The Last Strangers In Paradise

When is the last time that a comic book made you cry? No, I don't mean because it had Rob Liefeld art or was printed with those crappy water-based inks DC used briefly in the 1980's. I mean when did a comic book last emotionally affect you and bring you to tears? In my case, the answer was this morning when I had a chance to read the final issue of Terry Moore's STRANGERS IN PARADISE. Now here's the thing. I've been following it in the thick pocket book reprint editions of which the latest is about a year late I believe. Thus, when I approached issue 90 today, I was missing quite a bit of information from recent issues. Such is what happened to David? Where was Freddy? And what happened to statements I seem to recall from Moore indicating that his two main characters, Francine and Katchoo, were destined to remain star-crossed lovers forever? That last is the important point here because (SPOILER ALERT!) this is a happy ending!

Throughout the run of SIP, fans have seen more bizarre turns of events than in a decade's worth of mainstream comics. Katchoo loves Francine, Francine loves Freddy, David loves Katchoo, Katchoo is an international assassin who stole millions of dollars, Freddy marries Casey, David finds religion, etc., etc.

There's blood--lots of it--and violence that makes a PUNISHER comic look tame. At the heart of STRANGERS is love and surprisingly, in this final issue, the violence is all gone and the love wins out at last! There's so much positive stuff here that in any other hands it would come across as cliched. As it is, however, everything here is a well-deserved coda to the trials the leads have had to endure throughout the fifteen or so year run of the series.

In the STRANGERS IN PARADISE TREASURY EDITION of a few years back (which is where I discovered the series), Moore writes, "...now,more than ever, we need stories about love and hope, tender mercies and promises fulfilled." In this final visit with these oh-so-real characters, he does indeed fulfill promises.

Moore treats it like a movie, complete with cinematic takes, his trademark facial expressions and sense of humor, great snow scenes and "camera work," closing credits and even a particularly satisfying post-credits sequence. No matter what your feelings on homosexuality, it has long since been proven obvious that Francine and Katchoo were soulmates and fans were frustrated over and over when fate conspired to keep them apart. Thanks to their creator, they finally get to live happily ever after. I'll miss STRANGERS IN PARADISE but I hope it never comes back. Sometimes, an ending is just perfect. Just perfect. Thank you, Katchoo, Francine...and especially you Mister Moore! Sniff!

SuperSpike

Pressed for time today but I wanted to share this adorable shot from SUGAR AND SPIKE # 32 published in 1959 (when I was about their age myself!). Often credited with being the key player in the fact that Siegel and Shuster's SUPERMAN concept ever got published at all, here's Sheldon Mayer's take on his own Spike as the Baby of Steel. This was, alas, just a symbolic splash panel for a typically hilarious S&S story.

Howard Cruse and Wendel

One of my favorite cartoonists is Howard Cruse and one of my favorite strips is WENDEL. WENDEL, in case you aren't familiar with it, ran in THE ADVOCATE from 1983 to 1989. Now not being a gay man, I don't tend to read THE ADVOCATE but working in a bookstore, I did run across this book, WENDEL ON THE REBOUND, back in the early 1990's. I remembered Cruse from his ultra-clean cartooning on the strip BAREFOOTZ in the Marvel/Kitchen Sink hybrid, COMIX BOOK. It stood out so much from the style of the other major underground cartoonists that he almost seemed...well..normal. Cruse went on to found and publish GAY COMIX as well as starting WENDEL. WENDEL was far from a gay version of PLAYBOY's LITTLE ANNIE FANNY in spite of the main character's slight resemblance to Kurtzman and Elder's GOODMAN BEAVER (upon whom Annie was supposedly based). No, Wendel was the perhaps somewhat autobiographical tale of a young gay man and his friends trying to find happiness insomething pretty much akin to the real world. The strip had heart, hope and humor. Only on rare ocassion was it particularly explicit. For the most part, it was sort of like life. You know people are up to something when they're alone but you don't usually see it. If you're the least bit homophobic, stay away. The strip's very insistance on normalcy and the acceptance of various gay lifestyles would definitely grate on you. If, however, you're openminded enough to simply enjoy a great cartoonist at one of his peaks, haunt your local comic shops for WENDEL in any form you can find him.

Howard Cruse went on to do the much more serious, downbeat but brilliant DC/Paradox graphic novel, STUCK RUBBER BABY and is currently one of us here on the blogosphere! Or rather here:Loose Cruse: The Blog on the blogosphere. Hi, Howard!

Movies That Fell Through the Cracks # 25

Long on my list of the worst films I’ve ever seen, 1971’s KILL, KILL, KILL (or KILL, KILL, KILL, KILL according to IMDB) turned up on my radar only once as the second half of a double bill with Richard Burton’s BLUEBEARD in the mid-seventies. If not for the promised (and worth it) attraction of Joey Heatherton’s naked breasts in the Burton film, even I wouldn’t remember this one.
Improbably from the folks who would later bring you Christopher Reeve’s SUPERMAN (as well as the aforementioned BLUEBEARD), this international coproduction was written and directed by bad novelist Romain Gary and featured his ill-starred wife, Jean Seberg (look her up). Both would later be victims of tragic suicides but it’s presumed this movie had nothing to do with that. Classy James Mason stars as a government sanctioned hit man who goes after drug dealers and porn peddlers. FANTASTIC VOYAGE and BEN-HUR’s Stephen Boyd, one of my all-time least favorite actors is another guy with a gun who blows away a lot of folks. Who he is supposed to be exactly I don’t have a clue. It’s not that my memory fails from such a long-ago viewing, I couldn’t figure out the silly plot in the first place! There’s an almost surreal amount of blood which is probably why the film was named as it was (the original title was just plain KILL!)
Interestingly, IMDB’s bio on Boyd says, and I quote, "When he went independent it was obvious that he took on roles that spoke to him rather than just taking on assignments for the money…" and " Boyd chose his roles based solely on character development and the value of the story that was told to the public, and never based on monetary compensation or peer pressure." Uhhhh….yeah. Sure. Whatever you say, pal. If you have a chance to see this piece of cinematic drek and Joey Heatherton’s breasts aren’t part of the deal, I warn you now. Stay away. There’s a REASON some films are rarely seen again!

Christa Helm Meets Wonder Woman

You may well be out of luck on this one if you aren't in the US and on AOL but if you are, we offer today a link to AOL IN2TV and Christa Helm's episode of WONDER WOMAN with Lynda Carter: Beauty On Parade - AOL Video One of her final appearances prior to her still unsolved 1977 murder, Christa plays Rita in this episode, entitled BEAUTY ON PARADE. Dick Van Patten, Anne Francis and Bobby Van also appear. The growing Christa Helm cult seems to have begun on the Internet with this episode as fans are taken by her performance as the beautiful bitch. Behind the scenes here at the Library, work proceeds on the Christa Helm Project. Keep watching this space.

Bat Creativity '67

You get a lot of complaints out of us oldtimers about how BATMAN comics went camp when the TV series was a runaway hit. What seldom gets mentioned, however, is that this was, in fact, a golden age of sorts for Bat-covers! Here, for example, are two of my all-time favorites. The insides were back to being ghosted by Sheldon Moldoff pretty much around this time but Carmine Infantino could still be called in for knock-em-dead covers for both BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS! I never realized it until tonight but these two unusually creative ones (retailers were supposedly not happy about the BATMAN one due to the logo being toward the bottom where it would be unseen on racks of the day) came out within a week of one another...forty years ago.

Foul Play

SILVER STREAK (1976) and FOUL PLAY (1978) are two of my favorite seventies films and two of the best neo-Hitchcock films of all time. The Hitchcockian thriller had become almost a subgenre of film by this point with Brian DePalma and Jonathan Demme leading the pack but I think Colin Higgins topped them with these. SILVER STREAK, set almost entirely on a speeding train, features Gene Wilder in the everyman role Hitch often assigned to his leading men. There was a cool (if non-blonde) female lead and a truly menacing villain in Patrick McGoohan. FOUL PLAY made the girl (Goldie Hawn) the everyman and had a marvelous mix of light and dark comedy. As freakish killers try to kill a shy librarian for the secret microfilm (the McGuffin) her secret agent date slipped to her, she teams with a policeman who may or may not be what he seems. Dudley Moore, in the role that jumpstarted his soon-to-be American superstardom, appears as a lecherous musician, Burgess Meredith as a wily old snakehandler, and Chevy Chase in his acting debut as the police officer. Chase, here, is a dream. Cool, cocky, funny and focused, he is a joy to watch not just because of his obvious chemistry with Goldie but because he shows nary a trace of the selfindulgences that would almost immediately derail his promising acting career. After FOUL PLAY, he turned to a series of less than funny vehicles, many of which he seemed to be sleepwalking through. Okay, so some were hits. They still weren’t particularly good and Chase was sadly often the worst part of them. Even a second attempt at teaming him with Goldie a few years later in SEEMS LIKE OLD TIMES was unmemorable.
I first saw FOUL PLAY with my parents at a sneak preview about two weeks prior to the official opening. I had never heard of it until the day we went to see it. It was a sell-out crowd with standing-room only, something I never saw again! There were cheers and laughter and a house full of applause at the end, again something I never saw again.
Remade as a short-lived television version a few years later with Barry Bostwick (looking decidely "Mike Bradyish") and Deborah Raffin (now an amateur sleuth!), the magic was missing. The movie itself, which aired just last night on cable, still holds up in every possible way. Barry Manilow’s theme, "Ready to Take a Chance Again" is a perfect start and every single scene is perfectly paced for optimum suspense and/or comedy. Writer/director Higgins never again attempted this type of thriller and died ten years afterwards, a relatively early victim of AIDS. To me, though, his legacy was this shining and enjoyable tribute to Hawn, Chase and Hitchcock.