Doppleganger!

It's just barely possible I saw Journey to the Far Side of the Sun in the theater in 1969. I have some nagging memory of that, but no certainty. I've long wanted to get another look at, especially in light of rediscovering so many great Gerry Anderson productions such as UFO, Space:1999 and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. I recently added Thunderbirds to my collection, but more on that another day.

This movie was called Doppleganger in Europe, a name which has a proper mystery to it and of course points quickly the theme of the flick which features many of the classic Anderson touches. After years of puppets on television the Andersons wanted to break into live action and especially into film. They certainly the technical chops for it, but as this movie demonstrates, there's a lack of thematic depth which holds the work back.
 

The story is a simple enough affair. A new planet is discovered on the far side of the Sun in 2069 and Eurosec director Jason Webb (Patrick Wymark) wants to send men there, but it costs a lot of money. To fool the U.S. into being the sugar daddy for the operation, Webb allows the secret discovery to fall into the hands of the Soviets. This triggers a team up between Europe (Britain really) and the U.S. with Roy Thinnes showing up as ace astronaut Colonel Glenn Ross. Along with Ian Hendry in the role of Dr.John Kane, the two train then eventually head to the new planet. Crashing upon a arrival they discover that the world they have arrived at seems almost like the one they left.

This movie is a wonderfully quiet and technically sound presentation of space flight. The characters are by and large restrained with just enough personal intrigue to tell them apart. The movie seems to want to tap into the 2001: A Space Odyssey vibe with some psychedelic sequences and an ending which really does evoke the classic Kubrick space opera. The biggest problem with this movie is that the payoff doesn't really measure up to the build up. The discovery is curious, but doesn't seem to sufficiently challenge the protagonists enough to make me really care about their fates. It's all a bit too low key all the time.

This is a beautifully fabricated movie, but it sadly lacks enough of a point to make it elevate to a really rich viewing experience. If I actually did see this movie when it came out, I'm realizing why it left such a vague memory.

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Government Issue!

Government Issue: Comics for the People, 1940's-2000's is an adorable volume from Abrams Comicart which showcases decades of comics used for safety advice, military propaganda, civil defense information, drug abuse dramatizations, and many other uses. Written and compiled by Richard L. Graham and featuring a forward by Sid Jacobson, former Harvey editor and who along with Ernie Colon has produced some of the best nonfiction comics of the last decade, this volume tries to be comprehensive.

The only knock is that I'd have loved to have had more full comics, but space as always with these kinds of collections is a premium. From benign comics like one about fighting fires starring Smokey the Bear to infamous tomes like Milt Caniff's "How to Spot a Jap" to safety tips from the Peanuts gang, this one truly has something for everyone. There's vigorous work by Jack Sparling and some of the earliest comics work ever by Neal Adams. Also on hand are some great King Features characters and even Walt Kelly's Pogo shows up.

For a gander at some of the material contained take a gander at the covers below, some by seasoned and respected professionals in the comic book biz.

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Miraclemen!

Alan Davis

I knew absolutely nothing about Marvelman when I stumbled across Warrior magazine back in those halcyon days of the 1980's. The British superhero, a necessary adaptation of the successful Captain Marvel character after the latter was dropped from publication, was a total cipher to me. So that said, I lacked some of the pure joy which fans must've had when he showed up unannounced in the debut issue of Dez Skinn's old black and white magazine.

Garry Leach

Marvelman didn't make the cover until the second issue, but by then it was clear that Alan Moore and Garry Leach were creating something quite different. These days of course the deconstructed superhero is all to common, but then in those pre-Watchmen days it was a downright fresh notion. Here was a superhero who wasn't all that heroic really, not as you'd expect. He had sex for one thing, with his wife sort of admittedly, but sex nonetheless. It was a novel notion in a medium which wiped that aspect of life away save in the most obscure and sometimes titillating ways. Here was a superhero who was violent, truly violent in that he damaged mere human beings and even not-so mere human beings with the snap of his finger. Here was a guy who was Superman made carnate.

Mick Austin

This was rollicking stuff, but soon I lost track of the plot a bit and drifted out of independent comics and onto other matters. Over the years I read about the impossible tangle the Marvelman / Miracleman franchise had become, and like many fans I had such a high regard for my long-ago-traded-away Warrior magazines that I hoped it would resolve itself. But even then, I was pleasantly surprised how completely effective these stories still are after all this time. The seriousness of the storytelling is evident and compelling. This is significant stuff, not just a quaint superhero adventure, but something with import and resonance.

Mick Austin

Marvel has at long last republished these trapped gems. Like his inspiration "The Big Red Cheese", Marvelman / Miracleman has at long last escaped the limbo of the unpublished and returned to the stands with significant pomp and proper circumstance. Always exceedingly cantankerous in these matters, Alan Moore is merely "The Original Writer", but Garry Leach gets his props as does Alan Davis who quickly too over for Leach when the latter proved too meticulous for the grind of deadlines. Marvel has now published four issues, which reprint Book One of the saga. Most all of these I'd seen before, glimmering in the embers of my imagination. What comes next will be new to me. I look forward to it.

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The Day It Came To Earth!

The Day It Came to Earth is an amazingly bad movie, showcasing amateurish acting, miserable editing, non-existent lighting, and other classic trademarks of a lower-than-low budget attempt to knock off a sci-fi film. What the movie does have is an earnest attempt to present a story which sadly makes almost no sense almost immediately.

"Lonesome" George Gobel - The voice of reason

The story begins when a meteorite crashes near a local college. It smacks down right next to the dead body of a murdered gangster who had been dumped into an exceedingly shallow lake some time before, and the radiation of the meteor which shatters into various fragments reanimates that body creating a defacto slave. That undead slave then sets about terrorizing the surrounding neighborhood and meanwhile getting revenge on his murderers. Then our heroes, two hapless college sophomores ceaselessly on the make for two lovely freshmen,  find the meteorite and take some it to their professor (played by George Gobel). The rest of the rock is taken to the school and the space-zombie then must retrieve it causing even more havoc. Eventually he ends up terrorizing the local sorority before the hapless cops of the small town corner him.
 

Wink Roberts, Roger Manning, Delight DeBruine, and Rita Wilson

Like I said it's not a good movie, really. But this 1979 attempt takes the embers of sundry classic 50's movies, a dash of the zombie flick, and a smidgeon of the slasher film to make a brew which while never really tasty is nonetheless memorable.

What's my motivation?

I cannot recommend anyone see this movie really, but if you should chance across it, it's hopeless and harmless fun.

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Beast Of The Yellow Night!

Beast of the Yellow Night is a Philippines horror import directed by Eddie Romero and starring John Ashley. In fact Romero and Ashley specifically teamed up in 1971 to make this surprisingly restrained horror flick after the drive-in success of the "Blood Island Trilogy" . But while those three movies were intentionally lurid and violent, this one feels different.

It begins in 1945, at the end of WWII when the murderously evil John Langdon, a U.S. military deserter escapes prison and goes on a spree of violent crime. He is tracked down by the Philippines police and fatally shot. But he doesn't die immediately, and as he wanders the jungle slowly and painfully passing away he encounters a stranger who dispassionately offers him a deal, a deal which will give him an eternal existence on Earth. The bargain is sealed when Langdon consumes the remains of a woman who was killed trying to bringing him assistance. The story then cuts to the present day (more or less) and we find that the Stranger  (Could it be...Satan? Of course!) has had Langdon assume the identities of various evil folks over the years, but this latest time he takes on the guise of a seemingly dead industrialist and Langdon assumes his life, with wife and all that entails. Then things begin to get hairy when Langdon seems to want to do good things, such as spare his wife a life of sadness. Satan isn't pleased and turns Langdon into a Demon/Werewolf monster who sets about roaming the night killing folks. He kills then meets a blind old man who seems to offer him insight into his fate and eventually despite the police who are hot on his trail, his wife who stands by him regardless, and the Devil who keeps making things difficult he tries to make something good happen. It's a tough sale for sure.

The surprising thing about this movie, especially since I watched it having just finished the "Blood Island" movies was the somber and restrained way in which the story unfolds. Ashley is soft-spoken, as is the Devil actually. The tone is a relatively serious one with dialogue which seems oddly philosophical and reflective. Some of it seems a bit garbled, but the attempt to bring some intelligence to this defacto werewolf movie is admirable. This movie is plenty bloody and gross, but it's also plenty serious. Surprising.

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Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Holmes!

After his terrifically successful collaborations with Martin Powell on the Sherlock Holmes canon, artist Seppo Makinen dived in one more time, this time with writer Steven Philip Jones, to offer up a speculation about what if the great detective had been involved in the sinister case of  Edward Hyde. This classic tale by Robert Louis Stevenson is the perfect fit for Holmes, especially a Holmes who isn't afraid to trade in the supernatural from time time.

What we have in The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Holmes, a 1994 Caliber Comics one-shot tale is the classic story of Jekyll and Hyde, but this time blended into the mix throughout is the deductive skill of Sherlock Holmes as well as his able comrade Dr.Watson. They are brought into the case early when the repulsive Edward Hyde presents a check from the esteemed Henry Jekyll to pay for the care of the young girl he had brutalized on the streets of London. After confirming the check was legit, Holmes takes up the case in earnest and for a time keeps tabs on Hyde hoping to discover the secret of this strange and clearly dangerous lout. Eventually the full horror is revealed, but not until a great deal more tragedy is unleashed. What makes this story so potent is that Holmes is perfectly grafted into the already known story of Jekyll and Hyde but nonetheless adds to the whole.

Makinen's art is not as robust this time as I liked in his previous Holmes outings. What he has gained in skill he to some extent has lost in energy, but then a sure-footed storyteller he was likely merely following the script he was given.

This story collected recently by IDW in a volume titled Curious Cases of Sherlock Holmes is worth checking out for fans of Scarlet in Gaslight and other Makinen Holmes efforts, but don't get your hopes up too high.

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Kings Watch Complete!

Kings Watch from Dynamite has been worth the wait. Jeff Parker can write a story I like to read and Marc Laming can draw a comic book page worthy of the name. That might sound like false praise, but in the modern world of comics it ain't. Too many comics I glance at look terrible and read worse. This is good stuff by some pros who know what they are doing with some fabulous characters to do it with.

In many respects this storyline is a reboot of the Defenders of the Earth concept which found some success in the 80's both in cartoon for comic book formats. The idea was perfect, team up some classic King Features heroes and have battle the ultimate intergalactic foe Ming the Merciless. So we got to see The Phantom, Mandrake the Magician and Flash Gordon, a trio of titans get some penetration into a marketplace which as (at least in America) passed them by all too often.

In the story told by Parker and Laming, the Earth is overcome with nightmares, which seem not limited by geography or sociology. All peoples are suffering them and they suggest a difficult future to come. At the same time Dr.Hans Zarkov and Flash Gordon are trying to get an experimental plane into orbit. There is a connection. Then we learn that Cobra, a villain who once faced Mandrake is seeking a mysterious crystal which combined with one he already possesses will open a doorway to some unknown danger. Already weird creatures are finding their way to Earth. These creatures, at least in Africa are confronted by The Phantom and Lothar. Dale Arden, a science reporter is putting all the pieces together.

The battles develop quickly as Cobra uses his vast resources to threaten Earth's defenders and bring about the invasion of his master Ming the Merciless by combining some mysterious crystals and opening portals which will allow the invasion to happen at multiple points across the planet. The heroes realize they are fighting the same foe and join forces, using their wits and combined resources to stave off the invasion.

But despite their best efforts the invasion is launched and Ming's forces find their way into Earth's largest cities. A counterattack is developed and implemented.

I won't say much so as not to spoil a tremendously entertaining story. Suffice it to say, there are secrets within secrets to be revealed as to the full nature of the enemy and the heroes as well. Not everyone is who we think they are.

There is death, there is sacrifice, and there is real true heroism in the face of a brutal threat to mankind's very existence. The Kings Watch is a fabulous read, and the ground floor it seems to what Dynamite has planned for these wonderful heroes.

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