Humour

“If you loved someone the way that I love her, then you’d know that what you’re doing right now is unforgivable.”

It’s tempting to look at the absolutely jaw-dropping box-office of Brand New Day (third highest grossing film of all time, baby) and conclude that any worries about the MCU’s continued viability have been put to bed but I’m honestly still a little dubious.

Right now, I think the same thing is happening to superhero movies that happened to superhero comics in the nineteen fifties. Immediately after the big bang of Superman’s debut in Action Comics #1 in 1938, superheroes became a huge part of the cultural zeitgeist during the war years. But, after the war ended interest in superheroes cratered for a lot of reasons too long to go into here, thus bringing to an end the Golden Age of Comic Books. If you have even a cursory knowledge of comics history you probably already knew that. But, what’s sometimes forgotten is that the genre did not completely die.

Superman, famously, not only rode out the collapse of the superhero genre but was even more popular a decade after his debut thanks to radio, movie serials and TV. But even in the comics, the Superman family of titles kept going strong and he wasn’t the only one. All through the fifties Batman, Wonder-Woman and (for some fucking reason) Aquaman were consistently published. These were characters so beloved (and also Aquaman) that they were able to survive the collapse of their genre.

And, as it has so often done before, the history of the superhero genre in movies has repeated what happened in the comics. What it boils down to is that here, in 2026, the really big names, like Superman, Batman and Spider-Man can still put bums on seats. We are not back in 2014 where Marvel could release a movie about, say, Beta Ray Bill teaming up with Power Pack and Howard the Duck to run a Thai restaurant on Mars and still expect it to make a billion dollars.

Maybe I’m wrong (I am, after all, always wrong about everything) and I’ve no doubt that Doomsday will make all the money in the world. That movie is pretty much as sure a bet as anything in this life is. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no risk involved to Marvel. Transformers: Age of Extinction made huge money but so many people saw it and hated it that it poisoned the well for The Last Knight. If Doomsday is not just successful but successful and loved, then we have the opportunity for a real comeback as a new generation of fans is created and old fans who dropped have their interest re-ignited. But a financially successful but loathed Doomsday could actually do more damage long term than a good one that failed at the box office.

Anyway, that’s all in the future.

I’ve come to realise that within me are two wolves. And by “wolves” I mean “middle aged white dudes”.

On the one hand, I try to review these movies as movies, judging them as works of art on their own merit. But the guy on the right keeps complaining about things they changed from the comics. I try to keep that guy in check but I don’t want to ignore him entirely either. Yes, total fidelity to source material is neither possible, sensible or even desirable. But if, for example, a movie adapts a book and absolutely butchers its themes and characters, then that is a flaw of the film and it is valid criticism to point that out. I bring this up because this review is definitely going to trend negative but my criticisms are going to be more Comic Book Guy than Anton Ego. As a movie on its own, it’s fine. But as a Spider-Man movie I think it’s fucking terrible.

Man, the comments are going to be fun on this one.

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Bats versus Bolts: Universal Women

Dracula brought Universal back from the dead.

In 1931, Carl Laemmle Junior made a bet on the sickness and depravity of the American cinema-going public and made out like a goddamned bandit, turning his father’s ailing, indebted studio into a money-making powerhouse (for a while) and cementing Universal’s reputation as the natural home of American horror cinema.

It is a truth Universally (heh) acknowledged that a studio in possession of a hit must be in want of a franchise and Dracula’s Daughter debuted in 1936, five years after the original.

Likewise, plans for a sequel to James Whale’s classic Frankenstein were being laid even before the movie was released. After the rapturous response of early test screenings, the ending was re-shot to allow for the monster’s survival. Whale was tempted back to direct and proceeded to give as few fucks as an openly gay man in 1930s Hollywood might be expected to give; bupkiss, and by all accounts just decided to have fun with it. He had fun with it, and the result is widely regarded as even better than the original, one of the greatest films of Hollywood’s Golden Age and altogether quite good.

Dracula’s Daughter, by contrast, is primarily known (where it is known at all) as an obscure curio mostly of interest for its queer subtext.

Well, I am also an obscure curio mostly of interest for my queer subtext and I’m going to spoil something right now: this particular bout of Bats versus Bolts might be a lot more closely fought than you’d expect.

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Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000)

Hey, you know that series of novels featuring impossibly gorgeous vampires that’s sold more copies than The DaVinci Code?

If you said “Twilight”, hang your head in shame and face the wall.

Hideyuki Kikuchi, as well as having a name that cheers you up when you say it, is the author of the Vampire Hunter D series, clocking in at a whopping 58 novels. The story tells the story of a “Dunpeal”, a half-human, half-vampire vampire hunter in the far, far distant future. It is also not, as I had assumed, a manga. I learned this when I ordered the first omnibus for research only to find myself holding a novel roughly the length of Lord of the Rings with four days before the review was due to go up.

My contribution to the male reading crisis notwithstanding today’s movie is the second anime adaptation of Vampire Hunter D; Bloodlust from 2000. The first was 1985’s Vampire Hunter D which I haven’t actually seen but sound off in the comments if you’d like me to cover it.

The reason I wanted to review Bloodlust (apart from needing something vaguely spooky for October) was that I’ve had the DVD for this sitting in my collection for around a quarter of a century and yet I’d only viewed it maybe once and I could remember precisely two things about it:

It was one of the single most beautiful pieces of animation I’d ever seen.
I didn’t really enjoy it.

But I’m older, wiser, greyer and more infused with a sense of apocalyptic dread now. Time for a reappraisal.

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“Oh, God. That’s awful. That’s never gonna work.”

It’s actually quite hard to pin down when Supergirl first appeared as a character because, once you have Superman, the idea of Supergirl already exists in a conceptual form and it’s just a matter of time before someone puts pen to paper and actually draws her. There were several Supergirls and Superwomen before the one everyone is familiar with, and even more after her. Sometimes she’s the future daughter of Lois Lane and Clark Kent. Sometimes she’s a fallen angel. Sometimes she’s an alien shapeshifter or a refugee from an alternate reality. And sometimes she’s Claire Kent, the identity Clark took on when he was changed into a woman by an alien witch as punishment for being sexist.

Man, those are some woke rural Kansans in the fifties. Good for them.

But the most famous and long-lasting version of the Maid of Steel debuted in Action Comics in 1959 drawn by Al Plastino and written by Otto Binder, who I don’t think gets enough credit for being a genuine trailblazer in terms of creating female superheroes. He also created Mary Marvel for Fawcett and Miss America for Marvel (confusing, I know).

This version, Kara Zor-El, the blonde teenage cousin of Superman, has endured as one of the most popular and iconic female superheroes in the medium probably second to only Wonder Woman (at least prior to the MCU). And, like most long-running superheroes she’s undergone many changes in her portrayal. Early on she was depicted as essentially her cousin with a higher hemline but modern stories have leaned into the interesting wrinkle of Kara actually being raised on Krypton and having a much more alien perspective on Earth than the All-American Clark.

She’s a fascinating character with a rich history who deserves a great movie.

What she got was one of the WORST MOVIES EVER MADE.

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The Day the Earth Blew Up and Coyote Versus ACME

Since the nineteen sixties Warner Bros has had what must be a uniquely frustrating problem:

They own some of the most beloved and iconic cartoon characters in history but have no viable format with which to use them. The Looney Tunes were the absolute masters of the theatrical animated short, which these days is like being the world’s best court jester. Impressive, but how exactly does one make money from that?

Each one of these characters was honed by a process of rigorous cinematic evolution for one purpose; deliver as many fantastic gags as possible within a seven minute span. And, like any creature that evolved for a super-specific niche, they don’t handle changes to their environment well.

Part of the problem is that their style of comedy is primarily visual. Oh sure, there’s plenty of great verbal comedy but the bulk of the laughs come from Mel Blanc’s delivery and some of the most sublime animation ever put to film. And you’re just not going to get that on a TV animation budget. Especially not Mel Blanc.

As for movies, Warner Bros have tried to make the Tunes work in feature animation for decades. These were usually anthology films, taking several classic shorts united by a common theme (horror, sci-fi, show-biz) and weaving them into a loose narrative. At their best, these films are fine. But they are very obviously classic cartoons interspersed with visibly weaker animation and an audibly older and tireder Mel Blanc. They don’t really work as movies and that comes down, fundamentally, to just the different nature of how Warner Bros crfated these characters compared to, say, Disney.

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“Well I hope you don’t expect me to save you, ’cause I don’t do that anymore.”

Superman 3 is probably the most reputationally fluid of all the Reeves-era Superman flicks. One and (to a lesser extent admittedly) Two are uncontested classics of the genre, Supergirl and Quest for Peace were seen as dogs when they were released and are seen as dogs now. But the third outing is where I think consensus breaks down. Some people hate it even more than Superman 4. Mad people, I suspect, gibbering loons who should not be allowed out of the house unsupervised but they are an important and influential constituency in modern affairs and we overlook their views at our peril.

Superman 3’s standing at any given moment really depends on the general public’s taste in superhero media and how tolerant they are feeling towards silliness. For this is, let us be very clear, a deeply silly film. Richard Lester, now fully in control and having banished the last vestigaes of Richard Donner’s weighty, epic solemnity is ready to give us his thesis statement on what Superman is. And his answer boils down to; “Superman is very silly”.

So, Lester decides that Superman should be funny. And, if you’re the Salkinds that doesn’t just mean getting a comic actor to join the cast. That means getting THE BIGGEST STAND UP COMIC IN AMERICA *PUFF CIGARS*.

Now, the Salkinds’ “bigger equals better” approach served them quite well in the past but here I think it came a serious cropper. Richard Pryor is, and always will be, on the Rushmore of American comedy legends but (heresy incoming) I don’t think he was a great comedic actor. He certainly isn’t in this movie, most of his schtick (and oh my Christ is there a lot of it) comes across really laboured and kinda leaden. There’s a couple of problems here. Firstly, Pryor isn’t performing his own material. He’s an actor performing someone else’s script. Second, I think the Salkinds expected Pryor to do what Bill Murray did in Ghostbusters and just do his own thing while treating the script with a kindly disregard. But here’s the thing: Richard Pryor loved Superman and treated the material with a respect that is admirable but not particularly funny. To be sure, there are parts here that I find humorous but that’s more a result of waging a war of attrition. Pryor gets a whopping half an hour of screentime, compared to around forty minutes for Superman. He is very much the deuteragonist. In fact, the very first shot of the movie is his face.

In my review of Superman I mentioned how I consider it to be the ultimate “eighties” movie but I think this might have it beat. Superman 3 opens with a black man applying for unemployment benefit and being denied because he kept getting fired for stealing and being incompetent, only for him to see an ad looking for computer programmers and immediately getting a stable and well paid job because gosh darn it the economy is just that good. That may be the most eighties thing I have ever seen.

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“I see you are practiced in worshipping things that fly. Good.”

Well, it was nice while it lasted.

As mind bogglingly ambitious as Richard Donner’s Superman is, it’s incredible to think that the original vision was even more epic in scope. The idea was that Superman 1 and 2 would be released in quick succession and would constitute one single, massive saga, much like what Quentin Tarantino did with Kill Bill years later. Instead, mid-way through production Donner was fired by the Salkinds and replaced by another Dick, Richard Lester, who famously declared after seeing Donner’s vision for the film that he wasn’t interested in doing that “David Lean thing” (Lean being an English director famous for big, lavish epics).

It’s easy to cast Donner as an artistic savant whose vision was crushed by soulless Hollywood suits and it’s not even like that’s an entirely invalid read. Many people have made fun of the Salkinds, including me, Unshaved Mouse, in literally my last review.

But the truth, of course, is a bit more complicated than that. Donner was a notorious, almost Kubrickian perfectionist and his shoot ran way over time and, oh yeah, was the most expensive film in history at that point. It’s very easy to say that the Salkinds should just have backed off and let Donner cook when it’s not your money he’s cooking. And, to be fair to the Salkinds, they actually had a reputation for being very director friendly as producers go. Not takings sides, probably faults all around. Anyway, the result is we have two versions of Superman 2. The first is the entirely reshot version directed by Richard Lester. The second is the Richard Donner cut, a version assembled by Donner in 2006 using a combination of his own surviving footage, out-takes, screen-tests and some footage cribbed from Lester’s version. Both versions are worth your while, neither is the equal of the first film and both are fascinatingly flawed in different ways.

The plot, at least, is the same in both, at least in the broad-strokes.

The three Phantom Zone Criminals are freed by a nuclear device launched into space by Superman and begin to make their way to Earth. Lex Luthor escapes from prison with the help of Miss Teschmacher and they schlep all the way to the North Pole where they discover the Fortress of Solitude and learn about Zod. Meanwhile, Lois Lane deduces or is just basically shown that Clark is Superman and confesses her love to him. He consults with a holographic version of his father or (depending on the version) his much cheaper mother and is told that he can be Superman or have fine Earthling booty but not both. He gives up his powers and returns to civilization only to learn that Zod has basically conquered the Earth and is calling him out on national TV like Ultimate Warrior calling out the Hulkster. Superman returns to the Fortress of Solitude, bullshits his way into getting his powers back, flies to Metropolis, gets his ass beat and flies away. Lex Luthor, who has basically ingratiated his way into Zod’s inner circle, tells him where the Fortress of Solitude is and they take Lois hostage and fly over there. Superman fights them and then tricks them into losing their powers like he did whereupon he and Lois either possibly kill them (Lester cut) or DEFINITELY KILL THEM (Donner cut), thus saving the Earth.

But make no mistake, they are VERY different movies.

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“I’m here to fight for truth, and justice, and the American way.”

Superman (1978) is the greatest movie of the eighties.

I know what I said.

Yes, fine, there’s the number “1978” after the title but who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? Superman for me is the starting pistol of that era of huge populist genre blockbusters (Indiana Jones, ET, Back to the Future, Never Ending Story et al) that roared into American cinemas as the stings of Vietnam and Watergate began to fade and America discovered a new Reaganite swagger, for good and ill. It is the harbinger of the cultural era that would climax with the collapse of the Berlin wall and the apex of American power and prestige, a victory so total that serious people were able to proclaim the end of history itself and not be laughed out of the room.

And it’s the ultimate eighties movie with regards to the logic that went into creating it. I can almost picture Alexander and Ilya Salkind (the father-son producing team behind the film) chomping on cigars as they hash out their vision.

“We’re gonna make a movie about the BIGGEST SUPERHERO OF THEM ALL!”

“Yeah, and we’ll spend MORE MONEY THAN ANY PICTURE IN HISTORY!”

“Know who we’ll get to write the script? MARIO PUZO, WHO WROTE THE GODFATHER WHICH IS THE BEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME WHICH MEANS HE’LL WRITE THE BEST SUPERHERO MOVIE OF ALL TIME!”

*pause for vigorous puffing of cigars*

“Yeah, and we’ll get the BIGGEST MOVIE STAR IN THE WORLD AND PAY HIM MORE THAN ANY ACTOR IN HISTORY FOR TEN MINUTES OF SCREENTIME!”

“And we’ll film the sequel SIMULTANEOUSLY! BACK TO BACK!”

“But Pop, what if the first movie’s a flop?”

“HOW COULD IT BE A FLOP?! LOOK AT HOW MUCH MONEY WE’RE SPENDING!”

“I LOVE YOU POP!”

“I LOVE YOU SON!”

“AND WE BOTH LOVE CIGARS!”

And when you think about it like that, it feels like it had to fail right? It’s like with the Titanic. Once people start talking about how God couldn’t sink this ship, you damn well know that iceberg’s coming. That kind of hubris can’t go unpunished.

And yet.

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Knock Knock UK/Ireland cover reveal!

Hello folks!

Great news! I can at last reveal that the UK/Ireland rights to Knock Knock Open Wide have been acquired by British publisher Solaris for release March next year with an absolutely gorgeous new cover by Sam Gretton.

BEHOLD!

And in a weird bit of synchonicity I had the absolute pleasure to be interviewed by Violet and Aurora for their podcast Totally Not Illiterate (they’re not, I checked). I’ll post that when it’s up but for now enjoy their review of Knock Knock. They’re a super young channel and they really deserve to get as big an audience as possible so please do.

“I’m going to give you one last chance to stop acting like Nazi stormtroopers.”

Between the Superman radio series’ colossal decade-long run, the Fleischer cartoons and two multi-part film serials, I have to wonder if audiences in 1951 were starting to experience superhero fatigue. Remember how people complained when we got the Ed Norton Incredible Hulk so soon after Eric Bana’s? That at least was a five year gap. Kirk Alyn had barely flown offscreen before George Reeves stepped into his bright red boots.

Now, you might be a little confused as to why I’m covering this. If I’m only doing the theatrical live action Superman movies, what is George Reeves doing here? Didn’t he play Superman on TV? Indeed he did. Reeves, as well as being the reason why everyone gets Christopher Reeve’s name wrong, was the star of The Adventures of Superman which ran for a mighty impressive 106 episodes in the fifties. However, this movie served as a pilot of sorts for the TV show and was released in theatres. Alyn was apparently offered the chance to return to the role but he declined for two reasons. One, like many movie actors at the time he thought that TV was a passing fad (incorrect) and two, he worried that being typecast as Superman would kill his acting career stone dead (sadly, right on the money).

And so, the mantle passed to George Reeves, a military veteran and B-movie player whose acting career prior to becoming Clark Kent had deteriorated to the point that he’d been forced to take work digging cesspools just to make ends meet. Reeves was a fascinating and admirable man who deserved so much better than his tragic and mysterious death. But, if nothing else, he was for decades THE definitive onscreen Superman.

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