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.

Chrome OS

Google announced that they will produce an operating system called Chrome OS to go with their Chrome web browser. The OS will come out sometime in the second half of 2010 and be targeted at netbooks. The PC pundits have gone crazy over this. Some think it is the most significant announcement in years and signals that Microsoft's dominance in operating systems is at an end. Others think that it will crash and burn. Let's take a closer look.

First, this announcement does not affect Microsoft's core business in any meaningful way. Netbooks are the hottest part of the market right now, but they are still a tiny portion. By definition, they are not gaming machines or business workstations. That leaves the majority of the market to Microsoft. In fact, the netbook market is one that Microsoft is still trying to figure out. Currently they are selling Windows XP for netbooks and only charging a few dollars (the rumor is $15). They floated the idea of having a stripped-down version of Windows 7 for netbooks then relented. Either way, this is not their taditional market and they do not make much money on it. Losing it would not affect them except in a pyrrhic way.

So, Google is not a real threat to Microsoft. What about the other way - can Google establish itself on the netbook?

The first generation of netbook was based on the Linux operating system which is what Chrome OS will use. As netbooks matured, the market switched to Windows XP. There are several reasons for this and Google can learn from them.

The first netbooks were based on the ARM chip which Microsoft does not support. That made Linux the only choice. Intel introduced the Atom chip for low-powered applications and most netbook makers switched over. At the same time, Microsoft made several concessions, allowing netbooks to run Windows XP instead of Vista and reducing the licensing fee. This made Windows a viable choice.

The Linux that was being offered on the netbooks was not that attractive. since it is a new operating system, the makers wrapped it in a gui that tries to simply everything. This reenforced the fact that Linux is not Windows. When presented with an alien gui or the familiar Windows, most customers went with Microsoft.

Google's lesson here is that it is possible to make an operating system too friendly. The transition from Windows XP to a full-featured version of Linux such as Ubuntu is no worse than the transition from XP to Vista. More important, once you fire up your browser, there is virtually no difference. Google seems to have figured this out. They are promising that the operating system will not get in your way.

Google is promising an operating system that will boot fast and be virus-free (good luch with that part) and that will mainly exist to run the browser. Everything that you really need will be web-based.

There are skeptics:

But it's not just Office that will keep Microsoft's hold on the PC market. Can you replace Active Directory with a web app? Is there a site I can visit to connect to my office's shared printer? What do you mean World of Warcraft doesn't run in the browser? How do I play a DVD in Google Chrome?

This argument misses a big point - people do nto buy netbooks to connect with active directory or an office's shared printer. You cannot play World of Warcraft on a netbook and they do not come with a DVD player. Netbooks are used by people who want small, light PCs that are easy to carry around.

I will add that I have an Aspire One netbook. I installed Ubuntu Linux on it with a dual boot. I can switch between the two operating systems and do about everything I need in either. I can even play DVDs on an external drive in Linux.

This brings me to a final point. With Ubuntu I had to load several drivers and plug-ins. Some of these are deliberately kept out of the distribution because of licensing restrictions - you have to pay a license fee to distribute them. Presumably Google is big enough that they can cut a deal on these packages so that Chrome OS will come with everything that you need, out of the box.

If they manage that then they could capture a significant portion of the netbook market. If they can convince some of the makers to switch back to the ARM chip for extended battery life then they will have that portion of the market to themselves.

None of this is a threat to Microsoft but it could affect Apple by offering a second alternative to Windows.

Flash Gordon

On the 4th of July Spike TV showed Star Wars and G4 showed Flash Gordon. What a contrast.

Flash Gordon was one of a spate of science fiction movies produced after Star Wars in the hope of attracting the same audience. There were several others including Start Trek, the Motion Picture, but Flash Gordon manages to distinguish itself in its look and feel.

Ironically, the two movies share the same background. Star Wars was meant to recapture the excitement of the serials - movies released one reel at a time over several weeks. The Star Wars movies (and the Raiders of the Lost Ark movies) each break down into three distinct chapters per movie. The capsule description at the beginning of the movies comes straight from the serials.

While the serials were one influence on George Lucas, there were several others. The serials mainly influenced the form of Star Wars, not the content.

On this other hand, Flash Gordon was essentially a remake of a serial and took all of its inspiration from them. The result is visually stunning but very campy. A good bit of the dialog is tongue-in-cheek. The special effects manage to look expensive and cheesy at the same time. They capture the look of the old serials when spaceships were hung from wires but with state of the art (1980) effects. For example, the cloud of hawk men is impressive but their tiny wings could never support them.

The musical score deserves mention. It was done by Queen not long after their classic hit Bohemian Rhapsody. I think that this and Highlander were the only two scores that they did (It is hard to tell for sure. IMDB lists every movie that used a clip from Queen which is a very long list).

The cast includes Max Von Syndow as the Emperor Ming, Topol, Timothy Dalton as Prince Barin, and Brian Blessed as the bombastic ruler of the hawkmen.

The plot is too fast-moving and superficial to describe. The movie is best enjoyed by ignoring the plot twists and holes and listening to the over-the-top dialog. Just a few examples from IMDB:

Dale Arden: Flash, Flash, I love you, but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!

---

Flash Gordon: Prince Barin! I'm not your enemy, Ming is! Let's all team up and fight him.

---

Zarkov: We are only interested in friendship. Why do you attack us?
The Emperor Ming: Why not?

---

Zogi, the High Priest: Do you, Ming the Merciless, Ruler of the Universe, take this Earthling Dale Arden, to be your Empress of the Hour?
The Emperor Ming: Of the hour, yes.
Zogi, the High Priest: Do you promise to use her as you will?
The Emperor Ming: Certainly!
Zogi, the High Priest: Not to blast her into space?
[Ming glares at Zogi]
Zogi, the High Priest: Uh, until such time as you grow weary of her.
The Emperor Ming: I do.
Dale Arden: I do NOT!

---

Dale Arden: I'm a New York City girl. It's a little too quiet around here for me.

---

Princess Aura: But my father has never kept a vow in his life!
Dale Arden: I can't help that, Aura. Keeping our word is one of the things that make us... better than you.

---

Prince Barin: [to Flash] Welcome back from the grave.
[to Princess Aura]
Prince Barin: I knew you were up to something, though I'll confess I hadn't thought of necrophilia?

---

Klytus: No one - but NO ONE - dies in the Palace without a command from the Emperor.

---

Doctor Hans Zarkov: Look at them! The poor wretches are just waiting for someone to lead them in revolt...!
Flash Gordon: [annoyed] Oh, are you looking at ME, Zarkov?

---

Kala: We're going to empty your memory as we might empty your pockets... Doctor.
Doctor Hans Zarkov: Don't empty my mind! I've spent my whole life filling it!

---

The Emperor Ming: Klytus! Are your men on the right pills? Maybe you should execute their trainer!

---

Robot: Long live Flash! You've saved your Earth. Have a nice day.
Flash Gordon: YEAH!

---

Prince Barin: I've changed.
Princess Aura: I've changed, too.
Zarkov: [Successfully picks the electronic door lock] A-ha! I knew it was one of the prime numbers of the Zenith series. I haven't changed.

---

Goodbye Michael

On reflecting on the career of the late Michael Jackson, I have to start by saying that I hate child singers. Their voices grate on my nerves. The Osmonds and the Jackson Five are at the top of this list. That colors my views of the rest of Michael Jackson's career.

Something else, he was always a little creepy. His first number 1 solo hit was Ben which was a love song sung to a rat from the movie of the same name. I didn't pay much attention when he released his album, Off the Wall.

Then came Thriller with its first two releases, Billie Jean and Beat It. I didn't mind Billie Jean and I kind of liked Beat It, especially the video (although these days I can't watch it without thinking of Weird Al's version). The rest of the world went crazy over Michael. Everything he touched turned to gold. MTV devoted huge chunks of time to Thriller and the Making of Thriller (which was longer). Just signing background for an unknown like Rockwell (Somebody's Watching Me) guaranteed a huge hit. All of his siblings released records, even the ones who had never recorded before or who had retired from singing.

Michael began to get seriously weird. It is impossible to say at this point just how strange Jackson actually was. Some of the original stories were planed by Jackson and his publicists. He didn't really sleep in a hyperbaric tube. He just posed in one for a fake story. The same was true about his wanting to buy the Elephant Man's skeleton.

Other stories were true. He underwent a lot of plastic surgery. Between his first and second solo albums he changed his nose and straightened his hair. Later he added a cleft chin. His face kept changing over the years until he began to resemble Morbius the Living Vampire. At the same time his skin got paler and paler. Officially he was under treatment for a skin condition. There were rumors that he had taken drugs that totally removed all skin color. This is possible. He stopped going out in the sun and even when he moved between a car and a building his handlers held up umbrellas to shield him from the sun (another Morbius similarity).

Pop psychiatrists say that he was so busy performing that he missed his childhood causing him to fixate on it as an adult. He was said to be fond of Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up. This was the inspiration for his home/theme park, Neverland.

This might be charming in a 20-something but it starts to get strange in a 20-something and outright disturbing in a 40-something.

As Michael was to find out, once you start planting stories about a celebrity being strange, they develop a life of their own and can never be taken back.

By the end of the 1980s, pop music had moved on. Michael still managed some hits into the 1990s but his production costs were so high that even his best-sellers didn't make money.

Michael married Elvis's daughter. They broke up and he married the mother of his first two children. That also broke up.

Questions remain. Did he actually sleep with either of his wives? Did he really give his second son the same name as the first? And did he actually call him Blanket? How did a black man produce blond children? Did he die a wealthy man or one heavily in debt?

FF blogging - the Inhumans

Continuing my blogging on old issues of the Fantastic Four...

I left off with the defeat of the Frightful Four. This was followed by an annual where Reed and Sue were married with nearly everyone in the Marvel Universe making a cameo. The monthly comic continued from there with a four and a half issue story. It started with a domestic scene - Reed turning his inventing skills to making a dishwasher for Sue.

The issue introduced Gorgon who could shake the entire city or cause a building to collapse with a stomp of his foot. He was chasing Medusa, the only member of the Frightful Four still at large. She carjacked the Torch and had him drive her to someplace secluded. Gorgon stole the FF's helicopter and followed.

As it turned out, Johnny drove Medusa to an area near Empire State University which had figured in one of the last single-issue stories the previous year. Gorgon found them there but the ruckus disturbed the Dragon Man, an artificial creation from that same issue. Sue had made an impression on Dragon Man in kind of a King Kong/Fay Wray way. Remembering Sue, Dragon Man took Medusa to safety.

The FF and Gorgon caught up with them on an abandoned sky scraper. Dragon Man grabbed Sue, Gorgon grabbed Medusa and caused the building to collapse.

In the following issue Reed, Johnny, and the Thing survived the building's collapse, recovered Sue, and sort of adopted Dragon Man as a pet. This caused problems since he had the mind of a child, could breath fire, and was stronger than the Thing. They finally sedated him.

Cut to the remnants of Johnny's love life. While he had his own comic he had been dating Doris Evans but she dumped him. He was wandering around a bad part of town when he saw a lovely red head. She called up a wind storm and vanished. He managed to find her again. She caused a fire but he flamed on and absorbed the flames.

It turned out that she was an inhuman and mistook him for one also. She started introducing him to her family. Things went well enough until she got to Gorgon and Medusa. The Torch summoned the rest of the FF and Black Bolt, the head of the Inhumans returned. Cut to the next issue.

The Inhumans attacked the FF. Black Bolt took on the Thing fighting him to a tie. The Inhumans were mainly trying to hide from someone called the Seeker who managed to capture the Inhuman Triton during the fight. The rest of the Inhumans escaped with the help of Lockjaw, the Inhuman's giant dog. Lockjaw could open time/space portals.

Next the Seeker invaded the FF's headquarters and took Dragon Man, thinking that he was an Inhuman.

When they returned, Reed checked his survelance tapes to see what happened to Dragon Man then used one of his gadgets to track the Seeker. The Seeker turned out to be quite reasonable. His job was to rund up Inhumans and return them to the Great Refuge where they belonged. He offered to return Dragon Man with appologies. Unfortunately, the sedative wore off and Dragon Man woke up, tore loose of his restraints, and left.

The next issue started with Reed and Sue saving Triton after Dragon Man shattered his water tank. Johnny and Ben pursued Dragon Man. In an amazing coincidence (that would be repeated two months later), they caught up with Dragon Man right outside Alicia's window (Alicia was the Thing's girlfriend). Johnny eventually subdued Dragon Man and the army took him to a deserted island off-panel.

The Seeker escorted Reed and Sue out and returned to the Great Refuge, but not before Reed planted a homing device.

The FF chartered a jetliner and followed. Johnny was obsessed with Crystal, the red haired Inhuman.

In the meantime, Lockjaw trasported the Inhumans royal family back to the Great Refuge and we found out a little more about the politics. Black Bolt was the rightful ruler but lost his voice in an accident caused by his brother Maximus. Maximus was the current ruler and dreamed of killing humanity so that the Inhumans would be the only race on the planet.

Things got a little confused. Maximus wanted to marry Medusa. She, in turn, was in love with Black Bolt which is why she left the Great Refuge in the first place. There was an implication that Gorgon had been sent by Maximus to retreive her which does not explain why he took her to Black Bolt, instead. Possiblt Stan gave Gorgon a line that he meant to give the Seeker.

Regardless, Black Bolt reclaimed his crown with Medusa speaking for him. Maximus went along with this since he intended to activate his human-killing device and reclaim the crown.

The FF finally made it to the Great Refuge as maximus activated his device.

Cut to next issue - the device was a dud. Humans and Inhumans are genetically identical. The only difference is their artificially-induced powers. This knowledge drove Maximus mad and used his machice to create a negative zone cutting it off from the rest of the world. The FF escaped with the help pf Sue's force field but the Inhumans, including Johnny's new girlfriend, Crystal, were trapped.

And that was just the first half of the issue.

These issue were interesting for several reasons. It introduced the Inhumans who continue to be supporting characters in the Marvel Universe. At four and a half issues, this was the longest continued story that Lee and Kirby did. It also marked the start of Joe Sinnott as the FF's regular inker. He gave Kirby's art an updated look.

This story arc marked the beginning of Reed and Sue's marriage, one of very few super hero marriages in the 1960s. Implied, Johnny Storm graduated from high school and moved into the Baxter Building along with Sue (they previously lived in the house she inherited from her parents). Johnny and Crystal's infatuation marked Johnny's transition to adulthood. Their romance lasted through the Lee/Kirby years.

The only problem was what to do for an encore? With issue 50 coming up fast, Stan and Jack had something special planned.

Land of the Lost II

I haven't seen the Land of the Lost movie and I don't intend to so I can't offer a review of it. What I can do is review why I don't want to see it. I'm not alone in this. The movie is a major flop. It cost something like $200 million to produce and promote (IMDB gives $100 million but does not include marketing) but it only took in $18 million on its opening weekend.

Some movie ideas are so stupid that you wonder how anyone ever thought that people would watch them. The Jack Black/Green Lantern is one of these. Mercifully, it never got beyond the talking phase.

Land of the Lost can best be described as a Bizarro-world version of the TV show. The TV show was a serious drama aimed at kids (although adults could appreciate the science-fiction concepts). It was centered around a family of a father and his two kids. It was produced on a shoe-string budget. Top science fiction writers worked on it. The kids acted like kids and the animals acted like animals.

In contrast, the movie is a crude PG-13 comedy. It revolves around three unrelated adults. According to several review, the plot is mainly a bunch of comedy sketches strung together. There are no kids and the animals act like whatever the comedy bit requires.

So who was the audience for this thing? Fans of the original will not find much to like. Will Farrell fans who were not into the show are probably wondering why he did this?

This is not Farrell's first problem with translating 1960s and 1970s material. Bewitched and The Producers both bombed. The Producers was actually pretty good but Bewitched wasted both Farrell and Nichole Kidman in a script that couldn't make up its mind what it wanted to be.

Futurama Returns

Futurama was created as a companion piece to the Simpsons. Originally Fox showed it immediately after the Simpsons but the later player with the schedule, showing it at 7:00. In addition, once they started carrying football, the games always lasted until 8:00 or later so Futurama was only seen for the second half of the season. Between the earlier time and reduced exposure, it's audience averaged half that of the Simpsons. Since Fox ordered full seasons worth of episodes but only showed half-seasons, Futurama continued for a season after Fox stopped ordering new episodes.

This was a shame. The show started out amusing and got progressively better as time passed. Its best episodes were in its final season and it went out on a high note with Fry, the main character, exchanging his hands with the Robot Devil in order to gain the musical ability needed to make Lela love him (the Robot Devil got his hands back at the end leaving the show on an ambiguous note).

Cartoon Central bought the rights to the show and it quickly became a staple. When the rights expired Comedy Central picked it up and commissioned four made-for-DVD movies that could be cut into four episodes each. These in turn were popular enough that Comedy Central just announced that they are ordering 26 new episodes.

Land of the Lost

During the 1960s and 1970s, Hanna-Barbera ruled Saturday morning with limited-animation cartoons. In the late-60s and early 70s they had some competition from a couple of puppeteers named Sid and Marty Kroft. The Krofts produced several live-action shows that made a splash. The Krofts' first several shows were light-weight entertainment aimed at kids. In 1974 they did a serious show called Land of the Lost.

As originally promoted (and as implied in the theme song), a family was on rafting trip when an earthquake dropped them into a valley where dinosaurs still existed. What was actually produced was a science-fiction cult classic.

From the first few lines of the first episode it was established that the Marshall family was no longer on Earth. The world that they ended up in had dinosaurs but it also had ape-men called Pakuni and lizard-men called Sleestak.

Several of the best known science fiction writers were involved with the show as well as some Star Trek alumni. The story editor was David Gerrold, best known for the Trouble With Tribbles episode of Star Trek. Trek's story editor, D. C Fontaina contributed a script as did Walter Koenig.

As revealed over the first season, the Land of the Lost was a tiny pocket universe created by a lizard-like race called the Altrusians. This universe contained glowing crystals with special properties according to their color. If several crystals were combined into a matrix then they could control aspects of time and space. A number of pylons containing these matrixes maintained the Land of the Lost, controlling things such as the  weather and the movement of the sun and moons.

At some point the Altrusian race fell and devolved into the Sleestak. One of the Altrusians named Enik was stranded in his people's future and was trying to return to his own time to warn his people. Enik was a frequent ally but his degenerate descendants, the Sleestak were mainly interested in sacrificing the Marshals to their god.

A few times the closed nature of the pocket universe was demonstrated. The Marshalls tried to escape by following a river only to end up back where they came from. On a high cliff the Marshalls used binoculars to look at the next cliff only to see their own backs.

A young pakuni named Cha-ka was a regular. A consistent language was created for the pakuni.

All of this was at odds with the production values. Saturday morning shows were produced on a shoe-string budget. The Krofts typically spent most of their budget up-front on sets and costumes. Even that didn't go far. The show only had three sleestak costumes and three pakuni. In order to show a jungle-universe on a budget, many sets were constructed in miniature with the live-action cast added through chromakey. This was never very convincing.

The dinosaurs were animated through stop-motion supplimented by puppets. The models used were poor, even by 1970s standards.

While science fiction was part of the show, the episodes centered on the relationship of the Marshall family and their efforts to return home.

The show's cult status comes from this mix of ambitious science fiction and shoe-string budget. Watching it requires a major suspension of disbelief, much like the 1960s Dark Shadows.

The first season ended with a clever twist. Rather than leave the Marshals stranded in case the show was cancelled or precluding the possibility of other seasons, the last episode of the first season managed to do both. Enik managed to create a time doorway but it was stuck on the Marshall family plunging down a waterfall (as shown in the opening credits). The Marshalls couldn't leave the Land of the Lost until three people entered and the earlier version falling down the waterfall couldn't enter until three people left. The solution was for the two sets of Marshalls to exchange places. The current version went home and the earlier version came to the Land of the Lost, bringing the series in a full circle.

Presumably the second season was events that happened to the Marshalls before they left but had not been shown earlier.

For the third season the show changed studios and everything changed. Spencer Milligan who played the father, Rick Marshall, left the show and was replaced by his "brother", Uncle Jack Marshall. The family moved from the cave they had been living in to an abandoned Sleestak city.

The quality of the scripts declined. Many of the rules established in the first two seasons were dropped. The show was cancelled after this season.

A new version of Land of the Lost was created in the 1990s. It had a revised setting and improved production values but the scripts were uninspired.

A theatrical version will be released this week. The previews make it look like nothing more than a framework for Will Farrell jokes.