Author: Tom Panarese

Deathstroke, the Punisher? (My Life as a Teen Titan, Part Twelve)

I think that one of the drawbacks of Marv Wolfman’s sixteen year run on the various Titans books is that he didn’t do much as far as take time off.  Sure, that is definitely an advantage because he was able to really craft his core group of characters and have them grow in a way that seemed organic, but at the same time there were clearly periods where he was, for lack of a better word, running out of gas.  In the next couple of months, I’ll definitely be getting to one of those times as I start moving toward New Titans #100 and I get to go through at least a couple of years’ worth of Titans stories that aren’t considered the best of the bunch.

When Wolfman did step away for a moment and leave the books in someone else’s hands–like Louise Simonson, who did the Red Star Storyline I looked at last time around–the books weren’t necessarily better, but they were a refreshing “pinch hit”.  At the same time Simonson was handling Red Star and Cyborg over in New Titans, Steven Grant–he of the Punisher mini-series from the 1980s–was brought on to do several issues of Deathstroke.  I think that Wolfman was out on his honeymoon or something when these issues were due, or at least he felt he needed that break from Total Chaos.  At any rate, the Titans books moved along pretty well during this time, although I think Grant had an easier job than Simonson because he wasn’t dealing with all of the soap opera-type of stuff that had been moving its way through the Titans books.

Deathstroke was at the end of a long storyline that culminated in Cheshire’s destruction of Quarac and Slade’s telling off the U.S. government.  The Cheshire conspiracy had essentially been started back in the very first issue of the series so you are basically talking about nearly two years of story that wrapped up right before Grant came in.  Instead of starting something that was long and involved (which we will get with the “World Tour” storyline that starts with issue #26), Grant does one-offs and two-parters that remind us that the book is meant to first and foremost be an action comic.  I’d say that in ways it is definitely trying to reflect The Punisher but whereas The Punisher is a vigilante with a mission, Deathstroke is a mercenary/hitman and takes jobs.  It serves to further solidify his supporting cast (characters like the weapons supplier Squirrel and a contact named Frannie) and makes for some solid reading.

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Oh my Power Lords …

“Push his secret action button and he’ll move, turn, twist and change from human to the Power Lord.  With powers to save the world from Arkus, The Evil Dictator.  And only you can control him.”

Uh … what?

Our nostalgia for the 1980s and its various toy lines tends to stay with the stuff that is considered “landmark” or awesome:  G.I. Joe, The Transformers, Masters of the Universe, The Thundercats.  But for every one of those toy lines, there’s something that never really leaves a mark.  While I was reading an old comic book the other day, I noticed that the back cover had an ad for Power Lords, which Revell released in 1983.  Based on the timing and the size of the action figure produced, I think that they were trying to compete with He-Man; and the science fiction back story suggests that perhaps they were also taking a shot at Return of the Jedi, which had come out that May.

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Losers Bizhub, Winners Collate.

Though it is more than 25 years old and as a whole a pretty uneven movie, when I think about my job being accurately portrayed (or at least lampooned) in film, I think of the 1984 Nick Nolte film Teachers. One scene, in particular, has always worked and will always work. Mr. Stiles, nicknamed “Ditto” because of the amount of worksheets he produces, is in the main office using an old-fashioned mimeograph when another teacher approaches him and yells, “You’re always hogging that machine!” She then proceeds to squirt ink on his face and smack him around before being physically hauled away.

Now, I’ve never attacked another faculty member with ink, but I definitely can say that there are moments when I have become violently angry at a copier, using several four-letter words that are wholly inappropriate for a classroom but okay for the teacher’s lounge whenever the Risograph craps out in the middle of making 120 copies of my four-page, double-sided worksheet. Most office environments no longer have archaic copying systems like mine and are able to invest in something like a Bizhub; however, your average public school is not most offices. Since we cannot afford the Cadillac of copiers, we duplicate, we collate, we stack, we sort, and we manually staple everything we produce.

I am sure there is no formal statistic for the amount of time teachers spend putting papers together, but ask any teacher and he will tell you that at least a couple of times each marking period, his planning period is spent with the pages of a worksheet packet spread out among the rows of desks in his classroom in the correct order so he can move from page to page and stack then, then staple the stack together and move on to the next. I’ve done this dance myself, both in my classroom and at home and usually it takes me as long as two or three hours to put everything together.

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An Amazin’ Era

The cover to An Amazin’ Era. The images were also used on the promo poster and the tape was also available in Betamax. Yes, Betamax.

When I decided to recount my memories of the Mets’ 1986 season, I thought that I would spend some time on various games I had either watched on television or attended and my experience of being a fan 25 years ago when the team won its last World Series.  It seemed to be going all right, or at least I had some memory of the first home game of the season.  But as I began to leaf through my ’86 Mets stuff, I began to realize that I actually don’t have a lot of memories of that year.

It’s not that I wasn’t a fan or didn’t watch the team on television.  It’s just that I was nine years old and when I wasn’t spending my days playing with He-Man and the Masters of the Universe toys, I was watching maybe one or two cartoons each night before going to bed at 8:00.  I got to stay up later on Friday nights, but that was probably until about 9:00 or 9:30, which meant that if Channel 9 was showing a Mets game, I’d only get a few innings in before I was sent off to bed.  There were quite a few nights when I was rushed off to bed in the middle of the fourth with runners on base and Ed Lynch or Dough Sisk trying to get out of yet another jam (Doug Sisk, btw, was one of those pitchers you tried to imitate because he had this crazy overhand delivery … it was the polar opposite of Dan Quisenberry, and every time you tried to “Sisk” a pitch in baseball or wiffle ball, the ball landed a mile behind the catcher). Sure, there were Sunday games, but only if my mother wasn’t making me go outside and do something.

I did, however, have my fair share of Mets merchandise by this point, including a video that would prove as important as the 1985 pennant race in cementing my love for the team.  An Amazin’ Era is a one-hour documentary created to commemorate 25 seasons of Mets baseball, telling the story of the team from its very humble beginnings in 1962 to the anticipated title run in 1986 (it took me a while to figure that out, by the way, because the 25th Anniversary logo said 1962-1986 and if you do the math, that’s 24 seasons but considering that there is no “season zero” that’s actually correct).  It was released in early 1986 and I am pretty sure that I got it for my ninth birthday from either my parents or my Uncle Lou along with Donald Honig’s 25th Anniversary book and the Amazin’ Era poster that had been hanging in the video store and my dad had purchased and had mounted and framed (this poster, btw, would hang on the wall of my bedroom all the way up until the time I left home when I was 22 … it may be in my parents’ attic or basement, I’m not sure). (more…)

Glasnost!!! (My Life as a Teen Titan, Part Eleven)

You hate to admit that sometimes a pinch-hitter is exactly what a team needs.  I have watched too many hours of baseball in my life to see the Mets pinch hit with me wanting to pull my hair out at the supposed “intelligence” of that managerial decision.  You know, because I have this awesome track record of knowing so much about and being so awesome at baseball.  Anyway, in my experience, pinch hits usually wind up with someone like Rusty Staub or Julio Franco grounding into a 6-4-3, but every so often Kirk Gibson guts one out of Dodger Stadium.

The covers to New Titans #94-96 created a single image. It's not perfect but it's pretty cool.

I’m not saying that Louise Simonson filling in for Marv Wolfman in New Titans #94-96 was the comics equivalent of Kirk Gibson’s now-legendary homer (nor was it Rusty Staub), but I will say that her three-issue story with pencils by Phil Jiminez was exactly what the title needed.  I will fully admit that the Sell-Out story and creations like Metallik showed that Wolfman was hurting a little and probably feeling a little burned out.  So the editors gave him a break and had Simonson finally get us back to figuring out what might be going on with Cyborg.

If you recall, nearly two years earlier, in New Titans #75, Jericho had detonated Cyborg’s rocket and two issues later the team was in Russia, where Red Star and a team of Russian scientists had rebuilt him.  Unfortunately, Vic Stone is more or less a robot because his mind was completely wiped out, something we have been reminded of either through Gar leading him around by remote control, entire pages of him staring off into nowhere, and the first two issues of the Showcase ’93 series.

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Avant Garde in the Final Frontier

When I look at what my son likes to watch on television and what he likes to play with, I am amazed at how similar we are.  Now, I don’t have a photographic memory from when I was 3-1/2–most memories from that age come in flashes and spurts–but right now he is really into superheroes and Curious George.  I am sure that we’ll have years of superhero awesomeness in our house (and that’s a whole other entry), and Curious George is definitely another topic for another day as well, although I do remember that when I was young I had several of those books that I read and decorated with stickers that told everyone that it belonged to TOM.

But he’s also really interested in space travel and when he first showed interest in it I was excited but I wasn’t sure exactly how to encourage that curiosity about space.  You know, beyond watching space shuttle launches on YouTube and a set of space-themed flash cards my wife found in the dollar bin at Target.  I mean, it’s a bit too early to get him into Star Wars because even that type of violence might be a little much for a kid who gets a little scared when watching Scooby-Doo (besides, I don’t remember seeing Star Wars for the first time until I was about four or five).  And while I’m sure that I will get around to The Saga, I was hard-pressed to find something until I was hanging out in the library at work and came across National Geographic’s Picture Atlas of Our Universe.

With a futuristic-looking spaceship on the cover, Our Universe is one of those library books that when I was in junior high I would check out at least a few times a year in order to pore over its pages, taking in every artist’s rendition and satellite image.  The edition I had in my hands on was from 1992, so it was later than the one I used to check out of the library but still accessible to even a very little kid and still awesome to me.

That space ship on the cover is sort of our guide through the universe, as the book’s narrative takes us on a tour through all of the planets of the solar system including Pluto (and I don’t buy that “Pluto’s not a planet” crap anyway), and beyond.  The beyond includes stars, asteroids, comets, other galaxies and the history of space travel as well as the possibilities for the future.

The title page, which leads to …

Open the book and the title flies at you kind of how the opening credits of Superman do.  But what makes this even more awesome on some level than seeing “Richard Donner” streak across a screen is that Our Universe does the title flight over the course of two spreads with the words nearly off the page on the second spread.  That, and it’s in Avant Garde and Avant Garde is just awesomeness in itself.

After an introduction, we learn about how ancient civilizations viewed the cosmos as well as how our modern scientific theories come to fruition through scientists such as Newton and Galileo.  it’s an encyclopedia’s worth of information being written in a pretty tight narrative that your average and elementary and junior high kid would understand and probably enjoy.  The examples rely on both scientific models and artist’s conceptions, something that’s carried throughout.

… a TWO-PAGE SPREAD OF AVANT GARDE GRANDEUR!!!

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Dance ’til Dawn

When I was a teenager, I spent a little too much time thinking about what my senior prom would be like.  I wouldn’t call it an obsession, but I thought about the big end-of-high-school dance enough to keep my thoughts to myself as if they were some sort of dirty little secret.  If I wasn’t writing about it, that is.  Track down a copy of Collage, the Sayville High School literary magazine from 1995 and you’ll see a story called “Scenes from a High School Prom,” which is some sort of boy-finally-gets-the-girl story that only a lovesick teenager would write, or maybe even dream about (literally, in fact, because it’s based on a dream I once had).   I even incorporated prom (specifically, that story) into a novel I wrote nearly a decade ago; although by then the message wasn’t so much about the fairytale of the perfect prom night but what happens the morning after and the baggage that comes with it.

In real life, I never had baggage concerning my senior prom experience.  In fact, I had a great time mostly due to the fact that I went with someone very cool and avoided most of the bullshit drama that my particular group of friends was involved with at the time (at least for one night — certain friends of mine, if they’re reading this, know that there was drama that I definitely got sucked into during and after our senior year of high school).  So I was never disappointed in my prom night, mainly because I was surprisingly well-adjusted coming out of high school (though I am the first to admit that I was both high-strung and immature … but enough about my issues).  Still, I would be lying if I didn’t say that the prom fantasy definitely factored into my perception of what my prom would be like.

That fantasy, btw?  The one featured in that short story I wrote in senior year creative writing?  Well, boy takes friend on whom he has a crush to prom and at the last chance to finally do it, he tells her he loves her and she says she loves him and they kiss and everyone lives happily ever after.  And where did I get the idea that this is what was going to happen at my prom because this is what happened at every prom?  Usually I would have some long explanation regarding my unpopularity in high school coupled with my testimony of junior high dances being special, magical places; however, all I have to do is say three words:

Dance ’til Dawn.

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Boobs. (My Life as a Teen Titan, Part Ten)

The cover to the "Titans Sell-Out Special," which is kind of the beginning of the end.

One of the things I have always loved about Marv Wolfman as a comic writer, especially his Titans work, is that he had a knack for bringing the book back to the “street level” after a huge “event” storyline.  After the team’s first visit to Starfire’s homeworld (a “Titans in space” story that even after all these years I’m lukewarm to and probably should reread), they were involved in one of my favorite two-issue stories, “Runaways” where they dealt with the mafia, drug runners, and runaway teenagers.  After the Trigon storyline they had an opportunity to go camping.  After the Titans Hunt, they were in disarray but spent time (too much time, to be honest) licking their wounds before Total Chaos ramped up.

After Total Chaos, they sold out.

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Unlucky 13th

The back of the Daily News from April 15, 1986. Taken from the Daily News's Scrapbook History of the 1986 Mets.

I have to admit that I didn’t realize that the 1986 baseball season had started.  But I feel that since it was my second year following the Mets and the first year that I actually followed them from beginning to end, I have an excuse.  That March, I’d watched a little bit of spring training (after finding out what spring training actually was) and my cousin Brian and I had what would be the first of numerous arguments over the years about which team was better, the Mets or the Yankees.  Opening day was set for April 8 in Pittsburgh and by the time that Monday rolled around, the team was 2-2 and facing the St. Louis Cardinals in their home opener.

A year earlier, Gary Carter had hit a home run to beat the Cardinals on opening day and the two teams chased one another throughout the late summer, with the Cards winning the NL East and then going to the World Series (where thankfully they lost to the Royals).  So with all of that baggage going into this first game at Shea, I’d say that it was definitely going to be one that set the tone for the year.  If the Mets ever were going to compete for the division, they knew they were going to have to go through St. Louis to get there.

It was a day game, as were most of the home openers, and I was at school when it started at 1:35.  But with any luck I would be able to catch part of the ending on WOR, which is how at least a few of the games that season would wind up.  I can’t be sure, but I am pretty positive that I wound up going over to my neighbor Matt’s house to watch it, even though I could have watched it at my house.

When I got there, the game was in extra innings with the teams tied 2-2.  With Bruce Berenyi on the mound in relief and the bases loaded, Tito Landrum hit a ground ball to Howard Johnson at third.  It was, for all intents and purposes, a routine ground ball and HoJo should have been able to field it cleanly and get an out or two.  But that’s not how it went.  “I was playing in,” he said to the Daily News, “I was ready for the ball.  When I reached down, it seemed like all of a sudden the ball wasn’t there.  I was shocked as anybody.”

Two runs scored as the ball trickled through his legs and then Ozzie Smith doubled home two more to make the score 6-2.  The team didn’t recover and fell below .500 for the first time in nearly three years.  Having reading scrapbooks, yearbooks, and other works about the season, it seems like the press pushed the early panic button–although I am sure that if 1986 had happened in today’s media that sucker would have been slammed–but I don’t remember worrying.  Yes, it sucked that the Mets lost but even at the age of eight, I knew that the baseball season was long and a 2-3 start didn’t mean that the team was going to finish 2-160 (well, unless it’s, say 1993, but that’s not today’s topic).

I took away three things from that game.  First, my not being afraid was validated when the Mets went on a huge winning streak, which included a sweep of the Cardinals in St. Louis, one that shut the door on their arch-rivals and had the Mets looking to “wrap up” the pennant early, which they’d do more or less by the summer.  Second, the ground ball error would become crucial and almost symbolic of 1986 season so it’s almost fitting that it began like that.  Finally, every time the Mets have lost their home opener, I’ve taken it as an omen that things are going to do well because they won the series in 1986.

I know that sounds silly, especially considering it’s been 25 years since that game but I think that very often you view a team the same way you did when you first started following them, and considering the lack of innocence of that team (as I’d find out), I think holding on to a little bit of innocence isn’t a bad idea.

The Karateka Kid

So my relationship with video games can be summed up in two words:  I suck.

No, seriously.  I suck.  On levels not known to normal men.  It took me fifteen years–yes, a DECADE AND A HALF–to beat Super Mario Brothers.  I don’t think I have ever won a single game of Madden.  Shit, I can barely beat two or three stages of Pac-Man without using all of my guys.

I blame my parents for this one, honestly.  If they had listened to my demands when I was a seven-year-old and bought me an Atari 2600, I would have had plenty of time to improve my dexterity and my hand-eye coordination, and also would have had more time to practice for when I had to be good at stuff for the Nintendo.  Instead, I got my NES system at the end of elementary school and what little exposure to video games I had before then came through being at friends’ houses or having a pocketful of quarters whenever I went to a birthday party at the local bowling alley (at a future date, I will write about my love of the Star Wars video game machine at the Sayville Bowl).

Granted, my crap record with video games a) isn’t all crap because I kill at Tetris; and b) isn’t all bad because I also love a good round of pinball.  So it’s not like I was deprived or anything.  I just wasn’t one of those kids who was exposed early on to home systems, either on an Atari or a personal computer.  Although during those first few years of my discovering entertainment for what it was, absorbing movies and television (and later music and comic books), my parents did at least give it a shot.

I think it was my father who wound up getting the computer when I was about seven or eight.  It was manufactured by the Franklin computer company, whose forte was creating clones of Apple computers.  I am not sure what the exact model of the computer we had was, but it was a clone of one of the Apple II series, so it was either an Ace 500 (the Apple IIc) or the Ace 2000 (Apple IIe).  The computer had a 5-1/4″ internal floppy drive and an orange and black monitor that turned on like a television, and when it was time to load the game, you had to make sure the floppy disk was in the drive and since the computer had been second-hand (I don’t think he purchased it so much as they were unloading it at work — my mom would do something similar with a computer late in high school, but that one had a green screen) it always didn’t  boot up when you wanted to.  You’d turn the computer on and wait … and wait … and wait …  Then you’d turn it off again.  And you’d turn it on again.  And wait … and wait … and wait …  Then you’d turn it on again.  If you hadn’t given up and left the computer alone, it might boot up on the third or fourth try.  Then you’d get the “Broderbund Presents” screen and you were off and running with the only game we had:  Karateka.

How Karateka appeared on my Franklin computer.

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