The (Comic) Book Was Better - DC: The New Frontier

 

Since the maiden voyage of the good ship The (Comic) Book was Better didn’t completely capsize and sink, it’s time to set sail yet again, this time with the epic tale of epicness known as The New Frontier.  The comic was written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke and published in 2004; the cartoon came out in 2008.  The comic is so epic that it needed two full-length TPBs to contain the awesome (though it is all available in one volume now, from what I understand), so of course, the cartoon version had to cut quite a bit.  The question is: did it cut the right things?  And was it able to tell a compelling story with what it did use?

"Mask of Doom" - Fantastic Four

Every once in a while, I’ll come across a superhero that even I can’t bring myself to care about.  For Marvel, those heroes used to be the Fantastic Four.  For some reason, even as I was gobbling up the most recent Spiderman and X-Men cartoons and reading every issue of Young Avengers I could get my hands on, I just wasn’t interested in tracking down anything starring Reed Richards and company.  When I saw the “blockbuster” films from 2005 and 2007, I was even less interested.  And when I saw this show?  Let’s just say Marvel was lucky I stuck around long enough to give Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four a try.

Teen Titans #4

With the 2012 London Olympics now underway, I figured it was time to bust out another issue of the old school Teen Titans comic, and you can probably guess why by looking at the cover.  And, um, that’s it really.  So let’s start.

Batman, Season Two

The second season of Batman is almost twice as long as Season One, and frankly, I don’t think that was a good thing.  By this point, the show was a monster success and everyone was riding high.  It was nominated for three Emmys—Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Comedy (for Frank Gorshin), and Individual Achievements in Sound Editing—and was even being referenced by other shows (The Monkees, Gilligan’s Island) and movies (The Fortune Cookie).  The Bat-climb celebrity cameos were in full swing, featuring everyone from Sammy Davis Jr. to… Colonel Klink from Hogan’s Heroes?  How is that supposed to work?*

The point is, the show was at the peak of its popularity, and I guess that made the writers too lazy to get up off their laurels and make sure the show continued to be a success.

Spider-Man

In 2002, among the hottest of hot summer blockbusters was Sam Raimi’s take on Marvel’s wondrous wall-crawler, the spectacular Spider-Man, which earned a whopping 821.7 million dollars at the worldwide box office; was nominated for two Oscars, two Grammies, and a whole slew of other accolades; and spawned two sequels over the next five years.  The film remains popular to this day, scoring an 89% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and many, many devoted fans.

And I don’t like it.

I will now take a short recess to dodge the bushels of rotten vegetables being thrown at my head, and then we shall proceed.

"Lucy and Superman" - I Love Lucy

June 16, 1959.  For many, this is just another date on the calendar, but for those of us who know a little bit about superhero pop culture, this is also the day that George Reeves, most famous as TV’s Superman and that guy who had two lines at the beginning of Gone with the Wind, was found dead of a single gunshot wound.  The death was ruled a suicide—the result of depression coupled with a night of heavy drinking—but nevertheless remains a source of debate and intrigue even today, and as the owner of a superhero blog, it wouldn’t be right for me to let the anniversary of this tragic event go by unobserved.

"The Day They Unmasked Mr. Action" - Jimmy Olsen #159

I pretty much established from day one that Silver Age comics can be extremely silly.  As far as I’ve been able to tell, no hero was immune from the ridiculousness—they adopted improbable animal sidekicks, got turned into improbable animal sidekicks, turned evil, turned their improbable animal sidekicks evil, got turned evil by their improbable animal sidekicks… everybody was having their share of crazy, cracky goodness, but out of all the characters to have stupid adventures in the 1960s, the Idiot Supreme Award probably has to go to Jimmy Olsen.  Dude got into so much trouble I’m surprised he didn’t get a restraining order against Superman just so he could stop turning into a werewolf every other week. (No, seriously, he got turned into a werewolf.  Twice.  That I know of.)