Sunday Pin-Up

Superman by Gil Kane

This splash page comes from a rather cool 1983 tale called “Behold The Ultimate Man,” which was written as well as illustrated by Kane. The story concerns the Man Of Steel’s battle with a self-styled savior who - through comic-book science - evolved himself to the highest state humanity can possible aspire toward.

Unfortunately, just like Gary Mitchell in Star Trek, absolute power corrupts absolutely and Superman is forced to use every bit of his pre-COIE strength to free Earth from the Ultimate Man’s grasp. It’s great fun, and proof positive that a god-like Superman doesn’t preclude compelling stories as long as the creator uses a bit of imagination.

Brand New Deadpool

So it looks like Daniel Way is taking charge of Deadpool and … well … not to be judgmental but *ick.*

Much like Brian Reed of Ms. Marvel fame, Way is the sort of writer who talks a good game but rarely delivers upon his promises. When Wolverine: Origins first came out, there was plenty of hype regarding how Way would carefully put the disparate pieces of Logan’s life in order but - despite the title’s commercial success - most agree the stories are underwhelming at best.

Way’s Ghost Rider was similarly forgettable.

Marvel’s plans for the character also include a major tie-in to Secret Invasion that will bring in a “major player” who will supposedly play a key role in the Marvel cross-over and its aftermath.

Hooray.

Oh well. The Keeper will at least give the title a quick look at Borders. If it stinks - or more likely, appears mediocre - we can always get our Wade Wilson fix over at Random Happenstance!

Raging Brandys

After a much needed rest - consuming planets does take it out of a guy, you know - Bahlactus has returned to the blogoverse and is ready to layeth the smacketh down!

This time, however, there is a twist.

Feeling a bit Scorsese after 12 weeks of knockout punches, the urban space god has decreed that Friday Night Fights now be waged in glorious black and white! The Fortress Keeper, who’s been known to enjoy a monochromatic movie masterpiece or two in his time (Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein, anyone?), wholeheartedly approves.

Black & white films - and comics, of course - capture a certain grit their four-colored counterparts could never quite match.

So, in the spirit of Scorsese’s Raging Bull and Gil Kane’s His Name Is Savage!, we turn to one of the great, down ‘n’ dirty comic strips of all time for FNF’s first round … Frank Cho’s Liberty Meadows!

???

OK, well … Liberty Meadows isn’t quite as down and dirty as we claimed.

Cho - who may be better known these days as the “good girl” artist who gave Ultron boobs - once earned a living writing and drawing a syndicated funny animal strip that combined classic romance tropes (nerdy veterinarian Frank Mellish carried a torch for beautiful animal psychiatrist Brandy Carter) with broad, slapstick style humor and pop-culture parodies featuring the many critters that populated the comic.

Although alternately hilarious and touching, we must remember Liberty Meadows was created by the guy who gave Ultron boobs. So, one notable sequence in the strip - and later, comic book after Cho tired of battling newspaper and syndicate editors - was Brandy’s no-holds-barred cat-fight with her sinister doppelganger from another dimension, Evil Brandy!

Let the battle begin!

You know, considering that the above sequence was penned by the guy who gave Ultron boobs (No, the Keeper will never get over that strange, strange sight), the above sequence was actually quite restrained. In fact, we …

Ummm … never mind.

At any rate, Cho still produces sporadic issues of Liberty Meadows when he isn’t adding parts of the female anatomy to murderous cyborgs. The Marvel work may be more lucrative, but the world of Brandy and Frank is where the artist truly shines.

Back to you, O Great Bahlactus!

Kristy Lee Cooked

What will the Internet do now that Kristy Lee Cook is off American Idol?

For the past month or so, contributors to Idol-related message boards and blogs burnt the bandwidth 24-7 to express their distaste for the would-be country starlet. She’s been called everything from a scheming neo-conservative opportunist to a blank blond Barbie who cruised by on looks alone.

Given our penchant for supporting underdogs, it’s no surprise your humble host found himself rooting for Ms. Cook.

While we were initially attracted to her tomboy persona - although, to be frank, the Keeper did get a little tired of hearing about Cook’s wonder horse - the singer ultimately earned our allegiance through the sheer effort she put into remaining on the show week after week.

Her voice and stage presence were adequate at best, but Cook was intelligent enough to pick songs that either played to her strengths or were tailor-made for the audience she hoped to capture. Unlike Michael Johns and Carly Smithson - technically superior singers who never quite settled on a single, defining style - Kristy Lee effectively marketed herself as a country singer in the Faith Hill/Martina McBride mode.

(Johns would probably still be on the show if he had abandoned the classic rock anthems and concentrated on blues-soul music a la Boz Scaggs and Paul Rodgers.)

With the proper coaching and material - hey, the Idol-related 19 management team turned Kellie Pickler into a legitimate country star - there’s no reason why Kristy Lee Cook can’t succeed in the recording industry. In fact, given the self-awareness she displayed the past several weeks on the show, it’d be foolish to bet against her.

So now that Cook is gone, who will be the next Idol to receive the fans’ scorn? Syesha Mercado’s clueless self-regard is consistently annoying, but the Keeper casts his vote for either Smithson or Brooke White. Carly’s near-manic desperation to succeed is getting more painful to watch by the week, and pointing fingers at Simon Cowell is no way to succeed in the long term.

Similarly, Brooke White is getting a bit too schoolmarmish for her own good. Her swift rebuke to Cowell after the judge dismissed Kristy Lee screamed “holier-than-thou,” especially since Cook exited the program with humor and class.

In the end though, it probably doesn’t matter who the fans will turn against.

With the exception of Mercado, White, Smithson and Jason Castro each have an equal shot at the third-spot as Idol nation marches toward the inevitable David (Archuleta) & David (Cook) finale.

As for your humble host, we’re looking forward to Neil Diamond week. If nobody chooses to sing “Solitary Man” or “America,” we’ll consider the entire season a tragic waste.

Kid Dropper

HEL-loooo Internet!

During our time off, your Friend in the Fortress picked up a copy of David Hajdu’s The Ten Cent Plague, a chronicle of what the author calls “The Great Comic-Book Scare” that nearly destroyed the industry and brought about the infamous Comics Code.

It’s pretty compelling stuff. At the time political and social forces converged against comics, the medium was enjoying unparalleled success in a variety of genres: humor, horror, crime, romance and even a super-hero or two. If the trend had continued unabated, perhaps comic-books would be as widely read and respected in America as in Japan or other countries.

Yet due to the greed of schlock publishers, political opportunists and a tragic willingness by “responsible” adults to censor anything that challenged the status quo, comic-books were instead banished to the margins of society - limping along in neutered form until Julius Schwartz, Gardner Fox, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and other now-legendary talents found a way to make super-heroes appeal to a smaller - but intensely devoted - fan base.

Hajdu - who also wrote Positively 4th Street, a fairly well-balanced, if unflattering, biography of Joan Baez, Richard & Mimi Farina and Bob Dylan a few years back - does a good job of delving into Golden Age comics industry and the ways it enraged society’s gatekeepers.

Though a good chunk of the book is devoted to EC Comics, there’s also a memorable section on Lev Gleason comics - the publisher who brought the world Daredevil Vs. Hitler and the controversial Crime Does Not Pay.

Hajdu focuses on Crime’s editor, Charles Biro, a true visionary and a megalomaniac who passionately believed in his comics and also took more credit for their creation than he was actually due. The author notes that Biro’s comics “unlike most comic books that dealt with outlawry of various sorts, Crime Does Not Pay focused almost solely on lawbreakers and their crimes, rather than crime fighters and law enforcement.”

Of course, this approach proved controversial almost from the get-go. Parents at the time, if they bothered to look at their kids comics, probably weren’t too pleased to see pages devoted to such notable ghouls as “The Singing Slayer.”

If an understandably horrified parent read further, he or she would see the featured criminal would meet an appropriately grisly end. The comic was called Crime Does NOT Pay, after all, and what kid doesn’t love a good gross-out denouement?

It’s interesting for this father to note that most of Biro’s stories - which were apparently ghost-written by a woman named Virginia Hubbell - are no more gruesome today than a typical volume of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps, a series of books that are readily available in school libraries.

Of course, these days parents are more concerned about gangsta rap and video games than comic books. Today’s world would undeniably horrify the morality police who patrolled the newsstands in the 1950s.

Yet the answer to such issues, in any area, lies in the home. Children are always going to be attracted to people, places and things perceived as “forbidden fruit.” The job of the parent is not to destroy such obstacles - since there will always be something out there we’d rather our children not see or experience - but to simply pay attention to our sons and daughters and be ready to provide guidance.

As for Biro’s comics, the editor had an uncanny knack for selling the most sensationalist premise through the guise of realism and facts. The stories possess a breakneck energy that, like many Golden Age comics, is as primal and stimulating as the Sex Pistol’s God Save The Queen.

Were they bad for kids? Well, considering that the lawbreakers usually met an appropriate end in the last panel (unlike our morally-gray modern comics, where increasingly sadistic super-humans are cast as “anti-heroes”), the Keeper believes most found the stories no more than titillating entertainment - food for cops-and robbers-fantasy, perhaps, but nothing to act upon.

But why not judge for yourself? Courtesy of the great Golden Age Comics Downloads site, here’s the lead story from Crime Does Not Pay #58, beautifully drawn by a young George Tuska.

Enjoy, but remember nothing good comes from breaking the law!