because we see them do anything to move closer together. I suppose I could accept that they’re going through a lot but this is their job, they must be in harrowing situations all the time. There’s also a healthy dose of the kind of noble savage bullshit that I’m sure was all the rage in France in the 60s when this comic started publication but feels terribly tone deaf in 2017. Even beside that the dialogue is 80% dry exposition delivered with the cadence of someone bored of being there. Every time someone talks in Valerian the experience gets worse and worse.
It would be amazing to find out something like Valerian syncs up perfectly with a famous album or something because it would be nice to watch the movie again without having to listen to any of these characters talk. I want people to see this film, it’s so fun to watch when it’s on top of its game. Unfortunately it’s just as terrible when it isn’t. Valerian is a film that should be watched in a theater, on a big screen, but only by people who paid to see another film and have sneaked in with good headphones and a podcast on or something. This movie is a technical demo for what good effects people and cinematographers should do, and a cautionary tale for writers and actors. Study hard, film students and drama majors— or else you could end up making a film like Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and be trapped forever in pretty nonsense.
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