Battle Beyond the Stars (1980, Jimmy T. Murakami)

Battle Beyond the Stars answers that age-old question… what if you mixed the star-fighting of Star Wars, the visual grandeur of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and some of the production design of Alien, but also had all the sexy babes in the galaxy hot for John-boy Walton’s bod. Also, it’s a remake of Seven Samurai.

I should also mention the budget—approximately twenty percent of the original Star Wars (two million, which mostly went to the respectable special effects). Stars has shockingly good space effects. They just don’t have enough of them and sometimes reuse the same footage. They can’t do multiple ships in a frame, which limits the visuals after a certain point, but it’s a fine effort. James Francis Cameron did the special effects for the film.

Unfortunately, even though the space stuff looks good, the sets and “exteriors” are rather wanting. There are some okay matte shots of the alien worlds, but the actual sets are… I wanted to say iffy, but they’re much closer to bad. There are good exterior shots, but they’re models without any people. Sorry, I really want to talk about how Stars somehow didn’t know what trench warfare meant, but we’ll have to wait a bit.

The movie opens with intergalactic (literally, screenwriter John Sayles likes to talk about all the galaxies) bad guy John Saxon showing up at the peaceful world of Akir (home of the Akiras, which is more amusing now than when Stars originally came out) and threatening to nuke them from orbit if they don’t promise to be his subjects. The Akira are a peaceful people ruled by the Varda, a guide to a pacifist lifestyle, but Sayles didn’t write more than a rule and a half. Or they cut the rest. Some of Stars definitely got cut; you have to wonder about other parts.

Saxon’s seen Seven Samurai so he knows he’s got to threaten the yokels and then give them a deadline so they have time to mount a resistance, and there can be a movie. So, he leaves to go mess with some other planet.

Young farm boy with a hankering for adventure, Richard Thomas, decides he’ll go round up some mercenaries to defend the planet—he hasn’t seen Seven Samurai but the town elders explain it to him—and he takes Obi-Wan Ke… he takes Jeff Corey’s space ship, which has an AI on board named Nell (voiced by Lynn Carlin). The spaceship looks like a part of the human anatomy. Well, two parts, but parts in a pair. In fact, from different angles, it looks like two different pairs of parts of human anatomy.

Anyway.

Thomas’s first stop is Corey’s old friend Sam Jaffe, who isn’t going to a lost cause but also wants to breed Thomas with his daughter, Darlanne Fluegel. Fluegel seems like she’s going to be quite bad in Stars and she might be quite bad, but once Sybil Danning shows up, Fluegel improves, thanks to the comparison. It might not be Fluegel’s (or even Danning’s) fault. While director Murakami is good at the space stuff and some of the dramatic stuff, he’s utterly inert with the romance. And since Stars becomes a low-key race between Fluegel and Danning to bed Thomas, the romance will be important. Ish. I mean, it’d have been nice for Fluegel not to oscillate between love interest and exposition blatherer, and it’d really have been nice if Danning weren’t a scantily clad star warrior, but I’m not sure it’d have made too much difference.

But it would’ve made some kind of one.

Fluegel and Thomas team up to save his planet; he goes one way to get more help, she goes another. He’ll bring in George Peppard (as future Earth hillbilly space trucker Space Cowboy, one half of Stars’s Han Solo), Robert Vaughn (the other half of Han Solo, this one a soulless space assassin), and these nice Borg, led by Earl Boen, in a lot of makeup.

Plus Danning, who demands he let her fight alongside, but Thomas doesn’t like pushy women, so he tells her to bug off. She’ll tag along because that bod’s too hot.

Meanwhile, Fluegel gets kidnapped by space lizard Morgan Woodward, who, it turns out, hates Saxon–so, lucky timing.

Thomas is an affable, likable enough lead, but the best performances are Vaughn and Peppard. Peppard takes a while to warm up, but Vaughn’s on from his first scene. Carlin’s a lot of fun–unfortunately, Saxon’s awful. The supporting cast’s okay; there are no standouts either way.

The sublime editing from Allan Holzman and R.J. Kizer is the standout of the entire film (besides James Horner’s proto-Star Trek score). They cut the effects sequences just right and the non-effect sequences just right. Holzman and Kizer’s cutting is responsible for many effects sequences’ success. They cut just as the limitations are about to show.

Daniel Lacambre’s photography is good, too. Stars is visibly cheap but never bad-looking. Well, never too bad-looking.

It’s a peculiar, always diverting, usually engaging oddity.

Even if someone thought fighting in the trenches meant digging wide corridors where they could have battles on the same set but pretend they’re somewhere else.

Finally, look fast for Julia Duffy and faster for Kathy Griffin.

Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #269

The cover promises the Fatal Five’s return; while they do return, there’s also a mystery villain who starts the issue. He flies off towards Earth in his mystery ship; a ship crash lands on Earth, and the Fatal Five emerge from the ship, attacking Mon-El and Shadow Lass (who ditch Princess Projectra to get busy until superhero duties interfere).

I think the explanation is simply there are two spaceships. Still, it’s unclear if writer Gerry Conway wanted it to be confusing—because then it makes the Fatal Five seem like they might be holograms or something (the mystery villain uses mind projections on someone), and it makes the stakes feel a little tepid. Even for Legion. There’s going to be some battling, and there’s going to be a cliffhanger, but, really, we’re nowhere near Conway getting around to telling the story, so why get excited?

The rest of the issue is about Colossal Boy’s mom running for president of Earth and there being an assassination attempt. The scene where Colossal Boy finds out his mom is running takes Conway three pages. He’s got to get flustered when people ask him why he’s exclaiming. The cover also promised eight more pages, but no one puts them to any good use. Arguably, the double-page spread ought to be good–the Legion hanging out in some plaza on Earth and seeing the presidential announcements–but Jim Janes and Frank Chiaramonte’s art is often bad.

Not always. But often. And when it’s not bad, it’s barely middling.

The worst thing in the comic is how Conway writes Timber Wolf, the Legion’s emo dipshit, but all the character writing is pretty bad.

I hope next issue’s at least a little better. I don’t expect it to improve, but I hope.

The Babysitter (1980, Peter Medak)

The Babysitter is too technically proficient for its own good. It’s a wannabe prestige lurid TV movie about eighteen-year-old girl with a past (early twenties Stephanie Zimbalist) worming her way into a seemingly perfect family only to reveal all the cracks within.

Except it’s not a seemingly perfect family—and not even by the end, actually—with recovering alcoholic mom Patty Duke, distant dentist dad William Shatner, and chronic affluenza suffering twelve-year-old daughter Quinn Cummings. Cummings was the Oscar-nominated star of The Goodbye Girl at this point, so it makes sense when Babysitter is all about her at the beginning.

Mom Duke got so drunk so often she embarrassed the family out of Chicago, so Shatner’s set them up on a commuter island near Seattle. He’s neglecting Duke and Cummings to further his career—it’s the closest Babysitter comes to a subplot for Shatner, who’s otherwise pursuing or refusing Zimbalist. But Duke’s miserable having to hang out with Cummings, who’s on all sorts of medication for unnamed illnesses (don’t worry, they forget about it by the third scene), especially while having to stay sober.

So when Zimbalist starts hanging out with Cummings, both mooning over dreamy sixteen-year-old neighbor David Wysocki, Duke sees an opportunity. Zimbalist is a poor kid who’d been working as a nanny or something, and she needs a job. Likewise, Duke needs someone to keep Cummings occupied. It’s a win-win.

After a rapid montage for Zimbalist and Cummings, Cummings—Oscar-nominated Cummings—is basically out of the movie. The second act is about Zimbalist becoming Duke’s only confidant, advising Duke about her shitty marriage to Shatner while also trying to seduce Shatner away from Duke. The third act’s all the thriller stuff, mainly with Zimbalist and Shatner, but also John Houseman as the busybody neighbor who decides to investigate Zimbalist.

It also means there’s very little room for Cummings and Duke in the third act—but even Zimbalist starts getting pushed out too. The movie’s never clear whose bad dream it’s supposed to be—director Medak tries to focus on each character to give them a shot on the protagonist stage, but no one takes it. Or can’t take it in time. Medak and writer Jennifer Miller manage to be too quick with character moments while dragging out everything else.

As a result, it’s hard to care for the finale, especially since the main cast stands around to listen to a monologue no one cares about. The movie only realizes in the last few moments Zimbalist might be due some empathy as well, except the character motivation is so erratic it’s not worth the effort.

There’s some good acting from Duke. Houseman’s really bored as the investigating neighbor, but he’s got some charm. Shatner’s better before he’s got to play shitheel. Cummings is grating, but it’s the writing.

Babysitter doesn’t have an original score, and the stock music seems a little out of date—too groovy seventies—which makes the movie feel campy, except no one’s doing camp. Especially not with Redford L. Metz’s genuinely outstanding photography. Medak’s got a real lack of consistent tone, but it’s not Metz’s fault at all. Babysitter’s got swell lighting; Medak just doesn’t know what to do with it.

Maybe a real score would’ve helped since they really leverage montage sequences with music… who knows.

During the second act, while the movie’s about Duke, it seems like it’ll have to have an okay finish. The Babysitter doesn’t deliver, but it seems like it could for a while.

Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #268

Lsh268 I’ve always had a soft spot for Steve Ditko’s art. Even thirty-ish years ago, when I was starting to recognize creators in Silver Age books—hunting down older comics to read—Ditko was already a reclusive, right-wing crank. No doubt complaining about wokeness since 1985. History’s just proven his being quiet about it was the only difference between him and many other comic creators.

Except, of course, the talent. Ditko’s art has an energy about it, even here in a Legion of Super-Heroes fill-in. Bob Wiacek inks, doing what he can in the medium and long shots, but there’s this bewildering mix of static and kinetic in the Karate Kid fight scenes. The figures seem stiff, but they move fluidly. And then there’s something weird about the close-ups; not sure if it’s too much Wiacek or not enough.

The outer space stuff is fantastic. Full stop. Steve Ditko’s 2001.

The story—by J.M. DeMatteis—is ambitious but not successful. DeMatteis introduces a wild villain—named Doctor Mayavale—who kidnaps some of the Legionnaires, saying they’ve got a history together from previous lifetimes. The issue plays out like a spec script for a “Star Trek” episode—hey, maybe a “Star Trek: Phase Two” episode—only with the three Legionnaires kind of having something to do with the story. Only not really, just for action scenes.

It’s an incredibly padded story, starting with a reference to current events in the series, then a bookend with Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl (I think; I’ve been reading these for months, and I’m still not sure on most of the names—though Cosmic Boy’s the one dressed like a male stripper). Speaking of Cosmic Boy, he then narrates the flashback–so much padding. Then the mind-boggling cosmic space-time odyssey fit into an “each hero in separate trouble” comic book template.

There’s some really iffy Native American cultural appropriation, which DeMatteis ratchets up throughout the story, and the resolution’s very pat—even for a Legion fill-in—but the issue’s got some charm. It’s silly to see some guy talk about the secrets of the universe when Steve Ditko’s drawing him as a General Custer wannabe. It’s like they knew the absurdism would actually help, so they amped it up.

The wrap-up bookend kills the momentum, but it’s a much better read than it ought to be.

Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #267

Lsh267 Writer Gerry Conway maintains his enthusiasm through this Legion entry, though he doesn’t have as many pages as usual to fill. Paul Kupperberg writes a backup—with pencils from Steve Ditko!–and eight fewer pages is what Conway needs.

He also gets to break away from the Legion story for a few pages to explore a planetary mining operation, where the women are the fighter pilots because dudes just aren’t suited for that kind of work. Conway starts the issue letting Duo Damsel save the day from last issue’s cliffhanger, and—even though there’s occasional cringe—he seems to like writing strong women more than annoying guys.

And the starfighters versus giant space genie sequence has better art than the space superhero pages. Jim Janes pencils the feature, with Dave Hunt on inks (Hunt also inks Ditko on the backup). Janes’s visual pacing on the battle might be his best work to date on Legion. I certainly can’t remember anything else comparable.

The genie’s attacking the mining colony because he’s only been awake a few hours, and he’s seen humanity infest the stars, greedily strip-mining the cosmos. No lies detected.

Conway also reveals the genie’s origin, which involves the Guardians (the Green Lantern Guardians), who imprisoned an entire species to little bottles and flung them out to various worlds in the galaxy. Just like the strip-mining, it’s a little weird how the book tries to present the Guardians as the good guys. Instead, they seem like thoughtless dicks.

And if they’re not thoughtless, they’re certainly not particularly prescient. Patronizing, maybe.

After Duo Damsel’s very wordy rescue mission—she has thought balloons for almost her entire sequence, the female star fighter, and the genie origin, Conway’s only got time for the action finale and wrap-up. He does all right. It’s a little silly, but Conway never gets bored, and he doesn’t seem to loathe any of the characters he’s writing, which is nice.

The backup’s a mixed bag. Maybe half of Ditko’s panels are fun Silver Age-ish ones; then the other half is a little lazy. Hunt’s inks hold the line (no pun) for about half the story, then figures start getting very loose. There’s still some good composition, even if the story itself is incredibly confusing. It’s the origin of the Legion flight rings and Kupperberg overwrites Brainiac 5 and the exposition dumps.

If one’s interested enough in the curiosity of Ditko illustrating, the art alone can carry the story—until the mealy-mouthed exposition at the end—but it’s a disappointment. Not just compared to the surprisingly adequate feature but also the backup’s first couple pages. Everything’s clicking (relatively) before it breaks down.

Still, a pretty decent issue for Legion.

Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #266

Lsh266 Half of this issue reads like writer Gerry Conway’s excited to be on the book. The other half reads like he’s miserable, detailing the petty bickering of superhero teen bros as they try to upstage one another. But when Conway’s writing about married colonists Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel? He’s having a ball.

The marrieds are on an ice planet. Bouncing Boy feels like he doesn’t have any challenges to face outside Legion life, while Duo Damsel’s just trying to keep him happy. The two of them have such a nice Silver Age vibe; it feels like a reunion sitcom but good.

Then they uncover an ancient golden… lamp, and a genie appears, speaking Arabic and talking about Saladin. Conway’s got a weird amount of detail in the story, with Colossal Boy somehow making Islamophobia a thing in the thirtieth century. Colossal Boy says Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel are making the whole thing up, but the released genie is hurtling through space at enormous size and speed. It destroys space stuff along the way (Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel are in conveniently timed hot pursuit).

The stuff with Colossal Boy and Element Lad is lifeless and draining, but the genie—Kantuu, is a potent, if problematic, villain—and the marrieds are just fantastic together. Conway enjoying himself on Legion is rare, but it pays off when it happens.

Artists Jim Janes and Frank Chiaramonte have the occasional wanting panel, but their combined style matches Conway’s Silver Age but talky vibe. The art can’t make the bickering bro Legionnaires any more interesting, though. They’re too blandly written. At least when Conway’s got a big cast, the numerous characters can cover flat characterizations, but when it’s just two of them… the cracks show fast.

But, still, so much better than I was expecting. When Conway has to think about the future besides Legion business, he’s actually got some ideas.

Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #265

The Legion of Super Heroes 265 Given Jim Starlin once took his name off a Legion story because it wasn’t published as a Super Spectacular, I started wondering if regular writer Gerry Conway just did the plot for this issue—letting J.M. DeMatteis handle the script—because there’s a Radio Shack advertisement posing as a Superman comic accompanying. With pencils by none other than Jim Starlin.

I mean, I doubt it, but it’s a question.

The Legion story wraps up the Tyroc arc, which Conway’s been cooking for a couple issues. Tyroc—the only Black Legionnaire–ran off when they needed his help, causing team shithead Wildfire to go on a very pointed rant about Tyroc’s audacity and whatnot. Last issue, we found out it’s because his island homeland dimension hops every three hundred years or something. This issue finishes up that story and gets rid of the Legion’s only Black person, about four years after his first appearance. He doesn’t die; he just doesn’t escape with Shadow Lass and Dawnstar. The optics outweigh the spoilers—it’s not a particularly compelling tale, anyway.

Not the modern-day part, at least. Tyroc’s having a panic attack and ignoring all Shadow Lass and Dawnstar’s questions about being locked away from their own dimension for the rest of their lives. Eventually, he tells them the origin story of the island. A group of captive Africans, being transported in the slave trade, defeated their captors and found the island somewhere in the Atlantic. Soon after landing there, the island disappeared into another dimension. Then a few hundred years later, after they’d settled in, the island went back to Earth. And repeat. So they’re isolated both by being an island and also because they’re not permanently part of Earth’s history.

Tyroc’s a mutant (they don’t call him a mutant, of course), and he’s worried the use of his sonic powers has accelerated the window the island spends in Earth dimension.

There’s a lot of iffy and worse art from Jim Janes and Dave Hunt. It wasn’t worth the build-up, but it’s not absent good ideas.

Is The Computers That Saved Metropolis!, brought to you by DC Comics and Radio Shack, also not absent good ideas? It’s an almost thirty-page combination advertisement for Tandy Computers, a middle school computer history lesson, and Superman versus… Oh, wow. I thought writer Cary Bates created villain “Major Disaster” just for this comic (a giveaway at Radio Shack, reprinted in a number of DC comics), but he’s a Green Lantern villain. I thought for some reason they didn’t want to use a good villain like they’d need Radio Shack’s permission to use him; presumably, school teacher Ms. Wilson (Margaret to Superman) doesn’t appear again.

Anyway.

Starlin pencils, Dick Giordano inks. It’s funny how the “backup” has so much better art than the lead story here. Starlin’s always okay, sometimes better. There are some particularly good Superman action panels, as there should be, given Bates refers to him as the “Action Ace” a couple times.

Now, I must’ve had this comic at some point. I can’t imagine it wasn’t everywhere in the early eighties, either for free or close to it, but I’ve got no memory of the story. Major Disaster gets Superman to breathe in Kryptonite dust, then sets about showing off how Superman’s lost his super-smarts, which he uses to calculate all his action acing. The issue’s revelation Superman’s constantly doing math to figure out how not to kill everyone with his derring-do is… cool. Like, Superman as super-smart was always a neat bit.

Good thing Superman just gave Margaret’s class a couple Tandy TRS-80 microcomputers, which can do the math for him. Of course, he and the kids have worldwide micro-radio communication, but the best computers for crunching numbers aren’t in the Justice League Satellite; they’re available at your local Radio Shack®.

Major Disaster’s a lousy villain, and it’s too long—not to mention Bates (and Superman) contribute to erasing Hidden Figures’s NASA Black ladies (wait, is that erasure the connection with the first story?)—but it could be a lot worse. Like, Starlin’s heat vision panel’s fantastic.

Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #264

The Legion of Super Heroes 264 Turns out the only time Wildfire isn’t a raging asshole is when he’s ostensibly worried about his kidnapped parents. Either I forgot, didn’t realize, or didn’t care his parents had gotten taken last issue. They didn’t stand out (I think some parents got kidnapped off-page) because they weren’t assholes like their kid. It’s a really weird failing for writer Gerry Conway, who can write Wildfire freaking out about someone not saying hello to him, but when he’s actually supposed to be concerned….

Nothing.

The issue opens the Legionnaires causing a sky-traffic accident. Unlike the last time (I can’t remember who was writing that issue), Wildfire doesn’t threaten to incinerate the civilians in their car. He’s almost sympathetic this issue, though it’s probably just rebounding from him being such a prick every other issue.

After serving a bunch of red herring—including on the cover (which features Shadow Lass and Tyroc fighting, whereas they’re pals in the comic and Tyroc’s literally in two panels on the last page)—the issue settles into a mystery. After tracking the bad guy and the kidnapped parents to a remote power station, which turns out to be a trap, the Scooby gang starts investigating who might be after them and why. Well, they know the why—Legion patron R.J. Brande going bankrupt.

Or should I say, “B.D. Brande,” as his company’s building reads this issue. Jack C. Harris didn’t pay much attention when editing. It’d be difficult to pay too much attention—Jim Janes and Dave Hunt’s artwork is exceptionally bland and exceptionally boring. Janes occasionally does some okay composition work, but he’s also got some goofy angles. And his figures are terrible. It’s unclear how much Hunt’s inks help or hurt.

The bad guy turns out to be another of Conway’s rote Legion villains, though next issue promises something different, which is something at least. The cliffhanger reveals Tyroc’s got a good reason for running off last issue, though if he had a smartphone (in the year 2972 or whatever), the calendar app would change his life.

Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #263

Los263 When I was a kid reading Who’s Who, I always thought Wildfire had one of the coolest designs. I can’t believe I hadn’t seen Cosmic Boy or whoever’s dressed like a male stripper (maybe I blocked it). But, as ever, Wildfire proves to be not cool; two big examples this issue, first being shitty to Dawnstar with some major misogynist vibes, then being shittier to Tyroc (the only Black person in the future?). Tyroc’s got something going on back home and has to get there. Wildfire yells at him for having obligations while Black and promises to see him ejected from the Legion.

Though, given his living situation, Wildfire’s very much an incel, so all of it tracks except why he wasn’t kicked out of the Legion already.

In other words, duck that guy.

Anyway.

The story’s about some Legion parents coming to Earth and getting captured by a new villain. Not Wildfire or Tyroc’s parents, or any of the issue’s Legion roll call, actually. Not having anyone be too invested—except Wildfire being super mad at Tyroc having agency—lets writer Gerry Conway off the hook for some character work. Though he’s got a surprising lot of it in the opening with the parents. It’s downright fascinating. They’re these future parents from different planets (some who’ve never been to Earth), and they’ve all got powers like their kids, only they don’t use them for superheroing. They’ve never met, so they’re bonding. It’s like a really good “Love Boat” first arc.

The parents don’t seem to know it was Brainiac 5 who created the monster who destroyed Legion headquarters and killed untold billions or trillions, then got a pass on it from his paramilitary gang. Weird thing for the Legion not to tell folks when asking for government handouts and demanding no oversight.

The issue ends on a rote cliffhanger. I wonder if they’ll save the parents.

Jim Janes pencils with Dave Hunt inks. Janes’s very bland, very generic. His heroes look like the illustrations on eighties, Made in China generic action figure packaging. So… not good, but could be a lot worse. Especially for Legion.

Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #262

The Legion of Super Heroes 262 James Sherman is back on art after an extended period, now going by “Jim.” His style’s simplified, with a lot less detail. He’s still got fantastic composition and his people—again, simplified—have a lot of personality in what he does give them. Last time he was on the series, he was doing these lush, expansive sci-fi action panels. Now, he’s still got the sci-fi action, just not the lushness (well, a few times). He’s not as good as before, but he’s still pretty dang good.

Leagues ahead of the norm on Legion, anyway.

Writer Gerry Conway opens with Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl on Earth talking about the Legionnaires off on their missions. They’re telling readers everything they need to know to jump on (including who’s married to who, who’s dating who, and so on; it’s a tedious exposition dump). Anyway, last issue, we read about the space circus mystery, this issue, we’re going to read about the Legion team trying to help R.J. Brande rebuild his fortune. He makes stars. Zaps space dust and turns it into a star, which he then moves around for performance art. Or something. It’s unclear. And they get distracted from their mission when they discover a destroyed star system.

It ends up being a pretty good issue. It reads like Conway’s trying out for the “Star Trek” license, with the Legionnaires encountering a strange, dangerous planet with a complicated secret. Conway even makes a “final frontier” reference, inviting the comparison. It’s okay, especially with Sherman’s art giving the characters chemistry on their detour.

There are a few times the script and the art don’t match. First, when Light Lass rescues some other Legionnaire, he wants to give her a thank you kiss, but they’re seeing other people. In the reflection on Wildfire’s helmet, we see them locking lips, but it’s not written as ominous just fun. Maybe everyone in the Legion can swing now Superboy’s gone with his Midwestern values.

Later, there’s a space travel moment made nonsensical by the art and writing being out of whack, which is far less interesting than illicit behavior.

It’s nice to have Sherman around. Conway works better with him—even taking the occasional disconnect into account—than anyone else on the book so far.

I’m sure he’s not staying. Can’t catch a break on this one.