"Read Comics in Public Day" - a celebration of something or other

On August 28th the comics interwebs is once again asking comics readers to take to the streets for what is now an annual event called "Read Comics in Public Day".

To be clear, "Read Comics in Public Day" is pretty stupid.

I'm sorry.  Look, I know that's not a nice thing to say, but....

A few years ago some folks online decided that the reason why comics aren't more popular is because, by gum, you don't see enough comic nerds conspicuously sitting at Starbucks for hours reading a comic book.  Or at the park.  Or on a bus.  Or, probably, you know, lounging awesomely under a statue like that one in the plaza at the strip mall with the fountain that might make a cool picture for facebook or tumblr.

So... why?  Why is this even happening?  As near as I can tell, the purported reason for folks to take to the streets with comics is "promotion of comics".

these kids were reading comics in public before it was cool

The thinking went:  If more people were seen out in public reading comics, the whole entirety of what's wrong with a market that requires people spend $4 on 5-10 minutes of entertainment, that requires finding out-of-the-way shops in run down strip malls and understanding 20 years of back stories and, on top of that, often requires a byzantine pre-ordering structure...  All the financial woes of the industry would evaporate - if  only the masses saw a 20-something sitting on a bench outside the ice cream shoppe reading Ghost World or The Flash.

Yup, the problem is that nobody has seen you, you special snowflakes, reading comics.  In public.

There's kind of a curious logic to the idea that maybe doing this .3% of the year is not kind of pointless - especially given the limited number of attendees and that the sole criteria is that you appear "in public".  Why not send everyone to, say, the local library?  Starbucks?  Something that might make this newsworthy or even noticeable?  Strength in numbers?  Something for the cameras?  Why not, say, alert the media?

It's also a tradition born from the assumption that most people don't just mind their own damn business and that people actually look at what other people are reading.  Or, maybe, assumes that the person actively reading will somehow generate enough charisma by showing up "in public" that the casual passer-by will, of course, want to know what such an iconoclast is reading.

Happy B-Day to The Admiral

Happy Birthday to The Admiral.

Interestingly, he's doing his favorite thing on his birthday:  looking at someone else's finances and criticizing them.

You can retire a finance man out of business but you can't take the finance out of the man.  Or something.

Happy Birthday, man.  We'll grab a taco on Saturday.

Signal Watch Reads: The Underwater Welder

Jeff Lemire is currently doing a tremendous amount of work at DC Comics, and not just his series Sweettooth.  Prior to the New 52 he took on Superboy, and was doing a great job - certainly telling less headache-inducing stories than what we saw starting last September.

But many of us came to know him from his work on the Essex County trilogy, meditative, ethereal stories of past colliding with the present.  His latest book, The Underwater Welder feels a bit like a fourth installment in the Essex books, but in a new location (the hard cut coast of Nova Scotia), with water and diving a significant and ongoing theme rather than the wide open prairie/ near tundra of Essex County.

Jack Joseph is 33 years old and has made his living as a welder on the oil rigs that can be seen from the shore of his hometown.  His wife is very, very pregnant as he heads out for one last stretch of work before the baby is born - all in the week around Halloween, a day that resonates with Jack back through the years.

Lemire recognizes that past informs the present, and unlike the previous books in the Essex trilogy, the anxiety of the coming of fatherhood informs the future.  Despite the 224 pages of book, the comic feels much more like a particularly dense short story, in part because of Lemire's elaborate sense of pacing through visuals.  While far from an illustrative approach, Lemire's work stays on model in its' scratchy/ sketchy style, but paced brilliantly over the page count as each panel holds significance to the forward motion of the story - panels breaking up time, changing from one object to another, or otherwise manipulating the reader's point of view.

I hesitate to give up too much about the book, but it feels like Lemire is moving onward and upward with his work, instead of continuing to repeat himself - especially in the denouement of the book.  Rightly so, TV writer Damon Lindelhoff intros the book as an episode of The Twilight Zone, which featured tight vignettes that took characters through a strange or supernatural occurrence that provided some greater relevance in their life or gave the audience a moment to think a bit about what it meant for the character (I am still haunted by the idea of the man who wanted time to read, and in the wake of nuclear holocaust had all the time in the world.  Until he broke his glasses.  I probably think about that at least once a week.).

The story reads like fable or myth, and that's to its strength.

I did wonder how rushed Lemire felt to finish the book with his other assignments in queue.  The ending, while entirely satisfactory, lacked the pacing of the preceding set ups.  But perhaps I read the book too quickly.

Anyway, recommended.

And now I have to finally read The Nobody.

The Oddly Life Affirming Superman Toy

Saturday I had to go to Target to buy a new telephone.  Not a smartphone, just a $15 thing to plug into the wall.*  Whilst at the Target, I stumbled upon the latest Superman toy from Fischer-Price:

Hero World™ DC Super Friends™ VOICE COMM™ Superman™

The name your 3 year old is sure to share with you accurately as you head into the toy section.

I'm out of the action figure game unless its a Superman toy.   Despite the odd paint and plastic, this still qualifies as Superman, so I picked it up and looked at it, and this fellow, intended for kids 3-8, has kind of a weird, kid-friendly sculpt and a bunch of voice related features.   Basically, he's got some sort of chip and I guess he can interact with other figures in the line and it all seems a bit more complicated/ compelling than pulling a string and hearing the same phrase repeated over and over about a barnyard animal.

Neat enough.  But I was pleased to hear was what actually came out of Superman's mouth, so to speak.

"Why did I make these chains out of kryptonite?  OWWWWW!!!!"

This Superman doesn't talk about punching anybody or breaking things.  He's pretty much all about helping folks (quickly) and seems a bit alarmed about Lex Luthor and General Zod's whereabouts.  But, mostly, making declarative statements about leaping into action to help out at some specific emergencies and some less specific.

I like this.  It's a proactive Superman who isn't trying to teach kids 3-8 about dark vengeance or grim justice or some such.  It seems like it should be okay for superheroes to be as much about saving the day (our Superman toy blurts: "There's a truck in trouble!") as clobbering other action figures, but a lot of superhero toys don't seem designed that way.

Noir Watch: Over-Exposed (1956)

Back in the day there wasn't necessarily a concept of a "chick flick", but studios did produce something called "women's pictures".  Douglas Sirk made his name producing movies like Imitation of Life (featuring a lovely Lana Turner) that could be held up as the ideal of the genre of women struggling in a man's world, wrestling with romance or work, and often coming into conflict with their children (see:  Mildred Pierce - a movie I really dig).  

I'm not entirely certain how Over-Exposed (1956) made its way into a noir set, and like Women's Prison, it seems a bit of a stretch to find a place for this next to Double Indemnity or even The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers.  But given the turn in last third, it made be a matter of pacing that's throwing me off.  

It's an interesting mishmash of the money-driven, hard-scrabble girl from the wrong side of the tracks using whatever she's got to get ahead as in Baby Face (1933), but only able to hint at a dodgy past while assuming one could rise to fame and fortune taking pictures for the society pages.

It is 1956, so our leading lady pays and pays dearly for not jumping at the opportunity for marriage to an amiable guy with a good haircut (Richard Crenna).  

The star of the film is Cleo Moore - one of the platinum blondes Hollywood started cranking out in the wake of Marilyn Monroe's success and suddenly remembering Jean Harlow had been a pretty good idea.  She's all right, if a bit humorless, and lacks the punchy iciness of, say, a Joan Crawford (or, god forbid, Bette Davis at her best).  

Busted at a "clip joint" on her first night in a small town, Lily Krenschka falls in with the photographer who grabbed her shot outside the police station, learns his trade and heads to NYC where she tries to become a newspaper photog, and winds up a taking pictures for the society pages and personal portraits, which, according to the movie, makes you a celebrity yourself.  Eventually she gets pictures she shouldn't of had and things go badly for her.  

If only she'd just agreed to marry Richard Crenna.  She could have lived a life of adventure with Col. Trautman.  

I wasn't much of a fan of the movie.  You're on your own.

Noir Watch: Women's Prison (1955)

I think we're all friends here, and so it's in that spirit that I confess to a great love of the film Reform School Girls (1986).  It's high 80's cheese, completely self-aware, and has one of the most satisfying conclusions in cinema history.  If you haven't seen it, you likely believe it's some sort of pay cable late night hoo-hah, but it's a pretty straight up prison movie played for camp and some (intentionally) cheap thrills.

Man, someone was trying to sell a much racier movie than the one delivered.

Neither prison movies nor women's prison movies are something I seek out, and I was surprised that Eddie Muller had included a whole section on prison flicks in his book, Dark City.  I'm not going to argue with Muller over how or why prison films are considered part of the genre, so there you are.  And as this film was included in a set of "Bad Girls of Film Noir", I'm just going to deal.

Happy Birthday, Maureen O'Hara

Friday was the birthday of Maureen O'Hara.  We missed it.  Oh, well.  Happy Birthday to Ms. Maureen O'Hara, one of Ireland's finest exports.

35 Years Gone By, Elvis Aron Presley Merged with The Infinite

Eat it, every single other performer who ever fancied they had stage presence

Elvis gone 35 years ago, August the 16th, 1977.

I don't remember the death of Elvis.  I was two.  However, I grew up in a house where my mother played Elvis music on the turntable and hummed Elvis tunes while driving me to soccer practice.  A great gift once received was a bottle of "Elvis White Wine" which nobody ever drank, and eventually it got gross and was tossed away in 2010ish.

Like Marilyn Monroe, James Dean or Bogart, Elvis passed into the twilight realm of American Mythology, a demigod who didn't just sizzle in popularity for a short time after his death, but who attained legendary status once his life itself was no longer there to decry what could be and what could be believed.

Phyllis Thaxter (Superman: The Movie's Martha Kent) Merges with The Infinite

Actress Phyllis Thaxter, the actress who so wonderfully portrayed Martha Kent in Superman: The Movie, has passed at the age of 92.

She is preceded in death by actor Glen Ford who played Jonathan Kent, and Christopher Reeve, who played Superman.  However, Jeff East, who played a young Clark Kent is alive and well.

I have not seen much of Thaxter's work, but, oddly, last night I began watching Women's Prison with Ida Lupino and Audrey Totter, and the film's major character is played by none other than Phyllis Thaxter.  And she's really very good in what I'd seen so far.

Thaxter's portrayal of Martha Kent contained a stunning and instantly motherly quality that surpassed surprise at the strange manner in which she finds the boy, and his odd abilities, and cut straight to the need to love a little lost child when reason may have told her to do otherwise.  In the few lines and scenes she had in the movie, she and Richard Donner presented Martha Kent as a very real mother experiencing both the blessing and pain that comes with bringing a child into your life and then realizing you have to let him go.

Honestly, the wheat-field scene between East and Thaxter in the film was when I realized (way, way back in high school) what an extraordinary film Superman truly is.

Here, however, is that scene of discovery in a Kansas field.

The Comics Haul: 8.15.2012

So this is what I picked up after 2 weeks away from the shop.

2 issues of Atomic Robo (ongoing series and a mini), Popeye ongoing #1, a Daredevil Annual, Saga #6, the new Allred project - which is an old Allred project, It Girl!  I have no idea what It Girl! will be about, but I'm betting that at least I'll like the art.

And I came across Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #30 in pretty iffy condition, but it's a book I've been lacking from my Jimmy Olsen collection and one of my favorite Jimmy covers, so there you go.

The Phantom Eagle I picked up on a whim, but it's a Marvel war book from the 60's-era Marvel and obviously meant to grab some of that sweet, sweet Enemy Ace money.  Several years ago Garth Ennis used the character in his book War is Hell: First Flight of the Phantom Eagle.  I hadn't thought much about the character since, but the cover jumped out at me and I figured it was a good addition to my aviation comics.

Yes, I sort of buy and collect military aviation comics.

Shut up.

I also put a few sheckles down on my lay-away copy of Action Comics 101, a comic that I will one day actually have in my home.

Digitally, I've picked up the one-shot Busiek and Lieber comic, Thoughts on a Winter Morning, published here by MonkeyBrain Comics.   It's a lovely slice-of-life story, and makes you wonder what else Busiek would be writing about if he walked away from superheroes and whatnot for a bit.  It's a nice meditation on time and perspective, and uses the medium of comics beautifully.  At least, it seemed so on my laptop on guided view.