-
Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #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.
-
Frasier (1993) s07e15 – Out with Dad
As usual, I regret not keeping better track of writing credits. Joe Keenan gets the credit this episode; he’s been writing “Frasier” since season two with numerous big successes, but based on Out with Dad, I’d have thought him a newbie. The episode picks and chooses plot points from outstanding—and memorable—episodes and mixes them a bit. Dad John Mahoney tells Mary Louise Wilson he’s gay, so she’ll stop flirting with him, and she sets him up with her… well, wait, Brian Bedford’s English.
So maybe her brother-in-law? Anyway, Bedford is Marg Helgenberger’s uncle, which is important because Kelsey Grammer’s interested in Helgenberger. Only Bedford’s interested in Mahoney, so Mahoney has to pretend he’s gay for the evening, except gay and unavailable. He can’t come clean about being straight because it’ll mess up Grammer.
People being confused about Mahoney being gay goes back to season one. And the family pretending they’re something other than cishet WASPs most memorably happened in the “let’s pretend we’re Jewish” episode, but I’ll bet there have been more. Out just stirs them together a little differently.
Oddly, it’s a Valentine’s Day episode too. Grammer ropes Mahoney into going to the opera because otherwise, Mahoney would be at home watching chick flicks with Jane Leeves and Peri Gilpin. David Hyde Pierce was supposed to go with Grammer, but Jane Adams (who doesn’t appear) stayed in town special for him. Grammer doesn’t want to give up his seat (to Adams to go with Hyde Pierce) because he’s got the hots for Helgenberger, another opera-goer. When he and Mahoney get there, Mahoney waves at Helgenberger to be extra, but Wilson thinks he’s spotted her. Confusion and hijinks ensue, including Mahoney drafting an unlikely person as his romantic interest.
It’s an amusing episode; it’s just entirely redundant. There are some good laughs (and nice human moments, eventually, for Mahoney), but it’s an adequate episode for a sitcom in its seventh season, nothing more. And Helgenberger makes almost no impression, with first Wilson, then Bedford running all her scenes.
Solid direction from David Lee probably helps a lot. Again… fine, with asterisks.
Posted on
Posted in
Tagged
-
Tomb of Dracula (1972) #29
I can’t believe how well writer Marv Wolfman ends up doing with this issue. It very much should not work, yet it ends up working (in no small part due to Gene Colan and Tom Palmer’s superb artwork; it’s one of their best issues). But the story… wow wee. Dracula starts the issue attacking a random babysitter, and after the splash page, Colan goes with the vampire bat attacking from above, which was a visual trope for the first few issues of Tomb. Colan dropped it almost noticeably, and it’s only one panel here; not as much terrifying the victims, I guess.See, Dracula’s upset because he got dumped. Familiar Shiela left him for Yeshiva student David and so Dracula’s rampaging. He goes to bed, planning to kill David the next night. Luckily, since Shiela’s so upset about Dracula, David goes to kill him. Even though Shiela and David can’t be more than friends—“right or wrong,” their differing religions get in the way—he wants her to feel safe, so he’s going to succeed where everyone else has failed.
Sure.
Wolfman’s second-person narration mainly just lectures Dracula about being such a son of a bitch (Boris Karloff should’ve done readings of this narration, a la The Grinch). It’s not great and initially seems like it’s going to do the issue in. It does not, however, because Dracula’s actions—separate from the close second-person—reveal a much more complicated character arc. I’m sure Wolfman didn’t intend for the narration and the narrative to work against each other, but it’s a success.
Less successful—though very weird by the end—is Taj’s origin story. Dracula attacked Taj, his son, and his wife. The wife ran and got her legs crushed, a vampire bit the kid, and Rachel Van Helsing showed up in the nick of time to save Taj from Dracula. The wife narrates the origin and tries to trick… well, the reader, but apparently also Taj. It doesn’t matter because even though he’s been shitty to her—presumably okay because she ran out on him during the attack—they get busy in a very sexy scene from Colan and Palmer. Looks like a romance cover.
The resolution to the main plot’s a little abrupt, but the rawness helps with the emotion. It’s a rather good issue.
-
Frasier (1993) s07e14 – Big Crane on Campus
Oh, “Frasier: Season Seven,” why do you continue to taunt me? This episode has Jane Leeves and David Hyde Pierce cooking together and being adorable for the first time since Leeves found out about Hyde Pierce crushing on her. It’s a good scene, with Hyde Pierce getting to more fully participate—previously and problematically, these scenes have been from Leeves’s perspective (way to get a big subplot: it’s entirely in service of the dude). Sheldon Epps directs the episode and knows how to make it work. It’s a regular “Frasier” scene, only a little different; Hyde Pierce isn’t the awkward one; now it’s Leeves.
If I’d been watching this episode in February 2000, I’d have been fully committed to the idea of them getting together. Best thing for the show.
Whoops.
Otherwise, the episode’s a Kelsey Grammer-centric episode. He’s just happened to meet his high school crush (a hilarious, brassy Jean Smart) and can’t believe she’s being nice to him. Once they actually start seeing each other (there are some great scenes with Smart teasing a blubbering Hyde Pierce), Grammer discovers she’s a little too brassy for his tastes. Except he can’t give up the prom queen, not with their high school reunion just around the corner.
Outside Leeves and Hyde Pierce’s kitchen moment, everything in the episode’s in support of Grammer (and Smart). She’s a relatively featured guest star, getting a lot more complicated scenes than Grammer’s girlfriends usually get. Peri Gilpin’s around to talk Grammer through dating for the wrong reasons; she gets a classic literature book club C plot, which comes back in the end credits sequence as a way to be shitty. It’s an unfortunate finish to a strong episode.
First and foremost, it’s an excellent showcase for Smart, who was only a few years from starting to be appreciated in 2000. Or closer to it than “Designing Women.” It’s also proof they can do a mythology moment well for Leeves and Hyde Pierce. Mark Reisman, another new-to-the-show-this-season writer, gets the credit. And, finally, it’s a solid outing for Grammer. It treads somewhat familiar territory but with a fresh enough angle. He tends to be really good with his guest stars, and Smart’s no different.
So, another good episode to convince me everything’s fine and we’re not driving toward a cliff in a Winnebago.
Posted on
Posted in
Tagged
-
Dan Dare (2007) #7
I’m going to assume Dan Dare had a future-sword in the original comics or whatever, because otherwise, writer Garth Ennis has even more to answer for.
This final issue is oversized, which I’d been gleefully anticipating, but it turns out it’s too long. It’s fluffed up with lots of double-page spreads and it’s still too long. Worse, Ennis reuses entire bits from previous issues for that fluffing. The issue flops around quite a bit, with Ennis and artist Gary Erskine both at fault, but Ennis not having enough story is the real problem.
Erskine draws some repetitive space battle scenes—all the ships look alike, so while occasionally visually impressive, it’s not visually interesting. There are occasional fighter spaceship scenes, which end up being where Erskine comes through. It’s nice he’s got something he clicks with because—pretty much everything else—he doesn’t.
The issue’s split between Dan boarding the Mekon’s ship for the final showdown, which Erskine renders like Luke and the Emperor in Jedi because Ennis doesn’t give him anything else to do, Dan’s newest companion, Lieutenant Christian, commanding his flagship in the space battle, and Jocelyn back on Earth, getting drunk and waiting to hear whether humanity’s conquered.
The best subplot is Christian’s, which has her butting heads with an admiral who’s never been in a space battle but thinks he ought to be in command. The Dan plot, before it goes Jedi (without a Vader), is essentially a repeat of a couple issues ago, just with the same characters in different parts. Erskine utterly flubs the showdown between Dan and the Mekon, too, though—again—it’s not his fault Dan’s got a sword, and it’s not his fault Ennis doesn’t have a showdown.
Then Jocelyn’s whining is weird because it’s all about future history after the original Dan Dare and before this series when the newly formed British Neo-Nazis want his support with Brexit or something. It’s utterly superfluous world-building just when the comic’s closing up.
Ennis and Erskine still get in a few good scenes and moments, mainly when it’s a war comic, sometimes when it’s dealing with the “Dare as legend.” Most of the issue is just hoping it never gets too bad or too visually confusing. Erskine lacks continuity between panels, first occasionally, then all of them. It’s like the pages got lettered in the wrong order.
I’d forgotten how Dare ends—I do remember waiting forever for the final issue, which would’ve been one of Virgin Comics’s last publications—and I know why I’d much rather remember the series’s successes than its failures. It’s not a terrible last issue, but it’s not a good one, either.