The Hurting's Holiday Gift Guide, Part Two

(Not merely an excuse for me to put up quick links for you to buy
stuff on Amazon through my site, although that never hurts.)



The Essential Moon Knight Vol. 1

I've got easily a dozen of these huge Marvel Essential / DC Showcase Presents volume bumming around my bookcase, all of them in various unfinished states. I don't think I'm alone here, either - unless I miss my guess it's pretty common for these behemoths to tax the stamina of all but the bravest souls. I mean, sure, that giant compendium of "classic" Luke Cage stories may seem irresistible, until you actually get it home and try to read the damn thing. Then your mind tends to wander.

These "classic" Moon Knight stories aren't even close to being Marvel's finest hour -- in fact, I daresay these would barely make the list even if it were 500 books long. In a word, these books are pretty much the definition of schlock. And yet . . . when I sat down to read, I moved through the book with an alacrity that bordered on the brisk. Fact is, while I can find very little of actual "value" in these stories, simply the fact that they are eminently readable and fiercely enjoyable on the primal level of genre entertainment makes them memorable.

The shorthand criticism of Moon Knight has always been that he's Marvel's Batman, and a poor-man's Batman at that. Reading this book, I came to the conclusion that such a criticism is more or less accurate, but there' is a crucial difference. There have been a lot of Batman-wannabes in the history of comics, almost as many ersatz Caped Crusaders as phony Man of Steels. (Oddly enough, however, DC themselves seem to have cornered the market on boring-ass fake Batmen in the last few decades.) Where Moon Knight distinguishes himself is in the sheer density of the pastiche: every single successful element from Batman's career, which itself encompasses almost every successful niche of popular genre entertainment for the last seventy years, can be found somewhere in the person of Moon Knight. What's more, they can all be found pretty much simultaneously.

You like straight-ahead superheroics? Dark tortured urban vigilantes? Kung-fu chopsockey? Blaxploitaiton? Tough-guy mercenary gun porn? Urban paranoia thrillers a la Death Wish and Taxi Driver? The soft-core pseudo-mystical horror of the Hammer studios? Millionaire playboys? Detective fiction? Glamorous swashbuckling? Pseudo-science-fiction gadgetry and deus ex machina technology? It's all here, all at the same time. Even Batman knows better than to mix tonality like this - sure, you've got gritty urban crime Batman, shirtless Neal Adams swashbuckler Batman, high-concept sci-fi superhero Batman, but usually not in the same story. Here, you get everything, all at once. Is it any wonder Moon Knight is a headcase? It works about as often as it doesn't, but even the worst overreaches still move fast enough to redeem themselves.

You just gotta admire the chutzpah on display here. Even back in the late '70s when these things first hit the stands they stood out for their reckless abandon. For a while Moon Knight was a backup feature in the Hulk's black & white magazine, itself infamous for its less-than-restrained approach to tackling hot-button social-issues such as sexual assault at the YMCA. There is absolutely nothing at all redeeming about these stories, except for the fact that they nonetheless exert a powerful compulsion on the reader. If Marvel still made mainstream adventure comics with the kind of near-autistic joi de vrie found here, well, the world would be a better place, I'll say that much. It's a lost art.

The Hurting's Holiday Gift Guide, Part One

(Not merely an excuse for me to put up quick links for you to buy
stuff on Amazon through my site, although that never hurts.)



Mad Archives - Volume 2

I've been waiting for this book literally for five years -- since the first volume of the Mad Archives shipped, way back in 2002. That was hardly the first time I'd bought the material; in some cases it was actually the third or fourth time. The most recent at the time was, as I recall, a series of color newsstand super-specials put out in the mid-90s that reprinted the entirety of the original comic-sized Mad run -- good reading copies, but printed on the same shitty paper as every other issue of Mad Magazine until whenever they went glossy and lost their soul. If ever there was a book ideal for DC's occasionally fatuous Archives format, it's these classic Mads: some of the best, most important comics of all time, in a durable high-quality volume perfect for the reference library of any aficionado.

And then a funny thing happened: they stopped. I think the consensus at the time was that, basically, there were already too many copies of these stories circulating to interest anyone in yet another reprint, even if it promised to be as close to "definitive" as possible. The first volume has sat on my shelf all these years, lonely and cold, waiting for a companion, and finally, finally we see volume two. Given the rather ominous rumors about we've heard these past few months about the Archive program's dubious future, it is possible there may never be a volume three, at least in the series' present incarnation. (I will say that if any series ever cried out for the Absolute treatment, it's the Kurtzman Mads. Although they have yet to do an Absolute volume for anything earlier than the late 80s, it's practically tailor-made for the format -- extra large, just enough issues to fit snugly in one of those monstrous slipcases, easily more than enough reference material to compile some tasty extras, and major-league appeal to the casual non-comics-reading gift-book buyer. But I digress.) Regardless of whether or not we'll ever see another volume, I still intend to buy this volume, and I suggest you do the same. These are some of the most important comics ever made. They're certainly EC's most lasting contribution to the medium and to popular culture at large. The horror, sci-fi and war books may have made a splash and still command a loyal following, but their era-specific transgressive appeal dims with every passing year. Mad is still as necessary as it ever was.

It doesn't even matter that half these issues are devoted to spoofs of pop-culture ephemera which predates 75% of the current population of the United States. I also won't argue with the assessment that the later half of Kurtzman's Mad was better than the earlier issues, which depended far more on straight parody. (Unless I'm mistaken, this volume should include everything up to "Starchie", including the famous Basil Wolverton ugly girl cover.) Even given these facts, the first 23 issues of Mad remain essentially untouchable, and any caveats are strictly relative within that context.

---

New Young Pony Club - Fantastic Playroom

I hate compiling top ten lists, but I do so anyway in my capacity as a Popmatters writer. (Notice I never do any top ten comics lists? Because I never buy any comics anymore, because I'm poor.) It's usually an odious task involving all sorts of Solomon-like deliberations that don't really matter in any conceivable way whatsoever, but enough people who work for the site take it seriously that I try to do so as well. This year, however, before I even sat down to go over the possibilities for my list, I already knew what number one was going to be. What it had to be. There's no other album I've listened to so much this year, and I haven't been this excited about a new group since . . . well, it's been years. Maybe Bloc Party, but I don't even remember getting as excited about Silent Alarm back in 2005 as I did for Fantastic Playroom. You can read my review here. Anyway: ignore the hype or backlash or whatever you may have heard -- if you like good dance-inflected rock music with a taste of early Talking Heads thrown in for good measure, this is an album you need to own.





(I love how this video looks totally cheap, like the kind of videos you'd see on MTV back in the early 80s when music videos were filmed out of petty cash.)



(I'm glad they made more videos so I wouldn't have to post the clip for "Ice Cream" again. As much as I love NYPC, it's my least favorite track of theirs, probably the weakest on Fantastic Playroom. But if you haven't seen it, you can go here.)

To All My Homies in Hollywood

So, you've got this strike thing going. I'll bet you're pretty desperate for some scripts with which to make movies, right? Well, I've got a few doozies for you, and I'd be perfectly willing to scab for cheap.

"The Good Old Days" (tentative title)

Horror movie with a senior citizen serial killer. By day he pretends to be an Alzheimers-addled septuagenarian, but by night he prowls the city for fresh victims.

"Fast and the Furious" sequel

This once-solid franchise has fallen on hard times. The new installment introduces us to Ray, the hot-shot king of the late-night urban racing world. One night everything changes forever, however, as a race goes terribly wrong, resulting in a highway crash at 110 miles an hour. The other driver dies instantly, but Ray survives as a paraplegic. He is found guilty of manslaughter and sent to prison, where by day he endures grueling rehabilitative physical therapy and by night he is tormented by endless, gnawing guilt. Will he find the will to live in the harsh environment of a maximum security federal penitentiary?

"Gacy"

In the vein of "Patch Adams" and "Ray" - a John Wayne Gacy biopic focusing not on his exploits as a serial killer but on his overlooked clown career. A natural fit for "America's Funnyman", Robin Williams.

NERDAPOCALYPSE

OK, apparently the "What Is Archie Reacting To?" meme did not conquer the blogosphere. Which just proves that you all suck, except for anyone who has given me money or bought items through my Amazon links. You are all wonderful people, thank you very much.

But now, the time has come, when we must put aside childish things and walk amongst the fields as Men. And as Men we must pit out useless comics trivia against one another in mortal combat.

1) When did Peter Parker lose his virginity? I suspect most people will say "Gwen Stacy" (anyone who says "on his wedding night" gets a boobie prize), but anyone who can make a legitimate case for Mary Jane or Betty Brant gets extra points. ("Face it Tiger, you just hit the Jackpot, because I put out!")

2) Can Superman tap into the "Speed Force"? If not, why not? Show your work.

3) In the mid-80s the idea was floated that Ben's inability to change into human form from the Thing was mostly psychosomatic, stemming from his low self-esteem and belief that Alicia would cease to love him if he were normal. Has this ever been mentioned in the years since?

4) True or False: Superman should be able to lift Thor's hammer. Show your work.

5) At the end of the second Kree / Skrull war in Steve Englehart's Silver Surfer, the Kree Empire was ruled by a bumbling space pirate named Clumsy Foulup. This short-lived status-quo came to an end with Silver Surfer #53, when a Kree junta led by Ael-Dann and Dar-Benn took advantage of the confusion caused by Thanos wiping out half the universe with the Infinity Gauntlet to kill Foulup with a SIlver Surfer robot. From that point on and until the Kree defeat in the Kree / Shi'ar war, Ael-Dann and Dar-Benn ruled the empire. However, as the events of their coup took place during the Infinity Gauntlet crisis, all events must have been erased when Adam Warlock used to Gauntlet to reset time to before Thanos killed half the universe. And yet, it's never been mentioned how, in the absence of that turmoil, Ael-Dann and Dar-Benn replaced Clumsy Foulup in the first place. This has been bugging me for fifteen years. Come on, people.

WHAT IS ARCHIE REACTING TO?

U-Decide!