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Bookchat -- with Comic Books, Films, and Someone's Head in the Clouds [1]
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Date: 2022-10-12
I have not seen "Thor, Love and Thunder," but I applaud the revival of this idea. (Left) Natalie (Jane Porter) Portman and Chris (Thor) Hemsworth 2022; (Right) Odin, Thor, and Jane Porter - art by Jack Kirby 1966. Copyrighted characters co-created by Jack Kirby, and are used for educational purposes only in this essay.
Welcome to (comic) Bookchat! Where you can talk about anything; (comic) books, conventional books, plays, essays, and audio books. You don’t have to be reading a (comic) book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
In the middle of my 3 ½ day journey from Barcelona, Spain to Salt Lake City, Utah, the giant airliner in which I was riding flew directly over Hurricane Fiona. I could be mistaken, but I thought the pilot might have said we were flying at 42,000 feet.
On my outward flights, I had mostly slept, but on my flights back, I was watching free movies in my seat, with earbuds, and masked, except when eating or drinking. It should be no surprise to other R&BLers that I chose to watch recent Superhero Movies.
(Above) I would have watched “Thor: Blood & Thunder” if it had been available, but it wasn’t. New Zealand comedian Taika Waititi has made wonderful movies as a director, and I am confident this film will respect the enormous talent of its leading actress with an award-winning cast.
The first film I watched was THE BATMAN !!
Images: (L) Selena (Catwoman) Kyle, art by Lopez & Lopez. (C) Zoe (Catwoman) Kravitz and Robert (Young Bruce Wayne) Pattinson. (R) Publicity Art, based on characters originally created by Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, and Robert (Bob Kane) Kahn.
As an equally well-known fan of dancer Julie (Catwoman) Newmar, I am perpetually curious about how Catwoman’s character developed over the decades. Batman’s TV producer William Dozier put more thought and effort into realizing Catwoman during the 60’s than the negligent DC staff had done for decades. He even cast Julie Newmar, a Tony Award winning Broadway star, for this over-the-top comedic role on national television.
Cabaret star Eartha Kitt was equally funny, but former Miss America Lee Meriwhether’s script for Catwoman in Dozier’s feature film didn’t have much room for playfulness, nor was it exactly playful for her posh alias, Miss Kitka. I enjoyed Michelle Pfeiffer’s dangerously unpredictable Catwoman, but still pity Academy Award recipient Hallie Berry for the role she got to play in a Catwoman movie that served nobody well and won no awards. I’ve only seen photos of Anne Hathaway’s neoprene-clad, motorcycle-equipped, Catwoman, but heard almost no audience buzz about that role, except for some confusion with Batgirl because of that same motorcycle. I also have to plead guilty about totally missing Carmen Bicondova’s tragically criminal mid-teen Catwoman on TV’s Gotham.
DC eventually created Selena Kyle, a complicated alter-ego for our familiar fetishistic feline crime boss in their comic books. This version of Catwoman works extremely well in this movie, and Zoe Kravitz’s acting is convincingly first-rate. I like the portrayal of Penguin in this flick. It is a minor role as a petty criminal, which pleases me further. Burgess Meredith’s hilarious pitch-perfect interpretation will never be duplicated, and shouldn’t be challenged or imitated IMHO.
This movie has something to say about literally toxic corruption and class privilege. Pattinson’s traumatized Bruce Wayne learns some hard facts about his social circle. The shot-by-shot scenario, though, is not quite articulate enough to communicate all it implies, even though it tries. Catwoman and Batman have a satisfying chemistry together, which I respect the most in this much-better-than-average DC movie.
Multiverses of Madness Part One — Dr. Stephen Strange and Wanda Maxinoff
(Left) Final Dr. Strange cover by Steve Ditko. (Right) First appearance of Wanda and Pietro by Jack Kirby.
Steve Ditko’s Dr. Strange always inhabited a multi-dimensional world. Jack Kirby also played around with a so-called Forbidden Zone when he was drawing and plotting the Fantastic Four.
Wanda was regularly drawn in The Avengers by stalwart Don Heck of the Marvel Bullpen. His work had been turning towards a “real-life newspaper” style of cartooning, but after superheroes took over the company, he made do by drawing women with a lighter hand, in somewhat less-cartoonish styles - like fashionable suburban housewife Janet Van Dyne as the Tinkerbelle-like “Wasp” and reformed villain Wanda as the “Scarlet Witch,” who he drew somewhat daringly for the Comics Code Authority of those times. He was fond of drawing villain Natasha (Black Widow) Romanoff in nicely-fitted sophisticated outfits too, before other artists clothed her in dark catsuits during subsequent decades, paving the way for Scarlett Johansson’s run of ten movies playing Romanoff.
(Front) The Vision, a robot from the 1940’s, Wanda Maximoff, a mutant from the 1960’s, who met when Vision joined the Avengers in the late 60’s. They explicitly became “an item” circa 1982. (Back) Worthy adversaries Benedict (Dr. Strange) Cumberbatch add Elizabeth (Scarlet Witch) Olson, with a glimpse of Xochitl (America) Gomez, who spends much of the film fleeing for her very existence.
The whole idea of pairing Wanda and the Vision was too weird for me to take seriously in the 80’s, at the butt-end of Marvel’s “Pot Metal Age,” which followed the Silver and Golden Ages. However, that goofy character-reclamation project inexplicably mutated and endured when dozens of other team-ups failed. It led to a hit TV show not long ago, and was part of the deep background of this excellent movie.
Director Sam Raimi UNDERSTANDS the nuances of Marvel superheroes, and knows how to entertain an audience with them. Everybody’s acting in Multiverse of Madness is superb! There is irony and dark humor abounding in plot and dialog. The grief of villainess Wanda Witch is palpable and piteous, elevating the simple pursuit motif of the plot, and giving a HUMAN edge to all this gallivanting around in a sometimes-Lovecraftian Multiverse, which has now become a Marvel character of its own, and gets second-billing to Dr. Strange himself!
However, the movie’s scenario utilizes special effects that are becoming cliches, since they are based on the same digital models used in other Marvel Movies. Watch Out — just because they are expensive doesn’t mean that using and re-using every wire-frame iteration to fill plot-holes is wise!
The movie ends with a cameo appearance from veteran actor Angelina Jolie, playing her character Thena from The Eternals film, taking Dr. Strange off to a new adventure to fix yet another rupture in the Multiverse — somewhere in another movie (to be named later.)
Multiverses of Madness Part Two — The Eternals
Art by Jack Kirby circa 1978. “Thena” is clad in gold armor near the center, and like the movie, there are too many other characters for ready identification.
The Silver Age of Comics ended with brave efforts on the part of the industry’s creative leaders to connect with a wider audience, but some glorious failures and grim economics led instead to an overall decline in the physical quality of commercial comics as the 70’s became the 80’s, and although there were some remarkable exceptions, I’m sticking with my term “Pot-Metal Age” and leaving the Bronze Age label to regular archeologists. There were positive structural and creative happenings in the late 70’s, early 80’s and onward, but this essay isn’t about them.
My friend Jack Kirby labored during that half-decade under the nit-picking eyes of unimaginative editors at DC and Marvel before he quit the field to storyboard movies. (He drew those convincing layouts for the real “Argo” project over one weekend, for instance.) He was always prolific, but his new ideas weren’t accepted as readily by the average comic-buying public as they had been before.
He created a minor success with his Eternals series, though, and the MCU has given Jack’s ambitious, sub-world a try, with A-List actors Salma (Ajak) Hayak and Angelina (Thena) Jolie plus a couple of young stand-outs in main protagonist Gemma (Sirse) Chan and the very interesting Lia (Sprite) McHugh, who plays a character created by master storyteller, and Kirby acolyte, Neil Gaiman during the 21st Century.
(Center to Right) Sakma Hayak as “Ajak,” Gemma Chan as “Sirse,” Lia McHugh as “Sprite.”
I wasn’t particularly intrigued by the other performers, or the messy plot, and thought there were too many characters anyhow. (Sorry, Jack!) This movie may have been tomato-bombed in advance by mean-spirited RWNJs, but I will say that it earned all those additional ho-hums from other viewers too. The actors I’ve named had interesting scenes, and Ms. Chan held the center as well as anyone could, with McHugh’s Sprite livening things up when required. Thena was outright crazy at times, which should make her a rather unreliable ally during her adventure with Dr. Strange, that seems to be going on in the Multiverse right now.
(Whatever NOW may mean in what Jack once called his Forbidden Zone.)
(Left) Salma Hayak as “Ajak,” formerly a male character in the comic book stories. (Right) Angelina Jolie as “Thena,” a formidable but psychologically unstable warrior.
Multiverses of Madness Part Three — Spider Man: No Way Home
Jack Kirby explicitly told me: We gave Spider Man to Steve Ditko, and he made it his own!
Spidey’s initial cover (below right) was penciled by Jack, and that is a self-portrait of him dangling from Peter Parker’s right arm. As Art Director, he also drew layouts for new artists who were recruited from competing companies, like DC’s romance-comics artist John Romita (below left.)
Pencil artists plotted the stories during Marvel’s initial decades, and Romita found that he worked well with editor/dialog writer Stan (Lee) Lieber. When Steve Ditko suddenly quit the company, Romita and Lee worked up a team of ghost-artists from DC, along with Stan’s brother Larry, that coalesced in a way that made Spider Man the best selling title of the Marvel Comics Group, which it remains today.
(Left) Pencils: J. Kirby, J. Romita, Inks: Frank Giacoa. (Right) Pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Steve Ditko.
What I enjoyed most about No Way Home was that Peter Parker, M.J. and their peer group were portrayed as adolescents — kids, even! It seemed a bit forced here and there, but the illusion remained intact. The Multiverse was a worthy co-star too, along with unwillingly patient, but forgivably peevish, Dr. Stephen Strange, who is there when needed, and well-played by Benedict Cumberbatch. The plot was never totally lost in this movie, which earned my admiration! I also enjoyed successful flashes of acting talent by Marisa Tomei, as a believably attractive Aunt May Parker, and Willem Dafoe as a schizophrenic scientist. (There was a lot of overdone spectacle, but C’MON, it is an MCU movie!) The huge number of cameos by experienced actors also meant that good performances in small roles actually carried the day over special effects, which made it a WIN for the audiences and myself.
Publicity still from “No Way Home” Tom Holland played Peter Parker, and actress Zendaya played “M.J.”
Coda
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Comic Book Movies are big-time entertainment nowadays. Streaming mini-series keep conventional dramatic film-making commercially alive, thank goodness, but they are fertile grounds for ‘growing’ superhero ideas too. I noticed that the good, but neglected, indie comic book movie Tank Girl from the 1990’s was available on the airplane also.
A rare collaboration between rivals DC and Marvel — Art by long-time Spidey ghost-artist Ross Andru, also a DC regular, whose long-time inking partner Mike Esposito rendered other Spidey pencilers like Larry Lieber and John Romita as ‘Mickey Demeo.’ (Touch-up art for “Superman” by Neal Adams circa 1979, soon after Christopher Reeves’ landmark movie role.)
Do you enjoy the feeling of validation when an old favorite is discovered by the public at large?
Do those silly costumed figures all over the cinemas just drive you crazy? Have you ever SEEN anybody wearing a mask and catsuit who wasn’t going to a party or convention? It is October, and “fancy dress” is on the agenda for the rest of the month in the USA. Do you have any ‘super’ plans for Samhain or Halloween?
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