I was thinking about my ultimate life's goal of owning every appearance of Spider-Man in print ever (not even close, by the way), when I remembered that includes stuff like this:
I actually do own this issue, but I swear it's only for the Spider-Man appearance (which consists entirely of Spidey showing up and saying, "Wow, but this guy is a credible and not remotely fucking ludicrous crime fighter) and maybe a little for the cheese factor. This specific title is possibly the worst thing Marvel ever published, even for the nineties. While it couldn't begin to tarnish the rich legacy of Stan, Jack, Steve, and the whole bullpen gang, it's still memorable as the nadir of superhero ideas.
The idea that a Spidey guest shot could sell copies carries some weight (you see infinitely more copies of this first issue than the few subsequent issues of NFL Superpro). I'm not going to make any more comment on the actual title, it's well documented in the annals of Comic Book dreck, so I'll just leave an example of an enjoyable shameless Spider-Man promotional appearance.
Garish as it may be, I've been thinking about gracing my digits with some rings. Time to narrow my choices.
1) Green Lantern Power Ring - At it's essence, the Power Ring can construct whatever the wearer wills it to. Which means it can really do anything. Even make other rings. The drawback is that you need to charge it every 24 hours ("Earthman time") and it has a whack weakness to the color yellow (based on some impurity or some shit, really it's a giant yellow bug that lives in the Central Battery)
Don't know why I started here, as it's the best choice by far.
2) Flash Ring - It's a pretty little ring that contains a Flash costume. You push a button, the uniform pops out and expands, and you use your super speed to slide into it (super speed not included with ring). So, pretty useless, but cool.
3) Legion of Super-Heroes Ring - It let you fly. Already covered by the Power Ring. Kind of useless. (That aside, it would still be nice to have)
4) Kryptonite Ring - Just what it says on the tin. It's only useful if you hate Superman, or Superman has gone fucking nuts. Also, Superman would have to exist.
It also gives you cancer, apparently.
So, Power Ring it is. (Probably shouldn't have led off with it...)
As a side note, I wanted this to be a note on Facebook. But Facebook is a pile of cunts, and after crashing once (and deleting what I'd just finished writing) making me log in when I tried to post it (this time I saved a draft) and finally not letting me access the page to post the note, I gave up. Fuck those cockfucks. Fuck 'em.
Here I'm going to crop sections of a cover and make insightful craptacular comments on it.
The cover to Fantastic Four #10 (dated January 1963). Click images to enlarge
Here it means something, at the time of publication this may have been Doom's third or fourth appearance, only. (Fact Checking reveals it was the second) so this is really a legitimate RETURN of comics most nefarious villain, when the character was still fresh in the minds of youngsters and super-nerds everywhere.
This was back before Marvel Comics had their iconic Silver Age corner logos, or even before the comics said "Marvel Comics". That Mc is all anyone had to work with. Before the Fantastic Four there was little reason to draw attention to the name. Stan Lee had to create the brand before people could recognize it. In those days before the Marvel Age, Stan was the only guy left in the once modest, at the time barren office. Once the Masthead started appearing with iconic images of a comic's starring characters, all bets were off. The House of Ideas had taken off.
What's going on with Ben's face, here. I'd be offended, but that would give credence to the idea that his face resembled anything that could ever be said to look like a face. Although it is Kirby (sorry, Jack).
Speaking of faces, I know we aren't generally able to see Doom's, but his mask there has a weird Mummy-like quality. Kind of like the monster in a Scooby-Doo cartoon. Again, it's Kirby.
Also speaking of which, classic, classic Kirby face here. I was mentioning before the otherworldly look of the cover, which depending on your point of view was The Kings greatest strength, or his most horrific weakness. When Kirby drew, he drew dynamic. There was no other way. In his brain, there must have been a switch marked "Dynamic", and you could flip it one of two ways. "On", or "Not Off."
Kirby had a knack for drawing people in ways that would be impossible to replicate in reality. That was his gift, an his gift to comics. I've heard people call his work, "too ugly," and I agree. It's just that I find that ugliness absolutely memorizing, compelling, and just the slightest bit beautiful.
For such a cool cover, this is kind of a throwaway tussle. For those who don't know or can't guess, Dr. Doom has gone Freaky Friday on Mr. Fantastic's ass. That's the comic (Ok, so there's a 20 page story to go with my rampant simplification, but I don't want to summarize). The image serves to hint at the content of the story (FF battles a suspiciously earnest Dr. Doom, little realizing he's actually Reed Richards, not that I'd believe it if Victor von Doom came up to me pretending to be my Roomate/Love Interest/Father figure, all while wearing a metal facemask and green cloak), while the foreground we've already looked at gives the real meat of the cover. Why does Reed look like such an evil/constipated ass? Little would you realize the body-swapping content of the story, though the hints are there.
Shit, did I spoil it?
Also, Stan and Jack are in this. No, it doesn't make sense, and thankfully it wouldn't happen in every issue afterwords (though still too often for my tastes). You never see their faces, nor (if I remember correctly) are they referred to specifically by name. But this is the start of what became a tiny facet of the Marvel Universe. That Marvel Comics exists as some kind of vague publisher of popular non-fictional (but heavily fabricated and sensationalized) comics about heroes that actually exist. Which is weird when you think about it.
Also weird to think about, that in the 60's Stan looked like this, and not like the old man I always imaging him to be now.
When you think about it, the title sequence serves no purpose. How often are you sitting to watch a movie from the beginning without any awareness of what it's called. But it's not there so much to tell you the name, so much as to present the name (and the key individuals involved in production).
Actually, there are no Titles in the opening of Apocalypse Now (and there were no Titles/Credits period in initial prints of the film). But the opening sequence follows our rule of presenting the film, not through text on screen but through imagery. Like it or not, Coppola utilizes the rule of "Show, don't tell." in this movie. The sequence gives you everything you need to see the movie. It thrusts you into the delirium of Vietnam (and the shooting process of the picture, Apocalypse Now was a legendarily disastrous production. It's been said the film was shot like the war was fought, but that's a discussion for another time).
I'm not gonna lie, I dig Marty's work (we're on a first name basis here). So, naturally, I've got an extensive collection of Martin Scorsese DVDs. I admit, I don't own New York, New York (nor do I ever wish to), but I'll rank it anyway. Because that's how my list works.
Because I've bought some of these multiple times (I've got at least three copies of GoodFellas) they'll get listed more than once. With comments!
1) Raging Bull (Special Edition)
Probably the prettiest of the Scorsese releases (If you count packaging as a feature). It's a Digipack case, which I don't always like, neccessarily, but the fold out features pretty artwork (and pretty Cathy Moriarty, meow).
If you want to call this Scorsese's best, go ahead. I won't. It's hardly definitive in it's subject matter. The themes of Wiolence and Catholicism, and the technique and film language, are Super-Scorsese esque. But it's still hard to avoid the fact that this was really DeNiro's baby. If anyone can steal a movie from Scorsese, it's DeNiro. And he does it here. It's all about Bobby and The Method, and that's OK. But for that reason I always tend to think of it as a lesser Scorsese "work", in the terms of its creation. But the presentation of the disc is supoib, and it's a great movie (that invites a great deal of tongue-in-cheek homage).
2) The Last Temptation of Christ (Criterion Collection)
I love this movie (take that Christians!). I really do.
So far it's the lone Criterion disc of a Scorsese picture - if you don't count LaserDisc, and I don't. So really, all things considered, it looks fancy on the shelf.
And it's really expensive.
I'm a closet lover of Biblical epics, so mix wide expanses of sand with tracking shots and sundry Scorsese flair, and I'm sold. The Peter Gabriel soundtrack works, even if I'm not a huge New Age fan, and it's got Bowie as Pilate.
Oh, wait.
That's better. Fucking Bowie, man.
Some people attack Schrader's use of Vernacular in the script. I like it, because really, I'm pretty sure Jesus didn't give The Sermon on the Mount in 17th century Modern English either.
3) Gangs of New York
Not even Cameron Diaz can cancel the unadulterated awesome of Daniel Day-Lewis, so that's not worth bringing up.
It's well known that Scorsese always wanted to make two movies in his lifetime. The Last Temptation of Christ was completed in 1988 (after several lulls and cancellations of Production) and Gangs of New York.
Scorsese's intended 70's version of Gangs is one of my all-time beloved never-made almost-films (another being Kubrick's unmade Napoleon project). Had he made it then, it would have been a different beast, grittier and more evocative of the times (he even wanted an original Soundtrack by The Clash, which would have been the coolest thing since pretty much ever).
Instead, we got the slightly (ha) overblown debacle that was the 2002 version. Scorsese tells a story about George Lucas visiting the set (built in entirety on location, in Italy. It was monstrously expensive) and telling him that withing the decade the movie would be filmed digitally on a CG set. Thankfully, Scorsese went the classic "It's Hollywood, let's spend oodles of cash on something impractical that will never be used again!" direction, and we get a movie that actually looks real (remember, there were no computers during the 1860's).
The movie is controversial for cuts made in post production, reportedly removing about an hour of footage at the behest of producer Harvey Weinstein. Scorsese believes in the finality of a theatrical cut, so we'll never see the long cut of Gangs (forget it, it's almost 3 hours already). So, the project isn't without faults, of which are written ad nauseum elsewhere.
This isn't actually a great DVD, but I put it this high so here it stays.
This is pretty long, so I'll put up part II later.
It's hard to define just exactly what is wrong with contemporary Simpsons episodes. There's little consensus on just what made them bad and when. What's not hard to see is the definite drop in quality between an episode from, say, the 4th Season to one airing currently. (When we say "bad" in reference to a Simpsons episode, it's important to note the term is relative)
For me personally, I can see the show slipping between the seventh and eighth seasons, but the ninth (1997-98) presents a definite display of everything that is bad. And it all starts with "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson"
Maybe some people like it, but I've never been a huge fan of formula. And boy, does this episode love formula. Firstly, we start with the standard "First Act Misdirection" trope. A standard of Simpsons writing that went from somewhere near "fresh and irreverent" to "really goddamn tired". Long story short, Barney is stuck as the designated driver for a night at Moes, Duffman shows up, Barney is pissed, Barney steals Homer's car and disappears for two weeks. Homer get's a letter from the city of New York, telling him his car has been booted in the borough of Manhattan.
Let me take the opportunity to say that I really like Duffman. I think he's funny, I really do. But he has never been in a decent episode, because he was created too late. The same goes for Gil's sad Glengarry Glen Ross pastiche. Hilarious, but poorly utilized.
Now we get to the real meat, the wholly inconsequential"The Simpsons are going to [Destination]!" plot. I hate this plot. A whole bunch. Usually the writers use it to shoehorn in irrelevant Guest Stars (a fate from which we are alleviated in this episode) and generally not tell us any story at all. Here we get that no story, and do we ever get it. Homer, it is revealed, had a bad experience as a teenager in New York (in one of the funnier moments this show, Woody Allen drops garbage on a young Homer).
Homer has to sit outside the World Trade Center (complete with now uncomfortable World Trade Center jokes) all day waiting for the traffic cop to unboot his car. Here we get to see
A) Homer choosing to drink an excess of Crab Juice as opposed to Mountain Dew (Take THAT Mountain Dew!)
2) Homer having to scale both towers in search of a public restroom, in the meantime...
•) Missing the officer and recieving another ticket.
And while all that absolutely nothing is happening, Marge and the kids are, what's this, DOING NOTHING? The rest of the family spends the episode "sightseeing" and milking whatever fresh and exciting gags they can from New York City. Homer eventually gives up and drives off with the clamp still attached to his tire. And the Simpsons leave New York.
That's it. So I guess what I really hate is the inconsequential nature of later seasons. But wait, I also hate the shallow character development (Think: sober Barney, married father Apu). So I'm left just a confused as I was before.
And really, I don't hate this episode, nor do I find it that egregiously terrible. In fact, the much reviled "The Principal and the Pauper" immediately follows this episode (an episode I similarly don't actually hate myself), and "Realty Bites" is also coming this season (easily one of my least favorite episodes ever, and oddly enough the first appearance of Gil). But let's face it, the Simpsons isn't good anymore, as if it hasn't been said enough for the past 15 years.
- 1968
- 1979
- 1969
- 1998
- 1981
- 1966
(nor do I ever wish to), but I'll rank it anyway. Because that's how my list works.
to one airing currently. (When we say "bad" in reference to a Simpsons episode, it's important to note the term is relative)
presents a definite display of everything that is bad. And it all starts with "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson" 
