Month: November 2013

Deathstroke: The Hunted (My Life as a Teen Titan, Part Thirty-Five)

The 1990s take a lot of crap from comics fans and in all honesty a lot of that crap isn’t fair. But there are times when the effects of the era’s attitude are clearly seen and seen for the worst, which is when an established character undergoes some sort of transformation to make him or her “edgier” or “extreme” or “more exciting.” Post-Zero Hour, this happened to The New Titans, which had a new lineup and a whole slew of storyline and character changes that were mainly the result of interference from a new editor (though the title’s writer, Marv Wolfman, obviously shares some of the responsibility for how the book eventually crashed and burned) and this bled over into the other Titans-related comic of the time, Deathstroke: The Terminator.

Prior to the 1994 crossover event, Deathstroke had been chugging along and probably faced a fair amount of declining sales (I haven’t been able to find the actual sales figures) since its debut, or at least through most of the latter part of 1993 and into 1994, even though the title had been a pretty consistent read throughout its run. But with Zero Hour came a new editor, Pat Garrahy, and therefore came a new direction because Garrahy, much to the chagrin of Wolfman and quite a number of fans (especially in hindsight) was obsessed with the idea of “shaking things up” to the point where he didn’t seem to care about getting anyone upset or completely contradicting that which had come before (read: the Terra origin). In fact, I remember hearing a story about how he was once at a signing or convention and pointed out to a fan all of the characters he had killed … and seemed pretty proud of it. Granted, this story was something I heard on a message board back in the early 2000s and is more than likely not true, but it is indicative of the attitude of many an editor and many a company in the early 1990s: do something shocking or crazy so that your readers are sure to pick up the book.

Like I said, for The New Titans it was a lineup change; for Deathstroke: The Terminator, it was a new art team, a new direction, and a title change to Deathstroke: The Hunted.

Starting with issue 0, Sergio Cariello took over on pencils and stayed with the book for the better part of a year and a half as he and his brother Octavio took Slade to Hell and back and dismantled much of the book’s supporting cast in a drawn-out storyline that involved two mystery villains and several major deaths. Garrahy had Wolfman writing in higher octane mode than he already had (read: now EVERYONE WAS YELLING ALL THE TIME BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT COMICS DIALOGUE WAS IN THE 1990s! EVERYONE! HAS! TO! YELL!) and the Cariellos drew with a very fast-paced style that sometimes lent itself well to the storyline but other times seemed rushed, much like the issues that came out.

“The Hunted” is a Slade-on-the-run storyline that starts in the Zero Month issue with Deathstroke being chased by the United States government because he is wanted for the murder of a Senator, even though he knows that the person he killed was actually a terrorist disguised as the Senator who was going to blow himself up at a public appearance and the real Senator had been murdered by agents of the Crimelord, who is now in charge of the nation of Zandia, the former home of Brother Blood. The Crimelord is a villain shrouded in mystery. He talks to his operatives via video chat using avatars and sits in shadows smoking a cigar and petting an owl (because when you’re an international criminal supervillain you need to be petting some sort of animal), so we don’t know his identity and that is something that will be some sort of huge reveal at one point or another.

It takes a while to get to that point because the six issues that make up “The Hunted” are the “Deathstroke on the run” and “We’re going to destroy everything” part of all of this that is quite formulaic. The Zero Month issue establishes the story and it’s kind of jarring because there’s very little connection between issue #0 and issue #40, which was a run-of-the-mill action yarn.

So, Slade is on the run from the government. He gets captured. He gets rescued. The Crimelord acts behind the scenes and manipulates a lot of things. There’s also a mystery villain who will come to be known as The Ravager (the third Deathstroke-related character with that name) and Slade’s ex-wife Adeline is completely insane and obsessed with killing her husband.

Wash, rinse, repeat. (more…)

In Country: Marvel Comics’ “The ‘Nam” — Episode 10

Episode 10 of “In Country” covers issue 10 of The ‘Nam, where Ed Marks copes with the death of Mike Albergo from the previous issue while on patrol in the city. Plus, we get a little more insight into the character of Ramnarain in “Guerilla Action” by Doug Murray, Michael Golden, and John Beatty. As always, in addition to the summary and review of the issue I’ll be talking about the story’s historical context as well as taking a look at the letters, ‘Nam Notes, and ads.

You can download the episode via iTunes or listen directly at the Two True Freaks website

In Country iTunes feed

In Country Episode 10 direct link

Also, here is a link to 11th Cav ‘Nam, the site I used for some of the research in this episode: 11thcavnam.com

Pop Culture Affidavit Episode 20 — Eddie Lives!

The latest episode is a little late but I promise you it’s well worth it. This time around I take a look at one of my absolute favorite rock and roll stories, Eddie and the Cruisers. I delve into P.F. Kluge’s original novel; talk about the 1983 feature film starring Michael Paré as Eddie Wilson, along with Tom Berenger and Ellen Barkin; and I even cover the sequel, Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives! So come along for a rock and roll ghost story for the ages!

You can listen here:

iTunes: Pop Culture Affidavit

Direct Download

Pop Culture Affidavit podcast page

Here is the trailer for Eddie and the Cruisers:

Here is the trailer for Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives!:

And just because it’s so cool, here’s the full Eddie and the Cruisers poster:

In Country: Marvel Comics’ “The ‘Nam” — Episode 9

Nam 9

A major event in the lives of the 23rd and Ed Marks’s experience in “The ‘Nam” occurs in this episode, as I take a look at issue #9, “Pride Goeth …,” which is brought to us by Doug Murray, Michael Golden, and John Beatty. As always, in addition to the summary and review of the issue I’ll be talking about the story’s historical context as well as taking a look at the letters, ‘Nam Notes, and ads.

You can download the episode via iTunes or listen directly at the Two True Freaks website

In Country iTunes feed

In Country Episode 9 direct link

First and Best for the Rest

A quick note: Today is my tenth wedding anniversary. To honor it, I’m reposting what I wrote ten years ago on my old blog, Inane Crap. Bits and pieces of this have been edited for spelling/grammar, but it is that post from November 2003.

To use a cliché, it was a blur. Most great days usually are. A beautiful, 12-hour blur that ended with our eating doughnuts in a suite at the St. Regis hotel at 1:30 in the morning, amazed that we had pulled it off. I thought we should have printed T-shirts or something. “I survived planning a wedding.” Hey, if they can print them up for a 3:30 ride on The Big Bad Wolf, we can print them up for the end of 18 months of wedding planning. And in the end, all of our anal-retentiveness, insistences, weeknight meetings, and stress paid off completely.

I didn’t know if it was going to go smoothly, to be honest. I mean, we’d done everything that we possibly could, but as I headed into Thursday night, when Tom and Denise–my best man and his wife, both of whom deserve mad props for helping me keep my shit together all weekend–showed up at my place, I kept hearing Princess Leia’s voice in my head:

“The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

Yeah, I never understood why Carrie Fisher has a British accent in that scene, either. But she’s right–one of the best lessons I learned the weekend of my wedding was that you can only be so anal-retentive, and sometimes you just have to allow things to happen in order for them to go well. You know, along with the plethora (yes, a plethora) of other lessons that are valuable to any stress-crazed groom.

You will learn more about strange medical conditions and quick forms of death in the two weeks leading up to the wedding than you did in four years of college.

Not that I, having been a writing and political science major, would have learned anything about disease while in college outside of Wynnewood Towers dorm plague. Anyway, what happens the last week of your engagement is that not only does your celebration begin–your fiancée meeting your co-workers and finding out that some of them went to her high school is always fun–but your stress hits its zenith and begins to manifest in strange ways. I mean, yeah, there are the usual nightmares, pimples, and panic attacks that have you and your bride sitting awake at night wide-eyed and wondering if you are going to make it to Saturday, but there are also headaches that have you standing in the shower and wondering what an aneurysm feels like. You spend your days at work researching the symptoms of a stroke on Web MD, and actually make trips to the public library to see if there are any documented cases of spontaneous combustion.

I’m serious when I say that on the day before the wedding, I was wound so tightly that I could have put Cameron Frye to shame. In fact, I was so uptight that I missed most of the point of my groomsmen’s surprise–at lunch on Friday, three of the idiots I had asked to keep guard as I walked down the aisle showed up at lunch sporting some of the most ridiculous facial hair I had ever seen (although Drew’s mutton chops were quality). My response? A pretty hostile, “You’d better shave that shit.” I think it’s because when you start counting down hours, you start thinking from moment to moment. What is next? Did it go right? Good. Okay, what can go wrong next? How long before that happens? You start missing funny little things like that as a result. So, maybe my having a stroke in the middle of Fuddruckers wasn’t completely out of the question. (more…)