Supermarathon! Pilot: Lois & Clark

I wasn't watching much TV when Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman debuted.  I was a freshman at UT and the only TV I really watched was:

• Animaniacs
• Batman
• 90210 (it's a long story)
• Melrose Place (an addendum to the long story)
• X-Files
• Brisco County Jr.

Of course, the only channels we had good reception for in the dorm were Fox and PBS.

As I recall, the show aired on Sundays, which was homework night.

the show more or less promised Lois and Clark would eventually "do it" from the first promo pic

I did watch the pilot with some buddies, no doubt our iffy reception riddled with static.  And it aired at the same time as the pilot of SeaQuest DSV, and we couldn't figure out which to watch.  In the end we decided to try to pass our courses (barely) and didn't watch either on an ongoing basis, really.

Stars Dean Cain (Superman/ Clark) and Teri Hatcher (Lois Lane) became household names immediately.  A nation embraced the phrase "Great Shades of Elvis!" from our erstwhile Perry White.

Supermarathon: The Serials!

In 1948 Columbia rolled out a weekly Superman serial.  10 years after the Man of Steel had first appeared on a comic book cover, America knew Superman from comics, radio, the Fleischer cartoons, the newspaper strip and games and toys.

Special effects weren't exactly rudimentary in 1948, if you had a budget, but as the serials rolled out as part of kid-friendly Saturday afternoon matinee fodder, this was not a $200 million set-up.  The serials are probably best remembered for the use of animation to show Superman flying (which becomes rarer and rarer as the series progresses).   Basically, our live-action Superman poses, and then is switched to cartoon form for the flying scenes (and that's not to mention the death of Krypton, that seems inspired by your typical Betty Boop cartoon explosion).

Kirk Alyn is our pre-George Reeves Superman, and he actually looks not unlike the Superman of the comics of the time.  Alyn's a lot more "gee-whiz" than the "Yup, I'm three steps ahead and I got this situation handled" aspect of Reeves' Superman.  Lois is played by Noel Neill, who would return to the role in the TV series, The Adventures of Superman in seasons 2-6.    She's extremely young and perky here, but not the sloe-eyed adventuress of the Fleischer cartoons.  Jimmy is played by Tommy Bond in full huckster, vaudevillian mode in a goofy hat and making faces.

For some reason: a music-related post

I didn't post last night, so I feel obligated to check in.

I've been down in San Marcos, south of Austin by about 30 minutes, for work the past two days.  Always good to catch up with colleagues and whatnot, and, frankly, it's probably easier getting to the library at Texas State than to my own building every day.  The commute is about the same.

This evening Jamie and I had dinner with the lovely Margarita G., a former local, recently returned, and one of the many folks I've met inadvertently through JimD.  Lovely person, and I look forward to seeing more of Margarita around town.

Somehow I came home and went down several Google holes, including playing Barba Streisand tunes from YouTube to see how long it would take before Jamie asked me what I was doing.  The answer is: 6 songs, and it really took "Papa Can You Hear Me?" from Yentl before she finally started asking questions.

Also, Jamie insisted we listen to some Michael McDonald.  Nobody likes warbling along with Michael McDonald like my wife.  

This all somehow got wound up in me simultaneously listening to circa 1980 pop sensation Juice Newton when Paul's ladyfriend, Val, posed on Twitter "whatever happened to Juice Newton?"

I'm not sure, but do I remember Juice Newton?

Massive Open Online Course, Week 3

Well.

This week was about how making comics is a collaborative process, and that mainstream comics, especially superhero comics, are rarely the work of a single person.  There's a writer, artist, editor, etc...  associated with every comic that hits the stand.

The process includes many voices, from the writer sitting at their keyboard, to publishers wanting to push circulation, to editors trying to meet deadlines, to artists who seem to reference Maxim photo-spreads all too often.

The comics we were assigned to read included several incarnations of the Marvel "nobody's favorite" candidate, Carol Danvers, aka: Ms. Marvel, aka: Nova, aka: Ms. Marvel, aka: Captain Marvel.  I don't dislike Carol Danvers, but I also don't think about the character any more than I think about The Rhino or Arcade or Angle Man or something.

I didn't read the comics.

I was curious about the instructor's take on the production side of comics and how it would affect the narrative, and I thought the take was interesting, but... not what I expected.  I had expected discussion of how artists can put their own spin on a script, how editors act as mediators working from their own opinions and company dictates, how design of characters can be managed and scrutinized at a very high corporate level, and that intention of writers can be changed by the time a comic is actually produced.  And the fact that artists continually include shots of Wonder Woman's barely-covered butt from a low angle in all-too many Justice League group scenes.

Doc Watch: Wonder Women! on PBS

On Monday, I watched the documentary Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines on the PBS series Independent Lens.

If you were expecting a documentary about the importance of Wonder Woman to 20th and 21st Century females as a symbol of power for women, you were in the right place.

You can watch the whole thing online at the moment.  Here you go.

For those of us who are already fans of the character, it's a nice tribute to the character, a nice consideration of the influence of the character across the 20th century, but the doc was also a bit frustrating.

The documentary was a good starter kit for someone to consider pop culture touchstones as gateway drugs for empowerment for women and a place to start the discussion of media portrayals of women.  But, if you know your Wonder Woman (and I only kind of feel like I've scracthed the surface of the character), the film followed the prescribed narrative checklist of players and topics you'd get in talking about Wonder Woman's history if you were to talk on the subject for more than five minutes.

We got:

• William Moulton Marston's creation of a lie-detector and his hang-ups on bondage scenarios are touched upon
• Glora Steinem talks the first cover of Ms.
• Lynda Carter gets interviewed (and is still just as stunning)
• various academics are interviewed who talk about what it means to have a strong female character at the start of World War II
• Wonder Woman's second tier place in comics after WWII

Whoa. Yeah. I should post or something.

So.

I don't really have time for this.

Jamie went out of town this weekend, and I was supposed to be working on The Fortress of Nerditude (aka: my office) as Phase I of a sort of re-do the house plan.  I'm boxing up a whole lot of action figures in order to get rid of them, and I'm kind of mentally having to say good-bye to the past fifteen years' worth of hobby, in a way.  It's not that the office won't remain Super with a capital S, it's that the downstairs living room is going to get de-Supered to a great degree.  My call, not Jamie's.

I wanted to (a) kind of move on from the days when DC Comics was pretty much all I had going on in my life and (b) there's some really fragile and expensive stuff right inside the doorway, and over the years, I've just cringed everytime someone has passed the front door with everything from a ladder to a backpack.

Thursday night I was up til 2:00 AM watching the news about Boston.

Friday I was the guy who could barely work as he kept his eye on the news, waiting to see what would happen, and I was home again when Suspect #2 was captured.  Then Juan came over with a pizza, we watched a documentary and then Drive (2011) as Juan missed it in the theater.

Saturday I worked on my office, walked the dogs, etc...  and then Juan (apparently my girlfriend when Jamie is out of town) and I went to see CarlaBeth in a show she had put together for a local multi-arts festival called FuseBox.  It was a sort of sketch program entitled Failure, and was about the concept of "failure".  Apparently, from concept to performance was about a week, but it included songs, dance, sketches, monologues, games and a cake.

Pretty good.

Today I have done nothing but watch about 1/2 of Police Academy on basic cable (I really don't even like that movie, but...) and work on my office.

I slept really late into Saturday.  I was exhausted, and I have to believe part of that was partially due to news fatigue.  It seems the folks in West are coping as well as can be expected and Texans are doing a good job of donating and reaching out to our neighbors.  I sent a guy from work to donate blood on Friday, but I'm waiting to see if there's a second round needed.  I never really know what to do in these emergency situations, so I'm keeping my eyes peeled for opportunity in the coming weeks.

Honestly, I am glad the Boston PD was able to capture Suspect #2.  Already it seemed like Facebook and the mainstream media had turned into places for pundits and amateur pundits to roll out their personal axes and grinders to ascribe motive they couldn't possibly actually know.  Not only will we see the American Justice System (something I firmly believe in - warts and all) play out, but we'll get some legitimate information at some point from the FBI.

Sure, everyone will spin that information to suit their needs and agenda, and we can count on Alex Jones refusing to believe any of it and likely believing the suspects were framed (it's what he does- and if anything Jones does surprises you at this point, I cannot help you).

Here's to next week being a better week.  I have to go clean the house before Jamie gets home.

Supermarathon Update: The Fleischer Cartoons

On Wednesday night I watched some of the Fleischer Studios Superman cartoons from 1941 and 1942.

Title	Release date	Note
Superman (a.k.a. The Mad Scientist)	September 26, 1941	The short film Superman is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
The Mechanical Monsters	November 28, 1941	The short film The Mechanical Monsters is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
Billion Dollar Limited	January 9, 1942	The short film Billion Dollar Limited is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
The Arctic Giant	February 27, 1942	The short film The Arctic Giant is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
The Bulleteers	March 27, 1942	The short film The Bulleteers is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]

-lifted straight from Wikipedia


There's a lot more to go, and I'll watch a few more before I'm done with the Fleischer/ Famous Studios Superman cartoons.

If you're a Superman fan in any capacity, these early Superman cartoons are must viewing.  You have to remember these played in movie houses that might have seen Superman in a comic book, but had never really seen stuff quite like this animated - and it's so amazingly well crafted, it's hard to imagine something like this being made again even today.

We saw Birdemic 2 in Austin (and it was awesome!)

This evening Jamie and I drove up to the Alamo LakeCreek to catch the second installment in your favorite franchise and mine, Birdemic II: The Resurrection.

Two feet inside the door of the theater I spied my favorite director, and...

you people have no idea how excited I was here

James Nguyen does not pass up the chance to get his picture taken with a good looking dame:

Jamie and The Master of the Romantic Thriller

The movie stars...  well, an absolutely startling amount of the cast from the first Birdemic film.  Kudos to Nguyen for getting the band back together.

I've seen Birdemic: Shock and Terror somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 times, I own the BluRay, and I bought Damien Carter's single "Hangin' Out With My Family" on iTunes.  I'm a fan.

On the Event of Superman's 75th Anniversary

Today is, reportedly, the 75th anniversary of the debut of Action Comics #1.  75 years ago, Superman appeared on the cover of a comic book and, within a couple of months, had already risen to pop-culture superstardom.  By World War II, he had become a staple of Americana and - while Superman didn't invent the idea of the costumed hero, the science-fiction hero, or the altruistic do-gooder, he managed to put a distinct stamp on all of those ideas in one place - and has been endlessly imitated ever since.

In his first issue, all we knew was that Superman was a refugee of a doomed planet who arrived here as a baby.  There was no Jonathan and Martha Kent.  No Jor-El or Lara.  No Daily Planet (Clark landed a job at the Daily Star working for "Editor", I believe).  Just Lois, Clark, Superman and a whole lot of action.  And, man, Lois is a tough dame in that first issue.  No wonder Superman fell hard for her.

There are too many good books out there that talk about Superman's origins as a product of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster for me to try to recreate the story here.  But they were down on their luck 20-somethings (not the teen-agers that are described to have just had Superman pop into their heads one night) when they sold the property to a struggling publisher who was soon outmaneuvered by some smooth operators.  I don't want to dwell too much on the fate of Siegel and Shuster, that's been fought out in the courts for five decades.  But their creation was not just one of the moment, but one of the past, the present and a limitless future, the likes of which we'd only ever seen in a few American fictional characters, from Ichabod Crane to Huckleberry Finn.  And this one arrived in a splash of color, crude drawings and an insurmountable flash of power.

Superman is an amalgamation of a dozen or so pulp literature ideas, some stolen outright from big names like Doc Savage, some from lesser known sources like the novel Gladiator.  Many find biblical aspects in his origins or in the perceived saintly selflessness of his actions (an interesting idea given Superman's varying presentations over the years).

I would argue that most people* don't really know anything about Superman, but everyone believes they know all you need to know.  A lot of folks can dismiss what they don't know as unimportant, thanks to the character's comic book roots, while ignoring the fact that Superman has been a huge part of every major media revolution.  You see people ascribe characteristics and virtues to the character based on a glance and some half-remembered bits from a movie they haven't seen in decades.  Others demonize those same virtues as old fashioned or out of touch, without ever deconstructing what it means to declare a desire for a more just world, to protect those who can't protect themselves as irrelevant in the modern context.

Taking a night - blast in West, Texas

Man, this week.

As you may have heard, there has been an explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, a town Texans are familiar with as its on the I-35 corridor between Austin and Dallas, and home to the locally famous Czech Stop (we have a long history of Czech communities in Texas).

As of now, reports are coming in that there are over one-hundred injured and possibly dozens dead.

Red Cross and emergency crews are headed to West from all over.  Twitter-pal Ruiz mentioned he knows his workplace sent crews to the scene.

This was a terrible accident, and not the insanity of the Boston bombings, but it's damaged a huge part of a town here in Texas.  Obviously.

We're going to take a pass on blogging further tonight.