Ultraman

In August of 1968 we got our very first color television set just in time for that month’s debut of Cincinnati’s first commercial UHF station, WXIX-TV Channel 19. XIX quickly became a kids’ paradise in the late afternoon starting with Larry Smith’s puppets and soon adding CAPTAIN FATHOM, JOHNNY CYPHER, THE MARVEL SUPERHEROES, PRINCE PLANET and my favorite, ULTRAMAN.
ULTRAMAN was an early Japanese import. In the Americanized version it told the story of Hayata, a member of the THUNDERBIRDS-like Science Patrol who was involved in an accident with a giant spacecraft. The ship’s occupant saves Hayata’s life by merging with him. He then gives the Earthman a "Beta Capsule" which, when held to the sky enabled Hayata to actually become the giant hero in a time of need. And need there was! As anyone who ever saw a GODZILLA film knows, giant monsters somehow gravitate toward Japan on a regular basis and there were many! Hayata and the other members of the Science Patrol (who, in the classic tradition were not privy to his secret identity) would try to take them on but inevitably Ultraman would be called on to save the day. In an exciting if repetitious finale to just about every episode, our metallic looking silent space hero (silent except for a few non verbal exclamations such as "Su-WATT!") would use martial arts against the rubber-suited creatures. When that failed, he would shoot rays from his hands. Ultimately, the light bulb indicating that his energy levels were failing rapidly would start to blink and it looked like sudden death. Then, of course, he’d regain his strength and zap the baddie into oblivion! On one occasion, the giant monster actually WAS Godzilla, albeit with weird flower petal thingies around his neck that Ultraman plucks during the battle!
With international popularity came lots of merchandising, rip-offs such as ZONE FIGHTER and eventually sequel series, most of which attempted to outdo the original to varying embarrassing degrees. The most recent, to my knowledge, was an Australian co-production within the last ten years. My son the Pokemon trainer, to whom all things Japanese are good, used to get up very, very early to watch it with me on Saturday mornings during its brief US run but it just wasn’t the same as when I was nine years old. The original Ultraman was just too cool!

Captain Quasar

I’ll be honest with you, I have no earthly idea what this is other than a really cool super hero drawing by the great Barry Windsor-Smith dating from the mid seventies. An advertising piece for Quasar televisions perhaps? An unused Marvel character? A Gorblimey Press castoff? Anybody with more info than me, please feel free to comment.

Movies That Fell Through The Cracks # 8

Let’s face it, Rich Little is the kiss of death for a motion picture. I saw the famous impressionist live in 1979 or 1980 (with Suzanne Somers) and he put on a good show, ending up by shaking hands with just about everyone in the audience including me. Still, we’ve already discussed THE PHYNX and ANOTHER NICE MESS on this site and I’d be willing to bet that’s the ONLY place you’ve ever heard of them!
1981’s DIRTY TRICKS, although featuring Rich, was designed as a post CHARLIE’S ANGELS vehicle to make Kate Jackson into a film star. Sadly, it had a lot going against it besides Rich Little, not the least of which was a bad screenplay, poor distribution and the participation of Elliot Gould.
Gould, Barbra Streisand’s ex-husband, had been Hollywood’s golden boy just a decade earlier with BOB AND CAROL AND TED AND ALICE, M*A*S*H, CALIFORNIA SPLIT and Robert Altman’s THE LONG GOODBYE (as Phillip Marlowe). A long string of box office losers with diminishing returns had made him box office poison, too. (It’s not that all of his choices were poor. THE SILENT PARTNER and CAPRICORN ONE had been quite entertaining.)
A kind of mystery comedy, DIRTY TRICKS offers Gould as a professor on the run from various groups and a persistent TV reporter (Jackson) after coming into possession of a letter supposedly branding George Washington as a traitor.
Jackson, easily the best actress of TV’s T & A trio, had bounded from a silent role in DARK SHADOWS to a co-starring role in THE ROOKIES to the lead in CHARLIE’S ANGELS (although her spotlight would, of course, be eclipsed by Farrah’s smile). It was presumed by most that she could become a film star but it was not to be. In 1983, she turned up in the "talented amateur" role in TV’s SCARECROW AND MRS. KING, America’s pseudo remake of THE AVENGERS. It proved to be another longish-running hit for her and sealed her fate as a TV star. Since then, she’s worked steadily in the medium in between bouts of bad health which is more than you can say about Elliot Gould. Oh and when’s the last time you saw Rich Little on TV? That movie must have been bad luck. Somebody’s idea of a "dirty trick" indeed!

Steranko's History Who's Who

Now here's something I forgot. Apparently I had stuffed it into my copy of the STERANKO HISTORY OF COMICS vol. 1 at least thirty years back. As part of the extras that were sent along with the STERANKO HISTORY OF COMICS Vol. 2 back in the early seventies (to those of us impatiently waiting for what seemed like years), I received this handy dandy key to who's who on those colorful art-filled, wordless (at least in the early printings) covers of both vol. 1 and vol. 2. I'll be honest with you, though, What you see here are NOT my copies as those darned hard to store oversized volumes wouldn't even come close to fitting on my scanner. No, these are cribbed from the 'Net and I couldn't find a pic of a first printing of vol. 1 so the pictures toward the bottom are truncated or cut off. Sorry. Still, if you've always wondered who that guy or gal with the weird costume is (pick one), here's the official word from Jaunty Jim Steranko himself, circa 1972.

Marvel Illustrated Swimsuit Issue

In 1991, Marvel Comics published the first of a series of occasional magazines called MARVEL ILLUSTRATED. Subtitled "a sophisticated parody for everyone who loves Marvel Comics," this first issue was a super-hero variation on SPORTS ILLUSTRATED's famous annual swimsuit issue. Since we're here now at the beginning of a long hot summer of pool parties, vacations and cookouts (Who am I kidding? I can't swim, I can't even afford to go to the movies and the stone backyard barbecue that came with the house is being used as a planter.) I thought I'd share Joe Jusko's Mary Jane Watson-Parker and various other great summer posers from the so-called "House of Ideas."

Mister Roberts

MISTER ROBERTS was probably the quintessential film role for that quintessential American actor Henry Fonda. After an already amazing movie career that had seen Fonda star in several bona fide classics including THE LADY EVE, MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, THE OX-BOW INCIDENT and THE GRAPES OF WRATH, Henry Fonda moved to the stage after World War II, taking on the lead in Joshua Logan’s play based on Thomas Heggan’s dramady novel, MISTER ROBERTS. The character was that of an easy-going Naval Officer who wanted nothing more than to transfer off of his cargo ship to a battleship. Along the way, we witness his day to day dealings with his tough captain and the rest of the typically lunatic crew. When Fonda did the trouble-plagued, double director film version in 1955, those other roles were ideally cast with James Cagney (as the Captain), Jack Lemmon (as Ensign Pulver who would achieve an eponymous sequel a decade later starring Robert Walker, Jr), Ward Bond (who, if you look closely, is probably in every movie ever made) and the great William Powell, lured out of an early retirement for one last plum role as "Doc."
MISTER ROBERTS, with its many memorable characters and situations, flawless performances and well-done mix of comedy and serious drama, is probably as close to a perfect film as you’ll ever see…even if Henry Fonda himself felt it too compromised from its stage version. The script and acting go a long way toward bringing out the humanity in those we send to war, a point trivialized or glossed over in more gung-ho military dramas. It was made into a watered-down (pun intended) TV series with Ann-Margaret’s husband Roger Smith in 1965 which inspired a re-release of the book.
This 1966 paperback (seen above) features a nice imitation Jack Davis cover (strangely in black and white) by someone seemingly signing the name "Bob Buzz??" Note that we even see a certain spinach-chomping sailor man at left rear for some unknown reason. The other book seen here, THE FONDAS, was one of the very first film books in my collection, circa 1975.

Batman Credit Cards

Batman Credit Cards must have seemed like a good idea to somebody at one point. After all, George Clooney’s S&M Batman even uses one in the movie! These, though, are different. On E-Bay right now, you’ll find one of these—signed by bat-producer William Dozier—listed as having been a prop on the 1966 series and apparently going for a somewhat Bat-tastic sum. It’s my recollection, however, that some enterprising guy licensed Batman for a credit card at the height of Batmania only to have the series off the air by the time he was able to get them successfully printed up. As I recall, the uncirculated cards languished by the thousands in a warehouse somewhere for a few years before being dumped on the collector’s market for a pittance. Ads for them ran in early TBGs in the seventies. My own, in fact, came from a dealer in Chicago in the late eighties who had a case of them and was giving one away free with every purchase that day. He said he had bought a ton from that warehouse sale and found that there was just no real market for them. If my version is true (and it seems to be corroborated by that dealer) then Dozier’s card, with name imprinted on the front and signature on the back, simply could NOT have been a prop in the series. He would almost have had to have picked it up after the fact as a novelty memento of his biggest success.