Book Review: THE COMPLETE DICK TRACY, VOLUME 13: 1950-51 by Chester Gould (IDW Publishing, 2012)

* HERE BE SPOILERS *

I wish I could be as enamored of the material in this volume as Max Allan Collins, in his Introduction, seems to think I should be.  The stories and villains aren't bad, for the most part, but I can't overlook the fact that this era features what I believe to be the most unfortunate "terrestrial-based" casting decision that Gould ever made.  (I use the quotation-ringed qualifier to exempt the hare-brained "Moon period" of the 60s and 70s, about which it's probably better to simply remain silent... at least, until the reprint series gets to that point.)  By abruptly jettisoning the half-comic, half-tragic ham actor Vitamin Flintheart at the end of 1950, Gould reduced his "humorous supporting cast" to the B.O. Plenty family, which unnecessarily limited the varieties of humor that he could inject into his stories. Since Flintheart had a habit of innocently falling in with bad guys, as he did with Flattop in his first appearance and as he does with Flattop's titanic-tempered brother Blowtop here, an unknown number of opportunities for comedy-leavened adventure were probably also missed.  Amusingly, as related by Collins, Gould claimed in 1975 to have "just recently" used Vitamin and was legitimately surprised when reminded that Vitamin hadn't appeared in a quarter of a century.  In fact, Vitamin hadn't even gotten the compliment of a formal good-bye at the time; he was last seen as "one of the gang" around B.O. Plenty's hospital bed at the end of the T.V. Wiggles continuity in December 1950.  If Gould had it to do all over again, I'd like to think that he would have retained both Flintheart and the genius inventor Brilliant as members of his permanent troupe.

 

The ideal container for Vitamin Water?

Four-year-old Sparkle Plenty's compact little career as a ukulele-plunking, singing star of 1950 television (don't laugh -- this was the era in which desperate programmers would literally put anything on the air) has an even shorter shelf life than poor Vitamin.  This scenario provides the backdrop for the memorable story of petty-racketeer-turned-homicidal-maniac T.V. Wiggles, who tries to muscle in on Vitamin's sponsorship of Sparkle, only to ultimately try to "get rid of" her before meeting his end in the obligatory showdown with Tracy (plus, in this case, B.O. Plenty, who's nearly killed by gunfire as a result).  There are strong similarities here to the 1946 continuity featuring Gargles and Themesong, but this story features the added, extremely creepy element of Wiggles evincing what the child-protection authorities might call an "unhealthy" interest in the talented tot.  When Wiggles uses his experience as a TV wrestler to give Sparkle a deadening neck pinch, we can't help but wonder what other unpleasant "physical interventions" he might have in mind.  After the Wiggles tale is wrapped up, Sparkle and her folks have one final tubular gig, celebrating Christmas with TV Nation -- and that's the end of her "artistic career," at least until the 80s, when the grown-up Sparkle became a designer-jean modeler.  You would think that Gould would have jumped at the chance to continue to use Sparkle's well-established celebrity (she had basically been a public figure ever since she was born!) as a jumping-off point for any number of stories in which Sparkle was put in some sort of peril.  The "damsel in distress" theme might have grown tired in a hurry, but, heck, literally every major cast member was parked at death's door multiple times during the strip's lifetime, so why shouldn't Sparkle have been any different?  Instead, Gould abruptly turned his attention to the creation of Tracy and Tess' daughter Bonny Braids, who turned out to be a much less memorable and distinctive character.

The volume ends with the first part of the lengthy Crewy Lou continuity from 1951, which Collins flags as Gould's "masterpiece."  Unfortunately, I can't agree.  Granted, the wily photographer Lou is one of Gould's finest (and, arguably, most arrestingly designed) female villains, and Gould is at his ear-to-the-ground best in taking inspiration from contemporary events and getting Lou and Tracy mixed up with "Syndicate" gangsters, but I think that Gould's seat-of-the-pants compositional style betrayed him in a BIG way as this narrative unfolded.  Readers of DICK TRACY come to expect improbable deus ex machinae as an inevitable by-product of Gould's improvisational method of composition, but the abrupt introduction of Lou's "respectable" brother Brainerd is a fluke too far.  Just as Lou, pursued by both the cops and the Syndicate gangsters, goes on the run, Brainerd appears OUT OF NOWHERE (pace Greg Weagle) and vows to kill her because she's brought shame to the family.  Far-fetched, but not entirely beyond the realm of possibility... but then, Brainerd changes his mind twice and then decides to kill both himself and Lou so that he won't further sully the family name with an "additional" crime.  Uh...  so a simple murder is verboten, but a murder-suicide would be just fine?  Has TRACY just switched "moral universes" on us?  To make matters worse, Brainerd's scheme (which, to no one's surprise, ends up offing only him) turns out to be the overly elaborate cause of Lou stealing the Tracy family car and riding off into the wilderness, inadvertently taking baby Bonny Braids with her.  This whole misguided sequence climbs rarely-explored levels of "lame," and, IMHO, disqualifies the Crewy Lou story from being Gould's best.  To be fair to Collins, he does admit that his critical judgment is colored by the fact that this was one of the first TRACY tales he read as a youngster, back when Harvey Comics published a DICK TRACY reprint title.  Collins has done a great job in his Introductions to the volumes in this series, and this confession is just another illustration of his conscientiousness.

Book Review: 1919: THE YEAR OUR WORLD BEGAN by William Klingaman (Harper Collins, 1987)

Until author Klingaman tips his partisan hand about two-thirds of the way through, this is a highly readable and generally fair-minded survey of the events of one of the most momentous years in human history.  It's certainly not a pleasant journey.  After slogging through nearly 700 pages detailing the massacres, rebellions, and ethnic conflicts of war-torn Europe and the sad effects of race riots and "Red Scares" in the U.S., juxtaposed against the half-idealistic, half-cynical clown's pageant that was the Paris Peace Talks leading up to the Treaty of Versailles, the average reader is likely to feel a little like Jess Willard did after being massacred by Jack Dempsey in the July 4, 1919 heavyweight title fight at Toledo, OH.  Believe it or not, the story of this notorious bout is actually among the lighter moments of the relentlessly downbeat narrative.  

For such a comprehensive survey, there are a surprisingly large number of narrative lacunae in this tale.  Klingaman spends a good deal of time describing the "First Red Scare" in America but, for some reason, doesn't even mention the famed imprisonment of the Socialist leader Eugene Debs, who wasn't released from jail until well after Woodrow Wilson had left office.  This omission is particularly strange in that Klingaman provides us with a wealth of detail concerning the abortive Bolshevik rebellions in Germany and Hungary, to say nothing of the early struggles of the Soviet Union against the "White Russian" forces (and, lest we forget, a small contingent of Allied soldiers who were dumped into Russia with a rather vague charge to fight the Bolsheviks, and whose travails all too often go unmentioned in standard histories of this period).  If the omission of Debs' plight was a simple oversight, then it was a mystifying one.  Less defensible is Klingaman's decision to focus virtually all of the attention in the U.S. political battle over the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles on Wilson's strenuous -- and, in the end, near-fatal -- efforts to overcome Senatorial opposition with his famous whistle-stop tour of the American West.  Wilson's fate is obviously a more dramatic story than a dry debate in the halls of Congress could ever be, but Klingaman gives almost literally NO attention to the reasons for the opposition, apart from the usual boilerplate about isolationism.  It's difficult to attribute this to anything other than ideological bias.

Klingaman does leaven his narrative with occasional digressions into the fashions, literature, and cinema of the day.  Even many of these asides have their grim aspects.  Take sports, for example: aside from the Willard-Dempsey bout, the Black Sox Scandal gets plenty of space, and even the description of Babe Ruth's final season with the Boston Red Sox is likely to turn the stomachs of Sox fans.  The world of silent movies, meanwhile, is primarily represented through a retelling of the plot of the infamous horror film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.  It's unfortunate that 1919's introduction of the world's longest-lived animated cartoon character couldn't have at least been mentioned, if for no other reason than to soften the mood.

If you like sweeping "life and times"-style histories in the grand tradition of Mark Sullivan's OUR TIMES or William Manchester's THE GLORY AND THE DREAM, then you'll probably enjoy "1919"... that is, if "enjoy" is the proper verb to use to describe one's relationship with such a depressing catalogue of human injustice, crime, folly, and suffering.

Movie Review: THE AVENGERS (Marvel Studios/Paramount, 2012)

The arrival of this particular cinematic puppy has been heralded for a very long time, and so Nicky and I elected to avoid the crush on opening weekend and wait until yesterday to dare the trip to the theater.  Even so, pretty much all seats for the 6:15 showing were taken.  I was even willing to chance sitting in the seats up front until Nicky convinced me that the crick in my neck wouldn't be worth it and found some seats in the front row of the stadium-style section.

If you're expecting me to give out with lengthy a laundry list of the ways in which The Avengers is/is not faithful to the Marvel comics' version of the superhero team, then you're barking up the wrong blog.  I am strictly a "guest" of Marveltown, as opposed to a "lifelong resident."  I have enjoyed all of the modern Marvel movies that I've seen, though, and The Avengers is another winner, with more than enough action to satiate even the most blockbuster-jaded palate... plus a healthy helping of legitimately laugh-out-loud humorous bits.

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Before Nicky and I went to see The Avengers, Nicky insisted that I see Thor first.  Now I know why.  Thor's half-brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is the main bad guy in this new flick, stealing a gizmo called The Tesseract from S.H.I.E.L.D. and using it to rip open a "dimensional vortex" and allow a race of aliens to pour through and invade the Earth.  (Loki expects to be the Maximum Leader of the New Order, but it's fairly clear from the off that he is something of a means to an end.  If the narrative itself doesn't convince you, then the post-movie, pre-credits teaser certainly will.)

Most of the humor in this movie, as you would imagine given that it was directed and co-written by Joss Whedon, is of the verbal variety, with a good portion of it emanating from the self-satisfied Tony "Iron Man" Stark (Robert Downey Jr.).  Though some of the jokes have stirred up unexpected controversy, they all work well in context.  The gag that got the most laughter and applause, though, had nothing to do with verbal snarkiness.  How else can I possibly describe it, but...

"IT'S EASY, HULK!  JUST PRETEND MR. LOKI IS ON FIRE!!"

Ah, yes, The Hulk.  I didn't see the earlier Hulk movie -- nor was I a watcher of the old TV series with Bill Bixby -- but, judging by all reports, The Avengers is the best media representation to date of the "Big Green Guy" and his alter ego, the twitchy Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo).  Ruffalo did a great job of presenting Banner as a man whose emotions are kept so tightly under control that they're likely to suffocate.  And The Hulk himself... well, I'm not about to criticize his performance during the final streets-of-New-York battle sequence, are you?

Apart from Downey and Ruffalo, I especially liked the way in which the film handled Captain America (Chris Evans).  Any time that this character is employed, a political interpretation of his portrayal, for good or ill, is never far from one's thoughts.  Under the circs, the team of Whedon and Evans played Cap as straight as an old-fashioned hero still somewhat alienated from the times should have been played.  Granted, in the scene at the gym where Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) tries to recruit Cap for the Avengers' mission, a very broad hint is floated that the latter doesn't think much of America's recent military "adventures."  But later, Cap is told by Agent Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D. -- and apparently agrees -- that a good, stiff dose of "old-fashioned (patriotism)" is just what may be needed in this new fight against a would-be tyrant.  Cap also reacts to Loki's supposed "godhood" by saying that he recognizes only one God, and that Loki "doesn't dress like that."  All of these lines, to one extent or another, ring true to this challenging character's... um, character.

One fairly significant character dies during the course of the film, but, given the frequent bickering and infighting between the members of The Avengers, the reminder of that individual's self-sacrifice turns out to be one of the major spurs that goad the band of heroes on to complete their mission and gain victory.  As an accurate reflection of the classic Marvel sensibility, one could hardly do better than this.  It will be very difficult for the sequel to The Avengers to top the original, but the recent Marvel Studios track record gives reasonable cause for optimism.

Comics Re-re-re-review*: RICHIE RICH IN WELCOME TO RICH RESCUE! (Ape Entertainment, 2012)

*  No, the persona of Max Headroom hasn't suddenly engulfed my spirit.  It's much worse than that: Ape Entertainment has served up yet another reprinting of its pitifully small manifest of RICH RESCUE material.  For those who haven't been counting, that makes four such out-dishings, to wit:

1.  The original appearances in the Free Comic Book Day giveaway and RICH RESCUE #1-#4.  Only "Eruption Disruption," the Dr. N-R-Gee story from the FCBD book, isn't included in this 104-page trade paperback, possibly because the story didn't have much to do with the story arc in #1-#4... which, in point of fact, isn't a true story arc at all, but more of a collection of loosely-wound-together stand-alone stories, which I assume will be neatly chained together on that apparently-far-in-the-future day when RICH RESCUE starts publishing again.

2.  The so-called "digests," which are more like glorified pamphlets.

3.  The reprints of back-up stories that we've been seeing on a regular basis in RICHIE RICH GEMS.

4.  The present warmed-over warming-over of warmed-over leftovers.

Seriously, now, is Ape trying to piss off the people who would legitimately like to see RICH RESCUE continue?  I admit, it's convenient to have all of the stories from #1-#4 between a single set of covers, but it's almost as if Ape is jerking our chains on purpose at this point.  Come on, Apesters, get it together and get this country... er, title moving again.  (Apologies to JFK.)

Book Review: THE ADVENTURES OF HERGE by Bocquet, Fromental, and Stanislas (Drawn & Quarterly, 2012)

This project -- a sort of pictorial biography of the creator of TINTIN, drawn in a style at least faintly resembling Herge's famed "clear line" and formatted in the manner of a classic TINTIN album, right down to the page count -- is frankly a bit mystifying.  People familiar with Herge's life and work will not learn very much that is new.  At the same time, despite the presence of a helpful "cast of characters" (complete with headshots) at the back of the book, TINTIN neophytes will probably be quite confused the first time that they read it.  So who is most likely to mine enjoyment out of this?  Two groups come to mind: (1) the longtime "true TINTIN believers" who simply must own any and all Herge-related products and will thoroughly recognize and appreciate the various visual references to Herge's stories that crop up from time to time; (2) people who were intrigued by the recent feature film but aren't necessarily committed enough in their interest in TINTIN to essay a full-scale Herge bio, or even to read the albums.  For the latter group, THE ADVENTURES OF HERGE is a convenient, and highly enjoyable, "two-for-one" experience: a good place to learn a little something about Herge's life and get an idea as to what a TINTIN album is "supposed" to look like.

Artist Stanislas Barthelemy wisely doesn't essay a full-blown swipe of Herge's style.  His somewhat sketchy interpretation of same looks more like a cross between Herge's earliest work and the highly stylized approach of a John Held Jr.  This puts some useful artistic "distance" between the "hard-PG" narrative, with its scenes of nude portraiture, occasional use of harsh language, and depictions of marital infidelity, and a typical TINTIN narrative, which Herge famously said was created for everyone from ages 7 to 77.  The distinction is especially effective when Stanislas consciously parodies famous scenes from TINTIN albums.  Nowhere is it more so than in the scene in which Herge is freed from the jail where he had been held as a supposed collaborationist.  Even as Herge leaves to literally start his life over again, his cellmate, who'd also been imprisoned by the Resistance, is placed before a firing squad.  Several panels in this sequence bring to mind the scene in THE BROKEN EAR in which Tintin is about to be shot in the same manner.  Tintin famously got out of that one by getting drunk (!), with the tone of the scene strongly resembling that of the climax of DuckTales' "Allowance Day."  Suffice it to say that the denouement here is rather more sober.  The final two pages, depicting Herge's death, also make memorable use of props from Herge's stories and the opening scenes of THE SHOOTING STAR.

When I first heard of this project, I was worried that we might be getting a sort of deconstructionist deboning or ideological hijacking of Herge, in the manner of Frederic Tuten's novel TINTIN IN THE NEW WORLD or the anarchist rip-off TINTIN IN BREAKING FREE.  Thankfully, Jose-Louis Bocquet, who's written biographies of other European comics figures, avoids the pitfalls and pretty much tells the straight story, albeit with some exaggerations to accommodate the requirements of storytelling and the uses of Herge characters and scenes.  If you're a comics fan unfamiliar with the world of Herge, this isn't the worst place in the world to start finding out about the man, his times, and his works.

Book Review: E.C. SEGAR'S POPEYE, VOLUME 6: "ME LI'L SWEE'PEA" by E. C. Segar (Fantagraphics Press, 2012)

What feeling can possibly arise upon reading the last volume of THE COMPLETE E.C. SEGAR POPEYE, other than genuine sadness and dismay that Segar was taken from his loyal coterie of readers far too quickly?  I'd hesitate to pass definitive judgment on what a Segar THIMBLE THEATER of the 1940s and beyond (as distinct from the war years, which would almost certainly have tempted Segar to make the hard-punching sailor man serve his country in some "official" capacity, much as the animated Popeye in fact did) would have looked like, but we may have gotten a hint in my favorite of this volume's continuities, "A Sock for Susan's Sake."  By 1937, Popeye had been domesticated to a certain extent, and Segar had brought the incorrigible Poopdeck Pappy into the THIMBLE THEATER cast and given the latter some of the more anti-social aspects of Popeye's earlier, rougher persona.  But it's hard to imagine that Segar would have completely drawn out Popeye's eye-teeth and turned him into the less complicated character of the later Famous Studios shorts.  The picaresque "Sock," in which Popeye brusquely assumes the role of protector of and unofficial mentor to a lovely (by Segar's artistic standards, anyway) young female vagabond with a mysterious past, points the way towards what a future Segar Popeye might have looked like.  Popeye is every bit as proactive, arbitrary, and abrupt as he was during his early career, but also evinces compassion, self-sacrifice, and a sense of higher moral good.  Fittingly, after Popeye discovers that Susan's wealthy father had thrown her out into the street, he literally drags her back to a confrontation with him, leading to the obligatory "startling revelations" and, of course, the restoration of Susan to her proper place.  It's much like the tale of Cinderella, that is, if you can imagine the Fairy Godmother employing the occasional "righteous right cross" in place of the waving of a magic wand.

The much-praised "Mystery Melody" continuity, featuring the return of the Sea Hag, leads off the collection daily strips reprinted here.  While it's entertaining enough, it isn't as indelibly memorable as the "Plunder Island" Sunday sequence, probably because of the space limitations inherent in the daily format.  Poopdeck Pappy takes the lead role in "Wild Oats," a somewhat melancholy read in that it was the last daily story that Segar was able to complete before the progress of his leukemia forced him to quit "The Valley of the Goons" and "King Swee'pea" midway through.  Those last two Segar-influenced tales, perhaps reflecting the uncertain state of Segar's health, tended to wander a bit, and so does "Oats," with Poopdeck partying wildly until he gets hauled into court for creating a (rather innocuous) disturbance.  The trial gives Segar another chance to parody the workings of the law, but the depiction of the trial in "Oats" pales in comparison to the wonderful sequence in "A Sock for Susan's Sake" in which Popeye and Susan are arrested by a gung-ho constable (whose perpetual snarl hides the fact that he's a bit of a softy at heart) and arraigned before a rural magistrate on the charge of fishing in and swimming in the local reservoir.  Even the minor characters shine in this extremely funny sequence, in which Segar both pokes fun at and shows his affection for the quirky-but-decent locals, a la Mike Judge's treatment of the residents of Arlen in King of the Hill.

The last batch of Sunday pages continue to give Wimpy multiple chances to shine (he really could have carried his own strip) and feature the last explosion of creativity in the companion strip SAPPO, as John and Myrtle S. accompany Professor O. G. Wottasnozzle and a couple of other long-bearded deep thinkers (including, oddly enough, Wottasnozzle's arch-enemy Professor Finklesnop -- does the phrase "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer" come to mind?) on an epic space journey to the worlds "beyond Neptune."  I wish I knew why Segar suddenly switched back to continuities in SAPPO after ditching them for an extended period of time in favor of drawing lessons and the like.  It's almost as if he knew that he had very little time left for active creativity and wanted to expel as many crazy ideas as he could from his cranium before the end.  Short-lived it may have been, but the whole Segar POPEYE oeuvre is now between handsome hard covers, and fans of great comics will be forever grateful.