Lost's Final Season

I think I know where Lost is going with the final season and how they are going to tie up the series. The whole thing is about finding a successor for Nathan. There have been several references to this.

We now know that some of the survivors are "candidates". They were watched over and prepared from childhood by Nathan. Sometimes he met them in person. Other times he watched from his lighthouse. Each candidate has a number. The current set seems to match Hurley's numbers. There have been others, each one having his own number but most are gone.

This is being opposed by Smoky, the Smoke Monster who now appears as Locke. The real Locke was a candidate - probably a leading one given his rapport with the island. Sawyer/Ford was another candidate but he seems to have switched sides. So has Sayid. I can't believe that Sun or Jin would abandon the other. I'm not sure if Kate is a candidate or not but she is not a leader.

That leaves two candidates - Jack and Hurley. On the surface they are opposites - Hurley is easy-going and hates making decisions while Jack is tightly-wound and can't help being a decision-maker. They have some similarities, too. Hurley talks with the dead. Jack has healed people in seemingly miraculous ways. Both have been psychologically broken and needed the island to heal. Also, since returning to the island, Jack has been mellower and has made fewer bad choices. I suspect that Jack will become Jacob's replacement which will seem like an act of martyrdom - it will seem like it but he was a total screw-up on the outside world and has nothing to return to.

On the other side, Smoky is gathering his own set of candidates. Sawyer and the refugees from the temple have joined him but Ben rejected him.

So what is Smoky and who is (was) Jacob? I think that Smoky is the spirit of the island and wants to be free. Jacob was his jailer. Others have been Smoky's jailer in a line going back to Egypt.

What about Richard? I've always wondered if he came to the island on the Black Rock. The scene between him and Jack seemed to confirm this. It has been implied that he came as a slave and that Jacob freed him and made him ageless and undying (just as Michael was unable to kill himself). The only thing arguing against that is Richard's eye liner which could mean that he was brought to the island by the Egyptians.

Some questions - Ben's people made lists when the original Oceanic flight crashed. Where they doing this as a reflection of Jacob's list? Why do you have to kill your father in order to join Ben's people? Both Ben and Locke has to kill their fathers as an initiation. Was this a way of proving their commitment to the island? They keep insisting that they are the good guys but they have a high body count. Are the "good" because they help contain Smoky?

As for the flash-sideways - they seem to show what people would have been like without the island. I will not say that they seem happier, but they seem more at peace with themselves. Jack managed to keep a marriage together long enough to have a son. Locke worked through his bitterness and seemed to like his father. Ben is capable of self-sacrifice. On the other hand, Sayid is not a nice person in either world.

Old Avengers/New Avengers

When the Avengers was created it featured most of the unaffiliated heroes in the Marvel Universe - Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, Ant Man, and the Wasp. By issue fifteen, the team was really hitting its stride. The Hulk was long gone, replaced by Captain America. The other characters were better-defined.

Issue #15 was fast-paced. Baron Zemo returned and gathered his Masters of Evil - the Executioner, the Enchantress, the Black Knight, and the Melter. Zemo kidnapped Captain America's sidekick, Rick Jones, and flew to his base in Africa followed by Cap. The other four faced off against the remaining Masters of Evil.

During the fight between Zemo and Cap, Zemo was killed in a rock-slide. This was a point of honor for Stan Lee for years - a villain died and you saw his body so he will stay dead.

In issue #16, everything changed. The fight between the Avengers and the Masters of Evil was wrapped up quickly. After that, Thor left for Asgard for a trial of the gods. Captain America's plane was blown up so he had to walk back to civilization. The remaining three decided that they were tired of being Avengers and that they needed a break. They recruited a trio of replacements. Cap returned in time to be appointed leader of the team.

This was just one of many changes going on in Marvel at the time leading to what I think of as Marvel 2.0. Giant Man's strip in Tales to Astonish was replaced with the Sub-Mariner. The Human Torch and the Thing's strip in Strange Tales was replaced with Nick Fury, Agent of Shield. The Hulk went from a mindless brute to being intelligent (for a while). At the same time, the X-Men and Daredevil went from bi-monthly to monthly comics. They even tried changing the name from "Marvel Comics" to "Marvel Pop Art Productions".

Issue #17 was the first with the new team. In many ways this issue started what we think of as the Avengers. Previously the team had a rotating chairman. From this point forward, it would have an actual leader. This issue introduced the lower level of the Avengers mansion, filled with high-tech crime-fighting equipment. It was the first one that had the Avengers training together (although the X-Men and the Human Torch had been doing training exercises for some time). It was also the first issue where the Avengers had their own custom-built jet.

The issue began with the new members questioning Captain America's leadership. In order to add some power to their ranks, they announced a search to add the Hulk to their ranks.  They were given a clue that the Hulk was in the desert. While searching for him, they fell into a trap. The Mole Man decided to kill off the new, weaker team using the Minotaur - a giant creature who would have given the Hulk a fight. The Avengers used teamwork to defeat the Minotaur and the Mole Man, proving that they did not need additional strength. As all of this was happening, a few panels were reprinted from the Hulk's own strip showing where he was while the Avengers searched for him.

This was the strongest issue to date. There was character development and growth. You could see the group become a team.

Avengers Evolution II

More on the early issues of the Avengers.

It is interesting watching the characters change. In Avengers #1, Iron Man was in his original armor designed by Jack Kirby. By Issue #3 he was in the lighter suit designed by Steve Ditko. The helmet on this one had a faceplate that could swing up (but almost never did). Don Heck modified the armor to the version that was used for another couple of decades in Iron Man's own strip. When he took over the Avengers he updated the armor there, too.

Henry Pym went from Ant Man in the first issue to Giant Man in issue #2. He and the Wasp were still using pills to change size. By issue #8 he and the Wasp were using their cybernetic helmets to change their size. Giant Man's costume also changed. As Ant Man he had a bulky helmet. He swapped this for a lighter helmet that was almost a plain mask when he became Giant Man. He also changed his costume lightly. The original suit had stripes coming over is shoulders and joining a circle with a second circle beneath it. This was changed to alternating white and black stripes that went over his shoulders and down to his belt, almost lie suspenders. When Don Heck took over this stripes became solid black and joined. He got a revised costume with a blue overlay to his costume and helmet in issue #14 only to retire in issue #16.

The Wasp's mask changed several times. I'm not sure if there was ever an official version.

Captain America's shield got some electronics so that he could throw it and control it remotely. He switched back to straps an throwing it quickly.

Thor stayed unchanged.

Power levels changed, also. When Jack Kirby was the artist, Thor seemed to pull powers out of a hat. Iron Man mainly used beams from his palms to make people spin in mid-air although they usually escaped. Giant Man wasn't much stronger than Captain America.

Things changed around when Don Heck took over. Thor's powers were more limited. Iron Man was the one pulling powers out of a hat. Giant Man seemed stronger and used his growth and shrinking powers to maneuver around his opponents. Captain America threw his shield more.

They used Tony Stark's town house for meetings starting in the second issue.

The Avengers did not have a fixed leader. They had a chairmanship that rotated. Even the Wasp got to be in charge. By the 7th issue they had a set of by-laws. They also used Roberts Rules of Order - possibly the only time these were used so extensively in a comic book.

Transportation was interesting. In a couple of really early issues they used a jetcopter. This was probably a regular helicopter with a jet turbine. Helicopters were still pretty new in the 1960s and it looked stock. They also borrowed a submarine from Tony Stark. Later they left transportation to each member. This meant that they arrived at different times, making it easier for the villains.

Who is the Rulk?

The Red Hulk (Rulk) has been around since the latest Hulk reboot. A lot of clues have been dropped about his identity but many of them were "red" herrings. The biggest clue was overshadowed by one of those red herrings.

The two most obvious candidates are Leonard Samson and Thunderbolt Ross. At one point they even showed Samson's coat, irradiated with gamma radiation and stretched out as if someone grew while wearing it.

Both Ross and Samson have appeared with the Rulk.

I haven't spotted many other clues but there are a few. He likes guns. He seems to know a lot about SHIELD LMDs (Life Model Decoys). He knows Samson and Ross.

There is one other clue but it's a negative one. Samson vanished for a few issues when they were dropping strong hints that he was Rulk. At the same time he vanished, a crushed body turned up that was quickly identified as SHIELD agent Clay Quartermain. Almost nothing else was said about this.

So, why kill off a character who has been around since 1967? I don't think that they did. I think that Quartermain is the Rulk. He was with Samson at the time that Rulk appeared. Samson was involved, maybe even responsible. A body, or even a fake body, was planted to explain his absence. He even led a team of Hulkbusters at one point. Who better?

I'd say that you heard it here first but a Google search shows that someone else thought of this a few months ago. He also thinks that Quartermain has green hair when he is himself. This is incorrect. Issue 14 shows four people talking together. One has green hair and the other three are wearing caps. We see one of the figures in a cap go into an alley and change into the Rulk. During the change you can see his hat fall off and it is lying on the street when he finishes his change. Later we see that Samson was the one with green hair (and no cap) and Ross was one of the people with a cap.

Next question - who is the red She-Hulk? She quotes military strategy. She could be Betty Ross, back from the grave. That was my first guess. Her father is a general, after all. It seems too easy.

Since Quartermain is a secondary character that they slipped in, I think that the Red She-Hulk is another secondary character, possibly another member of SHIELD. Her torn outfit looks a little like a SHIELD uniform which supports this. I'm guessing Maria Hill, former deputy director of SHIELD.

Iron Man and Transistors

Every comic book featuring Iron Man from the early 1960s has constant references to transistors. Unless you grew up in the 60s, this will go over your head so I thought I would go into a little detail.

During the first half of the 20th century, electronics used vacuum tubes. These had a few wires inside a glass tube which kept the air out. Air acts as an insulator so they had to have a vacuum. These were big. The smallest ones were as big as a tube of lipstick. The big ones were as big as a light bulb. They took minutes to warm up before they started to work. They were heavy. They needed a lot of power. There was no such thing as a portable radio back then. The best you could get was a car radio which ran off of the car battery (and could run it down if the motor wasn't running).

The transistor changed that. It was tiny, durable, and only used a fraction of the power. Suddenly portable, battery-powered radios and even TVs were possible. Of course, the radios were still the size of a paperback book, AM-only, and they only came with an earphone for one ear but you could carry one around with you for the first time.

So, transistors were a "big" thing.

Now, Stan Lee didn't really understand what a transistor was. He just knew that they were responsible for miniaturization. He figured that you could attach a transistor to a magnet and boost its power. And he was really confused about the relationship between transistors and batteries so Iron Man was constantly "charging his transistors" instead of his batteries.

No one talks about transistors, these days. They were replaced with integrated circuit chips which hold the equivalent of many transistors. If you are carrying a smart phone then you are carrying millions of transistors around with you. That's why the Iron Man movie changed the focus from his transistors to his power source.

The Evolution of the Avengers

I've been taking advantage of Marvel's digital comics to reread the early issues of the Avengers. I hadn't read most of these comics since the 1960s so it I have a different perspective.

For now I'm covering issues 1-9. The first eight of these were Lee/Kirby with Don Heck taking over as artist with issue nine.

First, general impressions - Marvel had three team comics during this period - the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and the X-Men. Even though Lee and Kirby did the early issues of all three, each had a very different feel. They were all pretty early in the overall evolution of Marvel. Pages were broken up into regular panels - four or six to a page. Stories were self-contained but there was some continuity between issues.

The FF and the X-Men were almost families. The Avengers was different because it was a collection of heroes who already had their own books. They barely knew each other and none of them shared his secret identity with the others.

In some ways, the Avengers was a marketing ploy. Each issue introduced all of the characters enough that you could pick up their own books and know what was going on. There was always a couple of panels of Thor as Don Blake, often with his nurse, Jane Foster. You always knew that Iron Man was really Tony Stark and that his armor had to be recharged regularly or he would die. Issues with the Hulk usually included Bruce Banner and often included General "Thunderbolt" Ross and his daughter.

The Avengers spent a lot of time fighting each other and the Sub-Mariner. They joined to fight the Hulk. In issue #2, an alien impersonated different members making them fight some more. In issue #3, the Hulk quit and fought the Avengers, escaped, fought then joined the Sub-Mariner, and finally the two of them fought the Avengers. In issue #4, the Sub-Mariner tossed the piece of ice containing Captain America into the ocean. Later he and some of his Atlanteans fought the Avengers. In issue #5, the Lave Men pushed a "living rock" into the surface world in the South-West. The Hulk appeared and fought the Avengers (again) in the middle of this. Finally, in issue #7, Thor was magically hypnotized into attacking the other Avengers.

Not many memorable characters were invented during this period. Baron Zemo was introduced when Captain America was revived. We first saw him in issue #7 and he died in issue #15 although his son is still around.

Issue #8 finally created a memorable new (sort of) character - Kang the Conqueror. Kang had actually appeared twice before as the FF villain, Rama Tut, but here he was given a new name, costume, and technology. Between his advanced armor and his space/time ship, he was able to take on the Avengers single-handed.

Issue #9 introduced Wonder Man. He died at the end of the issue but came back from the dead several times, even having his own comic book for a while.

Issue #9 also marked the end of Jack Kirby's run and the beginning of Don Heck's. I always thought of Kirby as the superior artist but this issue surprised me. I realized that I have been judging Kirby by his later work. In 1964, Kirby was still a conservative artist. Heck's work was much more dynamic. He did not limit himself to regular panels or angles. It would be another couple of years before Kirby's work changed.

One last thing that struck me was how difficult it was to balance a team with Thor. Often either Thor or Captain America would end up separated from the others. In fact, Thor was much more powerful than the other Avengers put together so most plots had to work around this somehow. I suspect that this was one reason that Stan changed the line-up after a couple of years.

Lost - the final season

We are three episodes into the final season of Lost. The producers promised no more flashbacks or flashforwards. Instead we get Flashback-and-to-the-sides. We see the surviving cast in "real time" and we see what would have happened to them a few years ago if the flight hadn't crashed. It's hard to say where they are going with this. Will this continue to be a parallel universe, unconnected to the one we've been watching or will they somehow converge at the end? Is this just a way of confirming what Locke/Smoky said - that they all had pitiful lives and were better off on the island? (Not counting all of the ones who died.)

Speaking of Smoky, we now know that he is the second John Locke. We've seen him appear as dead people before. I think that the only time he has previously appeared to multiple people at once was as a horse to Kate and Sawyer (assuming that was him).

We've see the circle of powder that keeps Smoky out before. The first time Locke went to Jacob's cabin he crossed a line of the same powder. We saw the powder again when he tried to find the cabin but it had moved.

Hopefully the people in the temple are related to Ben's people. It would be too weird to have two groups living on the island. Ben's group seemed to support Jacob over Smoky and the temple group seems afraid of Smoky and the island.

Dogen, the head of the temple, said that he was afraid that the island's spirit had sunk into Sayid and tried to poison him because of it. Is this what Locke (the real one) was communicating with? Claire was last seen with Jack's father, Christian. Now, we are told that the island's spirit sunk into her and poisoned her. She seems to have become the new resident mad-woman. There are parallels between Claire and Rousseau, the previous mad-woman. Both had her child taken from her. Both ended up living alone in the jungle. It appears that both spend their spare time setting traps to catch the others.

Hero vs Hero

Back in the 1960s, it was a cliche that any time two Marvel heroes met, they had to fight, first. Digging through some of Marvel's Digital Comics, I looked up some examples and I can remember some others.

Marvel started small, adding one character or group at a time. Stan Lee was a genius at cross-promotion. As new heroes were created, they met well established heroes. This exposed the new characters to a wider audience with the idea of increasing sales. It also laid the foundation of the Marvel Universe. DC had a wide variety of characters. Most of them never crossed paths outside of the JLA. At Marvel, most of them lived in New York City so they often made cameo appearances. Spider-Man might be knocked off a lamp post by Thor's jet stream.

My focus here is the more formal appearance. Some of them were straight guest shots. Ant Man was called in when the FF faced a microscopic enemy. More often they were fights.

The Hulk's first appearance with the FF was an obvious cross-over. It happened near the end of the run of the Hulk's original comic. By that point, Bruce Banner would run to his hidden lab and expose himself to gamma rays in order to turn into an intelligent Hulk. In this case, the FF was called in to investigate acts of sabotage. General Thunderbolt Ross was sure that the Hulk was responsible but Banner and Rick Jones insisted that someone else was. After a rocket sled was wrecked (while the Thing was riding it), the FF found a series of caves and tunnels. In one of these they ran into the Hulk and tried to capture him. The battle was pretty evenly matched until a hidden ray knocked out the Hulk. The FF tracked it to Banner's assistant who was a communist saboteur (he even carried a membership card in a subversive organization in his wallet).

A few months later the Hulk was added as a backup to Giant-Man in Tales to Astonish (several early Marvel comics started out as science fiction/horror comics and it was easier to keep the original name and add the hero). The issue before the Hulk was added, he fought with Giant-Man. Here's a bit of trivia for you - this issue was the first time the Hulk said, "The madder I get the stronger I get."

Not a lot happened in this issue. It mainly introduced the cast and set up that the Hulk was now changing when he got angry. Giant-Man and the Wasp went looking for the Hulk to see if he wanted back into the Avengers. Banner assumed that they were hunting him, got angry, and changed into the Hulk. An old Giant-Man villain, the Human Top (now known as Whirlwind) orchestrated the fight and arraigned for the military to fire a nuclear shell at the Hulk, not knowing that Giant-Man was also present. The Hulk caught the shell, threw it in a different direction, and vanished.

When Captain America was added as a backup feature with Iron Man in Tales of Suspense, they had the prerequisite fight. Iron Man was testing the underwater capability of his armor and stumbled across Kraven the Hunter and the Chameleon. He captured Kraven but the Chameleon escaped. Shortly after that, Captain America appeared at Stark's office in a torn costume. He said that he had been captured by the Chameleon who absorbed his memories and planned on attacking the Avengers. Iron Man rushed to the Avenger's mansion to confront the imposer. Of course, the guy in the torn costume was the Chameleon and Iron Man was fighting the real Captain America. Eventually Giant-Man and the Wasp broke up the fight.

Spider-Man ran into the Hulk during his first fight with the Green Goblin. The Goblin convinced a movie director to make a movie in the southwest featuring a fight between Spider-Man and the Goblin along with a trio known as the Enforcers. It was all a trap. Spider-Man and the villains went off to rehearse in a cave. The Enforcers blocked the entrance and attacked. They were quickly subdued but during the fight with the Goblin, the Hulk appeared. They had chosen his cave to fight in. Spider-Man tricked the Hulk into unblocking the cave and escaped, carrying the unconscious Enforcers with him. The Goblin escaped. The most notable thing about this issue was that it clearly established power levels. Spider-Man hit the Hulk as hard as he could and nearly broke his hand. The Hulk wasn't fazed.

The biggest fight/launch was Avengers #1. Thor's enemy, Loki, saw the Hulk and decided that he had a chance of killing Thor. This was during the Hulk's smart phase. Loki use an illusion to lure the Hulk into wrecking a train. The Hulk's friend, Rick Jones, tried contacting the Fantastic Four with a ham radio but Loki changed the frequency of their message to one that Thor was listening to. As it happened, Iron Man and Giant-Man were also listening to the same message. They converged on the Hulk and fought with him until Loki was revealed. Then they decided to form the Avengers.

In Avengers #2, a shape-shifting alien came to earth an assumed the forms of different Avengers, causing them to fight each other again. At the end of the issue the Hulk quit the group. In a later issue joined forces with the Sub-Mariner to fight the remaining Avengers.

The X-Men fought the Fantastic Four. This issue was special to me. It was the first Fantastic Four comic I read and my third Marvel comic. This time the Mad Thinker and the Puppet Master joined forces. Under the Thinker's direction, the Puppet Master took control of Professor X using a radioactive clay doll. The Professor convinced the X-Men that his telepathy had uncovered a plot by the FF to take over the world. He sent the team to approach the FF then attack them. Under the Professor's direction, the X-Men captured Sue and brought her to an island the Thinker had already prepared. The X-Men were clearly outclassed but the Thinker's traps gave them an edge. After the FF was subdued the pair revealed themselves and the Puppet Master used the Professor's telepathy to render the X-Men unconscious. The Beast resisted long enough to crush the Puppet Master's doll. The FF was released and the Thinker and company had to flee.

Thor and the Hulk fought in an issue of Thor. This was a straight "who's strongest" knock-down, drag-out fight. It was actually an extended flashback from a two-panel fight the two had in an early issue of the Avengers (see above). The two got separated from the main fight and Thor wanted to prove who was the better warrior. He asked Odin to be able to fight without his hammer. Odin gave him five minutes. The battle was still going on when the time ran out and Thor recovered his hammer. The implication was that the hammer gave him an edge but the flashback trailed off there. The Hulk and Sub-Mariner vanished before the fight could conclude.

1968 started what I think of as Marvel 2.0. Reed and Sue got married. The Avengers got a new line-up. Tales of Suspense retired the Human Torch and the Thing for Nick Fury, agent of Shield and Tales to Astonish swapped out Giant-Man for the Sub-Mariner. As the lead-in for this, the Sub-Mariner fought Daredevil.

When the character was revived, the Sub-Mariner found that his people had abandoned the city of Atlantis. In FF Annual #1 he found them but they abandoned the new Atlantis because of Manor's divided loyalties. He found them again and assumed his role as ruler. He decided to settle his dispute with the surface world in court and ended up with Matt Murdock (Daredevil) as his attorney. The court ruled that his suit was out of their jurisdiction. At the same time, Namor was informed that there had been a coup. Warlord Krang had seized control of Atlantis. Namor tried to escape. Daredevil fought him and lost but out of respect for a valiant foe, Namor departed peacefully.

When it was decided to give the Silver Surfer his own book, Stan felt that he was too powerful. In an issue of the FF, the Surfer decided to unite humanity by giving them a common enemy. He attacked the Earth. A special missile was sent after him. It was supposed to drain his power then use it to explode, killing him. The FF saved the Surfer from the missile and he called off his attack but was left weakened.

One last fight deserves mention. The Sub-Mariner and the Hulk shared Tales to Astonish for some time. Before they got their own comics, they had one last fight. This one actually had a winner. The Sub-Mariner beat the Hulk by creating a whirlpool around him.

Marvel heroes would continue to fight but this marked the end of promotion through cross-over fight.

Digital Comics

I recently subscribed to Marvels' digital comic books. I also have a couple of DVDs of collections - one for the X-Men and one for the Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer. I'd like to compare them with each other and with the paper editions.

Comic books were designed to be on paper. There are no two ways about this. This is also the only form that they have any collectible value. That said, there are disadvantages to having them on paper. They take up a lot of room and they require careful storage to keep up their value. Finding an individual issue can be difficult unless you spend a lot of time filing them and you can't carry them everywhere without risking damage.

The biggest disadvantage of comics on paper is that it is expensive and difficult to read issues that you missed.

The DVD collections have scanned comic books in PDF format. Each book is converted to a scanned image, exactly as it appeared including ads and letters pages. This is a fairly pure experience. You see everything as it was. You use your PDF viewer to zoom in and out, up and down.

Marvel's digital comics take a different approach. They are stored in Flash format with navigation buttons at the bottom for going forward and backwards. The Flash animation has been preset to zoom in or out to make the comic easily readable. The images have been cleaned up. There is no yellowing, no folds, no staples, and nothing but the story itself. You do not buy the digital comics. You buy access, either by the month or by the year. As long as your subscription is valid you can read everything in their library which is being added to daily.

I've been using the PDF images for my FF blogging. Last night I read the FF's first meeting with the Hulk and the first four issues of Thor's return from Marvel's Digital Comics. My impression is that the PDF images work fine for older comics but will not be as convenient for newer ones. The old comics stuck pretty much to a six panel per page format. This was later changed to four panels with some oversized panels. On my PCs, the screen is smaller than the original comic so I zoom it to something like the original size then move the page up and down to read. Newer comics mix panel size constantly. One page might be divided with one panel taking up most of the page and a couple of smaller panels inserted on top of it. This does not lend itself as well to the PDFs.

The Digital Comics will zoom in and out, up and down, trying to follow the story while letting you see the layout of the page. This works fairly well although some word balloons are a bit hard to read when it is showing the full page. You can also override this, scolling the page up or down and changing the zoom. Ironically, the Digital Comics have problems with the older issues. The pages might have been divided into six panels per page but the viewer does not always synchronize properly. There were several times that a word balloon was cut off at the top and I had to scroll up. This is only a minor complaint.

Conclusions: All three ways work. If you are more interested in the story than the physical comic then the digital versions are a good choice. If you want to see the most recent issues then you still have to buy your comics on paper. If you want a wide selection that is still incomplete then the Digital Comics are a good choice. If you want a deep selection - everything for a single character then the DVD collections are good. The DVDs have the additional benefit of portability. You can take them anywhere that you take your laptop. The Digital Comics require a network connection.

Note: Don't even think about trying this on an iPad. It doesn't support Flash or external, optical disks.

FF Blogging - FF Annual #1

It's been a while since I blogged about old issues of the Fantastic Four.

I started reading the Fantastic Four with FF Annual #2. It was years before I saw the first annual and I think that this was the first time I reread it.

Growing up in the 1960s, Marvel's annuals were a big event. DC put out super-sized collections of reprints but Marvel was too new for that. Their annuals featured a new, extended-length story, a reprint, and some extra material. At a time when DC shoehorned two stories into a regular-sized comic, the extended story was unprecedented. Stan Lee fit extra-large subject matter into the story, in this case, the Prince Namor, Sub Mariner.

The Sub Mariner was the first Golden Age hero that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby revived. The Human Torch found him as a wondering, amnesiac, derelict in FF #3. After giving him a shave and dropping him in the ocean, namor regained his memory and went to rejoin his people. He found their city deserted, apparently due to nuclear testing. He declared war on the human race, starting with New York City and the FF. He also developed a crush on Sue Storm.

At the beginning of the annual, Namor found his people again and took him place as their ruler. Lady Dorma and Warlord Krang were introduced and would go onto become long-time supporting characters in the Sub Mariner's own comic.

The FF combined a vacation with an investigation into some strange sightings at sea. This turned out to be a trap. The Sub Mariner captured them then sent them to the United Nations to deliver his declaration of war. During the UN session, a scientist explained the evolution of Namor's people and the circumstances of his birth. The scientist turned out to the the Sub Mariner in disguise. When the UN rejected his demands, he launched his attack.

New York quickly fell to the Atlantean invaders. The FF captured a few soldiers and Reed figured out how to disrupt the helmets that let them breath out of water. His army fled but the Sub Mariner invaded the FF's headquarters and captured Sue Storm.

The other three followed but were attacked by sea creatures commanded by Namor. They were at a disadvantage and about to fall when a jealous Lady Dorma broke the window of the ship holding Sue. Sue nearly drowned and Namor commandeered the command craft to take her to a human hospital.

When he returned, Namor found that he people had deserted him again because of his divided loyalties.

That's a lot of story! These days it would have been spread over multiple issues and later gathered into a graphic novel.

As a backup, the annual had a reprint story and some pinups.

iPad Second Impressions

The iPad got a surprising amount of bad press. This was quickly followed by hard-core Apple defenders rebutting the complaints. Wired lists 10 Things Missing From the iPad then dismisses them as nothing anyone would want, anyway. I'm going to take a closer look at Wired's list. I reordered the list and combined four items into one.

• Flash
• Verizon
• OLED
• Multitasking
• 16:9
• USB, HDMI, Keyboard, Camera
• GPS

Wired's take on some of these is interesting. For Flash and Verizon, the answer seems to be that it is their fault that Apple doesn't support them. Wired even predicts that the iPad will kill Flash. I'm not sure why. There are tens of thousands of iPhones out there and Flash still survives. Even if the iPad is a success, it will take it years to equal the impact that the iPhone has.

Wired has a point about OLED. It would have pushed the price point up too high. More on that later.

People don't really expect to do multiple things on their phone so multitasking wasn't a big deal. Even so, the ability to multitask is a selling point for Droid and Palm. The iPad is supposed to be more than a simple phone so why does it have this restriction? Wired assumes that anyone buying an iPad will be too busy watching movies to want email going in the background (which ties into the next point). Ok, if the iPad is going to be a personal movie device then you might not want email interrupting the movie but what about people who are using it to browse the web. I thought that most people multi-tasked these days.

The lack of a 16:9 proportion argues that the iPad is not primarily meant as a way of watching movies and TV. Wired points out that the logo and the home button are positioned for portrait, not landscape, which also indicates that video is more an afterthought than a goal. The lack of built-in HDMI says the same thing. It is possible that they positioned things the way they did so that the iPad would look like a big iPhone. Microsoft used 16:9 in the Zune HD and it looks fine in portrait and landscape. That makes the proportions really puzzling. It's even more puzzling if you assume that the iPad will mainly be used for web browsing. Most web pages look best in landscape. Did they design it around books? Or was my big iPhone theory correct?

This brings me to the real design factor in the iPad - cost. They wanted it to be cheap so they left a lot out. You can add USB, a keyboard, a camera, and possibly HDMI but you have to pay extra. These extra will add up quickly, too. A USB port and a docking station adds 20% to the base price. I'm betting that Jobs came up with a list of features that the iPad has to have to be considered functional and cut everything else out if it to save money. Some things are available as ad-ins. GPS was eliminated except on the higher-end version that can use cell-phone technology to approximate it. That may explain the 4:3 screen, also. It is probably cheaper than a 16:9. It certainly explains why the iPad is so light on memory. $500 only gets you 16 gig and the most you can get is 64 gig. That's not much for a device that is supposed to become your entertainment hub.

Sacrificing features for price is probably a good idea. A recent survey found that most people would not buy an $800 iPad. A $500 is much more attractive. Still, you really have to wonder how successful it will be as a media device? It's too big to be a dedicated MP3 player and it is pretty expensive as a single-person video player. The ability to download movies and TV shows and play them on your wide-screen TV without having to resort to a second computer or an expensive adapter seems like a missed selling point.

I haven't talked about games yet. The assumption is that this will be a great gaming platform and possibly that is its real intended use. I'm still a little skeptical about that, too. I know that the iPhone has been embraced as a gaming platform but I wonder just how much fun it will be using a 1 1/2 pound game controller. I predict a lot of repetitive stress injuries.

iPad Impressions

The Jesus Tablet has finally arrived and it's a big iPhone with a clunky name - the iPad. This is supposed to be the device that saves publishing by convincing us to stop accessing the Internet with our PCs for free and start buying the content for the iPad, instead. It isn't going to happen.

Gizmodo has a list of things that suck with the iPad. I'm going to concentrate on a few important ones.

First, its web browser is crippled. It doesn't run Flash. That means that Youtube needs a special app to work and pages with embedded Youtube videos will not work.

Like the iPhone, it will only do one thing at a time. You can browse or your can check email but don't try to do both.

There's no camera so you cannot do a video chat with anyone either.

People are expecting the iPad to take over ebooks the way that the iPod took over music. It will not. It is too big and too expensive.

I don't expect it to cut into the Netbook market much either. It is lighter but it is missing a lot of functionality and it costs more. I'm using a laptop on my lap right now. The form factor is pretty good. I can type without it falling off of my lap and I don't have to hold it in place to see the screen.

Apple had great success with music and phones but they entered these markets with revolutionary products. Prior to the iPod, MP3 players had very limited memory and hard-to-use controls. Apple was the first to offer a music player that could hold an entire collection instead of a couple of CDs.

The iPhone was the first phone with a big touch screen. Every phone before it had a keypad that took up a lot of space.

The iPad does not offer new functionality. There are other tablets on the market that do more. For the starting price of an iPad, you can get a good notebook with ten times the storage and a full version of Windows 7. For less than the price of an iPad you can get a netbook with a fairly large hard drive, similar screen size and good battery life.

I don't doubt that Apple will sell a lot of iPads - at least a million by the end of the year. But I don't think that it will dominate any markets the way that the iPod and iPhone have done.

The Human Target

I never cared for the Human Target back when it was a back-up strip for Superman. The adventures of a regular guy who would disguise himself as people in danger in order to dodge assassination attempts was a poor fit for Superman and backup strips were usually too short to tell a good story, anyway.

Fox has adapted the strip as an action-adventure show which I like a great deal.

The concept has been totally retooled. The main character (Mark Valley) is now a bodyguard, accompanying the target rather than replacing him. He goes by the name Christopher Chance but it is clear that this is not his real name. In the first couple of episodes, they have dropped hints that Chance has a shady background and may have a death-wish. He is assisted by Winston (Chi McBride playing nearly the same role that he had in Pushing Daisies) and Guerrero (Jackie Earle Haley).

The show is basically an old-fashioned action/adventure/mystery with some comedy thrown in. This used to be a TV staple but now is mainly represented on network TV by Chuck. The two episodes shown so far involved a run-away bullet train and a pilot-less airliner.

I hope that this show gets a decent chance. Fox premiered it on Sunday then moved it to Wednesday at 9 with a special time next week on Tuesday. It may switch places with American Idol and move to 8:00.

Avatar, Race and Heroes

Is Avatar racist? Many think so. The story has been described as one of a series of movies in which a white westerner abandons his culture and embraces a new one, thereby becoming its savior. The implication is that the alien culture cannot save itself, it has to have a white outsider to save it.

This general plotline has deep roots.

One of the oldest and most common stories is about a young man who leaves home, finds a teacher or mentor, and becomes a hero. This dates back at least a thousand years. George Lukas bragged about using it in the original Star Wars movie.

A refinement of this has the man encountering a totally new culture and embracing it. This is a staple of novels, especially science fiction. Edgar Rice Burroughs used it for most of his heroes. This is the basis of Dune and the historic Japanese novel, Shogun.

The reason this is so common is that it allows the writer to introduce the new culture to us as it is introduced to the hero. The introduction becomes part of the plot.

During the Viet Nam war, a new variation grew up. The idea of a wise primitive culture resisting a cruel, technological culture was introduced. This mirrored the perception of a third world country being able to defeat a superpower.

In this variation, technology and culture have blinded the hero and he must learn the wisdom that his people forgot. The villains are normally either military or industrial with military accompanying them. They are contemptuous of the local culture but, when the final fight comes, the natives easily best the outsiders using their superior insights. Writer Alan Dean Foster made a career out of this as have other writers from the late 1960s and 70s.

This is what I grew up reading and James Cameron was born the same year that I was. You can also see the influence of this in other movies. In Return of the Jedi, Imperial soldiers are overcome by feral teddy bears. In Phantom Menace, a bunch of semi-primitives challenge a droid army. It is no coincidence that Alan Dean Foster wrote the first Star Wars novel.

The message here is debatable. It can be seen as a need for a white savior to rescue cultures that cannot save themselves, no matter how superior they are. An alternate view is that even someone from a decadent western culture can become enlightened if he leaves his culture behind and embraces a new one.

If James Cameron had just left it at that, conservatives would have continued to jeer but that would have been the end of it. The problem is that Cameron couldn't leave it alone. He had to introduce a racial element. When he cast the movie he cast whites as the bad guys and people of other races as the natives. Avatar is not about the superiority of primitive, planet-loving cultures over modern technological civilization. It is about everyone else being superior to whites. But they still need a white guy to save them. If you are sensitive enough then there is something here to offend everyone. Whites - you are evil. Blacks, Indians, Asians - you need whites to save you from other whites.

With it's anti-colonialism and anti-Bush message, Avatar was considered a contender for the Best Picture Oscar but some ham-handed racial casting might turn off enough Academy voters to give the Best Picture to someone else (possibly someone who made a better picture).

Doctor Parnassus

Most people know the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus as Heath Ledger's last film. Forget that. Yes, Ledger is there in an important role but he isn't what makes the movie stand out. It's real claim to fame is that it is Terry Gilliam's return to the type of film-making he did in the 1980s. It is the first movie that he wrote and directed since The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988!) and his personal touch shows. Like a Tim Burton movie, there are a number of "Gilliam" images scattered throughout.

The movie is about a series of wagers between Doctor Parnassus, a former Buddhist monk, and Mr. Nick, the devil. Parnassus has a traveling show in which people go through a mirror and enter a world created by a combination of Parnassus's imagination and their own. While there, they are presented with a choice between salvation and perdition. Parnassus and Nick each try to influence the person's choice.

Over the centuries, Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) and Nick (Tom Waits) have made wagers with various stakes. To confuse things, Nick doesn't always want to win. Sometimes he has his sights on a different prize and Parnassus is a means to an end. The result of one of these wagers is that Nick gets to claim Parnassus's daughter, Valentina, at her 16th birthday. As the days are counting down, a new person enters the show - a man they found hanging beneath a bridge. It turned out that he wasn't dead. He had swallowed a tube which kept his windpipe from being crushed. The man's name is Tony, played by Ledger along with Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell. He seems to offer salvation but he has his own dark secrets.

While the acting is good, the real star of the show are the visuals. Parnassus's traveling wagon unfolds into a fantastic stage with clockwork figures moving back and forth. Other times it has an seemingly unlimited number of doors and hiding places. The Imaginarium itself is ever-changing. Many of the visuals are reminiscent of Baron Muchausen. There is also a dance number by policemen in drag that reminds you that Gilliam started out in Monty Python.

If you liked Baron Munchausen, Brazil and Time Bandits then you will like Parnassus. If they left you confused then so will Parnassus.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

We were watching the Grinch (the classic Chuck Jones cartoon, not the overblown Jim Carey movie) last night and marveling at how well it has held up. The show was made in 1966 and all of the principles have died (at ripe old ages) but the show still seems fresh.

Part of this is the source material. This was the only Seuss book that is really aimed at the entire family instead of very young children. It is similar to Dickens's A Christmas Carol with a lonely character having a life-changing experience revolving around Christmas.

Part of it is the animation. This is Chuck Jones at the top of his form. You don't have to see the credits to know that he directed it but it is not as stylized as some of his work. It is also the best animated Christmas special that I can remember from the 1960s through the 1990s. The Charlie Brown Christmas special was done on a very limited budget and even that was nearly twice what CBS paid to show it. It didn't make a profit until its second showing (which was once per year back then). The Rankin Bass programs like Frosty the Snowman were poorly done and got progressively worse into the 1970s. The Grinch is theatrical-quality animation.

Then there is the voice talent. I'm sure that Boris Karloff would be pleased to know that his best know work turned out to be a classic children's tale instead of horror roles. Then there is Thurl Ravenscroft who sang "You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch" and June Foray who did Cindy Lou Who. While best remembered for voicing Tony the Tiger and Rocky the Flying Squirrel respectively, these voice actors were mainstays of animation for decades.

The splashy new Christmas special this year was Disney's Prep and Landing. While very well done, you wonder if how it will hold up in 40+ years.

Christmas Story

I haven't seen anyone mention it but the events in Christmas Story take place 70 years ago this year (1939).

The movie was not a big hit when it came out but it has gained a huge following thanks to repeated showings on cable, especially USA's annual 24 hour marathon.

I think that the secret to the movie is that it is a realistic depiction of Christmas from a child's point of view. While I was born too late for radio dramas, classrooms had not changed appreciably between the 1930s and the 1960s. And who among us hasn't had fantasies about what we will do with a new toy? Or had a classmate dare another one into doing something dumb?

The kids act like real kids but the adults don't act like real people. They act the way that kids think they act.

Zune HD Review

I got a Zune HD for my birthday. It is a fun device.

Previously I had been using a Sansa View and a Nokia n800 Internet Tablet for viewing media. The Zune falls somewhere in-between these. It has similar dimensions to the Sansa and can do a lot more than the Sansa but it isn't up to the Nokia. The Nokia has a larger screen and more applications. On the other hand, it is too large to carry easily and the battery life is too short.

The Zune is incredibly small and light and the battery life is rated similar to the View - up to 33 hours of music or 8+ hours of video.

Like other Zunes, the HD supports WiFi. It can use this for wireless syncing and it comes with a web browser. The browser is slow and automatically switches to mobile pages where available. It does not support Flash so you cannot watch Youtube on it. Besides Flash, I would also like to see an email application on the Zune. It does support a Zune-only messageboard. It also has an app that supports Twitter.

There are several apps available. The Zune Marketplace has some, both general and games. All are free but the games have ads that play when they start.

Microsoft has released a game developer kit and people have already used this to create some freeware. The best part about this is that it is not as tightly controlled as the iTunes store.

Microsoft has a special program for communicating with the Zune. This will automatically sync content or allow you to drag and drop. Personally, I prefer the directory model where I can move files directly into the Zune's directories.

As a media player, the Zune is easy to use. The touch screen makes navigation easy. I have a wide selection of videos I've saved from YouTube or ripped from DVDs. All of them played without any problems, even a couple that always caused my Sansa View to hang up for unknown reasons. The display is sharp and there is no sign of choppiness, even when playing a movie I had ripped for my netbook.

It is a long-standing rule of thumb that it takes Microsoft at least three releases before they get a product right. That puts the Zune right on schedule.

Update: I found a major limitation in the Zune's implementation of WiFi and the browser. Most hotspots redirect the first page to a form where you either log in or at least agree to their terms of service. The Zune will not connect with these. It just gives an error and tries connecting again. It does not connect with WiFi that requires a security key, either. The only place that it can connect is to a completely open WiFi. That makes it useless as a mobile browser since almost all hotspots have a redirected opening page. I hop that Microsoft issues a fix for this.

Platform wars

Things are getting interesting in technology. A lot of new players have entered the arena and there will be a lot of shake-out in the next couple of years. Lines are blurring between PCs, netbooks, phones, MP3 players, and digital book readers. All of these can now play music and most of them can browse the Internet.

The big loser is Microsoft. I'm not sure that they've noticed yet but they have become irrelevant to all of the interesting technologies. Yes, they have a new operating system out. You can run a crippled version on netbooks. That's about it. It doesn't do anything that the old versions of Windows didn't do and it doesnt' run on anything except PCs.

Microsoft did introduce a new touch-screen Zune which got good reviews. This may be their salvation if they can expand it into phones. It's long-term success is doubtful. Previous versions were easy to find at places like Walmart and Target. The new Zune HD is not. Walmart offers "ship to store" which means placing an order and coming back in a day or two. There is no sign of it at Target.

Regardless, touch-screen MP3 players are the little brothers to the new breed of touch phone. Microsoft has a version of Windows Mobile that runs on these but it is a third-tier player.

Several ebook readers came out this year. All of them have significant flaws. The biggest one is that you still pay twice as much for an ebook as for a paperback. On top of that, you don't really buy books. You buy the rights to read them on a specific platform or device. They only make sense if you carry a lot of hardbacks around with you. The real purpose of these devices is to tie you to one book-seller. I expect them to eventually vanish.

For the last few years Apple owned the touch phone market. That is over. There are a slew of competing phones on the market. I'm going out on a limb and predicting that Google android will be the eventual winner. The phone market right now looks a lot like the PC market did in the early 1980s and the lesson from that is that the operating system that runs on the most platforms wins. Google's Android is not tied to a specific phone company or manufacturer the way that all of the other phones are. They have also announced the Chrome operating system which is designed to run on netbooks. Nothing will actually run or be stored locally. Chrome will do nothing except run the Chrome browser and everything else will be a web service running somewhere else. This is a direct threat to Microsoft.

Microsoft practically gave away MSDOS in the 1980s in order to spread as far as possible. Google is giving away their operating system. Their goal it to get as many people onto their search engine as possible. With wide acceptance running across multiple platforms they could easily be the default operating system for everything smaller than a business workstation.

Good by Mr. Monk

Something over eight years ago Tony Shalhoub came up with an idea for a TV detective. This one would be obsessive-compulsive name Adrian Monk - sort of an anti-Columbo. He would also notice and remember everything. The networks passed but USA picked up the show. The show was a hit, such a hit that NBC showed Monk reruns.

Monk had a fair amount of back-story. He was a cop who had married in college. When his wife was murdered, he had a breakdown and had to leave the force. When the show started he was trying to get his badge back and doing police consulting to make ends meet. He also had a full-time nurse who accompanied him everywhere and handed him hand wipes whenever he touched anything (or anyone).

The early shows featured crimes that only Monk could solve because he noticed and remembered everything.

Somewhere along the way the format changed, possibly when USA adopted their "characters welcome" promotion. Monk episodes were no longer about the crimes. The crimes were just a way of placing Monk in new and (usually) uncomfortable positions. Often the crimes were an afterthought. At the same time Monk seemed to pick up new phobias weekly. The writing became lazy.

When it was announced that Monk was in his final season, a few questions remained - would he solve his wife's murder? Would he get his badge back? Would he become involved with his assistant?

The series finale is a two-part episode. Prior to that they answered the question about the badge - yes he got it back but he decided that he preferred consulting and resigned again. This was very disappointing since it was something he had been working for the entire run of the series. Just a couple of episodes earlier he had been meeting with the review board.

As for his wife's murder, it was pretty obvious from the first part who had her killed and the episode ended with him about to receive the final clue. The big question is if he will survive since he was poisoned in part one.

Even if the way that the series is closed is unsatisfying, at least it came to an orderly close. Many series, Columbo to name one, just trail off.

In Defense of the Little Mermaid

Wired's Geekdad listed Top 10 bad lessons from good movies movies. Number two was:

It's OK to completely change your physical appearance and way of life for the person you love, even if he makes no sacrifices at all (from The Little Mermaid). This movie has the single most appalling ending of any Disney movie ever made, which is a shame because, apart from that, it's a great film. I just cannot comprehend how anyone could make a movie in the late 1980s with this message, which is not exactly subtle: Ariel gives up her home, her family, and BEING A MERMAID because she loves Eric so. And he gives up … nothing. Yeah, that marriage is off to a great start.

At least he included the movie as a good movie. In fact, this was arguably the most important hand-animated movie of the last fifty years. After years of shoddy animated movies, Disney probed that it could still make one as good as any produced under Walt. It was the first of two decades of great Disney movies.

Regardless, it has been attacked since it came out. Feminists didn't like it because Ariel chased a prince and was eventually rescued by him. It didn't matter that she saved his life twice and he saved her twice. They didn't give the movie much credit for presenting the first Disney prince with a real personality or the first time that Disney had an actual courtship between one of their princesses and her prince.

But, that's not Geekdad's complaint. His complaint was that Ariel became human in order to be with Eric. Is this a valid complaint?

Keep in mind that staying a mermaid was a deal-breaker with their romance. They could only have a tenuous relationship on the boarder between land and sea - an environment that was dangerous to both. The choice was transform or give up someone you love.

This is not the same as having breast enhancements. The closest equivalent is leaving your native country to marry someone.

I'm sympathetic to this. My daughter moved to England to get married. A close friend moved to America from Canada to marry his girlfriend. I used to work with a German woman who married an American serviceman and moved here. She had to give up her language.

By Geekdad's reasoning, all of these choices were appalling.

Also, it was established early in the movie that Ariel was fascinated with the surface. You got the feeling that she may not have been ready to make a deal with the devil but she would gladly have traded her tail for legs, even before she met Eric.

Why Are They Showing This Now? - the game

It used to be that studios simply advertised movies. Now they market them with other movies. When I watch a movie on TV I tend to wonder, "Why are they showing this movie now?" You can make it into a game. Here are some examples from the last couple of days:

The Matrix Trilogy - the Directors have a new movie coming out on Thanksgiving.
Demolition Man - Two possibilities - Sandra Bullock as a movie coming out (The Blind Side) and has one out on DVD (The Proposal).
Almost Famous (a movie about a 1970s rock band) - Pirate Radio just came out (a movie about rock in 1966).

The Original Prisoner

It came and went forty years ago on American TV as a Summer replacement series. I was syndicated in the 1970s on independent stations. It went on to have a huge, devoted cult following. I'm referring to The Prisoner staring Patrick McGhoohan.

The premise was simple. A secret agent angrily resigns. As he is packing his clothing he is gassed. He wakes up on in the Village on an island where he is told that no one has a name, just numbers. He is Number 6. The island is governed by Number 2 (who changed weekly). Everyone on the island was under constant supervision. Many of the people there were there against their will. Others were spies. There was no way to tell who was who.

That's about all that we ever learned. We were never sure if Number 6 was abducted by his own government who suspected him of defecting or by a foreign government that figured that whatever made him resign must be important. It is possible that the Village was run by multiple governments as a sort of retirement center for spies who knew too much to be left out in the wild.

Every episode was different. Sometimes the new Number 2 would try a new interrogation technique. Sometimes he simply played mind games with Number 6, making him think that he was escaping only to fail at the last minute. A few times Number 6 played mind games with Number 2, doing meaningless activities designed that looked like a plot with the idea of implicating Number 2.

Prior to making the Prisoner, McGoohan had played a secret agent (Danger Man in the UK, Secret Agent in the US with the song "Secret Agent Man" as the theme song). We never learned if he was playing the same agent or if this was a different character. In fact, about the most we ever learned about Number 6 was that he built his car himself and it was one of his few prized possessions.

The show finally ended with Number 2 and Number 6 locked in a bunker until one of them broke. Number 6 won and was told that he was the new Number 2. In a surrealistic episode, he brought down the Village and escaped to London where he had the option of returning to his old life (symbolized by his apartment) or leaving (symbolized by his car). He drove off. The last shot had the door of his apartment closing automatically - something that the door in the village did.

The show was the only tv show or movie that the Beatles licensed a song to (All You Need Is Love in the final episode). They were big fans.

The show had long-term impact on other media. The Fantastic Four did a couple of issues inspired by the show. The Simpsons did a great parody. AMC is showing an updated version this Sunday.

Side-note: Patrick McGoohan turned down the chance to replace Sean Connery as James Bond. It was a wise move. The Bond movies of the 1970s were progressively sillier and he would have been a poor fit.

Dickens's Christmas Carol

A new version of A Christmas Carol comes out today. This one uses motion capture and CGI. Reviews have not been kind. From the beginning I was wondering why we need a new version. The advertising for this version has been relentless and all of it has focused on Scrooge flying through London.

This seems like a good time to mention some previous versions that are redoubtably better than the new version.

Years before Charlie Brown's Christmas, Mr. Magoo did a version. I was very young at the time - I turned 8 a few days after it was shown. In retrospect, this was a very 1960s production. The animation was not all that good. Regardless, it holds up fairly well.

CBS aired a made-for-tv production in 1984. CBS was at the top of their game in the 1980s. This one had a great cast starting with George C. Scott as Scrooge. We watched it last year. It holds up very well. Production values were very high. The sets look authentic. Scott plays the part with a light touch. His Scrooge is never evil but events in his past conspired to make him lonely and bitter. Regardless, he never lost his sense of humor. He tries to dismiss Marley's ghost as indigestion, using line straight from the book. about my only quibble is that Tiny Tim looks too well-fed and healthy.

WKRP in Cincinnati did a Christmas Carol adaptation in the early 1980s. The Art Carleson, the station manager, ate some funny brownies and dreamed a version. It was one of the best episodes of one of the best sitcoms of its day. Again, this was a CBS production.

Bill Murray did a great update of the story in 1988's Scrooged. This includes a play within a play where Murray is producing a live TV special of a Christmas Carol while living the story. It includes lots of digs at TV producers. This is up there with Groundhog Day.

Also in 1988, BBC's Black Adder did a Christmas special in which the nicest man in England is accidentally visited by a spirit who gives him visions of his ancestors and decedents. It turns him into the meanest man in England.
 
Following Jim Henson's death, the Muppets went from new plots featuring Kermit to adaptations of classics as ensemble productions. Their 1992 version of a Christmas Carol was the first of these and quite effective.

There have been other versions but none of them are worth looking up.

In the meantime, wait until December before watching any version.

Too Many Vampires?

MSNBC asks if there are too many vampire movies and TV shows. Their conclusion:

While their popularity may ebb and flow, vampires always will have a place in the audience's heart, said Nicolas Cage, who starred in 1989's "Vampire's Kiss" and was a producer on 2000's "Shadow of the Vampire."

"The vampire is always going to be fascinating," Cage said. "It's like the vigilante cop, or it's like the cowboy or the Western. It's part of the fabric of society."

I agree that vampires have a strong place in movies but there is a real possibility that they are overexposed. I remember a "what's coming" column (sorry, no link) that vampires are so 2008 and that werewolves are the new big thing. Since the next Twilight movie features werewolves, this may be hard to prove. Similarly, the Sookie Stackhouse books that Tru Blood is based on adds several other types of supernaturals into the mix.

Back in the early 1970s, Hammer Films thought that vampires were a bottomless well. Hammer released several Dracula movies (Dracula AD, Taste the Blood of Dracula, The Satanic Rites of Dracula, the Scars of Dracula) plus Captain Cronos Vampire Hunter, the Vampire Circus, and the Vampire Lovers. Other vampire movies and movies with vampires released around then included House of Dark Shadows, The House the Dripped Blood, Black Sabbath, and a really cheap Dracula vs. Frankenstein.

On TV, Dan Curtis followed Dark Shadows with Night Stalker, both a made for TV movie and a series, and a version of Dracula. PBS did their own adaptation of Dracula.

Inevitably, the supply exceeded demand. Most of these movies lost money and Hammer went out of business.

The vampires of today have more variety than the 1970s versions. Back then vampires were always monsters. Some, like Dark Shadow's Barnabas Collins, were sympathetic but they were still monstrous (Barnabas still drank women's blood then strangled them but he felt bad about it). Today's vampires have transcended the traditional image of the undead who thirsts for blood. Some of them are outright heroic. That gives today's vampire movies more variety but there is still a lot of them. Also, many of them are aimed at a narrow demographic that has a tendency to outgrow such things. When that happens, the next generation often establishes its own tastes.

Bottom line, there will always be vampire movies but don't bet the house on the current fad continuing much longer.

The Raven

In the early 1960s, American International pumped out a series of movies loosely based on the writings of Edgar Allen Poe and staring Vincent Price. While The Raven was one of them, it was quite different - it was done for laughs.

I was watching the movie for the first time in years on the cable channel MyTV. It continues to be entertaining.

This is a movie that would not be made today. It is too obvious that everyone in it was having fun. Even today's comedies take themselves more seriously than the actors in the Raven.

It had an all star cast: Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff and a very young Jack Nicholson. Much of the movie is scenes with Price and Lorre and those feature a lot of ad-libbing. In one clever bit, the pair are about to open the coffin of Price's character's lost love, Lenore. Lorre's character finds nothing unusual with keeping a coffin in the house. The pair remove a velvet cover from the coffin and carefully fold it up, then Lorre tosses it over his shoulder.

The highlight of the film is the wizard's battle between Price and Karloff's characters. Unfortunately, MyTV cut the movie for time and cut out the entire battle. A shame since this made the movie a cult classic.

The Coming IPhone App Crash

Newsweek has an article on how few IPhone developers actually make money. This is probably the first part of a market shakedown.

The math is pretty simple. It takes $20,000-$100,000 to develop an app. Most apps are priced low enough to be impulse purchases - around $1 and the developer only gets part of that amount. This means that you have to sell tens of thousands of apps before you break even. That might be possible except you are competing with 80,000 other apps. Unless you get very lucky and get a lot of word of mouth, no one will even find you app so you might have to spend additional money on publicity.

There is nothing mysterious about this. A new market opened up and started a gold rush. When this happens, only a very few get rich. Most people lose their shirts. Sometime soon, a lot of IPhone developers are going to move on to some other occupation.

This is a familiar pattern. When the IBM PC was first introduced there were a lot more programs available for it. A lot of those have fallen by the wayside over the years. A lot of web sites have come and gone in the last 15 years, also.

Monty Python at 40

40 years ago this month Monty Python started running on the BBC. A few years later it appeared in America on PBS. On the station I watched, it showed up at 10:00 pm on Sunday.

I started watching it fairly early. My father had been channel surfing (with only a dozen channels available you went through everything pretty fast) and left it on this for a while. I heard him laughing and turned it on in the basement. I got hooked pretty fast.

The show was unlike anything preceding it and very little after it. The general formula was to get it, tell your joke, then get out before the sketch turned stale. Often sketches would be ended by a BBC announcer, an army officer, an armored knight armed with a rubber chicken, or an animation. There were often running gags such as the Spanish Inquisition which turned up when someone said, "I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition."

Back when the show was new it was also pretty obscure. Almost no one I knew watched it. When I started college I found more people were fans. Regardless, it took it a long time to seep into the public consciousness. A movie that was nothing but clips from the tv show toured campuses but I don't think it was shown in theaters. Monty Python and the Holy Grail showed for one week in Columbus in one small theater.

The show appealed to comic book fans and there were occasional references to it in comic books. In a short-lived revival of the Metal Men, Walter Simonson slipped in a chapter title named "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition". Iron Fist's girl friend carried a Colt Python with "Monty" engraved on the barrel.

Things changed in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. The Life of Brian got a lot of notice, mainly because many people assumed that it was a parody of Christ and called for it to be banned. A lot of people went to see what the fuss was about. PBS syndicated it nightly in most markets which gave it a lot of exposure. Still, I was quite surprised that my daughter's friends could recite scenes from Holy Grail.

Modern shows like SNL could learn a lot from Monty Python. SNL in particular relies on the one-joke sketch too much. In this, there is one joke. It takes around 40 seconds for the audience to get it but they continue the sketch for five minutes or more - long past when it stopped being funny. They could really use a pompous official coming on every now and then and proclaiming that the sketch had become silly or boring and needs to stop.

Peanuts

50 years ago Peanuts started. It had a long run with the last new strip appearing the day of it's creator's death (Charles Shultz had actually retired a few weeks earlier). This was back in the days when every city had at least two papers and every family subscribed to at least one. Everyone read the comics.

Peanuts was special. Only children appeared but they lived in an adult world. Instead of cheap jokes, the kids worried about things like wearing away the planet by scuffing feet.

From the beginning Charlie Brown had a pet dog. In fact, Shultz's first published drawing was of a dog that looked a lot like Snoopy in Ripley's Believe It or Not. The real turning point in the strip came when Snoopy started thinking. After that he often took over the strip. He even got the last line in the last strip. 40 years ago he acquired a side-kick, a bird named Woodstock after the rock concert. Other characters were added over the years.

The strip looks dated now, especially the early ones that are currently being syndicated. The girls always wear dresses, the kids are all white and none of them come from broken families. This reflects how society saw itself at the time. Still, most of the humor still works.

FF Blogging - Galactus

It's been a while but I got up to FF #48-50. Stan and Jack wanted to introduce something new - a character so powerful that he thought of Earth in the same terms that a human thinks of an anthill. This character was Galactus.

I already covered some of FF 48. This combined the wrap-up of the Inhumans arc and the introduction of the Silver Surfer. In the beginning of the issue Maximus discovers that the Inhumans are mutated humans instead of being a different sub-species. The knowledge drive him insane and he uses his atmo gun to create a negative zone around the Inhumans' city, sealing it off from humanity. The FF escape before the dome can harden and return to New York where they discover that the sky is on fire. People panic, blaming the Human Torch. The Thing rescues the Torch and the flames vanish. Later they are replaced with flying boulders.

It turns out that Reed and the Watcher have been collaborating on masking the Earth from the Silver Surfer. Reed has been working non-stop for days and is unshaven.

The boulders do not work. The Surfer senses that something is unnatural about them and flies through them, landing on the roof of the Baxter Building (because he senses the Watcher?) where he signals his master. A moment later the Thing knocks him off of the building and across town. He is too late. Galactus arrives.

In the next issue, the Torch and Thing try attacking Galactus. He absorbs the Torch's flames and extinguishes the Torch. Then he uses the equivalent of a bug bomb on the Thing.

The FF retreats to plan their next step. Reed finally shaves and they try again, without the Torch. This time they attack Galactus's converter, the machine that will drain the Earth of life. Galactus summons the Punisher, a short, powerful being who quickly defeats the FF.

In the meantime, the Watcher sends the Torch to Galactus's homeship.

In the meantime part 2, in an amazing coincidence, the Surfer lands in Alicia's apartment. She convinces him that humanity is worth saving. He vows to use his power to stop Galactus.

In issue #50, the Surfer fails to defeat Galactus but delays him long enough for the Torch to retrieve the Ultimate Nullifier. Appalled at something so powerful in the hands of a human, Galactus agrees to leave the Earth. On his way out, he imprisons the Surfer on Earth.

The issue has a low-key ending with Johny enrolling at Empire State University and meeting his new roommate, Wyatt Wingfoot.

Several things about this story arc:

• It completed the transition from the early FF to the more mature version. The earlier stories often had more energy but just as often suffered from sloppy plotting and pacing (see my post about the first appearance of the Frightful Four).
• This was the first "cosmic" story arc and one of the most successful. The FF had faced enemies with immense power before but never one who was so impersonal. Galactus never directly addressed the FF until Reed had the Ultimate Nulifier.
• The general form of having the climax in the middle of the issue with an epilogue was used in some of Stan's best-remembered stories. A Spider-Man story where he was trapped beneath tons of metal in a flooding building is another example.
• The Surfer was an after-thought. Stan and Jack had a story conference and Jack drew issue #48. When Stan saw an unfamiliar character he called Jack to ask who it was. Jack replied that someone as powerful as Galactus needed a herald. Regardless, the Surfer quickly became Stan's favorite character. During the days when Stan was still active at Marvel he never allowed anyone else to write the Surfer.
• This wasn't the first time a character dropped in on Alicia. Just a few months earlier the Torch and Thing's fight with Dragon Man burst through her roof. The Surfer met her several times later including a quick affair near the end of the second run of his own comic.
• For years the letter columns of the FF and Thor had debates over who was more powerful - Galactus or Odin. I don't think that this was ever resolved.
• Galactus raised the power level of the Marvel Universe by a quantum level. Up until then it was obvious that DC characters were much more powerful than Marvel ones. Superman was splitting planets in half while the Hulk was trying to batter his way out of a cave. With the introduction of the Surfer and Galactus, Marvel had a character who could probably beat Superman (the Surfer) and one who could eat him and the planet he rode in on.
• It was one of the few "big" anniversary issues that worked. By contrast, FF #100 was thrown together as an afterthought and completely forgettable.
  

Disney and Marvel

Over the weekend Disney announced that it was buying Marvel for $4 billion. This is probably a good thing.

For the short-term, it does not mean a lot to Disney. Marvel has been pretty aggressive about licensing so there isn't much left for Disney. Long-term, Disney hopes to either continue profitable licensing contracts or to take them over as they expire. It is also hoping to appeal to boys. After years of marketing Disney princesses, fairies, Hanna Montana, etc., it finally occurred to them that boys have money, too.

This could mean a lot to Marvel. For decades they have been the tail wagging the dog. They have been owned by companies that were less profitable than Marvel. At least a couple of times Marvel's parent company has filed for reorganization. In contrast, DC has been owned by Time-Warner for decades. Time Warner regards DC as a source of licensing revenue and treats it pretty well. In particular, the animated versions of DC characters have all been consistent and high quality.

There has been a bit of meddling from DC. When the first Batman movie came out and they found out that Robin had been killed (and therefore could not be licensed) they directed that he be brought back. This turned out well. The new Robin was critically praised.

I'm not too worried about Disney meddling like this. After the current Marvel editorial staff came up with A Brand New Day, eliminating decades of Spider-Man continuity, it's hard to believe that Disney could be any worse.

Side-note - the Hulk is green because Marvel's owner in the 1960s used a cheap printing process that had trouble with colors. The Hulk was supposed to be gray but came out a different color on each page. After the first issue came out, Stan changed the character to an easier-to-print green.

Netbooks, Microsoft and Apple

(Taking a break from comic book blogging)

Netbooks are currently the hottest part of the PC market. These are loosely defined as an low-cost, low-power, ultra-light PC with a screen no larger than 10 inches and with a long battery life. Both Microsoft and Apple have made some disparaging remarks about this market segment. Microsoft expects it to vanish when the new line of thin-screen PCs are introduced. Apple refuses to discuss making inexpensive hardware but there are rumors that their new tablet computer will be aimed at this market. I don't think that either company understands the market.

Let's be honest - netbooks are lousy PCs. They are under-powered for games and they have tiny screens. So why are they popular? Because they are so portable. Their small screens may be harder to read but they also reduce the size and weight enormously. They are underpowered because the high-powered chips suck up battery power. A more powerful CPU means more batteries and more weight or shorter battery life which means adding in the weight and size of a power brick. They are also cheap which is important because they are a second PC for most people.

I have a netbook. I got it for traveling. It is great at that. I can stick it in my carry-on. I don't need a separate PC bag which is bigger and heavier than my carry-on. The 10-inch screen is big enough for web browsing and email which is what I take it for in the first place. An IPhone-sized screen is just too small for serious web browsing.

The new, thin laptop PCs that Microsoft is pushing will be more expensive and they will not be as portable. No matter how thin you make it, laptop with a a full-sized screen is still bigger than a 10-inch one. Battery life will be a problem again, also.

Then there is cost. Microsoft is almost giving away Windows XP on netbooks. They want to sell Windows 7 for a lot more. That will add to the price. So will the new technology. These will not be priced to be second PCs.

It's hard to figure out what Apple's market will be. Rumors say that their tablet will be a larger IPhone. Without AT&T subsidies it will be a lot more expensive. Will people want something that expensive with no keyboard that is too big to put in a pocket? How many people use an IPhone as their primary computing device?

More Anti-Hero Villains

Continuing my last post...

Marvel has a long history of noble villains who crossed over but still maintained most of their original characteristics. Hawkeye may have joined the Avengers but he remained a smart-mouth rebel.

Joining the Avengers seems to assure that someone will eventually reform, even if that wasn't why he joined in the first place. Both Wonder Man and the Swordsman joined the Avengers with the intention of betraying them. Both had a change of heart, reformed, died and were resurrected. With Wonder Man the process was fairly straightforward. He was given his powers by Baron Zemo with the caution that they would kill him within a week without further treatment. After betraying the Avengers, he repented and freed them but died without the treatment. As it turned out, he actually went into a state of suspended animation while his body rebuilt itself. He joined the Avengers for several years and even got his own strip before dying and being reanimated again.

Swordsman stayed a villain for several years until he reformed with the urging of his girlfriend, Mantis. He eventually died. When Mantis became the Celestial Madonna, swordsman's body was reanimated by an intelligent plant so that its marriage with Mantis could be consummated although this body eventually crumbled to dust.

The Fantastic Four introduced several characters who started as enemies but eventually became allies. Many of these were never really villains but ended up on the opposing side. Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner is at the top of this list. He was anti-human back when he was first introduced in the 1939. Eventually he was persuaded to limit his fight to the Nazis. He later mellowed. When he was brought back in FF #3 he found that his ancestral city of Atlantis was deserted. Blaming human nuclear testing, he declared war on the human race starting with the USA and New York City. When the FF stopped him, he transferred his rage to them personally. Despite this, he was infatuated with Sue Storm (prior to her engagement to Reed). Magneto tried to recruit Namor but he ended up refusing to join either side.

Even after the Sub-Mariner got his own strip in Tales to Astonish his role was ambiguous. As Prince of Atlantis he sometimes came in conflict with humans. Later his book took on environmental overtones causing more conflict.

I'm trying to confine myself to characters from the 1960s but I have to include Thanos in this discussion. He started as the ultimate villain - powerful, crafty, and literally in love with Death. In his first appearances in Iron Man and Captain Marvel he was evil personified.

Things got more confusing when he appeared in Adam Warlock. Adam was fighting a rogue version of himself called the Magus and Thanos came to his aid. Why? Somehow Magus became the champion of life. He was also a ruthless tyrant. As death's champion, Thanos wanted Magus eliminated. Despite his motivations, Thanos was a valuable ally. He reverted to type in his next appearance - a pair of annuals wrapping up the plotlines from Warlock's canceled comic. Thanos had built a machine capable of destroying the stars, hoping that it would win Death's affections. Along the way Warlock died but returned long enough to kill Thanos.

Thanos returned again several years later and collected the Infinity Gems in order to gain ultimate power. Warlock also returned and defeated Thanos. In the aftermath Warlock divided the gems between six guardians including himself and Thanos. From that point on, Thanos tended to side with the heroes although it was often in self-defense. He even gained ultimate power but detected a flaw in the Universe which required his self-sacrifice to fix (surprisingly, he survived). He even got his own comic book for a short time.

Anti-hero villains

I was just thinking about some of the early Marvel villains. I've always maintained that one of the reasons for Marvel's prominence is that they have better villains than the competition. Part of this is that many Marvel villains were more complex than elsewhere.

This started with FF #1 and the Mole Man. He wasn't just a megalomaniac who wanted to conquer the world. He was a ugly little guy with glasses who wanted to conquer the world because he was too short to get a date.

Magneto's motivations were pretty straightforward at first. He felt that mutants were superior to normal humans so they should be in charge. He was solo in his first appearance in X-Men #1 but he was back a few issues later with the "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants". This was a very strange brotherhood. They all hated each other and only stayed together because they feared Magneto. The brotherhood consisted of the Toad who was mainly there to flatter Magneto's ego. Mastermind was kind of creepy and obviously in it for the power. The unusual ones were the brother and sister - Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Magneto had rescued the Scarlet Witch from a mob earlier. They joined him out of gratitude and stayed out misplaced loyalty and fear.

The X-Men recognized this and tended to go easy on these two. Eventually Magneto was taken off-world by the Stranger and the Brotherhood broke up. Shortly afterward Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch joined the Avengers along with Hawkeye.

Hawkeye was another example. A circus performer, he decided to become a superhero using trick arrows. He quickly foiled a robbery but was soon with the stolen money and assumed to be the thief. Not long after that he met and became infatuated with a Russian agent - the Black Widow. She convinced him to attack Tony Stark's factory which brought him into conflict with Iron Man. Not long after that the Widow wanted to quit spying but her parents were threatened (the became a continuity problem later). She was given a costume and sent to re-enlist Hawkeye. She vanished after this appearance and Hawkeye joined the Avengers.

The Black Widow eventually resurfaced. She had defected and become a member of New York society. She made herself a new costume and tried it out on Spider-Man who was, as usual, wanted by the law himself. SShe eventually joined the Avengers herself.

DRM and digital devices

Two incidents have come up recently which illustrate the problems with modern electronic devices.

The first happened with Amazon's Kindle e-book reader. Recently they discovered that the company that was selling electronic versions of George Orwell's works did not have the rights to do this. If this had happened with a printed book then money would change hands between publishers and booksellers but people who actually had a printed copy of the book could keep them.

In the new digital age, this has changed. Amazon remotely deleted the books (along with any notes that students had been keeping) and refunded people their money. This is a reminder that you are not buying a book, you are paying for the rights to read a book. The rights are subject to many more restrictions than a physical book.

Amazon announced that it has changed its internal procedures and will not do something like this again - unless it changes its procedures again.

The other incident involves Apple's iTunes and the Palm Pre. When the Palm was released, one of its features was that it could load music directly from iTunes. Apple recently pushed out an update to iTunes that stopped non-Apple devices from connecting to it (the Pre is the only non-Apple device that can connect). Palm just released an update that restores this feature.

Again, with iTunes you are not buying music. From Apple's point of view, you are buying the right to listen to music on specific devices - theirs. Loading music that you have paid for onto an unauthorized device is a violation of their license and they have the right to stop it. This will probably hurt Apple in the long run. Once someone has paid for something they don't like it being tied to a particular manufacturer.

Sony learned this the hard way. Since Sony has both a media publishing arm and a hardware arm, the media wing was able to impose restrictions on their media players. Sony never released an MP3 player. Their digital players used a proprietary format that only they supported. No one was interested. They wanted to play MP3s.

Apple got around this two different ways. The first was that iPods can play MP3s. Most of the music on iPods was ripped from CDs (yours or someone else's). The other way is that Apple's DRM is fairly light-weight and their price per song is so low that people don't worry about it.

Imagine what would happen to the iPod market if Apple did what Amazon did - remotely removed content that people had paid for. They can do this with the iPhone.

The bottom line here is that there are still major issues with digital rights that have not been solved.

Comic Con

It is amazing how important Comic Con has become. A few years ago hardly anyone knew about it. Now it gets national attention. A good bit of this has little to do with comic book characters per se. It is the way that studios have used the convention to market new movies.

Consider what the news is - movie previews. Twilight is the big story but major directors and stars are coming to the convention to promote their new movies. Tim Burton and Johnny Depp were there along with a sneak peak at Alice in Wonderland. James Cameron showed 20 minutes of his new 3-d movie. A sequel to TRON is coming and Jeff Bridges was showing concept sketches.

All of this becomes a cycle feeding on itself. The bigger the stars who show up, the more national press it gets which attracts even more stars, etc.

While the studios have figured out that going to Comic Con is a cheap way of getting publicity it also shows a major shift in attitudes about superheroes and comic book characters (or characters who could be in comic books).

Back in the 1960s, comic books were dismissed as kid stuff. Yes, the Batman TV show was a big hit for a short while but it defined camp. The 1970s didn't help super hero acceptance much. The Hulk, Wonder Woman and Spider-Man all had TV shows but they were cheaply produced. The Hulk was critically the best of them but it followed the same formula as a dozen other shows. A rewrite of the script could change an episode from the Hulk to Airwolf or Kung Fu. Attempts were made to adapt Captain America and Doctor Strange but these were flops that never made it past the pilot movie. Superman the Motion Picture made a lot of money and showed that a comic book character could appeal to a broad enough market to support an A-level movie but there was still far too much camp.

The 1980s were kinder to superheroes (except for the Superman movies which came out with decreasing quality). Original superheroes did fairly well on TV. Shows like Beauty and the Beast moved beyond camp and attracted critical praise.

The big breakthrough was 1989's Batman. While over the top in places, it showed that a comic book movie didn't have to be campy.

The 1990s is when comic book based entertainment really took off. Batman descended into camp (along with bat nipples) but other comic book-based movies were bit hits, especially ones adapted from independent comics. They also established comic book movies as adult entertainment. By 2002, the Road to Perdition, which was adapted from a graphic novel, was on several critics' top movies list.

Which brings us to the 2000s. This decade has been dominated by superheroes. Spider-Man was one of the top draws of the decade. The reboot of Batman was phenomenally successful. The new Superman movie was a mess but it still made a lot of money. The X-Men movies became important events. Ghost Rider was an unexpected hit. When it was announced that the category for best picture would be expanded to ten nominees, Dark Knight and Iron Man were given as movies that should have been nominated but were not.

Even the blockbusters that have not been comic book adaptations featured characters who would fit nicely in a comic book. The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and the Matrix all featured characters with superhuman powers.

Somehow comic book conventions have incorporated this better than more general science fiction conventions. Which brings us back to Comic Con and the convergence of popular culture.

Thor Rumors

I'm seeing a lot of rumors about the upcoming Thor movie. Chris Hemsworth has been cast as Thor. He seems kind of young and thin for the part. Natalie Portman is Jane Foster. Brian Blessed as Odin. Kenneth Branagh is directing.

This will be a tougher movie than Iron Man. The character of Tony Stark had a lot of dramatic potential and updating Viet Nam to Afghanistan made the movie relevant.

In contrast, Thor started out fighting the Stone Men from Saturn. It took years before Odin and Asgard were incorporated into the comic. During that time, Jane Foster became a liability and was eventually cut from the book. The high points of the comic were the Lee/Kirby years and the Walt Simonson years. Both built on previous works and the Norse myths. I'm not sure how this can be worked into a movie.

Branagh has a mixed record as a director and his best works have been Shakespeare. On the other hand, Thor speaks a kind of Shakespearian English so maybe it will work out.