THINGS THAT MADE ME HAPPY IN APRIL

I believe my bloggy thing readers and online friends are generally well-informed, so I won’t get into all the news stories - fake and otherwise - that are making 2021 only moderately better than that year we don’t want to mention. It’s still very hard for me to be as productive as I would like. However...

One bright spot is that, now that I’m fully vaccinated, I’m ready to hit the convention trail again. First up is Pensacon 2021, which will be held May 21-23 in Pensacola, Florida. Mike Ensley and his crew put on what has become my favorite convention. I’m excited to be attending for what I think is my sixth year in a row. I’ll have more to say about the event in a day or two, but, if you check out the show’s wonderful guest list, you’ll be just as excited as I am. You’ll find that list on the Pensacon website.

As for April, well, brilliant ray of sunshine that I am, I managed to find something to make happy every day of the month...

April 1: Entertainment Earth has become one of my favorite places to shop for Funko and Godzilla items. My latest arrival from them is Wanda Maximoff in her WandaVision Halloween costume.

April 2: April fools! The first public Herd Gathering in a year as Roger Price, Bob Ingersoll and I had lunch at On Tap in Medina. It was great seeing these guys again!

April 3: Godzilla vs. Kong. My son Eddie saw it on the big screen on Thursday night. I’ll be writing about it in a near-future blog.

April 4: The Last Blockbuster. Streaming on Netflix, this terrific documentary takes you to Bend, Oregon, the home of the one and only remaining Blockbuster Video. It brought back so many memories of my nigh-daily Blockbuster visits back in the day.

                                                                                        

April 5: Funko’s Golden Age Wonder Woman Pop figure. My answer to the valid question asking if I buy too many Funko figures for a 69-year-old man is...no, I do not. But I do need suggestions for the best display cases for them.

April 6: The Foods That Built America on The History Channel. This documentary series tells the stories of our nation’s iconic foods and those who created them. Meet my next obsession.

April 7: Godzilla vs Kong Sometimes Friends Fight (But They Always Make Up) is a counting book for children six years old and younger. It’s never too early to introduce little ones to the wonders of the greatest kaiju of them all.

April 8: Pensacon. My first convention appearance since February, 2020, will be Pensacon in Pensacola, Florida, on May 21-23, 2021. I’m excited to return to my favorite convention. Check out the con website for their fantastic guest list.

[NOTE: Yeah, I know this was discussed at the top of today’s blog, but some things are so cool, they demand repeat mentions.]

April 9: Marvel Comics The Variant Covers by John Rhett Thomas. I just got this big beautiful coffee table book yesterday. I flipped through it and WOW! It looks amazing. I plan to savor this treasure a few pages every day.

April 10: Fun facts about comics history. I just learned recently that Marvel editor and writer Ralph Macchio is related to legendary comics artist Wayne Boring.

                                                                                

April 11: Spending an evening with Barb and Eddie putting together White Mountain’s 1000-piece Candy Wrappers jigsaw puzzle. Despite a missing piece, it was still big fun.

April 12: Black Lightning’s back-door pilot for Painkiller. I liked it a lot and was mightily impressed by the performances of Jordan Calloway, Nafessa Williams, Chantal Thuy, Sibongile Mlambo and the other cast members. More please.

                                                                                     

April 13: Truth. I’m a Godzilla dad. Just like a normal dad but way cooler. Because I own this t-shirt.

April 14: Working on my first YouTube video. I’m writing the script today and tomorrow, recording it Friday and posting it on Saturday. If it goes well, I might starting making these on a regular basis. Watch for details.

[NOTE: This project got sidelined for a few weeks, but it should be hitting YouTube before the end of May.]

April 15: Remember the 1000-piece Candy Wrappers jigsaw puzzle that was shy one piece? Saintly Wife Barb found that missing piece under a chair. She completes us.

April 16: My kids Eddie and Kelly got their second vaccine shots. Once their new powers manifest, I will start coming up with their super-hero names.

April 17: Last year, U.K. comics digest Commando began to publish new stories of characters like Lord Peter Flint (from Warlord) and Braddock (from Victor). Though I wasn’t familiar with either, I’m loving these revivals.

[NOTE: Sadly, Commando didn’t publish many of these special issues, even though they were well-received by the readers.]

April 18: President Joe Biden has joined my Social Justice League of the world via this action figure. On one side of the box is the phrase “Truth Over Lies.” A worthy objective that.

April 19: I came up with a brilliant name for a comics series I’ve wanted to write starring a group of giant monsters. Now all I need is the right artist, a publisher to foot the bills and the time to write it.

                                                                                 

  

April 20: Satoko and Nada by Yupechika. The beautiful story of two young women from distant lands (Japan and Saudi Arabia) who come to the U.S. for college concludes with its heartwarming, hilarious and satisfying fourth volume. It’s a treasure!

April 21: Thunder Force: Octavia Spencer’s hero name is Bingo. It has nothing to do with her invisibility power. I love this so much I should create a whole team of heroes named after popular public domain games.  

April 22: Using my new mastery (i.e. basic competence) of Zoom, I was interviewed by Christopher Brown, the host of the Cross Border Interview Podcast. It went well and I remembered to wear pants. I call that a win-win.

April 23: Via Zoom, I spoke to John S. Hollemon III’s students at Hampden-Sydney College. I like sharing accurate comics history with  others. I am also available for live talks, convention appearances and really dull parties.

                                                                                

April 24: The finale of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier delivered the satisfying conclusion I was hoping for. No spoilers here, but look for my bloggy thing overview in the near future.

April 25: Captain America 4 is in development with Malcolm Spellman (head writer of The Falcon and the Whiter Soldier) at the helm. With the expected return of Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan, my suggested title is Captain America 4: Justice.

April 26: Daredevil #9/620 [September 2019] by writer Chip Zdarsky with artists Lalit Kumar Sharma and Jay Leisten. Matt Murdock has dinner and a morality debate with a Hell’s Kitchen crime family. An engaging and thoughtful issue.

April 27: Watching teacher Laura Trammel become the first person to win a house in the Wheel of Fortune bonus round. The Margaritaville home is worth $375,000. What a thrilling and wonderful moment for Trammel and the viewers!

April 28: Jamon Allen Brown. My friend’s script for chapter four of Black Lightning’s “The Book of Ruin” was painful to watch. But it was also brilliant and gave the great cast so much to work with. I can’t wait to see what Jamon does next.

April 29: Discussing a character I’d never thought about writing, I quickly came up with a fresh take and a direction consistent with them. I’m beginning to think I can write any comics character. Even if I’m the only one who thinks this, it’s a nice feeling.

                                                                             

April 30: Across the Universe. What a beautiful movie! The romance of a well-off American girl and a poor Liverpool artist is framed in Beatles music and the turbulent 1960s. Thanks to Anthony Tollin for recommending it to me.

That’s all for now. I’ll be back soon with more stuff.

© 2021 Tony Isabella

WATCHING THUNDER FORCE AND MORE

 

 

Among my too long list of obsessions is the urge to see every darn super-hero movie that has been made. This is not as dangerous as it could be. For example, I have no interest in seeing Zack Synder’s films or animated versions of such brutally soulless comic books as The Killing Joke. But, yeah, with those exceptions, if a movie has super-heroes in it, I’ll watch it.

Recently released on Netflix, Thunder Force (2021) was written and directed by Ben Falcone, the husband of Melissa McCarthy, who, with Octavia Spencer, is one of the two members of the title super-team. Other actors include such favorites of mine as Jason Bateman, Bobby Cannavale and Melissa Leo. Players who weren’t on my radar before this, but whose performances I loved were Taylor Mosby and Marcella Lowery. Falcone has a small role as an ill-fated henchmen with the appropriate name of Kenny. Here’s the summary from the Internet Movie Database:

In a world where supervillains are commonplace, two estranged childhood best friends reunite after one devises a treatment that gives them powers to protect their city.

I wasn’t expecting much from Thunder Force, but it was a whole lot more entertaining than I expected. Time is spent showing the leads as they grow up together and move apart. Those warm moments are a nice contrast to the broad and sometimes gross comedy. Some super-hero bits are hilarious. At its core, this movie is about heroism and friendship.

This is a shorter review than I had originally intended to write. I made the decision to avoid spoilers because I wanted you to come to this movie without knowing too much about it. As I so often say when I write about films, Thunder Force won’t win any awards. What it will do is deliver a fun and satisfying hour-and-a-half’s worth of entertainment. That’s good enough for me.

                                                                           

The Last Blockbuster [2020] is a documentary currently streaming on Netflix. It’s the history of the last remaining Blockbuster Video store. That store is still operating in Bend, Oregon.

Though I’d known of the existence of this store, I stumbled across the documentary while channel-surfing, an ever more time-consuming activity, what with the many streaming networks available here at Casa Isabella. Directed by Taylor Morden and written by Zeke Kamm, this was an absolutely riveting hour-and-a-half spotlight on what was once an icon of American pop culture. It transported me back to
my own frequent visits to various Blockbuster stores, visits which started almost as soon as I bought my first VCR.

Owner Sandi Harding is the star of the documentary and, through her eyes, we see how important this family business was to not just her family but her community. There’s a wonderful scene in which past employees come to the store for an annual dinner. I think I got a little teary at how special that must be.

There are clips from celebrities talking about their experiences getting videos from or working at Blockbuster Video. Kevin Smith.Brian Posehn. Adam Brody. Ron Funches. Ione Skye. Cranky naysayer Lloyd Kaufman is included as well.

My own Blockbuster memories went hand-in-hand with my watching this documentary. Before I got married, I used to come home with a half-dozen videos of all kinds. I used to buy dozens of used VCR tapes. My schedule didn’t allow me to go to actual movie theaters all that often, but those tapes and bags of microwave popcorn in a darkened living room was a reasonable approximation of that experience for the times.

The Last Blockbuster gets my high recommendation. It even got me to thinking about visiting Bend, Oregon in the hopefully near future. Maybe even rent a movie and a VCR or DVD player while I’m in town.

                                                                                   

                                 

Saturday night movies with Svengoolie is always a good time. While I don’t get to enjoy his show every week, I usually manage to watch a couple times a month. Recently, I watched his presentation of The Beast Must Die (1974), a British film from Amicus Productions and directed by Paul Annett. Written by Michael Winder and based on the short story "There Shall Be No Darkness" by James Blish, this movie is a, well, let me crib from the Internet Movie Database to set it up for you:

At the beginning of the film with narration. This film is a detective story--in which you are the detective The question is not "Who is the murderer?"--But "Who is the werewolf?" After all the clues have been shown--You will get a chance to give your answer. Said but not written on screen, directly after above quote: Watch for the werewolf break.

Wealthy big-game hunter Tom Newcliffe [played by Calvin Lockhart]  invites five people to his remote mansion and proclaims one of them is a werewolf. All the summaries say six people, but the only way to reach that number is to count Newcliffe’s wife Caroline [Marlene Clark] and there’s no indication the hunter considered her to be a suspect.

The actual suspects include archaeologist and lycanthropy expert Professor Lundgren [Peter Cushing], artist and ex-con Paul Foote [Tom Chadbon], disgraced diplomat Arthur Bennington [Charles Gray] and pianist Jan Gilmore and his wife Davina [Michael Gambon and Ciaran Madden]. Rounding out the cast we have Newcliffe’s associate Pavel [Anton Diffring]. With Pavel, the hunter has surrounded his mansion and its grounds with so much surveillance equipment that I thought it was unfair to the werewolf.

The Beast Must Die reminded me of a TV movie to such an extent that I was surprised to learn it was a theatrical release. The action is adequate at best with Lockhart going into overacting overdrive for most of the film. Lockhart is black, making for less than optimal for scenes shot in the day with special filters to mimic the night. There are a handful of chilling scenes throughout the movie, enough to make it worth watching once. Inserted against director Annett’s wishes, the “Werewolf Break” is laughably off-key.

Svengoolie makes the movie for me. Unless I was writing a book on werewolf movies, certainly a distant possibility, I wouldn’t have watched it otherwise.

                                                                         

One more movie for today. Courtesy of Svengoolie, I watched a swell movie called The Undead [1957]. Directed by Roger Corman, written by Charles B. Griffith and Mark Hanna, the black-and-white horror movie stars Pamela Duncan, Richard Garland, Allison Hayes and Val Dufour. Here’s the IMDb summary:

A beautiful woman is sent back in time via hypnosis to the Middle Ages where she finds she is suspected of being a witch, and subject to being executed.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

The Undead is a pretty good shock ending comic-book story. I could visualize the panels and pages as I watched it.

Duncan is excellent in the dual roles of modern shady lady Diana Love and her virtuous medieval counterpart Helena. Garland is the knight who loves Helena, despite her being pronounced a witch and
doomed to execution. Hayes is best known for being that attacking 50-Foot Woman, but she’s likewise excellent as actual witch Livia. Dufour’s scientist is the scariest character in a movie that also features Lucifer. 

Quintus Ratcliff is a soulless investigator who sends Diana back to her past life as Helena. He sends himself back in time as well. He wants to see if Helena will sacrifice her (for her) present life to bring into being all the other lives that she will live. Centuries of women with lives of their own. Ratcliff only wants to see what happens, not giving a rodent’s behind for Helena or the weakening Diana. He’s an arrogant son of a bitch who doesn’t even flinch at bantering with the Devil.

Helena does choose to die in her medieval time so Diana and all her future selves will live. In modern times, Diana recovers and is so moved by Helena’s sacrifice that she vows to turn her life around and be worthy of that sacrifice.

The shock ending? Since Ratcliff was mentally linked to Helena, he has no way of getting back to his own time when she dies. With the Devil laughing, the scientist realizes he is trapped in the past. He’ll live his life and die before he was born. A fitting fate for the arrogant man.

SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER

I had never heard of The Undead before I watched it on Svengoolie. Now it’s a film I want to see again and which I recommend to all of you. And, yes, I’m available to adapt it into a comic book.

That’s all for now. I’ll be back soon with more stuff.

© 2021 Tony Isabella

X-MEN AND SUPERMAN

 

Since I’m not writing anything for Marvel or DC, I have little hope of ever becoming fluent with the current states of their respective universes. Should I ever resume writing for them, that won’t be a major obstacle. I’m a quick study, especially with editors who can bring me up to speed and elucidate what they’re expecting from me. Which is neither here nor there.

When I read comics from those companies it's almost always because a friend has recommended them to me. I gravitate towards collections because I prefer a great big chunk of story over individual issues, especially at a time when those individual issues seem like they’re merely taking up pages until the writers get to whatever big story they want to tell.

One of my transgender friends is a big fan of the X-Men, which is not surprising given the alienation and struggle for acceptance or survival that have been part of the X-Men since Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created them. You don’t have to be a scholar to see how that appeals to any number of readers.

House of X/Powers of X [Marvel; $49.99] by the “visionary writer” Jonathan Hickman and artists Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva was truly a mixed bag for me. I’m not a big Hickman fan, but I recognize the quality and thoughtfulness of his writing. I very much liked this concept of sentient mutant island Krakoa becoming homeland for all the Earth’s mutants. I loved the political maneuvering attendant on Krakoa creating its place among the planet’s nations. And I loved the ramifications of this new global landscape. When a super-hero series becomes more than big punch-ups and destruction/death on a planetary scale, I’m gonna give it a chance.

What I didn’t like, and this is by no means all on Hickman, was the far-ranging “future of mutantkind” story running concurrently with what the modern story. I have rarely been a fan of future stories, except when they were never said to be *the* future of the heroes. I loved the “Superman of 2099" stories that ran in Superman comics in the 1960s. I didn’t care for the “Adult Legion of Super-Heroes” story that ran in the same era. Perhaps this future X-Men story is not meant to be canon, but it seemed like it was meant to be such. Why continue to read X-Men comics if I know what’s coming?

Oh, and, just to be even more grumpy, I don’t like the overuse of alternate universe versions of characters. I also don’t buy for an instant that Moira MacTaggert has been some kind of secret mutant
who dies and reincarnates over and over to help chart the future of mutantkind. That one made my eyes roll.

I plan to continue reading X-Men as my library provides me with the collections. I could never follow this ongoing story on an issue-to-issue basis. I’d previously read and enjoyed collections of the Marauders title and mostly enjoyed the one X-Factor collection. In the case of X-Factor, my experience was diminished by the presence of the always annoying Mojo.

My over-all take at this early stage of reading X-Men again is to applaud the big concept without buying into it entirely. If you’ve got the energy/patience to follow what is functionally a separate, multi-title Marvel imprint, you might enjoy these comics.

                                                                                

                                                                            

Brian Michael Bendis is one of the best writers in comics and has been for many years. I generally like his work and definitely like him personally. He’s a damn good man. Which is why it pains me that I don’t like his now-concluded work on Superman.

Yes, I know Bendis put in a couple years on the Superman titles and that he’s not writing Superman at the moment. For reasons unknown to me, I’m just getting around to reading his Superman stuff now, via collections from my local library system.

Why am I reviewing these Superman comics now? Because some of why I don’t care for them is worth writing about. As of this bloggy, I have read The Man of Steel [DC Comics; $17.99] and Superman Vol. 1: The Unity Saga: Phantom Earth [$17.99].

Almost every time a big-name writer takes over the Superman books, they want to reinvent the character in some manner. Of course, the character can and needs to be brought into whatever modern era this is happening in. However, these writers need to consider what effect their “improvements” will have on the Superman legacy and on the DC Universe titles that revolve around Superman.

Back in the 1980s, John Byrne dumped Superboy, Supergirl and Clark Kent’s mild-mannered personality. His Superboy call screwed over the popular Legion of Super-Heroes. His Supergirl call led to the inevitable creation of a much more complicated and less interesting new Supergirl. I wasn’t quite as put off by Clark Kent getting more manly, but I was fond of what Jules Feiffer once pointed out as the main positive of the Superman/Clark dichotomy. That was the idea that, underneath our cheap suits, we could all be Superman. That idea has appealed to generation after generation of Superman fans. To a large extent, I think it’s what made Superman human and therefore relatable to readers. Sadly, I doubt we’ll ever see that dichotomy again. Its absence has become too ingrained with comics readers and media viewers of Superman.

What I disliked most about the Bendis run on Superman was his massive change to Krypton and its history. My favorite version of Krypton is the one where it’s a beautiful planet of tomorrow with amazing advances in science and, sadly, with the arrogance that comes when powerful people refuse to address potential dangers. This always reminds me of how mankind has largely dropped the ball on climate change. I don’t think Krypton’s leaders could have prevented the tragic destruction of their people and planet, but there’s a lesson to be learned from their hubris.

Breaking from that history, Bendis instead chose to have Krypton murdered by a powerful xenophobe. It’s an inelegant embrace of the Hollywood excess that prefers the eye-candy of mass destruction to more meaningful plot development. Krypton goes from being a tragedy to being a crime victim. Indeed, much of what I find fault with in the Bendis run is a devotion to Hollywood blockbuster theories of storytelling. Make it big and bloody.

While I’ll give Bendis credit for naming some of the thousands of citizens of Kandor who were murdered so he could show how brutal his new villain was, it wasn’t enough. Those characters were still reduced to faceless statistics.

As for the rest of what I read in these two collections, I liked that Lois Lane was treated with respect. I didn’t like the break-up of the Kent family as the hands of a somehow alive Jor-El who is just as arrogant as the Kryptonian scientists who failed to heed his warning.

Because it comes at the very end of Superman Vol. 1, I have yet to form an opinion of the surprise aging of Jon Kent into a teenager. I liked some previous stories featuring Jon as a pre-teen. I think there was untapped potential in stories of that type. I’ll reserve further judgment until I’ve read more tales of the older super-son.

That’s a wrap for today’s bloggy thing. Stay safe and stay sane as we deal with the enormous problems of the world outside out beloved comic books. I’ll be back soon with more stuff.

© 2021 Tony Isabella

CITIZEN TONY AND THE MEDINA EYESORE

If you’re a new reader of this bloggy thing of mine, you might not know this comic-book writer and fan, cheesy monster movie devotee, avid reader and reviewer of all kinds of books, and guy who watches an awful lot of TV is also a progressive liberal. Some readers are triggered by progressive liberal Democrats. They like me best when I write about those other things.

Here’s the thing. My writing is rarely devoid of social commentary even when it’s not abundantly obvious. If there is value to what I write, it’s because it often connects to the real world around us. That real world has always been political. Just as our comic-book super-heroes have always been political.

When you see “Citizen Tony” in the title of a bloggy thing, it’s my way of warning you that particular bloggy thing discusses political and social issues. I’m attempting to spare you being triggered by that day’s content. I’d rather you read my commentary and perhaps get a new perspective on the day’s topic, but that is your choice. You can skip today’s bloggy thing and come back on a day when I’m writing about something more to your liking.

Today’s “Citizen Tony” column has a letter I wrote to The Gazette, my home town’s local newspaper. Medina is way too Republican and way too white for my personal taste, and The Gazette generally (but not always) reflects that. Honestly, I don’t expect The Gazette to run this letter. It’s bad manners to call out racists as racists. Which is why you can read it here.

After much adieu, here is the letter:

Sweets & Geeks on East Smith Road is one of my favorite places in Medina. I love checking out the wondrous assortments of candy, soda pop and Funko figures, and that covers less than half of what you will find there. Unfortunately, my most recent visit to this great establishment was marred by a despicable eyesore.

Across the street from the Sweets & Geeks parking lot was a garage with a huge Confederate flag hanging from its door. It was as big as the United States flag that hung next to it. I wondered why anyone would display and seemingly take pride in displaying such an odious symbol of racism, slavery, treason and white supremacy.

The Confederate flag is not “heritage” except in the most negative way. Does the person who flies this flag consider their heritage to be one of  racism, slavery, treason and white supremacy? Because, when you dismiss the obviously false talking points about states rights and such, that’s the reality of this symbol. Racism. Slavery. Treason. White supremacy. Those were the realities of the Confederate States of America as proclaimed in the very documents that brought it into existence.

I’ll never understand why any American citizen would embrace what the Confederate flag represents. I don’t believe that flag reflect the hearts and minds of the vast majority of Medina’s residents. Yet there it flies on East Smith Road, a reminder that evil exists and that we still have a long way to go to truly make our country what it should be.

I’ll let you know if The Gazette runs this letter. In the meantime, stay safe and sane. I’ll be back soon with more stuff.

© 2021 Tony Isabella

WHILE I WORK ON SOME OTHER STUFF

 Hey, kids of all ages...

I've been trying to bring you new bloggy things on a nigh-daily basis, even though I know there will be days when that doesn't happen. I hope you've been enjoying the content I'm posting and will post your comments on same.

Comments have to be approved by me, so don't be alarmed if your comment doesn't appear immediately. I check for comments several times a day and approve them as swiftly as possible. Those of you who have been on the Internet for, let's say five minutes, understand why comments have to be screened before they appear. 

I made a boo-boo a few days back and used the title "STILL WATCHING" for two bloggy things in a row. I'll try to avoid that in the future.

Eventually, when I gain a little ground on my outlandishly long "Things To Do" list, I'll be adding a  DONATE VIA PAYPAL link to the bloggy. We've talked about how woefully under-employed I'm on, so I'm looking for ways to bring in a few more bucks every month. I'll be doing some other things as well, but this appears to be the one I can do easiest. I hope those aren't famous last words.

If you're eager to show your financial appreciation for my content, you don't have to wait for the Paypal link to show up. You can always tip the Tipster through PayPal by using my e-mail address.

Coming up in the next several days will be the usual mix of news, views and reviews. I'll also be writing about my upcoming convention appearances, my upcoming garage sales and some other cool stuff. In the case of the garage sales, this is the year I am determined to make a huge dent in my Vast Accumulation of Stuff. Saintly Wife Barb would like more of our house back.

Stay safe, stay sane and try to treat each other with kindness and respect. I'll be back soon with more stuff. 

Tony

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE STRENGTH OF THE SUMO

 

 

Captain America Omnibus Vol. 1 [Marvel; $125] has been part of my morning routine for a couple weeks now. I read one story every day, glorious reminders of how exciting it was to be a Marvel Comics fan in the mid-1960s.

The Captain America solo strip, which launched in Tales of Suspense #59 [December, 1964], was different from most super-hero strips in that Cap didn’t have supporting characters. It was mostly all him, the most human of the Marvel super-heroes, battling criminals, evil organizations and heartbreaking memories of having his late World War II sidekick Bucky Barnes. The only comparatively lonely hero was Dr. Strange over in Strange Tales and even that master of the mystic arts had Wong.

Some readers complained about the lack of a supporting cast in the letters pages of Tales of Suspense, clearly favoring Iron Man with its Tony Stark/Pepper Potts/Happy Hogan romantic triangle. I loved both strips, but something about that breakneck Jack Kirby action art put me firmly on Team Cap.

Speaking of the letter columns, there are familiar names among the fans representative in those pages. Names like Margaret Gemignani, Pete Von Sholly, George Haganauer, Derrill Rothermich, Don McGregor and more. Like many Marvel fans, I made friends through the letters columns and fanzines of those bygone days.

Tales of Suspense #61's “The Strength of the Sumo” is a story that caught my attention when I reread it. Captain America goes to Viet Nam to rescue an American helicopter pilot taken prisoner by the Communist forces. The pilot’s brother rescued Cap during World War II and Cap is looking to repay that debt.

Many comics tales featuring Communist villains are problematic when viewed through modern sensibilities. When Cap defeats a couple of muscular soldiers, their major bemoans that Cap “has caused him to lose face” before sending Cap off to face the general holding the pilot prisoner.

The general turns out to be a giant sumo wrestler, who enters the store behind a parade of masked dancers that would have done Cecil B. Demille proud. I didn’t get that reference in 1964 and I doubt any readers under the age of 50 would get it today.

The fight between Cap and the Sumo is outlandish and enormous fun. Cap maneuvers his opponent into dropping a statue on himself, but since we’re just panels away from the end of this story, all we see are big chunks of rocks behind the escaping Avenger. Cap and the rescued pilot steal the general’s small private jet, which the Sumo could not possibly have fit into, and fly to safety.

What makes this story special? The helicopter pilot is a black man. Sure, because of the coloring of that time, he does look more like a grey man, but this is still a pretty neat thing and an example of how Marvel was starting to make their comics more diverse.

What makes this story even more special? The pilot’s race is never mentioned. Not once. That he’s black is not key to the adventure. He just is. Good on Stan and Jack.

Looking at the story through my 2021 eyes, I do see some timeline problems. Given that it takes place two decades after World War II, the pilot would have more likely been the son of the man who saved Captain America.
 

If I ever wrote Captain America again, it would be tempting to use the helicopter pilot in a story. But I wouldn’t. The Viet Nam war was half a century ago and bringing it into a modern-day tale would be jarring. I don’t want to remind readers that, if you go by the dates these stories were originally published, Cap has been out of the ice block three times longer than he was in it. That is a detail better glossed over.

Two months after “The Strength of the Sumo” was published, Captain America’s series went in a new direction. Starting with a retelling of his origin, World War II would be the setting for his stories. Some tales would be retellings of stories originally published in the 1940a. Sidekick Bucky Barnes would be in most of these wartime adventures. Amusingly, issue #68's “The Sentinel and the Spy!” had Cap charged with recovering a stolen secret super-weapon, a secret weapon that seemingly every one, including rank-and-file American soldiers, knew about. Loose lips...

The World War II tales would run through issue #71. Jack Kirby did the layouts for the three-part finale with finishes by Dick Ayers,  George Tuska. Joe Sinnott inked Tuska’s second outing and, as you would expect, the combination looked great.

When Cap’s series switched back to the then-modern era, it was with a multi-issue story that excited me as a youngster. Indeed, had I been allowed to write more than a handful issues of Captain America in the 1970s, I would have done a sequel to it.

Alas, you’ll have to wait to learn about my planned contribution to the “Sleepers Saga” until I do another bloggy thing on the wonders to be found in Captain America Omnibus #1. I’ll try to make that happen before the end of the month. In the meantime, stay safe and sane. I’ll be back soon with more stuff.

© 2021 Tony Isabella

WATCHING AND WAITING

 

 

Perhaps there’s some minuscule bit of truth to the charge I watch too much TV and too many movies. On the other hand, these are not just part of my life but of the lives of a majority of my readers.Finding a balance between watching and writing is always difficult. However, by writing about what I watch, I combine these interests and claim my cable bill and my Bluray/DVD purchases as legitimate business expenses. Right, IRS?

Marvel Studios just keeps knocking it out of the park. My son Eddie and I have been getting together every Friday to watch The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, just as we did with WandaVision. The six-episode Falcon/Winter Soldier series is as amazing as WandaVision, albeit in a more down to earth manner. Five episodes in, we eagerly await the conclusion. I’ll be devoting a full blog to the series, but, for now, I want to talk about one aspect of it, an element I wish future Marvel productions would devote more time to.

Half the Earth’s population and heroes disappeared between the end of Avengers: Infinity War and the climatic epic battle in Avengers: Endgame. They disappeared for five years, a period that came to be known as the Blip. The planet, its nations and its people moved on from their incredible loss. The planet, its nations and its people were changed by that event and the welcome but challenging return of those thought gone forever. 

Gosh darn it, I want to see stories of those five years and of the new world the missing people returned to. Such an incredible event needs to be chronicled. I would love to see Marvel Comics address these years and their aftermath in a new imprint featuring comics stories from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Which, to me, is a no-brainer. The MCU is more relatable than the increasingly convoluted standard Marvel comics universe. I’d love to read those MCU tales. I’d love to write some of them.

I’ve been told such an imprint is something Marvel Comics isn’t at all interested in doing. That’s a shame. But, at least, we have a great many Marvel Studios projects to look forward to.

Loki is next up, making its Disney+ debut on June 11. The premise as reported on Wikipedia is:

After stealing the Tesseract during the events of Avengers: Endgame (2019), Loki is brought to the mysterious Time Variance Authority (TVA) organization and their Time-Keepers, and is forced to fix several timelines he broke, while traveling through time altering human history, ending up trapped in his own crime thriller.

With the terrific Tom Hiddleston reprising his role as Loki, this looks to be an exciting and wacky series. Like The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, there will be six episodes released one per week. Clear my Fridays.

                                                                                   

When I was ranking the DC/CW shows last season, Batwoman got third place after Black Lightning and Stargirl. It had a gritty feel not unlike Black Lightning and Gotham. The story of Kate Kane [played by Ruby Rose] was compelling. The fascist nature of the Crows was a nice commentary on police excess. The supporting cast was great. But that was last season.

Rose chose not to return to Batwoman for the second season. Which left the series without its lead, even though every since story line derived from Kate Kane. The logical path forward would have been to recast Kate Kane. Logic is hard to come by.

Ryan Wilder, innocent felon on parole living out of her van, became the new Batwoman when she recovered Kane’s gear from the wreckage of an airplane. Actress Javicia Leslie has done an amazing job in the role, but the plotting of the series has gone down in flames as hot as those in the plane wreckage. 

The convoluted manner in which Batwoman has connected the Kate Kane storylines to Wilder is painful to view. Crazed sister Alice/Beth Kane [Rachel Skarsten] flays around the series like an angry bird. Existing characters do the same. Incredibly boring new characters  like Safiyah, Enigma and Angelique rose to prominence in desperate attempts to plug holes in the leaking dam that is Batwoman. And, as good as Leslie and returning players Meagan Tandy, Nicole Kang, Camrus Johnson and Dougray Scott are...along with Leslie, they are why I’m still watching the show...they can’t stop the flood.

The addition of Black Mask is a decent move. He’s been a dangerous force in the Batman comic books and has the potential to move the series beyond Kate Kane’s stories. Except...

SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD

...Kate Kane is still alive. Disfigured in the plane crash, given a new face and brainwashed into being the enemy of all she used to fight for, Kate is alive and will be played by Wallis Day, formerly quite good in the short-lived Krypton series on the Syfy channel.Wilder will continue as Batwoman for the foreseeable future. 

Understand this, I love Leslie as Batwoman/Ryan Wilder. I like that a gay person of color from a challenging background is continuing that legacy, this from a guy who would much rather see characters of color and gay characters in original super-hero roles instead of becoming existing super-heroes. But there were all sorts of way to have Wilder become Batwoman without this new Kate Kane development. A disabled Kate could’ve become an inspiring character and another kind of role model in the series. Instead, we get cheesy melodrama. I’m officially on the fence re: Batwoman.

However, if Batwoman wants to get back in my good graces, and I’m assuming nothing is more important to them, they could always give radio talk show host Vesper Fairchild [Rachel Maddow] some actual screen time. Nothing major, just an occasional appearance. I think that would be great fun.

The response to these “watching” columns have been very good, so I plan to continue them. I’ll be back soon with more stuff.

© 2021 Tony Isabella