1990s

The Last Time the World was Supposed to End

A Y2K bunker. Although it doesn’t look like this one was very well-supplied.

So we survived yet another supposed apocalypse.You know, I have never been able to take threats of the end of the world very seriously. I suppose it’s due to the fact that in recent year, the talk of the end of days has come from the extreme type, those whose religious views are so out there that they may as well be something out of a bad movie about a cult. I suppose our popular culture hasn’t helped either. Turn on your average cable channel these days and while you surf through the low- class sideshow it has become (seriously, this is what I begged my parents for when I was a teenager?) you will more than likely come across a History Channel special where faux academics are interviewed about the vague statements made by someone before the flushable toilet was invented, or stuff like Doomsday Preppers.

I am not sure if the shows like these glorify these idiots or ridicule them. It seems like the fringe is more in the spotlight than they ever were, but it is hard to consider them “legitimate” because there really aren’t any threats anymore. It’s not like it’s 1962 anymore and we’re all building bombs shelters in our backyards because we are all scared of the bomb. As advanced as I guess the Mayans seemed, it was an ancient prophecy that seemed as unlikely as the prediction made last year by some dipwad who claimed that The Rapture was upon us (although I always thought The Rapture was not really in the book of Revelation, and instead was manufactured by someone who wanted followers to give him money). Besides, I had already become skeptical of apocalypse predictions years ago when Y2K didn’t happen.

Now, I’ m sure that most people who may read this remember what Y2K was, but its prominence as a threat to our society seems to have faded over time, becoming a footnote at least or the answer to a trivia question at best. In fact, the sophomores I teach had no idea what I was talking about when we were talking about the Mayan Apocalypse during some down time on the last day of classes before Christmas break. So, if you don’t know or don’t remember, Y2K was basically a widespread computer glitch that was going to destroy us all. The problem, basically, was that most co.puters were programmed with internal clocks that only displayed years with two digits. So, 1999 was simply 99. And on January 1, 2000, these computers would all display “00,” and since they didn’t know the difference between centuries, the computers would think it was not 2000, but 1900, and would shut down or something.

I first learned about it in Time when I came across the article “The End of the World As We Know It,” a title I suppose the magazine’s editors probably thought was hip but was really groan-worthy. Anyway, I had come across the article when I was in the Honors Program study lounge at Loyola, intending to do what everyone who went to the lounge always did, which was nap on the couch. Instead I got sucked into the story of the the Eckhart family of rural Ohio, who were among a population of very religious people who were convinced that it was the End of Days and had started to stockpile all sorts of supplies,including weapons, for the coming doom. They had even gone as far as to make bunkers, just like it was the Cuban Missile Crisis all over again. I was a typically self-absorbed college senior whose two major concerns were writing my weekly column in the student paper, and having the gas money to get to my girlfriend’s house on Friday night. Besides, I was set to graduate in May and only pulling 12 credits that semester, so I really didn’t give a crap.

Okay, that’s not entirely true,because I did run a Y2K compliance check on my computer (because my PC was so decrepit at that point that I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had exploded that January 1), and I had seen enough science fiction to wonder if it could really happen. But really, I just went about my business. (more…)

Pop Culture Affidavit Episode 4: A Soundtrack for the End of the World

Hey everyone, it’s time for THE APOCALYPSE!!! And while you’re sitting around wondering if a civilization that’s been dead for the better part of half of a millennium was right about the world ending, I thought I’d supply you with some music.

You can listen to the entire episode, which is basically one big playlist, here:

iTunes: Pop Culture Affidavit

Direct Download

Pop Culture Affidavit podcast page

Below is a list of songs with videos provided where available …

Intro music: Great Big Sea, “End of the World” (Live)

1. MC5, “Kick Out the Jams”

2. Andrew W.K., “Ready to Die”

3. Billy Joel, “Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)” (Live)

4. Nena, “99 Luftballons”

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Plagues, Monsters, and Jokers (My Life as a Teen Titan, Part Thirty-One)

So sometimes there are storylines that are so huge that the issues that come after it are a bit lackluster. It’s kind of like a hangover–that there’s a letdown after a huge event. After The Judas Contract, there was a series of stories that seemed a bit rushed as well as phoned in (with the exception of the Donna Troy-Terry Long wedding issue) mainly because Wolfman and Perez were working on two books at the same time as well as Crisis on Infinite Earths. Perez would leave the book soon after, but then returned with issue 50 of New Titans and drew the Who is Wonder Girl? storyline as well as several subsequent issues before slowly going off pencils (handing them off to Tom Grummett) and then going off co-plotting after a while as well. At the time, he was also working with Wolfman on the Games graphic novel, but this would mark a time when George Perez was more or less burning out and wound up leaving both DC and Marvel for a good deal of the early 1990s. Wolfman would, of course, fly solo on New Titans until the title was cancelled in the mid-1990s.

“A Lonely Place of Dying” was one of the biggest and best-selling Titans storylines of its time, mainly because of the tie-in to Batman, who was DC’s hottest property in 1989-1990 due to the Tim Burton film. Plus, this storyline featured Robin, who had been killed off a year or so earlier. So, you’d think that the boost in sales to New Titans would have been enough to keep that book going for a while. However, that wasn’t the case and I think part of it is due to the storylines that came afterward because the title was near cancellation as it headed toward issue 71, but was saved by Jon Peterson, who had been made editor by his former boss, Mike Carlin.

I’m not going to go into great detail as to what happened between issues #62 and #69 of New Titans. They are issues that I own and my favorite of the bunch is #65 because of the scenes between Dick Grayson and Tim Drake, which I felt really contributed to the latter’s character. In fact, the next parts of “Taking Flight” will take a look at Tim’s final steps toward becoming Robin. They are issues that I consider to be placeholders at best. The art is gorgeous–Tom Grummett took over full pencils on the title and he was a great replacement for Perez. In fact, with all due respect to Eduardo Barretto, who did a wonderful job as penciller for years, Grummett is my second-favorite Titans artist, even though the latter part of his tenure was a little sketchy (no pun intended) due to rushed deadlines, fill-in artists, and his own jobs on Adventures of Superman (and later Superboy) and Robin. But the stories were pedestrian at best. (more…)

Pop Culture Affidavit Episode 3 — Nothin’ Lasts Forever, Even Cold November Rain

In the third episode of Pop Culture Affidavit, I take a look at “November Rain,” a song from Guns n’ Roses’ 1991 album Use Your Illusion I that was released as a single and had an award-winning video that dominated MTV’s heavy rotation in 1992.

Along with talking about the song, I do a commentary for the music video and actually play it on my keyboard (although to be honest, I play it pretty badly). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll want to wear Slash’s hat.

You can listen here:

iTunes: Pop Culture Affidavit

Direct Download

Pop Culture Affidavit podcast page

To supplement the episode, here are a few things that I talked about on the podcast.

First, the ever-famous music video (note: you’ll probably have to watch an ad before you play the video so adjust your commentary track accordingly — and start playing the video about a second after I say “play.” Listening back, I realized that I was off a little. It’s my first commentary, go easy on me.):

Next, here’s a link to the short story “Without You” by Del James, upon which the video was based: “Without You”

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Pop Culture Affidavit Episode 2 — We All Float Down Here (or, Why I Hate Clowns)

In the second episode of the Pop Culture Affidavit podcast, I take a look at Stephen King’s It, both the 1986 novel as well as the 1990 TV movie starring Tim Curry as the evil Pennywise The Clown. It’s a Halloween treat that will remind you why demonic clowns dwelling in sewers will make you swear off the circus forever.

You can listen here:

iTunes: Pop Culture Affidavit

Direct Download

Pop Culture Affidavit podcast page

And, for your viewing enjoyment, here is a scene from the TV movie version of It:

Get Down Tonight

All of the pictures from the night in questions aren’t ones that my friends and I want floating around the web, so here’s a picture of the Humanities building.

I was cleaning a couple of weeks ago, doing the semi-annual “purge” of random useless stuff from the house, and among the old clothes and toys that were going to Goodwill was a pair of commemorative glasses from my college freshman-sophomore semi-formal more than 15 years ago. I’d like to say that I had held onto the glasses because I wanted to cherish the memories of that time in my life, but to be honest, I’m one of those people who is too lazy to buy new glassware so I simply hadn’t gotten rid of it earlier.

That’s not to say that retiring the glasses didn’t make me think of the night in question. Unfortunately, my adoring fans (both of them) will be disappointed to find out that the freshman sophomore semi, held April 26, 1997 with the theme of “Get Down Tonight” was not epic, grand, illicit, or even out of the ordinary, but instead was just like any other Saturday night in college.

Okay, I was wearing a jacket and tie.

It seems weird that a college SGA would throw dances, or at least that when they threw the dances, people actually would attend. College students are supposed to spend Saturday nights getting hammered on Natty Ice and throwing up into a trash receptacle outside of the library (which, of course, marks the only time in college they actually go to the library), not getting all dolled up and posing for pictures like it’s a high school homecoming dance, although everyone looks ten times worse than they did at homecoming due to college beer bloat and the fact that a dorm room doesn’t make for a very good area to primp.

On some level, attending a dance at my college kind of made sense because you really had nothing better to do, especially if you were one of those students who could not get into the bars and wanted some excuse to drink other than it was a weekend night. They were held in Reitz Arena, which is the same gym where the D-I Greyhounds played basketball … and I use the word gym because it really is a glorified gym. Sometimes the dances were held in the student center, but no matter where they were held, they always felt kind of like a high school dance, not something you’d expect in college. Oh sure, I went to a few sorority functions when I wa sdating my wife, but I can’t remember if she had a school-wide freshman-sophomore semi held in her university’s gym. Considering that The University of Virginia has about four times the population of Loyola College in Maryland, I’m probably right about that.

The music didn’t help, either. Our theme, “Get Down Tonight” came about probably because the late 1990s had a fair amount of nostalgia for both the late 1970s and 1980s going for it. Disco kind of made a comeback at that point, especially (and strangely) groups like K.C. and the Sunshine Band, whose three or four hits had become staples at weddings by then. They also weren’t hard songs to track down because they were featured heavily on the ever-popular ESPN Jock Jams albums that were released from 1995-1997, which my friends and I were all convinced were the only CDs the deejay that the SGA hired actually owned. I mean, how do you explain that the dance remix of “What’s Up?” by 4 Non Blondes was popular in 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999?

Maybe he was counting on the fact that we were too blitzed to pay attention to the music. If you were going to a school dance, you showed up already drunk because you spent the afternoon pre-gaming in your dorm room (one night had my five of us–my roommates and I plus my girlfriend—drink an entire keg during said pregaming) and maybe danced with your friends for the better part of an hour before, much like a high school dance, things got boring, drama happened, ro someone required some hair holding. I don’t think that anyone could really say that they were monumental romantic benchmarks.

Well, I should be more specific because for all I know someone first kissed his future wife at the freshman-sophomore semi. So let’s just say that these dances were never really monumental for me. I can’t decide if that’s because I put too much pressure on myself to have an amazing memorable time, or if I’m a complete romantic putz. Or both. Probably both.

But for what it’s worth, I went, danced, got my glass at the end of the night and went on with my life, developing a roll of film that probably won’t see the light of day and shrugging my shoulders at the thought of remembering and cherishing the night for the rest of my life. Unless I’m supposed cherish it and I’m doing it wrong, because in all honesty, I had to stretch to think about what exactly went on that night. I’m pretty sure there was drinking, sex, and definitely fighting among boyfriends and girlfriends, but ultimately it was fuzzy and fleeting, lost among the randomness of a time in my life that never made much sense and probably wasn’t supposed to anyway.

Kynasf’rr and … The Teraizer? Seriously?! (My Life as a Teen Titan, Part Twenty-Nine)

Liz Alderman in full-on Renfield mode, pregnant with her master’s demon seed. New Titans #108.

A couple of weeks ago, I was browsing eBay for things Titans-related and among the auctions was a group of four or five comics that were being offered at a starting price of $5.00 (with some sort of astronomical shipping attached). I almost laughed out loud because the comics in question were New Titans #108-112 and in all honesty, those are barely worth their cover price anymore.

Okay, maybe that is a little harsh, but those books are smack in the middle of what was, at the time, the nadir of the New Titans. In fact, a couple of the issues in this pile still make my all-time, dumpster-behind-a-Sizzler, bottom five Titans stories of all-time. Yet unlike some of the other stories I would put on this list, these do have at least one or two redeeming values.

I’ll start, I guess, with what has been happening since it’s been a couple of months since i sat down and looked at the main Titans book (which is kind of how things went for me back in 1994 anyway–I was so into Team Titans and the lead-up to Zero Hour and so turned off by what I was seeing in New Titans that I’m sure I was reading these out of obligation). Anyway, the Titans are now being led by Arsenal and have returned from the whole Cyborg/Technis storyline a team member down and without any real support. Meanwhile, Nightwing, their former leader, is focused on taking care of Starfire because she’s still suffering from whatever Raven did to her in issue #100 (oh yes, Dark Raven is still out there … and they won’t truly get rid of her until issue #130, which is the last issue of the series). Basically, this is the focus of the book all the way to Zero Hour‘s aftermath, and the quality of the two plot lines differ incredibly.

I’ll start with Dick and Kory; specifically, Kory, who is the focus of the first two issues and quite frankly who Marv Wolfman seemed to want to write about. This was around the time when the “Knights” sagas (-fall, -quest, -end) were finally wrapping up in the Batman books and as a result, Dick Grayson was going to be brought back into that particular “family”.” Wolfman would be losing a character he had been writing for a decade and a half, and since Nightwing’s solo adventures would (at first) have little to no connection to anything Titans, Dick and Kory had to break up. So, in issues 108 and 109, Starfire undergoes Kynasf’rr (pronounced “k-eye-nass-ferr?” I have no idea. I mean, you pronounce “Koriand’r” “coriander,” which … spicy … but … yeah …), which is a Tamaranean maturity ritual that I can best describe as kind of like Pon farr, the Vulcan mating ritual. As a result, Kory goes from being a blubbering mess to a fierce, almost emotionless “Shaman of Tamaran.”

Where this starts is in an insane asylum. Kory once again visits Liz Alderman, who now looks like a crazy old woman who is … pregnant? Huh? Well, she tells Kory exactly what is gestating inside of her and our hero as well: a demon seed, the dead children of Trigon. Nightwing steps in to protect Kory and as he does, an image appears to her and she flies off to the Southern Hemisphere, burying herself deep in the Andes to begin Kynasf’rr. (more…)

Elseworlds (My Life as a Teen Titan, Part Twenty-Eight)

As I’ve said before, when you’re trying to cover a series, annuals can be problematic. They don’t often fit into the continuity, or you find yourself struggling to fit them in, and even when they do they’re often not that good. During the sixteen years that Marv Wolfman wrote the New Teen Titans and New Titans series, there were fourteen annuals, and when I think of it there were three that were good and three that were worth reading. The three that were great were the exceptions to the rule–three annuals that wrapped up major storylines (the original Tamaran storyline, the origin of the Vigilante, and The Judas Contract in the 1980 series’ three annuals). The three that were worth reading either wrapped up long-standing questions (New Titans Annual #6, where the team returns to Tamaran and Karras dies), introduced new characters (New Titans Annual #7, which introduced the Team Titans), or carried the story along (1995’s New Titans Annual #11). But for the most part, the annuals from the New Teen Titans/ New Titans “baxter” series badly introduced new heroes or villians or spent time trying to reconcile post-Crisis continuity issues.

For what it’s worth, during the 1990s, DC did try to make their annuals relevant and for a couple of years it seemed to work. I don’t have the exact sales figures or anything in front of me, but I found both Armageddon 2001 and Eclipso: The Darkness Within fun, and Bloodlines … well, I read Bloodlines, does that count?

Okay, pithy comments aside, I’m sure that lack of quality and/or interest in Bloodlines proved a little problematic because when 1994 rolled around and it was time for annuals, DC decided that it wasn’t going to force its readers to buy every single annual out there to get a full-on storyline, but still wanted to tie together all of its annuals in some way and went for a thematic tie-in with Elseworlds.

Elseworlds was a concept that up until this point had mainly been applied to prestige format one-shots that mostly featured Batman or Superman, beginning with the excellent Gotham By Gaslight, which placed Batman in 19th Century Gotham City trying to solve the mystery of Jack the Ripper (it didn’t have the “Elseworlds” emblem on it, but is considered one of the very first).

The concept, as described by DC, is, “In Elseworlds, heroes are taken from their usual settings and put into strange times and places–some that have existed and others that can’t, couldn’t or shouldn’t exist.”

The Elseworlds specials seemed to be pretty successful each time and fans seemed to love the idea so much that the 1994 annuals were all “Elseworlds” stories starring the characters from those individual comics. This made it easy for continuity geeks like me to figure out where the annuals go, even if some of the annuals were pretty good and others seemed to come from the hackneyed “Die Hard on a ______” type of storytelling model.

The Titansverse had three annuals going for it, as Deathstroke: The Terminator Annual #3, New Titans Annual #10, and Team Titans Annual #2 were Elseworlds tales, and apparently I found these so significant that I didn’t realize that I didn’t even known the Deathstroke annual until a couple of years ago when I was sorting my collection into fresh long boxes and I noticed it wasn’t there. My local comics shop had it for a whopping $2.00, so it’s not like it was a crisis.

That Deathstroke annual, which was written by Marv Wolfman with art by Ed Benes (yes, that Ed Benes, and it’s extremely early Benes, so there’s no butts in anyone’s face), is the story of how Deathstroke fights in a future gone made against a race called The Genetix. Since he has been made immortal because of all of the experiments conducted on him, he seems to be the only man who can take down The Genetix, especially after learning their secret. Reading the story made me wonder if Wolfman had been watching Mad Max movies or reading old issues of Hex, because the post-apocalyptic world is right out of the 1980s. But to his credit, he chooses not to rework an origin story (which is what so many of the Batman Elseworlds tended to do) and that makes it the strongest of the three and a decent stand-alone story.

New Titans Annual #10, on the other hand, which was scripted by Louise Simonson from a plot by Wolfman, tries a little too hard. The creative team tries to place the Titans in a sword-and-sorcery epic and relies on a plot by Raven to bring back Trigon so he can take over the world, which is what had already been going on in the regular title (and what, quite frankly, fans were a little tired of) and quite frankly it feels like … well “It’s Die Hard but with magic!” and is rather forgettable.

Team Titans Annual #2, on the other hand, is not too bad. This came out a week before Team Titans #20, so Monarch hadn’t been revealed as the Team Titans’ leader and we weren’t aware of how he had this master plan that involved the upcoming Zero Hour crossover, but it wound up revealing one of the plot points for the last issues of the series. The adventure takes place in outer space with Lord Chaos essentially using Earth as some sort of Warworld and the Teamers being a band of rebels committed to destroying his tyranny. Most of the characters stay who they are, except for Redwing, who is able to transform into a beast called “Warhawk.” The difference between this and her transformation during Team Titans #20-24 was that in the annual she changes back to her more humanoid form and in the series the change is permanent, but I do remember seeing the regular issues and thinking it was pretty cool that I was able to see that Carrie would become “warhawk” in the regular comic.

Otherwise, the comic feels like a rehash of the Team Titans’ origin but a good enough rehash to stand on its own as a halfway decent story. Jeff Jensen and Phil Jiminez wrote a story that seemed to be a throwback to Marvel’s Star Wars series from the late 1970s and early 1980s, with its rebels and swashbuckling sort of space adventure and much like the series they were writing, they did their best to show that they were having some sort of fun. Had there not been three art teams, it may have been a little more solid, but reading “The Titans do Star Wars” is worth tracking it down.

So I’m sorry if this seems a little rushed, but that’s annuals for ya — something you’ve got to read because you’re reading everything, but nothing that you really remember when you’re done and file it away among the regular story.

Next Up: Raven haunts Starfire as New Titans heads toward a huge change.

Self-Righteous

The watershed moments in your life rarely come with a script. Oh sure, you have your major milestones and accomplishments but the moments of true epiphany are the most random, often happening when you least expect it. One such moment in my life came before a club meeting during my senior year of high school. I was helping pass out agendas and had left my backpack on my seat. A friend of mine, Jim, was a fellow officer in the club happened to see my Walkman and out of curiosity, pulled it out of my bag and gave it a listen. I returned to the table in time to see a look of complete confusion make its way across his face.

“Give me that,” I said, snatching the Walkman out of his hand. Jim didn’t respond, and I put my headphones on to hear what had prompted such a strange look. Playing near full blast was “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.”

Luckily, the meeting soon began and Jim didn’t care enough to mention it again or to anyone else, and needless to say that had me relieved because while I brushed the incident off, I felt the same sort of weird guilt you’d feel as if you’d been caught masturbating. This was music I had been listening to when nobody was around, an act of musical self-pleasure that I kept hidden from the guys I talked heavy metal with at the lunch table where for all they knew, I was genuinely impressed that Jeff tracked down a Megadeth bootleg or that Brian finally acquired the studio version of “Breadfan” when he bought the Japanese import single for “One.” Had he mentioned it to the group of people we hung out with, I would have been mercilessly ridiculed, like the time they found my copy of Born in the U.S.A. and wrote “Nice ass!” on the cover.

I probably shouldn’t have cared, to be honest. What’s wrong with having your own tastes? Who cares what other people think, right? But I was an individual with serious self-esteem problems and a need for approval that meant not only did I really want to seem like I was cool, but I was quite possibly the easiest target for ridicule. I will spare you the vulgar nicknames, the perfume sprayings, and other jokes in my honor and say that though Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield’s glory years were a good thirty years behind them at that point, my listening to the Righteous Brothers tape I’d borrowed from my mother, especially “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” had a perfectly reasonable explanation: Top Gun. (more…)

On Earth, Everyone Can Hear You Scream

“The Book of Alien,” published in 1979, had me scared out of my mind when I was a kid.

I think of all the movies I’m looking forward to this summer, Prometheus is at the top of the list. I know that being a huge comic book reader I would probably be more excited about The Avengers or The Dark Knight Rises, but when I heard that Ridley Scott was making a movie that had ties somehow to Alien, something in my nerd past reawakened and I remembered (suddenly? I mean it’s not like I ever really forgot) that when I was about 11 years old, the world he created in Alien was the center of my universe.

Okay, to be fair, the reason for that was more due to James Cameron’s sequel, Aliens, because up until the time I was in the fifth or sixth grade, I had only ever seen anything to do with Alien in the movie book–The Book of Alien–that someone on my bus had been passing around when I was in the second grade. Furthermore, what I had seen was a picture of the movie’s infamous “chestburster scene” (although at the time we called it “when that thing came out of the guy’s stomach”) and it scared the crap out of me.

I refused to watch Alien until I finally sat down and watched it during the summer before sixth grade–this was either the day before or the day of the incident where my father, who was wallpapering the living room–stepped on a razor blade and wound up with a few stitches in his foot. I don’t think I thought very much of the movie when I first saw it because it wasn’t as cool as Aliens, which I had already been watching on constant replay for the better part of a year.

Can you really blame me, after all? I was eleven or twelve and it was the middle of the “action Eighties” where I was into any movie that had large guns that shot lots of people, it quickly became my favorite movie. My friends and I would “play” Aliens (I was often Hudson to my friend Tom’s Hicks, although I think one time I actually played Ripley which I’m sure that some psychologist would have jumped on … but I have a feeling I just wanted to be one of the leads) when we wanted something slightly different than the “army” games we were used to playing after being kicked out of the house for watching Aliens way too many times.

But with anything from my childhood, my interest faded after a little while and I paid less attention to Ripley, Hicks, Hudson, Newt, and the other characters and more attention to things like baseball and the WWF. I would gravitate back toward Alien when I was in junior high after watching the original theatrical trailer while waiting on line to ride The Great Movie Ride at what was then called Disney’s MGM Studios in Disney World. I knew I had seen the movie before, but trailers were hard to come by in 1990–you either had to have it as part of a commercial break on something you taped off of television or on another video tape that came out at that time, and considering that Alien was released in 1979 and then released on VHS for the first time by CBS FOX video in the early 1980s, that wasn’t likely to happen in my house. The trailer blew me away and left so much of an impression that I remember trying to duplicate it as part of a computer animation project in my advanced computer graphics class in the ninth grade (I think it was a bunch of stills with quick cuts that wound up with no sound and a title in a really bad font … then again, it was 1991).

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