REMEMBERANCE OF CHRISTMAS PAST 1

This little guy is one of the earliest Christmas presents I can recall ever getting. It's a talking Beany doll from Mattel (You Can Tell It's Mattel, It's Swell!) from 1962. Beany had a pull string on his side and uttered about half a dozen phrases when you pulled the string. Stuff like: "Help, Cecil, Help!", "My name's Beany, what's yours?" and "Look out for Dishonest John". His body was stuffed, his jersey and overalls cloth while his hands, feet and head (complete with a beanie and spinning propeller) were all hard molded rubber. 

Beany, of course, was one of the stars of the cartoon series BEANY AND CECIL which ran on ABC-TV from 1962-1969. It was produced by legendary animator Bob Clampett. Beany's sidekick, Cecil, was a sea-sick sea-serpent. 

I adored this series when I was a wee lad and I loved my talking Beany doll even more. 

More Christmas memories to come. Stay tuned.

THE PILGRIM PROJECT

I did this one backwards. 

I saw the film COUNTDOWN (1968) a few years ago (and posted a review here on the blog). Then I read the Dell Movie Comic adaptation of the film. Finally, I read THE PILGRIM PROJECT (1964), the original novel upon which the film was based. Probably should have read the book first, seen the film, then finished off with the comic. Regardless of the order of encounter, I've now experienced this story in the three media in which it appeared and, as usual, it's the original novel that stands out as the best.

The Pilgrim Project is a secret space program developed by NASA to send one astronaut to the moon in an old Mercury space capsule. Once on the lunar surface, the astronaut will take up residence in a previously launched shelter. He'll be resupplied with other landings for the time it takes to successfully launch a three man Apollo mission to the moon whereupon the lone astronaut will be rescued and returned to Earth. Sounds like a crazy plan, right? 

Cockeyed as the Pilgrim Program is, it is scientifically proven to have a better than average chance of success if and when the United States ever has need to use it. Which probably won't ever happen. Until it does, when the Russians launch a one man mission to the moon from an orbiting Soviet space platform. Now, it's a race against time to find a volunteer, put him through rigorous training and send him on what could be a one way trip to the moon.

Author Hank Searls combines the hard science of 1960s NASA with political wrangling in the halls of Congress and the White House. The President and Vice-President are major players in the drama as is a powerful senator from California and an influential newspaper columnist. The German rocket scientist who devised the plan is terrified at the thought of actually going through with it while a Navy flight surgeon prematurely spills the beans about the program.

And then there is the man chosen for the mission, Steve Lawrence (what, no Edie Gorme?). Lawrence was played in the film by James Caan and here he's a conflicted man reluctant to leave his wife and son while at the same time feeling as if he has something to prove to his commanding officer and former Mercury astronaut known only as The Colonel (Robert Duval in the film). 

There's plenty of plot twists and it's not a guarantee that the mission will even launch. But launch it does in the novel's final pages which find Lawrence desperately searching the desolate lunar surface for the pre-launched shelter. Does he find it?

Read THE PILGRIM PROJECT and find out. Thumbs up.

"I REMEMBER WHEN COMIC BOOKS WERE A NICKEL!"

I had a conversation the other day with a buddy of mine about our respective comic book buying habits when we were kids. He has a couple of years on me but we grew up in the same time period. 

"I used to buy comics for a dime when I was a kid," he said. Which is certainly true. "Heck, I even bought some for a nickel." Which is kinda sorta true.

Comic books, dating all the way back to ACTION COMICS #1 in 1938, were always priced at ten cents. This was the standard cover price until the early sixties when prices rose to twelve cents. Oh sure, there were some exceptions. Dell Comics went from ten to fifteen cents before scaling back to twelve and there were always the giant size comics priced at twenty-five cents. But a nickel?

The only comic books that I know of that had a five cent cover price were the appropriately named NICKEL COMICS, a Fawcett publication which ran for eight issues in 1940. This short lived,  bi-weekly comic featured the adventures of Bulletman along with other Fawcett stalwarts. 

I guarantee you that my buddy never bought this comic because he wasn't born until the 1950s. 

Now, what he may be remembering is purchasing used comics from retailers who marked down older comics to half of the ten cent cover price in order to move inventory. That's entirely possible and it's what many comic book fans of a certain age probably experienced growing up.

But buying a brand new comic book off of the spinner rack for a nickel? Sorry, never happened.

I JUST PASSED A MILESTONE (AND BOY, DID THAT HURT)

I check the stats here on a fairly regular basis but this one slipped past me recently. I have posted a total of 1,570 posts and this trusty old blog has had 200,645 hits in the six plus years it's been up and running. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to stop by, read something and leave a comment. Your readership is greatly appreciated. As they use to say on THE TONIGHT SHOW, "More to Come." 

THE ILLUSTRATED MAN

I know a helluva lot more about both film and the works of Ray Bradbury today, in 2018 at the age of sixty-two, than I did at the age of thirteen in 1969. That's when I first saw THE ILLUSTRATED MAN at the State (now Stateside) Theater in downtown Austin. Didn't much care for the film at the time and when I watched it again yesterday for the first time in forty-nine years, I discovered that the film was even worse than I remembered it. 

It's not just bad. It's a fresh, hot, steaming turd of a horrible movie. 

Rod Steiger, who never met a piece of scenery he couldn't chew into oblivion, stars as the title character, a man whose proper name is actually the rather prosaic Carl. His body is covered in tattoos (except for his head and face and a blank spot on his back). But don't dare call them "tattoos". Carl is explicit that they should be referred to as "skin illustrations". The illustrations were placed upon Carl's body by Felicia (Claire Bloom), a woman who may or may not have come from the future and who may or may not be a witch (or both).

Carl meets a young drifter, Willie (Robert Drivas), on the road and tells him the story of how he acquired the "skin illustrations". They are pictures that come alive if you look at them too long and hard and come alive they do when Willie does just that. The illustrations morph into three stories, THE VELDT, THE LONG RAIN and THE LAST NIGHT OF THE WORLD. Funny thing about these stories. Carl and Felicia appear in each one and in each one they're characters named Carl and Felicia. There's no attempt to differentiate these story characters from the "real" Carl and Felicia. It's a clumsy bit of story telling that serves only to confuse an already bewildering narrative. 

The stories, are of course, adaptations of short stories found in Ray Bradbury's collection THE ILLUSTRATED MAN, first published in 1951. I read that book at the time of the film's release and re-read it a few years ago at the time of Bradbury's death. Bradbury's never been my favorite writer but I do admire his prose and all of the stories adapted in the film version were much better served on paper than celluloid. The futuristic settings are all uniformly tired and cliched looking, all sterile white plastic and billowing white tents for dwellings, and unisex, one-piece clothing for costumes.

 While it's a failure on the part of the production designer. the real failure here lies in the screenplay by Howard B. Kreitsek and the leaden, unimaginative direction by genre hack Jack Smight. Neither men bring an ounce of Bradbury's poetic imagery and lyrical prose to life. They're literally tone deaf when it comes to evoking the slightest scintilla of a sense of wonder, of breathless imagination that this material so desperately cries out for. Prior to ILLUSTRATED MAN, Bradbury's work was much better served on film in such fare as BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953), IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953) and FAHRENHEIT 451 (1966).

But the worst offender here is Steiger. His performance is as hammy and over the top as you would expect from this actor who could never play a part at a level of ten when eleven was available and so much better. While watching the film I wondered if director Smight gave Steiger any direction at all, if he even bothered to shape a performance and an honest-to-gosh character out of Steiger and the material or if Steiger just said, "Jack, I've got this, let me do it my way." I imagine it was the latter and given what was probably a limited budget and schedule, Smight knew better than to lock horns with his star. After all, Warner Brothers hired Steiger for the role so the powers that be must have wanted what he could bring to the screen.

After the three stories have played out, Willie looks into the blank spot on Carl's back and sees his own death (strangulation by Carl) depicted. Willie picks up a rather large rock and repeatedly bashes Carl's head in. Willie lights out across the countryside with Carl's dog, Peck in pursuit. Then, amazingly, Carl rises from his beating, one side of his face horribly disfigured by the attack and begins to lumber along the road after Willie. The end.

Wait, what?

Yep, the movie simply ends on a freeze frame of a deserted dirt road. Did Willie get away? Did Carl catch and kill him as foretold in the blank spot? Who knows? Who cares? The 103 minutes of this turkey are done.

I cannot recommend THE ILLUSTRATED MAN to anyone, not even die hard Bradbury fans who want to see the legendary master's work brought to life on the screen. Read one of his books, any of his books or watch any of the other films and television programs that have been produced over the years. But whatever you do, for God's sake, avoid this mess. 

"WITH GREAT POWER...."

I should have paid the $200.00 at that Wizard World Comic Con in Austin a few years ago. I should have ponied up my money and stood in line for who knows how long to meet the one and only Stan Lee. Don't know what I would have said that he hadn't heard a million times before from countless true believers. Something along the lines of "your work changed my life", "I love everything you've ever done", "you were a major part of my childhood",  "I became a writer because of you", or perhaps, just a simple and heartfelt "thank you.". 

Shoulda, coulda, woulda.

 I had my chance and I didn't take it. Stan Lee died today at the age of 95. This is a year that has seen two other creative giants, Steve Ditko and Harlan Ellison, pass away. Ditko's work, whether alone or in tandem with Stan, had a profound impact on my life as did the one-of-a-kind writings of Harlan Ellison. Important artists in my 62 years. But Stan, man, Stan towered above them all.

Got to meet Forrest J. Ackerman, another major figure in my life, not once but twice, first at his home in Los Angeles (the legendary "Ackermansion) and again in Austin when he was our opening night guest at the first and only Drive-In Double Feature Film Festival. Got to see Don Rickles twice (once in Las Vegas at the now gone Stardust Hotel and Casino, the other time at Austin's Paramount Theatre). Saw Woody Allen on stage at the Paramount also. Introduced and did a Q&A with Adam (Batman) West in 2010 before a full house at the Paramount before a screening of the 1966 BATMAN film.

 

 I geeked out like a total fanboy when I met Michael Chabon and got him to sign my hardcover first edition his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, of THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY (a work informed in no small measure by the life of Stan Lee). Met Neal Adams and told him that his artwork blew my mind when I first encountered it as a young lad. "Son," he replied, "that was my job."

 Met Gil Kane years ago at a convention in Houston. Practically everyone there was fawning over the current enfant terribles George Perez and Chris Claremont (yes, it was that long ago), while no one was at Kane's table except for me. Had a great visit with him. Chatted with Erin (BUCK ROGERS) Grey and Richard (FORBIDDEN PLANET) Anderson at a Wizard World convention. Sold books for and got my picture taken with William (STAR TREK) Shatner (he was an asshole, by the way). 

 I've had the opportunity to host a book signing event with the second man on the moon, Buzz Aldrin, go through a buffet line with Robert Duvall, visit with Peter Bogdanovich and Eli Wallach (both at the Paramount) , sit in on an English class lecture at St. Edward's University by James Ellroy, spot Sid Melton in the Las Vegas airport and share a plane flight to Los Angeles with Sugar Ray Leonard.

Not bad, not bad at all. But still, I had the chance to go for Stan and didn't take it. 

Stan Lee isn't my favorite comic book writer. That honor would go to Roy Thomas. But Stan was certainly the first comic book writer I knew by name. His byline was on practically every Marvel comic I bought in the 1960s. It seems that Stan wrote and edited everything published by Marvel at the time. My brother used to give me grief about how much I loved Stan's writing. He used to deride the entire concept of comic books and tell me, with more than a hint of malice, that there was no Stan Lee, that that was just a name someone made up. I knew better.

I'll leave it for others to document all of Stan's many accomplishments in the field of popular culture. While he may not have been the best writer in the history of comics, he was certainly the best at self-promotion, bombast and hyperbole. Yet Stan backed up the bally-hoo with solid, well crafted stories, drenched with emotion and leavened with humor, while creating from scratch the legendary Marvel Universe.

Oh sure, he had help in the form of such stalwarts as Don Heck, Dick Ayers, and Steve Ditko. Stan and Jack Kirby, my all-time favorite comic book artist, produced tons of excellent work. Their 100 issue run on FANTASTIC FOUR as co-creators, is a feat never to be equaled or surpassed in comic book history, a marathon of ideas, concepts and characters tumbling out one after the other, each one more impressive and game changing than the last. Consider: Dr. Doom, the revived Sub-Mariner, the Mole Man, the Puppet Master, Diablo, Dragon Man, the Hate Monger, the Red Ghost and his Super Apes, the Watcher, the Skrulls, the Inhumans, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, the Black Panther, the Mad Thinker, the Sentry, Ronan the Accuser, Annihilus, the Negative Zone, Psycho Man, Wyatt Wingfoot, Black Bolt, Medusa, the Frightful Four, Gorgon, Kurrgo, Master of Planet X, and on and on and on. Lee and Kirby produced what are hands down the greatest superhero comic books ever made. Once again, others can speak to the matter of who did what where credit is due. I'm not here to address that. I'm only here to say that Lee and Kirby were the Lennon and McCartney of comic books. 

It's been fun to see Stan cameo in all of the recent Marvel films and it's safe to say that there are millions of people out there who can easily quote Stan's most famous piece of writing without ever having read a single comic book by Stan or any one else.

"With great power there must also come great responsibility."

That was the final caption on the final panel of the very first Spider-Mann story by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. It appeared in AMAZING FANTASY #15 (the last issue of that title before Spidey debuted in his own title, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.). I own a copy of AF #15 and it's what I would have clutched in my hands while waiting for Stan to sign it for me. In that line I never got in that time I had a chance to meet "The Man". 

That opportunity is gone as is Stan Lee. But Stan Lee has achieved immortality through his work. An immense and wondrous body of stories that bedazzled me as a youth and fired my imagination in a way that no other comic books had ever done. He touched my life in a way that is hard to explain unless you also are a child of the sixties, a starry eyed youth like myself riding the pop culture wave of an incredible decade. It was a great time to be a kid, to be a fan, to discover new worlds aborning on an almost daily basis. 

Stan Lee was just one of the guides to the wonderful world of imagination. He took me for a ride that, while slowing down, has never come to a complete stop.

Thank you Stan. Thank you for everything. Thank you for taking an entire generation by the hand and showing them that there are still heroes in this world, that there is still something good and decent and honorable to believe in. Thank you for showing us that no matter how bleak things might seem, there's always hope. Thank you for showing us how to dream big and live large. 

God speed you dear and wonderful man. Excelsior and 'Nuff Said and all that other stuff. Goodbye old friend. 

I love you.