The Fiction isn’t a particularly strange book. The story isn’t strange. Even though it deals with getting sucked into a world of infinite imagination and danger, still not a weird story. Writer Curt Pires is very matter of fact about it. He seemingly gives the reader all the available information–it’s about adults returning to this alternate reality for the first time since they were kids. They seem to know as much as the reader does.
It makes Pires immediately trustworthy. He’s apparently not doing the thing where the characters are another part of the puzzle (at least as far as what they know, not their meaning in the story). It’s a nice change. The Fiction is compelling without being tricky.
What does make The Fiction different is artist David Rubín. He’s not otherworldly exactly, but he’s also definitely not realistic. He’s like a fantastic cartoonist.
It’s a cool book.
CREDITS
The Story of Everything; writer, Curt Pires; artist, David Rubín; colorist, Michael Garland; letterer, Colin Bell; editors, Jasmine Amiri and Eric Harburn; publisher, Boom! Studios.
It’s Howard without Beverly–in a delirious state he assumes she has run out on him with one of the hairless apes but it’s really innocent (or so we hope)–and that change in balance would be enough to get the issue done. It’s Howard fending for himself and all. Gerber could easily fill the pages with that angle.
Instead, Gerber adds to it–Howard’s still sort of delirious, even though he’s a little better, but then he’s on a bus with a collection of spiritual types and a fetching, lisping lady and his nemesis, the kidney lady. It’s weird. And it moves. Gerber and Colan do the movement of this bus beautifully. The pacing is just stunning.
And Gerber ignores all the plot points one might assume in the issue. He even goes out on an entirely unexpected hard cliffhanger, but displays it as a mild ending.
Amazing work.
CREDITS
Quack-Up!; writer and editor, Steve Gerber; penciller, Gene Colan; inker, Steve Leialoha; colorist, Janice Cohen; letterer, Jim Novak; publisher, Marvel Comics.
The first half of Lolita is a wonderful mix of acting styles. There’s James Mason’s very measured, very British acting. There’s Shirley Winters’s histrionics; she’s doing Hollywood melodrama on overdrive but director Kubrick (and Winters) have it all under perfect control. And then there’s Sue Lyons as the titular character. She’s far more naturalistic than either Mason or Winters–and certainly more than Peter Sellers in his supporting role. The second half of the film loses that mix. Instead of Mason playing off other styles, he’s mostly left to his own hysterics.
And Winters was better at them.
Lolita is a difficult proposition as Mason, as a supreme pervert, has to be somewhat sympathetic. Winters, who should be sympathetic, has to be a villain. Lyons, who is a victim, has to be villainous. And what about Sellers? He has to not run off with the picture, which he almost does every time he’s in the movie.
That first half, which Kubrick tells in summary, is gloriously well-paced. It moves in short sequences–sometimes just a shot with actors entering and leaving–and it moves it lengthy scenes. It’s far more interesting stuff than the second half of the film, which is a Hitchcockian thriller without any thrillers.
Great music from Nelson Riddle, great photography from Oswald Morris.
Everything sort of falls apart in the third act as Kubrick rushes to find a conclusion. The second half, with Mason’s outbursts and arguments, can’t compare to the sublimity of the first.
★★★
CREDITS
Directed by Stanley Kubrick; screenplay by Vladimir Nabokov, based on his novel; director of photography, Oswald Morris; edited by Anthony Harvey; music by Nelson Riddle; produced by James B. Harris; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Starring James Mason (Prof. Humbert Humbert), Shelley Winters (Charlotte Haze), Sue Lyon (Lolita), Jerry Stovin (John Farlow), Diana Decker (Jean Farlow), Lois Maxwell (Nurse Mary Lore), Bill Greene (George Swine), Marianne Stone (Vivian Darkbloom) and Peter Sellers (Clare Quilty).
Spears seems a lot more concerned with making this issue fun than anything else. The film crew gets to a jungle island and runs afoul of a giant gorilla, which the immortal serial killer brings to a graphic finish. It gives Callahan something to do because most of the rest of the issue is talking heads. Even when it’s the lead–whose name I still don’t remember–meeting with a dream plane script doctor, it’s talking heads.
A lot of the busy work of the issue has to do with the lead and his giving the part in his new picture to the Nazi girl, Isla, and not his girlfriend, Coconut. The Auteur needs more than lame relationship drama. It needs grandiose, absurd, awful relationship drama. It’s a tepid feature of an otherwise outlandish story.
Callahan’s noticeably light on backgrounds too….
It’s amusing, but Sister Bambi is definitely somewhat undercooked.
Spears seems a lot more concerned with making this issue fun than anything else. The film crew gets to a jungle island and runs afoul of a giant gorilla, which the immortal serial killer brings to a graphic finish. It gives Callahan something to do because most of the rest of the issue is talking heads. Even when it’s the lead–whose name I still don’t remember–meeting with a dream plane script doctor, it’s talking heads.
A lot of the busy work of the issue has to do with the lead and his giving the part in his new picture to the Nazi girl, Isla, and not his girlfriend, Coconut. The Auteur needs more than lame relationship drama. It needs grandiose, absurd, awful relationship drama. It’s a tepid feature of an otherwise outlandish story.
Callahan’s noticeably light on backgrounds too….
It’s amusing, but Sister Bambi is definitely somewhat undercooked.
CREDITS
Writer’s Cock; writer and letterer, Rick Spears; artist, James Callahan; colorist, Luigi Anderson; editor, Charlie Chu; publisher, Oni Press.
Steve Gerber tears down comics and rebuilds them in this issue of Howard the Duck. Well, maybe just in the first ten pages of the issue. He hangs out in the rebuilt part for the rest of the story. Real quick–Gerber’s Duck is an idea of where mainstream comics should go. And it’s a rejected idea. Seeing all the potential the medium and industry squandered is depressing.
The comic has Howard dreaming about his current psychological predicament. Gerber makes it a story about a duck out of water without ever showing the reader the water. It’s all inferred (Howard’s home) and it collides with all the political commentary Gerber is doing. It’s awesome work. So, so good. So thoughtful.
This issue also gives Colan a bunch of strange stuff to draw. He does it. Colan is realistically rendering the absurd while still keeping it absurd. It’s awesome work too.
CREDITS
Swan-Song …of the Living Dead Duck!; writer and editor, Steve Gerber; penciller, Gene Colan; inker, Steve Leialoha; colorist, Janice Cohen; letterer, Jim Novak; publisher, Marvel Comics.
KING KONG, as advertised in The New York Times (March 2, 1933).
Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1933 film, King Kong, is one of the most popular films ever made. Besides being a box office smash on release–and then again and again on its rereleases–Kong is nearly universally praised, whether by the Library of Congress or the American Film Institute. In his first movie guide, Leonard Maltin called Kong a “moviegoing must”[1]. The last edition of Maltin’s movie guide, has the same two sentence capsule, but in the intervening forty-six years, Maltin has added information about Kong’s remakes, restorations and colorizations. He has also included the subsequent notation–“followed immediately by The Son of Kong”[2].
Looking at the opening credits for The Son of Kong, one sees many familiar names from King Kong, but most duos are broken up. Ruth Rose is again on screenwriting duties, but her co-writer from Kong, James Ashmore Creelman, is absent. Schoedsack is directing, but Cooper is now just executive producing. Robert Armstrong and Frank Reicher are staring again, but Son is missing Bruce Cabot and Fay Wray.
Son of Kong does not have the reputation of Kong. It currently carries a thirty-three percent critics rating at “Rotten Tomatoes” (compared to the original’s ninety-eight)[3],[4]; the Leonard Maltin guide, in its first and final editions, awards the film ★★½[5]. Much better than “Rotten Tomatoes” and actually quite fair. Son of Kong’s negative reputation–so infamous Peter Jackson made fun of the film in a zealous April Fools Day joke in 2005 while remaking the original–has stunted both scholarship of the film and discussion of it.
Gentlemen prefer brunettes. Robert Armstrong and Helen Mack in THE SON OF KONG, their second pairing for RKO in 1933.
When comparing the films, star Robert Armstrong preferred Son of Kong, saying the role of Carl Denham was better in the sequel. Not sharing the screen so much with Cabot, Wray (or King Kong) meant Armstrong got “a great deal more character, swell dialogue and love scenes.”[6]
RKO Radio Pictures started production on Son of Kong in early April, a few days before the nationwide release of King Kong[7]. Kong had been such a success in its New York opening in March and had so impressed the studio brass, they had not just ordered the sequel, they had made Cooper the new head of production for the entire studio[8]. Hence his inability to return to the sequel as co-director.
Cooper pitched the board a “bigger and more elaborate” sequel to Kong. He brought together Rose, Schoedsack and Willis O’Brien (who did the first film’s exceptional special effects) to put together a story in March 1933 before Rose went off to write the script. Everyone was very excited. And then the RKO board halved the budget.[9]
Merian C. Cooper and his pipe dreams of KONG.
Son of Kong was always going to open in the 1933 holiday season. RKO wanted a sequel when moviegoers were still excited about Kong and Cooper wanted to beat any stop motion imitations[10]. While Cooper’s biographer Mark Cotta Vaz characterizes Cooper as disinterested in Son of Kong–Cooper, as the new head of production, ordered Son of Kong rushed and was only interested in the “bottom line” on the film, not the day-to-day progress of it[1].
However, RKO associate producer David Lewis characterizes Cooper as much different as a production head–at least when it came to films involving Ruth Rose. Rose was married to Schoedsack and Cooper took an active interest in the production of her scripts. He brought Lewis onto another film written by Rose, Blind Adventure, to make sure it got its best possible version. That film, released in August 1933–before Son of Kong wrapped principal photography for its actors–shared a director in Schoedsack and its leads in Armstrong and Helen Mack. Cooper, as RKO head, had halted production of Son of Kong to get Blind Adventure made.[12]
A poster for SON OF KONG.
There has been very little comprehensive research on the making of Son of Kong. Most citations come from a 1992 “American Cinematographer” article, which itself largely cites a 1975 book about the making of King Kong. Both article and book have an appreciative view of the film, but both also contain a number of historical inaccuracies. Vaz’s Cooper biography, from 2005, does not suggest scholarship on the subject is improving.
But if film historians have been interested (for the most part) but unable to properly chronicle the making of Son of Kong from the generative standpoint–the film crew’s troubles and tragedies during production are relatively well-known–at least those keen scholars are head of film critics. Son of Kong’s negative reviews did not start with “Rotten Tomatoes,” they started with “The New York Times” the day after the film premiered in New York. Even though the film was a hit in 1933–not just in the United States but also internationally, including in Malaysia (Son of Kong was “one of the few Hollywood-made films depicting that part of the world that looked sufficiently authentic to be accepted” by local audiences)[13]–it has never had a good reputation.
SON OF KONG, as advertised in The New York Times (December 29, 1933).
That bad reputation started on a very cold day in December 1933. “New York Times” film critic Andre Sennwald must have bundled up–New Yorkers were dealing with a temperature of three below zero on December 29, 1933, the coldest day in the city in thirteen years[14]–before heading to West 50th Street to see Son of Kong at the Roxy Theatre. The next day, Sennwald reported the film was a “low melodrama,” albeit one with “loud and satisfying” laughs. He was unsure if the filmmakers had intended the humor[15]. Given Son of Kong’s first joke–a smart one–comes at the end of the opening titles, it is hard to understand Sennwald’s confusion. If only Sennwald read the movie gossip columns of the time–writer Ruth Rose had quite intentionally and openly “expanded” the already extant comedy to “compensate” for RKO’s halving of the budget[16].
In the first paragraph of his four paragraph review, Sennwald spoils the end of Son of Kong before going on to complain about the lack of spectacle in the film. He did report the film’s target audience–“the youngsters”–loudly enjoyed themselves during the same screening. So Son of Kong was for someone, just no one who appreciated the “mechanical ingenuity” of the original[17].
A scene from SON OF KONG.
Of course, O’Brien and his crew utilized effects techniques they discovered while making the original. Technically, they were better at their craft on Son of Kong. They just did not have the time or budget to do the type of sequences in the original.
Reading Sennwald’s review today, having just seen Son of Kong–and his sentiment the sequel is “for kids” is widely held one (if people even bother to talk about Son of Kong)–it seems as though Sennwald and other critics have, over the years, seen a much different film.
Son of Kong is a depressing journey through poverty, both domestic and foreign, in an attempt not to find fortune but to find general comfort. That “great deal more character” Armstrong talked about in reference to his role? The events of the first film have left his character in deep depression, not to mention incredible legal trouble.
King Kong, as advertised in SON OF KONG.
The film works on two very different levels. First, the one where Schoedsack and Rose joke at the idea of making a sequel to King Kong. Whether it is bringing in the unseen map maker, revealing him a murderous, dishonest drunken coward, or just having leading lady Helen Mack have a show with a bunch of cute little monkeys, Son of Kong defies the audience to get comfortable with the film. In Armstrong’s self-loathing, the film prods the audience into accepting their culpability for watching the first film and then going to see a sequel.
The Son of Kong, in 1933, is either the first post-modern studio sequel or the first famous one. And it is entirely unappreciated for that quality. The ending of the film–the one Sennwald so pointlessly (and thoroughly) spoiled–erases the “franchise.” Schoedsack, Rose, O’Brien and Cooper send it out with a bang too–Son of Kong’s Skull Island is no longer the lost world of the original film, it is a fantasy land. As it becomes more fantastic, Armstrong becomes more human. By the end of the film, he is practically a grown-up.
Since day one, critics have tried comparing the height of Son of Kong to its “father.” The film scholarship on Son of Kong is so tepid, leading lady Helen Mack’s character does not even have an agreed upon name. Called Hilda in the opening titles, no one ever refers to Mack as anything but Helene in the picture itself. No one seemed to notice this incongruity for fifty years.
Instead of being dismissed Son of Kong (it currently enjoys less regard than Schoedsack, Rose, Armstrong and Cooper’s 1949 Mighty Joe Young), the film should be appreciated and considered for its peculiarities, its singular elements. It’s strictly on the level, even with the funny business.
KING KONG, as advertised in The New York Times (March 2, 1933).
Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1933 film, King Kong, is one of the most popular films ever made. Besides being a box office smash on release–and then again and again on its rereleases–Kong is nearly universally praised, whether by the Library of Congress or the American Film Institute. In his first movie guide, Leonard Maltin called Kong a “moviegoing must”[1]. The last edition of Maltin’s movie guide, has the same two sentence capsule, but in the intervening forty-six years, Maltin has added information about Kong’s remakes, restorations and colorizations. He has also included the subsequent notation–“followed immediately by The Son of Kong”[2].
Looking at the opening credits for The Son of Kong, one sees many familiar names from King Kong, but most duos are broken up. Ruth Rose is again on screenwriting duties, but her co-writer from Kong, James Ashmore Creelman, is absent. Schoedsack is directing, but Cooper is now just executive producing. Robert Armstrong and Frank Reicher are staring again, but Son is missing Bruce Cabot and Fay Wray.
Son of Kong does not have the reputation of Kong. It currently carries a thirty-three percent critics rating at “Rotten Tomatoes” (compared to the original’s ninety-eight)[3],[4]; the Leonard Maltin guide, in its first and final editions, awards the film ★★½[5]. Much better than “Rotten Tomatoes” and actually quite fair. Son of Kong’s negative reputation–so infamous Peter Jackson made fun of the film in a zealous April Fools Day joke in 2005 while remaking the original–has stunted both scholarship of the film and discussion of it.
Gentlemen prefer brunettes. Robert Armstrong and Helen Mack in THE SON OF KONG, their second pairing for RKO in 1933.
When comparing the films, star Robert Armstrong preferred Son of Kong, saying the role of Carl Denham was better in the sequel. Not sharing the screen so much with Cabot, Wray (or King Kong) meant Armstrong got “a great deal more character, swell dialogue and love scenes.”[6]
RKO Radio Pictures started production on Son of Kong in early April, a few days before the nationwide release of King Kong[7]. Kong had been such a success in its New York opening in March and had so impressed the studio brass, they had not just ordered the sequel, they had made Cooper the new head of production for the entire studio[8]. Hence his inability to return to the sequel as co-director.
Cooper pitched the board a “bigger and more elaborate” sequel to Kong. He brought together Rose, Schoedsack and Willis O’Brien (who did the first film’s exceptional special effects) to put together a story in March 1933 before Rose went off to write the script. Everyone was very excited. And then the RKO board halved the budget.[9]
Merian C. Cooper and his pipe dreams of KONG.
Son of Kong was always going to open in the 1933 holiday season. RKO wanted a sequel when moviegoers were still excited about Kong and Cooper wanted to beat any stop motion imitations[10]. While Cooper’s biographer Mark Cotta Vaz characterizes Cooper as disinterested in Son of Kong–Cooper, as the new head of production, ordered Son of Kong rushed and was only interested in the “bottom line” on the film, not the day-to-day progress of it[1].
However, RKO associate producer David Lewis characterizes Cooper as much different as a production head–at least when it came to films involving Ruth Rose. Rose was married to Schoedsack and Cooper took an active interest in the production of her scripts. He brought Lewis onto another film written by Rose, Blind Adventure, to make sure it got its best possible version. That film, released in August 1933–before Son of Kong wrapped principal photography for its actors–shared a director in Schoedsack and its leads in Armstrong and Helen Mack. Cooper, as RKO head, had halted production of Son of Kong to get Blind Adventure made.[12]
A poster for SON OF KONG.
There has been very little comprehensive research on the making of Son of Kong. Most citations come from a 1992 “American Cinematographer” article, which itself largely cites a 1975 book about the making of King Kong. Both article and book have an appreciative view of the film, but both also contain a number of historical inaccuracies. Vaz’s Cooper biography, from 2005, does not suggest scholarship on the subject is improving.
But if film historians have been interested (for the most part) but unable to properly chronicle the making of Son of Kong from the generative standpoint–the film crew’s troubles and tragedies during production are relatively well-known–at least those keen scholars are head of film critics. Son of Kong’s negative reviews did not start with “Rotten Tomatoes,” they started with “The New York Times” the day after the film premiered in New York. Even though the film was a hit in 1933–not just in the United States but also internationally, including in Malaysia (Son of Kong was “one of the few Hollywood-made films depicting that part of the world that looked sufficiently authentic to be accepted” by local audiences)[13]–it has never had a good reputation.
SON OF KONG, as advertised in The New York Times (December 29, 1933).
That bad reputation started on a very cold day in December 1933. “New York Times” film critic Andre Sennwald must have bundled up–New Yorkers were dealing with a temperature of three below zero on December 29, 1933, the coldest day in the city in thirteen years[14]–before heading to West 50th Street to see Son of Kong at the Roxy Theatre. The next day, Sennwald reported the film was a “low melodrama,” albeit one with “loud and satisfying” laughs. He was unsure if the filmmakers had intended the humor[15]. Given Son of Kong’s first joke–a smart one–comes at the end of the opening titles, it is hard to understand Sennwald’s confusion. If only Sennwald read the movie gossip columns of the time–writer Ruth Rose had quite intentionally and openly “expanded” the already extant comedy to “compensate” for RKO’s halving of the budget[16].
In the first paragraph of his four paragraph review, Sennwald spoils the end of Son of Kong before going on to complain about the lack of spectacle in the film. He did report the film’s target audience–“the youngsters”–loudly enjoyed themselves during the same screening. So Son of Kong was for someone, just no one who appreciated the “mechanical ingenuity” of the original[17].
A scene from SON OF KONG.
Of course, O’Brien and his crew utilized effects techniques they discovered while making the original. Technically, they were better at their craft on Son of Kong. They just did not have the time or budget to do the type of sequences in the original.
Reading Sennwald’s review today, having just seen Son of Kong–and his sentiment the sequel is “for kids” is widely held one (if people even bother to talk about Son of Kong)–it seems as though Sennwald and other critics have, over the years, seen a much different film.
Son of Kong is a depressing journey through poverty, both domestic and foreign, in an attempt not to find fortune but to find general comfort. That “great deal more character” Armstrong talked about in reference to his role? The events of the first film have left his character in deep depression, not to mention incredible legal trouble.
King Kong, as advertised in SON OF KONG.
The film works on two very different levels. First, the one where Schoedsack and Rose joke at the idea of making a sequel to King Kong. Whether it is bringing in the unseen map maker, revealing him a murderous, dishonest drunken coward, or just having leading lady Helen Mack have a show with a bunch of cute little monkeys, Son of Kong defies the audience to get comfortable with the film. In Armstrong’s self-loathing, the film prods the audience into accepting their culpability for watching the first film and then going to see a sequel.
The Son of Kong, in 1933, is either the first post-modern studio sequel or the first famous one. And it is entirely unappreciated for that quality. The ending of the film–the one Sennwald so pointlessly (and thoroughly) spoiled–erases the “franchise.” Schoedsack, Rose, O’Brien and Cooper send it out with a bang too–Son of Kong’s Skull Island is no longer the lost world of the original film, it is a fantasy land. As it becomes more fantastic, Armstrong becomes more human. By the end of the film, he is practically a grown-up.
Since day one, critics have tried comparing the height of Son of Kong to its “father.” The film scholarship on Son of Kong is so tepid, leading lady Helen Mack’s character does not even have an agreed upon name. Called Hilda in the opening titles, no one ever refers to Mack as anything but Helene in the picture itself. No one seemed to notice this incongruity for fifty years.
Instead of being dismissed Son of Kong (it currently enjoys less regard than Schoedsack, Rose, Armstrong and Cooper’s 1949 Mighty Joe Young), the film should be appreciated and considered for its peculiarities, its singular elements. It’s strictly on the level, even with the funny business.
It’s another mellow issue of Resident Alien. I wish it were a weekly, just with a scene or two. This issue has Harry investigating (of course) and getting rid of a problem employee. There’s practically more drama in the employee’s going away party than in the investigation. It’s certainly livelier.
Most of Harry’s investigating is in the form of a pulp non-fiction confession. There’s flashback art and Parkhouse does a rather good job with it. One forgets, when he’s setting stories amid the calm of Harry’s town, he’s so capable of doing intense suspense. There’s some really good art this issue. And not just on that suspense–the gentle hard cliffhanger has some great art too.
With only one more issue of Sam Hain–the third Resident Alien series–one has to wonder if Hogan has a plan for the series. Then one has to wonder if it matters.
not doing the thing where the characters are another part of the puzzle (at least as far as what they know, not their meaning in the story). It’s a nice change. The Fiction is compelling without being tricky.
It’s Howard without Beverly–in a delirious state he assumes she has run out on him with one of the hairless apes but it’s really innocent (or so we hope)–and that change in balance would be enough to get the issue done. It’s Howard fending for himself and all. Gerber could easily fill the pages with that angle.
★★★
Spears seems a lot more concerned with making this issue fun than anything else. The film crew gets to a jungle island and runs afoul of a giant gorilla, which the immortal serial killer brings to a graphic finish. It gives Callahan something to do because most of the rest of the issue is talking heads. Even when it’s the lead–whose name I still don’t remember–meeting with a dream plane script doctor, it’s talking heads.
Steve Gerber tears down comics and rebuilds them in this issue of Howard the Duck. Well, maybe just in the first ten pages of the issue. He hangs out in the rebuilt part for the rest of the story. Real quick–Gerber’s Duck is an idea of where mainstream comics should go. And it’s a rejected idea. Seeing all the potential the medium and industry squandered is depressing.
