I’m ostensibly going to talk about double standards in the media for a bit here. I may repeat myself from previous articles for emphasis. Consider yourself warned.
Tag Archives: Marvel comics
Straight Talk
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Don't Know Don't Care, Girls of BIUL, Worst Of All
When The Shill Hits The Fan
Before I begin, I want you to understand that I have no reason to lie to you. I don’t care about alienating the companies I’ll be attacking in the following article because they have nothing to offer me.
The comic book industry I dreamed about being part of since I was a boy is dead. It’s never coming back. It will never recover.
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Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Don't Know Don't Care, Idiot's Delight, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Worst Of All
“The Brownstones”
In a previous installment, I told you that in its early-’80s heyday, CRAZY magazine was the equal of MAD or National Lampoon. What I’m about to show you will prove that assertion.
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions
Our Man Stan
1990 trading card with original 1977 painting by Arnold Sawyer.
Our universe will never again see a personality like Stan Lee. For the most part, that’s not a good thing. But one must understand and accept that Stan’s career was very much of its time. What he became in his final years was a calculated maneuver, the bookend of a carefully managed and marketed existence. I say that not out of judgment, but out of respect, however begrudging that respect might occasionally be. More than perhaps anyone else, Stan Lee was comic books.
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Filed under Animation Analysis, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish
The Tragedy of Cy-Kill
Mistake #1: No weapon accessories.
Unless you were alive and paying attention in the 1980s, you probably didn’t know that Transformers weren’t the first toys in America that changed into vehicles. “GoBots” were.
Transformers came from Rhode Island’s Hasbro, in 1984. GoBots came from Tonka, makers of fine metal toy trucks, in 1983. That may be why Hasbro did everything right, from the start- they saw what Tonka had already done wrong. And oh boy… Tonka did just about everything wrong.
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Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Worst Of All
Autobiographic Asphyxiation
We have been experiencing technical difficulties. Thank you for your patience. Please allow me to use this opportunity to get us all on the same page. I’ve had a lot of time to think, away from the Internet. We all know how suffocating it can become.
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Don't Know Don't Care, Worst Of All
How To Profit From The Coming Nuclear Holocaust
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been obsessed with mushroom clouds. Something about their unbridled destructive power, and their strange, haunting beauty.
This and Miracle Mile are as close to “nuke porn” as I can get (my copy of Dr. Strangelove is worn out).
Also; the possibility that you could draw a really good one. It looked super-cool, and everyone at school knew what it was.
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions
Dead Kennedys
Real political subversion will be hidden from you by the media. When do you see a current celebrity interacting with rioters, or a mob of angry protesters? Never? There you go.
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Thousand Listen Club
Hate Proof: “You’re The Best (Around)”
Believe it or not, I have never seen The Karate Kid.
HI-KEEBA!
I know, right? Hasn’t everybody seen it? Well, sure, except for guys like me, who were totally and prematurely embittered towards the entire experience. Guys who were in sixth grade when The Karate Kid came out.
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Filed under Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club
Reborted
Moviegoers today act like naked Kate Winslet in Titanic, coyly demanding Leonardo DiCaprio to draw her like a French girl. A preternatural relationship has been forged between audience and studio. A production falls all over itself to seduce a fandom, because that’s where the blindly loyal dollars are. If a popular intellectual property is even slightly altered for a motion picture adaptation, it’s headline news, even above mass murder and election-year chicanery.
Eventually, this film will be remade, and this scene will feature different actors, pretty much just to fuck with you.
The movie industry has become such an intellectual wasteland that the 80s era of numerical sequel-mania looks dignified by comparison. Honest promotion and word-of-mouth don’t work anymore; attention span is dead. The only way to really sell a remake is to get people steamed. Take the things viewers loved about an original film, and subvert them. Serves the suckers right anyway, for falling in love with a fictional universe. The names P.T. Barnum and J.J. Abrams aren’t similar for nothing. Continue reading
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Filed under Don't Know Don't Care, Idiot's Delight, Late To The Party, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Worst Of All
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