Put some clothes on: The complications of female superhero costumes

One of our own posted a link to Twitter to a page showing redesigns of popular female characters in comics (in particular, DC Comics characters) in outfits that are not the white one-piece peek-a-book of Power Girl or the familiar star spangled corset and shorts of the Wonder Woman costume.

I'll take a poke at the Power Girl costume because the original is one of the most discussed costumes in comics and, short of Vampira, the one most likely to raise questions and hackles.

example of redesign

and original formula

In comparison to Power Girl's traditional costume, he redesign certainly seems less aimed at appealing to the male gaze and creating a look that still honors the original.  It appears functional and...  well, I think this design is actually pretty bad, but we can talk about that later.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Superman: The Musical!

Holy cow.

I've known about It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman! for around 10-12 years, but I had never seen it in any form.  Originally produced as a campy Broadway spectacular  in 1966 (it debuted the same year as the Adam West TV show), the show ran for about four months before closing.  I think that, these days, the show has mostly been forgotten.

In 1975, because nobody was paying attention, ABC broadcast a version of the musical.  Reportedly the program aired a single time, fairly late at night and in a dead zone where networks were often trying to figure out how to fill the airwaves*.  To the best of my knowledge, there is no legally obtainable copy of the broadcast available.  For Superman fans, the musical is about as close to an intentionally obscure artifact as I can think of to that king of pop cultural ephemera, the Star Wars Holiday Special.  Superman fans have all seen clips or stills, but we haven't seen the actual full program.

Can you read my mind?

This week, I did obtain a copy.  We'll keep it a little shrouded in mystery, but my source knows who he is, and knows how awesome he or she is.  As the existence of this video may not be entirely on the up and up (and so offended am I that I have immediately burned the DVD so that NONE may find yourself tainted by the sheer audacity of it's illegality), I'm keeping the gifter's name out of it.

But, thanks, man.  That was SUPER of you!**

The video itself is a transfer from tape.  Tape from 1975.  So, it's got some rough edges and the sound is occasionally wobbly because: aging analog media.  It's not the drug-fueled nightmare that the Star Wars Holiday Special devolves into within minutes of the opening, and, frankly, the Star Wars Special had about 20 times the budget of this show.  It's also an oddball bit of nerd media, and would fit nicely on your shelf next to the shelved low-budget, very 90's Justice League pilot, the Legends of the Superheroes, the Captain America TV movies, etc... etc...   But the musical is pure hammy schmaltz, but intentionally so, and it's oddly charming, even if it's not much of a musical.

DC Comics Leadership - Still Finding it's Way 18 Months into DCNu

These days I'm only reading a few DC Comics, so it's a bit harder to see what's going on in the halls at the company.  Certainly looking at the release of the monthly solicits is an excellent indicator.

The Beat already did a nice breakdown of some things that really stand out.  Todd Allen points out:

• The $2.99 line seems to be getting crossed
• We may not be looking at 52 titles anymore

Batman: One More Time, With Feeling (by Scott Snyder)

This news came on the same day DC announced a storyline called "Batman: Year Zero" to fill in all those gaps you had (right?) about what happened after Batman: Year One.   The story shall be about The Bat-Man, who he is and how he came to be!  Snyder's promise that the series will tell us all the things we've never seen before, like Batman's first run in with a super-villain, is true if you're 20 and just got into comics, abut less true if you dropped all the Batman books but Morrison's because you realized that maybe, in his current comics form, the Bat-fellow is getting pretty repetitive (for first super-villain meetings, we recommend the superlative Batman: Snow by Dan Curtis, JH WIlliams III and the late, terrific Seth Fisher).

I don't know what's more surprising: that Snyder's modus operandi with Batman has been to largely keep digging up the bones of well-loved, well-worn storylines done by some of the name-iest names in comics, or that this seems to be a real draw for the Bat-audience.  I'm old, so I was good with Batman: Year One, A Death in the Family, and every story that wanted to goof on Thomas and Martha Wayne from Hush to Death and the Maidens and was thinking maybe we were ready to move on.  But, short of another gang-war or serial killer story, it seems that all DC has to offer re: Batman these days is another whack at the same worn out Batman origin stuff and tilling about in the same soil of Batman's family history and early years.

Your Questions Answered: What if I Had Creative Control of Superman?

Jake asks:

Since this is Superman heavy blog, if you were the publisher or editor in chief over at DC, or even just a writer on a Superman title, what would you do, creatively, with Superman? Assuming you could flush the whole reboot, what would you do (or not do) with the character? Just focus on good, solid storytelling? Make Superman more socially/politically conscious? Introduce him to a wider audience, i.e. kids, women, etc.?

Believe it or not, this isn't something I think about all that much, and maybe that's wrong-headed, but I'm never comfortable with reviews of something that start with "what they should have done was..." or "what they should really do".  It seems like an endgame with little satisfaction.

Usually the question I find myself asking is: why didn't that work?

But rather than dodge the question, let me give it a whirl.

1. Re-Establish a Supporting Cast of Humans

If you've been picking up Superman comics for a while, or, in fact, most superhero comics of the last decade, one of the primary problems I detect is that there is no status quo.  There's no "home base" for the characters to point to and have in mind as they go about their adventures.  Spider-Man lost his with the dissolution of the Mary Jane marriage, Batman is almost never seen as billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne with his youthful ward, and the only writer who seemed to want to put Clark Kent in the Daily Planet for more than two panels every six issues was Geoff Johns, who left the book before his creative imprint could really take hold.

New Series coming: Superman Unchained! (nice title, DC...)

Sigh.

I wonder if DC even realizes that they're also publishing a comic of Django Unchained at the moment.  And that comic's title has a meaning to it that's a lot less steeped in DC's insecurities about their flagship character.

This, from an article at Newsarama:

"We're all fans and we've all known this character for a long time," Jim Lee tells USA Today. "You have to fight your natural tendency to do what you know or what you've always thought the character to be.

"We've been pushing the creators to not be beholden to the past conceits and understandings of Superman. So we will speak to a new generation of readers."

You can more or less read that as "we're really uncomfortable with Superman as a character who isn't as straightforward as Batman, and as guys who grew up thinking Batman rules and Superman drools, we're not sure what a Superman comic looks like, and we really aren't going to do any research to find out.  But we have a corporate imperative to make Superman work in the comics, so we're doing what everyone else has said they're doing since Mike Carlin left the editor's post."

I'm not sure the comic will be bad, necessarily, but the one drumbeat DC has had around Superman for at least 13 years has been "we think we know Superman, but we're going to try something new for a new group of readers".

At this point, the only thing left new to try is to actually go back to whatever that model was that they think Superman has been living by until the new writer (who has never read Superman before) took the paycheck. Only, the character hasn't had an opportunity for 13 years of comics to even have a status quo.  He's been rebooted five times in the past 8 years or so, and I think only writer Geoff Johns managed to get Clark Kent in a Daily Planet newsroom with Perry in more than one issue of his run.

Frankly, I'm tired of DC's shame of their own very lucrative bit of IP.  Nobody buying those t-shirts or stickers for their cars (all of which bring in way, way more than this comic ever will) are looking for a new, edgy Superman.  Dumping 75 years of the character doesn't automatically equate to speaking to ANYONE.  In fact, I'd argue that a lot of people would like to pick up a Superman comic and see what they're expecting as per Superman's status quo, not whatever the writer of the week and Jim Lee (no master storyteller, he) have as a way of reimagining the character.

DC, you are the disappointing sibling who we all think has the tools to get his life together, but who keeps somehow making bad decisions that he can only see as strokes of bad luck.  We're getting tired of bailing you out so you can keep the electricity on in the apartment you can't afford.

Your Questions Answered: Original Comic Art Page

On February 27th, we challenged readers to send in any question they liked and promised to respond to all queries. We're giving it a go.

Stuart asked via Twitter, so before we lose the tweet...

Stuart asks:   If you could get any one original comic art page signed, which would it be and why?

Wow.  That's a really, really tough question.

There's so much to consider.  What characters?  Which artists were involved?  The design of the page itself. What's the context of the page, and who wrote it?  Was the story memorable?

For perfection on ALL of these counts, I guess I'd say: Any single page from any issue of Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen.  But that's a shortcut of an answer.

So what would I want?

I think I'd want superhero art, for the most part.  I'd make an exception for Carl Barks or Don Rosa work, and would love to have stuff by either of them.  Nothing in particular comes to mind as per specific pages, though.  The same with Curt Swan, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, George Perez, and many more.  They're all amazing artists, but this is a singular page we're talking here, a single page from a comic that so stuck with us...

There's a few ways to answer this.

Monthly trip to the comic shop and Editorializing Inside the Story in Action Comics

These days I now only visit the comic shop once per month.  My LCS, Austin Books and Comics, doesn't have a pull list, it has a system I actually greatly prefer to other shops at which I was a regular customer.  ABC sends out a webform each Monday evening with that Wednesday's releases.  You fill out the webform, and ABC holds the things you want for that week.  They don't have a pull list you have to set up and try to maintain through the front desk, something I never felt worked terribly well, and they over-order on all titles so it's a very rare instance when I realize I missed something and now I can't find it on the shelf.  Most shops order exactly what people pre-requested, and then maybe a couple of copies for the rack.  How the industry thinks having just a few copies for someone to discover is beyond me.

And, of course, shops that were supposed to order me things routinely did not do so, or if they under ordered, somehow it seemed I was always the one who got shafted.  

This evening I made my monthly run to ABC, and walked out with a fairly serious stack of books.  I picked up: 

• the 3rd Rucka Punisher trade
• the first volume of Ennis's Fury: My War Gone By
• Action Comics #17
• Red Team #1
• Shadow: Year One #1
• Masks #3
• Stumptown #5
• Happy #4
• Fearless Defenders #1
• Joe Kubert Present#4
• Batman, Incorporated #7
• The Answer #1
• Superman Family Adventures #9 
• and the latest issue of Saga 

It's a healthy stack, to be sure.  It's also a greatly decreased stack from my monthly haul two years ago.  You can see I wanted to try some things, you can see I have some loyalties to folks like Rucka and Kubert and Ennis in there, and my interest in some of the pulp stuff Dynamite is doing.  

I'm an Alex Ross fan, and can't understand you people who don't care for his work.  And I love his voers for The Shadow, up to and including this latest.  

That, people, is how you draw Margo Lane

Happy Valentine's Day to Superman and Lois Lane

Well, it's Valentine's Day, and we're here to talk about the one thing we're an expert on:  ROMANCE.

Just think of The League as your shifty bellhop of love

Aside from my folks, I honestly think my earliest ideas about romance probably came from movies and cartoons, and, later, comics.  I mean, I remember watching Hart to Hart and thinking those two had a pretty ideal relationship, but I don't recall much from TV for adults that informed my ideas about how to actually pursue the ladies or what blossoming romance might look like.

The Leia/ Han relationship of Empire attempted to teach me a lot of things.

1.  Sometimes a bit of verbal combativeness is flirting
2.  Carrie Fischer looks great in a snowsuit
3.  You can find romance when stranded inside a giant spaceworm
4.  When you're ready to make your move, turn off the droids
5.  When it looks like all is lost and it's time to express how you really feel about each other, when she confesses in front of a bunch of strangers, that she loves you, always say "I know".  That shit is COOL.

As much as I appreciated Kirk using the Enterprise as his personal chick-magnet, he never really had an ongoing romance for more than episode or two, and maybe there's something to be learned from that.  Space Bros before Space Ladies.

I was always a little sad that Marion Ravenwood only appeared in one Indiana Jones movie, that is until recently.  She was the only leading lady who seemed like a good match (clearly, Willie Scott was not up to the task).

But, going back further, I do think the Superman movies did a good job of setting up the romance for a strange being from another world and a career gal in the big city.  Aside from Han and Leia, I think the pair I remember pulling for the most in movies from back in the day was Lois and Superman.  Despite all his, frankly, totally awesome powers, it seemed Clark Kent was no better around women than any of us, and could be jut as quickly and totally swept off his feet by a woman who isn't going to notice him until he drops a yacht in front of the police station.

The Orson Scott Card Conundrum - Social Ideals and The Purchase of a Superman Comic

All right, here we go.

I don't really want to write this post, but it's about Superman, it's in the news, etc..

Famed Sci-Fi writer Orson Scott Card has some social views that are well known within the comics and sci-fi "communities".  Card has written some highly successful work such as the famed Ender's Game (which I haven't read), and started working in comics a bit with Ultimate Iron Man several years ago now (also - haven't read).

Specifically, Card takes issue with homosexuality and gay marriage.  He sits on the board of an organization that is more or less dedicated to opposing gay marriage in the US, the National Organization for Marriage.

Last week, when the new Adventures of Superman was announced, Card was listed among the writers, and (if you're keeping score), specifically, he was one of the creators associated with the project that made me blink a bit while reviewing the roster of talent.

Full disclosure:  I am fully in support of marriage rights for the LGBT community and believe that this is the civil rights issue of our generation.  Fundamentally, I believe in extending the same legal privileges to all consenting adults in a free society, and am against legal loopholes or half-measures that would place legal or social restrictions on someone based upon race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.  </ lefty boilerplate>

The questions then arise:

New Adventures of Superman Series: Did DC win back the rights to Superman's Red Underpants?

I sort of don't know what to make of the (I'm calling it unsubstantiated) news that DC is launching a new web comic called The Adventures of Superman that will eventually be collected.  Somehow.  Whatever.

The things I care about are as follows:

1.  There's a lot here to suggest that most of the changes made to Superman in the New 52 were due to the Siegel/ Shuster heir lawsuit.  Things were looking pretty bad for DC for a while, which would have meant anything from Action Comics #1 that was ownable would now be the property of the creators.  That included red trunks on Superman and a girl reporter as a love interest.*

A short while ago, DC seems to have won the lawsuit (the heirs should still be receiving royalties, which is, I suppose, something...), which would mean DC can continue to exploit their trademark.  I mean, make great Superman comics in the popular tradition.

Trailer for Animated feature - Superman: Unbound

A loose adaptation of the final Brainiac story from the pre-boot DCU.

Should be action packed.

No Post Thursday - Superheroes on TV

I watched the first 2/3rds of What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? for the first time since college, and its even better than I remember.  Saving the rest for tomorrow, but, man, everyone in that movie is so good.

Anyway, we'll talk about that movie later.

And, we really need to find me a copy of Straight Jacket.

Also watched a PBS show, Pioneers of Television, that I think Randy originally sent me the link for.  Anyway, the topics was superheroes, and featured Batman, The Hulk, The Adventures of Superman, The Greatest American Hero and (sigh) Wonder Woman.


You can watch the whole thing on the PBS site, so go nuts.

Watch Superheroes on PBS. See more from Pioneers of Television.

Here, Lynda Carter has had enough of your nonsense:

Here's, like, 9.5 minutes of Diana Prince turning into Wonder Woman.  It's kind of weird.




 And, as a reminder, The Adventures of Superman is a terrific TV show.

Super Watch: Dark Knight Returns, Part 2

There isn't much to say about the plotting of this second installment of the direct-to-video adaptation of Dark Knight Returns that a generation of comics fans grew up with via the comics page.  The dialog, often the framing, the depiction of characters...  It's likely the closest adaptation I think you'll ever run into that doesn't fall into whatever trap Peter Jackson fell into with his The Hobbit Part 1 that felt like a checklist of scenes with no real narrative push or (dare I say it) heart in its desire to lovingly recreate each beat and scene.  Nor is it the Zack Snyder slavish recreation that misses everything about why Watchmen worked, and figures that showing the same stuff we saw on the panel is good enough, even if all the directorial decisions - like casting, emotional beats, musical selection and cinematography - were completely misunderstood.

In this second installment, as an audience we've had the opportunity to get used to Peter Weller as Batman (and he's actually pretty great), and we get Michael Emerson as a giddy, cerebral Joker (God bless you, Andrea Romano).  And, somewhat like the 3rd chapter in the Dark Knight trilogy from Nolan, Batman actually takes a back seat to some of what else is happening in the story.  World War III is seething to break out, Superman's relationship with the government is filled in, and against that backdrop, Batman is still running around concerned with cleaning up the streets of Gotham.  You can almost understand how it got ignored for all those years until he retired.

I recently saw a quote from comics creator Faith Erin Hicks noting how dated Dark Knight Returns felt on a re-read.  She's not entirely wrong, but I sort of also sort of rolled my eyes.  It's a work of its time with undercurrents that remain relevant and resonant.

Comics weren't really intended to have a shelf-life when the book hit the direct market, they were commenting on the moment, and Watchmen is no less a piece of the Cold War than DKR.  And we were so ready to forget about the cloud of nuclear annihilation when Gorbachev instituted Glasnost, I'm not surprised that a generation had grown up without the context, and doesn't quite get what it felt like to do duck and cover drills until everyone admits that it's kind of pointless when you're in about 3rd grade.  Nor has the era of street crime that pervaded the big cities been seen in Gen Y's lifetime (although Chicago spent 2012 doing it's damndest to recreate the era that made "Bloods" and "Crips" household names).

We continue to explore the strange marriage of Jimmy Olsen and Supergirl

Before reading this post, read last night's post.

So, I was all put out that I didn't know where to get Part 2 of the Supergirl marries Jimmy Olsen story, and Signal Corpsman Stuart of Kansas informed me the reason it sounded familiar was because it was in Jimmy Olsen 57, which I'd previously read.  Normally, that issue would be in a long box and hard to get to, but...

Viola!

I had recently bought a reader copy that hadn't made it into the longboxes.

So, what DOES happen in Part 2?

A whole lot more nonsense.

I like Jimmy's odd sense of vanity that runs through the Superman comics.  I envy him his cocksure certainty, but I guess when as many alien princesses have thrown themselves at you as they have at Jimmy, after a while, you have to start believing your own press.

By the way, something went wrong with how I was taking pictures, but I'm running with the weird effect on the pictures in the second half, so just bear with me.  I can't be bothered to take more pictures.

One thing I should make clear is that I didn't really ping to the fact that, while reading the comic last time, this is an "imaginary story", an out of continuity story that explores a "what if?" scenario in the world of Superman.  They're always fun, and somehow up the already batshit-crazy factor in Superman comics by a factor of 1000%.

Beg my pardon.

I'm Pretty Sure This Comic Was Implying Jimmy Olsen Made it With Supergirl

Somehow I had forgotten about this particular Silver Age tale, but I had read it before. I was going through some back issues I need to read and then file, and came across this story, that I'd either read in a collection of somewhere else, but here is the reprinting of a prior Supergirl/ Jimmy Olsen tale in Action Comics 351.

Here's our set-up. Jimmy and Supergirl are getting MARRIED. Not an uncommon starter to a Silver Age Superman story.

No, this is not scanned.  Yes, I snapped these pics with my iPhone.  You get what you pay for at The Signal Watch.

This tale unfolds during that weird period of actual plot development that occurred when Supergirl arrived on Earth.  During this story she's still living in the Midvale Orphanage where Superman was keeping her a secret from the world so she could act as his "secret weapon".

Yes, Superman stuck his poor cousin in an orphanage after she arrived on Earth after watching her parents slowly die from kryptonite poisoning.  And then asked her NOT to get adopted.  True Super Dickery.

In case Superman's inner-monologue above did not tip you off, for reasons that are really too inconsequential to go into, Jimmy is visiting the Midvale Orphanage.  Lest anyone not know and marvel at the fact he knows Superman, he presents the orphans with his Superman collectibles, including a rare, radioactive space rock which may or may not be lethal to humans.

Star Trek Wars, Jenny Olsen, and so much I missed while I was on hiatus

A lot happened while I was out.  Presidential Inaugurations.  The Sixth Gun got optioned for a TV show.  I watched a handful of pretty good movies programmed by Eddie Muller on TCM.

Anyway, while I was out I guess people online put together than Jimmy Olsen will not be Jimmy Olsen, but Jenny Olsen in the movie, Man of Steel.  I am sure five years ago that would have launched a 3000 word column from me on why it would be better if WB would respect the history and we'd all be snarky and sneer knowingly at the studio people for making some bad decisions.  But...

Yeah, I guess I don't really have the energy to get worked up about it anymore.  The studio is going to do what the studio is going to do, and it's not like they won't get my ticket on opening day.  Or that the prior five Superman movies really did anything with Jimmy as a character.  In fact, he got more to do in Supergirl than in pretty much any other film.

Not without precedent

I will always like the Silver and Bronze Age Superman comics, I think Jack Larson was great, but I think I'm kind of past thinking Superman is any one, particular thing.  I have my opinions of what works and what doesn't, but the past decade around Superman has really been about DC and WB wrestlimg with what they think Superman is or can be.

DC Comics Cancels "Superman Family Adventures" and we ponder how 30 years of having books you like cancelled might affect your enthusiasm

Man.

Word came down Monday that DC is cancelling Superman Family Adventures with issue 12 in April, just short of the release of Man of Steel to movie theaters.

On a month to month basis, the series - which was aimed at a truly all-ages audience - was some of the best work at DC in the wake of The New 52 and one of the few monthly DC books (and only Superman book) I would have put in the hands of adults or kids alike to get them interested in Superman.  It also was the only book that understood the basic dynamics of Superman, The Daily Planet, Lois, his extended family and the recurring villains of the Super-books.

Cartoony and goofy, yes.  But so were the first fifty years of Superman comics.

I know sales weren't particularly good, but I also don't know what anyone at DC expects years after comics abandoned trying to be available where kids can find and therefore WANT a comic.  The 18-25 year olds who are going to be buying fifteen iterations on Wolverine and Batman are going to want to even think about how Superman Family Adventures falls in with their hobby.

This is the second time DC Entertainment has ended a brilliant product in recent years for reasons I'm guessing boil down to the fact that the product wasn't in line with the 18-25 year old extreme market.  Batman: Brave and the Bold, an absolutely terrific love letter to the DCU and a great intro to all things DC, ended just around the time The new 52 debuted.  We were told we'd get a gritty Batman cartoon at some point with Alfred carrying guns and shooting at people (so, so many things wrong there).

Mostly, there's just been a complete lack of marketing for the book.  DC put it out there with Free Comic Book Day material, but I'm still not sure how FCBD is translating to awareness and sales for new books for anyone.

Siegel/ Superman Case Seems to Wrap It Up (For Now)

According to the articles I read Thursday, Warner Bros. is back to owning/ maintaining/ safeguarding with an army of lawyers - the rights to Superman, more or less as we've always known the character.  A judge somewhere far, far up the court system food chain (but not the Supreme Court) invalidated a 2008 decision to give the Siegel family many rights - essentially anything that had appeared in Action Comics #1 - and reverted the rights to Superman based upon a 2001 agreement that was more or less a "here's a pile of cash as a royalty" deal.

I won't get into the legal maneuvering too much, but it is a sordid, weird tale with attorneys with shady motivations, break-in's at law offices and all sorts of nonsense.  As this whole process has gone on and on, nobody in this has come out a hero, and it seems like the Siegels will get a bundle of money, but not the rights to Superman.*

I have stated before that the Superman comics have been a bit of a disaster in The New 52 because so much of the character was going to be affected if WB lost the case.  They had some part of Superman, just as the Siegels would have a very raw version of Superman.  They had an alien character with exciting powers and the highly licensable Superman shield.  But what else?

By virtue of owning Action Comics #1, the Siegels might have owned things like:

Pre "Man of Steel" Superman-a-thon?

I am planning some sort of epic re-watching of Superman media in the lead up to this summer's release of Man of Steel.

I have several issues.

unlike Superman, I do not go to the moon to ponder.  I bore you guys.

1.  What do I watch?

I own:

• The Fleischer cartoons
• The original serials starring Kirk Alyn
• The entire George Reeves series (6 seasons)
• the four cycle movie series with Chris Reeve, including the Superman 2 Director's Cut and Superman Returns
• Supergirl - yes, it's in continuity and it counts
• the animated series from the 1960's
• the animated series from the 1980's
• Season 1 of Superboy
• Season 1 of Lois and Clark
• Superman the Animated Series, Justice League
• a handful of DC/ WB Animation Studios direct-to-video movies like Superman Vs. The Elite

The 2012 Not-a-List Rundown

author's note:  2012 is a year I have been looking to put behind me for quite a while for any number of reasons.  Obviously the events in my personal life marked a very sad end to the year for us at our house.  Perhaps we should declare 2012 Annus Horribilis and move on.

With recent events weighing so heavily on me right now (and with this post started a long, long time ago), I'm going to stick to pop culture and the original, intended tone of the post - and this blog - and take a look back instead at...  yeah, I guess comics and whatnot.

here we go.

The 2012 Not-a-List Rundown

My Totem for Everything About my Pop Culture Hobbies in 2012

My relationship fundamentally changed with my hobbies and past-times, and superhero comics have begun to dip below the horizon to the same place Star Wars went circa 2002.  Because of travelling and the fact I was sick a lot this year, I also didn't really make it out to the movies very often.