After a brief hiatus, “In Country” is back and back in The ‘Nam with issue #63. We continue our three-parter featuring Iceman and Speed with a story by Chuck Dixon that features art by Wayne Vansant and Kim DeMulder. Plus, I look at events from March 1971 and read listener feedback!
You can download the episode via iTunes or listen directly at the Two True Freaks website
In Country Episode 71 direct link
You know, the phrase “It was all a big blur” is one that most people probably associate with a drunken night (or several, perhaps) in college, not to reading a comic book when you are eight years old. Then again, I may not be the only person who will say this about Secret Wars II.
Published in 1985 and 1986, Secret Wars II as the direct sequel to the blockbuster Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars event that had come out in 1984. In that original series, an omnipotent being named The Beyonder swipes all of Earth’s heroes and villains and transports them to Battleworld, where they do an enormous amount of fighting (and Spider-Man gets the infamous alien costume). In the sequel, The Beyonder comes to Earth in human form and learns about being human.
I think?
I have to be honest–I only ever owned issue #6 and even then didn’t buy it voluntarily because it was another birthday party favor. And I don’t know if I read it thirty years ago when I first got it. Even if I did, I probably didn’t understand what was going on. I remember looking at the cover and thinking that the issue was probably important because it said that it was “#6 in a nine-issue limited series” (that and DC’s “miniseries,” “maxi-series,” or “Anniversary” banners were catnip to me back in the day … and still kind of are) and the cover showed this guy busting past a group of Earth’s mightiest heroes, saying, “Move over heroes, The Beyonder’s here!”
But really, up until I read this comic for this very blog post, I didn’t know what the comic was about. And quite frankly, I still have no idea what is going on. It seems that The Beyonder has come to Earth, closed on some property, built a huge house/headquarters, filled it with a ton of stuff like cars and planes, and then decides to help out Power Pack (which I assume plays out in greater detail in Power Pack #18, which is an official crossover issue). Meanwhile, Dave, a reporter from a local newspaper interviews him and The Beyonder tells the reporter all about who he is and how he came to be. But then he basically hires the guy as his PR man, they set up and organization, and The Beyonder decides he will “fight for life.” he doesn’t know what his role is or should be, and The Watcher along with superheroes think he might be dangerous. He then decides to eliminate Death and despite the objections every celestial being, succeeds. Then Molecule Man and Dave plead for him to bring Death back because it has completely upset the balance of the universe and then he makes Dave into Death and disassembles his new house.
And that’s the most succinct summary I could come up with.
Because honestly, the issue is almost what it would be like if a kid were given super powers and had free right. Think of Tom Hanks in Big. Plus, The Beyonder does kind of look like and eight-year-old dressed him. I don’tknow if that many grown men wore a curly mullet and that appears to be a vinyl jumpsuit (seriously, it’s like the guy saw a windbreaker and said, “No. I want the whole outfit to be that”), but then again, I have seen grown me in cropped muscle tees and acid-wash jeans. God, the Eighties were blindingly awful.
Anyway, if I am going to pick something positive out of the story that Jim Shooter wrote, it’s that it is kind of like a kid trying to “act bigger” than he is–like it’s his first day of high school or something–and the art by Al Milgrom is workmak-like. Otherwise, I can see why Secret Wars II was something I forgot as soon as I acquired it and why it’s more of a punchline than a fondly remembered story.
Next Up: We finish “Comics Prehistory” with G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #48
As I make my way through these very early days of buying comics, I see more and more how my purchases were influenced by other media. The two issues of Transformers that I just looked at are prime examples. Superheroes are another, as much of my early knowledge of the spandex set came from seeing them on television shows such as Super-Friends or Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Another source was, occasionally, my dad, who liked Superman and was a fan of the Christopher Reeve films (at least Superman and Superman II). That, of course, led to my purchasing all four issues of Superman: The Secret Years, and it led to my buying Superman #410.
This was another trip to Amazing Comics, sometime around my birthday in 1985 because while this issue came out that May, I remember seeing this and Superman #411 on the shelves at the same time, so it must have been right before Bob took the comic off of the main shelves and put it on the spinner rack near the door, which is what he did for all of “last month’s comics.” It was a practice that he held onto for years and while I do have fond memories of comic book spinner racks and would love to own one someday, they do have an odd associate in my mind with comic book leftovers.
Okay, tangent over–or at least point of tangent, which is that my dad took me to the local comic store and said that he thought the cover to Superman #410 looked cool, so I decided to buy it. Drawn by Klaus Janson, who at that point was known for his work with Frank Miller, the cover is certainly a dramatic one–Clark Kent is walking away from a screen where Superman is saying “I categorically deny the story Clark Kent wrote about in the Daily Planet–it is nothing but a pack of lies!” If I may criticize it briefly, I will say that Superman does have a bit of a fat face and Clark’s suit looks two sizes too big, but the drama of Superman’s pronouncement and then the cover of the paper saying “CLARK KENT FIRED” was enough to pull me in and still makes me want to read the issue.
Superman saves a satellite. Or does he?
What’s inside is the first of a really great three-part story arc that is one of those excellent late Bronze Age/pre-Crisis Superman stories. We open with Superman saving a nuclear-powered satellite from falling to earth and blowing up, and then cut to Clark writing about it for the paper. But the thing is, that satellite resuce never actually happened and once that is discovered, Superman finds himself being forced to deny the story, which gets Clark fired. Superman, of course, is confused because he knows what he saw and knows what he did, yet when he flies to the place where the satellite fell from orbit, it’s still there.
Is he going nuts? No. This is all the machinations of Lex Luthor, who is messing with Superman’s mind from the confines of his lair, and he will just copntinue to do so until the end of issue #413, where he gets away because Brainiac recruits him to join a team of villains in Crisis on Infinite Earths #6 (Superman #413, by the way, is an issue I bought years later because it was an unofficial Crisis crossover).
It is, essentially, everything I wanted a Superman story to be when I was a kid, and exactly what i expect out of this time in the Man of Steel’s career. Lex has an underground lair with henchmen and is planning supervillainy? Check. There’s romantic subplots with Lana and Lois? Check. Clark is secondary to Superman? Check. Granted, I would come to really love the FCTC-era Superman and I do consider that version to be my favorite iteration of the characters, but the “Oh, this would only happen on pre-Crisis Earth-1” feel of this particular issue is part of its charm. Plus, it’s just a great setup and doesn’t feel like Cary Bates or Julius Schwartz were burning off stories prior to Alan Moore and then John Byrne.
Even the Curt Swan artwork, which I will admit I am hot and cold on at times, works well here. Swan is inked by Al Williamson, whom I am most familiar with from Star Wars comics of the era, and his links, though pretty loose at times(although this may be due to the reproduction on the digital comic, which makes some of these old newsprint comics look like they are on baxter paper and it doesn’t always work), give Swan’s artwork more grace and fluidity than I’m used to seeing. Then again, I’m not the most accurate judge of Swan’s art, considering I don’t have a lot of issues he actually drew.
But honestly, this is one of thosecomics that makes me with I had started collecting earlier than 1987, and that i had been experiencing the ed of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Modern Age as it happened. This was still a time when a little kid could pick up books and follow them even if he had little to no sense of continuity. Although even a sense of continuity could not have helped my next book.
Next up: Secret Wars II #6
Last week, a Facebook post as going around that recognized the 30th anniversary of the death of a naval aviator named Nick Bradshaw. As with many dead soldier post, its creator told us never to forget and dared us to re-post it, saying that he was sure that nobody would have the sense of patriotism or honor to do so.
In case you aren’t aware, Nick Bradshaw’s call sign was “Goose,” and his death actually didn’t happen because he was a fictional character–the witty sidekick to Tom Cruise’s Maverick in the 1986 movie Top Gun. His death comes about three quarters of the way through the film during a training exercise–while taking evasive action, Maverick is caught in another F-14’s jet wash (the technical term for which is “wake turbulence”) and both of his engines flame out, which results in his plane spinning out to sea. He and Goose manage to eject, but Goose launches into the roof of the cockpit and dies. His death winds up being a character moment for Maverick and becomes something he has to overcome, especially during the combat at the end (and the less said about how U.S. and Soviet diplomats magically managed to not have that incident result in a full scale war, the better).
Now, I think that if you polled people who were kids in 1986, the vast majority of them will tell you that they lost their pop culture innocence that year during Transformers: The Movie when Optimus Prime perished in battle. However, I contest that while Prime’s death was devastating, Goose’s death had a more long-term effect on my generation because whereas the former told us our favorite character could die, the latter told us that the average nice guy will not only never get his moment, but he might die, too.
This does not bode very well for people who look to identify with their favorite characters, and it does put truth to the cliche that “Nice guys finish last.” Maverick, after all, represents coolness to aspire to–he’s the best, dangerously the best pilot and he gets the girl–and Goose represents … well, he represents our reality. He is either who we are or who we will become. Let’s take a look at four reasons why.
1. He’s the class clown. When we’re introduced to Goose at the beginning of the film, it’s during the scene where Cougar and Merlin and Maverick and Goose enounter a couple of enemy MiG 28s and Cougar completely freezes up (this is the incident that eventually leads to both Maverick and Goose heading to Top Gun). While Merlin (played by a then-unknown and virtually unidentifiable Tim Robbins) is quite possibly one of the most neurotic characters in the film, Goose is making wisecracks and even takes a Polaroid of the MiG pilot when Maverick is “keeping up foreign relations … you know … giving him the bird?”
The wisecracks continue through most of the film and Goose is pretty much the guy who provides some levity through most of it and moreover has the confidence to do it. Take, for instance, the first day of instruction at Top Gun. Viper gives his introduction speech–and Tom Skerritt is incredibly intimidating in this movie–and Iceman says, “The plaque for the alternates is down in the ladies room.” Goose responds with an exaggerated laugh, one that says, “Yeah, you’re not very cool. Leave the jokes to me” but in a more subtle way than calling Iceman a loser (another great example of this in cinematic history is Charles DeMar’s reaction to Roy Stalin’s “You’d better shave her a little closer if you’re going to kiss her goodnight” at the New Year’s Eve dance in Better Off Dead). And that’s Goose’s role–to provide the humor and to be the nice guy that everyone likes (something Iceman awkwardly says in the locker room to Maverick following Goose’s death), whereas the rest of the co-pilots in the film seem to be variations on their pilots’ personalities (Slider’s just as arrogant as Iceman and Wolfman and Hollywood seem to have a thing going). He is, essentially, Robin to Maverick’s Batman and it shows.
2. He’s got his friend’s back. And in the same way that Batman needs Robin because he needs someone to help him out of a jam, Goose is always there to help his friend. Granted, Maverick doesn’t get into jams the way that Batman does, but when he needs help hitting on a woman in a bar because she’s lost that lovin’ feeling.
In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s this scene and this movie that gave rise to the term “Wingman” in dating parlance–the guy you’ve got with you to help you out.
And while I’m sure that there are a few people out there who are reading this post and thinking that they can fly solo and never need a wingman for “scoring with the ladies,” I say that … a) what are you, 17?; b) you’re also a complete liar; and c) the rest of us have all been the guy behind the guy.
[And a quick side note: this is the second movie in as many years where Anthony Edwards plays a guy who is trying to help get the main character laid and fails–the other is The Sure Thing starring John Cusack]
3. He’s a family man. Maverick is the ladies’ man. Goose, however, is married (to Meg Ryan) and has a kid, which is something that makes his death even more devastating, because this isn’t like Porkins dying during the Death Star attack because his Mountain Dew rolled under his seat and he had to reach down to get it. Here’s a guy who is trying to do right by his family and dies in a random accident, much like so many people. And I know that’s a completely macabre thought, but if you look at Top Gun as the story of Goose, it’s a sad and sometimes dark story that hopefully makes its audience really look at their own lives and feel grateful for what they have.
4. He plays volleyball with his shirt on. There are a lot of famous scenes in Top Gun, but I’m pretty sure that no other has been more inspiring or had a longer-lasting impact than the beach volleyball montage. It inspired an entire movie (Side Out, with C. Thomas Howell, Peter Horton, and Courtney Thorne-Smith) and probably had at least some influence on the montage-tastic syndicated television series Baywatch.
As you watch, you’ll probably notice three things: Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, and Rick Rossovich are chisled; Cruise is playing beach volleyball in jeans; and Anthony Edwards is wearing a shirt.
This, in a sense, is my closing argument, because while I’m sure there are plenty of us out there who are in good shape as we approach 40 (I have to endure their goddamn Facebook posts about running on a constant basis, so there definitely are), there are many of us who are not and have come to accept our dad bod. Goose, therefore, is there for all of us. In fact, the way he gets upset when Maverick leaves to go on his date with Charlie (and we hear one of my faovrite lines in the movie: “MOTHER GOOSE YOU PUSSY!”) suggests that he’s that guy who really wants to win games like that and it means more to him than anyone else playing because it gives him more credibility among the cool kids.
I mean, I was totally like that in gym class in high school. I got competitive at times not because I was an insane jock, but because I had a long-standing reputation for being mediocre at most sports and I thought that gym class would be one of those places where I could prove that wrong, so when I lost or when other people weren’t taking it as seriously, I got more annoyed than I probably should have. While Goose gives as well as he takes, you can tell that he has to put up with a lot of bullshit “prove you’re a man” type of stuff from guys like Iceman and Slider, so any small victory is a victory.
There’s a goofy likeability to Goose that makes his character feel real and enduring and it’s why his death had such an impact. May we all fare better and get the chance to fly that cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong.
“Dirty Deeds” brings us the return of two characters from previous ‘Nam missions: Speed and Iceman. Here, they are sent to retrieve an LRRP soldier who has gone rogue while back in Da Nang, the girlfriend of one of their special forces’ team gets into some serious trouble. It’s all in The ‘Nam #62 by Chuck Dixon, Wayne Vansant and Kim DeMulder.
I’ll also take a look at historical context from March 1971 and will be looking at letters and ads.
You can download the episode via iTunes or listen directly at the Two True Freaks website
Okay, so I cheated a bit with my last post and simply reblogged a very old post about Superman: The Secret Years, but in rereading that old post, I saw the very roots of this series as well as “Origin Story” itself–three of those four issues came from Amazing Comics, and that started me on the road to eventually becoming a collector because I knew exactly where I could get any comic at any time. Not only that, but I had followed an entire series from beginning to end, which was a big deal when I was seven.
On the day in March 1985 when I bought Superman: The Secret Years #4, which was a few weeks after the issue had hit the stands, I also bought Transformers #5. My friend Christ had come over to my house and for some reason, my dad decided to take us to the comic book store. I grabbed the Superman book while he grad a comic that he said had “Superman’s dad” in it that I think was Crisis on Infinite Earths #3; we both, however, saw Shockwave on the cover of Transformers #5 standing in front of the phrase “Are All Dead,” which he had carved into a wall and almost immediately grabbed a copy. In fact, I think I remember being slightly scared of that cover and even to this day I think there is something ominous about it.
Plus, Shockwave was one of the toys that had recently been introduced along with the autobot Jetfire, which was and still is my favorite-looking Transformers toy (mainly because it was modeled after the Valkyrie fighter from Robotech). They had shared a commercial and in our minds, that made them big.
Unknown to us at the time, in terms of The Transformers comic book, Shockwave was big–at the end of issue #4 (the last issue of what was then a four-issue miniseries), with the Autobots on the verge of a major victory, Shockwave shows up on Earth and just blasts everyone who is left standing completely to hell. When issue #5 opens, he is watching The Honeymooners (and the opening of Ed asking “What’sa matter, Ralphie Boy?” and Ralph saying “Homina homina homina” cracked the two of us up) among other shows, including a news broadcast about an offshore oil rig, and he decides that Earth will be easy to conquer. And by the way, the opening splash page, which is drawn by Alan Kupperberg, is incredible.
Then, we get an image scarier than the cover–a two-page splash of Shockwave walking under the seemingly dead bodies of the Autobots. Moreover, we see him reviving and repairing his fellow Decepticons and telling Megatron–who is also under repair–that he is going to lead the group now, especially since Megatron’s rather incompetent excuse for leadership is what got them all there to begin with.
It’s a dynamic that I was unfamiliar with, to be honest. I had been watching the cartoon every day after school and if you had asked me to name the Decepticon most likely to pose a threat to Megatron, I would say that probably would have been Starscream and not Shockwave. But the comic and the cartoon had a lot of difference in continuities, which is something I would discover years later when I collected the comics.
There isn’t much else to this issue. Spike and Buster find the one surviving Autobot, Ratchet, and begin to work toward helping the good guys get back to life, and the next issue’s main event, which is a fight between Megatron and Shockwave in one of those classic, “AND ONLY ONE SHALL LEAD!” Marvel cover moments. But I think it is probably one of the most important issues of the series. This was the first issue of the ongoing comic book (and if this were today, it would have been a new issue #1), so this storyline was going to be the big test of whether or not The Transformers could sustain a following. Bob Budianscky provides a transition piece that is full of tension and leaves you wanting action, but also complicates the world even further. It was only because of my sporadic comics buying habits, however, that I wouldn’t get issue #6, or any other Transformers comic book until 1987.
Next Time: Superman #410
If you were a comics reader in the late Eighties and early Nineties, you probably saw their ads–either a long list of back issues against a yellow background or a striking picture of the latest HOT character advertising what was going to be a RED HOT book. Well in this episode, I’m joined by Michael Bailey of Views From the Longbox (among other podcasts) for the first part of a two-part crossover about collecting comics in the decade that subtlety forgot.
For part one, Mike and I spend time talking about being teenagers during the boom years and specifically look at buying back issues through the mail. We talk about our experiences with Mile High Comics, the stalwart mail order service that so many of us have dealt with or bought from at one point or another. Then, we answer a question that crosses the minds of comics fans whenever they’re flipping through some Nineties comics: Whatever happened to American Comics/Entertainment This Month?
And after you’re done with that, check out Episode 233 of Views from the Longbox, which will drop later this week, where Mike and I continue our discussion, this time turning our attention to Wizard: The Guide to Comics. It’s the most EXTREEEEEEEEEME two-parter EVER!
Oh, and special thanks to Andrew Leyland, who really should be getting some sort of royalty check from me … but isn’t.
Here’s where to listen:
Pop Culture Affidavit podcast page
As an added bonus, here are some images and links that I used as part of my research for the episode:
An Entertainment This Month ad (taken from an issue of The ‘Nam from 1992):
The 1986 article from The Cavalier Daily (UVa’s student newspaper) about American Comics’ founder, Steve Milo: “Comics: America’s Hottest Art”
An Entertainment This Month Ad featured on the blog Very Fine Near Mint: “Entertainment This Month, Spider-Man Ad, 1990”
A Washington Post article from 1991 about the growing boom in the comic book retail industry: “Racking Up Sales of Comic Books”
An ad for a Scott Summers/Jean Grey wedding event to be held at Another Universe in the Springfield Mall in Springfield, VA (Another Universe was the company that American Entertainment was eventually purchased by in the mid-1990s):
The thread that I pulled the above ad from on the board Fairfax Underground: “Anybody remember that Another Universe store in Springfield Mall?”
The FTC press release concerning the settlement with American Entertainment/Entertainment This Month: “American Distribution, Inc.”
A Comic Book Resources article about Steve Milo being named head of new media for Marvel: “Marvel names AU founder Steve Milo president of new media”
And various boards and websites that tracked or made announcements of the gradual demise of Another Universe/Mania.com (an online venture Milo started in the late 1990s), which include speculation that the business was being sold to Steve Geppi:
“Mania Healthy, Publisher Says” (adamarnold.net, September 1998)
Ramblings — 29th October 1998 by Rich Johnston (Bleeding Cool)
“Another Universe.com Bites The Dust” (gamegrene.com,February 2001)
Finally, as an added bonus, here is an incredibly interesting read that wasn’t used for this episode but was intriguing nonetheless. Collected from a series of message board posts (which, unfortunately, end abruptly) and published in 2005 on a site called badmouth.net, this is the story of someone who had a small comic/card show-based retail business in the early 1990s and saw it all completely go up and way, way down in front of his very eyes: “The Comic-Book Apocalypse”
This time around, we close out the three-issue POW storyline with “The Ville,” a story by Chuck Dixon, Wayne Vansant, and Nicholas James that sees what happened to Ritchey when he escaped the POW camp. Will he make it out of the jungle alive? Or will he get caught and sentenced to an even worse fate? Find out in The ‘Nam #61.
I’ll also be covering historical information from March 1970 as well as letters and ads.
You can download the episode via iTunes or listen directly at the Two True Freaks website
While I was preparing my latest installment of “Comics Prehistory,” I realized that my next installment, “Superman: The Secret Years” was a series I wrote about way back in the early days of this blog. In fact, I wrote this entry back on April 17, 2010, a little more than SIX YEARS AGO.
So, enjoy this flashback re-post and I’ll be back in a week or two with the next Comics Prehistory book, Transformers #5.
I honestly don’t remember when I bought my first comic book or what that comic was. I have vague memories of perusing the magazine rack at Greaves stationary in my hometown and coming home with an issue of The Amazing Spider-Man or Superman. At some point, I know that I got an issue of the Batman team-up title The Brave and the Bold sometime in the very early 1980s, so that might have been it. But Superman: The Secret Years #2 was the very first comic book that I remember buying at an actual comic book store.
Amazing Comics, which is on Gillette Avenue in Sayville, NY, opened in the fall of 1984 next to an iron-on T-shirt store named The Special-T, which is where my friends and I procured most of our wardrobe. I am sure that I was at the Special-T buying a birthday present for…
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This time around, I’m joined by Andrew Leyland (Hey Kids, Comics!, The Palace of Glittering Delights, The Fantasticast, Listen to the Prophets) to discuss what has to be one of the most underrecognized (and maybe even underrated) Batman stories of the late 1980s, perhaps even of all time. Written by Jim Starlin with art by Berni Wrightson, it’s the four-issue prestige format miniseries from 1988, The Cult. We take an in-depth look at each of the issues and also talk a little bit about Batman and comics in general.
Here’s where to listen:
Pop Culture Affidavit podcast page
As a bonus, here are the covers for all four issues of the miniseries, plus the cover of the trade paperback:
Pop Culture Affidavit 