Jack Kirby and Me

Regular readers of this blog know that while I did at least get to see Jack Kirby in person (at the 1987 San Diego Con) I could not bring myself to speak to the King…especially after nearly knocking Will Eisner into Kirby. Now comes the news, three years late to these parts, that I DID, in fact, contribute a minute portion to Kirby mythology.
A few years ago, I corresponded with John Morrow of the wonderfully obsessive magazine, THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, about how I videotaped Kirby’s brief 1982 interview /profile from ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT. John requested a copy which I happily provided (although it wasn’t easy ‘cause I first had to find some way to get my old Betamax working again!) and then I promptly forgot all about it.
Recently, whilst perusing a Twomorrows catalog of amazing fanboy coolness that I currently can’t afford, I noted that a transcript of said interview with Catherine Mann had, in fact, appeared in an issue of TJKC that I had missed in 2003! A quick email to Eric at the publisher and I now possess a copy of that issue featuring my small contribution to archival Kirby lore.
Although I’m credited on the article itself, the absolute coolest part for me, comics collector and Kirby lover since 1966, was the contributor acknowledgement page near the back. You know, the one where they thank Neal Adams, Stan Lee, Joe Simon and a bunch of other folks whose work and creativity I’ve admired for most of my life? If you look closely, just a line under Jaunty Jim Steranko, you’ll find the name of moi, safely ensconced between Rascally Roy Thomas and Happy Herb Trimpe. You non-comics readers will never, ever understand just how freakin’ GREAT that is! Sigh…
Check out this issue, THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR # 39 (with Black Bolt on the cover) or any one of a hundred or more Twomorrows products here: TwoMorrows, Bringing New Life To Comics Fandom.
They’re a classy company with first rate editorial content and quality products all around. If you like to see behind the scenes of classic comics, they’re easily your best choice. Thanks John! Thanks Eric! Most of all thanks to you, Jack. Sorry I never said it in person.

Movies That Fell Through the Cracks # 13

There’s a new documentary making the rounds on singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson. If there’s any justice in this world, renewed popularity for Harry will finally get a legitimate release for 1974’s SON OF DRACULA, a great candidate for one of the worst films ever made!
SON OF DRACULA, billed as "the first rock and roll Dracula movie," had a lot of things against it right from the beginning. First of all, the monster craze of the sixties was on its last legs. Second, Harry and his drinking buddy Ringo weren’t very steady on their legs in those days either. Dennis Price who played Van Helsing in the picture was himself a notorious alcoholic who, in fact, had died from cirrhosis of the liver prior to this film’s decidedly limited release. Ringo produced (which is probably the only reason somebody greenlighted this thing in the first place) and is even co-credited with the editing. Because of the latter, I hesitate to blame director Freddie Francis for all of the long, boring shots of Nilsson’s Count Downe (the son of Dracula) just standing or walking around silently.
The slighter than slight storyline deals with the Count attempting to get Dr. Frankenstein (Freddie Jones who, ironically, had played the monster in Hammer’s FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED) to make him human so he could be with the girl he loves. Ringo appears from time to time mumbling nonsense as Merlin the Magician of all people. This Ringo is light-years away from the one who had gotten Chaplinesque reviews in A HARD DAY’S NIGHT just a decade earlier.
Nilsson’s songs have been memorable additions to many films and TV series including MIDNIGHT COWBOY, THE COURTSHIP OF EDDIE’S FATHER, RESERVOIR DOGS and SKIDOO (in which he sings the entire closing credits including the roman numerals in the fine print! I love that part!). They’re also the only saving grace here. You see, the Count likes to sing and what he sings are songs from Harry’s charttopping repertoire including JUMP INTO THE FIRE, WITHOUT YOU and my favorite, DAYBREAK which was a bigger hit than the movie itself. In one scene he even appears with an all-star band including Keith Moon and (Cincinnati’s own these days) Peter Frampton. Watch closely though as the cameraman doesn’t seem to particularly care about getting any bandmember shots in this horribly lit scene.

As to Harry Nilsson’s performance, there really isn’t one. I have never seen an actor so obviously not even trying. He could have hammed this up and made it fun but no, he stodgily walks and broods through most of the movie. If you DO find it anywhere, you’ll find yourself fast-forwarding through much of it.
Nilsson as a person is a fascinating footnote in pop history and his songs and recordings deserve every praise and re-release they get but there’s a reason no one even considered Harry for a role in THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW just two years later. That reason was SON OF DRACULA.

Bruce Lee Movies

I saw the martial arts movie, 5 FINGERS OF DEATH on a Saturday in 1973. On Sunday, I bought some out of town newspapers as I often did (to get different comic strips!) and was surprised to see a little photo of a man literally flying through the air. The man was identified as Bruce Lee from the upcoming movie, FISTS OF FURY. I remember thinking, "Bruce Lee? KATO?!!" Things happened quickly after that. The movie opened locally but it wasn’t at a theater I could reach by bus so I didn’t see it untl some time later. A second movie, THE CHINESE CONNECTION, opened very soon after, making me think Bruce had probably been making these things since last seen on LONGSTREET and maybe had dozens in the can being released now in an attempt to cash in on the success of 5 FINGERS OF DEATH! Then, while at a theater one afternoon, I saw a trailer for something starring Bruce called ENTER THE DRAGON that looked like nothing less than an Oriental James Bond movie! "Another one already!" I thought. All of this was within the space of a month or slightly more. The very next day, the newspapers carried word of his death.

I don’t think Bruce Lee was a nice man or a happy man. I would not have wanted to meet him in real life. Biographies paint him as conceited, arrogant, extremely touchy and perhaps even manic-depressive. On screen, however, his persona was that of a cocky do-gooder who tried to avoid fighting while knowing full well he could kick the ass of everyone in the room…all at once! After a successful Hong Kong film career as a charismatic child star, Bruce came to the US where, as Kato, he got himself noticed by effortlessly stealing the GREEN HORNET show from its bland star, Van Williams. The heck with all of the Hornet’s sonic gadgets and gas guns. You just knew that Kato was the real hero and didn’t really need the other guy at all!

After that show’s aborted run, however, roles for a Chinese man on US TV were few. He appeared in episodes of BLONDIE (whose star Will Hutchins tells me that at least once a year somebody tries to hit him up for a copy of but he doesn’t have one), IRONSIDE and HERE COME THE BRIDES before eventually getting a recurring role on LONGSTREET about a blind investigator. As a martial arts teacher on that show, he more or less played himself in a role actually written for him. Around the same time, he had a memorable if minor role in James Garner’s MARLOWE and did fight coordination behind the scenes on one of Dean Martin’s Matt Helm movies.

According to legend, Bruce also developed the idea for the KUNG-FU TV series and had expected to star in it. I find that very hard to believe. As a teacher, he had made some high-powered Hollywood friends including Steve McQueen and James Coburn but I still don’t think he would have had the clout to get such a series underway. Even if he did, quite frankly, I don’t think he, himself, would have been good casting for it! If I were the casting director, I think I would have passed on Bruce Lee for KUNG-FU as he just seemed to always be too damned cocky to make any variation on that role work. He reportedly hated the fact that the non-Oriental David Carradine was cast.

Anyway, that same legend says that it was in-between LONGSTREET and waiting for KUNG-FU to pan out that Bruce decided to make a return trip to Hong Kong where THE GREEN HORNET was very popular. He made the press and TV rounds and somehow linked up with one Raymond Chow, late of Hong Kong’s massive film factory Shaw Brothers (presided over by the marvelously named Run-Run Shaw). Chow had split from Shaw to create an upstart film company he called Golden Harvest and was looking for an exploitable name. Bruce saw some quick extra money and agreed to work with him. The result was a low budget martial arts crime movie with a modern setting entitled THE BIG BOSS. Unlike many Chinese productions, THE BIG BOSS did not feature a lot of outlandish, over-the-top fighting effects with wires and swords. Thus when Bruce Lee leaped through the air in that now iconic shot, it seemed all the more real. It’s a simple story of a simple guy who just happens to be the biggest badass in the room. A little blood and a couple of naked breasts got it an R rating in the US and its success was assured (no one would see a PG rated martial arts film as it was presumed to be ultra-wimpy!). Retitled FISTS OF FURY, it became a minor phenomenon at the box office.

Meanwhile, the producers quickly put Bruce’s follow-up film into immediate worldwide release. As it had been originally entitled FIST OF FURY and THE BIG BOSS had been retitled FISTS OF FURY (whose brilliant idea was that?) a new name had to be created. Someone (probably the same guy) called it THE CHINESE CONNECTION, apparently in an unnecessary attempt to cash in on William Friedkin’s then recent FRENCH CONNECTION. Not only was there (wait for it) NO connection, but timing being what it was, this film would have made a mint if you had called it HERE’S BRUCE LEE AGAIN.

During his lifetime, that’s all Bruce Lee got to see in this country and he didn’t get to see much of that before his controversial death (officially due to cerebral edema caused by an allergic reaction to a prescription analgesic given him by an actress with whom he may or may not have been having an affair). To say it was unexpected would be putting it mildly. Bruce literally seemed the healthiest, strongest guy in the world to see him up there on-screen. In the worldwide melee that followed his death, the rumors were flying fast and the legend began to grow.
A week later, back in Cincinnati, I attended a sneak preview of ENTER THE DRAGON with a packed audience at the Grand Theater. It was everything I expected, an all-out martial arts spy story with a DR. NO villain, an action packed musical score (by MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE’s Lalo Schiffrin) a sexy femme fatale (who doesn’t get enough screen time, dammit!), likable heroes, and best of all, Bruce lee unleashed, showcasing both his acting talents (without a dubbed voice for a change) and his absolutely breathtaking martial arts showmanship. The finale, a variation on Welles’ LADY FROM SHANGHAI with Bruce and the evil Han facing off in a hall of mirrors is just plain amazing and was probably absolute hell to stage and shoot properly! In the end, the individual scenes hold up much better (especially on repeated viewings) than the whole. With its flashbacks within flashbacks and so many rip-offs (read: homages) from other movies (Han is not a Dr. No-LIKE villain. Han IS Dr. No!), ENTER THE DRAGON is actually a real mish-mash. Director (and future Bruce Lee biographer) Robert Clouse keeps the action moving well but the star himself reportedly never liked the script. In fact, the screenwriter reportedly put in as many words as possible with "R" sounds just because he knew Bruce had pronunciation trouble with "R’s."

A new magazine from the publishers of BLACK BELT came out around the time the movie made its debut. Entitled FIGHTING STARS, it featured celebrity martial artists including Larry Hagman and William Shatner but its focus was on Bruce Lee right from the beginning. That initial issue had been put together prior to the actor’s death and thus is a perhaps more balanced look at where his career may have been heading. The mag would last for years and, like BLACK BELT itself, would find any excuse to feature Bruce Lee’s name on its covers just to sell copies.

One article I read around this time featured a brief interview with Bruce from a year or so earlier in which he talked about how his next film, ENTER THE DRAGON, was about a simple country boy going to a place where he doesn’t know the language. Hmmmm… That certainly didn’t describe the ENTER THE DRAGON I had seen three times by that point. Little by little it began to come out that there was one more Bruce Lee feature not yet released in the US. That film turned out to have been retitled WAY OF THE DRAGON so that the ENTER THE DRAGON title could go to the major Warner Brothers release replacing BLOOD AND STEEL and the (perhaps apocryphal) THE DEADLY THREE. What is it with these titles?!!

Anyway, it was perhaps inevitably entitled RETURN OF THE DRAGON by the time it got to the US, in spite of having not the slightest relationship to the other film besides its star. It was, as Bruce had said, a story of a Chinese man who goes to Italy. The fact that all of the dialogue was dubbed into English for the US release kind of made it seem silly when characters kept saying that they couldn’t understand other characters. None of that mattered, though. The big setpiece in this one was Bruce Lee battling American karate champion (and a future film and TV star in his own right) Chuck Norris in the Roman Colosseum (or rather a set variation thereof).

By the time RETURN OF THE DRAGON reached these shores, it had been preceded by a number of rip-off films purporting to have Bruce in them. Some were okay chop-socky flicks but one still felt ripped off that they didn’t live up to their billing. This where we began to see Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Dragon Lee and all of those guys who probably had no idea that they were being billed thus in America. Some films went even further. One, entitled THE REAL BRUCE LEE, actually did feature Bruce but it was in childhood footage from his early, non-martial arts Hong Kong film career. Another, BRUCE LEE AND I, featured brief home movie footage of Lee on-set with its star, now edited in as if part of the story and touted as "Starring Bruce Lee!" Sigh.

Another film that really did have Bruce was entitled KATO and was, obviously, several episodes of the GREEN HORNET TV series edited together. This in and of itself was not unusual. In fact, in the early sixties it was fairly common practice to release films, particularly overseas, that were compilations of TV episodes. This was done with ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. and others. Since THE GREEN HORNET had not really been successful in 1967, it was a little weird to be seeing it on the big screen nearly a decade later. In fact, I’ve heard there were two of these GREEN HORNET compilation films in the wake of Bruce’s death.

A number of books on Bruce had come out since his death, the best of this early lot being Alex Ben Block’s first out of the gate and Bruce’s widow Linda’s own book. The former featured an intriguing photo of Bruce from an unfinished film entitled GAME OF DEATH. What? Another one?!! US basketball giant (in more ways than one) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was in the photo battling tiny Bruce. It turned out the late star had been working on this film when the opportunity arose for the major Warner Brothers co-production and work on it was suspended and never completed. I was intrigued.

Apparently so were the exploitation film producers. The box office was soon full of such movies as GOODBYE BRUCE LEE-HIS LAST GAME OF DEATH which touted a "special guest appearance by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar." Was this it? Had somebody finished it? They were giving away free Bruce Lee posters with attendance. Having already been ripped off many times that year, I nonetheless took the chance and learned that if something seems to good to be true it usually is. The film featured some guy dressed in the cool jumpsuit Bruce had in the stills from the lost film (later worn also by Uma Thurman in the KILL BILL films!) but it was hardly Bruce. Kareem’s misleading appearance was a brief interview clip, not a battle.

Over the next few years there would be several more of these attempts to convince us gullible filmlovers that someone had finally finished off Bruce’s now legendary lost movie. Eventually, we quit falling for it which may explain why the real thing, arriving in 1978, was greeted with a resounding yawn.

Although directed by Robert Clouse, the man who did such a good job with ENTER THE DRAGON, GAME OF DEATH as released was one of the worst, most despicable hodge podges of a movie I’ve ever seen. In its own way, it’s as big a rip-off as the exploitation films that came before it. TV star Hugh O’Brian stars with Academy Award winner Gig Young (soon to murder his real-life wife and himself) and some guy pretending to be Bruce Lo, the world’s greatest martial arts star, while hiding behind masks, helmets, and even a horrible pasteover of the real Bruce Lee’s face at one point! In the film, the actor fakes his death, leading to an incredibly tasteless scene of the real Bruce’s real funeral from 1973 complete with Lee’s on view corpse!!! A very small amount of Bruce’s actual GAME OF DEATH footage appears toward the end and it is, as expected, stunning. When this mess finally aired on cable, that’s the only part I taped. I’m betting it was the same with most people.

Over the years, the martial arts film’s popularity has fallen out of the mainstream but never gone away. Many of the techniques and conceits of these films have been incorporated into the language of modern directors who spent Saturday afternoons at the Kung-Fu cinemas of the seventies. Bruce Lee’s legend has grown and he is looked at more as a cinema icon than a real man. He even got his own big budget film biography, 1993’s DRAGON starring Jason Scott (no relation) Lee. Many literary biographies have come and gone, also (including, bizarrely, one by Attractions guitarist, Bruce Thomas!), but the best and perhaps final word on Bruce Lee as man and myth was AMC’s 2002 production BRUCE LEE: A WARRIOR’S JOURNEY. This masterful documentary incorporated enough of the surviving footage of GAME OF DEATH that it was actually able to be edited into sequence according to Bruce’s original intentions, making it a mini-version of what might have been.

Although I never signed up for martial arts training as so many did, I left those theaters in 1973 kicking my way down the streets of the city thinking I was too damn cool. I’m sorry that Bruce Lee the man probably wasn’t happy or, as I said, particularly nice. In the end, though, as the saying goes, "When the legend becomes the truth, print the legend." Bruce Lee’s legend is what survives, discovered anew by subsequent generations. It thrives and grows, filled with heroism, hope and the very real feeling that you, too, can be the biggest badass in the room when you need to be! Perhaps unlike any other star, it isn’t so much the actor’s films that have become classics but Bruce Lee himself.

Here’s a link to our earlier look at the ENTER THE DRAGON comic booklet http://booksteveslibrary.blogspot.com/2005/11/enter-dragon-comics.htmland here’s one to BLACK BELT’s online look at trivia on Bruce’s movies:http://www.blackbeltmag.com/document_display.cfm?section_id=50&document_id=276

My Comedy Career-1980-1981

In 1980, I saw a local newspaper article about a man named Pat Stringfield who was putting together a comedy troupe. Having been relatively directionless since graduation (three years earlier!) I contacted him and almost before you know it I was in show business!
After a couple weeks of auditions, weeding and trying to come up with a name, we ended up with a core group of nine serious comedians (Is that a good thing?) to be known forever after as ORSWIC, THE OHIO RIVER SWIM CLUB…because you see you can’t…uh…swim in the Ohio River. It’s too…I mean, it’s illegal even and, uh…Never mind.
That initial group consisted of:
Pat-About 21 years old, he was serious about comedy and good at self-promotion and hustling.
Mindy-Also about 21, she was pretty and a professional actress who would prove to be the sex symbol of the group.
Alex-Just 17 and the only one to show up that first day with an audition tape, Alex already had a comedy radio show on a local public radio station
Joe- A typical sidekick, Joe was Pat’s best friend but seemed quite disinterested much of the time. He would eventually skip two of the group’s three big gigs.
Greg-A bit older and seemingly more professional, he had big plans and ideas.
Cordelia-A Southern belle housewife who would eventually quit because we wouldn’t perform any of the sketches she wrote-they were very dirty but not funny!
Judy-A loud and very stereotypically Jewish lady with a great smile and a great sense of humor that didn’t always jibe with Pat’s.
Ed-a good-looking but obnoxious guy who would perform our leading man roles.
And shy little 21 year old me wondering exactly what I’d gotten myself into!

After weeks of writing and rehearsals in Pat’s basement, Ed’s garage and Judy’s living room our leader got us our first gig at a trendy local piano bar. Somebody had the bright idea that we would pre-record commercial parodies that would run in between live sketches at the bar. This meant more writing and rehearsing as well as filming. Then it meant we had to rig the bar with TV monitors and a VCR the day of our performance. Judy’s disagreements with Pat led to her leaving the group just prior to that first performance. Her parts were split among Mindy and Cordelia.
Several of the sketches were written by yours truly including one in which I appeared as a vampire attempting to bite a lady at a bus stop. When she yells "RAPE!" I take offense. She responds that nobody would come if she yelled "VAMPIRE!" Our characters discuss it philosophically for a bit until two police officers show up and arrest me. Hilarious isn’t it? And that’s the one I remember!

The only consistent laughter in the house that evening seemed to come from Pat’s giirlfriend Lisa. The club refused to pay us so one of our number (who shall remain nameless) swiped a case of beer from the storage closet we’d been using as a dressing room. Joe hadn’t even shown up. The whole thing was an embarrassment and I pondered quitting. Cordelia and Greg did just that! Still, I couldn’t give up show business so I was back at our weekly rehearsal that weekend. Before the day was over I had been named head writer and talked Pat into bringing Lisa on as a replacement. Pat brought on another young woman named Karen and a second Steve also. We needed new members. Big plans were afoot.

Pat had talked the city of Cincinnati into letting our group host a "Comedy Day On Fountain Square." Our group was to appear in two sketches including a musical number. Pat convinced legendary TV zany Bob Shreve to emcee and famous jugglers the Flying Karamazov Brothers (in town for another show) to appear in exchange for a plug. Even my dad agreed to come see it!
The weather was great and there was a good lunchtime turnout. ORSWIC’s two sketches included my BASEBALL ANNOUNCERS sketch with Ed and Mindy and one of Alex’s or Pat’s political satires in which I appeared as a newsman interviewing street people running for local office. Strangely enough, the rest of the group, acting as the street people, got the musical number at that point.
Bob Shreve liked it well enough to invite us on his popular all-night movie/comedy series THE PAST PRIME PLAYHOUSE a couple weeks later. We were given three sketches on the show. Bob wanted my baseball sketch from the Square show (an old-school sports announcer meets his hip new female color commentator) but we also did my EASY STREET LOAN COMPANY which featured my own less than stellar TV debut with Mindy and a friend she drafted at the last minute when Joe didn’t show up…again. The third sketch was one of Alex’s that would have been funny if not for Karen skipping the pivotal line when she noticed a nice closeup of herself on the monitor and Lisa missing her mark so that only her hands made it into the scene.
The Square show was filmed by the other Steve but I never received my long promised copy. I did tape the TV appearance.

After that we wrote and recorded some stuff for a local radio album that ended up never being released. Karen had me working on a solo act for her and I borrowed Lisa and Mindy to form CENTRAL CASTING which appeared on Alex’s radio show doing several more of my sketches. Alex even cast us in roles in his continuing space opera spoof, HEADS UP! This led to a memorable line screw-up from Lisa who was supposed to say "Sir! We’ve jettisoned the injured crewmembers, sir!" but who said instead, "SIR? We’ve jet-stoned the insured crewMEMBERS! Sir?" Lisa was not asked back the following week but Mindy and I were, performing multiple roles in a marathon re-creation of HEADS UP! episodes. It was ORSWIC’s last gasp.

After that Karen became pregnant and one of the ORSWIC members was a possible father who wanted nothing to do with it so the group never got together again. I stuck by her and helped her through her pregnancy and the baby’s early months. She even let me name the baby. Then she disappeared, though. Lisa eventually left Pat and we became a real couple just long enough to break up. By 1982, I was working at the bookstore and my comedy career was behind me.
Lessons I learned from my fifteen minutes:
Patience really is a virtue.
Everyone has dark secrets.
Nice girls don’t have to be virgins.
Marijuana definitely does NOT make you funnier.
Humor writing has to be taken seriously.
Never, ever lose your sense of humor no matter what!
I lost Lisa to a Muslim DJ and within a year they were married and she had a baby. I only saw her once more (and she owes me money!).
Karen turned up a couple times more but she had fallen on hard times. I last saw her about ten years ago and she didn’t even recognize me.
I found Alex on the Web last year with his comic strip PROM ON MARS. He's currently listed as reviews editor for PopImage but my email bounced back.. Greg went on to be the announcer on the game show I was on in the early eighties.

I never saw or heard of Pat, Mindy or any of the others again. In downtown Cincinnati, though, someone—probably one of us—had spray-painted the letters ORSWIC on the inside wall of a local parking garage where it stayed for the next fifteen years or so no doubt endlessly mystifying the yuppie businessmen who saw it every day. Pictured in this article are Pat, Mindy and Alex at top, Ed and part of the other Steve, Joe, the Flying Karamazov Brothers (he's saying "That's not a professional camera!" to me), Bob Shreve arriving for Comedy Day on the Square, Lisa and a flaming retouched shot of Karen (the only one I could find at the moment).

2000AD

From 1982 through 1987 I was lucky enough to amass an extensive (if slightly incomplete) collection of another comic that reached issue 500, Britain’s long-running 2000AD weekly. Even better, that was a kind of golden age for 2000AD (that name must have seemed so far in the future still!) featuring as it did so many of the "British Invasion" greats just as they were starting to turn up in America. Among the creators found in this run are Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Dave Gibbons, Pat Mills, John Wagner, Alan Grant, Carlos Ezquerra, Alan Davis, Bryan Talbot and Kevin O’Neill.

2000AD, of course, was and is the home base for JUDGE DREDD. Backing up that long-running series, however, were a number of equally classic series. In this run alone, these included NEMESIS THE WARLOCK (said to be even more popular than DREDD at one point!), ROGUE WARRIOR, STRONTIUM DOG, ROBOHUNTER and THE ACE TRUCKING COMPANY. Mister Moore cruises through with DR AND QUINCH, SKIZZ, THE BALLAD OF HALO JONES and a bunch of those one-off SF tales we wrote about earlier.

JUDGE DREDD was already iconic at this point having become a song by the Human League (I AM THE LAW) as well as a daily comic strip. A black comedy set in the futuristic Megacity One, Dredd is the ultra-conservative, totally by the book, uber-nazi "hero" who arrests, sentences and/or executes perps for crimes ranging from jaywalking to organ harvesting. Imagine DICK TRACY if Chester Gould had continued along that sci-fi path he took in the sixties! With his cool helmet and motorcycle (depicted quite differently depending on the artist) Dredd is the focal point of the series but often the least interesting character. Longer sagas such as JUDGE DEATH and THE CURSED EARTH open up the series and the world for awhile but it always seems to drift back to being formulaic satire. Of course, if you absolutely HAVE to have something every single week…

All points and angles with a smoking arrow-shaped head, Nemesis the Warlock is probably the most outlandish looking alien hero in all of comics. His running enemy is Torquemada as in the legendary Spanish Inquisitor, here trying to bring "purity" to the universe.
Rogue Trooper is a future soldier whose buddies were killed but that’s okay. He manages to keep them alive in memory chips attached, respectively, to his backpack, helmet and gun. As such they continue to kibitz and aid the blue alien soldier in his lonely battles.
Strontium Dog is a derogatory term used to identify mutants. Mutant Johnny Alpha leads a motley crew that includes Viking Wulf Sternhammer and Middenface McNulty. Robohunter is Sam Slade, an old-style detective in a world where everything including his cigar is robotic. Ace Garp leads an intergalactic "trucking company" through comic misadventures. Other series appearing from time to timeinclude THE MEAN TEAM, HELLTREKKERS and THE STAINLESS STEEL RAT (based on books by former EC artist Harry Harrison).

Another major player in this run is SLAINE. Not a favorite for me, this Celtic Conan became extremely popular in spite of, in my opinion, confusing writing, overly complicated storylines and extremely messy art by Glenn Fabry. SLAINE’s growing popularity, along with the defections of many of my favorite creators, would lead to my eventually dropping 2000AD.

In later progs, we get Grant Morrison’s ZENITH, a unique teenage superhero. I dropped the title during this time but was intrigued enough to continue buying the Titan collections of ZENITH.

As I said, the highlight here has to be watching Alan Moore in his formative years. Already a master of his art, he deftly spins new TWILIGHT ZONE twists on little sci-fi themes, skewers everything with the violent, anarchist DR AND QUINCH (drawn beautifully by Alan Davis!) and then turns right around and offers the fully-realized worlds of SKIZZ (an ET story done better than ET) and Halo Jones (perhaps Moore’s most under-rated strip) with writing miles beyond the "kids paper" field.
The weekly was edited by one "Tharg the Mighty," s zarjaz alien editor with a superiority complex. Each issue, supposedly compiled by Tharg’s various creator ‘bots, is referred to as a "prog" as in computer program. As in the old EC’s featuring Gaines and Feldstein as characters, Tharg appears from time to time in his own lighthearted adventures often lording it over robots based on Alan Moore and others. There were even photofeatures with Tharg!

With the success of Moore’s SWAMP THING and the influx of other UK creators into the American market Eagle Comics attempted to present the original JUDGE DREDD and other strips in monthly US reprints. In spite of several attempts in multiple forms (with new and reprinted covers from Brian Bolland!) they never caught on. Could it be because the satire hit a bit too close to home?

Eventually, though, with the character’s continued popularity and the eventual feature film, DC Comics bought or licensed at least some interest in the character and teamed Dredd up with Batman a couple of times.
2000AD continues on well into this new millennium although I’ve not seen an issue in years. I had the hardcover annuals until a year or so ago and I still have the Sci-Fi specials, the early issues of the JUDGE DREDD magazine spin-off and the first two trade paperback collection of daily strips. Hard to find in the US, if you’re at all intrigued, seek out the Titan Books trade paperback collections of JUDGE DREDD, THE BALLAD OF HALO JONES, ZENITH and others for a taste of thrill-power!
In the immortal words of Tharg the Mighty himself, Splundig Ver Thrigg!!

Adventure Comics Digest

ADVENTURE COMICS was one of the first mainstream comic books to reach its 500th issue but it wasn’t easy. After dropping the venerable LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES strip at the end of the sixties the book seemed to lose direction. SUPERGIRL headlined it until she finally received her own overdue title while the LEGION strip was shunted off to irregular backups in ACTION and later SUPERBOY. After that a succession of interesting but ultimately failed series from CAPTAIN FEAR, THE BLACK ORCHID and the Fleisher/Aparo SPECTRE to a PLASTIC MAN revival and a new, CAPTAIN ATOM-like STARMAN were featured. Then somebody (probably editor Carl Gafford) had the idea to revive the title as part of DC’s growing Digest line. Starting with issue 491 in 1982, ADVENTURE COMICS brought the LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES strip home with two chronological reprints in every 100 page issue, starting from the first appearances of the characters.
The coolest part, though, was that this new version of ADVENTURE also featured some all new stories as well as reprints of characters who had appeared in the title in previous incarnations. To be fair, the reprints were more than likely inventory material and they dried up fairly quickly anyway. They included Don Newton Captain Marvel stories (with Kid Eternity) and Alex Toth on CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN. They dried up about halfway through the run.
Along with those, there were those groovy sixties AQUAMAN stories by Steve Skeates and Jim Aparo, THE SPECTRE by Murphy Anderson and later Neal Adams from the character’s sixties appearances, golden age Simon and Kirby SANDMAN stories (and later NEWSBOY LEGION), Toth’s seventies BLACK CANARY and ZATANNA by Gray Morrow. THE RAY, the seventies PLASTIC MAN and SHAZAM reprints rounded out the title.
The centerpiece, though was the LEGION. With a regular page of detailed annotations by LEGION scripter (and long-time buff) Paul Levitz, the whole history of the series and the characters shaped up right in front of you in every pint-sized issue. Eventually Nick Cuti came on as co-editor and later editor but if anything, things got even better. The covers were a mixed bag but featured new art every issue from the likes of Gil Kane, Ed Hannigan and Keith Giffen.
Issue 500 was all LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES reprinting no less than ten sequential stories from the original series including the first appearances of the Substitute Heroes and Light Lass. Walking comics encyclopedia E. Nelson Bridwell presented a brief history of the title, too. The writing was on the wall by that point, however. In spite of some excellent covers on the last few issues, ADVENTURE was cancelled with issue 503 in 1983. The digest version had run a scant thirteen issues but it was enough to get the title to that milestone number. These issues, along with the other mostly reprint digests that DC published in that period, are some of the most enjoyable, best kept secrets in the comic shops. With their teeny-tiny print, they’re also probably one of the main causes of my deteriorating eyesight, too, but hey, it was worth it! After all avenging ghosts, undersea races, thirtieth century teenagers and golden age super heroes? This wasn’t just a good read, it was an ADVENTURE!

Number 500!!!!

They say the first 500 are the hardest! This is my 500th post since throwing open the virtual doors of the Library back in August of 2005. During that time I’ve pulled books off the shelf and clippings and ads out of files and boxes and found that every one of them has a story. I’ve begun to feel like Rod Serling on NIGHT GALLERY!
Among the most popular subjects covered in those first 500 posts are:
Kings Island
Linda Blair
Cissy Colpitts
LET’S GO FOR BROKE
Christa Helm
Underground Comics
Batman
Michael Netzer
photomanipulated vampire girls
National Lampoon
Beatles
Wally Wood
Jim Steranko
Jim Shooter
Pussycat
Hayley Mills
Vampirella
Unsold TV Pilots
Dark Shadows
It’s all downhill from here to the big one year virtual anniversary party next month and you are ALL invited! Of course, if I’m still without a paying job you guys will have to bring your own snacks and stuff but I’ll provide the entertainment! Thanks to everyone for your continued support and encouragement! The doors are always open so drop by anytime and bring your friends. It's all POP in here!