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Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #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.
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Désirée (1954, Henry Koster)
With some notable omissions (paramours, they’re French, after all), Désirée is shockingly historically accurate. Napoleon really did have an ex-girlfriend named Désirée, who ended up the queen of Sweden, her husband his former general and then adversary. The film gets big and little details right. On its face, Désirée is just a resplendent CinemaScope melodrama. The costumes are gorgeous, the sets are grandiose, the performances are… well, more on the performances in a bit.
Jean Simmons plays Désirée. She does well aging up over the years, though the film’s makeup and hair designers roll back some of the aging in the third act. Not just for Simmons but everyone (except Marlon Brando). Simmons starts the film as a young woman—no longer a child or something to that effect—who happens to meet a man and invite him over to meet her sister, played by Elizabeth Sellers. The man is Joseph Bonaparte (played by Cameron Mitchell, who works his ass off in the background part). He brings along his brother, Napoleon (Brando). The brothers pair off with the sisters, Mitchell and Sellers, Brando and Simmons.
At this point, Napoleon’s a success, but not enough of one anyone’s listening to his ideas. The film tracks Napoleon’s story through Simmons’s informed, nearby perspective, which seems like a narrative device but, again, is actual history. Obviously, the better story is more focused on Simmons and Désirée, but it’s a CinemaScope melodrama. Brando eventually throws Simmons over for Josephine (Merle Oberon, who’s great in a glorified cameo), and Simmons ends up with general Michael Rennie. Rennie’s pretty sure Simmons spends her life in love with Brando, which provides a real subtext to their relationship as things get complicated first by Brando’s rise to power, then Rennie’s move to Sweden in opposition to him.
Most of the history comes through in Simmons’s diary entries (the film’s based on Annemarie Selinko’s historical fiction novel done as the real Désirée diary), and the second half of the film is just a series of quick, sometimes fun, sometimes not scenes. Simmons and Rennie have chemistry, Oberon and Simmons have chemistry (Simmons can have kids with her French general, Oberon can’t with hers), and then Sellers and Mitchell, every once in a while, show up and provide all this character. There’s also a whole movie in Simmons and Seller’s older brother and guardian (an uncredited Richard Deacon) bickering with the Bonaparte sisters; not sure of the historical accuracy of that bit.
While Brando and Simmons get the top billing, followed by Oberon and Rennie, it’s really Simmons’s picture. Brando should get an above-the-title “and” credit after Rennie. Every time Brando shows up in his fake nose and pound of make-up, he’s done like one portrait of the actual Napoleon or another. Director Koster shoots him in medium and long shots, sometimes to show off the sets, which is both good and bad. The bad is when they’re the wanting exterior sets, and the shots are framed to fit the set decoration exactly. Again, CinemaScope melodrama.
In his first scene with Simmons, Brando brings some intensity. It’s also the only scene where he’s shot in anything near close-up. The only other intensity he’ll bring later is rapey; he’s always trying to get Simmons alone, regardless of their spouses. It’s not a good performance from Brando. He’s got no insight into the character, either as written (Daniel Taradash’s script does give him some material, too, Brando just ignores it) or historically. Instead, Brando lets the make-up do the acting. And whatever Koster and cinematographer Milton R. Krasner do to make Brando seem shorter. Is it forced perspective, is it heels, or did they hire lots of taller people? Rennie was 6’4”, Brando was 5’9”, Simmons was 5’6”.
Anyway.
Simmons is solid in the lead. However, she doesn’t really get a character arc because her destiny (get it) is tied to Brando. Rennie’s okay too. Brando’s not incompetent, just not good or interesting. He’s got nothing to say with the performance.
The production’s decent, though Alex North’s music is a little flat. Koster’s a bland visual director, but he’s got his moments with the actors and some of the staging.
Besides wasting Brando as Napoleon, Désirée is a perfectly reasonable and surprisingly historical CinemaScope melodrama.
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Do a Powerbomb (2022) #3
Powerbomb does not disappoint with its first issue at the tournament. Creator Daniel Warren Johnson starts with a bunch of emotion—last issue’s cliffhanger revealed wannabe wrestler Lona’s dad is actually Cobrasun, the wrestler who killed her mom. The opening scene fills in the backstory when Dad visits her uncle.Their quick, boozy conversation reveals the ground situation we didn’t get in the first issue (since it was from Lona’s perspective as a little kid). Mom and Dad didn’t want to have to try explaining Dad being the heel wrestler, but eventually, they were going to tell Lona. So Mom knew she was wrestling Dad. So did the uncle. And it’s not impossible Mom knew he’d killed her.
But Powerbomb isn’t just about Lona’s sadness and Dad’s self-loathing; it’s about all the wrestlers in the tournament’s loss and self-loathing. When one team loses, they lose everything, something Johnson makes sure the reader feels—especially as it dawns on their opponents, who alternately show empathy and apathy.
It also turns out the other wrestlers aren’t playing by the same rules as Lona and her dad (she doesn’t find out Cobrasun’s her dad, though his protectiveness is a liability); pro wrestling in other dimensions isn’t a show; it’s for real. One of the other teams—who we haven’t met yet—is from Earth, so presumably there will be something to that match if and when it happens.
This issue has three fight scenes: two wrestling matches and a bar fight. Johnson emphasizes emotionality over mechanics. Well, the emotionality in the bar fight and one wrestling match, then the brutality of the other match. It helps set up the cliffhanger. Lona and Dad barely make it through their first day, and the next promises to be even more dangerous.
Once again, it’s a great issue. Johnson’s got a nice narrative distance pivot with Lona and Dad becoming joint protagonists (though uneven, as he’s keeping big secrets) while downgrading Necro, the inter-dimensional necromancer throwing the tournament, to an announcer role. The action’s faster-paced than before too, which is fine for the opening matches, but presumably, Johnson will slow the fights down again at some point.
The issue’s so affecting—the losers’ losses so palpable—I’m hoping against hope for a mega-happy ending. The not-psychopathic characters, even those just introduced this issue, deserve it.
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Tomb of Dracula (1972) #32
Well. Writer Marv Wolfman reveals a lot this issue; it’s almost entirely nonsense, but there’s a lot of it. There are conclusions (of sorts) to Taj’s Indian sojourn and Frank Drake’s South American capitalist exploitation. Taj can’t stop the villagers from breaking in to kill his vampire son; Frank discovers he’s surrounded by worker zombies who move to kill him after he says hello to one of them. Not sure what they’d have done if he had ignored them.It’s all part of Dracula’s plan, which includes something for Rachel, too—teased in an editor’s note but not revealed until the cliffhanger. He’s spent a dozen issues maneuvering nemesis Quincy Harker’s friends away, and now it’s time to strike. Despite Wolfman dragging out these subplots for ages, they make almost no sense, given Dracula’s plots over the same issues. He’s going to Harker’s now because Harker has a file about how Dracula is losing his powers. Like a white paper. Dracula apparently knows he’s losing strength, but not why, nor does he know the author of the white paper.
So Dracula had been isolating Harker—though, not really because Frank Drake’s just a shitty white guy who abandoned the vampire hunters—just in case he had need to call on him for a MacGuffin. Harker’s finally got the MacGuffin handy.
In the ensuing “battle, “ Dracula runs afoul of all Harker’s traps in the house. Or if he doesn’t get caught in one, Harker shows it to Drac to humble brag. All the while, Harker narrates in the present tense—presumably his internal monologue—and it’s awful. There’s this gorgeous Gene Colan and Tom Palmer art and this terrible narration from Wolfman. So much terrible narration.
But the narration isn’t the only problem: we’ve already seen Dracula in a trap house before. Maybe not this exact one, but he’s done a haunted house, he’s done a trap skyscraper… put them together, and it appears Dracula hasn’t learned shit over thirty issues; good thing for Harker.
We also learn why Harker wears dark sunglasses all the time. It’s a strange detail, revealing Dracula hasn’t just been incompetent since waking up in Tomb #1.
The cliffhanger promises we’ll get more resolution next issue, but I’m not sure I believe Wolfman.
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Absolution (2022) #3
Artist Mike Deodato Jr. gets a little too bored with the art this issue—it’s another fight scene at night in a skyscraper. That repetitiveness figures into the problem Absolution’s revealing about itself writ large. The concept lends itself too much to repetitive storytelling. High-tech super-assassin Nina needs to kill bad guys in a way to score approval with her (civilian) audience, who watch her stream. And because the future’s just as shitty as the present, she’s got to be sexy doing it (which raises a question for later). So she does well, her score goes up. Then she goes something wrong, or something bad happens, and her score goes down. So she needs to do well again. But then something will go wrong again.She starts this issue with an easy kill, but then it immediately goes wrong. So wrong a micro-bomb goes off in her brain to remind her to work harder. The explosion knocks her out, and she wakes up at the doctor’s. Not the legit doctor, but the underground “help those in need” doctor. This introduces a new character—Ann—who’s non-binary, which is apparently a thing for the comic so writer Peter Milligan can muse on whether non-binary people are real. Except Ann’s also… Nina’s only real friend and a good one at that, so… his musing’s confused and unnecessary.
That musing figures into the main plot, which has Nina deciding the way to get her score up is to off the rapist introduced last issue. The first page of this issue is post-rape, which needlessly gives Absolution some grit cred. It turns out the rapist is a high-powered businessman who sues anyone who threatens to talk about him being a rapist, including Woody Harrelson and the other talk show hosts.
I’m not sure this guy’s a believable villain. I mean, he’s a believable villain, but nothing about Absolution’s future implies he’d be considered one.
Once he’s established, it’s all about Nina taking him out. And, of course, what will go wrong when she does. It also reveals a problem with the scoring system. Milligan really needed to explain it better.
But it’s compelling and whatnot. However, Deodato ends up drawing people in the same scene at all different kinds of scale. He doesn’t even have time for fun photo-referenced faces. And I hope they don’t try to turn it into a streaming series. It’s clearly only got enough story for a ninety-minute and change movie.