Burger Time!

This delightful cover for Action Comics by the often overlooked Bob Oksner just makes me laugh. 

There was a whimsy and sheer sense of fun along with the awesome for the Superman covers of this era. Then it got all serious and they became far less interesting. 

The cover also reminded of the vintage video game Burger Time. I'm old and only ever played video games in their natural habitat, the arcade, and I remember this one was a good time.

The sophistication of modern games leaves me cold and in the dust. I'm sure I'd be a total fail trying to revive old reflexes to manage the modern challenges. Leave it to the young I say. 

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Justice League Of America - The Bronze Age!

This one is in my wheelhouse folks! I ignited as a fan of the JLofA probably a year before the stories in this collection when Gardner Fox was still the writer. It is his departure along with artist Mike Sekowsky and the transition thereafter that marks the end of the Silver Age for the JLofA and the beginning of the Bronze with writers talents like Dick Dillin, Denny O'Neil and Mike Friedich taking the reins of "The World's Greatest Super-Heroes". The Bronze Age begins properly when the League abandons their cavern Sanctuary and establish the greatest base of operations any superhero team has ever had -- the JLA Satellite.

Here the issues in this collection I think. There is no allowance made of the two giant reprint issues during this time, but I assume they are not part of this volume. We have delightful covers by Neal Adams, Gil Kane, and Murphy Anderson.

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The Spirit And The Corpse-Makers!

Will Eisner's The Spirit is no more alas. Some creators are so distinctive and wedded to their creations that when that talent is no longer available the creation wanes and disappears. Whether this will happen to The Spirit following the death of Eisner remains to be seen.

Some decent Spirit tales have been crafted, but I've yet to find any that had the same distinctive character, the same specific charm. That's the case with one of the most recent as well -- The Corpse-Makers by Francesco Francavilla. But I was eager to see this one in its collected form because if any modern artist was mining the same Film Noir material that evoked the original Spirit it's Francavilla.

There are a few things I like a lot, and number one is the creamy artwork of Francavilla who has found a nifty way tell a tale in the dark. His atmospheric backgrounds are exquisite. His usually deft storytelling falls down a few times in this five-part yarn that spins along for too short a time. That pace is the biggest downfall of his story, it flies by and all five chapters are read in minutes.

Once again I am reminded why I don't buy new comics, the storytelling is just not sufficient in a given chapter to warrant the the effort. Even with five parts collected here, the experience fell a bit shy. Now that's odd to say since the original Spirit stories were concocted in a handful of pages with a hammer-like rhythm.

But in the end despite the twenty dollar asking price, I found Francavilla's Spirit a satisfying read, not as good as Eisner, but on its own terms a proper Noir. I do hate the title though and recommend "Crimson Coal" or even  "The Crematorium" as possible substitutes. It will make sense when you read it.

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Utterly Fantastic Four Art!

Once upon a time, time itself was slower. I was still a youngster when Fantastic Four #100 hit the comic book racks, a number which seemed in many ways staggering as the Marvel Age was still ripe. The Fab 4 were always the first and foremost of the Marvel comics, despite the eventual popularity of Spidey and Hulk and others now and again, it was the Fantastic Four who marked the beginning.

They have faded, the four stalwart explorers replaced by oppressed mutants, snarky billionaires, and even a living legend or two over the decades. But the Marvel Age would feel right without them. And after a hiatus, the Fantastic Four returned to the racks. Now I long ago quit buying new stuff from Marvel, so the FF will not be an exception. Most of the names who  produce comics today are largely unknown to me, just kids looking to get on with their careers and godspeed to them, but for this vintage fan it will always be Lee and Kirby or DeFalco and Ryan, or the mighty Byrne who defines the FF. But there is one name who dabbled with the recent revival, one name I knew -- Art Adams.

Art Adams has been deploying gobsmacking artwork for several decades now and he produced for the first and second issues of the revived comic a fold-out interlocking cover which dazzles the eyes and evokes the majesty of the grand Fantastic Four #100 all at the same time.

Apparently this was a work which Adams took on as a fan commission. It's detail and elegance unfolding in detail which simmers slowly as the eyes dance across the composition. We see villains and heroes and more villains, the critters and folks who made the first one hundred issues of the Fantastic Four, so very "fantastic". We see Doctor Doom and the Inhumans and Mole Man of course. We the Watcher, the Silver Surfer, Diablo, Super-Skrull, Red Ghost and the Impossible Man too. But we also get Tomazooma and the Punisher and Torgo amid a horde of Moloids.

There are more and ore to see such as Maximus the Mad, the Mad Thinker, and truly Frightful Four. Even the Miracle Man gets a slot alongside the Puppet Master, Annihilus, Blastaar and Ronan. There are heroes too such as Thor, Hulk, Sub-Mariner, and you friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. I didn't get new Fantastic Four, but that doesn't I don't lust for a copy of this truly fantastic image. 

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Sojourns!

I'm not sure when my consciousness became aware of Joe Kubert's remarkable publication Sojourn. Likely is was when it was first available in the late 70's. It was a time when comic book men were looking for new ways to ply their craft and make connections with audiences who would pay the piper to get good material. Guys like Kubert, Doug Wildey, Lee Elias, John Severin, Dick Giordano, and Sergio Aragones always seemed to be looking for outlets which gave them the ability to stretch beyond the severe limits of the newsstand comic book pamphlet.

In Sojourn, a tabloid-sized publication which defied the expectations and alas the demands of the newsstand these talents and others found a momentary outlet for something slightly different. Kubert revived again in his 50's creation Tor, Wildey gave us T.C. Race a detective of sorts, Giordano with writer Mary Skrenes dabbled in science fiction with something titled "The Smooth", Severin gave us "The Eagle" a western from the native perspective (this one was actually reprinted later by Warren), Elias offered up "Kronos" an adventure yarn and Aragones presented "T.C. Marrs", a another detective in his own distinctive style. There's other stuff too such asart by a young Stephen Bissette.

Sojourn was a failed experiment, lasting only issues. But I've always wanted to sample them first hand and a few days ago I found them both in nifty shape for an exceedingly nifty price. Nearly all of these grand talents have passed on, but here are two experimental publications which give them elbow room to showcase their talent. They are over-sized and difficult to store, but I'm glad to have them at long last, see what my imagination only dreamed of so many decades ago.

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A Day In The Anti-Life - Tomorrow Land!

I was part of that naive generation that imagined that today we'd have jet packs. I know that's a pretty stupid thing to want, but it showed that people were using their wits and energy to create new ways for examine their world, not flying locked up in a large metal can, but flying reliably and safely under their own power like birds. Learning more about human nature, I've given up a lot on reliably and safely but still the deep-down fool in me would like a jet pack. Instead I get promised a big old old wall to hide behind along with the other "good" Americans who imagine that they ought to be protected from the waves of off-white folks who insist on living and thriving in a world America cannot control as it once did a few meager decades ago.

The simplistic and reduced notions of Ayn Rand have taken hold in this land of the free and now we are not all citizens, all men and women created equal, we are "makers" and "takers". Some few who have stuck oil with some idea or notion and no small amount of hard work and timing imagine that they are the ones who count exclusively and others who might not have been so lucky should just shuffle along to the exits. Even worse they imagine their success is because of some moral superiority they possess, they have what they have because they uniquely deserve and others have so little because that's what they deserved too. The social contract is broken and ignored as technology makes much of what people have done for "work" obsolete.

When confronted with this coming reality, the knobs will say that new jobs will be created as they have been in other periods of social transformation. But they ignore that now we live in the dawing age of the robot and those "new" jobs are not coming, but we will still have plenty of people to account for. Ideas like a basic guaranteed income strike the "makers" as heresy, but I wonder if that's what Marie Antoinette thought too.

The climate continues to do what it does despite the debates about the causes and effects. We already live in a time when the naysayers have largely given up pretending there's no change, but still and all pretend we cannot change it. They might well be right about that, but the changes will come regardless and we as a society seem unwilling to change in the face of the storm. For my generation it will not matter, we will be dust before the rising tide comes to wash us away, but for the next generation I fear they will struggle and the one after that even more. And I still never got my jet pack.

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Year Of The Sea-Monkey!

I for one miss the delightful whimsy of the Sea-Monkeys. I'm sure most folks who hover around this site have chanced across these vintage ads featuring the bizarre sub-sea nuclear family with their beaming smiles and impossibly humanoid appearances. That warm familial illustration was the work of talented comics professional Joe Orlando.

The promise of the Sea-Monkeys was the chance to play Frankenstein on the tiniest of scales, to give life and control that life in the comfort of your home. The little critters were as the ad suggests a "bowl full of happiness".  "So eager to please" it was suggested. It was all the most entertaining and  blatant of total hokum.

The light-hearted scam which was and is the Sea-Monkey tells me something about the fundamental nature of us all, or at least the folks I know. We crave connections, we hunger for some meager control over the lives which have been thrust upon us. By taking control of the lives of these pretend happy-go-lucky aquatic critters we feel that we will have something which is ours, completely and utterly.

At the same time, we know it's all a sham, a bogus joke which calls out our fundamental needs while weirdly giving balm to them at the same time. America and the world is all too ready to fall for nonsense from those who pretend to lead us to a better future, because we were trained from our earliest days to believe that life was ours to tamper with, life was ours to get hold of and make our pet. Like the insipid Sea-Monkeys, it's all rot, but we are programmed to want it nonetheless for the alternative is to see that we like the real Sea-Monkeys are just bits of flotsam that spark for a moment then disappear. We might as well smile.

Toward that end, expect perhaps a few changes here at the Dojo which enters its tenth year. I will no longer feel compelled to post each and every day. I've said that before I know, but this time I mean it. Actually over the course of the last year many re-posts filled in gaps where I had little to say or little inclination to say it. I go through periods where commenting seems a bit tiresome as I'm repeating myself for the umpteenth time. Also I notice that when I go to write a review of some movie, I realize I already did so many years before, so I just re-post the original. Usually my opinion has not shifted enough to warrant rewriting anything.

So don't imagine the worst if a few days pass and no new thing appears, I will eventually return with something to ramble on about I'm sure. I will notify one and all when such lapses present themselves because I well know that checking out blogs is a routine and I don't want to fall off the radar of those who check in here looking for some momentary diversion, I prize you one and all.

Let the Year of the Sea-Monkey commence!

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