A Century of Jack Kirby

You're going to see the names Jack Kirby and Jacob Kurtzberg a lot today.  Jack Kirby is the pen-name of the greatest comic artist and creator to grace this orb we call planet Earth.

Here, on the centennial of his birth (August 28th, 1917), it's possible to suggest that Jack Kirby may be one of the most important artistic and literary figures of the past 100 years.  The recognition came late, decades after his passing, and, still, his name is hardly a household word.  But the creations he unleashed upon popular culture from the 1940's to the 1990's would either be taken up directly by the public (at long last), becoming part of the parlance, or influence generations who could never produce that same spark of imagination, but built either directly or indirectly upon what he had done before.

There are Kirby bio sketches out there a-plenty (but no definitive monograph that I'm aware of), a magazine dedicated to the study and fan-splosion around his work, and Mark Evanier - who apprenticed under him - has become the living memory of his professional life while his grandchildren have taken up the cause of preserving the memory of the man.  Now there's a virtual museum (which deserves a physical location), and a charity it's worth considering giving to sometime.  And a slew of collections and books celebrating Kirby's influence and work.

Kirby was not first in when comics became a way for kids from the rougher neighborhoods of New York picked up a pencil or ink brush to start bringing in bread, but he was there really early.  He was a workman who put everything he had into the work, comic by comic, year by year, becoming better and better.  As they tell you in art-school, master the rules before you start breaking them - and that's what he did, finding his own unique style, his own way of creating action and drama, and eventually shattering what it meant to create a comics page.

Taking from mythology, from science-fiction, from films, from his colleagues and the bottomless well within, Kirby created whole universes, pockets within those universes, and held the lens to each character, bringing the internal life of gods, men and monsters to life.

My State is in a State of Disaster - Hurricane Harvey

Houston, from KHOU's website

I know the weather is probably lovely wherever you are.  Here in Texas, we're getting devastated by Hurricane Harvey.

I've lived in Texas most of my life, and Austin for most of that.  Every time a hurricane has made its way toward the coast, I genuinely worry for our coastal cities but roll my eyes at the dire warnings for Austin.  We're a good 3.5 - 4 hours to Galveston Island or Corpus Christi, driving wise.  A Straight line to the coast is still something like 150 miles away as the crow flies.

As news channels tried to get the story localized, I've filled bathtubs and whatnot in the past, and - of course - nothing happened.  So I wasn't expecting much out of Harvey.

But, look...  that is not what happened.  Hurricane Harvey is set to drop record levels of water and do record levels of damage to the Texas Coast and Houston.

For those of you from out-of-state, Houston is built in a mix of forested swamp land and marsh/ bayous on the very flat Texas coastal plain.  Arguably, it's not the best place for human habitation, but there's some history there for why the city exists, and a lot of it has to do with the utter destruction of Galveston, a prime shipping port in the 19th Century, and Houston picking up the baton in the 20th Century.  Galveston was leveled by, you guessed it, a nightmarish hurricane (the death toll was over 6000), and never recovered.

The storm changed to a Category 4 Hurricane just before landfall on Friday.  Since that time, the hurricane has parked itself on the coast, reducing in speed but not energy, harvesting moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and dumping it as far inland as where I live.  It's been raining since right after midnight early Saturday morning.  And not just a drizzle.  It's been pouring.

Rockport, Texas - a coastal town where a lot of Texans take their holiday - has been ravaged, Corpus has been heavily hit, and Houston is dealing with wind, rain and now massive flooding.

Water coming into studio at #KHOU11... We are moving upstairs. pic.twitter.com/MMEljNatw7

— Doug Delony (@DougDelonyKHOU) August 27, 2017

Between graduating from high school north of Houston (Go, Klein Oak HS Panthers!), a career that involved me with universities across Texas and general intra-state migration, I've got pals scattered across this state, and a good number of people in Houston and in outlying areas.  And friends' parents.  Heck, our own RHPT has a lot of people in Houston.

This is a full blown natural disaster, and if I am cheered, it's that - so far - the death count is very low.  If I am concerned, it's that so many cities, towns and suburbs are being damaged and destroyed, and right now those people I care about are huddled and riding this thing out.  You can read up on what's happening all over the web, but this will all get worse before it gets better, and could go through Thursday.

Here in Austin, I'm hiding out on my sofa, watching The Weather Channel and listening to the rain and wind bang around outside my own house.  I keep checking the ceilings to see if we've got any leaks.  So far, so good.  The dogs are bored and ready to get outside (that isn't happening).  I'm beginning to anticipate we won't have work tomorrow as UT tries not to bring anyone in during inclement weather events as they employ thousands and have 50,000 students who would descend upon the city.  So, we'll see.

So far, we've had several between 7.5 and 8.25 inches of rain in 36 hours or so.  Austin is technically kind of desert-y, so, that's a lot.  Our creeks will begin flooding here shortly, but it's not like it can be when we see flash flooding during spring downpours that can't be absorbed by the ground and cause a tremendous amount of damage (that's usually just a few inches, but in, like, an hour).

Anyway, keep the Texas Coast in your thoughts.  Give to Red Cross.  Don't spend time thinking about how Houston somehow brought this on themselves.  A lot of people are going to need a lot of help once the clouds break.

Happy 99th Birthday to Katherine Johnson, NASA's "Human Calculator"

Saturday the 26th of August marks the 99th birthday of Katherine Johnson, "The Human Calculator" who was key to the early success of NASA.

I'd spend time telling you about Johnson, but suffice it to say she overcame the gender and racial discrimination of her time to become a key player in America's space race.  A physicist and mathematician, her natural ability to rapidly and accurately calculate complex equations necessary for figuring trajectories, etc... in the days when we were still doing this by hand instead of super-computer, made her an invaluable asset.

It would be only in recent years that her contributions, and those of other calculators, were made part of the bigger story of NASA.  But today, she has a really terrific movie roughly telling the story of her role in the Apollo missions in Hidden Figures starring the terrific Taraji P. Henson as Mr. Johnson.  There's building named after her at NASA.  And this happened:

So if you still don't know who she is, get thee to Wikipedia.  And take two hours to watch Hidden Figures.  It's a good movie.

Happy B-Day to The Admiral

this was during the Holidays, 2016.  Raylan is considerably bigger and chattier now.

These days The Admiral has a more important title, that of "Papa" (which, to my ear, always sounds more like "Pop-Pop" when Raylan says it).  Raylan's my nephew, so I'm not around all that often for their interactions the way Jason is, but when I do listen to my dad and Raylan, holy smokes, do I have flashbacks to how we wrangled me and Jason when we were little.  

Where my mom was all about a two-pronged approach of (a) getting us out of the house and educated by osmosis via experiences and (b) reading*, my dad was the one who couldn't leave well enough alone when we were performing mundane tasks and turned it into a lesson.

"You know how a telephone works?" you might suddenly hear.  Well, no, Dad, but I bet by the end of this conversation I will, you'd say to yourself.  This is not a complaint, by the way.  I was the only kid in my 4th Grade class who understood the principles of lift, thrust and wingshape or how radio waves work.  In middle school it was how companies and combustion engines work.  In college it was rotary engines.  I don't think we've completed the list of random stuff my dad seems to know how it works, because you never know.  Even now he's figuring out something with an artificial waterfall and pumping mechanism that I've got about a 1/3rd of the story on.

Now he's got another round of well-refined "How Does It Work?" to share with my brother's kid.  Just last week I saw him explaining gears to a 2 1/2 year old on YouTube.  Next week it'll probably be how fishtank filters work or something.

Anyway, Happy Birthday, Dad, and thanks for all the impromptu lessons that made me unbearable to my classmates but also occasionally surprisingly handy.




*so, so much reading.

In the Wake of Charlottesville

I don't know what to tell you.

Normally we use this space to talk about movies and comics, maybe a book we read.  But, at the moment, we're way past normal.  Or, at least, the past year has stripped away the veneer of how we thought things worked and we're now dealing with what we always kind of knew was out there, but just didn't show it's face.

That's wrong, too.  It did.  It's all over twitter and has been boiling over in the comments on legitimate news sites and in our facebook feed from people we used to know in high school.

It's always there, from our complacence in the face of the social inequities we see (and tell ourselves nice creation myths rather than grappling with multi-generational issues), to legislation intended to discriminate, to how we think about perpetually skewed law-enforcement records to how we whisper certain words.  I'm as white a cracker as you're going to find.  I might as well have "privilege" stamped across my forehead, and I see this stuff everywhere, and I've seen it defended and warped and refracted through appropriated slogans and an unending sea of false equivalencies that don't hold up to the slightest examination.  And, because I'm coming from a place of privilege, I have to accept that I'm only seeing a fraction of it.

New "Mister Miracle" #1 by King and Gerads

It has been a long, long time since I've talked much about Mister Miracle by Jack Kirby, but when I came across a black and white collection back in late 90's, one of that series one of New Gods, the comics hit my psyche like a runaway freight train.

I'll talk more about Kirby's Mister Miracle and New Gods soon (I'll be doing my own salute to King Kirby before his 100th), but today I want to suggest you guys get onboard with the new Mister Miracle series by Tom King and Mitch Gerads, which hit shelves on Wednesday.

I admit, I've not read the duo's other work to date, though I've been meaning to pick up their Vision series for at least a year.   But...

As comics keep relaunching with new #1's, I'd suggest that both publishers and creators take note:  this is how one starts a series.

Kaiju Watch: Shin Godzilla (2016)

I had two failed attempts to see Shin Godzilla (2016) when it was released in October 2016 and then had a quick return to the screen around New Years 2017.  The first time something at work came up and I had to cancel.  The second time I went to see the movie with PaulT and Jamie and something was wrong with the film.  It started and a 1K tone was laid over the soundtrack to the movie.  Which was both awful and hilarious.  Anyway, they stopped the movie about three minutes in, we had this weirdly informal conversation with the manager about what we should do, and I got a couple passes to come back, but couldn't attend the next screening as it was my first day back to work after the holiday break.

And the more stuff I saw about the movie, the more goggle-eyed I became.  I really wanted to see this flick.

In case you don't know what Shin Godzilla is, essentially Toho Studios rebooted the Godzilla franchise from square one (it was also marketed in the US as Godzilla: Resurgence).  And if you've never seen Gojira, the 1954 Godzilla that is the Japanese version and lacks Raymond Burr (a) shaaaaaaame on you, and (b) fix that immediately.  It's a terrific film.  And aside from Godzilla 1985, Gojira is one of the only movies that's just about Godzilla (aka: Gojira) attacking Tokyo by himself and for mysterious reasons and is not fighting, say, Anguirus*.  Here, in a re-booted universe that's never heard of Godzilla, our scaly pal returns again for the first time to wreak just horrible, unthinkable havoc upon an unsuspecting Tokyo.

And it is really, really good.

Godzilla Man-In-Suit Actor Haruo Nakajima Has Merged With The Infinite

Harou Nakajima, the original Man-in-Suit, has passed.

Watching Godzilla movies will tell you that our gigantic, atomic-fire-breathing-pal had a definite personality.  And I think you can chalk a good chunk of that up to Mr. Harou Nakajima.

To get a better idea of what I mean, give those first few Godzilla movies a spin and watch as the big fella becomes more himself.  A sort of cranky giant who definitely has opinions.

I recently saw this video interviewing the actor.  It is absolutely inspiring and a testament to a certain mindset we could all stand to try on.

Television Signal - Catching Up: GLOW

We watched a lot of television this year, and in our reduced content mode, we haven't talked about the usual favorites - so just assume we enjoyed both Fargo and The Americans.*

Way back in high school I recall coming home one afternoon and somewhere between TaleSpin and The KareBear rolling into the driveway/ me starting homework, I was flipping channels when I stumbled upon an edition of Family Feud in which the new-ish World Championship Wrestling league was squaring off against a league I'd never heard of - G.L.O.W., or, Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling.

As colorful as the fellows from the WCW were, I was shocked to find out that there was an all-women's wrestling league and I had never heard of it.

I was never *that* into wrestling.  As a very young kid I was part of the wave that saw Hulk Hogan and JYD and Jake "The Snake" Roberts rise to stardom on Saturday broadcasts, but I'd moved on fairly quickly, watching WWF only occasionally.  But when I was 14, for some reason Steanso, his pal Lee and myself jumped in Lee's car and drove downtown and watched the show - and, man, live - wrestling is @#$%ing bonkers.  Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.  The next year we also attended a taping of an episode or two of regular WWF and NBC's Saturday Night's "Main Event", which was neat just because we saw all the flagship wrestlers of the era.  Yeah, I've seen Hulk Hogan from the 13th row.

But... that was kind of it.

Needless to say, by age 15 or so, the notion of lady wrestlers held some appeal.  And, as I watched what turned out to be a week's worth of episodes, the ladies of GLOW seemed way (waaaaaaay) crazier (and, honestly, smarter) than their male counterparts over the the WCW.

But I don't think GLOW ever aired anywhere I lived, either when I'd just previously lived in Austin, or when I moved to Houston between 9th and 10th grades.  Texas, especially before, say, 10 years ago, was a place where you find strip clubs the size of a warehouse, but there was also a church on every corner - the net result that TV stations probably decided it wasn't worth the letters and complaints from folks getting the vapors from witnessing ladies in high cut leotards jumping off turnstyles.  Believe me, I would have watched the living hell out of that show.  (edit:  Steven has written in to tell me he recalls seeing GLOW air in Houston circa 1987.  I was living in Austin at the time.)

Consequently, I've always had a deep-seeded curiosity about GLOW, but was unable to turn up much the few times I thought to Google it.

Of course, when Netflix announced it was putting out a show about GLOW featuring no less than Alison Brie, heck, yeah, I was in.

Happy Birthday, Michelle Yeoh

The all-around film star is apparently celebrating her birthday today.

This year, she's also been a space captain of some sort in a cameo in Guardian of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (and what I wouldn't give for the movie suggested by the grouping there at the end) and will be a very different kind of Captain in Star Trek Discovery.

She really is... out of this world.