goblin cartoons

I’ve written before about what a fan I am of DC Comics’ Justice Society of America and I’ve made no secret that when I came up with the name and logo for the Library Society of the World, I was heavily influenced by superhero comics, especially the JSA. Right, so…

Last Friday night, the CW showed a two-hour Smallville “movie” (it was originally going to be two connected episodes but instead was broadcast as one two-hour episode), “Absolute Justice.” The episode featured Clark, Chloe and Oliver discovering a secret group of costumed superheroes, the Justice Society of America. It’s quite possibly my favorite episode of Smallville so far. Geoff Johns wrote the episode and he really groks the JSA. The Justice Society wasn’t just portrayed as a team of superheroes, it was stressed that the team members considered each other friends and family. They didn’t just fight crime together, they socialized and celebrated together. They included their spouses and children. They considered the younger generation their students and heirs.

That’s one of the driving forces behind the Library Society of the World and, I think, the biggest reason why people continue to involve themselves in the LSW. We’re not just professional library associates, we’re friends and family. We don’t just work together, we play together. We learn from each other, we support each other, professionally and personally. We’re not a league, we’re not a professional association, we’re a society.

“Absolute Justice” has stuck with me in a way few TV show episodes do. In part because it hit a lot of my superhero fanboy buttons. But more importantly because it struck a chord regarding the Library Society of the World.

Excelsior!

I miss Earth-Two. No, not this Earth 2 (although I did enjoy that series). No, not this Earth 2 (although I do love me some Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely). The Earth-Two I miss hasn’t really existed since 1986.

One of the first comics I remember reading Justice League of America #148. It featured the JLA teaming up with (and fighting, due to magical mind control) the Justice Society of America and the Legion of Super-Heroes. There was something, a certain je ne sais quois, that attracted me to the Justice Society and the idea that these characters, so similar and yet so different from the superheroes I knew, were from an alternate world called Earth-Two. As the years went on and I read more comics, I became more of a fan of the Justice Society and Earth-Two. I loved how Green Lantern, the Flash, Hawkman and the Atom were so different from their Earth-One counterparts. I loved how the Clark Kent of Earth-Two was married to Lois Lane and editor of the Daily Star, and his cousin was called Power Girl. I loved how they actually killed off Earth-Two’s Batman and introduced his superhero daughter, Helena Wayne a.k.a. the Huntress.

At that time, DC Comics featured many alternate Earths: Earth-Three, Earth-X, Earth-S and so on. The 1985 maxi-series Crisis on Infiinite Earths changed all of that, as all of the myriad parallel universes came crashing down into one universe. It was supposed to make DC’s superhero comics less complicated and baroque, more accessible to new readers. Maybe it did, but it made me sad. Sure, the Golden Age heroes of the Justice Society were still around, but I missed their alternate Earth, with its different feel and different characters, with the potential to take familiar characters and do things with them that the regular series wouldn’t do (like make Clark Kent a greying newspaper editor or Bruce Wayne a pipe-smoking police commisioner). If the world of Earth-One, DC’s standard world of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the Justice League, was a magical place, Earth-Two was even more magical to me, another step away from ordinary reality, with even stranger heroes and villains.

DC has recently brought back the idea of multiple, parallel Earths. But so far, I haven’t seen anything that brings back the magic of old Earth-Two. I’m happy to see a return to the epic, gonzo multiple universes of old, but I still remain somewhat unsatisfied.

Earth-Two, you live on, if only in my dreams.

You all know that I’m colossal geek, right?

Young Frankenstein is one of my all-time favorite movies. On Saturday night, we decided it was time for Morgan to see it. (She’s already seen Blazing Saddles and loved it, even if she didn’t get all of the jokes.) So, we got some tasty burgers from Five Guys and settled in to watch Young Frankenstein.

Morgan liked it, of course. But while we watched the movie, thoughts started drifting through my head…Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, the brilliant, eccentric scientist…Inga, his young, pretty, blonde assistant and lover…Igor, the sarcastic trickster…the Creature, big, strong and impulsive…

And because I’m a colossal geek, I spent about an hour putting this picture together (using Heromachine and The Gimp):

It kind of makes sense, don’t you think? Or is that just geeky ol’ me?

I love fan-made media. My friends and I all did fan-made stories and comics when we were kids, and I absolutely grok the urge to create your own stories using characters and settings that you love passionately.

I particularly love well-done fan-made media. This fan-made mock trailer for an imagined Green Lantern movie, starring Nathan Fillion, is so well-done, I jizzed in my pants. I love Green Lantern, and Nathan Fillion would be perfect as Hal Jordan. Yo, Hollywood! Please make this movie and do it well!

I saw Watchmen this afternoon. I think it’s an outstanding adaptation of the comic and I think it’s a terrific movie. I think it’s perfectly cast, especially Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. Yes, they changed the ending of the comic, although the effect is still the same. And honestly, I think the film ending works at least as well as the comic. Actually, I think the film ending is better than the comic. I never thought anyone could successfully adapt Watchmen to the big screen. I was wrong.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Wil Wheaton got to see Watchmen and says it’s “fucking awesome.” So, I’m not at all worried about how the movie has turned out and I can’t wait to see it.

WATCHMEN!!!

I’ve loved Tony DiTerlizzi’s art since I first saw it in Planescape and Changeling books. His picture books Jimmy Zangwow’s Out-of-This-World Moon-Pie Adventure and Ted are two of my favorite children’s books. Plus, we were both born in California in 1969 and seem to have similar influences, so…I’m a fan.

But, oh boy, do I really, really love the pictures of the Joker, Robin, the Penguin and Catwoman that’s he’s done. Fan-freakin’-tastic! Just…wow!

In 1997, CBS produced a pilot for a Justice League of America TV show. It was apparently never aired in the US, which is probably one of the main reasons I only just recently even learned about it. I managed to get a copy of it and watched it last night.

Boy, am I glad it was never picked up as show!

To be fair, it’s not nearly as bad as I worried it would be. There are some nice bits to it, and all of the actors do a good enough job with what they’re given. But overall, it’s really, really bad, showing very little understanding of the Justice League, the original comics characters, or even superhero stories at all.

The Good:

• John Kassir is great as Ray Palmer. You could say I think that just because he wears glasses and bow ties, but no, Kassir plays Palmer as a sweet, earnest nerd and does a great job of it.
• David Ogden Stiers is good as J’onn J’onzz. No, his physique isn’t really, um, superheroic, especially around the middle. And the make-up he has to wear is…not good. But Stiers is one of those actors who could read the phonebook and make it sound incredibly compelling.
• Michelle Hurd and Matthew Settle are pretty good as Fire and Green Lantern, and I liked their interplay as once-involved-now-just-friends. OK, so the Guy Gardner in here is nothing like Guy in the comics (more like Kyle Rayner), so it’s beyond me why they called him Guy Gardner, but Settle makes him likeable.
• The overall plot isn’t all that bad, and the “Super Friends” take kind of works. It’s interesting, at least. It would’ve worked better if it weren’t the Justice League, though.

The Bad:

• The costumes suck hard, especially the Atom’s and the Flash’s. The Atom looks like a football quarterback in an outfit designed by Playskool. The Flash just looks like an idiot.
• Barry Allen as a jobless Joey Tribbiani really doesn’t work, and the actor (Kenny Johnston) doesn’t help by doing a lackluster job.
• It seems like the heroes mostly just save people from natural disasters (when not fighting Miguel Ferrer), which is really lame. They’re the Justice League! Why not show them actually fighting crime? Why not give them actual costumed supervillains to fight? As a villain, the “Weatherman” is lamer than lame. He’s no real threat to superheroes, except that the script keeps him away from the heroes until the very end (and then only Green Lantern goes up against him, in an exceptionally lame bit of “confronting the bad guy”).
• While the plot isn’t bad (except for a few massive holes), the show as a whole doesn’t even begin to live up to the history and potential of the Justice League. The old Batman show was camp, but at least it had style and vision. This is just a watered down version of what Hollywood imagines superhero comics are like.

Really, this pilot is tragic. It could’ve been quite good, but was utterly ruined by some incredibly boneheaded decisions. I took a bullet for you all by watching it. You can thank me with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

When I was a kid, I wrote and drew a lot of comics. It was one of my burning passions, and I still kick myself for giving up drawing. (I gave it up because it got too hard. I didn’t want to have to practice, I just wanted to be able to draw the things in my head. Giving things up because they got too hard was pretty common for me, I’m sad to say.) Through multiple moves and the usual purging of possessions, all the comics I did as a kid are lost–except for one, which I’ve somehow managed to hold on to. It’s deteriorating, though, so I scanned it in to preserve it.

And so I present…Swamp-Man #2! It’s crude, it’s goofy, but it’s all mine, and I’m still very proud of it.

(One of the main reasons why I’m doing NaNoWriMo this month is to reconnect with that comic-making mindset I had as a kid. Hence the posting of this now.)

I’ve been as skeptical as anyone about the upcoming Watchmen movie. Maybe I’ve been burned too many times, but I just don’t trust Hollywood to make a superhero movie, especially adapting an actual comic book story, without screwing it up. But with that in mind, I have to admit, the footage I’ve seen looks pretty amazing. I really hope it doesn’t turn out to suck.