Tip of the Hat/Wag of the Finger to Marvel Comics

-Swinebread

Randomness

Spring over here to get the scoop on the pics from the Wolverine movie set. Looks interesting especially since I didn’t even know they were in production with this thing. It’s funny because I bailed on Wolverine and X-men comics back in 1991, and back then Logan was still this guy with a mysterious past. Later, Marvel started filling in his back-story. Those comics look interesting but I never felt the urge to read them. X-men burnout I guess (and the undoing of the Dark Phoenix saga). As it stands now, the Wolverine movie could be extra entertaining for me

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MSNBC conducted an interview with David Hajdu, author of the new book, “The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America,” see here

Here’s a section by Hajdu:

The interesting thing about comics, and why comics were early to be a source of economic and social power for young people was because they were affordable. I mention this in the book, but these were things that were made by young people, for young people, marketed directly to young people and priced for young people. And they’re the only work of expression, of art, that qualified as such. Kids could buy candy bars … but not much else, for a dime. There were no other forms of art or creative expression within their reach….

Comics and the late,’40s and ’50s were more popular than any form of popular entertainment. The way to fully absorb the power that comics had was to understand not just the reach, which was extraordinary, which was huge, but also that the content of those comics and the point of view of those comics and the sensibility of those comics was so radically different from that of anything else that young people can see. If kids are going to the movies, they’re not seeing anything like this in the movies. Movies were geared toward families. There was nothing like this.

We lost a lot when comic books were practically destroyed in the 1950s by small-minded people. Comics most likely would have been as big here as Manga is in Japan had this purge not happened. Many of the readers of these 50s comics were boomers; I wonder if this is was their first rebellion? …a rebellion that was crushed.

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The Sci-Fi channel has started airing a “new show” last week about a man that morphs between three alternate universes called Charlie Jade. It’s not really new as it’s been out in Canada and South Africa for a few years.

Filmed gorgeously in and around Cape Town, this Canadian-South African co-production (2005, 20 episodes, plus one "recap" episode) centers on the adventures of the eponymous Charlie (Jeffrey Pierce), a private detective who, in the course of investigating a mysterious girl’s murder, gets catapulted into an alternative universe. Our universe. There he must unravel the machinations of the nefarious megacorporation, Vexcor, before... well, to say any more would spoil the surprise.

Charlie Jade breathes new life into the standard SF trope of the parallel universe. The show moves among three “present-day” universes: the Alphaverse, Betaverse, and Gammaverse. You won’t find Spock-with-a-Beard here; in fact, very few characters have alter egos. This—to invoke Spock again—is logical: given different life circumstances, most people’s parents wouldn’t have gotten together. Charlie comes from the Alphaverse, a Blade Runner-esque dystopia where Vexcor rules a totalitarian state of near-universal surveillance and corporate corruption. But Vexcor has a problem: the Alphaverse is running out of natural resources. Luckily for Vexcor, it has developed a universe-hopping technology that will allow the company to plunder the Gammaverse, a seeming utopian idyll of ecologically sustainable living. To reach the Gammaverse, however, Vexcor’s machine must punch a line through the Betaverse, our universe. And when Gammaverse terrorists blow up the Vexcor’s Gammaverse base, Charlie finds himself caught in the shock wave and stuck in Beta.

From Here

Trailer:


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Stephen Colbert's Make McCain Exciting Challenge! The first entries are in.



Also youtube has ton. Including one that used Dr. Zaius’ mini-me Bush here.


-Swinebread

Jane Fonda Gets Really Saucy on the Colbert Report

You have to see it to believe it. This is one of those moments that will go down in pop culture history. Stephen is really shocked but still manages to get the jokes out. Jane actually seems rather turned on for real. Wow!
see Here

Edit: here is the threesome with Gloria Steinam and Jane Fonda he was talking about Here

Captain America & The Colbert Report

Well if you haven't heard the news by now let me tell yah, Marvel has pulled another boner and killed off Captain America. I think they just did it to make a few quick bucks. I always liked Cap; he's a good guy. He's like Marvel's Superman but he ain't got no powers that’s what I enjoyed about him. Folks will likely say this has deep meaning because the country has been torn apart by the war blah blah blah.. This is just a moneymaker folks, and just like Superman they'll bring him back. Not that I'm really following much marvel comics right now mind you but fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. Oh well, at least he went down trying to protect our superhuman civil liberties.

I just happened to catch the Colbert Report when he devoted his nightly segment ‘the word” to Cap. I enjoy how he pokes fun at folks for taking these things too seriously while letting his fanboy colors wave.

Access to this video will expire on 4/9/07 so I'll have come back with something to fix this post but until then enjoy.

Note: The date says 4/9/07, I was gonna transcribe Colbert’s talk but Comedy Central took the video down early, maybe for the Easter Weekend. Needless to say, it was really funny but now it’s gone and I’ve got nothing to replace it with. I’ll look around the Internet for written excerpts.

-Swinebread