Rip Kirby, Past Imperfect (January-May 1947)

About half this storyline is spent with Pagan Lee as the protagonist. Rip and Honey are too busy vacationing (though there’s some more implications of their intimate relationship). Pagan’s past is catching up with her, with a card shark tries to shake her down. It’s an interesting structure, with Greene and Raymond spending a lot of time introducing the card shark and detailing his efforts before meeting Pagan. It barely feels like Rip Kirby in those strips.

Rip eventually shows up to sort the whole thing out and the story races to the finish. I think, once Rip appears, the rest of the story takes place over two days, maybe three. It’s almost too fast.

The other problem is how Greene writes Rip during the first half, as he ignores Pagan’s troubles. He makes Rip petty and occasionally mean.

It’s still a compelling read, since Pagan’s a very sympathetic character.

CREDITS

Writer, Ward Greene; artist, Alex Raymond; publisher, King Features.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010, Luc Besson)

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec is almost too precious for its own good. It’s so enraptured with the world it creates–Paris in 1911, where pterodactyls and mummies can come back to life–it sometimes forgets to get the viewer as involved.

Besson does a fantastic job bringing that world to life and a lot of it is close to being his best work… but there’s a disconnect. The beginning takes quite a while to introduce the lead–Louise Bourgoin makes the film as the titular Adèle–and in that instance, it has some charm. It seems like the supporting cast is going to have something to do with her. Regardless of the actual plot, she’s got to be the focus.

But she’s often not. I mean, she doesn’t even have a scene with Gilles Lellouche, who has the second-most screen time. He’s a comic police inspector who’s crossing paths with everyone but Bourgoin.

I imagine it’s a facet faithful to the source comic book (which I have unfortunately yet to read–Tardi is fantastic and is only now getting translated and printed in the States). In other words, there’s Besson being too precious again. It feels like he’s doing a straight narrative adaption of the source material, instead of making the storytelling approach appropriate for film.

There are some nice supporting performances, particularly from Jacky Nercessian and Nicolas Giraud.

Besson’s enthusiasm to sell it as a franchise leaves the ending wanting, making a film with the potential to be singular just good instead.

3/4 ★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Luc Besson; screenplay by Besson, based on the comic book by Jacques Tardi; director of photography, Thierry Arbogast; edited by Julien Rey; music by Eric Serra; production designer, Hugues Tissandier; produced by Virginie Silla; released by EuropaCorp Distribution.

Starring Louise Bourgoin (Adèle Blanc-Sec), Mathieu Amalric (Dieuleveult), Gilles Lellouche (Inspecteur Albert Caponi), Jean-Paul Rouve (Justin de Saint-Hubert), Jacky Nercessian (Marie-Joseph Espérandieu), Philippe Nahon (Le professeur Ménard), Nicolas Giraud (Andrej Zborowski), Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre (Agathe Blanc-Sec), Gérard Chaillou (Président Armand Fallières), Serge Bagdassarian (Ferdinand Choupard), Claire Perot (Nini les Gambettes), François Chattot (Raymond Pointrenaud), Stanislas De la Tousche (Le chauffeur Pointrenaud) and Youssef Hajdi (Aziz).


RELATED

OTHER FILMS DIRECTED BY LUC BESSON
OTHER 2010 RELEASES

Spider-Man: Back in Quack 1 (November 2010)

This issue, one of Marvel’s smorgasbord of one shots, is actually a Steve Gerber tribute issue. The feature is Howard the Duck (meets Spider-Man) and the backup is Man-Thing. Not sure why Marvel didn’t advertise it better, other than they missed a good memorial period by two years.

Stuart Moore does a fine job on the feature, with Spider-Man discovering Howard and Bev have been brainwashed by these corporate bad guys. It’s all very anti-establishment, but in a broad way. Moore’s not being a rebel, he’s just posing as one. I wouldn’t even mention it if it weren’t for the Man-Thing backup. In it, Moore discusses the problems with deranged veterans coming home from overseas. The solution? Getting zapped by Man-Thing.

The pencils on the feature are split between Mark Brooks and Ray Height. Brooks is better. Joe Suitor does the backup; he’s bad.

CREDITS

Human Slavery for Beginners; writer, Stuart Moore; pencillers, Mark Brooks and Ray Height; inker, Walden Wong; colorist, Andres Mossa; letterer, Clayton Cowles. Fear and Mister Dayton; writer, Stuart Moore; artist and colorist, Joe Suitor; letterer, Dave Lanphear. Editors, Tom Brennan, Stephen Wacker and Tom Brevoort; publisher, Marvel Comics.

Captain America (1968) #248

Captain America 248

Steve Rogers as mild-mannered commercial artist is a little off at first, but once he settles in with his friends—and a girl, I sort of remember him dating Bernie Rosenthal when I was a kid—it gets a lot more comfortable.

Stern starts with more about him being wowed by the era, but it quickly dissipates and the issue’s a lot stronger than the previous one had suggested it could be. Dragon Man shows up and a big rooftop fight scene ensues. Machinesmith is still an annoying villain, but he eventually goes away.

I mean, Dragon Man tries to eat Steve’s shield. It’s hilarious.

But Byrne is what makes the fight scene work. They’re destroying building after building and Byrne makes it all seem real, down to the gigantic Dragon Man who can hold Steve in one hand.

Though, really, Captain America having money problems seems wrong too….

Rip Kirby, Fatal Forgeries (November 1946-January 1947)

Instead of an involved, complicated story, this time Greene and Raymond go for something far simpler. There’s a blackmailer using kids to get celebrity autographs to fuel his forgery endeavor. Rip accidentally gets involved and has to sort it out. There’s a murder, some intrigue and Honey and Pagan fighting for Rip’s affections.

Unfortunately, when presented with a simple “case” for Rip, Greene and Raymond unnecessarily aggrandize it. It’s not a simple case of blackmail, there’s the youth gang; it’s not some smart blackmailer, it’s another guy with a silly nickname and a secret base. When Pagan turns out to know the blackmailer, it works since it’s a comic strip and things need to be neat… but Greene and Raymond are giving Rip a rogue’s gallery. It’s too much. He’s not Dick Tracy.

The romantic conflict is a nice touch, however, though Honey and Rip’s relationship has, unfortunately, become chaste.

CREDITS

Writer, Ward Greene; artist, Alex Raymond; publisher, King Features.

Rip Kirby, Enter: The Mangler (June-November 1946)

Greene and Raymond give Rip his first real nemesis here—the Mangler. Though we hear he’s called the Mangler for how he murders people, we never see it. The Mangler’s far more interested in elevating himself from crime boss to terrorist as he steals a biological warfare formula from Rip and proceeds to auction it to the highest bidding country.

The storyline is split into two parts—Rip getting kidnapped and tortured for the formula, only for the bad guys to realize threatening Honey will get him to cave. He does, which leads to the second part of the story, the hunt for the Mangler. The first part has a lot of implied sex; it’s funny to see a newspaper strip get away with it while a movie of the time could not.

The second half is better; the first half’s plot requires Rip to be really stupid, really often.

CREDITS

Writer, Ward Greene; artist, Alex Raymond; publisher, King Features.

Rescue (2010) #1

So in this issue of Rescue—oh, wait, no, it’s the only issue of Rescue, which is a travesty (if that description doesn’t give you an idea of the book in advance…)—is set during an Invincible Iron Man arc where Pepper hallucinates talking to her dead husband.

Her dead husband is, for those who don’t follow Iron Man (like me), Happy Hogan. The limo driver from the movies.

Anyway, Pepper recounts this incident where she saved some people and didn’t save some people. DeConnick doesn’t reinvent the wheel here—Pepper the superhero has always been Invincible’s greatest creation, just because of the way Pepper approaches her altruistic activities.

But what DeConnick does do is put together a compelling story and gives Pepper a great voice.

Andrea Mutti’s art is a little rough, but the writing makes up for it.

I wish it was a series, not a one-shot.

Destroy All Monsters (1968, Honda Ishirô)

Wow, it ends with Godzilla and Minya (Godzilla’s son for those unfamiliar–there’s no mama; I’m pretty sure Godzilla’s asexual) waving to the camera. How sweet.

Destroy All Monsters is barely a Godzilla movie, really. The monster only shows up at the beginning for the establishing of the ground situation–the narrator explains it is a near future and all the monsters live peacefully on one island–for a bit in the middle and then at the end for the big monster mash. The story itself doesn’t need an appearance.

It’s a sci-fi action thriller–Earth is under attack from space aliens and this crack UN team of guys races around doing stuff to save the world. It’s ripe for a remake–with the casual misogyny (all the evil aliens are female), maybe Neil LaBute could do it.

The effects are weak (it’s hard to believe it’s from the same year as 2001), but Honda’s occasionally ambitious with the effects work. It doesn’t look real, but it’s neat. Unfortunately, those moments are far and few. The film only runs eighty-some minutes but it drags often. There’s a lengthy sequence with the brainwashed humans in suits acting like it’s a shootout from a James Bond rip-off. And all the sets look like something out of “Star Trek” for the first twenty minutes or so.

The performances are generally fine, except ingenue Kobayashi Yukiko. She’s atrocious.

Ifukube Akira’s music is utterly fantastic.

Still, it’s a chore to get through.

The Scribe (1966, John Sebert)

The Scribe isn’t totally silent, but Buster Keaton is throughout. While he’s old (Keaton died soon after the film, an instructional short finished shooting), he and the filmmakers don’t make it obvious. There’s some stunt footage where it’s obviously not Keaton—flying around, hooked on a crane (it’s a construction safety film)—but some where it’s less clear, like the chase sequences. Sure, it’s not really Keaton, but if one just lets him or herself suspend disbelief a little more… it is.

Director Sebert is the one who makes The Scribe such a nice homage to Keaton. There are a lot of references to Keaton films, ones I imagine the construction workers forced to watch The Scribe did not appreciate.

It helps the production values are good. They film on a real construction site, no way around it, but the office bookends aren’t fake looking.

The Scribe’s a fine exercise.

2/3 Recommended

CREDITS

Directed by John Sebert; written by Paul Sutherland and Clifford Braggins; director of photography, Miklós Lente; edited by Kenneth Heeley-Ray; music by Quartet Productions Limited; produced by Ann Heeley-Ray and Kenneth Heeley-Ray; released by the Construction Safety Association of Ontario.

Starring Buster Keaton.


RELATED

OTHER 1966 RELEASES

Snarked (2011) #0

Snarked 0 I’ve been looking forward to Snarked since I first heard of it. I didn’t know anything about it, just it was a new original series from Roger Langridge. As it turns out, Snarked owes a lot to Lewis Carroll—both in the title and the characters of Walrus and McDunk (though McDunk gets named in Snarked, not from Carroll). The zero issue is half story and half back matter. The story is only ten or eleven pages and it’s absolutely wonderful, but more than wonderful, it’s filling. It feels like a full issue, hardly a half one.

The back matter is all excellent too, almost making me hope they keep including some of it. Langridge is just so thrilled with the material, it’s hard not to get carried away with him.

I love Langridge doing a “kids’ comic” featuring a lovable reprehensible character (Walrus). It’s even better than I’d hoped.