These Are A Few of My Favorite Things...

...well, today, anyway. For you, a few diversions to brighten your Tuesday AM. Well, except for the last one. That won't brighten anyone's Tuesday, save for bovine sadists.

Fave new blog: Rick Veitch's all-art, all-visuals blog,

which includes a 50th birthday card for amigo John Totleben (Happy Birthday, John -- yep, he made the half-century mark the rest of us passed years ago) and info and art from Heartburst, soon in stores!

Fave new paleo find that I wish I could tie into Tyrant (wrong continent): Devil Toad.

Will anyone at Marvel Comics be sharp enough to see the instant possibilities for a certain red dino hero, or are they too hung-up on making the Hulk red like N-Man?

Fave conspiracy of my lifetime, revived with what might be a few pages from a Larry Buchanan film (The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald -- go ahead, look it up!).

No wonder Buchanan switched gears to less controversial fare like Mars Needs Women and It's Alive! (1968) and remaking old AIP scripts.

Fave reminder why I don't eat beef, and how attentive our agencies are to the pending US mad cow crisis.

Not for the squeamish, folks.

Tempted on a Tuesday --

MIA Blogger Bissette, Reporting for Duty, Sir:
A Brat Pack Preview...

Yep, I've been MIA a lot of late, as this break between semesters at CCS has been not a break at all, but a writing marathon. On top of the Neil Gaiman Companion labors and other, uh, things, I've also been cranking on the essay I'm writing for Rick Veitch's 2008 definitive King Hell Press edition of Brat Pack, which Rick originally published via Tundra back in 1990-91.

Back in late summer of '07, Rick asked me to consider writing a balls-to-the-wall, all-out intensive essay to accompany his reprinting of this key initial work in his King Hell Heroica universe. We met a couple of times, I took pages of notes from our conversations, and I've been researching and writing ever since. I began piecing together the various fragments and chunks in December, though there's still a ways to go... still re-reading my Dr. Wertham texts (Seduction of the Innocent, The Circle of Guilt and the fascinating turnabout The World of Fanzines) and Bart Beaty's Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture (2005, University of Mississippi Press), so that major section is still underway.

I completely befuddled Rick this past week by sending him (prematurely) the chunk that hasn't to do with comics -- the 1980s-90s overview of the '80s teen movie stars who were the real 'brat pack,' and the post-Veitch-Brat Pack 'boy band' phenomenon (see the November 2007 Vanity Fair for an intensive article on the sordid behind-the-scenes antics of that scene's primary music mogul) -- but it's the comics that dominates this week's phase.

So, just so's you know I'm not dead, here's a chunk of just the Golden Age overview of the Brat Pack precursors. No time to clean it up -- italicize or capitalize, much less illustrate -- just the raw text for your reading pleasure. It's been fun!

____________________

The Boy Buddies and Beyond

To the uninitiated, the very premise of Brat Pack must seem ludicrous. What’s this “sidekick” trip? Why would adult superheroes need or want “sidekicks”? Why would any kid, however desperate or deluded, take up with these lunatics?

Rick Veitch didn’t pull this out of his -- cape. Comicbooks have had a peculiar but persistent love affair with superhero and vigilante sidekicks for well over half a century (plus a couple decades), and the archetype continues to resonate and populate comics to this day. It’s impossible to overstate how central to the genre this conceit has always been; indeed, given even a cursory introduction to the archetype, one can only be astonished at how succinctly Veitch managed to consolidate so many facets of the countless permutations of the ‘sidekick’ archetype into just four (well, okay, eight -- we do meet the precursors of our four heroes before their premature demise via carbomb) characters of Chippy, Kid Vicious, Luna and Wild Boy. To appreciate this accomplishment, read on.

In comicbooks, the emergence of the teenage hero and teenage sidekick has its own unique legacy.

First of all, let’s agree that the teen hero and teen sidekick isn’t as peculiarly American as comics historians love to proclaim. It could be argued that young Arthur was ostensibly Merlin’s ‘sidekick’ in many versions of Arthurian legend, though the arc of that lore was never consciously emulated in 20th Century superhero comics (the ‘sidekick’ growing up to reign o’er his mentor; still, Arthur and Merlin remained a ‘team’). In fact, the first youth-oriented comicbooks emerged from England in the 19th Century, intimately tied to the youth culture of that era. Initially growing from the publishing technology, markets and talent pools that fueled the penny dreadfuls, dime novels and pulps on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, the earliest youth comics emerged from the youth culture we’ve just discussed. As businessmen realized there was a youth market to tap, comics publishers, editors and creators were eager to squeeze their half-pennies from it, and rough-and-tumble boy adventurers and youth gangs punctuated the pages of many British comics from the pre-Hogan’s Alley launch of the American comic strip.

Young sidekicks and teenage heroes were a staple of boy’s (and girl’s) pulp entertainment of the era, an archetype quickly codified and adopted by every successive media: comic strips, radio, movies, etc. Some heroes lost their sidekicks moving from one media to another (e.g., Doc Savage lost his pulp sidekicks Long Tom, Renny and Johnny, in the move from radio and pulps to comicbooks), but most of them did not. The sidekicks were an essential ingredient to most -- even The Shadow was (very) briefly accompanied by an ill-conceived sidekick, Shadow, Jr. (Shadow Comics, December 1946).

Secondly, let’s acknowledge that many of the first wave of comicbook superheroes were the products of often horrific childhood trauma, real (on the part of their respective creators) and imaginary, children of the Depression one and all. As Gerard Jones details in Men of Tomorrow, the death of Jerry Siegel’s father undoubtably played a part in Superman’s origin: The infant Kal-el loses his parents and home world the moment he is rocketed to an uncertain fate, luckily landing on Earth in proximity of the benevolent Kents. But real-life trauma and loss was hardly essential to the imagining of fictional trauma: Batman is borne of a boy seeing his parents shot to death before his eyes, and he hates all crime because of that trauma (ditto Bulletman, in Nickel Comics #1, 1940). Namor (which means “Avenging Son”) the Sub-Mariner is the product of an unhappy cross-species marriage, a hybrid of his Atlantean mother Fen and her caucasian husband Commander McKenzie; when McKenzie destroys Fen’s undersea kingdom and people, the pregnant Fen deserts McKenzie to raise her son in the ruins and raises their son Namor to wage war on all mankind. The Human Torch is an android, suffering a Frankensteinian birth (which included spontaneous human combustion!) only to be exploited by gangsters and then his own creator; Captain Marvel’s alter ego Billy Batson was a homeless orphan sleeping in subways, hustling newspapers to survive. Worse yet was Captain Marvel Jr.’s origin: teenage Freddy Freeman not only watched the fascist villain Captain Nazi (whom he and his fisherman grandfather have just rescued) murder his grandpa and toss the old man’s body overboard, but the super-Nazi immediately breaks the boy’s back and leaves him to drown! Lev Gleason’s Daredevil was youngster Bart Hill, who watched both his parents cut down and endured torture via red-hot iron, leaving a boomerang brand on his chest and Bart rendered mute by his agonies (three years later, Charles Biro crafted a whole new, comparatively tame origin for the character). And so it went.

Many of the original comicbook creators were teenagers and/or just easing into their 20s themselves. It took three young cartoonists barely out of their teens -- writer Jerry Siegel (at the time 23 years old), artist Joe Shuster (also 23, though both were still teenagers when they’d created Superman), and editor/office assistant Sheldon Mayer (then just 21 years of age) -- to land Superman in Action Comics #1 (June 1938) and thereby create the entire superhero genre and springboard what has come to be called The Golden Age of comics (essentially defined as 1938-1955, which we’ll use here as our working definition of that period). Rick Veitch vividly explored his own perspective on the Superman mythos and the lives of its creators in the Heroica graphic novel Maxi-Mortal (1991-92, see that volume), imaginatively extrapolating on the reality and industry lore surrounding Siegel and Shuster and their world-famous creation. The Siegel and Shuster legend was further popularized and mythologized in Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000, Random House), and the true story was definitively chronicled in Gerard Jones’s essential Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book (2004, Basic Books).

One key Golden Age superhero teen surrogate wasn’t a sidekick, he was the superbeing’s alter-ego. Writer Bill Parker’s proposal to publisher Wilford “Billy” Fawcett to create a team of superheroes, each graced with a unique power derived from a mythological god, led by one Captain Thunder. Fawcett nixed the team concept as unworkable, so Parker synthesized all into the singular Captain Thunder, whose powers manifest when the first letter of each mythical hero’s name -- Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury -- was linked and spoken as a single anagram: “Shazam!” Parker’s decision to make Captain Thunder’s mortal alter-ego a mere lad, the newspaper boy Billy Batson, was a stroke of genius, an instantly identifiable character for every young reader aching to manifest their own super-powered inner self, the hidden self the adult world and the parameters youth stymied. Captain Thunder became Captain Marvel, debuting in Whiz Comics #1 (February 1940) in a story illustrated by Charles Clarence Beck (C.C. Beck). Captain Marvel and Billy Batson were also the first Golden Age characters to land on the silver screen, via Republic Pictures’s 1941 serial.

The instant popularity of the character spawned Captain Marvel, Jr. (who changes from crippled newsboy Freddy Freeman to superbeing when he exclaims, “Captain Marvel!”). Captain Marvel, Jr. was introduced in the pages of Whiz Comics in 1941, featured in Master Comics (#22-133, 1942-53), and “became the first teenage superhero to receive his own magazine” and “often one of Fawcett’s five top-selling comic books during the 1940s” (Benton, Superhero Comics of the Golden Age, pg. 156), lasting 119 issues (1942-53). He was joined by the super-powered Mary Marvel (aka Mary Bromfield, Billy Batson’s long-lost sister, introduced in Captain Marvel Adventures #18, December 1942, and earning her own title in 1945, lasting 28 issues, while also appearing in Wow Comics) and a mortal tomboy sidekick of her own, “self-appointed cousin” Freckles aka Freckles Marvel. Mary Marvel’s “Shazam” was a gender-specific anagram: Selena (changed from the planned Sappho, due to that Greek poet’s Lesbos association), Hippolyta, Ariadne, Zephyrus, Aurora and Minerva. Mary’s arrival expanded the Marvel Family, which grew to include Uncle Dudley aka Uncle Marvel (not a superhero, but a lovable poseur) and three Lieutenant Marvels -- and its own title, Marvel Family (89 issues, 1945-54). Did I mention this was a popular comics series? Remember the Marvel Family, please: they play a pivotal role in all that follows.

There were other Golden Age kids who weren’t sidekicks, but primary heroes. Golden Age comics historians cite the Star Spangled Kid (alter ego of boy millionaire Sylvester Pemberton) and Stripesy (Pembleton’s ex-boxer chauffeur) as the first teen hero with an adult sidekick (in Star Spangled Comics #1-86, 1941-49), co-created by Jerry Siegel and Hal Sherman; in June 1948, Siegel’s writing successor Otto Binder added Pemberton’s sister Mary to the mix, becoming the female costumed hero Merry, “Girl of 1000 Gimmicks.” There were immediate teen hero contemporaries sans sidekicks, including The Black Marvel (Mystic Comics #5-9, 1940-41) -- not an African -American hero, but a boy transformed by a “Blackfeet” Native American tribal initiation into a costumed hero -- Wonder Boy (National Comics #1-26, 1940-42), Yankee Boy (in Yankee Comics #1-4, 1941-42, and Dynamic Comics) and Airboy (introduced in Air Fighters Comics #2, which became Airboy Comics, 1941-53). Successors included Charles Biro and Bob Wood’s Crimebuster (in Boy Comics #3-111, 1942-56) -- whose sidekick was the monkey Squeeks, who scored his own comicbook! -- and the magical resurrected-from-the-dead hero Kid Eternity whose ‘sidekick’ was his ectoplasmic mentor Mr. Keeper (debuting in Hit Comics #25, December 1942, lasting until #60, 1949, and landing his own title Kid Eternity, 18 issues, 1946-49). There was the Boy King and his Giant (Clue Comics #1-9, 1943-44), and Mort Meskin’s Golden Lad (#1-5, 1945-46) and his female sidekick Peggy Shane aka Golden Girl, among others. Copy boy Rusty Adams turned himself into “boy nemesis to gangdom” the Crash Kid, sans any powers despite his garish caped costume (Cannonball Comics #1-2, 1945). The kid heroes were popular enough to score their own parody as early as 1942, and a major tip to early comicbook fandom it was, too. In Shadow Comics#15 and 22, writer Ed Gruskin and cartoonist George Marcoux introduced ten-year-old Koppy McFad, “the boy with the most comic books in America,” who “reads ‘em, breathes ‘em, and sleeps ‘em!” Wearing his grandpa’s flannel underwear and his father’s lodge uniform and “flying” by inflating his uniform with helium, Koppy became The Supersnipe and landed his own long-lasting title (45 issues, 1942-49).

Premiere among the solo teen heroes, it must be noted, was Superboy; the adventures of Superman as a youth were launched in More Fun Comics #101 (January 1945) and continued for decades in Adventure Comics (beginning with #103, 1946) and Superboy (196 issues, 1949-73). His solo comic was a wellspring for teen heroes and pseudo-sidekicks; Superboy introduced a prototypical Supergirl (in #5) -- not his cousin, who became the classic Supergirl and was herself introduced in #80 -- and Superbaby (#8), Bizarro (#68), Beppo the Super Monkey (#76), Mon-el (#89) and others. Mon-el became the catalyst for The Legion of Super-Heroes, the 30th-Century teen superhero club introduced in the Silver Age Adventure Comics #247 -- more on that, and other Silver Age developments, later. We’ve much ground to cover first.

Foremost among the Golden Age sidekicks was -- and remains, now in multiple incarnations -- Robin the Boy Wonder. Introduced in Detective Comics in April 1940 (his second appearance was in New York World’s Fair Comics #2, May 1940, which might have given him even wider exposure), Robin was a key component in National Periodicals, creator/artist Bob Kane, art assistant Jerry Robinson and writer Bill Finger’s campaign to ‘lighten up’ and legitimize the hardboiled pulp vigilantism of the original Batman. The addition of a sidekick and boy ward made Batman a more benevolent father figure, though the fact he constantly placed Robin in harm’s way as a core dynamic of their relationship was handily overlooked as a mitigating factor. Kane recalled, “I visualized that every kid would like to be a Robin... a laughing daredevil, free -- no school, no homework, living in a mansion above the Batcave, riding in the Batmobile. It appealed to the imagination of every kid in the world” (Benton, Superhero Comics of the Golden Age, 1992, pg. 70). Robinson adds, “Robin completed the basic cast, the basic appeal. He gave the kids a character they could directly relate to. A kid might imagine himself growing up to be the Batman, but in a realistic fantasy, he’d imagine himself meeting the Batman, helping him, like Robin” (Ibid.). Robin occasionally enjoyed solo stories in Detective Comics and Batman, and had a solo series in Star Spangled Comics (#65-130).

Actually, Robin wasn’t the first -- at almost precisely the same time, Carl Burgos’s Marvel Comics character The Human Torch found Toro, adopted by a traveling circus after his parents burned to death in a train accident; thereafter, the lad was inexplicably immune to flames and, more inexplicably, burst into flames he could eventually (with the Torch’s paternal guidance) control. Toro was unique among the sidekicks in that he eventually starred in his own comics (Young Allies -- more on this, below); good thing, too, since the Human Torch ditched Toro in the summer of ‘48 to take up with Sun Girl, only to have all his comics cancelled the following year.

Joe Simon and Jacob Kurtzberg, aka Jack Kirby -- one of Veitch’s greatest personal and artistic heroes, it’s essential to note -- had collaborated on the first issue of Captain Marvel Adventures for Fawcett (March 1941). Together, they created the patriotic hero Captain America and his sidekick Bucky for Martin Goldman, launching both characters together in the origin story that opened Captain America #1 (cover dated March 1941, but on newsstands December 1940). Bucky Barnes, “boy mascot of the regiment,” stumbled into Steve Rogers’ tent at an inopportune moment, catching sight of Rogers changing from his secret identity into Captain America (“You little rascal! I ought to tan your hide!... From now on we must both share this secret together... that means you’re my partner, Bucky!”). Simon named the character after a high school basketball friend, and was oft-quoted that he invented Bucky in order to give Cap “someone to talk to, so he wouldn’t be talking to himself.” Bucky proved himself an invaluable two-fisted compatriot from the start, and that first issue of Captain America innovatively invited reader to join “The Sentinels of Liberty,” a fan club that earned (with the mailing in of one dime) a shield-replica badge sporting images of Cap, Bucky and Cap’s girlfriend Betty Ross, and a membership card with the pledge the member will “uphold the principles of the Sentinels of Liberty and assist Captain America in war against spies in the U.S.A.”. Thus, a nation of sidekicks were spawned! Youngsters signed up by the thousands, flooding Goodman’s offices with reports of suspicious neighbors and family members (ominously echoed in Brat Pack via Cody turning in his parents to the Slumburg authorities), and the publisher was reportedly threatened by Nazi sympathizers.

Kirby brought fresh energy to the mix, having lived the life of an urban tough, growing up amid a scrappy, contentious Lower East Side neighborhood. Bucky was a fighter, more masculine in design and characterization than the oddly-garbed Robin, and consistently rendered with far more vigor and panel-busting vitality than the Boy Wonder -- that was Kirby’s doing. Kirby the boy had run with a street gang and learned to fight with his fists and his wits; his ever-fertile imagination and dedication to drawing were his ticket out. His first published comics work was for a boy’s club mimeographed newsletter (“Kurtzberg’s Konceptions” for the Boys’ Brotherhood Republic newsletter, 1933-35); no surprise, then, that Kirby had a major hand in launching many ‘boy gang’ comics, starting with the first of ‘em all the Young Allies (inspired, according to Simon, by the WW1 juvenile novel The Boy Allies). Bucky and Toro joined Captain America’s Sentinels of Liberty -- Knuckles (aka Percival O’Toole), Tubby Tinkle, Jeff Sandervilt and stereotypical black youngster Whitewash Jones -- as stars of Young Allies (20 issues, 1941-46) and featured series in Marvel Mystery Comics (#75-83), Mystic Comics (#1-2, 1944) and the one-shot Amazing Comics (1944) and Complete Comics (1944). The oddest of the Young Allies guest-gang-members was Subbie, a pint-sized Sub-Mariner who appeared with the Allies in Kid Komics (#1-2, 1943) before disappearing forever, never explained. Young Allies thrived and was the primary springboard for the whole phenomenon of super kid gangs. Bucky and Toro also joined their adult mentors in the All Winners Squad (in All Winner Comics #19 and 21, 1946), over four years after Simon and Kirby had left Goodman over Captain America royalty disputes. Sans Simon and Kirby, Captain America and Bucky continued their adventures under other creative hands until 1948, when Bucky was “scripted out” of the series and Betty Ross took his place as the costumed Golden Girl until the series ended in October 1949.

Before the kid gangs proliferated (back to them in a few paragraphs), Robin and Bucky’s example ruled the roost. Boy sidekicks were the status quo, usually wearing costumes replicating that of their adult mentor but a small mask, baring head and hair, to emphasize their youth and instantly differentiate them from the grown-up heroes at a glance or in silhouette. The hero/sidekick archetype dominated the superhero comics from 1940-49, and they were indeed legion -- the name combinations alone are intoxicating! C’mon, let’s get drunk:

If you thought you couldn’t get more all-American than Captain America and Bucky, think again: Will Eisner’s studio spun the famous James Montgomery Flagg WW1 recruitment poster into Uncle Sam and Buddy (for National Comics #1-45, 1940-45, and Uncle Sam Quarterly #1-8, 1941-43); Harry ‘A’ Chesler (the original mentor/patriarch of the Joe Kubert School when Veitch and I were part of the pioneer graduating class) had Yankee Doodle Jones and Dandy (in Yankee Comics #1-4, 1941-42, Dynamic Comics and Bulls-Eye Comics). The Green Mask aka Michael Shelby (introduced in Mystery Men Comics before headlining his own comic Green Mask #1-17, 1940-46) had “The Miracle Boy” Domino; in his second phase, 1944-46, the adult Green Mask was the super alter-ego of angry pre-teen Johnny Green. The green teams proliferated: Green Lantern had Doiby Dickles (All-American Comics, June 1941), Green Arrow had Speedy (debuting together in More Fun Comics #73, November 1941, and published uninterrupted into the 1960s, also joining the Seven Soldiers of Victory in Leading Comics #1-14, 1942-45), the Green Knight had the medieval-garbed Lance Cooper (Bulls-Eye Comics #11, 1944), and the Green Turtle had Burma Boy (in Blazing Comics #1-4, 1944-45; for more info, see below). There was the Bible-inspired Samson and the slingshot-wielding David (Fantastic Comics #1-23, 1939-41, and Samson #1-6, 1940-41), The Shield and “Boy Detective” Dusty in Pep Comics and Shield-Wizard Comics (1940), “The Dynamic Duo” Magno the Magnetic Man and Davey (1940), Hydroman and Rainbow Boy (Heroic Comics #1-29, 1940-44, with Jack Walton aka Rainbow Boy earning a solo back-feature in #14-20 and #25), the Human Meteor and the orphan shoeshine boy Toby (Champion Comics #6, 1940), Phantasmo and Whizzer McGee (The Funnies #45-63, 1940-42), The Dart and Ace the Amazing Boy (Weird Comics #5-20, 1940-42), and the revamped (second) Golden Age Sandman had Sandy Hawkins, the Golden Boy (Adventure Comics, December 1941), co-created by artist Chad Grothkopf and editor Whitney Ellsworth but famously delineated for the bulk of their run by Simon and Kirby. Amazing-Man (launched in 1939) had to wait two years before his costumed companion Tommy the Amazing Kick arrived (Amazing-Man Comics #23, August 1941).

Countless more popped out of the four-color pages: Tex Thomson aka Mr. America and Bob Daley aka Fat Man (Action Comics, 1941) became the Americommandos (1942), followed by The Eagle and Buddy (Science Comics, Weird Comics and The Eagle, 1940-42), The Lynx and Blacky the Mystery Boy (Mystery Men Comics #14-31, 1940-42), The Black Lion and Cub (Wonderworld Comics #21-27, 1940-41), The Black Fury and Chuck Marley (Fantastic Comics #17-23, 1941), Ed Herron and Joe Simon’s unemployed jack-of-all-trades vigilante Mr. Scarlet and Pinky (Wow Comics #1-69, 1940-48, Pinkey introduced Winter 1941), and Jack Cole gave The Silver Streak a teenage sidekick named Mickey O’Toole aka Mercury (Silver Streak Comics, June 1941 issue) aka Meteor, joined by their super-speed falcon mascot Whiz. There was The American Crusader and, uh, Mike (introduced in Thrilling Comics #21, 1941), the same title that featured Doctor Hugo Strange and, uh, Mike (yep, just “Mike” -- again -- Thrilling Comics #24-64, 1942-49), The Firebrand and Slugger Dunn (Police Comics #1-13, 1941-42), Dynamic Man and Dynamic Boy (Dynamic Comics #1-3, 8-24, 1941-48), Flag-Man and Rusty (Captain Aero Comics, April 1942), Captain Midnight and Ichabod Mudd aka Sargeant Twilight (Captian Midnight Comics, 1942-48), TNT and Dan the Dyna-Mite (Star Spangled Comics #7-23, 1942-45), The Sword and the Lance (introduced in Super-Mystery Comics #15, 1942), The Hooded Wasp and (choke) the Wasplet (Shadow Comics, July 1943), Airmale and Stampy (I am not making this up -- Prize Comics #34-43, Stampy was introduced in the December 1943 issue), Captain Wonder and Tim Mulrooney (Kid Komics #1-2, 1943), Nightmare and Sleepy (Clue Comics #1-15, 1943-44), Captain Red Blazer and Sparky (in All-New Comics #5-12, 1944-46), The Black Cobra and Kid Cobra (Dynamic Comics and Captain Flight Comics, 1944-47), Captain Wizard and Baldy Bean (Red Band Comics and Meteor Comics, both 1945),

Sometimes, one sidekick just isn’t enough. Pharmacist Bob Benton turned himself into The Black Terror and his teenage drugstore assistant Tim Roland into an identical replica of his super self, hammering the Axis as the Terror Twins (debuting in Exciting Comics #9, June 1941 and enduring -- in three titles -- until 1949). They weren’t the only ‘twins’: Yank and Doodle were genuine twin sons and sidekicks of the second Black Owl (the first signed up for the U.S. Army!), debuting as “America’s Fighting Twins” in Prize Comics #13 (August 1941) and finally learning the Black Owl was their dad (!) in the September 1944 issue; Military spy/metallurgist Niles Reed aka The Target worked with Dave and Tommy Reed, aka the Targeteers (Target Comics #11-103, 1941-49). There were plenty of goofy sidekicks, too: Paul Gustavson’s The Human Bomb had fellow human bomb Hustace Throckmorton (in Police Comics #1-58, 1941-46), the same comicbook in which Jack Cole gave Plastic Man the lumpy super-powered polka-dot wearing Woozy Winks (introduced in Police Comics, November 1942 issue and continuing into 1956 in Plastic Man), inspiring Steel Sterling (Man of Steel)’s duo Clancy and Looney (who were popular enough to score their own feature in Jackpot Comics, 1941-43) and the Flash’s annoying semi-sidekicks the Dimwits (Winky, Blinky and Noddy) had there own backup series (beginning in All-Flash #5, 1942) before they were eventually dumped from Flash’s adventures in 1947.

Then, there were the gangs and teams. Simon and Kirby launched the concept with Marvel’s Young Allies, but that was just the beginning. Boy Commandos were introduced in Detective Comics (June 1942) and continued in World’s Finest Comics (#8-41) before National Periodicals published their own title (36 issues, 1942-49). Simon and Kirby also created the Newsboy Legion (Tommy, Gabby, Scraper and Bigwords), who fought crime alongside the Guardian (whose alter-ego was policeman Jim Harper) in Star Spangled Comics (#7-64, 1942-?), and the Boy Explorers for Harvey after WW2, among others. Once Lev Gleason hired Charles Biro to script Daredevil, Biro softened the character’s origin and added the Little Wise Guys (in Daredevil #13, October 1942) -- Meatball, Scarecrow, Peewee and Jocko -- to fight crime; Biro shocked readers by killing Meatball soon afterward, replacing him with a street gang refugee named Curly. The Little Wise Guys outlasted Daredevil, who was retired from his own comic in 1950, leaving the comic to the gang for another six years. Along with the Young Allies, there were many other kid-hero teams: the Young Defenders were Slim, Lefty, Whitey (later replaced by the bald lad Beanie), and tomboy Joanie aiding Captain Freedom (in Speed Comics #13-44, 1941-47); the Boy Buddies (in Special Comics #1, 1941 and Hangman Comics #2-8, 1942-43) comprised of MLJ characters Dusty the Boy Detective from the Shield and Roy the Super Boy from the Wizard (from Top-Notch Comics #1-27, 1939-42, and Shield-Wizard Comics); the separated-at-birth twins Wally and Tom Danger aka The Danger Twins joined forces with buddies Derrick, Butch and Eagle to form the Tough Kid Squad (one issue, 1942); The Four Comrades (Pudge, Tip, Buzz and Tommy introed in Startling Comics #16, August 1942, thru #36); Little Boy Blue (Tommy Rogers, son of a District Attorney) and the Blue Boys (Tubby and Toughy, in Sensation Comics #1-34, 37-82, 1942-1949); the multi-ethnic Junior Rangers (in Headline Comics #1-21, 1943-46, their debut story co-starring the twin brother crime-fighters Yank and Doodle from Prize Comics); and more. Yes, more...

______________

OK, the rest comes when you buy Rick's new edition of Brat Pack, later this year.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, trust me -- I'm already at 18,000+ words, with two major sections not yet incorporated into the main document. We'll no doubt have to whittle this down to something publishable, but time will tell. Rick asked for both barrels and gave me carte blanch, so --

Well, have a super Saturday, sidekicks and sycopaths!

Wafflin' Wednesday

Random sharing of online oddities for you this morning... I'm midweek in my CCS teaching schedule and in Neil Gaiman book land every other available minute, so I'm just not in a blogging frame of mind this AM. Still, here's something or three to spark your day, if you're so disposed.

21st Century Goona-Goona

Battle at Kruger: "I can't stop watching it. I'm obsessed with these water buffaloes protecting their baby. Warning: If you're freaked out by wild animals attacking each other, you might not like this." - Sarah Stewart Taylor

Ever since the early 1900s, filmmakers amateur and professional have been cranking cameras to catch unique moments in the lives and deaths of wildlife from around the globe. The more exotic the animals, the more savage the action, the wider the audience. They used to call these 'goona-goona' films in the wake of the 1930 shot-in-Bali curio Goona Goona, and whether they were distributed by major studios (Dark Rapture, etc.) or roadshowed out of the back seat of huckster's cars (Ingagi, most elusive and once the most successful of all goona-goona), the animal action would back asses into seats. Well, OK, the native nudity helped. The Walt Disney True-Life Adventures, the 1970s wildlife features from Sunn International, cable TV Shark Week and Animal Planet and Fox TV fare like When Animals Attack are all part of this venerable tradition, and here's the most recent slice of

21st Century goona-goona to kiss my eyes, and this'll have you jumping out of your seat.

Thanks to fellow CCS instructor and vet mystery novelist Sarah Stewart Taylor for that link!

Say What -- ??

"Oh you gain flesh": CCS senior Penina Gal posted this incredible link, the most hilarious subtitling job imaginable on a familiar artifact of American pop culture,

and funny stuff whether you're an Arrested Development fan or not (I'm not). Fans of Hong Kong and Asian films have savored decades of insane subtitles, and we all have our personal favorites, but this case history beats 'em all!

Bissette Art on Ebay

I've held off posting ebay links for the various slices of my past that have popped up in the past few months -- they're not my auctions -- but here's a blast from the past you might wish to bid on if you get this in time (the auction ends later today). This is of interest, perhaps, as it's one of my rare wash comics works from the early 1980s, and one of my few Marvel Comics gigs I'm still pretty much proud of (except for a couple of really rushed pages -- brrrrrrrr, there's a couple of stinkers in this otherwise solid piece of work). Plus, it's going for cheap, so give it a look --

This vintage Bissette page (scripted by Steve Perry) from the Marvel Comics Bizarre Adventures story "The Blood Bequest" could find a new home today --

-- thanks to Mark for sending the link along this AM.

This particular page was completed with an assist from Rick Veitch (look like Veitch laid it out and likely pencilled the first panel), who lettered the entire story. This is also one of a handful of pages in this story directly referencing the Marv Wolfman/Neal Adams origin of Dracula story from Marvel's Dracula Lives! black-and-white zine. This was the last Marvel gig I completed before John Totleben and I began work on Saga of the Swamp Thing, and my last wash comics creation for any publisher except Scholastic: the shoddy, inconsistent quality of printing in those days destroyed the work that went into these pages.

OK, better blogging tomorrow, promise.

Have a woolly Wednesday, one and all...

The Blur is Here! S.R.Bissette's Blur Vol. 1 is Out!
Place Your Order Now...
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Note: I posted at length last night -- see below -- on recent international news; please see that post, below, and

this is the latest news story (as of 7 AM this morning) I find on the issue.

Small comfort to know the Securities and Exchange Commission is examining major Wall Street banks to determine their vulnerability to home-loan defaults,

when this completely dubious bon mot is immediately floated (which President Bush will no doubt conflate); note, per usual, that any truly accurate figure for our national deficit must also add the amount of the national surplus Bush inherited and immediately squandered.

But enough on this; I have a personal announcement to share. Just wanted to be sure you read my Friday evening post, if you're so inclined, and that I posted a bit of followup this AM.

But here's the topic of the day for me...
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Blur Vol. 1 is now available -- as of today! -- and you can place your order immediately, via this link.

This first of four volumes launches my first major archiving of my past work as writer and artist. Dumb luck (and time-limited) access to past digital files, and my own s-l-o-w-l-y growing computer skills, determined that the archiving of my weekly "Video Views" columns (1999-2001) was the first project to see print. This is just the beginning, and I hope I can count on your interest and support throughout -- starting with your order of Blur Vol. 1.

While I know all of you would much rather see my comics work back in print first and foremost, the massive project of sorting, restoring, scanning, digitally restoring, and preparing my 30+ years of comics story and illustration work has yet to begin. This will take, quite literally, years, and hopefully I'll find partners in this venture as the archiving projects gain their respective critical mass. Thanks to Rick Veitch's own ongoing archival restoration and republication of his past work, a wee bit of our collaborative work (as Creative Burnouts) is beginning to enjoy restoration and reprint, beginning with Rick's spring 2007 release of Shiny Beasts

(which you can order, here and now, via this link from the good folks at PaneltoPanel.net, with the limited edition signature plate signed by Rick, Alan Moore and yours truly -- likely the last place on Planet Earth you'll be able to get those three signatures together in this lifetime!).

More of the Creative Burnouts material is already in Rick's hands, and that restoration and reprint process is underway; in time, our collaborative work will all be back in print.

But I still have three decades worth of art, stories, and much writing to resurrect -- all while creating new work! -- and to that end, Blur Volume 1 marks the true beginning.

Each volume of Blur is over 250 pages. That's a lot of solid reading; once completed, this four-volume set will offer you over one thousand pages of my writings on film, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Every volume of Blur is jam-packed with my extensive reviews, articles, interviews and essays on the many feature films, anime, animated features and other (e.g., Maya Deren's films, etc.) landmarks of the video marketplace between 1999 and 2001. These were the key transitional years between videocassettes and DVDs, which includes the first-ever release of a film on DVD before its vhs release (Detroit Rock City was the fateful, forgettable title setting that benchmark). These were also the vital years in which the truly independent production and distribution of features were being co-opted by the major studios; the rise into mainstream culture of the long-fringe-market Christian feature films (via the boxoffice hit The Omega Code, the first Christian production to pop up on Variety's weekly top boxoffice grosses); the definitive embrace of anime by the major studios (via Warner Bros. theatrical release of Pokemon and Disney's initial manhandling of Hayao Miyazaki's masterpiece Princess Mononoke) -- all that, too, is here, in the Blur volumes. That makes these volumes further invaluable in charting a major period of Millennial change in our pop cultural landscape, preserving the ebb and flow and shifts in a way few other books have.

It's my plan to be publishing all my extensive writing on horror films, comics, and begin the archiving and reprinting of my past comics works, too, within the next couple of years. That I can do so at all is thanks primarily to the help and support I've received from my wife Marjory, my beloved friends Jean-Marc and Randy L'officier at Black Coat Press, and everyone at the Center for Cartoon Studies, primarily Jon-Mikel Gates at this critical juncture.

I'm happy to see Blur has already attracted some unsolicited notice online,

noting of course that Tim Lucas is an old friend; still, the post was unsolicited, and bodes well. (Curious aside: Tim notes Blur in the context of Bryan Senn's new McFarland book A Year of Fear; the cover collage image of all four Blur volumes is composed in part from imagery and textures lifted from elements of Mike Dobbs and my long-defunct A Year in Fear 1992 16-month horror calender, published by Tundra back in the day. Mere synchronicity, but still, amusing to this ol' codger.).

In any case, my first 20 copies of Blur are en route to me now from Black Coat and Lightning Press, and I'll be posting review copies later this week. But don't wait -- please, order from Black Coat Press knowing your copy could be in hand this month, too!

The full wraparound cover; collage/painting by yours truly, cover design by Jon-Mikel Gates; thanks, Jon! Covers to Blur Vol. 2-4 to be posted soon.

Note that Blur is only one of the many new titles available from Black Coat Press, an international publisher worthy of your attention and support.

More on the Blur book series -- including tantalizing excerpts -- in the days to come. Hey, I'm a shameless huckster, folks, but I'll be sure to keep the ballyhoo always entertaining and break it up amongst other posts of interest.

Have a great Saturday, one and all!

Thursday Lull:
This and That, Comics, Books, and Hostel: Part II

Well, as I wait for some of the ongoing CCS interviews to reach completion -- hey, guys and gals, get me your answers ASAP! -- and work on my own last couple of comics project for MoCCA debut projects, I'll take advantage of this Thursday AM lull in interview action to do a little morning catching up on odds and ends.

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"Not a dream! Not an imaginary story!"

Rick Veitch sent me this link to Army Times.com's online review of Rick's new Vertigo series, Army@Love, which is well worth a read.

The comic and the review, I mean, are worth a read.

This is some of Rick's most pointed satire to date, and oddly non-partisan in its ravaging of every aspect of the new face of 21st Century warfare. Who'da thunk it -- Rick Veitch as the Terry Southern of 21st Century mainstream comics?

The Army Times piece is especially worth a look for having interviewed Joe Kubert, too, and getting his reaction to Rick's latest opus. Check it out!

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I've been talking with the CCS grads/seniors/artists in the Myrant interviews about their perceptions of the potential future (and their futures) in comics, and coincidentally

Alan David Doane just posted his own musings on the topic, here.

I'll add, though, that like broadband internet, the sad fact of the matter is that most rural pockets simply aren't being served -- that is, there are no comics shops or venues offering comics in any reasonable driving distance.

When I was a kid, every small town had someplace in biking distance to buy comics off a spinner rack, usually in some quantity. Drug Stores had 'em, Mom and Pop grocery stores had 'em, and even a boy in backwoods Duxbury, VT could find comics in Vincent's Pharmacy across the Winooski River in Waterbury (a 20-minute bike ride) or in the village markets in Moretown, Middlesex or Waitesfield.

Today, Border's or some other chain book store in a nearby mall may be the only access to anything, save for the Archie Digest(s) and Disney Adventures (also digest format) sold at the supermarket impulse-buy checkout counter racks. This means there are precious few entry-level comics for young readers; thankfully, libraries are aggressively racking graphic novels; sadly, more and more communities are ceasing funding of libraries, and we're seeing some surprising local community libraries scaling back their purchases, their weekly schedules (open fewer and shorter hours), and moving toward closing their doors once and for all. This will cut off many young readers from entry-level graphic novels and, of course, reading, period -- another sad sign of the times.

Anyhoot, read Alan's post, and weigh in with your opinion there; the CCSers and I will continue to air our views here via the interview series.

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Another oddly timely sharing of info from Mirage Studios amigo Mike Dooney arrived this week, strangely attuned to both the memories I've just shared of '50s/'60s/'early '70s comics availability and, coincidentally, my ongoing work on the second part of my Star-Spangled War Stories "War That Time Forgot" reveries and my N-Man and Fury pet projects.

Mike sent me links to two sites that "allow you to see what comics were on the stands in a given week in the '60's etc." -- Wow, thanks, Mike, these sites are big fun!

Here's the DC cover site, and

here's the Marvel comics site!

Enjoy, and thanks, Mike.

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Another odd coincidence this week is my reading US Army Specialist Tony Lagouranis's harrowing account of his own experiences as an Iraq War interrogator, Fear Up Harsh (just out in bookstores everywhere) and catching a matinee of Eli Roth's Hostel: Part II (2007) this week. This isn't "pleasant" reading or viewing, but essential, each in their own way.

I'm sure some will object to my placing these two works side-by-side in this manner, but as noted numerous times here, I see obvious and timely parallels in our current political and military policies and the new wave of 'strap 'em to a chair/confined horror' films, and these are the two most prominent incarnations of the literature and cinematic streams of the genre.

I'm only half-way through Lagouranis's book, co-authored by Allen Mikaelian, but it's heartfelt and heartbreaking stuff, to say the least. Like many who have come home from serving in Iraq, and particularly those implementing the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld torture-by-another-name interrogation of often-innocent Iraq citizens, Lagouranis is speaking out about his extreme misgivings about this reprehensible new age of US military occupation sans Geneva Convention restraints. Unlike other pundits, articles and books on the subject, Lagouranis's views are rooted firmly in first-person experience, making this absolutely essential reading where ever you currently seat yourself on this controversial issue.

If you can't access the book or can't be bothered to read it,

Lagouranis's interview last week on The Diane Rehm Show is absolutely essential listening (Susan Page is the interviewer, filling in for Rehm), in part for the confrontational nature of some of the exchanges with skeptical and/or outraged listeners that may answer some of your concerns or questions, too.

If you can't be bothered with either, and still somehow support and/or stomach this US policy as "justified," you're hopeless.
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Sadly, more Americans -- particularly those more likely to end up serving in Iraq and/or Afghanistan than their older compatriots less likely to serve -- vicariously toyed with these hot-button issues (to torture or not to torture?) this week via the wide theatrical opening of Eli Roth's Hostel: Part II.

In the best of all worlds, these increasingly pressing real-world issues would be hotly debated in public venues all Americans would be tuned in to, and books like Fear Up Harsh would be reaching more voting citizens than Hostel: Part II, but that's la-la land, folks.

Let's face facts. Television and movies reach far, far more eyes and ears than books ever will in 2007, and Hostel: Part II will no doubt comprise the deepest thinking on torture most Americans will ever give the subject. So, I'll engage with my thoughts on the film in that context, folks.

More disturbing than anything in Hostel: Part II is the complacent indifference the film has been greeted with. The TV and radio spots and promo have been omnipresent, and it was surprising to hear an NPR radio program adopt Chas Balun's term 'gornography' (which Chas coined to sum up his personal revulsion for Aftermath when he was a guest at Montreal's FantAsia Fest in the '90s) in reference to Hostel: Part II. Even the outrage has reflected a sad overload mentality, from

those villifying the movie -- "You live in a free country, you put up with crud like Hostel Part II", writes Michael Phillips in The Chicago Tribune (here's the best online link to sample the yays and the nays, including Phillips's review) -- and

easily bored gorehounds who blithely note, "All in all I thought that Hostel 2 was sort of a 'meh' film" and "At least with the Saw movies there was a purpose for the torture."

Huh. Well, that's not the movie I saw.

First, I'll talk about this movie as a movie, period, and on its own terms.

Hostel: Part II is easily the best of Roth's films, manifesting a maturation of writing and directorial skills that were barely suggested by the earnest crudities of Cabin Fever. Roth is still willfully fusing intelligence and pop cultural debris -- the calling card of his dog pack, as Grindhouse lovingly demonstrated -- wearing his trash chic (copyright G. Michael Dobbs!) credentials on his sleeve without derailing the narrative thrust or drive of this, his tightest and best-crafted script. Roth succinctly ties up the loose ends of the original Hostel in an opener most reminiscent of Friday the 13th: Part 2 (1981) -- there's crap movie street cred for ya, bunkie -- before jumping into an equally succinct and effective expansion of all that Hostel implied.

Unlike the ballyhoo for the notorious Snuff ("Made in South America -- Where Life is Cheap!"), life isn't cheap in Hostel: Part II -- it's in fact tres expensive, as we quickly see when the smarmy young desk manager scans the passports of our trio of American female tourist (Roth inverting the gender issues of Hostel), setting off an international online bidding war for the option to execute. In about three minutes of screentime, Roth crosscuts between a global sampler of business elite and aristocracies, bidding on their laptops, cell phones and text messagers while at/in their respective desks, meetings, lunches, family outings, pools and golf courses.

This is deft, creepy, cruel and funny stuff, the first American cinematic fruition of all that Ellis delineated in his then-scandalous novel American Psycho. The rich yuppies of the '80s were only the tip of the iceberg. Moneyed sociopaths rule, and it's Hostel: Part II's effortless shorthand cartography of class warfare as a covert dungeon-room conflation of instant-connection 21st Century global economies and medieval European aristocratic abuses of power that sets Roth's sites higher than any of this subgenre to date.

Roth's cinematic chops are up to the challenge his own conceit presents. Hostel: Part II evokes The Most Dangerous Game (the venerable wellspring of this entire genre, quite explicitly referenced when the heroine stumbles into the hidden lair -- the headquarters -- of the implacable overseer of the conspiratorial network of youth hostels and subterranean torture chambers) and a range of now-celebrated European genre permutations, from '60s German-made medieval horrors (e.g., Tomb of Torture, etc.), Jess Franco (specifically La Comtesse Perverse) and gialli (note Edwige Fenech's role here as an art teacher, though the narrative echoes a few giallo, specifically Perfume of the Lady in Black) to far more aggressive '80s Euro-trash fare (none other than Ruggero Deodato, director of Cannibal Holocaust, cameos as "Italian cannibal," dining on one of the actors from the last Harry Potter film!). The very first onscreen atrocity recreates Elizabeth Bathory's historic literal bloodbaths, tapping (pun intended) the most ancient of predatory aristocratic abuses -- vampirism, both genuine (Bathory) or metaphoric (Stoker's Dracula), has always been the most pervasive of all 'rich cannibalizing the poor' horror tales. Roth gets that out of the way quickly (in a grueling setpiece) to get to deeper, rawer nerves.

In an underground economy where money trumps all -- even life -- the macho craving for obscene masculine 'rites of passage' (to increase one's personal power in corporate office arenas) is presented as the explicit motive for the two American businessmen buying Hostel's favors. This sociopathology may meet its match when it's a rich heiress tied to the hot seat. That's it, in a nutshell, and that's enough for an effective horror story. This truly is nightmare turf, for plankton-level peasants like ourselves and aspiring plutocratic whales alike, and kudos to Roth for upping the conceptual ante along with the gore quotient.

Hostel: Part II isn't art -- in that context, it's unlikely any filmmaker will ever match or top Pasolini's Salo in this reviled genre that by its very nature ghettoizes itself -- but it's a strong piece of work. Roth's script and direction are lean, mean and effective, his writing skills are head-and-shoulders above those demonstrated in his first two films, and the cast is uniformly solid and engaging. The location filming (in Prague and Iceland) enhances the story and experience considerably, and Hostel: Part II is the best of its ilk.

That's still likely to keep most of you away from the film; it fascinates me how many passionate practitioners of the genre still belittle and dismiss these films with a contemptuous turn of the lip or wave of the hand, as if "these kinds of films" were beneath them, sight unseen. I don't know, it's the same old shit -- just because the title The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is calculated to upset or offend, or George Romero's zombies seem silly out of context, doesn't mean there isn't much more, and something of real value, going on in "these kinds of films." I'm sick of the haughty contempt other artists -- including my friends! -- show for "these kinds of films," while they expect others to take their work seriously. (When I got into the topic of the current horror films briefly with Rick V during a chat, his eyes glazed and that "poor, sad Bissette" look came over his face (familiar since the Dawn of the Dead conversation, circa 1978) -- well, Rick, you've got Army@Love, Roth has Hostel: Part II. You're both aiming at the same underbellies, amigo. Ah, well, Rick always hated horror movies, anyway, particularly the ones with the most aggressive exploitation elements.)

"These kinds of films" are about something other than simply reveling in the spectacle of pain. They're actually quite complex in the moral issues and emotions they tap, explore (and, yes, exploit). With Hostel: Part II, Roth realizes, with unflinching clarity, a potent parable concerning the pathologies and hidden economies which manifest the ravages of NAFTA/European Union global corporate era plutocracies and the bottom-dollar cash uber alle shared cultures.

And by 'hidden economies,' I'm not referring to the underground snuff-chambers Roth mythologizes -- no, I'm referring to the film's most politically barbed subplot and most truthful aspect: the two American businessmen who bid, win and wind themselves up for the torture fest they crave. One is as macho as Rudy Giuliani (whom he resembles) in his 'bring it on' swagger and bluster, the other reluctantly involved. The dialogue these two wanna-be-American Psychos share during their morning jog before their day in the chambers is the black heart of the film; it may have run false a month ago, but after hearing the macho, compassionless posturing of the Republican debates in May and early June, it rings absolutely true. How their two stories play out, how their characters meet their respective fates, is the meat of this movie.

It ain't pretty, but it speaks volumes about the male fantasies that have launched us, as a nation, into interminable war, and what promises to keep us there. It also speaks volumes about the human capacity for objectification, projection, demonizing and scape-goating, and the need many have for victims to objectify, project upon, demonize and destroy -- the be-all and end-all of our current foreign policies.

It's also the closest most American teenage and twenty-something viewers are going to get to the grim realities of Tony Lagouranis's Fear Up Harsh, a book most Americans will knee-jerk avoid, dismiss and/or revile without reading it.

Please note, I'm not celebrating this sick function of the pop culture, just acknowledging the reality, and identifying how it functions.

I don't mean to lionize Roth, either -- I don't know him, but as the first horror movie director to make it into The New York Times 'Style' section (writing about his antics in the Manhattan club scene post-Hostel), Roth is indeed of a new breed, and he comes across as as an egotistical brat at times, but hey, what do I know. He's making horror movies that are honest in their way and he's getting better with every movie, so I'm on board for the duration. Bring 'em on, Eli. In the age of sick powerbrokers like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Gonzales redirecting American military operations into squalid cement dungeons in remote corners of the globe to exercise their respective power fantasies rendered flesh, directed toward innocents as well as the terrorists they target, if Eli Roth's brand of pop meditation on the issues is all we get, I'll embrace it.

It is some form of deterrent, some counter to Fox News's cheering on of the destructive Bush doctrines and status quo (ya, I know, O'Reilly et al have finally become more critical of late, but they actively campaigend for and promoted these policies, this war). It's at least offering some snapshot of what it feels like when someone (even wealthy American tourists) are 'rendered' (read: kidnapped) to awaken imprisoned, stripped of their rights, dignity and reduced to pointless interrogation fodder (in these films, the only point of the 'interrogation' is the primal power of victimizer over victim, the basest dynamic at work in any such scenario) -- and mind you, the Hostel films do locate the audience sympathies with the victims, not the perpetrators (it's the Saw franchise that vicariously engages with the more complex victim/victimizer issues).

To paraphrase one of the key architects of the current American clusterfuck, "We'll work with the pop culture army we have, not the one we'd wish for" -- until we can, ourselves, manifest a better one (I did my best & my part to do so in the '80s and '90s, folks).

Fear Up Harsh is the more legitimate, essential, necessary experience, but it's not going to reach many people. But what would a mass-market film that "legitimately" engaged with these volatile issues look like, and who would go see it? We have plenty of pro-torture media (24) and revenge fantasies (pick your recent action movie hit of choice); anti-torture movies are mighty hard to come by. What fictionalized equivalent of Fear Up Harsh would, or could, exist? What studio would finance it, what theater would show it?

The reality is this: Films like Saw and Hostel, in all their incarnations, are being financed by the studios and distributed to thousands of theaters because their genre structures overly depoliticize the content -- if the 'extraordinary renditions' of both of Roth's Hostel films were linked to the interminable-by-definition 'War on Terror', these films would not exist; if they existed, they would not be seen. Period.

How many of you saw, or even wanted to see, Gitmo: The New Rules of War, The Road to Guantanamo, The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib or Death in Gaza? No more than saw Winter Soldier and Sir! No Sir! (the two best and most accesible documentaries on the Vietnam War soldiers-against-the-war movement), I'm willing to bet. Go ahead, try to find any of those films for rent in your local DVD store -- even if you have no intention of seeing them, see if you can find them to view. But you'll find every installment of Saw, along with Wolf Creek, Hostel, etc. This is not a passive dynamic at work; for you free-market advocates, this is the so-called free market quite actively at work (as if the myth of 'free market' is even sustainable in the most addled of minds when only six major studios call the shots in American movie theaters). The new studio in town, Lions Gate, has built its entire empire on "these films"!

Hell, for just daring to review one of the films I've just cited, The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib -- scroll down to his June 5th post -- and give it a positive review, Mike Dobbs is taking heat (see his June 11th post, and comments).

Too many Americans don't just tune out, they either don't want to acknowledge the realities, or increasingly refuse to tolerate any objection to these horrendous abuses. However you shake the latter stance, it's still pro-torture (see the comments on Mike's June 11th post for the sorry and all-too-familiar rationale). But Americans tolerate horror movies -- they're fantasies, after all, however brutal they may be -- so, Hostel: Part II reaches the masses.

Hostel: Part II has already reached a lot of people, and more every day -- and it is better than no mediation on the issues. It's 93 somber minutes more than most teenagers, adults and TV shows give to the issues, and it's a hell of a lot more honest than anything Rush Limbaugh (remember his "our boys just letting off a little steam" comment about Abu Ghraib?), Bill O'Reilly, Rice or Rumsfeld or Cheney or that miserable fuckwad Gonzales have said on the matter.

It's a sad, sorry, worse-than-tragic state of affairs, but it's also a very American state of affairs, given the same pop culture dynamic that was at work and play in the late '60s and early '70s during Vietnam and Nixon's reign.

Given the grim realities of Bush Administration policies as a context for the macho strutting and crowing at the core of Hostel: Part II, Roth distills it to its primal essence. Thankfully, he's a sharp enough writer this time around to play his narrative trump cards with candor and finesse (even if that 'finesse' does include the most graphic onscreen castration since Make Them Die Slowly and Emanuelle in America, and the most graphic ever in mainstream American cinema; in narrative and metaphoric terms, though, that onscreen castration is central).

We're an utterly numb nation, and the old arguments about the fantasy pop culture's plethora of violence being responsible for desensitizing the populace simply can't hold water any longer in the face of reality. The horrors of Hostel: Part II, horrific though they may be, are as paled by reality as the Universal horror films of the 1940s were in the wake of the revelations of the Death Camps and the bombing of Hiroshima.

Choose your poison: the GOPs stonewalling of any censure of Gonzales; the brutalizing rhetoric of the Republican debates; the most recent court refute of the Administration's ongoing maladroit prosecution of Guantanamo prisoners; General Colin Powell's public statements against both Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib; the Italian legal prosecution (and attempted prosecutions) of a CIA-managed 'extraordinary rendition' operation which subverted more efficient international police operations targeting terrorist suspects; the list is interminable, and that's only this and last week's news!

It's all evidence of a proud, arrogant plutocratic culture gone pathologically insane, lacking even minimal human compassion while boasting, bragging and strutting its stuff as the most willfully "Christian" of all nations.

Hostel: Part II isn't the problem. Hostel: Part II isn't just the kind of movies we deserve; it's a kind of movie we, oddly enough, need.

Have a great Thursday, one and all...

Monday, Bloody Monday...

Before launching into this week's procession of interviews, I reckon it's fair to provide a little Monday recap of my week in some matters:

* I completed a two-page piece for the upcoming Trees & Hills New England cartoonists collective's anthology comic. They'll be selling it at MoCCA, too, so keep an eye out for that. Ye Venerable Editors, Dan Barlow and Colin Tedford, were at CCS on Saturday for a Trees & Hills comics jamming session, and I left the completed pages for them, as I couldn't attend.

The two-pager has been accepted, but their comments were interesting: this is an all-ages anthology, and working carefully within those parameters, I cooked up the most subversive two-pager I could, aimed at anyone who has ever seen a school yearbook. Dan wrote, "Very powerful stuff. I was actually quite stunned when I read it." Colin wrote, "Kind of at the edge of 'all-ages' (for some folks, I guess? I mean, I read Ender's Game in elementary school), but no more so than a newspaper anyway. I'm starting the mini's layout right here in the CCS classroom - looks like 52 pages incl. bios..."

Heh heh. You can do a lot with just two pages, folks. And if you want to see what this is all about, you'll just have to buy the comic, won't you? Links to follow, once Colin and Dan give me the heads up.

* Also worked on some panels/pages with CCS graduate Sean Morgan for his MoCCA comic. I've been drawing aliens for Sean's new story, and we'll have more on that closer to MoCCA -- again, you'll have to buy the comic to see what we've cooked up!

* Still laboring over one more piece for another CCS-spawned venture for MoCCA, but I'll hold off saying anything more until it's done. Biggest damn page I ever worked on, though.

Well, I've got to dash -- I'm having breakfast with CCS grad Ross Wood Studlar, who is leaving VT and the CCS community for work in the grand outdoors of Oregon this summer.

As I pointed out to Ross via email, he's carrying on a proud tradition: after all, folk singer/cartoonist Michael Hurley has been shuttling between Oregon and Vermont since the '60s, making his way in the world while making his own distinctive music and comics. Sending Ross off with at least one good Crossroads Cafe breakfast in his belly, my treat, seems the right thing to do. We'll miss you, Ross!

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The conclusion of The Sopranos was a corker last night. I loved the ending -- I thought my fucking cable had gone out! It pissed me off and left me feeling the way Tony must have felt every moment of his adult life. Kudos to David Chase and all the creators; what a great series.

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Beating a Dead Horse into Pulp Dept.: Note the comment thread on yesterday's 'PS' post, if you're interested in revisiting or visiting for the first time why I ain't doing what many folks think I should be doing, based on not knowing -- ah, well, read it, if you're interested.

So it's all in one neat, tidy compact place, here's the back story links:

Final public exchange with Rick Veitch about these & related matters, which pretty much covers the basics;

Dave Sim's followup to that exchange, which led to a final airing on the subject

via this reply from me, which is pretty much my last word on the subject of my retirement and reasons for it,

which thankfully brought the discussion (of years!) to a close with this reply from Dave Sim, putting matters to rest (scroll down a ways in his post to reach the few relevant paragraphs),

to conclude with this followup thread at Al Nickeron's Creator Rights Forum discussion board -- Go to: Creators Rights Forum Index -> Creator's Rights Discussions on the discussion board -- And then: the thread entitled: "Post subject: Steve Bissette's letter: Dave Sim and 1963..." -- my letter, and Dave's reply, are there complete, followed by some conversation about the very points Jed raised in last night's comments on this blog.

Whew. That's that, I hope. If not, let's converse on the comment thread for last night's PS, please.

And that frees me up now for the week of wonders ahead -- more interviews here, more drawing at home, and a sweet week in June.

Have a great Monday, one and all --