Fritz the Cat (1972)

“Heeey everyone.”

“Oh look guys, it’s Spouse of Mouse!”

“Heeey everyone. I was just hoping we could have a little chat before Mouse starts the review. Just us.”

“I know you all think it’s really funny that you got Mouse to review Fritz the Cat. I’m sure you’re all having a big laugh. “Ha” you might say, and also “Ha.”

“But here’s the thing. This movie messed him up so badly that I don’t know if he’ll ever recover. And I’m a simple mouse who lives by a simple rule: You hurt the ones I love?”

“I WILL FUCK YOUR FUCKING SHIT RIGHT THE FUCK UP. IF YOU EVER PULL ANYTHING LIKE THAT AGAIN I WILL TRACK YOU DOWN THERE IS NOWHERE YOU CAN HIDE. PAIN? I WILL MAKE YOU LONG FOR SOMETHING AS SWEET AS PAIN.”

“’Kay? Enjoy the review.”

***

Do you know what it’s like to review Fritz the Cat? To sit in the dark watching that cat fuck everything that moves, to feel your brain slowly coming apart from the constant assault of surreal, messed up, toked out, crazy shit? No. You don’t. Because you’ve never been out there, man. Out in the real deep shit. This movie man. You don’t know, man. It’s like, you think you have a handle on things, man, like life and art and truth and beauty man like they’re all just packaged and sold in these neat little Styrofoam boxes, man, and then this movie comes along and it’s like, you know man? Like, what does it all mean, man? I…I…I shouldn’t be doing this man, I should be a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas, man…

“Mouse, relax. You’re going crazy over there, man.”

“YOU WEREN’T THERE, MAN!”

Sorry. Sorry. I’m alright. Okay. Let’s do this.

For as long as there have been comics there have been “underground” comics, the kind of comics that aren’t read in a newspaper at the breakfast table on a lazy Sunday morning but are more usually read at night. Under the covers. With a flashlight.

Jerkin’ it.

Pornographic comic books or “Tijuana Bibles” were especially popular in the Great Depression and usually featured well known comic book characters or public figures engaging in what scripture calls “the hard fuckin’”. No one was safe. Popeye, Betty Boop, Superman you name it, someone drew them doin’ it.

Trust me, just be glad it’s Minnie and not Pluto.

By the 1960s the underground comics (or “comix”) scene had merged with the broader counter culture movement. In contrast to mainstream comics which had to abide by the Comics Code Authority, comix were uncensored and didn’t abide by jack shit. These books were absolutely steeped in sixties drug and music culture, often politically radical and transgressive and extreme in their depictions of sex and violence. They also, it must be said, frequently had a streak of misogyny a mile wide. But at its best, the comix scene produced some of the finest American sequential art of the twentieth century (Art Spiegelman, for example, honed his craft in indie magazines in the seventies).

The one creator who is probably more associated with the comix scene than any other is Robert Crumb and his most famous creation is almost certainly Fritz the Cat, an anthropomorphised cat who’s kinda like Felix crossed with Roosh V. The Fritz strips first appeared in the magazine Help! where the editors famously responded to his submission with a letter saying; “Dear R. Crumb, we think the little pussycat drawings you sent us were just great. Question is, how do we print them without going to jail?” The comic became a genuine breakout hit and was read by many a long-haired hippie degenerate, one of whom was our old friend Ralph Bakshi.

Bakshi had set up his own animation studio and was looking to create animation for adults. He came across one of Crumb’s books and bought the rights to the strip. Warner Bros originally were going to fund it but then they saw Bakshi’s early shoots.

Instead, the movie ended up being funded by Cinemation Industries, purveyor of such highbrow classics as The Black Godfather, Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song and The Eighteen Year Old Cheerleaders.

It’s important to remember that there was a weird period from the late sixties to around the mid-eighties where porn was pretty much mainstream, and you could just go to the cinema and watch a big budget porno made and financed by a large studio as opposed to some dude with a camera and a couch. Fritz the Cat is very much a part of that. It’s not solely a porno but it’s got relatives who are pornos if you catch me. So before we get into this review please take note that this is a movie with sex and nudity, pretty grotesque ethnic caricatures, frequent homophobic and racial slurs and some generally fucked up shit.

What I’m trying to say is…

“This review ain’t NSFW for nothin’ baby.”

(more…)

Those wacky Sharpson boys.

Happy Father’s Day everybody!

As some of you may know, my brothers John and Donal are both regulars on the Facts series on YouTube. For Father’s day they brought my Dad onto the show (thanks for showing me up guys, I just got him a frickin’ book) and not to brag or anything but my old man just killed it. Here’s the video.

“We’re sort of like a team. “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” type thing.”

Superhero teams have been around for almost as long as there have been superhero comics, with the first, the Justice Society of America, debuting in 1940. Since then they’ve been a staple of the genre and for good reason. They give editors a place to test out new characters that can be spun off into their own books if readers take a liking to them and there’s simply more stories you can tell with a large group than you can when you’re focused on a single hero. One character’s not working out? Simply kill him off and replace him and the book carries on unaffected, much like the earth will keep turning inexorably after your inevitable death (wow, where did that come from, Mouse?). In fact, it’s pretty much a cast-iron rule that where you have superheroes, you will have superhero teams. My point is, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby did many ground-breaking, ingenious and innovative things with the comic book medium during their partnership in the sixties, but inventing the Avengers was not one of them. Once they had created a certain number of superheroes, putting them all in the one book was about as inevitable as the tides. And to be honest…that kinda shows. When you read those old comics you can tell when Stan and Jack were really invested and bringing their A-game to a book (Fantastic Four, Thor, Silver Surfer) and when they were kinda phoning it in (Daredevil, X-Men and the Avengers). Even the name is half-assed. The first issue literally ends with the heroes standing around and saying “What should we call ourselves?” “The…avengers?” “Sure, let’s go with that.” Like, they literally just went with the generic place-holder superhero team name.

If the creation of the Avengers comic book was unremarkable and by-the -numbers, though, the movie was anything but. In fact, I’m pretty sure future movie historians will be looking back at this as the start of something entirely new. Whether that’s a good thing or not remains to be seen but regardless, this movie is a big effing deal. For the first time, audiences were expected to go to a movie that shared continuity, characters and plot with four separate pre-existing series of movies. This was something on a scale that the film industry had simply never seen before.

And, be honest, you kinda thought it would suck. Didn’t you?

Didn’t you?

C’mon. Be honest. You thought it was going to suck. You can say it.

“Yeah…”

“SEIZE HER!”

Seriously though, the reaction to this movie was damn near euphoric but part of that just had to have been due to the fact that Marvel had even pulled it off. The fact that it was simply something you could point to and say “Yup, that’s a movie.” was in and of itself something to Marvel at (I ain’t ashamed). Four years later, though, when every studio and their mother is trying to ape Marvel’s shared universe concept, does it still hold up as anything other than a well-executed gimmick? Is it even a good movie in its own right? Does it have what noted film-maker Jackie Treehorn called the “little extras”?

“Story? Production values? Feelings?”

Let’s take a look.

(more…)

Justice League: New Frontier (2008)

Comic Book historians divide the history of superhero comics into “ages”. The Golden Age lasted from the late thirties to the end of the second world war. It began with the creation of Superman and saw the births of Batman, Wonder Woman, Captains America and Marvel, the original incarnations of the Green Lantern and the Flash as well as a host of others. Owing to the ongoing unpleasantness at the time, many of these characters were patriotic, Japanazi fighting do-gooders like the greatest superhero for all time, the Original Human Torch.

“Mouse, stop showing that panel of the Original Human torch calling Hitler a liar while burning him a…”
“NEVER!”

Also, owing to the fact that this was a brand new genre and folks were still figuring out the rules these comics tended to be absolutely batshit insane.

In the forties we had a superhero who was a giant flying eyeball. How’s that for diversity?

And then, with the war over, the superhero fad died about as quickly as it had ignited and superheroes pretty much vanished from the shelves with the exception of a few stubborn holdouts like Superman.

Now, I want you to imagine that you wake up tomorrow and everyone is playing POGs. Like, POGS are suddenly huge again. Kids are playing POGs, college students are playing POGs, journalists are writing long earnest think pieces about the cultural ramifications of the POGsurgance instead of doing actual work. This weird fad from fifteen or twenty years back suddenly comes roaring to prominence again and never leaves and before you know it movie studios are making massive-budget spectacle movies with inter-connected continuity and people are lining down the street to watch Pog versus Pog: Dawn of Pog. That’s kind of what happened with the dawn of the Silver Age of comics in the late fifties/early sixties. So what happened?

“Two words. Sput! Nik!”

With the dawn of the space race, America became obsessed with science and its wild, stoner little sister science fiction. Whereas Golden Age heroes tended to have magical or mythical based powers, the new crop of superheroes belonged firmly in the realm of science fiction. Instead of getting his powers from an old magic lantern, the new Green Lantern was a space cop gifted with fabulous technology by a race of all powerful aliens. The new Flash was police scientist Barry Allen who eschewed the Roman mythology inspired look of his predecessor, Jay Garrick. Even the few surviving Golden Age heroes adapted to the times; I mean look at what poor Batman had to deal with for chrissakes:

“I AM THE NIGHT!”

Over at Marvel, the hottest new properties were Spider-man, a science student turned superhero, and the Fantastic Four, a quartet of astronauts who literally got their powers as a result of the space race.

Much like “the sixties” doesn’t simply mean the years between 1960 and 1969 but refers to an entire cultural…thing, “silver age” has come to represent a specific attitude and aesthetic in comics. The comics of this period tended to be bright, optimistic, occasionally goofy as hell and suffused with a spirit of Moon Shot era can-do. New Frontier, Darwyn Cooke’s classic 2004 love letter to that whole era, simultaneously interrogates the period in which those stories were written while simultaneously celebrating what made them great. In 2008, Cooke teamed up with his old partner Bruce Timm (Batman the Animated Series) to adapt this story as part of Warner’s line of direct to to DVD animations. Did Cooke’s work make the transition unscathed? Let’s take a look.

(more…)

A Tale of Two Republics

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Donald Trump where I called him mean names and mocked the size of his tiny, tiny hands. It was fun. We all laughed. Good times.

He’s now the nominee of the Republican party.

Also, around a month ago I wrote a post on the results of the most recent Irish general election and how it was going to be damn near impossible to form a government. Let’s tie those two together almost as if that was my plan all along. *tents fingers*

Trump. What? FUCK.

Trump What FUCK indeed, amigo. There’s a whole squirming nest-of-naked-baby-rats mess of factors that have brought us to this point and account for the appeal of Donald Trump.

Like racism?

This is a big part of it, no question. Some of it is just the general home-grown racial tension that’s been apiece with the American cultural landscape since…oh, Columbus. But more specifically to this moment in history is the fact that vast swathes of white America is in full on demographic panic. Current US immigration policies have led to a huge shift in the size of the Hispanic population relative to non-Hispanic whites, something encouraged by both main parties. The Democrats, obviously, because Hispanics form a core part of their coalition, but the Republicans too because, while they make political hay from coded racist appeals to white voters, having more low skilled workers than there are low skilled jobs helps keep wages depressed which is good news for the Koch brothers and other corporate Republican donors. Throw in lingering post 9/11 Islamophobia and a candidate who promises to deal with all of the above in short order, and presto, you have a Trump rally.

So Americans are just racist and we can all go home?

No, and here’s where I think it gets scary. Because I think the rise of Trump means that we’re seeing the final days of American democracy as we know it.

To counterbalance the grimness of that last sentence, here is a picture of a kitten wearing a jaunty little hat.

Now, I don’t mean that Trump is going to win (he probably won’t) or that once he won he’d abolish democratic institutions and declare himself dictator*. Any president who tried that (particularly one whose support in his own party is as tenuous as Trump’s) would very quickly find himself impeached, arrested or shot in no particular order.

No, the problem is built into how America actually votes. Sooner or later, Trump was going to happen.

(more…)

Darwyn Cooke: 1962-2016

Man, 2016 can eat a big one.

News has broken today that Darwyn Cooke, probably one of the most skilled and distinctive comic book artists of his generation lost his battle with cancer in the early hours of this morning.

He was 53.

Despite his phenomenal talent, Cooke had a hard time breaking into the comics industry. He submitted work to the major publishing houses in the early nineties because his work was simple, elegant and utterly beautiful and that’s just not what the nineties were about.

He did however, work as a storyboard artist on Batman The Animated Series, Superman the Animated series and Batman Beyond, animating the main title of the latter. He finally found success in comics in the early 21st century, with a notable run on Catwoman, creating a new visual look for the character that was instantly iconic. He is probably most famous for New Frontier, a story featuring most of the DC comics stable set in the late fifties/early sixties which ranks with Watchmen and Kingdom Come as one of the all-time great superhero stories.

He was also, from what I hear from my friends in the comics industry, a thoroughly wonderful bloke.

I was originally planning to review The Avengers on the 26th. However, in light of today’s news I have decided to review a movie that I’ve been meaning to for quite some time. To commemorate the life of this remarkable artist, I will be reviewing the 2008 animated adaptation of New Frontier.

Ar dheis Dé a anam. RIP, Mr Cooke.

Unshaved Mouseketeers Assemble!

Hey guys, so you know how everyone is always saying how women in Saudi Arabia have it so easy? Yeah, they don’t say that, and there’s a reason. Longtime readers of the blog already know my friend Sahar and her blog Saharcasm.

“Good title.”

Sahar has just been shortlisted for the Philadelphia Creativity for a Cause contest. As well as making sweet, sweet, delicious cheese, Philadelphia is offering to fund a business idea to improve the lives of people in the middle east. So what’s Sahar got in mind? I’ll let her explain it in her own words:

“If I win, (when I win – let’s stay positive!) I will get the mentorship and support to put my business idea to life. I want to focus on an English club for ladies in the Middle East. After living in KSA for 17 months, working as an English teacher, I have realised that it can be very difficult for women to survive. THERE IS NOTHING TO DO.

There were days where I almost went mad with boredom and I’m seeing a lot of the same from various online communities. I want to offer ladies English lessons, new mommy classes, book clubs, public speaking courses, microsoft word/excel/powerpoint course, halaqa, art & crafts, and so much more. The education system in KSA for the most part does not include any extra curricular activities so for some ladies it will be the first time they ever did anything like this. We don’t have a service like this in KSA, and anything even a little bit similar doesn’t cater specifically to the needs of the women involved. (Nurses struggling to keep up in an English speaking environment? Unemployed women without a college education who want to enter the work force?) They’re all just thrown together and given a standard course – it just doesn’t work!

I want to bring this service to the women in Saudi Arabia that really need it. I will be fighting constraints that hindered their education in the past such as – transport, childcare, timing, commitment, and cost so anyone can avail of the service. I’ve met these women, I know what they need, and they are some of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met in my life. There’s so much potential, it’s time to tap into it…”

This is a fantastic cause and I really want to help Sahar pull this off, so if you’ve got a second, please click on this link log in with your Facebook account and give her a vote. Thanks guys.

Guest Reviews with Paper Alchemist: The Snow Queen (1995)

Hey, everyone!

And see ya later, arachnophobes!

It’s your favourite Antipodean arachnid alchemist here. Mouse is off recovering from his holiday in the Big Apple, so I’m filling his wee little shoes this week.

As Australia is home to the Big Pineapple, the Big Prawn and the Big Banana, I was very disappointed to discover that there is no Big Apple in the Big Apple.

It’s late autumn where I live at the moment. Despite the very loveliest April we’ve ever had, the Season of Mud has now begun, and I can’t feel my extremities. You might have a mental image of me lurking in some rusty outback shack, where it’s hot enough to fry bacon and eggs on the driveway, but I’m from the temperate zone in the south. And believe me, it gets cold down here. Once, in my town, it actually snowed for a couple of minutes!

‘*snort*’

‘She’s dead serious, Europe! Everyone thinks I’m all about beaches and red dirt, but Antarctica’s just across the ditch from me. Sometimes people in Victoria and Tassie have to put on bloody trackie-dacks!’

‘Is that some kind of anti-shark armour, or…?’

‘Nah, ya dag. Tracksuit pants.’

Long trousers!

“Pfft…”

‘It’s true! Poor buggers have to cover their legs right down to the ankle.’

‘Sorry. You’re – you’re fine. It’s cute. Don’t let me stop either of you.’

Right now, most of you are probably cuddling little lambies, and dancing around Maypoles with flowers in your hair (I know you don’t have swooping magpies or termite swarms, so I have adjusted my mental image of spring in the Northern Hemisphere accordingly). You guys are just coming into summer right now, so it may strike you as odd that I’m reviewing such a wintry film. But for me, today’s movie is seasonally appropriate.

Which is probably the nicest thing I can say about it.

(more…)

Thoughts on New York

The lift in the hotel goes so fast and so high your ears pop.

There is a constant rumble in the background. The sound of millions of living human beings. It sounds like thunder about to break but it’s also oddly soothing.

It costs how much?

No, I don’t want to buy your CD.

The bus tour costs over $150 and is worth every damn cent.

The hotel is near a fire station, and the wail of the sirens ricochets off the sides of the skyscrapers. It sounds like wolves tearing around the tower, trying to get in.

Times Square feels like reality is breaking down around you in a bleed of colour, light and noise. If someone walked up to you and said “This is a dream. You are about to wake up.” you’d believe them.

It costs how much?

The fancy food is great. The fast food is AMAZING.

For such a large city the people are really friendly.

“Hey, what part of the UK you guys from?” “Ah ha ha. Bravely spoken.”

(more…)

News Round Up

Hi guys. Couple of items of news to cover and I might as well start with the big effing news.

THE BIG EFFING NEWS

Remember that play I was writing for the Abbey Theatre? Well, I handed it in and they said “sure, why not?” So. Yeah. A play of mine is getting a professional production in the national theatre.

Excuse me for a moment.

A Falling Ton of Iron should be going up sometime in 2017-2018 and I’ll keep you all posted. Nothing left to do now but wait and hope I don’t go down in history as the worst thing to happen to the Abbey since Ernest Blythe. Moving on!

The Devil’s Heir

Remember when I said that my most recent draft of the Devil’s Heir had been lost? Well, it’s been found.

It was actually on an old USB key but you get the gist.

New chapters will be going up soon, thanks for your patience.

New York, New York

This month Ms Mouse turns thirty so to celebrate I’m taking the love of my life to see Hamilton on Broadway.

“You packed?”

“Yep.”

“Now remember, we’re mice in New York, if we get seperated…”

“I climb the tallest building I can find and sing “Somewhere, out there.” until you find me, I know.”

Anyway, this means I won’t be around to do the next review but it’s okay because…

Meet your new Mouse

Paper Alchemist has very kindly agreed to step up while I’m in the States.

“Hey folks! I’ll see you all in two weeks!”

“Mouse, are you sure about this?”

“What? Amelia’s a great reviewer.”

“No doy. Remember what happened when John Stewart left The Daily Show and John Oliver subbed for him?”

“Yeah, it worked out great. In fact, people actually preferred John Oliver and he ended up getting his own show that became even more popular than the Daily Show oooooooooooh…”

“Yeah.”

“Ah it’s fine. I’ll just leave her a movie to review that’s so horrible it’ll destroy her will to review anything ever again.”

“Hey Mouse. Thanks so much for letting me do this.”

“No problem. I’m a good friend.”

So that’s it. Thanks for everything guys. Check in on 12^th of May for Amelia’s review, and then I’ll be back on the 26^th for the Avengers review. Mouse out.