THE FORTRESS OF BAILEYTUDE

…Trinity.

I mean I really didn’t like the book and was seriously considering dropping it altogether.  I dropped Countdown, after all and man that was hard to do, at least from the perspective of being an addict.  You are currently reading a blog written by a person that has in his house at least 80% of the super-hero books DC published between 1986 and 2006 and will tell you that he owns the 1997 crossover Genesis and not blink or feel dirty like he should.  I have stuck with them through a lot, so it has been kind of rough lately to admit to myself that I really don’t care for a lot of what DC is doing at the moment.

Continue reading “I’M GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE BACK A LOT OF THE THINGS I’VE SAID ABOUT…”

…but I am pretty sure this is where half of the villains from the late eighties and early nineties came from.

httpv://au.youtube.com/watch?v=w9A9VgyIgas

I vaguely remember this commercial.  I am a bit curious about who won the contest and what the villains were like.

Not enough to actually track it down tonight, but I have much to do and miles to go before I sleep. 

More to follow…

You may have noticed the new image above or the fact that I changed the tag line of the blog.  Well, there’s a reason for that.

This is no longer a Superman only blog.  I really wanted it to be.  I did, but the fact of that matter is I am too scatter brained to really concentrate on one character.  It’s just not in me.  Superman is still my absolute favorite and he always will be.  It’s just I’ll go through these periods of intense Superman fandom and then something else will come along (Batman, the Hulk, etc.) and I’m like, “Ooh, shiny!”

It’s not something I am proud of, but over the last few months I have come to certain realizations about the various aspects of my life and one of those realizations that had to do with comic books was that yeah I like Superman but I like all of these other characters as well and sometimes I want to write about them and then I think of writing something on Views about it but then I start thinking that’s a bit silly and then I start thinking this was the problem I had with The Blue, The Red and The Green and I just want to put the proverbial shotgun in my mouth, pull the trigger and repeat.

This shouldn’t be as difficult as I am making it to be.  I know.  Bear with me because this hasn’t been the best week for me so far.

Anyway, if I am going to make a go of doing the comics blogging thing I have to take what I consider my faults and either work on them or work around them. 

So this is the comics blog.  All comics, all the time.  Maybe I can do this daily (or week daily as my good friend Shag of Once Upon a Geek calls it) if I have more to talk about than one character.  There will still be Superman stuff and I make no bones about the amount of Superman stuff that will be discussed, but I will be mixing it up a little more.

And we’ll see how that works.

You know, this may work and then again I may be sitting there on a daily basis thinking, “Do I want to put this here or do I want to put this on Views From The Longbox?”

Ah, indecision.  I know thee well.

More to follow…and not just about Superman…

I like DC Direct.  I like Mego.  I like the current wave of Mattel action figures.  My absolute favorite DC line of toys EVER was the Super Powers collection.

And I just found some commercials.

I placed the videos below the cut, because I like you.  I found a site years ago that had some great info on the line, including the original pitches and what could have been.  Check that out HERE. 

Continue reading “SUDDENLY I AM NINE YEARS OLD AGAIN or AWESOME!”

A friend of mine from Live Journal (Hey, DJ!) posted this on her journal and as the title of this post suggests I was afraid of something like this.

Like the recent Batman sequel — which has become the highest-grossing film of the year thus far — Mr. Robinov wants his next pack of superhero movies to be bathed in the same brooding tone as “The Dark Knight.” Creatively, he sees exploring the evil side to characters as the key to unlocking some of Warner Bros.’ DC properties. “We’re going to try to go dark to the extent that the characters allow it,” he says. That goes for the company’s Superman franchise as well.

The studio is set to announce its plans for future DC movies in the next month. For now, though, it is focused on releasing four comic-book films in the next three years, including a third Batman film, a new film reintroducing Superman, and two movies focusing on other DC Comics characters. Movies featuring Green Lantern, Flash, Green Arrow, and Wonder Woman are all in active development.

Yeah, because a dark and brooding Superman is exactly what we need.

Don’t get me wrong.  I loved Dark Knight.  I thought it was a fantastic movie and just what the Batman franchise needed.  My hope was that the execs at Warner Bros. would see that the movie worked because it fit that particular character and and that Iron Man worked because it was right for that character and  that the same would go for Watchmen and that they would say, “Maybe we should do the same for Superman, but make it fit that character.”  My fear was that they would look at the money pouring in from Dark Knight and go, “Hey, it was dark and made money.  Let’s make them all dark and brooding because that must be why it was successful.”

Sigh.

Now it’s all up in the air and I don’t know what is going to happen.  Maybe this approach will end up working.  I was against a full reboot because I liked Routh in the role.  I have multiple issues with Superman Returnsand most of those involved a kid that was about so tall and was chucking pianos about three quarters into the flick.  So I liked Routh and I liked Spacey, but the story left me with problems and I was torn about the reboot.

This reminds me of that period between 1998 and 2004 when all kinds of messed up announcements were coming down the pike and everything looked freaking horrible.  Anyone besides me remember that?  When John Peters was talking about a Superman that would be “bad to know” and Krypton wasn’t going to blow up?  What Warners produces could be great or it could be terrible.  I really have no idea. 

At the end of the day all I want is a Superman film that ends and I not only want to immediately see again but also one that has me going, “That was so freaking cool!”

Only time will tell I guess.

More to follow…

Well, that’s not quite true.  I do care as in I am a part time student of comic book history, but at the end of the day this is one of those things I don’t think I can get all riled up about.

What I’m talking about is some information that has come to light because of the recent litigation between DC and the Siegels.  Some correspondence between DC and Joe Shuster saw daylight for the first time in decades and holy crap there are some nasty things said in those bits of business.  Here’s an example, thanks to Jeff Trexler over at Newsarama:

[W]hy it is necessary to shade Lois’ breasts and the underside of her tummy with vertical pen-lines we can’t understand. She looks pregnant. Murray suggests that you arrange for her to have an abortion or the baby and get it over with so that her figure can return to something a little more like the tasty dish she is supposed to be.

And the more esoteric…

…which looked like you have apparently dressed her out of a Montgomery Ward catalogue. [Jack Liebowitz] suggests Vogue, Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar as likelier spots for dress-research.

Apparently Whitney Ellsworth, high muck-a-muck that eventually had a lot to do with the Adventures of Superman television series also believed that Superman looked a bit…well..gay.

From one perspective this is great stuff and will go far, no doubt, in fueling the hatred some feel about how DC treated Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and for the most part I understand that sort of righteous indignation because Siegel and Shuster were dealt a raw deal.  Kind if like the way I feel about Bob Kane and his shafting of Bill Finger when it comes to the creation of Batman, but different.

The thing is that while I think the editors and higher-ups at DC were a bit rough on Jerry and Joe through this correspondence I really can’t bring myself to think of them as evil men.  Looking at it now their comments can be considered very offensive and frankly they are offensive, but it’s easy to look now from our modern and “thoroughly enlightened” perspectives and say, “Grr…evil men…abortion…gay,” and stand on the high peak of moral superiority casting a nasty glare towards the past.

The thing is I just can’t care as much as I maybe should.  To me there are more pressing concerns and add that to the fact that I go through life with the assumption that things were bad back then for just about everyone and there you go.  It’s easy to say that that sort of thing is awful but it is just as easy to say that that’s just the way it was and that we should consider the whole picture and not use current thinking in judging the past.  And because I just don’t want to have that sort of internal struggle right now I just can’t bring myself to get all angry about these recently released documents.

Catch me in a few days when I’ve had some rest.  Then maybe I’ll care.  Right now I find it interesting, a little funny in the way I find offensive humor to be funny and that’s just about it.

More to follow…

And I really didn’t want to postpone it either, but that’s how it worked out.

I had a plan.  I really did.  I was going to spend the end of July writing all of the posts ahead of time so I could just crank them out daily.  I forgot one simple thing, though.

Back to school.

My day job is that of a department manager at a big box office supply store.  We take care of business as opposed to simply saying that that was easy.  This time of year is busy for us because the area schools are getting ready to start up again.  Add to that Georgia’s Tax Free Holiday and I am one tired human being.

So if you were looking forward to the Reign of the Supermen stuff I am sorry.  It’s coming, just not in the next week or so.  I really want to have everything done before I transform and roll out.

Sorry.  My bad.

Oh!  Thanks to the people who have been leaving comments.  I really appreciate it.  James is one of my buddies from the Superman Homepage who writes bang up reviews of the old Superman radio series and some kick ass retro reviews as well.  BrianR is someone I don’t think I have spoken to online but seems like a good egg and has a neat blog called Comics In Crisis, which I greatly enjoyed and need to add to my blog roll.  And my boy Fiduch is a Live Journal friend, so seeing him comment was neat too.

Oh yeah.  Some guy named Shag keeps commenting too.

Just kidding.  Shag’s a very good friend of mine.

So there you have it.  Stuff is coming.  It’s just delayed.  I feel bad but unfortunately this blog is something that sometimes has to be put off when time is tight.

More to follow…

This piece by Alex Ross (from the over sized Superman book be did with Paul Dini) perfectly sums up how I feel right now.

It’s been a long couple of days.  It seems like whenever I get into a routine with this blog something comes up to make it seemingly impossible to post everyday.  I am happy with the amount of posting I’ve done here this month.  I really am.  I just want to do more and real life…well, work mostly, seems to be standing in my way, mocking me, laughing at the thought of daily content.

Sigh.

I am firming up my plans for the Reign of the Supermen anniversary.  It’s actually going to spread over three sites if all goes well.  Towards the end of August I am going to devote an episode of my podcast, Views From The Longbox, to my recollections of that summer of ’93.  Over at the Superman Homepage I’m going to write a five part (rough estimate at this point, it could be less) series of articles that will explore the story arc as a whole, both in terms of what happened and the characters involved.  For this blog I want to start rolling out some of the neat stuff I have here at the Fortress from that era.  Magazines, trading cards and the like.  Overall it should be a fun experience and will hopefully satisfy whatever compulsion is making me so freaking nostalgic for that summer.

Oh and there’s going to be a contest too.  Stay tuned for that.

Should be fun.  At least I hope it is.

Oh well.  Off to grab a light snack and to turn over the laundry and going to bed.

More to follow…

Steve Younis was nice enough to offer me a guest spot on the Superman Homepage’s weekly vid-cast Speeding Bulletins.  Here’s how it turned out.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpyOn3DbTKo

Yeah, I know.  The sound quality on my end was awful, but overall I was pleased.  Thanks to Steve for taking a chance on a kid and a digital camera.

More to follow…

Really.  There weren’t any issues of the Superman titles out this week and for the first time in a long time I felt a strange sort of ache because of that fact.

I miss the days of a Superman book every week.  I really do.  When there were four of them I would sometimes complain about that fact but that only happened when the books were not up to par which is to say bad which is to say Joe Casey.  When done right the weekly Superman worked and worked well.  It was exciting.  It was fun.  It was nice to have something Supermanish to read when you picked up your books.

Man I’m feeling nostalgic for 1993.

Must find a way to channel this energy.

Hmmmm…

More to follow…