The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Newspaper Comics Collection Volume 2 (1979-1981)

The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Newspaper Comics Collection Volume 2 (1979-1981), by Stan Lee and John Romita (with Larry Leiber)

No month stated, 2015  IDW Publishing

I was happy to discover this big hardcover collection of vintage Spider-Man newspaper strips. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, perhaps because it was so refreshing after the decade-plus of too cool (and, lately, too woke) Marvel Studios franchise, which has zero in the way of the geeky charm of the actual comics that inspired the movies. 

Perhaps that sentence didn’t make sense. If not, I don’t care. What I mean to say is, I was a comic geek when being a comic geek wasn’t cool. Indeed, I remember the days when you had to hide the fact that you read comic books from others, especially girls, lest you be ridiculed as a loser of the lowest order. It’s hard to believe, folks, but once upon a time you couldn’t buy about a zillion comic character t-shirts at Wal-Mart, or see people wearing comic character t-shirts at the office. There was a time when the average teenaged girl (the pretty ones, at least) had no idea what Spider-Man’s secret identity was, and for that matter they couldn’t have cared less. 

All those days are gone, and likely forgotten, and no doubt have been gone and forgotten for quite a while. I remember being in Miami in 2007 for a vacation or something, and we went to the mall, and at the bookstore I was floored to see a bunch of teenaged girls sitting there reading comic books. And they weren’t ugly girls either. (Not that I was checking them out, honestly I wasn’t: I’m just noting for clarity.) It was literally one of those times where I looked up at the sky and shook my head: “Thanks again, God.” 

This was before the Marvel Studio franchise even got rolling, and of course now we live in a world where these characters are more popular than ever…but, then, it’s the movie versions people now know. It’s debatable how well these fans of today know the actual original comic versions of the characters. It’s debatable that any of these modern fans know the geeky charm of Silver Age comic books, when the world of Marvel was a secret one that losers and geeks and nerds would escape to and dream about how they, too, could be just like Spider-Man or the Hulk or whoever. 

But then, there’s an entire generation that thinks Mary Jane Watson is a flat-chested, curly-haired, overly sarcastic girl of indeterminite race (and, perhaps, gender). They have no idea that Mary Jane Watson is supposed to fucking look like this: 

That’s another thing I liked so much about this book: it was also refreshing to see such unbridled and wonderful “toxic masculinity” in a product that was produced for the masses. It’s also hard to recall that there was a time when popular fiction and comics and movies were produced with a straight male audience in mind, and the male gaze was not subverted, but was catered to. Yes, it does seem like a million years ago, doesn’t it? 

Speaking of “a helluva long time ago,” I guess I mainly got into comics due to my childhood obsession with Spider-Man. I was such a Spider-Man fan that I even had a themed party, for my fifth birthday:

This party was likely on my actual fifth birthday – October 6, 1979 – as according to Google, October 6 was on a Saturday in 1979. But anyway, that’s obviously me standing in front of the Spider-Man cake in the first photo; I have no recollection of the names of any of the other kids at the party, save for the blonde-haired girl I smugly have my arm around in the second photo. (Don’t hate the player, hate the game!) Her name was Julie Bowen (not the actress!), and her mom was also a teacher, and in the years before we started school Julie and I were both watched by an old couple named Mr. and Mrs. Crohn (who, so far as I am aware, did not have Crohn’s Disease!). Julie moved away when we were in the Fourth Grade, I seem to recall…I also recall seeing Happy Gilmore in the theater in 1996, and when the name “Julie Bowen” came up in the credits I was like, “Could it be?” It wasn’t that Julie Bowen, of course, but the movie was great! In fact my brother (the older kid who is so unhappily holding my Spider-Man birthday cake in the above photo) liked that movie so much he’d rent the video every week or something at Blockbuster. Not sure why he didn’t just buy a copy. 

Well anyhoo, I go into this belabored backstory so as to set the scenery that I was a rabid Spider-Man fan as a kid…and, sometime around the late ‘70s, maybe in this same year of 1979, we took a family vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This is where practically the entire East Coast vacationed in the ‘70s. When we were down there, my dad got the local newspaper…and I was shaken to my core to discover that there was a Spider-Man comic strip! 

There was no such strip in the newspaper back home. And yet, this one and only encounter with the newspaper version of Spider-Man made enough of an impression on me that I still recalled it, all these decades later…and, when I saw that some of these strips had been collected in hardcover, I dutifully ordered a copy from Interlibrary Loan. (Hey, it’s not like I’m going to shell out a couple hundred bucks for a copy! I mean, that’s hooker money!) 

Collecting three years of strips, the book is certainly hefty, running to 315 pages. Stan “The Man” Lee handles all the writing, and does his usual fine job, and John Romita (back before he was “John Romita Sr.”) handles the artwork, which is great throughout. Toward the very end of the book, Romita steps out and Larry Leiber (aka Stan Lee’s younger brother) takes over, and truth be told his art is so similar to Romita’s that you might not even notice the change. That said, there’s certainly more sex appeal in Romita’s work – if he isn’t sexing up MJ or Carole (another of Peter Parker’s conquests in the book), he dutifully inserts some random sexy chick in a panel: 

What’s cool about this newspaper strip is that it caters to the established Marvel mythos, but puts a bit more of a “mainstream” spin on it. As with the films of the 2000s, Spider-Man is the only superhero (at least in New York), he’s wanted by the cops, and the cast of villainous characters is much whittled down from the comic books. Peter Parker, in college in these strips, is no longer the nerd of the Lee-Ditko originals, and in fact does pretty well for himself with the ladies…perhaps the biggest change to accommodate the broader (and no doubt male-slanting) newspaper readership. 

In fact, I was somewhat surprised that Lee and Romita often let us know, in no unsubtle terms, that Peter Parker has gotten laid: 

I mean, “help me bone up?” Stan the Man! Sure, that’s what students said when they were trying to study (or at least they said it in the 1950s), but still…you don’t have to be a total sleazebag to assume there’s some serious hanky-panky occurring between those panels. 

Granted, Peter Parker’s still the sad sack of the comics, where nothing works out perfectly for him, or he’s caught in some Three’s Company-esque miscommunication, or whatever. But he’s a lot more sure of himself with the women…and, in the hands of John Romita, these women are smoking.  In fact, I kind of wanted to reach into the comics and punch Peter Parker, because he’s constantly running away from these women, even when they’re in the process of giving themselves to him. Time and again in these collected strips, Carole or MJ will make an advancement on Peter, and he’ll either have to run off because he’s seen some crook in action, or he’s riddled with some soul-searching over if he wants to keep being Spider-Man or some other shit. As for the former, it’s kind of laughable – but again refreshing – how Peter is so quick to jump into the fray when he sees bankrobbers, or muggers, or whatever; yes, altogether refreshing to see someone so selflessly ensuring law and order in our postmodern era of “fiery but mostly peaceful protests.” 

But at the same time, even here I was constantly pulled out of the action…thinking of stuff I never would’ve thought of as a five year-old. Like, Peter Parker apparently wears his Spidey suit under his clothes…and he’s always in pants and a long-sleeved shirt and a coat…even in the stories that are set in the summer! I mean, with a Spidey suit beneath all that? The dude must be broiling. That enough would make me quit the whole super-hero game, which Peter attempts to do in a few stories collected here, with predictable results. 

“Predictable” sums up many of the plots here…but you know what? That’s just fine. Stan Lee tells a story the way only Stan Lee can, that corny but earnest and altogether endearing style that is Stan Lee’s alone, and never once did I find any of it hackneyed. Okay, maybe the final story collected here tried my patience, where Peter Parker decides that Spider-Man himself will become a criminal, to finally get a taste of success…and predictably fails in the process. It’s a fine setup, but lamely delivered; Spidey steals a jewel, then tries to sell it to a diamond dealer (who turns out to be a gangster), and then Spidey has to figure out how to get the diamond back into the museum. 

Other than that latter gaffe, the other stories here are all fun, and kept my attention more than I thought they would. To be honest, I thought I’d just peruse the book and return it to the library, but I read the whole thing! There is not much variety to the format of the strips, which I think works for it and against it at the same time. For it, because it essentially becomes the comics version of what fat people call “comfort food:” the Monday-Saturday strips run three panels each, and are black and white, and the Sunday strips are full color, and generally run six panels. Only occasionally does this change. 

There’s also a lot of stalling. Forever in the 315 pages of this book we’ll have Peter Parker decide to do something…then a few pages later he’s recapping what he plans to do…a few pages after that he’s gonna do it, by God…and then a few pages after that he might get around to doing it. This does admittedly become wearisome after a while, but then I read the book over the course of a few days. I bet if you took your time with it, and read maybe an arc at a time, it might not be as egregious. 

As for the story arcs, there are a bunch of them: Spidey framed by a lookalike Spider-Man (courtesy the Kingpin); the Loomis Love Cult (a Jim Jones commentary piece that seems to go on forever, but is probably the darkest story in the collection); the Prowler (a guy who wants to make a name for himself as a clawed supervillain but has a heart of gold): Kraven the Hunter (who inexplicably tries to fool people that Spider-Man is an alien so that he can fight Spidey on TV and beat him); the return of the Loomis cult (even more annoying without their boss); the return of the Kingpin (not as fun as the first time); and even a guy in a hat who wields a whip and tries to lean on Aunt May (and also hits on MJ). 

Between all this we have soap opera stories where Peter Parker questions his sanity, or if he wants to still be Spider-Man, or if he should tell Carol Jennings that he’s Spider-Man because he loves her and wants to marry her(!), or if he should commit to MJ, or if he should go bad and reap the profits as a villain himself. Or even if he should go on a That’s Incredible! type show to make a thousand bucks. 

I had forgotten how funny Stan Lee is. Throughout the book his tongue is firmly in cheek, but there’s none of the postmodern, too-hip sarcasm of today; you can tell Stan believes in his creation (as well he should), and he treats everything with respect. Peter Parker is so earnest that you have to respect him, even though he generally brings most of his problems on himself…sort of like fellow newspaper strip protagonist Charlie Brown, now that I think of it. 

And speaking of topical references, the book is filled with it: the late ‘70s aren’t as exploited as I’d like, but all the guys wear open-collar shirts, have big hair, and the girls all wear revealing, cleavage-baring tops, and they go to a roller disco at times (though this isn’t brought much to life, either). John Romita takes a lot of relish in putting famous faces in the backgrounds of various panels, like this particular Sunday story, which among many others even features a cameo by my man Johnny Carson: 

I like it that the Spider-Man newspaper strip lives in its own continuity; Stan Lee and John Romita did a great job bringing the geeky comics to a more widespread audience, playing up the melodrama a little more than in the comics, and toning down on the costumed super-battles. Otherwise everyone’s mostly the same: Spidey himself is a motor-mouth, either expositing what he’s doing as he does it or tossing one-liners at villains as he fights them – and again, Stan Lee’s humor shines here. MJ is a flirty bombshell, J. Jonah Jameson is a Spidey-obsessed villain (he clearly has Spidey Derangement Syndrome), and all the villains have unique personalities. Only Carole Jennings, the other bombshell in Peter’s life, is lame…personality-wise, at least. Romita is sure to draw her in such a jawdropping manner that you figure poor Peter Parker must be in a permanent lust-filled daze when he’s around her:

IDW has reprinted the Spider-Man newspaper comics through the ‘80s, and I think I might check them out sometime – particularly the first volume, as I’m hoping it would be even more ‘70s-tastic.

Black Dynamite (The Comic Book Series)

Black Dynamite, by Brian Ash, Jun Lofamia, Ron Wimberly, and Marcello Ferreira

February, 2015  IDW Publishing

Somehow I was completely unaware that there was a Black Dynamite comic book tie-in published several years ago, shortly after the release of the movie. I knew there’d been an animated series on Adult Swim, but I never watched it, and likely never will, as judging from the clips I’ve seen it’s nothing at all like the movie. And really, as the years have gone by, Black Dynamite has become one of my all-time favorite movies, if not my favorite ever. It’s a perfect spoof of a poorly-produced, low-budget “Blaxploitation” film of the early ‘70s, while being a very funny movie in its own right. Somehow the producers were able to walk that line, and they did so perfectly, from the “goofs” expected of the former (boom mics showing up in shots, actors blowing lines), to the straight comedy of the latter (the part where Black Dynamite and his pals have a brainstorming session in the diner in particular). 

Sure, Black Dynamite isn’t perfect; I’ve never been fond of the finale, which I think goes too far outside the self-imposed constraints of the film. Black Dynamite fighting Richard Nixon in the White House might sound funny, but it’s not something you’d see in a legitimate Blaxploitation film. Indeed, I’m always ticked that the main plot – a black politician working with a greasy mobster to sell drugs in “the community” – is hastily dispatched in the final quarter, as if the producers decided they needed a bigger finale. The deleted scenes on the Blu Ray even indicate that this storyline was indeed the finale, up to and including a bevy of Dolemite-esque hookers-slash-kung-fu fighters taking on the mob; this scene lasts a mere few seconds in the final film, the producers rushing through it to get to “Kung-Fu Island” and Richard Nixon. 

Then again, the imperfection kind of adds to Black Dynamite’s charm. The biggest mystery is why it wasn’t a hit, and why it isn’t better-known today. Director Scott Sanders wonders the same thing in the Introduction he provides for this trade paperback, which collects five comic books that were published by two different imprints from 2011 to 2014. This intro, which is the highlight of the book, is very insightful, as Sanders explains the origins of Black Dynamite (essentially, it was an idea of star Michael Jai White’s), as well as the writing of the script (White with the concept, collaborating with Sanders and fellow star Byron “Bullhorn” Minns, who per the intro is the one who ensured they got all the Blaxploitation tributes/parodies correct). 

Sanders tells us how an early cut of the film got a lot of industry attention, and how the final film was expected to do so well. And then, “crickets” upon the premiere…and Black Dynamite only even played in a few theaters. Sanders is clearly at a loss to understand what happened, and conveys this in his intro. He does try to find a silver lining; he tells us of a special showing in a Hollywood theater, sometime after the film’s general release, where he and Michael Jai White were the featured guests, and the two were surprised to see that most of the audience came dressed up as characters from the film. I wonder if this special showing Scott Sanders is referring to is the one at the Red Vic, for which an artist named Dave Hunter created a blacklight poster – a poster which I have and showed here on the blog fourteen years ago. (And for the past fourteen years, that blacklight poster, framed and ready to be hung, has been in the exact same spot on my study room floor, leaning against the wall and waiting to be hung up!) 

Scott Sanders also finds silver lining in how Black Dynamite has become both a cartoon and a comic book character, even speculating that he maybe should’ve been a comic character all along. Unfortunately, it appears that even Black Dynamite the comic bombed, as the “series” only lasted 4 issues, with a one-shot coming out before it, and this trade paperback is out of print and overpriced on the used books marketplace. Again it is curious that Black Dynamite didn’t resonate more. I concur with Sanders that it seemed like a pre-packaged success, even down to Adrian Younge’s pitch-perfect soundtrack. One can easily get wrapped up in the world of Black Dynamite, and the producers even gave us fun stuff that should have further guaranteed social media interest, like those PSA spots. These comics should have just added to that. Maybe it’s just a case that Black Dynamite came out at the wrong time. 

I’ll say right now though that the comic does not, and could not, compare to the film. Black Dynamite works mainly due to Michael Jai White’s performance, and the conceit that White is “really” a former pro footballer named Farrante Jones who has become an actor. (Furthering this conceit is the idea, which I read somewhere, that “Farrante’s” football career was cut short due to a neck injury, hence why Black Dynamite has such stiff upper-body movement – again, it is things like this, things you wouldn’t even notice until your fourth or fifth viewing, that make the movie so special.) The writer of the comics, Brian Ash (who apparently also wrote and produced the animated series), clearly has his work cut out for him, trying to mimic this “serious but not serious” vibe. His failure is that he even tries. That said, I did appreciate how Ash tried to stay true to the “Farrante Jones” conceit, with fake ads throughout the book of Michael Jai White as Farrante Jones, sporting some product. 

To me, the biggest failing of Black Dynamite the comic is that Brian Ash doesn’t play it straight. He should’ve just written a straight Blaxploitation caper featuring a studly and virile black protagonist, and left the funny stuff to the dialog or to the characters. Instead, Ash occasionally goes for humorous plots, or will have characters making fun of plot developments, which is never a good idea. Again, it works fine in the movie – one can clearly see Michael Jai White as “Farrante Jones playing Black Dynamite” struggling with the dumb-ass script and terrible lines he’s been given, not to mention the bad actors he has to work with – but in a comic it doesn’t work very well at all. 

Curiously, Ash also has a strange tendency to take Black Dynamite out of his element. Surprisingly, only one of the five comics here features Black Dynamite in his typical urban environment. The first three issues of the series, in fact, don’t even seem to take place in the ‘70s, and have him traveling around the world and fighting the Illuminati; the third issue in particular is head-scratcher, featuring Black Dynamite up against genetically-bred giant insects and lots of gore. Humorously, it’s as if Ash realizes he’s lost the plot, as despite ending on a cliffhanger, the events of issue three are ignored in issue four (which was the final issue). And of all the stories here, #4 has the most in common with the movie. Indeed, the fourth issue even sort of rips off the movie; whereas Black Dynamite concerned an evil white plot to contaminate malt liquor, Black Dynamite #4 concerns an evil white plot to booby-trap tennis shoes. 

But of all the comics in the collection, it is the first one, the one-shot Black Dynamite: Slave Island, that is the best; it was originally published in 2011 by Ape Entertainment. And no wonder this story is the best in the collection, as per the credits the plot is courtesy none other than Michael Jai White and Scott Sanders! So then, Slave Island may give an indication of what Black Dynamite II might have been like. If so, then perhaps Brian Ash isn’t the one to blame for consistently taking Black Dynamite out of his element in the ensuing comics, for White and Sanders set the trend here. Slave Island is essentially a take on the “slavesploitation” films of the ‘70s (Arthur “Roots” Haley himself even has a cameo in the comic), with Black Dynamite pointedly referred to as a “Mandingo” at one point. 

The concept is interesting, but perhaps a little too one-note for a film, so maybe it isn’t fair to judge Slave Island as a movie that never was. It concerns Black Dynamite becoming aware of an island off the coast where black people are still held as slaves. He gears up and heads there, only to end up being washed up on the coast sans all of his equipment. From here it’s Black Dynamite in a loin cloth – again, the funky ‘70s trappings are for the most part gone in the comics – as he attempts to lead a rebellion among the cowed slaves. And it turns out “Slave Island” is actually a tourist spot, with wealthy white vacationers paying to come here and see how “things are supposed to be.” 

None of the slave characters get much of a chance to breathe, what with Slave Island only being around 48 pages. The slave who gets the most attention is a sexy, scantily-clad Pam Grier-type who harbors rebellious tendencies, but she isn’t in the story nearly as much as she should be. Black Dynamite, who is quickly caught and thrown in with the slaves, will spend the rest of the story taunting the white owners of Slave Island that a revolution is brewing – that is, when he isn’t being bid off to a wealthy white matron who engages the “Mandingo” in several nights of off-page lovin.’ Oh and I should mention here, despite looking exactly like a 1970s comic, Slave Island features rampant cursing and even a little nudity, just like the movie Black Dynamite. It also features the wonderfully economical plotting of a ‘70s comic; unlike modern-day comics, where an entire issue or more can be devoted to plot setup, Slave Island tells the beginning, middle, and end at a rapid clip. 

There’s a lot of stuff here that one could imagine making its way into the movie sequel that never was, like Black Dynamite punching a shark after being capsized in the ocean. Also his leading the slaves in revolt is pretty cool, but again a little rushed, as is typical for a comic. But Slave Island is mostly interesting in how creators White and Sanders apparently wanted to broaden the character of Black Dynamite, taking him out of the inner-city; unfortunately, Sanders doesn’t give much background info on Slave Island in his intro. It’s interesting to wonder if he and White did indeed conceive of it as a potential storyline for Black Dynamite II. 

Another big thing going for Slave Island is the artwork, courtesy Jun Lofamia. Per a brief, uncredited postscript at the end of the trade paperack, it’s noted that the goal for Slave Island was for it to look exactly like a comic from the ‘70s, and it was a struggle to find a modern artist who did not have a modern comics style. But, as it turned out, Lofamia was a comic artist in the ‘70s, thus his style here is identical to something you might’ve seen in a Marvel comic of the ‘70s. It’s great, and one can tell that the book was a labor of love on this front, down to the muted color palette and the faux-yellowing of the pages. Slave Island is also good because Brian Ash refrains from too much spoofery, other than occasional “humorous” stuff, which usually involves dialog; one of his recurring shticks is having characters misunderstand each other. 

Unfortunately, Black Dynamite the series is a whole ‘nother thing. Published by IDW, the series only ran from 2013 to 2014. Given that Brian Ash was involved with the animated series, I have to wonder if his Black Dynamite comic series is a take on that; even the artwork of the first three issues is similar to the cartoon, courtesy Ron Wimberly in issue #1 and Marcello Ferreira in issues #2 and 3. Their artwork has that same “street” look as the cartoon, and I don’t like it at all. Apparently the concern over finding an artist who was not influenced by modern comic art was not a concern for the series, as it had been for the Slave Island one-shot. And not only is the artwork “modern” in these first three issues, so too is the storyline, which bears no similarity to Black Dynamite the movie. 

Actually, what the storyline of Black Dynamite #1-3 most reminded me of was the COMCON mini-series Gerald Montgomery wrote in 2000 for The Executioner. As with that Mack Bolan storyline, here Black Dynamite discovers a secret organization of evil white people that is heavily equipped and intent on taking over the world. The brevity of Slave Island is gone, with Black Dynamite #1 essentially nothing more than setup for the ensuing two issues – and it’s clear that more than two issues were intended for this storyline, as the “Illuminati” plot abruptly (and thankfully) comes to a halt after issue #3. 

Things get off to a bad start with an opening in which Black Dynamite is kicked out of “the community,” the very same community he saved from drugs in the movie. One thing going in this first issue’s favor is that the time is clearly stated (1976), and also the events of both the movie and Slave Island are mentioned. But otherwise there is no feeling of continuity. Black Dynamite is asked to leave by the locals because his ass-kicking has caused unintentional consequences for the people of the community, and they just want him gone. So, like Cain in Kung-Fu, Black Dynamite sets off to walk the Earth. 

One suspects he walks a helluva long time, because almost all the 1970s trappings of Black Dynamite are gone from here on out. The funky fly threads are gone, and Black Dynamite’s afro is even shorter. The villains all seem to have stepped out of the ‘90s; their leader is a bald white guy in a black three-piece suit, as if Lex Luthor has come over from DC Comics. (Actually the villain, dubbed “The Man,” looks a lot like famed comics writer Grant Morrison.) If Slave Island was a broadening of the Black Dynamite canvas, then the storyline in Black Dynamite #1-3 is a shattering of it. Tellingly, neither Michael Jai White nor Scott Sanders are credited for the plot of this storyline; it’s all the work of Brian Ash. 

Wandering the world, Black Dynamite is confronted by a squad of black-armored goons who take him off to a secret, high-tech facility. That’s the entirety of issue #1; so much for the economical storytelling of Slave Island. In issue #2, Black Dynamite meets “The Man,” the aforementioned Lex Luthor/Grant Morrison lookalike, who gabs that this high-tech army is part of “The Illuminati” that secretly runs the world, and what’s more they want Black Dynamite to join. But Black Dynamite picks up a bazooka that is conveniently lying there and blows the place up. After this he hooks up with a multi-ethnic resistance group – none of whom are named, but one of them is a sexy Asian gal – and he becomes a fighter against the Illuminati. 

With the Illuminati stuff and the ragtag band of guerrilla fighters, the parallells to Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles are very evident. In fact, what with the Morrison lookalike as the villain, I wondered if Black Dynamite #1-3 was intended as a spoof. But it doesn’t work, and what’s more it’s all rushed (the Asian gal isn’t even given a name, I believe), and The Man is not an interesting villain. And the plots are wholly unlike what one might expect from a Black Dynamite storyline.  And Ferreira’s art more so conveys the ‘90s. Again, like The Invisibles. 

The third issue is where it gets real puzzling, with Black Dynamite going to the Himalays and encountering a temple of monks who have these genetic insectoid monsters at their disposal; for some reason, Ash and Ferreira decide to add a bunch of gore to the world of Black Dynamite (and yes, I realize the film had a few gore affects as well), with the insectoids tearing people up and exploding. The finale is especially gory, with The Man having his head surgically implanted onto the neck of a black man (and then ordering the black man’s head gorily sawn off); certainly a tribute to the Blaxploitation movie The Thing With Two Heads. 

Fortunately (and humorously), Black Dynamite #4 ignores all that bullshit and gets back to what readers want: a story that feels like Black Dynamite. Also fortunately, Slave Island artist Jun Lofamia is back, again turning in artwork that seems to have come right out of a 1970s comic, once more even replicating the muted colors and the yellowed pages. Whereas issues #1-3 took place (presumably) in 1976, the fourth issue is stated as being in 1972. No mention is made of the previous three issues, as if Brian Ash himself wants to forget about them. 

Shockingly, this is the only story in the collection that has an inner-city setting. Black Dynamite is in the audience as a famous, Dr. J-type basketball player does some stunts on the court – and then the b-baller somehow explodes. While the news lies about what happened, Dynamite – after “balling” the guy’s sexy widow (lame pun alert) – investigates and learns that it’s all an Anaconda Malt Liquor-style plot. Evil Whitey is tricking out a new shipment of sneakers in the latest plot to take down the black man, and Black Dynamite kicks some ass. This one is a self-contained storyline, not as good as Slave Island, but certainly better than the Illuminati storyline. The only problem is that Brian Ash treats too much of issue #4 as a comedy. 

And thus Black Dynamite the comic comes to an ignoble end. This trade paperback collection is only notable for the insightful intro by Scott Sanders, and the tantalizing possibility that Slave Island might have been the plot for Black Dynamite II. And now that I’ve written so much, here are some random pics of the pages – take note particularly of Jun Lofamia’s pitch-perfect 1970s comic artwork recreation. 

Mad Peck Studios: A Twenty-Year Retrospective

Mad Peck Studios, by The Mad Peck

No month stated, 1987  Dolphin/Doubleday Books

You’d never guess from that eye-catching cover, but Mad Peck Studios is actually (sort of) a record review book. In fact that’s how I discovered this obscure and scarce trade paperback in the first place: searching the web for contemporary record review guides, because I’m always doing stupid stuff like that. I saw an image result of this cover and, of course, immediately looked into the book. I mean that cover is so appealing to the male gaze that, when I pulled up to the library drive-through window to get the copy of the book that had been sent to me via Interlibrary Loan, the librarian at the window – a young girl who was very cordial to me when I told her I had an ILL hold to pick up – stormed back from the holds shelf and angrily thrust the book out the window to me. No doubt she was offended by the wanton cleavage on the cover. 

The busty babe is The Masked Marvel, a repurposed superheroine who was previously known as “The Black Cat” in a Harvey comics series in the ‘40s and ‘50s. In the early ‘70s Providence-based artist The Mad Peck, in true underground comix style, appropriated The Black Cat, making her costume a little more revealing and and also giving her hair more of a “long and straight” ‘70s style than the shorter cut she sported in the Harvey comics. He also turned her into a record critic…indeed, the dream girl of pretty much any horny male rock listener who ever drew a breath. 

The Masked Marvel was just one of the Mad Peck’s characters: there was also Dr. Oldie, a rock historian based on the Mad Peck’s own radio character, Frogman Jack (an actual frog), and I.C. Lotz, a PR gal turned record reviewer. These characters appeared in short comic strips in underground and rock magazines through the ‘70s and ‘80s, most notably Creem and, later in the ‘80s, Spin. Mad Peck Studios offers a sort of “greatest hits” of these comics, selected by the Mad Peck himself. 

Given the short space the Mad Peck had to work with, the art is usually busy and, once he had his record review schtick developed, the artwork is often overclouded by dense dialog text. In a way this book documents how the Mad Peck even got to the record review setup in the first place; the first quarter of the book is devoted to the art the Mad Peck did for various catalogs he would market in underground magazines; the Masked Marvel does not appear in these, and indeed her introduction is almost an afterthought, particularly given that she will become the character most associated with the Mad Peck. When she does appear, in four or six-panel stories, it’s often the character I.C. Lotz who handles the brunt of the narrative. 

In these early ‘70s appearances, published in an underground mag called Fusion, I.C. Lotz and Masked Marvel get involved in various topical events, like for example a serialized story where they foil a hippie terrorist airplane hijacking. This too is very much in an underground magazine vibe; the hippie terrorist is swindled by I.C. Lotz’s promise that she has some cocaine for him, and then The Masked Marvel pulls up her shirt to further confound him. These serialized stories are different than the later record review comics, but maintain the same oddball humor and topical references. 

By the late ‘70s the Mad Peck has figured out the kind of comic he wants to do, and these record review comics take up the majority of the text. What the Mad Peck does is similar to what J.R. Young did earlier in the decade: a piece of fiction in place of a typical record review. But unlike J.R. Young, whose stories were at times hardly even connected to the album itself, the Mad Peck instead has his fictional characters discussing the merits of the album (or lack thereof). What the Mad Peck really specializes in doing is cramming mentions of obscure or overlooked albums within these reviews; as I say, some of the comics are particularly dense on the text front. 

I found that these comics were best appreciated in small doses, which likely betrays their origin; it’s not like the Mad Peck had an entire comic to establish a plot, characterization, or etc. When you’re talking one comic strip a month it’s a different story. But I really liked the weird, insular world he created here with these recurring characters, and wished for a more comprehensive peek into it. Also, the idea of a masked crimefighter turned record critic is just so bonkers that it has to be appreciated, though I couldn’t help but notice that the Mad Peck seemed to lose interest in Masked Marvel as the ‘80s comics progressed, focusing more and more on Dr. Oldie. 

The Mad Peck sprinkles the text with captions and narrative explaining the origins behind this or that strip, or spelling out some of the more obscure references. Since the book ends in the mid ‘80s, with the Mad Peck’s characters losing their latest home – in this case, Spin – I’m uncertain what happened to these characters afterward. But as a fun look at the “anything goes” vibe of the era, Mad Peck Studios was a lot of fun…though I’m glad I just got it via Interlibrary Loan instead of shelling out the exorbitant dough copies now go for. 

Here are some random samples:

Random Movie Reviews, Volume 16

The Eternals & Modern Hollywood (A Rant) 

The Eternals (2021): If a corporate Human Resources department ever made a big-budget superhero movie, this would be the result. It’s as if such minor things as creativity and storytelling took a backseat to checking off diversity and inclusion boxes; there’s so much “representation” in this film as to be ludicrous. And you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that this rampant diversity causes many, many issues with the movie, chief among them that there’s absolutely no unity among the titular Eternals, who seem like what they are: a bunch of actors from various racial backgrounds who have been thrown together by SJW Hollywood producers. There is zero connection between this execrable film and the original Jack Kirby comics…well, Angelina Jolie’s body does conform to a Kirby-esque mold, but we're not supposed to notice things like that. Comics have been entirely de-sexualized by Hollywood, unless of course we’re talking about the male characters, who per the norm get more naked than the women do…I mean we must always subvert the male gaze while appeasing the male gays. That’s pretty much as important to modern Hollywood as the diversity and inclusion. 

The film is a 2 and a half hour slog that does a piss-poor job of introducing an unwieldy cast of characters. I mean there are like 10 or 12 “main characters” in the film, meaning that they are all reduced to ciphers for the most part. However the only name you will remember is Sersi, as her name is repeated about a million times in the film. Surely this is intentional, given that Sersi is played by a Chinese woman (one who is apparently incapable of changing her expression…seriously one of the most wooden performances I’ve witnessed in a modern film), and The Eternals is directed by…you guessed it, a Chinese woman. Sure, Sersi was a statuesque brunette in the Kirby comics, but forget about that. So if literally every character says “Sersi” about twenty times each in the film, then surely that is only a good thing. We need to be reminded of her female empowerment at all times! How else would we know she’s so important? I mean are we to expect the plot to let us know, through organic storytelling elements? No, we don’t have time for a plot – we have an agenda to push! 

Now I harp on the diversity because it is the ultimate undoing of The Eternals, yet of course it is central to the objectives of the ideologues who made the film in the first place. The Eternals, we learn, have been together for untold eons, and one of the many, many half-assed subplots (half-assed because they’re rarely elaborated upon) is that they are a “family.” And yet in a real family – that is, not the leftist modern concept of a family, where your best friends and neighbors and pet dog are your “family,” but a real actual nuclear family – there is of course diversity…yet there is also unity. There is no unity among these Eternals. I mean Sersi and top tough guy Ikaris are supposed to be in love, with the filmmakers striving to create this epic, millennia-spanning love story between the two, yet the actors have zero chemistry, and the romance is forced. That said, I kinda appreciated how Sersi clearly digs white guys; there’s only one white non-Eternal male in the movie, and Sersi’s dating him, too. I’m surprised someone didn’t catch that in the preproduction stage and revise the character to be a person of color. 

There are only two white guys among the Eternals, and of course one of them turns out to be the villain. Because of course; who else would you expect to be the villain in an overly-“diverse” cast? Did you think it would be the deaf black girl? And speaking of which, yes, there is a deaf girl among the Eternals, but if you think about it, even that is stupid. Because another of the Eternals is a genius capable of inventing advanced technology…and of course he’s a heavyset black guy who is gay (and who takes part in “the first gay kiss in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” because that’s what we go to superhero movies to see, right?)…and yet somehow, despite existing for eons and eons and eons, this super-genius never considers creating a gizmo that would allow the deaf girl to hear and speak. I mean just give him another couple million years, folks! These things take time! 

And speaking of, uh, speaking, this brings me to another issue of stupidity: all the accents. So the setup is that the Eternals have existed together as a unit for millions of years, and have been on Earth since the beginnings of history. You’d think, after all that time, that Salma Hayek’s Ajak might’ve, you know, lost her Mexican accent. Same goes for the Asian Eternals, the Indian Eternal, etc. Even the few white Eternals have accents (with Angelina Jolie’s being humorously fake). I mean don’t you think they’d all have acquired accent-neutral speeking styes after, I don’t know, a couple hundred years or so? But then, Ajak already has a Mexcan accent when the Eternals arrive in the prehistoric era, before Mexican accents even existed, same as the others already have their accents, so I realize I’m splitting hairs. Actually I’m thoroughly splitting hairs, as everyone is speaking English, which itself didn't exist yet...but then if you think about it, it’s still ridiculous, because why would the Eternals each have a different accent if they were all created by the same Celestial?  This is another mystery the movie doesn’t bother to solve, let alone acknowledge, because it goes without saying that there is absolutely no ethnicity-derived humor in the film…modern Hollywood couldn’t even conceive of such a thing, anyway. But just imagine the fun someone like Mel Brooks could’ve had with this belabored “diversity” setup in a 1970s film…you know, back when Hollywood wasn’t straightjacketed by woke ideology.   

Man, I haven’t even gotten into the plot, but I don’t want to waste too much time on that. It’s sort of like if Lost had been condensed into a movie, with constant and seemingly arbitrary flashbacks to various events in the past, as we learn how the Eternals came to Earth in the prehistoric era and have stayed here all these centuries to fight the Deviants. All at the behest of their creator, a massive being known as a Celestial. (The Celestials are the only thing in the movie that actually resemble their Jack Kirby origins…and unsuprisingly so, given that they are CGI creations and thus couldn’t be “diversified.”) The Deviants are one of the countless stupid things in The Eternals, literally only showing up when the movie needs an action scene and then disappearing. But they’re just these demonic four-legged creatures, boring CGI monsters that bring to mind the similarly-boring CGI monsters of Justice League and The Avengers. One of them, apropos of nothing, morphs into a human-like appearance and makes random grandiose speeches which ultimately have zilch to do with anything. 

Oh, and the action scenes – they suck, too. They’re just chaotic sprawls of pixels as the various CGI creations face off against one another, with the actors occasionally striking lame “heroic” poses. And for that matter the filmmakers never can figure out the powers of the various Eternals, nor how they rank against one another. We’re told Angelina Jolie’s Thera is “the greatest warrior,” yet Ikaris (I’m too disinterested to look up the actor’s name) is most often described as the most powerful of the group. Huh? But then their powers seem to depend upon the lazy plotting; Ajak fights as good as the others in the flashback scenes before apparently forgetting how to use her powers in a sequence in the modern era. Oh, and that reminds me of another stupid part…so they have all these title cards, like “Mesopotamian Period” or whatnot, to let us know when the various flashbacks occur. Then, late in the movie, we get a title card informing us, “Five days ago.” Five days ago from when? The prehistoric era sequence? The part in 400 AD India? It was just so stupid and poorly thought out that it made me laugh…but then the stupid goofs, of which there were many, were all that did make me laugh. 

Another stupid thing is that, despite being ageless, these Eternals seem to have no appreciation of time. How would it feel to live for millennia, to see humans grow old and die? Hell if I know after watching this movie. You’d think that would be a chief concern for the story to convey, but nope. As hard as it is to believe, The Highlander actually did a better job of this. One of the Eternals even has a human spouse and a child…is this his first human family in the thousands of years he’s been here on Earth? Has he had other families who grew old and died as he remained ageless? How does he connect with his young son, knowing that he will outlive him? You will not find an answer to any of these questions in The Eternals. No, the bigger concern is the ideology – because, you see, the Eternal with a human family is the gay Eternal, who you betcha has a son he’s raising with his husband. What matter such trivialities as character development when you have an agenda to push? The guy even gives an impassioned speech about “never wanting to change a single thing” about himself. Even when the world is about to end, it comes down to identity politics.

There’s so much dumb shit in this movie I could write a book about it. I mean at the end – and there are no spoilers here, but at the same time who gives a shit about this stupid movie – the godlike Celestial who created the Eternals millions of years ago pops up and snatches a few of them off the Earth to give them a good talking to. Meanwhile, a few of the other Eternals have recently left the Earth to find more of their own kind. Yet the ones who left Earth are’t collected here by the Celestial in the climax. What, this godlike, omniscient and omnipotent being couldn’t find them? I mean all you have to do is hop on a spaceship and you can totally evade your omnipotent creator? It’s all just so fucking stupid and half-assed, and clearly has been turned out by people who have “greater” priorities than just delivering a good story. This is indicative of what goes on behind the scenes in modern Hollywood – story, plot, characterization, none of that matters now. It’s all watered-down bullshit by Twitter obsessives who want to ensure they check off all the right D&I boxes in their screenplays. I mean the only thing they missed in The Eternals is a trans character, but I’m sure they’re saving that for the sequel. “I’m no longer Ikaris…I am now Chickaris!” 

Early indications were that The Eternals would be a bomb, but I’m sure it’s gone on to do well in streaming and other stuff. Shame on anyone who paid to see it, though. I saw it for free via a friend who got it on Prime or something. Actually, I know pride’s a sin and all (or at least used to be), but one thing I pride myself on is that I haven’t given Hollywood a dime in at least a decade. I cut my cable, I don’t go to movies, I don’t buy Blu Rays or DVDs of new movies, and I don’t pay to stream anything. If just a million or so more people could do that, we’d bleed Hollywood dry in a year or two…and maybe then everyone making movies now would be fired and replaced by filmmakers who don’t make woke ideology their chief concern. Because folks, don’t expect Citizen Kane or Casablanca from the social media generation. 

But then that’s just my opinion! However I watched The Eternals with my wife, who as I’ve mentioned before happens to be Chinese. Also a literal immigrant, not a liberal immigrant (in the “we’re all immigrants” sense), who grew up speaking Cantonese and Malay and immigrated here when she was a teenager. So she’s a woman of color (she hates that term, btw) and she likes superhero movies, so you’d figure she’d be the prime audience for The Eternals. She thought it was stupid, too. Which pretty much says all there is to say about this dumb movie…it can’t even cater to the audience it’s trying to cater to. But then that’s what happens when you put ideology above creativity. On the other hand, The Eternals is no doubt the direction the Marvel Cinema Universe will continue to head, following its comic-book roots; comics too have been overtaken by SJW types who use the comics as a platform for their woke ideology. 

Like a certain guy once said, “Everything woke turns to shit,” and friends The Eternals is all the evidence you need.

The Hulk: Stalker From The Stars

Stalker From The Stars, by Lein Wein, Marv Woflman, and Joseph Silva 

November, 1978 Pocket Books 

In the late ‘70s Marvel Comics attempted to branch out into the general fiction market, releasing several tie-in novels through Pocket Books. I picked up a few of them many years ago, but just couldn’t get into them. Recently I came across this sole Hulk novel and decided to read it, particularly given its sort of Lovecratian alien menace, a space squid with mind-control powers. 

Stan Lee provides a brief intro in his customary style, where he curiously only mentions authors Len Wein and Marv Wolfman; Joseph Silva, supposedly a pseudonym of prolific writer Ron Goulart, isn’t mentioned at all. Lee states that this could just be the first in a long line of Hulk novels, though it turned out there were only three of them. He also clarifies for readers that Stalker From The Stars takes place in the world of the comics, thus it features two characters who didn’t exist in the TV show (which was going strong at the time of the book’s publication): the Hulk’s archenemy, General Thunderbolt Ross, and Bruce Banner’s best friend, young sort-of hippie Rick Jones. (Ross’s daughter Betty is not mentioned.) Lee drums up a lot of enthusiasm for the novel, but to tell the truth I felt it was so straighjacketed to the confines of the comic world that this “novelistic” approach was ultimately a failure. 

I was a little surprised at the amount of hardcore sex and violence in the book. Just kidding – there’s none of either, though the authors seemed to have fallen in love with the word “damned.” Rick Jones says it so many times in the book that you could make a drinking game out of it. Usually it comes off as arbitrary as can be, but it is another reminder of those Bronze Age Marvel comics, where “damned” was about the extent of cursing that was allowed. The Hulk does appear to kill someone, though; early on in the book he’s walking along the countryside and witnesses a car about to run over some random kid. The Hulk jumps to the kid’s aid, putting his body in the path of the car – which basically pretzels around Hulk’s body. Absolutely no further mention is made of the driver, though it’s clear he had to have been killed, given the destroyed condition of the car. To make it all the more clear, later when Hulk crashes Army tanks or helicopters or whatnot, the authors are sure to mention the pilots and drivers jumping out of them. 

The book opens with Rick Jones walking into the small town of Crater Falls, North Dakota, having hitchhiked across the country to get here; the authors insert all kinds of goofy foreshadowing that something bad’s about to go down here. Otherwise it’s an idyllic little town, filled with the cliched slackjawed yokels you usually find in such fictional places. Rick is here to search out Dr. Rudy Stern, a nuclear scientist with specialty in gamma radiation, ie the special radiation that turned Bruce Banner into the Hulk. The authors insert a long flashback to how Banner became the Hulk, taken directly from the comics; dumbass Rick Jones somehow got on the testing grounds, and Banner rushed out there to save him, thus taking on a heroic dose of gamma radiation. Now Rick of course blames himself, venturing around the country in the hopes of finding someone who can cure Bruce Banner so he won’t be plagued with the Hulk anymore. 

Thus he has come to Crater Falls, as Dr. Stern not only knows Banner but worked with him in gamma research. But Stern apparently had a falling out with the government and left to do his own research up in this small North Dakota town; its name comes from the large crater in the center of the town’s forest, courtesy a meteor impact many centuries ago. Rick walks around the small town, asking the slackjawed local yokels where Dr. Stern lives. He finally ends up outside a boarding house, where he doesn’t meet Stern, but the pretty young woman who works as Stern’s assistant: Linda Connolly. Here we get some unintentionally humorous stuff, in light of our modern emasculated era: the book is clearly written for boys or young men, thus Linda is often exploited for us: “her slim figure showed to advantage,” and the like. I also loved the random observation from Rick that Linda’s probably in her early or mid-20s, and so “still in range” for him, should he try to pursue her (not that he does). 

Linda explains to Rick that she hasn’t seen Dr. Stern in a while, leading to the goofy development of Rick moving into the boarding house (which Linda manages) and taking on a handyman job! Meanwhile the authors inject a little Hulk action into the narrative; we meet Bruce Banner as he rides in a boxcar in the midwest, mulling over the incidents “some time ago” which turned him into the Hulk. Now he’s chased everywhere by the army, with General Ross personally in charge of bringing down the green giant. This leads straight to an action scene, with helicopters attacking the train Banner’s on; he turns into the Hulk, and the authors don’t much describe the transformation or what the Hulk looks like, clearly aware that the majority of their readers would be familiar with the comics. The action is handled pretty off-handedly, with Hulk just throwing things around and charging across the countryside. The authors also try to retain the “sound effects” of the comics, which really gives the book a juvenile tone: “smash,” “kerplop,” and my favorite, “kaslam!” 

General Ross has “Operation Pea Pod” in effect (gotta love the name), in which plastic pods are dropped on the rampaging Hulk. These actually work and the big freak is finally captured, taken to a special containment area. The authors here also introduce a character from the comics: Quatermain, a rugged SHIELD agent who quickly got on my nerves with his comic-booky smart ass asides, none of which were very funny. We also here get a lot more background on how Banner became the Hulk, how he’s been running all these years, and whatnot. While Banner’s plight is well-captured, his insistence that “it’s not me, it’s the Hulk!” who is doing the damage comes off as incredibly petulant, like a temper-tantruming little girl. As for General Ross, no effort at all has been made to make him seem realisitic; he’s a walking, talking cliché, angry at everything and even yelling at broken-down cars. Again, fine for a comic, but the reader of a novel expects a little more. 

Meanwhile in Crater Falls, Rick discovers some weird shit is going down. Namely, the entire populace turns into zombies at night, including Linda…they stumble around the town in a daze, at some strange mental command. Rick tries to follow, only to get knocked out. Next morning he pretends like nothing happened, and Linda is oblivious to any strangeness, as is everyone else in the town. We finally get back to the Dr. Stern subplot: Rick and Linda find his green-glowing corpse out in the forest, right by the crater. That night Rick again is subjected to the zombified locals, who again get out of bed and stumble around town; we never learn what happens here, but Rick calls a special number Banner gave him – which connects directly to General Ross – and gets knocked out (again) during the call. This scene is relayed from Ross’s perspective, and what’s happened to Rick is a mystery. 

Banner himself doesn’t do much in the novel, other than fool Quartermain and Ross into thinking that he’s calm and peaceful, to the point that they let him out of his special Hulk cell. He overhears Ross on the phone with Rick Jones, and when Ross won’t tell Banner what’s going on, Banner knocks out Quartermain and steals his helicopter, to fly to Crater Falls on his own. Again, all very comic-booky, with not much concern over realism. Banner’s threatened with such bad vibes upon entering Crater Falls at night that he turns into the Hulk; to the authors’s credit, they don’t skimp on the Hulk action in this novel. Here he finds the entire townsfolk under a strange mental command – and by now we readers know it’s courtesy an ancient Lovecratian alien, which is buried in the crater. Indeed, the alien, Sh’mballah, caused the crater when his spaceship crashed here eons ago. 

The Hulk can never catch a break; the townspeople attack him, under the alien’s control, and then General Ross shows up on the scene with those damn “pea pods” again. This part features the great line, “You will not gas Hulk!” Kind of reminded me of that ancient Saturday Night Live skit with John Belushi as the Hulk, coming out of the bathroom. But anyway, they do “gas Hulk,” those pea pods having a knockout gas in them, so Hulk is captured yet again – it seems he’s constantly passing out and turning into Banner, or vice versa. But ultimately we do get what we’re here for: Hulk versus Sh’mballah, which turns out to be a monstrous squid-like thing, with its glowing organs visible through patches of its hide. It’s a straight-up comic book style fight, with green monster and space monster slugging it out – but it’s like the authors were afraid it would be too comic booky, thus Hulk kicks Sh’mballah’s ass much too soon, tossing the space squid into a burning garage and killing it. Like just a handful of pages after we finally got to see the creature! 

Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from here. For Sh’mballah isn’t dead – it’s just possessed the corpse of Dr. Stern. There follows an unintentionally humorous part where Banner (changed from the Hulk again), Rick Jones, General Ross, and Linda stand in the town and watch a figure walking toward them…and it just keeps going on. “Is that Dr. Stern?” “It sure looks like him!” Just on and on, like something that would be a couple panels in a comic but it goes on for like a couple pages here. In fact this last quarter features a lot of padding like this, with the heroes standing in the burning chaos of Crater Falls and trading expository dialog or arguing. General Ross particularly wears out his welcome here. But it’s a drawn out affair in which Stern’s corpse is a “gamma bomb,” and the group must figure out how to dispose of it without destroying the entire town. 

The novel ends on a mystery note – of course, the Hulk rampages off with Stern/Sh’mballah so that it can explode elsewhere, but by book’s end Rick Jones, General Ross, and everyone else are under the impression that the Hulk was killed in the blast as well. As if! The book ends in true “Bill Bixby starring in” fashion, with Bruce Banner ambling along into some new shitkicking town and wondering if he’ll ever be free of the Hulk. There were two more books featuring the Hulk: Cry Of The Beast and Hulk and Spider-Man: Murdermoon, but that was it. Doubtless the books just failed to resonate with the general readership Pocket no doubt aimed for – the comic readers probably even found these novelizations unsatisfying. ‘Nuff said!

Green Lantern and Green Arrow #2

Green Lantern and Green Arrow #2, by Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams
June, 1972  Paperback Library

This slim paperback collects two issues of Green Lantern, reformating the original comic book pages to fit in a mass market paperback format. Also, more importantly, it’s in black and white. It’s interesting that something like this was done so early on; as a kid I had a similar papberback, collecting early issues of The New Teen Titans, but this was in the early ‘80s. For this book it seems that Paperback Library was trying to jump on the “comix” bandwagon, maybe to attract people who wouldn’t normally read comics. This also extends to the material collected here, which wasn’t like most mainstream comic books of the day.

Back in the late ‘90s I got on a brief comic book kick; I’d been obsessed with them as a kid but had moved on. At the time I was really into ones from the Silver Age, especially DC. This was when eBay was first starting and I recall signing up so I could bid on various issues drawn by Neal Adams, the most famous DC artist of that period. I was aware that, with writer Dennis O’Neil (who very recently passed away), Adams had done a series of stories in Green Lantern in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s that followed the vibe of Easy Rider, with Lantern as the square-jawed Peter Fonda and Arrow as the wild and wooly Dennis Hopper. But at the time those particular issues were overpriced, and I’m not sure if there was a trade paperback.

More importantly, one thing I vividly recall from this time, which I guess was around 1998, was that this storyline, which I believe was nicknamed “Hard Travelin’ Heroes,” was considered “dated” by the online comics community. This is because O’Neil and Adams brought politics to the forefront of their storyline. While Superman would be fighting the usual supervillains and Batman versus the Joker and whatnot, Green Lantern and Green Arrow would be encountering “real people” during a trip across the United States, a trip in which they wanted to confront the “moral cancer” of the United States. When I was reading about these comics in the late ‘90s, the sentiment from online geeks was that, while the art was great (though what else could be expected from Neal Adams), the dated politics really sunk the overall storyline…especially given that the majority of the stories dealt with racial issues.

As mentioned O’Neil and Adams were clearly inspired by Easy Rider, and GL and GA fit in the Fonda and Hopper mold, though admittedly Fonda’s Captain America wasn’t as much of a straight tool as Green Lantern is presented. Basically Green Lantern’s function, in his own series, is to act as the whipping boy for all of America’s original sin. Along for the trip is an old alien, one of the Guardians in Lantern’s orbit, but this paperback doesn’t even bother to inform us who he is or why he’s here. His main goal is to pass the occasional condemnation of America. Arrow’s main goal is to harass Lantern for always supporting “the system,” and he’s real eager to show Lantern how various minorities have been mistreated by America – specifically, by white America. But it isn’t all white-people bashing, all the time, as O’Neil and Adams somehow manage to get some action and drama into these stories, not to mention some uninentional humor.

For the irony here is that Lantern and Arrow are themselves white males, and do all the fighting and saving in these two stories. Of course, they’re the heroes of the stories, so they have to. And yet…O’Neil and Adams present the subjugated minorities as incapable of helping themselves in the first place. They need to be saved from those white devils, which sort of undercuts the entire “minority empowerment” subtext. There’s even a laughable bit in the second story where Green Arrow pretends to be an American Indian so as to encourage the real American Indians to stand up to their, uh, white oppressors. All this would be humorous if such topics weren’t treated so dead serious today. (Not to mention that poor old Green Arrow would be disparaged for cultural appropriation…I mean he even goes around in headfeathers and everything.) While these stories were rightly seen as “dated” in the more enlightened ‘90s, they’d probably be eagerly embraced in our current post-America society, in which the race button has been pushed past the breaking point.

As mentioned it seems that Paperback Library was hoping to get in on the underground comic movement of the day; the headline of the series has here been changed to “Comix that give a damn,” “comix” being the “hip” way all the heads referred to comic books in the ‘60s:

I’m betting this wasn’t in the original DC editions! And speaking of which, the two issues here are from 1970: Green Lantern #78 (July, 1970) and Green Lantern #79 (September, 1970). Another thing that set this storyline apart from others is the continuity. In the Silver Age the focus for the most part was standalone stories, with only the grander scene evolving across issues. It’s been decades since I bought a new comic, but I do know at some point this changed, with intricately-plotted storylines taking over, so that if you missed an issue you were SOL. O’Neil and Adams handle things much more professionally; I don’t have any of the earlier (or later) issues, but had no problem getting into the two stories and understanding what the main plot was. What I’m trying to say that the continuity, in the case of these two stories, didn’t detract from the overall pleasure of reading the stories.

The first story’s titled “A Kind Of Loving, A Way Of Death,” and opens with Black Canary – Green Arrow’s blonde-haired girlfriend, who dresses in fishnet stockings and boots – being accosted by some bikers in Mt. Ranier park, in Washington state. In humorously-vague backstory, we learn that Canary’s from another dimension(!), but now lives on the current Earth because she likes Green Arrow. Of course as a veteran comics reader I was aware of the various Earths, destroyed in the mid-‘80s DC retooling, but this must’ve been a mind-blower for the non-comics fan who picked up this paperback. “Heavy, man!” She manages to hold her own against the biker scum, then gets knocked out and her bike stolen – yes, everyone rides a chopper in this post-Easy Rider world.

We meet Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and their never-named alien pal as they’re hanging out in Washington state, and it’s a couple weeks later. They go into a native-run place that only serves beans, which leads to another unintentionally-humorous bit where both heroes thank the American Indian for the food, and he goes off on a tangent about “palefaces walking all over us for 400 years.” “The things I’m ashamed of about my race,” whines GL. This storyline goes away – to be replaced in the next issue – as the focus becomes Black Canary, who stumbles onto the scene, now a brainwashed follower of Manson-esque cult messiah Joshua. A “bargain-basement messiah” is how GA refers to him (he uses “bargain-basement” again in the next story, so he must’ve really liked the phrase). Black Canary says she’s happy with Joshua and “no thanks” to GA when he pleads with her to come back with him. There’s some goofy, pointless hero-fighting when ever-oblivious GL tells GA, “She just doesn’t dig you.”

Joshua is a one-dimensional character at best, but you’ve gotta give him some credit, ‘cause he’s damn determined in the finale, which sees him leading his all-white congregation on a race war. They’re all brainwashed, armed with pistols, and he sets them on the native populace and doesn’t back down for anything. GA’s shot in the main action scene, and GL manages to stop the hordes with his power ring, but the climax has to do with just Joshua, Black Canary, and Green Arrow, with Joshua commanding Black Canary to kill Green Arrow. Total miss on the author-artist part where Joshua orders Black Canary to “use your revolver,” and Adams draws a .45 automatic in Black Canary’s hands! When Black Canary refuses, Joshua ends up offing himself…and Green Arrow gets into a little victim-blaming, wondering how Black Canary could’ve let herself be brainwashed in the first place!

Next up is “Ulysses Star Is Still Alive,” which picks up on the aggrieved Native American subplot of the previous yarn. It’s a couple days later and our heroes are still in Washington, with Black Canary now atoning for her brainwashed sins by providing medical help at the local reservation (“They’ve been under the white man’s heel,” she eagerly informs everyone). Meanwhile the local lumberman’s union, run by a despicable cretin who looks a little too much like Clark Kent, is trying to clear out the “animals,” ie the American Indians who claim to own the trees the union’s trying to wipe out to build Wal-Marts and stuff. GL and GA are too busy having a pseudo-lover’s spat to help out much, even though they are of course both aggrieved by the racial grievances. GA wants to storm in and bust union heads, while GL as ever wants to use “the system” to effect change.

But Green Lantern’s kind of a fool. So basically the story has it that the grandson of the former tribe leader had a deed from the US government which told him these trees belonged to his tribe. But this guy, who is himself now very old, left the tribe ages ago. GL goes off searching for him – and finds the dude while his tenement house is burning up. So GL pulls him to safety…and then the dumbass asks the old guy if he has the paperwork which gave the tribe legal right to the trees. I mean dude, the guy’s house just burned down!! And of course this the old guy tells GL that the deeds of course went up in the fire, and our hero’s thunderstruck by this unexpected turnaround. He’s so damn clueless that not until the end of the story does he even put two and two together and realize that tenement fire was no accident. Frank Drebin was a better investigator.

Here comes the now-frowned-apart bit where Green Arrow goes around posing as the “spirit” of Ulysses Star, mythical warrior of the tribe, ages ago. In full “Native American warrior” regalia he goes around, giving pep talks to the tribe and sowing fear into the hearts of the union jerks. Adams’ art implies that “Ulysses Star” glows, but this is lost in the black and white reprint. At any rate it would be clear to even Green Lantern that this is none other than Green Arrow in costume…I mean “Ulysses Star” even carries around a quiver filled with trick arrows, which is, you now, Green Arrow’s main gimmick, and likely the reason he never showed up in the Superfriends cartoons I loved as a kid. I mean nothing says “safe entertainment for kids” like a guy who fights with bows and arrows. Oh and apropos of nothing, by far my favorite of all those Superfriends series was Challenge Of The Superfriends which ran in ’78, and my parents (this was so long ago they were still married) had one of those cable boxes on the TV at the time, with a switch that would go to either HBO or “the Superstation,” aka TBS – which was how Ted Turner became a bujillionaire (and married Barbarella), because his local station rode HBO’s signal. Anwyay, TBS broadcast Challenge Of The Superfriends, and even though I was so young I knew to switch it over to the Superstation at 4:30PM on weekdays to see it. And also apropos of nothing, I bought the DVD set of the series years ago, and am now watching it with my kid, who seems to love it.

Okay, I’m back on track now. But as you can see the subtext is ruined; these proud native warriors, trampled by “palefaces,” are incapable of stirring themselves to action until a white man poses as the spirt of their famous ancestor. So they’re both cowardly and superstitious. But who cares, because in the final confrontation it’s actually Green Lantern versus…Green Arrow. Yes kids, our two heroes bash each other into oblivion as everyone watches on…O’Neil trying to invest mythic dimensions with the two fighting to purge themselves of the sins of their race.

To make it worse, blind luck saves the Indians in the end; we’re told in a hasty epilogue that “a confessed arsonist” came forward and said he’d been hired to burn down that tenement building…hired of course by the labor union and other assorted white devils. So they’re hauled off to jail, GL’s conviction to go “by the system” somewhat upheld, even though neither he nor Green Arrow did anything to really help in the course of the story. Other than to beat up a couple union toughs and scare a few corporate types. And now that I think of it, the “confessed arsonist” is also white, thus by confessing he has saved the brutalized Indians…so once again it’s white people to the rescue, irony and hypocrisy be damned. But then irony and hypocrisy are generally lost on propagandists.

As mentioned Adams’s art shines, despite the lack of color and the re-jiggering of the page layouts. If anything the editing brings out the drama and motion of Adams’s panels, as seen in these two arbitrary page shots:

Looks like this was the last of the Green Lantern/Green Arrow paperbacks Paperback Library published; there’s an ad in the back for the first one, the cover of which has our heroes being shamed by an old black guy. Man, talk about prescience! Oh and speaking of which, the cover of this one doesn’t illustrate a scene in the actual book…I kept waiting for these two losers to be crucified for the sins of their ancestors, but sadly it never happened. But anyway, it is kind of fun to wonder what it would’ve been like if Fonda and Hopper had actually made a movie out of this, replacing their Easy Rider choppers with spandex. Wait, no – I wouldn’t want to see that at all.