(We're in the home stretch now!)
One of the confusing things about Japanese superheroes to the outsider is the maddening array of sub-genres available in something that looks all the same to them. Is it a Rider show, or a sentai show? How should they know? But at least there is some logic to why those shows are slotted into those categories. Not so much for the "metal hero" genre, which is based on two factors : 1) shows that aired in the same time slot on a certain network and 2) heroes that use metal.
Pretty flimsy basis for a genre, don't you think? Yet "metal hero" is a commonplace shorthand even for Toei, despite the fact that it covers everything from armored heroes to robot policemen to heroic ninja to mechanical dog things. By pure happenstance, Disc 6 of this collection turns out to be a "metal hero" disc. This is a much better thing than you'd probably gather from my intro.
It is worth noting that METALDER is considered one of the best Japanese superhero shows ever by a number of people who've seen a lot of them. I'm not sure I agree, but it's dark and somber and filled with robots whaling the hell out of each other. It's also sort of loosely based on KIKAIDER, and later became an aspect of the nearly forgotten American series VR TROOPERS.
The JIBAN movie is entertaining and filled with creepy monsters (courtesy of Keita Amemiya, color me unsurprised). I was not expecting this. JIBAN is one of those shows that is known for dialing down the action content, but they amped it up a little here. Jiban himself? Though there are obvious differences, he owes a certain debt to a chap named RoboCop.
Speaking of RoboCop, an old penpal of mine once exclaimed "A purple RoboCop!" regarding the JANPERSON movie. He wasn't wrong. Janperson is possibly even more influenced by the character than Jiban. Though this story lacks both Bill Goldy and Gun Gibson from the series (don't ask), it still manages to be complete insanity. To give you an idea - evil clowns are only the BEGINNING.
BLUE SWAT has a not undeserved reputation as one of the most boring tokusatsu series ever. The movie does little to persuade me otherwise, though it isn't horrible. I'm a little vague as to whether it is original, re-edited from the series, or some combination of the two. I haven't ever found myself caring enough to research this.
B-FIGHTER was touted by some as a return to form for the "metal hero" genre (cough cough). That's debatable, but there are certain similarities to the fast-paced, action-packed "space sheriff" shows which launched the whole shebang in the first place. After several years of stoic armored/robotic champions, the B-Fighters were a breath of fresh air. The insect-themed gadgetry added to the novelty, and toy sales, too. I'd still sort of like one of those functionally improbable "Input Magnums".
And on that toy-focused note, we conclude this installment of this seemingly never-ending review series. But fear not! This is the penultimate chapter, and whenever I next discuss this set (don't wait up), we'll bring the proceedings to a rousing conclusion! Well, no, probably not, but it sounds better that way.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Cowboy Comics
In January, I visited my gal pal Sara, and we took a trip the Phoenix Art Museum. One of the pieces we saw was Gary Erbe's "Cowboy Comics" pictured above. This is what the exhibit had to say about this 1996 piece.
This sculpture displays Erbe's affinity for optical trickery. In the style of trompe l'oiel, a French term meaning "to fool the eye", Erbe attempts to convince the viewer that this is a real stack of 1950s comic books. In truth, they are made of bronze and painted to appear authentic. The "comic books" rest on a gilded pedestal, adding to the novelty of the work, as it seems to venerate such everyday objects. Erbe's close attention to detail, including the use of real staples on the comics' bindings, adds to the life-like quality.
A self-taught artist, Erbe is drawn to subject matter from his childhood memories and American popular culture. He believes that common objects are universally understood and appreciated.
I'm not going to comment on the loftier interpretation of the work offered above, as you can take it as you wish. I will say, however, that I feel the photo of the piece adds to any perceived illusion. Under a reasonable amount of scrutiny, you can detect that these aren't real comics. That doesn't detract from the impressive skill it took to duplicate them in the first place.
Because it's what I do, I tried to find out which comics Erbe used as models for his work. It turned out to be remarkably easy, because the artist's keen eye led him to reproduce many details that might have been lost in lesser hands. The visible comics recreated in the work "Cowboy Comics" are :
Roy Rogers Comics #30
The Lone Ranger #14
Hopalong Cassidy #77
Gene Autry Comics #26
Tom Mix Western #7
Go check out those covers and compare them to Erbe's loving homage to them. Then you can visit his site through the link in the first paragraph, to see more of his fantastic work. You won't be disappointed!
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Ball-peen Bulletins
ITEM! The extremely talented Lewis Smith posted a piece of art of the ROJ character Silver Raven recently, and it's amazing! It will be appearing on the ROJ site for the next update, but you can see it right now!
ITEM! I don't usually promote posts on my LiveJournal here (it's actually vice-versa), but I recently hit a milestone - 2000 entries! Go take a look at my old place if it's not on your usual list and see what it's all about.
ITEM! I've done some fiddling with the sidebar here again. This is mostly to eliminate some of the redundancy of links between this site and the ROJ Links Page. There's always going to be some, but I'm hoping variety will get people more attention.
ITEM! I'm still working on one of the entries that I'd intended to post here last month. Hopefully, this will be its month! I have a couple more pieces in various stages of completion, so I'll try to get some of them finished. I've also begun to tentatively work on some ROJ stuff, so maybe the next update will happen sooner rather than later. Fingers crossed!
That's all this time, pilgrims! Excelsior!
ITEM! I don't usually promote posts on my LiveJournal here (it's actually vice-versa), but I recently hit a milestone - 2000 entries! Go take a look at my old place if it's not on your usual list and see what it's all about.
ITEM! I've done some fiddling with the sidebar here again. This is mostly to eliminate some of the redundancy of links between this site and the ROJ Links Page. There's always going to be some, but I'm hoping variety will get people more attention.
ITEM! I'm still working on one of the entries that I'd intended to post here last month. Hopefully, this will be its month! I have a couple more pieces in various stages of completion, so I'll try to get some of them finished. I've also begun to tentatively work on some ROJ stuff, so maybe the next update will happen sooner rather than later. Fingers crossed!
That's all this time, pilgrims! Excelsior!
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Cult Rockers
As a public service to you, my faithful readers, I present one of my favorite books for those brief moments when you just need to be alone (don't make me say it) :
CULT ROCKERS
This is one of the many books I purchased at the much-missed Book Warehouse in Iowa, LA. Though it has totally ruined me with some of its peculiar phrasings, I find it wonderful reading - particularly in small doses. It's in no way a complete catalog, but it doesn't claim to be. It's more like an informal survey of a lot of different kinds of musicians. Most aren't household names, though some are. I mean, you can't do a book like this and not have the Grateful Dead get coverage. But for every act you might know, there's an obscure punk band or a guitar hero who doesn't get a lot of press. It's a fun book, and worth picking up for a few dollars.
CULT ROCKERS
This is one of the many books I purchased at the much-missed Book Warehouse in Iowa, LA. Though it has totally ruined me with some of its peculiar phrasings, I find it wonderful reading - particularly in small doses. It's in no way a complete catalog, but it doesn't claim to be. It's more like an informal survey of a lot of different kinds of musicians. Most aren't household names, though some are. I mean, you can't do a book like this and not have the Grateful Dead get coverage. But for every act you might know, there's an obscure punk band or a guitar hero who doesn't get a lot of press. It's a fun book, and worth picking up for a few dollars.
Monday, July 6, 2009
You Have Perception
How we perceive the world determines the kind of world we occupy. That's pretty heady stuff, and is a lot fancier than the rest of this entry is going to be. But I tend to believe it.
To use a perfectly mundane example, I believed that the TV series THE MASTER was incredibly popular during its run because everyone I knew was always talking about it. As it turns out, THE MASTER (which features Lee Van Cleef as a heroic ninja) ran semi-erratically for 4 months, disappeared for 3, and then was trotted out for two additional episodes before being put out to pasture. It turns out my schoolmates in junior high were not a good sample of the viewing public at large. But if you had asked me for years afterward, I would have sworn up and down that THE MASTER was quite popular and ran at least more regularly than it did.
Of course, that's just a misperception. According to everything I've ever read, however, my memory has a serious fault in chronology regarding a completely different - and completely trivial - thing. It's the kind of thing that shouldn't even BE a memory, and yet it is, and it contradicts the facts as I later learned them.
Are you ready for this? Alright, according to my memory, Wang Chung hit it really big with "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" (are you ready to wang chung yet?) and the less-remembered but still huge "Let's Go". Then, the movie TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. came out and it featured the band performing a song of that same title, along with other music by them.
It makes sense, doesn't it? A band becomes the big hot thing with a monster hit or two and then gets on a movie soundtrack. It's perfectly logical and tidy and orderly and that's how it plays out in my memory. I had no reason to ever wonder about it, because...well, why would I?
Except it's wrong. Despite how I remember it, the movie came out in 1985, and "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" came out in 1986. I've checked in more than one place and it seems like there is no error, except in my brain. I somehow sequenced these things incorrectly and it became fact to me. I could see getting confused about the songs - it's not particularly unusual for an older song to be re-released successfully after an act hits it big. Heck, Aerosmith's "Dream On" became more than a footnote that way. And yet...yet, my memory persists in telling me the MOVIE came after Wang Chung's hits. This is demonstrably not so.
Release Dates:
TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. (soundtrack album by Wang Chung) - September 1985
TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. (film) - November 1985
MOSAIC (Wang Chung album with "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" & "Let's Go") - September 1986
As it turns out, "Let's Go" did not even receive release as a single until the early days of 1987.
Could this all be a massive cock-up? Could these dates be wrong and it all happened just the way I remembered it? Well, anything's possible. But it certainly looks to me as if my wires got crossed quite significantly about this, even though absolutely nothing in MY life relies on it. I'm not even the biggest Wang Chung fan I know. (That would be this guy, by the way.)
The reason I bring this up is that it makes me wonder how much of my memory is a forgery that I have inflicted upon myself. There are plenty of memories swirling around in my head that are a lot more important than stuff involving Wang Chung. How have I selectively edited and rearranged them into a more satisfying form? Do I build myself up better than I am? Or do I knock myself down lower than I should? That's the part that is potentially interesting to me. I wonder how much of who I am is shaped by these distortions.
The deep questions are probably unanswerable. I'm just content to understand why I think about ninja when I'm watching spaghetti westerns.
To use a perfectly mundane example, I believed that the TV series THE MASTER was incredibly popular during its run because everyone I knew was always talking about it. As it turns out, THE MASTER (which features Lee Van Cleef as a heroic ninja) ran semi-erratically for 4 months, disappeared for 3, and then was trotted out for two additional episodes before being put out to pasture. It turns out my schoolmates in junior high were not a good sample of the viewing public at large. But if you had asked me for years afterward, I would have sworn up and down that THE MASTER was quite popular and ran at least more regularly than it did.
Of course, that's just a misperception. According to everything I've ever read, however, my memory has a serious fault in chronology regarding a completely different - and completely trivial - thing. It's the kind of thing that shouldn't even BE a memory, and yet it is, and it contradicts the facts as I later learned them.
Are you ready for this? Alright, according to my memory, Wang Chung hit it really big with "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" (are you ready to wang chung yet?) and the less-remembered but still huge "Let's Go". Then, the movie TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. came out and it featured the band performing a song of that same title, along with other music by them.
It makes sense, doesn't it? A band becomes the big hot thing with a monster hit or two and then gets on a movie soundtrack. It's perfectly logical and tidy and orderly and that's how it plays out in my memory. I had no reason to ever wonder about it, because...well, why would I?
Except it's wrong. Despite how I remember it, the movie came out in 1985, and "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" came out in 1986. I've checked in more than one place and it seems like there is no error, except in my brain. I somehow sequenced these things incorrectly and it became fact to me. I could see getting confused about the songs - it's not particularly unusual for an older song to be re-released successfully after an act hits it big. Heck, Aerosmith's "Dream On" became more than a footnote that way. And yet...yet, my memory persists in telling me the MOVIE came after Wang Chung's hits. This is demonstrably not so.
Release Dates:
TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. (soundtrack album by Wang Chung) - September 1985
TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. (film) - November 1985
MOSAIC (Wang Chung album with "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" & "Let's Go") - September 1986
As it turns out, "Let's Go" did not even receive release as a single until the early days of 1987.
Could this all be a massive cock-up? Could these dates be wrong and it all happened just the way I remembered it? Well, anything's possible. But it certainly looks to me as if my wires got crossed quite significantly about this, even though absolutely nothing in MY life relies on it. I'm not even the biggest Wang Chung fan I know. (That would be this guy, by the way.)
The reason I bring this up is that it makes me wonder how much of my memory is a forgery that I have inflicted upon myself. There are plenty of memories swirling around in my head that are a lot more important than stuff involving Wang Chung. How have I selectively edited and rearranged them into a more satisfying form? Do I build myself up better than I am? Or do I knock myself down lower than I should? That's the part that is potentially interesting to me. I wonder how much of who I am is shaped by these distortions.
The deep questions are probably unanswerable. I'm just content to understand why I think about ninja when I'm watching spaghetti westerns.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Captain America Says It Well
Our pal Cap has this to say, courtesy of Stan Lee & Jack Kirby (ably abetted by Chic Stone & Sam Rosen) :
Image from The Avengers #6 (July 1964), as reprinted in Avengers Classic #6 (January 2008). Art & characters © Marvel Entertainment.
Happy Independence Day, United States!
Image from The Avengers #6 (July 1964), as reprinted in Avengers Classic #6 (January 2008). Art & characters © Marvel Entertainment.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Comics That Will Never Be Reprinted
It's no secret that there is money to be made in the reprinting of vintage comics. Certainly, both Marvel and DC have been mining their back catalogs as best they can. There are some stumbling blocks along the way, though. Reprint fees are a concern, and then there's the thorny issue of licensing. Already, collections of titles like Shazam! and Marvel Two-in-One have had to skip stories because the publishers no longer hold the rights to characters appearing in them. This sort of thing will continue, and it means there is at least one comic book series that will almost certainly NEVER be reprinted in any form.
That series is Marvel Comics' Shogun Warriors.
To give a bit of background for those coming late to the party, the Shogun Warriors were a line of toys produced by Mattel, through an arrangement with the Japanese company Popy. These robots weren't original toy creations - each was a licensed property based on either an anime or a tokusatsu production. When Marvel gained the license to put out a comic book based on the "Shogun Warriors" property, that complicated things. They couldn't just use any robots they wanted in their stories. In fact, they were limited to only three :
1) Raydeen - based on 勇者ライディーン/Yuusha Raideen
2) Combatra - based on 超電磁ロボ コン・バトラーV/Chodenji Robo Combattler V
3) Dangard Ace - based on 惑星ロボ ダンガード A (エース)/Wakusei Robo Danguard Ace
There were requests for other "Shoguns" to be used in the book, but for various reasons, it was for naught. Doug Moench and Herb Trimpe did a workmanlike job on the title, comparable to their run on Marvel's Godzilla comic book. And as you may know, that series was reprinted in a B&W "Essential", through a special arrangement with Toho. Such a fate will probably be denied the thematically similar Shogun Warriors
So, what is the real problem? Well, for most properties, there is a single license holder. The Shogun Warriors is different. To reprint this comic, Marvel would need to deal with a licensing FOUR separate properties - each robot, and the title itself. And the reality of the relative values of those properties is far different than it was in 1979.
Here's how the indicia of a typical issue of Shogun Warriors broke it down (note that I'm not reproducing the whole thing, and the weird capitalization was in the original) :
Can you say "cost prohibitive"? It's a shame - Shogun Warriors is a fun comic, even if it has absolutely zero to do with its source material. But because reprinting it would be just too astronomical to be worth it, it must be consigned forever to the dusty back issue bins of history.
That series is Marvel Comics' Shogun Warriors.
To give a bit of background for those coming late to the party, the Shogun Warriors were a line of toys produced by Mattel, through an arrangement with the Japanese company Popy. These robots weren't original toy creations - each was a licensed property based on either an anime or a tokusatsu production. When Marvel gained the license to put out a comic book based on the "Shogun Warriors" property, that complicated things. They couldn't just use any robots they wanted in their stories. In fact, they were limited to only three :
1) Raydeen - based on 勇者ライディーン/Yuusha Raideen
2) Combatra - based on 超電磁ロボ コン・バトラーV/Chodenji Robo Combattler V
3) Dangard Ace - based on 惑星ロボ ダンガード A (エース)/Wakusei Robo Danguard Ace
There were requests for other "Shoguns" to be used in the book, but for various reasons, it was for naught. Doug Moench and Herb Trimpe did a workmanlike job on the title, comparable to their run on Marvel's Godzilla comic book. And as you may know, that series was reprinted in a B&W "Essential", through a special arrangement with Toho. Such a fate will probably be denied the thematically similar Shogun Warriors
So, what is the real problem? Well, for most properties, there is a single license holder. The Shogun Warriors is different. To reprint this comic, Marvel would need to deal with a licensing FOUR separate properties - each robot, and the title itself. And the reality of the relative values of those properties is far different than it was in 1979.
Here's how the indicia of a typical issue of Shogun Warriors broke it down (note that I'm not reproducing the whole thing, and the weird capitalization was in the original) :
- Combatra Copyright ©1979 Hiromi Pro/Toei
I don't really know how "Hiromi Pro" (also associated with the tokusatsu series THUNDERMASK) fits into this, but Toei Video released a DVD box set of COMBATTLER V. You might notice that the only copyright notice on the page is for "Toei". Interestingly, that doesn't say "Toei Animation", but simply Toei. - Dangard Ace copyright ©1979 Reiji Matsumoto/Toei Animation
Leiji Matsumoto (his preferred Romanization) is renowned for things far, far bigger than DANGUARD ACE, but I'd assume he's still involved with it. Toei Animation definitely is. - Raydeen copyright ©1979 Tohokushinsha
Tohokushinsha is still going strong, and so is Raideen. In fact, there was a brand-new series just two years ago! - SHOGUN ™ and SHOGUN WARRIORS ™ are trademarks of MATTEL, INC. and are used with permission.
I'm not linking to Mattel's site, as you can find it on your own if you're so inclined. I'll hazard a guess that they probably don't have a trademark on "shogun" anymore, and possibly not even "shogun warriors". I mean, wasn't there a totally unrelated video game by that name? However, their distinctive logo was still used, and I can't see how you could exclude Mattel as a result.
Can you say "cost prohibitive"? It's a shame - Shogun Warriors is a fun comic, even if it has absolutely zero to do with its source material. But because reprinting it would be just too astronomical to be worth it, it must be consigned forever to the dusty back issue bins of history.
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