Sunday, August 30, 2015

Nighthawks in US Culture


Nighthawks by Edward Hopper:  The work by American realist artist Edward Hopper was done in early 1942, and was initially categorized as one of many of the works Hopper did that emphasized solitude, if not alienation.  But the sparseness of the painting later gave rise to questions about who might linger in the shadows, and how safe was it to be near the man with his back turned, at 3 a.m.  Hopper himself suggested that the work was as much about a quiet moment as it was alone in a world of shadows and possible danger. His work coming out in the dark years of World War II might not have been a direct response to the war and the domestic response to both Japan and German acts of war and the American response, but it surely captures the unsettled feelings that were flying about at the time.

There are many pieces of homage art that have resulted from the Nighthawks work.  It stands as a moment of time, capturing a perfect image and vision of the era.  It remains in our psyche.

IN COMICS  you can find it (all works copyright their respective owners, click image in greater detail.):



MUSIC: In music there are songs that have referenced the diner and painting,  and there are  album covers that specifically affect a look to homage the diner.

Tom Waits:  "Nighthawks at the Diner" 1975

Nighthawks at the Diner Video


TELEVISION & FILM

 Red and Kitty Foreman visited the diner on the period comedy show That '70s Show

Nighthawks influenced the look of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner; Scott said "I was constantly waving a reproduction of this painting under the noses of the production team to illustrate the look and mood I was after"


ARCHITECTURE: And while this is just a taste of the many homage works there have been, upon the streets there is even architecture that pays homage to the great painting, and perhaps the artist... The Flat Iron




TWO EDWARD HOPPER paintings posted for the hell of it.



ALSO IN THE NEWS MEDIA: 

And lastly, at the turn of the century we had a party in that diner. 

"It’s (the lack of communication between the people in his paintings, ed.) probably a reflection of my own, if I may say, loneliness. I don’t know. It could be the whole human condition." 

Edward Hopper

WHY WE BOTHER
 
I am often asked why bother reading history, or reading ABOUT art, or about anything.  Why not just like things for what they are, and move on.  And I tell people straight out, anyone can live without knowing history, knowing about things or knowing why things are important.  It might make historians sad, or artists upset that I am not saying their work is supposedly not important.  But I am not saying that.  A human body exists, uses chemicals inside, functions within its system, without ever needing the user to know why.  Eat, poop, pee, sleep.  That system is relatively stable.

But just as a person doesn't want to eat chicken broth for every meal, the human mind has a desire to be fed.  And by feeding the mind, the personal experience and desire to become more is satisfied, and, triggers a desire to build from that.   So, as long it doesn't matter, think Abe Lincoln was famous for logs, go a lifetime thinking the United Kingdom is off the coast of Florida, or that France is a state of California, or have more chicken broth.  You have a choice to feed your mind as well as your body.

Today's subject is the artistic homage, which is a form of art that is done to demonstrate how great one piece of art is, by showing it as a part of the spirit and form of another.  This is a practice that is done, in general, to show appreciation, but could, I suppose, be used to show how the homaged piece is viewed by society/culture.

Unless the viewer/listener/reader is familiar with the source the homage is lost upon them, unless the creative work doing the homage points it out.   And, that is where the need to know more than the basics comes in, because if you simply catch a glimpse, and understand, you add another layer of quality and interest to the work at hand.  Parody, Satire and Homage are all solidly based upon an understanding of the source material.  If you do not understand the thing being referenced, you lose out on enjoyment, and perhaps a greater knowledge of the world.


Monday, August 24, 2015

Again with the negative waves...

I wrote in a previous article about negative reviews and received a lot of positive response from it. Apparently people prefer hearing about the odd turd than the shining examples.  Sigh. Thanks, sort of, to Kurt Wilcken for making me aware of this recent fuckery by DC.


DEVOLUTION

DC Comics had been my preferred flavor in the vast buffet of characters, they had the universes of imagination. That is, growing up, and until the Crisis on Infinite Earths. After that watermark for me, I chose to read anything with new eyes and new allegiances, because I felt that DC had burned down the past, the past I had loved. A prime example WATCHMEN, however good, took characters from Charlton Comics, recently acquired and killed all but three of them. (Spoiler that.) With every new release the artist/writer/editor team seemed to feel a need to change characters, sometimes for better, but usually for change sake.

Despite new and different editorial teams and head of publishing changes, various turnover of talents, there was one thing at DC following the Crisis that never changed, the constant uprooting and changing what was given as "continuity" and the newly united universe.  It was true that DC made a choice to change the worlds in which their imaginary characters "lived" for a reasonably important reason.  They wanted all the characters in their worlds to be on the same "earths" the same "universes" and the like. But, what happened was disarray.  Soon enough the allure of breaking ground in the new territory of virgin lands was too tempting to the creative talents, and maybe even editorial staffs.  With every new series, every relaunched series, changes were made, and almost never were the changes made for any reason that made better the previous situation.   In some cases it mattered a lot.  Long time series were disrupted and went astray. The multi generational fan favorite Legion of Super Heroes particularly saw changes that really were asinine and that could well have been written off and ignored.  But change they did.  Various attempts to revive the series suffered with each new attempt.

One character that received the worst of this change for change sake was THE CREEPER.  DC made several attempts to renew interest in a great character created by Steve Ditko.   The origin of the character featured an investigative reporter attending a masquerade ball with the contents of a box of odds and ends of a costume shop.  An Eastern European scientist Dr. Yatz has been kidnapped, and he won't reveal his serum or studies to the nasty bastards holding him.  But Ryder infiltrates.  Yatz injects Ryder, giving him numerous powers, and leading him to a dual existence as a human with healing abilities and enhanced strength.   Dr. Yatz is shot, Ryder rounds up the bastiches, and now Ryder is a vigilante.  He can change his physical features between his human form and his bizarre Creeper look.  Over time there were various different nips and tucks, changes to the story.  But, the original is quite good enough.

BEWARE THE CREEPER

In the aftermath of World War I, the bohemian art scene explodes onto Paris -- much to the chagrin of the rich and powerful Arbogast family. Surrealist painter Judith Benoir wants desperately to make a splash -- even if it means ignoring the warnings of others. And as The Creeper, she escalates  simple cat burglaries into spectacular art crimes, establishing her as a cultural icon. But what are the true motivations behind The Creeper's actions? And how long before her antics spiral out of control and the law closes in?

This is a series that was based upon a juxtaposition of a character's traits and form, and placed in a different time and place.  As such the change is very evident and intentional and not an issue. However, it is an un-ironic salute to the many attempts at fucking up a perfectly good concept, not needing change.

THE CREEPER

Len Kaminski and Shawn Martinborough addressed the Creeper through quite a different approach. It was assumed that The Creeper had now gone insane. Or had he?  Part of the modus operandi of Ryder while being Creeper was to ACT crazy. So, this story angle was a case of literalism, or taking a tangent with the hope of making a story from it.  It was a considerably unsuccessful run in and of itself.  But, the change in the M.O., was the greatest issue.

THE CREEPER

Writer Steve Niles and artist Justiniano rebooted the origin, reintroduced the characters, and started all over.  DC Comics seemed to have greater plans for the character, as it was announced initially that this run was an ongoing series, but then backtracked that this was a limited run of 6 issues.  Steve Niles has a background of writing horror, and weird characters, he has the skills to write such a character.  The ultra moody art by Justiniano was suited for the character as well.  The change here wasn't as overt as previous efforts, but DC showed its lily liver by pulling the carpet from beneath the project.  But, that may well be part of the entire DC ethos, change the character until it can't be recognized, fuck with origins so that it can be considered unattached to the old continuity, or, get the creative team to change enough to do that, and stab them in the back before they can get their project up to speed.

DC's NEW 52

And all of this leads us to this, DC's New 52.  Some idiot at DC has decided that Creeper is actually a Demon.  ... Um... yeah.  A demon. And that means that someone at DC is really, I mean, REALLY stupid.  Instead of simply creating a concept and making it work, they've raped and destroyed a fine concept created by one of the masters of the medium, and they took that and turned it into a concept no more worthy than a dog taking a shit upon it.   This is the biggest insult to the readers of DC Comics.

Saturday, August 8, 2015

Fine, Take this you depressing bastards

Some people do not know that I've been writing reviews, and doing interviews on the internet since 2002.  Many of the sites I worked for are gone, disappeared in the mists of time.  However I still receive emails telling me that I should write many more reviews and include amongst them negative reviews.   I would probably do more reviews if I received more product, but I am not in charge of that.  After having a number of health issues, I have not been able to maintain a regular output here.

And regarding including negative reviews, well, I get that, that the negative reviews help appear to balance the positive so that it doesn't seem that you give everyone an online blowjob... I don't live with those fears and worries.  You see, I'd really prefer not to bring attention to the works that I dislike, and I'd prefer to give attention to the works I did like.  It doesn't come from the growing up adage of not saying something unless you have something good to say, I say shit all the time.  I offend people left and right.  But, if someone sends me their creative work, if I can't find a way to review it, I'd prefer not poop on a person's creative work.  However, there are certainly works that I dislike, and works that I find to not have been well done.

I've written reviews, and at some point I realized that my reviews resulted in getting me more reviews.  If you review and review positively people want you to review their work.  That is a natural response.  However, in doing so, there were people who read my reviews, sent me their work, and then were pissed off that I didn't care for their work, or, after they sent me dozens of emails saying why aren't you reviewing my work, I finally did a review that was less than positive, they didn't respond well.  It would seem foolish, as comics and entertainment are not the most important works in existence, but I've received death threats from people, not many I worried about.  But I did get a number of them.   Frankly I received more death threats from my early support of Obama from Gun Nuts than I did comic people who hate me.  (I've lost a great deal of faith in all political parties, so my Obama faith was misplaced, I am afraid).

ROB ZOMBIE'S SPOOKSHOW INTERNATIONAL
Rob Zombie 

This work was not written or drawn with me in mind.  While I like horror, I do not like vile, obscene, morally corrupt, ugliness.  And the art was not to my taste, the writing was bad.  So despite my desire to support Crossgen works, this was one that if it had been my first Crossgen product, it would also have been my only Crossgen product.


JHTM
Jhonen Vasquez

One of Slave Labor's biggest hits was Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.  The quality of product, as far as quality of production, and paper was fine.  But the work that it collected was something that offended my senses.  There are a great many people who love JTHM and consider it to be a form of catharsis or personal therapy or self help.  It is relentlessly dark cynical black humor and violent.  It makes a mockery of human existence and shames itself by doing so.  Well, I thought so.  I refused to leave a review grade when I read this.  I knew others would feel very different than I did.  And from the dozens of emails, I know they did.




X-MEN: APOCALYPSE VS DRACULA
Frank Tieri

At one time I liked aspects of this title.  I didn't think it is was a genius work, or something I had to read, but I loved the four covers by Jae Lee, I enjoyed the concept of villain versus villain, and Frank Tieri's writing of evil characters absolutely has a ring of truth versus a number of other more heralded writers.  Jae Lee's covers did in fact make me buy this work.  As a fan of his work I let the beauty of his work make my decisions to buy.  Apocalypse being ancient, and Dracula being eternal, both have clans of warriors and kin who they gather around themselves.  And the two sides fight.  As I said, at one time I liked this, but upon rereading it, I wondered, what the hell was I thinking.  I guess I was lured in by the pretty pictures.



CAPTAIN ATOM: ARMAGEDDON
Will Pfeifer

I have no issues with DC or Wildstorm, Jim Lee or anyone involved in this book.  But this nine issue comic book series was the series that made me stop buying any comic not written or drawn by people I know or support.  I am a fan of the character of Captain Atom, and had enjoyed Will Pfeifer's writing, but damn... This work was a 9 issue $27 event meant to drain my wallet of money in order to get me to read the last page of the 9th issue.  That is, the first 8 issues and 90% of the 9th meant really nothing.  The final two pages were a blink of cosmic dust or something and the worlds rebooted.  And then I realized again, as I've always known, imaginary stories don't matter but for the amount of entertainment they provide.  And I stopped caring about the world of continuity or anything similar in the world of comics.

Monday, August 3, 2015

Whatever Happened to Speedball?



I remember a Marvel panel at a comics convention in Chicago I attended back in the late ‘80s. I think it was their Assistant Editor’s Panel, mostly a kind of comics pep rally to promote the books Marvel was putting out that year, and it was a bit gimmicky but fun, full of audience participation stunts. They had a group of volunteers from the audience come up on the stage to be a cheering section. Their job was to cheer any time anybody mentioned “SPEEDBALL”, a new title the company was pushing.

At one point, during an audience Q&A session, an editor from the company’s Distinguished Competition stood up and asked: “At our company we’ve had some success recently in taking some of our old, worn-out, boring characters and completely re-vamping them...” He was alluding, of course, the John Byrne MAN OF STEEL Superman reboot. “...Do you suppose a similar approach might work for... say... SPEEDBALL?”

And the peanut gallery on the stage cheered.

Okay, it was a cheap joke; but it reflected the fact that SPEEDBALL really wasn’t terribly popular. The character didn’t fit the Comics Zeitgeist of the late ‘80 - early ‘90s.. I only picked up one or two of his comics myself and although I found him mildly interesting, I wasn’t interested enough to follow him.

The reason Marvel was trying to promote the character was because he represented the return to Marvel Comics of one its legends: Steve Ditko.

As most comics fans probably know, Ditko was the artist who along with Stan Lee created Marvel’s iconic character, the Amazing Spider-Man. He drew, and to a great extent co-plotted AMAZING SPIDER-MAN for the first four years of its run, and also worked on the Incredible Hulk and Iron Man. He also co-created Doctor Strange, and his surreal, otherworldly artwork for Strange became that character’s hallmark.

Ditko often disagreed with Lee, who was more liberal in his politics than Ditko; (although not nearly as liberal as his fellow artist in the Marvel Bullpen, Jack Kirby) . Due to the “Marvel Method” Stan developed to work with his artists, Ditko rarely had to butt heads with him, though. Stan would give his artists a brief plot synopsis, which they would elaborate and draw. Only after the pencils were completed would Stan go back and write dialogue for it. Because he was doing so much of the plotting of the stories he drew, Ditko demanded credit for it -- and got it.

But eventually Ditko left SPIDER-MAN and Marvel. The popular legend is that he objected to a scene in the comic in which Spidey villain Green Goblin was revealed to be Norman Osborne, the father of Peter Parker’s best friend. Ditko wanted the Goblin to be some anonymous guy whom Peter didn’t know. Comics writer and historian Mark Evanier has speculated that the real reason might have been that Marvel had licensed the rights for a Spider-Man cartoon. Previous cartoons Marvel had done for TV, like CAPTAIN AMERICA, THE MIGHTY THOR and IRON MAN, had been done on the cheap, using actual panel art from the comic books and a minimal amount of animation. The artists who drew the original art were neither credited, nor compensated for this use of their work, and Ditko strongly objected to this. His precise reasons for leaving Marvel, however, are unknown. Ditko does not talk a lot about himself and rarely if ever gives interviews, saying he prefers to let his work speak for itself.

During this period, Ditko had also been working for Charlton Comics, and after leaving Marvel, he continued to work there. Charlton was something of an anomaly; it wasn’t exactly a comics company, it was the sideline of a magazine publisher. Unlike many magazines, Charlton owned its own printing company; and its comics line were a way of keeping the presses busy when they might be otherwise idle. The pay rate at Charlton was notoriously low, but they also allowed their creators comparatively more freedom than Marvel and National (DC) Comics. At Charlton, Ditko retooled the Golden Age Blue Beetle character into a modern science-based hero, and created characters such as Captain Atom and the Question. Much later all these characters would be acquired by DC and incorporated into the DC Universe.

He also did a lot of work for little independent publishers, for whom he did some of his most personal work. His best known character of these is Mister A, whose stories usually featured densely-worded polemics on Objectivist philosophy and whose uncompromising vision of moral absolutes inspired the character of Rorschach from Alan Moore’s WATCHMEN.

During the ‘70s, Ditko worked occasionally for DC, creating characters such as The Creeper, Hawk and Dove, and Shade the Changing Man.

So when he returned briefly to Marvel in the late ‘80s, it was something of a celebration for one of their Legends returning to the House of Ideas. Or at least it should have been.

Speedball was created by Ditko and writer Tom DeFalco, originally as part of Marvel’s New Universe line of comics. The New Universe crumbled, and instead the character was moved into the mainline Marvel Universe, appearing first as a guest in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #22, and following that in his own series, which was plotted and penciled by Ditko and scripted by Roger Stern. Which one of them thought that it would be cool to name a super-hero after a street drug is unknown; although to be fair, “Speedball” is also the name of a manufacturer of pen nibs for lettering and inking, which might be where the name came from.

The character was a high school student named Robbie Baldwin who, while working part-time at a research laboratory, becomes accidently exposed to cosmic other-dimensional energy which gives him the ability to generate a kinetic energy field that manifests as a swarm of pink energy bubbles that – stop laughing, now. They’re pink, okay? When he gets hit by anything, he can redirect the kinetic force in various ways, like force-fields, kinetic blasts and, obviously, by bouncing. Yes, he is Marvel’s answer to the old LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES character Bouncing Boy.

Although that might seem kind of doofy, and to a lot of readers at the time did, I can see a reason for it. Ditko liked to build his characters around themes. The Question was driven to seek answers; Hawk and Dove personified America’s division over the Vietnam War; Shade the Changing Man was all about self-perception and illusion. Often. Later writers who took over these characters didn’t quite get what Ditko intended. (Or thought they had a better idea, and some of the revamped characters were fairly good). Under writer and former hippie Denny O’Neil, the Question became a zen philosopher, the very antithesis of Ditko’s Mister A. Where Ditko’s Hawk and Dove represented opposing but valid points of view, illustrating that pacifism and force can both be valid responses to evil based on the situation; later writers made Hawk an irredeemable jerk who is always wrong; (although later still, Barbara and Karl Kessel brought the characters closer to Ditko view by redefining them as avatars of Order and Chaos). And Shade went to Vertigo.

Robbie Baldwin, at least as I read the character, was at heart an optimistic and resilient character, and his powers matched his personality. Not that Robbie was free of Peter Parker-ish angst; he had to hide his powers from his father, a crusading DA opposed to costumed crime-fighters; and his parents ultimately went through a messy divorce. Ultimately, though, Robbie was a Good Kid.

About this time Marvel put out a team book titled NEW WARRIORS featuring a line-up of previously-established teen heroes, such as Firestar, Namorita (The Sub-Mariner’s sort-of kid sister), and Nova; and new ones such as Speedball and the team’s leader, Night Thrasher (a black kid from the streets who fought crime on a skateboard; it made sense, it was the ‘80s). Writer Fabian Nicieza expressed a liking of Speedball and wrote him as cocky and arrogant, although Robbie’s civilian identity in NEW WARRIORS came off as angstful and sullen.

The sad fact is that Robbie was out of synch with his time. The late ‘80s and early ‘90s were the Golden Age of Tarnish, when Grim ‘n’ Gritty ruled the comics and when joyful exuberance and playfulness were considered Old School and Hokey. Occasionally, we’d get some whimsical push-back; Dwayne McDuffy’s superb DAMAGE CONTROL, about a construction company that repairs the collateral damage done by super-hero slugfests was one; and Dwayne made Robbie an intern at Damage Control in one of his story arcs, doing a good job with the character.

The nadir – for Robbie, at least; we aren’t nearly out of the Grim ‘n’ Gritty Era yet – came with Marvel’s CIVIL WAR crossover series. The premise of the series was to pit much of the Marvel Universe against itself over a federal law requiring the registration of super-heroes. The intent was to have both sides in this conflict have valid points so that the issue could be seen as a real debate instead of just an excuse for a big punch-out, and to reflect real-life debates over Security vs. Liberties. As it played out, however, the Pro-Registration side was guilty of some horrendous abuses of power that for many readers turned heroes like Tony Stark and Reed Richards into outright villains.

The event was triggered by a horrendous tragedy which prompted the adoption of the Supers Registration Act. The New Warriors, it was established, had become the subjects of a TV Reality Show. During the shooting of this show, a fight with a team of villains went terribly wrong, resulting in an explosion killing over 600 people including an elementary school full of people in Stamford, Connecticut. Speedball was the only member of the Warriors to survive the blast and became the scapegoat for the disaster. Running through the CIVIL WAR series, we get the personal story of Robbie enduring guilt, public objurgation, guilt, loss of powers, guilt, imprisonment in Reed Richard’s Super Gulag in the Negative Zone, guilt, and, oh yes, guilt.

In the end, he designed a new costume for himself featuring spikes on the inside constantly driving themselves into his flesh – one for each victim of the Stamford disaster. And he renamed himself “Pennance”. That’ll teach him to be optimistic and resilient.

I don’t think it was intentional, but you’d almost think the writers hated Ditko’s character so much that they went out of their way to destroy him.

After CIVIL WAR, Robbie bounced around a bit more, and not in a bubbly fun way like before, getting manipulated by various villains, but eventually he was able to kind of center himself. He became a teacher and mentor for young aspiring heroes in AVENGERS ACADEMY and even resumed the name of “Speedball”. More recently, he’s joined a re-formed version of the New Warriors and has even regained some of his old, upbeat personality.

So maybe Ditko did win in the end after all.


I guess that’s the way the ball bounces.