'TBH Politoons'
Cory!! Strode On Graphic Novels
'The Essential Super-Villain Team-Up'
Not everything that comes out that I recommend is going to change how you look at the world. Some of it going to be just goofy fun that you can sit down and read for a few hours. One of those that I have been having fun reading is the book "The Essential Super-Villain Team-Up" that came out from Marvel late last year. It reprints a number of comics, including the series Super-Villain Team-Up, issues of the Avengers that tie in to the stories, and a short lived solo series of the Fantastic Four villain Dr. Doom from 1970.
OK, despite the title, none of these stories are essential. You could quite easily go through the rest of your life without reading them, and most comic book fans have. Sales on the series were so poor that the book was canceled around a year and a half after it started, but for Marvel to keep copyright on the term "Super-Villain", they would do annual issues for a few years afterwards, so most super-hero fans didn't read them either. "Essential" is Marvel's term for their cheap black and white reprints on newsprint of their older series, and they sell for $14 - $17 each, and all of them run about 550 pages, so it's a good value if you don't mind the black and white printing.
The book shows the assembly line nature of comics in the 70's, with changing art teams, writers leaving in mid-story, and endless references to other comics long since relegated to dirty back issue bins.
By now, you're asking, "Why is Cory!! Recommending this? It sounds like utter crap!" That's the funny thing, for a series that could have easily been the comics equivalent of an Ed Wood movie, it comes off as goofy, nostalgic fun. The book starts with art and story by Wally Wood, who drew for MAD magazine, the THUNDER Agents, and early DareDevil comics, and his art works well in black and white here, and it actually looks better than when it was printed in color, which muddies Wood rich black tones and classic figure work.
The rest of the book generally features one of Marvel's earliest characters, The Sub-Mariner, who was actually in the first issue of "Marvel Comics" back in 1939. By the 70's, the Sub-Mariner's own book had been canceled, and the Spider-Man book "Marvel Team Up" was selling well, so Marvel published Super-Villain Team Up to keep the Sub Mariner in the public eye, in case fans were interested. The stories themselves are standard 70's super-hero fare, over written, filled with fight scenes, and highly depended upon knowing what has happened in other Marvel comics. The final few issues were a crossover with The Avengers, trying to get fans interested in the comic, and giving the Avengers the chance to fight Dr. Doom and the Sub-Mariner again. The series ended mid-story, but the story is concluded in another super-hero series, and those issues are reprinted here are well.
However, there are a number of fun things that make this book worth your $15. First, the Wally Wood stories are some of his best, and are worth the price alone just to see his art before his decline through the 70's. Second, the goof-ball factor is a lot of fun, much like watching a 70's cop show as it goes through the motions. And third, in the middle of the series, Steve Englehart decided to do a Marvelized version of Batman named "The Shroud" used for both satiric purposes, and so he could show the publisher of Batman that he was more capable of writing the character than their creators and he was writing one of the best Batman runs within a year of leaving Marvel. If you are in the mood for it, Essential Super-Villain Team Up is a couple of rainy afternoons worth of 70's fun. It rates a 3 out of 5.
Cory!! Strode (The Best Dressed Man In Comics) has written comic books, novels, jokes for comedians, Op Ed columns, the on-line comic strip
www.Asylumon5thstreet.com and has all kinds of things on his website
www.solitairerose.com
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
The Mogambo Guru:"I'm Mad As Hell and I'm Not Going to Take It Anymore!" (The Daily Reckoning)
A lot of things scare me nowadays, and the two biggest things I fear are 1) that my wife wants to go on the Jerry Springer show to tell me something, and 2) that the U.S. Treasury issued $49 billion in new debt, which they did, in ten lousy days.
L.A. HEBERLEIN: What happened to real Republicans? (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
I was a Teenage Republican.
Jim Hightower: Bush's Bureaucracy Stiffs Wounded Vets (AlterNet)
The scandals of George W.'s Iraq attack continue to come home to haunt us.
Arianna Huffington: The Washington Establishment Fails Logic 101 (AlterNet)
In any freshman course in logic, the White House reasoning would collapse, shot full of holes.
5 Wishes Living Will
Another Rant
Avery Ant
Reader Suggestion
Laurel & Hardy
Marty,
Heads up: TCM is doing a Laurel & Hardy marathon on April Fools.
Paul in LA
Still protesting after all these years
Thanks, Paul!
The month of April on TCM is loaded with wonderful old comedies - from Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle to Laurel & Hardy to the Marx Brothers and then some!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Another rainy day. With thunder & lightning, too.
It's now officially the 2nd wettest year on record here.
Our pal Jack, who messed up his knee skiing, braved the weather & came over for dinner.
The kid is out of school til 4 April.
In HST's Will
'Gonzo Trust'
In a nod to the first-person form of journalism he popularized, Hunter S. Thompson's will calls for all his property to flow into "The Gonzo Trust" to be managed by three people the writer knew for years.
The will, dated June 27, 2003, was filed in state court Feb. 23, three days after the 67-year-old writer took his own life at his home in Woody Creek, near Aspen. It was made public Monday.
Trustees are attorneys Hal Haddon of Denver and George Tobia of Boston, and historian Douglas Brinkley of New Orleans.
Tobia said the trustees would inventory the estate during the next several months. Brinkley said he was appointed literary executor to manage Thompson's writings and book contracts and find a home for his archives.
'Gonzo Trust'
Told to Pay Rival Promoter
Clear Channel
A federal jury on Monday ordered Clear Channel Communications Inc. to pay a rival promoter $90 million for engaging in anticompetitive behavior to land a deal to promote motorcycle races.
Chicago-based Jam Productions Ltd. had accused Clear Channel of illegally using its entertainment industry might to scuttle Jam's bid to promote Supercross dirt-track motorcycle racing at arenas across the country.
Jurors ruled that while Clear Channel did not violate antitrust laws, the company had intentionally interfered with Jam's contract and its business relationship with the American Motorcycle Association. They ordered Clear Channel to pay $17 million in lost profits and $73 million in punitive damages.
Clear Channel
Portraits of U.S. War Dead
'Faces of the Fallen'
Art and fatherhood became intertwined when John R. Phelps volunteered to paint a portrait that would be included in a tribute to soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. His subject was his son.
Phelps' painting of Marine Pfc. Clarence Phelps is among 1,327 images of soldiers in an exhibit titled "Faces of the Fallen." It opens to the public Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetery.
The images of the soldiers, each 6-by-8 inches, are mounted on plain steel rods that reach to near eye level. Each rod includes a label with the soldier's name, hometown and date of death.
Five rows are arranged chronologically by the soldiers' times of death and stretch along a half-circle inside the small museum at the entrance to the cemetery. The number of images does not represent all those killed - that figure now is more than 1,600.
The exhibit will be on display until Veterans Day.
'Faces of the Fallen'
Ordered to Sell TV Station
Tribune Co
A federal judge has ordered Tribune Co., a Chicago-based media company that owns The Hartford Courant, to sell its TV station WTXX in Waterbury, Conn. to comply with media ownership rules.
Tribune, which owns WTXX and WTIC-TV in Hartford, purchased The Courant from Times Mirror Publications in 2000.
The FCC ordered Tribune to sell WTXX, a WB affiliate, in 2001, but granted extensions that expired in August 2002. The company has asked for a permanent waiver of the cross-ownership rules, but said it has not received a reply.
Tribune Co
Wants to Win Kentucky Derby
David Cassidy
David Cassidy isn't horsing around when he says his life's passion is to win the Kentucky Derby.
The 1970s teen idol has a contender in Mayan King, an undefeated 3-year-old who will run Saturday in the Lane's End Stakes at Kentucky's Turfway Park. Cassidy co-owns the horse with several partners.
Cassidy, 54, has bred thoroughbreds since the 1970s, when he rose to stardom playing Keith Partridge on "The Partridge Family." He has used a different name because he didn't want to draw attention to his celebrity.
David Cassidy
Heading Publishing Imprint
Mary Matalin
Mary Matalin, the Republican pundit and strategist also known as the wife/sparring partner of Democratic consultant James Carville, will run a new conservative publishing imprint at Simon & Schuster.
"It's the absolute nexus of what I love to do," Matalin told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "I think we're on the threshold of a whole new way of looking at politics and policy and there's something vital about getting those ideas down in book form."
The imprint, currently unnamed, is expected to release six to 10 books a year, beginning in 2006.
Mary Matalin
Gets Probation
Tracey Gold
Former "Growing Pains" actress Tracey Gold was placed on three years' probation after she pleaded guilty to a second felony drunken driving charge in a rollover crash that injured her husband and two of their three children.
On Monday, a Superior Court judge decided to reduce the charge to a misdemeanor, but Deputy District Attorney Jeff Gorrell objected and said an earlier plea bargain was off and he wouldn't drop the child-endangerment charges against Marshall.
To avoid those charges, she pleaded guilty to the second felony drunken-driving charge.
Judge Bruce Clark then placed Marshall on three years' probation, ordered her to complete 30 days of work release supervised by the jail and 240 hours of community service.
Tracey Gold
Exiled Iraqi Musician
Rahim AlHaj
For Rahim AlHaj, noted Iraqi oud player, it was an impossible choice: Abandon a beloved instrument that had been his "best friend" since age 9 or risk another arrest by the Iraqi authorities.
Some 14 years ago, AlHaj stood at the Iraqi-Jordanian border for what seemed like an eternity before he realized there was no going back. Under Saddam Hussein's regime, he had already been imprisoned and tortured twice for political activism, and his mother had sold nearly everything to raise $20,000 for a false passport and safe passage to Jordan.
It was also the beginning of an odyssey that took AlHaj through nine years of exile in Jordan and Syria and ultimately landed him in Albuquerque, New Mexico, now home base between a growing number of performances around the country. He recently embarked on a tour through California.
Just five years ago, when AlHaj arrived in the U.S. Southwest as a political refugee, he was destitute and his hosts arranged for him to work at a local McDonald's to earn some money.
Instead he landed a job working nights as a security guard, where he was able to practice playing the oud, often called the grandfather of all string instruments, and learn English by studying a translation of a favorite Nietzsche book.
Rahim AlHaj
Fox TV President Leaving
Gail Berman
Gail Berman, president of entertainment at the Fox Television network, is leaving to take an unspecified role at Paramount Pictures.
Berman would be the first high-profile hire of studio chief Brad Grey, who himself took the top spot at Paramount earlier this month.
Grey came to Paramount with extensive television experience. He had run the talent agency Brillstein-Grey Entertainment and produced films and television shows, most notably the HBO series "The Sopranos."
Gail Berman
Forgotten Text Dusted Off
Alexandre Dumas
A forgotten novel by Alexandre Dumas, author of 'The Three Musketeers', is set to go on sale in June after a scholar found the incomplete work buried among archives in France's national library.
Claude Schopp, an expert on Dumas' works, has spent 10 years touching up the story, entitled 'The Knight of Sainte-Hermine', which was rushed out in rough-and-ready serialised form in Dumas' final days but never published as a novel.
Dumas died in 1870 without completing the 900-page epic, extracts of which were published in serialised form in 1869 in a daily, 'Le Moniteur Universel'. The last chapter was unfinished and Schopp has added the final lines himself, in italics.
Alexandre Dumas
Won't Settle
Sharon Bush
The former wife of President Bush's brother has rejected a proposed settlement of a slander lawsuit accusing her of spreading rumors that Neil Bush fathered a child out-of-wedlock.
Sharon Bush says paternity tests she ordered on the boy last year are unreliable. She claims the doctor who performed the test is unqualified, and that she hired a new DNA expert to review the original test.
The original results "are flawed and should be thrown out," Sharon Bush said in a statement released Tuesday by her publicist. "They do not demonstrate one way or the other who fathered the child."
Despite a letter to a judge from Andrews' lawyers announcing a proposed settlement Monday, Sharon Bush's legal team later filed papers saying the parties have "unsuccessfully attempted to settle this case" and are ready for trial in April.
Sharon Bush
Day Early In Northern Hemisphere
Spring
Spring officially started a day ahead of schedule in the northern hemisphere, with the equinox occurring on Sunday rather than Monday, the Paris observatory said.
March 21 is generally held to be the date of the spring equinox -- or correspondingly the autumn equinox in the southern hemisphere -- but this year day and night were of equal length on Sunday, March 20.
The observatory said that since the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1582, the spring equinox can fall on either March 19, 20, or 21.
The last time it fell on March 19 was in 1796, and it is due to do so again in 2044.
Spring
Prime-Time Nielsen
Ratings
Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen Media Research for March 14-20. Top 20 listings include the week's ranking, with viewership for the week and season-to-date rankings in parentheses. An "X" in parentheses denotes a one-time-only presentation.
1. (1) "American Idol" (Tuesday), Fox, 28.4 million viewers.
2. (3) "American Idol" (Wednesday), Fox, 24.7 million viewers.
3. (X) "Survivor: Palau," CBS, 18.4 million viewers.
4. (42) "House," Fox, 17.3 million viewers.
5. (16) "Cold Case," CBS, 17.3 million viewers.
6. (18) "60 Minutes," CBS, 16 million viewers.
7. (16) "Medium," NBC, 15.4 million viewers.
8. (9) "Everybody Loves Raymond," CBS, 15.2 million viewers.
9. (11) "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 15 million viewers.
10. (7) "CSI: Miami," CBS, 14.6 million viewers.
11. (4) "Desperate Housewives," ABC, 13.3 million viewers.
12. (29) "The Amazing Race: 7," CBS, 12.7 million viewers.
13. (36) "The Simple Life 3," Fox, 12.6 million viewers.
14. (X) "CBS NCAA Basketball Championship" (Sunday) CBS, 12.5 million viewers.
15. (25) "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," NBC, 12.4 million viewers.
16. (32) "Las Vegas," NBC, 12.1 million viewers.
17. (25) "24," Fox, 12.1 million viewers.
18. (22) "Law & Order," NBC, 12 million viewers.
19. (14) "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," ABC, 11.8 million viewers.
20. (18) "The Apprentice 3," NBC, 11.6 million viewers.
Ratings
