Marvel 1965

My last post left Reed and Sue escaping from the Frightful Four, towing a brainwashed Thing who had an anti-gravity disk glued to him. The Wizard and a brainwashed Human Torch tried to stop their escape. The rest of the EFF (Evil FF) team also had anti-gravity disks glued to them and were hanging on to the ground for their lives.

Reed and Sue made good their escape and Sue revealed that she had disabled the Wizard's ID machine so the Torch was only playing at being brainwashed. They managed to get the Thing to the Baxter Building and gave him a dose of sleeping gas.

The Wizard rescued his team-mates, figured out that the Torch was faking and captured him. Reed improvised an anti-brainwashing devise which half-killed the Thing before they shut off the main power.

The EFF broke into the Baxter Building and confronted Reed and Sue. The Wizard showed them the Torch, stuck to a large anti-gravity disk the Wizard controlled. The only way to save the Torch was for the three of them to submit to the Wizard's ID machine.

Just then the Thing woke up long enough to crush the Wizard's chest piece. This freed the Torch. Reed took advantage of the confusion and disarmed the Trapster. Medusa fled and the other three surrendered.

In a bit of 1960s humor, Reed called the police to collect the EFF but the desk sergeant thought it was a crank call. The Torch had to escort the three personally.

The Thing woke up again, back to normal and over his hard feelings from two issues earlier. The story ended with a promo for the FF annual featuring Reed and Sue's wedding.

This ended the FF's first three-issue continued story and a six-issue story arc on the Frightful Four. It marked a new style of story-telling. Single-issue plots would be the exception instead of the rule and the comic would never return to the formulaic stories of just a few months earlier. (It was also the last time the Frightful Four were a credible threat).

The same thing was happening across the Marvel line-up. The other Lee/Kirby comic, Thor, was into a lengthy plot arc that included a two-part fight with the Absorbing Man, the Trial of the Gods, a side-trip to Viet Nam, a two-part fight with the Destroyer, and another two-part fight with the Absorbing Man.

Several other titles had been revamped. The Sub-Mariner replaced Giant Man and the Wasp in Tales to Astonish and starting with a multi-issue quest. The Hulk in the backup-strip stopped changing into Banner for the next few years. Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD replaced the Torch and the Thing as the lead in Strange Tales with an epic fight against Hydra. Doctor Strange in the backup strip had a multi-part fight with Baren Mordo and the Dread Dormammu.

The X-Men graduated from high school and finally defeated Magneto (with the help of the Stranger).

The original Avengers quit and Captain America led a new team made up of reformed villains - Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch.

Spider-Man also graduated from high school. In the next year or so his book would have major changes as he switched girl friends and artists.

This was an exciting time at Marvel but the fantastic Four continued to be ground zero. The next year would see a major expansion of the Marvel Universe as the FF met the Inhumans, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, and the Black Panther. Lee and Kirby also introduced Ka-Zar and the Savage Land in the X-Men and the High Evolutionary in Thor. The 1965 Thor annual featured a Thor/Hercules fight that intruduced other pantheons besides the Norse. With the introduction of the Kree Empire in the FF in 1967, the Marvel Universe as we know it was pretty much established.

Along with scope, the depth of the stories changed. The single-issue format only left enough room for a page or two of characterization. Continued stories meant that most of an issue could be spent on a single character as long as it led to the promise of action in the next issue.

1965 was the big dividing point for all of this. a sea change like this could never happen today. Back then the Marvel bullpen was a myth. The office consisted of Stan, the editor and main writer, a small office staff, and a bunch of free-lancers who only came by once or twice a month. Now each comic book has its own staff of assistant editors and major changes come from the board room.

Fantastic Four - 1965

I happened to start looking at issues of the FF in 1965 a few weeks. I chose an issue (#36, the Frightful Four's first appearance) which someone swiped from me not long after I bought it. I've been reading issues forward and back from there and it turns out that this year was a watershed for Marvel. I realized at the time that the comics seemed to be getting better but I was only ten at the time. With lots more years or perspective I can see how this year changed comic books.

Several elements of Marvel were in place from the beginning. Stan Lee placed the characters in real cities and had them interact with the real world in ways that other superheros didn't do. For example, in issue #35, the Yancy Street Gang sent the Thing a Beatles wig. After brawling with the Torch over it, he admitted that he liked it and tried it on. The plot involved a billionaire who bet his rivals that he could destroy the Fantastic Four. His plot fell apart because his son was a fan (at one point he showed his father his Fantastic Four "magazines") and got caught in the trap that was supposed to eliminate the FF. The Billionaire repented while the Thing wondered how he would look in the Thing's Beatles wig. Between being self-referential and pop-culture references, it was the sort of story that gave Marvel its initial splash.

On the other hand, issues had a certain sameness. A typical FF comic started with a couple of pages of the FF then introduced (or reintroduced) the villain and set up for the fight. The fight itself was rather fast with a quick resolution in the last page or two.

This wasn't a formula as much as a convention. The assumption was that each issue should stand on its own in order to attract new readers. Accordingly, the heroes and villains were reintroduced every issue and plots seldom took more than a single comic.

I recently wrote about the Return of the Frightful Four. This is when things changed. This issue itself was typical enough except it ended on a cliffhanger - the FF were caught in a Q-bomb explosion and left floating in the open ocean.

The next issue picked up from there. A US navy sub rescued the FF. after a couple of pages of dancing around it, the four admitted that they had lost their powers (radiation giveth, radiation taketh away). Worried that they would be unable to defend themselves, Reed started trying to duplicate their powers with special suits. He also consulted with their attorney to be sure that his will was in order.

In the Marvel universe, every one's attorney is Matt Murdock who is also Daredevil.

In the meantime, Doctor Doom realized that he had been tricked in his last encounter with the FF and attacked the Baxter Building. It was empty but he took over Richards' equipment and located the FF in a warehouse. He then used Richards' own weapons to attack the powerless FF. They were aided by Daredevil.

This story took two issues with the FF finally reaching the Baxter Building in the second issue. While Daredevil distracted Doom, Richards retrieved an energy gun that he had used three issues earlier and used it to restore their powers (he explained that he had been letting it recharge and the suits were a stop-gap).

This is where it gets interesting. It is a cliche that the cursed hero will become normal then heroically become cursed again. This was in the Fantastic Four movie. It was in last night's season finale of Chuck. But that wasn't how it happened here. Beg Grimm was normal and didn't want to change back but Reed changed him anyway. They the rest let the Thing take on Doom alone.

This was an epic battle. Doom was pulling powers out of a hat and the Thing took everything that Doom threw at him and smashed up his suit, forcing him to flee.

Then the Thing quit the group. He had been normal and he was a monster again. He didn't like it one bit.

Cut to the next issue. The battle with Doom hurt the Thing more than he admitted. He snuck onto a pickup truck and fell asleep. Even falling out of the truck on a rough road didn't wake him.

The Wizard located him there and brought him to the Frightful Four's headquarters. He had a new device that would brainwash the Thing and put him under the Wizard's control. In the meantime we got a look at the team dynamic. Medusa was really in charge, using a combination of flirting and power to keep the others in line. The Wizard was too busy to notice. Sandman liked women who played rough, and the Trapster whined but tended to do whatever Medusa said.

The rest of the FF eventually tried to track down the Thing after his girlfriend, Alicia, shamed them into it. With the Thing's help, the other three were quickly overpowered and captured. The Torch and Sue were secured. Reed was glued to a board. Then the Wizard reminded the Thing that Reed had made him ugly and ordered him to kill Reed. End of issue.

The next issue took up directly from there. It was almost all fight. Reed got free of the board he was glued to but the Thing stuffed him into a metal bottle. Sue escaped with the bottle while the Wizard used him mind-control machine on the Torch. During a lull, Medusa flirted with the Thing and Sandman got jealous. Sue freed Reed and they counter-attacked using the Trapster's paste and the Wizard's flying disks to throw the EFF off balance. Reed and Sue fled, taking a floating Thing while the Torch and the Wizard tried to stop them.

It was an adrenaline rush of an issue. No introduction, no introducing the characters, just cover to cover action. Without the usual 3-6 pages of set-up there was a lot more room for action and characterization. The continued story was now the preferred way of telling a story.

My next post will discuss how other Marvel comics were changing at the same time and cover the wrap-up to the Frightful Four.

The Return of the Frightful Four

Several days ago I wrote about the issue of the Fantastic Four that introduced the evil FF - the Frightful Four. It was an unusual issue. Panels were missing backgrounds and the comic book ended before the plot. The book looks like it was rushed out.

Two issues later the Frightful Four returned in what amounts to a do-over issue.

In the issue in between, the FF had gone to the Skrull homeworld to avenge the death of Sue's father.

The return of the EFF (Evil FF) starts with Reed examining some huge blowups of photographs he had taken the previous issue. Jack Kirby liked to incorporate unusual photographs into his artwork and used real photos.

This quickly degenerated into horseplay between Reed and Sue. The Torch left and spotted a flying man who quickly vanished.

This turned out to the the Wizard. He returned to the EFF's current hideout in upstate New York but was subdued by the Sandman then the Trapster (Paste-Pot Pete renamed himself and upgraded his weapons). The Wizard retaliated by using his anti-gravity powers to throw the other three around the cabin. This introduced the EFF to readers who missed their first appearance.

Cut to Sue who was looking at dress designs by a new designer. This turned out to be Madam Medusa. Sue was rendered unconscious and taken to a remote island where the Wizard had hidden a "Q" bomb (some sort of nuclear device).

Reed was frantic at this and used his technology to search the world. He found the EFF's ship right above the Baxter Building. The Torch flew up to investigate it but got too close and was also taken prisoner. The EFF led Reed and Ben to the island where their Pogo Plane was destroyed. The Torch was released and the two groups had a short battle.

In the meantime, Sue woke up and freed herself from the Trapster's paste bonds. The Thing heard her moving around underground and broke off the fight. While the FF was distracted the EFF left in the Wizard's ship. This left the FF trapped on an island as a nuclear device went off.

Sue's force field protected them as they were blown off of the island. The last panel showed them floating in the force field, unconscious, with the Thing turning back into Ben Grimm.

Structurally this was very similar to the earlier issue but the content was different. A lot happened here but nothing seemed rushed or glossed over. All of the panels had backgrounds, some of them ambitious. Kirby was expanding his scope, setting up for future "cosmic" issues.

This also started the era of multi-issue story arcs. The issue was self-contained but the story continued through the next two issues with a different villain (Doctor Doom).

This is an intersting structure - a three-issue arc where a villain defeats the hero in one issue followed by two issues where the hero fights a different villain. This structure had already appeared in Spider-Man. During a battle with the Green Goblin, Spider-Man heard that his aunt was sick and left the fight. In the next issue he met the Sandman but was afraid to fight him out of fear that Aunt May would be left without anyone to care for her. At the end of the second issue May gave a speech to Peter about not giving up. In the third issue he returned to crime fighting, defeating the Sandman and freeing the Human Torch who had been taken captive.

Both examples resolved the story arc but left things hanging with the original villain. This was a deft touch since it made the eventual rematch that much more exciting.

Minimalist Comics

I was re-reading an old issue of the Fantastic Four recently. Someone stole my copy of that issue shortly after I bought it so it has been over 40 years since I last saw it. Looking at it again was an interesting experience.

The plot:
The comic begins with Reed and Sue announcing their engagement and being surrounded by reporters. This takes up a couple of pages. It cuts to the Torch who is experimenting with a contraption that lets him change the color of his fireballs. He expands his test to full-blown fireworks.

Nearby the Sandman and Paste-Pot Pete are watching the display. They reminisce about how they came to be together - they escaped from jail, hijacked a small plane, then rescued the Wizard who was floating uncontrollably. They decided to form an evil counterpart to the Fantastic Four, the Frightful Four. The Wizard recruited Madam Medusa as their fourth member.

The Frightful Four landed on the Baxter Building in the Wizard's anti-gravity ship. Medusa used her prehensile hair and Pete's paste gun to immobilize the Thing. They quickly subdued Reed and Sue, rendering them unconscious with a spray. The Thing's girlfriend, Alicia managed to fire an emergency flare before she was captured. The Wizard attached anti-gravity disks to the four and let them drift into the upper atmosphere where they would die from lack of oxygen.

The Torch saw the flare and flew to the rescue. He grabbed the Wizard and forced him to fly his anti-gravity craft to rescue the others. The remaining Frightful Four stole the FF's Pogo plane and pursued. The Sandman tried to force the Wizard's craft down but could not. The Wizard landed. The Torch and the Thing faced off against the Wizard. Off-panel, the others escaped, blew up the Wizard's craft, and vanished.

I was surprised by the artwork, or the lack of it. Several panels were missing backgrounds completely. I don't know if this was done by Jack Kirby or the inker but.

That's a lot of plot to stuff into a single issue and it didn't quite fit. The confrontation between the two FFs never quite happened. The event that ended the fight happened off-panel. Someone from off-panel yelled a warning but we don't even know if it was Reed or Sue.

The pacing was also off. The story just trailed off as if Kirby miscounted his pages and had to wrap it up a page or two early.

I suspect that Stan and Jack felt constrained by the single-issue format. Two issues later the Frightful Four reappeared in a three-issue arc that saw the FF fighting Dr. Doom without their powers. From that point on multi-issue stories were the rule. Often a page or two would be spent setting up for future stories. This allowed much greater depth of storytelling and characterization.

A note on the villains:
The Sandman was a Spider-Man villain who had also fought the Torch. Paste-Pot Pete was a Torch villain who had a paste gun that could shoot quick-setting, unbreakable paste. He was later renamed the Trapster. The Wizard was a genius inventor who turned to crime until he was caught by the Torch. His specialty was anti-gravity. These villains appeared in the Torch's short-lived solo strip in Strange Tales. The Thing joined the Torch for a year or so before the feature was replaced by Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD. The Frightful Four was probably Stan Lee's way of reusing some perfectly good villains now that the Torch's strip was gone. Medusa was a new character. Originally she was the coldest and most calculating of the Frightful Four but she quickly reformed once she was reunited with the Inhumans.

Monsters vs Aliens - Observations

I love a tightly constructed plot and Monsters vs Aliens does a good job of this. Here are some observations about the plot and other points. Stop reading if you don't want to see any spoilers.

The movie is mainly about Susan/Ginormica's transformation from shallow bride to world defender. At the opening all she can think about is that she is about to go to Paris. The marriage and her future husband are incidentals.

Early on Susan is repulsed by her future mother-in-law's deformed thumb and the prediction that kids that she has with Derek will have the same trait. Shortly after that she is transformed into a monster and learns to appreciate he fellow monsters.

We never see what happens to the meteor but it apparently is actually a ball of energy which Susan absorbs entirely (twice). We do see the energy as it is sucked from her body by Gallaxhar.

Susan maintains that she isn't really a monster, she's just large. In fact, her actions in the outside world show that there is no place for her there. She is just too big. She has a much harder time fitting in than the other monsters (since she doesn't actually fit into anything).

What sort of fabric was that wedding dress made out of that it could stretch (in all directions)? Too bad her garter wasn't made of the same stuff.

No one even comments on Susan's hair changing color.

Susan wakes up in a uniform provided by the military. It has the number "005" on the breast. She is the fifth monster added to the collection (not counting the late Invisible Man).

Susan has a stroke of luck. The other monsters have been imprisoned for years or decades. She is only locked up for three weeks before the military needs them to fight a giant robot.

The robot has been sent to retrieve the energy that Susan absorbed. If the government had realized this they would probably have simply handed Susan over, end of movie. Instead she and the other monsters got to save the world from a menace directly related to Susan. No wonder they are locking up people with abilities on Heroes.

Susan thinks of herself as an ordinary person who happens to be large. When confronted with a robot that dwarfs her, she acts like an ordinary person and runs. It isn't until she is on the Golden Gate Bridge that she sees people in danger and starts acting like a hero.

General Monger's briefing on Ginormica mentioned that the energy she absorbed gave her size and incredible power. This set up her fight with the robot when she discovered that she is disproportionately strong (she is even stronger than you would expect from someone her size).

Science factoid - strength goes up according to the square of the cross-section but mass goes up according to the cube of the volume. This means that really big people have trouble supporting their own weight. A fifty foot woman could not stand up. Ginormica has extra strength which compensates for this.

Watch Gallaxhar's eyes. The middle ones behave normally. The outer ones seem to have a mind of their own.

Apparently Ginormica has to concentrait to use all of her strength. When Gallaxhar tells her that it is too bad that she doesn't know how to harness the power she replies that she knows how to use it. She then breaks a force field and tears through several steel blast doors.

It is almost a cliche that a monstrous hero will be given a chance at a normal life and have to give it up to save the world. Susan never even thinks about the choice. By the time she is returned to normal she has accepted her life as Ginormica. She seems more concerned about losing her powers than her chance at resuming her life.

The clones don't seem to be very smart. This is probably on purpose. An army of exact replicas of Gallaxhar would probably kill each other arguing about who should be in charge.

Stealing a uniform as a disguise is another cliche. Loony Toons characters did it all the time. They also did it in the Wizard of Oz. Indianna Jones and the Rocketeer both did it. I could go on. The results are usually as unlikely as the monsters.

The suit that Gallaxhar put in Susan was handy since her government issue outfit would not have shrunk. Either he was concerned about her modesty or repelled by human physiology. Either way, it was convenient.

Someone changed Susan's clothing twice while she was unconscious. Will there pictures of a naked, sleeping Ginormica appearing on the Internet in future movies?

Will Arnet (Missing Link) and Jeffery Tambor (Susan's father) were regulars on Arrested Development. Arnet's wife, Amy Poehler (computer voice), was also in a few episodes of Arrested Development.

Most Americans know Hugh Laurie from House. He is actually a British actor and the Dr. Cockroach character is much closer to the rest of his career than Dr. House.

An in-joke was that Susan was only 49 feet, 11 inches. This must have been in a press packet since several reviewers mentioned it but no one gave her height in the movie. She may have grown after one of Dr. Cockroach's experiments.

The Missing Link was inspired by The Creature from the Back Lagoon. B.O.B. was the Blob. Dr. Cockroach was from the Fly.

Insectasurus was obviously a take-off of Mothra. Mothra went from giant caterpillar to moth.

The idea of using earth monsters to fight aliens/alien robots was a staple of Japanese monster movies in the 1960s.

Saving San Francisco wasn't enough to give the monsters acceptance. They had to save all of humanity instead.

General Monger first used his parachute in the war room.

Only by becoming Ginormica did Susan finally get to go to Paris.

Monsters vs Aliens vs Incredibles

I've seen various reviewers compare Pixar and Dreamworks as Disney and Warner Brothers. This comparison sells Dreamworks short. Their movies usually have more laughs than Pixar's but there is more substance than Warner Brothers cartoons (since Warner Brothers only did shorts, they never had enough screen time for anything more).

Dreamworks Monsters vs Aliens just came out. The Incredibles is the closest thing to it that Pixar has produced (and still one of their best) so I'm going to compare the two.

Warning - I'm not going to go into the plots in detail but this will contain minor spoilers.

The basic set-up of both movies has similar elements. In one, the government has outlawed costumed heroes and placed them in safe, boring everyday jobs. In the other, the government decided to keep the existence of monsters secret and has rounded them up and is holding them in a secret facility.

The Incredibles focuses mainly on Bob, Mr. Incredible, as he goes from superhero and newlywed to insurance adjuster in a soul-crushing job and his return as a superhero. Along the way he learns to depend on others instead of acting solo.

Monsters vs Aliens is about Susan, Ginormica, as she goes from her wedding day to being locked up for being 50 feet tall (give or take an inch) and her transformation into hero. Along the way she learns self-reliance and that geeks may embarrass you but they will not desert you.

There are a few scenes in common between the two movies. They both have five heroes facing off against a giant robot to save a city. In both movies, the main characters finally receive acceptance through conspicious acts of heroism.

What about the Warner Brothers comaprison?

The Incredibles is pretty much deadpan. There are a few scenes put in for comic relief - a neighborhood child who keeps watching Bob to see what will happen next, Frozone asking for his super suit. Monsters plays the main plot straight but a lot of humor comes from Susan's fellow monsters, especially BOB the Blob who is a natural clown. The scenes with the President are all for comic relief, similar to Scrat's appearances in the Ice Age movies. Monsters ends up having a lot more humor than Incredibles but compartmentalizes it. Except for some pratfalls caused by her size, Susan is never a humorous character. She is also more sympathetic than Mr. Incredible who borders on being a jerk at times.

Susan's character is handled deftly. At the beginning she is rather shallow, obsessed with going to Paris on her honeymoon. She is also repelled by minor physical deformities. The movie's focus is almost exclusively on her rather than being split between the four members of the Incredibles family so there is more screen time for her to grow as a character (no pun intended). By the end of the movie she has accepted her role as monster/defender of humanity and has the audience rooting for her.

Now that I've said all of that, I will admit that the way the monsters disguise themselves in the alien ship is right out of Warner Brothers. There are a lot of in-jokes about other monster movies. The President and his advisors are outright silly (with perfect casting of Stephen Colbert as the President).

Monsters has a lot more laughs but it still makes an emotional connection - a difficult combination.

Pixar's Up comes out later this year. It will be interesting to see which movie takes the best animation for 2009. Dreamworks has a real shot at beating Pixar.

Car Clocks

Last weekend began Daylight Savings Time. My car has a an analog clock with a simple mechanism for resetting the clock. You put a pen into a small button on the dashboard and the clock runs fast. You release the button at the right time. My wife's digital clock is a bit harder. Either way, we can set the clock and trust it to keep correct time until Daylight Savings Time ends in November. It didn't used to be like that.

When they first started putting clocks in cars they used a simple electric motor. These ran at a consistent rate depending of the voltage applied. The problem is that cars have different voltages. When the motor is turned off the battery puts out 12 volts. When it is running, it is recharging the battery and the voltage is more like 14.5 volts. This can drop if you are running power-hungry things like the rear window defroster. Combine that with headlights, radio, windshield wipers, and the fan and the voltage drops nearly back to 12 volts.

Every time the voltage changes, the old car clocks ran at a different speed. Engineers tried to estimate how much driving the average person would do and adjust the clock so that it would average out. This never seemed to work in real life. Car clocks could gain or lose as much as five or ten minutes in a week. You either constantly adjusted your clock or you gave up and never looked at it.

Sometime in the 1980s they started using quartz movements in car clocks. A quartz crystal vibrates if you apply current to it and it is fairly forgiving about variations in voltage. Problem solved.

The PT Cruiser

A change of subject, instead of talking about media, I'm going to talk about cars - at least one model, the PT Cruiser.

In the mid-1990s, Volkswagen introduced the New Beetle. This was basically a Jetta with a new body made to resemble the iconic Beetle from the 1960s. A few years later Chrysler announced their own retro car - the PT Cruiser. The Cruiser looked like a cross between a Beetle and a classic hot-rod. The Beetle had a lot of trade-offs for its look. It is only a two-door with a small trunk and a difficult-to-service engine. The Cruiser solved most of those problems. It was four-door and had a huge amount of usable space for its size. It was also fairly inexpensive, starting below $20,000.

During its first few years the Cruiser was a halo car for Chrysler. People stopped just to look at it. Merely having it in their lineup made Chrysler seem cool. It was at least two years before production caught up to demand. Prior to that you had to get on a long waiting line or pay a premium to get a Cruiser.

Other companies tried to produce a retro car. Ford launched its revived T-Bird which started off hot but cooled quickly. GM came out with their SSR and HHR. The SSR, a cross between a pickup and a hot-rod was heavy, slow, and overpriced. The HHR was a better try but when you parked it next to a full-sized pick-up it looked like a scale model of a larger car. That never happened with the Cruiser.

Sales eventually dropped. Chrysler made a half-hearted attempt at freshening its looks but mainly managed to dilute them. The original Cruiser had a triangular grill that went past the bumper. This was responsible for a lot of its distinctive look. The new Cruiser lopped off the grill at the bumper, making it look more like a Pacifica. This was probably deliberate. According to one of the Cruiser's designers, Chrysler's German owners never liked or understood the Cruiser.

I owned two of them. I loved the first one but it was totalled in a wreck. I replaced it with a slightly newer one that had more options. When that wore out I considered getting a new one but the new design just didn't excite me the way that the original did.

Rare comics

An issue of Action Comics #1 is coming up for sale. It could possibly top $1,000,000. So, what is your collection likely to be worth?

Probably not much.

This comic book is special because it was the first appearance of Superman, the first costumed superhero. It is also very, very rare for several reasons.

One is that it was aimed at kids. Kids are hard on their possessions. They wear them out and throw them away. 

It was meant to be a disposable medium. Comic books are printed on cheap paper which doesn't last long. The publishers didn't want you to save your comic books. They wanted you to read it, throw it away, then buy the next issue.

There was no collectible market when this was printed. Comic books were saved almost by accident. The collector's market didn't really take off until the 1960s. In between there were several paper drives during World War II. Most comic books and pulp magazines were donated to those to help the war effort.

Nowadays comic books are printed on better paper and they are sold to adults who know about the collectible market and hope to cash in on it some day.

In one of his books (I'm too lazy to look it up right now), Stan Lee admits that they pumped the collectibles market in order to sell more comic books. They would print issues with two different covers and the hard-core collectors would buy both because they didn't know which would be more valuable in the future. They would use any excuse to start a comic over with a new #1 issue because collectors guaranteed that these would be sellouts.

The result is that none of these have any collectible value because there is no shortage.

Oscar Ratings

Once again the organizers of Oscar night are expecting low ratings and wondering why. This is an easy question to answer. Currently popular movies are disqualified from even being nominated because they considered are too commercial. Look at this year's crop. Most of the major nominees were only in limited release during 2008 in order to qualify for a nomination. They went into wide release the same weekend that the nominations were announced in order to take advantage of the publicity. Of all the nominees in major categories, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the only one that actually did well at the box office.

What happened to Dark Knight? During most of the Summer it was considered a lock on best picture. It was also the most popular movie in years. But it suddenly lost Oscar momentum and only got a nomination for supporting actor. This is an example of what is wrong with the whole nominating process.

Rumor is that the people doing the nominations considered Dark Knight too dark and too Bush-era. There is no place for a movie about a sociopath in the Age of Obama. So, in order to get a nomination a movie has to pass a political test as well as an artistic one. You can see the same effect in reverse in Milk. Both the subject matter and the star are on the right (left) side of politics.

In the end, people tune in to the Oscars to root for their favorite movie to win. The show itself is long and boring in a self-indulgent way. If you haven't seen any of the top movies then there are better things you can do with your time.

Deadman

I've been meaning to write this for a few weeks - ever since Deadman made an appearance in the new Brave and the Bold cartoon series.

Deadman was a unique character, even in the Silver Age of comics. He wasn't a superhero at all. He was a ghost who was looking for his killer. Normally invisible and intangible, his only power was that he could possess people.

Despite his name and costume, both of which were suitable for a super-powered ghost, he had both when he was alive. Deadman was really a trapeze artist named Boston Brand with a morbid streak. He figured that the crowd really came to watch him die so he took the name Deadman and wore a death mask as part of his act. One night during his act he was shot by someone with a hook. He materialized as a ghost looking like he did when he died. The spirit Rama Kushna apppeard to him and explained that he had been given a "gift" - the power to walk among men until his killer was brought to justice.

The character was created by Arnold Drake and Carmine Infantino but it was quickly turned over to Jack Miller and a newcomer, Neal Adams.

The comic was much closer to a TV show like the Fugitive with a bit of Quantum Leap thrown in rather than a traditional comic book. Except for another costumed trapeze artist called the eagle, Deadman dealt with regular people and regular problems. Neal Adams's art was a perfect match for this. He had been doing syndicated newspaper comics and had a hyper-realistic style that matched the tone of the comic.

At first Deadman simply thought of people who might want him dead (there was a long list) and checked them out. Some of them were involved in other crimes. Others had problems of their own. Inevitably Deadman would posses someone and use his acrobatic and street-fighting skills to clear things up. Then he would move on to another dead end (pardon the pun).

The comic had a strong supporting cast from the circus but Deadman never revealed himself to them. Presumably he intended to solve his murder and move on to the next world. The exception to this was in an issue of Brave and the Bold. Deadman decided to ask Batman for help with his murder. This turned into another false lead, this time to the brother of the man who had killed Bruce Wayne's parents.

Around half-way through its run, the pace of Deadman stories picked up. It started with Boston seeing what the police were doing about his murder. This led to several near encounters with Hook and a reunion of sorts with his twin brother Cleveland. At one point Cleveland tried to flush Hook out of hiding by pretending that Boston had survived. Hook shot Deadman again, although this time it turned out to be the circus strongman Tiny in Deadman's costume. Tiny survived.

Despairing of ever finding Hook, Deadman chose someone at random and decided to take over that man's life. In an amazing coincidence, he chose an assassin named Willie Smith. In a bigger coincidence, the assassins next job was to capture Hook.

It turned out that Hook was training to enter a society of assassins. He final test was to pick someone at random and kill him. Hook chose Deadman from a circus poster. Cleveland's impersonation of Boston and Tiny's survival convinced the society that Hook has failed his test. He was allowed to fight for his life against the Sensei, an aged, frail oriental who quickly bests Hook. Hook's body is dumped in the ocean leaving Deadman to wonder what next?

In the following issue, Deadman follows Smith and the Sensei on a mission to destroy the city of Nanda Parbat (sort of a Shangri La). Deadman stops them and discovers that, while in Nanda Parbat, he is alive again. Further, this is where Rama Rushna is. He and Rama come to an understanding - Boston will continue to fight evil as he is for an unspecified time.

This was supposed to be the jumping off point for a new direction. Deadman would move from trying to find Hook to fighting Sensei and his assassins. Unfortunately it was Deadman's last issue. What was supposed to be a two-part story was continued in Brave and the Bold with Batman helping Deadman save Nanda Parbat.

The Sensei and his assassins merged with an on-going Batman plotline involving Ras al-Ghul and elements of this were in Batman Begins.

There have been several attempts to revive the character since then. Deadman also had a short run as a backup strip in Aquaman. This was written and drawn by Neil Adams. The only other story worth mentioning was Deadman's third appearance in Brave and the Bold. Batman needed someone to infiltrate a criminal organization. Deadman was perfect for this until he fell for a woman at the top. The artwork was by Jim Aparo who matched Neil Adams' realistic style.

Other attempts were not as successful. Jack Kirby's Forever people had a Deadman guest shot. In this, he merged with an android that looked just like him (including his ghostly costume) and started a new search for the Hook. Kirby had noticed an inconsistency in which hand Boston's assassin had lost. This was mercifully forgotten.

Deadman was revived (so to speak) in 1986 but it never captured the spirit (so to speak) of the original strip. Rama Kushna was demoted from an asexual aspect of God (or something) to a goddess who damaged spirits in order to keep them earthbound. The supporting cast was killed off.

The biggest problem with subsequent attempts to revive Deadman is that they all involve the supernatural, often on a cosmic scale. Deadman doesn't work well in these stories. He is at his best when dealing in small, human stories.

Ultimate Joker?

There is a movement to force Warner from ever using the Joker in any movie - ever. Called the Ultimate Joker, this movement says that Heath Ledger was so good in the role that it should be retired.

I disagree.

I do think that the current franchise should drop using the Joker again, even though he appeared to survive Dark Knight. His story has been told. Even if Ledger was still alive, they could not top what they already did. All they could do is up the body count and dilute the character.

But, was this the defining performance which was so good that no one should ever try again? Come on. A generation ago they said the same thing about Jack Nicholson's performance. Each appealed to the current audience by tapping into current culture.

Ledger's version was a dead serious anarchist. He loved destruction for its own sake. This tapped into our current fears of terrorists. We never learned where he came from. He gave a few different stories about his scars. Presumably both were lies.

Nicholson's version was crazier. He also tapped into current fears. His method was product tampering - something that had killed several people in the 1980s. He also used the trick of luring people to a big event so that he could kill them (and presumably loot their bodies). Plus he had more fun.

Then there was the 1960s version with Cesar Romero. The serious version of Batman wouldn't have worked back then. The only way that people accepted a man dressed like a bat who fought similarly bizarre criminals was to play it as over-the-top. Romero's Joker fit in with this premise but gave it enough of an edge to stand out. Of all of Batman's foes in the 1960s, Joker was the most deadly. At one point he poisoned a possibly disloyal assistant  (Batman revived her with universal bat-antidote).

The comic book versions have also reflected the various versions of the Joker. Starting out as simply a colorful criminal, he became deadly and vengeful after the Comics Code was loosened around 1970. In one memorable appearance in the mid-1970s, he used chemicals to make fish look like himself. He then demanded that he be able to patent the Joker Fish and collect royalties and killed the patent clerk who told him that this couldn't be done. So far no screen version has been quite that cunning or deranged.

In another decade or two, after the current version has run its course, Warner will probably want to reboot the franchise again. The fans will want to see the newest version of the Joker. Why should they be denied?

Heroes and Lost

Lost returned a couple of weeks ago. Heroes returns tonight. The big question for both is how well they will keep up their energy.

Lost started strong. They explained some of mysteries such as why the Others were present at Locke's birth and early childhood. The episodes are strong on plot instead of being a framing device for the flashback as it was during the worst of the 3rd season.

Heroes faces a difficult challenge. The second season lost some momentum. The producers thought that what was needed was to bring back all of the elements from the first season but mix them differently. Thus we got an apocalyptic vision of the future that had to be averted, Hiro's excitement as he learned to use his powers for the first time, an artist who paints the future and Hiro buying a comic book to see what he should do next. They also decided to play with the concept of hero and villain and make us reevaluate our standards - or so they said. The execution of this was spotty and prroly thought-out. We might like one ambiguous anti-hero but not a series of them.

NBC got the message and replaced the writers. Now we will see if it helps. They are promising a completely different story arc this time with the heroes being hunted. This worked pretty well for the X-Men so it might work here, also. As Lost has shown, it is possible for a show to return after a slump.

Lost 1-4

It has been almost seven months since the last new episode of Lost aired but it seems less. The show has been syndicated since the Fall and ABC showed the last three hours of the last season a week ago (for good measure Sci-Fi showed the same episodes Monday). That gives a good overview of the series in general and gives me a chance to look over the entire series to this point.

No question about it, the first season was the best. The novelty of the flashbacks hadn't worn off and we were still meeting the characters. the structure of the show was different, also. More characters were featured in each episode and the episode wasn't totally centered on the character getting the flashbacks. At least 2/3s of an episode was taking place on the island instead of in flashback.

Also, the show's options were still open. It was still about a large group of castaways, most of them anonymous, stranded on an island where strange things happened. They acted like you would expect - they set up housekeeping, they argued, they formed romances, and they tried to get rescued.

The second season got off to a good start. We knew that other people lived on the island and they gave us some hints about them. The mysterious hatch was interesting. And at least a couple of the tail-enders were interesting (until they were killed off). On the other hand, the flashbacks got longer and repetitive.

The third season was divided in two with three of the cast being held by the Others. This was a low point for the series. The episodes blur together. The show was on the decline until a couple of episodes into the second half of season three (3.5?). Once Locke made contact with Ben things started happening. The feel of the show changed. It gained a new urgency that carried into season four.

Having the episodes in syndication, you can pick and choose which one you want to see again and which ones you want to skip. This is different from watching on DVD where you already decided to watch the show and it is a good measure of how good an episode is.

I noticed that I am much more likely to watch anything from season one and I am likely to turn off episodes from season two and three where Jack gets the flashbacks.

All of season four is worth watching except possibly the Desmond episode (too much flashback, and it feels like a filler episode). Some of the episodes are flashbacks. Some are flash forwards. We find out what happens to the Oceanic Six after they leave the island Ben predicted this at the end of season three when he pointed out that none of them were happy in the outside world. Sure enough, Kate is the only one whose life isn't a total disaster. Back in island time, something happens every episode. They are no longer trying to keep the show going as long as possible. Now they have a goal in sight.

Going into season five we will find out what happened after the six left and watch them going back to fix things.

I do have a couple of complaints about season four. The body count was too high. With both Alex and her mother dead, will we ever find out their backstory? I assume that the Others are from the Black Rock so at some point we will get their backstory. Do they stay on the island in order to keep their immortality? How did some of them get off after the island moved?

The producers have promised that they will have a satisfying wrap-up. We will see.

Art or Illustration?

It seemed like every obituary of the late Andrew Wyeth included a mention that some critics dismissed his works as being illustration rather than art. Here's an example. Maybe it is because I grew up with comic books but I think that this is an insult to both Wyeth and some of the great artists of all time.

The argument goes that photography freed the artist from having to slavishly follow reality. Since cameras can produce a much more realistic picture than an artist, true artists should forsake realism and immerse themselves in abstract art.

This is a load of crap (which some modern artists have been known to dry, varnish, and sell as art). Several generations of artist-wannabees with no technical talent convinced themselves and the world that they are the real artists. The critics are pleased to go along with this. It elevates the critics. Since it takes special training to tell good art from random blotches of paint thrown on a wall, abstract art keeps the critics in business.

My personal view is that anyone should be able to tell if an artist is good. If it isn't obvious to an untrained eye then it isn't fine art.

Also, simply because an artist uses a realistic style does not mean that he has slavishly copied reality.

The Dutch artist Vermeer is a great example. Some of his paintings were based on a device known as a camera obscura. This was a set of lenses that would project a view onto a flat surface. Vermeer used this to reproduce buildings. But the cityscapes he painted did not exist. He moved buildings around. He changed or added details.

An art class could spend an entire day studying how Vermeer painted pearls (this changed during his career). Then they could spend another week studying the meaning of the different symbols he put in his paintings. There is a lot more there than you see at first glance.

Try that with Brushstrokes in Flight by Roy Lichtenstein. Everything that this sculpture has to say can be covered in five minutes.

Back to Wyeth, his art speaks to people and his technical ability shamed the other artists and critics who could not match him so the degraded him, instead.

The Empire Strikes Back

It is generally acknowledged that The Empire Strikes Back is the best of the six Star Wars movies. I was watching it over the weekend and examining why it is better.

The cheap shot answer is that George Lucas let someone else write and direct it. That isn't fair to Lucas since he was co-writer and was looking over the shoulder of director Irvin Kershner.

One thing that really stands out every time I see this movie - it is gorgeous. set design, lighting, and cinematography combined to make a really good looking movie. All of the Star Wars movies use different pallets for different worlds but this goes a step further. Several of the rooms of the floating city have their own feel - the diffuse sunset-like lighting outside, the red lighting in the freezing chamber.

A big factor in the movie's success is the simplicity of the climax. The first two movies, this one and the original Star Wars (later renamed A New Hope) have very simple climaxes. Star Wars has the space fight to destroy the Death Star. Two groups of fighter pilots are making passes at a small target while being fired on. They go one at a time, each failing until Luke Skywalker (with cover from Han Solo) succeeds.

In The Empire Strikes Back, the climax is the lightsaber fight between Luke and Darth Vader. It is divided into three parts, each with its own feel. The first part in the freezing chamber establishes that Luke can hold his own. In the second part he finds that he is outclassed after all and in the third part he is disarmed (literally) and defeated.

Compare this with the other four movies. Starting with Return of the Jedi, Lucas decided to top a space fight and a lightsaber fight by doing both at once along with a third fight involving Ewoks. More is not always better and having three fights going on at once keeps the viewer from getting as involved with any single fight. This works against the movies. The other three movies follow this format instead of that from the earlier movies.

Similarly, Lucas no longer had to worry much about budget constraints so he could throw anything on the screen that he could imagine. Often this was too much. Attack of the Clones featured a fight between Count Dooku and Yoda. While impressive, the two moved so fast that it was difficult to see what was happening. The slower fight between Vader and Luke was more engaging even if it was technically inferior.

Finally, Empire featured Vader as the classic villain he is. He was one of the most memorable characters in Star Wars but in the original movie was was subordinate to Admiral Tarkin. In Jedi he was subordinate to the Emperor. Empire was the only movie where Vader acted alone.

This was also Vader at his most merciless. He strangles anyone who fails him. He tortures Han. He cuts Luke's hand off. He deflects blaster fire with his hand. The first movie left audiences wanting to see more of Vader and this movie delivered.

In the Return of the Jedi, Lucas was setting up for Vader's eventual reformation so Vader was much more subdued. He didn't kill anyone. The Emperor filled in as lead villain but was not as compelling as Vader had been.

In the second set of movies, Senator (later Emperor) Palpatine was a presence but he could never replace Vader. The mostly silent Darth Maul was more energetic than threatening. Count Dooku, Count Grievous, and the Trade Federation never approached Vader's level of villainy.

Frost/Nixon

We managed to see Frost/Nixon over the weekend. The movie is still in limited release.

This is a great movie. It deserves a best picture nomination and possibly some best actor nominations.

In 1977, talk show host David Frost did a no-holds-bared, three-part interview of Richard Nixon. The movie is the back-story about how the interview came about. As portrayed in the movie, the interviews became a contest between Frost and Nixon. Frost needed to get Nixon to make some new admissions in order to sell the interviews. Nixon on the other hand was trying to salvage his reputation. There was no way that both could succeed.

In addition, Frost's two researchers wanted the interviews to be a substitute for the trial that Nixon never had.

 I was expecting the movie to concentrate on the interviews. Instead director Ron Howard only has bits and pieces of them - just enough to give a taste for how Nixon was handling Frost.

Frank Langella gives the performance of his life. Previously his most memorable role was as Dracula, 30 years ago. In Frost/Nixon, he avoids an outright impersonation of Nixon, but uses just enough of Nixon's voice and mannerisms to be believable. He manages to make Nixon both interesting and convincing.

I'm not as familiar with Michael Sheen. Like Langella, he made his mark previously playing a vampire - Lucian in the Underworld series. I don't remember much about David Frost but Sheen's version is spot on with my memories.

The movie takes a few liberties with history. The movie shows Frost as being a light-weight personality who slowly realizes that he is in over his head. The real Frost was more highly regarded. On his short-lived talk show, he had the reputation for being too smart for the American audience.

A few lines were changed between the real interview and the movie. The movie has Nixon making an admission that did not happen in real life. In the real interviews Frost tried to get Nixon to admit that he had approved the original break in at the Watergate but he refused.

Regardless, it is a riveting movie and sheds much more light on Nixon than Oliver Stone ever did.

Immortality through Christmas Specials

While watching some classic Christmas specials last night I was struck by how they have altered our perception of several actors. Take Darren McGavin. IMDB has 180 entries for his work. This includes a couple of TV series that he starred in and at least two cult movies from the 1970s (Tribes about a hippy drafted into the Marines and Night Stalker about a vampire in Las Vegas). However, to most people he was the unnamed "old man" in Christmas Story.

Jimmy Stewart was one of the most celebrated actors of his generation with one Oscar and four other nominations (plus one for lifetime achievment) but It's A Wonderful Life is the only movie he made that is regularly played.

For several generations, Boris Karloff was the most famous horror movie actor ever. A victim of type casting, he seldom played anything but a villain and usually was cast as a mad scientist. However, the last few generations mainly know him as the voice of the Grinch. He also won a Grammy for narrating this story.

There are worse ways to be remembered. These are classics for a reason and it is likely that these would not have reached classic status without these actors.

I suspect that Jimmy Stewart would prefer to be remembered for some of his meatier roles. McGavin spent most of his career playing an "everyman" so he would probably be ok with being remembered for Christmas Story. Karloff would probably be gratified to be remembered for doing a children's story. He was a gentle, cultured man, very unlike the characters he usually played.

Heroes Book 3

Looking back on Book 3 of Heroes, I'm not impressed. The season started out with an interesting premise - exploring the dividing line between heroes and villains. Unfortunately, the execution was lacking. Most of the characters crossed the dividing line multiple times - so often that I became numb to it.

A major subplot was Sylar's attempt to reform. While this had its moments, it conflicted with earlier depictions of Sylar. He is at his best when he accepts what he is. He finally got back to this in the last couple of episodes.

I think that the point of the season was to save the world. An image of the Earth splitting apart was constantly shown. The trouble is that this happened in the future but we have seen so many alternate futures that it is hard to take one seriously. They need to drop this quest to stop a future menace. It was good in the first season and tiresome in the second and third seasons.

Too many elements were retreads from the first season. Hiro lost most of his memory and recreated his character development from the first few weeks of the first season. They even brought back the comic book and Hiro's cheer, "I did it!".

The eclipse was a stunt that added little or nothing. It was also the longest and widest total eclipse in history.

Aurthur didn't add much. He spent most of the season lurking instead of actually doing something. When you are that powerful you should take a more active hand.

They wrapped things up too quickly. Doesn't anyone on the show understand pacing? Last sason I could understand the rush to wrap up a slow season in a couple of episodes but there is no writers strike going on now. Why limp along and then cram too much in at the end.

That's the second time they had a character killed when a fiery bulding collapses.

Book 4 looks promising. They at least have the heroes in a different situation. It looks like they come out of the shadows.

What happened to the holiday movies?

This is something like the fourth weekend of the holiday movie season and I'm still waiting for something I want to see to come out. Past years have brought such releases as the three Lord of the Rings, the first Harry Potter movies, Titanic, and several Trek movies. We were supposed to get both Harry Potter and Trek but they were moved to the summer in the hope of making more money.

In the meantime we have things that I just don't want to see. I burned out on James Bond after the first Roger Moore release. I am not in the target audience for Twilight. Most of the other releases are Oscar-bait - critically acclaimed but not of interest to the average audience-member.

This week we get a remake of The Day the earth Stood Still. The ads make it look like a boring message movie. The reviews confirm this.

What happened to Hollywood?

Boston Legal

Boston Legal is about to end. Unlike most cancellations, this one is voluntary.

The show has had a strange run. Most of the cast is recycled from other shows. At one point two cast members were from different incarnations of Star Trek with a third (Candice Bergen) having been in a different Gene Roddenberry show. Younger cast members came and went without a ripple, replaced by more colorful actors.

Originally the premise of the show was that nothing is illegal. Whatever you did or wanted, they would plead it in court, with passion. James Spader's character was an example of the world's shadiest lawyer. He didn't win cases. He intimidated people. In one case he hired someone to break into a plaintiff's house and tie him up. Spader then informed that person that this would happen weekly.

A few years ago things changed. Spades's character started pleading cases. He also started pontificating. The show started including a weekly anti-Bush rant. It was also horribly unbalanced. Characters who were supposed to disagree usually said something like, "Yes, everything you say is true but..."

Spader's character also engaged in enough hijinks to get an entire law firm disbarred. He had affairs with the presiding judge. He bet on his own cases.

The real fun in the show was watching Shatner's character, Denny Crane. He shot people. In one episode he was on trial for shooting his doctor. The doctor pulled out his own gun and threatened the court whereupon Crane shot him again. It seems that they both knew how to bypass the metal detector.

The show took a different turn this season. In one case a teenager wanted to have an abortion. Candice Bergen's character was all for this until she realized that it was for the wrong reason. The girl who was of Chinese ancestry, wanted an abortion because the child was a girl. Bergen's character objected to the procedure, earning a lecture from the judge. In a surprising bit of nuance, Spader's character admitted that he was in favor of abortion because he was looking for justification for his own actions. He had impregnated two women and paid for their abortions and he worried about the morality of it.

The show wraps up next week with a two-hour finale. They will plead before the Supreme Court that someone who might benefit from a drug should be allowed to bypass FDA approval. This is surprising from them since this has been a conservative/libertarian position for years.

Unintentional Irony

New this year - a plastic reproduction of the Christmas tree from A Charlie Brown Christmas. You can also get an entire kit with both book and tree. The tree with the kit is much smaller.

There is a cruel irony about this. The Peanuts special was all about the over-commercialization of Christmas. In an effort to get the Christmas spirit, Charlie Brown goes to buy a Christmas tree to go with a play about the nativity. He and Linus find a lot full of search lights and artificial trees. Charlie Brown finds the last natural tree - a spindly branch nailed to crossed boards that sheds needles when touched. The other kids are outraged that he didn't get a proper plastic tree but, after a Bible quote from Linus, they relent, decorate the tree, and wish Charlie Brown a Merry Christmas. The special is a gentle rebuke to the commercialization of Christmas already underway in the 1960s.

Over the years there has been a lot of Peanuts merchandise. Charles Shultz, the creator of Peanuts, became quite wealthy from this and used some of his money for public works. Given this, I normally don't have any problems with Peanuts merchandise.

This one is a bit different since it is exactly what the special was complaining about - plastic trees and over commercialization.

Stan Lee Honored

Stan Lee, who helped create hundreds of comic book superheroes, including "Spider-Man," and Olivia de Havilland, 92, who won an Academy Award in 1939 for her portrayal of Melanie Hamilton in "Gone With the Wind," were among the recipients of the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal at the White House today.

"I wonder what took so long," said Lee, 85, in an interview Sunday. "Say 'He said it with a laugh' or I'll shoot you."

See the entire article here.

Who's the most powerful?

For decades Marvel danced around the question of which hero is the most powerful? They did create a hierarchy with a select few at the top. This was refined by several notable battles. The first was the original Hulk vs the Thing fight. This was an important issue. It wrapped up the Hulk's run on his own comic and set up for him to move into the back pages of Tales to Astonish. It also had the Avengers. Things like that just didn't happen in comics in those days. Regardless, the main even was the Thing trying to stop the Hulk even though the Hulk was stronger.

Not long after an issue of Thor featured a Thor/Hulk fight. This was a bit of a cheat. It was done as a flashback of a fight between the two in Avengers 3. Through a special dispensation from Odin, Thor's hammer was unenchanted for a few minutes so that they could meet hand-to-hand. The fight was still inconclusive when the time expired and Thor recovered his hammer.

The two met a few times afterward with no conclusion. In an Avengers/Defenders crossover, the two strained against each other without giving an inch for hours until the rest of the heroes told them to knock it off. This obviously violated the Hulk's most basic attribute - the madder Hulk gets the stronger he gets.

For a short time the Hulk and Thor were at the top of Marvel's pyramid. Then new characters were introduced. Thor fought Hercules a few times with results that were just as inconclusive. Hyperion, a Superman surrogate, moved into the Marvel universe from an alternate world (although Thor used his magic hammer to beat him when they first met).

During the Silver Surfer's short run in double-sized comics, he fought Thor. He won but concluded that Thor was stronger so Loki must have augmented the Surfer's power. Even this was inconclusive since the Surfer had been substantially depowered prior to getting his own comic.

The Sub-Mariner is often forgotten in these calculations but, when in water, he can take on anyone. He shared Tales to Astonish with the Hulk for a few years. The last issue had the two squaring off against each other. The Sub-Mariner actually won although he did it by swimming fast enough to create a vortex around the Hulk. The Sub-Mariner had no trouble overpowering the original X-Men but his fights with Iron Man and the Thing were less definitive.

Under Stan, when unequal heroes fought you usually got a definite winner. This often happened in the weaker hero's comic where just surviving the stronger hero was a feat. I already mentioned the Silver Surfer and Thor and the X-Men meeting the Sub-Mariner. Spider-Man spent his first encounter with the Hulk dodging blows and trying to stay alive. Daredevil threw everything he had at the Sub-Mariner and failed miserably (but the Sub-Mariner departed out of respect for a valiant foe). Giant Man and the Wasp managed to survive the Hulk at the beginning of his run in Tales to Astonish. On the low end, Daredevil was no match for Spider-Man.

A strange thing happened as other writers took over from Stan. When two heroes fought, the outclassed hero usually won, usually by a trick. Both the Invisible Girl and Ghost Rider beat the Hulk by cutting off his oxygen. In an Old Avengers vs the New Avengers annual, Captain America, the Black Panther, and Hawkeye all beat Thor, the Hulk, and Iron Man. At one point in the 1980s, the Thing mutated into a stronger form while the Hulk reverted to a weaker gray version. When they fought, the Hulk won anyway. He outsmarted the Thing!

Marvel seems to have a new editorial policy. Thor is the most powerful. Earlier this year he smashed Iron Man's armor. More recently he fought the Red Hulk. It was clearly established that the Red Hulk is the stronger Hulk (although he overheats if he gets too mad). He also admitted that he was likely to loose a fight with Thor.

This matches an early letter page where someone asked who would win - the Hulk or Thor? Stan(?) answered that he suspected that Thor's hammer gave him the edge.

I'm leaving the Sentry out of all this. His powers are too poorly defined and I've missed most of his appearances.

Of course, defining the most powerful hero in the Marvel universe is just an intellectual exercise. There are several beings who are vastly more powerful than any hero. These include the personifications of space and time. Once anthropomorphic projections of the universe enter the picture, everyone else is outclassed.

Rulk vs Hulk

I have to admit, the whole Red Hulk (Rulk) plot has me hooked. The first issue was a little off-putting since the Hulk didn't really appear. I worried that this meant a return to the plots of a few years ago when the Hulk got, at most, a page or two per issue and sometimes didn't even appear at all.

It turned out that this first issue was just a tease. They didn't want us to realize that there are two Hulks - the traditional dumb green one and the smart red one.

Over the next few issues they established that the Rulk is probably a regular but not anyone we suspect. He is not Banner (still the green Hulk) not is he Rick Jones (the new Abomination aka A-Bomb). They faked us out that he could be Dr. Samson or General Ross but those were reh herrings.

They also established that Rulk is really strong. He's beaten the green Hulk and stopped Thor's hammer in mid-stroke. He is also smart. He used loopholes in Thor's powers to temporarily beat him.

With the end of the first six-issue arc we established that Hulk can beat Rulk and the two went separate ways. The Green Hulk is temporarily gone, replaced by the grey Joe Fixit. In the meantime, three of Marvel's most powerful women are trying to bring in Rulk. Without much luck as it turns out.

Is Blu-ray Dead?

ZDNews has a column on the impending death of Blu-ray. It goes into some of the problems that Blu-ray faces but he misses a couple of vital reasons why Blu-ray will not take off like DVDs did.

Tiny Market
To play a DVD, all you need is a DVD player. To appreciate a Blu-ray you also need a fairly high-end high-def TV. Not a lot of people have these. This changes blu-ray from an impulse purchase to a major entertainment system upgrade. Conventional wisdom says that the format war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD hurt them both but this overlooks how few people had TVs that would show the better picture.

High Entry Cost
Blu-ray player prices are coming down but they are still high. The lowest are in the $150 range (according to the ZDNews column). At this point in their life-cycle, DVD players were already commodity items going for under $100. Just as important, DVD prices were around $5 less than VHS tapes. It didn't take many purchases before you saved the initial cost of the player. Blu-ray disks cost around $5 more so switching to Blu-ray will cost you beyond the initial purchase.

No New Functionality
DVDs offered several advantages over tapes. A better picture was one but the smaller size, the ability to go directly to scenes without having to fast forward or rewind, and the DVD extras made it a completely different experience than a VHS tape. Blu-ray offers a better picture but no other new features. Many people consider the DVD extras the best part of the DVD and that drove DVD acceptance as much as anything.

If Blu-ray hangs in there then it might eventually gain market share as people upgrade their TVs but this will take a decade. Does Sony have the patience to support it that long?

Heroes and Brickbats

I read two columns today complaining about Heroes. Both are complaining that the show is not living up to its initial season. Before I take that on I will point out the places I agree with them.

Time travel has been overused. I lost count of the number of alternate futures the heroes have to avert. There are at least two that involve blowing up cities, one with a plague,  and one where everyone has powers and someone blows up everything. There was one where people with powers are hunted but I think that this was also one of the exploding city ones. You get the idea.

So what about any and all other complaints? I don't think that these people remember what they were watching two years ago. The series up to the December break was slow and confusing. None of the plotlines had been resolved and new ones seemed to be launched weekly. Hiro was the only fun character.

Not that it wasn't engrossing, but as of mid-October all we knew was that they had to save the cheerleader to save the world. We had no idea how that worked. All we knew was the New York was going to blow up. When they finally did save the cheerleader, people were still upset because it happened so fast and because Sylar seemed to get away.

The second half of season one was a lot better and that is coloring people's memories.

In the meantime, the writers are having a lot of fun with the Heroes/villains concept. Most of the characters have jumped back and forth. Hiro is the consummate good guy but he killed his best friend. Except he didn't. His speedster nemesis is a thief but is repelled by her killer associates. Sylar was always a nice guy when he wasn't slicing the tops off of people's heads. Now we see this as an aspect of his power (This makes scense. He didn't start killing people until his power woke up).

The show's producers have promised to end the current arc by the mid-season break. I'm holding off judgement until then.

Looking back at Lost

First season reruns of Lost are showing on a couple of channels. Watching them reminds me why the show was originally so popular and why is seemed to decline, especially in the 3rd season.

One thing that strikes you is how much used to happen in an episode. The episode might feature the person who got the flashbacks but there were usually sub-plots going on, some of them totally unrelated to the person with the flashbacks.

The flashbacks were a lot shorter, also. Several 3rd season episodes were little more than framing scenes for the flashback. In the first season the flashback never dominated the episode. I would guess that they took 1/4-1/3 of the screen time. In later seasons I would put it more like 2/3 of the screen time.

Knowing what is coming doesn't change the experience much. I know that half the first season cast will be dead by the end of the fourth season but the episodes are interesting enough to distract you from this.

There were a lot of dropped sub-plots. A few of them like the meaning of the numbers were resolved in other media. Others might yet be resolved but it is hard to see how. Danielle's entire backstory would appear to have been dropped when she was killed. Then there is the statue and the skeletons in the cave. Some plot points have been contradicted. It was important that Claire raise her child but Kate ended up with him.

Some characters lost their edge. In the first season Kate was secretive and manipulative. At one point she wanted on the raft so she arranged for Sun to drug Michael, drawing suspicion to Sawyer. She regularly lied and tricked both Jack and Sawyer. More recently she has simply become part of a love triangle (or possibly a love pentagram).

Of course the biggest difference is that in the first season we were still meeting the characters and they were still meeting each other. Plus the island was still new. Now we are familiar with them. Introducing new characters helps a little but the core cast is still there and getting a little tiresome. Especially Jack.

The Princess Bride

I see that The Princess Bride is on AMC tonight. That gives me an excuse to write about it. This movie was a modest hit when it came out 21 years ago. According to IMDB, it cost $16 million and made nearly $31 million. At some point in the 2 decades after its release it became a cult classic.

I should mention that I have a Dread Pirate Roberts T-Shirt. (I am Dread Pirate Roberts #73249—Ask about franchise opportunities in your area).

• A few examples of the movie as a cult classic (not counting the special 20th anniversary release they did last year).
• We had a staff sleep-over on the Columbus Santa Maria in May. It was mainly volunteers in their late teens. A TV was set up for movies as part of it. The two movies shown were Princess Bride and Batman Begins. The teens knew a lot of lines from Princess Bride.
• Last week we were camping as part of a historic reenactment. Some parents asked their young daughter if she knew what our bellows was for. She remembered Miracle Max using one (and was surprised that I knew about the movie).
• In the 2nd season of the TV show Eureka!, an Australian character lifted a line from the movie, "He just made a classic mistake. Never go up against an Australian when death is on the line."

Part of the movie's appeal is its timelessness. The only part that looks dated is the video game that Fred Savage is playing in the opening sequence and that lasts less than a minute.

A bigger appeal is that it is one of the few movies that works for multiple ages. The plot is simple enough for a young child but there is quite a bit of depth to it, especially the dialog. There are all sortf of actual historic references (most of them anachonistic). During the duel, they drop the names of real fencing masters. The names of the rival countries (Florin and Guilder) are old currency. The rule about never get into a land war in Asia is a real warning.

Then there is the historic setting. Most of the movie was filmed at Haddon Hall, my favorite English Country House. Parts of it are nearly 1,000 years old including the chapel where they did the wedding. The boat that they used was so accurate that it even had medieval-style teardrop-shaped deadeyes (and I expect that few people reading this will even know what I am talking about which kind of proves my point).

The new season

The new TV season is off to a good start. All of my favorite network shows have shown at least one episode. Too bad the list of favorite shows is so short. Here's the list.

The Simpsons.
TV's longest-running sitcom, ever. Also the longest-running prime-time cartoon. The show was in a slump for years but pulled out a few seasons ago. It's impossible for it to be fresh after so many years but it still manages to be relevant. The season opener poked fun at Dog the Bounty Hunter and similar shows.

Heroes.
I didn't dislike the second season at the time but the third season feels much stronger. After an early a two-episode premier, we are now three episodes into the season. As always, we don't exactly know what is going on but we have a better idea than at this point in previous seasons. We do know that the heroes are going to save the world again but we also know that there are at least two alternate futures that the world has to be saved from - not counting the ones from the first two seasons.

Chuck
The lead-in show for Heroes is about an electronics store nerd who got involved in James Bond-style spy stuff. The first season was ok but it always seemed like the show should be better. It either should have taken itself a little more seriously or a little less. The season opener seemed stronger. They seems to have gone for taking the show a little more seriously. It is just as well. The Middleman on ABC Family sets the bar pretty high for over-the-top spy spoofs. There is still plenty of room for a classy crime-solving show with light comedy. There were several of these in the 1980s but they died off in the 90s.

Pushing Daisies.
One of the best shows from last year and one of the most original shows ever. ABC is pushing it hard which is a good thing. The show has a lot of continuity from one episode to another but it also has a narrator who tells you everything you need to know. The show features off-beat plots and stunning visuals. It picked up right where it left off. With the exception of a longer-than-usual opening naration, it felt like the next episode in season one (this is a good thing).

For those who have not seen it, it features a pie-maker who can raise the dead with a touch (they die again on the second touch), his partner, a detective who has a fondness for knitting and pop-up books, his girlfriend who he brought back to life (and can't touch), her aunts (one of them is secretly her mother), and the waitress in the pie shop who knows almost everyone's secrets.

Night of the Lepus

I'm watching Night of the Lepus on TCM. I remember seeing this when it was new in 1972. Time hasn't improved it. This movie was the tail-end of the giant animal horror movies that began with Them (1954).

Them was very good of type. The special effects were well done for the time and the script was well-written. Them was about a colony of giant ants. They were introduced slowly in the dessert. This colony wasn't difficult to take care of once the leads knew what they were fighting. The problem was that a few queens got away leading to a world-wide ant-hunt. The last of the queens turned up in LA in the sewers where the army had to go in and fight them.

Other giant-animal movies followed. The Beginning of the End had praying mantises attacking Chicago. Obviously, Tarantula featured a giant spider.

Lepus went for something completely different. Where other movies took insects which are already strange and alien, this took something harmless and cute. Lepus is Latin for Rabbit. The monsters in the movie were giant, carnivorous bunny rabbits.

The cast was first-rate with Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh plus a post-Star Trek DeForest Kelley.

The special effects were... well, not so special. They mainly used close-up shots of rabbits to make it seem like the bunnies were large. They also had a fake rabbit that would only be seen for an instant when a rabbit was hopping on someone to bite their throat out.

I'm not sure why the rabbits turned carnivorous but it was crucial to the plot. Without the occasional bunny-slaying accompanied by bright red blood, the rabbits weren't any more menacing than a herd of buffalo. Given how slow they looked, a buffalo stampede would probably cause more damage.

The script didn't help a bit. No one seemed skeptical, or even surprised at the idea of giant rabbits. Near the end of the movie they need to lure the rabbits onto an electrified train track. Someone runs up to a drive-in theater and announces that a pack of giant rabbits in on the loose and no one questions it for a moment.

Happy Birthday Mark Hamill

The man who was Luke Skywalker turns 57 today.

Hamill got his role in Star Wars mainly because he could say the rather pretentious lines like he believed them. He describes himself as just a fanboy who got lucky.

His voice work goes back to 1973 when he did a few episodes of Scooby-Doo but it really took off after he played the Trickster on the short-lived live-action Flash. Until then people still typecast him as a hero but his version of the Trickster was so over-the-top that he was cast as the Joker for the animated Batman. He continues to be the voice of the animated Joker along with a long list of other voicework.

In 2004, Hamill and some fellow voice artists improvised a movie at the San Diego Comic Convention. It was entitled Comic Book the Movie and I swiped it for the name of this blog.

Save Superman's Birthplace

Auction raises cash for Superman's Ohio birthplace

An online auction began Tuesday to raise money to restore the inner-city house where the idea for the Superman character was conceived.

Two high school boys, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, hatched the idea of the man who could bend steel with his bare hands in 1933. Hattie and Jefferson Gray have owned the home and lived there for more than two decades, tolerating unexpected visits by Superman fans.

Auction organizers hope the sale will raise at least $50,000 to fix the roof, replace rotting wood siding and repaint the house, with anything left over going toward upkeep and future repairs.

(AP) Superman memorabilia is shown in the front windows of the boyhood home of the superhero's creator... Full Image

Among the items to be auctioned during September will be a T-shirt signed by Siegel, a walk-on role on television's "Heroes," and original art by Jim Lee, Murphy Anderson, George Perez, Tim Sale and others. Lee's drawing offer drew a $710 bid on Tuesday.

The Cleveland-based Siegel and Shuster Society and novelist Brad Meltzer's charity - Ordinary People Change the World - will run the four weeklong auctions of about 12 items at a time.

The Grays recently agreed to give the Siegel and Shuster Society first rights to buy the house at fair market value when they decide to sell it.

Richard Pace, chairman of the society, said it's important the old Siegel home be preserved.

"It's also great to see that we're finally recognizing the creativity of Siegel and Shuster and what they did to create Superman," he said. "We must save the house for future generations so people can take their kids to see it and be inspired to create something on their own."

Hattie Gray said she's excited about the start of the auction and what it will mean for her house. She also gets a big kick out of all the attention the home has received.

Meltzer's novel, "The Book of Lies," partially takes place at the Siegel house. Over the past several weeks, Tom Batiuk's "Funky Winkerbean" comic strip has been set in the house, with a "Superman" writer visiting the home for inspiration.

War Games

I was watching War Games on cable last night. It offers some interesting insights on how things have changed since 1983.

First, there is Matthew Broderick who was 21 at the time but looked convincing as a teenager. He played enough roles as a teen or young adult that it is difficult to think of him as being in his late 40s.

This was the first movie to feature hackers or home computers (the IBM PC hadn't been introduced when the movie was made). The computer that Broderick uses is an Imsai 8080. It was one of the first home computers made (I think it was the second). By the time the movie came out, the computer was obsolete. Most home computers made by 1983 were plain boxes, much like today. The script specified this computer, probably because it had lots of switches and lights.

When the Imsai 8080 came out, computers didn't have a bios to tell them how to load the operating system. The very first home computers didn't even have an operating system. In order to run a program you wrote it in assembly code on paper then hand-translated the assembly code into machine instructions. Finally, you used all of the switches on the front to enter your program, one bit at a time. This required toggling at least 8 switches per instruction.

The movie was meant as a message movie about nuclear disarmament. It begins with a sequence where a couple of soldiers log into a missile silo. They are given the order to launch (as a test) and fail. As a result the human element is wired out of the launch sequence. This sets the tone of the movie and is a plot point later when a self-aware computer decides to initiate a nuclear strike. The first time I saw the movie we got in late and missed the opening sequence. This changed the tone of the movie completely. I was quite surprised how different the tone was when I saw the whole movie.

The movie features a self-aware computer, the WOPR. From it's case it seems to have been built in the 1950s but it is still far advanced over 2000s technology. That's movies.

Here is a link describing how the technology was set up.

In 1983 the nation was convinced that we had to do something immediately about nuclear disarmament before the world ended. Compare that with today's urgency about global warming.

Where did Superman Come From?

There are two current theories about the origins of Superman. The newest one starts with the father of writer Jerry Siegel dying during a robbery. A year later he invented a bullet-proof hero who could stop any crime. Did the one lead to the other? Maybe but there was another strong influence.

Meanwhile, a character in Funky Winkerbean who writes comic books was assigned to write Superman. He is suffering from writer's block so one of the other characters took him to the house that Siegel lived in when he created Superman. The writer imagines Siegel lying in bed, bored. Beside him is a copy of Philip Wylie's book Gladiator.

Wikipedia says: The novel is widely assumed an inspiration for the character Superman,^[1] though no confirmation exists that Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel was influenced by it.

For anyone who has read the novel and the early issues of Superman, there is no question about the novel's influence. In the novel, a scientist discovers a way to give superhuman strength and speed to any organism as long as his treatment is applied in early development. After a successful test on a kitten, he tries it on his unborn son.

The experiment is a total success. The scientist's son is superhuman. He can hurl boulders like pebbles. He can run at fantastic speeds and make incredible leaps. He is nearly indestructible as he discovers in World War I the first time he is shot with a machine gun. But he has limits. He is only one man and he eventually tires. He has to hide his strength or people fear him.

During the novel he tries several things. He is a football star and a soldier. He tries cleaning up Washington DC. None of these work out. Eventually he decides to create a city of people like himself. He challenges god to stop him and is killed by lightening.

In the first couple of issues of Superman, he goes undercover as a football player. He stops a war. The cover of the first issue where Superman smashes one car into an other happened while he was cleaning up Washington.

And of course, in the beginning Superman couldn't fly. He just leaped, just like Wylie's character. Superman didn't have X-ray vision or any of his other powers, either. He was strong, fast, and indestructible.

It is clear that Siegel and Shuster used Wylie's character but they made their own changes. They gave him a costume and a secret identity. They reasoned that someone in a flashy costume wouldn't scare people. They also changes the source of his powers. Instead of a scientist working in secret, they had Superman come from a different planet. By far the biggest divergence from Wylie was that Superman was successful at everything he tried and that he devoted himself to helping people. Wylie's character never had any luck helping people.

Even though they swiped the concept for Superman from another medium, Segiel and Shuster's own spin on the character was far more important than the source material. Costumes characters had existed for a while (the Phantom, for example, was created two years before Superman), but they created the model for superheroes to come - the idea of someone with superpowers adopting a costume and secret identity continues to today.

Superman doesn't return

Wired has an article on Superman. A good bit of it is devoted to a court battle between the widow of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel and Time Warner but it also mentions that Bryan Singer couldn't come up with a treatment for his next Superman movie that the studio would accept.

The speculation is that the next Superman movie will reboot the franchise. This is a good thing. The original Superman the Motion Picture was OK for its time but parts of it were too campy, even then, and it got dated very fast.

Superman's relationship with Lois got complicated in Superman II. She discovered his identity, he gave up his powers and the consumated their relationship only for Clark to realize that the world needed Superman. He recovered his powers and removed Lois's memory of the event. It didn't seem especially creepy at the time but what he did was similar to the use of a date rape drug.

By Superman IV he was restoring her memory so that they could talk then removing it again. It was definitely starting to get creepy by then.

Singer pretended that Superman III and IV didn't exist and picked up after Superman II. His version of Superman raised the ick-factor. Lois was engaged and living with someone and had a son. It turned out that Superman didn't use protection in Superman II so Lois had his son without no memory of how he was conceived. Did she know? Did she suspect? Is that why she wrote an award-winning essay on "Who needs Superman?"

Plus, Superman was raised to demi-god status or higher. He sees and hears everything and decides who he will save and who he will ignore.

Plus he used his powers to super-stalk Lois.

Then there was the gratuitous torture of dogs (one dog ate the other, Luthor planned to eat the survivor, Clark's dog wanted to play fetch and he threw the stick over the horizon).

It is hard to see just where Singer thought he could go after all this. He should have started from scratch... like the next director will.

Deja Vu Summer

We went to see the The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor this weekend and I flashed back to several other movies.

The opening sequence has Rick's grown son Alex (Luke Ford) opening a tomb in China. Between the traps and his leather jacket, it seemed like an Indiana Jones sequence. Parts of it were also reminiscent of National Treasure 2 (although that had more water).

Then there was Jet Li playing a powerful emperor who can only be killed if he is stabbed in the heart by one weapon. The Golden Kingdom had the same set-up (including Jet Li). Both movies also had a romance between a young westerner and an oriental girl who was dedicated to killing Li's character.

One thing it didn't feel like was a Mummy movie. It doesn't matter how many times they kept calling the characters mummies, they weren't. Clay warriors just aren't mummies.

The movie was like Indiana Jones in another way - the original cast is pretty small. Four characters were returning from the last movie. One, the female lead player by Rachael Weisz, was replaced by Maria Bello. Alex who was ten in the last movie was also replaced. That only left two characters from the original movie.

I haven't decided if it was a good or bad movie yet - two days later. Some of the action scenes seemed a bit off. It had the humor of the originals but it came and went.

Possibly the problem was Brendan Fraser - or the lack of him. To a large extent he carried the first two movies. Most of the humor came from his character. Few actors can handle an action movie with a light touch the way that he can. With his character's son given an expanded part, there was less of Fraser and Ford simply doesn't have Fraser's light touch.

The movie also lacked a suitable side-kick for the villain. In the first movie we had Beni. In the second we had the Mummy's girl friend Meela. In one of my favorite exchanges in that movie, Alex asked her why he should do what she ordered when he wouldn't for his mother. She replied in a musical voice, "Because your mother wouldn't put poisonous scorpions in your bed while you were sleeping."

There just weren't any lines like that in the Mummy 3.

Monks and sharks

For the last several years, USA's show "Monk" has been one of the best on TV. Originally passed over by the networks, it has won several awards and has even appeared on NBC.

The premise of the show is that former policeman Adrian Monk is an amazing detective but he has "problems" that keep him off of the force. Monk notices everything and can solve the most impossible crime while combating his personal demons.

At least that was the original premise. The show has drifted a lot in the last few years. It used to be about watching Monk solve the case and guessing what forgotten clue would be the murderer's undoing.

The new premise is to place Monk in new situations weekly. There are still crimes but they are secondary, more often an afterthought than the driving force behind the plot.

The current season opener is an example. Monk bought the house that had been a crime scene. The explanation for this was that Monk's psychiatrist died (as did the actor who played him) so he wanted to change everything in his life. In reality, this was just an excuse to place Monk in an uncomfortable situation.

Monk noticed that a ceiling light was off-center and had a handy-man move it. While doing this, the handy-man noticed several other problems and called in a helper. The two kept finding additional problems and tearing up the new home.

Monk's phobias include dirt, dust, and messiness so having two strangers tear up his spotless house was a nightmare for him. Eventually it turned out that they were looking for money that had been hidden in the house. Monk didn't do any actual detective work in this one.

This is either because the writers got lazy or because the management at USA wanted to stress Monk's character over the crimes. Either way, the show has jumped the shark.

Taking the law into their own hands

{warning - spoilers ahead}

At a time when we are struggling with the limits to government power, it is interesting to look at our heroes.

First there was Iron Man. When he discovered that his weapons systems were being used by terrorists he built a suit of armor and took them out personally.

Then there is Hellboy. If someone refuses to answer a question then Hellboy beats on him until the subject talks.

This question is asked again and again in Dark Knight. Batman tries to beat information out of the Joker and the police let him. District Attorney Harvey Dent puts a gun to someone's head and flips a coin to see if he should shoot (this is a bluff since it is a double-headed coin). At one point a criminal tells Batman straight out that he isn't scary enough to compete with the Joker. Eventually Batman lets the world think that he is merciless in order to uphold Dent's reputation.

Out here in the real world, none of this would be tolerated. We want results from our heroes but we also want their hands to be clean. Funny how we allow our fictional heroes more latitude than real-life law enforcement authorities.